[Photo provided to China Daily]

The late literati Qian Juntao was hailed for his versatility. He achieved success in classic Chinese painting, calligraphy, poetry, music and book publishing.

Two years before he died in 1998, Qian donated hundreds of his works, seals he carved and his own collection of Chinese paintings and artifacts to the city of Haining in East China's Zhejiang province. A museum named after him was built there based on his donations and was opened to the public immediately after his death.

A selection of this personal collections are now on show at the Zhejiang Art Museum in nearby Hangzhou through Nov 5.
Scorned by Hillary Clinton and her supporters, loathed by President Donald Trump and his allies, accused by the Justice Department of overreach -- and now furiously protested as he delivered a convocation address at Howard University.

Former FBI director James Comey could be considered a divisive figure, but he doesn't seem to be dividing much opinion these days. For a variety of reasons, Comey might be one of the most roundly disliked people in American politics right now.

September has been a cruel month for the former head of the FBI. After it was revealed on the last day of August that he drafted a statement clearing Clinton in the email server probe in advance of its conclusion, Trump pounced early the next morning.

"Wow, looks like James Comey exonerated Hillary Clinton long before the investigation was over ... and so much more," he tweeted. "A rigged system!"

But that was a love-tap compared to the accusations leveled by Clinton, who has been quite clear on how she perceives Comey's role in the 2016 election. (At a Women for Women International event in May, she famously told CNN's Christiane Amanpour, "If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president.")

With the release of her book, "What Happened," Clinton has re-released some of her ire in Comey's direction.

"He, I think, forever changed history," Clinton said during an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on September 13.

"No nation, particularly an adversarial nation, can mess with our democracy," Clinton told Cooper, describing what she would have done if the election had bounced her way. "I would have had an independent commission. I would have done everything I could to get to the bottom of it because it's not going to stop. That's what I'm worried about."

The connection was clear -- in Clinton's analysis, Comey had cost her the presidency and with it the chance for the US to conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into the scope of Russian meddling during the campaign.

At Howard University on Friday, the anger was just as fresh, if more deeply rooted. Protesters chanted "we shall not be moved" and "white supremacy is not a debate" as Comey, the school's Gwendolyn S. and Colbert I. King endowed chair in public policy, eventually fell silent for 15 minutes.

Among the complaints: Comey's suggestion in October 2015 that police officers were being unduly cautious in response to increased scrutiny following the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri -- the so-called "Ferguson Effect."

"In today's YouTube world, are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime? Are officers answering 911 calls but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns?" he said then. "I don't know whether this explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year. And that wind is surely changing behavior."

Those comments drew pushback from the former Obama White House. Former press secretary Josh Earnest said, "The available evidence at this point does not support the notion that law enforcement officers are shying away from fulfilling their responsibilities."

HU Resist, a student activist group, handed out a statement on Friday condemning the remarks.

"James Comey represents an institution diametrically opposed to the interests of Black people domestically and abroad," it said. "The 'Ferguson Effect,' for example, is an outright racist lie designed to undermine Black Liberation Movement."

As he wrapped his speech, Comey said, "I look forward to adult conversations about what is right and what is true," and he did eventually leave to a standing ovation.

But how his presence will play during what has been billed as a lecture series remains to be seen. If the past few months are any indication, there could be more choppy waters ahead.

CNN's Laura Jarrett contributed to this report.
Eight former federal energy regulators  including five former commission chairs  oppose a Trump administration plan to bolster nuclear and coal-fired power plants, arguing it would raise prices and disrupt electricity markets.

The former officials, who served under presidents from both parties, call the plan "a significant step backward."

The plan by Energy Secretary Rick Perry would reward nuclear and coal-fired power plants for adding reliability to the nation's power grid. Perry says the plan is needed to help prevent widespread outages such as those caused by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.

The plan aims to reverse a steady tide of retirements of coal and nuclear plants, which have lost market share as natural gas and renewable energy flourish. President Donald Trump has vowed to revive the struggling coal industry and expressed strong support for nuclear power, while casting a skeptical eye toward renewable energy such as wind and solar power.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is considering the plan and could decide by mid-December.

A letter signed by eight former energy commission members said "subsidizing resources" such as coal and nuclear plants "so they do not retire would fundamentally distort markets ... and inevitably raise prices to customers."

The plan could backfire as investors lose confidence in energy markets, the former officials said. "This loss of faith in markets would thereby undermine reliability," they wrote.

The letter was signed by officials who served under every president since Ronald Reagan, including former FERC chairs Elizabeth Moler, James Hoecker, Pat Wood III, Joseph Kelliher and Jon Wellinghoff. Moler, Hoecker and Wellinghoff are Democrats, while Wood and Kelliher are Republicans.

The American Public Power Association also urged FERC to reject the plan, saying in a statement Monday it would "impose significant costs on customers without any justification."

Energy markets "need significant reform, but the DOE proposal would take us in the wrong direction," said Sue Kelly, president and CEO of the power group, which represents community-owned utilities.

The Utility Workers Union of America, meanwhile, supported the plan, noting that nearly 8,000 jobs have been lost in electric power generation by traditional fossil fuels since 2011, with another 6,500 nuclear jobs lost during that same period. "If baseload coal and nuclear generation are not properly valued for their services, thousands more workers are at risk of losing their jobs," the union wrote.

Perry's plan would compensate power plant owners that maintain a 90-day fuel supply protected against the elements. The exact cost is unknown, but critics say it could result in subsidies worth billions of dollars.

The proposal has drawn opposition from an unusual coalition of business and environmental groups that frequently disagree with one another.

Environmental groups say the plan would boost dirty and dangerous fuels, while the energy industry warns about interference in the free market and manufacturers that use huge amounts of electricity complain about higher energy prices that could be passed on to consumers.

Opponents say there is no evidence of a threat to the grid's day-to-day reliability that would justify the emergency action Perry is seeking. An Energy Department report in August called reliability "adequate," citing significant additions to the grid from natural gas, wind, and solar.

Democrats in Congress have denounced the plan, while Republicans have generally taken a wait-and-see approach.
Two Florida cities have made National Geographics list of the happiest places to live in the United States.

Those cities were not in South Florida, but along the states west coast: Naples and Sarasota.

The Naples area was ranked number 11 on National Geographics list, noted for its tropical climate and Gulf Coast beaches. The areas of Immokalee and Marco Island were also included in the ranking.

The Sarasota metropolitan area (included with Bradenton and North Port) was ranked number 14, lauded for art galleries and circus exhibits.

A total of 190 metropolitan areas were analyzed for the study. Along with a team of Gallup social scientists, bestselling author and National Geographic explorer Dan Buettner used a specially crafted index to pick the 25 happiest cities in America.

According to the study, 15 key metrics were measured to determine a citys happiness, including healthy eating, civic engagement, vacation time and financial security.

The happiest city in America, according to the study, is Boulder, Colorado.


The Islamic State militants came into the Syrian town with a hit list. By the time they left three weeks later, more than 70 civilians had been killed  shot or beheaded, their bodies dumped in farms and ditches.

The apparent revenge killings in the town of Qaryatayn underscore the ability of the extremists to inflict heavy losses even when they're in retreat  and portend more violence as they fight to hang on to their last strongholds in Syria.

News of the gruesome slayings began to emerge late Sunday, after ISIS militants were driven out by advancing government troops.

Terrified residents said they watched the slaughter from their windows or in the streets.

One former resident said his surviving family members walked for miles to find cell phone coverage so they could tell him of the deaths of his uncle, two cousins and a fourth relative. Another uncle remains missing.

"They came into town with a hit list," said Abdullah AbdulKarim, adding that 35 of the 50 militants who overran the town late last month were originally from Qaryatayn. He said the militants accused many of their victims of collaborating with the government but many others were also caught in the revenge killing.

"Our curse is from within us," he said, speaking to The Associated Press from northern Syria, where he fled years ago.

Once a predominantly Christian town known for its ancient monastery, Qaryatayn has changed hands between ISIS and the Syrian government several times during Syria's civil war. Parts of the 1,500-year-old St. Elian monastery were demolished the first time ISIS took over the town in 2015 and thousands of its Christian residents fled, fearing the extremist group's brutality.

An AP video, filmed as Syrian government troops recaptured Qaryatayn on Saturday, showed several bodies lying in the streets. In the video, a town resident said ISIS "monsters" killed more than 100 people, including soldiers and civilians.

"These are people who don't know God, they don't know anything. They killed children and women with knives, they beat women, broke their arms," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear for his own safety.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had documented the killings of at least 128 people in Qaryatayn, including at least 12 killed by government forces on suspicion of aiding the ISIS militants.

AbdulKarim and Mohamed Hassan, an activist who runs the Palmyra Network News, put the death toll at 75 civilians, saying many more remain unaccounted for. They said the dead included some who were shot by government forces.

But Hassan said most of the slayings were by Islamic State militants. "It seems it was mostly revenge," he said.

Another activist network, the Palmyra Coordination Committee, released the names of 67 civilians who were confirmed killed and said the number was likely to rise. It said at least 35 of the dead were found dumped inside a ditch.

Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, said ISIS "terrorized" residents for three weeks, adding that most of the dead were townspeople who were government employees or were affiliated with Syria's ruling Baath party.

He said at least 13 residents remained missing and six bodies had not been identified.

ISIS militants first seized Qaryatayn in August 2015, and relied on its strategic location to defend another of their bastions, the historic city of Palmyra. With Russian backing, Syrian government troops regained control of Qaryatayn in April 2016. But ISIS, facing major setbacks in Syria and Iraq, launched a new offensive on the town in late September and recaptured it.

AbdulKarim said during the three weeks that ISIS controlled the town, the militants went door to door looking for people they accused of collaborating with the Syrian government.

He said his uncle, who was a local mayor, and two cousins were shot after they were taken to an undisclosed location. Another uncle remains missing.

"They took people to show them bodies dumped in an open area to let them know they were killed, but also to terrorize the public," AbdulKarim said. He said the extremists barred residents from burying their dead.

He said the advancing government troops also killed civilians, but residents were too afraid to report the government killings.

AbdulKarim and the Observatory said the militants took Qaryatayn's police chief, his wife and other security personnel as hostages to negotiate their exit after government troops encircled the town. About 200 militants evacuated the town, before government forces marched in, they said.

Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, contributed to this report.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has signed an executive order banning the state from doing business with companies that support boycotts of Israel.

Hogan signed the executive order Monday.

The Republican governor says requests for future bids on state contracts will include language certifying that a company has not engaged in a boycott of Israel. Hogan also says he is asking the state pension system to divest itself of companies who have participated in the movement known as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

BDS was founded in 2005 to protest Israel's actions toward Palestinians by boycotting Israeli products and companies.

So far, 23 states have enacted laws or issued executive orders banning state business with companies that support the boycott.
A campaign mailer funded by the Democratic Party of Virginia is sparking criticism among Republicans.

The ad authorized by Kathy Tran, a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates seat for District 42, warns residents of the Springfield area about Republican candidate Lolita Mancheno-Smoak.

"The Halloween season, protect your family from the scariest threats," the mailer says, showing Mancheno-Smoak's smiling face alongside a metal mask and a snarling wolf mask.

John Whitbeck, chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia, implied on Twitter that the mailer was racist.

"If the @VA_GOP did this we would be called racists instantly. It would be on @Morning_Joe, @maddow and all over @CNN" he wrote.

Later in the day, he posted, ".@vademocrats cry racism over Eds public safety ads then compare a Hispanic woman to a dog and a serial killer."

Mancheno-Smoak said the mailer was "debasing," but not because of the illustration. "It's a pretty good photo of me," she said. Rather, she objected to what she called "blatant lies" about her policies.

Virginia House Democratic Caucus spokeswoman Katie Baker defended the ad.

"We compared Lolita Mancheno-Smoak's policy positions to masks from the Halloween aisle at Target, while Republicans attacked Latina candidates with the words 'thugs, violent criminals, gang members and child predators,' and images of bullet holes, guns and men in hoodies."

Tran said the mailer was intended to highlight Mancheno-Smoak's "frankly scary" policies.

Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate for governor, accuses Democratic candidate Ralph Northam, the current lieutenant governor, of failing to crack down on the MS-13 gang.

Latino activists say Gillespie's TV ads about the gang demonize their community.

"A Latino myself, I was very offended that in Gillespie's ad Hispanics were only portrayed as MS-13, as gang members, as violent, and we are a robust, diverse community," said Michelle LaRue, Virginia director of the immigrants' rights group CASA.

Del. Dave Albo, who Tran and Mancheno-Smoak are vying to succeed, said he was glad he'll be done soon with the meaner parts of politics.

"There's many reasons I retired. One of them is the campaigns have gotten so nasty," he said.

Voters head to the polls in just two weeks, on Tuesday, Nov. 7.
A 3-year-old boy who was taken from a Virginia home Wednesday has been found safe, but his alleged abductor is still on the run, police say.

Cayden Thomas Merchant was last seen at a home in North Chesterfield, Virginia, about 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 23. An Amber Alert was issued for the little boy about 10:45 p.m.

The alert was canceled just under an hour later when Merchant was found. Investigators did not say where Merchant was located.

But police say his alleged abductor 40-year-old James Benjamin King is still on the run.

King is described a black man with brown eyes and a short afro. King was last seen wearing a Deadpool insignia T-shirt with light-colored blue jeans.

Police say he may be driving a red 2016 Hyundai Elantra with Virginia license plate XWS-1828 and may be headed to Petersburg, Virginia. Anyone who thinks they may have seen King or the car is asked to call 911 immediately.
The body of a man who was once on the Frederick Police Department's most wanted list was found in a wooded area of the county Sunday.

Two hunters found Gennady Errigo, 19, of Walkersville, Maryland, dead along the wood line at a farm on the 9300 block of Liberty Road. Errigo was wanted by Frederick police for first-degree burglary, vehicle theft and theft.

Maryland State Police investigators said Errigo was wearing grey sweatpants, brown boots and a black shirt tied around his waist when his body was discovered on Oct. 22.

The medical examiner will determine the cause and manner of death.

Police are asking anyone who may have information about this case to contact police at the Frederick Barrack at 301-600-4150.
To celebrate Samhain, a Wiccan festival that falls on the evening of Oct. 31, Washington, D.C. resident Elizabeth Stephens usually prepares a pot of jambalaya to honor her late grandmother and a plate of roast beef in memory of her parents. She marks the festival with witches and fellow Wiccans, who offer their own dishes as a part of the days feast. The table they set becomes patterned with platters that were the favorites of family members and friends.

As a part of the celebration, a black cloth is held above the heads of the attendees and cut with a knife through the center, representing an opening between the spirit and material worlds. After some time has passed, participants encourage the spirits to return to their realm and the cut in the cloth is sewn.

Images of witches being veiled in darkness, casting spells over cauldrons endure, but a new generation of Wiccans and witches have established growing communities in D.C. and across the country.

Like other Wiccans and witches, Stephens has come out of the broom closet -- a term that refers to publicly revealing ones beliefs as a Wiccan or witch. They are fighting back against misinformation about Wiccans and witches.

Stephens said she loves Halloween.

Its a celebration of the witch. You can have sexy witches, you can have scary witches, but its still a celebration of the witch. Even if the witch isnt shown in a positive light, said Stephens, a 37-year-old Wiccan who also practices witchcraft.

Teighe Thorsen is a 29-year-old D.C. resident and witch who cofounded the group CityWitches in 2016.

Thorsen said she created the group, which includes Wiccans, Pagans and other occultists, as a place where the alternate outcasts of magic can actually come together and talk.

Were getting a lot of youth, a lot of people generally under 30, although not always, who are trying to find somewhere in their life that they actually have power, she said. Theyre trying to find it in something that is non-dogmatic and something that is just their own -- mystical, different, badass and empowering.

Since starting CityWitches, Thorsen said she has seen an increase in interest from those inspired by her magic, including the rituals she writes on her Instagram, and a rise in members on the group's Facebook page.

On her Instagram, Thorsen posts pictures of and describes in detail her magical practices. In one photo, she set up candles around a pentagram, with tarot cards, amethyst crystals and feathers surrounding the shrine. She occasionally posts photos of herself that show her colorful hair and amulets of jade and lapis lazuli.

Witches have repeatedly captured Americans' imaginations. The Craft" and the Harry Potter series are all hits, along with television shows like American Horror Story: Coven." But the visibility can create problems with perceptions. This Halloween version of witchcraft has made people assume about what Thorsen's practices are, she said.

Those are fantastical interpretations of what a witch is, but there is a little bit of truth to it, Thorsen said. There are things that you can do to affect certain results around you that most people wont pick up on but you know how to do it.

All magic involves completing certain things, like spells, to create certain consequences that a witch wants, Thorsen said.

It [magic] is a tool for personal development and empowerment as well as for changing your environment, for helping the people around you, and fear is never welcome. Fear is the antithesis of forward momentum, Thorsen said. "What I practice in magic is fearlessness.

Whereas witchcraft includes magical practices that can change from witch to witch, Wicca is a religion with a set structure, according to Penny Verin-Shapiro, a professor in the anthropology department at California State University, Fresno. Verin-Shapiro spoke to Wiccans and witches, studying their separate systems of beliefs, for her 2014 book Central Valley Pagans.

Verin-Shapiro found in her interviews with Wiccans and witches that many of them didnt seem to fit into the religions that they followed previously and stumbled on something that made them want to convert. She said that the influx of information on the internet has contributed to more individuals identifying themselves within modern-day witchcraft and Wicca.

Its [the internet] made it a lot easier to find out information that was hidden before and to find a group, if you want to a group to work with or to learn from, Verin-Shapiro said. Theres just a whole lot more information out there now that is easily accessed."

Along with the availability of information, a more accepting attitude toward other religions has allowed Wiccans and witches to be more vocal and visible with their beliefs, according to Verin-Shapiro.

The general public has become more accepting that not everybody has to be Christian, that there are many ways to worship, she said. So it has become easier for some people to come out of the broom closet.

Being out of the broom closet hasnt always been an option.

For centuries, the word witch was associated with witch trials, including the famous Salem witch trials in the 17th century, which accused some of practicing and performing magic.

Witchcraft didnt begin and end with the witch trials. From Caribbean Santeria to Italian Stregheria to various voodoo practices in West Africa and Louisiana, witches have discovered methods to magic and medicine within themselves in the past and present.

Modern-day witches have created their own collection of magic practices, inspired by centuries of witchcraft from across the world, according to Laura, a 58-year-old Wiccan high priestess who asked News4 to withhold her last name because she does not want her children to be harassed because of her beliefs. She said she has considered herself a witch for more than 30 years.

Within every faith, you can find some sort or form of magic worker or belief in energy, in that you are able to work with the energy forces, Laura said. Not all of those people would have necessarily called themselves witches, of course. But they were working with the same constructs.

Laura said she has been interested in magic since childhood. She found Wicca through a teacher, who said she could trace her teachers back to the founder of the modern-day Wiccan movement.

Gerald Gardner, a member of the Masons, combined elements from ceremonial magic and folk tradition into what he coined Wicca, which means "to bend," according to Laura. She studied different degrees of mastery in Wicca to become a high priestess.

For me, it is literally seeing the giant web of life and how every touch upon it affects something else in ways that are often unexpected," Laura said.

From honoring an earth goddess with a mindfulness about ones effect on the environment to an awareness about the three-fold law, which says that any action put out into the world comes back to someone three times, the Wicca that Laura follows teaches her that we fully responsible for our own words and that includes what goes beyond ourselves.

Laura said that her teachings and traditions in Wicca arent all necessarily followed by other Wiccans or witches, who may observe a completely separate set of customs.

If you talk to five witches, you are going to get 10 different answers, she said.

Laura has heard others describe what they think her religion is about: dancing naked, worshiping the devil and sacrificing animals. Those ideas are far from the truth, she said. She said she knows a man who lost visitation rights to see his child because a judge misconstrued his beliefs with Satanism.

Ive had people not take me seriously. Ive had people be very condescending to me. Are you a good witch or a bad witch? kind of thing. I kind of looked at them and said ... 'Find out," Laura said.

Stephens too said she has seen how stereotypes have seeped into how people understand her beliefs. Once, when she was reading a Wiccan book of spells at a McDonalds, a cashier asked her about the book. While Stephens explained her faith, the cashier told her that Evil never makes sense.

It was the worst experience that Ive had as a witch, Stephens said.

Still, in the coven of three other witches that shes a part of, Stephens has found a family that she sees almost every week in Virginia.

A lot of people think that were evil, that were spawn of Satan, that we worship the devil. We dont even believe in hell, much less Satan, Stephens said. Were people. We have as much variety within ourselves as a group as any other group."

Were not all painted with one brush. There are witches that I would not associate with, but there are Christians that I would not associate with and Muslims and Jews and Hindus and Sikhs, she added. Every faith has its own share of bad apples. But just because there are a few bad apples does not mean that we are all bad apples.
What to Know Girl reported missing Oct. 7 after father said he placed her outside when she refused to drink her milk.

In a statement to police Oct. 23, girl's father said she choked on her milk and died and that he removed her body from the home.

Dallas County medical examiner confirmed through dental records that the child found Sunday was Sherin Mathews.

The body of a North Texas child found in a drainage culvert Sunday has been confirmed to be missing 3-year-old Sherin Mathews.

Richardson police released new details to NBC 5 and confirmed the finding late Tuesday morning, citing a report from the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office saying the child had been positively identified using dental records.

Richardson Police Sgt. Kevin Perlich gives an update on the case of Sherin Mathews.

The girl's adoptive father, Wesley Mathews, was arrested Monday night after changing his story, telling police he "physically assisted" his daughter in drinking milk and that she died after beginning to choke, according to an arrest affidavit. He then told police he removed her body from the family's Richardson home.

Today Dallas M.E. has confirmed the identity of child recovered on 10/22 as 3yo Sherin Mathews using dental records. Cause of death pending. pic.twitter.com/Xkhg0TeEo4  Richardson Police (@RichardsonTX_PD) October 24, 2017

After being read his Miranda rights, detectives said Mathews told them had been trying to get his youngest daughter to drink milk in the garage but that she wouldn't listen to him.

"Eventually the 3-year-old girl began to drink the milk," the affidavit said. "Wesley Mathews then physically assisted the 3-year-old girl in drinking the milk. The 3-year-old girl began to choke. She was coughing and her breathing slowed. Eventually, Wesley Mathews no longer felt a pulse on the child and believed she had died."



Mathews told police he then removed the girl's body from the home, though no further details were given about where he left his child, according to the affidavit.

Mathews, who was out on bond after being charged with negligence, was re-arrested and charged with felony injury to a child Monday night. His bond on the new charge was set at $1 million.

NBC DFW was reaching out to his attorney.

The body of a child found in a drainage culvert Sunday has been confirmed to be missing 3-year-old Sherin Mathews.

Sherin Mathews was reported missing Oct. 7. Wesley Mathews initially told police she went missing around 3 a.m. after being told to stand outside as punishment for not drinking milk and that she was gone when he checked on her 15 minutes later.

In his original story, Wesley Mathews told police he went to look for the girl but returned home and did some laundry while waiting for her to return. Just after 8 a.m., nearly five hours after she disappeared, Mathews called police to report his youngest daughter was missing.

NBC 5 News

After a night of heavy rainfall Sunday morning, the body of a small child was found in a drainage culvert not far from the Mathews' home. Richardson police said late Tuesday morning the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office confirmed the child was Mathews using dental records.



Earlier Monday, Wesley Mathews and his wife Sini Mathews attended a court hearing to determine whether they could regain custody of their biological 4-year-old daughter, who had been placed in protective custody after her sister was reported missing.

The body of a child found in a drainage culvert Sunday has been confirmed to be missing 3-year-old Sherin Mathews.

The judge postponed the hearing until Nov. 13 to give Wesley Mathews time to hire a civil attorney, said Marissa Gonzales, a spokeswoman for Child Protective Services. The girl will remain in foster care at least until that hearing or until a judge orders a change in custody.

Wesley Mathews Arrest Affidavit


A new bike lane in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has put bicyclists at odds with local business owners.

The lanes, which extend along Brattle Street and Cambridge Street, were implemented over the summer. Since then, businesses along Brattle have complained of a lack of parking for their customers, as well as safety concerns.

"I haven't spoken to one human being who looks at this and doesn't think it's a mess," said Randy Ricker, owner of Brattle Square Florist.

While the lanes only extend along a quarter mile of Brattle, Ricker said they have created confusion for residents and drivers. While Brattle is a one-way street, the city removed a lane of its traffic to create the two-way bike lane. The goal was to create a safe space for cyclists to travel in and out of the bustling Harvard Square area, however, Ricker contends that it has made driving more dangerous.

"It's become a lot more crowded because there is now less space for cars," he explained. "You can't see some bikes that are coming down Brattle, so if youre going to take a turn onto it, you have no idea if cars are coming."

Adding to some frustration is the removal of parking spaces. While the city tried to limit the impact, the project did require the removal of 15 metered spots.

"Business has gone down, customers have been saying we are not coming in, there's no place to park. It's ridiculous," said Mariana Maradianos, who works at Hillside Cleaners.

However, the lanes have been a welcomed addition by bicyclists. After two bike fatalities in the city last year, safety advocates worked with the city to come up with solutions. One of them included the new lanes, which offer a partition to separate the cyclists from cars.

"There wasn't even a bike lane for people riding here. Give this type of infrastructure a chance," said Becca Wolfson, executive director of Boston Cyclists Union.

The Brattle Street lanes made sense, Wolfson argued, pointing out that the city determined car traffic would not be impacted with the reduction from two lanes to one. City data shows it was also a popular stretch for bicyclists in the evening. Approximately 150 riders traveled the road after work on any given evening in the spring. City leaders plan to study the section next year to determined the lane's impact.

Furthermore, Wolfson contends, many customers in Harvard Square commute by train or on foot.

"For any business that says they're losing business because people can no longer park here, I have a hard time believing that," Wolfson said. "Hardly any legal parking was removed to implement this facility."

But business owners still believe there is a better solution for both drivers and cyclists. More than 30 businesses have signed onto a petition with Harvard Square Business Association to urge the city to reevaluate the program.

"I just think it's totally counter-intuitive," said Ricker. "It's a disaster."
The White House on Tuesday said the Justice Department should consider a criminal prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey, claiming he had leaked privileged information to the press and offered false testimony to Congress.

"It's something they should certainly look at," press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters when asked whether the administration should prosecute Comey. She acknowledged that it was "not the President's role" to determine which criminal investigations are taken up by the Justice Department.

The question arose as Sanders defended Trump's decision to fire Comey earlier this year, a choice Trump's former chief strategist called a mistake this week.

Speaking to "60 Minutes" on CBS, Steve Bannon called the Comey decision the worst mistake in "modern political history."

Sanders countered that Trump has been "very happy with the decision" to fire Comey and felt "fully vindicated."

Trump abruptly fired Comey in May, initially explaining his decision as a response to Comey's handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server. Later Trump suggested the firing was actually a response to the FBI's investigation of Russia's election year meddling.

Comey told lawmakers during congressional testimony this year that Trump had pressured him to drop the investigation. Trump has denied he ever made such a request.

Sanders suggested those remarks to Congress, along with Comey's directed leaks of his memos to reporters, could be grounds for prosecution. She said legal action should be considered for what she described as Comey's fireable actions.

"If there's ever a moment where we feel that a person has broken the law, particularly if they're with the FBI, that's something that should be looked at," she said.
A few weeks back I told you how white box vendors, those Chinese-made, unbranded server vendors that compete with HP Enterprise and Dell EMC, were taking a sizable chunk of the business from the brand-name vendors.

Well, now HPE has made it official and announced it will no longer try to sell commodity hardware  the cheap, low-end servers used in abundance in public-facing data centers  to tier 1 customers like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft.

Also on Network World: How HPE plans to spin out its software assets

HPE president Antonio Neri made the announcement at HPEs analyst day event last week. He added that HPE would continue to sell higher-end servers to those vendors.

Its not an original strategy. Oracle made the same move in 2010 when it acquired Sun Microsystems. One of the first announcements Larry Ellison made was that Oracle would not pursue the low-end commodity market, and hes been true to that word. The company doesnt sell a lot of Exadata, Exalogic and other network appliances, but when it does they are massively decked out with lots of CPU cores, memory, flash storage, and traditional storage, and they sell in the millions.

Also, to a point, IBM did the same thing when it unloaded its x86 server business to Lenovo in 2015. IBM had been paring down its commodity businesses for some time, and that was just the latest. The companys hardware business is now confined to z Series mainframes and Power-based servers, which, like the Oracle servers, dont sell in massive numbers, but they are very high end and very expensive.

The move also reflects HPEs continued efforts to pare down its business and focus on the more profitable lines. It sold off its software business to U.K. software giant Micro Focus (that Autonomy purchase really worked out well for them, didnt it?) and sold off its services division to independent services giant CSC.

Its not like HPE was spinning its wheels in the cloud infrastructure market. According to Synergy Research, HPE held an 11.5 percent market share of cloud infrastructure servers in Q4 of 2016, a respectable showing.

Chinese 'white box' makers gaining a foothold in the U.S.

But its a crowded market with low margins and a lot of competition, and the Chinese are gaining more and more of a foothold in the U.S. Companies such as Quanta and SuperMicro are becoming real competitors. And they are perfectly willing to live with single-digit profit margins, whereas their American competitors are not.

I like to read one of the last computer print publications out there, called CPU, or Computer Power User. Its for geeks like me who prefer to build their own PC. Amid all the ads for water cooling and colored lighting, I regularly see full-page ads from SuperMicro, offering things like all-flash storage arrays and ultra-dense compute racks.

SuperMicro isnt foolish. They know that CPUs readers are system builders. They are going where the influencers are. I expect to see more from its competitors before I see ads from Dell EMC and HPE.

So, how long before you have a white box server in your data center?
Fires have laid to waste huge swaths of Northern California. The deadly blazes have burned through more than nearly 400 square miles forcing 100,000 people to evacuate, and destroying over 8,400 structures.

How do firefighters respond to such a disaster? Where are they dispatched? When and where are evacuations ordered? How can a fire being propelled by 78mph gusts of wind be contained? How do planes know where and when to deploy fire retardant?

Sensors, drones, fire-cams, crowdsourcing and geographical information systems all help minimize damage and deaths.

Background

The latest count on the Tubbs makes it by far the most destructive fire in our states history, said Daniel Berlant, the assistant deputy director for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. The biggest problem in most of the fires was the countless embers that were carried a half-mile to a mile in front of the flames. The embers rained down and ignited homes, which fell like dominoes.

Technology brings a new level of precision and a data-driven approach to managing wildfires. Real time data about fire conditions is collected and blended with predictive data such as current wind speed and direction. It showcases the value of Internet of Things (IoT) in action with (1) data collection (2) real time analysis and (3) optimizing the response.

Collection: gathering fire and environmental data

Aerial Reconnaissance

Fire incident commanders in the past often had rely on information which was out of date while fires continue to burn. Aerial reconnaissance has changed that. It helps fight wildfires using unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) such as Insitus ScanEagle that are equipped with High Accuracy Photogrammetry (HAP) sensors. They use military-grade electro-optical (EO) cameras during daylight, and infrared (IR) cameras for night-time imaging. These UAS can penetrate smoke or darkness, gathering and still images which are used to create geo-referenced, high-resolution digital fire progression and suppression maps.

Data is fed into a geographic information system (GIS) customized for firefighters and hosted on Esris ArcGIS platform. It provides data collection, analysis, and decision-making information to manned firefighting fleets operating in difficult terrain and smoke conditions. The aerial remote sensor imagery provides near-real time live, web-based video feed of thermal images to FireWhats ground-based mobile command centers. Esris Drone2Map creates 3D imagery from these still images and integrates them into a dashboard map for optimal situational awareness. Drones are used to map the fire perimeter, and to identify thermal concentrations in the fire where fire retardant should be deployed. This dramatically improves firefighters tactical awareness and decision-making.

Helmet cams

Helmet cams worn by firefighters such as the FireCam transmit live video, audio, high quality snapshots, and GPS location back to command centers while still recording video on the camera unit. Esri incorporates these live video feeds and other data feeds into real time maps.

Crowdsourcing is vital to information collection. Residents with the free Waze app in states that also have Esri's ArcGIS can both enter and receive alerts about fires, road closures and other conditions through the Waze Connected Citizens Program. The app is both a data source and a real-time dashboard. When Wazers enter the data, it can be displayed with the Citys data in ArcGIS online to present a real-time picture to the city and first responders. Community members can also provide on the on-the-ground insight into fire damage in their neighborhoods with Esris Survey 123 for ArcGIS.

Analysis:converting fire information into actionable data Field observers, safety officers and division supervisors, depend on accurate information on fire perimeter changes, proposed drop points, targets for aerial support and road closures. These insights enable improved request accuracy and better situational awareness. How is this provided?

Weather conditions such as changing winds, humidity and temperature all influence a fires intensity and growth. Weather and environmental monitoring sensors capture this information and relay it to Esris ArcGIS GeoEvent Server. Data provided by the USGS, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination Group gives near real-time understanding of the situation on the ground. This information is analyzed with an ArcGIS server along with data from first responders, fire cams, annonymized Waze data, weather sensors and drone generated imagery.The results are shared back in real time with municipalities and firefighters to coordinate responses and alert residents.

Act: responding in real-time

Real-time data feeds is integrated into maps with Esris ArcGIS Online and StoryMaps. They provide fire personnel with comprehensive situational awareness through in-vehicle computers, handheld computers, and mobile devices. Updates can also be easily transmitted from the field to the common operating picture in dispatch.

The fires in northern California have devastated thousands of acres, killed dozens of people and displaced thousands of others. Thanks to the brave firefighters helped with technology, the damage and suffering is being minimized. You can help by donating to the recovery services.
Production downtimes days are limited thanks to the industrial Internet of Things (IoT). Machine-embedded, network-connected sensors along with the collection of massive amounts of data will allow for self-healing manufacturing, scientists say.

Thats the concept behind an enthusiastic research project called SelSus currently being explored by multiple European academic institutions and manufacturers, including Ford.

Also on Network World: How industrial IoT is making steel production smarter

The idea that the team proposes is to not just detect weaknesses during production, but to also fix the potential issues automatically through a kind of mathematically calculated self-healing. The scientists say diagnostics should supply recommendations before a piece of equipment has failed. That self-healing aspect would take equipment monitoring to the next level.

The aim is not just to monitor the status of the machines and components, says Martin Kasperczyk of Germanys Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA, one of the participating organizations, in a press release. The plan is to detect potential weak points or signs of wear and tear early enough for the system to be able to predict potential malfunctions.

It should also correct the defects, too, in some cases.

The team has already gotten some of that to work. With one of the EU-funded research partners systems  a robotic arm for engine production  the device will self-heal when it starts to fail. If it were to detect resistance, for example, it would back-off rather than snap, the researchers explain.

The system can also calculate the probability of a stressed cable breaking under load.

How the self-healing technology works

Mathematical models called Bayesian networks that compute probabilities are behind the networked sensor-driven tech used. It, along with learning software that analyzes how the machine should run compared to how it is actually running, is part of the algorithm makeup.

It hasnt been easy, though.

You dont get there just by programming a couple of algorithms, Kasperczyk says.

Model data is captured during machine setup and also in a test under load. Its then compared to actual running conditions, along with an alert to human machine operators.

The major challenge is building up the models both for decision making and simulation in a way that they reflect the real manufacturing environment, says Fraunhofer IPAs Michael Kempf on the projects website.

Ive written about other kinds of IoT machine-failure sensing before. Sound monitoring sensors, connected to IoT can predict mechanical failure. Ultrasonic and vibration-sampling sensors, along with algorithms, can advise operators that theres trouble ahead based on the noises the machine makes  it wont sound right if theres an anomaly.

One of the players in the SelSus (Health Monitoring and Life-Long Capability Management for Self-Sustaining Manufacturing Systems) project is Swedish home appliance maker Electrolux. It wants a decision-support system to predict failures in its laundry washing machine manufacturing plant. Sensors monitor excessive power use, heat generated and machine oil usage. They are all indicators of trouble. The number crunching provided by the SelSus project should ultimately keep the plant running all of the time.

Often the problem is only a small defect or normal wear and tear. However, if left undetected, these can lead to major disruptions and production downtimes, SelSus researchers say.

Read more:
Lymphogranuloma venereum represents an uncommon sexually-transmitted disease caused by the invasive serovars of an obligate intracellular pathogen Chlamydia trachomatis. It belongs to the genital ulcer disease spectrum (alongside syphilis, chancroid and herpes simplex type 2), and the main site of action of the putative organism are regional lymph nodes.

The only reservoir for Chlamydia trachomatis is human, and the disease is transmitted via sexual intercourse when a direct contact with an open lesion ensues (albeit indirect or non-sexual transmission is sporadically described in the literature). Untreated patients remain infectious for years, while the spread of the disease is further perpetuated by poor hygienic conditions.

Although lymphogranuloma venereum most likely affects both males and females equally, the condition is more commonly observed in men. This is probably due to the fact that early disease manifestations are more discernible in men; therefore, the diagnosis is established more readily.

CDC microbiologist Dr Cheng-Yen Chen, was shown preparing a pyrosequencing experiment in order to differentiate between Chlamydia trachomatis L-serovars responsible for lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV), and other chlamydial serovars. Organisms of the same genus are further subdivided into serovars, or serotypes, which group these organisms based upon their constituent intracellular antigenic profiles. Image Credit: CDC/ Hsi Liu, Ph.D., MBA, James Gathany

Endemic Regions for Lymphogranuloma Venereum

Lymphogranuloma venereum is still endemically present in heterosexuals in West and East Africa, certain parts of Southeast Asia, South America, India, and the Caribbean basin. It usually appears in the classic form of the disease, manifesting with genital ulcers and lymphadenopathy (but without the presence of proctitis).

Clinical case series of patients presenting with genital ulcer suggest that lymphogranuloma venereum is not a common cause of genital ulcers in Africa. However, ten percent of all patients with buboes (i.e. swollen, tender and enlarged lymph nodes) that present to STD clinics in Bangkok are harboring these invasive serovars of Chlamydia trachomatis, while large epidemics were reported among the users of crack cocaine in the Bahamas.

The prevalence of the disease in Jamaica in 1996 was 2.63 percent (as determined by cross-sectional surveys), while in Madagascar eight percent of genital ulcer diseases in 1997 were diagnosed clinically as lymphogranuloma venereum. In Nigeria, lymphogranuloma venereum was the most common cause of genital ulcerative changes for years in women that attended STD clinics.

Spread across Europe and the United States

Until 2003 only sporadic cases of the disease were reported in Europe and North America  mainly among travelers, military personnel and seafarers who were infected during their visit to endemic regions of the world. These infections were, therefore, considered imported.

However, after 2003 the disease became established mostly among men who have sex with men (MSM) that exhibit high-risk sexual behavior. The predominant clinical presentation was proctitis, and the spread started in the Netherlands, which was followed by other Western European countries, North America and Australia. Based on the data between 2004 and 2008, there is evidence that the disease may be endemic among MSM in the United Kingdom.

In the beginning, no national reporting or universal surveillance was instituted in the United States, thus the true incidence remained unknown. However, soon after European experience the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) offered assistance for lymphogranuloma venereum testing, and a study from 2011 that evaluated multiple countries in the US found that one percent or less of all rectal swabs obtained from MSM were positive for Chlamydia trachomatis L serovars.

Almost all those cases of lymphogranuloma venereum have been caused by the L2b variant of Chlamydia trachomatis (conveniently dubbed the Amsterdam variant), and usually confined to individuals co-infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and/or hepatitis C.

The number of lymphogranuloma venereum in MSM populations is still on the rise. Moreover, more recent reports of endemically acquired disease among heterosexual individuals in the Netherlands, France and some other Western European countries means that transmission is occurring outside the initial close group  therefore close monitoring is warranted.

Sources https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26602624 http://www.cfp.ca/content/cfp/62/7/554.full.pdf http://www.scielo.br/pdf/abd/v85n4/v85n4a15.pdf https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4381887/ www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1744436/pdf/v078p00090.pdf de Vries HJC, Morre S. Lymphogranuloma Venereum: A Concise Outline of an Emerging Infection among Men Who Have Sex with Men. In: Black CM, editor. Chlamydial Infection: A Clinical and Public Health Perspective. Karger Medical and Scientific Publishers, 2013; pp. 151-157. de Vries HJC, Reddy BSN, Khandpur S. Lymphogranuloma Venereum. In: Kumar B, Gupta S, editors. Sexually Transmitted Infections, Second Edition. Elsevier Health Sciences, 2014; pp. 506-521.

Further Reading
Last night, five surgeons received the 2017 American College of Surgeons (ACS)/Pfizer Surgical Humanitarian Awards and Surgical Volunteerism Awards in recognition of their selfless efforts as volunteer surgeons who provide care to medically underserved patients abroad.

The extraordinary contributions of these five award recipients were recognized at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress 2017 during the annual Board of Governors reception and dinner. The awards are determined by the ACS Board of Governors Surgical Volunteerism and Humanitarian Awards Workgroup and are administered through the ACS Operation Giving Back program.

The ACS/Pfizer Surgical Humanitarian Award recognizes Fellows who have dedicated much of their careers to ensuring that underserved populations have access to surgical care and have done so without expecting commensurate compensation. This year, humanitarian awards were granted to two surgeons.

Robert E. Cropsey, MD, FACS, a general surgeon from Ypsilanti, Mich., received the Surgical Humanitarian Award for his work in establishing two hospitals and serving the needs of patients in the West African country of Togo for the last three decades.

Dr. Cropsey began his medical career to become a surgeon so that he could live in Africa and offer his services to those in need. After completing his residency, Dr. Cropsey and his family moved to Togo to provide care to the medically underserved people of the country. In 1985, Dr. Cropsey, collaborating with locals and other medical professionals and missionaries, opened the Karolyn Kempton Memorial Christian Hospital (KKMCH), Togo. Since then, Dr. Cropsey has served as the hospital director, chief of staff, and chief of surgery. KKMCH admits more than 3,000 patients annually, and houses an adult intensive care unit (ICU), pediatric ICU, ultrasound rooms, isolation rooms, and two operating rooms capable of supporting most major operations. KKMCH trains medical students and surgical residents and is also in the process of establishing, with the Pan African Academy of Christian Surgeons, a five-year residency program to train local surgeons.

In addition to his work in establishing KKMCH, Dr. Cropsey helped to open the Hospital of Hope in Mango, a remote community in northern Togo lacking modern health care. Between 2005 and 2015, Dr. Cropsey traveled between Togo and the U.S. to plan, coordinate, fundraise, lay out, and build the Hospital of Hope, which opened in 2015 and now sees thousands of patients who were previously unable to receive care. The hospital also provides community health education services, mobile clinics, and community development services.

Francis Robicsek, MD, PhD, FACS, a retired cardiothoracic surgeon from Charlotte, N.C., received the Surgical Humanitarian Award for his more than 50 years of work in providing medical care, particularly cardiothoracic surgical services, and establishing a medical infrastructure in Central America.

Dr. Robicsek began his humanitarian work in the early 1960s in Honduras, treating surgical tuberculosis patients. He then moved on to providing direct surgical care to patients in Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Eastern Europe. Dr. Robicsek was the first to perform open heart operations in Honduras and Guatemala and initiated and assisted the first open heart procedure by a native surgeon in Belize, where he maintains an active open heart surgery program. He has also brought sustainable medical aid to the Central American region through training medical professionals, delivering supplies, and helping develop local health care infrastructure.

In the 1970s, Dr. Robicsek arranged to have patients from Guatemala flown into Charlotte for operations, and he accepted Guatemalan surgeons for training fellowships. His work with the Guatemalan government and health care system led to the founding of Unidad de Cirugia Cardiovascular de Guatemala-;or UNICAR-;the Guatemalan Heart Institute, where more than 700 heart operations are performed annually. To help these efforts, Dr. Robicsek arranges to have more than $1.5 million in new and refurbished hospital supplies delivered to the region each year.

A major part of Dr. Robicsek's humanitarian work focuses on training Central American surgeons in Charlotte so they can return home with the skills necessary to care for their native populations. These efforts have led to the establishment of burn units, mammography services, echocardiogram networks, catheter labs, and more across Central America. The effects of Dr. Robicsek's work in this regard continue to grow each year.

The ACS/Pfizer Surgical Volunteerism Award recognizes ACS Fellows and members who are committed to giving back to society through significant contributions to surgical care as volunteers. This year, volunteerism awards were granted to three surgeons.

Sherry Wren, MD, FACS, a general surgeon from Palo Alto, Calif., received the International Surgical Volunteerism Award for her work with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, also known as Doctors without Borders) in several African countries, as well as her work in the U.S. aimed at preparing surgeons to provide international humanitarian aid.

In more than 10 years of doing volunteer work with MSF, Dr. Wren's work has covered a wide range of surgical disciplines, particularly general, obstetric, and orthopaedic surgery. She has provided surgical care and humanitarian aid in countries including Cote d'Ivoire, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Dr. Wren's first long-term project was at the University Teaching Hospital, Harare, Zimbabwe, where she created a surgical residency exchange program with the University of Zimbabwe that was recognized by the American Board of Surgery. The program allowed surgeons and residents from Stanford University to travel to Zimbabwe to learn and assist. However, unlike most international programs, this one created the opportunity for surgeons and students from Zimbabwe to train at Stanford.

Dr. Wren also launched a medical student interest group in surgery for women in Zimbabwe, where there are no female general surgeons. She has directly trained more than 40 Zimbabwean surgeons in trauma, ultrasonography, low-resource laparoscopy, and other procedures. Her work in Africa led to Dr. Wren's election to the College of Surgeons of Eastern, Central and Southern Africa (COSECSA), a group similar to ACS for the 14 participating countries. During the 2014 outbreak of the Ebola virus, Dr. Wren worked extensively with surgeons in Ebola-ravaged African countries.

In 2010, Dr. Wren designed the International Humanitarian Aid Skills Course at Stanford, which was the first in the U.S. to offer physicians the knowledge and skills to function in a low-resource environment. Since it was created, the course has been offered 10 times and has more than 400 graduates. It offers didactics, case studies, simulation, and video-based teaching for critical areas including tropical medicine, low-resource anesthesia, burns and wounds, orthopaedic trauma, head injury, and post-partum hemorrhage.

CAPT Zsolt Thomas Stockinger, MD, FACS, a U.S. Navy trauma surgeon from Fort Sam Houston, Texas, received the Military Surgical Volunteerism Award for his service during a U.S. military mission to Haiti to provide medical care after the 2010 earthquake, as well as his service during voluntary deployments to Afghanistan.

Dr. Stockinger has consistently volunteered for difficult missions to provide surgical assistance in austere environments in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, and other countries. Following the earthquake in 2010, Dr. Stockinger volunteered to deploy to Haiti and serve as a clinician. Once he arrived, he realized there was a need to assist with the planning and organization in addition to medical care. When the USNS Comfort became the referral center for Haiti's medical facilities, Dr. Stockinger developed criteria for accepting incoming patients on the ship, as well as patient flow and discharge plans. He was one of only four general surgeons aboard the ship for the first three weeks of the mission until additional personnel could arrive, and the only U.S. military general/trauma surgeon present for the entire seven-week Comfort mission.

In 2011 and 2012, when Dr. Stockinger was chief of trauma at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) hospital in Kandahar, he was involved in efforts that led to the Afghan army's regional hospital becoming the Afghan Level I trauma center for the region. The NATO hospital then became the subspecialty referral center for complex cases. In 2013, while volunteering as a NATO regional command surgeon in Helmand province, Dr. Stockinger worked with coalition and Afghan army personnel to establish a temporary facility operated by Afghan surgical teams that had been deployed to Helmand from Kabul. By the end of his tour, funding was secured and construction began on a permanent facility, which was the first ever Afghan army surgical facility in southern Afghanistan.

In addition to these missions, Dr. Stockinger has volunteered for foreign training assistance missions since 2006. He has established self-sustaining war/trauma surgery courses in Pakistan, Georgia, and Ukraine. He has conducted site surveys in Ghana and the Philippines to help increase U.S. humanitarian assistance to underserved populations, and he helped the government of Mauritius develop a nationwide disaster response plan in 2008.

Yihan Lin, MD, a general surgery resident from Denver, Colo., received the Surgical Resident Volunteerism Award for leading the effort to create a national surgical and anesthesia plan in Zambia, and for providing patient care and education in other underserved countries.

Dr. Lin has been an active medical volunteer since she was a medical student. She served as student director for the Stout Street Clinic for the homeless in Denver from 2009 to 2010, and then began to work internationally. Dr. Lin traveled to Ecuador, where she worked with the local community on culturally acceptable methods of birth control. In Uganda, Dr. Lin sought to bridge the gap between medical visitors and the community by compiling a dictionary of medical phrases in the local language, Rukiga, and creating a visitor's handbook for traveling medical professionals. She also performed a needs assessment of hospital technology and equipment and built a storeroom for supplies donated from Project Cure in Colorado. In 2013, Dr. Lin spent a month in Leogane, Haiti, where she operated with local surgeons, sought donations for the local hospitals, and cared for patients in emergency room and clinics.

Beginning in 2015, Dr. Lin participated in the two-year Paul Farmer Global Surgery Fellowship program, which was created to train leaders to promote surgical care, research, and educational issues pertinent to global surgery. During this fellowship, Dr. Lin spent more than a year in Rwanda, where she worked with the Rwandan Ministry of Health to help develop a national surgical, obstetric, and anesthesia plan, with the goal of increasing surgical access to all Rwandans. This involved designing tools to collect baseline surgical data, and will contribute to future work with stakeholders to further develop the country's surgical priorities in the future in the areas of infrastructure, workforce, information management, and financing. She also spent time in Zambia, where she worked with the Zambian Ministry of Health to create a national surgical and anesthesia plan that has since been signed into law and incorporated into their national health plan. This year, Dr. Lin has also worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, with the goal of advocating for basic surgical care to be a part of universal health coverage. This included the publication of a baseline surgical assessment for countries to use when developing national surgical plans..
Getting enough vitamin D during infancy and childhood is associated with a reduced risk of islet autoimmunity among children at increased genetic risk for type 1 diabetes, according to a study published this week in the journal Diabetes.

The study's lead author, Jill Norris, MPH, PhD, of the Colorado School of Public Health at CU Anschutz, and her co-authors examined the association between vitamin D levels in the blood and islet autoimmunity.

Islet autoimmunity, detected by antibodies that appear when the immune system attacks the islet cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, is a precursor to type 1 diabetes.

"For several years there has been controversy among scientists about whether vitamin D lowers the risk of developing of islet autoimmunity and type 1 diabetes," said Dr. Norris.

Type 1 diabetes is a chronic autoimmune disease that is increasing by 3-5 percent annually worldwide. The disease is now the most common metabolic disorder in children under age 10. In younger children, the number of new cases is particularly high. And the risks seem to be greater at higher latitudes, further north from the equator.

Vitamin D represents a candidate protective factor for type 1 diabetes as it regulates the immune system and autoimmunity. Moreover, vitamin D status varies by latitude. But associations between vitamin D levels and islet autoimmunity have been inconsistent. This may be due to different study designs, population variation in vitamin D levels, or a failure to account for the combined effect of exposure and underlying genetic variation in the vitamin D pathway.

The findings are part of The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) study, a large, multi-national study funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

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TEDDY's effort began in 2004 with children from six clinical centers: three in the U.S. (Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes at CU Anschutz, the Pacific Northwest Research Institute in Seattle, and Augusta University in Georgia) and three in Europe (Universities of Turku, Oulu, and Tampere in Finland, Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen in Germany, and Lund University in Sweden). The aim of the study is to search for triggers and protective factors for type 1 diabetes in 8,676 children with elevated type 1 diabetes risk.

The TEDDY children were followed with blood samples drawn every three to six months from infancy, to determine the presence of islet autoimmunity, as well as levels of vitamin D.

The authors compared 376 children who developed islet autoimmunity with 1,041 children who did not. The authors found that in children with a genetic variant in the vitamin D receptor gene, vitamin D levels in infancy and childhood were lower in those that went on to develop islet autoimmunity compared with those that did not develop autoimmunity.

This study is the first to show that higher childhood vitamin D levels are significantly associated with a decreased risk of IA.

"Since this association does not prove cause-and-effect, we look to future prospective studies to confirm whether a vitamin D intervention can help prevent type 1 diabetes," Dr. Norris said.
Benzo[a]pyrene is a potent carcinogen and mutagen present in cigarette smoke, automotive exhaust, burnt wood fumes, barbecued and smoked meat etc.

Understanding the mechanisms whereby benzo[a]pyrene, which belongs to the class of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), may induce malignant transformation of human cells is the aim of a research project supported by the Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) and coordinated by Ana Paula de Melo Loureiro, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo's School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (FCF-USP) in Brazil.

According to Loureiro, the idea is to identify the cellular pathways or sequences of biological reactions involved in the development of cancer and hence find possible targets for prevention or treatment of the disease.

"Tests have shown that supplementing cell cultures with nicotinamide riboside, one of the components of vitamin B3, protects cells and prevents malignant transformation," she said. "We now want to find out exactly how this happens and whether the compound in question can be used in chemoprevention."

A substance intensifies cell metabolism

In experiments performed with regular lung cells - more precisely bronchial epithelial cells - cultures were exposed to 0.5 and 1 micromolar (M) benzo[a]pyrene for seven days.

Recent data in the scientific literature suggest that the appearance of tumors is closely associated with genetic alterations and also with epigenetic alterations, which may activate the expression of protumoral genes or silence protective genes, for example.

What most drew the scientists' attention, however, was a significant drop in the levels of metabolites involved in the production of energy for cells shortly after the first hour of exposure to benzo[a]pyrene. Throughout the exposure period, the cells readapted metabolically, and by the end of the period, the levels of metabolites had risen in exposed cells compared with the control group.

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"It was for this reason that we had the idea of supplementing the cultures with nicotinamide riboside, a precursor to nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide [NAD+], which is essential to cellular metabolism and to the production of ATP [adenosine triphosphate, a molecule that stores energy for cell use]," Loureiro said.

Supplementation with nicotinamide riboside (1 M) began 24 hours before exposure to benzo[a]pyrene and was renewed daily with the latter. Because benzo[a]pyrene is absorbed rapidly and biotransformed, it has to be replenished in the cell cultures every day, Loureiro explained.

Understanding the connection between benzo[a]pyrene and tumoral development

At the end of the seven-day period, the cells were transferred to a semi-solid medium containing agarose, a polysaccharide obtained from algae, in order to prevent adhesion to the culture dish. The researcher says that a normal epithelial cell is unable to grow in this semi-solid medium without Anchorage.

"To make this possible, the expression of a number of genes and proteins must be altered so as to favor tumor development, for example by silencing the expression of cadherins [calcium-dependent adhesion molecules that form junctions to bind nearby cells together]," said Loureiro.

Analysis performed during the incubation period showed the occurrence of DNA alterations - both genetic (lesions that caused mutations in the nucleotide sequence) and epigenetic (increased levels of 5-methylcytosine, which alters gene expression). Cells grown in the semi-solid medium displayed global hypomethylation (reduction in levels of 5-methylcytosine), a characteristic of tumor cells.

Supplementing cells exposed to the carcinogen nicotinamide riboside yielded positive results since they proved unable to grow in the agar medium, displaying similar behavior to the control cells, which were not exposed to benzo[a]pyrene.
Delivering news about end-of-life issues is one of the most difficult tasks clinicians encounter in medical practice. Researchers from the Texas Medical Center on behalf of the ETHICS study investigators, in Houston, Texas, aimed to assess how prepared health-care providers feel in communicating end-of-life issues and determining if proper training had been given to health-care providers.

A 30-question survey addressing opinions regarding ethical issues, religion, and attitudes on specific group of patients, and communication skills was administered in 174 different institutions across 40 countries. 10,106 surveys were completed, showing that 30% of all health-care providers, and 11.5% of physicians let someone else give notice of a patient's death to the patient's relatives.

The authors concluded that only one-third of the health-care providers surveyed had undergone formal training in delivering bad news. Medical students received less training than other health-care professionals. Among physicians, more years of experience appear to compensate for the lack of training in delivering bad news. The study also found that nurses with no ICU experience do not deliver bad news to patients or their families. Women were more likely to communicate the death of patients than men.

"Learning good interpersonal communication skills, including delivering bad news, should be part of all health education programs globally," states lead researcher Dr. Joseph Varon, "efforts to provide tools for communication skills are necessary for delivering better patient care."

Further results from this study will be shared at CHEST Annual Meeting 2017 in Toronto on Wednesday, November 1, 1:30 PM-2:30 PMat the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Exhibit Hall, Poster Number 105.
For millions of Americans, their world is dissolving into an unrecognizable blur. Diabetic retinopathy is an eye disease affecting one-third of the estimated 30 million Americans who struggle with diabetes. As the patients' vision slowly fades, it never recovers and few treatments are available.

Researchers at University of Utah Health have identified a protein (ARF6) that when inhibited reduces diabetic retinopathy, a condition that results when blood vessels at the back of the eye leak fluid into the eye, impairing vision. Published in the October 23 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, these results offer an opportunity to develop new treatments for this eye disorder.

"What is exciting about this study is that we and our collaborators identified a compound (NAV-2729) that inhibits ARF6, which is crucial for the development of diabetic retinopathy," explained co-first author Weiquan (Wendy) Zhu, Ph.D., research assistant professor in Internal Medicine at U of U Health.

Studies were conducted in rodents treated to simulate the diabetic condition. By injecting NAV-2729 into the eyes of these animals, vessel leakage, as well as, the overgrowth of blood vessels, another driver of disease, were significantly reduced.

The long-term efficacy of treatment remains unknown. It also remains to be determined whether the drug will be suitable as a therapeutic intervention for people.

"ARF6 acts like a traffic cop at a busy intersection within a cell," explained Dean Li, Ph.D., vice president, Head of Translational Medicine at Merck & Co. and senior author on the paper. Li is the former associate vice president and chief scientific officer at U of U Health and co-founder of Navigen Inc. "ARF6 orchestrates multiple inflammatory signals that contribute to inflammation common in many diseases, including diabetic eye disease."

ARF6 amplifies and maintains the signal protein (vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)) receptor, which stimulates a series of cascading responses, leading to a diseased state in the eye.

Today, patients with diabetic eye disease can receive monthly anti-VEGF injections directly into the eye to reduce inflammation, a treatment that is successful in only 40 percent of patients. In the study, injections of NAV-2729 into the eyes of diabetic mice were more effective in reducing blood vessel leakage than the anti-VEGF injections.

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"Diabetic retinopathy can develop over time, leading to dramatic vision loss that may not be improved with glasses," said M. Elizabeth Hartnett, M.D., professor in Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at Moran Eye Center and a contributor to this study. "New treatments are needed, because diabetic retinopathy is increasing world-wide and anticipated to increase more in the next decades."

Also new to this study, the researchers identified two proteins  GEP100 and ARNO  that play a critical role in the signaling process. These proteins activate ARF6 at two different locations in the cell to continue the signaling cycle.

"We think these results are important because they identified a mechanism by which ARF6 controls VEGF receptor signaling and therefore may have much broader implications, extending to other diseases that involve VEGF receptor activation, such as cancer," said Shannon Odelberg, Ph.D., research associate professor in Internal Medicine at U of U health and corresponding author on the study.

According to Odelberg, ARNO activates ARF6, which shuttles the VEGF receptor into the cell where its signal can be amplified. GEP100 activates ARF6 to recycle the VEGF receptor back to the outside of the cell where it can be reactivated for the signaling process to begin again. This signaling loop triggers disease by increasing blood vessel leak and the formation of new and weak blood vessels.

The team of researchers plan to continue to explore the role of ARF6 in other inflammatory diseases.

NAV-2729 was identified by A6, a subsidiary company of Navigen Inc, a Salt Lake City drug discovery and development company, whose research scientists contributed to this study. According to Zhu, A6 researchers are pushing forward with development of other compounds, which are more suitable as potential new treatments.
The World Health Organization is working to contain an outbreak of Marburg virus disease (MVD) that has appeared in eastern Uganda on the border with Kenya.

At least one person is confirmed to have died of MVD and several hundred people may have been exposed to the virus at health facilities and at traditional burial ceremonies in Kween District, a mountainous area 300 kilometres northeast of Kampala.

The first case was detected by the Ministry of Health on 17 October, a 50-year-old woman who died at a health centre of fever, bleeding, vomiting and diarrhoea on 11 October. Laboratory testing at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) confirmed the cause of death as MVD.

The womans brother had also died of similar symptoms three weeks earlier and was buried at a traditional funeral. He worked as a game hunter and lived near a cave inhabited by Rousettus bats, which are natural hosts of the Marburg virus.

One suspected and one probable case are being investigated and provided with medical care. An active search for people who may have been exposed to or infected by the virus is underway.

The Ministry of Health has sent a rapid response team to the area supported by staff from the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFNET).

WHO is providing medical supplies, guidance on safe and dignified burials, and has released US$500,000 from its Contingency Fund for Emergencies to finance immediate response activities.

We are working with health authorities to rapidly implement response measures, said Ibrahima-Soce Fall, WHO Regional Emergency Director for the Africa region. Uganda has previously managed Ebola and Marburg outbreaks but international support is urgently required to scale up the response as the overall risk of national and regional spread of this epidemic-prone disease is high.

Marburg virus disease is a rare disease with a high mortality rate for which there is no specific treatment.

Source: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2017/virus-uganda-kenya/en/
Cosmic Ghost Rider takes on his own doppelganger in his new ongoing title

Cosmic Ghost Rider is riding into his first ever solo ongoing series this March
A Northwestern University and MIT study of automation and unemployment risks suggests that small cities will be less resilient than large cities in weathering the impacts of automation. Cities with fewer than 100,000 inhabitants will experience more disruption.

Smaller cities have proportional more jobs that are routine clerical work, such as cashier and food service jobs, which are more susceptible.

The city has proven to be the most successful form of human agglomeration and provides wide employment opportunities for its dwellers. As advances in robotics and artificial intelligence revive concerns about the impact of automation on jobs, a question looms: How will automation affect employment in cities? Here, they provide a comparative picture of the impact of automation across U.S. urban areas. Small cities will undertake greater adjustments, such as worker displacement and job content substitutions. They demonstrate that large cities exhibit increased occupational and skill specialization due to increased abundance of managerial and technical professions. These occupations are not easily automatable, and, thus, reduce the potential impact of automation in large cities. Their results pass several robustness checks including potential errors in the estimation of occupational automation and sub-sampling of occupations. Their study provides the first empirical law connecting two societal forces: urban agglomeration and automations impact on employment.

To construct a comparative picture of automation in cities, their first challenge is to get reliable estimates of how automation impacts workers. Existing estimates are wide ranging. Frey and Osborne estimate that 47% of U.S. employment is at high risk of computerization in the foreseeable future, while an alternative OECD study concludes a more modest 9% of employment is at risk. Note that these results do not tell us about the impact of automation in cities as they are presented at a national level. Differences in these predictions arise from discrepancies over two main skill dynamics: the substitution of routine skills, and complementarity of non-routine and communication skills. Additionally, technology-driven efficiency may redefine the skill requirements of occupations and actually increase employment in low-skilled jobs. Nevertheless, even if we take current estimates of the absolute risk of computerization of jobs with skepticism, these estimates can provide useful guidance about relative risk to different cities that is robust to errors in the estimates.

Large cities have more unique occupations and industries but distribute employment less uniformly across those occupations. This juxtaposition of both diversity and specialization in large cities is reconcilable through the division of labor theory.

What do large cities specialize in and why? The division of labor encourages worker modularity, which has the potential to impact whole groups of workers who are competing with automation technology. Therefore, specialization alone is not enough to explain the resilience to automation impact that we observe across cities. For example, Detroit, which is famous for its specialization in automotive manufacturing, has experienced economic down turn, while the San Francisco Bay area, epicenter of the information technology industry, continues to flourish despite the dot-com bubble (perhaps due to its support of a creative class of workers). Their analysis highlights specific occupations, such as Mathematician and Chemist, as well as specific types of skills, such as Computational/Analytical skill, that explain the increased resilience of large cities. These occupations and skills may inform policy makers in small cities as they identify new industries and design worker retraining programs to mitigate the negative effects of automation on employment. By quantifying relative impact, we provide an upper bound for technological unemployment in cities. Changing labor demands produce systemic effects, which make it difficult to precisely predict employment loss. For example, the introduction of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) suggested a likely decrease in human bank teller employment. However, contrary to this prediction, ATM technology cut the cost to banks for opening and operating new branches, and, as a result, national bank teller employment increased. However, these bank tellers performed different tasks, such as relationship management and investment advice, which required very different skills. Hence, by impact, they refer to the magnitude of the skill substitution shocks that cities just respond to.

The actual technological unemployment in a city will be shaped both by free market dynamics (e.g. shifts in supply and demand curves) and by economic and educational policy (e.g. worker re-training, or skilled migration).

Despite being seemingly unrelated societal forces, they uncover a positive interplay between urbanization and automation. Larger cities not only tend to be more innovative but also harbor the workers who are prepared to both use and improve cutting-edge technology. In turn, these workers are more specialized in their workplace skills and less likely to be replaced by automated methods in the foreseeable future. These findings open the door for more controlled investigations with input from policy makers.
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Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
The American Red Cross is encouraging people to give blood in advance of the upcoming holiday season.

Red Cross officials said many regular donors delay giving due to holiday activities and travel between Thanksgiving and New Years Day.

Upcoming donation opportunities in western Wisconsin are as follows:

Nov. 2Altra Federal Credit Union, 1700 Oak Forest Dr., Onalaska, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Nov. 7Church of Christ, 825 Nelson Pkwy, Viroqua, noon to 5:30 p.m.

Nov. 8Comfort Inn & Suites, W10170 Hwy 54 E., Black River Falls, noon to 5:30 p.m.

Nov. 9First United Methodist Church, 1105 Butts Ave., Tomah, 10:45 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Nov. 13Coon Valley Lutheran Church, 1005 Central Ave., Coon Valley, 1-6 p.m.

Nov. 14Presbyterian Church, 625 W. Franklin St., West Salem, 12:30-5:30 p.m.

Nov. 17Viroqua High School, 100 Blackhawk Dr., Viroqua, 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

To make an appointment, download the American Red Cross Blood Donor App, visit redcrossblood.org or call 1-800-733-2767.

A blood donor card or drivers license or two other forms of identification are required at check-in.
Medicares annual open enrollment period, which allows enrollees to choose their health and drug coverage for 2018, started Oct. 15. All enrollment choices for next year must be made by Thursday, Dec. 7.

Some current Wisconsin beneficiaries will need to choose new prescription plans for 2018 as two Medicare Part D drug plans have announced that they will be shutting down effective Dec. 31  First Health Part D Premier Plus and Wellcare Extra. All beneficiaries impacted by these plan terminations were sent a mailing by their plan in late September or early October. If they fail to choose a new plan for 2018, they may risk having little or no drug coverage.

In total, 25 Part D plans are available in Wisconsin for 2018, with premiums ranging from $19.70 to $157.70 per month. This total includes two Part D plans offered by Cigna-HealthSpring which are no longer under sanction by Medicare and will be able to accept any new enrollments. Additionally three new Part D prescription plans are being offered next year.

There are also two new Medicare Advantage plans being offered in Vernon County for 2018 from United Healthcare  Care Improvement Plus and Care Improvement Plus Premier. Both of these plans offer both health and prescription benefits, along with extra benefits relating to fitness, eye care, hearing and dental services. There are 6 other Medicare Advantage plans available to Vernon County residents  4 from Gundersen Senior Preferred and 2 from Humana. There are also two choices for Medicare Savings Accounts, which are similar to a health savings account. Premiums for these plans range from $0 to $173.20 per month, in addition to the deduction of the usual Part B premium.

For assistance in reviewing options for 2018 drug and health coverage, contact the Aging and Disability Resource Center (ADRC) serving each Wisconsin county. For Vernon County, the phone numbers for an appointment at the ADRC are 608-637-5201 or 1-888-637-1323.

Other resources for help understanding and comparing plan options include contacting Medicare at 1-800-633-4227 (available 24 hours/day) or on their website at www.medicare.gov. Another resource is the Wisconsin Medigap Helpline at 1-800-242-1060 for help with Medicare Advantage and Supplement plans.

Also there are two government-funded, impartial prescription helplines for Wisconsin residents. Call either the Wisconsin Medicare Prescription Helpline at 1-855-677-2783 for persons age 60 and over, or the Disability Drug Benefit Helpline at 1-800-926-4862 for those under age 60.

Medicare enrollees may also work directly with an insurance sales agent to review their 2018 health and prescription options. Sales agents are licensed to sell the plans offered only by the companies they represent, so beneficiaries may not receive information on all plans available for 2018 from every agent.

All of the government-based resources listed above also have information on assistance programs to help with Medicare costs, such as Part D plan costs and Part B premiums.
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Eighteen protesters were arrested Monday after staging a protest at the front gate of the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility near Porter Ranch, while a truck driver who drove up to the group as they blocked the entrance was detained.

The protest took place on the two-year anniversary of the massive gas leak at Aliso Canyon. A video of the event (below) was taped on Facebook Live and later put up on the Save Porter Ranch Facebook page. At the 3 hour and 18 minute mark, the truck can be seen driving up to a crowd of protesters who were sitting on the ground. Since the truck is coming from off-screen, it's hard to discern how fast it was going, but an officer later remarked in the video that it was "kinda going fast."

Several people got up from where they were sitting as the truck stopped right in front of them. Are you crazy? one person can be heard screaming at the driver. I dont think he saw [the protesters], one of the officers said, though he added later that they would be taking down the driver's information. "He was definitely laughing in the car," said the person behind the camera.

Sal Ramirez, a public information officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, told LAist that 18 protesters were arrested for failing to disperse. He added that the driver of the truck was detained according to ABC 7 the driver will be investigated for possible assault with a deadly weapon.

The Aliso Canyon gas leak was a massive environmental disaster that started in October 2015 and went on for months until SoCal Gas finally declared that the leak was plugged. It's estimated that it spewed roughly 100,000 tons of methane gas into the air, and boosted California's methane emissions by 25 percent for the four-month period. More than 3,000 households were evacuated, and two schools were temporarily closed. Locals reported that they suffered headaches, nosebleeds, and other health effectsthe concerns have led researchers to launch studies into the long-term effects of the leak.

Protesters have urged for the Aliso Canyon gas fields to be shut entirely. Several minor leaks have cropped up in the Aliso Canyon area since the 2015 disaster.

Additional reporting by Emma Specter.
Dear reader, we're asking for your help to keep local reporting available for all. Your financial support keeps stories like this one free to read, instead of hidden behind paywalls. We believe when reliable local reporting is widely available, the entire community benefits. Thank you for investing in your neighborhood.

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Jonathan Gold's much-anticipated 101 Best Restaurants for 2017 dropped Monday evening, and Vespertinethe 22-seat, $250+ per person spaceship tasting menu restaurant/immersive theater experience in Culver Cityhas taken the top slot.

The annual guide is now live on the L.A. Times' website as a subscriber exclusive, and the premium print edition will be delivered to Times Sunday subscribers on October 29.

Jordan Kahn's hypetastic hot spot has received both heated criticism and mixed praise, and Gold begins his first place blurb by "address[ing] the spaceship in the docking port here  not everybody is going to be ecstatic that we are naming Vespertine the best restaurant in Los Angeles."

Though not a complete shock (Gold mainly praised the otherworldly experience of Vespertine in a September 1 review), the choice still feels like a bit of bummer. Part of what makes Gold's Los Angeles and, by extension, his 101 Best Restaurants list, so vibrant is that his reviews always feel like an exhortation to explore the city. Providence, which Vespertine unseated after four years in the top spot, is also a top-tier fancy restaurant with the prices to match. But their basic tasting menu costs $120 a person, or less than half of Vespertine's opening bid. Providence is very fine dining, but it's not a 22-seat, high-concept "gastronomical experiment seeking to disrupt the course of the modern restaurant," to quote Vespertine's press release. Then again, I can't really knock VespertineI haven't been there. Not a single person I know has, which is maybe the problem.

Along with Providence and Vespertine, Spago, Lukshon and Taco Maria round out the top five of the 2017 list.

Notable additions for 2017 include the Arts District's sublime Italian newcomer Rossoblu (Gold's number 10 slot, and we should note Rossoblu's pastas also made LAist's extremely competitive The Five Best Last Meals To Eat In L.A. Before A Nuclear Attack list earlier this year), Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson's Kismet (number 21), Heres Looking At You in Koreatown (number 26), Brentwood's Pizzana (number 36) and Mercado La Paloma's Holbox (number 39, in a joint entry with Chichen Itza). Chinatown Filipino restaurant Lasa emerges in the number 18 slot after being name-checked in last year's Far East Plaza entry while still in semi-permanent status. Ricardo Zarate's new Peruvian restaurant Rosaline is another notable addition (number 70), as is Santa Monica's Erven (71).

One notable exclusion? Venice's Felix Trattoria, which was named as LA Weekly's 2017 pick for best new restaurant in Los Angeles, and topped Esquire's recent best new restaurants in America list. Here's Gold's previous Felix review.
Did GST, demonetisation hurt CG employees?

The reason the government is not giving into the demand of the CG employees is because there are not enough funds now. The economy has slowed down and also taken a beating due to GST and demonetisation and hence the hike of Rs 26,000 cannot be fulfilled officials say.

Notebandi hit everyone

While the decision on GST has slowed down things, the government says that it is only temporary. Demonetisation on the other hand has affected several persons including the CG employees. Due to these factors, the government has decided that the basic minimum pay would be hiked to Rs 21,000 and not Rs 26,000.

Not in position to accept demands now

The government says that it is not in a position to accept the demands of the CG employees now. The government has lost money due to GST and demonetisation. If the government decides to go accept the demand of the CG employees, then it would add to the burden of the exchequer. The Indian economy has considerably slowed down due to demonetisation and implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST). The GDP growth came down to 5.7 per cent in the first quarter of the financial year 2017-2018.

7th Pay Commission is last, pay will vary

However not all is lost of the CG employees. While the 7th Pay Commission is likely to be the last, the government is now proposing a variable pay hike for CG employees. The government is set to take the decision on pay hike in January and following that the pay hike would be variable and would be reviewed from year to year.
A year since demonetisation: Opposition to hold massive protest

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

On November 8, a year since the decision on demonetisation was made a united opposition will hold a nation-wide joint protest.

Some opposition parties led by the Congress met in Parliament to chalk out modalities for the proposed joint agitation. Leaders of six opposition parties - the Congress, the Left, the BSP, TMC, DMK and JD(U)'s Sharad Yadav faction - who are part of an opposition coordination committee, today met in the chamber of Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad over the issue. After the hour-long discussions, Azad told reporters that it was an initial meeting and he was asked to consult all 18 opposition parties before finalising anything further.

We will discuss with the other opposition parties and come with our plan soon," he told reporters. Sources said the opposition is planning a nation-wide protest on note ban anniversary to highlight the "ill- effects" on the economy hard and the job market. "Today the opposition coordination committee met. Representatives of six parties were present.

We decided to meet again before parliament session. We will announce our plan tomorrow," TMC leader Derek O'Brien said after the meeting.

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O'Brien said the opposition parties discussed the economic situation in the country, including demonetization, GST and other issues. "Today we met to discuss the economic fallout in the country and discuss various aspects of it. Ghulam Nabi has been given the responsibility to discuss the issue with other opposition parties. We will meet again to chalk out our plans," said CPI leader D Raja after the meeting. The opposition parties today also discussed the case of Sharad Yadav's disqualification from the Upper House, which is pending before Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu.

The Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) had sought Yadav's disqualification from Rajya Sabha after he revolted against the party's decision to ally with the BJP. The sources said the opposition leaders have decided to speak to the Vice President tomorrow at a luncheon, where he has invited all leaders of opposition parties. TMC leader O'Brien said his party feels Yadav is been targeted by his party JD(U). "This MP was elected by people on 'mahagathbandhan' ideology. He didn't break the ideology, others broke it. Why should Yadav be penalised ?" he said.

Sharad Yadav, Satish Chandra Misra, Derek O'Brien, Kanimozhi and D Raja were among those present at today's meeting. Another member of the coordination committee Ram Gopal Yadav of Samajwadi Party could not attend.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 7:30 [IST]
BJP slams West Bengal govt over dengue cases in state

India

pti-PTI

Kolkata, Oct 24: West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh on Tuesday criticised the state government for allegedly failing to control the dengue outbreak. He said the state government is busy "hushing up dengue cases".

The state government and the health department should ensure proper treatment and diagnosis of dengue patients, he said.

"The state government has completely failed to tackle the outbreak of dengue in the state.... My question is why is the state government trying to hush up the matter, instead of providing better treatment facilities to patients," he said.

West Bengal BJP on Monday staged a protest rally in Salt Lake area of North 24 Parganas district against the 'failure' of the state government to tackle the outbreak of dengue. The party also demanded resignation of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from the post of health minister.

PTI
Why Taj Mahal will not be illuminated with tricolor lights this Independence Day

Bomb threat at Taj Mahal, police say it was a hoax

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The Agra police went on a wild goose chase following a bomb threat to the Taj Mahal. An unidentified caller said that there was a bomb at the Taj Mahal following which scores of security personnel were pressed into service.

A search operation was launched and the bomb disposal squad too was called in. The Tajganj police station in-charge Raja Singh said that the call was received on the emergency number at around 9.40 pm on Monday.

Is Taj Mahal a temple

The lights at the Taj were turned off and the dog squad too was brought in. The search operation concluded at around 9.40 pm following which the bomb threat was declared a hoax.

The phone call came on a day when a dozen youths belonging to Hindu outfits were caught reciting Shiva Chalisa on the premises of the Taj Mahal, causing tension at the iconic monument, which, they claimed, was originally a Shiva temple.

OneIndia News
We have not exhausted ammunition on rate cuts, policy actions: RBI Governor

Bank holidays in April 2022: Here is the full list of non-working days

Govt infuses Rs 2.11 lakh crore in public banks to boost economy

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

The cabinet has approved an unprecedented public sector bank capitalisation of Rs 2 lakh 11 thousand, the Finance Ministry said Tuesday.

Out of this, Rs 1.35 lakh crore will be through the recapitalisation bonds, while remaining Rs 76,000 crore from the budgetary support.

"It was decided that a bold step needs to be taken by the government to recapitalise banks," Arun Jaitley said while addressing a press conference on Tuesday.

"Between 2008 and 2013, public sector banks engaged in indiscriminate lending, which led to the rise in non-performing assets," he added. The rest 76,000 crore of the total allocated 2.11 lakh crore would come from other sources, Arun Jaitley said.

He also said the capital infusion would be accompanied by series of banking reforms which would be spelt out in the next few months.

The nature of the bonds and details of the bonds would be made public during course of time, he said.

Non-performing assets of banks have increased from Rs 2.75 lakh in March 2015 to Rs 7.33 crore as on June 2017.

The finance minister said banks would get Rs 18,000 crore under the Indradhanush plan.

Under Indradhanush roadmap introduced in 2015, the government had announced to infuse Rs 70,000 crore in state- run banks over four years to meet their capital requirement in line with global risk norms, known as Basel-III.

OneIndia News
#WATCH: Fire rages at a building near #Ludhiana's Shingar Cinema, more than 12 fire tenders present at the spot. pic.twitter.com/m8CWgJ6Jnm  ANI (@ANI) October 24, 2017

Ludhiana fire

Twelve fire brigades were present at the spot. Police sources said that the fire was so intense that a portion of the building collapsed.

Shops on fire

Earlier today, a major fire broke out at Delhi's Kamla Nagar market in which over a 100 shops were gutted. The incident happened at around 1:00 am when the fire department got a call regarding the fire at the Cooler Market area.

At least nine fire tenders were rushyed to the spot to douse the flames. The extent of damage due to the fire is yer to be ascertained. No casualties or injuries have been reported so far.

(Image credit - ANI/Twitter)

Massive fire in Kamla Market

Kamla Market is a popular market in Delhi near Minto Road.

In July this year, a fire broke out at a footwear godown in north Delhi's Kamla Nagar.

(Image courtesy - ANI/Twitter)

Over 100 shops gutted

Over a 100 shops were gutted in flames, which have now been brought under control.

(Image courtesy - ANI/Twitter)
No decision yet on joining BJP or AAP, says Hardik; hails saffron party over Ayodhya issue, Article 370

Is Hardik Patel joining BJP today? This is what he says

Did Hardik meet Rahul? The guess work continues

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

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Hardik Patel, the firebrand Patidar leader from Gujarat has kept everyone guessing. He denied reports of him meeting with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi at a hotel in Ahmedabad on Monday.

News of Hardik meeting Rahul cropped up when local channels ran footage for the former entering the hotel's premises late on Sunday night. The footage also showed him emerging out of the hotel at 4 pm the next day. Incidentally Rahul arrived at the same hotel at around 1 pm on Monday.

While there was footage to show Hardik entering and exiting the hotel, there was no evidence of the meeting.

Congress state president Bharatsinh Solanki earlier told mediapersons that Gandhi's meeting with Patel had been postponed, and the two would interact during his next visit through November 1, 2 and 3. The 24-year-old Patidar leader, in turn, said interacting with Gandhi this time would be difficult because he was busy with rallies in north Gujarat.

During Rahul Gandhi's visit to Gujarat, the Congress invited three representatives of the OBC community for talks. They were Alpesh Thakor, Jignesh Mewani and Hardik Patel. While Thakor formally joined the Congress at a rally on Monday, Mewani decided to give the meeting a skip.

Patel on the other hand remained non-committal. He said that he was busy and would speak with the media later.

OneIndia News
Bengaluru comes out against Mahadayi verdict amidst cries of "we want justice"

Ktaka polls: Will scientist-turned-AAP leader be able to defeat Jagadish Shettar in his home turf?

Industries need not wait for statutory clearances for 3 yrs, can start work in K'taka

Did Jagadish Shettar dress up as Tipu Sultan?

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

A photograph of former Karnataka chief minister Jagadish Shettar dressed as Tipu Sultan has gone viral on the social media. This provided much fodder to the Congress which has been criticised by the BJP for celebrating Tipu Jayanti on a grand scale.

Former Deputy chief minister R Ashoka and former Lok Sabha member D B Chandre Gowda are also seen wearing the headgear in the photograph. The Congress was quick to react and said that this exposed the double standards of the BJP.

Shettar however denied that he was dressed up as Tipu Sultan. He said that the photograph was from an award function of the party's minority morcha and they were given headgears and swords, he also said.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has said Shettar had written a foreword to a book praising the valour of Tipu. Shettar had called Tipu a patriot in a book written by historian Sheikh Ali.

Many BJP leaders, including Union Minister Ananth Kumar Hegde, had refused to join the birthday celebrations of Tipu Sultan, terming him "anti-Hindu and anti-Kannada." BJP general secretary and MP Shobha Karandlaje said the party will launch a protest if the government goes ahead with the celebrations.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 6:44 [IST]
Former J&K CM Farooq Abdullah demands opening of dialogue with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue

India

oi-Amitava

By Amitava

Jammu and Kashmir National Conference leader and former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah opined that the appointment of an interlocutor to resolve the Kashmir issue would be a futile issue unless dialogues are initiated with Pakistan also.

Incidentally the Union Government has appointed an interlocutor to carry forward a sustained dialogue in Jammu and Kashmir.

Rajnath Singh, the Union Home Minister announced the Government's interest in starting and continuing sustained dialogue with stakeholders on the Kashmir issue. "We want to open dialogues with elected representatives, political parties, individuals and associations of Jammu and Kashmir. We want to understand the aspirations of the people" stated Minister Singh.

Dineshwar Sharma, former IB Chief has been appointed the interlocutor to carry out the task. Sharma a retired IPS officer of the 1976 batch of the Kerala cadre has a good understanding of the Kashmir issue. He is also credited for bringing peace in certain regions of the North East also.

Former Jammu and Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah has however criticized the move and demanded that dialogue should be initiated with Pakistan also. "Pakistan occupies a part of the State which India holds as her own. To resolve the Kashmir issue Pakistan has to be consulted also. Pakistan is also one of the parties to the problem" demanded Abdullah.

National Conference is of the opinion that unless dialogue is initiated with Pakistan appointment of interlocutors are a futile exercise as with the cases of past instances of appointment of interlocutors.

However Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has welcomed the appointment of Sharma as the interlocutor stating that Sharma in the past has been closely working with the Kashmir issue and has a sound understanding.

"This dialogue initiative is in line with P.M @narendramodi's 15th August speech na goli se, na gaali se, Kashmir ke samasya suljhegi gale lagaane se (sic)" she has tweeted, hailing PM Modi's initiative.

Sharma has stated that he would leave for Kashmir in the next 10 days. "My role is different from the police and army. My job is to ensure peace in the region and find out a permanent solution. I am open to talks. I will talks to anyone or any party interested to talk to me" stated Sharma.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 12:12 [IST]
Clothes, footwear, cab fares to get costlier from January 1, 2022: All you need to know

Gabbar Singh Tax or Good and Simple Tax: Whats your full form of GST?

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

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New Delhi, Oct 24: Oh, Indians truly love to quiz each other to test the other person's IQ (Intelligence Quotient) level.

Talking about IQ level, how could we not mention a popular television spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who recently announced that Indian film stars have "low IQ".

Anyway, from films, let us talk about the country's economy. And when it comes to economy we Indians have in recent times beautifully embraced both the controversial demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST) into our lives.

Now, when it comes to the GST, since it was rolled out in July at a grand event in Parliament by Prime Narendra Modi, we all have our own take on it while expanding India's current favourite acronym.

Immediately after the GST was launched, PM Modi called it "Good and Simple Tax" to stress on the fact that how the latest tax regime is easy for all to adopt. But what we witnessed was something totally different.

The complex GST has created a lot of confusion in the minds of not only the aam aadmi (the commoners not so adapt with audits and tax slabs), but also experts, traders and government officials, leading to massive loss in the economy.

On Monday, the GST re-entered our lives, this time in the incarnation of Bollywood's dreaded villain Gabbar Singh from the all-time classic, Sholay. Taking a dig at the Modi government regarding the 'faulty tax regime' that is destroying small businessmen and industries in the country, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi dubbed the GST as "BJP's Gabbar Singh Tax" at a public meeting in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

"The government ignored all our suggestions on the GST and introduced it with celebrations at midnight. In their GST, there is the highest 28 per cent tax and three return forms that makes the GST Gabbar Singh Tax," Rahul said.

Demonetisation and GST together have ruined the economy, the Congress VP alleged. "With one stroke of demonetisation, Modiji ruined the economy but he did not stop there. He went ahead with the GST, which has derailed the small businessmen and industries," Rahul said.

Now, by bringing "Gabbar Singh" into the whole GST debate, Rahul literally touched the raw nerve of the already weary people, especially those who are active on social media.

Thus on Monday, the hashtag--#GabbarSinghTax--trended on Twitter and everyone was seen cracking a joke or two at the expense of the messy tax regime of the Modi government.

The twitter handle, @RealHistoryPic, threw the question, "What's your full form of GST?" that elicited tremendous response.

Here we bring you some of the responses to the question:

Whats your full form of GST?  History of India (@RealHistoryPic) October 23, 2017

Greatly Screwed-up Tax  Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) October 23, 2017

Gayi Sarkar Tumhari  Rachit Seth (@rachitseth) October 23, 2017

Go Sell Tea  Uday Menon (@Uday47) October 23, 2017

Godse Savarkar Tax  Tempest (@ColdCigar) October 23, 2017

Now, it's your turn to define the GST in your own unique style.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 8:28 [IST]
Who will win Gujarat 2022 polls? Here's what ABP-C-Voter survey says

Gujarat bribery allegation: Narendra Patel demands court-monitored investigation

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

Narendra Patel, a close aide of Hardik Patel, on Tuesday filed application in Gandhinagar Court seeking a court monitored probe in alleged Rs 1 Crore bribery case.

Earlier on Sunday, Narendra Patel, who belongs to the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) led by Hardik Patel, had said that the BJP attempted "to purchase him for Rs 1 crore and Rs 10 lakh was paid in advance".

The claims were made by Narendra Patel only a few hours after prominent BJP leaders of Gujarat announced his joining the saffron party on Sunday evening.

Narendra Patel in the press conference called Sunday late claimed that he was 'made to say' that he was joining the party after being offered Rs 1 crore.

A few hours after Narendra was inducted into the BJP, he convened a press conference late on Sunday night displaying bundle of cash, summing up to Rs 10 lakh, which he claimed was the first instalment of a crore used to bait him into joining the BJP.

"Varun Patel offered the Rs 1 crore deal on behalf of BJP. He gave me Rs 10 lakh in advance. He told me that they will give me Rs 90 lakh rupees tomorrow," added Narendra Patel.

He further said, "If they give me the entire Reserve Bank of India they will not be able to buy me."

He also displayed bundles of Rs 500 notes that he claimed were given to him as part of the deal.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 19:47 [IST]
Why NOTA, a blank vote, is a waste with no impact on election results

How BJP's win in Gujarat, HP is spreading happiness in the Indian market

In new Himachal Assembly, 52 out of 68 MLAs are crorepatis

Himachal Assembly elections 2017: 15 companies of paramilitary forces roped in

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Ahead of the Himachal Pradesh assembly elections 2017, 15 companies of paramilitary forces will be deployed. Security will be particularly high on the inter-state barriers to check movement of cash, drugs and liquor aimed at wooing the voters.

A total of 93 such barriers have been operationalised on the borders of Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, UP and J&K. Una, with 25 barriers, has the largest number, followed by Kangra with 21, DGP Somesh Goyal informed.

A total of 65 companies of paramilitary force -23 from ITBP, 15 each from BSF and CRPF and 12 from SSB, will be deployed for the elections by the state police. Besides, the state police will mobilise approximately 11,500 policemen alongwith 6,000 homeguards to provide security during the electoral process.

Himachal Pradesh Elections 2017: 275 nominations filed on last day

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Himachal Pradesh has close to 87,000 arms licence holders, which is one of the highest arms to population ratio in the country. Over 36,000 arms have already been deposited with the police so far.

Also, more than 27 lakh Indian currency have been seized by various agencies in the last 10 days. The state police alone have seized Rs 23.87 lakh in cases, where the carrier did not have any plausible explanation for carrying cash.

The police have also registered 35 cases under the NDPS Act and booked 38 persons and recovered 11.68 kg charas, 9 kg ganja, 7.7 kg poppy husk, nearly 1 kg opium and some quantities of heroine, smack and capsules in the last 10 days.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 6:20 [IST]
How Pakistanis are posing as NRIs and marrying women from Punjab

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

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The arrest of Ehsaan-Hul-Haq a Pakistani spy has led investigators to discovering a brand new modus operandi in Punjab. Haq who held a fake Aadhaar and Pan card had managed to remain undercover in the state of Punjab for long.

On the target of the ISI according to Haq are those women who are in the lookout for an NRI groom. The ISI has been training its men to speak in the local dialect and also pose as NRIs.

The ISI which gives protection to the Khalistan militants has roped in several members and infiltrated them into Punjab. They have been tasked with cheating the women and getting married to them.

In this modus operandi, the ISI hopes to disturb peace in the state and also provide a safe haven for the terrorists to operate in the state.

Haq was arrested following an operation by the Jalandhar police. At the time of his arrest he said that he was an Australian national. During the course of the interrogation, the police learnt that he was originally a Pakistan national. He too had indulged in a similar modus operandi as mentioned above.

He is suspected to have been sent to India by the ISI to collect vital information. He was married to an Indian for the past five years. Prior to that he was married to an Australian, the police also say.

The police say that he had taken his wife several times to Pakistan. He had faked his identity and claimed that he was an Indian national although he is originally a resident of Sarja village near Nankana Sahib in Pakistan. In India he managed to get an Aadhaar card and Pan by giving an address in Salempur village. He had also purchased a plot in Alipur and built a house, the police also say.

The police say that the investigations are ongoing and they are trying to find out if he was a spy. The police suspect that he may have been sending confidential information from India to Pakistan.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 7:49 [IST]
One dead, several others injured in grenade attack at Srinagars Amira Kadal market

Mohali attack: TNT used in blast; no one present at office when incident occurred, says Punjab DGP

J&K: Grenade attack on police patrol party in Tral

India

oi-Madhuri

A group of militants lobbed grenades on a police patrol party in Tral area of Pulwama district in Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday.

It is learnt that the militants hurled a grenade on police party in Tral area of Pulwama.

However, no loss of life have been reported so far.

This is the fourth attack. Earlier on Sunday, one CRPF jawan was injured as militants hurled grenade at the residence of a National Conference leader in Jammu and Kashmir. On Saturday night, suspected militants also vandalised the residence of a PDP leader in Tral.

Armed with guns, the militants reportedly barged into the house of PDP zonal president Peer Mohammad Ashraf at Dadsara in Tral and vandalised it. They alleged that the gunmen fired shots in the air before fleeing.

OneIndia News
Karnataka bans riding pillion on 2 wheelers with less than 100cc engines

India

oi-PTI

The state government has decided to not allow two-wheelers below 100 cc to have pillion riders. , giving effect to a 2015 court order. The transport department also banned registration of such vehicles.

"Not only has the registration of such vehicles which have seats for pillion rider been banned but also riding pillion on two-wheelers below 100 CC is prohibited," said a government order issued by the transport department on October 13 last.

The order was issued based on a Karnataka High Court order in a case relating to the award of compensation to Hemanth, a minor riding pillion who was crippled for life following a road accident in Mysuru in March, 2009.

Hemanth and Nithin, who was riding the two-wheeler without a licence, were both aged around 14 then. A recklessly driven car had crashed against their vehicle. While Nithin escaped with minor injuries, Hemanth was crippled for life with serious head injuries.

In its June 15, 2015 order on a petition related to compensation claim by parents of Hemanth, the court had taken note of violations of rules and issued a slew of directions to the education and transport departments and the police to prevent minors from riding motor vehicles above 50 CC.

It had directed that to avoid repetition of similar situation, the transport department should not register vehicles below 100 CC with a pillion seat attached to it and not permit riding pillion on such vehicles (already registered).

There should not be any seat for pillion riders in vehicles below 100 CC as mandated under Rule 143(3) of the Karnataka Motor Vehicles Rules - 1989, the court had said.

PTI

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 15:52 [IST]
Why Taj Mahal will not be illuminated with tricolor lights this Independence Day

Members of right wing groups detained for chanting shiv chalisa at Taj Mahal

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Members of Rashtra Swabhimaan Dal (RSD) and Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV) were on Monday detained for chanting 'Shiv Chalisa' on the premises of the Taj Mahal. They were, however, released later after they submitted a written apology, said reports.

The situation could have led to tensions as some right wing groups claim that the Taj Mahal was originally a Shiva temple.

Several BJP leaders have in the past gone on to state that the Taj Mahal was in reality a temple. A petition in the Supreme Court had sought to declare the Taj as a temple, but it was struck down.

Historian P N Oak had written a book, Taj Mahal a true story, in which he argues that it was a hindu temple. Some believe that the term Taj Mahal is a corrupt form of the sanskrit term Tejo Mahalay.

[Is Taj Mahal a temple]

Last week, BJP MLA Sangeet Som had stirred a controversy by saying that the Taj Mahal was built by traitors and that it was blot on Indian history.

Currently, only Muslims are allowed to worship at the site, offering Friday prayers at a mosque attached to the Taj Mahal.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 10:41 [IST]
Ex-president Ashraf Ghani says he fled Kabul to save 6 million people in the Afghan capital

Did Ghani flee with millions of dollars? US watchdog to probe

Modi, Ashraf for closure of cross-border safe havens to bring lasting peace

India

pti-PTI

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani syressed that closure of cross-border safe havens and sanctuaries were essential for lasting peace.

The two leaders also "positively assessed" the support extended by India in the defence and security fields, including training of thousands of Afghan defence and security with New Delhi agreeing to extend further assistance depending upon the needs of the Afghan defence and police forces.

Detailed discussions were held between the prime minister and the president in one on one format, restricted meeting and a working lunch, a statement by the external affairs ministry said.

The Indian leadership reiterated its support for a negotiated political reconciliation in Afghanistan that is Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled, the statement said.

During the wide-ranging talks, deep appreciation was expressed for the bravery with which the Afghan forces were fighting terrorism imposed on Afghanistan.

"The support extended by India in the defence and security fields, including training of thousands of Afghan defence and security personnel was positively assessed. The Indian side agreed to extend further assistance depending upon the needs of the Afghan defence and police forces," it said.

MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted, "Prime Minister Modi and president Ghani discussed range of bilateral, regional and global issues, express firm resolve to end menace of terrorism."

This was President Ghani's fourth visit to India in the last 3 years and 12th personal interaction between the two leaders, the ministry said.

"It was emphasised that renunciation of violence and terror, and closure of cross border safe havens and sanctuaries were essential for any meaningful progress and lasting peace," the MEA statement said, in an obvious reference to Pakistan. However, the statement did not name Pakistan.

Ghani's visit also assumes significance as it comes ahead of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's talks with Indian leadership tomorrow. The US wants India to play a greater role in Afghanistan.

Tillerson had also made an unannounced trip to Kabul yesterday and had met the Afghan president.

Reiterating their commitment to their strategic partnership, the two sides positively assessed the outcomes of the recent high level bilateral exchanges, including the visits of Afghan chief executive Abdullah Abdullah and Foreign Minister Rabbani to India last month and that of the National Security Adviser to Afghanistan last week.

The two sides agreed to further deepen the bilateral strategic dialogue and consultations at all levels in order to achieve the shared objectives, it said.

The New Development Partnership that was launched at the meeting of the Strategic Partnership Council on September 11 was assessed as a "significant step" in building upon the highly successful development cooperation of the past 16 years.

The new generation India-assisted projects, including in the fields of health, agriculture, drinking water supply, education, renewable energy, infrastructure development, skill development and capacity building, among others will further contribute to Afghanistan's reconstruction, economic development and effective governance.

The statement said that the two sides agreed that the recent convergence and alignment of views at regional and international arenas have created opportunities for bringing peace, security and stability in Afghanistan.

Issues related to connectivity were discussed in detail with the two countries acknowledging the establishment of the air freight corridor as an important factor in providing Afghan farmers a direct and easy access to the Indian market.

"The efforts for early operationalisation of the Chahbahar Port, including the shipments of wheat in coming weeks to Afghanistan through the Port was considered as a step that would shape new trade and transit opportunities for landlocked Afghanistan," the statement said.

The Indian side reiterated the readiness of its Integrated Check Post at Attari for receiving Afghan trucks carrying goods to and from India.

The two sides agreed to work closely with the regional and international partners; and consult, coordinate and cooperate in various international fora, with the view to further the objective of seeing Afghanistan emerge as a stable, peaceful, united, progressive, prosperous and pluralistic nation.

PTI
Need to embrace Kashmiris and ensure peace: Dineshwar Sharma

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

It is a big responsibility for me and I have to live up to the expectations, former Intelligence Bureau director, Dineshwar Sharma said after he was appointed as the representative for a sustained dialogue in Jammu and Kashmir.

"The government has decided to start a sustained dialogue in Jammu and Kashmir.

Former IB director Dineshwar Sharma will be Government of India's representative. Rank of Dineshwar Sharma will be equivalent to that of a Cabinet Secretary," Union Home Minister, Rajnath Singh said at a press conference in New Delhi.

Sharma took time off to speak to OneIndia, about how he plans to go about the issue.

Who is Dineshwar Sharma, the Centre's special representative in Kashmir

Peace is a priority he said while adding that all modalities would be worked out. On being asked whether he would speak with the separatists in the Valley, Sharma informed that he would like to talk to everyone. I will speak to all who want to restore peace in the Valley he said.

Peace is a priority and all doors are open to everyone, he further added. On being asked if he would manage to restore peace, the former IB boss said that he hoped to live up to the expectations and it is a big responsibility he is shouldering.

For me the rank does not matter. What matters is that peace has to be restored at any cost. That would be my priority Sharma also said. In Kashmir, we need to find a permanent solution, he also said.

Explaining the way forward in Kashmir, Sharma said that he would be there in another 8 to ten days. The first step would be to assess the situation in the state. Following this, we will think of how things can be taken forward.

We have to work towards the goal. We need to embrace Kashmiris and ensure that there is lasting peace in the Valley, Sharma also said.

OneIndia News
Man rapes 8-year-old to use her blood for removing obstacles to his marriage

Protestor beaten up for protesting against eve teasing on the fringes of Kolkata

India

oi-Amitava

By Amitava

Though the recent incidents of violence against women in different parts of the country has raised questions on silent onlookers; incidents of violence against protestors is being seen as a reason for silence among onlookers. Barasat in West Bengal was a witness to such an incident.

A group of around 25 men barged into the residence of a 30 year old and thrashed him in front of his family. The incident took place in Barasat in North 24 Parganas bordering Kolkata on Monday.

The father and brother of Krishna Saha were also roughed up when they had come to Saha's aid. The 30 year old had saved a group of girls from being harassed by a group of inebriated youths at a prominent Kali puja pandal. The accused were arrested by the police.

Trouble had started on Saturday night when Saha was manning the gates of a popular Kali puja pandal. Incidentally Barasat is famous for Kali puja.

Some volunteers complained to Saha that a group of inebriated youths were passing lewd remarks and making dirty gestures at a group of girls. Saha had immediately intervened. A clash had ensued but soon the inebriated youths were overpowered by Saha and other volunteers.

Police were called in and the youths including the prime accused Manoj Lohar were arrested. They were however released by a Barasat Court on bail on Monday.

At around 11:30am on Monday, when Saha was having lunch at his residence, a group of around 25 men barged into Saha's residence.

"I was dragged out and mercilessly beaten. My father and brother tried to save me and were also beaten up" stated Saha.

Saha who works as a civic supervisor at the Barasat Municipality, with injuries in his eyes, head and back is at present ailing at the Barasat district hospital. A fresh FIR has been lodged against 11 persons.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 16:57 [IST]
India's stand on Rohingyas gracious so far but housing them would be risky

Rohingyas are not refugees but aggressors/invaders, fresh plea in Supreme Court

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Oct 24: A day after India's external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj expressed her concern over the growing Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh, a fresh plea was filed in the Supreme Court on Monday favouring the Centre's stand to identify and deport 40,000 "illegal Rohingya Muslims staying in various parts of the country" to their homeland Myanmar.

The latest plea on deportation of Rohingyas is likely to be heard by a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra in November.

The apex court bench is already considering various petitions on Rohingyas, including the lead Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by two Rohingya Muslim refugees, Mohammad Salimullah and Mohammad Shaqir, challenging their deportation.

The SC has already fixed the earlier pleas for detailed hearing from November 21.

The fresh plea has been filed by Binay Kumar Singh, a national executive member of Kisan Morcha of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), T Raja Singh, a BJP member of legislative assembly (MLA) from Goshamahal in Telangana, and Sunil Kumar, an activist.

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They have sought impleadment as parties in the ongoing matter and alleged that the illegal Rohingya immigrants are not refugees but should rather be seen as "aggressors/ invaders".

The plea has raised the issue of Rohingyas settled in Jammu and Kashmir saying Article 370 of the Constitution imposed restrictions on Indians but these people have been allowed to stay there.

"If Indians are not allowed to stay in the State of Jammu and Kashmir then even the illegally immigrated Rohingya community cannot be permitted to stay nearby the sensitive Pakistan border," it said.

"No foreign national or power may be permitted to force our hands to let them live here as they like. The (Rohingyas) petition makes an outrageous demand that people who have not obtained refuge, who have not been granted refuge, but are admittedly illegal immigrants be accorded shelter by the nation. It plainly is a blatant disrespect to India's sovereignty...," the plea said.

The Rohingya immigrants, who have filed the PIL, had claimed they had taken refuge in India after escaping from Myanmar due to widespread discrimination, violence and bloodshed against the community there.

Besides the present plea, former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue and Rashtriya Swabhiman Andolan leader KN Govindacharaya has also moved the SC seeking to intervene in the pending PIL on Rohingyas.

The Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) and the youth wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI(M) have also moved the court and opposed the Centre's move to deport Rohingyas, saying the deportation of Rohingya children would be in violation of the provisions of the 1989 United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child.

According to an estimate, at least 600,000 Rohingyas have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh since violence broke out in Rakhine State on August 25. Bangladesh has urged Myanmar to take back the Rohingyas and initiate the process of their re-settlement and rehabilitation as it is running out of space, food and water to take care of the unprecedented flow of refugees in the recent times.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 6:49 [IST]
Shooting the Valley messenger: Attacks on those perceived to be pro-India

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

In the past week, terrorists attacked the houses of eight political workers in Jammu and Kashmir. With such attacks on the rise, the Intelligence Bureau says that this is a pattern that is being noticed and the idea is to shoot the messenger.

With the frequency of such attacks rising, the IB says that it is a systematic pattern that is being followed by terrorists. Those perceived to be pro-India are the ones under the radar, the IB officer also said.

If one goes by the pattern of killings in the past few days, it becomes amply clear that the terrorists are trying to wipe out the informants. A teacher, a police man and a sarpanch were killed in separate incidents over the past couple of days.

This is a systematic pattern that is being noticed and the idea is to create fear and also wipe out the informants. The recent killings of terrorists has been precise in nature. This is thanks to very good ground level intelligence. The people of the state as well as the local police are helping both the Intelligence Bureau as well the Army to identify terrorists and this has led to them being taken down.

Moreover there is a deadline that the forces have given themselves to wipe out the top command before the winter sets in. Infiltrations are almost nil during the winter. The Army feels that if the top command is wiped out before the winter, they could control the state and restore peace.

In a bid to beat the Army, Pakistan has planned a huge influx of terrorists into the Valley. They want to ensure that at least 100 are pushed into the state so that they could continue with attacks during the winter as well.

In a bid to achieve this plan, the local terrorists have been told to identify and kill informers. This they feel would cause panic among the people and they would distance themselves from the Indian establishment.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 9:05 [IST]
The joy of our lives: Sushma Swaraj's husband warm birthday wishes for late leader

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Sushma Swaraj calls on Afghan President, discusses bilateral, regional issues

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, Oct 24: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called on Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, ahead of his talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on promoting security and stability in the war-torn nation.

"#Neighbourhoodfirst. EAM @SushmaSwaraj calls on visiting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in New Delhi. Bilateral & regional issues discussed," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in a tweet.

Ghani, who is here on a one-day working visit, will hold talks with Modi on furthering the shared objective of promoting security and stability in Afghanistan, and efforts to combat the menace of terrorism. They will also discuss regional and global issues of mutual interest.

During his visit, President Ghani will meet with his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind. The invitation to Ghani was extended by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval during his trip to Kabul on October 16.

PTI
Syed Salahuddins son, the man with the money transfer codes in Kashmir

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The arrest of Syed Shahid Yousuf, son of globally proscribed terrorist, Syed Salahuddin is a major breakthrough for the National Investigation Agency. The arrest was made in connection with the Kashmir terror funding case which is being probed by the NIA.

NIA officials say that Yousuf is a key link to those persons from Pakistan who had been transferring money to fuel the Kashmir unrest. The NIA would now probe his links with his father who has been instrumental in fuelling the unrest in the Valley since the death of Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Burhan Wani.

According to the NIA, Yousuf played a key role in moving the money into the Valley from Pakistan. He was in touch with a key financier in the case, Aijaz Ahmed Bhat a resident of Pakistan.

NIA arrests Syed Salahuddin's son for Kashmir terror funding case

NIA officials say that Yousuf's role came to light after it was found that he had been in telephonic contact with Bhat. Yousuf was given codes by Bhat. NIA officials say that these money transfer codes were given to Yousuf and the same had been used to transfer money to those persons who were fueling the unrest in the Valley.

The NIA will now seek to get the larger picture from Yousuf. The probe is at a very crucial stage and the questioning of Yousuf would help the NIA understand better the role played by his father. His father has been shown as an absconding accused in the case. The NIA names Syed Salahuddin in the chargesheet. The NIA says that Salahuddin has been proscribed as a global terrorist and a Red Corner Notice had been issued against him.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 16:07 [IST]
When this mom got a surprise gift, her reaction was 'gold' | Watch

Tillerson arrives in Delhi: Key regional issues on agenda

India

pti-PTI

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in Delhi on Tuesday from Pakistan and will hold talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday to discuss further strengthening of Indo-US strategic partnership in key areas, and collaboration on security in the Indo-Pacific region.

Tillerson, who is the second high-ranking official of the Trump Administration to visit India in the last two months, will call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hold talks with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

US Defence Secretary James Mattis visited India last month. Ahead of Tillerson's three-day visit, the external affairs ministry had said that there will be detailed discussions on further strengthening of Indo-US partnership.

Strengthening cooperation in strategic areas of defence, counter terrorism, security, energy and trade are expected to figure during the meeting between Swaraj and Tillerson.

Tillerson will meet with senior Indian leaders to "discuss further strengthening of our strategic partnership and collaboration on security and prosperity" in the Indo-Pacific region, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert had said in Washington last week.

The US Secretary of State, who paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan yesterday, said the Trump administration was of the view that India can play a positive role in creating a peaceful and stable Afghanistan.

He also asserted that America's relationship with India is of strategic importance which is not limited to South Asia. In a major India-policy speech, Tillerson said last week that the US is India's "reliable partner" at the world stage in this period of uncertainty and angst.

He also referred to the rise of China, saying its behaviour and action were "posing a challenge to the rules-based international order".

"China, while rising alongside India, has done so less responsibly, at times undermining the international, rules-based order - even as countries like India operate within a framework that protects other nations' sovereignty," he had told a Washington audience ahead of his maiden visit here. "China's provocative actions in the South China Sea directly challenge the international law and norms that the US and India both stand for," he had said.

The two sides will discuss key bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interest.

Tillerson's visit also comes at a time when the Trump Administration is "considering" India's request for armed drones for its air force. Earlier this year, the IAF had requested the US government for General Atomics Predator C Avenger aircraft. It is understood that the IAF would need 80 to 100 units making it approximately a whopping USD 8 billion deal.

PTI
Ready, get set, go: Rahul Gandhis Bharat Jodo speeds up in Telangana

TSPSC Forest Section Officer answer keys to be released, how to download

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The TSPSC Forest Section Officer answer keys will be released soon. Once released it would be on the official website.

Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) had released the hall tickets for written examination to the post of forest section officer in Forest Department.

This TSPSC recruitment process began few days after August 15, when Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has said that the government is all set to fill up close to 85000 jobs.

TSPSC has also released the hall tickets of Civil Assistant Surgeons (Specialist) in Telangana Vaidya Vidana Parishad computer based recruitment test. The hall tickets are available on tspsc.gov.in.

How to download TSPSC Forest Section Officer answer key

Go to tspsc.gov.in

Click on "TSPSC Forest Section Officer Answer Key 2017" Link

Choose your set and download the FSO Answer Sheet

Cross check your answers and mark your obtained score

Take a printout

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 11:45 [IST]
Shoaib open fires in UP university after trying to start conversation with girls; arrested

Humanity at its worst: 3 men hang dog to death in Ghaziabad

Watch: Sukhoi jets carry out flypast during IAFs landing exercise

India

oi-Madhuri

As part of emergency landing drill, a set of 16 Indian Air force aircrafts took part in a touch and go excercise on the Agra Expressway near Bangarmau in Unnao district about 65 km from Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow on Tuesday.

The first transport aircraft, a C-130J Hercules, landed and took off on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway.

It was a short landing trailed by Garud commandos and their vehicles. On disembarking from the aircraft, the commandos took position on either side of the 'air strip' to cordon it off for fighter operations.

Also, two IAF Sukjoi fighter het aircraft also carried out a flypast during the landing excercise.

#WATCH 2 IAF Sukhoi fighter jet aircraft carry out flypast during IAF's landing exercise pic.twitter.com/3Y8TY1cthu  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) October 24, 2017

A large number of people have congregated to watch IAF planes land on Lucknow-Agra expressway.

Sixteen aircraft, including two AN-32 transport and fighter planes such as Mirage 2000, Jaguar, Sukhoi 30 MKI are taking part in the exercise. The AN-32 are meant for humanitarian assistance and relief operations during floods or any other natural calamity.

This is not for the first time the IAF is carrying out such kind of drill. The Indian Air Force wants new public roads to serve as runways for their warplanes.

Meanwhile, traffic has been restricted for the commuters until 2pm.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 12:28 [IST]
'Enduring defeat of IS must be the goal'

Trump ousts Tillerson as Secretary of State, replaces him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo

Trump enters US state department for first time as his favourite Mike Pompeo takes over as secy

Weaponisation of Guardian drones likely to be discussed during Tillerson's visit

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

India is likely to rake up the issue of weaponisation of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) Guardian with US secretary of state Rex Tillerson, who will arrive in the national capital on Tuesday evening.

The US had agreed to sell 22 Guradian drones to India during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Washington visit in June this year. The drones would significantly enhance Indian Navy's surveillance capabilities in the strategic Indian Ocean region.

This is the first time that the US has agreed to sell Guardian drones, manufactured by General Atomics, to a non NATO nation.

According to reports, 22 Guardian UAVs, priced at around $3 billion, would be more cost-effective if they were weaponised.

The weaponised version of the Guardian is called the Sea Avenger, and it comes with a top-of-the-line synthetic aperture radar and an electro-optical targeting system for firing Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs, an HT report said.

Earlier this year, India received 10 advanced Heron drones from Israel for $400 million, making Israel a weapons supplier competitor to the United States.

During his two-day visit, Tillerson will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. Bilateral relations and issues realted to terrorism are likely to to at the centre of discussions.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 9:47 [IST]
FM Nirmala Sitharaman hints at possibility of Centre considering restoration of state status to J&K

Who is Dineshwar Sharma, the Centres special representative in Kashmir

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

Dinewhwar Sharma was appointed as the Centre's special representative in Kashmir. He returns to the state in a hope to restore peace exactly 25 years after his first posting in the Intelligence Bureau in the state.

Sharma's appointment has been hailed and those who have worked with him say that his affable approach will give him the edge. He will speak to all those who are interested in restoring peace in the Valley.

Sharma who held the post of IB director has immense experience in tackling terrorism. Besides Kashmir, he has also served in the north-eastern states that were hit by militancy.

It was May 1992. Militancy was at its peak and Sharma, then 36, arrived in Srinagar after completing a year of customary training at the Intelligence Bureau headquarters in New Delhi.

Need to embrace Kashmiris and ensure peace: Dineshwar Sharma

The Kerala-cadre officer, who was posted as assistant director between 1992 to 1994, went on to head the IB from 2014 to 2016.

"It's like homecoming for me. I am sure that I will be able to fulfil the expectations of the government and people of the country," Sharma said.

The 61-year-old -- at present the Centre's pointperson for dialogue with Assam-based militant groups -- said he feels honoured that he has been assigned such a challenging task.

Kashmir has been a running thread through his career. After his return from the Valley in 1994, Sharma was again posted at the Kashmir desk in the national capital.

"The times were tough and I hope that now we will together bring peace in the Valley," he said.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 7:08 [IST]
'Enduring defeat of IS must be the goal'

Trump ousts Tillerson as Secretary of State, replaces him with CIA Director Mike Pompeo

Trump enters US state department for first time as his favourite Mike Pompeo takes over as secy

Eradicate terrorists operating within Pakistan's soil: Tillerson tells Abbasi

International

pti-PTI

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday bluntly told Pakistan's top leadership that it must increase efforts to eradicate terrorists operating within the country.

Tillerson arrived here on a whirlwind visit to reset bilateral ties strained after President Donald Trump accused Pakistan of providing safe havens to terrorist groups.

During his meeting with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Tillerson discussed the bilateral cooperation and partnership, expanding economic ties between the US and Pakistan, and Pakistan's critical role in the region.

Abbasi chaired an inter-agency meeting attended by Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, Minister of Defence Khurram Dastigir Khan, Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, ISI chief Lt Gen Naveed Mukhtar and other officials.

The US embassy here said that the Secretary reiterated President Trump's message that "Pakistan must increase its efforts to eradicate militants and terrorists operating within the country."

To address those concerns, the Secretary outlined the United States' new South Asia Strategy and the vital role that Pakistan can play in working with the US and others to facilitate a peace process in Afghanistan that can bring stability and security to the region, the embassy statement said.

"The Secretary noted that Pakistan and the United States share common interests in establishing a stable, peaceful Afghanistan, defeating ISIS in South Asia, and eliminating terrorist groups that threaten both Pakistan and the United States."

During the meeting, Abbasi assured Tillerson that his country is committed to the war against terrorism.

"The US can rest assured that we are strategic partners in the war against terror and that today, Pakistan is fighting the largest war in the world against terror," Abbasi said.

Abbasi said Pakistan is "committed in the war against terror."

He said Pakistan has produced "results" in its war against terrorism and it was looking forward to moving ahead with the US and building a tremendous relationship.

So far no official statement was issued by Pakistan but Defence Minister Khan talking to Geo TV said that all aspects of relations were discussed and there was agreement to increase cooperation to defeat militancy.

"They asked Pakistan to take action against groups which are involved in militancy and also urged Pakistan to help create peace in Afghanistan," he said.

He said the Pakistani side insisted that its efforts for peace were derailed twice -- once when the news of the death of Mullah Omar was divulged and second when Taliban leader Mullah Mansoor was killed.

He said Pakistan the tone of the US delegation was reconciliatory and it insisted that Pakistan's role was important for regional peace as it lies between India and Afghanistan.

Khan said that Pakistan also highlighted the issue of Indian presence in Afghanistan and raised concerns about New Delhi's role in security affairs in the war-torn country.

"We said that we do not have any issue with Indian development work in Afghanistan but we have issued with its security role," he said.

He said the US official tried to "tell us that India is not a threat to Pakistan but our perception was different".

He said Tillerson expressed gratitude to Pakistan in securing the release of the Boyle-Coleman family from Taliban captivity.

Earlier, Tillerson quietly landed at a military airport in Rawalpindi in the afternoon and was driven to US embassy where he was briefed by senior US officials about relations with Pakistan.

He later met Abbasi at the Prime Minister House and held detailed talks on various aspects of relations.

It was Tillerson's first visit to the region after Trump unveiled his policy for Afghanistan and South Asia. Trump's remarks in August unruffled the ties already under strain due to various issues.

Pakistan regularly denies that it hosts terror groups fighting the US and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

Trump's criticism led to further strain in US-Pakistan relations with a peeved Islamabad saying the president ignored its efforts in the war against terrorism.

PTI
Father of missing Indian girl Sherin Mathews arrested, body still not identified

International

pti-PTI

Houston, Oct 24: Wesley Mathews, father of missing three-year-old adopted Indian girl Sherin Mathews has been arrested, a day after body of a small child was found in a culvert, less than a mile from the family's home.

Sherin Mathews, who has developmental issues and limited verbal communication skills, was last seen outside her family's backyard in Richardson city in Texas on October 7 after her Indian-American father Wesley Mathews upbraided her and sent her alone outside late at night as punishment for not finishing her milk.

Wesley was arrested last evening and faces charges of injury to a child, Police Sgt. Kevin Perlich said. Yesterday, Wesley and his attorney voluntarily arrived at the Richardson police station and shared a different account of the girl's disappearance than his original statement, Perlich said. "He provided an alternate series of events from what he had previously given us," Perlich said.

PTI
ED is 'completely independent' in what it does: Nirmala Sitharaman

FM Nirmala Sitharaman hints at possibility of Centre considering restoration of state status to J&K

India will continue to rely on close cooperation of US to address global economic challenges: Sitharaman

Terrorism, radicalisation are serious threats to societies: Sitharaman

International

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Emphasising on the global security situation, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said that India has taken "resolute measures" to fight the menace of terrorism.

Speaking at the ASEAN defence ministers' meeting in Philippines, Sitharaman said, "Terrorism and radicalization pose one of the most immediate and serious security challenges to our societies."

She said that global security situation is constantly evolving and has thrown up serious challenges.

"New developments in Cyberspace have expanded threat, as these are exploited by terrorists to develop ways of manipulating minds...India has taken resolute measures to fight the scourge of terrorism from across its borders," she added.

Association of Southeast Asian Nations Defence Ministers' Meeting in the Philippines began today and will end on October 25.

Sitharaman is also likely to meet US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis on the sidelines of the meeting.

[ASEAN meet in Philippines: Sitharaman to meet Mattis]

This would be the first meeting between the two leaders after Mattis' successful trip to India last month. Mattis had said the ASEAN defence ministers' meeting will be an opportunity to recognise ASEAN for 50 years of promoting peace and stability in the region.

ASEAN, Mattis had said, provides an international forum, giving voice to those who want relations between states to be based on respect, not on predatory economics or on the size of militaries, in an apparent reference to China.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 16:05 [IST]
US military to pursue Niger operations after deadly attack

International

pti-PTI

Washington, Oct 24: The United States will maintain its large military presence in Niger to assist local forces despite the deaths of four American soldiers in an ambush, the Pentagon's top officer has said.

Nearly three weeks after jihadists attacked a joint US- Niger patrol in a sensitive border area, General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US is firmly committed to supporting Nigerien forces in counter- insurgency operations.

With some 800 US forces deployed in the country, "our intent is to continue operations there," Dunford told a news conference yesterday. The October 4 clash, the deadliest US combat incident since President Donald Trump took office in January, has shocked many Americans unaware of the military presence in the African country, the largest US deployment on the continent.

The four troops died on a reconnaissance patrol on the Niger-Mali border directly north of Niamey. Dunford said five Nigerien solders were killed, and another two Americans wounded. The 12 American and 30 Nigerien soldiers on the mission were attacked by about 50 fighters Dunford characterized as locals associated with the Islamic State group. Questions have been raised over why it took hours before backup support reached the patrol, and why one US soldier's body was left behind and only recovered the following day.

Dunford said the October 3-4 mission was originally approved based on an intelligence assessment that they were "unlikely" to come into conflict with any local forces. The unit went to a village near the border and was attacked as they returned to their base to the south. Dunford said that, based on what investigators know so far, the patrol did not call for support until one hour after first being attacked, suggesting perhaps they believed they could handle the situation.

A surveillance drone was sent to the location quickly after they did call for support, and two French Mirage jets arrived overhead an hour later. But Dunford gave no details of what took place on the ground, and said he did not know, for example, why the French jets did not drop bombs.

"This is a very complex situation that they found themselves in," he noted. "When they didn't ask for support for that first hour, my judgement would be that that unit thought they could handle the situation without additional support." The incident has drawn calls from Congress for an investigation into the US presence in Niger. A US special operations raid on Mogadishu in 1993 became a massive firefight leaving 19 US soldiers dead and resulted eventually in the pullback of US forces from Somalia.

The 800 deployed in Niger are part of around 6,000 US forces on the continent, mostly there to train local partners. "We mitigate the risk to the US forces with specific guidance that we will only accompany those (local) forces when the prospects of enemy contact is unlikely." Dunford said the Niger clash reflects the globalisation of the fight against IS, even as it loses ground in Syria and Iraq.

PTI
US visa processing time expected to fall by mid-2023, says official

US to withdraw aid to Myanmar military over Rohingya violence

International

pti-PTI

Washington, Oct 24: In the wake of massive exodus of Rohingyas, the United States has announced it was withdrawing military assistance from Myanmar units and officers involved in violence.

"We express our gravest concern with recent events in Rakhine state and the violent, traumatic abuses Rohingya and other communities have endured," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in announcing the punitive measures.

"It is imperative that any individuals or entities responsible for atrocities, including non-state actors and vigilantes, be held accountable."

The State Department said it has already cut off travel waivers allowing current and former senior military leaders into the country and was considering further actions to impose economic measures against those responsible for atrocities against Myanmar's ethnic minority. The department said that all military units involved in operations against the Rohingya were ineligible for American aid.

PTI
USA considering economic sanctions against Myanmar over Rohingya issue

International

oi-Amitava

By Amitava

In what could be a major financial crackdown on Myanmar the United States is mulling economic sanctions against this Southeast Asian nation over the Rohingya issue.

It has just been a year that the US has lifted a decade long trade sanctions from Myanmar. Reinstating sanction would hit the economy of this developing country hard, feel analysts.

In a statement released late on Monday, the U.S. State Department said it was considering "economic options" to target individuals associated with atrocities against the Rohingyas.

Washington is also "exploring accountability mechanisms available under U.S. law, including Global Magnitsky targeted sanctions," the State Department stated.

Incidentally The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act authorizes the administration to sanction foreign individuals for human rights violations and corruption.

This move comes on the heels of more than 40 lawmakers of the House of Representatives calling for stringent action against military leaders of Myanmar.

The USA had earlier lifted all trade sanctions from Myanmar in October 2016 with the return of civilian rule in 2015. However the military junta still exercises a strong grip on the Government led by Nobel Laureate Aung Sang Suu Kyi as defacto leader.

The USA is also consulting with allies on accountability options, the statement continues. Along with this, arms embargoes would also be effective, stated a recent note from Amnesty International.

The State Department has further stated that all units of the Myanmar security forces involved in Rakhine operations from participating in U.S. assistance programs.

Reinstating of economic sanction could create a major dent in Myanmar's newfound status as one of the most upcoming frontier markets.

The Rohingyas are an ethnic group, majority belonging to the Muslim faith, who have lived for centuries in Myanmar. Currently, there are about 1.1 million Rohingya who live in the predominantly Buddhist country.

The Rohingya speak the unique Ruaingga dialect but are not considered one of Myanmar's 135 official ethnic groups. They have been denied citizenship in Myanmar since 1982. This has rendered the Rohingya's stateless.

Nearly all of the Rohingyas in Myanmar live in the western coastal state of Rakhine in camps. Time and again there have been allegations of Myanmar embarking on ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya's which the country has denied.

Following an attack on the police posts and an army base in Myanmar on August 25 that left 12 officers dead, the Myanmar military has imposed a crackdown on the Rohingya population which they have dubbed a clearance operation against an insurgent terrorist group.

Due to ongoing violence and persecution, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighbouring countries either by land or boat.

India however has announced a different approach to the Rohingya crisis.

Sushma Swaraj, External Affairs Minister, Government of India in a statement issued after a joint consultative committee meeting in Dhaka, Bangladesh to discuss India- Bangladesh ties had stated "The only long term solution to the situation (Rohingya) in Rakhine State is rapid socio-economic and infrastructure development that would have a positive impact on all communities living in the State."

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 11:48 [IST]
Xi Jinping named in Chinese constitution, elevated to status of Mao, Deng

International

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The Communist Party of China (CPC) on Tuesday endorsed a second five-year term for President Xi Jinping. Further it was decided to amended its constitution to add his name and ideology, elevating him on a par with party founder Mao Zedong and his successor Deng Xiaoping.

Former leaders Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin also had their own ideologies incorporated in the constitution. But unlike Mao and Deng, their names were not included.

Xi's concept of "socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era" was added to the constitution at the end of the CPC's week-long Congress.

The amendment to the constitution was approved, making 64-year-old Mr. Xi's ideology as a new component of the party's guide for action, according to a resolution of the 19th CPC National Congress.

The conference, attended by over 2,350 delegates, ended at the Great Hall of the People, the seat of power of China's Communist leadership.

Xi and Premier Li Keqiang (62), ranked number one and two in the CPC hierarchy, would continue based on two five-year tenure convention for top leaders. Five new members will be elected to the seven-member Standing Committee of the party.

Xi and Li took charge in 2012 and set to continue till 2022.

The new standing committee will be unveiled for China and the world on Wednesday when they would formally appear in front of the media in a live telecast.

Reports in the Hong Kong media said that Xi may not have his way at the congress, as his closest aide Wang Qishan, who led the massive anti-corruption campaign in which Xi's opponents were allegedly crushed, is likely to step down from the powerful standing committee, belying speculation that he would be retained by overriding the 68-year retirement rule.

Also the congress may keep the number of the standing committee members to seven, contrary to reported preference of Mr. Xi to reduce its number to five.

The new committee may retain balance of power among various factions within the party though Xi may still remain powerful with the induction of some of his close associates into it, the reports said.

As China enters a new era, the CPC must write a new chapter, of 21st century Marxism with a broader vision to achieve the goals set at the milestone congress, Chen Shuguang, a professor with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee told state-run Xinhua news agency.

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Story first published: Tuesday, October 24, 2017, 16:19 [IST]
Even as some Democrats are at long last growing frustrated with the lack of actual evidence for the past several months of stories about Russia stealing a U.S. election, Russiagate has penetrated so deeply that Trump's ambassador to the United Nations has declared Russia's alleged crimes to be acts of war. That Russia's fictional actions being warfare would make Donald Trump guilty of treason is really a minor glitch not to be fretted over if we step back and view the situation calmly and wisely from the point of view of the weapons dealers.

The University of Virginia's Miller Center has hardly met a war criminal it didn't love. It's now planning three days of nonstop Russophobia:

"Since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the United States and Russia have been geopolitical and ideological rivals."

That's one way of noting that the U.S. and its allies immediately sent their militaries into Russia to fight against the revolution -- an action which had absolutely nothing to do with defending the United States or upholding the rule of law or preventing genocide or expanding women's rights or spreading democracy or respecting national sovereignty, or any of the other pieces of nonsense put forward as excuses for wars these days. In fact, this warmaking was a blatant violation of the sixth of Wilson's 14 Points, and of each of the first five general Points as well.

"In aftermath of the First World War, the Bolshevik challenge to American ideals of democratic capitalism set the tone for the rest of the century."

So, the U.S. sending troops into Russia didn't set any tones, but the Bolsheviks' disagreements with the "democratic capitalism" that is working out so well for us did that.

"Despite a period of partnership during the great war against Hitler, the USA and the USSR viewed one another with deep suspicion and eventually came to see the other as an existential threat. Even with the collapse of the Cold War order, America and Russia could not develop a stable, mutually beneficial relationship, and since the advent of Vladimir Putin to power in 2000, the relationship has reached a level of mutual enmity not seen since the depths of the Cold War."

Putin, huh? His offer of friendship and support and gift of a memorial following September 11, 2001, his willingness to help with a U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan just doesn't exist? We have to jump straight to the decline in relations that began when Putin would not support attacking Iraq, and pretend it happened three years earlier? Boy was he wrong about attacking Iraq, eh? That sure has paid off big time and set a moral standard for a world full of slimy rivals. (That the year 2000 is the wrong date on which to begin the "enmity" is acknowledged by one of the Miller Center's articles.)

"This conference aims to place the current US-Russia relationship into broad historical context by returning to key historical moments of crisis and controversy as well as restraint and compromise. By exploring U.S. presidents and their ties to Russian and Soviet leaders, and by analyzing the perceptions of the latter, we hope to illuminate the real nature of the bilateral relationship: the underlying forces, ideological, geopolitical, strategic, historic--that have placed the United States and Russia at cross-purposes for the past century."

Sure you do. In preparation, the center has published several articles online. Here's the conclusion of one that begins with Wilson and Lenin:

"Putin, we are told, sees international politics as a great power game, governed by that old Thucydidean maxim that might makes right."

Never mind by whom we are told this and what value it may have!

"This was precisely the logic of the pre-1919 world order that both Wilson and Lenin rejected. They both wanted a world governed by norms and institutions of international cooperation; they founded the League of Nations and the Third International, after all, around the same time. Wilson, of course, wanted an order that reflected the principles of democratic capitalism, and Lenin, those of Communist internationalism. Both, however, would have rejected Putinism as an abomination."

Putin is very quickly transformed into "Putinism" on the basis of what "we are told," and then denounced as an "abomination." Egad! What can we do to avoid this abomination?

"The United States, then, has two choices in its general posture toward Russia today. One is to accept Putin's premise and shape its policy based on the principles of great power politics. Washington still enjoys vast economic and military superiority over Moscow, and this, combined with America's favorable geostrategic position, gives it considerable leverage. Such a strategy, however, would require a clear definition of strategic priorities and some recognition, however distasteful, of Russia's perceived interests in its own near abroad. As much as Washington opposes Russian involvement in Ukraine, for example, or a potential incursion into the Baltics, how far is it really willing to go to stop them? "The second choice is to adopt a more principled, Wilsonian perspective, as Wilson himself did toward Lenin. In this scheme, Putin's refusal to abide by the international norms and institutions crafted after 1945 under US influence (if sometimes flouted by US policies) would render his regime internationally illegitimate. The United States would rally like-minded allies (presumably, mainly in Europe) to tighten economic sanctions and further reduce diplomatic contacts."

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Let's read a New York Times editorial from Monday:

"The United States has been at war continuously since the attacks of 9/11 and now has just over 240,000 active-duty and reserve troops in at least 172 countries and territories. While the number of men and women deployed overseas has shrunk considerably over the past 60 years, the military's reach has not. American forces are actively engaged not only in the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen that have dominated the news, but also in Niger and Somalia, both recently the scene of deadly attacks, as well as Jordan, Thailand and elsewhere."

That's a big "elsewhere" that includes Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, etc.

"An additional 37,813 troops serve on presumably secret assignment in places listed simply as 'unknown.' The Pentagon provided no further explanation. There are traditional deployments in Japan (39,980 troops) and South Korea (23,591) to defend against North Korea and China, if needed,"

The gratuitous claim that what U.S. troops are doing halfway around the globe is defensive helps explain why this extreme militarism is tolerated. This editorial will go on to scratch its head in bewilderment, but the U.S. would not have gotten into these wars without the hard work of the New York Times, which has so normalized the mouthing of patent nonsense in defense of permanent war that it goes unnoticed even in an editorial lamenting permanent war.

"" along with 36,034 troops in Germany, 8,286 in Britain and 1,364 in Turkey -- all NATO allies. There are 6,524 troops in Bahrain and 3,055 in Qatar, where the United States has naval bases."

Plus 14,617 in Italy, 12,489 in Afghanistan with 4,000 more on the way, 12,342 in Kuwait, 5,963 in Iraq, etc, etc, plus many more mercenaries and contractors than troops in some of these locations. And of course "has naval bases" in plain English is "props up brutal dictatorships with horrific results to come."

"America's operations in conflict zones like Africa are expanding: 400 American Special Forces personnel in Somalia train local troops fighting the Shabab Islamist group, providing intelligence and sometimes going into battle with them. One member of the Navy SEALs was killed there in a mission in May. On Oct. 14, a massive attack widely attributed to the Shabab on a Mogadishu street killed more than 270 people, which would show the group's increased reach. About 800 troops are based in Niger, where four Green Berets died on Oct. 4."

The pattern of increased terrorism following the spread of "counter terrorism" can be found, but is never pointed out, in the New York Times.

"Many of these forces are engaged in counterterrorism operations -- against the Taliban in Afghanistan, for instance; against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria; against an affiliate of Al Qaeda in Yemen. So far, Americans seem to accept that these missions and the deployments they require will continue indefinitely. Still, it's a very real question whether, in addition to endorsing these commitments, which have cost trillions of dollars and many lives over 16 years, they will embrace new entanglements of the sort President Trump has seemed to portend with his rash threats and questionable decisions on North Korea and Iran."

When the hell were we asked? Are there polls showing that we've embraced these wars and the warmaking that they "require"?

"For that reason alone, it's time to take stock of how broadly American forces are already committed to far-flung regions and to begin thinking hard about how much of that investment is necessary, how long it should continue and whether there is a strategy beyond just killing terrorists."

How in the world could any of it be necessary? Why must the New York Timescreate that assumption?

"Which Congress, lamentably, has not done. If the public is quiet, that is partly because so few families bear so much of this military burden, and partly because America is not involved in anything comparable to the Vietnam War, when huge American casualties produced sustained public protest. It is also because Congress has spent little time considering such issues in a comprehensive way or debating why all these deployments are needed. Congress has repeatedly ducked efforts by Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, and others to put the war against the Islamic State, which has broad popular support but no specific congressional authorization, on a firm legal footing."

That "broad public support" is very dubious and not documented here in any way. Polls have often shown the same people horrified of ISIS and wanting ISIS destroyed opposing continuing or escalating U.S. warmaking. The "firm legal footing" is a highly dangerous lie by one of its top promoters: the New York Times. None of these wars is legal under the UN Charter or under the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and there is nothing that Congress can do to make them legal. If some foreign nation attacked this one, the New York Times wouldn't look into the manner in which that nation's government decided on war and whether it was in compliance with that nation's constitution. It would recognize that a criminal cannot legalize a crime through a proper criminal procedure.

"President Trump, like his predecessor, insists that legislation passed in 2001 to authorize the war against Al Qaeda is sufficient. It isn't. After the Niger tragedy, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker of Tennessee, has agreed to at least hold a hearing on the authorization issue. It is scheduled for Oct. 30."

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Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"Rob Kall's book, Bottom-Up: Tapping the Power of the Connection Revolution has really caused me to relook and reframe many of my thoughts on where our connectedness using social media tools like LinkedIn is headed, and not just for career trajectory but for life. If you are looking for a new perspective on our sometimes zany digital world we live in, this book will keep you reading and may ultimately revise but for sure challenge your current paradigm."



Wayne Breitbarth, author of The Power Formula for Linkedin Success: Kick-Start Your Business, Brand, and Job Search
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From Consortium News

Last Thursday, President Trump gave his administration a "10 out of 10" for its handling of the hurricane recovery in Puerto Rico, However, even as Trump was patting himself and his team on the back, the power grid in San Juan went down again throwing the city into darkness.

More than a month after Hurricane Maria made landfall on Sept. 20, many Puerto Ricans remained in dire straits, especially those needing electricity for respirators or dialysis machines to treat medical conditions. Some back-up generators were burning out due to overuse.

Meanwhile, those living in more remotes areas of Puerto Rico like Vieques and Culebra were still living without any resources, often left to fend for themselves, forced to drink highly polluted water from rivers, or other sources, including those directly connected to superfund sites.

Given Puerto Rico's ongoing crisis, some officials of the U.S. territory have tried to avoid angering the President. At one point during the meeting in the Oval Office, Trump turned to Puerto Rico's Governor Ricardo Rossello and asked, "Did we do a great job?" Rossello finessed the President's question: "You responded immediately, Sir."

But San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz quipped that Trump was right about giving his administration a "10" if it was out of 100. "If it is a 10 out of a scale of 100, of course, it is still a failing grade," she said on CNN's "New Day" on Friday.

In an interview late Thursday, I spoke with Flashpoints contributor Judith Berkan in San Juan, whose electricity had again failed, along with millions of other Puerto Ricans. Berkan is a human rights activist and attorney who deals with land rights, and has been a resident on the U.S.' island colony for the last 40 years.

Dennis Bernstein: What's the latest regarding the situation on the ground? Is the situation beginning to improve?

Judith Berkan: In some ways, the situation keeps getting worse. For example, just a half an hour ago most, if not all, of the San Juan area lost electricity. The power comes and goes. You get it for a couple days and you get a sense of some routine in your life and then it disappears again. So the San Juan metropolitan area, which in some ways is the economic motor of the country, is still in the dark. I live in an apartment building which has generators. There has been a fire sale of generators here at very exorbitant prices. People are being gouged.

Dennis Bernstein: Talk about the situation in terms of power at medical facilities.

Judith Berkan: I just spoke with a friend of mine who spent all day waiting for ambulatory surgery and then the lights went out. About three-quarters of the hospitals on the island are working but most of those are working on generators. Generators cause all sorts of other problems. The air contamination is frightening and we are seeing more respiratory diseases.

Because of the uncertainty of power, hospitals are limiting their operations and sending people who can afford it off the island to have operations. Because doctor's offices are closed by and large, emergency rooms have become, in effect, doctor's offices.

There has been a propagation of contagious diseases. Pneumonia is showing up quite a bit. We have had torrential rains this past week. In October, so far, we have had over six inches of rain, which has resulted in huge floods. The water is still contaminated by animal carcasses and rodent urine and that kind of thing. We are seeing scabies, which is one of those diseases that can pass from an animal to a human being.

We also have a devastating situation with the tarps. Something like 250,000 homes have totally lost their roofs and many more have lost part of their roofs. The FEMA director here was saying that the only tarps that have been distributed were some 45,000 that were on stock here in Puerto Rico. When the request was made for more tarps to the States, they said that none were available. So now they are being manufactured and they estimate that next week 500,000 will arrive.

As far as the job that the US is doing, they are not offering enough aid, they are offering us loans at a time when Puerto Rico's indebtedness is extraordinary to begin with. There are still communities, 29 days after the storm, who have not been reached by a single governmental agent. Only about 10 percent of roads are passable and there is still debris all over the streets.

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From WSWS

When former Trump Senior Adviser and current Breitbart News editor Steven Bannon told delegates at the California Republican Party convention that "there has not been a more destructive presidency than George [W.] Bush's," he was greeted with loud applause. The very mention of Bush, the party's previous president, and of 30-year Senator John McCain provoked boos from the audience.

Bannon's attacks on Bush and McCain follow public statements they made against Trump in recent days, although neither used the current president's name. Speaking in New York on Thursday, Bush took aim at Trump, saying, "We've seen nationalism distorted into nativism" and "our discourse degraded by casual cruelty." Last Monday, McCain attacked Trump's "half-baked, spurious nationalism."

Leaving aside the highly hypocritical character of such condemnations from the perpetrators and apologists of the Iraq War and other imperialist slaughters, the fight between Bannon and his allies and the Republican establishment is developing into an internal fight that could destroy or radically alter the 163-year-old capitalist party.

Bannon is fanning and exploiting the escalating divisions to carry out his long-term goal of either transforming the Republican Party into an explicitly fascistic party or splitting sufficient politicians and donors from the Republicans to establish a new far-right party of his own.

This perspective animates Bannon's effort to recruit challengers in the 2018 Republican primaries, which take place in the spring and summer. He recently pledged to "wage civil war" on Republican leadership, singling out enemies like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, and others. At the California Republican convention, he said he was trying to build "a grassroots army" to "revolt against Republican establishment." He seeks to ensure the primaries take place amid a political climate of reaction, jingoism, and anti-immigrant hysteria.

But his current tactic is also aimed at appealing to lower-ranking Republican officials and their financial backers to join him in opposing Republican leadership. Referencing Trump's 2016 victory, Bannon told the California Republican Party that Trump's 2016 campaign was based on a coalition approach: "This is why it had to be the Republican establishment, it had to be limited-government conservatives, it had to be libertarians, it had to be populists, it had to be economic nationalists, it had to be evangelical Christians."

The aim of this maneuver, offering of the olive branch to sections of the Republican establishment, is two-fold. Bannon hopes to build a political bridge between the far right and the Republican Party's wealthy donors. And he hopes to drive a wedge between the so-called establishment section of the party and its financial and fundamentalist backers. In this way, he can either isolate and purge the pro-McConnell and neo-conservative elements or win sufficient support to justify formally breaking with the Republicans to found a third party.

Bannon has been traveling across the country in recent weeks, raising money for Breitbart and for efforts to fund primary challengers to a number of Republican senators. He has boasted on Breitbart that he is winning support from a number of wealthy Republican donors, including Dan Eberhart, John Childs, Susan Gore, Eric Crown, and Sheldon Adelson. On Wednesday, he met with a group of establishment Republican donors in New York to "pitch his 2018 midterm strategy against Republican incumbents," according to Breitbart.

Bannon says he will back mainstream Republican candidates in states without Republican incumbents, but that he will challenge six of the seven sitting Senate Republicans who are up for reelection in 2018.

The coalition Bannon is constructing will be based on mercenaries, war criminals, speculators, evangelical preachers, and out-and-out fascists.

He is urging Erik Prince -- former Blackwater CEO and brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos -- to run against Senator John Barrasso in Wyoming. He is also supporting challengers in Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Nebraska, and Mississippi, where some of the candidates Bannon supports have closer ties to the Republican establishment. In Alabama, Bannon backed the evangelical zealot Roy Moore, who defeated the establishment candidate Lester Strange in September's Republican primary run-off.

Bannon also met with former-Republican Congressman and current Breitbart correspondent Tom Tancredo last month and the two discussed Tancredo running for governor of Colorado in 2018. Tancredo is ferociously anti-immigrant and has called for the establishment of brownshirt-style neighborhood militias to fight immigration and Islamism.

In other words, Bannon's coalition would weave together the most reactionary threads of American politics, drawing veterans of the criminal wars in the Middle East, the Southern evangelical churches, and the anti-immigrant militia.

The Republican leadership has thus far attempted to downplay the threats from Bannon-backed primary challengers, calling the schism an "interparty skirmish" that will harm the Republicans' chances in 2018.

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(Image by Egberto Willies) Details DMCA



It is clear that Bob Corker does care more for the country than the Republican Party as he made it clear that Trump is a clear and present danger.

Asked if the President is debasing the country, Senator Bob Corker could not be clearer.

"I don't think there's any question but that's the case just in the way that he conducts himself and goes to such a low level," Corker said. "I just. I do. But look, I mean the rest of us need to do what we can to act as statesmen and to try to move our nation ahead and a time when we have a leader such as we have now."

Corker gave his Republican colleagues a pass in response to a reporter who asked if they need to speak up.

"I can't speak to what other people should do. Corker said. "I would never want to you know do or say something that puts people that I serve with, in an uncomfortable place."

A reporter asked if he regretted campaigning for Trump. Corker said he really did not campaign for Trump. He said he went to Raleigh when Trump was considering him for the Vice Presidency. He said he told the Trump then he wouldn't be Vice President and in an embarrassing moment the president called him out on stage.

Corker gave a harsh parting shot at the end of the interview.

"But look, we are where we are as a country and again I think what we need to do is support him when he's right," Corker said. "Check him when he is wrong which is plenty. And try to conduct ourselves in a manner that brings out the best of the American people when our president obviously does not conduct himself that way. His governing model is to divide and to attempt to bully and to use untruth."

When will the floodgates open from the Republican Party? Senator Corker and a few others are giving the timid ample opportunity even if to simply use his quotes. It is likely just a matter of time for this president.
From Strategic Culture

Two very different faces of world leadership were on display this week. In Beijing, President Xi Jinping delivered a bold, outward-looking vision of Chinese global leadership. Meanwhile, in Washington President Donald Trump was embroiled in yet more egotistical infighting and tawdry claims of media lies.

Addressing the 19th congress of China's Communist Party, 64-year-old Xi was reelected for a second five-year term. He is being talked about as the greatest Chinese leader since Mao Zedong who led the country's founding revolution in 1949. With dignified composure, Xi spoke to the Great Hall of the People about "a new era of modern socialism... open to the world."

The Washington DC-based Council on Foreign Relations headlined: "Xi Asserts China's Global Leadership Role."

The BBC reported Xi as telling the more than 2,000 delegates: "China has entered a new era in which it should take centre-stage in the world."

Reuters reported: "In what was probably an indirect reference to US President Donald Trump's America First policy, Xi promised that China would be fully engaged with the world, and reiterated pledges to tackle climate change. Trump this year opted to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate pact."

"No country can alone address the many challenges facing mankind; no country can afford to retreat into self-isolation," Xi told delegates during a three-and-half-hour address.

Reuters again: "Xi set bold long-term goals for China's development, envisioning it as a modernized socialist country by 2035, and a modern socialist strong power with leading influence on the world stage by 2050."

Fair enough, cynics may balk at "promise fatigue" and snipe that the Chinese leader's rhetoric was heavy on aspiration and light on specific enabling details.

However, there is no denying that Xi was this week offering a vision of ambitious possibility for social progress and internationalism.

Contrary to American leadership and Trump in particular, Chinese characteristics of global leadership are not marked by knuckle-dragging domination, militarism and aggression. The emphasis from the Chinese leader is on global cooperation and multilateralism. In short, a peaceful and prosperous world.

Contrast that to Trump's tirade before the UN General Assembly last month when he rhetorically swaggered and threatened nations with "total destruction."

In that regard, Russian President Vladimir Putin shares the same leadership qualities as China's Xi. No wonder the two leaders are visibly comfortable when they meet publicly, as they have done more frequently than any other two current heads of state. Quietly, with dignity, the two men seem driven to create a more progressive, peaceful world of co-development and co-existence -- in spite of American proclivities to create a world of chaos, conflict and hegemony.

While Xi Jinping was conducting himself with dignity and dedication, on the other side of the world, physically and metaphorically, Trump was behaving like the antithesis.

Again this week, Trump was bragging about massive tax cuts for the already mega-rich; about imposing stricter travel bans on foreigners; about ripping up international accords (the Iran nuclear deal); and showing appalling disrespect for his own country's military men and women -- despite at other times boasting about American military might.

Trump's embarrassing boorishness is getting so bad, senior Republicans are deploring the country's "lack of leadership." Arizona Senator John McCain lamented that "America's leadership and ideals are absent." Last week, another senior Republican Senator, Bob Corker, said Trump was behaving like someone who should be confined to "an adult care center" and whose reckless rants are endangering the planet with World War III.

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By Dave Lindorff

This past weekend, my wife and I drove up to Connecticut to attend my 50th high school reunion (which was a great event). But on the way there, we stopped off at a local B&B to drop off our luggage since we'd booked the place for that night. While we were standing just outside the open entryway of the 250-year-old house talking with the innkeeper, there was a loud explosion and a blast of air. It turned out there had been a gas explosion in the inn's kitchen which, while it didn't ignite a fire, did severely burn two chefs whose restaurant was catering an event that evening, as well as three waiters.

The victims were brought outside the home and laid on the ground with blankets and we all tried to ease their intense pain, to comfort them as best we could and to keep them from going into shock while waiting for fire trucks and rescue vehicles to arrive.

I mention this because it was so impressive to see the mostly volunteer firefighters from this rural area who raced to the scene in minutes rush straight into the house, unafraid of another blast, to search for any possible victims still inside and to insure that there wouldn't be any further explosions. Meanwhile, a few firefighters with EMT training started more serious evaluation and treatment of the victims' injuries.

Firefighters have always impressed with how astonishingly dedicated and brave they are -- and the volunteer ones especially, since they put their lives on the line all the time like that for no remuneration.

This came to mind as I thought of President Trump's stuffed shirt chief of staff, the retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, and his recent dissing of Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D-FL), whom he disparagingly called an "empty barrel" and just a former public school teacher. In Kelly's stated view, America's soldiers, especially the ones killed in battle, are the "finest one-percent" of all Americans "because they are the very best this country produces, and they volunteer to protect our country when there's nothing in our country anymore that seems to suggest that selfless service to the nation is not only appropriate, but required."

He also said that America's soldiers "are not making a lot of money," but "love what they do."

Clearly, Gen. Kelly thinks that America's firefighters, it's EMT workers, or others who work in dangerous, stressful, and often low-paid jobs that are critical to the functioning of this American society, are of a lower caliber than soldiers like himself.

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.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp2y64IPeVw

PSSD Interview with Anna from Croatia

Professor David Healy is a world-renowned psychiatrist, scientist, author, and a leading psycho-pharmacologist who is studying the condition called Post-SRRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD), an incurable, permanent illness that can occur after taking SSRIs or other modern antidepressant drugs, which does not go away after stopping the medication. PSSD sufferers say life feels pointless and that they no longer feel sexual or romantic feelings and so cannot fall in love. Many children and young adolescents who are given these medications who then go on to develop PSSD say they have no idea what sexual or romantic feelings are like.

Professor Healy believes the condition might more common than previously thought because it unreported as doctors usually dismiss it when their patients say their sex drive has not been the same after taking antidepressant drugs. Because of the nature of the condition patients feel too ashamed to mention it to anyone else. Many sufferers are lonely because their lack of sexual feelings and romantic passion makes relationships difficult.

A number of years ago the medical journalist, Robert Whitaker, wrote an article about it but no newspaper, magazine, or online media outlet would publish it. When the Oliver James, the left-leaning British psychiatrist who often writes for the MSM, was asked about it he said it would be difficult to publish. Apparently, newspapers rely too much on drug-company advertising and don't want to upset their customers.

Professor Healy is trying to raise money for a $100,000 prize for anyone who can develop a cure for this dreadful condition. If you wish to donate, there's the link below. Please re-blog this post.

https://rxisk.org/prize/

Reprinted with permission from Rxisk

David Healy

This prize is part of a two-pronged attack on the unwillingness of the medical and regulatory establishments to listen to people with adverse events in general -- not just the sexual dysfunctions mentioned here. The second front in the attack will be unveiled in a few weeks' time.

The problem

The idea for a RxISK Prize began with our involvement with sufferers from Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD) some years ago, and soon after people with comparable problems following Accutane and Finasteride. The motivation and endurance of those affected has been inspiring.

A complete and permanent wipe-out of your ability to make love is among the most debilitating side effects of a drug imaginable. In the case of all these drugs when it happens it affects men and women, young and old, can appear after a few days on the drug or only after treatment stops. It can last for decades, perhaps longer. It leads to suicides, the break-up of relationships and job losses. There is no upside to it.

PSSD shares many common features and looks like it is closely related to Post-Finasteride Syndrome (PFS), and Post-Retinoid Sexual Dysfunction (PRSD) triggered primarily by isotretinoin (Accutane). Isotretinoin is both a serotonin-reuptake inhibitor and a 5-alpha reductase inhibitor (5ARI), so it could give rise to PSSD or PFS, or all three conditions may have something else in common.

We have recently submitted a paper for review describing 300 cases of PSSD, PFS and PRSD, and we are aware of many more cases and comparable phenomena happening on some other drugs. There may be tens of thousands affected as some evidence suggests that less than half of those who have been on SSRIs for months will regain full and normal function.

There are communities online and linked to universities researching these conditions as vigorously as the AIDS community once got involved in the search of a cure for AIDS. The most successful of these so far have been linked to PFS, with sufferers having created a Foundation to promote research on this condition. The research done by these groups have followed up all of the obvious treatment leads but nothing so far has worked.

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See original here

By Lorraine Chow

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt has been noted for taking unusual steps to operate with extreme caution at the job -- including the installation of a $25,000 soundproof communications booth and contravening a bi-partisan EPA transparency practice of keeping his schedule secret.

Now, CNN reports, the EPA is expanding Pruitt's security detail with an additional 12 agents, meaning his total security fleet stands at 30 bodyguards. This will cost the department $2 million a year in salaries alone and does not include training, equipment or travel.

Meanwhile, President Trump's budget blueprint would cut the EPA's funds by more than 30 percent.

Before the new hires, Pruitt's security detail had already demanded "triple the manpower of his predecessors" and is forcing "officials to rotate in special agents from around the country who otherwise would be investigating environmental crimes," the Washington Post reported last month.

No other administrator has needed 24/7 security but Pruitt has reportedly received more death threats than any other EPA chief. The inspector general said the office has launched investigations into more than 70 such threats.

"We have at least four times -- four to five times the number of threats against Mr. Pruitt than we had against Ms. McCarthy," said assistant inspector general Patrick Sullivan, referring to President Obama's EPA administrator, Gina McCarthy.

"The EPA is a lightning rod. We get threats from both sides of the spectrum," Sullivan told CNN. "Some people believe the EPA is not doing enough to enforce environmental laws, and they're upset about that. Other people think the EPA is doing too much, vis-a-vis enforcing environmental laws and they're upset about that."

However, eyebrows are raising over Pruitt's questionable use of taxpayer money. In August, the inspector general launched a "preliminary investigation" into Pruitt's frequent trips back to his home state of Oklahoma "at taxpayer expense" following congressional requests. Airfare for these trips reportedly cost more than $12,000.
From Paul Craig Roberts Website

Once upon a time the left-wing of the political spectrum was committed to the advancement of the working class and its protection from political and economic abuse by the owners of the means of production. Consequently, the left-wing was politically potent and reached a pinnacle of power when Henry Wallace was selected by Franklin D. Roosevelt as his third term vice president. Despite his wealth from the company he founded, Wallace stood for the farmer and the working class.

The Democratic Party power brokers refused to accept Wallace as the vice president candidate until FDR told them he otherwise would decline the presidential nomination.

Wallace was Roosevelt's and the Democratic voters' choice for vice president in Roosevelt's fourth term. But Wallace's progressive views had alienated the party bosses, Wall Street bankers, anti-union businesses, and America's British and French allies with his support for labor unions, women, minorities, and victims of colonialism. When he called for the emancipation of colonial subjects and for working with the Soviet Union in the cause of peace and working class justice, he sealed his fate. Despite a Gallup Poll released during the Democratic national convention in July 1944 showing that Wallace was the favorite with 65% of the vote and Roosevelt's announcement that if he were a delegate, he would choose Wallace, the party bosses chose Harry Truman who was preferred by only 2% of Democratic voters.

This was a turning point in US politics and world history. If the people had prevailed over the corrupt Democratic party bosses, Wallace instead of Truman would have become the first postwar US president. Most likely, there would have been no Cold War, no Korean War, no Vietnam War, no NATO, and no decades of mutual distrust between the US and Russia that today threatens life on earth.

Moreover, in place of today's highly skewed income and wealth distribution toward the very rich fraction of one percent, there would be an equitable distribution that would support a strong consumer market instead of declining real incomes and debt expansion that threatens economic growth, business profits, employment, and high equity values.

Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick in their best seller, The Untold History of the United States, describe the Clinton-style Democratic Party corruption that was used to block Wallace as the vice presidential candidate:

"Party insiders made sure they had an iron grip on the convention. Yet the rank-and-file Democrats would not go quietly, staging a rebellion on the convention floor. The groundswell of support for Wallace among the delegates and attendees was so great that despite the bosses' stranglehold over the proceedings and strong-arm tactics, Wallace's supporters almost carried the day as an uproarious demonstration for Wallace broke out on the convention floor. In the midst of the demonstration, Florida Senator Claude Pepper realized that if he got Wallace's name into nomination that night, Wallace would sweep the convention. Pepper fought his way through the crowd to get within five feet of the microphone when the nearly hysterical Mayor Kelly, purporting that there was a fire hazard, got the Chairman, Senator Samuel Jackson, to adjourn the proceedings. Had Pepper made it five more feet and nominated Wallace before the bosses forced adjournment against the will of the delegates, Wallace would have become president in 1945 and the course of history would have been dramatically altered."

The next day Senator Jackson apologized to Senator Pepper: "I had strict instructions from Hannegan not to let the convention nominate the vice president last night. So I had to adjourn the convention in your face."

Thus was the power of interest groups to prevail over democracy 73 years ago when there was still a press that would on occasion speak for the people. Dave Kranzler and Brett Arends describe the power of the interests and the degeneration of the media today:

"It's been my view since circa 2003 that [the oligarchs] would hold up the system with printed money and credit creation until every last crumb of middle class wealth was swept off the table and into the pockets of those in position to do the sweeping.

"Obama delivered nothing on his original campaign promises. He was going to 'reform' Wall Street. But the concept of Too Big To Fail was legislated under Obama, and Wall Street indictments/prosecutions fell precipitously from the previous Administration.

"Obama left office and entered into a world of high six-figure Wall Street-sponsored speaking engagements and to live in a $10 million estate in Hawaii paid for by the Chicago elite (Pritzkers etc). Now Obama will be paid off $10's of millions for his role in aiding and abetting the transfer of trillions from the middle class to the elitists. Look at Bill and Hillary -- need I say more? Trump has reversed course on his campaign promises twice as quickly as Obama. Almost overnight after his inauguration, Trump became a war-mongering hand-puppet for the Deep State's 'Swamp' creatures."

"The media has been willingly complicit in this big charade. Much to my complete shock, Brett Arends has published a commentary on Marketwatch which, from an insider, warns about the media:

'Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I'll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world. Once upon a time you saw people like this in every newsroom in the country. They often had chaotic personal lives and they died early of cirrhosis or a heart attack. But they were tough, angry SOBs and they produced great stories.

'Do you want to know what kind of people get promoted and succeed in the modern news organization? Social climbers. Networkers. People who are gregarious, who 'buy in' to the dominant consensus, who go along to get along and don't ask too many really awkward questions. They are flexible, well-organized, and happy with life. And it shows.'

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The leader of the dark forces of Shi'aism in the world

Grand Ayatollah, Sayyed Ali Khamenei of Iran

By Hamma Mirwaisi

The growing power of the follower of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan's is deriving the leaders of the countries above to mental instability.

The US government's support of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the Syrian war is driving the above leaders to act not normally.

The Syrian People's uprising began in mid-March 2011. The revolt quickly was taken over by the Islamic Sunni Arab extremist organization to remove Allawi President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

The Syrian people's nightmare started by the so-called 'domino effect'. Hezbollah of Lebanon of the Islamic Shi'aism loyal to the Ayatollah of Iran rushes to support fellow Alawites (the branch of Islamic Shi'aism) of Syria. President Erdogan of Turkey had the dream to establish new Islamic Empire similar to Ottoman Empire to lead Islamic Sunni extremist in the world to wage war against Russian and Europe and exterminate Kurds loyal to Abdullah Ocalan as Kurdish leader. The Persian Gulf Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar supplied Islamic Sunni Arab terrorist forces to destroy Syrian government with the blessing of the Obama administration.

The Syrian government was about to fall, Iranian government called on Shi'a extremist to save Allawi President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The Islamic Sunni Arab invited Islamic Sunni extremist around the world to join them to establish the Islamic Sunni caliphate (Empire).

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's dream to become Islamic caliphate led him to open the gate for the Islamic terrorist forces around the world to join Islamic terrorist forces in Syria.

Russian President Putin saw the weakness of the US President Obama in Syria; he took the opportunity to send forces to Syria to save Syrian government and establish the alliance with Islamic Shi'a Empire led by Ayatollah of Iran.

Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan need one another's help one more time.

The Islamic Arab extremist wanted Syrian Kurds to join them in the fight against Syrian government. Majority of Kurds did not want to do so; they wanted peace in their area and did not want to join either side. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan encouraged Islamic Sunni Arabs and Turks to eliminate Kurds in that region of Syria because they helped PKK in Turkey. Kurdish followers of Abdullah Ocalan, teaching established YPG local forces to defend Kurdish people in Syria.

YPG success drove Massoud Barzani and Talabani mafia families to seek support from Turkey because both of them were afraid of growing power of Kurds loyal to Abdullah Ocalan's teaching. Both Barzani and Talabani mafia families kept the good relationship with Iran too. But to take the side in critical time, Barzani wants to be the servant of Turkey and Talabani wants to be the servant of Iran for families' protection from Kurdish people.

Israeli leaders who involve in corruption are favoring Erdogan and Barzani to make money. The corrupt leaders in the US, EU countries, and Israel are in favor of Erdogan and Barzani and against Kurds loyal to Abdullah Ocalan's teaching. Ocalan's teaching is against corruption and Mafia families of Barzani and Talabani are for corruption.

Oil deals divided people and countries in that part of Kurdistan.

President Donald Trump helped the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in bringing benefit to the people in the US in the long range. And the SDF success led to the establishment of strange alliances of on and off between 'Russian, Turkey (puppet of Turkey is Barzani Kurds and corrupt ex-leaders from the US, EU countries, and Israel), and Iran (puppet of Iran are Syria, Iraq, Talabani Kurds and Lebonan).

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Right before election day 2016, I was worried about whether Clinton had enough of the millennial vote to beat Trump . Looking back, this concern was well founded. Clinton didn't have enough support despite policies that would have favored millennials. Millennials are the nation's largest age group, with voting power that often goes unheeded by those who have it. The lack of millennial support helped spur Clinton's defeat.

Regardless of Clinton's shortcomings, if we could have expected an age group to vote against Trump, it would have been millennials. A Quinnipiac University poll found 64 percent favored Clinton before the election. Trump's campaign didn't look promising to the mainstream press, partly because 61 percent of millennials had an unfavorable opinion of him, and millennials make up 31 percent of the electorate, which rivals baby boomers. Looking back, polls now mean less than the press would like them to.

When it came down to it, about 55 percent of millennials who voted cast their ballot for Clinton. In 2012, 60 percent voted for Obama. That drop off of 5 percent hurt Clinton a lot, because a 60 percent millennial vote would've meant 1.2 million more votes for her. As it was, she only needed a little more than 50 thousand votes in three states to beat Trump.

The same percentage of millennials who voted for Mitt Romney voted for Trump--37 percent. It's a wonder even that many voted for him. Is it because of economic problems?

While Clinton campaigned partially on ideas she borrowed from Bernie Sanders--easing college debt and paying for college--Trump made it sound like he was going to stick it to big corporations, bring working class jobs back to America, and give companies incentive to raise wages.

Millennials are a big part of a workforce for which wages are stagnating. Wage stagnation has caused a lot of millennials to take side gigs, but side gigs aren't worth a lot: the average side gig nets about $299 a month, and only 15 percent of the people who work a side gig make over $500 a month. The millennial who works a side gig is left with less time on their hands and has to watch as the enormously wealthy and corporations catch huge tax breaks. Now, if Trump succeeds with his budget, millennials will have to watch this disparity grow even further.

Trump is promising $4,000 will go back in people's pockets if his budget passes. But this promise is a Trojan horse to sneak enormous tax breaks in for the wealthy. Taxpayers would see a 0.8 percent break on income taxes --thus the $4,000--but the top 1 percent would see far more than that, with a bonus of 10.2 to 16 percent more after-tax income.

As Bernie Sanders points out , the Koch brothers will get a tax break of $33 billion, the Walton family of Walmart will get $52 billion, the Trump family $4 billion. Trump's budget amounts to a massive money-grab for the wealthiest individuals. The top 1 percent will reap 80 percent of the benefits, the top one-tenth of the 1 percent will see 40 percent of the benefits.

The tax plan also calls for reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. The idea here is if you lower taxes on businesses, they'll be able to pay workers more. But The Balance points out that most large corporations don't pay more than 15 percent anyhow, because of loopholes. Some don't even pay any taxes because they pass them onto shareholders (who, in turn, only pay 15 percent). If corporations are already paying minimal taxes now and it hasn't led them to raise wages, why would it be any different once the corporate tax rate is officially lower?

At the heart of it, Trump is promoting Republican ideology; he just makes it seem more extreme through his rhetoric. As the Republican plank goes, it's up to businesses and individuals to decide what to do with their money. But millennials are big on corporate social responsibility--70 percent say a company's social responsibility policies and commitments influence their choice of employer. Is it a corporation's social responsibility to raise wages for impoverished workers? You'd think so.

There's a veiled threat here. According to Ohio University,

"Millennials are particularly tech savvy, and they don't think twice about researching a company and looking into its ethical record and labor practices. Many feel like it is their duty to do their part in making the world a better place, and this burgeoning generation does not want to be associated with or support companies who do not take responsibility for the world and the people in it."

In other words, if a company doesn't act right, millennials will vote with their wallets and support companies that are socially responsible.

Donald Trump isn't just a person, he's a corporate brand, a brand that hasn't been socially responsible, to say the least. The ironies keep piling up. Millennials, who care so much about social responsibility, also granted a socially-irresponsible Trump enough votes to put him over the top against Clinton.

Maybe there's just something wrong with the education system that helped raise millennials. Correct me if I'm wrong. But as a psychopathic Trump parades destructively down Main St. waving guns, too many millennials are too busy working side gigs and staring at their smartphones to know what's going on.
Smartphone Image Sensor Market: Dynamics, Segments, Size and Demand, 2017-2021

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The latest industry research report on Smartphone Image Sensor by MRC provides a thorough analysis of the global Smartphone Image Sensor market. The report scrutinizes the market by different segments including regions, applications, competitive landscape, etc. over the predicted time frame. This report provides 360 Degree perspective of the Smartphone Image Sensor industry with an all-inclusive discussion of definitions, classifications, and market players in the industry chain structure. It features qualitative and quantitative analysis of the industry taking into consideration the significant development factors, competition in the market, and important reasons impacting the market growth.Smartphone Image Sensor Report by Material, Application, and Geography  Global Forecast to 2021 is a professional and in-depth research report on the world's major regional market conditions, focusing on the main regions (North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific) and the main countries (United States, Germany, united Kingdom, Japan, South Korea and China).The report firstly introduced the Smartphone Image Sensor basics: definitions, classifications, applications and market overview; product specifications; manufacturing processes; cost structures, raw materials and so on. Then it analyzed the world's main region market conditions, including the product price, profit, capacity, production, supply, demand and market growth rate and forecast etc. In the end, the report introduced new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis.The report includes six parts, dealing with:1.) basic information;2.) the Asia Smartphone Image Sensor Market;3.) the North American Smartphone Image Sensor Market;4.) the European Smartphone Image Sensor Market;5.) market entry and investment feasibility;6.) the report conclusion.Get sample copy of this report @Table of ContentsPart I Smartphone Image Sensor Industry OverviewChapter One Smartphone Image Sensor Industry Overview1.1 Smartphone Image Sensor Definition1.2 Smartphone Image Sensor Classification Analysis1.2.1 Smartphone Image Sensor Main Classification Analysis1.2.2 Smartphone Image Sensor Main Classification Share Analysis1.3 Smartphone Image Sensor Application Analysis1.3.1 Smartphone Image Sensor Main Application Analysis1.3.2 Smartphone Image Sensor Main Application Share Analysis1.4 Smartphone Image Sensor Industry Chain Structure Analysis1.5 Smartphone Image Sensor Industry Development Overview1.5.1 Smartphone Image Sensor Product History Development Overview1.5.1 Smartphone Image Sensor Product Market Development Overview1.6 Smartphone Image Sensor Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.1 Smartphone Image Sensor Global Import Market Analysis1.6.2 Smartphone Image Sensor Global Export Market Analysis1.6.3 Smartphone Image Sensor Global Main Region Market Analysis1.6.4 Smartphone Image Sensor Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.5 Smartphone Image Sensor Global Market Development Trend AnalysisChapter Two Smartphone Image Sensor Up and Down Stream Industry Analysis2.1 Upstream Raw Materials Analysis2.1.1 Upstream Raw Materials Price Analysis2.1.2 Upstream Raw Materials Market Analysis2.1.3 Upstream Raw Materials Market Trend2.2 Down Stream Market Analysis2.1.1 Down Stream Market Analysis2.2.2 Down Stream Demand Analysis2.2.3 Down Stream Market Trend AnalysisPart II Asia Smartphone Image Sensor Industry (The Report Company Including the Below Listed But Not All)Chapter Three Asia Smartphone Image Sensor Market Analysis3.1 Asia Smartphone Image Sensor Product Development History3.2 Asia Smartphone Image Sensor Competitive Landscape Analysis3.3 Asia Smartphone Image Sensor Market Development TrendChapter Four 2012-2017 Asia Smartphone Image Sensor Productions Supply Sales Demand Market Status and Forecast4.1 2012-2017 Smartphone Image Sensor Capacity Production Overview4.2 2012-2017 Smartphone Image Sensor Production Market Share Analysis4.3 2012-2017 Smartphone Image Sensor Demand Overview4.4 2012-2017 Smartphone Image Sensor Supply Demand and Shortage4.5 2012-2017 Smartphone Image Sensor Import Export Consumption4.6 2012-2017 Smartphone Image Sensor Cost Price Production Value Gross MarginChapter Five Asia Smartphone Image Sensor Key Manufacturers Analysis5.1 Company A5.1.1 Company Profile5.1.2 Product Picture and Specification5.1.3 Product Application Analysis5.1.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.1.5 Contact Information5.2 Company B5.2.1 Company Profile5.2.2 Product Picture and Specification5.2.3 Product Application Analysis5.2.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.2.5 Contact Information5.3 Company C5.3.1 Company Profile5.3.2 Product Picture and Specification5.3.3 Product Application Analysis5.3.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.3.5 Contact Information5.4 Company D5.4.1 Company Profile5.4.2 Product Picture and Specification5.4.3 Product Application Analysis5.4.4 Capacity Production Price Cost Production Value5.4.5 Contact InformationThe research report focuses on the analysis of its major geographies, and different segments. This all-inclusive study discusses the current market development and trends, important factors driving market growth like drivers, restraints, market projections, and market structure for each region and its sub-segments. It also provides glimpses on the recent technological advancements in the market along with detailed profiles of key industry players. The report also includes an analysis of the micro and macro aspects noteworthy for the present active and the new entities apart from the study of the value chain.Check Discount on Report atKey Topics Covered in the Report:Comprehensive overview of parent market with market definition, classificationRecognition of factors influencing the market scenarios and analysis of market drivers, barriers, and their impact on the market growthCurrent and future market trends, market scope and detailed market segmentation on the basis of application, region, and competitive scenarioValue Chain Analysis, Strategic insights, and market estimationsTechnology, trends, developments, and changing market dynamics of the Cannabis Testing industryFacts, stats, historical data, market size forecast regarding volume and valueAnalysis of competitive landscape and assessments on a regional scale with company profiles of leading market players, finance metrics, product offerings and key business strategies and growth prospects for the projected periodInsights on prospective opportunities and challenges, success and riskThe report brings to your attention analysis of the Smartphone Image Sensor market in major geographies including North America, Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and the Rest of the World. This research report provides a complete insight of the market trends and guides in making informed business decisions. It gives a clear understanding of the competitive environment, key market players, their portfolio, and strategies. It also features a technological growth map over a time and helps understand its impact on the market.Market ScopeThe research report takes different facets into consideration to scrutinize the global Smartphone Image Sensor industry. It brings to your attention market overview, market trends and future outlook, market growth and dynamics, market challenges and opportunities, competitive landscape, and potential investment segment.Report Details @About Market Reports Center;Market Reports Center is an e-commerce platform obliging the needs of knowledge workers, experts, professionals who are subject to market research information for their work, or to make strategic business decisions. We are dedicated to create a comprehensive offering of market research which is accurate, credible and affordable.Market Reports Center currently has more than 5,00,000 plus titles and 50+ Publishers on our platform and growing consistently. We cover more than 35 industry verticals being: Automotive, Electronics, Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, Healthcare, Chemicals, Construction, Agriculture, Food, Beverages, Banking & Finance, Media and Government, Public Sector Studies.Connect for more details:Sam CollinsMarket Reports CenterHouse 421 Hudson Street New York, NY 10014, USA1-646-883-3044 (US)
Gas Generator Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of 8% from 2016 to 2023

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Market HighlightsA Gas Generator is a device normally used to generate electricity, by propelling the gas over the turbine in a compressed state. Gas generators have been in use as auxiliary power equipment for a long time in residential households.Currently, the market is experiencing strong demand for generators with capacity less than 300 kW and above 1 MW. Generators with capacity less than 300 kW are primarily used in small-scale industries where the total load is less and the operation is of short timeline. The demand for these category of generators is likely to come from emerging industries in the developing nations such as, China and India, as these countries are the center of small cost-driven businesses who are slowing grasping market. Also, the growing power outage rates in this countries have certainly increased the demand for gas generators.The growing need for uninterrupted power supply during power outages and power failure has boosted the adoption of gas generator in all major sectors. Phenomenal growth in healthcare infrastructure, rising demand for data centers & IT facilities and rapid urbanization in developing countries are driving the global gas generator market. However, limited power generation capacity, high maintenance & operating cost and rise in transmission & distribution expenditure may hinder the Global Gas Generator Market.Gas Generator Market is expected to grow over the CAGR of more than 8% during the period 2017 to 2023Key Players The key players of global gas generator market are APR Energy (USA), Siemens Ltd. (Germany), General Electric Company (USA), Aggreko plc (U.K), Toshiba Corporation (Japan), Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (South Korea), Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Japan), Hyosung Corporation (South Korea), Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (India) Perkins Engines Company Limited (U.K).Request a Sample Copy @Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow at the fastest rateThe gas generator market in the Asia-Pacific region is currently leading and is followed by Europe market. The rapid industrial development in the countries such as India and China, where there are issues with continuous electricity supply, is driving the market for power transformers. Also R&D and utilization of ultra-high voltage transformers in China and India will drive power transformer market.Scope of the ReportThe scope of the study segments the global gas generator market by its power capacity, by end-user, by regions.By Power Capacity 300 kW 301 kW-1 MW < 1 MWBy End-User Residential Commercial & Industrial UtilityBy Regions North America Asia Pacific EuropeRest of the World .For further information on this report, visit @Table of Content1 Executive Summary2 Research Methodology2.1 Scope Of The Study2.1.1 Definition2.1.2 Research Objective2.1.3 Assumptions2.1.4 Limitations2.2 Research Process2.2.1 Primary Research2.2.2 Secondary Research2.3 Market Size Estimation2.4 Forecast Model3 Market Dynamics3.1 Market Drivers3.2 Market Inhibitors3.3 Supply/Value Chain Analysis3.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis4 Global Gas Generator Market, By Power Capacity4.1 Introduction4.2 > 300 KW4.3 301 KW-1 MW4.4 < 1 MW5 Global Gas Generator Market, By End-UserContinue.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Impact of Surgical Robots on Global Surgical Equipment Market

Surgical Equipment Market - Outlook and Forecast 2017 - 2022

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Modern invention and innovation in technology has captivated almost all industries and is continuously influencing the market growth across the world. The surgical equipment market is also influenced due to product innovations.A recent report by Arizton Advisory & Intelligence, which includes the study of global surgical equipment market has provided some evident that the launch of advanced products is likely to impact the global market. The report Surgical Equipment Market  Global Outlook and Forecast 2017-2022, states that the advent of surgical robots is expected to drive the market growth.View Report: Surgical Equipment Market  Global Outlook and Forecast 2017-2022Demand for surgical robots to drive global surgical equipment market growthThe increased need for robotic surgery will likely drive the demand for surgical equipment. Robotic assisted surgeries require the integration of various surgical equipment, including power tools to perform various procedures. For instance, surgical robots work with four arms, which increased the demand for various surgical equipment, including power tools. For instance, the University of Washington has developed surgical robots that can use multiple surgical tools during operations. Surgical robots are self-powered, computer-controlled devices that can be programmed to aid the positioning and manipulation of surgical instruments. Advantages associated with these systems will drive the adoption substantially. For instance, surgical robotic systems provide less post-surgical complications and help in reducing labor cost. Therefore, large-scale hospitals in developed and developing economies are looking to prefer automated surgical robots that can be integrated with surgical equipment. For instance, the number of surgical procedures that use Intuitive Surgicals robotic machines stood at approximately 0.7 million in 2015 (worldwide), indicating an increase of 15% over the previous fiscal year. In developing countries such as India, the demand for robotic surgeries is expected to increase and hospitals are increasingly adopting surgical robots. About 30 healthcare facilities in India have already adopted surgical robots to provide better patient care. This indicates that there is an increased adoption of surgical equipment required to carry out robotic surgeries. For instance, in 2015, more than 4,000 surgical procedures were witnessed in India. Therefore, the shift to robotic-assisted surgeries will increase the demand for surgical equipment.The report also provides a detailed study of major trends in the global market that are likely to affect the growth during the forecast period.Innovation likely to change global surgical equipment market dynamicsContinuous focus of innovation will certainly bring substantial growth opportunities in the market. Vendors are increasingly pursuing new product development strategies to bring innovative products into the market. For instance, in October 2016, InTech Medical SAS, a launched a new Wayvio platform, which is dedicated to drive standalone surgical instruments with smart communication tools.View Report: Surgical Equipment Market  Global Outlook and Forecast 2017-2022Related Reports1) Intraoperative Neuromonitoring (IONM) Market - Global Outlook and Forecast 2017 - 20222) Wheelchair Lift Market - Global Outlook and Forecast 2017-2022Source Link:About AriztonArizton  Advisory and Intelligence is an innovation and quality-driven firm, which offers cutting-edge research solutions to clients across the world. We excel in providing comprehensive market intelligence reports and advisory and consulting services.Arizton has gained a paramount standpoint in the market research arena as it offers top of the line solutions to clients to assess market landscape and to finalize foolproof business strategies. We are committed to provide inclusive market research reports and consulting services to clients from diversified industries including Consumer Goods & Retail Technology, Automotive and Mobility, Smart Tech, Healthcare and Lifesciences, Industrial Machinery, Chemicals and Materials, IT and Media, Logistics and PackagingArizton comprises a team of exuberant and well-experienced analysts who have mastered in generating incisive reports. Our specialist analysts possess exemplary skills in market research. We train our team in advanced research practices, techniques, and ethics to outperform in fabricating impregnable research reports.Arizton Advisory & IntelligenceChicago, Illinois, 60605Mail: enquiry@arizton.comCall: +1-312-465-7864
Global Nail Enamel - Industry Size, Share, Trends, Analysis and Forecast 2017  2022

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Global Nail Enamel IndustryThis report studies Nail Enamel in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with capacity, production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringOPIBobbi BrownNarsCNDCover GirlSally HansenZaRevlonAnnaDiorORLYCOSMAYLoreal ParisEssieRevlonJapan GlazeTry Sample Report @Market Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate of Nail Enamel in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), likeNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaSplit by product type, with production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoType IType IISplit by application, this report focuses on consumption, market share and growth rate of Nail Enamel in each application, can be divided intoApplication 1Application 2Buy now @Some Major Points from Table of content:2 Global Nail Enamel Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Nail Enamel Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Global Nail Enamel Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.3 Global Nail Enamel Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.4 Manufacturers Nail Enamel Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Nail Enamel Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Nail Enamel Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Nail Enamel Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Nail Enamel Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global Nail Enamel Production and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global Nail Enamel Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global Nail Enamel Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.4 North America Nail Enamel Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.5 Europe Nail Enamel Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.6 China Nail Enamel Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.7 Japan Nail Enamel Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.8 Southeast Asia Nail Enamel Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.9 India Nail Enamel Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)4 Global Nail Enamel Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)4.1 Global Nail Enamel Consumption by Regions (2012-2017)4.2 North America Nail Enamel Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.3 Europe Nail Enamel Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.4 China Nail Enamel Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.5 Japan Nail Enamel Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.6 Southeast Asia Nail Enamel Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)4.7 India Nail Enamel Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2012-2017)5 Global Nail Enamel Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Nail Enamel Production and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.2 Global Nail Enamel Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)5.3 Global Nail Enamel Price by Type (2012-2017)5.4 Global Nail Enamel Production Growth by Type (2012-2017)6 Global Nail Enamel Market Analysis by Application6.1 Global Nail Enamel Consumption and Market Share by Application (2012-2017)6.2 Global Nail Enamel Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2012-2017)6.3 Market Drivers and Opportunities6.3.1 Potential Applications6.3.2 Emerging Markets/Countries7 Global Nail Enamel Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 OPI7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Its Competitors7.1.2 Nail Enamel Product Type, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 OPI Nail Enamel Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015 and 2016)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Bobbi BrownContinued..For Detailed Reading Please visit WiseGuy Reports @About UsWise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available.Contact Us:Norah Trent+1 646 845 9349 / +44 208 133 9349Follow on LinkedIn:Wise Guy Reports Is Part Of The Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. And Offers Premium Progressive Statistical Surveying, Market Research Reports, Analysis & Forecast Data For Industries And Governments Around The Globe. Wise Guy Reports Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Spanning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt LtdPune  411028Maharashtra, GlobalPh: +91 841 198 5042
Fresh Meat Packaging Market - Industry Shares, Market Strategies And Key Players

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The global market for fresh meat packaging has witnessed an impressive rise over the last few years, thanks to the increased shelf-life of the meat products, a growing demand for customization in meat films by meat producers, and the benefits of flexible film packaging over rigid packaging.With various beneficial characteristics of fresh meat packaging, such as low carbon footprint, reduced energy consumption, decreased raw material consumption, and low wastage, this market is likely to continue its growth trajectory over the next few years. Apart from this, the increasing rate of urbanization in emerging regions, such as Asia Pacific and Latin America, is also projected to cause a massive shift towards the preference for packaged food among consumers, further stimulating the market.In 2015, the overall opportunity in this market was US$1.92 bn. Rising at a CAGR of 2.30% between 2016 and 2026, it is likely to reach US$2.47 bn by the end of 2026. A number of lucrative opportunities for players operating in the market are expected to arise in the near future, especially in the Asia Pacific region.Get an exclusive sample of this report @Adoption of VSP Technology in Fresh Meat Packaging to IncreaseModified atmosphere packaging (MAP), vacuum skin packaging (VSP), and vacuum thermoformed packaging (VTP) are the key technology types used in fresh meat packaging. Among these, VSP technology enjoys a significantly high popularity among consumers. Its popularity graph is anticipated to continue increasing over the next few years, resulting in the segments lead with a share of 32% by the end of 2026.The main types of materials used in fresh meat packaging are PE, PP, BOPP, EVOH, PVC, and PA. The PE segment has been leading the global fresh meat packaging market currently and is expected to remain doing so over the forthcoming years, thanks to a number of factors, such as lower cost of production as compared to other materials and the elasticity.Browse Press Release of this Research Report @North America to Continue its LeadNorth America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, and Japan are the predominant regional markets for fresh meat packaging across the world. North America, among these, holds the dominant share of this market at present and is expected to continue to do so over the next few years on the ground of early adoption of fresh meat packaging among meat producers. The North America fresh meat packaging market held more than 36% of this market in 2015. This regional market is projected to gain considerably in the years to come from the increased research and development activities, boosted by the mounting investments.Asia Pacific excluding Japan is also expected to witness a substantially high growth over the forthcoming years. The rapid industrialization in this region is likely to boost the Asia Pacific market for fresh meat packaging in the near future. Alongside, the increasing investments by companies for research and development in this field in Asia Pacific is also anticipated to propel this regional market over the next few years.Amcor Ltd., Dupont, Bemis Co. Inc., Berry Plastic Group, Winpack Ltd., Sealed Air Corp., Crown Holdings, Reynolds Group, Coveris Holdings S.A., and Sealpac International BV are some of the key companies involved in the business of meat packaging across the world.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.coWebsite:
Global Beauty Devices Market is boosted by growing prevalence of skin diseases and growing appearance consciousness

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Global Beauty Device Market Report by Variant Market Research, estimate that global market is expected to reach $113 Billion by 2024, from $29 Billion in 2016. The report will include detailed analysis of beauty device market with respect to major segments such as device type, usage area, and geography.To browse the complete report, visit at @Beauty devices denotes to the services and products that help in enhancing or improving physical appearance of an individual. These devices have several advantages as they are suitable to use and also, portable. These devices help in rejuvenating and cleansing the skin, and are also helpful in treating aging-related problems such as acne, wrinkles, scars, hair loss and spots.Get Table of Content (TOC) @Increasing geriatric population shall drive the global beauty devices marketAwareness about the accessibility of treatments and associated devices for treating aging skin has been boosting the global beauty device market share. Despite observing a considerable increase over the last few years, knowledge concerning the risks associated or linked with using these devices is hindering the markets growth. The advent of these side-effects can slow the process of skin treatment. Also, many popular beauty devices emit intense pulsed light that can result in side-effects such as oedema, scarring, postoperative erythema, and superficial burn. Minimizing these side effects will definitely work in increasing the global beauty device market size in coming future.Market SegmentationsDevice type, usage area, and geography are the major segments in the global beauty devices market. Device type is segmented into skin dermal rollers, cellulite reduction devices, hair removal devices, hair growth devices, cleansing devices, rejuvenation devices, light/LED therapy & photo-rejuvenation devices, oxygen, acne devices, & steamer devices, and others. Usage area is further categorized into salon, at home, spa, and others.Hair removal devices and cleansing devices dominated the device type segmentHair removal and cleansing devices dominated the device type segment majorly due to growing prevalence of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and other hormonal skin problems amongst females. Cleansing devices due to increasing awareness or consciousness for appearance are expected to lead the market. Increasing use of these devices in daily life by the females is expected to boost the beauty device market forecast.Salon accounted for the largest market share in usage area segmentSalon accounted for the largest market share due to increasing number of salon and also due to increasing disposable income of the people which can afford the service. Busy lifestyle and increasing need for lavish lifestyle are also the factors leading to the growth of this segment and are considered as the major beauty device market trend.North America held the highest market share of global beauty device marketNorth America has been the largest market for beauty devices, with U.S. as the basic contributor to the market as compared to Canada. The factor driving the growth of North American beauty device market comprise of growing aging population and increasing prevalence of skin and skin related problems in the region. U.K. due to high acceptance of these devices also commands the significant market in Europe. Developing economies such as India, China are expected to provide large opportunities for these devices in the coming year.Click Here to Request a Free Sample PDF of This Report @Competitive LandscapeKey players in the market are collaborating to deliver better advanced beauty equipment or devices. In January, 2017, L'Oreal engaged in an agreement with Valeant pharmaceuticals to acquire the skincare brands including AcneFree, CeraVe, and Ambi. The acquisition is majorly aimed to expand the LOreals active cosmetics division.The major players in the beauty device market includes LOreal S.A., Koninklijke Philips N.V., Syneron Medical Ltd., Panasonic Corporation, Nu Skin Enterprises, Carol Cole Company., Procter & Gamble, Home SKinovations Ltd., TRIA Beauty, Inc., and Lumenis Ltd., among others.Scope of the Global Beauty Devices MarketDevice Type Segments Cellulite Reduction Devices Skin Dermal Rollers Hair Removal Devices Cleansing Devices Hair Growth Devices Rejuvenation Devices Light/LED Therapy & Photorejuvenation Devices Acne Devices Oxygen & Steamer Devices Other DevicesUsage Area Segments Salon Spa At Home Other Usage AreasGeography Segments North Americao U.S.o Canadao Mexico Europeo UKo Germanyo Franceo Italyo Others Asia-Pacifico Chinao Japano Indiao South Koreao Others RoWo South Americao Middle Easto AfricaAbout Variant Market ResearchVariant Market Research offers syndicated and customized reports to fulfill clients' objectives. We also provide customized data pack proposing market sizing in an Excel/PDF/PowerPoint or Word format as per the requirement of clients. We cover several industry domains, namely Semiconductor & Electronics, Consumer Electronics, Information and Communication Technology, Automotive, Consumer Goods, Food & Beverages, Pharmaceuticals, Medical Devices, Chemicals, Industrial, Mining Equipment, Automation, Manufacturing, Construction, Energy & Power, Defense & Aerospace and Banking, Financial services and Insurance (BFSI). Our expertise are data triangulation, competitor benchmarking, parent market benchmarking, estimating market size and forecast of the market from 2016 to 2024.For further information, visitMichael MendesHead - SalesVariant Market Research649 Mission St, 5th Floor, San Francisco,CA 94105, United States.Tel: +1-415-680-2785Fax: +1-415-680-2786Email: michael.mendes@variantmarketresearch.comEmail: help@variantmarketresearch.com
Flexible Packaging Market - Growth Forecast Analysis by Manufacturers, Regions, Types and Applications to 2021

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The use of flexible sheets and films in the packaging industry has been present for a substantial amount of time, but has seen commercial success only in the recent decades. Modern flexible packaging provide varying levels of flexibility while maintaining the highest level of durability possible, keeping their primary job of protecting the contents. These factors have strongly championed the use of flexible packaging in the ASEAN regions, where high population density, growing consumerism, increasing need for brand appeal, and the savings in size of package and space that they can achieve.The ASEAN flexible packaging market is likely to show an optimistic CAGR of 5.7% within a forecast period from 2016 to 2024. It is expected to reach US$6.71 bn by the end of 2024, from its valuation of US$4.32 bn in 2015. The primary propellant for the market currently is the large scale consolidation efforts taken by the leading players in the market. The market also benefits substantially from factors such as economic advancements in the region, increasing rate of investments by multinational players, and dynamic characteristics of the population. Megatrends such as the flourishing modern retail industry and the increasing growth of food and beverages industries is also contributing to the growth of the ASEAN flexible packaging market. Food and beverages in the ASEAN region takes up a majority of the market for flexible packaging. Therefore, product development efforts initiated by manufacturers of flexible packaging in the ASEAN region are targeted towards key food and beverages clients.Get an exclusive sample of this report @Indonesia to Continue to Shine in ASEAN Flexible Packaging MarketBased on ASEAN nations, the flexible packaging market has been segmented into Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, and Myanmar. Indonesia is currently estimated to constitute the leading share in the ASEAN flexible packaging market, with Thailand in second place. The markets in Philippines, Vietnam, and Myanmar are likely to show a relatively higher growth rate over the coming years. GDP growth and a rise in disposable income in the ASEAN region will play a key role in propelling the demand for flexible packaging over the coming years.Browse Press Release of this Research Report @Pouches to Maintain Dominant Share, Multi-layered Packaging Gains TractionOver the coming years, the ASEAN flexible packaging market is forecast to swing from single layer packaging to multilayer variants. The latter segment can be divided further into two layers, three layers, five layers and seven layers. Five-layered flexible packaging and seven-layered flexible packaging are expected to take up the greater shares in the overall market for the given forecast period, with the market segment on the basis of layer types. However, the multi-layered packaging segment currently shows greater barriers to growth, such as high costs of manufacturing and overall reluctance of consumers to purchase the items with costlier packaging. The promotion of this segment as a highly hygienic and safe option for packaging of food products is likely to boost its demand over the coming years.Based on products, the ASEAN flexible packaging market can be divided into pouches, bags, films and rollstocks, and other flexible packaging products. Pouches took up the leading share in the market in 2015, in terms of demand volume and growth rate. This segment is additionally expected to remain a highly attractive over the forecast period. The pouches segment is further divided into standup pouches, retort pouches, and vacuum pouches, among which standup and retort pouches are forecast to show a profitable future. The segment of bags is divided into wicketed bags and gusseted bags.The leading players in the ASEAN flexible packaging market so far, have included Sonoco Products Company, Bemis Company, Inc., Amcor Limited, Constantia Flexibles GmbH, Mondi Group, Berry Plastics Group, Inc., and AR Packaging Group.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.coWebsite:
Online Portals Help Aspirants to Get Govt Jobs Information

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Good News for aspirants of state govt jobs and central govt jobs. Now, they will be able to get all information they require through different websites on the Internet. So, those who were missing out on application dates for their desired government jobs can now apply successfully within the last date. Moreover, all these websites offer first hand information on the eligibility criteria and mention links of official websites where the aspirants can find details information regarding each posts.Whats on offer?From a govt. job portal like Ejobtime, one can gather all necessary information regarding the vacancies announced and the eligibility criteria for each post. Thus, the aspirants could check every detail before applying for their dream posts. Moreover, regular updates and information on both central govt jobs and state govt jobs will help the candidates to focus on what they are planning to apply. Sometimes, even if the interested candidates hear the news of a recruitment drive, they are confused regarding the portal from where they could gather all necessary information. But not anymore! Ejobtime is one of those sites where there is every piece of information as well as the most valuable links to the official websites where the interested candidates can get data like age limits, syllabus, and other things.Checking information on a govt. job portalThe websites that offer information on the vacancies and recruitment drives for Government jobs, offer information promptly. Thus, by following these websites, the interested candidates do not have to wait for long to apply. Moreover, it helps the aspirants to apply for both central govt jobs and state govt jobs well within time. Last dates are not missed and proper documentations help the applications to be accepted.No wrongful information providedA reputed govt. job portal like Ejobtime offers the most accurate information on the different vacancies that are announced by the government. Thus, it helps the candidates to decide whether they are willing to apply for any particular post. As these websites or web portals offer comprehensive information, a candidate do not have to visit the official websites or read elaborate information to find out job details and specific requirements.Owing to these benefits the govt job aspirants trust the information on a job portal for both central govt jobs and state govt jobs.It is a reputed govt. job portal for all central govt jobs and state govt jobs in West Bengal. It is here that the aspirants can get all information on the announced job vacancies.EjobtimeJirat Kaliagarh Balagarh Hooghly West Bengal Pin: 712501Biman Dasinfo@ejobtime.com+919681110474
Feminine Hygiene Products Global Market 2017- Competitive Landscape, Strategies, Share, Trends, Segmentation, Growth Forecast 2022

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This report studies Feminine Hygiene Products in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringRequest a Sample Report @Procter & GambleUnicharmJohnson & JohnsonKimberly-ClarkSvenska Cellulosa AktiebolagetEdgewell Personal CareBellaBodywise (UK)CoraCormanFirst Quality EnterprisesFujian Hengan GroupLil-LetsMasmiMoxieOntexPee BuddyKaoThe Honest CompanySeventh GenerationVivanionBy types, the market can be split intoSanitary NapkinsTamponsPantylinersMenstrual CupsFeminine Hygiene WashBy Application, the market can be split intoPhysical StoresOnline StoresBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaMake an enquiry of this Report @If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Table of ContentsGlobal Feminine Hygiene Products Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of Feminine Hygiene Products1.1 Definition and Specifications of Feminine Hygiene Products1.1.1 Definition of Feminine Hygiene Products1.1.2 Specifications of Feminine Hygiene Products1.2 Classification of Feminine Hygiene Products1.2.1 Sanitary Napkins1.2.2 Tampons1.2.3 Pantyliners1.2.4 Menstrual Cups1.2.5 Feminine Hygiene Wash1.3 Applications of Feminine Hygiene Products1.3.1 Physical Stores1.3.2 Online Stores1.3.3 Application 31.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 India2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Feminine Hygiene Products2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Feminine Hygiene Products2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Feminine Hygiene Products2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Feminine Hygiene Products3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Feminine Hygiene Products3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Feminine Hygiene Products Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Feminine Hygiene Products Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Feminine Hygiene Products Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Feminine Hygiene Products Major Manufacturers in 20164 Global Feminine Hygiene Products Overall Market Overview4.1 2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global Feminine Hygiene Products Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2016 Feminine Hygiene Products Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2012-2017E Global Feminine Hygiene Products Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2016 Feminine Hygiene Products Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2012-2017E Global Feminine Hygiene Products Sales Price4.4.2 2016 Feminine Hygiene Products Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment)5 Feminine Hygiene Products Regional Market Analysis5.1 North America Feminine Hygiene Products Market Analysis5.1.1 North America Feminine Hygiene Products Market Overview5.1.2 North America 2012-2017E Feminine Hygiene Products Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.1.3 North America 2012-2017E Feminine Hygiene Products Sales Price Analysis5.1.4 North America 2016 Feminine Hygiene Products Market Share Analysis5.2 China Feminine Hygiene Products Market Analysis5.2.1 China Feminine Hygiene Products Market Overview5.2.2 China 2012-2017E Feminine Hygiene Products Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.2.3 China 2012-2017E Feminine Hygiene Products Sales Price Analysis5.2.4 China 2016 Feminine Hygiene Products Market Share Analysis5.3 Europe Feminine Hygiene Products Market Analysis5.3.1 Europe Feminine Hygiene Products Market Overview5.3.2 Europe 2012-2017E Feminine Hygiene Products Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.3.3 Europe 2012-2017E Feminine Hygiene Products Sales Price Analysis5.3.4 Europe 2016 Feminine Hygiene Products Market Share Analysis5.4 Southeast Asia Feminine Hygiene Products Market Analysis5.4.1 Southeast Asia Feminine Hygiene Products Market Overview5.4.2 Southeast Asia 2012-2017E Feminine Hygiene Products Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.4.3 Southeast Asia 2012-2017E Feminine Hygiene Products Sales Price Analysis5.4.4 Southeast Asia 2016 Feminine Hygiene Products Market Share Analysis5.5 Japan Feminine Hygiene Products Market Analysis5.5.1 Japan Feminine Hygiene Products Market Overview5.5.2 Japan 2012-2017E Feminine Hygiene Products Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.5.3 Japan 2012-2017E Feminine Hygiene Products Sales Price Analysis5.5.4 Japan 2016 Feminine Hygiene Products Market Share Analysis5.6 India Feminine Hygiene Products Market Analysis5.6.1 India Feminine Hygiene Products Market Overview5.6.2 India 2012-2017E Feminine Hygiene Products Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.6.3 India 2012-2017E Feminine Hygiene Products Sales Price Analysis5.6.4 India 2016 Feminine Hygiene Products Market Share AnalysisContinuedPurchase Report @Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.ADDRES:WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Encryption Software Market Size & Forecast 2022 Profiling Microsoft, Sophos, Checkpoint Software Technologies, Trend Micro, Symantec Corporation

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New report of Encryption Software Market Report communicates about the manufacturing process. The process is analysed thoroughly with respect three points, viz. raw material and equipment suppliers, various manufacturing associated costs (material cost, labour cost, etc.) and the actual process of whole Enterprise Encryption Software market. The Enterprise Encryption Software Industry research report is a resource, which provides technical and financial details of the Enterprise Encryption Software Market (Volume and Value).This report studies the global Encryption Software market, analyzes and researches the Encryption Software development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, like Microsoft, Sophos, Checkpoint Software Technologies, Trend Micro, Symantec CorporationRequest a Free sample PDF of this research to evaluate more:Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report covers United States, EU, Japan, China, India, Southeast AsiaMarket segment by Type, the product can be split into Disk Encryption, File Encryption, Database Encryption, Communication Encryption, Cloud EncryptionMarket segment by Application, Encryption Software can be split into Bfsi, Healthcare, Government&Public Sector, Telecom, Retail, Aerospace&DefenseIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Get Discount on this Report:Table of Content for Global Encryption Software Market Size Research Report:Industry Overview of Encryption Software MarketGlobal Encryption Software Market Size Competition Analysis by PlayersCompany (Top Players) ProfilesGlobal Encryption Software Market Size by Type and Application (2012-2017)United States Encryption Software Market Development Status and OutlookEU Encryption Software Development Status and OutlookJapan Encryption Software Development Status and OutlookMarket Forecast by Regions and Application (2017-2022)Encryption Software Market Size DynamicsMarket Effect Factors AnalysisResearch Finding/ConclusionAppendixFor More Info on Market Research @Related Reports: -Global (North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa) Construction Project Management Software Market 2017 Forecast to 2022This report studies the Construction Project Management Software market, Construction project management involves the planning, coordination, and control over the various tasks involved in construction projects. This could include different types of construction projects, like agricultural, residential, commercial, institutional, industrial, heavy civil, and environmental.Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Market Study ReportThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:News:
Global Application Security Market For Mobile Applications And Web Application Advances in web technologies coupled with a changing business environment, mean that web applications are becoming more prevalent in corporate, public and Government services today. Although web applications can provide convenience and efficiency, there are also a number of new security threats, which could potentially pose significant risks to an organizations information technology infrastructure if not handled properly. Application security encompasses measures taken to improve the security of an application often by finding, fixing and preventing security vulnerabilities. Different techniques are used to surface such security vulnerabilities at different stages of an applications lifecycle such design, development, deployment, upgrade, or maintenance.



Need to protect enterprise applications and data, stringent government regulations, increasing sophistication level of cyber-attacks and increasing deployment of third-party applications are expected to drive global application security market in near future. In terms of revenue, global application security market in 2016 stood at USD 2,710.7 million and is expected to reach USD 9,442.3 million by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 23.7% from 2017 to 2022.



Browse the full report at http://apexmarketreports.com/Marketing-Research/Global-Application-Security-Market-Size,-Status-and-Forecast-2022



On the basis of type application security can be classified as mobile applications and web application. Web application type occupied larger market share as compared to mobile applications. While, mobile applications type is also expected to grow at a faster growth rate during the forecast period.



Region wise global Application security market is segmented into the U.S., Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India and RoW. The U.S. held the largest market share followed by Europe. China is expected to grow at a fastest growth rate followed by Japan. In the past two years, China has a downturn in the economy, due to a series of factors like excess production capacity, decline of export and domestic demand. But the application security develops rapidly and increases continuously. As we know, the mobile internet is developing fast in China, due to the large population and the rapid growth of Internet economy. In the future, China will keep the high-speed growth. Japan is also an important market, with mature market, large population, completed infrastructural facilities and high-leveled skilled labor. Similarly, India is a country that has large population and high developed economy, especially in software industry. In the following years, India will be the country that has fastest growing economies in the world. Southeast Asia is also a large market, with 11 countries and a population of over 500 million. In the future, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines and Singapore will accelerate the application security growth.



Some of the global major players operating in the application security market include Trustwave VERACODE Synopsys WhiteHat Security Optiv, Accenture Denim Group Applicure Entersoft, Security Innovation, Aspect Security, Black Duck Software, IBM, Redspin, Fortinet and ARXANamong others.



The Global Application security market is segmented as follows:



Global Application Security Market: Application analysis



 Mobile Applications

 Web Application



Global Application Security Market: Region analysis



 U.S.

 Europe

 Japan

 China

 India

 Southeast Asia

 RoW



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Global Ebola Virus Vaccine Market 2017: Latest Innovations, Drivers, Dynamics And Strategic Analysis, Challenges By 2022

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Ebola Virus Vaccine Market is set to Grow according to the Expcted CAGRThe research report is worms eye view of Ebola Virus Vaccine market for 2017-2022 . The report provides data for business growth, revenue, market share, strategy planning chronicled cost and the key players in the market. It gives specification for business mappingThe report is split segment wise considering the following key regions1.North America2.Europe3.China4.Japan5.Southeast Asia6.IndiaAnd more.The report covers major commercial contenders and there market valuation including the prices, revenue, growth rate and market share with below mentioned top players1.Bavarian Nordic2.Crucell3.Fab Entech4.Inovio Pharmaceuticals5.Microbiotix6.Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma7.Profectus BiosciencesAnd moreAccess a sample report on:Browse Full Report from:The report discusses the following contentTOCChapter 1 Industry Overview of Ebola Virus Vaccine:1.1 Definition and Specifications of Ebola Virus Vaccine1.1.1 Definition of Ebola Virus VaccineChapter 2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Ebola Virus Vaccine:2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Ebola Virus VaccineChapter 3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Ebola Virus Vaccine:3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Ebola Virus Vaccine Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Ebola Virus Vaccine Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Ebola Virus Vaccine Major Manufacturers in 2016Chapter 4 Global Ebola Virus Vaccine Overall Market Overview:4.1 Global Heparin API Consumption by Region (2012-2017)2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global Ebola Virus Vaccine Capacity and Growth Rate AnalysisChapter 5 Ebola Virus Vaccine Regional Market Analysis:5.1 North America Ebola Virus Vaccine Market Analysis5.1.1North America 2012-2017E Ebola Virus Vaccine Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption AnalysisAnd more...To summarize the Ebola Virus Vaccine market research report covers the current as well as future prospects of Ebola Virus Vaccine market. It is primary as well as secondary research performed to predict the diversity, growth, revenue and market share for 2017 to 2022.About UsReports Monitor (ReportsMonitor.com) is a platform for companies looking to meet their market research and business intelligence requirements. Our aim is to change the dynamics of the Market Research industry by providing quality intelligence backed by data. Your requirement for market forecasting is fulfilled by our exclusive quantitative and analytics driven intelligence. We have a vast collection of reports, covering maximum industries worldwide. Our process is meticulously planned and executed in order to use maximum resources and explore the market for getting genuine insights. The prime focus is to get reliable data, Decision makers can now rely on our distinct data gathering methods to get factual market forecasting and detailed analysis.Contact UsJay MatthewsDirect: +1 513 549-5911Email: sales@reportsmonitor.comWebsite:
Global Digital Signature Market to reach value of US$4,983.6 mn over 2017-2025

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The report on the global digital signature market provides analysis of this market for the period 20152025, wherein the years from 2017 to 2025 is the forecast period and 2016 is considered as the base year. Data for 2015 has been included as historical information. The report covers all the major trends and technologies playing a major role in the digital signature market growth over the forecast period. It highlights the drivers, restraints, and opportunities expected to influence the market growth during this period.The study provides a holistic perspective on the markets growth in terms of revenue (in US$ Mn) across different geographical regions, namely North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa and South America. Report highlights the key trends affecting the market in each region mentioned above. Furthermore, region wise prominent countries/regions covered in the report includes the following - the U.S, Canada, Germany, France, the U.K., China, Japan, Australia, GCC, South Africa and Brazil.Click to get sample PDF with TOC:The market overview section of the report showcases the market dynamics and trends which includes drivers, restraints, opportunities and trends that influence the current nature and future status of this market. It also provides an overview about the key market indicators given across the five geographical regions. Under the porters five forces analysis section, a brief analysis of the level of competition within the digital signature industry and business strategy development is provided in order to determine the competitive attractiveness and intensity of the digital signature market. The report also includes key industry developments covering significant advances made by leading market players.Based on different deployment options, the report segments the digital signature market into on-Premise and cloud. In cloud-based deployment model, documents can be signed digitally with the help of cloud hosted signing solutions. Here the user is not required to have a locally installed digital signing software. Whereas in on-premise deployment model, digital signature solutions are locally based and is not required to be connected to the cloud.On the basis of industry vertical, the market has been segmented into BFSI, real estate, education, government, healthcare, retail, transportation, legal and other (nonprofit etc.). The segmentation provided has been analyzed thoroughly in the report. In terms of geography, the global digital signature market is classified into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and South America.Global Digital Signature Market: Competitive LandscapeThe report provides the competitive landscape for the digital signature market, thereby listing out all the major players according to their geographic presence, market attractiveness and recent key developments. The competitive landscape section of the report gives an overview about the market share of several key players in the market for the year 2016. The digital signature market data estimates are the result of our in-depth secondary research, primary interviews and in-house expert panel reviews.These market estimates have been analyzed by taking into account the impact of different political, social, economic, technological, and legal factors along with the current market dynamics affecting the market growth. The competition matrix benchmarks leading players on the basis of their capabilities and potential to grow. Factors including market position, offerings and R&D focus are attributed to companys capabilities. This section also identifies and includes various recent developments carried out by the leading players. Moreover, key takeaways section provided at the end of competitive landscape section would help the operating companies to make the best move in this market.Enquiry:Adobe Systems Incorporated, Gemalto NV, Secured Signing Limited, SIGNiX, Ascertia, Entrust Datacard Corp., eSignLive, RPost, DocuSign Inc., IdenTrust, Inc. and Thales e-Security, Inc. are few of the key players which have been profiled in this study. Details such as financials, business strategies, SWOT analysis, and other such strategic information pertaining to these players has been duly provided as part of company profiling.ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:
aspaNETCONOMY: SAP(R) Partners NETCONOMY and ASPA Consulting join forces

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Madrid, October 11, 2017The SAP Hybris-specialists enter a strategic partnership and establish a joint venture, aspaNETCONOMY, located in Madrid, Spain.Coup within the central European SAP Hybris-Eco System: The renowned IT-specialist NETCONOMY further expands dynamically and founds a joint venture with its Spanish partner ASPA Consulting. Core business of the newly formed company aspaNETCONOMY will be the development of international markets with cutting-edge and industry specific SAP Hybris Omnichannel solutions.We have taken the opportunity to enter into a strategic alliance with a strong partner in the Iberic area, states Martin Barzauner, CEO NETCONOMY. Along with more than fifteen years of experience in SAP Hybris, the Software and Consulting specialist will offer its profound Sales- and Marketing Know How in the joint venture.This is an ideal opportunity to position ourselves as a leading SAP Hybris Partner in Europe, adds Jose Manuel Gonzalez Cid, CEO ASPA Consulting; highlighting the all-European growth prospect and dynamic ramp-up of aspaNETCONOMY.Based upon the impressive track records of its founders, aspaNETCONOMY is about to become the largest SAP Hybris Partner in the region. It is planned to expand quickly and grow to around 100 employees within the next 18 to 24 months.Solidly set up like this, aspaNETCONOMY will support its clients with their digital transformation and seizing sustainable competitive advantages - thanks to smart digital business models based upon powerful Hybris-software platforms.About NETCONOMYNETCONOMY supports internationally renowned customers in the successful implementation of digital business models and seamless integration of SAP Hybris-based Omnichannel solutions. More than 300 Hybris experts accompany companies in their digital transformation - from requirements analysis to the formulation of viable Omnichannel concepts up to their implementation and operation.NETCONOMYS satisfied customers include companies like Migros, the XXXLutz Group, Wacker, AVL, Swarovski, Bosch, Beiersdorf, BASF and Red Bull. NETCONOMY was named "Global Most Innovative Partner of the Year 2016" by SAP Hybris and offers "Recognized Expertise" (for HANA and Commerce in AT). Furthermore, NETCONOMY is a certified "SAP Partner Center of Expertise" and is "SAP Partner of the Year in Specialized Solutions". In addition, the company was honored as "SAP Hybris EMEA Partner of the Year 2017" and named a finalist of the prestigious SAP Pinnacle Awards.Read more atAbout ASPA ConsultingASPA Consulting was founded in 1996 to provide technology services to the leading companies of the retail, manufacturing and services sectors. Having been focused in services around ERP systems, eCommerce technologies and optimization of logistics processes, today ASPA is one of the leaders in Spain when it comes to services using SAP ERP and SAP Hybris technologies.With more than 200 projects carried out in several countries, in ASPA we work with our clients in implementing SAP ERP and SAP Hybris Omnichannel solutions that help companies to make the digital transformation that consumers demand today. We aim to achieve a unique and consistent customer experience across all channels and touch points, leading to customer engagement.We provide a wide spectrum of services covering all the phases of the journey, including: Omnichannel strategy, design of the digital user experience, implementation of SAP Hybris solutions (being the first company named SAP Hybris Gold Partner in Spain), content and campaign management, marketing analytics and customer engagement analytics.Read more atNETCONOMYSoftware & Consulting GmbHHilmgasse 4, 8010 GrazAustriaPress Contact:Doris SalchingerMarketing Manager+43 664 60 801 822d.salchinger@netconomy.net
The rising importance of pre wedding ceremonies in Indian weddings

https://www.chococraft.in/pages/invitation-for-wedding-ceremonies

https://www.chococraft.in/collections/wedding-return-gifts

Indian weddings are a grand ceremony celebrated with great fervour in every part of the country. In almost every culture the wedding ceremony itself is a solemn ceremony that is officiated by a priest. The couple is guided through rituals that are hundreds of years old in the presence of elders and family members. After all your wedding day is perhaps the most important day of your life and definitely deserves its due reverence.Perhaps to balance out the seriousness of the wedding ceremony itself Indian weddings feature a lot of pre wedding ceremonies that are more about fun, music and laughter. Popular ceremonies that are often scheduled before the wedding are - Engagement ceremony, Mehandi and Sangeet. These occasions dont have many formal customs or rituals associated with them. They are an opportunity for the family to come together and party with music and dance featuring prominently in them. Guests are frequently given separate invitations for mehendi or sangeet () as they happen before the wedding.Return gifts at pre-wedding ceremonies are also becoming very popular. A lot of the guests that participate in these ceremonies are not present at the actual wedding ceremony. It is great idea to ensure that they carry their memories of the ceremony home with in the form of a return gift. A lot of brides and grooms are opting for customised return gifts. These wedding return gifts () are a unique way to ensure that your engagement, mehendi or sangeet ceremony becomes a treasured memory for your wedding guests.There are several reasons why these ceremonies are becoming more important. One could be the influence of television and Bollywood. The grand ceremonies features on the silver screen often inspire young couple to plan their own. In fact a lot of weddings that earlier did not feature these ceremonies, like traditional Bengali weddings, have now started including them at the insistence of brides.Another reason no doubt is the growing affluence. With a rise in incomes people want to make sure that their wedding is a memorable event. These pre wedding ceremonies are a great way to make the whole wedding more enjoyable for the guests. Sometimes customised return gifts may be given at an engagement or Sangeet ceremony.There is also a great overlap in the different cultures in the country and pre wedding ceremonies are now becoming almost essential in all weddings, no matter which part of the country they are happening in!For wedding planners, wedding return gift suppliers and even for wedding invitations these ceremonies offer a great opportunity to come up with creative ideas. For the bride and groom it is a chance to highlight their own unique style and ideas. Their funky style is often reflected in unique and creatives invites for these ceremonies.Our bespoke wedding invitation gifts ensures every celebration for the happy couple is personal and unique. Beautifully crafted chocolate gifts for Indian wedding invitations.CHOCOCRAFT F-1099, PALAM EXTN, SECTOR 7, DWARKA, NEW DELHI - 110077
Digital Shadows announces its Digital Risk Management Technology Ecosystem

Alex Seton, Digital Shadows VP Business & Corporate Development

www.digitalshadows.com

Dubai, UAE, October 24, 2017  Digital Shadows, the industry leader in digital risk management, today announced the launch of its Digital Risk Management Technology Ecosystem. Formed from almost a dozen technology companies, with more expected to join in the coming months, they all share a vision for how security analytics and security information and event management (SIEM), product orchestration and automation, risk & compliance, intelligence and network enforcement, must work together to best protect customers from todays digital risks. All initial ecosystem members will bring their individual, industry-proven strengths to enhance Digital Shadows intelligence and digital risk management capabilities which extend across the widest range of data sources within the open, deep and dark web to protect customers around the world.Cyber and physical threats, combined with data, brand, VIP and infrastructure exposure along with third-party risk, are continuing to grow in complexity and volume. Organizations need a rapid and coordinated approach to analysis and response, but their existing solutions typically arent validated to work together to facilitate these efforts. To meet this need, Digital Shadows developed the Digital Risk Management Technology Ecosystem to give customers a tightly integrated portfolio of third-party technology products and services, enabling enhanced threat management and remediation capabilities to protect customers business, brand and reputation, while simultaneously accelerating return on investment for existing security solutions.Todays digital economy indexed on the use of digital technologies requires that organizations gain complete visibility into their digital footprint to understand their external risk exposure and enable threat mitigation actions, said Doug Cahill, Senior Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. Such a holistic approach requires collaboration and integrations that when realized, would enable organizations to take a huge step forward in business efficiency and security effectiveness.Alex Seton, Digital Shadows VP Business & Corporate Development said, Customers seeking to leverage Digital Shadows Searchlight intelligence and digital risk management service with third-party products will now be able to more effectively respond to digital threats. Through a framework created with leading industry partners, Digital Shadows customers now gain even greater insight, a streamlined approach to workflow and remediation, and network-level resolution to verified threats.Initial digital risk management technology ecosystem partners include:1. Security Analystics/SIEM  IBM Security, Splunk, Micro FocusDigital Shadows Searchlight integration with products IBM QRadar, Splunk Enterprise, and Micro Focus ArcSight.2. Orchestration & Automation  Digital Shadows Searchlight integration with Phantom, ServiceNow, and DemistoPhantom supports the Digital Shadows Digital Risk Management Technology Ecosystem as a clear way to connect our industry leading security automation and orchestration platform to threat management and mitigation solutions aimed at protecting customers businesses, brands and reputations, said CP Morey, VP, Marketing & Products, PhantomIntegrating the leading digital risk management solution from Digital Shadows with the automation and security orchestration capabilities of Demisto allows our customers to more quickly detect and remediate threats by automating routine tasks, said Rishi Bhargava, Co-founder, Demisto. Effective security is all about speed to remediate threats and intelligence about the risks faced by enterprises from inside and outside the organization is critical to success. 3. Intelligence - Digital Shadows Searchlight integration with Anomali, ThreatConnect, ThreatQ, and TruStar TechnologyIntelligence and context is critical to effective cybersecurity and by partnering with Digital Shadows, our customers can leverage and operationalize this information to identify and remediate security threats,  said Colby DeRodeff, Chief Strategy Officer at Anomali. Together, we enable enterprises to discover security incidents, provide richer context on threat actors and their campaigns, and drive more efficient response. "We are excited that the ThreatConnect and Digital Shadows longstanding partnership continues to strengthen,  said Dan Cole, ThreatConnect's Director of Product Management. Our integration helps customers better understand adversaries and mitigate threats, and with the new Digital Risk Management Technology Ecosystem, those capabilities will be enhanced."ThreatQuotients goal is to deliver our customers and partners a platform that allows them to make their threat intelligence as effective as possible to secure their business with confidence, said Haig Colter, Director of Alliances, ThreatQuotient. We are proud to provide security teams with the ability to utilize Digital Shadows insight as part of their integrated security operations and management.Combining Digital Shadows with TruSTARs threat intelligence platform helps SOC analysts achieve a real-time understanding of their events and how they fit in the wider threat landscape, said Paul Kurtz, Co-Founder & CEO of TruSTAR Technology. Our sharing group and enterprise customers clamored for this partnership and were pleased to finally be able to offer this invaluable layer of insight.4. Enforcement - Cisco Cloud Security for Digital Shadows Searchlight integaration with Cisco UmbrellaDigital Shadows monitors and manages digital risk across the widest range of data sources within the open, deep, and dark web to protect an organizations business, brand, and reputation. The Digital Shadows SearchLight service combines scalable data analytics with human intelligence analysts to manage and mitigate risks of an organizations cyber threat, data exposure, brand exposure, VIP exposure, infrastructure exposure, physical threat, and third party risk, and create an up-to-the minute view of an organizations digital risk with tailored threat intelligence. The company is jointly headquartered in London and San Francisco. For more information, visit:Conrad Offices, 19th FloorSheikh Zayed Road, Dubai
Aroma Chemicals Market : Segmentation, Regional Outlook, Growth Drivers And Key Players

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https://www.alltakemarketresearch.com/report-detail/Aroma-Chemicals-Market

Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Aroma Chemicals in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal Aroma Chemicals market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingBASFSolvayKaoTakasagoBell Flavors and FragrancesSensient TechnologiesSymriseVigon InternationalGivaudanRobertetT.HasegawaTreattJiaxing Wintrust Flavours Co.,LtdYingYang (China) Aroma Chemical GroupSilverline Chemicals LtdPFW Aroma Chemicals B.V.Request For Free Sample Of The Report @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoNatural Aroma ChemicalsSynthetic Aroma ChemicalsOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate of Aroma Chemicals for each application, includingFoods and BeveragesCosmeticsPersonal and Household Care ProductsObtain Report Details @If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.About UsAlltake Market Research is division of the Alltake LLC. that offers premium quality market intelligence, market research, industry analysis reports & forecast data for different domains across the business industry.Alltake Market Research understands the importance of market analysis for any strategy that is implemented in any organization or association. In order to provide the best solution, Alltake Market Research have associated with major organizations within market research and consultancy firm. This portfolio offers market analysis report at one place for different business verticals. Alltake Market Research ensures to offer you with the most reliable and quality market research available.Contact UsAlltake Market Research16192, Coastal Highway Lewes,DE 19958, United StatesUS - 188 8587 9717UK - 4480 0680 0195Email sales@alltakemarketresearch.com
Metallic Stearates Market Intelligence Study for Comprehensive Insights 2017 - 2027

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Metallic stearates are long chain fatty acid compounds with metals of different valencies. Metallic stearates can be used for a wide range of applications, owing to their versatile properties, such as lubrication, separating properties, water repellence, gelling, stabilising, foam inhibition, and others. Metallic stearates have high melting points and are thermostable in nature. They are mostly derived from animal or plant based fatty acid sources. Aluminium and magnesium stearates are widely being used as stabilizing agents in many suspensions. Metallic stearates are used as lubricating agents in the plastics processing industry. They provide excellent resistant to colour degradation at elevated temperatures. Moreover, Zinc stearates are used as mould release agents in a number of applications.Global Metallic Stearates Market: DynamicsDrivers:The global metallic stearate market is driven by the increasing demand for PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) and other polymers, which use metallic stearates in various types of processing. The use of metallic stearates in the manufacturing of different polymers, such as phenolic resins, polyolefin, polystyrene, and others is expected to drive the global metallic stearates market.Request For Report Sample@Moreover, there has been an increase in the use of metallic stearates in the manufacture of soaps and detergents, due to their hydrophilic properties that prevent particles from absorbing moisture and thus, prevent agglomeration.Restraints:A major factor that acts as a challenge for the growth of the global metallic stearate market is the problem of filterability of chemicals by the use of these stearates. Another problem faced by the addition of metal stearates is that of corrosion.Trends:Manufacturers are focusing on the development of tailored solutions. Special customised metallic stearates are being manufactured as per requirement. Based on specific needs, such as water repellence, stabilising properties, acid scavenging, and others, different types of metallic stearates are being manufactured.Global Metallic Stearates Market: SegmentationThe global metallic stearates market can be segmented in a number of ways. Some of the prominent classifications being on the basis of product type, end use industry, and form.On the basis of product type, the global metallic stearates market can be segmented as:Zinc stearateMagnesium stearateCalcium stearateAluminium stearateOthers (Nickel, Copper, Lithium, etc.)On the basis of end use industry, the global metallic stearate market can be segmented as:Building and constructionPharmaceuticalCosmetics and personal careLubricantsPaints and coatingsPolymer and rubber industryPaper and pulp IndustryMining and metallurgyFood and beverage IndustryOn the basis of form, the global metallic stearate market can be segmented as:Fine powerFlakesPellet/granularAqueous stearate dispersionsGlobal Metallic Stearates Market: Regional OutlookAsia Pacific is anticipated to hold a major share in the global metallic stearate market and the region is projected to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period. There has been an increase in the demand for metallic stearates in Asia Pacific, owning to an increase in the number of major end use industries, such as polymers and rubber, and building and construction, among others. China is a major market for metallic stearates, followed by India. Europe and North America are also anticipated to hold a significant share in the global metallic stearates market. This can be attributed to a large base of manufacturing industries in the region that require metallic stearates for various applications. The Middle East and Africa region is anticipated to show relatively sluggish growth over the forecast period and the region is expected to remain a relatively small market for metallic stearates. Japan is projected to expand at a moderate CAGR over the forecast period.Visit For TOC@Global Metallic Stearates Market: Market ParticipantsExamples of some of the market participants identified across the value chain of the global metallic stearates market include Baerlocher GmbH, Dover Chemical Corporation, Brenntag Specialities Inc., PMC Group Inc., Valtris Specialty Chemicals, James M. Brown Ltd., Faci S.p.A, Hallstar, Peter Greven GmbH & Co. KG.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market InsightsAbhishek Bhudoliya616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Content Analytics Market : Rising Digitalization of Government Sector Drives Demand from Content Analytics Market

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/content-analytics-market.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/report-toc/13382

www.transparencymarketresearch.com

The global content analytics market has been driven in the recent past by the steady development of big data analytics, which has enhanced the utility of content analytics to enterprises. The intensifying competition in application sectors such as retail, telecom, BFSI, and manufacturing has thus made content analytics valuable, driving the demand from the global content analytics market at a steady pace. The growing use of digital resources in various end use industries and the increasing acceptance and popularity of digital tools among the population is likely to enable steady growth of the content analytics market in the coming years.The global content analytics market was valued at US$2.5 bn in 2017 and is expected to grow to US$8.1 bn by 2022 at a strong 26.1% CAGR therein.Obtain Report Details @Here are the key insights into the global content analytics market:The rising use of big data analytics for customer interaction and product advancement is likely to remain a major driver for the global content analytics market in the coming years. The growing use of digital information input channels is leading to rising use of big data analytics in the corporate sector, making content analytics ever more important. Big data analytics are thus likely to remain important to the global content analytics market, especially due to the rising volume of unstructured data received by enterprises.Text analytics is likely to remain the dominant application of content analytics systems in the coming years due to the rising popularity of text input in various media, including but not limited to social media. Accordingly, social media analytics is also likely to remain important for the global content analytics market in the coming years due to its growing popularity. Text content forms the bulk of the material processed in the content analytics due to its widespread use. Text analytics accounted for 24.3% of the global content analytics market in 2017 and is likely to retain a similar share through the 2017-2022 forecast period. The segment is expected to rise to a value of US$1,783.9 mn by 2022.North America is expected to dominate the global content analytics market in the coming years, with the regional market expected to exhibit a robust 26.5% CAGR in the 2017-2022 forecast period and rise to a valuation of US$2,547.5 mn by 2022. The North America content analytics market was valued at US$787.1 mn in 2017. The widespread presence of leading content analytics end users as well as developers is likely to enable steady dominance of North America in the global content analytics market in the coming years, as the telecom and retail sectors are likely to exhibit rapid growth in the region in the coming years. Content analytics are likely to be vital to players in these sectors due to the advantage it can provide against growing competition, making steady growth of the content analytics market likely in the coming years.Request to download and view full ToC @Europe accounts for more than a quarter of the global content analytics market at present, but is likely to witness a drop in its market share over the coming years. The Europe market is likely to drop 197 BPS over 2017 by 2022, but is likely to remain important to the global market due to widespread adoption of digital resources in the highly developed region.Competitive DynamicsLeading companies in the global content analytics market include Google Inc., IBM, Microsoft Corporation, Oracle, SAS, OpenText Corporation, Nice Systems, Adobe Systems, HPE, and SAP. The global content analytics market is likely to remain intensely competitive over the coming years due to the widespread demand for content analytics, which will lead to proactive action from all established market players.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendationsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Forecast on Magnetic Bearing Market for the Period 2017 - 2027

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https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3752

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A bearing is an element of a machine generally used to support other moving parts of the machine. While carrying any load, it helps in the relative movement between the connecting surfaces of the machine. Majority of the bearings are used to support the rotating shaft of the machine by holding it either radially or axially. Similarly, a magnetic bearing supports the load using magnetic levitation, without physical contact. A shaft is radially surrounded by magnets, which allow the shaft to spin in the air by levitation  this is the basic working principle of a magnetic bearing. Additionally, magnetic levitation is a method where magnetic force acts as a counter force to the effect of gravitational and other forces.Magnetic bearings are mainly of three types, namely active magnetic bearings, passive magnetic bearings, and hybrid magnetic bearings. An active magnetic bearing offers friction free, clean, efficient and reliable operation, and eliminates many other components of the machine. These magnetic bearings employ only electromagnets and are used in high speed rotating machines. On the other hand, hybrid magnetic bearings use a combination of electromagnets and permanent magnets for performing the operations.Request For Report Sample@A passive magnetic bearing offers contact-free magnetic levitation with the help of repulsive and attractive forces of permanent magnets. Also, according to configuration, a PMB supports tilt, axial and radial direction of stabilization. As these magnetic bearings do not require actuators or power electronic components, they are available in a comparatively small size and at a low price. Also, passive magnetic bearings cannot be used in the axial direction, and hence they are less commonly used.Magnetic bearings offer low friction, require less or no lubricant, and can work in vacuum and without mechanical wear. They are used in high temperature and high-speed applications, where normal bearings fail. However, it is important that there must be no friction, for efficiency in operation and safety reasons.Magnetic Bearing Market: DynamicsMagnetic bearings offer reduced transportation cost and better supply management. These advantages propel the demand for this market, and hence act as key drivers for the industry. Additionally, the rising demand for innovative products, such as cost-effective and advanced technologies, energy-efficient flexible solutions and high quality can also be considered as the drivers for the industry. Increasing use of magnetic bearings in HVAC, defense, and aerospace applications is providing several avenues for growth of the magnetic bearing industry.Increasing demand in niche markets of healthcare, such as cardiology and ventricular assistant can prove to be opportunities for the industry. The manufacture of generators, motors, and turbines with improved speed, efficiency and services are identified as notable trends in the magnetic bearing market.Magnetic Bearing Market: SegmentationSegmentation of the magnetic bearing market on the basis of type:Active magnetic bearing (AMB)Passive magnetic bearing (PMB)Hybrid magnetic bearing (HMB)Segmentation of the magnetic bearing market on the basis of application:CompressorsTurbinesPumpsMotorsGeneratorsSegmentation of the magnetic bearing market on the basis of end-use industry:Electrical industryHealthcare industryRailway industryMagnetic Bearing Market: Regional OutlookAsia Pacific dominates the market for magnetic bearings with a comparatively high market share, followed by North America. However, China and North America, together hold over half the market share. Also, the Middle East and Africa hold significant market shares after Asia Pacific, followed by Western Europe. The increasing demand for industrialization and construction, and the rising application of magnetic bearings in the cardiology sector of healthcare are expected to act as drivers for the market.Few countries in Europe are adopting off-grid power systems, which increases the demand for magnetic bearings. Therefore, a substantial increment can be expected in the market share of magnetic bearing. The sales of the magnetic bearings is expected to grow significantly in some regions, such as the Middle East & Africa and Asia Pacific over the forecast period.Visit For TOC@Magnetic Bearing Market: Market ParticipantsExamples of some of the market participants in the magnetic bearing market, identified across the value chain are: Siemens AG, Dresser-Rand, Waukesha Bearings Corporation, Calnetix Technologies LLC, Advanced Motion Controls, Comsol Inc., Mecos AG, Simply Bearings Ltd., NSK Europe, KML Motion Industries Co. Ltd.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market InsightsAbhishek Bhudoliya616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Linear Actuators Market Research Study for the Period 2017 - 2027

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3778

https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3778

www.futuremarketinsights.com

Linear actuators assist in converting energy into straight line motions, generally for positioning applications. Most of the linear actuators are either mechanical or electro-mechanical devices that provide controlled movement and positioning. These actuators are primarily used in industrial machinery, computer peripherals, valves, and many other places where linear motion is required. A typical linear actuator generally produces push and pull action. As most processes across a variegated range of industries gets automated, the global linear actuators market is expected to expand with an impressive CAGR throughout the forecast period.Linear ActuatorsMarket: Drivers & RestraintsThe major factors boosting the growth of linear actuators market is rising automation across manufacturing industry. Industrial objectives such as achieving complete factory automation, and integrating Industrial Internet of Things are some of the prime reasons that will drive more demand for linear actuators. While, rising industrialization particularly in the third world countries is another factor that will drive the demand in the global linear actuators market, on the backdrop of increasing number of factories. As the number of research studies conducted increases, demand for telescopic actuators is expected to increase significantly. Also as companies overcome their legacy systems to achieve higher efficiency, and replace existing actuators with new ones, demand for linear actuators is expected to rise. Furthermore, as an increasing number of industrial process adopt self-control and positioning demand in the linear actuators market is expected to continuously rise.Request For Report Sample@However, as concerns regarding employment rises among most countries on the backdrop of increasing automation in factories, demand for linear actuators might get sluggish over the end years of the forecast period. Adoption of 3D printing in many industries is another factor that will restrain the demand for linear actuators, as usage of machines will decrease.Linear ActuatorsMarket: Market SegmentationThe Linear Actuators Market is segmented into two parts based on operation type and end use industry:Based on operation mechanism, the linear actuator market is segmented into:MechanicalHydraulicPneumaticPiezoelectricElectro-mechanical actuatorsBased on End Use Industry, the linear actuator market is segmented into:AutomotiveMedical/HealthcareEnergy and Mining,SteelConstructionMilitaryChemicalOthersLinear Actuators Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, linear actuators market has been categorized into seven key regions including North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, APEJ, Japan, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa.A prominent share of the demand for linear actuators comes from North America, and the region is expected to maintain its dominance throughout the forecast period. Furthermore, with more inclination towards shifting manufacturing in US from China and other ASEAN countries, demand for linear actuators will further rise in the region. Asia Pacific Exc. Japan is another prominent shareholder in terms of demand for linear actuators, amid, large manufacturing sector of China. Moreover, with India and Indonesia picking up at a fast pace, demand for linear actuators is expected to expand with a bullish growth rate over the forecast period. Being home to large automotive and research base companies, Western Europe is another prominent region generating huge demand for linear actuators. Eastern Europe is also expected to generate descent demand for linear actuators, particularly from energy and defense sector. Rising industrialization and the already dominant oil and gas industry of Middle East and Africa is the prime reason driving automation in the Middle Eastern region. Thus driving more demand for linear actuators. Japan is another prominent industrial nation, which drives demand for linear actuators, due to high automation penetration in their industries coupled with growing semiconductor industry of the region.Visit For TOC@Linear Actuators Market: Key PlayersSome of the players identified in Global Linear Actuators market are:-Duff-NortonHelix Linear Technologies, Inc.Altra Industrial MotionTolomatic, Inc.Fabco-Air, Inc.Actuonix Motion DevicesTusk Direct, Inc.Bishop-Wisecarver CorporationBEI Kimco MagneticsBurr Engineering & Development CompanyDel-Tron Precision, Inc.Rollon India Pvt. Ltd.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market InsightsAbhishek Bhudoliya616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Smart Kids Shoes Market Trends,Share,Size,Growth ,Status and Forecast 2017 to 2022

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Research Beam has added a report on Global Smart Kids Shoes Market Research Report Forecast 2017 to 2022.A brief overview of the Global Smart Kids Shoes Market is provided in the report based on product scope and market status & outlook. The market is segmented on the basis of type, end-users/application, and geography. The report provides information about the production, price, revenue, market share, and growth rate of each type. Geographically, the market has been analyzed across North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, and India. The status and prospect through 2012-2022 for each of these regions are listed in the report.Get Sample@The report entails the qualitative and quantitative analysis of current and future market estimations. It also divulges details about the mode of research methodology used for the study. It includes data from primary as well as secondary resources. The report is a useful resource for industry players, new entrants in the marketplace, and investors as it helps them plan their business to gain fruitful and meaningful outcomes. It makes them aware of the production, capacity, revenue, supply, consumption, export, import, the challenges and risks associated with the industry, and much more. Factors that drive the growth of the market are detailed in the study. Key players are profiled in the report and their developments in recent years are mentioned, which helps in understanding the competitive outlook of theGet 15% discount on this report @The Global Smart Kids Shoes Market report has a mention of the industrial chain, sourcing strategy, and downstream buyers. This incorporates the overall industrial chain analysis, upstream raw materials sourcing, raw materials sources of the product major manufacturers in 2015, and downstream buyers.The report also throws light on the marketing strategy used for the study. It includes marketing channel (direct marketing, indirect marketing, and marketing channel development trend) and market positioning (pricing strategy, brand strategy, and target client).The Global Smart Kids Shoes Market report also covers an analysis of the market effect factors. This includes the technology progress/risk (substitutes/threat and technology progress in the related industry), consumer needs/customer preference change, and economic/political environmental change.The key players which provide solutions in the Global Smart Kids Shoes Market Fibretronic Limited Heapsylon LLC Intelligent Clothing Ltd. Interactive Wear AG Koninklijke Ten Cate Nv Milliken & Company Performance Fibers, Inc. Schoeller Textil AG Textronics, Inc.Information about the production, capacity, price, revenue (value), and market share of each of these manufacturers from 2012 to 2017 are clearly described in the report. In addition, the report details the basic information, manufacturing base, area of sales, and competitors of each of the players. The trends and marketing strategies such as mergers and acquisitions, adopted by each of the manufacturers provide an understanding of the level of competitiveness prevailing in the industry.Check Full Report With TOC@About Us:Research Beams uniqueness lies in its highly ethical reports at economical rates because we value your relationship and growth more than money. Your growth is our aim. With the arsenal of different search reports, we help you here to look and buy research reports that will be helpful to you and your organization. Our research reports have the capability and authenticity to support your organization for growth and consistency.Contact Us:Global Head Quarters5933 NE Win Sivers Drive,#205, Portland, OR 97220United Statesphone+1 (800) 910-6452mail help@researchbeam.com
Aragonite Market Report  Actionable Insights and Recommendation 2017 - 2027

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Aragonite is a carbonate mineral and is polymorph form of calcium carbonate. Aragonite occurs in two different places. One during the metamorphism of deep-sea basaltic rock in greenstone likewise is formed at a relatively low temperature of the high pressure in a pocket of Moroccan lava bed. The other major occurrence of aragonite is in the sea life where it is formed in carbonate shell. Aragonite in sea life is formed due to the chemical condition such as the concentration of magnesium, which favors formation of carbonate shell. Aragonite is metastable at the surface condition and is reverted to calcite on heating it to 400 degree Celsius. Single aragonite crystal is shaped more like prisms or tablet and multiple twins makes aragonite in pseudo-hexagons shape. It is most common naturally occurring crystal forms of calcium carbonate similar to other minerals such as vaterite and calcite. Aragonite is colorless in its pure form, impurities in aragonite lead it to form in different variety colors. Aragonite commercial use is similar to limestone and high calcium carbonate material. It is popularly used in reef aquariums to replicate the sea like conditions for aquatic animals. Aragonite is also used as a gemstone in jewelry. It is used, along with soda ash and sand, in making glass. Properties such as rich in calcium carbonate, low in magnesium and alkaline in nature are found in aragonite, and it can be used in agriculture to help to condition the soil which results reducing the acidity in the soil.Global Aragonite Market: DynamicsAragonite in its raw state helps to add biological benefits to soil and limit the amount of the use of fertilizers as aragonite stimulates the microbial life in the soil that giving nutrients available for plant utilization. The factor is the key driver of the growth of global aragonite market. Aragonite sand replicates to natural properties likewise sea for aquatic animals in reef aquariums and thus shows potential factor for the growth of aragonite market. Moreover aragonite sand for aquatic animal keeps the pH of the water to the natural level which helps in to prevent the dissolution of biogenic calcium carbonate. Another potential factor to the growth of aragonite market is aragonite treatment removes pollutants like cobalt, zinc, and lead from contaminated waste water. Calcium salt powder as a derivate of aragonite is used therapeutically as a phosphate buffer in hemodialysis patients which helps the patients to filter, remove waste, such as urea, from the blood and eliminate extra fluid from the body is an additional factor driving the growth of global aragonite market. Application of aragonite to soil gives enhancement by giving 30-35% of calcium and less than 2% of magnesium with an array of trace minerals like iron, copper, and zinc. Restraint to aragonite market is the availability of aragonite is high as compared to limestones and other nitrates.Request For Report Sample@Global Aragonite Market: SegmentationBased on color: Aragonite market is segmented intoWhiteRedYellowOrangeGreenBrownGreyBlueBased on crystallography: Aragonite market is segmented intoPseudo-hexagonalAcicularReniformColumnarInternally bandedPrismatic crystalsCoralloidalStalactiticGlobularPisoliticBased on form: Aragonite market is segmented intoSandStoneGlobal Aragonite Market: Region Wise OutlookThe global aragonite market is divided into seven regions, namely North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan and the Middle East and Africa (MEA). North America dominates the global aragonite market. The region has aragonite sand at beaches in Florida which are a driving factor for the region. Moreover, the growing reef aquarium at domestic places and high-end restaurants brings in demand for aragonite is a potential factor in the forecast period of global aragonite market. Followed by North America is Europe which is growing due to its application in soil, giving increased fertility to soil condition and reducing the application of fertilizer. North America and Europe is estimated to witness healthy CAGR in the forecast period of aragonite market.Visit For TOC@Global Aragonite Market: Prominent PlayersFew of the key players of global aragonite market areU.S. Aragonite EnterprisesREAL REEF SOLUTIONS.Red Sea.The Fertrell CompanyThe global woodworking machines market is highly fragmented due to the presence of large number of regional and global players. Regional players choose quality service and competitive pricing as their winning strategy over global players. In response to this, global players are largely involved in merger & acquisition and partnership activities in order to enhance their profitability margin and market share.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market InsightsAbhishek Bhudoliya616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market to Exceed more than US$ 1 Billion By 2022

Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market

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The Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market is segmented on the lines of its product, end user, application and regional. Based on product segmentation it covers dyes, gels, buffers, others reagents. Based on end user segmentation it covers academic & research institutions, pharmaceutical & biotechnology companies, hospitals & diagnostic centers, other end users. Based on application segmentation it covers protein analysis, DNA & RNA analysis. Based on technique segmentation it covers gel electrophoresis, capillary electrophoresis. The Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market on geographic segmentation covers various regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Each geographic market is further segmented to provide market revenue for select countries such as the U.S., Canada, U.K. Germany, China, Japan, India, Brazil, and GCC countries.The Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market is expected to exceed more than US$1.15 Billion by 2022 at a CAGR of 5.4% in the given forecast period.You Can Browse Full Report @:This report provides:1) An overview of the global market for Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market and related technologies.2) Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2013, estimates for 2014 and 2015, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2022.3) Identifications of new market opportunities and targeted promotional plans for Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market.4) Discussion of research and development, and the demand for new products and new applications.5) Comprehensive company profiles of major players in the industry.The major driving factors of Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market are as follows: Increasing occurrence of cancer, infectious diseases, and genetic disorders Expanding funding for genomic and proteomic research Highly increasing geriatric population New innovations technological advancements in electrophoresis reagents Expansion number of industry academic research collaborationsThe restraining factors of Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market are as follows: Time-reduced operations and limited sample analysis through gel electrophoresis Safety affairs Associated With Mutagenic Nucleic Acid Dyes Presence of alternative technologies offering better efficiency and resultsRequest Sample Report:The scope of the report includes a detailed study of global and regional markets on Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market with the reasons given for variations in the growth of the industry in certain regions.Table of Contents1 Introduction2 Research Methodology3 Executive Summary4 Premium Insights5 Market Overview5.1 Introduction5.2 Market Segmentation5.3 Market Dynamics5.3.1 Market Drivers5.3.1.1 Rising Incidences of Cancer, Infectious Diseases, and Genetic Disorders5.3.1.2 Increasing Funding for Genomic and Proteomic Research5.3.1.3 Growing Number of IndustryAcademic Research Collaborations5.3.1.4 Rapidly Increasing Geriatric Population5.3.1.5 Technological Advancements5.3.2 Key Market Restraints5.3.2.1 Time-Consuming Operations and Limited Sample Analysis Through Gel Electrophoresis5.3.2.2 Presence of Alternative Technologies Offering Better Efficiency and Results5.3.3 Key Market Opportunities5.3.3.1 Rapid Growth in Emerging Countries5.3.3.2 Increasing Demand for Personalized Medicine5.3.3.3 Shift From Plant-Derived to Genome-Based Drug Discovery5.3.4 Key Market Challenges5.3.4.1 Safety Concerns Associated With Mutagenic Nucleic Acid Dyes6 Industry Insights7 Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market, By Product8 Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market, By Technique9 Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market, By Application10 Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market, By End User11 Global Electrophoresis Reagents Market, By Region12 Competitive Landscape13 Company Profiles13.1 Introduction13.2 Thermo Fisher Scientific13.3 Sigma-Aldrich Corporation13.4 Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc.13.5 Qiagen N.V.13.6 Merck Millipore13.7 GE Healthcare13.8 Agilent Technologies, Inc.13.9 Lonza Group, AG13.10 Takara Bio, Inc.13.11 Harvard Bioscience, Inc.13.12 Sebia GroupAbout UsMarket Research Engine (MRE) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. MREs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each Market Research Engines research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862Country: United StatesWebsite:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States
Astellia and Three UK team up to drive customer experience in all telco cloud network

Rennes, France, October 24th 2017 - Astellia, leading provider of network and subscriber intelligence for mobile operators, announced that it has signed a major contract with Three UK to successfully transform their network to a virtualized and software-based architecture. The agreement aims at providing the visibility and the capability to improve network performance and customer experience.In order to maximize network resource utilization, reduce operation and maintenance (O&M) costs and be better equipped to respond to future industry changes, Three UK developed the network transformation strategy aiming to fully virtualize its traditional networks using NFV/SDN.Astellias vProbes-based virtual monitoring solution is designed to effectively monitor traffic within the virtual infrastructure of Three UKs network, raise alarms for performance degradation and troubleshoot issues. The solution will interface with the NFV orchestrator which controls the integration of new network services and virtual network functions into Threes virtual framework.Based on a big data architecture, Astellias solution will provide comprehensive network, subscriber and service analytics to improve customers quality of experience. The solution will support Customer Experience Management (CEM) use cases that will be used by multiple teams from across the business. They will address topics such as churn prediction, usage-based segmentation and customer experience for voice services (VoLTE, VoWiFi, etc.), video streaming, web browsing and messaging.Our customers are at the heart of everything we do. We were the first UK network to introduce all you can eat data and we let our customers roam abroad at no extra cost in 60 destinations, says Adam OKeeffe, Head of OSS Transformation at Three UK. Astellias technology will help build upon our already excellent customer experience by deploying the capability to monitor the performance of services and customer experience on our new virtualized technology.Customer experience management becomes even more critical with the emergence of on-demand and virtualized services. We are looking forward to accompanying Three UK achieve the efficiency and agility they seek with their shift towards network virtualization, help them strengthen customers perception of their network and maximize the value extracted from network and subscriber intelligence, highlights Sebastien Schultz, Managing Director Europe at Astellia.About ThreeThree is a communications company. We are focused on making mobile better for everyone. We want to give customers a quality mobile experience and address the industry issues that frustrate them. We continue to look at ways of improving the experience we offer our customers. Three carries 39% of the UKs mobile data. Our network covers 98% of the UK population. Three UK is a member of CK Hutchison Holdings, which also has investments in mobile operations in Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Macau, Sri Lanka, Sweden and Vietnam. Three employs over 4,400 people across its offices in Maidenhead, Glasgow and Reading and its 347 retail stores. For more information visit three.co.ukAbout AstelliaAstellia is a leading provider of network and subscriber intelligence enabling mobile operators to drive service quality, maximize operational efficiency, reduce churn and develop revenues. Its vendor-independent real-time monitoring and troubleshooting solution optimizes networks end-to-end, from radio to core. Astellias unique blend of products and services provides automated optimization, actionable geolocated insights and big-data analytics to Network Operations, Service Operation Center, Customer Care and Marketing teams. Astellia has close partnerships with more than 120 telecom operators. Headquartered in France, Astellia is based in Canada, Lebanon, Morocco, South Africa, Spain and the USA. Follow Astellia: astellia.com, LinkedIn and @Astellia_news.ZAC Airlande, 2 Rue Jacqueline Auriol, CS 691232 Rue Jacqueline Auriol
SWISS-BELHOTEL INTERNATIONAL CONTINUES EXPANSION IN SAUDI ARABIA

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Continuing its expansion in Saudi Arabia, Swiss-Belhotel International (SBI) has signed Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan. The announcement was made by Mr Laurent A. Voivenel, Senior Vice President, Operations and Development for the Middle East, Africa and India, Swiss-Belhotel International. Featuring 210 keys, the upscale 4-star property is owned by Cardamom International Property Management LLC and is superbly located in the port city of Jazan with direct access to the beach.Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan enjoys close proximity to Red Sea coast merely 20 minutes drive from Jazan regional airport. Boasting 210 keys including 140 well-appointed rooms and 70 studios plus apartments, the hotel is being designed to cater to a diverse mix of travellers. Included in its extensive facilities will be an array of business and lifestyle features making it the ideal address for both corporate and leisure guests. On site are four dining outlets, a spectacular ballroom and three meeting rooms, a health club with steam and sauna and a swimming pool. Among these a key highlight is the beautiful marina and restaurant on the beach that will be exclusively dedicated for the hotel guests.Mr Nawaf bin Mansour bin Saleh Al Sharif, Owner of Cardamom International Property Management, stated, We are delighted to collaborate once again with Swiss-Belhotel International and are confident together we will make Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan a preferred choice for residents and travellers to Jazan. It is a market that is currently under supplied in terms of hotels and is, therefore, projected to show strong growth in the near future and we are keen to take advantage of this massive opportunity.Mr Gavin M. Faull, Chairman and President of Swiss-Belhotel International, said, As part of our global expansion strategy, we are dedicated to enter new markets and particularly excited about our debut in Jazan with a reputable partner like Cardamom International Property Management. Jazan is witnessing major economic development in KSA and we believe our brand will be ideally placed to cater to the needs of travellers to the city with an exceptional property like Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan.Mr Voivenel, stressed, We are delighted to expand our footprint in Saudi Arabia strengthening further our relationship with Cardamom International Property Management LLC with whom we had recently signed Swiss-Belhotel Al Aziziya Makkah. The new agreement demonstrates the confidence of the owners in the strength of Swiss-Belhotel International brand. Jazan City is a significant market with a growing demand for hotels. The development of Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan will enable us to cater to travellers looking for quality accommodation with world-class facilities at a great value.Saudi Arabia currently has the most hotel rooms under construction in the Middle East and North Africa, with 36,742 keys in 85 projects. In addition to massive development of hotels, the Saudi government is investing in major infrastructure projects to grow tourism. Jazan has got some of the largest and most significant infrastructure projects in the country worth billions of dollars including Saudi Aramcos 400,000 bpd refinery with associated terminal facilities on the Red Sea.For further information visitFor media contact:Hina BakhtVice PresidentMPJ (Marketing Pro-Junction)Mob: +971 50 697 5146Email: h.bakht@mpj-pr.comAbout Swiss-Belhotel InternationalSwiss-Belhotel International currently manages a portfolio of more than 145* hotels, resorts and projects located in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Australia, New Zealand, Bulgaria, Georgia, Tanzania and Turkey. Awarded Indonesia's Leading Global Hotel Chain for six consecutive years, Swiss-Belhotel International is one of the world's fastest-growing international hotel and hospitality management groups. The Group provides comprehensive and highly professional development and management services in all aspects of hotel, resort and serviced residences. Offices are located in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Australia, China, Europe, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam.*Numbers may fluctuate1110, Yes Business CenterAl Barsha, Dubai, UAE1110, Yes Business CenterAl Barsha, Dubai, UAE
U.S. Small Arms Ammunition Market Trends and Opportunities Report 2017

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IndexBox has just published a new report "U.S. Small Arms Ammunition Market. Analysis And Forecast to 2025" ().This report is best suitable for you if you: Are planning to enter a new geographical market and wish to know which one is best for your product Are planning to enter a new product market and want to have a detailed overview of the market before entering Already work in a given market and want to update your knowledge on the topic Are developing/reviewing your company strategy and wish to know the existing trends in the market Want to find the best country to import a product from Are consulting a client in the given industry and wish to get a deep understanding of the situation in the market Are planning to open new production facilities and wish to choose the best location.The report serves the above mentioned purposes by providing a deep survey of the key indicators of the small arms ammunition market. It includes a market overview, which consolidates the key conclusions made from the analysis of the market survey, giving insights on the most extensive markets based on the comparative analysis. The report also provides a forecast of how the market is expected to change in the coming years, based on historical trends, external and internal factors, and the main drivers changing the market. Each section contains a an in-depth analysis of the data provided. Specifically, the report covers the historical developments and current prospects of small arms ammunition production volumes, consumption data, as well as producer prices.The trade section provides crucial data, such as historical data on imports/exports, changes in the direction of trade, as well as import/export prices. Analysis of small arms ammunition trade shows the opportunities that are opening before producers and suppliers in a changing market.Product coverage: Small arms ammunition.Countries coverage: the U.S.Abstract:In 2015, the value of small arms ammunition production in the U.S. amounted to $3.1B, declining by -1.0% against the previous year level. Overall, the U.S. small arms ammunition output pursued a perceptible growth from 2007 to 2015. The total output figures increased at an average annual rate of +7.2%. The trend pattern, however, indicated some noticable fluctuations throughout the analyzed period. The growth pace was the most rapid in 2012, when the output figure increased by +20% from the previous year level. Over the period under review, the total value of small arms ammunition shipments in the United States attained its maximum level of $3.2B in 2013. Afterwards, the growth in terms of the small arms ammunition production failed to regain its strength through to 2015.Data coverage: Small arms ammunition market value and size; Major trends in the small arms ammunition market; Forecast of the market dynamics in the medium term; Exports, imports and trade balance; Import and export prices; Life cycle of the small arms ammunition industry; Number of establishments and their locations; Small arms ammunition industry productivity. Key market players and their profiles.Methodology:Our methodology consists of obtaining information from various trusted sources (both paid and open), which include, but are not limited to: International official statistical agencies Governmental statistical agencies Official trade statistics Paid trade databases Industrial associations Company reports Industry experts.Companies mentioned:Remington Arms Company,Smith & Wesson Holding Corporation,Hornady Manufacturing Company,Nosler,Sierra Bullets,Fiocchi of America,Starline,Precision/Delta Corporation,Precision Gun Works,Vista Outdoor Inc.,Berger Bullets,Nonlethal Technologies,Berry's Manufacturing of Utah,Kent-Gamebore Corporation,Galion,Barnes Bullets,Federal Cartridge Company,Freedom Arms,Amron,First Defense International,Beta Production ,American Rheinmetall Munition,Fs Technology,O I Inc,Environ-Metal,Gti Systems,Lightfield Ammunition,West Coast Shot ,P & G Imaging Technologies ,Prograde Ammo Group,Wright's Ammunitions,Vista Outdoor Sales ,North American TradeOur research team compare the information gathered, confirm it with sources when required, and analyze the collected data, developing a full clear picture of the market and coming up with the final numbers. It is crucial to understand the trends of the market, for which we do provide study, taking into account events in the market, in adjacent and related markets, raw material markets, and markets, which are the main demand creators for the product under research. As for the forecast, it is conducted using analytical models of data on consumption, production, exports, imports, prices, as well as the industry trends, economic trends, consumption trends, possible political and technological trends.Source:IndexBox is a leading market research publisher in the world. You can find more than 25,000 research reports in our web store, which cover global industries and regional markets. All the worldwide marketing data you need is at your fingertips.Company Name: IndexBoxContact Person: Kirill BezverhiEmail: kirill.bezverhi@indexbox.co.ukPhone: +44 20 3239 3063Adress: United Kingdom, 44 Main Street, Douglas, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, ML11 0QW
Global Color Coated Steel Market Trends, Analysis and Market Research 2017

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Color Coated Steel Market Research Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.The business landscape of the global Color Coated Steel market is undergoing dynamic changes. In order to facilitate a complete understanding of the complex industry scenario for clients and thus enhance their decision making process, the study on the global Color Coated Steel market presents a methodological explanation of this dynamic market scenario. The research study also offers the growth prospects of the global Color Coated Steel market in the coming few years.The research study begins with a brief overview of the industry and enlists details such as the definition, specifications, and classification of the global Color Coated Steel market. This section of the report provides to business professionals the key historical developments of the industry with details such as applications of Color Coated Steel and industry policy analysis. The manufacturing cost structure evaluation in the research study delivers an extensive analysis of the labor costs, equipment suppliers, and raw material suppliers, and manufacturing cost. In-depth segmentation analysis of the global Color Coated Steel market by key criteria with the growth prospects of the key segments paints a clear picture of the growth framework of the market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @A strategic business forecast for the volume and value of the global Color Coated Steel market is covered in the report. The global and regional trends that will impact the growth of the various segments of the market further give insights to readers into the market scenario. Description of key strategies of the major companies operating in the global Color Coated Steel market allows readers to estimate the competitive framework of the market. Further, the study offers details such as each key companys profile, contact information, sales, sales price, sales revenue, and gross margin analysis. Actionable insights from expert analysts on the new project investment feasibility of the global Color Coated Steel market will support clients in forming sound business decisions to boost ROI.This report studies Color Coated Steel in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with capacity, production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringBlueScopeArcelorMittalNIPPON STEEL&SUMITOMO METALThyssenKruppUnited States Steel CorporationCoated Metals GroupYieh Phui EnterpriseBaoSteelDongbu SteelJFE SteelBenbow SteelsRuukkiBrowse Complete Report with TOC @Table of ContentsGlobal Color Coated Steel Market Research Report 20171 Color Coated Steel Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Color Coated Steel1.2 Color Coated Steel Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Color Coated Steel by Type in 20152 Global Color Coated Steel Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Color Coated Steel Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Global Color Coated Steel Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.3 Global Color Coated Steel Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.4 Manufacturers Color Coated Steel Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Color Coated Steel Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Color Coated Steel Market Concentration Rate3 Global Color Coated Steel Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)3.1 Global Color Coated Steel Capacity and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.2 Global Color Coated Steel Production and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.3 Global Color Coated Steel Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3.4 Global Color Coated Steel Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)3.5 North America Color Coated Steel Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)Get discount copy @List of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of Color Coated SteelFigure Global Production Market Share of Color Coated Steel by Type in 2015Figure Product Picture of PE Color Coated SteelTable Major Manufacturers of PE Color Coated SteelFigure Product Picture of HDP Color Coated SteelFigure China Color Coated Steel Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Japan Color Coated Steel Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Southeast Asia Color Coated Steel Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure India Color Coated Steel Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Figure Global Color Coated Steel Revenue (Million UDS) and Growth Rate (2012-2022)Table Global Color Coated Steel Capacity of Key Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)About UsQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Printing Machinery and Equipment Market in the USA - Industry Growth, Size, Forecast, Analysis, Trends, and Share 2017 - 2025

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IndexBox has just published a new report "U.S. Printing Machinery And Equipment Market. Analysis And Forecast to 2025" ().This report is best suitable for you if you: Are planning to enter a new geographical market and wish to know which one is best for your product Are planning to enter a new product market and want to have a detailed overview of the market before entering Already work in a given market and want to update your knowledge on the topic Are developing/reviewing your company strategy and wish to know the existing trends in the market Want to find the best country to import a product from Are consulting a client in the given industry and wish to get a deep understanding of the situation in the market Are planning to open new production facilities and wish to choose the best location.The report serves the above mentioned purposes by providing a deep survey of the key indicators of the printing machinery and equipment market. It includes a market overview, which consolidates the key conclusions made from the analysis of the market survey, giving insights on the most extensive markets based on the comparative analysis. The report also provides a outlook of how the market is expected to change in the coming years, based on historical trends, external and internal factors, and the main drivers changing the market. Each section contains a a comprehensive study of the data provided. Specifically, the report displays the historical developments and relevant prospects of printing machinery and equipment production volumes, consumption data, as well as producer prices.The trade section provides crucial data, such as historical data on imports/exports, changes in the direction of trade, as well as import/export prices. Analysis of printing machinery and equipment trade shows the opportunities that are opening before producers and suppliers in a changing market.Product coverage: Printing presses, all types; Binding machinery and equipment (including paper cutting, collating, and gathering machines); All other miscellaneous printing trades machinery, including typesetting machinery (excluding justifying typewriters); Printing machinery and equipment manufacturing, nsk, total.Countries coverage: the U.S.Abstract:In 2015, the value of printing machinery and equipment production in the U.S. amounted to $1.7B, increasing by +2.6% against the previous year level. Overall, the U.S. printing machinery and equipment output pursued a moderate decline from 2007 to 2015. The total output figures decreased at an average annual rate of -2.0%. The trend pattern, however, indicated some noticable fluctuations throughout the analyzed period. The growth pace was the most rapid in 2015, when the output figure increased by +3% from the previous year level. Over the period under review, the total value of printing machinery and equipment shipments in the United States attained its maximum level of $2.0B in 2008. Afterwards, the growth in terms of the printing machinery and equipment production failed to regain its strength through to 2015.All other miscellaneous printing trades machinery, including typesetting machinery (excluding justifying typewriters) accounted for the highest share (56% in 2015) of U.S. printing machinery and equipment manufacturing, leaving a considerable room for printing presses, all types (29%). The other related products with less notable individual shares together comprised approx. 15% of the total output.Data coverage: Printing machinery and equipment market value and size; Major trends in the printing machinery and equipment market; Forecast of the market dynamics in the medium term; Exports, imports and trade balance; Import and export prices; Life cycle of the printing machinery and equipment industry; Number of establishments and their locations; Printing machinery and equipment industry productivity. Key market players and their profiles.Methodology:Our methodology consists of obtaining information from various trusted sources (both paid and open), which include, but are not limited to: International official statistical agencies Governmental statistical agencies Official trade statistics Paid trade databases Industrial associations Company reports Industry experts.Companies mentioned:Sandhills Publishing Company,Manroland ,Brown Machine ,Andy Mark' ,Anderson & Vreeland,Weber Marking Systems,Pamarco Global Graphics,Futurelogic Incorporated,The Exone Company,vNilpeter Usa,Graphic Innovators,Mark/Trece,Baldwin Technology Company,Epilog Corporation,Bmp America,Goss International Corporation,Prestone Press,Manugraph Americas,Macdermid Printing Solutions ,Domino Amjet,Altair Corporation (del),Shps Fulfillment Services,Chatham Corporation,Pamarco Technologies ,North American Cerutti Corporation,Xerox International Partners,Muller Martini Mailroom Systems,Delphax Technologies ,Presstek,4l Technologies ,FisherGraphic Industries A California Corporation,M & R Printing Equipment,Aleris Ohio Management,MAI HoldingsOur research team compare the information gathered, confirm it with sources when required, and analyze the collected data, developing a full clear picture of the market and coming up with the final numbers. It is crucial to understand the trends of the market, for which we do provide study, taking into account events in the market, in adjacent and related markets, raw material markets, and markets, which are the main demand creators for the product under research. As for the forecast, it is conducted using analytical models of data on consumption, production, exports, imports, prices, as well as the industry trends, economic trends, consumption trends, possible political and technological trends.Source:IndexBox is a leading market research publisher in the world. You can find more than 25,000 research reports in our web store, which cover global industries and regional markets. All the worldwide marketing data you need is at your fingertips.Company Name: IndexBoxContact Person: Kirill BezverhiEmail: kirill.bezverhi@indexbox.co.ukPhone: +44 20 3239 3063Adress: United Kingdom, 44 Main Street, Douglas, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, ML11 0QW
Trends and Forecast of Oil and Gas Hydraulic Equipments Market - Global Industry Analysis, Market Size, Share, Growth, 2015 - 2023

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"Oil and Gas Hydraulic Equipments Market - Global Industry Analysis, Market Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023" The Report covers current Industries Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.Description-Increasing demand for energy has made the oil and gas exploration and production companies to search for new oil and gas reservoirs. These companies are willing to invest in drilling technologies to locate new offshore and onshore oil and gas reserves. As a result of such activities market for hydraulic equipments used in oil and gas application can see significant growth. Hydraulic equipments are used in jackup vessels, jackup platforms, floating production storage and offshore facilities (FPSO), catenary anchor leg mooring systems and pipelaying vessels. Moreover, the advancement in underwater technologies has enabled the companies to perform operations at greater depth that require the use of specialized hydraulic equipments. Owing to the advancement in technologies the companies are now able to perform drilling operations in deep and ultra-deep waters.Get Sample Report With TOC @The segmentation of the oil and gas hydraulic equipments market can be done by application area, type of application provided and geography. Hydraulic equipments used in the oil and gas application can be used to carry out both offshore and onshore oil and gas operations. However, offshore applications require greater investments due to the use of specialized hydraulic equipments. These equipments can be used for turret connect systems, turret mooring systems, buoy locking and buoy pulling systems, hawser reeling and hose reeling systems, jackup vessels, jackup platforms, floating production storage and offshore facilities (FPSO), catenary anchor leg mooring systems and pipe-laying vessels. Hydraulic systems can also be used for stinger shock absorption systems, stinger handling systems, cantilever skidding systems and special handling systems.The regional segmentation of the oil and gas hydraulic equipments market can be done by identifying the countries with major offshore and onshore oil and gas reserves. Major onshore areas include the United States, Canada and Mexico in North America; Russia in Europe, India., Indonesia, Australia and China in Asia Pacific; Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Angola, Libya and Nigeria in Middle East and Africa. The Rest of the World (RoW) segment includes the Latin American countries such as Venezuela and Brazil. Major offshore areas include offshore regions of Mexico and the United States in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM); offshore areas of the United Kingdom and the Norway in the North Sea and offshore deep water areas in West Africa and Brazil. Shale gas boom in the United States has lead to the increase in the demand for the hydraulic equipments in North America.The increase in the oil and exploration and production activities, advancement in underwater exploration activities and shale gas discovery in the United States are the major drivers for the oil and gas hydraulic equipments market. Moreover, increasing investment by the exploration and production companies after the end of economic slowdown is another factor driving oil and gas hydraulic equipments market. The stringent government regulations and the capital intensive nature of the market are the major restraints to the market for hydraulic equipments used in oil and gas application. The expected oil and gas discoveries in West Africa and expected shale gas boom in Argentina can act as the opportunities for the oil and gas hydraulic equipments market.Some of the key players in oil and gas hydraulic equipments market include companies such as HMS Group, Denley Hydraulics Limited, Aberdeen Dynamics, Inc., Allison Hydraulics Ltd and Accelerated Production Systems.This research report analyzes this market on the basis of its market segments, major geographies, and current market trends. Geographies analyzed under this research report includeNorth AmericaAsia PacificEuropeMiddle East and AfricaLatin AmericaThis report provides comprehensive analysis ofMarket growth driversFactors limiting market growthCurrent market trendsMarket structureMarket projections for upcoming yearsThis report is a complete study of current trends in the market, industry growth drivers, and restraints. It provides market projections for the coming years. It includes analysis of recent developments in technology, Porters five force model analysis and detailed profiles of top industry players. The report also includes a review of micro and macro factors essential for the existing market players and new entrants along with detailed value chain analysis.Reasons for Buying this ReportThis report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamicsIt provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growthIt provides a six-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to growIt helps in understanding the key product segments and their futureIt provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitorsIt helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsIt provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segmentsNote: Although care has been taken to maintain the highest levels of accuracy in TMRs reports, recent market/vendor-specific changes may take time to reflect in the analysis.Report Enquiry and Other Query @ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Researchmoz Global Pvt. Ltd.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074
Industrial Sugar Market: Cane to Dominate the Source Segment for the Foreseeable Future

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The global industrial sugar market is shaped by factors such as the average international price of commodities, sugarcane products value addition by way of integrated sugar complexes, industrial beet sugar market growth, and expanding sugarcane production. In addition, the consumption trends of packaged food & beverages and new innovations leading to the use of sugar in products marketed as health products should certainly benefit the industrial sugar market. The industrial sugar market is anticipated to witness a moderate CAGR of 4.7% for the period from 2017 to 2022.Request Sample:The sweetener segment accounts for approx. a third revenue share of the industrial use segment in the year 2017 but is nonetheless predicted to lose share going forward. The sweetener industrial segment is expected to be worth more than US$ 35 billion by end 2022 and APEJ alone contributes two-fifth of this. Sweeteners have become increasingly popular across demographics and key stakeholders are advised to take this into consideration. Bakery products are a close second and represent a revenue share of just under a quarter of the industrial sugar market in terms of industrial use. Companies could target the Europe bakery products market as the continent is well-known for its diverse range of tasty cakes and pastries all of which require a huge amount of sugar sold in the industrial sugar marketThe confectionary segment is the third largest in the industrial sugar market and is likely to lose share during the course of the forecast period. Both the APEJ and MEA region are predicted to record a robust CAGR in excess of 5% from 2017 to 2022 but the former is assessed to be nearly six times the size of the latter by the end of 2022. Beverages are a comparatively small segment in the industrial sugar market and have a revenue share in single digits. However, the beverages segment should grow in the years ahead making it unwise to overlook this segment of the industrial sugar market completely. The maximum potential for the beverages segment thus exists in Europe and the APEJ regionsDownload TOC:Pharmaceuticals are an industrial use segment that may require an increased use of industrial sugar in the days ahead. Even though the pharmaceutical segment has a single digit revenue share in the industrial sugar market, it is poised to witness a robust CAGR during the period studied. The APEJ pharmaceutical segment alone is assessed to push past a value of more than US$ 2.5 billion by the end of the five-year study and companies are recommended to devise their long-term investment strategies accordinglySugar is easily one of the most important commodities worldwide, if not the most important, as it is widely consumed in a variety of different foodstuffs. The global industrial sugar market is largely shaped by expanding sugarcane production, rising prices of sugar, trends observed in the industrial beet sugar market, and the consumption patterns of ready to eat foodstuffs and drinks. In addition to this, innovative product launches that allow the use of industrial sugars in even more use-cases is poised to benefit the global industrial sugar market. The industrial sugars market is predicted to record a moderate CAGR of 4.7% for the five-year study from 2017 to 2022.About Us:Persistence 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 Us:305 Broadway,7th FloorNew York City, NY 10007United States+1-646-568-7751+1 800-961-0353 (USA-Canada Toll free)Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWebsite:
Air Conditioning Market - U.S. Industry Growth, Share, Analysis, Trends, Size, and Forecast 2017 - 2025

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IndexBox has just published a new report "U.S. Air-Conditioning, Air Heating Equipment And Refrigeration Equipment (Commercial And Industrial) Market. Analysis And Forecast to 2025" ().This report is best suitable for you if you: Are planning to enter a new geographical market and wish to know which one is best for your product Are planning to enter a new product market and want to have a detailed overview of the market before entering Already work in a given market and want to update your knowledge on the topic Are developing/reviewing your company strategy and wish to know the existing trends in the market Want to find the best country to import a product from Are consulting a client in the given industry and wish to get a deep understanding of the situation in the market Are planning to open new production facilities and wish to choose the best location.The report serves the above mentioned purposes by providing a deep study of the key indicators of the air-conditioning, air heating equipment and refrigeration equipment market. It includes a market overview, which consolidates the key conclusions made from the analysis of the market survey, giving insights on the most influential markets based on the comparative analysis. The report also provides a outlook of how the market is expected to change in the coming years, based on historical trends, external and internal factors, and the main drivers changing the market. Each section contains a a detailed analysis of the data provided. Specifically, the report reveals the historical developments and current prospects of air-conditioning, air heating equipment and refrigeration equipment production volumes, consumption data, as well as producer prices.The trade section provides crucial data, such as historical data on imports/exports, changes in the direction of trade, as well as import/export prices. Analysis of air-conditioning, air heating equipment and refrigeration equipment trade shows the opportunities that are opening before producers and suppliers in a changing market.Product coverage: Heat transfer equipment (excluding electrically operated dehumidifiers), mechanically refrigerated, self-contained, excluding motor vehicle mechanical air-conditioning systems; Commercial refrigerators and related equipment; Refrigeration condensing units, all refrigerants, excluding ammonia (complete); Room air conditioners and dehumidifiers, excluding portable dehumidifiers; All other miscellaneous refrigeration and air-conditioning equipment; Compressors and compressor units, all refrigerants, excluding automotive; Warm air furnaces, including duct furnaces and humidifiers, and electric comfort heating; Parts and accessories for air-conditioning and heat transfer equipment; Unitary air conditioners, excluding air source heat pumps; Air-source heat pumps, excluding room air conditionersGround and ground water source heat pumps (single and split systems); Air-conditioning and warm air heating equipment and commercial and industrial refrigeration equipment manufacturing, nsk, total.Countries coverage: the U.S.Abstract:In 2015, the value of air-conditioning, air heating equipment and refrigeration equipment production in the U.S. amounted to $31.6B, increasing by +6.0% against the previous year level. Overall, the U.S. air-conditioning, air heating equipment and refrigeration equipment output pursued a measured growth from 2007 to 2015. The total output figures increased at an average annual rate of +1.3%. The trend pattern, however, indicated some noticable fluctuations throughout the analyzed period. The growth pace was the most rapid in 2010, when the output figure increased by +7% from the previous year level. Over the period under review, the total value of air-conditioning, air heating equipment and refrigeration equipment shipments reached its maximum level in 2015, and is likely to continue its growth in the immediate term.Heat transfer equipment (excluding electrically operated dehumidifiers), mechanically refrigerated, self-contained, excluding motor vehicle mechanical air-conditioning systems accounted for the highest share (24% in 2015) of U.S. air-conditioning, air heating equipment and refrigeration equipment manufacturing, leaving a considerable room for unitary air conditioners, excluding air source heat pumps (23%). The other related products with less notable individual shares together comprised approx. 53% of the total output.Data coverage: Air-conditioning, air heating equipment and refrigeration equipment market value and size; Major trends in the air-conditioning, air heating equipment and refrigeration equipment market; Forecast of the market dynamics in the medium term; Exports, imports and trade balance; Import and export prices; Life cycle of the air-conditioning, air heating equipment and refrigeration equipment industry; Number of establishments and their locations; Air-conditioning, air heating equipment and refrigeration equipment industry productivity. Key market players and their profiles.Methodology:Our methodology consists of obtaining information from various trusted sources (both paid and open), which include, but are not limited to: International official statistical agencies Governmental statistical agencies Official trade statistics Paid trade databases Industrial associations Company reports Industry experts.Companies mentioned:United Technologies Corporation,Ingersoll-Rand US Trane Holdings Corporation,SPX Corporation,Emerson Climate Technologies,Goodman Manufacturing Company,Lennox International ,Carrier Corporation,Rheem Manufacturing Company ,Hussmann International,Modine Manufacturing Company ,Tecumseh Products Company,Standex International Corporation,Amsted Industries Incorporated,Nortek Global Hvac ,York International Corporation,Nortek,Evapco,SPX Cooling Technologies,Air System Components,Lennox Industries ,Connell Limited Partnership,Nortek Air Solutions,Air Distribution Technologies,Trane ,Goodman Global Holdings,Pi. US Holding,Thermo King Corporation,Goodman Global,Trane U.S. ,The Trane Company,Chill HoldingsOur research team compare the information gathered, confirm it with sources when required, and analyze the collected data, developing a full clear picture of the market and coming up with the final numbers. It is crucial to understand the trends of the market, for which we do provide study, taking into account events in the market, in adjacent and related markets, raw material markets, and markets, which are the main demand creators for the product under research. As for the forecast, it is conducted using analytical models of data on consumption, production, exports, imports, prices, as well as the industry trends, economic trends, consumption trends, possible political and technological trends.Source:IndexBox is a leading market research publisher in the world. You can find more than 25,000 research reports in our web store, which cover global industries and regional markets. All the worldwide marketing data you need is at your fingertips.Company Name: IndexBoxContact Person: Kirill BezverhiEmail: kirill.bezverhi@indexbox.co.ukPhone: +44 20 3239 3063Adress: United Kingdom, 44 Main Street, Douglas, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, ML11 0QW
Global PPC Software Market Insights by Size, Status and Forecast 2022

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HTF MI recently added a new research study in its database that highlights the in-depth market analysis with future prospects of PPC Software market. The study covers significant data which makes the research document a handy resource for marketing managers, analysts, industry executives, consultants, sales and product managers, and other key people who are in need of ready-to-access and self analyzed study along with graphs and tables to help understand market trends, drivers and market challenges. Some of the key players mentioned in this research are SEMrush, Optmyzr, RocketROI, Marin Software, WordWatch, Shape Integrated Software, Omnia, AdStage, Balihoo, Varazo, IgnitionOne, Ferzy, Kenshoo & Apex Pacific.Get Access to sample pages @The research covers the current market size of the Global PPC Software market and its growth rates based on 5 year history data. It also covers various types of segmentation such as by geography [United States, EU, Japan, China, India & Southeast Asia], by product /end user type [], by applications [PC Terminal & Mobile Terminal] in overall market. The in-depth information by segments of PPC Software market helps monitor performance & make critical decisions for growth and profitability. It provides information on trends and developments, focuses on markets and materials, capacities, technologies, CAPEX cycle and the changing structure of the Global PPC Software Market.The study also contains company profiling, product picture and specifications, sales, market share and contact information of various international, regional, and local vendors of Global PPC Software Market, some of them are SEMrush, Optmyzr, RocketROI, Marin Software, WordWatch, Shape Integrated Software, Omnia, AdStage, Balihoo, Varazo, IgnitionOne, Ferzy, Kenshoo & Apex Pacific. The market competition is constantly growing higher with the rise in technological innovation and M&A activities in the industry. Moreover, many local and regional vendors are offering specific application products for varied end-users. The new vendor entrants in the market are finding it hard to compete with the international vendors based on quality, reliability, and innovations in technology.Global PPC Software (Thousands Units) and Revenue (Million USD) Market Split by Product Type such asThe research study is segmented by Application such as PC Terminal & Mobile Terminal with historical and projected market share and compounded annual growth rate.Global PPC Software (Thousands Units) by Application (2016-2022)Market Segment by Application 2012 2016 2022 Market Share (%)2022 CAGR (%)(2016-2022)PC Terminal xx xx xx xx% xx%Mobile Terminal xx xx xx xx% xx%Total xx xx xx 100% xx%Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), and market share and growth rate of PPC Software in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringMarket Segment by Regions 2012 2016 2022 Share (%) CAGR (2016-2022)United States xx xx xx xx% xx%EU xx xx xx xx% xx%Japan xx xx xx xx% xx%China xx xx xx xx% xx%India xx xx xx xx% xx%Southeast Asia xx xx xx xx% xx%Total xx xx xx xx% xx%Read Detailed Index of full Research Study at @The research insights solutions to the following key questions: What will be the market size and the growth rate in 2022? What are the key factors driving the Global PPC Software market? Who are the key market players and what are their strategies in the Global PPC Software market? What are the key market trends impacting the growth of the Global PPC Software market? What trends, challenges and barriers are influencing its growth? What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the vendors in the Global PPC Software market? What are the key outcomes of the five forces analysis of the PPC Software market?Buy this research report @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the Global PPC Software market.Chapter 1, to describe PPC Software Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of PPC Software , with sales, revenue, and price of PPC Software , in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the Global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of PPC Software , for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in United States, EU, Japan, China, India & Southeast Asia;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application [PC Terminal & Mobile Terminal], from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, PPC Software market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe PPC Software sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.Get customization & check discount for report @Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact US :Craig Francis (PR & Marketing Manager)HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA  08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218
Global And United States-Defense and Security: Leading spending for military supremacy (Strategy, Performance and Risk Analysis)

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"The Report United States-Defense and Security: Leading spending for military supremacy (Strategy, Performance and Risk Analysis) provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About United States-Defense and Security MarketThe US ranks 17th globally in terms of level of conflict and third in terms militarization. The USs involvement in the armed conflict against Islamic State, including several airstrikes on IS-held territory, drastically increased the countrys international conflict score. The US ranks ninth in terms of economic impact and violence, seventh in terms of military expenditure (% of GDP), 14th in terms of the costs of terrorism and 20th in terms of the business costs of crime and violence.Get Sample copy of this Report @MarketLines Premium industry reports provide a comprehensive market view, including sections on: key industry trends and drivers, industry SWOT analysis, industry benchmarking to compare key performance indicators with regional and global markets, competitive landscape, and innovation.Key HighlightsDeclining revenue and capital expenditure is expected to change over the forecast period:Capital expenditure in the US witnessed a CAGR of -5.2% over the historic period, from US$227.2 billion in 2012 to US$183.5 billion in 2016. However, the countrys capital expenditure is expected to increase at a CAGR of 2.8% over 2017-2021 to reach US$198.7 billion. This increase is mainly due to the countrys focus on replacing the damaged and obsolete defense equipment used in the Iran and Afghan wars. Similarly, the countrys revenue expenditure observed a CAGR of -5.2% over the historic period, from US$418.2 billion in 2012 to US$338.1 billion in 2016. This decline was primarily due to sequestration measures imposed by the government. However, it is expected to increase at a CAGR of 2.8% over 2017-2021 to reach US$386.4 billion. This growth is primarily due to the countrys increased spending on training activities and its efforts towards maintaining military superiority.View Report @The USs total defense expenditure posted a CAGR of -2.6% over the historic period, from US$645.5 billion in 2012 to US$580.3 billion in 2016, but is expected to increase at a CAGR of 0.7% over 2017-2021 to reach US$599.4 billion.Aircraft and C4ISR electronics & IT segments led in terms of capital expenditure:In terms of the different defense segments, aircraft and C4ISR electronics & IT led in terms of capital expenditure, registering US$82.0 billion and US$54.9 billion respectively in 2016. Aircraft expenditure in the US stood at US$81.9 billion in 2016 and is forecast to increase at a CAGR of 2.7% over 2017-2021 to reach US$91.4 billion. This growth is primarily driven by the replacement of aging aircraft, equipment and technological innovations in the industry.C4ISR electronics & IT expenditure stood at US$54,945.5 million in 2016 and is expected to witness a CAGR of -0.5% over 2017-2021 to reach US$55,845.9 million. However, the DoDs (Department of Defense) aim to develop next generation C4ISR technologies such as AESA, hi-tech radars, cloaking technology, un-jammable imaging systems, and Video Synthetic Aperture Radar (ViSAR) will maintain C4ISR segment expenditure.Strong tie-ups with overseas countries:Even though the US has a highly advanced military industrial base, making it a high military hardware exporter, it imports arms in order to build strategic relations with countries such as the UK, Germany, Canada, and Norway. The country imports military hardware primarily from European countries. Germany is the largest supplier of arms to the US, followed by the UK and Canada. The US and the UK have also built strong military relations through mutual cooperation, such as the joint operation of the British Armed Forces and the US Armed Forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom.Send An Enquiry Request @Scope- Industry Snapshot and Industry View - Key defense and security industry statistics including total expenditure, revenue expenditure, and capital expenditure are analysed to reveal the key issues and trends driving market performance in the US defense and security market.- Industry SWOT Analysis - Discover the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats impacting market performance and investment in the US defense and security market.- Industry Benchmarking - Benchmark how the US defense and security market is performing compared to regional and global markets in terms of total expenditure, revenue expenditure, and capital expenditure to gauge potential for growth or market entry.- Competitive Landscape - Analyze and compare the performance of the leading players in the US defense and security market by business segment on metrics such as arms sales, along with detailed overview and product offerings of the leading defense and security players in the US.Reasons to buy- How is the market performing in terms of: total expenditure, revenue expenditure, and capital expenditure?- How risky is it to invest in the US defense and security industry compared to other North American countries?- What is driving the performance of key industry segments such as C4ISR Electronics & IT, aircraft, and others?- Who are the leading players in the US defense and security industry and how does their performance compare?- What trends are being witnessed within the US defense and security industry?- What are the US defense and security industrys Strengths and Weaknesses and what Opportunities and Threats does it face?- What are the recent developments, innovations and deals in the US defense and security industry?Table of ContentsConflict &Costs Index 3Industry Snapshot 7Industry View 26Industry SWOT Analysis 30Industry Benchmarking 36Industry Performance 55Competitive Landscape 70Innovation 79Deals 82Key Developments 91Appendix 95Buy Now @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Turkey-Defense and Security: Shift towards indigenous industry (Strategy, Performance and Risk Analysis)

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"The Report Turkey-Defense and Security: Shift towards indigenous industry (Strategy, Performance and Risk Analysis) provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About Turkey-Defense and Security MarketTurkey ranks ninth in terms of societal safety and security as an increase in internal conflicts has driven the country to spend more on the segment. The country ranks 14th in terms of militarization due to its conflicts with Russia and Greece. Turkey also ranks high on level of conflict and its associated costs.Get Sample copy of this Report @MarketLines Premium industry reports provide a comprehensive market view including sections on: key industry trends and drivers, industry SWOT analysis, industry benchmarking to compare key performance indicators with regional and global markets, competitive landscape, and innovation.Key HighlightsDeclining revenue and capital expenditure affects Turkeys total defense expenditure:Turkeys capital expenditure witnessed a CAGR of -5.8% over the historic period, from US$4,415.5 million in 2012 to US$3,509.2 million in 2016. However, this is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.7% over 2017-2021 to reach US$4,713.6 million, attributed to the procurement of advanced defense equipment and the countrys focus on developing its indigenous defense industry. Turkeys revenue expenditure observed a CAGR of -6.1% over the historic period, from US$10,048.5 million in 2012 to US$7,796.2 million in 2016. However, it is expected to increase at a CAGR of 7.4% over 2017-2021 to reach US$10,976.2 million due to an increase in expenditure towards military training activities.Turkeys total defense expenditure posted a CAGR of -6.0% over the historic period, from US$14.5 billion in 2012 to US$11.3 billion in 2016. However, it is forecast to increase at a CAGR of 7.2% over 2017-2021 to reach US$15.7 billion. This is due to the countrys strained relationships with Russia and Greece, continuous threats from the Kurdish Workers Party, and the countrys active participation in peacekeeping missions.View Report @Aircraft segment leads in terms of capital expenditure:Turkeys aircraft segment capital expenditure led over the other defense segments. It registered US$4,535.6 million in 2016, increasing at a CAGR of 1.9% over the historic period. Aircraft segment growth is primarily driven by the countrys increasing procurement plans and its focus on boosting its indigenous defense industry. For instance, in October 2016, Turkey agreed to order a second batch of F-35 Lightning II fifth-generation multirole fighter aircraft as a part of the multinational Joint Strike Fighter program. Aircraft segment capital expenditure is expected to register a CAGR of -0.16% over 2017-2021 to reach US$7.0 million.Geostrategic location:Turkeys historical and geostrategic importance has been a key driver in terms of the development of its defense capabilities. Turkey is a key NATO member located between Europe and the Middle East. Turkish armed forces also rank as the second largest armed force in NATO. The country shares its border with Iraq and Syria, which has driven the country to continuously undertake procurement plans to advance its defense capabilities and maintain a competitive edge over its neighbors. Turkey also shares border with Iran, which has an advanced ballistic missile arsenal that puts Turkey at risk. As a result, the country has made significant efforts to acquire foreign missile and air defense systems, as well as developing them domestically.Scope- Industry Snapshot and Industry View - Key defense and security industry statistics including total expenditure, revenue expenditure, and capital expenditure are analysed to reveal the key issues and trends driving market performance in the Turkish defense and security market.- Industry SWOT Analysis - Discover the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats impacting market performance and investment in the Turkish defense and security market.- Industry Benchmarking - Benchmark how Turkeys defense and security market is performing compared to regional and global markets in terms of total expenditure, revenue expenditure, and capital expenditure to gauge potential for growth or market entry.- Competitive Landscape - Analyze and compare the performance of the leading players in Turkish defense and security market by business segment on metrics such as arms sales, along with detailed overview and product offerings of the leading Defense and Security players in Turkey.Send An Enquiry Request @Reasons to buy- How is the market performing in terms of: total expenditure, revenue expenditure, and capital expenditure?- How risky is it to invest in the Turkeys defense and security industry compared to other Middle East and African countries?- What is driving the performance of key industry segments such as Aircraft, Homeland Security, and others?- Who are the leading players in Turkish defense and security industry and how does their performance compare?- What trends are being witnessed within in Turkeys defense and security industry?- What are Turkish defense and security industrys Strengths and Weaknesses and what Opportunities and Threats does it face?- What are the recent developments and innovations in the Turkey defense and security industry?Table of ContentsConflict &Costs Index 3Industry Snapshot 7Industry View 20Industry SWOT Analysis 24Industry Benchmarking 30Industry Performance 49Competitive Landscape 63Innovation 68Deals 70Key Developments 72Appendix 75Buy Now @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Solar Micro Inverter Market to Reflect a Significant CAGR of 16.6% During 2016-2026

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The demand for solar micro inverters is expected to witness a significant upsurge on account of increase in the number of photovoltaic (PV) installations and the need to improve overall system efficiency and safety. In 2016, the global solar micro inverters market is anticipated to register a y-o-y growth of 11.4% over 2015, and reach US$ 488.2 Mn in terms of market value. The escalating demand for solar micro inverters will continue to penetrate the market for module-level power electronics, owing to falling prices and upcoming products.Browse Complete Report @The higher adoption of photovoltaic installations is a key factor driving the growth of the global solar micro inverters market. Moreover, rising preference for fully integrated PV modules or AC Modules, is anticipated to fuel the demand for solar micro inverters. The U.S. National Electric Code (NEC) also favours the usage of micro inverter technology and is driving the demand for micro inverters in the North American market. However, the use of power optimisers as an alternative to micro inverters can restrain the growth of the global solar micro inverter market.Request and Download Sample Report @On the basis of system type, the global market for solar micro inverters is expected to be dominated by Stand Alone system sales, followed by micro inverter systems sold for developing AC Modules, named as integrated systems. In 2015, the stand alone solar micro inverter systems procured global market share of 96.7%, and are expected to attain estimated revenues of US$ 471 Mn by 2016-end.By end-user type, the residential segment of the global market will continue dominance over the commercial segment by attaining a market share of 76.2% in 2016. Among residential end-users, changing consumer preference for more efficient and safe inverter alternative will prompt the replacement of conventional inverters with solar micro inverters. Dropping prices and rising commercial scale PV installations will incite extensive growth in the demand for solar micro inverters among the commercial segment as well.View and Download TOC of Solar Micro Inverter Market Research Report @Due to the varying use of micro inverters across the world, global players are concentrating on regions where awareness about using renewable energy resources is higher. Robust adoption of PV storage systems in the U.S. will continue to fuel demand for solar micro inverters in North America, and the region is expected to attain market value of US$ 282.2 Mn in 2016. Moreover, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) is expected to be a lucrative region for the growth of the global market. The growing trade of inexpensive inverters in China and India will boost the demand for solar micro inverters in APEJ region. The key players contributing to the growth of the global solar micro inverters market include, SMA, Darfon Electronics, ABB, APSytems, Chilicon Power, iEnergy, Enphase, NEP, SunPower, and Sparq Systems among others.Long-term Outlook: The global solar micro inverters market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 16.6% during the forecast period 2016-2026. Over the forecast period, North America and APEJ will continue to be the most profitable regions for the growth of the global market for solar micro inverters.Buy Full Solar Micro Inverter Market Research Report @About Us:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global and United Kingdom-Defense and Security: Modernization and procurement to drive expenditure in 20117

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"The Report United Kingdom-Defense and Security: Modernization and procurement to drive expenditure (Strategy, Performance and Risk Analysis) provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About United Kingdom-Defense and Security MarketThe UKs total defense expenditure witnessed a CAGR of -2.8% during the historic period, from US$60.0 billion in 2012 to US$53.5 billion in 2016, owing to government initiatives to reduce the countrys fiscal deficit and the removal of troops from Afghanistan. However, it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.3% over the forecast period, from US$55.0 billion in 2017 to US$65.2 billion in 2021, due to the governments procurement plans.Get Sample copy of this Report @The aircraft category remains one of the UKs key segments in terms of defense and security, with capital expenditure on aircraft accounting for 43.1% of total capital expenditure in 2016. The C4ISR electronics & IT segment accounted for 40.8% of the total in 2016.Market Lines Premium industry reports provide a comprehensive market view, including sections on: key industry trends and drivers, industry SWOT analysis, industry benchmarking to compare key performance indicators with regional and global markets, competitive landscape, and innovation.Key HighlightsRevenue expenditure to account for the majority of total defense expenditure:During the historic period, the share of revenue expenditure as a percentage of total defense spending increased from 77.1% in 2012 to 79.1% in 2016, with the remainder spent on the procurement of equipment and services. The implementation of budget cuts and reform measures are unlikely to affect the UKs revenue expenditure over the forecast period. Therefore, the share of capital expenditure is expected to remain at an average of 21.1%, while revenue expenditure would account for the remaining total defense expenditure.View Report @UK undertakes various peacekeeping missions:The UKs armed forces are actively involved in a number of peacekeeping operations. The country has deployed troops to the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali), and the UN Mission in Sudan. Participating in peacekeeping missions gives UK the advantage of being able to establish army bases in various countries. As it stands, the UK has deployed forces to Afghanistan, Africa, Baltics states, Belize, Brunei, Canada, Cyprus, Germany, Gibraltar, Iraq and South Atlantic Islands.The country is making efforts to strengthen its domestic defense industry:Armed force modernization plans with smaller budgets are driving procurements from domestic firms. The UKs defense industry comprises a range of advanced technologies and products with proven capabilities. It is also home to BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and Babcock International Group. A numbers of UK-based firms have entered into joint development programs to enhance their competencies and capabilities.Scope- Industry Snapshot and Industry View - Key defense and security industry statistics including total expenditure, revenue expenditure, and capital expenditure are analysed to reveal the key issues and trends driving market performance in the UK defense and security market.- Industry SWOT Analysis - Discover the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats impacting market performance and investment in the UK defense and security market.- Industry Benchmarking - Benchmark how the UK defense and security market is performing compared to regional and global markets in terms of total expenditure, revenue expenditure, and capital expenditure to gauge potential for growth or market entry.- Competitive Landscape - Detailed overview and product offerings of the leading defense and security players in UK.Send An Enquiry Request @Reasons to buy- How is the market performing in terms of: total expenditure, revenue expenditure, and capital expenditure?- How risky is it to invest in the UK defense and security industry compared to other European countries?- What is driving the performance of key industry segments such as aircraft, C4ISR electronics & IT, naval ships, helicopters, military vehicles, and others?- Who are the leading players in the UK defense and security industry and their overview and product portfolio?- What trends are being witnessed within the UK defense and security industry?- What are the UK defense and security industrys Strengths and Weaknesses and what Opportunities and Threats does it face?- What are the recent developments and innovations in the UK defense and security industry?Table of ContentsConflict &Costs Index 3Industry Snapshot 8Industry View 26Industry SWOT Analysis 30Industry Benchmarking 36Industry Performance 55Competitive Landscape 70Innovation 78Deals 80Key Developments 84Appendix 89Buy Now @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Air and Gas Compressor Market - U.S. Industry Size, Share, Growth, Trends, Forecast, and Analysis 2017 - 2025

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IndexBox has just published a new report "U.S. Air And Gas Compressor Market. Analysis And Forecast to 2025" ().This report is best suitable for you if you: Are planning to enter a new geographical market and wish to know which one is best for your product Are planning to enter a new product market and want to have a detailed overview of the market before entering Already work in a given market and want to update your knowledge on the topic Are developing/reviewing your company strategy and wish to know the existing trends in the market Want to find the best country to import a product from Are consulting a client in the given industry and wish to get a deep understanding of the situation in the market Are planning to open new production facilities and wish to choose the best location.The report serves the above mentioned purposes by providing a deep survey of the key indicators of the air and gas compressor market. It includes a market overview, which consolidates the key conclusions made from the analysis of the market study, giving insights on the most valuable markets based on the comparative analysis. The report also provides a forecast of how the market is expected to change in the coming years, based on historical trends, external and internal factors, and the main drivers changing the market. Each section contains a a detailed analysis of the data provided. Specifically, the report covers the historical developments and existing prospects of air and gas compressor production volumes, consumption data, as well as producer prices.The trade section provides crucial data, such as historical data on imports/exports, changes in the direction of trade, as well as import/export prices. Analysis of air and gas compressor trade shows the opportunities that are opening before producers and suppliers in a changing market.Product coverage: Air and gas compressors and vacuum pumps, including value of drivers; Parts and attachments for air and gas compressors and vacuum pumps (excluding refrigeration, ice making, and air-conditioning equipment); Industrial spraying equipment and parts and attachments for industrial spraying equipment, sold separately; Air and gas compressor manufacturing, nsk, total.Countries coverage: the U.S.Abstract:In 2015, the value of air and gas compressor production in the U.S. amounted to $10.3B, declining by -4.4% against the previous year level. Overall, the U.S. air and gas compressor output pursued a moderate growth from 2007 to 2015. The total output figures increased at an average annual rate of +1.3%. The trend pattern, however, indicated some noticable fluctuations throughout the analyzed period. The growth pace was the most rapid in 2012, when the output figure increased by +10% from the previous year level. Over the period under review, the total value of air and gas compressor shipments in the United States peaked at $10.8B in 2014, falling back in the following year.Air and gas compressors and vacuum pumps, including value of drivers was the major product category in the U.S. air and gas compressor manufacturing, with a share in total output standing near 69% in 2015. Industrial spraying equipment and parts and attachments for industrial spraying equipment, sold separately lagged far behing, accounting for only the 14% share. The other related products together comprised approx. 17% of the total output.Data coverage: Air and gas compressor market value and size; Major trends in the air and gas compressor market; Forecast of the market dynamics in the medium term; Exports, imports and trade balance; Import and export prices; Life cycle of the air and gas compressor industry; Number of establishments and their locations; Air and gas compressor industry productivity. Key market players and their profiles.Methodology:Our methodology consists of obtaining information from various trusted sources (both paid and open), which include, but are not limited to: International official statistical agencies Governmental statistical agencies Official trade statistics Paid trade databases Industrial associations Company reports Industry experts.Companies mentioned:Dresser-Rand Group,Nordson Corporation,Elliott Company,Fs-Elliott Co.,Ariel Corporation,Dresser-Rand ,Compressor Engineering Corp,SEC Energy Products & Services ,Ebara Technologies Incorporated,Danfoss Turbocor Compressors Inc.,The Graham Corporation,Campbell Hausfeld,Wagner Spray Tech Corporation,Bauer Compressors,Atlas Copco Compressors ,Rogers Machinery Company Inc.,Atlas Copco Comptec,A G Equipment Company,Packaging Service Co.,Gardner Denver Thomas,Falcon Safety Products,United Air Specialists,Saylor-Beall Manufacturing Company,Rodriguez Chavez Corporation,Sundyne,Gast Manufacturing,Devilbiss Air Power Company,Mat Industries,Wagner Holdings ,Neuman & Esser Investments,Texas AirsystemsOur research team compare the information gathered, confirm it with sources when required, and analyze the collected data, developing a full clear picture of the market and coming up with the final numbers. It is crucial to understand the trends of the market, for which we do provide study, taking into account events in the market, in adjacent and related markets, raw material markets, and markets, which are the main demand creators for the product under research. As for the forecast, it is conducted using analytical models of data on consumption, production, exports, imports, prices, as well as the industry trends, economic trends, consumption trends, possible political and technological trends.Source:IndexBox is a leading market research publisher in the world. You can find more than 25,000 research reports in our web store, which cover global industries and regional markets. All the worldwide marketing data you need is at your fingertips.Company Name: IndexBoxContact Person: Kirill BezverhiEmail: kirill.bezverhi@indexbox.co.ukPhone: +44 20 3239 3063Adress: United Kingdom, 44 Main Street, Douglas, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, ML11 0QW
Europe Multiple Sclerosis Market, Patients By United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain

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"The Report Europe Multiple Sclerosis Market, Patients By (United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain) By (Injectables, Infusion, Orals) provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About Europe Multiple Sclerosis MarketEurope multiple sclerosis market potential is of more than US$ 5 Billion by 2022. But only more than half this market is expected to be actually achieved. This huge difference between actual market and unmet market is due to gap between number of patients who require multiple sclerosis drugs and number of patients who are receiving disease modifying therapy.Get Sample copy of this Report @Orals mode of administration is Fast growing disease modifying therapy in the European regionOrals mode of administration is fast growing disease modifying therapy in the European region. Injectables and infusions multiple sclerosis therapies are steadily losing their ground in the European market.Germany is the clear winner in the Europe multiple sclerosis marketIn the Europe multiple sclerosis market, Germany is the clear winner, but its losing its market share year on year. The other important markets in the European region are France, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom.View Report @Europe Multiple Sclerosis Market, Patients By (United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain) By (Injectables, Infusion, Orals) published by Renub Research on Multiple Sclerosis Market. This 86 page report with 73 figures and 1 Tables provides 5 Countries: actual and unmet patient numbers and market. This report also explains multiple sclerosis disease modifying therapy (DMT) mode of administration.Actual Market is the current market which is already presentUnmet Market is the market which can be accomplished; but it has yet not been accomplished due to demand and supply gap. At present DMT receiving patients are less than total number of multiple sclerosis patient numbers.Top 5 Countries Multiple Sclerosis Market & Patients TreatedUnited KingdomGermanyFranceItalySpainMode of administration - Market & Patients TreatedInjectablesInfusionsOralsKey Questions Answered in the Report?What is the Europe multiple sclerosis market and its growth potential in near future?How many number of patients treated by disease modifying therapy in the European region?What is the multiple sclerosis market in European countries (UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain)?How many multiple sclerosis patients living in European countries?Which mode of administration (Injectables, Infusions, Orals) is gaining more popularity?Send An Enquiry Request @Table of Content1. Executive Summary2. Europe Multiple Sclerosis Patient Numbers (2011  2022)2.1 Patient Number & Forecast2.2 Disease-Modifying Therapy (DMT) Patient Numbers & Forecast2.3 By Mode of Administration - Disease-Modifying Therapy (DMT) Patient Numbers & Forecast2.3.1 Injectables Patients Numbers2.3.2 Infusions Patients Numbers2.3.3 Orals Patient Numbers3. Europe Multiple Sclerosis Market (2011  2022)3.1 Unmet Market & Forecast3.2 Market & Forecast3.3 By Mode of Administration - Market & Forecast3.3.1 Injectables Market3.3.2 Infusions Market3.3.3 Orals Market4. Europe Multiple Sclerosis Population Share (2011  2022)4.1 Patient Numbers Share & Forecast4.2 Disease-Modifying Therapy (DMT) Patient Numbers Share & Forecast4.3 By Mode of Administration - Patient Numbers Share & Forecast5. Europe Multiple Sclerosis Market Share (2011  2022)5.1 By Countries  Unmet Market Share & Forecast5.2 By Countries  Market Share & Forecast5.3 By Mode of Administration Market Share & Forecast6. United Kingdom6.1 Multiple Sclerosis Patient Numbers (2011  2022)6.1.1 Patient Number & Forecast6.1.2 Disease-Modifying Therapy (DMT) Patient Numbers & Forecast6.2 Multiple Sclerosis Market (2011  2022)6.2.1 Unmet Market & Forecast6.2.2 Market & Forecast7. France7.1 Multiple Sclerosis Patient Number (2011  2022)7.1.1 Patient Number & Forecast7.1.2 Disease-Modifying Therapy (DMT) Patient Numbers & Forecast7.2 Multiple Sclerosis Market (2011  2022)7.2.1 Unmet Market & Forecast7.2.2 Market & Forecast8. Germany8.1 Multiple Sclerosis Patient Number (2011  2022)8.1.1 Patient Number & Forecast8.1.2 Disease-Modifying Therapy (DMT) Patient Numbers & Forecast8.2 Multiple Sclerosis Market (2011  2022)8.2.1 Unmet Market & Forecast8.2.2 Market & Forecast9. Italy9.1 Multiple Sclerosis Patient Number (2011  2022)9.1.1 Patient Number & Forecast9.1.2 Disease-Modifying Therapy (DMT) Patient Numbers & Forecast9.2 Multiple Sclerosis Market (2011  2022)9.2.1 Unmet Market & Forecast9.2.2 Market & Forecast10. Spain10.1 Multiple Sclerosis Patient Number (2011  2022)10.1.1 Patient Number & Forecast10.1.2 Disease-Modifying Therapy (DMT) Patient Numbers & Forecast10.2 Multiple Sclerosis Market (2011  2022)10.2.1 Unmet Market & Forecast10.2.2 Market & ForecastBuy Now @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Patient Fluid Status Monitor Device Market Report for Period 2017 till 2022 Sensible Medical, Noninvasive Medical Technologies and Others

Patient Fluid Status Monitor Device Market

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Global Patient Fluid Status Monitor Device market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Medtronic, Sensible Medical, Noninvasive Medical Technologies and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2022, etc.Patient fluid status monitor device generally refers to device used clinically to measures hydration in a patient, to determine whether or not the patient is dehydrated or retaining fluids. By quantifying fluid volume status, clinicians can optimize medical regimens and hydration critical in the management of heart failure patients; besides, patient fluid status monitor device can also be used in the treatment of hypertension patients and ESRD patients. Currently, there are patient fluid status monitor device produced by two manufacturers available in the market, which include Medtronic and NMT (Noninvasive Medical Technologies). Besides, another company, Sensible Medical had launched a new type of patient fluid status monitor device called SensiVest.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Patient Fluid Status Monitor Device Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:Noninvasive Medical TechnologiesMedtronicSensible MedicalOthersGlobal Patient Fluid Status Monitor Device Market: Key Product TypeInvasiveNon-invasiveOthersGlobal Patient Fluid Status Monitor Device Market: Key Application TypeHeart Failure TreatmentOther Disease TreatmentOthersGlobal Patient Fluid Status Monitor Device Market: Key RegionNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Others)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Others)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Others)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Others)The Global Patient Fluid Status Monitor Device Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Patient Fluid Status Monitor Device Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Patient Fluid Status Monitor Device Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Market Segment Overview1.1.1 Product Definition1.1.2 Market by Type1.1.2.1 Invasive1.1.2.2 Non-invasive1.1.3 Market by Application1.1.3.1 Heart Failure Treatment1.1.3.2 Other Disease Treatment1.2 Global and Regional Market Size1.2.1 Global Overview........................Continue (Global Patient Fluid Status Monitor Device Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Healthcare BI Platform Market : Government Regulations in Developed Economies Compel Adoption

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In the increasingly competitive vendor landscape for the global healthcare BI platform market, the rising number of solutions and service providers are focusing on expansion across emerging regional markets and the leveraging their capabilities to exploit opportunities offered by the cloud platform, observes Transparency Market Research in a recent report. The number of strategic collaborations with peers and healthcare organizations have increased in the market in the past few years as companies seek to expand their product portfolios and consumer bases. In the near future, the market is expected to witness the emergence of companies offering pure cloud-based services and a number of old vendors are expected to actively move towards strengthening their cloud-based services.Some of the leading companies in the market presently are Microsoft Corporation, OpenText Corporation, Oracle Corporation, IBM Corporation, SAP SE, SAS Institute, Inc., and Information Builders.Obtain Report Details @Transparency Market Research estimates that global market for healthcare BI platform will exhibit an impressive CAGR of 11.7% over the period between 2015 and 2023, rising form a net worth of US$1.5 bn in 2014 to an opportunity of US$3.9 bn by 2023.North America Market to Lead the WayFrom a geographical standpoint, the market for healthcare BI platform in North America held the dominant 47.8% of the global market in 2014. The rising healthcare expenditure, pressure to reduce costs, and the well-established and digitized healthcare infrastructure are the key factors attributed to the strong demand for BI platforms in the region. The region is also expected to retain its top spot over the reports forecast period.In terms of deployment, the segment of on-premise deployment accounted for the dominant share in the overall market in 2014 in terms of revenue contribution. While the segment will continue to account for a significant share of the market owing to demand from consumers concerned about the safety of business- and patient-critical data, the cloud segment will see the most promising growth owing to its benefits such as low cost, high speed of deployment, and ease of use.Government Regulations in Developed Economies Compel AdoptionOne of the key factors fueling the uptake of BI platforms in the healthcare industry is the massive volumes of data generated by healthcare establishments, whether they are fully or partly digitized. Although the data is vast, ways of generating business critical information, which could have a massive impact on the decision-making process and outcomes in the form of clinical performance, disease management, patient management, and cost and waste reduction, are not implemented to their full potential. As healthcare establishments realize that business intelligence plays a key role in realizing all these benefits of drawing information from raw business data, an increasing number are adopting BI platforms.The market for healthcare BI platforms is also fueled owing to several government regulations, including the Affordable Care Act in the U.S. (2010). As such regulations require the healthcare industry to replace outdated healthcare platforms with advanced ones, healthcare organizations are compelled to give into the reformative changes, pushing up the uptake of BI platforms, especially in developed economies. While the market has witnessed a slow pace of growth in emerging economies and less-developed countries so far, encouraging government policies and actions aimed at the improvement of healthcare infrastructure could lead to promising growth opportunities in these regions in the near future.Request to download and view full ToC @This review of the global healthcare business intelligence (BI) platform market is based on a recent market research report by Transparency Market Research, titled Healthcare BI Platform Market (By Function - Clinical Analytics, Financial Analytics, Operational Analytics, and Others; By Deployment Type - On-premise and Cloud; By Model Type -Self-service BI and Corporate BI) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends, and Forecast 2015 - 2023Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. TMRs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each TMR research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendationsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Data Protection as a Service (DPaaS) Market: Comprehensive Analysis and Future Estimations 2024

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The three leading providers of data protection as a service models in 2015 were EMC Corporation, HP Development Company, L.P., and Amazon Web Services, Inc. They held leading shares in DPaaS consistently till now and are additionally showing a high rate of growth over the coming years. The data protection as a service models provided by IBM Corporation are considered to hold strong potential.As per a new publication by Transparency Market Research, the global market for data protection as a service is in a state of intense competition, due to the high proliferation of cloud computing in multiple industries and sectors around the world. With data recovery and disaster management of data fast becoming the top priorities of both large enterprises and SMEs, the providers of data protection as a service are situated in a highly promising position of growth till 2024.Obtain Report Details @The global market for data protection as a service is expected to show an astronomical CAGR of 30.1% within the forecast period from 2016 to 2024, with respect to its revenue. The revenue is expected to be US$5.66 bn by the end of 2016 and is projected to reach US$46.40 bn by the end of 2024.North America, with its massive IT industry and the growing scope of cloud computing in the public sector, is expected to retain its dominant share in the global market for data protection as a service. By the end of 2024, North America is expected to generate as much as US$14.07 bn in DPaaS revenue.Download Table of Content @Asia Pacific on the other hand is expected to be the faster region in terms of demand for data protection as a service. This regions DPaaS market is projected at a CAGR of 33.6% from 2016 to 2024.Globally, the private cloud has been the more preferred deployment model for data protection as a service. This segment is expected to generate US$20.123 bn by the end of 2024. Meanwhile, hybrid clouds are expected to show the faster growth in demand as far as the deployment of DPaaS is concerned. It is projected at a CAGR of 31.1% from 2016 to 2024.One of the key drivers for the global data protection as a service market is the staggering volumes of workload taken up by the cloud computing application markets. There is a very high degree of virtualization today, with SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS being pushed across multiple industry verticals. The overall workload is rapidly migrating from conventional data centers to cloud-based platforms.With greater cloud-based workloads will come a greater need for data protection. This is where the providers of data protection as a service come in, supplying the needful, states a TMR analyst.DPaaS solutions can be extremely complicated in nature when it comes to deployment. This has to do with the current IT systems and infrastructure already in place. This system can be quite complex and detailed, and to replicate the same on a cloud platform can become very difficult and time consuming. There is a relative lack of redundancy solutions being offered by DPaaS providers, further increasing the restraining factor on the markets growth.Request A Sample Of Report @There is also the issue of compatibility when it comes to the cloud applications and their use in multiple industry verticals. Most data protection as a service solutions are high-transaction and critical in nature, thereby allowing little scope of creating archetypes that can be applied across different vertical, thereby restraining the markets growth.The analyst adds, There is still an immense scope of growth left for data protection as a service providers in emerging economies, especially the Asia Pacific region. India, China, and Southeast Asia are expected to become key regions in the utility of cloud computing, thus becoming key sources of finding users for data protection as a service solutions.The information presented in this review is based on a Transparency Market Research report, titled, Data Protection as a Service (DPaaS) Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
MI Neurosurgery Devices Market Report for Period 2017 till 2022 Smith & Nephew, Boston Scientific, Richard Wolf, Medtronic, Stryker Corporation, NICO and Others

MI Neurosurgery Devices Market

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Global MI Neurosurgery Devices market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Conmed Corporation, Zimmer Holdings, Richard Wolf, NICO, Achkermann, Integra LifeScience, Medtronic, Stryker Corporation, Olympus Corporation, Boston Scientific, B.Braun, Carl Storz, Smith & Nephew and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2022, etc.Patients benefits Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery offered like less recovery time, shortened hospital stay, greater accuracy, less pain and muscle sparring which is making minimally invasive neurosurgery a preferred option for the medical practitioners and surgeons. This report covered Miniature video cameras (Endoscopes), Special surgical instruments and External video monitors used in the intracranial surgery, endonasal neurosurgery, and spinal surgery and so on. We also have reports about minimally invasive surgery market.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global MI Neurosurgery Devices Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:MedtronicStryker CorporationOlympus CorporationBoston ScientificB.BraunCarl StorzSmith & NephewConmed CorporationZimmer HoldingsRichard WolfNICOAchkermannIntegra LifeScienceOthersGlobal MI Neurosurgery Devices Market: Key Product TypeMiniature video camerasSpecial surgical instrumentsExternal video monitorsOthersGlobal MI Neurosurgery Devices Market: Key Application TypeIntracranial SurgeryEndonasal NeurosurgerySpinal SurgeryOthersGlobal MI Neurosurgery Devices Market: Key RegionNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Others)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Others)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Others)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Others)The Global MI Neurosurgery Devices Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global MI Neurosurgery Devices Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global MI Neurosurgery Devices Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Market Segment Overview1.1.1 Product Definition1.1.2 Market by Type1.1.2.1 Miniature video cameras1.1.2.2 Special surgical instruments1.1.2.3 External video monitors1.1.3 Market by Application1.1.3.1 Intracranial Surgery1.1.3.2 Endonasal Neurosurgery1.1.3.3 Spinal Surgery1.1.3.4 Others........................Continue (Global MI Neurosurgery Devices Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Switch Wired Scalable Infrastructure: Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2017 to 2023

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"Switch wired scalable infrastructure market steady growth is anticipated because the adapter units are offering breakthrough node to node integration capabilities that further automates a data center."About Switch wired scalable infrastructure MarketThe 2017 study has 214 pages, 104 tables and figures. Worldwide markets are poised to achieve significant growth as the artificial intelligence software, IOT Internet of things, drones, self-driving cars, and all manner of automated process increases use of the digital economy. Scalable Data Centers depend on infrastructure scalability excellence, which is achieved with a two-layer architecture utilizing adapters and processors described in this study.Get Sample copy of this Report @Data center solutions are moving in the direction of being open standards-based, software-driven, and able to work seamlessly with DevOps to achieve cross-domain automation. The aim of IT is to meet agility and efficiency goals. Scalable data center wired switch represent one component of the move to a digital economy.Speed is the new currency of business. Digital disruption is illustrated by Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Among many other well-known digital disruptors Salesforce stands out. These companies have IT that is characterized by the ability to respond to opportunities quickly. It is no longer possible to beat the competition by having a better product, lower prices, and the best people. That still matters, but is not enough.To win, companies need an agile IT architecture, less expensive by a factor of 50 than existing IT, and that helps companies respond to the next big wave of opportunity and ride it faster than the competition. While corporate management is consumed in managing people by setting rules and creating workgroups that are effective, and things that are put in place to let people do their work, IT is consumed with increasing the levels of automation, making more parts of the organization automated. It is significant that no IT manager has ever become CEO or CFO of a major corporation, illustrating that the corporate management and IT functions are different.View Report @IT organizations have become more complex, managing more endpoints that bring more data into the same IT center. The IT departments work to achieve end-to-end connectivity and services with a mandate to move to cloud computing.In this context, servers, storage, cannot always be moved into a hyper-converged cloud infrastructure. Broadcom intelligent interconnect solutions are a key part of supporting Scalable Infrastructure inside any IT organization, supporting both cloud and existing infrastructure that is in place and functioning.Broadcom is a leading vendor of switch semiconductor solutions focused on high-performance interconnect. It has successfully launched several generations of InfiniBand and Ethernet data center products. Strong competencies are provided for integrating mixed-signal processing and integrating complex ICs. Software development capability is a key strength because all complex integration is managed with software.Software allows offering more complete solutions. A significant portfolio of intellectual property, IP, permits Mellanox to offer industry leading integration of signals at the chip level. This is a major shift in the way IT is conducted with integration of systems previously happening at the API level. Broadcom has significant IP and a large number of patents.According to Susan Eustis, lead author of the team that wrote the study, Market growth is a result of the ability of the switches to work inside a fiber infrastructure data center. Broadcom dominates its market segment. Switches are used to manage data transport inside the data center to move data much faster in the network inside the data center, to create any node to any node data transmission within the data center, and to process the mountains of data being generated by digital economy up to 1,000 times more efficiently than is now the case with traditional systems.Send An Enquiry Request @Scalable Data Center Market ForecastsScalable wired infrastructure switch market forecast indicates that markets at $5 billion in 2017 are expected to reach $26.3 billion dollars worldwide by 2023. These represent a very specialized type of analytics systems able to address a wide range of issues that can be newly managed with digitization. Steady growth is anticipated because the adapter units are offering breakthrough node to node integration capabilities that further automates a data center. Steady growth is anticipated because the adapter units are the best device for implementing efficient operations at low cost.Companies ProfiledMarket LeadersBroadcomQuantumMarket ParticipantsAlphabet / GoogleArris / BroadcomBrocadeCiscoFacebookMellanoxIntelIBMCaviumKey TopicsSwitch Wired InfrastructureScalable InfrastructureScalable Data CenterReplacing All Existing Enterprise Data CentersScalable Data Center Wired SwitchesHyperscale Data CenterScaleAutomationCloud ComputingCloud 2.0Automatic RulesPush-Button ActionsCloud Application IntegrationContainer Control SystemOpen Source ContainerTable of ContentsAbstract: High-Performance Switches Implement Software Defined Data Center1Scalable Data Center Wired Switches: Market Shares, Market Strategies, and Market Forecasts, 2017 to 2023 1Scalable Data Center Wired Switch: Executive Summary 17Scalable Data Center Wired Switch Market Driving Forces 17Scalable IT Infrastructure Data Center Switch Market Driving Forces 20Suppliers of Intelligent, Highly Scalable Interconnect Solutions 21Data Growth Continues to Drive Infrastructure Scalability 22Scalable Infrastructure Data Center Switch Shares: 25Scalable Wired Infrastructure Switch Market Forecasts: 261. Scalable Data Center Wired Switches: Market Description and Market Dynamics: 281.1 Critical Challenge of Handling Exponentially Expanding Volumes of Transactions And Data 281.1.1 IT is Everything for the Business 291.2 End-To-End High-Performance Interconnect Products and Solutions for Artificial Intelligence 331.2.1 Scalable Infrastructure Data Center Components 331.2.2 Server Computing and Traditional Storage Systems Being Replaced 341.2.3 High-Performance Interconnect Solutions Value 351.2.4 High-Performance Interconnect Solutions Replace Existing Server Architectures 361.3 Challenges Addressed by High-Performance Interconnect Switch 401.3.1 High-Performance Interconnect Switch Manage Increasing Complexity 411.3.2 Advantages of InfiniBand 411.3.3 Scalable Computing Uses a Network to Enhance Processing Performance 451.4 Superstar Companies That Are Able to Leverage IT to Achieve Growth 451.4.1 Using Digital Technology To Create Market Disruption 462 Scalable Data Center Wired Switch: Market Shares and Market Forecasts 482.1 Scalable Data Center Wired Switch Market Driving Forces 482.1.1 Scalable IT Infrastructure Data Center Switch Market Driving Forces 512.1.2 Suppliers of Intelligent, Highly Scalable Interconnect Solutions 522.1.3 Data Growth Continues to Drive Infrastructure Scalability 532.2 Scalable Infrastructure Data Center Switch Shares: 552.2.1 Broadcom 612.2.2 IBM's OpenPOWER Initiative 622.3 Scalable Wired Infrastructure Switch Market Forecasts: 632.3.1 Facebook Fabric Next-Generation Data Center Network Design: Pod Unit of Network 702.3.2 Mega Data Center Server Pods 722.3.3 Exchange Of Data Between Servers Represents A Complex Automation Of Process 732.3.4 Network Disaggregation 742.3.5 Scalable Infrastructure Data Management Component Application Segments 772.3.6 Super Computing 812.4 Scalable Infrastructure Data Center Data Growth 842.5 Scalable Infrastructure Data Center Components Challenges 852.6 Scalable Infrastructure Data Center Component Prices: 882.7 Scalable Infrastructure Data Center Components Regional Segments: 923. Scalable Data Center Infrastructure Switch Products: 943.1 Broadcom 943.2 Quanta 953.3 Mellanox Delivers ConnectX-4 LX for the IBM z14 973.3.1 Mellanox IBM z14 Supporting Resources: 993.3.2 Mellanox Leading Supplier of InfiniBand ICs 1003.3.3 Mellanox Leading Supplier of Scalable Infrastructure Ethernet Adapters 1003.3.4 Mellanox Strategy 1013.3.5 Mellanox NPS Next Generation Network Switch Unit (NPU) 1033.4 Intel Omni-Path Architecture (Intel OPA) 1043.4.1 Intel / Mobileye 1063.5 IBM 1073.6 Facebook Aggregation Switches Are Lashed Together Through a Set Of Non-Blocking Spine Switches 1083.6.1 Google Network Called Jupiter 1093.7 Microsoft Cloud Data Center Multi-Tenant Containers 1103.7.1 Microsoft Azure Running Docker Containers 112Buy Now @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Managed Print Services Market: Latest Trends and Forecast Analysis up to 2024

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According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research entitled Managed Print Services Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024, the MPS market is expected to reach US$ 94.97 Bn in revenue by 2024, rising from US$ 26.18 Bn in 2015. The market is estimated to expand at a CAGR of 14.8% during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024.Browse the full Managed Print Services (MPS) (By Channel (Printer/Copier Manufacturers and Channel Partner/Core MPS Providers); By Enterprise Size (SMEs and Large Enterprises); By Deployment (On-premise, Hybrid, Cloud-based); By End-use (BFSI, Telecom and IT, Government and Public, Health Care, Education, Legal, Construction, Manufacturing, and Others)) Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024Obtain Report Details @In a cost-sensitive environment, organizations are highly influenced by the cost benefits offered by MPS by reducing the operational costs of their printing activities. This is one of the major factors attracting organizations to adopt MPS. The need for the streamlining of the printing workflow and for monitoring and control of printer usage by employees have added to the cost reduction benefits achieved through the implementation of MPS. The growth of the MPS market is also expected to be driven by environmental benefits such as a reduction in paper wastage and efficient use of energy achieved through the implementation of MPS. Growth in awareness about the benefits of MPS in the SMEs is expected to further boost the growth of the MPS market in the coming years. The SMEs segment of the MPS market is projected to grow faster than large enterprises in terms of the adoption of MPS during the forecast period.Download Table of Content @Channel partner/core MPS providers accounted for the largest share of the total MPS market in 2015. In order to cater to the ever increasing demand for MPS in the discrete SMEs sector, lead MPS vendors have turned to channel partners in order to expand their customer base by targeting untapped opportunities. Furthermore, cloud-based deployment was the largest segment of the MPS market in 2015 and is likely to dominate over the forecast period. The cost effectiveness of cloud-based MPS deployment and reduction in the burden on organizations internal servers are some of the major factors expected to drive the cloud-based MPS market in the coming years.Request A Sample Of Report @The government and public end-use segment was the largest in 2015 and is likely to hold its top position in terms of revenue share the forecast period. Government authorities deal in a high amount of paperwork and their high preference for security of these vital documents/data has influenced the dominance of the government and public sector segment in the MPS market.The major key companies operating in MPS market include Xerox Corporation, ARC Document Solutions, Inc., Ricoh Company Ltd., Lexmark Corporation, Canon, Inc., Konica Minolta, Inc., KYOCERA Corporation, Toshiba Corporation, HP Development, L.P., and Print Audit. Key players are focusing on increasing the number of channel partners and geographical expansion to increase their market presence.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Pediatric Healthcare Market Report for Period 2017 till 2022 Mead Johnson, Nestl, Abbott, Sanofi and Others

Pediatric Healthcare Market

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Global Pediatric Healthcare market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Sanofi, Perrigo, Mead Johnson, Nestl, Danone, Abbott, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co., Pfizer and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2022, etc.Pediatrics is the branch of medicine that deals with the medical care of infants and children, the age limit usually ranges from birth up to 7 years of age. Correspondingly, it is obvious that pediatric healthcare mainly involves in nutritionals, vaccines and drugs, all of which the purpose is to help children to grow up healthily. Millions of pedia die from disease, malnutrition and virus each year, as a consequence, it is quite significant to study pediatric healthcare.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Pediatric Healthcare Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:AbbottAstraZenecaGlaxoSmithKlineMerck & Co.PfizerSanofiPerrigoMead JohnsonNestlDanoneOthersGlobal Pediatric Healthcare Market: Key Product TypeVaccinesDrugsNutritionalsOthersGlobal Pediatric Healthcare Market: Key Application TypeProphylactic ProductsTherapeutic ProductsOthersGlobal Pediatric Healthcare Market: Key RegionNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Others)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Others)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Others)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Others)The Global Pediatric Healthcare Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Pediatric Healthcare Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Pediatric Healthcare Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Market Segment Overview1.1.1 Product Definition1.1.2 Market by Type1.1.2.1 Vaccines1.1.2.2 Drugs1.1.2.3 Nutritionals1.1.3 Market by Application1.1.3.1 Prophylactic Products1.1.3.2 Therapeutic Products........................Continue (Global Pediatric Healthcare Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
HIP Replacement Market Forecast to 2020

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The report "HIP Replacement Market by Product (Primary HIP Replacement (Cemented, Cementless), Partial HIP Replacement, Revision HIP Replacement, HIP Resurfacing), Geography (Americas, EU-5, Japan, BRIC, South-East Asia, MEA) - Forecast to 2020", The global hip reconstruction devices market was valued at USD 4.8 Billion in 2014, and is estimated to reach USD 5.9 Billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 3.0% from 2015 to 2020.Browse 105 market data tables and 114 figures spread through 228 pages and in-depth TOC on "HIP Replacement MarketEarly buyers will receive 10% customization on reports.The Global Hip Reconstruction Devices market is expected to witness substantial growth due to increasing number of arthritis patients, favorable reimbursement, and technological advancementsThe global hip reconstruction devices market growth is attributed to the rise in the number of patients suffering from arthritis, technological advancements, and favorable reimbursement. Despite this, the pricing pressure, waiting list and risk of complications after implantation are some of the major hindering factors.The government initiative of allocating new funds and development of new policies have reduced the waiting time for hip reconstructions, and increased the number of operations. However, it is difficult to achieve 90% threshold of patients that receive care within the regulated time.Get PDF Brochure Here :The technological advancements in hip reconstruction market, such as newly developed prostheses with improved strength and reliability of joints are reducing the need and cost of revision surgery. The minimally invasive techniques for hip reconstruction surgery will improve the precision and accuracy of surgeons, thus reducing the time of surgery. The emergence of these techniques and other improved surgical tools for the treatment of arthritis is expected to address the rising demand for surgery during the forecast period.In 2014, the global hip reconstruction devices market was dominated by North America. This market is segmented and forecast on the basis of product, and geography. The product comprises of primary hip reconstruction devices, partial hip reconstruction devices, revision hip reconstruction devices and hip resurfacing devices. The primary hip reconstruction devices are subsegmented into cementless and cemented reconstruction device. The market is further segmented and forecast on the basis of major geographies such as North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. These major geographies are further sub-segmented into major countries.The market in North America is growing due to rising pool of arthritis, and favorable reimbursement. The European market is growing due to the technological advancements and is dominated majorly by Zimmer Inc. (U.S.) and Depuy Synthes (U.S.). The Asian market is growing due to growing health awareness among masses, along with increase in the spending capacity of the Indian population. Also, increasing number of population suffering from musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), government initiatives, and rising awareness towards hip reconstruction are propelling the market growth.Get Sample Report Here :This report also includes the market share, approach for arriving at the market size, new technology developments, product matrix, life cycle analysis, Porters five forces analysis and price analysis by product. In this report, market metrics are also included such as drivers, restraints and upcoming opportunities in the market. In addition, it presents a competitive landscape and company profiles of key players in the market including major companies which provide hip reconstruction devices as a product.The research study is aimed at identifying emerging trends and opportunities in the global hip reconstruction devices market along with detailed classifications, in terms of revenue. It provides comprehensive competitive landscape and identifies the key players with respect to market size and market share. The research study also includes a detailed segmentation of the global hip reconstruction devices market, on the basis of product, and region.About MarketsandMarketsMarketsandMarkets is worlds No. 2 firm in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.M&Ms flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.Contact:Mr. RohanMarkets and MarketsUNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZMagarpatta city, HadapsarPune, Maharashtra 411013, India1-888-600-6441Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com
Global Green Coatings Market 2017 - BASF SE, HEMPEL A/S, JOTUN A/S, PPG INDUSTRIES, AKZONOBEL NV

Global Green Coatings Market

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Apex Market Reports, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Green Coatings Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Green Coatings Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Green Coatings industry, and estimates the future trend of Green Coatings market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Green Coatings Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportAKZONOBEL NVASIAN PAINTS LIMITEDAXALTA COATING SYSTEMBASF SEBERGER PAINTS INDIA LIMITEDDEUTSCHE AMPHIBOLIN WORKS SE (DAW)HEMPEL A/SJOTUN A/SPPG INDUSTRIESTHE SHERWIN-WILLIAMS COMPANYThe market research report explores the Green Coatings market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Green Coatings Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Green Coatings market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Green Coatings. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Green Coatings market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for Green Coatings is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Green Coatings market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Green Coatings market globally.Inquire Before Buying @The Global Green Coatings market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Green Coatings production volume, data pertaining to demand and Green Coatings supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Green Coatings along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Green Coatings across the world.Apex Market Reports offers elevating market research globally. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different categories. Apex Market Reports provides you to best services, weather youre searching for new trends in market or competitive scenario in emerging market.Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Frank ValadezCorporate Sales Specialist155 North Wacker Drive, Suite 4250Chicago, IL 60606Phone: +17739042683Email id - sales@apexmarketreports.comWebsite -
Peptide Synthesizer Market Report for Period 2017 till 2022 Intavis AG, Hainan JBPharm, PTI, Biotage, Activotec and Others

Peptide Synthesizer Market

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Global Peptide Synthesizer market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Shimadzu, Activotec, CS Bio, Intavis AG, Hainan JBPharm, AAPPTec, PTI, PSI, CEM, Biotage and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2022, etc.Peptide Synthesizer is an instrument used for peptide synthesis according to the principle of solid phase peptide synthesis. Peptides are used to prepare epitope-specific antibodies, map antibody epitopes and enzyme binding sites and to design novel enzymes, drugs and vaccines. Peptide synthesis is characterized as the formation of a peptide bond between two amino acids.As the introduction of peptide synthesizer, the development of polypeptide therapeutic market is becoming faster and faster, which drives the development of peptide synthesizer industry in return.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Peptide Synthesizer Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:AAPPTecPTIPSICEMBiotageShimadzuActivotecCS BioIntavis AGHainan JBPharmOthersGlobal Peptide Synthesizer Market: Key Product Typemcg ~ mgmg ~ gg ~ kgkgOthersGlobal Peptide Synthesizer Market: Key Application TypeUniversity LaboratoryBiopharmaceutical CompanySynthesis Services CompanyOthersGlobal Peptide Synthesizer Market: Key RegionNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Others)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Others)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Others)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Others)The Global Peptide Synthesizer Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Peptide Synthesizer Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Peptide Synthesizer Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Market Segment Overview1.1.1 Product Definition1.1.2 Market by Type1.1.2.1 mcg ~ mg1.1.2.2 mg ~ g1.1.2.3 g ~ kg1.1.2.4 kg........................Continue (Global Peptide Synthesizer Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Durapak Supplies Offers Industrial and Retail Packaging Supplies

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Durapak Supplies is a global supplier of the broadest variety of packaging and shipping products to meet all industrial, retail, and individual needs for storage, improving the attractiveness of items, marketing, and transportation. Operating from their warehouse in California, the company has developed a massive distribution network and enhanced processing of orders meeting their clients demands in the shortest duration. As the direct source of their products, Durapak Supplies provides their clients with customization options both in size and print to meet each unique demand in the market.Speaking about their range of products, the Stores Manager said, Our inventory is a comprehensive collection of top quality packaging and shipping supplies suited for any business or personal use. Falling under major categories such as shrink products, boxes & cases, bags, cable ties & twist ties, gift & ribbon packages, and shipping supplies we have hundreds of items you can select from. Research and compliance to market trends have also seen us constantly introduce new models of packages to cover emerging areas of interest.Air cushion bubble wrap and mailers are primarily preferred when packaging or shipping products that require interleaving, void fill, cushioning, and surface protection. Constructed with pockets of air locked between the top and bottom layer of low-density polyethylene film the wraps provide a secure layer that protects fragile products while in transit. Durapak Supplies is offering bubble mailers in bulk for companies that want a lightweight but safety enhanced packaging material that will significantly reduce their shipping costs. The bubble wrap and mailers are sold in rolls which are perforated after every 12 inches to avoid hand cutting.On their customized bubble envelopes and pouches, the Sales Director said, Some items require protective shipping but are too small to be packaged using larger bubble rolls. We have designed tough; waterproof bubble lined envelopes with self-adhesive strips for ease in transporting such items. The outer covers of the envelopes are made of a strong goldenrod kraft paper making them convenient for use in mainstream shipping options. We also have self-sealing bubble poaches for inner packaging of products that are combined shipped but require minimal contacts to avoid damages.Clients looking for a clear folding box for sale made of PVC, PET, or PP have the most extensive collection of patterns, sizes, and thickness at Durapak Supplies. Folding boxes are popular for their appeal when used for retail packaging with their usage being widely for jewelry, gifts, flowers, decorations, and wine packaging. Among the types of folding boxes Durapak Supplies supplies include those with auto lock bottom, handle top, tuck top & bottom, favor boxes, round boxes, pillow boxes and cylinder boxes. The folding boxes have been designed to ease their assembly with some such as telescope and heart boxes delivered when fully set up.About Durapak SuppliesDurapak Supplies is a one-stop solution for all packaging and shipping supplies requirement. Serving the global market the company has set the highest standards for its quality of products which it offers at the lowest market rates.Contact DetailsCompany Name: Durapak Supplies1900 Tyler Ave, Unit N, South El Monte, Ca 91733, USATelephone Number: 626-350-0868Email: info@durapak.netWebsite:
Pertussis Vaccine Market Report for Period 2011 till 2023 Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, Astellas Pharma, Beijing Tiantan, Biological Products, Astellas Pharma, Minhai Biotechnology and Others

Pertussis Vaccine Market

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Global Pertussis Vaccine market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Life Sciences, Beijing Tiantan, Biological Products, Chengdu Institute of, Biological Products, Sanofi Pasteur, GSK, Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma, Astellas Pharma, Minhai Biotechnology, Wuhan Institute of, Biological Products, Changchun Changsheng and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2022, etc.Pertussis vaccine is a vaccine that protects against whooping cough. There are two main types: whole-cell vaccines and acellular vaccines. The whole-cell vaccine is about 78% effective while the acellular vaccine is 71.85% effective.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Pertussis Vaccine Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:Sanofi PasteurGSKMitsubishi Tanabe PharmaAstellas PharmaMinhai BiotechnologyWuhan Institute ofBiological ProductsChangchun ChangshengLife SciencesBeijing TiantanBiological ProductsChengdu Institute ofBiological ProductsOthersGlobal Pertussis Vaccine Market: Key Product TypeWhole-cell vaccinesAcellular vaccinesOthersGlobal Pertussis Vaccine Market: Key Application TypeChildrenAdultsOthersGlobal Pertussis Vaccine Market: Key RegionNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Others)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Others)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Others)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Others)The Global Pertussis Vaccine Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Pertussis Vaccine Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Pertussis Vaccine Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Objectives of Research1.1.1 Definition1.1.2 Specifications1.2 Market Segment1.2.1 by Type1.2.1.1 Whole-cell vaccines1.2.1.2 Acellular vaccines1.2.1.3 Others........................Continue (Global Pertussis Vaccine Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Physiological Saline Market Report for Period 2011 till 2023 Cisen, Denis Chem Lab Limited, Otsuka, Kelun Group, Baxter, Hospira (Pfizer), Fresenius Kabi and Others

Physiological Saline Market

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Global Physiological Saline market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely CR Double-Cran, SSY Group, Cisen, Denis Chem Lab Limited, SHREE KRISHNA KESHAV, Pharmally, Baxter, Hospira (Pfizer), Fresenius Kabi, BBraun, Otsuka, Kelun Group and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2022, etc.Physiological Saline is a mixture of sodium chloride in water and has a number of uses in medicine. Applied to the affected area it is used to clean wounds, help remove contact lenses, and help with dry eyes. By injection into a vein it is used to treat dehydration such as from gastroenteritis and diabetic ketoacidosis. It is also used to dilute other medications to be given by injection.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Physiological Saline Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:BaxterHospira (Pfizer)Fresenius KabiBBraunOtsukaKelun GroupCR Double-CranSSY GroupCisenDenis Chem Lab LimitedSHREE KRISHNA KESHAVPharmallyOthersGlobal Physiological Saline Market: Key Product TypeFlexible BagPlastic BottlesGlass BottlesOthersGlobal Physiological Saline Market: Key Application TypeHospitalClinicsRecovery CenterOthersGlobal Physiological Saline Market: Key RegionNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Others)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Others)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Others)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Others)The Global Physiological Saline Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Physiological Saline Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Physiological Saline Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Objectives of Research1.1.1 Definition1.1.2 Specifications1.2 Market Segment1.2.1 by Type1.2.1.1 Flexible Bag1.2.1.2 Plastic Bottles1.2.1.3 Glass Bottles1.2.2 by Application1.2.2.1 Hospital1.2.2.2 Clinics1.2.2.3 Recovery Center1.2.2.4 Other........................Continue (Global Physiological Saline Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Global Takeaway Food Market: Industry Analysis & Outlook (2017-2021)

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"The Report Global Takeaway Food Market: Industry Analysis & Outlook (2017-2021) provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"About Takeaway Food MarketThe term take-away food, describes a way of eating restaurant food outside the restaurant or a growing variety of prepared foods that consumers purchase from food stands and drive-in locations. The concept of takeaway food lies in the changing lifestyles and eating habits of people, who largely prefer takeaway food due to busy life schedule and increasing traffic congestion.Get Sample copy of this Report @Takeaway food orders are made via telephone, restaurant websites and apps, online restaurant places, and dine-ins. The US stood as the largest takeaway food market with highest revenue contribution, whereas, the UK was the largest takeaway market within Europe. Growth of the market was driven by increased urbanization, increased usage of internet worldwide, and rising use of mobile internet. Some of the noteworthy trends of the industry includes emerging multicultural population, online market place convenience and strategic mergers and acquisitions.View Report @Key challenges include barriers to entry because of high logistical complexities and tedious development and implementation of systems that accept orders online. Setting up things turn out to be very expensive and time consuming for new players in the market.The report Global Takeaway Food Market: Industry Analysis & Outlook (2017-2021) by Koncept Analytics provides a comprehensive study of global market and major regional markets. The global takeaway food market remains highly competitive consisting of several large enterprises including Just Eat Plc, Grubhub Inc., Takeaway.com and Delivery Hero. The competitive landscape of the respective market, along with the company profiles of the leading players are discussed in detail.Send An Enquiry Request @Table of Content1. Market Overview1.1 Take Away1.2 Methods for Food Delivery Orders1.3 Benefits of Food Delivery2. Global Market Analysis2.1 Global Food Services Market by Value2.2 Global Food Services Market Forecast by Value2.3 Global Takeaway Food Market2.3.1 Global Takeaway Food Market by Value2.3.2 Global Takeaway Food Market Forecast by Value2.3.3 Global Takeaway Food Market by Country2.3.4 Global Takeaway Food Market Penetration by Country3. Regional Market Analysis3.1 The US3.1.1 The US Takeaway Food Market by Value3.1.2 The US Takeaway Food Market Forecast by Value3.1.3 The US Online Food Delivery and Pickup Market by Value3.1.4 The US Online Food Delivery and Pickup Market Forecast by Value3.2 The UK3.2.1 The UK Takeaway Food Market by Value3.2.2 The UK Takeaway Food Market Forecast by Value3.2.3 The UK Takeaway Food Order Per Household3.2.4 The UK Takeaway Food Order Per Household Forecast3.2.5 The UK Takeaway Food Order by Volume3.2.6 The UK Takeaway Food Order Forecast by Volume3.2.7 The UK Takeaway Food Market by Commission3.2.8 The UK Takeaway Food Market by Commission Forecast3.3 Brazil3.3.1 Brazil Takeaway Food Market by Value3.3.2 Brazil Takeaway Food Market Forecast by Value3.3.3 Brazil Takeaway Food Market by Platform3.3.4 Brazil Takeaway Food Market Forecast by Platform3.4 Germany3.4.1 Germanys Takeaway Food Market by Value3.4.2 Germanys Takeaway Food Market Forecast by Value3.4.3 Germanys Takeaway Food Average Order Size3.4.4 Germanys Takeaway Food Average Order Size Forecast3.4.5 Germanys Takeaway Food Market by Commission3.4.6 Germanys Takeaway Food Market by Commission Forecast3.5 Netherlands3.5.1 Netherlands Takeaway Food Market by Value3.5.2 Netherlands Takeaway Food Market Forecast by Value3.5.3 Netherlands Takeaway Food Average Order Size3.5.4 Netherlands Takeaway Food Average Order Size Forecast3.5.5 Netherlands Takeaway Food Market by Commission3.5.6 Netherlands Takeaway Food Market Forecast by Commission4. Market Dynamics4.1 Growth Drivers4.1.1 Rising Urbanization4.1.2 Increasing Traffic Congestion4.1.3 High Food Pricing4.1.4 Increasing Internet and Smartphone Penetration4.2 Key Trends & Opportunities4.2.1 Emerging Multi-Cultural Population4.2.2 Online Market Place Convenience4.2.3 Mergers and Acquisitions4.2.4 High Growth Prospects in the Emerging Economies4.3 Challenges & Issues4.3.1 Barriers to Entry4.3.2 Seasonality of Demand5. Competitive Landscape5.1 Global Takeaway Food Market5.1.1 Revenue Comparison5.1.2 Market Cap Comparison5.1.3 Active Users Comparison5.1.4 Functional Operation ComparisonBuy Now @About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
New Trends of Offshore Support Vessels Market with Worldwide Industry Analysis to 2025

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Global Offshore Support Vessels Market: OverviewOffshore support vessels are a crucial class of vessels essential for the smooth function of offshore oil and gas operations. Offshore support vessels fulfil all the logistical needs of offshore petroleum platforms. Due to this, they have taken on an important role in the global petroleum industry following the acknowledgment of the declining levels of petroleum in terrestrial reservoirs, which has led to intense focus on offshore exploration and production of petroleum. The global offshore support vessel market is thus likely to grow steadily in the coming years thanks to consistent utilization in the oil and gas industry.Global Offshore Support Vessels Market: Key TrendsThe prime driver for the global offshore support vessels market is the rising investment being made in underexplored regions such as Africa and Brazil for offshore petroleum exploration and extraction. The West coast of Africa and the East coast of Brazil have become important regional segments of the global offshore support vessel market and are likely to be developed further in the coming years, resulting in steady growth prospects for the global offshore support vessels market.Request Sample Copy of the Report@Other emerging economies such as China and India are also likely to increase their investment in offshore petroleum exploration in the coming years, which bodes well for the global offshore support vessel market. Meanwhile, the North Sea has also become important for the global petroleum industry and exploration and extraction projects in the region could also generate significant revenue for the offshore support vessels industry.On the other hand, the capital-intensive pricing dynamics of the offshore support vessel market have reduced the number of viable players claiming a sizable share in the global market. The steady decrease in petroleum prices in the last two years has also had an adverse effect on the global offshore support vessels market, as it has reduced the spending power of even some of the top companies in the global petroleum sector.Request TOC of the Report @Global Offshore Support Vessels Market: Market PotentialAdapting to dire pricing dynamics has forced many offshore support vessel manufacturers to fold up or accept inconvenient mergers. According to 2017s Annual Offshore Support Journal Conference, this is likely to remain the status quo in the global offshore support vessel industry in the coming months, with many more players likely to turn to mergers in order to sustain their business. The expected recovery in the petroleum sector in 2017 and 2018 could bring comfort to the offshore support vessel industry.Offshore support vessels designed to minimize their environmental impact are likely to become popular in the coming years. Norway and other countries using the oilfields in the North Sea have been among the first to use electrically powered offshore support vessels, and vessels with onboard batteries could soon become the norm rather than exception in the global offshore support vessel industry. Battery systems can be retrofitted on many existing designs of offshore support vessels, which could further increase the scope of their adoption in the offshore support vessel industry.Get Discount @Global Offshore Support Vessels Market: Geographical DynamicsNorth America, led by the U.S., is likely to remain the leader in the global offshore support vessel market in the coming years. Asia Pacific countries such as China and Latin American countries such as Brazil and Venezuela are also likely to feature prominently in the development of the offshore support vessel market in the coming years, whereas Western African countries could also benefit strongly from the increased offshore petroleum sector operations.Global Offshore Support Vessels Market: Competitive DynamicsThe leading companies in the global offshore support vessel industry include Tidewater, Inc., Farstad Shipping ASA, Gulfmark Offshore, Inc., Havila Shipping ASA, Swire Group, Ltd., Siem Offshore, Inc., Hornbeck Offshore Services, Inc., Bourbon Corporation SA, The Maersk Group, and Seacor Marine, LLC. With steady consolidation likely to be the order of the day for the offshore support vessels industry in the coming months, larger players could benefit significantly from acquisitions and profitable mergers.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Mozzarella Cheese Market Report for Period 2017 till 2022 Groupe Lactalis S.A, EMMI, ARLA Foods, Trevisanalat, SAPUTO INC. and Others

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Global Mozzarella Cheese market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Granarolo, SAPUTO INC., Groupe Lactalis S.A, EMMI, ARLA Foods, INC., FROMAGERIES BEL S.A., Trevisanalat and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2022, etc.Mozzarella cheese originates in Italy where it was initially made from buffalo milk and eaten as fresh cheese. Mozzarella belongs to the pasta filata group of cheeses that are characterised by a distinctive fibre-like structure, which occurs as a result of kneading/stretching fresh cheese curd in hot water.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Mozzarella Cheese Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:ARLA Foods, INC.FROMAGERIES BEL S.A.TrevisanalatGranaroloSAPUTO INC.Groupe Lactalis S.AEMMIOthersGlobal Mozzarella Cheese Market: Key Product TypeFresh Mozzarella CheeseProcessed Mozzarella CheeseOthersGlobal Mozzarella Cheese Market: Key Application TypeResidential UseFood processOthersGlobal Mozzarella Cheese Market: Key RegionNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Others)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Others)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Others)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Others)The Global Mozzarella Cheese Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Mozzarella Cheese Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Mozzarella Cheese Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Market Segment Overview1.1.1 Product Definition1.1.2 Market by Type1.1.2.1 Fresh Mozzarella Cheese1.1.2.2 Processed Mozzarella Cheese1.1.3 Market by Application1.1.3.1 Residential Use1.1.3.2 Food process........................Continue (Global Mozzarella Cheese Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Perimeter Intrusion Detection Systems Market Research and Forecast Analysis Report of Top Countries 2017 - 2025

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Global Perimeter Intrusion Detection Systems Market: OverviewPerimeter intrusion detection systems are made up of sensors and other instruments that offer protection to end users by helping them detect intrusions in their perimeter/property in time for assessment and action. The various types of sensors used in these systems, include infrared sensors, microwave sensors, radar sensors, and fiber-optic sensors. They can be deployed in open area, fences, and underground. Some of the common verticals where these systems are used are military and defense, transportation sector, government, industrial, commercial, and correctional facilities. Based on service, the global perimeter intrusion detection systems market can be segmented into managed services, risk assessment and analysis, system integration and consulting, and maintenance and support.Global Perimeter Intrusion Detection Systems Market: Key TrendsOver the past few years, there has been a sharp rise in terrorism and infiltration activities. To maintain the security of the common mass and data of high importance, governments worldwide are investing hefty sums in security systems, which is, thus, fuelling the global perimeter intrusion detection systems market. Moreover, the enforcement of stringent government regulations on perimeter security is working in favor of the market. These systems enable significant reduction in the cost of manpower, which is helping the global market in gaining tremendous momentum.Request Sample Copy of the Report@On the flip side, the high rate of false alarms with the existing perimeter intrusion detection systems is hampering the growth of the global market. Furthermore, issues pertaining to the integration of existing systems with new technologies are keeping the market from realizing its utmost potential.Global Perimeter Intrusion Detection Systems Market: Market PotentialA trend that is likely to revolutionize the global perimeter intrusion detection systems market is the emergence of video surveillance and analytics. The rapid pace of technological innovation in video analytics is adding extra value to intrusion detection solutions. The vast improvements in efficiency, capability, and reliability are pushing analytics from the periphery to the mainstream and thereby, pushing the global market. The prospects of this trend are likely to attract players in the global perimeter intrusion detection systems market to focus towards incorporating video analytics in their offerings.The practice of collaboration and agreements between market players is also paving way for breakthrough technologies that will shape the future of the global market. For instance, in April 2017, Magal Security Systems Ltd. announced a corporation agreement with Dynamatic Technologies Ltd. to provide smart perimeter intrusion detection systems to address the security challenges and prevent infiltration by terrorists in India.Request TOC of the Report @Global Perimeter Intrusion Detection Systems Market: Geographical SegmentationThe key segments analyzed in the research report are Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, Europe, and Rest of the World. North America will be a prominent destination for market players. The growth of the region can be attributed to sizeable budget allocated by governments for the defense sector and pressing need for security against terrorist activities. Moreover, the rapid advancements in the underlying technologies and high focus on product innovation are propelling the growth of the region.Latin America is expected to emerge as an attractive pocket for global participants. Continuous innovations in perimeter intrusion detection systems to effectively counter intrusion threats are supplementing the growth of the region. Countries such as Brazil and Argentina will be sights of high growth rate in the region.Get Discount @Global Perimeter Intrusion Detection Systems Market: Competitive LandscapeA raft of players in the global perimeter intrusion detection systems market are adopting mergers and acquisitions as key growth strategies to expand their offerings. Besides this, key participants are paying high attention to product launches and partnerships to ensure inorganic growth in the market. In addition, players are pouring large funds into research and development of advanced products, which will help them in boosting their visibility in the market. Some of the prominent companies operating in the global perimeter intrusion market are Honeywell International Inc., Tyco International Plc., Schneider Electric, Axis Communications AB, FLIR Systems Inc., Senstar Corporation, Advanced Perimeter Systems Limited, Anixter International Inc., and Southwest Microwave.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Micro Turbine Market Key Profile- Capstone Turbine Corporation, FlexEnergy, Inc., Ansaldo Energia S.p.A, Eneftech Innovation SA, Microturbine Technology BV, Calnetix Technologies LLC

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Market HighlightsGrowing clean electricity demand coupled with growing concern for reducing carbon footprint and the aging grid infrastructure, will boost the global micro turbine market over the forecast period. Micro turbines are used as an alternative energy source for power generation. They are widely known for their function of cogeneration of heat and power.Micro turbines are widely accepted across the world in the industrial & commercial sectors owing to growing demand of combined heat and power in industries such as, oil & gas, construction, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, waste water treatment, and mining among others.Micro Turbine Market is expected to grow over the CAGR of around 10% during the period 2017 to 2023Asia-Pacific region is expected to dominate the marketNorth America led the global micro turbine market, owing to increased consumption of energy and growing awareness of carbon footprint in the region. The U.S. dominated the North America micro turbine market, due to several potential advantages over other technologies for small-scale generation. The shale gas activities in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico is expected to contribute in the development of micro turbine market in the region.Request a Sample Copy @Key PlayersThe key players of the global micro turbine market are Capstone Turbine Corporation (U.S.), FlexEnergy, Inc. (U.S.), Ansaldo Energia S.p.A (Italy), Brayton Energy LLC. (U.S.), Eneftech Innovation SA (Switzerland), Microturbine Technology BV (the Netherlands), Wilson Solarpower Corporation (U.S.), ICR Turbine Engine Corporation (U.S.), Calnetix Technologies LLC (U.S.), Toyota Motor Corporation (Japan), Bladon Jets (Isle of Man) others.Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 50 market data tables and figures spread in 110 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Global Micro Turbine Market Research Report  Forecast to 2023Scope of the ReportThe scope of the study segments the global micro turbine market by its power rating, application, by end-user and by region.By Application Cogeneration Standby PowerBy Power Rating 12 kW -50 kW 50 kW-250 kW 250 kW-500 kWBy End-User Industries Commercial ResidentialBy Regions North America Asia-Pacific Europe Rest of the WorldFor further information on this report, visit @Table of Content1 Executive Summary2 Research Methodology2.1 Scope Of The Study2.1.1 Definition2.1.2 Research Objective2.1.3 Assumptions2.1.4 Limitations2.2 Research Process2.2.1 Primary Research2.2.2 Secondary Research2.3 Market Size Estimation2.4 Forecast Model3 Market Dynamics3.1 Market Drivers3.2 Market Inhibitors3.3 Supply/Value Chain Analysis3.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis4 Global Shunt Capacitor Market, By Application4.1 Introduction4.2 Cogeneration4.3 Standby Power5 Global Shunt Capacitor Market, By Power RatingContinueAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
US Automotive Parts Aluminium & Magnesium Die Casting Market Report 2017, Trends, Analysis, Share, Estimates and Forecasts to 2022.

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The US Automotive Parts Aluminium & Magnesium Die-Casting report provides an in-depth analysis of the various market segments and its sub-segments.Product types Covered: Pressure die casting Semi-solid die casting Squeeze die casting Vacuum die castingApplications Covered: Body assemblies Engine Parts Transmission parts OthersFor More, Please Visit:The report focuses on current and upcoming market trends such as Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, and Challenges, technological advancements, Porters Five Forces analysis to assess the intensity of competition in the market. The market values are presented in the form of tables and graphs for better interpretation.Market Size EstimationsThe market assessment is made by the core industry experts using our 360 research approach. The data is derived from the most reliable, authenticated data sources and is validated by the industry experts (Primary Research). Both top down and bottom up analysis are implemented to enhance the accuracy of the market figures. The market projections are calculated for the next 8 years using the actual market numbers of previous year as the base year.Company ProfilingThis section provides the overview of the key players that are leading in the industry, covering their business operations, financials, list of products & services, SWOT analysis, major developments such as mergers & acquisitions, agreements, partnerships, joint ventures, new product launch, expansions etc.Report Highlights:- Market share assessments for all the mentioned market segments and sub-segments- Market share analysis of the top industry players- Strategic recommendations for the new entrants- Market forecasts for a minimum of 8 years for all the given segments- Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)- Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations- Competitive landscaping, mapping the key common trends- Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments- Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancementsFor More, Please Visit:We offer wide spectrum of research and consulting services with in-depth knowledge of different industries. We are known for customized research services, consulting services and Full Time Equivalent (FTE) services in the research world. We explore the market trends and draw our insights with valid assessments and analytical views. We use advanced techniques and tools among the quantitative and qualitative methodologies to identify the market trends. Our research reports and publications are routed to help our clients to design their business models and enhance their business growth in the competitive market scenario. We have a strong team with hand-picked consultants including project managers, implementers, industry experts, researchers, research evaluators and analysts with years of experience in delivering the complex projects.STRATISTICS MRC17049 King James Way, Gaithersburg,MD, 20877, USA
Thermal Energy Storage Market is Anticipated to Show the Robust Growth During 2017 - 2025

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Global Thermal Energy Storage Market: OverviewThermal energy storage systems consist of an insulating medium or combination of media that can hold on to captured heat for long periods. Thus, thermal energy systems are essentially thermal batteries that store energy in terms of temperature difference instead of potential difference.The rising awareness regarding the adverse effects of the use of greenhouse gases for energy generation has been one of the key drivers for the global thermal energy storage market in the recent past. While the use of renewable sources of energy has picked up steam in recent years, the renewable energy sector faces a considerable problem in the lack of consistent energy production from renewable energy sources. Thermal energy storage has been mooted as a solution in this regard and is likely to become a key part of the global renewable energy market in the coming years.Request Sample Copy of the Report@Global Thermal Energy Storage Market: Key TrendsThe rising use of combined energy generation units, wherein energy is harnessed from two or more renewable sources simultaneously, is a prime driver for the global thermal energy storage market. Solar and wind energy generation can usually be conducted on the same site and often on the same device. However, both solar and wind energy suffer from the lack of a reliable energy storage mechanism, as both energy sources are available infrequently. A rising number of residential as well as commercial consumers, particularly in developed countries, have started to install combined energy generation systems on their own land, which is likely to drive the demand for thermal energy storage systems in the coming years.Utilities distributors are also playing an important role in the development of the global thermal energy storage market. While the use of smart grids will help distributors provide utilities uniformly, the installation of thermal energy storage can help further smoothen the process.Request TOC of the Report @On the other hand, despite the steady rise in the demand from the thermal energy storage market, the high cost of thermal energy storage technology is likely to hamper the growth of the market to some extent. Despite the rising demand for thermal energy storage technologies from the utilities sector, the thermal energy storage industry needs to achieve parity with other non-storage options.Global Thermal Energy Storage Market: Market PotentialDue to the high costs of developing and installing thermal energy storage systems, the market needs government support to enable widespread adoption. Developed countries such as the U.S. are likely to be at the forefront, with Maryland becoming the first American state to incentivize the use of energy storage with tax credits. The bill was passed in April 2017 and could be the first step in establishing a well-maintained and efficient power storage and distribution infrastructure that takes into account the variety of energy sources used in a modern economy.Get Discount @Global Thermal Energy Storage Market: Geographical DynamicsThe global thermal energy storage market is expected to be dominated by the Middle East and Africa (MEA) in the coming years, as the region receives abundant solar power and is also home to a power-intensive industrial sector. Europe and Asia Pacific could also play key roles in the growth of the global thermal energy storage market in the coming years due to the rising emphasis on solar power in both regions.Global Thermal Energy Storage Market: Competitive DynamicsThe report also discusses the competitive landscape of the global thermal energy storage market in detail by profiling the leading players operating in it. The key companies examined in the report include Ice Energy, Calmac, SolarReserve LLC, and Abengoa Solar.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Medical Imaging Reagents Market | Analysis and Key Trends 2019

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A new research report has been recently published by Transparency Market Research and made available for sale on the company website. The research report, titled Medical Imaging Reagents Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2013 - 2019, provides an in-depth analysis of the global medical imaging reagents market.Browse the full Medical Imaging Reagents Market (Class: Contrast Reagents, Optical Reagents and Nuclear Reagents; Technology: Nanoparticles, Fluorescent Proteins, Fluorescent Dyes and Probes, Radiopharmaceuticals and Quantum Dots & Application: Diagnostics, Drug Discovery and Development and Research and Development) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2013 - 2019 report @According to the research study, in 2012, the global market for medical imaging reagents was worth US$10.3 bn and is projected to reach US$18.5 bn by the end of 2019, exhibiting a progressive 8.80% CAGR from 2013 to 2019.Some of the key factors boosting the medical imaging reagents market are the growing demand for diagnostic and functional imaging technologies and the rising incidence of cardiac disorders and cancers. The increasing opportunities of application of advanced medical reagents and rising concern for the safety of patients have propelled the medical imaging reagents market. However, the increased cost of development, supply shortages, lack of awareness, and rigid reimbursement structures are some of the factors that are expected to curb the growth of this market in the near future.Request to download and view full ToC -By class, the global market for medical imaging reagents is divided into nuclear reagents, contrast reagents, and optical reagents. In 2011, the contrast reagents segment held a share of 44% in the global market. Nevertheless, the nuclear reagents segment is estimated to exhibit a high growth rate in the forecast period owing to the increased adoption of localized tracers and nuclear medicine. By technology, the global market for medical imaging reagents is classified into radiopharmaceuticals, fluorescent proteins, nanoparticles, and quantum dots. Among all the segments, the nanoparticles segment is estimated to grow rapidly, exhibiting an 8% CAGR from 2013 to 2019.By application, the global market for medical imaging reagents is categorized into drug discovery and development, diagnostics, and research and development. Among the several applications, the drug discovery and development segment is expected to witness high growth throughout the forecast period thanks to the high adoption of medical imaging reagents in pre-clinical studies. On the flip side, the diagnostics application segment held the largest share in the overall market in terms of revenue due to the rising number of patients suffering from chronic disorders such as cancers, neurological diseases, and cardiovascular diseases.Request to view Sample Report -The global medical imaging reagents market has been segmented on the basis of geography into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. Among all the regions, North America dominates the overall market owing to the growing prevalence of cardiovascular and neurological diseases and cancer in this region and growing awareness about advanced imaging reagents. North America is followed by Europe. On the other hand, the Asia Pacific medical imaging reagents market is expected to witness rapid growth due to the robust economic advancements and increasing demand for nonionizing imaging reagents observed in recent years.The research report further covers a vendor analysis of the global medical imaging reagents market including company overview, inception details, financial overview, business strategies, mergers and acquisitions, and recent developments. The prominent players operating in the market include Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, Bracco Imaging SpA, Bayer Healthcare AG, Lantheus Medical Imaging, Inc., Siemens Healthcare, and GE Healthcare.Medical Imaging Reagents Market Report is available @ US$ 5795About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Geriatric Care Services Market | Analysis and Key Trends 2019

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Transparency Market Research has published a new research report that offers a holistic view of the global geriatric care services market. According to the research report, titled Geriatric Care Services Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2013 - 2019, the market shows a positive growth trend due to several reasons. Research analysts have studied this market using SWOT analysis to highlight the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing the market. Additionally, the research report uses Porters five forces analysis to shed light on the threat of new entrants, the threat of substitute products or services, the bargaining power of customers (buyers), the bargaining power of suppliers, and the intensity of competitive rivalry.Browse the full Geriatric Care Services Market (Home Care, Adult Day Care, and Institutional Care) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2013 - 2019 report @According to the research report, the global geriatric care services market is expected to surge at a CAGR of 5.90% from 2013 to 2019 to reach a figure of US$850 bn by the end of 2019. The global geriatric care services market is expected to grow due to the convenience they offer and the cost-efficient solutions they come with. Furthermore, the lack of nursing home options in developing countries will also fuel the home care services segment in the coming years.Request to download and view full ToC -The global geriatric care services market is segmented on the basis of type and geography. The types of geriatric care services in the global market are home care, adult day care, and institutional care. The home care segment is further divided into health care and non-medical care. The health care is inclusive of medical care, telehealth, physiotherapy services, palliative care, and hospice care, whereas the non-medical home care sub-segment includes personal care, meals and grocery, home making, rehabilitation, and others. The adult day care segment is composed of non-medical care and health care. The institutional care segment is sub-segmented into nursing homes, hospital-based, assisted living, and independent senior living. The nursing home sub-segment includes hospice care and palliative care.Request to view Sample Report -Geographically, this market is segmented into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World. Of all the regions, North America is expected to dominate the global geriatric care services market in the coming years. This regions success will be closely followed by Europe.The research report on the global geriatric care services market offers a complete analysis of the competitive landscape of the market. It profiles some of the key players in this market such as GGNSC Holdings LLC, Amedisys Inc., Brookdale Senior Living Inc., Genesis HealthCare LLC, Home Instead Senior Care Inc., Gentiva Health Services Inc., Senior Care Centers of America, Sunrise Senior Living LLC, Kindred Healthcare Inc., Extendicare Health Services Inc., and Skilled Healthcare Group Inc. The research also shares a comprehensive overview of the global geriatric care services market by sharing details pertaining to the financial overview, research and development activities, business and marketing strategies, and investment outlook of the key companies for the near future.Geriatric Care Services Market Report is available @ US$ 5795About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Tuesday, October 24, 2017

The Delaware Supreme Court has disbarred a Pennsylvania attorney who was found to have committed serious misconduct while admitted pro hac vice in a medical malpractice action.

The attorney failed to disclose his defendant doctor client's alteration of records, false testimony and fraudulent conduct.

The appended report of the Board on Professional Responsibility concludes that the attorney failed to take reasonable remedial action in light of his client's false deposition and trial testimony.

The underlying conduct involved the doctor's evaluation of a baby's jaundice. (Mike Frisch)

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/10/the-delaware-supreme-court-has-disbarred-a-pennsylvania-attorney-who-was-found-to-have-committed-serious-misconduct-while-adm.html
Pasta Sauce Market Report for Period 2017 till 2022 Barilla, Mizkan, Dolmio, Premier Foods, Knorr, Giovanni Rana, Campbell, Newmans Own and Others

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Global Pasta Sauce market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Campbell, Premier Foods, Knorr, Giovanni Rana, Leggos, Del Monte Foods, Sacla, Francesco Rinaldi, Private Labels, NAPOLINA, Barilla, Mizkan, Dolmio, Hunts, Heinz, Newmans Own, B&G Foods and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2022, etc.Pasta sauce is commonly used to make paste a better taste. Generally speaking, Pasta sauce is divided into red sauce, green sauce, white sauce and black sauce. Red sauce is mainly made of tomato sauce, which is the most common basis of many flavors; green sauce made of basil, pine nuts and olive oil, is more special and rich; white sauce made of salt-free sauce, is mainly for the baked noodles, thousands of layers and seafood category of pasta; black sauce is made of cuttlefish sauce.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Pasta Sauce Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:BarillaMizkanDolmioHuntsHeinzNewmans OwnB&G FoodsCampbellPremier FoodsKnorrGiovanni RanaLeggosDel Monte FoodsSaclaFrancesco RinaldiPrivate LabelsNAPOLINAOthersGlobal Pasta Sauce Market: Key Product TypeRed SauceGreen SauceWhite SauceBlack SauceOthersGlobal Pasta Sauce Market: Key Application TypeDried PastaFresh PastaOthersGlobal Pasta Sauce Market: Key RegionNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Others)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Others)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Others)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Others)The Global Pasta Sauce Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Pasta Sauce Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Pasta Sauce Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Market Segment Overview1.1.1 Product Definition1.1.2 Market by Type1.1.2.1 Red Sauce1.1.2.2 Green Sauce1.1.2.3 White Sauce1.1.2.4 Black Sauce1.1.3 Market by Application1.1.3.1 Dried Pasta1.1.3.2 Fresh Pasta1.1.3.3 Others........................Continue (Global Pasta Sauce Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Global Industrial Pump Rental Market 2017: Xylem, Holland Pump, Selwood, Global Pump, Barco Pump

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Global Industrial Pump Rental Market 2017-2022QY Market Research include new Industrial Pump Rental market research report "2016-2022 Report on Global Industrial Pump Rental Market Competition, Status and Forecast, Market Size by Players, Regions, Type, Application" to its huge collection of research reports.This report on the global Industrial Pump Rental market is highly helpful because it covers all the aspects which are important in deciding the future of this industry. The Industrial Pump Rental report is collated by full-fledged analysts who have created use of their market intelligence to explain all basic and crucial knowledge regarding the worldwide Industrial Pump Rental industry.Get Free Sample of Report Here:The Industrial Pump Rental market report makes use of tables, charts, graphs, maps, and statistics to present the data in the easiest way to understand. The Industrial Pump Rental market report is a comprehensive analysis of the key factors impacting the global Industrial Pump Rental industry. This Industrial Pump Rental market report includes both the driving factors as well as the restraining factors that are influencing the market's performance positively and negatively, respectively.Top Manufacturers Analysis Of This Research Report,XylemMWIUnited RentalsCornell PumpThompson Pump Siemens HealthcareHolland PumpIntegrated Pump RentalSelwoodACTIONGlobal PumpBarco PumpTsurumiThe present trends shaping the worldwide Industrial Pump Rental market and the way it will influence the Industrial Pump Rental market within the future are studied. Additionally to this, the future opportunities within the Industrial Pump Rental market that have the potential to assist the market to expand are given within the Industrial Pump Rental report.Enquire Here:The segments inside the global Industrial Pump Rental industry and their sub-segments also are studied in detail. This ensures that the whole Industrial Pump Rental market is covered. The leading segment along with the declining segment and also the most promising segment has been given during this Industrial Pump Rental report. This helps the newcomers, shareholders, readers, stockholders and leading manufacturers to choose which segment or sub-segment to speculate on therefore on acquire most profits.The Industrial Pump Rental market report discusses the degree of competition, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, and a threat of substitutes, both internal and external substitute of Industrial Pump Rental market. The threat of recent entrants or the barriers experienced by new and prime players in getting into the worldwide Industrial Pump Rental market has been mentioned. This offers new players a plan on whether or not they will exist within the competitive Industrial Pump Rental industry.About Us:Business Worldwide is a trusted brand in the research industry with a capability of commissioning complex projects within a short span of time with high level of accuracy. At Business Worldwide, we believe in building long-term relations with our clients. Our services cover a broad spectrum of industries including Energy, Chemicals and Materials, Automotive, Software and Aerospace.Contact Us:Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803
Teleradiology Market | Analysis and Key Trends 2026

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According to National Institute of Cancer, 448.7 new cancer cases per 100,000 men and women are diagnosed each year in the US. Taking into account the gravity of such details, the demand for teleradiology is expected to surge not just in the US, but in regions witnessing higher concurrence of cancer. In its latest report, Future Market Insights assesses that the global demand for teleradiology will soar vigorously in the years to come. And, the report projects that largest share of global teleradiology revenues will be emanating from the US alone. The country will not only account for dominance of North America in the global teleradiology market, but by the end of 2026, US teleradiology revenues will have closed in on US$ 5.5 Bn value. During this period, the US teleradiology market is expected to reflect a sizeable gain of 416 BPS, exhibiting a stellar CAGR of 22.3%.View Report-According to Future Market Insights, the global market for teleradiology is presently valued at US$ 1.9 Bn, and is anticipated to be worth US$ 13.2 Bn by the end of 2026, reflecting a CAGR of 21%. The report, titled Teleradiology Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026, has analysed the global teleradiology market by splitting other parts of the world from the US. Dominance of US on the global teleradiology market is expected to remain throughout the forecast. Teleradiology Solutions, Argus Radiology, USARAD Holdings, Inc., TeleDiagnosys Services Pvt. Ltd., Imaging Advantage, Foundation Radiology Group, Direct Radiology, Imaging On Call, LLC, ONRAD, Inc., Rays (Envision Healthcare Company), StatRad LLC, ARIS Radiology, NightShift Radiology, Mednax, Inc., Alta Vista TeleRadiology, and Quality Nighthawk are US-based companies actively participating in the growth of global teleradiology market.Request to download and view full ToC -However, the report also anticipates higher contribution from Europe and the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region. By the end of 2026, the teleradiology market in Europe will have reached US$ 2.76 Bn in value, while teleradiology revenues accounted the APEJ region will record fastest growth at 24.6% CAGR. European healthcare companies such as Global Diagnostics (Integral Diagnostics), 4ways Healthcare Limited, Medica Group PLC, Teleconsult Europe, and Telemedicine Clinic are also observed as key market players. The report has also profiled companies such as Everlight Radiology, SRL Diagnostics, and Vital Radiology Services, which are based across the APEJ region.Easy Access to Teleradiology Promoting its AdoptionThe report has observed that increasing consumer awareness regarding teleradiology & easy accessibility of this technology are boosting the markets growth at considerable extent. Due to online availability of the radiology series, diagnostic images of complex problems can be shared between professionals within a medical setting. Moreover, local clinicians or radiologists can get opinions from subspecialists in order to make informed decision. Active participation and initiatives taken by various government and non-profit organizations to spread awareness regarding telemedicine worldwide is also expected to fuel growth of the global teleradiology market.Request to view Sample Report -Global Teleradiology Market: Key Research HighlightsA majority of teleradiologists will be preferring CT-scan as the modality for diagnosis, revenues from which are expected to surge at 23.6% CAGRMRI scan and ultrasound scans will also be prominent modes of carrying out teleradiological diagnosisWhile hospitals & clinics, collectively, will remain the largest end-users of teleradiology, the demand for such diagnostic technology is expected to gain traction across ambulatory surgical centres (ASCs)By 2026-end, ASCs will account for an estimated 30% share of global teleradiology revenuesTeleradiology Market Report is available @ US$ 5000ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Singapore based start-up, Social Weaver, launches a new one-stop platform that solves a myriad of problems for time-starved young parents.

New Singapore-based parenting site Social Weaver has just launched this October and has raised pre-seed funding from a pool of prominent angel investors, such as Deepak G Gurnani, and banking and tech professionals both in Singapore and abroad.Social Weaver is a one-stop platform that allows parents to discover and book local services for their family, review products or services, and write in queries to other parents. It has a curated database of 4000 recommended service providers on the island, spread across a hundred categories. It also aims to be the go-to marketplace for service providers to connect with parents, promote their services, and easily build and manage leads.Founded by SumedhaKhoche and KaivalyaGundu, who are both professionals-turned-entrepreneurs as well as mothers, Social Weavers mission is to help parents spend more time with their children and less time searching for information online. Frustrated by their own online searches, they found that they needed a reliable resource that combined information relevant to them with local community knowledge, without the sponsored product promotions that are common in most parenting sites.As they began talking to other parents, they realized that it was not a problem they faced alone and that it was a viable business opportunity for Southeast Asia which has over 64 million parents and a $20 billion childcare market.I think Social Weaver is making a bold attempt to solve this problem, and their approach to becoming a one-stop marketplace for parenting needs hasn't been tried before by other sites in this industry, says angel investor and entrepreneur SudhanshuTewari.While there are other parenting websites out there, Social Weaver is unique because it focuses on building a large data bank of local knowledge. According to Khoche, who is Co-Founder and the CEO, so many questions that parents have are local and related to the neighborhood or city. We want to make the discovery and booking of great local services instant and fuss-free, so we simplify the process for both parents and service providers, she says. Angel investor Harish Narayan also believes that this is an underserved space. Nothing out there is local, organized and curated so having a player like Social Weaver is necessary, he says.Harish Narayan, along with SudhanshuTewari, CEO of Rewardz, and seasoned tech investor Deepak G Gurnani are among those who have participated in this round of funding.Service providers, like Sport4Kids and Genah Lim (Director of Beauty Mums and Babies), who have signed on believing that Social Weaver will give them greater visibility and also enable them to use the data analytics tools that the platform provides to enhance their business and serve their customers better with personalized options.In today's digital age, Social Weaver aims to deliver the wisdom of grandparents, the care of experts and the power of discovery at our fingertips. Hence this aggregation model provides for unique investment opportunity for me, says Mr. Deepak G Gurnani. Social Weaver has uniquely positioned itself as an evolving platform where the parental community comes together to learn and retool themselves, in order to best cope the demanding needs of parenting in the current high-stress environment of urban living.About Social WeaverNamed after the Social Weaverbird, which builds spectacular community nests, this platform aims at being an online nest of parenting wisdom. It is a one-stop, reliable content-community-commerce platform that allows parents to discover and book local services, write in queries and review products or services. It has a curated database of 4000 recommended service providers in Singapore, spread across a hundred categories, so the answers to parenting queries from pregnancy to pre-school and beyond are only a click away. The site also aims to be the go-to marketplace for service providers to connect with parents, making their own CRM more efficient and effective.Social Weavers Management Team has decades of experience in Tech, FMCG and Finance companies including Pepsi Co., Procter & Gamble, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Wachovia Securities.For media inquiries, please contact:Alyssa Reinosohello@socialweaver.co+65 6653 8826We are building a Yelp for Parenting in S.E. Asia. Our founders have decades of experience in blue-chip consumer goods, consulting and technology firms. Our tech and business ninjas are a small but mighty team of experienced, multidisciplinary product managers, designers, marketers, and developers. Borders, office hours, hierarchy are archaic concepts for us but we value integrity, transparency, and simplicity. Our team is distributed across Singapore (HQ) and Pune, India.About Social WeaverAt Social Weaver, our mission is to enable you to spend more time with your children by providing you with the information you need to make parenting decisions so that you can be in the know without spending hours online. From pregnancy to pre-school and beyond, we give parents like you relevant information through high quality, unsponsored content that will help you make quicker and more informed decisions.Social Weaver also aims to be the go-to CRM/Marketing SaaS partner for service providers that serve parents- less stress, higher ROIs and more time dedicated to delivering a great service rather than chasing administrative or social media to dos.Social Weaver Pte Ltd02-05, 79, Ayer Rajah Avenue, SG, 268818For media inquiries, please contact:Alyssa Reinosohello@socialweaver.co+65 6653 8826
Weatherproof Camera Market Key Players - Vicon Motion Systems, Arlo Corporation, FLIR Systems by Forecast to 2023

Weatherproof Camera Market

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Market Highlights:Weatherproof surveillance cameras is used to capture excellent footage, similar to that of high-quality indoor surveillance camera. These camera are resistant to water and survive in all-weather condition. Weatherproof camera can be used to detect motion and generate alarms and thereby, more effective monitoring can be achieved. It supports security surveillance at home or offices at challenging environments.The weatherproof camera market is expected to grow at approximately USD 9 Billion by 2023, at 7% of CAGR between 2017 and 2023.The study indicates city infrastructure to boost the market of Weatherproof Camera Market Infrastructure development, growing urbanization and expansion of business across globe are few of the significant factors driving the growth of the market. The study indicates, government initiatives regarding safety of citizens from foreign attacks and strong border security implementation with water resistant camera is boosting the market growth. The study also indicates that enterprises are implementing safety measures for employees within and outside the work premise. That contributes to the growth of weatherproof camera market. High adoption of weatherproof cameras by photographers, security agencies, enterprises and government organization is boosting the weatherproof camera market.Request a Sample Report @Major Key Players: Vicon Motion Systems (U.K.) Arlo Corporation (U.S.) FLIR Systems (U.S.) Honeywell International Inc. (U.S.) Shenzhen Heshi Technologies Co.Ltd (China) Nest Cam (U.S.) Pelco Corporate (U.S.) Amcrest Technologies (U.S.) Zosi Technology Co. Ltd (Hongkong) Frontpoint Security Solutions (U.S.)Regional Analysis:The regional analysis of weatherproof camera market is being studied for region such as Asia Pacific, North America, Europe and Rest of the World. North America is one of the leading player in the weatherproof camera market owing to major camera manufacturers present in the region.The emergence of HD analog products is engaging a new, lower-end market. Asia-Pacific region is expected to have fastest growth in the market due to the growing number of weatherproof camera manufacturers and increasing infrastructure development.Weatherproof Camera Market Segmentation:The weatherproof camera market has been segmented on the basis of product, type and application. The range segmentation includes waterproof upto 100 feet. Waterproof upto 100 feet camera comprised of GPS system, interactive world map and Wi-Fi connectivity, plus an altimeter and underwater depth instrument for measurement. It offer users with high resolution service and function down to a depth of 100 feet.Market Research Analysis:Regional analysis for weatherproof camera market is studied in different geographic regions such as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of World. North America region is mainly dominating the market due to advanced technology implementation in security system. European region is also gaining growth owing to increase demand of citizens and investment by government in weatherproof camera market.Europe region is facing frequent terror attacks that enable government and security agencies to implement advanced and powerful security equipments to combat foreign attacks. The protection of citizen in the region and across the border has risen the need for strong security surveillance gadgets. Asia-Pacific region is the prominent player in the weatherproof camera market owing to advanced infrastructure development from countries such as China and India is boosting the market growth. Increasing urbanization, business expansion across and industrial developments is driving the growth of weatherproof camera in the region.Weatherproof Camera Market (MRFR) Research Analysis:By range segment, weatherproof camera can be water resistant upto 50 feet. This camera has gauges to measure air or water pressure, altitude or depth and shows electronic compass directions which is useful for climbing and trekking.By region, MRFR analysis shows that North America region accounts for largest market share in weatherproof camera owing to growing security concerns of citizens and frequent occurrence of natural calamities that is effecting the security devices. Asia-Pacific region is constantly investing into research and development of weatherproof camera market to directly address the security of citizens. Europe region is one of the prominent player in weatherproof camera market to combat terror attacks and security & safety of citizens. The region is investing into strong border security for safeguarding the citizens from foreign attacks.Browse Full Report Details @Intended Audience: Investors and consultants System Integrators Government Organizations Research/Consultancy firms Technology solution providers IT Solution Providers Original Equipment ManufacturersTable of Contents1 Market Introduction1.1 Introduction1.2 Scope of Study1.2.1 Research Objective1.2.2 Assumptions1.2.3 Limitations1.3 Market Structure2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Type2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research2.4 Forecast Model2.4.1 Market Data Collection, Analysis & Forecast2.4.2 Market Size EstimationContinuedList of TablesTable 1 Weatherproof Camera Market, By ProductTable 2 Weatherproof Camera Market, By RangeContinuedList of FiguresFigure 1 Research TypeFigure 2 Weatherproof Camera Market: By Product (%)ContinuedAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 524/528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Substantial Growth in Second-hand Market Likely to Drive Stairlift Market

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The global stairlift market is expected to cross US$1.7 billion, growing at a CAGR of 8.4% during the period 20162022The Stair Lift Market  Global Outlook and Forecast 20172022 is the latest report published by Arizton Advisory & Intelligence. The report includes a holistic view of the global stairlift market and examines the factors that are going to drive the market growth during the forecast period 2016-2022.View report: Stair Lift Market  Global Outlook and Forecast 2017  2022The report discusses the emerging trends and opportunities that are likely to shape the global market growth. Although the primary reason for the growth of the stairlift market is due to growing aging population, there is an increased number of people with no disabilities purchasing in the second hand market at a low price with no insurance requirements. Used stairlifts are often viewed as an inexpensive alternative for a limited time usage. The potential source for second hand lifts includes friends, neighbours, and acquaintances of deceased users, who wish to offload them quickly. The not-for-profit enterprises (charity shops) are the most popular offline choice for used stairlift shopping.Also, there is a significant growth in the second hand stairlift market are sold at many specialist retailer outlets  in store and online. The sites such as eBay and Amazon have listed various stairlifts and accessories from vendors, and the buyer can purchase both new and second hand lifts online. It has become a reliable avenue for customers, and retailers are looking to maximize sales with aggressive discounting. Mainstream retailers offer an experience for customers, however, they still find it a challenge to get people into stores when online retailers are offering convenience and money-saving options.Better Knowledge of Mobility Equipment among Disabled and Elderly Population Will Affect the Stairlift Market GrowthThe stairlift market counts disabled, the elderly, and those with mobility-related challenges, including knee issues, osteoporosis, heart ailments, and obesity. While developed economies fare better in ensuring the access to public health infrastructure, developing countries are still catching up with the liberalization of their economies. Major economies including India, Brazil, China, and Indonesia have started to open up their healthcare industries to foreign investments in the realms of hospital infrastructure, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and health insurance.View report: Stair Lift Market  Global Outlook and Forecast 2017  2022Source:About AriztonArizton  Advisory and Intelligence is an innovation and quality-driven firm, which offers cutting-edge research solutions to clients across the world. We excel in providing comprehensive market intelligence reports and advisory and consulting services.Arizton has gained a paramount standpoint in the market research arena as it offers top of the line solutions to clients to assess market landscape and to finalize foolproof business strategies. We are committed to provide inclusive market research reports and consulting services to clients from diversified industries including Consumer Goods & Retail Technology, Automotive and Mobility, Smart Tech, Healthcare and Lifesciences, Industrial Machinery, Chemicals and Materials, IT and Media, Logistics and PackagingArizton comprises a team of exuberant and well-experienced analysts who have mastered in generating incisive reports. Our specialist analysts possess exemplary skills in market research. We train our team in advanced research practices, techniques, and ethics to outperform in fabricating impregnable research reports.Arizton Advisory & IntelligenceChicago, Illinois, 60605Mail: enquiry@arizton.comCall: +1-312-465-7864
Global Insurance for HNWIs Market 2017: Nationwide, Tokio Marine, Argo Group, Hanover Insurance, Manulife

Insurance for HNWIs Market 2017

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Global Insurance for HNWIs Market 2017-2022QY Market Research include new Insurance for HNWIs market research report "2016-2022 Report on Global Insurance for HNWIs Market Competition, Status and Forecast, Market Size by Players, Regions, Type, Application" to its huge collection of research reports.This report on the global Insurance for HNWIs market is highly helpful because it covers all the aspects which are important in deciding the future of this industry. The Insurance for HNWIs report is collated by full-fledged analysts who have created use of their market intelligence to explain all basic and crucial knowledge regarding the worldwide Insurance for HNWIs industry.Get Free Sample of Report Here:The Insurance for HNWIs market report makes use of tables, charts, graphs, maps, and statistics to present the data in the easiest way to understand. The Insurance for HNWIs market report is a comprehensive analysis of the key factors impacting the global Insurance for HNWIs industry. This Insurance for HNWIs market report includes both the driving factors as well as the restraining factors that are influencing the market's performance positively and negatively, respectively.Top Manufacturers Analysis Of This Research Report,UnitedHealthcareACE&ChubbTokio MarineChina LifeXL GroupArgo GroupPICCMunich ReCPICHanover InsuranceNationwideZurichHudsonIronshoreHiscoxManulifeAssurantThe present trends shaping the worldwide Insurance for HNWIs market and the way it will influence the Insurance for HNWIs market within the future are studied. Additionally to this, the future opportunities within the Insurance for HNWIs market that have the potential to assist the market to expand are given within the Insurance for HNWIs report.Enquire Here:The segments inside the global Insurance for HNWIs industry and their sub-segments also are studied in detail. This ensures that the whole Insurance for HNWIs market is covered. The leading segment along with the declining segment and also the most promising segment has been given during this Insurance for HNWIs report. This helps the newcomers, shareholders, readers, stockholders and leading manufacturers to choose which segment or sub-segment to speculate on therefore on acquire most profits.The Insurance for HNWIs market report discusses the degree of competition, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, and a threat of substitutes, both internal and external substitute of Insurance for HNWIs market. The threat of recent entrants or the barriers experienced by new and prime players in getting into the worldwide Insurance for HNWIs market has been mentioned. This offers new players a plan on whether or not they will exist within the competitive Insurance for HNWIs industry.About Us:Business Worldwide is a trusted brand in the research industry with a capability of commissioning complex projects within a short span of time with high level of accuracy. At Business Worldwide, we believe in building long-term relations with our clients. Our services cover a broad spectrum of industries including Energy, Chemicals and Materials, Automotive, Software and Aerospace.Contact Us:Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803
Nuclear Reactor Market Report for Period 2011 till 2022 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Hitachi GE Nuclear Energy, Rosatom, Westinghouse Electric Company and Others

Nuclear Reactor Market

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Global Nuclear Reactor market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely CGN, Hitachi GE Nuclear Energy, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, KHNP, Areva, CNNC, Rosatom, Westinghouse Electric Company and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2022, etc.Nuclear reactors are devices designed to maintain a chain reaction producing a steady flow of neutrons generated by the fission of heavy nuclei. They are, however, differentiated either by their purpose or by their design features. In terms of purpose, they are either research reactors or power reactors.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Nuclear Reactor Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:ArevaCNNCRosatomWestinghouse Electric CompanyCGNHitachi GE Nuclear EnergyMitsubishi Heavy IndustriesKHNPOthersGlobal Nuclear Reactor Market: Key Product TypePWRBWRGCRPHWRLWGRFBROthersGlobal Nuclear Reactor Market: Key Application TypeGenerating ElectricityMoving Aircraft Carriers & SubmarinesOthersGlobal Nuclear Reactor Market: Key RegionNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Others)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Others)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Others)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Others)The Global Nuclear Reactor Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Nuclear Reactor Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Nuclear Reactor Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Objectives of Research1.1.1 Definition1.1.2 Specifications1.2 Market Segment1.2.1 by Type1.2.1.1 PWR1.2.1.2 BWR1.2.1.3 GCR1.2.1.4 PHWR1.2.1.5 LWGR1.2.1.6 FBR........................Continue (Global Nuclear Reactor Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Global Insurance for Mass Affluent Market 2017: Hudson, UnitedHealthcare, Argo Group, Sompo Japan Nipponkoa

Insurance for Mass Affluent Market 2017

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Global Insurance for Mass Affluent Market 2017-2022QY Market Research include new Insurance for Mass Affluent market research report "2016-2022 Report on Global Insurance for Mass Affluent Market Competition, Status and Forecast, Market Size by Players, Regions, Type, Application" to its huge collection of research reports.This report on the global Insurance for Mass Affluent market is highly helpful because it covers all the aspects which are important in deciding the future of this industry. The Insurance for Mass Affluent report is collated by full-fledged analysts who have created use of their market intelligence to explain all basic and crucial knowledge regarding the worldwide Insurance for Mass Affluent industry.Get Free Sample of Report Here:The Insurance for Mass Affluent market report makes use of tables, charts, graphs, maps, and statistics to present the data in the easiest way to understand. The Insurance for Mass Affluent market report is a comprehensive analysis of the key factors impacting the global Insurance for Mass Affluent industry. This Insurance for Mass Affluent market report includes both the driving factors as well as the restraining factors that are influencing the market's performance positively and negatively, respectively.Top Manufacturers Analysis Of This Research Report,UnitedHealthcareACE&ChubbTokio MarineChina LifeXL GroupArgo GroupPICCMunich ReCPICHanover InsuranceNationwideZurichHudsonIronshoreHiscoxManulifeAssurantSompo Japan NipponkoaRenaissanceRe HoldingsThe present trends shaping the worldwide Insurance for Mass Affluent market and the way it will influence the Insurance for Mass Affluent market within the future are studied. Additionally to this, the future opportunities within the Insurance for Mass Affluent market that have the potential to assist the market to expand are given within the Insurance for Mass Affluent report.Enquire Here:The segments inside the global Insurance for Mass Affluent industry and their sub-segments also are studied in detail. This ensures that the whole Insurance for Mass Affluent market is covered. The leading segment along with the declining segment and also the most promising segment has been given during this Insurance for Mass Affluent report. This helps the newcomers, shareholders, readers, stockholders and leading manufacturers to choose which segment or sub-segment to speculate on therefore on acquire most profits.The Insurance for Mass Affluent market report discusses the degree of competition, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, and a threat of substitutes, both internal and external substitute of Insurance for Mass Affluent market. The threat of recent entrants or the barriers experienced by new and prime players in getting into the worldwide Insurance for Mass Affluent market has been mentioned. This offers new players a plan on whether or not they will exist within the competitive Insurance for Mass Affluent industry.About Us:Business Worldwide is a trusted brand in the research industry with a capability of commissioning complex projects within a short span of time with high level of accuracy. At Business Worldwide, we believe in building long-term relations with our clients. Our services cover a broad spectrum of industries including Energy, Chemicals and Materials, Automotive, Software and Aerospace.Contact Us:Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803
Mid IR Sensors Market Report for Period 2011 till 2023 Sony, Honeywell, Emerson, Hamamatsu, ON Semiconductor and Others

Mid IR Sensors Market

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Global Mid IR Sensors market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Murata, Honeywell, Advanced Photonix, Elliot Scientific, FLIR, Emerson, ON Semiconductor, CMOSIS, Sony, Hamamatsu, JAI, Company six and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2022, etc.Mid IR sensors are the base of the Internet of Things initiatives, they form the building blocks for all different types of imaging and controls. Drones, robots, industrial robots, machines, cameras, buildings, fire departments, traffic lights, traffic control, the military, the border patrol, law enforcement, healthcare, asthma treatment, virtually everyone will increasingly use mid IR sensors.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Mid IR Sensors Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:ON SemiconductorCMOSISSonyHamamatsuJAICompany sixMurataHoneywellAdvanced PhotonixElliot ScientificFLIREmersonOthersGlobal Mid IR Sensors Market: Key Product TypeThermal Mid IR SensorsPhoton Mid IR SensorsOthersGlobal Mid IR Sensors Market: Key Application TypeIndustry AreaDetection & MeasurmentMilitaryOthersGlobal Mid IR Sensors Market: Key RegionNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Others)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Others)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Others)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Others)The Global Mid IR Sensors Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Mid IR Sensors Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Mid IR Sensors Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Objectives of Research1.1.1 Definition1.1.2 Specifications1.2 Market Segment1.2.1 by Type1.2.1.1 Thermal Mid IR Sensors1.2.1.2 Photon Mid IR Sensors1.2.1.3 Others........................Continue (Global Mid IR Sensors Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
October 24, 2017 - Tamara Williams

Preston Sanchez, co-director of the UNM Marshall-Brennan Project, introduces co-deans Alfred Mathewson and Sergio Pareja (waiting in the background) to high school students who came to the law school on Constitution Day.

For the past four years, the UNM chapter of the Marshall-Brennan Project has celebrated Constitution Day by bringing high school students to the law school to learn more about how the Constitution impacts their lives, as well as the role of lawyers and law schools in promoting Constitutional values.

This year, UNM Marshall Brennan Project co-directors Preston Sanchez (Class of 2012) and Matt Bernstein (Class of 2014) brought 80 high school students from West Mesa, South Valley Academy, Valley High School, ACE Leadership Academy, Native American Community Academy (N.A.C.A.) High School, and Siembra Leadership Academy to celebrate Constitution Day on Friday, September 22.

High school students file in to a law school classroom set up as a courtroom to learn about how the Constitution impacts their lives, and the role of lawyers and law schools in promoting Constitutional values.

The students also learned about the path to law school and about participating in the 2018 National Marshall-Brennan Moot Court Competition held in Boston, Massachusetts.

Christian Tafoya, a student from Valley High School, said it was a life changing experience because he got to see how UNM Law students work and the way they are learning to become lawyers.

The Marshall-Brennan Project embraces the continuing need to educate young people about the Constitution, says Professor Maryam Ahranjani, faculty advisor to the UNM Marshall-Brennan Project. We can never be complacent about activating our rights and must remain vigilant that American constitutional values of inclusion, equality, and opportunity pervade government institutions like public schools and universities.

Javier Martinez (Class of 2010), the New Mexico State Representative from District 11, spoke to the students during lunch.

The day included a section on Know Your Rights, using the example of automobile police encounters. Students learned that the Fourth Amendment protects their right against unreasonable searches and seizures, and that the Fifth Amendment protects your right not to self-incriminate. After an introduction, a true/false section, and learning the rules, the students engaged in role play where a law school student played the officer.

The high school students also toured the law school, and heard from Javier Martinez (Class of 2010), the New Mexico State Representative from District 11, during lunch.

Cruz Lopez (Class of 19), is a Marshall-Brennan teaching fellow in the 3-credit, graded seminar.

Cruz Lopez (Class of 19), a teaching fellow for the Project, says Constitution Day and similar experiences in civics are important.

Constitution Day is not only important because of the substantive knowledge that we impart, but also because we show the students that attend what can be, says Lopez. I remember taking a trip to Washington, D.C. as part of a high school civic education program and being exposed to the history, culture, and even just being around lawyers and judges made me think that I could do it too. I think the students that come to UNMSOL get that exposure in a surrounding that is close to them and hopefully, that means something to them.
Global Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms Market 2017: Alibaba, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco

Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms Market 2017

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Global Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms Market 2017-2022QY Market Research include new Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms market research report "2016-2022 Report on Global Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms Market Competition, Status and Forecast, Market Size by Players, Regions, Type, Application" to its huge collection of research reports.This report on the global Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms market is highly helpful because it covers all the aspects which are important in deciding the future of this industry. The Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms report is collated by full-fledged analysts who have created use of their market intelligence to explain all basic and crucial knowledge regarding the worldwide Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms industry.Get Free Sample of Report Here:The Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms market report makes use of tables, charts, graphs, maps, and statistics to present the data in the easiest way to understand. The Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms market report is a comprehensive analysis of the key factors impacting the global Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms industry. This Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms market report includes both the driving factors as well as the restraining factors that are influencing the market's performance positively and negatively, respectively.Top Manufacturers Analysis Of This Research Report,BaiduAlibabaJingdongMXCHIPTencentAmazonMicrosoftThingWorxIBMCiscoSalesforceCarriotsOracleGeneral ElectricThe present trends shaping the worldwide Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms market and the way it will influence the Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms market within the future are studied. Additionally to this, the future opportunities within the Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms market that have the potential to assist the market to expand are given within the Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms report.Enquire Here:The segments inside the global Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms industry and their sub-segments also are studied in detail. This ensures that the whole Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms market is covered. The leading segment along with the declining segment and also the most promising segment has been given during this Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms report. This helps the newcomers, shareholders, readers, stockholders and leading manufacturers to choose which segment or sub-segment to speculate on therefore on acquire most profits.The Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms market report discusses the degree of competition, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, and a threat of substitutes, both internal and external substitute of Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms market. The threat of recent entrants or the barriers experienced by new and prime players in getting into the worldwide Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms market has been mentioned. This offers new players a plan on whether or not they will exist within the competitive Internet of Things (IoT) Platforms industry.About Us:Business Worldwide is a trusted brand in the research industry with a capability of commissioning complex projects within a short span of time with high level of accuracy. At Business Worldwide, we believe in building long-term relations with our clients. Our services cover a broad spectrum of industries including Energy, Chemicals and Materials, Automotive, Software and Aerospace.Contact Us:Joel JohnSuite #8138, 3422 SW 15 Street,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803
Mobile Advertising Market Report for Period 2011 till 2023 Apple (iAd), Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Amazon, Flurry and Others

Mobile Advertising Market

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Global Mobile Advertising market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Yelp, Amazon, Millennial Media, Adfonic, Amobee, Chartboost, Flurry, HasOffers, Hunt, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Pandora, YP, Apple (iAd) and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2022, etc.Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless) phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Mobile Advertising Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:GoogleFacebookTwitterYahooPandoraYPApple (iAd)YelpAmazonMillennial MediaAdfonicAmobeeChartboostFlurryHasOffersHuntOthersGlobal Mobile Advertising Market: Key Product TypePictureTextVideoOthersGlobal Mobile Advertising Market: Key Application TypeTablet PCPhoneOthersGlobal Mobile Advertising Market: Key RegionNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, Italy and Others)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia and Others)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Others)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Others)The Global Mobile Advertising Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Mobile Advertising Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Mobile Advertising Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Objectives of Research1.1.1 Definition1.1.2 Specifications1.2 Market Segment1.2.1 by Type1.2.1.1 Picture1.2.1.2 Text1.2.1.3 Video1.2.2 by Application1.2.2.1 Tablet PC1.2.2.2 Phone........................Continue (Global Mobile Advertising Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
CIS Insulin Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2015 - 2023

Market Research Report

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "CIS Insulin Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2015 - 2023" to its huge collection of research reports.Insulin is one of the most important peptide hormone produced by beta cells in the pancreas. It regulates the metabolism of carbohydrates and fats by promoting the absorption of glucose from the blood to skeletal muscles and fat tissue and by causing fat to be stored rather than used for energy. Insufficient production of insulin leads to accumulation of sugar in blood cells which causes diabetes.The global market for CIS insulin is expected to boost due to driving factors such as growing number of diabetes cases worldwide, changing lifestyle and eating habits resulting in health disorders such as obesity and other metabolic diseases would fuel the market growth. Diabetic patient need supply of external insulin. According to International Diabetes Federation (IDF), 382 million people were diagnosed with diabetes worldwide as of 2013, and the number is expected to reach 550 million by 2030. This speedy rate of diabetes patients is expected to boost the growth of CIS insulin market during the forecast period. Deeper market penetration of insulin products due to extensive development in the insulin products and commercialization has also assisted insulin market to grow.Furthermore, introduction of manufacturer favoring regulations has encouraged multinational companies to enter into insulin production, which has considerably helped the market growth.The CIS insulin market is segmented on the basis of product type, by application, by source and by geography. On the basis of product type, CIS insulin market is further segmented into rapid acting, long acting, short acting, intermediate acting and premixed. Long acting insulin accounted for the largest share in the CIS insulin market. The rapid acting insulin market is anticipated to have the highest growth rate in the near future. By application, the CIS insulin market is sub-segmented into type I Diabetes and Type II Diabetes. Type II Diabetes dominates the CIS insulin market, accounting for approximately 90% share. The availability of a wide variety of products in the Type II Diabetes segment and its high prevalence rate complements the growth of Type II Diabetes. Based on source, the CIS insulin market is classified into Analogs and Human Recombinant. The analog source segment, due to its high efficacy level holds the largest share in the CIS insulin market. The introduction highly efficient products such as ultra-fast analog and ultra-long acting analog booths market growth of analog source segment.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Geographically, North America accounted for the largest CIS insulin market in the world followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. The high prevalence rate of diabetes and metabolic diseases such as obesity acts as the major driver for the CIS insulin market. Additionally, continuous research and development in this field for efficient products would act as an assisting factor for market growth.Europe was the second largest market due to extensive government initiatives for the production and the regulating price, acting as the factor for the market growth. Asia-Pacific is observed to be an emerging market for CIS insulin market, due to majority of pharmaceutical companies choosing Asia-Pacific as the manufacturing destination. Moreover, rising population in countries such as China, India and others would result in the market growth for CIS insulin market. South American countries such as Brazil and Mexico are the regions that have significant potential for growth due to developing medical infrastructure, high disposable income and rise in population.Some of the major players in the CIS insulin market include Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly and Company, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, Novartis AG, Pfizer, Inc and others.This research report analyzes this market on the basis of its market segments, major geographies, and current market trends. This report provides comprehensive analysis ofMarket growth driversFactors limiting market growthCurrent market trendsMarket structureMarket projections for upcoming yearsThis report is a complete study of current trends in the market, industry growth drivers, and restraints. It provides market projections for the coming years. It includes analysis of recent developments in technology, Porters five force model analysis and detailed profiles of top industry players. The report also includes a review of micro and macro factors essential for the existing market players and new entrants along with detailed value chain analysis.Reasons for Buying this ReportThis report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamicsIt provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growthIt provides a six-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to growIt helps in understanding the key product segments and their futureIt provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitorsIt helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsIt provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segmentsBrowse More Details @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Worldwide Beer Box Market 2017: (Keystone, Packaging Services Industries, S.B.Industries, Accurate Box), Market Trends, Revenue & Challenges

Beer Box Markets

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HTF MI published a new industry research that focuses on Beer Box market and delivers in-depth market analysis and future prospects of Global Beer Box market. The study covers significant data which makes the research document a handy resource for marketing managers, analysts, industry executives, consultants, sales and product managers, and other key people who are in need of ready-to-access and self-analyzed study along with graphs and tables to help understand market trends, drivers and market challenges. The study is segmented by Application/ end users [Commercial & Home], products type [Paper, Plastic & Wooden] and various important geographies like North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan & India].Get Access to sample pages @The research covers the current market size of the Global Beer Box market and its growth rates based on 5 year history data along with company profile of key players/manufacturers such as Keystone, Packaging Services Industries, S.B.Industries, Accurate Box, Deline Box, Saxon Packaging, Lone Star Container & Advanced Packaging Materials. The in-depth information by segments of Beer Box market helps monitor future profitability & to make critical decisions for growth. The information on trends and developments, focuses on markets and materials, capacities, technologies, CAPEX cycle and the changing structure of the Global Beer Box Market.The study provides company profiling, product picture and specifications, sales, market share and contact information of key manufacturers of Global Beer Box Market, some of them listed here are Keystone, Packaging Services Industries, S.B.Industries, Accurate Box, Deline Box, Saxon Packaging, Lone Star Container & Advanced Packaging Materials. The market is growing at a very rapid pace and with rise in technological innovation, competition and M&A activities in the industry many local and regional vendors are offering specific application products for varied end-users. The new manufacturer entrants in the market are finding it hard to compete with the international vendors based on quality, reliability, and innovations in technology.Global Beer Box (Thousands Units) and Revenue (Million USD) Market Split by Product Type such as Paper, Plastic & Wooden. Further the research study is segmented by Application such as Commercial & Home with historical and projected market share and compounded annual growth rate.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), and market share and growth rate of Beer Box in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), covering North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan & India and its Share (%) and CAGR for the forecasted period 2017 to 2022.Read Detailed Index of full Research Study at @The research insights solutions to the following key questions: What will be the market size and the growth rate in 2022? What are the key factors driving the Global Beer Box market? Who are the key market players and what are their strategies in the Global Beer Box market? What are the key market trends impacting the growth of the Global Beer Box market? What trends, challenges and barriers are influencing its growth? What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the vendors in the Global Beer Box market? What are the key outcomes of the five forces analysis of the Beer Box market?Buy this research report @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the Global Beer Box market.Chapter 1, to describe Beer Box Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Beer Box , with sales, revenue, and price of Beer Box , in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the Global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Beer Box , for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan & India;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application [Commercial & Home], from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, Beer Box market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Beer Box sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.Get customization & check discount for report @Thanks for reading this article; you can also get individual chapter wise section or region wise report version like North America, Europe or Asia.HTF Market Report is a wholly owned brand of HTF market Intelligence Consulting Private Limited. HTF Market Report global research and market intelligence consulting organization is uniquely positioned to not only identify growth opportunities but to also empower and inspire you to create visionary growth strategies for futures, enabled by our extraordinary depth and breadth of thought leadership, research, tools, events and experience that assist you for making goals into a reality. Our understanding of the interplay between industry convergence, Mega Trends, technologies and market trends provides our clients with new business models and expansion opportunities. We are focused on identifying the Accurate Forecast in every industry we cover so our clients can reap the benefits of being early market entrants and can accomplish their Goals & Objectives.Contact us :HTF Market Intelligence Consulting Private LimitedUnit No. 429, Parsonage Road Edison, NJNew Jersey USA  08837sales@htfmarketreport.com+1 (206) 317 1218
Social Business Intelligence Market : Industry Analysis and Detailed Profiles of top Industry Players

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Enterprises across multiple industrial verticals are compelled to employ programs that deliver custom analytical reports on their businesses and help them improve their entrepreneurial efficiency through intelligent solutions.Growing adoption of cloud technologies among all sorts of businesses has propelled the demand for such programs, which can be collectively identified as social business intelligence. Future Market Insights, thus, predicts that the impact of cloud technology will remain greatly profitable for adoption of social business intelligence programs.Obtain Report Details @Cloud technologies, nevertheless, will gain prominence in the global market for social business intelligence. The market, which is presently valued at US$ 15.8 Bn, is anticipated to expand steadily at 6% CAGR and bring in more than US$ 28 Bn by the end of 2026. Tools and platforms developed for collaborative or social business intelligence will continue to be devised from advanced technologies. Growing usages of social media, rising implementation of big data analytics, and higher preference to software-as-a-service business model are some of the key drivers for growth of the global social business intelligence market.Apropos the report, North America is expected to dominate the global social business intelligence market by closing in on 40% revenue share towards the end of the forecast period. The region will also showcase fastest revenue growth at 7.7% CAGR, and is likely to surpass US$ 11 Bn by 2026-end. Demand for social business intelligence program will also gain traction in Western Europe, while Middle East & Africa will render slowest revenue growth at 3.6% CAGR.Make an Enquiry @The report identifies four most-lucrative industrial verticals for adoption of social business intelligence programs as healthcare, travel & tourism, governance & administration, and the banking, finance, securities & investment (BFSI) sector. Collectively, more than half of global social business intelligence market revenues will be emanating from these verticals throughout the forecast period.The report also reveals large enterprises will be attributing to the largest chunk of global revenues through 2026. Small and medium-sized enterprises will also witness an uptick in their presence in global social business intelligence market.IBM Corporation, SAP SE, Tableau Software, Inc., Qlik Technologies, Inc., SAS Institutes, Inc., MicroStrategy, Inc., Logi Analytics, Inc., Microsoft Corporation, TIBCO Software, Inc., and Alteryx, Inc., are leading providers of social business intelligence programs profiled in the report.Get ToC@About UsFuture 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 centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.FMIs team of over 200 research analysts provides market intelligence at global, regional, and country level. Our analysts are committed to provide independent insights, relying on our cognitive defusion training module, which conditions them to look at data objectively and unbiasedly.ContactFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
PLC Market in North America to Witness Huge Growth for Next Five Years

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The PLC Market in North America is expected to grow at a CAGR close to 9% during 2016-2022.The PLC Market  Global Outlook and Forecast 2017-2022, an exclusive report published by Arizton state that the North America region is likely to dominate the global PLC market during 20162022.View Report: PLC Market  Global Outlook and Forecast 2017-2022Analysts at Arizton predict that the demand for PLCs in the North America region is driven by a high awareness of their advantages over conventional products, better product availability, and extensive reach of innovative products. It is further reinforced by a well-connected and evolved connectivity grid, product development with emphasis on low-power consumption, sustainability, and well-connected institutional footprint.PLC Market in North America: Market Size and AnalysisNorth America, which includes the key countries of the US and Canada, constitutes a key geography as it hosts the most advanced and the largest economies of the world. The PLC market in North America ranks ahead of others in terms of innovation and standards in the region pave well for the product development and market structure wherein the competition is often measured in terms of performance than price. However, Arizton predicts the rise of competition in terms of closely matched functionalities and price for institutional buyers in view of tepid domestic demand and rapidly evolving product capabilities. Also, increasing demand for food and beverages, power, and water treatment industries is likely to escalate the use of modular PLCs in North America.PLC Market in USThe US is the worlds largest market for PLCs, driven by a high degree of automation, better availability of range and awareness, followed by China. The PLC vendors in the region stand at the forefront of innovation-driven by the large end-user market, and stringent adherence to workspace safety, energy efficiency, and cost controls all of which point automation to be imperative. Vendors of PLCs in this region are increasingly investing in their product development capabilities, especially to enhance their product value in terms of ruggedness, low noise and energy consumption, sleek and compact designs and multi-dimensional integration with a modular build.PLC Market in CanadaThe PLC market in Canada, although significant, has witnessed a sluggish growth recently characterized by tepid industrial demand. A majority of the demand growth is being fueled by infrastructural growth, including new town planning projects and improved retail footprint of brands. The housing market in Canada is unique as it is heavily concentrated with few urban pockets hosting a majority of the population.Request Sample: PLC Market  Global Outlook and Forecast 2017-2022Source:About AriztonArizton  Advisory and Intelligence is an innovation and quality-driven firm, which offers cutting-edge research solutions to clients across the world. We excel in providing comprehensive market intelligence reports and advisory and consulting services.Arizton has gained a paramount standpoint in the market research arena as it offers top of the line solutions to clients to assess market landscape and to finalize foolproof business strategies. We are committed to provide inclusive market research reports and consulting services to clients from diversified industries including Consumer Goods & Retail Technology, Automotive and Mobility, Smart Tech, Healthcare and Lifesciences, Industrial Machinery, Chemicals and Materials, IT and Media, Logistics and PackagingArizton comprises a team of exuberant and well-experienced analysts who have mastered in generating incisive reports. Our specialist analysts possess exemplary skills in market research. We train our team in advanced research practices, techniques, and ethics to outperform in fabricating impregnable research reports.Arizton Advisory & IntelligenceChicago, Illinois, 60605Mail: enquiry@arizton.comCall: +1-312-465-7864
Texture Paints Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2016 - 2024

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Texture Paints Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2016 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.The continual evolution of the paint industry to deliver higher aesthetic and functional value has proliferated the demand for texture paints over the recent past. Texture paint refers to the textured feel and appearance on the exterior on interior walls of commercial or residential structures for an elegant look. Texture paints have added resins and additives to safeguard the texture even when the after the paint dries, which make them different from normal paints. The unique texture pattern embossed on the surface remains intact for long span of time.The report provides a granular analysis of the market dynamics will impact the development of the global texture paints market between 2016 and 2024.Global Texture Paints Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe high aesthetic value of texture paints along with their affordable cost is driving the global texture paints market. This, along with the growth in interior designing and increasing demand for home interiors is expected to fuel the growth of the texture paints market. Texture paints have certainly been distinguishable in the present home decorations segment. The unparalleled visual effects that can be created using texture paints offsets their high cost over regular paints. Additionally, several companies have color experts to provide assistance about pattern and paint selection, which includes stucco, metallic, drizzle, sand, and whirl.Texture paints extend the advantage of covering uneven surfaces and protecting the wall surface from damage. Not only this, texture paints have prices comparable to wallpaper and offer an extensive range of patterns that can be created using a mix of various colors. Thus, the aesthetic and functional value associated with these paints is expected to drive the texture paints market in the future.Global Texture Paints Market: Regional OutlookThe global texture paints market is broadly divided into the regional segments of North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. The emerging economies of Asia Pacific are expected to present lucrative opportunities to the texture paints market over the coming years. The rising middle class population that are spending huge sums on home decoration is resulting in an increased customer base for these products in these countries. Moreover, the massive rise in the number of commercial and residential complexes across. Additionally, the rapid economic development in countries such as China, India, Thailand, and Malaysia along with rising disposable incomes has further multiplied the demand for texture paints in the region. Hence, Asia Pacific is expected to be the most promising market for texture paints over the forecast period.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The steady growth of the construction sector in developed regions post the economic slump of 2007 is expected to display demand for texture paints, thereby further boosting the texture paints market. In addition, the growth of interior designing in developed regions is expected to bode well for the texture paints market over the reports forecast period.Global Texture Paints Market: Competitive LandscapeSome of the key companies in the global texture paints market include Akzonobel, Berger Paints, Kansai Neroloac Paints Ltd., Andura Coatings, Nippon Paint Group, Asian Paints, Spectra Texture Wall Coating Pvt. Ltd., Diamond Paints, and Valspar.The key players operating in the market are largely focused on emerging countries for tapping growth opportunities that are present herein. The top players are also strategizing for capacity expansion in developing countries such as India and China to serve the swiftly growing demand for texture paints.The global texture paints market can be segmented as follows:Global Texture Paints Market, by GeographyNorth AmericaEuropeAsia PacificMiddle East and AfricaLatin AmericaThis report gives you access to decisive data such as:Market growth driversFactors limiting market growthCurrent market trendsMarket structureMarket projections for the coming yearsKey highlightsOverview of key market forces propelling and restraining market growthUp-to-date analyses of market trends and technological improvementsPin-point analyses of market competition dynamics to offer you a competitive edgeAn analysis of strategies of major competitorsAn array of graphics and SWOT analysis of major industry segmentsDetailed analyses of industry trendsA well-defined technological growth map with an impact-analysisA clear understanding of the competitive landscape and key product segmentsBrowse More Details @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Tablet Market : Comprehensive Evaluation Of The Market Via In-Depth Qualitative Insights

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According to a new report, global tablet shipments are projected to increase at 9.1% CAGR through 2026. In terms of value, the global tablet market is expected to reach nearly US$ 600 Bn by 2026.Nearly 193 million iOS tablets were shipped in 2016, whereas Android and Windows collective shipments were valued at 226 million. However, during the forecast period 2016-2026, Android tablets will witness the highest growth rate, owing to their low price and popularity, especially in emerging markets. In 2017, total tablet shipments are estimated to surpass 455 Mn units.Global demand for tablets is going through a period of sluggish growth, as large screen smartphones continue to find favour among consumers. However, commercial segment is expected to offer the next wave of growth to vendors, as businesses move away from PCs to detachables.Obtain Report Details @The growing proliferation of laptop-tablet hybrids is eating into the markets share of tablets. The ever-increasing size of smartphones is not helping the cause of the tablet industry.Another key factor that can impede the growth of the market is low upgrade cycle. As is the case in the smartphone segment, consumers are not showing the same level of eagerness to upgrade their existing tablets. Long replacement cycles can restrain demand for new tablets during the forecast period.Screen size is an important buying decision for consumers, and as above 6-inch smartphones become ubiquitous, tablet vendors are finding it difficult to promote size as their USP.Bigger display sizes can be a luring factor for brands, as in the smartphone segment, above 6-inch phones come with a hefty price tag. Consumers in Tier II and Tier III cities in India use their phones to watch movies and videos in the absence of a PC.Make an Enquiry @Apple Inc. remains the largest player in the global tablet market. It held a revenue share of nearly 26% of the global market in 2016. Samsung is the second biggest player in the market with over 15% market share. Micromax is the third largest player, while the rest of the market share is dominated by the likes of Lenovo, Asus, Xiaomi, Acer, and Huawei.Get ToC@About UsFuture 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 centres in the U.S. and India.FMIs research and consulting services help businesses around the globe navigate the challenges in a rapidly evolving marketplace with confidence and clarity. Our customised and syndicated market research reports deliver actionable insights that drive sustainable growth. We continuously track emerging trends and events in a broad range of end industries to ensure our clients prepare for the evolving needs of their consumers.FMIs team of over 200 research analysts provides market intelligence at global, regional, and country level. Our analysts are committed to provide independent insights, relying on our cognitive defusion training module, which conditions them to look at data objectively and unbiasedly.ContactFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email:sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Exscudo wallet killer feature: synergy of accounts conversion

After completing the EON blockchain testnet we will launch a bunch of products, united by the EON platform. One of them is the Channels wallet, decentralised, safe, fast and transparent, which is planned to be launched in Q1 2018. Within this wallet a user can have several accounts: in Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. These accounts will be operated with color coins, equivalent by value to the corresponding cryptocurrencies. For the users convenience we added to the wallet a killer feature, which enables to convert funds from one currency to another, and transfer them from one internal account to another at the rate set by the user (or at the exchange rate). And you even do not need to exit your wallet to do this!How it works:Channels issues a letter of credit for any color coin in EON network, and this letter goes directly to the Exscudo exchange. The exchange accepts it and conducts a conversion operation. After that color coins are transferred to the corresponding Channels account, and the balance is returned to the users deposit account. Letter of credit has a period of validity - if the price set by a user does not interest anyone on the exchange the operation is canceled and money is returned to the users account.Example. How it works from the users point of view:User N has Channels wallet with EON, BTC and Ethereum accounts in it. He wants to exchange one bitcoin for the corresponding amount of ethereum at rate 1ETH = 0.0726BTC. His order is sent to the exchange where it meets the relevant offer, and the transaction is made. Then 1 BTC is written off from the user Ns BTC account and his ETH account is credited with 13.77ETH. The balance is sent to the deposit account. The only case when this operation will not work is if user N sets the rate which simply cannot find a counter-proposal on the exchange, such as 1 BTC = 1 ETH. But even then user N has nothing to worry about: after the letter of credit validity period expires his funds will be returned to his deposit in safety.Exscudo strives to create a platform, which unites the world of traditional finance and the cryptocurrency market. Our main goal is to create an easy-to-use, fast, legal, and secure access to the cryptocurrency market for every person with access to the Internet and credit card.TallinnMerirahu 58
Forecast the Solar Encapsulation Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Trends, Analysis, Growth 2015 - 2023

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ResearchMoz added Latest Research Report titled " Solar Encapsulation Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Trends, Analysis, Growth and Forecast 2015 - 2023 " to it's Large Report database.Encapsulation of solar cells is done between the solar module glass cover and the glass cover of the solar cell located inside the module. Encapsulations are usually done in order to extend the useful life of such PV installations. Materials selected for encapsulations usually possess corrosion resistant, flame retardant or hard wearing properties. Generally such encapsulation cannot be easily automated and requires significant energy and material resources. The use of such encapsulants is growing steadily in multiple industries such as construction and automotive among others. Encapsulation ensures safe working of solar PV modules which enables consumers to reduce the maintenance costs. The construction industry is one the largest consumers of this segment. The growth of construction industry in the future will encourage companies to invest in R&D activities associated with solar encapsulation technology. The market for solar encapsulation is anticipated to grow at a substantial rate in the future owing to increased adoption of solar PV modules. Currently, there are no substitutes available for solar encapsulation technology, thus the growth of PV modules will directly enhance the growth rate of this technology.Request for Sample PDF of Premium Research Report with TOC:Growing awareness towards renewable energy resources and increased adoption of solar as a viable form of energy is bolstering the demand for solar PV modules. Many government agencies in developed counties have set targets to ensure maximum adoption of solar technology. Such government initiatives and growing demand of solar PV modules will encourage investment in solar encapsulation market. Other driving factors include growing energy requirements and immense technological proliferation in the solar PV module industry resulting in plummeting prices. Even though the market is at a nascent stage of development, growing acceptance and negligible product substitutes will ensure steady growth of the market in future. Constant R&D initiatives by existing PV module manufacturers will drive down encapsulation prices in the future as well as develop newer encapsulants for future PV technologies. The development of organic solar technology in the future will attract further investment in solar encapsulation market.The encapsulants can be segmented on the basis of technology and materials used. Segmentation on the basis of technology can be done as polycrystalline silicon solar technology and thin film solar technology. On the basis of material used for encapsulation, segmentation may be done as Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), Ethylene Vinyl Acetate (EVA), Polyvinyl Butyral (PVB) and Ionomers among others. The material to be used for construction of solar encapsulation depends on the requirements of the consumer.Browse more details @Asia is emerging to be the market leader in terms of adoption of such encapsulation technologies. This is mostly due to aggressive renewable energy targets and growing energy requirements of the Asian economies. Countries such as India and China have intensively invested in this technology. Significant adoption is also observed in both North America and Europe. The national governments in these regions have announced several tax benefits to encourage adoption of solar technology which positively impacts the solar encapsulation market. Rest of the World has a comparatively lower market share in the overall installation market.Some of the key players competing in solar encapsulation market include Bridgestone, STR Holdings Inc., DuPont, First Solar GmBH, Dow Corning Corporation, KURARAY EUROPE GMBH and Hangzhou First PV Material Co. Ltd. among others.This research report analyzes this market on the basis of its market segments, major geographies, and current market trends. Geographies analyzed under this research report includeNorth AmericaAsia PacificEuropeMiddle East and AfricaLatin AmericaThis report provides comprehensive analysis ofMarket growth driversFactors limiting market growthCurrent market trendsMarket structureMarket projections for upcoming yearsThis report is a complete study of current trends in the market, industry growth drivers, and restraints. It provides market projections for the coming years. It includes analysis of recent developments in technology, Porters five force model analysis and detailed profiles of top industry players. The report also includes a review of micro and macro factors essential for the existing market players and new entrants along with detailed value chain analysis.About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the world's fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMoz's service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Contact Us:Mr. Nachiket Ghumare90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074 / Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:Follow me on Blogger at:
October 24, 2017 - Anna Baecker, Class of 19

Three UNM School of Law alumni were honored at the New Mexico Defense Lawyers Association (NMDLA) Annual Awards Luncheon, CLE and Annual Meeting on September 29, 2017.

Mark Mowery (81) received the Outstanding Civil Defense Lawyer of the Year Award, Justin Goodman (11), received the Young Defense Lawyer of the Year Award and Patrick Coronel (17) was recognized for his service to NMDLA by founding the student chapter and solidifying NMDLAs presence at the law school.

Mark Mowery (81) received the Outstanding Civil Defense Lawyer of the Year Award.

Mowery is a director in the Santa Fe office of the Rodey Law Firm and practices in the Litigation Department, with a special emphasis in personal injury, property damage, product liability, medical malpractice claims and general insurance defense. Mowery also has an active mediation practice.

I have been an active member of the NMDLA since its early days in the mid-1980s, said Mowery. For anyone who practices primarily on the defense side of civil cases, it is a great resource and provides easy access to a network of similarly focused litigators. Mowery credited his success to the solid foundation he gained while attending UNM School of Law.

Justin Goodman (11) received the New Mexico Defense Lawyers Association Young Lawyer of the Year Award.

Goodman is an associate at Stiff, Keith, & Garcia, LLC, where he maintains a civil litigation practice in the areas of insurance law, bad faith, personal injury, fraud investigation, and construction defect. He serves on the Alumni Association Board and is an adjunct faculty at the law school.

I am deeply honored to receive the New Mexico Defense Lawyers Association Young Lawyer of the Year Award, said Goodman. It is truly awesome to practice law in New Mexico where the attorneys and community are supported by such incredible organizations and a first-rate law school. I am very thankful to my family, friends, colleagues, and mentors.

Coronel is an associate at the Rodey Law Firm. His practice involves civil defense litigation in health law and products, and general liability.

Patrick Coronel (17) was recognized for his service to the NMDLA.

He served as the Founding President of the NMDLA Student Chapter. During law school, my closest mentors were NMDLA members, and they helped me realize that civil defense attorneys face many misconceptions about their practice, said Coronel. The civil defense bar in New Mexico is friendly, professional, and willing to provide mentorship and guidance to law students who are considering civil litigation. Coronel encouraged UNM School of Law students to get involved with the NMDLA Student Chapter so that they can learn about the many benefits of civil defense work in New Mexico.

UNM School of Law students from the NMDLA student chapter were among those who attended the luncheon. Its exciting to see defense attorneys get together to celebrate good lawyering and share how the defense bar is so essential to our system of fairness, said Deian McBryde, Co-president for the NMDLA Student Chapter. There is no dark side! Anyone interested in becoming an excellent civil litigator should get to know the NMDLA and our UNMSOL Student Chapter!

It has been such a pleasure working closely with the NMDLA, said Sara Klemundt, Co-president for the NMDLA Student Chapter. The relationship between the NMDLA and UNMSOL through the NMDLA Student Chapter has been a great addition to my law school experience, and I hope that it will be a great thing for many other students looking to go into civil litigation. The luncheon on September 29, 2017 was a great way to celebrate such important people in the law school community like Professor Goodman and recent UNMSOL graduate Patrick Coronel who made the relationship between NMDLA and UNMSOL possible.
Canada-Defense and Security: Truncated Spends for Military Supremacy (Strategy, Performance and Risk Analysis 2017-2022)

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Market Research Hubs premium report Canada-Defense and Security: Truncated Spends for Military Supremacy provide a comprehensive overview of each market within a countrys defense industry; benchmark key performance indicators against regional and global peers; review industry trends and drivers; evaluate the competitive landscape and innovation potential of singular markets; and conduct data-driven SWOT analysis to ascertain a structured assessment of the performance of each territory represented.Request Free Sample Report@The aircraft category remains one of the key growth drivers of the Canadian defense and security industry accounting for 46.9% of capital expenditure in 2016; followed by the C4ISR category with 8.0%. Overall, Canadian defense and security CAPEX posted a CAGR of 17.3%, rising from US$3.1 billion in 2012 to US$5.9 billion in 2016, owing to modernization plans outlined in the Canada First Dwithefense Strategy (CFDS). CAPEX will increase due to a considerable number of government-planned procurements.Key HighlightsAircraft and C4ISR systems to drive capital expenditure:Aircraft accounted for 46.9% of military CAPEX in Canada in 2016, followed by C4ISR with 8.0%. Modernization initiatives will see Canada procure F-35 fighter jets and replace older CF-18 fighters by 2021. In addition, the government announced plans to replace obsolete jets with the cheaper F/A-18 Super Hornets. The collective share of the aircraft and C4ISR categories with regards to capital expenditure will stand at 67.2% in 2021.Imports from the US increased during the review period:Defense imports increased at a CAGR of 5.9%, rising from US$205 million in 2012 to US$258 million in 2016; sensors and radars to supplement modernization programs were the key growth drivers. The majority of the countrys military hardware is imported from US-based defense contractors and it is anticipated that Canada will procure CH-47F Chinook helicopters, C-130J-30 Hercules aircraft, M-113A3 armored personnel vehicles, and AN/APS-143(V) radars over the forecast period.Emphasis on homeland security:Threats emanating from terrorism, illegal immigration, and cyberattacks will drive Canadas homeland security expenditure. Canadas aim to reinforce its land and maritime borders will cause spending to post a forecast-period CAGR of 2.64% to reach US$739.5 million in 2021. According to the governments Economic Action Plan 2015, a public safety broadband network was set up for an investment of US$2.2 million to support the police.Browse Full Report with TOC@Scope- Industry Snapshot and Industry View - Key defense and security industry statistics including total expenditure, revenue expenditure, and capital expenditure are analysed to reveal the key issues and trends driving market performance in the Canadian defense and security market.- Industry SWOT Analysis - Discover the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats impacting market performance and investment in the Canadian defense and security market.- Industry Benchmarking - Benchmark how the Canadian defense and security market is performing compared to regional and global markets in terms of total expenditure, revenue expenditure, and capital expenditure to gauge potential for growth or market entry.- Competitive Landscape - Detailed overview and product offerings of the leading defense and security players in Canada.Reasons to buy- How is the market performing in terms of: total expenditure, revenue expenditure, and capital expenditure?- How risky is it to invest in the Canadian defense and security industry compared to other North American countries?- What is driving the performance of key industry segments such as aircraft, C4ISR Electronics & IT, naval ships, helicopters, military vehicles, and others?- Who are the leading players in the Canadian defense and security industry and their overview and product portfolio?- What trends are being witnessed within the Canadian defense and security industry?- What are the Canadian defense and security industrys Strengths and Weaknesses and what Opportunities and Threats does it face?- What are the recent developments and innovations in the Canadian defense and security industry?Enquire About this Report@About Market Research Hub:Market Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of market research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients.Contact Us90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: - 800-998-4852 (US-Canada)Email:- press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite:-Read Industry News at :-
Digital Signage Software Global Market 2017: Key Players  Signagelive, Scala Inc, Broadsign International LLC, Omnivex Corporation, Rise Vision

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Digital Signage Software Market 2017Wiseguyreports.Com adds Digital Signage Software Market Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2022 To Its Research Database.Report Details:This report provides in depth study of Digital Signage Software Market using SWOT analysis i.e. Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat to the organization. The Digital Signage Software Market report also provides an in-depth survey of key players in the market which is based on the various objectives of an organization such as profiling, the product outline, the quantity of production, required raw material, and the financial health of the organization.This report studies Digital Signage Software in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringSignagelive (UK)Scala Inc. (US)Broadsign International LLC (Canada)Omnivex Corporation (Canada)Navori (Switzerland)IntuiLab SA (France)Mvix, Inc.(US)NoviSign Digital Signage Inc.(Israel)Four Winds Interactive (US)Rise Vision (Canada)Planar Systems Inc.(US)NEC Display Solutions Ltd (Japan)Panasonic Corporation (Japan)Sharp Corporation (Japan)Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (South Korea)Request a Sample Report @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoEdge Server SoftwareContent Management SystemBy Application, the market can be split intoCommercialInfrastructuralBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Complete Report Details@Major Key Points in Table of Content:1 Industry Overview of Digital Signage Software1.1 Definition and Specifications of Digital Signage Software1.1.1 Definition of Digital Signage Software1.1.2 Specifications of Digital Signage Software1.2 Classification of Digital Signage Software1.2.1 Edge Server Software1.2.2 Content Management System1.3 Applications of Digital Signage Software1.3.1 Commercial1.3.2 Infrastructural1.3.3 Application 31.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 India8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Digital Signage Software8.1 Signagelive (UK)8.1.1 Company Profile8.1.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.1.2.1 Product A8.1.2.2 Product B8.1.3 Signagelive (UK) 2016 Digital Signage Software Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.1.4 Signagelive (UK) 2016 Digital Signage Software Business Region Distribution Analysis8.2 Scala Inc. (US)8.2.1 Company Profile8.2.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.2.2.1 Product A8.2.2.2 Product B8.2.3 Scala Inc. (US) 2016 Digital Signage Software Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.2.4 Scala Inc. (US) 2016 Digital Signage Software Business Region Distribution Analysis8.3 Broadsign International LLC (Canada)8.3.1 Company Profile8.3.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.3.2.1 Product A8.3.2.2 Product B8.3.3 Broadsign International LLC (Canada) 2016 Digital Signage Software Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.3.4 Broadsign International LLC (Canada) 2016 Digital Signage Software Business Region Distribution Analysis8.4 Omnivex Corporation (Canada)8.4.1 Company Profile8.4.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.4.2.1 Product A8.4.2.2 Product B8.4.3 Omnivex Corporation (Canada) 2016 Digital Signage Software Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.4.4 Omnivex Corporation (Canada) 2016 Digital Signage Software Business Region Distribution Analysis8.5 Navori (Switzerland)8.5.1 Company Profile8.5.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.5.2.1 Product A8.5.2.2 Product B8.5.3 Navori (Switzerland) 2016 Digital Signage Software Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.5.4 Navori (Switzerland) 2016 Digital Signage Software Business Region Distribution Analysis8.6 IntuiLab SA (France)8.6.1 Company Profile8.6.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.6.2.1 Product A8.6.2.2 Product B8.6.3 IntuiLab SA (France) 2016 Digital Signage Software Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.6.4 IntuiLab SA (France) 2016 Digital Signage Software Business Region Distribution Analysis8.7 Mvix, Inc.(US)8.7.1 Company Profile8.7.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.7.2.1 Product A8.7.2.2 Product B8.7.3 Mvix, Inc.(US) 2016 Digital Signage Software Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.7.4 Mvix, Inc.(US) 2016 Digital Signage Software Business Region Distribution Analysis8.8 NoviSign Digital Signage Inc.(Israel)8.8.1 Company Profile8.8.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.8.2.1 Product A8.8.2.2 Product B8.8.3 NoviSign Digital Signage Inc.(Israel) 2016 Digital Signage Software Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.8.4 NoviSign Digital Signage Inc.(Israel) 2016 Digital Signage Software Business Region Distribution Analysis8.9 Four Winds Interactive (US)8.9.1 Company Profile8.9.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.9.2.1 Product A8.9.2.2 Product B8.9.3 Four Winds Interactive (US) 2016 Digital Signage Software Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.9.4 Four Winds Interactive (US) 2016 Digital Signage Software Business Region Distribution Analysis8.10 Rise Vision (Canada)8.10.1 Company Profile8.10.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.10.2.1 Product A8.10.2.2 Product B8.10.3 Rise Vision (Canada) 2016 Digital Signage Software Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.10.4 Rise Vision (Canada) 2016 Digital Signage Software Business Region Distribution AnalysisContinued.Buy now @Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Sales@Wiseguyreports.ComPh: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)ABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.ADDRES:WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Petrochemicals Market Analysis, Current and Future Trends 2020

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Transparency Market Research (TMR) has announced the release of a new market study on the global petrochemicals market. The report examines the historical trajectory of the market up to 2013 and presents forecasts for the markets development from 2014 to 2020. According to the report, the global petrochemicals market is expected to exhibit a steady 6.8% CAGR from 2014 to 2020. The market will reach a valuation of US$885.1 bn by the end of the forecast period.The report is titled Petrochemicals Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020 and is available for sale on the official website of TMR.View Full Report:Petrochemicals, as the name suggests, are a wide range of chemicals derived from petroleum feedstock. The global market for petrochemicals is a crucial part of the chemicals industry and has significant impact on various walks of human life, as ubiquitous materials such as plastics are derived from petrochemicals. Due to the rising demand for its various end-use segments, the global petrochemicals market is expected to exhibit steady growth in the coming years.The major product segments of the global petrochemicals market are ethylene, propylene, methanol, butadiene, xylene, benzene, styrene, vinyls, and toluene. Of these, ethylene was the major product type in the market in 2013. Ethylenes use in the manufacture of polyethylene  which, as the name suggests, consists of multiple polymers of ethylene  is a major driver for the global petrochemicals market.Request to view Sample Report:The rising use of methanol in fuel mixtures has also provided a boost to the global petrochemicals market.Adding methanol allows for cleaner combustion of fuels, reducing the environmental damage caused by the combustion. According to TMR, methanol is expected to be the fastest growing product segment of the global petrochemicals market in the forecast period. The demand for styrene and butadiene is also expected to rise in the coming years, thanks to their growing application in styrene butadiene rubber and the rising demand for butadiene for the production of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene.On the basis of geography, China emerged as the largest segment of the global market in 2013. China accounted for 25% of the demand from the global petrochemicals market, thanks in part to the countrys booming automotive and construction industries. China is also anticipated to remain in a dominant position in the global petrochemicals market in the coming years and is expected to be the fastest growing segment of the market in the forecast period.Request to download and view full ToC The rest of Asia Pacific followed China in the regional hierarchy of the global petrochemicals market in 2013. India is the leader in the rest of Asia Pacific, with the increasing demand for products containing petrochemicals and the countrys flourishing manufacturing sector expected to propel the regional market for petrochemicals.The Middle East and Africa also have an important role to play in the future of the global petrochemicals market. These two regions contain some of the largest petroleum producers in the world, with the easy availability of petroleum allowing petrochemical companies in the region to post strong growth figures.Buy Now This Report @In competitive terms, the global petrochemicals market is highly fragmented and marked by constant efforts on the part of multinational giants to acquire smaller regional companies. Key players in the global petrochemicals market are BASF SE, Shell Chemical Company, Total S.A., E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Sumitomo Chemical Co. Ltd., ExxonMobil, Sinopec Ltd., The Dow Chemical Company, SABIC, LyondellBasell Industries, and Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LLC.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.ContactTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Photoresists and Photoresist Ancillaries Market Latest Trends and Forecast Analysis up to 2020

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Transparency Market Research has published a new report titled Photoresists and Photoresist Ancillaries Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 - 2020. According to the report, the global photoresists and photoresist ancillaries market was valued at US$ 3.02 Bn in 2013 and is anticipated to reach US$ 4.60 Bn by 2020, expanding at a CAGR of 6.2% between 2014 and 2020.View Full Report:Growth in the global semiconductor industry is anticipated to drive the photoresists and photoresist ancillaries market worldwide. Photoresists are indispensable components in the process of multi-layer wiring configuration in semiconductor manufacturing and high density packaging. Trends in dynamic display technologies are estimated to boost the photoresists and photoresist ancillaries market in the near future. However, environmental and occupational health hazards associated with photoresists and photoresist ancillaries are projected to hamper market growth. Upcoming nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) are likely to offer high opportunities for market players in the next few years.Request to view Sample Report:ArF immersion photoresists emerged as the largest application of the global photoresists market share in 2013. Increasing trend of miniaturization and semiconductor downsizing in the global electronics industry is projected to drive the segment during the forecast period. Antireflective coatings held the largest share of the global photoresists ancillaries market and accounted for over 30% of the share in 2013. Resolution enhancement offered by antireflective coatings is expected to drive the segment in the next few years.Request to download and view full ToC In terms of revenue, semiconductor and ICs application segment that held the largest share is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of over 6% between 2014 and 2020. Photoresists and ancillaries are used in semiconductor fabrication and packaging. Printed circuit board was the second-largest application segment in the global photoresists and photoresist ancillaries market in 2013.Asia Pacific dominated the global photoresists and photoresist ancillaries market, accounting for more than 65% in 2013, led by high demand from semiconductor and printed circuit boards industries. Asia Pacific is considered the manufacturing hub for the global electronics industry. In terms of revenue, the market in North America is anticipated grow at a moderate rate due to recovery of semiconductor industry in the region. The market for photoresists and photoresist ancillaries in RoW is projected to expand at the second-highest growth rate in the next few years, due to growth in consumer electronics industry in the region.Buy Now This Report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.ContactTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Flow Chemistry Market Key Players, Industry Overview, Supply Chain and Analysis to 2020

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Transparency Market Research has published a new report titled Flow Chemistry Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 - 2020. According to the report, the global flow chemistry market was valued at US$ 808.6 Mn in 2013 and is projected to reach US$ 1,526.3 Mn in 2020, expanding at a CAGR of 9.5% between 2014 and 2020.View Full Report:The market for flow chemistry is primarily driven by factors such as increasing need to lower operating costs and adoption of sustainable technologies by chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Flow chemistry offers various advantages over traditional batch processes. These include significant savings in energy usage, high scalability and continuous processing with high reactor throughput and superior heat and mass transfer. Flow chemistry also offers eco-friendly, low emission and a safe production process, thereby supporting green manufacturing.Request to view Sample Report:Continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) dominated the flow chemistry market in 2013. However, microreactor systems is anticipated to be the fastest growing segment during the forecast period. Chemical was the largest end-user segment in the flow chemistry market in 2013. Pharmaceutical is estimated to be the most lucrative end-user for flow chemistry in the next few years. However, scaling-up issues coupled with the need to conform to governmental regulations in the pharmaceutical industry are likely to hamper market growth in the near future.Continuous stirred tank reactor accounted for over 40% of the global flow chemistry market in 2013. Plug flow reactor followed continuous stirred tank reactor. However, microreactor systems is expected to be the fastest growing product segment in the flow chemistry market during the forecast period. Other flow chemistry equipment, including microwave systems, is projected to boost market growth in the next few years, due to rising demand for flow chemistry in chemical and petrochemical industries.Request to download and view full ToC The chemical segment dominated the end-user segment, constituting around 35% of the global demand for flow chemistry in 2013. Flow chemistry can be used to carry out various reactions such as nitration and bromination. Pharmaceutical accounted for the second-largest market share in the global flow chemistry market in 2013. It is also anticipated to be the fastest growing end-user segment for flow chemistry during the forecast period. Flow chemistry is used in the manufacture of APIs in the pharmaceutical industry. Petrochemical and academic & industrial research are also considered major end-users in the global flow chemistry market. Other end-users such as polymers and nanostructured materials are expected to offer higher opportunities for flow chemistry during the forecast period.Buy Now This Report @North America has been dominating the demand for flow chemistry over the past few years. The region accounted for over 35% of the global demand for flow chemistry in 2013. Rising demand for flow chemistry in the pharmaceutical industry has been a key factor for the growth of the flow chemistry industry in North America. Asia Pacific followed North America, accounting for the second-largest share in the global flow chemistry market in 2013. Increasing demand for flow chemistry in chemical and pharmaceutical applications is driving the demand for flow chemistry in Asia Pacific. Europe is likely to experience stable growth for flow chemistry in the near future. Market share of Rest of the World is projected to increase in the flow chemistry market in the next few years, led by high demand for flow chemistry in Brazil and Saudi Arabia.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.ContactTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Desktop or Personal 3D Printers to Dominate Global 3D Printers Market in terms of Volume

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Industrial 3D printers dominate the market in terms of revenueArizton has added an exclusive report on the 3D printing market titled 3D Printing Market  Global Outlook and Forecast 20172022. The 140-pager report provides a detailed analysis of the global 3D printing market and outlines some interesting fact that are crucial for the industry.View Report: 3D Printing Market  Global Outlook and Forecast 20172022.Analysts at Arizton say that in 2016 the desktop/personal 3D printer segment accounted for a market share of 96% in terms of volume. However, in terms of revenue, the industrial 3D printer segment dominated the market with its 78% market share in 2016.Desktop 3D Printer MarketThe demand for desktop/personal 3D printer is increasing worldwide. The major growth factors in this demand are declining per unit cost and growing demand for these printers by home businesses. Many manufacturers have developed low-cost desktop/personal printer and are offering them in the market at economical prices. This has resulted in the proliferation of these printers among end-users. Further, mass production of such printers is bringing down their ASPs, thereby increasing their penetration among end-users.XYZprinting, Ultimaker, Monoprice, Wanhao, Formlabs, Flashforge, MakerBot (Stratasys), and M3D are some of the largest vendors of desktop/personal 3D printers in the market.Request Sample:Industrial 3D Printer MarketThe industrial 3D printer market is growing at a significant rate across the globe, especially in developed economies. The demand for these printers is increasing as large manufacturers are looking forward to using 3D printing technology to reduce their manufacturing expenses. Further, the deployment of these printers is aimed to smoothen the production process. Large organizations such as Boing, General Electric, Ford Motor, and Lockheed Martin are deploying these printers in their factories to produce thousands of parts and components.Industries such as electrics and electronics, food and beverage, aerospace, automotive, and healthcare are the largest end-users of industrial 3D printers in the market. The market for industrial 3D printers is also being fuelled by the requirement for various tooling applications as tooling in these industries has complex shapes.Stratasys, EOS, 3D Systems, SLM Solutions, and Concept Laser (acquired by GE) are some of the largest market players in the global industrial 3D printer market.The report provides a holistic view of the global market, the companies involved in the market, and the factors driving its growth. The report also provides information on some of the latest trends that have started to surface and are likely to become strong market driving forces over the next five years. This report also provides the Porters Five Forces analysis along with a description of each force and its impact on the market. Further, the report also provides complete value chain analysis of the global market.Related Report1)Fax Services Market - Global Outlook and Forecast 2017 - 20222) Online Fax Market - Global Outlook and Forecast 2017 - 2022Source:About AriztonArizton  Advisory and Intelligence is an innovation and quality-driven firm, which offers cutting-edge research solutions to clients across the world. We excel in providing comprehensive market intelligence reports and advisory and consulting services.Arizton has gained a paramount standpoint in the market research arena as it offers top of the line solutions to clients to assess market landscape and to finalize foolproof business strategies. We are committed to provide inclusive market research reports and consulting services to clients from diversified industries including Consumer Goods & Retail Technology, Automotive and Mobility, Smart Tech, Healthcare and Lifesciences, Industrial Machinery, Chemicals and Materials, IT and Media, Logistics and PackagingArizton comprises a team of exuberant and well-experienced analysts who have mastered in generating incisive reports. Our specialist analysts possess exemplary skills in market research. We train our team in advanced research practices, techniques, and ethics to outperform in fabricating impregnable research reports.Arizton Advisory & IntelligenceChicago, Illinois, 60605Mail: enquiry@arizton.comCall: +1-312-465-7864
U.S. Fabricated Pipe and Pipe Fitting Market - Analysis, Trends & Forecasts to 2025

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IndexBox has just published a new report "U.S. Fabricated Pipe And Pipe Fitting Market. Analysis And Forecast to 2025" ().This report is best suitable for you if you: Are planning to enter a new geographical market and wish to know which one is best for your product Are planning to enter a new product market and want to have a detailed overview of the market before entering Already work in a given market and want to update your knowledge on the topic Are developing/reviewing your company strategy and wish to know the existing trends in the market Want to find the best country to import a product from Are consulting a client in the given industry and wish to get a deep understanding of the situation in the market Are planning to open new production facilities and wish to choose the best location.The report serves the above mentioned purposes by providing a deep analysis of the key indicators of the fabricated pipe and pipe fitting market. It includes a market overview, which consolidates the key conclusions made from the analysis of the market study, giving insights on the most significant markets based on the comparative analysis. The report also provides a outlook of how the market is expected to change in the coming years, based on historical trends, external and internal factors, and the main drivers changing the market. Each section contains a a detailed survey of the data provided. Specifically, the report presents the historical developments and relevant projections of fabricated pipe and pipe fitting production volumes, consumption data, as well as producer prices.The trade section provides crucial data, such as historical data on imports/exports, changes in the direction of trade, as well as import/export prices. Analysis of fabricated pipe and pipe fitting trade shows the opportunities that are opening before producers and suppliers in a changing market.Product coverage: Fabricated pipe and pipe fittings made from purchased pipe.Countries coverage: the U.S.Abstract:In 2015, the value of fabricated pipe and pipe fitting production in the U.S. amounted to $7.3B, going down by -5.6% against the previous year level. Overall, the U.S. fabricated pipe and pipe fitting output pursued a mild decline from 2007 to 2015. The total output figures decreased at an average annual rate of -1.4%. The trend pattern, however, indicated some noticable fluctuations throughout the analyzed period. The growth pace was the most rapid in 2011, when the output figure increased by +22% from the previous year level. Over the period under review, the total value of fabricated pipe and pipe fitting shipments in the United States attained its maximum level of $8.1B in 2008. Afterwards, the growth in terms of the fabricated pipe and pipe fitting production failed to regain its strength through to 2015.Data coverage: Fabricated pipe and pipe fitting market value and size; Major trends in the fabricated pipe and pipe fitting market; Forecast of the market dynamics in the medium term; Exports, imports and trade balance; Import and export prices; Life cycle of the fabricated pipe and pipe fitting industry; Number of establishments and their locations; Fabricated pipe and pipe fitting industry productivity. Key market players and their profiles.Methodology:Our methodology consists of obtaining information from various trusted sources (both paid and open), which include, but are not limited to: International official statistical agencies Governmental statistical agencies Official trade statistics Paid trade databases Industrial associations Company reports Industry experts.Companies mentioned:Anvil International,H-P Products,Sanoh America,Deublin Company,Elkhart Products Corporation,Team Industries,Tube Processing Corp,Blissfield Manufacturing Company,Dormont Manufacturing Company,Judson A. Smith Company,United Group Services,Hercules Industries,Ipsco Tubulars ,Tube Specialties Co.,Perma-Pipe,Texas Steel Conversion,Globe Mechanical Inc,Pioneer Pipe,Scott Process Systems,Morton Industries ,U S Weatherford L P,Southwest Stainless,Boccard Pipe Fabricators,Nichirin-Flex U.S.A.,CB&i Walker La,Eps Corporate Holdings,Long Island Pipe Supply ,Future Pipe Industries,Star Pipe,Rotary Drilling Tools Usa,Express Pipe & Supply Co.,Rdt Intermediate HoldcoOur research team compare the information gathered, confirm it with sources when required, and analyze the collected data, developing a full clear picture of the market and coming up with the final numbers. It is crucial to understand the trends of the market, for which we do provide study, taking into account events in the market, in adjacent and related markets, raw material markets, and markets, which are the main demand creators for the product under research. As for the forecast, it is conducted using analytical models of data on consumption, production, exports, imports, prices, as well as the industry trends, economic trends, consumption trends, possible political and technological trends.Source:IndexBox is a leading market research publisher in the world. You can find more than 25,000 research reports in our web store, which cover global industries and regional markets. All the worldwide marketing data you need is at your fingertips.Company Name: IndexBoxContact Person: Kirill BezverhiEmail: kirill.bezverhi@indexbox.co.ukPhone: +44 20 3239 3063Adress: United Kingdom, 44 Main Street, Douglas, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, ML11 0QW
Global Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) Market Growth Opportunity and Industry Forecast 2022

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Reports on Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) Market Research Report with the global valuation from the year 2017 to 2022.This report studies Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022.Get the abstract of report on:This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringGeneral MotorsLockheed MartinBoeingGeneral DynamicsLogos TechnologiesMagnet MotorZero MotorcyclesAeroVironmentBAE SystemsFord Motor CompanyOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoBatteryFuel CellSolar CellOtherBy Application, the market can be split intoTransportDrillOtherGet Discount on report @By Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaGet a Customized report as per the requisites.Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV)1.1 Definition and Specifications of Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV)1.1.1 Definition of Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV)1.1.2 Specifications of Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV)1.2 Classification of Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV)1.2.1 Battery1.2.2 Fuel Cell1.2.3 Solar Cell1.2.4 Other1.3 Applications of Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV)1.3.1 Transport1.3.2 Drill1.3.3 Other1.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 India2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV)2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV)2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV)2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV)BROWSE FULL TABLE OF CONTENTS and REPORT DESCRIPTION @In nutshell, the Military Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) Market research report for 2017 to 2022 is summation of data collected that would help to strategize the business planning.About Us:Reports Monitor (ReportsMonitor.com) is a platform to meet the market research and business intelligence requirements. Our aim is to change the dynamics of the Market Research industry by providing quality intelligence backed by data. Your requirement for market forecasting is fulfilled by our exclusive quantitative and analytics driven intelligence. We have a vast collection of reports, covering maximum industries worldwide. Our process is meticulously planned and executed in order to use maximum resources and explore the market for getting genuine insights. Decision makers can now rely on our distinct data gathering methods to get factual market forecasting and detailed analysis.Contact Us:Jay MatthewsDirect: +1 513 549-5911Email: sales@reportsmonitor.comWebsite:
Global Food Arabic Gum Market 2017 - Nexira, Nutriroma, TIC Gums, KANTILAL BROTHERS

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Global Food Arabic Gum Industry 2017 Market Research Report provides a unique tool for evaluating the market, highlighting opportunities, and supporting strategic and tactical decision-making. This report recognizes that in this rapidly-evolving and competitive environment, up-to-date marketing information is essential to monitor performance and make critical decisions for growth and profitability.The research study focuses major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. It provides information on trends and developments, and focuses on markets and materials, capacities and technologies, and on the changing structure of the Food Arabic Gum Industry.Download Free Sample Report @Market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer, the top players includingNexiraTIC GumsKANTILAL BROTHERSKapadia Gum Industries PvtNutriromaPowder Pack ChemGeographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Food Arabic Gum Industry in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), covering North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India.On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, and market share and growth rate of each type. On the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate of Food Arabic Gum Market Industry for each application.Access Full Report @Major points covered in this Report are :Food Arabic Gum Industry Market Overview, Segment by Type (Product Category), by Application, by Region (2012-2022), Competition by ManufacturersGlobal Market Size (Value) of Food Arabic Gum Industry (2012-2022)Global Food Arabic Gum Industry Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value), Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)Global Food Arabic Gum Industry Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeGlobal Food Arabic Gum Industry Market Analysis by ApplicationGlobal Food Arabic Gum Industry Manufacturers Profiles/AnalysisFood Arabic Gum Industry Manufacturing Cost AnalysisIndustrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersMarketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersMarket Effect Factors AnalysisGlobal Food Arabic Gum Industry Market Forecast (2017-2022)Research Findings and ConclusionThe research includes historic data from 2012 to 2016 and forecasts until 2022 which makes the reports an invaluable resource for industry executives, marketing, sales and product managers, consultants, analysts, and other people looking for key industry data in readily accessible documents with clearly presented tables and graphs. The report will make detailed analysis mainly on above questions and in-depth research on the development environment, market size, development trend, operation situation and future development trend of Food Arabic Gum Industry on the basis of stating current situation of the industry in 2017 so as to make comprehensive organization and judgment on the competition situation and development trend Food Arabic Gum Market and assist manufacturers and investment organization to better grasp the development course of Food Arabic Gum Market.Available Customizations -With the given market data, Fior Markets offers customizations according to the companys specific needs.The following customization options are available for the report:Segment Analysis :Product matrix, which gives a detailed comparison of the product portfolio of each companyDetailed analysis at volume level can also be provided.Regional Analysis :Further breakdown of the Rest of Asia Pacific Food Arabic Gum market, by countryFurther breakdown of the Rest of Europe Food Arabic Gum market, by countryFurther breakdown of other countries in the RoW Food Arabic Gum market, by country.Fior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.Contact UsMark StoneSales ManagerPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:
Global Angular Contact Ball Bearings Market 2017 - SKF, Timken, JTEKT, NSK, FAG

Global Angular Contact Ball Bearings Market

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Apex Market Reports, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Angular Contact Ball Bearings Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Angular Contact Ball Bearings Market" from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global Angular Contact Ball Bearings industry, and estimates the future trend of Angular Contact Ball Bearings market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Angular Contact Ball Bearings Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportSKFTimkenJTEKTNSKFAGNachi Europe GmbHAST Bearings LLCThe market research report explores the Angular Contact Ball Bearings market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Angular Contact Ball Bearings Market". The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Angular Contact Ball Bearings market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Angular Contact Ball Bearings. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Angular Contact Ball Bearings market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.The competitive landscape of the global market for Angular Contact Ball Bearings is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Angular Contact Ball Bearings market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Angular Contact Ball Bearings market globally.Inquire Before Buying @The Global Angular Contact Ball Bearings market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Angular Contact Ball Bearings production volume, data pertaining to demand and Angular Contact Ball Bearings supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Angular Contact Ball Bearings along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Angular Contact Ball Bearings across the world.Apex Market Reports offers elevating market research globally. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different categories. Apex Market Reports provides you to best services, weather youre searching for new trends in market or competitive scenario in emerging market.Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Frank ValadezCorporate Sales Specialist155 North Wacker Drive, Suite 4250Chicago, IL 60606Phone: +17739042683Email id - sales@apexmarketreports.comWebsite -
UAV Market 2017 Industry, Analysis, Research, Share, Growth, Sales, Trends, Supply, Forecast to 2021

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Exclusive Summery About Report:The global UAV market is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 11% during 2016-2021. This growth is driven due to significant demand and procurement of UAVs in civil and commercial application.As per the MRFR analysis, cost effectiveness is one of the key drivers for global UAV market to acquire and operate in comparison to manned aircraft and helicopters. The challenges associated with the market are the low endurance and stringent regulation associated with civilian and commercial usage of UAVs.The United States is leading the global UAV market; however the demand has increased from emerging nations such as EMEA and Asia Pacific in relation to growing defense spending to counter national security threat.Access the market data and information presented through over 60 tables and figures spread 80+ pages of the project report. Avail in-depth table of content (TOC) & market synopsis on Global UAV Market Research Report- Forecast to 2021"Global UAV Market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players including AeroVironment, Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Limited, Aeyron Labs, Aibotix, BAE Systems, DJI, Lockheed Martin and Prox Dynamics.Request a Sample Report @Key Findings In 2015, the market was led by Americas with a share of around 56%, followed by EMEA with 25%, and APAC with 19%. Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become popular on the battlefield for various military missions (such as ISR applications) Demand for UAVs is rapidly increasing from emerging and developing nations to counter national security threat China is a major market for UAVs. It is expected to rise parallel with Chinas commitment to growing utilization of unmanned systems, mainly for military applications In the US, FAA is working to draft guidelines and standards for the wide scale civilian or commercial use of UAVIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.For further information on this report, visit @Study Objectives of UAV Market To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 5 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the Global UAV Market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To analyse the Global UAV Market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW) To provide country-level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective To provide country-level analysis of the market for segment by types and applications To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analysing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market To track and analyse competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Global UAV MarketThe reports also cover country level analysis:Americas (North & Latin) US Canada Brazil OthersEurope Germany France Italy Spain U.K Rest of EuropeAsia  Pacific China India Japan Australia/New Zealand Rest of Asia-PacificMiddle East & Africa UAE, Kuwait Israel Rest of Middle East & AfricaThe market report for UAV of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Global Luggage Leather Goods Market Expected to Reach US$ 361.3 Bn by 2024-end

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Innovatively designed baggage & leather goods will remain in great demand as tourists from all parts of the world will prefer travelling in style. Soaring demand for trendy suitcases and hand bags will also be instrumented by higher durability of leather goods and luggage. A latest report published by Persistence Market Research projects that during the 2016-2024 forecast period, the global market for luggage & leather goods will reach US$ 361,326.1 Mn value. The report further estimates that the market, which is presently valued a little over US$ 244,000 Mn, will soar steadily at a CAGR of 5%.Key factors impacting the dynamics of the global luggage & leather goods market are compiled in the report, which follow:Growing preference to vegetable-tanned leather is influencing the global consumption of leather luggage. Manufacturers of such goods are labelling their products according to such popular consumer preferences.Flourishing tourism industry is directly boosting the global sales of luggage & leather goods, with favors pouring in from both domestic and international tourism.However, the demand for luggage & leather goods is also expected to witness restrain from surging adoption of substitute materials. The demand for leather luggage products is expected to lose traction, gradually, to polyester, nylon, rexine, and other equally-durable synthetic materials.Rising demand for lightweight bags, organic leather products and affordable luggage goods is also expected to favor the growth of global market for luggage & leather goods. Over nine out of every ten luggage goods sold in the world will continue to be leather goods. The report predicts that by the end of 2024, the world will have witnessed sales of US$ 331,000 Mn worth of leather goods. Among which, footwear and leather accessories are anticipated to be top-selling leather products.The report further reveals that specialty & multi brand stores, single brand stores, and general retail outlets will collectively serve as largest sales channels for luggage & leather goods. In 2016, over 2,000 million units of luggage & leather goods were sold through general retailers, while online sales accounted for a little over 4.5% revenue share. Key findings in the report also exhibit that North America and Europe will collectively dominate the global market for luggage & leather goods. Nevertheless, these regions are likely to showcase value CAGRs below 5%. Contrary to this, Latin Americas luggage & leather goods market is projected to soar at 5.3% CAGR. Asia-Pacific region, on the other hand, will witness fastest revenue growth at 5.8% CAGR.Request and Download Sample Report@The report has also profiled globally-prominent manufacturers of luggage & leather goods, which include, Knoll, Inc., Samsonite International SA, Hermes International SA, American Leather, Inc., Aero Leather Clothing Ltd., Timberland, Woodland, Johnston & Murphy, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, and VIP Industries Ltd.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:
Assembly Automation Market by Technology, Growth, Application & Geography  Analysis & Forecast to 2022

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Assembly Automation Market Size, Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa), Application Development status, Price Trend, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2017  2022.Automated assembly refers to a manner of producing goods by use of automated machinery or assembly robots and a systematic approach to assembling goods that operates at least partly independently from human control. In most cases, automated machinery is used to produce products using standardized parts added in a specific series of motions or activities along what is commonly called an assembly line. In many technology firms, medical research and clinical companies and factories, automated assembly is an important part of the process.Request a Free sample PDF of this research to evaluate more @Scope of the Global Assembly Automation Market Report:This report focuses on the Assembly Automation in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, Global Assembly Automation Market report covers as FANUC, ABB, Yaskawa, Kuka, Hanwha, Hirata, ThyssenKrupp, ATS Automation, Velomat and Bastian Solutions.Global Assembly Automation Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers:North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa).Global Assembly Automation Market Segment by Type, covers as Robot Automation Equipment, Other Automation Equipment and Central control systemGlobal Assembly Automation Market Segment by Applications, can be divided into: Automobile, 3C Industry and OthersEnquire Discount on Global Assembly Automation Market Research Report @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Assembly Automation market.Chapter 1, to describe Assembly Automation Market Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Assembly Automation, with sales, revenue, and price of Assembly Automation, in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the global Assembly Automation market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Assembly Automation, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to Assembly Automation Industry analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the Assembly Automation Market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, Assembly Automation market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Assembly Automation Industry sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source.For more information on this report, Please visit at:Related Reports: -Europe Assembly Automation Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022Automated assembly refers to a manner of producing goods by use of automated machinery or assembly robots and a systematic approach to assembling goods that operates at least partly independently from human control. In most cases, automated machinery is used to produce products using standardized parts added in a specific series of motions or activities along what is commonly called an assembly line.Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Market Study ReportThe Green Suite #4594,Dover, DE 19901United StatesPhone: 1-201-355-0868US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:News:
HPV Decontamination Systems Market: Key Players and Production Information analysis with Forecast

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Transparency Market Research has released a new market report entitled HPV Decontamination Systems Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024. According to this report, the global HPV decontamination systems market revenue stood at US$122.75 mn in 2015 and is expected to reach US$220.05 mn by 2024, at a CAGR of 6.7% from 2016 to 2024.Browse the full HPV Decontamination Systems Market (By Applications - Incubators, Autoclave/ Cage Washer, Isolators, Rooms/Facilities) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024 report atHPV decontamination systems rely on microcondensation for the total elimination of pathogens from an inert environment. HPV is used in hospitals globally, primarily for the complete disinfection of rooms that are used for patient care and also to reduce the risk of spreading to the subsequent room. The growing prevalence of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) has led to increasing use of HPV decontamination systems in hospitals and facilities worldwide. International regulatory bodies emphasis on sterile testing and aseptic processing is one of the major drivers of the markets growth. Cost effectiveness with minimum downtime to business activities and operations of HPV decontaminations has also bolstered the growth of the HPV decontamination systems market.Download Table of Content @The demand for the decontamination of laboratory-scale incubators among customers on a regular basis due to various research changes or accidental spillage, has led to increasing adoption of HPV decontamination systems in this segment. The isolators application segment is anticipated to grow the fastest, with an expected CAGR of 7.9% during the forecast period due to its use of barrier technology to minimize the risks of contamination. In 2015, the incubators application segment of the global HPV decontamination systems market generated revenues of US$ 39.81 Mn, which is approximately 30% of the overall HPV decontamination systems market.Request A Sample Of Report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Cloud Access Security Brokers Market: An Array of Graphics and Analysis of Major Industry Segments

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According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research entitled Cloud Access Security Brokers Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024, the cloud access security brokers (CASB) market was worth US$ 3,371.4 Mn in 2015 and is expected to reach US$ 13,218.5 Mn by 2024, expanding at a CAGR of 16.7% from 2016 to 2024. North America was the largest market for cloud access security brokers in 2015. The growth in this region is being driven by the presence of a large number of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), start-ups, and large corporate enterprises.Browse the full Cloud Access Security Brokers Market (Cloud Deployment Type: SaaS, PaaS, IaaS; Software Type: Cloud-based, On-premise; Software Solution: Control & Monitoring, Risk & Compliance Management, Cloud Data Encryption, Data Leakage Prevention, Tokenization; Services: Consulting, System Integration, Operation & Maintenance) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024 report atCASB services provide a security platform for cloud silos. A large number of SMBs and large corporates currently rely on cloud computing technologies to store their information and extract it whenever required. Security over the cloud is one of the major concerns facilitating the growth of cloud security solutions. CASB services play a significant role in providing solutions encompassing control & monitoring, risk & compliance management, tokenization, data leakage prevention, and cloud data encryption. These solutions are capable enough to provide complete cloud security, avoiding data leakage and the risk of security breaches at access points and nodes.Download Table of Content @The report provides cross-segment analysis of the CASB market, based on cloud deployment type and components comprising software and services. Segmentation on the basis of deployment type includes SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. IaaS platforms are expected to emerge as the fastest-growing platforms, owing to their augmented IT delivery capabilities, increased scalability, and flexibility. However, the SaaS platform held the dominant position in terms of CASB cloud deployment type in 2015.Software solutions that are particularly used for data leakage prevention and control & monitoring held the largest market shares in 2015. Furthermore, these segments are growing at a significant pace owing to rising threat of security breaches. Frequently changing cloud regulations by governing bodies are making it difficult for cloud storage vendors to ensure compliance. This has enabled cloud storage vendors to outsource the security platform to the CASB providers, empowering the CASB risk & management compliance market to expand at an expected CAGR of 18% from 2016 to 2024. However, cloud data encryption is expected to be the fastest-growing software solution segment, expected to advance at the rate of 20.2% over the forecast period from 2016 to 2024.Request A Sample Of Report @Geographically, North America is the largest market for CASBs and the region is anticipated to dominate the global CASB market over the forecast period. In 2015, North America accounted for approximately 30% of the global CASB markets revenue. Key players in the market include NetSkope Inc., Skyhigh Networks, CloudLock Inc., Zscaler, Inc., Adallom, Inc., Bitglass, Inc., CipherCloud Inc., and Protegrity USA, Inc.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Micro Irrigation Systems Market: Structure and Overview of Key Market Forces Propelling Market

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The presence of a large pool of participants characterizes the competitive landscape of the global micro irrigation systems market. As the market faces intense competition, major players are focusing on innovations as well as the integration of latest technologies into their existent offerings in order to retain their position, finds Transparency Market Research.In the recent times, a number of leading companies have introduced advanced micro irrigation systems. For instance, Netafim launched its next-generation low-flow drippers and Toro introduced Aqua-Traxx Flow Control drip tape in 0.13 GPH emitter flow rate. However, over the coming years, manufacturers will undertake strategic partnerships to expand their product portfolios as well as to increase their sales, notes TMR.Obtain Report Details @Micro irrigation systems are widely recognized as one of the fast-emerging segments in the worldwide agriculture industry. The immense rise in the adoption of these systems is mainly attributed to the encouragement by various governments across the world.With water scarcity being a looming concern, micro irrigation can prove beneficial as it is capable of saving 50 to 60% of the ground water compared to other conventional irrigation practices. Consequently, governments in Asian and African countries, where water scarcity is severe, are offering subsidies over the installation costs of micro irrigation systems, prompting farmers to adopt these systems. Besides, farmers are also preferring micro irrigation systems over traditional ones as the former allow them to water plants evenly and when required, optimizing crop yields and improving their quality.Download Table of Content @Considering these factors, the future of the global micro irrigation systems market looks teeming with opportunities. However, the high cost associated with the installation and maintenance of these irrigation systems may limit their application to large-scale and corporate farming in the coming years.Analysts at TMR estimate the global opportunity in micro irrigation systems, which stood at US$2.6 bn in 2014, to expand at a CAGR of 15.10% during the period from 2015 to 2023 and possibly worth US$9.1 bn by the end of the forecast period.Currently, sprinklers dominate the market with a majority share and are expected to remain dominant in the near future. However, drip irrigation systems are poised to report their adoption at the fastest rate over the forecast period. While the demand for pumping units is the highest in the sprinkler segment, filters draw the maximum demand in the drip irrigation systems segment.Request A Sample Of Report @Regionally, Europe led the global market with a revenue share of 32% in 2014. The region, however, will lose its ground to Asia Pacific in the coming years, thanks to the increasing involvement of technology in agriculture in countries such as Australia, China, India, and Japan.The study presented here is based on a report by Transparency Market Research (TMR) titled Micro Irrigation Systems Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Water Heater Market is Poised to Reach US$ 52.8 Bn by 2021

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According to the latest market report published by Persistence Market Research, titled Global Market Study on Water Heater Market: Increased Product Visibility Has Resulted in Increasing Demand for Energy-efficient Water Heaters in the Recent Past, the water heater market is estimated to be valued at US$ 39.5 Bn by the end of 2015 and is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 4.9% from 2015 to 2021. Also, in terms of volume, around 68.8 Mn water heater units are expected to be installed by 2015 end across the globe, with the overall market anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 4.6% during the forecast period.View and Download TOC of Water Heater Market Research Report@Hot water is an essential part of day to day living. It is required for showering, washing clothes, and other purposes, such as for hydronic heating and thermal comfort, especially in extremely cold climate regions and countries. Appliances supplying hot water for residential and commercial purposes include boilers, Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, and water heaters.Expanding manufacturing and construction industry, increasing urbanization, and rise in strategic alliances by various players to leverage market opportunity are factors driving the growth of the global water heater market currently. Also, increasing demand for continuous hot water supply is prompting manufacturers to focus on delivering energy efficient and low maintenance water heater products. However, factors such as high installation costs, increasing focus on compliance of standards, and fuel demand dynamics are restricting the growth of the overall water heaters market currently.Request and Download Sample Report@Global water heaters market is segmented on the basis of product types, storage types, and end use regions. Product type segments include solar heaters, electric heaters, gas & propane heaters, and geothermal water heaters. Of these, the electric heaters segment is expected to dominate the market in terms of value share contribution by 2021 end and is expected to expand at the highest CAGR over the forecast period (20152021). In terms of volume, the gas and propane heaters segment is expected to account for a significant market share during the forecast period.Buy Full Water Heater Market Report@Key market players profiled in this report include Venus Home Appliances Private Ltd., AO Smith Corporation, Rheem Manufacturing Co., Siemens AG., Ariston Thermo SPA. Bajaj Electricals Ltd., Bradford White Corp., Haier Electronics Group Co., Ltd., HTP Inc., Noritz Corp. and Rinnai Corp. In addition, China-based manufacturers covered in the report include Zhejiang KANCHQUAN Electric Appliance Co., Ltd, Jiaxing Jinyi Solar Energy Technology Co, Ltd., Genrui, Himin Solar Co., Ltd, and Zhongshan Inse Group Co, Ltd.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:
Lebanon Life Insurance Market 2017-By Various Distribution Channels in the Lebanon Life Insurance 2020

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WiseGuyReports published new report, titled Life Insurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities.Synopsis'Life Insurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides a detailed outlook by product category for the Lebanese life insurance segment, and a comparison of the Lebanese insurance industry with its regional counterparts.It provides key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (20112015) and forecast period (20152020).The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Lebanese economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country.The report brings together research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure.GET SAMPLE REPORT @Summary'Life Insurance in Lebanon Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Lebanese life insurance segment, including: An overview of the Lebanese life insurance segment The Lebanese life insurance segments growth prospects by category A comprehensive overview of the Lebanese economy and demographics A comparison of the Lebanese life insurance segment with its regional counterparts The various distribution channels in the Lebanese life insurance segment Details of the competitive landscape in the life insurance segment in Lebanon Details of regulatory policy applicable to the Lebanese insurance industryScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the life insurance segment in Lebanon: It provides historical values for the Lebanese life insurance segment for the reports 20112015 review period, and projected figures for the 20152020 forecast period. It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Lebanese life insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2020. It provides a comparison of the Lebanese life insurance segment with its regional counterparts It analyzes the various distribution channels for life insurance products in Lebanon. It profiles the top life insurance companies in Lebanon and outlines the key regulations affecting them.Key points to buy Make strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Lebanese life insurance segment, and each category within it. Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Lebanese life insurance segment. Assess the competitive dynamics in the life insurance segment. Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories. Gain insights into key regulations governing the Lebanese insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future.Key Highlights In 2016, Bancassurance SAL launched a new retirement plan to target the aging population. Allianz SNA SAL provides the Jana retirement saving plan, in collaboration with BBAC Bank. In 2016, Arope Insurance announced a strategic partnership with BoB Finance, in collaboration with Beirut Brokers. As of 2015, life insurers must have a minimum paid-up capital of LBP2.3 billion (US$1.5 million) to operate in Lebanon. The civil war in Syria negatively affected the Lebanese economy and insurance industry during the review period. In 2015, the Insurance Control Commission (ICC) initiated the provision of soft loans as incentives to encourage mergers and acquisitions.Table of Contents1 KEY FACTS AND HIGHLIGHTS2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY3 ECONOMY AND DEMOGRAPHICS4 SEGMENT OUTLOOK5 OUTLOOK6 DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL OUTLOOK7 COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE8 GOVERNANCE, RISK AND COMPLIANCE9 DATABOOK10 DEFINITIONS AND METHODOLOGY11 ABOUT TIMETRIC..CONTINUEDWise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Europe Mosquito Repellent Candles Market is Expected to Surpass US$2.0 bn by the end of 2021

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The Europe mosquito repellent candles market is marked by intensive research and development of new products by leading companies that differentiates them from their rivals, according to a recent study by Transparency Market Research (TMR). The report rates Yankee Candle Company, Gies-Kerzen GmbH, Diversam Comaral, Guangzhou Tiger Head Battery Group, Biosensory Inc., Bite Lite LLC, and Coghlans Ltd. as some of the leading companies operating in the European mosquito repellent candles market. Constant focus of these companies is on making products that are ecofriendly, made from natural substances, and are harmless to human beings.As per the projections provided by the TMR report, the demand in the mosquito repellent candles market in Europe will expand at a significant CAGR of 6.3% during the forecast period of 2015 to 2021, reaching a valuation of US$2.0 bn by the end of 2021, significantly up from its estimated worth of US$1.3 bn. Although the competition is stiff, there is vast scope of new product development as well as marketing in order to gain ground over the competitors. While France is rated by the report as most lucrative country-wide market for mosquito repellent candles in Europe, reasonable pricing is another prominent factor that will define the scenario of the market in the near future.View and Download TOC of Europe Mosquito Repellent Candles Market Research Report @France Most Lucrative Country-wide MarketBased on raw material type, the TMR report segments the Europe mosquito repellent candles market into citronella oil, andiroba oil, basil oil, and eucalyptus oil. Out of these, citronella oil candles segment is projected to increment the demand at most prominent CAGR of 6.0% during the forecast period of 2015 to 2021, gaining traction from reasonable pricing. Citronella, a natural mosquito repellent, is extracted from the leaves and stem of lemongrass. Owing to the widespread availability of lemon grass, the production of citronella oil is not expected to subsidize during the forecast period.Country-wise, the report takes stock of the potential of mosquito repellent candles market in France, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Hungary, and Rest of Europe. France, in particular, is expected to expand the demand at most significant CAGR of 6.3% during the forecast period. Spain and Italy are other two country-wide markets projected to add to the demand for mosquito repellent candles in the near future.Request and Download Sample Report @Awareness Regarding Zika Virus and Tiger Mosquitoes Driving UptakeApart from the discomfort they cause, the prevalence of numerous mosquito-inflicted diseases was already the primary factor augmenting the demand for these mosquito repellent candles, but now the discovery of Zika virus has further fueled the need for this candles. Dengue fever, yellow fever, and bunyamwera fever are some of the common diseases caused by these mosquitoes. Specific oils in these candles ward off mosquitoes with the smoke they produce, and are available in the form of liquid, incense sticks, coils, and creams. In addition to that, these candles add to the decoration of the ambience as well as spread aroma. These candles release little dirt and smoke in comparison to other alternatives and hence are gaining consumer preference.Browse Complete Report @Tiger mosquitoes, who are flourishing in increasing temperatures in European countries, increasing consumer awareness and establishment of strong distribution channel are some of the other factors driving the demand in the Europe mosquito repellent candles market. Conversely, soot produced by paraffin wax is severely harmful, if consumed or inhaled. This factor obstructs potential consumers to opt against mosquito repellent candles, and hinders the prosperity of the market for the same.Buy Full Europe Mosquito Repellent Candles Market Report @About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Workflow Management System Global Market 2017: Key Players  HP, IBM, Oracle, SAP, Appian, Bosch, EMC

Workflow Management System Market

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Workflow Management System Market 2017Wiseguyreports.Com adds Workflow Management System Market Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2022 To Its Research Database.Report Details:This report provides in depth study of Workflow Management System Market using SWOT analysis i.e. Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threat to the organization. The Workflow Management System Market report also provides an in-depth survey of key players in the market which is based on the various objectives of an organization such as profiling, the product outline, the quantity of production, required raw material, and the financial health of the organization.This report studies the global Workflow Management System market, analyzes and researches the Workflow Management System development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia.This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeHPIBMOracleSAPAppianBoschEMCFujistuNetwork AutomationNewgen SoftwareOrangeScape TechnologiesPaperSavePegasystemsPNMsoftSoftware AGTibco SoftwareRequest a Sample Report @Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, Workflow Management System can be split intoProduction Workflow SystemsMessaging Based Workflow SystemsWeb Based Workflow SystemsSuite Based Workflow SystemsOther Workflow SystemsMarket segment by Application, Workflow Management System can be split intoBanking, Financial Services and InsurancePublic SectorHealthcareEnergy and UtilitiesRetailIT and TelecomTravel and HospitalityIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Complete Report Details@Major Key Points in Table of Content:Global Workflow Management System Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Workflow Management System1.1 Workflow Management System Market Overview1.1.1 Workflow Management System Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Workflow Management System Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 Workflow Management System Market by Type1.3.1 Production Workflow Systems1.3.2 Messaging Based Workflow Systems1.3.3 Web Based Workflow Systems1.3.4 Suite Based Workflow Systems1.3.5 Other Workflow Systems1.4 Workflow Management System Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Banking, Financial Services and Insurance1.4.2 Public Sector1.4.3 Healthcare1.4.4 Energy and Utilities1.4.5 Retail1.4.6 IT and Telecom1.4.7 Travel and Hospitality2 Global Workflow Management System Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Workflow Management System Market Size (Value) by Players (2016 and 2017)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 HP3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Workflow Management System Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 IBM3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Workflow Management System Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 Oracle3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Workflow Management System Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 SAP3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Workflow Management System Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Appian3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Workflow Management System Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 Bosch3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Workflow Management System Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 EMC3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Workflow Management System Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 Fujistu3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 Workflow Management System Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.8.5 Recent Developments3.9 Network Automation3.9.1 Company Profile3.9.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.9.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.9.4 Workflow Management System Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.9.5 Recent Developments3.10 Newgen Software3.10.1 Company Profile3.10.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.10.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.10.4 Workflow Management System Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.10.5 Recent DevelopmentsContinued.Buy now @Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Sales@Wiseguyreports.ComPh: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)ABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.ADDRES:WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Latin America Feminine Hygiene Products Market Poised to Account for US$3,809.7 million By 2020

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Leading market research firm Transparency Market Research has announced the release of a new research report, detailing the Latin America feminine hygiene products market. The markets historical and present figures are detailed and analyzed in order to present reliable forecasts for the markets growth in the period from 2014 to 2020. The Latin America feminine hygiene products market is expected to grow at a 9.6% CAGR in the 2014-2020 forecast period, rising from a 2014 valuation of US$2,198.2 million to a projected 2020 valuation of US$3,809.7 million.The report, titled Feminine Hygiene Products Market  Latin America Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2014  2020, has been prepared by expert analysts with primary and secondary research and is available on the company website for sale.The report is a must-have guide for executives and stakeholders in the Latin America feminine hygiene market, since it provides key recommendations to act on in the forecast period to maximize the competitive advantage of an entity.The rise in the number of working women in Latin American countries is described in the report as the main driver for the Latin America feminine hygiene products market. While Latin America, consisting of Central and South America, has been one of the underdeveloped regions in the world, the 21st century has seen great progress in the economic conditions of major countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Peru. Growing urbanization in these countries and consequent modernization of lifestyles has led to a high proportion of the female population being employed and thus requiring a wide variety of feminine hygiene products.Urbanization and GDP growth in Latin American countries has also benefitted the Latin America feminine hygiene products market in other ways. Advanced feminine hygiene products now mainstream in developed countries are steadily gaining mass acceptance in Latin America, as a result of which the market exhibits strong growth prospects. Increasing product innovation has also helped develop feminine hygiene products for budget-conscious customers, since the region still remains far from the prosperity of regions such as North America and Europe.Rise in the ubiquity of sophisticated urban shopping avenues such as super/hypermarkets and specialize beauty and drug stores has also helped the Latin America feminine hygiene products market by making the products more accessible to the common Latin American consumer than ever before. These shopping channels and discrete packaging used by major players in the Latin America feminine hygiene market have also removed the social stigma of buying feminine hygiene products. The strong demand for ultra-thin sanitary pads also bears out this point, since they are inconspicuous and thus convenient.Request and Download Sample Report@Major players operating in the moderately fragmented Latin America feminine hygiene products market, such as Gillette, Tampax, Siempre Libre, Always, Vagisil, Nosotras, Schick, Lactacyd, and Carefree, are profiled in the report and key facts about the companies are elaborated to provide a complete guide to the competitive landscape of the Latin America feminine hygiene products market.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:
Europe Industrial Protective Footwear Market Expected to Reach US$2.6 bn by 2020

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Transparency Market Research has published a new report on the Europe industrial protective footwear market. As per the report, the Europe industrial protective footwear market is expected to expand at a 2.10% CAGR from the period between 2014 and 2020. The report, titled Industrial Protective Footwear Market  Europe Industry Analysis, Trend, Size, Share and Forecast 2014  2020, states that the Europe industrial protective footwear market is predicted to progress from US$2.2 bn in 2013 to US$2.6 bn by 2020.View and Download TOC of Industrial Protective Footwear Market Research Report@The industrial protective footwear market includes all kinds of safety footwear used for the protection of workers working in various industries including construction, chemicals, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing. The increasing incidence of worker accidents across various industrial areas has led to growth of the Europe industrial protective footwear market in the recent past. Going forward, strict government regulations mandating safety measures within work premises are expected to propel the Europe industrial protective footwear market during the period between 2014 and 2020.Increasing industrialization and the increasing number of workers across Europe are two of the primary factors expected to boost the demand for industrial protective footwear. Countries such as Germany, Italy, and France are predicted to create new growth opportunities in the Europe industrial protective footwear market in the years to come. The number of foreign manufacturers of industrial safety products and protective footwear is expected to increase in the coming few years. To sell new industrial safety products across the European region, foreign manufacturers need to abide by the rules of the European government. The duties and regulations imposed by the latter are predicted to hamper the growth of the Europe industrial protective footwear market in the years to come.The Europe industrial protective footwear market is segmented on the basis of application and country. By application, the Europe industrial protective footwear market is classified into construction, chemicals, oil and gas, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, transportation, food, and others. In 2013, the manufacturing segment was the largest segment of the Europe industrial protective footwear market in terms of volume. The manufacturing segment is predicted to expand at a 3.20% CAGR during the period between 2014 and 2020. Manufacturing is expected to be the largest application segment in Germany due to the presence of many manufacturing utilities in the country.Request and Download Sample Report@The food segment is predicted to be the fastest developing segment of the Europe industrial protective footwear market, expected to progress at a 3.50% CAGR from 2014 to 2020. The others segment is predicted to expand at a 3.10% CAGR from 2014 to 2020. Some of the leading companies in the Europe industrial protective footwear market are Jal Group (Italy), Saina Group Co, Ltd. (China), Rahman Group (India), Cofra Holdings AG (Switzerland), Oftenrich Holdings Company Limited (Taiwan), and others.Considering the rules and regulations of the European government, foreign manufacturers are focusing on improving the quality of their products so as to maintain their position in the market. Mergers and acquisitions are predicted to help the leading companies maintain their dominance in the Europe industrial protective footwear market in the years to come.Key Segments of Europe Industrial Protective Footwear MarketEurope Industrial Protective Footwear Market, by applicationConstructionManufacturingOil and gasChemicalsFoodPharmaceuticalsTransportationOthersBuy Full Industrial Protective Footwear Market Report@About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Middle office BPO Services Market Expected To to Surpass Revenues worth US$ 400,000 Mn by 2022

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A new report added to the repository of Market Research Reports Search Engine Global Market Study on Middleoffice BPO Services: North America will Remain Largest Market for Middleoffice BPO Services is a comprehensive repository of information, providing market share, size, and forecast.Request for Sample Report:Persistence Market Research (PMR) has delivered an exhaustive evaluation of the global middleoffice BPO services market for forecast period 2017 to 2022. The report, titled Middleoffice BPO Services Market: Global Industry Analysis (2012-2016) and Opportunity Assessment (2017-2022), offers a comprehensive study on expansion of middleoffice BPO services market across key regions, along with a five-year forecast based on the global perspective. Global leaders in the middleoffice BPO services market are profiled in the report. The market standings and product portfolio of these leading players have been reviewed by PMRs analysts, for obtaining an accurate information about their market revenue shares over the previous five years. The information is then been aggregated for creating an all-inclusive valuation of the market for 2012 to 2016. With the help of calculations and advanced formulas, the historical data is used as reference for deducing market size estimations for 2017 to 2022.Report StructureIn order to offer an outlook on future of the global middleoffice BPO services market, the report provides an executive summary of the market, highlighting regional expansion of the market throughout the forecast period. This chapter of the report renders the markets overview, followed by an unbiased & formal introduction of the market and definition of middleoffice BPO services as per industry standards. This chapter also summarizes the market value forecasts, analysing them with the help of metrics such as absolute $ opportunities, year-on-year (Y-o-Y) growth rates, revenue share percentages, and the compound annual growth rates (CAGRs).Browse Full Report with TOC:The report further offers an in-depth analysis of the different causative factors impacting the middleoffice BPO services markets dynamics. The report has provides analysis of the market across every parameter, ranging from macroeconomic factors and industry trends to the market-specific drivers and restraints. In addition, pricing trends and cost structure in the market have been included in the report, along with insights about distribution network, raw material sourcing strategies, and supply chain management. The report has marked the presence of key market players across specific regions with the help of an intensity map.In its subsequent chapters, the report offers a segmentation-wise analysis & forecast of the middleoffice BPO services market. The market has been segmented precisely, considering wide scope of middleoffice BPO services in IT & Telecommunication sector. In last chapters of the report, company profiles of key players are offered, along with information about their latest developments. Illustrating current market standings of the market players, the report sheds light on how the competitors are adopting distinguished strategies for boosting their presence globally.Research MethodologyA systematic and robust methodology has been employed by PMRs analysts to develop the report on the global middleoffice BPO services market. In-depth primary & secondary research has enabled the analysts in achieving accurate estimations on market share analysis and revenues of companies profiled in the report. Regional market valuations are converted by referring to 2017 currency exchange rates. Scope of PMRs report is enabling market players to understand competition landscape of the market, and develop informed strategies for exploring untapped opportunities by overcoming their weaknesses.Enquire about This Report:About UsMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.ContactState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY  12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comSite:
Life Insurance in Egypt, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2021

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Timetrics 'Life Insurance in Egypt Key Trends and Opportunities to 2021' report provides a detailed outlook by product category for the Egyptian life insurance segment, and a comparison of the Egyptian insurance industry with its regional counterparts.It provides key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (20122016) and forecast period (20162021).The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Egyptian economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country.The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure.Get The Sample Copy Of Report :SummaryTimetrics 'Life Insurance in Egypt Key Trends and Opportunities to 2021' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Egyptian life insurance segment, including:An overview of the Egyptian life insurance segmentThe Egyptian life insurance segments growth prospects by categoryA comprehensive overview of the Egyptian economy and demographicsA comparison of the Egyptian life insurance segment with its regional counterpartsThe various distribution channels in the Egyptian life insurance segmentDetails of the competitive landscape in the life insurance segment in EgyptDetails of regulatory policy applicable to the Egyptian insurance industryScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the life insurance segment in Egypt:It provides historical values for the Egyptian life insurance segment for the reports 20122016 review period, and projected figures for the 20162021 forecast period.It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Egyptian life insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2021.It provides a comparison of the Egyptian life insurance segment with its regional counterpartsIt analyzes the various distribution channels for life insurance products in Egypt.It profiles the top life insurance companies in Egypt and outlines the key regulations affecting them.Send An Enquiry :Reasons To BuyMake strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Egyptian life insurance segment, and each category within it.Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Egyptian life insurance segment.Assess the competitive dynamics in the life insurance segment.Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories.Gain insights into key regulations governing the Egyptian insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future.Key HighlightsIn May 2017, the Egyptian Society for Cooperative Insurance (ESCI) introduced mortgage insurance policy for the low-income group.In May 2017, Allianz Egypt announced its partnership with Orange Telecom to provide insurance to employees and assets of small- and medium-sized enterprises.FDI in Egypt increased from EGP17.0 billion (US$2.8 billion) in 2012 to EGP69.0 billion (US$6.8 billion) in 2016 at a review period CAGR of 42.1%.During the review period 20122016, the Egyptian life insurance gross written grew at a CAGR of 16.7%.MRRbiz supports your business intelligence needs with over 700,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Innovation On Digital Signage Software Market Professional Survey Report 2017 By players, regions, product types and end industries

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This report studies Digital Signage Software in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringSignagelive (UK)Scala Inc. (US)Broadsign International LLC (Canada)Omnivex Corporation (Canada)Navori (Switzerland)IntuiLab SA (France)Mvix, Inc.(US)NoviSign Digital Signage Inc.(Israel)Four Winds Interactive (US)Rise Vision (Canada)Planar Systems Inc.(US)NEC Display Solutions Ltd (Japan)Panasonic Corporation (Japan)Sharp Corporation (Japan)Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (South Korea)On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoEdge Server SoftwareContent Management SystemGet The Sample Copy Of Report :By Application, the market can be split intoCommercialInfrastructuralBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaTable of ContentsGlobal Digital Signage Software Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of Digital Signage Software1.1 Definition and Specifications of Digital Signage Software1.1.1 Definition of Digital Signage Software1.1.2 Specifications of Digital Signage Software1.2 Classification of Digital Signage Software1.2.1 Edge Server Software1.2.2 Content Management System1.3 Applications of Digital Signage Software1.3.1 Commercial1.3.2 Infrastructural1.3.3 Application 31.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 IndiaSend An Enquiry :2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Digital Signage Software2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Digital Signage Software2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Digital Signage Software2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Digital Signage Software3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Digital Signage Software3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Digital Signage Software Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Digital Signage Software Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Digital Signage Software Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Digital Signage Software Major Manufacturers in 20164 Global Digital Signage Software Overall Market Overview4.1 2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global Digital Signage Software Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2016 Digital Signage Software Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2012-2017E Global Digital Signage Software Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2016 Digital Signage Software Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2012-2017E Global Digital Signage Software Sales Price4.4.2 2016 Digital Signage Software Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment)5 Digital Signage Software Regional Market Analysis5.1 North America Digital Signage Software Market Analysis5.1.1 North America Digital Signage Software Market Overview5.1.2 North America 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.1.3 North America 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Sales Price Analysis5.1.4 North America 2016 Digital Signage Software Market Share Analysis5.2 China Digital Signage Software Market Analysis5.2.1 China Digital Signage Software Market Overview5.2.2 China 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.2.3 China 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Sales Price Analysis5.2.4 China 2016 Digital Signage Software Market Share Analysis5.3 Europe Digital Signage Software Market Analysis5.3.1 Europe Digital Signage Software Market Overview5.3.2 Europe 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.3.3 Europe 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Sales Price Analysis5.3.4 Europe 2016 Digital Signage Software Market Share Analysis5.4 Southeast Asia Digital Signage Software Market Analysis5.4.1 Southeast Asia Digital Signage Software Market Overview5.4.2 Southeast Asia 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.4.3 Southeast Asia 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Sales Price Analysis5.4.4 Southeast Asia 2016 Digital Signage Software Market Share Analysis5.5 Japan Digital Signage Software Market Analysis5.5.1 Japan Digital Signage Software Market Overview5.5.2 Japan 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.5.3 Japan 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Sales Price Analysis5.5.4 Japan 2016 Digital Signage Software Market Share Analysis5.6 India Digital Signage Software Market Analysis5.6.1 India Digital Signage Software Market Overview5.6.2 India 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.6.3 India 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Sales Price Analysis5.6.4 India 2016 Digital Signage Software Market Share Analysis6 Global 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Segment Market Analysis (by Type)6.1 Global 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Sales by Type6.2 Different Types of Digital Signage Software Product Interview Price Analysis6.3 Different Types of Digital Signage Software Product Driving Factors Analysis6.3.1 Edge Server Software of Digital Signage Software Growth Driving Factor Analysis6.3.2 Content Management System of Digital Signage Software Growth Driving Factor Analysis7 Global 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Segment Market Analysis (by Application)7.1 Global 2012-2017E Digital Signage Software Consumption by Application7.2 Different Application of Digital Signage Software Product Interview Price Analysis7.3 Different Application of Digital Signage Software Product Driving Factors Analysis7.3.1 Commercial of Digital Signage Software Growth Driving Factor Analysis7.3.2 Infrastructural of Digital Signage Software Growth Driving Factor AnalysisMRRbiz supports your business intelligence needs with over 700,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Bentonite Market- Global Industry Analysis and Forecast 2017  2025

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Bentonite is a colloidal clay mineral, formed by the alteration of volcanic ash. The two most common type of bentonite available in the market are: sodium bentonite and calcium bentonite. Sodium bentonite is often known as swelling bentonite, due to its high water absorption property. Bentonite are employed in various applications such as binding, sealing, and filling. Owing to its properties, it is used in various applications of foundry, cat litter, pelletizing, drilling, construction, paper, and cosmetics. Calcium bentonite is the non-swelling type of bentonite. It is usually activated with soda ash and converted into sodium bentonite. Bentonite is one of the key raw materials used in construction. It has an ability to swell and gel when dispersed in water, which is used in construction, primarily in excavation and foundation works. Rising construction industry is therefore expected to propel the Bentonite Market during the forecast period, owing to its use in various construction applications.Request For Free Sample Report:Bentonite is also used in many foundry applications such as sand casting applications. It is extensively employed as a green sand additive or binder in metal casting applications. Demand for bentonite is projected to increase significantly in the next few years considering the extensive growth of the green sand casting process. Asia Pacific dominates the bentonite market in terms of production and demand. Countries such as China, India, Japan, and South Korea are expected to be the key consumers of bentonite. North America is the second largest consuming region. Bentonite is also used as a major constituent of drilling fluids in oil & gas industry. The sluggish growth of the oil & gas industry has remarkably affected the bentonite market. This trend is anticipated to continue during the forecast period, and is therefore expected to unfavorably affect the market growth.Global Bentonite Market: Scope of the StudyThis report analyzes and forecasts the market for bentonite at the global and regional level. The market has been forecast based on volume (Kilo Tons) and revenue (US$ Mn) from 2016 to 2024, considering 2015 as the base year. The study includes drivers and restraints of the global Bentonite market. It also covers impact of these drivers and restraints on demand for Bentonite during the forecast period. The report also highlights opportunities in the bentonite market at the global and regional level. It further includes detailed value chain analysis, which provides a comprehensive view of the global bentonite market.Porters Five Forces model for the bentonite market has also been included to help understand the competitive landscape in the market. The study encompasses market attractiveness analysis, wherein end-users are benchmarked based on their market size, growth rate, and general attractiveness. The study also provides a decisive view of the global bentonite market by segmenting it in terms of product type (sodium bentonite, calcium bentonite & others) and applications such as drilling mud, iron ore pelletizing, foundry sands, pet products, construction, others (textile, paper, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, etc.). These segments have been analyzed based on present and future trends. Regional segmentation includes current and forecast demand for bentonite in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa.The actual market size of bentonite for 2015 and estimated market size for 2016 with forecast for the next eight years have also been provided in this study. The global market size of bentonite has been provided in terms of volume and revenue. Market volume has been defined in kilo tons, while market revenue is in US$ Mn. Market numbers have been estimated based on product type and key applications of bentonite. Market size and forecast for numerous end-users have been provided in terms of global, regional, and country level markets.Global Bentonite Market: Research MethodologyIn order to compile the research report, we conducted in-depth interviews and discussions with a number of key industry participants and opinion leaders. Primary research represented the bulk of research efforts, supplemented by extensive secondary research. We reviewed key players product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents for competitive analysis and market understanding. Secondary research includes a search of recent trade, technical writing, Internet sources, and statistical data from government websites, trade associations, and agencies. This has proven to be the most reliable, effective, and successful approach for obtaining precise market data, capturing industry participants insights, and recognizing business opportunities.Secondary research sources that are typically referred to include, but are not limited to company websites, annual reports, financial reports, broker reports, investor presentations, SEC filings, CSA Global, Society of Mining , Metallurgy & Exploration, Inc. Colorado USA, World Mineral Production Institute of Sciences, FAO, internal and external proprietary databases, and relevant patent and regulatory databases such as ICIS, Hoovers, oneSOURCE, Factiva and Bloomberg, national government documents, statistical databases, trade journals, market reports, news articles, press releases, and webcasts specific to companies operating in the market.We conduct primary interviews on an ongoing basis with industry participants and commentators to validate data and analysis. These help validate and strengthen secondary research findings. These also help develop the analysis teams expertise and market understanding.Companies Mentioned in the ReportThe report comprises profiles of major companies operating in the global Bentonite market. The global bentonite market is partially consolidated. Key players include Minerals Technologies Inc., Clariant International Ltd., IMERYS SA, Ashapura Group, American Colloid Company, Bentonite Performance Minerals LLC, Dantonit A/S., and Canbensan. Market players have been profiled in terms of attributes such as company overview, financial overview, business strategies, and recent developments.Browse Full Report With TOC:The global bentonite market has been segmented as follows:By Product TypeSodium BentoniteCalcium BentoniteOthersBy ApplicationDrilling MudIron Ore PelletizingFoundry SandsPet ProductsConstrictionOthers (paper, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals etc.)By RegionNorth AmericaS.CanadaEuropeK.ItalyRussiaFranceGermanyRest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaIndiaASEANJapanRest of Asia PacificLatin AmericaBrazilMexicoRest of South AmericaMiddle East & Africa (MEA)GCCSouth AfricaRest of MEAEnquire About this Report:About UsMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact USState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Global Tool Management Software Market 2017 - PQ Systems, ToolWatch, Wells Innovations, Jolly Technologies, Rapidsoft Systems

Tool Management Software Market

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Global Tool Management Software Market 2017 Survival Strategies explore Economic Impact in Global Industries Manufactures, Growth, Size, Share, Trends, Development Challenges and Opportunities till 2022A Research study on " Global Tool Management Software Market 2017-2022 " represent the market share and size of Tool Management Software in international Industry. MRS Research Group added latest market research report by QY Research. Research Report provides an essential information and statistically evaluated data about the Tool Management Software. The research report provides a detailed study of the Tool Management Software market, enlightening the major areas such as future market scenario, market growth factors, market growth restraints, and others. The advanced technological trends and various new opportunities are also provided in this research report.Read Detail Information of Reseacrh Report @Report Focuses on Some Important Manufacturers in Global Market Includes :PQ Systems, ToolWatch, Wells Innovations, Jolly Technologies, Rapidsoft Systems, ASAP Systems, Saltbox Systems Group, EDP System Services, Applied CIM Technologies, Lighthouse Systems, Spectrum CNC TechnologiesReport Covers by Some Importatnt Regions/Countries as Following :United States, EU, Japan, China, India, Southeast AsiaThe research report provides the Tool Management Software markets classification in detail. The Tool Management Software market is bifurcated into a number of segments on the basis of materials,types,applications,and end-users. The geographical analysis of the global Tool Management Software market is also coveredin the report. The vital information mentioned in the research report helps in significantly predicting the future scope of the global market.Get Free Sample Copy Of Report @The various segmentation of the global market is based on the overall product profit, costing, global market growth, and manufacturing processes. The report covers a region-wise analysis which provides the customer with different market studies that give a detailed analysis of the product and its impact on the global market. The Tool Management Software report also highlights the growth statistics depending on the supply and demand in the different regions.Features of our report:1. The market analysis of the global market share, position, and size from the different regions are done.2. The admired players in the market and their share in the global market are discussed.3. Suggestions and the strategic plans that will help the new market players to maintain the competitive edge are also included.4. Several other major points that are included in the Tool Management Software Market report are growth factors, limiting factors, challenges that are faced, new upcoming opportunities, the technological advancements, and much more.5. On the basis of the estimations of the global market, the recommendations and the observations are included in the business segments.6. The current trends that are being followed in the market are included along with examples.7. How the technological advancements and the research and development activities are impacting the market are further explained in detail.Read Complete Report with TOC @The Tool Management Software report covers the precisely studied and evaluated data of the global market players and their scope in the market using a number of analytical tools. The analytical tools such as investment return analysis, SWOT analysis and feasibility study are used to analyze the key global market players growth in the Tool Management Software industry.About Us: MRS Research Group provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Prof Research cover more than 30 industries including energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free : +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@mrsresearchgroup.com
Aerosol Propellants Market Global Industry Analysis and Forecast 2022

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The global Aerosol Propellants market was worth USD 16.65 billion in the year of 2012 and is expected to reach approximately USD 26.79 billion by 2022, while registering itself at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.37% during the forecast period, owing to the growth of outstanding propellant formulations with enhanced item dispensing abilities. Additionally, rising technological advancements that result in the production of improved propellant compounds is foreseen to boost the demand of the item in the upcoming years. The market is anticipated to encounter high development by virtue of expanded entrance of aerosol cans in application enterprises, for example, automotive, paints, medical, and food processing. The market is portrayed by the existence of an extensive number of makers that depend vigorously on the improvement of advanced items to build the share of the overall industry. The market is anticipated to develop by virtue of the improvement of the previously mentioned propelled item formulations. Expanding utilization of the metal aerosol cans because of the requirement for health and cleanliness related items, for example, air fresheners and insect repellants is relied upon to prompt an expanded interest for aerosol propellants. Likewise, developing urbanization combined with developing infrastructural advancement, essentially in UAE, China and India is relied upon to propel the demand for these cans, prompting the development of the aerosol propellant market.For more information on this report, fill the form @:The market depends intensely on the accessibility of oil and gas items, for example, natural gas and petroleum as raw materials. High unpredictability in the cost of the previously mentioned crude materials combined with the popularity for petroleum fuels is required to boost the cost of the propellants. The market faces significant difficulties with respect to the carriage of the propellants because of their high inflammability. Dimethyl ether is for the most part transported in ISO compartments, that gives expanded comfort to store combined with a lessening in the auxiliary transportation cost.Market ClassificationAerosol Propellants Market , By Product, Estimates and Forecast, 2012-2022 ($Million)DMEHydrocarbonsNitrous oxide and carbon dioxideOther ProductsAerosol Propellants Market , By Application, Estimates and Forecast, 2012-2022 ($Million)Automotive & IndustrialPaintsMedicalPersonal careFoodsHouseholdOther ApplicationsResearch MethodologyWe use both primary as well as secondary research for our market surveys, estimates and for developing forecast. Our research process commence by analyzing the problem which enable us to design the scope for our research study. Our research process is uniquely designed with enough flexibility to adjust according to changing nature of products and markets, while retaining core element to ensure reliability and accuracy in research findings. We understand both macro and micro-economic factors to evaluate and forecast different market segments.Obtain Report Details @:Data MiningData is extensively collected through various secondary sources such as annual reports, investor presentations, SEC filings, and other corporate publications. We also refer trade magazines, technical journals, paid databases such as Factiva and Bloomberg, industry trade journals, scientific journals, and social media data to understand market dynamics and industry trends. Further, we also conduct primary research to understand market drivers, restraints, opportunities, challenges, and competitive scenario to build our analysis.About Crystal Market ResearchCrystal Market Research is a U.S. based market research and business intelligence company. Crystal offers one stop solution for market research, business intelligence, and consulting services to help clients make more informed decisions. It provides both syndicated as well as customized research studies for its customers spread across the globe. The company offers market intelligence reports across a broad range of industries including healthcare, chemicals & materials, technology, automotive, and energy.Contact:304 South Jones Blvd, Suite 1896,Las Vegas NV 89107,United StatesToll Free: +1-888-213-4282Email: sales@crystalmarketresearch.comWebsite:
Energy and Utilities Construction in South Korea Market 2017- By Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories 2021

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WiseGuyReports published new report, titled Energy and Utilities Construction Market in South KoreaSynopsis"Energy and Utilities Construction Market in South Korea: Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics to 2021" contains historic and forecast market data for the energy and utilities construction market in South Korea, with a detailed breakdown of the data by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition) and by cost type( construction materials, construction equipment and construction services). This report also contains overall values of the energy and utilities construction segments such as Energy and utilities construction market covers the development of energy and telecommunications related projects, oil and gas projects including both upstream and downstream exploration, and utility projects such as water and sewage infrastructure. This market includes five categories: electricity and power, oil & gas, telecommunications, sewage infrastructure and water infrastructure.This research report provides up-to-date market size data for the period 2012-2016 and an illustrative forecast to 2021.GET SAMPLE REPORT @SummaryEnergy and utilities construction market covers the development of energy and telecommunications related projects, oil and gas projects including both upstream and downstream exploration, and utility projects such as water and sewage infrastructure. This market includes five categories: electricity and power, oil & gas, telecommunications, sewage infrastructure and water infrastructure.The South Korean energy and utilities construction category has observed some fluctuations in the review period with a value of KRWxxx.xx Billion (US$xx.xx Billion) in 2016 and declined at a rate of x.xx% over 2015. The market recorded a CARC of -x.xx% from 2012 through 2016."Energy and Utilities Construction Market in South Korea: Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics to 2021"' provides a top-level overview and detailed insight into the operating environment of the energy and utilities construction market in South Korea. It is an essential tool for companies active across the South Korea construction value chain and for new players considering to enter the market.Scope An overview of the energy and utilities construction market in South Korea. Historic (2012 through 2016) and forecast (2017 through 2021) construction market output values are provided. A detailed breakdown of the data by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition) is provided at the market level while the values for the segments are provided by cost types (construction materials, construction equipment & construction services). This report covers all the segments of commercial construction market including Energy and utilities construction market covers the development of energy and telecommunications related projects, oil and gas projects including both upstream and downstream exploration, and utility projects such as water and sewage infrastructure. This market includes five categories: electricity and power, oil & gas, telecommunications, sewage infrastructure and water infrastructure.Key points to buy Enhances your knowledge of the market with key figures detailing construction type. Provides you with a breakdown of the market by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition). Provides you with a breakdown of the segments by cost type (construction materials, construction equipment &construction services). Details the segments covered under commercial construction market. Allows you to plan future business decisions using the forecast figures given.Table of Contents1 Introduction2 Overall Energy and Utilities Construction Value: Market Analysis3 Energy and Utilities Construction Output: Analysis by Category4 Electricity and Power construction: Market Analysis6 Telecommunications construction: Market Analysis7 Water Infrastructure construction: Market Analysis8 Sewage Infrastructure construction: Market Analysis9 Appendix..CONTINUEDWise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Can Liposuction Help In Breast Augmentation Surgery

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Breast Augmentation or Mamoplasty, is a surgical process where the surgeon places the silicon, saline water, or fat or any composite breast implants to give a firm size, shape or fullness to it. This type of surgery is done to correct any congenital defects of the chest wall from accidents or hormonal change, however, it is popular for its cosmetic aesthetic goals.Liposuction NowThis surgery costs vary a lot and clinics will rarely give an exact quote over the phone as because many variables are involved in the procedure where the variables are dependent on the size of the area and the amount of work to do the job as well as the technique involved. The traditional techniques was done with micro cannula which breaks the fat giving so far the best results and are worth the extra cost for the procedure.Many physicians are not well informed about the new advanced technology improvements happening with Lipo, where twenty years ago, this surgery was done under general anesthesia with bigger canulas, making large incisions leaving behind more saggy skin. Earlier the surgeon performed the surgery using general anesthesia and making incision which needs surturing, which none of is needed now. So, basically the idea is here that Liposuction cost is based on what area is being treated and the amount or the volume of the fat is to be extracted.Why Breast Augmentation Done With The Help Of Liposuction?For better understanding, lets go through the points as why Lipo is used for Breast Enhancement. With an instant fat transfer, bigger and firmer shaped breasts are obtained and it is a win-win condition with smaller waist and bigger breasts. It is a safer way to breast enhancement compared to silicone breast implants. There are no alien objects staying inside since your own fat is transferred and deposited. It gives a natural look with extra volume. There is less or no risk of allergic reaction or rejection due to the small incision.Benefit Of Breast EnlargementBreast implants are used to enlarge the size of an individual's breast, especially woman opts for this surgery as numbers of benefits are associated with this cosmetic procedure. One feels better and more comfortable with them, which lifts up the self-confidence and esteem. Below is a list of key benefits, which are. Feeling more feminine and like having a more "womanly" figure. Having a higher level of confidence and self-esteem. The fitting of clothes may improve and in turn, make you feel better wearing them. Your breasts can have a more symmetrical appearance. Changes that occurred following pregnancy, breastfeeding or weight loss can be corrected.Harley Body Clinic has experienced surgeons who work with FDA approved devices, to know more visit our website atHarley Body Clinic(Subsidiary of Harley Cosmetic Group)61 Harley StreetLondon W1G 8QU
Remembering those who died in the Mid-Valley. Photos submitted by family members to accompany their obituaries in the Albany Democrat-Herald a
Global Market Study on LED Lighting Solutions: Industry Analysis and Forecast, 2017-2025

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The latest report by Persistence Market Research titled LED Lighting Market: Global Industry Analysis and Forecast, 2017-2025 consists of four main parts. The first part is dedicated to explaining the market definitions, market segmentation and acronyms used in the report. In this section of the report, the key definitions in the global LED lighting market are provided, along with an explanation of how Persistence Market Research has segmented the target market. In the subsequent sections of this part of the report, research methodology used to arrive at the indicated market numbers has been clearly indicated. In the second part of the report, the major factors enabling and impacting growth of the global LED lighting market as well as the growth of the parent industry is briefly elaborated.Request For Free Sample Report:This section of the report includes key growth drivers and the impact of these drivers on the global LED lighting market. Major challenges confronting the global LED lighting market and the impact of these challenges on the market is also mentioned in the report. At the end of the second part, trends, opportunities and recent developments in the global LED lighting market have been included. The third part of the report consists of the key analysis and insights into the global LED lighting market and comprise the bulk of the report. This part consists of information regarding the market size and CAGR  historic, current estimated and forecast  for the next eight years. Y-o-Y growth rate comparison of various segments and sub segments of the global LED lighting market are also presented in this section of the report. In addition, absolute dollar opportunity analysis of each segment of the global LED lighting market is also presented. In the fourth and last part of the report, a competition landscape is included, which presents a dashboard view of the competitive benchmarking, based on relative positioning of the competitors in the global LED lighting market. Besides this valuable information, product offerings of the major competitors operating in the global LED lighting market is also highlighted in this section. The company profiles covers the overview, financials, recent developments, SWOT analysis and a brief business strategy of the main players in the global LED lighting market.Another distinctive feature of this report is the inclusion of the current scenario of the global LED lighting market that tracks the various phases the market has covered or is yet to cover and the evolution of the global LED lighting market based on phases such as the introductory phase, growth phase, maturity phase and the decline phase. In addition, a detailed product lifecycle stage write up is also given that discusses the various characteristics of the global LED lighting market, which comprise sales perspective, price, product adoption, competitors and also information on manufacturer profit margins. Also, there is one more distinctive feature in the report pertaining to the global LED lighting market value chain analysis. In this part of the report, various stages in LED lighting manufacturing have been elaborated  upstream stage, midstream stage and downstream stage. The value chain analysis has all the manufacturing components broken down minutely and cross reductions across various stages in the value chain are also given.Browse Full Report With TOC:Research MethodologyPersistence Market Research has used multiple resources of information and analysis to estimate the market revenue of the global LED lighting market. In order to give the market value projections till 2025 end, Persistence Market Research analysts have first explored LED lighting solutions by product type, services, end user and application. After this, the analysts have done primary and secondary research to arrive at the stated market figures. The secondary research consists of qualitative data gathering through various articles, journals, blogs, industry association data, company websites and other secondary sources. In primary research, discussions with industry experts were carried out. In the data analysis phase, adoption of LED lighting solutions across various industries was considered, along with value chain analysis. A study of the trends in the parent market and end user industry was also carried out and a forecast was developed. This was verified and validated using the triangulation method. Based on this, market insights were derived on which key findings and recommendations of this report are based.Market SegmentationBy Product TypeLED BulbsBare LED TubesLED FixturesLED DownlightsOthersBy ServicesConsulting ServicesInstallation ServicesMaintenance & Support ServicesBy End UserResidentialCommercialIndustrialBy ApplicationOutdoorIndoorBacklightingAutomotiveOthersBy RegionNorth AmericaLatin AmericaEuropeAsia Pacific (APAC)Middle East and Africa (MEA)Enquire About this Report:About UsMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Mobile Payment Industry, Technology (Near Field Communication), Remote and Proximity M-Payments Market Report: 2016 Edition

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Gen's report, 'Global Mobile Payment Industry, Technology (Near Field Communication), Remote and Proximity M-Payments Market Report: 2016 Edition' provides detailed market and segment level data on the Global and Chinese consumption of Mobile Payment Industry, Technology (Near Field Communication), Remote and Proximity M-Payments. The report provides historic, forecast and growth patterns by company, country and type/application from 2016 to 2021.This report delivers an extensive overview of Global Mobile Payment Industry, Technology (Near Field Communication), Remote and Proximity M-Payments industry with a focus on China. It also acts as an essential tool to companies active across the value chain and to the new entrants by enabling them to capitalize the opportunities and develop business strategies. It also helps the companies to better understand the trends of Soups market to seize opportunities and formulate crucial business strategies.Get The Sample Copy Of Report :With this report, you will get access to:1. Market overview including definition, industrial chain (upstream & downstream), manufacturing technology details and the costs analysis from the aspects of raw materials, labor costs and depreciation.2. Value and volume consumption status and trends of the market, including Global and Chinese top players capacity & production, price & production value, cost & profit and market shares from 2011 to 2016.3. Worldwide supply/demand pattern of Mobile Payment Industry, Technology (Near Field Communication), Remote and Proximity M-Payments by country or region (North America, China, EMEA, Asia except China), and by application/type.Send An Enquiry :4. Growth, trends and forecast of 2016-2021 Mobile Payment Industry, Technology (Near Field Communication), Remote and Proximity M-Payments market and some important proposals for new investment of Mobile Payment Industry, Technology (Near Field Communication), Remote and Proximity M-Payments Industry before evaluating its feasibility.Overall, the report provides an in-depth insight of 2011-2021 Global and Chinese Mobile Payment Industry, Technology (Near Field Communication), Remote and Proximity M-Payments industry covering all important parameters.MRRbiz supports your business intelligence needs with over 700,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Image Detection Sensor Market - Global Industry Analysis and Forecast 2017  2025

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Increasing technological advancement and continuously growing application of Image Detection Sensors in the consumer electronics, healthcare, automotive and industrial sector is expected to have a very strong impact on the market for image detection sensors globally. Increasing usage of CMOS sensors for advanced digital cameras is having a positive impact on the market. CMOS primarily offer a low-cost alternative for CCTV cameras and point to shoot cameras. Growing usages of CMOS sensors in advanced driver assistance system in automotive sector and usage of thermal sensors in aerospace and defense industry are some of the major boosting factors for the Image Detection Sensors market.Request For Free Sample Report:The growing usage of CMOS sensors in mirror-less cameras is expected to have a positive impact on the Image Detection Sensor market. In addition, rise in usage of advanced lithography technology in CMOS sensor for consumer electronics is another prime factor which is contributing in the positive development of Image Detection Sensor market. With technological advancement, different sort of fabrication technology with reduced power dissipation and improved signaling have been developed for CCD and CMOS sensors. These advancements are fueling the growth of the Image Detection Sensor market.Global Image Detection Sensor Market: SegmentationBased on technology, the market has been segmented into three types CMOS, CCD and Thermal. The growing demand for smaller pixel size and improved fill factor in different digital cameras in order to enhance imaging quality is having a high impact on the market in terms of usage of CMOS sensors for consumer electronics. There is a significant rise in demand for CMOS area image sensor for x-ray imaging in healthcare industry since CMOS image sensors are best-suited for intra-oral x-ray imaging in dental diagnosis.Furthermore, this growing usage of CMOS sensors in consumer electronics and healthcare industry is likely to have a positive impact on the expansion of the market. Growing usage of CCD sensors in wearable devices is expected to have moderate impact on the market .In addition to that, growing usage of thermal sensors in machine vision technology and thermal imaging is also going to create high impact in the Image Detection Sensor market during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024.Based on application, the market is segmented into imaging and photography.Global Image Detection Sensor Market: Geographical AnalysisGeographically, the Image Detection Sensor market is categorized into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. The market for image detection sensors has been provided in (USD million) in terms of revenue and (Million units) in terms of volume as well as the CAGR for the forecast period of 2017 to 2025. The key players in the image detection sensors market have been competitively profiled across the five broad geographic regions. This competitive landscape is inclusive of the various business strategies adopted by these major players and their recent developments in the field of image detection sensors. Further, the report includes the market attractiveness analysis of different technology of image detection sensors and insight into the major application area of the image detection sensors.The report also provides assessment of different drivers that is impacting the global market, along with the restraints and opportunities that has also been covered under the scope of this report. For each segment (such as technology type, applications, end users), market dynamics analysis has been provided. All these factors help in determining different trends that has been impacting the overall market growth. Moreover, after taking into consideration all this factors, an extensive analysis of the region wise growth parameters of Image Detection Sensors market along with the overall assessment for the forecast period of 2017-2025 has also been provided within this report. Furthermore, the report includes the porters five forces.Browse Full Report With TOC:Companies Mentioned in the Research ReportSome of the leading players operating in the market are Hamamatsu Photonics (Japan), ON Semiconductor Corporation (The U.S.), Canon Inc. (Japan), Sony Corporation (Japan), Teledyne Technologies Inc. (The U.S.), Toshiba Corp. (Japan), Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (South Korea), Omron Corporation (Japan), OmniVision Technologies, Inc. (The U.S.), Panasonic Corporation (Japan),FLIR Systems (The U.S.), Hikvision (China) ,Fluke Corporation(The U.S.), Festo (Germany), Cognex Corporation (The U.S.) and Texas Instruments (The U.S.) among others.The global image detection sensor market has been segmented as follows:By Technology TypeCCDCMOSThermalBy ApplicationPhotographyImagingBy End UserHealth CareAutomotiveConsumer ElectronicsIndustrialAerospace & DefenseOthersBy RegionNorth AmericaThe U.S.CanadaMexicoEuropeGermanyFranceItalyRest of EuropeAsia PacificJapanChinaIndiaRest of Asia PacificMiddle East and Africa (MEA)United Arab EmiratesSaudi ArabiaSouth AfricaRest of MEALatin AmericaBrazilArgentinaRest of Latin AmericaEnquire About this Report:About UsMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact USState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Non-Life Insurance in Vietnam, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019

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Timetrics 'Non-Life Insurance in Vietnam, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides a detailed outlook by product category for the Vietnamese non-life insurance segment, and a comparison of the Vietnamese insurance industry with its regional counterparts.It provides values for key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, combined ratio, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (20102014) and forecast period (20142019).The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Vietnamese economy and demographics, explains the various types of natural hazard and their impact on the Vietnamese insurance industry, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country.Get The Sample Copy Of Report :The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure.SummaryTimetrics 'Non-Life Insurance in Vietnam, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Vietnamese non-life insurance segment, including:The Vietnamese non-life insurance segments detailed outlook by product categoryA comprehensive overview of the Vietnamese economy and demographicsA comparison of the Vietnamese insurance industry with its regional counterpartsDetailed analysis of natural hazards and their impact on the Vietnamese insurance industryDetails of the competitive landscape in the non-life insurance segment in VietnamDetails of regulatory policy applicable to the Vietnamese insurance industrySend AN Enquiry :ScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the non-life insurance segment in Vietnam:It provides historical values for the Vietnamese non-life insurance segment for the reports 20102014 review period, and projected figures for the 20142019 forecast period.It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Vietnamese non-life insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2019.It analyzes the various distribution channels for non-life insurance products in Vietnam.It profiles the top non-life insurance companies in Vietnam, and outlines the key regulations affecting them.Reasons To BuyMake strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Vietnamese non-life insurance segment, and each category within it.Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Vietnamese non-life insurance segment.Assess the competitive dynamics in the non-life insurance segment.Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories.Gain insights into key regulations governing the Vietnamese insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future.Key HighlightsVietnams non-life insurance segment is still in its nascent stages of development, registering a penetration rate of 0.61% in 2014.The increase was primarily due to rise in construction activity, the high uptake of agriculture insurance, growth in the automobile sector and a rise in trade activity.Property insurance was the largest category and accounted for 38.3% of the segments gross written premium in 2014.Motor insurance was the second-largest category, which posted a review-period CAGR of 9.4%.Liability insurance accounted for 3.1% of the segments gross written premium in 2014.Improved trading activity, combined with a growth in imports and exports, is likely to generate more business for transit insurance over the forecast period.MRRbiz supports your business intelligence needs with over 700,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Global Cancer Therapeutics And Biotherapeutics Market- Industry Size, Market Share, Trends, Analysis And Forecasts 2012 - 2018

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"The Report Cancer Therapeutics And Biotherapeutics Market- Global Industry Size, Market Share, Trends, Analysis And Forecasts 2012 - 2018 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Cancer is affecting about more than 10 million people every year globally and this number is expected to increase by 2.4% by the year 2020 and reach to 14 million.Get Sample copy of this Report @Biotherapy is one of the most promising and new approach in treatment of cancer as it enhances the natural tendency of body to defend itself against malignant tumors without damaging healthy tissues. Some of the common types of cancers include breast, lung, stomach, liver, prostate, cervical, esophageal, bladder, and colon.Chemotherapy market is a well established market that has maintained steady growth over the past decade with hundreds of chemotherapy products approved for cancer treatment. It is the largest segment in terms of available products in cancer therapeutics market. Despite of products innovations and development of new drugs for treatment of different types of cancer, traditional therapies are firstly preferred for treating cancer victims. Products like pemetrexed, gemcitabin, and oxaliplatin are expected to fuel the growth of this market with approval of new applications for use of these products. However, side effects of traditional chemotherapy products pose serious challenge to the use of these treatment methods.Investment from major players in the market and their focus on reducing side effects of these traditional treatments is expected to further boost the growth of this industry. Increasing incidences of cancer among the growing population and emergence of new players in this industry is creating new growth opportunities in this field.View Report @ Market SegmentationBased in TechnologyChemotherapyHormone TherapyBiotherapyRadiation TherapyThis research report analyzes this market based on its market segments and major geographies. Geographies analyzed under this research report includeNorth AmericaEuropeAsia PacificRest of the WorldThis research report provides comprehensive analysis of current industry trends, factors driving market growth, restraints, industry structure, and market projections for upcoming years. Report also includes analysis of technological developments in this market, Porters five force model analysis, and complete company profiles of top industry players. It provides review of micro and macro factors significant with respect to existing market players and new entrants along with detailed value chain analysis.Request for Enquiry @ Major PlayersSome of the major players dominating this market are AstraZeneca plc, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Eli Lilly & Company, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Company Inc., Novartis AG, Pfizer Inc., Roche, Sanofi, and others.Reasons for Buying this ReportIt helps in clearly understanding competitive environment and key product segmentsIt provides complete analysis of major competitors and their market strategiesThis research report includes distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segmentsIt helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of industry trendsIt provides technological growth map over time and explains its impact on industryit provides pin-point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitorsCheck Discount @ About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.Contact usMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Global Health Insurance Market Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015-2023

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"The Report Health Insurance Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Health Insurance Market: OverviewThe improving GDPs of several nations across the globe has favored the growth of the global health insurance market in recent years. Health insurance companies have been benefitting from the rising per capita incomes, the emergence of the middle class, and growing number of people with a relatively high income.Get Sample copy of this Report @ The research report by Transparency Market Research has also studied using a SWOT analysis and a Porters five forces. The research report includes an explanation of the various factors determining the trajectory of the global health insurance market in the coming few years. Analysts have also factored in opinions of various market experts and leaders to give the readers a fair understanding of the overall market. Additionally, the document includes recommendations for the new entrants and existing players to improve their businesses with the wealth of valuable knowledge about the market.Health Insurance Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe efforts invested by several companies to make their product offerings as transparent as possible has fared well over the past few years. This move has made it easier for buyers to compare and understand the terms of insurance and the products being sold to them. Additionally, the integration of solutions through data analytics, cloud computing, and other modeling techniques is also projected to encourage the growth of the global market in the near future.Despite the positive outlook of the global health insurance market, it faces some tough challenges such as intense competition and tough profit margins. The undulating economic conditions have also led a considerable about of uncertainty in the global market.View Report @ Health Insurance Market: Region-wise OutlookThe U.S. is the leading health insurance market in the global market due to its unmatched healthcare system in the world. The growth of the market is predominantly being aided by the strong presence of leading players such as Anthem Inc., Aetna Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc., Humana Inc., and Cigna Corp. These players occupy a share of about 80% in the private and public sector of insurance in the U.S. The companies are exploring opportunities of digitizing access to insurance schemes and communication about the same with their consumers to reach out to a wider audience. Options such as providing distributors and consumers with self-service features are also likely to open up a plethora of opportunities for the global market. Furthermore, marketing the products in an easily comprehensible manner is also expected to be the strategy of leading players in the coming years. The only threat for the new entrants is the high level of competition in the U.S. health insurance market.Asia Pacific is expected to a lucrative market as the region has shown a remarkable progress in its GDP. Furthermore, the improving disposable incomes and the enhancement of health security standards are also expected to boost this market in the region in the near future. The growing middle class and an increasing number of high net worth individuals in Asia Pacific are also expected to give the health insurance market the much-needed impetus.Browse more Healthcare IT Market Research Reports @ Key Players Mentioned in the ReportSome of the leading players operating in the global health insurance market are Cigna Corporation, AIA Insurance Group, UnitedHealth Group Inc.,Allianz SE, Zurich Insurance Group Ltd., Express Scripts Holding Company, AXA, Aviva plc, Aetna, Inc., Apollo Munich Health Insurance, and International Medical Group.Major geographies analyzed under this research report are:North AmericaEuropeAsia PacificRest of the World (RoW)This report gives you access to decisive data such as:Market growth driversFactors limiting market growthCurrent market trendsMarket structureMarket projections for the coming yearsRequest for Enquiry @ Key highlights of this report:Overview of key market forces propelling and restraining market growthUp-to-date analyses of market trends and technological improvementsPin-point analyses of market competition dynamics to offer you a competitive edgeAn analysis of strategies of major competitorsAn array of graphics and SWOT analysis of major industry segmentsDetailed analyses of industry trendsA well-defined technological growth map with an impact-analysisOffers a clear understanding of the competitive landscape and key product segmentsCheck Discount @ About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.Contact usMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
X-ray Diffractometer Market Report 2017: Economic Indicators and Product Offerings Worldwide with Future Prospects 2022

Reports Monitor

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https://www.reportsmonitor.com/world-x-ray-diffractometer-xrd-market-research-report-2022-covering-usa-europe-china-japan-india-south-east-asia-and-etc/

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X-ray Diffractometer MarketWorld X-ray Diffractometer (XRD) market research report provides the newest industry data and industry future trends, allowing you to identify the products and end users driving Revenue growth and profitability.The industry report lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry Analysis of the key factors influencing the market.The report includes the forecasts, Analysis and discussion of important industry trends, market size, market share estimates and profiles of the leading industry Players.For Requesting a Sample Copy of This Report, Please Visit @Global X-ray Diffractometer (XRD) Market: Product Segment AnalysisX-ray powder diffraction, Single-crystal XRDGlobal X-ray Diffractometer (XRD) Market: Application Segment AnalysisPharma, Biotech, Chemcial, Scientific research institutesGlobal X-ray Diffractometer (XRD) Market: Regional Segment AnalysisUSA, Europe, Japan, China, India, South East AsiaThe Players mentioned in our reportBruker, Panalytical, Shimadzu, Agilent, Thermo Fisher, Innox-X, Hao Yuan Instrument, Tongda , Persee, RigakuBrowse Full Table of Contents and Report Description @Table of ContentsChapter 3 World Portable Concrete Mixer Market share3.1 Major Production Market share by Players3.2 Major Revenue (M USD) Market share by Players3.3 Major Production Market share by Regions in 2017, Through 20223.4 Major Revenue (M USD) Market share By Regions in 2017, Through 2022Chapter 4 Supply Chain Analysis4.1 Industry Supply chain Analysis4.2 Raw material Market Analysis4.2.1 Raw material Prices Analysis 2012-20174.2.2 Raw material Supply Market Analysis4.2 Manufacturing Equipment Suppliers Analysis4.3 Production Process Analysis4.4 Production Cost Structure Benchmarks4.5 End users Market AnalysisContinuedAbout UsReports Monitor (ReportsMonitor.com) is a platform to meet the market research and business intelligence requirements. Our aim is to change the dynamics of the Market Research industry by providing quality intelligence backed by data. Your requirement for market forecasting is fulfilled by our exclusive quantitative and analytics driven intelligence. We have a vast collection of reports, covering maximum industries worldwide. Our process is meticulously planned and executed in order to use maximum resources and explore the market for getting genuine insights. Decision makers can now rely on our distinct data gathering methods to get factual market forecasting and detailed analysis.Contact UsJay MatthewsDirect: +1 513 549-5911Email: sales@reportsmonitor.comWebsite:
Military Biometrics Market - Global Industry Analysis and Forecast 2017  2025

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Biometric systems are becoming increasingly popular in wearable devices such as smart watches, eye glasses and fitness bands. These devices are equipped biometric identification capabilities such as heart rate sensors and blood pressure monitors. Furthermore, the wearable devices are also used for authentication purposes. Similarly, the Biometrics Applications are also gaining popularity in defense sector. The ongoing threat for terrorism and the rising concern for illegal migration in countries such as the U.K. and the U.S. are resulting into government focusing on upgrading the military and defense facilities with biometric authentication. These are few factors which are expected to drive the growth in the market during the forecast period.Request For Free Sample Report:However, there is one major factor lowering the demand for these systems during the forecast period. The installation of biometric authentication systems is complex and needs skilled personnel. In case of a system breach, there is a chance of data loss. Moreover, the whole system installation cannot be reset easily. This is one primary reason hindering the demand for biometric systems in defense sector as it involves the security of highly confidential data which cannot be compromised. Nevertheless, the ongoing technological innovations are expected to reduce the chances of breaching or hacking biometric authentication systems. Furthermore, the ongoing research and development in the field of secure access in expected to drive the demand for biometrics in defense. In June 2016, the CIO of Pentagon, Terry Halvorsen announced a two year plan of replacing the functions of common access cards with biometric systems such as iris scanners and behavioral analytics. The same technology will further be incorporated by the U.S. allies who include Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.Global Military Biometrics Market: SegmentationThe global military biometrics market can be segmented by types in fingerprint recognition, facial recognition and iris recognition primarily. The fingerprint recognition market is expected to dominate the market during the forecast period owing to the increasing application of these systems in developing regions such as Asia Pacific and Middle East. Furthermore, the iris recognition segment has been identified to be the most attractive segment owing to its accuracy in identifying the person with less malfunctionality. Iris recognition has been analyzed to be the most accurate way of identifying a person. Moreover, iris cannot be copied or used from a dead person as it becomes useless immediately. In addition, facial recognition is also becoming popular as it can be used to track a person in any area equipped with facial recognition cameras. Hence the demand for facial biometrics is expected to drive the market for military biometrics significantly. Hence the segment is expected to witness promising growth during the forecast period. Moreover, the growing concern over security from terrorist activities and the global rise in mass migration with illegal identities is expected to drive the global demand for facial and iris biometrics significantly. By geography, the global biometric market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa and Latin America. North America has been analyzed to dominate the military biometrics market. The ongoing threat of illegal migrations from Mexico has resulted into the U.S. government upgrading their authentication systems in border security. Furthermore, Asia Pacific has been anticipated to have the fastest growth during the forecast period. Countries such India and China are gradually investing towards upgrading defense facilities with secured authentication which is expected to drive the market for military biometrics significantly.Browse Full Report With TOC:Companies Mentioned in the ReportThe major vendors in the global Military Biometrics market are 3M Cogent, Inc. (United States), Crossmatch (United States), M2SYS Technology (United States), NEC Corporation (Japan), Safran Identity and Security (France), Aware, Inc. ( United States), BIO-Key International, Inc. (United States), Fulcrum Biometrics LLC (United States) and HID Global Corporation (United States) among others.The segments covered in the global military biometrics market are as follows:By TypesFingerprint RecognitionFacial RecognitionIris RecognitionOthersBy GeographyNorth AmericaS.CanadaMexicoEuropeK.GermanyFranceItalyRest of EuropeAsia PacificIndiaChinaJapanSouth KoreaRest of Asia PacificMiddle East and AfricaUAESaudi ArabiaSouth AfricaLatin AmericaBrazilRest of Latin AmericaEnquire About this Report:About UsMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact USState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Energy and Utilities Construction in Azerbaijan Market 2017- By Plan Future Business Decisions Using the Forecast Figures 2021

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WiseGuyReports published new report, titled Energy and Utilities Construction Market in AzerbaijanSynopsis"Energy and Utilities Construction Market in Azerbaijan: Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics to 2021" contains historic and forecast market data for the energy and utilities construction market in Azerbaijan, with a detailed breakdown of the data by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition) and by cost type( construction materials, construction equipment and construction services). This report also contains overall values of the energy and utilities construction segments such as Energy and utilities construction market covers the development of energy and telecommunications related projects, oil and gas projects including both upstream and downstream exploration, and utility projects such as water and sewage infrastructure. This market includes five categories: electricity and power, oil & gas, telecommunications, sewage infrastructure and water infrastructure.This research report provides up-to-date market size data for the period 2012-2016 and an illustrative forecast to 2021.GET SAMPLE REPORT @SummaryEnergy and utilities construction market covers the development of energy and telecommunications related projects, oil and gas projects including both upstream and downstream exploration, and utility projects such as water and sewage infrastructure. This market includes five categories: electricity and power, oil & gas, telecommunications, sewage infrastructure and water infrastructure.The Azerbaijani energy and utilities construction category has observed some fluctuations in the review period with a value of AZNxxx.xx million (US$xxx.xx million) in 2016 and declined at a rate of xx.xx% over 2015. The market recorded a CAGR of x.xx% from 2012 through 2016."Energy and Utilities Construction Market in Azerbaijan: Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics to 2021"' provides a top-level overview and detailed insight into the operating environment of the energy and utilities construction market in Azerbaijan. It is an essential tool for companies active across the Azerbaijan construction value chain and for new players considering to enter the market.Scope An overview of the energy and utilities construction market in Azerbaijan. Historic (2012 through 2016) and forecast (2017 through 2021) construction market output values are provided. A detailed breakdown of the data by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition) is provided at the market level while the values for the segments are provided by cost types (construction materials, construction equipment & construction services). This report covers all the segments of commercial construction market including Energy and utilities construction market covers the development of energy and telecommunications related projects, oil and gas projects including both upstream and downstream exploration, and utility projects such as water and sewage infrastructure. This market includes five categories: electricity and power, oil & gas, telecommunications, sewage infrastructure and water infrastructure.Key points to buy Enhances your knowledge of the market with key figures detailing construction type. Provides you with a breakdown of the market by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition). Provides you with a breakdown of the segments by cost type (construction materials, construction equipment &construction services). Details the segments covered under commercial construction market. Allows you to plan future business decisions using the forecast figures given.Table of Contents1 Introduction2 Overall Energy and Utilities Construction Value: Market Analysis3 Energy and Utilities Construction Output: Analysis by Category4 Electricity and Power construction: Market Analysis5 Oil and Gas construction: Market Analysis6 Telecommunications construction: Market Analysis7 Water Infrastructure construction: Market Analysis8 Sewage Infrastructure construction: Market Analysis9 Appendix..CONTINUEDWise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Matrix Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance Device

Aadhaar authentication, for attendance marking, has now been made mandatory for employees working in the government organizations. Matrix Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance Device  COSEC VEGA FAXQ, is the first of its kind. This device enables employees to directly mark their attendance, without having to manually entering their Aadhaar number. They can either use a smart card or the keypad on the device followed by their fingerprint authentication to mark their attendance. If using the keypad, the Aadhaar number needs to be entered, whereas with the smart card, the Aadhaar number will already be stored in it. Hence, smart card becomes an easier option.Key Features: STQC Approved Fingerprint and Smart Card based Terminal Embedded Linux based Device Multiple Authentications: Keypad (Aadhaar Number) + Finger Smart Card (Aadhaar Number) + Finger Multiple Language Support Ethernet, PoE, Wi-Fi, 4G/3G Mobile Broadband IP65, CE, FCC, RoHS, and BISAbout MatrixEstablished in 1991, Matrix is a leader in Telecom and Security solutions for modern businesses and enterprises. Matrix, an innovative, technology driven and customer focused organization, is committed to keep pace with the revolutions in the telecom and security industries. With more than 40% of its human resources dedicated to the development of new products, Matrix has launched cutting-edge products like IP-PBX, Universal Gateways, VoIP Gateways and Terminals, GSM Gateways, Access Control, Time-Attendance and Video Surveillance solutions. These solutions are feature-rich, reliable and conform to the international standards. Having global footprints in Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Africa through an extensive network of more than 1000 channel partners, Matrix ensures that the products serve the needs of its customers faster and longer. Matrix has gained trust and admiration of customers representing the entire spectrum of industries. Matrix has won many international awards for its innovative products.Matrix Comsec394 GIDC, Makarpura, Vadodara-390010+91 0265 2630555
Frontier Pharma: Dermatology - Intracellular Signal Transducers and Cytokine Signaling Molecules Dominate Pipeline and First-in-Class Innovation

Frontier Pharma: Dermatology - Intracellular Signal Transducers and Cytokine Signaling Molecules Dominate Pipeline and First-in-Cl

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Dermatology is a highly diverse therapy area that deals with diseases of the skin, hair and nails. Over 3,000 distinct dermatological conditions are thought to exist, ranging from rare autoimmune disorders such as scleroderma, to very common conditions such as acne vulgaris and atopic dermatitis. For the past decade the majority of the therapeutic dermatology market has been saturated and highly genericized, and strongly dominated by small molecules. There is a significant unmet need for more efficacious and safer treatment options, as physicians often cite poor efficacy, low patient compliance and problematic safety profiles as issues with the long-term use of many available treatments.Although the scope of dermatological disorders is diverse in terms of severity, clinical presentation, and key patient demographics, there is a degree of crossover between many indications in terms of their underlying pathophysiology. Increased inflammation and aberrant immune response resulting in skin barrier dysfunction are commonly shared causes. Infections and dysfunctions in wound healing are also common causes of dermatological diseases.Scientific advancements over the course of recent decades have revealed a broad range of novel potential molecular targets, enabling the advancement of a previously stagnant field. This is reflected in the high number of products being developed, with 961 pipeline products currently in the dermatology therapy area pipeline.Analysis indicates that the current pipeline is following a trend of focusing on innovative biologic therapies, following the clinical and commercial success of such therapies in the treatment of psoriasis. There are various biologics in the pipeline for major skin disorders - including atopic dermatitis, acne vulgaris and rosacea - for which there is a significant unmet need in patients with moderate-to-severe conditions.Moreover, there is a considerable degree of innovation present in the therapy area, as there are a total of 197 first-in-class pipeline products in development for dermatological indications, representing 32% of the 617 pipeline products for which there is a disclosed molecular target. Many of these appear promising in terms of safety and efficacy, and carry a significant potential to strengthen the treatment landscape for various dermatological conditions.Scope- With 961 products in active development, the pipeline is considerably large. How will pipeline innovation affect the future dermatology market?- There are 197 first-in-class products in the dermatology pipeline. Which of these hold the greatest potential to improve future disease treatment with regard to their molecular target?- The majority of first-in-class products are in development for indications involving inflammation. Which first-in-class targets are most promising, and how does the ratio of first-in-class targets to first-in-class products differ by stage of development and molecular target class?- A significant number of first-in-class products have been identified with no prior involvement in deals. How do deal frequency and value compare between target families and molecule types, and which first-in-class programs have not yet been involved in a licensing or co-development deal?To Get Sample Copy of Report please visit @Reasons to buy- Understand the current clinical and commercial landscape. The report includes a comprehensive study of disease pathogenesis, diagnosis, prognosis and the treatment options available.- Visualize the composition of the dermatology market in terms of dominant molecule types and targets, highlighting what the current unmet needs are and how they can be addressed. This knowledge allows a competitive understanding of gaps in the market.- Analyze the dermatology pipeline and stratify by stage of development, molecule type and molecular target. There are strong signs in the pipeline that the industry is seeking novel approaches to treating dermatological diseases, including rare conditions.- Assess the therapeutic potential of first-in-class targets. Using proprietary matrices, first-in-class products have been assessed and ranked according to clinical potential. The matrices have been split into three categories: inflammatory diseases, infectious diseases, and wounds/scars. Promising targets have been reviewed in greater detail.- Identify commercial opportunities in the dermatology deals landscape by analyzing trends in licensing and co-development deals, and producing a list of first-in-class therapies with no prior involvement in licensing or co-development deals.To view a detailed description and Table of Contents please visit:About ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston,MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-1947abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Flow Meter Identifies Potential Savings in Compressed Air Supply

The EE741 flow meter measures and monitors the compressed air consumption with high accuracy.

www.epluse.com

The monitoring of compressed air consumption ensures cost transparency and helps cutting energy costs by identifying potential savings. The EE741 in-line flow meter from E+E Elektronik is ideal for measuring the consumption of compressed air and technical gases. Due to its modular design, the compact device is suitable for pipe diameters from DN15 to DN50 (1/2 to 2). The thermal hot-film anemometer measuring principle provides high accuracy and reliability.For pipe diameters DN15 to DN50The modular EE741 consists of the transmitter unit with flow sensor and a stainless steel or aluminum gauge mounting block. The mounting blocks are available for DN15 (1/2), DN20 (3/4), DN25 (1) and now also for DN32 (1 1/4), DN40 (1 1/2), DN50 (2) pipes.The gauge mounting block enables easy and reproducible positioning of the transmitter in pipes with an operating pressure up to 16 bar (232 psi). Outstanding measuring accuracy, even in the lower measuring range, is achieved by the application-specific multi-point factory adjustment at 7 bar (102 psi). This allows precise leak detection and the consequent energy savings. The EE741 features an integrated consumption meter for cost-effective consumption monitoring without an additional data logger.Easy installation and removalOnce the gauge mounting block is built into the pipeline, the transmitter can be easily removed and installed without disassembling the pipework. This is particularly useful for periodical calibration. Besides, one transmitter can be used for temporary measurements at several gauge mounting blocks. The sealing plug included in the scope of supply enables the operation of the compressed air system when the transmitter unit is removed. The robust stainless steel sensing head protects the sensing element against mechanical damage during installation or removal.Highly accurate thermal measuring principleThe EE741 works on the thermal hot-film anemometer principle. The E+E thin-film sensing element stands out by excellent long-term stability and short response time. The measuring principle is largely insensitive to contamination and eliminates the need for additional pressure or temperature compensation. The EE741 also measures the standard volume flow, mass flow, standard flow and temperature of non-corrosive gases such as nitrogen, oxygen, helium, CO2 or argon.Comfortable operation via displayThe optional display shows the actual measured data as well as the total consumption. The entire device setup can be performed with the display and the push buttons. For optimum readability the display alignment can be rotated in 90 increments. An EE741 without display can be configured via USB service interface using the free EE-PCS product configuration software.Several output optionsThe EE741 features two outputs, which can be configured for analogue, pulse or alarm signals. Optionally, the flow meter is available with a Modbus RTU or M-Bus interface.E+E Elektronik develops and manufactures sensors and transmitters for humidity, temperature, dewpoint, moisture in oil, air velocity, flow and CO2. Data loggers, hand-held measuring devices and calibration systems complete the comprehensive product portfolio of the Austrian sensor specialist. The main applications for E+E products lie in HVAC, building automation, industrial process control and the automotive industry. A certified quality management system according to ISO 9001 and ISO/TS 16949 ensures the highest quality standards. E+E Elektronik has a worldwide dealership network and representative offices in Germany, France, Italy, Korea, China and the United States. The accredited E+E calibration laboratory (OEKD) has been commissioned by the Austrian Federal Office for Metrology (BEV) to provide the national standards for humidity and air velocity.E+E Elektronik Ges.m.b.HLangwiesen 74209 EngerwitzdorfAustriaT: +43 (0) 7235 605-0F: +43 (0) 7235 605-8info@epluse.atPress contact:Mr. Johannes FraundorferT: +43 (0)7235 605-217pr@epluse.at
Automotive Wiring Harness Market will Grow at an Impressive 8.7% CAGR by 2025

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Future Market Insights (FMI) recently announced the release of its report titled Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025. According to the report, the global automotive wiring harness market was valued at US$ 36.82 Bn in 2014 and is anticipated to reach US$ 91.53 Bn by 2025, expanding at a CAGR of 8.7% throughout the forecast period.Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe global automobile industry registered an annual growth rate of over 5.5% from 2010 to 2015, and is estimated to be valued at US$ 5.1 trillion by end of 2015. Consistent growth in the parent industry is expected to fuel demand for automotive wiring harness in the near future.Currently, increasing fuel costs and stringent government regulations regarding CO2 emissions are boosting demand for electric vehicles in regions such as North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific.Governments across various geographies have mandated use of certain electronic safety features such as Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS), Electronic Stability Program (ESP) and other features in both passenger and commercial vehicles. Furthermore, rise in demand for high-end electronics and safety features in vehicles, particularly passenger cars, along with cost reduction and enhanced reliability is leading to increase in global demand for automotive wiring harnesses.View and Download TOC of Automotive Wiring Harness Market Research Report @Automotive Wiring Harness Market TrendsUse of automotive Ethernet by automotive OEMs represents a new trend in the external as well as internal electronics devices connectivity in an automobile. These automotive Ethernets minimise the use of complex wiring harness structures to a great extent and, thereby, may act as a restraint for growth of the global automotive wiring harness market in the coming years.Rise in technological developments is expected to create favourable growth opportunities in the market in the near future. Growing demand for connectivity and car digitisation, which not only helps establish connectivity within the integral parts of a vehicle but also enables communication with other vehicles through improved and intelligent roadway infrastructure, is an emerging trend in the market.Automotive Wiring Harness Market SegmentationRegion-wise, APEJ (Asia Pacific Excluding Japan) dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014, accounting for 38.3% value share of the overall market. Furthermore, APEJ is foreseen to expand at a relatively high CAGR of 10.4% during the forecast period and is expected to maintain its revenue share dominance till 2025 end. Risein automotive production and sustained economic growth are some of the factors driving the APEJ automotive wiring harness market currently.North America and Western Europe are expected to register high Y-o-Y growth during the forecast period, owing to increasing demand for e-vehicles and e-bikes in these regions. Growth of the connected car market has resulted in risein demand for multiple electronic devices in vehicles in North America and Western Europe.Japan is currently witnessing moderate growth in demand for e-bikes, and the trend is expected to continue during the forecast period as well. The Japan automotive wiring harness market is expected to register a sluggish CAGR of 4.0% during the forecast period, due to the matured automotive industry in the country.Request and Download Sample Report @On the basis of vehicle type, the passenger vehicles segment dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014 in terms of revenue, and is foreseen to expand at a CAGR of 8.6% during the forecast period. In terms of revenue, the hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles segments are expected to register significant CAGR between 2015 and 2025, in view of the stringent government regulations and growing fuel prices globally.On the basis of application type, the chassis & safety segment dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014 in terms of revenue, accounting for 40.8% share of the overall market. This segment is expected to lose its market share to the HVAC segment, which is projected to expand at a significant CAGR of 10.1% during the forecast period. Furthermore, HVAC manufacturers are designing new eco-friendly devices in order to follow the environment standards along with introducing new innovating designs.Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Key CompaniesKey market players covered in the report include YAZAKI Corporation, Aisin Seiki Co., Samvardhana Motherson Group (SMG), Delphi Automotive PLC, Fujikura Ltd., Sumitomo electric Industries, Ltd., Lear Corporation, LEONI AG, Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. and PKC Group PLC.Most players in the market are engaged in various activities, such as mergers and acquisitions, increasing investments in technological and product developments, geographical expansion and brand building via strong marketing strategies, in order to sustain their position in the competitive market.Buy Full Automotive Wiring Harness Market Report @ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Energy and Utilities Construction in Bulgaria Market 2017- By Plan Future Business Decisions Using the Forecast Figures 2021

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WiseGuyReports published new report, titled Energy and Utilities Construction Market in BulgariaSynopsis"Energy and Utilities Construction Market in Bulgaria: Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics to 2021" contains historic and forecast market data for the energy and utilities construction market in Bulgaria, with a detailed breakdown of the data by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition) and by cost type( construction materials, construction equipment and construction services). This report also contains overall values of the energy and utilities construction segments such as Energy and utilities construction market covers the development of energy and telecommunications related projects, oil and gas projects including both upstream and downstream exploration, and utility projects such as water and sewage infrastructure. This market includes five categories: electricity and power, oil & gas, telecommunications, sewage infrastructure and water infrastructure. This research report provides up-to-date market size data for the period 2012-2016 and an illustrative forecast to 2021.GET SAMPLE REPORT @SummaryEnergy and utilities construction market covers the development of energy and telecommunications related projects, oil and gas projects including both upstream and downstream exploration, and utility projects such as water and sewage infrastructure. This market includes five categories: electricity and power, oil & gas, telecommunications, sewage infrastructure and water infrastructure.The Bulgarian energy and utilities construction category has observed some fluctuations in the review period with a value of BGNxxx.xx million (US$xxx.xx million) in 2016 and increased at a rate of x.xx% over 2015. The market recorded a CAGR of xx.xx% from 2012 through 2016."Energy and Utilities Construction Market in Bulgaria: Market Size, Growth and Forecast Analytics to 2021"' provides a top-level overview and detailed insight into the operating environment of the energy and utilities construction market in Bulgaria. It is an essential tool for companies active across the Bulgaria construction value chain and for new players considering to enter the market.Scope An overview of the energy and utilities construction market in Bulgaria. Historic (2012 through 2016) and forecast (2017 through 2021) construction market output values are provided. A detailed breakdown of the data by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition) is provided at the market level while the values for the segments are provided by cost types (construction materials, construction equipment & construction services). This report covers all the segments of commercial construction market including Energy and utilities construction market covers the development of energy and telecommunications related projects, oil and gas projects including both upstream and downstream exploration, and utility projects such as water and sewage infrastructure. This market includes five categories: electricity and power, oil & gas, telecommunications, sewage infrastructure and water infrastructure.Key points to buy Enhances your knowledge of the market with key figures detailing construction type. Provides you with a breakdown of the market by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition). Provides you with a breakdown of the segments by cost type (construction materials, construction equipment &construction services). Details the segments covered under commercial construction market. Allows you to plan future business decisions using the forecast figures given.Table of Contents1 Introduction2 Overall Energy and Utilities Construction Value: Market Analysis3 Energy and Utilities Construction Output: Analysis by Category4 Electricity and Power construction: Market Analysis5 Oil and Gas construction: Market Analysis6 Telecommunications construction: Market Analysis7 Water Infrastructure construction: Market Analysis8 Sewage Infrastructure construction: Market Analysis9 Appendix..CONTINUEDWise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Healthcare Enterprise Software Market Growth Factors, Trends, and Top Companies Analysis & Foresight to 2027

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Healthcare Enterprise Software Market Analysis By Key Companies-( Microsoft Corporation (US) IBM (US) Oracle Corporation (US) Allscripts (US)) by applications (administrative, clinical, patient engagement, others) by deployment types (on premise model, cloud based) by end users (Hospitals, clinics, research institutes) - Forecast to 2027Market Synopsis of Healthcare Enterprise Software Market:Market Scenario:Healthcare Enterprise Software in healthcare is the procedure of dealing with office's cases, installment and revenue generation processes and other management of healthcare organizations vital assets. In order to efficiently manage the patient revenue cycle of any organization, institute or office. In this era it is required or essential to have medical billing software, practice administration program which permits the management to successfully monitor the process.Get a Copy of Sample Report @Key Players for Healthcare Enterprise Software Market:Microsoft Corporation (US)IBM (US)Oracle Corporation (US)Allscripts (US)Nuance Communications (US)McKesson Corporation (US)Cerner Corporations (US)Athenahealth (US)Medidata Solutions (US)CompuGroup (UK)Study Objectives of Healthcare Enterprise Software Market: To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 10 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the Global Healthcare Enterprise Software Market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To Analyze the Global Healthcare Enterprise Software Market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- Americas, Europe, Asia, and RoW To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective To provide country level analysis of the market for segments by application, by end users, by deployment and sub-segments. To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Global Healthcare Enterprise Software MarketSegments:Global Healthcare Enterprise Software market has been segmented on the basis of deployment which consist on premise model and cloud based. On the basis of application which includes people management, clinical data management, relationship management, and financial resource management on the basis end users which includes hospitals, clinics, research institutesBrowse Full Report Details @TABLE OF CONTENTS1. INTRODUCTION2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY3. MARKET DYNAMICS4. MARKET FACTOR ANALYSIS5. GLOBAL HEALTHCARE ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE MARKET, BY APPLICATION6. GLOBAL HEALTHCARE ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE MARKET, BY DEPLOYMENT TYPES7. GLOBAL HEALTHCARE ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE MARKET, BY END USER8. GLOBAL HEALTHCARE ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE MARKET, BY REGION9. COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE10. COMPANY PROFILEThe report for Global Healthcare Enterprise Software market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different markets segments and regionsContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Global Healthcare Enterprise Software Market Research Report- Forecast To 2027 chain related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Media Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Deep Brain Stimulation Devices Market Demand and Growth Analysis with Forecast up to 2020

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Transparency Market Research (TMR) has published a new report, titled Deep Brain Stimulation Devices Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020.The report states that the global deep brain stimulation devices market for Parkinsons disease will expand at a CAGR of 11.0% during the forecast period from 2013 to 2019. In 2012, the global deep brain stimulation devices market for Parkinsons disease was worth US$4.5 bn and by 2019, it is projected to be worth US$9.4 bn.Browse Full Deep Brain Stimulation Devices Market for Parkinson's Disease (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2013 - 2019 Report @According to The Parkinsons Disease Foundation, there are around 10 million people around the world suffering from this condition and more than 1 million of these people are living in America. The global deep brain stimulation devices market for Parkinsons disease is driven by the expanding geriatric population and the high prevalence of neurological conditions such as Alzheimers disease, dementia, and Parkinsons disease.In addition to this, the global deep brain stimulation devices market for Parkinsons disease will be driven by the rising demand for deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices due to the increasing popularity of minimally invasive procedures. DBS surgical therapy is currently the therapy of choice during the advanced stages of the Parkinsons disease. On the other hand, chemotherapy is recommended generally during the early stages of the disease. Medical practitioners and patients are increasingly choosing DBS over drug therapy as the latter is considered to have several side effects. Furthermore, the efficacy of drug therapy cannot be gauged accurately.Request to download and view full ToC -Moreover, the favorable reimbursement scenario is also adding to the growing acceptance of these devices worldwide. The global deep brain stimulation devices market for Parkinsons disease will also benefit from the rising availability of innovative deep brain stimulation devices.On the other hand, the global deep brain stimulation devices market for Parkinsons disease will be challenged by the risks associated with deep brain stimulation procedures. Furthermore, the implementation of certain policies from the government such as the Affordable Care Act in the U.S. will restrict the global deep brain stimulation devices market for Parkinsons disease.Request to view Sample Report -Players in the global deep brain stimulation devices market for Parkinsons disease will benefit from the opportunity provided by the high unmet needs in the emerging economies located in Asia Pacific and other regions. Regionlly, the global deep brain stimulation devices market for Parkinsons disease is segmented into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World.The global deep brain stimulation devices market for Parkinsons disease is led by a handful of players. These include: Boston Scientific Corporation, Aleva Neurotherapeutics SA, St. Jude Medical, Inc., and Medtronic, Inc. The research study states that companies by focusing on improving public awareness regarding the disease, related consequences and treatment options can greatly benefit by expanding their reach. Furthermore, hiring CMOs for manufacturing deep brain stimulation devices will also help companies to boost their revenue. Another recommendation from the report is for companies to focus on enhanced product life and reducing prices of DBS devices to create better prospects.Deep Brain Stimulation Devices Market Report is available @ US$ 5795About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Kidney Cancer Drugs Market | Trends, Opportunities and Forecast up to 2020

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The Global Kidney Cancer Drugs Market is dominated by a few global giants, namely F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Bayer AG, Novartis AG, GlaxoSmithKline plc, and Pfizer, Inc. This makes the competitive landscape highly consolidated in nature. Competition among the players is stiff too.Biopharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer, Inc., among them, led the global market for kidney cancer drugs with maximum share in 2013 on the back of Sunitinib and Axitinib, two of the main drugs used for treating kidney cancer. Other big names in the industry, such as Novartis and GSK too are adopting other strategies to increase their geographical outreach. They are focusing on bolstering their distribution networks in the relatively underserved markets in the emerging nations that are seeing an increasing prevalence of kidney cancer cases.A report by Transparency Market Research predicts the global market for kidney cancer drugs to expand at a 6.6% CAGR during the period between 2014 and 2020.View Report-North America Market Leads on the Back of Commercial Availability of Drugs from Prominent BrandsDepending upon the prominent brands of drugs, the global market for kidney cancer drugs can be segmented into Avastin (Bevacizumab), Afinitor (Everolimus), Inlyta (Axitinib), Torisel (Temsirolimus), Nexavar (Sorafenib), Sutent (Sunitinib), Proleukin (Aldesleukin/Interleukin-2), and Votrient (Pazopanib). Of them, Sutent, which is the marketed version of Sunitinib  Pfizers drug in the global kidney cancer drugs market, raked in maximum revenue in 2013. This is because Sutent is mainly prescribed as the first-line of treatment against kidney cancer. Sutent is also among the most studied drugs in its class for multiple indications, as it targets multiple receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs).Request to download and view full ToC -Geography-wise, the key segments of the global market for kidney cancer drugs are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Rest of the World (RoW). North America, among them, accounts for maximum market share owing to most prominent brands of kidney cancer treatment drugs being commercially available. In addition, a substantial number of patients and a solid healthcare system tailor-made for the pharmaceutical industry is also majorly fuelling the market in the region. North America accounted for 45% of market share in 2013.Request to view Sample Report -Rising Population of Geriatrics Highly Susceptible to Kidney Cancer Driving MarketThe global market for kidney cancer drugs is predicted to clock steady growth in the upcoming years because of an increasing geriatric population and higher prevalence of kidney cancer. As per the American Cancer Society, those afflicted with kidney cancer are mostly in the higher age bracket. The average age of people diagnosed with the malady is 64. Kidney cancer is very uncommon in people under the age of 45. The organization also finds that kidney cancer is one of the 10 most common cancers in both men and women.Approval of novel drug molecules is also serving to catalyze growth in the global kidney cancer drugs market. Posing a challenge to the market, on the contrary, is the growing sales of generic drug variants on account of expensiveness of branded cancer drugs.A trend noticed in the global market for kidney cancer drugs is the manufacturers shifting their gaze towards developing economies to bring about sales growth.Kidney Cancer Drugs Market Report is available @ US$ 5795About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Canada Home Healthcare Market Future Demand and Growth Analysis with Forecast up to 2020

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The Canada home healthcare market is exhibiting a CAGR of 8.9% in the forecast period of 2014 to 2020. According to a research report released by Transparency Market Research, the Canada home healthcare market is expected to reach US$18.94 bn by the end of 2020, after being recorded at US$10.45 bn in 2013. The report is titled Canada Home Healthcare Market - Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020, and is available on the company website now.Browse the full Canada Home Healthcare Market (By Device Types - Diagnostics and Monitoring Devices, Therapeutic Home Healthcare Devices, Mobility Assist Devices and Medical Supplies; By Services - Rehabilitation, Telehealth and Telemedicine, Respiratory Therapy, Infusion Therapy and Unskilled Home Healthcare Services) - Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020 report @According to the report, the Canada home healthcare market is primarily driven by the rising number of patients who suffer from ailments such as diabetes, arthritis, cancer, and multiple chronic diseases. This rising prevalence of diseases, coupled with a growing population of geriatric Canadian citizens, is boosting the Canada home healthcare market at a rapid rate.Request to download and view full ToC -Other drivers of the Canada home healthcare market include technological advancements that allow for a more efficient healthcare service that can be delivered at an optimum time, and a growing awareness of citizens towards the Canada home healthcare market and its services.Between the different segments of the Canada home healthcare market according to type, the market is led by diagnostics and monitoring devices, a segment that held over 30% of the market in 2013. This segment is boosted by consistent government efforts taken to increase awareness among citizens regarding the existence of diagnostic and monitoring devices and their benefits.Request to view Sample Report -The home mobility segment earned the lowest revenue for the Canada home healthcare market in 2013. This is attributed to the low market cost of the instruments sold in the home mobility segment, such as walkers, crutches, cranes, and rollators.In terms of services, the Canada home healthcare market is led by the segment of telehealth and telemedicine. The segment is progressing at a CAGR of 11.0% by 2020. The telehealth and telemedicine segment generated 2% of the usual revenue recorded in the Canada home healthcare market in 2013. The Canada home healthcare market services are constantly driven by factors such as high cost-effectiveness, easier access to rural locations, and high quality care of patients.From a geographical perspective, the Canada home healthcare market was led by the province of Ontario in 2013. At the same time, the Canada home healthcare market in the Quebec is expected to rise at a rapid CAGR of 9.2%. The report cites increasing population of chronically ill people as the key reason for the high growth rate of the Canada home healthcare market in Quebec.Key players involved in the Canada home healthcare market are Home Care Ontario, The Canadian Home Caress, We Care Health Services, GM Healthcare, 3M Healthcare, Omron Healthcare, and Johnson & Johnson.Canada Home Healthcare Market Report is available @ US$ 5795About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Americas Gold Nanoparticles Market Segments Based on Geography, Key Players, Driver, Market Challenge, Market Trend 2027

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Americas Gold Nanoparticles Market Analysis by Key Companies - Nanopartz Inc (U.S) Nanosphere (Canada) Nanostellar (U.S) NanoRods LLC (U.S), by Application (photodynamic therapy, diagnostics, medical imaging), by Type, by End-users (Hospitals, Clinics,Dental clinics) - Forecast to 2027Market Synopsis of Gold nanoparticlesMarket ScenarioThe market for Gold nanoparticles is increasing rapidly due to increasing advancement in nanotechnologies. The factors that influence the growth of Gold nanoparticles market; expanding medical diagnostics industry, increasing growth in advance healthcare technology, high advantages in medicinal imaging applications and many others.Get a Copy of Sample Report @Key Players:Cytodiagnostics (Canada)Goldsol (U.S)NanoHybrids Corp (Austin)Nanopartz Inc (U.S)Nanosphere (Canada)Nanostellar (U.S)NanoRods LLC (U.S)Sigma Aldrich (U.S)SegmentsThe Americana market for Gold nanoparticles is segmented into mainly three; by type, by application and by End-users and its various sub-segments. By types include nanorods, nanoshells and nanocages. By application include photodynamic therapy, diagnostics, medical imaging and others. Whereas by End-users it includes medical, electronics, catalysis and others.Study Objectives of Gold nanoparticles To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 10 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the Americas Gold nanoparticles market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To Analyze the Gold nanoparticles market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- Americas, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW) To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective To provide country level analysis of the market for segment by Application, by End-users and its sub-segments. To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Americas Gold nanoparticles marketBrowse Full Report Details @The report for Gold nanoparticles of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.ContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Americas Gold Nanoparticles Market Research Report - Forecast to 2027 chain related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Media Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
N-Hexane Market is Expected to Display Positive Growth at a CAGR of 5.7% by 2024

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According to the latest report published by Persistence Market Research titled, Global Market Study on n-Hexane: Oil Extraction End-Use Segment to Dominate Consumption over the Forecast Period , the global n-Hexane Market is anticipated to witness a Y-o-Y growth of more than 3% in 2016. Increasing population coupled along with shooting refined oil demand is expected to propel the demand for n-Hexane. As a special-purpose solvent, n-Hexane has applications across a diverse set of industries which is expected to boost demand of n-hexane.View and Download TOC of N-Hexane Market Research Report @Demand for n-Hexane, especially in developing region such Asia Pacific, is expected to boost the demand of the global n-Hexane market over the forecast period. Excellent properties of n-Hexane to remove odor and unwanted taste are expected to propel the demand of n-Hexane from the edible oil industry. n-Hexane has the ability to remove unwanted taste and odor and this is the precise reason that the demand for n-Hexane has increased in edible oil industry. However, the consumers from developed regions are shifting from refined oil to cold-pressed oil owing to its superior health benefits. Cold pressing is a natural way to produce oil which does not contain solvent residues, no preservatives with natural antioxidants. In addition, Isohexane, a hexane isomer is used as a substitute of n-Hexane in few oilseed extraction applications. Due to toxic nature of n-Hexane, it has been substituted by n-heptane in some pharmaceutical applications. This may retard the growth of the n-Hexane market.Based on application, oil extraction will continue to lead the market share, representing nearly 57% of total revenues in 2016. High demand for n-Hexane in oil extraction owing to its effectiveness and high yield is expected to propel the global n-Hexane Market. Polymerization is expected to reach more than 200KT in 2016. Oil Extraction, Pharmaceutical, and Polymerization will remain top 3 end-users in global n-Hexane Market.Request and Download Sample Report @Grade wise, oil extraction followed by industrial will dominate the Global n-Hexane Market in 2016 and is anticipated to reach more than US$ 600 Mn in 2016. Demand for industrial grade n-Hexane is expected to reach closed to 560 KT in 2016.On the basis of the region, APAC has the largest market in n-Hexane market across the world. China recorded a dominant market share of more than 40% in 2015. Asia-Pacific is estimated to lead the market in 2016, followed by Europe and North America. Moderate growth is expected from the mature markets such as North America and Europe. Europe will witness sluggish growth owing to the gradual economic recovery. In addition, important players in the market have been shifting their production bases to Asia Pacific region in order to capitalize on scale economies. Rising environmental concerns in developed regions over the use of n-Hexane and its adverse impact on health and environment may inhibit the growth of the n-Hexane market. APAC is expected to drive the global n-Hexane market and is expected to register closed to 5% of volume CAGR over the forecast period 2016-2024.Key participant of global n-Hexane market are Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd., Sak Chaisidhi Company Limited, Liangxin petrochemical company, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Chevron Philips Chemicals LLC, Indian Oil Corp. Ltd., , Royal Dutch Shell plc., Rompetrol Rafinare S.A, DHC Solvent Chemie GmbH, Dongying Liaoning Yufeng Chemical Co., Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd.Buy Full N-Hexane Market Report @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:
Non-invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) Market : Application and Development Trends 2017 - 2025

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Global Non-invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) Market: OverviewThe growing preference for non-invasive techniques over invasive surgeries is one of the key growth drivers for the global non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) market. In addition to this number of babies born with Down syndrome, XYY syndrome, Turner, and Klinefelter is increasing, boosting the growth of the market. These chromosomal aneuploidies occur as a result of infertility, reproductive loss, and language development delays and can be detected and diagnosed by non-invasive prenatal testing. Thus, NIPT enables the detection of fatal chromosomal aneuploidies through the analysis of the cell-free DNA of fetuses. NIPT makes use of ultrasononography and serum screening.Global Non-invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) Market: Key TrendsOne in every 830 child births in the U.S. suffers from the Down syndrome, as per Down Syndrome Education (DSE). In Europe, the incidence rate for Down syndrome is one in every 920 babies. Thus, there exists a large potential consumer base for NIPT. An increasing number of people are preferring NIPT because chorionic villus sampling (CVS) and amniocentesis, which are the traditional invasive prenatal genetic tests can result in the risk of miscarriage. Non-invasive prenatal testing however, analyze the cell-free DNA, which floats in the maternal plasma. Thus, no risk of miscarriage exists in the use of NIPT methods. A growing number of doctors are opting for non-invasive prenatal testing that make use of cell-free circulating DNA in the maternal serum.Request Sample Copy of the Report@Global Non-invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) Market: Market PotentialSequenom Inc., a key player operating in the NIPT market has recently announced the enhancement of MaterniT GENOME laboratory-developed test that identifies 1 in 3 positive findings that may not be detected by standard NIPT. While standard NIPTs can identify chromosomal abnormalities such as trisomies 21,13, 18, and chromosome aneuploidies, the MaterniT GENOME can analyze all chromosomes for gains and losses of chromosomal materials that are 7 Megabases or greater in size. In fact it can also analyze microdeletions, which are less than 7 Megabases.Efforts such as this by key players are expected to create growth potential for the global non-invasive prenatal testing market. Furthermore, untapped markets in emerging nations are projected to offer growth opportunities to players in the NIPT market.Request TOC of the Report @Global Non-invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) Market: Regional OutlookWhile North America has been leading in the global non-invasive prenatal testing owing to the presence of key players in the U.S. coupled with high awareness levels about NIPT, Europe is anticipated to emerge second in terms of leading. Moreover, Asia Pacific is anticipated to be the region witnessing the fastest growth, with countries such as China, Australia, India, and Japan holding great potential for growth in the NIPT market. A growing number of women preferring late pregnancy in the region is anticipated to be the driving force for the growth of the Asia Pacific non-invasive prenatal market. BGI Diagnostics and Berry Genomics are two of the leading companies operating in the NIPT market in China, which has pushed the growth of country. Moreover, the CFDA approval for BambniTest has propelled the growth of the market in this region.Global Non-invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT) Market: Competitive LandscapeIllumina, Inc. (Verinata Health, Inc.), Sequenom, Inc., Ariosa Diagnostics, BGI Health, Natera, Inc., LabCorp, LifeCodexx AG, and Berry Genomics are the key players competing in the non-invasive prenatal testing market. By forming alliances with physician offices, hospitals, and clinical laboratories, these players operate by marketing their proprietary non-invasive prenatal tests.Get Discount @About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Hot Drinks Sector in Australia Market 2017- Revenue, Price and Gross Margin Research Report 2021

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SUMMARYWiseGuyReports published new report, titled Hot Drinks Sector in AustraliaA well established cafe culture in the country, coupled with a large young population base and increasing demand for high quality, healthy products are driving the Australian Hot Drinks sector. Of the three markets, Hot Coffee is the largest in both value and volume terms, while the Other Hot Drinks market is forecast to register the fastest growth during 2016-2021. Hypermarkets & Supermarkets is the leading channel for the distribution of Hot Drinks in the country. Paper & Board is the most commonly used package material in the sector, while Rigid Plastics is forecast to register the fastest growth during 2016-2021. Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Nestle, and Unilever are the leading market players in the Australian Hot Drinks sector.Country Profile report on the Hot Drinks sector in Australia provides insights on high growth markets to target, trends in the usage of packaging materials, category level distribution channel data and market share of brands.What else is contained?- Market data: Overall market value and volume data with growth analysis for 2011-2021. The overall market value and volume included in the report is split on the basis of On-trade and Off-trade- Category coverage: Value and growth analysis for Hot Coffee, Hot Tea and Other Hot drinks with inputs on individual category share within each market and the change in their market share forecast for 2016-2021- Leading players: Market share of brands and private labels, including private label growth analysis from 2011-2016- Distribution data: Percentage of sales within each market through distribution channels such as On-trade, Hypermarkets & Supermarkets, Convenience Stores, Food & Drinks Specialists, eRetailers and others- Packaging data: consumption breakdown for package materials and pack types in each market, in terms of percentage share of number of units sold. Package material data for Glass, Flexible Packaging, Paper & Board, Rigid Plastics, Rigid Metal and others; pack type data for: Carton, Bag/Sachet, Tub, Bottle, Jar and Stand Up Pouch.GET SAMPLE REPORT @Scope- The Hot Drinks sector in Australia is forecast to grow at 1.2% CAGR in value terms during 2016-2021.- Hot Coffee is the largest market in both value and volume terms in the Australian Hot Drinks sector.- The Other Hot Drinks market is forecast to register the fastest growth during 2016-2021.- Hypermarkets & Supermarkets is the leading distribution channel for Hot Drinks in Australia.- Moccona is the leading value brand in the Australian Hot Drinks sector.- Paper & Board is the most commonly used package material in the Australian Hot Drinks sector.Key points to buy- Identify high potential categories and explore further market opportunities based on detailed value and volume analysis- Existing and new players can analyze key distribution channels to identify and evaluate trends and opportunities- Gain an understanding of the total competitive landscape based on detailed brand share analysis to plan effective market positioning- Access the key and most influential consumer trends driving Hot Drinks products consumption, and how they influence consumer behavior in the market which will help determine the best audiences to target- Our team of analysts have placed a significant emphasis on changes expected in the sector that will provide a clear picture of the opportunities that can be tapped over the next five years, resulting in revenue expansion- The packaging analysis report helps manufacturers, in identifying the most commonly used packaging materials in the sector- Analysis on key macro-economic indicators such as GDP per capita, population (overall and breakdown by age), and consumer price index. It also covers a comparative analysis of political, economic, socio-demographic, and technological indicators (PEST) across 50 countries.Table of Contents1. Report Scope2. Executive summary3. Australia in the global and regional context4. Market size analysis - Hot Drinks Sector5. Market and category analysis6. Distribution analysis7. Competitive landscape8. Packaging analysis9. Macroeconomic analysis10. Consumergraphics11. Methodology12. Definitions13. Appendix14. About15. Disclaimer16. Contact UsContinuedWise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Heart Valve Repair and Replacement Market | Emerging Market Trends, Size, Share and Growth Analysis 2020

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According to a new market report published by Persistence Market Research Global Market Study on Heart Valve Repair and Replacement: Asia Pacific to Witness Highest Growth by 2020, the global heart valve repair and replacement market was valued at USD 2,945.2 million in 2014 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.1% from 2014 to 2020, to reach USD 4,712.7 million by 2020.View Report-The global heart valve repair and replacement market is witnessing significant growth due to growing geriatric population, change in lifestyles, and associated conditions leading to cardiovascular disorders. Moreover, technological advancements in the heart valve repair and replacement devices and surgeries, and rise in medical tourism promoting heart valve repair and replacement surgeries are also driving the market.However, there are various risks and complications associated with heart valve repair and replacement surgeries such as irregular heart rhythm, breathing problem, and embolism. Furthermore, lack of primary healthcare infrastructure in developing countries inhibits the growth of the heart valve repair and replacement market. The heart valve repair and replacement market is anticipated to grow from an estimated USD 2,945.2 million in 2014 to USD 4,712.7 million by 2020 at a CAGR of 8.1% during the forecast period.Request to download and view full ToC -In North America, the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases is high compared to other regions of the world due to increasing rate of obesity and change in lifestyle in the region. In the U.S., approximately 70,000 heart valve procedures are performed for mitral valve stenosis annually.In Europe, the heart valve repair and replacement market is driven by a rise in geriatric population, increasing the prevalence of lifestyle-associated disease, and change in lifestyles. Cardiovascular diseases cause more deaths among Europeans Approximately 50,000 valve replacement surgeries take place annually.Request to view Sample Report -However, the growth of heart valve repair and replacement market in Asia Pacific is much higher than that in developed countries due to the large population base, change in lifestyles, increasing prevalence of lifestyle associated diseases, and rising medical tourism in the region.Edwards Lifesciences Corporation, St. Jude Medical, Inc., Medtronic, Inc., Sorin Group, Boston Scientific Corporation, and Abbott Laboratories, Inc. are some of the major players in the heart valve repair and replacement market.Heart Valve Repair and Replacement Market Report is available @ US$ 4900ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Top Tips For Exhibition Stand Design

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Design your exhibition stand well, and youll build your brand, attract new leads, and help generate sales. Miss the mark, and youll have an oversized lump that gets ignored and overlooked.To help you get the exhibition stand design you need, here are our top tips on exhibition stand design: Ensure your stand clearly shows who you are, what you do, and what you have to offer. Be true to your brand and create recognition by matching your stand design with your other marketing materials, such as your website, brochures, print ads, direct mail, etc.. Create visual impact with a stand that has bright, bold colors (as appropriate), big images that speak to your potential clients, and easy to read text that sends a clear message. Design your exhibition show stand space so it best fits your specific marketing objectives  spaces for brand-building graphics, lead collection stations, demo areas, meeting tables, refreshments bar, etc. While many exhibitors find they get more leads with an open and inviting space, others find they need large structures or displays for impact or walls for meeting areas. Just focus on your top objectives, because you dont have room for them all! Decide on whatever technology you will use in your stand, so you can incorporate that into the design from the start. Focus on displaying your most popular and/or new products, rather than trying to showcase all your products in a limited stand space. Put fewer words on your graphics, but make each word bigger. A single clear statement is better than a long list of bullet points that gets ignored. Choose a design that balances your need for marketing impact with cost effective solutions and usability during the show. Plan your exhibit design for the next year, two, or three, to minimize your expenses for various sizes, marketing messages and locations. Give yourself enough time to get a new stand designed, and include the time evaluate the design with your team on practical usage during the show.We hope these top tips will give you some usable ideas to enhance your next exhibition presence. Of course we at CannesExpo are more than happy to help you with the design and build of your stand if you are exhibiting in Cannes, Nice or Monaco.CannesExpo is located just outside is your local supplier for stand design and construction in Cannes, Nice and Monaco. We provide a full service including design, construction and assembly of stand.CannesExpoPlace des anciens Combattants06560 ValbonneFranceInfo@cannesexpo.com
Interconnects and Passive Components Market : Emerging Trends and Growth Rate Till 2025

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Global Interconnects and Passive Components Market: OverviewAn interconnect component refers to an optical or electric connection or cable connecting two or more devices. A broad range of interconnect parts such as board to board connectors, electronic cable connectors, and DIN connectors used in a broad range of applications are offered by a number of manufacturers. Cellular phones, hubs, HVAC equipment, routers, mp3 players, GPS devices, Ethernet and other high speed connectivity applications, digital cameras, and video connections are some of the key applications that deploy interconnects components. Passive components, on the other hand, are used in applications such as computers, wireless communication, security systems, 3D printers, medical instruments, power supply circuits, handheld devices, digital thermostats, and several household appliances.Global Interconnects and Passive Components Market: Key TrendsThe rising demand for interconnects and passive components in the thriving consumer electronics industry is a primary catalyst of the global market. Used in the production of devices and machines deployed in automobiles, healthcare, data processing, and telecommunication, these components are likely to witness greater adoption over the next few years. The market is also receiving a significant boost from the continual technological advancements in the consumer electronics industry. Moreover, the growth of the interconnect segment creates further scope of expansion for the market. The growth of this segment can be attributed to the preference for high speed bandwidth in data processing, emergence of robotics and automation across numerous sectors, and development of compact electronic components and devices.Request Sample Copy of the Report@Global Interconnects and Passive Components Market: Market PotentialThe competitive scenario of the global interconnects and passive components market is marked by unceasing product launches. For instance, in March 2017, AVX Corporation announced the release of its new low pass integrated thin film SMD filter, which can be an ideal solution for various wireless applications such as global positioning systems (GPS), mobile communications systems, and wireless large area networks (LANs). The new FHC1 and FHC2 series feature low parasitics, low insertion loss, conducive heat dissipation properties, and a wide frequency range.Partnerships, acquisitions, and collaborations are focused on by several companies. For example, in Ixia announced its partnership with Foxconn Interconnect technology (FIT) and Cisco for demonstrating 400 Gigabit Ethernet traffic at The Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exhibition (OFC) 2017 in Los Angeles, USA.Request TOC of the Report @Global Interconnects and Passive Components Market: Regional OutlookRegionally, the global interconnects and passive components market is segmented into Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. Asia Pacific exhibits colossal growth opportunities, springing from factors such as easy availability of cheap labor, raw material, along with low costs of production. The booming consumer electronics industry in the region, and particularly in China, is aiding steady growth of the market for interconnects and passive components. Moreover, with increasing per capita incomes of the middle class, the standard of living of the people has improved. This has resulted in more demand for smartphones, LED and LCD displays, and other electronic devices. North America and Europe are also slated for extensive growth, encouraged by beneficial policies of the government.Global Interconnects and Passive Components Market: Competitive AnalysisPanasonic Corporation, Guangzhou Copper Factory Co., Ltd., TT Electronics Plc., AVX Corporation, Celtic Chemicals Ltd, JST Mfg. Co. Ltd., E Connectivity Ltd., Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd., and Cisco Systems, Inc. are some of the prominent players operating in the global market for interconnects and passive components.Get Discount @About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Sleep Aids Market Future Demand and Growth Analysis with Forecast up to 2020

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Used in diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders or sleep disturbances, sleep aids are high in demand today. They can be drugs or devices that help people overcome sleep-related disorders and lead a healthy life. The Global Sleep Aids Market registered a value worth US$ 58.1 Bn in 2014. According to PMRs research, the market is projected for a value of around US$ 80.8 Bn by the end of 2020. During this six-year forecast period, the global market for sleep aids will expand at a moderate CAGR of 5.7%. With growing demand for medications that help quality sleep, the market for sleep aids is witnessing steady growth.View Report-Key Market DynamicsLack of quality sleep remains a key factor sustaining the demand for sleep aids on a global level. Growing incidences of physical and psychiatric issues, medical disorders, and environmental disturbances are increasingly leading into shifted sleeping patterns, which is another driver to the market growth. People nowadays often change their sleeping schedules due to a busy professional lifestyle that ultimately results in lack of quality sleep. With increasing number of professionals working in night shifts rescheduling their sleeping time, sleeping aids are likely to gain traction in the next few years. A considerable size of global population is now aware of the ill effects of a sleep disorder, including altered neural efficiency, poor health condition, increased risk of accidents, reduced productivity, stress-laden relationships, and augmented chances of acquiring chronic diseases such as cancers, CVDs, diabetes, obesity, and long-term depression. Apart from a majority of geriatric population preferring sleeping pills frequently, growing awareness among consumers is providing a strong impetus to the sleeping aids market. Several healthcare organizations are initiating sleep disorder awareness programs, which will further propel the demand for sleeping aids, eventually boosting the market.Adoption of home sleep test kits is one of the latest trends among people with higher chances of acquiring sleep apnea. The market is also witnessing spiking sales of wearable monitors and passive-off body sensors since the recent past. Moreover, continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy to treat sleep apnea is also trending in the global market for sleep aids.However, sleep aids are often associated with certain side effects, which will continue to limit penetration. Apart from side effects of medications, patent expiry of major sleep drug is also a critical factor that may hamper the market growth.Request to download and view full ToC -Segment AnalysisThe global sleep aids market is segmented on the basis of sleep disorder into insomnia, sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, narcolepsy, and sleep walking, based on product into mattresses and pillows, sleep laboratories, medications, and sleep apnea devices. By medication, the market is fragmented into prescription-based drugs, OTC drugs, and herbal drugs. Based on the sleep disorder, sleep apnea will remain the fastest growing segment, whereas mattresses and pillows will continue to lead the market based on product type. On the basis of medication, prescription medications form the largest segment in the market.Request to view Sample Report -Regional AnalysisBased on geography, the global market for sleep aids is classified into three key regions viz. North America (the U.S.), Europe (Germany, France, and the U.K.), and Asia (China and Japan). North America, especially the U.S., is observed to be the dominant market globally, owing to rapid technological advancements and growing awareness about adverse consequences of sleep disorders among consumers in the region. The market in North America is anticipated to reach US$ 44.5 Bn in 2020, up from US$ 31.9 Bn attained in 2014. The market in this region is likely to expand at a CAGR of 5.7% over 2014-2020. Asia is foreseen to be a significantly growing market for sleep aids and the growth is attributed to rising incidences of sleep disorders as a result of busy, stressed lifestyle.Key Market PlayersA number of companies compete in the global sleep aids market. Some of the leading names are Pfizer, Sanofi, Merck & Co., GSK Plc, SleepMed, Inc., Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Philips), DeVilbiss Healthcare LLC, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Care Fusion Corporation, Cadwell, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Compumedics Limited, and Natus Medical manufactures.Sleep Aids market Report is available @ US$ 4900About 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 Us305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
North America and Europe Dermal Filler Market | Emerging Market Trends, Size, Share and Growth Analysis 2026

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Future Market Insights (FMI) delivers key insights on The North America And Europe Dermal Filler Market in its latest report, titled North America and Europe Dermal Filler Market: Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026. In terms of revenue, the North America and Europe dermal filler market is projected to register a promising CAGR of 6.4% over the forecast period, owing to numerous factors, about which FMI offers thorough insights and forecasts in this report.The factors powering demand for dermal fillers are aging population, increasing expenditure on aesthetics and beauty procedures, introduction of new areas of application such as HIV induced facial lipoatrophy, enhancement of dorsal area of hand and rising demand for non-invasive aesthetic procedures over surgical aesthetic procedures.However, higher cost associated with the dermal filler procedure, patch up or reinjection needed for achieving the desired facial rejuvenation for absorbable dermal fillers and some post procedure complications associated with dermal fillers like bruising, redness and granulation are some factors expected to hamper growth of the North America and Europe dermal filler market over the forecast period.Key trend defining the market is the prominent players acquiring smaller players in aesthetics product domain, consequently increasing their infrastructure along with expanding their product portfolio. Also, big players are partnering with local and smaller companies for distribution of their products on a regional level in pursuance of capturing the market share. Furthermore, dermal filler manufacturers are also increasingly concentrating on end user engagement to retain and expand their market share.View Report-Segmentation highlightsThe market is segmented based on product type, filler material, distribution channel and region. Based on product type, the market is segmented into absorbable fillers and non-absorbable fillers.Among the product type segment, absorbable product type segment is expected to exhibit the highest revenue growth over the forecast period. The absorbable product type segment is expected to register a significant CAGR of 6.5% during the forecast period in terms of value. The non-absorbable product segment is projected to register CAGR of 4.5% over the forecast period.To provide in-depth insights on the pattern of demand for dermal fillers, the market is segmented into different type filler material such as hyaluronic acid (HA), poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA), calcium hydroxylapatite (CaHA), polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and collagen. The hyaluronic acid material segment is projected to register a significant CAGR of 6.7% over the forecast period in terms of value.The market has also been segmented by distribution channel into retail pharmacies and drug stores, clinics and hospital pharmacies and online sales segments. Clinics and hospital pharmacy distribution segment is expected to be the highest in terms of revenue over the forecast period, with the segment registering a CAGR of 7.8%.Retail pharmacies and drug stores are projected to witness a CAGR of 6.8% over the forecast period. One of the major growth supporter for the dermal filler market is the office based procedure and small time required for procedure (30 to 60 minutes).Request to download and view full ToC -Regional market projectionsThis report assesses trends in driving growth of each segment on the collective as well as regional level and offers potential takeaways that could prove substantially useful to dermal filler manufacturers looking forward to enter the market. North America market is expected to dominate the dermal filler market, accounting for maximum revenue share by 2016 end. Western Europe market is expected to account for approximately 28.5% revenue share of the North America and Europe dermal filler market by 2016 end. Among the emerging markets, Germany is projected to exhibit a significant CAGR of 7.2% over the forecast period, followed by France, due to rising demand for non-invasive aesthetics procedures and increasing expenditure on aesthetic procedures.Request to view Sample Report -Vendor insightsSome of the key players in the North America and Europe dermal filler market include Allergan plc., Galderma Pharma S.A., Sinclair Pharma S.A., Anika Therapeutics Inc., Suneva Medical Inc. and Merz Pharma GmbH and Co. KGaA. In this report, FMI has discussed individual strategies followed by these companies in terms of enhancing their product portfolio, creating new marketing techniques, mergers and acquisitions. The Competitive Landscape is included to provide report audiences with a dashboard view and company share collectively.Dermal Filler Market Report is available @ US$ 5000ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market-Future Demand, Market Analysis & Outlook 2017-2022

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The Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market Research Report 2017 renders deep perception of the key regional market status of the Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Industry on a Global level that primarily aims the core regions which comprises of continents like Europe, North America, and Asia and the key countries such as United States, Germany, China and Japan.For Request a Sample Click @The report on Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market is a professional report which provides thorough knowledge along with complete information pertaining to the Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles industry propos classifications, definitions, applications, industry chain summary, industry policies in addition to plans, product specifications, manufacturing processes, cost structures, etc.Scope of Report:The report cloaks the market analysis and projection of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market on a regional as well as Global level. The report constitutes qualitative and quantitative valuation by industry analysts, first-hand data, assistance from industry experts along with their most recent verbatim and each industry manufacturers via the market value chain. The research experts have additionally assessed the in general sales and revenue generation of this particular market.In addition, this report also delivers widespread analysis of root market trends, several governing elements and macro-economic indicators, coupled with market improvements as per every segment. Furthermore, the report contains diverse profiles of primary market players of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market.Read a Full Report of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market Research -@Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players including Toyota Ford Honda Hyundai Nissan GM BMW PSA Daimler Mitsubishi Suzuki Van Hool SAIC Yutong Toton VW GroupOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split into Direct Fuel Cell Indirect Fuel CellOn the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate for each application, including Passenger Cars Commercial VehiclesThe report is generically segmented into six parts and every part aims on the overview of the Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles industry, present condition of the market, feasibleness of the investment along with several strategies and policies.Apart from the definition and classification, the report also discusses the analysis of import and export and describes a comparison of the market that is focused on the trends and development. Along with entire framework in addition to in-depth details, one can prepare and stay ahead of the competitors across the targeted locations.Ask for Discount @The fact that this market report renders details about the major market players along with their product development and current trends proves to be very beneficial for fresh entrants to comprehend and recognize the industry in an improved manner.The report also enlightens the productions, sales, supply, market condition, demand, growth, and forecast of the Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles industry in the Global markets.Some points from TOC:-Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market Research Report 20171 Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles1.2 Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Direct Fuel Cell1.2.4 Indirect Fuel Cell1.3 Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Segment by Application1.3.1 Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Passenger Cars1.3.3 Commercial Vehicles1.4 Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 EU 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 South Korea Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)2 Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.1 Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Production and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.2 Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.3 Global Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Average Price by Manufacturers (2012-2017)2.4 Manufacturers Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, ExpansionEnquiry before Buying @About Us:QY Research Groups is a company that simplifies how analysts and decision makers get industry data for their business. Our unique colossal technology has been developed to offer refined search capabilities designed to exploit the long tail of free market research whilst eliminating irrelevant results. QY Research Groups is the collection of market intelligence products and services on the Web. We offer reports and update our collection daily to provide you with instant online access to the worlds most complete and current database of expert insights on Global industries, companies, products, and trends.Contact us:Jia Wang, Room B1510, ShijiKemao Building, No.66,Zhongguancun East Road,Haidian District, Beijing, 100190,China
Global Frozen Fruits and Vegetables Market: Dole, Ardo NV, HJ Heinz, General Mills and Forecast 2017-2027

Frozen Fruits and Vegetables Market, Frozen Fruits and Vegetables Industry, Frozen Fruits and Vegetables Market

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Frozen Fruits and Vegetables MarketFruits and vegetables are wasted due to its natural deterioration process, and low grade storage process. Frozen fruits and vegetables can be preserved for a long period of time due to increase in the shelf-life. Hence the frozen fruits and vegetables market is growing rapidly.Request for Sample Report @Global Frozen Fruits and Vegetables Market Information- by Type (fruits, vegetables) by form (whole, puree, topping bar, other processed forms), by packaging(10-15 kgs,15-30 kgs, and >30 kgs), by application (Fruit- Whole Fruits, Fruit juices & Smoothies, Breakfast Cereals, Salads & Desserts, Bakery Foods, Yoghurt and Others), (Vegetable-Whole Vegetables, Pizza Toppings, Salads, RTE (Ready to Eat Foods), Noodles & Pastas, Soups, and Others) and by Region - Forecast to 2027Research Methodology for the Frozen Fruits and Vegetables MarketStudy Objectives of Frozen Fruits and Vegetables MarketDetailed analysis for micro and macro marketsTo estimate market size by type, sub-type, form, packaging and applicationTo understand the supply and demand dynamics including supply and consumption concentration mappingTo provide region level market analysis and future outlook for North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW) and their countriesCompetitive landscaping evaluating key strategies taken by top players in the marketCompany profiling of major players in the marketValue chain analysis and supply chain analysisAnalysis of historical market trends, and technologies, and current government regulatory requirementsKey Findings:Increase in demand for confectionery, bakery and dairy products specifically in berries will drive demand for kiwi and apricots among the frozen fruit segmentsIncrease in demand for RTE foods will drive demand for frozen spinach and other legumes among the frozen vegetable segmentsVolume wise market size will continue to be higher under APAC region with more than 50% share. With rise in disposable incomes in India and China and growing demand for healthy foods will drive higher demand for frozen fruitsKey PlayersThe key players profiled in Frozen Fruits and Vegetables are Dole (U.S.), Ardo NV (Belgium), HJ Heinz (US), Simplot Australia PTY Ltd (Australia), General Mills (U.S.), Findus Sverige AB, (Sweden), Pinnacle Foods Corp. (US), and Bonduelle Group (France).Browse Complete Report @Intended AudienceFrozen Fruit manufacturersFrozen Vegetable manufacturersCold Logistics companiesReefer companiesRetailers, wholesalersE-commerce companiesTraders, Importers and exportersReasons to buyThis report includes in-depth study analysis of frozen fruits and vegetables marketIt covers market segmentation by type, sub-type, form, packaging and applicationIt helps in identifying region-wise major suppliers and understand consumption patternsThe report will provide useful and premium insights that will support in investments for frozen fruits and vegetables and allied companies providing details on the fast growing segments and regionsIn addition, it will provide key findings that will help the companies to improve profitability by using supply chain strategies, cost effectiveness of various products mentioned in the reportThe data used in the report is primarily based on primary interviews with the major producing companies and industry experts and also supported by authentic industry data from secondary sources.Table of Content:1 REPORT PROLOGUE2 INTRODUCTION2.1 DEFINITION2.2 SCOPE OF THE STUDY2.2.1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE2.2.2 ASSUMPTIONS2.2.3 LIMITATIONS2.3 MARKET STRUCTURE3 RESEARCH METHODOLGY3.1 PRIMARY RESEARCH3.2 SECONDARY RESEARCH4 MARKET DYNAMICS4.1 DRIVERS4.1.1 INCREASE IN DEMAND FOR CONVENIENCE FOODS4.1.2 INCREASE IN DEMAND FOR FRESH FRUITS AND VEGETABLES4.1.3 USE OF EFFICIENT MATERIALS AND ADOPTION OG ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES4.2 RESTRAINTS4.2.1 LOSS OF NUTRITION DURING FREEZING4.2.2 PREFERENCES FOR FRESH FRUITS AND VEGETABLES4.2.3 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT4.3 OPPORTUNITIES4.4 INNOVATIONS IN PRODUCTS & PROCESS4.5 MACRO-ECONOMIC INDICATORS5 MARKET FACTOR ANALYSIS5.1 VALUE CHAIN ANALYSIS5.2 PORTER'S FIVE FORCES5.2.1 THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTS5.2.2 THREAT OF SUBSTITUTES5.2.3 BUYER POWER5.2.4 SUPPLIER POWER5.2.5 INTENSITY OF RIVALRYAt Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Market Research FutureOffice No. 524/528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Akash Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Global Cancer Biomarkers Market Trends and Forecast for Six Years!!!

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Cancer biomarkers market are biomolecules that specifies the existence of cancer or cancerous cells in the body. These are generally molecules that are released due to the presence of a tumor or a particular indication in the body to the presence of cancer. These molecules are densely distributed in tissues, urine, serum, blood, and other body fluids. Their expression levels serve as the basis or indication of any abnormal process or a disease.The market size of the global cancer biomarkers market was valued at $6,521 million in 2015 and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 13% over the forecast period to reach $15,737 million in 2022. Market growth is attributed to the increasing incidences of cancers such as lung cancer, breast cancer, and prostate cancer among others coupled with growing importance of biological and targeted drug therapies and technological advancements in the field of cancer treatment. However, unregulated government laws and reimbursement policies; as well as high cost of drug development and threat of failure are anticipated to have an adverse effect on the market growth. Nevertheless, advancement in cancer drugs research and significant unmet need in cancer diagnosis are estimated to overshadow these restraints.The global cancer biomarkers market is segmented based on profiling technology, biomolecules, cancer type, application, and geography. By profiling technology, the market is segmented into omic technologies, imaging technologies, immunoassays and cytogenetics based tests. Based on biomolecules, the market is segmented into genetic biomarkers, protein biomarkers, and glycoprotein biomarkers. Amongst these, genetic biomarkers are widely used in the market owing to better diagnostic and therapeutic usage as compared to protein and glycoprotein biomarkers.Request for Sample Copy@The various cancer types include breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, stomach cancer, and others. Amongst these, lung cancer is the major cancer type where biomarkers are being used for detection. Owing to high tobacco consumption and smoking, lung cancer has increased at an alarming rate. CEACAM-5/CD66e, Cytokeratin 19, EGF R/ErbB1, Enolase 2/Neuron-specific Enolase, Lactate Dehydrogenase A/LDHA, Lactate Dehydrogenase B/LDHB, Napsin A and PDGFRL are some of the major cancer biomarkers used for lung cancer detection.Geographically, North America is the leading revenue generating region, due to high incidence rate of cancer, growth in awareness towards cancer and higher cancer biomarker testing. Asia-Pacific is growing at the fastest CAGR due to rise in awareness, increased disposable income, and affordability for advanced cancer treatments.Companies have adopted collaboration and partnership as their key development strategies. Increase in focus on collaboration and partnership is mainly for the development of innovative technologies in the field of cancer biomarkers. In May 2016, Roche received an approval by FDA for its first anti-PD-L1 cancer immunotherapy namely Tecentriq (atezolizumab), thereby expanding its product portfolio.For Purchase Enquiry@KEY BENEFITS FOR STAKEHOLDERS The drivers, restraints, and opportunities in the global cancer biomarkers market are expected to help in understanding the market behavior better. The market estimations are a result of high-end analysis of the key market segments for the period of 20142022 Projections in the report are made by analyzing the current market trends and future market potential for the forecast period in terms of value. The analysis helps in understanding the strategies adopted by various companies for the growth of the global cancer biomarkers market. Country level analysis has been done to provide micro market sizing of cancer biomarkers in different regions Porter's five forces model gives an in-depth analysis of bargaining power of buyers and suppliers, threats of new entrants & substitutes, and competition amongst the key market players.About Us:It is crucial for market players to take leaps strategically and update themselves with recent trends, opportunities, and emerging investment pockets. We, at Research Beam, adhere to these factors and offer a wide range of reports that are detailed and enable our clients to achieve their goals with long term planning coupled with competitive advantage.Our database includes a broad array of various market reports from numerous publishers across the globe. These reports of several market categories and sub-categories help our clients to find the exact report they are looking for. We are instrumental to provide quantitative and qualitative insights in their area of interest and bring reports from various publishers under one umbrella to save their time and money. Our clients across the world are gaining profits from the information given in the reports sourced by us.Contact Us:5933 NE Win Sivers Drive,#205, Portland, OR 97220, United StatesDirect: +1-971-202-1575Toll Free: + 1-800-910-6452Email: help@researchbeam.comWeb:
Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Market 2017 Global Trends, Market Share, Industry Size, Growth, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022

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SummaryRequest a Sample Report @Euromonitor International's Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in Retail - Fad or Future? global briefing offers an insight into the size and shape of the retailing industry, highlights emerging trends, their effects on retailing in markets around the world, on the development of channels and consumers shopping patterns. It identifies the leading companies and brands, offers strategic analysis of key factors influencing the market  be they the developments of new store types, the importance of non-store retailing, economic/lifestyle influences, private label or pricing issues. Forecasts illustrate how the market is set to change and criteria for success.Product coverage: Non-Store Retailing, Store-based Retailing.Data coverage: market sizes (historic and forecasts), company shares, brand shares and distribution data.Why buy this report?* Get a detailed picture of the Retailing market;* Pinpoint growth sectors and identify factors driving change;* Understand the competitive environment, the markets major players and leading brands;* Use five-year forecasts to assess how the market is predicted to develop.Euromonitor International has over 40 years' experience of publishing market research reports, business reference books and online information systems. With offices in London, Chicago, Singapore, Shanghai, Vilnius, Dubai, Cape Town, Santiago, Sydney, Tokyo and Bangalore and a network of over 800 analysts worldwide, Euromonitor International has a unique capability to develop reliable information resources to help drive informed strategic planning.Enquiry Before Buying This Report @Table of ContentsScopeWhat virtual and augmented reality have to offerKey findingsWHAT ARE VIRTUAL AND AUGMENTED REALITY?What is virtual reality (VR)?What is augmented reality (AR)?FAQs: Understanding the basicsFAQs: Common confusionsWHAT POTENTIAL DOES THE TECH HOLD?The two share something in common: N oveltyVirtual reality pros and consAugmented reality pros and consCURRENT BUSINESS PURPOSESGeneral business purposes for retailersDriving traffic to storesMarketing tools : Pre- and post-purchase s ervicesMarketing tools : Turning this tech into the new direct r esponseMarketing tools : Brand experiencesVirtual storefrontsUSE CASES BY CONSUMER VALUE, BUSINESS PURPOSE, AND LOCATIONRevisiting the existential questionsWhat value can VR and AR bring to the customer?Predicting potential over time by business purpose: Traffic driversPredicting potential over time by business purpose: Marketing toolsPredicting potential over time by business purpose: Virtual storesLocation matters when you consider which technology to usePRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATIONRevisiting the practical questionsWho will you be targeting?PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR IMPLEMENTATIONWhat devices and platforms should you use?What sort of content do you need ? What are the building blocks?Will it go social?FAD OR FUTURE?Growth is predicted to continue regardless of retail reactionNew technology needs to reflect the customer for them to use it..Buy Now @Continued..Contact Us: Sales@Wiseguyreports.ComPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US) ; Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)ABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.ADDRES:WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Chagas Disease Treatment Market, By Distribution Channel (Hospitals pharmacy and Retail Pharmacy) - Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook, and Opportunity Analysis, 2017-2025

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American trypanosomiasis also known as Chagas disease is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (T.cruzi), which is transmitted by the bite of triatomine bugs. The parasites hide during the day time and become active at night and feed on human blood. T. cruzi can also be transmitted by food contaminated with the parasite, blood transfusion, transmission from infected mother to newborn during gestational period, organ transplant, and laboratory accidents. Its symptoms are not severe and are often not diagnosed. The parasites hide mainly in the heart and digestive muscles during the chronic phase. After years of chronic infection, it become an important cause of human heart diseases (30 %), megacolon, and megaseophagus. Chagas disease is one of the neglected parasitic infection in the U.S., however it is targeted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for community health action.People living in rural part of Latin America are primarily affected by Chagas disease. It is mostly found in the 21 endemic regions of Latin American countries. According to a report by WHO, 2017, over the past few decades, there has been increase in the detection of chagas disease in Canada, European region, and western pacific countries mainly due to increasing influx in the population of Latin America According to Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in 2017, around 300,000 people are estimated to be affected by chagas disease in the U.S. Furthermore, World Health Organization (WHO) stated that, around 6 million to 7 million people are expected to be affected by chagas disease in 2017. Vector control is the most useful method to prevent the spread of Chagas disease in Latin America. High incidence rate and easy transmission mode is expected to increase the demand for treatment of Chagas disease. Non availability of vaccines and biological treatment, is expected to create opportunity for the market players.Request Sample Copy of the Report:Chagas Disease Treatment Market TaxonomyBy Distribution ChannelHospital PharmacyRetail PharmacyBy RegionNorth AmericaEuropeAsia PacificLatin AmericaMiddle EastAfricaUnmet need of safe and effective drugs is expected to fuel the chagas disease treatment market growthCountries like Venezuela have successful vector control program based on the improved rural housing and vector control. The use of nitro derivative compound drugs, which are associated with the host immune response, help to keep the disease in check and to avoid parasite proliferation. None of the drug are able to completely cure the disease. Drugs used for the treatment of Chagas disease, benznidazole, and nifurtimox, have serious side effects such as headache, skin rashes, photosensitivity, chest pain, dizziness, nausea, insomnia, jaundice and among others. Medication with less side effects is the unmet need of the chagas disease treatment market. Active partnership of state and local health department to educate them the way to take care of patients, is expected to propel the chagas disease treatment market growth in the near future.Approval of first safe and effective therapy for Chagas disease by FDA, expected to propel the market players to develop novel drugsIn 2017, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved benznidazole for use in children between the age 2 and 12 years affected from chagas disease. It is the first approved safe and effective therapeutics in U.S. for the chagas disease treatment. FDA granted benznidazole priority review and orphan product designation, as it is a rare disease and there have been no approved drugs for its treatment in U.S. This approval is expected to propel the manufacturers to develop new drugs and biological products for the prevention and treatment of rare disease. Some of the major players operating in the global chagas disease treatment market include F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Bayer AG., and ELEA SACIF Laboratory.Complete Report Details @About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Ignition Coil Market: Global Industry Analysis & Opportunity Assessment 2023

Ignition Coil Market

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Market Highlights:The global market of ignition coil is growing rapidly. Technological advancement and heavy investments are helping both automotive glass manufacturers and consumers. Major factors such as rising automotive production, government initiatives, and strengthening transportation infrastructure are some of the factors driving the market. The use of new and improved electronic ignition system provides lesser deposits and a much cleaner combustion than the conventional ignition system. The global automotive ignition coil market is driven by continuous growth of global automotive production. The high growth in automotive production, especially in developing countries such as China, India and Mexico, is expected to spur the global ignition coil market.Request a Sample Copy @Key Players of Ignition Coil Market: Robert Bosch GmbH (Germany) BorgWarner Ludwigsburg GmbH (Germany) Delphi Automotive PLC (UK) Denso Corporation (Japan) Federal-Mogul Corporation (US) Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Japan) Hitachi Automotive Systems Americas, Inc. (U.S.) Wings Automobile Products Pvt. Ltd (India)Market Research Future Analysis:Market Research Future analysis show that the global market of ignition coil is estimated to grow at a CAGR of around 3.8 % by the end of year 2023. Demand for vehicles is consequently high in Asia-Pacific, with China and India projected as the most promising markets. Lower manufacturing cost with cheap labor, advantage of location of production base and short-distance supply are some of the factors, which boost the market in Asia-Pacific.Brief TOC:1 Executive Summary2 Research Methodology2.1 Scope of the Study2.1.1 Definition2.1.2 Research Objective2.1.3 Assumptions2.1.4 Limitations2.2 Research Process2.2.1 Primary Research2.2.2 Secondary Research2.3 Market size Estimation2.4 Forecast Model3 Market Dynamics3.1 Market Drivers3.2 Market Inhibitors3.3 Supply/Value Chain Analysis3.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis4 Global Ignition Coil Market, By Type4.1 Compression Ignition4.2 Spark Ignition4.3 Battery4.4 Others5 Global Ignition Coil Market, By Component5.1 Introduction5.2 Spark Plug5.3 Ignition Coil5.4 Capacitor5.5 OthersContinueAccess Report Details @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Components, Application, Technologies and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Global Tableware Market Size and Trends Study Released by Top Publisher at QYResearchReports

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report Global Tableware Market 2017 Industry Research Report to its huge collection of research reports.The business landscape of the global Tableware market is undergoing dynamic changes. In order to facilitate a complete understanding of the complex industry scenario for clients and thus enhance their decision making process, the study on the global Tableware market presents a methodological explanation of this dynamic market scenario. The research study also offers the growth prospects of the global Tableware market in the coming few years.The research study begins with a brief overview of the industry and enlists details such as the definition, specifications, and classification of the global Tableware market. This section of the report provides to business professionals the key historical developments of the industry with details such as applications of Tableware and industry policy analysis. The manufacturing cost structure evaluation in the research study delivers an extensive analysis of the labor costs, equipment suppliers, and raw material suppliers, and manufacturing cost. In-depth segmentation analysis of the global Tableware market by key criteria with the growth prospects of the key segments paints a clear picture of the growth framework of the market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @A strategic business forecast for the volume and value of the global Tableware market is covered in the report. The global and regional trends that will impact the growth of the various segments of the market further give insights to readers into the market scenario. Description of key strategies of the major companies operating in the global Tableware market allows readers to estimate the competitive framework of the market. Further, the study offers details such as each key companys profile, contact information, sales, sales price, sales revenue, and gross margin analysis. Actionable insights from expert analysts on the new project investment feasibility of the global Tableware market will support clients in forming sound business decisions to boost ROI.Table of Contents1 Tableware Market Overview11.1 Product Overview and Scope of Tableware11.2 Tableware Segment by Types21.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Tableware by Types in 201621.2.2 Glass31.2.3 Plastic31.2.4 Stainless Steel41.2.5 Ceramics41.2.6 Other41.3 Tableware Segment by Applications51.3.1 Tableware Consumption Market Share by Applications in 201651.3.2 Commercial Use61.3.3 Residential Use61.4 Tableware Market by Regions71.4.1 North America Status and Prospect (2012-2022)71.4.2 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)8Browse Complete Report with TOC @2 Global Tableware Market Competition by Manufacturers192.1 Global Tableware Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)192.2 Global Tableware Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)222.3 Global Tableware Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)252.4 Manufacturers Tableware Manufacturing Distribution272.5 Tableware Market Competitive Situation and Trends272.5.1 Tableware Market Share of Top 3 Manufacturers272.5.2 Tableware Market Share of Top 5 Manufacturers283 Global Tableware Production, Revenue (Value) by Regions (2012-2017)303.1 Global Tableware Production and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)303.2 Global Tableware Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Regions (2012-2017)323.3 Global Tableware Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)343.4 North America Tableware Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)343.5 Europe Tableware Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)343.6 China Tableware Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)353.7 Japan Tableware Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)353.8 Southeast Asia Tableware Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)353.9 India Tableware Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)364 Global Tableware Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)374.1 Global Tableware Consumption by Regions (2012-2017)374.2 North America Tableware Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)394.3 Europe Tableware Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)394.4 China Tableware Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)394.5 Japan Tableware Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)404.6 Southeast Asia Tableware Production, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2012-2017)40Get discount copy @List of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of Tableware1Figure Global Production Market Share of Tableware by Types in 20162Table Classification of Tableware2Figure Product Picture of Glass3Figure Product Picture of Plastic3Figure Product Picture of Stainless Steel4Figure Product Picture of Ceramics4Figure Product Picture of Other4Figure Tableware Consumption Market Share by Applications in 20165Table Applications of Tableware5Figure Commercial Use Examples6Figure Residential Use Examples6Figure North America Tableware Revenue (M USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2017)7Figure North America Tableware Revenue (M USD) and Growth Rate (2017-2022)8Figure China Tableware Revenue (M USD) and Growth Rate (2012-2017)8QYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Automotive Carbon Fiber Composites Market Is Expected To Grow At A CAGR Of 10.6% By 2023

Automotive Carbon Fiber Composites Market

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Market Highlights:The global market of automotive carbon fiber composites around the world is growing rapidly. Carbon fibers are molded with other materials such as plastic resin and graphite to form carbon fiber composite. It is the fastest-growing automotive composite driven by its high demand for chassis & powertrain components application. Technological advancement and heavy investments for automobiles are helping automotive carbon fiber composites market. Increasing vehicle production, growing implementation of environmental regulations are some of the major factors contributing to growth of the global automotive carbon fiber composites market. Automotive carbon fiber composites market is consequently high in Asia-pacific, with China and India expected to be the most promising markets.Request a Sample Copy @Key Players of Automotive Carbon Fiber Composites Market: Cytec Industries (U.S.) SGL Carbon SE (Germany) Toray Industries, Inc. (Japan) ACP Composites, Inc (U.S.) Clearwater Composites, LLC (U.S.) Owens Corning (U.S.) HITCO Carbon Composites Inc (U.S.) Mitsubishi Rayon Carbon Fiber and Composites, Inc. (U.S.) Polar Manufacturing Limited (U.K.) Rock West Composites (U.S.)Market Research Future Analysis:Market Research Future analysis show that the global market of automotive carbon fiber composites market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 10.6% by the end of year 2023.Asia-Pacific is the biggest market for carbon fiber composites and expected to remain at the top for the forecast period. Need for lightweight and fuel efficient vehicles shifted manufacturers focus towards automotive carbon fiber composites. Improving economic conditions in the APAC region are expected to open up enormously potential opportunities for the manufacturers which helps to grow the market.Brief TOC:1 Executive Summary2 Research Methodology2.1 Scope of the Study2.1.1 Definition2.1.2 Research Objective2.1.3 Assumptions2.1.4 Limitations2.2 Research Process2.2.1 Primary Research2.2.2 Secondary Research2.3 Market size Estimation2.4 Forecast Model3 Market Dynamics3.1 Market Drivers3.2 Market Inhibitors3.3 Supply/Value Chain Analysis3.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis4 Global Automotive Carbon Fiber Composites Market, By Production Type4.1 Introduction4.2 Hand Layup4.3 Resin Transfer Molding4.4 Vacuum Infusion Processing4.5 Injection Molding4.6 Compression Molding5 Global Automotive Carbon Fiber Composites Market, By Application5.1 Introduction5.2 Structural Assembly5.3 Power Train Components5.4 Interior5.5 Exterior5.6 OtherContinueAccess Report Details @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Components, Application, Technologies and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Free Space Optics Market Evolving Technology, Trends and industry Analysis

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https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/free-space-optics-market.htm

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The global Free Space Optics (FSO) Market features a highly dynamic landscape wherein numerous technological advancements are taking place at a rapid pace and companies are compelled to focus more on development of innovative and more reliable FSO systems and solutions, observes a report by Transparency Market Research. Key companies in the market, including Trimble Hungary Ltd., Optelix,Mostcom Ltd., AOptix Technologies Inc., LightPointe Communications, Inc., and Harris Corporation are also under constant pressure of competition from existing players in fiber optics and wireless communication technologies.The market holds immense growth potential owing to the vast rise in demand for high-speed, low-cost, and secure communication methodologies across the globe. Transparency Market Research estimates that the market will exhibit a remarkable 39.5% CAGR over the period between 2016 and 2024. Expanding at this pace, the market is expected to rise from an opportunity of US$81.3 mn in 2015 to US$1,306.1 mn by 2024. Of the key application areas of the FSO market, the segment of data transmission presently holds the leading position. North America is the leading regional market, accounting for a share of over 30% in the global market in 2015.Sample With Latest Advancements @Rising Demand for High-speed Communication Channels to Boost Adoption of FSOThe ever increasing demand for data streaming and multimedia services across communication networks and the unprecedented growth and demand for higher bandwidths for high-speed internet has resulted in the congestion of conventional radio frequency spectrum despite rapid advancements in the networking sector. This is a key factor compelling an increasing number of network providers to switch to FSO technology as an alternative to overburdened conventional technologies for outdoor networking. Other advantages of FSO technology, including low operational and start-up costs, rapid deployment, high data transmission security, and high fiber-like bandwidth have also enticed network operators to increase the adoption of FSO technology.Browse Our Press Releases For More Information @The market for FSO technology is also driven by the rising usage of this mode of communication across a number of military applications. Some of the most promising areas in the military sector where deployment of FSO technology can prove to be highly effective are ship-to-ship communication, ship-to-shore communication, and communication between military bases where bases are located within the range of 2-4 kilometers. Owing to the usage of modulated light in FSO, it is capable of supporting larger bandwidths than radio frequency spectrum. The collimated laser energy of FSO offers properties such as low probability of detection and interception, which are highly desirable for applications demanding high security. These factors are collectively expected to have a significant impact on the overall development of the market in future years.Signal Quality Constraints Due to Environmental Interference Raise Concerns Regarding FSOs ReliabilityIn most optical wireless technologies, the light being transmitted through free space needs to contend with the interference presented by the complexity of the surrounding space. In case of FSO communication also, the space through which FSO signals propagate presents fundamental limitation to the reliability and robustness of FSO systems. In locations with link ranges over 200 meters, weather conditions such as fog and atmospheric turbulence could lead to temporary link outages and result in the deterioration of communication signals in terms of factors such as quality, speed, and efficiency. These factors could make the consumer weary about FSO systems and act as a key restrain for the development of the market.Browse Our Table of Content @Nevertheless, with increased focus on research and development activities, service providers are introducing FSO systems and solutions with technological advancements that can eliminate the impact of these interferences. Attempts are being made by network operators to eliminate the effect of scintillation on the quality of FSO transmission with the help of spatial diversity, which refers to a multi beam approach that exploits multiple regions of the space.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Automotive Fuel Filter Market: Worldwide Industry Growth, Share, Trends, Statistics, Opportunities & Forecast 2023

Automotive Fuel Filter Market

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Market Highlights:The automotive fuel filter is used to prevent the dust particles from interfering with the system. It eliminates the dust particle from the fuel, preventing the dust to enter into the fuel pump. Fuel pumps are generally used for controlling emissions to protect the environment. If dust particle enter the fuel pump, they cause a system breakdown. So fuel filters are widely used in automobiles to reduce instances of breakdown. The major drivers for the automotive fuel filter market are increase in the vehicle production and stringent government regulation for the emission control. Other factors that are responsible for the growth of this market are growth in automotive industry and technology advancement.Key Players:The key players in automotive fuel filter market are Mann+Hummel (Germany), ALCO Filters Ltd (Cyprus), Ahlstrom Corporation (Finland), Cummins Inc. (U.S.), Sogefi SpA (Italy), Donaldson Co. Inc. (U.S.), Mahle GmbH (Germany), Clarcor Inc. (U.S.), Denso Corp. (Japan), and Hengst SE & Co. KG (Germany).Request a Sample Copy @Market Research Analysis:Asia-Pacific is expected to dominate the automotive fuel filter market during the forecast period due to the rising vehicle production in the developing countries such as India, China, South Korea, and Indonesia. The rising per capita income in these countries is also expected to result in the growth of this region. North America is expected to be the second largest region in the fuel filter market due to the increase in the number of the eco-friendly automobiles and stringent government regulations for the use of eco-friendly components in the vehicles. Europe is expected to emerge as a small portion of the fuel filter market during the forecast period. The global automotive fuel filter market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.5 % during the forecast period.Browse Full Report @Scope of the Report:This study provides an overview of the global automotive fuel filter market, tracking three market segments across four geographic regions. The report studies key players, providing a five-year annual trend analysis that highlights market size, volume and share for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC) and Rest of the World (ROW). The report also provides a forecast, focusing on the market opportunities for the next five years for each region. The scope of the study segments the global automotive fuel filters market by its vehicle type, by fuel type, by sales channel, and by region.By Vehicle Types Passenger car LCV HCVBy Fuel Type Gasoline DieselBy Sales Channel OEM AftermarketBy Region North America Europe Asia Pacific Rest of the WorldAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Telemonitoring System Market to Forecast throughout 2017  2022

Reports Monitor

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https://www.reportsmonitor.com/world-telemonitoring-system-market-research-report-2022-covering-usa-europe-china-japan-india-south-east-asia-and-etc/

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Telemonitoring System MarketWorld Telemonitoring System market research report provides the newest industry data and industry future trends, allowing you to identify the products and end users driving Revenue growth and profitability.The industry report lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry Analysis of the key factors influencing the market.The report includes the forecasts, Analysis and discussion of important industry trends, market size, market share estimates and profiles of the leading industry Players.For Requesting a Sample Copy of This Report, Please Visit @Global Telemonitoring System Market: Product Segment AnalysisCOPD Telemonitoring System, Glucose Level Telemonitoring System, Blood Pressure Telemonitoring System, Cardiac & Monitoring SystemsGlobal Telemonitoring System Market: Application Segment AnalysisUSA, Europe, Japan, China, India, South East AsiaThe Players mentioned in our reportMedtronic, Philips Healthcare, St. Jude Medical, GE Healthcare, Nihon Kohden, Abbott, Honeywell , SHL Telemedicine, TeleMedCare, Boston Scientific CorporationBrowse Full Table of Contents and Report Description @Table of ContentsChapter 3 World Portable Concrete Mixer Market share3.1 Major Production Market share by Players3.2 Major Revenue (M USD) Market share by Players3.3 Major Production Market share by Regions in 2017, Through 20223.4 Major Revenue (M USD) Market share By Regions in 2017, Through 2022Chapter 4 Supply Chain Analysis4.1 Industry Supply chain Analysis4.2 Raw material Market Analysis4.2.1 Raw material Prices Analysis 2012-20174.2.2 Raw material Supply Market Analysis4.2 Manufacturing Equipment Suppliers Analysis4.3 Production Process Analysis4.4 Production Cost Structure Benchmarks4.5 End users Market AnalysisContinuedAbout UsReports Monitor (ReportsMonitor.com) is a platform to meet the market research and business intelligence requirements. Our aim is to change the dynamics of the Market Research industry by providing quality intelligence backed by data. Your requirement for market forecasting is fulfilled by our exclusive quantitative and analytics driven intelligence. We have a vast collection of reports, covering maximum industries worldwide. Our process is meticulously planned and executed in order to use maximum resources and explore the market for getting genuine insights. Decision makers can now rely on our distinct data gathering methods to get factual market forecasting and detailed analysis.Contact UsJay MatthewsDirect: +1 513 549-5911Email: sales@reportsmonitor.comWebsite:
Spa Resort Market, By Spa Type (Salon Spa, Medical Spa, Hotel Spa, Others), and Geography - Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook, and Opportunity Analysis, 2017 - 2025

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Spa is a body relaxing activity, which makes use of mineral rich water for medicinal baths. Spa offers various medical treatments known as balneotherapy. Spa resorts are special places where treatments and various facilities are provided for health and wellness. These places are popular destinations for body relaxation and health management processes. Spa provides massages, salon services, skin treatments, Ayurveda medicines, and yoga therapy, among others. Spa is often used as a medium for managing stress, treating medical problems, reducing weight, boosting immune system, and detoxifying the body.For more information:Increase in travel and tourism activities coupled with increasing global health awareness are driving major growth of the spa resort market. Fast paced lifestyle, hectic work ethics, and high costs associated with healthcare are further expected to drive growth of the spa resorts market over the forecast period. Furthermore, increasing working population in emerging economies, have resulted in unhealthy lifestyle characterized by high levels of stress, coupled with increasing disposable income among the populace have boosted the demand for spa services, in turn propelling market growth.Spa Resort Market TaxonomyOn the basis of spa type, the global spa resort market is segmented into:Salon spaMedical spaHotel spaDestination spaMineral spaOthersSpa Resort Market outlook:Europe is the dominant region for the spa resort market and is expected to sustain its dominance throughout the forecast period. Growing focus and awareness on health and beauty, increasing expenditure on services such as massages, and facials, along with relatively high revenue generated in the region are the major factors fueling the spa resort market growth. Moreover, customized and mini treatments are driving growth of the market in this region, owing to the busy and sedentary lifestyle. Furthermore, tourism boost demand for spa resorts in the region. The region witnesses the presence of a large number of certified nutrients and cosmetics experts in spa resorts, in turn contributing to significant growth of the market in the region. According to the European Spa Association, Europe has over 1200 medical spa and health resorts in the region. European tourism statistics stated that over the period of 2006-2015, the average stay at tourist accommodation increased by 22%.Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region in the spa resorts market. Economic growth has led to the increasing personal disposable income in the region, which in turn, is expected to boost growth of the spa resorts market in the region. Emerging economies in the region such as Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand are lucrative tourist destination and are emerging as major spa resort spots in Asia Pacific. The profound impact on the spa industry of the region is a result of various regional practices such as Thai massage, Yoga, and Ayurvedic medicines that attract various tourists, annually. In 2015, international tourist arrival in the region increased by 6%, recording 279 million from around 110 million in 2000. Number of spa resorts are expected to reach 535 million by 2030, as stated by United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).Get best discount on this report:Key players are adopting various inorganic growth strategies. For instance, Hyatt acquired New York-based Miraval group, a wellness resort and spa company in 2017. Major players operating in the spa resorts market include Emirates palace, Four Seasons Hotel limited, Massage Envy Franchising LLC, Jade Mountain Resort, Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas, Lanserhof Tegernsee, and Gaia Retreat & Spa.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Coherent Market Insights 1001 4th Ave, #3200 Seattle, WA 98154 Tel: +1-206-701-6702Coherent Market Insights 1001 4th Ave, #3200 Seattle, WA 98154 Tel: +1-206-701-6702
Automotive Electric Bus Market Is Expected To Reach USD 82.5 Billion By 2023

Automotive Electric Bus Market

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https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/automotive-electric-bus-market-3202

Market Highlights:The global market of automotive electric bus around the world is growing rapidly. Technological advancements and heavy investments are helping automotive electric bus to grow. Developed countries are replacing their existing diesel and natural gas based public transit to zero emission buses. The surge in urbanization, along with lower operating cost of electric buses is propelling their growth in the developing countries. New trend shows that research and development is being carried on by automotive electric bus manufacturers to introduce innovative features and technology, which is pushing the market towards growth.Request a Sample Copy @Key Players of Automotive Electric Bus Market: Daimler AG (Germany) Anhui Ankai Automobile Co., Ltd. (China) Volvo Group (Sweden), Wright Enrichment Inc (U.S.) Shandong Yi Xing Electric Auto Co., Ltd (China) Zhongtong Bus Holding Co., Ltd. (China) BYD Auto Co., Ltd (China) Iveco (Italy) Ebus (Singapore) Beiqi Foton Motor Co., Ltd. (China)Market Research Future Analysis:Market Research Future analysis shows that the global market of Automotive Electric Bus Market Is Estimated to Grow at USD 82.5 Billion By The End Of Year 2023. Currently, Asia-Pacific is dominating the market. Countries such as China and India give this market a competitive advantage over the other regions. China is one of the dominant region for global electric bus market, due to the improved in drive quality and power and are designed exclusively for commercial purposes. Moreover, Indian bus market is fast moving towards electric and hybrid solutions.Access Report Details @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Components, Application, Technologies and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Intraoperative Neuro- monitoring (IONM) Market - Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook, and Opportunity Analysis, 20172025

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Intraoperative neuromonitoring referred as intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring (IOM), is an integral part of surgical procedures that use electrophysiological techniques such as electromyography (EMG), Electroencephalography (EEG), and evoked potentials to monitor the integrity of the neural structures. These neural structures include neurons, spinal cord and several parts of the brain. The IONM helps in the risk reduction from the iatrogenic damage to the nervous system during the surgical procedures by surgeons and anesthesiologists. The intraoperative neuromonitoring techniques have helped to reduce the mortality and morbidity levels to a significant rate without the new addition of risks. Therefore, the intraoperative neuromonitoring techniques have helped to reduce the costs of health care.Request Sample Copy of the Report:The iatrogenic damages during surgical processes responsible to fuel the demand for the intraoperative neuromonitoring systemsAccording to a fact sheet of 2015 by Sci-Info-Pages, 12500 new spinal cord injuries occur each year and nearly 300,000 people in the United States are currently living with the spinal cord injuries. Also, as per a scientific paper published in 2014, Deutsches Arzteblatt suggests that the iatrogenic nerve injuries accounted for 17.4% of the total traumatic nerve injuries. Moreover, according to World Health Organization (WHO) factsheet of 2015, 80% disorders in the disabling conditions are neurological. These high incidence rates of nerve and spinal cord injuries can be lowered down with the use of intraoperative neuro monitoring due to the alerts provided as early warnings regarding the sensory and motor functions. This leads to the reduction in the chances of manual errors by surgeons while performing a neural procedure.The Outsource intraoperative neuromonitoring segment is anticipated to show dramatic growth in the forecast periodThe global intraoperative neuromonitoring market can be segmented on the basis of type of monitoring and geography.On the basis of type, the global intraoperative neuromonitoring market is segmented intoInsource Intraoperative Neuromonitoring System,Outsource Intraoperative Neuromonitoring SystemThe Outsource IONM is the fastest growing segment as well as gaining popularity due to the constant modifications leading to the improved performances of these systems. The additional benefit of outsourcing the intraoperative neuromonitoring systems is that it eliminates the cost of purchase and cost of maintenance for these systems by the hospitals making them a more preferred option than the currently dominating insource intraoperative neuromonitoring systems.Request TOC of the Report:North America dominating the global intraoperative neuromonitoring market owing to consistent development within the fieldBased on the geography, the global intraoperative neuromonitoring system can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The North America accounts for maximum share in the global intraoperative neuromonitoring market followed by Europe. This attributes to a constantly improving scenario in these regions in terms of reimbursement. The patients are benefitted by the insurance companies with the clear defined codes of the procedures, making it easy and convenient. Additionally, the vivid guidelines mentioned in the implementation of neuromonitoring systems makes the job easy for the hospitals and the medical personnel. However, Asia Pacific is anticipated to exhibit maximum growth in the forecast years owing to the growth of awareness among people about safety and precautions to be taken during surgery as well as rising medical tourism in these countries.Vivid reimbursement policies making the global IONM market to accelerate the demandsThe high probabilities of major surgeries to pose a risk to the nervous system that necessitates the intraoperative neuromonitoring is the prime reason to drive the global intraoperative neuromonitoring market. Moreover, the favorable reimbursement scenario is also responsible to fuel the market growth. However, the lack of skilled persons and technicians to operate these systems as well as the unawareness about the neuromonitoring facilities in the developing countries are some factors that are responsible to restrain the growth of the global intraoperative neuromonitoring market.The dominant players involved in acquisition policies for expansion of the IONM servicesThe key players operating the global intraoperative neuromonitoring market includes Accurate Monitoring, Neuromonitoring Technologies, Natus Medical Incorporated, Medtronic LLC, Biotronic NeuroNetwork, NuVasive Inc., Sentient Medical Systems, and SpecialityCare. The dominant players are indulged in acquiring smaller companies so as to expand the product offering as well as to establish a strong geographical presence in the global intraoperative neuromonitoring market. For instance, the NuVasive, Inc. was acquired by Biotronic NeuroNetwork LLC for the expansion of Insource and Outsource IONM services.Complete Report Details:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Automotive Wiring Harness Market Is Predicted To Grow At A CAGR Of 5.6% By 2023

Automotive Wiring Harness Market

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https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/automotive-wiring-harness-market-2408

Market Highlights:The automotive wiring harness market growth is majorly driven by the booming automotive industry and increased income levels of people in the Asia-Pacific region. Countries like China, India and Thailand are registering huge sales in the automotive sector and there is a pressing demand to meet the stringent vehicle emission norms in the countries. Also, the increased sales of two wheeler segment in the region is also adding to the drivers of the wiring harness market. However, the growth of this market can be restrained by the cost of the technology and the continuous research and development that is needed to update the system.Request for Sample Copy @Market Research Analysis:Globally, the automobile sector has been witnessing increased sales in the recent years. This is mainly due to the increased purchase capacity of the Asia-Pacific region. Additionally, wiring harness of automobiles have gained prominence in recent years because of increased demand for the fuel efficient as well as reduced emission vehicles and rising demand for passenger vehicles.The Asia-Pacific region is expected to be the largest market for automobile wiring harness especially because of countries like China, Thailand and India in the region. The wiring harness market in North America and Europe is driven by the strong aftersales market in the regions. Global manufacturers are required by law to reduce the emission from automotive engines and also increase cleaner burning of fuels. All these factors are contributing to the growth of the automotive wiring harness market.Scope of the Report:This study provides an overview of the global automotive wiring harness market, tracking three market segments across four geographic regions. The report studies key players, providing a five-year annual trend analysis that highlights market size, volume and share for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC) and Rest of the World (ROW). The report also provides a forecast, focusing on the market opportunities for the next five years for each region. The scope of the study segments the Global automotive wiring harness market by vehicle type, material type, applications and regions.By Vehicle Type Passenger Car Light Motor Vehicles Heavy Motor Vehicle OthersBy Material Type Copper Aluminium OthersBy Application Engine HVAC Body Chassis Sensors OthersBrowse Full Report @Key Players:The key players of global automotive wiring harness markets includes Delphi Corporation, Yazaki Corporation, Leoni Group, Sumito Electric Industries, Furukawa Electric, Fujikura Ltd, PKC Group, SPARK MINDA, THB Group, Yura Corporation and among others.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 524/528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Automotive Interior Leather Market Is Expected To Cross USD 32,000 Million By 2023

Automotive Interior Leather Market

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Market Synopsis of Automotive Interior Leather MarketAutomotive interior leather is designed to provide comfort and to improve the visual appeal of the interior of the vehicle. It also leaves the vehicle with a remarkable appearance and feel. It is used widely for automotive interiors across the globe, especially in midrange and premium passenger vehicles. Growing spending capacity and rapid developments in automobile manufacturing, are pushing the market towards growth. The interior of a vehicle that adds to the aesthetic appeal of a vehicle, is also a major factor that influences consumer buying decision.Low cost, longer operational life and extended warranties are some factors helping the market growth while high initial investment and improper disposal of effluents, act as barriers for the interior leather insulated market.The global automotive interior leather market was valued at around USD 26,000 million in 2015 and is expected to cross USD 32,000 Million by 2023 at CAGR of 5.1 %.Request a Sample Copy @Key Players of Automotive Interior Leather Market: Johnson Controls Inc (U.S.) Toyota Boshoku Corporation (Japan) Lear Corporation (U.S.) Toyoda Gosei Co., Ltd. (Japan) Faurecia S.A. (France) Gst Autoleather, Inc.(U.S.) DK Leather Corporation Berhad (Malaysia) BASF SE (Germany) Alea Leather Specialist Inc / Sunguard Group (U.S.) Grammer AG (Germany)Brief TOC:1 Executive Summary2 Research Methodology2.1 Scope of the Study2.1.1 Definition2.1.2 Research Objective2.1.3 Assumptions2.1.4 Limitations2.2 Research Process2.2.1 Primary Research2.2.2 Secondary Research2.3 Market Size Estimation2.4 Forecast Model3 Market Dynamics3.1 Market Drivers3.2 Market Inhibitors3.3 Supply/Value Chain Analysis3.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis4 Global Automotive Interior Leather Market, By Material4.1 Introduction4.2 Synthetic Leather4.3 Genuine Leather4.4 OthersContinueRegional Analysis of Global Automotive Interior Leather Market:Asia-Pacific is expected to remain the largest region due to continuously growing automotive sector, owing to the presence of manufacturers in the developing nations such as China and India. Increasing necessity of owning a car, and the improving living standard, are some of the factors that help in the market growth. Moreover, rapid economic growth and rising population are driving the demand for automotive interior materials in countries such as India.In North America, the U.S. has been showing steady growth and is one of the dominant automotive interior materials markets in the world.Browse Full Report @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
HbA1c Testing Devices Market - Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook, and Opportunity Analysis, 20172025

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HbA1c test is used to screen and diagnose for diabetes and prediabetes in patients. Hemoglobin molecule from the blood cell sticks to the glucose that gives rise to glycosylated hemoglobin molecule termed as hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C). Patients with high glucose level have more HbA1C present in blood. Average blood glucose level of a person can be diagnosed by measuring this glycosylated hemoglobin molecule. It is important for diabetic patient to know the glucose level, as there might be risk of diabetes related complications. HbA1c test is considered more effective than checking the blood glucose level. Blood glucose level gives the presence of glucose at a single point time whereas, the HbA1c test gives blood glucose level status for 2-3 months.Request Sample Copy of the Report:Increase in healthcare expenditure over diabetes management is owing to the growth of HbA1c testing devices marketGrowing diabetes patient population globally is one of the important factor driving the growth HbA1c testing devices market. According to World Health Organization (WHO), the number of patients with diabetes has increased from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. Around 5 million deaths were reported in 2015 due to diabetes and 2.2 million deaths were attributed to high blood glucose level. The data given by International Diabetes Federation showed the expenditure of 673 billion USD on diabetes in 2015. Additionally, rise prescription by physicians for HbA1c test is contributing to the growth of HbA1c testing devices market. Moreover, factors such as growing awareness about diabetes preventive care, rise in geriatric and obese population which are more prone to diabetes, upgrading technologies for management of diabetes are expected to fuel the growth of HbA1c testing devices market. However, some factors are likely to hamper the growth of HbA1c testing devices market, such as high cost of testing devices and limitations for the results of certain population, which include pregnant women, elder people, and non-Hispanic black. HbA1c testing devices market have opportunities in future, due to untapped market and rise in demand for medical tourism.Wide use of bench top devices in diagnostic laboratories owing to domination of device segmentThe global HbA1c testing devices market is segmented by device- type, by technology, by end users, and by regionOn the basis of device- type, the HbA1c testing devices market is segmented intoBench top device,Handled device,.On the basis of technology, the HbA1c testing devices market is segmented intoAssay,Enzymatic Assay,Turbidimetric inhibition immunoassay,Chromatography,Ion exchange HPLC,Affinity binding chromatography,Others,.On the basis of end users, the HbA1c testing devices market is segmented intoHospitals,Diagnostic laboratory,Research institutions,Homecare,.Ask for customization:Rising diabetic population is attributed to the growth of HbA1c testing devices market in Asia PacificRegional segmentation of HbA1c testing devices market by Coherent Market Insights comprises of North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. The increase in number of patient population in North America is fuelling the growth of HbA1c testing devices market. Furthermore, the factors like established healthcare infrastructure and adoption to the technologically advanced medical devices, are helping North America to dominate in the HbA1c testing devices market. According to recent data given by International Diabetes Federation, there are around 109 million people in China and 69 million people in India with diabetes. The large number of diabetic population, unmet health needs, and development in healthcare sector are fuelling the growth of HbA1c testing devices market in Asia Pacific.Product development is helping the organizations in HbA1c testing devices market to hold the top positionKey industry players operating the global HbA1c market includes Abbott Laboratories, Transasia Biomedicals limited, Alere Incorporated, Arkray Incorporated, Danaher Co., Bio-Rad Laboratories, Siemens Healthcare, F.Hoffmann-La Roche Limited, and Trinity Biotech Plc. The industry players are likely to get involved in product development for higher accuracy, reliable results, and quicker turnaround time for the analyzers. The factors like product development and approval of devices for diagnosis of diabetes are helping the organizations to hold the maximum share in the HbA1c testing devices market.Browse Full Report at:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Beverage Refrigeration Market to exceed $4.5bn by 2024

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Beverage Refrigeration Market to be valued USD 4.5 billion by 2024; according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc.Escalating demand for refrigerators to store and serve drinks for social gathering and private events, is a key factor driving beverage refrigeration market growth. Ongoing technological advances to reduce the overall cooling time and consumer demand for distinctive features such as bottom freezer drawer and powerful filtered water will boost beverage refrigeration market size.Request for a sample of this research report @Increasing consumer preference for packaged drinks which are convenient to consume at home will support the product demand. According to recent statistics, the global consumption of packaged drinks was estimated more than 1.05 trillion liters in 2016 and Chinese consumption amounted to about 178.6 billion liters.Manufacturers are anticipated to invest in new product development to comply with new energy standards implemented by the regulatory bodies. Further, increasing penetration of refrigerators that employ specific features such as modifiable shelves to accommodate bottles and cans will boost product sales.Under counter beverage refrigerator was valued at over USD 1 billion in 2016. Product offering such as stainless-steel body or custom panel-ready fronts are stimulating the demand. In addition, better shelving and temperature control will support segment penetration over the forecast period.Rising demand to preserve milk in dairy shops will propel coolers demand over the projected timeframe. Diary companies are upgrading their existing capacities, and setting up cold storages along with the processing plant. This will generate the overall revenue over the forecast period.Storage beverage refrigeration estimated to register over 4% CAGR in terms of volume by 2024. Increasing demand of premium refrigerators with aesthetic features in high end restaurants, convenience stores and professional kitchens will propel industry size.Browse key industry insights spread across 270 pages with 537 market data tables & 14 figures & charts from the report, Beverage Refrigeration Market Size By Product (Under Counter Beverage Refrigerator [Gliding Door, Swing Door], Countertop Beverage Refrigerator [Gliding Door, Swing Door], Storage Beverage Refrigerator, Milk Coolers), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Russia, China, India, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Philippines, Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa), Growth Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2017  2024 in detail along with the table of contents:North America beverage refrigeration market size is anticipated to surpass USD 1 billion by 2024. This can be credited to escalating consumption of refreshment drinks and technological improvements in refrigeration systems. In addition, government encouraging utilization of energy-efficient and eco-friendly technologies in refrigerators.Asia Pacific market holds over 20% of overall industry share in 2016. According to industry estimates, the region is anticipated to account for more than two-thirds of the global beverages consumption by 2020. The region accounts for 60% of the world population and increasing consumption will provide lucrative opportunities for manufacturers.Global beverage refrigeration market is fragmented in nature. Key industry players are Electrolux, Daikin Industries, Avanti, Dover Corporation, KingsBottle, Whirlpool Corporation, Edgestar, Haier, Ford and General Electrics. Other Industry participants are Koolatron, Coca-Cola, Danfoss, Gamko, Liebherr, Marvel, Kegco, Danby, Johnson Controls, U-line, HABCO, Allavino, Kenmore, Marvel, United Technologies Corporation and Illinois Tool Works.Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @Technological advancement is expected to positively influence the industry size. Mergers & acquisition is anticipated to be key strategy to widen their geographical presence and improve their profitability.About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone:1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:
Myeloproliferative Neoplasms Treatment Market By Drug (Jakfi) - Global Industry Insights, Trends

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Myeloproliferative Neoplasms (MPNs) are a group of rare disease, in which the bone marrow produces excess blood cells. It can be white blood cells, red blood cells or platelets. The overproduction of blood cells by the bone marrow creates hindrance in the smooth flow of blood, which leads to various symptoms such as progressive cytopenias, cachexia and weight loss, splenomegaly, and blastic transformation. These conditions are developed gradually over a period of time. Most people are diagnosed after the age of 60 years, when they were accompanied by many other health issues, makes the treatment more difficult. The major symptoms associated with MPNs include bleeding problem, anemia, chest pain, fatigue, enlarged spleen, and weight loss. According to Annals of Hematology, approximately 90% of patients has experienced MPN-symptoms in past 12 months, wherein women are reported to have higher overall burden than men. The treatment for myeloproliferative neoplasms is mainly aimed to reduce the excess number of blood cells circulation. The concept of myleoproliferative disease was first given by hematologist Williom Dameshek in 1950. However, in 2008, World Health Organization (WHO) classified hematologic malignancies and renamed myloproliferative diseases to myeloproliferative neoplasms.Request For Sample Copy@Rising awareness of molecular abnormalities and cellular pathways involved in the pathogenesis of MPNs is expected to facilitate the development of novel drugs, propels the Myeloproliferative Neoplasms treatment market growth in the near futureMyeloproliferative neoplasm can significantly affect the quality of life of the patient. The complication and treatments as well as the physiological strains of cancer diagnosis can affect the physical and emotional wellbeing of patients. Effects of complication vary from depression, fatigue, pain or depression with suicidal ideation. Moreover, patients can experience few or no symptoms for a longer period of time. MPNs can be cured with proper monitoring and treatment. There has been a major revolution in the management of MPNs by introduction of JAK1 and JAK2 inhibitor and ruxolitinib. Ruxolitinib inhibits these two enzymes in order to manage MPNs. The drug has also been proven as an alternative therapy for the treatment of polycythemia vera. Further, the therapeutic armamentarium for MPN is still inadequate for normalization of life span, reduction in cardiovascular complications, and prevention of hematological progression.Rising awareness of molecular abnormalities and cellular pathways involve in the pathogenesis of MPNs is expected to facilitate the development of clinical trials with novel drugs, either alone or in combination with ruxolitinib. Interferon (IFN) is a drug that has proven as an effective alternative for MPNs patients. Better understanding of its mechanism of action for MPNs could lead to better interferon compound and potential drugs. In 2017, MPN research foundation have initiated a MPNRF Interferon (IFN) multi-center project which is expected to bring together internationally recognized experts to determine cytokine-driven pathways that affect the path of the MPNs. It is a closely-related group of progressive blood cancer which is also among the lucrative opportunities for major players in the Myeloproliferative Neoplasms treatment market.Collaboration among the biotech and pharmaceutical companies to identify new drugs for MPNs is expected to accelerate the market growthNovartis AG and Incyte Corporation are among the key players in Myeloproliferative Neoplasms treatment market. According to MPN research foundation, biotech and pharmaceutical companies are expected to propel the demand for improved treatments and quickly connecting patients with latest treatment options. It is expected to lead developing relationships with biotech and pharmaceuticals companies to identify new areas for scientific exploration. For instance, Incyte Corporationis is developing inhibitor for Janus Kinase (JAK) and also focusing on the discovery, development, and commercialization of proprietary therapeutics globally.Get More Details On this Report:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr.ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Insulated Lunch Box Market 2017 Global Analysis By key Players  THERMOS, Tiger Corporation, Zojirushi, LOCK&LOCK, Gipfel, Asvel

Insulated Lunch Box Market 2017

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WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On - Insulated Lunch Box Market 2017 Global Analysis By key Players  THERMOS, Tiger Corporation, Zojirushi, LOCK&LOCK, Gipfel, Asvel.Insulated Lunch Box-Global Market Status & Trend Report 2013-2023 Top 20 Countries Data offers a comprehensive analysis on Insulated Lunch Box industry, standing on the readers perspective, delivering detailed market data in Global major 20 countries and penetrating insights. No matter the client is industry insider, potential entrant or investor, the report will provides useful data and information.Key questions answered by this report include:Worldwide and Top 20 Countries Market Size of Insulated Lunch Box 2013-2017, and development forecast 2018-2023Main manufacturers/suppliers of Insulated Lunch Box worldwide and market share by regions, with company and product introduction, position in the Insulated Lunch Box marketMarket status and development trend of Insulated Lunch Box by types and applicationsCost and profit status of Insulated Lunch Box, and marketing statusMarket growth drivers and challengesGet a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comThe report segments the global Insulated Lunch Box market as:Global Insulated Lunch Box Market: Regional Segment Analysis (Regional Production Volume, Consumption Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate 2013-2023):North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Spain and Benelux)Asia Pacific (China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia and Australia)Latin America (Brazil, Argentina and Colombia)Middle East and AfricaGlobal Insulated Lunch Box Market: Type Segment Analysis (Consumption Volume, Average Price, Revenue, Market Share and Trend 2013-2023):Stainless Steel Insulated Lunch BoxPlastic Insulated Lunch BoxGlobal Insulated Lunch Box Market: Application Segment Analysis (Consumption Volume and Market Share 2013-2023; Downstream Customers and Market Analysis)ChildrenAdultThe AgedGlobal Insulated Lunch Box Market: Manufacturers Segment Analysis (Company and Product introduction, Insulated Lunch Box Sales Volume, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin):THERMOSTiger CorporationZojirushiPacific Market InternationalLOCK&LOCKGipfelAsvelZebraBentologyKitchen ArtHaersTAFUCOSUPORASDJieyang Xingcai MaterialGuangdong ShunfaKing BossGuangzhou Zhenxing IndustrialGuangdong DongchengShanghai HongchenXiamen GuanhuaIn a word, the report provides detailed statistics and analysis on the state of the industry; and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Ask Query About Report @Table Of Contents  Major Key PointsChapter 1 Overview of Insulated Lunch Box1.1 Definition of Insulated Lunch Box in This Report1.2 Commercial Types of Insulated Lunch Box1.2.1 Stainless Steel Insulated Lunch Box1.2.2 Plastic Insulated Lunch Box1.3 Downstream Application of Insulated Lunch Box1.3.1 Children1.3.2 Adult1.3.3 The Aged1.4 Development History of Insulated Lunch Box1.5 Market Status and Trend of Insulated Lunch Box 2013-20231.5.1 Global Insulated Lunch Box Market Status and Trend 2013-20231.5.2 Regional Insulated Lunch Box Market Status and Trend 2013-2023Chapter 2 Global Market Status and Forecast by Regions2.1 Market Development of Insulated Lunch Box 2013-20172.2 Sales Market of Insulated Lunch Box by Regions2.2.1 Sales Volume of Insulated Lunch Box by Regions2.2.2 Sales Value of Insulated Lunch Box by Regions2.3 Production Market of Insulated Lunch Box by Regions2.4 Global Market Forecast of Insulated Lunch Box 2018-20232.4.1 Global Market Forecast of Insulated Lunch Box 2018-20232.4.2 Market Forecast of Insulated Lunch Box by Regions 2018-2023Chapter 3 Global Market Status and Forecast by Types3.1 Sales Volume of Insulated Lunch Box by Types3.2 Sales Value of Insulated Lunch Box by Types3.3 Market Forecast of Insulated Lunch Box by TypesChapter 4 Global Market Status and Forecast by Downstream Industry4.1 Global Sales Volume of Insulated Lunch Box by Downstream Industry4.2 Global Market Forecast of Insulated Lunch Box by Downstream IndustryChapter 5 North America Market Status by Countries, Type, Manufacturers and Downstream Industry5.1 North America Insulated Lunch Box Market Status by Countries5.1.1 North America Insulated Lunch Box Sales by Countries (2013-2017)5.1.2 North America Insulated Lunch Box Revenue by Countries (2013-2017)5.1.3 United States Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)5.1.4 Canada Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)5.1.5 Mexico Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)5.2 North America Insulated Lunch Box Market Status by Manufacturers5.3 North America Insulated Lunch Box Market Status by Type (2013-2017)5.3.1 North America Insulated Lunch Box Sales by Type (2013-2017)5.3.2 North America Insulated Lunch Box Revenue by Type (2013-2017)5.4 North America Insulated Lunch Box Market Status by Downstream Industry (2013-2017)Chapter 6 Europe Market Status by Countries, Type, Manufacturers and Downstream Industry6.1 Europe Insulated Lunch Box Market Status by Countries6.1.1 Europe Insulated Lunch Box Sales by Countries (2013-2017)6.1.2 Europe Insulated Lunch Box Revenue by Countries (2013-2017)6.1.3 Germany Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)6.1.4 UK Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)6.1.5 France Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)6.1.6 Italy Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)6.1.7 Russia Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)6.1.8 Spain Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)6.1.9 Benelux Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)6.2 Europe Insulated Lunch Box Market Status by Manufacturers6.3 Europe Insulated Lunch Box Market Status by Type (2013-2017)6.3.1 Europe Insulated Lunch Box Sales by Type (2013-2017)6.3.2 Europe Insulated Lunch Box Revenue by Type (2013-2017)6.4 Europe Insulated Lunch Box Market Status by Downstream Industry (2013-2017)Chapter 7 Asia Pacific Market Status by Countries, Type, Manufacturers and Downstream Industry7.1 Asia Pacific Insulated Lunch Box Market Status by Countries7.1.1 Asia Pacific Insulated Lunch Box Sales by Countries (2013-2017)7.1.2 Asia Pacific Insulated Lunch Box Revenue by Countries (2013-2017)7.1.3 China Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)7.1.4 Japan Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)7.1.5 India Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)7.1.6 Southeast Asia Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)7.1.7 Australia Insulated Lunch Box Market Status (2013-2017)7.2 Asia Pacific Insulated Lunch Box Market Status by Manufacturers7.3 Asia Pacific Insulated Lunch Box Market Status by Type (2013-2017)7.3.1 Asia Pacific Insulated Lunch Box Sales by Type (2013-2017)7.3.2 Asia Pacific Insulated Lunch Box Revenue by Type (2013-2017)7.4 Asia Pacific Insulated Lunch Box Market Status by Downstream Industry (2013-2017)Continue.Buy 1-User PDF@For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.Office No.528,Amanora Chambers,Magarpatta Road,Hadapsar,Pune-411028.
Food & Beverage Plastics Market Expected To Witness The Highest Growth

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The Global Food & Beverage Plastics Market Research Report 2017 to 2022 renders deep perception of the key regional market status of the Food & Beverage Plastics Industry on a global level that primarily aims the core regions which comprises of continents like Europe, North America, and Asia and the key countries such as United States, Germany, China and Japan.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The potential of this industry segment has been rigorously investigated in conjunction with primary market challenges. The present market condition and future prospects of the segment has also been examined. Moreover, key strategies in the market that includes product developments, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, etc., are discussed. Besides, upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also conducted.Report Includes:-The report cloaks the market analysis and projection of Food & Beverage Plastics Market on a regional as well as global level. The report constitutes qualitative and quantitative valuation by industry analysts, first-hand data, assistance from industry experts along with their most recent verbatim and each industry manufacturers via the market value chain.The research experts have additionally assessed the in general sales and revenue generation of this particular market. In addition, this report also delivers widespread analysis of root market trends, several governing elements and macro-economic indicators, coupled with market improvements as per every segment.Global Food & Beverage Plastics market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players including:Chemson GroupConstantia Packaging AgLimburgse Vinyl Maatschappij (Lvm)Solvay S.A.SolvinTotal PetrochemicalsArkemaGlobal Closure Systems (Gcs)Uponor CorpVinnolit Gmbh & Co. KgNova Chemicals CorporationAdvanced Drainage Systems, Inc.Aep Industries, Inc.American Excelsior CompanyBrowse Complete Report with TOC @The report is generically segmented into six parts and every part aims on the overview of the Food & Beverage Plastics industry, present condition of the market, feasibleness of the investment along with several strategies and policies. Apart from the definition and classification, the report also discusses the analysis of import and export and describes a comparison of the market that is focused on the trends and development. Along with entire framework in addition to in-depth details, one can prepare and stay ahead of the competitors across the targeted locations.The fact that this market report renders details about the major market players along with their product development and current trends proves to be very beneficial for fresh entrants to comprehend and recognize the industry in an improved manner. The report also enlightens the productions, sales, supply, market condition, demand, growth, and forecast of the Food & Beverage Plastics industry in the global markets.So as to fabricate this report, complete key details, strategies and variables are examined so that entire useful information is amalgamated together for the understanding and studying the key facts pertaining the global Food & Beverage Plastics Industry. The production value and market share in conjunction with the SWOT analysis everything is integrated in this report.Check for Discount @Some points from TOC:-1 Food & Beverage Plastics Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Food & Beverage Plastics1.2 Food & Beverage Plastics Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Food & Beverage Plastics Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Food & Beverage Plastics Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 PET1.2.4 HDPE1.2.5 PVC1.2.6 LDPE1.2.7 PP1.2.8 PS1.2.9 Other1.3 Global Food & Beverage Plastics Segment by Application1.3.1 Food & Beverage Plastics Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Fruits and Vegetables1.3.3 Bottles/Containers1.3.4 Dairy1.3.5 Bakery1.3.6 Meat/Poultry/Seafood1.3.7 Frozen1.3.8 Other1.4 Global Food & Beverage Plastics Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Food & Beverage Plastics 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 & Beverage Plastics (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Food & Beverage Plastics Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Food & Beverage Plastics Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)About Us:QY Research Groups is a company that simplifies how analysts and decision makers get industry data for their business. 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Global Lactate Esters Market Professional Survey Report 2017: Vertec Biosolvents,Florida Chemicals,Cargill Inc.

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This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringArcher Daniels Midland CompanyBASF SEBioamber Inc.Huntsman CorporationE.I. Dupont De Nemours & Co.The DOW Chemical CompanyVertec Biosolvents Inc.Florida Chemicals Company Inc.Cargill Inc.Cremer Oleo Gmbh & Co Kg.By types, the market can be split intoLactateEthyl LactateButyl Lactate'Download Free exclusive Sample of this report:Table of ContentsGlobal Lactate Esters Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of Lactate Esters1.1 Definition and Specifications of Lactate Esters1.1.1 Definition of Lactate Esters1.1.2 Specifications of Lactate Esters1.2 Classification of Lactate Esters1.2.1 Lactate1.2.2 Ethyl Lactate1.2.3 Butyl Lactate1.2.4 Others1.3 Applications of Lactate Esters1.3.1 Coating1.3.2 Spices1.3.3 Synthetic Resin2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Lactate Esters2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Lactate Esters2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Lactate Esters2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Lactate Esters3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Lactate Esters3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Lactate Esters Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Lactate Esters Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Lactate Esters Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Lactate Esters Major Manufacturers in 20164 Global Lactate Esters Overall Market Overview4.1 2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global Lactate Esters Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2016 Lactate Esters Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2012-2017E Global Lactate Esters Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2016 Lactate Esters Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2012-2017E Global Lactate Esters Sales Price4.4.2 2016 Lactate Esters Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment)5 Lactate Esters Regional Market Analysis5.1 North America Lactate Esters Market Analysis5.1.1 North America Lactate Esters Market Overview5.1.2 North America 2012-2017E Lactate Esters Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.1.3 North America 2012-2017E Lactate Esters Sales Price Analysis5.1.4 North America 2016 Lactate Esters Market Share Analysis5.2 China Lactate Esters Market Analysis5.2.1 China Lactate Esters Market Overview5.2.2 China 2012-2017E Lactate Esters Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.2.3 China 2012-2017E Lactate Esters Sales Price Analysis5.2.4 China 2016 Lactate Esters Market Share AnalysisQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market 2017 Global Analysis By key Players  BMW, Daimler, General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, Arada, Autotalks

Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market

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WiseGuyReports.Com Publish a New Market Research Report On - Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market 2017 Global Analysis By key Players  BMW, Daimler, General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, Arada, Autotalks.Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X)-Global Market Status & Trend Report 2013-2023 Top 20 Countries Data offers a comprehensive analysis on Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) industry, standing on the readers perspective, delivering detailed market data in Global major 20 countries and penetrating insights. No matter the client is industry insider, potential entrant or investor, the report will provides useful data and information.Key questions answered by this report include:Worldwide and Top 20 Countries Market Size of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) 2013-2017, and development forecast 2018-2023Main manufacturers/suppliers of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) worldwide and market share by regions, with company and product introduction, position in the Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) marketMarket status and development trend of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) by types and applicationsCost and profit status of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X), and marketing statusMarket growth drivers and challengesGet a Sample Report @For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comThe report segments the global Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) market as:Global Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market: Regional Segment Analysis (Regional Production Volume, Consumption Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate 2013-2023):North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Spain and Benelux)Asia Pacific (China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia and Australia)Latin America (Brazil, Argentina and Colombia)Middle East and AfricaGlobal Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market: Type Segment Analysis (Consumption Volume, Average Price, Revenue, Market Share and Trend 2013-2023):V2VV2IV2PGlobal Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market: Application Segment Analysis (Consumption Volume and Market Share 2013-2023; Downstream Customers and Market Analysis)Road Safety ServiceAutomatic Parking SystemEmergency VehiclesAuto Car ServiceGlobal Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market: Manufacturers Segment Analysis (Company and Product introduction, Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Sales Volume, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin):BMWDaimlerGeneral MotorsToyotaVolkswagenAradaAutotalksCohdaDelphiDensoeTransKapschQualcommSavariIn a word, the report provides detailed statistics and analysis on the state of the industry; and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Ask Query About Report @Table Of Contents  Major Key PointsChapter 1 Overview of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X)1.1 Definition of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) in This Report1.2 Commercial Types of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X)1.2.1 V2V1.2.2 V2I1.2.3 V2P1.3 Downstream Application of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X)1.3.1 Road Safety Service1.3.2 Automatic Parking System1.3.3 Emergency Vehicles1.3.4 Auto Car Service1.4 Development History of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X)1.5 Market Status and Trend of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) 2013-20231.5.1 Global Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status and Trend 2013-20231.5.2 Regional Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status and Trend 2013-2023Chapter 2 Global Market Status and Forecast by Regions2.1 Market Development of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) 2013-20172.2 Sales Market of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) by Regions2.2.1 Sales Volume of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) by Regions2.2.2 Sales Value of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) by Regions2.3 Production Market of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) by Regions2.4 Global Market Forecast of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) 2018-20232.4.1 Global Market Forecast of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) 2018-20232.4.2 Market Forecast of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) by Regions 2018-2023Chapter 3 Global Market Status and Forecast by Types3.1 Sales Volume of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) by Types3.2 Sales Value of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) by Types3.3 Market Forecast of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) by TypesChapter 4 Global Market Status and Forecast by Downstream Industry4.1 Global Sales Volume of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) by Downstream Industry4.2 Global Market Forecast of Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) by Downstream IndustryChapter 5 North America Market Status by Countries, Type, Manufacturers and Downstream Industry5.1 North America Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status by Countries5.1.1 North America Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Sales by Countries (2013-2017)5.1.2 North America Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Revenue by Countries (2013-2017)5.1.3 United States Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)5.1.4 Canada Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)5.1.5 Mexico Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)5.2 North America Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status by Manufacturers5.3 North America Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status by Type (2013-2017)5.3.1 North America Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Sales by Type (2013-2017)5.3.2 North America Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Revenue by Type (2013-2017)5.4 North America Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status by Downstream Industry (2013-2017)Chapter 6 Europe Market Status by Countries, Type, Manufacturers and Downstream Industry6.1 Europe Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status by Countries6.1.1 Europe Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Sales by Countries (2013-2017)6.1.2 Europe Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Revenue by Countries (2013-2017)6.1.3 Germany Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)6.1.4 UK Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)6.1.5 France Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)6.1.6 Italy Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)6.1.7 Russia Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)6.1.8 Spain Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)6.1.9 Benelux Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)6.2 Europe Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status by Manufacturers6.3 Europe Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status by Type (2013-2017)6.3.1 Europe Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Sales by Type (2013-2017)6.3.2 Europe Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Revenue by Type (2013-2017)6.4 Europe Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status by Downstream Industry (2013-2017)Chapter 7 Asia Pacific Market Status by Countries, Type, Manufacturers and Downstream Industry7.1 Asia Pacific Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status by Countries7.1.1 Asia Pacific Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Sales by Countries (2013-2017)7.1.2 Asia Pacific Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Revenue by Countries (2013-2017)7.1.3 China Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)7.1.4 Japan Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)7.1.5 India Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)7.1.6 Southeast Asia Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)7.1.7 Australia Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status (2013-2017)7.2 Asia Pacific Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status by Manufacturers7.3 Asia Pacific Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status by Type (2013-2017)7.3.1 Asia Pacific Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Sales by Type (2013-2017)7.3.2 Asia Pacific Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Revenue by Type (2013-2017)7.4 Asia Pacific Automotive Vehicle to Everything (V2X) Market Status by Downstream Industry (2013-2017)Continue.Buy 1-User PDF@For more information or any query mail at sales@wiseguyreports.comABOUT US:Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.Office No.528,Amanora Chambers,Magarpatta Road,Hadapsar,Pune-411028.
Alcoholic Beverages Market Analysis, Production, Key Players, Size, Share, Future Demand and Foresight to 2023

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Market ForecastGlobal Alcoholic Beverages Market is anticipated to be driven by the increasing per capita disposable income of the consumer in developed over the past few years. Also, the increasing purchasing power of the consumer in developing nation is considered to be the significant for the rising growth of alcoholic beverages in the near future. Changing lifestyles of the consumer to adopt western culture in Asian countries is anticipated to stimulate the sales of alcoholic beverages.Manufacturers are launching new products in various flavors and colors to suit the specific requirement of the consumer. Also, the manufacturers of Alcoholic beverages are focusing to enhance its packaging solution in order to attract new customers.Alcoholic is an odorless liquid obtained by fermentation of sugar. Various types of compounds are present in the alcohol. However, ethyl is considered to be food grade alcohol in maximum alcoholic beverages. Ethanol or Ethyl alcohol is manufactured through a natural process when the yeast transforms the sugar contained in fruit, cereals, and sugar-canes, into alcohol. The process used for its preparation is called fermentation.Sample Copy of Report @Competitive Analysis-The major Key Players in the Alcoholic Beverages Market are Anheuser Busch InBev. (Belgium) Carlsberg Group (Denmark) Diageo Plc (U.K.) Heineken Holding Nv (Netherland) Accolade Wines (Australia) Beam-Suntory (U.S.) Constellation Brands (U.S.)Alcoholic beverages market is highly concentrated in Europe. Asia Pacific has massive potential for alcoholic beverages, as there is an increasing consumer awareness regarding the alcoholic beverages coupled with the per capita disposable income is anticipated to fuel the sales of alcoholic beverages during the forecast period.Downstream Analysis-Distilled spirit segment is estimated to account maximum market proportion during the forecast period of 2017 to 2023. Among the distilled spirit segment, whiskey is estimated to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period of 2017-2023. Beer is projected to witness highest growth as compare to the other segment. In terms of distribution channel, supermarkets & hypermarkets is likely to hold maximum market proportion during the forecast period. However, online sales is gaining momentum in the developing nation which is projected to observe maximum growth during the review period.Access Report Details @Regional AnalysisAlcoholic Beverages Market is segmented into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and rest of the world (ROW). Among these, Europe region is expected to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period. This is attributed by the increasing per capita disposable income coupled with the changing lifestyles of the consumer in the Eastern Europe economies. North America is also estimated to hold healthy market proportion in the Alcoholic beverages market. Asia Pacific region is projected to grow at a substantial growth during the forecast period. However, China is projected to register maximum CAGR during the forecast period in Asia Pacific region. Especially China and India offer a lucrative opportunity in the Asia Pacific region for the Alcoholic beverages manufacturers. Latin America & Middle East region is projected to show a high potential in the alcoholic beverages market due to the rising disposable income of some of the countries.Key Findings: Europe dominates the alcoholic beverages market followed by North America Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing region in the alcoholic beverages market. India and China has shown huge potentials for alcoholic beverages market share during reviewed period of 2017-2023About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.ContactMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Telemedicine Technologies and Services Market Future Forecast Assessed On The Basis Of How The Market Is Predicted To Grow

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According to a new market research report published by Transparency Market Research Telemedicine Technologies and Services Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2015 - 2023, the global telemedicine technologies and services market was valued at US$ 21.1 Bn in 2014 and is estimated to reach US$ 86.7 Bn in 2023, expanding at a CAGR of 17.2% from 2015 to 2023.Browse the full Telemedicine Technologies and Services Market (Component - Hardware, Software, and Services; End-user - Telehospital and Telehome) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2015 - 2023 report atTelemedicine is the union of health care and telecommunication/information technology aimed at providing assistance to individuals in remote areas who do not have access to health care centers in times of need. Critical care and emergency situations are the primary areas for which telemedicine evolved in practice. The health care industry has always been one of the most lucrative, yet steadily growing, industries across the globe.Sample With Latest Advancements @Requirement of health care is termed as critical and crucial to the sustenance of life, hence considered an important industry. Growth of the telemedicine market is primarily attributed to the rise in quality health care services and products adopted by patients worldwide. The telemedicine market has been largely driven by increasing reimbursements received by health care insurance providers that trickle down to the patient population.The rising geriatric population along with increasing cases of physical disability promotes usage of telemedicine among a significant portion of the global population. However, dearth of medical practitioners dedicated to telemedicine service is a major issue globally. Moreover, growing concern among patients about the inadequacy of virtual consultation presents a challenge to the growth of the telemedicine market. The global telemedicine technologies and services market was valued at US$ 21,124.2 Mn in 2014 and is projected to reach US$ 86,754.8 Mn by 2023 at a CAGR of 17.2% from 2015 to 2023.Browse Our Press Releases For More Information @Based on component, the telemedicine technologies and services market has been segmented into hardware, software, and services. The hardware segment has been categorized into videoconferencing unit, imaging unit, vital signs unit, ECG, and others. The videoconferencing unit sub-segment accounted for the largest share of the hardware segment in 2014. The segment will continue to dominate the market until 2023 due to increase in preference for videoconferencing units for telemedicine solutions. The imaging unit segment is expected to expand at the highest CAGR from 2015 to 2023 owing to high demand for imaging services, mostly preferred for radiology and digital pathology services, and rapid technological advancements in the imaging segment. However, concerns over confidentiality of patients medical information is likely to hamper the growth of the telemedicine technologies and services market during the forecast period.Based on software, the telemedicine technologies and services market has been segmented into integrated and standalone. The integrated software segment dominated the market in 2014 due to high adoption rate and technological innovations. Telemedicine services (interactive, store and transfer, and chronic care management) is the most promising segment of the telemedicine market owing to worldwide popularity and ability to provide high definition and quality medical services in remote areas. People in developing nations cannot afford technologically advanced products due to financial crisis and low disposable incomes. Hence, they opt for cost-effective and consistent telemedicine services. Therefore, the services segment is likely to gain momentum in developing countries such as India, China, Brazil, and South Africa.Browse Our Table of Content @Based on end-user, the global telemedicine technologies and services market has been segmented into telehospital/teleclinic and telehome. The telehospital segment dominated the market primarily due to high adoption rate of technologically advanced and cost-effective innovative telemedicine services and products and rising preference of patients toward telemedicine services for telehospital.The global telemedicine technologies and services market is characterized by the presence of major companies such as Aerotel Medical Systems Ltd., AMD Global Telemedicine, Inc., General Electric Company, Honeywell International, Inc., and LifeWatch AG.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. We have an experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, who us e proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR Syndicated Research report covers a different sector  such as pharmaceuticals, chemical, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, our syndicated reports thrive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA  Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
United States Breast Cancer Screening Market Analysis: By Type, Share, Cases, Clinical Trials Insight, Reimbursement, Competitive Strategies and Forecast, 2017 - 2022

United States Breast Cancer Screening Market Analysis: By Type, Share, Cases, Clinical Trials Insight, Reimbursement, Competitive

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title United States Breast Cancer Screening Market Analysis: By Type, Share, Cases, Clinical Trials Insight, Reimbursement, Competitive Strategies and Forecast, 2017 - 2022 to its growing collection of premium market research reports.United States Breast Cancer Screening Market is expected to reach more than US$ 5.8 Billion by 2022.Longterm Growth Projection: Mammography grasp the dominant share in the United States Breast Cancer Screening Market Breast MRI Screening market is likely to reach more than US$ 350 Million by 2022 Number of mammograpy screening population in United States will increase to more than 50 Million by 2022Market growth can be attributed to factors such as increasing incidence of breast cancer, increasing awareness related to early breast cancer detection, growing government investments and funding for breast cancer screening, technological advancement in breast imaging technologies and implementation of several initiatives to create awareness about the early detection of breast cancer.United States Breast Cancer Screening Market Analysis: By Type, Share, Cases, Clinical Trials Insight, Reimbursement, Competitive Strategies and Forecast, 2017 - 2022 provides a deep and thorough evaluation of the United States Breast Cancer Screening Market. The report provides an indepth analysis of the breast cancer invasive, in situ and men cases and added breast cancer death figures of both men and women in United States. Furthermore, the report also covered mammography screening population from 2010 to 2022.Market outlook in value terms has been analyzed based on historical, current and potential trends and the market is projected from 2017 to 2022. The breast cancer screening market is segmented based on its product types: Mammography, Breast MRI and Breast Ultrasound. Additionally, the report includes assessment of clinical trials and reimbursement pattern. The report also explores detailed description of growth drivers and inhibitors of the United States Breast Cancer Screening Market.The report concludes with the profiles of major manufacturers of Mammography, MRI and Ultrasound such as Hologic, Hitachi Medical Corporation, Siemen Healthineers, Philips Healthcare, Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation and GE Healthcare. The major manufacturers are evaluated on various parameters such as business overview, marketed products and latest development and trendsTo view detailed description and Table of Contents of this report please visitKey Topics Covered in the Report United States Breast Cancer Cases (2010 - 2022) United States Breast Cancer Mammography Screening Population (2010  2022) United States Breast Cancer Death (2010  2017) Market Overview: United States Breast Cancer Screening (2010  2022) Market Share: United States Breast Cancer Screening (2010  2022) By Types (Mammography, Breast MRI & Breast Ultrasound): Market Size & Analysis (2010  2022) Reimbursement Policies of the United States Breast Cancer Screening Breast Cancer Screening Market Clinical Trail Insight by Phase, Company & Country Key Drivers and Inhibitors of the United States Breast Cancer Screening Market Key Manufacturers AnalysisMajor Breast Cancer Screening Analyzed Under This Report Are: Mammography Breast Magnetic Resonance Imaging(MRI) Breast UltrasoundMajor Companies Covered in This Report: Hitachi Medical Corporation Siemen Healthineers Philips Healthcare Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation GE HealthcareTo Get Sample Copy of this report please visitAbout ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston,MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-1947abigail@reportsworldwide.com
United States Pediatric Vaccine Market 2017  Demand, Insights, Analysis, Opportunities Segmentation and Forecast to 2024

United States Pediatric Vaccine Market 2017  Demand, Insights, Analysis, Opportunities Segmentation and Forecast to 2024

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ReportsWorldwide has announced the addition of a new report title United States Pediatric Vaccine Market 2017  Demand, Insights, Analysis, Opportunities Segmentation and Forecast to 2024 to its growing collection of premium market research reports.United States Pediatric Vaccine market is likely to reach nearly US$ 10 Billion by 2024.Growth in US pediatric vaccine market can be attributed to factors such as increased disease awareness, growing public acceptance, increasing government focus on immunization programs and increased government funding for the vaccine development.The research report titled United States Pediatric Vaccine Market 2017  Demand, Insights, Analysis, Opportunities Segmentation and Forecast to 2024 examines the market dynamics, competitive landscape and discusses major trends. The study describes an indepth analysis of the United States pediatric vaccine market.The report contains a granular analysis of the market segmentation, reveal facts on the market size, volume and revenues and provides forecasts through 2024. The report also provides a deep and thorough evaluation of the top 10 pediatric vaccines by disease indication. On the basis of disease indication, the top 10 pediatric vaccines provide an in-depth analysis of doses administered, number of children being vaccinated and market size. The report also explores detailed description of growth drivers and inhibitors of the United States pediatric vaccine market.The report concludes with the profiles of major players in the United States pediatric vaccine market. The key market players are evaluated on various parameters such as company overview, pediatric vaccine portfolios and latest development & trends of the pediatric vaccine market.To view detailed description and Table of Contents of this report please visitMajor Pediatric Vaccines (Disease Indication) Covered Under This Report Are:Diphtheria, Tetanus & Pertussis (DTap)Hepatitis AVaricella/Chicken PoxPneumococcalHaemophilus Influenzae Type B (HIB)PolioRotavirusHepatitis BInfluenza PediatricMeasles, Mumps & Rubella (MMR)Key Companies Covered in the Report are as follows:Sanofi PasteurGlaxoSmithKline(GSK)Merck & Co.Pfizer IncGrifolsKey Deliverables in the StudyMarket Definition for the specified topic along with identification of key drivers and inhibitors for the marketIt provides a growth map over time to understand the industry growth rateIt provides a seven-year forecast assessed based on how the market is predicted to growIt helps in understanding the key product segments and their futureIt helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsA comprehensive list of key market players along with the analysis of their current pediatric vaccines portfolios and latest development and trends.To Get Sample Copy of this report please visitAbout ReportsWorldwide.comReportsWorldwide.com is a leading provider of global market intelligence reports and services. With research reports from top publishers, consulting and advisory firms, ReportsWorldwide.com offers instant online access to a growing database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, geographies and trends.Press Contact:Abigail CrastoSenior Vice President101, Arch StreetBoston,MA 02110USPhone +1 (617) 398-1947abigail@reportsworldwide.com
Microarray Analysis Market Share: Worldwide Demand, Applications and Opportunities Market Research Report 2027

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Microarray Analysis Market Reports comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance.Life science relates to the study of living organisms which includes plants, humans, and microorganisms among others. With unparalleled connectivity, evolving demographics, impressive growth in patent applications in emerging markets and pharmaceutical demand changes worldwide, the trend of Life science is also changing and improving.Get Sample Report @Global Microarray Analysis Market is driven by factors which include increasing government expenditure, growth in research and development activities need for early cancer detection, increasing healthcare expenditure, and diagnosis and large-scale DNA/gene chip initiatives. Microarray helps to reduce criticality occurred during the understanding of the cell and its associated diseases. It is used for the study of biological materials such as DNA, RNA, small tissues, or protein, by immobilizing them on silicon-thin film. It is estimated that 2 million engineering and life science jobs will become open during forecasted period due to continue rise in aging population. Microarray, the combination of robotics, chemistry, computer science, and biology are used to study many points within a genome which is composed of thousands of genes at one time.Competitive Analysis:Affymetrix, Inc., Agilent Technologies, Inc., Sequenom, Inc., Roche NimbleGen, Illumnia, Inc., and Applied Microarrays. Other companies operating in the global microarrays market are biome rieux SA, Discerna, Gyros AB, Luminex Corporation, NextGen Sciences, PLC. and ProteoGenix.Global Microarray Analysis Market Report: ApplicationThe factors such as global innovation, increase taxation by government, awareness about education in Life science field, improved R&D expenditure driving global demand for genetic study which includes Microarray, population genomics, and molecular biology among other life science study areas.Microarrays are useful for processing thousands of samples cost-effectively to identify transformations and structural variations in gene expression and methylation. Microarray analysis is been used in various industries such as healthcare, life science, medical among others. For instance, cancer germline mutation analysis is used to study cancer predisposition, cytogenomics is useful in detection of low-level mosaics, CNVs, LOH, across the genome, Agrigenomics genotyping is used for the study about plants and animals, and many more.Browse Report @The advantages of Microarray analysis includes:Reproducible, high-quality data at a low costSupport fast, high throughput, multiplex processingAvailable in expert and custom formatsGlobal Microarray Analysis Market Report: Market SegmentationGlobal Microarray Analysis Market can be segmented into types, methods, applications, and end-users.Global Microarray Analysis Market by Types:DNA Microarray, LOC (Lab-on a-Chip), Protein Microarray, Tissue Microarray, OthersGlobal Microarray Analysis Market by Methods:Human genotyping, Non-human genotyping, Gene expression analysis, Methylation analysis, Mutation analysis, othersGlobal Microarray Analysis Market by Applications:SNP detection, Genotyping, Forensic analysis, Research, Diagnostics, OthersGlobal Microarray Analysis Market by End-users:Pharmaceuticals, Medical, Healthcare, Laboratories, OthersGlobal Microarray Analysis Market Report: Regional AnalysisThe regional analysis includes North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and rest of the world.Increasing clinical trials and drug discovery activities, upgrading technological advancements such as Chip-on-chip, CGH, splice variants and microRNAs, wider application area of microarray and government initiatives and support are expected to develop new market opportunities for the Global Microarray Market. Moreover, increasing mergers and acquisition, growing collaborations and partnerships, and product launches are some of the latest trends in the Global Microarray Market.North America:North America is dominating the Global Microarray Analysis Market followed by Europe. Increasing technological advancement, improved healthcare industries, growing research & development activities, increased usage of personalized medicines, increasing cancer incidences and growing government support are the major growth driven factors of Microarray market in North America region.Asia-pacific:Asia-pacific is the emerging market in Global Microarray Analysis Market during the forecasted period. The improving healthcare infrastructure, growing prevalence of chronic diseases, increasing government expenditure, growing drug discovery and development activities are the major growth drivers of Microarray Market in Asia-Pacific region. The China, Russia and India are the emerging economies due to improved lifestyle, growing awareness about biological terms and its benefits and government support in Asia-Pacific region. In India, top Indian pharma companies are now partly foreign-owned and are already generating more than half of their sales outside the country. Besides this, economic growth has increased the buying power of Indias middle class for healthcare services in general, particularly medicines. Emergence of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer has increased the demand for medicines.Global Microarray Analysis Market Report: Latest NewsMolecular Devices Launches High-Content Imaging System with New 3D Analysis Software, announced on 19th April 2016.The Agilent Cary 8454 UV-Visible spectrophotometer builds on 30 years of experience in photodiode array (PDA) technology and delivers an updated instrument that is easy to use, is ideal for routine applications, and meets the compliance needs of global pharmaceutical companies.Global Microarray Analysis Market Report: Market InfluencerAdoption of personalized medicines, wide range of application areas, and technological advancements are other factors which are driving the Microarray market.However, standardization in microarray data and lack of skilled professionals are some of the major factors hindering the growth of the Global Microarray Analysis Market.Get Discount @The reports also covers brief analysis of Geographical Region includes:AmericasNorth America, US, CanadaEuropeWestern Europe, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, U.K, Rest of Western Europe, Eastern EuropeAsia PacificAsia, China, India, Japan, Rest of Asia, Pacific CountriesThe Middle East& AfricaAt Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for , regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Organic Sugar Market to Exceed a Healthy Growth Rate at CAGR 15.55% from 2017 to 2022

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Market Overview:Organic sugar is made from sugar canes, grown in an organic way without synthetic herbicides or pesticides. It may be lightly refined or almost pure white. Organic sugar is a great substitute for refined sugar because of resemblance in properties of the two. Organic sugar contains of 17 amino acids, 11 minerals and 6 vitamins which include antioxidants that aid to converse oxidative damages. Organic sugar is majorly used by ready to eat food manufacturers which include chocolate & confectionery and bakery products. Also, carbonated beverages manufacturers are also increasingly using organic sugar owing to the rising demand of organic beverages in the developed countries.Competitive AnalysisThe major key players in organic sugar are Dwarikesh Sugar Industries Limited (India) Mitr Phol Group (Thailand) Wangkanai Group (Thailand) Cosan Ltd. (Brazil) Tereos Internacional (Brazil) Shree Renuka Sugars Limited (India) Raizen S.A (Brazil) Bunge Limited (Brazil)Key players are focused majorly on acquisition of small players to expand their business and penetrate the global organic sugar market. Expansion is also one of the key strategies followed by acquisition. Expansion will help in capturing the untapped markets and increasing the production capacity to meet the rising demand from consumers end thereby further contributing to the increasing revenue. Acquisition and expansions are evaluated to be contributing to more than 30% of strategy share and is facilitating the companies to penetrate the potential market across globe.Request a Sample Report @Market ForecastThe global market for organic sugar have witnessed continued demand during the last few years and is projected to reach USD 1314.53 million by 2022. The world demand for organically produced foods is growing rapidly in developed countries like Europe, U.S., Japan and Australia which is further influencing the demand for organic sugar. Sugar is an essential part of foods and beverages and hence is majorly used as an ingredients in the manufacturing of food and beverages. The increasing consumer awareness about the harmful effects involved in using conventional sugar and the chemicals used in the creation of such sugar will mark a huge demand of organic sugar in food preparation.Based on the application, personal care products is expected to witness the highest growth rate (~16%) on a global level. Food & beverages based application of organic sugar will hold a significant share and will also witness a steady growth during the given forecast period. Pharmaceuticals is likely to experience a high and is estimated to hold a market share of more than 5% during the forecast period.By Downstream AnalysisBy 2022, organic sugar will reach a market value of USD 1314.53 Million on a global level. Potential applications of organic sugar in food & beverages, pharma and personal care industries have a positive impact on its market share growth. Based on the application, personal care based application of sugar will experience the highest growth rate of more than 16% during the review period. However, food & beverages based application will dominate the market is will account for a share of more than 90% of the overall organic sugar market.Access Report Details @Regional AnalysisAmong the regions, Latin America will continue to dominate the organic sugar market with more than 55% of the market share and it is projected to reach more than USD838.17 million by 2022. Latin America will witness the highest growth rate (~15.88%) during the forecast period 2017-2022. Growing popularity of organic sugar owing to their potential applications in food industries as well as pharmaceutical industries is supporting their market growth on the global level. Rising health awareness and increasing disposable income have been playing a key role in the organic sugar growth from the last few years.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.ContactMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Medical Sensors Market is Expected To Be Worth US$ 15 Billion Globally By 2022

Medical Sensors Market

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The Global Medical Sensors Market is segmented on the lines of its product, application, end user and regional. Under product segmentation it covers pressure sensors, image sensors, temperature sensors, accelerometers, biosensors, SQUID sensors, flow sensors and others. End user segment is classified into hospital, nursing home, home healthcare, physician offices and others. Based on application segmentation it covers surgical, therapeutic, diagnostic and monitoring. The Global medical sensors Market on geographic segmentation covers various regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Each geography market is further segmented to provide market revenue for select countries such as the U.S., Canada, U.K. Germany, China, Japan, India, Brazil, and GCC countries.The Global Medical Sensors Market is expected to exceed more than US$ 15 billion by 2022 and will grow at a CAGR of more than 8% in the given forecast period.You Can Browse Full Research Report:This report provides:1) An overview of the Global Medical Sensors Market and related technologies.2) Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2013, estimates for 2014 and 2015, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2022.3) Identifications of new market opportunities and targeted promotional plans for Global Medical Sensors Market.4) Discussion of research and development, and the demand for new products and new applications.5) Comprehensive company profiles of major players in the industry.The major driving factors of Global Medical Sensors Market are as follows: Rising incidence of chronic diseases Increasing utilization of medical sensors in laboratory practices Increasing aging population Increasing patient preference for home health care devicesThe restraining factors of Global Medical Sensors Market are as follows: High cost of sensors for medical applicationRequest Sample Report:The scope of the report includes a detailed study of global and regional markets for Global Medical Sensors Market with the reasons given for variations in the growth of the industry in certain regions.Table of Contents1 INTRODUCTION2 Research Methodology3 Executive Summary4 Premium Insights5 Market Overview5.1 Introduction5.2 Market Evolution5.3 Market Segmentation5.3.1 By Application5.3.2 By Type5.3.3 By Placement5.3.4 By Geography5.4 Market Dynamics5.4.1 Key Market Drivers5.4.1.1 Increase in Hospital-Acquired Infections (HAIS)5.4.1.2 Technological Advancements in the Market Such as Wearable Devices and Disease Detecting Devices5.4.1.3 Demand for Personalization of Healthcare Systems5.4.1.4 Increase in Life Expectancy and Ageing of World Population5.4.1.5 Increase in Individual Disposable Income and Awareness of Preventive Measures5.4.2 Restraints5.4.2.1 Inadequate and Irregular Reimbursement/Limited Warranty Coverage for Medical Devices5.4.2.2 Slower Rate of Penetration of Advanced Medical Systems in Developing Regions5.4.3 Opportunities5.4.3.1 Emerging Wireless Sensor Devices5.4.3.2 Emerging Applications of the Capacitive Sensors in the Field of Nanotechnology5.4.3.3 Increasing Number of Merger and Acquisition in Growing Economies5.4.4 Challenges5.4.4.1 Stringent Regulatory Procedures for Product Approval5.4.4.2 Security Concerns in the Devices and Connectivity Problems5.5 Pricing Trends6 Industry Trend7 Medical Sensors Market, By Sensor Type8 Global Medical Sensors Market, By Sensor Placement9 Medical Sensor Market, By Application10 Geographic Analysis11 Competitive Landscape12 Company Profiles12.1 Introduction12.2 GE Healthcare12.3 Honeywell International Inc.12.4 Stmicroelectronics N.V.12.5 Measurement Specialties, Inc.12.6 Analog Devices, Inc.12.7 Medtronic PLC12.8 First Sensor AG12.9 Smiths Medical12.10 Texas InstrumentsAbout UsMarket Research Engine (MRE) is a next-generation provider of syndicated research, customized research, and consulting services. MREs global and regional market intelligence coverage includes industries such as pharmaceutical, chemicals and materials, technology and media, food and beverages, and consumer goods, among others. Each Market Research Engines research report provides clients with a 360-degree view of the market with statistical forecasts, competitive landscape, detailed segmentation, key trends, and strategic recommendations.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862Country: United StatesWebsite:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States
Bacterial Cell Culture Market: Global Major Manufacture Profile Chemical Co, Ltd., EMD (Merck) Millipore, Hi-Media Laboratories Pvt. Ltd., Neogen Corporation

Bacterial Cell Culture Market

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Market Research Future published a half-cooked research report on " Global Bacterial Cell Culture Market Research Report Forecast to 2024" - Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, TrendsBacterial Cell Culture Market Research Report, by Consumables (Flask, Plate, Petri Dishes), By Instruments (Incubator, Centrifuge, Spectrophotometer), by Media (Complex, Simple), by region (Europe, North America, Asia Pacific) - Global Forecast to 2024It is the process by which bacterial cells are grown under controlled conditions to determine the cause of infectious diseases. Bacterial culture is essential for the study of bacterial genomes, pathogenicity and antibiotic areas. The major reasons for culturing bacteria are to purify DNA and to express protein. Microbial cultures are the basic diagnostic methods used in molecular biology as a research tool. These microbiological cultures are grown in petri dishes (cylindrical dishes or plastic lidded dishes which biologist usually use for their experiment) which have a thin layer of agar based growth medium. Another method of Bacterial culture is liquid culture where researcher can inoculate liquid broth with bacteria and let it grow overnight.Request for sample report atBacterial Cell Culture Application:The major application areas of Bacterial cell are Pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and food & beverages. The instrument nucleometer is used to test the number of somatic cells in a milk sample. The other consumables such as petri dishes and flask are used by Scientist or researcher to do various experiments which result in some productive results. In pharmaceuticals industry bacterial cell culture provides very useful results to develop & improved drugs and medical antibiotics..Bacterial Cell Culture market segmentation:The Bacterial cell market currently has a global market of around $ 3 billion and is showing rapid growth in the upcoming years. The major growth factors are raising demand for advanced antibiotics, increase in fund of life science research, growing food microbiology and increase ratio of foodborne diseases.The bacterial cell culture market can be segmented into types, instruments, applications, consumables, medium and region. Bacterial cell culture market by types: Bacterial culture and eukaryotic culture. Bacterial cell culture market by instruments: Spectrophotometer, incubator, centrifuge, automated cell counter and nucleometer. Bacterial cell culture market by consumables: plate/dish, flask, roll bottle, and petri dishes Bacterial cell culture market by medium: Simple, complex, synthetic, and Special media Bacterial cell culture market by region: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East, and Rest of the WorldThe major growth restraint is the high cost of various media and instruments and untrained professionals in the market.Bacterial Cell Culture market regional analysis:The regional analysis of bacterial cell market comprises of North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and rest of the world.North America:North America is dominating this market on the basis of its revenue followed by Europe. North America region is benefited by the presence of large number of biopharmaceutical industries, and research institutes. The various segments such as instruments and consumables with latest technologies is used by this market and thus is showing good opportunities in future.Asia:Asia region is also showing good opportunities in this market in upcoming years. The major growth driven factors are the rising health care expenditure, rising focus on food safety, and growing demand for antibiotics. As developing countries India, China, and Japan where health related issues and food related problems are the major concerned areas; the bacterial cell culture technology is expected to offer opportunities in these countries.Browse Complete Report atBacterial Cell Culture market major players:Becton, Dickinson and Company, bioMerieux S.A., Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., Eiken Chemical Co, Ltd., EMD (Merck) Millipore, Hi-Media Laboratories Pvt. Ltd., Neogen Corporation, Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC, Scharlab S.L., and Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.The reports also covers brief analysis of Geographical Region includes:Americas North America US CanadaEurope Western Europe Germany France Italy Spain U.K Rest of Western Europe Eastern Europe Poland RussiaAsia Pacific Asia China India Japan Rest of Asia Pacific Countries Australia New Zealand The Middle East& AfricaGet a Table of Content atEvery report of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.About usAt Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Akash AnandP: +1 646 845 9312W:sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Intraductal Papilloma Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of ~ 4.4 % % by 2023

Intraductal Papilloma Market

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Market Research Future has a half cooked research report on the global intraductal papilloma market. Intraductal Papilloma Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of ~ 4.4 % % by 2023Intraductal Papilloma Market Information: By Type (Central/Solitary, Peripheral/Multiple), Diagnosis (Mammogram, Biopsy, Ultrasonography, Computerized Tomography (CT)), Treatment (Microdochectomy, Total Duct Excision), and End User - Global Forecast till 2023An intraductal papilloma is a benign, noncancerous, breast tumour that forms in a milk duct and is made of gland and fibrous tissue as well as blood vessels. These generally appears as lumps after breast examination and may cause nipple discharge or bleeding. Intraductal papilloma most commonly occur in women between ages 35 and 55. Central/solitary papillomas are generally benign while multiple papillomas, have been associated with a slightly higher risk of breast cancer.The symptoms of breast enlargement are breast enlargement, inversion of the nipple thickening or swelling of part of the breast, changes to the breast or nipple skin area, such as dimpling, redness, scaling, peeling etc. Multiple papillomas consist of about 10 % of all intraductal papillomas. Intraductal Papilloma comprise of approximately 10% of all benign breast tumour types. Intraductal papillomas of the breast are benign lesions with an incidence of approximately 2-3% in humans. Risk factors such as obesity, alcohol consumption, postmenopausal hormone therapy, medications containing estrogen and progesterone such as birth control pills, menstrual cycle abnormalities, physical inactivity, not breastfeeding the child etc. increase the chances of intraductal papillomas. Additionally, mothers who have their first child after the age of 35, or never have one, also run equal risks for this condition.Product development represents the best strategy for dominating the market as surgery is the definitive treatment for intraductal papilloma market. The advent of minimally invasive treatment has changed the market landscape for surgeries to a large extent. Miniaturization of surgical instruments and development of non-invasive treatment such as radiofrequency ablation is expected to drive the future market. The growing demand for better minimally invasive surgical procedures is the greatest unmet need of the market.Get a Sample report atGlobal Intraductal papilloma Market PlayersSome of the key players profiled in the report are Allergen plc, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc., Entax Medical, Olympus, Boston Scientific Corporation, Medtronic, Cook Medical, Cook Medical, Inc., and others.Regional AnalysisThe Americas account for a significant market share owing to extensive volume of surgeries performed and high expenditure on the health care. Additionally, the fastest uptake of new products and surgical procedures in the US drives the intraductal papilloma market. Also, concentration of major healthcare companies in the developed countries of this region coupled with the larger insurance penetration is adding fuel to the market growth. Moreover, the US expend high on the healthcare, which accounts for 16% of GDP also cruises the sale of intraductal papilloma treatment.Europe is the second largest market in the world due to high income and strong healthcare penetration. European market growth is led by countries such as Germany and France. The UK is expected to be the fastest growing market over the assessment period.Asia Pacific region is expected to grow rapidly and China and India are likely to lead this market due to fast growing healthcare sector and large unmet needs during the forecast period. South East Asian countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia are projected to contribute highly to the market growth.Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are estimated to drive the Middle East & African market. Other Middle East nations to watch out for will be Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt and Iran. The African region is expected to witness a moderate growth owing to poor economic and political conditions and poor healthcare development.Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 50 market data tables and figures spread over 80 pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content (TOC) & market synopsis on Global Intraductal papilloma Market Research Report  Forecast till 2023.Get a discount atSegmentationThe global intraductal papilloma market has been segmented on the basis of type, diagnosis, treatment, and end user.Based on type, the market has been segmented as central/solitary papillomas, peripheral/multiple papillomas and others.Based on diagnosis, the market has been segmented as examination, ultrasonography, biopsy, mammogram/galactography, ductograms, Computerized Tomography (CT) and others.Based on surgery, the market has been segmented as microdochectomy, total duct excision, drugs and others.Based on the end user, the market has been segmented as hospitals & clinics, academic and research, and others.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Browse Complete Report atTable Of Content1. Report Prologue2. Market Introduction2.1 Definition2.2 Scope Of The Study2.2.1 Research Objective2.2.2 Assumptions2.2.3 Limitations3. Research Methodology3.1 Introduction3.2 Primary Research3.3 Secondary Research3.4 Market Size Estimation4. Market Dynamics4.1 Drivers4.2 Restrains4.3 Opportunities4.4 Challenges4.5 Macroeconomic Indicators4.6 Technology Trends & AssessmentAbout usAt Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact:Market Research FutureMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@Marketresearchfuture.ComWeb:
Orthokeratology Lens Market Report for Period 2017 till 2022 Alpha Corporation, Lucid Korea, Brighten Optix and Others

Orthokeratology Lens Market

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Global Orthokeratology Lens Market report provides detailed analysis of companies namely Alpha Corporation, Lucid Korea, Brighten Optix and Others. This report study includes global market statistics and analysis for example, company performance, historical analysis 2012 to 2016, market forecast 2017 to 2023 in terms of volume, revenue, YOY growth rate, and CAGR for the year 2017 to 2023, etc.Ortho-K is a non-surgical refractive treatment. In order to correct your short-sightedness and astigmatism, the cornea has to be re-shaped. Our optometrists tailor your Ortho-k lenses with highly permeable lens materials according to the precise measurement by the Corneal Topographer.Request for Free Sample Copy of Global Orthokeratology Lens Market 2017Top Company Profiles and Analysis included in this report:AutekEUCLIDParagonAlpha CorporationLucid KoreaBrighten OptixContexProcorneaOthersGlobal Orthokeratology Lens Market: Key Product TypeBoston MaterialParagon MaterialOthers MaterialGlobal Orthokeratology Lens Market: Key ApplicationTeenagersAdultsOthersGlobal Orthokeratology Lens Market: Key RegionAsia-PacificNorth AmericaEuropeSouth AmericaMiddle East & AfricaThe Global Orthokeratology Lens Market analysis report provides detailed value chain for analysis of Global Orthokeratology Lens Market. The value chain helps to analyze major upstream in raw materials, major equipments, manufacturing process, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis.The report also covers in-depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities happened in current and past few years. The Global Orthokeratology Lens Market report explores manufacturers competitive scenario and provides market share for all major players of this market based on production capacity, sales, revenue, geographical presence and other major factors.Enquire before Buying @Table of Contents:1 Market Overview1.1 Market Segment Overview1.1.1 Product Definition1.1.2 Market by Type1.1.2.1 Boston Material1.1.2.2 Paragon Material1.1.2.3 Others Material1.1.3 Market by Application1.1.3.1 Teenagers1.1.3.2 Adults1.2 Global and Regional Market Size.......................Continue (Global Orthokeratology Lens Market Research Industry Report is prepared with the help of extensive primary and secondary sources, directories, journals, newsletters and with the help of third-party application like Hoovers, Factiva, Bloomberg, Businessweek, etc.About Us:Market Reports Company is a global research and consulting company. We provide customized reports. We can study and analyze any market based on wide range of parameters. We can provide market insights for any particular region, country across the globe within shortest possible turn around time.What we offer: Customized Reports: we provide customized report study on any market or industry. Region Specific Study: If you need region specific or if you are searching for particular region market study then, we have expert research team for that. How we work: We work in all domains and industries, you name it and we provide the market research industry report analysis of it. Expertise: Superior Research Team, 24*7 Customer Care ServiceContact UsJason Smith,Sales Manager, Global Business Development,Website:Email: jasonsmith@marketreportscompany.comContact us: +1-888-220-3424Address: 20 N State Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60602 United States
Antihelminthics Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of ~ 5.3% from 2017 to 2023

Antihelminthics Market

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Market Research Future has a half cooked research report on the global Antihelminthics market. Antihelminthics Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of ~ 5.3% from 2017 to 2023Antihelminthics Market Information: By Type (Benzimidazoles, Abamectin, Salicylanilides, Praziquantel), Application (Schistosomiasis, Fasciolasis, Filariasis, Angiostrongylosis, Ascariasis, Giardiasis), End User (Hospital)  Global Forecast till 2023Antihelminthics Market are prescribed to kill parasites (helminthes). Common parasitic infestations include amebiasis, malaria, giardiasis, hookworm, pinworm, threadworm, whipworm and tapeworm infestations. The drugs function either by destroying the worms on contact or by paralyzing them, or by altering the permeability of their plasma membranes. According to World Health Organization (2014), over 1.5 billion people are infected with soil-transmitted helminths worldwide. Additionally, According to the latest report published by WHO, more than 880 million children are in need of treatment for these parasitic diseases. Increasing prevalence of parasitic diseases, rising demand for the treatment, and increasing number of patients drives the growth of the market. Moreover, changing lifestyle and increasing geriatric population have increased the probability of causing digestive tract infections, thus helps in driving the growth of the market. Additionally, the increasing need for the cost-effective treatment and increasing per capita income have fuelled the market growth. However, antihelminthics drugs are slightly toxic and some of the side effects are observed in some patients. This factors may restrain the growth of the market.The global antihelminthics market is expected to grow at a CAGR of ~ 5.3% during the forecast period 2017-2023.Sample Report Available atKey PlayersSome of key the players in the market are Abbott (US), Novartis AG (Switzerland), ZEISS International (Germany), Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc (US), Sanofi (US), Merck & Co., Inc. (US), GlaxoSmithKline plc (US), Astellas Pharma Inc. (Japan), Bayer AG (Germany), Mentis Pharma Ltd. (India), Pfizer Inc. (US), Sanofi (France), ALLERGAN (Ireland), and AstraZeneca (UK).SegmentationThe global antihelminthics market has been segmented on the basis of types, application, and end user.On the basis of types, the market is segmented into benzimidazoles, abamectin, salicylanilides, praziquantel and others. Benzimidazoles is further segmented into albendazole, mebendazole, benzimidazoles, thiabendazole, and others. Salicylanilides is further segmented into niclosamide, oxyclozanide, rafoxanide, and others.On the basis of applications, the market is segmented into schistosomiasis, fasciolasis, filariasis, angiostrongylosis, ascariasis, giardiasis and others.On the basis of end user, the market is segmented into hospitals, clinics, and others.Regional AnalysisThe Americas command the major share of the market owing to the large patient population, strong government support for research & development, growing prevalence of digestive diseases. According to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, over 135 million people are suffering from GI infection in America. Moreover, increasing geriatric population has fuelled the growth of the market.Europe holds the second position in the global antihelminthics market followed by Asia Pacific. The growth of the European market is majorly attributed to the increasing geriatric population, government support, and well-developed healthcare sector. Asia Pacific is the fastest growing antihelminthics market. China, and India are the key contributors to the market growth due to huge patient population, rapidly growing economy to support the population, increasing healthcare expenditure, and huge population base.The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait are expected to drive the Middle East & African market. The Middle East & Africa holds the least share of the global market due to limited availability of medical facilities and poor economic condition in African region. However the growth of the Africa market is high due to presence of opportunities for the development of this market.Browse complete report atThe global antihelminthics market is segmented on the basis of types, application, and end user.On the basis of types, the market is segmented into benzimidazoles, abamectin, salicylanilides, praziquantel and others. Benzimidazoles is further segmented into albendazole, mebendazole, benzimidazoles, thiabendazole, and others. Salicylanilides is further segmented into niclosamide, oxyclozanide, rafoxanide, and others.On the basis of applications, the market is segmented into schistosomiasis, fasciolasis, filariasis, angiostrongylosis, ascariasis, giardiasis and others.On the basis of end user, the market is segmented into hospitals, clinics, and others.On the basis types, benzimidazoles holds the major share in the market due to their long history and efficiency. A number of different types of benzimidazoles are available in the market, however, certain side effects are observed in the patient, which may slow the growth of the benzimidazoles market.BRIEF TOCChapter 1. Report PrologueChapter 2. Market Introduction2.1 Definition2.2 Scope Of The Study2.2.1 Research Objective2.2.2 Assumptions2.2.3 LimitationsAsk Question to Expert atChapter 3. Research Methodology3.1 Introduction3.2 Primary Research3.3 Secondary Research3.4 Market Size EstimationChapter 4. Market Dynamics4.1 Drivers4.2 Restrains4.3 Opportunities4.4 Challenges4.5 Macroeconomic Indicators4.6 Technology Trends & AssessmentChapter 5. Market Factor Analysis5.1 Porters Five Forces Analysis5.1.1 Bargaining Power Of Suppliers5.1.2 Bargaining Power Of Buyers5.1.3 Threat Of New Entrants5.1.4 Threat Of Substitutes5.1.5 Intensity Of Rivalry5.2 Value Chain Analysis5.3 Investment Feasibility Analysis5.4 Pricing AnalysisAbout usAt Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Akash AnandP: +1 646 845 9312W:sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Neurorehabilitation Devices Market Quadruples To USD ~ 2.25 Billion Posting A Whooping CAGR By 2023

Neurorehabilitation Devices Market

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The Global Neurorehabilitation Devices Market is growing with the rapid pace; mainly due the burgeoning Healthcare Sector and the rising prevalence of neurological disorders.According to a recent study report published by the Market Research Future, The global Neurorehabilitation Devices Market is booming and expected to gain prominence over the forecasted period. The Market is estimated to demonstrate a huge growth by 2023, surpassing its previous growth records in terms of value & volume. The market for Neurorehabilitation Devices is expected register an exponential growth by reaching ~ 2.25 Billion in 2022 with a striking CAGR.The global Neurorehabilitation Devices Market is predominantly driven by increasing prevalence of neurological disorders and government funding. Heavy investments transpired in to the field of R&D by the manufacturers to develop advent devices provides impetus to the market growth.Rehabilitation of cognitive function involves methods for recalibrating neural pathways or training new neural pathways to improve cognitive functioning that has been weakened by trauma or other neurological disorders. The recent advancements in the technology can make a significant improvement in the recovery of the patients suffered from the head injury, stroke, spinal cord injury and some neurological conditions such as Parkinsons disease. Some of the big companies in the business are employing robotics in the rehabilitation technologies in order to enhance the scope of the rehab process.Sample Report Available atNeuro-rehabilitation services are essential in reducing post-stroke impairments, enhancing independence, and improving recovery in hospital and post-discharge. However these services are therapist-dependent and resource intensive. Patients disengagement and boredom in stroke units are common which adversely affect functional and psychological outcomes. Novel techniques such as use of iPads are increasingly researched to overcome such challenges.In January 2017, a student research team conducted a study to determine the feasibility, effectiveness, acceptability, and barriers to the use of iPads in stroke neuro-rehabilitation. Studies were included in accordance with the review selection criteria. The majority of the studies focused on iPads use in speech and language therapy. Although of small scale, the studies highlighted that iPads are feasible, have the potential to improve rehabilitation outcomes, and can improve patients social isolation. Patients stroke severity and financial limitations are some of the barriers highlighted in this review. This review presents preliminary data supportive for the use of iPad technology in stroke neuro-rehabilitation. However, further research is needed to determine impact on rehabilitation goals acquisition, clinical efficacy, and cost-efficiency.Neurorehabilitation Devices Global Market  Key PlayersThe Neurorehabilitation Devices market is widely expanded and highly competitive with the presence of a numerous major and small players operating at international level and regional level around the globe. Based upon product differentiation, portfolio, and pricing these vendors are competing against each other. Furthermore, the competitive strength of these market players is dependent on product precision, product pricing, versatility and product reliability. The market will witness a fierce competition due to the expected extensions in product & service and product innovations. Manufacturers operating in the Neurorehabilitation Devices market strive to develop devices with adept technology with unrivalled design and features that support the fastest recovery from the years old (chronic) disability of patients and enhance their quality of life. They are extensively adopting the advent technologies such as IoT, nanotechnology, robotics, wearable technology and non-invasive medical technologies to support the development of Neurorehabilitation Devices. Acknowledging the augmented need of the time, these key players are extensively developing a line of devices with advent technology and efficacy.Browse complete report atNeurorehabilitation Devices Global Market  SegmentsThe Neurorehabilitation Devices market can be segmented in to 4 key dynamics for the convenience of the report and enhanced understanding;Segmentation By Product Type : Comprises Neuro-robotic devices, Wearable Devices, Non-Invasive Stimulators, Brain Computer Interface and other.Segmentation By End User : Comprises Hospitals/clinics, cognitive care centers, research institutes, and other.Segmentation By Application : Comprises Parkinsons Disease, Spinal Cord Injury, Brain Trauma Injury, Stroke, Cerebral Palsy, Schizophrenia, and other.Segmentation By Region : Comprises Geographical regions - North America, Europe, APAC and Rest of the World.Ask Question to Expert atNeurorehabilitation Devices Market  Regional AnalysisGlobally America is the largest market for neurorehabilitation devices eventually contributing to the growth of North America Market. Europe is the second-largest market. Furthermore Asia-Pacific market is expected to be the fastest growing market for neurorehabilitation devices. However high cost associated with the purchase and implementation of these devices is impeding the adoption of Neurorehabilitation Devices in APAC Market.MRFR Analysis indicates that the grand growth of North America and Europe Market is attributed to the augmented prevalence of neurological disorders, Technological advancement, increasing awareness of populace towards neurorehabilitation devices and centers, and the accessibility to the state of art healthcare infrastructure.About usAt Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact:Market Research FutureMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.ComWeb:
Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing Global Market Surging With A Striking CAGR; Asserts MRFR

Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing Market

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Market Research Future published a Cooked research report on Global Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing Market Research Report - Forecast to 2027 Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2027A contract manufacturing organization (CMO), in some cases called an agreement improvement and manufacturing association, is an organization that serves different organizations in the pharmaceutical business on a contract basis to give extensive services from drug advancement through drug manufacturing. This permits major pharmaceutical organizations to outsource those parts of the business, which can help with versatility or can permit the major organization to concentrate on drug discovery and drug advertising. The Global Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing Market is growing with the rapid pace; mainly due the burgeoning Healthcare Sector.According to a recent study report published by the Market Research Future, The global Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing Market is booming and expected to gain prominence over the forecasted period. The Market is estimated to demonstrate a huge growth by 2027, surpassing its previous growth records in terms of value & volume. The market for Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing is estimated to increase by a substantial monetarily growth by end of the forecast i.e. 2027, with expansion rate of a considerable CAGR during the period 2017 to 2027.Sample Report Available atThe Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing market is predominantly driven by the augmented global demand and supply for the medicines, growing demand for the generic drugs, huge pipeline of drugs manufacturing and growing number of patent expires. Additionally, factors such as increasing geriatric population, and technological advancements in the medicinal field are providing impetus to the market growth.However, augmenting complexity of clinical trials and lack of in-house laboratory capacity are some of the factors may pose challenges to the market growth.During the analysis, MRFR Research team observed an interesting trend in the market that to gain competitive advantage, pharma companies are increasingly emphasising upon R&D of drugs rather than getting involved in the production of drugs.Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing Market  Key PlayersThe Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing market is widely expanded and highly competitive with the presence of a numerous major and small players operating at international level and regional level around the globe. Based upon pricing and services of array these vendors are competing against each other. Furthermore, the competitive strength of these market players is dependent on Service precision, Service pricing, versatility and Service reliability. The market will witness a fierce competition due to the expected extensions in innovations. Manufacturers operating in the Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing market strive to offer services with adept technology with unrivalled design and features.The Players operating in the market are looking for rapid expansion and integration set for 2017-2018, with which these key players continue to build a pharmaceutical services company with complementary offerings in key regions to serve the rapidly growing market. They ensure that the acquired company has significant professional experience, state of the art capability and a long history of delivering high quality pharmaceuticals that meet or exceed customer expectations and regulatory requirements in every major market around the world.Browse complete report atIndustry News:On Oct. 6, 2017, Avara Pharmaceutical Services (Norwalk, US) announced that it has acquired to acquire the Reims, France manufacturing and distribution facility. This key acquisition is another important component of their strategic plan that further expands their services.On 13 October 2017, Piramal Pharma Solutions, the contract manufacturing division of Piramal Enterprises (India) announced the investment of $55 million in capacity expansion in expanding manufacturing capacity of APIs across sites in North America, Asia and the UK.It will also expand capabilities for APIs with higher potency at its plant in Riverview, Michigan in the US, while augmenting early development capabilities out of Ennore, India, through additions of good-manufacturing-practices-compliant kilo labs and a pilot plant.Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing Market  SegmentsThe Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing market can be segmented in to 2 key dynamics for the convenience of the report and enhanced understanding;Segmentation By Types : Comprises Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) Manufacturing, Finished Dosage Formulation (FDF) Secondary Market, and other.Segmentation By Region : Comprises Geographical regions - North America, Europe, APAC and Rest of the World.Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing Market  Regional AnalysisGlobally North America is the largest market for Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing. The North American market for Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing is expected to grow at a substantial CAGR and is expected to reach to astronomical amounts by the end of the forecasted period. This is due to increasing consumption of medicines around the world. Europe is the second-largest market for Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing which is expected to grow at a considerable CAGR. Whereas Asia pacific is expected to be a growing market for Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing market and expected to grow at a rapid rate owing to the availability of skilled manpower at a lower labour cost are some of the factors propelling the rapid growth in this region.Ask Question to Expert atPharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing Market  Regional AnalysisGlobally America is the largest market for Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing eventually contributing to the growth of North America Market. Europe is the second-largest market. Furthermore Asia-Pacific market is expected to be the fastest growing market for neurorehabilitation devices. However high cost associated with the purchase and implementation of these devices is impeding the adoption of Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing in APAC Market.MRFR Analysis indicates that the grand growth of North America and Europe Market is attributed to the augmented prevalence of neurological disorders, Technological advancement, increasing awareness of populace towards Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing and centers, and the accessibility to the state of art healthcare infrastructure.About usAt Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact:Market Research FutureMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.ComWeb:
Connecting your phone to your Windows 10 PC has never been easierand with the hints Microsoft has dropped as part of the Fall Creators Update, it looks like the phone will be a big deal in future PCs.

Right now, if you own either an Android phone or an Apple iPhone, you can reply to texts right from your PC. In the future, youll be able to take webpages you were reading on your train ride and send them to your Windows PC at the office. Passwords? Who needs em? And now, with a dedicated Phone section within the Settings menu, Microsoft appears to be setting up a framework for even stronger connections in the future.

For those of you frantically waving Windows phonesyes, you too can connect your phones to your PC, via the Continuum experience Microsoft debuted a little more than a year ago. Unfortunately, with limited hardware and tepid customer support, Microsofts Windows phone aspirations are basically dead. Instead, Microsoft has focused on bringing its ecosystem to the far more popular iPhone and Android platforms. The best thing is all of these features are live within the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

1. Reply to texts right within Windows

If youre like me, you probably work best without distractionand most of your electronic gadgets are primarily designed to distract you, with notifications, popups and audible tones to get your attention. Texts and phone calls are the worst, in part because weve programmed ourselves to prioritize those needs above everything else. Now, Windows 10 allows you to treat a text like just another email.

Mark Hachman / IDG Cortana (here, for Android) is the app youll need to link your phones texting ability with your Windows 10 PC.

Heres what youll need: an up-to-date Windows 10 PC, an Android phone or iPhoneand, most importantly, the Microsoft Cortana app for Android or Cortana for the iPhone. If you wish, Cortana can step in and largely replace your phones digital assistant. Even if you refuse her assistance, however, Cortana operates behind the scenes as the connective tissue between your phone and your PC. Weve used the most popular phone platform, Android, for this article.

The key to connecting your phone and your PC lies within the Cortana apps cross-device settings (Go to the apps hamburger menu in the upper left-hand corner, then go to Settings > Cross device.) Make sure that the top three settings (Missed call notifications, Incoming message notifications, and Low battery notifications) are all toggled on. You can also toggle on App notifications sync, though of the four apps Cortana detected, some were obsolete (my discontinued Basis Peak fitness band app) and others were of dubious value, such as Googles VR services.

Mark Hachman / IDG Toggle these Cortana options on to get your phone talking to your PC.

A bit strangely, the ability to sync Cortana itself is off by default. If you toggle it on, the app warns that Cortana will have the ability to read all your messages. For now, there doesnt seem to be any reason to do so, though its certainly possible that in the future your spouse might be able to text you a reminderpick up eggs at the store and Cortana will interpret it as a formal reminder.

As you might expect, the capabilities that the Cortana app toggled on enable the corresponding abilities within your PC. When your phones battery drops below a certain point (usually about 15 percent) a low-battery notification will slide in from the lower right-hand corner, and will archive itself within your Action Center notifications. If you miss a phone call, another notification will appear. Texts sent to your phone will also appear as pop-up notifications.

Mark Hachman / IDG Texts sent to your phone will turn into pop-up notifications

What makes this especially convenient is the ability to reply to phone calls and texts right at your PC. If you miss a text, for example, you can click the notification (look for the downward-pointing caret) and a text box opens up. Within it, you can send a reply, and Cortana will talk to your phone and send it on its way. Even if you miss a call, you can send a text letting the other party know youll respond soon. Windows doesnt allow you to actually call the other party backeither by phone or by Skypethough this could, presumably, be added to the future.

Mark Hachman / IDG but if you miss one, you can still reply right from within the Action Center.

Unfortunately, this feature doesnt allow you to actually initiate texts from the Action Center notifications. You can, though, send texts from Cortana.

Mark Hachman / IDG Say Hey, Cortana, text John: We were going and the rest of the text to send SMS texts right from your PC.

If theres a drawback, though, its that this capability still isnt as reliable as it needs to be. If you move among multiple Windows PCs, Windows can get confused about which one youre working on, and send notifications to another. But even if youre not switching PCs, Windows has an annoying habit of not always sending notifications until you shift focus between apps, or resume working from sleep or hibernation. Then a string of notifications pop up on your PC. Fortunately, you can still go into the Action Center and respond via text from the notification itself.

2. Pick up where you left off, on the web

Microsoft is still adding features to the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, and Windows 10 Insider Build 16257 finally added one of the features Microsoft had originally promised: the pick up where you left off capability for phones. The idea is that you should be able to move seamlessly between Windows devices, specifically your phone and your PC. Again, this should be eventually part of the Fall Creators Update, due in September or so.

To enable this feature, youll need to do two things: link your phone within Windows, and download the required mobile app.

Mark Hachman / IDG Meet a newcomer to the Windows 10 Settings menu: the Phone settings.

Insider Build 16257 adds a new section to the Settings menu: the Phone settings menu. There, the relatively spartan Phone settings asks you to connect your phone to your PC. To do so, youll need to enter your phone number to text yourself a link to the app youll needMicrosoft Apps, which began life as an index of the Microsoft apps within the respective app stores. A recent update enables the app to connect your phone to your PC. (Its not clear whether youll eventually need both the Cortana apps as well as the Microsoft Apps to connect your phone to your PC, but for now, you do.)

Microsoft You can share a Web page now, or later.

Now, when you surf to a webpageeven on Androids Chrome browseryoull have the option to share it to your PC, just as you might share it to Twitter or Facebook. Youll have the options to share it now or share it later. Sharing it now immediately opens a webpage using Windows Edge browser. Sharing it later should place the link inside the Action Centers notifications for later viewing, though a bug seemed to prevent that from working on my machine. (It appears that Build 16273 may fix this, based on the update notes.)

Mark Hachman / IDG Share a Web page with the Continue on PC function, and Microsoft Edge will open it on your PC.

Right now, the sharing options are not available on the mobile Office apps, though you can always auto-save documents to OneDrive for later editing on the PC.

Note that Microsoft already provides a PC-centric pick up where you left off capability within Cortana, where users who work on more than one PC can theoretically resume their work on another PC. However, its of limited use. Click the Cortana search box, and then the Ive got more for you box just above. Cortana will then show you the apps you were previously working on. Thats of limited use: Youre really going to forget that you were working in Outlook?)

Mark Hachman / IDG Not so useful right now.

3. Bypass your Windows password and use your phone instead

By now, youve probably heard of two-factor authentication, where your phone is used as an additional authentication beyond your password. Use it! But you may not know that you can avoid using your Windows password and use your phone as the primary login method to certain Microsoft apps and servicestheoretically, at least.

Remember, two-factor security is based on any two of these three factors: what you know, what you have, and what you are. Normally, two-factor authentication works by asking you for your password (what you know), then texting a code to your phone, or using an app (what you have). Microsofts Authenticator app for Android and iPhone is the approved way to receive that code. The combination of the password you know and the code Microsoft sends to your device secures the transaction.

IDG If you want, you can turn your phone into your primary authentication device.

But you could also go a step further. Normally, if for some reason the Authenticator app cant access the server and approve the transaction, the app can automatically generate an eight-digit code that changes every 30 seconds. To access it, you may need to tap the downward-facing caret next to your account, which displays the code.

However, the Authenticator app offers a second way to authenticate thats not immediately obvious. If you tap that caret again, a second menu will open up, offering the ability to set up phone sign in.

Heres how it works. Some pages that ask for your Microsoft password have a small text link to Use an app instead. Authenticator becomes the first factor in the pages authenticationremember, your phone (with the Authenticator app installed) is the what you have factor thats unique to you. Youll still need a password, though. And in place of your Windows password, youll either enter your phones PIN unlock code (what you know) or touch your finger to its biometric sensor (who you are).

Note that this works only for personal Microsoft accounts. Though the Authenticator app is available for Windows phones, this feature wont work with them. (If that makes you mad, you can always complain in the comments section on the Authenticator page.) Microsoft also promises that more and more webpages will use this method to authenticate thembut for right now, we havent been able to find any.

Which method is superior? If you have a complex, unique Windows password (you do, right?), entering it and using your phones Authenticator app as the additional factor is probably more secure. However, its up to you.

Unfortunately (or not) Microsoft still hasnt enabled this method for unlocking your PC, though you can set up Windows to lock your PC when youre away, if your PC senses you (and your phone) have moved away. Go to Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options, then scroll down to click the checkbox for Dynamic lock. Now, if you walk far enough away (with your phone), your PC will automatically lock itself to secure your privacy.

Over time, its likely that Microsoft will try to tie the phone even more strongly to the PC. With over half of Americans now owning a smartphone (and millions more users overseas), its easy to understand why.

This story was updated on October 23 to reflect that the new feature is in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, and to add new details.
Password manager Dashlane and PC maker Lenovo are among the first consumer-facing companies to take advantage of a little-known feature within Intels 8th-generation Core chips that could become much more popular: enabling two-factor authentication with just your PC, and not your phone.

What Intel calls Intel Online Connect (or, more generically, Universal Second Factor (U2F) authentication) lives within the 8th-generation Core architecture. Typically, two-factor authentication (2FA)recommended for years as an additional security measure for email, online storage, and other datarequired that a code be sent to your phone either via an app or SMS. Intels 8th-gen Core architecture and its associated software cuts out the need for a phone, simply requiring you to click a software button to authenticate the 2FA transaction.

Intels Online Connect improves on a related technology Intel introduced in its 7th-generation Core chips, known as Software Guard Extensions, or SGX. SGX is essentially a protected area within the chip for storing encryption keys. But only two services announced support for SGX: Dropbox and Duo Security, which announced proofs-of-concept earlier this year.

Lenovo is the first PC maker to announce support for Intel Online Connect in both some of its older as well as its more recent PCs. On Tuesday, Lenovo announced Intel Online Connect support for the Yoga 920, IdeaPad 720S, ThinkPad X1 Tablet (2nd generation), ThinkPad X1 Carbon (5th generation), ThinkPad Yoga 370, ThinkPad T570, ThinkPad P51s, ThinkPad T470s, ThinkPad X270 and ThinkPad X270s. Intel Online Connect can be either downloaded from the web directly, or will be made available via Lenovo System Update and Lenovo App Explorer on all supported Lenovo devices, the company said.

Why this matters: Breaking into your PC is bad enoughthats why theres Windows Hello, user PINs, and Windows passwords. With web services accessible from just about anywhere, however, theres a need for a second layer of security to differentiate you from the bad guys. Two-factor authentication helps secure those online transactions; U2F promises to make them less of a hassle.

Ryan Whitwam Traditionally, two-factor authentication assumes the use of a phone, though a dedicated USB key can also be used.

How U2F works within Intels Core chips

Once the 8th-generation Core chips ship, Dashlane will immediately be able to take advantage of the built-in technology and use U2F as an additional form of authentication, Allison Baker, the strategic partnerships manager for Dashlane, said. She confirmed that U2F will work with 8th-gen Core chips for consumers, and dont require Intels vPro technology for businesses.

You dont need a phone or anything else, besides a compatible Intel-based PC, Baker said.

The FIDO Alliance developed U2F as an open authentication standard, designed to help simplify two-factor authentication. For the purposes of registering with an online service like Dashlane, two keys are created: a public one, which is registered with the service itself, as well as a private one, which is stored within the Core chip on the client PC.

According to Dashlanes Baker, the clients private key signs an assertion that the service can verify as coming from the client PC. But the signature is only released after the user verifies his presence by clicking a button on the screen, displayed by Intels Online Connect middleware. Intels been busy working on PC security solutions for years; last year, Intel showed off its Authenticate technology, combining fingerprints, PIN, paired phones, and more.

According to a GIF Dashlane prepared to demonstrate the process, authenticating with Dashlane requires entering your password. Intels Online Connect will then find the security key. Sending it on its way requires clicking on a button that appears randomly within a separate window, within 15 seconds. That window uses whats called Intel Protected Transaction Display technology, which actually generates the screen from within the Intel chip itself. The user sees the button; according to Intel, any man-in-the-middle attacker would merely see a blank, black box with no indication on where to click.

It appears, though, that U2F places more of an emphasis on the first line of security used to defend your PC: Windows Hello, a PIN, or a password. If an attacker were able to guess your PIN while you left your eighth-generation PC alone to buy a cup of coffee, theyd still need to know your Dashlane master password to log in. But with traditional two-factor, phone-based authentication, a service like Dashlane would also buzz your phonewhich you might have in your pocket, alerting you that an attack was in progress.

In any event, though, services like Dashlane appear to be preparing to take advantage of the U2F capabilities built into Intels Core chips. Passwords used to be sufficient, but complex, hard-to-guess passwords can be a pain to use repeatedly. The challenge is to offer security without imposing too much of a burden on the user, and Intel and its partners appear to be zeroing in on quick, convenient security methods.

This story was updated at 11:40 AM on Oct. 24 to note that laptops and tablets from Lenovo now support the new Intel Online Connect technology.
Do you have free WiFi?

Thats becoming an increasingly common question for small business owners. And with good reason. Studies show businesses see a 72% success rate in increased sales after implementing free WiFi. Accenture reports that 64% of consumers make a restaurant decision based on WiFi availability.

Reaching out to wireless influencers, we discovered three main areas or focus for business owners who offer, or want to offer free WiFi: security, speed and management. Heres what they had to say:

Meeting customers expectations of blazing fast free WiFi, and keeping your business safe dont have to be mutually exclusive. According to a dozen experts we consulted, there are a host of best practices and practical considerations that will get small business customers online safely, while protecting data and identities belonging to both parties  customers and businesses.

And its not just free WiFi thats expected; customers expect fast and reliable WiFi as well. Offering slow, glitchy WiFi can be worse than no WiFi at all.

Installing a reliable business network can turn out to be a difficult task that could trip up small business owners. Theyre concerned about cyber security risks and lack of control. And theres the possibility that network administration can take away from their core mission  like selling coffee, or sandwiches  and reflect poorly on their company.

The biggest challenges Ive seen with free WiFi are security and speed, says Jeff Cutler, technology consultant and writer. The best solutions for business owners regarding free WiFi are to establish a secondary channel for anyone visiting your facilities. This prevents many security concerns  as the separate network can be monitored and secured apart from the companys main systems. And it ensures limited lag as the guest network can run on separate servers and be fully controlled by IT.

Separate networks for administration and public consumption was echoed by several of the experts.

Free WiFi needs to be completely segregated from the companys network, says IDTheftSecurity.com Robert Siciliano, CEO.

Chad Schlotter, Bluelock Solution Architect, joins the chorus with this recommendation: Keep your internal WiFi hidden and only broadcast your free WiFi. Maintain as much separation from the internal WiFi and the free WiFi as possible and limit the amount of bandwidth available to the free WiFi to not allow those users to consume it all.

Slow speeds and other glitches in the user experience can reflect badly on the business  almost a no good deed goes unpunished scenario. The user experience is key.

The biggest challenges and glitches I see for SMBs offering free WiFi are customers who cant connect or when they do connect cant get past the captive portal system (the WiFi landing page) to enjoy the Internet, says technology content consultant David Geer.

Speed Thrills

Once connected, speed is critical. To avoid common glitches, SMBs should adopt best practice approaches to WiFi installation and consider aspects such as sufficient fixed backhaul capacity and suitable locations of access points (not behind pillars) so they are close enough to the users, says Saul Friedner, associate director, Spectrum Services at LS Telcom. Also, if SMBs can determine the existing usage of WiFi within the area of their business (best to do this prior to deployment) that will help them know in advance if there is already extensive use and thus likelihood of poor quality of service.

That pre-installation phase can help assure success, says Tom Hollingsworth, Founder of The Networking Nerd. Its important to make sure to offer enough capacity to meet the needs of a growing mobile workforce and customer base without causing issues with airtime contention, he says.

Be safe and secure

Rivalling speed for importance to small businesses offering free WiFi is security. From passwords to data protection to guarding against third-party attacks, here are some pointers from our influencers.

System administrator and popular blogger and YouTuber known as Jessassin emphasizes passwords. One thing I see done incorrectly on public wireless is not having a passcode. Password protection should be considered a critical part of any network rollout.

IDTheftSecurity.coms Robert Siciliano offers these guidelines:

Create a secure WiFi that requires a user name and password to join. This may not prevent all kinds of e-crimes but its a start to improve your WiFi network security.

Confirm you are on a business account [with your ISP]: Many small businesses may set up under a personal account because it might be a bit cheaper. But that personal account doesnt enjoy some of the protection and indemnities that a business account would.

Free WiFi: Good for Business, But Must be Managed

Small business WiFi is here to stay, and growing. The WiFi Alliance reports that with more than 3 billion WiFi device shipments expected in 2017 and more than 8 billion devices currently in use around the world, WiFi is playing a more prominent role in the expanding communications infrastructure, including consumers expectations of free, secure and fast access from small businesses.

Says Jeff Cutler, From coffeehouses to global headquarters, Ive found most are now facing the reality that all visitors want access to the Web, and providing secure passage to guests data is often as valuable as protecting your own.

Click here to learn more.
Harbor Springs frees up funding with public safety millage

The Harbor Springs public safety millage will free up some of the funds impacted by the Headlee Amendment, but city officials say it isn't a long-term fix.
a brand new 10-mile flow trail outside of St. George, Utah

About DMBTA:

About the Calendar:

2018 Fundraising Calendar for Dixie Mountain Bike Trails Association

2018 Cover

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Each year Chasing Epic creates a mountain bike photography-based calendar to sell, with all proceeds benefiting a non-profit mountain biking organization. This year is no different, as were selling a calendar to help fund. The trail project is being overseen by the fine folks at DMBTA  the Dixie Mountain Bike Trails Association. If youve ever ridden any of the epic trails around St. George and Hurricane, Utah (with us or on your own), then you know how awesome these guys are and they need help funding this new flow trail that will be just as epic.Starting on West Mountain Peak, the new flow trail will be a 10-mile directional trail thats sure to create some incredible memories and even better riding. The fine folks at DMBTA will work with the BLM to get a matching grant with this donation, in essencethe amount were able to donate so buy a lot of calendars!The Dixie Mountain Bike Trails Association is a mountain biking access and trails advocacy group formed in June of 2010 in response to the BLM travel planning process. We are located in the Southwest Corner of Utah known as Dixie; current projects include continued master planning for BLM trails and access, the developing community relationships and infrastructure, existing trails maintenance coordination, and ethics awareness activities.- Each calendar is $22, which includes shipping within the continental United States.- There isto the number you can purchase; we recommend buying a lot of them so we can donate even more money to build new trails!from the calendar sales will be donated to Dixie Mountain Bike Trails Association, with 100% of the money going towards building the new West Mountain Peak flow trail.- Calendar orders will be taken until December 1st, and the calendars will be mailed in time to arrive at least a week prior to Christmas. We typically shoot for the second week of December.See below for the images in this years calendar. You can purchase the calendars at the link below. If youd like to pay by check, please email us directly at: info@chasingepicmtb.com and well send you more information.
I've always been drawn to the Canadian North. It gives me gratitude for how large, beautiful, and untouched Canada really is. The Trance is the ideal bike to explore this. It's light and agile for long climbs to remote zones, yet eats almost anything while descending. When the trail can be uncertain ahead, it gives me confidence knowing I'm on the right bike
Advancement in Wound Dressing Market begins years before when the film and hydrocolloids introduced. Advanced Wound Dressing accelerates the healing process by keeping moist environment around the wound along with medicines like antibiotic and painkillers.

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Advancement in Wound Dressing Market begins years before when the film and hydrocolloids introduced. Advanced Wound Dressing accelerates the healing process by keeping moist environment around the wound along with medicines like antibiotic and painkillers.Advanced Wound Dressing used to heal acute and chronic wounds especially in chronic wounds. Advanced wound dressing has shown very significant results in diabetic patients as well in chronic wounds that takes a long time or cannot be healed by traditional wound dressings.Browse Full Report With ToC @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-807 Advance Wound Dressing Market: Drivers and RestraintsAdvanced Wound Dressing market is growing as the number of diabetic and chronic patients increasing rapidly worldwide. Major drivers for the Advanced Wound Dressing Market is ageing population, increase in incident of accidents, increase in adoption rate of Advanced Wound Dressings like hydrocolloids and wound contact layers, continuously advance improvement in dressing like combination of antibiotics and painkillers with dressings. However, high price and lack of adequate reimbursement policies in developing countries are the main hindrance of the market growth.Advance Wound Dressing Market: OverviewAdvance Wound Dressing Market is growing with a significant CAGR because of its high adoption rate in treatment of chronic wounds. Developing countries is growing with a higher CAGR compared to other parts of the world.Advance Wound Dressing Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic region, global Advanced Wound Dressing market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.North America contributes maximum in global Wound dressing Market Share. European countries showing a good growth as the adoption rate for Advance Wound Dressing is increasing for diabetic patients, burns, and chronic wounds. Asia Pacific is growing with a significant CAGR for Advance Wound Dressing market due to increase in healthcare awareness. Amongst the Asian countries, India and china are more promising due to large population pool and increased number of hospitals.Request For Report sample @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-807 Advance Wound Dressing Market: Key PlayersKey players of Advance Wound Dressing market includes Smith & Nephew, Molnlycke Health Care, Paul Hartmann, Covidien, ConvaTec, B. Braun Melsungen, BSN medical, 3M Health Care, Systagenix Wound Management, Derma Sciences, Coloplast, Laboratoires Urgo, Johnson & Johnson, Kinetic Concepts, Inc and Others. Local Players also have a significant presence in Advance Wound Dressing Market.
Aircraft Cleaning Chemical Market

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CONTACT:Future Market InsightsAbhishek Bhudoliya616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531

The external climatic conditions and temperature variations associated with of aerial transportation has generated the need of operation and maintenance activities in aircrafts, which in turn has generated a considerable demand for aircraft cleaning chemical. Stringent quality inspections and related checks are conducted during every scheduled take offs and landings of an aircraft. The aircraft cleaning chemical ensures the performance, safety, and aesthetics of an aircraft body protecting it. This involves periodic cleaning with appropriate aircraft cleaning chemical safeguards the aircraft from such damages and extends the shelf life. The excessive grime that may get collected on the exterior body, wings and pilot window screens of an aircraft can cause adverse effects on performance and safety of the aircraft thereby requiring regular cleaning of aircraft. Aircraft cleaning chemical is made for specific purposes, which includes manufacturing, maintenance, and testing of aircraft. Apart from these, aircraft cleaning chemical is useful for polishing, coating, etc.There are many chemicals available for cleaning aircraft to keep the aircraft at its best in all weather conditions. Aircraft cleaning chemical is used to keep the components of aircraft in safe and working condition and also protection from metal corrosion.Request For Report Sample@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3155 Aircraft Cleaning Chemical Market: Market DynamicsThe demand of aircraft cleaning chemical is highly driven by OEMs and after sales service industry. The high growth in aircraft after sales service industry is expected to drive the growth of global aircraft cleaning chemical market. The future of aircraft cleaning chemical market looks stable with opportunities in commercial, military, and personal segment. It has been estimated that with the increase in air passenger traffic, air travel increases, which creates a positive growth for aircraft cleaning chemical that caters to the demand of maintenance and operations activates. It has been also estimated that the major demand of aircraft cleaning chemical is from the commercial aviation industry.There is stringent regulation by the authorities in respect to the aircraft cleaning chemicals which is required in aviation industry to ensure the safety and effective functioning of the aircrafts. The development of aviation chemicals meeting all regulatory guidelines along with maintaining their profitability is expected to remain a key challenge among aviation chemicals manufacturersAircraft Cleaning Chemical Market: Regional OutlookNorth America is expected to be a relatively large market of aircraft cleaning chemical as it covers one of the largest aircraft fleets globally along with a large number of airlines in the world. Maintenance chemical usage is directly proportional to aircraft fleet size, and an increase in number of aircrafts is a growth factor for this market.The regions with cold climatic conditions will always be major consumers of the de-icing / anti-icing purpose. Asia Pacific is expected to grow with a high CAGR, due to the expansion in aircraft fleet. The increase in passenger traffic across end use sectors in turn is expected to increase the scope of operation and maintenance activities thereby driving the aircraft cleaning chemicals market.Aircraft Cleaning Chemical Market: Market SegmentsThe global market for aircraft cleaning chemical can be segmented on the basis of product type, chemicals, and end user.Based on nature of chemicals, the aircraft cleaning chemical market can be divided intoOrganic ChemicalInorganic ChemicalOn the basis of end user, the global aircraft cleaning chemical market can be divided into:General aviationBusiness aviationDefense aviationCommercial aviation.On the basis of product type, global aircraft cleaning chemical market can be divided intoAviation Acidic Cleaners & DegreasersAviation Neutral Cleaners & DegreasersAlkaline CleanersMetal Pretreatment ChemicalsPaint and Coating RemoverCorrosion InhibitorsAircraft Polishing ChemicalsAircraft Dry wash Cleaner & WaxGrease Cutting AgentsOthersVisit For TOC@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3155 Aircraft Cleaning Chemical Market: Market ParticipantsExamples of some of the market participants identified in the global aircraft cleaning chemical market are Callington Haven Pty Ltd, Spirit Group International, ALMADION International, Jaco Aerospace., Velocity Chemicals Ltd, Crest Chemicals, and Z.I. Chemicals, LLC among others.
Anesthesia is the combination of the endpoints which are reached by drugs acting on different but overlapping sites in the central nervous system of human body. General anesthesia has three main objectives like lack of movement (paralysis), unconsciousness, and blunting of the stress response.

PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 10:57:32

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Abhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531

Anesthesia is the combination of the endpoints which are reached by drugs acting on different but overlapping sites in the central nervous system of human body. General anesthesia has three main objectives like lack of movement (paralysis), unconsciousness, and blunting of the stress response.Anesthesiology as a specialty has spread its hold in the hospital care system. The anesthesia machine is one of the most important medical apparatus in the hospital. The goal of anesthesia care is to ensure the safest possible experience for the patient. Anesthesia machines have evolved from simple, pneumatic devices to sophisticated, computer-based, and fully integrated anesthesia systems.Browse Full Report With ToC @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-789 Anesthesia Machines Market  Drivers and RestraintsPresently anesthesia machines global market is driven by the technological advancement, aging population, increase in the prevalence of chronic disease, increase in the minimal invasive surgeries around the world.Anaesthesia global market drives by the aging population, technological advancement, rise in the number of surgical procedures, Medical tourism and rising healthcare expenditure in emerging economies. However, lack of skilled and trained Anesthesiologists is the main barrier for this market.Anesthesia Machines Market  OverviewWith rapid technological advancement, aging population, and rise in the number of surgical procedures around the globe, the global anesthesia machine market is expected to have healthy growth rate in the forecast period (2015-2025).Anesthesia Machines Market  Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic region, the anesthesia machines global market is segmented into seven key regions: : North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.Asia Pacific is emerging as dominating markets for anesthesia machines market due to their high healthcare awareness and augmented disposable income. Amongst the Asian countries, India and china are more promising due to large population pool and increased number of hospitals.Request For Report sample @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-789 Anesthesia Machines Market  Key PlayersSome of the key participating players in anesthesia machine market are GE Healthcare, Phillips Healthcare, Smiths medical, Spacelabs Healthcare, Infiniummedical Co., Supera Anesthesia Innovations, Dameca AS, Dragerwerk AG & Co. KGaA, and others.The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The researchreport provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, types, technology and applications.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 03:09:42

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3 Green StreetDoveton, Victoria 3177Australia1800 061 205Cam Wilkes006499503888

Natural spring water delivery service Big Wet has announced a special refreshment bundle for its new customers. When customers rent a free-standing hot and cold water cooler for just $49 (plus GST) for one year they will get four 15-litre spring bottles, cup holder and a sleeve of cups absolutely free. They also get a $25 Coles/Myer voucher.Customers have to nominate the freestanding cooler or bench top cooler with the order. This limited time offer gives a saving of up to $100. The deal is available online through the companys website or phone orders. Customers must also sign up for an ongoing direct debit facility in order to qualify for this deal.Big Wet delivers quality bottled water, free of charge, to all of metropolitan Melbourne including the expanding Northern suburbs, Bayswater and the Yarra Ranges, Geelong and the Bellarine peninsula, plus the regional area of Gippsland and the Bass coast. The refreshing quality water is popular in homes and offices around the region. The company has customised solutions available like water filtration, water bottle delivery and cooler delivery. They will pick the empty bottles and keep track of ongoing needs.With busy lifestyles and to manage complex office needs having a bottled delivery service makes things simple. Cool, crisp water available readily is necessary for homes and offices. The cost effective service from Big Water ensures there is constant supply for quality water. The company has the necessary equipment and expertise that allows them to service the Melbourne region effectively.Big Wet sources water from two deep underground springs from picturesque hills of Daylesford Victoria. They deliver sustainable one-stop solution for all bottled water related needs. The spring water employs a team of reliable delivery staff that is committed to providing courteous personalised service to all its customers. They will deliver the bottled water on a regular monthly cycle and also make frequent trips when arranged.For more information: https://www.bigwet.com.au/shop-online/spring-water-gift-card-promo.html To call: 1300 699 965
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 15:01:00

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U.S. OFFICE:State Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesHead of Marketing+1-518-618-1030

Global Bio Based Lubricants Market: OverviewThe increasing depletion of crude oil resources and the increasing awareness about their environmental implications have led to the development of environment-friendly lubricants. This is because crude oil based lubricants have health implications and are also a cause of pollution that environment-friendly products are free of. Lubricants usually impact the environment at all stages from production to use to disposal and thus need to be non-toxic to humans either through inhalation or contact during production and use.Request Sample Copy of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=2920 Bio based lubricants are mainly synthesized from vegetable oil and oilseeds. Bio based lubricants are mostly made of esters, which are either natural, oleo chemical, or complex. While natural esters are triglycerides of vegetable oils, oleo chemical esters of fatty acids are polyol esters and diesters and complex esters. These lubricating substances are synthesized from numerous cultures, usually rapeseed or sunflower, but can also be produced from exotic oils. Moreover, depending on the usage, fatty acids can also be derived from palm oil and coconut oil and these oils have distinguished properties in comparison to the oils that are commonly use, predominantly in terms of oxidation stability.The report is a complete study of current market trends, growth drivers, and restraints that will impact the growth of the global bio based lubricants market between 2014 and 2020. Using validated research tools and assumptions, the report presents market size estimates and competitive structure of the market until the end of the forecast period in 2024.Global Bio Based Lubricants Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe implementation of mandates for the usage of bio based lubricants and growth in end-user industries such as transportation, shipping are some of the major factors driving the global bio based lubricants market. The increasing use of bio based lubricants derived from renewable resources is also due to their low toxicity, high biodegradability, and environment-friendly nature. Due to the natural abundance and high lubricating properties of vegetable oils, they are increasingly finding application in hydraulic fluids, petroleum fuel additives, engine oils, and metalworking fluids. With increasing demand for vegetable oils, their production is also on the rise. For example, the annual production of vegetable oil increased from 55 million metric tons (MMT) in 1980 to 100 MMT by 2000 across the globe. It is projected to reach 200 MMT by 2020.However, factors such as fluctuations in mineral oil prices and the high cost of production of bio based lubricants are slowing the growth of this market. Nevertheless, rapid industrialization predominantly in emerging economies is expected to offer ample growth opportunities to the growth of this market.Oil spills and fires that happen due to crude oil based lubricants can impact environmentally sensitive areas such as waterways, harbors, forests, construction sites, agriculture, and mining. Thus, increasing public response to prevent such situations the stipulation of norms that encourages the use of environment friendly lubricants are desirable. This has created an opportunity for the production of environmental friendly lubricants that are synthesized from natural esters such as vegetable oils.Major Companies Mentioned in ReportSome of the leading players in the global bio based lubricants market are United Bio Lube, Soyatech LLC, Renewable Lubricants Inc., and Nio-based Lubricants LLC among others. Each of the companies is profiled for their attributes of business position, recent developments, product portfolio and specification, and SWOTs.Request TOC of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=2920
Biochemicals control market has witnessed significant rise over the decades owing to technological advancement in healthcare industries.

PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 11:07:03

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Biochemicals control market has witnessed significant rise over the decades owing to technological advancement in healthcare industries. In a growing healthcare market where profits and growth prospects run together, many companies are vying to plunge into this untapped market. Though the healthcare industry has seen immense technological innovation over the years, the market is getting complex owing to emergence of critical healthcare illness. One such healthcare illness that has strongly affected the mankind is prostate cancer. Cases has been seen where biochemical recurrence has led to biochemical relapse, thus leading to re-emergence of prostate cancer among survivors. According to a recent study conducted by University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center in Madison, USA, 35% of prostate cancer survivors are susceptible to biochemical relapse within 10 years of receiving treatment. Also, as per the World Cancer Research Fund International, prostate cancer is one of the major cause of concern globally, recording more than 1.1 million cases in 2012. Of these, 68% of the cases are recorded in developed regions. North America is the prominent region where mortality rate from prostate cancer is scaling the peak. Search for effective yet reliable technological innovation for biochemicals control in prostate cancer is offering new business horizons to healthcare industries.Browse Full Report With ToC @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-804 Biochemicals Control Market: Drivers & RestraintsThe biochemicals control market is expected to grow exponentially during the forecast period, primarily due to the changing lifestyle, physical inactivity and prognosis of patients with biochemical relapse of prostate cancer treatment are some of the key drivers of this market. High prevalence of prostate cancer among middle class population is another significant driver for biochemicals control market. Though the market seems optimistic in coming years, preference for alternative treatment, high costs of treatment, along with stringent regulatory procedures in some of the key nations can led to some negative impact on this industry. However, this million dollar industry is expected to witness upward trend during the forecast period 20152025, primarily due to rise in effective prostate cancer treatment.Biochemicals Control Market: SegmentationBiochemicals market is broadly classified on the basis of therapy and regional prevalence.Various therapies are used depending upon the feasibility of prostatic cancer conditions. Among all types of prostatic cancer, hormone therapy is the widely accepted treatment method. It blocks the testosterone signaling pathway at the androgen receptor. This therapy is followed by adjuvant chemo-hormonal therapy, and combined chemo-hormonal therapy methods. Though these treatment options are viable and has proved effective, companies are emphasizing on R&D to offer innovative and robust healthcare solutions for biochemicals control market.Biochemicals Control Market: Region-wise OutlookDemands for biochemical control market is expected to generate from developed economies including North America and Europe. Increasing prevalence of prostate related cancer, government focus towards providing reliable healthcare solution, increasing healthcare expenditure and key innovations driven by some of the key industry leaders in the region is expected to boost the overall sales of prostate cancer therapies in North America and Europe. More than 40% of the demand for biochemical control is expected to generate from North America and Europe. Asia Pacific and Latin America are next in trail. Increasing healthcare expenditure is one of the key driving factor in Asia Pacific. Around 15% of all prostate cancers diagnosed globally are from Asia Pacific. Increase in irregular lifestyle in most parts of Asia Pacific is expected to entrap more people in coming years. Healthcare solutions to battle prostate cancer is widely needed globally.Request For Report sample @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-804 Biochemicals Control Market: Key PlayersSome of the key market players in prostate cancer treatment and biochemical control are GlaxoSmithKline, Accord Healthcare Inc., Biologics Inc., BioZyme Inc, Juno Therapeutics, etc.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 18:43:02

For Immediate Release: October 24, 2017

BOISE, Idaho - Boise Cascade Company (NYSE: BCC) will host a webcast and conference call to discuss 2017 third quarter earnings on Tuesday, October 31, at 11 a.m. Eastern.

To participate in the conference call, dial 844-795-4410 and use passcode 1613314 (international callers should dial 661-378-9637). To join the webcast, go to the Investor Relations section at www.bc.com and select the Event Calendar link.

A replay of the conference call will be available from October 31 at 2 p.m. Eastern through November 7, at 1 p.m. Replay numbers are 855-859-2056 for U.S. callers and 404-537-3406 for international callers with a passcode of 1613314. The archived webcast will be available in the Investor Relations section of Boise Cascade's website.

About Boise Cascade

Boise Cascade Company is one of the largest producers of engineered wood products and plywood in North America and a leading U.S. wholesale distributor of building products. For more information, please visit our website at bc.com.

Investor contact: Wayne Rancourt, 208 384 6073

Media contact: John Sahlberg, 208 384 6451





This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: Boise Cascade Company via Globenewswire


PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 13:50:01

Oslo, Norway, 24 October 2017 - IDEX, a leading developer of advanced fingerprint solutions for mass market applications, is pleased to issue this invitation to a Capital Markets Day in London on 2 November from 10am GMT. The event will be held at The Clubhouse Bank at 1 Angel Court, in the City of London. The IDEX executive team will present a detailed update on strategy and progress, with a focus on the biometric card market.

The market for biometric cards is now on the cusp of commercialization. On the back of widespread adoption of biometric solutions in mobile devices there is significant demand from customers including; banks, retailers and government institutions for biometric card payment solutions.

IDEX is confident that it is in pole position, and far ahead of the competition, in the market for biometric cards by virtue of its deep partnership with one of the leading providers of card payment systems based on IDEX's first of a kind biometric payment card technology. The previously announced partnership on the next-generation biometric card with global payment provider, Mastercard, has advanced in line with plan. It has undergone several successful real-world customer trials with large multi-nationals including; ABSA Bank, Unicredit Bank and retailer Pick-n-Pay and is progressing into the certification phase prior to commercial rollout.

This initiative is attracting new entrants from across the value chain to participate in what is increasingly expected to be a huge global market, thereby validating the momentum in the biometric card payment market. IDEX's sensor solution is the central component of the complete system required for a biometric card, and IDEX is one of only a few vendors capable of providing fingerprint sensors that meets the performance, cost and volume requirements for mass deployment. IDEX is receiving strong interest from the wider industry and expects to be a supplier to many of these new entrants, who together with IDEX, will assist card manufacturers in developing their own range of card solutions as the biometric card payment systems become ubiquitous in the market.

The key elements in moving from prototypes to mass commercialization are:

Low cost for biometric solution, Compliance with exacting performance standards, Scalable channel to market and deployment path.

IDEX's pre-eminent position in providing convenient and secure biometric solutions for cards is supported by the following:

Fundamental off-chip advantage for card sensors with low cost and bendability in card form factors as the sensor is made from standard polymer material IDEX solution requires no battery or special components for contact or contactless cards

For a 9x9mm image sensor IDEX's solution occupies 1/8th of the silicon area compared with on-chip silicon sensors and does not require the added process steps for thinning the die or protective packaging, resulting in significant cost savings compared with alternative technologies.

IDEX solution has benefited from real-life tests and bank trials (e.g. user misplacing finger, rotation, partial touches, limited attempts).

IDEX can further shrink the die and reduce solution cost without compromising biometric performance.

IDEX can increase the size of the sensor image enabling exceptional user performance and simple enrolment with a range of existing matcher solutions.

IDEX has been working closely with the global payment provider and with a leading card integrator, which delivers over 1 billion cards per annum, for more than two years creating a technologically superior, robust and proven biometric solution suitable for standard manufacturing processes and ready for EMV certification. Formal certification is critical to go to market. IDEX is ahead of the competition and expected to certify shortly.

Other available solutions depend on a complex inlay, which is comparatively expensive and not scalable, in production giving a price of over USD 30 per card, whereas IDEX polymer sensor enables a card solution of one third of that price, reducing significantly in high volume production.

IDEX is the preferred sensor partner to the leading innovator in global payment who has strong end customer relationships and is the de-facto market leader in the biometric card market. The payment provider drives customer engagement and relationships. The banks and other issuers procure the payment products from the payment provider, and card integrators subsequently deliver an end-to-end solution integrating IDEX's biometric card.

IDEX has invested beyond the sensor to offer critical integrated biometric card solutions. This is demonstrated by the innovation agreement by which IDEX will deliver a patented solution to low-cost on-card remote enrolment in the home and a breakthrough compact matcher for commercial deployment in 2018. This provides our customers with a fully integrated, highly secure, convenient and low cost biometric solution that is unique to IDEX.

IDEX is looking forward to providing further details on the Capital Markets Day. Please find a detailed invitation enclosed.

Contact:

Charlotte Knudsen, Director of IR and Communications, +47 9756 1959, ck@IDEX.no

Henrik Knudtzon, CFO, +47 9302 2827, hk@IDEX.no

About IDEX

IDEX is a leading developer of advanced fingerprint sensor technology and products. IDEX technology is used in a range of biometrically enabled applications within three core markets: smartcards, mobile, and Internet of Things (IoT). IDEX's addressable market represents a fast-growing multi-billion unit opportunity.

IDEX technology includes both a conventional silicon sensor and a unique off-chip technology, which means that IDEX can offer its partners solutions which are flexible and cost efficient.

IDEX ASA (ticker IDEX) is a Norwegian company listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. For more information, please visit www.IDEX.no

This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: IDEX ASA via Globenewswire


Cargo Shipping Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 13:29:43

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Transparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/Abhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531

Cargo shipping means transportation of goods of various types through ships from one location to another. The cargo transported by ships can be of various types. Dry cargoes are common traded goods such as scrap metals, white-goods, paper, etc. that are transported by ships. Shipping cargoes are transported through large cuboidal shaped containers. Reefer cargo or refrigerated cargo means food and perishable items. They are transported through special dehumidified containers providing a temperature range from ~ -35 degrees to up to ~ +30 degrees when the ambient temperature is up to 50 degrees. Food items, rare and precious items, hazardous items such as chemicals and coffee can also be transported by ships. The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is an index with provides information on prices of moving raw materials or cargo by sea. The indictor is issued by London-based Baltic Exchange. The cargos that are generally shipped are electrical and electronics equipment, iron ore, diesel, petrol, fruits, drinks, solids, manufacturing raw materials, bulk cargo consisting of commodity, materials and oil.By cargo type the market is segmented into dry cargo, hazardous cargo, reefer cargo and over-sized cargo. By vessel type the market is segmented into less than 2,300 Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU), 2,300  4,000 TEU, 4,000  6,000 TEU, 6,000  8,000 TEU, 8,000  10,000 TEU, 10,000  13,000 TEU, 13,000  15,000 TEU, 15,000  18,000 TEU and more than 18,000 TEU. By industry the market is segmented into food & beverages, chemical, manufacturing, oil & gas, white-goods, etc.Browse Full Report With ToC @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=28655 By geography the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. North America is a prominent cargo shipping market in the world. The U.S. is the largest market in the region. Canada and Mexico are other major market in North America. Europe is one of the largest cargo shipping market in the world. Germany, Italy, France, Spain, the U.K, Belgium, Sweden and Netherlands are major markets in Europe. Asia Pacific is one of the largest cargo shipping market in the world. China which is one of the largest exporter in the world is the largest market for cargo shipping in the Asia Pacific region. Japan, India, South Korea and Australia are other major markets in Asia Pacific. Middle East and Africa is a significant cargo shipping market led by Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and South Africa. Latin America is another major cargo shipping market led by Brazil and Argentina. Brazil is the largest market in the region.Rising imports of soybeans, coal and iron ore to China from Australia, Brazil, etc have not increased the shipping rates and increased the demand for cargo shipping. Due to increase in new shipping vessels, shipping prices of commodities have not increased. Growth in foreign trade agreements such as NAFTA (North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement), TPSEP (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership) and AFTA (ASEAN Free Trade Area), etc. is increasing the demand of cargo shipping market. A restraint for cargo shipping is goods and materials transported through air. As air transport is faster than transportation by ships, the former is the preferred mode of transport for quick transportation.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=28655 The report mentions the diverse competitive strategies implemented by key players operating in the market to gain market share. Company profiles mention company details, market presence by geography and segments, strategic overview, SWOT analysis and historical revenue. The report also contains details of market share analysis of key players in the market. The major firms operating in the market are A.P. Moller  Mrsk A/S (Denmark), Mediterranean Shipping Company SA (Switzerland), China Cosco Holdings Company Limited (China), CMA CGM S.A (France), Hapag-Lloyd AG (Germany), CEVA Logistics (the Netherlands), Panalpina Welttransport (Holding) AG (Switzerland) and Nippon Express Co. Ltd. (Japan).
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 14:30:58

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Chikungunya is a vector-transmitted viral disease caused by chikungunya virus i.e. CHIKV. CHIKV is an RNA virus belonging to Alphavirus genus of family Togaviridae. The disease was first detected in 1952 in southern Tanzania during an outbreak. The term chikungunya, which is borrowed from Kimakonde language, literally means to become contorted. The term was coined due to the stooped or curved appearance of sufferers having arthralgia (joint pain). Chikungunya is transmitted by day-biting infected mosquitoes, which are primarily of two types: Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. The virus may also be circulated within different animals including rodents and birds. The disease is characterized by fever and joint pain. Other symptoms such as joint swelling, muscle pain, headache, fatigue, nausea, and rash are also observed. Most people suffering from chikungunya recover within a week; however, joint pain is often unbearable and it varies in duration. The disease can be diagnosed by testing the blood for antibodies against the virus (i.e. serological testing) or by detecting viral RNA in blood (i.e. molecular testing). Often the chikungunya infection is misdiagnosed with dengue or Zika virus in the areas where the latter two are prevalent, as all the three infections manifest similar symptoms.Request Sample Copy of the Report@According to the World Health Organization (WHO), chikungunya occurs in Asia including the Indian subcontinent and Africa with relatively low levels of human infection. However, in the year 19992000, a large outbreak occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in 20062007, in India and Gabon. Thereafter, several cases were reported in other Southeast Asian countries and also in European countries. Since 2013, cases have been reported in France, North American countries, and Latin American countries also. So far, chikungunya is a disease with no cure or vaccines. Treatment is generally symptom-oriented and it aims at relieving the symptoms. The disease prevention is focused on the prevention of mosquito bites and prevention and control of mosquito infestation.The global chikungunya diagnosis market is witnessing rapid growth, owing to the increasing incidence of chikungunya worldwide, rising awareness about mosquito-transmitted infections, and government initiatives regarding the prevention and control of mosquito infestation and the disease. Other factors driving the market for chikungunya diagnosis are constant government efforts regarding the prevention of mosquito breeding and general awareness among people about mosquito bites and the resulting infections. Additionally, the rising unmet needs for chikungunya diagnosis in Asia and Africa are likely to provide growth opportunities for the global chikungunya market during the forecast period. However, lack of appropriate treatment and vaccines and misdiagnosis of chikungunya with dengue and Zika virus infections may hamper the growth of the global market during the same period. Also, factors such as lack of awareness in certain underdeveloped countries, shortage of proper diagnostic services along with skilled professionals, and scarcity of funds in these countries may lead to sluggish growth of the global market in the near future.The chikungunya diagnosis market can be segmented on the basis of technique, end-user, and region. Chikungunya can be diagnosed by serological testing techniques or molecular testing techniques. Serological testing involves enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) carried out for detecting the presence of IgG and IgM anti-chikungunya antibodies. Molecular testing involves reverse transcriptasepolymerase chain reaction (RTPCR) carried out for detecting the presence of viral RNA. The market can be segmented on the basis of end-user into diagnostic laboratories, hospitals, and others (academic & research institutes, biotechnology & pharmaceutical companies). The diagnostic laboratories segment is expected to account for a major share of the market during the forecast period, due to increasing incidence of mosquito-transmitted diseases and high investments in diagnostic laboratories.Geographically, the chikungunya diagnosis market has been segmented into five regions viz. Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. North America holds a major share of the global market, due to extensive R&D activities in the health care sector in the region including ongoing corporate and government efforts for the development of new products. The market in Asia Pacific is projected to expand at a rapid pace, due to high prevalence of mosquito-transmitted diseases. Additionally, alliances among the western market players is another factor stimulating the growth of the chikungunya diagnosis market in the region.Key players operating in the global chikungunya diagnosis market are Abbott Laboratories, Alere Inc., Becton, Dickinson and Company, bioMerieux SA, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Danaher Corporation, Hologic, Inc., MedMira Inc., Merck KGaA, QIAGEN, Roche Molecular Systems Inc., Siemens Healthcare, and Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc.Request TOC of the Report@The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.
Contact Lenses Market by Material (Soft, Silicone Hydrogel, Rigid Gas Permeable, Hybrid, and Polymethyl Methacrylate), by Application (Therapeutic, Cosmetic, and Others), by Design (Spherical, Bifocal, Orthokeratology, and Toric), and by Region - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecasts (20162021)

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PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 12:07:51

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2nd Floor, Lakeview Plaza, Kavuri Hills, Hyderabad, TelanganaSales Manager+1-888-702-9626

According to the report Global Contact Lenses Market published by Market Data Forecast, the global market projected to reach USD 15.1 billion by 2021, at a CGSR of 7.60% from 2016 to 2021.View report at: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-contact-lenses-market-1697/ A contact lens is a thin and curved lens which is placed on the surface of the eye. They can be used for cosmetic and novelty purpose or for vision correction. Contact Lenses are medical devices, regulated by Food and Drug Administration (USA) hence requires prescription. The various types of contact lenses are Silicone Hydrogel Contact Lenses, Soft contact lenses, and Rigid Gas Permeable Contact Lenses, among others. Contact lenses come with particular wear schedules such as Extended Wear Contact Lenses and Disposable Contact Lenses. Extended Wear Contact Lenses can be worn overnight for a period ranging from 6 to 30 days, whereas Disposable Contact Lenses can be discarded after use. As contact lenses, do not contain water traces, it can withstand any deposits build up.Download free sample report: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-contact-lenses-market-1697/request-sample The growth of Contact Lenses market is majorly driven by factors such as rising public awareness, affordability, convenient to use, presence of umpteen numbers of brands, improving economy, growth in online sales, increase in disposable income, wider range of products, growth in eye disorder, and consumers preference for lenses over glasses. Additionally, consumer group, specifically youngsters are drawn towards cosmetic lenses to improve their appearance, thereby spurring up the demand for the product. The rise in aging population is also expected to increase the demand for the product. The advanced technology in contact lenses made it possible for people suffering from astigmatism and presbyopia to opt for contact lenses, thereby spiking the demand for the product. The key constraints of the market are increase in demand for corrective eye surgery (Laser-Assisted in Situ Keratomileusis LASIK and Photorefractive Keratectomy PRK), cut-throat competition, economic slowdown, and serious hazards of contact lenses (infections, eye dryness, itchiness in the eye, conjunctivitis, and corneal ulcer, among others).Inquire before buying: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/global-contact-lenses-market-1697/inquire The products are segmented based on Material, Application, and Design and studied for a deep-level understanding of the Contact Lenses Market. Each sub segment is accompanied with Market Size Estimations and Y-o-Y Forecasts as well.Buy now: https://www.marketdataforecast.com/cart/buy-now/global-contact-lenses-market-1697 Key Points from Table of Contents Overviewo Executive Summaryo Key Inferenceso New Developments Drivers, Restraints, Opportunities, and Challenges Analysis (DROC) Industry Segmentationo Based on Materialo Based on Applicationo Based on Design Geographical Analysis Pipeline Product Analysis Strategic Analysis8.1 PESTLE analysis8.2 Porters five analysis Industry Leaders' Analysis Competitive LandscapeThe market has also been geographically segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle-East and Africa. North America is expected to command the major market share of 37% in 2016 followed by Europe. Asia Pacific is anticipated to be the fastest growing region for the product with a CAGR of 8.16% during the forecast period 2016-2021.Geographical Segmentation: North America Contact Lenses Market Europe Contact Lenses Market Asia-pacific Contact Lenses Market Latin America Contact Lenses Market Middle East and Africa Contact Lenses MarketThe key players in Global Contact Lenses Market are Johnson & Johnson (USA), Bausch & Lomb (USA), Carl Zeiss AG (Germany), CooperVision (USA), Alcon Laboratories, Inc (USA), Hydrogel Vision Corp (USA), Abbott Medical Optics, Inc. (USA), CIBA Vision (USA), Essilor International (France), and Contamac (United Kingdom).Future trend of Contact Lenses is Smart Contact Lenses mains that a contact lens integrates a set of electronic components and forming a specific function. They may be used to monitor diabetes by measuring intraocular pressure, tear glucose, or for presbyopia and myopia control, low vision.The Contact Lenses Market study offers the following deliverables: Global, regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the major countries/regions in which this industry is blooming and to also identify the regions that are still untapped Segment-level analysis in terms of Material, Application, and Design along with market size forecasts and estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of the effect of exogenous and endogenous factors that affect the global market; which includes broadly demographic, economics, and political, among other macro-environmental factors presented in an extensive PESTLE Analysis Study the micro environment factors that determine the overall profitability of an Industry, using Porters five forces analysis for analysing the level of competition and business strategy development A comprehensive list of key market players along with their product portfolio, current strategic interests, key financial information, legal issues, SWOT analysis and analyst overview to study and sustain the market environment Competitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies An executive summary, abridging the entire report in such a way that decision-making personnel can rapidly become acquainted with background information, concise analysis and main conclusions Expertly devised analyst overview along with Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketAbout Market Data Forecast:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, they cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. From all-encompassing umbrella markets to extremely specific niche markets covering all the major regions across the globe as part of the research scope, their research services offer one of a kind specialities with competitive pricing options. For more info kindly visit, www.marketdataforecast.com
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 15:00:49

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U.S. OFFICE:State Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesHead of Marketing+1-518-618-1030

Global Cyanoacrylate Adhesives Market: OverviewCyanoacrylates, also referred to as super glue, are covered under the famous family of adhesives used for application in industrial, medical, and household sectors. These adhesives usually have a shorter shelf-life. If unopened they can last up to a year, however, if opened they hardly last for more than a month. Cyanoacrylate is the generic name used to connote ethyl-2- Cyanoacrylate and 2- octyl- Cyanoacrylate.Request Sample Copy of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=2756 Industrial cyanoacrylates are known as instant adhesives, which provide high strength glue to bond unlike materials such as plastic, rubber, and metal. Furthermore, thermoplastic resins can be obtained from these adhesives at room temperature and at a rapid speed enabling it derive its fixture strength within a few seconds and complete strength within a day. For the purpose of the study, the global cyanoacrylates adhesives market can be segmented based on products into toughened adhesives, general purpose adhesives, low bloom adhesives, flexible adhesives, light cure adhesives, and thermal adhesives.The report provides a holistic analysis of the global cyanoacrylates adhesives market covering the various growth drivers and restraints impacting its trajectory. The effect of Porters five forces is studied to gauge the bargaining power of buyers and suppliers, the prevailing competitive strengths, and challenge posed by the entry of new players and availability of substitutes. To study the vendor landscape, the report profiles some of the leading companies operating in the global cyanoacrylate adhesives market and conducts SWOT analysis on them. It is thus compiled to help readers gain a 360 degree overview of the global market.Global Cyanoacrylate Adhesives Market: Trends and OpportunitiesCyanoacrylate adhesives are used across diverse applications such as in flying model aircraft, assembling prototype electronics, and retention dressing for nuts and bolts. In addition, these adhesives are used as finishes in wood turners, besides in automotive assemblies. The application of cyanoacrylate is extended across the medical device sector as well, where it is used for bonding needle and syringe.However, industrial segments to continue being at the fore of the global cyanoacrylate adhesives market, projects the report. For instance, the market will gain from the increased use of plastic in the appliance industry, as these adhesives are used for bonding plastic cabinets, doors, appliances, shelves, and liners. Additionally, the increasing use of reusable plastic in the appliance industry will bolster opportunities for the application of cyanoacrylates adhesives. By using this, the industry can ensure minimal plastic disposal. While factors such as limited technological advancements can hamper the markets trajectory in the near future, it is expected to gain significantly from the growth of various end-use segments.Global Cyanoacrylate Adhesives Market: Regional OutlookRegionally, the global cyanoacrylates adhesives market can be segmented into Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, and Rest of the world. Among these regions, North America is expected to demonstrate lucrative opportunities due to the growth witnessed in the regions rigid bonding and transportation segment. Besides this, the market will also witness robust growth in Asia Pacific due to the rapid expansion of plastic manufacturing industries in China and Japan.Global Cyanoacrylate Adhesives Market: Vendor LandscapeSome of the most prominent players operating in the global cyanoacrylate adhesives market are ITW Devcon, 3M, Bostik, Henkel, Permabond, Lord Corporation, and Hernon Manufacturing Inc. An analysis into the policies adopted by these companies can present insights into the factors influencing the prevailing demand and supply forces in the market. Besides this, marketing strategies and business policies adopted by the companies to strengthen their hold also have a considerable influence on the overall market operations.Request TOC of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=2756
3D Bioprinting also known as additive manufacturing is used to make three dimensional solid objects from a digital file which is achieved by using additive processes.

PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 11:02:08

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Abhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531

3D Bioprinting also known as additive manufacturing is used to make three dimensional solid objects from a digital file which is achieved by using additive processes.3D Bioprinting technology developed from prototyping in various applications for development of actual usable parts and products. 3D bioprinting market facilitates the opportunities for prosthesis, dental implants, hearing aids, contact lenses, hips implant, custom made knee and etc. that are customized and personalized according to the individual, one of the advances of 3D printing is known as bio-printing or the ability to print living tissues. 3D printer use bio-ink, a blend of living cells, the bio-printer create a structure from these cells, layer by layer, to create human tissue. By the help of 3D bioprinting physicians can use patient-specific data to capture, modify and at last apply various physical solutions of all shapes and sizes to the patient, without such application or technology, personalized treatment to patient would be difficult, as patients will need unique parts that can be rapidly and simply manufactured. Its also helps to reduce surgery cost, time, trauma and healing period which is beneficial for both patient and surgeon.Browse Full Report With ToC @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-808 3D Bioprinting Market: Drivers and RestraintsPresently, global 3D healthcare printing market is driven by the advancement in technology, increase in the percentage of aging population as old age is considered as the high risk factor for the development of various disorders, improvement in the healthcare infrastructure, and increase in the investment in research and development sector.Technological advances in this dynamic industry are ever ongoing applications of additive manufacturing in healthcare are expanding. However, lack of skilled professional act as a major barrier for 3D healthcare printing global market.3D Bioprinting Market: OverviewWith rapid technological advancement and increase in the investment in R&D sector, the global 3D bioprinting market is expected to have a healthy growth rate in the forecast period (2015-2025).3D bioprinting global market is expected to witness significant growth, owing to intervention of government for improving healthcare infrastructure and increasing investments in R&D sector. In addition, healthcare professionals increasingly explore 3D bioprinting because it reduces the risks associated with anesthesia during long surgeries and improves healthcare.3D Bioprinting Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic region, global 3D bioprinting market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.North America is the leading market for 3D bioprinting whereas Europe is expected to capture the large market shares followed by Asia Pacific region where the market is expected to grow due to rapid technological innovations, huge investment on research and development in these regions, large consumer base, and high disposable income.Request For Report sample @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-808 3D Bioprinting Market: Key PlayersSome of the key participating global players in 3D bioprinting global market are Stratasys Ltd., 3D Systems, Inc., Materialise NV, Organovo Holdings Inc., SOLS Systems, Youbionic, The Pexion Group, Oceanz 3D printing & Additive Manufacturing, and others.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 14:44:05

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Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a genetic disorder characterized by muscle degeneration and weakness. Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) cause due to lack of protein known as dystrophin which causes muscles deterioration and break down, leads to difficulty in walking and general mobility. DMD is a one of the most progressive childhood neuromuscular disorders. It affects mostly boys, but occasionally girls are affected. According to Muscular Dystrophy Australia, in 2016, Duchenne muscular dystrophy affected approximately 1 in 3500 male births across the world. Symptoms of Duchenne muscular dystrophy are frequent falls, muscle pain and stiffness, trouble running and jumping, and difficulty getting up from a lying or sitting position, among others. DMD can be caused due to cardiac, neuromuscular, and orthopedic disorders.Request Sample Copy of the Report@Increasing research and development, introduction of novel disease therapies, rising demand for effective therapies among patients, and increasing disease prevalence are projected to fuel the growth of the global Duchenne muscular dystrophy market. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2016, prevalence of Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy (DBMD) was 1 in every 7,250 males aged 5 to 24 years. Rising prevalence of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular, neurovascular, and arthritis, and increasing health care insurance coverage are the other factors likely to accelerate the growth of the global Duchenne muscular dystrophy market. According to the World Health Organization, cardiovascular diseases accounted for 17.7 million deaths in 2015, representing 31% of all global deaths. However, stricter regulation for product approvals and high product cost are likely to restrain the Duchenne muscular dystrophy market.The Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) market has been segmented based on treatment type, diagnosis, end-user, and region. In terms of treatment type, the market has been classified into drug therapy and novel therapy. The drug therapy segment has been sub-segmented into corticosteroids and others. The novel therapy segment has been categorized into gene therapy, stem cell therapy, utrophin, and others. In terms of diagnosis, the Duchenne muscular dystrophy market has been classified into blood tests, gene tests, and muscle biopsy. Based on end-user, the market has been classified into hospitals, specialty clinics, and ambulatory surgery centers.Geographically, the Duchenne muscular dystrophy market has been segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. North America dominates the global Duchenne muscular dystrophy market due to new product innovation, high health care expenditure, and government awareness programs. The United Parent Projects Muscular Dystrophy initiated World Duchenne Awareness Day. The aim of Duchenne Awareness Day is to raise awareness about Duchenne muscular dystrophy across the globe and September 7 has been declared as Duchenne Awareness Day. Europe is the second largest market for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The market in Asia Pacific is expected to grow at higher rate due to rapid rise in population, growing prevalence of chronic diseases, increasing health care coverage, and rising investment in research and development. Emerging regions such as Latin America and Middle East & Africa will create a large opportunity in the global Duchenne muscular dystrophy market due to growing awareness among people, increasing public and private health care insurance coverage, etc.Major players operating in the global Duchenne muscular dystrophy market include Pfizer, Inc., Eli Lilly and Company, Nobelpharma Co., Ltd., Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc., Tivorsan Pharmaceuticals, Acceleron Pharma, Inc., BioMarin Pharmaceutical, Inc., Asklepios Kliniken GmbH, FibroGen, Inc., and Santhera Pharmaceuticals Holding.Request TOC of the Report@The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 09:01:34

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Francesca Jewellery

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70 MUrray Street,



Hobart,



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Francesca Jewellery

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# 363 Words

Shop 212,70 MUrray Street,Hobart,TAS,7000AustraliaCompany Representative0487 893 650

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Jewellery designer Francesca Collections is fundraising to support the National Breast Cancer Foundation. They have designed a stunning pink Aragonite and solid sterling silver bracelet that consists of 6mm beads threaded onto industrial strength elastic. Handmade in Tasmania the bracelet costs $39 AUD. By purchasing the awareness bracelet $20 will go directly to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.This month provides everyone an opportunity to focus on breast cancer and its impact on those affected by the disease. In Australia it is the most common cancer (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer). While survival rates continue to improve, there is a great need to continue to deliver the message of early detection. Self-examination or finding a health professional to check changes in the breast is the best way to detect any potential issues.As this is a charity donation, the awareness bracelet from Francesca does not come with other discount codes and does not have exchanges or refunds available unless the product is considered faulty. It is available in the standard size, but can be made smaller or larger by discussing this with Francesca. Gift wrapping is available and can be selected from the shopping site. Customers can also customise this bracelet by adding a letter charm.Francesca is passionate about women living the life they love and feeling empowered by spreading the lifesaving message of getting checked. They aim to create a brand with a conscience, one that focusses on the bigger things in life. Giving back to the community is a huge priority and every month Francesca fundraises for a charity through their exquisite Awareness Bracelet. It is designed in the colour of their cause. Through I=Change social platform and their efforts with Be Her Freedom for victims of human trafficking Francesca is on its way to be an internationally recognised brand that fights for womens rights.Francesca jewellery started as a small stall in Tasmanias Salamanca Market. Today they have a thriving online store and in 2016 opened their first Melbourne store.For online shopping: https://www.francesca.com.au/ For more information about breast cancer prevention in Australia: https://canceraustralia.gov.au/healthy-living/campaigns-events/breast-cancer-awareness-month
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 15:00:50

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Furan resins are heterocyclic organic compound polymers manufactured from furfuryl alcohol. It has applications in solvents, foundry, plastics, wetting agents, adhesives, automotive and in gas hardening processes. The raw material furfuryl alcohol is obtained from sugarcane bagasse and corn cobs, wheat bran, oats and others. It has application in rocketry as a hypergolic fuel which ignites readily in presence of fuming nitric acid and red fuming nitric acid. It is also used as raw material for other specialty chemicals for various applications.Request Sample Copy of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=2761 Increasing demand for bio-based products owing to increasing awareness among consumers coupled with rising environmental regulations is expected to drive the furan resins market. Furan resins are manufactured from renewable raw materials such as sugarcane bagasse, wheat bran and oats. Environmental regulations favor eco-friendly products over synthetic counter parts. Furan resins find application in paints & plastic industry which is anticipated to drive the market due to increase in demand from construction and paints industry. In addition, growing demand for furan resin in foundry application is expected to drive the market growth. Bio-based resins and paints are gaining demand from developed countries with strict environmental regulations. Furan resin derivatives are waterproof, acid & chemical resistant and offer high weight to strength ratio. These properties make them indispensable in construction and industrial structures industry. Further demand for furan resins from automotive industry is expected to boost the market growth. Furan resins and its derivatives are used in different parts of automotives to reduce the weight. For example, epoxy furan is used as matrix material in automotive manufacture.However the safety issues regarding transportation and export rules of different developing countries is expected to restrain the market growth. Furan is highly flammable and volatile at room temperature that makes transportation difficult. Environmental regulations are imposed with exposure limits of furan resins and its derivatives due to its toxic nature and potential to cause cancer.Research and developments in the field of rocketry are expected to provide immense opportunities for manufacturers of furan resins in the near future. Furan resins with reinforced material are highly resistant to high temperature and chemicals that is used in protective structure of the rocket parts while re-entering earths atmosphere. Further novel furan resins application in composites is expected to open up new opportunities in the near future.Asia Pacific was the largest producer and consumer of furan resin in which China contributes to the highest consumption. Proximity to raw material and increasing applications in plastics & resins are expected to drive the market in this region. Foundry industry is the major contributor towards the growth of furan resin market in this region. Asia Pacific was followed by Europe in terms of consumption owing to increase in the application area of furan resins and eco-friendly nature of furan resin based products. Research activities in the field of wind energy and rocketry are expected to provide opportunity for furan resin market in this region. North America is expected to grow at a faster pace owing to increase in availability of raw materials and rising demand from construction and paints industry.Some of the key players in Furan Resins market include DynaChem Inc., The Chemical Company, Hongye Chemical Co. Ltd, Penn A Kem LLC, Nova Molecular technologies, Continetal Industries Group Inc., Shenzhen Shu Hang Industrial Development Co. Ltd., SolvChem Inc., NeuChem Inc., SweetLake Chemical Ltd., Ideal Chemical & Supply Company, Novasynorganics, International Process Plants among others.Request TOC of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=2761
Europe OTC Orthopedic Braces Market By Product, By Indication And By Region-Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, And Forecasts 2016 to 2021

Europe OTC Orthopedic Braces Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 07:56:07

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The Europe OTC Orthopedic Braces Market is estimated to be growing from 294 million in 2016 at a CAGR of 5.15%, to reach USD 377 million by 2021. The market is showcasing evident growth potential in the mentioned forecasting period and is also predicted to grow in the future years because of the developments in medical sector.Browse more details @ http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-otc-orthopedic-braces-market-3059/ Orthopedic braces, also known as orthopedic splints, provide the joints with protection, stabilization and correction of injuries or abnormal structure of bones. They have a wide range of applications including injury rehabilitation, prevention, and more. The braces are also designed in a way to compensate for muscles which have little or no strength in them. They also provide corrections in the structural anomalies and help the doctors to detect cerebral palsy, spina bifida, as well as to treat the symptoms of stroke.Increasing geriatric population, developing research activities, advancement in technology, rising disposable income and growing awareness of public regarding different treatment options for orthopedic conditions are propelling the growth of the OTC orthopedic braces market in the Europe region. However, high cost, insufficient reimbursement scenarios and growing preference towards other treatment alternatives are the factors that prove as major constraints for this market.The Europe OTC Orthopedic Braces market is broadly categorized on the basis of Product into Lower Extremity Braces, Knee Braces, Foot & Ankle Braces, Upper Extremity Braces, Shoulder Braces, Elbow Braces, Wrist Braces, Back & Hip Braces and Other Braces. Based on Indication, the market is segmented into Prophylactic, Injury, Osteoarthritis (OA) and Other Indications. The prophylactic braces segment is expected to hold the largest share of the Europe OTC orthopedic braces market in 2016 owing to increased participation in sports, studies proving the efficacy of prophylactic braces in decreasing the injuries, and increased awareness.Download Free Sample Report @ http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-otc-orthopedic-braces-market-3059/request-sample On the basis of region the Europe market is analyzed under the regions U.K, Germany, France, Netherlands, Spain and Italy. These countries are highly developed in the medical sector and hence prove to be a major hot spot for the growth of OTC Orthopedic Braces Market.Some of the major competitors dominating the market are DJO Finance LLC, DeRoyal Industries Inc, Breg, Inc, Bauerfeind AG, BSN Medical, Otto Bock HealthCare, Medi GmbH & Co. KG, Thuasne Group and 3M Company.Market Segmentation :1) Product2) IndicationInquire before buying @ http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/europe-otc-orthopedic-braces-market-3059/inquire About us:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, they cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. From all-encompassing umbrella markets to extremely specific niche markets covering all the major regions across the globe as part of the research scope, their research services offer one of a kind specialties with competitive pricing options.For more information, kindly visit, www.marketdataforecast.com Contact us:Abhishek ShuklaSales Manager (International Business Development)Market Data ForecastDirect Line: +1-888-702-9626Mobile: +91 998 555 0206Mail:abhishek@ marketdataforecast.com Visit Market Data Forecast Blog @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/blog/ View latest Press Releases of MDF @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/press-releases
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 15:03:01

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gainsight(TM), the Customer Success company, today unveiled a new solution on its Customer Success software platform called Gainsight for Services Success, designed exclusively for professional services teams. Now, for the first time, services teams have access to a technology platform that will enable them to drive a seamless customer journey from the handoff from sales to the realization of specific business outcomes.

Over the past 10 years, with the rise of the subscription business model, companies have increasingly begun to offer their customers new services as a way of providing value on top of their products or to drive entirely new revenue streams. According to Gartner, by 2020 more than 80% of software vendors will change their primary business model from traditional license and maintenance to subscription.

To make this shift successfully, businesses need to engage with their customers in an entirely new manner. Customers of subscription-based services are intensely focused on time-to-value as well as the achievement of specific business outcomes. As a result, the traditional approach of services organizations, which is focused on project success (time and budget), isn't enough to succeed in the subscription economy. Therefore, Gainsight is extending its Customer Success platform with Gainsight for Services Success to enable professional services organizations to quickly and efficiently onboard clients at scale, as well as measure service engagement results based on business outcomes. As a result, Gainsight for Services Success can complement an existing Professional Services Automation (PSA) solution investment which is focused on project success but missing critical customer context.

"While professional services teams have long been at the forefront of customer engagement, their tools have been very internally focused on the management and control of their project-based business," said Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight. "As companies shift to subscription-based offerings, they need a tool that bridges the gap between managing the internal operations of their services business and managing the higher expectations of today's customers. With our focus on Customer Success, Gainsight is uniquely positioned to help professional services teams thrive in the subscription economy."

Gainsight for Services Success Solution Highlights

Success Plans: Ensure smooth handoffs from sales by capturing the customer's desired business outcomes during the sales cycle, and stay aligned with those goals throughout the customer journey

Customer Journey Orchestrator: Create seamless engagement across the entire customer journey using a mix of human and digital touchpoints

Create seamless engagement across the entire customer journey using a mix of human and digital touchpoints Service Performance Surveys: Capture customer sentiment through a turnkey survey program to get the pulse on projects, from start to post-completion

Capture customer sentiment through a turnkey survey program to get the pulse on projects, from start to post-completion Service Scorecards: Tie project goals to tangible metrics to measure the impact of a project with sophisticated scorecards

Tie project goals to tangible metrics to measure the impact of a project with sophisticated scorecards Project 360: Centralize project information, customer data, and intelligent workflow to maintain a comprehensive picture of the customer and proactively address project risk and escalations

Centralize project information, customer data, and intelligent workflow to maintain a comprehensive picture of the customer and proactively address project risk and escalations Proactive Calls-to-Action: Manage project risk or capitalize on a sales opportunity with automated alerts triggered by trends in data

"Giving our Onboarding Team access to Gainsight has allowed us to improve our enterprise Onboarding CSAT from 8.25 to 9.15 (out of 10) over the past 18 months," said Domenico Batteate, Program Manager, New Customer Experience at Adobe. "With Gainsight, we can streamline the onboarding experience, consistently measure the impact and ensure our customers are receiving the outcomes they purchased Adobe for."

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Founded in 2011, Gainsight's mission has been to deliver the technology, expertise and community companies need to turn their customers into their best growth engine. As the shift from one-time sales to recurring revenue accelerates, the only way to to drive profitable growth is to improve customer retention and expansion. According to the investment bank Pacific Crest's 2015 survey, it is 6x-8x cheaper to retain or up-sell an existing client than it is to get a new one. With a suite of offerings designed to unify customer data, provide strategic insight into your customer portfolio and drive integrated human and automated action, Gainsight is widely considered the leading provider of customer success solutions.

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Global Bluetooth Speaker Market report offers a detailed insight into the upstream raw material analysis and downstream demand analysis along with crucial elements

Research Trades

PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 11:54:24

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# 430 Words

Office No.10, Wing C, Rajhans, Baner, Pune-45, IndiaDigital Maraketing Executive7507349866

- Festive Month Offer -20% discount on purchase of reports from 1st October to 31st October.For more offers post 31st October, kindly contact us. * Terms & Conditions apply!!Contact No. : +16269994607 (US), /+91 7507349866 (IND)Email: sales@ researchtrades.com Report Overview:Global Bluetooth Speaker Market report offers a detailed insight into the upstream raw material analysis and downstream demand analysis along with crucial elements of this market report for furthermore highlights key proposals for new project development along with offering an assessment of investment feasibility analysis. This study is a useful guide to all investors to identify the lucrative market avenues across different segments and geographical regions. The market entry conditions along with emerging avenues will help the new entrants to gauge the pulse of the market. Furthermore, the study tracks industry news in terms of new mergers and acquisition made by prominent companies to expand their product offerings across various countries. The report is a useful guide to market players, all stakeholders, interested market participants and investors to formulate their strategies.Bluetooth is simply a wireless technology that lets two devices talk to each other. In the case of Bluetooth speakers, your smartphone, tablet, or other device transmits to the Bluetooth speaker which uses its built-in amplifier and speakers for playback.Get sample copy of this report @ https://www.researchtrades.com/request-sample/1217576 Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Bluetooth Speaker in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report covers Bose Corporation, Sony, Beats Inc, Harman International, Yamaha Corporation of America, Audiovox Corporation, Poineer, Logitech, Sennheiser, Polk Audio, Altec Lansing, Creative, Samsung, Philips, Panasonic, LG, Doss, Edifier, Bowers & Wilkins.Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, covers Portable & Fixed.Market Segment by Applications, can be divided into Home Use & Commercial.Key Chapters of this report1 Market Overview1.1 Bluetooth Speaker Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 Portable1.2.2 Fixed2 Manufacturers Profiles2.1 Bose Corporation2.1.1 Business Overview2.1.2 Bluetooth Speaker Type and Applications2.1.2.1 Type 12.1.2.2 Type 23 Global Bluetooth Speaker Market Competition, by Manufacturer3.1 Global Bluetooth Speaker Sales and Market Share by Manufacturer (2016-2017)3.2 Global Bluetooth Speaker Revenue and Market Share by Manufacturer (2016-2017)3.3 Global Bluetooth Speaker Price by Manufacturer (2016-2017)3.4 Market Concentration RateContinue...
Global Colposcopy Market report offers a detailed insight into the upstream raw material analysis and downstream demand analysis along with crucial elements

Research Trades

PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 11:12:52

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# 459 Words

Office No.10, Wing C, Rajhans, Baner, Pune-45, IndiaDigital Maraketing Executive7507349866

- Festive Month Offer -20% discount on purchase of reports from 1st October to 31st October.For more offers post 31st October, kindly contact us. * Terms & Conditions apply!!Contact No. : +16269994607 (US), /+91 7507349866 (IND)Email: sales@ researchtrades.com Report Overview:Global Colposcopy Market report offers a detailed insight into the upstream raw material analysis and downstream demand analysis along with crucial elements of this market report for furthermore highlights key proposals for new project development along with offering an assessment of investment feasibility analysis. This study is a useful guide to all investors to identify the lucrative market avenues across different segments and geographical regions. The market entry conditions along with emerging avenues will help the new entrants to gauge the pulse of the market. Furthermore, the study tracks industry news in terms of new mergers and acquisition made by prominent companies to expand their product offerings across various countries. The report is a useful guide to market players, all stakeholders, interested market participants and investors to formulate their strategies.Colposcopy is a medical diagnostic procedure to examine an illuminated, magnified view of the cervix and the tissues of the vagina and vulva. Many premalignant lesions and malignant lesions in these areas have discernible characteristics which can be detected through the examination. It is done using a colposcopy, which provides an enlarged view of the areas, allowing the colposcopies to visually distinguish normal from abnormal appearing tissue and take directed biopsies for further pathological examination. The main goal of colposcopy is to prevent cervical cancer by detecting precancerous lesions early and treating them.Get sample copy of this report @ https://www.researchtrades.com/request-sample/1230337 Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Colposcopy in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report covers Leisegang, Welch Allyn, Philips, Olympus, Zeiss, other.Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, covers Electronic Colposcopy & Optical Colposcopy.Market Segment by Applications, can be divided into Cervical Cancer Diagnostic, Physical Examination, Other.Key Chapters of this report1 Market Overview1.1 Colposcopy Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 Electronic Colposcopy1.2.2 Optical Colposcopy2 Manufacturers Profiles2.1 Leisegang2.1.1 Business Overview2.1.2 Colposcopy Type and Applications2.1.2.1 Type 12.1.2.2 Type 23 Global Colposcopy Market Competition, by Manufacturer3.1 Global Colposcopy Sales and Market Share by Manufacturer (2016-2017)3.2 Global Colposcopy Revenue and Market Share by Manufacturer (2016-2017)3.3 Global Colposcopy Price by Manufacturer (2016-2017)3.4 Market Concentration RateContinue...
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 16:23:13

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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Golden Ridge Resources Ltd.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Kelowna, British Columbia (FSCWire) - Golden Ridge Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture:GLDN). has issued a press release with the following headline:Golden Ridge Resources Provides Corporate Update and Completes a 14 Hole, 4,250 Meter Diamond Drilling Program at Hank PropertyTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Golden Ridge Resources Ltd., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Golden Ridge Resources Ltd.Source: Golden Ridge Resources Ltd. (TSX Venture: GLDN)Date: October 24, 2017Time: 10:22 AM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Golden Ridge Resources Ltd. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
Graphene Nanocomposites Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 11:55:35

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CONTACT:Future Market InsightsAbhishek Bhudoliya616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531

Graphene, an allotrope of carbon, is also the basic structural element of several other allotropes such as charcoal, graphite, fullerenes and carbon nanotubes. This material finds application in high-performance markets such as electronics, medical and military among others, and could re-define the nanocomposites market in the future. Graphene nanocomposites have shown a great growth potential in certain industry segments such as electronics, aerospace, green energy and automotive. Over the past few years, technology has advanced significantly and the synthesis of graphene in bulk amount became possible. This is a milestone in the development of graphene based composite and hybrid materials.Owing to the high cost of material manufacture and production techniques, as well as the high cost of technology and patent protection, some materials in the nanocomposites market have posed difficulties in terms of costing and manufacturing delays for various high-performance end-user segments. Graphene based polymer composites show prevalent mechanical, thermal, fire resistance and electrical properties in contrast with a routine polymer.Request For Report Sample@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3154 Its contribution to the host framework enhances electrical and mechanical properties superior to different Nanocomposites, for example, clay and carbon nanotubes (CNT). In spite of the fact that CNTs are practically identical in mechanical properties to that of graphene, graphene nanocomposites are ideal over the previous one due to its better electrical and thermal conductivity. The exceptional thermal, electrical and mechanical properties of graphene nanocomposites are expected to propel the nanocomposites market growth. Graphene nanocomposites also possess the properties of fracture toughness, lightweight, fatigue strength and cost-effectiveness. All these features promote its usage as primary filling agents in conventional composite applications.Graphene nanocomposites are also utilized in energy storage and conversion devices such as lithium (Li), Li-sulphur Li-air batteries and super capacitors or ultra-capacitors. Graphene nanocomposites exhibits fabulous material features, for example, quicker recombination rate and longer stability. Li-ion batteries by means of solution blending improves the recharging capacity and its performance level. Research & Development to utilize graphene nanocomposites in microbial fuels are being carried out in order to generate electricity from organic matters.Asian countries such as Indonesia, South-Korea, Japan, Taiwan and China and North America region are the major manufacturers and consumers of graphene nanocomposites in terms of volume. Major growth in these countries is expected from the growing electronics & electrical, packaging, automotive and electronics & semiconductor sectors. The presence of a large number of manufacturers, research institutes and universities, combined with an increased demand for graphene nanocomposites, the global graphene nanocomposites market is projected to witness an exponential growth over the forecast period.Global Graphene Nanocomposites Market: SegmentationGlobal Graphene Nanocomposites market is segmented as followsBy Type;Graphene Oxide (GO)Graphene Nano Platelets (GNP)Graphene PolymerBy Application;Electro catalystsHigh performance materialsBiosensorsBiomedical materialsBy End-Use;PackagingBuilding & ConstructionElectronics & ElectricalAutomotiveMedicalGlobal Graphene Nanocomposites Market: Key Trends and DriversThe swift growth of electronics industry and perennial development in technology drive the graphene nanocomposites market growth to an extent. Because of certain unique properties of graphene nanocomposites such as high carrier versatility, good electrical conductivity and direct optical transmittance, they are used as part of electrode applications for manufacturing active solar cells, liquid crystal devices, field emission devices and natural light radiating diodes, which drives the graphene nanocomposites market. Graphene nanocomposites are also suitable for biomedical applications such as gene delivery and nano medicine, which bolsters its growth in medical sector also. Another major application of graphene nanocomposites is ceramic-based nanocomposites. They exhibit excellent electrochemical properties with high carrier features applicable in energy sector. The relatively high cost associated with the production of graphene nanocomposites is expected to hamper the market growth.Visit For TOC@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3154 Global Graphene Nanocomposites Market: Market ParticipantsExamples of some of the market participants identified across the value chain include, 2-D Tech, Abalonyx AS,ACS Material, Angstron Materials, Applied Graphene Materials plc., DFJ nanotechnologies Co Ltd, Gramor, William Blythe Limited, Graphene Laboratories Inc., Graphenea and Graphene Tech, among others.
HbA1c Testing Devices Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 15:54:48

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1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154CEO+1-206-701-6702

HbA1c test is used to screen and diagnose for diabetes and prediabetes in patients. Hemoglobin molecule from the blood cell sticks to the glucose that gives rise to glycosylated hemoglobin molecule termed as hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C). Patients with high glucose level have more HbA1C present in blood. Average blood glucose level of a person can be diagnosed by measuring this glycosylated hemoglobin molecule. It is important for diabetic patient to know the glucose level, as there might be risk of diabetes related complications. HbA1c test is considered more effective than checking the blood glucose level. Blood glucose level gives the presence of glucose at a single point time whereas, the HbA1c test gives blood glucose level status for 2-3 months.Request Sample Copy of the Report: https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/945 Increase in healthcare expenditure over diabetes management is owing to the growth of HbA1c testing devices marketGrowing diabetes patient population globally is one of the important factor driving the growth HbA1c testing devices market. According to World Health Organization (WHO), the number of patients with diabetes has increased from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014. Around 5 million deaths were reported in 2015 due to diabetes and 2.2 million deaths were attributed to high blood glucose level. The data given by International Diabetes Federation showed the expenditure of 673 billion USD on diabetes in 2015. Additionally, rise prescription by physicians for HbA1c test is contributing to the growth of HbA1c testing devices market. Moreover, factors such as growing awareness about diabetes preventive care, rise in geriatric and obese population which are more prone to diabetes, upgrading technologies for management of diabetes are expected to fuel the growth of HbA1c testing devices market. However, some factors are likely to hamper the growth of HbA1c testing devices market, such as high cost of testing devices and limitations for the results of certain population, which include pregnant women, elder people, and non-Hispanic black. HbA1c testing devices market have opportunities in future, due to untapped market and rise in demand for medical tourism.Wide use of bench top devices in diagnostic laboratories owing to domination of device segmentThe global HbA1c testing devices market is segmented by device- type, by technology, by end users, and by regionOn the basis of device- type, the HbA1c testing devices market is segmented intoBench top device,Handled device,.On the basis of technology, the HbA1c testing devices market is segmented intoAssay,Enzymatic Assay,Turbidimetric inhibition immunoassay,Chromatography,Ion exchange HPLC,Affinity binding chromatography,Others,.On the basis of end users, the HbA1c testing devices market is segmented intoHospitals,Diagnostic laboratory,Research institutions,Homecare,.Ask for customization: https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-customization/945 Rising diabetic population is attributed to the growth of HbA1c testing devices market in Asia PacificRegional segmentation of HbA1c testing devices market by Coherent Market Insights comprises of North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. The increase in number of patient population in North America is fuelling the growth of HbA1c testing devices market. Furthermore, the factors like established healthcare infrastructure and adoption to the technologically advanced medical devices, are helping North America to dominate in the HbA1c testing devices market. According to recent data given by International Diabetes Federation, there are around 109 million people in China and 69 million people in India with diabetes. The large number of diabetic population, unmet health needs, and development in healthcare sector are fuelling the growth of HbA1c testing devices market in Asia Pacific.Product development is helping the organizations in HbA1c testing devices market to hold the top positionKey industry players operating the global HbA1c market includes Abbott Laboratories, Transasia Biomedicals limited, Alere Incorporated, Arkray Incorporated, Danaher Co., Bio-Rad Laboratories, Siemens Healthcare, F.Hoffmann-La Roche Limited, and Trinity Biotech Plc. The industry players are likely to get involved in product development for higher accuracy, reliable results, and quicker turnaround time for the analyzers. The factors like product development and approval of devices for diagnosis of diabetes are helping the organizations to hold the maximum share in the HbA1c testing devices market.Browse Full Report at: https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/ongoing-insight/hba1c-testing-devices-market-945 About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@ coherentmarketinsights.com Visit our news Website: http://www.coherentnews.com
Industrial Burner Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 11:59:15

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CONTACT:Future Market InsightsAbhishek Bhudoliya616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: www.futuremarketinsightsAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531

An Industrial burner is a mechanical device which uses gas or liquid fuel to produce flames in a controlled manner. The efficiency of a burner depends on the mixing rate of air and fuel which affects flame stability. An industrial burner is a crucial component of an effective combustion system design. Some crucial functions that industrial burners need to perform include fuel preparation, distribution of air and fuel and combustion control. Industrial Burners have many applications in various industries like chemical industry, automotive industry, food processing industry, etc. Various features of a good industrial burner are:Less PollutionLow NoiseLong lifeSafety in operationStable operationAs almost every industry uses burners during the manufacturing process, it becomes extremely important for manufacturers to do regular maintenance of burners to avoid breakdowns in operations, unnecessary failures, etc. Also, timely maintenance of industrial burners contributes to energy and fuel savings.Request For Report Sample@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-3382 Market Trends, Drivers, RestraintsIndustrial burners are an integral part of the operations in all industries as they provide thermal energy needed for transferring of heat, generation of steam, heating of fluids, etc. The extensive use of burner management systems (BMS) in various industries will have a positive effect on the global industrial burners market. Burner Management Systems help in safe start, operation and shut down of the multiple burner furnace section of a boiler. The increase in demand for industrial boilers in developing countries due to rising industrialization has fueled the growth of the industrial burner market.Due to the various regulations introduced by governments across the world, it has become important for all manufacturers to produce energy efficient burners. Also, many manufacturers are now focusing on new technologies that will reduce the cost of production, apart from also reducing emissions from industrial furnaces. Industrial burners bring about complete combustion of the air and fuel which, in turn, reduces carbon dioxide emission. Many companies, in the steel industry specially, are now focusing on research and developments to produce energy efficient industrial burners.One of the major trends being seen in the industrial burner market is the use of renewable fuel oil. With increasing focus on reducing emissions so to avert negative changes in climatic condition, it has become important to use renewable fuel for operations. Companies are investing hugely in R&D for developing such industrial burners.There are various challenges that the industrial burner industry is facing at this point in time. Retrofitting of industrial burners is a major concern, which may also hamper the growth of the industrial burner market in future.Visit For TOC@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-3382 Examples of some of the market participants in the global Industrial Burner market identified across the value chain include:Alzeta CorporationANDRITZBaltur S.p.A.Bloom Engineering.Forbes Marshall.Honeywell international Inc.LimpsfieldMITSUBISHI HITACHI POWER SYSTEMS LTD.OilonQED Combustion.Selas Heat Technology CompanyWESMANJOHN ZINK COMPANY, LLC.IBS Industrie-Brenner-Systeme GmbHFaber Burner CompanyWeishaupt GroupOxilon Burners CompanyESA Pyronics InternationalBABCOCK WANSONAGF Burner, Inc.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 15:00:54

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Inorganic pigments are obtained from mixed metal oxides and are produced by a high temperature calcinations process. These pigments are not affected y strong acids, base and oxidizing agents. Also inorganic pigments are non-migratory, do not bleed and are non-warping. Most inorganic pigments can withstand various temperatures and bad climatic conditions; they are heat resistant, have resistance to other chemicals and are easy to disperse. There are a variety of inorganic pigments available and are classified primarily from the source they are derived from. Some of the inorganic pigments include Chrome, which is derived from lead, Cadmiums, which are derived from cadmium compounds, and Irons that are derived from various iron oxides among others. Inorganic pigments are solid materials that obtain their transparency owing to their extremely small size and shape.Request Sample Copy of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=2903 Inorganic color pigments are used in various industries, which include coil coatings, powder coatings, industrial coatings, architectural coatings among others. They are also used in the coloring of plastics, buildings, constructions etc... It finds its application even in the automotive segments as a colorant for engineering plastics. Owing to the quality of industrial products, which have been improving over the past few years, the demands on their appearance and durability are increasing as well. Due to their fastness properties and their tolerance to adverse conditions, they are the most preferred pigments used in constructions. Inorganic pigments are the most stable class of pigments that have been manufactured as of today.The key drivers for the inorganic pigment market include rapid growth in urbanization, the paints and the coatings market, the construction agency, the building material and plastic industry. The demand for inorganic pigments is expected to be the highest in developing countries. These inorganic pigments are mainly used in the automotive industry due to its durable properties. The market for automotives in developing countries along with the plastic, paint and coatings industry is growing at a rapid pace especially in emerging economies like India and China and hence the demand for inorganic pigments is anticipated to be high in these countries. The main setbacks of the inorganic pigment industry are coping with continuous globalization, markets that are mature in a few applications and regions and the excess production of commodity pigments.The adverse environmental effects inorganic pigments cause can be a restrain for its market especially in Europe. However due to the lack of stringent regulations in Asia Pacific countries especially in countries like India and China, inorganic pigments are used produced and used on a large scale.The key segments for this market include North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the world (RoW). The most widely used pigments are manufactured from iron oxide. The largest manufactures of inorganic pigments is China, followed by North America and finally Europe. Demand for inorganic pigments is seen to be declining in western countries while demand in Asian countries is increasing especially in China. The inorganic dye market is mature in Japan and is not likely to increase by a huge margin over the next few years. The consumption of inorganic pigments is expected to grow significantly in India and China in the near future.Some of the key companies profiled for Inorganic Color Pigments market include Ferro Corporation GmbH, Shepard Color Company, Bayer AG, Rockwood, Atlanta AG, Apollo Colors, Honeywell International and Todo Kogyo among others.Request TOC of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=2903
Intracranial Pressure Monitoring Devices Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 14:37:29

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Intracranial pressure is the pressure inside the skull that might increase due to rise in pressure of cerebrospinal fluid or it may be due to rise in pressure within the brain. Intracranial pressure might arise due to a brain tumor, fluid around the brain or bleeding into the brain, or swelling within the brain. Increased intracranial pressure can be observed in hepatic encephalopathy, head trauma, hydrocephalus, and cerebral edema. Elevated intracranial pressure can lead to death in neurosurgical patients or it may cause cerebral ischemia. To avoid this circumstance, rapid recognition and monitoring of elevated intracranial pressure is important. Elevated intracranial pressure can be measured, either clinically or quantitatively.Growing population with the neurological disorders globally is certainly driving the intracranial pressure monitoring devices marketA Number of neurological disorders and traumatic accidents are increasing day by day. According to the United Nations data of 2007, around 1 billion people, that is, 1 in every 6 of the worlds population suffered from neurological disorders, epilepsy, Alzheimers, strokes, multiple sclerosis and migraines.. The increasing number of population with neurological disorders is the major factor that is driving the intracranial pressure monitoring devices market. Additionally, According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around 2.5 million cases of traumatic accidents are registered in U.S. that lead to brain infection, meningitis, and aneurysm globally, results in the requirement of intracranial pressure monitoring and hence propels the growth of intracranial pressure monitoring devices. A Large amount of funds have been invested by the government for the improvement of the healthcare sector, expected to boost the intracranial pressure monitoring devices market.Request For Sample Copy@However, the high cost of this monitoring devices and lack of skilled professionals for handling the devices are the factors which restraints the growth of intracranial pressure monitoring devices market. Intracranial pressure monitoring devices which are mostly used today are with certain limitations hence the development and validation of intracranial pressure monitors that would measure absolute intracranial pressure is expected to create the opportunity in intracranial pressure monitoring market.External ventricular drainage segment holds the largest share in the intracranial pressure monitoring devices market due to its accurate measurement of intracranial pressureThe global intracranial pressure monitoring devices market is segmented by product, by application, by end users and by regionsOn the basis of product type, intracranial pressure monitoring devices market is segmented intoInvasive,External ventricular drainage,Microtransducer ICP monitoring devices,Fiber Optic devices,Microchips,Others,Non invasive,MRI/CT,Transcranial Doppler Ultrasonography,Tympanic membrane displacements,Fundoscopy,OthersOn the basis of applications, intracranial pressure monitoring devices market is segmented intoTraumatic brain injury,Intracerebral hemorrhage,Meningitis,othersOn the basis of end users, intracranial pressure monitoring devices market is segmented intoHospitals,Clinics,Private medical offices,Trauma centers,Government and research organizations,OthersRising awareness about neurodegenerative diseases is expected to propel the growth of intracranial pressure monitoring devices marketRegional segmentation of intracranial pressure monitoring devices market by Coherent Market Insights comprises of North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific, and The Middle East. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in U.S, there are around 2 to 3 million Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) cases registered every year, that eventually lead to the more usage of intracranial pressure monitors in North America. Hence the rising number of patients with such diseases and increase in the usage of intracranial pressure monitoring devices are the factors that leads to domination of North America in intracranial pressure monitoring devices market. Rising government initiatives to generate the awareness about the neurodegenerative disorders also propelling the growth of intracranial pressure monitoring devices market.Mergers & acquisitions are helping the industry players to obtain the maximum share in intracranial pressure monitoring devices marketKey players operating the intracranial pressure monitoring devices market includes Codman & Shurtleff Incorporated, Sophysa, Gaeltec Devices Limited, Integra Lifesciences Co., Raumedic AG, VITTAMED, Orsan Medical Technologies, Haiying Medical, and others. The industry players had adopted the strategy of mergers and acquisitions, and partnership to hold the largest share in the intracranial pressure monitoring devices market.Get More Details On this Report:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Coherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@ coherentmarketinsights.com Visit our news Website: http://www.coherentnews.com
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Global LRVP market will witness promising growth in the first half of the forecast period (5.5% CAGR), which will incur a slight dip post-2020, (4.9% CAGR). However, the overall CAGR of the market estimated for 2016-2024 is estimated at 5.2%.View Full Report: https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/liquid-ring-vacuum-pumps-market.asp  Research Analyst, Industrial Automation Domain, Persistence Market ResearchAccording to Global Liquid Ring Vacuum Pumps Market Industry Analysis and Forecast 2016-2024, the global liquid ring vacuum pumps market will reach US$ 2,871.3 Mn by the end of the forecast period.Regional analysis indicates that the US$ 535 Mn North American market will rule the roost with an estimated 6% CAGR over 2016-2024. Towards the close of 2024, this region is expected to attain revenues worth US$ 851.1 Mn. Latin America, Europe, and Asia Pacific are identified to be the next key markets for LRVP. North America, Europe, and APAC will collectively hold a whopping 75% share of the total market size in 2024.In developing economies within Asia Pacific, leading LRVP manufacturers are tackling the competitive pricing issue in order to deliver customer-centric products. Moreover, China and India host a swelling number of small manufacturers specifically serving pharma and chemical process industries. These factors will play a vital role in pushing the sales of liquid ring vacuum pumps in near future within Asian markets. Reaching a value beyond US$ 504 Mn, APAC market is likely to expand at a moderate CAGR of 5.3% over 2016-2024.Request to view Sample Report: https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/12991 LRVP market expanding at the backdrop of a slew of factorsIncreasing demand from oil & gas, and power industriesGrowing preference for high capacity-high cost liquid ring vacuum pumpsExtending applications in chemical and general process industriesConstant innovation by manufacturersStrict EPA regulationsPromising emergence of low water consuming pumpsBurgeoning M&A between key playersLucrative opportunities in Asia countriesSegment analysis: Consumption by oil & gas segment crossing US$ 931 Mn by 2024In terms of capacity, 500-1500 cfm segment will continue to lead with the maximum revenue sales, followed by < 500 cfm segment. However, < 500 cfm segment will possibly thrive fastest at a CAGR of 5.2%, followed by > 1500 cfm segment with an estimated 4.4% CAGR over 2016-2024.Request to download and view full ToC  https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/liquid-ring-vacuum-pumps-market/toc Considering material type, cast iron segment will continue dominance with over 60% value share, reaching a value of US$ 1,718.2 Mn in 2024. This segment will also demonstrate the fastest CAGR of 5.3% over the forecast period. Stainless steel segment will also grow moderately at 5%, attaining a value worth US$ 876 Mn in 2024.Based on the end-use industry, oil and gas sector will retain dominance over others, with over US$ 931 Mn by the end of 2024 in terms of revenues. Chemical processing and general process industries will continue to maintain the second and third largest segments respectively. Among these, general process industries will display a higher CAGR of 5.8% over 2016-2024, bagging the revenues of over US$ 511 Mn. Paper and pulp, and power segments are expected to grow steadily throughout the assessment period.Buy Now This Report @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/12991 View Report Table of Contents, Figures, and TablesReport analyzes the key company profilesDekker Vacuum Technologies Inc., Busch Vacuum Technics Inc., Flowserve Corporation, Tsurumi Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Atlas Copco Airpower N.V., Gardner Denver Nash LLC, Tuthill Vacuum & Blower Systems, and Graham Corp. are some of the key players that constitute the competitive landscape of the global liquid ring vacuum pumps marketplace. Persistence Market Researchs report includes in-depth profiling of key companies.
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Global demand for magnesium metal will reach 1,085 KT in 2016, representing market value worth US$ 3.13 Bn. Steady automotive sales in the US and Western Europe, combined with a rapidly growing Asia Pacific automotive market will continue to drive demand for magnesium, as manufacturers increase their emphasis on fuel efficiency and emission control. Magnesiums applications in making automotive wheels, transmission cases, and engine blocks will continue to fuel demand in 2016 and beyond.Browse Complete Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/magnesium-metal-market Environmental and legislative influences will continue to promote the use of magnesium vis-a-vis steel and aluminium. As lightweight and fuel-efficient vehicles gain centre stage in the automotive landscape, magnesium is gaining traction as a preferred manufacturing material.Application-wise, magnesium alloys and die-casting will continue to remain the largest segments, accounting for 349 KT and 302 KT respectively in 2016. Demand will also be supported by magnesiums growing applications in iron and steel desulphurisation. Magnesium will continue to witness stable demand from the aerospace sector, owing to its excellent properties as a reductant in manufacturing titanium.Request and Download Sample Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/REP-GB-1550 While magnesiums excellent properties will continue to boost its adoption in end-use industries, slower economic growth and stringent import regulations can impede demand in 2016. Leading players in the magnesium metal landscape are expected to focus on capacity expansions and capacity additions to address these challenges.Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) will remain the largest market for magnesium metals, accounting for 518 KT of magnesium in 2016, up from 482 KT in 2015. The region accounts for a major share in overall global automotive and steel production, and magnesium is widely used in these industries. China will continue to be the most lucrative market for magnesium  of the overall global magnesium production capacity, around 85% is concentrated in China, while the remainder is distributed in pockets across the globe.View and Download TOC of Magnesium Metal Market Research Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/magnesium-metal-market/toc Key China based players include Taiyuan Tongxiang Magnesium Co., Ltd, Shanxi Wenxi Hongfu Magnesium Co., Ltd.,Wenxi YinGuang Magnesium Industry (Group) Co., Ltd., and Shanxi Wenxi Zhenxin Magnesium Co., Ltd. among others. Some of the key players based outside of China include US Magnesium LLC.; Dead Sea Magnesium Ltd.; POSCO; RIMA Group; Solikamsk Magnesium Works OAO. Players based outside China are channelising efforts towards ramping up production capacities to better cater to growing magnesium demand across the globe. Over the next two to three years several new magnesium production facilities are slated to become operational across the globe.Long-term Outlook: The global magnesium metal market is anticipated to increase at a CAGR of 7.1% during 2016-2026, reaching 6.2 Bn in revenues by 2026. APEJ will remain the largest market throughout the forecast period, increasing at a CAGR of 7.3% through 2026.Buy Full Magnesium Metal Market Research Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/checkout/1550 About Us:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@ futuremarketinsights.com Website: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com
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Leading market intelligence firm Transparency Market Research (TMR) has released a new market research report. The report, titled Magnetic Materials Market  Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2013  2019, details the market in terms of its historical development to 2012 figures. Based on these figures, the future trajectory of the global magnetic materials market is predicted.The report states TMRs estimations that the magnetic materials market is expected to grow at a robust 8.9% CAGR from 2013 to 2019 to reach an end value of US$87.18 billion. This represents a significant rise from the global markets 2012 valuation of US$48 billion.Of the three types of magnetic materials on the global market, semi-hard magnetic materials have historically been the dominant product segment of the market. Semi-hard magnetic materials took up a 55% share in the global market in 2012. They are expected to remain the dominant category over the forecast period, though in large part thanks to the headstart they have accumulated over the years. Easier availability of soft and permanent magnetic materials is expected to propel demand for these two segments at high rates over the forecast period. The high performance of permanent magnets such as NdFeB is a boon to the modern industrial sector and is expected to result in high demand for the permanent magnetic materials segment.View and Download TOC of Magnetic Materials Market Research Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/report-toc/1894 The report also provides detailed quantitative and qualitative information regarding the various applications of magnetic materials. The growing automotive industry is one of the two major end users of magnetic materials in the current scenario. Diverse applications of various magnetic materials in automotive design have resulted in high demand from the global magnetic materials market. The strong rise of the Asia Pacific automotive sector will help keep demand for magnetic materials high in the forecast period, allied to steady demand from the historical automotive powerhouses in Europe and North America.A good opportunity for major magnetic materials manufacturers catering to automotive giants is the growing interest in hybrid electric cars. Because magnetic materials are important components in electric powertrains, this sector will generate steady demand for magnetic materials in the coming years, said a TMR analyst about a promising opportunity in the global magnetic materials market.Request and Download Sample Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1894 The energy sector, though, is a rapidly developing application segment of magnetic materials and is expected to grow in terms of demand for magnetic materials at a CAGR of 8.8% in the forecast period. Wind energy claims the largest demand for magnetic materials among all energy generation mechanisms. Growing support for wind energy from various governments around the world will result in an escalating demand for magnetic materials from the wind energy sector in the forecast period.The report also details the competitive landscape of the global magnetic materials market by profiling major players in the market, such as Molycorp Inc., Tengam Engineering inc., Hitachi Metals, Ltd., OM Group, and TDK Corporation.Buy Full Magnetic Materials Market Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=1894<ype=S About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@ transparencymarketresearch.com Website: www.transparencymarketresearch.com
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Morgellons disease is a rare, controversial, unexplained skin disorder characterized by crawling, sores, crawling sensations on and below the skin, and fiber-like filaments emerging from the sores. Some medical experts say Morgellons is a physical infection or diseases. While, others experts suggest it is a type of psychosis called "delusional parasitosis," in which patient may feel like something is crawling, biting, or stinging all over and a person thinks parasites have infected their skin. Physicians and patients often misjudge Morgellons symptoms as being parasitic in origin but researchers found that no parasites are involved with the etiology of Morgellons. It has also been found that there are no fungal components to the etiology of Morgellons. Borrelia, a spirochetal bacterium, has been discovered in all Morgellons patients for study so far. Borrelia is identified by multiple methods in large quantity within Morgellons skin lesions including culture.Request Sample Copy of the Report@Morgellons disease is a quite uncommon disorder or illness that most commonly affects middle-aged white women. A number of cases occurred in California, which provoked the CDC to conduct a research study to define if the cases were somehow related. Moreover, another study carried out in London reviewed five years of cases, from 2003 to 2008, and found 18 patients with a diagnosis of mysterious dermopathy or Morgellons. Of these, 83 percent were middle-aged women and 69 percent were white. Cause of disease is still unknown, research on this syndrome has so far not found it to be caused by an infection. It is therefore not transmissible. Moreover, this condition has not been found to be caused by an environmental contaminant.People who have Morgellons disease report the following signs and symptoms:Intense itchingCrawling sensations under the skinSpontaneouslyappearing, slow-healing lesionsSeed-like objects/ granules and black specks on/in skinFuzz balls on/in intact skinFine, thread like colored fibers beneath and/or extruding from the skinLife altering fatigueNeurological impairmentVisual and hearing changesBrain fog and diminished higher cognitive abilitiesHair lossGastrointestinal changesMuscle aches, Joint painGeneral malaise; intense, life-impacting painDental deteriorationSleep disturbancesPsychiatric manifestations can include anxiety, depression, new onset of panic attacks, changes in behavior and personalityDifficulty concentratingShort-term memory lossAt present, there are no diagnostic laboratory tests specifically targeting Morgellons disease. Patient suffering from disease can be identified by medical history, and complaints as well as healthcare provider can ask questions about medical and mental health. Physician can perform a physical examination and may order a variety of lab tests to determine the appropriate diagnosis. Unfortunately, there are no tests currently available that are 100% accurate for diagnosing disease.While there is no precise treatment for Morgellons disease, individuals who suffer from this disorder have been found to benefit from medications that treat psychosis (Phobia) or tics, like olanzapine (Zyprexa, Zydis, Relprevv) or pimozide (Orap), respectively. Because of the lack of clarity regarding disease symptoms, diagnosis, and potential causes, the prognosis for this disorder is difficult to estimate.According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, "This condition is not currently recognized as a distinct clinical disorder with established diagnostic criteria that are generally accepted by the medical community and many dermatologists consider the condition to be synonymous with delusional parasitosis (DP). To date, most of what is known about the condition is based on isolated case reports or anecdotal accounts. A range of potential infectious (for example, Lyme disease, parasitic) and non-infectious causes has been postulated, but the etiology of this condition remains unknown and there have been no proven effective medical therapies. Request TOC of the Report@The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.The study is a source of reliable data on:Market segments and sub-segmentsMarket trends and dynamicsSupply and demandMarket sizeCurrent trends/opportunities/challengesCompetitive landscapeTechnological breakthroughsValue chain and stakeholder analysisThe regional analysis covers:North America (U.S. and Canada)Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and others)Western Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Nordic countries, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg)Eastern Europe (Poland and Russia)Asia Pacific (China, India, Japan, ASEAN, Australia, and New Zealand)Middle East and Africa (GCC, Southern Africa, and North Africa)
The North America Antifungal Drugs Market is estimated at $4.62 billion in 2016 and projected to be growing with CAGR of 3.7% reaching $5.54 billion by 2021.

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In the following years, the market is poised to grow significantly with the rising global population. Antifungal drugs are used commonly for curing fungal infections occurring due to, unclean, unhygienic and damp environment. Invasion of epithelial tissue by microscopic organisms lead to fungal infections.View Full Report @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/north-america-anti-fungal-drugs-market-245/ Systemic fungal infections are those caused due to indigestion or inhalation of spores, leading to fungal pneumonia and diseases like candidaisis, meningitis, mucormycosis, etc. are caused by opportunistic fungus. Although majority of the fungal infections and diseases are commonly non-lethal, they are very uncomforting to the host and their common occurrence is responsible for the rising antifungal drugs market. Antifungal drugs work via various mechanisms such as by inhibiting of cell wall formation, cell membrane disruption and cell division.The major factors driving the market are rising awareness of fungal infections with more and more cases of antifungal infections all over the world, increase in government and corporate funding in the industry. Further, the growing public private partnership in the pharmaceutical industry and the mounting popularity of over-the-counter antifungal drugs to cure dermal infections is responsible for the growth of North America antifungal drugs market. Also, the rising population with weak immune system because of cancer chemotherapy or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, in whom the fungal infections occur more frequently than average, is driving the market in North America. Existing high penetration of conventional drugs used for the treatment of common fungal infections is restraining the market growth. High drug costs are a challenge faced by the market. Increasing treatment effectiveness can help in overcoming it.Free sample of the report is available @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/north-america-anti-fungal-drugs-market-245/request-sample The antifungal drugs market is segmented by drug type into Echinocandins, Azoles, Polyenes, Allylamines and Other Drugs. Also, the market is segmented by type of therapeutic indications into Aspergillosis, Dermatophytosis, Candidiasis, Other therapeutic indications. And the market is also segmented by applications into Powders, Ointments, Drugs, Pastes. While Azoles which include fluconazole, itraconazole, ketoconazole, posaconazole and voriconazole, are systemically acting, Echinocandins which include anidulafungin, caspofungin and micafungin are lipopeptides derived from natural fungal fermentation products and Polyenes which include amphotericin B deoxycholate and liposomal amphotericin B. Corifungin are systemically acting and disrupts eukaryotic cellular membranes. Azoles segment is the largest segment of the market followed by echinocandins.Geographically, the North America antifungal drugs market is sub-segmented into the countries United States and Canada. North America has commanded largest share of the global antifungal drugs market. United States contributes to the major share of North America antifungal drugs market due to the presence of the leading companies. Canada antifungal drugs market is expected to grow fastest in the North America region.The major companies dominating the market are Alternaria, Pfizer, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, Merck & Co., Asperqillus, Kramer Laboratories, Bayer Healthcare, Enzon Pharmaceuticals, Glaxosmithkline Gilead and Abbott Laboratories to name few.Scope of the Report Regional and country-level analysis and forecasts of the study market; providing Insights on the major countries/regions in which this industry is blooming and to also identify the regions that are still untapped Segment-level analysis in terms of technology, component, and type along with market size forecasts and estimations to detect key areas of industry growth in detail Identification of key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) in the market and their impact on shifting market dynamics Study of the effect of exogenous and endogenous factors that affect the global market; which includes broadly demographic, economics, and political, among other macro-environmental factors presented in an extensive PESTLE Analysis Study the micro environment factors that determine the overall profitability of an Industry, using Porters five forces analysis for analysing the level of competition and business strategy development A comprehensive list of key market players along with their product portfolio, current strategic interests, key financial information, legal issues, SWOT analysis and analyst overview to study and sustain the market environment Competitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companies An executive summary, abridging the entire report in such a way that decision-making personnel can rapidly become acquainted with background information, concise analysis and main conclusions Expertly devised analyst overview along with Investment opportunities to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketInquire before buying @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/north-america-anti-fungal-drugs-market-245/inquire About Us:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, we cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. Our analyst team comprises expert professionals in market research, who with their collective knowledge and sksillset dedicatedly serve clients from various industries and regions.
North America Fertigation and Chemigation Market

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The North America Fertigation and Chemigation Market is expected to reach USD 11.56 billion by 2021 from USD 8.59 billion in 2016, growing at a CAGR of 6.11%. The Fertigation & Chemigation market is showcasing great potential in the forecasting period. The market continues to gain momentum as a result of the high demand in most of the regions across the globe and also because of the intensive market opportunities. Different companies in the agricultural industry have been taking interest in the fertigation and chemigation market recently and the trend is expected to follow.view full report @ http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/north-america-fertigation-and-chemigation-market-2283/ Fertigation and Chemigation market has gained interest due to the high crop productivity, rising water scarcity and less labour intensive. It basically includes various kinds of irrigation techniques such as sprinkler irrigation and drip irrigation. Fertigation and Chemigation techniques are usually used in improving crop yield and having better quality of crop.The increasing population and their demand for better quality and quantity of crops have led to the market to exhibit significant growth lately. Other key factors driving the market are high efficiency of nutrient utilization, better growth, yield & quality of cops, minimal nutrient leaching losses. Apart from these factors, the market faces few restraints as well. Some of the major ones are high initial investments and critical nutrient application doses. The market has also faced a challenge of improving its efficiency. These factors have been hindering the growth of the market over the years.Download Free sample Report @ http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/north-america-fertigation-and-chemigation-market-2283/request-sample The North America market for Fertigation & Chemigation has been segmented based on agri input, application, crop type and irrigation systems. On the basis of Agri inputs the segmentation is done under Fertilizers, Fungicides, Insecticides, Herbicides and Other inputs. Based on segmentation by crop type the categories are Plantation Crop, Field Crops, Orchard Crops as well as Forage & Turf Grasses. By application the market has been segmented into Agricultural Irrigation, Greenhouse Irrigation, Landscape Irrigation and by irrigation systems the segmentation has been done under drip and sprinkler irrigation. In the respective segmentations, the categories dominating the market share are fertilizers, field crops, greenhouse irrigation and drip irrigation. On the basis of geographical analysis, the North America market is segmented under various regions namely United States and Canada.Some of the major companies dominating the market, by their products and services include The Toro Company, Netafim, Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd, Rivulis Irrigation, Lindsay Corporation, Rain Bird Corporation, Valmont Industries Inc, EPC Industries Limited, Nelson Irrigation Corporation, T-L Irrigation Co.Market Segmentation :1) Agri Input2) Crop Type3) Application4) Irrigation SystemsInquire before Buying @ http://marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/north-america-fertigation-and-chemigation-market-2283/inquire About us:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, they cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. From all-encompassing umbrella markets to extremely specific niche markets covering all the major regions across the globe as part of the research scope, their research services offer one of a kind specialties with competitive pricing options.For more information, kindly visit, www.marketdataforecast.com Contact us:Abhishek ShuklaSales Manager (International Business Development)Market Data ForecastDirect Line: +1-888-702-9626Mobile: +91 998 555 0206Mail:abhishek@ marketdataforecast.com Visit Market Data Forecast Blog @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/blog/ View latest Press Releases of MDF @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/press-releases
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Future Market Insights (FMI) delivers key insights on the North America fresh meat packaging market in its latest report, titled Fresh Meat Packaging Market: North America Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016  2026. In terms of revenue, the North America fresh meat packaging market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 2.2% over the forecast period (20162026), owing to numerous factors, about which FMI offers thorough insights and forecasts in this report.To provide in-depth insights, a detailed consumer preference analysis was carried out at each level of the value chain, which includes film convertors, packaging equipment manufacturers, meat producers/co-packers and retailers. Some of the key highlights from the analysis include, preferred packaging technologies for different types of meat products, factors impacting purchasing decision of packaging materials and most commonly used layer types.Browse Complete Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/north-america-fresh-meat-packaging-films-market Two individual markets, namely North America fresh meat packaging film and North America fresh meat packaging equipment were collectively considered to arrive at data regarding the North America fresh meat packaging market. North America fresh meat packaging film market is segmented on the basis of packaging format, meat type, packaging material, layer type and country. On the basis of packaging material, the market is segmented into PE, PVC, BOPP, PA, EVOH, PP and others. In terms of value, EVOH segment is anticipated to register a CAGR of 2.7% during the forecast period. On the basis of layer type, the market is segmented into monolayer, 3-layer, 5-layer, 7-layer and 9-layer. Among all layer type segments, 7-layer segment is anticipated to exhibit the highest revenue growth, followed by 5-layer segment over the forecast period. On the basis of packaging format, the market is segmented into MAP, VTP, VSP and others. In terms of value, MAP segment is expected to register a CAGR of 2.6% during the forecast period. On the basis of meat type the market is segmented into beef, pork, poultry and others. Among all meat types, beef segment is anticipated to remain dominant during the forecast period. On the basis of country, the market is segmented into the U.S. and Canada.Request and Download Sample Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/REP-NA-1517 A key trend defining the market is that of major players focusing towards enhancing their product portfolio and expanding their customer base by entering into strategic mergers and acquisitions. Furthermore, film convertors are also increasingly focused on downgauging and optimisation of packages size to offer eco-friendly and cost-effective solutions to meat producers, co-packers and retailers.This report assesses trends driving growth of meat packaging, and offers key takeaways that could prove substantially useful to manufacturers across different levels looking to enter into the market. The U.S. has been estimated to dominate the North America fresh meat packaging market, accounting for maximum revenue share of the market by 2016 end.View and Download TOC of North America Meat Packaging Market Research Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/north-america-fresh-meat-packaging-films-market/toc Key players in the North America fresh meat packaging market were identified at each level of the value chain. At film convertor level, some of the key players are Bemis Company, Inc., Winpak Ltd., Sealed Air Corp. ,Berry Plastic Group, Inc., and Coveris Holdings S.A. At packaging equipment manufacturers level, some of the key players are Multivac Sepp Haggenmuller GmbH & Co.KG , Robert Reiser & Co, Harpak-ULMA Packaging, LLC, ALKAR-RapidPak, Inc., and Sealpac International BV. At meat producer level major player covered in the report include Tyson Foods, Inc., JBS SA ADR, Cargill Meat Solutions Corporation, National Beef Packing Company, LLC., and Hormel Foods Corporation. At the retailer level, some of the key players identified were Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., The Kroger Co., Costco Wholesale Corporation, Whole Foods Market IP. L.P., and Wegmans Food Markets Inc. At the retailer level, some players are focusing on private label products and regional expansion through setting up new stores. The Competitive Landscape is included to provide report audiences with a dashboard view and company share.Buy Full North America Meat Packaging Market Research Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/checkout/1517 About Us:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@ futuremarketinsights.com Website: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 12:00:12

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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for Jackpotjoy PLC--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---London, England (FSCWire) - Jackpotjoy PLC (LSE:JPJ). has issued a press release with the following headline:Notice of ResultsTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on Jackpotjoy PLC, or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/Jackpotjoy PLCSource: Jackpotjoy PLC (LSE: JPJ, ISIN: GB00BZ14BX56, OTC Bulletin Board: JKPTF)Date: October 24, 2017Time: 6:00 AM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of Jackpotjoy PLC and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 13:13:35

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The West Africa offshore mooring market is highly competitive, thanks to the presence of a large pool of players, finds a new research report by Transparency Market Research (TMR). Innovation and technological advancements in mooring systems is the key strategy adopted by the leading companies looking to strengthen their position in this market. A shift in their focus towards mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships can also be observed over the next few years.View Full Report:Grup Servicii Petroliere S.A., Mampaey Offshore Industries B.V., FMC Technologies Inc., BW Offshore Ltd., and Trelleborg Marine Systems are some of the prominent vendors of offshore mooring systems in West Africa, states the research report.According to the market study, the overall opportunity in the West Africa offshore mooring system market was worth US$169.70 mn in 2015. Analysts expect it to rise at a CAGR of 4.90% during the period from 2015 to 2024 and reach a value of US$470.2 mn by the end of the period of the forecast. The demand for spread mooring systems is much higher than other products available in this market. The scenario is anticipated to remain same throughout the forecast period.Request to view Sample Report:West Africa Offshore Mooring Systems Market to be Led by AngolaThe report further present an exhaustive analysis of the West Africa market for offshore mooring systems on the basis of its geographical presence. As per the study, Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, D.R. Congo, Angola, and Congo Brazzaville are the main geographical segments of the West Africa offshore mooring system market. Among these, Angola dominated the overall market in 2015 with a revenue contribution of US$45.1 mn. Researchers anticipate this domestic market to maintain its leadership over the period of forecast.The markets for offshore mooring systems in Ghana, Gabon, and Ivory Coast are also projected to witness significant growth over the forthcoming years, thanks to the surging emphasis on energy conservation, increasing investments in their respective oil and gas industry, and the continued rise in exploration and production activities, notes the study.Drag embedment, suction, and vertical load anchors are considered as the key type of anchors used in offshore mooring in this research report. With 30.7%, the drag embedment anchors segment led the West Africa offshore mooring systems market in 2015 and is expected to remain doing so over the next few years, states the report.Request to download and view full ToC -Need for Efficient Management of Marine Fuel to Boost DemandThe increase in the demand for energy in West Africa despite fluctuating prices of oil has been the most prominent factor behind the growth of the offshore mooring systems market in this region, says an analyst in TMR. As marine fuel cost accounts for a heavy portion of the vessel operating cost, the need for an efficient management of marine fuel has increased considerably. With offshore mooring systems being highly effective in monitoring, controlling, and reporting of marine fuel consumption, their demand is likely to augment remarkably in the oil and gas industry of West Africa in the near future, reflecting positively on this market.The technological advancement in mooring products is also projected to boost this market over the forecast period. However, the high cost of investments needed for exploration and production activities may hamper the markets growth in the coming years, states the report.Global Offshore Mooring Systems Market Report is available at US$ 5795 -
Operating room is a facility where all the surgical procedures are performed on patients in order to treat different physiological and pathological conditions in a sterile environment, operating rooms are also known as the operation theatre or operating suite.

PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 11:06:47

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Operating room is a facility where all the surgical procedures are performed on patients in order to treat different physiological and pathological conditions in a sterile environment, operating rooms are also known as the operation theatre or operating suite. An operating room equipped with technically advanced equipment ensures better patient care and enhanced operational efficiency by empowering surgeons and other healthcare professionals with greater flexibility and ease of handling. All these equipment are used for the betterment of patient care and enhanced operational efficiency by empowering surgeons and other healthcare professionals with greater flexibility and ease of handling.Rapid technological advancement has brought a lot of changes in the way of surgical procedures which are carried out today around the globe. Operating rooms are becoming more commodious with new and advanced operating equipment that have become an essential part of modern hybrid operating rooms. The operating room equipment global market is primarily characterized by growing demand for technically advanced operating room equipment as healthcare providers across the globe are increasingly adopting the concept of hybrid operating rooms.Browse Full Report With ToC @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-811 Hybrid operating room combine the surgical and non-surgical functions such as diagnostics, radiology, patient monitoring, and etc. at one place and provide surgeons with greater operational flexibility by enabling access to advanced imaging modalities such as C-arm, CT scanners, MRI scanners, and others.Operating Room Equipment Market: Drivers and RestraintsPresently, operating room equipment global market is driven by the technological advancement in healthcare sector, increase in the number of surgery procedure around the globe, increase in the number of ambulatory surgical centers, rise in the aging population and increase in the prevalence of chronic disease. However, high cost associated with latest technology devices act as a major barrier for operating room equipment global market.Operating Room Equipment Market: OverviewWith rapid technological advancement, increase in the number of ambulatory surgical centers, rise in the aging population, increasing demand for operational efficiency, increase in the prevalence of chronic disease, and increase in the number of surgery procedure around the globe, the operating room equipment global market is expected to have a healthy growth rate in the forecast period (2015-2025).Operating Room Equipment Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, global operating room equipment market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.North America is the leading market for operating room equipment due to rapid technological innovations, huge investment on research and development in this region. Whereas, Europe and Asia-Pacific is projected to grow at a substantial growth due to large consumer base, rising government initiatives for enhancing healthcare infrastructure, and high disposable incomewill contribute to the global operating room equipment market value exhibiting a robust CAGR during the forecast period, 2015-2025.Request For Report sample @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-811 Operating Room Equipment Market: Key PlayersSome of the key participating global players in operating room equipment global market are Getinge AB, Creative Health Tech Pvt. Ltd., Stryker Corporation, Siemens Healthcare GmbH, STERIS Corporation, Trumpf Medical, BERCHTOLD Corporation, and others.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 15:00:58

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Potassium chlorate is a versatile chemical compound which has extensive industrial applications. Potassium chlorate generally occurs as a white or colorless, crystalline, water-soluble solid. It is the most common chlorate in commercial use. Potassium chlorate is used chiefly as an oxidizing agent in the manufacture of fireworks, explosives, matches, disinfectants and bleaches. Potassium chlorate is a strong oxidant and reacts easily with sulfur, carbon, phosphorous and organic compounds. In addition potassium chlorate is insoluble in water. Potassium chlorate is produced commercially by passing chlorine into the hot milk of lime and subsequently adding potassium chloride. Furthermore, potassium chlorate can be manufactured in small quantities by passing chlorine gas into a hot solution of caustic potash.Request Sample Copy of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=2917 Potassium chlorate has numerous applications due to its superior chemical and physical properties. Potassium chlorate is a necessary ingredient in modern firearms. Potassium chlorate is used as an ingredient in smoke compositions such as smoke grenades. Potassium chlorate is also used in laboratories and educational institutions to generate oxygen gas. Potassium chlorate is used as a pesticide due to its weed killer applications. In Finland, potassium chlorate is sold under the brand name Fegabit. Potassium chlorate is used in chemical oxygen generators which are used as oxygen-supply systems of space stations, aircraft and submarines. Potassium chlorate displays potent antimicrobial properties due to its chemical nature. Potassium chlorate is used in making powerful disinfectants and used to treat drinking water from pathogens. In addition, potassium chlorate is used as a basic raw material for the safety match work industries and as a bleaching agent in the textile industry. Furthermore, potassium chlorate can be mixed with an appropriate fuel to form an explosive material called sprengel explosive.The growth in the end user industries is expected to be a major driving factor for the growth of potassium chlorate market. The growth of pesticide and defense industry is expected to drive the demand for potassium chlorate. Potassium chlorate based firearms are more effective than traditional gunpowder and less likely to be damaged by water. In addition, growing demand from emerging economies due to rapid economic growth is expected to increase the demand for potassium chlorate. However availability of substitutes and government regulations could hamper the growth of this market.Potassium chlorate has a global market due to its extensive industrial applications. Asia Pacific is one of the fastest growing markets for potassium chlorate along with Latin America. China and India are the major consumers of potassium chlorate in Asia Pacific due to growth of defense and pesticide industries. Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Japan are other major consumers of potassium chlorate in Asia Pacific. North America and Europe are saturated markets and demand for potassium chlorate is expected to grow at a moderate rate.Some of the key players in the Potassium Chlorate market are Dow Chemical (U.S.), E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company (U.S.), Mitsubishi Chemical (Japan), LG Chem (South Korea), BASF (Germany), Sumitomo Chemical (Japan), Mitsui Chemicals (Japan), Toray Industries (Japan), Eastman Chemical Company (U.S.), AkzoNobel (Netherlands) and Evonik Industries (Germany) among others. AkzoNobel is one of the largest producers of potassium chlorate in Europe.Request TOC of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=2917
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 07:57:04

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Global Bioprocess Antifoam Market: SnapshotChemical antifoaming agents are used for the destruction of excessive foam in biological processes. This is because foaming can transform into major problem at the time of large-scale recombinant protein bioprocesses. Antifoams are available in several forms with a range of properties and varied foam destruction capabilities, with the ones needed several times becoming depleted over time.Request Report Brochure @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=15233 Antifoaming agents may contain surfactants that may include hydrophobic solids dispersed in carrier oil, liquid single components or solids, and aqueous suspensions or emulsions. Antifoams can affect the growth rates of prokaryotic as well as eukaryotic organisms along with changing surface properties such as lipid content which results in change in permeability.On the other hand, certain concentrations of antifoams are related to detrimental effect on cells and protein production. The effects of these concentrations are dependent on the protein being expressed. This emphasizes the importance of optimizing the concentration of antifoams for bioprocesses. However, very less information is available regarding the biological effects of antifoaming agents and most of it is not recent.Present research suggests that antifoams can have wide effects on bioprocesses, which includes the culture environment as well as the cells. This requires a detailed evaluation of these agents. This is mainly because antifoams are generally added without due regard to their potential biological impact on processes.Antifoams can be divided into fast and slow antifoams that depends on their mechanism of foam destruction. While slow antifoams are often oils that destroy foam over a relatively longer period of time, fast antifoams are usually mixed agents that enter the foam films.Bioprocess antifoam market generally encounters an issue during the biological process which is excessive foaming. Bioprocess antifoam market thus requires a foam control agent, termed as antifoam. An antifoam can be actively used during fermentation or any other process when foaming is an inherent issue. Foaming can disrupt a process as the foam comprises of tiny bubbles which are of mechanical or chemical origin and it interrupts in proper aeration of the cell culture.It is to be noted that an antifoam should meet the need of fermentation industry, perform highly, should possess low toxicity, with neutral odors and taste. Bioprocess antifoam market industry is currently facing many advancements with product developments and advancements. Manufacturers are focusing to develop products with high performance, low toxicity, neutral odors & taste, safe to use, silicone free, easily sterilized, and cost effective. On the basis of various products types available we can segment the bioprocess antifoam market into the following:Water-basedOil-basedSilicone-basedOthers (Ethylene Oxide and Propylene Oxide)The above products are segmented on the basis of their derived sources and we can also segment the bioprocess antifoam market on the composition and type of antifoaming agents available:Silicone Polymeralkoxylated fatty acid ester/vegetable basepolypropylene glycolpolyethylene glycolssilicone oilpolyalkylene glycolResearch shows that antifoams can have different effects on the biological process and hence it is to be ensured before choosing an antifoaming agent for a process. These effects can either be positive such as increasing the volumetric yield of protein, or negative as any growth defect encountered during the production. Silicone based antifoams are projected to be the highest growing market as they offer low surface tension, chemically inert, thermally stable, and completely insoluble in water. The applications of antifoams are not restricted to pharmaceutical industry, as these agents can be actively utilized in food and beverages industry, pulp and paper industry, oil and gas industry, water treatment, detergents, food and beverage, paints and coatings, textile and many others. As the industry is growing it faces various challenges which restraint the market, the use of oil based antifoams and water based antifoams can affect the cell cultures, the silicone based antifoams can also disrupt the culture and hence it is used in small ratios.Based on geography, the bioprocess antifoam market can be segmented into five major regions: North Americas bioprocess antifoam market, Europes bioprocess antifoam market,, Asia-Pacifics bioprocess antifoam market, Latin Americas bioprocess antifoam market,, and Middle East-Africas bioprocess antifoam market. At present, North America observes a leading position in the bioprocess antifoam market, followed by Europe. The major driving factors which have driven the growth of the bioprocess antifoam market, in this region is that the growing demand of the product, high growth of the end use industries, and high manufacturing. Asia-Pacific is anticipated to be an emerging player as various countries like China, Japan and India are emerging with large number of industries, growth in pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries and increased number of domestic players. Key companies have adopted various new strategies such as new product launches, technological advancements as manufacturing companies are moving their focus towards less volatile products which is increasing the growth of the bioprocess antifoam market.Visit For TOC @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=15233 It is anticipated that with in the coming years there will be an entry of various players along with the existing well-established players in the bioprocess antifoam market. Some of the key companies operating in the bioprocess antifoam market are, Accepta, Bluestar Silicones International, Dow Corning Corporation, Air Products and Chemicals Inc, Ashland, Inc, Evonik Industries AG., and Kemira Oyj. These players are anticipated to stretch their operations through mergers and acquisitions in the coming years making a high market impact which help them to increase their market share in bioprocess antifoam market.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 09:04:01

New cordless Philips SpeechMike Premium Air dictation microphone out now

RevolutionAir: Philips Launches a Brand-New Wireless SpeechMike Premium Air

Speech Processing Solutions

Lea Pachta

lea.pachta@speech.com

Tel: +43 1605 291 744

www.philips.com/dictation

Speech Processing Solutions, the worlds number one in professional dictation, has just released its latest innovation, the wireless SpeechMike Premium Air dictation microphone. For the first time in history, the new device offers not only outstanding audio recording quality, enabling exceptional speech recognition results, best in class quality and ergonomics, but also a wireless dictation microphone, based on 100% lossless speech technology. The dictation microphone allows users to quickly turn their voice into text, saving them time and making them more effective at their core profession.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201710240050

Philips SpeechMike Premium Air (Photo: Business Wire)

Lossless speech technology

The high-quality device delivers maximum mobility without any compromises. Dr Thomas Brauner, CEO of Speech Processing Solutions explains: Our unique new device allows users to benefit from all advantages of the industry leading Philips SpeechMike Premium, without the constraints of a cable. The new Philips SpeechMike Premium Air uses a unique lossless speech technology, which enables users to work cable-free and without any signal interruptions, up to five meters away from their workstations.

New mobility in dictation

The included docking station provides wireless charging under three hours and instant pairing between the users device and the dock. The charged device can easily be used for up to 24 hours. This is especially useful for heavy users in hospitals, legal practices and other roles which carry a high administrative burden adds Dr Brauner. Together with a foot control, the SpeechMike Premium Air docking station even enables hands-free recording.

Studio-quality microphone designed for speech recognition

The free-floating decoupled microphone in the SpeechMike Premium Air is equipped with a special noise cancelling pop filter and distinctive hexagonal grill openings, which allow three times more sound to reach the microphone, compared to its predecessor. All these unique features guarantee that no background, touch, click, air or structure-borne noise is recorded. This helps users achieve high-quality audio recordings, enabling exceptional speech recognition results.

Easy plug & play including pre-configured button modes

The SpeechMike Premium Air supports plug & play functionality and is fully compatible with previous SpeechMike versions. An office or practice can work seamlessly together, even when employees are using different models. The SpeechMike Premium Air also features pre-configured button modes, catered for the needs of leading speech recognition solutions.

The device also works perfectly with the latest Philips SpeechExec Pro software with integrated professional speech recognition for example, as well as with the Philips cloud-based dictation workflow solution SpeechLive. Amongst many of its features, SpeechLive offers a professional transcriptionist service, where trained typists transcribe the recordings as well as built-in speech recognition.

Once youve tried the new SpeechMike Premium Air and experience its uncontested ease of use, outstanding speech recognition performance and have the opportunity to stand up and walk around in your office while recording, you will never want to change back to a corded device! This is the break through our customers and the entire speech industry has been waiting for! Dr Brauner concludes.

For more information on Philips dictation solutions, please visit: www.philips.com/dictation

About Speech Processing Solutions

Speech Processing Solutions is the global leader in professional dictation solutions. The company was founded in 1954 in Austria as a Philips subsidiary, and has been a driving force for innovative speech-to-text solutions for 60 years. The company developed ground-breaking products such as the mobile Philips SpeechAir, the Philips Pocket Memo voice recorder, the Philips SpeechMike Premium USB dictation [..] and the Philips Dictation Recorder app for smartphones, thus meeting its demands for excellence and superior quality. Thanks to the recent innovation, Philips SpeechLive, dictations and recordings will become faster and easier than ever before with cloud-based workflow services. Speech Processing Solution's perfectly tailored offers and products help professionals save time and resources and maximize efficiency.

Connect with Speech Processing Solutions on:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/philipsvoicetracer

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/philips_dictation/

Twitter @speech_com: http://www.twitter.com/speech_com

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LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/speech-processi

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201710240050

Philips SpeechMike Premium Air out now!
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 15:01:04

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Silicone elastomers are in general referred as silicone-based polymers that are vulcanized. Silicone elastomers are majorly available in different forms, such as closed cell sponges, solids, thermally conductive and open cell foams. Silicone elastomers with their unique ability to retain mechanical properties over a wide temperature range make them suitable in several industrial sectors like construction, mould making in furniture, automotive applications and electronics division. The market for silicone elastomers is largely dominated by China which is followed by Europe and then the U.S. With several production facilities and availability of local suppliers the consumption of silicone elastomers is expected to rise at rapid pace in China. However this market is expected to be price sensitive with further increase in production rate across several other regions like Middle East and Africa.Request Sample Copy of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=2932 Silicones or polysiloxanes are one of the most versatile polymers consisting of an alternating silicon-oxygen backbone, characteristically with aromatic side group. Silicones are generally classified as elastomers, fluids, or resins based on the extent of cross-linking or their molecular weight. Silicone elastomers are majorly cross linked linear silicone fluids having a three-dimensional structure. In order to increase the strength of silicone elastomers they are added with reinforcing fillers like silica. The major properties of silicone elastomers include excellent ozone and UV resistance, high thermal conductivity, exceptional weatherability, easy to fabricate or process, high gas and drug permeability, outstanding electrical insulating properties, low flammability, low compression set at elevated temperatures and sterilizable.With this wide range of chemical and mechanical properties silicone elastomers have several commercial and industrial applications as sealants and structural glazing (construction sector), mold making (prototyping and restoration), gaskets, vibration dampers, hoses, spark plug boots, ignition cables and o-rings (automotive sector), door seals and masks(aerospace and aviation sector),adhesives(electronic sector), shoe inserts, bakeware, kitchen utensils, gasketing, tubes, infant care products (consumer goods), dental and surgical devices, orthopedics and prosthetics, medical tubing, sterilization mats and catheters (health care sector).The extensive range of applications in numerous sectors makes the market for silicone elastomers most lucrative. The growth in automotive sector is one of the most important catalysts for the silicone elastomers. Also the demand for safe and sterile surgical and other instruments in health sector across all countries will boost up the market for silicone elastomers. The common applications in consumer goods will further propel the need of silicone elastomers. As the electronic sector flourishes it will add to the demand of silicone elastomers which are as used as adhesive primarily due to their high thermal conductivity. The increase in aviation sector will boost the aerospace applications will indirectly fuel the need of silicone elastomers. The major regions that dominate the silicone market areChina, Europe and the U.S. However as per current market share China acts as a leader. The major reason behind this is increased manufacturing facilities coupled with the accessibility of domestic sources. The developed countries across the U.S. and Europe are expected to have stable market for silicone elastomers as they face stiff price completion from China and other countries. The other regions like Middle East and other African countries are expected to have upward trend in consumption of silicone elastomers.The foremost companies operating in the silicone elastomers market are Reiss Manufacturing Incorporated, Allergan, Arlon Silicone Technologies, ELMET, Dow Corning, Cabot Corporation, MESGO s.p.A, ContiTech AG, Marsh Bellofram, Bentec Medical Incorporated, AkzoNobel, Sigmasoft Engineering GmbH, Momentive, Rogers Corporation, Saint-Gobain, Shin-Etsu Chemical Company Limited, and Wacker Chemie AG.Request TOC of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=2932
Asia Pacific Hospital Supplies Market is estimated to reach $14.23 billion by 2021

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PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 07:58:33

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The Asia Pacific Hospital Supplies Market was worth $7.93 billion in 2016 and estimated to be growing at a CAGR of 12.40%, to reach $14.23 billion by 2021. The Hospital supplies market has been growing at a substantial rate over the past few years.Technically advanced products are being launched by companies to assist medical professionals in managing their patients. With an extensive category of development and investment prospects for budding players seeking to be a part of the medical device market, continual growth of the hospital supplies market is expected.Full report at: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/asia-pacific-hospital-supplies-market-717/ The growth of the Asia Pacific Hospital Supplies market is mainly due to factors such as rising number of hospitals, aging population, and methods such as frequent glove swapping and double gloving during procedures. Increasing geriatric population and improved economic situation in the developing countries in this region are the other major factors boosting the growth of the market. However, factors such as advent of home care services and increasing preference towards personalized medicine are the major limitations hindering the growth of the market.The Asia Pacific Hospital Supplies Market is segmented on the basis of product type into Operating Room Equipment, Sterilization & Disinfectant Equipment, Syringes & Needles, Patient Examination Devices, Mobility Aids & Transportation Equipment, and Disposable Hospital Supplies. Disposable hospital supplies lead the market with a market share of 46% followed by syringes and needle segment with a market share of 23%.The Asia-Pacific region is geographically segmented into China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. The Asia-Pacific region is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period due to the unprecedented rate of population growth in this region. There is swift growth in the China hospital industry due to the stable advancement of health care reform and due to the constant increase in demand stimulus. Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia, are some of the other promising players in this market.Request sample: http://www.marketdataforecast.com/market-reports/asia-pacific-hospital-supplies-market-717/request-sample The major companies dominating the market in this region are Advanced Sterilization Products Services Inc., Dickinson and Company, Cardinal Health, Inc., Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Becton, 3M Health Care, and B. Braun Melsungen AG.About Market Data Forecast:The publisher of this report is Market Data Forecast whose forte lies in Market research and Business Intelligence. Handling both individual and corporate clients across multiple business domains they offer syndicated/customized research to suit the clients research objective. Their research reports section offers a wide variety of market studies ranging from all-encompassing comprehensive market studies to product specific niche markets covering North America among other regions of the global market as well. For more info kindly visit, www.marketdataforecast.com Contact:Abhishek ShuklaSales Manager (International Business Development)Market Data ForecastDirect Line: +1-888-702-9626Mobile: +91 998 555 0206Mail: abhishek@ marketdataforecast.com Visit MarketDataForecast Blog @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/blog/ View latest Press Releases of MDF @ http://www.marketdataforecast.com/press-releases
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 11:57:56

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+1-347-918-3531

e-mail

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# 585 Words

Abhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531

Future Market Insights (FMI) delivers key insights on the sulphur recovery technology in its latest report titled, Sulphur Recovery Technology Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026. Global sulphur recovery technology market is projected to register a healthy CAGR of 11.5% in terms of value during the forecast period (20162026).On the basis of technology, sulphur recovery technology market has been segmented into Claus Process and Tail Gas treatment. The tail gas treatment technology is projected to grow at a significant CAGR of 11.7% in terms of value during the forecast period.Browse Complete Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sulphur-recovery-technology-market By source of recovery, sulphur recovery technology market has been segmented into oil, gas, and others (coal gasification). The gas segment is expected to register a CAGR of 11.0% in terms of value over the forecast period. Recovery of sulphur through gas is largest as compared with other sources. This due to the increasing demand for gas and increasing number of gas processing plants in Middle East and Central Asia.By capacity, sulphur recovery technology market has been segmented into 100 t/D, 101200 t/D, 201300 t/D, and 300 t/D. The 100 t/D segment has been estimated to account for 51.8% value share of the market in 2015. Most refineries opt for low capacity sulphur recovery units, as medium to high capacity sulphur recovery units are capital intensive and require sizeable amount of finances for its operation and maintenance.Request and Download Sample Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/REP-GB-1431 Growth of the sulphur recovery technology market is mainly driven by increasing adoption of sulphur recovery technologies by the oil & gas industry and implementation of various stringent environmental regulations. Other trends driving growth include upgrade of existing sulphur recovery units and increasing number partnership between refineries and fertilizer producers. Capital intensiveness of project can act as a restraint to a certain extent for players to venture into big sulphur recovery projects.View and Download TOC of Sulphur Recovery Technology Market Research Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sulphur-recovery-technology-market/toc Middle East & Africa (MEA)has been estimated to dominate the global sulphur recovery technology market, with over 50% market share in 2015 and is anticipated to remain dominant by 2026 end, followed by Europe. Among all the regions, Americas market is anticipated to register the highest CAGR over 20162026, followed by Asia Pacific (APAC). This is mainly attributed to increasing demand from oil & gas industry in Americas and APAC.Key players in the sulphur recovery technology market include Chiyoda Corporation, Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., Amec Foster Wheeler, Technip SA, Linde AG, WorleyParsons Ltd., Fluor Corporation, KT  Kinetics Technology SpA, GTC Technology US, LLC, PROSERNAT, and Black & Veatch Holding Company.These companies are executing number of projects that also includes sulphur recovery technology. For example, on 23 February 2016, the Jacobs Engineering Group completed its Chuandongbei Project, an onshore gas project, in southwest China. The project involved use of Jacobs Comprimo Sulfur Solutions technology.Buy Full Sulphur Recovery Technology Market Research Report @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/checkout/1431 About Us:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@ futuremarketinsights.com Website: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 15:01:02

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Transparency Market Research

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# 593 Words

U.S. OFFICE:State Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesHead of Marketing+1-518-618-1030

Global Synthetic Textile Fiber Market: OverviewSynthetic textile fibers are referred to the textile fabric that is not a naturally occurring fiber but a man-made one. The most common synthetic textile fibers are polylactide, olefin, spandex, nylon, lyocell, lurex, luminex, ingeo, acrylic, aramid, polyester, tencel, acetate, and rayon. Several scientists discovered synthetic fibers with extensive and incessant research over the past few years. Synthetic textile fibers were developed chiefly from extrusion, fiber-forming raw materials through spinnerets into the air and thus creating a thread. Before the introduction of synthetic fibers, textile fibers were mainly produced artificially from a material known as cellulose, which is extracted from plants. It is, however, obligatory for textile companies to provide details on the textile contents on the label of their product. This information is then processed for testing textiles under several conditions and to meet the required safety standards.Request Sample Copy of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=2931 The report is an in-depth investigation into the growth trajectory in terms of the past, present, and future opportunities of the global synthetic textile fiber market. It provides an evaluation of the dynamics that might probably impact the growth of the market and the dominant trends have also been mentioned in the research publication. The study further presents a diverse outlook of the competitive scenario of the market by utilizing the value chain and Porters five forces analysis. The market shares, strategies, and product description of the leading companies have also been mentioned in the study.Global Synthetic Textile Fiber Market: Trends and OpportunitiesSynthetic textile fibers are commonly used than the naturally occurring fibers and comprise of almost the half of the total fiber usage across the globe. The synthetic textile fibers are employed in almost every fiber and textile technology field, especially in the fashion industry. These fibers have unique characteristics that make them suitable for being used as a dress material. These synthetic textile fibers are abundant in nature as they are not dependent on any agricultural crops. Some of the qualities of synthetic textile fibers are stain and rot resistance, easy to wash and dry, are resistant to pests and insects, and they pick up dyes very easily. The other factors that are expected to drive the demand for synthetic textile fiber market are its durability and low cost.However, the synthetic fibers also have some disadvantages such as they burn comparatively faster than natural fibers, they melt easily, and cant be worn for a longer period of time as they are not skin friendly. To combat these issues, scientists and researchers are focusing on developing biofibers to reduce the dependence on synthetic textile fibers and reduce the pressure on oil sources.Global Synthetic Textile Fiber Market: Regional OutlookThe demand and production of synthetic fibers is considerably high in North America thus making it the leading market for synthetic textile fibers trailed by Latin America and Europe in the exact order. The market is likely to mature over the coming years owing to environmental regulations in the region and the rising use of green fibers. Manufacturers are likely to focus on the Asia Pacific market owing to fewer regulations and rising demand.Companies Mentioned in the ReportA few of the leading companies operating in the global synthetic textile fiber market are Bridgestone Corporation, BP Amono Plc., Univex SA, Bayer AG, BASF SE, and DuPont (EI) de Nemours.Request TOC of the Report @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=2931
Thrombectomy system are used in several procedures which require clot removal to achieve efficacious treatment and to save patients lives. Due to its versatility, the thrombectomy system can be utilized in several different applications like acute myocardial infraction (AMI), peripheral arterial disease (PAD), deep vein thrombosis (DVT), pulmonary embolism (PE), and neurovascular procedures.

PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 10:00:20

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# 399 Words

Abhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531

Thrombectomy is the surgical procedure where removal of thrombus (blood clot) from a blood vessel is performed. Blood contain cells called platelets and a substance called fibrinogen that allow the blood to clot. In normal circumstances, clotting is a good thing as it prevents blood loss from injury such as cut or gaze. However, when a blood clot forms inside a blood vessel, it can cause serious problem like part of the body supplied by that vein becomes swollen as the blood is unable to flow back towards the heart. If one forms in an artery, the blood cannot reach the area supplied by the artery.Thrombectomy system are used in several procedures which require clot removal to achieve efficacious treatment and to save patients lives. Due to its versatility, the thrombectomy system can be utilized in several different applications like acute myocardial infraction (AMI), peripheral arterial disease (PAD), deep vein thrombosis (DVT), pulmonary embolism (PE), and neurovascular procedures.Browse Full Report With ToC @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-673 Thrombectomy System Market: Drivers and RestraintsPresently, thrombectomy system global market is driven by the technological advancement, aging population, and increasing demand for minimally invasive surgery.Thrombectomy system global market is drives by the aging population, technological advancement in healthcare industry, increasing demand for minimally invasive surgery, increasing prevalence of cardiovascular disease such as AAAs and PADs, patient lifestyle changes and unhealthy habits. However, lack of skilled professionals and the lack of awareness about peripheral vascular disease among patients are major barriers for this market.Thrombectomy System Market: OverviewWith rapid technological advancement, increase in the number of aging population and increase in demand for minimally invasive surgery, the thrombectomy system global market is expected to have healthy growth rate in the forecast period (2012-2025).Thrombectomy System Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic region, global thrombectomy system market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.North America holds the largest share of the global thrombectomy system market, due to high aging population and wide technological advancement.Request For Report sample @ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-673 Thrombectomy System Market: Key PlayersSome of the key participating players in thrombectomy system global market are Bayer HealthCare LLC, Boston Scientific Corp., Covidien Plc., Minnetronix Inc., Argon Medical Devices Inc., NexGen Medical Systems Inc., and others.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 13:05:01

Telefonica's Brazilian Subsidiary Renews Billing Operations and Support Contract for B2B and B2C Subscribers

Vivo Extends Operation for Netcracker's Revenue Management and Provisioning Solution Until 2020

Netcracker Technology

Erin O'Reilly, +1-781-366-1171

Erin.OReilly@Netcracker.com

Netcracker Technology announced today that Vivo, the subsidiary of the Telefonica Group operating in Brazil, has extended its BSS Operations and Support contract with Netcracker until 2020. The Netcracker BSS platform used by Vivo is currently responsible for supporting the billing operations for B2C and B2B for more than 35 million subscribers.

As the leading communications service provider in Brazil, Vivo offers fixed-line and mobile voice, television and internet broadband services to approximately 97 million subscribers.

"Over the past years, Netcracker demonstrated commitment and continuous support of our mission-critical billing operations, ensuring high performance, quality and timely billing execution as our trusted partner," said Alessandra Bomura, CIO at Vivo.

"The fast-moving Latin American market forces service providers to leverage innovative, future-proof systems that deliver a wide range of capabilities across all business lines," said Fabio Gatto, General Manager of LATAM at Netcracker.

For more information on Netcracker's Revenue Management solution or Professional Services, please contact Erin O'Reilly at Erin.OReilly@Netcracker.com.

About Netcracker Technology

Netcracker Technology, a wholly owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation, is a forward-looking software company, offering mission-critical solutions to service providers around the globe. Our comprehensive portfolio of software solutions and professional services enables large-scale digital transformations, unlocking the opportunities of the cloud, virtualization and the changing mobile ecosystem. With an unbroken service delivery track record of more than 20 years, our unique combination of technology, people and expertise helps companies transform their networks and enable better experiences for their customers.

For more information, visit www.netcracker.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201710240053

Vivo Extends Operation for Netcracker's Revenue Management and Provisioning Solution Until 2020
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 15:04:06

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Persistence Market Research

CONTACT:





Persistence Market Research



305 Broadway



7th Floor, New York City,



NY 10007, United States



Rahul Singh

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# 704 Words

CONTACT:Persistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United StatesMarketing Head800-961-0353

The demand for water pumps across North America and Latin America continues to grow in parallel with the growth in the regions population. More households emerging in countries such as the US, Canada, Brazil or Mexico will certainly require water pumps for domestic purposes. Concurrently, agricultural, administrative and industrial sector in these regions will also adopt such pumps to keep up with the surging demands of consumers. Water pumps being deployed in the residential sector of North America and Latin America are projected to grow as municipalities & county authorities from this region will strive to improve their drinking water facilitation and upgrade the wastewater treatment plants.View Full Report: https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/north-and-latin-america-water-pumps-market.asp Nevertheless, a recent study developed by Persistence Market Research projects that revenues garnered from sales of water pumps across Latin America and North America will soar at a moderate CAGR of 4% over an eight-year forecast period. After amassing an estimated US$ 9,422.9 million revenues in 2016, the water pumps market in North America and Latin America is anticipated to reach a valuation of US$ 13,412 .8 million by the end of 2024.Request to view Sample Report: https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/13618 Key Deterrents for Adoption of Water Pumps in North & Latin AmericaAvailability of cheap Chinese water pumps: North American and Latin American manufacturers of water pumps are constantly at risk of losing market presence to newly-entered Chinese pump makers. Consumers in these regions end up opting for cheap Chinese water pumps, which tend to go kaput in short span of time. On the other hand, availing Chinese water pumps becomes more practical for consumers with tight budget, especially for deploying them in agricultural activities.Durability & energy efficiency of centrifugal pumps: Manufacturers of centrifugal water pumps in this region are improving the operating life of their products. This has decelerated the rate at which water pumps get replaced. Low replacement rate has dragged down the aftermarket sales of water pumps in North America and Latin America, thereby impeding the aggregate market revenues.Budget limitations in industrial and agricultural sectors: Expenditure on water pumps fares on a tightrope in North America. Submersible pumps are also expected to impact the adoption of centrifugal water pumps in this region. Latin Americas industrial sector is likely to trim its gross expenditure, which will incidentally impact the sales of water pumps in this region. Low profit margins in North Americas agriculture industry have also slowed down the rate at which water pumps were being installed or replaced in farming activities.Request to download and view full ToC  https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/north-and-latin-america-water-pumps-market/toc In the report, titled Water Pumps Market: North & Latin America Industry Analysis and Forecast, 2016-2024, Persistence Market Research predicts that more than 90% of water pump revenues in Latin America and North America will be accounted by sales of centrifugal pumps. While over 936 thousand units of positive displacement pumps are estimated to be sold in the Americas during the forecast period, sales of centrifugal pumps will be raking in revenues worth over US$ 12 billion by the end of 2024. In 2016, centrifugal pumps worth nearly US$ 3 billion were estimated to be consumed by wastewater and water treatment plants across North America and Latin America. Oil and gas industries in this region have been predicted to have consumed over 200 thousand units of positive displacement pumps in 2016.View Report Table of Contents, Figures, and TablesCompared to Latin America, North America will continue to have a large share in their collective regional market for water pumps. In 2016, the US water pumps market accounted for more than two-third of North Americas water pump revenues, while Brazil and Mexico attributed to more than 50% growth in Latin Americas water pumps revenues. US-based companies Xylem Inc. and Flowserve Corporation are the leading native players in North America and Latin Americas water pumps market. The market will continue to witness higher participation from European water pump manufacturers such as KSB AG, Weir Group Plc., Grundfos, and Sulzer AG. Japanese water pump manufacturer, Ebara Corp is also observed to be a key participant as the company has established two manufacturing plants in North America and one in Latin America.Buy Now This Report @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/13618
PR-Inside.com: 2017-10-24 03:49:52

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Watts McCray Lawyers

Level 15, The Chambers



370 Pitt Street



Sydney, New South Wales 2000



Australia







02 9635 4266

email

http://www.divorce.com.au



Published by

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006499503888

e-mail

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# 445 Words

Level 15, The Chambers370 Pitt StreetSydney, New South Wales 2000Australia02 9635 4266Cam Wilkes006499503888

Australians are almost at the end of same-sex marriage plebiscite voting period. The results of the postal survey will be announced on November 15. In September Australians were asked: Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry? Snap polls indicate an overwhelming majority of Australians are in favour of same-sex marriage. The postal vote came after the High Court dismissed a challenge against it.The new law will have significant implications for same-sex couples. Marriage equality will allow same-sex couples to have the benefit of rights to their partners estate and superannuation in the event of the death of their partner. Applying for a Family Law property settlement could get simpler. If marriage equality laws in Australia are passed, same-sex couples who choose to marry will no longer be required to prove they meet eligibility requirements to apply for a property settlement. They do not have to provide evidence that they are in a committed relationship.Same-sex couples who were married overseas will be able to divorce in Australia. Legalising same-sex marriage will allow already married same-sex couples to divorce following 12 months separation; as heterosexual married couples are currently able to do. As marriage is presently defined as being between a man and a woman, same sex couples cannot marry here nor is there any legal recognition if they have been married overseas. If they separate they cannot get divorced.If a majority of people vote in favour of same-sex marriage, a vote will then be held in parliament. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he expects a majority yes vote will lead to making same-sex marriage legal. If Australians vote against same-sex marriage, Mr Turnbull has said the parliamentary vote will not proceed.For people in a same-sex relationship the vote will have long-term implications. Family lawyers Watts McCray will be able to advise clients on the particular circumstances of their case, in light of the current law, as well as potential changes in the law in the future. Watts McCray has been at the forefront of making Australians aware of the latest in the world of family law. Their resource filled, dedicated website divorce.com.au aims to make things simple for those looking for information on all types of family law matters. The website also addresses issues such as child support, spousal maintenance, child custody, divorce and property.To get advice on any family law matter or to make a new will contact Watts McCray. Watts McCray Lawyers, with offices located in Sydney, Canberra, Central Coast, Parramatta, Norwest, Brookvale and Frenchs Forest, are a leading specialist family law firm.For more resources related to divorce: https://www.divorce.com.au/
The Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, on Monday placed shares of Oando Plc on technical suspension.

A notice posted by the exchange said the companys shares will henceforth be available for trading but there will be no price movement while the technical suspension subsists.

The NSE had last Wednesday suspended trading in the shares of Oando plc for two days.

The Exchange in a notice said it was acting based on the directive of the Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC.

PREMIUM TIMES had earlier reported that SEC directed the full suspension on trading in the shares of the oil firm following petitions forwarded to it by aggrieved stakeholders.

In its notice, signed by Tinuade Awe, General Counsel and Head of Regulation at the NSE, the Exchange explained that the full suspension is effective for 48 hours from Wednesday to Friday, after which it would commence a technical suspension until further directive.

A full suspension is the halt of trading activities in a listed security for a period, Ms. Awe said.

A technical suspension is the interruption of price movement in a listed security for a period so that any dealings in the securities which occur during the period of the suspension will not result in any change in price, which change may have occurred had the suspension not been implemented.

On Monday, the Exchange confirmed it had lifted the full suspension on the firm.

Dealing Members are referred to our market bulletins of Wednesday, 18 October 2017 (NSE/LARD/LRD/MB05/17/10/18) notifying them that effective Friday, 20 October 2017 and until further directive, the shares of Oando Plc (Oando or the Company) will be placed on technical suspension; and that of Friday, 20 October 2017 (NSE/LARD/LRD/MB07/17/10/20) informing them that the shares of Oando were still on full suspension as the process of converting from full to technical suspension was yet to be completed.

Please be informed that effective today, Monday, 23 October 2017; the shares of Oando Plc have been placed on technical suspension.

Thus, the shares will be available for trading but there will be no price movement while the technical suspension subsists, the NSEs notice said.

Oando had in its response last week said it would address the development in a statement it planned to release later.

But as at Monday evening, the company was yet to issue its statement.
President Muhammadu Buhari has congratulated octogenarian businessman, Kesington Adebutu, on his 82nd birthday.

Mr. Adubutu, owner of the popular lottery called Baba Ijebu, is from Ogun State, South-west Nigeria.

The presidents congratulatory message was contained in a statement by his spokesperson, Femi Adesina.

On behalf of the federal government and his family, President Muhammadu Buhari heartily felicitates with the Ogun State-born businessman and eminent philanthropist, Kesington Adebutu as he clocks 82, on October 24.

The president lauds Mr. Adebutus contributions to the growth of the economy through his businesses, and the provision of jobs to thousands of Nigerians especially the youth.

He also commends the business acumen, hard work and sheer determination which enabled the celebrant to rise from humble beginnings to currently sit atop a business empire.

President Buhari affirms that Mr. Adebutus philanthropic programmes under the auspices of the Kesington Adebukunola Adebutu Foundation have made life more meaningful for less privileged Nigerians.

Describing as worthy of emulation the donations made particularly to educational and religious organisations by the kind-hearted octogenarian, popularly called Baba Ijebu, the President notes that such contributions have endeared him to Nigerians from all parts of the country.

President Buhari prays that Almighty God will grant Mr. Adebutu, a recipient of several chieftaincy titles and honorary doctorate degrees, good health and longer life to continue rendering selfless services to his fatherland and humanity.
The United Arab Emirates on Monday blocked a request at a World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting from Qatar, which had asked the trade body to rule on the economic boycott imposed on the nation by other Arab countries including the UAE.

The UAE said a formal WTO dispute settlement process was not in order.

For the reason that its actions against Qatar were based on national security considerations and therefore in line with international trade rules, a Geneva trade official said.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt severed diplomatic, trade and transportation ties with Qatar in June, accusing Doha of supporting and funding terrorists.

The quartet has not only demanded that Qatar cut its links with terrorists, but that it also downgrade ties with Iran, a regional rival of Saudi Arabia.

Qatar has denied any links with terrorists and complained that these moves amount to coercive measures to isolate its economy.

According to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Egypt backed the UAE at the WTO meeting.

The U.S, an ally of Saudi Arabia and a long-standing enemy of Iran, also sided with the quartet, arguing that the WTO should not rule on national security issues.

Report says Qatar can now ask other WTO countries to mediate, and it can make a new request for a ruling at a future WTO dispute settlement meeting.

(dpa/NAN)
Kenyas Supreme Court will hear a petition on Wednesday filed by three Kenyans that seeks the cancellation of a presidential-election rerun scheduled for the following day.

Those, who filed the petition are Khelef Khalifa, Executive Director of Muslims for Human Rights; Samwel Mohochi, Executive Director of the International Commission of Jurists; and Nahason Kamau.

They said that the credibility of the vote is not assured, citing political interference among other concerns.

The court will hold a hearing on the petition on Wednesday, the eve of the rerun of August elections which were later nullified by the Supreme Court due to irregularities.

Incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta won Augusts poll, but opposition leader, Raila Odinga, went to court over alleged fraud and demanded a rerun, which he was granted.

The new date was set for Thursday, but earlier this month Mr. Odinga pulled out saying the electoral reforms he had asked for had not been met.

He has called for mass protests to coincide with Thursdays vote, which Mr. Kenyatta is insisting will take place.

Tensions have been mounting in the East African country ahead of the poll rerun, with almost daily mass protests and foreign diplomats warning a fair election cannot be guaranteed.

On August 18, a senior official in the countrys electoral commission fled to the U.S. saying she had received death threats.

After Kenyas disputed 2007 election, more than 1,000 people died in clashes that were mainly divided along ethnic lines.

(dpa/NAN)
Nigerian doctors have threatened to go on mass sabbatical if the federal government accedes to the demand of other health sector workers.

In what is clearly a continuation of the rivalry between doctors and other health workers, the doctors, under the banner of the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, described the association of other health workers, JOHESU, as an illegal body.

The NMA declared its opposition to many of the demands made by JOHESU, describing them as unacceptable.

The members of JOHESU are hospital workers apart from medical doctors and dentists.

The NMA Chairman, Mike Ogirima, while addressing a news conference in Ilorin on Monday to mark the 2017 Physician Week, warned that doctors will be compelled to take a sabbatical, if JOHESU does not contain its radicalism.

Government should not allow itself to be intimidated by illegal bodies like JOHESU in the health sector; we expect each professional to stick to the ethics of their profession, he said.

The chairman also alleged that doctors are now endangered species in the communities and traditional hospital environment.

The value for money and hospitals titles have made the members of JOHESU to set up fellowship colleges with the aim of bearing the title of consultants, he said.

JOHESU embarked on a nationwide strike on September 20 to protest among other issues, salaries adjustments, promotion arrears, and improved work environment for its members.

In compliance with the declaration of an indefinite strike by JOHESU, the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives, NANNM directed its members to stay away from all federal health institutions across the country.

On the 9th day of the strike, JOHESU struck a deal with government.

The national chairman of the union, Biobelemoye Josiah, said the strike had been suspended in principle. He said the union has reached an agreement with the federal government and workers are to resume work.

NMA KICKS AGAINST THE AGREEMENT

The NMA opposed the agreement the federal government reached with JOHESU, thus sending a warning signal that professional rivalry may lead to serious crisis in the health sector.

The NMA referred to JOHESUs demands and the agreement reached with the union as an aberration in health service in the country and called on the government to urgently redress it.

The NMA specifically opposed salary harmonization, one of the important agreements government reached with JOHESU, and declared that the doctors cannot receive the same salary as other health workers.

NMA is totally opposed to salary harmonization as doctors are not prepared to receive the same salary as other health workers, the NMA warned in an open letter written to the Minister of Labour and Employment.

Top on the list of issues raised in the October 3 letter was that JOHESU has no justification to demand for adjustment of salary scale as was done for CONMESS.

What JOHESU is asking for is equal pay with medical doctors. No single evidence was provided by JOHESU to justify their demand.

The NMA is not opposed to any salary review, adjustment or increase for JOHESU members or any other worker for that matter provided that the same rate applied to CONHESS is applied to CONMESS to sustain the principle of relativity agreement as signed between the Federal Government and NMA on the 2nd of January, 2014, the letter read in part.

Consolidated Medical Salary Structure, CONMESS, is the salary structure for medical and dental officers in the federal public service while Consolidated Health Salary Structure, CONHESS, is the salary structure for pharmacists, medical laboratory, nurses and other health workers in the health sector of the federal public service.

On Monday, Mr. Ogirima also appealed to the federal government to operationalise the National Health Act of 2014, which made provisions among others the pooling of not less than one per cent of consolidated revenue as Basic Health Provision Fund (BHPF) to cater for the vulnerable.
The controversial recall of fugitive Abdulrasheed Maina to the Nigerian civil service was masterminded by Attorney General Abubakar Malami and the Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau, sources and official correspondence seen by PREMIUM TIMES have revealed.

While Mr. Malami was the mastermind of the recall, Mr. Dambazau, contrary to his claims, played a major role in it, investigations reveal.

The recall of Mr. Maina, who is still wanted for alleged N2 billion fraud by the anti-graft agency, EFCC, has since been condemned by Nigerians and civil society groups, forcing a prompt reaction by President Muhammadu Buhari.

According to a statement on Monday by his spokesperson, Femi Adesina, Mr. Buhari ordered the immediate disengagement of Mr. Maina from the civil service.

The president also demanded a full report of the circumstances of Mainas recall and posting to the Ministry of Interior, Mr. Adesina said, adding that the report must be submitted tonight (Monday).

While the presidency reviews the report of Mr. Mainas reinstatement, PREMIUM TIMES can confirm that two of his ministers played crucial roles in the recall.

HOW IT STARTED

On April 27, Mr. Malami wrote the Federal Civil Service Commission, FCSC, requesting it to give consequential effect to the judgement that voided the warrant of arrest issued against A.A. Maina which formed the basis for the query and his eventual dismissal, Mustapha Sulaiman, the chairman of the FCSC said.

In other words, according to Mr. Sulaiman, the attorney general in his letter with reference HAGF/FCSC/2017/VOL.1/3 requested Mr. Mainas reinstatement based on a supposed court order voiding his arrest warrant.

However, PREMIUM TIMES findings reveal that Mr. Malamis claim that the arrest warrant was the basis for which Mr. Maina was dismissed is false.

While Mr. Maina was dismissed for absconding from office on February 21, 2013, the EFCC only secured a court order for his arrest two years later, on October 27, 2015.

The arrest warrant granted by a Chief Magistrate in Abuja, Ahmed Shuaibu, was however lifted in 2016.

On Monday evening, EFCC spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, declined comment on Magistrate Shuaibus directive; simply saying Maina is wanted by the commission; that is our position.

Mr. Malamis spokesperson, Salihu Isah, declined to comment on why his boss made a false claim and why he did not appeal such a ruling considering that Mr. Maina had still refused to surrender himself to the EFCC.

I cant speak to PREMIUM TIMES on this issue, he said. Im not aware of anything, he (AGF Malami) has not told me anything in that regard. I dont know anything about it.

Sources at the anti-graft agency also confirmed that Mr. Malami never raised the issue of Mr. Maina with the commission before his advice to the FCSC.

ENTER DAMBAZAU

Following Mr. Malamis letter, the FCSC held a meeting on June 14 where it deliberated on the Attorney General of the Federations letter and requested the Office of the Civil Service of the Federal vide letter FC.4029/82/VOL.III/160 of 21st June 2017 to advise the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Interior to consider the AGFs letter, the Officers case and make appropriate recommendations to the commission, Mr. Sulaimans letter to Mr. Maina and the Head of Service on September 18 reads.

At a meeting held on June 22, the Senior Staff Committee of the Interior Ministry headed by Mr. Dambazau, deliberated on the letter and recommended that Mr. Maina be reinstated to his former position as deputy director, at the Interior Ministry.

Therefore, contrary to Mr. Dambazaus claim that it was the Head of Service and the FCSC that recommended Mr. Mainas reinstatement, it was actually his ministry under his supervision that made the recommendation following Mr. Malamis letter.

Sources knowledgeable about the matter confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES that Mr. Dambazau is a close associate of Mr. Maina and played a crucial role in the negotiation for his reinstatement.

Sources also said the Head of Service, Winifred Oyo-Ita, resisted the move to reinstate Mr. Maina but eventually caved in to pressure.

That is why you will never see a memo where she wrote recommending or supporting the recall; because she never did, a source said.

Mrs. Oyo-Ita also made that stance publicly when she said in a statement on Monday that the re-instatement and posting of Mr. Maina never emanated from her office.

However, while the reinstatement did not emanate from her office, it is Mrs. Oyo-Itas office which forwarded the decision of the Interior Ministry to the FCSC in a letter dated August 14 with reference number HCSF/LU/COR/FCSC/749/III/135.

Two days after the Head of Service forwarded the letter, the FCSC met to arrive at a conclusion, Mr. Sulaiman wrote.

The FCSC at its meeting held on Wednesday 16th August, 2017 considered the letter from the AGF and the recommendation of the Interior Ministry.

The FCSC, thereafter, approved the reinstatement of the officer into the service with effect from 21st February 2013 (being the date he was earlier dismissed from service).

To further reward Mr. Maina, the FCSC also approved for the officer to sit for the next promotion examination to the Post of Director (Administration), SGL.17.

Several calls and messages sent to Joel Oruche, Deputy Director, Press, of the Federal Civil Service Commission went unanswered.

The Press Secretary of the Interior Ministry, Ehisienmen Osaigbovo, could not also be reached on why his principal provided false information to Nigerians.

WHAT NEXT FOR BUHARI

The presidential spokesperson, Mr. Adesina, confirmed on Monday night that Mr. Buhari had received the report by Mrs. Oyo-Ita.

Speaking on Channels Television, Mr. Adesina said the report was submitted to the presidents chief of staff, Abba Kyari, on Monday evening as directed.

However, many Nigerians are wondering if Mr. Buhari would take any decisive step on his minsters who ordered such recall of a fugitive.

Human Rights lawyer, Jiti Ogunye, argued that Mr. Buhari has no legal powers to order the sack of Mr. Maina, but has such powers to dismiss his aides who engineered the recall.

But the President has the power to sack his AGF, the Minister of the Interior and any political appointee including his Chief of Staff who are reported to have masterminded and orchestrated the Maina fiasco, Mr. Ogunye said.

So, the President has left those he could sack and has gone for the head of the one he could not lawfully sack.

It appears to be forlorn hope that the President will move soon against the members of his kitchen cabinet who are hatching one plot of dent for him after another.

While Nigerians await the presidents action, Mr. Maina continues to be a fugitive and has refused to submit himself to the EFCC which accuses him of involvement in a N2 billion pension fraud.

On Monday, the anti-graft agency stormed his alleged $2 million dollars house and marked it as being under investigation.
The Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Governors Forum and Imo State Governor, Rochas Okorocha, was absent on Monday as governors of southern states of Nigeria met in Lagos where they unanimously reiterated their call for true federalism and devolution of powers to states.

The governors, in a communique at the end of the meeting read by the host and Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, also resolved to collaborate with one another for the growth and development of their economies.

The meeting was attended by governors of Ogun, Ibikunle Amosun; Oyo, Abiola Ajimobi; Osun, Rauf Aregbesola, Ebonyi, David Umahi; and Edo, Godwin Obaseki.

Others are governors of Ondo, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu; Abia, Okezie Ikpeazu; Enugu, Henry Ugwuanyi; Bayelsa, Seriake Dickson and Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose.

The governors of Cross River, Anambra and Delta were represented by their deputies  Evara Esu, Ikem Okeke and Kingsley Otuaru respectively.

But PREMIUM TIMES correspondent at the event reports that Mr. Okorocha was absent. Our correspondent also observed that unlike his counterparts from Anambra, Delta and Cross River who could not be at the event but sent representatives, when the communique was read, no mention was made of Mr. Okorochas representative at the summit.

Mr. Okorocha was in the news recently when he erected a statue in honour of South African president, Jacob Zuma. The development, however, attracted a barrage of criticisms from Nigerians.

Continuing with the communique at the Lagos House on Monday, Mr. Ambode said the governors after extensive deliberations, also emphasized priority on security and lives and property of citizens of the regions, while also resolving to work on effective linkage on good infrastructure across the 17 states in the region.

At the meeting, Mr. Ambode was unanimously appointed as the Chairman of the Southern Governors Forum (SGF) while Messrs. Dickson and Umahi of Bayelsa and Ebonyi states respectively, were appointed co- chairmen of the forum.

AMBODE makes case for true federalism

Earlier, Mr. Ambode, while welcoming his colleagues to the meeting, reflected on the clamour for true federalism and devolution of powers, saying that states will benefit from the envisaged restructuring.

He said the goals of true federalism, which included the strengthening of autonomy and the enhancement of fiscal viability will enable the states to develop at their own pace and based on their peculiarities.

He said the forum had achieved an increased awareness on the sustenance of the national question germane to peaceful co-existence in the country.

However, he said there is a lot to be done and achieved, stressing that true federalism required urgent, meticulous and proactive attention by the forum.

The Lagos governor also frowned at what he described as the non-periodic review of the revenue formula as provided by the constitution to reflect evolving realities.

He said the review is crucial to enhance the viability of states and local governments and their capacity to fulfil their developmental roles in the polity.

States are disparaged for always carrying begging bowls to Abuja in quest of hand-outs from the federal government. This is a function of our present national constitution that burdens the federal government with activities and responsibilities that rightly fall within the province of states, he said.

The productivity and revenue-generating capacities of most states are thus stifled, thus turning them into no better than street beggar states incapable of even meeting routine obligations of paying workers salaries and pensions without federal support.

Mr. Ambode recalled that Lagos State had fought and won several legal battles since 1999 that have systematically strengthened her autonomy and enhanced her fiscal viability.

He noted that the state had won the legal control over the management of its environment, the control of urban and physical planning, the regulation of overhead masts, the registration and regulation of hotels and restaurants, and the control of inland waterways.

He said these victories belonged, not only to Lagos, but also to other states, adding that, if Lagos could achieve so much by fighting alone, the Southern Governors Forum will accomplish more through collective planning and strategy.

The governor said the forum has been reactivated at the time the National Assembly is harmonising its differences over the 1999 Constitution amendment, which will soon be transmitted to the Houses of Assembly for approval

He said: It is important for this forum to comprehensively look at the proposed amendments with a view to working with our respective Houses of Assembly to ensure a coordinated response on our part that will strengthen the practice of democracy, federalism, constitutionalism and the rule of law.

The governor also explained that while pushing for greater devolution of powers, responsibilities and resources from the centre to the states, the goal of the forum is neither a weak centre and strong states and vice versa.

The governor paid tribute to former Lagos State Governor Bola Tinubu for his initiave, recalling that he hosted the first meeting of the forum in Akodo Beach Resort, Ibeju-Lekki, Lagos.

Mr. Ambode also hailed the forum for advocating for a special allocation to oil-producing states in the Federation Account, adding that its agitation led to the current 13 per cent revenue derivation and allocation from the Federation Account.

Another major victory won towards strengthening the countrys practice of true federalism was the declaration by the Supreme Court in 2002 that the then prevalent practice of the Federal Government deducting monies from the Federation Account as a first charge for the funding of Joint Venture Contracts, the NNPC priority projects, servicing of Federal Governments external debt, the judiciary and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and other federal obligations were illegal and unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court in that case abolished the special funds created by the Federal Government to enable it draw funds from the Federation Account to pay for matters that fell within its exclusive responsibility before sharing whatever was left with states and local governments, he noted.

The forum held its last meeting in 2005, during the administration of Mr. Tinubu in Lagos State. On Monday, the forum also scheduled its next meeting for Port Harcourt at a yet to be announced date.
The Senate ad hoc committee investigating alleged misuse of funds, under-remittance and other fraudulent activities in government revenue generating agencies has unearthed how government revenue generating agencies shortchanged the government of over N21.5 trillion between 2012 and 2016.

The committee has also initiated moves to amend relevant laws to make it mandatory that these agencies accommodate resident treasury officers to be posted by the Accountant General of the Federation to ensure accountability.

The officers are expected to have access to all financial records and books of the agencies.

The committee explained that 25 of the 93 agencies so far covered defrauded the government of N1,695,585,887,406 (approx N1.7 trillion) as unremitted revenue generated between 2012 and 2016. The report added that the estimated amount yet to be remitted to the Federal Government during the period by the 93 agencies it is investigating was N21.5 trillion.

The committee said the agencies followed the guidelines of a memo allegedly issued by a former Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to the agencies to remit 25 per cent of revenue they generated to the Federal Government and spend 75 per cent for their activities.

This was contained in an interim report by the committee chaired by Olamilekan Adeola, which was laid before the Senate last week Thursday, a copy of which was sighted by our correspondent on Monday.

The former minister could not be immediately reached for comments.

The Senate committee said the agencies chose to (illegally) comply with a directive by Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala via a memo dated November 11, 2011, with Reference Number BO/RVE/12235/259/VII/201 by the former minister to remit 25 per cent only from the revenue generated and use the remaining 75 per cent, which is a clear violation of Section 120 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) and the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 as well as the establishment acts of some of these institutions.

It alleged that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, NNPC, generated N15.541 trillion, while its entire expenditure during the period was N18.657 trillion, exceeding the corporations revenue profile by N3.115 trillion.

The committee, in the report, said the NNPC operated at a deficit of N3.1 trillion, while the Nigeria Customs Service, which generated N335.855 billion, failed to remit N83.963 billion during the period under review.

The report also indicted the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, which generated N455.5 billion but allegedly failed to remit N33.83 billion.

Also, the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA reportedly remitted N86.636 billion to the Consolidated Revenue Fund when it generated N789.104 billion.

Other defaulting agencies it listed include the Central Bank of Nigeria, remitting N13.716 billion out of N3.098 trillion; NIMASA, N184.489 billion out of N301.160 billion and Nigerian Television Authority, N5.567 billion out of N56.817 billion.

Part of the report reads: Most of the revenue generating agencies deny the Auditor General of the Federation access to their financial books and records, which is in conflict with Section 125, Subsection (3) and (i and ii); and Subsection (4) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).

Consequently, the committee recommends as follows: that the Senate should amend the laws where necessary to make it mandatory for all revenue generating agencies to accommodate resident auditors to be posted by the Auditor General of the Federation that will have access to all financial records and books, and to ensure compliance with Section 120(i) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).

The Fiscal Responsibility Act should be amended in a way to compel all agencies and institutions of government on compliance with financial regulations regarding income generation, accounting and remittances.
A Nigerian Army sergeant, Taiwo Owoye, has been accused of culpability for the death of a 27-year-old commercial motorcyclist, Abu Alhaji, in Lagos.

Mr. Alhaji died on January 28 at the Reference Hospital, Lagos, a day after he was allegedly assaulted by the soldier over a traffic incident, the brother of the deceased told the Human Rights Army Tribunal on Tuesday.

The tribunal is currently sitting in the premises of the Lagos State High Court in Ikeja on cases involving alleged rights violation by officers of the Nigerian Army.

The case of Mr. Alhaji was brought before the tribunal by the Nigerian Human Rights Commission through its counsel, Lucas Gboyejo and Emmanuella Anyawu.

Testifying before the tribunal, Mr. Mohammed said his deceased brother was operating his motorcycle taxi in Maroko area of Lagos.

Abu Alhaji took a passenger to Maroko Roundabout on January 27 and parked at the back of a vehicle, Mr. Mohammed recounted.

Unknown to him, the car had an occupant. When he realized this, he knocked on the car so that the car which could move would not hit him at that time. But the driver of the car was unfortunately an Army officer who is Sergeant Taiwo Owoye.

Sergeant Owoye slapped my brother twice and my brother fell down. After falling down, the sergeant did not stop and started hitting my brother in the stomach severally, which made him unconscious.

Abu started vomiting and he was vomiting blood and other things before we rushed him to the hospital where he died the next day around 10:30 p.m.

Afterwards, the sergeant boasted that nothing would happen even after the incident if my brother died.

Mr. Mohammed who was the only witness presented by the commission, said the Nigeria Police withheld the corpse for four months and refused to release a copy of the autopsy report to the family.

We tried to get his corpse but they did not release it to us till May 25, 2017. They said they were doing autopsy but even we the family did not get any copy of the autopsy report from them.

We even applied for ambulance but they failed to give to us saying we should pay a huge amount which we could not afford.

Mr. Mohammed asked the tribunal to help the deceaseds family get justice.

We want justice because nothing has been heard about the case since. Even the Nigerian Military although arrested him (the accused), but after the arrest we did not hear anything at all. We want the accused officer to be prosecuted and a compensation paid for damages.

Replying to the charge, the Chairman of the panel, Abraham Georgewill, promised to expedite action to ensure justice after proper investigations.

We promise that issues will be addressed. We will hear from the Nigerian Army because this is a huge case. We sympathize with your family over the death of the young man but we will get back to you after due investigations. Mr. Georgewill said.

The tribunal was set up following a spate of allegations of abuse of human rights by Nigerian Army officers.
The police in Kogi on Tuesday confirmed the killing of two police officers and the abduction of an expatriate by unknown gunmen at a construction site in the state.

The spokesperson of the state police command, William Aya, told journalists in Lokoja that Ezekiel Negedu, an inspector, and Gini John, a sergeant, were killed while on guard duty on Obajana  Oshokoshoko  Kabba road.

Mr. Aya, an assistant superintendent of police, said that Mr. John died on the spot while Mr. Negedu died on arrival in hospital.

According to the police spokesperson, about 15 gunmen emerged from a nearby bush and attacked the construction site of A .G. Dangote Company currently handling the rehabilitation of the 45-kilometre Obajana  Kabba Road.

He said that the abducted expatriate, Jose Machada, a Portuguese civil engineer, along with other expatriates and Nigerians, were inspecting the project when the gunmen struck.

According to him, the deceased police officers put up a gallant fight and resisted attempt by the invading gunmen to wreak further havoc.

He, however, expressed regret that Messrs. Negedu and John died in active service to the nation.

Mr. Aya said that the state police commissioner, Ali Janga, had a raised a team headed by the Deputy Commissioner of Police and comprising men of Special anti-robbery squad, mobile police force, Counter Terrorism Unit and others to comb the bush and rescue the victim.

He said that Mr. Janga had also visited the scene where he met with top officials and workers of the construction company on the incident.

Mr. Aya said that the police commissioner assured the workers of adequate security and promised to rescue the abducted expatriate.

(NAN)
Despite being on the run after being declared wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, for alleged corruption, embattled former chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reform, Abdulrasheed Maina, was provided federal security cover, PREMIUM TIMES can report today.

Investigators have found that for months, Mr. Maina received protection from operatives of the Nigeria Police Force and the State Security Service, SSS. The SSS also provided an accommodation for him.

Mr. Maina is currently at large and did not report to duties on Monday at the Ministry of Interior where he was recently posted to.

The spokesperson of EFCC, Wilson Uwujaren, said the agency was intensifying its search for Mr. Maina.

The fresh search was triggered by a PREMIUM TIMES report on Friday detailing how the former pension boss, who fled Nigeria in 2013, sneaked back to the country and was reinstated into the civil service, and promoted.

The story sparked outrage amongst Nigerians and the civil society who viewed the case as a litmus test for the anti-corruption effort the Buhari administration.

On Monday, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered for immediate disengagement of Mr. Maina and demanded a report of the circumstances leading to his reinstatement from the Head of Service of the Federation. The presidency said the report has been turned in.

SSS, Police involvement

PREMIUM TIMES learnt that all the while, Mr. Maina was being provided guards by the SSS. A safe house in Maitama, allegedly belonging to the SSS, was also provided for his use.

The SSS does not have a known spokesperson to respond to this story.

PREMIUM TIMES telephoned the director general of the SSS, Lawal Daura, and the services director of operations, identified as Mr. Bassey, but both officials did not respond to multiple calls.

This paper also found out that Mr. Mainas controversial $2 million house in Jabi, Abuja, was guarded by the police.

A PREMIUM TIMES reporter who saw an armed police guard at the property on Monday, confirmed that the operative was posted there from the Maitama police division.

The FCT Police spokesperson, Anjuguri Manzah, said he was not aware of the posting. He promised to find out and get back to this newspaper. He was yet to do so.

Mouthwatering offer

Meanwhile, PREMIUM TIMES has obtained more details about how Mr. Maina purchased the Jabi property.

As exclusively reported by this newspaper two years ago, Mr. Maina used bankers and other intermediaries to launder most of the money he allegedly embezzled from the pension funds in his care.

The process of purchasing the Jabi home, located at No. 10 Hamisu Musa Road, followed a similar pattern.

Investigators familiar with the deal told PREMIUM TIMES that Mr. Maina, who paid for the house in cash, made a mouth-watering offer to the first owner, identified as Adamu Modibbo, a former managing director of Sigma Pension.

PREMIUM TIMES learnt that the property was not in the market so Mr. Maina, acting through a middleman, approached Mr. Modibbo with an enticing offer.

Mr. Modibbo initially resisted the proposal to sell the house, where he was living with his family, but was given what an official called an irresistible offer.

Officials said both the buyer and the seller contravened provisions of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act by transacting in cash, given the amount involved.

Investigators, who traced the land documents at the Abuja Geographic Information System, AGIS, found that the new title documents were collected by an official of Guarantee Trust Bank.

Investigators later found that the man had resigned his post from the bank and disappeared.

Contacted for comments, Mr. Modibbo said he would not want to make any comment. He said he would rather allow EFCC to get to the root of the matter.

EFCC continues search

Mr. Mainas whereabouts remained unknown by Tuesday evening.

A senior official at the EFCC however told PREMIUM TIMES that the commission had searched Mr. Mainas family house in Kaduna following a tip off that he was in the city to see his mother over the weekend. The search was fruitless.

Officials also said Mr. Maina has been unreachable even to close associates in the last two days.
The Sokoto Governor, Aminu Tambuwal, has appealed to the Federal Government to hand over federal roads in the country to state governments for effective management.

He made the appeal when he received the Senate Committee on Works led by its Chairman, Kabiru Gaya, at the Government House in Sokoto late Monday night.

There is the need for the federal government to hand over the roads to states because state governments are closer to the people and we have more efficient methods of supervision. If this is done, it will go a long way in ensuring that the vast majority of major roads and highways in the country are well maintained, he said.

Mr. Tambuwal said Sokoto state government will continue to work with all those involved to ensure that the infrastructural development of Nigeria is given utmost attention.

He equally solicited the support of the National Assembly to facilitate the reimbursement of the money the state government spent on the repairs of some federal roads in its domain.

In his remarks, Mr. Gaya said they were in the state for the conduct of their oversight functions.

He lauded Mr. Tambuwals efforts especially in the area of infrastructure development.

Mr. Gaya also assured that his committee would facilitate the reimbursement of the funds used by the state government in construction federal roads.

He thanked the governor for his commitment to see to the completion of the Sokoto-Jega-Yauri -Kontagora road which is currently under construction.
The Senate on Tuesday resolved to intervene in the $1.2 billion debt crisis rocking Nigerian telecommunications company, Etisalat, now known as 9mobile.

Leading the motion, Adeola Olamilakan (Lagos-APC) noted that the seven-year syndicated loan was acquired in 2013 from a consortium of 13 banks in Nigeria as a mid-term facility to fund the expansion of the companys network .

As of 2016, the company had started defaulting on the $1.2 billion loan obligations leading to a few bailouts from its parent company in Abu Dhabi, he said.

He noted that only 42% of this loan has been repaid, remaining an outstanding debt of $696 million representing 58% of its capital, which Etisalat has failed to service since 2016.

Mr. Olamilekan observed that about 4000 jobs are at stake and that a loan of such magnitude could set off another banking crisis in Nigeria.

Barau Jibrin (Kano-APC) said the motion should be passed urgently to prevent further job loss.

I support this motion. We need to find out those who spent this money. We cannot allow 4,000 Nigerians to lose their jobs, he said.

Magnus Abe (Rivers-APC), while speaking on the motion asked for a complete overhaul of the corporate business environment in Nigeria order to check the excesses of foreign investors.

All over the world, the integrity of any country does not only depend on the stock market but also on the behaviour of top companies, he said.

We cannot allow foreign investors to just come to this country and do what they like. We need to look at this issue from the angle of regulating the corporate business world and stock exchange market.

The Senate mandated its Committee on Banking, Communications, Capital Market and National Security to investigate the management and utilisation of the loan facility and make recommendations to prevent similar occurrences in the future.

The Senate also urged relevant financial agencies of the Federal Government to investigate the management of Etisalat and all defaulting parties.
The Federal Government has called for collaboration between Nigeria and Indonesia in agriculture and agro-allied industries.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo made the call on Monday during a bilateral meeting in Jakarta with his Indonesian counterpart, Jusuf Kalla.

During the meeting held on the sidelines of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, EITI, Beneficial Ownership Transparency Conference, the vice president said Nigeria was shopping for new investments to grow the economy.

Nigeria is open for business and more investment. We are looking forward to more Indonesian investments, especially in the manufacturing sector in Nigeria. We are trying to exploit our local raw materials, the VP said.

Mr. Osinbajo, who also restated his declaration during his meeting with members of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce on Monday, also said Nigeria was ready to increase economic cooperation between both countries.

He told Mr. Kalla that the Buhari administration had implemented several reforms that have positively impacted the Nigerian business environment and made it more attractive to new investors.

Other issues discussed by the two vice presidents included how both countries can collaborate more in the Agriculture and agro-allied sector, and also in palm oil research and production.

Responding, the Indonesian vice president said his country was also ready for more economic cooperation with African countries, especially Nigeria.
A former Minister of Education and a co-leader of the #BringBackOurGirls group, Oby Ezekwesili, has blamed the National Assembly for the low public trust in Nigerias democracy.

The reason we continue after 18 years of uninterrupted democracy to have low public trust in our society is because of the quality of legislature, Mrs. Ezekwesili said on Tuesday in a series of tweets from her Twitter account @obyezeks.

Ordinarily it should be that citizens hold their legislature in high regard and therefore have high public trust in government, she said. But we dont.

Mrs. Ezekwesili said it was tragic that only a few citizens take the National Assembly serious whenever the lawmakers conduct a public hearing on scandals.

For as long as the individual and institutional integrity of @nassnigeria remains poor in citizens rating, executive scandals will soar, she added.

Mrs. Ezekwesili accused the leadership of the National Assembly of not investing in building public trust through legislature integrity.

She appealed to Nigerians to take the election of lawmakers seriously.

If we ever manage to improve the quality of those that constitute our legislature public trust rises.

To build up our public trust, we direly need a legislature that is trusted by citizens to hold the executive accountable.

It is in the interest of our democracy that our @nassnigeria is not a weakened arm of government that cannot hold the executive arm to account, she said.
A popular wrestler, John Eke Uti, popularly known as Power Uti, was on Tuesday hauled up before an Ebute Meta Magistrates Court, Lagos, for allegedly killing his wife, Toyin.

Uti, 55, was arraigned before Magistrate Bola Folarin-Williams on a two-count charge of murder and disrespect of corpse.

After going through the case file, Mrs. Folarin-Williams said she did not see anything both in the accuseds statement and in the police investigations to show that the accused killed his wife and quashed the remand application brought by the police.

She, therefore, admitted the accused to a bail of N500, 000 with two responsible sureties in like sum, who must be blood relations and also work with reputable organisations.

She directed that the case file be duplicated and a copy forwarded to the State Director of Public Prosecutions (DPPs) for legal advice.

Earlier, Jimah Iseghede, the prosecutor, had told the court that the accused committed the offences on October 10 about 10.25 p.m. at No. 17, Oremeji St., Ilupeju, Lagos.

He alleged that the accused beat his wife, Toyin, 38, to death and abandoned the corpse in a room to decompose.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Uti, a former world wrestling champion, was first taken to Ilupeju Police Station before being transferred to the State Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Department for further investigation.

The offences contravened Sections 165(a) and 223 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015.

If found guilty, the accused faces a death sentence.

The case has been adjourned until November 15.

(NAN)
The first plenary session of the sixth Macau legislature  effectively initiating the group of newly elected and appointed lawmakers  was marked by several queries regarding the procedures of the Legislative Assembly (AL) yesterday afternoon.

Addressing the first query even before the scheduled period for spoken enquiries, AL president Ho Iat Seng commented on a letter of complaint presented to the AL board by lawmaker Sulu Sou on October 19 regarding the plenarys deliberation over the constitution, members and designations of the ALs Standing Committees.

The lawmaker questioned the choice of committee members as well as what actions they proposed to take in their positions.

Ho said the board had refused to address the topic at the plenary. In the end of July we changed some of the rules of the AL [and have now established] a timing in advance for the lawmakers to present their proposals before the agenda speeches, he said.

He said the measure was to allow AL staff to translate documents in both official languages for lawmakers and media representatives. Those that failed to comply with such [a] rule today will not have the opportunity to address the plenary before the agenda [] their interventions [will be] postponed and [take] priority for the upcoming session.

The procedure matters started right before the first interventions of the day, and followed the first point of the agenda where lawmakers discussed and voted on the composition of the Committee for Regulations and Mandates of the AL.

Sou was again the loudest critic, followed by Au Kam San, Pereira Coutinho and Ng Kuok Cheong. All four called for greater transparency in the works of the committees and demanded to know whether the seven lawmakers being appointed to the Committee for Regulations and Mandates would address certain issues. These included the possibility of opening AL meetings to the media and whether one lawmaker could be represented in multiple committees.

The distribution was done according to the provenience [form of election]. We are going to have three [lawmakers] directly elected and three from indirect elections and I think this is a balanced solution, Ho said.

Sou suggested that the AL board should question all lawmakers before deciding on the members of a list, in case there are others that want to participate.

Au agreed with Sou, and Pereira Coutinho reiterated that this had always been one of his main battles, saying that he was also very curious about the matter.

Hos response was that the regime is very clear regarding this matter. There is no rule that restricts the participation of other [lawmakers in the committees] but this is a matter that should not be presented to the plenary since its a matter of the committee.

He added that the members could not speak because they were not elected yet.

Ng voiced his agreement with the idea that committees can be open to [the] public, to which Ho replied that this decision can be taken in the committee. Thats what the regime states. Its a decision from the Committees.

Pereira Coutinho suggested that the current rule could be inverted, leaving the Committees open by default and in special cases [the meetings could be held] behind closed doors, just in very particular cases that can raise panic [in the society] or similar.

Vong Hin Fai intervened, reaffirming the rule that allows nomination by secret vote in the event the list proposed by the Board is not accepted.

This ended the debate and the AL proceeded to vote on the proposal, which was approved with 30 votes in favor and only two against (from Sulu Sou and Pereira Coutinho).

The second and third points of the agenda  pertaining to the constitution, members and composition of the Standing and Follow up Committees  were approved unanimously with 32 votes in favor.

For the last item on the agenda, lawmaker Angela Leong was elected as the representative in the Administration Council with a majority of 24 votes. Two votes were blank, while the rest of the opposing votes belonged to several other lawmakers.

Sulu Sou stands for young Macau people

In his first address to a Legislative Assembly plenary session, New Macau Association lawmaker Sulu Sou thanked voters for the trust placed in him and said that his spike-covered chair represents the hope of survival for his supporters. Sou remarked that he has always taken the initiative to speak out in the presence of injustice, while others didnt for being restrained by hidden rules.

In a speech laying out his position, Sou said the because of the faith placed in him, society will change, and even if it just slightly changes, there will be none to regret it.

Housing and jobs were two of the issues highlighted in the speech. He said, when housing and jobs are difficult, it is natural that youngsters become [divided]. They work and save money to go abroad, noting that in this way, young people that love this land and want to live all their lives in this city are labeled as having [low ambition] and fear to go out to the Greater Bay [area], the Belt and Road and Portuguese-speaking countries.

Public officials accountability in the spotlight following Hato

The consequences of Typhoon Hato and their connection to the accountability of high-ranked public officials was a topic on which several lawmakers focused before the meeting began in earnest.

Si Ka Lon was the first to address the topic in the plenary, urging the government members to assume their duties.

Quoting Chinese Premier Xi Jiping during the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Si said, The State needs to continue to implement criteria in order to have good staff; in other words, select government members that have strong convictions, that serve the people, that are hard workers and pragmatists, that assume their responsibilities and are incorruptible.

He cited public opinion that many of the government members are unqualified and do not assume their duties and responsibilities.

Without mentioning Typhoon Hato, Si urged the government to define criteria related to the accountability regime and, at the same time [] improve the inspection works. He continued to say that when the inspections uncovered a disease they should treat it immediately.

In an unprecedented plenary address spoken entirely in Mandarin, appointed lawmaker Lei Chan U noted the inoperativeness and low efficiency of the administration. He called these endemic problems and entreated the government to perfect the mentioned regime.

Leong Sun Iok, a new face at the AL, also addressed the topic: Society wants a perfect regime for the accountability of high-ranked officials.

Leong noted that the non-timely communication of information to the society by the SMG (Meteorological and Geophysical Bureau) before the passage of Typhoon Hato is one of the reasons that justify the significant losses, both in human lives and in property damage. He accused government officials of developing a passive attitude.
The Nigerian government has asked the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration, NAFDAC, to cut down its time of registration of products from 90 to 60 days.



The vice president of Nigeria, Yemi Osinbajo, who said this in Abuja on Tuesday at the NAFDAC stakeholders consultative forum on the ease of doing business in Nigeria, noted that this will encourage business owners.

Mr. Osinbajo, who was represented by his special adviser on micro, small and medium enterprises, Fola Johnson, said with the new directive, NAFDAC would need to speed up its process of registration as this was one of the best ways to encourage small businesses.



Sixty days is possible. Collectively let us put our house in order. Let MSMEs, NAFDAC and the federal government, target 60 days. The shorter the time for registration, the better for MSMEs, because just to collect a registration number should not take months, when will you start the business? When will you start making profits?

Any MSME that employs a person today is doing the federal government a huge favour. What the federal government is supposed to do is create an enabling environment. It is the private sector that drives the economy, so we must encourage every activity that drives that space, he said.

The acting Director General of NAFDAC, Ademola Mogbojuri, said the agency was already encouraging small businesses as it had recently slashed by 50 per cent the cost of registration for companies with less than five employees.

Mr. Mogbojuri, who was represented by Abubakar Jimoh, said the agency had reduced its registration period from a maximum of one year to a minimum of 90 days.

He said efforts would be made to ensure that it is brought down to between a month and 60 days especially for small businesses.

In order to encourage MSMEs, NAFDAC has guaranteed a 50 per cent reduction in cost of registration of products for companies with five or less than five employees.

Weve also reduced the registration time to 90 days and established a small business support desk to guide small business through the registration process and serve as enquiry point for small businesses on regulatory issues.

NAFDAC has set up a system for the electronic submission of documents to line directorates to reduce the time taken for hard copies to get to such directorates in Lagos, he said.
The Chairman, National Population Commission (NPC), Eze Duruiheoma (SAN), has advised families to adopt birth control measures to avert population disaster and harness demographic dividend in Nigeria.

Mr. Duruiheoma gave the advice on Tuesday in Abuja while briefing newsmen as part of the activities to commemorate the 2017 Annual Population Lecture Series (APLS) scheduled to hold on October 30.

He noted that Nigerias population was its greatest asset, but the population size can become a curse if investments were not adequately made in some key sectors.

According to him, more investments should be made on education that would enable the youth to become equipped with the skills they need to succeed in life.

He added that public and private sectors should also provide job opportunities for the youth after schooling; these efforts among others would lead Nigeria to the realisation of demographic dividend.

It is not a matter of how many youths we have in Nigeria, but the youths we are talking about falls within the productive age of 14 to 40 years.

This category of the population makes about 65 per cent of the population.

We want families to decide the number of children they want to properly carter for, if we are able to start at this level we will effectively control our birth in Nigeria, the chairman said.

The 2017 APLS has a theme Achieving Demographic Dividend: Strategic tool for national economic recovery and sustainable development.

Mr. Duruiheoma said the theme was in tandem with the efforts of the government to revamp the nations economy through the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).

He added that the APLS aimed to deepen government and other stakeholders awareness and understanding of the benefits of appropriate systems and sectors to reap demographic dividends.

He said the meeting would arouse public interest on the need to key into the tenets of Nigerias Roadmap on Demographic Dividend, among others.

Earlier, Muhammad Tola, the Chairman, APLS Media Sub-committee, said the lecture series was essentially designed to sensitise stakeholders to mobilise ministries, departments and agencies to harness the dividend of population.

Mr. Tola, who represented the Chairman of the main Planning Committee Kole Shettima, added that the goal of the lecture series was to ensure that human resources are explored, developed and harnessed towards national development and improve the life of Nigerians.

(NAN)
The UN on Tuesday said it would commence implementation of over $4 billion dollars UN Sustainable Development Partnership Framework (UNSDPF) in Nigeria in 2018.

Edward Kallon, the UN Resident Humanitarian Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative, made this known at the UN Day Celebration in Abuja, noting that the scheme would be from 2018 to 2022.

Mr. Kallon said the theme of the celebration was Concrete Action for SDGs, adding that the scheme was to demonstrate UNs commitment to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the country.

The resident representative said the UNSDPF was premised on SDGs principles, with clear mapping and linkages of contribution of each results area to SDGs target.

According to him, the UNSDPF 2018-2022 is the main strategic document defining the broad areas of support and assistance of the UN system to Nigeria.

He said it was a joint development and humanitarian framework for the over 20 UN agencies and organisations in Nigeria, focusing on Governance, Human Rights, Peace and Security.

He explained that it also focused on Equitable Quality Basic Services and Sustainable and Inclusive Economic Growth and Development.

He added that the UNSDPF is major imperative for not only a joint-UN partnership but direct re-affirmation of support to governments development agenda, especially the Economic Recovery and Growth Programme.

A total of 193 world leaders recently reaffirmed their commitment to world peace and emphasised the SDGs both as a developmental imperative and operational framework for moving the world to greater prosperity, Mr. Kallon said.

The leaders made the commitment at the recent concluded 72nd session of UN General Assembly in New York.

I, therefore, urge policy makers and development partners in Nigeria to go beyond `business as usual approach to `business unusual approach to SDGs implementation.

He also urged them to incorporate both the letter and spirit of Agenda 20139, as well as the AU commissions Agenda 20163, into policies, plans and legislation at both federal and state levels.

While noting that government alone could not deliver the SDG promise, Mr. Kallon called for broad coalition with the private sector, development partners, academia, civil society organisations, among others, to achieve the goals.

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, represented by the ministrys Permanent Secretary, Olakunle Bamgbose, said Nigeria was proud to be a committed member of the UN family.

According to him, the theme of the anniversary is apt and timely in view of the aspiration to tackle poverty and other challenges in Nigeria.

He said the country recognised SDGs as clear stimulus for generating coherence.

We are convinced that full implementation of SDGs is crucial to the development of Nigeria. And it therefore calls for our collective goals and this will help to transform our world.

Let me reassure you of Nigerias commitment to engage global communities and most importantly the UN; there is the need to promote effective and transformation of implementation of SDGs at national and sub-national level.

These are goals that President Muhammadu Buhari remain personally committed to provide and ensure that no one is left behind, he said.

(NAN)
The House of Representatives on Tuesday set up an ad-hoc committee to investigate the resurfacing, reabsorbing and subsequent elevation of fugitive alleged pension fund fraudster, Abdulrasheed Maina, to the rank of an acting director in the Federal Ministry of Interior.

The move by the lawmakers came on the same day their counterpart in the Senate took the same step over the issue.

PREMIUM TIMES had exclusively reported how Mr. Maina, who is wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, was secretly recalled and promoted to the position of director in charge of Human Resources in the Ministry of Interior.

In a motion of urgent public importance raised by Adams Jagaba (Kaduna-APC), the house also vowed to recommend strong sanctions against anyone implicated in the scandal.

The lawmakers also urged the EFCC to immediately arrest Mr. Maina for prosecution.

The Senate had earlier on Tuesday also resolved to investigate the circumstances that led to the reinstatement of Mr. Maina, into the civil service.

The lawmakers, after several deliberations, drafted the chairmen and vice- chairman of committees on Interior, Judiciary, Anti-corruption and Public Service Establishment to determine the circumstances surrounding Mainas return to the country and how he was reinstated to the service and got promoted to the post of Director after dismissal.

The report of an investigation ordered by President Muhammadu Buhari on the matter was submitted to the presidents chief of staff on Monday.
An Abuja Division of the Federal High Court has adjourned ruling until Wednesday on an application by former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, to set aside a subpoena for his appearance in the court.

A former spokesperson of the Peoples Democratic Party, Olisah Metuh, obtained the subpoena from the court on Monday following an order of the Appeal Court on September 29.

Mr. Dasukis lawyer, Ahmed Raji, on Monday asked the court to set aside the subpoena saying it had not been served on his client.

Speaking during an interview with journalists after Mondays hearing, Mr. Raji said his application was for the court to set aside, or at the very worst put in abeyance, the order for the service of the subpoena until his client is released.

We are asking it to set aside its subpoena, or at the very worst put it in abeyance, until the colonel is released. Because the subpoena is asking him to come and testify in a matter where there is a subtle indictment against him.

Its like asking him to come and testify against himself which is unconstitutional. So our stand is that the subpoena is not in order, Mr. Raji said.

Speaking during the court session on Tuesday, Mr. Raji reiterated that his clients decision to challenge the order was because the particulars of the charge against Mr. Metuh also indict his client, hence Mr. Dasuki should not be made to testify in the matter.

Reacting to Mr. Rajis submission, Mr. Metuhs lawyer, Onyeachi Ikpeazu, asked if the court had the right to overrule the subpoena.

Mr. Ikpeazu said the submission of Mr. Raji that his client was indicted in Mr. Metuhs charge is an issue to be determined by the court.

Mr. Ikpeazu said the subpoena was made in good faith and that since Mr. Dasuki was not a party in the matter, there should be no need for the first defendant to antagonize the prospective witness by securing a warrant of arrest for Mr. Dasuki.

That will be incongruous my Lord, Mr. Ikpeazu said.

Similarly, the prosecution witness, Sylvanus Tahir, opposed the application on the grounds that the FHC, venue of Mr. Metuhs trial was subordinate to the Appeal Court which had overruled a decision of the lower court against Mr. Dasukis subpoena.

Citing a ruling of the higher court to back his point, Mr. Tahir said any attempt by the lower court to counter the order of the Appeal Court amounts to an invitation to anarchy.

The Federal High Court is a subordinate court to the Court of Appeal. Therefore a judicial action of the Court of Appeal cannot be subjected to a review by the FHC.

Any attempt to do so would be contrary to the necessary intendment of the constitution and will cause judicial anarchy.

Mr. Tahir said the order for the subpoena had not been appealed, therefore the former NSA could not bring his application to the court in session.

He further argued that since Mr. Dasuki was not a party in the matter, he could not appeal the case.

Responding, Mr. Raji said the subject of his application, which was the subpoena, did not emanate from the Appeal Court but from the lower court, hence the court in session had powers to set it aside or put it in abeyance.

He said the argument of the prosecution was inconsistent because the prosecution counsel, Mr. Tahir contended on one hand that Mr. Dasuki could not appeal the order, regarding the subpoena, since he was not a party in Mr. Metuhs trial, and in another breath, he (Tahir) also said Mr. Dasuki had not challenged the order.

The presiding judge, Okon Abang, adjourned the trial for the second time in one week, at the instance of the defence, saying the matter would continue on Wednesday with the court deciding the application by Mr. Raji.

Mr. Abang also ruled that the adjournment on Tuesday was to allow both former President Goodluck Jonathan and Mr. Dasuki appear in court.

The application for Mr. Jonathans appearance was made orally on Monday. It was stated in court on Tuesday that the subpoena written after Mondays session was yet to be served on the former President.

Speaking outside the courtroom, Mr. Raji told journalists that the subpoena was yet to be served on his client.
The All Progressives Congress says reinstatement of Abdulrasheed Maina, former Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, into the Federal Civil Service was an embarrassment to the Federal Government.

The National Publicity Secretary of the party, Bolaji Abdullahi, stated this while speaking with journalists on Tuesday in Abuja.

He said that the development was unacceptable and also embarrassing to the party.

Mr. Maina was dismissed from the Federal Civil Service for abandoning his duty post and evading arrest for his involvement in the mismanagement of about N2 billion pension fund.

We are all shocked like any other person. It is almost unbelievable that such a thing can happen.

However, we are all delighted that President Muhammadu Buhari has taken very decisive punitive action against those that are involved.

We are also delighted that he has ordered full scale investigation into the circumstances that led to this individual to be reinstated into the public office, he said.

Mr. Abdullahi said that the APC believed that those that were part or found to be part of the development would face appropriate consequences.

He, however, debunked insinuations that the president was shielding the suspended Secretary to Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal and the Director-General, National Intelligence Agency, NIA, Ayo Oke, over corruption investigation.

The APC spokesman expressed confidence that the president would do what was necessary and right under the situations in the best interest of the nation.

Action will definitely be taken on them. I think we should just be kind and wait for the president to take action on that before we come to the conclusion that he has not acted, he said.

(NAN)
The National Emergency Management Agency, NEMA, on Tuesday received another 257 Nigerian voluntary returnees flown back from Libya.

Hundreds of Nigerians stranded in Libya have returned to the country in 2017.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the latest returnees arrived at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, in a chartered Airbus A330-200 flight with Registration number 5A- LAT at 9.15pm.

They had been stranded in the course of their failed attempt to cross over to Europe through the volatile North African country.

The returnees were assisted back to Nigeria by the International Organisation for Migration, IOM, while the Italian Government provided the aircraft.

They were handed over to the Zonal Coordinator of NEMA Southwest, Suleiman Yakubu, who received them on behalf of federal government.

The females among the returnees comprised 241 adults, two children and five infants while the male comprised four adults, four teenage boys and one infant.

Mr. Yakubu enjoined the returnees to embrace the change mantra of the federal government.

He urged them to remain positive and focused on contributing their quota to national development, instead of seeking greener pastures where it doesnt exist.

Mr. Yakubu noted that they would not be treated as second class citizens in their own country, unlike what they face abroad after migrating illegally.

He disclosed that the European Union was providing the reintegration assistance, urging them to make use of the initiative and better their lives.

NAN reports that other agencies present when Yakubu received the returnees were the Nigerian Immigration Service, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria and the Police.

(NAN)
A new date has been announced for the 23rd professorial inaugural lecture of Bayero University, Kano, BUK, to be delivered by the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, Umar Danbatta.

Mr. Danbatta had been billed to deliver the 22nd inaugural lecture of the university on August 18 which did not hold because of the strike embarked by the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU.

The professor of telecommunications engineering is now scheduled to deliver the lecture on November 2 at the old campus of the university in the ancient city of Kano.

The topic of the lecture is: Getting out of Woods: Diversifying the Nigerian Economy through Telecommunications Sector, and is expected to attract top members of the university community and beyond.

In the same vein, the NCC boss has accepted the invitation of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, Kabuga Branch, to also deliver the 1st Engineer I K Inuwa Annual Public Lecture on November 4.

Earlier this year, the professor joined the league of eminent Nigerians who delivered the Convocation Lecture of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he spoke on The Role of ICT Infrastructure in Tertiary Education in Nigeria: NCC Interventions.

Likewise, Mr. Danbatta, who presented the October 2016 lecture of the Nigerian Academy of Engineering, was also the first Chief Executive Officer of the NCC to address the participants of the Senior Executive Course of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies in March 2016. He was declared the Chief Executive Office of the year by Tell Magazine at a ceremony in Lagos among numerous other recognitions he has received both locally and at the global stage.

Since he assumed the mantle of leadership of Africas biggest telecom regulatory body, the commission has continued to receive more global attention with many international recognitions coming its way.
The Jos Electricity Distribution Company (JEDC), has sacked 150 workers, in what its management said was part of a re-organisation aimed at optimum performance.

Among those sacked across its four states of Plateau, Gombe, Bauchi and Benue were marketers, linesmen, network engineers, cable joiners and electrical fitters.

Their sack letters, signed by Abubakar Mohammed, Head, Human Resources and Support Services, simply told the workers that their services were no longer required.

The letters said that they would be paid one months salary in lieu of notice, and warned them against impersonating as workers of the company.

Some of the workers, however, accused the JEDC management refusing to settle their entitlements before sacking them, and also alleged that they were paid half salary in September.

They also rejected managements claims that those sacked were old and unproductive, arguing that most of them were young persons engaged few years ago.

Gidado Modibbo, JEDC Managing Director, who reacted to the allegations, told the News Agency of Nigeria on Tuesday in Jos that the weeding exercise was aimed at ridding the company of dead woods.

We assess workers based on performance. Those sacked fell short of minimum expectations. Some were too old for the jobs they were handling.

We even had Faults Men that were more than 60 years and blind. We had to ask them to go because they could not climb electric poles and were not adding any value to us, he said.

He also rejected claims that the workers were paid half salaries in September, and explained that they received 70 per cent of their wages because management had set a target and resolved to base salaries on it.

Friday Elijah, JEDC Director of Communications, who also reacted, said that the main parameter used for the sack was performance.

The performance of the workers have been generally very poor and management had always told them to sit up.

Last month, for instance, we distributed N4 billion worth of energy, but realised only N950 million. It means that many workers are not productive, hence our resolve to ask them to go.

He said that some workers were sacked for extorting monies from consumers, while others collected money from customers but did not remit same to the company.

Mr. Elijah said that some workers were too old and could no longer add any value to the company, while others, who were inherited from the former owners, had served for close to 40 years.

The official, however said that the company had engaged more workers than it had sacked since it took over JEDC in November 2013, in spite of new technology that has minimised the need for manual activities.

(NAN)
The President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Ayuba Wabba, on Tuesday in Abuja appealed to Nigerians to rally round Kogi workers by donating relief materials to them.

Mr. Wabba, who was answering questions from journalists on the Kogi worker who committed suicide on Friday, said this was necessary in order to avert another act of suicide.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Edward Soje had taken his life after going 11 months without his monthly salaries.

With the suicide mission embarked upon by the state worker, it shows that Kogi state workers are already internally displaced.

This unfortunate suicide mission by the Kogi worker is an issue that should worry all Nigerians, as non-payment of salaries is becoming a reality among workers in the state, Mr. Wabba said.

He disclosed that the NLC would soon have an audience with the governor of Kogi State in view of the fact that the plight of workers in the state was becoming worrisome.

The NLC president however pointed out that non-payment of salaries had assumed a dangerous dimension in the country by leading to workers committing suicide, and should be tackled headlong.

He said the labour union would also take its case to the National Assembly.

We will be demanding that the legislative body should urge governors of affected states to pay salaries when due.

Mr. Wabba however said it was unfortunate that the Kogi governor had two weeks ago during a courtesy call on President Muhammadu Buhari claimed that he was only owing two months salaries.

He added that it was more embarrassing that the same governor had, through the states Head of Service, later owned up that his government owed Mr. Soje only eight months salary.

This is an issue the NLC will not take lightly. We are resolute and we will mobilise our people to protest the non-payment of salaries in Kogi.

We have learnt however that the governor is in the habit of using thugs to harass people, but we shall be there, because we know he is not ready for dialogue, the NLC president said.

NAN reports that the late Mr. Soje, who was a Director in the Kogi State Civil Service, had committed suicide by hanging himself on a tree in Lokoja, the state capital.

He was a Grade Level 16 officer in the State Teaching Service Commission at the time he took his own life.

(NAN)
China yesterday defended its growing trade with North Korea as permitted by U.N. Security Council sanctions that say they should avoid hurting humanitarian needs.

China, the Norths main trading partner, strictly implements sanctions aimed at stopping the Norths pursuit of nuclear and missile technology, said a foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang.

Customs data show Chinese exports to North Korea rose 31.4 percent in August from a year earlier, while imports fell 9.5 percent. Beijing has pointed out the sanctions dont prohibit food sales and argued against measures that might harm the North Korean public.

The Security Council barred member governments on Aug. 5 from buying North Korean coal and seafood. Those penalties were expanded Sept. 11 to ban supplying the North with natural gas or buying its textiles after Pyongyangs sixth and strongest nuclear test explosion.

The Security Council pointed out that the relevant resolutions should not inflict negative impacts on the livelihood and humanitarian needs of North Korea, Geng said at a regular briefing.

China, long North Koreas diplomatic protector, has gone along with the sanctions out of growing frustration with leader Kim Jong Uns government.

Beijing also has cut into Pyongyangs foreign revenue by ordering North Korean-owned restaurants and other businesses and ventures with Chinese partners to close.

One of five permanent Security Council members with veto power over U.N. actions, China doesnt want to push North Korea too hard out of fear Kims government might collapse. AP
Residents of some coastal settlements in Bayelsa on Tuesday expressed their grief over the devastation caused by the overflow of River Nun, a tributary of River Niger, in the area.

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the flood submerged some settlements along the bank of the river.

NAN also reports that residents of Tombia community in Ekpetiama kingdom and Okordia-Zarama appear to be worst-hit, as vast sections of the two neighbourhoods have remained inundated since September 27.

Some of the residents told NAN that they lost property such as houses, farmlands and fishing equipment to the disaster.

Peter Otobotekere, the President of the Ekpetiama Youth Association, who said that the community had been experiencing perennial flooding for a long time, appealed to government to come to the aid of the residents.

He said that the residents had solicited the intervention of the government on several occasions but to no avail.

Mr. Otobotekere urged the government to intervene and save the community from imminent destruction.

We have been experiencing perennial flash floods for a very long time.

Following warnings of impending floods by the federal government due to weather predictions for 2017, we expected that the state government should have done something to mitigate it.

It is usual for water levels to rise at this time of the year, which often helps our fishing vocation.

But the water level has reached a crisis point and sadly, there are no contingency plans for those of us who are vulnerable to flooding, he said.

An environmentalist, Alagoa Morris, also urged the state government to act on flood disaster warnings.

He underscored the need for the government to improve on its flood preparedness to mitigate the effect of flooding.

There have been danger signs, as many communities near the Bayelsa flank of the East-West Road were already receiving excess water from the overflow of River Nun, he said.

(NAN)
A Nigerian student has asked the Federal High Court, Uyo, to restrain an interim management committee from running the affairs of the Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Oron, Akwa Ibom state.

The federal government, through the Ministry of Transport, in September set up an interim management to run the affairs of the countrys pioneer maritime academy.

The management, headed by Adebayo Sarumi, is tasked with the responsibility of restructuring the school for its eventual take off as a maritime university.

According to court documents, Ene Ene, a prospective student who is seeking for admission into the academy, is accusing Mr. Sarumi of taking arbitrary actions which he said has adversely affected the smooth running of the academy.

Mr. Ene is suing Mr. Sarumi and others for the alleged suspension of the admission into the national diploma, higher national diploma, and postgraduate diploma programmes of the school for the 2017/2018 academic session.

He said the suspension has affected him as a prospective student who applied for admission into the national diploma programme.

The academy, the minister of transportation, and the attorney general of the federation are co-respondents in the suit.

One Francis Otioro is the co-applicant.

The applicants are seeking for an order of interlocutory injunction restraining the 3rd defendant whether by himself, privies, officers, agents, servants or through any person whatsoever from directing, running, interfering or participating with the administration, management of affairs of the 1st defendant in any manner whatsoever pending the hearing and determination of this suit.

The applicants in their affidavit said that the Maritime Academy of Nigeria has a Governing Council which is the only recognized body with the authority to administer, manage and run its affairs and that the Interim Management Committee chaired by the 3rd respondent is neither part of the Governing Council nor a recognized agent or body of the Maritime Academy of Nigeria.

The case was filed by a Lagos-based lawyer, Inibehe Effiong, on behalf of the applicants.

No date has been fixed for it yet.

The school host community has also protested against the interim management.
A patrol team of the Rapid Response Squad of the Lagos State Police Command on Monday assisted accident victims on the Third Mainland Bridge with first aid treatment.

The patrol team, which was on the Third Mainland Bridge heading towards the Island, noticed a traffic snarl caused by a burning Ford 4Wheel Drive and stopped to help put out the fire.

Minutes later, a Volkswagen commercial bus, with the registration number BOG 340 XR suffered a brake failure and rammed into a Toyota Sequoia (MUS 953 BZ) after brushing a Honda Accord (RSH 163 CL).

Over four passengers in the Volkswagen bus sustained various forms of injuries which necessitated the deployment of First Aid treatment by the Rapid Response Officers before the arrival of medical personnel.

The state government had in April started training and retraining of RRS officers on application of first aid treatment in emergencies, CPR, Controlling bleeding and fracture management.

About 150 branded First Aid Boxes were handed over to RRS by Lagos State Government in June 2017 for distribution to RRS patrol vehicles.
Members of a syndicate, who reportedly specialise in kidnapping of babies, have been arrested by the Ogun State Police Command.

The command also rescued a 3-year-old victim from the gang. The gang members, who were paraded by the command on Tuesday include Abibat Oyesanya, Morenike Shittu and Olubunmi Tajudeen.

The Commissioner of Police, Ahmed Ilyasu, said through intelligence gathering, the gangs activities were uncovered around Mowe-Ibafo area in Obafemi-Owode local government area.

He added that information revealed that the nefarious activities of the gang cut across the South-west, where they had succeeded in abducting many children.

The operatives from FSARS went after the women and three of them were promptly arrested, Mr. Ilyasu said.

The commissioner said the leader of the gang, Abibat Oyesanya, had been arrested and convicted for a similar offence in the past.

In an interview with PREMIUM TIMES, the suspects confessed to the crime, adding the 3-year-old victim was kidnapped from Ibadan.
For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.





to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.





Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.





View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.




The EEC is donating 1.8 million to help combat the famine in Ethiopia.

Officials from Oxfam, Save the Children, Christian Aid and the Red Cross believe that up to 10 million people are facing starvation unless the flow of aid is increased.

Aid agencies lobbied EEC ministers in Brussels in response to the latest drought to hit the country.

Hugh McKay from the Save the Children Fund said: This is an excellent start and will buy us a little time to develop a long term strategy to deal with this tragedy.

The Community has also ordered the immediate shipment of 5,000 tons of food with more to be delivered soon.

The worst affected areas are the northern provinces of Tigre, Wollo and Eritrea, where a 10-year drought and a succession of wars have produced the worst famine in Ethiopias modern history.

As the announcement was made the Ethiopian Relief and Rehabilitation Commission said it would hold an emergency meeting with Western governments to discuss ways to improve airlifting food to the region.

Local officials are said to be trying to clear congestion at ports to get more food to the rest of the country. Up to 1,000 tons of food a day are now being handled, up from 500 a few weeks ago.

A recent report shown on the BBC highlighted the harrowing problems being faced in Ethiopia and led to an overwhelming public response.

Overseas director of Oxfam Michael Harris said: On one day alone we received 1,000 calls from people offering help, including three who offered transport aircraft.

Courtesy BBC News

In context

One million people are thought to have died in the famine of 1984 despite money from around the world helping to improve the situation.

In December 1984 rock stars joined together to record Do they know its Christmas?. The single raised more than 12 million for famine victims in Africa.

Live Aid in July 1985, organised by Bob Geldof, raised more than 70 million for the cause. Two massive concerts were staged in London and Philadelphia. Artists including Paul McCartney, U2 and Madonna performed on the day.

Many Ethiopians continue to rely on food aid from abroad. In 2004 the government began a drive to move more than two million people away from the arid highlands of the east.

It said the programme was a lasting solution to food shortages.
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and LA Film Festival, announced the producers selected for its 17th annual Producing Lab. This intensive program helps filmmakers develop skills as creative, independent producers. In the Lab, selected Fellows develop strategies and action plans for bringing their feature projects to fruition. The Lab also helps to further the careers of the Producing Fellows by introducing them to film professionals who can advise them on both the craft and business of independent producing.

"Creative Producers play such an integral role in the independent film landscape today but often remain the unsung heroes in an exceedingly challenging industry," said Jennifer Kushner, Director of Artist Development at Film Independent. "Film Independent makes it a priority to champion and support independent producers and we are thrilled to welcome this exceptional group of visionary storytellers into the Lab. We are also very excited to welcome back past Producing Lab Fellows Rebecca Green, Jim Young and Steven Berger now as mentors to the next generation of creative producers. Thanks to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation we are able to award $110,000 annually to writers, directors and producers making compelling films and television series grounded in science."

This year's Producing Lab lead mentor is Rebecca Green (It Follows, I'll See You in My Dreams). Additional Creative Advisors and Guest Speakers include: Steven J. Berger (The Feels, Inheritance), Amanda Marshall (Swiss Army Man, The Diary of a Teenage Girl), Hannah Minghella, President of TriStar Pictures, Jordana Mollick (Hello, My Name is Doris) and Jim Young (The Man Who Knew Infinity).

On October 20, 2017 at the annual Film Independent Forum, Film Independent awarded a total of $90,000 in grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. A $10,000 development grant was awarded as part of Film Independent's inaugural Episodic Lab to Michael Kogge, for his project Age of Reptiles. The 11th annual Sloan Producers Grant, a $30,000 production grant, was awarded to producer Lena Vurma for her feature film project Adventures of a Mathematician. Finally, the 3rd annual Sloan Distribution Grant, a $50,000 grant to help maximize the distribution for a film, was awarded to The House of Tomorrow written and directed by Peter Livolsi and produced by Tarik Karam and Danielle Renfrew Behrens. The film stars Ellen Burstyn, Nick Offerman, Asa Butterfield, Alex Wolff and Maude Apatow and will be released in early 2018. Film Independent also awards an annual $20,000 Sloan Grant through the Fast Track Finance Market during the LA Film Festival.

For the past 11 years Film Independent and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have worked hand in hand to increase public understanding of science and technology and challenge stereotypes of scientists, engineers and mathematicians through compelling artist-driven films made by new, independent voices. Past recipients of Film Independent's Alfred P. Sloan Grants include the Spirit Award-nominated Valley of Saints; The Man Who Knew Infinity starring Jeremy Irons and Dev Patel, which premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival; and Michael Almereyda's Experimenter, starring Peter Sarsgaard and Winona Ryder, which received Film Independent's inaugural Alfred P. Sloan Distribution Grant.

Recent projects developed through the Producing Lab include Chloe Zhao's Spirit Award Nominated Songs My Brothers Taught Me produced by Angela C. Lee and Mollye Asher; Clay Liford's Slash produced by Brock Williams which premiered at the 2016 South by Southwest Film Festival; Joseph Wladyka's Spirit Award nominated Manos Sucias produced by Elena Greenlee and Marcia Mayer and Sian Heder's Tallulah produced by David Newsom, which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

Film Independent Artist Development promotes unique independent voices by helping filmmakers create and advance new work through its Filmmaker Labs (Directing, Documentary, Episodic, Producing and Screenwriting), Grants Program which awards over $800K annually to filmmakers, the Fast Track finance market, Fiscal Sponsorship and Project Involve, Film Independent's signature diversity program, that this year celebrates its 25th anniversary.

For more information on Film Independent Artist Development, please contact Jennifer Kushner, Director of Artist Development, at 310 432 1275. Additional information and an application form can be found at filmindependent.org.

The 2017 Producing Lab is supported by Artist Development Lead Funder Time Warner Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The 2017 Producing Lab filmmakers and projects are:

Title: Adventures of a Mathematician

Producer: Lena Vurma

Logline: After immigrating to the US in the 1930s, gregarious Jewish mathematician Stan Ulam experiences the joy of love and discovery along with the pain of loss and homesickness, while playing a fundamental role in creating both the hydrogen bomb and the first computer.

Title: College Girl

Producer: Julie Hook

Logline: While attending a living skills program for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, a young woman with Down syndrome questions her place in the world in the face of impending motherhood.

Title: Death of Nintendo

Producer/Writer: Valerie Martinez

Logline: Set in 90's suburban Manila, when video games were still a novelty, four 13-year-old friends take us on a journey through their colorful world where they face the horrors of pop-culture obsession, first loves and circumcision.

Title: Mickey and the Bear

Producer: Lizzie Shapiro

Logline: In rural Montana, teenager Mickey Peck must break out of her oppressive relationship with her unstable, veteran father in order to forge her own independent identity as a woman.

Title: Noor

Producer: Avril Z. Speaks

Logline: Caught in the throes of grief following her brother's unsolved murder outside of a Brooklyn bodega, a black woman develops an unexpected physical connection to the Arab man who works there, causing their worlds to collide and forcing them to choose between passion and loyalty.

Title: The Strays

Producer: Liz Cardenas Franke

Logline: After being kicked out of her home and forced to survive on her own, a 15-year-old girl finds beauty in her harsh reality when she experiences her first love with her brother's girlfriend.

For Film Independent Logos visit

https://www.filmindependent.org/press/logos-and-laurels/

About Film Independent

Film Independent is a nonprofit arts organization that champions creative independence in visual storytelling and supports a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision. Film Independent helps filmmakers make their movies, builds an audience for their projects, and works to diversify the film industry. Film Independent's Board of Directors, filmmakers, staff and constituents is comprised of an inclusive community of individuals across ability, age, ethnicity, gender, race and sexual orientation. Anyone passionate about film can become a Member, whether you are a filmmaker, industry professional or a film lover.

In addition to producing the Spirit Awards, Film Independent produces the LA Film Festival and Film Independent at LACMA Film Series, a year-round, weekly program that offers unique cinematic experiences for the Los Angeles creative community and the general public.

With over 250 annual screenings and events, Film Independent provides access to a network of like-minded artists who are driving creativity in the film industry. Film Independent's Artist Development program offers free Labs for selected writers, directors, producers and documentary filmmakers and presents year- round networking opportunities. Project Involve is Film Independent's signature program dedicated to fostering the careers of talented filmmakers from communities traditionally underrepresented in the film industry.

For more information or to become a Member, visit filmindependent.org.

ABOUT THE ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION

The New York-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, founded in 1934, makes grants in science, technology, and economic performance. Sloan's program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports books, radio, film, television, theater and new media to reach a wide, non-specialized audience.

Sloan's Film Program encourages filmmakers to create more realistic and compelling stories about scientists, science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers in the popular imagination. Over the past 15 years, Sloan has partnered with some of the top film schools in the countryincluding AFI, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, NYU, UCLA and USCand established annual awards in screenwriting and film production, along with an annual best-of-the-best Student Grand Jury Prize administered by the Tribeca Film Institute. The Foundation also supports screenplay development programs with the Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, the San Francisco Film Society, the Black List, and Film Independent's Producing Lab and Fast Track program and has helped develop such film projects as Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game, Matthew Brown's The Man Who Knew Infinity, Michael Almereyda's Experimenter, Rob Meyer's A Birder's Guide to Everything, Musa Syeed's Valley of Saints, and Andrew Bujalski's Computer Chess.

The Foundation also has an active theater program and commissions about twenty science plays each year from the Ensemble Studio Theater and Manhattan Theatre Club, as well as supporting select productions across the country. Recent grants have supported Leigh Fondakowski's Spill, Nick Payne's Incognito, Frank Basloe's Please Continue, Deborah Zoe Laufer's Informed Consent, Lucas Hnath's Isaac's Eye, and Anna Ziegler's Photograph 51, recently on London's West End starring Nicole Kidman. The Foundation's book program includes early support for Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, now the highest grossing Oscar nominated film of 2017 that was awarded the San Francisco Film Society Sloan Science in Cinema Prize in 2016.

For more information about the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, visit sloan.org.

Contact: Alia Quart Khan, Film Independent

Tel: 310.432.1287 or [email protected]

Ryan Collins, Ginsberg/Libby

Tel: 323.645.6800 or [email protected]

SOURCE Film Independent

Related Links

http://www.filmindependent.org


DETROIT, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Achates Power, Inc. announced today the appointment of two new members to its Board of Directors effective immediately. The new directors are:

John Wall , retired Chief Technology Officer  Cummins

, retired Chief Technology Officer  Cummins John Koszewnik , Chief Technical Officer  Achates Power

"We are pleased to welcome our newest members to the Board of Directors," said David Johnson, Achates Power president and CEO. "They bring deep industry experience and unique perspectives that will be beneficial as we continue our growth. The combined wealth of industry knowledge and leadership experience on our board is truly inspiring."

John Wall, former Chief Technology Officer  Cummins

Dr. Wall has more than 35 years of industry experience in internal combustion engine technology, fuels and emissions, and in global engineering organizational development. Most recently, Wall served as chief technical officer of Cummins Inc., the world's largest independent manufacturer of diesel engines and related technologies, retiring in 2015. As he progressed from research and product engineering into engineering leadership, Wall remained directly involved in the most critical technology programs for low emissions, powertrain efficiency and alternative fuels. He also played a key role in the transformation of Cummins' technical function taking it from approximately 1,000 engineers primarily based in Columbus, Indiana, to a global organization with the collective talents of more than 6,000 engineers located around the world, including technical centers in India, China, and Brazil.

Wall has received numerous honors over his career, including induction into the National Academy of Engineering in 2010 and the Soichiro Honda Medal for outstanding achievement from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2013. He has also received the Haagen-Smit Clean Air Award from the California Air Resources Board in 2014, which is given annually to people who have made outstanding lifetime contributions in the fields of clean air, climate change, technology, and related policies. He is a Fellow in the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and a recipient of the 2017 Franz F. Pischinger Powertrain Innovation Award, which recognizes engineers who demonstrate outstanding innovation in the field of powertrain design and development through patents, publications, and/or new products and services.

Wall studied mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his Bachelor, Master and Doctorate of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering.

John Koszewnik, Chief Technical Officer  Achates Power

Mr. Koszewnik joined Achates Power in June 2011 as Chief Technical Officer and will replace the company's founder, Dr. James Lemke on the board. Koszewnik leverages his 40 plus years of industry experience to further the development of Achates Power's clean, efficient and cost effective internal combustion engine designs.

Koszewnik worked at Ford Motor Co. for 30 years, most recently as director of North American Diesel where he led engineering and business responsibilities for Ford diesel offerings within North America. Prior to that assignment Koszewnik was responsible for forward model engine engineering of all Ford's gasoline V6, V8, and V10 engines leading an organization of approximately 1200 employees. Koszewnik held a variety of other assignments while at Ford, including Manager of Worldwide Product Strategy and Manager of North American Marketing Product Plans.

Following his distinguished career at Ford, Koszewnik was senior vice president of construction equipment product development at Case New Holland, where he managed 10 engineering centers worldwide and 650 employees. Additionally, he was director of production development at FEV Inc., an engineering services and consulting company, responsible for ensuring achievement of all functional requirements, quality, cost, and timing of production programs. He also supported product development and strategic study projects for the automotive, heavy truck, locomotive, and powertrain component supply industries.

Koszewnik earned a bachelor's degree in engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology and a Master in Business Administration from Harvard University. He is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, elected in 2016 based on his past and present work in engine design.

"As the world's foremost developer of clean, efficient and cost effective Opposed-Piston Engines, we are fortunate to have appointed this strong bench of new Board members," continued Johnson. "Our founder Jim Lemke played a large role in our company and we thank him for his service and truly visionary leadership. This key milestone underscores our commitment to bring our fuel efficient, low emissions engine to our customers around the world."

About Achates Power, Inc.

Achates Power, Inc. was founded in 2004 with the mission to build cleaner, more efficient engines. The San Diego-based company has an experienced staff of engineers and scientists focused on applying their proven technical know-how and expertise, coupled with the industry's leading-edge testing, simulation and analysis tools. It is backed by top private equity firms Sequoia Capital Partners, RockPort Capital Partners, Madrone Capital Partners, InterWest Partners and Triangle Peak Partners. For more information, visit www.achatespower.com.

SOURCE Achates Power, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.achatespower.com


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Board Certified Medical Affairs Specialist Program or BCMAS now offers continuing medical education (CME) in partnership with ScientiaCME, an accredited provider of CME/CE for physicians and pharmacists. In addition, the ACMA is a recognized organizational member by the Institute for Credentialing Excellence (ICE), a global leader known for recognizing excellence in certification programs.

"The ACMA only accredits the BCMAS program for MSLs and medical affairs professionals. It is important to know that, we do not accredit any other 'certification' programs. Professionals in the pharmaceutical industry should be cautious about enrolling in other programs not accredited by the ACMA" said, Mehul Patel, PharmD, BCMAS, a member of the ACMA Board of Governors and Medical Director with Allergan. "We are proud to say that the BCMAS program is recognized as the standard of excellence for professional board certification training for MSLs and medical affairs professionals in general," said Suzanne Soliman, PharmD, BCMAS, Chief Academic Officer with the ACMA.

Dr. Soliman, a former Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Pharmacy and a well-respected thought leader in pharmacy education points out, "A key feature of the BCMAS program is that unlike a certificate program, after one passes the board exam, they will be awarded a professional designation that is globally recognized and used to highlight their certified status. We now have several pharmaceutical companies that are offering the BCMAS program to MSL and medical affairs teams worldwide."

About the Accreditation Council for Medical Affairs (ACMA)

The ACMA is comprised of a self-governing board of governors and international board of renowned medical affairs officers with global recognition. The ACMA receives no financial support from any pharmaceutical or biotechnology manufacturer and acts as an independent accrediting body.

To learn more about how you can become board certified in medical affairs, visit, www.MedicalAffairsSpecialist.org

Media Contact: Sarah Basmadjian

Tel: 1-855-255-7137

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Accreditation Council for Medical Affairs

Related Links

https://www.medicalaffairsspecialist.org


LAS VEGAS, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ADISA, the nation's largest trade association for the alternative and direct investment space, announced today the 2017 winners of the organization's A Champion of Excellence (ACE), Distinguished Service and President's awards. The awards were presented during the welcoming ceremony at the organization's 2017 Annual Conference at the ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.

The ACE Award, the highest honor bestowed on a member by ADISA, was presented to Larry Sullivan, president of Passco Companies. This award is given to an organization or individual that has reached a pinnacle in their career and has brought credit to themselves and ADISA through distinguished accomplishments.

The Distinguished Service Award is presented to individuals and companies who have provided exceptional service to ADISA, the alternative investments industry and the overall community. The 2017 Distinguished Service Award was presented to Greg Mausz, executive vice president of Preferred Apartment Communities, and Mark Kosanke, founding partner of Concorde Financial Group.

The President's Award was presented to DFPG Investments, a full-service independent broker-dealer firm. The award is given to an individual or organization that has made outstanding contributions in their chosen field, in service in local, state or national affairs, or in support of the advancement and continued excellence of ADISA.

"ADISA is proud to honor Larry Sullivan, Greg Mausz, Mark Kosanke and DFPG Investments for their dedication and perseverance throughout the year that has led to substantial achievements for the alternative, direct investment industry," said ADISA Executive Director and CEO John Harrison. "These recipients have all demonstrated a remarkable commitment to excellence and adhered to the highest ethical standards and quality performance, and we're pleased to present each with their respective award."

ADISA's 2017 Annual Conference & Trade Show, the nation's largest event for members of the alternative and direct investment space, has brought together approximately 1,000 of the industry's leading professionals for education, networking and the exchange of ideas.

ABOUT ADISA

The Alternative & Direct Investment Securities Association is the nation's largest trade association representing the non-traded alternative investment space. ADISA's members are typically involved in non-traded real estate investment trusts, business development companies, master limited partnerships and private and public funds (LPs/LLCs), 1031 exchange programs (DSTs/TICs), energy and oil and gas interests, equipment leasing programs, or other alternative and direct investment offerings. The association was founded in 2003 and has approximately 4,500 members who are key decision makers, representing more than 220,000 professionals throughout the nation  including sponsor members who have raised in excess of $200 billion in equity and serve more than 1 million investors.

Contact: Jill Swartz

Spotlight Marketing Communications

[email protected]

949.427.5172, ext. 701

SOURCE ADISA
BEIJING, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- While Chinese consumers are spending more time on digital media, advertisers are also increasing their spending on digital platforms in 2017. However, with the fragmentation of internet platforms as well as the consumer journey, it is the key of marketing success if advertisers have full knowledge of consumer preferences.

AdMaster, the leading marketing data technology company in China, has reached an agreement on data collaboration with Weibo. AdMaster helps marketers to have a comprehensive understanding of target consumers with its advertising measurement technology supported by the massive consumer tagging data from Weibo. It also helps advertisers to reach the right target audience more accurately. Both AdMaster and Weibo work together to bring precision marketing to another level.

AdMaster's precision marketing solution (People-based Measurement Solution) used to build on the audience data provided by Tencent. This collaboration with the addition of Weibo's consumer interest and hobbies data enriches its understanding of consumer social behavior. Thanks to Weibo data, AdMaster PMS is now providing comprehensive and dynamic evaluation on the reach performance of digital advertising campaigns. It can create a more granular report on the audience reached by the campaign.

Weibo is one of the largest social media platforms in China. Its massive tags over consumer interest map perfectly well with AdMaster's data. The result of data integration from both parties provides comprehensive and complete consumer tags and portraits over the audience reached by advertising campaigns. Brand owners are now having more in-depth understanding on the interest and consumption preference of their target audience. The more marketers know about their target audience, the better they can optimize their marketing strategy with improved ROI.

AdMaster is the first company to introduce feed ads measurement on Weibo. And AdMaster also integrated Weibo's feed ad measurement into its cross-screen measurement and budget allocation system.

With the data partnership, AdMaster will compute the cross-device GRP/Reach for unique audience based on its own algorithm and Weibo's UID. This allows advertisers to measure accurately the reach and design more relevant communication.

Wang Yajuan, Vice President of Weibo, commented, "the challenge of mobile marketing is about reaching the target audience effectively in this fragmented media environment. It is the unique natural advantage of Weibo to be the platform for netizens to gather together to focus on hot topics according to their common interests. Weibo big data provides brand owners the consumer insights on social behavior and tags. This collaboration with AdMaster is the full realization of the commercial values of Weibo's tags on consumer social behavior data, which is particularly effective on the accurate illustration of the consumer profiles. The advertising campaigns will achieve a more extensive reach and ultimately high ROI through the precision marketing effect brought by Weibo's advertising solutions and other strategic marketing initiatives.

Vincent Yan, the founder & CEO of AdMaster, expressed, "we are very glad to be the data partner of Weibo. It is a high recognition to AdMaster achievement on data technology, our leading position in the advertising measurement industry, and most importantly our independent third-party proposition. In the future, we will continue our belief in technology innovation by working closely with different strategic partners such as Weibo, Tencent, Ali Group and JD.com. Our goal is to provide the most effective marketing and measurement solutions. We use data technology to measure the quantity and quality of digital ads and maximize the value of digital marketing."

About AdMaster:

AdMaster is the leading data solution provider specialized in data collection, analysis and management. By using cutting-edge proprietary technology, it creates value for businesses by turning big data into smart data and delivering it to them through software-as-a-service platform, enabling them to make more informed decisions and gain a competitive edge.

Its core services include third party digital advertising verification, social media and e-commerce measurement, and data management  including data obtained from personal computers and mobile devices. http://www.admaster.com.cn/en

SOURCE AdMaster

Related Links

http://www.admaster.com.cn/en


Mr. Frankum specializes in complex reorganizations, corporate recovery, and litigation support services to both companies and creditors in a wide range of industries, including retail, automotive, government contracting, power, printing, telecommunications, cable, restaurants, franchises, and chemicals. He has acted as an interim manager in several senior finance/chief restructuring officer positions with companies generating up to $1.2 billion annually.

Prior to joining Ankura, Mr. Frankum was a senior managing director in the corporate finance and restructuring group at FTI Consulting.

Ankura Co-President Kevin Lavin stated, "Adrian's arrival again shows Ankura's commitment to providing the most comprehensive array of services to assist our clients in meeting their everyday business challenges. Adrian's breadth and depth of experience strengthens our excellent expert collaborations across all of our work as we continue to grow."

Mr. Frankum said, "Ankura's commitment to a highly cooperative work culture is unique in the expert services industry and I am pleased to be a part of this professional community where I can continue to create the most effective solutions for our clients."

SOURCE Ankura Consulting

Related Links

http://www.ankuraconsulting.com


MONTREAL, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - CN (TSX: CNR) (NYSE: CNI) will issue its third-quarter 2017 financial and operating results today, Oct. 24, 2017, at 4.01 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

CN's senior officers will review the results and the railway's outlook in a webcast/conference call starting at 4.30 p.m. EDT Oct. 24. Luc Jobin, CN president and chief executive officer, will lead the call.

Parties wishing to participate in or listen to the third-quarter 2017 presentation and question-and-answer period by telephone should call 416-641-6122 or 800-355-4959 by 4.20 p.m. EDT today.

CN will webcast the presentation live and furnish slides supporting the officers' remarks via the Investors' section of its website, www.cn.ca/en/investors. The slides will be posted on the website after the close of markets today. A webcast replay will be available after the call ends.

CN is a true backbone of the economy whose team of approximately 23,000 railroaders transports more than C$250 billion worth of goods annually for a wide range of business sectors, ranging from resource products to manufactured products to consumer goods, across a rail network of approximately 20,000 route-miles spanning Canada and mid-America. CN  Canadian National Railway Company, along with its operating railway subsidiaries  serves the cities and ports of Vancouver, Prince Rupert, B.C., Montreal, Halifax, New Orleans, and Mobile, Ala., and the metropolitan areas of Toronto, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Calgary, Chicago, Memphis, Detroit, Duluth, Minn./Superior, Wis., and Jackson, Miss., with connections to all points in North America. For more information about CN, visit the company's website at www.cn.ca.

SOURCE CN

Related Links

http://www.cn.ca


WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The AFL-CIO is pledging to work with the American Federation of Government Employees to fight efforts to privatize veterans' health care and to restore due process rights for VA workers.

On Tuesday, delegates to AFL-CIO's quadrennial convention in St. Louis adopted two resolutions submitted by AFGE in support of workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The AFL-CIO has pledged to fight efforts to privatize veterans' health care and restore due process rights for VA workers. The American Federation of Government Employees has been working to improve veterans' access to health care, holding rallies outside VA facilities like the one here in St. Louis, Mo.

The AFL-CIO resolved to oppose the privatization of veterans' health care services and to help AFGE restore due process rights for VA employees that have been weakened by Congress.

"Ever since the waitlist scandal at the Phoenix VA, it's been open season on VA employees," AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. said in introducing the privatization resolution for adoption.

"Very few people know that the scandal was brought to light by AFGE bargaining unit employees  whistleblowers  who knew that their bosses were manipulating the data in order to qualify for big bonuses," Cox said. "Yet that scandal has been used by politicians of both parties to justify not only privatization, but also the weakening of our civil service protections and collective bargaining rights."

The AFL-CIO's vote came the same day that the House Veterans' Affairs Committee held a hearing to consider legislation opposed by AFGE that would make the private-sector Choice program permanent, which would further starve the VA of needed resources and lead to more privatization of veterans' health care services.

"This is a deliberate strategy: Establish the basics of a privatization plan  they call it Choice  and they keep throwing more and more money at it and encourage veterans to use it instead of the VA," Cox said in his AFL-CIO address. "At the same time, they starve the VA of staff and other resources in order to make it fail. And of course, when the VA fails, the VA workers' union disappears as well. It's a story we all know too well.

"Then they have what they want: A broken system that has lost public support, a system with lots of valuable real estate they can sell off, and a privatization infrastructure that sends all the patients whose treatment is profitable to the private sector, with a skeletal VA left to care for the sickest that the private sector doesn't want.

"Brothers and sisters, we need your help in the fight to retain our beloved VA health care system."

AFGE is an affiliate with the AFL-CIO, the umbrella labor federation representing 12.5 million working people nationwide. AFGE represents 250,000 employees across the VA.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union, representing 700,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia, including 250,000 in the Department of Veterans Affairs.

For the latest AFGE news and information, visit the AFGE Media Center. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

SOURCE American Federation of Government Employees

Related Links

http://www.afge.org


A well-known Spanish economist and politician last night described the British people as more or less imperialists in the context of the countrys 2016 decision to part with the European Union.

The 83-year-old Professor Ramon Tamames was speaking at the Rui Cunha Foundation in Macau, where he was invited last night to present his thoughts on the future of the European Union.

The scholar-cum-politician said that the EU has survived the economic crisis between 2008 and 2013, but now has a new problem on its hands, and that problem is called Brexit.

The United Kingdom has decided to separate from the European Union. That appears [initially] to be a fiasco in the European Union, but it is [actually] a fiasco of the British people, said Tamames.

People in the United Kingdom, they are more or less imperialists, he considered, adding that the British, much as they have been for centuries, are preoccupied with the former British Empire, the prosperity of the monarchy and good business above all.

We can see that all the institutions of the British Empire were the real protagonists of the victory [behind] Brexit, concluded Tamames.

But the speaker also feels that there is an opportunity in Britains departure.

I am not celebrating that the country [is leaving] the project, but rather that the project can now continue [towards its federation goal], he said.

The UK has long been seen by some EU member states as an unwilling partner in the European project, resisting closer integration and insisting on opt-out clauses.

However, it is not the only EU country to resist integration. Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland and Hungary have often found mutual ground with Britain within the politicking of the European Union, and Brexit may not have the expediting effect many pro-federalists are hoping to see.

Yesterdays talk did not give rise to such aspects, instead focusing on the rise of populism as the chief concern for Europe in the coming years. Also notably absent from Tamamess presentation were the issues of national identity and the so-called European Migrant Crisis.

After the economic crisis [in Europe, there] emerged apostles with very simple solutions to our problems, claiming to solve everything within a few months, he said. In Austria they are in a very good position, even nearly in [the Netherlands], but also Poland and Hungary.

Tamames, who has held prestigious posts at notable academic institutions and international organizations, has long been affiliated with the Spanish hard left, having joining the Communist Party of Spain in 1956 and the United Left from 1986.

His lecture yesterday was titled Europe Facing the Future: The role of the European Union in a world of economic and political globalization, and served as a rallying call for a European-led, Marshall Plan-style project for the economic rejuvenation of the African continent.

The Marshall Plan was a U.S. initiative to rebuild Western Europe after the devastation of the Second World War. Involving the channeling of more than USD13 billion in economic aid ($132 billion in todays terms), it was also designed to deter the countries of Europe from considering Soviet-style communism as an economic alternative to free market capitalism.

Tamamess argument stems from growth projections of Africas youthful populace combined with its high birth rates, which he predicts will cause the continents population to swell to four billion in the near future.

The scholar argued that the European Union can play a critical role in financing the infrastructure needed to support this growth, while  presumably  advancing its international influence.

Do you know of anyone who favors the Chinese model [of economic development]? he asked yesterdays attendees. Even in Africa, there is nobody, because it [the model] lacks liberty for the individual. [] What we need in Europe are new targets. We are striving for a new distribution of power, with the contribution of all countries.
"With China as Los Angeles' top trading partner, we are committed to growing and strengthening the economic and cultural ties between the two. The new nonstop Los Angeles-Shenzhen service brings together two of the world's leading technology and innovation hubs," Dr. Zhihang Chi, Air China's Vice President and General Manager stated.

According to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC), majority of Chinese investment into the United States originates from Guangdong Province which covers Shenzhen and Guangzhou.

Dr. Chi added, "At no time is the connectivity between these two cities more needed than it is now when China's homegrown tech companies with headquarters in Shenzhen are expanding their presence and direct investments in the United States. This new service offers more options for business and leisure travelers to Shenzhen and Hong Kong which is only 19 miles away.

"As this will be operated with our newest Dreamliner which includes a premium economy class cabin, we are confident our competitive fares and affordable, easy upgrade programs will be very attractive for travelers to Shenzhen, Hong Kong and beyond. In addition to extra legroom, our premium economy passengers also enjoy priority boarding and more Phoenix miles, among other amenities."

Air China's B787-9 three-cabin Dreamliner features 30 seats in Capital Pavilion (business class), 34 premium economy and 229 economy class seats for a total of 293.

Schedule and other details for the new service:

Flight # Origin-Destination Departure* Arrival* Frequency Aircraft CA 769 Shenzhen-Los Angeles 23:30 20:00 Mon, Thu, Sat B787-9 CA 770 Los Angeles-Shenzhen 22:50 5:40+2** Mon, Thu, Sat B787-9 Note: * All times are local. ** +2 = Two days. Days of operation and times are subject to seasonal changes.

This announcement, Air China's latest in a series of unprecedented expansions in North America, brings the average of its seasonally adjusted flights to 150 per week between cities throughout the region and China. Since 2013, China's national carrier has been launching a new route every year.

In September 2016, Air China launched its nonstop service between Shanghai (PVG) and San Jose (SJC), its first direct service between Shanghai and North America. The international carrier's other U.S. and Canada gateways offer nonstop services to Beijing from Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Newark, Washington Dulles, Houston, Honolulu, Vancouver and Montreal.

About Air China



A Star Alliance member and China's exclusive national carrier, Air China is the only airline granted the privilege of having the flag of China painted on the fuselage of its fleet. In addition to its commercial operations, it also provides exclusive special flight services for China's senior government officials on state visits to other countries. It is the top Asian airline in brand value, according to Brand Finance 2016. As well, it is the only airline in the top 20 of Millward Brown's Most Valuable Chinese Brands 2016.

With a fleet of 590 passenger aircraft and freighters, Air China serves 174 cities in 40 countries and regions. It offers access to 1330 destinations in 193 countries through its Star Alliance affiliation. It holds the controlling shares in Air Macau, Shenzhen Airlines, Shandong Airlines, Dalian Airlines, Tibet Airlines, Beijing Airlines and Air China Inner Mongolia Limited. Next to the Swire Group, Air China is the second largest stakeholder of Cathay Pacific Airways.

Visit www.airchina.us or call 800-882-8122 for sales and reservations.

Media Contact: Lillibeth Bishop

(310) 744-8231

[email protected]

SOURCE Air China

Related Links

https://www.airchina.us


SINGAPORE and ISTANBUL, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- AirTies Wireless Networks, a leading international provider of premium in-home wireless systems and set-top box solutions, today announced at the Broadband World Forum 2017 in Istanbul that it has signed a new two-year contract to supply Singtel, Asia's leading communications technology group, an ultra-fast whole-home Wi-Fi Mesh.

Unlike traditional Wi-Fi, which relies on a single Wi-Fi Access Point (AP) on home gateways and routers, Singtel uses AirTies' multiple Mesh APs (extenders) to create an intelligent Wi-Fi network with faster connection speeds and a broader range of consistent, whole-home Internet coverage.

Under this new agreement, AirTies will supply Singtel with its new Managed Mesh system which includes the recently announced Air 4930. These new 2.5Gbps Wi-Fi Mesh extenders are AirTies' fastest extenders to date. In addition, AirTies' Mesh Software ensures devices continually connect to the best available extender and frequency band (2.4GHz and 5GHz), based on real-time network usage. Singtel will also have access to AirTies' Remote Manager, a cloud-based performance management platform, which helps optimize in-home Wi-Fi for subscribers.

"Singtel is widely-recognized for delivering innovative in-home experiences and superior broadband services to millions of subscribers," said Philippe Alcaras, CEO of AirTies. "We share a common vision that internet connections must not only be fast, but consistently fast throughout the subscribers' homes  which requires a Managed Wi-Fi Mesh solution. We're very honoured to be selected again to help Singtel serve the super-connected home of today, and tomorrow."

A survey of 1,050 respondents, with multiple Wi-Fi users per home, commissioned by AirTies and conducted by Qualtrics, found that seventy-eight percent (78%) of respondents would prefer if their Internet Service Providers provided them with their in-home Wi-Fi networking gear, versus purchasing it themselves. The survey also found that the majority of consumers would consider upgrading their Internet service plans, or paying extra, for a premium Wi-Fi experience that improves performance throughout the entire home.

At the Broadband World Forum in Berlin, AirTies will host a private lunch for service providers and technology partners on Wednesday, October 25th from 12:20pm-1:30pm in meeting room MR12. Additional details about Singtel are available at: www.Singtel.com. More information about AirTies is available at: www.AirTies.com.

About AirTies

Founded in 2004, AirTies is the most widely deployed provider of Managed Wi-Fi Mesh solutions to operators around the globe. AirTies designs and develops software and hardware that wirelessly streams Internet connections and high definition video to multiple rooms and screens. Its award winning technology enables seamless wireless integration at the touch of a button, increased wireless speeds, and coverage throughout subscribers' entire homes. AirTies has an installed base of over 15 million devices worldwide. AirTies' customers include: Atlantic Broadband, Frontier, Midco, Singtel, Sky (SKY Q in the UK; Germany; Italy; and New Zealand), Swisscom, Vodafone, Waoo, and many other operators. More information is available at www.AirTies.com.

About Singtel

Singtel is Asia's leading communications technology group, providing a portfolio of services from next generation communication, technology services to infotainment to both consumers and businesses. For consumers, Singtel delivers a complete and integrated suite of services, including mobile, broadband and TV. For businesses, Singtel offers a complementary array of workforce mobility solutions, data hosting, cloud, network infrastructure, analytics and cybersecurity capabilities. The Group has presence in Asia, Australia and Africa and reaches over 650 million mobile customers in 22 countries. Its infrastructure and technology services for businesses span 21 countries, with more than 428 direct points of presence in 360 cities. For more information, visit www.singtel.com

SOURCE AirTies

Related Links

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NORTH CHICAGO, Ill. and SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- AbbVie (NYSE:ABBV), a global biopharmaceutical company, and Alector, a privately owned biotechnology company, today announced a global strategic collaboration to develop and commercialize medicines to treat Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

Immuno-neurology is a rapidly evolving scientific area focused on harnessing the power of the immune system to attack devastating neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease. There is increasing rationale  from large-scale human genetic analyses and animal model studies  that immune deficiencies within the central nervous system play an important role in the progression of neurodegeneration. Alector has developed an innovative immuno-neurology technology platform to simultaneously address multiple pathologies associated with neurodegeneration.

"Alzheimer's is among the most difficult-to-treat diseases and there is an urgent need for new scientific approaches that lead to better therapies for patients," said Jim Sullivan, Ph.D., vice president, pharmaceutical discovery, AbbVie. "Alector's unique approach to engaging the immune system to combat neurodegeneration reflects our commitment to target this epidemic in new ways. We recognized the potential of Alector's research first as an AbbVie Ventures portfolio company and are now eager to partner with them to further develop this platform into meaningful advances for patients."

"We seek to advance the field of immuno-neurology as a new therapeutic modality for dementia and neurodegeneration. We anticipate that immuno-neurology therapies will have as much of an impact on brain disorders as immuno-oncology is having on cancer," said Arnon Rosenthal Ph.D., chief executive officer, Alector. "We look forward to co-developing our disease-modifying drugs in true partnership with AbbVie, which is making a bold commitment to the field."

Under the terms of the agreement, AbbVie and Alector have agreed to research a portfolio of antibody targets and AbbVie has an option to global development and commercial rights to two targets. Alector will conduct exploratory research, drug discovery and development for lead programs up to the conclusion of the proof of concept (PoC) studies. Upon exercise of the option, AbbVie will lead development and commercialization activities. Alector and AbbVie will co-fund development and commercialization and will share global profits equally. Alector will receive a $205 million upfront payment and a potential, future equity investment of up to $20 million.

Alector is a portfolio company of AbbVie Ventures.

About Alector LLC

Alector is a privately-owned biotechnology company whose mission is to harness the immune system to meaningfully treat neurodegenerative diseases and cancer. Alector was founded in 2013 by thought leaders in biotechnology, neuroscience, and antibody drug discovery and is backed by leading investors including OrbiMed, Polaris, Google Ventures, Topspin Partners, Mission Bay Capital as well as Merck, AbbVie, Amgen and the Dementia Discovery Fund. For more information, please visit www.alector.com.

About AbbVie

AbbVie is a global, research-driven biopharmaceutical company committed to developing innovative advanced therapies for some of the world's most complex and critical conditions. The company's mission is to use its expertise, dedicated people and unique approach to innovation to markedly improve treatments across four primary therapeutic areas: immunology, oncology, virology and neuroscience. In more than 75 countries, AbbVie employees are working every day to advance health solutions for people around the world. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com. Follow @abbvie on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

AbbVie Forward-Looking Statements

Some statements in this news release may be forward-looking statements for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "project" and similar expressions, among others, generally identify forward-looking statements. AbbVie cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, challenges to intellectual property, competition from other products, difficulties inherent in the research and development process, adverse litigation or government action, and changes to laws and regulations applicable to our industry.

Additional information about the economic, competitive, governmental, technological and other factors that may affect AbbVie's operations is set forth in Item 1A, "Risk Factors," in AbbVie's 2016 Annual Report on Form 10-K, which has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. AbbVie undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking statements as a result of subsequent events or developments, except as required by law.

SOURCE AbbVie

Related Links

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CHICAGO, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Allant Group, a nationally recognized, data-driven analytics firm, today announced a partnership with Aginity, a leader in enterprise analytics management software. The partnership accelerates Allant's ability to develop analytics in a fraction of the time, allowing customers to share Allant's proprietary analytics across a range of applications to drive more personalized customer engagements across marketing channels and customer touchpoints for clients in retail, consumer products, financial services and other industries.

Previously, up to nine months might elapse from data set-up to analytic insights in support of marketing decisions. With this partnership, such insights can be in market in a matter of weeks.

"Combining the power of Allant's OneTouch real-time data enrichment APIs with the Aginity Amp solution places us in a unique position to help clients fully leverage analytic solutions to advance their marketing objectives," said Gaurav Issar, CEO of Allant Group. "We found Aginity to be the only technology provider that allows our analytics to be easily reused across the organization, which not only speeds time to customer insights but also ensures that a single point of truth is presented through marketing automation and reporting applications."

Analytic reuse enables analysts to share and build upon each other's work enterprise-wide, explained Tzaras Christon, Aginity CEO. "At scale, our customers have reduced time to market up to 90% while ensuring that analytic results are consistent in every application across organizational and geographic lines," he added.

"Aginity's industry-leading customers have benefited from greater analytic efficiency and consistency when designing programs to increase customer loyalty and lifetime value," Christon continued. "Our partnership with Allant leverages their deep set of capabilities in marketing analytics, enabling customers to share them within and across organizations."

About Allant Group

Allant is a marketing technology services provider that delivers end-to-end omni-channel marketing services. Allant's expertise and market knowledge enables the delivery through faster customer and 3rd party data integration, improved analytical insights, easy to understand data visualizations, and effective campaign management execution to enable personalized communication by marketers to acquire, retain and win back customers. Allant is a privately held company headquartered in the Chicago area. For more information, call 800.367.7311 or visit allantgroup.com.

About Aginity

Aginity Software transforms the way companies compete on analytics by allowing companies to reuse their analytics and data structures consistently across any application, environment or user. Aginity Amp eliminates thousands of hours of coding and configuration and connects applications and computing environments so insights and answers are consistent across the enterprise. Aginity customers in Financial Services, Retail, Media, and CPG are the largest brands in their categories and have achieved 100x efficiency gains by applying the governed, reusable analytics that Amp enables. For more information, call 224.307.2656 or visit aginity.com.

CONTACT:

Tim Finnigan

1-630-778-2758

[email protected]

SOURCE Allant Group

Related Links

http://www.allantgroup.com


Since SelectCheckout is retailer-branded and customizable based on a brand's needs, it elevates awareness of their card program and builds loyalty and tender share. In addition, cardmembers can see their available credit and rewards information, and redeem rewards while making a purchase, increasing shopping cart conversion. Customers will see how close they are to their next reward, inspiring a bigger basket size. This new payment solution is desktop-, tablet-, and mobile-optimized to provide a consistent and seamless experience across all channels, and requires minimal effort for integration into a brand's existing e-commerce site. Additionally, SelectCheckout removes the need for retailers to store credit card data online.

"Checkout is a criticaland easyopportunity for a brand to make a positive impression on a customer, driving conversion," said Sheryl McKenzie, vice president of products and capabilities for Alliance Data's card services business. "Typically when using other payment options, customers are disconnected from their loyalty program, meaning they must have a promo code available to redeem rewards and their store credit card information to earn new rewards. Today, customers are shopping on the go and it simply isn't convenient to stop and look for these items. SelectCheckout integrates it all online for customersit's a simpler, more rewarding way to pay."

From Cart to Confirmation in Four Easy Steps

Retailers' current online checkout process has an abandonment rate as high as 77 percent1. There are a number of reasons why, from customers not having credit card information or a promo code on hand to frustration with filling out lengthy order forms. With SelectCheckout, the customer can checkout easier. After a one-time sign-up, customer information such as name, shipping address and card information is auto-filled so fewer keystrokes are necessary. Customers may view progress to the next reward. Selecting "Keep Me Signed In" eliminates the need to log in again, ensuring even faster checkouts during future visits.

SelectCheckout is convenient for private label cardmembers to use with just a few simple steps. The customer:

clicks SelectCheckout option at checkout;

enters credit card account user name and password during the initial visit;

selects available reward(s) to redeem;

views order details, rewards status and remaining credit line available, places order and earns more rewards for the purchase.

"We work hard to provide innovative solutions to our partners that increase transaction size and build brand advocacy," said Jami Dewolf, chief marketing officer for Alliance Data's card services business. "SelectCheckout provides the convenience and immediacy that shoppers crave, and it's easy for brands to implement. It's all about eliminating barriers throughout the customer journey, from acquisition to long-term loyalty."

About Alliance Data's card services business

Alliance Data's card services business is a leading provider of tailored marketing and loyalty solutions, delivered through branded credit programs that drive more profitable relationships between our brand partners and their cardmembers. We offer private label, co-brand, and business card products to many of the world's most recognizable brands across a multitude of channels.

We uphold our Know more. Sell more. promise by leveraging unmatched customer insights, advanced analytics, and broad-reaching innovative capabilities. It's how we deliver increased sales to our partners, build enduring loyalty to their brands, and provide more value to our cardmembers. Alliance Data's card services business is a proud part of the Alliance Data enterprise. To learn more, visit www.KnowMoreSellMore.com or follow us on Twitter @Know_SellMore.



1 https://blog.salecycle.com/stats/the-remarketing-report-q2-2017

SOURCE Alliance Data

Related Links

https://www.alliancedata.com


Last Flag Flying received a warm welcome as the opener to the New York Film Festival on September 28 at the Lincoln Center, where the film's director Richard Linklater gave a nod to Amazon Studios, saying, "We've been trying to make this film for ten years and Amazon finally came on board and said, 'Hey, we like this, let's do this.' So, bless them."

In addition to praise from the book trade publication Booklist, which recommends "both novels and the movie," actor Bryan Cranston is impressed with the novel and its author. "Darryl has once again captured the camaraderie and complexity of male bonding, as he did so brilliantly in The Last Detail", he said. "Three familiar characters, now some thirty years later, with a dubious history and an undesirable task ahead of them are what dominate the fascinating and satisfying story in Last Flag Flying."

In Last Flag Flying, Ponicsan tells the poignant, heartwarming, and funny tale of an unlikely trio of men on a solemn mission. A surprisingly moving story of male friendship, both tough and tender, it is at once a protest against injustice and a celebration of life.

The sequel to Ponicsan's cult classic novel features the same beloved charactersBilly "Bad-Ass" Buddusky, Mule Mulhall, and Larry Meadowsat a later stage in life. Now middle-aged, Meadows seeks out the older men to help him bury his only son, a Marine killed in Iraq, in Arlington National Cemetery. When he learns that the authorities have lied to him about the circumstances of his son's senseless death, he decides with the help of the other two to transport him home to Portsmouth. And so, begins a journey to find solace somehow and bring a child home.

Skyhorse Publishing, one of the fastest-growing independent book publishers in the United States, was launched in September 2006 by Tony Lyons, former president and publisher of the Lyons Press. It has had forty-six titles on the New York Times bestseller list over the course of its ten-year history.

With more than 6,500 titles in print, and a focus on publishing books of the moment, Skyhorse publishes a maverick list that includes fiction, nonfiction, history, politics, rural living, cooking, humor, and children's books. Lyons is dedicated to publishing books that make people's lives better, whether that means teaching them a hobby, bringing them a unique and important story, or encouraging them to fight against injustices, conspiracies, or abuses of power.

Last Flag Flying: A Novel

by Darryl Ponicsan

Skyhorse Publishing paperback (movie tie-in edition)

ISBN: 978-1-5107-3329-9 | $15.99 | On Sale: November 14, 2017

Press requests: Caitlin Thomas

212-643-6816 x 303

[email protected]

SOURCE Skyhorse Publishing

Related Links

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According to a new research report " Artificial Intelligence in Retail Market by Type (Online, Offline), Technology (Machine Learning and Deep Learning, NLP), Solution, Service (Professional, Managed), Deployment Mode (Cloud, On-Premises), Application, R egion - Global Forecast to 2022 " , published by MarketsandMarkets, the market size is expected to grow from USD 993.6 Million in 2017 to USD 5,034.0 Million by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 38.3%. The key factors driving the growth of the AI in retail market include the increasing need to streamline omnichannel retailing and customer turnover.

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The machine learning and deep learning technology is expected to have the largest market share during the forecast period.



Among the technologies, the machine learning and deep learning segment is expected to have the largest market share during the forecast period. Organizations in the retail industry are using the machine learning and deep learning technology to offer a more personalized experience to the end-users as well as to provide an interactive environment to them. Furthermore, the rising technology adoption can be attributed to the need for streamlining retail operations, minimizing efforts, and increasing revenue for retailers.

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The visual search segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period.



Among the solutions, the need for visual search solutions is expected to grow, due to their increasing popularity among eRetailers as well as shoppers. Customers usually click and save the images of the products they like. Visual search solutions provide users the option to search for the products they wish to buy by simply uploading its image or the URL. Visual search solutions are observing a surge in demand, due to the attractiveness of searching products by simply uploading pictures instead of basic text-based search. Moreover, uploading the product images simplifies the search and also increases the customer turnover for eRetailers, as they can offer more options to the shoppers for similar products.

North America is expected to have the largest market share while Asia Pacific (APAC) is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period.



Among the regions, North America is expected to continue to dominate the market with the highest market share during the forecast period. This is mainly because of the presence of several developed economies, such as the United States (US) and Canada, and the region's focus on enhancing the existing solutions. North America hosts the major AI solution providers and is an early adopter of the AI technology. Many retailers in this region have deployed AI-based solutions to optimize their supply chain operations and inventory. AI is helping the retailers in managing and maintaining their customers, and understanding the buying patterns of the consumers. To engage customers and increase the sales turnover, AI technologies are being accepted by both online and offline retail businesses, and this is driving the growth of the market in this region. The APAC region is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The increasing technology spending in countries such as China and India and the demand for cost-effective, advanced AI-based solutions and services among the retail industry are expected to drive the APAC market growth during the forecast period.

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The major vendors providing AI in retail solutions and services include Microsoft (US), Google (US), IBM (US), NVIDIA (US), Intel (US), Oracle (US), Sentient Technologies (US), Salesforce (US), Amazon Web Services (US), SAP (Germany), Inbenta Technologies (US), Nuance Communications (US), SAMSUNG (South Korea), Narrative Science (US), Daisy Intelligence (Canada), Infosys (India), Wipro (India), Happiest Minds (India), MicroStrategy (US), Dynamic Yield (US), IPsoft (US), Appier.com (Taiwan), ViSenze (Singapore), Manthan Software Services (India), and Optoro (US).

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Facial Recognition Market by Component: Software Tools (2D, 3D, and Thermal) and Services (Training & Consulting Services and Cloud-Based Facial Recognition Services), Technology, Use Case, and Application Area - Global Forecast to 2021

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Machine Learning Market by Vertical (BFSI, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Retail, Telecommunication, Government and Defense, Manufacturing, Energy and Utilities), Deployment Mode, Service, Organization Size, and Region - Global Forecast to 2022

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DRESHER, Pa., Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ascensus, a technology-enabled solutions provider that helps more than 7 million Americans save for the future, has entered into an agreement to acquire Polycomp Administrative Services, Inc. (Polycomp). The retirement plan design and benefit plan administrative services firm will immediately become part of Ascensus' retirement division.

Polycomp, which has offices throughout California in Roseville, Woodland Hills, and San Diego, provides client-specific solutions and services for self-directed IRAs, qualified plans, and prevailing wage trusts. Founded in 1974, the firm works with over 5,000 clients and administers approximately 1,500 plans. It is also home to dozens of credentialed associates who hold certifications from the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries, the National Institute of Pension Administrators, and the Institute of Certified Bankers.

"Polycomp is nationally recognized as a leader in retirement plan consulting and administrative services," states Shannon Kelly, Ascensus' president of retirement. "The climate of mutual trust and purpose that they've created is attractive not only to its clients, but also to its associatesmany of whom have been with the firm for more than 10 years. Ascensus gladly welcomes these new associates and the expertise they can share with our clients to help them prepare for the future."

"Since Polycomp doesn't sell or recommend investments to our clients, we can focus our efforts on client objectives and collaborating with other experts in the accounting, financial planning, and investment fields," says Donna Harmon, Polycomp's chief operating officer. "Becoming part of Ascensus and gaining access to all of its resources will allow us to continue to provide the highest level of expertise in retirement plan design and compliance administration."

"The acquisition of Polycomp is an excellent proxy to our diversified growth strategy, as Polycomp's solutions span not only our core retirement third-party administration markets, but also the self-directed IRA, trust administration, and compliance areas," says Raghav Nandagopal, Ascensus' executive vice president of corporate development and M&A. "In addition to these adjacencies, we continue to aggressively pursue acquisition opportunities in college solutions, health solutions, benefit administration, and other logical areas."

About Ascensus

Ascensus helps more than 7 million Americans save for the futureretirement, college, and healthcare through technology-enabled solutions. With more than 35 years of experience, the firm offers tailored solutions that meet the needs of asset managers, banks, credit unions, state governments, financial professionals, employers, and individuals. Ascensus supports approximately 50,000 retirement plans, more than 4 million 529 college savings accounts, and a growing number of ABLE savings accounts. It also administers more than 1.6 million IRAs and health savings accounts. As of June 30, 2017, Ascensus had over $155 billion in total assets under administration. For more information about Ascensus, visit ascensus.com.

View career opportunities at careers.ascensus.com or on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/ascensus. For the latest company news, follow @AscensusInc on Twitter.

SOURCE Ascensus

Related Links

https://www.ascensus.com


NORTHBROOK, Ill., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Astellas today announced the five C3 Prize finalists chosen from more than 160 entries to present their ideas to change cancer care in a live forum at the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) World Cancer Leaders' Summit (WCLS) on November 13th in Mexico City. The Astellas Oncology C3 Prize is a global challenge designed to acknowledge and support non-medicine innovations to improve the cancer care experience for patients, caregivers and their loved ones. Following the live pitches, Astellas will award one Grand Prize Winner a $50,000 grant and a personal business consultation with Robert Herjavec, technology entrepreneur, star of ABC's Emmy Award-winning hit television show Shark Tank and former cancer caregiver.

"The quality of the Astellas Oncology C3 Prize submissions is a testament to Astellas' philosophy of tapping into the collective genius of people around the world to generate innovation," said Herjavec. "Each of the finalist ideas has the potential to bring non-treatment based innovation in cancer care to reality, and I'm looking forward to meeting with this year's Grand Prize Winner."

Applicants to this year's challenge included patients, caregivers, healthcare providers and technology entrepreneurs from more than 20 countries who submitted ideas in four areas where patients living with cancer and the overall cancer community face some of the toughest obstacles: navigating the health care system, adhering to complex medical care requirements, coordinating care and surviving life post-treatment. The five finalists are:

Kevin Bambury of Killarney, Ireland , ONCOassist, which has developed an interactive informational app designed to contain all of the tools oncology professionals need at point of care to help diagnose and manage treatment.

, ONCOassist, which has developed an interactive informational app designed to contain all of the tools oncology professionals need at point of care to help diagnose and manage treatment. Howard Isenstein of Bethesda, Maryland , Care Progress, whose app CarePrompter aims to improve patient navigation, adherence and care coordination by prompting patients to check in with their clinicians frequently on a wide range of topics.

, Care Progress, whose app CarePrompter aims to improve patient navigation, adherence and care coordination by prompting patients to check in with their clinicians frequently on a wide range of topics. Cory Kidd of San Francisco, California , Catalia Health, which has developed the Mabu Wellness Coach Platform featuring an AI-powered companion robot that incorporates psychology, evidenced-based healthcare solutions, and artificial intelligence to help patients better manage their care.

, Catalia Health, which has developed the Mabu Wellness Coach Platform featuring an AI-powered companion robot that incorporates psychology, evidenced-based healthcare solutions, and artificial intelligence to help patients better manage their care. Hernani Oliveira of Porto, Portugal , HOPE PROJECT, which consists of a two-part app developed to help both pediatric cancer patients and their parents solve issues related to medication adherence and the sedentary lifestyle of children that are diagnosed with cancer, and help parents further understand and explain complex cancer treatment procedures.

, HOPE PROJECT, which consists of a two-part app developed to help both pediatric cancer patients and their parents solve issues related to medication adherence and the sedentary lifestyle of children that are diagnosed with cancer, and help parents further understand and explain complex cancer treatment procedures. Charlotte Vander Stichele of Antwerp, Belgium , Mindbytes, whose Cancer Patient Decision Aid (CADA) would provide patients with an interactive scenario-based decision-support tool complete with information on disease burden, treatment impacts and the various decision-points during care.

The finalists will present their ideas at the WCLS to a panel of judges including Ambassador Sally Cowal, senior vice president, Global Cancer Control at the American Cancer Society, Nick Grant, executive director, International Partnerships at Cancer Research UK, Chihiro Hosoya, senior manager, New Business Incubator at Astellas, and Mark Reisenauer, senior vice president, Oncology Business Unit at Astellas.

"We are again thrilled with the number and quality of submissions received for this year's C3 Prize," said Reisenauer, whose own personal experience caring for his late father influenced the development and launch of the C3 Prize.

In addition to the Grand Prize Winner, the other four finalists will each receive $12,500 from Astellas and all five finalists will receive a one-year nights and weekends' membership to MATTER, a healthcare innovation community, to help bring their ideas to life.

For more information, visit www.C3Prize.com.

About Astellas

Astellas is a pharmaceutical company dedicated to improving the health of people around the world through the provision of innovative and reliable pharmaceutical products. For more information on Astellas, please visit our website at www.astellas.us. You can also follow us on Twitter at @AstellasUS, Facebook at www.facebook.com/AstellasUS or LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/astellas-pharma.

About UICC

The Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) is dedicated to taking the lead in convening, capacity building and advocacy initiatives that unite the cancer community to reduce the global cancer burden, promote greater equity, and integrate cancer control into the world health and development agenda.

Founded in 1933 and based in Geneva, Switzerland, UICC is the largest and oldest international cancer organisation. With over 1,000 members and 56 partners across 162 countries, UICC features the world's major cancer societies, ministries of health, research institutes, patient groups, and industry leaders.

For more information, visit www.uicc.org.

About MATTER

MATTER is a community of entrepreneurs, innovators and industry leaders working together to harness technology to improve health and healthcare. MATTER connects and promotes collaboration between entrepreneurs, scientists, physicians, investors and industry leaders in order to bring next-generation products and services to market that improve quality of care and save lives. For more information, visit www.matterchicago.com .

SOURCE Astellas Pharma Inc.

Related Links

http://www.astellas.us


NEW YORK, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Aviation Week Network today announced the winners of its 16th annual Aviation Week Program Excellence Awards, sponsored this year by Siemens PLM Software. The awards honor global aerospace and defense programs and projects, their leaders and their teams for going beyond meeting requirements to exemplify the best in value creation, leadership, adapting to complexity and executing with excellence.

Developed in 2004, the Aviation Week Program Excellence Awards were created in response to repeated concerns about the complexity and difficulty associated with managing and leading the aerospace and defense programs that are the foundation of the industry. During the evaluation process, more than 300 program management representatives from across industry and government score each application, resulting in the widespread sharing of innovative practices and processes.

"We are honored to celebrate the best of the best programs  programs that deliver results, but that also innovate new ways to bring technology to bear on some of society's toughest problems," said Greg Hamilton, president of Aviation Week Network. "This year's nominees hailed from every sector of the industry, and the winners truly set the standard for what leadership and performance are all about."

Winners were announced at the annual Aviation Week Program Management Symposium and Awards Banquet in McLean, Virginia. Finalists and winners received awards and winners are featured in Aviation Week & Space Technology and at www.AviationWeek.com.

Winners of the 2017 Aviation Week Program Excellence Awards are:

Supplier R&D/SDD

United Technologies Corp. Aerospace Systems: Advanced Air Data Sensor Design, Testing and Manufacturing Capabilities for Severe Icing Conditions; Brian Matheis, Technical Fellow, Aero/Thermo Fluids; Greg Seidel, Manager, Technology; Jake Dahn, Manager, Manufacturing Engineering

Supplier Production

Ball Aerospace: James Webb Space Telescope Cryogenic Electronics System; Allison Barto, Program Manager

Supplier Sustainment

Lockheed Martin Corp.: Apache Sensors Performance-Based Logistics; David Belvin, Program Director, Apache Fire Control Programs

OEM R&D/SDD

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.: Gray Eagle Extended Range; Doug Aiken, Program Manager

OEM Production

Orbital ATK: Cygnus; Frank DeMauro, Vice President/General Manager, Advanced Programs; David Hastman, Program Manager

OEM Sustainment

Lockheed Martin Corp.: Space-Based Infrared System Sustainment; Christopher Ayres, Military Space Operations, Sustain and Logistics

Special Projects

Raytheon Missile Systems: Immersive Design Center; Kendall Loomis, Center Manager

The Program Excellence initiative is supported by Boeing Defense, Space & Security, Elbit Systems of America, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Honeywell Aerospace, Lockheed Martin Corp., Moog Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp., and Rockwell Collins. For more information about Aviation Week Network's Program Excellence Initiative, visit www.aviationweek.com/program-management-corner.

ABOUT AVIATION WEEK NETWORK

The Aviation Week Network is the largest multimedia information and services provider for the global aviation, aerospace and defense industries that has a database of 1.2 million professionals around the world. Industry professionals rely on Aviation Week for analysis, marketing and intelligence. Customers include the world's leading manufacturers, suppliers, airlines, business aviation operators, militaries, governments and other organizations that serve this global market. The product portfolio includes Aviation Week & Space Technology, AC-U-KWIK, Aircraft Blue Book, Airportdata.com, Air Charter Guide, Air Transport World, AviationWeek.com, Aviation Week Intelligence Network, Business & Commercial Aviation, ShowNews, SpeedNews, Fleet and MRO forecasts, global maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) tradeshows and aerospace & defense conferences.

ABOUT SPEEDNEWS CONFERENCES

SpeedNews Conferences, the leader in global executive events, provides targeted information and professional networking opportunities for senior level aerospace industry leaders, decision makers, financial institutions, economic development organizations, and industry analysts. These Conferences deliver an array of information and data for commercial, defense, business and general aviation, aerospace manufacturing, raw materials, and M&A developments.

SpeedNews Conferences offer an unmatched depth of market data and innovative ways to present organizations' materials. Meet with distinguished experts in the aerospace industry, learn about current trends, new products and developments, hear forecasts, and network with customers and peers. From aircraft and engine manufacturing to current financial reports and data, you will walk away with timely, crucial knowledge from these experts to help guide your business plans.

About Informa Exhibitions

With over 200 trade and consumer exhibitions annually, Informa Exhibitions is a global market leader in such end markets as Boating, Beauty, Construction & Real Estate, Life Sciences, Maritime, Health & Nutrition, Agriculture and Pop Culture. Through face to face and digital channels, its transaction-oriented exhibitions enable communities to engage, experience and do business. In doing so, Informa brings together people who want to buy and sell, network, do business and gain inspiration. Industry insight, coupled with an innovative and entrepreneurial approach, provides Informa Exhibitions customers and partners with the opportunity to create business advantage and access markets.

Informa Exhibitions is a division of Informa PLC, a leading business intelligence, academic publishing, knowledge and events business, creating unique content and connectivity for customers all over the world. Informa PLC is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a member of the FTSE 100.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Joanna Speed

SpeedNews

+1-424-465-6501

[email protected]

SOURCE Aviation Week Network

Related Links

http://www.AviationWeek.com


The Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) and Evora University signed a cooperation agreement yesterday in Macau. The agreement was signed by IFT president Fanny Vong and Evora University rector Ana Costa Freitas.

Through the cooperation with the Portuguese university, IFT hopes to promote faculty and student exchanges, internship placements, joint research and other forms of institutional collaboration in postgraduate studies.

The announcement follows a visit to Portugal by a Macau delegation led by Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Alexis Tam, which took place between September 17 and 25. During the trip, the Tertiary Education Services Office arranged for a group from Macaus higher education sector to visit the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, as well as universities, laboratories and incubation centers.

Established in Portugal in 1559, Evora University is a renowned institution with a long history. According to an IFT statement issued yesterday, Evora University engages in a lot of research and projects on cultural heritage conservation and restoration, as well as [] the identification of the material and structure of cultural relics.

The university offers a postgraduate program in cultural heritage.
ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Center for Baby and Adult Hygiene Products (BAHP) announced today the launch of a Spanish version of its popular consumer-focused website, http://www.diaperanswers.org/es/, which provides BAHP members, consumers and the media with information about the advantages, safety and convenient use of disposable diapers.

"As a pediatrician and parent, I am excited that BAHP has launched the Spanish version of this website. It now reaches a much broader audience and provides parents and caregivers with beneficial information on the safety of disposable diapers," said Rachel W. Tellez, MD. "Users of the site will find the data credible and helpful when faced with important issues regarding the safety of their children."

The website also features important information about how diapers are made, environmental issues, and includes Frequently Asked Questions.

BAHP membership is available to all U.S. and Canada-based companies that manufacture and distribute their own branded disposable diaper products. For more information about the Center for Baby & Adult Hygiene Products and its members please visit www.bahp.com.



BAHP is an affiliate of the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates, a trade association representing specialty chemical manufacturers.

About The Center for Baby and Adult Hygiene Products

The Center for Baby and Adult Hygiene Products (BAHP), formerly known as the Personal Absorbent Products Council (PAPC), is the trade association for personal hygiene products. It provides information on the scientific, regulatory and related issues which may impact upon health, safety and environmental aspects of the manufacture, use and disposal of consumer products containing superabsorbent material including disposable diapers, training pants, feminine hygiene products, adult incontinence products, and wet wipes.

About SOCMA

Since 1921 SOCMA has represented a diverse membership of chemical companies located around the world bringing world-class support uniquely tailored to enhance the operational excellence of our member companies. SOCMA is the only U.S.-based trade association dedicated solely to the specialty chemical industry, making us the leading authority on this sector. For more information visit www.socma.com.

Media Contact:

Ryan Cinney

Manager, Marketing and Communications

(571) 348-5120

[email protected]

SOURCE The Center for Baby and Adult Hygiene Products (BAHP)

Related Links

http://www.bahp.com/


WHIPPANY, N.J., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Bayer announced today that data from its pulmonary disease franchise will be presented in scientific sessions at the 2017 annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST 2017), October 28  November 1 in Toronto, Canada. The presentations include two oral scientific sessions about new analyses of the RESPITE ( R iociguat clinical E ffects S tudied in P atients with I nsufficient T reatment response to PD E -5 inhibitors) study investigating the clinical effects of riociguat in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). The RESPITE study is a part of the collaboration between Bayer and MSD (known as Merck in the U.S. and Canada).

"These data provide us with further understanding about management of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension who are having difficulty reaching or maintaining their therapeutic goal," said Aleksandra Vlajnic, M.D., vice president of medical affairs at Bayer. "Bayer is committed to continuing research that adds to the growing body of knowledge that helps inform potential treatment strategies for this progressive and life-shortening disease."

The presentations being made are:

Effect of Riociguat on Pulmonary Arterial Compliance in Patients with Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH) in the RESPITE study

Date/Time: Tue, October 31st , 3:30 PM - 3:45 PM

,

Location: Convention Center - 603

Convention Center - 603

Presenter: Thenappan Thenappan, M.D., University of Minnesota

Thenappan Thenappan, M.D., The Relationship of Hemodynamics and Exercise Capacity with Response to Riociguat Therapy in the RESPITE Study of PAH Patients with an Insufficient Response to Phosphodiesterase 5 Inhibitors

Date/Time: Tue, October 31st , 3:45 PM  4:00 PM

, 

Location: Convention Center - 603

Convention Center - 603

Presenter: Raymond L. Benza, M.D., Allegheny General Hospital

About Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH)

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is defined by elevated pressure in the arteries going from the right side of the heart to the lungs.i Typical symptoms of PAH include shortness of breath on exertion, fatigue, weakness, chest pain and syncope.ii PAH is caused by abnormalities in the walls of the pulmonary arteries.i,iii

The presentations include data on riociguat, which is marketed as Adempas in the U.S. Since October 2014, the worldwide strategic collaboration between Bayer and MSD (known as Merck in the U.S. and Canada) in the field of sGC modulators, brings together the two leading companies in this field, who both have the stated intent to make full use of this promising class of compounds and the potential it holds for the benefit of patients. Riociguat, the first sGC stimulator approved and made available to patients, is the first product which is part of this collaboration.

About Adempas (riociguat)

Riociguat, licensed in the U.S. as Adempas, is a stimulator of soluable guanylate cyclase (sGC) and is the only treatment approved in the U.S. for use in two types of pulmonary hypertension (WHO Groups 1 and 4).

INDICATIONS

Adempas (riociguat) tablets is indicated for the treatment of adults with persistent/recurrent chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH), (WHO Group 4) after surgical treatment, or inoperable CTEPH, to improve exercise capacity and WHO functional class.

Adempas is indicated for the treatment of adults with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), (WHO Group 1), to improve exercise capacity, WHO functional class and to delay clinical worsening.*

Efficacy was shown in patients on Adempas monotherapy or in combination with endothelin receptor antagonists or prostanoids. Studies establishing effectiveness included predominantly patients with WHO functional class IIIII and etiologies of idiopathic or heritable PAH (61%) or PAH associated with connective tissue diseases (25%).

*Time to clinical worsening was a combined endpoint defined as death (all-cause mortality), heart/lung transplantation, atrial septostomy, hospitalization due to persistent worsening of pulmonary hypertension, start of new PAH-specific treatment, persistent decrease in 6MWD and persistent worsening of WHO functional class.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

WARNING: EMBRYO-FETAL TOXICITY Do not administer Adempas (riociguat) tablets to a pregnant female because it may cause fetal harm.

Females of reproductive potential: Exclude pregnancy before the start of treatment, monthly during treatment, and 1 month after stopping treatment. Prevent pregnancy during treatment and for one month after stopping treatment by using acceptable methods of contraception.

For all female patients, Adempas is available only through a restricted program called the Adempas Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) Program.

Contraindications

Adempas is contraindicated in:

Pregnancy. Adempas may cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman. Adempas was consistently shown to have teratogenic effects when administered to animals. If this drug is used during pregnancy, or if the patient becomes pregnant while taking this drug, the patient should be apprised of the potential hazard to the fetus

Co-administration with nitrates or nitric oxide donors (such as amyl nitrite) in any form.

Concomitant administration with specific phosphodiesterase (PDE) -5 inhibitors (such as sildenafil, tadalafil, or vardenafil) or nonspecific PDE inhibitors (such as dipyridamole or theophylline) is contraindicated. Do not administer within 24 hours of sildenafil. Do not administer 24 hours before or within 48 hours after tadalafil.

Patients with Pulmonary Hypertension Associated with Idiopathic Interstitial Pneumonias (PH-IIP).

Warnings and Precautions

Embryo-Fetal Toxicity. Adempas may cause fetal harm when administered during pregnancy and is contraindicated for use in women who are pregnant. In females of reproductive potential, exclude pregnancy prior to initiation of therapy, advise use of acceptable contraception and obtain monthly pregnancy tests. For females, Adempas is only available through a restricted program under the Adempas REMS Program.

Adempas REMS Program. Females can only receive Adempas through the Adempas REMS Program, a restricted distribution program.

Important requirements of the Adempas REMS program include the following:

Prescribers must be certified with the program by enrolling and completing training.

All females, regardless of reproductive potential, must enroll in the Adempas REMS Program prior to initiating Adempas. Male patients are not enrolled in the Adempas REMS Program.

Female patients of reproductive potential must comply with the pregnancy testing and contraception requirements.

Pharmacies must be certified with the program and must only dispense to patients who are authorized to receive Adempas.

Further information, including a list of certified pharmacies, is available at www.AdempasREMS.com or 1-855-4ADEMPAS.

Hypotension. Adempas reduces blood pressure. Consider the potential for symptomatic hypotension or ischemia in patients with hypovolemia, severe left ventricular outflow obstruction, resting hypotension, autonomic dysfunction, or concomitant treatment with antihypertensives or strong CYP and P-gp/BCRP inhibitors. Consider a dose reduction if patient develops signs or symptoms of hypotension.

Bleeding. In the placebo-controlled clinical trials, serious bleeding occurred in 2.4% of patients taking Adempas compared to 0% of placebo patients. Serious hemoptysis occurred in 5 (1%) patients taking Adempas compared to 0 placebo patients, including one event with fatal outcome. Serious hemorrhagic events also included 2 patients with vaginal hemorrhage, 2 with catheter site hemorrhage, and 1 each with subdural hematoma, hematemesis, and intra-abdominal hemorrhage.

Pulmonary Veno-Occlusive Disease. Pulmonary vasodilators may significantly worsen the cardiovascular status of patients with pulmonary veno-occlusive disease (PVOD). Therefore, administration of Adempas to such patients is not recommended. Should signs of pulmonary edema occur, the possibility of associated PVOD should be considered and if confirmed, discontinue treatment with Adempas.

Most Common Adverse Reactions

The most common adverse reactions occurring more frequently ( > 3%) on Adempas than placebo were headache (27% vs 18%), dyspepsia/gastritis (21% vs. 8%), dizziness (20% vs 13%), nausea (14% vs 11%), diarrhea (12% vs 8%), hypotension (10% vs 4%), vomiting (10% vs 7%), anemia (7% vs 2%), gastroesophageal reflux disease (5% vs 2%), and constipation (5% vs 1%).

Other events that were seen more frequently in Adempas compared to placebo and potentially related to treatment were: palpitations, nasal congestion, epistaxis, dysphagia, abdominal distension and peripheral edema.

For important risk and use information, please see the full Prescribing Information, including Boxed Warning, at: http://labeling.bayerhealthcare.com/html/products/pi/Adempas_PI.pdf

Bayer: Science For A Better Life

Bayer is a global enterprise with core competencies in the Life Science fields of health care and agriculture. Its products and services are designed to benefit people and improve their quality of life. At the same time, the Group aims to create value through innovation, growth and high earning power. Bayer is committed to the principles of sustainable development and to its social and ethical responsibilities as a corporate citizen. In fiscal 2016, the Group employed around 115,200 people and had sales of EUR 46.8 billion. Capital expenditures amounted to EUR 2.6 billion, R&D expenses to EUR 4.7 billion. These figures include those for the high-tech polymers business, which was floated on the stock market as an independent company named Covestro on October 6, 2015. For more information, go to www.bayer.us.

 2017 Bayer

Bayer and the Bayer Cross are registered trademarks of Bayer.

Our online press service is just a click away: press.bayer.com

Follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pharma.bayer

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BayerPharma

Media Contacts :

David Patti, +1-973-452-6793

Bayer, Product Communications

[email protected]

Bayer Forward Looking Statement

This news release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Bayer Group or subgroup management. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in Bayer's public reports which are available on the Bayer Web site at www.bayer.com. The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.

i Rosenkranz S. Pulmonary hypertension: current diagnosis and treatment. Clin Res Cardiol. 2007;96(8):527-541.

ii McKenna SP et al. The Cambridge Pulmonary Hypertension Outcome Review (CAMPHOR): a measure of health-related quality of life and quality of life for patients with pulmonary hypertension. Qual Life Res 2006;15(1):103-115.

iii Galie, N et al. A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials in pulmonary arterial hypertension. Eur Heart J 2009;30:394-403.

PP-400-US-3806

SOURCE Bayer

Related Links

http://www.bayer.us


GREENFIELD, Mass., Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A Community Town Hall on Wednesday night will feature registered nurses from Baystate Franklin Medical Center sharing their concerns about patient safety at the hospital and community members asking questions and discussing their experiences at BFMC.

What: A Community Town Hall, sponsored by Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution, Hampshire/Franklin County Central Labor Council and Massachusetts Jobs with Justice

When: Wednesday, Oct. 25 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Where: St. James Parish Hall at 8 Church St. in Greenfield.

"As we keep up our fight for safe patient care and a fair contract, it is more important than ever that the community hears directly from its local nurses," said Donna Stern, RN and Senior Co-Chair of the BFMC MNA Bargaining Committee. "This event will give everyone a chance to learn about our specific patient care concerns and discuss the solutions nurses have proposed during negotiations."

Bargaining Background

BFMC nurses held a one-day strike on June 26, 2017 after voting by a 93% margin to authorize the strike. The nurses were preemptively locked out of the hospital by Baystate management, who kept the RNs from caring for their patients the evening before the strike. The lockout lasted for two days following the strike and involved Baystate spending $1 million to hire replacement nurses from outside the community instead of allowing BFMC nurses to care for their patients once the strike concluded.

Following the strike, Baystate gave its "best and final" to BFMC nurses on July 21. That day BFMC nurses spent hours revising proposals, including on their key issue of improving nurse workload and staffing to protect patient care. A few minutes after providing management with their revised proposal, they flatly rejected it and gave nurses a pre-printed "best and final offer."

BFMC nurses voted to reject that offer on August 15. The MNA has filed more than 20 unfair labor practice charges against Baystate on behalf of BFMC nurses for, among other reasons, failing to bargain in good faith over mandatory subjects of bargaining such as nurse workload and health insurance.

"Baystate has been refusing to bargain over our core issues of safe nurse staffing, workload and health insurance," Stern said. "We are trying hard to negotiate a fair contract that protects patients and ensures quality of life and working conditions."

BFMC nurses began negotiating for a new contract in November 2016 to replace the contract that expired Dec. 31, 2016. A federal mediator is involved in negotiations.

MassNurses.org  Facebook.com/MassNurses  Twitter.com/MassNurses

Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.

SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association

Related Links

http://www.massnurses.org


LAS VEGAS, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Civic, the company revolutionizing digital identity with its Blockchain-based technology, today at Money 20/20 announces the expansion of its partnership with BitGo. The new initiative adds KYC services to BitGo's new Royal Mint Gold (RMG) wallets, enabling consumers to invest in real gold held by the Royal Mint.

"We're excited to announce that BitGo will be our first full digital KYC partner for the Civic Network, and that we are enabling this important compliance function for their customers," said Civic CEO Vinny Lingham. "We look forward to continuing our relationship and bringing together our services to better serve customers and improve the investing experience."

RMG is a new, innovative gold investment product that is digitally traded using blockchain technology. Purchasers of RMG will have the opportunity to invest in real gold with the ability to trade value on an exchange. The project will initially be available to all UK residents and will expand globally in the coming months.

"We chose the Civic identity solution because of their innovative underlying model which protects consumers and businesses alike. Civic is keeping user data safe in a way which provides higher accuracy for businesses at lower cost," said BitGo CEO Mike Belshe.

RMG was initiated by The Royal Mint (Her Majesty's Treasury) and CME Group in 2016 and aims to change the way gold is traded, executed and settled by making it available for trade with a transparent ledger of ownership and lowering costs.

For more information or to become a Civic business partner, visit www.civic.com.

About Civic:

Civic is a visionary blockchain identity verification technology that allows consumers to authorize the use of their identities in real-time. They are spearheading the development of an ecosystem that is designed to facilitate on-demand, secure, and low-cost access to identity verification services via the blockchain. Civic recently introduced a Civic token that participants in the ecosystem will use to provide and receive identity verification-related services. The company sold $33 million of its tokens during its token sale event in June 2017. For more information, visit https://www.civic.com.

About BitGo:

BitGo is the leader in digital currency security and world's largest institutional wallet provider. As a pioneer of multi-signature technology, BitGo offers B2B products for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, RMG, and other digital currencies. The company builds the BitGo Offline Vault, an enterprise-grade, secure cold storage solution atop HSMs for both custodial and non-custodial solutions. Finally, the BitGo API is used to transact over $8billion of value monthly across many of the largest businesses in the digital currency markets. Learn more at www.bitgo.com.

CONTACT: Spark PR, [email protected]

SOURCE Civic

Related Links

http://www.civic.com


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On October 25, BizBash Live: New York will return to Jacob Javits Center with a new lineup of the event industry's most innovative ideas and inspiration. The 17th annual event brings together more than 2,000 event professionals, including hundreds of top vendors who will showcase their offerings, as well as an incredible team of game changers sharing insights. Event professionals who come to BizBash in search of their "AHA" moment are sure to discover new technologies, event software, unique design ideas, fund-raising tools, exciting new venues, and more.

Eventbots (by Sciensio) will take center stage at BizBash Live with the New York debut of Betty the BizBash EventBot, who will enhance the attendee experience with a user-friendly Q&A interface, becoming the "customer service bot." Art of Everyone's interactive laser-guided painting experience will easily transform every guest into an artist. Challenge co-workers to a game of giant scrabble or chess with Giant Games of NYC and take a 360 selfie at NY Photo Party's photo booth. Plus, multi-award winning illusionist Wayne Hoffman will perform his mind-blowing act.

The renowned Event Innovation Forum and Workshop Series return as part of the BizBash Live lineup with presentations from industry trailblazers, including Deborah Curtis of American Express; Albie Hueston and Kelly Markus of Refinery29; Colleen Kennedy Cohen of Goop Inc.; and Josh Wood of Josh Wood Productions. BizBash is proud to debut the Wedding Forum where events and weddings will merge. Globally-celebrated wedding designer Preston Bailey, elite cake artist Ron Ben-Israel, Lauren Kay of The Knot, and Kevin Denton of Pernod Ricard USA will share their tips and insights on the 2018 wedding season. During these sessions, attendees will also experience stunning audiovisual creations from KM Productions and 1 Way Audio Visual. This annual experience is the perfect opportunity to explore, connect, and create lasting relationships.

The full list of speakers, exhibitors, sponsors, and registration information can be found at www.bizbash.com/expony. BizBash additionally acknowledges the Jacob Javits Center, Rosewood Theater, Bagatelle, Blueprint Studios, Boomset, and Swoogo for their event support. For media coverage, please contact Brittany Bucceroni at [email protected].

Media contact:

Brittany Bucceroni

BizBash

646.839.6846

http://www.bizbash.com

Source: BizBash

SOURCE BizBash

Related Links

https://www.bizbash.com


SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Health Foundation awards grants annually to organizations working to improve the health of Tennesseans. Microclinic International, a recipient of one of these grants, offers training clinics in disease prevention and management to foster healthy habits in the state's residents.

Microclinic International began in the Middle East and Africa and has been in Tennessee for two years. The program uses small clinic groups composed of motivated individuals who become advocates for good health. Clinic participants learn about healthy behaviors, as well as disease prevention and management, then use this information to influence the habits of their friends, families and neighbors, creating a ripple effect of better health.

The latest issue of Better Tennessee magazine, published by BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, features MCI and some of its clinics in East Tennessee.

"MCI's model is premised on the idea that good health behaviors are just like bad health behaviors; they can be made contagious and spread throughout social networks," says program founder and chief executive officer Dr. Daniel Zoughbie.

According to MCI, one person changes the lives of 5-10 people through a microclinic, and those attendees go out and change the lives of even more. The program has established strong roots in East Tennessee and plans to expand statewide.

"Good habits can help prevent countless health issues," says Chelsea Johnson, interim director of community relations and foundations at BlueCross. "The BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Health Foundation is proud to support the work that Microclinic International is doing on the front lines to encourage better health among our state's residents."

Through grants from the BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Health Foundation and BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Community Trust, as well as corporate sponsorships, BlueCross invested nearly $10.5 million in Tennessee communities in 2016.

About BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Health Foundation, Inc.

The BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Health Foundation, Inc. (THF) was established in December 2003 as a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation organized to promote the philanthropic mission of BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. THF awards grants focused on high-impact initiatives across the state that promote better health.

About BlueCross

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee's mission is to peace of mind through better health. Founded in 1945, the Chattanooga-based company is focused on serving more than 3.4 million members in Tennessee and across the country. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Inc. is an independent licensee of the BlueCross BlueShield Association. For more information, visit the company's website at bcbst.com.

For Media Inquiries:

Misty Philpot

Email: [email protected]

Related Files

MCI_one pager_2017_FINAL.pdf

Related Links

Microclinic International website

Microclinic International Facebook page

SOURCE BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Health Foundation

Related Links

http://bcbst.com


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- BNY Mellon (NYSE:BK) announced that the company's Investor Day will be held on Thursday, March 8, 2018.

At the event, CEO Charles Scharf and members of the senior leadership team will discuss BNY Mellon's strategy and outlook.

BNY Mellon is a global investments company dedicated to helping its clients manage and service their financial assets throughout the investment lifecycle. Whether providing financial services for institutions, corporations or individual investors, BNY Mellon delivers informed investment management and investment services in 35 countries and more than 100 markets. As of Sept. 30, 2017, BNY Mellon had $32.2 trillion in assets under custody and/or administration, and $1.8 trillion in assets under management. BNY Mellon can act as a single point of contact for clients looking to create, trade, hold, manage, service, distribute or restructure investments. BNY Mellon is the corporate brand of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (NYSE: BK). Additional information is available on www.bnymellon.com. Follow us on Twitter @BNYMellon or visit our newsroom at www.bnymellon.com/newsroom for the latest company news.

Contacts:

Media

Eva Radtke

+1 212 635 1504

[email protected]

Analysts

Valerie Haertel

+1 212 635 8529

[email protected]



SOURCE BNY Mellon

Related Links

http://www.bnymellon.com


MIAMI, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Brickell Travel Management (BTM), in collaboration with their client La Colonia Medical Center, has successfully sent a charter plane to deliver relief to Puerto Rico on Friday, October 20th. Together along with clients, vendors, partners and employees, BTM was able to collect over 16,000 lbs. of water, nonperishable food, basic necessities, first aid supplies and rebuilding materials.

Donations arriving on site. Michel Rodriguez, President, loading final donations.

"We quickly realized that the main issue was not gathering supplies, but being able to deliver them to the island. We feel blessed that we were able to leverage our resources within the travel industry to secure a plane and be able to support the recovery of Puerto Rico," said Michel Rodriguez, President of Operations at BTM. "In a global environment with so much tragedy surrounding us, it's easy to feel helpless and we are just glad to be able to contribute."

La Colonia Medical Center's generous donation consisted medical supplies, medicine and generators for Puerto Rico's cancer patients, many of whose lives are at risk and unable to continue treatment in the aftermath of this natural disaster. Among other clients who made generous donations are Bupa Latin America, EFG Capital, INTL FCStone, Safari Ltd, Plastipak, Novi Coffee & Tea, DataCore Software Corporation.

Hurricane Maria made landfall as a Category 4 storm in Puerto Rico and devastated the island; powerful winds ripped the roofs off homes, uprooted trees and brought down power lines, leaving 100% of the island and her 3.5 million residents without power, potable water or communication. Many people suffered crippling losses from the storm, and resources have been scarce as the island recovers.

Once the charter plane arrived to Puerto Rico, supplies began to be distributed amongst university hospitals throughout the island in collaboration with the Department of Health and ASEM.

Brickell Travel Management, a Business Travel Agency serving the top companies across the nation since 2009, has grown from a small operation to an emerging industry leader with annual sales exceeding $100 million. The company has recently relocated its corporate headquarters to the newly renovated 66 West Flagler Street in Downtown Miami, across the street from the Miami-Dade County Courthouse.

Media Contact:

Monica Gutierrez

[email protected]

(305) 856-8889 ext. 128

www.brickelltravel.com/corporate

SOURCE Brickell Travel Management

Related Links

http://www.brickelltravel.com/corporate


MELVILLE, N.Y., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Canon Solutions America, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Canon U.S.A., Inc., today announced that on October 12, 2017, its Enterprise Managed Services Division (EMSD) led by the Healthcare Advisory Team (HEAT), collaborated with the American Hispanic Healthcare Executives (AHHE) to host the Manager's Council Healthcare Roundtable Series on "Bridging the Gap in Access to Healthcare." This session focused on the challenges of Healthcare Executive Officers in ensuring their hospitals provide affordable and comprehensive care to the communities they serve, and how the formulation of strategic partnerships between the private and public sectors can support the community by providing access to healthcare for everyone.

The event began with introductions by Pedro A. Rivera, Esq., LL.M and George Zeppenfeldt-Cestero, president & CEO of AHHE, who invited EMSD to sponsor the event.

The first presentation of the night was a conversation between Andrea Rai, senior manager of Strategic Partnerships with the Healthcare Advisory Team, and Sasha Dolgicer, senior director of Corporate Relations for the University of Miami (UM). They discussed the history of the relationship that began in 2013 between EMSD and UM, encompassing UHealth, the University's hospital system. EMSD's commitment to a holistic partnership that focuses on UM students, patients, the university, and the hospital has helped lead to positive impacts on underserved portions of the South Florida community and their access to healthcare.

Steve Lorig, the EMSD account executive managing the NYC Health + Hospitals engagement and a HEAT healthcare ambassador, presented on EMSD's recent collaboration with the health system, and how EMSD has begun developing strategic partnerships within the system.

The keynote speaker for the event was Alina Moran, the Chief Executive Officer of NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan. Ms. Moran's presentation examined the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Medicaid redesign in New York State, and the Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) Program.

Ms. Moran's presentation also explored OneCity Health goals, which among other things, seeks to drive long-term community engagement and partnership while building healthier communities.

The final topic of the keynote was NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan Transformation Goals: Strengthen Primary Care and Behavioral Health, Enhance Outreach and Activation, Ensure Robust, Targeted Care Management, and Support Seamless Care Transitions.

Over forty healthcare executives attended the event, representing major hospitals across New York City.

"Our collaboration with Canon's Enterprise Managed Services Division on the AHHE Managers Council Roundtable was a great success," stated Pedro A. Rivera, Esq., LL.M, director of Labor Relations for NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue, and a member of the AHHE Managers Council. "The event was very well attended by AHHE members and the healthcare community. This was an incredible opportunity to learn from the experiences of those who support the effort to make healthcare accessible to all."

Strategic collaborations have become the foundation of Canon Solutions America's Enterprise Managed Services Division's engagements with healthcare clients. EMSD's healthcare offering seeks to go beyond delivering multifunctional print devices, software, and services by seeking to align the strategic goals of the client and vendor at the outset of each engagement. To assist in this effort, the Healthcare Advisory Team was created to conduct primary research on industry trends and to focus on opportunities in the healthcare print space by identifying and implementing best practices, including benchmarking metrics to track program goals and successes.

To learn more, please contact the Healthcare Advisory Team (HEAT).

About Canon Solutions America, Inc.

Canon Solutions America provides industry leading enterprise, production, and large format printing solutions, supported by exceptional professional service offerings. With the technology offerings of the Canon and Oce brands, Canon Solutions America helps companies of all sizes improve sustainability, increase efficiency, and control costs through high volume, continuous feed, digital and traditional printing, and document management solutions. A wholly owned subsidiary of Canon U.S.A., Inc., Canon Solutions America is headquartered in Melville, N.Y. and has sales and service locations across the U.S. For more information on Canon Solutions America, please visit csa.canon.com.

Canon is a registered trademark of Canon Inc. in the United States and elsewhere. Oce is a registered trademark of Oce-Technologies B.V. in the United States and elsewhere. All other referenced product names and marks are trademarks of their respective owners and are hereby acknowledged.



 2017 Canon Solutions America, Inc. All rights reserved.

Canon Solutions America, Inc. Website:

http://csa.canon.com

For sales info/customer support:

1-844-443-INFO (4636)

Editorial Contact:

Conor Febos

631-330-4109

[email protected]

SOURCE Canon Solutions America, Inc.

Related Links

https://csa.canon.com


"We're taking the bakery to California - I can't believe it!" exclaims Buddy Valastro. "We're always asked when we'll make it out there and I honestly couldn't be more humbled to say the big day is finally here. Carlo's Bakery has come such a long way since Hoboken. I'm touched by the outpouring of support and encouragement we receive from fans to grow the business. I know my father would be so proud. I just want to give everyone a little piece of that Hoboken magic and I'm so thrilled that Santa Monica is the next stop on our journey. Come see me and the famiglia on November 18. We can't wait to meet you!"

The grand opening of Carlo's Bakery at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California will be celebrated on Saturday, November 18, 2017. Opening day promises to be especially sweet for those in attendance. Buddy Valastro and his family will hold the brand's traditional ribbon cutting ceremony at 7:00am. The bakery will open for business immediately following the ceremony with meet and greet opportunities available to patrons. Carlo's Bakery in Santa Monica is located at 1345 3rd Street Promenade, Santa Monica, CA 90401.

ABOUT CARLO'S BAKERY

Established in 1910, Carlo's Bakery was catapulted from a Hoboken, NJ-based neighborhood bakery to a household name through the public's fascination with the over-the-top cakes produced by master baker Buddy Valastro and success of TLC's hit series, Cake Boss, and subsequent spinoff Next Great Baker. Garnering attention from a variety of media outlets including Brides, Rachael Ray Show, Huffington Post and Good Morning America, Carlo's Bakery has existing locations in Hoboken, Marlton, Morristown, Red Bank, Ridgewood, Wayne, and Westfield, NJ; Las Vegas, NV; Dallas, Frisco, and, The Woodlands, TX; Uncasville, CT; Orlando, FL; Atlanta, GA; Bethlehem, and Philadelphia, PA; Bloomington, MN (Mall of America); New York, and Westbury, NY; and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Follow Carlo's Bakery on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for the latest updates from the brand. For more information, please visit www.carlosbakery.com.

Contact: Nicole Valdes

[email protected]

201-448-8402

SOURCE Carlo's Bakery

Related Links

http://www.carlosbakery.com


More than 4,000 people in Macau have been diagnosed with dementia, according to Lo Iek Long, a coordinator at the Dementia Medical Center of the Health Bureau (SSM).

From January to September this year, SSM assessed the cognitive functions of 1,037 residents. The number of residents assessed was double that of the same period last year.

The rate of diagnosis increased from 37.5 percent last year to 45 percent this year.

Lo added that the number of newly diagnosed dementia patients registered at the Dementia Medical Center increased by 188 percent year on year, with more than 300 new patients confirmed.

Alexis Tam, the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture, recently stated at a dementia-related event that the Macau government is keen to improve the prevention of dementia, which is an important part of the governments ten- year plan for the elderly.

Tam added that the Macau government is setting up a system for dementia treatment which will consist of five main stages: prevention, detection, diagnosis, treatment and support.
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- California Cryobank (Cryobank), the worldwide leader in frozen donor sperm and egg banking, recently announced their new DNA Advantage Donor Program, which includes comprehensive genetic screening for over 260 conditions on new sperm donors. Cryobank will be collaborating with Sema4, a Mount Sinai venture and next generation health information company, which will perform the donor genetic testing.

While all California Cryobank sperm donors are screened for conditions recommended by the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG), DNA Advantage Donors will have substantially more genetic information that can be utilized by recipients as part of their donor selection process.

"All human beings carry mutations for recessively inherited conditions. The availability of these genetic testing panels has transformed the reproductive industry, allowing physicians to offer genetic screening in the pre-conception phase as standard practice," explains California Cryobank Executive Medical Director Jaime Shamonki, M.D. "While it is impossible to identify or eliminate all heritable risks to children, screening the donor as well as the recipient can substantially reduce the risk of a child being affected by one of these potentially significant diseases."

"We are pleased to work with California Cryobank to offer our comprehensive capabilities in reproductive health testing, including superior carrier screening, DNA extraction and storage for a number of sample types, and karyotyping," said Sema4 Chief Executive Officer Eric Schadt, PhD. "Interest in preconception care and genetic risk testing is soaring as prospective parents, and those who help serve their needs, seek to better understand the risk of passing a genetic disorder along to a child."

"Working with Sema4 is a great fit," says Pamela Callum, Director of Cryobank's Genetics Services. "Their comprehensive panel overlaps very well with the other commonly used genetic testing services, meaning that no matter what genetic panel or laboratory one of our clients or their physician utilizes, we can help find a compatible donor."

By adding expanded genetic screening to an already extensive qualification process that includes a comprehensive psychological assessment by a licensed doctorate-level mental health professional, criminal background check, 3-generation family medical history assessment, physical exams, repeated communicable disease testing, and outstanding specimen quality, Cryobank continues to set the industry standard for sperm donor screening. In fact, less than 1% of applicants ultimately become California Cryobank donors.

"We believe in robust screening as well as quality informed consent," said Dr. Shamonki. "Our screening process selects for the most committed, altruistic, and informed donors."

About California Cryobank

California Cryobank provides frozen donor sperm and donor egg services, reproductive tissue storage, and cord blood banking through FamilyCord). Operating throughout the United States, Europe, Latin America, Australia, and Asia, Cryobank is registered with the FDA, accredited by the AATB and AABB, and licensed by the states of California and New York. Cryobank is a portfolio company of two healthcare-focused private investment firms, Longitude Capital and NovaQuest Capital Management.

Media Contact:

Scott Brown

[email protected]

SOURCE California Cryobank

Related Links

http://www.cryobank.com


The Awz HLS Fund invests $4.5 million in NanoLock Security

TORONTO, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - The Awz Homeland Security Fund (the "Fund"), a Canadian venture capital fund that invests exclusively in leading-edge Israeli cyber security, intelligence and physical security technology, today announced the completion of an additional investment, its third in the last quarter. The Fund, led by Yaron Ashkenazi, CEO of Awz HLS Fund, recently completed a US$4.5 million investment in Nanolock Security Inc., a company that specializes in protecting connected and Internet of Things ("IoT") devices against cyber security and malware attacks.

"Israel is recognized as one of the world's foremost leaders in cyber security and is commonly referred to as the 'start-up nation' for high-tech innovation," said Mr. Yaron Ashkenazi, Founder and CEO of the Awz HLS Fund. "There is a growing global need for Israel's powerhouse security capabilities and expertise. The strategy for our Fund is to invest in companies that are at the forefront of generating real solutions to the most challenging existing security threats."

In line with this strategy, last month, Awz HLS Fund announced a US$3.5 million investment in Siga Data Security Ltd., a company that develops cyber security technology that protects critical operating and control systems in the Operation Technology ("OT") space. Furthermore, in June, the Fund announced a US$5.25 million investment in Octopus Systems Ltd., a company that developed a cloud-based management platform that consolidates cyber security, logical and physical security elements.

Israeli high-tech is rightfully considered a leader in the development of integrated security solutions, and NanoLock is another example that offers a unique solution for IoT smart devices. The Fund has identified extraordinary technological advantages in NanoLock's solution, and it operates in a market potentially worth billions of dollars. The company's founders are leading cyber and technology professionals with proven capabilities in managing and developing exceptional businesses.

Upon the completion of the investment, Shlomo Oren, Chairman of NanoLock commented: "We are proud of Awz's confidence in the technological capabilities and business achievements of NanoLock in recent months. The transition from IT to OT and the arrival of billions of endpoint devices with limited computing resources on the one hand and severe security flaws on the other, creates a great demand from leading players in this field. NanoLock brings to the market an end-to-end solution that provides not only powerful protection of endpoint devices but also the required management capabilities. The company is currently investing efforts in working with leading companies from around the world."

NanoLock Security Inc.

NanoLock was founded in 2016 by Eran Fine, CEO and Shlomo Oren, Chairman. Eran Fine is an entrepreneur and senior manager with more than 18 years of international experience in founding, managing and leading high-tech companies. Previously, he was the Founder and CEO of OREE, which was subsequently sold to Diogano. He also served as CEO of MOBILSPEAR, and was a consultant for the nanotechnology centres of Tel Aviv University and the University of Tsinghua (Beijing).

Shlomo Oren, Chairman of NanoLock, has 45 years of experience in managing and leading companies in the field of microelectronics in Israel and abroad. Previously, he served in several positions including CEO of K & S Israel; President and CEO of Shellcase Ltd., which was subsequently sold to Tessera Inc.; CEO of Tech Transfer Corp. of Haifa University. Mr. Oren is also the active chairman of NanoAir Ltd. Among the company's entrepreneurs are Amir Sade, former CEO of GreenSQL, which was sold to HUAWEI of China, and former CEO of Onigma, which was sold to Intel; and Kevin Connelly, a former CTO of SanDisk.

NanoLock has developed a hardware and software based platform that can protect tens of billions of connected and IoT devices that are in constant threat from cyber and functional attacks. The technology developed by NanoLock enables maximum protection even for devices with limited resources, power and latency concerns, and continues to protect even in situations of local and infrastructure attacks. The company offers protection for IoT devices exposed to severe attacks that can take over the systems and cause significant economic damage.

The patent-protected, end-to-end solution prevents the ability to write malware to the operating system, while enabling highly secure software updates that serve privileged entities.

The company is in the midst of several pilot projects with leading companies in Japan, the U.S. and Europe. Last month it was announced that Nanolock won "GO IGNITE", a global competition offered by an alliance between Orange, Telefonica, SingTel and Deutsche Telekom.

Advocate Etti Koren, of Koren - Grodberg & Co. Law Offices, represented the Awz HLS Fund in Israel. Barbara Miller, Partner, Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, represented the Awz HLS Fund in Canada.

About Awz HLS Investment Fund I LP

Awz HLS Fund is a groundbreaking intelligence and security fund, founded by attorney Yaron Ashkenazi, a former Shin Bet security officer living in Toronto, Canada. The fund's executive team and advisory committee include a former Canadian federal Minister of Public Safety, former senior security and intelligence executives from Canadian and Israeli agencies, and global business and financial experts, among them: Chairman of the Advisory Board, Ed Sonshine, CEO of Canada's largest Real Estate Investment Trust, Riocan; Erez Kreiner, former Director of the National Information (Cyber) Security Authority under the Shin Bet; Haim Tomer, former Head of the Mossad Intelligence Division; Gary Barnea, the former Director of the Shin Bet Protection and Security Division; and Lt. Gen. (Ret) D. Michael Day, former commander of the Canadian Special Forces. Awz HLS Fund will invest up to $50 million in Israeli companies that have developed cutting-edge cyber security, intelligence and physical security technologies. The Fund will also invest in establishing subsidiaries in North America in collaboration with several of its investee companies.

SOURCE Awz Ventures Inc.
MINNEAPOLIS, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Responding to growing consumer preferences for natural and wholesome food production, Cargill today announced it has signed a binding agreement to acquire Diamond V, a leading global provider of innovative natural solutions and technologies that improve animal health, animal performance, and food safety. This acquisition, which follows Cargill's recent investment in Delacon, the global leader in natural, plant-based phytogenic additives, will give Cargill market-leading participation in the $20 billion global animal feed additives market, as well as world-class technical, regulatory and R&D capabilities and go-to-market strength in approximately 70 countries worldwide.

"This acquisition strengthens Cargill's and Diamond V's shared vision to be a leader in creating new solutions for evolving consumer preferences for sustainable and wholesome food production," said David MacLennan, Cargill's chairman and chief executive officer. "Our combined businesses will accelerate growth, build industry-leading capabilities and natural solutions for animal health and food safety, and help fulfill Cargill's purpose to nourish the world in a safe, responsible and sustainable way."

Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based Diamond V has a 75-year history and global reputation for developing unique, research-proven immune support technologies that work naturally with the biology of the animal to strengthen the immune system and promote a healthy digestive system to enhance animal health, animal performance, and food safety. The purchase will encompass all of Diamond V's business, including the human health business, Embria Health Sciences, and its branded product EpiCor. Diamond V's headquarters will remain in Cedar Rapids and the Diamond V brand will be the platform for future investments in natural solutions for safer animal food production.

"I am excited about what Diamond V and Cargill can accomplish together," said Jeff Cannon, Diamond V president and CEO. "This acquisition is an investment in the well-being of animals  and ultimately, in people."

This investment will enable Cargill's animal nutrition business to better serve customers who are increasingly turning to unique natural technologies to unlock the potential in feed to promote healthier animals, improve performance and to help them produce safer more wholesome food. Natural immune support products in animal feed  like natural health supplements for people  are increasingly being used to improve immunity and digestive health.

"Diamond V is a tremendous company with deep scientific expertise and a highly respected global brand," said Chuck Warta, president of Cargill's premix and nutrition business. "Adding Diamond V's leading talent and technology as well as its applications for sustainable protein production, will enable us to deliver improved profitability and performance for our customers. Together, Cargill and Diamond V will accelerate the pace of innovation and drive strategic, long-term growth."

Cargill has deep nutritional expertise built over decades and delivered through its animal nutrition business. Diamond V will enhance these capabilities through its innovative focus on immune function and digestive health, critical components that will help customers improve the well-being of their animals and the safety of the food supply. Through its commitment to innovation, technology and quality, Diamond V has earned a global reputation of trust and reliability in the animal nutrition industry and is recognized as a leader in food safety.

"Cargill and Diamond V will expand and create new world-class natural health technologies that will provide unique opportunities for customers and consumers alike," said Cannon. "Adding Cargill's vast resources and global reach to Diamond V's industry-leading practitioners, scientists, and technical experts, will allow the new organization to provide world-class, innovative technologies and solutions to the global animal health and nutrition industry."

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close in January 2018, subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions.

About Diamond V

With headquarters and manufacturing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA, Diamond V is a leading global animal health company, conducting basic and applied research in multiple species, and supplying natural immune support products and technical consultation to improve animal health, animal performance, and food safety worldwide. More than 75 years of science, innovation, technology, and quality have earned Diamond V the reputation of The Trusted Experts in Nutrition and Health. For more information about Diamond V, visit Diamondv.com.

About Cargill

Cargill provides food, agriculture, financial and industrial products and services to the world. Together with farmers, customers, governments and communities, we help people thrive by applying our insights and 150 years of experience. We have 150,000 employees in 70 countries who are committed to feeding the world in a responsible way, reducing environmental impact and improving the communities where we live and work. For more information, visit Cargill.com and our News Center .

About Cargill Animal Nutrition

Cargill's animal nutrition business has more than 20,000 employees at more than 275 facilities in 40 countries. Fuelled by our innovation and research, we offer a range of products and services to feed manufacturers, animal producers, and feed retailers around the world, helping put food on the plates of nearly one billion people around the world every day. Cargill's animal nutrition business offers a range of compound feed, premixes, feed additives, supply chain and risk management solutions, software tools and animal nutrition expertise that is unmatched in the industry. For more information about Cargill Animal Nutrition, visit: http://www.cargill.com/feed.

SOURCE Cargill

Related Links

http://www.cargill.com


RESTON, Va., Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The ROCA vulnerability discovered by researchers at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic has the internet security community understandably concerned. The researchers will present the attack method on November 2nd giving Internet users only a short amount of time to take precautions. Every digital certificate user needs to be aware of this latest vulnerability and importantly, whether their identity credentials are susceptible to this weakness.

Using the same detection code authored by the researchers, CertiPath created the TrustMonitor ROCA Vulnerability Test tool that can accept bulk certificates or certificate bundles (p7b), immediately providing results. CertiPath has also provided a set of test certificates containing vulnerable keys that can be used to confirm any ROCA test tool's capabilities.

CertiPath, a leading provider of PKI expertise and innovative tools, is making this publicly available to help maintain the integrity of PKI and the Internet overall.

The tool can be accessed at https://monitor.certipath.com/rsatest/ and requires no software to be downloaded.

CertiPath has developed a framework for identity monitoring and analytics to address the rising occurrences of identity-related gaps in the IT services and systems security. CertiPath's products and services make secure credentials and online identities safer and more efficient to use enabling enterprises to establish and leverage a reliable Trust Fabric that can insure your critical assets are being accessed by valid and vetted users.

Media Contact: Daniel Myslewski, 571-355-2485, [email protected]

SOURCE CertiPath

Related Links

https://certipath.com


CHENGDU, China, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, opened an office to attract overseas talent in Toronto, Canada.

It is the city's third international office, following one each in the United States and Germany, established to welcome high-end businesses and talent to relocate to Chengdu, according to the city's Human Resources and Social Security Bureau.

"We are trying to make the region's demand for businesses and talent known, and some companies in the Canadian health sector have shown interest," said Zhang Jing, manager of the office.

As a hub in China's western regions, Chengdu wants to woo overseas talent to help it compete with larger cities on the east coast, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, by offering more generous terms and a better environment.

Jiang Zhonghan, a Canadian citizen originally from China, has decided to bring his design team to Chengdu.

An innovation and entrepreneurship competition for overseas Chinese concluded in the city last week and Jiang's team's design, a battery management system for new energy vehicles, won the first prize. "Our system is like the 'brain' of battery unit, which enables it to operate with high efficiency," he said.

Currently, they are negotiating with the Chengdu Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone, which offers preferential policies like lower office rental costs, subsidies for the new energy sector and government aid to help recruit industrial workers.

The competition was part of a hi-tech conference for overseas Chinese in western China jointly organized by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council and two other bodies.

Since 1995, the conference has helped to attract over 1,400 hi-tech talents and more than 1,000 international projects to relocate to Chengdu.

Last month, the city launched a preferential policy for overseas talents who hold a Chinese green card, in which they can enjoy benefits in 20 aspects, such as healthcare and education for their children.

"The rapid development of western China and its thirst for hi-tech talent have made the region a base for entrepreneurship and innovation," said Jiang.

SOURCE Chengdu Human Resources and Social Security Bureau
Universal Security CEO Mark Lundgren announced on Friday, "Brian has served the City of Chicago for decades and we are thrilled to have him join our team so that we can continue to serve the city, state, and country together."

For the past 17 years Commander Thompson has served on the personal security detail (PSD) for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley; Commander Thompson for the last 7 years was the PSD Leader. Commander Thompson's gained invaluable experience from planning and executing high profile security plans for Mayor Rahm Emanuel PSD during events including, 2012 NATO Conference, 2012 and 2016 Democratic National Convention, as well as the 2013 Presidential Inauguration of President Barack Obama. With this experience, Universal Security and its clients will gain industry-changing knowledge.

Universal Security has been providing professional security services to Fortune 500 Companies for two decades. Universal Security has for over 10 years conducted security operations at both Chicago O'Hare and Chicago Midway Airports. Along with aviation and transportation security, Universal Security continues to provide security guard service for business, residential, education, critical infrastructure, construction, and faith-based organizations.

SOURCE Universal Security

Related Links

http://www.universalscty.com


WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Clutch published an updated report highlighting the top Phoenix and Minneapolis web design companies. The research evaluated each company's web design expertise and ability to deliver on its clients' expectations.

The top Phoenix web designers are: Skyhook Interactive, Pyxl, eCreations, My Favorite Web Designs, Resound, Tension Design, Avenue 25, Nuanced Media, Fyresite, Avintiv Media, Dreamztech, Propelur, Majestic Warrior, and Miss Details Design.

Top Web Designers Phoenix 2017 Top Web Designers Minneapolis 2017

The top Minneapolis web designers are: Ackmann & Dickenson, Windmill Design, Navigation North, 3plains, Westwerk, 3five, Creed Interactive, BrandHoot, Origin Eight, echoinnovate IT, Software for Good, Horizontal Integration, Edition Studios, Aware Web Solutions, and 8bitstudio.

"The best web design agencies create websites that match their clients' brands and help them meet their business goals," said Eleonora Israele, Business Manager at Clutch. "The highlighted companies have earned their position by creating visually appealing websites that drive results."

Clutch analysts assessed each company using Clutch's methodology that takes into account a company's service offerings, market and online presence, previous work, and client feedback interviews.

Clutch's research on leading web designers is ongoing, and Clutch encourages web design agencies to apply to get listed. Upcoming publications will showcase top agencies in Latin America.

Full research and reviews can be found at:

https://clutch.co/web-designers/phoenix/leaders-matrix

https://clutch.co/web-designers/minneapolis/leaders-matrix

About Clutch

A B2B research, ratings, and reviews firm in the heart of Washington, DC, Clutch connects small and medium businesses with the best-fit agencies, software, or consultants they need to tackle business challenges together and with confidence. Clutch's methodology compares business service providers and software in a specific market based on verified client reviews, services offered, work quality, and market presence.

Contact

Eleonora Israele

202-540-9093

[email protected]

SOURCE Clutch
The Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP brand was founded by husband and wife entrepreneurs Dan and Angie Bastian, who will continue to actively support the business as part of Conagra Brands. The brand features more than a dozen varieties of ready-to-eat popcorn and is available nationwide in natural food, grocery, club, drug and mass retail outlets. Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP has a presence in the U.S., Canada, South Korea, Peru, the Caribbean and Mexico.

About Conagra Brands

Conagra Brands, Inc. (NYSE: CAG), headquartered in Chicago, is one of North America's leading branded food companies. Guided by an entrepreneurial spirit, Conagra Brands combines a rich heritage of making great food with a sharpened focus on innovation. The company's portfolio is evolving to satisfy people's changing food preferences. Conagra's iconic brands, such as Marie Callender's, Reddi-wip, Hunt's, Healthy Choice, Slim Jim and Orville Redenbacher's, as well as emerging brands, including Alexia, Blake's, Frontera and Duke's, offer choices for every occasion. For more information, visit www.conagrabrands.com.

About Angie's Artisan Treats, LLC

Husband and wife entrepreneurs Dan and Angie Bastian founded the snack company out of their garage in 2001 in Mankato, MN as a means of teaching their children the value of hard work and creating a college fund for them. They also wanted to create a snack they felt good about feeding them. Their gluten free, non-GMOwhole grain popcorn was rebranded from Angie's to Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP in 2012. The popcorn is proudly sold in natural food, grocery, club, drug and mass retail outlets nationwide with a product presence in Canada, South Korea, Peru, the Caribbean and Mexico. Angie's BOOMCHICKAPOP is loved by fans as a positive, empowered brand that makes real food with simple ingredients and delivers a hugely-flavorful taste experience.

About TPG Growth

TPG Growth is the middle market and growth equity investment platform of TPG, the global alternative asset firm. With more than $8.3 billion of assets under management, TPG Growth targets investments in a broad range of industries and geographies. TPG Growth has the deep sector knowledge, operational resources, and global experience to drive value creation, and help companies reach their full potential. The firm is backed by the resources of TPG, which has more than $73 billion of assets under management. For more information, visit www.tpggrowth.com.

For more information, please contact:

MEDIA: Dan Hare

312-549-5355

[email protected]

INVESTORS: Brian Kearney

312-549-5002

[email protected]

SOURCE Conagra Brands, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.conagrabrands.com


WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Constantine Cannon LLP announced today that the firm has expanded its whistleblower practice to better serve prospective whistleblowers reporting tax fraud and tax evasion, with the addition of former Department of Justice trial attorney Michael J. Ronickher, Of Counsel, in the Washington, D.C., office. Professor Diane M. Ring of Boston College Law School will join as Of Counsel in Boston, and Robert Gardner, former manager in the Internal Revenue Service Whistleblower Office, will also join the firm as Tax Specialist and Fraud Investigator.

With its 22-attorney whistleblower practice group, Constantine Cannon assumes its place as a leading law firm for whistleblowers seeking to bring submissions under the IRS whistleblower program or tax fraud claims under the whistleblower provisions of the New York False Claims Act and other state acts. With the firm's recent London expansion, international whistleblowers now also have the opportunity to be represented by a leading whistleblower law firm, not only before the IRS, but also before the SEC and under other whistleblower programs.

Michael Ronickher represents a broad range of whistleblowers, including applying his tax litigation background to fight on behalf of IRS whistleblowers. During his nine-year tenure in the DOJ's Tax Division, he litigated numerous complex and high-profile cases in federal court on behalf of the U.S. government.

Ronickher has extensive experience successfully challenging intricate tax shelters and other tax avoidance schemes. Notably, he helped fashion the government's case against a company sheltering the income from $870 million in investments, and he served on the trial team that unwound 26 tax shelters known as SILO (Sale-In, Lease-Out) transactions that Wells Fargo had used to claim $115 million in tax deductions. He also worked closely with the IRS Whistleblower Office in John Doe v. United States, which concerned a whistleblower's tip alleging more than $500 million in tax fraud.

Ronickher spearheaded the Tax Division's litigation involving the Section 1603 grant program, which provided a federal subsidy for clean-energy investments, including leading the government's trial team in a $260 million case over the valuation of the largest wind farm in the United States.

Professor Diane Ring will join the firm as Of Counsel, advising on substantive tax issues that arise in IRS and state tax whistleblower matters. She will continue her tenure as Professor of Law and the Dr. Thomas F. Carney Distinguished Scholar at Boston College Law School. As a professor, she focuses on international taxation, corporate taxation, and ethical issues in tax practice.

Professor Ring has also worked as a consultant for the United Nations, most recently in 2014, on a project to help developing countries protect their tax base. In 2013, she consulted on the U.N.'s initiative to support treaty administration for developing countries and served as the U.S. National Reporter for the 2012 International Fiscal Association Conference on the Debt Equity Conundrum.

Prior to Boston College Law School, Professor Ring was an associate professor of law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, and an assistant professor of law at Harvard Law School.

Robert Gardner will join the firm as Tax Specialist and Fraud Investigator, bringing his decades of experience with the IRS to assist Constantine Cannon's clients. Gardner was most recently Senior Program Manager in the IRS Whistleblower Office, where he supervised the intake, monitoring, and disposition of all high-dollar or sensitive cases. Previously, he served as a revenue agent and supervisor for more than thirty years. In those decades of experience, he has helped to investigate some of the most serious federal tax issues, including offshore tax evasion and transfer pricing.

Constantine Cannon Managing Partner Richard Aborn said: "We are pleased to welcome the addition of Michael, Professor Ring, and Robert to our whistleblower practice. The expansion of our firm will help us to continue in the pursuit of fighting for justice on behalf of our whistleblower clients, by bringing together the best lawyers and minds in the field today."

Eric Havian, Partner and Co-founder of the San Francisco office, said: "Tax whistleblowers are sophisticated and look for the type of expertise that Michael, Professor Ring, and Robert bring to our firm. Our tax whistleblower practice is second to none."

MORE ABOUT CONSTANTINE CANNON'S NEWEST WHISTLEBLOWER ATTORNEYS AND INVESTIGATOR

Michael J. Ronickher

Ronickher is Of Counsel in Constantine Cannon's Washington, D.C., office. He focuses on qui tam lawsuits brought under the federal False Claims Act, as well as whistleblower submissions to the IRS and SEC. During his time at the Justice Department, Ronickher won the Tax Division Outstanding Attorney Award three times. He was also the recipient of two awards from the IRS: the Mitchell Rogovin Award and the IRS Lucite Award. Ronickher received his J.D. from Stanford Law School with distinction in 2008 and his B.A. summa cum laude in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College in 2002. Click HERE for more on Michael.

Professor Diane M. Ring

Professor Ring will join Constantine Cannon as Of Counsel. She will specialize in advising the whistleblower team on substantive tax matters that arise in IRS and state tax matters. She is Professor of Law and the Dr. Thomas F. Carney Distinguished Scholar at Boston College Law School, where she researches and writes primarily in the fields of international taxation, corporate taxation, and ethical issues in tax practice. She currently serves as Vice Chair of the American Bar Association Tax Section's Teaching Taxation Committee.

Professor Ring has co-authored three casebooks on taxation that feature corporate taxation, international taxation, and ethical problems in federal tax practice. Prior to her academic career, she practiced at Caplin & Drysdale in Washington, D.C., specializing in international tax and the taxation of financial instruments.

She has clerked for Judge Jon O. Newman of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Professor Ring received both her A.B. and J.D. from Harvard University. Click HERE for more on Diane.

Robert Gardner

Gardner will join the firm's whistleblower practice as Tax Specialist and Fraud Investigator. Gardner worked at the IRS for over three decades and mostly recently supervised the most important cases within the IRS Whistleblower Office. After leaving the agency, Gardner ran his own firm, the Gardner Consulting Firm, working in tandem with the IRS on the IRS Informant Award program for the past four years. He is an IRS enrolled agent.

Gardner received his M.S. in federal and state taxation from the Walsh College of Accountancy and Business Administration, a B.S. in Accounting from Akron University, and a B.A. in Economics from Hiram College. Click HERE for more on Robert.

ABOUT CONSTANTINE CANNON LLP

Constantine Cannon, with offices in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and London, has deep expertise in antitrust and complex commercial litigation, whistleblower representation, government relations, securities, e-discovery, and other practice areas. Constantine Cannon's whistleblower practice represents whistleblowers under the False Claims Act; the whistleblower programs of the IRS, SEC (Dodd-Frank Act), CFTC, and DOT; and the various federal and state laws that encourage industry insiders to report evidence of fraud or misconduct. To learn more about Constantine Cannon's whistleblower practice, click here.

The firm's antitrust practice is among the largest and most well recognized in the nation. Constantine Cannon's experience spans multiple industries, including healthcare, banking, electronic payments, insurance, high tech, telecommunications, the Internet, and government contracting. To learn more about the firm generally, click here.





Media Contact:

Andrea M. Garcia

PRCG | Haggerty

[email protected]

212.683.8100

SOURCE Constantine Cannon LLP

Related Links

https://constantinecannon.com


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ALM's Consulting magazine honors the profound difference women continue to make for their clients and their firms at the Women Leaders in Consulting Gala Awards Dinner on November 16 at the St. Regis in New York, NY. Nancy Pechloff, Regional Managing Director at Protiviti, is being recognized with Consulting magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award.

The Women Leaders in Consulting will be featured in the December issue of Consulting magazine, which will be available on December 8 and can be found after the date on www.consultingmag.com. For additional details on the Gala Awards Dinner, please visit: http://at.alm.com/WomenLeadersinConsulting.

Pechloff joined Protiviti in 2004 and is the company's Regional Managing Director (U.S. Central), reporting to the CEO. Under her leadership, the region has doubled revenues in the last five years and is the firm's largest and most profitable. Pechloff began with Arthur Andersen in 1973 where she became one of the firm's first women partners and led Andersen's Global Enterprise Group with revenues of $500 million worldwide. She was a founding member of Andersen's Growth and Retention of Women Initiative.

In addition to the Lifetime Achievement Award, Consulting magazine will honor 12 other award recipients, including six Excellence in Leadership winners: Anna Bourne, EY; Sharon Karlsberg, ZS; Michelle Russell, The Boston Consulting Group; Htike Htike Kyaw Soe, KPMG; Lata Varghese, Cognizant; and Carol Wingard, L.E.K Consulting.

The Excellence in Client Services award winners include: Nancy Aubrey, RSM; Pilar Tarry, AlixPartners; and, Jennifer Hayes, Bain & Company. Future Leader award winners include: Jantzen Bridges, Slalom; Dawn Hall, FTI Consulting; and Tiffany Hickerson, A.T. Kearney.

"Consulting magazine is honored to be able to shine a light on the accomplishments of these women leaders and the firms they represent," said Joseph Kornik, Publisher & Editor in Chief of Consulting magazine. "Even though women make up about a quarter of the consulting profession, their overall impact is significantly greater. It's astounding to see how women are shaking up the profession.The quality of the nominations and the accomplishments of the winners continue to stun us year after year, and this year was certainly no exception."

About Consulting magazine

Consulting magazine is the flagship publication of the consulting profession featuring the latest information on consulting careers, thought leadership and corporate strategies. In addition to providing industry insights, Consulting hosts award dinners as part of our Achievement Awards serieshonoring Women Leaders in Consulting, The Top 25 Consultants, The Rising Stars of the Profession, The Best Firms to Work For, and Social & Community Investment.

About ALM Intelligence

ALM Intelligence, a division of ALM Media LLC, supports legal, consulting, and benefits decision-makers seeking guidance on critical business challenges. Our proprietary market reports and analysis, rating guides, prospecting tools, surveys, and rankings, inform and empower business leaders to succeed. Please visit www.alm.com/intelligence for more information.

ALM Media Contact:

Carrie Winans, Prosek Partners

212 279 3115 x218

SOURCE ALM Intelligence

Related Links

http://www.alm.com/intelligence


It wasnt just the dark-suited delegates in Beijing who were listening intently last week as Chinese President Xi Jinping outlined his grand ambitions to launch a twice-a-decade Communist Party congress.

On Chinas peripheries there was apprehension and optimism as Xi, Chinas strongest leader in decades, reasserted his authority over semiautonomous Hong Kong and self-governing Taiwan.

Xi declared that Hong Kong, where residents are increasingly divided over Beijings rule of the former British colony, and Taiwan, where voters elected an independence-leaning president last year amid rising alienation from the mainland, are part of a great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation led by the Communist Party.

Heres a look at what people on the two islands told The Associated Press about the party congress:

THE ANXIOUS BUSINESSMAN

Businessman Ringo Lee believes President Xi Jinping must talk with Taiwans President Tsai Ing-Wen to encourage better ties across the Taiwan Strait.

Companies like his travel agency depend on it. The company brings mainland Chinese tourists to Taiwan and also sends Taiwanese tourists to the mainland.

Travel and tourism-related companies need good cross-strait relations, Lee said. But because of strained ties in recent years, the number of Chinese tourists coming to Taiwan has dropped, said Lee, 45.

Xi Jinpings task in his second term is to make Taiwanese people feel that China is a friendly nation, Lee said.

THE ACTIVIST

Christophe Chan feels Xi has done little over the past five years to improve relations with Taiwan, a democracy that Beijing views as a renegade province.

Like many younger residents, he believes Beijing should give up on its claim that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory.

Taiwan and China are two different countries. This is a political fact that must not be neglected, said Chan, a supporter of 2014s student-led Sunflower Movement protests that opposed a trade agreement with Beijing and closer ties with the mainland.

Only when China has faced the truth about Taiwan, and recognizes it as a democratic and sovereign entity, can both countries engage in friendly dialogue and exchange, said Chan, 38.

Chan disapproves of the Communist Partys hard- line governance under Xi. We are used to calling China a superpower, or even a great country, but the partys policies in recent years suggest otherwise, he said.

China is cracking down on human rights, Chan said.

THE PRO-BEIJING RETIREE

For retiree Fan Li, the most important thing is whether Chinas leaders can improve the livelihoods of people in Hong Kong.

In the last 10 years, Chinas leaders  Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin and Xi Jinping  have all introduced different policies to support the development of Hong Kong, said Li, 70.

Li believes Chinas leaders will successfully steer the citys future economic development as they have done for the mainland.

He cited Beijings big projects like the One Belt, One Road infrastructure project, which aims to better connect China, Europe and Africa, and another aimed at helping Hong Kongs integration with the wealthy, industrialized neighboring mainland province of Guangdong.

He believes that Hong Kongs pro-democracy lawmakers hindered the citys economic development.

When some people constantly oppose policies for the sake of opposition, they delay progress, he said.

Take Shenzhen, Li said, referring the mainland boomtown next door to Hong Kong. In the last 20 to 30 years, it has grown rapidly from a small village to the large, vibrant city that it is today. Hong Kongs development has stalled in comparison, he believes, because of internal problems.

THE DISILLUSIONED STUDENT

College student Lee Chan, 21, believes the partys policies have done little to address problems faced by Hong Kongs young.

Disillusioned about their chances of social mobility and struggling to find affordable housing, many have given up on their dreams, he said.

But an even greater worry is the Communist Partys increasing encroachment on political liberties like freedom of speech. Many people will complain about economic problems such as high property prices, or the rising cost of chicken and vegetables, he said, but are unaware that our political freedoms are gradually eroding.

Hong Kongs prosperity as an international finance hub is underpinned by these freedoms, which are now being compromised, he said.

Booksellers have been detained and sent back to the mainland via illegal means, he said. Hong Kong people face greater threats, in particular when it comes to their political rights.

His outlook is bleak.

Maybe one day, we will not be able to organize on the streets, express our viewpoints, publish books, criticize the government, or express what we believe to be right and just, said Lee. The values that define Hong Kong will no longer exist.

THE OPTIMISTIC STUDENT

Jackel Wan, 19, is optimistic about relations between Hong Kong and the mainland and thinks the good atmosphere will continue under Xis leadership.

Beijings policies havent significantly touched Kuis personal life and he believes the freedoms he enjoys remain intact.

I can still study freely. I still have freedom of speech. Hong Kong is still under the framework of One Country, Two Systems, and still under the Basic Law, he said, referring to a special formula and mini-constitution Beijing promised after the 1997 handover from Britain. They guarantee the citys wide autonomy and civil liberties unseen on the mainland.

Kui believes Beijings tough line on rising dissent in the city is appropriate, a stance at odds with many other young people, including those who helped spearhead huge 2014 pro-democracy protests. He said calls for Hong Kong independence by a small but vocal minority on college campuses and elsewhere are unrealistic.

They are doing the right thing to keep the situation under control, Kui said of China. AP
TSX: CMMC

VANCOUVER, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Copper Mountain Mining Corporation (TSX: CMMC) (the "Company" or "Copper Mountain") is pleased to announce that the company will be attending and presenting at the New Orleans Investment Conference, October 25-28, 2017.

Rod Shier, Copper Mountain's CFO, will present to attendees on Friday, October 27, 2017 at 10:10 am  10:30 am, Presentation Area 1, Exhibit Hall. The presentation will provide an update on Copper Mountain's third quarter production results, mining activities at the Copper Mountain Mine and other current activities as copper continues to show its importance in global developments.

Copper Mountain Mining will also have a booth at the conference, # 316, for conference attendees to visit for an update on the company and the mine.

The 2017 New Orleans Investment Conference will be held at The Hilton New Orleans Riverside, 2 Poydras Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130. "dozens of the world's top experts to address every one of the crucial problems, risks and opportunities facing investors today. With celebrated authorities in geopolitics, economics and every asset class  including many of the top experts in gold, metals and mining shares  this year's conference will more than live up to its reputation as "the world's greatest investment event!"

About Copper Mountain Mining Corporation:

Copper Mountain's flagship asset is the Copper Mountain mine located in southern British Columbia near the town of Princeton. The Company has a strategic alliance with Mitsubishi Materials Corporation who owns 25% of the mine. The Copper Mountain mine has a large resource of copper that remains open laterally and at depth. This significant exploration potential is being explored over the next few years in order to fully appreciate the property's full development potential. Additional information is available on the Company's web page at www.CuMtn.com.

On behalf of the Board of

COPPER MOUNTAIN MINING CORPORATION

"Jim O'Rourke"

Jim O'Rourke, P.Eng.

Chief Executive Officer

Note: This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements may differ materially from actual future events or results. Readers are referred to the documents, filed by the Company on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, specifically the most recent reports which identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to review or confirm analysts' expectations or estimates or to release publicly any revisions to any forward-looking statement.

SOURCE Copper Mountain Mining Corporation

Related Links

http://www.CuMtn.com


DENVER, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Although corporate counsel overwhelmingly recognize the importance of technology in helping them control rising litigation costs, most have not adopted a comprehensive strategy with respect to purchasing and deploying e-discovery technology. While nine out of 10 have used or plan to use e-discovery technology, 72 percent continue to purchase products on a piecemeal, as-needed basis.

At the same time, corporate counsel increasingly favor the use of advanced technologies such as technology assisted review (TAR) and data analytics. Of those who use e-discovery tools, 73 percent say they have used TAR in the past two years. Across the board, 80 percent of corporate counsel say they encourage their outside counsel and vendors to use machine learning, and 72 percent say the same about data visualization and analytics.

These are among the findings of a survey of 130 chief legal officers, general counsel and in-house attorneys, "Managing Litigation: E-Discovery Resources Survey Report." Conducted by Catalyst and Bloomberg Law, the survey sought to accurately gauge the role that technology plays in corporate discovery.

"General counsel today are faced with an increasingly difficult array of challenges from growing data volumes, pressure to operate like a business unit, and visibility into managing budgets and cases," said Robert Berger, Catalyst's vice president of marketing. "Even though they are increasingly using e-discovery technology to address these challenges, they're still chasing matters one at a time and not developing longer-term strategies to save on e-discovery costs and benefit from technology."

While most of the corporate attorneys surveyed said they want centralized access to securely managed document repositories for cost savings and security, only 19 percent have what they would consider a global platform and most still handle their matters as separate, individual matters. The leading concern inhibiting broader adoption of technology is cost, the survey found.

Nevertheless, corporate counsel cite automation and advanced e-discovery technology as among the top ways to better manage costs now and into the future. Many are also looking at performing a greater proportion of e-discovery work in-house.

"Although many respondents are diligent about closely monitoring their e-discovery spending, there is an even larger number looking for further advantages and gains by using machine learning and data visualization," said Berger.

You can download the survey results here.

About Catalyst

Catalyst designs, hosts and services the world's fastest and most powerful document repositories for large-scale discovery and regulatory compliance. For more than 15 years, corporations and their counsel have relied on Catalyst to help reduce litigation costs and take control of complex legal matters. To learn more, visit catalystsecure.com or follow the company on Twitter at @CatalystSecure.

SOURCE Catalyst

Related Links

http://www.catalystsecure.com


SHANGHAI, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- China Rapid Finance Limited ("China Rapid Finance" or the "Company") (NYSE: XRF), one of China's largest consumer lending marketplaces, today announced the appointment of Zhou Ji'an, Executive Director and General Manager of China United SME Guarantee Corporation ("Sino Guarantee"), to its board as a non-executive independent director.

A seasoned chief executive in the financial industry, Mr. Zhou brings to the Company more than 18 years of experience in global organizations, financial institutions and government. Before joining Sino Guarantee, he served as a senior executive for China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation, the official export credit agency in China, and for China Life Insurance Co., Ltd. Mr. Zhou is a Senior Scholar of the Eisenhower Fellowships, the international nonprofit leadership organization, and holds a master's degree in Economics from Renmin University of China.

"We are delighted to welcome Mr. Zhou to China Rapid Finance's board of directors," said Dr. Zane Wang, Founder and CEO of the Company. "He brings a strong track record of business leadership, a customer-centric approach to innovation and technology, and a wealth of asset management and risk control experience in the credit insurance industry that will be helpful as China Rapid Finance continues to expand its services across one of the world's largest untapped consumer credit markets. We look forward to benefitting from Mr. Zhou's insights and perspectives."

"It is an honor to join China Rapid Finance as a Director at this incredibly exciting time of the Company's expansion," said Mr. Zhou. "Since inception, the rapid growth of China Rapid Finance's consumer lending marketplace has reflected the strong demand for affordable credit from China's 500 million Emerging Middle-class Mobile Active consumers (EMMAs). I am confident that my diversified experience leading different types of financial institutions will help the Company continue to grow and further its mission. I look forward to contributing and supporting the Company on delivering long-term value for shareholders."

Mr. Zhou becomes the seventh board member of China Rapid Finance, whose global board of directors is comprised of current and former senior executives of Hewlett Packard, McKinsey & Company, Morgan Stanley, UBS, and other prestigious institutions.

About China Rapid Finance

China Rapid Finance operates one of China's largest consumer lending marketplaces in terms of total number of loans, having facilitated over 20 million loans to over 2.7 million unique borrowers as of June 30, 2017 at a significantly lower borrowing cost than many competitors. The Company deploys machine learning and proprietary decisioning technology to facilitate affordable digital credit for one of the world's largest untapped consumer credit markets: China's 500 million Emerging Middle-class Mobile Active consumers (EMMAs). China Rapid Finance operates a pure play marketplace, and does not take credit risk. The Company utilizes its technology to efficiently select quality EMMAs for its platform. China Rapid Finance facilitates smaller, shorter-term initial loans to these EMMAs and then enables larger, longer-term loans for repeat borrowers who demonstrate positive credit behavior. This "low and grow" strategy enables the Company to attract and retain high quality EMMAs who generate significant customer lifetime value. China Rapid Finance was founded by Dr. Zane Wang, who has decades of consumer credit experience in both the U.S. and China, and is governed by a global board of directors. For more information, please visit http://ChinaRapidFinance.InvestorRoom.com .

About Sino Guarantee

Sino Guarantee, a Chinese financial services company that provides financial guarantees for loans and bonds, was founded by JP Morgan Chase, Siemens China and other leading Chinese institutions. Sino Guarantee is currently an indirect shareholder of China Rapid Finance and collaborates with the Company on obtaining institutional lending capital for its online consumer lending marketplace.

Safe Harbor Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These forward-looking statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements can be identified by terminology such as "may," "will," "expects," "anticipates," "aims," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates," "likely to" and similar statements. Among other things, quotations from management in this announcement, China Rapid Finance's financial outlook as well as China Rapid Finance's strategic and operational plans contain forward-looking statements. China Rapid Finance may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its reports filed with, or furnished to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, in its annual reports to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about China Rapid Finance's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement, including but not limited to the following: unexpected difficulties in China Rapid Finance's pursuit of its goals and strategies; the unexpected developments, including slow growth, in the consumer lending market; reduced demand for, and market acceptance of, China Rapid Finance's products and services; difficulties keeping and strengthening relationships with borrowers or investors; difficulties of expanding data and channel partnerships, potentially costly servicing activities; competition in the consumer lending market; PRC governmental regulations and policies; and general economic and business conditions in the regions where China Rapid Finance provides products and services. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in China Rapid Finance's reports filed with, or furnished to, the Securities and Exchange Commission. All information provided in this press release and in the attachments is as of the date of this press release, and China Rapid Finance undertakes no duty to update such information except as required under applicable law.

Investor Relations Contacts:

China Rapid Finance

Mao Mao

Tel: +1 (646) 308-1635

Email: [email protected]

IR Results

Gretchen Lium

Tel: +1 (303) 638-9185

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE China Rapid Finance
RESTON, Va., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- comScore today announced that data science firm 0ptimus will comprehensively match comScore's television ratings and digital measurement with 0ptimus' nationwide custom modeled audiences. Such matching will allow 0ptimus more in-depth political targeting on an individual basis across all marketing channels including TV and digital.

0ptimus, which works with political campaigns and brands to help find key audiences and target media placement, has been a long-time user of comScore, having utilized comScore local television data to develop analytics for election races. With the expanded partnership, 0ptimus will now rely on comScore's television and digital footprint to match consumer profiles of individuals in homes to gain a full household audience measurement.

"With comScore's television data, we match our industry-leading consumer profiles and create custom models for our clients to use towards television buys," said Scott Tranter, Partner at 0ptimus. "By matching comScore's television and digital data with 0ptimus custom modeled audiences, we are able to target on a more individual basis across traditional and digital content."

"0ptimus has been a close partner since comScore's early days in the political vertical," said comScore's Chief Revenue Officer Chris Wilson. "We look forward to continuing to work with 0ptimus in this expanded relationship to help them create new products that better define and target voters."

About comScore

comScore is a leading cross-platform measurement company that measures audiences, brands and consumer behavior everywhere. comScore completed its merger with Rentrak Corporation in January 2016, to create the new model for a dynamic, cross-platform world. Built on precision and innovation, comScore's data footprint combines proprietary digital, TV and movie intelligence with vast demographic details to quantify consumers' multiscreen behavior at massive scale. This approach helps media companies monetize their complete audiences and allows marketers to reach these audiences more effectively. With more than 3,200 clients and a global footprint in more than 75 countries, comScore is delivering the future of measurement. Shares of comScore stock are currently traded on the OTC Market (OTC:SCOR). For more information on comScore, please visit comscore.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including, without limitation, comScore's expectations as to the impact of Station View Essentials, TV Essentials and the broader family of digital products on the success of comScore's business. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from expectations, including, but not limited to, comScore's ability to achieve its expected financial and operational results. For additional discussion of risk factors, please refer to comScore's respective Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and other filings that comScore makes from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), which are available on the SEC's website (www.sec.gov).

Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date such statements are made. comScore does not intend or undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements to reflect events, circumstances or new information after the date of this press release, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

SOURCE comScore

Related Links

http://www.comscore.com


DALLAS, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Debbie's Dream Foundation: Curing Stomach Cancer (DDF) will hold its Dallas Stomach Cancer Education Symposium and Webinar featuring a panel of leading oncologists and healthcare experts on Saturday, November 4, 2017. The symposium, supported in part by Title Sponsor, Lilly Oncology, will be live translated to Spanish and is designed for patients, families, caregivers, and healthcare professionals. Attendees in person and on the live webcast will hear about best practices and the most current cutting-edge gastric cancer treatments including surgical treatment options, non-surgical treatment options, radiation oncology, clinical trials, nutrition, immunotherapy, targeted therapies, and more.

Past DDF Symposium Participants

The panel of distinguished medical professionals includes:

Dr. Jaffer Ajani , Professor of Cancer Medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center

, Professor of Cancer Medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center Dr. Muslim Atiq, Gastroenterologist at Sanford Health, Sioux Falls , ID

, ID Dr. Scott Celinski , Surgical Oncologist at Baylor University Hospital

, Surgical Oncologist at Hospital Dr. Michael Choti , Professor of Surgery at University of Texas Southwestern

, Professor of Surgery at Southwestern Shelli Hardy , Clinical Dietician at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

, Clinical Dietician at Dr. Syed Mohammad Ali Kazmi , Assistant Professor at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

, Assistant Professor at Dr. Jeffrey Meyer , Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

, Associate Professor at Dr. Matthew Porembka , Surgical Oncologist at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

, Surgical Oncologist at Dr. Aravind Sanjeevaiah , Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

"The Dallas Stomach Cancer Education Symposium is an excellent opportunity for patients and caregivers to hear multidisciplinary experts speak on topics that are important for patients across the continuum of care," said Dr. Jaffer Ajani. "This format helps educate the audience to be more informed consumers of healthcare as well as advocates for their own care," said Dr. Michael Choti. Both doctors serve on DDF's Scientific and Medical Advisory Board and have led the initiative to bring this event to Dallas and its surrounding communities.

Lectures will be available on the Debbie's Dream Foundation website at http://www.DebbiesDream.org/portal/lecture-library. For more information or to register for the event, visit http://www.debbiesdream.org/portal/dallas-symposium.

About Debbie's Dream Foundation: Curing Stomach Cancer

Debbie's Dream Foundation: Curing Stomach Cancer (DDF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to raising awareness about stomach cancer, advancing funding for research, and providing education and support internationally to patients, families, and caregivers. Debbie's Dream Foundation seeks as its ultimate goal to make the cure for stomach cancer a reality.

DDF was founded in 2009 by Debbie Zelman after she was diagnosed with stage IV incurable gastric cancer in 2008 and given only weeks to live. DDF now has a Scientific and Medical Advisory Board of world renowned doctors and chapters throughout the United States and in Canada and Germany. Considered a "Super Survivor," Debbie is still receiving chemotherapy almost 9  years later and is thrilled to be able to watch her three children grow up. To learn more about DDF, please visit us at www.DebbiesDream.org.

Media Contact:

Brittnay Sparks

Communications Coordinator

Debbie's Dream Foundation: Curing Stomach Cancer

(954) 475-1200

[email protected]

www.DebbiesDream.org

SOURCE Debbie's Dream Foundation: Curing Stomach Cancer

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NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF) is pleased to share The Harvard Foundation of Harvard University's announcement that our Founder Elton John will receive The Harvard Foundation's 2017 Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award at a ceremony on Monday, November 6, 2017.

This award recognizes prominent public-spirited leaders in honor of the late Rev. Professor Peter J. Gomes. Over the past 35 years, Harvard Foundation humanitarian awards have been presented to an array of distinguished individuals, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu; United Nations Secretaries General Ban Ki-moon, Kofi Annan, Boutrous-Boutrous Ghali and Javier Perez de Quellar; gender rights advocate Malala Yousafzai; anti-child-labor spokesman Kailash Satyarthi; Cherokee Nation Chief Wilma Mankiller, and farmworker rights advocate Delores Huerta, among others.

"Accepting an award like this is both gratifying and tremendously humbling," stated Elton John. "I am grateful to Harvard University and the Harvard Foundation for acknowledging my philanthropic work toward ending HIV/AIDS. It's an honor to share this recognition with such illustrious past recipients. I remain committed, now more than ever, to helping sustain and grow the progress we've made to eradicate stigma and end the spread of HIV/AIDS, once and for all."

About the Elton John AIDS Foundation

At the Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF), we believe AIDS can be beaten. We act on that belief by raising funds for evidence-based programs and policies and also by speaking out with honesty and compassion about the realities of people's lives. Sir Elton John created EJAF nearly 25 years ago, first in the United States in 1992 and then in the United Kingdom in 1993. Through the generous support of far-sighted individuals, foundations, and corporations, the two foundations together have raised more than $385 million over the past quarter century to challenge discrimination against people affected by the epidemic, prevent infections, provide treatment and services, and motivate governments to end AIDS. The U.S. foundation focuses its efforts on programs in the United States, the Americas, and the Caribbean, while the U.K. foundation funds HIV-related work in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Join us in speaking out, taking action, and contributing to our efforts to achieve a world without AIDS. For more information, please visit www.ejaf.org.

SOURCE Elton John AIDS Foundation

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LONDON, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- DelveInsight's "Epilepsy  Market Insights, Epidemiology and Market Forecast-2025" report provides an overview of the Epilepsy, epidemiology and market trend of the Epilepsy for the United States, EU5 (Germany, Spain, Italy, France and United Kingdom), and Japan.



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5144652





The Report covers the therapeutics market revenue, treatment practice/algorithm and forecasted market size of Epilepsy from 2017 to 2025 segmented by seven major markets. In addition, the report also includes the forecasted epidemiology of Epilepsy till 2025.The Report also covers market drivers, market barriers and unmet medical need.



Our report provides the subtype specific prevalent population i.e. Focal Epilepsy, Generalized Epilepsy and Unclassified Epilepsy. In addition, the report also covers the prevalent cases of TSC associated Epilepsy in 6MM (excluding Japan). According to DelveInsight, the prevalent population of Epilepsy is expected to reach up to XXX cases by the end of 2025 at a CAGR of 4.13% from 2015-2025. High prevalent cases were observed in United States as compared to EU5 and Japan.



The market is dominated by approved therapies that are used for the treatment of

Epilepsy. The three best selling drugs of 2016 were Vimpat (UCB), Lamictal (Glaxosmithkline) and Keppra (UCB).



United States contributes the major share of Epilepsy market as compared to EU5 countries and Japan. The therapeutic market of Epilepsy in 7MM is expected to reach USD 8.8 Billion in 2025 at the CAGR of XX% from 2015-2025.



Key Coverage and Benefits:

 The report will help in developing business strategies by understanding the trends shaping and driving the Epilepsy market in 7MM.

 Organize sales and marketing efforts by identifying the best opportunities for Epilepsy in US, European Union 5 (Germany, Spain, Italy, France and United Kingdom) and Japan.

 To understand the future competition in the Epilepsy market (7MM) and Insightful review of the key market drivers and barriers.

 The report provides historical as well as forecasted epidemiology of Epilepsy in the 7MM covering United States, EU5 (Germany, Spain, Italy, France and United Kingdom) and Japan from 2015-2025.

 The Report also covers the detailed historical and forecasted Epilepsy market covering United States, European Union 5 (EU5- Germany, Spain, Italy, France and United Kingdom), Japan and Rest of the World (RoW) from 2015-2025.



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5144652



About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

https://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

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HOUSTON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Eureka Midstream Holdings, LLC (Eureka Midstream or the Company) www.eurekamidstream.com, announced today a new ownership structure and provided an operations update.

New Ownership Structure and Improved Financial Flexibility

Eureka Midstream announced a new ownership structure of the Company. Blue Ridge Mountain Resources, Inc. (BRMR), formerly known as Magnum Hunter Resources, entered into a definitive agreement to divest 100% of its equity investment in Eureka Midstream. BRMR formerly had an equity partnership in the Company with Morgan Stanley Infrastructure, Inc. (MSI). MSI has entered into a new partnership in the Company with SK Holdings Co., Ltd. (SK), a top three conglomerate in South Korea, with assets of $150 billion and deep expertise in the energy sector globally. SK now has a direct ownership interest in the company and will work with MSI and the Eureka team to continue to drive the system's impressive growth.

Eureka Midstream, as further noted in a press release issued September 6, 2017, closed on a $400 million senior credit facility with an additional $100 million accordion provision, subject to certain terms and conditions. Intended use of the credit facility will be to fund capital expenditures, finance acquisitions, and organic growth projects. The new Eureka Midstream credit facility, among other things, provides the Company with improved financial flexibility with an increase in aggregate commitments from $225 million to $400 million.

"Third quarter 2017 was a busy and productive period at Eureka Midstream. Our new credit facility provides us with improved financial flexibility and liquidity to explore and pursue new expansion opportunities for both our valued customers and shareholders in the nation's largest natural gas basin," says Chris Akers, President of Eureka Midstream.

"At the same time," Akers continued, "we believe that our continued operational and commercial execution to serve the needs of existing as well as new customers, combined with our new ownership structure, will create additional opportunities for growth and development at Eureka. Already, we have seen a significant increase in drilling activity throughout the basin as companies continue to recognize that the Marcellus and Utica are the country's lowest cost and most prolific natural gas and natural gas liquids resource. This increase in drilling activity has further facilitated an increase in midstream activity. We believe these developments, as well as the exceptional experience and success that both Morgan Stanley and SK bring to the table, will drive increased throughput volumes within our network and create future growth opportunities at Eureka Midstream."

Increased Demand

Eureka Midstream's twelve interconnects, designed to provide higher netbacks and optionality for our clients, combined with the strategic location of our 200+ mile pipeline network, has driven increased demand for our services. Initial demand estimates indicate roughly 30  40 percent increase in throughput volumes between first quarter 2017 and year-end 2017, to more than 1 Bcf/d.

About Eureka Midstream

Eureka Midstream Holdings, LLC is a Houston, Texas based midstream company focused in the Appalachian Basin. The Company is currently active in two of the most prolific unconventional shale resource plays in North America, the Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale located in Northwest West Virginia and Southeast Ohio.

SOURCE Eureka Midstream Holdings, LLC

Related Links

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DUBLIN, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Smart Metering in Europe - 13th Edition" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.

Annual shipments of smart electricity meters in Europe will grow by 71 percent in 2017 to reach 23.1 million units, according to a new research report. Growth is driven by accelerating deployments in France, Italy and the UK that coincide with the final phase of the nationwide rollout in Spain. The great majority of the devices deployed in 2017 use powerline communication (PLC). Already in 2018, shipments of PLC smart meters are however expected to start to decline, even as the market remains strong. Instead radio-based technologies like 4G cellular (LTE-M/NB-IoT) and RF mesh will increase their market shares.

Key Topics Covered:

Executive summary

1 Electricity, gas and district heating markets in Europe

1.1 Energy industry players

1.2 Electricity market

1.3 Gas market

1.4 District heating market

2 Smart metering solutions

2.1 Introduction to smart grids

2.2 Smart metering

2.2.1 Smart metering applications

2.2.2 Smart metering infrastructure

2.2.3 Benefits of smart metering

2.3 Project strategies

2.3.1 System design and sourcing

2.3.2 Rollout and integration

2.3.3 Implementation and operation

2.3.4 Communicating with customers

2.4 Regulatory issues

2.4.1 Models for the introduction of smart meters

2.4.2 Standards and guidelines

2.4.3 Individual rights issues

3 IoT networks and communication technologies

3.1 IoT network technologies

3.1.1 Network architectures

3.1.2 Unlicensed and licensed frequency bands

3.2 PLC technology and standards

3.2.International standards organisations

3.2.2 G3-PLC

3.2.3 PRIME

3.2.4 Meters & More

3.2.5 OSGP

3.2.6 Netricity

3.3 3GPP cellular and LPWA technologies

3.3.1 2G/3G/4G cellular technologies and IoT

3.3.2 The role of cellular networks in smart meter communications

3.3.3 NB-IoT and LTE-M network deployments in Europe

3.3.4 LoRa

3.3.5 Sigfox

3.4 RF technology and standards

3.4.1 IEEE 802.15.4

3.4.2 Wi-SUN

3.4.3 ZigBee

3.4.4 Proprietary IPv6 connectivity stacks based on 802.15.4

3.4.5 Wireless M-Bus

4 Smart metering industry players

4.1 Meter vendors

4.1.1 Landis+Gyr

4.1.2 Itron

4.1.3 Honyewell Elster

4.1.4 Aclara Technologies

4.1.5 ADD Grup

4.1.6 AEM

4.1.7 Aidon

4.1.8 Apator

4.1.9 Circutor

4.1.10 Diehl Metering

4.1.11 EDMI Meters

4.1.12 Elgama Elektronika

4.1.13 EMH Metering

4.1.14 Flonidan

4.1.15 Hager

4.1.16 Hexing Electrical

4.1.17 Iskraemeco

4.1.18 Janz

4.1.19 Kaifa Technology

4.1.20 Kamstrup

4.1.21 Linyang Energy

4.1.22 MeteRSit

4.1.23 Networked Energy Services

4.1.24 Pietro Fiorentini

4.1.25 RIZ

4.1.26 Sagemcom

4.1.27 Sanxing Electric

4.1.28 Wasion

4.1.29 ZIV

4.1.30 ZPA Smart Energy

4.2 Communication solution providers

4.2.1 AP Systems

4.2.2 Corinex

4.2.3 CyanConnode

4.2.4 Devolo

4.2.5 NURI Telecom

4.2.6 Ormazabal

4.2.7 Power Plus Communications

4.2.8 Sensus

4.2.9 Silver Spring Networks

4.2.10 Trilliant

4.2.11 Xemex

4.3 Software solution providers

4.3.1 Cuculus

4.3. Enoro

4.3.3 Ferranti Computer Systems

4.3.4 Grlitz

4.3.5 Kisters

4.3.6 Oracle

4.3.7 Powel

4.3.8 SAP

4.3.9 Telecontrol STM

4.4 System integrators and communication service providers

4.4.1 Arqiva

4.4.2 Atos Worldgrid

4.4.3 Capgemini

4.4.4 CGI

4.4.5 Ericsson

4.4.6 IBM

4.4.7 Kapsch

4.4.8 LG CNS

4.4.9 Schneider Electric

4.4.10 Siemens

4.4.11 Telefnica

4.4.12 Telekom Austria

4.4.13 UtilityConnect

4.4.14 Vodafone

5 Market profiles

5.1 Regional summary

5.1.1 EU smart metering policies

5.1.2 Top smart metering projects in EU28+2 countries

5.2 Austria

5.2.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.2.2 Metering regulatory environment

5.2.3 Smart metering market developments

5.3 Belgium

5.3.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.3.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart metering market developments

5.4 Bulgaria

5.4.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.4.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart metering market developments

5.5 Croatia

5.6 Cyprus

5.6.1 Electricity distribution industry structure

5.6.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart metering pilots

5.7 Czechia

5.7.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.7.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart metering pilots

5.8 Denmark

5.8.1 Electricity distribution industry structure

5.8.2 Metering regulatory environment

5.8.3 Smart metering market developments

5.9 Estonia

5.9.1 Electricity distribution industry structure

5.9.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart metering market developments

5.10 Finland

5.10.1 Electricity distribution industry structure

5.10.2 Metering regulatory environment

5.10.3 Smart metering market developments

5.11 France

5.11.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.11.2 Nationwide program for smart electricity metering

5.11.3 Nationwide program for smart gas metering

5.12 Germany

5.12.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.12.2 Metering regulatory environment

5.12.3 Technical standardisation of smart meters

5.12.4 Smart metering market developments

5.13 Greece

5.13.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.13.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart metering pilot program

5.14 Hungary

5.14.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.14.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart metering market developments

5.15 Ireland

5.15.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.15.2 Nationwide program for deployment of smart meters

5.16 Italy

5.16.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.16.2 First wave of smart metering 2001-2013

5.16.3 Second wave of smart metering 2014-2023

5.17 Latvia

5.17.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.17.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart metering market developments

5.18 Lithuania

5.19 Luxembourg

5.19.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.19.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart metering rollout plans

5.20 Malta

5.20.1 Utility industry structure

5.20.2 National smart grid project

5.21 Netherlands

5.21.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.21.2 Metering regulatory environment

5.21.3 Smart metering market developments

5.22 Norway

5.22.1 Electricity distribution industry structure

5.22.2 Metering regulatory environment

5.22.3 Smart metering market developments and tender results

5.23 Poland

5.23.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.23.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart metering projects

5.24 Portugal

5.24.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.24.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart metering market developments

5.25 Romania

5.25.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.25.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart meter market developments

5.26 Slovakia

5.26.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.26.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart meter market developments

5.27 Slovenia

5.28 Spain

5.28.1 Electricity and gas distribution industry structure

5.28.2 Metering regulatory environment

5.28.3 Smart metering market developments

5.29 Sweden

5.29.1 Electricity distribution industry structure

5.29.2 First wave of smart metering 2003-2009

5.29.3 Second wave of smart metering 2015-2024

5.30 Switzerland

5.30.1 Electricity distribution industry structure

5.30.2 Metering regulatory environment and smart meter market developments

5.31 United Kingdom

5.31.1 Electricity and gas industry structure

5.31.2 Metering regulatory environment

5.31.3 Great Britain's planned nationwide smart metering system

5.31.4 Pre-DCC smart meter deployments

5.31.5 Smart metering in Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and Gibraltar

6 Case studies: Smart metering projects in Europe

6.1 Enel

6.1.1 Enel Open Meter and the second generation rollout in Italy

6.1. Endesa's smart metering project in Spain

6.1.3 Smart meter rollout plan for Romania

6.2 Enedis

6.2.1 The Linky Programme

6.2.2 System development and large-scale pilot

6.2.3 Full-scale rollout plan

6.3 E.ON

6.3.1 Sweden

6.3.2 Germany

6.3.3 United Kingdom

6.3.4 Central Eastern Europe

6.4 Iberdrola

6.4.1 The PRIME project

6.4.2 Smart meter rollout in Spain

6.5 Current smart meter projects in Scandinavia

6.5.1 RADIUS (DONG Energy)

6.5.2 Hafslund

6.5.3 Ellevio

6.6 Smart gas meter rollouts in France and Italy

6.6.1 GrDF

6.6.2 2i Rete Gas

6.6.3 Unareti (A2A)

6.7 Smart meter communication platforms in Germany and the UK

6.7.1 Germany

6.7.2 United Kingdom

6.8 Smart metering in Russia & CIS and the Balkans

7 Market forecasts and trends

7.1 Market trends

7.1.1 Mass-rollouts ramp up to volume in Western Europe

7.1.2 Mixed outlooks in Germany and Central Eastern Europe

7.1.3 Second wave rollouts begin in Italy and Sweden

7.1.4 PLC smart meter shipments will peak in 2017

7.2 Smart electricity metering market forecast

7.2.1 Capital expenditure forecast

7.2.2 Communication technology market shares

7.3 Smart gas metering market forecast

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/ndtd3t/smart_metering_in



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SEATTLE  Memo to the many places vying for Amazons second headquarters: It aint all food trucks and free bananas.

For years, much of downtown Seattle has been a maze of broken streets and caution-taped sidewalks. Dozens of enormous cranes tower overhead as double-length dump trucks hauling excavated dirt rumble past pedestrians and bicyclists. The crashing and clanging of construction is the citys soundtrack on a perpetual loop.

Housing prices have soared faster than anywhere else in America, driving some low- and even middle-income residents beyond city limits. Traffic is frequently unmentionable. And while Amazon is far from solely to blame  and while lawmakers, economists and many residents say the benefits clearly outweigh any drawbacks  life in its hometown is indeed one more endeavor the tech giant has disrupted.

Economic growth brings opportunities, and it brings headaches, says Margaret OMara, a University of Washington professor who specializes in urban history. That was true in 1840s Manchester, it was true in 1890s Pittsburgh, and its true with Seattle in the 20-teens. ... Its on both cities and the tech companies to figure out the way to handle these things.

Amazon opened its headquarters in a previously sleepy warehouse district known as South Lake Union in 2010, foregoing what it says would have been the cheaper option of building in the suburbs, where its workers might have been less connected to the city.

Since then, it has expanded from a workforce of about 5,000 to more than 40,000 in 33 buildings here. It surpassed the university as the citys biggest employer, and its still growing apace. Even as it announced plans for a second headquarters location, the company said it would lease the entirety of Seattles second-largest skyscraper, the still-under-construction Rainier Square tower, which will have room for 3,500 workers.

The city has been transformed, with new towers seeming to sprout weekly and Amazons striking new biospheres due to open next year. Amazon estimates its direct spending boosted Seattles economy by $38 billion from 2010 to 2016. Hotels are thriving thanks to visits by friends and family of Amazon workers, as well as by Amazon employees from elsewhere. The Downtown Seattle Association estimates $5 billion in construction activity was underway during the summer, with more than 30,000 residential units in the works.

Cities across the U.S. and Canada are clamoring at the prospect of landing Amazons second headquarters  and with it, investments topping $5 billion. They have until Thursday to submit their proposals.

In Seattle, theres no question the companys growth has improved life in many ways. Unemployment is extremely low. A large fraction of its workers walk to the office or rely on public transit, and its buildings have green roofs, recycled heat, reclaimed lumber and other sustainability features. It opened plazas where it hosts farmers markets, concerts and, yes, banana stands  Amazon has given away 2.7 million bananas and counting.

Terrific restaurants, cafes and food trucks have proliferated, with lines of Amazon workers  recognizable by their badges or by their dogs, welcome at work  outside.

That said, not everyone can afford to enjoy such amenities. Robby Stern, president of Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action, which advocates for seniors, said rising housing costs have forced two of his organizations board members from the city. The Seattle Times reported in September that the median house price in the city was $730,000  double what it was five years ago.

Bringing a lot of new, good-paying jobs to town, you have to view that as being a positive development, Stern said. But the changes that have happened have created Seattle as a less livable place for categories of people, and thats not what I want for Seattle.

After taking some criticism for a perceived lack of involvement in the community, Amazon has engaged more publicly, including supporting some beloved Seattle nonprofits: It announced this year that it will give the shelter organization Marys Place permanent room in its new building to house 200 homeless women, children and families. It has also given FareStart, which trains people struggling with homelessness or drug addiction to work in the restaurant industry, space and equipment to open five new eateries on its campus.

Last year, Amazon gave $10 million toward a new computer sciences building at the University of Washington, where it also endowed two professorships. And this year, the family of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced a $35 million gift to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center  the largest donation in the centers 41-year history.

The company also donated to a successful political campaign last fall to expand light rail service, and has paid for an additional streetcar to serve South Lake Union.

Seattle had bad traffic and limited housing even before Amazon arrived  some of which lingered from decades of anti-growth policies and a failure to build more mass transit sooner.

With Amazons bidding process for HQ2, at least the places applying know what to expect.

Greg Nickels, the citys mayor from 2002 to 2010, worked to transform South Lake Union into a tech and biotech hub. He says Seattle has had to do some catching up on transit and housing, given the companys unpredictably explosive expansion, and the citys $15-an-hour minimum wage experiment is a good one to try to alleviate income inequality.

I know many people find that growth uncomfortable, but its much better than being a Detroit or a Cleveland, where people are watching their cities waste away, Nickels said.
"For the first time in our history, we will be opening sales of this limited release to the public. We will be donating 25 percent of sales of our 2014 All Great Things 'Hope' Red Blend vintage now through the end of the month," said Susan Hoff, proprietress of Fantesca, and past senior vice president and chief communications officer of Best Buy. "Napa Valley is a close-knit community. We have an opportunity to assist our neighbors in healing, and we want to do our part. We believe our Hope vintage captures the spirit of what our community is working to accomplish: rallying from recent events and welcoming back visitors to Napa Valley."

Fantesca's 2014 All Great Things 'Hope' Red Blend is produced by world-class winemaker Heidi Barrett. This vintage is the sixth release in the All Great Things Red Blend series, and is inspired by a quote from Winston Churchill: "All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy and hope." The 2014 vintage is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc.

To purchase a bottle of the 2014 All Great Things 'Hope' Red Blend, you can call the winery directly at 707.968.9229 or email [email protected]. You can also find more information at Fantesca.com.

About Fantesca Estate & Winery: Fantesca Estate & Winery is a family owned, limited production, boutique winery located in the Spring Mountain appellation of Napa Valley. Proprietors Susan and Duane Hoff founded Fantesca in 2004. Fantesca is world-renowned winemaker, Heidi P. Barrett's, first new project following her success at Screaming Eagle. Barrett produces Fantesca's Russian River Chardonnay, All Great Things  a Napa Valley red wine blend, and her only Spring Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon. With only 3,500 cases of wine produced annually, Fantesca's wines are available exclusively to Allocation Members, guests of the winery, and at select restaurants.

Contact:

Mandi Ackerman

Brand Manager

[email protected]

707-968-9229

SOURCE Fantesca Estate & Winery

Related Links

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First Resource Bank Announces Most Profitable Quarter to Date; Quarterly Net Income Increased 39% Over the Prior Year Third Quarter
KELOWNA, British Columbia, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Flair Airlines Ltd., (Kelowna, BC) Canada's leader in low fare travel today announced that it has selected Salesforce Service Cloud to deliver enhanced customer service experiences. Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, will be central to Flair's service workforce, setting a new standard for customer experience, responsiveness and quality.

Flair Airlines transports more than a half a million passengers annually, and expects its aggressive strategic plan to double that number through its current and future route network. Service Cloud will provide Flair's airport operations personnel and customer service representatives with connected, 360-degree views of every customer, enabling them to provide faster, smarter and more personalized service.

"This is an exciting addition for our airline," said Chris Lapointe, Vice President Commercial Operations, Flair Airlines. "With Salesforce, we'll improve our quality of service and increase customer satisfaction. Salesforce is the cornerstone for building a service model that will allow us to stay ahead of the competition."

Data from Flair's reservation system, social media networks and other contact points will be routed through Service Cloud allowing service representatives to respond to potential issues quicker.

"As customer expectations continue to evolve, the service experience is quickly becoming the biggest differentiator today," said Dave Borrelli, Vice President, Commercial Business, Salesforce Canada. "To meet these expectations, companies need to leverage AI-powered technology tools, like Service Cloud, to help deliver more personalized and intelligent customer service across every channel."

"We believe that our service combined with our affordable pricing is the biggest differentiator from competition," said Lapointe. "Service Cloud will support our growth and more importantly contribute to our goal of making air travel enjoyable for Canadians."

Salesforce and others are among the trademarks of salesforce.com, inc.

About Flair Airlines

Flair Airlines Ltd is a Canadian Airline based in Kelowna, BC. Flair operates a fleet of Boeing 737 aircrafts and recently received delivery of additional aircrafts. Airline announced new service between Toronto Pearson Intl Airport, Vancouver Intl Airport and Kelowna and Edmonton on December 15th 2017. Flair Airlines recently acquired assets of NewLeaf travel company, with intent to expand its scheduled service within Canada.

For more information, see www.flairairlines.com

SOURCE Flair Airlines

Related Links

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Highlighting a major advancement in chip design, Flex Logix Technologies, Inc., today announced it is demonstrating the initial version of its flexible microcontroller design concept with embedded FPGA at this week's Arm TechCon in its booth #201. This new design integrates embedded FPGA on MCU processor and peripheral buses, enabling unprecedented improvements in performance, cost and time to market for next generation chips.

"This announcement is a major milestone in the industry as it shows designers a complete implementation of embedded FPGA and provides a 'breadboard' for MCU and SoC architects to experiment with the architecture to develop their own products," said Geoff Tate, CEO of Flex Logix. "A flexible microcontroller or SoC has a block of embedded FPGA, with appropriate RAM resources, on the processor bus and can be configured, and reconfigured, by the customer to accelerate the workload(s) that matter in their applications. The embedded FPGA also can implement programmable I/O either directly or on the peripheral bus, enabling customers to implement the flavor of serial I/O they require and/or to do processing of I/O to offload the host processor."

Until now, microcontrollers and SoCs have done all processing in the MPU or sometimes have a hardwired accelerator on the processor bus for the highest-workload task, such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES.) If various customers have distinct workloads and thereby need different accelerators, different hardwired accelerator versions are required to be designed and manufactured. This results in substantial cost in masks, design time and qualification time, as well as adding significant lead time to perform all the tasks. A flexible microcontroller with embedded FPGA saves mask costs, speeds time to market and enables the customer to deploy their own accelerators.

Flex Logix is demonstrating at Arm TechCon a flexible microcontroller concept design based on the Arm Cortex-M0, and using peripherals from Silvaco combined with a reconfigurable accelerator and reconfigurable I/O. Flex Logix will show several different applications. The reference design is implemented on Flex Logix's TSMC16FFC validation chip, which implements an EFLX200K array and substantial RAM.

"Silvaco is proud to provide IP cores for the EFLX200K array for the flexible microcontroller demonstration platform," said Jim Bruister, Director, Digital Systems of Silvaco. "Our proven AMBA subsystems and peripherals are an excellent match for the EFLX array family and we look forward to working with Flex Logix's customers to provide reconfigurable solutions."

Evaluation boards with the EFLX200K validation chip will be available later this quarter for customers for evaluating both the flexible microcontroller and the EFLX200K validation chip to try out their own RTL designs in hardware for other applications such as networking, artificial intelligence, signal processing, and more.

About Flex Logix

Flex Logix, founded in March 2014, provides solutions for reconfigurable RTL in chip and system designs using embedded FPGA IP cores and software. The company's technology platform delivers significant customer benefits by dramatically reducing design and manufacturing risks, accelerating technology roadmaps, and bringing greater flexibility to customers' hardware. Flex Logix has secured approximately $13 million of venture backed capital, is headquartered in Mountain View, California and has sales rep offices in China, Europe, Israel, Japan, Taiwan and Texas. More information can be obtained at http://www.flex-logix.com or follow on Twitter at @efpga.

PRESS CONTACT:

Kelly Karr

Tanis Communications, Inc.

[email protected]

+408-718-9350

Copyright 2017. All rights reserved. Flex Logix is a trademark and EFLX is a registered trademark of Flex Logix, Inc.

SOURCE Flex Logix Technologies, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.flex-logix.com


GREENSBORO, N.C., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- F.N.B. Corporation (NYSE: FNB) today announced the appointment of David R. Edwards, Jr., as Regional President for the Piedmont Triad Region.

David R. Edwards, Jr., Regional President for FNB's Piedmont Triad Region

In his new role, Edwards is directly responsible for the management and supervision of the Corporate Banking teams in FNB's Piedmont Triad Region. As Regional President, he will expand his current territory which includes Boone, Elkin, Statesville, Salisbury and Wilkesboro to include the Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point markets in North Carolina. Edwards also oversees the regional integration of FNB's cross-functional business model, which encourages collaboration between business units for a seamless client experience.

Edwards has more than 22 years of banking experience serving business clients in the greater Piedmont Triad area, most recently as Regional Commercial Manager for FNB and including 13 years with Yadkin Bank and its predecessors as a Regional President. FNB completed its merger with Yadkin in March 2017.

"We are confident that Edwards' extensive experience and knowledge of the local markets put him in an excellent position to add value for FNB's clients and communities," said Steven W. Jones, FNB's Chief Banking Officer for North and South Carolina.

A native of the Piedmont Triad area, Edwards is actively engaged in the local community, previously serving as the Treasurer of the Yadkin Valley Chamber of Commerce, Secretary and Treasurer of the High Country Business Network and is a volunteer teacher with Junior Achievement of Glen, North Carolina. He is also a member of the board of the Wilkes YMCA, for which he was honored as the 2015 Volunteer of the Year. Edwards earned his bachelor's degree and Masters of Business Administration from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and is a graduate of the North Carolina School of Banking at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

About F.N.B. Corporation

F.N.B. Corporation (NYSE: FNB), headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is a diversified financial services company operating in eight states. FNB holds a significant retail deposit market share in attractive markets including: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Baltimore, Maryland; Cleveland, Ohio; and Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham and the Piedmont Triad (Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point) in North Carolina. The Company has total assets of $31 billion, and more than 400 banking offices throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. The Company also operates Regency Finance Company, which has more than 75 consumer finance offices in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

FNB provides a full range of commercial banking, consumer banking and wealth management solutions through its subsidiary network which is led by its largest affiliate, First National Bank of Pennsylvania, founded in 1864. Commercial banking solutions include corporate banking, small business banking, investment real estate financing, international banking, business credit, capital markets and lease financing. The consumer banking segment provides a full line of consumer banking products and services, including deposit products, mortgage lending, consumer lending and a complete suite of mobile and online banking services. FNB's wealth management services include asset management, private banking and insurance.

The common stock of F.N.B. Corporation trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "FNB" and is included in Standard & Poor's MidCap 400 Index with the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) Regional Banks Sub-Industry Index. Customers, shareholders and investors can learn more about this regional financial institution by visiting the F.N.B. Corporation website at www.fnbcorporation.com.

SOURCE F.N.B. Corporation

Related Links

http://www.fnbcorporation.com


SAN DIEGO, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Home Bay Technologies Inc. announced today Chris Crocker has joined the company as Vice President of Strategic Partnerships.

As former Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at Zillow and Chief Operating Officer at Pacific Sotheby's, Crocker brings more than 20 years' experience in technology and real estate. In addition to building and strengthening Home Bay's relationships with existing partners, Crocker will assume executive oversight for creating new partnerships and bringing more value to consumers.

"We're thrilled for Chris to join the Home Bay team. We've admired Chris for his leadership as well as his perspective and approach in advocating and leveraging technology to help partners," said Home Bay co-founder Tom Owen. "We place tremendous value on fostering great partnerships and building innovative products that support our partners. Chris is the right choice to lead this critical role."

"It's no secret that consumers are frustrated with high commissions and the archaic process to transact a property. You shouldn't have to give up six percent of your equity to sell your home. Home Bay delivers a better transaction experience at a small fraction of the cost of a traditional broker," said Crocker. "To date, Home Bay has already saved consumers over $7.5M in commissions. We will extend the innovation in the Home Bay technology platform to integrate mortgage, title, escrow and other related services into a better and more holistic experience for our customers."

Crocker served as Vice President of Partnerships at Zillow from 2012 to 2015. He served as Chief Operating Officer of Pacific Sotheby's from 2015 through September 2017.

About Home Bay Technologies Inc. Home Bay Technologies Inc., San Diego based company, provides consumers a smarter way to buy and sell homes with data-driven intelligence, complete transparency and an on-demand customer experience. Home Bay's sophisticated technology platform expedites the transaction with efficient, seamless systems that save consumers and real estate agents time and money. For more information, visit HomeBay.com.

SOURCE Home Bay Technologies Inc.

Related Links

https://www.homebay.com


CHICAGO, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Strategy execution firm Gagen MacDonald has hired Craig Smith as a senior consultant to serve clients in the areas of employee engagement, organizational transformation, culture change and leadership. With more than 30 years of experience at large companies, Smith brings deep corporate expertise to enhance the firm's capabilities.

"Craig brings an important perspective as he has 'walked in our clients' shoes for three decades. He has great empathy and understanding for their experience and the complexity they face, as well as how hard it is to drive change from the inside-out in Corporate America today," said Gagen MacDonald President Sherry Scott.

He brings to Gagen global, multi-industry experience in internal communication, change communication, employee engagement, corporate vision definition and employee value proposition development. Before joining Gagen MacDonald, Smith served for three years as head of internal communications for Travelers Insurance. At Traveler's, he developed the company's first enterprise internal communications strategy and oversaw the creation of its new intranet.

In prior roles, he led a wide range of communication work including re-positioning the internal communication function at The Hartford into a strategic team of business partners and trusted advisers, leading communication for its organizational transformation, and developing the company's vision. He developed Accenture's first employee value proposition and an internal communication strategy for its India operations, as well as pioneering the use of webcasts to connect the widely-dispersed global HR organization. He was responsible for employee communications at UK electricity generator National Power during a period of power station closures and large-scale layoffs and led teams that created award-winning publications at BP and Accenture.

Smith, who recently relocated to Chicago, holds a bachelor's degree in politics and parliamentary studies from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.

Founded in 1998, Gagen MacDonald is a woman-owned consulting firm focused on employee engagement, culture change, and leadership for many of the world's largest brands. Throughout its 19-year history, the company has undergone several quantum leaps to remain on the cutting edge of accelerating organizational change.

"I've had the privilege of working with Gagen MacDonald for many years as a client, and I'm thrilled to join the firm as it continues to grow," said Smith. "My passion is developing strategic internal communications initiatives that deliver business results, and I'm looking forward to partnering with our clients to help them increase the effectiveness of their communication programs."

About Gagen MacDonald

Gagen MacDonald is a strategy execution firm specializing in employee engagement, culture change, and leadership. Working collaboratively from the corporate office to the front line, Gagen uses an organization's brand, culture, vision, and history to motivate and align employees to transform companies, accomplish business objectives and drive reputation from the inside out. As a pioneer in organizational change, Gagen has helped some of the world's biggest brands, including Coca-Cola, DuPont, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Phillips 66, and Walgreens Boots Alliance. To learn more, please visit www.gagenmacdonald.com.

For more information:

SOURCE Gagen MacDonald

Related Links

http://www.gagenmacdonald.com


HOLLYWOOD, Calif., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The history of the American Southwest is riddled with tales conflict, conquest and consequences. Often lost in this history are untold stories of intrigue, betrayal, greed, genocide and stolen legacies.

For American artist and entrepreneur Roland Barrera, an unfortunate business entanglement set him on an unexpected path of discovery that would unearth a truth almost too incredible to be true. After single-handedly creating Orange County's top rated Jazz Club and Lounge, Roland found himself betrayed by long time friends and business partners. Forced to step away from his business, Barrera spent time researching his ancestry. In doing so he uncovered his family's storied history and soon realized it had far reaching implications.

His family's fight for justice stretches from the original Spanish land grants ordered by King Charles III of Spain and spans generations of war, genocide, stolen land and countless fortunes. Barrera uncovered struggles against the US Government, hired guns, rebels, banditos and revolutionaries.

These experiences mirrored those of countless Spanish/Tejano settlers in the region. It is a history he also shares with Hollywood mogul and distant relative Eva Longoria. On a recent episode of Faces of America with Henry Louis Gates Jr, Longoria discovered the complex and dangerous history of her family and their battle to hold onto their land. He even proclaimed that Ponciano Longoria belonged in the history books alongside Sam Houston and Davey Crockett.

"I read recently that Eva discovered her family's history with the Texas Rangers," adds Barrera. "The land dispute she speaks of is the same one I discovered in my family history. It is an incredible story and one that needs to be told."

Enlisting the help of respected Landman Gabriel Grajales, Barrera made another startling discovery. His family owned large and intertwined lands surpassing ten thousand acres. According to Grajales, Mr. Barrera and his family may be entitled to thousands of surface and mineral acres.

Barrera's discovery has led him to write The COUNT, a new series inspired by his distant great grandfather Juan Longoria and his fight to keep his lands while navigating the changing political tides of no less than six countries' flags. The series segues between Barrera's current business dealings and Longoria's fight for survival. It also tells a story of North American history previously untouched upon.

"What began as an attempt to learn about my family history, took an amazing turn," says Barrera. "I uncovered an incredible true story of survival, bloodshed and injustices endured by so many families. It is a story that needs to be told."

Roland Barrera will be attending America Film Market in Santa Monica November 1-8. He will be available to discuss The COUNT as well as new information he has uncovered regarding this unique chapter in North American history.

To contact Roland Barrera or to schedule an interview contact [email protected]

For More Information Please Visit  www.thecountsurvival.com

SOURCE The COUNT

Related Links

http://www.thecountsurvival.com


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gap, the iconic American clothing brand, today announces the holiday 'Meet Me in the Gap' campaign starring actress and Grammy nominated recording artist Janelle Monae alongside a cast of individuals from different places, backgrounds and genres to collaborate and celebrate the festive season.

The hero campaign video captures Monae harmonizing with six talented choirs as they "meet in the gap," performing an optimistic and cheerful song to invite all families to get together, spend real time with one another and find the little things that unite us. Directed by legendary Director Paul Hunter, the video, set in a blank space, embraces the magic of the holidays with the entire cast outfitted in classic Gap crazy stripes styled with cozy seasonal essentials. Through an acapella rendition of Freddie Scott's original version of "(You) Got What I Need," Janelle and the accompanying choirs embody the melody and its message of togetherness.

"The Gap has been a part of my life since I was a little girl so it was very exciting to be involved in this campaign," said Monae. "I love the unity of the 'Meet Me in the Gap' concept. It really reflects the idea that although we may be from different parts of the world, when we come together, we can create something magical."

In addition to the hero video, there are a series of short videos and a print campaign that feature a mix of families, models and influencers who come together and inspire by creating optimistic energy that ties back to the theme of togetherness and appreciating the different families we develop over time and celebrate with during the holidays.

"As a brand, holiday has always been a memorable and emotional moment for Gap, marked by crazy stripes and togetherness," said Gap chief marketing officer Craig Brommers. "This holiday season, we offer an invitation to families from all over the world to get together, spend real time with one another, and ultimately, meet in the Gap."

Launching on November 6, the campaign spans television, mobile, social, in store and digital. The television spots will air on major networks and be incorporated into high impact moments including digital takeovers on ABC, YouTube, Vevo, Hulu and Spotify and live commercial integration with "Late Late show with James Corden" during the week of Thanksgiving. Lastly, we are continuing our partnership with Spotify to sponsor one of Spotify's most popular holiday playlists, 'Pop Christmas.'

For more information on 'Meet Me in the Gap,' visit gap.com.

About Gap

Gap is one of the world's most iconic apparel and accessories brands and the authority on American casual style. Founded in San Francisco in 1969, Gap's collections are designed to build the foundation of modern wardrobes  all things denim, classic white shirts, khakis and must-have trends. Beginning with the first international store in London in 1987, Gap continues to connect with customers online and across the brand's about 1,600 company-operated and franchise retail locations around the world. Gap includes Women's and Men's apparel and accessories, GapKids, babyGap, GapMaternity, GapBody and GapFit collections. The brand also serves value-conscious customers with exclusively-designed collections for Gap Outlet and Gap Factory Stores. Gap is the namesake brand for leading global specialty retailer, Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS) which includes Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta, Intermix and Weddington Way. For more information, please visit www.gapinc.com.

Contact: Will Davis, [email protected], 212-463-7245

SOURCE Gap

Related Links

http://www.gapinc.com


"Kevin will be a tremendous asset to our leadership team, bringing a wealth of customer analytics and strategic marketing experience to help further the value we bring to our customers," said Pedro Cherry, executive vice president of customer service and operations for Georgia Power. "As we continue to evolve our business to meet the changing needs of our customers, Kevin's expertise in customer service will be key to our success."

Kastner began his Southern Company career in 2003 and has held roles across multiple customer-focused organizations including Customer Analytics, Strategic Marketing, E-Business, Customer Service and Technology. During his tenure with the company, Kastner's teams have been responsible for the company's Online Customer Care Website, Social Media Center and for launching chat as a new customer service channel.

In his most recent position as Director of Application Development, Kastner was responsible for the company's technology strategy, support and operations for Customer Service and Marketing for Southern Company's electric utility companies serving more than 4.6 million customers.

Prior to joining Southern Company and Georgia Power, Kastner worked in R&D, Product Development, and Process Engineering for Kimberly-Clark, and in Mechanical Engineering and Product Development for CIBA-Vision. He holds an MBA of marketing strategy and decision sciences from Emory's Goizueta School of Business and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and minor in industrial psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

About Georgia Power

Georgia Power is the largest electric subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), America's premier energy company. Value, Reliability, Customer Service and Stewardship are the cornerstones of the company's promise to 2.5 million customers in all but four of Georgia's 159 counties. Committed to delivering clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy at rates below the national average, Georgia Power maintains a diverse, innovative generation mix that includes nuclear, coal and natural gas, as well as renewables such as solar, hydroelectric and wind. Georgia Power focuses on delivering world-class service to its customers every day and the company is consistently recognized by J.D. Power and Associates as an industry leader in customer satisfaction. For more information, visit www.GeorgiaPower.com and connect with the company on Facebook (Facebook.com/GeorgiaPower), Twitter (Twitter.com/GeorgiaPower) and Instagram (Instagram.com/ga_power).

SOURCE Georgia Power

Related Links

http://www.georgiapower.com


WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW) and Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) today announced that they will cohost an event on Capitol Hill during National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Cybersecurity Day on the Hill, sponsored by a bi-partisan group of members of Congress, is designed to inspire the next generation of female cybersecurity professionals and encourage dialogue between the public and private sectors about developing a diverse talent pool to solve our toughest cybersecurity challenges.

Palo Alto Networks and GSUSA announced their collaboration in June 2017 to deliver the first-ever national Girl Scout Cybersecurity badges for girls in grades K12. Led by a team of expert cybersecurity advisers, the two organizations expect to roll out the first in a series of 18 Cybersecurity badges to Girl Scouts throughout the country in September 2018.

At the event, Palo Alto Networks CEO and Chairman Mark D. McLaughlin and GSUSA CEO Sylvia Acevedo will have a discussion about diversity and cybersecurity moderated by Lauren Prox, a Gold Award Girl Scout alumna from Girl Scouts of the Colonial Coast in Virginia.

Also during the event, girls from Girl Scouts Nation's Capital in Washington, DC, will participate in an interactive activity, led by Palo Alto Networks experts, that teaches foundational cybersecurity skills.

The following Members of Congress are honorary co-hosts of the Cybsersecurity Day on the Hill:

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)

(R-WV) Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

(R-ME) Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)

(D-IL) Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)

(D-NH) Rep. Susan Brooks (R-IN)

(R-IN) Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ)

(D-NJ) Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)

(R-WA) Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)

QUOTES

"One of the motivating factors in my becoming an engineer and a rocket scientist was my Girl Scout experience. I am thrilled at the prospect of encouraging girls to fully embrace the possibilities of STEM and to focus on an issue of major national importance, Cybersecurity," said Sylvia Acevedo, CEO of GSUSA. "In collaboration with Palo Alto Networks, Girl Scouts is able to bring STEM to a new generation of girls across America in a way that is relevant for today's world. We are excited to demonstrate to our leaders in Congress how private enterprise and Girl Scouts can work together to address the skills gap in cybersecurity."

"Our collaboration with Girl Scouts of the USA provides girls in every zip code across the United States with access to cybersecurity education and mentors who can guide them towards career opportunities that they may have never otherwise known existed," said Mark McLaughlin, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks. "Meaningful investments made today by corporations and non-profits alike will ensure that the cyber workforce of our future is well equipped to solve tomorrow's toughest security challenges and help maintain trust in our digital age."

LEARN MORE

About Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks is the next-generation security company, leading a new era in cybersecurity by safely enabling applications and preventing cyber breaches for thousands of organizations worldwide. Built with an innovative approach and highly differentiated cyberthreat prevention capabilities, our game-changing security platform delivers security far superior to legacy or point products, safely enables daily business operations, and protects an organization's most valuable assets. Find out more at www.paloaltonetworks.com.

About Girl Scouts of the USA

We're 2.6 million strong1.8 million girls and 800,000 adults who believe in the power of every G.I.R.L. (Go-getter, Innovator, Risk-taker, Leader) to change the world. Our extraordinary journey began more than 100 years ago with the original G.I.R.L., Juliette Gordon "Daisy" Low. On March 12, 1912, in Savannah, Georgia, she organized the very first Girl Scout troop, and every year since, we've honored her vision and legacy, building girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place. We're the preeminent leadership development organization for girls. And with programs from coast to coast and across the globe, Girl Scouts offers every girl a chance to practice a lifetime of leadership, adventure, and success. To volunteer, reconnect, donate, or join, visit www.girlscouts.org.

Palo Alto Networks and the Palo Alto Networks logo are trademarks of Palo Alto Networks, Inc. in the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other trademarks, trade names, or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

SOURCE Palo Alto Networks, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.paloaltonetworks.com


LONDON, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- About Hotels and Accomodation Market



Accroding to procurement professionals, the decrease in international air ticket prices is contributing to an increase in the number of business travelers leading to the growth of this market.



Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/5154216



Covered in this report

The report provides actionable insights to improve source-to-contract cycle performance in the hotels and accomodation market. Its helps sourcing professionals formulate better category strategies, enhance savings, understand supplier and market challenges, and implement sourcing best practices.



SpendEdge's report, Hotels and Accomodation Market, provides up-to-date information about market shifts and potential risks, as well as in-depth knowledge of products and services, which can help in planning and executing category management activities. It focuses on the cost-saving aspects of procurement and on providing insights that can lead to optimization of category spend.



Category driver

 The growth of the global business travel sector

 For a full, detailed list, view our report



Category constraints

 Non-availability/expensive nature of LRA facilities in peak seasons

 For a full, detailed list, view our report



Procurement best practices

 Maintaining an optimum mix of hotel segments to save costs and procure good-quality service

 For a full, detailed list, view our report



Key questions answered in this report

 What are the market dynamics?

 What are the key market trends?

 What are the category growth drivers ?

 What are the constraints to category growth?

 Who are the suppliers in this market?

 What are the demand-supply shifts?

 What are the major category requirements?

 What are the procurement best practices in this market?



You can request one free hour of our analyst's time when you purchase this market report. Details are provided within the report.



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About Reportbuyer

Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers

https://www.reportbuyer.com



For more information:

Sarah Smith

Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com

Email: [email protected]

Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

Website: www.reportbuyer.com

SOURCE ReportBuyer

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DETROIT, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) today announced solid third-quarter performance in all operating segments driven by robust results in North America and China, solid improvement in South America, continued growth of GM Financial and an intense focus on costs.

Third-quarter 2017 highlights:

Income from continuing operations impacted by $2.3 billion non-cash charge related to deferred tax assets no longer realizable due to Opel/Vauxhall sale

non-cash charge related to deferred tax assets no longer realizable due to Opel/Vauxhall sale EPS-diluted of $0.08 and EPS diluted-adj. of $1.32 , from continuing operations

and EPS diluted-adj. of , from continuing operations Achieved first profitable quarter in all business segments, including South America , since Q4 2014

, since Q4 2014 GMF posted record revenues of $3.2 billion

For complete details and to see reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures, click here to download the full press release, or visit the GM Investor Relations website.

(Note: All comparisons are year-over-year versus Q3 2016)

Investor analyst conference call

GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra and Executive Vice President and CFO Chuck Stevens will host a conference call for investor analysts at 9 a.m. EDT today to discuss third-quarter business results. The call will include introductory remarks followed by a question and answer session for analysts. Journalists who wish to listen to the call may dial in using the following numbers:

United States: 1-888-808-8618 International: +1-949-484-0645 Name of Call: GM Earnings Call

General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM, TSX: GMM), its subsidiaries and joint venture entities produce and sell vehicles under the Chevrolet, Cadillac, Baojun, Buick, GMC, Holden, Jiefang and Wuling brands. GM has leadership positions in several of the world's most significant automotive markets and is committed to lead the future of personal mobility. More information on the company and its subsidiaries, including OnStar, a global leader in vehicle safety, security and information services, can be found at http://www.gm.com.

SOURCE General Motors

Related Links

http://media.gm.com


"We spent a lot of time doing the research. Once completed, our path was clear," says Kathi Moore, Vice President, Branding, for CheapOair.com. "Our name is quirky, it's memorable. By using it as an asset, we are taking maximum advantage of what that means in terms of building awareness for the brand."

In the new commercial, consumers are encouraged to understand that "cheap" means value. A series of fun and appealing travel scenarios are supported by a clear copy direction and a friendly and accessible music track. :30 and :15 second versions of the spots, in both English and Spanish language, were written and produced by Manhattan-based, Rogue Producer. The English language versions began airing nationally in October.

Sam S. Jain, Founder and CEO of Fareportal, the corporate owner of the CheapOair.com brand, explains, "CheapOair.com has grown exponentially over the last decade. With 'Go Ahead, Be Cheap' we are creating the foundation for the hyper-growth we expect in the next few years. Tactically, and technically, we are ready. The next logical step for us is to reach out to the travel consumer with strong, branded messaging to increase our customer base."

For more information, please visit www.cheapoair.com, www.cheapoair.com/mobile, or our social media pages, www.facebook.com/cheapoair and www.twitter.com/cheapoair.

About CheapOair

CheapOair is a flight-focused, hybrid travel agency that enables consumers to book online, on mobile apps for iOS and Android, by phone or live chat. CheapOair (https://www.cheapoair.com, 1-800-566-2345) bridges the gap between an online and traditional travel agency with certified travel agents available 24/7 to help find deals and offers to destinations worldwide on over 450 airlines, 1 million hotels, and 100s of car rental companies. Partner airlines benefit from access to CheapOair's broad customer base that books high yield international travel and add-on ancillaries at above the industry average. Follow CheapOair on Facebook and Twitter to learn how to travel the world for less.

About Rogue Producer

Rogue Producer is an independent production department that partners directly with marketers to outsource the execution of all production needs. Rogue created a new, industry model in which content production is decoupled from agencies to create a company that services all the production needs of clients, across all platforms, at a fraction of the cost. Rogue is a cost-efficient, alternative production choice for companies and brands without the high overhead. Rogue takes creative ideas and works together with marketers to turn them into engaging forms of consumer communications.

SOURCE CheapOair

Related Links

http://www.cheapoair.com


ATLANTA, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Highlights

Graphic Packaging will create a leading integrated paper-based packaging company with approximately $6 billion of revenue and $1 billion of EBITDA post-synergies

of revenue and of EBITDA post-synergies Expands existing and builds new platforms for integrated growth in SBS foodservice markets and folding carton converting

International Paper Company's North America Consumer Packaging business valued at $1.8 billion

Targeting $75 million in synergies by the end of year three

in synergies by the end of year three Valuation of 8.6x Adjusted EBITDA and 6.3x Adjusted EBITDA post-synergies based on $210 million of Adjusted 2017 Estimated EBITDA

of Adjusted 2017 Estimated EBITDA Projected to be accretive to earnings in year one

Transaction structured as a new partnership comprised of Graphic Packaging's existing businesses and International Paper Company's North America Consumer Packaging business. Graphic Packaging Holding Company will own 79.5 percent of the partnership and will be the sole operator. International Paper will own 20.5 percent of the partnership

No change to Graphic Packaging's current Board of Directors or leadership team

Graphic Packaging Holding Company (NYSE: GPK) will create a $6 billion paper-based packaging company by forming a new partnership comprised of Graphic Packaging's existing businesses and International Paper's (NYSE: IP) North America Consumer Packaging business. Graphic Packaging Holding Company will own 79.5 percent of the partnership and will be the sole operator. International Paper will own 20.5 percent of the partnership, equivalent to a $1.14 billion value. The partnership will assume $660 million of International Paper debt. There will be no change to Graphic Packaging's current Board of Directors or leadership team.

The transaction will be completed at a compelling EV/Adjusted EBITDA multiple of 8.6x, pre-synergies, and 6.3x, post-synergies. International Paper will have a 2-year lock-up on the monetization of their partnership interest and cannot purchase GPK shares for a period of 5 years, subject to limited exceptions.

International Paper's North America Consumer Packaging business is a $1.6 billion revenue leading producer of solid bleached sulfate (SBS) paperboard and paper-based foodservice products globally. The business includes two SBS mills located in Augusta, Georgia and Texarkana, Texas with annual production capacity of 1.2 million tons of SBS, three converting facilities in the U.S. and one in the U.K., with the capacity to convert 250,000 tons of SBS paperboard into over 24 billion units of paper-based cups and cylindrical containers. The business is projected to generate Adjusted EBITDA of $210 million in 2017.

"We are excited about the platform for future growth created by this combination," said President and CEO Michael Doss. "We expect the transaction will significantly increase our mill production and converting scale, meaningfully increase our exposure to the growing foodservice market, provide significant runway to realize synergies, and drive strong financial results."

"The $75 million in synergies is compelling and will be driven by cost reductions, increased paperboard integration, and procurement and mill efficiencies."

The transaction has been approved by the Board of Directors of both companies. The transaction is subject to standard closing requirements and regulatory review and is expected to close in early 2018.

Graphic Packaging's financial adviser was BofA Merrill Lynch and Alston & Bird LLP acted as legal counsel.

Conference Call

The Company will host a conference call at 8:30 am eastern time today (October 24, 2017) to discuss the combination. To access the conference call, please go to the Investor Relations section of the Graphic Packaging website: http://www.graphicpkg.com and click the audio webcast link. For those calling from within North America, dial 800-392-9489 at least 10 minutes prior to the start of the conference call (Conference ID # 61299881). Supporting materials for our conference call have also been posted to the Company's website. Replays of the call will be available for one week following the completion of the call and can be accessed by dialing 855-859-2056.

Forward Looking Statements

This communication contains "forward-looking" statements as that term is defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the proposed transaction between International Paper and Graphic Packaging. All statements, other than historical facts, including statements regarding the expected timing and structure of the proposed transaction; the ability of the parties to complete the proposed transaction considering the various closing conditions; the expected benefits of the proposed transaction such as improved operations, enhanced revenues, earnings and cash flow, cost reductions, increased paperboard integration, synergies, growth potential, market profile, financial profile and accretion to shareholder value; the competitive ability and position of the combined company following completion of the proposed transaction; foodservice and folding carton converting market conditions; legal, economic and regulatory conditions; and any assumptions underlying any of the foregoing, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements concern future circumstances and results and other statements that are not historical facts and are sometimes identified by the words "may," "will," "should," "potential," "intend," "expect," "endeavor," "seek," "anticipate," "estimate," "overestimate," "underestimate," "believe," "could," "project," "predict," "continue," "target" or other similar words or expressions. Forward-looking statements are based upon current plans, estimates and expectations that are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those indicated or anticipated by such forward-looking statements. The inclusion of such statements should not be regarded as a representation that such plans, estimates or expectations will be achieved. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such plans, estimates or expectations include, among others, (1) that one or more closing conditions to the transaction, including certain regulatory approvals, may not be satisfied or waived, on a timely basis or otherwise; (2) the risk that the proposed transaction may not be completed in the time frame expected by Graphic Packaging, or at all; (3) unexpected costs, charges or expenses resulting from the proposed transaction; (4) uncertainty of the expected financial performance of the combined company following completion of the proposed transaction; (5) failure to realize the anticipated benefits of the proposed transaction, including as a result of delay in completing the proposed transaction or integrating the businesses; (6) the ability of the combined company to implement its business strategy; (7) difficulties and delays in achieving revenue and cost synergies of the combined company; (8) inability to retain and hire key personnel; (9) the risk that stockholder litigation in connection with the proposed transaction or other settlements or investigations may affect the timing or occurrence of the contemplated transaction or result in significant costs of defense, indemnification and liability; and (10) other risk factors as detailed from time to time in Graphic Packaging's reports filed with the SEC, including Graphic Packaging's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, periodic quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, periodic current reports on Form 8-K and other documents filed with the SEC. The foregoing list of important factors is not exclusive. Undue reliance should not be placed on such forward-looking statements, as such statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and Graphic Packaging undertakes no obligation to update such statements, except as may be required by law.

About Graphic Packaging Holding Company

Graphic Packaging Holding Company (NYSE: GPK), headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, is committed to providing consumer packaging that makes a world of difference. The Company is a leading provider of paper-based packaging solutions for a wide variety of products to food, beverage and other consumer product companies. The Company operates on a global basis, is one of the largest producers of folding cartons in the United States, and holds leading market positions in coated unbleached kraft paperboard and coated-recycled paperboard. The Company's customers include many of the world's most widely recognized companies and brands. Additional information about Graphic Packaging, its business and its products is available on the Company's web site at www.graphicpkg.com.

SOURCE Graphic Packaging Holding Company

Related Links

http://www.graphicpkg.com


MIAMI, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Joining the American Bar Association's (ABA) 2017 National Celebration of Pro Bono Oct. 22-28, global law firm Greenberg Traurig LLP has adopted shelters across the country in support of the new ABA Homeless Youth Legal Network created by firm Co-President Hilarie Bass in her role as President of the ABA.

Nationwide, the firm is working with Covenant House shelters in many of the cities where Greenberg Traurig has offices. Firm offices in Fort Lauderdale, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Houston, and Orlando will be among the offices that have committed to provide pro bono support for Covenant House youths. In other markets, Greenberg Traurig offices are partnering with individual shelters, such as the Los Angeles office's partnership with the Los Angeles LGBT Youth Center and the Northern Virginia office's work with Second Story.

Many of the more than 500,000 homeless youth in the United States need access to lawyers who can remove the legal barriers that prevent them from getting the education, employment, housing, health care, identification and other services that could transform their lives. But of the more than 350 shelters in the U.S. that serve homeless children, few have access to pro bono legal services. The ABA Homeless Youth Legal Network Pro Bono Initiative hopes to pair attorneys with homeless youth shelters to provide services in these matters, and deliver better outcomes for this highly vulnerable population.

The homeless youth pro bono efforts will include hundreds of Greenberg Traurig attorneys and represent a way for the firm to give back to the communities it serves in honor of the firm's 50th anniversary.

"I am proud to be able to say that from Greenberg Traurig's founding 50 years ago, my firm has placed a high priority on pro bono work and making a difference in the communities we serve. I am grateful  but not surprised  that my colleagues are supporting my efforts to make a difference in the lives of homeless youth," said Bass, a Greenberg Traurig Miami Litigation Shareholder. "Whether runaways from foster care, victims of sexual exploitation, or LGBTQ youth who left inhospitable home environments, we know that there are thousands of children in the United States who live on the streets and who need our help. Extending a helping hand to these children will change the trajectory of their lives at a time when they need it the most."

During the ABA's Pro Bono Week, many Greenberg Traurig attorneys will kick off their participation in the ABA program by visiting the local homeless shelters they have adopted to hold on-site meetings with shelter staff and other social services organizations offering support for the initiative. After that, Greenberg Traurig attorneys will hold regular legal clinics to meet the individual shelter needs.

"Our global platform allows us to give a voice to some of the most vulnerable in our society," said Caroline J. Heller, Chair of Greenberg Traurig's Global Pro Bono Program and a Litigation Shareholder in the firm's New York office. "Greenberg Traurig has a long history of helping children with a variety of legal issues, from special education to immigration, and we plan to make our service to homeless youth a hallmark of our pro bono program this year and for years to come."

About the National Celebration of Pro Bono

The ABA Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service chose to launch the National Celebration of Pro Bono because of the increasing need for pro bono services during these harsh economic times and the unprecedented response of attorneys to meet this demand. It is meant to be an effective strategic tool for enhancing and expanding local efforts to increase access to justice for all. Although national in breadth, the celebration provides an opportunity for local legal associations across the country to take the next step in their efforts to provide high quality legal services to those living on the social margins.

About Greenberg Traurig's Pro Bono Program

Greenberg Traurig lawyers across the firm's offices provide pro bono legal services to the indigent and working poor, as well as to numerous civic and charitable organizations dedicated to assisting them. The firm focuses its resources on specialized and interrelated issues including civil rights and affirmative action, anti-human trafficking, family law matters, criminal appeals, immigration and political asylum, housing and homelessness.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Greenberg Traurig, LLP and P.A. has more than 2,000 attorneys in 38 offices in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East and is celebrating its 50th anniversary. One firm worldwide, GTLaw has been recognized for its philanthropic giving, was named the largest firm in the U.S. by Law360 in 2017, and among the Top 20 on the 2016 Am Law Global 100. Web: www.gtlaw.com Twitter: @GT_Law.

Contact: Elaine Walker

Telephone: 305-579-0832

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Greenberg Traurig LLP

Related Links

http://www.gtlaw.com


Routes part of group-wide focus to increase tourism and cultural exchanges between the U.S. and China

HNA flagship carrier offers the largest number of flight routes between the two countries

Parent company HNA Group supports significant non-profit arts & culture institutions in New York City

NEW YORK, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hainan Airlines, a unit of HNA Group and mainland China's only Skytrax Five-Star airline, this week begins two new routes between New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and the Chinese cities of Chengdu and Chongqing. In conjunction with the route launches, Hainan Airline's parent-company, HNA Group, is supporting a series of New York City events including Lincoln Center's Fall Gala, the China Institute's Blue Cloud Gala and the Asia Society's Game Changer Awards.

Services to Chongqing commence on October 21 and to Chengdu on October 27 from JFK's Terminal 4. Each route will operate twice weekly on Hainan Airline's fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft. With a capacity for over 60,000 passengers per year, it is the only non-stop service offered between New York City and China's rapidly growing Sichuan province. Chongqing to New York will be Hainan Airlines' longest flight routenearly 7573 miles.

Sun Jianfeng, Hainan Airlines President said, "We're excited to be offering the only non-stop flights between the U.S. East Coast and the major cities of Chengdu and Chongqing. These new services represent the 13th and 14th non-stop trans-Pacific routes, following our West Coast launch earlier in the year. The opening of the new route is expected to significantly enhance exchanges and collaborations concerning culture, the economy, and politics between the two countries and to further improve both Chengdu and Chongqing's status as key global economic centers."

HNA Group's focus on the New York routes is a sign of confidence in the relationship between the U.S. and China as a primary travel and tourism partner. According to statistics from the National Travel and Tourism Office, 2016 saw almost 3,000,000 Chinese tourists enter the USA (an increase of 466% since 2009), with more than 800,000 visitors to New York alone. The total Travel and Tourism Exports for the year was more than $32 billion.

Commenting on HNA's tourism strategy, Adam Tan, CEO of HNA Group said: "We are continuing our expansion in the tourism and travel sectors globally, as we strive to build closer connections for world travelers. Through a range of strategic travel investmentsfrom gategroup aircraft hospitality suppliers, to MRO specialists SR Technics, to the recent acquisition of a 25% share in Hilton Hotels, HNA Group remains committed to building the tourism sector across the globe. The opportunity for us to connect New York with the fastest growing Chinese regional centers of Chengdu and Chongqing is expected to lead to additional trade opportunities throughout China and the US."

In conjunction with the new route launches, HNA Group is sponsoring a week of local activities in support of its commitment to New York City, including hosting a major corporate event and concert at the Alice Tully Hall of Lincoln Center for partners and the travel sector. The concert will showcase the extraordinary talents of U.S. and Chinese artists, including the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and renowned violinist Lu Siqing.

HNA will also be sponsoring a range of high-profile annual gala events over the course of the coming weeks as it showcases its commitment to New York City. HNA will be the title sponsor of the annual Lincoln Center Fall Gala (October 23), the Asia Game Changer Diplomacy Champion Partner at the Asia Society Asia Game Changer Awards (November 1), and the presenting sponsor of the China Institute Blue Cloud Gala (November 2).

Each event is the partner organization's biggest of the year and highlights HNA's growing presence in the U.S. At the Asia Game Changer Awards, in particular, HNA will recognize the important role of Chengdu's Giant Pandas, which have been an integral symbol of bilateral diplomacy between China and the U.S. over the past 45 years.

Access to Chinese Regional Centers

Connecting the US to China's growing regional centers is a core element of HNA Group's strategy, supporting increased capacity and expanding cultural exchanges between the two nations.

Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, is widely recognized for its Giant Panda Breeding Center. But this traditional home of Sichuanese cooking city is fast-becoming the latest stop on the global food trail, as Chengdu is Asia's first UNESCO City of Gastronomy. Chengdu also strikes the perfect balance of traditional Chinese customs and modern cultural elements, from the many traditional tea houses to the 150 museums it boasts.

Chongqing is a major commercial center of 30 million people, renowned for its distinctive spicy cuisine, and its busy port along the Yangtze River. Chongqing is the home of the UNESCO World Heritage site of The Dazu Rock Carvings and Chinese religious sculptures and carvings that date back to the 7th Century. As the provisional capital of China from 1937  1945, Chongqing also has a rich wartime history.

Hainan Airline New Route Information

One of Skytrax' top ten global airlines, Hainan Airlines is known for its exceptional service, which includes lie-flat sleeper seats and complimentary limo service in business class. Introductory fares are available on its website, www.hainanairlines.com, starting at $468 for return, economy flights.

Through its partner, JetBlue, Hainan Airlines will offer connections to its network of over 70 destinations to passengers arriving from JFK.

Flight Route Departure Time Landing Time Schedule Type Chongqing-New York HU415 22:00 00:50+1 Weds/Fri B787 New York-Chongqing HU416 02:50 05:55+1 Thurs/Sat B787 Chengdu-New York HU7915 22:00 00:50+1 Thurs/Sat B787 New York-Chengdu HU7916 02:50 05:55+1 Fri/Sun B787

-Ends-

About HNA Group

HNA Group is a global Fortune 500 company focused on tourism, logistics and financial services. Since its founding in 1993, HNA Group has evolved from a regional airline based on Hainan Island in southern China into a global company with approximately $145 billion of assets, over $90 billion in annual revenues, and an international workforce of 410,000 employees, primarily across America, Europe and Asia. HNA's tourism business is a fast-growing, vertically-integrated global player with market-leading positions in aviation, hotels and travel services. HNA operates and invests in nearly 3,200 hotels with over 380,000 rooms across major markets, and has 1,250 aircraft carrying nearly 100 million passengers to 270 cities worldwide. HNA's Logistics business is a leader in logistics and supply chain management with capabilities in shipping and equipment manufacturing, maritime transportation, third-party payment platforms and project finance. In financial services, HNA is China's largest non-bank leasing company, and a leading provider of a diverse set of businesses in equipment leasing, insurance, asset management, investment banking and credit services. For more information, visit www.hnagroup.com

About Hainan Airlines:

Founded in January 1993, Hainan Airlines Holding Co., Ltd, a unit of HNA Group, has become one of the three safest airlines worldwide, and one of the nine airlines in the world to be rated Five Star Award by Skytrax. We are devoted to providing passengers with comprehensive flight services. Hainan Airlines' fleet is mainly composed of Boeing 737 and 787 series aircraft and the Airbus 330. Please log on the Hainan Airlines website (www.hainanairlines.com) for more information.

Media Inquiries:

For more information, please contact:

Daniel Workman, Edelman

Tel: 202-386-0393

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE HNA Group
TOLEDO, Ohio, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- HCR ManorCare takes great pride in its helpful, caring and responsive employees who are committed to providing quality care to our patients and residents. Our employees around the country are regularly honored at their locations by patients, residents, family members and fellow employees for the care and caring they provide. Our company has taken the recognition a step higher in launching a program that honors on a quarterly basis an HCR ManorCare Champion of Caring, a national champion across all service lines.

2017 Third-Quarter Champion Announced

"I am pleased to announce that our 2017 third-quarter HCR ManorCare Champion of Caring is Sonia Rodriguez, a housekeeping aide at ManorCare Health Services in Elk Grove Village, Illinois," said Steve Cavanaugh, chairman, president and chief executive officer. "I congratulate her on the helpful, caring and responsive way she carries out her responsibilities, exhibiting a true spirit of caring." Sonia has been a caregiver at ManorCare  Elk Grove Village for 21 years. She makes a point of learning patients' names, and they know hers. She takes pride in her work and is a stickler for detail. She instills her strong work ethic in the housekeeping staff she trains, which has led to a remarkable housekeeping team with excellent customer service scores. Her human resources director holds her up in new employee orientation as the example of how employees should respond to customer needs and concerns. She has a caring, positive attitude and goes out of her way to make sure patients are safe.

Sonia was chosen from among finalists representing each of HCR ManorCare's seven operating divisions. Each of the finalists had already distinguished her- or himself by being chosen a Divisional Champion of Caring from among thousands of employees. Divisional finalists not chosen as the national champion in the past quarter joined seven new divisional finalists in the selection pool for the 2017 third quarter. The seven new finalists in the third quarter were:

Mirlande Amilcar , Registered Nurse Supervisor, ManorCare Health Services  King of Prussia, Pennsylvania

, Registered Nurse Supervisor, ManorCare Health Services  Mike Garrison , Spiritual Care Counselor, Heartland Hospice of Fairview Heights, Illinois

, Spiritual Care Counselor, Heartland Hospice of Darline Legentus , Resident Caregiver, Arden Courts of Fort Myers, Florida

, Resident Caregiver, of Maria Moors , Receptionist, ManorCare Health Services  Venice, Florida

, Receptionist, ManorCare Health Services  Jacqueline Nowak , Occupational Therapist, Heartland Health Care Center  Livonia, Michigan

, Occupational Therapist, Heartland Health Care Center  Pamela Shipe , STNA, ManorCare Health Services  Barberton, Ohio

, STNA, ManorCare Health Services  Ruthie Williams , Laundry/Housekeeping Aide, ManorCare Health Services  Tacoma, Washington

Each of our finalists had the qualities we were looking for in an HCR ManorCare Champion of Caring. We congratulate Sonia, our 2017 third-quarter HCR ManorCare Champion of Caring, and also her peer finalists. All are winners.

The HCR ManorCare health care family comprises locations that are leading providers of short-term, post-acute services and long-term care. More than 50,000 caregivers nationwide provide quality care for patients and residents through a network of nearly 500 skilled nursing and rehabilitation centers, memory care communities, outpatient rehabilitation clinics, and hospice and home health care agencies. These locations operate primarily under the respected Heartland, ManorCare Health Services and Arden Courts names.

SOURCE HCR ManorCare
MIAMI, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

HD View 360 Inc. ('HD View' or 'HDVW'), (OTC MarketsOTCQB: HDVW), a premier provider of custom IT, security monitoring, and business intelligence solutions, announced today the official launch of its new website, https://hdview360.com/.

The completely revamped web portal is part of the publicly-traded company's recent investments into its digital marketing efforts, as HD View 360 positions itself to become an industry leader in providing franchise businesses with the IT and security monitoring tools they need to operate efficiently and securely.

"We are extremely proud of our new mobile-responsive website and the essential information and enhanced support it provides our customers and shareholders," said Dennis Mancino, HD View 360 Founder and CEO.

The new hdview360.com delivers the ultimate user-friendly experience with improved navigation and functionality while allowing customers to see the full product portfolio the company can offer. The website also has a secure support portal where clients can log in to submit 24-hour IT service tickets or schedule a call with a live technician.

"Beyond being breathtakingly beautiful, this new website is an extension of our best-in-class technology support while simultaneously growing our reach to an ever-widening digital audience," said Mancino.

HD View 360's new website will be updated regularly with news of service launches, new partnerships, press mentions, and relevant investor and financial information.

Visitors are encouraged to tour the website and contact the company for more information.

About HD View 360, Inc.

HD View 360 and its subsidiary companies are a complete B2B Information Technology solution that provide hardware installation, security monitoring systems, telephone services, merchant processing, POS software, and ongoing IT support to small and medium-sized businesses. Where some IT companies specialize in one specific area, HD View 360 has hands-on experience in almost every aspect of retail operations. In a few short years, the quality and value of HD View 360's services have been recognized by top franchise brands, including European Wax Center, Amazing Lash Studio, OrangeTheory Fitness, and Massage Envy. HD View 360's rapid growth, solidified business relationships, and smart acquisition strategy have positioned the company to deepen its services to include a more comprehensive geographic presence, while acquiring new franchise clients and increasing revenue streams and profit margins for the company and its shareholders.

Safe Harbor

This press release contains forward-looking statements, particularly as related to, among other things, the business plans of HDVW, statements relating to goals, plans and projections regarding the HDVW's' financial position and business strategy. The words or phrases "would be," "will allow," "intends to," "may result," "are expected to," "will continue," "anticipates," "expects," "estimate," "project," "indicate," "could," "potentially," "should," "believe," "think", "considers" or similar expressions are intended to identify "forward-looking statements." These forward-looking statements fall within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934 and are subject to the safe harbor created by these sections. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, involve known and unknown risks, a reliance on third parties for information, transactions or orders that may be cancelled, and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or developments in our industry, to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results include risks and uncertainties related to the fluctuation of global economic conditions, the performance of management and our employees, our ability to obtain financing, competition, general economic conditions and other factors that are detailed in our periodic reports and on documents we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Statements made herein are as of the date of this press release and should not be relied upon as of any subsequent date. HDVW cautions readers not to place undue reliance on such statements. HDVW does not undertake, and HDVW specifically disclaims any obligation, to update any forward-looking statements to reflect occurrences, developments, unanticipated events or circumstances after the date of such statement. Actual results may differ materially from HDVW's expectations and estimates.

Press Contact:

Dennis Mancino

[email protected]

+1-786-294-0559



https://www.hdview360.com

SOURCE HD View 360 Inc.
HILLSDALE, Mich., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On Tuesday, October 24, Hillsdale College will host a public lecture from this fall's Eugene C. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Fellow Matthew Continetti, editor-in-chief of The Washington Free Beacon. Continetti's talk, titled, "Influence of Identity Politics on American Life and Culture," will draw on Continetti's many years as a journalist. The lecture is a key part of Continetti's tenure on campus as a Pulliam Fellow, for which he also served as a guest instructor in the journalism department and consultant to the Hillsdale student newspaper, The Collegian.

The event is free and open to media. Seats are limited and advance registration is requested. For more information or to register, contact Barbie Keiser at [email protected] or (517) 607-2527.

WHEN: Tuesday, October 24, 2017

8 p.m. EDT



WHERE: Phillips Auditorium  Searle Center

315 N West Street

Hillsdale, MI 49242



WHO: Matthew Continetti graduated from Columbia University in 2003 and worked as a writer and editor at The Weekly Standard before being named editor-in-chief at The Washington Free Beacon in 2011. Continetti's work has appeared in various media outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. He is also the author of The K Street Gang: The Rise and Fall of the Republican Machine and The Persecution of Sarah Palin: How the Media Tried to Bring Down a Rising Star.

Hillsdale College is an independent liberal arts college located in southern Michigan. Founded in 1844, the College has built a national reputation through its classical liberal arts core curriculum and its principled refusal to accept federal or state taxpayer subsidies, even indirectly in the form of student grants or loans. It also conducts an outreach effort promoting civil and religious liberty, including a free monthly speech digest, Imprimis, with a circulation of more than 3.7 million. For more information visit Hillsdale.edu.

SOURCE Hillsdale College

Related Links

http://www.hillsdale.edu


SAN DIEGO, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hippo Premium Packaging (www.hippopackaging.com), announced that it has created new brand identities and marketing programs for three new cannabis companies located within California's famed " Emerald Triangle." The company also recently hired two additional account executives in Humboldt County to provide services and expertise to California's cannabis farming communities, as cultivators will be responsible for packaging their products in compliant systems as of January 1.

Hippo recently developed new brand identities, logos, and packaging design for three cannabis companies in Northern California. They are: Ganja Grove, KMB Farms, and Broken Arrow. Hippo created a comprehensive range of packaging solutions that meet California's new regulations for child-resistance, and also supplied an array of marketing solutions, including public relations and social media programs.

Kary Radestock, Founder and CEO of Hippo Premium Packaging said that the company is unique because it provides world-class solutions along with highly attentive customer service. "We know that the transition to a highly regulated market will be burdensome to many growers in California, so we have developed a team of incredibly talented individuals with expertise in child-resistant packaging, design, marketing and branding, to help farmers get ready and become compliant with the new rules that go into effect the first of the year," she said.

Hippo recently hired Laura, an industry professional with over 20-years of experience working with companies that include: Apple, Disney-Pixar, Dreamworks, Sony Imageworks, and Adobe.

The company also hired Amber, a noted pro with over 10-years experience helping companies grow market share by developing innovative advertising strategies, direct marketing programs, and creative merchandising solutions.

Both new hires will be based in Humboldt County to provide locally-based service to growers, producers, manufacturers and dispensaries in the region. The new Account Executives join Hippo's growing team that now includes personnel throughout Northern and Southern California and Colorado.

For information on Hippo Premium Packaging, call: 619-269-0939, or visit: www.hippopackaging.com.

Connect with Hippo:

Facebook: facebook.com/hippopackaging

Twitter: @HippoPackaging

Instagram: instagram.com/hippopackaging

Pinterest: pinterest.com/hippopackaging

Website: www.hippopackaging.com

Media Contact:

[email protected]

SOURCE Hippo Premium Packaging

Related Links

http://www.hippopackaging.com


WILMINGTON, Del., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TD Partnership Programs  one of North America's leading private label credit card companies  announced a partnership with HTC America today. Backed by TD Bank, the HTC Financing Program will provide financing to customers purchasing the company's latest mobile devices. HTC produces cutting-edge smart mobile devices and technologies.

The HTC Financing Program provides cardmembers instant access to make purchases with special financing and no money down. The program will be available to customers with purchases totaling $599 or more on mobile products including the award-winning HTC U11 and HTC accessories on HTC.com.

"HTC is renowned for designing products that reflect 'U'  your drive, passion, creativity, and individuality  so it makes perfect sense to offer customer-focused financing that is easy to use," said Andre Lonne, president of HTC America. "Our partnership with TD Bank will further enhance our customer commitment, as the bank's tailored partnership program will provide customers with instant access to pay over time options to purchase the latest in mobile devices and accessories."

"We are thrilled to partner with a leading organization within the consumer technology space like HTC," said Mike Rittler, Head of Retail Card Services at TD Bank. "This partnership underscores our bank-wide commitment to drive innovation forward and put customers at the forefront of what's to come in mobile-technology."

TD Bank's financing options are available only for purchases made on HTC.com. For more information on the financing options available, please visit HTC.com/US/HTC-Financing

TD Partnership Programs (www.tdpartnershipprograms.com) launches and administers new credit card portfolios for brick-and-mortar, e-commerce and catalog merchants, and acquires retailers' existing credit card portfolios.

About TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank

TD Partnership Programs is a top 10 card issuer in North America with over $24B in card receivables. TD Bank's credit cards are distributed nationally, leveraging our retail distribution network, direct response channels and through hundreds of partnership programs with financial institutions, retailers and other third party organizations, including private label financing.

About HTC

HTC Corporation aims to bring brilliance to life. As a global innovator in smart mobile devices and technology, HTC has produced award-winning products and industry firsts since its inception in 1997, including the critically acclaimed HTC One and Desire lines of smartphones. The pursuit of brilliance is at the heart of everything we do, inspiring best-in-class design and game-changing mobile and virtual reality experiences for consumers around the world. HTC is listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE: 2498). www.htc.com

HTC and the HTC logo are the trademarks of HTC Corporation.

SOURCE TD Bank
CLEVELAND, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc. (NYSE:HY) will release 2017 Third Quarter financial results and will file its 2017 Third Quarter 10-Q before the market opens on Friday, November 3, 2017.

The Company will also host a conference call on Friday, November 3, 2017 to discuss its results for the 2017 third quarter.

Conference Call:

Friday, November 3, 2017 Time:

11:00 a.m. (Eastern Time) Telephone:

(833) 241-7250 (Toll Free) or (647) 689-4214 (International)



Conference ID: 5598339



(Call in at least five minutes before start time) For Replay Call:

(800) 585-8367 (Toll Free) or (416) 621-4642 (International)



Conference ID: 5598339

This call will also be broadcast live and available for replay over the Internet. To access the call, go to www.hyster-yale.com. Please allow 15 minutes to register, download and install any necessary software.

Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc., headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, offers a broad array of solutions to meet the specific materials handling needs of customers' applications. The Company's wholly owned operating subsidiary, Hyster-Yale Group, Inc., designs, engineers, manufactures, sells and services a comprehensive line of lift trucks and aftermarket parts marketed globally primarily under the Hyster and Yale brand names. Subsidiaries of Hyster-Yale Group include Nuvera Fuel Cells, LLC, an alternative-power technology company focused on fuel cell stacks and engines, on-site hydrogen production and dispensing systems, and Bolzoni S.p.A., a leading worldwide producer of attachments, forks and lift tables marketed under the Bolzoni Auramo and Meyer brand names. For more information about Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc. and its subsidiaries, visit the Company's websites at www.hyster-yale.com and www.bolzonigroup.com .

SOURCE Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.hyster-yale.com


Located at the historic Willow Run site in Ypsilanti Township, ACM is creating a world-class proving ground where companies will collaborate to develop CAV and future mobility technologies, as well as work on standards and education programs.

"Hyundai's investment supporting ACM strengthens our long-term commitment to the advancement of safety and mobility through automated vehicle technology. Working together with industry, academia and government provides a collaborative environment to support new and innovative mobility solutions," said Andy Freels, president, HATCI. "We are excited to be a founding member of the government-industry team at the neighboring ACM facility. As a founding member, we will help set the direction for CAV standards and test advanced technologies in a safe environment for the North American customer."

The creation of the unique testing environment, located in close proximity to HATCI's engineering headquarters, will enhance HATCI's development and validation of advanced driver-assistance systems and CAV technologies. The ACM facility will provide testing under unique and extreme conditions in a repeatable and controlled environment to improve the safety of these systems for the customer. This collaboration will advance safety, connectivity, cybersecurity and autonomous technologies.

Testing emphases will include:

Sensor technology development

Vehicle/infrastructure communication

Specification development for infrastructure scenarios such as: rural, residential, highway, overpasses, off-road, and urban

Severe test conditions featuring various weather situations

"We have been working closely with Hyundai and are thrilled they have decided to take the next step with this significant investment to further our collaboration," said John Maddox, president and CEO, ACM. "The Hyundai team has some unique developments they are working on and we are eager to help them achieve their goals."

"Hyundai's commitment to ACM is another example of its commitment to Michigan, and is a great addition to the other companies already partnering with the American Center for Mobility," said Governor Rick Snyder. "It's exciting to see the spirit of innovation continue at Willow Run that will help fuel job growth and solidify Michigan as the epicenter of automotive and mobility."

The contribution from Hyundai brings ACM's fundraising total to $101 million to develop the 500-acre state-of-the-art testing site at Willow Run. The Center's first phase of construction is nearing completion and the testing and validation, product development, education and standards facility will open in December.

Hyundai joins other ACM Founders; AT&T, Toyota, and Ford, which announced their support of ACM earlier this year.

The ACM project is a joint initiative with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, State of Michigan, Michigan Department of Transportation, the University of Michigan, Business Leaders for Michigan and Ann Arbor Spark.

About Hyundai America Technical Center, Inc.

As one of Hyundai Motor Group's (HMG) six centers focused on research and development (R&D), Hyundai America Technical Center, Inc. (HATCI) was established in 1986 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. HATCI is HMG's design, technology and engineering division for North America. As HMG solidified its position as one of the top five global OEMs, HATCI has grown to include a strong network of engineering disciplines and increased business-focused activities to support North America's Voice of the Customer.

HATCI supports new model development for HMG's North American operations and global programs from our dedicated engineering facilities and support staff at affiliate sites located throughout the United States (Alabama, California, Georgia, Michigan and Washington D.C.). HATCI's success in satisfying the demands of increasingly sophisticated consumers is a direct result of HMG's commitment to the future of American automotive engineering. HATCI upholds a strong R&D philosophy hinged on creative and passionate input of all team members. This philosophy is paramount to HMG's North American operational strategy and serves as the foundation for engineering excellence and technological advancement.

More information about Hyundai Motor and its products can be found at:

http://worldwide.hyundai.com or http://globalpr.hyundai.com

About ACM

The American Center for Mobility is a non-profit testing, education and product development facility for future mobility, designed to enable safe validation and self-certification of connected and automated vehicle technology, and to accelerate the development of voluntary standards. ACM is one of 10 U.S. DOT designated Automated Vehicle Proving Grounds in the U.S. To learn more about ACM, visit www.acmwillowrun.org.

SOURCE Hyundai America Technical Center, Inc.
"This research paper  illustrating the enduring value of education to the American economy  is an excellent resource for all who are interested in education, equity, economic growth, and their intrinsic connection," said American Academy President Jonathan Fanton. "In a world in which the focus is often on short-term results, investing in college completion offers a long-term outcome well worth considering." This paper is an example of how the American Academy contributes to the public good with nonpartisan, well-considered facts, analysis, and recommendations.

The Academy's Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education  which is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York  is chaired by Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., President and CEO of TIAA, and by Michael S. McPherson, President Emeritus of the Spencer Foundation and a past president of Macalester College; both are economists and members of the Academy.

The Commission's exploration of postsecondary education in America underscores that institutions of undergraduate education are far better at admitting students than graduating them:

Nearly 90 percent of recent high school graduates enroll in college during their early adulthood.

Only 60 percent of students who pursue a bachelor's degree complete one, taking, on average almost six years to complete their studies.

Only 30 percent of students who start a certificate or associate's degree earn a credential within three years.

The lack of a credential is compounded by the loss of time and money by students and their families, teachers, and taxpayers.

There are ways to offset problematic completion rates. Increased scholarship funding, transportation assistance, trained advisors who can monitor progress and intervene when appropriate, and other supports are boosting college completion rates  especially for students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. A program at the City University of New York that provides an array of supports raised completion rates by roughly 50 percent. An innovative and intensive advising program at Georgia State University that uses Big Data to determine how and when to intervene has been similarly successful.

The time is right to understand the value of wide-scale support for helping America's students earn undergraduate credentials. The Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education engaged Moody's Analytics to develop a model for assessing the expense and impact of investing more in programs that increase graduation rates in associate and baccalaureate programs. Moody's was asked to quantify the economic benefits of college success that accrue to the individuals, the community, and to the economy overall.

Moody's analyzed the costs and benefits if support for completion results in increasing by 50 percent the graduation rates of students who now are in the bottom half of the distribution of institutional graduation rates and increasing the graduation rates of those in the top half by a somewhat smaller percentage, both over the course of ten years. The report takes into account the costs of these programs and the benefits to the individuals and economy:

In the early years there are significant new expenses to support enrolled students and few benefits because the students are in school and not in the workforce.

Over the course of the first decade, as more students with degrees enter the workforce, the economic benefits emerge alongside the costs.

In year eleven the payback of educated Americans entering the workforce and having average higher wages surpasses the costs of investing in college completion.

Moody's projects it will take twenty years for the net benefits of the program to be in place, and that those benefits will lead to wages in the workforce that are 3.1 percent higher than they would be without the investment, with the gains concentrated on those who would not have achieved degrees without the program. Further, after thirty years, the program is projected to raise gross domestic product by 2.5 percent. The economic benefits for the nation of investing in college completion are not immediate but they are compelling, sustained, and quantifiable.

"Improving the education level of the population has historically been a significant source of economic growth for the United States," said Adam Ozimek, a senior economist at Moody's and co-author. "This research suggests that as we look for ways to continue improving educational attainment, lifting completion rates should be a central part of the discussion."

Commission Co-chair Michael McPherson compares investments in college completion to infrastructure projects in terms of the expense in the early years and the enduring benefits thereafter. He notes in his Foreword to the research paper that the rewards of a college degree can outlast even those of a bridge or highway; "education investments are among the longest lasting in economic terms."

The Moody's research understandably focuses on the quantifiable benefits of education but the overall commitment of the Academy and its Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education is also rooted in the value of education for its benefits that are less easily measured, including individual fulfillment and intellectual engagement.

The Commission's final report, The Future of Undergraduate Education, The Future of America, will be released on November 30 and will outline a comprehensive national strategy to ensure Americans receive the quality education they need to thrive in the 21st century. More information about the commission, including its members and recent publications, is online at www.amacad.org/cfue.

SOURCE American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Related Links

http://www.amacad.org


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Information Builders, a leader in business intelligence (BI) and analytics, information integrity, and integration solutions, today announced the launch of Information Builders' Accelerators, a set of pre-configured analytical capabilities designed to reduce the time to value of WebFOCUS implementations. Drawing on Information Builders' deep domain expertise across industries and thousands of customer implementations, the vertical-specific Accelerators empower knowledge workers to analyze data for answers to questions around an essential use case or scenario.

Tweet this: [email protected] launches vertical specific #WebFOCUS Accelerators to speed benefits of #BI and #analytics programs: http://ow.ly/t2LJ30g4owv

Information Builders' WebFOCUS BI and analytics platform is designed to enable all user groups, regardless of their degree of technical savvy, to execute smarter decisions from trusted data. The company takes these benefits a step further, providing non-technical employees, partners, and customers with interactive analytical content such as data visualizations, graphs, and reports. With the launch of WebFOCUS Accelerators, Information Builders is further strengthening its self-service capabilities by packaging Accelerators with the platform and enabling companies to lessen the time to value of their BI and analytics investments.

The Accelerators are built on Information Builders' deep vertical expertise, providing the data management, integration, and analytics necessary to explore data and answer common industry questions. For example, allowing a bank executive to analyze trends within individual product lines or branch production or giving law enforcement officials access to data to identify potential risk areas. The Accelerators integrate seamlessly with the broader WebFOCUS platform, making it easy for companies to scale their implementations as their BI and analytics programs mature. Information Builders is launching the following four Accelerators initially, with more planned for later in the year:

Financial Services: Accelerator for Credit Union Operations  With pre-built content including an executive dashboard and a report generator for non-technical users to create their own reports, the Accelerator provides executives and operations managers with key metrics to determine the health of the institution and trends within member, branch, and lending performance

With pre-built content including an executive dashboard and a report generator for non-technical users to create their own reports, the Accelerator provides executives and operations managers with key metrics to determine the health of the institution and trends within member, branch, and lending performance Law Enforcement: Accelerator for Officer Analytics  The Accelerator helps agencies identify key trends and various risk factors through a variety of predefined content that allows officials to understand the dynamics and relationships between diverse data points

The Accelerator helps agencies identify key trends and various risk factors through a variety of predefined content that allows officials to understand the dynamics and relationships between diverse data points Healthcare: Accelerator for Ambulatory Operations  Providing insight into key areas of operational metrics such as visit productivity, patient condition categorization, and no shows, the Accelerator gives physicians and practice managers a quick view into the health of the practice

Providing insight into key areas of operational metrics such as visit productivity, patient condition categorization, and no shows, the Accelerator gives physicians and practice managers a quick view into the health of the practice Insurance: Accelerator for P&C Executive Insights  The Accelerator enables P&C leaders to better manage their business and drive results by providing data-backed insights for better alignment of strategy, activity, and results across internal functions, lines, external channels, and risk partners.

Gerald Cohen, president and CEO, Information Builders, said:

"As a result of our long-standing engagements with customers from a variety of verticals, we've identified some valuable use cases for BI and analytics in these respective industries. With Information Builders' Accelerators offering, we're providing customers with out-of-the-box WebFOCUS functionality to immediately derive data-backed insights into these chief challenges. The technology enables non-technical user communities from numerous sectors to make more informed and efficient decisions that drive the business forward and lay the framework for further BI and analytics success."

Visit our website to learn more and demo the Accelerators.

About Information Builders

Information Builders provides solutions for business intelligence (BI), analytics, data integration, and data quality that help drive performance improvements, innovation, and value. Through one set of powerful products, we enable organizations to serve everyone  analysts, non-technical users, even partners, customers, and citizens  with better data and analytics. Our dedication to customer success is unmatched with thousands of organizations relying on us as their trusted partner. Founded in 1975, Information Builders is headquartered in New York, NY, with global offices, and remains one of the largest independent, privately held companies in the industry. Visit us at informationbuilders.com, follow us on Twitter at @infobldrs, like us on Facebook, and visit our LinkedIn page.

Press Contacts

Kathleen Moran

Information Builders

(917) 339-6313

[email protected]

Kate Clinton

LEWIS

(781) 761-4487

[email protected]

SOURCE Information Builders

Related Links

http://www.informationbuilders.com


(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130122/589162 )

Q2 revenues grew sequentially by 2.9% in USD terms; 2.2% in constant currency terms

Q2 revenues grew 5.4% year-on-year in USD terms

Q2 operating margin at 24.2%, as compared to 24.1% in Q1 18

Q2 net margins improved to 21.2%, as compared to 20.4% in Q1 18

Q2 Basic EPS was $ 0.25, sequential growth of 7.0% and year-on-year growth of 7.3%

H1 year-on-year revenue growth at 5.7% in reported terms; 5.5% in constant currency terms

Liquid assets including cash and cash equivalents and investments were at $6,340 million as on September 30, 2017

Utilization excluding trainees at all-time high of 84.7%

Declared interim dividend of `13 per share, compared to an interim dividend of `11 per share in FY 17

FY 18 revenue guidance at 5.5%-6.5% in constant currency. Operating margin guidance unchanged at 23%-25%

Financial Highlights

Consolidated results under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for the quarter ended September 30, 2017

Revenues were $ 2 , 728 million for the quarter ended September 3 0 , 201 7

QoQ growth of 2.9 % in reported terms; 2.2 % in constant currency terms

YoY growth of 5.4 % in reported terms; 4.6 % in constant currency terms

Operating profit was $ 659 million for the quarter ended September 3 0 , 201 7

QoQ growth of 3.4 %; YoY growth of 2.4 %

Net profit was $578 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2017

QoQ growth of 7.0%; YoY growth of 7.3%

Consolidated results under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for the half year ended September 30, 2017

Revenues were $5,379 million for the half year ended September 30, 2017

YoY growth of 5.7% in reported terms; 5.5% in constant currency terms

Operating profit was $1,298 million for the half year ended September 30, 2017

YoY growth of 4.1%

Net profit was $ 1,119 million for the half year ended September 30, 2017

YoY growth of 6.6%

"We continue to focus on executing on the theme of software enabled services and on accelerating growth of our new services portfolio." said U B Pravin Rao, Interim CEO and Managing Director. "During the quarter, we responded quickly to the management and Board changes through proactive communication with all stakeholders minimizing any negative impact to the business and allowing us to deliver growth across all our large industry units."

"Our focus on improving operational efficiencies enabled us to deliver stable margins in the quarter and at the same time provide compensation increases and higher variable payouts to our employees." said M. D. Ranganath, CFO. "We have taken several steps during the quarter towards our capital allocation policy covering `13,000 crore share buyback, coupled with interim dividend of `13 per share for enhancing shareholder returns."

2. Outlook for FY 2018

The Company's outlook (consolidated) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2018, under IFRS is as follows:

Revenues are expected to grow 5.5%-6.5% in constant currency*;

Revenues are expected to grow 6.5%-7.5% in USD terms based on the exchange rates as of September 30, 2017 **

*FY 17 constant currency rates - AUD/USD - 0.75; Euro/USD - 1.09; GBP/USD - 1.30

**Currency rates as of September 30, 2017 - AUD/USD - 0.78; Euro/USD - 1.18; GBP/USD - 1.34

3. Update on share buyback

The Board, at its meeting on August 19, 2017, approved a proposal for the Company to buyback its fully paid-up equity shares of face value of `5 each from the eligible equity shareholders of the Company for an amount not exceeding `13,000 crore (approximately $2 billion). The Buyback offer comprises a purchase of upto 113,043,478 Equity Shares aggregating upto 4.92% of the paid-up equity share capital of the Company at a price of `1,150 per Equity share. The buyback is proposed to be made from all eligible equity shareholders (including those who become equity shareholders as on the Record date by cancelling American Depository Shares and withdrawing underlying Equity shares) of the Company as on the Record Date (i.e. November 1, 2017) on a proportionate basis through the "Tender offer" route. The shareholders approved the said proposal of Buyback of Equity Shares through the postal ballot concluded on October 7, 2017. The Company has published a Public Announcement on October 10, 2017 for the buyback of its shares through a tender offer and has submitted the Draft Letter of Offer to regulatory authorities for their comments.

4. Strategy Refresh

Over the past eight weeks, members of the management team and the Committee of Directors undertook a comprehensive strategy refresh exercise. With the objective of outlining a sharpened strategic direction, they reviewed all programs across the organization, accelerated execution plans and prioritized key areas of investments across the services and software portfolios.

An important outcome of the exercise is a reassertion that our strategic direction will continue to be driven with a portfolio of market relevant design, consulting and technology services, enabled by software. The successful execution of this strategy positions us as the partner our clients can count on to accelerate their digital transformation journey.

5. CEO search and shareholder consultation

The process of identifying the next CEO and shareholder consultation outreach have been initiated and are progressing well.

6. Review of Investigations

As previously indicated, the Chairman has conducted a review of all the external investigations into certain anonymous complaints the Company had previously received. The review covered a range of matters described below, including the acquisition of Panaya which was completed by the Company in February 2015 and the severance payments to the former CFO.

After careful consideration led by our Chairman, the Board reaffirms the previous findings of external investigations that there is no merit to the allegations of wrongdoing.

Mr. Nilekani, Chairman of the Board, said. "I believe that all stakeholders acted out of a strong passion for Infosys, wanting what they believed to be the best for the Company and to see it succeed. In light of my review of these matters, I am fully persuaded, as is the entire Board, that the conclusions of the independent investigations are correct. This Board and I are committed to the highest standards of professionalism and will deal promptly and decisively with any governance issues should they ever come up in the future."

In certain respects, as the Board has previously noted, the severance payments to the Company's former CFO could have been better handled, and the Company has identified opportunities for improvements in processes and practices, which have been implemented. While the disclosures in this regard were timely, based on the feedback received, the Company has since December 2016 adopted a practice of disclosing the severance payment to key managerial personnel ("KMP") at the time of their departure, making the disclosures sooner than required. Additionally, the Company has now globally benchmarked its severance pay and revised its senior management employment contracts.

As previously noted, these external investigations were comprehensive and robust. The investigation conducted by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Control Risks, neither of whom had any prior dealings with Infosys, also included a review of the previous two investigations conducted by Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas ("CAM"). They concluded that CAM's two previous investigations were thorough and their findings and conclusions were reasonable and credible based on the evidence. Gibson Dunn's investigation was led by Charles Stevens and Benjamin Wagner, both Presidentially-appointed former senior prosecutors in the U.S. Department of Justice, each with several decades of experience in investigating and prosecuting fraud and business crimes. The investigation involved interviews of over 50 witnesses globally, a review of company policies, Board minutes, public filings and internal documents, the collection, search and review by Gibson Dunn attorneys of many thousands of internal emails and attachments, the use of forensic accounting experts to analyze technical and financial information, the review of media accounts and public records in multiple countries, the review of the previous investigation reports issued by CAM and supporting documentation, and other investigative measures. No limitations or restrictions were placed on the investigating team from accessing information, and the Company and the relevant directors and employees cooperated fully.

Among other things, the review reaffirmed the conclusion of the independent investigation that there was no merit to the allegations of wrongdoing with respect to the acquisition of Panaya. The review also confirmed that the Company made appropriate and timely disclosures relating to severance payments to the former CFO at the end of the quarter of his resignation, and subsequently in the Company's 20-F and Annual Report.

Unlike the practice followed in the past, the Company published the summary findings of these investigations, given the attention these matters had received. A copy of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's memorandum to the Audit Committee with the summary findings of the investigation is attached as an Annexure.

After careful re-consideration, the Company has concluded that publishing additional details of the investigation would inhibit the Company's ability to conduct effective investigations into any matter in the future. Confidentiality is critical to ensuring the candor and cooperation of whistleblowers and other participants in any investigative process. The precedent of releasing the full investigation reports could impair the cooperation of participants should the need for an investigation arise in the future.

Mr. Nilekani added, "As the Company moves forward to a more stable environment I am grateful to all the well-wishers of the Company, including Mr. Narayana Murthy, for their deeply held passion for Infosys. The Board will continue to represent the interest of all the shareholders. I would also like to acknowledge the leadership role Mr. Narayana Murthy has played in building this iconic institution and in corporate governance matters. Going forward, it is our endeavour to build a trusting relationship with Mr. Murthy."

The Board notes that the questions and scrutiny in relation to these matters were fuelled in part by the strong feelings that various stakeholders have for the Company and its success. Questions were raised by stakeholders who have a deeply held passion for Infosys. The Board responded with equal passion and good faith.

The Board also firmly believes that it is time to put these issues to rest. It seeks the support of all stakeholders to look towards the future, and to collectively focus on strategy, operations, and growth.

7. Business highlights

This quarter we acquired Brilliant Basics, a London-based product design and customer experience (CX) innovator known for its world-class Design Thinking-led approach and experience in executing global programs. This acquisition will enhance our digital capabilities to drive transformation solutions for clients.

We further enhanced our global footprint by opening a new office in the Netherlands. We also made good progress on our commitment to hire 10,000 American workers over the next two years, and announced that we will open our North Carolina Technology and Innovation Hub in Raleigh.

Our investments in new services, especially Cloud Ecosystem, Big Data and Analytics, API and Micro services, Data and Mainframe Modernization, Cyber Security and IoT Engineering Services are showing promising results. Over the past quarter, these offerings have seen increased traction with clients, and currently contribute 9.4% of our revenues in Q2 18.

In addition, the nature of our client engagements continues to evolve, as we explore new models and go-to-market approaches.

CMA CGM Group, a world leader in container shipping, entered into a seven-year partnership with us aimed at simplifying and transforming CMA CGM's IT applications while improving their customer service experience. As part of this agreement, Infosys will open a Development Center in Marseille and will also acquire CMA CGM's Innovation and Delivery Center in Dubai .

Working with ATP, we announced the launch of the new 'PlayerZone' app and website, an extranet portal for ATP players, their support teams, coaches, and others in the ecosystem, which allows users to engage with each other and access information across a wide range of operational aspects related to life on Tour.

We launched a private cloud solution in collaboration with Micro Focus SUSE, a pioneer in open source software, providing software-defined data centre infrastructure and application delivery solutions. This solution will help businesses significantly accelerate their digital transformation journey by being hardware agnostic, enabling faster time to market through rapid adoption, providing faster delivery of services, and greater infrastructure agility and control.

Infosys and Adecco, a Fortune 500 company and a leading Global HR Solution Provider, are redefining the future of staffing through the co-creation of Adia - a Mobile-first, Cloud-based, end-to-end Digital Staffing Platform. Adia makes it possible for employers to find temporary staff for short term assignments and aims to revolutionise the industry by matching the demand and supply of talent across multiple industry segments including hospitality, events, logistics among several others. The platform is already live in six cities in Switzerland .

Our new software business continues to grow and contributed 1.6% to our revenue in Q2 18. We are leveraging offerings across Finacle, NIA, Edge, Panaya and Skava to streamline processes, drive business differentiation and elevate user experience for our clients.

In Q2, the EdgeVerve business delivered strong performance with 54 wins and 34 go-lives from both the Finacle and Edge suite of solutions across various markets.

Infosys NIA, our flagship Artificial Intelligence and Automation platform, continues its positive momentum and features in most large new deals. In addition, the platform has been used in many diverse business solutions including Loan Onboarding, Fraud Management, Demand Sensing, Predictive Costing, Contract Compliance, Procurement Automation and more. We are working with more than 100 clients on close to 200 engagements and see tremendous potential for the platform and business solutions going forward.

The AssistEdge RPA implementation at nbnTM was awarded the Winner in "RPA Excellence award for Customer Experience" at the AI and RPA for Enterprises event organized by IQPC Australia. The award recognizes key business outcomes delivered for nbnTM to support the scale required in year 2017.

Finacle continued to strengthen its position as a partner of choice for digital transformation and to enable new business models for banks. This quarter, Finacle announced three new Fintech partnerships with - Active.AI, to offer conversational banking services through chat and voice based interfaces across digital channels; Niki.ai, which offers a chat-based commerce platform for banking customers; and ToneTag, to offer a joint solution that will leverage sound wave technology to enable proximity payments and interactions. All these partners were on-boarded through the Finacle Connect Program.

Among key go-lives this quarter, Mediterranean Bank, a leading Maltese banks, went live on the Finacle Lending Module. The Bank replaced its existing lending solution with Finacle to provide a unified, consistent platform for its corporate customers. In yet another prominent implementation, DBS Hong Kong went live with the Finacle suite of solutions covering Deposits, Teller, Overdrafts, Clearing, ACH and Structured Products. The implementation program won the 'Core Banking System Initiative of the year - Hong Kong ' in The Asian Banking and Finance awards 2017.

Infosys is very proud to be associated with the prestigious GST project which is the largest tax project of its kind in the world. The system has already demonstrated success across several parameters - till date 37 crore invoices have been uploaded on the system while the system is designed to handle 300 to 320 crore invoices every month. 70 lakh tax payers have successfully migrated to the new system and the country has recorded 25 lakh new registered taxpayers. Central and state level tax regimes have been integrated with all 29 States and 7 Union Territories successfully migrating onto this system. In addition, the system is able to manage 1 Lakh active users and saw peak loads during the last two days of filing, with 50% of the filings done in that timeframe and 70% of the collection achieved with just 25% of server utilization, demonstrating the system's ability to manage scale.

Any large project of this scale, especially a transformative one like this has to deal with changes in both policy and stakeholder usability. Some of these modifications have resulted in rapid changes to the system particularly due to its integration with heterogeneous IT ecosystems including GST Suvidha Providers, Aadhar, Central Board of Excise and Customs and Model 1 states. Given the complex nature of the project and rapid change management, there have been several stakeholder concerns that have also been raised. Some of our finest engineers are supporting the GSTN team as they work towards resolving these and serving all stakeholders.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Infosys has been inducted into the prestigious Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) and is now part of the DJSI World and DJSI Emerging Markets Indices

Infosys positioned as a Leader in Everest Group's Life & Pensions (L&P) insurance AO PEAK Matrix TM

Infosys positioned as a Leader in Everest Group's Insurance AO PEAK Matrix TM

Infosys positioned as a Leader in Winner's Circle in the HfS Blueprint: Application Development and Management Services 2017

Infosys positioned as a Leader in Winner's Circle in the HfS Blueprint: Energy Operations 2017

Infosys positioned as a Leader in Winner's Circle in the HfS Blueprint: Application Testing Services 2017

Infosys positioned as a Leader in Winner's Circle in the HfS Blueprint: IT Infrastructure Management and Enterprise Cloud

Infosys was awarded the Microsoft Platform Modernization Award and the World Wide Cloud & System Integrator Intelligent Cloud Alliance Partner at Microsoft Inspire 2017

Finacle positioned as a leader in digital banking offerings in the prestigious Forrester Wave : Digital Banking Engagement Platforms 2017

: Digital Banking Engagement Platforms 2017 Finacle was positioned as a Leader for the 10th time in Gartner's Magic Quadrant - Global Retail Core Banking 2017

About Infosys Ltd.

Infosys is a global leader in technology services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countries to create and execute strategies for their digital transformation. From engineering to application development, knowledge management and business process management, we help our clients find the right problems to solve, and to solve these effectively. Our team of 198,000+ innovators, across the globe, is differentiated by the imagination, knowledge and experience, across industries and technologies that we bring to every project we undertake.

Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise thrive in the digital age.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements mentioned in this release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. These filings are available at www.sec.gov Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law.

Infosys Limited and subsidiaries

Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets as of

(Dollars in millions except equity share data)

September 30, 2017 March 31, 2017 ASSETS Current assets Cash and cash equivalents 3,575 3,489 Current investments 1,857 1,538 Trade receivables 2,056 1,900 Unbilled revenue 633 562 Prepayments and other current assets 797 749 Derivative financial instruments 1 44 Total current assets 8,919 8,282 Non-current assets Property, plant and equipment 1,814 1,807 Goodwill 580 563 Intangible assets 107 120 Investment in associate - 11 Non-current investments 945 984 Deferred income tax assets 111 83 Income tax assets 956 881 Other non-current assets 119 123 Total non-current assets 4,632 4,572 Total assets 13,551 12,854 LIABILITIES AND EQUITY Current liabilities Trade payables 82 57 Derivative financial instruments 10 - Current income tax liabilities 700 599 Client deposits 2 5 Unearned revenue 306 274 Employee benefit obligations 228 209 Provisions 64 63 Other current liabilities 1,025 954 Total current liabilities 2,417 2,161 Non-current liabilities Deferred income tax liabilities 29 32 Other non-current liabilities 21 24 Total liabilities 2,467 2,217 Equity Share capital- `5 ($0.16) par value 2,400,000,000 (2,400,000,000) equity shares authorized, issued and outstanding 2,286,087,194 (2,285,655,150), net of 10,901,258 (11,289,514) treasury shares as of September 30, 2017 (March 31, 2017), respectively 199 199 Share premium 592 587 Retained earnings 12,571 12,190 Cash flow hedge reserve (1) 6 Other reserves 108 - Other components of equity (2,385) (2,345) Total equity attributable to equity holders of the company 11,084 10,637 Non-controlling interests - - Total equity 11,084 10,637 Total liabilities and equity 13,551 12,854

Infosys Limited and subsidiaries

Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income

(Dollars in millions except share and per equity share data)

Three months Three months Six months Six months ended ended ended ended September September September September 30, 2017 30, 2016 30, 2017 30, 2016 Revenues 2,728 2,587 5,379 5,088 Cost of sales 1,743 1,638 3,435 3,231 Gross profit 985 949 1,944 1,857 Operating expenses: Selling and marketing expenses 132 134 269 271 Administrative expenses 194 171 377 340 Total operating expenses 326 305 646 611 Operating profit 659 644 1,298 1,246 Other income, net 137 114 263 226 Share in associate's profit / (loss) - (1) - (1) Write-down of investment in associate - - (11) - Profit before income taxes 796 757 1,550 1,471 Income tax expense 218 218 431 421 Net profit 578 539 1,119 1,050 Other comprehensive income Items that will not be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss: Re-measurements of the net defined benefit liability/asset 1 (6) 1 (9) Cumulative impact on reversal of unrealized gain on quoted debt securities on adoption of IFRS 9 - - - (5) Equity instruments through other comprehensive income, net - - - - Items that will be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss: Fair value changes on investments, net 2 - 6 - Fair value changes on derivatives designated as cash flow hedge, net 3 - (7) - Foreign currency translation (107) 119 (47) (54) Total other comprehensive income, net of tax (101) 113 (47) (68) Total comprehensive income 477 652 1,072 982 Profit attributable to: Owners of the Company 578 539 1,119 1,050 Non-controlling interests - - - - 578 539 1,119 1,050 Total comprehensive income attributable to: Owners of the Company 477 652 1,072 982 Non-controlling interests - - - - 477 652 1,072 982 Earnings per equity share Basic ($) 0.25 0.24 0.49 0.46 Diluted ($) 0.25 0.24 0.49 0.46 Weighted average equity shares used in computing earnings per equity share 2,285,865,36 2,285,641,71 2,285,762,18 2,285,632,08 Basic 1 0 6 1 2,287,526,18 2,285,949,30 2,287,882,53 2,285,875,98 Diluted 3 3 4 8

NOTE:

1. The unaudited Condensed Consolidated Balance sheets and Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income for the three months and six months ended September 30, 2017 have been taken on record at the Board meeting held on October 24, 2017

2. A Fact Sheet providing the operating metrics of the company can be downloaded from www.infosys.com

3. During the quarter ended June 30, 2017, the Company has written down the entire carrying value of the investment in its associate DWA Nova LLC, an Infosys Innovation Fund Investment. The impact of write down on Q1 18 net profit is $11 million

IFRS-INR Press Release: https://www.infosys.com/investors/reports-filings/quarterly-results/2017-2018/q2/Documents/IFRS-INR-press-release.pdf

Fact Sheet: https://www.infosys.com/investors/reports-filings/quarterly-results/2017-2018/q2/Documents/fact-sheet.pdf





Contact

Investor Relations

Sandeep Mahindroo

+91-80-3980-1018

[email protected]

Media Relations

Sarah Vanita Gideon

+91-80-4156-3998

[email protected]

Chiku Somaiya

+1-7136706752

[email protected]

SOURCE Infosys
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana announced the launch of the J. Eugene Marans Scholarship in International Law, which will support students who participate in the school's summer study abroad program in China. Designed and structured by the Fund for Academic Renewal (FAR), the gift is the result of pooled donations from friends of J. Eugene Marans, a proud Montanan with a distinguished career in American and international law.

"After his passing last year, Gene's friends came to us with a mission: to honor and extend his legacy in American and international law," said Jacqueline Pfeffer Merrill, Ph.D., executive director of the Fund for Academic Renewal. "FAR helped the donors to design a gift that reflects their philanthropic vision and will have a lasting impact. We were pleased to work with the Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana to build a program that carries on Gene's intellectual curiosity and passion for international affairs."

Funded with a grant from the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, the Fund for Academic Renewal provides free programmatic and legal advisory services that help donors, family offices, and advisors articulate their philanthropic goals, preserve donor intent, and structure gifts to colleges and universities that foster academic excellence and intellectual diversity. FAR also helps donors identify the specific institution and academic program they wish to support and negotiate terms with the university.

FAR's unique approach addresses common challenges that donors face. It helps donors find the right programs and design gifts to maximize their impact, in some cases by pooling gifts of like-minded donors.

"Gene cared deeply about his home state of Montana, as well as about inspiring future generations to serve as informed contributing members of society," noted Emil Frankel, a longtime friend of Gene and donor to the scholarship fund. "We wanted to bring Gene's many friends and colleagues together to honor his distinguished career and pro bono activities. FAR worked with us to pool our funds and structure a gift that would achieve greater impact for years to come."

Originally from Butte, Gene Marans was an involved citizen from an early age. He served as the governor of Montana Boys State and was a Montana state debate champion. After receiving his law degree from Harvard University, Gene embarked on a preeminent legal career focused on securities, financial, and regulatory matters on a national and international level. One of Gene's proudest achievements was leading the effort to secure voting rights for Americans living overseas, for which he was honored by the United States House of Representatives.

"Our donors enable us to offer Alexander Blewett III School of Law students a wealth of intellectually meaningful experiences that will help them to develop a deeper understanding of international legal work, and prepare them to succeed in life and careers," Paul Kirgis, Dean of the Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana. "The J. Eugene Marans Scholarship in International Law will support our globally-minded students who are eager to understand the political and legal systems in China, one of the world's most powerful economies. We are grateful for the collaboration with FAR, which has enabled us to work with Gene's friends to establish a meaningful program that celebrates a great Montanan and offers an exciting new opportunity for our students."

The scholarship fund will award $1,000 annually to one or two students who plan to take part in the school's international summer program in China. The program is offered in partnership with the Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing and the China Youth University of Political Studies in Beijing. Program courses range from comparative international business law to comparative environmental law.

ABOUT THE FUND FOR ACADEMIC RENEWAL

The Fund for Academic Renewal fosters academic excellence by helping donors maximize the impact of their gifts to colleges and universities. We serve as a trusted advisor to donors, helping them to articulate goals, match with academic programs, and navigate the giving process. A program of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, the Fund provides free programmatic and legal advisory services to individual donors and family offices. To learn more, visit https://www.academicrenewal.org/.

CONTACT: Christina Chandra, 202-851-3603, [email protected]

SOURCE Fund for Academic Renewal

Related Links

https://www.academicrenewal.org


PARIS, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

We are proud to introduce the audio industry's newest player: Funky Sound Studio. This French disruptive audio-focused startup based in Haute Savoie, France and Palo Alto, California is making its first public appearance today.

(Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/588827/Funky_Sound_Studio_Logo.jpg )

Founded by a young visionary entrepreneur addicted to stunning sound and innovative technologies, Arnaud Perret created Funky Sound Studio to fuel his passion. Funky Sound Studio's mission is to "serve the music" by creating beautiful, and even smarter, listening objects designed for the modern world. It is dedicated to inventing best-in-class audio products by pulling inspiration from its French and international know-how in hard and software.

Funky Sound Studio has partnered with the French Investment Bank (BPI), The French Tech, and is supported by a strong team of French investors: Jean-Claude Bontaz, Louis Pernat and Julien Dussaix. Funky Sound Studio has an experienced board of advisors including Sam Hickmann and Antoine Level, both successful serial entrepreneurs, and a skillful engineering team with Antoine Chabert and Tuyen Pham, sound experts, Pierre Voreux co founder and hardware expert, Mickael Fourgeau, VR expert and the multi-awarded designer Xavier Houy. Funky Sound Studio's high-level partners Final, Dolby, A-Volute and Sogilis, complement its powerhouse lineup.

At CES Unveiled in Paris this week, Funky Sound Studio will reveal its brand DEBUSSY and its first intelligent, luxury headphone. DEBUSSY is not only "intelligent sound art," but it reveals a sound experience closer to anything anyone has heard before. DEBUSSY's smart listening objects are dedicated to the passion for music, refinement, excitement, and pleasure. Listening will never be the same again.

Visit us in Paris at CES Unveiled, or at CES in Las Vegas this January.

http://www.funkysound.studio

SOURCE Funky Sound Studio
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, People's United Community Foundation, the charitable arm of People's United Bank, N.A., announced it has awarded a $175,000 grant to Junior Achievement USA to promote financial literacy and career readiness amongst students in six states that align with their footprint, including: Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The award is part of People's United's celebration of their 175th anniversary and is the Foundation's largest single one-time gift since established in 2007.

The beneficiaries of this grant include: Junior Achievement of Southwest New England, Junior Achievement of Western Connecticut, Junior Achievement of Southwest Connecticut, Junior Achievement of New York, Junior Achievement of Maine, Junior Achievement of Northern New England, and Junior Achievement of Western Massachusetts. As part of their support, People's United Bank employees will also volunteer their time, delivering financial literacy programs in elementary schools that coincide with the programs the grant will fund.

"Most of us face financial decisions on a daily basis, but very few Americans receive financial literacy education while in school," said Jack Kosakowski, President and CEO of Junior Achievement USA. "Given the global nature of our economy, it's important that today's young people are better equipped to make important financial decisions for tomorrow. People's United Community Foundation is helping us do that with its considerable support."

"We could not think of a more influential organization to support as part of our 175th anniversary celebration as Junior Achievement USA," said Jack Barnes, President and CEO, People's United Bank. "Their programs help prepare today's youth by laying the foundation for a bright professional and financial future through skills they might otherwise not have exposure to. Throughout our 175 year history community involvement has been at the core of our culture and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Junior Achievement."

Prior to this award, People's United Community Foundation has awarded a total of $175,000 in grants to Junior Achievement affiliates throughout its footprint since 2007. People's United Bank employees have also volunteered countless hours focusing on local elementary, middle and high school education programs.

About People's United Community Foundation

Established in 2007, People's United Community Foundation was formed to help support programs and activities that enhance the quality of life for citizens in the communities that People's United Bank serves. People's United Bank is a subsidiary of People's United Financial, Inc., a diversified financial services company with over $43 billion in assets. People's United Bank, founded in 1842, is a premier, community-based, regional bank in the Northeast offering commercial and retail banking, as well as wealth management services through a network of more than 400 retail locations in Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The funding priorities of the Foundation include affordable housing, community development, and youth development.

About Junior Achievement USA

Junior Achievement is the world's largest organization dedicated to giving young people the knowledge and skills they need to own their economic success, plan for their future, and make smart academic and economic choices. JA programs are delivered by corporate and community volunteers, and provide relevant, hands-on experiences that give students from kindergarten through high school knowledge and skills in financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurship. Today, JA reaches 4.8 million students per year in 109 markets across the United States, with an additional 5.6 million students served by operations in more than 100 countries worldwide. Visit www.ja.org for more information.

Contact:

Ed Grocholski

Junior Achievement USA

(719) 540-6165

[email protected]

SOURCE Junior Achievement USA

Related Links

http://www.ja.org


ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- An empty 55-acre parcel of land in Macomb Township, Michigan may appear to be a risky investment to the average financing institution, but Kennedy Funding Financial didn't see a challenge -- they saw an opportunity to invest in a thriving community.

Kennedy Funding Financial, (www.kennedyfunding.com), the Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey-based direct private lender closed a $1,150,000 loan to Elite Sport Ventures, LLC. The loan is designated to pay off existing debt and for working capital to subdivide the collateral and develop an industrial park at a vacant 55-acre property located at 17300 23 Mile Road, approximately 45 minutes north of Detroit and within short distance from routes 53 and 59 and Interstate 94.

According to Kevin Wolfer, CEO of Kennedy Funding Financial, traditional banks often do not grant land loans in Michigan due to an unsteady job market and stunted industry growth.

"Most of Michigan has seen steady declines in population and in job growth, which makes it a risky prospect according to the rigid requirements set by traditional financing institutions," Wolfer said. "As private lenders, we can examine the merits of each deal independent of any preset factors, so we were able to support Elite Sport Ventures as they pursue a development plan."

Despite Michigan's overall sluggish growth, Macomb County has exhibited promising signs of an improving economy: Macomb Township is Michigan's fastest-growing major municipality, with a 44 percent population increase between 2000 and 2010. The county's industrial real estate market has experienced low vacancy rates and increasing rental rates in recent years. Neighboring Shelby Township will become home to a 1,000,000-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center in 2018, with the potential to bring 1,000 jobs along with it.

"Instead of writing off the development as a high-risk venture in a struggling state, we were able to see the property's potential and share in the borrower's vision," Wolfer said. "The growing population, commerce and industry are all reasons to invest."

Elite Sport Ventures, which acquired the property in December 2014, intends to subdivide the property and develop smaller parcels. A 2.55-acre portion of the site located near 23 Mile Road will be sold and developed into a hotel. Elite Sport Ventures plans to sell a 39.89-acre parcel to a related entity of Michigan property developer and manager Kojaian Companies, pending site plan approval. Additionally, the northern portion of the site may be re-zoned to allow for commercial use; previous plans to reclassify the property for commercial use were denied by the local zoning board.

"Elite Sport Ventures' property is located among materials suppliers, tool shops and many other industrial uses," Wolfer said. "The industrial complex will be right at home at 17300 23 Mile Road."

About Kennedy Funding Financial

Kennedy Funding Financial, is a nationwide direct private lender specializing in bridge loans for commercial property and land acquisition, development, workouts, bankruptcies, and foreclosures. The principals of the company have closed over $2.5 billion in loans to date. The firm's creative financing expertise enables the closing of loans of up to 75% loan-to-value, from $1 million to over $50 million, in as little as five days. Kennedy Funding Financial continues to actively seek new funding opportunities throughout the world.

www.kennedyfunding.com

SOURCE Kennedy Funding Financial

Related Links

http://www.kennedyfunding.com


DURHAM, N.C., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- KNOW Bio, LLC, an innovative life science company committed to improving and extending people's lives, today announced the addition of Haywood Cochrane, Phil Hodges, Harry Smith, and Anne Whitaker to its Board of Managers.

"We are delighted that these four experienced and capable leaders have agreed to join our Board," said Chairman, Neal Hunter. "We look forward to working collaboratively with them to enhance value for all KNOW Bio shareholders."

Hunter added, "As KNOW Bio grows, we are committed to strengthening the management team as demonstrated by the recent appointment of Anne Whitaker as the CEO and President, John Oakley as the CFO, and Dr. Mark Schoenfisch as the Chief Scientific Officer of the Company. Anne, John and Mark have demonstrated their leadership and collaborative style in successfully establishing our first wholly owned biopharmaceutical subsidiary, Novoclem Therapeutics, Inc. Together they make an incredibly dynamic and powerful executive leadership team for KNOW Bio and Novoclem."

KNOW Bio, LLC New Board Members

Haywood Cochrane - Mr. Cochrane is a seasoned industry executive with over 30 years of healthcare, laboratory and diagnostics industry experience in executive and senior management positions. Currently, he is the elected Chair of the Board of Trustees for UNC Chapel Hill. He is the past Chairman of the Board of Directors of DARA Biosciences. He began his career in banking and moved into healthcare where he specialized in being part of a team that rebuilt and grew a number of public and private companies-with the support of venture capital and private equity partners-to create jobs and build long-term shareholder value. He has held senior management and executive positions at companies such as Allied Clinical Laboratories, Roche Biomedical Laboratories, National Health Laboratories, LabCorp, and CHD Meridian Corporate Healthcare, now a unit of Walgreens. He has served as director of I-trax Health Management Solutions, Allied Clinical Laboratories, Tripath Imaging, EV3, American Esoterics, JDN Realty, Sonus Corp., Unilab, and Ameripath, as well as other private companies.

Phil Hodges - Mr. Hodges is a pharmaceutical industry veteran with a significant depth of experience in pharmaceutical development and manufacturing. He currently is a Chairman of Kaio Therapy, Chesson Laboratory Associates, and RFPi, and a Director of Mayne Pharma Group. Phil began his pharmaceutical career at Burroughs Wellcome Company in Greenville as an analytical chemist. In 1994, he transitioned from Glaxo Wellcome to start Metrics, a contract analytical laboratory serving the pharmaceutical industry. Phil led Metrics through the addition of formulations development and clinical batch manufacturing services. Building a state-of-the-art facility in 2000, Metrics completed its evolution to a contract pharmaceutical development company. In 2004, Metrics added Coastal Pharmaceuticals as a generic drug development company. After Metrics was purchased by Mayne Pharma Group in November of 2012, Phil remained President until December of 2013.

Harry L. Smith, Jr. - Mr. Smith is an experienced serial entrepreneur known for his strong leadership and business turn-around capabilities focused on creating jobs and local economic development. He served as the CEO of Flanders Corporation for eight years where he led the company out of bankruptcy to profitability with > $30 million EBITDA. Harry was the Founder and Owner of National Warehouse Leasing and the Co-founder of OakRidge Metals. He joined the startup company Pronamics, which created over 300 jobs in Wilson and Washington, NC.

He is currently a co-owner of Pitt Electric, purchased in bankruptcy and successfully driven to profitability. Harry is the elected Vice Chair of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors where he serves on the Budget and Finance Committee, as well as the Strategic Initiatives Committee.

Anne Whitaker - Ms. Whitaker has over 26 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry with a reputation and proven track record of visionary leadership, turning around businesses, and leading teams to deliver exceptional business results. Anne is a global and multicultural executive who has successfully driven business strategy and growth across multiple continents. In 2012 and 2013, she was recognized by Fierce Pharma as one of the top 25 Most Influential People in BioPharma, and in 2014 as one of the top 25 Most Influential Women in BioPharma.

Currently, Anne is CEO and President of Novoclem Therapeutics. She previously held senior executive leadership roles at Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Synta Pharmaceuticals, Sanofi, and GlaxoSmithKline. She serves on the boards of Cree, KNOW Bio, and Novoclem Therapeutics. She previously served on Synta Pharmaceuticals Board of Directors.

About KNOW Bio LLC

KNOW Bio is a life science company committed to improving and extending people's lives by advancing the development and commercialization of its drug and device pipeline through wholly or majority owned subsidiary companies. Each of the subsidiaries is focused on specific therapeutic applications where nitric oxide can provide a meaningful health benefit.

About Novoclem Therapeutics, Inc.

Novoclem Therapeutics, a subsidiary of KNOW Bio, is an innovative, preclinical-stage pharmaceutical company focused on helping people who suffer from severe respiratory diseases to breath better and live life more fully. It is focused on developing a nitric oxide based treatment for people living with cystic fibrosis and infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The company anticipates submitting an Investigational New Drug application and initiating First in Human clinical trials in 2018. More info available at www.novoclem.com.

Forward-looking Statements

Except for historical information, all of the statements, expectations, and assumptions contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. Actual results might differ materially from those explicit or implicit in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: risks associated with the drug development process; reliance on key personnel; the early stage of our business; competition; and other risks described in other Company press releases and presentations. KNOW Bio and Novoclem Therapeutics assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

Media Contact:

Darlene Dendy

1-919-270-5789

[email protected]



SOURCE KNOW Bio, LLC

Related Links

http://knowbiollc.com


HOUSTON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Kraton Corporation (NYSE: KRA), a leading global producer of styrenic block copolymers, specialty polymers and high-value performance products derived from pine wood pulping co-products, announces financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2017.

THIRD QUARTER 2017 SUMMARY

Third quarter consolidated revenue of $510.9 million , up 12.5% compared to the third quarter of 2016

, up 12.5% compared to the third quarter of 2016 Third quarter consolidated net loss of $4.0 million compared to net income of $15.6 million in the third quarter of 2016

compared to net income of in the third quarter of 2016 Third quarter Adjusted EBITDA (1) of $121.7 million , up 33.6% compared to the third quarter of 2016

of , up 33.6% compared to the third quarter of 2016 Polymer segment Adjusted EBITDA (1) of $77.4 million , with an associated margin (2) of 24.6%, up $27.8 million or 56.0% compared to the third quarter of 2016

of , with an associated margin of 24.6%, up or 56.0% compared to the third quarter of 2016 Chemical segment Adjusted EBITDA (1) of $44.3 million , with an associated margin (2) of 22.5%, up $2.8 million or 6.8% compared to the third quarter of 2016

of , with an associated margin of 22.5%, up or 6.8% compared to the third quarter of 2016 Delivered incremental cost reductions and transaction synergies of $10.7 million , with full realization of $65 million of transaction synergies at September 30, 2017 , ahead of the initial FYE 2018 target



Three Months Ended September 30,

Nine Months Ended September 30,

2017

2016

2017

2016

(In thousands, except percentages and per share amounts) Revenue $ 510,947



$ 454,143



$ 1,494,392



$ 1,328,715

Polymer segment operating income $ 17,802



$ 28,728



$ 95,572



$ 59,936

Chemical segment operating income $ 23,706



$ 22,089



$ 66,864



$ 40,894

Net income (loss) attributable to Kraton $ (4,033)



$ 15,560



$ 27,941



$ 111,048

Adjusted EBITDA (non-GAAP)(1) $ 121,687



$ 91,074



$ 288,738



$ 276,911

Adjusted EBITDA margin (non-GAAP)(2) 23.8 %

20.1 %

19.3 %

20.8 % Diluted earnings (loss) per share $ (0.13)



$ 0.49



$ 0.88



$ 3.56

Adjusted diluted earnings per share (non-GAAP)(1) $ 1.51



$ 0.63



$ 1.88



$ 2.07

































(1) See non-GAAP reconciliations included in the accompanying financial tables for the reconciliation of each non-GAAP measure to its most directly comparable GAAP measure. (2) Defined as Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue.

"Kraton's favorable results for the third quarter 2017 reflect notable margin expansion and solid volume growth in our Polymer segment and improving fundamentals in our Chemical segment, where we posted our second quarter of sequential growth in Adjusted EBITDA and a return to Adjusted EBITDA margins above 22%. Building upon good business momentum in the second quarter, we posted consolidated Adjusted EBITDA of $122 million for the third quarter of 2017. This result was up $31 million or nearly 34% compared to the third quarter 2016, with a 370 basis point improvement in Adjusted EBITDA margin to 23.8%," said Kevin M. Fogarty, Kraton's President and Chief Executive Officer. "As a result of our strong third quarter results, and in light of our overall year-to-date performance, we now expect that Adjusted EBITDA for the full-year 2017 will be approximately $375 million."

"As anticipated, cash generation continued to increase into the third quarter, and as a result we reduced Kraton net debt by $87 million in the quarter. For the full year 2017, we expect to reduce Kraton net debt by $125 to $150 million, despite incurring $16 million of financing costs in the first nine months of the year," said Fogarty. "During the quarter we repriced the USD tranche of our Term Loan Facility and issued a Euro tranche under the Term Loan Facility to further reduce interest expense," Fogarty added.

"With regard to ongoing cost reset initiatives in our Polymer segment and transaction synergies associated with the acquisition of our Chemical segment, as of September 30th we achieved our $65 million synergy goal, well ahead of our original year-end 2018 target. We now expect to realize approximately $50 million of our $70 million cost reset goal by year-end 2017, and we expect the full $70 million run rate to be achieved in 2018," Fogarty said.

Status of Synergies, Operational Improvement, and Cost Reduction Initiatives

We previously announced synergies and operational improvement initiatives associated with our January 6, 2016 acquisition of Arizona Chemical (the "Arizona Chemical Acquisition") and a cost reduction initiative targeted at lowering costs in our Polymer segment. Following is a summary of the status of these initiatives:



Cumulative through

September 30, 2017

December 31, 2016

(In thousands) General and administrative synergies $ 23,609



$ 17,663

Operational improvements 41,044



19,223

Cost reduction 40,690



31,338



$ 105,343



$ 68,224



Polymer Segment



Three Months Ended September 30,

Nine Months Ended September 30,(3)

2017

2016

2017

2016 Revenue (In thousands, except percentages) Cariflex $ 43,031



$ 45,303



$ 124,433



$ 126,513

Specialty Polymers 94,313



89,107



285,712



256,197

Performance Products 175,968



138,479



508,820



403,214

Other 847



81



1,260



208



$ 314,159



$ 272,970



$ 920,225



$ 786,132

















Operating income $ 17,802



$ 28,728



$ 95,572



$ 59,936

Adjusted EBITDA (non-GAAP) (1) $ 77,363



$ 49,576



$ 172,233



$ 141,023

Adjusted EBITDA margin (non-GAAP)(2) 24.6 %

18.2 %

18.7 %

17.9 %























(1) See non-GAAP reconciliations included in the accompanying financial tables for the reconciliation of each non-GAAP measure to its most directly comparable GAAP measure. (2) Defined as Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue. (3) The nine month information is provided for comparative purposes only.

Q3 2017 VERSUS Q3 2016 RESULTS

Revenue for the Polymer segment was $314.2 million for the three months ended September 30, 2017 compared to $273.0 million for the three months ended September 30, 2016. Sales volumes of 91.9 kilotons for the three months ended September 30, 2017 increased 6.9% compared to the three months ended September 30, 2016. Performance Products volumes increased 11.1%, Specialty Polymers volumes decreased 3.8% (excluding the effect of the sale of the compounding business, sales volumes would have been relatively flat), and Cariflex volumes decreased 1.3%. The positive effect from changes in currency exchange rates between the periods was $3.3 million.

For the three months ended September 30, 2017, the Polymer segment generated Adjusted EBITDA (non-GAAP) of $77.4 million compared to $49.6 million for the three months ended September 30, 2016. The increase was due to higher volumes and improved unit margins, primarily driven by higher selling prices. See a reconciliation of GAAP operating income to non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA below.

Chemical Segment

The following results of operations for the Chemical segment have been included in our consolidated results since January 6, 2016.



Three Months Ended September 30, 2017

Three Months Ended September 30, 2016

Nine Months Ended September 30, 2017(3)

For the period January 6, 2016 through September 30, 2016 Revenue (In thousands, except percentages) Adhesives $ 64,159



$ 60,771



$ 192,796



$ 186,903

Performance Chemicals 106,280



96,244



304,877



284,597

Roads and Construction 12,940



13,778



38,579



40,845

Tires 13,409



10,380



37,915



30,238



$ 196,788



$ 181,173



$ 574,167



$ 542,583

















Operating income $ 23,706



$ 22,089



$ 66,864



$ 40,894

Adjusted EBITDA (non-GAAP) (1) $ 44,324



$ 41,498



$ 116,505



$ 135,888

Adjusted EBITDA margin (non-GAAP)(2) 22.5 %

22.9 %

20.3 %

25.0 %

























(1) See non-GAAP reconciliations included in the accompanying financial tables for the reconciliation of each non-GAAP measure to its most directly comparable GAAP measure. (2) Defined as Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue. (3) The nine month information is provided for comparative purposes only.

Q3 2017 VERSUS Q3 2016 RESULTS

Revenue for the Chemical segment was $196.8 million for the three months ended September 30, 2017 compared to $181.2 million for the three months ended September 30, 2016. Sales volumes were 107.8 kilotons for the three months ended September 30, 2017, an increase of 3.5 kilotons or 3.3%. Adhesives volumes increased 5.1%, Performance Chemicals volumes increased 2.7%, and Tires volumes increased 12.3%, and Roads and Construction volumes decreased 1.1%. The positive effect from changes in currency exchange rates between the periods was $3.7 million.

For the three months ended September 30, 2017, the Chemical segment generated $44.3 million of Adjusted EBITDA (non-GAAP) compared to $41.5 million for the three months ended September 30, 2016. The increase in Adjusted EBITDA reflects higher sales volumes and stable overall unit margins compared to 2016. See a reconciliation of GAAP operating income to non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA below.

CASH FLOW AND CAPITAL STRUCTURE

During the nine months ended September 30, 2017 (excluding borrowings under the Kraton Formosa Polymers Corporation (KFPC) Loan Agreement) we decreased Kraton Corporation net indebtedness by $69.4 million ($84.9 million excluding refinancing costs).

Summary of principal amounts for indebtedness and a reconciliation of Kraton debt to Kraton net debt and consolidated net debt (non-GAAP):



September 30, 2017

December 31, 2016

(In thousands) USD Tranche $ 500,000



$ 1,278,000

Euro Tranche 281,005





10.5% Senior Notes 440,000



440,000

7.0% Senior Notes 400,000





ABL 





Capital lease 2,339



3,042

Kraton debt 1,623,344



1,721,042

Kraton cash 79,307



107,599

Kraton net debt 1,544,037



1,613,443









KFPC(1) loan 146,451



115,854

KFPC(1) cash 9,811



14,150

KFPC(1) net debt 136,640



101,704









Consolidated net debt $ 1,680,677



$ 1,715,147

























(1) This amount includes all of the indebtedness of our Kraton Formosa Polymers Corporation (KFPC) joint venture, located in Mailiao, Taiwan, which we own a 50% stake in and consolidate within our financial statements.

USE OF NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES

This press release includes the use of both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. The non-GAAP financial measures are EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA margin, Adjusted Diluted Earnings per Share, and Net Debt. Tables included in this earnings release reconcile each of these non-GAAP financial measures with the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP financial measure. For additional information on the impact of the spread between the FIFO basis of accounting and estimated current replacement cost ("ECRC"), see Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016.

We consider these non-GAAP financial measures to be important supplemental measures of our performance and believe they are frequently used by investors, securities analysts and other interested parties in the evaluation of our performance including period-to-period comparisons and/or that of other companies in our industry. Further, management uses these measures to evaluate operating performance, and our incentive compensation plan bases incentive compensation payments on our Adjusted EBITDA performance and attainment of net debt, along with other factors. These non-GAAP financial measures have limitations as analytical tools and in some cases can vary substantially from other measures of our performance. You should not consider them in isolation, or as a substitute for analysis of our results under U.S. GAAP in the United States.

EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, and Adjusted EBITDA Margin: For our consolidated results, EBITDA represents net income (loss) before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. For each reporting segment, EBITDA represents operating income before depreciation and amortization, disposition and exit of business activities and earnings of unconsolidated joint ventures. Among other limitations EBITDA does not: reflect the significant interest expense on our debt or reflect the significant depreciation and amortization expense associated with our long-lived assets; and EBITDA included herein should not be used for purposes of assessing compliance or non-compliance with financial covenants under our debt agreements. The calculation of EBITDA in our debt agreements includes adjustments, such as extraordinary, non-recurring or one-time charges, proforma cost savings, certain non-cash items, turnaround costs, and other items included in the definition of EBITDA in the debt agreements. Other companies in our industry may calculate EBITDA differently than we do, limiting its usefulness as a comparative measure. As an analytical tool, Adjusted EBITDA is subject to all the limitations applicable to EBITDA. We prepare Adjusted EBITDA by eliminating from EBITDA the impact of a number of items we do not consider indicative of our on-going performance, including the spread between FIFO and ECRC, but you should be aware that in the future we may incur expenses similar to the adjustments in this presentation. Our presentation of Adjusted EBITDA should not be construed as an inference that our future results will be unaffected by unusual or non-recurring items. In addition, due to volatility in raw material prices, Adjusted EBITDA may, and often does, vary substantially from EBITDA and other performance measures, including net income calculated in accordance with U.S. GAAP. We define Adjusted EBITDA Margin as Adjusted EBITDA as a percentage of revenue (for each reporting segment or on a consolidated basis, if applicable). Because of these and other limitations, EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA should not be considered as a measure of discretionary cash available to us to invest in the growth of our business.

Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share: We prepare Adjusted Diluted Earnings per Share by eliminating from Diluted Earnings (loss) per Share the impact of a number of non-recurring items we do not consider indicative of our on-going performance, including the spread between FIFO and ECRC.

Net Debt: We define net debt for Kraton as total debt (excluding debt of KFPC) less cash and cash equivalents. We define consolidated net debt as Kraton net debt plus debt of KFPC less KFPC's cash and cash equivalents. Management uses net debt to determine our outstanding debt obligations that would not readily be satisfied by its cash and cash equivalents on hand. Management believes that using net debt is useful to investors in determining our leverage since we could choose to use cash and cash equivalents to retire debt. In addition, management believes that presenting Kraton's net debt excluding KFPC is useful because KFPC has its own capital structure.

CONFERENCE CALL AND WEBCAST INFORMATION

Kraton has scheduled a conference call on Wednesday, October 25, 2017 at 9:00 a.m. (Eastern Time) to discuss third quarter 2017 financial results. Kraton invites you to listen to the conference call, which will be broadcast live over the internet at www.kraton.com, by selecting the "Investor Relations" link at the top of the home page and then selecting "Events" from the Investor Relations menu on the Investor Relations page.

You may also listen to the conference call by telephone by contacting the conference call operator 5 to 10 minutes prior to the scheduled start time and asking for the "Kraton Conference Call  Passcode: Earnings Call." U.S./Canada dial-in 800-857-6511. International dial-in #: 210-839-8886.

For those unable to listen to the live call, a replay will be available beginning at approximately 11:00 a.m. (Eastern Time) on October 25, 2017 through 1:59 a.m. (Eastern Time) on November 18, 2017. To hear a replay of the call over the Internet, access Kraton's Website at www.kraton.com by selecting the "Investor Relations" link at the top of the home page and then selecting "Events" from the Investor Relations menu on the Investor Relations page. To hear a telephonic replay of the call, dial 800-551-8152 or 203-369-3810.

ABOUT KRATON CORPORATION

Kraton Corporation (NYSE: KRA) is a leading global producer of styrenic block copolymers, specialty polymers and high-value performance products derived from pine wood pulping co-products. Kraton's polymers are used in a wide range of applications, including adhesives, coatings, consumer and personal care products, sealants and lubricants, and medical, packaging, automotive, paving and roofing applications. As the largest global provider in the pine chemicals industry, the company's pine-based specialty products are sold into adhesive, road and construction and tire markets, and it produces and sells a broad range of performance chemicals into markets that include fuel additives, oilfield chemicals, coatings, metalworking fluids and lubricants, inks and mining. Kraton offers its products to a diverse customer base in numerous countries worldwide.

Kraton, the Kraton logo and design, and Cariflex are all trademarks of Kraton Polymers LLC or its affiliates.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

Some of the statements and information in this press release contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This press release includes forward-looking statements that reflect our plans, beliefs, expectations, and current views with respect to, among other things, future events and financial performance. Forward-looking statements are often identified by words such as "outlook," "believes," "target," "estimates," "expects," "projects," "may," "intends," "plans", "on track", or "anticipates," or by discussions of strategy, plans or intentions, including, but not limited to our expectations with respect to full-year 2017 Adjusted EBITDA results, 2017 net debt reduction, and the amount and timing of our cost reset initiatives.

All forward-looking statements in this press release are made based on management's current expectations and estimates, which involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other important factors that could cause actual results, performance or our achievements, or industry results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are more fully described in our latest Annual Report on Form 10-K, including but not limited to "Part I, Item 1A. Risk Factors" and "Part II, Item 7. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" therein, and in our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and include, but are not limited to, risks related to: the integration of Arizona Chemical (now, AZ Chem Holdings LP); Kraton's ability to repay its indebtedness; Kraton's reliance on third parties for the provision of significant operating and other services; conditions in the global economy and capital markets; fluctuations in raw material costs; limitations in the availability of raw materials; competition in Kraton's end-use markets; and other factors of which we are currently unaware or deem immaterial. There may be other factors of which we are currently unaware or deem immaterial that may cause our actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. In addition, to the extent any inconsistency or conflict exists between the information included in this report and the information included in our prior reports and other filings with the SEC, the information contained in this report updates and supersedes such information. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and we assume no obligation to update such information in light of new information or future events.

KRATON CORPORATION CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (Unaudited) (In thousands, except per share data)



Three Months Ended September 30,

Nine Months Ended September 30,

2017

2016

2017

2016 Revenue $ 510,947



$ 454,143



$ 1,494,392



$ 1,328,715

Cost of goods sold 382,228



318,887



1,075,051



967,744

Gross profit 128,719



135,256



419,341



360,971

Operating expenses:













Research and development 10,325



9,693



30,429



30,383

Selling, general, and administrative 42,579



42,769



124,436



135,845

Depreciation and amortization 34,307



31,977



102,040



93,913

Operating income 41,508



50,817



162,436



100,830

Disposition and exit of business activities 











40,001

Loss on extinguishment of debt (15,632)







(35,370)



(13,423)

Earnings of unconsolidated joint venture 125



94



370



274

Interest expense, net (33,017)



(33,870)



(101,766)



(101,450)

Income (loss) before income taxes (7,016)



17,041



25,670



26,232

Income tax benefit (expense) 2,165



(2,198)



(2,907)



83,024

Consolidated net income (loss) (4,851)



14,843



22,763



109,256

Net loss attributable to noncontrolling interest 818



717



5,178



1,792

Net income (loss) attributable to Kraton $ (4,033)



$ 15,560



$ 27,941



$ 111,048

Earnings (loss) per common share:













Basic $ (0.13)



$ 0.50



$ 0.90



$ 3.60

Diluted $ (0.13)



$ 0.49



$ 0.88



$ 3.56

Weighted average common shares outstanding:













Basic 30,625



30,221



30,548



30,137

Diluted 30,625



30,783



31,006



30,557



KRATON CORPORATION CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (In thousands, except par value)



September 30, 2017

December 31, 2016

(unaudited)



ASSETS





Current assets:





Cash and cash equivalents $ 89,118



$ 121,749

Receivables, net of allowances of $1,406 and $814 253,437



200,860

Inventories of products, net 362,831



327,996

Inventories of materials and supplies, net 24,832



22,392

Prepaid expenses 36,348



35,851

Other current assets 45,993



37,658

Total current assets 812,559



746,506

Property, plant, and equipment, less accumulated depreciation of $505,660 and $411,418 942,834



906,722

Goodwill 773,635



770,012

Intangible assets, less accumulated amortization of $184,614 and $144,946 416,747



439,198

Investment in unconsolidated joint venture 12,098



11,195

Debt issuance costs 2,633



3,511

Deferred income taxes 8,766



6,907

Other long-term assets 23,334



22,594

Total assets $ 2,992,606



$ 2,906,645

LIABILITIES AND EQUITY





Current liabilities:





Current portion of long-term debt $ 33,553



$ 41,825

Accounts payable-trade 156,426



150,081

Other payables and accruals 151,856



130,398

Due to related party 16,045



14,669

Total current liabilities 357,880



336,973

Long-term debt, net of current portion 1,667,074



1,697,700

Deferred income taxes 215,145



211,396

Other long-term liabilities 168,139



170,339

Total liabilities 2,408,238



2,416,408









Equity:





Kraton stockholders' equity:





Preferred stock, $0.01 par value; 100,000 shares authorized; none issued 





Common stock, $0.01 par value; 500,000 shares authorized; 31,261 shares issued and outstanding at September 30, 2017; 30,960 shares issued and outstanding at December 31, 2016 313



310

Additional paid in capital 369,702



361,682

Retained earnings 282,380



254,439

Accumulated other comprehensive loss (97,105)



(158,530)

Total Kraton stockholders' equity 555,290



457,901

Noncontrolling interest 29,078



32,336

Total equity 584,368



490,237

Total liabilities and equity $ 2,992,606



$ 2,906,645



KRATON CORPORATION CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (Unaudited) (In thousands)



Nine Months Ended September 30,

2017

2016 CASH FLOWS FROM OPERATING ACTIVITIES





Consolidated net income $ 22,763



$ 109,256

Adjustments to reconcile consolidated net income to net cash provided by operating activities:





Depreciation and amortization 102,040



93,913

Amortization of debt original issue discount 4,926



4,893

Amortization of debt issuance costs 6,309



5,343

(Gain) loss on disposal of property, plant, and equipment 61



452

Disposition and exit of business activities 



(40,001)

Loss on extinguishment of debt 35,370



13,423

Earnings from unconsolidated joint venture, net of dividends received 67



136

Deferred income tax benefit (3,526)



(4,343)

Release of valuation allowance 



(86,631)

Share-based compensation 7,366



7,272

Decrease (increase) in:





Accounts receivable (38,921)



(18,114)

Inventories of products, materials, and supplies (19,126)



44,035

Other assets (6,171)



(3,044)

Increase (decrease) in:





Accounts payable-trade 2,267



(2,981)

Other payables and accruals 26,851



(401)

Other long-term liabilities (5,433)



4,631

Due to related party 606



(1,710)

Net cash provided by operating activities 135,449



126,129

CASH FLOWS FROM INVESTING ACTIVITIES





Kraton purchase of property, plant, and equipment (71,595)



(62,885)

KFPC purchase of property, plant, and equipment (11,790)



(16,995)

Purchase of software and other intangibles (4,959)



(4,691)

Acquisition, net of cash acquired 



(1,312,105)

Sale of assets 



72,803

Net cash used in investing activities (88,344)



(1,323,873)

CASH FLOWS FROM FINANCING ACTIVITIES





Proceeds from debt 739,167



1,782,965

Repayments of debt (837,012)



(480,133)

KFPC proceeds from debt 39,898



24,368

KFPC repayments of debt (16,244)





Capital lease payments (703)



(105)

Purchase of treasury stock (2,297)



(967)

Proceeds from the exercise of stock options 2,954



2,625

Settlement of interest rate swap (879)



(5,155)

Settlement of foreign currency hedges (716)





Debt issuance costs (13,929)



(57,646)

Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities (89,761)



1,265,952

Effect of exchange rate differences on cash 10,025



5,291

Net increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents (32,631)



73,499

Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of period 121,749



70,049

Cash and cash equivalents, end of period $ 89,118



$ 143,548

Supplemental disclosures:





Cash paid during the period for income taxes, net of refunds received $ 12,030



$ 7,788

Cash paid during the period for interest, net of capitalized interest $ 72,288



$ 56,972

Capitalized interest $ 3,334



$ 4,022

Supplemental non-cash disclosures:





Property, plant, and equipment accruals $ 17,268



$ 30,494



KRATON CORPORATION RECONCILIATION OF NET INCOME (LOSS) ATTRIBUTABLE TO KRATON AND OPERATING INCOME TO NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES (Unaudited) (In thousands)



Three Months Ended September 30, 2017

Three Months Ended September 30, 2016

Polymer

Chemical

Total

Polymer

Chemical

Total Net income (loss) attributable to Kraton







$ (4,033)











$ 15,560

Net loss attributable to noncontrolling interest







(818)











(717)

Consolidated net income (loss)







(4,851)











14,843

Add (deduct):





















Income tax expense (benefit)







(2,165)











2,198

Interest expense, net







33,017











33,870

Earnings of unconsolidated joint venture







(125)











(94)

Loss on extinguishment of debt







15,632













Operating income $ 17,802



$ 23,706



$ 41,508



$ 28,728



$ 22,089



$ 50,817

Add (deduct):





















Depreciation and amortization 17,342



16,965



34,307



14,977



17,000



31,977

Loss on extinguishment of debt (15,632)







(15,632)













Earnings of unconsolidated joint venture 125







125



94







94

EBITDA 19,637



40,671



60,308



43,799



39,089



82,888

Add (deduct):





















Transaction, acquisition related costs, restructuring, and other costs (a) 2,240



61



2,301



7,216



530



7,746

Loss on extinguishment of debt 15,632







15,632













Weather related costs (b) 760



1,320



2,080













KFPC startup costs (c) 2,424







2,424



1,421







1,421

Non-cash compensation expense 2,219







2,219



2,141







2,141

Spread between FIFO and ECRC 34,451



2,272



36,723



(5,001)



1,879



(3,122)

Adjusted EBITDA $ 77,363



$ 44,324



$ 121,687



$ 49,576



$ 41,498



$ 91,074























(a) Charges related to the evaluation of acquisition transactions, severance expenses, and other restructuring related charges. (b) Costs related to Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma. (c) Startup costs related to the joint venture company, KFPC.

KRATON CORPORATION RECONCILIATION OF NET INCOME ATTRIBUTABLE TO KRATON AND OPERATING INCOME (LOSS) TO NON-GAAP FINANCIAL MEASURES (Unaudited) (In thousands)



Nine Months Ended September 30, 2017

Nine Months Ended September 30, 2016

Polymer

Chemical

Total

Polymer

Chemical(e)

Total Net income attributable to Kraton







$ 27,941











$ 111,048

Net loss attributable to noncontrolling interest







(5,178)











(1,792)

Consolidated net income







22,763











109,256

Add (deduct):





















Income tax expense (benefit)







2,907











(83,024)

Interest expense, net







101,766











101,450

Earnings of unconsolidated joint venture







(370)











(274)

Loss on extinguishment of debt







35,370











13,423

Disposition and exit of business activities



















(40,001)

Operating income $ 95,572



$ 66,864



$ 162,436



$ 59,936



$ 40,894



$ 100,830

Add (deduct):





















Depreciation and amortization 50,439



51,601



102,040



45,199



48,714



93,913

Disposition and exit of business activities 











40,001







40,001

Loss on extinguishment of debt (35,370)







(35,370)



(13,423)







(13,423)

Earnings of unconsolidated joint venture 370







370



274







274

EBITDA 111,011



118,465



229,476



131,987



89,608



221,595

Add (deduct):





















Transaction, acquisition related costs, restructuring, and other costs (a) 11,493



(509)



10,984



19,255



7,773



27,028

Disposition and exit of business activities 











(40,001)







(40,001)

Loss on extinguishment of debt 35,370







35,370



13,423







13,423

Effect of purchase price accounting on inventory valuation (b) 















24,719



24,719

Weather related costs (c) 760



1,320



2,080













KFPC startup costs (d) 9,664







9,664



3,280







3,280

Non-cash compensation expense 7,366







7,366



7,272







7,272

Spread between FIFO and ECRC (3,431)



(2,771)



(6,202)



5,807



13,788



19,595

Adjusted EBITDA $ 172,233



$ 116,505



$ 288,738



$ 141,023



$ 135,888



$ 276,911



















(a) Charges related to the evaluation of acquisition transactions, severance expenses, and other restructuring related charges. (b) Higher costs of goods sold for our Chemical segment related to the fair value adjustment in purchase accounting for their inventory. (c) Costs related to Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma. (d) Startup costs related to the joint venture company, KFPC. (e) Chemical segment results are included since January 6, 2016.

KRATON CORPORATION RECONCILIATION OF DILUTED EARNINGS PER SHARE TO ADJUSTED DILUTED EARNINGS PER SHARE (Unaudited)



Three Months Ended September 30,

Nine Months Ended September 30,

2017

2016

2017

2016 Diluted earnings (loss) per share $ (0.13)



$ 0.49



$ 0.88



$ 3.56

Transaction, acquisition related costs, restructuring, and other costs (a) 0.05



0.20



0.25



0.72

Disposition and exit of business activities 











(0.82)

Loss on extinguishment of debt 0.32







0.72



0.28

Weather related costs (b) 0.04







0.04





Effect of purchase price accounting on inventory valuation (c) 











0.63

KFPC startup costs (d) 0.04



0.02



0.16



0.04

Valuation allowance (e) 











(2.77)

Spread between FIFO and ECRC 1.19



(0.08)



(0.17)



0.43

Adjusted diluted earnings per share (non-GAAP) $ 1.51



$ 0.63



$ 1.88



$ 2.07















(a) Charges related to the evaluation of acquisition transactions, severance expenses, and other restructuring related charges. (b) Costs related to Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma. (c) We had higher costs of goods sold for our Chemical segment related to the fair value adjustment in purchase accounting for their inventory. (d) Startup costs related to the joint venture company, KFPC. (e) Reduction of income tax valuation allowance related to the assessment of our ability to utilize net operating losses in future periods.

For Further Information:

H. Gene Shiels 281-504-4886

SOURCE Kraton Corporation

Related Links

http://www.kraton.com


WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Learning Ovations, Digital Promise, UC Irvine (UCI), and MDRC have been awarded a U.S. Department of Education five-year Education Innovation and Research (EIR) expansion grant totaling $14.65 million for the United2Read project.

United2Read project partners will bring Learning Ovation's "A2i" technology professional support system to students and teachers nationwide with the goal of improving literacy skills and closing the achievement gap, which are national priorities. A2i, or assessment-to-instruction, has strong evidence of efficacy based on results of randomized controlled trials and quasi-experiments conducted since 2005 in 30 schools and more than 190 classrooms in Florida and Arizona. The first study in 2005-06, published in Science magazine, with 10 schools randomly assigned to treatment or control conditions, showed that first graders whose teachers used A2i and received professional development achieved stronger literacy skills than their peers in the control classrooms.

"A2i is a researched-based instructional tool that informs teachers on the right amount and type of reading instruction so that they can effectively differentiate instruction for all students' needs," explains Amanda Jacobs, principal at Phoenix Collegiate Academy and user of the A2i professional support system. "A2i was a major relief to our literacy teachers. They had the data to tell them what to do and the tools to help them build concrete lessons and next steps. They felt confident in their instructional decision-making. As a result, students are growing much faster and teacher morale is much higher."

"Our mission is to close the Digital Learning Gap and create an environment where everyone has the opportunity to learn, supported by technology and research," said Karen Cator, president and CEO of Digital Promise. "We are thrilled to join with our esteemed partners and take this research-based strategy to the League of Innovative Schools and beyond to help ensure students are reading at or above grade level."

"Partnerships of this character can serve as a model for improving education in the 21st Century. By leveraging external partners, our extraordinary faculty can accelerate the broad dissemination and use of evidence-based solutions to literacy and other pressing educational needs facing our nation. It's truly thrilling to see the work of professors Carol Connor and Deborah Vandell impacting the educational lives of tens of thousands of students in more than 300 schools," said Richard Arum, dean of the University of California, Irvine's School of Education.

Many high-need students do not achieve literacy proficiency because they do not receive effective personalized literacy instruction during the early elementary grades. The A2i professional support technology is a data-driven system that was designed by and for teachers.

While the grant emphasizes high-need student success, the partnership's ability to expand nationwide is made possible by the fact that the individualization afforded by A2i benefits ALL children. Subsequent studies of the cumulative effects (2012) of using the A2i's professional support systems from kindergarten through third grade, have shown children finishing third grade reading at an average fifth grade level. These results were only possible given that both struggling and successful readers showed significant improvement.

At least 300 schools and 100,000 students in K-3rd grade will be served through the grant. One hundred and fifty-five schools have already been identified, many including Digital Promise's League of Innovative Schools network.

"We are excited to be the partner in this project that evaluates scale-up strategies for a state-of-the-art reading program that leverages technology in many creative and useful ways," said Fred Doolittle, Vice President and Director of K-12 Education at MDRC.

Partners and Roles:

Learning Ovations will provide the A2i software platform, individual school partners, teacher coaching, online assessments, full data reporting, and customized technology support to each district based on their choice of curricula, assessment, and LMS. Learning Ovations supports schools and shares accountability in achieving these results for children. Digital Promise will act as the overall project manager and fiscal agent, engage school participants through its League of Innovative Schools network, provide qualitative research, and offer guidance in line with its Learner Positioning Systems initiative, which provides research-based personalized learning supports for the full diversity of learners. UCI will serve as the research lead and will advise on all aspects of professional development, partnering with schools, and improving the A2i technology (isilearn.net). The School of Education is ranked in the top 25 in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report. MDRC, the evaluation partner in the project, will conduct a school-level randomized controlled trial study of the expansion of United2Read.

The outcomes of the initiative are twofold:

(1) Achieve strong student literacy outcomes for students using the A2i professional support system in at least 300 schools across the nation, serving over 100,000 students; and

(2) Identify and remove critical barriers to scale including a literacy scan, an independent evaluation of the professional development protocols to test the cost effectiveness of moving to technology-based PD, and investigate how IBM-Watson can facilitate administrative processes.

About Learning Ovations

Learning Ovations Inc. was founded to bring evidence-based and rigorously tested interventions and instructional practices to schools with the aim of raising learning outcomes for all students. Learning Ovations combines technology and professional development to provide educators with the tools, data, and know-how to effectively individualize literacy instruction from kindergarten through third grade. The patented, A2i technology platform, coupled with professional development is proven to raise reading achievement for all students to at or above grade level by the end of third grade. The A2i professional support system links language and literacy assessment results to recommendations for specific amounts and types of reading instruction thru evidence-based algorithms.

About Digital Promise

Digital Promise is a nonprofit organization authorized by Congress to spur innovation in education to improve the opportunity to learn for all Americans. Through its work with educators, entrepreneurs, researchers, and leading thinkers, Digital Promise supports a comprehensive agenda to benefit lifelong learning and provide Americans with the knowledge and skills needed to compete in the global economy. For more information, visit the Digital Promise website and follow @digitalpromise for updates.

About the University of California, Irvine

Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 30,000 students and offers 192 degree programs. It's located in one of the world's safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County's second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.

About MDRC

Founded in 1974, MDRC is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that develops, evaluates, and improves education and social programs that serve low-income children, adults, and families. Visit our website (www.mdrc.org) or follow us on Twitter (@MDRC_News) for more information.

Media Contacts:

Learning Ovations: Joseph A. Connor

Founder / CEO

734-904-1459

[email protected]

Digital Promise: Kristin Atkins

650-815-6934

[email protected]

UCI: Pat Harriman

949-824-9055

[email protected]

MDRC: John Hutchins

212-340-8604

[email protected]

SOURCE Digital Promise
RESTON, Va., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Leidos (NYSE: LDOS), a FORTUNE 500 science and technology company, was awarded a prime contract by the U.S. Army to support the Afghanistan Air Force (AAF) and Special Mission Wing (SMW) helicopter and fixed-wing fleets. Work will be performed in Kabul, Afghanistan, with an estimated completion date of May 31, 2020 at a total potential contract value up to $728 million.

Through the Afghanistan Contractor Logistics Support contract, Leidos will deliver all flight operations, maintenance, and logistics, and will provide mentoring for the AAF and SMW to operate and maintain aircraft. Leidos has applied its logistics and operations expertise in Afghanistan to support the AAF and SMW, while also providing aviation services to the customer.

"This award reflects our commitment to the customer's mission," said Leidos Defense & Intelligence President Tim Reardon. "We look forward to continuing to provide superior flight operations, maintenance, logistics, and mentoring expertise."

About Leidos

Leidos is a FORTUNE 500 science and technology solutions and services leader working to solve the world's toughest challenges in the defense, intelligence, homeland security, civil, and health markets. The company's 32,000 employees support vital missions for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Leidos reported annual revenues of approximately $7.04 billion for the fiscal year ended December 30, 2016. For more information, visit www.Leidos.com.

Statements in this announcement, other than historical data and information, constitute forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause our actual results, performance, achievements, or industry results to be very different from the results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Some of these factors include, but are not limited to, the risk factors set forth in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the period ended December 30, 2016, and other such filings that Leidos makes with the SEC from time to time. Due to such uncertainties and risks, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof.

SOURCE Leidos

Related Links

http://www.leidos.com


Roger Sutton, Liftow's President and CEO, stated that the acquisition of MasonLift "will have a significant impact on Liftow's presence in the forklift market. We plan on taking advantage of the respective strengths that exist in both companies to create overall improvement."

"This is a momentous day for our company and we are excited to welcome the talented colleagues at MasonLift to the Liftow family, their addition will enhance the depth of our team", said Roger Sutton.

MasonLift's majority shareholder, George Peles, stated, "The culture of the two organizations were aligned with both believing in the same old-fashioned values and principles throughout their storied histories and it is anticipated that shared best practices will create further efficiencies for the combined entity".

About Liftow

Founded more than 50 years ago, Liftow's mission is to provide its customers with the most exceptional material handling equipment, products, training, and customer service in the industry. The Company is dedicated to establishing a true partnership with its customers, while finding the safest, most productive, and cost-efficient solutions for their material handling needs.

About MasonLift

With unmatched customer service capabilities, with the largest number of trained technicians and the largest forklift rental fleet in British Columbia, MasonLift is an industry leader. For over 70 years, MasonLift, has provided mobile material handling solutions to businesses throughout British Columbia.

Additional Information

Additional information about Liftow and MasonLift is available at the companies' websites www.Liftow.com and www.Masonlift.com .

SOURCE Liftow Limited
NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Enterprise CXOs today are rapidly adopting a "cloud first" approach to their organizations' growing IT infrastructure needs. While some compute functions are still best managed on premise, an extensible hybrid cloud IT strategy can deliver a more cost-effective, pay-as-you-go model that increases the agility needed in a modern workplace while decreasing capital expenditures. To help, Logicalis US, an international IT solutions and managed services provider (www.us.logicalis.com), announced today the expansion of its cloud-first infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) capabilities, offering enterprise customers the assistance they need to migrate key workloads to the Microsoft Azure cloud.

"Our goal is to support our customers' cloud-first visions by helping them put their infrastructure in the cloud," says Wendy McQuiston, Director of Microsoft Professional Services, Logicalis US. "With Azure, we can take those workloads that have traditionally resided in a data center, taking up server rack space, requiring cooling and cabling and on-premise maintenance and management, and move that into the cloud. The move to the cloud offers organizations greater agility, the ability to obtain innovative services, and improved time-to-market for desired solutions. Additionally, many customers find that shifting the financial model from a cap-ex to a more cost-effective, pay-as-you-go op-ex model is advantageous."

To foster this cloud-first shift, Microsoft is turning to experienced partners like Logicalis to help customers develop their strategic roadmaps to the cloud. CIOs and other IT pros need to know that the software and hardware choices they are making today will align with their emerging cloud-first plans and that those plans will correctly support their business and financial goals.

Because Logicalis has a history of marrying IT solutions with its customers' business goals, it is perfectly positioned to be that trusted advisor. By helping CIOs assess the various infrastructure and software solutions they already have in place and those they are considering for the future, Logicalis helps organizations knit together the best hybrid solutions to meet their business objectives.

Key applications for cloud-based solutions include the creation of Azure workspaces for ISVs; "lift and shift" solutions that deliver backup and disaster recovery for everyone from small to enterprise customers in a wide array of vertical markets; business analytics, IOT and management solutions; and finally, hybrid solutions for flexible, on-demand capacity delivered using DevOps methodology underpinned by end-to-end automation to achieve scale, speed and reduced time-to-market. All of this can also be integrated and packaged with Logicalis' professional and managed services.

Want to Learn More?

Transforming your infrastructure to adopt a cloud services model is not a simple journey; learn what it takes and discover where your organization is along the road toward IT transformation here: http://ow.ly/ByNq30fMakp.

Our cloud, your cloud, someone else's cloud  which is right for your organization? Read about Logicalis' cloud solutions for software providers, then find out how Logicalis has expanded its Cloud Solution Provider relationship with Microsoft here: http://ow.ly/e41u30fMbgW.

The relationship between business and IT has changed, and that means the relationship between IT and its core platforms must change too; read about this shift in this downloadable paper, "IT by Wire: Delivering IT at the Speed of Business": http://ow.ly/Rjrq30fMaGq.

About Logicalis

Logicalis is an international multi-skilled solution provider providing digital enablement services to help customers harness digital technology and innovative services to deliver powerful business outcomes.

Our customers cross industries and geographical regions; our focus is to engage in the dynamics of our customers' vertical markets including financial services, TMT (telecommunications, media and technology), education, healthcare, retail, government, manufacturing and professional services, and to apply the skills of our 4,000 employees in modernizing key digital pillars, data center and cloud services, security and network infrastructure, workspace communications and collaboration, data and information strategies, and IT operation modernization.

We are the advocates for our customers for some of the world's leading technology companies including Cisco, HPE, IBM, NetApp, Microsoft, VMware and ServiceNow.

The Logicalis Group has annualized revenues of over $1.5 billion from operations in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific and Africa. It is a division of Datatec Limited, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the AIM market of the LSE, with revenues of over $6.5 billion.

For more information, visit www.us.logicalis.com.

Business and technology working as one

To learn more about Logicalis activities through a variety of social media outlets, click here.

Media Contacts:

Karen Franse, Communication Strategy Group for Logicalis US

[email protected]

866-997-2424 x222

www.gocsg.com

Arthur Germain, Communication Strategy Group for Logicalis US

[email protected]

866-997-2424 x101

www.gocsg.com

SOURCE Logicalis US

Related Links

http://www.us.logicalis.com


TOANO, Va., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Lumber Liquidators (NYSE: LL), the largest specialty retailer of hardwood flooring in North America, and a proposed class of plaintiffs in the Formaldehyde MDL (MDL 2627) led by Cohen, Milstein, Sellers & Toll PLLC; Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, LLP; Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP; and a proposed class of plaintiffs in the Durability MDL (MDL 2743) led by Robertson & Associates, LLP and Whitfield, Bryson & Mason LLP, today announced the entry into a Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") to settle all litigation related to the Chinese-manufactured laminate flooring previously sold by Lumber Liquidators pending in the two Multi-District Litigations in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Under the terms of the MOU, the Company will contribute $22 million in cash and provide $14 million in store-credit vouchers for an aggregate settlement of $36 million to settle all claims brought on behalf of purchasers of the Chinese-manufactured laminate flooring sold by the Company between January 1, 2009 and May 31, 2015. The MOU is subject to the execution of a definitive settlement agreement, court approvals, and approval by the Plaintiffs' Co-Lead Counsel in the two cases and Lumber Liquidators' board among other contingencies. The Company's execution of the MOU does not constitute an admission by the Company of any fault or liability. The parties have agreed to settle these matters to avoid the expense and uncertainty of continuing the litigation. Out of an abundance of caution, the Company discontinued the sale of the relevant product in May 2015.

Dennis Knowles, Chief Executive Officer of Lumber Liquidators commented, "We are pleased to have entered into this MOU, and welcome it as an important step toward resolving this legacy issue and moving forward."

All Plaintiffs' Counsel are pleased with this settlement that they believe will return real value to the class members.

Forward-Looking Statements

This Current Report on Form 8-K may contain "forward-looking statements" within the meanings of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements, which may be identified by words such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "intends," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "thinks," "estimates," "seeks," "predicts," "could," "projects," "potential" and other similar terms and phrases, are based on the beliefs of the Company's management, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, the Company's management as of the date of such statements. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the Company's control. Forward-looking statements in this Current Report may include, without limitation, statements regarding expectations relating to the settlement of the two consolidated class actions matters related to the Company's Chinese-manufactured laminate flooring. The Company specifically disclaims any obligation to update these statements, which speak only as of the dates on which such statements are made, except as may be required under the federal securities laws. Information regarding additional risks and uncertainties is contained in the Company's other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Item 1A, "Risk Factors," section of the Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2016.

About Lumber Liquidators

With more than 385 locations, Lumber Liquidators is North America's largest specialty retailer of hardwood flooring. The Company features more than 400 top quality flooring varieties, including solid and engineered hardwood, bamboo, cork, laminate and resilient vinyl. Additionally, Lumber Liquidators provides a wide selection of flooring enhancements and accessories to complement, install and maintain your new floor. Every location is staffed with flooring experts who can provide advice and useful information about Lumber Liquidators' low priced product, much of which is in stock and ready for delivery.

With premier brands including Bellawood and Morning Star Bamboo, Lumber Liquidators' flooring is often featured on popular television shows such as HGTV's Dream Home and This Old House. For more information, please visit www.LumberLiquidators.com or call 1.800.HARDWOOD.

Lumber Liquidators aims to be the industry leader in sustainability. For more information, please visit www.LumberLiquidators.com/Sustainability. Learn more about our corporate giving program at LayItForward.LumberLiquidators.com. You can also follow the Company on Facebook and Twitter.

For further information contact:

Lumber Liquidators Investor Relations

Steve Calk

Tel: 757.566.7512

Plaintiffs Formaldehyde Counsel:

Steven J. Toll 202-408-4600

Nancy L. Fineman 650-697-6000

Steve W. Berman 206-623-7292

Plaintiffs Durability Counsel:

Alexander Robertson, IV 818-851-3850

Daniel K. Bryson 919-600-5000

SOURCE Lumber Liquidators

Related Links

http://www.lumberliquidators.com


AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Main Street Hub, the marketing platform for over 10,000 small businesses across the United States, today announced the launch of a suite of new branding and content products for small businesses. This new customer experience includes a professional photo shoot for new customers to power authentic, data-driven customer service and outreach.

The photo shoots, powered by Main Street Hub's nationwide network of experienced, freelance photographers, enable small businesses to elevate their online presence and win new customers with compelling photographs that tell their story. The new products also include one-of-a-kind branding tools that enable every small business' online messages to be extensions of what makes their business unique. These tools combine a business' brand colors, fonts, and photos with their voice to create authentic content for thousands of small businesses. In the background, data on design and performance enable machine learning to continuously improve customer results.

The company's small business customers can also continue to oversee their marketing closely with personalized tools, dashboards, and reporting -- taking advantage of Main Street Hub's pioneering "Do-It-For-You" customer experience.

"Every small business has a unique story, and we're privileged to be able to tell those stories every day," said Andrew Allison, Co-CEO. "Through a radically customer-centric approach, we're delivering a customer experience that's unlike anything that's ever been done for local businesses."

"No other technology company possesses this depth of understanding of each of their small business customers," said Matt Stuart, Co-CEO. "We are still at the beginning of our work to create thriving local economies, and we're excited to raise the bar in terms of what technology, creativity, and data can do for small businesses across the country."

About Main Street Hub:

Founded in 2010, Main Street Hub is the marketing platform for local businesses. Utilizing its proprietary technology, the company integrates social media, customer reviews, and email marketing to help local businesses get more customers and keep them coming back, while saving them valuable time. Main Street Hub is headquartered in Austin, TX and backed by leading investors, including Vista Equity Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Harrison Metal Capital.

For more information on Main Street Hub, visit www.mainstreethub.com, or follow Main Street Hub on their blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

SOURCE Main Street Hub

Related Links

http://www.mainstreethub.com


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The best brands in the world have often been described as having religious followers. Their customers  seemingly blind to other options  consistently choose these brands over others.

Attendees dig into this phenomenon at the first Primal.Live event happening on Nov. 8 at NeueHouse Madison Square in New York City.

Patrick Hanlon is the author of Primal Branding and the co-founder of Primal.Live

"Brands are belief systems. Believe it or not," says Patrick Hanlon, author of Primal Branding, which decodes the seminal construct for building communities around people, places, and things.

The supporting Primal principles are not new; rather, they are the underpinnings of belief systems that have been in existence for thousands of years, only recently revealed in Hanlon's book, "Primal Branding" (Simon & Schuster) and applied by the greatest storytellers ever: modern religion. This proven community-building construct can be applied to products and services, political candidates, destinations, cities and even ideas.

"If one were to start a religion today, one would start with Primal.Live," says Joseph Perello, a co-founder of the one-day immersion session.

Primal.Live is not a conference. Instead, it is an intensely interactive work session for those seeking to build apostolic brands.

Joining Hanlon and Perello are other Primal practitioners, including some of the world's best and most provocative marketers and story-tellers from Google, R/GA, YouTube, political campaigners and others. They include:

Jon Bond, The Shipyard

Jon is the co-chairman of The Shipyard. He was a co-founder of Kirshenbaum + Bond, the first "word-of-mouth" agency. Jon was voted number four by Adweek's Executive of the Decade in 2010. And KBP was named agency of the year in 2008. He's remained an entrepreneur, become a philanthropist and he's always prepared to speak his mind.

Rachel Lightfoot Melby, Google

Rachel is the global brand strategist for Google. She leads an innovative new development team at YouTube, focused on social media stars and celebrity growth. Her team's mission is to bring the world's most beloved personalities and events to the platform, where they can share their stories with the world. She's helped YouTube superstars, Fortune 500 companies, and entrepreneurs improve their online brand and build zealous communities.

Steve Schmidt, MSNBC / Edelman

Stephen is an American campaign strategist and public relations executive. He specializes in political message development and strategy. Schmidt was the senior campaign strategist and advisor to the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator John McCain and was the subject of the book and film "Game Change" on HBO. He is currently a political analyst for MSNBC.

Carly Rullman Walsh, Vox Media

Carly is communications leader at Vox Media, an innovative media company, Vox Creative and publisher-led marketplace, Concert. Much of her career has been in advertising, including agencies like Goodby Silverstein & Partners and most recently, Droga5. She's worked with Google Pixel, The New York Times, Prudential and Under Armour, she continues to illustrate the powerful pull of a great story.

Pat Stern, Props

Pat is the founder of Props, an innovative creator and content technology platform. Leading agencies like R/GA, TBWA MediaLab and iCrossing, he's worked with some of the best brands in the world including Apple, Nike and Wal-mart. Pat's award-winning work includes the highly acclaimed and massively successful "Get a Mac" campaign created for Steve Jobs and Apple.

Sandra Heikkinen Glading, GrubHub

Sandra is the director of public relations at Grubhub, where she is responsible for driving all aspects of the company's internal and external communication efforts. Prior to Grubhub, she led Google's vertical PR program, helping to launch Google Express and Google Flights, developed small business initiatives and collaborated with the YouTube sales team on internal/sales communications.

Primal.Live was created by the author of Primal Branding, Patrick Hanlon, an unconventional brand strategist, design-thinker, and writer of The Social Code, Super Bowl commercials, and Forbes, Inc. magazine and Joseph Perello, an agency leader, entrepreneur, former CMO of New York City and VP of the New York Yankees.

Primal.Live is happening at NeueHouse in NYC on Nov. 8. Learn more or register at www.primal.live.

Related Files

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Related Images

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Patrick Hanlon

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Joseph Perello

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Primal.Live / 11.8.17 / NeueHouse / NYC

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Primal.Live / 11.8.17 / NeueHouse / NYC

Related Links

Primal.Live

Related Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JAFocvQ91Q

SOURCE Primal.Live

Related Links

http://www.primal.live


The Marketing Outreach Strategies Award salutes New American Funding's hard work , dedication, and creativity in developing Latino Focus Committee and New American Dream. MBA commended both initiatives as exemplary diversity and inclusion programs that are reaching the industry's fastest-growing market segments.

"It's an honor to receive this recognition. We're passionate about making an impact," said President Patty Arvielo. "We believe it's our responsibility to develop effective programs that equip more hard-working Americans with the opportunity to become viable homeowners." Arvielo established both initiatives as a means of serving underserved consumers.

In 2013, she formed Latino Focus to enrich the Hispanic community with affordable homeownership opportunities; in May, New American Funding furthered that commitment by pledging to lend $25 billion in new mortgages to Hispanic borrowers by 2024.

Arvielo also created New American Dream as an avenue for educating African-American consumers and to equip them with access to relevant home loan options. Since then, she has become a frequent guest of Armstrong Williams' Sirius XM Urban View radio show, where she has educated African-American consumers regarding homeownership.

Due to her role as a national housing advocate, earlier this year, CFPB appointed Arvielo to its Consumer Advisory Board. She's also a member of the Corporate Board of Governors for the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals; and in 2016, LA Times recognized Arvielo's contributions by honoring her with its Latinos de Hoy Business Award for stellar leadership and service.

About New American Funding

New American Funding is a national mortgage banker licensed in 48 states with approximately 130 branches that offer a variety of home loan options including: Conventional, FHA, Cash Out, Fixed Rate and Adjustable Rate Mortgages, VA, HARP 2.0, Jumbo, and Reverse Mortgages. The company is a Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae Direct Seller/Servicer, FHA Direct Endorsement, and VA Automatic mortgage lender.

SOURCE New American Funding

Related Links

http://www.newamericanfunding.com


SAN DIEGO, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Medical Marijuana, Inc. (OTC: MJNA), the first-ever publicly traded cannabis company in the United States, announced today subsidiary HempMeds Brazil has gained media attention in Brazilian newspapers after a Federal judge there ordered the government to subsidize payments for Real Scientific Hemp Oil (RSHO) for a Brazilian citizen.

According to the article, the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region (TRF4) ordered the Union and the state of Santa Catarina to subsidize payments for RSHO for a Florianopolis merchant.

The article states that: "The trader appealed to the court, arguing that the use of the drug is essential, that efficacy is proven in such cases and that the right to health is fundamental and guaranteed by the Constitution. The court's rapporteur, federal judge Rogerio Favreto, stated in his vote that the interference of the judiciary in drug applications, even if it is an exception, should occur if the patient's need is proven. The judge pointed out that in the case under analysis the urgency is evident and has been proven by medical expertise."

"We continue to be impressed and humbled by the amazing, historic gestures by the judicial system and federal government regulators in Brazil acting in the best interests of the health and wellness of the Brazilian people," said Medical Marijuana, Inc. CEO Dr. Stuart Titus. "This amazing progress in the Brazilian courts reaffirms our mission to keep educating the world about the beneficial nature of hemp-based cannabidiol (CBD) products such as RSHO."

This is the second recent case in which a Federal Justice has ordered that the Brazilian government should subsidize payments for CBD in Santa Catarina. In July of this year, a ruling also granted a child from Blumenau the right to free treatment with CBD. Also in February 2015, a young Santa Catarina girl named Amanda Dalagnol, Dionisio Cerqueira, in the West of SC, was awarded in court the right to government-subsidized CBD treatments.

About HempMeds Brasil

HempMeds Brasil currently has three cannabis products approved for importation into Brazil as a prescription medication for Epilepsy, Parkinson's and Chronic Pain. The company had the first-ever cannabis product allowed for import into Brazil and its products are currently subsidized by the Brazilian government, under their health care system, for all three medical indications listed above. HempMeds Brasil is working on additional approvals for multiple indications.

About Medical Marijuana, Inc.

We are a company of firsts. Our mission is to be the premier cannabis and hemp industry innovators, leveraging our team of professionals to source, evaluate and purchase value-added companies and products, while allowing them to keep their integrity and entrepreneurial spirit. We strive to create awareness within our industry, develop environmentally-friendly, economically sustainable businesses, while increasing shareholder value. For details on Medical Marijuana, Inc.'s portfolio and investment companies, visit www.medicalmarijuanainc.com.

To see Medical Marijuana, Inc.'s video statement, click here.

Shareholders are also encouraged to visit the Medical Marijuana, Inc. Shop for discounted products.

FORWARD-LOOKING DISCLAIMER AND DISCLOSURES

This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements and information, as defined within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and is subject to the Safe Harbor created by those sections. This material contains statements about expected future events and/or financial results that are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements by definition involve risks, uncertainties.

The statements in this press release have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease. The Company does not sell or distribute any products that are in violation of the United States Controlled Substances Act. The Company does sell and distribute hemp-based products.

CONTACT:

Public Relations Contact:

Andrew Hard

Chief Executive Officer

CMW Media

P: 888-829- 0070

[email protected]

www.cmwmedia.com

SOURCE Medical Marijuana, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.medicalmarijuanainc.com


TORONTO and HOUSTON, TX, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Medicenna Therapeutics Corp. ("Medicenna" or the "Company") (TSX: MDNA; OTCQX: MDNAF), a clinical stage immuno-oncology company, developing first-in-class proprietary cytokines, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued another patent related to the Company's Superkine platform. U.S. Patent 9,738,696 ("Superkines and synthekines: repurposed cytokines with new and enhanced signaling activities") issued to the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University and licensed exclusively to Medicenna, covers the composition of engineered interleukin-4 ("IL-4") Superkines.

"The issuance of the IL-4 patent, along with issued patents covering our IL-2 and IL-13 Superkines, solidifies our leadership position in developing a series of unique and versatile interleukins that represent key pillars of our next generation platform of immunotherapies," said Dr. Fahar Merchant, Chairman, President and CEO of Medicenna Therapeutics. "We remain focused on maximizing the value of our leading-edge Superkine platform through advancing these novel super-agonists and super-antagonists into clinical development on our own and with potential partners."

Medicenna continues to protect its Superkine and Empowered Cytokine platforms which comprises of over 40 filed or issued patents in key territories including the US, Canada, EU and Asia.

Superkines have exceptionally high selectivity and affinity for receptor sub-types, resulting in superior safety and efficacy. Proof of concept results published in leading scientific journals have demonstrated the significant potential of these Superkine agonists and antagonists to address unmet needs in oncology, inflammatory and other immune mediated diseases.

About Medicenna Therapeutics Corp.

Medicenna is a clinical stage immuno-oncology company developing novel highly selective versions of IL-2, IL-4 and IL-13 Superkines and first in class Empowered Cytokines (ECs). Its wholly owned subsidiary, Houston-based Medicenna BioPharma, is specifically targeting the Interleukin-4 Receptor (IL4R), which is over-expressed by at least 20 different types of cancer affecting more than one million new cancer patients every year. Medicenna's lead IL4-EC, MDNA55 is enrolling patients in a CPRIT (Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas) funded Phase 2b clinical trial for recurrent glioblastoma ("rGBM") at leading brain cancer centres in the US. MDNA55 has completed 3 clinical trials in 72 patients, including 66 adults with rGBM, demonstrated compelling efficacy and obtained Fast-Track and Orphan Drug status from USFDA. Unlike most other cancer therapies, Medicenna's IL4-ECs have the potential to purge both the tumor and the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, offering a unique treatment paradigm for a large majority of cancer patients.

For more information, please visit www.medicenna.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to the future operations of the Company and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as "will", "may", "should", "anticipate", "expects" and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements related to our leadership position in developing a series of unique and versatile interleukins, that we will maximize the value of the Superkine platform, statements regarding future plans and objectives of the Company and others are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations include the risks detailed in the annual information form of the Company dated June 15, 2017 and in other filings made by the Company with the applicable securities regulators from time to time.

The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking information may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company will update or revise publicly any of the included forward-looking statements only as expressly required by Canadian securities law.

SOURCE Medicenna Therapeutics Corp.
MCLEAN, Va., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- HDI has announced its speaker lineup for the 2018 annual conference and expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. MetricNet is pleased to announce that Jeff Rumburg, Managing Partner of MetricNet has been invited to present in two major tracks at the conference, including "Putting Metrics To Work" and "Service Desk Masters." This marks the 24th consecutive year that Mr. Rumburg has been selected as a speaker for the HDI Conference & Expo. For those interested in attending, HDI 2018 is happening April 10-13 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mr. Rumburg will be presenting "Leveraging Metrics to Take Southwest Airlines to a Higher Plane - A Case Study" and "The Enterprise Service Desk - The Greatest Opportunity in a Generation!" In the Putting Metrics To Work track, he will discuss how Southwest Airlines leveraged metrics to close performance gaps and achieve world-class performance. And in the Service Desk Masters Track, Mr. Rumburg will present a leadership model for IT to expand the reach of service management to non-IT enterprise services such as HR, facilities, and regulatory compliance.

"Much of what is known about IT Service Management has been gained incrementally, through years of trial-and-error. But ITSM is now a relatively mature discipline that can provide a roadmap for other, non-IT services," said Jeff Rumburg. "In the Service Desk Masters track, I will discuss how these enterprise services, in turn, have an opportunity to bypass decades of trial-and-error evolution by building upon the experience and proven success factors of IT Service Management."

Those interested in hearing Mr. Rumburg present the Southwest Airlines case study should attend Session 302 on Wednesday, April 11, 2018 at 3:00 p.m. and those interested in hearing Mr. Rumburg speak on The Enterprise Service Desk should attend Session 604 on Thursday, April 12, 2018, at 4:00 p.m. All IT service and support professionals are encouraged to attend. This includes C-level executives, IT directors, Service Desk and Desktop Support Managers, analysts and technicians as well as any other professional in IT who is interested in expanding their understanding of industry best practices.

Mr. Rumburg is the winner of the Ron Muns Lifetime Achievement Award, was named to HDI's Top 25 Thought Leaders list for 2016 and has served on HDI's Strategic Advisory Board. He is co-founder and Managing Partner of MetricNet, LLC, where he is responsible for global strategy, product development, and managing client engagements. As a leading expert in benchmarking and re-engineering, Mr. Rumburg authored a best-selling book on benchmarking, and has been retained as a benchmarking expert by such iconic companies as American Express, Intel, Coca-Cola, and Emory Healthcare.

If you would like more information about benchmarking your service and support functions, please visit http://www.metricnet.com or e-mail MetricNet at info(at)metricnet(dot)com.

About MetricNet

MetricNet is the global leader in IT service and support benchmarking. More than half of the FORTUNE 500 rely on MetricNet benchmarks to improve and optimize their performance. MetricNet is the first, and still the only company to offer downloadable service desk and desktop support benchmarks from their website. With a global benchmarking database of more than 3,700 IT service and support benchmarks, MetricNet has the most comprehensive database of process and performance metrics in the industry.

About HDI

Founded in 1989, HDI is the first membership association and certification body created for the technical service and support industry. Since then, HDI has remained the source for professional development by offering the resources needed to promote organization-wide success through exceptional customer service. In other words, we help professionals in service management better serve customers. We do this by facilitating collaboration and networking, hosting acclaimed conferences and events, producing renowned publications and research, certifying and training thousands of professionals each year, and connecting solution providers with practitioners. Learn more at www.ThinkHDI.com. HDI is organized by UBM Americas, a part of UBM plc (UBM.L), an Events First marketing and communications services business. For more information, visit ubmamericas.com.

SOURCE MetricNet, LLC

Related Links

http://www.metricnet.com


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF) and the Tau Consortium today announce a funding partnership to accelerate development of novel positron emission tomography (PET) imaging tracers for the detection of the alpha-synuclein and tau proteins in the living brain.

Several neurodegenerative diseases  Parkinson's disease, Lewy body dementia, multiple system atrophy, progressive supranuclear palsy and frontotemporal dementia, among others  involve the aggregation of alpha-synuclein and/or tau. Tools to detect the location and abundance of these proteins would improve clinical care and speed drug development by allowing earlier and more definitive diagnosis, more precise trial subject selection, and more efficient and conclusive therapeutic impact assessment.

"The ability to monitor disease, potentially even before symptom onset, would revolutionize the patient care experience and the pace of drug development," said MJFF CEO Todd Sherer, PhD. "This partnership with the Tau Consortium will bring us closer to that goal."

Patrick Brannelly, Program Director of the Tau Consortium, said, "The process of developing a new PET tracer is challenging, complex and iterative. It makes sense for nonprofits and industry to pool their resources in pursuit of success."

Under this new partnership, the Tau Consortium and MJFF will convene and co-fund a team of leading scientists who will closely coordinate their development of compounds that may bind to alpha-synuclein or tau. Gil Rabinovici, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, will direct the initiative. The inaugural grantees are Chester Mathis, PhD, Director of the University of Pittsburgh PET Facility, and Neil Vasdev, PhD, Co-founder of MedChem Imaging LLC.

"It's an honor to work alongside these outstanding investigators and as the director of such an important initiative," said Dr. Rabinovici. "Presently, these protein aggregates can be measured only at autopsy. Our field needs better tools to enable earlier intervention with potentially disease-modifying treatments."

PET tracers to evaluate protein load in the living brain would allow clinicians and researchers to diagnose people in prodromal or early disease stage, leading care decisions and earlier intervention with potentially disease-modifying treatments. A hypothesis for why some drugs in testing fail is that study participants are too advanced in the disease; an imaging tracer would allow testing in earlier-stage volunteers. Additionally, data from PET tracers would allow researchers to evaluate the biological impact of their candidate drugs.

Given the importance of this technology, MJFF and the Tau Consortium have invested significantly in this area of research. For example, The Michael J. Fox Foundation is supporting other projects pursuing an alpha-synuclein PET tracer and last year announced a $2M prize to the first group to develop a viable selective tracer and agree to make the tool available broadly.

About The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research

As the world's largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson's research, The Michael J. Fox Foundation is dedicated to accelerating a cure for Parkinson's disease and improved therapies for those living with the condition today. The Foundation pursues its goals through an aggressively funded, highly targeted research program coupled with active global engagement of scientists, Parkinson's patients, business leaders, clinical trial participants, donors and volunteers. In addition to funding more than $700 million in research to date, the Foundation has fundamentally altered the trajectory of progress toward a cure. Operating at the hub of worldwide Parkinson's research, the Foundation forges groundbreaking collaborations with industry leaders, academic scientists and government research funders; increases the flow of participants into Parkinson's disease clinical trials with its online tool, Fox Trial Finder; promotes Parkinson's awareness through high-profile advocacy, events and outreach; and coordinates the grassroots involvement of thousands of Team Fox members around the world. For more information, visit www.michaeljfox.org.

About the Tau Consortium

The Tau Consortium is an innovative medical research program that is operated under the auspices of the Rainwater Charitable Foundation. The Consortium commissions world-class basic research and drug discovery to treat and prevent progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and other tauopathies. The Tau Consortium acts with urgency and with patients in mind. It ensures that its members work collaboratively and engage with partners who can accelerate their progress. Since founding the Tau Consortium in 2009, the Rainwater Charitable Foundation has committed nearly $100 million to the program. There are currently five treatments in early stage human trials for PSP as a result of the Rainwater family's funding. Please visit http://tauconsortium.org for more information.

SOURCE The Michael J. Fox Foundation

Related Links

www.michaeljfox.org


CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Matt Zamesthe highly regarded finance executive who's had a guiding hand in a number of key global financial events over the past quarter centuryis returning to his alma mater, MIT, as an Executive in Residence at the school.

"Matt has been at the forefront of the financial services industry throughout his professional career," says Paul Asquith, the Gordon Y Billard Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and an early mentor to Zames. "He has an incredible depth of experience and a rich grasp of the financial services sector. I am thrilled to welcome him back to the MIT community."

Most recently, Zames served as Chief Operating Officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co. In that role, his responsibilities included the firm's Chief Investment Office, the Oversight and Control Group, Treasury & Funding, Mortgage Banking Capital Markets, One Equity Partners, Corporate Strategy, Regulatory Affairs, Global Technology and Operations, Real Estate, Procurement, Security & Safety, General Services, and Military & Veteran Affairs.

He was co-COO from July 2012 until April 2013 when he assumed the full COO position. Previously, he was Chief Investment Officer of JPMorgan Chase.

Prior to joining the corporate sector, he held a series of senior roles in the firm's Investment Bank. He was co-head of Global Fixed Income for J.P. Morgan's Investment Bank and head of Chase's Mortgage Banking Capital Markets. Before that, he managed several leading Markets businesses, including Rates, Foreign Exchange, Public Finance, Securitized Products Group, and the Tax Exempt Capital Markets business.

"The day after Matt stepped down in June, I spoke to him and encouraged him to come to MIT," says Asquith. "I knew that our faculty and students would benefit from his experience and firsthand knowledge, and I thought he might appreciate some time to reflect and recharge and think about his next move."

"When Paul proposed I return to MIT, I thought it was an excellent idea," says Zames. "I credit a lot of my success in life with my education and experiences at the school. The opportunity to give back to MIT is incredibly appealing to me."

Zames has already engaged in lively exchanges with faculty members on a variety of financial topics. He will return to Cambridge next month to hold roundtable discussions with students. "My goal is help push people to understand the practical aspects of what they are working on and learning about," he says. "It's been great fun."

Zames is a former member and chairman of the U.S. Treasury Department's Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee. He is also a former member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Treasury Market Practices Group. Additionally, he is a member of the Economic Club of New York and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is on the MIT Sloan Finance Group Advisory Board. He is also on the board of directors of numerous groups including: Business Executives for National Security, the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation, and Guiding Eyes for the Blind. He is also the former co-chairman of the board of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University.

SOURCE MIT Sloan School of Management

Related Links

http://www.mitsloan.mit.edu


An adult patient visiting Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai to be assessed for a Lasik procedure ended up being diagnosed with a squint, of which she was unaware. The patient was successfully treated after an eye realignment surgical procedure. Squint is common amongst children and generally picked up in childhood when it is relatively easy to diagnose and correct. It can cause debilitating double vision and affect the quality of life. However, there is no age limit to correcting the problem.

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/589626/The_Incredible_Dr_Khan.jpg )



(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/589632/Dr_Irfan_Khan.jpg )



Squint (also known as 'strabismus') is a misalignment or crossing of the eyes. When it occurs in adults (known as 'adult strabismus'), it may be a residual problem from childhood, which had never been diagnosed, or could occur as a result of eye disease, stroke or even eye tumours.

Emma Quintin - the Moorfields Dubai patient - is a Dubai resident and UK national, with a family history of eye problems. She had always had 'tired eyes' but no discomfort or impairment - and no diagnosis of squint. This all changed after a road accident at the start of 2017.

"I never really noticed the squint and so was surprised by the diagnosis, although my brother and grandmother had vision problems and I felt that my eyes were always tired," said Emma. "Now, I can see properly and it is an incredible feeling; I work in the visual arts, theatre and TV, making good vision essential for my work. The eye realignment surgery was quick and straightforward. I was in and out of the hospital within the afternoon. Whilst there is always some risk involved, this was explained to me in depth prior to my operation and I went ahead full of confidence. In fact, I was so pleased with the results and with the care I received that I composed a special poem of thanks to my doctor, entitled - 'The Incredible Dr. Khan'."

After a family friend in Dubai recommended that she visit Moorfields, the hospital team - led by Dr. Khan - was able to assess and diagnose the problem.

Dr. Muhammad Irfan Khan, Consultant Ophthalmologist Specialist in Paediatrics, Strabismus and Cataract, at Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai, said: "We are very pleased with Emma's results, recovery and progress. Squint is generally diagnosed in childhood, but of course there is no age limit for squint patients. Surgery is an outpatient procedure that we carry out at the hospital and patients quickly go back to a normal life. We were especially pleased that the hospital was recommended to Emma by an existing patient, as this is always the ultimate test of the quality of our patient service."

Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai has treated more than 150,000 patients - including many complex cases - of nearly 200 nationalities since opening in Dubai Healthcare City, in 2007.

Notes to editors

About Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai

Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai (MEHD) is the first overseas branch of Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, the oldest and one of the largest centres for ophthalmic treatment, teaching and research in the world. Located at the Al Razi Medical Complex in Dubai Health Care City, the facility provides day care surgery and outpatient diagnostic and treatment services, for a variety of surgical and non-surgical eye conditions. MEHD will also raise standards for research and teaching in the region. MEHD is owned and managed by the NHS Foundation Trust, and maintains close links with London, to ensure that patients in the GCC receive the best eye care treatment in the world.

SOURCE Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MPOWER Financing (www.mpowerfinancing.com), an innovative fintech company and provider of educational loans to high-promise international students, has entered into a partnership with Nelnet (www.nelnet.com), the country's leading student loan servicer.

MPOWER Financing, which recently extended its student loan program to all 50 states and 262 colleges and universities, has been growing its loan book at a rate of more than 30 percent on a month-over-month basis. Just two months ago, the company announced a $100 million debt raise to meet its growing pipeline of loan applications, which now totals over $300 million.

Nelnet, headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska, is a diverse company with a focus on delivering education-related products and services and student loan asset management. Nelnet currently services over $200 billion in federal, private and consumer student loans for 7.64 million borrowers.

"Nelnet is the perfect partner to help us achieve our ambitious growth objectives and to establish the foundations for securitizing our loan portfolio in the future," said Manu Smadja, CEO and co-founder of MPOWER Financing. "Nelnet offers a robust and technologically advanced platform to manage our growth, and both companies share the same high level of commitment to their student borrowers. As we get closer to generating the scale of loan volume necessary for securitization, we expect that Nelnet's stellar reputation and its capital markets expertise will serve us well when we go to market."

Mark Heiser, director of Business Development at Nelnet, said: "We are thrilled to be working with MPOWER and to help their customers achieve their educational dreams. We are expanding our product offerings to deploy our decades of experience in loan servicing to the emerging fintech space, and MPOWER is a great fit to continue our mission to create opportunities for people where they live, learn and work."

Shasha Geng, MPOWER Financing's vice president of Strategic Initiatives, added: "Nelnet is the leader in the servicing of private education student loans. We can rely on its many years of experience in this sector to provide MPOWER Financing with the highest quality of loan servicing and technical solutions to help manage the challenges we face as we grow our student loan portfolio to $1 billion and beyond."

About Nelnet

Nelnet, Inc., headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska, is a diverse company with a focus on delivering education-related products and services and student loan asset management. The largest operating businesses engage in student loan servicing, tuition payment processing and school information systems, and communications. A significant portion of the Company's revenue is net interest income earned on a portfolio of federally insured student loans. The Company also makes investments to further diversify the Company both within and outside of its historical core education-related businesses, including, but not limited to, investments in real estate and start-up ventures. Substantially all revenue from external customers is earned, and all long-lived assets are located, in the United States. (www.nelnet.com)

About MPOWER Financing

MPOWER Financing is an innovative fintech company and provider of educational loans to high-promise international students. MPOWER Financing helps students build their credit histories and provides them with personal finance, education and gateway financial products to prepare for life after college. The team is backed by Zephyr Management, Goal Structured Solutions, 1776, Village Capital, VARIV, DreamIt, Fresco, Chilango, K Street and University Ventures. For more information, visit www.mpowerfinancing.com, or follow MPOWER on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Media Contacts:

Richard Anderson / Henry Feintuch / Doug Wright

Feintuch Communications

718-986-1596 / 212-808-4901 / 212-808-4903

[email protected]

SOURCE MPOWER Financing

Related Links

http://www.mpowerfinancing.com


YANGON, Myanmar, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Up in the mountains of Shan state, in the east of Myanmar is getting ready for a spectacular balloon festival. It will be held between 29 October and 3 November 2017. The event will see the launch of 393 traditional made paper balloons.

In a remote field in the mountains in mysterious Shan state in Myanmar, a yearly tradition is about to become even bigger. The whole country celebrates Tazaungdaing, the festival of lights in the middle of November. Especially the festivities in Taunggyi - the capital of Shan State are going to be more spectacular than ever, according to the organising committee.

During 6 days (from Sunday 29 October til Friday 3 November) there are food stalls, shops and games setup at the festival grounds south of Taunggyi. In total 266 papier-mache hot air balloons in different shapes and sizes are launched in the afternoon between 11:00 a.m. and 15:00 p.m. In the evening around 20:00 p.m., it's time for in total 127 big fire balloons. Once the balloon reaches a height of about 20 meters the fireworks attached to the balloons explode in all directions. A fun and fascinating festival which everybody should see at least once while in Myanmar.

Myanmar Tourism Marketing confirmed that there will be special-marked areas for foreign tourists to watch the launching of the balloons from a safe distance. Walking around the festival field is much fun as well, as thousands of Shan people are joining the grounds for some food, drinks and games.

The festival has been running for many decades and the Shan people are keen to keep the tradition of making these typical balloons alive. "I attended the festival last year and could not believe the size of these traditional balloons," said an expat living and working in Yangon. "When they are all lit-up it's magical and fantastic to experience  it is unlike any kind of firework display I have ever seen anywhere else," he continued.

If you're not in Taunggyi area (near the famous tourist destination - Inle Lake) around that time, it's still a great time to travel in Myanmar. The monsoon rains are gone and their only reminder is a lush green scenery all over the country. It's the time that yellow robes (and many other accessories) are offered to monks around the country. During the days before the festival, you will see bamboo poles with donations (including banknotes folded in beautiful shapes) around towns and villages.

During the festival, hot air balloons are launched throughout the country, although at a smaller scale and most of the temples organise weaving competitions. It's a good time to be in any mid-sized town in Myanmar.

For the first time, the Myanmar government announced additional public holidays during the Tazaungdaing festival to compensate for the reduced number of days off during the annual Myanmar New Year in April. As a result, most Myanmar people will have leave from 2  5 November and use this long weekend to travel around the country. Be sure to book accommodation, flights etc. in time.

Further information online:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl8aHOAETcs

About Myanmar Tourism Marketing

Myanmar Tourism Marketing (MTM) aims to promote Myanmar as a sustainable tourism destination that can be visited the whole year round. It is part of the Myanmar Tourism Federation and is mainly privately funded by key members of the tourism industry in Myanmar. The MTM team is happy to assist press and media to publish more about tourism in Myanmar.

For editors & journalists

MTM is currently organizing media trips for publications that are interested to show the tourism side of Myanmar. Please do contacts if you are interested in a hosted media trip and let us know which angle of the story and which area you would like to cover.

Media queries and questions regarding this Press Release or future media trips or TV and film opportunities in Myanmar can be addressed to:

Htet Htet Lin  PR Officer

Myanmar Tourism Marketing

No. 204, Bo Myat Tun Road (Middle Block) Pazundaung Township

Yangon, Myanmar

Tel: +959 977204456, 58, 59, 60

Mobile: +95 9 966 961079

E-mail: [email protected]

Website: www.tourismmyanmar.org and www.myanmar.travel

Facebook: www.facebook.com/myanmartm

Instagram: www.instagram.com/visit.myanmar

Twitter: www.twitter.com/MyanmarTM

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/VisitMyanmar

Related Images

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SOURCE Myanmar Tourism Marketing

Related Links

http://myanmar.travel


Aurora is a leader in both innovative electric aircraft designs and in high-performance aircraft for commercial applications. The company is currently leading the development of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) XV-24A LightningStrike, a 12,000-pound hybrid-electric aircraft with 3 MW of electric power driving 24 electric fans. Aurora recently flew a fully autonomous, battery-powered subscale version of the XV-24A, which also serves as the basis for Aurora's work on urban mobility platforms. In April 2017 Aurora was selected as one of Uber's industrial partners for the UBER ELEVATE program.

Aurora is also developing the D8, a commercial airliner design for the 150-180 seat market. Using composite structures, boundary layer ingestion, and high levels of autonomy, the D8 can provide up to 50 percent reductions in fleet-wide fuel burn over designs currently in use. The D8 is being developed through the FAA CLEEN II program, the NASA New Aviation Horizons program, and Aurora internal funding.

The award will leverage Aurora's lessons-learned across this diverse electric aircraft portfolio to assist NASA in validating the system level performance of the STARC-ABL aircraft.

About Aurora Flight Sciences:

Aurora Flight Sciences is an innovative technology company which strives to create smarter aircraft through the development of versatile and intuitive autonomous systems. Operating at the intersection of technology and robotic aviation, Aurora leverages the power of autonomy to make manned and unmanned flight safer and more efficient. Headquartered in Manassas, Virginia, Aurora operates production plants in Bridgeport, West Virginia and Columbus, Mississippi, has Research and Development Centers in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dayton, Ohio and Mountain View, California, and a European office, Aurora Swiss Aerospace, located in Luzern, Switzerland. To view recent press releases and more about Aurora please visit our website at www.aurora.aero.

SOURCE Aurora Flight Sciences

Related Links

http://www.aurora.aero


The Center for Cyber Safety and Education's 2017 Global Information Security Workforce Study predicts there will be a cybersecurity workforce gap of 1.8 million by 2022. The shortage of professionals protecting our extensive networks poses a significant risk to our economic and national security. Attracting young people to join the next generation of skilled cyber workers and training existing employees in cybersecurity are starting points to building stronger defenses across the internet's borderless landscape. As National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM)  a widespread online safety awareness and education initiative co-founded and led by NCSA and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS)  nears its end, NCSA is encouraging students and professionals to explore the variety of options that cybersecurity offers as a viable and fulfilling profession. Role models and key influencers like parents, teachers, counselors and government officials are urged to educate this group about the exciting careers in cybersecurity and the pathways to pursuing them.

"A highly skilled and motivated cybersecurity workforce is just as critical to the internet's future as new and emerging technologies," said Michael Kaiser, NCSA's executive director. "A career protecting the internet  a global resource we all share  can be extremely rewarding, matched with interests in a specific sector like finance, health or government and highly portable, as industries around the globe need competent help."

Cybersecurity careers also provide opportunities to use a variety of skills  like problem solving, communication, management, data analysis and software programming  and offer competitive salaries, challenging work and a variety of positions and opportunities. Check out the latest NCSAM infographic for more information about the benefits of a career in cybersecurity and resources to help guide you on the path to working in this gratifying field (download and share it on social media using the hashtag #CyberAware!).

The Good News: Millennials Have Positive Perceptions re: Cybersecurity and Education

Fortunately, the majority of millennials have favorable feelings  and access to resources  about cybersecurity programs; the study indicates the following:

83 percent said that it's important, very important or extremely important to strengthen cybersecurity awareness programs in the workforce as well as in formal education programs

70 percent reported that their high school or secondary education programs prepared them to use technology safely, securely, ethically and productively in the workplace  up from 55 percent in 2013

"Our digital world needs young people who want to pursue the limitless opportunities available in cybersecurity," said Valecia Maclin, director of cybersecurity and special missions at Raytheon. "We are very encouraged that more millennials are valuing cybersecurity awareness and education programs. The next critical step is to motivate them to take action and chart a course toward this very necessary and meaningful line of work."

The Bad News: Young People Are Skipping Basic Online Safety

Unfortunately, interest among many millennials in learning about cybersecurity and access to cyber education has not translated to always using proper cyber hygiene. Exhibiting poor cybersecurity practices could spell danger not just for young people's accounts and information but also for their employers. The survey reveals the following:

There are several key security actions young adults reported not taking, despite thinking they should, such as:

taking, despite thinking they should, such as: Updating software/apps quickly when notified of updates (55%)



Using two-step authentication (57%)



Avoiding clicking on links unless they are sure they're legitimate (63%)



Limiting the sharing of personal information online (60%)



Using a different password for every key account (54%)

77 percent reported connecting to no-password Wi-Fi in the last month  up from 66 percent in 2013

42 percent said they had shared passwords with non-family members in the last year  up from 23 percent in 2013

Despite the positive trends in young people's awareness and education, there is still work to be done to encourage action and behavioral change when it comes to individuals' cybersecurity habits and interests in working to protect the internet. NCSA's free online safety resources  including tip sheets, posters, infographics and videos  can help people teach themselves, their families and friends and their communities about online safety, security and privacy basics. In particular, this primer can help parents and educators guide young people as they consider cybersecurity careers.

NCSA will be conducting a variety of Facebook Live interviews that will provide intriguing perspectives about careers in cybersecurity. Catch them throughout the week at facebook.com/staysafeonline.

Facebook's Commitment to Cybersecurity Careers

Facebook is working to highlight cybersecurity careers as rewarding, valuable options for young and seasoned professionals alike, including working to promote a more diverse cyber workforce. For example, Aanchal Gupta, Facebook's security director, grew up in a small town in northern India, became an engineer and now is a security leader helping more than two billion people feel safe while using the widely popular social media platform. Gupta emphasizes that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to getting where you want to go and recommends continuing to learn and prepare for the future.

"Having confidence and courage helps," Gupta said. "There will be times when you will see an opportunity that will not totally align with your skill set. Push yourself to that challenge. Technology is changing fast, and continuous learning is the only way to stay current. Continue to explore new technological areas and prepare for the future. Even though you may not be an expert in each field, you are still bringing diversity of thought and experience, and that is invaluable."

Facebook hosts middle school and high school students on campus to give them a feel for what a day in a security engineer's life looks like. If more companies do this, Facebook believes they will encourage more students to choose science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, which could lead to careers in security.

Be a Part of Something Big: Become a NCSAM Champion

One way you and/or your organization can participate in NCSAM is by becoming a NCSAM Champion. Champions represent those dedicated to promoting a safer, more secure and more trusted internet. Becoming a Champion is easy and does not require any financial support. There are already more than 1000 organizations and more than 520 individuals signed up to support the month. Champions receive a toolkit of online safety awareness and education materials they can use to support the month and updates leading up to and throughout October on resources, upcoming events and ways to get involved.

Upcoming NCSAM Events

NCSA and partners will host a number of events across the country up to and throughout NCSAM. Noteworthy upcoming events and initiatives include:

CyberNextDC: Privacy. Partnerships. Protection. Wednesday, Oct. 25 , 7:30 a.m.  6:00 p.m. (EDT), Venable LLP, 600 Massachusetts Avenue NW, 9th Floor, Washington, D.C. : In honor of NCSAM, the Coalition for Cybersecurity Policy & Law, the Cyber Threat Alliance and The National Security Institute at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia School of Law will host this inaugural policy day in Washington . This daylong event will feature prominent members of the cybersecurity community as well as congressional and administration leadership who are actively engaged in cybersecurity policy issues. The event will also feature top policymakers, leading industry practitioners and other experts discussing the current state of cybersecurity, fostering critical discussions among participants and identifying forward thinking approaches to improve cybersecurity.

In honor of NCSAM, the Coalition for Cybersecurity Policy & Law, the Cyber Threat Alliance and The National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia School of Law will host this inaugural policy day in . This daylong event will feature prominent members of the cybersecurity community as well as congressional and administration leadership who are actively engaged in cybersecurity policy issues. The event will also feature top policymakers, leading industry practitioners and other experts discussing the current state of cybersecurity, fostering critical discussions among participants and identifying forward thinking approaches to improve cybersecurity. Finding a Career in Cybersecurity  Panel on Job Successes , Wednesday, Oct. 25 , 1:00-2:00 p.m. EDT/ 10:00-11:00 a.m. PDT , Virtual/Online : For those looking to break into the cybersecurity industry, the options can be overwhelming. Should you go back to school or take online courses? How can you find the right role that matches your passions and skills? In this free webinar, hosted by [email protected] Manager Tom Gilheany, we'll be diving into how to answer these questions and more. After a brief introduction to set the scene, our panel of experts will discuss how they got their role, lessons learned and advice for job seekers like you.

: For those looking to break into the cybersecurity industry, the options can be overwhelming. Should you go back to school or take online courses? How can you find the right role that matches your passions and skills? In this free webinar, hosted by [email protected] Manager Tom Gilheany, we'll be diving into how to answer these questions and more. After a brief introduction to set the scene, our panel of experts will discuss how they got their role, lessons learned and advice for job seekers like you. #ChatSTC Twitter Chat: The Internet Wants You  Consider a Career in Cybersecurity, Thursday, Oct. 26 , 3:00-4:00 p.m. EDT / 12:00-1:00 p.m. PDT , Virtual/Online : A key risk to our economy and security is the shortage of cybersecurity professionals to protect our extensive networks. Week 4 of NCSAM is all about growing the next generation of a skilled cyber workforce. In this NCSAM Twitter chat, we'll discuss the many exciting and rewarding opportunities in the field of cybersecurity and provide tips and resources for both new and seasoned professionals looking to gain cybersecurity expertise. Use #ChatSTC to join!

A key risk to our economy and security is the shortage of cybersecurity professionals to protect our extensive networks. Week 4 of NCSAM is all about growing the next generation of a skilled cyber workforce. In this NCSAM Twitter chat, we'll discuss the many exciting and rewarding opportunities in the field of cybersecurity and provide tips and resources for both new and seasoned professionals looking to gain cybersecurity expertise. Use #ChatSTC to join! 2017 International Information Sharing Conference , Tuesday, Oct. 31  Wednesday, Nov. 1, Walter E. Washington Convention Center, 801 Mount Vernon Place NW, Washington, D.C .: Join the Information Sharing and Analysis Organization Standards Organization for its inaugural International Information Sharing Conference, with participation from the and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This two-day event will convene practitioners from small businesses to multinational corporations and from information sharing newcomers to well-established cybersecurity organizations.

.: Join the Information Sharing and Analysis Organization Standards Organization for its inaugural International Information Sharing Conference, with participation from the and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This two-day event will convene practitioners from small businesses to multinational corporations and from information sharing newcomers to well-established cybersecurity organizations. EDUCAUSE Annual Conference , Tuesday, Oct. 31  Friday, Nov. 3, Pennsylvania Convention Center, 1101 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA : The EDUCAUSE Annual Conference hosts professionals and technology providers from around the world to network, share ideas and discover solutions to today's challenges. Here you'll have access to the largest gathering of your peers. People who you can relate to, learn from and actively contribute to the best thinking in higher education IT.

The EDUCAUSE Annual Conference hosts professionals and technology providers from around the world to network, share ideas and discover solutions to today's challenges. Here you'll have access to the largest gathering of your peers. People who you can relate to, learn from and actively contribute to the best thinking in higher education IT. #ChatSTC Twitter Chat: Protecting Critical Infrastructure From Cyber Threats, Wednesday, Nov. 1 , 3:00-4:00 p.m. EDT / 12:00-1:00 p.m. PDT , Virtual/Online: As NCSAM comes to a close, we'll discuss the connection between the cyber and physical worlds, the importance of protecting and securing our critical infrastructure  our traffic lights, running water, phone lines, power grids and more  and share simple cyber tips for individuals looking to do their part to protect our critical infrastructure from cyber threats. Use #ChatSTC to join!

Learn more about upcoming NCSAM events (and submit your own to NCSA's events calendar) at staysafeonline.org.

Helpful Resources from NCSA and Partners

For the remainder of NCSAM, you can join the conversation on social media using the hashtag #CyberAware (and tag your own posts with #CyberAware, too!). Additionally, @STOPTHNKCONNECT will continue its weekly Twitter chats in support of NCSAM to discuss different topics and trends in cybersecurity. Tune in for hourlong chats Oct. 26 and Nov. 1 at 3 p.m. EDT/noon PDT; visit the STOP. THINK. CONNECT. website for the full chat schedule. NCSA has created sample social media posts, infographics, posters, memes and more that you can download and share, and that encourages organizations and individuals to show their support for NCSAM and get the latest resources by registering as NCSAM Champions. Finally, check out the Stay Safe Online blog for NCSAM posts from NCSA and partners during the month of October.

About National Cyber Security Awareness Month

National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) was created as a collaborative effort between government and industry to ensure every American has the resources they need to stay safer and more secure online. Now in its 14th year, NCSAM was co-founded and is co-led by the Department of Homeland Security and the National Cyber Security Alliance, the nation's leading nonprofit public-private partnership promoting the safe and secure use of the internet and digital privacy. Recognized annually in October, NCSAM involves the participation of a multitude of industry leaders  mobilizing individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, nonprofits, academia, multinational corporations and governments. Encouraging digital citizens around the globe to STOP. THINK. CONNECT., NCSAM is harnessing the collective impact of its programs and resources to increase awareness about today's ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape. Visit the NCSA media room for more information and resources.

About the National Cyber Security Alliance

The National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) is the nation's leading nonprofit, public-private partnership promoting cybersecurity and privacy education and awareness. NCSA works with a broad array of stakeholders in government, industry and civil society. NCSA's primary partners are the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and NCSA's Board of Directors, which includes representatives from ADP; Aetna; AT&T Services Inc.; Bank of America; Barclays; CDK Global, LLC; Cisco; Comcast Corporation; ESET North America; Google; Facebook; LifeLock, Inc.; Logical Operations; NXP Semiconductors; RSA, the Security Division of EMC; Symantec Corporation; Intel Corporation; MasterCard; Microsoft Corporation; PayPal; Raytheon; PKWARE; Salesforce; SANS Security Awareness; TeleSign; Visa and Wells Fargo. NCSA's core efforts include National Cyber Security Awareness Month (October); Data Privacy Day (Jan. 28) and STOP. THINK. CONNECT., the global online safety awareness and education campaign co-founded by NCSA and the Anti Phishing Working Group, with federal government leadership from DHS. For more information on NCSA, please visit staysafeonline.org/about-us/overview/.

SOURCE National Cyber Security Alliance

Related Links

http://www.staysafeonline.org


LISLE, Ill., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Navistar International Corporation (NYSE: NAV) today announced that Troy A. Clarke, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Walter G. Borst, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, will discuss industry topics and business matters related to the company during Gabelli & Company's 41st Annual Automotive Aftermarket Symposium in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Monday, October 30, which is scheduled to begin at 3:15 p.m. Pacific.

The company also announced that Troy A. Clarke, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer will discuss business matters related to the company during the Robert W. Baird 2017 Industrial Conference in Chicago, Illinois on Thursday, November 9, which is scheduled to begin at 2:00 p.m. Central.

The live webcast can be accessed through the investor relations page of the company's website at http://www.navistar.com/navistar/investors/webcasts. Investors are advised to log on to the website at least 15 minutes prior to the start of the webcast to allow sufficient time for downloading any necessary software. The webcast will be available for replay at the same address approximately three hours following its conclusion, and will remain available for a limited time.

About Navistar

Navistar International Corporation (NYSE: NAV) is a holding company whose subsidiaries and affiliates produce International brand commercial and military trucks, proprietary diesel engines, and IC Bus brand school and commercial buses. An affiliate also provides truck and diesel engine service parts. Another affiliate offers financing services. Additional information is available at www.Navistar.com.

SOURCE Navistar International Corporation

Related Links

http://www.navistar.com


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- GraphConnect New York  Neo4j, the market leader in connected data, today announced that it has donated an early version of Cypher for Apache Spark (CAPS) language toolkit to the openCypher project. This contribution will allow big data analysts to incorporate graph querying in their workflows, making it easier to bring graph algorithms to bear, dramatically broadening how they reveal connections in their data. Developers of Spark applications now join the users of Neo4j, SAP HANA, Redis Graph and AgensGraph, among others, in gaining access to Cypher, the leading declarative property graph query language. This also expands the tooling available to any developer, under Apache 2.0 licenses from the openCypher project.

As graph-powered applications and analytic projects gain success, big data teams are looking to connect more of their data and personnel into this work. This is happening at places like eBay for recommendations via conversational commerce, Telia for smart home, and Comcast for smart home content recommendations. Until now, the full power of graph pattern matching has been unavailable to data scientists using Spark or for data wrangling pipelines. Now, with Cypher for Apache Spark, these data scientists can iterate easier and connect adjacent data sources to their graph applications much more quickly.

"Cypher for Apache Spark is an important milestone in both the pervasiveness of graph technology, and in the evolution of the Cypher query language itself," explains Philip Rathle, VP of product at Neo4j. "In making Cypher available for Apache Spark, we looked closely at the way Spark works with immutable data sets, and then in coordination with the openCypher group, brought in facilities that let graph queries operate over the results of graph queries, and an API that allows graphs to be split, transformed, snapshotted and linked together in processing chains that give huge flexibility in shaping graph data, including data from users' data lakes. Cypher for Apache Spark is the first implementation of Cypher to allow queries to return graphs, as well as tables of data."

Cypher for Apache Spark also implements the new multiple graph and composable query features emerging from the work of the openCypher Implementers Group which formed earlier this year. The openCypher project is hosting Cypher for Apache Spark as alpha-stage open source under the Apache 2.0 license, in order to allow other contributors to join in the evolution of this important project at an early stage.

"As data accumulates in lakes at accelerating speeds and in unprecedented volumes, the challenge of extracting value from it by traversing differentiated structures and inferring context from them grows exponentially," said Stephen O'Grady, analyst and co-founder at RedMonk. "Neo4j and its Cypher graph query language intend to be the de facto solution to precisely this problem."

Neo4j is the graph platform leader and a relentless champion of making graph technology accessible for a larger, wider audience. This announcement builds on Neo4j's sponsorship of openCypher in October 2015, as an effort to push the whole graph industry forward by tapping into the open source community and making Cypher's evolution an open exercise while avoiding redundant research. Today over 20 organizations and universities are participating in the openCypher implementers group. This team meets regularly to discuss how Cypher should evolve. These meetings are open to the public with governance by consensus in the Cypher community.

About Neo4j, Inc.

Neo4j, Inc. is the graph company behind the #1 platform for connected data. The Neo4j graph platform helps organizations make sense of their data by revealing how people, processes and digital systems are interrelated. This connections-first approach powers intelligent applications tackling challenges such as artificial intelligence, fraud detection, real-time recommendations and master data.

The company boasts the world's largest dedicated investment in native graph technology, has amassed more than ten million downloads, and has a huge developer community deploying graph applications around the globe. More than 250 commercial customers, including global enterprises like Walmart, Comcast, Cisco, eBay, and UBS use Neo4j to create a competitive advantage from connections in their data.

Neo4j is privately held and funded by Eight Roads Ventures (an investment arm of Fidelity International Limited), Sunstone Capital, Conor Venture Partners, Creandum, Dawn Capital and Greenbridge Investment Partners. Headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., Neo4j has regional offices in Sweden, Germany and the UK. For more information, please visit Neo4j.com and@Neo4j.

All trademarks and registered trademarks, including Neo4j are the property of their respective owners.

Media contact

Dan O'Mahony, InkHouse for Neo4j

[email protected]

SOURCE Neo4j

Related Links

http://Neo4j.com


These new cable assemblies were specifically designed to address confined space connectivity applications. Typically used in poorly ventilated areas, low-smoke zero-halogen cable jackets are very popular with military contractors and in any application where it is critical to protect people and equipment from toxic and corrosive gases in the event of a fire.

To address those applications where LSZH cables are required, MilesTek now stocks 78 Ohm twinaxial and 50 Ohm triaxial LSZH cable assemblies with the following connector combinations: TRB 3-slot plug, blunt end, insulated and non-insulated Bulk Head 3-Lug connectors and more. These cables are available in standard and custom lengths in inch increments.

"Our new LSZH cables were designed to address military applications including use aboard aircraft, land vehicles, seagoing vessels or in confined land-based applications. We have released this new cable series to address the growing need for off-the-self LSZH interconnect products in military applications," said Mark Hearn, Product Manager.

These new MIL-STD-1553B LSZH cables are in stock and available for immediate shipment.

For more information about this release, please contact:

Peter McNeil

MilesTek

17792 Fitch

Irvine, CA

978-682-6936 x1174

About MilesTek:

MilesTek designs and manufactures a broad range of MIL-STD-1553B products to address Military Avionics, Aerospace, Industrial and government applications. In addition to a wide selection of off the shelf products, MilesTek can custom manufacture cable assemblies and harnesses. MilesTek is headquartered in Lewisville, Texas and is AS9100C and ISO9001:2008 certified. MilesTek is an Infinite Electronics company.

SOURCE MilesTek
The five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is just 9 percent . In order to save lives and double survival by 2020, PanCAN urges the New Orleans community to join PurpleStride. Funds raised through the event support critical research, clinical initiatives and patient services, including Know Your Tumor , Precision Promise SM , Clinical Trial Finder and the Patient Registry .

Laryssa Bonacquisti, Miss Louisiana 2017, lost her grandmother Charlotte Laveron Falls to pancreatic cancer earlier this year. She has made it her personal mission to improve patient outcomes.

"Although she lost her battle against the world's toughest cancer, I am determined to fight for those who continue to face this silent killer," said Bonacquisti. "I created Team Charlotte to honor my grandmother, help raise vital funds for PurpleStride New Orleans and support the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network's urgent mission to save lives and double survival by 2020."

PurpleStride New Orleans will take place at City Park at Roosevelt Mall and will be hosted by WWL-TV anchor Natalie Shepherd. The event is supported by national presenting sponsor Celgene, national gold sponsor AbbVie, and gold media sponsor The New Orleans Advocate.

To register, donate or learn more about PurpleStride New Orleans, please visit purplestride.org/neworleans.

To learn more about the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network and its signature walk PurpleStride, watch the PurpleStride PSA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgfqCmz_4uY&feature=youtu.be and the organization's PSA. Follow PanCAN on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

About the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) is dedicated to fighting the world's toughest cancer. In our urgent mission to save lives, we attack pancreatic cancer on all fronts: research, clinical initiatives, patient services and advocacy. Our effort is amplified by a nationwide network of grassroots support. We are determined to improve patient outcomes today and to double survival by 2020.

Media Contact:

Samantha De Castro

Media Relations Chair

Pancreatic Cancer Action Network  New Orleans Affiliate

[email protected]; 504-952-4485

Zahra Nealy

Public Relations Specialist

Pancreatic Cancer Action Network

[email protected]; 310-706-3532

SOURCE Pancreatic Cancer Action Network

Related Links

http://www.pancan.org


PALM BEACH, Florida, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Key factors driving the continued growth of the hemp/CBD/marijuana/cannabis market include innovative CBD product introductions, technological advancement in operations, premium pricing due to high energy consumption in marijuana production, rising social acceptance of marijuana, large base of potential cannabis consumers, medical cannabis on the rise as well as a growing popular support in cannabis market. It was recent reported by Research and Markets, analysts forecast the global CBD oil market alone to grow at a CAGR of 39.19% during the period 2017-2021. Active in the industry today includes: PotNetwork Holding Inc. (OTC: POTN), Supreme Pharmaceuticals Inc. (TSX-V: FIRE) (OTC: SPRWF), Medical Marijuana, Inc. (OTC: MJNA), Hemp Inc. (OTC: HEMP), Amfil Technologies Inc. (OTC: AMFE).



PotNetwork Holding Inc. (OTC: POTN) is pleased to announce that its wholly owned subsidiary, Diamond CBD, Inc., has enhanced its product line with a delicious selection of premium honey products. Among them are honey packed straws, infused with 10mg of pure natural organic CBD. With the potential healing attributes of both Cannabis and Honey known for centuries, Diamond CBD's highly anticipated Infused Honey Sticks offer a whole new tasty way to enhance wellness and boost the immune system. Comprised of 100% natural CBD and all natural honey, these delicious straws are expected to be a welcomed enhancement, providing enthusiasts with a practical and beneficial addition right upon the inevitable opening of flu season. Read this and more news for POTN at: http://www.marketnewsupdates.com/news/potn.html



Although THC remains a scheduled substance under current US law, the paradigm is shifting and attitudes are changing towards cannabis, due to recent research into the endocannabinoid system and the physical role it plays. Containing receptors that naturally respond to cannabinoids, the human body has in numerous studies shown to interact favorably, often enhancing the body's natural ability to fight disease and reduce symptoms.



One of the major ingredients of cannabis, and the source of CBD Rich Hemp Oil, cannabidiol has been formally recognized by the US Patent Office as an "antioxidant and neuroprotectant". Filed in 1999, and published in 2003, US Patent 6630507 has recognized cannabidiol as an effective antioxidant. Antioxidants are generally useful in the treatment of oxidative diseases and are known for anti-aging effects. Treatment resistant ailments such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and HIV dementia are mentioned in the abstract as potentially treatable with antioxidant CBD. Inflammatory and autoimmune diseases are also noted.



Recently announced, the Company has delivered yet another impressive month of financial and industry growth. For the month of August 2017, Diamond CBD achieved record breaking revenues of $1,764,880.00, which exceeded July revenues by 20.9%.



In other industry developments and market performances of note:



Supreme Pharmaceuticals Inc . (TSX-V: FIRE.V) (OTC: SPRWF) yesterday announced that 7ACRES has obtained the Health Canada approvals necessary to commence cultivation at the recently completed 30,000 sq. ft. flowering rooms at the Company's Hybrid facility. The additional flowering area consists of three modular 10,000 sq. ft. flowering rooms representing the most recent innovation of 7ACRES' hybrid cultivation methodology. The additional flowering rooms increases the size of 7ACRES' flowering facility from 10,000 sq. ft. to 40,000 sq. ft. "Our mission at Supreme is to drive innovation in commercial production of legal, premium cannabis," said John Fowler CEO of Supreme. "Since inception we have focused on refining and improving our cultivation infrastructure, management systems and standard operating procedures. The operational experience we accumulated in 2016 was used to design and develop the new flowering rooms, incorporating feedback from our operators as well as our skilled team of engineers and consultants. I am proud of the progress we have made as an organization, and I'm excited to see the new levels of quality we can achieve moving forward."

Medical Marijuana Inc. (OTC: MJNA) recently announced that its subsidiary Kannaway LLC is welcoming Robert "Bo" Brannin as its new Senior Director of Operations. In this position, Brannin will be responsible for managing every aspect of the company's supply chain operations from purchasing to inventory, production and shipping. He will bring his twenty years of experience in the operations and logistics field to assist the team in building a strong foundation as the company now prepares to establish international operations. "We are excited to bring Bo onto the executive team as Senior Director of Operations and we are more than confident that he has the experience and skills required to effectively serve all of Kannaway's loyal customers and Brand Ambassadors," said Kannaway CEO, Blake Schroeder.

Hemp Inc. (OTC: HEMP) Developments: One Step Vending, Corp. (KOSK), a holdings company specializing in market disruptive acquisitions with an emphasis on the self-serve vending market, after the recent agreement with Hemp Inc. (OTC: HEMP), for the placement of CBD products in Micro Markets network, announces the Company's decision to direct its focus on multi-billion dollar CBD products marketing and sales online as well. As hemp and marijuana-derived CBD products constitute an emerging industry with rapid growth and a multi-billion dollar market, the Company decided to dedicate part of its resources to the creation of an e-shop for the marketing and sale of selected CBD products online. The Company is already in discussions with manufacturers of CBD consumer products and is also exploring the potential to develop its own line under its own brand as revealed in previous press releases. Along with the San Diego Micro Markets on-the-spot network, the e-shop will be the vehicle for the online sale of CBD products.

Amfil Technologies Inc. (OTC: AMFE) announced this week a summary of its Fiscal Q1 2018 Financials and provide an update on Fiscal Q2 2018 progress thus far. Amfil Technologies Inc. posted revenues of $5,900,374 for our Fiscal Q1 2018 up 20,619% from Fiscal Q1 2017 which posted $28,477 in total revenue. The company saw a gross profit of $1,041,121 and a net income of $114,106. The company as at FY Q1 2018 being September 30th 2017 had $297,748 in cash, $4,286,000 in inventory and $6,734,935 in total assets. As of today, the Public Float held with DTC is 285,504,206. Common Shares Outstanding is 488,797,586 and the Authorized Share Count has been reduced down to 600,000,000 from 900,000,000. The company has been heavily reinvesting profits to fuel its expansion since Fiscal 2017. The significant profit increases posted in our recent Q1 2018 financials are a direct result of reinvesting profits to aggressively expand the Snakes & Lattes distribution business last year.



DISCLAIMER: MarketNewsUpdates.com (MNU) is a third party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels. MNU is NOT affiliated in any manner with any company mentioned herein. MNU and its affiliated companies are a news dissemination solutions provider and are NOT a registered broker/dealer/analyst/adviser, holds no investment licenses and may NOT sell, offer to sell or offer to buy any security. MNU's market updates, news alerts and corporate profiles are NOT a solicitation or recommendation to buy, sell or hold securities. The material in this release is intended to be strictly informational and is NEVER to be construed or interpreted as research material. All readers are strongly urged to perform research and due diligence on their own and consult a licensed financial professional before considering any level of investing in stocks. All material included herein is republished content and details which were previously disseminated by the companies mentioned in this release. MNU is not liable for any investment decisions by its readers or subscribers. Investors are cautioned that they may lose all or a portion of their investment when investing in stocks. For current services performed MNU has been compensated forty-nine hundred dollars for news coverage of the current press release issued by PotNetwork Holding Inc by a non-affiliated third party. MNU HOLDS NO SHARES OF ANY COMPANY NAMED IN THIS RELEASE.

This release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended and such forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "may", "future", "plan" or "planned", "will" or "should", "expected," "anticipates", "draft", "eventually" or "projected". You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including the risks that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, and other risks identified in a company's annual report on Form 10-K or 10-KSB and other filings made by such company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements in this release are made as of the date hereof and MNU undertakes no obligation to update such statements.



Contact Information:

Media Contact

[email protected]

+1(561)325-8757



SOURCE MarketNewsUpdates.com
JUNO BEACH, Fla., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The NextEra Energy Foundation and NextEra Energy's Duane Arnold Energy Center have announced a $25,000 donation to support Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education in schools in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, area. The donation, on behalf of Iowa's only nuclear power plant, will help update and improve science learning in middle school classrooms.

The funding will help the Grant Wood Area Education Agency upgrade science kits that are used to help middle school students get hands-on science education. The kits also help provide materials for teachers to be able to teach children lessons related to STEM in a fun and interactive way. NextEra Energy representatives recently presented the funding to Grant Wood AEA at a special ceremony at Springville Secondary School.

"NextEra Energy is committed to supporting the growth of STEM in local schools," said Duane Arnold Energy Center Site Director Dean Curtland. "These students are the scientists and engineers of the future, and we're proud to support them right here in Iowa."

"This generous donation from NextEra Energy will help us update our science program and reach more students in Iowa," said Grant Wood AEA Science Consultant Kathy Schultz. "The continued support of this program is an investment in our state, and will help support Iowa's long-term workforce."

The donation was made during Nuclear Science Week, which celebrates all the innovations and opportunities associated with nuclear science. In addition to supporting STEM education, NextEra Energy Duane Arnold supports more than $250 million in economic activity in Iowa each year and more than $500 million of activity in the U.S. economy. Duane Arnold also employs 550 people full time and numerous support staff for refueling outages and special projects in the Cedar Rapids area.

NextEra Energy's charitable foundation donates millions of dollars each year to projects and programs that contribute to the health and well-being of the communities we serve.

NextEra Energy Resources

NextEra Energy Resources, LLC (together with its affiliated entities, "NextEra Energy Resources"), is a clean energy leader and is one of the largest wholesale generators of electric power in the U.S., with approximately 19,990 megawatts of generating capacity, which includes megawatts associated with noncontrolling interests related to NextEra Energy Partners, LP (NYSE: NEP), primarily in 29 states and Canada as of year-end 2016. NextEra Energy Resources, together with its affiliated entities, is the world's largest generator of renewable energy from the wind and sun. The business operates clean, emissions-free nuclear power generation facilities in New Hampshire, Iowa and Wisconsin as part of the NextEra Energy nuclear fleet, which is one of the largest in the United States. NextEra Energy Resources, LLC is a subsidiary of Juno Beach, Florida-based NextEra Energy, Inc. (NYSE: NEE). For more information, visit www.NextEraEnergyResources.com.

SOURCE NextEra Energy Resources, LLC

Related Links

http://www.nexteraenergy.com


WALL, N.J., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- NJFX, the first and only colocation campus to sit at a cable landing station in the U.S and offer Tier 3, carrier neutral data center capabilities, announces a new, direct way for carriers to reach the United States via the TGN-A and Seabras-1 cable systems. NJFX customers can reach these strategic subsea cables via secure Network to Network Interfaces (NNI) at NJFX's New Jersey colocation campus. The NNIs contribute to guarantee increased performance, reliability and route diversity.

The breakout capabilities also allow carriers, service providers, content companies and enterprises high capacity, while eliminating traditional points of failure when providing US-Europe, US-Brazil, US-Asia connectivity. TGN-1 & 2 cables are submarine cable systems connecting Highbridge UK to Wall, New Jersey. U.S. Seabras-1 is a 10,500-km fiber optic cable that connects Sao Paulo, Brazil to the U.S. It offers connectivity to financial markets and other Latin America enterprises and bypasses the Atlantic hurricane zone.

"Our new breakout capability allows carriers to use these subsea systems to reach the U.S. and bypass traditional routes that have multiple hops," states Gil Santaliz, NJFX Founder and Chief Executive Officer. "This is crucial not only to reduce latency, but also in terms of increasing reliability and disaster recovery options. You only have to look to recent hurricanes to see that for communications hubs, one disruption in the chain could mean disruption in financial transactions, communications and connectivity to South America."

"Customers at NJFX with the most stringent latency and diversification requirements, and who need higher reliability, can now enjoy direct advanced connectivity solutions to Brazil and beyond through Sparkle's Seabras-1 capabilities," says Federico Porri, CTO at Sparkle Americas. "As we are constantly working to provide more value and secure diversity options for our customers, we are happy to partner with NJFX, a company that provides a very reliable and flexible environment with great backhaul partners."

NJFX offers backhaul options to strategic locations across the United States through carriers including Comcast, Cross River Fiber, Epsilon, Lightower Fiber Networks, Sparkle, Telia Carrier, Windstream, and Zayo  all with no recurring interconnection fee, for direct connectivity to over 50,000 buildings.

For more information on the NJFX colocation campus, visit www.njfx.net.

About NJFX

NJFX operates "Tier 3 by the Subsea," the world's first colocation campus that strategically intersects a carrier neutral subsea cable landing station meet-me room with a Tier 3, carrier neutral data center. The 64,800-square foot purpose-built data center offers direct access to multiple independent subsea cable systems that interconnect North America, Europe, and South America. High and low-density colocation solutions are available with 24/7 support as well as unique US fiber back-haul solutions that avoid traditional legacy network points of failure. NJFX's offerings provide the flexibility, reliability and security that global carriers, content providers, enterprise and government entities require to drive revenue, reduce expenses and improve service quality.

For more information, please visit www.NJFX.net.

For the latest news, follow the company on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

SOURCE NJFX

Related Links

http://www.NJFX.net


HOUSTON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Nova Medical Centers, based out of Houston, TX, is joining forces with the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots Program for another year to ensure a bright holiday for thousands of underprivileged children. All 48 Nova Medical Centers are a Toys for Tots Drop-Off Donation Site where anyone can drop off a new, unwrapped toy for a child in need. They will begin collecting toys Monday, October 23, and continue until Friday, December 15. Everyone is welcome to join in their efforts by dropping off a toy at any Nova Medical Centers facility.

As a family-owned and operated company, Nova Medical Centers is proud to work with such a giving organization. CEO, Ulf Rohde, shared that, "This is an annual event that is a no-brainer for us. Nova is proud to partner each year with Toys for Tots in the hopes of giving kids a great Christmas. We hope you stop by and participate in spreading the joy this year."

ABOUT TOYS FOR TOTS

The U.S. Marine Corps Toys for Tots Program's mission is to collect new, unwrapped toys during October, November, and December each year, and distribute those toys as Christmas gifts to less fortunate children in the community. The objectives of Toys for Tots are to help less fortunate children throughout the United States experience the joy of Christmas; to play an active role in the development of one of our nation's most valuable resources  our children; to unite all members of local communities in a common cause for three months each year during the annual toy collection and distribution campaign; and to contribute to better communities in the future.

ABOUT NOVA MEDICAL CENTERS

Nova Medical Centers began as a single facility formed 25 years ago in Conroe, Texas, to provide the highest level of healthcare to patients suffering from work-related injuries. Currently, Nova treats more than 40,000 injuries each year and sees more than 600,000 patient visits in 12 months. Nova operates more than 48 occupational medicine facilities across Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Indiana. For more information please visit: www.n-o-v-a.com.

SOURCE Nova Medical Centers

Related Links

http://www.n-o-v-a.com


WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency will host a workshop in Albuquerque, N.M., at the Crown Plaza Albuquerque, December 4-6, for directors, senior management team members and other key executives of national community banks and federal savings associations supervised by the OCC.

The Building Blocks for Directors workshop combines lectures, discussion, and exercises to provide practical information on the roles and responsibilities of board participation. Taught by seasoned OCC supervision staff, the workshop focuses on duties and core responsibilities of directors and management, discusses major laws and regulations, and increases familiarity with the examination process. This is the final Building Blocks for Directors workshop scheduled for 2017.

The workshop fee is $99. Participants receive a pre-workshop reading package and course materials, assorted supervisory publications, and a Dictionary of Banking Terms. The workshop is limited to the first 35 registrants.

The workshops are taught by experienced OCC staff and are offered nationwide to enhance and expand the skills of national community bank and federal savings association directors. To register for this workshop, visit www.occ.gov/occworkshops.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ("OCC") charters and oversees a nationwide system of national banks and federal savings associations and assures that these banking institutions are safe and sound, competitive, and capable of serving the banking needs of their customers in the best possible manner. OCC press releases and other information are available at http://www.occ.gov. To receive OCC press releases and issuances by e-mail, subscribe at http://www.occ.gov/subscribe/occ-email-list-service.html.

SOURCE Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

Related Links

http://www.occ.gov


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM), operator of financial markets for 10,000 U.S. and global securities, today announced Metalla Royalty & Streaming Ltd. (CSE: MTA; OTCQX: MTAFF), Canada-based precious metals royalty and streaming company, has qualified to trade on the OTCQX Best Market. Metalla Royalty & Streaming upgraded to OTCQX from the OTCQB Venture Market.

Metalla Royalty & Streaming begins trading today on OTCQX under the symbol "MTAFF." U.S. investors can find current financial disclosure and Real-Time Level 2 quotes for the company on www.otcmarkets.com.

"We congratulate Metalla Royalty & Streaming on graduating from our OTCQB Venture Market to now trade on our OTCQX Best Market," said Jason Paltrowitz, Executive Vice President of Corporate Services at OTC Markets Group. "OTCQX companies are distinguished by their commitment to providing a superior trading & information experience for their investors. We look forwarding to supporting Metalla Royalty & Streaming in the public market."

"In response to growing investor interest we have chosen to have Metalla's shares trade on the OTCQX Best Market, enabling greater exposure, liquidity, transparency and accessibility to our expanding U.S. shareholder base," said Metalla's President and CEO Brett Heath. "Metalla looks forward to broadening its shareholder base further through trading on OTCQX."

About Metalla Royalty & Streaming

Metalla is a Canada-based precious metals royalty and streaming company. Metalla provides shareholders with leveraged precious metal exposure through a diversified portfolio of royalties and streams. Its strong foundation of current and future cash generating asset base, combined with an experienced team gives Metalla a path to become of the leading gold and silver companies for the next commodities cycle.

About OTC Markets Group Inc.

OTC Markets Group Inc. (OTCQX: OTCM) operates the OTCQX Best Market, the OTCQB Venture Market, and the Pink Open Market for 10,000 U.S. and global securities. Through OTC Link ATS, we connect a diverse network of broker-dealers that provide liquidity and execution services. We enable investors to easily trade through the broker of their choice and empower companies to improve the quality of information available for investors.

To learn more about how we create better informed and more efficient markets, visit www.otcmarkets.com

OTC Link ATS is operated by OTC Link LLC, member FINRA/SIPC and SEC regulated ATS.

Subscribe to the OTC Markets RSS Feed

Media Contact:

OTC Markets Group Inc., +1 (212) 896-4428, [email protected]

SOURCE OTC Markets Group Inc.

Related Links

http://www.otcmarkets.com


NEW YORK and MIAMI, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --The Parkinson's Foundation today announced the election of Chicago entrepreneur Peter Goldman and New York financial analyst Joshua Raskin to its Board of Directors.

"Peter and Joshua bring valuable business and philanthropic experience that will further advance the Parkinson's Foundation's mission to serve the one million Americans and ten million people worldwide living with this disease," said John W. Kozyak, Esq., Chairman of the Board of the Parkinson's Foundation.

Peter Goldman

Goldman is managing partner of Lakeshore Sport & Fitness in Chicago, which owns and operates businesses in the Chicago area focused on hospitality, health and wellness. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Goldman worked for Sam Zell in real estate investing and McKinsey & Company as a management consultant. He has served on several non-profit boards including the Auxiliary Board of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was a vice president and created a new annual signature fundraising event.

"I am excited to join the Parkinson's Foundation board at this critical time," Goldman said. "The Parkinson's Foundation's mission to make life better for people with Parkinson's is more urgent than ever with 60,000 new cases being diagnosed every year."

Joshua Raskin

For the past 18 years, Raskin has served as managing director at Barclay's Capital, where he coordinates coverage of the healthcare services sector in the equity research department. Prior to this, he was a managing director at Lehman Brothers for nine years. In 2017, Raskin formed Nephron Research, an independent research boutique focused on healthcare. He has a personal connection to Parkinson's in his immediate family.

"The fight against Parkinson's disease and the mission of finding a cure are of deep importance to me, particularly in light of my family history," Raskin said. "I remain committed to the Parkinson's community in my new role on the Parkinson's Foundation board of directors."

A complete list of the Parkinson's Foundation's Board of Directors is available at www.parkinson.org/board.

About the Parkinson's Foundation

The Parkinson's Foundation makes life better for people with Parkinson's disease by improving care and advancing research toward a cure. In everything we do, we build on the energy, experience, and passion of our global Parkinson's community. For more information, visit www.parkinson.org or call (800) 4PD-INFO (473-4636).

About Parkinson's Disease

Affecting an estimated one million Americans and 10 million worldwide, Parkinson's disease is the second-most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer's and is the 14th-leading cause of death in the United States. It is associated with a progressive loss of motor control (e.g., shaking or tremor at rest and lack of facial expression), as well as non-motor symptoms (e.g., depression and anxiety). There is no cure for Parkinson's and 60,000 new cases are diagnosed each year in the United States alone.

Contact: Leilani Pearl, 305-537-9907, [email protected]

SOURCE Parkinson's Foundation

Related Links

http://www.parkinson.org


FORT COLLINS, Colo., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Millions of people exposed their deepest secrets to the world through social media during the #MeToo movement. Most have been left wondering what to do next. After the likes, retweets, and caring comments subside, often the pain and baggage of sexual assault remains. It may be no coincidence that a Fort Collins, Colorado author and Lost and Found Publishing launched a book designed for sexual abuse survivors on Oct. 15, the same day #MeToo would take the world by storm.

Lost and Found Publishing

Jessie's Song is the debut work of Jeremy Williamson. Inspired by true events, the story follows Jessie Jenkins through a childhood devastated by secrets and abuse. Later, after years of running from her past and searching for her true identity, Jessie runs headlong into her answer. The answer Jessie finds has left readers feeling, "So many emotions, tears of sadness and tears of joy." According to one reader's review, "It is a must read on anyone's healing journey."

Author Jeremy Williamson says "I am fed up with the fact that millions of amazing, infinitely valuable people are limping through life with unhealed wounds. They've been forced into silence by a culture which refuses to deal with the issue of abuse because it is just too messy. I am inviting everyone who is hurting to find healing for their broken heart and hope for their future."

Jeremy has been this passionate as long as he can remember. Directly after graduating high school, Jeremy dove into an educational and ministry journey which has taken him from the slums of Central America to the jungles of India. He's served orphans in Thailand and women living with HIV in Malawi. He has prayed with members of Mexican drug cartels and struggling American youth in the same afternoon.

Today, Jeremy lives in Northern Colorado with his family. Whether he's at home or abroad, Jeremy's life continues to be dedicated to "Helping all kinds of people encounter the relentless love of God."

Jessie's Song is a powerful work of fiction inspired by the story of someone Jeremy loves very muchhis mother. Jessie is a young girl growing up in a small Texas oil town. She and her five siblings spend their time adventuring in the woods and doing their best to survive the rage of their alcohol-driven father.

Late one night, after Jessie's father stumbles into her room and attempts to molest her, an existential battle over her identity erupts in her soul. This battle will lead her to the brink of suicide. Months after her suicide attempt and the jail time which followed, Jessie meets a mysterious stranger near a tiny lake high in the Rocky Mountains. This stranger knows every detail of her past and offers the only thing she ever wanteda love that can be trusted to heal and not harm. As Jessie takes the greatest risk of her life, she discovers the truth about her past that will change her future forever.

Jessie's journey is one of hope, healing, and true identity for survivors of abuse and everyone who longs to believe again that they were created for something more.

Media Contact:

Jeremy Williamson is available for speaking engagements, on-air interviews, and more.

[email protected]

(970) 658-6585

Facebook: /jeremyw805

Twitter: @jeremyw805

jessiessong.com

lostandfound.life

Complementary digital review copies of Jessie's Song are available. Request review copies by sending an email with your name, company name, and contact info to: [email protected]

Visit www.jessiessong.com today to learn more about why this book is changing lives.

#MeToo #Sexualassault #jessiessong #youarenotalone

Related Images

image1.jpg

Book Cover

image2.jpg

Author Photo

SOURCE Lost and Found Publishing

Related Links

http://lostandfound.life


BOSTON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHAlliance), a nonprofit organization formed by HIMSS, and WEGO Health, a Boston-based digital health company, today announced a new strategic partnership to strengthen collaboration between connected health companies and freelance experts drawn from the patient and caregiver community. The partnership will accelerate patient-focused innovation by deploying the expertise of patient experts who bring both professional skills and personal health experience.

"PCHAlliance and WEGO Health share a commitment to ensuring that connected health solutions are designed not just for patients, but with patients," said Patty Mechael, PhD, executive vice president, PCHAlliance. "We believe we can support our members by helping them quickly discover vetted experts from the patient community who have the skills and experience to serve as consultants and who can be hired on-demand through the WEGO Health Experts platform."

Companies that participate in the PCHAlliance are among the world's leading developers of connected medical devices and apps that are aimed at improving patient care. Members include global technology and life sciences companies such as Intel Corporation, Roche and Qualcomm Life, as well as early stage digital health companies such as Propel Health, Get Real Health and Numedics. While worldwide adoption of connected devices continues to increase, studies show persistent challenges in patient adoption, including high abandonment rates and reduced impacts on long-term behavior.

"We see tremendous opportunities for connected health companies to bring patient expertise into every stage of these companies' life cycles, to ensure that apps and devices are co-designed, managed and adopted by the intended end users," said Jack Barrette, WEGO Health's founder and chief executive officer. "PCHAlliance members are on the bleeding edge of digital health technology and they need a low-friction way to find and collaborate with the early adopters on the patient side."

WEGO Health connects the healthcare industry with freelance patient experts, who are vetted freelance consultants and professionals with the ability to help drive patient-centered innovation. The company's network includes more than 125,000 patients and caregivers who manage chronic and complex health conditions, and who deeply understand the health consumer perspective. The WEGO Health Experts platform has already connected hundreds of companies with patient experts in market research, advisory boards, product design, influencer marketing, speaking engagements, and dozens of other specialties.

About the Personal Connected Health Alliance

The Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHAlliance) aims to make health and wellness an effortless part of daily life. The PCHAlliance, a non-profit organization formed by HIMSS, believes that health is personal and extends beyond healthcare. The Alliance mobilizes a coalition of stakeholders to realize the full potential of personal connected health. PCHAlliance members are a vibrant ecosystem of technology and life sciences industry icons and innovative, early stage companies along with governments, academic institutions, and associations from around the world. To support its vision, PCHAlliance convenes the global personal connected health community at the annual Connected Health Conference, the premier international event for the exchange of research, evidence, ideas, innovations and opportunities in personal connected health. The Alliance publishes and promotes adoption of the Continua Design Guidelines. Continua is recognized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as the international standard for safe, secure, and reliable exchange of data to and from personal health devices. PCHAlliance accelerates technical, business, policy and social strategies necessary to advance personal connected health through its Healthy Longevity initiative to promote lifelong health and wellness.

About WEGO Health

WEGO Health is a mission-driven company connecting healthcare with the experience, skills and insights of patient leaders, working across virtually all health conditions and topics. WEGO Health Experts is the first on-demand talent platform that matches companies seeking patient expertise with individuals who are available to work as independent consultants. WEGO Health's network collaborates with startups, life sciences companies, non-profits, agencies, government and all types of organizations across healthcare. WEGO Health offers enterprise and on-demand solutions that allow organizations to leverage patient experience and expertise in the design, development, and promotion of their products and services.

SOURCE Personal Connected Health Alliance

Related Links

http://www.pchalliance.org


SEATTLE and NEW YORK and LONDON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- PitchBook, the premier data provider for the private and public markets, today unveiled the PitchBook Extension for Google Chrome, enabling customers to access PitchBook's comprehensive data directly from their browser while visiting a company website, reading the news or doing online research. Additionally, PitchBook also introduced Notes and Files, a new feature that allows users to securely store and share information and documents within the PitchBook Platform. In today's fast-paced business environment, technologies that optimize individual workflows and collaboration help organizations save time and money, while also providing a competitive edge. The PitchBook Platform's newest features allow investors, service providers and business professionals to improve overall productivity and more readily take advantage of the award-winning private and public financial market database.

According to a global survey conducted by Harvard Business Review and the Economist Intelligence Unit, more than 20% of productivity is lost during the average work week due to "organizational drag," or internal structures and processes that take up valuable time and resources. The study goes on to find, when business leaders adopt a productivity mindset and simplify their organization's operational processes to align with "true sources of value," they are 40% more productive. Considered the world's most robust database on venture capital, private equity, M&A and the public markets, the PitchBook Platform is a critical tool in informing business decisions. The latest enhancements make it easier for customers to access valuable data and collaborate with colleagues using one centralized system.

With PitchBook's Chrome extension, users can now leverage the power of the PitchBook Platform while visiting company websites, scanning news articles and researching online. By simply opening the extension while browsing the web or right-clicking on a company in a news article, PitchBook subscribers can instantly view hard-to-find company data including funding history, valuations, investors, contacts and more. In addition, search history and followed companies are automatically synced across PitchBook Mobile, Desktop and Chrome Extension, allowing users to easily pick up where they left off. With private and public market insight just one-click away, customers are easily able to find, vet and pursue promising opportunities without toggling between tabs or leaving their current workspace.

Additionally, the company has also added a Notes and Files feature, which provides users the ability to securely store and share information and documents within the Platform. For instance, PitchBook users are now able to share emails and meeting notes and attach pertinent documents about a company, person or investor of interest, all within a centralized system. The new functionality was designed to further optimize customer workflows by enabling easy communication and tracking of business opportunities within one platform.

"Our team is laser focused on putting the PitchBook Platform into the hands of our clients wherever they are and to make their workflow easier," said Fabrice Forget, chief product officer at PitchBook. "Both the Google-Chrome extension as well as Notes and Files, allows PitchBook customers to more easily integrate PitchBook into their existing workflow and save valuable time and resources. The ability to access the world's most robust private and public financial market database with a simple right click while perusing the web, allows PitchBook customers easily get intel they wouldn't normally find on a webpage. The added benefit of easily sharing updates and notes within the Platform, allows internal communications and PitchBook's powerful data to work hand-in-hand."

For more information on PitchBook's Google-Chrome Extension as well as its new Notes and Files feature, please watch this video and read more here.

About PitchBook

PitchBook is a financial data and software company that provides transparency into the capital markets to help professionals discover and execute opportunities with confidence and efficiency. PitchBook collects and analyzes detailed data on the entire venture capital, private equity and M&A landscapeincluding public and private companies, investors, funds, investments, exits and people. The company's data and analysis are available through the PitchBook Platform, industry news and in-depth reports. Founded in 2007, PitchBook has offices in Seattle, New York and London and serves more than 12,000 professionals around the world. In 2016, Morningstar acquired PitchBook, which now operates as an independent subsidiary.

SOURCE PitchBook

Related Links

http://www.pitchbook.com


Mr. Miller brings more than 20 years of experience in building industry-leading technology systems and innovative customer facing applications within prominent consumer companies. Most recently, he served as senior vice president and chief information and technology officer at Sonic Drive-In, where he was responsible for developing and executing technology transformation strategies and services, including customer experience, digital engagement, store operations, advanced analytics and corporate solutions. Prior to joining Sonic, he served as executive vice president and chief information officer at Movie Gallery/Hollywood Video where he led strategic planning and development for the implementation of a new retail technology portfolio for all business functions. Mr. Miller previously held several senior technology roles at Bank of America, PepsiCo and a software development firm that specialized in large-scale enterprise solutions and consumer products.

Mr. Sopkin joins Planet Fitness with approximately two decades of regional and national real estate and development experience. Most recently, he served as chief real estate officer at Dean & Deluca, where he was responsible for all aspects of development, construction, design and facilities, and created a strategic growth plan and store development organizational structure for the U.S. rollout of gourmet market stores and the launch of a new fast casual concept. Previously, Mr. Sopkin spent 18 years at Starbucks, most recently as the managing vice president of U.S. store development, leading U.S. store development and overseeing the integration of Starbucks' store development with licensed stores in Canada and internationally.

"As we continue to build upon our strong leadership team, these appointments will further support and drive our future growth. Craig and Rob are both highly accomplished leaders in their respective fields with exceptional experience delivering strong results to support leading brands," said Chris Rondeau, chief executive officer of Planet Fitness, Inc.

Rondeau continued, "Throughout his career, Craig has shown great leadership in his ability to work collaboratively with internal teams and franchisees in crafting a shared vision that ultimately drives significant improvements in both operating systems and the customer experience. Rob brings a wealth of development expertise in fast-paced retail environments having developed, implemented, and led incredibly successful market growth strategies at leading brands. I am excited to welcome both of them to the Planet Fitness team."

About Planet Fitness

Founded in 1992 in Dover, N.H., Planet Fitness is one of the largest and fastest-growing franchisors and operators of fitness centers in the United States by number of members and locations. As of June 30, 2017, Planet Fitness had over 10 million members and 1,400 stores in 48 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada and the Dominican Republic. The Company's mission is to enhance people's lives by providing a high-quality fitness experience in a welcoming, non-intimidating environment, which we call the Judgement Free Zone. More than 95% of Planet Fitness stores are owned and operated by independent business men and women.

SOURCE Planet Fitness, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.planetfitness.com


NAPERVILLE, Ill., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Production Partners Co. (PPC), an innovative print and print-related services company, today announced that it has received its Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) Certification. The intent of MBE certification and supplier diversity programs is to fuel job creation to support the growth of minority businesses.

PPC also announced a new partnership with SG360, an industry-leading print and direct marketing solutions provider. SG360, owned by certified MBE private equity firm ICV Partners, will serve as the direct mail production partner of PPC.

Majority owner Haves McNeal, a Chicago-area businessman with more than 30 years of corporate and entrepreneurial experience, is president and chief executive officer of PPC. He brings an extensive background in printing, publishing and manufacturing to his position within PPC and as a partner to SG360.

"Our goal at PPC is to provide customers with a one-stop resource to manage complex print projects," said McNeal. "Partnering with SG360 gives us access to a complex and wide-ranging set of print and distribution capabilities."

Serving as PPC's executive vice president of sales is Frank Clark III. Frank is an experienced business builder who brings with him more than 20 years of expertise in operations and sales leadership.

"We are proud to partner with PPC and support a growing minority business in the Chicagoland area," said Mary Lee Schneider, president and CEO of SG360. "Our investment in and partnership with PPC diversifies our offerings, strengthens our relationships with existing customers, opens the door to new customers and accelerates the continued growth of SG360."

ABOUT PRODUCTION PARTNERS

Production Partners Co. is a sales and marketing organization specializing in multichannel marketing solutions. We offer comprehensive knowledge of print and product management; in-depth understanding of supplier diversity initiatives and their return on investment; and extensive training in continuous improvement methodology. More information is available at www.pp-co.biz.

ABOUT SG360

SG360 is an industry-leading printing and direct marketing services provider that offers multichannel marketing solutions. Its services range from research and strategy to concept and execution and includes multichannel marketing, direct mail, data analytics, and fulfillment, among other services. Headquartered in Wheeling, IL, it is owned by private equity firm ICV Partners, a certified MBE. In addition to its Chicagoland operations, SG360 has locations in California, Florida, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. More information is available at www.sg360.com.

Media Contact: Production Partners, Co. | Alici McNeal, Manager | [email protected]

SOURCE Production Partners Co.; SG360

Related Links

http://www.pp-co.biz


VANCOUVER, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Pure Multi-Family REIT LP ("Pure Multi-Family") (TSXV: RUF.U, RUF.UN; RUF.DB.U; OTCQX: PMULF) announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire a multi-family apartment community (the "Property") located in Phoenix, Arizona for a purchase price of US$59,000,000. The Property is located at 601 W Fillmore Street in Phoenix, Arizona.

Developed in 2016, the Property is an institutional quality multi-family asset comprising 230 units with an average unit size of 934 square feet. The Property is located on 4.0 acres near Fillmore Street and Seventh Avenue and offers residents a unique value proposition that includes excellent walkability and bike-ability to the unique amenities found in Downtown Phoenix.

Unit interiors feature high-end amenities such as oversized quartz countertops and islands, stainless steel appliances, vinyl plank flooring, full size in-unit washers and dryers, spacious walk-in closets and built-in shelving. Many units also come with electronic entry locks, private balconies and covered parking. High tech packages are also available in select suites featuring audio visual upgrades including wall speakers and Bluetooth capabilities.

The Property features a rooftop lounge with views of downtown Phoenix, pet areas featuring dog washing stations and a fenced dog run, a club room with a 13-foot television, a demonstration kitchen, ultra-luxe pool, spa, cabanas with towel service, bike shop, gas grills, and an on-site coffee shop which delivers food and beverage items to residents.

Stephen Evans, Pure Multi-Family's CEO, stated "We are pleased to add to our Phoenix portfolio as we continue to acquire new and nearly new properties with market leading amenities in dynamic locations that we believe are well positioned for future growth. The property is a unique asset with luxury amenities in a rapidly changing and highly demanded submarket. The property features artwork from local artists and architectural features that honour the heritage and style of its neighbourhood."

The acquisition is subject to the satisfaction of customary conditions precedent and is expected to close in late November 2017. Pure Multi-Family intends to fund a portion of the purchase price with cash on hand and new debt financing on terms to be determined.

About Pure Multi-Family REIT LP

Pure Multi-Family is a Canadian based, publicly traded vehicle which offers investors exclusive exposure to attractive, institutional quality U.S. multi-family real estate assets.

Additional information about Pure Multi-Family is available at www.puremultifamily.com or www.sedar.com.

Forward-Looking Information:

Certain statements contained in this news release may constitute forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "plan", "expect", "may", "will", "intend", "should", and similar expressions. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements in this news release include: (i) the acquisition is subject to the satisfaction of customary conditions precedent and is expected to close in late November 2017; and (ii) Pure Multi-Family intends to fund a portion of the purchase price with cash on hand and new first mortgage financing on terms to be determined. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by Pure Multi-Family, including: (i) Pure Multi-Family's ability to satisfy the conditions precedent to complete the acquisition of the property; and (ii) Pure Multi-Family ability to obtain new first mortgage financing.

Although Pure Multi-Family believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because Pure Multi-Family can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. These include, but are not limited to, the failure to satisfy the condition precedent to complete the acquisition of the Property, the failure to obtain mortgage financing on acceptable terms, competitive factors in the industries in which Pure Multi-Family operates, prevailing economic conditions, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of Pure Multi-Family.

The forward-looking statements contained in this news release represent Pure Multi-Family's expectations as of the date hereof, and are subject to change after such date. Pure Multi-Family disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result.

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) HAS REVIEWED OR ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR THE ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

SOURCE Pure Multi-Family REIT LP

Related Links

www.Puremultifamily.com


BEIJING, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Qudian Inc. ("Qudian" or the "Company") (NYSE: QD), a leading provider of online small cash credit products in China, today reiterated the following information in light of recent commentary in the market:

The Company's collection efforts extend to every delinquent borrower. The Company's collection process is divided into distinct stages based on the severity of delinquency, which dictates the level of collection steps taken. For example, automatic reminders through text and instant messages are sent to a delinquent borrower as soon as the collections process commences, and the Company takes such measures to address delinquencies typically caused by borrowers' oversight. If the payment is still outstanding after these reminders, the Company's collection system will initiate automated voice calls. In the event such efforts remain unsuccessful, the Company's collection team will make phone calls to the delinquent borrowers. For larger amounts past due, the Company may also conduct in-person visits. The Company may stop collection efforts when credit drawdowns are 180 calendar days overdue and collection attempts have reached a certain number.

The following table sets forth the amount of delinquent principal and financing service fees for on-balance sheet transactions the Company successfully recovered through its collection efforts during the periods presented, as a percentage of the balance of outstanding principal and financing service fees past due for on-balance sheet transactions as of the end of the periods presented:





Period from

April 9, 2014

(inception)

through

December 31,

Year Ended December 31,

Six Months

Ended

June 30,



2014

2015

2016

2017 Percentage of delinquent principal and

services fees for on-balance sheet

transactions recovered

5.7%

20.1%

35.1%

52.1%

As part of the major upgrade of the Company's risk management system in January 2017, the Company has developed a machine learning algorithm to better allocate collection resources based on more detailed grouping of larger delinquency risk. Higher risk groups are allocated with more collection resources as the likelihood of their outstanding balance becoming longer-term delinquent or even uncollectable is generally higher. The Company expects to both improve its collection efficiency and reduce delinquency under this algorithm.

In addition, as stated in the Offering Documents (as defined below), in an effort to comply with potential applicable laws and regulations, the Company adjusted the pricing of all its credit products in April 2017 to ensure that the annualized fee rates charged in all credit drawdowns do not exceed 36%. Please refer to the Offering Documents for detailed discussions of the Company's pricing policy.

The information set forth above and related information about the Company's collection policy and efforts, is set forth in the Company's Registration Statement on Form F-1/A and Prospectus (the "Offering Documents"), which were filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") on October 13, 2017. The Offering Documents can be obtained free of charge at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov as well on the Company's investor relations website at http://ir.qudian.com/. You are encouraged to read the Offering Documents in full before you make investment decisions on the Company.

The Offering Documents also provide detailed business, financial and operating information about the Company, and discloses its operating and regulatory risks, and other pertinent matters. Investors are encouraged to read the Offering Documents for further information about these matters as well.

About Qudian

Qudian is a leading provider of online small consumer credit in China. The Company uses big data-enabled technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, to transform the consumer finance experience in China. With the mission to use technology to make personalized credit accessible, Qudian targets hundreds of millions of young, mobile-active consumers in China who need access to small credit for their discretionary spending, but are underserved by traditional financial institutions due to lack of traditional credit data and operational inefficiencies of traditional financial institutions. Qudian's data technology capabilities combined with its operating efficiencies allow the Company to understand prospective borrowers from different behavioral and transactional perspectives, assess their credit profiles with regard to both their willingness and ability to repay and offer them instantaneous and affordable credit products with customized terms, and distinguish Qudian's business and offerings.

For more information, please visit http://ir.qudian.com

Safe Harbor Statement

This announcement contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends," "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, the expectation of its collection efficiency and delinquency, contain forward-looking statements. Qudian may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the SEC, in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about Qudian's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement, including but not limited to the following: Qudian's goal and strategies; Qudian's expansion plans; Qudian's future business development, financial condition and results of operations; Qudian's expectations regarding demand for, and market acceptance of, its credit products; Qudian's expectations regarding keeping and strengthening its relationships with borrowers, institutional funding partners, merchandise suppliers and other parties it collaborate with; general economic and business conditions; and assumptions underlying or related to any of the foregoing. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in Qudian's filings with the SEC. All information provided in this press release and in the attachments is as of the date of this press release, and Qudian does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.

For investor and media inquiries, please contact:

In China:

Qudian Inc.

Sissi Zhu

Tel: +86 (10) 5948-5220

E-mail: [email protected]

The Piacente Group, Inc.

Ross Warner

Tel: +86 (10) 5730-6200

E-mail: [email protected]

In the United States:

The Piacente Group, Inc.

Alan Wang

Tel: +1-212-481-2050

E-mail: [email protected]

SOURCE Qudian Inc.

Related Links

http://ir.qudian.com/


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Questback, the global leader in enterprise feedback management, has announced the appointment of Radu Immenroth as it's new Chief Technology Officer. Immenroth replaces outgoing CTO Oliver Trabert and will join the company's senior leadership team effective immediately.

Questback CTO Radu Immenroth

Immenroth has held multiple leadership roles during his six-year tenure at Questback, most recently as Global Head of Product Strategy. As CTO, Immenroth will continue leading product strategy while also overseeing engineering and cloud operations. The appointment represents Questback's continued commitment to creating next-gen technology and innovative customer-centric solutions to leverage the disruptive power of feedback. Immernroth reflects, "I have personally experienced the enormous positive impact that feedback can bring to people's lives. At Questback, we are embarking on a technology journey that will open up new, unprecedented opportunities and I look forward to guiding this effort."

Immenroth holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering degree from the German RWTH University and a Master of Business Administration degree from the British University of Surrey.

ABOUT QUESTBACK

Questback is a complete feedback system that helps companies transform customer, employee and market research programs. Used by thousands of companies, including one third of the Forbes list, Questback is the smarter, faster way to manage feedback. Get the software, services and human support you need to manage customer, employee and market feedback  all in one place. People matter. Get their insight.

Learn more at www.questback.com.

Media Contact:

Roslyn Sakaguchi

[email protected]

832.482.8003

SOURCE Questback

Related Links

http://www.questback.com


DETROIT, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The nation's largest FinTech lender today took another leap forward to provide clients with a radically simple mortgage process. Quicken Loans is participating in a Single Source Validation pilot program with Fannie Mae, testing a new process allowing homebuyers, and refinancing homeowners, to digitally verify assets, employment and income information in one concise step.

"Quicken Loans is the pioneer of the online mortgage. We have been communicating with our clients remotely and receiving their documents electronically for more than 15 years, always striving to make the process less cumbersome and reduce the stress for our clients," said Jay Farner, Quicken Loans CEO. "Now that the entire mortgage process is online with Rocket Mortgage, we continue to drill down into each step of the process, focusing on ways to improve transparency and speed. Starting today, our clients are able to provide more financial information in less steps, greatly reducing the time they need to commit to their mortgage."

Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans already enables clients to securely import their data directly from their financial institutions. Now, in collaboration with Fannie Mae, the company will use that data to identify clients' employment and income information by reviewing direct deposit information from their bank account. Employment and income verification are typically separate steps in the mortgage process, relying on pay stubs, W2s, and manually contacting employers. Now, 3 steps are combined into 1.

This innovation is an enhancement to Fannie Mae's DU validation service. It isn't limited to clients who started the process in Rocket Mortgage. Quicken Loans mortgage bankers can assist their clients in the use of the online asset import tool. Clients who import income and assets shave an average of 12 days off of the mortgage process.

"In addition to the added speed and convenience, this is also a major accomplishment in making the process safer and more accurate  because we are gathering robust data directly from the source" Farner continued.

The goal of this pilot program is to test the process, provide feedback and iterate to improve the process before a broad rollout in 2018.

This is the third technology announcement Quicken Loans has made within a month. The FinTech mortgage lender recently announced a partnership that will allow clients to eSign their documents on a mobile tablet rather than digging through a mountain of paper work. Additionally, Quicken Loans is now able to complete the final steps of the mortgage process online  creating and securely storing the eNote that can be digitally delivered to the secondary market.

About Quicken Loans

Detroit-based Quicken Loans Inc. is the nation's second largest retail home mortgage lender. The company closed more than $300 billion of mortgage volume across all 50 states between 2013 and 2016. Quicken Loans moved its headquarters to downtown Detroit in 2010, and now more than 17,000 team members from Quicken Loans and its Family of Companies work in the city's urban core. The company generates loan production from web centers located in Detroit, Cleveland and Scottsdale, Arizona. The company also operates a centralized loan processing facility in Detroit, as well as its San Diego-based One Reverse Mortgage unit. Quicken Loans ranked "Highest in Customer Satisfaction for Primary Mortgage Origination" in the United States by J.D. Power for the past seven consecutive years, 2010  2016, and highest in customer satisfaction among all mortgage servicers the past four years, 2014  2017.

Quicken Loans was ranked #10 on FORTUNE magazine's annual "100 Best Companies to Work For" list in 2017, and has been among the top-30 companies for the past 14 consecutive years. The company has been recognized as one of Computerworld magazine's '100 Best Places to Work in IT' the past 13 years, ranking #1 for eight of the past twelve years including 2017. The company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rock Holdings, Inc., the parent company of several FinTech and related businesses. Quicken Loans is also the flagship business of Dan Gilbert's Family of Companies comprising nearly 100 affiliated businesses spanning multiple industries. For more information and company news visit QuickenLoans.com/press-room.

Twitter: @QLnews

Facebook.com/QuickenLoans

SOURCE Quicken Loans
Toft has been in the financial services business for 44 years. He joined HomeTown Bank in January, 1998 as Vice President, Agricultural and Commercial Lending, was promoted to President/Chief Operating Officer in 2001 and named Chief Executive Officer on January 1, 2004. Since 2004, HomeTown Bank has grown from three locations to nine, total assets have grown from $82 million to $290 million, total deposits have grown from $61 million to $240 million and total loans have grown from $54 million to $211 million.

Dean Toft has been very active in community affairs in Redwood Falls, MN serving on numerous boards of directors of local civic and development groups. He was inducted into the Redwood Area Education Hall of Fame in 2015. Toft was also active in the Minnesota Bankers Association serving two terms on the MBA Board of Directors and served as Chairman of the association in 2015-2016.

Toft says, "I want to thank the Board of Directors for giving me the chance to lead this company for the past 13+ years and for all of the help and guidance they have provided me. For the past three years in a row, HomeTown Bank has been named a StarTribune Top 150 workplace. This is a tribute to all of my co-workers as they are all hard-working, loyal and dedicated people with whom I'm very proud to serve our customers. I've had the privilege of working with some customers for 40 years including some third generation customers. I really appreciate being part of their lives and helping them achieve their dreams."

The Board of Directors of Redwood Financial, Inc. and HomeTown Bank named Timothy Grabow as President and CEO of both entities effective January 1, 2018. Grabow joined HomeTown Bank as Chief Operating Officer in 2006 and was promoted to President of HomeTown Bank in 2014. He also serves as a director of Redwood Financial, Inc. and HomeTown Bank. Grabow has worked in the banking industry for over 37 years.

Douglas Schweim, President of Community Insurance Brokerage, Inc. has been named as the Chief Executive Officer of that entity effective January 1, 2018. He also serves as a director of Community Insurance Brokerage, Inc. and as Vice President of HomeTown Bank. Schweim joined Community Insurance Brokerage, Inc. and HomeTown Bank in 2006. He was promoted to President of Community Insurance Brokerage, Inc. in 2010. Doug has been in the banking business since 1999 and a licensed insurance agent since 2001.

HomeTown Bank has offices in Redwood Falls, Olivia, Henderson, Le Sueur, St. Peter, Cleveland, Jordan, Waconia and Shakopee and is a member of the FDIC.

SOURCE Redwood Financial, Inc.
TAMPA, Fla., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ReliaQuest, a leading provider of IT security solutions, is proud to again serve as presenting sponsor for the Florida Center for Cybersecurity's annual conference. The statewide conference brings together cybersecurity experts from around the country to gain new perspectives and forecast trends for the year ahead.

The conference takes place Oct. 27 from 9 a.m.  5 p.m. at the Tampa Convention Center.

ReliaQuest, a leading provider of IT security solutions, is proud to again serve as presenting sponsor for the Florida Center for Cybersecuritys annual conference.

ReliaQuest CEO Brian Murphy will headline a speaking session on the tangible benefits of a strong company culture in an industry of rapid change. Murphy will provide practical strategies other security leaders can use to design a culture that thrives on change and challenge. This approach has allowed ReliaQuest to consistently deliver industry-leading IT solutions over the past decade through a focus on continuous development of its people.

"The Florida Center for Cybersecurity understands the impact our industry can have when we share information and highlight each other's positive contributions," said ReliaQuest CEO Brian Murphy. "ReliaQuest is proud to partner with FC2, which is doing a great job connecting the dots of cybersecurity expertise for all our benefit."

ReliaQuest has been a longtime supporter of the Florida Center for Cybersecurity  established by the Florida Legislature in 2014 to drive cybersecurity education, research, community engagement and workforce development. The Center works closely with the State University System of Florida and corporate partners like ReliaQuest to deliver practical applications of the latest cybersecurity research, issues and trends. Its fourth annual conference will offer a number of speaking sessions and interactive training opportunities. More information can be found at www.thefc2.org.

About ReliaQuest

ReliaQuest advances the delivery, reliability and outcomes of IT security through co-management. Founded in 2007 and serving Fortune 1000 organizations in diverse industries, ReliaQuest helps customers better understand security threats to stay ahead of the curve. The company takes a collaborative approach, developing custom solutions based on each organization's risk profile and business goals, while leveraging existing investments in security hardware and software. ReliaQuest provides Detection and Response, Security Engineering, Security Analytics and Threat Management solutions 24 hours a day, 365 days a year from Security Operations Centers in Tampa, FL, and Las Vegas, NV. ReliaQuest's model is recognized by industry experts as the emerging standard for large and complex organizations. The company has also received numerous accolades for its commitment to maintaining a positive company culture. In 2017 ReliaQuest CEO Brian Murphy was named EY Entrepreneur of the Year for Florida.

Media contact:

Kim Wilmath

Director of Communications

813-857-5397

[email protected]

SOURCE ReliaQuest

Related Links

http://www.reliaquest.com


FAIRFAX, Va., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Remine's revolutionary new cutting-edge real estate intelligence platform is now live in two MLS markets  Greater El Paso Association of REALTORS (GEPAR) and Alaska Multiple Listing Service (AKMLS).

"It was awesome to have you introduce your game-changing product to our members. Feedback has been incredible so far and we couldn't be happier to be the first MLS in the country to launch Remine! I truly believe this is the beginning of a long and successful partnership," said Jason Sanchez, Director of MLS & Technology, Greater El Paso Association of REALTORS (GEPAR).

"Nearly 40% of our membership participated in the launch with Remine. I've never seen anything like it. There is a new energy and excitement about the opportunities that Remine creates. This company is transforming the business and elevating the profession," said Michael Smith, CEO, Alaska Multiple Listing Service (AKMLS).

Leo Pareja, CEO of Remine, said, "We are so appreciative of the MLSs that have supported us, their staff, and their members who have welcomed us in their markets. Remine is here to provide the best tools and data to keep Agents at the center of the transaction. We are here to listen, support and help innovate for the future of our industry."

About AKMLS

Alaska MLS is a progressive, broker-owned MLS, serving over 2,000 real estate professionals in Alaska. AKMLS provides a full range of MLS technology services, retail stores, and an extensive array of forms. AKMLS equips members with the right tools at the right time, so they may exceed the expectations of the consumer.

About GEPAR

The Greater El Paso Association of REALTORS has been established for over 100 years and is one of the larger board of REALTORS in Texas. They uphold the highest professional standards, place an emphasis on education, technology services and fight to protect private property rights for the betterment of their community. To learn more visit ElPasoRealtor.com.

About Remine

Remine is a real estate intelligence platform for Agents, that is delivered exclusively through the MLS. The platform analyzes property records, transactional history, consumer data and delivers actionable insights on an intuitive user interface. Visit Remine.com or call 855-217-0171.

SOURCE Remine

Related Links

http://www.remine.com


RIVERSIDE, Calif., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Renowned pain management physician Tobias Moeller-Bertram, M.D., will open the 11th Annual Inland Empire Palliative Care (IEPCC) Conference, Oct. 25, 1 p.m. at The Mission Inn. Moeller-Bertram, chief medical officer for the Summit Institute, a consortium of multidisciplinary pain clinics in Southern California, will speak about alternative modalities in the management of pain.

"Our goal is to create a healing environment for our patients in a single location using a comprehensive, integrated, and holistic approach so we may help them restore quality of life," said Summit Institute Chief Medical Officer Tobias Moeller-Bertram, M.D. "Our patients come to us because other treatment methods may have failed them, but we know we can offer them an alternative."

Dr. Moeller-Bertram is the chief medical officer for the Summit Institute (Summit) and Desert Clinic Pain Institute, (DCPI) a consortium of multi-disciplinary pain management clinics in the high and low desert from Victorville to Indio. He is double-board certified in anesthesiology and pain management, served as an associate clinical professor of anesthesiology and psychiatry and as the director of clinical pain research at the University of California, San Diego, and is currently an associate clinical professor (voluntary) in family medicine with the University of California Riverside School of Medicine. He has dedicated his life and career to the treatment of patients in chronic pain, including veterans, and the debilitating impact of PTSD. His research has been extensively published and he has presented nationally and internationally at dozens of forums and conferences.

"We have been able to clearly demonstrate that our methodology in the care and treatment of complex patients dramatically reduces their pain and need for pain medication, and ultimately, at less of a cost," said Moeller-Bertram, M.D. "And while reducing the cost is important, what we're doing for our patients, in allowing them to live their lives, is far more important for them, for their families, and for their communities."

Summit and DCPI clinics afford patients access to traditional medicine, but also if eligible, the benefit of a wide range of holistic opportunities such as chiropractic, acupuncture, yoga, meditation, and massage through the Center of Excellence (COE). What makes the COE program unique is that all patient treatment takes place in a single location, which allows for much greater patient provider interaction, consistent conversation, ongoing precise patient evaluation, and ultimately, positive outcomes. More importantly, a community is created that facilitates a deeply integrated personal relationship between the medical staff and patients who work together to eliminate the problem of pain.

Desert Clinic Pain Institute and the Center of Excellence operate three healthcare clinics in Palm Springs, Indio, and Rancho Mirage. The Summit Institute and Center of Excellence operate three clinics in San Jacinto, Hemet, and Victorville. More clinics are in development for California across the U.S.

SOURCE Desert Clinic Pain Institute

Related Links

https://www.desertclinics.com/


COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- RevLocal, the leader in personalized digital marketing for local businesses, today announced that its President, Aaron Boggs, will present at the Yext Onward17 Annual Conference.

Aaron Boggs has been selected to speak on the November 3, 2017 panel at 1:30 p.m., EDT. The panel is entitled, "The Intelligent Future of Your Agency."

"The product suite has evolved into what the local business owner wants a marketing partner to provide. The narrative is still the same; just do the work and make my phone ring," Boggs said.

Boggs will also discuss how to futureproof your business as well as how digital services are evolving and positioning to bring value to the local business. "Listening to the needs of your customer still has tremendous value," Boggs added.

As intelligent services increasingly shape our daily lives, brand strategies face new challenges and marketers need new skills in order to compete.

At ONWARD17, marketing experts will be able to explore these concepts and return to their jobs with actionable tips on how to excel in a future in which the development, distribution and control of digital knowledge is a competitive advantage.

About RevLocal

RevLocal is a digital marketing agency that specializes in local search marketing, reputation management, paid advertising and social content marketing for local businesses and franchises of all types and sizes.

As the leader in digital marketing, RevLocal makes digital marketing efficient, effective and affordable for all. RevLocal is a Premier Google Partner and was named one of the top 50 best places to work by Inc. Magazine. For more information on the company, visit www.RevLocal.com.

This press release was issued through 24-7PressRelease.com. For further information, visit http://www.24-7pressrelease.com.

SOURCE RevLocal

Related Links

http://www.RevLocal.com


SALT LAKE CITY, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sundance, a premier lifestyle retailer of women's and men's apparel, footwear, jewelry, accessories, art, and home decor, is excited to announce the opening of its first store in the Southeast in Alpharetta, GA. This store, located in Avalon, will host its Grand Opening Weekend celebration beginning on Thursday, October 26, 2017.

Robert Redford's Sundance opens newest retail location at Avalon in Alpharetta, GA.

Avalon is located outside of Atlanta, GA, an exciting area experiencing tremendous growth in both industry and culture. As Sundance's first store located in the Southeast, CEO Matey Erdos describes, "We are thrilled to be joining this art-forward community. The Sundance heritage is one of celebrating artistic passion and independent spirit, and we are pleased to be bringing this heritage to the Southeast with our newest store. There is an obvious fit for the Sundance brand through our mutual appreciation for, and recognition of, new forms of creative expression."

Erdos continues, "The Avalon store allows our customers a unique experience, one we are privileged to provide. The design of the store is artisan inspired, bringing the distinctive Sundance lifestyle to the culturally rich area. We are confident our loyal customers will make it a great success."

"We're thrilled to welcome the first Sundance store in Georgia right here at Avalon," said Carla Cox, director of marketing at Avalon. "We pride ourselves on our collection of best-in-class retailers, and Sundance is a truly wonderful addition to our growing community. We can't wait for guests to have an exciting new shopping experience to enjoy as they stroll down Avalon Boulevard, and the ability to take home pieces from Sundance you can't find anywhere else."

With a historical commitment to artisans, Sundance will donate a portion of the proceeds from the Grand Opening Weekend to the Spruill Center for the Arts, an Atlanta-based organization committed to fostering understanding and appreciation of the visual arts. Erdos remarks, "We support the mission and work of the Spruill Center for the Arts, as we too believe every one deserves an opportunity for art education. Being exposed to this education empowers the great artists of the future."

The opening of the Avalon Sundance Store continues the company's recent retail expansion. Since August of 2015, Sundance has opened stores in Edina, MN, Dallas, TX, Southlake, TX, Scottsdale, AZ, Tigard, OR, San Diego, CA, and plans to expand their retail locations over the next several years. One-of-a-kind pieces and Sundance exclusive items will continue as the cornerstones for product offerings.

About Sundance

Famed actor, director, and visionary of independent filmmaking, Robert Redford founded Sundance Catalog in 1989 to promote the works of artists and craftspeople from across the country and around the world. From a small operation run out of the attic of the old Sundance Village firehouse, Sundance has grown to become one of America's preeminent lifestyle retailers. Offering a thoughtfully curated mix of unique, premium-quality women's and men's apparel and footwear, jewelry, accessories, art and home decor, Sundance elevates the traditions of authentic American heritage into a classic and creative style.

Sundance headquarters are located in Salt Lake City, UT. In addition to Avalon, the company's unique product selection is available through its catalog, eight other retail stores, Corte Madera, CA, Park Meadows, CO, Edina, MN, Dallas, TX, Scottsdale, AZ, Tigard, OR, San Diego, CA, and an outlet store in Salt Lake City, UT, and website www.sundancecatalog.com.

SOURCE Sundance

Related Links

http://www.sundancecatalog.com


HOUSTON, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A Texas appeals court upheld a take-nothing summary judgment in favor of a Houston lawyer sued for defamation by a law school professor for a letter of complaint addressed to the school's dean.

Family law attorney Ellen Yarrell was litigating a custody dispute. James Paulsen, a South Texas College of Law Houston professor who sat in on a hearing in the case, wrote to the trial court judge on law school letterhead complaining the judge had made critical mistakes in her rulings and that she had been "bamboozled" by Ms. Yarrell and her client.

In response, Ms. Yarrell wrote Mr. Paulsen's dean accusing the professor of a "grave breach of legal ethics," with his unsolicited letter. Ms. Yarrell requested South Texas College of Law to review the correspondence, which was drafted and presented on South Texas College of Law stationery. The use of the stationery gave the appearance that STCL authorized the communications to the court. Ms. Yarrell asked the Dean to admonish Mr. Paulsen about any future communications on college letterhead that were not authorized by the college and determine if he had committed any sanctionable conduct.

Mr. Paulsen sued Ms. Yarrell for defamation and tortious interference with a contract, and Ms. Yarrell filed a counterclaim. At the trial court, attorneys Frank Carroll and Mia Lorick with Roberts Markel Weinberg Butler Hailey PC won a summary judgment on behalf of Ms. Yarrell.

The two lawyers also prevailed against Mr. Paulsen at the 1st Court of Appeals in Houston. On Oct. 12, a panel of that court upheld the take-nothing judgment of the lower court. The judges said the letter to the law school dean was simply "Yarrell's opinion coupled with factual statements that have been shown to be true." The panel also rejected Mr. Paulsen's argument that he was protected under the Texas Citizens Participation Act supporting free speech.

"This has been a needless and time-wasting exercise," said Mr. Carroll. "We are pleased for our client that the right decision was made."

Ms. Lorick called Ms. Yarrell "a hard-working attorney who merely wants to continue representing her clients without the frustration of this unnecessary litigation. We are pleased with the appellate decision."

The case is Paulsen v. Yarrell, case No. 01-16-00061-CV in the Texas Court of Appeals for the 1st District.

Roberts Markel Weinberg Butler Hailey PC is committed to providing an enhanced level of service to clients seeking counsel in professional liability, directors and officers litigation, fiduciary litigation, commercial disputes, labor and employment, energy arbitration, appeals, community association law, and corporate and real estate transactions. The firm has offices in Houston, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Fort Bend County. To learn more, please visit http://www.rmwbhlaw.com/.

Contact Information

Mary Flood

800-559-4534

[email protected]

SOURCE Roberts Markel Weinberg Butler Hailey PC

Related Links

http://www.rmwbhlaw.com


WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Administrator Linda McMahon, head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, will deliver remarks at the 2017 InnovateHER Challenge, a national live-pitch competition that provides an opportunity for small businesses to showcase products, technologies, or services being developed throughout the United States. These visionary entrepreneurs have a measurable impact on the lives of women and families, and in the marketplace.

During the spring and summer of 2017, 120 local host organizations administered a preliminary round of local pitch competitions resulting in 10 national finalists. The 10 finalists were selected through a rigorous nationwide competition held by host organizations, including universities, accelerators, and SBA Resource Partners that ran local area competitions through June 2017. Next, an executive committee of SBA officials evaluated more than 120 semi-finalist nominations and chose 10 finalists to participate in the National Pitch Competition, whose products and services best meet the competition criteria and present the greatest potential for success.

The InnovateHER Challenge finalists will come to Washington, D.C. to conduct a marketing pitch before a team of judges to compete for the top three awards totaling $70,000 in prize money [provided by the Sara Blakely Foundation]. A luncheon will follow the pitch competition, where the winners will be announced.

Media are invited to attend the pitch competition. Select finalists will be made available for interviews.

WHO:

SBA Administrator Linda McMahon

WHAT:

InnovateHER Pitch Competition Finals

WHEN:

Thursday, October 26, 2017 from 9:00 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. (EDT)

9:00 a.m.  Live Pitch Competition

11:30 a.m.  Networking

12:00 p.m.  Lunch

12:10 p.m.  Administrator McMahon's Remarks

1:00 p.m.  Winners Announced

WHERE:

Top of the Town

1400 N. 14th St.

Arlington, Virginia 22209

HOW:

Media can confirm attendance HERE.

Requests for interviews with Administrator McMahon can be directed to Press Secretary Casey Brinck at [email protected]; (202) 664-0758.

For details on the InnovateHER Challenge, visit www.sba.gov/innovateHER.

The support given by the U.S. Small Business Administration to this activity does not constitute an express or implied endorsement of any cosponsors or participant's opinions, products, or services. All SBA programs or cosponsored programs are extended to the public on a nondiscriminatory basis. Cosponsorship Authorization #17-6050-38. Reasonable accommodations will be made for individuals with disabilities. Please contact [email protected].

About the U.S. Small Business Administration

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) was created in 1953 and since January 13, 2012 has served as a Cabinet-level agency of the federal government to aid, counsel, assist and protect the interests of small business concerns, to preserve free competitive enterprise and to maintain and strengthen the overall economy of our nation. The SBA helps Americans start, build and grow businesses. Through an extensive network of field offices and partnerships with public and private organizations, the SBA delivers its services to people throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam. www.sba.gov

Release Number: MA17-15

Contact: Cecelia Taylor (202) 401-3059

Internet Address: www.sba.gov/news

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & Blogs

SOURCE U.S. Small Business Administration

Related Links

http://www.sba.gov


The 2018 Search for a Champion contest will again offer sponsorships in both the 'On the Track' and 'In the Garage' categories. $115,000 (USD) in racing sponsorships  including one $50,000 (USD) grand prize sponsorship  will be awarded to grassroots racers competing in the 'On the Track' category covering the dirt, asphalt and water/snow racing environments. In addition to the grand prize sponsorship, the contest will offer $5,000 (USD) sponsorships to each of 10 runners-up and $500 (USD) sponsorships to each of 30 finalists. Within the 'Off the Track' category, which is targeted toward DYIers and vehicle maintenance experts who restore or maintain vehicles, equipment, or engines of any size, Federal-Mogul Motorparts will award one $5,000 (USD) Search for a Champion grand prize sponsorship and 10 $500 (USD) runners-up sponsorships. The entry period ends on January 3, 2018.

The contest will also include a sweepstakes for Champion merchandise for those who register and vote for their favorite entries at www.searchforachampion.com. Voting is open from January 5, 2018 through March 23, 2018. Federal-Mogul Motorparts will announce the 2018 Grand Prize winners in early April.

"We have had great success with our Search for a Champion contests over the years, and we love being able to connect with and support the many different racers and enthusiasts who are passionate about what they do as well as the products they use," said Rebecca Mahan, brand manager, Champion, Federal-Mogul Motorparts. "Search for a Champion is a great outlet in which to showcase both established and up-and-coming racers, as well as individuals who make their vehicle or equipment maintenance a priority."

To enter the contest, entrants should visit www.searchforachampion.com and submit photos and a 200-word story describing why they deserve to join #TeamChampion. Participants may also submit an optional two-minute video for consideration.

For additional information regarding the contest, please visit www.searchforachampion.com. To learn more about Champion and our growing range of products, visit ChampionAutoParts.com.

Search for A Champion Contest and Sweepstakes. NO PURCHASE OR PAYMENT NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. Contest Entry period starts on November 1, 2017 at 9:01:00 a.m. ET and ends on January 3, 2018 at 11:59:59 p.m. ET. Public voting and sweepstakes begins January 5, 2018 at 9:01:00 a.m. ET and ends March 23, 2018 at 11:59:59 p.m. ET. Open to legal residents of the 50 United States, D.C., and Canada (excluding Quebec). Parental consent/age verification required for contest entrants under 13. Contest Prizes include sponsorships in the amounts of $50,000, $5,000, and $500 USD. Sweepstakes Prizes (200): a prize pack, ARV $24.00 USD. Odds of winning a sweepstakes prize depend on the number of eligible sweepstakes entries received. Void in Quebec and where prohibited. For complete Official Rules visit www.searchforachampion.com. Sponsor: Federal-Mogul Motorparts LLC, 27300 W 11 Mile Road, Southfield, Michigan 48034.

About Federal-Mogul

Federal-Mogul LLC is a leading global supplier of products and services to the world's manufacturers and servicers of vehicles and equipment in the automotive, light, medium and heavy-duty commercial, marine, rail, aerospace, power generation and industrial markets. The company's products and services enable improved fuel economy, reduced emissions and enhanced vehicle safety.



Federal-Mogul operates two independent business divisions, each with a chief executive officer reporting to Federal-Mogul's Board of Directors.



Federal-Mogul Motorparts sells and distributes a broad portfolio of products through more than 20 of the world's most recognized brands in the global vehicle aftermarket, while also serving original equipment vehicle manufacturers with products including braking, wipers and a range of chassis components. The company's aftermarket brands include ANCO wipers; Beck/Arnley premium OE quality parts and fluids; BERU* ignition systems; Champion lighting, spark plugs, wipers and filters; Interfil filters; AE, Fel-Pro, FP Diesel, Goetze, Glyco, National, Nural, Payen, Sealed Power and Speed-Pro engine products; MOOG chassis components; and Abex, Ferodo, Jurid and Wagner brake products and lighting.

Federal-Mogul Powertrain designs and manufactures original equipment powertrain components and systems protection products for automotive, heavy-duty, industrial and transport applications.



Federal-Mogul was founded in Detroit in 1899 and maintains its worldwide headquarters in Southfield, Michigan. The company employs nearly 53,000 in 24 countries. For more information, please visit www.FMmotorparts.com.

*BERU is a registered trademark of BorgWarner Ludwigsburg GmbH

CONTACT:

Karen Shulhan (Federal-Mogul Motorparts)  248.354.4383

[email protected]

Drew Shippy (Pinnacle Media)  330.688.3500

[email protected]

SOURCE Federal-Mogul Motorparts

Related Links

https://www.fmmotorparts.com


CHICAGO, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Shapiro+Raj, a leading strategic brand and marketing insights company, released survey results today indicating that despite reports of increased consumer confidence, over 70 percent of Americans report that they aren't really looking forward to the holidays.

The reasons go beyond the usual suspects of stretched budgets, debt worries, shopping stress and obligations. Macro issues like natural and manmade disasters, terrorism abroad, political upheaval and social unrest at home are exacerbating the decreased enthusiasm. In fact, close to 80 percent of people are not happy with the state of the country and 53 percent of people feel things are getting worse.

"We wanted to explore the sentiments behind the holiday shopping forecasts," said Zain Raj, Chairman and CEO of Shapiro+Raj. "What we learned is that while people may be feeling more economic stability, they have been taxed emotionally, socially, environmentally and spiritually by these macro issues. We believe the brands who understand this context and are able to offer some relief, will forge deeper connections with their consumers this holiday season."

For more information on this research, Shapiro+Raj executives will be onsite at TMRE 2017 in Orlando.

About Shapiro+Raj

Shapiro+Raj is a new strategic brand and marketing insights company built for the Insight Economy by connecting Shapiro's 60-year leadership in research, insights and analytics with new-world brand strategy, innovation and ideation capabilities. Shapiro+Raj delivers the kind of deep and powerful insights that inspire ideas that will move people to action. We help Fortune 500 clients improve the value of their brands while driving profitable growth of their business. Headquartered in Chicago, the independent firm also has offices in New York, Dallas and Pune, India. For more information, visit www.shapiroraj.com.

SOURCE Shapiro+Raj

Related Links

http://www.shapiroraj.com


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Attorney Advertising -- Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC notifies investors that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Rio Tinto PLC ("Rio" or the "Company") (NYSE: RIO) securities and certain of its officers, on behalf of a class who purchased Rio American Depositary Receipts ("ADRs") between October 23, 2012 and February 15, 2013, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"). Such investors are encouraged to join this case by visiting the firm's site: www.bgandg.com/rio.

This class action seeks to recover damages against Defendants for alleged violations of the federal securities laws under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Rio Tinto is incorporated in the United Kingdom ("U.K."), and its ADRs are listed on the New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE"). The Company, a mining and metals company, finds, mines, processes, and markets mineral resources. It has operations in Australia, North America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America.

During August 2011, Rio Tinto completed its purchase of certain coal assets in Mozambique for approximately $3.7 billion (net of cash acquired at acquisition). This business became known as Rio Tinto Coal Mozambique, or "RTCM."

The complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, defendants made false and misleading statements and/or failed to disclose adverse information regarding RTCM's true value, and specifically that: (1) within months of the purchase, now-former senior executives knew of material problems adversely affecting RTCM's multi-billion dollar publicly reported valuation; (2) as time passed, the same senior executives knew of additional problems and events that, under applicable accounting rules, required an impairment analysis of RTCM and reductions in its reported valuation; (3) instead of timely performing the impairment analysis, these executives thwarted it and continued to tout RTCM's value to investors; (4) when a concerned employee outside the normal financial control function discovered or suspected the senior executives concealed RTCM's negative valuation from Rio Tinto's Board of Directors, he bypassed them and directly alerted the Chairman, who ordered an investigation into RTCM's true value; (5) on January 15, 2013, less than a year and a half after the purchase, the Board determined RTCM was severely impaired and should be written down by billions of dollars to $611 million; and (6) the impact of this writedown was reported to investors in Rio Tinto's financial report on Form 6-K filed with the SEC on February 15, 2013.

A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to review a copy of the Complaint you can visit the firm's site: www.bgandg.com/rio or you may contact Peretz Bronstein, Esq. or his Investor Relations Analyst, Yael Hurwitz of Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC at 212-697-6484. If you suffered a loss in Rio you have until December 22, 2017 to request that the Court appoint you as lead plaintiff. Your ability to share in any recovery doesn't require that you serve as a lead plaintiff.

Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC is a corporate litigation boutique. Our primary expertise is the aggressive pursuit of litigation claims on behalf of our clients. In addition to representing institutions and other investor plaintiffs in class action security litigation, the firm's expertise includes general corporate and commercial litigation, as well as securities arbitration. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

Contact:

Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC

Peretz Bronstein or Yael Hurwitz

212-697-6484 | [email protected]

SOURCE Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC

Related Links

http://www.bgandg.com


CHICAGO, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Shiftgig, the mobile technology platform that connects businesses with vetted, hourly workers, today announced 45 percent of organizations are increasing their use of on-demand labor, with the need for greater business agility as their top concern (71 percent). The survey findings are part of Ardent Partners' 2017-2018 State of Contingent Workforce Management report, available through Shiftgig here.

Ardent Partners estimates that 40 percent of today's total workforce is considered flexible, including temporary labor, professional services, independent contractors and on-demand workers. Businesses can no longer afford to view their workforce in silos, and 73 percent of respondents shared that they examine their total talent pool when determining how work will get done. Further, 56 percent of companies are leveraging online talent platforms.

Christopher Dwyer, Ardent Partners' Vice President of Research, explained online talent platforms "serve as real-time networks in which flexible/non-employee workers and businesses can connect." He added that "Most of these platforms specialize in specific areas or verticals (such as field service, industrial and blue-collar work), and many utilize unique algorithms to help enterprises determine the best alignment between a project and potential freelancer or non-employee worker."

Talent is increasingly a business's competitive differentiator, and technology becomes a way to further utilize the workforce as an advantage. The report found the top focus areas for today's contingent workforce management programs are to enhance overall talent engagement strategies and leverage more innovative technology (63 and 55 percent respectively).

"Technology has transformed the way we think about employment," said Wade Burgess, CEO, Shiftgig. "With consumer-like interfaces and mobile applications, businesses and workers can connect easily in real time. The real innovation is happening in tying best-of-breed talent platforms together to create what Ardent Partners calls a 'boundary-less' network that is fueling the future of work."

Shiftgig is hosting a webinar to discuss how technology is defining the new world of work with Ardent Partners on Nov. 29. Registration is now open.

About Shiftgig

Shiftgig connects businesses with the on-demand workforce through our industry-leading mobile platform. Our technology creates financial opportunity for hourly workers seeking flexibility and choice, while delivering powerful business agility to companies.

SOURCE Shiftgig

Related Links

http://www.shiftgig.com


NUREMBERG, Germany, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

- ASP accelerated further in 3Q17, posting the highest year-on-year increase in any observed quarter

- Strong 3Q demand for smartphones is powered by Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe

Global smartphone demand reached 367 million units in 3Q17, up three percent year-on-year. This is the highest 3Q tracked by GfK, in terms of absolute demand, despite moderating growth. The record demand was primarily driven by Latin America (up 11 percent year-on-year) and Central and Eastern Europe (up nine percent year-on-year). Global average sales price (ASP) continued to increase in 3Q, rising by a record seven percent year-on-year.

Smartphone sales 3Q 2017 vs. 3Q 2016 Units sold (in million) 3Q17 3Q16 Y/Y % change Western Europe 30.9 33.2 -7% C & E Europe 22.3 20.5 9% North America 49.3 50.0 -1% Latin America 27.8 25.1 11% Middle East & Africa 45.2 41.9 8% China 117.0 111.9 5% Developed Asia 16.4 17.6 -7% Emerging Asia 57.7 55.2 5% Global 366.6 355.4 3% Source: GfK Point of Sales (POS) Measurement data in 75+ markets, monthly data to the end of August 2017, plus weekly data to 30 September 2017. Percentages are rounded.

Table Continued Smartphone sales 3Q 2017 vs. 3Q 2016 Sales value (in billion USD 3Q17 3Q16 Y/Y % change Western Europe 13.7 13.2 4% C & E Europe 5.4 4.3 26% North America 19.1 18.9 1% Latin America 8.8 7.8 13% Middle East & Africa 10.7 10.2 5% China 38.3 31.9 20% Developed Asia 10.3 11.3 -9% Emerging Asia 10.5 8.7 21% Global 116.8 106.3 10% Source: GfK Point of Sales (POS) Measurement data in 75+ markets, monthly data to the end of August 2017, plus weekly data to 30 September 2017. Percentages are rounded.

Arndt Polifke, global director of telecom research at GfK, commented, "Although unit sales may be down in some regions, the increase in ASP reveals the fantastic opportunity to grow the value of the smartphone market. This is welcome news for manufacturers, particularly in regions such as Western Europe where saturation has resulted in declining sales volumes year-on-year. The industry has clearly been switching its focus to drive sales value, and top tier global brands, such as Apple, Google, HTC, Huawei, LG, Moto, Nokia, Samsung and Sony, either already have, or will release, new premium models in an effort to upsell customers to their flagship devices. At the same time, premium features are increasing in importance to consumers, so we expect to see more emphasis on water and dust protection, battery power and memory, high resolution sound, camera and video capabilities, bezel-less design and even biometric sensors on new launches."

Western Europe: Revenue grows despite market saturation

Smartphone demand totaled 30.9 million units in 3Q17 in Western Europe, down seven percent year-on-year. The combination of the saturated market and delayed launch of the iPhone X has led to a year-on-year decline for the fourth consecutive quarter. Demand in Germany is set to decline by seven percent year-on-year and both Great Britain and France are expected to experience an eight percent fall. However, sales value in the region rose four percent year-on-year, driven by an 11 percent increase in ASP. As a result, GfK raised its 2017 smartphone revenue outlook for the region to six percent year-on-year. The shift towards very high end devices is a clear trend in this region, with one out of eight smartphones sold in this quarter priced above USD 900, compared to one out of 16 in 3Q16.

Central and Eastern Europe: Revenue up 26 percent

Smartphone demand continues to recover in Central and Eastern Europe, with a nine percent increase year-on-year in 3Q17, bringing demand to 22.3 million units. Sales value, however, increased at a faster rate of 26 percent year-on-year, driven by a shift in consumer demand towards higher-priced devices. The improvement in the region's demand in 3Q17 is mainly due to strong growth in Russia (up 10 percent year-on-year) and the Ukraine (up 19 percent year-on-year). The outlook is also positive, with 2017 smartphone demand forecast to grow nine percent year-on-year to 85.2 million.

North America: A slight fall in 3Q17 but a positive outlook to round the year off

In North America, smartphone demand totaled 49.3 million units in 3Q17, down one percent year-on-year. This represents a return to decline, following growth in 2Q. However, the outlook for 4Q17 is positive, as major product releases have been announced for this quarter. GfK forecasts 2017 smartphone demand to total 201 million units, a growth of one percent year-on-year.

Latin America: Brazilian sales give the region a boost

In this region, smartphone demand reached 27.8 million units in 3Q17, a rise of 11 percent year-on-year. Demand in Brazil remains the driver of this sterling regional performance. Brazil experienced a 17 percent increase in demand in 3Q17 compared to the previous year. GfK has raised its 2017 forecast for Latin America to growth of nine percent year-on-year.

Middle East and Africa: Egypt returns to growth

Smartphone demand totaled 45.2 million units in the Middle East and Africa, up eight percent year-on-year. This increase in sales has been driven by a faster-than-expected recovery in Egypt, where demand returned to growth in July 2017 for the first time since November 2016. Overall, GfK forecasts smartphone demand to grow by five percent year-on-year in 2017. This is driven primarily by Sub-Saharan and South African countries, where smartphone penetration remains relatively low.

China: Unit demand up, with prices set to increase further as new models are launched

In China, smartphone revenue is up 20 percent year-on-year in 3Q17. This growth was driven by a 15 percent year-on-year rise in ASP, while demand increased five percent year-on-year, reaching 117 million units. Launches from key domestic brands that were postponed to 3Q17 contributed to the positive performance of this quarter. Overall, smartphone demand in China is expected to total 464 million in 2017, a growth of four percent year-on-year. In value terms (USD), 16 percent year-on-year growth is forecast.

Developed Asia*: Declining demand in South Korea continues to bite

Smartphone demand in the region reached 16.4 million units in 3Q17, down seven percent year-on-year, weighed-down by a 15 percent year-on-year decline in South Korea. Demand in Japan grew two percent year-on-year, delivering moderating growth from to the previous quarter. GfK's 2017 forecast for the region has been lowered to minus four percent year-on-year, with smartphone demand totaling 70.1 million units.

Emerging Asia*: Still on track to post the strongest growth across all regions in 2017

In emerging Asia, smartphone revenue increased 21 percent year-on-year in 3Q17, while demand increased five percent year-on-year, reaching 57.7 million units. Demand growth in India and Indonesia in the quarter moderated to three percent and five percent, respectively, year-on-year. In Malaysia demand grew by 25 percent year-on-year, representing the sixth consecutive quarter of growth. Bangladesh also saw strong demand in the quarter, with growth of 22 percent year-on-year. GfK forecasts smartphone demand in emerging Asia to total 238 million units in 2017 (up 11 percent year-on-year), the strongest of all regions this year.

Smartphone sales Units sold (in million) Sales value (in billion USD) 2017 vs. 2016 2017 2016 Y/Y % 2017 2016 Y/Y % Sales Sales Change Sales Sales Change Western Europe 126.7 131.0 -3% 56.6 53.5 6% Central and Eastern Europe 85.2 78.0 9% 21.0 16.8 25% North America 201.1 198.5 1% 80.6 77.5 4% Latin America 115.4 105.9 9% 36.2 30.9 17% Middle East & Africa 176.8 168.9 5% 41.9 42.1 0% China 464.3 448.5 4% 154.3 133.1 16% Developed Asia 70.1 72.9 -4% 44.7 46.1 -3% Emerging Asia 238.6 214.5 11% 43.0 34.5 25% Global 1478.2 1,418.2 4% 478.3 434.5 10% Source: GfK Point of Sales (POS) Measurement data in 75+ markets, monthly data to the end of August 2017, plus weekly data to 30 September 2017. Percentages are rounded.

Yotaro Noguchi, product lead in GfK's trends and forecasting division, concluded, "This quarter's results reveal the complexity of the global smartphone market and explain why, when it comes to forecasting performance and meeting future demand, manufacturers really do need to examine and understand the nuances of each individual market."

Note:

This release is based on final GfK Point of Sales data for July and August, and September estimates based on weekly data to 30 September 2017.

*Developed Asia: Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan

*Emerging Asia: Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam

http://www.gfk.com / https://twitter.com/GfK

SOURCE GfK
SAN MATEO, Calif., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Snowflake Computing, the only data warehouse built for the cloud, today announced the launch of the Snowflake Center of Excellence by Wipro Limited, (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company.

The Snowflake Center of Excellence is a strategic initiative by Wipro to help enterprises transition from their legacy, on-premises data analytics infrastructure to a modern, scalable solution, leveraging Snowflake's leading-edge data warehouse built for the cloud.

Snowflake and Wipro have helped a number of large, strategic enterprise customers realize the full benefits of cloud computing and therefore accelerate their time to market. Snowflake and Wipro's joint customers span financial services, retail and e-commerce industries. Wipro is in the process of transitioning a legacy data warehouse for a leading financial services company, and in another case, for a global leader in apparel and footwear, to Snowflake's state-of-the-art cloud data warehouse.

The Snowflake Center of Excellence for enterprise data analytics offers the following:

Trained consultants  A growing practice of 450+ data management and data analytics experts trained on Snowflake and many legacy platforms.

 A growing practice of 450+ data management and data analytics experts trained on Snowflake and many legacy platforms. Access to Wipro's proprietary technology  Migration tools, frameworks and accelerators to help enterprises migrate from their current infrastructure to Snowflake.

 Migration tools, frameworks and accelerators to help enterprises migrate from their current infrastructure to Snowflake. Data analytics expertise  Wipro brings decades of consulting experience from successful data warehouse, data analytics and big data implementations.

 Wipro brings decades of consulting experience from successful data warehouse, data analytics and big data implementations. Faster time to market  Wipro's migration methodology and Snowflake's ease-of-use deliver cloud-native solutions in a fraction of the time of traditional migration options.

By migrating to Snowflake's data warehouse, enabled by Wipro, enterprises also get the six defining qualities of the no. 1 cloud data warehouse:

All of your data  Store and analyze petabytes of structured and semi-structured data (JSON, XML, AVRO) from a single source of truth to quickly extract critical insight.

 Store and analyze petabytes of structured and semi-structured data (JSON, XML, AVRO) from a single source of truth to quickly extract critical insight. All of your users  An architecturally unlimited amount of concurrent users and applications can gain access without eroding performance.

 An architecturally unlimited amount of concurrent users and applications can gain access without eroding performance. Pay only for what you use  Snowflake's built-for-the-cloud solution scales storage separate from compute, up and down, transparently and automatically.

 Snowflake's built-for-the-cloud solution scales storage separate from compute, up and down, transparently and automatically. Zero management  Snowflake reduces complexity with built-in performance so there's no infrastructure to tweak, no knobs to turn and no tuning required.

 Snowflake reduces complexity with built-in performance so there's no infrastructure to tweak, no knobs to turn and no tuning required. Complete SQL database  Snowflake supports the tools millions of business users already know how to use today.

 Snowflake supports the tools millions of business users already know how to use today. Data sharing - Snowflake extends the data warehouse to the Data Sharehouse, with direct, governed and secure data sharing within seconds so enterprises can easily forge one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many data sharing relationships.

"Our partnership with Wipro provides our enterprise customers with an end-to-end solution, comprising the only built-for-the-cloud data warehouse with the expertise of a leading global services provider," Snowflake's Vice President of Alliances, Walter Aldana said. "Together, we provide peace of mind for many large customers moving away from on-premises legacy environments to an all-cloud strategic deployment."

Pallab Deb, Vice President and Global Head - Analytics, Wipro Limited said, "Our partnership with Snowflake represents a significant, long-term commitment to serve enterprise companies and help them streamline their operations, better serve their customers and lead their industries. We believe that Snowflake's offerings can be a game changer and we will work jointly with them to facilitate wider adoption by clients. We continue to see a massive shift in customers migrating their entire analytics infrastructure to the cloud and we believe our partnership with Snowflake will continue to yield the best results for Wipro, Snowflake, and most of all, our joint customers."

Resources

About Snowflake Computing

Snowflake is the only data warehouse built for the cloud. Snowflake delivers the performance, concurrency and simplicity needed to store and analyze all data available to an organization in one location. Snowflake's technology combines the power of data warehousing, the flexibility of big data platforms, the elasticity of the cloud, and live data sharing at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions. Snowflake: Your data, no limits. Find out more at snowflake.net.

About Wipro Limited

Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO) is a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company. We harness the power of cognitive computing, hyper-automation, robotics, cloud, analytics and emerging technologies to help our clients adapt to the digital world and make them successful. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, strong commitment to sustainability and good corporate citizenship, we have over 160,000 dedicated employees serving clients across six continents. Together, we discover ideas and connect the dots to build a better and a bold new future.

SOURCE Snowflake Computing

Related Links

http://www.snowflake.net


PHILADELPHIA and HOUSTON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, biotechnology company Solugen announced the launch of their first consumer product line, Ode to Clean. Powered by Bioperoxide, one of the purest forms of hydrogen peroxide made 100% from plants and created using Solugen's proprietary technology, Ode to Clean offers consumers a safe, powerful, and convenient way to clean without relying on harsh, petroleum-based chemicals, which exist in all cleaners today.

In addition to launching their new product line, Solugen has announced their first round of fundraising. The company has raised $4.4M in seed funding from investors including Y Combinator, Refactor Capital, MIT, Liquid 2 Ventures and Social Capital Partnerships, among others.

The Team

Solugen was founded in 2016 by CEO Gaurab Chakrabarti, M.D., Ph.D., and CTO Sean Hunt, Ph.D. Dr. Chakrabarti discovered a unique enzyme that produced hydrogen peroxide using an extremely efficient and ultra-pure method from sugar sources during his M.D. and Ph.D. training in oncology at the University of Texas Southwestern. Dr. Hunt was completing his Ph.D on nanoparticle synthesis for hydrogen peroxide production at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Through their combined expertise, Drs. Hunt and Chakrabarti saw an opportunity to apply their work to the field of hydrogen peroxide manufacturing, a typically energy-intensive and dangerous process that relies on non-renewable resources like petroleum and produces hazardous byproducts.

"Hydrogen peroxide is recognized worldwide as a safe and effective cleaning ingredient, but is incredibly dangerous and energy-intensive to create and transport," said Dr. Chakrabarti. "Sean and I wanted to not only develop a technology that reduces the waste and pollution in the production process, but also create a purer product that would be clean and safe to use in our homes with our own families."

The Technology

Through their combined research, Dr. Hunt and Dr. Chakrabarti developed a proprietary micromanufacturing platform, which combines cutting-edge enzymatic technology (via CRISPR/Cas9) with a reactor to create Bioperoxide, a form of hydrogen peroxide made from 100% plant starch.

"Our vision is to reduce the danger and pollution that is associated with the production, transportation and storage of hydrogen peroxide," said Dr. Hunt. "Our micromanufacturing units make it easy to scalably produce Bioperoxide when and where it is needed, reducing the long-term risks associated with storing and transporting hydrogen peroxide."

The team aims to license their proprietary micromanufacturing technology to major chemical companies to use in their own hydrogen peroxide manufacturing or as an end user, helping to reduce the broader environmental impact that chemical manufacturing has on the environment. Capitalizing on the emerging field of enzymatics and the gene editing technology CRISPR/Cas9, Bioperoxide is the first of many chemicals that can be re-imagined through green chemistry, creating cleaner, more efficient and environmentally friendly manufacturing processes.

"The combined knowledge that Sean and Gaurab bring to this market is unmatched," said Joe Montana, founder and partner at Liquid 2 Ventures. "Together, they have been able to not only patent and demonstrate the effectiveness of their technology, but also bring it to market. Hydrogen peroxide is in innumerable household products, from toothpaste to household cleaners, and there are just as many potential applications for Bioperoxide."

Introducing Ode to Clean

Solugen's first product line featuring the cleaning power of Bioperoxide is Ode to Clean. Starting today, Ode to Clean wipes will be available at www.odetoclean.com. A sleek, low-profile filled dispenser plus one refill pack will be available for $18.00.

Ode to Clean's wipes use Bioperoxide and are made from 100% plant starch. Because they are made with only plant starch and water, they are the only cleaning wipes on the market that do not emit toxic fumes or leave behind a toxic residue on surfaces, making them safe to use anywhere in the home. The wipes are 100% biodegradable and compostable, reducing the impact that disposable wipes have on the environment.

"Wipes are incredibly energy intensive to produce and create a lot of waste, but are also incredibly convenient to use," said Dr. Hunt. "In fact, we could drive from the Earth to the moon and back 18,000 times with the petroleum used to make the cleaning wipes Americans use every year. It made sense that we'd want to tackle this category first, creating wipes that are not only convenient and effective, but that consumers can feel good about using."

"Ode to Clean is not only a safe and effective cleaning product, but it's also a proof of concept for Bioperoxide," said David Lee, co-founder and Managing Partner at Refactor Capital. "Sean and Gaurab are not only proving that Bioperoxide can be produced in a safe and environmentally friendly manner, but that there is an increasing demand for consumer products and companies that are actively reducing their carbon footprint."

About Solugen

Founded in 2016 by Gaurab Chakrabarti, M.D., Ph.D., and Sean Hunt, Ph.D., Solugen is a biotechnology company applying green chemistry principles to re-design the production of a variety of ingredients. Solugen's mission is to help the fight against climate change by creating cleaner, greener, and safer chemical processes that reduce reliance on non-renewable resources and energy-intensive manufacturing, without sacrificing safety and efficacy. Solugen's line of cleaning products, Ode to Clean, features Bioperoxide, an ultra-pure form of hydrogen peroxide produced from 100% plant starch. Ode to Clean is available at www.odetoclean.com. Solugen is based in Philadelphia, PA and Houston, TX.

SOURCE Solugen

Related Links

http://www.solugentech.com


HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- UP Aerospace Inc. and Cesaroni Aerospace teamed to create a state-of-the-art solid rocket motor manufacturing and test facility at Spaceport America, New Mexico. The project was completed in under one year with the culmination of three full-scale SpaceLoft solid rocket motor static test firings. The tests were conducted to verify new high-performance motor casing and insulation manufacturing techniques, and validate the automated, remotely controlled propellant mix, and cast processing facilities. The new facility, called the Space Propulsion Center (SPC), is co-owned and operated by the two companies and is located at Spaceport America adjacent to the UP Aerospace Sub-Orbital Space Launch Complex. The new capability was created in part to support propulsion development of the UP Aerospace Spyder orbital launch vehicle. The Spyder rocket, under development in collaboration with NASA, is targeting a total launch cost of $1M for a 20-pound payload to Low Earth Orbit. The facility will also be used to produce high-performance military grade rocket motors for the U.S. government.

SpaceLoft Rocket Motor Qualification Static Test Conducted Oct. 9, 2017 at the Space Propulsion Center (SPC), Spaceport America, New Mexico

Jerry Larson, President of UP Aerospace Inc. said in a statement, "This new facility adds to our existing 12 years of launch operations at Spaceport America, the ability to produce propulsion systems for the SpaceLoft on-site, and develop new propulsion systems for our orbital Spyder vehicle." Larson went on to say, "Having a motor production and test facility on-site with our launch complex will reduce cost and schedule for future missions flown from Spaceport America."

UP Aerospace is currently under contract to conduct 4 sub-orbital space-flown missions from Spaceport America in 2018. Three missions are scheduled for NASA, and the forth hypersonic mission for a commercial customer. UP Aerospace is also fully funded to complete the development of the first stage solid rocket motor of the Spyder launch vehicle. The effort includes a full-scale flight qualification test fire of the Spyder Stage one solid rocket motor in September of 2018 in collaboration with NASA. Larson concluded, "The Space Propulsion Center (SPC) and crew are functioning very efficiently and are poised to support a very busy 2018 launch and test schedule at Spaceport America."

"UP Aerospace has been a long-term partner of Spaceport America and we are very proud of their continued progress. UP Aerospace is a great reflection of the exciting work being performed in the space industry and highlights Spaceport America's role in supporting civil, commercial and national security space in southern New Mexico," said Dan Hicks, CEO of Spaceport America.

At the completion of the Space Propulsion Center (SPC), three full-scale SpaceLoft rocket motors were manufactured and tested in September and October 2017. The three motors were test fired within three weeks using the facilities' new 30,000-pound test stand. Two of the motors were a high-performance SpaceLoft motor that demonstrated an increased propellent loading, and the third test was a standard SpaceLoft motor which qualified its use on all sub-orbital flights scheduled for NASA missions in 2018 and beyond.

Cesaroni Aerospace interests in the new facility also include the expansion of production capacities and enable testing of advanced bi-propellant engines. Anthony Cesaroni, President and CEO of Cesaroni Aerospace said, "We have big plans for New Mexico that includes military, sub-orbital as well as orbital systems that are currently under contract." Cesaroni Aerospace currently has two large propulsion contracts that the Space Propulsion Center (SPC) will manufacture over 100 military grade solid rocket motors in 2018. One such client is Sandia National Labs. Cesaroni is known for its capabilities in rapid design and testing all types of propulsion systems including solid rocket motors, liquid rocket engines, hybrid rockets motors, and gas generators. Cesaroni went on say, "The infrastructure at the Space Propulsion Center (SPC) is capable of supporting our bi-propellant propulsion development activities. We plan to expand these capacities over the next few years at this new site. The center includes engineering, manufacturing, fuel, test, launch on site, and on demand. All this makes this new capability a very exciting step forward in our combined business growth with UP Aerospace."

Since 2005 Cesaroni Aerospace has supplied solid rocket motors for UP Aerospace's SpaceLoft sounding rocket program that has launched a total of 10 microgravity flights from Spaceport America to altitudes exceeding 400,000 feet. During this 12-year span, Cesaroni and UP Aerospace have teamed on many launch and propulsion projects. This new collaborative propulsion capability allows the two companies to work closely together on advanced propulsion and launch systems in an extremely cost-effective manner. Propulsion and launch operations revenue growth is expected to significantly increase for both companies over the next few years as a result of this new facilities capabilities and teaming arrangement.

About UP Aerospace Inc.

UP Aerospace is a space launch and flight test service provider incorporated in 2004 to offer world-class access to space. The company specializes in advanced engineering, launch technology development, and state-of-the-art rapid and low-cost launch operations. UP Aerospace has successfully reduced the cost and scheduled time of launching experiments and commercial payloads into space with our in-house developed SpaceLoft launch platform. The company headquarters are in Denver, Colorado, with motor manufacturing and launch facilities at Spaceport America in New Mexico. UP Aerospace is currently developing an orbital launch vehicle called Spyder tailored for placing cubeSat payloads into Low Earth Orbit. For more information about UP Aerospace Inc. contact Tracey Larson at (303) 683-8814 or visit www.upaerospace.com.

About Cesaroni Aerospace

Cesaroni Aerospace, a high-tech company specializing in industrial design and manufacturing as well as research and development. Located in Sarasota, Florida and Toronto, Ontario, Cesaroni Aerospace provides the aerospace industry with propulsion development and services for solid rocket motors, liquid rocket engines and gas generators. For more information about Cesaroni Aerospace contact Anthony Cesaroni at (941) 360-3100 or visit www.cesaronitech.com.

About Spaceport America

Spaceport America is the first purpose-built commercial spaceport in the world. The FAA-licensed launch complex, situated on 18,000 acres adjacent to the U.S. Army White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico, boasts 6,000 square miles of restricted airspace, low population density, a 12,000-foot spaceway, and 340-plus days of sunshine and low humidity. With 40 vertical launches *doesn't include 60 student launches conducted during the Spaceport America Cup and 8 horizontal missions to date, some of the most respected companies in the commercial space industry are customers at Spaceport America: Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, UP Aerospace, EXOS Aerospace, and Pipeline2Space.

Visit http://spaceportamerica.com and http://gatewaytospace.com for more information. Spaceport America is #NewMexicoTRUE. Media Contact: Rosa Banuelos, +1.575.202.4524, or email at [email protected].

To watch video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLZfnaXtnjI

Press contact; Tracey Larson @[email protected]

Related Images

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Related Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLZfnaXtnjI

SOURCE UP Aerospace

Related Links

http://www.upaerospace.com


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Empire Wind is the project name selected by Statoil for the company's offshore wind site located off the southern coast of Long Island, New York. The 79,350 acre site, secured by Statoil in a federal auction in December 2016, has the potential to generate up to 1GW of offshore wind power, making it a key part of New York State's plan to deploy renewable energy sources to meet the state's electricity needs.

Statoil (NYSE: STO) also announced the launch of the Empire Wind website www.empirewind.com where members of the public can obtain information on the project and register to receive updates.

"The name Empire Wind captures the pivotal role that this important project will play in helping New York achieve its ambitious renewable energy goal," said Statoil's Empire Wind Project Director Christer af Geijerstam. "Empire Wind also speaks to the leading role that New York State is taking in advancing the deployment of offshore wind technology in North America."

Statoil is in the early stages of developing the offshore wind farm with the potential to provide New York City and Long Island with a significant, long-term source of renewable electricity. The Empire Wind project team is currently conducting an extensive evaluation process, gathering detailed information about the seabed conditions, grid connection options and wind resources characteristic to the area.

New York's Clean Energy Standard mandates an increase in the share of renewables in its energy mix to 50 percent by 2030. As part of that effort, Governor Andrew Cuomo recently called for the development of up to 2.4 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030.

"Statoil looks forward to working with all stakeholders as we move forward with the job of bringing offshore wind energy to New York," said Geijerstam of Statoil. "We are committed to working with other developers, state officials, unions and the business community to develop a U.S. supply chain for this and other offshore wind projects. Our goal is to help make offshore wind a leading option for generating clean and affordable energy in New York."

Statoil currently has seven offshore wind projects online or under development in Europe, including the world's first floating offshore wind project in Scotlanda technology which could prove pivotal in generating offshore wind power for the U.S. west coast and Hawaii. The company's offshore wind portfolio has the capacity of providing over one million European homes with renewable energy. Statoil also recently announced its first solar investment in the 162MW Apodi solar asset in Brazil which will provide approximately 160,000 households with electricity.

For more information, visit https://www.statoil.com/en/what-we-do/new-energy-solutions.html

Statoil is an international energy company, with operations in more than 30 countries and approximately 20,000 employees worldwide.

We are headquartered in Norway and are listed on the New York and Oslo stock exchanges.

Statoil has extensive experience in the U.S. and is a significant player in the exploration and development of oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico and from shale and tight rock formations throughout the mainland US.

Media contacts:

North America: Nate Teti, [email protected], +1 202 476 9671

Europe: Elin A. Isaksen, [email protected], +47 48091183

SOURCE Statoil

Related Links

http://www.empirewind.com


ORANGEBURG, S.C., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Zeus Industrial Products Inc. ("Zeus") has released its latest thin-walled PTFE catheter liner as part of their Sub-Lite-Wall StreamLiner series. StreamLiner XT, the first offering from the series, was released in July with an impressive maximum wall thickness of 0.00075" (0.01905 mm). The next in the series, StreamLiner VT, launches October 24 and features a maximum wall thickness of .001" (.025mm) in an ID size range of 0.004"- 0.120" (.107mm  3.05mm).

Zeus Streamliner Series Zeus logo

As a free extrusion, the StreamLiner series makes for a sturdier and more robust finished device while retaining necessary functional properties such as torqueablity, pushability, and flexibility. Both the StreamLiner XT and StreamLiner VT feature Zeus' proprietary LoPro technology, leveraging more than 50 years of experience in developing state-of-the-art polymer extrusion processes to achieve the thinnest components in the industry.

"The market is challenging manufacturers to develop transcatheter solutions for smaller and more tortuous anatomies. Zeus's StreamLiner series is poised to answer that challenge and become the market standard," states Josh Ridley, director, medical sales and marketing for Zeus. "These PTFE liners are stronger and tougher than conventional catheter liners and don't exhibit the surface imperfections or proclivity toward flaking sometimes associated with dip-coated technology."

The lubricious new StreamLiner XT PTFE liner greatly improves deployment force through the lumen of the catheter for improved minimally-invasive procedures. Meanwhile, Sub-Lite-Wall StreamLiner XT and StreamLiner VT both allow greater access to small vessels, including peripheral and neurovasculatures, enabling medical device engineers and clinical interventionalists to improve procedural success rates and minimize patient trauma.

The release of the StreamLiner VT was accelerated after a positive market response to the successful launch of the StreamLiner XT. Zeus has plans to roll out additional liners in the series but has not yet announced those release dates.

Both StreamLiner XT and StreamLiner VT will be on display at Zeus Booth #1405 at MD&M Minneapolis, November 8-9. Free product samples are also available through the company's Virtual Sample Locker (VSL) program.

About Zeus Industrial Products, Inc.

Zeus Industrial Products, Inc., is headquartered in Orangeburg, SC, USA. Its core business is the development and precision extrusion of advanced polymeric materials. The company employs 1,250 people worldwide with manufacturing facilities in Aiken, Gaston and Orangeburg, South Carolina; Branchburg, New Jersey; and Letterkenny, Ireland. Zeus products and services serve companies in the medical, automotive, aerospace, fiber optics, energy and fluid management markets. For more information, visit www.zeusinc.com.

MEDIA CONTACT

Jenn McQuesten

Corporate Marketing Director

803.268.9539 Office

803.747.1208 Cell

[email protected]

SOURCE Zeus Industrial Products

Related Links

http://www.zeusinc.com


The letter also calls upon Catalonia's president, Mr. Puigdemont, to demonstrate his sincere commitment to dialogue by acknowledging the concerns of those who are doubtful of his government's democratic mandate to pursue the secession of Catalonia. The scholars not only propose that the best means by which to achieve the aforementioned is to organize a referendum that would reflect the hopes of the Catalan people, but they also urge Spain's prime minister, Mr. Rajoy, to recognize those aspirations as legitimate and refrain from suppressing them. The scholars urge the leaders of both sides to accept a popular referendum as the best way to understand the challenges that Catalan hopes for independence pose to the Spanish constitutional order. The letter ultimately calls for both sides to focus on reaching a negotiated constitutional settlement, which would honor everyone's constitutional rights and demonstrate concern for Catalan political aspirations.

Sujit Choudhry is the founding director of the Center for Constitutional Transitions and an I. Michael Heyman Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked as constitutional advisor to emerging democracies across the world. He is currently also a member of the United Nations Mediation Roster and was a consultant to the World Bank Institute at the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program.

Professor Choudhry coordinated the letter together with Robert Howse, Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law at the New York University School of Law, Zoran Oklopcic from the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University, and Asanga Welikala, the Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law as well as the Lecturer in Public Law at the University of Edinburgh School of Law.

The Center for Constitutional Transitions assembles and leads international networks of experts to conduct thematic research projects that offer evidence-based policy options to practitioners. This is part of the Center's effort to create and mobilize knowledge in support of constitution building. It has several global collaborations and partnerships with multilateral organizations, think tanks, NGOs and universities. Through the Center's partnership with the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Choudhry co-leads three global collaborative research projects. These include "Dealing with Territorial Cleavages in Constitutional Transitions", "Security Sector Reform and Constitutional Transitions in Emerging Democracies", and "Security Sector Oversight: Protecting Democratic Consolidation from Authoritarian Backsliding and Partisan Abuse".

About Sujit Choudhry:

Sujit Choudhry, the I. Michael Heyman Professor of Law, University of California at Berkeley Law School, is an internationally recognized authority on comparative constitutional law. He has in-depth field experience as an advisor to constitution building processes, including in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Nepal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Ukraine and Yemen. He has lectured or spoken in over two dozen countries. Professor Choudhry's research addresses a broad variety of issues in comparative constitutional law.

About the Center for Constitutional Transitions:

The Center for Constitutional Transitions generates and mobilizes knowledge in support of constitution building by assembling and leading international networks of experts to produce evidence-based policy options for decision-makers and agenda-setting research, in partnership with a global network of multilateral organizations, think tanks, and NGOs. It has worked with over 50 experts from more than 25 countries.

SOURCE Center for Constitutional Transitions

Related Links

http://www.constitutionaltransitions.org


SANTA FE SPRINGS, Calif., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Swann, a global leader in security monitoring with over 30 years of experience in DIY video surveillance, today announced the release of the new wire-free Smart Security Camera. Equipped with crystal clear 1080p full HD Video and a wide 120-degree viewing angle, the camera can capture details such as faces and license plates from every angle. With its night vision and IP65 rating for full weatherproofing, users can rely on the camera to keep their families and pets safe day and night, inside and outside.

Wire-free Smart Security Camera

The device offers effortless installation and reliable threat detection thanks to Swann's True Detect heat-sensing technology. All users need is the camera, a Wi-Fi connection and their smartphone.

The combination of its completely wire-free design and rechargeable battery operation means it's easy and convenient for home or business owners to set up wherever they like  inside or outside the house, at the front door or even inside the baby's room. The wireless camera connects to an existing Wi-Fi network within minutes and does not require a DVR or base station, unlike many other surveillance systems.

Swann's all-new True Detect Technology also means that users will no longer fall victim to false alarms caused by trees blowing in the wind, leaves falling or a pet moving around the home. The technology uses heat-based PIR (Passive Infrared) motion detection to reliably distinguish heat of larger objects including people and cars. Once triggered, users receive reliable push notifications to their Smartphone coupled with efficient video recording to local memory and secure cloud.

"Many people say they want to implement home security; however, they don't have the time or money to install and purchase an effective home security solution. Using our 30 years of experience in Do-it-Yourself security, we've introduced a unique product with the new True Detect Technology in order to deliver smarter security that users can truly rely on," said Dennis McTighe, Vice President of Americas at Swann. "Given the Smart Security Camera is 100 percent wire-free and rechargeable, people don't need to waste money on installation and can avoid the high cost of battery replacements. It's also a great option for renters due to its affordability, portability and no drilling requirements. They can quickly and easily set up their camera and enjoy the peace of mind knowing their home or business is under 24/7 surveillance."

Using the new and free SAFE by Swann app (for iOS and Android), home and business owners can select when to receive push notifications, monitor cameras in real-time and listen to the audio at any time and from anywhere in the world. Through the app, users can playback footage from the past seven days, stored locally on the camera, and from the past two days stored securely on the cloud. For anyone wanting expanded protection, there is also the ExtraSafe plan that allows for cloud storage of thousands of clips for up to 30 days.

Availability

Swann's Smart Security Camera will be coming soon to authorized retailers across the USA in November 2017. The MSRP for the product will begin at USD $149.99 for a single camera, USD $279.99 for a twin pack, and USD $529.99 for four cameras. For more information on Swann, visit www.swann.com.

The ExtraSafe Plan is offered at $4.99 monthly and $49.90 yearly, with a 30-day free trial. It allows up to 30 days of cloud recording and the backup of seven days local recording. Users can also share access to their Smart Security System with other members of their family. Clips are stored with the protection of 'bank level' privacy encryption. The ExtraSafe plan also provides for unlimited premium customer support (phone, live chat, community support & email).

About Swann

Swann is a global leader in Do-it-Yourself video surveillance with a proud 30-year history, dating back to 1987, providing innovative security and consumer electronics solutions.

Swann creates and stands behind the world's smartest, most intuitive and best value security solutions to empower consumers to protect, and stay connected to, their home or business no matter where life takes them.

With offices in the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, China and Hong Kong, and distribution partners around the globe, Swann is a key player in the global security market. Swann's products are available from leading retailers and distributors such as Best Buy, Amazon.com, Fry's Electronics, Lowe's, Menards, Maplin, Screwfix, Costco Wholesale, Exertis, JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman and Bunnings Warehouse.

Swann's vision is to be the world leader in smart security solutions, taking care of people and making every home and business a safe place.

Media Contacts:

Jennifer Buonantony : Owner, Press Pass LA (PR Contact)

+1 323 496 1976 | [email protected]

Dennis McTighe: VP Americas, Swann Communications

+1 682-704-1364 | [email protected]

Related Links

Swann

SOURCE Swann Communications

Related Links

http://www.swann.com


PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Systemax Inc. (NYSE: SYX) today announced that it will release financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2017 on Tuesday, October 31, 2017 after U.S. market hours.

Management will provide pre-recorded remarks on the Company's third quarter 2017 results at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on October 31st. To access the remarks please dial (412-717-9224) ten minutes prior to the start time. The pre-recorded remarks will also be available via webcast on the Company's website at www.systemax.com in the investor relations section.

If you cannot listen to the call at its scheduled time, the webcast will be archived on www.systemax.com for approximately 90 days.

About Systemax Inc.

Systemax Inc. (www.systemax.com) is a provider of industrial products in North America and technology products in France, going to market through a system of branded e-Commerce websites and relationship marketers. The primary brands are Global Industrial and Inmac Wstore.

Investor/Media Contact:

Mike Smargiassi

Brainerd Communicators, Inc.

212-739-6729

[email protected]

SOURCE Systemax Inc.

Related Links

http://www.systemax.com


For the second year in a row, the Sparkling Ice sales team increased awareness and lent support to the organization through an internal competition. For each thematic "WOW" display built in stores throughout the summer months, Talking Rain donated to Honor Flight. This year, the Sparkling Ice sales team surpassed goals with over 490 displays built, resulting in a $79,000 donation to support Honor Flight. As such, Talking Rain has fully funded an entire Puget Sound Honor Flight trip, which transported veterans of WWII and the Korean War from Talking Rain's hometown of Seattle, to our nation's capital. The remaining funds will be donated to various local chapters to support their flights.

Talking Rain attributes the brand's involvement with the Honor Flight Network to U.S. Navy Veteran and Talking Rain Chief Operating Officer, Chris Hall, who discovered the organization after stumbling upon a moving Honor Flight departure while traveling. Hall quickly went to work to include the Honor Flight Network among Talking Rain's various charity partners. "As a veteran, the mission of the Honor Flight Network is close to my heart," says Hall. "No matter who you are, everyone has a connection or has been touched by a veteran in some way or the other. Giving back to those who have made it possible for us to do the things we do is so important, and it has been my honor to play a part in inspiring my team to give back to our veterans in this way."

"We are truly humbled by Talking Rain's support of Puget Sound Honor Flight here in Seattle, as well other hubs across the nation," said Co-Director Denise Rouleau. "This is the first company to fully fund an entire Puget Sound Honor Flight trip to Washington, DC - meaning 60 local veterans will fly for free to the country's capital to tour the memorials built in their honor. Talking Rain's support gives these veterans an opportunity to be recognized and thanked for their service. These trips offer a cathartic experience and, for some, a chance for closure. We are very grateful to everyone at Talking Rain for their generous support and partnership."

The Puget Sound Honor Flight departed from Seattle, WA on October 14th, flying veterans and their guardians directly to Washington D.C. The veterans received VIP treatment and private tours at their respective memorials. Since its inception in 2005, the Honor Flight Network has transported over 180,000 veterans to Washington, D.C. in support of their goal to provide every veteran with the opportunity to visit those memorials that were created to honor their service and sacrifice, and those of their fellow service men and women.

About Talking Rain Beverage Company

An iconic brand in the Seattle-area for more than 30 years, Talking Rain is a Washington-based beverage company situated in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. This innovative company is outselling global brands in flavor-categories across the U.S., while beginning to find success internationally with the brand's bold-flavored, lightly carbonated sparkling water.

A part of the Talking Rain product portfolio for over 25 years, Sparkling Ice beverages were often overlooked, until a major organizational shift in 2010 where the new leadership team refocused the company's efforts on this diamond in the rough. At that time, Talking Rain started to build a strong marketing, sales and manufacturing team to focus efforts on this flavored, zero-calorie carbonated beverage, which was quietly building a strong following in the Northwest since entering the marketplace.

Since 2011, this strategic focus on Sparkling Ice has ignited the brand, resulting in 5900% sales growth from 2010-2015, and surpassing $650 million in sales that same year.

About Puget Sound Honor Flight

Puget Sound Honor Flight is a non-profit organization whose mission is to transport Western Washington war veterans to Washington, D.C., at no expense to them, to visit and reflect at memorials dedicated to honor their service and sacrifice. Puget Sound Honor Flight is a regional hub of a national organization, the Honor Flight Network, and was started in March 2013. For more information, visit http://pugetsoundhonorflight.org/.

SOURCE Talking Rain

Related Links

http://www.talkingrain.com/


Teleperformance's strategy of setting up a "Multilingual Euro Hub" in Lisbon, Maastricht, Athens, Istanbul, and Cairo has proved highly successful, as it has allowed contact centres to cover European markets from a small number of centres. The network of hubs offers services in up to 30 European languages, which helps clients build their brands and understand evolving customer preferences across current and emerging channels.

"Teleperformance's strategy in Europe is reflected in the unique ecosystem it has created there," said Stephen Loynd, Digital Transformation Practice Analyst, Frost & Sullivan. "That ecosystem allows clients to access a collaborative environment that responds to both challenges and new opportunities."

For the past four years, Teleperformance has been operating a state-of-the-art Customer Experience Lab. The lab helps educate clients on the evolving drivers behind satisfaction and changing customer preferences across current and emerging channels. "Teleperformance is focusing on an omnichannel world, and Frost & Sullivan is impressed that the company has put considerable resources into understanding today's ever-evolving omnichannel landscape," continued Loynd. Additionally, Teleperformance has launched a number of very innovative "Customer Experience Journey" Showrooms around its network in EMEA which guide clients and prospects through a seamless omnichannel experience using internally developed tools and technologies.

Teleperformance also places due emphasis on security across its network and has built a team of dedicated, certified security professionals who operate globally. Furthermore, Teleperformance made the strategic decision in 2015 to invest in the development and implementation of the "Teleperformance Observer". The Observer is a tool for clients and potential clients located in Dubai to be able to monitor the customer experience offered by Teleperformance in Cairo. Unifying Cairo and Dubai, the leading technology is the next-generation innovation of the virtual model used to connect Teleperformance operations in Mexico and the United States.

Frost & Sullivan best practices awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.

About Teleperformance Group

Teleperformance (RCF - ISIN: FR0000051807 - Reuters: ROCH.PA  Bloomberg: RCF FP), the worldwide leader in outsourced omnichannel customer experience management, serves companies and administrations around the world, with customer care, technical support, customer acquisition (Core Services), as well as with online interpreting solutions, visa application management services, data analysis and debt collection programs (Specialized Services). In 2016, Teleperformance reported consolidated revenue of 3,649 million (US$4,050 million, based on 1 = $1.11).

The Group operates 163,000 computerized workstations, with 217,000 employees across 340 contact centers in 74 countries and serving 160 markets. It manages programs in 265 languages and dialects on behalf of major international companies operating in a wide variety of industries.

Teleperformance shares are traded on the Euronext Paris market, Compartment A, and are eligible for the deferred settlement service. They are included in the following indices: STOXX 600, SBF 120, Next 150, CAC Mid 60 and CAC Support Services. They also have been included in the Euronext Vigeo Eurozone 120 index since December 2015, with regard to the Group's performance in corporate responsibility.

For more information: www.teleperformance.com Follow us: Twitter @teleperformance

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Contact:

Estefany Ariza

P: 210.477.8469

F: 210.348.1003

E: [email protected]

SOURCE Frost & Sullivan

Related Links

http://www.frost.com


LONDON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Telit, a global enabler of the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced that it has two modules  LE910-SV1 and LE910-SVL  certified by Verizon. These two modules are part of Telit's portfolio of LTE Category 1 (Cat 1) modules supporting Voice over LTE (VoLTE) technology that are now available for operation on Verizon's 4G LTE network. IoT integrators are now able to take advantage of the new and cost-effective standard for cellular voice communication, essential for the long-term evolution of voice-dependent applications in the IoT. For more information on the xE910 family: http://www.telit.com/cellular/4g-modules/xe910-family/#LE910-Cat1-Series.

"The IoT industry is mainly focused on data traffic," said Yosi Fait, Interim CEO, Telit. "But voice communication, either by itself or simultaneously with data, is essential for applications like home security systems. For example, monitoring services need a voice channel to listen for sounds within the premises and to engage in a dialog to establish if, and what kind of, help is needed. As a major supplier to the IoT segment of security and surveillance and many others dependent on voice, we are intent on continuing to deliver achievements like this certification."

The LE910-SVx module is a member of Telit's best-selling xE910 family and can easily be applied as a drop-in replacement in existing devices based on the family's modules for 2G, 3G and the various categories of LTE. With the company's design-once-use-anywhere philosophy, developers can cut costs and development time by simply designing around the xE910 LGA common form factor, giving them the freedom to deploy technologies best suited for the application's environment.

Integrators and providers looking for lower costs, security and extended product lifecycles now have more options with the Telit LE910-SVx Verizon-certified LTE Cat 1 VoLTE modules. The combination of LTE Cat 1 technology with VoLTE support makes these modules ideal for new and existing applications in segments such as home and business security, people tracking, wellness monitoring for the elderly and convalescent, smart home and smart buildings.

Telit also features the broadest portfolio of certified LTE IoT Category modules in the industry. For more information about the Telit portfolio of LTE modules: http://www.telit.com/cellular/.

About Telit

Telit (AIM: TCM), is a global leader in Internet of Things (IoT) enablement. The company offers the industry's broadest portfolio of integrated products and services for end-to-end IoT deployments  including cellular communication modules in all technologies, GNSS, Wi-Fi, short-to-long range wireless modules, IoT connectivity plans and IoT platform services. Through the IoT Portal, Telit makes IoT onboarding easy, reduces risk, time to market, complexity and costs for asset tracking, remote monitoring and control, telematics, industrial automation and others, across many industries and vertical markets worldwide.

Copyright  2017 Telit Communications PLC. All rights reserved. Telit and all associated logos are trademarks of Telit Communications PLC in the United States and other countries. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Telit Media Contact:

Leslie Hart

919-415-1510

[email protected]

SOURCE Telit

Related Links

http://www.telit.com


ANAHEIM, Calif., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TERADATA PARTNERS CONFERENCE -- Teradata (NYSE: TDC), the leading data and analytics company, last night honored 33 high-performing customers and partnerships with Teradata EPIC Awards. The award ceremony was held at the Teradata PARTNERS Conference and celebrated the innovative use of data and analytics to shape positive business outcomes.

Teradata Chief Executive Officer Vic Lund and Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer Oliver Ratzesberger officiated at the 10th annual ceremony, with Teradata Executive Vice President, International, Peter Mikkelsen and Teradata Executive Vice President, Americas Sales and Services, Karen Thomas joining them to congratulate the winners.

An independent panel of judges evaluated all EPIC Award submissions to determine the winners. The panel included industry innovators, chief information officers, marketing specialists, technologists, educators and technology journalists. This year's winners are

China CITIC Bank, winner in the category of Analytical Excellence

RajComp Info Services Ltd, winner in the category Big Data Excellence

David Covert at Bank of the West, winner in the category of Collaboration and Innovation

at Bank of the West, winner in the category of Collaboration and Innovation HSBC UK with Celebrus Technologies, winner in the category of Customer Journey Excellence

UnitedHealth Group/Optum, winner in the category of Integrated View of the Business

Qualcomm, winner in the category of On the Edge with the Internet of Things

The Directorate General of Tax for the Republic of Indonesia , winner in the category of Operational Excellence

, winner in the category of Operational Excellence SAS and Cleveland Clinic, winners in the category of Big Data Intelligence

Fuzzy Logix and Gilead Sciences, Inc., also winners in the category of Big Data Intelligence

Cognizant Technology Solutions and a Leading Telecom, winners in the category of Business Insight

Clintworld GmbH and A1 Telekom Austria AG, also winners in the category of Business Insight

IBM GBS and a Leading Energy Company, winners in the category of Enterprise Intelligence

Dataguise, Inc. with eBay, also winners in the category of Enterprise Intelligence

The following list provides more detail for the EPIC Award winners by category.

Customer Awards

Category: Analytical Excellence

The winning solution demonstrates improved business decision-making by increasing the accuracy and speed of analytics-driven business insights. It also results in delivering measurable improvements in revenue, organizational performance and productivity.

Winner: China CITIC Bank

The marketing organization at China CITIC Bank needed to improve customer management and engagement across the customer journey and the customer life-cycle. The challenge was to leverage data, analytics and technology to drive innovation in customer engagement and in so doing, transform the retail banking business. Cross-functional teams worked closely to create the business strategy, develop the analytical requirements, and implement the big data solution, in which technology augmented by Teradata served as the intelligence hub for marketing insights and business execution. The results were positive: improved customer experience, product innovation, optimized processes and improvements in the bank's investment advice. Business outcomes also included 1) net income growth of 33 percent over two years and 2) net profit contribution growth of 75 percent over two years. Notably in 2017, the retail banking business contribution has been seven percent higher than the same period in the prior year.

Category: Big Data Excellence

The winner in this category is delivering high-impact business outcomes using big data, and/or data lakes with BI technologies and techniques.

Winner: RajComp Info Services Ltd. (India)

RajComp is an IT consulting firm serving the state government of Rajasthan, which needed a more integrated information infrastructure. Lack of integration constrained visibility across their various state service organizations, and limited their use of unstructured data. Rajcomp built a complete big data analytic environment using Teradata technology to integrate, store and manage a wide variety of structured and unstructured data like text, image, video and social media. In addition, the Teradata Hadoop appliance for Hortonworks and Teradata Aster together have provided unexpected new insights. These included deeper understanding of citizen needs and interests, opportunities to improve citizen engagement, and increased visibility into the quality of state services. The solution has also empowered government departmental users, who now have strong analytical support for more timely and effective decision-making, resulting in greater user satisfaction and better management of services.

Category: Collaboration and Innovation

This category honors a person or team whose leadership and expertise resulted in an extraordinary technology-enabled business outcome.

Winner: David Covert is responsible for strategy, governance and the daily execution of the multi-channel sales and marketing program at Bank of the West. Faced with the need to better target customers in real time through preferred channels, David leveraged Teradata's Customer Interaction Manager (CIM) application. To meet the challenge, his team developed a contact frequency algorithm that measures and manages email responses and distribution. Insights from this analytics-driven process have resulted in a 21 percent increase in 'open' rates and a 15 percent reengagement rate.

Also, under David's leadership, 'event-triggered' marketing leads increased by 50 percent in 2016, with response rates up to five times better than prior 'propensity-based' leads. In addition, David and the cross-functional teams developed new channels and programs to expand the CIM platform across two additional lines of business, resulting in a successful initiative to generate client upstream referrals and home lending sales. David's innovative approach was instrumental in topping the revenue and profit charts by 125 percent in 2016 and is now on track for 120 percent in 2017.

Category: Customer Journey Excellence

The winner in this space combined expertise in data integration, advanced multi-genre analytics, and cross-channel orchestration to drive and optimize customer journeys, help create new products, and execute successful multi-channel campaigns.

Winner: HSBC UK with Celebrus Technologies

HSBC faced the challenge of converting online visitors into customers, a critical part of the drive to become much more customer-centric. This was the key component of a major transformation project - to build one system which would connect customer channels to a central CRM brain to create a single customer view and deliver consistent, joined-up messaging across channels. HSBC UK used Teradata Real-Time Interaction Manager and Celebrus Technologies to convert individual-level digital customer data captured in real time into actionable insight. Today, HSBC UK delivers millions of highly personalized messages per day across multiple channels, including many in real-time, which helps them address multiple objectives and drive business growth.

Category: Integrated View of the Business

The winning solution delivered analytic insights by unifying the data ecosystem into a cohesive analytic environment. This resulted in performance improvements and new business opportunities while supporting the reuse of data.

Winner: UnitedHealth Group/Optum

The challenge for United Health Group (UHG) was the pressing need to meet the stringent reporting requirements associated with the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which mandated new reporting practices beginning in January 2014.

To meet these requirements, specifically the three R's (Risk Adjustment, Risk Corridors, and Reinsurance), UHG needed a health care reform-focused reporting capability. Leveraging their Teradata 'Unified Data Warehouse' (UDW), UHG was able to design and deliver its 3R reports containing claims, member, policy and provider data sourced from more than 30 systems to meet federal requirements and satisfy internal measures of success tied to volume and quality. As a result, UHG was able to achieve exceptionally high data acceptance for their 2016 3R submission.

The Teradata UDW manages detailed data in support of claims and files pertaining to clinical documents and data pertaining to customers, products, plans, benefits and a wide variety of operational, financial and health data. The use of Teradata's platform for complex compliance helped UHG deliver millions of dollars of business value across the organization.

Category: On the Edge with the Internet of Things

The winner in this category is monetizing the Internet of Things, using sensor data from telematics and interconnected devices including vehicles, meters, machines, weather devices, buildings, manufacturing lines, and shopping carts. The solution is resulting in better business models, process improvements, personal healthcare, or enhanced customer experiences.

Winner: Qualcomm

Qualcomm is a multinational semiconductor and telecommunications company that designs and markets wireless products and services. The main IoT challenge faced by Qualcomm was the predicted 1000x rise in cellular data traffic, now referred to as the "1000x Data Challenge." To address this, Qualcomm foresaw the need to increase the efficiency of its many assets while adopting radically different ways of acquiring, deploying and managing these resources.



Qualcomm recognized that the solution to skyrocketing data traffic is only possible through more powerful data collection across products and services - and the extensive use of machine learning. Qualcomm engaged Teradata's Think Big Analytics team to help tackle the many IoT data issues and analytic dimensions of this challenge. With Teradata, Qualcomm gained close access to a collective of consultants with data science expertise as well as systems architects and product technologists with mature levels of experience.

Qualcomm has now expanded its technological capabilities and has uncovered insight-driven opportunities that are driving enhanced products and services for shared learning and better business outcomes. For instance, with Teradata's support, the Qualcomm Data Science Group now has a comprehensive roadmap that is enabling cross-business unit collaboration. Development teams within Qualcomm are now leveraging the same data and gaining insight from each other  in areas like Mobile Processor, Embedded Processor Bluetooth Products, Cellular Modems and Wi-Fi, and Radio-Frequency (RF) Products. The work with Teradata continues today, to expand and enable data science across Qualcomm with technology-enabled business solutions that are practical, scalable and future proof.

Category: Operational Excellence

The winner is using data and analytics to deliver measurable performance improvements in operations across the value chain with an emphasis on good bottom-line business outcomes.

Winner: The Directorate General of Tax for the Republic of Indonesia

The Directorate General of Tax for the Republic of Indonesia (DGT), serving the Indonesia Minister of Finance, faced a major challenge to detect and reduce tax fraud while widening the tax base. This island nation has 255 million citizens, but only 27 million (11 percent of the population) are registered taxpayers. DGT recognized that the one way they could meet these challenges was through sophisticated data management. DGT chose Teradata and began implementing the Unified Data Architecture (UDA) to create a more integrated information ecosystem.

DGT's DAWET project ("Integrated Data Warehouse" in Bahasa Indonesian) is the big data analytics core of their UDA, which effectively organizes and manages its data. The business now has the analytical foundation to turn previously unseen opportunities into actionable insights. For instance, with Teradata, DGT is identifying issues such as suspicious transactions, transfer pricing, companies owned by other companies, identification of triangular transactions, insight into organizational structures and the inter-connections between owners and stakeholders. Increased visibility across the operation is also helping realize specific business goals, which are to help improve service and increase revenue through tax collection while improving taxpayer compliance, reducing fraud, and better managing costs. DGT now has an operational foundation to achieve their vision to be the best tax administration in Southeast Asia.

Integration and Consulting Partner (ICP) and Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Awards

Category: Big Data Intelligence

The partner leveraged one or more of Teradata's technologies and involved new emerging data sources such as Web logs, sensors or compelling new analytics to drive digital marketing optimization or new Web path analysis. The solution showed measurable return on investment.

Winners (ISV): SAS and Cleveland Clinic

Located in Cleveland, Ohio, the clinic is a nonprofit, multi-specialty academic medical center that integrates clinical and hospital care with research and education. Today, with more than 1,400 beds on Cleveland Clinic main campus and 4,435 beds system-wide, Cleveland Clinic is one of the most respected hospitals in the country.

The Cleveland Clinic has created an integrated, cost-effective, and agile analytics platform that is facilitating simplified access to strategic data assets across every service line; supporting the complete analytic lifecycle at scale from hypothesis generation through model operationalization and maintenance; and allowing them to generate better insights for executive and operational decision-making.

Winners (ISV): Fuzzy Logix and Gilead Sciences, Inc.

Fuzzy Logix and Teradata collaborated with Gilead Sciences, a U.S. biotech company, to meet the challenge of better detecting and understanding "adverse event signals"  which signify causal relationships between an adverse event and a specific treatment. The teams developed an adverse signal detection solution running on the Teradata Analytic Platform, which accelerates the development of complex computations using Bayesian Poisson methods that analyze time-based events in a linear way.

This solution on Teradata has enabled faster, more insightful analysis of electronic medical record data and improved accounting for all health transactions. Gilead can now efficiently compare subject groups exposed to different medications using a complex "matching" algorithm. The solution has resulted in substantial time savings, an increase in the number of safety signal evaluations, and a significant reduction in the number of false positive signals  which together deliver new insights as well as better health outcomes.

Category: ICP & ISV Business Insight

The winning partners have developed and implemented a solution involving pre-built applications and offers that use a Teradata analytic data platform. The solution is in production and delivering measurable return on investment for the customer.

Winner (ICP): Cognizant Technology Solutions and a Leading Telecom

The UK's second-largest telecom provider faced the challenge of personalizing customer contact to increase cross-selling and up-selling opportunities. The role of the Teradata Analytic Platform was central in the solution as it gathered and integrated various types of data to enhance customer profiles. The platform would then analyze and accelerate intelligent insight to the marketing applications. The big performance improvements occurred when the telecom business upgraded to IntelliFlex, with flexible multi-dimensional scalability. Ultimately, the telecom provider increased their business agility, accelerating insight delivery to users by 20 percent.

Winner (ISV): Clintworld GmbH and A1 Telekom Austria AG

A1 Telekom faced the challenge of effectively introducing a new product portfolio to business customers. Moreover, the sales agents needed a tool to manage the migration of existing customer contracts into this new portfolio. To address this challenge, the teams collaborated to develop a dedicated tool based on Clintworld's 'Clintview' price simulation software that creates very precise personalized offers. This app also guides sales agents through the entire sales cycle and advises them on the best new offer for each individual customer.

The Clintview 'Super Simulation' (SUSI) software, driven by the massively parallel power of Teradata, can calculate millions of offer combinations and provide the results in minutes, or seconds. SUSI on Teradata enabled the strategic business outcome: a rapid migration of customers to new contracts. All KPIs (e.g. software utilization, revenue changes) were met, indicating a highly successful implementation benefiting the client's business.

Category: ICP & ISV Enterprise Intelligence

Partners in this category are helping customers build a company-wide solution leveraging a Teradata Analytic Platform for the customer's strategic data analysis. The solution is in production and producing positive results for the customer.

Winner (ICP): IBM GBS and a Leading Energy Company

The IBM and Teradata teams were challenged with delivering more timely, efficient and strategic data management for a leading integrated energy company. The teams helped the client replace older DB systems with the Teradata Analytic Platform. It was used to accelerate the performance of the Exploration and Production business unit. The move to Teradata involved the migration of almost 300 database tables and the conversion of almost 600 ETL jobs from competitive platforms. The project resulted in a lower cost of ownership, with improved performance and scalability  while also creating a single view of the business.

Winner (ISV): Dataguise, Inc. and eBay Inc.

eBay faced a challenge to increase data velocity across the business, which has always been complicated by its continuously growing data volumes  the result of one billion active listings and 164 million buyers. Volumes today exceed 12 petabytes of customer transaction data in Teradata platforms that must be analytically converted to intelligence for personalized customer experiences. However, before datasets can be used for analytics, all sensitive data must be detected and either protected or removed to comply with a rigorous set of internal and external privacy and compliance requirements. These are the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Knowing that "You can't protect what you can't see," the eBay Global Data Infrastructure (GDI) team deployed Dataguise DgSecure for precise sensitive data detection in all Teradata repositories. With Dataguise, eBay is able to discover sensitive data, report its exact location, alert internal data owners, and take action as required. As a result, eBay can quickly and fully leverage customer transaction data for analytics-driven growth, while reducing business risk and business cost through complete data privacy and regulatory compliance.

Relevant news links

About Teradata

Teradata empowers companies to achieve high-impact business outcomes. Our focus on business solutions for analytics, coupled with our industry leading technology and architecture expertise, can unleash the potential of great companies. Visit teradata.com.

Get to know Teradata:

http://www.twitter.com/teradata | http://www.facebook.com/Teradata |

http://www.linkedin.com/company/teradata | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV559dNBu0FRpuNLsrEKbzA

Teradata, Aster, and the Teradata logo are registered trademarks of Teradata Corporation and/or

its affiliates in the U.S. and worldwide.

MEDIA CONTACT

Mike O'Sullivan

Teradata U.S.

937-242-4786

[email protected]

SOURCE Teradata

Related Links

http://www.teradata.com


"The presentations given at the conference, which were about the root causes of diseases and spiritual and divine healings were absolutely necessary for Russian doctors," said Dr. Oleg Ostreiko, the chairman of the organizing committee. "The atmosphere of the whole conference was excellent. The case presentations were very inspirational, and especially the performance of the Korean team was of very high quality and spirituality," said Dr. Andre Gasiorowski, the president of "Helping Hands Coalition" and one of the organizers of the 2018 WCDN conference in Poland. He also said he would do everything in his power to make the next conference a success.
WINNIPEG, Manitoba, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA) is celebrating its 15th anniversary, serving more than 15 million U.S. customers since 2002. During this time period, CIPA has maintained a 100 percent perfect safety record while offering personal use medications costing 50-80 percent less than the same prescriptions filled in the U.S.

CIPA is an association of licensed retail pharmacies that sell 90-day supplies of pharmaceuticals and maintenance medications, but not controlled substances, to Canadians and Americans. CIPA member pharmacies abide by stringent standards to ensure patient safety, including: requiring a valid prescription before dispensing medications; obtaining demographic and medical information from the patient and maintaining a health profile with medication history to avoid adverse drug interactions; having a licensed pharmacist on staff to supervise dispending of medications and be available for patient consultation upon request; and having procedures to ensure patient privacy and confidentiality of personal records and contact information.

CIPA meets an urgent need by providing safe, affordable daily medications especially important to seniors and others living on fixed incomes. The exorbitantly high cost of U.S. medications has dire consequences, especially for these at-risk individuals. As drug prices continue to skyrocket out of control, tens of millions of these Americans must choose between their medications and other critical living expenses, often skipping doses or not purchasing necessary medications at all.

"Millions of Americans must make untenable choices, and often jeopardize their health because they simply cannot afford the outrageous costs of their daily medications," explains CIPA General Manager Tim Smith. "For 15 years, we have been providing a safe, affordable solution to this problem, and we're proud to celebrate this anniversary with the knowledge that we're improving  and even saving  the lives of U.S consumers."

CIPA members in good standing display the CIPA Certification Mark on their website, providing an important consumer tool for identifying safe, legitimate pharmacies. Consumers should look for the CIPA Mark when visiting Canadian pharmacies, and then visit the CIPA website to verify the pharmacy is legitimately using the CIPA Certification.

CIPA routinely identifies rogue online pharmacies using the CIPA Certification Mark without authorization. When this occurs, CIPA sends "cease and desist" notifications, notifies domain name registrars, and alerts law enforcement. Consumers can find a list of undesirable (rogue) online purveyors they should avoid on the CIPA website as well.

"Our Certification Mark represents our integrity, our trustworthiness, our stringent practices, and our resulting perfect safety record over 15 years. CIPA members display the Mark proudly, and look forward to continuing to meet the urgent demand from U.S. consumers for safe, affordable maintenance medications they can rely upon to protect their health," Smith said.

About CIPA

The Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA) is an association of licensed retail pharmacies that sell pharmaceuticals and maintenance medications (but not controlled substances) in 90-day quantities for personal use to individuals in both Canadian and the U.S. from pharmacies in Canada. In addition, CIPA members have business relationships with licensed international pharmacies and government-approved dispensing facilities that ship medications directly to patients from their premises. CIPA member pharmacies provide the same quality controls and convenience of U.S. mail-order services, allowing consumers to maintain their health with brand-name pharmaceuticals delivered right to their home. Our member pharmacies have maintained a 100 percent perfect safety record, while serving more than 15 million U.S. patients since CIPA was established in 2002. CIPA can be found online at www.cipa.com.

SOURCE Canadian International Pharmacy Association (CIPA)

Related Links

http://www.cipa.com/


CHICAGO, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Relativity, the developer of the leading e-discovery platform, and the ABA Center for Innovation today announced the first phase of the DFNDER (Distributed Forensic Expert Network Delegating Review) Project. The DFNDER Project is a distributed network of forensic experts, attorneys, and academics investigating potential cases of wrongful conviction across the U.S.

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 2016 set a record for exculpations in the United States: 168 people were vindicated after being wrongly convicted of crimes. The DFNDER Project is designed with a purpose in mind to increase that number and, ultimately, help free the innocent.

The DFNDER Project has three key goals:

To improve the review process of wrongful convictions nationwide with the help of e-discovery technology;

To collect data and define the key factors contributing to a wrongful conviction based on forensic science;

And to develop a talent pipeline through which both law and forensic science students can gain real-world experience in a meaningful work environment.

Currently, the DFNDER Project is working with the Midwest Innocence Project in Kansas City, Mo., and the Iowa State Public Defender's Wrongful Conviction Division to determine how e-discovery technology can improve their review of potential cases involving wrongful convictions. Other project partners are the University of MissouriKansas City School of Law and the Arson Research Project, among others.

As its first focus, the DFNDER Project is looking to define the relationship between cognitive biases and two of the most common forensic techniques which produce invalidated or improper evidence: microscopic hair analysis and arson investigation. One of the recent reports published by the FBI, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), and the Innocence Project concluded that FBI testimony on microscopic hair analysis contained testimonial errors in more than 90 percent of cases in an ongoing review.

Relativity will help the DFNDER Project bring the work of the distributed network of legal and forensic experts to one e-discovery platform. Using Relativity will allow the team to break the workflow into components, match those components with corresponding experts, and facilitate the review and analysis of case documents, including identifying cognitive bias and trends related to wrongful convictions. Equipped with advanced analytics and powerful visualizations, Relativity will also allow the DFNDER Project to follow an investigative pattern of thought and make data-driven decisions around potential cases of wrongful conviction.

"With Relativity and a growing network of legal and forensic experts, the DFENDR Project should be better equipped to accelerate the review of wrongful convictions around the country," said Bryan Wilson, head of the DFNDER Project and a fellow at the ABA Center for Innovation. "We're looking forward to setting an example of how the legal community can use technology to fight injustices caused by incorrect assumptions about human behavior."

Relativity provided the DFNDER Project with access to its e-discovery technology through the company's Academic Partner program, an educational initiative that equips law schools and paralegal programs with free access to hands-on training in Relativity and helps prepare students for future roles in the field.

"We're honored to assist the DFNDER Project, helping the legal community find the truth while freeing those who have suffered wrongful convictions," said David Horrigan, e-discovery counsel and legal content director at Relativity. "For many years, people thought e-discovery law was only for large corporations in complex commercial litigation. In today's digital age, finding the truth through e-discovery is critical in almost every case."

About Relativity:

At Relativity, we make software to help users organize data, discover the truth, and act on it. Our e-discovery platform is used by more than 13,000 organizations around the world  in the cloud, on-premises, or both  to manage large volumes of data and quickly identify key issues during litigation, internal investigations, and compliance projects. Relativity has over 160,000 active users in 40+ countries from organizations including the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 70 Fortune 100 companies, and 199 of the Am Law 200. As a platform, Relativity also allows developers to design, build, and integrate applications that extend its functionality. Relativity has been named one of Chicago's Top Workplaces by the Chicago Tribune for six consecutive years. Please contact Relativity at [email protected] or visit http://www.relativity.com for more information.

About the American Bar Association (ABA):

With more than 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is one of the largest voluntary professional membership organizations in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law. View our privacy statement online. Follow the latest ABA news at www.americanbar.org/news and on Twitter @ABANews.

Contact

Mariya Barnes, Relativity

[email protected]

SOURCE Relativity

Related Links

http://www.relativity.com


RICHMOND, Va., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Hilb Group, LLC (THG), a leading property & casualty insurance and employee benefits broker, announced today the acquisition of BKC Insurance Agency (BKC). The transaction became effective October 1, 2017. BKC is THG's 39th acquisition since it was founded in 2009.

Based in Cheboygan, Michigan with an additional location in Indian River, Michigan, BKC will further expand THG's geographic footprint in the Midwest. BKC provides a wide array of property & casualty and employee benefits solutions for businesses and individuals, including specialized programs for farms and other agricultural services in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Following the transaction, BKC's associates, including managing partners, Joseph Breed, Ken Pletcher, and Pete Patrick, will join THG and continue to service clients from their existing offices.

"For over 75 years, we have held fast to our commitment of offering our clients a broad choice of products and solutions, all backed by prompt, personal service," said Joseph Breed. "Joining forces with THG will allow us to build upon this commitment by providing access to new ideas and solutions."

"BKC's expertise and market relationships exemplify our values of service and entrepreneurialism and their broad expertise will further enhance our growing Midwest operations," said Ricky Spiro, CEO of THG. "We look forward to supporting BKC's growth in the years to come"

About the Hilb Group: The Hilb Group is a Top 50 middle market insurance agency headquartered in Richmond, Virginia and is a portfolio company of Boston-based private equity firm, Abry Partners. The Hilb Group seeks to grow through targeted acquisitions in the middle market insurance brokerage space. Please visit our website at: http://hilbgroup.com.

Media Contact:

Margaret Clary

804-205-1209

[email protected]

SOURCE The Hilb Group, LLC

Related Links

http://hilbgroup.com


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- With US tourist arrivals to India growing 27% over the past four years, some 1.3 million Americans visiting India last year and interest in the country at an all-time high, the Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board (MP Tourism), is seizing the opportunity to introduce the state's rich heritage, culture and wildlife and position Madhya Pradesh as a new 'must explore' destination.



Located in the heart of India, Madhya Pradesh is well established amongst domestic travelers and has won dozens of awards including best state for tourism three years in a row. MP Tourism is now setting its sights on the US market with the goal of attracting more visitors.



To accomplish this, MP Tourism has launched a multi-faceted campaign designed to establish its brand, grow awareness and interest in the destination, educate travel professionals and increase the number of travel offers in the marketplace. The tourism office has appointed Latitude International as its US agency and local representative to implement a strategic campaign comprised of marketing, communications, and advertising initiatives over the next five years.



Starting with trade and media outreach, MP Tourism will be participating in the USTOA Annual Conference in November and will host educational workshops in New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles in December. Other key elements of the campaign include placements of advertorials in top consumer and trade print and electronic media, ongoing communication and assistance to travel professionals, collaborative promotional efforts with tour operators, travel associations and airlines, media relations, escorted group familiarization and press trips to the destination, social media marketing and more.



Madhya Pradesh is a region which will surprise and delight even the most seasoned traveler; both exceptional in its offerings while noticeably untouched. The states is home to 3 UNESCO World Heritage sites - the 10th century temples of Khajuraho, covered in ecstatic erotic sculptures which are reminders of India's ancient artistic heritage, millennia-old Buddhist monuments at Sanchi and Paleolithic cave paintings at Bhimbetka  so much of the subcontinent's unimaginably long history compressed into a single, vastly unexplored region.



Madhya Pradesh is also home to rich forests, nature reserves, wildlife sanctuaries and national parks which cover 25% of its territory and house countless exotic species, including nearly 20% of India's tiger population. By virtue of being a sanctuary for India's National Animal, it has been deemed a 'Tiger State'.



The Pench Tiger Reserve and its surroundings provided inspiration for the setting of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book stories. The character Mowgli was created from a true story narrated by Sir William Henry Sleeman about a boy raised by wolves. Many of the Jungle Book's locations, including Seoni, Mowgli's birthplace, and village, can still be visited today.



In addition to important historical sites, countless ancient temples, ornate palaces and painted caves dating back to the beginning of India's Stone Age, Madhya Pradesh is also known for its intricate and fine arts and crafts including silks, prints, metal artifacts and tribal jewelry; as well as year-round colorful festivals and celebrations and exceptionally varied culinary offer.



For more information about Madhya Pradesh please visit www.mptourism.com. For information on the Madhya Pradesh US promotional campaign please send an email to [email protected]



Media Contact:

Gustavo Rivas-Solis

2126332047

[email protected]



Photos:

https://www.prlog.org/12672485



Press release distributed by PRLog

SOURCE Madhya Pradesh Tourism Board

Related Links

http://www.mptourism.com


SYDNEY, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A focus on integrity is paying off for Australia's fastest growing Quick Service Restaurant Soul Origin who have just been named Australia's Emerging Franchise of the Year after a stellar year with customer numbers up a massive 164% for FY17 and sales increasing 57.4%, 11% above forecasts.

"ROI is important to most organisations and it's very important to us at Soul Origin. But for Soul Origin ROI stands for Return on Integrity," says Soul Origin CEO Chris Mavris.

Chris Mavris, Soul Origin CEO

"Every decision we make at Soul Origin must have integrity and this is central to our success. Soul Origin's values of relationships, family, pride and success guide how we do business and help us ensure we are providing our franchise partners with the best possible tailored support and our customers with the best, freshest most convenient and nutritious food."

Soul Origin is revolutionising the way people are thinking about fast food. By making nutritious fresh food delicious, convenient and accessible, the company is helping customers to eat mindfully everyday.

Since opening its first store in 2011, Soul Origin has experienced exponential growth.

"The Soul Origin brand has had incredible growth to date and the pathway forward looks extremely positive. We have a very hardworking and dedicated group of franchise partners that are passionate about the Soul Origin brand and this is displayed in the results," says Soul Origin General Manager (Former Boost Juice GM) Adam Neill.

"In the past year alone we have opened 30 new stores, expanding from NSW into the ACT, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia. We now have 80 stores across Australia, having doubled our store footprint in FY17 and there's no sign of this growth slowing down. But this is just the beginning for the Soul Origin brand."

"At Soul Origin we know we have a system that can succeed anywhere in the world. Without our talented and hardworking staff and franchise partners, however, this would not have been possible. The team at our support centre are second to none and continually go above and beyond to nurture and grow the Soul Origin brand. Our franchise partners love Soul Origin as much as we do and their ongoing hard work, dedication and commitment to excellence does us proud everyday," adds Soul Origin General Manager Adam Neill.

Soul Origin began franchising in 2014 and currently has just five stores that are company operated with the majority of the network run by franchise partners.

CEO Chris Mavris highlighted the importance of franchising at the recent Franchise Council of Australia Conference.

"Franchising is the most dynamic and creative business model in Australia. Making up 10% of the Australian economy, it's such an important part of our country. At Soul Origin, we are committed to supporting our franchise partners and doing the franchise sector proud by investing in systems, training and support to ensure our franchise partners succeed now and in the future."

Soul Origin franchise partner Kane Chen says as a franchisee of Soul Origin he has the freedom of being a small business owner but is backed with tools and support of a much larger business, a business that cares.

"As a franchise partner of Soul Origin, I have the freedom of running my own business but I also benefit from the incredible backing and ongoing support of a fast-growing company like Soul Origin. The training and tools provided to me have been integral to the success of my business. It's great to be working with such an energised and supportive team that has such important values and a commitment to delivering the best."

About Soul Origin:

Soul Origin is revolutionising the way people see fast food. Since opening its first store in 2011 the company has experienced rapid growth with 80 stores across Australia. Soul Origin's mindful approach to fresh-but-fast food is revolutionising the choice of Australian consumers. The company offers a range of nutritious and delicious breakfast and lunch options, with everything prepared fresh on-site. Soul Origin's product range includes wraps, sandwiches, salads, olive oil paninis, seasonal soups, fruit salads, along with world-class coffee and sweets as well as catering packages.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Sari-Elle Kraemer on [email protected] or via mobile on 0407284457

OR LJ Loch on email [email protected] or via mobile on 0488 038 555

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SOURCE Soul Origin
Harnish is an expert in growing companies. He writes a syndicated column, "Growth Guy" and is a columnist for Fortune magazine. He's the author of the bestselling books, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up, which won the 2015 International Book Award for Best General Business book.

"The award selection criteria focus on recognizing anyone who has made outstanding contributions to the understanding and practice of entrepreneurial leadership, which might include entrepreneurs, educators or consultants," said Dan Freeman, founding director of Horn Entrepreneurship.

Horn Entrepreneurship's Siegfried Award in Entrepreneurial Leadership was established by Robert L. Siegfried, CEO and founder of The Siegfried Group and chair of the advisory board for UD's Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics.

"Verne exemplifies the idea of an entrepreneurial leader," Siegfried said. "I've had the pleasure of learning from and working with Verne, and his contributions to the field of entrepreneurial leadership are so important. Verne helped me clarify the kind of leader I wanted to be and he continues to do that for countless others every day. He is a powerful leader of leaders and the world is a much better place because of him. Thanks Verne!"

Harnish was selected to receive the award by a committee consisting of five entrepreneurs and three university professors. Freeman and Siegfried co-chaired the selection committee.

Harnish will receive the award, which includes a $10,000 honorarium, during a private celebration on Wednesday, Nov. 1.

About The Siegfried Group, LLP

The Siegfried Group, LLP (Siegfried) works alongside financial executives across the nation, on their most important accounting and finance projects. Filled with an innovative spirit and led by an ambitious entrepreneur, Siegfried provides unique Leadership Advisory combined with high potential talent. At the heart of our Firm is our approach to individual leadership and the continual pursuit of helping people grow both personally and professionally. As a whole, we value having fun, being fair, and building and sharing stakeholder value.

About Horn Entrepreneurship

Horn Entrepreneurship serves as the University of Delaware's creative engine for entrepreneurship education and advancement. Built and actively supported by successful entrepreneurs and thought leaders, Horn Entrepreneurship empowers aspiring innovators and entrepreneurs as they pursue new ideas for a better world.

Contact:

Megan Pettingill

[email protected]

(302) 660-1516

SOURCE The Siegfried Group, LLP

Related Links

http://www.siegfriedgroup.com


PELLA, Iowa, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TheBestSchools.org, a leading online publication for ranking schools and degree programs, has now released three essential online publications for students of faith:

"The 30 Best Online Christian Colleges"

The 20 Best Online Master of Divinity (MDiv) Degree Programs - TheBestSchools.org The 30 Best Online Christian Colleges - TheBestSchools.org

https://thebestschools.org/rankings/best-online-christian-colleges/

"The 20 Best Online Master of Divinity (MDiv) Degree Programs"

https://thebestschools.org/rankings/best-online-master-divinity-mdiv-degree-programs/

"Religious Scholarships: Everything You Need to Know and Do"

https://thebestschools.org/financial-aid/religious-scholarships/

Through these rankings and resources, TheBestSchools.org offers essential information to students either pursuing online postgraduate studies in religion or online undergraduate studies through a college or university with a Christian statement of faith. Also provided is an extensive list of scholarships and grants available to students from a wide range of religious practices (Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and more), including information on award values, deadlines, and links to qualifications and applications.

"Online options for top-ranked programs studying faith and religion were limited in the past," says Dan Edelen, director of marketing services for TheBestSchools.org. "But with the expansion of online courses and a need to adapt to changing educational needs, many Master of Divinity programs and undergraduate Christian colleges and universities are creating outstanding opportunities online. We're helping both to raise awareness of these online options and to provide prospective students with the best information available, not only for their studies but also for funding them."

Top-ranked online Christian colleges and universities, listed alphabetically:

Abilene Christian University, Abilene, Texas

Belhaven University, Jackson, Mississippi

Benedictine University, Lisle, Illinois

Bethel University, Arden Hills, Minnesota

Biola University, La Mirada, California

California Baptist University, Riverside, California

Charleston Southern University, Charleston, South Carolina

Colorado Christian University, Lakewood, Colorado

Columbia International University, Columbia, South Carolina

Dallas Baptist University, Dallas, Texas

Eastern University, St. Davids, Pennsylvania

Franciscan University of Steubenville, Steubenville, Ohio

GardnerWebb University, Boiling Springs, North Carolina

George Fox University, Portland, Oregon

Grand Canyon University, Phoenix, Arizona

Houston Baptist University, Houston, Texas

Indiana Wesleyan University, Marion, Indiana

Johnson University, Knoxville, Tennessee

LeTourneau University, Longview, Texas

Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia

Luther Rice College and Seminary, Lithonia, Georgia

Marylhurst University, Marylhurst, Oregon

Ohio Christian University, Circleville, Ohio

Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia

Saint Leo University, Saint Leo, Florida

Saint Mary's College of California, Moraga, California

Toccoa Falls College, Toccoa Falls, Georgia

Trinity International University, Deerfield, Illinois

Union University, Jackson, Tennessee

University of St. Francis, Joliet, Illinois

Top-ranked Master of Divinity (MDiv) programs, listed alphabetically:

Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky

Bethel Seminary of Bethel University, St. Paul, Minnesota

Clarks Summit University, Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania

Corban University School of Ministry, Salem, Oregon

Denver Seminary, Littleton, Colorado

Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California

Gateway Seminary, Los Angeles, California

Grand Canyon University, Phoenix, Arizona

Iliff School of Theology, Denver, Colorado

Liberty University Rawlings School of Divinity, Lynchburg, Virginia

Luther Rice College and Seminary, Lithonia, Georgia

Moody Theological Seminary and Graduate School (Moody Bible Institute), Chicago, Illinois

New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana

Portland Seminary, Portland, Oregon

Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, North Carolina

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky

Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University, Marion, Indiana

Western Seminary, Portland, Oregon

Through "The 30 Best Online Christian Colleges," "The 20 Best Online Master of Divinity (MDiv) Degree Programs," and "Religious Scholarships: Everything You Need to Know and Do," TheBestSchools.org offers students of faith details on a number of online study options and helpful access to scholarships and grants they can use to reach their educational goals.

TheBestSchools.org is a leader in school rankings  K12, college, postgraduate, online, and on-campus  providing millions of prospective students with the information they need to find the right school for them. TheBestSchools.org is an independent educational website whose staff and advisory board believe learning transforms lives for the better and should be a lifelong pursuit.

Contact:

Dan Edelen, Director of Marketing Services

Web: https://thebestschools.org

Email: [email protected]

Phone: (513) 601-8202

SOURCE TheBestSchools.org

Related Links

http://thebestschools.org


Portrait of a Gentleman on a Grey Hunter

Stubbs' eighteenth-century nickname also belies the fact that he worked as a portraitist long before he began painting horses. Portrait of a Gentleman on a Grey Hunter, then, is the perfect celebration of all his talents in one artwork, a depiction of both man and beast captured in all their glory. And not just any man, either. Portrait of a Gentleman on a Grey Hunter is considered by many Stubbs scholars to be one of the most personal portraits he ever painted, noting that the rider's uncanny resemble to the artist suggests that this is likely a portrait of his son, George Townly Stubbs. It's a passion shared by Toby Rose herself, a self-proclaimed Stubbs fan who describes featuring one of his works at the fair as 'a privilege'. "It's rare to see such a high-quality piece as the 1781 Stubbs that Trinity House Paintings are presenting at the SF Fine Art and Antiques show", she said. "Stubbs is among my favorite painters and it is a privilege to have an actual Stubbs at the Show this year. It would be wonderful for it to find a home in San Francisco."

The San Francisco Fall Art and Antiques Show takes place at the Fort Mason Centre from the 26th to the 29th of October and Trinity House will be exhibiting this rare Stubbs piece alongside other works from artists such as Monet, Degas, and a special painting by John Steven Dews commissioned by us exclusively for the fair.

SOURCE Trinity House- US
BOSTON, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Solutionpath, a U.K. education technology business is set to revolutionize the way universities are able to harness their student data after a three-year trial of its pioneering analysis and monitoring software. The pilot project, at Nottingham Trent University in the U.K., has demonstrated marked improvements in students' academic performance, with over 15 percent more of their students now achieving top-class degrees.

Solutionpath CEO Howard Hall and CMO David Cole

Solutionpath, founded in 2012, has developed a software product called StREAM which measures and analyses student 'engagement', accurately identifying students who are at risk of early withdrawal from their course, or of under-achieving academically.

The software will be launched in the U.S. at the EDUCAUSE Annual conference at the Pennsylvania Convention Center on Oct. 31.

The firm has already met with several U.S. colleges and has announced it will embark on initial data analysis and verification projects, and Beta testing of their enhanced U.S. software package early in 2018.

The company's sophisticated analytics software monitors and assesses digital interactions logged each time a student 'engages' with the university or college by carrying out day-to-day activities such as using the library or attending a lecture, alongside data on academic progress. The resulting analytics enable universities to identify students at academic risk at a much earlier stage so that staff can intervene and offer the help and support required.

Solutionpath has been working with Nottingham Trent University for the past three years, trialing and developing the system with undergraduates. The software is particularly valuable in the first year of students' degree courses, one of the most common times for problems to arise in the transition from high school to university.

David Woolley, head of schools, colleges and community outreach at Nottingham Trent University, said: "There's a very clear association between students using the StREAM software and their academic success, particularly when compared to their peers who were not using it.

"We saw some impressive results: in 2015-16 over 65 percent of students who used the Solutionpath software achieved a 2:1 or first class degree compared to just under 50 percent of students who did not use StREAM. Students who used it more often were even more successful, with 72 percent of those who logged in ten or more times scoring a 2:1 or first."

Howard Hall, CEO and co-founder of Solutionpath, said: "While the analytics that StREAM delivers are highly complex, as the trial with Nottingham Trent has shown, the benefits for both students and universities of using big data in this way are beautifully simple. Dropping out of university or under-achieving in their degree can be a personal disaster for a young person and extremely worrying for their family, and for the university, the loss of course fee revenues involved is significant too.

"Our analytics not only help prevent a student reaching these crisis points where they no longer feel they can continue with their studies but also help keep students engaged and motivated to achieve the best academic outcomes they can."

"We need to ensure we find the right collaboration partners as our first U.S. clients, as we are adding more features and aspects to the software specifically to meet the needs of the U.S. market, but already the feedback has been fantastic and we are excited about our 2018 launch here," concluded Mr. Hall.

Solutionpath is currently working with 11 universities in the U.K. and Australia. Further information can be found at http://www.solutionpath.co.uk.

ENDS

For further media information contact Sarah Hone at Great British Marketing on (+44) 1423 569999 email [email protected] or call Paul Snape on (+1) 617 275 2706 or email [email protected].

SOURCE Solutionpath

Related Links

http://www.solutionpath.co.uk


PHOENIX, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Troxell, a national leader in education technology and collaboration solutions for more than 60 years, is proud to announce it has been awarded the Jefferson County Public Schools Bid #7310  Audiovisual. As one of 8 vendors awarded the contract, Troxell participated in the competitive sealed bid process and was granted the award based on successful evaluations of required performance and provider criteria.

Contract number 7310  Audiovisual, awarded by Jefferson County Public Schools, Louisville, KY, is effective from September 27, 2016 - September 23, 2017 with the recent renewal through September 23, 2018. On the contract, Troxell represents multiple manufacturers for products, offering a wide range of discounts.

"We are pleased to be awarded the Audiovisual contract through Jefferson County Public Schools," said Dottie Stewart, Regional Vice President of Sales - Central and Northeast. "Troxell is happy to help JCPS reach their goal of providing equal access to education for all students."

Through Jefferson County Public Schools, Troxell participated in a comprehensive Request for Proposal (RFP) competitive solicitation. JCPS employs industry best practices, processes and procedures to procure any commodity, supply, service, or construction project with an aggregate annual dollar expenditure of $20,000 or more.

Troxell continues to participate in multiple national, regional, state and local contracts, helping educational institutions pay less for products and reduce administrative costs in order to overcome the challenges of tight and diminishing budgets.

For more information, visit www.TroxellSolutions.com. Contact Jack Finke at 513-351-5487 or [email protected].

About Troxell

Headquartered in Phoenix, AZ, Troxell is the nation's leading end-to-end solution provider for technology and collaborative solutions in K-12 and higher ed. With 65 offices nationwide, we combine large-scale purchasing power with the high-touch, consultative approach of a local specialist. Find a location near you.

About Jefferson County Public Schools

Jefferson County Public Schools has made it their mission to challenge and engage each learner to grow through effective teaching and meaningful experiences within caring, supportive environments.

For Press Inquiries Contact: Raigan Irwin-McCabe, VP of Marketing

SOURCE Troxell

Related Links

http://www.troxellsolutions.com


BOSTON, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The elected union leaders who represent the 1,200 MNA nurses at Tufts Medical Center issued a notice to hospital management on October 19th stating that they will hold an informational picket on Thursday, November 2 from 5 to 7 p.m. directly in front of the hospital's main entrance at 800 Washington Street.

The notice was delivered by the nurses' negotiating committee to Tufts management at the end of what was their forty-third contract negotiation session, and the ninth session since the nurse's momentous one-day strike in July. In the weeks since that strike, the nurses' contract talks have yet again stalled and resolution on the three key issues that led to their historic strike  improved staffing, market-competitive wages, and equitable pension benefits for all RNs  remain mostly out of reach.

The informational picket aims to draw the public's attention back to the nurses' fight for a fair contract, as well as to put pressure on management to reach a fair settlement as soon as possible.

Nurses, in good faith, offer compromise on pension

Throughout the nine sessions since the strike, the nurses have made significant compromises on what the hospital identified as its main issue: freezing the existing defined benefit (DB) pension plan in the name of cost savings. Most recently, and in response to a pension proposal that management had recently put forth, the nurses countered with a phase-in proposal that would allow the hospital to freeze the DB pension plan on December 31 of this year, contingent upon the hospital adding three years of service to the account of each participating nurse. Subsequently, on Jan. 1 of 2021, the hospital would contribute a match of up to four percent to the defined contribution (DC) plan of these same nurses.

Meanwhile, nurses not in the defined benefit pension plan, but who participate in the defined contribution plan, would see their retirement benefits improve by an additional one and/or two percent in the form of an increased contribution rate from the hospital. These improvements would be phased in over the length of the contract.

"This proposal is a serious compromise on our part," said Barbara Tiller, co-chair of the MNA bargaining unit at Tufts and an IV/PICC/CRN nurse. "Yes, it gives our youngest nurses a small boost in retirement savings. And yes, it gets our senior nurses as close as possible to 100 percent of their previous DB benefit amounts. But it is still a long way from a secure DB plan, such as a Taft-Hartley plan, and it is still not as competitive as we had hoped for."

Added bargaining unit co-chair and OR nurse Mary Cornacchia, "We countered with this compromise because management identified the pension as their cornerstone issue, and we hoped it would result in progress on our remaining issues: staffing and market-competitive wages. We were wrong."

Real Nurses vs. Vague "Resources"

The nurses  who had already significantly revised their previous proposals on staffing most recently presented simple, targeted proposals that would enhance staffing in core nursing areas, including IV therapy, clinical resource, and charge nursing.

The nurses' proposals quite simply ask the hospital to commit to having teams of IV and clinical resource nurses available on peak days/times, as well as permanently having charge nurses free of a patient assignment for the length of the contract and beyond. The hospital has rejected these modest proposals and has repeatedly countered with murky language that proposes adding "resources" to these areas. The proposal on IV nursing is so murky, in fact, that management cannot even articulate how it will be operationalized.

"Quite frankly, these teams are so basic they should be in place already," said Tiller. "Patients shouldn't have to wait hours on end for IV or PICC-line insertions. That's just 'Safe Patient Care 101'. But that's exactly what is happening at Tufts: endless wait times for essential care. Our proposals would solve this; management refuses to accept them."

Market-Competitive Wages

With the pension compromise the nurses offered, Tufts will save millions of dollars annually. The union is asking that some of those savings be reinvested in the nurses in the form of enhanced wages.

"The hospital's issues around recruitment and retention will not improve if management doesn't enhance its wages beyond their last offer," added Cornacchia. "This should be easy given that we will be saving them millions of dollars with the new pension proposal. They have to move or we will lag even further behind the rest of the area hospitals."

Background

The 1,200 unionized MNA nurses at Tufts saw their contract expire on July, 30 of 2016, and they have been negotiating for a successor agreement for nearly 18 months. Their historic on-day strike  and subsequent four-day lockout  was held July 12 to 17 of this year. The nurses next return to the bargaining table Oct. 23, 2017.

MassNurses.org  Facebook.com/MassNurses  Twitter.com/MassNurses  Instagram.com/MassNurses

Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association is the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.

SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association

Related Links

http://www.massnurses.org


BLUE BELL, Pa., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS) today said that it will host its 2017 Investor and Financial Analyst Day on Wednesday, November 1, 2017. The half-day event will be held at the JW Marriott Essex House in New York City. Company presentations will begin at 8:00 am Eastern Time.

Unisys will provide access to the live webcast on the Unisys Investor website at www.unisys.com/investor. A replay of the webcast will be available on the Unisys Investor website shortly after the live event.

About Unisys

Unisys is a global information technology company that specializes in providing industry-focused solutions integrated with leading-edge security to clients in the government, financial services and commercial markets. Unisys offerings include security solutions, advanced data analytics, cloud and infrastructure services, application services and application and server software. For more information, visit www.unisys.com.

Follow Unisys on Twitter and LinkedIn.

RELEASE NO.: 1024/9547

Unisys and other Unisys products and services mentioned herein, as well as their respective logos, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Unisys Corporation. Any other brand or product referenced herein is acknowledged to be a trademark or registered trademark of its respective holder.

UIS-C

SOURCE Unisys Corporation

Related Links

http://www.unisys.com


ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading up to National STEM Day (Nov. 8), nearly a thousand Miami-area high school students and educators will gather at the Miami Airport Convention Center today for a STEMFest event hosted by Ten80 Education and the U.S. Army.

Students will work alongside U.S. Army Soldiers in a series of interactive workshops that encourage them to apply teamwork and leadership skills and use critical thinking to overcome challenges. The workshops also show students how they can turn their visions into reality through STEM-related exercises, from coding and gaming to the art of marketing their ideas.

"The U.S. Army's partnership with Ten80 Education enables us to help students explore the importance of science, technology, engineering, and math education as foundations for successful careers," said James Ortiz, director of marketing, U.S. Army Marketing and Research Group. "The U.S. Army is the Nation's most innovative organization and STEM skills are essential to our success. With support from Ten80 Education, the U.S. Army continues to mentor thousands of students across America to pursue higher education and available scholarship opportunities in the U.S. Army."

Through it's partnership with Ten80 Education, the U.S. Army is able to reach students from across the nation and parallel the advanced training required of Soldiers and the skills harbored by STEM professionals in the civilian workforce. This relationship also helps those students and their families understand the many opportunities the U.S. Army provides to obtain a college education to foster their STEM careers. The U.S. Army helps offset the growing issue of college debt through financial support programs like the GI Bill and the U.S. Army ROTCwhich is one of the largest scholarship awarding organizations in the world.

"Much like U.S. Army Soldiers, STEM students are problem-solvers with a heightened interest in innovation," said chief executive officer and president of Ten80 Education, Terri Stripling. "The Army is committed to education initiatives and advanced technology, making the partnership with Ten80 a natural fit for both organizations."

Ten80 Education and the U.S. Army will wrap up a sucessful 2017 with a final STEMFest in Raleigh, N.C. on Nov. 14. To learn more, visit goarmy.com and click here to watch a video highlighting the U.S. Army's partnership with Ten80 Education.

About the Army Marketing and Research Group (AMRG)

The Army Marketing and Research Group (AMRG) is the U.S. Army's national marketing, marketing research and analysis. The AMRG develops innovative and effective ways to: connect with the American public and make the Army more accessible and understood; increase awareness of both the benefits and value of Army service; and motivate the most qualified candidates to choose the Army as their service of choice.

Contact:

Army Marketing and Research Group

Dottie Bennett, [email protected]

McCann Worldgroup, PR Team

Mandee Hayes, [email protected]

SOURCE Army Marketing and Research Group
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- U.S. News & World Report, the global authority in education rankings for more than 30 years, today released the 2018 Best Global Universities rankings. The overall rankings evaluate 1,250 universities  up from 1,000 last year  across 74 countries and are the largest and most comprehensive assessment of research universities worldwide.

The U. S. leads the rankings again this year, with 221 universities making the overall list. The top four spots are held by U.S. schools, with Harvard University at No. 1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology comes in at No. 2, followed by Stanford University at No. 3 and the University of CaliforniaBerkeley at No. 4. The United Kingdom's University of Oxford rounds out the top 5.

Behind the U.S., the following countries have the most ranked institutions out of the 1,250 schools on the overall list:

China : 136

: 136 Japan : 76

: 76 U.K.: 73

Germany : 58

In addition to the overall list, the new edition of Best Global Universities includes rankings by country, region and subject. New this year are four country-specific rankings, including for Argentina and Mexico, bringing the total up to 42.

Across the 22 subject-specific rankings, U.S. schools again claim the most No. 1 spots. For the first time, China's Tsinghua University replaces MIT as No. 1 in computer science and once again tops the list for engineering. Listed in rank order, these countries performed the best in the following subject rankings:

Computer science: U.S., China , U.K., Canada , Australia

, U.K., , Economics and business: U.S., U.K., Australia , Canada , China (tie), Netherlands (tie)

, , (tie), (tie) Engineering: U.S., China , U.K., Canada , Italy

, U.K., , Neuroscience and behavior: U.S., Germany , U.K., Canada (tie), France (tie), Netherlands (tie)

"The schools that rank the highest in the Best Global Universities rankings are those that emphasize academic research, including by partnering with international scholars to produce highly cited articles," said Robert Morse, chief data strategist at U.S. News. "This is different from the Best Colleges rankings, which measure the overall quality of undergraduate institutions in the U.S. and focus on student outcomes such as graduation and retention rates."

For the 2018 edition, U.S. News made a slight change to the methodology to further emphasize international collaboration at universities by rewarding schools that author articles with researchers from different countries.



The Best Global Universities methodology  which is based on Web of Science data and metrics provided by Clarivate Analytics InCites  weighs factors that measure a university's global and regional research reputation and academic research performance. For the overall rankings, this includes bibliometric indicators such as publications, citations and international collaboration. Each subject ranking has its own methodology based on academic research performance and reputation in that specific area.

"For more than 30 years, U.S. News has been committed to making higher education data more accessible to prospective students choosing a U.S. university," said Anita Narayan, managing editor of Education at U.S. News. "The Best Global Universities rankings similarly allow consumers to accurately evaluate and compare international schools to find the right fit for them, based on available data."

2018 U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities

Overall Best Global Universities  Top 10

1. Harvard University (U.S.)

2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (U.S.)

3. Stanford University (U.S.)

4. University of CaliforniaBerkeley (U.S.)

5. University of Oxford (U.K.)

6. California Institute of Technology (U.S.)

7. University of Cambridge (U.K.)

8. Columbia University (U.S.)

9. Princeton University (U.S.)

10. Johns Hopkins University (U.S.) (tie)

10. University of Washington (U.S.) (tie)

10. Yale University (U.S.) (tie)

Africa  Top 5

1. University of Cape Town (South Africa)

2. University of Witwatersrand (South Africa)

3. University of KwaZulu Natal (South Africa)

4. Stellenbosch University (South Africa)

5. Cairo University (Egypt)

Asia  Top 5

1. National University of Singapore

2. Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)

3. University of Tokyo (Japan)

4. Tsinghua University (China)

5. Peking University (China)

Australia/New Zealand  Top 5

1. University of Melbourne (Australia)

2. University of Sydney

3. University of Queensland Australia

4. Monash University (Australia)

5. Australian National University (tie)

5. University of New South Wales (tie)

Europe  Top 5

1. University of Oxford (U.K.)

2. University of Cambridge (U.K.)

3. Imperial College London

4. University College London

5. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (Switzerland)

Latin America  Top 5

1. University of Sao Paulo (Brazil)

2. Pontificia University Catolica de Chile

3. Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

4. University of Buenos Aires (Argentina)

5. State University of Campinas (Brazil)

The Best Global Universities rankings serve the broader U.S. News mission to provide trusted information and rankings to help all students navigate their higher education options  including with the Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools and Best Online Programs rankings. For Chinese students in particular, U.S. News offers online resource centers published in Chinese to help guide prospective undergraduate and graduate students interested in studying abroad. In addition, U.S. News is continuing to collaborate with U.S. News Global Education, a subsidiary company of Shorelight Education, to help international students and their families connect with universities.

For more information on the Best Global Universities, visit Facebook and Twitter using #BestGlobal.

About U.S. News & World Report

U.S. News & World Report is a digital news and information company that empowers people to make better, more informed decisions about important issues affecting their lives. Focusing on Education, Health, Personal Finance, Travel, Cars and News & Opinion, USNews.com provides consumer advice, rankings, news and analysis to serve people making complex decisions throughout all stages of life. More than 37 million people visit USNews.com each month for research and guidance. Founded in 1933, U.S. News is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

SOURCE U.S. News & World Report

Related Links

http://www.usnews.com


LAS VEGAS, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

AEVI and Vantiv (NYSE: VNTV) announced today at Money20/20 USA(Booth #601), a major strategic partnership in North America to provide Vantiv's channel partners and merchants with an open application platform across the acquirer's SmartPay Series of hardware devices.

Vantiv and AEVI's innovative offering is the first in the US to provide a payment solution with the security of next-generation smart terminals and the flexibility of a rich, Android-based application marketplace. The venture will allow Vantiv's small and mid-size merchants to benefit from increased functionality and versatility to efficiently run and grow their business, their way.

As the first open marketplace solution that runs on multiple third-party hardware platforms, the SmartPay Series marketplace enables Vantiv's channel partners and merchants to revolutionize payments at the Point of Sale. They will be able to deliver tailored, value-added solutions that enhance the checkout experience, payroll management, loyalty programs and more, across different verticals.

"By offering more choice through an open application platform, we can drive a simpler smart terminal solution to help our partners and merchants win in the market," said Scott DeAngelo, Senior Vice President, Product at Vantiv. "With this solution, we are placing our partners and merchants ahead of the curve - whether it's through core software applications addressing specific POS needs, growing revenue through loyalty and analytics tools, or protecting their bottom line with inventory and labor management tools."

AEVI's Marketplace will be available to channel partners as a plug-and-play solution for merchants, backed by Vantiv's payment expertise and scale.

"We are very excited to partner with Vantiv, the largest merchant acquirer in the US, launching our open ecosystem for the North American market," said Mike Camerling, Director Marketplace at AEVI. "Our mission is to provide acquirers with their own marketplaces making available their unique combination of business apps to deliver unprecedented value to merchants. By enabling third-party devices, we can initiate a new era of payments and business services in the US, based on even more choice and flexibility."

Initial availability of the Vantiv/AEVI SmartPay marketplace solution is expected in select markets during the first quarter of 2018.

Visit Vantiv.com, for more information about Vantiv's in-store payment solutions for small businesses.

For further information about AEVI's global Marketplace solution visit AEVI.com.

Find out more at Money20/20 USA at The Venetian, The Palazzo in Las Vegas as AEVI and Vantiv will be jointly presenting their partnership at 11:50 a.m., on Tuesday, Oct. 24 Track 5, Level 3, The Venetian. More information on the presentation can be found here.

About Vantiv

Vantiv, Inc. (NYSE: VNTV) is a leading merchant acquirer differentiated by an integrated technology platform. Vantiv offers a comprehensive suite of traditional and innovative payment processing and technology solutions to merchants and financial institutions of all sizes, enabling them to address their payment processing needs through a single provider. We build strong relationships with our customers, helping them become more efficient, more secure and more successful. Vantiv is the second largest merchant acquirer and the largest PIN debit acquirer based on number of transactions in the U.S. The company's growth strategy includes expanding further into high-growth channels and verticals, including integrated payments, ecommerce, B2B payments and merchant bank.

For more information, visit www.vantiv.com

About AEVI

AEVI brings acquirers closer to their merchants, and merchants closer to their consumers, with an open Ecosystem that combines apps, payment services and a multi-vendor selection of payment devices. Selecting from a marketplace of high-quality apps and services, Acquirers can quickly create differentiated, innovative SmartPOS solutions under their own brands. Our centralized payments as a service platform eliminates obstacles, and helps Acquirers simplify the complex payment landscape with a single integration and access to a comprehensive suite of cloud-based, back office reporting tools for enhanced control and flexibility. We welcome Acquirers, App Solution Partners and Hardware Vendors to build on our vision of an open, collaborative payments Ecosystem unrestricted by device vendors, currencies, borders or regulations.

For more information, visit: www.aevi.com

AEVI International GmbH is a subsidiary company of Diebold Nixdorf and is headquartered in Germany with operations in the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic.

For media enquiries please contact:

AEVI in Europe

Imogen Saunders, AEVI Media Relations Executive

[email protected]

Phone: +44-1243-535063



AEVI in North America

Pete Bartolik, AEVI Media Relations Executive

[email protected]

Phone +1-508-259-2108



Martina Jeronski, AEVI Head of Global Marketing and Communications

[email protected]

Phone: +49-176-326-913-48



VANTIV

Adam Kiefaber, Vantiv Leader of Corporate Communications

[email protected]

Phone: +1-513-900-5097



SOURCE AEVI
SEATTLE, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Amplero, a recognized leader in core artificial intelligence marketing (AIM) technology, is scheduled to present at the VentureBeat Summit 2017 AI Innovation Showcase on Tuesday, Oct. 24. Amplero was selected to participate by an expert panel as one of the Top 5 Most Promising AI Technologies based on disruptive and differentiated technology with a business application.

The theme of this year's VB Summit is "Riding the AI Wave," focused on applied AI that skips the hype and is already generating breakthrough results. According to a recent study conducted by Forrester, 86 percent of marketers believe that AI can provide value to their business and 78 percent are planning to expand or implement artificial intelligence marketing to support digital transformation initiatives. Amplero Head of Product Garrett Tenold will speak to real-world examples of how AI is transforming the way consumer-obsessed businesses like Sprint, Xbox, and DoubleDown interact with their customers at scale.

Details of Amplero's participation at the VB Summit 2017 AI Innovation Showcase, include:

What: Amplero Presenting as a "Top 5 Most Promising AI Technology" at the VentureBeat AI Innovation Showcase

When: Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017 at 1:55 p.m., PDT

Who: Garrett Tenold, Head of Product, Amplero

Where: VB Summit 2017, Claremont Club & Spa, 41 Tunnel Rd., Berkeley, Calif. 94705

After the Event: For those unable to attend the VB Summit, yet interested in learning more about how marketers are adapting in the age of AI, Amplero is hosting a webinar on Thursday, Oct. 26 at 12:00 p.m., PDT. Amplero CEO Olly Downs, PhD, will host the 60-minute webinar that will feature Forrester VP and Principal Analyst Joe Stanhope. Register here: https://www.amplero.com/the-machine-on-your-team-forrester-and-amplero-ai-marketing-study-webinar/.

About Amplero

Headquartered in Seattle, Amplero is an Artificial Intelligence Marketing (AIM) company that enables business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers at global brands to optimize customer lifetime value at a scale that is not humanly possible.

Unlike traditional rules-based marketing automation systems, Amplero's Artificial Intelligence Marketing Platform leverages machine learning and multi-armed bandit experimentation to dynamically test thousands of permutations to adaptively optimize every customer interaction and maximize customer lifetime value and loyalty.

With Amplero, marketers in competitive, customer-obsessed industries like telecom, banking, gaming, and consumer tech are currently seeing measurable lift across key performance indicatorsincluding 1-3% incremental growth in customer topline revenue and 3-5x lift in retention rates.

For more information, contact us today or follow us on Twitter.

SOURCE Amplero

Related Links

https://www.amplero.com


OCTANe, an Orange County-based accelerator organization for life sciences and technology companies distributes the honor to those who have demonstrated exceptional leadership while developing new technological advancements in their respective industries.

"Orange County is one of the top areas in the country for medical technology innovation and we are honored to receive the High Tech Innovation Award for 2017 given the large number of outstanding companies in the region," said Eric Wichems, President and CEO of Vertos Medical. "We are grateful that OCTANe has recognized the importance of the mild procedure in treating the many patients currently suffering from lumbar spinal stenosis that are looking for more minimally invasive treatment options."

More than two million U.S. patients are treated annually for LSS, a degenerative, age-related narrowing of the lower spinal canal which causes compression of the spinal nerves that can lead to increased pain and discomfort when a patient is standing or walking. The vast majority of patients choose low-risk treatments that have very limited proven long-term effectiveness. The mild procedure addresses this unmet need by offering a clinically validated, low cost, low-risk interventional pain therapy that treats the stenosis and provides long-term symptom relief. 1

Vertos' mild procedure uses specialized instruments and a patented X-ray visualization method to remove small amounts of bone and tissue through an opening about the size of a baby aspirin. The procedure is done in an outpatient setting and requires no general anesthesia, no implants, and no stitches.

Now in its 24th year, the High Tech Awards is Southern California's premier awards program celebrating achievement within the regional tech and life sciences industries.

Vertos Medical Inc. is a medical device company committed to developing innovative, minimally invasive treatments for lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS). Its proprietary technologies include mild, which offers a safe, outpatient, minimally invasive, fluoroscopically guided therapeutic LSS treatment that requires no general anesthesia, no implants, and no stitches. LSS is primarily a degenerative, age-related narrowing of the lower spinal canal that causes symptoms of pain and numbness in the lower back, legs, or buttocks. mild treats this condition by restoring space in the spinal canal using specialized mild devices to remove hypertrophic ligamentum flavum through a 5.1 mm treatment portal. Clinical studies show that mild can help LSS patients stand longer and walk farther with less pain1, and no major device related complications have been reported in any clinical trial.2 Vertos Medical headquarters is located in Aliso Viejo, CA. To learn more about how mild treats LSS click here.

OCTANe drives innovation and growth by connecting people, resources and capital to fuel technology growth in Southern California. Its members represent technology executive leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, venture capitalists, academicians, and strategic advisors, all working together to fuel innovation in the OC. The organization has helped more than 800 companies via the LaunchPad SBDC accelerator. LaunchPad companies have received more than $2.1 billion in investment and equity exits. OCTANe annually welcomes more than 7,000 people to its programs and events. More than 2,000 business leaders throughout the region are OCTANe members. For more information, visit www.octaneoc.org.

SOURCE Vertos Medical

Related Links

http://www.vertosmed.com


Despite costly litigation, many male managers continue to assert their dominance over female workers using; solicitation of sex, inappropriate touching and even rape. As a result, many women are working in an atmosphere of intimidation and fear.

Even with the best of intentions to promote a productive workplace free of sexual harassment, employers face a constant barrage of sexual harassment claims.

Companies, universities, government and military organizations have traditionally responded by reprimanding the accused, paying-off the accusers for their silence and looking the other way. Advising those who allege harassment to tell the perpetrator to stop, doesn't cut it and instead, puts the onus on victims who are in the situation due to their powerlessness.

Instead of accepting "boys will be boys" justifications, Victoria Steele works to change the culture of the organization. She has developed a powerful course of action to eliminate the toxic culture of sexual harassment in the workplace.

Men and women learn to recognize harassment and how stand with those who are experiencing it. Everyone in the organization learns sexual harassment is NOT acceptable and they are empowered to take action without fear of retribution. Organizations learn how to facilitate mentoring and advancement for women.

Steele's strategy goes significantly beyond "JUST SAY NO" to changing the organizational culture.

Steele is a former Arizona State Legislator, psychotherapist, broadcast journalist and co-founder of Tucson NOW (National Organization for Women). Steele's unique approach treats the toxic organizational behaviors and fosters a Woman-Friendly workplace.

The Steele Workforce Assessment and Sexual Harassment Training entails an intense examination of the workplace and interviews with the company's leaders, managers and workforce. Once this two-week study is completed, Steele presents her recommendations and action plan and conducts a series of trainings and workshops for the entire workforce.

Training starts at $10,000 which is significantly less than the cost of litigation.

SOURCE Victoria Steele

Related Links

http://www.Victoria-Steele.com


DENVER, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ProtectWise, the enterprise security company that delivers pervasive visibility, automated threat detection, and unlimited forensic exploration, today released the results of a new study, Immersive Technologies and the Future of Cybersecurity. The study, which surveyed more than 500 people ages 16 to 24 in the United States, revealed that nearly three quarters of respondents (74%) say the presence of VR tools increase their likelihood of pursuing cybersecurity careers.

With 1% of employed respondents working in cybersecurity and only 9% of all respondents showing an interest in pursuing a career in the field, the research uncovered that a lack of awareness and perceived high barriers to entry have led younger generations away from jobs in cybersecurity. Sixty-five percent of respondents who haven't been exposed to cybersecurity in an academic setting said their school didn't offer cybersecurity courses and 30% of respondents who do not plan to pursue a cybersecurity career didn't feel they had adequate technical ability.

"Organizations are struggling to fill a shortage in cybersecurity professionals. In fact, a recent survey1 revealed that 45% of IT and cybersecurity professionals say that their organization has a problematic shortage of cybersecurity skills," said Jon Oltsik, Senior Principal Analyst at ESG. "Rather than continue to talk about the skills gap, we need to start thinking about how to appeal to, educate, and recruit the next generation entering the workforce. This survey reveals some things that have the potential to attract millennials and post-millennials to jobs which could have a positive impact on the future of cybersecurity."

The research explored millennials' and post-millennials' attitudes toward cybersecurity when VR and immersive technologies are present. Among the findings:

77% said they would get more enjoyment from VR-based tools compared to desktop-based tools

74% said VR would increase ease of use

72% said it would increase their efficiency

Even among respondents who did not feel they have the technical aptitude for security jobs, 64% reported that access to VR and immersive technologies increase their likelihood of considering a job in cybersecurity

When asked if VR tools would have changed a career decision to consider cybersecurity, a 24-year-old chef said, "If I had known these tools had been available it would have been something I pursued. Especially my generation, we have a greater understanding of technology, but we're also very visual, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Seeing things through VR feels like  I've experienced it. It's a great way to train someone, with how immersive it is."

"Millennials and post-millennials grew up with Minecraft and Xbox, developing skills for spatial reasoning and collaboration in immersive environments that are now second nature," said Scott Chasin, Co-founder and CEO at ProtectWise. "As the roles of threat hunter, responder and commander become more defined for enterprise security teams, their characteristics are aligning with these innate abilities, which enable more effective incident response. The cybersecurity industry must evolve to embrace technologies that attract and empower this next generation of talent."

The Immersive Technologies and the Future of Cybersecurity survey was conducted by ESG on behalf of ProtectWise. The survey was taken online by 524 technology-oriented millennials and post-millennials between July 17, 2017 and August 1, 2017.

The full report can be downloaded at https://www.protectwise.com/experience/.

About ProtectWise

ProtectWise provides a new utility model for enterprise security, powering real-time, retrospective and automated threat detections for enterprise, cloud and industrial control environments. The company's platform, The ProtectWise Grid, captures full fidelity network traffic for analysis in an advanced visual presentation. Delivered from the cloud, The ProtectWise Grid is an integrated solution that provides frictionless deployment and scalability.

Founded in April 2013, ProtectWise is based in Denver and led by a team of security and SaaS industry veterans from McAfee, Palo Alto Networks, and Symantec. The company launched the Immersive SecuritySM movement in 2017 to build a new path forward for the security industry. ProtectWise has raised more than $70 million in funding. For more information, visit www.protectwise.com.

1 ESG Research Report: 2017 IT Spending Intentions Survey, March 2017

SOURCE ProtectWise

Related Links

http://www.protectwise.com


DENVER, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Vista Gold Corp. (TSX & NYSE American: VGZ) ("Vista" or the "Company") today announced that, together with its wholly-owned subsidiaries Minera Gold Stake Holdings Corp., Granges Inc. and Minera Gold Stake, S.A. de C.V. ("MGS"), it has entered into an agreement (the "Option Agreement") to option our interest in the Guadalupe de los Reyes gold and silver project in Sinaloa, Mexico (the "GdlR Project") to Minera Alamos Inc. and its subsidiary Minera Alamos de Sonora S.A. de C.V. ("Minera Alamos").

Pursuant to the terms of the Option Agreement, Vista has granted Alamos an exclusive right and option right to earn a 100% interest in the GdlR Project by:

making payments totaling $6,000,000 comprised of a payment of $1,500,000 made at the execution of the Option Agreement ("Option Grant Date"), two successive payments of $1,500,000 each to be made at the one-year and two-year anniversaries of the Option Grant Date; and a final $1,500,000 payment to be made before the four-year anniversary of the Option Grant Date;

comprised of a payment of made at the execution of the Option Agreement ("Option Grant Date"), two successive payments of each to be made at the one-year and two-year anniversaries of the Option Grant Date; and a final payment to be made before the four-year anniversary of the Option Grant Date; maintaining the concessions comprising the GdlR Project in good standing;

fulfilling all of the obligations of MGS to the Ejido La Tasajera (the "Ejido") as set out in the temporary occupation contract between MGS and the Ejido;

granting Vista a capped NSR royalty on production from open pit mining (the "Open Pit NSR") at rates that range from 1% (at gold prices of $1400 /oz or less) to a maximum of 2% (at gold prices above $1600 /oz) up to an aggregate of $2,000,000 in royalty payments;

/oz or less) to a maximum of 2% (at gold prices above /oz) up to an aggregate of in royalty payments; granting Vista a perpetual NSR royalty on production from underground mining (the "Underground NSR") at rates that range from 1% (at gold prices of $1400 /oz or less) to a maximum of 2% (at gold prices above $1600 /oz); and

/oz or less) to a maximum of 2% (at gold prices above /oz); and granting Vista the right to assume a 49% non-carried interest in an underground project if Minera Alamos decides to develop an underground mine at the GdlR Project (the "Back-in Right").

The Option Agreement provides that all cash payments are non-refundable and optional to Minera Alamos, and in the event Minera Alamos fails to pay any of the required amounts as set out in the Option Agreement, or fails to comply with its other obligations, the Option Agreement will terminate and Minera Alamos will have no interest in the GdlR Project. Provided it is not in breach of the Option Agreement, Minera Alamos may at its discretion advance the above payment schedule.

Subject to Minera Alamos timely making all the option payments, and fulfilling its other obligations with respect to the Option Agreement, Vista will transfer 100% of the ownership of the GdlR Project to Minera Alamos and the Open-Pit NSR and Underground NSR will be granted to Vista.

If Minera Alamos discovers, and decides to develop, an underground mine at the GdlR Project and Vista exercises the Back-in Right, Vista and Minera Alamos have agreed to form a joint venture to develop and operate the underground mine. If the joint venture is formed, the Underground NSR will terminate.

Frederick H. Earnest, Vista's President and CEO, commented, "We are pleased to have Minera Alamos as a partner in the GdlR Project. We believe they have the requisite experience and skill to succeed in Mexico, and we are very supportive of their commitment to develop the GdlR Project.

"The Option Agreement preserves the upside of the GdlR Project for Vista shareholders by maintaining exposure to the underground potential as well as providing near-term non-dilutive strength for our balance sheet."

All dollar amounts in this press release are expressed in U.S. dollars.

About Minera Alamos

Minera Alamos is an advanced stage exploration and development company. Its portfolio of Mexican projects includes the La Fortuna open pit gold project in Durango and the Los Verdes open pit copper-molybdenum project in Sonora.

About Vista Gold Corp.

The Company is a well-funded gold project developer. Our principal asset is our flagship Mt Todd gold project in Northern Territory, Australia. Mt Todd is one of the largest known undeveloped gold projects in Australia. For more information about our projects, including technical studies and resource estimates, please visit our website at www.vistagold.com.

For further information, please contact Connie Martinez at (720) 981-1185.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, included in this press release that address activities, events or developments that we expect or anticipate will or may occur in the future, including such things as our belief that Minera Alamos will have no interest in the GdlR Project if the Option Agreement terminates; the receipt of any future payments and the grant of the Open-pit NSR and the Underground NSR pursuant to the terms of the Option Agreement; the entry into a joint venture agreement on acceptable terms, if at all, if we exercise the Back-in Right; our belief that Minera Alamos has the requisite experience and skills to succeed in Mexico and its committed to developing the GDLR Project; our belief that we are preserving the upside of the GdlR Project for Vista shareholders by maintaining exposure to the underground potential; and our expectation that the transaction will strengthen our balance sheet are forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. The material factors and assumptions used to develop the forward-looking statements and forward-looking information contained in this press release include the following: our discussions with Minera Alamos, our approved business plans, exploration and assay results, results of our test work for process area improvements, mineral resource and reserve estimates and results of preliminary economic assessments, prefeasibility studies and feasibility studies on our projects, if any, our experience with regulators, and positive changes to current economic conditions and the price of gold. When used in this press release, the words "optimistic," "potential," "indicate," "expect," "intend," "hopes," "believe," "may," "will," "if," "anticipate," and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Such factors include, among others, uncertainty of resource and reserve estimates, uncertainty as to the Company's future operating costs and ability to raise capital; risks relating to cost increases for capital and operating costs; risks of shortages and fluctuating costs of equipment or supplies; risks relating to fluctuations in the price of gold; the inherently hazardous nature of mining-related activities; potential effects on our operations of environmental regulations in the countries in which it operates; risks due to legal proceedings; risks relating to political and economic instability in certain countries in which it operates; uncertainty as to the results of bulk metallurgical test work; and uncertainty as to completion of critical milestones for Mt Todd; as well as those factors discussed under the headings "Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk Factors" in the Company's latest Annual Report on Form 10-K as filed on February 22, 2017 and other documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Canadian securities regulatory authorities. Although we have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements and forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements or forward-looking information; whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

SOURCE Vista Gold Corp.

Related Links

http://www.vistagold.com


WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- This week, The Jack Kemp Foundation, in partnership with Internet Association, will host a Kemp Forum on the future of work in the new digital economy.

Scholars and policy makers will discuss the future of work and how technological innovation is reshaping the economy of the 21st century.

When: 9:30am  12:30pm ET, Wednesday October 25, 2017

Where: Rotunda Conference Room, 101 Constitution Ave NW, Washington, DC 20001

What: Three panel discussions followed by a speech by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC)

Who: Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta; Michael Beckerman, President and CEO, Internet Association; Dan Bryant, Senior Vice President of Global Public Affairs and Government Relations, Walmart; U.S. Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX); Mark Jamison, AEI, University of Florida and former FCC transition team; Jimmy Kemp, The Jack Kemp Foundation; Chris Liddell, White House Office of American Innovation; Michael Mandel, Progressive Policy Institute; Commissioner Terrell McSweeny, Federal Trade Commission; U.S. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE); U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC); Bret Swanson, Entropy Economics.

Registration, Parking Details, Livestream Link, and Agenda: All attendees, including media, must register at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-kemp-forum-on-opportunity-in-the-new-digital-economy-tickets-37918378892

All Kemp Forum activities seek to carry forward the power of ideas, principled leadership and a compelling cause.

The Jack Kemp Foundation is a nonprofit, tax-exempt entity organized under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC). The Jack Kemp Foundation engages only in educational activities and does not engage in any lobbying or political activity as those terms are defined by the IRC. Contributions to the Jack Kemp Foundation are deductible to the donor to the extent allowed by law.

Media Contact: Emma Watkins

[email protected]

202.452.6224

SOURCE Jack Kemp Foundation

Related Links

http://www.jackkempfoundation.org


COEUR D'ALENE  Debbie Dane has received the 2017 Governors Lifetime Achievement Award in recreation and tourism.

Dane, of Twin Falls, spent 15 years promoting recreation and tourism  efforts that have brought together individuals and communities for shared goals. Her marketing know-how and her drive to have businesses and individuals understand the value of tourism and the importance of customer service have helped improve southern Idahos economy and enhanced the quality of life for residents and visitors alike.

Some of Danes most notable contributions include:

Working to establish a master plan for the Snake River Canyons North Rim Park project

Coordinating the Southern Idaho Hospitality organization

Participating on the Twin Falls Economic Development Ready team

Increasing lodging tax receipts as executive director of Southern Idaho Tourism

Working to organize volunteers and community donations to support state parks in the region when public funding was reduced

Volunteering as a member of the Friends of Minidoka organization

The spirit of public engagement, customer service and community collaboration are among the qualities that make Idaho great," Gov. C.L. Butch Otter said in a statement. "Debbies valuable efforts  which are a great testament to her passion for Idaho  have been a tremendous asset, and we cant thank her enough for her years of dedication to advancing recreation and tourism."
ROCKVILLE, Md., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In an opinion piece to be published today in the journal eLife, eight scientists and science policy experts make the case for standardizing how postdoctoral researchers are categorized by human resources offices and provide a framework that willing institutions can follow.

The authors argue that the widespread use of inconsistent titles for researchers who've earned Ph.D.s and hold temporary research positions, primarily at academic institutions, makes tracking their progress difficult and counting them simply impossible. What's more, the authors say, different designations come with different salaries, benefits and professional-development opportunities, leading to disparities in treatment of similarly ranked employees both within and across institutions.

"Postdocs are a key component of our biomedical research workforce," says Wesley I. Sundquist, co-chair of the biochemistry department at the University of Utah and emeritus chair of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology's Public Affairs Advisory Committee. "We owe it to them, and also to the overall health of our enterprise, to ensure that they are treated equitably and professionally, receive great scientific training and have strong career development opportunities. Standardizing postdoc titles and positions is one important step along that path."

In recent years, the number of scientists holding Ph.D.s and seeking permanent research positions has exceeded demand for them, forcing many of those job seekers to prolong their existing postdoctoral positions or complete multiple short-term stints. Given that postdoc positions are designed to be temporary, some institutions have resorted to instituting term limits to ensure turnover.

"Unfortunately, this effort has led to the proliferation of new designations for similar positions," the authors write, and devising new names for basically the same jobs has consequences. "First, scientists in other designations may not receive the training and career development that is provided to their postdoc counterparts. Second, redesignating scientists who have exhausted their postdoc eligibility so that they can simply continue to perform the same work does not constitute advancement."

In addition, changes to the overtime rules in the Fair Labor Standards Act last year prompted many U.S. universities to raise postdoc salaries. "However," the authors write, "the use of nonstandard designations has meant that these improved pay scales and benefits packages have not always been extended to researchers who are essentially postdocs."

The authors point out that some young scientists even are willing to accept unpaid positions to avoid gaps in employment.

"While this situation is rare, this is a most extreme example of inequities in compensation between scientists at a similar career stage. A task force that studied nonfaculty research positions at Boston University this past spring specifically addressed this issue," explains Michael D. Schaller, chair of the biochemistry department at West Virginia University and the lead author on the eLife article.

The authors say policies at the University of Chicago and Boston University are worth examining. Both institutions have taken steps to standardize their postdoc titles and treatment. At Chicago, there now are only two designations  fellow and scholar  and both get equitable pay and experiences. In Boston, administrators cut down 12 professional research titles to four, one of which describes postdocs (termed "postdoctoral scholars"), and eliminated unpaid research positions entirely.

"In our paper, we take the lessons learned by the University of Chicago and Boston University and provide a blueprint to perform the necessary task of postdoc consolidation at any institution," says Andre Porter, policy analyst at ASBMB and an author. "Our hope is that institutions use the step-by-step outline that we've developed and implement many of these recommendations in order to ensure that these young researchers not only receive parity in treatment but in career opportunities as well."

The proposal is overdue, says Gary McDowell, executive director of Future of Research and one of the article's authors. "As one colleague recently said to me, it makes no sense that we can use gene editing in human embryos, but we can't count our postdocs. We hope that we can give institutions a framework to find and more efficiently administer their postdoc populations."

The article ("Point of View: What's in a Name?") will be published in the journal eLife on Oct. 24. The authors are Schaller, McDowell, Porter, Dorothy Shippen of Texas A&M University, Katherine L. Friedman of Vanderbilt University, Matthew S. Gentry of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Tricia R. Serio of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Sundquist. See the paper at https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.32437.

About the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

The ASBMB is a nonprofit scientific and educational organization with more than 11,000 members worldwide. Most members teach and conduct research at colleges and universities. Others conduct research in government laboratories, at nonprofit research institutions and in industry. The Society's student members attend undergraduate or graduate institutions. For more information about ASBMB, visit www.asbmb.org.

Contact:

Angela Hopp

1-240-283-6614

[email protected]



SOURCE American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Related Links

www.asbmb.org


DALLAS, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --An invaluable A-to-Z lawyers' guide to courtroom preparation and strategy entitled "On the Jury Trial: Principles and Practices for Effective Advocacy," is being released this month by University of North Texas Press.

The book  written by leading Texas trial lawyer and Winston & Strawn Dallas Managing Partner Tom Melsheimer and respected Texas Judge Craig Smith  spells out the do's and don'ts of jury selection, witness preparation, opening statements, jury research, and more. Providing a fly-on-the-wall insight into world-class trial preparation and strategy, the book serves as a combination of advice, illustration, and commentary for litigators.

"In an age when the jury trial is vanishing, I think a book such as ours is a must-read," said Tom. "To preserve the jury trial, we must preserve the skills involved in trying a case effectively and efficiently. Judge Smith and I wrote this to add to that effort."

Veteran trial lawyers whose comments appear on the book's jacket laud the work for its down-to-earth advice, illustration and commentary, as Tom and Judge Smith take readers on a behind-the-scenes tour of the inner workings of the judicial process.

"Real-world, real-life insights. A book that every lawyer should read," said Michael E. Tigar, author of "Persuasion: The Litigator's Art and Examining Witnesses."

"I will definitely order a copy of this book for every associate in my firm and recommend that others do so too," said Steve Susman of Susman Godfrey L.L.P.

Before being elected to the 192nd District Court in Dallas County in 2006, Judge Smith was an accomplished trial lawyer for more than 25 years. As a judge, he was honored as Trial Judge of the Year by the Dallas Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates and was elected president of the Texas Association of District Judges in 2010.

Tom has tried cases for more than 30 years. He is a past "Trial Lawyer of the Year" by the Texas Chapters of the American Board of Trial Advocates and by the Dallas Bar Association. He is a Fellow in the International Academy of Trial Lawyers and an Advocate in the American Board of Trial Advocates.

Winston & Strawn LLP is an international law firm with 16 offices located throughout North America, Asia, and Europe. More information about the firm is available at www.winston.com.

CONTACT: Jill Shea

PR & Marketing Communications Manager

312-558-3734

[email protected]

SOURCE Winston & Strawn LLP

Related Links

http://www.winston.com


OAKLAND, Calif., Aug. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- To reduce global economic inequality along with greenhouse gas emissions from its corporate travel, travel industry leader Expedia, Inc. has invested in four community-owned carbon offset projects from the non-profit Carbon Offsets to Alleviate Poverty (COTAP.org).

COTAP's carbon offset projects counteract emissions through tree planting, agroforestry and forest protection in areas where incomes are less than $2 per day. They are certified under Plan Vivo, the world's longest-standing voluntary standard for forest carbon, which requires rural communities own their offset projects and that they receive at least 60% of all carbon revenues.

Expanding voluntary carbon markets and using carbon offsets were topics discussed in a recent UN intersessional meeting in Bonn, Germany on implementing the Paris climate agreement. US withdrawal from Paris has not slowed carbon offset use by companies. Major companies which have recently announced using carbon offsets for corporate travel include retailer Zappos.com, business software giant SAP and car rental leader Hertz, to name a few.

But Expedia, whose 2016 revenues exceeded $8.7 billion, is the first Fortune 500 company to work with COTAP to offset some of its corporate travel and insure the lion's share of the money goes directly to those who need it most. Through donations to COTAP, Expedia offset 1,010 tonnes of atmospheric carbon, counteracting emissions from a large meeting convening leaders from many Expedia locations. The funds will be distributed evenly among COTAP's partner projects in India, Malawi, Nicaragua and Uganda, with cash payments directly shared with smallholder farmers and forest communities there.

COTAP projects serve and connect key UN Sustainable Development Goals, including ending poverty, taking action on climate change, enhancing food security, fighting deforestation, boosting sustainable growth and employment, and protecting ecosystems and biodiversity. They're also examples of how the private sector and communities in developing countries can work together to help meet global emissions reduction goals.

"One of Expedia's core Corporate Social Responsibility values is climate action, so there was really was no question about whether or not working with COTAP made sense. Travel is a large contributor to carbon emissions and given that we are in the business of travel anything we can do to help alleviate the impact we're on board. We are very excited to be working with COTAP and look forward to what we can accomplish together," said Tony Donohoe, SVP and CTO, Expedia Worldwide Engineering at Expedia, Inc.

"By offsetting through COTAP, Expedia is creating over $5.00 per tonne in direct, life-changing income for the world's poorest people," said Tim Whitley, COTAP founder. "This unsurpassed level of direct carbon revenue sharing is made possible by the combination of Plan Vivo's 60% community revenue sharing requirement, the premium price of $9 per tonne COTAP pays projects, and our modest and transparent margin of 9.1%. Our projects create other indirect co-benefits like improved food security, biodiversity, soil quality, and reduced erosion. But income is the ultimate benefit because beneficiaries can use it to pay for income-generating assets, medical treatment, food, or their children's school fees."

Expedia's donation to COTAP also gives its more than 20,000 employees worldwide access to COTAP's Employee Offset Matching Program via Expedia Cares. It lets employees double the amount of carbon emissions they can offset and halve the effective rate they pay. At COTAP.org/Expedia, they can calculate, learn to reduce, and offset their carbon footprint of any size.

A full version of this release is posted here.

Contact: Stephen Kent, [email protected] 914-589-5988

SOURCE COTAP.org

Related Links

http://cotap.org/


MORRIS PLAINS, N.J., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Two Honeywell (NYSE: HON) employees who have helped shape the way the world flies  and how we explore beyond this world  are being honored by their peers. The Arizona women, Terri Taylor, senior engineering manager, and Jennifer Reich, principal engineer, are being recognized by the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) this week for their individual contributions to the aerospace industry, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education), and their communities.

Terri Taylor is being honored with the Resnik Challenger Medal, named for Dr. Judith Resnik, an electrical engineer and longtime SWE member who was a mission specialist on the tragic 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger mission. This award acknowledges Taylor's achievement of expanding space exploration through her invention of the application of spin-bearing technology for attitude control systems that steer, stabilize and point a spacecraft. Her contributions to the technology over the past 27 years have provided reliable, longer-life spacecraft. From the Space Station to imagery satellite to weather satellites, along with undisclosed missions of national importance, Taylor's impact cannot be overstated. Her passion has helped shape the way space is explored, and Taylor is just as passionate about helping to encourage and mentor young female engineers.

Jennifer Reich is being honored with the Emerging Leader Award, which recognizes female engineers who have "demonstrated outstanding technical excellence resulting in significant accomplishments." Reich is an expert and leader in aerodynamic analysis using computational fluid dynamics tools to solve complex problems in the design and development of commercial and military aerospace products. She is an inventor on multiple patents related to aircraft cabin pressurization and engines. Reich is also a published technical author.

Reich is committed to advancing women in engineering, in part through her work mentoring young girls aspiring to grow a STEM field career. She has been an SWE leader for years and is a founding leader of the Women at Honeywell Engineering Network, or WHEN, which creates networking and professional development opportunities for women engineers at Honeywell.

"The men and women recognized this year have made significant contributions to the engineering community," said Jonna Gerken, president of SWE. "They are leaders, inspiring the current and future generation of STEM professionals, and paving the way to empowerment for women engineers everywhere."

Taylor and Reich will be recognized at the SWE annual conference in Austin, Texas, Oct. 2628, 2017. Billed as the "world's largest conference for women engineers," the event annually draws more than 11,000 industry leaders.

Supporting Resources:

Honeywell Aerospace products and services are found on virtually every commercial, defense and space aircraft, and its turbochargers are used by nearly every automaker and truck manufacturer around the world. The Aerospace business unit develops innovative solutions for more fuel-efficient automobiles and airplanes, more direct and on-time flights, safer flying and runway traffic, along with aircraft engines, cockpit and cabin electronics, wireless connectivity services, logistics, and more. The business delivers safer, faster, and more efficient and comfortable transportation-related experiences worldwide. For more information, visit www.honeywell.com.

Honeywell (www.honeywell.com) is a Fortune 100 software-industrial company that delivers industry specific solutions that include aerospace and automotive products and services; control technologies for buildings, homes, and industry; and performance materials globally. Our technologies help everything from aircraft, cars, homes and buildings, manufacturing plants, supply chains, and workers become more connected to make our world smarter, safer, and more sustainable. For more news and information on Honeywell, please visit www.honeywell.com/newsroom.

SOURCE Honeywell Aerospace

Related Links

https://aerospace.honeywell.com


Argelia Leon will staff the position of Manager of Strategic Partnerships, where she will manage growing and maintaining WSPA's affiliations in the five western states including California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Nevada.

"I'm very excited to bring my experience building coalitions, engaging stakeholders and activating community groups to support the policy initiatives of our association," Argelia Leon said. "Under Catherine Reheis-Boyd's leadership, WSPA has successfully navigated complex legislative and regulatory challenges, and I look forward to making an impactful contribution to our collective efforts."

"Now home to the largest populations of Latinos and Asian-Americans, and sizable numbers of African-American, millennial, immigrant and LGBT communities, our five-state region represents a unique opportunity to build a coalition of ethnic, community and business organizations that reflects the strength of the petroleum industry's diverse workforce and consumer base," Leon added. "I'm confident the work I've done in California and Mexico will help accomplish this across our region."

Prior to joining WSPA, Leon served as Vice President at Mercury Public Affairs, working with the government affairs unit, managing public affairs campaigns and coalition building efforts throughout the state, and helping to establish the firm's Mexico City office. She recently returned from Puerto Rico where she managed the political campaign for a gubernatorial candidate in the most recent elections.

Leon holds a bachelor of arts degree in political science and journalism.

ABOUT THE WESTERN STATES PETROLEUM ASSOCIATION

The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) is a non-profit trade association that represents companies that account for the bulk of petroleum exploration, production, refining, transportation and marketing in the five western states of California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Nevada.

SOURCE Western States Petroleum Association
NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Young America Capital (YAC) announces that it has successfully assisted Gaston Security, Inc (GSI) in an outright sale of the company to ADT's Integrated Solutions division, which is solely focused on the commercial electronic security market.

Headquartered in Emporia, VA, GSI and its two founders, Greg and Angela Burns, have built a premier electronic integrator, servicing commercial customers within a broad array of sectors of the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast regions. Having established an excellent reputation for quality and dependability over 26 years of operation, now in 9 states, GSI will move to the next level with the sponsorship and resources of ADT, a global leader in the Security and Alarm industry.

ADT is a leading provider of security and automation solutions for homes and businesses in the United States and Canada. ADT's broad and pioneering set of products and services, including ADT Pulse interactive home and business solutions, and health services, meet a range of customer needs for today's active and increasingly mobile lifestyles. Headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida.

"We continue to make strategic acquisitions in the commercial security integration space to enhance and grow our integrated solutions division," said Dan Bresingham, Chief Administrative Officer, ADT. "This purchase, along with our recently announced acquisitions of MSE Corporate Security and Protec, strengthen our ability to better support our Commercial and National Account Customers."

"As part of the ADT family, we now have access to resources that will expand our services and solutions, providing a tremendous benefit to our customers," said Greg Burns, Owner, Gaston Security. "We look forward to being part of this growing business, while also delivering increased career opportunities for our employees."

"GSI's standard of excellence in meeting the security needs of their commercial customers helped to make this a smooth and successful transaction for both buyers and sellers," said Stanley Tobin, YAC's lead-banker on the transaction. Spotts, Fain of Richmond served as legal counsel to GSI in the transaction.

Young America Capital works with early and mid-stage companies who seek investors, or merger and acquisition advice, as well as with international companies seeking market access in the US. YAC's ability to assist small to mid-market companies interested in understanding their current value within an industry specific M&A scenario should contact YAC if you would like to learn more about their capabilities and services in this area.

About Young America Capital, LLC

Founded in 2000, Young America Capital is a New York-based FINRA/SEC/MSRB licensed independent investment bank and broker-dealer which provides capital raising, M&A advisory and fund marketing services for companies and alternative investment fund managers. The company is comprised of a diverse group of senior investment banking professionals with particularly deep sector experience in Consumer & Retail, Energy & Clean-Tech, Technology, Media and Telecom, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Financial Services & Fin-Tech, Real Estate, and Latin America. www.yacapital.com

Media Contact:

Peter Formanek

914-777-0100

[email protected]

SOURCE Young America Capital

Related Links

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SHANGHAI, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ZTO Express (Cayman) Inc. (NYSE: ZTO) ("ZTO" or the "Company"), a leading express delivery company in China, today announced the appointment of Mr. Tsun-Ming "Daniel" Kao, effective October 24, 2017, as an independent director on its board of directors to replace Mr. Baixi Lan, who resigned as director of the Company on the same day but will remain in his position as ZTO's general manager of operations in Beijing. Mr. Kao has also been appointed as a member of the corporate governance and nominating committee, effective October 24, 2017.

Mr. Kao has more than sixteen years' industry experience with leading e-commerce and Internet companies in the US and China. Mr. Kao most recently served as the chief technology officer at Vipshop (NYSE: VIPS) from 2012 to 2016. Before joining Vipshop, Mr. Kao was the director of site operations and quality engineering at eBay Inc. ("eBay"). During his tenure at eBay, Mr. Kao focused on customer service enhancements, as well as online branding and organization growth strategies. Prior to that, he was the enterprise architect for Acellops which provides integrated data center and cloud service monitoring software solutions to enterprises and service providers. In 2007, he co-founded AdChina Ltd., a leading integrated Internet advertising platform in China, where he also served as the chief technology officer. Earlier in his career, he worked at eBay as a principle software engineer and software development manager for seven years. Mr. Kao received a bachelor's degree in computer science from Iowa State University.

The Company also announced the appointment of Mr. Charles Huang as a member of the audit committee to replace Mr. Meisong Lai, the appointment of Mr. Frank Zhen Wei as the chairman of the nominating and corporate governance committee to replace Mr. Meisong Lai and the appointment of Mr. Frank Zhen Wei as a member of the compensation committee to replace Mr. Jianfa Lai. Each appointment took effect on October 24, 2017.

Mr. Meisong Lai, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ZTO, commented "I'd like to thank Baixi for his service during our first year as a listed company. I look forward to working closely with Daniel. His many years of experience in e-commerce and Internet companies will contribute greatly towards expanding the application of new technology and products across our network."

About ZTO Express (Cayman) Inc.

ZTO Express (Cayman) Inc. (NYSE: ZTO) ("ZTO" or the "Company") is a leading express delivery company in China and one of the largest express delivery companies globally, in terms of total parcel volume in 2015, according to the iResearch Report. ZTO provides express delivery service as well as other value-added logistics services through its extensive and reliable nationwide network coverage in China.

ZTO operates a highly scalable network partner model, which the Company believes is best suited to support the significant growth of e-commerce in China. The Company leverages its network partners to provide pickup and last-mile delivery services, while controlling the mission-critical line-haul transportation and sorting network within the express delivery service value chain.

For more information, please visit http://zto.investorroom.com.

For investor and media inquiries, please contact:

ZTO

Ms. Sophie Li

Investor Relations Department

E-mail: [email protected]





Christensen

In China



Mr. Christian Arnell

Phone: +86-10- 5900-1548

E-mail: [email protected]

In US



Mr. Tip Fleming

Phone: +1-917-412-3333

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE ZTO Express (Cayman) Inc.
Klepierre has signed a leasing agreement with mobile and cable operator VodafoneZiggo for a total of 17,000 square meters at Hoog Catharijne in Utrecht. According to the agreement, VodafoneZiggo will use 16,000 sqm to accommodate its new central office and open a 1,000-sqm flagship store in the mall.

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St. Louis comics and graphic novel publisher Lion Forge has acquired The BEAT: The News Blog of Comic Culture, a pioneering blog focused on comics trade news, founded and directed by longtime PW graphic novel reviews editor Heidi MacDonald.

As a result of the acquisition, MacDonald, who founded The BEAT in 2004, will leave PW to continue as editor-in-chief of The BEAT on a full time basis. The site will continue to be headquartered in New York City.

To house all of the assets of The BEAT as well as all future content created by MacDonald and her editorial team, Lion Forge publisher and founder David Steward II has created Syndicated Comics, a separate company controlled by Lion Forge. Lion Forge is a fast growing independent comics and graphic novel publisher founded in 2011. The company now has about 30 employees in St. Louis, Chicago and New York City.

The acquisition of the BEAT comes after the Library of Congress announced earlier this month that The BEAT will be archived as part of the historical records at the LOC.

Lion Forge president Geoff Gerber said that LOCs plan to archive the BEAT protects The BEATs past. David Steward II is working to ensure its future and legacy. Lion Forge/Syndicated Comics will take over all the nuts and bolts of running the site, so Heidi can focus on great journalism and great commentary. Gerber added: Syndicated Comics has no operations other than The BEAT, but we are evaluating what quality content expansion The BEAT can pursue with additional resources.

Syndicated Comics, he said, will immediately increase the BEATs budget for freelance writers and we plan to add more coverage. Gerber said to look for changes and additional features in the coming months, including adding media formats such as video and podcasts: We want The BEATs readers to be able have a range of media to consume.

And look for expanded convention coverage: More shows and even more thorough coverage, Gerber said. We want to free Heidi from business management and put her in places and on platforms where she can talk about the industry.

The BEAT was an early example of a news blog focused on the comics and pop culture industries. The site was founded and directed by MacDonald, previously an editor at Disney Comics and DC Comics, who also did most of the site's early reporting and commentaryas well as all of the basic technical maintenance of the site. Indeed, MacDonald sold ads, updated the site daily and kept the whole enterprise running and relevant to the industry even when facing thin financial support.

The BEAT has since developed into a full-service news platform with a growing staff of writers reporting on virtually every aspect of pop culture. It is one of the best known sources of news and commentary on the comics industry. The site has been nominated twice for a Will Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Journalism.

MacDonald joined PW as a freelance reviewer, editor and writer more than 10 years ago, eventually becoming the PW graphic novels review editor. She has been instrumental in establishing overall comics coverage as well as graphic novel reviews at PW during her tenure.

MacDonald said, The BEAT has survived many ups and downs in both the comics business and the journalism business, and joining Lion Forge is a natural evolution of our mission. Im grateful to David Steward and the whole Lion Forge team for their vision in forging this partnership, and incredibly excited about what the future holds.
Led by a 33% gain in its childrens group, Bloomsbury reported a 15% increase in total revenue for the six-month period ended August 31. Sales were 72.1 million, compared to 62.7 million in the first six months of last year. Operating profit was 1.7 million, up from 53,000.

In Bloomsbury's consumer group, where the strong gains posted by the childrens division led to 20% jump in sales to 44.7 million. Bloomsbury pointed to a 40% increase in sales of Harry Potter titles for the improvement in the children's group. The publisher said the Harry Potter Box Set and the new editions of Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, sold particularly well.

Meanwhile, sales of adult titles slipped to 13.0 million, from 13.4 million a year ago. The drop was blamed on flat print book sales and a 10% decline in e-book sales.

Bloomsbury said its U.S. adult list performed well, led by Dreamland: The True Tale of Americas Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones and White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson.

Revenue in the publishers non-consumer group rose 8%, to 27.4 million.

Earlier this month, Bloomsbury announced the creation of Bloomsbury China. The unit will, the publisher said, release English-language books about China and for China, by Chinese, Western and other writers. Bloomsbury China will launch in February 2018 with a collection of work by one of China's best known playwrights, The Complete Dramatic Works of Tang Xianzu.

Bloomsbury said business continues to perform along expectations, and that the second half of the year will see the release of a number of new Harry Potter titles, including illustrated editions of Prisoner of Azkaban and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
Vietnam was a war, not a movie. Each new Vietnam movie meets some version of that charge, but Vietnam news documentaries have always fared better, perhaps a tribute to the people who risked their lives to produce them. In 1967, the first major documentary appeared as a CBS News Special Report featuring a film by French director Pierre Schoendoerffer. It was an hour-long introduction to key features of the American War in Vietnam told through the filming of an American platoon. Schoendoerffer had put himself in just the right place by picking the First Cavalry Division in the Central Highlands. He could show the new American war, the Americans who would fight that war, and a particularly important region of the conflict. In retrospect, it's grainy, black and white realism gives a lasting visual context to what was at the time daily news.

In 1954, Schoendoerffer was an enlisted photographer with the French Army Cinematographic Service in Indochina. Wounded at Dien Bien Phu early in the operation, he was evacuated for treatment, and then parachuted back in to film the siege. At the French surrender, he destroyed his camera and films except for a few short clips that disappeared into the hands of Soviet cameraman Roman Kamen then filming an epic celebration of the Viet Minh victory. None of Schoendoerffer's film from the siege survived.

A dozen years later, Schoendoerffer went back to Vietnam to film the new American war and accompanied an American platoon for six weeks. His film was shown on French public television in February, 1967. On July 4, 1967, CBS presented a one-hour adaptation of that documentary as The Anderson Platoon, titled after the platoon's commander Lieutenant Joseph Anderson.

The Anderson Platoon was not high cinematic art, shot in black and white with all the blurred confusion of battle at the platoon-level. Its vignette of booted feet marching through mud to Nancy Sinatra's These Boots Are Made for Walking was too cute, but its television presentation was memorable. It was on television as news, not drama, and spoke to many people who would never go to a Vietnam movie. Anyone who knew Vietnam was the war in their personal future, as I did, had reason to remember and reflect on the program.

Schoendoerffer narrated the original television version and you can hear more than a heavy French accent in his voice. His intonation makes some lines easy to remember, among them: It began on a Sunday in September 1966. On this day, the Vietnamese in their pagodas try to appease all the souls of the unburied deadwandering souls: those of beggars, prostitutes and soldiers.

The remainder of this commentary is available on nationalinterest.org.

James T. Quinlivan is an adjunct senior operations research analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. He served with the U.S. Army in the Central Highlands.

This commentary originally appeared on The National Interest on October 22, 2017. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
There is a term to describe the mindset of Japanese people who put so much faith in Japan's peace constitution that they are complacent about security threats. They are said to suffer from heiwa-boke. With North Korea demonstrating increasingly sophisticated missiles and threating to sink the country with nuclear weapons, heiwa-boke is a luxury the country can no longer afford. A serious national debate is long overdue about what Japan needs to ensure its survival.

Japan's effort to meet regional missile threats rests largely on a two-tiered ballistic missile defense, or BMD, system. The sea-based tier consists of destroyers equipped to intercept missiles in midcourse, outside the earth's atmosphere. The land-based tier consists of Patriot missile batteries designed to intercept missiles in their terminal phase. Overall, Japan's BMD system is advanced, but there are limits to what it can do. According to unclassified sources, the PAC-3 interceptors that Japan deploys in its Patriot systems have a range of about 12.5 miles, making them useful only if they happen to be placed quite near an incoming missile's target. The destroyers and their Aegis combat systems, by contrast, can potentially protect the entire country, but the ships must be in the right place at the right time. Whether any of this covers a specific area in Japan depends on when and where the missile drops. Worst of allfor the U.S. and consequently Japan's value for regional missile defensethe missiles North Korea fired in August and September over Hokkaido flew at a speed and lofted trajectory that put them out of reach of Japan's BMD completely.

To fill in the gaps, Japan could proceed with plans to purchase the land-based Aegis Ashore system and deploy more advanced missile interceptors for Japan's sea-based and land-based systems, adding range, altitude and accuracy. While these capabilities would not protect all 127 million Japanese, especially if North Korea fires multiple missiles or uses multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, it would provide a much better chance at interception than the current system....

The remainder of this commentary is available on defenseone.com.

Based in Washington, Jeffrey Hornung is a political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation.

This commentary originally appeared on Defense One on October 23, 2017. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
Body cameras for the Mooresville Police Department have arrived. Find out when they will be used.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has met with Indian leaders in New Delhi to review bilateral relations between the two countries as well as regional security and the fight against terrorism.

Ghani's office said that his talks on October 24 with Indian President Ram Nath Kovind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj touched upon cooperation in the field of trade, transit, and investment, among other things.

Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said on Twitter that Modi and Ghani expressed "firm resolve to end [the] menace of terrorism."

Kumar said the two also discussed ways to further a "shared objective or [promote] security and stability in Afghanistan," where the Western-backed government is struggling to beat back insurgents in the wake of the exit of most NATO forces in 2014.

Ahead of Ghanis one-day working visit to the Indian capital, India's Foreign Ministry said both sides will review "the entire gamut of multifaceted bilateral strategic partnership."

Ghani's visit comes a day after he met in Afghanistan with visiting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for talks that focused on a regional approach to combating terrorism in South Asia.

Tilerson was set to arrive in New Delhi late on October 24 after a stop in Islamabad, where he was expected to urge Pakistani officials to do more to deny safe havens to terrorists.

Kabul and New Delhi have long accused Pakistan of backing and sheltering militants who carry out attacks on their soil.

Islamabad denies the allegations.

With reporting by dpa


British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson says there is "absolutely no doubt" the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers will survive despite the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump not to recertify the deal.

Johnson, in a London speech on foreign affairs on October 23, said after meeting with the "most influential figures" in the U.S. Congress -- "none of them fans of the Iranian regime" -- he was reassured Trump's action would not kill the landmark accord.

"I have absolutely no doubt that with determination and courage the [deal] can be preserved," Johnson said.

Under terms of the landmark accord, Tehran agreed to curtail its nuclear activities in exchange for relief from international sanctions.

Many U.S. and other officials see it as a way to slow Iran's potential path toward creating a nuclear weapon. Tehran says its nuclear program has purely peaceful aims.

Trump on October 13 stopped short of renouncing the accord but he refused to certify Iran's compliance, accusing Tehran of violating the "spirit" of the agreement, in part for its continued testing of ballistic missiles and its support for extremists in the Middle East.

Trump said he would ask lawmakers to strengthen a U.S. law to put additional pressure on Tehran, leaving the Republican-controlled Congress has 60 days to consider any amendments to agreement.

In his October 23 speech, the British foreign minister said the deal had been vital because Iran had been "only months away" from producing a nuclear weapon.

He did not criticize the U.S. president directly, saying Trump had "not junked" the accord and in fact had "continued to waive nuclear-related sanctions against Iran."

Johnson acknowledged Tehrans "disruptive behavior" in the region, but added "that does not mean for one minute that we should write Iran off."

"On the contrary, we should continue to work to demonstrate to the [Iranian] population that they will be better off under this deal."

In reaction to Trump's move, U.S. allies Britain, France, and Germany reinforced their stance in favor of maintaining the hard-won deal, which they said was "in our shared national security interest."

European Union foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini called the nuclear deal a "robust agreement" that is working and cannot be terminated by any one leader.

Russia and China are also signatories to the accord.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, BuzzFeed, and The Independent
Before the physical assault, there was an information attack.

Before what was apparently an attempted assassination of a journalist, there was a character assassination of that journalist.

Two weeks before a knife-wielding man entered the offices of Ekho Moskvy and stabbed Tatyana Felgengauer, Russian state television ran a segment accusing the radio station of colluding with foreign powers to undermine the Russian state and society.

And the segment identified Felgengauer by name and showed her face on screen.

Now, we don't know the true motivations of Boris Grits, the 48-year-old man who attacked Felgengauer.

Initial reports have suggested he may be psychologically disturbed. But initial reports also suggest that his attack on Ekho Moskvy and on Felgengauer appeared very well-planned and very carefully executed.

But what we do know is that Kremlin-controlled media has consistently fed an atmosphere of hate and suspicion against independent journalists and opposition figures.

They've been called "enemies of the people." They've been called "traitors." And they've been called "foreign agents."

Just last month, another Ekho Moskvy journalist, Yulia Latynina, fled Russia after being assaulted multiple times in Moscow -- including an arson attack on her car and having a canister of feces thrown at her on the street.

When state media dehumanizes journalists and opposition figures and brands them as enemies, it's all too predictable that somebody somewhere is going to take that as a license to assault them with impunity.

Keep telling me what you think on The Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page.
A senior Iranian military commander has warned Persian Gulf countries that they need to choose between "their media" and their security if they interfere in Iran's affairs.

Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, special military adviser to Irans supreme leader, issued the warning on November 10 in a speech that appeared to be a thinly veiled threat to Saudi Arabia, in particular, over what Tehran sees as meddling by foreign "enemies" during weeks of unrest following the death of a young woman while in the custody of Iran's notorious morality police for an alleged dress code violation.

During the speech, Safavi referred to the "countries on the southern border of the Persian Gulf" as "wretched" and warned that they would pay "compensation" if they interfere in Iran's affairs.

The threats came a day after Iran said it had designated the London-based news channel Iran International as a "terrorist" organization and that employees and those "related" to the outlet will be prosecuted. Separately, the broadcaster has said London's Metropolitan Police had informed the broadcaster of an imminent threat against two of its journalists and their families.

Iranian authorities consider Iran International TV to be affiliated with Saudi Arabia. However, in a recent statement, the station called itself "an independent Persian-language network based in Britain."

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly on November 11 accused Iranian authorities of issuing death threats to U.K.-based journalists.

"I have summoned the Iranian charge d'affaires today after journalists working in the U.K. were subject to immediate threats to life from Iran," he wrote in a tweet. We do not tolerate threats and intimidation from foreign nations towards individuals living in the U.K.



The Iranian government has unleashed a brutal crackdown on weeks of unrest -- one of the deepest challenges to the Islamic regime since the revolution in 1979 -- that erupted following the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini while in police custody for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly.

The alleged rape of a 15-year-old Baluch girl by a local police official in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan on September 30 further fueled the animosity as protesters demanded accountability.



Reports on November 11 indicate that protests took place in various cities in the southeast Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan, including Zahedan, Saravan, Rask, Khash, Iranshahr, and Chabahar after the end of Friday Prayers.





In videos released from Iranshahr, security forces could be seen lobbing tear gas at the protesters while what seem to be gunshots can be heard in the background.





Top Iranian Sunni cleric Molavi Abdulhamid on November 11 again emphasized in his Friday Prayer sermon in Zahedan that the majority of Iranians of all religions and ethnicities are protesting the current situation, and that the authorities must listen to their message.



Earlier this month, the cleric, regarded as a spiritual leader for Irans Sunni Muslim population, said senior officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were "responsible" for the killing of protesters in Zahedan and called for an immediate referendum with the presence of international observers to "change policies based on the wishes of the people."



Amnesty International has called the police reaction to the deadly clashes part of an "alarming escalation in the use of force and firearms" in dealing with protesters.



Since Amini's death, more than 300 people have been killed in the police crackdown, according to rights groups. Several thousand more have been arrested, including many protesters, as well as journalists, lawyers, activists, digital rights defenders, and others.

Written by Ardeshir Tayebi based on an original story in Persian by RFE/RL's Radio Farda
Getting a minister approved in Iran is not a perfect science; finding the right formula for the sensitive post of science minister is particularly difficult.

More than two months after beginning his second term in office, President Hassan Rohani is still looking to complete his cabinet. The position of science minister, which has been scrutinized by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in recent years, is one of the final pieces of the puzzle.

Rohani has reportedly been running the names of potential nominees by Khamenei, who is said to have expressed concerns that the position could be used to lead the country down a path of "deviation" from the principles of the Islamic Revolution. He has warned against academia being used as a soapbox for political activities, and the science minister is tasked with overseeing universities, many of which have been at the center of antiestablishment protests and political activism.

While his office technically has the right to nominate the science minister by itself, there have been suggestions that President Rohani has presented as many as 20 names to Khamenei -- all of which have reportedly been rejected.

Now, however, there are signs that Rohani has found someone that Khamenei and Iran's camp of hard-line conservatives can live with.

Rohani on October 21 presented the name of his nominee, Mansur Gholami, to parliament.

Safe Choice

Gholami, the current head of Hamedan's Bu-Ali Sina University, appears to be a safe choice for a president who began his second term in August amid intense pressure by hard-liners, who oppose Rohani's stated goals of opening up the country and giving Iranians more freedom.

Lawmaker Mahmud Sadeghi suggested on Twitter on October 17 that Rohani had proposed more than 10 names to Khamenei, but none passed muster with the man who has the last say in all state matters in the Islamic republic.

Another lawmaker, Elias Hazrati, told Etemadonline on October 22 that Gholami was number 21 on Rohani's list of candidates to lead the Science Ministry.

"The president has defined a process and steps for naming the science minister," Hazrati said, without providing more details. "The 20 other candidates who were on his list apparently did not succeed."

Universities came under intense pressure under Rohani's predecessor, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, with dozens of students being banned or suspended from studies over their political activism.

Coming after Rohani's campaign promises of more openness, the first science minister in the president's first term, Reza Faraji Dana, reinstated some of the banned students and gave students more room to roam.

But that quickly led to Dana's impeachment and dismissal by the parliament, which also accused him of nominating to senior posts individuals who were involved in the 2009 protests against Ahmadinejad's reelection, and of acting against national interests.

In July, Khamenei's website denied "rumors" that all cabinet members are selected with the approval of the supreme leader. It pointed out that such "coordination" is traditionally limited to the posts of defense minister, foreign minister, and intelligence minister, in keeping with the supreme leader's duties as outlined in the Iranian Constitution.

Khamenei.ir conceded, however, that the Iranian leader is sensitive about certain ministries, including the Science Ministry and Culture Ministry, because "any deviation in those places would lead to the country's deviation as a whole."

Student Protests

Gholami isn't universally seen as the right fit, however. Gholami has been accused by some students of favoring restrictions on and outright prevention of political and media activities by pro-reform students.

Students at several universities have said that, in nominating Gholami, Rohani has gone against his campaign promises

This week, students at Tehran's Amir Kabir and Alameh Tabatabayi universities assembled for protests in which they held placards reading "Mr. Rohani, remain committed to your promises" and "We want free and independent universities."

Many have also voiced their opinions on social media, including this student from Hamedan's Bu-Ali Sina University headed by Gholami.

"Let Gholami stay with us Bu-Ali Sina students, we're used to political and security suffocation," the student posted on Twitter.



"The selection of Mansour Gholami as the nominee to lead the Science Ministry is like a [cold shower] for students who wanted change," tweeted journalist Shahrzad Hemati.

Rohani has not publicly reacted to the criticism. Parliament is due to review Gholami's nomination for science minister, along with that of the other unfilled post, energy minister, in the next few days.


Several opposition and rights activists have been detained across Kazakhstan as the day of an early presidential election scheduled for November 20 nears.

Police in the southwestern town of Zhanaozen on November 15 detained noted opposition activist Estai Qarashaev, who was sentenced to six days in jail several hours later on a charge of violating regulations for holding public gatherings.

Qarashaev was among oil workers who protested in 2011 to demand higher wages. Police brutally dispersed the protests, killing at least 16 people.

In the country's largest city, Almaty, on November 15, police detained Aset Abishev, a member of the founding committee of the Algha Qazaqstan (Forward, Kazakhstan) party that has been trying unsuccessfully for eight months to get registered for the election.

It is not clear why Abishev was detained. Last week, five other members of the unregistered party were detained for taking part in an unsanctioned rally in August.

WATCH: Several activists of a Kazakh opposition movement have been arrested and police were stationed outside the door of another ahead of a snap presidential election scheduled for November 20.

Meanwhile, in the village of Bobrovka in the East Kazakhstan region, rights activist Serik Ydyryshev was detained, his wife Gulmira Berikqyzy told RFE/RL on November 15. According to Berikqyzy, her husband's arrest is linked to the upcoming early presidential election. The police department of the East Kazakhstan region was not available for comment.

One day earlier, opposition activist Rashid Qamaldanov was sentenced in Almaty to 15 days in jail for taking part in an unsanctioned rally earlier this year.

In Astana, the capital, jailed activist Sandughash Qantarbaeva stared a hunger strike last weekend, protesting her administrative arrest that she says was handed to her to prevent her from taking part in protests on the day of the presidential election.

Many activists complained to RFE/RL that they have been followed and that police have been monitoring their homes. According to the activists, the pressure imposed on them is directly linked to the presidential poll, while the countrys Constitution guarantees them freedom of expression and freedom of public gatherings. An Interior Ministry official denied that measures to prevent the activists from holding rallies on the day of election are under way.

President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, who has tried to position himself as a reformer, on September 1 called the early presidential election and proposed changing the presidential term to seven years from five years. Under the new system, future presidents will be barred from seeking more than one term.

Critics say Toqaev's initiatives have been mainly cosmetic and do not change the nature of the autocratic system in a country that has been plagued for years by rampant corruption and nepotism.

Toqaev's predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbaev, who ran the tightly controlled former Soviet republic with an iron fist for almost three decades, chose Toqaev as his successor when he stepped down in 2019.

Though he was no longer president, Nazarbaev retained sweeping powers as the head of the Security Council. He also enjoyed substantial powers by holding the title of elbasy or leader of the nation.

Many citizens, however, remained upset by the oppression during Nazarbaev's reign.

Those feelings came to a head in January when unprecedented antigovernment nationwide protests started over a fuel price hike, and then exploded into countrywide deadly unrest over perceived corruption under the Nazarbaev regime and the cronyism that allowed his family and close friends to enrich themselves while ordinary citizens failed to share in the oil-rich Central Asian nation's wealth.

Toqaev subsequently stripped Nazarbaev of his Security Council role, taking it over himself. Since then, several of Nazarbaevs relatives and allies have been pushed out of their positions or resigned. Some have been arrested on corruption charges.

A Toqaev-initiated referendum in June removed Nazarbaev's name from the constitution and annulled his status as elbasy.

msh/mj
Kazakh authorities say two Qatari nationals have been detained at the Almaty International Airport while apparently trying to smuggle 29 protected falcons out of the country.

The National Security Committee said on October 24 that the saker falcons (falco cherrug) were discovered by customs officers in 15 boxes belonging to the two suspects, who were heading to Doha, Qatar.

The saker falcon -- a protected species in many range states, including Kazakhstan -- is used for hunting in Persian Gulf states.

The price for such a bird on the Central Asian black market ranges between $10,000 and $15,000.

The saker falcon occurs from Eastern Europe to western China.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature says it has listed the species as "endangered" because its population may be undergoing a rapid decline as a result of electrocution on power lines, unsustainable capture for the falconry trade, habitat degradation, and other factors.

It says the rate of decline appears to be "particularly severe" in the species' Central Asian breeding grounds.

Illegal trafficking of saker falcons from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to Persian Gulf countries was frequent in the 1990s.

Based on reporting by Atameken Business TV and Interfax
OSH, Kyrgyzstan -- Kyrgyz civil rights activists, former colleagues, friends, and relatives of the late Kyrgyz independent journalist Alisher Saipov have gathered in southern Kyrgyzstan to mark the 10th anniversary of his death.

The commemoration took place in Saipov's house, which has been transformed into a museum, in his native city of Osh on October 24.

One of Saipov's brothers, journalist Shahrukh Saipov, said there were plans to establish a prize in his name soon to honor young Kyrgyz journalists.

A special edition of the Siyosat (Politics) newspaper, the journal founded by Saipov, was distributed during the commemoration to honor his life and achievements as a journalist.

The Uzbek-language weekly, which was distributed both in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, stopped publishing after Saipov was shot dead in central Osh on October 24, 2007.

In 2010, an Osh city court found local resident Abdulgafar Rasulov guilty of murdering Saipov. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

However, Saipov's relatives protested against the sentence, charging that the "real killers" and those who plotted the killing were not punished.

Saipov, an ethnic Uzbek, wrote about Islamic groups and opposition politics in the region. He had also reported on the 2005 massacre of protesters in the Uzbek city of Andijon.

In 2012, the Interior Ministry launched a fresh investigation into Saipov's murder, citing "new leads" in the case. However, the new investigation has not identified any new suspects involved in the killing.

Saipov also cooperated with RFE/RL and Voice of America.
2 An Indian Hindu devotee prays to the sun god standing on the shores of the Bay of Bengal at marina beach during the Chhath Puja festival in Chennai on October 27. (AFP/Arun Sankar)
Members of the Russian performance-art collective Pussy Riot have carried out a protest in support of jailed Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov at Trump Tower in New York City.

Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina posted on social media on October 24 photographs and video of three masked women unfurling a large banner with the slogan "Free Sentsov" inside the skyscraper that is owned by U.S. President Donald Trump and is where he lived before moving to the White House in January.

The action, which occurred October 23, was stopped by tower security guards shortly after the banner was unfurled. They were not arrested since the area where they protested is considered public space.

Sentsov was arrested in the Ukrainian region of Crimea in 2014 following its illegal annexation by Russia. A Russian court in 2015 convicted him and co-defendant Oleksandr Kolchenko of planning to commit terrorist acts. Both men deny the accusations. Sentsov is currently serving a 20-year term in a Russian prison, while Kolchenko is serving a 10-year term.

Western governments and rights organizations have called for Sentsov and Kolchenko to be released, and the Russian Memorial human rights center considers both men political prisoners.

Alyokhina is currently touring with a play about three artists in prison, one of whom is Sentsov.

Pussy Riot gained global notoriety in 2012 when three members of the collective, including Alyokhina, performed a punk song inside Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral.

The three defendants -- Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich -- were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" and sentenced to two years in prison.

Samutsevich's sentence was suspended on appeal. Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were released in December 2013 as part of an amnesty for nonviolent offenders.

With reporting by AP


MOSCOW -- Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio says a prominent journalist who was stabbed in the throat by an attacker has been operated on and transferred to an intensive-care unit of a Moscow hospital.

Tatyana Felgengauer, a program host and deputy editor in chief at the independent Russian news station, was put into a medically induced coma on October 23 after she was attacked in the station's central Moscow studios.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on October 24 dismissed suggestions that there might have been connections between the attacker and Kremlin officials.

Peskov blamed the knife attack on a "madman."

"The actions of a madman are the actions of a madmen," Peskov said. "Trying to link them to anything is absolutely illogical and wrong."

Ekho Moskvy released security-camera footage on October 24 that shows the attacker gaining entrance to the station by spraying gas into the face of a security guard, ducking under a turnstile, and running inside.

Russia's Investigative Committee has identified the alleged attacker as 48-year-old Boris Grits, a citizen of Russia and Israel.

After being apprehended on October 23, Grits told investigators police he had been in "telepathic contact with Felgengauer" for five years.

Grits appeared in court for an initial hearing on October 24 where he was ordered to be remanded in pretrial custody at least until December 23. He was also scheduled to undergo a psychiatric examination.

State-owned media have long targeted Ekho Moskvy and other rare independent media outlets in Russia for critical reports about the government.

Earlier in October, state-run Rossia-24 TV issued a report claiming that Ekho Moskvy had paid for "destabilizing society" ahead of Russia's March 2018 presidential election.

Another popular Ekho Moskvy host, Yulia Latynina, fled Russia in September after a suspected arson attack on her car.

Latynina wrote in the October 24 edition of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper that the attack against Felgengauer was a logical follow-up to increasingly militant rhetoric from Russian officials who openly describe independent media as enemies.

"Grits' mental disorder curiously matches the party line," Latynina wrote. "The attack on Felgengauer falls neatly into the line of numerous attacks on independent journalists and opposition politicians that were met with impunity."

With reporting by AP, AFP, TASS, Novaya Gazeta, and Ekho Moskvy
Russia has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that would have extended for one year the work of international inspectors investigating chemical-weapons attacks in Syria.

The October 24 veto came immediately after Moscow failed to secure a one-month postponement of the vote in order to allow the body to consider a report from the inspectors that is due on October 26.

Russian UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said the United States -- which drafted the resolution -- called the vote "to show up and dishonor Russia."

The October 26 report will cover an April 4 chemical-weapons attack using sarin gas in the village of Khan Sheikhun, which was controlled by the Syrian opposition at the time.

The United States, France, and Britain have accused forces loyal to Assad of carrying out the attack, which left more than 80 people dead.

Russia, which is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has criticized the inspectors, or Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), in the past.

On October 13, Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov accused the JIM of failing to carry out a "qualitative investigation" of the incident.

The JIM has previously determined that Syrian government forces were responsible for three chlorine-gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 and that Islamic State (IS) militants had used mustard gas.

The Syrian government has denied ever using chemical weapons.

After the Russian veto, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley issued a statement accusing Moscow of "once again" siding with dictators and terrorists.

"Russia has once again demonstrated it will do whatever it takes to ensure the barbaric Assad regime never faces consequences for its continued use of chemicals as weapons," Haley's statement said.

"We are disappointed, we are very disappointed that Russia put what it considered to be political considerations over the Syrian people who were so brutally murdered," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a regular briefing on October 24.

In addition to Russia, Bolivia voted against the resolution, while China and Kazakhstan abstained. The other 11 Security Council members voted in favor.

It was the ninth time Russia has used it UN veto power to support Assad.

The JIM was authorized by the Security Council in 2015 and had its mandate renewed for another year in 2016.

Its current mandate expires on November 17.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, dpa, and AFP
Two weeks before an assailant burst into the office of Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy in central Moscow on October 23 and stabbed Deputy Editor in Chief Tatyana Felgengauer in the neck, state television had portrayed the journalist and the broadcaster as nefarious Western agents.

The report by the Rossia-24 network accused Ekho Moskvy, which regularly gives airtime to Kremlin critics, of trading in "information weapons" by selling content to Western media, and criticized Felgengauer and two other of the station's journalists for attending a forum involving Western NGOs.

"Essentially, these are genuine foreign agents who aren't even hiding what they're doing," the anchor said.

The segment was one of numerous reports on state-controlled and Kremlin-loyal television during President Vladimir Putin's third term painting the liberal opposition and other government critics as Western tools scheming to destabilize the government.

Those reports have repeatedly triggered accusations that state media is whipping up an "atmosphere of hate" against those who disagree with the government. This atmosphere, critics say, can have deadly consequences, including the 2015 slaying of Boris Nemtsov, a prominent Putin foe.

The October 23 knife attack on Felgengauer, who survived and is recovering in a Moscow hospital, has stirred fresh debate in Russia over what, if any, role state media has played in attacks on government critics.

Prominent Russian journalists and Kremlin critics have specifically linked the attack to what they call attempts to smear dissenting voices. That argument, however, has been met with pushback -- including from the Kremlin -- after revelations about the purported mental state of Felgengauer's alleged assailant.

'Work Of A Madman'

Russian investigators have identified the suspected attacker as Boris Grits, 48, a dual Russian-Israeli citizen who claimed to have been in "telepathic contact" with Felgengauer for several years and that the journalist had "sexually harassed" him telepathically.

Asked whether media reports like the Rossia-24 segment about Ekho Moskvy could play a role in attacks on journalists, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was "illogical" to draw broad conclusions about the work of "a madman."

"The actions of a madman are the actions of a madman," Peskov was quoted by the state-run TASS news agency as saying. "Trying to link this to something or paint this in a certain way is absolutely illogical and wrongheaded."

Ekho Moskvy Editor in Chief Aleksei Venediktov said during the broadcaster's morning program on October 24, however, that, whatever the suspect's mental state, "people don't live in a vacuum."

"I believe that, for example, Boris Nemtsov was killed not only by the scumbag who fired the gun, but also by the atmosphere of hate and instigation," Venediktov said.

A Moscow court in July convicted five men from Russia's North Caucasus region of Chechnya of Nemtsov's slaying and sentenced them to prison, though relatives and associates believe his murder was ordered at a higher level.

Allies of Nemtsov have previously asked the United States to impose sanctions on Russian media personalities they accuse of a demonization campaign that helped lead to his killing.

Venediktov added that this atmosphere is "undoubtedly" relevant in the case of Felgengauer and other journalists who have faced attacks and harassment in Russia.



'They're Not Being Caught'

Numerous pro-government voices have accused government opponents of trying to generate political capital from the attack on Felgengauer.

Noting the suspect's bizarre claims about telepathy, Ilya Remeslo, who sits on a largely symbolic Kremlin advisory council, wrote on Facebook that Kremlin opponents "wanted so badly to blame everything on 'the regime,' but using their colleague's misfortune for political purposes didn't work out."

Remeslo, a vocal critic of Russia's liberal opposition, was quoted in the Rossia-24 segment as saying Ekho Moskvy maintains a "deeply antigovernment line."

After reports emerged about Grits's purported mental-health problems, prominent state-television journalist Vladimir Solovyov -- whom Nemtsov's allies accuse of stoking hatred against the slain politician -- suggested that "everyone who libeled" Rossia-24 should "apologize."

Even journalists who believe the government is indeed fomenting hatred against critics have voiced skepticism that the attack may have been anything other than a random act of a mentally unstable person.

"Maybe he was just f***ed up," Roman Badanin, editor in chief of the independent Dozhd TV wrote.

Venediktov, however, said that while there are "a lot of psychos, when psychos attack journalists there's not a great effort to catch them."

He cited the case of Ekho Moskvy talk-show host Yulia Latynina, who fled Russia in September after a suspected arson attack on her car. Last year, an unidentified assailant dumped feces on Latynina as she was walking to work in central Moscow. A militant pro-Kremlin group hinted it was behind that attack, for which no one has ever been charged.

Independent journalists and opposition politicians have long accused authorities of emboldening those who commit acts of violence against government critics by failing to properly investigate the incidents.

"They don't even really try to catch those who kill," Venediktov told Current Time TV, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. "That's why [such assailants] have gotten out of hand, because they're not being caught."

Igor Yakovenko, an ex-lawmaker and former head of the Russian Union of Journalists, said in a blog post that the "atmosphere of hate, amplified by television, can kill."

"The tragedy of Boris Nemtsov proves this. Tatyana Felgengauer, thank god, is alive," Yakovenko wrote.
Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has called upon his supporters in Ukraine to protect him from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

"Poroshenko wants to extradite me," Saakashvili said in a statement broadcast on the NewsOne television outlet on October 24. "I ask Kyiv residents and all other honest people for protection."

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko announced that the country's migration service had rejected Saakashvili's application for refugee status.

"As a result, he is now a stateless person and there are no special obstacles excluding him from deportation or extradition," Lutsenko said.

Saakashvili's lawyer, Pavlo Bohomazov, told Russia's RIA Novosti that his client has not received a rejection from the migration authorities.

Saakashvili is wanted in Georgia on suspicion of trying to organize a coup there, allegations he denies.

In 2015, Poroshenko appointed Saakashvili governor of Ukraine's Odesa region. He surrendered his Georgian citizenship in order to take the post. In November 2016, however, Saakashvili resigned, saying that his reform efforts had been blocked by Poroshenko's allies.

In June 2017, Poroshenko revoked Saakashvili's Ukrainian citizenship, saying that he had withheld information during the application procedure.

Saaksashvili reentered Ukraine in September, even though his Ukrainian passport was invalid.

Lutsenko also said on October 24 that Kyiv was preparing to expel 20 Georgian supporters of Saakashvili who have set up tents for a round-the-clock protest outside Ukraine's parliament. He said the men had received residence permits under false pretenses and were now planning a "forcible seizure of power."

"There are all necessary grounds for expelling these 20 people from Ukraine and this is being carried out now by forces of the Ukrainian Migration Service," Lutsenko said.

Saakashvili's supporters set up tents outside the parliament on October 17, calling for Poroshenko to enact anticorruption reforms. Other opposition groups have since joined in the demonstration.

At least 10 people were arrested after police used tear gas against demonstrators on October 18.

With reporting by Meduza, RIA Novosti, and dpa
Serbian Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin has criticized as unfriendly remarks by a senior U.S. diplomat who suggested that Belgrade's balancing act between Moscow and the West is unsustainable.

In a statement circulated late on October 23, Vulin said that the remarks made by U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Hoyt Brian Yee earlier in the day represented "the greatest pressure publicly put on Serbia yet."

"This is not a statement made by a friend or a man respecting Serbia, our policy, and our right to make our own decisions," said the minister, who is known for his pro-Russian stance.

He added that Serbia will choose its course regardless of what the "great powers" want.

Speaking at the Serbian Economic Summit in Belgrade, Yee earlier said that countries wishing to join the European Union "must very clearly demonstrate this desire."

"You cannot sit on two chairs at the same time, especially if they are that far away," he said.

The chief Serbian negotiator in the country's EU accession talks, Tanja Miscevic, suggested on October 24 that Yee's statement was "taken out of context."

Miscevic said the U.S. diplomat understood Serbia's determination to become a member of the European Union, adding that Serbia had "a clear foreign political strategic orientation."

On October 24 in Belgrade, Yee held talks with Serbian Prime Minister Anna Brnabic. He was scheduled to meet with President Aleksandar Vucic later in the day.

Serbia is formally seeking EU membership. Vucic, a former nationalist, has remade himself as a pro-EU reformer while seeking to maintain good relations with traditional ally Russia, which is looking to block the Balkan country's path toward possible NATO membership.

With reporting by AP and Balkan Insight
WASHINGTON -- A U.S.-based security research firm says Russia, and the former Soviet region more broadly, is the single largest source for foreign militants fighting in Syria and Iraq.

The report, released on October 24 by the Soufan Group, documented the shifting makeup of fighters who have joined the Islamic State extremist group in the region, or some of the smaller allied groups.

More than 40,000 foreigners from more than 110 countries are estimated to have traveled to the region to join Islamic State (IS) fighters after they declared a caliphate in June 2014.

Two years ago, the Soufan Group estimated that Tunisia and Saudi Arabia were the largest sources of fighters in Syria and Iraq, followed by Russia.

Now, the group says, more than 8,700 from the former Soviet Union have traveled to the region, and an estimated 3,417 from Russia alone, primarily from the troubled North Caucasus, where Chechnya is located.

The new report shows how much that has shifted, as IS militants hold on territory has shrunken amid ongoing campaigns, with Russian and Syria leading one effort, and a U.S.-led coalition, with Syrian Arab and Kurdish fighters leading another.

Earlier this month, U.S.-backed forces said they had taken control of the IS stronghold of Raqqa, in Syria.

The shrinking battlefield has added to growing worries about what foreign fighters will do after, and whether some will return to their home countries to stoke insurgencies or terrorist activities there.

The Soufan Group said at least 5,600 people from 33 countries have returned home after spending time in Islamic State territories. Among Russian nationals, 400 have returned home.

Islamic State has its own affiliate in Russia's Northern Caucasus, and has claimed responsibility for more than a dozen killings of security forces in recent years.

Saudi Arabia has seen the highest number of its fighters -- 760 -- return home, the group said.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, during a surprise visit to Baghdad, has urged Iraqi and Kurdish leaders to enter into dialogue to end their bitter dispute and ease tensions in the country.

"We have friends both in Baghdad, and we have friends in Irbil, and we encourage both parties to enter into discussion and dialogue," Tillerson said in Baghdad during his brief stop on October 23.

Tillerson was in Iraq after making a similarly unannounced stop in Afghanistan following his planned visits to Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The top U.S. diplomat met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi to discuss Baghdad's battle against the Islamic State (IS) extremist group and Iraqi forces' efforts to take over areas that have been under control of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.

Iraqi and Kurdish leaders have been at loggerheads since the Kurds held a September 25 referendum on independence, which Baghdad has said was illegal and which the United States, the United Nations, and others also opposed.

Comments by Tillerson prior to his arrival in Baghdad had already increased tensions in the region.

Speaking on October 22 after a meeting with Saudi Arabias King Salman and Abadi in Saudi Arabia, Tillerson said it was time for Iranian military advisers and fighters "to go home and allow the Iraqi people to regain control."

"Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fight against [IS] is coming to a close, those militias need to go home," Tillerson said. "The foreign fighters in Iraq need to go home and allow the Iraqi people to regain control."

A senior U.S. official said Tillersons remarks referred to militia fighters known as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and the Quds Force, the foreign arm of Irans powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

A statement issued by Abadis office a day later responded to Tillersons remarks by saying "no party has the right to interfere in Iraqi matters."

Abadi told Tillerson that the PMF "is an official institution among state bodies," which includes "Iraqi fighters who fought terrorism and defended their country."

"We should encourage them because they will be a hope for the country and the region," Abadi's office quoted him as telling Tillerson.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif assailed Tillerson's comments.

"If it wasn't for the sacrifices of the Islamic Republic of Iran, [IS] would have installed its government in Damascus, Baghdad, and [the Iraqi Kurdistan capital] Irbil by now," Zarif said.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have accused the group of committing war crimes.

With reporting by dpa, AFP, and Reuters
A new wave of cyberattacks seeking to extract ransoms from computer users hit a major Ukrainian international airport as well as the Kyiv subway ticketing system, and three Russian media outlets.

While no major outages were reported in the United States, the U.S. government issued a warning to computer users on October 24 to guard against the attacks, which followed campaigns in May and June that used similar malware and were also concentrated in Russia and Ukraine.

The cyber firm ESET estimated that more than half the victims of the latest attacks, dubbed "BadRabbit," were in Russia, followed by Ukraine, Bulgaria, Turkey and Japan.

Ransomware is a type of computer virus that locks up infected computers and asks victims to pay a ransom to restore access.

Earlier on October 24, Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) said the new wave of hacks was targeting the country, and called on transportation networks to be on high alert.

"We ask the owners of telecommunication systems, other information resources, transport infrastructure first of all, as well as ordinary Internet users, to comply with stricter cybersecurity requirements," CERT said in a statement.

Odesa's international airport said that its information system stopped functioning in the afternoon.

It said in a statement, "We report that the IT system of Odesa international airport has been hit by a hacker attack. All services of the airport are working in a reinforced security regime."

Its website showed air traffic going in and out of the Black Sea resort city according to schedule.

Also on October 24, the Kyiv subway wrote on Facebook that its computer system was attacked by hackers and informed clients that card payment for services was temporarily impossible.

Ukraine's Central Bank said the banking system was working normally.

Ukraine suspects Russia is behind regular attacks on its computer systems, but Moscow denies any involvement.

In Russia, the Interfax news agency -- one of the country's biggest -- also sent its last dispatch at 2:13 p.m. local time before falling silent.

Yevgeny Gukov, a Moscow-based cybersecurity expert from Moscow, said the Fontanka news site in Russia's second city of Saint Petersburg and a third media outlet "whose name, unfortunately, we cannot reveal at this time" had also gone off line.

"We cannot say what it is at the moment," said Gukov, who works for the Group-IB IT security firm.

Gukov said the malware appeared to be using an encryption scheme that prevented analysts from deciphering the malicious code.

Group-IB later issued a statement saying the cyberattack appeared to have its origins in Russia and had also hit corporate sites in Turkey and Germany.

"This ransomware infects devices through a number of hacked Russian media websites," Group-IB said.

"Based on our investigation, this has been a targeted attack against corporate networks, using methods similar to those used during the [NotPetya] attack."

The "NotPetya" attack, which took place in July, was a modified version of the "Petya" ransomware that hit last year. "Petya" demanded money from victims in exchange for the return of their computer data.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP




Sentencing for Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. Army sergeant who pleaded guilty to endangering his comrades by abandoning his post in Afghanistan in 2009, has been delayed as a military judge weighed the impact of comments by President Donald Trump on the case.

Sentencing was due to start on October 23, but the judge, U.S. Army Colonel Jeffery Nance, heard last-minute arguments by defense attorneys that earlier comments by Trump had prevented a fair proceeding.

Bergdahl's attorney, Eugene Fidell, argued Bergdahl -- who faces a possible life sentence -- should be spared prison time because Trump had unlawfully influenced the proceedings.

"[Trump's] statements clearly called for Sergeant Bergdahl to be severely punished," Fidell argued in the Fort Bragg, North Carolina, court.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump called Bergdahl "a no-good traitor who should have been executed."

Nance, who allowed attorneys to question him about the impact of Trump's comments, said he did not believe he was influenced by the remarks and that he had no "doubt whatsoever that I can be fair and impartial in the sentencing."

He indicated he would issue a written ruling later on defense attorneys' request to have the case thrown out over Trump's comments.

Sentencing was scheduled to resume on October 25.

Berghahl will be sentenced on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy after pleading guilty on October 16.

Bergdahl, 31, was held captive for five years by allies of the Taliban after he left his military post in Afghanistan.

In a deal with his captors, the Obama administration in 2014 agreed to release five Taliban prisoners from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in exchange for Bergdahl's release.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on October 24 visited Pakistan amid fraying bilateral relations prompted by Washington's accusation that Islamabad is allegedly providing "safe havens" for Taliban militants.

Tillerson was greeted by a mid-level Pakistani Foreign Office official and the U.S. Ambassador David Hale at the military airport in Rawalpindi, just south of the capital, Islamabad -- a welcome without the pomp that usually accompanies high-level visits.

The trip was the first to Pakistan by a senior official of U.S. President Donald Trump's administration and comes months after Trump angrily accused Islamabad of harboring "agents of chaos" who could attack U.S.-led NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan.

It followed an unannounced stop in Afghanistan on October 23, where Tillerson reiterated America's commitment to the country and warned that Washington has made "very specific requests" to Pakistan over the militancy.

In Pakistan, Tillerson met with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, the powerful military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and other top officials.

Tillerson "reiterated President Trump's message that Pakistan must increase its efforts to eradicate militants and terrorists operating within the country," a statement from the U.S. Embassy said October 24.

Tillerson also voiced his appreciation to Pakistan for the sacrifices it has made in fighting militancy and for its help in securing the release of a U.S.-Canadian family held captive by the Taliban for five years.

"We are committed in the war against terror. We have produced results. And we are looking forward to moving ahead with the U.S. and building a tremendous relationship," Abbasi replied, according to a pool report.

Tillerson left Pakistan for India in the evening, less than four hours after his arrival.

Relations between uneasy allies United States and Pakistan have frayed in recent years, with Washington accusing Islamabad of tolerating and even helping Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network militants who stage attacks in Afghanistan. Pakistan denies doing so.

Relations have deteriorated even more dramatically since Trump took office in January.

Trump has vowed to get tough with Pakistan unless it changed its behavior, with U.S. officials threatening further reductions in aid and contemplating targeted sanctions against Pakistani officials.

As one of 16 "Non-NATO Major Allies," Pakistan benefits from billions of dollars in aid and has access to advanced U.S. military technology banned from other countries.

With reporting by Reuters and AFP
He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. The van was traveling along I-75 near Flint, Michigan. He had a 5-year-old son. He was a good man and a good father, his fiancee Aimee Cagle told to media. Kyle Anger, 17, and four 15-year-olds Alexander Miller, Mark Sekelsky, Mikaydyn Payne and Trevor Gray from Michigan have been charged as adults with second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit second-degree murder and malicious destruction of property.



Kenneth with his son

By their action, more than a dozen rocks were allegedly thrown from a Michigan overpass, striking multiple moving vehicles, including a van that included the victim. After throwing the rock that killed White, the teens left the overpass and went to a McDonalds to eat. They could spend the rest of their life in prison. Its not a prank, its second-degree murder, said the prosecutor. The teens will be formally arraigned in court on Tuesday. Authorities said four other cars were struck with large rocks. No other injuries were reported.
South Bend sparks two multi-million-dollar projects with city money

Plans for the Indiana Dinosaur Museum, led by South Bend Chocolate Co. owner Mark Tarner, and a 69-unit apartment complex near Notre Dame will both move forward.
Tabby's Star

A bizarre cosmic object known as "Tabby's star" exhibits strange dips in brightness, and scientists can't seem to figure out exactly why.



The star  also known as Boyajian's star or KIC 8462852  is located 1,500 light-years from Earth. It has generated quite a bit of intrigue and speculation since 2015, when data from NASA's Kepler space telescope revealed that the star had an irregular cycle of brightness. In fact, data from 2011 and 2013 showed that the star dimmed by as much as 22 percent for days at a time. "This [dimming] behavior was not something we were looking for or had trained our algorithms to find," Tabetha Boyajian, an assistant professor of astrophysics at Louisiana State University who led the team that first detected the star's fluctuations, said in a statement from NASA.



Scientists have tried to explain the star's weird behavior with hypotheses ranging from swarms of comets to alien megastructures. Here's a rundown of NASA's possible explanations.

Surrounded by dust

NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter

Recent studies have shown that the unusual dips in the object's brightness are likely caused by dust surrounding the star. New data from NASA's Spitzer and Swift space telescopes revealed that the star's dimming was more pronounced in ultraviolet than infrared light, suggesting that any particles surrounding the star could not be any larger than a dust grain (which infrared radiation can penetrate). Otherwise, the dimming would appear uniform across all wavelengths, astronomers have said.

Ringed planet & asteroid clusters

NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter

Another study has suggested that a ringed planet and clusters of asteroids orbit the star, causing the strange dimming behavior. In fact, monitoring a star's changing brightness as seen from Earth is a common technique (called the transit method) for detecting exoplanets. In theory, when a planet passes in front of its parent star, observers on Earth would see a temporary dip in brightness.



However, scientists have said that the dips in brightness seen from Tabby's star are far too substantial to be caused by an orbiting planet.

Ravenous star

NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter

One other possible explanation for the dramatic change in brightness is that Tabby's star is tearing apart and swallowing a planet. A similar behavior has been seen in some stars that have given birth to Earth-like rocky planets only to devour them later.



Scientists have developed a method for detecting planet-eating stars using their chemical signature. When a rocky planet plunges into a star, it leaves traces of particular elements, which absorb light in different ways. By looking at the wavelengths of light or spectra of a star, scientists can determine the abundance of certain elements that star contains and determine whether it gobbled up a planet.

Swarm of comets

NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter

Scientists have hypothesized that the changing brightness of KIC 8462852 could be due to hundreds of comets passing in front of the star. A large swarm of rocky debris orbiting the star could block enough light and cause the unusual dimming.



However, scientists have not found enough evidence to support this idea. In fact, if a storm of comets were pelting Tabby's star, NASA's Spitzer telescope would likely be able to detect some infrared radiation emitted by the dust and debris. But no excess infrared radiation has been found to date, scientists say.

Triple-star system

NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter

Many explanations have focused on some sort of large object (possibly a planet) orbiting the star. The Kepler space telescope was designed to look for changes in brightness around stars, as this type of behavior often indicates that an exoplanet may be crossing the face of its star, like a mini-eclipse.



However, a planet alone would cause only a small, but observable, decrease in brightness. Instead, scientists have proposed that a larger, star-size object could orbit Tabby's star, causing the dramatic dips in brightness. Multistar systems have been found in the universe  but if this were the case for Tabby's star, its orbiting companion star would exert an obvious gravitational force, and scientists have found no evidence of that to date.

Stellar Burn-Out

NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter

Aside from the irregular patterns of long-term dimming, Tabby's star is a normal F-type star  slightly larger and hotter than Earth's sun  that is fusing hydrogen into helium in its core. Eventually, when the star runs out of hydrogen, it will fuse helium and other heavier elements until it runs out of fuel altogether.



However, scientists have found evidence suggesting that the star is nowhere near the end of its life; rather, KIC 8462852 is at an age where it should be gradually brightening, not growing fainter.

Magnetic Activity

Since the drastic changes in brightness at Tabby's star are considered far too substantial to be caused by planets or dust crossing the star's face, scientists decided to focus on the internal workings of the star, rather than possible structures in its surroundings. One study suggested that the strange dimming could be the result of avalanche-like magnetic activity within the star.



A star's magnetic field can undergo a sudden, major shift. In fact, once every 11 years, the sun's magnetic field reverses its polarity at the peak of the star's solar cycle. A similar situation could explain the fluctuations in light from Tabby's star. However, data shows that the star has dimmed over the course of a century, making avalanche-like activity an unlikely source of such progressive darkening, scientists have said.

Instrument glitch

NASA/Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter

One simple explanation for the irregularities in this particular star would be a glitch in the Kepler space telescope. However, scientists have ruled out this possibility, because data from the probe is the same, regardless of which of the telescope's detectors were observing the star, according to a statement from NASA.



Furthermore, "the enormous drops in brightness were already visible in every single pixel attributed to this star in the Kepler images. Usually, all those pixels need to be added together and the total brightness of a star measured in order to detect a change; if any pixels belonging to another star are mistakenly included, this can create a false positive. That was clearly not the case here," NASA officials said in the statement.

Alien Megastructure

Stephen McNally, UC Berkeley

Possibly the most exciting idea surrounding Tabby's star is that the strange dips in brightness are the result of a Dyson sphere  a massive, hypothetical structure built by an advanced alien civilization to collect as much energy from its star as it can. However, using new data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Swift mission, scientists have ruled out the presence of an alien "megastructure" around KIC 8462852. Instead, it is now believed that any objects surrounding the star would be no bigger than a grain of dust.



So, which NASA hypothesis do you think best explains the weird dimming observed from Tabby's star? Share your thoughts here in our comments section below. You can also follow the investigation and get updates online with the hashtag #TabbysStar.



Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+.
NASA is looking to make changes to the design of the WFIRST mission to reduce its estimated cost from $3.6 to $3.2 billion, while retaining its 2.4-meter main telescope.

WASHINGTON  The head of NASA's science directorate has requested modifications to the design of its next flagship astrophysics mission based on the recommendations of an independent review.

The proposed changes to the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission are intended to reduce the spacecraft's projected cost by at least $400 million and address issues about the technical maturity and risk of some elements of the space observatory while the mission is still in its earliest phases of development.

In an Oct. 19 memo to Chris Scolese, director of the Goddard Space Flight Center, which hosts the WFIRST program, NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Zurbuchen said he was acting to make changes to the WFIRST program based on recommendations from the WFIRST Independent External Technical/Management/Cost Review, or WIETR. NASA carried out that review this summer based on a recommendation from a 2016 report by the National Academies, which worried that potential cost growth in WFIRST could affect the balance of other astrophysics missions funded by the agency. [Video: How NASA Will Use WFIRST Space Telescope]

"This report is as thorough and thoughtful as we hoped," Zurbuchen said in a statement. "We are taking the report's findings and recommendations very seriously as we think about the future of this exciting mission."

In the memo, Zurbuchen directed Scolese to make a number of changes to the design of WFIRST, including cost reductions to both its main "widefield" instrument as well as a separate coronagraph instrument. Those reductions are intended to bring the mission's estimated total cost down from its latest estimate of $3.6 billion to an earlier target of $3.2 billion.

"I am directing the Goddard Space Flight Center to study modifying the current WFIRST design, the design that was reviewed by the WIETR, to reduce cost and complexity sufficient to have a cost estimate consistent with the $3.2B cost target set at the beginning of Phase A," Zurbuchen wrote in the memo.

In addition to seeking cost reductions from the two instruments, Zurbuchen said that the coronagraph instrument should be treated as a "technology demonstration" instrument. Zurbuchen noted in the memo that the WIETR report concluded incorporating that advanced instrument, designed to block light from individual stars to detect planets and debris disks orbiting them, "has been one of the mission system design and programmatic drivers" that "is certain to present risks to the primary mission" as development continues.

The independent review also raised questions about the risk classification of the mission. WFIRST is considered a "Class B" risk mission by NASA, which means it is high priority but only medium to high cost and with a medium mission lifetime. That is less stringent than the Class A assignments usually given to "strategically important missions with comparable levels of investment and risks," Zurbuchen wrote.

The review, the memo noted, suggested NASA add more engineering development and spare hardware, as well as additional analysis, "to provide a more robust program" than its existing Class B risk classification. It also called for a "top-to-bottom cost-benefit assessment to balance scope, complexity, and the available resources" for WFIRST.

Zurbuchen, in his memo, requested that the review be completed in time for a system requirements review and mission design review scheduled for February 2018, which will support a review known as Key Decision Point B in March or April 2018. An independent cost review will also be carried out by this review to confirm that the revised WFIRST design fits into the $3.2 billion cost estimate.

That revised design will continue to make use of a 2.4-meter telescope, one of two obtained by NASA from the National Reconnaissance Office in 2012. That telescope, much larger than the 1.3-meter telescope originally proposed for WFIRST when astronomers identified the mission as its top priority flagship mission in the 2010 decadal survey, was intended to reduce costs while improving the scientific performance of the mission.

Zurbuchen, though, left open the possibility of revisiting that decision should this latest redesign fall short. "If the result of this study is the conclusion that WIFRST cannot be developed using the current 2.4m telescope architecture within the $3.2B cost target," he wrote, "I will direct a follow-on study of a WFIRST mission consistent with the architecture described by the Decadal Survey."

NASA, while releasing the Zurbuchen memo responding to the WIETR report, did not release the report itself. Zurbuchen and the two co-chairs of the WIETR panel, Orlando Figueroa and Peter Michelson, are scheduled to discuss the report at an Oct. 25 meeting of the Space Studies Board's Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics in Irvine, California.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
The Dawn spacecraft has received a second extended mission that will ensure it spends the rest of its life at the dwarf planet Ceres.

NASA officials have decided that the Dawn spacecraft will spend its last days studying the dwarf planet Ceres. Rather than move on to another target for its final hurrah, Dawn will remain at Ceres until it runs out of fuel, which should happen around the middle of 2018.

The decision grants Dawn a second extended mission, during which the spacecraft will dip down to an altitude of just 120 miles (200 kilometers) above the surface of Ceres, according to a statement from NASA. This will be the closest that the probe has ever come to Ceres, having previously reached a low altitude of 240 miles (385 km).

The mission will continue until Dawn uses up the last of its hydrazine fuel, which is used to change the spacecraft's orientation. Dawn is expected to continue operating "until the second half of 2018," according to the statement, but the exact date will depend on what activities the mission team decides to execute. [Dwarf Planet Ceres, the Solar System's Largest Asteroid]

"How quickly we will use the hydrazine will depend on details of the observations that we have not yet designed, so we do not have a precise time frame," Marc Rayman, the Dawn chief engineer and mission director, told Space.com in an email. "When the last of the hydrazine is exhausted, the spacecraft will no longer be able to control its orientation, so it won't be able to point its solar arrays at the sun, its sensors at Ceres, nor its antenna at Earth. That will be the end of Dawn's operational life."

Dawn began orbiting Ceres in March 2015. It is the only spacecraft to have orbited two celestial bodies, having looped around the large asteroid Vesta from 2011 to 2012. In 2016, NASA was considering a proposal to send Dawn to a third target in the asteroid belt.

The northern hemisphere on the sunlit side of dwarf planet Ceres, seen by NASA's Dawn spacecraft in April 2015. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

These giant asteroids have remained largely unchanged since the birth of the early solar system (though they are not entirely inactive), and studying them can help scientists better understand the evolution of the solar system and the conditions in which the planets formed, according to NASA.

One of Dawn's primary avenues of investigation is to understand how much water is present on Ceres. The close flyby will allow one of the probe's instruments, called the Gamma Ray and Neutron Detector (GRaND), to produce a more detailed map of chemical elements on the surface of Ceres, including water, according to the statement.

Ceres is approaching its closest position to the sun (called perihelion), and its close proximity to the star could help scientists test two hypotheses, according to the statement. The first is that water ice in Ceres' surface is warmed up and turned into vapor, which helps to create the thin atmosphere that was detected around the dwarf planet prior to Dawn's arrival, but which occasionally disappears.

The second hypothesis is that water vapor contributing to the atmosphere could also be created by energetic particles (other than photons) "interacting with ice in Ceres' shallow surface," officials said in the statement. Ground-based telescopes will also keep an eye on Ceres as it approaches its April 2018 perihelion, to assist in these investigations.

"I am really excited about the extension, and so is the entire team," Rayman said. "Dawn has already revealed Ceres to be an exotic world of ice, rock and salt, with organic materials and other chemical constituents, and I am looking forward to more discoveries about its composition and its geology. After all, the benefit of having the capability to orbit a distant destination, rather than being limited to a brief glimpse during a flyby, is that we can linger to scrutinize it and uncover even more of the secrets it holds. I don't know what we'll find, and that is part of the process of science and the thrill of exploration."

When Dawn finally runs out of fuel, it will remain in orbit around Ceres for at least 50 years. NASA's Planetary Protection Office required the mission planners to guarantee that the probe would not crash into Ceres' surface less than 20 years after arriving at the dwarf planet, according to the agency. This decision helps to ensure that any microscopic life-forms that piggybacked on Dawn from Earth will be killed by the space environment, and will not invade any potentially habitable environments on Ceres.

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Paul Weitz, seen here aboard the Skylab orbital workshop in 1973, died on Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, at the age of 85.

Paul Weitz, a former NASA astronaut who lived on board Skylab before commanding the maiden mission of space shuttle Challenger, died on Monday (Oct. 23). He was 85.

Weitz died peacefully at his home in Flagstaff, Arizona, as reported by his daughter, by way of a family friend. He had been diagnosed with Myelodysplastic Syndromes, or MDS, a form of cancer.

A member of NASA's fifth group of astronauts selected in April 1966, Weitz served on the first crew to live and work aboard an American space station. He flew as pilot on the Skylab 2 (SL-2) mission in 1973, helping to save the orbital workshop, while also setting a record for the longest single spaceflight, 28 days, at the time. [Skylab: How NASA's First Space Station Worked (Infographic)]

Ten years later, Weitz led the STS-6 crew on the first flight of Challenger, NASA's second space shuttle orbiter to fly.

In total, Weitz logged 33 days, one hour and 13 minutes in space, including 2 hours and 16 minutes on spacewalks.

Weitz' first launch, on May 25, 1973, was aboard an Apollo command module atop a Saturn IB rocket from Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Originally scheduled to lift off the day after Skylab entered orbit, the station was damaged during launch, leading to an 11-day delay while a plan was quickly devised for Weitz, Charles "Pete" Conrad and Joseph Kerwin to repair their home on orbit.

"We had to get the temperatures under control if we were going to salvage Skylab at all," said Weitz in a 2000 NASA oral history.

During launch, the Skylab workshop's micrometeorite and thermal shield as well as one of its two large solar arrays were torn off, and the remaining array did not deploy.

After arriving at Skylab, Weitz conducted a "stand-up EVA"  his head and body protruding out the Apollo command module's hatch while Kerwin held him by the ankles from inside  in an attempt to free the stuck array.

"We got down near the end of the solar array and I got a hold of it with the shepherd's crook," Weitz recalled. "But what we really hadn't thought about was, in heaving on it, trying to break the thing free, what I was doing, in effect, I was pulling the command module in toward the workshop."

Having no success with that approach, Weitz switched to using a pruning shears-like tool to try to cut a strap holding the array to the side of the station.

"[I] just didn't have enough muscle with that thing, because it was about 6 or 8 feet [1.8 to 2.4 meters] out ahead of me and I was pulling on a line to try to do it. We just couldn't get it through," he said.

Ultimately, Weitz rejoined his crewmates in the command module, leaving the array to be freed on a later spacewalk by Conrad and Kerwin. And, after several failed attempts docking to Skylab, the three men entered the space station and deployed a collapsible parasol through a small airlock to act as a sunshade.

"It turned out [that] when we deployed the parasol, it had four extendable booms on it to put it out in a rectangular shape," Weitz described. "Well, one of them didn't extend all the way. It's kind of like the old-timey legs on a tripod, where they 'click, click, click' and they pulled out [and] one of them didn't extend that last segment."

"So, it didn't cover the whole side of the workshop ... you could tell once the temperatures got down, once we [had] moved into the workshop, you could tell by feel. You could outline exactly where the shadow from the parasol was," he recalled.

Despite the problems, including having to work with limited power until the stuck array was freed during a spacewalk halfway through the mission, Weitz, Conrad and Kerwin completed almost 400 hours of science experiments and captured 29,000 images of the sun. Weitz and Conrad also conducted a one hour and 36 minute spacewalk on June 19, 1973, to retrieve film from an exterior telescope.

Weitz and his two Skylab crewmates returned to Earth on June 22, 1973, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near their recovery ship, the USS Ticonderoga, after circling the planet 404 times.

NASA portrait of STS-6 commander Paul Weitz. (Image credit: NASA)

Weitz' second spaceflight came a decade after he returned from Skylab. Assigned command of the sixth space shuttle mission, Weitz led the first flight of OV-099, "Challenger," on a 5 day, 23 minute and 42 second flight in April 1983.

Weitz' STS-6 crew, including pilot Karol "Bo" Bobko and mission specialists Story Musgrave and Donald Peterson, were tasked with deploying the first satellite in the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). The flight also included the first EVA, or spacewalk, from a space shuttle, performed by Musgrave and Peterson.

"It really was an evaluation flight, pretty much a test flight, obviously not the first one, but, nevertheless, it still was," said Weitz. "We flew the first flight on Challenger, so it was a vehicle shakedown flight also."

After 80 orbits and 2.1 million miles (3.4 million kilometers) traveled, Weitz landed Challenger on the concrete runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California on April 9, 1983.

Paul Joseph "PJ" Weitz was born on July 25, 1932 in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Weitz earned a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 1954 and received his master's in aeronautical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, in 1964.

He was commissioned as an ensign through the NROTC program at Pennsylvania State and served for one year at sea aboard a destroyer before going into flight training and being awarded his wings in September 1956. He served in various naval squadrons, logging more than 7,700 hours flying time  6,400 hours in jet aircraft, until his selection among the 19 astronauts chosen by NASA in 1966.

Prior to his Skylab flight, Weitz served on the support crew for Apollo 12, the second moon landing mission. Though it was canceled well before assignments were made, Weitz may have been considered for command module pilot on the Apollo 20 moon mission, based on the crew rotation schedule at the time.

Weitz served as deputy chief of NASA's Astronaut Office from 1981 to 1987, deputy director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston from 1987 through 1993, and the acting center director from 1993 to 1994. He was serving as the center's acting associate director when he departed NASA in 1994.

Weitz retired from the U.S. Navy in 1976 with the rank of Captain.

Weitz was a recipient of the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. He was honored alongside his Skylab crewmates in 1973 with the Collier Trophy by the National Aeronautic Association and in 1975 with the Goddard Memorial Trophy by the National Space Club.

Weitz was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in October 1997.

Weitz married the former Suzanne M. Berry, with whom he had two children, Matt and Cindy.

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The European Space Agency is studying ways to build a "moon village" using 3D printing. Heres an artists illustration of one concept.

Human settlement of the moon may go through Hawaii.

Earlier this month, an International MoonBase Summit (IMS) brought together representatives from academia, government and the private sector to help lay the groundwork for a base on the lunar surface.

"Because of its geography, geology and culture, Hawaii is the perfect place to build a MoonBase prototype," said Henk Rogers, an entrepreneur based in Hawaii and the organizer of the IMS. [Lunar Colony: How to Build a Moonbase in Images]

Key issues

Working groups at the Summit, which was held from Oct. 1 through Oct. 5 on Hawaii's Big Island, focused on addressing key issues in the areas of:

commercialization and business dynamics for economic success;

organizational structure and public-private partnership models;

design and architectural principles;

cultural and philosophical guidelines for planetary settlement;

geological/geographic considerations for location of the International MoonBase (IMB) and its terrestrial analog;

surface systems to build and operate the IMB; and

public engagement and educational opportunities.

Summit decisions

Meeting participants included Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin. During his keynote address, Aldrin encouraged the development of the International MoonBase as a valuable gateway to Mars.

Three key decisions resulting from the summit are:

The International MoonBase will be located close to one of the moons poles to enable access to the abundant lunar resources, such as water ice, that exist there;

The terrestrial analog for the International MoonBase will be located on the Big Island, taking advantage of the many moonlike features of the islands environment;

A self-sustaining model will fund this "Mahina Lani Simulator."

A master plan, scheduled to be drafted in the spring of 2018, will also include a large number of issues that will be the subject of trade studies in the months ahead.

Furthermore, a 3D model of the International MoonBase is in development; that model will provide the public with a high-fidelity look at the layout of the base.

For more information on the project, visit: https://moonbasealliance.com/

Leonard David is author of "Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet," published by National Geographic. The book is a companion to the National Geographic Channel series "Mars." A longtime writer for Space.com, David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. This version of this story was posted on Space.com.
Comets are icy bodies of frozen gases, rocks and dust left over from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. They orbit the sun in highly elliptical orbits that can take hundreds of thousands of years to complete.

As a comet approaches the sun, it heats up very quickly causing solid ice to turn directly into gas via a process called sublimation, according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute (opens in new tab). The gas contains water vapor, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and other trace substances, and is eventually swept into the distinctive comet tail.

Scientists sometimes call comets dirty snowballs or snowy dirtballs, depending on whether they contain more ice material or rocky debris according to NASA (opens in new tab).

Related: Amazing photos of Comet NEOWISE from Earth and space (opens in new tab)

According to NASA, as of September 2021, the current number of known comets (opens in new tab) is 3,743. Though billions more are thought to be orbiting the sun beyond Neptune (opens in new tab) in the Kuiper Belt (opens in new tab) and the distant Oort cloud (opens in new tab) far beyond Pluto (opens in new tab).

Occasionally, a comet streaks through the inner solar system; some do so regularly, some only once every few centuries. Many people have never seen a comet, but those who have won't easily forget the celestial show.

What is a comet made of?

A comet primarily consists of a nucleus, coma, hydrogen envelope, dust and plasma tails. Scientists analyze these components to learn about the size and location of these icy bodies, according to ESA (opens in new tab).

Nucleus

The nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko imaged by Rosetta's OSIRIS narrow-angle camera from a distance of 177 miles (285 km). (Image credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA)

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The nucleus is the solid core of a comet consisting of frozen molecules including water, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia as well as other inorganic and organic molecules  dust. According to ESA the nucleus of a comet is usually around 10 kilometers across or less (opens in new tab).

Coma

As a comet gets closer to the sun, the ice on the surface of the nucleus begins turning into gas, forming a cloud around the comet known as the coma. According to science website howstuffworks.com (opens in new tab) the coma is often 1,000 times larger than the nucleus.

Hydrogen envelope

Surrounding the coma is a hydrogen envelope that can be up to 6.2 million miles (10 million kilometers) long and is made from hydrogen atoms according to ESA (opens in new tab). As the comet gets closer to the sun, the hydrogen envelope gets bigger (opens in new tab).

Tails

Comet C/1995 01 Hale-Bopp captured on March 14, 1997. In this image you can see the dust tail streaking out to the right whist the blue ion tail points away from the sun. (Image credit: ESO/E. Slawik)

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There are two main types of comet tails, dust and gas. Comet tails are shaped by sunlight and the solar wind and always point away from the sun according to Swinburne University of Technology (opens in new tab).

According to NASA, comet tails get longer as a comet approaches the sun and can end up millions of miles long (opens in new tab). The dust tail is formed when solar wind pushes small particles in the coma into an elongated curved path. Whereas the ion tail is formed from electrically charged molecules of gas.

Comet tails may spray planets, as was the case in 2013 (opens in new tab) with Comet Siding Spring's close encounter with Mars.

We can see a number of comets with the naked eye when they pass close to the sun because their comas and tails reflect sunlight or even glow because of energy they absorb from the sun. However, most comets are too small or too faint to be seen without a telescope.

Comets leave a trail of debris behind them that can lead to meteor showers on Earth. For instance, the Perseid meteor shower (opens in new tab) occurs every year between August 9 and 13 when Earth passes through the orbit of Comet Swift-Tuttle (opens in new tab).

Comet orbits

Astronomers classify comets based on the durations of their orbits around the sun. Short-period comets need roughly 200 years or less to complete one orbit, long-period comets take more than 200 years, and single-apparition comets are not bound to the sun (opens in new tab), on orbits that take them out of the solar system, according to NASA. Recently, scientists have also discovered comets in the main asteroid belt  these main-belt comets might be a key source of water for the inner terrestrial planets.

Scientists think short-period comets, also known as periodic comets (opens in new tab), originate from a disk-shaped band of icy objects known as the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune's orbit, with gravitational interactions with the outer planets dragging these bodies inward, where they become active comets. Long-period comets are thought to come from the nearly spherical Oort Cloud even further out, which get slung inward by the gravitational pull of passing stars. In 2017 (opens in new tab), scientists found there may be seven times more big long-period comets than previously thought.

Some comets, called sun-grazers, smash right into the sun or get so close that they break up and evaporate. Some researchers (opens in new tab) are also concerned (opens in new tab) that comets may pose a threat to Earth (opens in new tab) as well.

Comet McNaught (Comet C/2006 P1) behind Mount Paranal in the Chilean Atacama desert. This image was captured in January 2007. Comet McNaught was the brightest comet seen since 1965 and, in some places, it was even visible to the naked eye during the day! (Image credit: S. Deiries/ESO)

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Naming a comet

Comets are generally named after their discoverer. For example, comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (opens in new tab) got its name because it was the ninth short-periodic comet discovered by Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy. Spacecraft have proven very effective at spotting comets as well, so the names of many comets incorporate the names of missions such as SOHO or WISE.

Comets through history

In antiquity, comets inspired both awe and alarm, "hairy stars" resembling fiery swords that appeared unpredictably in the sky. Often, comets seemed to be omens of doom  the most ancient known mythology, the Babylonian "Epic of Gilgamesh (opens in new tab)," described fire, brimstone, and flood with the arrival of a comet, and the Roman emperor Nero (opens in new tab) saved himself from the "curse of the comet" by having all possible successors to his throne executed. This fear was not just limited to the distant past  in 1910, people in Chicago sealed their windows to protect themselves from what they thought was the comet's poisonous tail.

For centuries, scientists thought comets traveled in the Earth's atmosphere (opens in new tab), but in 1577, observations made by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (opens in new tab) revealed they actually traveled far beyond the moon. Isaac Newton (opens in new tab) later discovered that comets move in elliptical, oval-shaped orbits around the sun, and correctly predicted that they could return again and again.

Chinese astronomers kept extensive records on comets for centuries, including observations of Halley's Comet (opens in new tab) going back to at least 240 B.C., historic annals that have proven valuable resources for later astronomers.

Comet missions

A number of missions have ventured to comets.

NASA's Deep Impact (opens in new tab) collided an impactor into Comet Tempel 1 (opens in new tab) in 2005 and recorded the dramatic explosion that revealed the interior composition and structure of the nucleus. The mission also included a flyby of Comet Hartley 2 and the remote sensing of Comet Garradd during an extended mission.

Comet Tempel 1 67 seconds after NASA's Deep Impact's impactor spacecraft crashed into the comet. The image was captured by a high-resolution camera on the mission's flyby craft. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD)

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In 2009, NASA announced that samples returned from Comet Wild 2 during the Stardust mission (opens in new tab) revealed a building block of life  glycine. According to NASA, it was the first time an amino acid was found in a comet (opens in new tab).

In 2014, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft (opens in new tab) entered orbit around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (opens in new tab). The Philae lander touched down on Nov 12, 2014. Among the Rosetta mission's many discoveries was the first detection of organic molecules on the surface of a comet (opens in new tab); a strange song from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (opens in new tab); the possibilities that the comet's odd shape may be due to it spinning apart (opens in new tab), or resulting from two comets fusing together (opens in new tab); and the fact that comets may possess hard, crispy outsides and cold but soft insides, just like fried ice cream. On Sept. 30, 2016 (opens in new tab), Rosetta intentionally crash-landed on the comet, ending its mission.

June 19, 2019, ESA selected the Comet Interceptor (opens in new tab) mission as the last "fast" or F-class mission. The new mission will intercept an as-yet-undiscovered comet as it enters the inner solar system. The mission consists of three spacecraft that will capture snapshots of the comet from different angles, creating a 3D profile of the object and characterizing its surface, composition, shape and structure. Comet interceptor is due to launch (opens in new tab) in 2028 according to ESA.

Famous comets

Halley's Comet (opens in new tab) is likely the most famous comet in the world, even depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry that chronicled the Battle of Hastings of 1066. It becomes visible to the naked eye about every 75 years when it nears the sun. When Halley's Comet zoomed near Earth in 1986, five spacecraft flew past it and gathered unprecedented details, coming close enough to study its nucleus, which is normally concealed by the comet's coma.

The roughly potato-shaped, 9-mile-long (15 km) comet contains equal parts ice and dust, with some 80% of the ice made of water and about 15% of it consisting of frozen carbon monoxide. Researchers believe other comets are chemically similar to Halley's Comet. The nucleus of Halley's Comet was unexpectedly extremely dark black  its surface, and perhaps those of most others, is apparently covered with a black crust of dust over most of the ice, and it only releases gas when holes in this crust expose ice to the sun.

The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided spectacularly with Jupiter (opens in new tab) in 1994, with the giant planet's gravitational pull ripping the comet apart for at least 21 visible impacts (opens in new tab). The largest collision created a fireball that rose about 1,800 miles (3,000 km) above the Jovian cloud tops as well as a giant dark spot more than 7,460 miles (12,000 km) across about the size of the Earth  and was estimated to have exploded with the force of 6,000 gigatons of TNT.

Scattered fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 were captured on May 17, 1994 by the Hubble Space Telescope. The fragments impacted Jupiter in July 1994. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/H. Weaver and E. Smith (STSci))

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A relatively recent, highly visible comet was Hale-Bopp (opens in new tab), which came within 122 million miles (197 million km) of Earth in 1997. Its unusually large nucleus gave off a great deal of dust and gas  estimated at roughly 18 to 25 miles (30 to 40 km) across  appeared bright to the naked eye.

Comet ISON (opens in new tab) was expected to give a spectacular show in 2013. However, the sun-grazer did not survive its close encounter with the sun and was destroyed in December that year.

In 2021, scientists found what could be the largest comet ever seen (opens in new tab). Comet C/2014 UN271 or Bernardinelli-Bernstein after its discoverers, University of Pennsylvania graduate student Pedro Bernardinelli and astronomer Gary Bernstein, was officially designated a comet (opens in new tab) on June 23. Astronomers estimate this icy body has a diameter of 62 miles to 124 miles (100 km to 200 km), making it about 10 times wider than a typical comet. The comet will make its closest approach to our planet in 2031 but will remain at quite a distance even then.

Additional reporting by Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com contributor.
Chahid El Hafed, October 19, 2017 (SPS) - The Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to Western Sahara, Horst Kohler, held a working session with members of the Saharawi negotiating delegation at the guest house in Chahid El Hafed.

"This is an initial meeting with Kohler since the beginning of his tenure as UNSG Personal Envoy to Western Sahara," said Head of the Negotiating Delegation, Jatri Aduh. "He (Personal Envoy) expressed his full and complete readiness to resolve matters and the existing problems as a result of Moroccan intransigence to international legitimacy."

The Saharawi people are prepared to cooperate with the United Nations, its Secretary-General and its Personal Envoy to end the illegal occupation of Western Sahara on the basis of international legitimacy and the relevant UN and African resolutions, adds the head of the negotiating delegation

Jatri Aduh stressed that the Sahrawi issue is decolonization issue, whose fate has not yet been determined, calling for creating conditions for resuming negotiations. This, according to the head of the negotiating team, is done by stopping the continuous violations of human rights committed by the Moroccan state as well as the systematic looting of the Sagarwi natural resources.

"The Saharawi people are enduring enough and it is time to exert real pressure on Morocco to comply with international legitimacy," said the Sahrawi official. "Everyone is convinced that Morocco is the one hindering the settlement efforts." SPS

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F or some years now, Trevor Finn at Pendragon has been amusing himself  and me, in fairness  with abuse of my idiotic approach to car ownership.

Im a dinosaur, he says, a financial ignoramus. He might have a point, but then again I havent just issued a profit warning which saw my shares crash 20%, so perhaps we can call it quits.

As boss of Britains biggest car dealer, Finn wants people to take a punt on a new motor, not to persist with the old jalopy.

My foolish car deal is this: every three or four years, I trade in my old BMW for a new (old) BMW. I hand over the old old BMW and several thousand pounds in cash. Then I drive away the new (old) BMW.

This leaves me with: some new (old) wheels. And zero obligation to the seller. Finn thinks I should see a car like a mobile phone, as something you never own, that you rent by the month in permanent hock to Apple or Samsung.

He quotes J.Paul Getty approvingly: If it appreciates, buy it. If it depreciates, lease it.

It is only, he says, my northern penny-pinching background that leaves me unable to grasp this wisdom.

Yesterday, Pendragon said profits would be 15 million lower than previously promised and warned of a glut of supply. Too many car-makers are trying to flog too much kit to consumers who are suddenly nervous.

Those cars of Finns are now depreciating even before theyve arrived on his forecourts. Too many new cars for sale means old cars for sale are suddenly cheaper too  this idiot market is heading my way.

What happens if a new generation of folk decide they can manage without a car? Finn mocks the idea. In central London, no one needs a car, he concedes. By the time you get to Hull, the centre of the universe, everyone needs a car. Thats going to be less and less true over time, probably, which does make you worry for our giant car manufacturing sector (and to shed a tear for dealers like Pendragon).

Finn says that car ownership in the UK has grown every year since the war. But that growth will stop at some point, how about right now?

Some numbers not in Pendragons statement are these: UK car dealerships have 27.3 billion of unsold stock, just sitting around, up from 23.6 billion a year ago, nearly 18% of total car turnover, according to accountants UHY Hacker Young.

From the outside, the car market has looked like an accident waiting to happen for years. Russ Mould at AJ Bell says: It will now be interesting to see if we get a re-run of the fall-out that followed the collapse of the sub-prime housing market in the car industry, with consumers simply handing back the keys. He adds: The situation is the same in the USA, where car volume growth peaked several years ago.

The falling value of the cars at some point will make the banks nervous, and they might withdraw financing not just to consumers but to companies such as Pendragon. Regulators will start to fish around for signs of bad behaviour in the car dealer sector (this may not be difficult to find).

Then youve got a mis-selling scandal on your hands, perhaps to rival PPI.

Whod have thought that cars sold on credit cards would turn out to be a bad idea? Everyone apart from banks and car companies.
T he Palace of Westminster is so familiar to us as the home of Parliament that we barely give a thought to what an extraordinary building it is. It wasnt always that way.

When the old St Stephens Chapel, home to the House of Commons, burnt down in 1834, there was a huge row about what should replace it.

The King at the time tried to palm off Buckingham Palace on the homeless parliamentarians. Others suggested building a neo-classical temple away from the river. Instead, the politicians decided to plump for an enormous, outlandish, neo-Gothic complex of towers, turrets and cloisters.

Architect Charles Barrys radical design cost a fortune, took decades to build and was mired in controversy.

Today it is the much-loved symbol of our nation, our most famous landmark, a destination for countless school visits, the backdrop to a million tourist selfies and also the daily home of a complex modern democracy.

And it is slowly falling apart. Literally. A piece of masonry crashed into a parked car there the other day. The spaghetti of pipes and cables in the basement is a fire hazard. The heating bill is astronomical. The incredible Pugin interiors are decaying.

The leaders of the Houses of Commons and Lords are now setting out the latest options for a complete repair.

That is welcome, though it is frustrating that, after years of consideration, they still havent decided whether its sensible for MPs to decamp entirely during the work  so it can be done quickly  or remain in parts of the building while its done around them.

The truth is that with a hung Parliament, and with some MPs intent on grandstanding, the Government cant risk having its chosen option shot down.

So theyll take another year to think about it and let the MPs decide. Thats the reality of a parliamentary democracy.

Another reality is that with such a big, messy, historic building, any option is going to cost many billions of pounds.

The cheap shot is to say: spend the money on the NHS instead. But we only have our NHS, and raise the regular funds to support it from taxpayers, because we have a democracy.

So make a decision, accept it is going to cost billions of pounds and give that democracy a home fit for purpose.

Terror czar is wrong

The point of having an independent reviewer of terrorism legislation is that they are free to say uncomfortable things. That doesnt mean we have to agree with them.

The current reviewer, Max Hill QC, says today that the Government would be quite wrong to bring in new laws that make the preaching of extremism illegal.

We do not, and should not, criminalise thought without action or preparation for action, he will tell a human rights group tonight.

Of course, our law and our police should go after those who seek to commit acts of terror. But to target only the potential Islamist suicide bomber or white supremacist murderer, and not those who inspired them to kill, is a mistake that has already cost innocent lives.

We can defend free speech while denying a home for hateful, violence-inspiring ideology.

Mr Hill may be independent but on this he is wrong.

Never again

London's new Holocaust memorial in Westminster will be in David Adjayes striking design, 23 bronze panel-fins representing the countries where the Nazis destroyed Jewish communities.

Its a great choice.

Mr Adjaye wants his memorial to be a living space, including a Hall of Testimonies where visitors listen to survivors stories.

This Holocaust memorial will be both witness to the most terrible evil and a way to help ensure it is never repeated.
D ramatist David Greig has been a prolific writer of startling, humane plays, from The Events, looking at how the aftermath of a massacre impacts on a community, to supernatural tale The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart. And he's an extremely busy man too - since last year he's been artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, and now he has two shows opening in London: his adaptation of The Lorax is returning to the Old Vic, and his version of The Suppliant Women will be at the Young Vic next month.

What was the first play to make you want to write plays?

I didnt really want to write plays, as such. I started out making and devising work with friends at university. My writing grew accidentally out of that. But just as I was beginning to get my foothold in writing I saw Shining Souls by Chris Hannan at The Traverse in Edinburgh. It was lyrical, poetical, chaotic, magical, sentimental, and funny. That was the play that made me proud of the idea of being a writer. I wanted to make plays like that.

Buy tickets for The Lorax with Evening Standard Tickets

What was your background to becoming a playwright?

I joined Edinburgh Youth Theatre aged 15 and I immediately fell in love with actors with some specific actors but also with actors generally; actors as an idea. Actors are the most exciting, interesting, sexy, glamorous people. When youre with them you never know whats going to happen next. And making plays was more fun than anything else I had ever done. But I was a terrible actor. So, I thought, how can I carry on doing this? I did a drama degree at Bristol University. I directed work, devised work, did sound and lighting but eventually writing found me. It was a process of elimination.

Whats the hardest play youve ever written?

The Events was pretty hard. The subject matter was so sad. I felt a moral responsibility not to exploit or cheapen the experience of survivors of the type of event the play describes. It was grim to spend so much time in close proximity to evil. Fortunately, a lot of the writing was done during the tech rehearsals for Charlie and The Chocolate Factory so whenever I raised my head from the laptop there was music or song or silliness or delight happening so that helped.

Which brought you the most joy?

Midsummer! It was written as a laugh with my friend Gordon Macintrye of the band Ballboy. We wanted to do the sort of rom-com indie musical we would love to see ourselves. We made a rule. 'Only if its fun. If its no fun, dont carry on doing it.' Then we got Cora Bisset and Matthew Pidgeon on board and the sense of fun continued. When we made it we thought wed play to a few hundred people in Edinburgh in Traverse 2. In the end the show has played in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Korea it lives on and on. Many of the people who have been involved in making Midsummer, in our version or in others, end up getting married. Theres a good few Midsummer babies. Pure joy.

Which playwrights have influenced you the most?

Michel Vinaver and Douglas Maxwell.

What is your favourite line or scene from any play?

Ooogh thats so hard! My favourite line is from Crave by Sarah Kane: Death is my boyfriend, and hes moving in. My favourite scene is in Charlie Sonata by Douglas Maxwell when the alcoholic Charlie Sonata teaches his god-daughter the rules of drinking and promises to be her guardian angel. I cried every single time I saw it. I still cry thinking about it. I also love in The Winters Tale when Hermione comes back to life.

Whats been the biggest surprise to you since youve had your writing performed by actors?

I never cease to be surprised. Its a perennial joy to see what actors bring to a line. I love it when they defend my own work from me. When I want to cut something, or change a line that feels wrong and the actor defends it. Thats when the character comes alive. The character is no longer part of you. A new creature is born with a will of its own. I love that.

Whats been your biggest setback as a writer?

I dont think Ive had anything I would count as a set-back. Ive been very lucky. Ive made a living and fed my kids for 25 years. Thats all I could ever have wanted. It hurts when a play is badly reviewed, or it closes for lack of audience, but you get over it. Writing itself kills me, though. Each new play feels like its my last. For some reason I cant write without the feeling that this is it. Its finally all over. Ive been found out. The process of writing is emotionally very costly. So maybe I am my own biggest set-back as a writer.

And the hardest lesson youve had to learn?

You cant fake it. Whether it's a big musical, or tiny monologue, a new play or an adaptation, you have to strip naked when you write. Its a bit sordid. But thats that. You have to tell the truth and if you dont, it will be s***.

What do you think is the best thing about theatre? And the worst?

The best: the rehearsal room. The worst: reading your own reviews.

Whats your best piece of advice for writers who are starting out?

First apply seat of pants to chair. If you can get to The End of any play you will have catapulted yourself from being one of the many millions of people who might write a play into being one of the very few who have written a play. If you can get to The End it is very likely that something will come of it even if its just a meeting, a reading, contact with a theatre. Something good will happen.

Are there any themes and stories you find yourself re-visiting with your plays?

... loneliness, bringing people back from the dead, hotel rooms, the devil being sad but sexy, shamanic healing...

Are you on Twitter? Do you find it a help or a hindrance as a writer?

I am on Twitter and I love it but I find it a deep hindrance as a writer. Little hits of dopamine take energy and focus away from the big hit of finishing a play. Twitter stops me daydreaming. I can just flick on my phone and my brain is occupied. No idle time staring out of a window, or in a supermarket queue so ideas find it harder to emerge. Also, Twitter is a very snarky, judgemental place. Its like hanging round with all the cool bitchy kids at school and then - with them all around you - suggesting we can take out the Lego and make a spaceship. Its just not the right environment. Im trying to take time away from Twitter. Having said that, as a resource for humans I love it. Its been wonderful for me in many ways. But no, its as bad for my mental health as smoking was to my physical. Mind you, I loved smoking. Still dream of it.

How did you write your new play?

Very quickly and in rhyming couplets!

How do you spend opening night?

I never dress up for opening night. Thats a superstition since I was a baby writer. Every time Ive dressed up the reviews have been poor. So I always wear the same clothes as Ive been wearing during rehearsal. Big glass of brandy. Watch play. Hold my wifes hand all the way through the show.

Whats the best play youve seen this year?

The Whip Hand by Douglas Maxwell.

Whats your favourite place to watch theatre in London?

Got to be the Old Vic. Its glamorous. Its historic. Its got lovely bars. It looks like how a proper theatre should look.

What other art forms do you love when youre not in a theatre?

Poetry is my secret vice. I also like stand up comedy.

If the Prime Minister said they were abolishing the theatre tomorrow, what would you do?

No doubt you would find me up in the hills with my grandfather's old flint-lock, writing propaganda plays for the resistance, and sabotaging railway lines.

Dr Seusss The Lorax opens at the Old Vic on 24 October with previews from 15 October; oldvictheatre.com
D ay of the Dead is around the corner, just after Halloween. Although it is a traditional Mexican festivity, it has gained popularity around the world due to its beautiful bright colours and creative face paint and costumes.

Day of the Dead is a time for families to honour the lives of loved ones who have passed away through reflection and celebration.

Here's all you need to know about Day of the Dead.

When is Day of the Dead?

Day of the Dead-themed costumes have made their way into Halloween celebrations around the world / Reuters

Traditionally festivities begin on October 31 and run until November 2. Over this time, it is believed the gates of heaven open and allow the spirits of deceased ancestors to reunite with their families for 24 hours.

The festival is a three-day celebration of the deceased, combining indigenous Aztec rituals with Catholicism.

Day of the Dead acknowledges death as a natural part of the human experience, believing that the dead would be insulted by mourning or sadness.

On October 31, it is believed that the spirits of deceased children return to earth. On November 1, commonly referred to as All Saints Day, it is believed that deceased adults come back to their families for a day.

The last day of the holiday is November 2. On the final day, families visit cemeteries to decorate the graves of their relatives. There are usually parties and celebrations to mark the occasion.

What does Dia de los Muertos mean?

The tradition skull face paint should not be bloody or scary, but rather festive / Anita Baca/AP

Dia de los Muertos literally means Day of the Dead.

Other names associated with the festival are Dia de los Inocentes, which translates to Day of the Innocents, and Dia de los Angelitos, which means Day of the Little Angels.

Why is it celebrated at the same time as Halloween?

Day of the Dead celebrations developed among pre-Columbian cultures. The ancient festival, which has been celebrated for more than 3000 years, originally fell on the ninth month of the Aztec calendar, around the beginning of August, and lasted a whole month.

Traditionally the festival celebrated a goddess known as Lady of the Dead. In modern days, La Calavera Catrina has become an icon for the celebrations, after a famous etching by Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada.

In the late 20th century, many Mexicans had altered the holiday to celebrate the dead and moved the celebrations to correspond with Halloween and the Catholic tradition of All Saints Day, celebrated in late October and early November.

The Day of the Dead is a day of celebration rather than mourning of the dead / EPA/Mario Guzman

What happens on Day of the Dead?

Prior to the festival, people create altars to commemorate the deceased. Intricate cloths are placed on the altar, which are then usually decorated with candles, flowers, fruits and snacks such as mole and tamales as well as salt and water, placed to quench the thirst of the souls.

Over the three-day period, families visit the graves of loved ones and bring them gifts. Gifts can range from sombre to humorous. Toys are brought for children, whereas tequila is often left for deceased adults. Families lay flowers on graves, the most common flower used is the Mexican marigold.

Mexican schoolchildren often make a childrens altar to welcome the spirits of dead children back to visit. Alongside this, most family homes and Government offices will have a decorated altar to honour the dead.

Why do Mexicans wear sugar skull face paint and costumes?

The altars for the dead are colourful and celebratory / RBG Kew / Jeff Eden

The origins of the skull motifs often seen around Dia de los Muertos can be traced back to as early as the Aztec civilisations, when they also used skull imagery to honour their dead.

More recently, in the 1910s, Jose Guadalupe Posada created a print of a figure called La Calavera Catrina (Dapper Skull).

The image depicts a woman with a skull for a face and was originally made to mock Mexican upper-class women, who were adopting European traditions.

This style of imagery is now called sugar skulls and has become the most familiar symbol of the Day of the Dead, popularising the skull motif still further.

Today, people paint their faces as calacas and calaveras (skeletons and skulls) and many dress up as Catrina. Skulls made of chocolate and sugar are often given as gifts to the deceased.
F rom an outsiders perspective, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge along with Prince Harry look like a pretty fun bunch to be around.

And while most of us will never get the chance to call them our friends, you could soon call them your employer.

The royal trio are advertising for a senior communications officer according to an official posting on their website.

The communications role will be based at Kensington Palace. You will be expected to work 37.5 hours per week and will be on a fixed term contract, covering maternity leave. So far, so good.

The listing says the role would suit someone who can both reactively and proactively manage the daily news flow to the media, communicating with audiences via traditional, digital and social media. Read: a social media whizz who can also knock out great press releases.

Your role will come with some nifty travel perks, accompanying the royals on their tours like the Duke and Duchess's upcoming tour around Norway and Sweden.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Family Album - In pictures 1 /70 The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Family Album - In pictures Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, (2R) and Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, (L) and their three children Prince Louis of Cambridge (2L), Princess Charlotte of Cambridge (C) and Prince George of Cambridge (R) posing for a photograph at Anmer Hall in Norfolk in the Autumn of 2018 Matt Porteous via AFP/Getty Images Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, in Norfolk, HRH The Duchess of Cambridge Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, in Norfolk, HRH The Duchess of Cambridge Their Royal Highnesses Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge kiss on the balcony at Buckingham Palace on April 29, 2011 in London, England Getty Images Prince George's first birthday AFP/Getty Images The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with their two children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, in a photograph taken late October 2015 at Kensington Palace in London. PA Prince William and Kate Middleton pose for photographs in the State Apartments of St James Palace on November 16, 2010 in London, England. After much speculation, Clarence House today announced the engagement of Prince William to Kate Middleton Getty Images TRH Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge smile following their marriage at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011 in London, England Getty Images Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge drive from Buckingham Palace in a decorated sports car on April 29, 2011 in London, England Getty Images The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge leaving the Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital in London, with their newborn son Prince George of Cambridge on July 23rd, 2013 Jeremy Selwyn Duke and Duchess of Cambridge as they sit with their son Prince George in the garden of the Middleton family home in Bucklebury, Berkshire surrounded by Tilly the retriever (a Middleton family pet), and Lupo the cocker spaniel, the couple's only dog in their first five years of marriage PA Prince George, at Chapel Royal in St James's Palace, ahead of the christening of the then three month-old Prince by the Archbishop of Canterbury PA Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge reacts as their son Prince George of Cambridge bites a small present that was given to him at the enclosure of an Australian animal called a Bilby, which has been named after the young Prince, during a visit to Sydney's Taronga Zoo on April 20, 2014 in Sydney, Australia Getty Images Prince George sits for his official Christmas picture in a courtyard at Kensington Palace in late November of 2014 in London, England HRH The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge depart the Lindo Wing with their newborn daughter at St Mary's Hospital on May 2, 2015 in London, England John Stillwell/PA Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge depart the Lindo Wing with their newborn daughter at St Mary's Hospital on May 2, 2015 in London, England Getty Images Prince George looking at his sister Princess Charlotte as she was pushed to church by the Duchess of Cambridge in a vintage 1950s Millson pram once used by the Queen Elizabeth II for her children, during Princess Charlotte's christening at St Mary Magdalene in Sandringham, Norfolk PA Prince George and Princess Charlotte. The photograph was taken by the Duchess in mid-May at Anmer Hall in Norfolk HRH The Duchess of Cambridge Princess Charlotte of Cambridge is pushed in her silver cross pram as she leaves the Church of St Mary Magdalene on the Sandringham Estate after her Christening on July 5, 2015 in King's Lynn, England Getty Images Prince George gives his little sister Princess Charlotte a kiss HRH The Duchess of Cambridge Catherine Duchess of Cambridge and Prince George attend the Gigaset Charity Polo Match with Prince George of Cambridge at Beaufort Polo Club on June 14, 2015 in Tetbury, England Getty Images Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte of Cambridge arrive at the Church of St Mary Magdalene on the Sandringham Estate for the Christening of Princess Charlotte of Cambridge on July 5, 2015 in King's Lynn, England Getty Images Prince George on his first day at the Westacre Montessori nursery school near Sandringham HRH The Duchess of Cambridge Prince George of Cambridge looks at his sister Princess Charlotte of Cambridge in her pram as he leaves the Church of St Mary Magdalene on the Sandringham Estate for the Christening of Princess Charlotte of Cambridge Getty Images Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, with their children, Princess Charlotte and Prince George, enjoy a short private skiing break on March 3, 2016 in the French Alps, France Getty Images Princess Charlotte of Cambridge plays with a teddy as she is seen at Anmer Hall HRH The Duchess of Cambridge Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge holds her daughter Princess Charlotte and strokes her son, Prince George's head as they stand on the balcony of Buckingham Palace to watch a fly-past of aircrafts by the Royal Air Force, in London on June 11, 2016. AFP/Getty Images The Duke of Edinburgh, The Duchess of Cambridge holding Princess Charlotte, Prince George and The Duke of Cambridge on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in 2017 PA A family picture at Pippa Middleton's wedding. Getty Images The Duchess of Cambridge with their children Prince George and Princess Charlotte at a children's party for Military families at Government House in Victoria during the Royal Tour of Canada PA Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte leave from Victoria Harbour to board a sea-plane on the final day of their Royal Tour of Canada on October 1, 2016 in Victoria, Canada Getty Images William, The Duke of Cambridge, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Prince George, and Princess Charlotte visit Canada Mark Large/Daily Mail Prince William, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Prince George and Princess Charlotte arrive at a children's party at Government House in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Reuters Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, his wife Catherine, The Duchess of Cambridge, Prince George and Princess Charlotte arrive at Tegel airport in Berlin, Germany, July 19, 2017 Reuters The Duchess of Cambridge speaks to Princess Charlotte and Prince George after the wedding of Pippa Middleton and James Matthews at St Mark's Church Getty Images Prince George (centre) stands with other page boys and flower girls following the wedding of Pippa Middleton and James Matthews, as they leave St Mark's church in Englefield, Berkshire PA Prince George who celebrates his fourth birthday Getty Images Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Prince George of Cambridge, Princess Charlotte of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge depart from Hamburg airport on the last day of their official visit to Poland and Germany on July 21, 2017 in Hamburg, Germany Getty Images Prince William, Duke of Cambridge (L) and Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge aka Kate Middleton show their newly-born son, their third child, Britain's Prince Louis of Cambridge to the media outside the Lindo Wing at St Mary's Hospital AFP/Getty Images Prince William, Duke of Cambridge carries his newly-born son, Britain's Prince Louis of Cambridge from the Lindo Wing at St Mary's Hospital Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images Prince William arrives at Lindo wing at St Mary's Hospital with Prince George and Princess Charlotte to meet new baby brother. Jeremy Selwyn Prince William, Duke of Cambridge arrives with Prince George and Princess Charlotte at the Lindo Wing where Kate had just given birth to Prince Louis in London Prince George and Princess Charlotte at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle PA Princess Charlotte of Cambridge and Britain's Prince George of Cambridge hold hands with their father, Britain's Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, as Britain's Prince Louis of Cambridge is carried by Britain's Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge on their arrival for his christening service at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace, London on July 9, 2018 AFP/Getty Images Princess Charlotte playing as her father, the Duke of Cambridge, takes part in the Maserati Royal Charity Polo Trophy at the Beaufort Polo Club, Downfarm House, Westonbirt, Tetbury PA Princess Anne, Princess Royal, Princess Beatrice, Lady Louise Windsor, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, Queen Elizabeth II, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Princess Charlotte of Cambridge, Savannah Phillips, Prince George of Cambridge and Isla Phillips watch the flypast on the balcony of Buckingham Palace during Trooping The Colour on June 9, 2018 in London Getty Images The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge after attending the St Patrick's Day parade at Cavalry Barracks in Hounslow, where they presented shamrock to officers and guardsmen of 1st Battalion the Irish Guards PA The Duchess of Cambridge (L) smiles as she and Britain's Prince William, Duke of Cambridge arrrive for the Easter Mattins Service at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle AFP/Getty Images Prince Louis pictured in the garden of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's Norfolk home earlier this month HRH The Duchess of Cambridge An emerged photo of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's 2019 Christmas card The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and their children, Prince Louis, Princess Charlotte and Prince George attend a special pantomime performance at Londons Palladium Theatre, hosted by The National Lottery, to thank key workers and their families for their efforts throughout the pandemic PA The Duchess of Cambridge with Prince Louis and Princess Charlotte attend a special pantomime performance at Londons Palladium Theatre, hosted by The National Lottery, to thank key workers and their families for their efforts throughout the pandemic PA Prince Louis, photographed by his mother, the Duchess of Cambridge, at Kensington Palace PA Media

It won't all be travel and playing spot Meghan Markle however as you will also need to draft and circulate press lines, organise and give press briefings and handle after-hours media enquiries.

The successful applicant will need to have extensive communications, marketing and media experience with a relevant degree or equivalent qualification. They need to be a strong decision maker, with a good sense of integrity and judgement while also exercising caution (so probably don't go around posting unapproved candid snaps of the royals at home - as much as we would love a Keeping Up With The Windsors).

The young royals have been pioneers of social media in the royal family, having launched their shared Kensington Royal Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts which break the Internet every time they post a photo of Prince George or Princess Charlotte.

YouTube has also been their social media platform of choice often releasing videos in aid of charity projects they are working on.

This isnt the first job opening from the royals over the past year. Earlier this year the Royal Household were looking for a cushion and curtain maker for Buckingham Palace, Prince Charles advertised for an assistant private secretary and the Duchess looked for a new private secretary in March.

You can apply here, but act fast. Applications close on October 26.
A rescued bear has undergone major surgery in order to remove its oversized tongue.

The bear, whose name is Nyan htoo, had a huge amount of swelling on his tongue which caused it to balloon out of its mouth and drag along the floor.

Weighing 3kg (6.5lb), the tongue posed a huge problem for the bear as he was unable to eat and was physically weighed down by the disfiguration.

Nyan htoo had to undergo a four-hour operation to remove half of his tongue tissue in order to improve his quality of life.

Vet surgeons operating on the animal. (University of Edinburgh ) / University of Edinburgh

He was rescued by monks as a cub from Burmese traffickers who illegally sell bears in China.

After noticing that the cubs tongue was abnormally large, the monks contacted a local vet who had previously studied in Sheffield.

The vet contacted an expert in the field, Heather Bacon from the University of Edinburghs Royal School of Veterinary Studies. Ms Bacon and her team travelled to a monastery rescue centre in Myanmar earlier this month to tend to the bear.

Post op: A happier looking Nyan htoo. / University of Edinburgh

Nyan htoo is an Asiatic Black Bear more commonly referred to as a Moon Bear due to the unique marking on its chest that resembles a crescent moon.

At only two years old, it is unclear what caused Nyan htoos tongue to swell. Some vets have suggested that it may have been caused by a mosquito-transmitted infection called elephantiasis.

The parasitic infection has never been known to affect bears and Nyan htoo may be the first case of the parasite affecting animals.

The bear had previously undergone surgery last year to relieve the swelling, however the operation only provided a temporary fix as his tongue began to swell again over time.

However, after his most recent surgery, Nyan htoo is no longer weighed down by his tongue and can go on to live a normal life.

"Now he will be able to eat much more comfortably, sleep in more natural positions and move more freely for the rest of his life," said Caroline Nelson, a veterinary nurse at Animals Asia's bear rescue centre in Vietnam.
T his is the moment a bungling moped burglar was flattened by a falling sheet of glass as he attempted to smash his way into an estate agents.

CCTV footage appears to show the helmeted suspect pull up with an accomplice and use a block to batter through the glass frontage - only for the 130lb window pane to crash down and send him sprawling to the pavement.

The youth picked himself up and snatched a 2,000 iMac computer from the desk but slipped again as he turned to go - before the pair made their escape.

Matt Friedlander, 37, who runs the Flats and Houses estate agent in Stamford Hill, north London, with his brother Josh, said: The muppets come along with a soft rubber block and they hit the window so hard the frame came off and the whole lot fell down.

The burglar takes a breeze block to the shop's window

He must have got such a shock. If he didnt have a helmet on, he would have been knocked out for sure.

His ears were probably ringing after that. Hes such a mug.

Mr Friedlander said had raced from his home in Hendon after being woken at about 2.20am yesterday morning by an automatic call from his security system.

But the entire pane of heavy glass smashes down on top of his helmet

He added: These windows are very hard to smash. We just had to lift it up and pop it back in again.

The cost of re-fitting the window pane in the early hours of the morning had come to 270, Mr Friedlander said.

But he added: Im not worried about it  the fact is its funny. For 270, it made us all laugh, so its worth it. I laugh every time I see it.

The raider was left sprawled on the floor beside his alleged accomplice

Im sure he was dizzy, thats why he was dancing around the office. I dont think theyre going to come back.

:: Two males, age 27 and 17, were appearing before magistrates in Harringay today charged with burglary and aggravated vehicle taking, police said.
T he scale of people viewing child abuse images online in the UK is horrifying, one of Britains most senior police chiefs has said.

Speaking at the Commons Home Affairs Committee on the future of policing, West Midlands Police chief constable Dave Thompson said a national discussion on the issue was needed.

He said the problem was about "much more than law enforcement" as he was asked about whether naming and shaming offenders was a bigger deterrent than a straightforward prosecution.

He said: "I am staggered by what I see in terms of the operations the force carries out on the peer-to-peer sharing of images and more sensitive covert policing techniques we carry out - the amount of men in this country who appear to show an active interest in this area is horrifying and the scale of it, I think, takes my breath away."

"There is a really big discussion I think, as a society, about how we deal with this that's much more than law enforcement.

"Of course it makes us all feel deeply uncomfortable to think that people who have that involvement in those activities should in any shape or form escape punishment, but the scale of it is just absolutely huge."

The chief constable was speaking at a meeting of the Home Affairs Committee inquiry into policing for the future, where Tory MP Tim Loughton asked about suggestions that there should be alternative prosecutions for those guilty of viewing indecent images, with those in denial unlikely to be receptive to treatment.

Mr Thompson said: "Everything as a police officer and a parent says that we need to do something urgently to deter people in this area.

"I think if people are in denial that they've got a problem, then we need to be really careful that treatment might not work, but I think the broader issue that's being raised is this is a massive challenge, I think, that goes far beyond policing.

"The area of online activity is just breathtaking ... there's a big conversation that needs to be had about it.

"Seeing prosecution as the answer to this is not going to be an answer on its own."

Speaking at the committee, Britains most senior counter terrorism officer Mark Rowley said social media giants must be proactive in raising the alarm over potentially violent extremists using their platforms.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley suggested companies may spot someone sharing bomb-making instructions months before authorities become aware.

Warning that in some parts of the country individuals are being radicalised at an unprecedented rate through internet propaganda, he said major organisations could do more to tackle the problem.

Mr Rowley's remarks come days after the head of MI5 declared that technology companies have an "ethical responsibility" to help confront the unprecedented terrorist threat.

Concerns over the availability of terror-related material such as execution videos and bomb-making instructions on the internet have intensified after five attacks hit Britain this year.

Asked whether companies were doing enough to tackle extremist content, Mr Rowley told MPs: "They could do more.

"The big social media companies, I'm absolutely sure they have no desire for terrorism literature to be on their sites.

"They are absolutely committed to trying to deal with that problem."

He highlighted links between police and banks, saying there is a "lot of willpower" on the part of the financial sector to look for "dirty money and practices" and proactively report them.

Mr Rowley told the Commons Home Affairs committee the relationship with the social media sector is "developing".
A breakthrough stem cell treatment is hoped to help rein in a prescription drug epidemic killing thousands in the United States.

The treatment, for chronic back pain, could bring welcome relief to millions of people suffering from lower back pain.

The injection would also offer a crucial alternative to prescription painkiller opioids, such as oxycodone, hydrocodone or methadone, which are leading to dangerous addiction among many Americans. Earlier this year, doctors warned against the rise of similar opiate painkillers in the UK.

Back pain is a common health issues that affects about 28 million people in the US, and accounts for around half of all opioid painkiller prescriptions there.

The US is currently experiencing an opioid epidemic, with more than 15,000 people dying from overdosing on the prescription painkillers in 2015. Last week, US president Donald Trump said he is due to declare the opioid crisis a national emergency.

Many of these deaths are due to patients becoming hooked on opioids after being prescribed the drugs to relieve lower back pain. Overdoses from prescriptions have increased four times since 1999 in the US.

The stem cell treatment works by injecting a dose of about six milion cells into damaged discs between the spine vertebrae.

The treatment offers a vital alternative to prescription painkillers for people suffering from back pain / Shutterstock

Known as mesenchymal precursor cells, these work to reduce inflammation and help to rebuild damaged tissue.

The research was first conducted successfully in sheep where scientists were able to completely rebuild damaged vertebral discs.

Led by Silbiu Itescu, a team in Melbourne, Australia, then tried the technique in people. MRI scans found that the cells appeared to rebuild damaged discs in people as well.

Mr Itescu said, according to the New Scientist: In 100 patients, weve shown substantial improvements in function and pain relief that last two years or more.

If were successful in [our] larger trial currently under way, we can hopefully keep people away from opioids.

Figures released by the NHS in May showed that prescriptions for addictive opiate painkillers have doubled in the UK in the last decade, with doctors warning the drugs are being handed out too readily.

The new research is specifically focused on treating degenerative disc disease, which is one of the most common causes of lower back pain. The condition occurs when intervertebral discs deteriorate as a normal process of aging.

In the study, an injection of the cells helped around half of those treated to experience no back pain for two years. Some have been without pain for three years.

Preliminary results were presented at the annual meeting of the US Spine Intervention Society in New Orleans, in August. More detail will follow at the Piper Jaffray Healthcare Conference in New York in November.
I S JODIE Kidd the new Bono? The well-heeled fashion model told The Londoner she is so concerned about the welfare of the residents of Dominica, who have been devastated by Hurricane Maria, that she is putting on her own Live Aid -style event in Barbados.

Next year Im going to raise money by doing a concert in my family home in Barbados and try to raise as much money as I possibly can, Kidd, right, told us at a party last week. I wasnt supposed to be here: Ive been doing a lot of aid work in Dominica, transporting medical supplies, blood, tarpaulins. They are still without power, still without water.

Kidd, whose family have owned an estate in Barbados for decades, is worried that time is running out for those in the islands affected by the recent spate of extreme weather. They are still getting very hungry but the press is looking somewhere else now: 95 per cent of Dominicas revenue is exports in coconuts and avocados, and its been obliterated. After that theres nothing coming in.

The festival should be easy to put together: Kidds mother Wendy throws an annual arts event in Barbados, and will be on hand to help. But Kidd has her eye on the man who helped make Live Aid a success. I would love to get Bono, she says.

She must be pretty busy these days. Kidd also owns a pub called The Half Moon in West Sussex and its proving a hit with visitors, even giving Heston Blumenthal a run for his money. A Trip Advisor user said, I valued The Half Moon tasting plate better than I did The Fat Duck, she said, thrilled. Not bad for a new landlady.

Weinstein disappears from Bafta HQ

THE London fightback against Harvey Weinstein and his ilk continues. An eagle-eyed visitor at Baftas headquarters in Piccadilly has noticed that the uber-producer  accused of a long list of cases of sexual harassment  has been stricken from the building. A plaque bearing his name, and that of his brother Bob, could previously be found on a seat in the venues Princess Anne Theatre, next to George Clooneys. It has now disappeared.

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London theatre means business too. A statement released by 19 major organisations, as well as venues such as the Bridge Theatre and Hammersmith Lyric, pays tribute to those speaking out against harassment. It said: We salute the bravery of everyone who calls out this abusive behaviour... We will support you to speak out, and we will hear you when you do. Bravo.

---

Will the legal profession follow suit after news that Amal Clooney has experienced harassment? I know so many women who have big law stories and are afraid to come forward because it would be career suicide, Professor Ellie Margolis tweets. Ive even had friends tell me theyre afraid to retweet the Amal Clooney story for fear of how that would be perceived at their firms.

Quote of the day

They need to make their own Billionaire Phones4U entrepreneur John Caudwell tells a high court he wont leave much money to his children

Too many cooks? Not at The Dorchester

Michelin Stars: Gordon Ramsay and Alain Ducasse (Photo by Dave Benett/Getty Images) / Dave Benett/Getty Images for Ala

LAST night The Londoner joined Gordon Ramsay, Tom Aikens and Raymond Blanc to toast 10 years of Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester. Disproving the suggestion that too many cooks spoil the caviar, we sampled canapes of hand-dived sea scallops and white truffles washed down with cocktails, and mango and passion fruit ice lollies, all prepared by Ducasses executive chef, Jean-Philippe Blondet. Ramsay looked fresh from his recent TV documentary foray into the worldwide cocaine trade, while M Ducasse himself looked very fetching in a white apron. Bon appetit!

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WE headed over to the Dean Street Townhouse for a bite to eat last night, where the terrace was resplendent with TV presenter Caroline Flack. The Londoner was mildly surprised to overhear the topic of her conversation: she was getting stuck into the finer details of the Dubs Amendment, having an in-depth discussion on child refugees with Josie Naughton of Helps Refugees. Thats what you get for eavesdropping.

Ru is the dog for the job

Just for Ru: Edward Enninful poses with a cut-out of his dog Ru (Photo @edward_enninful)

CHOUPETTE, Karl Lagerfelds pampered cat, should be worried: the most influential pet in fashion is set to be unseated by Ru, Vogue editor Edward Enninfuls Boston Terrier.

Since Enninful, right, took up Alexandra Shulmans mantle at Vogue this summer  his forthcoming debut issue is out soon  Ru has been a regular fixture at Vogue House in Hanover Square. He just loves London, Enninful enthused to The Londoner. Hes the love of my life. He comes to the office and I dont see him the whole day  he has so much energy!

Enninful conceded that he is nervous about the world seeing what he does with the publication, especially with his debut cover, saying that everyones going to be looking so closely.

Could Ru take the honour of being the first dog on the cover of Vogue? It could be Ru, Enninful said with a smile. But I dont think he can sit still. Its a dogs life.

Job of the day

The New York Times is looking for a journalist to spend a year exploring the planet. The ideal candidate is a permanent student of life and astute documentarian of the world. Cant we send Trump?

Tweet of the day

THE fact that weve been downgraded from champagne socialists to latte socialists is proof in itself that capitalism is a failure. After taoiseach Leo Varadkar comes up with a new name for his Left-wing critics, @Ciara87C bemoans the new label

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Here come the (Poldark) girls ...

Poldark ladies @_gabriellawilde_

Actresses Heida Reed, Ruby Bentall and Gabriella Wilde are in Cornwall filming series four of the beloved costume drama Poldark. The trio put on their best pouts for an on-set selfie. No sign of Aidan Turner with his top off yet, though, unfortunately.

Follow The Londoner on Twitter and Facebook here
P olice have failed to adequately tackle cases of slavery and human trafficking, sometimes even prosecuting victims, according to a watchdog.

As a result of compound shortcomings such as delays and clear missed signals, those suffering at the hands of slave-masters were not always recognised as victims, inspectors found.

Instead they remained trapped by their traffickers, or were arrested as offenders or illegal immigrants, according to the assessment from HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS).

The news came after the Evening Standard's special investigation into modern slavery spoke to dozens of victims, some of whom had been held by authorities and accused of offences themselves.

Protesters march to highlight the issue of modern slavery / Eleanor Rose

Abigail, who told how she was forced into prostitution after being trafficked from Nigeria, was detained in an immigration centre for three months before being put through the National Referral Mechanism, the Government's system for identifying victims of slavery.

Failings detailed in the report included: a clear tendency to close cases prematurely, sometimes without speaking to victims or witnesses; extensive delays of up to eight months in starting investigations; and a lack of focus on safeguarding all potential victims.

It found that, in one case, a woman was forced to work as a prostitute but no rape offences were recorded despite her telling police of her experience.

In another example, immigration authorities contacted a force about a victim of domestic servitude trafficked into the country by private jet - but no investigation was started to identify suspects or locations of interest.

One woman found at a suspected brothel was arrested on suspicion of immigration offences. After inquiries revealed she was in the UK legally, she was left outside the premises where she was originally detained.

Officers later expressed concern that she may be a victim, but when the address was revisited it was empty, and the woman is still missing.

The report also found there was "variable commitment" among police leaders to tackling human trafficking and modern slavery, which are thought to affect tens of thousands of people in the UK.

Some senior officers openly expressed a reluctance to "turn over the stone" and proactively look for offences in the categories, citing concerns about the "potential level of demand", the report said.

HM Inspector of Constabulary Wendy Williams, who led the probe, said police have a "crucial role" to play in protecting thousands of men, women and children being "degraded and dehumanised" every day.

She said: "Whilst modern slavery cases can be complex and require significant manpower, many of the shortcomings in investigating these cases reflect deficiencies in basic policing practice.

"We found inconsistent, even ineffective, identification of victims and investigations closed prematurely.

"As a result, victims were being left unprotected, leaving perpetrators free to continue to exploit people as commodities."

Frank Field MP, who chaired the evidence review for the landmark Modern Slavery Act of 2015, said it was "impossible to think of a more damning report on police non-activity to defend and free slaves in this country".

He told the Standard: "It runs totally against the instructions that Theresa May gave when Home Secretary, that this was to be a priority area of work."

The NSPCC, which helps child victims of trafficking, said the report "shines a glaring light on how police are failing trafficking victims".

A spokesman said: From recognising that modern slavery is a problem to better co-ordination, it is clear that much needs to be done.

If we are to stamp out trafficking then officers need to look at the children they find in trafficking operations with fresh eyes and see that this is a child protection matter.

These young people are first and foremost victims of abuse and entitled to protection, just like any other child.

The National Police Chiefs Council Lead for Modern Slavery, Chief Constable Shaun Sawyer welcomed the research as "important, but frustrating, as it is out of date".

It was highly complex to parse the victim from the perpetrator in some cases since somebody who begins a victim of slavery can go on to commit crimes, he said.

"The person in front of you can swing between the two," he added.

He said that because the cut-off point for the report, which was the end of March 2017, the "transformation" triggered by a 8.5 million Home Office investment into fighting slavery was not captured in the report.

"There are now 17 dedicated posts in this area that didn't exist at the time," he said, adding that there had been a 218 per cent increase in police investigations into modern slavery in the past year.

Modern slavery and human trafficking can cover wide range of offending, including forced labour, sexual exploitation and domestic servitude.

An official estimate previously suggested there are up to 13,000 potential modern slavery victims in the UK, but last week the anti-slavery commissioner described this figure as "far too modest".

Premises targeted as part of police activity include nail bars, brothels and car washes.
A Labour MP is under investigation by his party after claims emerged that he made a string of sexist and homophobic remarks including calling a constituent an ugly b**** in March.

Senior Labour figures have branded Jared O'Mara's alleged comments "unacceptable" and party leader Jeremy Corbyn faced calls to remove the whip from the MP.

Sheffield bar worker Sophie Evans, 25, earlier told BBC Two's Daily Politics programme that she was abused by the politician in a nightclub in March this year.

Some of his comments "aren't broadcastable", she said, adding: "There were some transphobic slurs in there, but he called me an ugly b****."

Asked what her response was, she said: "I just thought 'wow, he's not a very nice man' and just forgot about it."

A spokeswoman for Labour confirmed the Sheffied Hallam MP is now subject to a probe.

"The party is investigating Jared O'Mara MP in relation to comments and behaviour reported from earlier this year," she said.

Ms Evans's allegation came as OMara sought to cling on to his job on Tuesday over derogatory comments he made online in 2004.

Mr OMara has already apologised and resigned from the women and equalities committee, but the new claim escalated the row as fellow MPs call for his suspension from the Labour Party.

Who is Jared O'Mara?

Ms Evans said of the abuse she allegedly endured: "I knew he was involved in politics but I had no idea at the time that he was running for MP, for Shef Hallam [Sheffield Hallam], which is my constituency."

She went on: "I had no idea that he was so heavily involved in politics.

"I just kind of thought that someone like that couldn't possibly be involved, but clearly I was wrong."

Speaking to the Sun, Ms Evans claimed the MP flipped and told her: I wouldnt touch you with a manky womans c**k you ugly b****.

Revelations of the comments were met with outcry.

Tory MP Iain Stewart said: Jared OMara needs to explain himself as this would seem to destroy any such claim he is a reformed character. Will the Labour Party be investigating these allegations?

Mr OMara has apologised several times for his historic comments. In an interview with Huck magazine released today, the Labour politician said: Its important to take ownership of the things youve done wrong.

"I truly believe that. Thats why Im not hiding, Im not going back to my hotel and switching my phone off. Im dealing with this head-on.

Theres no room for the views I had as a young man in 2017 society, there was not room for those views back then.

Before the latest comments surfaced, a Labour Party spokeswoman said: The comments and language used by Jared OMara are completely unacceptable and have no place in the Labour Party, our politics or our society. The Labour Party condemns the language used."

Labour MPs were said to be standing by him after he delivered a "heartfelt" personal apology to his Parliamentary colleagues.

Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said she would be happy to sit alongside Mr OMara in Parliament because he had apologised and understood his words were wrong.
L abour MP Jared OMara made a fresh apology today for sexist and homophobic remarks as he sought to cling on to his job.

Derogatory comments made by the politician in 2004 were unearthed by blogger Guido Fawkes, and last night led to his resignation from the women and equalities select committee.

In an interview with Huck magazine released today, the Labour politician said: Its important to take ownership of the things youve done wrong,

"I truly believe that. Thats why Im not hiding, Im not going back to my hotel and switching my phone off. Im dealing with this head-on. Theres no room for the views I had as a young man in 2017 society, there was not room for those views back then.

However today the Labour MP, who beat Nick Clegg at the general election in the Sheffield Hallam constituency, faced fresh claims of misogyny.

Sophie Evans, a pub worker from Sheffield, alleged that Mr OMara called her an ugly bitch at a music venue where he was DJ-ing in March this year before he was elected.

Sophie Evans interview on Jared O'Mara MP

A spokesperson for his office said the allegation has been around for some time and he had previously addressed it in a radio interview.

Liberal Democrat MP Christine Jardine said Labour should consider withdrawing the whip from him if he did make the remark.

Tory MP Iain Stewart said: Jared OMara needs to explain himself as this would seem to destroy any such claim he is a reformed character. Will the Labour Party be investigating these allegations?

However, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner said she would be happy to sit alongside Mr OMara in Parliament because he had apologised and understood his words were wrong.
A Government whip sparked a furious backlash today by writing to universities asking for a list of professors lecturing on Brexit and details on what they are teaching.

Staunch Brexiteer Chris Heaton-Harris also requested links to online lectures on Britains departure from the EU. The demands were met with a wave of condemnation from academics. Downing Street swiftly distanced itself from Mr Heaton-Harriss comments, insisting they were made in his role as an MP rather than as a Government representative.

Universities minister Jo Johnson stressed the importance of academic freedom while another MP warned against a witch-hunt. Professor Kevin Featherstone, head of the European Institute at London School of Economics, said: The letter reflects a past of a McCarthyite nature. It smacks of asking, Are you or have you ever been in favour of Remain?

Professor David Green, vice-chancellor of Worcester University, denounced the sinister letter, saying: Here is the first step to the thought police, the political censor and newspeak, naturally justified as the will of the British people.

A pro-Brexit academic criticised Mr Heaton-Harris, who is MP for Daventry and a former MEP. Lee Jones, reader in international politics at Queen Mary University of London, said: It is really troubling that an MP thinks it is within his remit to start poking his nose into university teaching.

Letter from Chris Heaton-Harris MP for Daventry to Vice Chancellor of Worcester University David Green.

Universities are autonomous and politicians have no right to intimidate academics by scrutinising their courses. I have colleagues who are die-hard Remainers. But I know what they teach and it is not propaganda.

Jo Johnson MP / Oli Scarff / Getty Images

In his letter, on House of Commons notepaper, Mr Heaton-Harris wrote to universities: I was wondering if you would be so kind as to supply me with the names of professors at your establishment who are involved in the teaching of European affairs, with particular reference to Brexit. Furthermore, if I could be provided with a copy of the syllabus and links to the online lectures which relate to this area I would be much obliged.

The Prime Ministers spokesman said: My understanding is Chris Heaton-Harris wrote to universities in his capacity as an MP, not as a representative of the Government. Theresa May respected the freedom of universities, the spokesman added.

Mr Johnson tweeted: Academic freedom  which weve just entrenched in statute in Higher Ed & Research Bill 2017!  is core to success + better protected than ever.

Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman Layla Moran said: Conservative Brexiteers know they have lost the intellectual debate and now appear to be engaging in a witch-hunt. Mr Heaton-Harriss office and the Conservative Party did not respond to requests for comment.

Donald Tusk today urged the 27 EU nations to stay united on Brexit talks, warning that division will end in our defeat. Updating MEPs on last weeks Brussels summit, the European Council president threw the ball back into Britains court, saying: It is in fact up to London how this will end: with a good deal, no deal or no Brexit.
S adiq Khans new digital officer today promised to leave the door open to new technologies like drones and driverless cars operating in Londons sky and streets.

Theo Blackwell said he was up for innovative new ideas but suggested they would need proper caveats so they were used appropriately.

The City of London has just allowed drones to film in its airspace for the first time while General Motors plans to become the first company to test self-driving cars in New York.

Mr Blackwell told the Standard: I want to work with boroughs and other public institutions to trial new technology and do them in a way thats right for London.

Youve got to plan for future growth and needs. There are technologies that are being trialled in other parts of the world and we have to leave our door open to how they could be deployed appropriately here.

Sadiq Khans new digital officer Theo Blackwell

However, he added: All that we do will be driven by the needs of Londoners and not by the needs of someone with a product.

The former Labour councillor, who previously worked in the video games industry, denied Transport for Londons decision to revoke the licence of taxi-hailing app Uber was an attack on innovation.

London has 50 tech clusters, life sciences, fintech, loads of start-ups. Tell them that London is not open for innovation, he said.

Its not down to the outcome of the licencing process with one company or another - we have a huge tech sector which is innovating right now.

City Halls digital chief, who admitted he had used Uber in the past, insisted it was important for all new firms to play by the rules. The Mayor is absolutely right on Uber. There are rules. And not all rules are there to be disrupted, he said.

Rules can also create innovation. Once people know where they are, they can then innovate.

Uber is currently appealing against the decision.

Mr Blackwell said he would try to boost broadband speeds across the capital  already lagging behind European counterparts - to cope with the predicted explosion in handheld devices.

He said slow speeds were now a primary concern of boroughs and suggested new technology such as wifi boxes on top of tall buildings and on Londons high streets could help.

My main concern is that the number of devices in the capital will go up by several million at the very least over the next five or six years. We need to plan better, he said.

However, the digital tsar added that there were some areas of excellence, with the capitals broadband infrastructure supporting the growth of 50,000 tech firms.

Mr Blackwell said it was his mission to make London the smartest city in the world, investigating how to use big data to provide better results in areas like air quality, congestion and public services.

However, he said this would be difficult without giving companies and councils greater confidence on cyber-security. A report last week found 80 per cent of London boroughs were vulnerable.

We cant really talk about the smartest city in the world unless were able to help protect the citizen better and help businesses protect themselves better, he said.

Mr Blackwell said that big internet firms like Google had a responsibility to tackle hate crime online, acting faster to take offending posts down.

We cant stand by if people are being stalked or harassed on the internet, he said, before adding that his own strategy for coping with online trolls was dont engage.

He added: What happens online is not any different from what happens in life. The two things should be dealt with the same.

Mr Blackwell warned that access to skilled talent was the number one issue for the tech sector, which employs thousands of EU nationals  and it was crucial for ministers to get a good Brexit deal.

London is the place to be with technology, so why on earth would you want to put up restrictions to people assembling world class teams to create the best products to sell to the world? he said.
T he House of Lords is embroiled in a fresh expenses scandal after it was revealed 17 members claimed 400,000 between them - despite the majority not contributing to debates or submitting questions.

The news comes just weeks after it was revealed 115 lords - a seventh of the entire house - claimed 1.3 million in the past year despite not speaking once in the upper chamber.

Newly released data shows 17 lords pocketed 424,637 in expenses between them in the past year, despite failing to speak, sit on a committee or submit a written question.

The data includes the standard daily attendance allowance of up to 300 per day and travel expenses.

Labour peer Lord Kirkhill claimed the most - 43,896 for the year, closely followed by Scottish Labour Party peer Baroness Adam, who claimed 41,287, the Mirror reported.

Speaking to the newspaper, Alexandra Runswick, director of campaign group Unlock Democracy, said: "The Government tells us we don't have enough money to fund the NHS but we're expected to tolerate people treating Parliament as a subsidised drop-in centre.

"We need fundamental reform so the second chamber is accountable to the people."

A spokesman for the House of Lords said: "Members can claim 300 or 150 for every day they attend the House and undertake parliamentary work. Apart from travel costs, this is the only payment peers receive.

"They are expected to pay for any costs associated with attending the House such as their London accommodation, as well as any staff costs from this.

"One of the principal functions of the House of Lords is to scrutinise and improve legislation. Members do that by voting, sometimes late at night. Voting is a key role of a legislator in any partliament.

"In recent years, votes in the House of Lords have asked the Government think again on issues like cuts to tax credits, stopping adults from smoking in cars with children present, and taking more unaccompanied child refugees fleeing war zones.

"These changes made a real difference to some of the most vulnerable people in society."

The House of Lords was later forced to apologise to one peer, Viscount Colville, after an administration error recorded he had not made any spoken contributions when actually he made 18.

Ed Ollard, Clerk of the Parliaments, said: Due to an error online by the House of Lords, the data used by the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) about Viscount Colville of Cullrosss spoken contributions in the House of Lords in its press release New Lords expenses scandal revealed: 17 Peers claim over 400,000 despite failing to contribute are incorrect.

The ERS press release states that Viscount Colville of Cullross made no spoken contributions in the parliamentary session which ran from 18 May 2016 to 27 April 2017. Viscount Colville of Cullross actually made 18 spoken contributions in the House of Lords during that period.

The incorrect data were published on the House of Lords Hansard website due to an error in the indexing of the speeches which attributed the current (5th) Viscount Colville of Cullrosss spoken contributions to his late father the 4th Viscount Colville of Cullross.

I sincerely apologise to Viscount Colville of Cullross on behalf of the House of Lords Administration for this error and the distress the reporting of this incorrect information has caused.
A Briton who faced three months in a Dubai jail for touching a man's hip in a bar has said "no one should go through what I went through".

Jamie Harron, 27, from Stirling, was set to fly home on Tuesday after being freed at the special order of the emirate's ruler.

He was sentenced to prison for public indecency on Sunday after being arrested in July.

But the charge was dropped and the sentence overturned following an intervention by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum.

Mr Harron said he was "struggling to come to terms with" his sudden release.

In a statement issued through campaign group Detained in Dubai, which had fought for his release, he said: "Yesterday, I faced months in a Dubai prison cell. Today, I was phoned to say I could collect my passport.

"It is hard for my friends to imagine what was going through my head when I was told I would be jailed for months.

"I am struggling to come to terms with being released but will be having dinner with my friends tonight before I leave for good."

The electrician was detained on July 15 during a two-day stopover in Dubai after working in Afghanistan.

He said he was arrested after he touched a businessman's hip to steady himself and avoid spilling a drink as he brushed past him in a crowded bar.

Mr Harron lost his job and has spent 32,000 on legal fees and expenses after police confiscated his passport, leaving him stranded in Dubai.

Prosecutors pursued the case even after his accuser dropped the allegation.

"No one should have to go through what I went through," said Mr Harron. "It's going to take me a while to recover.

"The past few months have been up and down and full of worry for everyone. I am arranging flights back home now and can't wait to see my family."

Radha Stirling, chief executive of Detained in Dubai, described the allegations against Mr Harron as "entirely unwarranted, defamatory, and meritless".

She said: We wish to express our deepest gratitude to Sheikh Mohammed for his personal intervention in this case, and for exonerating Jamie at long last."

But she added Mr Harron's case "highlights the urgent need for judicial reform" in the United Arab Emirates.
F ormer New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has reportedly said that Brexit was "stupidest thing any country has ever done" - apart from electing Donald Trump US president.

The billionaire media mogul told a tech conference in Boston that "maybe I wouldn't have" opened a new European HQ in London if he'd known the UK was going to quit the EU, according to the Guardian.

"My former wife was a Brit, my daughters have British passports, so we love England - it's the father of our country, I suppose," Mr Bloomberg said, according to the newspaper.

"But what they are doing is not good and there is no easy way to get out of it because if they don't pay a penalty, everyone else would drop out.

"So they can't get as good of a deal as they had before."

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Michael Bloomberg attend the opening of Bloomberg Arcade on Tuesday / PA

The 75-year-old reportedly added: "I did say that I thought it was the single stupidest thing any country has ever done, but then we Trumped it."

The series of forthright comments were made two weeks ago, according to the report, and similar comments repeated at an event in France on Monday.

Mr Bloomberg was in London on Tuesday to open the new Europe HQ for his firm, but the remarks appear to suggest he regretted the decision.

Speaking alongside Mayor Sadiq Khan, he took a softer line, saying the firm was "strongly committed to London". The former NY mayor employs 4,000 UK staff and 20,000 globally.

The comments emerged after European Council president Donald Tusk on Tuesday raised the prospect of "no Brexit," saying it's up to the Government to decide whether to proceed with negotiations on leaving the EU.

In a major update to the European Parliament on last week's Brussels summit, Mr Tusk said it was up to Theresa May's Government whether there is a "good deal, no deal or no Brexit" at all.

He said: "It is in fact up to London how this will end: With a good deal, no deal or no Brexit.

"But in each of these scenarios we will protect our common interest only by being together."
A British former assistant to disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has broken a confidentiality agreement to speak out about alleged sexual harassment.

Zelda Perkins said in an interview with the Financial Times, published on Monday, that she wanted to break the non-disclosure agreement she signed in 1998.

Perkins, who worked for Miramax in London, shared a 250,000 payment with another woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted by Weinstein, according to the report.

Ms Perkins, who waived her right to anonymity, said Weinstein had repeatedly sexually harassed her, starting when he asked her to massage him while he was in his underwear.

Producer Harvey Weinstein attends the BFI's London Film Festival in October 2010. / Getty Images

"I want to publicly break my non-disclosure agreement," she told the newspaper, running the risk of legal action against her.

"Unless somebody does this there won't be a debate about how egregious these agreements are and the amount of duress that victims are put under."

Harvey Weinstein: What we know so far

She claims the first time he sexually assaulted her, he had asked her to massage him while he was wearing nothing but his underwear. When she declined, his behaviour continued.

"But this was his behaviour on every occasion I was alone with him," she said. "I often had to wake him up in the hotel in the mornings and he would try to pull me into bed."

Weinstein, who denies allegations of non-consensual sex, has been accused of sexual harassment and abuse by dozens of women since a bombshell investigation published by The New York Times.

The 65-year-old is the subject of criminal investigations in the UK, Los Angeles and New York as well as a civil rights investigation in the US state.

According to his spokesperson, the producer "unequivocally denies" all allegations of non-consensual sex and sexual assault.
A US Republican Senator has announced he will not be running for re-election with a stinging rebuke of President Donald Trump.

Arizona Senator Jeff Flake criticised the "flagrant disregard of truth and decency" that he says is undermining American democracy.

In a speech on the Senate floor, he said he did not enjoy criticising the president but it was a matter of duty and conscience.

The senator has previously been described by Mr Trump as toxic.

President Donald Trump previously called Senator Jeff Flake "toxic" / Getty Images

He told the Senate: "We must never regard as "normal" the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals.

"I have children and grandchildren to answer to, and so, Mr President, I will not be complicit."

He added that the impulse to "threaten and scapegoat" could turn America and the Republican Party into a "fearful, backward looking people".

John McCain, another prominent Republican critic of the Trump administration, paid tribute to Sen Flake.

He tweeted: Thank you to my dear friend @JeffFlake for your honorable service to the state of #Arizona & the nation.

Mr Trump is also embroiled in a row with another Republican Senator, Bob Corker, who has accused the president of lying.
R esidents in a quiet Florida neighbourhood have been warned not to go out alone at night amid fears a serial killer is stalking the streets.

The warning follows the shooting of three people in night-time ambushes over the last weeks in Seminole Heights, Tampa.

At least two of the victims were trying to catch a bus when they were shot, police said.

Police have released an indistinct video of a person wearing a hooded top they think may be the killer.

Benjamin Mitchell, 22, was alone at the bus stop after dark when he was shot on October 9.

The three people - two men and a woman - were shot and killed seemingly at random in the past two weeks.

Monica Hoffa, 32, was walking through the neighbourhood two days later to meet a friend when she was shot.

Anthony Naiboa, 20, was trying to find a bus stop when he was shot on October 19.

Police say they think a single killer is behind all three attacks because they happened so near to each other at roughly the same time in the evening and without any obvious motive.

The Tampa Bay Times reported that police have been escorting children to school bus stops in the morning to keep them safe.

Brian Dugan, the Tampa police departments interim chief has warned people not to go out alone.

Following a residents meeting last night, city mayor Bob Buckhorn said people should turn on their porch lights.

For the men and women in the (Tampa Police Department) this is personal and were not going to stop until we catch this guy

Were not leaving until we catch this guy but we need you to turn those lights on, we need you to tell us what you see.

We have added over 1,000 streetlights in Seminole Heights. Youve seen our men out there. Were not stopping until we catch this guy.

Authorities are offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer or killers.
T he decision-making process of voters who chose Donald Trump and Brexit has been explained in a new study of populist ideologies.

Academics from the universities of Kent, Warsaw and Maryland, conducted the international study to shed light on recent populist successes including the rise of Donald Trump, Brexit and the emergence of Polands Law and Justice Party.

It discovered people are more likely to vote for populist ideologies, ideas that appeal to 'ordinary' citizens, if they feel they are disadvantaged in society.

The team of psychologists and political scientists found "national collective narcissism", or an unrealistic belief in the greatness of a nation, led to support for populist movements.

Collective narcissism was said to increase in response to group feelings of being disadvantaged, especially over long periods of time.

The findings offer a better understanding of populist movements, like Brexit in the UK and Donald Trump rising to power in the US, two major political upheavals which left people around the world reeling.

Voice of youth: thousands took to the streets of London in protest after last years EU referendum result / NurPhoto via Getty Images

In the study, published in the journal Populism as Identity Politics, researchers suggest that a narrative of relative disadvantage, fuelled by populist leaders, might reinforce a defensive and destructive national perspective.

They said that narcissistic beliefs about greatness offer a way to compensate for feelings of being worse off than other groups.

One of the team, Dr Aleksandra Cichocka of the University of Kent's School of Psychology, said that the results may explain why populism is often linked to prejudicial attitudes and behaviours.

Nigel Farage: The champion of Brexit. / AP Photo/ Evan Vucci

The research was carried out across three studies in Kent, UK, Maryland, US and Warsaw, Poland, with the first examining collective narcissism versus conventional national identification using data from Poland in 2014.

In a second study conducted around the EU Referendum in the UK, researchers found that a perception of long-term group disadvantage resulted in a more willingness to adopt populist views reflected in Brexit support. This was driven by national collective narcissism.

In a final study examining support for Donald Trump, researchers understood that feelings that Americans were being disadvantaged relative to immigrants was associated with national collective narcissism, which in turn predicted preference for Trump.

The authors wrote: Populists combine anti-elitism with a conviction that they hold a superior vision of what it means to be a true citizen of their nation. We expected support for populism to be associated with national collective narcissisman unrealistic belief in the greatness of the national group, which should increase in response to perceived in-group disadvantage.

"In Study One, national collective narcissism predicted support for the populist Law and Justice party. In the experimental Study Two, perceived long-term in-group disadvantage led to greater support for Brexit and this relationship was accounted for by national collective narcissism. In Study Three, group relative deprivation predicted support for Donald Trump and this relationship was accounted for by national collective narcissism.

These associations were present even when we controlled for conventional national identification.
E ight prototypes for Donald Trump's controversial wall between the US and Mexico have been installed along the border for testing nine months into his presidency.

Six construction companies bidding for the contract to build the wall have submitted their designs - all of them between 18 and 30 feet high.

The wall was a core pledge during his 2016 election campaign. Trump plans to build a new reinforced barrier along the 2,000 mile frontier.

The firms completed their prototypes with just days to go until their October 26 deadline.

Steel and spikes: Each of the prototypes is different. / REUTERS

Four of the prototypes have been constructed with concrete, while the other four are made from alternative materials.

The models, were installed for testing at a building site on the US-Mexico border spaced around nine metres apart.

Trump insisted the wall would be "beautiful" throughout his campaign run. Reports suggest builders "paid attention to aesthetics" in their bid to win the lucrative Government contract.

The prototypes currently stand around nine feet apart near the Mexico border / Reuters

In November, an unnamed private company will begin a two-month process testing the wall prototypes for weaknesses.

Roy Villareal, a chief agent of US Customs and Borders Protection (CBP), said: "We're going to test them for breachability, for the subterranean aspect.

The eight contenders Solid concrete: Fisher Sand & Gravel Co., based in Arizona, delivered a 30ft tall solid concrete structure for examination. Cost: $365,000 Part -see through: KWR Construction, also based in Arizona, submitted a design made from unidentified material, featuring a see-through lower two-thirds and a thicker top third. Cost: $486,411 Steel mesh and spikes: The Texas Sterling Construction Co. lined the top of its grey concrete project with steel mesh and spikes. Cost: $470,000 Concrete and see-through: The Caddell Construction Co., based in Alabama, submitted a concrete prototype - nicknamed 'the comb' - with a solid top half and see-through bottom half. Cost: $458,103 Thick concrete base: A second construction by the Caddell Co. features a concrete wall with a thicker bottom half. Cost: $344,000 Steel 'radiator style': ELTA North America Inc. submitted a steel wall with a rounded top - resembling a radiator, according to some. Cost: $406,319 Metal: W.G. Yates & Sons, of Philadelphia, submitted both a concrete and non-concrete prototype. This metal version cost $458,103 Concrete: W.G. Yates & Sons, of Philadelphia, submitted both a concrete and non-concrete prototype. This concrete version cost $453,548

"Can we dig under it? Can we cut through it? Can we scale over it?"

Bidding guidelines called for the prototypes to be able to withstand a sustained hour-long attack from a sledgehammer, pickaxe, torch, chisel or power tools.

The wall samples vary between 18 and 30ft. / REUTERS

According to a rendered image released by the CBP, Trump's wall will be a multi-faceted barrier, featuring a concrete stretch facing the US, a transparent non-concrete stretch facing Mexico and a walkway in-between.

At present, there are 654 miles of single-layer fencing on the 1,954 mile border, as well as 51 miles of double and triple-layer fencing.

There has been no indication yet as to how direct a role the president will play in the selection of the wall's design.

Trump has been widely criticised for emboldening nationalist sentiment, using anecdotal and inconsistent evidence to justify the building of the wall.

During his election campaign, the President seized on the case of a Mexican man charged with the murder of a young woman as "yet another example of why we must secure our border immediately".

Questions as to how Trump intends to fund the construction of his wall remain unanswered. He has repeatedly claimed the Mexican government will pay for it, something they have consistently denied.

The eight samples have been put up at a construction site near the US-Mexico border. / REUTERS

The US Congress has also shown little interest in taking on the estimated $21.6 billion price tag thus far. The House of Representatives recently approved a spending bill which included putting $1.6 billion towards building the wall, but the bill stalled in the Senate.

The bill seeks to begin building new sections of the wall and replacing existing ones, building 28 miles of levee wall in the Rio Grande Valley and 14 miles of new wall to replace pre-existing border fences south of San Diego.

The White House has not yet announced a date for selecting their preferred design for the wall.
F orces from the US, South Korea and Japan are staging a missile tracking drill amid fears of an imminent attack from North Korea.

The exercises are being held in waters off the coasts of South Korea and Japan, the South Korean military said in a statement.

Troops are preparing for the launch of a ballistic missile by North Korea, which has been carrying out tests in recent months.

The drill aims to practise detecting and tracking missiles through Aegis combat systems on ships.

It comes as Donald Trump prepares to visit China next month, where he will urge President Xi Jinping to make good on his commitments to pressure North Korea.

Isolating North Korea further over its nuclear and ballistic missile tests is a key goal for Trump on what will be his longest foreign trip to date.

Mr Trump will call on Mr Xi to fully implement U.N. Security Council resolutions against Pyongyang and take other steps to pressure North Korea.
W orld-famous illusionist Uri Geller has claimed the CIA employed him to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Just days before secret documents concerning the shooting are due to be released, the Israeli magician and self-proclaimed psychic said he was hired by a CIA agent in Mexico to find out whether shooter Lee Harvey Oswald had any accomplices.

President Kennedy was murdered in 1963 after being shot in the head by Oswald while riding in a motorcade in Texas. A huge number of official documents were classified top secret and never released to the public, prompting a variety of conspiracy theories.

Incumbent president Donald Trump recently confirmed that he will open around 3,000 "long-blocked" files concerning the murder to the general public.

Now Mr Geller, 70, claims he was drawn into the investigation by the CIA in an attempt to find out if Oswald had any outside backers - such as the KGB or the Mafia - and even met first lady Jackie Kennedy to brief her on his findings.

Lee Harvey Oswald was killed not longer after being charged with Kennedy's murder / AFP/Getty Images

Writing in a Facebook post on Sunday, he said: "The assignment took me in the early 1970s, inter alia, to Mexico City, to the Russian Embassy, where Oswald had travelled shortly before he shot the American president.

"I was able to shed some light on organisations he may have been in contact with, but these did not include any US agencies, [such as] the Mafia or Lyndon Johnson [as some speculate].

"I also met Jackie Kennedy at her apartment in New York...I relayed these findings to her, since she was absolutely determined to discover the truth. She and I stayed in touch, and I still have correspondence from her."

Mr Getty claimed he 'might never be able to reveal' what he discovered / AFP/Getty Images

Mr Geller went on to speculate as to whether or not he will be mentioned in the upcoming information dump. He said that if his name was redacted "[he] will never be able to reveal what [he] discovered because it is quite shocking."

Earlier this year, it was revealed Geller had been the subject of a number of CIA experiments in 1973. The agency sought to establish the validity of his "telepathic" abilities.

President Trump revealed at the weekend that he doesn't plan to block the scheduled release of thousands of top secret files on the assassination.

He wrote in a Saturday morning tweet: "Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK files to be opened."

The National Archives has until Thursday to disclose the remaining files.
B ritish cruise ship passengers on a luxury trip round the Mediterranean woke up to find themselves in the middle of a mission to save a group of stricken migrants lost at sea.

Holidaymakers on the P&O ship Britannia, were alerted by the "man overboard" siren early on Monday morning.

It is understood 10 men, of North African origin, were spotted clinging to a wooden boat 26 miles off the Spanish coast.

They were shortly taken aboard the 143,000-tonne ship before being escorted away by the Spanish authorities.

The ongoing migrant crisis has seen huge numbers of people - close to 1.5 million - attempting to cross land into Europe by boat since 2015.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, one onlooker said: "There was a tiny little boat in the water. We saw a lot of people in it. It was absolutely pitch black.

"The seas were fairly calm but we were completely in the middle of nowhere. The captain said they had a legal and moral duty to help these people but I didn't hear anyone complaining."

The 473 million had journeyed from Southampton earlier this month, setting sail for a tour of Spain, France and Italy.

A P&O spokesman told the Mail: "Working with local authorities, Britannia aided in the search and rescue of a number of migrants off the coast of Almeria.

"They were then handed over to the Spanish authorities."

Spanish authorities say good weather conditions had led to an influx of people attempting to cross the sea in recent weeks. More than 100 migrants were rescued by coastguard officials off the coast of Almeria on Sunday.
C hinese President Xi Jinping was today formally elevated to the status of countrys most powerful ruler since Mao Zedong.

The ruling Communist Party voted to enshrine his name and ideology in its constitution.

The unanimous vote to incorporate Xi Jinping Thought took place at the end of the twice-a-decade Communist Party congress, Chinas most important political meeting.

It sets the stage for the authoritarian leader to tighten his grip over the country while building a stronger military and foreign policy.

The ruling Communist Party voted to enshrine Xi Jinping's name and ideology in its constitution / EPA

The move makes him the most powerful Chinese ruler in decades, and effectively makes any act of opposing him tantamount to an attack on the party itself.

The Chinese people and nation have a great and bright future ahead, Mr Xi told party delegates as the meeting came to a close after they voted to enshrined his ideology of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era.

At this great time, we feel more self-confident and proud. At the same time, we also deeply feel a heavy sense of responsibility, he said.

Previous Chinese Communist Party leaders have had their ideologies incorporated into the partys constitution or thinking - but none, besides founder Mao Zedong, have had their philosophy described as thought, which is at the top of the ideological hierarchy.

In every sense, the Xi Jinping era has begun in earnest, said Zhang Lifan, an independent political commentator in Beijing. Only Maos name was enshrined in the party ideology while he was still alive. Were opening something that hasnt been broached before.

For centuries, Chinese emperors were accorded ritual names which signalled either that they were successors in a dynastic line or the founder of an entirely new dynasty. What Mr Xi accomplished this week was a modern equivalent of the latter, Mr Zhang said.

He wants to join that pantheon of leaders, he said.

Mr Xi has described his concept as central to setting China on the path to becoming a great modern socialist country by the mid 21st-century.

At the centre of his vision is a ruling party that serves as the vanguard for everything from defending national security to providing moral guidance to ordinary Chinese.

Other analysts say Mr Xi still lacks the broad popular support of the Chinese public that Mao enjoyed.

This (elevation) is a result of the partys political system and not of the sincere support of the peoples hearts, political analyst Zhang Ming said. If he can achieve that, he would become Mao.
T he sweater is a must when winter settles in. Be it a more traditional knitwear pullover, a warming polo neck, or a more casual sweatshirt, its an item thatll keep you warm and stylish for adventures at home, at work or in the outdoors.

Weve compiled our top pick of sweaters to suit a range of budgets, styles and intended uses this winter.

Best jumpers and sweatshirts for men

Filson Crew Neck Guide Sweater

Totally bombproof and super warm - this substantial sweater is made for hard repeated use. Made from a tight 100 per cent merino wool knit its quite generous in size and has a real weight and chunky feel.

You know immediately this is super warm and durable, and wont pile or show signs of wear easily. The pattern is simple and no nonsense, but exceptional build quality and materials. Itll keep you very warm, and has some natural water repellency too. If youre looking for something soft and cuddly, this isnt for you, but if you want outstanding quality, durability and warmth, this is for you.

295 | Filson | Buy it now

Belstaff Marine Roll Neck

A real classic, this great looking jumper is made from a high quality wool that feels really nice and soft on your skin (it wont irritate your neck) and has a nice height to the roll neck too - not too high or tight.

Its really well cut, not too baggy or tight, and has a really nice weight to it. With subtle pattern changes so torso and back has a mini squares pattern, to the arms with linear ribbing. Yes, its certainly not cheap but its a very well made jumper thatll no doubt give you years - probably decades - of service.

325 | Belstaff | Buy it now

Penfield Boylston Graphic Zip Neck Sweatshirt

A really comfortable casual item for winter with a generous high zip neck and nice weight 100 per cent cotton. It has a relaxed feel to it, featuring two pockets on the front and drawcord around the hem to allow a snug and draft free fit as well as customise length.

85 | Penfield | Buy it now

ASOS DESIGN lambswool jumper

At this price, you cant go wrong with this simple wardrobe round-neck staple. Its a really well fitted lambswool sweater that will keep you warm around and about town, with a nice cut - not overly tight or too generous either.

35 | ASOS | Buy it now

Charles Tyrwhitt Zip Neck Pure Cashmere Jumper

This is a very versatile choice thatll work in almost any day to day situation, perfectly suited to both work and casual use. Made from high quality cashmere, it is super soft yet still provides a nice level of warmth, and its a more relaxed fit too whilst still gripping around the waits and cuffs Youre getting a very high quality item at a very fair price.

139.95 | Charles Tyrwhitt | Buy it now

Ralph Lauren Cable-knitted Cashmere Jumper

If youre looking to splash out and treat yourself to something special, this cable-knit sweater is an absolute classic. Youll be wrapped up in sumptuously soft cashmere with understated elegance - theres no embroidered Polo logo on the chest. It has a relatively thin and light feel to it yet is surprisingly warm, and unlike many other winter knits, you certainly wont feel overwhelmed or swamped.

389 | Ralph Lauren | Buy it now

Alps & Meters Alpine Guide Sweater

This US based brand turns out luxury alpine apparel, with a real reference to tradition and high end materials. The great looking Alpine Guide lambswool sweater is intended and built for for true outdoor use - such as skiing or hiking.

Really neat touches (that also look cool) include reinforced shoulder patches for skis or backpacks, water resistant chest and waist pockets, and warming zip collar. However its a great looking item for colder evenings around town too.

$325 | Alps & Meters | Buy it now

Fjallraven Greenland Re-Wool Crewneck

A really comfortable jumper with a soft and mid weight feel to it, with a more generous and relaxed fit - perfect for layering and winter cosiness. This jumper also uses recycled wool, so great if youre trying to make more environmentally conscientious choices. Its great quality

150 | Fjallraven | Buy it now

Topman Yellow Peached 1/4 Zip Sweatshirt

A more relaxed fitting number with longer sleeves, this funnel neck is ideal to throw on in any casual occasion. At this price too, its an item you cant go wrong with and to have in your wardrobe for cold and casual days.

25 | Topman | Buy it now

Musto Milano Crew Neck Knit

A no nonsense tight weave knitted crewneck made from soft feel cotton. It has a nice weight and thickness to it that will keep you warm on colder days. Its a simple design, perfect for business or leisure, and reasonably priced too.

90 | Musto | Buy it now

Shackleton Hero Wool Sweater

A true classic, this 100 per cent high quality lambswool uses a 5-gauge knot making it the real deal if you want a durable and warm sweater thatll give years of loyal service. This top end British brand leave no stone unturned when it comes to making their gear.

235 | Shackleton | Buy it now

Timberland Phillips Brooks Lambswool Sweater

A timeless classic design, this ribbed sweater is made from 60 per cent lambswool providing a really nice level of warmth with a snugger fit to it. Wear with just a light tee or shirt underneath and youll find yourself using in a multitude of occasions; home, social or work.

120 | Timberland | Buy it now

Next Crew Sweatshirt

A nice cotton sweat thats soft and cosy. Its got a light feel to it and at this price you cant go wrong.
K it Harington has backtracked over claims that he has experienced sexism in the film and TV industry, admitting that he was wrong to complain.

The Game of Thrones star faced a backlash when he moaned about being objectified in an interview last year, in which he said that men faced sexism as well as women.

Harington has now said that he regrets making the comments, and has learnt how to control the feeling of objectification.

I was wrong there, though, he told the Guardian. Sexism against men is not something I should have really said. I think what I meant was, being objectified.

Kit Harington discusses playing his distant relative in Gunpowder

At that time, I did feel objectified, and now Ive learned how to control that.

The British star said that has learnt to deal with it by just shutting it down. Look, I do think men can get objectified. I do feel I have been objectified in the past, sexually as well, in pieces that have been written about me.

Game of Thrones Season 7: LA Premiere - In pictures 1 /20 Game of Thrones Season 7: LA Premiere - In pictures Kit Harington and Rose Leslie arrive at the LA Premiere of "Game of Thrones" at The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles Invision/AP Cast member Sophie Turner poses at a premiere for season 7 of the television series "Game of Thrones" in Los Angeles REUTERS Nathalie Emmanuel arrives at the LA Premiere of "Game of Thrones" at The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP Cast member Gwendoline Christie poses at a premiere for season 7 of the television series "Game of Thrones" in Los Angeles, California Reuters Maisie Williams transforms into a White Walker' at the premiere for season 7 of the television series "Game of Thrones" in Los Angeles, California Maisie Williams transforms into a White Walker' at the premiere for season 7 of the television series "Game of Thrones" in Los Angeles, California Sophie Turner transforms into a White Walker' at the premiere for season 7 of the television series "Game of Thrones" in Los Angeles, California Iain Glen and Jerome Flynn arrive at the LA Premiere of "Game of Thrones" at The Walt Disney Concert Hall on Wednesday, July 12, 2017, in Los Angeles Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP Cast member Sophie Turner poses at a premiere for season 7 of the television series "Game of Thrones" in Los Angeles Getty Images Cast member Maisie Williams poses at a premiere for season 7 of the television series "Game of Thrones" in Los Angeles REUTERS Nathalie Emmanuel arrives at the LA Premiere of "Game of Thrones" at The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles Getty Images Cast member Gwendoline Christie poses at a premiere for season 7 of the television series "Game of Thrones" in Los Angeles, California Getty Images Hannah Murray arrives at the LA Premiere of "Game of Thrones" at The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP Kit Harington arrives at the LA Premiere of "Game of Thrones" at The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP Keisha Castle-Hughes arrives at the LA Premiere of "Game of Thrones" at The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP

Harington went on to say that he has been made to feel uncomfortable by certain articles, but is aware that it not in the same as the sexism that women face in the industry.

Has that made me feel uncomfortable in the past? Yes. Do I think my position is the same as a womans in society? No, he said.

Theyre very different things, and I should have separated them. I was wrong.

Back in 2016, Harington told the Sunday Times: I think there is a double standard. If you said to a girl, Do you like being called a babe? and she said, No, not really, she'd be absolutely right. I like to think of myself as more than a head of hair or a set of looks. It's demeaning.

"Yes, in some ways you could argue I've been employed for a look I have. But there's a sexism that happens towards men. There's definitely a sexism in our industry that happens towards women, and there is towards men as well.
T he producer of the Paddington sequel has said he hopes to sever the film's ties with the studio co-founded by disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

David Heyman, who was also behind the widely popular first movie, has said it is "very sad and deeply frustrating" that The Weinstein Company (TWC) could have any further association with the character.

The studio, which found itself at the centre of a civil rights investigation in New York on Monday, is scheduled to distribute the film in North America.

Heyman, who heads the British studio Heyday Films, said he hopes "The Weinstein Company name is nowhere near Paddington 2", according to Hollywood industry website Deadline.

"It's very sad and deeply frustrating that Paddington, who's been around for more than 50 years, and is always looking for the good in people, and has such a generous, warm-hearted spirit could have any association," the Londoner, 56, said.

Harvey Weinstein is the subject of criminal investigations in Los Angeles, New York and London / AP

Heyman, who also produced the Harry Potter films, added that he is "sure all options will be explored" after other companies came forward to express an interest in distributing the film.

Weinstein was sacked by TWC and then stepped down from its board of directors after dozens of women accused him of sexual assault and harassment.

His younger brother Bob had said TWC's involvement in Paddington 2 would continue after initial reports detailing alleged sexual abuse and harassment by Weinstein.

The sequel was financed by Studiocanal, which will release it in the UK on November 10, but TWC had planned to release it State-side on January 12.

The first film made more than 76 million dollars (58 million) in the US after being distributed by TWC and Bob Weinstein had said "we expect even greater success" for the sequel.

Ben Whishaw voices the animated bear while Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins and Peter Capaldi also star on-screen.

New York state's attorney general Eric Schneiderman announced on Monday that his office is investigating TWC.

A subpoena requested all documents and records relating to complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination at the studio.

Harvey Weinstein, who has "unequivocally denied" allegations of non-consensual sex, is also the subject of criminal investigations in Los Angeles, New York and London.
E arlier this summer, marine biologists discovered an octopus village off the coast of Australia. It was populated by 15 gloomy octopuses (octopus tetricus), once thought to be solitary creatures but here leading complex social lives.

The citizens of Octlantis communed one-on-one and in groups; they decorated their homes; they evicted cephalopods they didnt like. (Octopuses have also shown sophisticated capacities for mimicry, deception, affection, logic, humour and play, as well as enacting Finding Dory-style escapes from aquarium tanks.)

These behaviours are the product of natural selection and may be remarkably similar to vertebrate complex social behaviour, said David Scheel of Alaska Pacific University.

This suggests that when the right conditions occur, evolution may produce very similar outcomes in diverse groups of organisms.

A humpback whale in the fjords of Northern Norway / BBC

Octlantis is not the only intriguing marine development to have surfaced on the social media tides of 2017.

Back in the austral autumn, scientists were surprised to find a supergroup of 200 humpback whales had gathered off South Africa; humpbacks usually travel in groups of 10-20. Ive never seen anything like this, said one cetologist.

A recent study in Nature, Ecology and Evolution demonstrated cetaceous consciousness is much more sophisticated than we once thought.

A scientist uses lasers to measure a whaleshark in scenes in the new series / BBC

Bottlenose dolphins gossip; sperm whales have dialects; it seems their large brains, like ours, are evolved to cope with living in complex social groups. What are they up to? We dont know. But there is, after all, hope for intelligent life on Earth.

Still, we land apes ought not to be too harsh on our species. The anthropocene era has now produced Blue Planet II, and thats a pretty wondrous thing.

The sequel to Sir David Attenboroughs landmark natural history series of 2001 premieres on BBC1 on Sunday. Its been four years in the making, with footage drawn from 6,000 hours of filming taken on 125 expeditions launched from 39 countries, and for the next seven weeks it will bring wonder and joy into our living rooms.

Scientist Steve Simpson uses a multi-directional hydrophone to record the sounds of a coral reef / BBC

I watched a preview of the first episode the other night with my three-year-old son Ted, and his running commentary was only a little less excitable than mine: Puffins! Walruses! Are they bottlenose dolphins? Did the fish eat the bird? Killer whales! We saw killer whales!

Anyway, the first episode is as wonderful and universal as youd expect from the BBCs Natural History Unit, beginning with a magnificent sequence of bottlenose dolphins playing on the waves, captured by a surfing cameraman.

The technology has advanced in the 16 years since the first series, including bubble-less diving equipment that allows the cameramen to swim underneath the whales, and light-detection cameras that can capture phosphorescent rays. Tentacles flick. Polyps shimmer. Later episodes promise more incredible deep-sea sequences, with many discoveries new to science. Attenboroughs favourite bit, apparently, is a sequence of eels diving in and out of an underwater lake, a sea within a sea.

The fangtooth has the largest teeth relative to body size for any fish in the entire ocean. / BBC

And theres a spiritual timeliness to this second series too. As Attenborough (now 91) recently told The Times of India: For the first time in the history of humanity, one species has the future in the palm of their hands. I just hope they realise that. The seas are very vulnerable and essential to our future. I get a lot of letters, between 20 to 30 a day, from those who watch my nature shows and the overriding thing that people say is  with Brexit, North Korea, Trump  just to be able to look at something where human beings arent the prime players, where theres beauty, wonder, history, biology and, above all, truth, thats what they want to watch when they come home at night.

The first Blue Planet premiered on BBC1 on September 12 2001  ie, the day after the Western world lost its innocence. I can remember watching the DVD a lot around the time of the Iraq War, the shock n awe intermingling with those scenes of shearwaters dive bombing into a feeding frenzy of dolphins, tuna and mackerel. That partly explains why it soothed such a tender place, more so than Attenboroughs other opuses.

A orange-dotted tuskfish holds a clam in its formidable jaws on the Great Barrier Reef / BBC

But its also the fact of the oceans, the Earths most abundant resource, a landscape that was once our home but is now inhospitable to us. Weve explored less sea-bed than we have moon. One reason octopus intelligence is so interesting is that, evolutionarily, we share so little in common with them they may as well be aliens. (If aliens were to land, why wouldnt they visit Octlantis first?)

This gives the series a fantastic element of discovery. Thom Yorke of Radiohead has re-recorded an orchestral version of their 2011 song Bloom, which was inspired by the original series. He described looking after his son after a late night, lying on his sofa at 7am, trying to go back to sleep, with Blue Planet coming in and out of my subconscious.

Blue Planet II - In pictures 1 /58 Blue Planet II - In pictures Sir David Attenborough BBC The Garibaldi fish (Hypsypops rubicundus) is well known for its feisty defence of its territory in the Californian kelp forests. It removes pests of all kinds and sea urchins, which graze down the turf algae that harbour the garibaldi's invertebrate food, are a particular nuisance BBC Surfing bottlenose dolphins on the Wild Coast, South Africa BBC Vast seagrass meadows in Shark Bay, Australia, where some of the largest undersea meadows in the world can be found. The meadows are comprised of many species including the seagrass Amphibolis Antarctica. They support great populations of seagrass grazers, such as the green turtle (Chelonia mydas) and the manatee as well as their predator, the tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier BBC A giant spider crab (Leptomithrax gaimardii) emerging from the shell it has outgrown. Each year, they march into the shallows in great numbers in order to molt before returning to deeper waters BBC Some of the largest seagrass meadows in the world are found off the coast of Australia, in Shark Bay and the Torres Strait. The meadows are comprised of many species including the seagrass Amphibolis Antarctica. More closely related to lilies than terrestrial grasses, they are the only flowering plants to live completely submerged in seawater BBC Fronds of the giant kelp, (Macrocystis pyrifera), the largest known brown algae in the world. It forms great forests along the Pacific coast of North America, from central California to Baja California in Mexico. The giant structures of this kelp create homes and hiding places for thousands of undersea forest dwellers BBC zebra mantis shrimp (Lysiosquillina maculata), the largest mantis shrimp in the world. It lives in tunnels, fifty centimetres deep on the edge of mangroves along the Australian coast. From there, it can ambush an unsuspecting fish BBC Sea otters (Enhydra lutris), Monterey Bay, California, USA. Sea otters must eat around 30% of their body weight every day but, when not hunting, they rest by floating on their backs, frequently wrapping themselves in fronds of kelp for better stability BBC Purple urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) have incredibly tough, self-sharpening teeth made almost entirely from calcite and so hard that they can grind through rock. They therefore have no problem chewing through relatively soft kelp stypes BBC A common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) fighting off an attack by a pyjama shark (Poroderma africanum), an expert at hunting in the undergrowth. The octopus must be careful - it can sacrifice a limb but a bite to its head could prove fatal BBC Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) feeding together off the coast of Monterey, USA. A vast, deep canyon at the head of the bay is the source of great upwellings of nutrients for seasonal phytoplankton blooms. They, in turn, feed macroplankton which become food for the shoaling fish. This is what attracts the whales. Humpback whales BBC Yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares), Pacific Ocean. These predators solely inhabit the open ocean. They can pursue their prey at speeds of up to 40 miles per hour BBC Sir David Attenborough BBC Portuguese man-of-war (Physalia physalis) at dawn. The venomous Portuguese man-of-war is not a jellyfish but a siphonophore, a colonial animal made up of specialised individuals working together. It is also known as floating terror' as it sails with the wind, trailing tentacles that can deliver a vicious sting - painful to humans but paralysing for fish BBC Lion's mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata), the largest species of jellyfish in the world. It feeds on other jellyfish, like the Moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita BBC Portuguese man-of-war (Physalia physalis). The venomous Portuguese man-of-war is not a jellyfish but a siphonophore, a colonial animal made up of specialised individuals working together. Its tentacles can deliver a vicious sting - painful to humans but paralysing for fish BBC Sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus). Female sperm whales share baby-sitting duties and even nursing of their calves with other females in their group BBC On the 10th January 1992, a container of plastic ducks, like this one, and other bath toys was accidentally released into the Pacific Ocean, recreated here. But this inadvertently led to breakthroughs in the understanding of the ocean's circulatory system BBC How plastic is killing our sea creatures in the ocean BBC The footage showed the effect plastic can have on creatures of the deep sea BBC How plastic is killing our sea creatures in the ocean BBC A scientist uses lasers to measure a whaleshark BBC A bustling reef in Fiji BBC An Atlantic puffin with a beakful of food for its chick in Hornoya Island, Norway BBC A male Kobudai (Asian Sheephead Wrasse), Japan BBC A Sally Lightfoot crab BBC Surfing bottlenose dolphins on the Wild Coast, South Africa BBC An orange-dotted tuskfish holds a clam in its jaws on the Great Barrier Ree BBC Atlantic Walrus colony, Svalbard, Arctic BBC A cheeky green turtle in Sipidan, Borneo, Malaysia BBC The fangtooth has the largest teeth relative to body size for any fish in the entire ocean BBC Giant Trevally patrolling the shallows of a lagoo BBC An orange-dotted tuskfish holds a clam in its formidable jaws on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia BBC Humpback whale in the fjords of Northern Norway, Atlantic Ocean BBC Bottlenose dolphins with a calf, Red Sea, Egypt BBC Giant Waves breaking along the Wild Coast, South Africa BBC A hermit crab with the super pincers it uses to feed BBC Surfing bottlenose dolphins on the Wild Coast, South Africa BBC False Killer Whales (Pseudorca crassidens) travelling with a pod of oceanic Bottlenose dolphins off the coast of the North Island, New Zealand BBC Scientist Steve Simpson uses a multi-directional hydrophone to record the sounds of the reef BBC Giant Trevally patrolling the shallows of a lagoon BBC Walrus mother and pup resting on an iceberg in Svalbard, Arctic BBC A giant cuttlefish mating aggregation, South Australia BBC

He was impressed that they had managed to go so deep that they had discovered all sorts of creatures they never even knew existed. That whole thing for me, the idea of discovering life that humanity doesnt know about, is one of the most profound concepts. Even if its discovering fossils, or the idea that creatures exist  that theres a history to the place we live that we dont know anything about  to me is the most profound, spiritual expression of humanity.

But Blue Planet never turns away from the harshness of nature itself  a nature that doesnt really give a damn what you think or feel. Remember the ordeal of a gray whale and her calf, harassed by a gang of orcas off the coast of California? Eventually, the orcas separate the exhausted mother from her child, which they drown. The pod of 15 killer whales spent over six hours trying to kill this calf, but now, having succeeded, theyve eaten nothing more than its lower jaw and its tongue. Bloody yobs!

Mobula rays in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico / BBC

You cant help making such human comparisons. Environmentalism has crept ever more urgently into Attenboroughs films since the Noughties and is now central (though never hectoring). Attenborough has issued stark warnings about the amount of plastic we dump into the sea; theres a disturbing sequence, too, of walrus mothers fighting for space for their pups on the retreating Arctic ice. The scarcity prompts rivalry among peers but also forges deeper bonds between mother and child. Its unbearably poignant.

And actually, the latest discoveries in animal intelligence do suggest that anthropomorphism isnt just a sentimental indulgence but often an appropriate reaction. As the primatologist Frans de Waal has argued, anthrodenialism  the insistence that animals cannot think and feel, that we are not ourselves animals  is fraught with much more danger. And if theres a theme in the opening episode, its that these creatures are far more intelligent than we realise. In one sequence a little tuskfish picks up a clam in its mouth and diligently smashes it open on a special clam-opening divot that it has found in a piece of coral. In other words, it uses a tool. Imagine that fish, after one million years of evolution!

But the most stirring is an enormous pod of false killer whales marauding through the seas off New Zealand, clicking and whirring away, until they come upon a similarly enormous pod of bottlenose dolphins. Whereupon they all have a big catch-up: saying hi to each other in dolphin language, hanging out, catching fish. Almost unbelievable, these different species are old friends. Apparently they do this every year, a bit like a sort of dolphin Christmas. Humans? NFI.

The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind, said Charles Darwin. Theyre planning something  Im sure of it.

Blue Planet II begins Sunday, October 29 at 9pm on BBC One.
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In August Malaysia launched the first of six 3,100 ton warships built in a local shipyard. Malaysia is calling these vessels Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) and they are based on French Gowind 2500 corvettes. As part of the $2.1 billion deal the French builder agreed to set up production in Malaysia and to modify the Gowind design to meet Malaysian requirements. Because of this arrangement the first LCS will not enter service until 2019, two years later than if they were built in France. Malaysia is using this deal to develop its own warship building capability, which has already developed to the point where it could build smaller warships like OPVs (offshore patrol vessels).

The Malaysian Gowinds were originally to be 2,400 ton corvettes, but the Malaysian modifications have increased them to 3,100 ton frigate type warships with a crew of 118. The Malaysian LCSs are still armed with a 57mm gun, a 30mm autocannon (for use against small boats), anti-aircraft missiles launched from VLS (vertical launch system) built into the deck, two box launchers each with four NSM anti-ship missile (185 kilometer range), six anti-submarine torpedo tubes, and a 5.4 ton Lynx helicopter. LCS has a top speed of 48 kilometers an hour and endurance of about 12 days (assuming mostly using cruise speed of 28 kilometers an hour). Some of the modifications made include the turret for the 57mm gun being modified to maintain the low-radar visibility aspect in the expanded superstructure. Design modifications like this were part of the basic Gowind design, which can be applied to ships using the basic Gowind design but varying from 1,100-4,000 tons displacement.

With the Malaysian sale, French warship builder DCNS has won its first export customer for the new Gowind concept. Malaysia is buying the Gowinds for about $350 million each. DCNS has had a very difficult time finding any export customers for Gowind. The French Navy wasn't buying either. So in 2010 DCNS began building one of the 1,100 ton OPV Gowinds with its own money and persuaded the French Navy to provide a crew to operate the ship for 18-36 months. Thus, DCNS could pitch potential customers with the fact that at least one Gowind has been built and successfully served with the French Navy. This worked for Malaysia, as did the willingness to move construction (and assembly of some of the electronic subsystems) to Malaysia. Egypt subsequently ordered four Gowind ships similar to the ones Malaysia is building.
A U.S. Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers assigned to the 37th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, deployed from Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, and two Republic of Korea Air Force F-15K fighters fly over a crowd during the 2017 Seoul Aerospace & Defense Exhibition (Seoul ADEX 17) at Seoul Airport, Republic of Korea (ROK) Oct. 21, 2017.The two B-1B bombers departed Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, and conducted an 11-hour mission in the vicinity of the Korean Peninsula and Japan. The mission included sequential bilateral integration with Koku Jieitai (Japan Air Self-Defense Force) and ROK air forces before continuing over land to support a flyover for the 2017 Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition (Seoul ADEX 17). (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Alex Echols)

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For nearly a week now the American CIA and their Pakistani counterpart (ISI) have been arguing over what exactly happened to the kidnapped American-Canadian family Pakistani troops freed from the Haqqani Network on October 12 th . Everyone agrees that the family was held captive for five years but the ISI insists they were held in Afghanistan while the CIA says it has evidence that the family was held in Pakistan all that time. Pakistan has long denied any connection with Haqqani, much less control of the group, but there is much evidence that ISI works closely with Haqqani. This entire incident is suspect and as more details leak out it becomes stranger still.

American Caitlan Coleman, her husband Canadian Joshua Boyle were captured by the Taliban in 2012 while hiking in eastern Afghanistan. Coleman was pregnant at the time and when rescued had three young children. Boyle considered himself a humanitarian and was friendly with some Islamic terrorists before taken. In any event the couple ended up with the Haqqani Network, which often bought foreign captives to use in efforts to get Haqqani Network leaders freed from Afghan jails. Normally Islamic terrorists could use bribes to get such men freed but the Haqqani Network was particularly unpopular in Afghanistan because the group had gone from being Afghan warriors fighting Russian occupation in the 1980s to mercenaries who have long worked for Pakistan to carry out horrific bombings in Afghanistan, with more of the victims being innocent civilians. This has always been denied by the Pakistani military and ISI but Afghans, Indians and Americans have plenty of evidence to prove otherwise. Boyle and his wife appeared in some proof of life videos as Haqqani continued to try and use the couple (and their growing family) to get Haqqani prisoners out of Afghan jails. That failed and when rescued the couple and their children did not appear to have been mistreated.

A new (since early 2017) American government apparently ordered the couple to be found and freed no matter where they were and who held them. The family were soon tracked to a Haqqani hideout in Pakistan and Pakistan was told to either get the family freed or the U.S. would send in commandos to do it and the Pakistani generals did not want that. The 2011 American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani sanctuary (that ISI long denied existed) was an embarrassment the Pakistani military has still not recovered from. Another incident like that would be much worse. So Pakistan staged their own commando operation near the Afghan border and got the captives (at least the Canadian Boyle) to go along with the cover story (that the family were locked in a car trunk when the rescue took place and all the kidnappers were killed and only Boyle received a minor injury). The U.S. offered to fly that family home via a stopover in Afghanistan but Boyle refused. He did not want to enter any area where the U.S. might detain and question him. So the family flew back to Canada where Canadian intelligence is also curious about exactly what went on with this long captivity.

Meanwhile Pakistan insists the family was held most of the time in Afghanistan, not Pakistan and whatever other information Pakistan was willing to share was apparently not being made public. In an effort to placate the Americans Pakistan did announce its security forces were in daily contact with American forces in Afghanistan about counter-terror operations along the border. This assurance is more promise than performance and is really aimed more at discouraging more American airstrikes or commando raids inside Pakistan. There appear to have been at least five American UAV missile strikes just across the border in Pakistan during 2017. Thats up from three for all of 2016 and down from 14 in 2015 and over 300 between 2008 and 2014. Pakistan also insists that there will be no joint operations along the Afghan border and is, as far as the U.S., Afghanistan and India are concerned, being as non-committal and evasive as ever.

One very tangible Pakistani achievement along its Afghan border was the recent completion of the first 43 kilometers of its new security fence along the Afghan border. The fence consists of two three-meter (nine foot) high chain link fences running parallel, two meters apart, with three rolls of barbed wire in that two meter gap. Construction began in South Waziristan (which borders Afghanistans Paktika province and Pakistans Baluchistan, where the Afghan Taliban still maintain a sanctuary). The fence construction was announced in March 2017 and intends to extend along the entire 2,600 kilometer border with Afghanistan. This is part of an effort to hinder the Pakistani Taliban, and other illegal groups (terrorists and smugglers) from easily moving back and forth. After the Paktika portion of the fence is completed construction will continue along the border with the Afghan provinces of Nangarhar and Kunar. These provinces are where there has always been a lot of lawless activity and these days it is full of Islamic terrorists hostile to either Pakistan or working for Pakistan (against Afghanistan). The new plan will continue giving priority to areas where there are the most problems but will not stop there and eventually (by the early 2020s) have a fence along the entire Afghan border.

Even without the fence the Pakistani military has been successful in reducing terrorist violence substantially since 2014, when it went after Islamic terror groups that made attacks inside Pakistan. There was a catch as the counter-terrorism effort left alone the Afghan Taliban sanctuary in in the southwest (Baluchistan) and several other groups that operated openly in various parts of Pakistan but always carried out attacks elsewhere (usually Afghanistan or India). That counter-terrorism effort is having continued success and terrorist related deaths appear headed for a 30 percent reduction in 2017. The anti-Pakistan Islamic terror groups have adapted to three years of heavy attack by the security forces and demonstrated their capabilities by remaining active in 2017, but not as active as previous years. There was a spike in Islamic terrorism related deaths in February (114 civilians, 23 soldiers and police and 125 Islamic terrorists) but that has since declined. The total Islamic terrorism related deaths for all of 2016 was 1,803 (150 a month), compared to 3,682 for 2015. Until the wave of attacks in February Pakistan expected to have, for the first time since 2005, a year where there were under a thousand Islamic terrorism related deaths. That is not going to happen in 2017 because during the first ten months of the year there have been nearly 1,100 terrorism related deaths. But if the trend continues there may well be record low numbers of terror victims in 2018. Back in 2005 there were 648 dead and in 2003 only 189 and the post 2005 rise in terror attacks inside Pakistan was blamed on the Americans, India and non-Moslems in general. Meanwhile India, with six times as many people, has kept annual terrorism (mostly not Islam related) to under a thousand a year since 2012.

Pakistan wont take credit for the increased terrorism related deaths in Kashmir this year. Yet even with that India is on track to have another year of low (under a thousand) terrorist related deaths in 2017. In fact the nationwide Indian deaths are back to 2015 (under 700 deaths) levels, after a spike (to 900) in 2016. That spike was largely the work of Pakistan along the Kashmir border and inside Indian Kashmir. Bangladesh has also seen a 2017 decline (about 40 percent) in terrorism deaths. The one common factor in all these countries is the number of local Islamic terrorists who, when taken alive often boast of the support (training, equipment, sanctuary) they received from Pakistan.

India Makes New Friends

In the midst of all this turmoil within Pakistan the U.S. has been working with India more closely to deal with both Islamic terrorism and the threats from China. That means it is the U.S. and India working more closely together than they have ever done in the past. This is fine with Afghanistan which sees India as more helpful and reliable than Pakistan or Iran ever was. The Americans can be useful to pressure Pakistan to be more cooperative in dealing with border violence (especially in Kashmir). Pooling information from the U.S., India and Afghanistan has made it possible to convince the international community that Pakistani support for Islamic terrorism was real. This scrutiny has become a growing problem for Pakistan, which can no longer simply deny all the evidence of their Islamic terrorism support. While China and Russia can still be relied on to use their veto to block any major UN actions against Pakistan that veto support comes at a price. That is why Pakistan remains the largest customer for Chinese weapons. Pakistan has gone to great lengths to assist China in building links to a Chinese controlled (and upgraded) port near the Iranian border. China pays for all this construction in Pakistan, but the Pakistan government is expected to quickly respond to any Chinese requests. Russia is somewhat less demanding. Russia wants Pakistan to buy more Russian aircraft and assist Russia diplomatically (or with intelligence) as needed. So far Pakistan appears to have kept the Russians content. The Russian relationship with Pakistan makes India less willing to maintain decades old trade relationships with Russia. India has been increasingly demanding prompt action when there are problems with Russian military equipment and is not satisfied with the Russian response. Thus India is slowly switching to Western suppliers, despite a lot of Indian voters and politicians still favoring strong ties with Russia and none with America and Israel.

The weakening affection for communism inside India is one of the reasons that the Maoist rebels have been growing much weaker of late. Incidents of Maoist violence have fallen by more than half since 2010. The basic problem for the Maoists is that after fifty years of futile fighting the revolution has lost its popular appeal. The Maoist movement has seen their membership decline by about half from the 1 2,000 they had in 2007. That was the year the government launched a major military campaign in eastern India against the Maoists in their rural strongholds. The s enior leadership suffered even heavier losses and been embarrassed as more evidence emerged that some senior Maoist leaders had become personally wealthy by diverting millions of dollars worth of income to themselves or close family members . The Indian Maoists have no outside support while the Islamic terrorists have long, and very visibly been based in Pakistan. The Maoists were running out of cash, ammo, new recruits and, worst of all, credibility.

Factional fighting has long been characteristic of the Indian Maoists and those deadly feuds have been more common as the Maoists lose ground to a major government campaign against them. Since the 1990s there has also been more disagreement within the Maoist movement over what to make of the collapse of most communist governments in 1989-91. There was a similar (but generally non-violent) debate between Indian political parties and the general conclusion was that communism didnt work and neither did a lot of socialist economic policies. There is still a large minority of Indian politicians who believe that communism could work if it were implemented correctly but that attitude is losing its appeal. All this has meant less popular support for buying Russian weapons, and more working with the Americans and Israel in military matters.

The Invisible Enemy

There is another major effort this year to vaccinate vulnerable Afghan and Pakistani children against polio. In 2016 there were 20 cases of polio in Pakistan and 13 in Afghanistan. There were four in Nigeria, a country that is expected to be free of polio this year or next. In Pakistan and Afghanistan there are still religious problems with vaccination. The Afghan Taliban have openly supported the vaccination program but there still some rural areas where local Moslem clerics or teachers continue to denounce the vaccinations. There is a similar situation in Pakistan, where some fringe Islamic groups will still try and kill members of the vaccination teams. Despite this continued resistance polio cases in both nations continues to decline. For Afghanistan there have been at least six cases so far in 2017 compared to 13 for 2016. In Pakistan the situation is similar with about the same number of cases in 2017. Nevertheless the global vaccination effort has worked. In the 1980s, when the polio elimination effort began there were 350,000 cases in 125 countries. For the last several years there have been fewer than a hundred cases worldwide. In the last decade the main obstacle has been Islamic terror groups who ban polio vaccinations and attack anyone trying to deliver the vaccine to vulnerable children. Islamic terrorists in general tend to believe the vaccination teams are spying for the government and that the vaccinations are a plot to sterilize Moslems.

October 23, 2017: The Chinese construction work on the new Pakistani Gwadar port facilities is visible to anyone on the ground or flying by and it was recently noticed that some features of the new port and airport facilities are clearly intended for military use. India has long accused China (despite denials) was planning to use Gwadar as a base for Chinese warships and naval aircraft. Pakistan never had a problem with Chinese military using Gwadar as it helps keep local troublemakers out. Pakistan has assured China that there would be no terrorist violence against Chinese working on upgrading the port of Gwadar and land links north to China. Pakistan is willing to pay a high price to get CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) done because it means Pakistan has an ally against Iran and even Western powers that might have some violent disagreement with Pakistan. Best of all China is picking up most of the $55 billion cost. Earlier this year China and Pakistan finally signed the agreement that grants China a 40 year lease on new facilities China is building in the southwestern port of Gwadar. The lease grants China most (over 80 percent) of the revenue brought in by port and free trade zone operations.

Gwadar is a key part of CPEC and it has the misfortune of being in a province (Baluchistan) that does not want to be part of Pakistan. China and the Pakistanis try to ignore this by not reporting on non-Islamic terror attacks on CPEC construction projects. The government has long been accused of suppressing news of tribal separatists in Baluchistan attacking government targets and especially those related to CPEC. The separatists claim to have made four attacks on CPEC construction projects (including two bridges) between July and October along with over 120 attacks on security forces and government facilities. Another thing not given much media exposure in Pakistan is the government sanctioned terrorism in southwest Pakistan. This area has long been called Baluchistan, or "Land Of the Baluchi", after a tribe ethnically related to the Pushtun in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as the Iranians. Baluchi separatists in Pakistan have been fighting the government for more autonomy (and cash from gas deposits in their territory), or even a separate state, since Pakistan was created in 1948.

After the 1990s some Baluchi tribes tried to work with the Taliban and al Qaeda but that failed because the Taliban were created by the Pakistani military and al Qaeda depended on Pakistani government sanctuary and protection to survive. The Baluchi separatist problem is nothing new as Iran has been fighting Baluchi separatists for centuries. Baluchis comprise about two percent of the Iranian population. In Pakistan Baluchis are 3.5 percent of the population and are sympathetic to the fight of their fellow Baluchi in Iran, where Baluchi are a religious (Sunni) and ethnic minority in a Shia majority nation. In both countries the government efforts to suppress the Baluchi separatists is criticized for growing use of illegal methods like kidnapping, murder and tolerating Islamic terrorist violence against Baluchis (usually by pro-government groups hiding out in the area). The Pakistani government is mainly concerned with keeping thousands of Chinese working on CPEC projects in Baluchistan and that is apparently working because the Chinese will publicize and attacks on Chinese citizens outside of China.

October 21, 2017: In Pakistan police are seeking a Chinese Islamic terrorist belonging to ETIM (East Turkestan Islamic Movement) who had recently entered Pakistan with the intention of murdering the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan. China had alerted the Pakistani government a few days ago, providing the ETIM assassins name (Abdul Wali) and details from his passport. The Chinese fear that Wali is one of several ETIM men in Pakistan seeking to get assistance from Islamic terrorist groups in Pakistan to go after the Chinese ambassador and the thousands of Chinese working on CPEC.

October 20, 2017: In northwest Pakistan JuA (Jamaat ul Ahrar), a Pakistani Taliban faction that once belonged to ISIL, selected Asad Afridi to be the new leader. His predecessor (Omar Khalid Khorasani) was recently kill by an American UAV missile strike. Most of the JuA men are Pushtuns from the Khyber and Mohmand districts on the Afghan border. Since the Pakistani army attacked North Waziristan (south of Khyber and also on the border) in 2014 and shut down what had been an Islamic terrorists sanctuary, the Pakistani Taliban and especially groups like JuA (which regularly carries out bloody attacks in Pakistan) have based most of their personnel in Afghanistan. They are attacked there, especially by the American UAVs and manned aircraft. But it is still considered safer than Pakistan.

October 19, 2017: In southwest Pakistan (Baluchistan) someone threw a grenade into a group of men working on the Gwadar port wounding 26. Further north, outside the provincial capital Quetta a similar grenade attack wounded fifteen. The grenade attacks may be part of some criminal gang seeking to extort regular cash protection payments from the construction companies. Further west gunmen attacked some paramilitary troops, killing one and wounding four.

October 18, 2017: Pakistani troops along the border of Indian Kashmir again opened fire, for several hours, on Indian border guards and two nearby villages. There were similar incidents on the 12th and 13th. Pakistan has refused to negotiate and observe a ceasefire for the disputed Kashmir border.

October 17, 2017: Pakistan is trying to ease the pressure on the Islamic terror groups it employs for attacks inside India and is trying to get key Islamic terrorist leaders freed from house arrest and allowed to lead new Islamic political parties. In September the head of the Jamaatud Dawa, with military support, openly backed a new political party (Milli Muslim League or MML) in the elections. MML is basically a front for numerous Islamic terrorists the military supports and protects. As part of this effort the army admitted that it had links to Islamic terrorist groups but did not control them. This is not what members of these groups, captured outside of Pakistan, have said. Captured documents and electronic monitoring of phone and wireless communications also shows the Pakistani army connection.

Back in January the Pakistani military also said it agreed with the decision to put five leaders of Islamic terror group Jamaatud Dawa under house arrest and shut down its charities which actually collect cash for Islamic terrorist operations, frequently against India. This sort of crackdown has been used before and it was always temporary. India believes Pakistan is, as it did in 2001 (after Pakistani based terrorists attacked the Indian parliament building) and 2008 (after a major attack in Mumbai) going through the motions of cracking down on the terrorist organizations. In 2001, Lashkar e Toiba (which planned the recent Mumbai attacks) and Jamaatud Dawa (which provided money and other support) had its leaders put under house arrest and its offices closed temporarily. When the media heat was off Pakistan, the terrorist leaders were released, and the terrorist organizations reopened their offices under new names. Until 2008 India negotiated with Pakistan to reverse that decision. But Pakistan insists that the terrorists dedicated to seizing Kashmir from India are too popular inside Pakistan to really shut down. Since the 2008 Mumbai attack India has been pressuring Pakistan to really, really shut down operations like Lashkar e Toiba. Pakistan continues to resist in the expectation that it would get away with doing nothing. That has become more difficult as the international community, including the UN, has recognized Lashkar e Toiba and Jamaatud Dawa as terrorist organizations and threatened to declare Pakistan a "terrorist state." That would be interesting, as Pakistan has nuclear weapons and is keeps encountering evidence that Islamic terrorist groups are seeking an opportunity to seize one or more of these atomic bombs.

October 15, 2017: In eastern India (Chhattisgarh State) several hundred Hindu radicals attacked a Christian church during Sunday worship, ransacked the church and beat many of the worshippers, nine of them seriously. India has been more energetic and effective in controlling sectarian violence but it still occurs and politicians do not like to back enforcement of the freedom of religion guarantees in the constitution. Unless the attackers kill someone (which is usually the case when Hindus go after Moslems or vice versa) the government does not consider it a serious matter. Normally Indians from different religions get along but ambitious politicians or religious leaders are often tempted to exploit the religions differences to expand their own power.

October 9, 2017: In southwest Pakistan (Baluchistan) Sunni Islamic terrorists fired on a truck carrying Hazara men, killing five of them. Nearly half a million Afghan Hazara (nearly all of them Shia) have fled to Pakistan since the 1980s to escape the violence, including Afghan Sunni Islamic terrorists who see the Hazara Shia as heretics. Since early 2016 at least twenty Hazara have died like this in Baluchistan because those anti-Shia Sunni groups exist in Pakistan as well and have become more intent on attacking Hazara refugees from Afghanistan. .

October 4, 2017: In northwest Pakistan (Kyber region) someone fired from Afghanistan (Nangarhar province) and killed a soldier and wounded another at a newly established Pakistani border post. The Afghans complain that more than 80 rockets have been fired into Afghanistan from Pakistan in the last two days. There were apparently no casualties in Afghanistan.

October 1, 2017: In northeast India (Arunachal Pradesh) troops stationed there noted that across the border in Tibet a new 409 kilometer highway from the provincial capital of Tibet to the Indian border had been completed and opened for use. While Arunachal Pradesh is an Indian state China claims that it belonged to Tibet in the past and thus China has a claim now. Both countries have been building up their forces along this border and highways like this one make it easier to rush military forces to the border or across it and into India. West of Arunachal Pradesh India also noted that China still has an above average number of troops in Chumbi Valley, from which China launched a June incursion into Indian territory on the Doklam plateau. That confrontation was settled in late August. The two nations blamed each other for this confrontation in a very inhospitable part of the world. The Doklam plateau is where the Tibet border meets Indias Sikkim State. China is also building new roads to this part of the Tibet/India border.

September 27, 2017: On September 27th China announced that its J-20 stealth fighter had officially entered service. Earlier in 2017 Chinese officials admitted that at least a dozen J-20s had been delivered to the Chinese air force as part of a new fighter squadron. This information was apparently released to help with export sales because the recent official announcement comes at the same time that a Chinese press release about China-Pakistan relations seemed to confirm that Pakistan had agreed to buy J-20s. Numbers were not announced and there are still questions about how effective the J-20 actually is. Pakistani interest in the J-20 may have more to do with the fact that China is the only major-power ally they have, their main supplier of weapons and, best of all, a neighbor.

The manufacturer of the J-20 (CAC, Chengdu Aircraft Company) also produces the JF-17 and J-10. The JF-17 is a joint effort with Pakistan and Pakistan is the main customer. The twin engine J-20 made its first flight in 2011 and is a 36 ton fighter similar to the 38 ton American F-22 and 37 ton Russian T-50. The J-20 is stealthy enough to perform as a nuclear bomber for Pakistan.
The Linux Foundation on Monday introduced the Community Data License Agreement, a new framework for sharing large sets of data required for research, collaborative learning and other purposes.

CDLAs will allow both individuals and groups to share data sets in the same way they share open source software code, the foundation said.

As systems require data to learn and evolve, no one organization can build, maintain and source all data required, noted Mike Dolan, VP of strategic programs at The Linux Foundation.

Data communities are forming around artificial intelligence and machine learning use cases, autonomous systems, and connected civil infrastructure, he told LinuxInsider. The CDLA license agreements enable sharing data openly, embodying best practices learned over decades of sharing source code.

The agreement could help foster an increase in data sharing across a variety of industries, supporting collaboration in climate modeling, automotive safety, energy consumption, building permit processes, water use management and other functions.

Uniform Guidelines

The agreement calls for two main sets of licenses, which are designed to help data contributors and consumers work with a uniform set of guidelines that clarify the rules of the road and mitigate risks.

The Sharing license encourages contributions of data to the community. The Permissive license does not require any additional sharing of data.

Among the commercial and creative implications of the licenses:

Data producers can be more specific regarding what recipients can do with data. Data producers can choose between the Sharing and Permissive licenses, depending on which model better aligns with their needs. Either type of license gives them greater clarity of agreement terms, and provides greater protection from liability and warranties.

Licenses allow communities to share data on equal terms that balance out the needs of data users and producers. Data communities can add their own rules and requirements for curating data, particularly involving personally identifiable information.

A data user looking for information that will be used for training on an artificial intelligence system or for another use will have access to data shared under a known license model that has terms that are clearly spelled out.

The agreements are agnostic with regard to data privacy, and it will be up to publishers and curators of data to create their own governance structure, taking into account applicable laws.

Higher Learning

The agreement comes at a time when technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence are capable of analyzing data sets in ways that previously were not possible. The licensing agreements provide a framework to make data repositories uniform enough to allow accurate and replicable analysis.

The critical issues for deep learning are verification and transparency  and is the training replicable? said Paul Teich, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

Organizations often share data in order to allow other groups to try to replicate their results, he told LinuxInsider. In addition, organizations might publish data sets speculatively for other groups to process  and potentially pick a vendor for advanced analytics, depending on how well different algorithms worked on a particular data set.

The new Community Data License from The Linux Foundation reflects the growing importance of information as a resource for big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

In essence, data provides the fuel required for processes, including teaching systems to accurately perform complex functions and analyze ongoing occurrences, he told LinuxInsider.

Rising Demand

There has been a surge in the level of interest in data sets in recent years, noted Mark Radcliffe, global chair of the FOSS Global Practice Group at DLA Piper.

For example, connected cars can provide a wealth of data, including GPS, miles per hour and music playlist information, he told LinuxInsider. Internet of Things devices could provide information like boiler temperatures, or wind speeds from wind farms.

CDLAs will encourage a more uniform process for sharing such data.

These license agreements [could be] very, very helpful, Radcliffe said, because in many cases people are doing this on an ad hoc basis.

The legal protection available for data is very fragmented and very uncertain, he pointed out. Its not an area that has had [much] case law involved. In many cases you have a very uncertain background in which to work.

The Open Transport Partnership, which is backed by the World Bank, has been working since 2016 to collect GPS streams in order to research traffic congestion, particularly during peak commute times.

The partnership launched an effort last year with a number of organizations, including the World Resources Institute, the National Association of City Transportation Officials, ride-sharing firms like Grab and Easy Taxi, open mapping firm Mapzen, data platforms like MDrive, and other firms.

The World Bank collaborated with Grab, with backing from the Korea Green Growth Trust Fund, to use anonymized GPS data from 500,000 Grab drivers to map out peak congestion times in Manila. The program was scheduled to expand to other countries like Brazil, Malaysia and Columbia.
Complaints have been mounting over display and audio issues with Googles Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, launched just three weeks ago.

Consumers have reported a screen burn-in problem with the Pixel 2 XL, which refers to embedded functions leaving a ghost-like image on the display.

In addition to the Pixel 2 XL display issue, there have been numerous reports of high-pitched noises and strange clicking sounds occurring during calls on the Pixel 2.

The demand for Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL has exceeded our expectations, and were thrilled with the positive reaction to our new phones, both from the reviewers who have tried and tested our devices thoroughly and from consumers who are switching to Pixel, said Mario Queiroz, vice president, product management at Pixel. We take all reports of issues very seriously, and our engineers investigate quickly.

The company will provide updates as soon as it has conclusive data, he said.

The Pixel 2 XL uses pOLED screens, which can display a leftover image when fixed backgrounds or pictures remain on them for a long period of time, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

Anyone who has a pOLED device should be using active backgrounds and make sure no one image remains on the phone for an extended period of time, he told TechNewsWorld.

Some games do have fixed grids, suggesting long-time game players need to watch this as well, Enderle added.

Sales Slowdown

If the reports about the scope of the complaints turn out to be accurate, Google will face a major test in the marketplace, said Werner Goertz, research director for personal technologies at Gartner.

I think it is a grave concern that these devices have been put into the market, he told TechNewsWorld, though certainly with excellent features on paper.

Concern about Googles ability to field a quality device has the potential to impact not only future sales, but also pending deals, Goertz said, including the US$1 billion agreement to acquire HTCs smartphone business, announced last month.

There are people who are going to speculate on the upcoming HTC integration, he added. People will argue maybe in anticipation of new design resources coming on board that maybe they overlooked that.

Despite those concerns, Google has some inherent positives to fall back on, Goertz said, noting that the original Google Pixel did not have the same issues, suggesting that Google has its internal design capabilities in place.

Its unlikely that the reported display issues will lead back to LG, he said, noting that its a company that typically knows what it is doing.

Although the complaints may dampen Pixel sales, Google will be able to absorb the blow, said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

Apple and Samsung have both had major product defects and survived, he told TechNewsWorld. Im sure Google will survive a product setback.

Every major company faces product issues like this at some point, McGregor said, often the result of too-aggressive scheduling.

Flagship Flounders

The Pixel 2 complaints come more than a year after Samsung went through a massive recall of its flagship Galaxy Note7 smartphones, which were the subject of a massive recall due to overheating batteries that exploded or caught fire.

Samsung ultimately halted production of the Note7 devices, because replacements were found to have similar problems.

Just over a month ago, iPhone and iPad users began reporting a host of problems with the upgraded iOS 11, the new mobile operating system from Apple. Consumers reported the new OS led to battery drainage issues, slow speeds, and problems with WiFi and Bluetooth.
A refresh of Googles critically acclaimed Pixel smartphones is expected Wednesday when the company holds its annual product launch event at the SFJAZZ center in San Francisco.

Although their features wont be known officially until Google raises the curtain on the phones at the event, leaks  including photos  have given the public a good idea of whats to come.

These are the Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL https://t.co/cXCs560jNH pic.twitter.com/f3P47aeZ2I

 Evan Blass (@evleaks) October 2, 2017

The smaller of the two phones, the Pixel 2, is expected to have a 1080p FHD display with an aspect ratio of 16:9. Its larger brother, the Pixel XL, is believed to have a 6-inch, QHD+ display with an 18:9 ratio. The XL doesnt display as much screen real estate as some of the nearly edge-to-edge phones on the market, but the screen-to-body ratio of 80-85 percent does give the XL a thin bezel look.

The XL reportedly will support a Wide Color Gamut and include a Google Imaging Chip, and the 12-MP cameras in either one or both of the phones will support optical image stabilization.

Although there isnt a lot of flashy technology in either of the units, the XL may include an Active Edge feature on the left side of the phone that will allow you to mute calls and alarms, as well as launch Google Assistant, by squeezing the phone.

Google may be upping the storage ante by bundling unlimited Google Cloud storage with the mobiles.

Ditching Headphone Jack?

The new phones will have dual stereo speakers, based on several reports. That seems likely, especially for the XL, made by HTC  a company known for producing phones with loud, crisp, distortion-free sound.

Like other new smartphones, the new models may come without a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The new units reportedly are built around the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset and run Android 8 Oreo.

Other features include an E-SIM card slot, which provides for connection to networks without replacing the phones SIM card; a second-generation Google fingerprint reader; IP67 dust and water resistance; and Gorilla Glass 5.

The Pixel 2 has a 2700 mAh battery, while the XL boasts a 3520 mAh power plant.

Both phones have 4 gigabytes of memory and either 64 or 128 gigabytes of storage. Pricing has been reported at US$649 (64 GB) and $749 (128 GB) for the Pixel 2. The XL will sell for $849 (64 GB) and $949 (128 GB).

The Pixel 2 will start shipping Oct. 19 and the XL Nov. 15.

Taking on Apple and Samsung

With the latest phones from Apple and Samsung already in the market, the new Pixel offerings are getting out of the blocks late. That may not be too much of a disadvantage, though, since the Pixels dont seem to be targeting likely iPhone X and Galaxy Note customers.

They seem to be more of a direct competitor to the Apple 8 and Galaxy S8, as opposed to the X and Note, which represent exceptional offerings, said Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research.

Theyre premium products, but theyre not positioned as an absolute top-of-the-market, best-of-the-best, based on the specs out there now, he told TechNewsWorld.

Although features are important, Google has other ways to appeal to consumers shopping for an Android phone.

Where it can differentiate is on the tight integration between hardware, the Android OS and Googles services, no doubt using Android O,' observed David McQueen, research director for consumer devices at ABI research.

Hardware is less important to Google than services, he told TechNewsWorld. They want eyeballs on their services the way Facebook does.

Conventional Design

Hardware design seems to take a backseat to software in the Google universe.

The design of the new phones is fairly conventional, which is probably on purpose, said Kevin Krewell, a principal analyst at Tirias Research.

Google wants to feature the Android operating system above the physical aesthetics of the phone, he told TechNewsWorld. The phone should be functional, but its really the software that counts for user interaction.

That approach may be just right for the person Google is trying to reach with the Pixel.

The buyer of a Google Pixel phone is likely someone who is heavily invested in the Google ecosystem and wants the most pure Android experience and faster updates, Krewell said.

The first generation of Pixel phones, although receiving good critical notices, werent runaway bestsellers. However, that doesnt mean the phones arent doing what Google wants them to do.

Success is always nice, but the new Pixel solutions are part of a larger Google hardware ecosystem that includes Pixel Chromebooks, Home speakers and VR headsets that also leverage the companys growing services ecosystem, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

Neither Apple nor Samsung has anything that approaches those Google capabilities, he told TechNewsWorld.

Tough Sell

Capturing the attention of shoppers isnt a problem just for Google but for all smartphone makers  especially makers of Android phones, noted Bob ODonnell, chief analyst at Technalysis Research.

There some pretty nice Android phones out there, so its going to be tough for Googles phones to stand out, he told TechNewsWorld. Its going to depend on how theyre sold and where theyre sold  other aspects besides the pure tech.

One of Googles advantages is that it can offer a pure form of Android unadulterated by carriers or phone makers.

Yet up to now, theyve have only very modest success with the Pixel, ODonnell said. That suggests to me that Andoid buyers arent as interested in that as a differentiator.
Austrian company Denuvo Software Solutions had pirates on the ropes at one point with its Denuvo anti-tamper technology. It was just too hard to break and bootleggers were about ready to give up. Then came CONSPIR4CY's crack of Rise of the Tomb Raider and it was game on again. It almost seemed like hackers had made a contest out of who could crack the latest Denuvo-protected game the fastest.

Once the Tomb Raider DRM was defeated, other Denuvo games fell quite quickly. It only took notorious cracker Baldman eight days to break the protection on Prey. Games like Nier: Automata and Tekken 7 didn't fare much better.

The copy-protection company has tried to gain back its once rugged rep among the torrent-sharing community but with little success. The best it has done recently is when horror game 2Dark lasted about a month before being dismantled.

Now, within the last month or so, pirates have beaten the protection mechanism in less than 24 hours on several recent releases.The latest crack was last week's release of South Park: The Fractured but Whole. Middle Earth: Shadow of War, Total War: Warhammer 2 and FIFA 18 were also all broken on day one of launch according to Ars Technica.

"Our goal is to keep each title safe from piracy during the crucial initial sales window when most of the sales are made."

When Denuvo was getting cracked in under a week last summer, the company defended itself by telling Eurogamer that, "Given the fact that every unprotected title is cracked on the day of release---as well as every update of games---our solution made a difference for this title." This comment was specifically referencing the pirating of Resident Evil 7 less than a week after its release.

To that end, the company has something of a point. Considering that most sales of new releases happen in the first few days after launch, holding pirates at bay for a week is enough time to at least move those initial units to legitimate buyers.

However, with the algorithms giving up the goods on day one, publishers don't have much incentive to pay to use a scheme that may not even cover its own costs. This dilemma does not spell hot water for Denuvo - more like lukewarm at best.

Software piracy has been (and always will be) a big game of cat and mouse. Software makers come up with better copy protection, then crackers come along and figure out a way in. It's an endless cycle.

Rumors are that Denuvo should be just about ready to release "version 5" of its software. When it does, crackers will be back at work trying to find its secrets and game makers will have that brief window to make some decent sales.
FBI director Christopher Wray looks set to reignite the security vs privacy debate after revealing that his agency failed to access "more than half" the devices it recently tried to unlock. In the first 11 months of the fiscal year, agents couldn't extract data from almost 7,000 mobile devices.

"To put it mildly, this is a huge, huge problem," Wray told the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Philadelphia. "It impacts investigations across the board---narcotics, human trafficking, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, gangs, organized crime, child exploitation."

The encryption argument is one that often appears in the wake of terrorist attacks, and it reached new levels during the San Bernardino iPhone case last year. A judge had ordered Apple to help the FBI access the locked iPhone 5c that belonged to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters. The company fought the decision, arguing that creating such a backdoor would ultimately enable governments and hackers to breach people's devices.

The FBI eventually turned to a third party for help unlocking Farook's iPhone. While it's widely suspected it paid $900,000 to Israeli firm Cellebrite for assistance, a federal court earlier this month ruled that the agency doesn't have to reveal who helped it or how much it cost.

Wray said that there needs to be a balance between using encryption and allowing government agencies access to devices.

"I get it, there's a balance that needs to be struck between encryption and the importance of giving us the tools we need to keep the public safe," he said.

Wray also mentioned the increasing threats faced by homegrown extremists and foreign terror organizations, which may have been his way of convincing people that backdoors are necessary. "The threats that we face keep accumulating, they are complex, they are varied," the director added.

The US isn't the only country where authorities are battling encryption. Through the Investigatory Powers Bill, aka the Snooper's Charter, the UK has one of the most extreme surveillance laws ever passed in a democracy and has long called for weakened encryption. In August, Home Secretary Amber Rudd said that "real people" don't care about such security features.
In April 2016, Microsoft filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department over the right to inform its customers that authorities were accessing their emails held on company servers. Now, the Windows maker is dropping its case after the DoJ introduced a new policy that addresses these issues.

Microsoft explains that the policy limits the use of gag orders, ensuring they are only used when absolutely necessary. Additionally, it is now much more difficult for one of these orders, which often came without a fixed end date, to last an indefinite amount of time.

"This is an important step for both privacy and free expression. It is an unequivocal win for our customers, and we're pleased the DOJ has taken these steps to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans," wrote Microsoft's President and Chief legal officer, Brad Smith.

When Microsoft filed the lawsuit, the company said it had received 2567 legal demands from the government that included gag orders, 68 percent of which appeared to prevent it from ever informing customers about the requests.

"Until today, vague legal standards have allowed the government to get indefinite secrecy orders routinely, regardless of whether they were even based on the specifics of the investigation at hand. That will no longer be true," Smith added.

Despite the win, Microsoft is asking for more changes. It wants the Senate to advance the ECPA Modernization Act of 2017, which updates the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act that was put in place before the arrival of the web and cloud computing.
The thought of turning on the lights to your home, closing the drapes or pre-heating the oven from your mobile device can make it sound like were living in the future. Technology can be helpful and save you time, but as our world becomes more connected, we need to be aware of the vulnerability that comes with it.

As we continue our look into National Cyber Security Awareness Month, this week we are talking the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT devices include everything from door locks to web-enabled cameras, coffee makers and even medical devices. According to the FBI, the number of IoT devices in use is expected to increase from 5 billion in 2016 to an estimated 20 to 50 billion by 2020.

What is the danger in being able to start your coffee from bed or close your curtains from your cellphone? Once a cybercriminal gains access to your IoT devices, they may compromise devices connected to your online network, potentially accessing your sensitive personal information.

IoT marketers are quick to explain the benefits and conveniences of their products and services; it is up to you to understand the how they work and access your information.

Here are a few tips from the FBI to minimize the security risks associated with devices and products that connect to the internet:

Understand your IoT devices. Many come with default passwords or open Wi-Fi connections, so change to a strong password and only allow the device to operate on a network with secured Wi-Fi.

Protect your Wi-Fi networks. Set up firewalls and use strong, complex passwords, and consider using tools that limit the devices able to access your network.

Isolate IoT devices. Your router may have an option to set up more than one networkif so, consider separating your computing devices from your IoT devices.

Research the device and update. Purchase IoT devices from manufacturers with a track record of providing secure devices, and update your devices software and security patches when available.

Dont be afraid to ask questions! Its important to understand what your internet-connected device is doing and take steps to protect your information.
Ever since the proliferation of different individual computing devices has occurred, people have been faced with a frustrating dilemma. How do you get your devices to work better together?

Yes, it's great that we all now have a range of impressively powerful and capable devices that let us do almost anything, anywhere. The fact that we have computers in our pockets that are now more capable than room-sized supercomputers of a few decades ago is clearly a wonderful thing. And today's super-slim, lightweight notebooks are a godsend for those who suffered through generations of "luggables."

Ironically, though, the more capable the individual devices become, the more frustrating are the challenges that come with not having them work together more effectively. In the past, all the serious work only happened on PCs, so that was the only logical choice for many tasks. Similarly, large capacity storage was also only available on PCs, meaning they were the only place you needed to go to look for whatever files you desired.

Now, of course, high-capacity storage exists on everything from smartphones, to tablets, to PCs, to fingernail-sized storage cards, and the unlimited capacity of cloud-based storage services means it's getting harder and harder to find the files, images or other data that we need. Plus, the amazing compute resources and connectivity options available on everything from the smallest wearables on up means it's possible to do complex tasks across a huge range of computing devices.

Ironically, the more capable individual devices become, the more frustrating are the challenges that come with not having them work together more effectively.

The net result is a confusing mix of devices, platforms, services, and communications options that makes it increasingly difficult to maintain an organized digital life.

Several companies have made efforts to overcome these challenges, but most are intentionally limited to their own operating systems or other environments. Apple, for example, has had the ability to receive certain types of notifications that originate on iPhones onto Mac screens since the introduction of Continuity features in Mac OS X Yosemite, back in 2014.

Even having simple connections between multiple devices doesn't always help, though. In fact, sometimes it gets downright annoying. Yes, I appreciate that a phone call to my iPhone will also appear on the screen of a Mac that I may be simultaneously using, but more often than not, I'm still going to answer on the phone. Plus, I don't really appreciate every iOS device in sight starting to ring. Now, responding to a text or instant message is certainly easier with the full-sized keyboard of the connected Mac than tapping on an iPhone screen, but the fact that I (and the majority of other iPhone owners) are usually using a Windows PC along with an iPhone means this trick doesn't do much good.

Microsoft is also attempting to address these multi-device issues. In the new Windows 10 Creators' Edition update, the company has introduced a feature called Continue on PC that lets you move your browsing sessions from your smartphone to your PC. The setup process is a bit lengthy and it does require you to install an app on either your iOS or Android-based phone, but it's a step in the right direction. A number of third-party vendors are also working on similar solutions, but the seamlessness of the experience and their overall effectiveness are still unknown.

There's no question that we need to evolve our view and usage of multiple device scenarios into easy-to-use, easy-to-traverse everyday experiences.

With the increasing number of smart connected devices in our homes, the longer-term vision for these multi-device scenarios needs to expand as well. Samsung presented an intriguing vision of this concept at their recent developer's conference in San Francisco, describing the ability to move certain tasks, such as automatically transferring over your exact location in reading a Facebook timeline from a Galaxy smartphone to a Samsung Smart TV. The devil is in the details for these kinds of applications, however, and while the concept sounds great, the execution of the idea remains to be seen. Plus, there is the concern that, like Apple, Samsung will limit these multi-device scenarios to its own branded products---something that would dramatically reduce its potential impact.

The process of moving from an individual device-focused world to one where all of our devices---regardless of brand or platform---can function together seamlessly is bound to be a long one. Overcoming the challenges necessary to make these multi-platform jumps isn't easy and brand-centric thinking doesn't help. Plus, doing these types of turnovers effectively is going to require a lot more intelligence about how, where, and for what applications we use our various devices. Most people do things a bit differently, so automatically customizing for individual habits is going to be essential for long-term success.

Despite these challenges, however, there's no question that we need to evolve our view and usage of multiple device scenarios into easy-to-use, easy-to-traverse everyday experiences.

Bob O'Donnell is the founder and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, LLC a technology consulting and market research firm. You can follow him on Twitter @bobodtech. This article was originally published on Tech.pinions.
IO Interactive on Tuesday announced a new entry in the popular Hitman franchise. Hitman: Game of the Year edition will consist of the base game as well as all of the content released in Season One.

Buyers will also get a bonus campaign called "Patient Zero" featuring four missions that take place in reworked versions of existing areas, each with new gameplay opportunities, characters, disguises, gameplay mechanics, challenges, HUD elements and AI behavior.

Niels Bye Nielsen, the composer for Season One, has again been tapped to produce a custom soundtrack for the new campaign.

Other new content includes clown, raven and cowboy suits with matching, themed weapons and three themed escalation contracts.

The Hitman franchise looked to be in trouble earlier this year when it was revealed that Square Enix was planning to sell the Danish developer. In a note to investors at the time, the company warned of losses totaling $43 million due to the planned sale.

A month later, IO Interactive orchestrated a management buyout, essentially buying itself from Square Enix to once again become an independent developer. It was able to retain the rights to the Hitman series in the process - great news for fans of the franchise.

Hitman: Game of the Year edition launches digitally on November 7 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC priced at $60. Those who already own Season One can pick up the GOTY upgrades for just $20.

Additionally, IO Interactive on November 7 will release a free patch for the base game featuring a redesigned UI with a new color scheme and visual style, new contract mode features, lighting improvements across all missions, an in-game commemorative coin for unlocking elusive targets, native 4K support on Xbox One (plus a higher framerate), Tobii eye tracking support for PC and a host of various bug fixes.

Full details on the update are expected soon.
Over 250,000 Haitian descendants do not have legal residence due to a deliberate policy of non-regularization of migration. | Read More
2017 Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro Review By John Heilig

THE AUTO PAGE

By John Heilig

Senior Editor and Bureau Chief

Mid-Atlantic Bureau

The Auto Channel

REVIEWED MODEL: 2017 Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro

ENGINE: 3.6-liter V6

TRANSMISSION: 6-speed automatic with sequential shift

HORSEPOWER/TORQUE: 278 hp @ 6,000 rpm/265 lb.-ft. @ 4,600 rpm

WHEELBASE: 127.4 in.

LENGTH X WIDTH X HEIGHT: 212.3 x 75.2 x 71.6 in.

TIRES: P265/70R16

CARGO CAPACITY: 1,175 lbs. payload

ECONOMY: 18 mpg city/23 mpg highway/17.8 mpg test

FUEL TANK: 21.1 gal.

CURB WEIGHT: 4,445 lbs. #/HP: 16.0 gal.

TOWING CAPACITY: 6,400 lbs.

COMPETITIVE CLASS: Chevrolet Colorado, Honda Ridgeline, Nissan Frontier

STICKER: $44,814 (includes $940 delivery, $1,114 options)

BOTTOM LINE: Then Toyota Tacoma is almost a perfect size for a pickup, with decent power and good ride quality.

Toyota introduced an all-new mid-size Tacoma pickup in 2016, joining a niche in the market that only Chevrolet and GMC fill on the domestic side and Nissan and Honda on the import side. For 2017, theres a new Tacoma option, the TRD Pro, aimed at, as Toyota says, The most dedicated adventure-seeking, off-road-loving, work-hard-play-hard enthusiasts.

Well, constant readers will realize that in urban Eastern Pennsylvania, off-roading locations are a challenge to find, so what youre going to get here is an on-road adventure" review. We took the Tacoma to get lawn mower parts while it was in my driveway. First, the man who owns the Cub Cadet store said the Tacoma was just what he wanted. He could tow his trailer with his ATV and still use the truck for work.

We had a slight problem with the cargo bed, though. It was equipped with a bed extender, which is normally a great feature. However, our lawn mower parts were in a large heavy box, and two older men (me included) couldnt lift the box over the extender, so we had to remove it, load the box, then re-install it.

The TRD Pro looks tough. Again, according to Toyota, its heritage-inspired ?TOYOTA front grille with color-keyed surround, blacked-out hood scoop and graphic, color-keyed power outside mirrors with turn signal indicators, color-keyed door handles, black overfenders, and color-keyed rear bumper serve to separate it from more pedestrian Tacomas.

Yes, it looks tough, almost like a super duty US truck. With its double cab (pseudo rear door handle) and short bed, the TRD Pro has all the off-road goodies one would want. To the base TRD Off-Road model, the TRD Pro adds18-inch black alloy wheels, Goodyear Wrangler All-Terrain tires, TRD-tuned front springs, TRD-tuned rear suspension, FOX 2.5-inch Internal Bypass shocks, TRD Pro aluminum front skid pad, standard V6 tow package, and all the visual goodies youd want.

Overall, the TRD Pro is a nice package, not just a souped-up Tacoma with a hard ride. The 3.6-liter V6 engine offers good power at 278 horsepower. Acceleration is good, even from 50 mph up. The engine is relatively quiet. It does get noisy on hard acceleration, but what engine doesnt?, but in general the engine is quiet.

Road feel is good. The Tacoma has good ride comfort. Parallel parking can be a challenge thanks to the long wheelbase, but in general handling is good. Rough road surfaces dont get into the cabin. For example, we have a road we travel often that has been grooved for repaving for at least a year. That section felt like a normal road.

Entry is relatively easy. Theres an assist handle on the A Pillar for the front passenger, while the driver has to make do with grabbing the wheel. One problem I had was that the wheel seemed to be positioned low and couldnt be raised any higher. I had to squeeze under it every time I entered. While the transmission is automatic, the shifter has a nice feel.This is good for when you decide to use the sequential manual shift.

At the base of the center stack is array of optional switches and outlets - Blind Spot Monitor, ECT power, Park Assist, USB, 12-volt.

Rear legroom is cozy. On my wifes side, where she likes her seat positioned further back, its almost non-existent. For rear entry, there are assist handles mounted over the rear semi-doors. The rear seat backs fold to make it possible to use the rear as an added cargo area. Folding the seats reveals a secret storage area behind the seats.

As I said earlier, the cargo bed is a good size, but then I dont use a truck for work. The bed extender helps for longer loads, and its easy to remove and re-install. The tailgate lowers and raises easily. The bed has inserts to place 2x4 planks with a 4x8 sheet of plywood over them to create a double cargo space. The cargo bed has numerous tie-downs, and theres a light that goes on when you unlock the doors, handy at night. In addition, there are 12-volt DC and 110-volt AC outlets in the cargo bed.

While the Toyota Tacoma TRD Pro is designed for hard-core off-road enthusiasts, it also serves well as a standard mid-size pickup truck with a bit of styling panache.

(c) 2017 The Auto Page
Ford Motor Company announces executive appointments to support redesigned organizational structure and focus on fitness

Kumar Galhotra to add global marketing responsibilities to his current role leading Lincoln; Stephen Odell is retiring after 37 years of service with Ford

Linda Cash to lead Quality and New Model Launch, succeeding Bennie Fowler who is retiring after serving 27 years at Ford

Dale Wishnousky to lead Manufacturing, Ford of Europe, succeeding Cash

Birgit Behrendt is named to a newly created position leading Joint Ventures, Alliances and Commercial Affairs, Ford of Europe

Lisa Drake to lead Global Powertrain Purchasing and Global Purchasing Operations, succeeding Behrendt

Felicia Fields retiring after 31-year career at Ford; Kiersten Robinson to act as interim Human Resources leader

John Casesa elects to leave Ford as the company realigns global strategy

Joy Falotico, Ford Credit chairman and CEO, and group vice president of Ford Motor Company now reports to Ford CEO Jim Hackett

DEARBORN, Mich., October 24, 2017  Ford Motor Company today announced global leadership changes as it continues to redesign company operations for long-term success.

As we develop our strategy to become the most trusted mobility company, designing smart vehicles for a smart world, we will continue to reshape the organization to deliver the most value for our customers and all of our stakeholders, said Jim Hackett, president and CEO. The changes we are announcing today will further align resources and improve efficiencies throughout our global markets and operations. At the same time, I want to recognize the truly significant contributions of the senior leaders departing from Ford and thank them for their many years of service.

In Global Markets, Kumar Galhotra, 51, is named group vice president, Lincoln and Chief Marketing Officer, effective Nov. 1. He will report to Jim Farley, executive vice president and president, Global Markets.

In this expanded position, Kumar will continue to lead the transformation of Lincoln as a world-class luxury brand, a role he has held since September 2014.

He also will lead the Marketing function shifting investments towards product categories that play to Fords strengths, and developing more effective brand communications including digital services, emobility and autonomy. This supports Fords smart vehicles in a smart world vision and includes the evolution of a more efficient distribution model using digital platforms.

With nearly 30 years of global experience within Ford and Lincoln, Galhotra has a deep understanding of product development, business strategy and the role that marketing, sales and service plays within the process.

At the same time, Stephen Odell, 62, executive vice president, Global Marketing, Sales and Service has elected to retire, after 37 years of service at Ford.

During his career, he was instrumental in leading the development and implementation of Fords European transformation plan with an emphasis on achieving profitable growth through an intense focus on new products, a strong brand and increased cost efficiency. He also served six years with Mazda on three continents and as CEO of Volvo.

Stephen has made significant contributions to Ford, including laying the groundwork for our turnaround in Europe and positioning us for success as we continue to create a world-class global marketing and sales organization, said Hackett. In addition, he has mentored and helped develop many of our next generation of leaders. We appreciate his many years of service and wish him well in the future.

Ford also is announcing the following changes in Global Operations and Ford of Europe.

Linda Cash, 55, is named vice president, Quality and New Model Launch, reporting to Joe Hinrichs, executive vice president and president, Global Operations.

In this role, she is responsible for driving quality processes throughout the design and production of Ford vehicles, and for new model launches globally, ensuring alignment throughout the business operations. Joining Ford in 1984, Cash has spent her entire career with Ford in Manufacturing. She previously was vice president, Manufacturing, Ford of Europe, based in Cologne, Germany.

Cash succeeds Bennie Fowler, 61, group vice president, Quality and New Model Launch, who has elected to retire. During his 27-year career at Ford, Fowler has held many key positions in the heart of the companys business operations, including in Engineering, Manufacturing and Product Development, and began serving in leadership roles early in his career.

Fowler directly influenced the quality of Ford's newest, current and future model vehicles, launching over 900 vehicles, 163 powertrain programs and 19 plants around the world. Under Fowlers leadership, Fords quality improved globally and jumped to No. 2 of all non-premium brands in J.D. Powers 2017 Initial Quality Study  Fords best-ever ranking in the annual study now in its 31st year.

Ford has made significant strides in improving vehicle quality globally under Bennies leadership, said Hackett. He has an absolute unwavering commitment to continuous improvement and we are grateful for his contributions to our success. We wish him all the best.

Succeeding Cash is Dale Wishnousky, 54, who is named vice president, Manufacturing, Ford of Europe and is appointed a company officer. Based in Cologne, Wishnousky will report jointly to Steven Armstrong, group vice president and president, Europe, Middle East and Africa and to Bruce Hettle, group vice president, Manufacturing and Labor Affairs. Wishnousky previously served as director, Global Manufacturing Business Office.

In Ford of Europe, Birgit Behrendt, 58, is named vice president, Joint Ventures, Alliances and Commercial Affairs, reporting to Steven Armstrong. Appointed a corporate officer in 2013, Behrendt is the highest-ranking German national and first-ever German national female officer working for Ford of Europe.

In this newly created position based in Cologne, Behrendt will be responsible for all joint ventures and alliances in Europe, including the development of new arrangements to support the companys business growth. She also will be part of the leadership team responsible for driving the regions strategic initiatives.

Joining Ford in 1978, Behrendt has held various positions within Purchasing and several global leadership roles. She most recently served as vice president Global Powertrain Purchasing and Global Purchasing Operations in Dearborn, Mich.

Succeeding Behrendt is Lisa Drake, 45, who is named vice president, Global Powertrain Purchasing and Global Purchasing Operations. She also is appointed a company officer.

In this role, Drake will be responsible for all powertrain purchasing operations worldwide, as well as global operational purchasing performance. She will report jointly to Hau Thai-Tang, executive vice president, Product Development and Purchasing and to Raj Nair, executive vice president and president of North America.

The following leadership changes also are effective:

Felicia Fields, 52, group vice president, Human Resources, has elected to retire after more than 30 years with the company. Appointed to her current position in 2008, Fields was instrumental in leading the companys efforts in talent management, workforce planning, organizational development, recruiting and leadership development as the company recovered from the financial crisis.

Felicia has been an outstanding leader and we thank her for the tremendous contributions she has made to Ford throughout her career, said Hackett. She has long been a trusted source of guidance and leadership, always putting our employees first, and working to make Ford a great place to work.

Kiersten Robinson, 47, executive director of Human Resources, Global Markets, will serve as the companys interim Human Resources leader, effective Nov. 1. Robinson has a wealth of global experience in human resources spanning more than 25 years, including serving in Europe, Asia Pacific and most recently in the Americas.

John Casesa, 55, group vice president, Global Strategy, also has elected to leave the company, effective Nov. 1, as the company realigns the global strategy function. During his time at Ford, Casesa led the effort to develop the global strategy team and processes to better align the companys business unit and skill team leaders around the world. Going forward, the Global Strategy function now will report to Bob Shanks, executive vice president and CFO.

We thank John for his leadership in growing our global strategy capabilities, particularly

related to our progress on mobility, electrification and transportation services, said Hackett. We are clearly focused on delivering smart vehicles, connected to a smart transportation operating system, and have begun building out several of our new business models.

As the company redesigns the organization and grows Ford Credit, Joy Falotico, chairman and CEO, Ford Motor Credit Company and group vice president of Ford Motor Company, now will report to Jim Hackett, effective Nov. 1. Falotico previously reported to Bob Shanks.

Ford Credit will play an increasingly significant role in Ford Motor Companys business strategy by identifying revenue-generating financing opportunities and mobility business models  including vehicle sharing and flexible payments  that support smart vehicles in a smart world.

All appointments are effective Jan. 1, 2018, unless otherwise noted.

Related Information


Lena Dunham in Brooklyn, 2003. Photo: Laurie Simmons

This piece originally appeared in New Yorks 50th anniversary issue, My New York  a special edition that attempts to capture the citys voice through first-person stories, spoken and written, about how our disparate lives intertwine. Read them all here.

When I was in seventh grade, we moved to Brooklyn and got a dog, two signs of domestication my father had sworn hed never partake of. Despite having sired two young, clumsy daughters, he was convinced we could remain forever in an industrial building with condemned stairs and no certificate of occupancy, and that the pressure to wash your jeans was a conspiracy by Big Downy. But there we were, on our Sesame Streetperfect block of carriage houses with a terrier who rode in the back of a gray Volvo. This is fucking humiliating, my father muttered as he loaded us in for a drive to brunch. Rage, rage against the changing of the boroughs.

But I took to our new neighborhood like Liza Minnelli to a broke gay man  it was as if Id been waiting my whole life for the chipper sitcom that is Brooklyn Heights. Good morning, Mr. Construction Worker Leering at my non-breasts! Pleasure to see you, Old Lady With Substantial Day-Drinking Problem! I worked part-time at the video store. I had friends at the diner, the dog park, and Talbots, where Id stop to peruse discount ladys separates. And I tacked my business cards up in Pets Emporium. EXPERIENCED PET GROOMER, they said, though experience simply meant a pair of clippers purchased at sale prices and a relentless will not to be bitten. I was too scared to actually use the razor, so I gently trimmed dog bangs. I was never hired twice.

But to build a business, you need a champion, and mine was Sammy, an affable Palestinian man who spent most of the day outside his shop, the aforementioned Pets Emporium, greeting the neighbors, giving dating tips to unmarried female customers, and ordering around the sons (four out of his eight) who worked for him in what was actually a stunning parlor floor apartment, though it was far too stuffed with bird seed and hamster wheels for the classic architectural details to matter.

I was quickly fired from the video store (turns out the customer is really, actually, and totally always right, even if its about gang-bang porn). I was 70 percent friendless and the market for an untrained 15-year-old dog groomer is niche, so I had a good amount of time on my hands and that time was spent with Sammy. Sometimes he let me stack and organize product in exchange for a small store credit. Other times I passed out flyers on special deals. Often we just read quietly, what my mom would call parallel play. My beautiful Lena! he would cry when I appeared in the doorway, in the least-sleazy singsong a 55-year-old man can direct at a 15-year-old girl.

I really dont know what my parents thought was going on. Wheres Lena? Oh, shes spending Saturday at the pet store with her best friend and mentor Sammy, stacking litter boxes in exchange for organic rabbit pellets! Sammy let me bring my actual rabbit, first name Chester, last name Hadley, who would sit behind the register in a cardboard box chewing on Timothy Hay. Once, Sammy sent me to cut the nails of an elderly blind womans cat, and she paid me with a brooch I still have, a fake ruby in a gold-plated filigreed heart. Sammy marveled at it. What a treasure!

When it was time to go to college, Sammy and I had an emotional farewell. I promised to be studious, responsible, and kind  and I promised to visit. But I never visited. My parents moved. My obsession with small-animal husbandry faded. I instead became obsessed with what I ate, what I wore, and whom I fucked (or more accurately, who was refusing to fuck me). Eight years later, I moved back to the neighborhood, but I avoided Sammys block. Despite certain successes, it was hard to imagine that I had fulfilled Sammys order to be good. I had HPV, there were whole neighborhoods I was scared to walk through for fear of a yelling match with a tattooed landscaper, and sometimes I went to the bodega at 4 a.m. and ate six to seven packaged croissants then threw them up. I had no pets.

But one day, having turned 31 and celebrated my five-year anniversary with someone I considered to be the embodiment of good, my feet walked me where my mind had refused to go. It was a Sunday. Would the store even be open? Did Sammy still run Pets Emporium or would one of his sons stare at me blankly, wondering who this woman with unbrushed hair and daytime pajamas asking for his dad was?

I dont know whats going to happen, I told my boyfriend as the door creaked open. But there behind the counter was Sammy, in his old spot nestled between the leashes and the dog-breath neutralizers. My beautiful Lena! he said without a beat. I grinned. It quickly became apparent that he had no idea what Id been up to for a dozen years  he hadnt read about me in Page Six. He didnt believe I had caused Hillary Clinton to lose the presidency. He had not seen my nipples and bush on TV. He was simply happy Id kept up with this whole being-alive thing. I told him which of our family pets were still living and which one had died after taking a huge shit on my moms color printer. I told him I was a writer, for real now. I presented my boyfriend like a trophy.

Look at you! said Sammy, who had kept a strong business rocking through the financial crisis, the Starbucks-ification of Montague Street, and the challenges of being a human on this earth. No. Look at us.
Photo: Michael Lane/EyeEm/Getty Images

For so many women, the process of becoming requires two, Julie Buntin writes in her novel Marlena, in which a 30-something woman obsesses over the memory of her childhood best friend. Its not hard to make out the marks the other one left. The fictional relationship is based on Buntins memories of her own glamorous, drug-addicted best friend, whose liver gave out in her early 20s. Lea was the kind of person you join Facebook to stalk, Buntin wrote in an Atlantic piece about her inability to stop monitoring Leas Facebook page, years after her status updates ceased.

Marlena is part of a slew of recent books focusing on a womans complex, lifelong link to her first real friend. Elena Greco  the narrator of Elena Ferrantes Neapolitan novels  marries into a cosmopolitan family and makes a name for herself as a writer, but cant shake the feeling that she is less deserving than her naturally brilliant best friend, who never left the poor neighborhood where they grew up. In her memoir The Hot One, Carolyn Murnick (an editor at New York) explores how her relationship with her childhood best friend shaped her sense of identity even after their paths diverged  even after a cross-country move and an underlying rivalry drove them apart, and even  especially  after Ashley was murdered at 22. Ashley was charismatic, unself-conscious; Carolyn was bossier, more of a misfit. Both had brothers and Jewish dads. It was Ashley  who had Hollywood-good looks and was dating Ashton Kutcher when she died  who had been the hot one, leaving Carolyn to take up the mantle of the smart one.

The impact of a childs relationship with her caregiver is well-known: Any number of online quizzes and best-selling self-help books will tell you that the type of relationships you form as an adult and your very way of being in the world can be traced back to the way you related to your parents. Did you have an anxious attachment? Youre doomed. Avoidant? Youre doomed. Secure? Congrats! But what about the first relationships kids choose for themselves? Writers may be ahead of psychologists here, but researchers are coming to appreciate how formative those bonds are.

An underlying assumption of these attachment theorists is that the earlier relationships result in an internal working model or relational schema that guides how adolescents navigate and experience future relationships, explains Amy Bellmore, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Those attachments can be with peers as well as parents. Early adolescence is when we see the emergence of an understanding of intimacy and the growing importance of feeling trust in relationships. In the prepubescent years of middle school, girls tend to peel off into intense, exclusive pairs, while boys are more likely to hang out in groups, an escalation of a gendered pattern that emerges in early childhood. Whether its socialized or whether theres a genetic predisposition, its something we see throughout the lifespan, says Mitch Prinstein, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina and author of Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World.

Its also a developmental sweet spot. Theres something about the pubertal years when those relationships get far more emotionally intimate, especially for girls, says Prinstein. They are more likely to tell their friends things rather than parents. They rely on each other for coping. Eleven- and twelve-year-olds are capable of a more mature intimacy than younger kids, but havent yet been bruised by the breakups and rejections that make adults more cautious. Their identity is still forming, their boundaries fluid; they can try on the hobbies, preferences, even the personality of a favorite friend. Through sleepovers and play dates, they become privy to the idiosyncrasies and private rhythms of a second family unit, expanding their world and challenging their ideas of whats normal.

Part of the intensity of these friendships is situational: A burgeoning capacity for empathy coincides with a flood of new opportunities and freedoms. In middle school, kids have a larger pool of potential buddies to choose from, and can finally pick their own friends, based on criteria more meaningful than whos on their bus route or who their parents approve. Friendship is particularly important during middle school because supervision from adults declines, says Brett Laursen, a psychology professor who has studied adolescent peer pressure and the longevity of middle-school friendships. They have a lot more latitude in terms of their choices of what to do and who to spend time with.

And the transition to middle school can be turbulent. They need help navigating this brand new world where people arent looking over their shoulder all the time, says Laursen. When you were little and you went to the museum, your teacher would tell you you have to stick close to that buddy they assigned you. Nobodys assigning you a buddy, but you want to stick close to somebody as you navigate adolescence.

There is often something passionate, even proto-romantic about those best-friend bonds. While it should never be assumed that a close relationship between two women is homoerotic  just ask Oprah, who is perennially interrogated about the nature of her friendship with Gayle  it shouldnt diminish the validity of a friendship to acknowledge a pseudo-sexual undercurrent, either. Harry Stack Sullivan, an influential early-20th-century psychiatrist, argued that same-sex, one-on-one prepubescent friendships are practice for later heterosexual romance. According to Sullivan, a shift takes place sometime around the ages of 8 to 10, as children begin to form more reciprocal, emotionally intense relationships, and to consider the needs and desires of their friends. Instead of focusing solely on what should I do to get what I want, he wrote, the preadolescent starts to think about how to contribute to the feeling of worth-whileness of my chum. And in thinking about how the friend perceives her, the preadolescent gains a new understanding of herself: One gets a look at oneself through the chums eyes.

Though not all of Sullivans ideas stand up to modern research, the gist of this one does. The pattern for our behaviors in romantic relationships seems to be predicted by the kinds of friendships that we had and the things that happened to us within those friendships, Prinstein says. People who had difficulties with their friendships might have difficulty, growing up, establishing supportive relationships. Our relationships with our peers are the most important in adolescence, so it makes sense that they would hold a special power years later.

As consuming as those friendships are in the moment, though  and as sincerely as 10-year-olds believe that they will last forever  they tend to be transient. You dont really know who you are or what youre looking for, Laursen said. His study, which followed hundreds of kids from the beginning of middle school until the end of high school, found that only one percent of friendships forged in seventh grade made it to graduation. The friendships fell apart as their individual identities took shape: they were most likely to drift apart if one friend became more successful  whether academically or socially  than the other. Yet the legacy of those bonds can endure. I know: I havent spoken to my middle-school best friend  my chum, as Sullivan might say  in years, but I still Google her every so often. Maybe next time, I wont feel as weird about it.
Twenty years ago most Brits settled for a sun lounger and poolside pina colada on their holiday. These days activity holidays are all the rage. According to ABTA, twice as many of us will go on an activity holiday this year, compared to just a decade ago. With good reason: for one thing, sunbathing is great for about five minutes, but mind numbingly dull after that. For another, our lives are now so busy that holidays are the only time left for pursuing hobbies or learning a new skill. Activity holidays arent just fun  theyre a modern-day essential. Here are 8 reasons you need to do an activity holiday  and why you need to book one NOW.

Turns tourists into travellers

Activity holidays show you a side to a country tourists dont normally see. Learn to cook with Flavours Holidays in Tuscany, for example, and the local host will escort you to local markets and artisan food shops. Theyll also take you to their favourite out-of-the-way trattoria and bars. Youll meet locals, swap menus and get a proper glimpse of the real Italy. Likewise on their painting and photography holidays, tutors will take you way off the tourist path, to practice portraits in tiny hilltop hamlets and little-visited villages.

Relieves stress

Focusing on a new skill or activity literally takes your mind off things. No mortgage, no office politics  just how on earth do I paint those vivid red poppies and terracotta rooftops, or how the hell am I supposed to hold this Pilates position and breathe at the same time?

Activity holidays demand focus

They promote concentration, dragging your mind away from the usual tiny stresses that usually make up the day. In fact, neuro-scientists mapping the brain liken the experience of complete concentration and absorption you get while painting, say, to mindfulness practices such as meditation and yoga.

No-pressure way to make friends

On a group activity holiday youll be surrounded by like-minded people. By definition, theyll be up for new challenges and experiences. In other words, youll have a bunch of possible friendships on tap. The relationships can form as big a part of the holiday as the activity itself.

Travel on a single trail

Little wonder, then, that activity holidays are such a hit with single travellers: Flavours Holidays estimates that 70% of their guests are travelling solo. Partly thats because of their no single supplement policy; but also its because activity holidays are a brilliantly low-pressure way to make friends. Youre focusing on a shared experience, without the horror of having to approach strangers for a chat.

Makes you happier

A bold claim, we know, but scientists at Harvard and the University of California have recently discovered that holidays can actually alter gene function, dampening stress, boosting the immune system and lowering levels of proteins linked to dementia and depression. Effects, they found, were still apparent one month after the holiday ended  longer if people had been on an activity holiday. Theories posited include the idea that once home, activity holiday participants typically carry on practising the skills developed. This way they effectively reinforce those positive genetic changes on a daily basis. Its the holiday gift that keeps on giving.

Can holidays reverse the effects of depression?

Other scientists go even further. Kelly Lambert, a behavioural neuroscientist at Macon Randolph University in Virginia suggests that activities such as painting may actually stimulate parts of the brain affected by depression, effectively reversing its effects.

Develops problem-solving skills

Whatever holiday activity you go for, there are bound to be hiccups along the way. The path to greatness is paved with adversity  or, when trying to perfect puddings on a cooking holiday, say, with panna cotta that looks more like milkshake than Michelin-starred pud. Dealing with disaster has two benefits: for starters, you quickly learn to deal with disappointment. For another, you have to adapt, to come up with creative solutions to the problem of a pud that just wont set. Thinking outside the box becomes second nature.

Improves communication skills

Activity art holidays such as painting, drawing and photography help you tap into your subconscious, allowing you to communicate your feelings to yourself and the outside world. Art activity holidays allow you to access feelings buried deep within, and enable you to deal with those feelings by giving them a physical shape, removing the anguish involved when keeping feelings hidden. In fact, psychologists often prescribe art therapy for patients who have suffered psychological trauma: it helps release emotions in a safe, non-threatening environment.

Carves out valuable me time

We live in busy times. Between mortgage and work stress and emails and kids, who on Earth has time to take up something as time-consuming as Pilates? As for learning a whole new language? Forget it. Except forget it you absolutely must not. Pilates is a life-changing practice, the ultimate antidote to our modern lives doubled over a laptop or phone. And a new language? It rewires the brain, fires up the synapses, simultaneously opens up a whole new world of travel  not to mention self-confidence.

Some activities are just so much better abroad.

Learn Italian with Flavours Holidays in Italy, and you can reinforce everything youve learned on excursions to towns and restaurants. Its total immersion, and it accelerates your language learning like nothing else. Do a Pilates holiday with Flavours, and youll be stretching out al fresco, gazing from your gorgeous villa across a sea of vineyards and hills. It beats the hell out of a chilly village hall back home.

Improves memory and concentration

Activity holidays boost memory function and sharpen the mind. Just as a runner exercises their heart, so painting holidays, language courses and cooking classes exercise the parts of your brain responsible for memory and concentration. People who regularly practice creative activities are shown to have less chance of developing Alzheimers and dementia. Activity holidays arent just a great way to meet likeminded people and develop life changing skills  theyre also aerobics for the brain!

Lorne Blythe is the owner of Flavours of Italy Ltd, a specialist travel company.
A mother in Edinburgh, U.K., who found that her babys coffin was empty after she spent 40 years trying to get it exhumed, now wants a DNA test carried out. (Google Maps)

After 40 Years, Mother Finds No Remains in Sons Coffin and Demands DNA Testing

A mother who found that her babys coffin was empty after she spent 40 years trying to get it exhumed and now wants a DNA test carried out.

Lydia Reids son Gary died seven days after he was born in Edinburghs Royal Hospital for Sick Children in 1975. Reid told local outlets that she was confident that her son was not inside his coffin during his funeral more than 40 years ago.

The National Health Service (NHS) in Scotland has admitted widespread organ retention from 1970 to 2000. Some 6,000 organs and tissues were kept by Scottish hospitals, many from children. Reid suspected Gary was among the victims.

Read more: Organ Harvesting Persists in China

The coffin was light. I knew the weight of a baby. My son was not there. Again, nobody believed me, Reid told the BBC. For the next 42 years, shes wondered if Gary was not in his coffin.

When she finally convinced professor Dame Susan Black and got a court order to exhume the grave, she saw there was nothing in the coffin.

She said, I wanted to be wrong. I wanted to be called a stupid old woman. But the minute Sue lifted the shawl out of the ground, I knew there was nothing in it. Nothing, as reported by The Independent. My heart hit my feet. I didnt know what to say.

What was discovered in the coffin was only a shawl, hat, nameplate, and a cross instead of her sons body. The nameplate spelled Garys name incorrectly, as Garry, she said, adding insult to injury.

Mother discovers her sons coffin was buried empty, 42 years after he died https://t.co/Jt5A3p3I3v  Metro (@MetroUK) September 2, 2017

Reid told the MailOnline this week that she wants a DNA test.

My son wasnt there. Someone stole the body of my son, she said. I had buried my empty coffin.

I want them tested for DNA as I want to know if there is any part of my son there, she said.

Reid said there were no signs of decomposition inside the coffin. She suspected it was empty long ago because of how light it was at the funeral.

Mum's horror as she opens her dead baby's coffin https://t.co/7ZuMnFbEPD pic.twitter.com/TdoPuJO1fg  The Sun (@TheSun) October 23, 2017

Even if hes been incinerated I want to know, she said. Even if hes lying in a jar in a hospital somewhere I want to know.

If its possible to get my son back, I want my son back. And if its not, then at least tell me, and let me have peace, she said.
Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne speaks during a news conference with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, and Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, at the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London, Britain Sept. 9, 2016. (REUTERS/Nick Ansell/Pool)

Australia Expands Security Assistance to Philippines to Combat Islamic Terrorists

CLARK FREEPORT ZONE, PhilippinesAustralia on Tuesday announced the expansion of its security support to the Philippines, which will involve training in urban counter-terrorism, to fight the rise and spread of Islamic terrorism in the region.

The announcement follows the end of the 154-day battle for Marawi city which stunned the Philippines military inexperienced in urban combat, and fueled concerns ISIS loyalists wanted to use the southern island of Mindanao as a base for Southeast Asia ISIS activity.

The battle for Marawi ended on Monday, Oct. 23. Philippines authorities said 920 militants, 165 troops and police and at least 45 civilians were killed in the conflict, which displaced more than 300,000 people.

Australia, along with the United States, Singapore and China, provided weaponry and technical support, including surveillance aircraft.

All nations must learn from the recent Marawi conflict and the Philippines experience, said Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne, adding Canberra and Manila will host a post-conflict seminar to learn from the five-month Marawi conflict.

About 80 soldiers from Australias mobile training team will be deployed in local bases in the Philippines to train army and marine units in urban counter-terrorism warfare, said Payne on the sidelines of an ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting in Clark, a former U.S. air force base.

The practical training the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) will provide will ensure the Philippines defense force is better able to counter the brutal tactics being employed by terrorists, Payne told a news conference.

The spread of Daesh-inspired (IISIS) terrorism is a direct threat to Australia and its interests and we are committed to working with our partners and allies to ensuring Daesh cannot establish a geographic foothold in the region.

Payne said Australia was concerned with ISIS fighters returning from Iraq and Syria to home countries in Southeast Asia and was working closely with Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore to monitor terrorist movements.

Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said in the same briefing the government had been provided by Kurdish intelligence, through Manilas embassy in Baghdad, with a list of Indonesians, Malaysians and a few Filipinos who might return home.

Lorenzana said the Philippines and Australia are now reviewing the deployment of surveillance planes, which flew four times a week over Marawi since late June.

Apart from urban warfare training, Australia will also enhance provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability, share information and intelligence and strengthen maritime security engagement and bilateral maritime patrols.

An increasing number of Australian warships are expected to make visits to Manila. Canberra is also emerging to be the top source of education and training for local troops.
Snow covers a sculpture of a gun with a twisted barrel on the grounds of the United Nations last year in New York. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images)

Billy the Kid Photo Turns out to Be Worth Millions

He bought the old photo for $2but it turns out its worth millions.

The value skyrocketed after experts confirmed that one of the figures in the picture, which shows 15 people in front of an old cabin, is the notorious outlaw Billy the Kid.

Its only the second picture confirmed of the infamous outlaw, whose real name is William Bonney.

The kid is in the middle of a croquet game in New Mexico in the picture, which was taken in 1878. Kagins, a company specializing in Western Americana and Rare Coins, recently authenticated the picture.

The historical importance of a photograph of Billy the Kid alongside known members of his gang and prominent Lincoln County citizens is incalculable. This is perhaps the single most compelling piece of Western Americana that we have ever seen, Kagins owner Donald Kagin said in a statement on the companys website.

Collector Randy Guijarro told KSEE that buying the picture was a last-minute decision.

I had just a couple of bucks left, and I found three photographs I liked, and of the three, the oldest tintype, I actually kind of chucked it back in the box, he told the station.

The other known Billy the Kid picture was sold for $2.3 million in 2011.
Italian former leftist guerrilla Cesare Battisti leaves the headquarters of the Federal Police in Sao Paulo, Brazil March 13, 2015. (REUTERS/Nacho Doce/File Photo)

Brazil Seeks to Revoke Asylum of Italian Ex-guerrilla Convicted of Murder

BRASILIAThe Brazilian government told the Supreme Court on Monday that President Michel Temer has the authority to revoke the asylum status a former left-wing guerrilla convicted of murder in Italy and extradite him at his countrys request.

Cesare Battisti committed four murders in the 1970s when he belonged to a guerilla group called Armed Proletarians for Communism, according to the Italian government. He escaped from prison in 1981 and lived in France before fleeing to Brazil to avoid being extradited to Italy.

Brazils Supreme Court authorized Battistis extradition in 2009, but he was not sent back to Italy because former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva granted him refugee status on his last day in office in 2010.

In a note to the top court, the governments chief lawyer Grace Mendonca argued that extradition was a political decision that only the president could make.

She reminded the court that it had approved Battistis extradition in 2009 and asked the justices to reject a habeas corpus writ issued ten days ago by one of its members.

Battisti was arrested on Oct. 4 as he tried to cross the border into Bolivia in a taxi, apparently fearing that Brazils government was about to revoke his asylum status at Italys request. He was freed two days later.

Lulas refusal to extradite Battisti upset relations between Brazil and Italy. Temer, a center-right president who took office when Lulas handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached last year, decided it was time to remove that thorn.
A member of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) rests on a chair as another walks by in the town of al-Karamah, 26 kms from the ISIS group bastion of Raqa, on May 10, 2017. (Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images)

British Volunteer Fighting ISIS in Syria Is Killed

A British man who was fighting ISIS in Syria has been killed while clearing landmines for civilians in the former ISIS-held city of Raqqa, reports said.

Jac Holmes, 24, a former IT worker and decorator in Bournemouth joined the Kurdish Peoples Protection Unit (YPG) in Syria in 2015.

His mother Angie Blannin told the BBC, He loved what he was doing there, he loved being a soldier. He had the courage of his convictions.

He was just a boy when he left the UK, a little bit lost. He told me he didnt know what he wanted to do with his life. But by going out there, he found something that he was good at and that he loved, she said.

He stuck by his convictions because he wanted to be there and he wanted to see the end of Raqqa and to see the end of the caliphate. That was a moment in history, and he wanted to be part of it, Blannin said.

We thought with any luck hed be home for Christmas. It had been so tough since he had been away but I was always 100 percent behind him, she said.

The 24-year-old, who had no previous experience in the military, had spoken with Sky News about how he missed England while in Syria.

Before I came here, I was just living a normal life, like everyone back home. I was fixing computers and I was a painter Then I decided I wanted to come and join the YPG. I wanted to fight evil in Syria, he said.

He added, I miss England a lot, Ive been here nearly a year now without going home. I miss everything, I miss living a normal life.

On Sunday, Oct. 22, the British fighter posted video footage on Instagram where he walked into a stadium in Raqqa just after it had been liberated from ISIS. He died a few days later.

Walking into the stadium in Raqqa for the first time since the battle ended. We spent weeks seeing this place from hundreds of metres away, it was strange walking the streets and finally going inside. Filmed by @duttenhof #ypg #sdf #raqqa #syria #223 A post shared by Jac Holmes. YPG. (@jac.holmes) on Oct 22, 2017 at 4:47am PDT

His YPG battalion announced his death in a Facebook post.

It is with the deepest of hearts that we must announce the passing of sores (Jac Holmes) a British volunteer who was fighting alongside the YPG since the beginning of this conflict, they wrote.

Jac was fearless in the face of the enemy but still held onto that compassion and reasoning as to why he traveled to Rojava to take part in the fight.

Idris Al Oso described him as a hero in a tweet posted earlier today.

Our dearest comrade and hero Jac Holmes passed away today.His only wish was tosee the end of ISISand he passed inthe last moments of victory pic.twitter.com/fQ0Mlb0IRN  Idris Al Oso (@Idrisaloso) October 24, 2017

Holmes is thought to be the sixth Briton who has died while fighting ISIS in Syria.
A boy in northwest Argentina has a close brush with death when lightning strikes in his backyard as he's playing in the rain. (Youtube/MIsiones Online)

Caught on Camera: Boy Playing in Rain Almost Struck by Lighting

A mom filming her 12-year-old son playing in the backyard during a thunderstorm captures his close brush with death.

Mother Carolina Kotur told local media she was standing with her daughter, who has a fear of thunderstorms, watching her son play in the backyard of their home when it happened.

They live in Posadas, a city in the northeastern Argentine province of Misiones.

The boy can be seen with an umbrella and raincoat playing in a gushing water spout that had swollen with rain.

She said she was filming him as a joke, but when he ventured into the yard, it was no laughing matter.

Just 16 seconds into the video, as he is walking toward the family pool, a flash of lightning can be seen just yards away from the boy.

The mother appears to drop the phone and the video ends.

Despite the lightning strikes proximity, the boy is unhurt. Thank God, nothing happened to him, she told local media.

The fierce storm did take two lives however.

Brothers Sinforiano Venialgo Vazquez, 43, and Simon Venialgo Vazquez, 41, were killed near their home when lightning struck in the Paraguayan town of San Pedro del Parana, just 40 miles northwest of Posadas.

The storm brought hail in at least one area, and left some communities without power, local Paraguayan media ABC Color reports.

From NTD.tv
Drug Cartels Are Building Assassin Drones

Experts warn of flying bomb trend and its impact on US security

Mexican Federal Police arrested four men driving a stolen vehicle on Oct. 20 in Guanajuato, in Central Mexico, and in the cars trunk, in a container next to an AK-47 variant rifle, they found a weapon that could soon change the nature of policing criminal gangs.

What they discovered was a remote-controlled flying drone that can be purchased online for around $229, yet fitted with a homemade bomb.

The Mexican drug cartels can use the flying bombs for targeted assassinations, and the technology behind the bomb drone pulls from recent developments in homemade weapons by terrorist groups including the Colombian communist terror group FARC and ISIS.

The significance of the finding was pointed out in a recent report in Small Wars JournalEl Centro by senior fellows Dr. Robert Bunker and Dr. John Sullivan. In an email interview, Bunker said that such developments in cartel weaponry may be inevitable.

A criminal insurgency has been raging in Mexico for over a decade now with well over 100,000 homicides taking place, Bunker stated in the email, noting that the insurgency in Mexico blurs the lines between criminal activity and a war.

And recently in the conflict, Bunker notes, What can be considered terrorist TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) have been increasingly coming into play, such as the use of human shields and now the fielding of a weaponized drone.

The use of bomb drones is a trend. Drug cartels in Mexico have begun using drones to smuggle drugs across the border, and the Small Wars Journal report notes that between 2012 and 2014 the cartels made an estimated 150 intrusions with drones into the United States. Theyve also been using the drones at an increasing rate to gather information for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

The next trend is the explosive device found on the drone. It is what insurgents call a potato bomb, or papas bombas, or Bombas de impacto, which consists of explosive materials wrapped into a ball with shrapnel. The report notes the bombs have been used by the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion and by FARC.

At least four cases of papas bombas being used in attacks have been reported in Mexico since February.

The idea of strapping bombs like these onto drones is not a new concept, but its on the cutting edge of weapons used by terrorist groups. ISIS terrorists have used drones to carry and drop bombs on targets. The report states, Such use is well known and has been identified in [ISIS] tactical actions taking place as early as December 2015 in Tishrin, Syria and June 2016 in Khan Touman, Syria.

While Bunker notes its not yet certain if the four individuals arrested with the rifle and bomb drone were members of a cartel, the technology, other items seized in the arrest, and location of the arrest suggest they were.

Bunker notes that Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) has used such weapons, and the arrest was in Guanajuato, where CJNG is fighting for control against two other drug cartels, Los Zetas and the Sinaloa cartel.

We are working under the assumption that this weaponized drone may be CJNG-linked but no evidence of such a confirmed linkage presently exists, Bunker said.

Bunker stated that he spoke in Mexico City in June at an Armored Vehicle Latin America conference, where he raised the issue of the cartels using drones as weapons.

He said the use of weaponized drones would immediately place Mexican state and federal police as well as the military on the defensive, until theyre able to roll out technologies to counter the devicestechnologies which the local authorities do not currently have.

Bunker notes the development is taking place in a region that has become a petri dish of cartels experimenting with new technologies and weapons. While the area is relatively far from the U.S.-Mexico border, Such cartel technology use diffusion of course has the potential to spread north to the cartels and/or cartel factions operating in the borderlands.

The U.S. government is aware of the growing threat and is already rolling out systems capable of countering drones.

According to the researchers, this development in counter-weapons was mainly due to ISIS and other terrorist organizations beginning to use drones in their attacks over the last few years.

With the cartels now going this route as well, however, Bunker notes that, moving forward, U.S. Border Patrol and Homeland Security agents will of course want to begin tracking cartel drone use patterns if they are not already doing so.
EU Negotiator: Off-the-Peg Deal for Britain, Bespoke Pact Must Wait

BERLINBritain must choose from a range of existing off-the-peg models for its relationship to the European Union when it leaves the bloc, Brussels chief negotiator Michel Barnier has told a group of newspapers.

He said a bespoke deal could only be negotiated after an orderly departure.

Barnier, who is leading the EUs negotiations with Britain after last years Brexit vote, told Handelsblatt that while it was in both sides interest to maintain a close relationship, the range of possible relationships was limited.

The only way to do it without difficulties is by staying within the internal market. That would be the Norway model, but the British government rejects it, he said. Another option would be a free trade agreement like the CETA-deal with Canada.

Even a Canada-style deal would take several years to negotiate. Asked if there would be a specific British model after the country left on March 30, 2019, Barnier said: No.

European leaders decided this weekend that Britain had not made enough progress on exit negotiations to begin work on devising a future relationship, leading to concern in Europe and the world that Britain could crash out of the bloc in disorderly fashion, with serious economic and political consequences.

A disorderly exit would bring enormous problems  mainly for Britain, but also for us, he said in the interview with Handelsblatt and four further European newspapers. That would affect everything from food supply to healthcare.

He added: Britain would leave the single air traffic space, losing take-off and landing rights. It would no longer be a member of the Euratom treaty and could no longer import nuclear material from the EU for hospitals and power stations.

The process of designing a longer-term relationship with the EU was also fraught with difficulties, he added, warning that the EU would need to find ways to head off any British attempts to undercut European environmental or welfare standards.

We will have to arrange future co-operation on defense and security policy in a separate treaty, he said. We will have to ward off British attempts to influence our decision-making processes in this area.

By Thomas Escritt Editing by Jeremy Gaunt
Family of Missing Hiker Shot by Boyfriend Hold No Grudges Against Him

The family of Rachel Nguyen, who was found shot dead by boyfriend Joseph Orbeso, said that they dont hold the man responsible for her death as they believe that she was severely injured prior to the incident.

Nguyen and Orbeso were found dead near a tree in Californias Joshua Tree National Park last week. They were found, notably, locked in an embrace in what appears to be a sympathetic murder-suicide, it was reported.

We thank God that well be able to give Rachel a proper burial and lay her to rest, Son Nguyen, who is Rachels uncle, told The Desert Sun on Saturday.

Her parents  and myself are united, believing in the detectives accounts of this being a sympathetic murder-suicide. We hold no grudges against Joseph or the Orbeso family.

Nguyen said that Rachel may have injured herself while sliding down a cliff.

Joseph went after her and took care of her, he said, adding that a T-shirt was found around her head like a bandage. A shirt was found wrapped around her legs

Apparently, Rachel and Orbeso, who worked as a security guard, reached a point where they wanted to ease the pain due to a lack of water.

It was a hot day. I wish they had been better prepared. Until you are in the same situation  you dont know how you would react, he said, adding that his niece was an average girl trying to make her way through young adulthood.

The San Bernardino County Sheriffs Office confirmed to media outlets last week that, Based on evidence located at the scene, detectives believe Orbeso shot Nguyen, then shot himself.

We are all very fortunate and relieved to have a proper and peaceful memorial service for Joseph and Rachel. God bless both of them and all the people they have touched, Gilbert Orbeso, the mans father, told The Desert Sun.

The two were discovered three months after they were reported missing, according to reports.

Citing police, the OC Register reported that the two appeared to be rationing food and had no water.

That is not the kind of person Joseph is, friend Austin Young told the Register. I think he brought a gun out there to protect Rachel. I think they got lost and were suffering in 100-degree heat.
Father Finds Long Lost Twin Sons Through Viral Facebook Post

A 40-year-old dad from Manitoba, Canada, finally found his long-lost twin sons, after his girlfriend sent out a message with his photo on Facebook.

In the post, Roberto Gaspar said he wanted to meet his twin sons before he died. He hadnt seen them since they were six months oldmore than 20 years ago. They were the only two of his seven children that hed not had any contact with.

Gaspars current girlfriend, Dana Sinclair, gave birth to his seventh child on Friday, Oct. 13, and seeing his new baby made Gaspar think of his twins.

I was laying in bed and I looked at my girlfriend and said, You know, I really got to find a way to find my boys. Im going crazy about these boys, I cant find them,' Gaspar told CBC News.

Gaspar was just a teenager when his boys, Ramando and Robert Gaudette, were put up for adoption by their mother, a previous girlfriend of Gaspars. The twins had remained together in the process.

The boys mother had recently died, however, and she never revealed the whereabouts of the boys to Gaspar. He did manage to make contact with their long lost sister, who had also been adopted, and they have since grown close, according to CBC. But she had not had contact with the boys either.

Luckily, the photo and accompanying message went viral.

The post was up for three days, collecting views and shares on both Sinclairs Facebook page, as well as on a page called Shoutout Edmonton, a community page where people can anonymously engage in discussion on issues of a personal and community nature.

By the morning of Tuesday, Oct. 17, the post had reached one of the twins21-year-old Ramando Gaudettewho looked up the post after someone called his home about it. And he was impressed by what he saw.

Thats my dad. Thats awesome. Pardon my language, he looked like a badass. He looked awesome, said Ramando in a CBC interview.

The family has yet to meet each other in person, but they did have a three-way phone call together.

The first thing that I let them know was that I never gave up on them and they were always in my heart, said Gaspar. It was too much. I was shaking, nerves were hitting high, my stomach was in knots.

Gaspar plans to bring all of his children together for a family reunion so they can meet their siblings, half-siblings, and extended family.

From NTD.tv
Father of Missing Texas Girl Sherin Mathews Arrested on Felony Charge: Police

He 'voluntarily arrived at the Richardson Police Station with his attorney'

The father of missing Texas girl, Sherin Mathewswhose body is believed to have been found by investigatorswas arrested on a felony charge.

Police in Richardson say Wesley Mathews is facing a felony count of injury to a child, the police department said in a statement on Monday night. Its a felony punishable by life or anywhere from 5 to 99 years in prison, the department noted.

Mathews voluntarily arrived at the Richardson Police Station with his attorney and asked to speak with detectives. He provided an alternate statement of events from those which he had given previously, regarding the disappearance of Sherin, the department wrote.

Details of the alternative statement were not provided by police.

Hes now being held on $1 million bond in the Richardson City Jail, police stated.

We are still awaiting a positive identification from the Dallas County Medical Examiners office for the childs body found yesterday, believed to be Sherin Mathews, the department said.

Mathews initially told investigators earlier this month that he ordered Sherin, 3, to stand outside the familys home at 3 a.m. as punishment for not drinking her milk. He was later arrested that day before he posted bond and was released.

Police said they believe his wife, Sini Mathews, was sleeping when the girl was told to go outside and wasnt aware of the alleged punishment, Fox4 reported. He was previously charged with endangerment to a child and had to wear an ankle monitor.

On Sunday, police said they found the body they believe to be Sherins in a culvert near a road close to the Mathews home, located in a suburb north of Dallas. She went missing Oct. 7.

Wesley Mathews didnt report the girl missing for five hours later, and he reportedly did the laundry in the meantime.

The couple adopted Sherin in 2016 from India after she was abandoned in her native country, according to The Times of India.

Worst news finding childs body, Richardson Police Chief Jimmy Spivey tweeted on Monday, but he added that he is happy [it has been] recovered so properly laid to rest.

Those who are responsible, he vowed, would be brought to justice.

Worst news finding child's body If it's #SherinMathews happy recovered so properly laid to rest. Will bring person(s) responsible to justice pic.twitter.com/uKKWkf9QjB  Chief Jimmy Spivey (@RPD_Chief) October 22, 2017
Sherin Matthews, 3, went missing from her home in Sunningdale, Texas, on Oct. 7, 2017. (Facebook/Richardson Police Department)

Father of Sherin Mathews Says She Choked on Milk

The father of Sherin Mathews claims that she choked on her milk and believed she had died, changing his initial story that he asked her to go outside as a form of punishment for not drinking her milk.

According to an arrest warrant for Wesley Mathews obtained by local news outlets, the details of the conflicting story led to his arrest on Monday evening. Police in Richardson confirmed his arrest on Monday, Oct. 23.

Mathews alleges that hed been trying to get the 3-year-old child to drink the milk in the garage at 3 a.m. and physically assisted her in drinking the milk when she wouldnt listen, WFAA reported, citing the arrest warrant.

She was coughing and her breathing slowed, the warrant said. Eventually, Wesley Mathews no longer felt a pulse on the child and believed she had died.

Eventually the 3-year-old girl began to drink the milk, it said, Fox8 reported. Wesley Mathews then physically assisted the 3-year-old girl in drinking the milk. The 3-year-old girl began to choke.

Mathews then admitted that he removed her body from his home.

Originally, after she disappeared Oct. 7, he said that he told her to go outside and stand near a tree at 3 a.m. as punishment for not drinking her milk. He was then arrested on charges of felony endangerment to a child and was placed on electronic ankle monitoring before he bailed out of jail.

Wesley Mathews "physically assisted" his daughter drink milk. He admitted to moving her body after she choked/died. https://t.co/DiOLkNlO39 pic.twitter.com/khxg6aAUjj  Frank Heinz IV (@frankheinziv) October 24, 2017

He was re-arrested on Monday for felony injury to a child after telling officials at the Richardson Police Department the conflicting new details.

When they came in, they provided us with some information that was contrary to what we had previously been told regarding her [Sherin Mathews] disappearance, said Kevin Perlich, who is a Richardson Police Department spokesperson. It is possible that he could bond out again, Perlich said, WFAA reported.

Neither Sini Mathews nor husband Wesley had any comment regarding their daughter Sherins death at a court hearing in Dallas. pic.twitter.com/xLjGfpWSel  T.L. Langford (@tlangford) October 23, 2017

His bond has been set at $1 million and he was taken to the city jail.

He wouldnt elaborate on the details on the original story Mathews told police. It was not what he told us originally, Perlich stated.

The body of a child was found in a culvert on Sunday morning, and police believe it belonged to the girl.

Wesley Mathews and his wife Sini Mathews on Monday attended a court hearing to determine whether they could regain custody of their biological 4-year-old daughter.

Sherin was adopted from India after she was abandoned by her biological family, according to the Times of India. Reports say she was developmentally disabled and had difficulty communicating.
Florida School Bus Involved in Crash With Deputy Cruiser: Reports

A deputy cruiser in Florida was involved in a crash with a school bus on Tuesday morning, Oct. 24, officials said.

According to ABC Action News, the cruiser rear-ended the bus, which was carrying seven students, in Thonotosassa. It took place after 6 a.m. local time on Main Street, near Harney Road.

The school bus was transporting students from Armwood High School in Seffner when the unmarked Hillsborough County Sheriffs Office deputy cruiser hit the vehicle.

One student complained of a neck injury and will be looked at by medical personnel, ABC reported.

Here's a snapshot of the crash  school bus versus deputy vehicle. Main St @ Bunk House Lane in Thonotosassa. pic.twitter.com/XbqvMhCn1f  Tampa Bay Traffic (@TampaBayTraffic) October 24, 2017

Thonotosassa: EB Main @ Bunk House. Hills. Co. deputy rear ended school bus. 12 Armwood High students on board. 1 transported for precaution pic.twitter.com/7RK5Lc3yun  Leslee Lacey (@LesleeLacey) October 24, 2017

WFLA reported that four other students were waiting to get on the bus when the collision occurred.

The deputy, meanwhile, suffered minor injuries and wasnt hospitalized.

Other details have not been released in the incident.
Homicide Detectives Start Investigation After 2-Year-Old Dies of Severe Burns

Homicide detectives in Hawaii are investigating the death of a 2-year-old girl who passed away 5 weeks after suffering severe burns while she was in the care of her father at an Army base.

Ocean Wright was rushed to a hospital on Aug. 18 after military law enforcement and medical personnel responded to a 911 call from a sergeants home at Schofield Barracks, an Army base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.

The girls mother, Sassidy Curry, flew to Hawaii as soon as she heard the news, Hawaii News Now reported. She spoke to doctors at the Kapiolani Medical Center who told her that it appeared like water was poured on the girl and that her arm went up to defend herself. Curry also said that her daughter had bruises on her body as well as a bite mark.

I only can imagine the screams that she had and the pain that she felt, Curry said.

Wright lived with her mom and two siblings in Las Vegas and traveled to Oahu to stay with her father for two months. The father was living with his new wife and two children. According to Curry, the adults explanation of the incident kept on changing.

The 2-year-old girl died on Sept. 25 more than 5 weeks after she was hospitalized.

I felt like I wanted to die. I watched my baby on life support for 23 days. I watched her suffer for five weeks, her mother said.

According to the Army, the dad is a 25th Infantry Division soldier. He and his current family have no history of child abuse, an Army representative said. The Army notified Child Protective Services about the burning incident one hour after Wright was sent to a hospital.

Im never going to stop until justice happens, said Curry. My daughter might be dead in flesh, but she still lives on because as long as Im her mother, Im never going to stop.

The Honolulu Police Department opened a first-degree assault case for the injuries. They said no one as yet has been arrested, although a 21-year-old woman is considered a suspect.

The case is being treated as unattended death while police wait for autopsy results.

From NTD.tv
Eight prototypes of President Donald Trump's US-Mexico border wall being built near San Diego, seen from across the border in Tijuana, Mexico, on Oct. 22, 2017. (GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP/Getty Images)

Illegal Immigrants Jump Existing Fence During MSNBC Report on Border Wall

Recently an MSNBC reporter got a dose of reality while doing a report on President Trumps promised border wall.

The reporter was covering the new prototypes of Trumps border wall near San Diego when the interview was interrupted by a small group of migrants jumping over an existing part of the wall.

As the rolling camera captured the scene, three people, including a girl with a pink backpack, could be seen turning themselves in to the Border Patrol officers on horseback. It was all captured in the background of MSNBCs shot.

This is the reality of everyday border enforcement, a Border Patrol agent told reporter Jacob Soboroff. The United States is still the drawthe ultimate drawfor people that have dire situations where theyre at.

Were going to continue to witness this. It plays out on a regular basis for us, Soboroff said.

And it did just here, just now, the reporter said.

According to MSNBC, the three people were asylum seekers and were not from Mexico.

David Bossie, a former deputy campaign manager for the Trump campaign told Fox & Friends that MSNBC witnessed the facts in action.

MSNBC went down there to do one story and it came away with another, Bossie told the network on Tuesday, Oct. 24. The facts got in the way of their very good, dishonest story.

The presidents right, we need a wall and thats an exact reason why, a perfect example, he added.

See more of Foxs interview below.

Watch the latest video at &amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=//video.foxnews.com&amp;amp;amp;gt;video.foxnews.com&amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;gt;

On Oct. 17, Trump tweeted a video of the new border wall prototypes being erected.

BORDER WALL prototypes underway! he wrote in the video post that garnered over 103,935 likes and over 30,961 retweets as of writing.

BORDER WALL prototypes underway! pic.twitter.com/arFNO80zmO  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2017

Earlier this month, the House Homeland Security Committee passed a bill that included $10 billion in spending for a border wall, including wall, fencing, technology, air assets, and other barriers on Oct. 5.

In addition to the wall funding, the bill would add 5,000 Border Patrol agents and 5,000 Customs and Border Protection officers.

The bill, named Border Security for America Act, includes $5 billion to help combat illicit drug trafficking at major ports of entrymost drugs enter the country over bridges and through airports, rather than over the border.

The bill would also make up to $35 million in funding available to deploy the National Guard to help with aviation and intelligence support along the southwestern border, especially in Texas, which has called for help in securing the border.

Texas has one of the more difficult borders to secure, due to much of the border being the Rio Grande river. Most of the nations illegal border crossers come over the river in the Rio Grande Valley.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), also targets visa overstayers by fully rolling out biometric entry and exit systems at all ports of entry. A significant portion of the illegal immigrants in the United States are visa overstayers. In 2016, more than 544,000 people on visas who were supposed to leave the United States did not, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

From NTD.tv
NEW DELHIRahul Gandhi, the scion of Indias most fabled political dynasty, will within weeks be crowned leader of the Congress party, handing him a freer rein to prove if he can mount a credible challenge to the dominance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The great-grandson of Indias founding prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, has struggled to convince voters  and many in his party  that he is leadership material, especially after a his defeat in the 2014 general election.

Modis depiction of the 47-year-old as an undeserving prince has helped sideline Gandhi since the last national vote, during which time Congress has suffered some of its worst ever local election results.

But this year the economy has stumbled, and Congress politicians hope a round of state elections, beginning in Modis home state of Gujarat, offer them  and their leader  a shot at revival ahead of the next national poll in 2019.

Gandhi will soon take over as Congress president from his 70-year-old mother, Sonia Gandhi, a symbolic promotion that three Congress officials said they hoped would free his hand to shift the narrative from a clash of personalities  which Modi has so far resoundingly won  to a debate about policies.

You will see many changes and every change will be a reaffirmation of what Congresss core beliefs are, said party MP and senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia , who works closely with Rahul Gandhi.

The right time has come to strike a chord with the masses against Modis governance style, and we will not miss it.

Focus on Jobs

Congress insiders acknowledge their leader has sometimes made it easy for Modis Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to question his commitment to politics.

The key problem with Rahul Gandhi has been his lack of consistency, said a senior party figure, who declined to be identified. He frequently takes a break after few roadshows and it is this inconsistency that has been a huge issue.

But Congress officials say Gandhi has recently been finding his stride criticizing Modi for failing to create jobs, while the party has won a handful of recent by-elections.

Gandhi is traversing Gujarat, the western state where Modi made his name, to fire up his party workers.

He has ditched some of the party rallies for one-on-one meetings with trade unions, dairy workers and small traders  a traditional Modi powerbase that has been hit hard by recent economic reforms championed by the prime minister.

Modi has taken notice.

Last week he told workers from his Hindu nationalist BJP that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty would destroy Gujarat.

His party president, recently dispatched to the Gandhi family heartland in northern India, said this month that Gandhi needed to swap his Italian glasses for Gujarati spectacles to see the economic development the BJP had brought to the region, in a jibe at his Italian-born mothers roots.

BJP would love it to be a war of personalities. Congress has to frame it as a war of two different approaches, even ideologies, said Sandeep Shastri, a political scientist and Congress expert at Jain University.

Gandhi, who rarely talks to the media, declined a Reuters interview request.

Gandhis challenges

Rahuls father, grandmother and great-grandfather were all prime ministers in post-independence India. But critics deride Gandhi as a political lightweight who depends on his family name for power.

Bursts of political energy have been followed by lengthy absences. In 2015 he took nearly two months of leave, prompting Modis party to accuse him of holidaying while parliament was in session.

Congress now governs states home to less than 10 percent of Indias 1.3 billion population, its powerbase shriveled under the onslaught of Modis popularity.

Congress insiders acknowledge the party is unlikely to win the December election in Gujarat, but cutting into the BJP majority in the state would send a powerful signal that Congress under Gandhi has a fighting chance against a still-popular Modi.
TWIN FALLS  Twin Falls public servants are scrambling to get moving this week so the city doesnt have to extend its lease of a temporary City Hall.

City employees begin moving into the new City Hall on Wednesday and Thursday  starting with informational services and utility billing. Theyve been stationed in the former KeyBank building downtown since April 2016; the city leases the building for $8,000 a month.

To avoid extending the lease, employees have to be out by the end of October.

The utility billing department will start out Thursday with half its staff helping the public in the temporary City Hall, 103 Main Ave. E. When the city flips the switch later in the day, utility billing will start helping the public at the new City Hall at Main Avenue East and Hansen Street.

There should be no disruption in those services, Deputy City Manager Mitch Humble said during a tour with the City Council on Monday.

Everyone else is going to be a little tricky to find, he said.

Informational services will start out the moving process on Wednesday, followed by utility billing, the city managers office, the finance department, human resources and economic development on Thursday.

Humble recommends that if you have an appointment with someone in those departments over the next week, you should call them first to see where you will meet.

The deputy city manager has found himself in a sort of limbo over the next few days after discovering his furniture had been moved Friday in his absence.

I dont even have a desk, Humble said.

Project Manager Jason Derricott with Starr Corp. said the City Hall project is actually a few weeks ahead of the contracted schedule, in order to move city employees out of the former Key Bank building by the end of the month.

More than 60 employees will move from the temporary City Hall and the planning and zoning building on Hansen Street. The planning and zoning, engineering and building departments will move onto the second floor Nov. 6, Humble said.

They probably will shut down for a day, he said. We own that building so theres less of a rush.

The $5.7 million remodeling is projected to be right on budget and is nearly complete.

Inside, exposed concrete and pipes give the building an industrial-style look.

The City Council chambers in the basement have repurposed wood paneling from the Rogerson and Banner Furniture buildings. The City Council will continue to meet Mondays at 305 Third Ave. E., until January, so that basement room will be the last to be completed. Otherwise, the city would have to re-notice all of its upcoming public meetings  which would cost money, Humble said.
Las Vegas Victims Family Demands Answers as Police Remain Tongue-Tied

The family of a wounded victim of the Las Vegas shooting massacre is demanding answers from the hotel company and the music festival organizers as police continue to release insufficient information about what happened during the deadliest mass shooting in recent U.S. history.

Paige Gasper was left with shattered ribs and a lacerated liver after she was hit by a bullet at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on Oct. 1.

Gaspers family filed a lawsuit against MGMthe company that owns Mandalay Bay Resort and CasinoLive Nation, the organizer of the music festival, a maker of bump stocks, and a number of other parties.

Gasper worked three jobs while attending Sonoma State University and saved up $236 to attend the country music festival. Shes doing better now, but has a long road to recovery, according to her lawyer, Michelle Simpson Tuegel.

A kid like that expects two simple things: to have a good time at a concert and to be safe, Tuegel told Fox News.

As information about what happened on Oct. 1 remains scarce, Tuegels firm launched an independent investigation concurrent with Gaspers lawsuit.

The lawsuit blames concert organizers for not informing attendees what to do in case of an emergency.

There appears to have been no PA, emergency announcement, no pre-planned here is where the exits are in case of the emergency, she said. Knowing these large outdoor events are targets is not new to anyone.

Tuegel claimed that part of the injuries Gasper suffered was due to the chaos that broke out after the shooter began firing.

Based on information we have from our client and other statements we have gathered our client was trampled a bit, Tuegal told Fox News. Chaos ensued after that.

Police say that a single shooter, Stephen Paddock, fired from the 32nd-floor window of his hotel room in Mandalay Bay onto the music festival crowd below, killing 58 people and injuring more than 500.

Gaspers family is ready for a lengthy lawsuit, Tuegel said. At least one lawsuit similar to Gaspers has already been filed and Tuegel said her firm is set to file another lawsuit soon.

A similar case was filed in Los Angeles on behalf of Gus Castilla, the father of Andrea Castilla who died in the attack.

That lawsuit accuses MGM of not keeping track of Paddock as he brought a massive weapons arsenal to his room.

Its inconceivable to us that the perpetrator was capable of transporting what amounts to an actual armory of weapons into the hotel, especially in an era in which shooting incidents and terrorism are front page news on a daily basis, said a statement from the law firm of attorney Richard Bridgford.

The lawsuit also accuses concert organizers of not having clearly marked exits for the crowd.

Whats truly regrettable, especially in these times of known heightened risk, is that this tragedy was completely foreseeable and thus avoidable, the statement continues. That such things will occur is a virtual certainty these days. As such, those who profit from attracting the public into their business venues must do a far better job of safeguarding them. As a result of their failure to do so my client has forever lost his beautiful and intelligent daughter of only 28 years.

Live Nation, the organizer of the music festival, issued a statement saying the company was heartbroken over the tragedy.

And while we are stunned and grieving over this incomprehensible act of violence, we know that this is a moment when we must come together to prevent more tragedies like this from occurring, the statement reads.

A statement from MGM said that the company is cooperating with authorities.

We are grateful for all who came to the victims aid that evening, including our employees, first responders, the police and citizens who acted in countless ways to assist, the company told Las Vegas Review-Journal. Out of respect for the victims we are not going to try this case in the public domain and we will give our response through the appropriate legal channels.

From NTD.tv
LONDONThe City of London must remain the top global financial center after Brexit to avoid its financial services drifting to other parts of the world, Luxembourg Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna said on Monday.

Financial centers such as Luxembourg, Paris and Frankfurt are battling each other to attract banks, insurers and asset managers in Britain who need an EU base after the UK departs the bloc in 2019.

Companies from across the EU use London for currency trading, derivatives and managing investment funds. Some EU policymakers want parts of these activities shifted to the continent after Brexit to avoid relying on what will then be a foreign financial center.

Its key for Europe  that the Number 1 financial center in the world remains in Europe, Gramegna told students at the London School of Economics.

There was a need to harness the City of London to Europe to ensure that London continued to perform well, Gramegna said.

Punishing London to get a chunk of the pie was a very short-term view, and a no deal Brexit would not benefit the EU, but send UK financial services to countries outside Europe, Gramegna said.

Britain would then, in a sense, drift away into the Atlantic, he added.

I find that a balanced final agreement with the UK, specifically for financial services, is in the interests of Europe itself, Gramegna said.

Britain and the EU have held several meetings to agree a divorce settlement, with too little progress to begin talks on future trading relations.

Gramegna declined to put a figure on Britains divorce bill, a key stumbling block.

What is the value of access to the EU single market? Can you put a figure on that? I cannot. Money is really not whats the most important, he said.

As regards Britains future trading relations with the EU, he said Switzerland has shown how it could work when it comes to the free movement of people, which many Britons want to curb.

He urged British and EU politicians to dedramatise the divorce talks, avoid megaphone diplomacy, and focus on the factual.

We must be neither complacent, nor try to punish the UK, he said. Having no trading deal would be bad for both sides.

A transition period between Brexit and new trading terms was needed to reassure business, he said.

The pressure on companies is much higher than what governments anticipated, he said.

Financial technology firms in London, for example, have already met with Luxembourg, saying they need access to EU customers after Brexit.

This is much more of an urgent matter than people think, Gramegna said.
A surgeon and his theater team perform key hole surgery to remove a gallbladder at at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, on March 16, 2010. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

NHS Could Be Carrying Out 280,000 More Operations per Year

National Health Service (NHS) hospitals could be carrying out 280,000 more non-emergency operations per year if schedules were better organised, according to new research.

An analysis of 100 NHS Trusts in England has reportedly revealed that more than two hours per day are wasted in operating theatres.

The study by regulator NHS Improvement said that avoidable factors such as late start times and early finish times led to the time loss, the BBC said.

In 2016, the period analysed by the regulator, about 1.64 million routine operations were carried out, including surgical procedures to the eye, ear, nose, and throat and orthopaedic procedures.

The logjam effect is a very major problem because the hospitals are completely full virtually all of the time, said Professor Derek Alderson, president of the Royal College of Surgeons to the BBC. So if you need an intensive care bed and yesterdays patient is not well enough to leave the intensive care unit, that days operating list cannot start.

He added, I think the NHS can always be more efficient and I think people have worked very hard to try to make it more efficient, but I dont think those savings are going to resolve the ever-increasing demand that is being put on the health service.

The study allowed for 5 percent of the time to be lost due to last minute cancellations.

The British Medical Association has said the NHS is at a breaking point. Dr. Mark Porter, the BMA council chair, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Theresa May in June.

Year on year real-term cuts to pay and the worsening state of the NHS are having a damaging impact on the morale, and the recruitment and retention of front-line staff, he wrote.

Speaking to the BBC, NHS Improvements Steve Russell said he hoped the research results will help the NHS become more efficient in the future.

We hope this analysis will enable them to identify bottlenecks within their systems to ensure operations are scheduled more appropriately and more patients receive the care they need quickly, he said.

The data from the watchdog comes just weeks after the new chief of hospitals, Professor Ted Baker described the NHS as not fit for the 21st century.
Once Hungry for War, North Korea Now Talks About Global Peace

News Analysis

After years of threatening to destroy the United States and its allies with nuclear weapons, North Koreanow faced with a U.S. president willing to use military actionis talking about global peace.

For the ruling class in Pyongyang, the threat of military force against its adversaries has been a key part of its domestic efforts to maintain its ruthless regime for decades.

The reality, however, is that North Korea is an impoverished country that cannot even provide enough food for its citizens to eat. Much of its military equipment is outdated, and it wouldnt stand a real chance of winning against a vastly superior United States army.

Thats where North Koreas nuclear weapons come in. The regime is well aware that the only way it can matter on the world stage is by having nuclear weapons at its disposal.

With only months left for its nuclear weapons program to be finalized, North Korea has sharply escalated its threats of firing the weapons of mass destruction at the U.S. mainland as well as Japan and South Korea.

In response to this threat, President Donald Trump has pursued diplomatic efforts backed up with economic sanctions and the threat of military action to pressure North Korea into giving up its nuclear weapons program.

On Trumps request, the military has drawn up a number of scenarios for military action, which have been refined over the past few months. The United States has also been deploying strategic military assets to the region, such as the aircraft carrier the USS Ronald Reagan, and at least two nuclear-powered submarines with the ability to fire cruise missiles that are currently taking part in navy drills.

Once hungry to fight the so-called final battle with the United States, as North Korea calls it, its state media are now expressing worry about the simmering tension and prospect of military action on the Korean Peninsula.

An article published by the communist regimes state media on Oct. 24 said North Korea had sent a letter to the United Nations about the naval drills and the threat to global peace.

It also raised concerns over the United States gaining support from NATO and other allied forces in the Korean peninsula.

In a separate article published on the same day, North Korea raised concerns about Japans close collaboration with the United States. On the same day, a Japanese official said that the threat of nuclear war with North Korea had reached an unprecedented level.

In reality, North Korea has become increasingly isolated on the world stage.

In recent months, two of North Koreas closest allies, China and Russia, have joined the United States in imposing stronger sanctions on it.

Especially the sanctions imposed by Chinaon which North Korea relies for some 90 percent of its tradeare believed to have a major impact on the regimes economy.

Trump is expected to pressure Chinese leader Xi Jinping to expand the sanctions further and to put more pressure on North Korea.

Absent a diplomatic solution, which North Korea has refused so far, the threat of a military option is real.

The president has been extremely clear on his perspective on North Korea. Hes not going to accept this regime threatening the United States with a nuclear weapon. He just wont accept it, National Security adviser H.R. McMaster said at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on Oct. 19.
A Russian Yars RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile system rides through Red Square during the Victory Day military parade in Moscow on May 9, 2017. (Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images)

Russia Ready to Test New Nuclear ICBM

Russia is ready to test a new nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile which Russia claims can penetrate U.S. missile defenses and destroy an area the size of the state of Texas.

Initial tests will be conducted at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, about 500 miles north of Moscow.

The new missile, dubbed the RS-28 Sarmat, was announced last December by Col. Gen. Sergey Karakayev, commander of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, as being ready for mass production at the Krasnoyarsk Machine-Building Plant.

Design and construction started in 2009. The first-stage engine was tested successfully on Aug 10, 2016. The new missile is supposed to be ready for deployment by 2019 or 2020.

The Sarmat was supposed to be ready for testing in earlier this year, but neither the missile, nor its launch silos, were finished on schedule. The silos are supposed to be sturdy enough to withstand seven consecutive nuclear strikes.

The missile is reported to weigh more than 100 tons, with a payload of 10 to 15 MIRV (multiple independent reentry vehicles)that is, 15 smaller self-guiding warheads, each of which can attack a different target.

Russias state-controlled RIA Novosti news agency reported that each individual warhead could be up to 750 kilotons.

In alternate configurations, the missile could carry ten heavier warheads or 24 lighter glider warheads. The missile can also carry anti-missile countermeasures designed to defeat air-defense systems.

The Sarmat should have a range of about 7000 miles, and will reputedly be too fast for air defense systems to stop.

RIA has reported that the Sarmat has a throw weightthe weight of the payloadof about five tons.

Michael Kofman, a research scientist from the non-profit Center for Naval Analyses in Washington D.C. doesnt think the reporting is right.

If RIA is right, and it probably is not right, how do you fit a payload of 10 warheads and tons of decoys into five tons? he asks. There are large questions outstanding about conflicting claims about throw-weight, warheads and penetration aids.

The RS-28 Sarmat will replace the R-36M missile. Apparently, it will receive the NATO designation SS-30 Satan 2 when operational. NATO called the R-36M SS-18 Satan. The R-36 has been Russias main missile since 1974.

The new Sarmat RS-28 is about half the weight of the R-36M and has about half the throw weight.

The RS-28 Sarmat will replace the R-36M at Dombarovsky Air Base in southeastern Russia, and Uzhur in central Russia.

From NTD.tv
The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt departs its homeport of San Diego for a regularly scheduled deployment to the U.S. 7th and 5th Fleet areas of responsibility, in support of maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Travis S. Alston)

2nd Aircraft Carrier Strike Group Deployed to South Korea

The United States has taken the unusual step of deploying a second nuclear-power Nimitz-class aircraft carrier to patrol the waters off South Korea.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt and the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group, (TRCSG) originally headed for the Persian Gulf, have been rerouted to the area off the Korean Peninsula.

The Roosevelt Strike Group will join the USS Ronald Reagan Strike Group, already docked in the Korean port of Busan.

The Theodore Roosevelt and the Ronald Reagan are Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, the most powerful warships in the world.

The USS Theodore Roosevelt, nicknamed The Big Stick, and the rest of TRCSG, also called Carrier Strike Group 9 (CSG-9) entered the 7th Fleet area of operations (AOO) on Oct. 23.

Entering 7th Fleet is an exciting opportunity to integrate with other U.S. Navy units in the AOO, as well as operate with our partners and allies in the region, said Rear Adm. Steve Koehler, commander, Carrier Strike Group Nine. We look forward to continued partnerships that lead to mutual security and common views about operating at sea.

The U.S. Navy website states the strike group is in the area to conduct maritime security operations, theater security cooperation, and port visits as part of the U.S. Navys ongoing presence in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.

Aboard the Theodore Roosevelt are three Navy fighter squadrons, a Marine fighter squadron, two helicopter squadrons, plus fleet support, early warning, and electronic attack squadrons.

Along with the Theodore Roosevelt is the guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill as well as the guided-missile destroyers the USS Halsey, the USS Preble, and the USS Sampson.

USS Theodore Roosevelt is prepared to carry out the full spectrum of possible missions, from humanitarian relief to combat operations, said Capt. Carlos Sardiello, Theodore Roosevelts commanding officer. When a carrier leaves on deployment, we have to be ready for anything.

The Theodore Roosevelt left San Diego on Oct. 6, scheduled to relieve the USS Nimitz in the Persian Gulf.

It is highly unusual for two such potent vessels to be stationed in the same area of operations (AOO.) This happened briefly in June when the USS Carl Vinson was in the area for training. The last time before that was in the 1990s.

The USS Ronald Reagan and its strike group returned to the port of Busan on Oct. 21 after five days of joint exercises with the South Korean air force and navy.

The Ronald Reagan is the flagship of Carrier Strike Group Five, which includes the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers USS McCampbell and USS Barry, and the Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Shiloh.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit South Korea as part of a trip through Asia in November.

From NTD.tv
Sister of Girl Feared Dead to Stay in Foster Care for Now

The 4-year-old sister of the missing girl Sherin Matthews will be looked after in foster care for another three weeks.

A custody hearing was postponed by a Dallas County judge on Monday to allow her father, Wesley Matthews, time to hire an attorney, according to CBS news.

Three-year-old Sherin Matthews went missing after she was left outside at 3 a.m. on Oct 7 as a punishment for not finishing her milk.

Her adoptive father was arrested and initially charged with abandoning or endangering a child, and her 4-year-old sister was removed from her parents care by Texas Child Protective Services.

Since the discovery of a childs body by police on Sunday, which they believe to be that of Sherin, her father has been re-arrested and charged with a further felony offense.

On Monday, at the custody court hearing in Dallas, Wesley Mathews asked for more time to get a civil attorney to represent him in the custody hearing, according to CBS Dallas/Fort Worth.

The judge granted an extension, scheduling a new hearing for Nov. 13, and ordering that the 4-year-old remain in foster care until then.

In the meantime, officials will determine if relatives or family friends in Fort Bend County, about 40 miles southwest of Houston, could take custody of the 4-year-old if necessary.

According to CBS, Kent Starr, the attorney representing the childs mother, Sini Mathews, said his client was participating with the police department to identify whether or not the body that was discovered in Richardson, Texas, is that of Sherin Mathews.

Police in Richardson said Wesley Mathews is facing a felony count of injury to a child, the police department said in a statement on Monday night. Its a felony punishable by life or from 5 to 99 years in prison, the department noted.

Mathews voluntarily arrived at the Richardson Police Station with his attorney and asked to speak with detectives. He provided an alternate statement of events from those which he had given previously, regarding the disappearance of Sherin, the department wrote.

Hes now being held on $1 million bond in the Richardson City Jail, police stated.

We are still awaiting a positive identification from the Dallas County Medical Examiners Office for the childs body found yesterday, believed to be Sherin Mathews, the department said.

Mathews initially told investigators earlier this month that he ordered Sherin, 3, to stand outside the familys home at 3 a.m. as punishment for not drinking her milk. He was later arrested that day before he posted bond and was released.
In this handout photo released by the South Korean Defense Ministry, South Korea's Hyunmoo-2 ballistic missile is fired during an exercise aimed to counter North Korea's nuclear test on Sept. 4, 2017, in East Coast, South Korea. (South Korean Defense Ministry via Getty Images)

South Korea Developing Frankenmissile Aimed at Norths Leadership Bunkers

South Korea is officially developing a Frankenmissile capable of destroying the bunkers protecting the North Korean leadership in the event of war.

The North Korean regime currently has missiles and artillery trained on the cities of South Korea, including Seoul, just 35 miles from the border.

That threat can be neutralized quickly, according to an army report given to South Koreas Parliament on Oct 19, which outlined its new pre-emptive strike system, including the development of the new missile, according to the Telegraph.

The new missile could carry double the payload of current missiles, enabling it to penetrate the underground bunkers of the communist regime leaders who have threatened to turn Seoul into a lake of fire.

The missile has been dubbed Frankenmissile due to its potential to carry a beefed-up modified warhead.

Combined with current missile capabilities, the new missile would inflict unbearable cost, neutralizing nuclear and missile sites, as well as long-range artillery units, said the army report, according to the Korean Herald.

Previous missiles were limited to 1,100 pounds as part of a missile agreement with the United States, which was in principle revoked by U.S. President Donald Trump in September.

Any scenario of military action against North Korea quickly runs into the thorny issue of how to protect South Koreas civilian population, with the capital Seoul just 35 miles from the border.

Even without a nuclear weapon, Pyongyang could use conventional missiles and artillery to potentially inflict massive damage with a worst-case scenario of 100,000 killed in two days, according to The Telegraph.

Until now South Korea only had two missiles to neutralize that threat in the event of a war. The third missile, able to carry a much more powerful payload, would be able to penetrate the extensive network of underground bunkers protecting the leadership.

We would use those three-types of missiles as the first salvo of the missile strike and concentrate them during the initial phase of war to destroy North Koreas long-range artillery units and missiles located in ballistic missile operating area, the army said in its report to a parliamentary audit, according to the Korean Herald.

According to The Telegraph, the report said that a tactical surface-to-surface missile, called KTSSM, would strike embedded artillery equipment along the demilitarized zone and on the coast of border islands.

KTSSM-I will strike the enemys tunnels with the 170-mm self-propelled howitzers and 240-mm multiple-rocket launch systems, said the report.

Hyunmoo-2 ballistic missiles, with a range of up to 500 miles, would then take out the Norths nuclear and other WMD systems.

Finally, the new powerful ballistic missiles, thought to be called Hyunmoo-4, would target the states leadership in their bunkers.

The new missiles would dramatically boost South Koreas retaliation capability against North Korea, said Kwon Yong-soo, a professor at Korea National Defense University, talking to The Korean Herald on Sept. 5. With a 1-ton warhead ballistic missile, South Korea could target almost all of North Koreas underground facilities.

Fran-Stefan Grady, associate editor of The Diplomat wrote ,Precision-guided ballistic missiles armed with a 1-ton warhead will likely have a bigger chance penetrating leadership bunkers and other underground facilities in the North.
Teacher Found Dead in Ohio Home, 911 Call Released

Police are now investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of an Ohio middle school teacher, CBS News reported.

Melinda Pleskovic, 49, was found dead inside her Strongsville home on Monday night, Oct. 23. Her husband told authorities about the womans death, and he reportedly told a 911 dispatcher, I think someone killed my wife.

The school district where Pleskovic worked as a teacher released a statement.

We have been informed of an investigation being conducted by the Strongsville Police Department regarding an incident at the home of one of our 6th grade teachers. As this is an ongoing police investigation, we are unable to comment any further at this time. We will, however, have crisis counselors on hand for students to speak with as we are aware this is unsettling and has been publicized through the media, the statement read.

Death investigation underway at this strongsville home. A mom who knew the victim says she was a great person @cleveland19news pic.twitter.com/lWF0Ss26pC  Alyson Bruner (@AlysonBruner) October 24, 2017

The woman was taken to Southwest General Hospital, where she died from her injuries, according to the Cleveland19 news station.

According to WKYC, the husband said that people have broken into his home before. A portion of his 911 call was released,

Somebodys been attacked in my house.

Husband found Strongsville teacher Melinda Pleskovic found stabbed to death in kitchen of home on Blazing Star Dr. Monday night pic.twitter.com/eEp3az3DEp  Matt Wright Fox 8 (@mattwrighttv) October 24, 2017

Dispatcher: They attacked who? Who was attacked?

Mel Pleskovic. Mel Pleskovic was attacked.

Dispatcher: She was attacked by whom? Do you know?

No. We just came home. Shes on the kitchen floor. I took her son and my daughter outside. Her husband is inside with her now.

Dispatcher: So the husband attacked her?

No. No. No. We just came home. We just came home.

Dispatcher You came home and found her injured on the floor?

We found her in the kitchen. Shes not moving. I took the kids and I walked outside.

Dispatcher: Did she look like she was beaten, or what?

She has blood all around her. I didnt look. I just grabbed the child and left.

The call continued 

Theres a lot of blood.

Dispatcher: How do you know this woman?

I live here. I live here. Shes my fiancees mother?

Dispatcher: Has she like had anybody trying to harm her? Harass her? Anything like that?

No. No.

Dispatcher: Do you have a dog that lives at that house?

We have two. We have two dogs.

Dispatcher: Are the dogs there, or you dont know?

I dont know. We just walked in the front door and we left.

Dispatcher: We got a phone call from somebody who found a dog that belongs at your residence. Thats why Im thinking the dogs got out, OK?

The caller said he had just come home with the victims husband.

Dispatcher: Do you see any like forced entry or anything to the house?

Im outside. The door was locked.

Dispatcher: The door was locked?

The front door was locked.
Teachers Facebook Post About Buying A Gun Spooks Parents Into Keeping Children Home

An elementary school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is investigating a teacher after she posted a Facebook status saying she was going to buy a gun.

Im going shopping sat. Who wants to go. Im buying a gun. Watch out world. Hahahaha.

The post caused some panic among parents with children attending Moore Elementary School, causing nearly a quarter of the 225 students at the K-5 school to miss class.

Today, nearly sixty students were either kept home from school or were picked up early due to a social media communication made by a staff member, reads a statement the Brentwood School District put out to parents that was obtained by CBS affiliate KDKA.

The District is not permitted to share the details of the incident, especially as there is an ongoing investigation.

The notice assured parents that the district safety plan was followed and appropriate borough authorities were notified.

That included having the director of school police and superintendent at the school for the day keeping the children inside for recess.

A planned field trip for kindergarten students went ahead, however, but a school police officer escorted the students and staff.

Our Director of Special Education, who is also a school psychologist, was also onsite all day to assist as needed, read the notice.

Signed by Superintendent Amy Burch, the notice pledged to keep parents updated as circumstances warrant.

Rest assured, the District takes these types of situations very seriously and remains committed to the safety of our students and staff as our first priority.

The name of the teacher has not been disclosed, nor any details that would indicate the post was something more significant than it appeared on the surface.

While parents in Pittsburgh were unsettled by the incident, parents in Colorado may find some assurance in teachers carrying weapons.

Earlier this year it was reported that teachers in Colorado were being trained to carry guns in classrooms after a school massacre in 2012.

In June,the BBC reported, 17 staff members there had taken a three-day course that included firearms and medical training so they could be considered armed first responders.

The pilot program will allow volunteers, who were tested on their weapons abilities at a firing range near Denver, to bring concealed guns into schools under existing concealed carry laws.

Colorado was host to one of the first major student school shootings in the United States when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 students and one teacher at the Columbine High School massacre in 1999.

The states new program was propelled by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that claimed 20 children and six adults when 20-year-old Adam Lanza opened fire at the school in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012.
RUPERT  The Grace Community Church will host a community shoe box packing party Nov. 4

The event is part of the Operation Christmas Child Program.

Everyone is welcome to help.

The event will be held from 1 to 4 p.m. at the church, 100 N. Meridian Rd.

The party is family friendly.

Needed items include school supplies, small toys for children ages 2-14, wash cloths, bars of soap and toothbrushes. All items must be new and fit in a shoebox.

Operation Christmas Child is a project of Samaritans Purse, an international Christian relief organization headed by Franklin Graham.

Since 1993 the program has collected and delivered more than 146 million gift-filled boxes to children in more than 150 countries and territories. For many of the children it is the first gift they have ever received.

To donate items, call 208-431-1640 or 208-431-2865.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping (R) shakes hands with Hu Jintao, his predecessor, during the opening session of the 19th National Congress in Beijing on Oct. 18, 2017. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

Camera Angles Show Whos Out of the Political Game at Chinas National Congress

What the public sees of Chinas most important political eventthe 19th National Congressis mostly a show. Elected delegates (in fact chosen by Party higher-ups) convene every five years to determine new leaderswhen the roster is actually pre-determined through back-door power plays.

But if you read between the lines, youll see clues to what is really going on.

On Oct. 18, the opening day of the congress, current Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who is expected to continue in his position for another five-year term, gave a speech in front of more than 2,000 delegates.

With party elders and other VIP officials on stage behind Xi, the occasion is a display of the Chinese Communist Partys unity behind the man in power.

But if you look closely at the CCTV (China Central Television, the state broadcaster) live broadcast of the speech, hidden messages abound, signifying the Partys infighting.

Right when Xi walks into the venue, Beijings Great Hall of the People, the camera shows former CCP leaders Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, and others trailing behind them. But Jiangs face is repeatedly obscured by Xi walking in frontin contrast with Hu, who walks out later but can be seen in full view.

Xi and Jiang are in a bitter power struggle. Xi has spent the past five years since he took power purging Jiang loyalists who still hold influence in the Party. Through Xis campaign to investigate corrupt officials, many Jiang faction officials have been purged.

China current affairs analyst Ji Da said it is common for the CCPs mouthpiece media to convey subtle messages via camera shots. Per party convention, Jiang was invited to the congress as a former leader, but he gets slighted on-screen several times, effectively given the cold shoulder treatment, Ji said.

As Xi begins his speech, the camera occasionally pans to Jiang, who can be seen examining a personal notebooknot the copy of Xis progress reportusing a massive magnifying glass.

Off camera, journalists from outside China report that Jiang repeatedly checked his watch, appearing disinterested and dozing off several times.

When Xi gets to a section of his speech about fighting corruption, emphasizing a zero tolerance approach toward those in the party who engage in bribery, the camera cut to Jiang.

Later, when Xi starts a sentence with what the people and the masses oppose, what they abhor, the camera once again goes to a close-up of Jiang.

The underlying meaning is all too clear for Chinese viewers.

When Xi finishes his speech, Jiang gets snubbed one more time. Xi first turns to Hu to shake hands with him. The camera lingers on the scene.

Xi then turns to where Jiang is sitting, but the camera only shows a view of Xi extending his arms toward Jiangs seat, with Jiang completely obscured by a cameraman on the side.

In the next shot, Xi and Hu are chatting and smiling, signaling that they are on the same team. Pointedly, there are no shots of Xi interacting with Jiang.

Based on what the silent message appears to be, Xi and Jiang are still at war.

Lou Ya and Xu Menger contributed to this report.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine General Joseph Dunford at the Pentagon in Washington on May 19, 2017. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

Top American General Reveals More Details on Ambush in Niger That Killed 4 Soldiers

A top U.S. general, Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there would be a thorough and transparent investigation into the deaths of four U.S. soldiers in the West African nation of Niger.

The soldiers, Dunford said in media reports, were attacked by a group affiliated with the ISIS terrorist organization.

We owe you more information and, more importantly, we owe the families of the fallen more information, and thats what the investigation is designed to identify, Marine Gen. Joe Dunford said, Politico reported.

The questions include: Did the mission of U.S. forces change during the operation? Did our forces have adequate intelligence, equipment, and training? Was our pre-mission assessment of the threat in the area accurate? How did U.S. forces become separated during the engagements, specifically Sgt. [La David] Johnson? And why did it take time to find and recover Sgt. Johnson? Dunford stated.

A theory on the assault was that the U.S. soldiers were set up and later ambushed by terrorists, three American officials told NBC News. The American Green Berets and other support soldiers were slated to have a meeting with village elders, who were believed to have been supportive of ISIS. They attended a meeting on Oct. 4 after a night of patrolling the area.

We owe you more information; more importantly, we owe the families of the fallen more information, Dunford said. Did the mission change? Its a fair question.

Militants may have used the meeting in the Niger village of Tongo Tongo to carry out a sneak attack, the officials stated. The villagers tried to delay the troops as they left the village, the officials said, and once they left, militants attacked them with machine guns and small arms, the unnamed officials told NBC.

When soldiers returned fire, militants then used mortars and rocket-propelled grenades from light military vehicles, officials said. The soldiers got back in their vehicles before they were trapped.

The attackers, the bandits, the terrorists have never lacked accomplices among local populations, said Almou Hassane, the mayor of Tongo Tongo, was quoted by NBC as saying.

A village chief in Tongo Tongo, named Mounkaila Alassane, was later arrested, he said.

Well find out in the investigation why, Dunford told reporters.

Our assessment right now is it is an ISIS-affiliated group, he said. These are local tribal fighters that are associated with ISIS.

Dunford said that U.S. military forces have carried out training missions off and on in Niger for two decades.
L: The UN Security Council meeting in New York on Sept. 28, 2017. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images); R: A truck returns from the North Korean town of Sinuiju to the Chinese border city of Dandong, in China's northeast Liaoning province on Sept. 5, 2017. (Baker/AFP/Getty Images)

UN Prohibits 32 Items From Being Sold to North Korea to Stifle Development of Weapons of Mass Destruction

The United Nations Security Council has added 32 items to the list of goods prohibited from being sold to North Korea in order to dampen its ambitions to build weapons of mass destruction.

The banned itemsmaterials, equipment, goods, and technologyare considered dual-use, meaning they could be used both for benign purposes as well as for development of weapons.

Some items are self-explanatory, like radiation detectors or TV cameras shielded from radiation.

Some are more generic, like certain common types of stainless steel piping, higher-concentration nitric acid, or more powerful cooling systems.

Many are specialized products, like mass spectrometers, particle accelerators, seismic detectors, and flash X-ray machines.

The Security Council agreed to expand the list of banned items in its Sept. 11 resolution. The council has a special committee tasked with evaluating the list. The committee then had 15 days to determine what specifically should be banned.

The resolution has already imposed a host of restrictions, including a ban on sale of liquid natural gas to North Korea, limits on oil sales, a ban on North Korean textile exports, and a ban on new work permits for its citizens.

The resolution is not legally binding, but, to a degree, it expresses what the member countries are able to agree on.

President Donald Trump has been increasing pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile programs. Hes also urged other nations to exert pressure on the rogue regime.

His efforts have already borne some fruit. In August, China announced it was halting imports of coal, iron, and lead from North Korea. In September, after North Korea conducted a sixth underground nuclear test, the Chinese regime voted in favor of the new sanctions, just as Russia did.

Chinas central bank has also instructed other banks to stop providing financial services to North Korea and has ordered North Korean businesses operating in China to close.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree enacting the sanctions earlier in October.

Meanwhile, a second U.S. aircraft carrier has entered the Korean Peninsula regiona rare sight. Trump has repeatedly said military action is on the table if diplomatic efforts fail.

Heres the full list of the newly banned items:

Ring magnets (except those designed for consumer electronics or automobile applications) Hot cells Glove boxes suitable for use with radioactive materials Software for neutronic calculations/modeling Software for radiation transport calculations/modeling Software for hydrodynamic calculations/modeling (except those used strictly for civilian purposes, such as but not limited to communal heating utilities) Radiation detection, monitoring and measurement equipment Radiographic detection equipment such as X-ray converters, and storage phosphor image plates (except X-ray equipment specially designed for medical use) Electrolytic cells for fluorine production Particle accelerators Freon and chilled-water cooling systems capable of continuous cooling capacity of 100,000 Btu/hr (29.3 kW) or greater Hardened steel and tungsten carbide precision ball bearings (3-mm diameter or greater) Tributyl phosphate Nitric acid in concentrations of 20 percent of weight or greater Fluorine (except that used for strictly civilian purposes, such as refrigerants, including freon and fluoride for toothpaste production) Alpha-emitting radionuclides Bellows-sealed valves Isostatic presses Bellows manufacturing equipment, including hydraulic forming equipment and bellows forming dies Metal inert gas welders (greater than 180 A DC) Monel equipment, including valves, piping, tanks and vessels (pipes and valves greater than 8-in diameter and rated for 500 psi and tanks greater than 500 l) Grade 304, 316 and austenitic stainless steel plates, valves, piping, tanks and vessels (pipes and valves greater than 8-in diameter and rated for 500 psi and tanks greater than 500 l) Electroplating equipment designed for coating parts with nickel or aluminum Vacuum valves, piping, flanges, gaskets and related equipment specially designed for use in high-vacuum service (0.1 Pa or lower pressure) Centrifugal multiplane balancing machines Frequency changers capable of operating in the frequency range of 300-600 Hz Mass spectrometers All flash X-ray machines and parts or components of pulsed power systems designed therefrom, including Marx generators, high-power pulse-shaping networks, high-voltage capacitors and triggers Electronic equipment of synthesized frequencies within the range of 31.8 GHz or greater and power output of 100 mW or greater for time-delay generation or time-interval measurement, as follows: (a) digital time delay generators with a resolution of 50 nanoseconds or less over time intervals of 1 microsecond or greater; or (b) multichannel (i.e., with 3 or more channels) or modular time interval meters and chronometry equipment with resolution of 50 nanoseconds or less over time intervals of 1 microsecond or greater Chromatography and spectrometry analytical instruments Seismic detection equipment or seismic intrusion-detection systems that detect, classify and determine the bearing of the source of a detected signal Radiation-hardened television cameras
A U.S. MH-60S Sea Hawk flies by Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force ship JS Shimakaze above waters around Okinawa southwest of the Korean peninsula, Oct. 9, 2017. Japan, the United States, and South Korea launched a joint ballistic missile tracking drill on Oct. 24, 2017. (U.S. Navy via REUTERS)

US and Allies Hold Missile Defense Drills in the Face of Nuclear Threat

The United States, Japan, and South Korea began a drill on Tuesday to help the allies coordinate their anti-missile defenses.

The exercise aims to help the three countries coordinate their efforts to detect and track a ballistic missile launch.

Its the allies fifth trilateral drill, coming as North Koreas provocations push the three countries into a tighter alliance and more military cooperation.

South Korea and Japan have also separately been conducting bilateral drills with the United States.

Tuesdays drill comes after North Koreas public mulling over a nuclear test in the Pacific Ocean.

The warning exercise will run over two days in waters off the coasts of South Korea and Japan. The three countries will mobilize four Aegis Combat-equipped ships, according to a statement the Joint Chiefs of Staff provided to South Koreas Yonhap News.

The Aegis-equipped ships are part of the navys contribution to the Missile Defense Agencys (MDAs) Ballistic Missile Defense System.

The Aegis system uses powerful radars and computer systems to track intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM) in their mid-course phase above the atmosphere and intercept them.

Ongoing tests of the system have helped the Navy and Defense Department increase the operational realism and complexity of targets, says the MDA.

The current drill helps the allies better coordinate their deployment of the system.

The latest exercise is designed to prepare against growing nuclear and missile threats by North Korea, the JCS said.

The exercises will not include an actual missile launch. Instead, the Aegis-equipped ships will jointly detect and track a computer-simulated launch, communicating with each other in realtime as they monitor its progress.

The drill begins the day after Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis met with South Koreas Minister of National Defense Song Young-moo in the Philippines.

The two defense ministers met on the sidelines of the ASEAN Defense Ministerial Meeting and discussed the threat posed by North Korea as well as other regional and global security issues.

Mattis reaffirmed the U.S. alliance with South Korea, as he did that same day in another meeting with Japanese Minister of Defense, Itsunori Onodera.

Beyond pushing the allies closer together, North Koreas sixthand by far its most powerfulnuclear test in September also prompted President Donald Trump to increase weapons sales to Japan and South Korea.

I am allowing Japan & South Korea to buy a substantially increased amount of highly sophisticated military equipment from the United States.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2017 The United States, which provides many of the components critical to South Koreas missile program, revised restrictions it had placed on the payload South Korean missiles could deliver. South Korea said it needed more powerful missiles because North Korea has hardened its defenses, protecting its weapons and facilities in concrete underground bunkers.
Maria Elena Sullivan and Dylan James Kitzmiller were charged in connection to the murder of the woman's 13-day-old baby. (West Jordan Police Department)

Utah Couple Arrested in Death of Infant Boy

After a 13-day-old infant passed away, a Utah couple was charged.

Maria Elena Sullivan, the infants mother, and Dylan James Kitzmiller, her boyfriend, were charged with murder, according to a Fox13 report. Sullivan was arrested in Georgia. They also face three counts of child abuse as second-degree felonies in the death of the boy.

Sullivan was seeking treatment at a hospital and she was arrested without incident, Sgt. Marianne Kelly of the Cherokee County Sheriffs Office in Georgia confirmed.

Kitzmiller was arrested Friday night without incident, the Fox affiliate reported.

Court documents say the infant was found unresponsive on the floor of the couples bedroom floor with broken bones, including a broken spine, People reported. The child also suffered other injuries.

Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill told the station that they dont suspect Sullivan caused any of the abuse directly, but she still faces a murder charge.

Both of them were charged because the girlfriend indicated that there was a level of abuse that was going on, she was aware of this abuse, and she took no steps to stop this or to take the child to safety, Gill said.

According to prosecutors, Kitzmiller allegedly abused the child on a regular basis. Sullivan knew about the abuse but didnt do anything to prevent it nor did she get treatment for the infant.

Sullivan told police that Kitzmiller was rough with the child. In one instance, he bit the childs hands and slapped his face. Police, however, said that she left the child in Kitzmillers care.

On the day of the childs death, Sullivan had told a friend that she needed to get away from Kitzmillers abuse, Fox News reported. The baby was alone with the boyfriend on the day of the phone call and death.

When Sullivan came back, the child was only wearing a diaper, and Kitzmiller was moving his legs in a rough weird bicycle thing, a police report said. Later in the night, the baby was heard making noises and was having difficulty breathing. As she tried to get the child to respond, he gasped several more times and stopped breathing entirely.

They called 911 but responders were not able to save the child.

The Fox report stated that he also used heroin in the presence of the baby. Kitzmiller also verbally abused Sullivan, she alleged in the Fox report.

Kitzmiller is currently being held at Salt Lake County Jail on a $1 million bond, People reported. Sullivan is being held without bond in Georgia and shes facing extradition back to Utah.

Its not clear if either suspect has an attorney.

West Jordan, Utah, is located about 5 miles south of Salt Lake City.
Sen. Jeff Flake speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill after announcing he will not seek re-election on Oct. 24, 2017. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

White House Responds to Sen. Flake Not Seeking Re-election

WASHINGTONThe White House said on Tuesday that it was probably a good thing that Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) had announced he wont be seeking re-election, given his low popularity in his home state of Arizona.

Flake had announced his decision in a 17-minute speech on the Senate floor earlier in the day.

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said during the White House daily briefing that she hadnt spoken yet to the president since Flakes announcement, but that it was probably best.

I think that, based on previous statements, and certainly based on the lack of support that he has from the people of Arizona, its probably a good thing, Sander said.

Jeff had been identified by Democrats as one of the most vulnerable Republicans up for re-election.

I think that the people both in Tennessee and Arizona supported this president and I dont think that the numbers are in favor of either of those two senators in their states, Sander said referring to Flake and Tennessees Sen. Bob Corker.

Flake, who came to the Senate in 2013, suffered from an extremely low approval rating and is far behind his primary challenger, Kelli Ward, in the polls.

According to a survey from the left-leaning Public Policy Polling released in August, only 18 percent of Arizona voters approve of Flakes job.

A JMC Analytics poll released late August showed Flakes primary challenger, Kelli Ward, has a 26 percent lead over him.

Flake has been a fierce opponent of President Donald Trump and took several jabs at the president during his speech on the Senate floor.

Trump won the state of Arizona in the 2016 Presidential elections by 48 to 44 percent over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Arizonas senior Senator, John McCain, has also been fiercely critical of Trump, and is also unpopular among Republican voters. An August Quinnipiac University Poll found that 74 percent of Democrats hold a favorable opinion of McCain compared to only 39 percent of Republicans.

McCain surprised Republican leaders in late July when he unexpectedly voted against a Republican healthcare bill that would have replaced and repealed parts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare. Many Republicans criticized McCain for backtracking on a key promise he and other Republicans had made to voters.

Ward lost the Republican primary for McCains Senate seat last year in a 51 to 39 percent vote.

Following Flakes announcement, Ward wrote on Twitter: Arizona voters are the big winner in @JeffFlakes decision to not seek reelection. They deserve a strong, conservative in the Senate.

She also said that she supports Trumps America First agenda.

Arizona voters are the big winner in @JeffFlake's decision to not seek reelection. They deserve a strong, conservative in the Senate 1/2  Dr. Kelli Ward (@kelliwardaz) October 24, 2017

Who supports @POTUS & the 'America First' agenda. Our campaign proudly offers an optimistic path forward for Arizona & America #MAGA 2/2  Dr. Kelli Ward (@kelliwardaz) October 24, 2017

Charlotte Cuthbertson contributed to this report.
Worst Roommate Ever Arrested for Toilet Prank

A Tennessee State University student is facing charges after she filled her roommates water bottle with toilet water.

The roommate told police that she started losing weight and lost her appetite and discovered on Snapchat that her roommate, Tierni Williams, contaminated her bottles of water. According to the video footage, Williams had used a styrofoam cup to get liquid from the toilet and brought it to their dorm room in Nashville, WZTV reported.

Williams, in the video, can be heard narrating what she is doing. Her roommate, she adds, is gonna get sick from this.

Police then arrested Williams, 20, with adulteration of food, liquid with bodily injury.

She was jailed last Tuesday, Oct. 18, and posted bond.

But theres more to the story.

In a later report, according to WKRN, the other roommate was identified as Erein Tiller. She has also been arrested for committing a crime against Williams.

Tiller was arrested Oct. 3 for punching Williams. She was charged with domestic violence against her roommate, the report said. Tiller admitted to punching the girl after finding out about offensive photos of her that were posted online.

The young lady who put the toilet water in her water bottle, was also posting pictures without my daughters knowledge of her in like her bra and her underwear, and her sleeping. She posted a lot of pictures, said Tillers mother, Nicole Wright.

UPDATE: Metro police released booking photo for Tierni Williams, TSU student accused of repeatedly putting toilet water in residence hall roommates drinks; Williams tells me she has no comment. @WKRN pic.twitter.com/DjWiNS8gzB  Josh Breslow (@JoshBreslowWKRN) October 18, 2017

Wright told WKRN that Tiller is being expelled from school.

My daughter was never offered any type of empathy or sympathy for her being sick, for being ill. The only resolution they have is, shes going to be kicked out. She has to be out tomorrow by 5 o clock, said Wright.

TSU was filled to capacity when we got there, my daughter was one left without housing. They put her in temporary housing where she was with two other loving young ladies, and then they moved her from temporary housing into permanent housing with Ms. Williams. Ms. Williams made it very clear in the beginning, she thought she was going to be in the room by herself, Wright added.

Her daughter asked for help, Wright said.

The suitemates, RAs, and the residence director, they were all aware of exactly what was going on because my daughter went to them numerous times. My daughter was often discouraged and it was said to her you wouldnt want to talk to my superiors because then they may try to put both of you out because were full to capacity and theres nowhere for you to go, said Wright.

Both Tiller and Williams are due in court in November.
TWIN FALLS  A woman charged with murdering her 20-month-old daughter will soon be brought back to Twin Falls to face charges.

Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs said 22-year-old Amanda Dunlap will be transported to Twin Falls soon and will be tried in Twin Falls County.

Dunlap is charged with first-degree murder and eight counts of felony injury to a child and one misdemeanor count.

No court date has been set.

Loebs declined to comment further on the case.

Dunlap was arrested Friday and booked into the Ada County jail early Saturday.

The investigation began Oct. 8 when police were called to St. Lukes Magic Valley Medical Center about a baby in distress. The child was flown by helicopter to Boise and died a week later, on Oct. 14.

In a statement issued Saturday, police said theyd release no more information because theyre continuing to investigate. Loebs said authorities may make more information available this week, depending on the progress of the investigation.
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A writer at an ultra-left publication suggests John Kelly foreshadows a military coup. Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, serves as current White House chief of staff. Unless you were vacationing on Saturn you know last week Kelly dressed down a sitting member of the House of Representatives. This followed the woman politicizing a call from the president to a Gold Star widow. It was such a dramatic and thorough take down the left is reeling.

For decades now liberal culture warriors have run roughshod over traditional American values. It started 50 years ago with the belittling of military efforts in Southeast Asia. When the left eventually realized a large block of its countrymen werent on the bandwagon the undermining of the Pentagon became much more nuanced. Bowe Bergdahl is hailed as a hero by many on the left because he undermined a war effort liberals didnt like.

Right after the 9/11 attacks Ill never forget a lunch meeting with a public television executive who told me the United States got what it had coming. While most Americans realize their country isnt perfect they still recoil at the idea any good men were involved with al Qaeda in its mass murder of 3,000 Americans. The left is always on an apology tour.

When Democrats see their narrative threatened by a strong personality along the lines of Gen. Kelly, you know theyll respond like cornered rats. And the partys minions in mainstream media quickly joined the effort. The thing is, bashing Gold Star father John Kelly is probably no more productive than bashing the Gold Star parents who campaigned last year against Donald Trump.

As one Gold Star mother from Idaho explained, Trumps predecessor mailed her a form letter after her son was killed at war. Trump is at least trying to make an effort to personally thank the families for the last full measure of devotion. Trump Derangement Syndrome has reached a point where its nothing but rage and lacks any reason.

As for a coup, I think a blatant military takeover is highly unlikely. What I believe is much more possible is a period of military control if street rioting approaches levels of civil war, which I suggest daily becomes an ever greater threat. Where is there any common ground between right and left? Love of country? There isnt any agreement on where the love commences. Theres no common ground on where life begins. Theres no common ground on shared bathrooms. Theres no common ground on the role of law enforcement and the military. Theres no common ground on the symbolism of the flag and national anthem. Were now asked to choose sides.

Its not an aberration. In the great historical and sociological work The Fourth Turning, were due for some bloodletting. The book details eight centuries of English-speaking history. Every 80 years (give or take a few years) English-speaking peoples have faced the following in tandem or individually: Dynastic wars, civil wars and wars with neighbors. Even the American Revolution can be seen in the wider context as an English-speaking civil matter. It followed Englands Glorious Revolution by a little more than eight decades. The American Civil War fits the pattern. As does World War II. Were due for a conflict. It could involve a rogue Asian nation, battles here at home or both.

A few weeks ago a friend retired from the Army after reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel and serving in two wars. Over the years he would supply me with polls of our fighting men and women. Most often they identified as Republican. In recent years there were changes. Fewer Republicans but more libertarians. The type of people we identify living in the Idaho Panhandle who go to Boise and make a lot of noise in the state Legislature. They surely arent Democrats.

Two weeks ago I was reading a column from a nationally known liberal writer and he claimed the ranks of the military were conservative by his definition but the officers have become more liberal. He may be referring to the Pentagons mixed signals on transgendered troops. Im not sure where he found any voting records, but Saturday I did some research and came across some numbers refuting the notion the generals now lean left. In fact the figures show a very deep red crowd at the Pentagon. Almost 90 percent could be considered Republicans or sympathetic to right-leaning ideals.

Additionally, they no longer need to mouth politically correct platitudes to advance. The new president has their backs.

So, in a crisis the troops would back law enforcement. A video I watched related to the figures Ive cited also shows the Intermountain West would be a bystander in such events. For us it would be nothing more than a television show. This notion a free press would prevent any clampdown on leftist dissent is baloney. As media demands an end to the Second Amendment and whines Trump will squelch the previous, it cant see its credibility evaporating.

Its a corrupt institution. Attacks on men like Gen. Kelly only further marginalize liberals and news media. And I apologize for being redundant.
Republicans and Democrats alike have been deluding themselves for some time about White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. They were certain that Kelly was a grown-up who understood that the president the American people elected was hobbledmorally, intellectually, temperamentallyand it was Kellys job to steer the ship of state away from the rocks. He wouldnt lie to the American people as President Donald Trump did, these Kelly fans believed.

Recognition is now sinking in that Kelly is not so different than all the other politicians and officials who come in contact with Trump. To serve him requires suspension of integrity, and therefore those who serve become morally corrupted. (The sole exception to this seems to be Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who from day one simply refused to act as Trumps political flack.) One can hear a palpable sense of sadness after last weeks events, a sense of disillusionment.

After Kelly came out to play defense for Trump over his handling of calls to Gold Star families, smeared Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., and refused to apologize, launched a Trumpian soliloquy about the good old days (when women were sacred, but not in the workforce) and elevated the moral stature of service members over mere civilians, it was hard to argue he was anything more than a Trump enabler.

Susan Glasser of Politico appearing on Face the Nation observed, Were not surprised Donald Trump behaved this way because its very consistent with what weve seen from President Trump throughout not only his presidency but his campaign. . . . I think its more surprising what we saw in a way from General Kelly. We learned more. One of the things thats been apparent over the last couple of months that this underscored is that it remains Donald Trumps White House and not John Kellys White House, even if he has imposed more discipline and more of a process, number one.

She added, We saw that General Kelly, this week, shares more of Donald Trumps agenda than we realized. . . . I found General Kellys comment to be surprising and even puzzling that he would have brought up in the same commentary about this incident with the Gold Star families this notion that in the good old days women were sacred. She noted, A lot of people have talked about the irony of working for a president who has been accused of this kind of behavior.

Kellys fall from grace was swift and senseless. It was all so unnecessary; he need not have gone out to spin for the president.

The verdict on Kelly was remarkably negative, whether it was retired Gen. David Petraeus musing that Kelly was no doubt trying to figure out how to turn down the volume, or longtime GOP political strategist Matthew Dowd. (The problem is that I have is . . . does he know who he works for? He talks about the sacredness of Gold Star families and that we have lost that when he works for a guy that attacked Gold Star families and attacked John McCain as a prisoner, Dowd said. He talks about the sacredness of women, and he has somebody that said certain things on tape, things that were at best predatory, at best predatory, and has been accused by 12 or 14 different women of behavior. He says we lost the sacredness of religion, and he works for somebody that wanted to ban Muslims.)

So from adult day-care shift supervisor to enabler in a short week, Kelly sacrificed a good deal of his utility to the president for nothing. In seeking to elevate the military above the rest of us, he ironically undercut his own stature as a guarantor of our democratic norms.

Those harboring unrealistic expectations about Kelly have learned once again: None of Trumps advisers can make up for the deficits of this president; and with a lonely exception of Mattis, all of them look worse for having tried.
What's next for SD Gov. Kristi Noem as she heads into her second term?
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LONDONDriving an old diesel car in London has just gotten a lot more expensive.

Starting Monday, drivers in the centre of the British capital whose cars do not meet European Union emissions standards will have to pay an additional daily penalty. The change comes amid a Europe-wide backlash against diesel in the wake of a scandal in which several major carmakers, particularly Volkswagen, secretly cut corners on environmental standards.

The new charge will primarily affect drivers of older, diesel-powered vehicles, and will be in addition to the citys long-standing congestion charge in which most vehicles are assessed a daily fee to enter central London during busy weekday hours.

Read more: How realistic are plans to ban new gas and diesel cars?

City officials said the toxicity levy, known as the T-Charge, was intended to improve air quality. But it may also hasten the already precipitous decline in the sale of cars powered by diesel, once the fuel of choice in Europe.

Affected drivers will be charged 10 pounds, or $13.20, per day to drive in the city centre. That is on top of the congestion charge, which was put in place in 2003 and is now 11.50 pounds per day. That means it will now cost 21.50 pounds, or almost $30, for them to drive in the city centre.

Transport for London, which operates the public transport system, said the new emissions charge was part of our commitment to help clean up Londons dangerously polluted air. The charge will apply primarily to cars manufactured before 2005.

Authorities will track who owes the new fees by using the same enforcement systems used for the congestion charge: Surveillance cameras will monitor vehicles that enter and leave the city centre, and a failure to pay the levy will result in an additional fine.

Weve got a health crisis in London caused directly by the poor-quality air, Mayor Sadiq Khan said in an interview with the BBC on Monday. Roughly speaking, more than 9,000 Londoners die prematurely because of the poor-quality air.

Khan said air pollution contributed to the underdevelopment of childrens lungs and the development of maladies like asthma, dementia and strokes in adults. In a statement, the mayor said he himself had recently begun to suffer from asthma.

The mayors office posted a flurry of statistics online in support of the fee. It said drivers made roughly 6 million trips in London each day and roughly a third of them drove less than 2 kilometres.

Roughly 40 per cent of air pollution in the city comes from diesel vehicles, Khans office said. Many of those are being driven short distances or for less-than-urgent reasons like shopping, leisure and personal business, it said.

Many of these trips could be made in other ways, it said. Unnecessary car use is putting our health at risk.

Londons action is likely to embolden other European cities to impose similar restrictions. Paris, Madrid and Athens have announced plans to ban diesel vehicles beginning in 2025. In Germany, numerous cities, including the automaking centres Stuttgart and Munich, are considering bans of older diesel vehicles.

Despite assertions by automakers that diesel is clean, studies by the German, French and British governments have found that virtually all manufacturers took advantage of loopholes in European Union regulations. That allowed them to weaken a vehicles emissions controls during everyday driving to reduce wear and tear on the cars anti-pollution equipment.

As a result, levels of harmful nitrogen oxides in urban areas have remained high despite emissions standards that, on paper, have grown progressively more rigorous. City governments are under pressure to ban diesel to avoid sanctions for excess pollution.

The backlash against diesel has even become a threat to Germanys economy, which is dependent on automaking. Until recently more than half of new cars sold in Europe had diesel engines, largely because of tax breaks that ensure that diesel fuel is less expensive at the pump.

But consumers are abandoning diesel because of health concerns and fears that they may be compelled to park their cars outside city limits. In Germany, Europes largest car market, sales of cars with diesel engines have fallen more than 20 per cent during the last year.

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OTTAWAOpposition critics are hammering Finance Minister Bill Morneaus decision to retain shares in Morneau Shepell, the big pension firm he used to run, saying he faced a minefield of potential conflicts.

Those may have included the Liberal governments decision to financially back Bombardier last winter to the tune of $372.5 million in interest-free loans for its CSeries and Global 7000 aircraft programs.

Morneau Shepell, which bills itself as Canadas largest administrator of retirement and benefits plans, administers some group insurance and pension benefits for Bombardier, a knowledgeable source who declined to speak on the record told the Star. The contract has been in place for over a decade and there has been no substantial change since the 2015 election, the source said.

Read more:

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Two years in, Trudeaus rookie ministers have accounted for much of the governments grief: Hebert

Neither Morneau Shepell nor Bombardier would discuss their contract, but Morneau Shepells copyright stamp is on the website portal for Bombardier employees to access information about their benefits.

However, it is unclear whether Morneau participated in any of the government discussions around Ottawas repayable contribution for Bombardier or whether a so-called conflict-of-interest screen set up at the urging of the federal ethics commissioner Mary Dawson prevented Morneau from participating in those decisions.

Dawson advised Morneau his chief of staff should act as his screen and advise when the minister cannot participate in discussions due to potential conflicts.

Morneaus office declined to answer directly whether Morneau participated in Bombardier discussions, and will only say the conflict-of-interest screens Dawson recommended are in place and have been applied several times over the course of the last two years.

Dan Lauzon, communications director for Morneau, said the screen protects against conflicts arising from dealings specifically with or related to Morneau Shepell, and each instance is reported directly to the Ethics commissioner.

Morneau said last Thursday he remembered at least two times being taken out of meetings, and was unaware of any requirement to report the recusals. There are no formal reports of recusals by Morneau published on Dawsons website but the commissioner said Friday she only publishes instances when the screen fails to work in advance, and a minister has to step out of  or recuse from  a meeting or discussion.

Morneau Shepell has worked with a range of clients in the public and private sectors. A news release from 2012 says the company had recently inked contracts to perform disability management services for Canada Post, provide pension administration technology to the Alberta government, and deliver pension administration services for small and mid-size clients through TD Bank.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which has been critical of the Trudeau governments proposed tax changes for private corporations, offers its 109,000 members access to voluntary retirement savings plans designed by Morneau Shepell. CFIB spokesperson Andy Radia said the organization also has a workplace safety program with Morneau Shepell with several thousand participants in Quebec.

The Toronto Sun reported Friday Morneau Shepell similarly administers insurance and benefits for Bank of Canada employees  an institution Morneau indirectly has influence over because he appoints people to its board. However, in that case the bank had signed off last February on a four-year extension of the contract with Morneau Shepell.

Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre said in an interview it is extremely troubling Morneau continues to hold shares in a company with some vast tentacles in the Canadian economy.

He is the most powerful financial decision maker in the government. He controls $300 billion of expenditures. He is the shareholder of the Bank of Canada, sells bonds to banks and other financial institutions and is one of the people in the government who approves massive subsidies to businesses like Bombardier, for example. These vast powers mean he should have no vested interest in any individual publicly traded company.

NDP ethics critic Nathan Cullen said in an interview Morneau ought to have recused himself from any dealings or conversations about government support for Bombardier.

If Bombardier is getting a forgivable loan, its going to help Bombardier out; if Morneau Shepells working for Bombardier, then its helping Morneau Shepell out.

Cullen said even if it is unknown whether Morneau participated in any conversations about Bombardier, it shows the finance ministers poor judgment at the outset to keep his interests in a company that has dealings right across the government of Canada.

Cullen said it amounted to Morneau making the decision that he was going to be dodging a conflict-of-interest minefield every day.

The NDP has also put forward a motion in the House of Commons calling on Morneau to apologize for misleading Canadians about how his private assets were handled.

With a file from Jenna Moon

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SASKATOONThe head of an organization representing Saskatchewan First Nations is expressing concern following the fatal shooting of an Indigenous man by RCMP.

Brydon Whitstone of the Onion Lake Cree Nation died after being shot on Saturday in North Battleford, Sask.

Bobby Cameron, chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, says hes been getting calls and messages questioning the details around the 22-year-old mans death.

Read more: RCMP shoot and kill man in North Battleford, Sask.

Cameron says the shooting furthers the mistrust First Nations people have toward the justice system, and he adds there is also a lack of trust in the independent investigation that has been called.

RCMP said in a media release after the shooting that they had pursued a vehicle following reports of a man being chased and shot at.

The police chase ended shortly after the suspect rammed a cruiser and officers opened fire.

A woman who was also in the vehicle suffered minor injuries, was taken to hospital for treatment and then released back into custody.

One RCMP member was also hurt in the pursuit, taken to hospital, treated and released

Whitstones brother tells CTV Saskatoon that officers were pursuing the wrong car.

The story of him being a suspect, of chasing a guy, is wrong, says Landin Blanko. It just so happens he was in a white, four-door car in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was an innocent man, shot and being blamed for something he didnt actually do.

Blanko believes his brother may have panicked when police began pursuing the vehicle.

Brydon didnt do nothing wrong, but probably was scared, Blanko says. Hes a 22-year-old kid. All of a sudden  boom  police come out of nowhere, chasing him out of nowhere. He had no idea what was going on.

Cameron says he is left wondering what specifically led police to shoot Whitmore.

The comments about in response to the drivers actions to the officers, what does that mean? Cameron asked on a CKOM radio talk show on Monday.

He said he is worried that RCMP may have been too quick to use lethal force.

Does damage to a vehicle warrant to kill someone on sight?

RCMP have turned over the investigation to the Regina Police Service. The review is to be overseen by the provincial Justice Ministry.

Cameron said the FSIN has long wanted to see First Nations represented at such investigations.

The majority of people that are incarcerated are First Nations people. Wouldnt it make sense to have one of our own First Nations legal experts involved in all these processes? he asked.

Cameron suggested involving First Nations people would be a step toward rebuilding trust in the justice system.

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A federal judge has slammed the Canadian government for not responding faster to a lawsuit launched by five intelligence officers and analysts who allege that they were bullied and harassed while working at Canadas spy service because they are gay, Muslim or Black.

You cant act as if the Court is not there, Justice Simon Noel told Department of Justice lawyers during a September teleconference call regarding the case.

The Star obtained a redacted transcript of the call, which was filed with the federal court this week.

(T)here is a course of action to be followed and you are no different from any other parties in Canada, Noel said. It is not because you are the Attorney General of Canada that you can act as if the Rules do no apply. This is not acceptable.

At issue is the governments delay in filing a statement of defence regarding the $35-million lawsuit, which provided detailed accusations from inside one of the countrys most secretive organizations.

The 54-page statement claim was filed in July and alleges that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service is run like an old boys club, creating a toxic work environment. One email cited in the claim, allegedly sent by a manager to a Toronto intelligence officer reads: Careful your Muslim in-laws dont behead you in your sleep for being homo. The complainant, who goes by the pseudonym Alex, is gay and has a Muslim partner.

Read more: Five CSIS employees are accusing the spy agency of Islamophobia, racism and homophobia in a $35-million lawsuit

A statement of defence is usually filed after 30 days unless an extension is granted. Department of Justice lawyer Gillian Patterson told the judge that there was a misunderstanding about filing deadlines.

Noel shot back, give me a break, later stating, I think there is something unusual happening here, and I am polite in my language.

While the Department of Justice may be slow to respond, reaction from CSISs director to the allegations was swift.

David Vigneault had only been on the job leading the spy service for a few weeks when news broke about the lawsuit. He quickly issued a statement saying CSIS does not tolerate harassment.

Soon after, he invited the five complainants and their lawyer to his office.

According to those who attended, he listened intently for nearly three hours, as boxes of Kleenex were shared around the table.

It was unprecedented quite frankly for us to be invited in to talk, said Alex, one of the five complainants, who alleges he had tried unsuccessfully for nearly four years to have his concerns addressed. He listened. It was very heartfelt.

Alex and Bahira, a Muslim intelligence officer with more than a decade of experience who is also part of the claim against CSIS, agreed to speak with the Star on the condition that their identities were not revealed. In both court documents, and during the interview last month, they used pseudonyms.

The public would be shocked about this if they only knew; we keep our own secrets.  A witnesss comment about alleged harassment at CSIS, according to a statement of claim filed in Federal Court in July.

Under Canadas Security of Information Act, identifying a spy can be considered an offence.

All five of the complainants are still CSIS employees, but are on medical leave due to mental and physical conditions.

Some of them are not being paid anymore; they were on disability, some are no longer being paid their disability amounts, their lawyer John Phillips told Justice Noel on the conference call. And I know things dont move at a quick pace in litigation, but they need to have a resolution of this case.

None of the allegations against CSIS, which was recognized by Mediacorp Canada Inc. as one of Canadas top 100 employers for 2017, have been proven in court.

Justice Noel has given the government until Friday to submit a statement of defence. According to the transcript of the Sept. 13 call with Noel, the government is attempting to resolve the claim.

Alex and Bahira said the stress of suing CSIS and the publicity it has generated has taken a toll. In the only interviews they have given, they said they felt they had no choice but to sue in order to get the attention of the government.

Both said they were optimistic after their meeting this summer with the director. That was our hope. Hes going to take care of this. Hes a new fresh face, hopefully not supportive of the managers who refuse to do anything about this, Bahira said. So we had hope and we waited week after week.

Ive worked hard in the last 15 years and Ive done some incredible work for them, Bahira said as she began to cry. I wanted my legacy to be the first Muslim hijabi who fought for her country and contributed. They robbed me of that. My legacy is Bahira, the discriminated, the victim  I feel betrayed; I feel angry. Something is wrong when someone like me cant walk into that building.

Bahira said she was often praised during her performance evaluations for having unique access in the Muslim communities where she worked. I understood the culture, I understood the background. I know a lot about religion and can talk about it with credibility, she said about her work on the counterterrorism file concerning extremist groups recruiting Muslims. I was able to build trust and credibility, to have a son report on a father, and a father report on his son, or a mother compel her son to sit down and talk to me.

But inside CSIS, she claims managers regarded her with suspicion once she began wearing a hijab in 2004. I still remember going home and wanting to cry my eyes out at time, thinking, Why is this so hard because its not me, I get along with people  colleagues seem to have respect for me,  she told the Star. Its what I represented and I knew I couldnt do anything about it  no senior manager is going to stand up for me.

Alex alleges that he had tried since 2013 to get his concerns addressed inside CSIS and never wanted to go public. In 2016, he launched a formal complaint that resulted in a third-party investigation. According to the statement of claim, the investigation noted that CSIS was old school and that employee complaints about managers were dismissed and disregarded.

But Alex said no action was taken about the reports findings and his situation got worse. So who was punished? No one. Come back to work now, and by the way, you get to report back to your accused. Oh, and youre not going to be in your plum position anymore, he said. My career was done by that point.

Read more: Read the explosive allegations of Islamophobia, racism and homophobia levelled against Canadas spy agency

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Justin Trudeaus Liberals added the Quebec seat of Lac-Saint-Jean to their ranks on Monday for the same reason Stephen Harper did in a byelection a decade ago. In both instances, a plurality of Lac-Saint-Jean voters wanted one of their own at the federal government table. And so they returned the riding to the Liberal fold after a 33-year absence.

Lac-Saint-Jean used to be a Bloc Quebecois stronghold. Lucien Bouchard held it for as long as he was in the federal arena and then ran provincially under the Parti Quebecois banner in the same region. If the BQ were even going to come back to a position of pre-eminence in Quebec this is one of the first ridings it would normally win back.

But on Monday, the party  despite the support of a strong Parti Quebecois local organization and a viable candidate  received less than one in four votes, up only marginally from its last election finish of 18 per cent.

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That would suggest that Quebecers  even in the provinces nationalist heartland  are mostly done with voting for a permanent federal opposition party.

The Conservatives and the New Democrats could hardly have hoped for better byelection timing than Mondays. The ruling Liberals literally spent the campaign tripping over their shoelaces on and off Parliament Hill.

The small business tax reform brouhaha; the controversy over Finance Minister Bill Morneaus less than arms-length disposal of his personal wealth; the spectacle of Heritage Minister Melanie Joly falling flat on her face on the much-watched Tout le monde en parle talk show over her deal with Netflix, all provided fodder for the opposition parties to exploit on the hustings.

Polls show widespread concern among Quebecers over the imminent legalization of marijuana. The Conservatives played hard on those fears. The New Democrats used a visit to the riding by their new leader, Jagmeet Singh, to highlight their continued willingness to play by made-in-Quebec referendum rules.

Trudeau landed in the riding last week on the day after the national assembly adopted the controversial law that prescribes provincial and municipal services be dispensed and received with ones face uncovered. During his visit, the prime minister was dogged by questions as to whether he would fight Quebec in court over Bill 62. He eventually left the door open for his government to do so.

Based on Mondays outcome, voters did not hold that against his party. So far, being consistently offside with what pollsters purport to be a Quebec consensus on religious wear has not hurt Trudeau in his home province. Back in 2015, his opposition to the proposed Conservative ban on niqabs at citizenship ceremonies had not stood in the way of the Liberals winning a majority of Quebec seats.

The religious accommodation issue may have a lot of traction in the polls, but the ballot box payoff of state-enforced secularism remains elusive. (As an aside, on Tuesday Quebec Justice Minister Stephanie Vallee walked back much of her talk about forcing individuals  whether they wear sunglasses or face-covering Muslim-veils  to remove them to use a vast array of public services. In her latest take on her own bill, people would  at least in the case of public transit or local libraries  have to uncover their faces for identification purposes only.)

It would be tempting to sum up the Lac-Saint-Jean results as a failed introductory test for the rookie leaders of the Bloc Quebecois, the Conservative party and the NDP. But the opposition weaknesses the byelection exposed were already in place on the night of the last general election.

In 2015, only a favourable division of the Quebec vote accounted for the seat gains of the BQ and the Harper-led Conservatives. The NDP has been in decline since its massive Quebec breakthrough in 2011. That decline has been accelerated by the decision to oust Thomas Mulcair from the leadership.

By way of consolation for Singh, the party under one of his leadership rivals would not have fared much better than it did Monday.

Andrew Scheer lost the Lac-Saint-Jean seat, but the Conservatives main concern should be the poor performance of the New Democrats. Their support dropped 16 points to 12 per cent on Monday.

Shave a few percentage points off the NDP across the board in Quebec and 20 more seats are within the reach of the Trudeau Liberals in 2019  leaving the other three parties to divvy up electoral crumbs in Canadas second-largest province.

Chantal Hebert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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MONTREALQuebecs controversial religious neutrality law would require veiled Muslim women to show their uncovered faces only during direct interactions with employees providing public services, the provinces justice minister said Tuesday.

In an apparent shift following widespread condemnation, Stephanie Vallee took the unusual step of explaining with specific examples how the law is meant to be applied.

Contrary to earlier comments, she said veiled individuals must remove their niqab  a religious face covering with only a slit for the eyes  when verification of photo identification by a government agent is required to access public transport, to check out library books, or to register at a medical clinic or hospital.

Read more: Quebec women who wear niqab worry about how Bill 62 will affect daily life

Quebecs face veil ban may face a Supreme Court challenge

But those people can cover their faces once they have taken their seat on the bus, while browsing the bookshelves or while sitting in the waiting room for their doctors appointment, Vallee said.

Its the interaction thats important, she said.

Before the law was passed, the justice minister told reporters that the obligation to unveil is for the duration that the service is being provided. That was widely thought to mean that veiled Muslim women would be denied access to public transit, health care and other services if their faces are covered.

Its something completely different now, said Warda Naili, a 33-year-old Montreal resident who wears the niqab. Does she really think we have such a short memory?

Naili, who converted to Islam in 2003, said the law as it was explained Tuesday is less intrusive, but still discriminatory because it impacts a minority of Muslim women rather than people of all faiths.

Justin Trudeau is weighing in further on the Quebec law banning people from covering their faces while receiving public services. The prime minister says it is not the role of government to tell women what they can or cant wear. (The Canadian Press)

She fears the impact it will have in provincial hospitals, which she frequents due to ongoing health problems.

I have certain doctors with whom I am comfortable keeping my niqab and Id like to continue because there is a good level of respect that allows us to work together, she said.

The new law would oblige her to remove her face covering while being examined by a doctor.

From what I understand they will be obligated to ask me (to remove the veil), she said. Will they all agree to ask me to do so? I hope not. I hope they will protest it.

Reacting to the Liberal governments explanation of how the law will be applied, Parti Quebecois Leader Jean-Francois Lisee said Quebec had caved to criticism rather than defended the principles of secularism.

This is a victory for the multiculturalists, for the Trudeauists. Its a victory for the Ontario legislature . . . . Its not a victory for Quebec democracy, he said.

The law was adopted after a divisive decade-long debate in Quebec about the balance between religious freedoms and state secularism.

Another aspect of that debate was shut down Tuesday afternoon when one of Quebecs opposition parties refused to support a motion calling for the removal of a giant crucifix that hangs in the provinces legislative chamber.

Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, co-leader of Quebec Solidaire, which had proposed the motion, said elected members championing religious neutrality should take the first step by moving the symbol of Quebecs Roman Catholic heritage to a museum-like setting.

While Vallee said she was confident of the legal basis for the religious neutrality law, legal experts, advocacy groups and even Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre have predicted that it will be challenged in the courts and ultimately overturned.

The law also obliges students in schools, colleges and universities to be unveiled in class; forces parents to show their face when picking up children from daycare; and obliges people seeking access to court services or testifying before a judge to do so uncovered.

But if a person is using an electronic pass without any photo identification requirements to swipe their way onto a public bus or the Montreal subway, however, there would be no obligation to unveil.

An individual can request an exemption from the law on religious grounds from the agency or institution providing the service, but the law says that request must be refused if it violates principles of safety, gender equality or if the burden of accommodating the request becomes too great for the public body.

There are no fines or penalties for those who do not adhere to the law. Vallee said the province no plans to create a special force to ensure the rules are followed, nor any fear of conservative Muslim women being chased off of public transportation. They will simply be refused the service.

A person who refuses to meet the requirements to get onto a bus simply wont be allowed on, she said.

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A 17-year-old boy is facing charges in a triple stabbing near a Scarborough high school on Friday, and police said they are looking to speak with several other suspects.

The stabbing happened near David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute, close to Lawrence Ave E. and Rushley Dr. at around 3:30 p.m. that day, police said in a release issued Tuesday.

A group of boys had been sitting on a wall in the area when a motorcycle with two male riders pulled up to the group. Police said the rear passenger got off the bike, allegedly pulled a knife from under his clothing, and stabbed one of the boys.

As two of his friends tried to intervene, an unspecified group of people allegedly rushed from behind a nearby McDonalds and joined in the fight, according to both police and a witness who spoke with the Star on Friday.

Police said the group allegedly held down the two friends as the suspect stabbed them several times.

Both the motorcycle riders and the group helping them managed to flee the scene before police could apprehend them.

All three stabbing victims, two of whom had life-threatening injuries, were rushed to hospital. Friends of the victims later told the Star at Sunnybrook Hospital that they were in okay condition.

David and Mary Thomson Collegiate Institute was put on hold-and-secure for about an hour. The Toronto District School Board later said that one of the victims, a 17-year-old boy, was a student at the school.

Police arrested the 17-year-old boy late Monday night. Hes facing three counts each of aggravated assault and assault with a weapon, as well as one of possessing weapons dangerous to the public peace, carrying a concealed weapon, and failing to comply with probation.

He appeared in court on Tuesday morning. The Youth Criminal Justice Acts prohibits news organizations, including the Star, from publishing his name because he is under the age of 18.

Police havent said how many other suspects there are in the case.

With files from Victoria Gibson

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Ontario will spend $21 million over three years on student transportation and other education support to boost outcomes for children and youth in foster care and group homes.

The money will help school boards pay for busing so kids in the care wont have to switch schools when they move. It will also help childrens aid societies hire educational liaison staff to develop education plans and co-ordinate school and community supports to ensure these vulnerable children and youth reach their full potential.

This funding will bring stability to students at a critical time that will enable them to focus on their education, Education Minister Mitzie Hunter said in a statement Monday.

Students will also be able to maintain important relationships in school with friends, staff and educators, from Kindergarten to Grade 12 and beyond, she said.

Read more:

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Annie Kidder and People for Education have made a mark on Ontario schools, but have they become part of the system?

The initiative, announced in Hamilton by Hunter and Children and Youth Services Minister Michael Coteau, comes three years after an ongoing Star investigation showed more than half of the provinces Crown wards had three or more unplanned school moves.

Child welfare experts have pointed to such moves as among the factors behind the troubling high-school dropout rate for youth in care which has been stuck at over 50 per cent for more than a decade. Meanwhile, fewer than 14 per cent of Ontario high school students fail to graduate after five years, a figure that has dropped from 32 per cent since 2004.

Former Crown ward Jane Kovarikova, 33, welcomed the change, as long as children have the choice.

I think it would help a lot of children who are socially integrated into their schools, said Kovarikova, who attended four elementary schools and another five high schools, due to numerous moves in the foster care system.

Although she isnt sure the policy would have made her childhood any easier, Kovarikova said her younger brother would have loved to have had the option to stay in his school.

Now what I wish I would see with this policy is a plan to evaluate if it actually does shift high school graduation rates up, added Kovarikova, who has formed an advocacy group to push for evidence-based policy in child protection.

The office of Ontarios Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth said young people in care have been demanding this change for decades.

School can be a place of refuge for children and youth in care, said Trevor McAlmont, director of advocacy services for the office. Changing schools not only disrupts their education, but causes them to lose important social supports, friends, teachers and community, he added.

Provincial funding for school liaison is a signal to all children and youth in care, no matter where they are in their schooling, that we expect them, and will support them, to achieve their full potential, he added.

A provincial commission in 2012 noted schools are under no obligation to enrol a child or youth in care mid-way through the term, and found students were sometimes out of class for weeks when they were forced to switch schools.

A Brantford youth interviewed by the Star in 2014 said she wasnt allowed to start a new school until she signed a paper promising to be a good kid.

Missing school is another barrier. Annual, government-mandated Looking After Children surveys known as OnLAC reveal a significant number of absentee days are due to CAS-related work: 15 per cent for meetings with child-care workers, 6 per cent for access visits from biological parents and 4 per cent due to completing the OnLAC survey. Appointments with mental-health workers were responsible for another 15 per cent of days off school.

New school liaison staff should reduce such school absences, a ministry spokesman said.

The Ontario Association of Childrens Aid Societies (OACAS), which represents Ontarios 38 societies, said Mondays announcement addresses many long-standing concerns raised by the sector.

We hope that it will specifically address the disruptions children in care experience in their day-to-day school lives that are the result of simply being in care, said Wendy Miller, senior manager of government and stakeholder relations, at OACAS.

The government is working with Indigenous partners to provide culturally appropriate services to Indigenous children and youth in care that support their educational success.

There are 38 childrens aid societies and 10 Indigenous societies in Ontario. In 2016-17, there was an average of almost 14,000 children and youth in care.

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First they fought fires, then they fought cancers.

Now theyre fighting among themselves in a bitter legal battle over millions of dollars  a battle that grows uglier and more acrimonious as thousands of pages of court documents pile up.

On one side is the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association (OPFFA), which represents more than 10,000 active firefighters across the province.

On the other side are Hamilton firefighter Colin Grieve and a Toronto firefighter named Paul Atkinson. For years, they have helped victims settle claims with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.

Read more:

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Fraud allegations hard to believe, says firefighters widow

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Grieve was one of the hundreds of Hamilton firefighters who battled the notorious Plastimet blaze two decades ago. He then became an advocate for colleagues stricken with work-related cancers, sought after for his expertise in navigating the bureaucracy of the WSIB claims process.

The two sides are now fighting over what has happened to some of the settlement money that has gone, in many of the cases, to the widows and families of firefighters who died from illnesses linked to their jobs.

So far, there has been a $4-million lawsuit filed by the OPFFA against Grieve and Atkinson, a $12-million countersuit filed by the two firefighters against the OPFFA and its former president, Carmen Santoro, and a total of eight criminal charges laid by Halton police against Grieve and Atkinson.

The OPFFA alleges the two firefighters misappropriated at least $3 million that should have gone to the association while Grieve and Atkinson claim their actions were condoned by the OPFFA.

Each side has declared the others actions and statements to be some combination of outrageous, malicious, scandalous and defamatory.

On Oct. 26 and 27, a judge will be asked to rule on five separate motions clogging the arteries of the civil cases as the legal battle becomes uglier and more acrimonious.

The two most crucial motions are an attempt by Grieve and Atkinson to have the OPFFAs lawsuit dismissed, or failing that, to have the civil suits put aside until the criminal charges are resolved.

Our clients want to deal with these issues but fighting a two-fronted battle on the same issues at the same time is unfair, said Gavin Tighe, a Toronto lawyer representing Grieve and Atkinson in the civil cases.

Our clients believe there is no merit in either of the cases, Tighe added.

On Feb. 28, Halton police laid four criminal charges each against Grieve and Atkinson  two counts each of fraud over $5,000, and single counts of attempting to obstruct justice and money laundering.

Grieve and Atkinson have already failed in their attempt to take the extraordinary step of forcing three of the OPFFAs lawyers to get on the witness stand and provide evidence against their client in the civil lawsuit.

The two firefighters have raised concerns about the unusually close relationship between the OPFFAs lawyers and Halton police.

Grieve and Atkinson have also taken the inflammatory step of threatening to name two of the OPFFAs lawyers as defendants in a malicious prosecution action if the criminal charges are withdrawn or dismissed at a trial.

None of the allegations made so far in the OPFFAs statement of claim, the counterclaim of Grieve and Atkinson, or the various filed affidavits have been proven in court.

A pretrial conference on the criminal charges will continue on Nov. 16.

Rahool Agarwal, the lead lawyer for the OPFFA, declined to comment on the case because the matter is still before the court.

The OPFFAs lawsuit was launched in the spring of 2016 but the story starts 20 years ago in the wake of the Plastimet fire, one of Hamiltons worst environmental nightmares.

A toxic soup of chemicals from the burning plastics left a number of the firefighters stricken with long-term illnesses, including elevated rates of cancers.

Following an appearance on CBCs The Fifth Estate in late 1997 to discuss the Plastimet fire, Grieve began informally helping other firefighters, retirees or their families advance claims for occupational illnesses.

By the late 1990s, Grieve and Atkinson were appointed to the OPFFAs WSIB committee.

What complicated the matter was the fact many of the WSIB claims needing assistance were coming from retirees or their families and they werent members of the OPFFA, which represents active firefighters.

By 2004, the association established the Retirees Cancer Claim Fund (RCCF), which started with $20,000 in seed money from the OPFFA to help with the process of submitting claims.

The association decided to also seek voluntary donations from retired firefighters or their beneficiaries, paid as a percentage of a WSIB settlement.

The OPFFA drew up a letter of agreement and if a successful claimant decided to make a contribution, they were asked to donate 1.5 per cent of the settlement to help the association continue representing others.

But the fund couldnt keep up with the requests for assistance.

By 2005, the OPFFA had increased the suggested donation amount to 3 per cent of the settlement and then to 5 per cent in 2007. The association also introduced a $1-per-month levy on its members in 2006 that has generated more than $1 million for the retirees cancer fund.

In 2005, the OPFFA decided to formalize the roles of Grieve and Atkinson. Their full-time job was to represent active and retired firefighters or their families as they made claims for workplace-related illnesses.

Grieve and Atkinson continued to be paid their regular salaries by their respective municipalities and the OPFFA paid the costs of substitute firefighters to cover the shifts that Grieve and Atkinson would normally take.

The OPFFA also paid Grieve and Atkinsons expenses and daily per diems in some cases, along with annual honoraria.

A balance sheet filed in court by the OPFFA shows it paid out $1.37 million in expenses related to Grieve and Atkinson over a nine-year period from June 2006 through May 2015.

The expenses included $216,000 in mileage charges and $46,500 for cellphones.

The allegations

In 2015, the association began to have concerns about the conduct of Grieve and Atkinson, according to its statement of claim.

The association alleges some of the donation money from successful WSIB claimants that should have gone to the OPFFA was instead being kept by the two firefighters.

From 2004 through 2015, Atkinson and Grieve represented more than 230 claimants, leading to over $80 million in total WSIB payouts. However the OPFFA received just over $600,000 in donations to the RCCF over that same time period, or approximately 0.7 per cent, the association alleges.

The OPFFA alleges that Atkinson and Grieve misappropriated at least $3 million in donations. Thats on top of the expenses, honoraria and regular salaries that were already paid to them.

In 2005, Grieve and Atkinson created a company called Professional Firefighters Advocates Inc., which they allegedly referred to at times as PFFA in an effort to confuse claim recipients into believing they were agreeing to contribute monies to the OPFFA, according to the statement of claim.

The OPFFA alleges Grieve and Atkinson developed copycat letters of agreement for claimants to sign that replicated almost verbatim the OPFFAs agreement but instead directed donations be made out to PFFA  an acronym they used to refer to their company.

The court filings include examples of invoices provided to claimants families.

On some, the O from OPFFA is missing but the address below PFFA is the Plains Rd. location of the actual OPFFA headquarters in Burlington.

There are notations to Make all cheques payable to Professional Fire Fighters Advocates Inc. and that cheques should be mailed to a Stoney Creek address that appears to be Grieves home.

The OPFFA states it received a complaint from Bev Bamlett, the widow of a deceased firefighter. Atkinson had helped handle her WSIB claim and she was concerned about his conduct, according to the documents.

The OPFFA filed text messages that purport to show Atkinson soliciting Bamlett to pay him for the work he did preparing her claim.

In notes provided to the OPFFA by Bamlett, she said she wanted to donate $7,500 from the settlement.

She asked if she should make the cheque out to OPFFA but Atkinson said, No, he has a company for that, she alleges.

She was particularly upset that Atkinson seemed to consider a successful settlement similar to a lottery win.

Paul mentioned lottery so many times, Bamlett wrote. The settlement is not a lottery win. I lost my husband and my daughters lost their father.

The OPFFA alleges Atkinson and Grieve asked some claimants to sign confidentiality agreements and asked some to destroy all documents related to their claim after the fact.

Last October, current OPFFA president Rob Hyndman filed an affidavit outlining a number of cases where the association believes financial irregularities took place.

There was the case of London firefighter Jack Kellum, now deceased, who was diagnosed with a brain tumour. After the claim was settled, his wife made two payments  one for $2,200 made out to the OPFFA and a second donation for $8,588.50, to an organization called PFFA,  according to a statement filed in court by Kellums wife, Nancy.

Jack thought it was strange that we would be asked to make those two separate donations and questioned Colin about it, Nancy Kellum stated.

Colin never indicated that PFFA was a company that he owned and operated, she alleges. It was not our intention that this money would be received by Paul or Colin personally or any company under their control.

There was the case of Caledon firefighter James Martin, who died of esophageal cancer. His daughter Nora attempted to make a donation of nearly $30,000 to the OPFFA.

According to a witness statement by Martin filed in court, Atkinson told her to make the cheque payable to PFFA.

It was not my understanding that our donation was made to compensate Paul or his company in any way, Martin wrote. It was my intention that the money ultimately go to the OPFFA.

The OPFFA alleges the two firefighters committed breach of fiduciary duty, breach of trust, false misrepresentation, breach of contract and unjust enrichment, among other acts.

The defendants actions were outrageous, malicious and high-handed, the association alleges. Their motive was to dupe retired firefighters suffering from life-threatening illnesses, and their families, out of money they agreed to give to the OPFFA.

The two firefighters deny the OPFFAs allegations and state in their defence that they never engaged in any fraudulent scheme, conspiracy or subterfuge.

The allegations in the statement of claim to this effect are purposefully scandalous, they claim in their statement of defence.

Grieve and Atkinson state that the OPFFA couldnt provide the name of a single victim and the true purpose of the associations lawsuit is to gain monetary benefit for the OPFFA and its current executive, they allege.

Whats more, they allege, the OPFFA condoned the compensation arrangements between the WSIB claimants and the two firefighters as long as it continued to receive a percentage of the proceeds of such efforts.

It was only after (Grieve and Atkinson) decided to break ties with the OPFFA, and in the face of a loss of revenue to which the OPFFA had no legal entitlement in the first place, that the OPFFA suddenly began to take issue with these defendants work on behalf of claimants, their statement of defence alleges.

The families and firefighters assisted by these defendants were fully aware of and agreed to compensate them for their efforts, Grieve and Atkinson claim, at a fraction of the cost that a paralegal or lawyer would have charged.

The two firefighters launched a counterclaim against the OPFFA and its former president Carmen Santoro, seeking $5 million in damages and $1 million in punitive damages against each for unlawful interference of economic interest, abuse of process, defamation and intentional infliction of mental distress.

Atkinson and Grieve allege that Santoro embarked on a malicious smear campaign designed to harm their integrity and damage their reputations.

(We) have been subject to embarrassment, scorn and ridicule, the two firefighters claim.

sbuist@thespec.com905-526-3226

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The U.S. may have the worst president its ever had, but feminist icon Gloria Steinem says she has seen progress in her fight for equality.

It was clear, though, throughout Steinems speech to an almost full house at the University of Torontos Convocation Hall that the work of challenging hierarchy is far from over.

Slavery may have been abolished in the U.S., she said, but the racism that fuelled it hasnt been addressed. We have not done what seems to have been done in Germany, which is that every classroom, including very young kids, learn about the Holocaust and what that meant. They learn about the past. We dont, not really.

Now in her 80s, Steinem has spent decades advocating for womens rights and issues of equality around the world.

Earlier in the day, she shared her experience with more than 600 students in Grades 7 to 12 at Torontos Branksome Hall, an all-girls private school, as part of its annual Rachel Phillips Belash speaker series, which features renowned women. Last year, Arianna Huffington addressed the students.

This was the first year the school organized a complementary evening event open to the public.

Throughout the evening, Steinem answered questions from both the audience and moderator Amanda Lang, a business journalist with Business News Network, entertaining and no doubt inspiring a rapt audience with her insights and dry sense of humour.

Asked at one point what she thinks about the notion that women can have it all, Steinem said, You cant have it all if you have to do it all.

The structure of work is still set up for households with a sole male earner with someone at home cooking the meals, she said. Its not human nature to live in the hierarchical way we do, she said.

One solution is to give economic value to work in the home through tax deductions or refunds.

For Grade 11 student Charley LaFayette, Steinems morning speech at Branksome Hall was inspiring.

I was mesmerized, it was phenomenal to see her speak. We were all so inspired, she said. It makes you feel like you need to do more.

The students were able to ask Steinem questions and LaFayette, who is a co-leader of the schools gender studies club, asked about the effect U.S. President Donald Trump has had on womens rights.

Steinem, LaFayette said, told them that seeing someone whos so against womens rights has ignited a fire in both men and women and pushed them to start advocating for their rights.

In that way, the movement has been strengthened, despite some concerning new bills, LaFayette said, recounting Steinems response to her question.

I really liked that answer, she said, commenting on the optimistic way Steinem approaches her advocacy.

Shes very tenacious in the way that she fights for rights and the way that she advocates for women, but its also a very positive, LaFayette said.

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A key aspect of the Law Society of Upper Canada's plan to address systemic racism in the legal profession is coming under fire.

The issue is whether Ontario's legal regulator should be requiring lawyers and paralegals to adopt and abide by a so-called statement of principles that acknowledges (their) obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion generally, and in (their) behaviour towards colleagues, employees, clients and the public, as described in an email sent last month by the law society to all licensees, reminding them that the statement is mandatory.

Licensees can either adopt a statement of principles prepared by the law society, or come up with their own, but they must indicate whether it's been done in their annual report to the law society, the regulator says. They do not have to submit the actual statement to the law society for approval.

The statement of principles was one of the recommendations stemming from a law society working group that looked into the challenges faced by racialized licensees, and which were adopted unanimously (with three abstentions) at the law society's board meeting last December.

Toronto lawyer Joe Groia, a member of the board of directors (known as benchers), said he fully supports efforts to improve equality and diversity in the profession, but takes issue with the fact that the statement is mandatory. He will be bringing a motion at the board meeting this December that would allow an exemption for those who have a conscientious objection to the requirement, which is proving to become a divisive topic in the profession.

Not that these are not laudable objectives, because they are, and not that lawyers don't occupy a special position, they do, but I think that the real question is: Is this requirement, which I think amounts to compelled speech, compelled belief, is that something that the law society is allowed to do? And even if it is, is it something that the law society should do? he told the Star.

Groia's motion is being seconded by Ottawa lawyer Anne Vespry, herself a racialized licensee.

I believe I have a duty to act in a way that does not discriminate, but I do not believe that I have a duty to promote anything except maybe my own business, Vespry told the Star, adding she will stand up for this motion and any other motion that will make the recommendations make better sense.

Both Groia and Vespry were among the 19 benchers who had supported bencher Sidney Troister's unsuccessful motion to discuss and vote on each recommendation separately last December.

I have been approached by more lawyers and paralegals and asked to reconsider this initiative than I have on any other matter that's been before the law society in my time as a bencher, Groia said. Every single person I've spoken to have said we are not opposed to the promotion of equality, we in fact support every effort, what we are opposed to do is being required to prepare a statement of principles that may indeed go against our faith, may go against our beliefs, may go against our conscience.

Groia is already locked in another battle with the law society; the Supreme Court of Canada is set to hear on Nov. 6 his appeal of his incivility conviction for being rude in court and one-month suspension imposed by the law society tribunal. More than 3,600 lawyers elected him a bencher in 2015 as his case  which is being closely followed in legal circles  was making its way through the courts.

The working group spent four years looking into challenges faced by racialized licensees, finding them both long-standing and significant. It came up with a total of 13 recommendations, three of which, including the statement of principles, are being implemented this year. Another mandatory recommendation requires legal workplaces with 10 or more licensees to develop and implement a human rights and diversity policy. The third recommendation, for licensees to participate in an inclusion survey, is optional.

The statement of principles forces people to think about what exactly is their obligation, to understand that they have such an obligation and to think about how they're going to implement it in their own practice, said lawyer Paul Jonathan Saguil, chair of the law society's equity advisory group. There's no debate about the fact that people can decide what words to use (in the statement), but to fail to acknowledge that you have an obligation to promote equality and inclusion, if people don't want to do that, if people say they don't have any such obligation, that to me is a serious flaw on their perception of what it means to be a lawyer in the 21st century in Ontario.

The law society has said change is needed now more than ever, as the number of racialized lawyers in Ontario has doubled  from 9 per cent of the profession in 2011, to 18 per cent in 2014.

Licensees who don't come up with a statement of principles this year will receive a letter indicating their non-compliance, said treasurer Paul Schabas, the elected head of the regulator. Whether they will face penalties in the future remains to be seen.

We're trying to be positive and proactive, he told the Star. Our focus is on raising awareness and achieving the culture shift the working group recommended, which is make people aware of the challenges faced by racialized licensees in getting jobs and advancing in jobs. Our aim is simply to educate and raise awareness, we didn't bring this in to penalize.

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You dont like me, do you?

It probably would not have required being under oath for Shawn Lerner to give an honest answer.

No.

Lawyers dont give a fig whether witnesses under cross-examination like them or not. Its an adversarial process.

But Dellen Millard, who is representing himself in court, is one of the two defendants on trial for first-degree murder in the death of Laura Babcock, whose remains have never been found.

Read more: Laura Babcock murder trial hears of her struggles with drugs, mental health

Dreadful details come fast and furious on Day 1 of trial into Laura Babcock's murder: DiManno

Laura Babcock killed for being odd woman out in love triangle, court hears

The prosecution says Millard and Mark Smich killed her five years ago, then disposed of the young womans body in an incinerator.

You find me sketchy.

More a declaration than a question but Lerner responded. Yes, he does.

When Babcock went missing in early July, 2012, it was Lerner, her former boyfriend, who raised the alarm.

Just as it had been Lerner, still fond of his ex in a close friend way, who put Babcock up in a west end Toronto motel for a couple of nights, just before her vanishing, because she had nowhere to stay, had been couch-surfing and quarrelling with her parents. And, as Lerner discovered when they met for dinner at a food court  the last time he saw the 23-year-old alive, their final texts exchanged on July 1  had been working for an escort service.

It was Lerner, too, who loaned Babcock an iPad that night  the same device on which investigators would later find rap lyrics which appear to allude to her murder. The bitch started off all skin and bone, now the bitch lay on some ashy stone . . .  In a brief video segment shown to the jury earlier this week, Smich is seen singing that repugnant ditty.

Both Smich and Millard have pleaded not guilty.

The last eight phone calls Babcock made on her phone were to Millard, Lerner told court. He learned this when examining the phone bill that Babcocks mother had given them after family and friends became deeply worried about her unknown whereabouts. After those calls to Millards number, there was no further activity on her phone.

In the early days of Babcocks disappearance, Lerner testified, police seemed not to take the matter seriously. Just another missing adult  most of them show up eventually. When Lerner provided details of Babcocks life  the escort connection, her drug use, the bizarre behaviour over recent months  police interest waned further.

But Lerner, whod dated Babcock for about 18 months  theyd broken up around Christmas, 2011  would not let it rest. Indeed, he ended up making a formal complaint about the investigation to the Office of Independent Police Review Director.

If there is an admirable individual in the whole sordid and grim mess that has been unfolding in court, its Lerner.

He cared.

A 27-year-old businessman by profession, he turned himself into an amateur sleuth.

Lerner knew Babcocks phone password so he accessed it for messages, a clue. He created a group page on her Facebook account to share information with friends  hed retrieved their names  anything to assemble a trail. Nobody had heard from her. Babcock, who had been keenly active on social media, had gone silent.

Crucially, Lerner called Millard. Im not looking to point a finger at anyone, Lerner texted, but were concerned about Laura and it looks like you were the last person to correspond with her.

After ignoring the first few texts, Millard answered that hed heard about Babcock being missing. Dont know where she is.

Not accepting the brush-off, Lerner urged they meet to talk.

They did so, at a Starbucks, on July 27.

During that conversation, as Lerner recalled under direct examination earlier, Millard told him that Babcock had been using drugs, developed a cocaine addiction and had been bugging him to get her drugs, which hed vehemently refused. He implied shes gone, said Lerner. She got mixed up with the wrong people. And I should have no reasonable expectation of finding her.

It was not the first time Lerner and Millard had met. In February, 2011, Lerner had planned a surprise birthday party for Babcock. Millard  whom he did not personally know  was invited. Afterwards, a group of them went back to Millards condo.

This was one of the areas Millard pursued in his cross-examination Tuesday; his assertion that Lerner found him sketchy dated back to that evening.

I dont recall if I found you sketchy immediately upon leaving (the party). But by the time I left that evening I certainly did find you sketchy.

Lerner recounted that, in their conversation at his condo, Millard had given inconsistent details about what he did for a living. He also observed Millard giving drugs to Babcock that night  he thought it was ecstasy.

Youre against the use of hard drugs? Millard asked.

Lerner: I was against her getting her getting pills from you, unsolicited by her. You made it clear that it was a birthday present.

Why should Lerner care, Millard continued.

Because she (was) my girlfriend and I cared about her and I loved her.

Millard asked whether, at their Starbucks meeting, hed informed Lerner that Babcock had been working as a prostitute.

No. I had to that point understood that she was working as an escort.

Hed admittedly not been thrilled when Babcock told him about that, at their dinner. She did say there was no sex involved. She seemed brand new to the business. The way she explained it to me, it was sort of . . . men looking to have a pretty girl on their arm. She may have believed it. I was obviously not convinced that might be all there was to it.

Had he, Millard, not expressly stated, at Starbucks, that he wasnt providing drugs to Babcock? I had witnessed you giving her drugs in the past, said Lerner.

Millard: You asked if I was having sex with Laura at that time. I said no and that I have a girlfriend.

Babcock and Millard had dated briefly several years earlier, court has heard. It is unclear when or how their paths crossed again. The prosecution theory is that Babcock had boasted to Millards current girlfriend that she was still sleeping with him. The woman became upset. In the opening address on Monday, Crown attorney Jill Cameron quoted from texts Millard had sent his girlfriend in April: First I am going to hurt her. Then Ill make her leave. And: I will remove her from our lives.

It was at that point, the prosecution maintains, that Millard set about getting an incinerator. The Crown believes Babcock was killed July 3 or 4.

Millard suggested to the witness that Babcock had a number of strange men in her life at the time she disappeared.

Millard: Are you trying to shift the case one way or another?

Lerner: No, absolutely not.

Millard: Are you trying to shift suspicion on to me?

Lerner: No, Im trying to answer your questions.

And this exchange:

Millard: How do you feel about Laura today?

Lerner: I miss her.

The trial continues.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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With the legalization of pot scheduled for next year, a cannabis delivery company is advertising its services by distributing hot pink flyers to city mailboxes amid complaints questioning its methods.

Riverdale resident Pauline Stanley received an advertisement late last week from Weedora, offering seven free grams of marijuana with the purchase of one ounce of a high end strain. Interested parties would reach out via text message for service.

Stanley, a mother of two children, aged 9 and 14, reached out to the company under an alias to gather more information. She said prices for an ounce  with names such as Chemo Kush, or UK Cheese 2.0  are $150 to $250.

Stanley said theres a school down the street from her home, adding shes frustrated that a technically illegal recreational drug market can operate unchecked and indiscriminately appeal to youth.

My door is not a nightclub, she said. There are all kinds of school-age kids in the neighbourhood, so how many of these (flyers) were nabbed by teenagers? Its pretty inviting.

When I got it, I thought this must be illegal and intrusive, Stanley said.

Stanley said the advertisement isnt for medical purposes. The companys website doesnt specify. It does state that buyers must be 19 or older to order.

It is our mission to give cannabis lovers the best strains grown by local farmers for the most affordable prices, delivered right to your door in the GTA, reads the companys mission statement.

The federal government is planning to follow through with plans to legalize recreational pot on July 1, 2018. Ontario has signalled that cannabis will be sold from LCBO outlets or through a government-operated server.

Mark Pugash, director of communications at the Toronto Police Service, said the issue is on the forces radar, but declined to comment.

A request by the Star for an interview with the unnamed owner of Weedora was declined.

By mid-afternoon Tuesday, the companys website showed that about 750 people had visited.

It normalizes drug use, in the eyes of children, Stanley said.

Councillor Paula Fletcher (Ward 30, Toronto-Danforth) said Stanleys concerns are warranted, adding that the crackdown of dispensaries in Toronto has forced the marijuana market to shift its strategy and continue working in a protracted grey zone.

It is technically advertising an illegal product for somebody to bring it to your house, she said. The marijuana industry is a very smart, savvy, large industry that will find other ways to distribute until the regulation comes into play.

Fletcher said her ward has seen dispensaries pop up, tolerated by her constituents for a spell, and eventually shut down.

Its the wild, wild west, she said. I believe there must be regulation. This gray area is unfair to everybody, at this point. I think the police need to act a little more swiftly.

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Heres a little story:

A kicks and punches B.

B fight backs but is silenced through fair means and foul.

Bs friend, C, roars in defence of B.

Thats rude, cries A. Punish C.

Think thats fair?

Who holds A accountable?

Id wager that kids in Grade 3 would have a pretty clear idea of where they would stand on this. But Dalhousie University in Halifax wrestled with it and found Cs words merited disciplinary review.

Masuma Khan, the vice-president of the student council executive at Dalhousie, the activist who had led thousands in the streets to protest against high tuition fees, and who identifies more with Malcolm X than Martin Luther King, will face a disciplinary committee come November or December.

The review comes over a now-deleted Facebook post in which she defended her motion to the students union to not celebrate Canada 150. She said she would not stand with privileged white people, or be proud of a country that is responsible for over 400 years of genocide and the stealing of land. For good measure she added the hashtags #unlearn150, #whitefragilitycankissmyass and #yourwhitetearsarentsacredthislandis.

Unlearn 150. White fragility can kiss my ass. Your white tears arent sacred. This land is.

Fierce words. Fighting words. Challenging words.

Words worth censoring?

A university investigation concluded there was enough evidence for a committee to review Khan related to unwelcome or persistent conduct that . . . would cause another person to feel demeaned, intimidated or harassed.

On Monday, statements of support poured in for Khan.

While our constitutional order offers protection to many kinds of speech, none is more valued and protected than political speech, a group of 25 law professors from Dalhousies own Schulich School of Law wrote in a letter to the universitys senate.

Expression which challenges majoritarian views, traditions, and practices that have caused harms to marginalized and oppressed minorities lies at the very core of Canadas constitutional commitment to the protection of political speech, they wrote.

We write this letter to ask that Dalhousie University repeal its policies that use student discipline to suppress the freedom of expression of its students, the Ontario Civil Liberties Association wrote in another letter to Dalhousie.

The irony in this situation  where a university that proclaims to value academic freedom and free speech penalizes a student for openly challenging oppressive power structures  would be laughable were it not deeply worrisome, said the political organization Solidarity Halifax.

If free speech is so vaunted in Canadian social and legal consciousness, why did Khans words cause anger in the first place? To my mind, its because Khan mentioned white in a not-complimentary way. And because her response didnt cater to how white people felt about this.

If you dont know what white fragility means, the reaction to Khans statement is the definition of it. One of the triggers of fragility is when people of colour choose not to protect the racial feelings of white people when talking about race.

The term white fragility, was coined by Robin DiAngelo, who taught multicultural education at Westfield State University in Massachusetts.

White people move through a racialized world with an unracialized identity, she says. For example, white people see themselves as representing all of humanity, while they see people of colour as representing only their racial selves. This is why suggesting that a white persons viewpoint comes from a racialized identity is seen as a challenge to their objectivity. These challenges are highly stressful and even intolerable, DiAngelo says. White fragility, then, is white pushback to regain racial position and equilibrium.

How did this fragility unfold in the Dalhousie case?

Khans initial motion last summer for students to not celebrate Canada Day was more a symbol of solidarity than an actual boycott given that it fell over the holidays. But it upset the good members of Nova Scotia Young Progressive Conservatives.

The Dalhousie Student Union should be helping instill pride in our country, not boycott it on our most significant national holiday, the group said in a Facebook post. From an Indigenous perspective, Canada 150 celebrations are part of an ongoing colonial legacy, but perhaps this isnt visible to those who have not learned history from multiple lenses.

Khan responded, not with love and courage, but with rage. At this point, f*** you all, she said in her Facebook post before she unleashed her hashtags. I stand by the motion I put forward.

A white graduate history student named Michael Smith complained to the university that targeting white people who celebrate Canada Day is blatant discrimination.

Arig al Shaibah, the vice-provost for student affairs, investigated and found that Khans choice of language was concerning but that she did not target a specific group. Challenging white fragility is not the issue, she said in a statement Monday.

Does that mean using the F-word was the problem? And if it wasnt Khans words, was it her tone? Is anyone policing the tone and content of the abuse being hurled at Khan?

People might say it wasnt an appropriate response. You have to understand I deal with Islamophobia on the daily, she told The Canadian Press. Im the one that gets called a terrorist when I walk down the street.

Khan was told she could attend training sessions on coalition-building and write a reflective essay on what she learns. She refused, and will now face a disciplinary hearing.

Suggesting I should take some training about how to talk about racism, thats incredibly invalidating, she said.

Shree Paradkar writes about discrimination and identity. You can follow her @shreeparadkar

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The failure to warn Dalton McGuintys chief of staff against hiring an outside contractor to wipe hard drives was an oversight by senior bureaucrats, a defence lawyer argued Monday.

A memo authored by cabinet office legal counsel William Bromm cited the obligation to preserve records of government decisions, but did not specify government IT staff do computer work, Scott Hutchison said.

Thats a gap, isnt it? Hutchison asked Bromm at the deleted documents trial of two top aides to Dalton McGuinty during his final months as premier amid the gas plants scandal in 2012 and 2013.

Read more:

Civil servants kept emails in case they shed light on McGuintys gas plant cancellations

McGuinty staffers destroyed records they had a duty to preserve, gas plant trial told

The idea of using private contractors to delete data called 'stupid' at gas plant trial

Thats a hypothetical gap, replied Bromm.

I didnt say that nor did I need to say it, he added before being further pressed by Hutchison to confirm the memo does not expressly prohibit hiring an outside contractor.

Correct. It does not say that, Bromm continued before adding it would say that now.

Former McGuinty chief of staff David Livingston and his deputy chief Laura Miller are on trial for breach of trust, mischief in relation to data and misuse of a computer system in the alleged wiping of hard drives.

They have pleaded not guilty and face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of the Criminal Code charges laid in the wake of the gas plants furor, in which legislative committees demanded documents explaining the decisions to scrap gas-fired power plants in Mississauga and Oakville before the 2011 election.

Court has heard that the premiers office brought in private information technology consultant Peter Faist  Millers life partner  to wipe the hard drives. He is not charged.

This was in the days before Kathleen Wynne took power from McGuinty  who had resigned over the controversy swirling around his government  in February 2013 after Livingston obtained a special administrative password allowing access to computers in the premiers office.

Bromm said earlier in the day that remarks from Livingston to another cabinet office official about hiring an outsider were not taken seriously, echoing testimony last week from former cabinet secretary Peter Wallace, his boss.

He called the remark by Livingston a passing frustration and a stupid comment and added it never occurred to me to speak to Livingston about it since it was so far outside of standard government procedures.

There are formal procedures in an official procurement process for contracting out such a job, said Bromm.

He agreed with defence lawyers that Livingston was not alone in feeling that the powers of a legislative committee dominated by opposition MPPs to compel the release of government documents in the minority government seemed extraordinary.

Initially, even Wallace, who as cabinet secretary was the head of the provincial civil service, was skeptical.

He didnt believe what I told him and he sought external advice, Bromm said, referring to legal opinions Wallace sought out.

McGuinty was not part of the investigation and co-operated with police.

The trial continues Tuesday.

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After 26 years, Roger Fowler finally has hope.

The retired General Electric worker, who believes his cancer was caused by the two decades he spent working among toxic chemicals in the companys Peterborough plant, received a call late last week saying his WSIB claim is being reviewed.

But the roller-coaster ride hes been on since the 1990s  having his claim turned down, being rejected again on appeal, then informed he would get a review, only to be told no because of the previous rejection  means the 71-year-old is still wary.

Read more:

Ailing GE Peterborough workers still waiting for justice, group says

GE Peterborough plant was a symbol of opportunity. But did it make workers sick?

WSIB to review more than 250 General Electric plant claims in Peterborough

After what Ive been through, you cant trust anybody until you see it in writing, or somebody calls me and says, You are in,  Fowler said in a telephone interview. Im worried in a hopeful way. Im really nervous.

Fowler, a colorectal cancer survivor who worked at the plant for 22 years, is among hundreds of former employees between 1945 and 2000 who say their cancer or serious illness was a result of exposure to thousands of chemicals at the site.

Their claims for compensation were earlier dismissed by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. But in recent months, new research has found they were exposed to the toxic substances at unsafe levels  and about 40 of those chemicals have been linked to cancer  so the board decided to reconsider some 250 cases that had previously been denied.

The WSIB has since looked at 16 of those cases, and so far 10 of them have been overturned, with six denials upheld. The rest of the 250 claimants have been told to expect letters in the mail this week as the reviews get underway.

Its taken a while to get to this point, but I think were doing it the right way because we are now going to see an orderly progression, Labour Minister Kevin Flynn said.

In the past, he added, there were no claims being dealt with  when you look at how far this dates back, now that the WSIB is starting to move through the process in an orderly way  if they can keep this pace all should be dealt with by the end of the year or early spring.

Last week, Fowler was part of a group who came to Queens Park to say the Ministry of Labour was dragging its feet and failing to make good on promises, such as $2 million in funding for a specialized team based in Peterborough to help workers with their WSIB claims.

In 2016, the Star chronicled the lethal legacy of the Peterborough plant and, earlier this year, a study by the Unifor union found an epidemic of workplace illnesses for those who worked at the plant up until 2000, when it was decontaminated.

The GE Peterborough plant was the areas largest employer, and made diesel locomotive engines, nuclear reactor fuel cells and hydro generators, as well as appliances and other items. Over its 125-year history, the plant has employed tens of thousands of workers, and GE has said health and safety has always been the companys No. 1 priority.

The WSIB says that since 1993, about 80 per cent of some 2,400 GE claims were allowed, though critics have said the number of approved cancer claims is just one-quarter. Given the new findings, the WSIB is now looking at more than 250 rejected claims and urging workers who havent yet put in a claim to come forward.

The WSIB says it has received more than 60 calls in the past month, and 30 new claims are now being processed.

New scientific research and information from the community is helping to shed new light on the substances people were exposed to, said Aaron Lazarus of the WSIB. We are working to thoroughly review each claim as quickly as possible so that people have answers and the benefits they may be entitled to.

In this video, originally published in Dec., 2016, Roger Fowler, a former GE employee, reads one of his poems during the Celebration of Life, an annual event by former GE employees to honour those who have died of ca

The additional cases that have come forward may be reviewed under a different, expedited process, Flynn has said, and advocates have been urging automatic approval.

Last Thursday during question period, New Democrat MPP Cindy Forster (Welland) asked why the workers and their families havent yet received compensation. She noted that while the WSIB has been rejecting claims, it has continued to give businesses a cut in premiums.

What the workers have gone through is tragic, added NDP Leader Andrea Horwath. A lot of their colleagues have passed away over the years with terrible cancers and illnesses  its just horrifying.

She said the government needs to act much faster.

What they shouldnt do is keep stringing them along, she added. What they shouldnt do is give them false hope and make false promises and I think thats why they are so frustrated  they really did believe that the government was going to step up to the plate and get the WSIB to proactively get these claims resolved and start ensuring that those who are left are able to get the compensation they deserve from the toxic exposures in the workplace.

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When it comes to political scandals, Ontarios Liberals have made legal history.

Not just not guilty. Not even close.

An extremely rare directed verdict from a judge throwing out the prosecutions unfounded case before the defence needed to even defend itself. Because no reasonable jury could possibly fathom a conviction in this three-year-old case that the Ontario Provincial Police, the opposition parties and some pundits had described as a slam dunk from the first.

And so for the first time in the 27-year history of Ontarios Election Act, a judge has said, in so many words, that the law is an ass. Especially in the hands of the OPP and Crown prosecutors who surely should have known better.

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Two Liberal party warhorses  one working in the premiers office, the other a Sudbury kingpin  faced bizarre allegations of bribery and influence-peddling merely for playing politics in a local byelection. Their supposed crimes?

Persuading and dissuading.

They tried to persuade Glenn Thibeault, a star candidate from the federal NDP caucus in Ottawa, to run for the Liberals in a provincial byelection. And they tried to dissuade a local aspirant with a far dimmer star  Andrew Olivier lost in the previous general election  from fracturing party unity, instead urging him to go off quietly (because the premier would never sign his nomination papers anyway).

In a dramatic judgment delivered Tuesday, a judge tried to explain to OPP investigators and Crown prosecutors what they never learned in police college and law school:

That theres a difference between wooing and bribing a star candidate.

And that pacifying a disappointed aspirant  urging him to remain active and involved  cant be twisted into influence-peddling.

That may be too nuanced for our opposition parties, who now understand their jobs to be forever opposing everything, even if always overreaching. Smelling blood, it was the New Democratic Party that first called in the cops as part of their continuing campaign, in league with the Progressive Conservatives, to criminalize the governing Liberals.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne says she wanted to take the witness stand Sept. 13 to be as open as possible at a bribery trial involving a former top adviser and a Liberal fundraiser. (The Canadian Press)

When a judge called it all off this week, the NDP and Tories still wouldnt give up. They claimed the Liberals had gotten off on a technicality  if thats what you call the absurdity that the judge methodically laid out in his decision.

This was never a complicated case, despite feverish attempts by the NDP, OPP, and Crown to raise it to a higher level. Like many perceived transgressions, this one first went viral on social media, when a disgruntled Olivier revealed in a Facebook posting that hed recorded Premier Kathleen Wynnes deputy chief of staff, Patricia Sorbara, and local Liberal activist Gerry Lougheed, offering him volunteer or paid positions if he would play ball.

It is in the nature of most Ontarians to ignore provincial politics most of the time. Even when people pay attention, its usually from a distance.

The big eye-catching headline was Sudbury bribery. But there less to the case than met the eye.

Volunteer party jobs arent exactly bribery. Being invited to apply for a job as a constituency assistant  which typically pays $35,000 to $45,000 a year  hardly qualifies as big money.

The tape recordings were certainly awkward, as most private conversations can be when aired in public  just ask the Tories, for example, if theyd be OK with transcripts of their own conversations being released. Out of context, anything can sound like everything, but police and prosecutors are meant to dig deeper than Facebook postings.

Instead, they laid criminal charges against Lougheed  a prominent fundraiser in Sudbury for the Liberals, but also a famously generous donor to local medical facilities  before having second thoughts and downgrading the allegations to provincial offences under the loose language of the Election Act. They also roped in Sorbara, accusing her of inducing Thibeault to quit the NDP and join the Liberals for the price of a couple of short-term jobs for old staffers that amounted to a few thousand dollars.

As I wrote last year, when the police were still in hot pursuit: Its easy to confuse democracy with criminality, and to conflate take-no-prisoners campaigning with bribery and skulduggery. But any informed reading of the Elections Act makes it clear that it was written to guard against influence peddlers trying to pervert the course of democracy by buying off corrupt politicians, not political operators trying to recruit winning talent to their team (while ridding themselves of losers).

By dragging it out for years, the police did undeniable damage to the reputations of Lougheed, Sorbara and Thibeault (who was never charged despite being sullied). And tarnished the Liberal party in the process.

In so doing, the OPP did the work of the NDP and the PCs  not deliberately, but inadvertently. And the Crown did a disservice to us all by failing to exercise its prosecutorial discretion to crumple up the charge sheet before their case crumbled in court.

Martin Regg Cohns political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn

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In the two weeks after a gun show is held in Nevada, injuries and deaths involving firearms jump by 69 percent  in neighboring areas of California.

However, when gun shows occur in California, the state does not experience an increase in firearm-related trauma over the next fortnight.

The findings, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, show that state gun laws have a measurable effect on public safety, especially when it comes to gun shows, the study authors wrote.

Read more:

Why American gun laws are likely to get looser, not tighter, even after Las Vegas: Analysis

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Massachusetts Senate approves ban on bump stock devices

More than 4,000 gun shows are held in the United States each year, and experts estimate that theyre responsible for 4 per cent to 9 per cent of the nations firearms sales. When these sales are made by federally licensed gun dealers, would-be buyers are subject to a background check. But in some states, unlicensed sellers at gun shows dont have to follow the same rules.

California, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, requires background checks even at gun shows. Nevada does not.

Ellicott Matthay, a public health researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues recognized this as an ideal scenario for testing the effects of state laws regarding gun show sales.

The researchers scoured gun show listings in a magazine called the Big Show Journal. Altogether, they tallied 275 such shows in Nevada and 640 shows in California between Jan. 1, 2005, and Dec. 31, 2013. Then they identified regions in California that were within a one-hour drive of a California gun show or a two-hour drive of a Nevada gun show.

(Interesting fact: Most California residents could have driven to a gun show in 60 minutes or less at least once every few weeks.)

Next, the researchers used state health data to compare the number of gun injuries both fatal and nonfatal for each of the study regions in the two weeks before and two weeks after the nearby show. When the show was in California, the after period began 10 days after the shows opening day, because buyers were subject to the states 10-day waiting period.

Altogether, 15,000 Californians were injured or killed by firearms in the two weeks before California gun shows, as were 14,893 in the two weeks after those gun shows. In the before-and-after comparison, the rate of firearm injuries and deaths remained essentially flat, at about 1.3 per 100,000 people, the researchers found.

The firearms toll was much lower in regions near Nevada gun shows. Only 44 Californians were injured or killed in the two weeks leading up to those shows, but that figure jumped to 74 in the two weeks afterward. The rate of gun injuries and deaths rose from 0.67 to 1.14 per 100,000 people. After the researchers made some statistical adjustments, that represented a 69 percent increase in gun-related morbidity and mortality, the study said.

The researchers also found that firearm-related casualties suffered by Californians increased much more 70 percent more when gun shows were held in Nevada than when they were in California.

Most of that increase could be traced to cases in which the shooter meant to harm another person (as opposed to accidents or instances of self-harm). Injuries and deaths from these intentional shootings rose 2.2 times more after Nevada gun shows than they did after California gun shows.

The results offer a compelling case for laws regulating gun sales, according to an editorial that accompanied the study.

Laws regulating access to guns matter and do make a difference, wrote Drs. Ali Rowhani-Rahbar and Frederick Rivara, both pediatricians and epidemiologists at the University of Washington in Seattle.

But state laws can only go so far, they added. Without federal legislation, tough regulations in California can be easily breached by a car trip to Nevada. It does not reduce the importance of the laws but does reduce their impact.

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ANCHORAGE, ALASKAFour-time Iditarod champion Dallas Seavey denied Monday that he administered banned drugs to his dogs in this years race and said he has withdrawn from the 2018 race in protest of the allegation.

I have never given any banned substance to my dogs, Seavey said in a video posted to his Facebook page.

He didnt immediately return calls to The Associated Press after the Iditarod Trail Committee identified him as the musher who had four dogs test positive for a banned opioid pain reliever after finishing the race last March in Nome.

Read more: Dogs test positive for banned drug in a first for Alaskas Iditarod sled race

Seavey said he fully expected the committee to ban him from the race for speaking out. Theres a so-called gag rule preventing mushers from making statements critical of the race or sponsors.

I have done absolutely nothing wrong, the 30-year-old Seavey said, adding he wouldnt be thrown under the bus by the races governing board.

Iditarod officials on Monday identified Seavey as the musher whose dogs tested positive. The Iditarod Trail Committee met in an emergency meeting and decided to release the mushers identity after initially refusing on a lawyers advice.

Because of the level of unhealthy speculation involved in this matter, ITC has now decided to disclose the name of the musher involved, the committee said in a statement.

Iditarod spokesperson Chas St. George said its not his place to say if Seavey will be banned from the race because of his comments. He said the decision would have to be made by the Iditarod Trail Committee.

Seavey will not face any discipline involving the determination that drugs were given to the dogs.

As a result of the positive test findings, the race rule dealing with canine drug use was revised earlier this month to hold mushers liable for any positive tests in future races unless the mushers can prove the results happened because of something outside of their control.

Previously, the rule could be interpreted to require that race officials provide proof that a musher intended to administer the prohibited substance.

Officials say four dogs in Seaveys team tested positive after the finish of this years Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Nome in March. The banned substance was the opioid pain reliever, Tramadol.

Organizers relented after scores of professional mushers demanded that race officials identify the musher.

A statement from the Iditarod Official Finishers Club was signed by 83 current and former competitors who called for the musher to be named within 72 hours.

The demand came after the group met Sunday to discuss how organizers of the nearly 1,609-kilometre race handled its first instance of dogs testing positive for a banned drug.

After Seavey was named, club president and competitor Wade Marrs said he doesnt believe Seavey intentionally administered the drugs to his animals. Marrs said he believes the musher has too much integrity and brains to do such a thing as administer drugs before an expected test.

I dont really know what to think at the moment, Marrs said. Its a very touchy situation.

Seaveys dog team was tested six hours after finishing the race in Nome, officials said. Race officials have estimated the drug could have been administered 15 hours or less before the test.

Seavey, who was not among the mushers who signed the finishers club statement, won the Iditarod in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. He finished second last year to his father, Mitch, and has had nine straight top 10 finishes.

Dallas Seavey is a former Alaska high school wrestling champion and also spent a year at the U.S. Olympic Training Center before turning his attention back to dogs. He lives in Willow, a community located about 80 kilometres north of Anchorage and widely considered to be the dog mushing capital of the nation.

Only the first 20 teams to reach Nome are tested, leading to a feeling among mushers that any of them could be suspected because the musher whose dogs failed the test was not identified, mushers said.

Officials had initially refused to identify the musher because they said it was unlikely they could prove the musher intentionally administered the drug and because a lawyer advised them not to make the name public.

The Iditarod began testing sled dogs for prohibited substances in 1994. Dogs on all teams are subject to random testing between pre-race examinations and along the race trail. Testing in Nome for top finishing teams, however, is not random but expected.

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OTTAWACaitlan Coleman, the 31-year-old American woman who gave birth to her three children while held hostage by the Haqqani network, says she is breaking her silence to dispute statements made about her familys captivity and the day they were rescued.

Right now everybodys shunting blame and making claims. Pakistan says, no they were never in Pakistan, until the end. The U.S. says, no they were always in Pakistan; it was Pakistans responsibility. But neither of those are true, she told the Star.

During her first interview Monday since being rescued 12 days ago, Coleman added crucial details about the kidnapping case that has captured international attention and led to widespread speculation.

While she said she is not ready to speak publicly about all aspects of her captivity, she is certain they were held in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and claims made by Islamabad and Washington, that they were rescued Oct. 11 after crossing the border are false. We were not crossing into Pakistan that day. We had been in Pakistan for more than a year at that point.

Read more:

After a lifetime in captivity, the children of Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman begin to heal

Were looking forward to a new lease on life, Joshua Boyle tells the Star after five-year kidnapping nightmare

What we know about the rescue of Canadian Joshua Boyle, his wife and their three children in Pakistan

Coleman was kidnapped with her husband, Joshua Boyle, a Canadian, in October 2012 in Afghanistan. They were held for five years by the Taliban-linked Haqqani network before their dramatic rescue by Pakistani forces. She was pregnant when she was taken captive.

Until reaching out to the Star, Coleman has shunned publicity, with the exception of Saturday night emails to her hometown paper about her memories of growing up in Pennsylvania. Good friends and great times are not forgotten, even now, she wrote to the York Daily Record.

Her 34-year-old husband, however, began speaking just hours after landing in Toronto, telling journalists at the airport that his wife had been raped and one of his daughters murdered.

Joshua Boyle, a Canadian who was held hostage by a Taliban-linked group, says they murdered his infant daughter and raped his wife Caitlan Coleman while the family was held in captivity. (Toronto Star)

His statement confirmed what the couple had darkly alluded to in letters and proof-of-life videos the captors released. Coleman said she had been defiled in front of her children and Boyle wrote vaguely of a terminated pregnancy.

Coleman said Monday that the forced abortion was in retaliation for Boyles refusal of Haqqani network efforts to recruit him. They were very angry because Joshua had been asked to join them, to work for them, and he said no, she said. They killed her by dosing the food. They put massive doses of estrogen in the food.

High levels of estrogen in a pregnancy can force a miscarriage and Coleman says once she lost her baby, whom the couple named Martyr, the kidnappers boasted about what they had done.

The Taliban last week issued a statement refuting the claim, saying she miscarried naturally.

Coleman said they kept her other two pregnancies secret, and Boyle delivered both her youngest son and daughter by flashlight as she quietly laboured in pain.

Coleman spoke to the Star Monday alone on the grounds of Ottawas Childrens Hospital of Eastern Ontario, as her husband cared for their sons, who are 4 and 2.

All three of her children, including her months-old daughter, who slept in her lap for part of the interview, have been undergoing tests at the hospital and still adapting to a life free from captivity, which includes trips to a playground on the property. Coleman was also receiving medical attention but said she had been recovering.

She said shes aware of criticism on social media and elsewhere calling both her and Boyle reckless for travelling in Afghanistan while she was pregnant and then getting pregnant three more times while captive.

It was a decision we made. We did think about it and talk about it and its difficult to explain all the reasons, but, for me, a large part was the fact that it has always been important to me to have a large family, she said. This took our life away from us  this captivity with no end in sight. And so I felt that it was our best choice at that time. We didnt know if we would have that opportunity when we came back. We didnt know how long it would be. It was already unprecedented, so we couldnt say, Oh well only be here a year or six months. 

During the interview, she at times laughed at the ridiculousness of a memory  at other times she grew quiet or simply said, No comment. She has continued to wear a hijab since returning to Canada but declined Monday to speak about whether she has converted to Islam.

The couples willingness to talk so early after their harrowing ordeal is part of what makes this story unique, along with the fact that Boyle was once married to Zaynab Khadr, the sister of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr. Canadian Colin Rutherford, who was released in January 2016 after five years in captivity, has still not spoken publicly about his captivity. Amanda Lindhout, who spent 460 days held hostage in Somalia before her release in 2009, would eventually write a bestselling book and give talks about her survival. But she was hospitalized and underwent intense therapy  which she continues today  for many years before speaking openly.

But Coleman said she hoped by speaking out she could help temper the politicking that is shaping the narrative of their kidnapping and rescue.

Pakistans army issued a statement hours after the young family was freed and safe in Islamabad that claimed they were alerted by U.S. agencies that the kidnappers were crossing from Afghanistan, at the Kurram Agency border, into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in northwestern Pakistan.

U.S. President Donald Trump commented on the release of Joshua Boyle, Caitlan Coleman and their three children. The five are finally free after five years of being held hostage in Afghanistan by the Taliban-linked Haqqani network. (courtesy: The White House/YouTube)

The next day, U.S. President Donald Trump hailed the rescue as a positive moment for our countrys relationship with Pakistan.

The Pakistani governments co-operation is a sign that it is honouring Americas wishes for it to do more to provide security in the region, he said in a statement.

For some, the rescue was hailed as deft diplomacy and a direct line drawn from Trumps hardline stance with Pakistan this summer, when he threatened that Islamabad had much to lose if it failed to co-operate on security issues in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Coleman said they were moved quickly from Afghanistan to Pakistan after being kidnapped and the first six or seven months were among the most difficult.

They first took us out of Afghanistan; it was several days drive. They took us to Miran Shah, in Pakistan, where we were kept for more than a year, she said, adding that Boyle understood some Farsi, which helped them understand at times where they were. It was very bad. My husband and I were separated at that time. He wasnt allowed to see Najaeshi or spend any time with us.

They named their oldest son Najaeshi Jonah.

Then we were moved to the north of Miran Shah, to the house of a man who said he was called Mahmoud. He was very nice to Najaeshi and would provide us with amenities we wouldnt have otherwise, she said. He would take Najaeshi out to get him sunlight and nobody else did that at any other point.

In 2014 and 2015, the family was moved often. It was during this time, Coleman says, she had the forced abortion and was raped. We had a pen they didnt know about and we were taking little scraps of paper and trying to hand out notes to anyone and everyone that wasnt one of the guards or commanders involved in killing Martyr, she said. But then they took us, separated us, and beat us and that was when the assault on me happened because they wanted us to stop.

From there, she says, they were moved to Spin Ghar, just over the border in Afghanistan, southeast of Kabul. They were often drugged for the transport and put in the trunk of a vehicle.

They were always saying youll go free in one week or two weeks and this was one of the times they said, Were going to this new place and one day, two day, maybe a week, you go free, youre released. 

They gave the houses nicknames, so the Spin Ghar home became House of One Day. They were there for months.

Then they built a custom-built house for us. It was still close, in Spin Ghar. It was not good, not bad. It had problems, but no big problems  After that, we just stayed in a house for a short time, a day or two, because they were clearly running from something. One of them we called Dar el Fake Osama because one of their small commanders came but he was yelling that he was Osama bin Laden and we had to do everything he said, Coleman said, shaking her head. It was so bizarre.

In a place they called the Cat Hotel, as they believed it was a hotel, they could see the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was there that Coleman says the kidnappers acquired a jingle truck, one of the brightly painted trucks adorned with bells that are ubiquitous on Pakistans roads. They were taken back into Pakistan in an area between Kohat and Bannu, she said.

They spent their final months there in what they called Dar el Musa (House of Musa). Outside every day they were doing some training, or something was going on, and some guy was shouting and we laughed because whoever Musa was, he was not doing a good job, she said. He was always yelling, No, no, no, Musa Musa. 

She said they were held mainly in that house from about November 2016 until just two days before the rescue, when they were transferred to the Mud House, where the windows were covered with wet, packed dirt.

On Oct. 11, Coleman said, she was put in the trunk of the kidnappers car, after which some sort of car chase and gun battle broke out before they were freed.

Our first fear  why we were not poking our heads up and yelling for help  was our fear that it was another gang trying to kidnap us. Possibly just part of the Haqqani network fighting with another part. Theyre all just bandits, she said.

Youre a prisoner for so long, youre so suspicious, I was still thinking we dont know these people, we dont know where theyre taking us.

When she finally realized they were Pakistani forces and she was free, she doesnt remember breaking down, or exactly how she reacted.

I think I was mostly just in shock.

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ANCHORAGE, AlaskaThe worlds most famous sled dog race has become engulfed in a doping scandal involving a four-time champions team of huskies, giving animal rights activists new ammunition in their campaign to end the gruelling, 1,000-mile Iditarod.

The governing board of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race disclosed Monday that four dogs belonging to Dallas Seavey tested positive for a banned substance, the opioid painkiller Tramadol, after his second-place finish last March.

It was the first time since the race instituted drug testing in 1994 that a test came back positive.

Seavey strongly denied administering any banned substances to his dogs, suggesting instead that someone may have sabotaged their food, and race officials said he would not be punished because they were unable to prove he acted intentionally. That means he will keep his titles and his $59,000 (U.S.) in winnings this year.

But the finding was another blow to the Iditarod, which has seen the loss of major sponsors, numerous dog deaths, attacks on competitors and pressure from animal rights activists, who say the huskies are often run to death or left with severe infections and bloody paws.

If a member of the Iditarods royalty dopes dogs, how many other mushers are turning to opioids in order to force dogs to push through the pain? People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said in a statement Tuesday.

Dallas Seavey poses with his lead dogs Reef, left, and Tide on March 15, 2016, after finishing the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Nome, Alaska. Four-time Iditarod champion Seavey denies he administered banned drugs to his dogs in this year's race, and has withdrawn from the 2018 race in protest.





It added: This doping scandal is further proof that this race needs to end.

The race is all about winning and getting to the finish line despite the inhumane treatment towards the dogs, said Fern Levitt, director of the documentary Sled Dogs.

Read more:

Dogs test positive for banned drugs in first for Alaskas Iditarod sled race

Record breaking Iditarod marred by dog deaths

Earlier this year, the Anchorage-to-Nome trek lost a major corporate backer, Wells Fargo, and race officials accused animal rights organizations of pressuring the bank and other sponsors with manipulative information about the treatment of the dogs.

Five dogs connected to this years race died, bringing total deaths to more than 150 in the Iditarods 44-year history, according to PETAs count. And last year, two mushers were attacked by a drunken man on a snowmobile in separate assaults near a remote village. One dog was killed and others were injured. The attacker was given a six-month sentence.

Seavey won the Iditarod in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. He finished second this year to his father, Mitch, and has had nine straight top-10 finishes.

Dogs are subject to random testing before and during the race, and the first 20 teams to cross the finish line are all automatically tested.

I have never given any banned substance to my dogs, the 30-year-old Seavey said in a video posted on his Facebook page. He said that security is lax along the route and that someone might have tampered with his dogs food.

He added that he wouldnt be thrown under the bus by the races governing board and that he has withdrawn from the 2018 race in protest.

Seavey said he expects the Iditarod Trail Committee to ban him from the race for speaking out. Mushers are prohibited from criticizing the race or sponsors.

Iditarod spokesman Chas St. George said that decision would be up to the committees board of directors.

The committee decided to release the name of the offending musher on Monday after scores of competitors demanded it do so. Race officials initially refused to do so because, they said, it was unlikely they could prove the competitor acted intentionally and because a lawyer advised them not to make the name public.

At the time of this years race, the rule essentially said that to punish a musher, race officials had to provide proof of intent. That rule has since been changed to hold mushers liable for any positive drug test unless they can show something happened beyond their control.

Wade Marrs, president of the Iditarod Official Finishers Club, said he doesnt believe Seavey intentionally administered the drugs to his animals. Marrs said he believes the musher has too much integrity and brains to do such a thing.

I dont really know what to think at the moment, Marrs said. Its a very touchy situation.

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A former assistant to Harvey Weinstein has broken a nondisclosure agreement she signed nearly two decades ago and is speaking out about sexual harassment she said she observed  and experienced firsthand  while working under the now-disgraced Hollywood mogul.

In a lengthy interview with the Financial Times, Zelda Perkins became the first of Weinsteins former employees to break such a legal contract to speak candidly about the film producers alleged behaviour.

In doing so, Perkins said she wanted to cast light on how egregious nondisclosure agreements, often referred to as NDAs, can be in silencing and shaming victims.

Read more:

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New York attorney general launches civil rights probe of Weinstein Co.

#MeToo opens door to voices of women of colour: Paradkar

My entire world fell in because I thought the law was there to protect those who abided by it, Perkins told the newspaper. I discovered that it had nothing to do with right and wrong and everything to do with money and power.

Perkins told the Financial Times that Weinstein sexually harassed her on every occasion I was alone with him in the late 1990s, when she was one of his assistants in the London office of Miramax, the company Weinstein co-founded and led at the time. At the time, Weinsteins assistants frequently worked from his hotel room when he was in town  and when they were alone, Perkins said, the Hollywood mogul would walk around naked or ask her to watch him bathe.

I often had to wake him up in the hotel in the mornings and he would try to pull me into bed, Perkins told the newspaper.

The incident that prompted her to take legal action against Weinstein, however, happened to a female colleague when they were all in Venice for a film festival in 1998, Perkins said.

She was white as a sheet and shaking and in a very bad emotional state. She told me something terrible had happened. She was in shock and crying and finding it very hard to talk. I was furious, deeply upset and very shocked. I said: We need to go to the police, but she was too distressed. Neither of us knew what to do in a foreign environment.

In a generic statement to the Financial Times, a representative for Weinstein denied allegations of nonconsensual sex and retaliation.

Perkins and her colleague, whom she did not name in the FT interview, ended up going to the London law firm Simons Muirhead & Burton. Though Perkins said she originally wanted to take the case to Disney, Miramaxs parent company, lawyers cautioned her that Weinstein would destroy her credibility and her family.

She said she was told a settlement was the only viable option.

My driving motivation was to create safeguards to protect future employees, Perkins told the FT. She said she gave the London lawyers a list of demands aimed at controlling his behaviour, such as a commitment that he receive medical treatment and the creation of a proper human resources complaints procedure at Miramax so that people would be aware of their rights and could complain about harassment if they needed to.

A former Weinstein Co. production assistant has come forward alleging that Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her after her repeated refusals. Mimi Haleyi claimed Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in 2006. (The Associated Press)

Perkins and her colleague settled for 250,000 pounds (about $328,000 today, or about $400,000 at the time), which was to be divided between the two women. Part of the agreement dictated therapy for Weinstein for as long as his therapist deems necessary, as well as other measures aimed at protecting others from his behaviour, Perkins told the newspaper:

Miramax said that within six months of its agreement with Ms Perkins the company would appoint three complaint handlers who would investigate future harassment allegations. It also agreed to provide proof of how its staff were told about the new procedures. Crucially, if a complaint against Mr. Weinstein occurred within two years of the contract and it resulted in a settlement of either 35,000 or six months salary Miramax agreed to report the matter to Disney  or to dismiss Mr. Weinstein.

Although these and other obligations ended up in the contract it is not known whether Miramax fully abided by them.

Ultimately, the lengthy negotiation process left her broken and feeling emotionally exhausted and ashamed, Perkins told the FT.

I want to call into question the legitimacy of agreements where the inequality of power is so stark and relies on money rather than morality, she told the newspaper. I want other women who have been sidelined and who arent being allowed to own their own history or their trauma to be able to discuss what they have suffered. I want them to see that the sky wont fall in.

Perkinss public account comes little more than two weeks since a pair of investigative reports, first from the New York Times and then from the New Yorker, exposed decades of sexual harassment and assault claims against Weinstein.

In the wake of those stories, Weinstein issued a long, scattered statement in which he begged for a second chance in the community, referenced Jay-Z lyrics and declared he would take on the National Rifle Association.

I appreciate the way Ive behaved with colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain, and I sincerely apologize for it, he said in his Oct. 5 statement. Though Im trying to do better, I know I have a long way to go.

Soon after, Weinstein reportedly flew to Arizona to check in to a sex-addiction rehabilitation centre. Since then, more than 40 women have come forward to accuse the disgraced film producer of grossly inappropriate behaviour. Through them all, Weinstein  or at least his representatives  mostly stayed quiet, hewing to generic rebuttals that do not name the accusers.

Notable exceptions have been an Oct. 5 interview with the New York Post, in which Weinstein insinuated that Ashley Judd had levelled accusations against him because she was going through a tough time right now. Weinstein also specifically disputed claims by Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyongo, who detailed in an op-ed for the New York Times a pattern of predatory behaviour Weinstein had directed at her, starting when she was still a student at the Yale School of Drama.

Since the scandal has exploded, Weinstein has been fired from the Weinstein Company, which he co-founded after leaving Miramax.

The fallout has also prompted some Hollywood staffing agencies to train its workers to report sexual harassment or other inappropriate conduct. Debra Katz, a civil rights and employment lawyer in Washington, told The Washington Posts Danielle Paquette that nondisclosure agreements  which assistants commonly sign in the industry  cannot block someone from filing a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Assistants who know their bosses are sexually assaulting others but dont disclose such behaviour could later be liable for aiding and abetting sexual misconduct, Katz said.

A Weinstein spokesperson returned to the boilerplate rebuttal in response to Perkins interview with the Financial Times: The FT did not provide the identity of any individuals making these assertions. Any allegations of nonconsensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances.

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Note to readers: This story contains graphic content.

NEW YORKA former Weinstein Co. production assistant has come forward alleging that Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her after her repeated refusals.

In a press conference Tuesday in New York held by attorney Gloria Allred, Mimi Haleyi claimed Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in 2006. Haleyi was in her 20s at the time, Allred said.

In graphic detail, Haleyi described Weinstein holding her down at his New York apartment in what she said appeared to be a childs bedroom.

He was extremely persistent and physically overpowering, said Haleyi. He then orally forced himself on me, while I was on my period. He even pulled my tampon out. I was mortified.

Weinstein representative Sallie Hofmeister said Tuesday, Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein.

Among the dozens  including Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd  who have claimed Weinstein sexually harassed them, several women have said Weinstein raped them. Police in Los Angeles, New York and London are investigating rape allegations.

Actress Rose McGowan recently went public with her allegation that Weinstein raped her after reaching a settlement with Weinstein in 1997. Italian filmmaker and actress Asia Argento and one-time aspiring actress Lucia Evans told the New Yorker that Weinstein sexually assaulted them by forced oral sex.

Read more:

Former Harvey Weinstein assistant breaks confidentiality agreement to speak out about sexual harassment

New York attorney general launches civil rights probe of Weinstein Co.

#MeToo opens door to voices of women of colour: Paradkar

Haleyi said she first met Weinstein at the London premiere of The Aviator in 2004. She encountered him again at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006. She expressed interest in working on one of his films and he invited her to his hotel room and asked for a massage.

Haleyi refused, replying, No sorry, Im not a masseuse, and suggesting he instead contact hotel reception. More meetings followed, though, including an invitation from Weinstein to attend a fashion show in Paris. She worked as a production assistant on a Weinstein Co.-produced television series, though she and Allred declined to name the show.

The alleged incident occurred at Weinsteins Soho apartment after the movie producer sent a car to pick up Haleyi. She began crying Tuesday as she recounted what she thought would be a professional meeting.

I would not have wanted anyone to do that to me, even if that person had been a romantic partner, said Haleyi. I remember Harvey rolling over and saying, Dont you feel like were so much closer now?

Allred, who is representing other women who have made allegations against Weinstein, declined to say whether Haleyi will file criminal or civil charges.

But Allred called on Weinstein to meet with her and make amends to the alleged victims.

We need justice for these victims, said Allred. Vague apologies are not enough. Its time for him to take meaningful actions.

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WASHINGTONThe Republican chairpersons of two House committees announced Tuesday theyre opening an investigation into actions the Obama administration Justice Department took during last years presidential election.

The chairpersons said in a statement Tuesday they have several questions, including why then-FBI director James Comey decided to publicly announce the investigation into Hillary Clintons handling of classified information but not to publicly announce the investigation into Donald Trumps campaign associates.

Trump fired Comey in May. At first, the White House cited a harsh memo about Comeys performance from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as the justification  though Trump later said he would have fired Comey regardless of what the Justice Department recommended.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, chairperson of the Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, chairperson of the Oversight Committee, announced the probe. They described it as necessary to better understand the reasoning behind how certain conclusions were drawn.

Other questions the Republican lawmakers said they want addressed revolve around the decision not to file criminal charges against Clinton. The lack of charges remains a lingering grievance for Trump, who for months has held it up as an example of a rigged criminal justice system that shielded his Democratic opponent from punishment for her use of a private server for government business.

Comey said in July of last year that Clintons handling of classified information was extremely careless but the FBI would not recommend charges against her.

The two chairpersons said they want to know more about the FBIs timeline for charging decisions.

Congress has a constitutional duty to preserve the integrity of our justice system by ensuring transparency and accountability of actions taken, Goodlatte and Gowdy said in a press release.

Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia dismissed the move.

This is nothing more than a charade and distraction from the ongoing crisis in the White House. What about Russia? What about rampant conflicts of interest? This gives hypocrisy a bad name, he said.

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CLARK, PHILIPPINESDaesh, also known as ISIS, sent at least $1.5 million to finance the recently ended siege of the southern Philippine city of Marawi, with the assault leaders using the 2014 Daesh seizure of the Iraqi city of Mosul as a blueprint, the Philippine military chief said.

The battle defeats of the brutal group in Syria and Iraq, and now the Daesh-aligned gunmen in Marawi, however, show a major vulnerability of the extremists: Their audacious territorial occupations tend to crumble over time as theyre cornered in urban settings by the relentless firepower of U.S.-backed offensives, Gen. Eduardo Ano said in an interview with The Associated Press late Monday.

The counterterrorism victories have given governments confidence that Daesh  which shocked the world with its rise a few years ago  could be stopped and defeated, said Ano, who oversaw the military campaign that ended the five-month siege in Marawi this week.

Read more: Clashes in Marawi fuel fear of Daesh foothold in southern Philippines

Philippine government declares end to Marawi extremist militant siege

They underestimated the reaction of the different countries in the world, the alliances, he said.

With what happened in Mosul, the Philippines and Raqqa, the different countries are now confident that if ever an ISIS siege would erupt . . . they now have the recipe or the formula to fight it, Ano said, adding that the Philippine military is ready to share its battle experiences in mosque-studded Marawi.

The siege, which was launched on May 23, left more than 1,100 combatants and civilians dead, including more than 900 militants, and displaced some 400,000 residents, including the entire population of Marawi, a bastion of the Islamic faith in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines. Military airstrikes, artillery and heavy machine-gun fire turned the lakeside citys central business district and outlying communities into a smouldering wasteland of disfigured buildings and bullet-pocked mosques and houses.

It was one of the most devastating urban fights the country has witnessed since World War II, the military chief said.

Like in Mosul, the black-flag waving militants plotted to launch the Marawi siege on the first day of Ramadan, the holy Muslim month of fasting, but they were forced to stage the attack prematurely after Philippine army troops raided the hideout of its leaders. They also took hundreds of hostages as human shields and employed snipers to slow the advance of the military, Ano said.

Every day, they watched videos of ISIS in Mosul, Ano said of the Marawi siege leaders, including Isnilon Hapilon, a top Asian terror suspect who was killed by Filipino troops last week.

That was their blueprint, that was their pattern, he said, adding that troops recovered Islamic State group video discs of the Mosul violence in captured militant positions in Marawi.

It took about three weeks for thousands of government forces, which have been battling insurgents in jungle settings, to adopt to the urban fighting, Ano said. Two battalions of marines, for example, got stuck in a beach until a combat engineering battalion was quickly organized to clear mounds of debris that allowed them to move inland.

The massive offensive led to the killings of at least 10 key terror suspects from different extremist groups that have pledged allegiance to the Daesh, including Hapilon, four siblings belonging to the local Maute clan, and Indonesian and Malaysian militants, he said.

It would have taken five to 10 years for troops to hunt down and find all those militant leaders in the jungles of the south, where Ano said the extremists had mastery of the terrain and support from local clans.

The leaders of the bloody insurrection, who came from different ethnic backgrounds, were linked by their desire to be recognized by Daesh as its Southeast Asian branch and obtain funding from the Middle East-based group.

When the militants forged an alliance, Daesh sent $1.5 million in batches to finance the attack, Ano said, citing intelligence information, including some provided by the U.S.

But Ano said the Marawi militants, like their Middle East counterparts, were blindsided by their ambition and miscalculated the response to their plot, which involved the seizure of a military camp in Marawi.

They thought that they can get the helicopters and armoured vehicles and the people of Marawi will protect them, and there will be a flag flying and they can all it their own, an enclave, and probably more foreign fighters will come, Ano said.

Tens of thousands of Marawi residents, however, abandoned the city in panic and troops managed to secure Marawis military camp and other vital areas. The United States and Australia later deployed surveillance aircraft that provided real-time images of militant positions, even at night  modern warfare technology that, coupled with the tenacity of Filipino troops, became a game changer in the massive effort to liberate the city, Ano said.

The military firepower was designed to push the militants to a coastal area where they could be overcome more easily, said the veteran combat general, who called the Marawi offensive the greatest battle of his military career. He retires on Thursday.

We designed a very good campaign to flush them out and pressure them and canalize them into the chosen engagement areas, he said. We call it constriction.

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TAMPA, FLA.Fears of a serial killer have police in Tampa escorting children to school in one neighbourhood near downtown, and a city bus changed its usual route.

Three people have been shot to death in the past two weeks within a 1.6-kilometre radius in the normally quiet Seminole Heights neighbourhood. Police believe the shootings are linked by proximity and time frame, but they dont have a motive or a suspect.

The three victims did not know each other, but all three rode the bus and were alone when they were shot on the street. None were robbed.

Im afraid, said Maria Maldonado, who lives near the scene of two of the shootings, about 300 yards apart. The other was less than a mile away.

Maldonado wont let her 7-year-old son play in the yard.

We dont open the door or nothing. A lot of people are scared. Im scared for my son, for the neighbourhood, she said Monday.

Seminole Heights is a working-class neighbourhood northeast of downtown Tampa thats slowly becoming gentrified. Run-down homes sit next to renovated, historic bungalows, and trendy restaurants have sprung up near auto body shops.

Residents and business owners say there are car burglaries and fights between kids, but they are not accustomed to anything like the violence that started Oct. 9.

Business owners report a downturn in recent days, as worried residents stay inside.

We dont know whats next, said Majed Foqahaa, owner of the M&M market.

He said two of the victims would come into the store and buy soda and snacks. Foqahaa said he has a concealed carry permit for a handgun, and he keeps it at the store while he is working. When he walks out to his car at night, he holds it in his hand.

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn said the city has put dozens of officers in the area around the clock. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also are helping, he said.

There arent a lot of facts, or evidence, yet, Buckhorn said as he visited a block where one victim was killed. But its not for lack of Tampa Police Department trying. We literally have put bodies out here by the dozens. Were going to find this guy and were not leaving this neighbourhood till we do.

He was hesitant to use the word serial killer, but Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan wasnt.

We can call it what we want. If that brings attention to this. . . . Thats fine, he said.

Police said 22-year-old Benjamin Mitchell was the first person killed on Oct. 9. Two days later, 32-year-old Monica Hoffa was killed in a vacant lot. Anthony Naiboa, 20, was shot and killed Oct. 19.

Lula Mae Lewis, an 80-year-old woman who has lived in the area for 30 years, lives across the street from where Hoffas body was found.

I heard the shots that Wednesday night, she said. But I was afraid to open my door because they were so loud, it sounded like it was just right here.

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WASHINGTONA Republican stood on the Senate floor Tuesday and delivered a detailed indictment of just about everything about the Republican president.

Declaring that he must answer to his children and grandchildren, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake said he could not stay silent about Donald Trumps reckless, outrageous and undignified behaviour  or about his party colleagues complicity in supporting a president who is a threat to Americas values and future.

None of this is normal, Flake said.

We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country, he said. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions; the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve.

Trumps anger and resentment, Flake said, are not a governing philosophy. Invoking Trumps Make America Great Again slogan and cries of fake news, Flake said, We were not made great as a country by indulging or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorying in the things which divide us, and calling fake things true and true things fake.

Mr. President, I rise today to say: enough, Flake said.

It was an extraordinary moment, seemingly written for the history books, that might, under other circumstances, have suggested that Trump was losing control of the party he took over.

But the day as a whole might have actually demonstrated that Trumps grip is strengthening, not weakening. Flake gave his speech minutes after he effectively conceded defeat to Trump by announcing he would not be seeking re-election in 2018  and, afterward, he received little support from fellow senators.

Read more: Key Republican senator calls Donald Trump an utterly untruthful president, says he is debasing the U.S.

Flake, a seven-term House member in his first term in the Senate, is a traditional conservative who has boasted high scores from right-wing advocacy groups. But he had alienated many of his own voters by criticizing Trump in a book he published earlier in the year. And he acknowledged that his pro-trade, pro-immigration stances, once standard in the party, put him out of step in the Trump era.

GOP Sen. Jeff Flake says "resentment is a not a governing philosophy" and that times are odd for true conservatives in U.S. politics. Flake announced Tuesday he would not seek re-election during a speech clearly directed at President Trump. (The Associated Press).

There may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party, he told the Arizona Republic.

Flakes poll numbers in Arizona had plummeted, and pro-Trump Republican strategists like Steve Bannon had been plotting to defeat him. He acknowledged Tuesday that it would have been hard to win his party primary.

He had pissed off so many of the conservatives here, said Laurence Schiff, a psychiatrist and self-described Trump guy who chairs the Republican committee in Arizonas Mohave County. He said Flake was too supportive of illegal immigrants; voters there, he said, want a hard line, including Trumps giant wall on the Mexican border.

I dont think Jeff Flake is particularly conservative, Schiff said. I think that Flake had pissed off so many of the Republicans that an awful lot of people who werent going to vote for (Democratic candidate) Kyrsten Sinema were going to sit home.

Republican members of Congress who do plan to run again have been reluctant to criticize Trump, even as they have been privately scathing, out of fear of alienating such voters. Just as they remained largely silent in response to former president George W. Bushs criticism of Trump last week, they did not did not appear moved by Flakes call to vocal action.

As a Republican, Im proud of our former presidential candidates and retiring senators. About our active politicians, Im not so sure, conservative writer Bill Kristol, a Trump critic, wrote on Twitter.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has avoided criticism of Trump, called Flake a very fine man. But neither McConnell nor other Republican leaders endorsed any of the substance of Flakes remarks. Nor did they offer backup to the other retiring senator who castigated Trump hours earlier.

In a lengthy attack of his own, Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, lambasted Trump as utterly untruthful after the president tweeted a false claim about the senators role in Barack Obamas nuclear deal with Iran. Trump, Corker said, is debasing the country and obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president.

House Speaker Paul Ryan brushed off Corkers words as part of a mere Twitter feud. He urged people to focus on the Republicans legislative priority of the moment: tax reform.

Thats what matters. So all this stuff you see on a daily basis on Twitter this and Twitter that, forget about it. Lets focus on helping people, he said.

Flakes decision to abandon the Senate leaves Trump to contend, for a year, with three Republican senators who strongly dislike him and no longer need his support. (The other Arizona senator, John McCain, has terminal brain cancer; Corker has also announced he will not run.) With a 52-member caucus, Trump can only afford to lose two party members on any given vote to execute his agenda.

In the long run, though, the departures of Flake and Corker will almost certainly move the party closer to Trumps own views. While Democrats have a chance to win Flakes seat, the top candidate for the Republican nomination is a staunchly pro-Trump former state senator, Kelli Ward.

Its not like Corker was this liberal trapped inside the Republican Party. He was a moderately conservative internationalist. And that he cant find a place in the Republican Party is bizarre by historical standards. Thats what the Republican Party stood for in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, said Terry Sullivan, a University of North Carolina political science professor who studies the presidency.

Trumps press secretary, Sarah Sanders, dismissed Flakes criticism as petty grandstanding. And she celebrated his decision to leave the Senate with a pointed jab, saying it was probably a good move in light of the lack of support that he has from the people of Arizona.

The White House says Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake's decision not to seek re-election was "probably a good move," arguing that he lacks enough support in his home state to win in 2018. (The Associated Press)

Trump, meanwhile, attacked Corker again on Twitter  mocking his height once more.

People like liddle Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back, the president wrote. Now we move forward.

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ISLAMABADU.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in Pakistan to deliver a tough message on the importance of fighting extremists and driving them from hideouts on Pakistani territory.

Tillerson arrived in Islamabad on Tuesday, a day after travelling to Iraq and Afghanistan in conditions of strict secrecy. He met with Pakistans Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Foreign Minister Khwaja Mohammad Asif and the heads of the army and intelligence services.

Tillerson told Abbasi that Pakistan is so important regionally to our joint goals of providing peace and security to the region and providing opportunity for greater economic relationship.

Read more:

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson makes surprise visits to Afghanistan and Iraq

In first sit-down interview, Caitlan Coleman tells of forced abortion, disputes official account of her rescue in Pakistan

Abbasi said Pakistan is committed in the war against terror.

We have produced results and we are looking forward to moving ahead with the U.S. and building a tremendous relationship, he said.

The U.S. can rest assured that we are strategic partners in the war against terror and that today Pakistan is fighting the largest war in the world against terror, Abbasi said. We appreciate the understandings that we agreed and we appreciate the engagement.

In Afghanistan on Monday, he told reporters that Pakistans co-operation on counterterrorism is essential for a good relationship with the U.S. His comments echoed those of other top U.S. officials who have been pressing Pakistan on the matter.

He said Pakistan needs to take a clear-eyed view of its position and act.

Pakistan needs to, I think, take a clear-eyed view of the situation that they are confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organizations that find safe haven inside of Pakistan, he said. So we want to work closely Pakistan to create a more stable and secure Pakistan as well.

Earlier this month, the campaign appeared to produce some success when Pakistani security forces assisted with the release of a Taliban-held U.S.-Canadian family after five years in captivity. However, officials cautioned that action needed to be followed with additional steps.

Tillerson, who will visit India after Pakistan, is in South Asia to outline the Trump administrations new strategy for the region, which is heavy on combating extremist groups.

Last week, CIA director Mike Pompeo said that for the strategy to work, the Taliban must be convinced they have no hope of winning militarily in Afghanistan and that means making it impossible for them to cross the rugged Afghan-Pakistani border and hide inside Pakistan.

To do that you cannot have a safe haven in Pakistan, he said. But he added that the U.S. had low expectations.

U.S. officials have long accused Pakistan of turning a blind eye or assisting the Afghan Taliban and the allied Haqqani network. Pakistan routinely denies colluding with the militants.

In early October, Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional hearing that it was clear to him that Pakistans intelligence service had connections to militant groups.

Pakistan has struggled to shake off suspicion that it wields a malign and strategic interest in Afghanistan, on its western border. It has ties to the Taliban dating to the extremist movements genesis in the 1990s.

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WASHINGTONU.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday allowed the resumption of refugee admissions into the U.S. under new, stricter screening rules but ordered nationals from 11 countries believed to pose higher risk to U.S. national security to face even tougher scrutiny.

Officials refused to identify the 11 countries, but said refugee applications from those nations will be judged case-by-case.

Trump issued his new order on refugee screening as the administrations four-month ban on refugee admissions expired. It directs federal agencies to resume refugee processing, which he clamped down on shortly after taking office.

Read more:

U.S. Supreme Court upholds Trump administrations ban on most refugees

U.S. Supreme Court rules Trump can enforce refugee ban, but must relax restrictions on family

Trump travel ban expires Sunday as Homeland Security suggests targeted restrictions

The new enhanced vetting procedures for all refugees include such measures as collecting additional biographical and other information to better determine whether refugees are being truthful about their status; improving information-sharing between agencies; stationing fraud detection officers at certain locations overseas; and training screeners to weed out fraud and deception.

Refugees already face an extensive backlog and waiting periods that can take years. Additional screening will likely lengthen the wait.

The security of the American people is this administrations highest priority, and these improved vetting measures are essential for American security, said acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke. These new, standardized screening measures provide an opportunity for the United States to welcome those in need into our country, while ensuring a safer, more secure homeland.

Jennifer Sime, senior vice-president of U.S. programs for the International Rescue Committee aid group, said in advance of the announcement that she was concerned the new screening procedures would add months or even years to the most urgent refugee cases. She said most of those cases involve women and children in heinous circumstances who need the permanent and proven solution of resettlement.

With a world facing brutal and protracted conflicts like in Syria, or new levels of displacement and unimaginable violence against the Rohingya  this moment is a test of the worlds humanity, moral leadership and ability to learn from the horrors of the past, she said. Sime was referring to the mounting refugee crisis in Myanmar, where more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh to escape retaliation from security forces.

Even with the refugee ban lifted, admissions are expected to be far lower than in recent years.

Trump last month capped refugee admissions at 45,000 for the year that started Oct. 1, a significant cut from the 110,000 limit put in place a year earlier by President Barack Obama. The actual number admitted this year could be lower than 45,000, since the cap sets a maximum limit, not a minimum.

In a separate action Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed a case about the refugee ban. An order from the justices wipes away a lower-court ruling that found problems with the refugee ban and with a temporary pause on visitors from six mostly Muslim countries. A new travel policy that applies to six countries with Muslim majorities already has been blocked by lower courts.

The limits on refugees were in addition to Trumps broader travel ban on people from several countries. Courts have repeatedly blocked that policy, but largely left the temporary refugee policy in place.

Trump has made limiting immigration a centrepiece of his administrations efforts to safeguard U.S. national security.

Besides the travel ban, which initially targeted a handful of Muslim-majority nations, the president rescinded an Obama-era executive action protecting immigrants brought to the country as minors from deportation. He has also vowed to build a wall along the border with Mexico.

During the presidential campaign, Trump pledged to stop the massive inflow of refugees and warned that terrorists were smuggling themselves into naive countries by posing as refugees fleeing war-torn Syria.

Thousands of refugees are being admitted with no way to screen them and are instantly made eligible for welfare and free health care, even as our own veterans, our great, great veterans, die while theyre waiting online for medical care that they desperately need, Trump said last October.

Trump has said the best way to help refugees is to keep them closer to their home countries.

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The appointment of a new justice of the Supreme Court is always a moment of historic import. There are only nine, they serve until age 75, and their decisions touch the most vital issues of our lives.

But as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mulls the shortlist of candidates now before him, he has a unique opportunity to make an especially profound contribution to legal history, to the future of Canadian justice and to the relationship between Canada and First Nations. It is time the federal government put an Indigenous jurist on the Supreme Court.

On the 150th anniversary of Confederation, the appointment of the first Indigenous justice to the countrys highest court would be a powerful symbol of reconciliation, a project Trudeau has put at the centre of his agenda.

More than that, it would better position the legal system to respond to a longstanding crisis in Canadian justice: the vast over-representation of Indigenous people in prisons and courts.

As Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould pointed out last year, while they form about 4.3 per cent of Canadas population, Indigenous people make up more than a quarter of prison inmates. In some parts of the country, they are up to 33 times more likely to end up behind bars. No wonder 18 of the 93 calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission pertained to reforming our prisons and courts.

Adding an Indigenous perspective to the top court has the potential both to improve the quality of justice and to begin to build trust in communities that have long felt victimized by our legal system. As outgoing chief justice Beverley McLachlin, whose retirement created the current opening, once said, Many people, particularly women and visible minorities, may have less than complete trust in a system composed exclusively or predominantly of middle-aged white men in pinstriped trousers.

Some will surely argue that the candidate should be selected solely on merit, without regard for other factors. But when it comes to Supreme Court appointments, we already accept that other criteria matter. For instance, Trudeau instructed the advisory committee that composed the shortlist to choose only candidates who are functionally bilingual in English and French and only jurists from the West or North. But are the current conventions around regional representation really the best way to ensure the top court embodies the true diversity of our country?

Undoubtedly, the pool of highly qualified Indigenous candidates is relatively small. The benches of lower courts remain alarmingly white and male. Only 1 per cent of all Canadian judges are Indigenous  and only 3 per cent are people of colour. Our courts, at every level, should better reflect our population.

But as advocates have lobbied the government in recent months to select an Indigenous judge for the open seat on the top court, a number of apparently excellent candidates have emerged.

For instance, John Borrows, a renowned Anishinabe professor of law at the University of Victoria, is creating a program that blends the study of Indigenous legal traditions with that of the common law. He would bring a valuable new perspective to the court. Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, too, has been rumoured to be among the top candidates. The bilingual Saskatchewan Provincial Court judge, of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, spent 10 years as Representative for Children and Youth in British Columbia, where she was an outspoken and dogged advocate.

Whatever the government decides, it should not ignore the widespread desire to see an Indigenous person on the highest court. Ideally, Trudeau would deliver now. If not, he should at least explain why it was not possible this time around  and ensure that the circumstances are right when the opportunity next arises.

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Bye-bye soda.

"I'd be amazed if they are drinking a full sugar based product," former PepsiCo (PEP) - Get Free Report and Apple (AAPL) - Get Free Report CEO John Sculley told TheStreet when asked if kids would be drinking regular soda 10 to 20 years down the line. In fact, Sculley -- who rose to fame for his top notch marketing skills at PepsiCo that landed him the CEO job within 10 years - almost apologizes for making the space so hot.

"When I was in the beverage industry, Coca-Cola (KO) - Get Free Report , Pepsi, McDonald's (MCD) - Get Free Report , Wendy's (WEN) - Get Free Report these were the sexy companies to work for -- I think of it now, and I was selling sugar water to kids and today they are getting obese. I was launching the first two liter plastic bottle and now it has issues about what we do about our landscape. I started PepsiCo's business internationally to sell snack foods -- look what's happening today, we have hundreds of millions of people taking in these high triglyceride oils into their stomach," Sculley said.

He added, "It doesn't look like such a cool industry anymore." It seems like many consumers agree.

Soda consumption in the United States fell to a 31-year low in 2016, according to Beverage Digest. Sales of carbonated soft drinks -- mostly full sugar soda -- fell 0.8% last year. Sculley does credit companies such as PepsiCo and Coca-Cola for expanding into healthier beverages and snacks, but thinks the packaged goods space will need more cost cuts given the industry's slow growth.

Apple and PepsiCo is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS Charitable Trust Portfolio. Want to be alerted before Cramer buys or sells AAPL and PEP? Learn more now.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Marsh & McLennan Companies: 8WORKS INC., 8WORKS LTD, A. Constantinidi & CIA. S.C., A.C.N. 000 951 146 Pty Limited, A.C.N. 001 572 961 Pty Limited, A.C.N. 076 935 683 Pty Limited, A.C.N. 102 322 574 Pty Limited, ACE Insurance Agents Limited, ACE Insurance Consultants Limited, ACE Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers Limited, AD Corretora de Seguros, AFCO Premium Acceptance Inc., AFCO Premium Credit LLC, Access Equity Enhanced Fund GP LLC, Admiral Holdings Limited, Agnew Higgins Pickering & Co. (Bermuda) Ltd, Aldgate Investments Limited, Aldgate Trustees Ltd, Alexander Forbes Group Holdings Limited, Alpha Consultants Limited, Alta SA, Altius Real Assets (GP) LLC, Amal Insurance Brokers Limited (in liquidation), Anda Insurance Agencies Pte Ltd, AssetVal Pty Ltd, Assur Conseils Marsh S.A., Assurance Capital Corporation, Assurance Services Corporation, Australian Insurance Brokers Pty Ltd, Australian World Underwriters Pty Ltd., BBPS Limited, Barney & Barney Orange County LLC, Beaumonts (Leeds) Limited (in liquidation), Beaumonts Insurance Brokers Limited (in liquidation), Beaumonts Insurance Services Limited, Beneficios Integrales Oportunos SA, Benefitfocus Inc., Blue Marble Micro Limited, Blue Marble Microinsurance Inc., Bluefin, Bluefin Insurance Group Limited, Bluefin Insurance Services Limited, Boulder Claims LLC, Bowring (Bermuda) Investments Ltd., Bowring Marine Limited, Bowring Marsh (Bermuda) Ltd., Bowring Marsh (Hong Kong) Limited, Bowring Marsh Asia Pte. Ltd., Bowring Marsh Corretora de Resseguros Ltda., Bowring Marsh Limited, Broderick Piller Pty Ltd, Broker 2 Broker Limited, BuildPay LLC, Burke Ford Trustees (Leicester) Limited, C.T. Bowring Limited, CMC-Belgibo NV, CPRM Limited, CPSG Partners LLC, Carpenter Marsh Fac Chile Corredores de Reaseguros Limitada, Carpenter Marsh Fac Colombia Corredores de Reaseguros S.A., Carpenter Marsh Fac Peru Corredores de Reaseguros S.A.C., Carpenter Marsh Fac Re LLC, Carpenter Turner Cyprus Ltd, Carpenter Turner S.A., Cascade International Holdings C.V., Cascade Regional Holdings Limited, Central Insurance Services Limited, Charter Risk Management Services LLC, Chartwell Healthcare Limited, Chronos Insurance Brokers Pty Limited, Claims and Recovery Management (Australia) Pty Limited, Clark Thomson Insurance Brokers Limited, Client Provide Limited, Colombian Insurance Broking Wholesale Limited, Consultores 2020 C.A., Cronin & Co Insurance Services Limited, DVA - Deutsche Verkehrs-Assekuranz-Vermittlungs GmbH, Dawson Insurance, DeLima Marsh S.A. - Los Corredores de Seguros S.A., Dovetail Insurance Corp., Dovetail Insurance Corp., Dovetail Managing General Agency Corporation, Dovetail Technology Service India Private Limited, Draw Connect Limited, Draw Create Limited, Draw Group London Limited, Eagle & Crown Limited, Echelon Australia Pty Limited, Echelon Claims Consultants Sdn Bhd, Echelon New Zealand Limited, EnBW Versicherungs Vermittlung GmbH, Encompass Insurance Agency Pty Ltd., English Pension Trustees Limited, Epsilon (US) Insurance Company, Epsilon Insurance Company Ltd., Eustis Insurance & Benefits, Evolution Management Ltd, Exchange Insurance Services Limited (in liquidation), Exmoor Management Company Limited, Faulkner & Flynn LLC, Freedom Trust Services Limited, GC Genesis LLC, GCube Insurance Services Inc, GCube Underwriting Limited, Gama Consultores Associados Ltda., Gem Insurance Company Limited, Global Premium Finance Company, GrECo International Holding AG, Gracechurch Trustees Limited, Gresham Pension Trustees Limited, Group Promoters Pty Limited, Guy Carpenter & Cia (Mexico) S.A. de C.V., Guy Carpenter & Cia. S.A., Guy Carpenter & Co. Labuan Ltd., Guy Carpenter & Company AB, Guy Carpenter & Company Corredores de Reaseguros Limitada, Guy Carpenter & Company Corretora de Resseguros Ltda., Guy Carpenter & Company GmbH, Guy Carpenter & Company LLC, Guy Carpenter & Company Limited, Guy Carpenter & Company Limited, Guy Carpenter & Company Ltd./Guy Carpenter & Compagnie Ltee, Guy Carpenter & Company Participacoes Ltda., Guy Carpenter & Company Peru Corredores de Reaseguros S.A., Guy Carpenter & Company Private Limited, Guy Carpenter & Company Proprietary Limited, Guy Carpenter & Company Pty. Ltd., Guy Carpenter & Company S.A., Guy Carpenter & Company S.A. (Uruguay), Guy Carpenter & Company S.A.S., Guy Carpenter & Company S.r.l., Guy Carpenter (Middle East) Limited, Guy Carpenter Bermuda Ltd., Guy Carpenter Broking Inc., Guy Carpenter Colombia Corredores de Reaseguros Ltda., Guy Carpenter Insurance Brokers (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Guy Carpenter Japan Inc., Guy Carpenter Mexico Intermediario de Reaseguro S.A. de C.V., Guy Carpenter Reasurans Brokerligi Anonim Sirketi, HAPIP GP 2009 LLC, HAPIP GP LLC, HSBC Insurance Brokers International (Abu Dhabi) LLC (in liquidation), Hamilton Bond Limited, Hansen International Limited, Hayward Aviation Limited, INSIA Europe SE, INSIA SK s.r.o., INSIA a.s., INSURANCE BROKERS OF NIGERIA LIMITED, IRC Asia Insurance Brokers Limited, InSolutions Limited, Industrial Risks Protection Consultants, Ingeseg S. A., Ingeseg S.A., Insbrokers Ltda., InsurTech Alliance LLC, Insure Direct (Brokers) LLC, Insure Direct (Brokers) LLC [BAHRAIN BRANCH], Insure Direct - Jardine Lloyd Thompson Limited, International Catastrophe Insurance Managers LLC, International Loss Control Services Limited, International Risk Consultants (Asia) Limited, Invercol Limited, Irish Pensions Trust Limited, Isosceles Insurance (Barbados) Limited, Isosceles Insurance Company Limited, Isosceles Insurance Ltd, Isosceles PCC Limited, J&H Marsh & McLennan Limited, J.W. Terrill Benefit Administrators Inc., JI Holdings Limited, JIB Group Holdings Limited, JIB Group Limited, JIB Holdings (Pacific) Limited, JIB Overseas Holdings Limited, JIB UK Holdings Limited, JL Marine Insurance-Brokers GmbH & Co. KG, JLM Verwaltungs GmbH, JLT (Insurance Brokers) Limited, JLT Actuaries and Consultants Limited, JLT Advisory Limited, JLT Affinity Colombia Solutions SAS, JLT Agencies Limited, JLT Asesorias Ltda, JLT Asia Holdings BV, JLT Asia Shared Services Sdn Bhd, JLT Belgibo, JLT Benefit Consultants Limited, JLT Benefit Solutions Limited, JLT Benefit Solutions SA (Pty) Ltd, JLT Bermuda Ltd, JLT Brasil Holdings Participacoes Ltd, JLT Chile Holdings SpA, JLT Colombia Retail Limited, JLT Colombia Wholesale Limited, JLT Consultants & Actuaries Limited, JLT EB Holdings Limited, JLT EB Services Limited, JLT Employee Benefits Holding Company (PTY) LTD, JLT Employee Benefits SA (Pty) Ltd, JLT Financial Planning Limited, JLT France Holdings, JLT Group Services Pty Limited, JLT Holdings (Barbados) Ltd, JLT Holdings (NZ) Limited, JLT Independent Insurance Brokers Private Limited, JLT Insurance Agencies Limited, JLT Insurance Brokers Co. Limited, JLT Insurance Brokers Co. Limited ( Shanghai Branch), JLT Insurance Brokers Co. Limited (Beijing Branch), JLT Insurance Brokers Co. Limited (Guangzhou Branch), JLT Insurance Brokers Ireland Limited, JLT Insurance Brokers SA, JLT Insurance Group Holdings Ltd, JLT Insurance Management Malta Limited, JLT Intellectual Property Limited, JLT Intellectual Property [UK Branch], JLT Interactive Pte. Ltd., JLT Investment Management Limited, JLT LATAM (Southern Cone) Wholesale Limited, JLT Latin American Holdings Limited, JLT Life Assurance Brokers Limited, JLT Management Services Limited, JLT Marine (Pty) Ltd, JLT Mexico Holdings Limited, JLT Mexico Intermediario de Reaseguro S.A. de C.V., JLT Netherlands BV, JLT Norway AS, JLT PLA, JLT Pension Trustees Limited, JLT Pensions Administration Holdings Limited, JLT Pensions Administration Limited, JLT Peru Reinsurance Solutions Limited, JLT Peru Retail Limited, JLT Peru Wholesale Limited, JLT QFM Services Limited, JLT RE Brasil Administracao e Corretagem de Resseguros Ltda, JLT Re (French Branch), JLT Re (Northern Europe) AB, JLT Re Argentina Corredores de Reaseguros S.A.U., JLT Re Labuan Limited, JLT Re Limited, JLT Re Pty Ltd, JLT Reinsurance Brokers GmbH, JLT Reinsurance Brokers Limited, JLT Reinsurance Brokers Limited [French Branch], JLT Risk Management Limited, JLT Risk Solutions AB, JLT Risk Solutions AB Branch - Germany, JLT SA IB Holdings Company (Pty) Limited, JLT SCK Affinity Administracao e Corretora de Seguros Ltda., JLT SCK Corretora e Administradora de Seguros, JLT Secretaries Limited, JLT Sigorta ve Reasurans Brokerlii A.., JLT Singapore Holdings Pte. Ltd., JLT Specialty France, JLT Specialty Insurance Broker A/S, JLT Specialty Limited, JLT Specialty Limited [DUBAI BRANCH], JLT Specialty Pte. Ltd., JLT Towner Insurance Management (Anguilla) Limited, JLT Trust Services (Barbados) Ltd, JLT Trustees (Southern) Limited, JLT Trustees Limited, JLT UK Investment Holdings Limited, JLT Vantage Risk and Benefit Consulting Private Limited, JLT Wealth Management Limited, JLT do Brasil Corretagem de Seguros Ltda, JLTPCS Holdings Pte. Ltd., JMIB Holdings BV, JSL Securities Inc., Japan Affinity Marketing Inc., Jardine IBR Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson (Proprietary) Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Asia Pte Ltd, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Australia Pty Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Canada Inc, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group Ltd, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Group plc, Jardine Lloyd Thompson India Private Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson India Private Limited (UK Branch Office), Jardine Lloyd Thompson Insurance Consultants Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers Inc., Jardine Lloyd Thompson Ireland Holdings Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Ireland Unlimited Company, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Korea Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Limited [Macao Branch], Jardine Lloyd Thompson PCS (Dubai) Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson PCS Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson PCS Pte Ltd, Jardine Lloyd Thompson PCS SA, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Private Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Pty Limited, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Sdn Bhd, Jardine Lloyd Thompson Valencia y Iragorri Corredores de Seguros SA, Jardine Pension Trustees Ireland Limited, Jardine Risk Consulting Co. Limited, Jardine ShunTak Insurance Brokers Limited, Jardine ShunTak Insurance Brokers Limited [Macao Branch], Jardines PF- Consultoria Em Gestao De Risco Limitada, Jelf, Jelf Commercial Finance Limited, Jelf Financial Planning Limited, Jelf Insurance Brokers Limited, Jelf Limited, Jelf Risk Management Limited, Jelf Wellbeing Limited, John Lampier & Son Ltd, Johnson & Higgins (Bermuda) Limited, Johnson & Higgins Limited, KESSLER & CO AG, Kepler Associates Limited, Kessler & Co Inc., Kessler Consulting Inc., Kessler Prevoyance Inc., Key Underwriting Pty Limited, Kroll, Lambert Brothers Holdings Limited, Lambert Brothers Insurance Brokers (Employee Benefits) Limited, Lambert Brothers Insurance Brokers (Hong Kong) Ltd, Laterlife.com Limited (in liquidation), Lavaretus Underwriting AB, Lavaretus Underwriting AB (BRANCH - Denmark), Libra Insurance Services Limited (in liquidation), Lloyd & Partners Limited, Local Government Insurance Brokers Pty Limited, Lomond Macdonald Limited, Lynch Insurance Brokers Limited, M&M Vehicle L.P., M.P. Bolshaw and Company Limited, MAG JLT SpA, MERCER ALTERNATIVES LIMITED, MM Risk Services Pty Ltd (for dissolution), MMA Mid-Atlantic Employee LLC, MMA Securities LLC, MMB Consultores S.A., MMC (Singapore) Holdings Pte. Ltd., MMC 28 State Street Holdings Inc., MMC Borrower LLC, MMC Brazilian Holdings B.V., MMC Capital Inc., MMC Cascade Regional Holdings LLC, MMC FINANCE (EUROPE) LIMITED, MMC FINANCE HOLDINGS LTD, MMC Finance (Australia) Limited, MMC Finance (Singapore) Limited, MMC France Holdings (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., MMC GP III Inc., MMC Group Services sp. z o.o., MMC Holdings (Australia) Pty Ltd, MMC Holdings (New Zealand) ULC, MMC Holdings (UK) Limited, MMC International Finance (Barbados) SRL, MMC International Holdings LLC, MMC International Limited, MMC International Treasury Centre Limited, MMC Middle East Holdings Limited, MMC Poland Holdings B.V., MMC Realty Inc., MMC Regional Asia Holdings B.V., MMC Regional Caribbean Holdings Ltd., MMC Regional Europe Holdings B.V., MMC Regional LATAM Holdings B.V., MMC Securities (Europe) Limited, MMC Securities LLC, MMC Treasury Holdings (UK) Limited, MMC UK Group Limited, MMC UK Pension Fund Trustee Limited, MMOW Limited, MMRC LLC, MOW Holding LLC, MPIP III GP LLC, MPIP IV GP LLC, MPIP V GP LLC, MPIP VI GP LLC, Mangrove Insurance Europe PCC Limited, Mangrove Insurance Solutions PCC, Mangrove Insurance Solutions PCC Limited, Manoel Management Services Ltd, Marchant McKechnie Insurance Brokers Limited, Marine Aviation & General (London) Limited, Marsh & McLennan (PNG) Limited, Marsh & McLennan Agencies AS, Marsh & McLennan Agencies Limited, Marsh & McLennan Agency A/S, Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC, Marsh & McLennan Agency Limited, Marsh & McLennan Agency Pty Ltd., Marsh & McLennan Argentina SA Corredores de Reaseguros, Marsh & McLennan Colombia S.A., Marsh & McLennan Companies Acquisition Funding Limited, Marsh & McLennan Companies Acquisition Limited, Marsh & McLennan Companies Asia Pacific Treasury Center Limited, Marsh & McLennan Companies BVBA/SPRL, Marsh & McLennan Companies Finance Center (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., Marsh & McLennan Companies France S.A.S., Marsh & McLennan Companies Holdings (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc., Marsh & McLennan Companies Regional Holdings S.a.r.l., Marsh & McLennan Companies Services B.V., Marsh & McLennan Companies UK Limited, Marsh & McLennan Europe S.a.r.l., Marsh & McLennan GP I Inc., Marsh & McLennan Global Broking (Bermuda) Ltd., Marsh & McLennan Holding GmbH, Marsh & McLennan Holdings (Canada) ULC, Marsh & McLennan Holdings Inc., Marsh & McLennan Incorporated (for dissolution), Marsh & McLennan Innovation Centre Holdings II, Marsh & McLennan Innovation Centre Holdings S.a.r.l., Marsh & McLennan Innovation Centre Limited, Marsh & McLennan Insurance Services Limited, Marsh & McLennan Ireland Limited, Marsh & McLennan Management Services (Bermuda) Limited, Marsh & McLennan Risk Capital Holdings Ltd., Marsh & McLennan Servicios S.A. De C.V., Marsh & McLennan Shared Services Canada Limited, Marsh & McLennan Shared Services Corporation, Marsh (Bahrain) Company SPC, Marsh (Beijing) Risk Management Consulting Co. Ltd., Marsh (China) Insurance Brokers Co. Ltd., Marsh (Hong Kong) Limited, Marsh (Insurance Brokers) LLP, Marsh (Insurance Services) Limited, Marsh (Malawi) Limited, Marsh (Middle East) Limited, Marsh (Namibia) (Proprietary) Limited, Marsh (Pty) Ltd, Marsh (Risk Consulting) LLP, Marsh (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Marsh A/S, Marsh AB, Marsh AG, Marsh AS, Marsh Advantage Insurance Holdings Pty Ltd, Marsh Advantage Insurance Pty Ltd., Marsh Africa (Pty) Ltd, Marsh Argentina S.R.L., Marsh Associates (Pty) Ltd, Marsh Austria G.m.b.H., Marsh Aviation Insurance Broking Pty Ltd (for dissolution), Marsh B.V., Marsh Botswana (Proprietary) Limited, Marsh Brockman y Schuh Agente de Seguros y de Fianzas S.A. de C.V., Marsh Broker Japan Inc., Marsh Broker de Asigurare-Reasigurare S.R.L., Marsh Brokers (Hong Kong) Limited, Marsh Brokers Limited, Marsh Canada Limited/Marsh Canada Limitee, Marsh Company Management Services Cayman Ltd., Marsh Compensation Technologies Administration (Pty) Ltd, Marsh Corporate Services (Barbados) Limited, Marsh Corporate Services Isle of Man Ltd, Marsh Corporate Services Limited, Marsh Corporate Services Malta Limited, Marsh Corretora de Seguros Ltda., Marsh EOOD, Marsh Egypt LLC, Marsh Emirates Consultancy LLC, Marsh Emirates Insurance Brokerage LLC, Marsh Employee Benefits Limited, Marsh Employee Benefits Zimbabwe (Private) Ltd, Marsh Eurofinance B.V., Marsh Europe S.A., Marsh FJC International Insurance Brokers Limited, Marsh For Insurance Services S.A.E., Marsh Franco Acra S.A., Marsh GSC Servicos e Administracao de Seguros Ltda., Marsh GmbH, Marsh Holding AB, Marsh Holdings (Pty) Ltd, Marsh India Insurance Brokers Private Limited, Marsh Insurance & Investments LLC, Marsh Insurance Brokers, Marsh Insurance Brokers (Macao) Limited, Marsh Insurance Brokers (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Marsh Insurance Brokers (Private) Limited, Marsh Insurance Brokers AO, Marsh Insurance Brokers Limited, Marsh Insurance Consulting Saudi Arabia (in liquidation), Marsh Insurance and Reinsurance Brokers LLC, Marsh Intermediaries Inc., Marsh International Broking Holdings Limited, Marsh International Holdings II Inc., Marsh International Holdings Inc., Marsh Investment B.V., Marsh Ireland Brokers Limited, Marsh Ireland Brokers Limited (UK Branch), Marsh Ireland Holdings Limited, Marsh Israel (1999) Ltd., Marsh Israel (Holdings) Ltd., Marsh Israel Consultants Ltd., Marsh Israel Insurance Agency Ltd., Marsh Israel International Brokers Ltd. (in liquidation), Marsh JCS Inc., Marsh Japan Inc., Marsh Kft., Marsh Kindlustusmaakler AS, Marsh Korea Inc., Marsh LLC, Marsh LLC Insurance Brokers, Marsh LLC [Ukraine], Marsh Lda., Marsh Limited, Marsh Limited [Fiji], Marsh Limited [New Zealand], Marsh Limited [PNG], Marsh Ltd. [Wisconsin], Marsh Management Services (Bahamas) Ltd., Marsh Management Services (Barbados) Limited, Marsh Management Services (Bermuda) Ltd., Marsh Management Services (Dublin) Limited, Marsh Management Services (Labuan) Limited, Marsh Management Services (MENA) Limited, Marsh Management Services (USVI) Ltd., Marsh Management Services Cayman Ltd., Marsh Management Services Guernsey Limited, Marsh Management Services Inc., Marsh Management Services Isle of Man Limited, Marsh Management Services Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Marsh Management Services Malta Limited, Marsh Management Services Singapore Pte. Ltd., Marsh Management Services Sweden AB, Marsh Marine & Energy AB, Marsh Marine Nederland B.V., Marsh Medical Consulting GmbH, Marsh Mercer Holdings (Australia) Pty Ltd, Marsh Nest Inc., Marsh Oman LLC, Marsh Oy, Marsh PB Co. Ltd., Marsh Philippines Inc., Marsh Privat A.I.E., Marsh Private Client Life Insurance Services, Marsh Pty. Ltd., Marsh Qatar LLC, Marsh RE S.A.C. Corredores de Reaseguros, Marsh Rehder Consultoria S.A. (MRC), Marsh Rehder S.A. Corredores de Seguros, Marsh Resolutions Pty Limited, Marsh Risk Consulting B.V., Marsh Risk Consulting Limitada, Marsh Risk Consulting Ltda., Marsh Risk Consulting S.L., Marsh Risk Consulting Services S.r.L., Marsh Risk and Consulting Services (Pty) Ltd, Marsh S.A. Corredores De Seguros, Marsh S.A. Mediadores de Seguros, Marsh S.A.S., Marsh S.p.A., Marsh SA [Argentina], Marsh SA [Belgium], Marsh SA [Luxembourg], Marsh SA [Uruguay], Marsh SIA, Marsh Saldana Inc., Marsh Saudi Arabia Insurance & Reinsurance Brokers, Marsh Secretarial Services Limited, Marsh Semusa S.A., Marsh Services Limited, Marsh Services Spolka z.o.o., Marsh Sigorta ve Reasurans Brokerligi Anonim Sirketi, Marsh Spolka z.o.o., Marsh Szolgaltato Kft., Marsh Takaful Brokers (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Marsh Treasury Services (Dublin) Limited (in liquidation), Marsh Treasury Services Limited, Marsh Tunisia S.a.r.l., Marsh UK Limited, Marsh USA (India) Inc., Marsh USA Borrower LLC, Marsh USA Inc., Marsh Uganda Limited, Marsh Venezuela C.A. Sociedad de Corretaje de Seguros, Marsh Vietnam Insurance Broking Company Ltd, Marsh Zambia Limited, Marsh Zimbabwe Holdings (Private) Limited, Marsh d.o.o. Beograd, Marsh d.o.o. za posredovanje u osiguranju, Marsh for Insurance Services - Jordan, Marsh i-Connect (Pty) Ltd, Marsh s.r.o., Matthiessen Assurans AB, Mercer (Argentina) S.A., Mercer (Australia) Pty Ltd, Mercer (Austria) GmbH, Mercer (Belgium) SA-NV, Mercer (Canada) Limited/Mercer (Canada) Limitee, Mercer (China) Limited, Mercer (Colombia) Ltda., Mercer (Danmark) A/S, Mercer (Finland) OY, Mercer (France) SAS, Mercer (Hong Kong) Limited, Mercer (Ireland) Limited, Mercer (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Mercer (N.Z.) Limited, Mercer (Nederland) B.V., Mercer (Norge) AS, Mercer (Polska) Sp.z o.o., Mercer (Portugal) Lda, Mercer (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Mercer (Sweden) AB, Mercer (Taiwan) Ltd., Mercer (Thailand) Ltd., Mercer (US) Inc., Mercer Administration Services (Australia) Pty Limited, Mercer Africa Limited, Mercer Agente de Seguros S.A. de C.V., Mercer Asesores de Seguros S.A., Mercer Asesores es Inversion Independientes S.A. de C.V., Mercer Broking Ltd., Mercer Career Unipessoal Lda, Mercer Consultation (Quebec) Ltee., Mercer Consulting (Australia) Pty Ltd, Mercer Consulting (Chile) Limitada, Mercer Consulting (France) SAS, Mercer Consulting (India) Private Limited, Mercer Consulting B.V., Mercer Consulting Group Inc., Mercer Consulting Holdings Sdn. Bhd., Mercer Consulting Limited, Mercer Consulting Middle East Limited, Mercer Consulting S.L.U., Mercer Consulting Venezuela C.A., Mercer Corredores de Seguros Limitada, Mercer Corretora de Seguros Ltda, Mercer Danismanlik Anonim Sirketi, Mercer Deutschland GmbH, Mercer Employee Benefits - Medicacao de Seguros Unipessoal Lda., Mercer Employee Benefits Limited, Mercer Financial Advice (Australia) Pty Ltd, Mercer Financial Services Limited, Mercer Financial Services Limited liability company, Mercer Financial Services Middle East Limited, Mercer Global Investments Europe Limited, Mercer Global Investments Management Limited, Mercer HR Consulting Borrower LLC, Mercer HR Services LLC, Mercer Health & Benefits (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Mercer Health & Benefits Administration LLC, Mercer Health & Benefits LLC, Mercer Holdings Inc., Mercer Holdings Inc. [Philippines], Mercer Human Resource Consulting Ltda, Mercer Human Resource Consulting S.A. de C.V., Mercer ICC Limited, Mercer Investment Consulting Limited, Mercer Investment Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Mercer Investment Solutions (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Mercer Investments (Australia) Limited, Mercer Investments (Hong Kong) Limited, Mercer Investments (Japan) Ltd, Mercer Investments (New Zealand) Limited, Mercer Investments LLC, Mercer Ireland Holdings Limited, Mercer Italia Srl Socio Unico, Mercer Japan Ltd., Mercer Korea Co. Ltd., Mercer LLC, Mercer Limited, Mercer MC Consulting Borrower LLC, Mercer Master Trustees Limited, Mercer Mauritius Ltd., Mercer Oliver Wyman Holding B.V., Mercer Outsourcing (Australia) Pty Ltd, Mercer Outsourcing S.L.U., Mercer Pensionsfonds AG, Mercer Pensionsraadgivning A/S, Mercer Philippines Inc., Mercer Private Investment Partners IV General Partner S.a.r.l., Mercer Private Markets AG, Mercer Private Markets Advisers (US) AG, Mercer Services Poland Sp. z.o.o., Mercer Sigorta Brokerligi Anonim Sirketi, Mercer South Africa (Pty) Limited, Mercer Superannuation (Australia) Limited, Mercer Switzerland Inc., Mercer System Services LLC, Mercer Technology Acquisitions Limited, Mercer Treuhand GmbH, Mercer Trust Company LLC, Mercer Trustees Limited, Mercer WorkforcePro LLC, Mercury Insurance Services Pty Ltd, Moola Systems Limited, Mountlodge Limited, Muir Beddal (Zimbabwe) Limited, NERA Australia Pty. Ltd., NERA Economic Consulting GmbH, NERA Economic Consulting Limited, NERA S.R.L., NERA SAS, NERA UK Limited, NERA do Brasil Ltda. (for dissolution), National Economic Research Associates Inc., NetComp Insurance Corp., Neuburger Noble Lowndes GmbH, Normandy Reinsurance Company Limited, Northern Alliance Brokers Limited (in liquidation), OWL Marine Insurance-Brokers GmbH & Co.KG, OWL Marine Verwaltungs GmbH, Oliver Wyman (Bermuda) Limited, Oliver Wyman (Hong Kong) Limited, Oliver Wyman AB, Oliver Wyman AG, Oliver Wyman Actuarial Consulting Inc., Oliver Wyman B.V., Oliver Wyman Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd, Oliver Wyman Consultoria em Estrategia de Negocios Ltda., Oliver Wyman Energy Consulting Limited, Oliver Wyman FZ-LLC, Oliver Wyman Group KK, Oliver Wyman Inc., Oliver Wyman LLC, Oliver Wyman Limited, Oliver Wyman Limited Liability Company, Oliver Wyman Limited/Oliver Wyman limitee, Oliver Wyman Ltd., Oliver Wyman Pte. Ltd., Oliver Wyman Pty. Ltd., Oliver Wyman S. de R.L. de C.V., Oliver Wyman S.A.S., Oliver Wyman S.L., Oliver Wyman S.r.l., Oliver Wyman SNC, Oliver Wyman SPRL/BVBA, Oliver Wyman Sdn. Bhd., Oliver Wyman Services Limited, Oliver Wyman Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Oliver Wyman sp. z o.o., Omega Indemnity (Bermuda) Limited, Organizacion Brockman y Schuh S.A. de C.V., Osbornes Insurances Oxford Limited (in liquidation), PFT Limited, PI Indemnity Company Designated Activity Company, PT JLT Reinsurance Brokers, PT Jardine Lloyd Thompson, PT Marsh Indonesia, PT Marsh Reinsurance Brokers Indonesia, PT Mercer Indonesia, PT Nexus Asia Pacific, PT Oliver Wyman Indonesia, PT Quantum Computing Services, PT Quantum Investments, PT Quantum Support Services, Pallas Marsh Servicos Ltda., Pavilion Alternatives Group (Singapore) PTE. Ltd, Pavilion Financial Corporation Holdings UK Limited, Pavilion U.S. Investments Holdco LLC, Pension Trustees Limited, Pensionsservice Benefit Network Sverige AB, Perils AG, Personal Pension Trustees Limited, Pet Animal Welfare Scheme Limited, Portsoken Trustees (No. 2) Limited, Portsoken Trustees Limited, Potomac Insurance Managers Inc., Premier Pension Trustees Limited, Premium Services Australia Pty Limited, Professional Claims Handling Limited (in liquidation), Profund Solutions Limited, Promerit AG, Promerit Hungary Kft, Promerit Schweiz AG, Pymetrics Inc., R G Ford Brokers Limited, R R B Beratungsgesellschaft fuer Altersversorgung mbh, R. Mees & Zoonen Holdings B.V., Renewable Energy Loss Adjusters LLC, Renewable Energy Loss Adjusters Limited, Resource Benefit Associates, Rightpath Reinsurance SPC Ltd., Risk Management Australia Pty Limited, Rivers Group Limited, Rockefeller Risk Advisors Inc., Rutherfoord International Inc., SAFCAR-Marsh, SBJ Holdings Limited, SCIB (Bermuda) Limited, SCM Global Real Estate Select GP LLC, SCM Infrastructure General Partner S.a r.l., SCM International Private Equity Select III GP LLC, SCM LT General Partner S.a.r.l., SCM PE General Partner S.a.r.l., SCM PE II GP Ltd., SCM PE II Scotland GP Ltd, SCM Strategic Capital Management (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., SICAR Marsh S.a.r.l., SME Insurance Services Limited, Sail Insurance Company Limited, Scalene Re Ltd, Seabury & Smith Borrower LLC, Seabury & Smith LLC, Secure Limited, Sedgwick (Holdings) Pty. Limited, Sedgwick Consulting Group Limited, Sedgwick Dineen Group Limited, Sedgwick Financial Services Limited, Sedgwick Forbes Middle East Limited, Sedgwick Group, Sedgwick Group (Australia) Pty. Limited, Sedgwick Group (Bermuda) Limited, Sedgwick Group (Zimbabwe) Limited, Sedgwick Group Limited, Sedgwick Internationaal B.V., Sedgwick Limited, Sedgwick Management Services (Barbados) Limited, Sedgwick Management Services (Singapore) Pte Limited, Sedgwick Noble Lowndes (UK) Limited, Sedgwick Noble Lowndes Group Limited, Sedgwick Noble Lowndes Limited, Sedgwick Overseas Investments Limited, Sedgwick Private Limited, Sedgwick Re Asia Pacific (Consultants) Pte Ltd (for dissolution), Sedgwick Trustees Limited, Sedgwick UK Risk Services Limited, Sedgwick Ulster Pension Trustees Limited, Settlement Trustees Limited, Shanghai Mercer Insurance Brokers Company Ltd., Shorewest Insurance Associates LLC, Sirota Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Sirota Consulting UK Limited, Smith Long Term Disability Management Group Inc., Societe d'Assurances et de Participation Guian SA, Software Underwriting Systems Limited (in liquidation), Southern Marine & Aviation Inc., Southern Marine & Aviation Underwriters Inc., Sudzucker Versicherungs-Vermittlungs GmbH, Sumitomo Life Insurance Agency America Inc., Sylvite Financial Services, TBX Solutions Limited, Talent Tech Labs LLC, The Benefit Express Holdings Limited, The Benefit Express Limited, The Carpenter Management Corporation, The Insurance Partnership Holdings Limited, The Insurance Partnership Services Limited, The Positive Ageing Company Limited, The Purple Partnership Limited, The Recovre Group Pty Ltd, Thomsons Online Benefits (HK) Ltd., Thomsons Online Benefits Inc., Thomsons Online Benefits Limited, Thomsons Online Benefits Pte Ltd., Thomsons Online Benefits S.R.L, Torrent Government Contracting Services LLC, Torrent Insurance Services LLC, Torrent Technologies, Torrent Technologies Inc., Tower Hill Limited, Tower Place Developments (West) Limited, Tower Place Developments Limited, U.T.E. AMG, U.T.E. Marsh - Caja Castilla La Mancha Junta de Comunidades, U.T.E. Marsh - Salvado Reus (in liquidation), U.T.E. Marsh - Salvado Reus 2012, U.T.E. Marsh - Salvado Vila-Seca 2010, UAD BB Marsh Lietuva, Vezina & Associes Inc., Vezina Assurances Inc., Victor Insurance Europe B.V., Victor Insurance Holdings Inc., Victor Insurance Italia S.r.l., Victor Insurance Managers Inc., Victor Insurance Managers Inc./Gestionnaires d'assurance Victor inc., Victor O. Schinnerer & Co. (Bermuda) Ltd., Victor O. Schinnerer & Company Limited, Victoria Hall Company Limited, Wellnz Limited, William M. Mercer (Canada) Limited/William M. Mercer (Canada) Limitee, William M. Mercer AB, William M. Mercer Comercio Consultoria e Servicos Ltda., Wortham Insurance & Risk Management, everBe SAS, and realright GmbH.

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The following companies are subsidiares of UnitedHealth Group: 1070715 B.C. Unlimited Liability Company, 1st Avenue Pharmacy Inc., 310 Canyon Medical LLC, 4C MSO LLC, 4C Medical Group PLC, 5995 Minnetonka LLC, ABCO International Holdings LLC, ACN Group IPA of New York Inc., ACN Group of California Inc., AHN Accountable Care Organization LLC, AHN Central Services LLC, AHN Target Holdings LLC, AMIL International S.a.r.l., APS  Assistencia Personalizada a Saude Ltda., ASC Holdings of New Jersey LLC, ASC Network LLC, ASC Operators-East Bay LLC, ASC Operators-San Francisco LLC, ASC Operators-San Luis Obispo LLC, ASC Operators-Santa Rosa LLC, ASC Operators-South Bay LLC, ASV-HOPCo-SCA Cornerstone LLC, ASV-HOPCo-SCA Florida LLC, AbleTo Behavioral Health Services P.C., AbleTo Inc., Accurate Rx Pharmacy Consulting LLC, Administradora Clinica La Colina S.A.S., Administradora Country S.A.S., Administradora Medica Centromed S.A., Advanced Surgery Center of Clifton LLC, Advanced Surgical Center LLC, Advanced Surgical Hospital LLC, Advocate Condell Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Advocate Southwest Ambulatory Surgery Center L.L.C., Advocate-SCA Partners LLC, Aliansalud Entidad Promotora de Salud S.A., All Savers Insurance Company, All Savers Life Insurance Company of California, Alliance Surgical Center LLC, Allina Health Heart and Vascular Surgery Center LLC, Allina Health Surgery Center-Brooklyn Park LLC, Aloha Surgical Center LLC, Ambient Healthcare Inc., Ambient Holdings Inc., AmeriChoice, AmeriChoice Corporation, AmeriChoice of New Jersey Inc., American Health Network of Indiana Care Organization LLC, American Health Network of Indiana II LLC, American Health Network of Indiana LLC, American Health Network of Kentucky LLC, American Health Network of Ohio Care Organization LLC, American Health Network of Ohio II LLC, American Health Network of Ohio LLC, American Physicians Inc., Amico Saude Ltda., Amil, Amil Assistencia Medica Internacional S.A., Angiografia e Hemodinamica Madre Theodora Ltda., Anne Arundel-SCA Holdings LLC, Anne Arundel-SCA Surgicenter LLC, Antelope Valley Surgery Center L.P., Analisis Clinicos ML S.A.C., Apothecary Holdings Inc., AppleCare Medical Management LLC, Aquitania Chilean Holding SpA, Arcadia JV Holdings LLC, Arcadia Outpatient Surgery Center L.P., ArchWell Health LLC, ArchWell Health MSO LLC, ArchWell Health Professional Services Holding Co., ArchWell Health Professional Services of Alabama LLC, ArchWell Health Professional Services of North Carolina P.C., ArchWell Health Professional Services of Oklahoma LLC, Archwell Health Professional Services of Arizona LLC, Archwell Health Professional Services of Nebraska LLC, Arise Physician Group, Arizona Physicians IPA Inc., Arlington Surgery Center LLC, Aspectus Inc., Associacao Lusiadas Knowledge Center  Health Education and Research, Audax Health Solutions LLC, Aurora Hospitalist P.C., Austin Center for Outpatient Surgery L.P., Avella Specialty Pharmacy, Aventura Medical Tower Surgery Center LLC, Avery Parent Holdings Inc., Aveta Inc., AxelaCare Intermediate Holdings LLC, AxelaCare LLC, B.R.A.S.S. Partnership in Commendam, BOSC Holdings LLC, BSC Holdings LLC, Ball Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Banmedica Colombia S.A.S., Banmedica Internacional SpA, Banmedica S.A., Barranca Surgery Center LLC, Beach Surgical Holdings II LLC, Beach Surgical Holdings III LLC, Beach Surgical Holdings LLC, Beaver Medical Group P.C., Bedford Physicians Risk Retention Group Inc., Behavioral Healthcare Options Inc., Beltway Surgery Centers L.L.C., Benefit Administration for the Self Employed L.L.C., Benefitter Insurance Solutions Inc., Bergan Mercy Surgery Center LLC, Bergen-Passaic Cataract Laser and Surgery Center LLC, Bessler MD PLLC, Bind Benefits Inc., Bind LH Holdings Inc., Bind Re Inc., Birmingham Outpatient Surgery Center Ltd., Birmingham Outpatient Surgical Center LLC, Bloomfield ASC LLC, Blue Ridge Day Surgery Center L.P., Blue Ridge GP LLC, Blue Ridge Properties LLC, Boca Raton Outpatient Surgery & Laser Center LTD., Bordeaux Barbados Holdings I SRL, Bordeaux Barbados Holdings II SRL, Bordeaux Barbados Holdings III S.r.l., Bordeaux Holding SpA, Bordeaux International Holdings Inc., Bordeaux UK Holdings I Limited, Bordeaux UK Holdings II Limited, Bordeaux UK Holdings III Limited, Bosque Medical Center Ltda., Brandon Ambulatory Surgery Center LC, BriovaRx Infusion Services 102 LLC, BriovaRx of Florida Inc., BriovaRx of Maine Inc., BriovaRx of Massachusetts LLC, CCEC Anesthesia Management LLC, CDC Holdings Colombia S.A.S., CLISA  Clinica de Santo Antonio S.A., CMO  Centro Medico de Oftalmologia S/S Ltda., CMS  Central de Manipulacao e Servicos Farmaceuticos Ltda., COI  Clinicas Oncologicas Integradas S.A., Cabin Enterprises LLC, Cabin Holdings LLC, California Medical Group Insurance Company Risk Retention Group, Camp Hill Ambulatory Centers, Camp Hill-SCA Centers LLC, Capital City Medical Group L.L.C., Cardinal Holding Company LLC, Care Improvement Plus Group Management LLC, Care Improvement Plus South Central Insurance Company, Care Improvement Plus Wisconsin Insurance Company, Care Improvement Plus of Texas Insurance Company, Care Logistics LLC, CareMount Dental Member LLC, CareMount Health Solutions ACO LLC, CareMount Health Solutions Employer LLC, CareMount Health Solutions LLC, CareMount Holding LLC, CareMount Medical Foundation Inc., CareMount Value Partners IPA LLC, Carr PLLC, Casa de Saude Santa Therezinha Ltda., Castle Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Castle Rock SurgiCenter LLC, Catalyst360 LLC, Catamaran 2 Unlimited Company, Catamaran Finance Ireland Unlimited Company, Catamaran S.a.r.l., Cedar Park JV Partners LLC, Cedar Park Surgery Center LLC, Cemed Care  Empresa de Atendimento Clinico Geral Ltda., Center for Quality Improvement LLC, Center for Restorative Surgery at Maple Grove LLC, Center for Surgery of North Coast L.P., Central Indiana Care Organization LLC, Central Ohio Care Organization LLC, CentriHealth Corporation, CentrifyHealth LLC, Centro Medico Hospitalar Pitangueiras Ltda., Centro Odontologico Americano S.A.C., Centro de Entrenamiento Capacitacion en Reanimacion y Prevencion Limitada, Centro de Servicios Compartidos Banmedica SpA, Centromed Quilpue S.A., Centros Medicos y Dentales Multimed Ltda., Centura-SCA Holdings LLC, Centurion Casualty Company, Channel Islands Surgicenter L.P., Channel Islands Surgicenter Properties LLC, Charleston Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Charleston Surgery Properties LLC, Charlotte Surgery Center LLC, Charlotte Surgery Properties LTD., Charlotte-SC LLC, Chatham Orthopaedic ASC LLC, Childrens Surgery Center LLC, Citrus Regional Surgery Center L.P., Claims Management Systems Inc., Cleburne Surgical Center LLC, Clinical Partners of Colorado Springs LLC, Clinton Partners LLC, Clinica Alameda SpA, Clinica Bio Bio SpA, Clinica Ciudad del Mar S.A., Clinica Davila y Servicios Medicos S.p.A., Clinica Iquique S.A., Clinica Medico Cirurgica de Santa Tecla S.A., Clinica Portoazul S.A., Clinica San Felipe S.A., Clinica Santa Maria S.p.A., Clinica Sanchez Ferrer S.A., Clinica Vespucio S.A., Clinica del Country S.A.S., Coachella Valley Physicians of PrimeCare Inc., Coalition for Advanced Pharmacy Services Inc., Cobranzas Banmedica SpA, Cogent Healthcare IPA of New York Inc., Cogent Healthcare Inc., Cogent Healthcare Management of New York Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Arizona P.C., Cogent Healthcare of California Prof. Corp., Cogent Healthcare of Georgia P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Illinois LLC, Cogent Healthcare of Iowa P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Jackson MS LLC, Cogent Healthcare of Jacksonville LLC, Cogent Healthcare of Mississippi Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Missouri Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Montana P.C., Cogent Healthcare of New Jersey P.C., Cogent Healthcare of North Carolina P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Oregon P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Pennsylvania Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Pensacola L.L.C., Cogent Healthcare of Tennessee P.C., Cogent Healthcare of Virginia Inc., Cogent Healthcare of Washington P.C., Cogent Medical Care P.C., Cogent Patient Safety Organization Inc., Cogent/Endion Medical Care of New York P.C., Collaborative Care Holdings LLC, Collaborative Care Services Inc., Collaborative Realty LLC, Colmedica Medicina Prepagada S.A., Colonial Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Colorado Innovative Physician Solutions Inc., Colorado Springs Surgery Center Ltd., Comfort Care Transportation LLC, Comprehensive Hospital Physicians of Florida Inc., ConnectYourCare Inc., ConnectYourCare LLC, Connecticut Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Connecticut Surgery Properties LLC, Connecticut Surgical Center LLC, Consorcio Regenero S.A., Constructora Inmobiliaria Magapoq S.A., Consumer Wellness Solutions Inc., Continuum Physicians Group Inc., Continuum Physicians Group of Washington PLLC, Cornell Surgicenter LLC, Cornerstone Surgery Center LLC, Cornerstone Surgicare LLC, Corpus Christi Endoscopy Center L.L.P., Country Scan Ltda., Critical Care Physician of New York P.C., Critical Care Physicians of Illinois LLC, Critical Care Physicians of New Jersey PC, Critical Care Physicians of Pennsylvania P.C., Cross Timbers Surgery Center LLC, Cypress Care Inc., DBP Services of New York IPA Inc., DSP Flint Real Estate LLC, DSP-Building C LLC, DTC Surgery Center LLC, DWIC of Tampa Bay Inc., Dallas Inpatient Specialist PLLC, Danbury Surgical Center L.P., Day-Op Surgery Consulting Company LLC, Definity Health, Dental Benefit Providers Inc., Dental Benefit Providers of California Inc., Dental Benefit Providers of Illinois Inc., Denton Endoscopy Surgery Center LLC, Denton Surgery Center LLC, Derry Surgical Center LLC, Diagnostico Ecotomografico Centromed Ltda., Diasnostico por Imagenes Centromed Ltda., Digestive Disease Center L.P., Dilab Medicina Nuclear Ltda., Diplomat Blocker LLC, Diplomat Corporate Properties LLC, Diplomat Pharmacy, Diplomat Pharmacy Inc., Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy Great Lakes Distribution Center LLC, Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy of Chicago LLC, Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy of Ft. Lauderdale LLC, Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy of Los Angeles County LLC, Distance Learning Network Inc., Divisadero Holdings LLC, DocASAP Inc., DocASAP India Technologies Private Limited, DocASAP US LLC, Doctor + S.A.C., Dry Creek Surgery Center LLC, Dublin Surgery Center LLC, Duluth Surgical Suites LLC, Durable Medical Equipment Inc., E Street Endoscopy LLC, EM Orange Tree LLC, EP Campus I LLC, EPIC Health Plan, EPIC Management Services LLC, East Bay Endoscopy Center L.P., East Brunswick Surgery Center LLC, Echo Locum Tenens Inc., Electronic Network Systems Inc., Elual Participacoes S.A., Emerald Coast Surgery Center L.P., Emisar Pharma Services LLC, Emmaus Holdings LLC, Emmaus Surgical Center LLC, Empire Physician Management Company LLC, Empremedica S. A., Endion Hospitalist North P.C., Endion Hospitalist of Western New York P.C., Endion Medical Healthcare P.C., Endion Medical Services P.C., Endoscopy Center Affiliates Inc., Enterprise Life Insurance Company, Equian, Equian LLC, Equian Parent Corp., Esho  Empresa de Servicos Hospitalares S.A., Everett MSO Inc., Excelsior Insurance Brokerage Inc., Executive Health Resources Inc., Executive Surgery Center L.L.C., Eye Clinic Oftalmologia Clinico Cirurgica e Diagnostico Ltda., Eye Specialists Surgery Centers LLC, FMG Holdings LLC, Family Health Care Services, Family Home Hospice Inc., Ferrell Physician Services P.C., Fideicomiso Clinica Barranquilla Portoazul FA-517, First Coast Orthopedic Center LLC, First Family Insurance LLC, Florence Surgery Center L.P., For Health Inc., For Health of Arizona Inc., Fort Sutter Medical Building a California Limited Partnership, Fort Worth Endoscopy Centers LLC, Fortified Provider Network Inc., Foundation Surgery Affiliate General of Huntingdon Valley LLC, Foundation Surgery Affiliate of Huntingdon Valley L.P., Franklin Surgical Center LLC, Freedom Life Insurance Company of America, Freeway Surgicenter of Houston LLC, Frontier Medex Tanzania Limited, FrontierMEDEX Inc., FrontierMEDEX Kenya Limited, FrontierMEDEX US Inc., Fundacion Banmedica, GLBESC LLC, GRANTS PASS SURGERY CENTER LLC, Gadsden Surgery Center LLC, Gainesville Surgery Center L.P., Gainesville Surgery Properties LLC, Genoa, Genoa Healthcare Inc., Genoa QoL Wholesale LLC, Genoa Technology Canada Inc., Genoa Technology Inc., Genoa Telepsychiatry Inc., Genoa of Arkansas LLC, Gladiolus Surgery Center L.L.C., Glenwood Surgical Center L.P., Glenwood-SC Inc., Global One Ventures LLC, Golden Gate Endoscopy Center LLC, Golden Outlook Inc., Golden Rule Financial Corporation, Golden Rule Insurance Company, Golden Triangle Surgicenter L.P., Grandview Surgery Center LTD., Greater New Haven ASC LLC, Greensboro Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Greenville Surgery Center LLC, Greenway Surgical Suites LLC, Grossmont Surgery Center L.P., Grove Place Surgery Center L.L.C., H&W Indemnity SPC Ltd., H.I. Investments Holding Company LLC, HCP ACO California LLC, HCentive Technology India Private Limited, HFHS-SCA Holdings LLC, HMG Holding Corporation, HMG Holdings LLC, HMP of Baltimore  USH P.C., Harken Health Insurance Company, Harrison Endo Surgical Center LLC, Hawthorn Place Outpatient Surgery Center L.P., Hays JV Partners LLC, Hays Surgery Center LLC, Health Care-ONE Insurance Agency Inc., Health Inventures Employment Solutions LLC, Health Inventures LLC, Health Plan of Nevada Inc., HealthCare Partners ASC-LB LLC, HealthCare Partners Affiliates Medical Group, HealthCare Partners Management Services California LLC, HealthCare Partners RE LLC, HealthEast Surgery Center-Maplewood LLC, HealthFirst IPA Inc., HealthMarkets Group Inc., HealthMarkets Inc., HealthMarkets Insurance Agency Inc., HealthMarkets LLC, HealthMarkets Services Inc., HealthSCOPE Holdings Inc., HealthScope Benefits Inc., Healthcare Solutions Inc., Healthplex America LLC, Healthplex Dental Services Inc., Healthplex I.P.A. Inc., Healthplex Inc., Healthplex Insurance Company, Healthplex of CT Inc., Healthplex of DC Inc., Healthplex of MD Inc., Healthplex of ME Inc., Healthplex of NC Inc., Healthplex of NJ Inc., Healthplex of TX Inc., Heartland Heart and Vascular LLC, Help Seguros de Vida S.A., Help Service S.A., Help SpA, Hemonefro  Hemodialise e Nefrologia Ltda, Highlands Ranch Healthcare LLC, Home Medical S.A., Honodav SpA, Hospice Inspiris Holdings Inc., Hospitais Associados de Pernambuco Ltda., Hospital Alvorada Taguatinga Ltda., Hospital Ana Costa S.A., Hospital Santa Helena S.A., Hospital de Clinicas de Jacarepagua Ltda., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of Broome County PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Binghamton P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Buffalo P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Newburgh P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Nyack P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physician of New York - Patchogue P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Alabama  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Alabama  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Alaska  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Alaska  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Goodyear Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Nogales Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Phoenix II Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Phoenix Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Sierra Vista Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Tucson II Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona - Tucson Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arizona  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arkansas  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Arkansas  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Buncombe County PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Apple Valley PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Bakersfield PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Camarillo PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Crescent City PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Fairfield PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Fremont PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Grass Valley PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Jackson PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Oceanside PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Oxnard PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Salinas PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - San Bernardino II PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - San Bernardino PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - San Leandro PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Sonoma PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Stockton II PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Stockton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Thousand Oaks PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California - Vacaville PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of California  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Colorado - Brighton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Colorado - Denver PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Colorado  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Colorado  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut - Manchester LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut - Rockville LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut - Wallingford LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Connecticut  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of DC PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of DC  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of DC  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Delaware  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Delaware  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida - Ft. Lauderdale LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida - Jacksonville II LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida - Jacksonville LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida - Palm Coast LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Florida  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Fredericksburg LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia - Atlanta PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia - East Point PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia - Lavonia PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia - Savannah PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Georgia  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Hawaii - Kealakekua Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Hawaii  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Hawaii  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Idaho - Nampa PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Idaho  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Idaho  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois - Downers Grove LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois - Elmhurst LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois - Rockford LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois - Winfield LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Illinois  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana - Clinton LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana - Mishawaka LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana - Terre Haute LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Indiana  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa - Cedar Rapids PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa - Mason City PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Iowa  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas - Topeka LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas - Wichita II LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas - Wichita LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Kansas  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana - Alexandria Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana - Bossier City Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana - Lake Charles Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana - Shreveport Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Louisiana  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maine - Bangor PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maine - Lewiston PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maine  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maine  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Cheverly PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Cumberland PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Frederick PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Laurel PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland - Rockville PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Maryland  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Brockton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Dorchester PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Framingham PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Holyoke PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Natick PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Norwood PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Springfield PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Stoughton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Taunton PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts - Worcester PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Massachusetts  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Alpena PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Dowagiac PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Escanaba PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Grand Blanc PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Grayling PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Kalamazoo PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Plainwell PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Port Huron PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Saginaw PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan - Tawas City PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Michigan  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Minnesota  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Minnesota  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Mississippi LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Mississippi  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Mississippi  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Missouri - Bridgeton Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Missouri - Richmond Heights Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Missouri  TCG Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Missouri  TCS Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana - Billings PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana - Butte PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana - Miles City PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana - Missoula PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Montana  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Multiple Practice Sites LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nebraska  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nebraska  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada - Henderson Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada - Henderson II Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada - Las Vegas Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada - Las Vegas II Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada  TCG Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Nevada  TCS Bessler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Hampshire  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Hampshire  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Jersey - Hackensack PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Jersey - Paterson PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Jersey - TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Jersey  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Mexico - Clovis LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Mexico - Rio Rancho LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Mexico - TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New Mexico - TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of New York PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Burlington PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Clyde PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Elizabeth City PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Jacksonville PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - New Bern PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina - Rocky Mount PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Carolina  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Dakota  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of North Dakota  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Akron Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Batavia Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Canton Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Cincinnati II Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Cincinnati III Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Cincinnati Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Circleville Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Columbus II Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Columbus Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Dover Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - East Liverpool Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Fairfield Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Martins Ferry Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Westerville Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio - Youngstown Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio  TCG Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Ohio  TCS Professional Corporation, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oklahoma - Oklahoma City LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oklahoma  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oklahoma  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oregon - Portland PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oregon  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Oregon  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Pennsylvania P.C., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Pennsylvania  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Pennsylvania  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Rhode Island  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Rhode Island  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Richland County Ltd., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of San Luis Obispo County Inc., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Carolina - Aiken LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Carolina - Rock Hill LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Carolina  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Carolina  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Dakota  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of South Dakota  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Tennessee  Columbia PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Tennessee  Franklin PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Tennessee  TCG PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Tennessee  TCS PC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Amarillo PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Atlanta PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Austin II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Austin PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Bryan PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Burnet PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Corpus Christi II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Corpus Christi PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Cypress PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Dallas PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - El Paso II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - El Paso III PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - El Paso PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Fort Worth II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Fort Worth PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Fredericksburg PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Houston PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Humble PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Kerrville PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Kyle PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Livingston PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Lubbock PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Lufkin PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Mount Pleasant PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Plainview PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Rockwall PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Round Rock PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio III PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio IV PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio V PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio VI PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Antonio VII PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - San Marcos PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Texarkana PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas - Tyler PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Texas  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Utah  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Utah  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Vermont  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Vermont  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Alexandria LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Front Royal II LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Front Royal LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Mechanicsville LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Midlothian LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Richmond II LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Richmond LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia - Winchester LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Virginia  TCS LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Arlington PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Auburn PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Bellingham PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Bremerton PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Burien PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Coupeville PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Enumclaw PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Federal Way PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Gig Harbor PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Lakewood PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Mount Vernon PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Puyallup PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Tacoma II PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Tacoma III PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Tacoma PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington - Vancouver PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington County LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Washington  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  Martinsburg PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  South Charleston PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  TCG PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  TCS PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of West Virginia  Wheeling PLLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Wisconsin Ltd., Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Wyoming - Casper LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Wyoming  TCG LLC, Hospitalist Medicine Physicians of Wyoming  TCS LLC, Hospitalists Management Group LLC, Humedica, Humedica Inc., Hygeia Corporation, Hygeia Corporation Ontario, IEC Holdings LLC, IHD Holdings LLC, INOV8 Surgical at Memorial City LLC, INSPIRIS of Texas Physician Group, Illinois Independent Care Network LLC, Imagen Technologies Inc., Impel Consulting Experts L.L.C., Impel Management Services L.L.C., InTouch Pharmacy LLC, Indiana Care Organization LLC, Indiana Endoscopy Centers LLC, Inland Surgery Center L.P., Inmobiliaria Apoquindo 3001 S.A., Inmobiliaria Apoquindo 3600 Ltda., Inmobiliaria Apoquindo S.A., Inmobiliaria Clinica Santa Maria S.A., Inmobiliaria Vinamed Ltda., Inmobiliaria e Inversiones Alameda S.A., Inpatient Services P.C., Inpatient Specialists of California P.C., Inspiris, Inspiris Inc., Instituto Radium de Cammpinas Ltda, Inter-Hospital Physicians Association Inc., International Healthcare Services Inc., Inversiones Clinicas Santa Maria SpA, Ironman Holdco Inc., Ironman Intermediate Holdco LLC, Isapre Banmedica S.A., JPM Healthcare LLC, Johnston Surgicare L.P., Joliet Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Jordan Ridge Family Medicine LLC, Joyable Inc., Kansal Inc. A Professional Corporation, Knox Diagnostic Imaging Center LLC, Kokomo Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, LDI Holding Company LLC, LDI Management Services LLC, LGH-A/Golf ASTC L.L.C., LHC Group, La Esperanza del Peru S.A., Laboratorio ROE S.A., Laboratorios Medicos Amed Quilpue S.A., Landmark Group Holdings LLC, Landmark Health Holdings LLC, Landmark Health LLC, Landmark Health NY IPA LLC, Landmark Health NY PO LLC, Landmark Health Technologies Private Limited, Landmark Health of California LLC, Landmark Health of Massachusetts LLC, Landmark Health of North Carolina LLC, Landmark Health of Oregon LLC, Landmark Health of Pennsylvania LLC, Landmark Health of Washington LLC, Landmark India LLC, Landmark Intermediate Holdings LLC, Landmark MSO LLC, Landmark Medical of Idaho PC, Landmark Medical of Massachusetts PLLC, Landmark Medical of Tennessee PC, Landmark Primary Care LLC, Laser Acquisition Holdings III LLC, Leehar Distributors LLC, Lemhi Ventures Fund I LP, Lemhi Ventures Fund II LP, Level2 Medical Services P.C. Alaska, Lexington Surgery Center Ltd., Liberty Anesthesia Services LLC, LifePrint Health Inc., LifeWell. Ltd. Co., Lifeprint Accountable Care Organization LLC, Limestone Medical Center LLC, Litomedica S.A., Logan Surgical Suites LLC, Lotten-Eyes Oftalmologia Clinica e Cirurgica Ltda., Louisville S.C. Ltd., Louisville-SC Properties Inc., Loyola Ambulatory Surgery Center at Oakbrook Inc., Loyola Ambulatory Surgery Center at Oakbrook L.P., Lusiadas - Parcerias Cascais S.A., Lusiadas A.C.E., Lusiadas Algarve S.A., Lusiadas S.A., Lusiadas SGPS S.A., Lutheran Campus ASC LLC, MAMSI Life and Health Insurance Company, MCNA Health Care Holdings LLC, MCNA Insurance Company, MCNA Systems Corp., MD Ops Inc., MD-Individual Practice Association Inc., ME AHS UC LLC, MGH/SCA LLC, MHC Real Estate Holdings LLC, MIAMI SURGERY CENTER LLC, MSLA Management LLC, Main Line Spine Surgery Center LLC, Managed Care of North America Inc., Managed Physical Network Inc., Mansfield Endoscopy Center LLC, March Holdings Inc., March Vision Care IPA Inc., March Vision Care Inc., March Vision Care of Texas Inc., Marin Health Ventures LLC, Marin Specialty Surgery Center LLC, Marin Surgery Holdings Inc., Marlin Holding Company LLC, Maryland Ambulatory Centers LLC, Maryland-SCA Centers LLC, Massachusetts Assurance Company Ltd. PIC, Massachusetts Avenue Surgery Center LLC, McKenzie Surgery Center L.P., MedExpress Primary Care West Virginia Inc., MedExpress Urgent Care Alabama LLC, MedExpress Urgent Care Inc. - Ohio, MedExpress Urgent Care Maine Inc., MedExpress Urgent Care New Hampshire Inc., MedExpress Urgent Care of Boynton Beach LLC, MedSynergies, MedSynergies LLC, Medical Clinic of North Texas PLLC, Medical Hilfe S.A., Medical Support Los Angeles Inc., Medical Surgical Centers of America Inc., Medical Transportation Services LLC, Melbourne Surgery Center LLC, Memorial City Holdings LLC, Memorial City Partners LLC, Memorial Houston Surgery Center LLC, MemorialCare Surgical Center at Orange Coast LLC, MemorialCare Surgical Center at Saddleback LLC, Mesquite Liberty LLC, Metro I Stone Management Ltd., Mid Atlantic Medical Services, Mid-West National Life Insurance Company of Tennessee, Midlands Orthopaedics Surgery Center LLC, Midwest Center for Day Surgery LLC, Mile High SurgiCenter LLC, Mississippi Medical Plaza L.C., Mobile Medical Services of New Jersey PC, Mobile-SC LTD., Modality Accountable Care Organisation Limited, Moen M.D. P.C., Mohawk Surgery Center LLC, Monarch Management Services Inc., Montgomery Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Monument Health LLC, Moore Orthopaedic Clinic Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Morris County Surgical Center LLC, Mt. Pleasant Surgery Center L.P., Multiangio Ltda., Murrells Inlet ASC LLC, Muskogee Surgical Investors LLC, Mustang Razorback Holdings Inc., My Wellness Solutions LLC, NAMM Holdings Inc., NPN IPA Washington PLLC, NSC Channel Islands LLC, NSC Greensboro LLC, NSC Greensboro West LLC, NSC Lancaster LLC, NSC Seattle Inc., NSC Upland LLC, Naperville Surgical Centre LLC, National Foundation Life Insurance Company, National Pacific Dental Inc., National Surgery Centers LLC, Navigator Health Inc., Nebraska Spine Hospital LLC, Neighborhood Health Partnership Inc., Netwerkes LLC, Nevada Pacific Dental, New Orleans Regional Physician Hospital Organization L.L.C., New West Physicians Inc., New York Proton Management LLC, Newton Holdings LLC, Niagara Hospitalist P.C., Nomad Buyer Inc., North American Medical Management California Inc., North Coast Surgery Center Ltd. a California Limited Partnership, North Dallas Surgical Center LLC, North Kitsap Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, North Puget Sound Oncology Equipment Leasing Company LLC, Northern Nevada Health Network Inc., Northern Rockies Surgery Center L.P., Northern Rockies Surgicenter Inc., Northern Utah Surgery Center LLC, Northwest Hills JV Partners LLC, Northwest Medical Group Alliance LLC, Northwest Spine and Laser Surgery Center LLC, Northwest Surgicare LLC, Northwest Surgicare Ltd. an Illinois Limited Partnership, OC Cardiology Practice Partners LLC, OCC MSO LLC, OSB  Tecnologia e Servicos de Suporte Lda., Omesa SpA, OmniClaim LLC, Oncocare S.A.C., One World Surgery, Ophthalmology Surgery Center of Dallas LLC, Optimum Choice Inc., Optum Bank Inc., Optum Biometrics Inc., Optum Care Inc., Optum Care Networks Inc., Optum Care Services Company, Optum Care of New York Management Inc., Optum Clinics Holdings Inc., Optum Clinics Intermediate Holdings Inc., Optum Compounding Services LLC, Optum Digital Health Holdings LLC, Optum Direct To Consumer Inc., Optum Financial Inc., Optum Frontier Therapies Holdings LLC, Optum Frontier Therapies II LLC, Optum Frontier Therapies LLC, Optum Genomics Inc., Optum Global Solutions Colombia S.A.S., Optum Global Solutions India Private Limited, Optum Global Solutions International B.V., Optum Global Solutions Philippines Inc., Optum Government Solutions Inc., Optum Growth Partners Holdings Inc., Optum Growth Partners LLC, Optum Health & Technology Holdings US Inc., Optum Health & Technology Hong Kong Limited, Optum Health & Technology India Private Limited, Optum Health & Technology Servicos do Brasil Ltda., Optum Health & Technology Singapore Pte. Ltd., Optum Health & Technology US LLC, Optum Health Plan of California, Optum Health Services Canada Ltd., Optum Health Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Optum Health Solutions UK Limited, Optum Health and Technology FZ-LLC, Optum Healthcare of Illinois Inc., Optum Hospice Pharmacy Services LLC, Optum Inc., Optum Infusion Services 100 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 101 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 103 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 200 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 201 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 202 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 203 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 204 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 205 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 206 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 207 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 208 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 209 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 301 LP, Optum Infusion Services 302 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 305 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 308 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 401 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 402 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 403 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 404 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 500 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 501 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 550 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 551 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 553 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 554 Inc., Optum Insurance of Ohio Inc., Optum Labs Inc., Optum Labs LLC, Optum Life Sciences Canada Inc., Optum Management Consulting Shanghai Co. Ltd., Optum Networks of New Jersey Inc., Optum Operations Ireland Unlimited Company, Optum Oregon MSO LLC, Optum Palliative and Hospice Care of Pennsylvania Inc., Optum Palliative and Hospice Care of Texas Inc., Optum Perks LLC, Optum Pharma Services Holdings Inc., Optum Pharmacy 601 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 700 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 701 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 702 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 704 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 705 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 706 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 707 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 800 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 803 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 805 Inc., Optum Pharmacy 806 Inc., Optum Public Sector Solutions Inc., Optum Rocket LLC, Optum SCA CS JV Holdings LLC, Optum Senior Services LLC, Optum Services Inc., Optum Services Ireland Limited, Optum Services Puerto Rico LLC, Optum Solutions UK Holdings Limited, Optum Technology LLC, Optum UK Solutions Group Limited, Optum Venture Global Partners II LP, Optum Venture Global Partners LP, Optum Venture Partners II LP, Optum Venture Partners III LP, Optum Venture Partners LP, Optum Washington Network LLC, Optum Women's and Children's Health LLC, Optum of New York Inc., Optum360 LLC, Optum360 Services Inc., Optum360 Solutions LLC, OptumCare ACO New Mexico LLC, OptumCare ACO West LLC, OptumCare Clinical Trials LLC, OptumCare Colorado ASC LLC, OptumCare Colorado LLC, OptumCare Colorado Springs LLC, OptumCare Endoscopy Center New Mexico LLC, OptumCare Florida CI LLC, OptumCare Florida LLC, OptumCare Holdings Colorado LLC, OptumCare Holdings LLC, OptumCare Management LLC, OptumCare New Mexico LLC, OptumCare New York IPA Inc., OptumCare Portland LLC, OptumCare South Florida LLC, OptumCare Specialty Practices LLC, OptumHealth Care Solutions LLC, OptumHealth Holdings LLC, OptumHealth International B.V., OptumInsight Holdings LLC, OptumInsight Inc., OptumInsight India Private Limited, OptumInsight Life Sciences Inc., OptumRx Administrative Services LLC, OptumRx Discount Card Services LLC, OptumRx Group Holdings Inc., OptumRx Health Solutions LLC, OptumRx Holdings I LLC, OptumRx Holdings LLC, OptumRx Home Delivery of Ohio LLC, OptumRx IPA III Inc., OptumRx Inc., OptumRx NY IPA Inc., OptumRx PBM of Illinois Inc., OptumRx PBM of Maryland LLC, OptumRx PBM of Pennsylvania LLC, OptumRx PBM of Wisconsin LLC, OptumRx PD of Pennsylvania LLC, OptumRx Pharmacy Inc., OptumRx Pharmacy of Nevada Inc., OptumRx of Pennsylvania LLC, OptumServe Technology Services Inc., Oregon Healthcare Resources LLC, Oregon Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Orlando Center for Outpatient Surgery L.P., OrthoNet Holdings Inc., OrthoNet LLC, OrthoNet New York IPA Inc., OrthoNet West Inc., OrthoNet of the South Inc., OrthoWest MSO LLC, Orthology Inc., Orthopedic Center of Palm Beach County LLC, Orthopedic Surgery Center of Palm Beach County LLC, Orthopro Management LLC, Ovations Inc., Owensboro Ambulatory Surgical Facility Ltd., Oxford Benefit Management Inc., Oxford Health Insurance Inc., Oxford Health Plans CT Inc., Oxford Health Plans LLC, Oxford Health Plans NJ Inc., Oxford Health Plans NY Inc., P2P Link LLC, PCCCV Inc., PHC Subsidiary Holdings LLC, PHYSICIANS DAY SURGERY CENTER LLC, PMI Acquisition LLC, PMSI Holdings LLC, PMSI Settlement Solutions LLC, POMCO Inc., POMCO Network Inc., PPH Holdings LLC, PPH Management Company L.L.C., PPH-Columbia Inc., PPH-Gardendale Inc., PS Center LLC, PacifiCare Health Systems, PacifiCare Life Assurance Company, PacifiCare Life and Health Insurance Company, PacifiCare of Arizona Inc., PacifiCare of Colorado Inc., Pacific Cardiovascular Associates Medical Group Inc., Pacific Casualty Company Inc., Pacifico S.A. Entidad Prestadora de Salud, Panama City Surgery Center LLC, Park Hill Surgery Center LLC, Parkway Surgery Center LLC, Patient Care Associates L.L.C., PatientsLikeMe, Patrimonio Autonomo Nueva Clinica, Payment Resolution Services LLC, Peninsula Eye Surgery Center LLC, Penzo Enterprises LLC, Peoples Health, Peoples Health Inc., Perham Physical Therapy LTD, Perimeter Center for Outpatient Surgery L.P., Pharmaceutical Technologies LLC, Physician Alliance of the Rockies LLC, Physicians Health Choice of Texas LLC, Physicians Health Plan of Maryland Inc., Physicians' Surgery Center of Downey LLC, Pinnacle III LLC, Plano de Saude Ana Costa Ltda., Plus One Health Management Puerto Rico Inc., Plus One Holdings Inc., Pocono Ambulatory Surgery Center Limited, Polar II Fundo de Investimento em Participacoes Multiestrategia, Polo Holdco LLC, Pomerado Outpatient Surgical Center Inc., Pomerado Outpatient Surgical Center L.P., Post-Acute Care Center for Research LLC, Practice Partners in Healthcare LLC, Preferred Care Network Inc., Preferred Care Network of Florida Inc., Preferred Care Partners Holding Corp., Preferred Care Partners Inc., Preferred Care Partners Medical Group Inc., PreferredOne, PreferredOne Administrative Services Inc., PreferredOne Insurance Company, Premier Choice ACO Inc., Premier Surgery Center of Louisville L.P., Premiere Medical Resources LLC, Presidio Surgery Center LLC, Prime Health Inc., PrimeCare Medical Network Inc., PrimeCare of Citrus Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Corona Inc., PrimeCare of Hemet Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Inland Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Moreno Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Redlands Inc., PrimeCare of Riverside Inc., PrimeCare of San Bernardino Inc., PrimeCare of Sun City Inc., PrimeCare of Temecula Inc., PrimeDoc St. Francis P.C., PrimeDoc of Richmond P.C., ProHEALTH Care Associates L.L.P., ProHEALTH Care Associates of New Jersey LLP, ProHEALTH Medical Management LLC, ProHealth Physicians ACO LLC, ProHealth Physicians Inc., ProHealth Proton Center Management LLC, ProHealth/CareMount Dental Management LLC, Procura Management Inc., Professional Coverage Services PLLC, Progressive Enterprises Holdings Inc., Progressive Medical LLC, Promotora Country S.A., Pronounced Health Solutions Inc., Prosemedic S.A.C., Prospero Benefits Management LLC, Prospero Care Management LLC, Prospero Management Services LLC, Providence & SCA Development LLC, Providence & SCA Off-Campus Holdings LLC, Providence & SCA On-Campus Holdings LLC, Providence & SCA Outreach Markets Holdings LLC, Pulse Platform LLC, QoL Acquisition Holdings Corp., R Cubed Inc., RABessler M.D. P.C., ROC Surgery LLC, ROCS Holdings LLC, RX Ricardo Campos Ltda., Rally Health Inc., ReMedics LLC, Real Appeal Inc., Redding Surgery Center LLC, Redlands Ambulatory Surgery Center, Redlands-SCA Surgery Centers Inc., Reliant MSO LLC, Reliant Medical Group Inc., Reliant Medical Group The Endoscopy Center LLC, Research Surgical Center LLC, Resonancia Magnetica de Colombia Ltda., Resonancia Magnetica del Country S.A., RightCare Solutions Inc., River Valley ASC LLC, Riverside Corporate Wellness LLC, Riverside Electronic Healthcare Resources Inc., Riverside Medical Management LLC, Riverside Surgical Center of Meadowlands LLC, Riverside Surgical Center of Newark LLC, Robert A. Bessler MD PLLC, Rockville Eye Surgery Center LLC, Rocky Mountain Health Maintenance Organization Incorporated, Rush Oak Brook Surgery Center LLC, SC Affiliates LLC, SCA AHN JV Holdings LLC, SCA Alaska Surgery Center inc., SCA Athens LLC, SCA Austin Holdings LLC, SCA Austin Medical Center Holdings LLC, SCA Aventura Holdings LLC, SCA BOSC Holdings LLC, SCA Bloomfield Holdings LLC, SCA Cedar Park Holdings LLC, SCA Clifton LLC, SCA Colorado Springs Holdings LLC, SCA Community Service Foundation, SCA Cottonwood Holdings LLC, SCA Danbury Surgical Center LLC, SCA Denver Holdings LLC, SCA Development LLC, SCA Duluth Holdings LLC, SCA Duncanville Holdings LLC, SCA Duncanville MSO LLC, SCA ESSC Holdings LLC, SCA Englewood Holdings LLC, SCA Global One Holdings LLC, SCA Greenway Holdings LLC, SCA Grove Creek Holdings LLC, SCA Guilford Holdings LLC, SCA Hays Holdings LLC, SCA Health Value Enterprise LLC, SCA Heartland Holdings LLC, SCA High Point Holdings LLC, SCA HoldCo Inc., SCA Holding Company Inc., SCA Holdings Inc., SCA IEC Holdings LLC, SCA Indiana Holdings LLC, SCA Lutheran Holdings LLC, SCA Maple Grove Holdings LLC, SCA Mohawk Holdings LLC, SCA Murrells Inlet LLC, SCA Northern Utah Holdings LLC, SCA Northwest Holdings LLC, SCA Outside New Jersey LLC, SCA Pacific Holdings Inc., SCA Pacific Surgery Holdings LLC, SCA Palisades Holdings LLC, SCA Pennsylvania Holdings LLC, SCA Pinnacle Holdings LLC, SCA Premier Surgery Center of Louisville LLC, SCA Providence Holdings LLC, SCA ROCS Holdings LLC, SCA Rockledge JV LLC, SCA Rush Oak Brook Holdings LLC, SCA SSSC Holdings LLC, SCA Sage Medical LLC, SCA Sage Medical MSO LLC, SCA San Diego Holdings LLC, SCA Skyway Holdings LLC, SCA South Ogden Holdings LLC, SCA Southwestern PA LLC, SCA Specialists of Florida LLC, SCA Specialty Holdings of Connecticut LLC, SCA Stonegate Holdings LLC, SCA Surgery Holdings LLC, SCA Surgicare of Laguna Hills LLC, SCA Teammate Support Network, SCA West Health Holdings LLC, SCA Westgreen Holdings LLC, SCA Woodbury Holdings LLC, SCA eCode Solutions Private Limited, SCA of Clarksville Inc., SCA-Albuquerque Surgery Properties Inc., SCA-Alliance LLC, SCA-Anne Arundel LLC, SCA-Applecare Partners LLC, SCA-Bethesda LLC, SCA-Blue Ridge LLC, SCA-Bonita Springs LLC, SCA-Brandon LLC, SCA-Castle Rock LLC, SCA-Central Florida LLC, SCA-Charleston LLC, SCA-Chatham LLC, SCA-Chevy Chase LLC, SCA-Citrus Inc., SCA-Colonial Partners LLC, SCA-Colorado Springs LLC, SCA-Connecticut Partners LLC, SCA-DRY CREEK LLC, SCA-Davenport LLC, SCA-Denver LLC, SCA-Denver Physicians Holdings LLC, SCA-Derry LLC, SCA-Doral LLC, SCA-Downey LLC, SCA-Dublin LLC, SCA-Encinitas Inc., SCA-Eugene Inc., SCA-First Coast LLC, SCA-Florence LLC, SCA-Fort Collins Inc., SCA-Fort Walton Inc., SCA-Franklin LLC, SCA-Frederick LLC, SCA-Freeway Holdings LLC, SCA-Ft. Myers LLC, SCA-GRANTS PASS LLC, SCA-Gainesville LLC, SCA-Gladiolus LLC, SCA-Glenwood Holdings LLC, SCA-Grove Place LLC, SCA-Hagerstown LLC, SCA-Hamden LLC, SCA-Hilton Head LLC, SCA-Honolulu LLC, SCA-Houston Executive LLC, SCA-IT Holdings LLC, SCA-Illinois LLC, SCA-JPM Holdings LLC, SCA-Kissing Camels Holdings LLC, SCA-MC VBP Inc., SCA-Main Street LLC, SCA-Marina del Rey LLC, SCA-Mecklenburg Development Corp., SCA-Memorial City LLC, SCA-Memorial LLC, SCA-Merritt LLC, SCA-Midlands LLC, SCA-Midway Management LLC, SCA-Mobile LLC, SCA-Mokena LLC, SCA-Morris Avenue LLC, SCA-Morris County LLC, SCA-Mt. Pleasant LLC, SCA-Naperville LLC, SCA-Naples LLC, SCA-New Jersey LLC, SCA-Newport Beach LLC, SCA-Northeast Georgia Health LLC, SCA-PORTLAND LLC, SCA-Palm Beach LLC, SCA-Palm Beach MSO Holdings LLC, SCA-Panama City Holdings LLC, SCA-Paoli LLC, SCA-Phoenix LLC, SCA-Pocono LLC, SCA-Practice Partners Holdings LLC, SCA-River Valley LLC, SCA-Riverside LLC, SCA-Riverside Partners LLC, SCA-Rockville LLC, SCA-Sacred Heart Holdings LLC, SCA-San Diego Inc., SCA-San Luis Obispo LLC, SCA-Sand Lake LLC, SCA-Santa Rosa Inc., SCA-Somerset LLC, SCA-South Jersey LLC, SCA-Sparta LLC, SCA-Spartanburg Holdings LLC, SCA-St. Louis Holdings LLC, SCA-St. Louis LLC, SCA-St. Lucie LLC, SCA-SurgiCare LLC, SCA-Swiftpath LLC, SCA-VERTA LLC, SCA-VLR Holdings Company LLC, SCA-Wake Forest LLC, SCA-Western Connecticut LLC, SCA-Westover Hills LLC, SCA-Winchester LLC, SCA-Winter Park Inc., SCA-Woodlands Holdings LLC, SCAI Holdings LLC, SCLHS-SCA Holdings LLC, SCP Specialty Infusion LLC, SHC Atlanta LLC, SHC Austin Inc., SHC Hawthorn Inc., SHC Melbourne Inc., SJ East Campus ASC LLC, SRPS LLC, SSSC Holdings LLC, SVHS-SCA Florida JV LLC, Sacred Heart ASC LLC, Saden S.A., Sage Medical Prof. LLC, Salem JV Holdings LLC, Salem Surgery Center LLC, Salveo Specialty Pharmacy Inc., San Diego Endoscopy Center, San Diego Sports and Minimally Invasive Surgery Center LLC, San Francisco Endoscopy Center LLC, San Luis Obispo Surgery Center a California Limited Partnership, Sand Lake SurgiCenter LLC, Santa Barbara Endoscopy Center LLC, Santa Cruz Endoscopy Center LLC, Santa Helena Assistencia Medica S.A., Santa Rosa Surgery Center L.P., Santos Administracao e Participacoes S.A., Sanvello Health Holdings LLC, Sanvello Health Inc., Sanvello Health Limited, Scanner Centromed S.A., Seashore Surgical Institute L.L.C., Seisa Servicos Integrados de Saude Ltda., Senate Street Surgery Center LLC, Senior Benefits L.L.C., Serquinox Holdings LLC, Servicios Integrados de Salud Ltda., Servicios Medicos Amed Quilpue S.A., Servicios Medicos Bio Bio Ltda., Servicios Medicos Ciudad del Mar Ltda., Servicios Medicos Santa Maria Ltda., Servicios Medicos Vespucio Ltda., Servicios de Entrenamiento en Competencias Clinicas Ltda., Serviclinica Inmobiliaria S.A., Serviclinica S.A. Ex Los Leones La Calera, Servisalud Inmobiliaria S.A., Servisalud S.A. Ex Los Carrera Quilpue, Shark Holdings P.C., Sierra Dental Plan Inc., Sierra Health Services Inc, Sierra Health Services Inc., Sierra Health and Life Insurance Company Inc., Sierra Health-Care Options Inc., Sierra Home Medical Products Inc., Sierra Nevada Administrators Inc., Sistema de Administracion Hospitalaria S.A.C., Small Business Insurance Advisors Inc., Sobam  Centro Medico Hospitalar S.A., Sociedad de Inversiones Santa Maria SpA, Solstice Administration Services Inc., Solstice Administrators Inc., Solstice Administrators of Alabama Inc., Solstice Administrators of Arizona Inc., Solstice Administrators of Missouri Inc., Solstice Administrators of North Carolina Inc., Solstice Administrators of Texas Inc., Solstice Benefit Services Inc., Solstice Benefits Inc., Solstice Health Insurance Company, Solstice Healthplans Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Arizona Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Colorado Inc., Solstice Healthplans of New Jersey Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Ohio Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Tennessee Inc., Solstice Healthplans of Texas Inc., Solstice of Illinois Inc., Solstice of Minnesota Inc., Solstice of New York Inc., Solutran LLC, Somerset Outpatient Surgery L.L.C., Sound Inpatient Physicians Inc., Sound Inpatient Physicians Medical Group Inc., Sound Inpatient Physicians of Ohio LLC, Sound Inpatient Physicians of Texas I Inc., Sound Inpatient Physicians  Michigan PLLC, Sound Intensivists of Nevada RBessler M.D. PLLC, Sound Kenwood Hospitalists of Cincinnati Inc., Sound Kenwood Hospitalists of Cincinnati LLC, Sound Physicians Advisory Services Inc., Sound Physicians Alaska Hospitalist Group LLC, Sound Physicians Anesthesiology of Texas PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Arizona Inc., Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Georgia P.C., Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Illinois LLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Kansas LLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Kentucky PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Louisiana Inc., Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Michigan PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Nevada Bessler PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of South Carolina LLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Southern California P.C., Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Texas PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of Washington PLLC, Sound Physicians Emergency Medicine of West Virginia PLLC, Sound Physicians Holdings LLC, Sound Physicians Intensivists of Arizona Inc., Sound Physicians Intensivists of Georgia PC, Sound Physicians Intensivists of South Carolina LLC, Sound Physicians Intensivists of Virginia LLC, Sound Physicians Intensivists of Washington PLLC, Sound Physicians Palliative Care of Maryland P.C., Sound Physicians Telemedicine Inc., Sound Physicians of Florida IV LLC, Sound Physicians of Georgia III P.C., Sound Physicians of Hawaii Inc., Sound Physicians of Idaho PLLC, Sound Physicians of Illinois LLC, Sound Physicians of Indiana LLC, Sound Physicians of Iowa PLLC, Sound Physicians of Kankakee Illinois LLC, Sound Physicians of Massachusetts II P.C., Sound Physicians of Massachusetts Inc., Sound Physicians of New Jersey LLC, Sound Physicians of New York PLLC, Sound Physicians of North Carolina PLLC, Sound Physicians of South Carolina LLC, Sound Physicians of Wyoming LLC, South Arlington Surgical Providers LLC, South County Surgical Center LLC, South Sound Inpatient Physicians PLLC, Southern California Medical Practice Concepts LLC, Southland Hospitalists P.C., Southwest Medical Associates Inc., Southwest Michigan Health Network Inc., Southwest Surgery Center LLC, Southwest Surgical Center LLC, Space Coast Surgical Center Ltd., Spartanburg Surgery Center LLC, Specialists in Urology Surgery Center LLC, Specialized Pharmaceuticals Inc., Specialty Benefits LLC, Specialty Billing Solutions LLC, Specialty Surgical Center LLC, Spectera Inc., Spectera of New York IPA Inc., Sports and Spinal Physical Therapy Inc., St. Cloud Outpatient Surgery Ltd. a Minnesota Limited Partnership, St. Cloud Surgical Center LLC, St. Louis Cardiovascular Institute LLC, St. Louis Specialty Surgical Center LLC, Stonegate JV Partners LLC, Stonegate Surgery Center L.P., Summer Street ASC LLC, SunSurgery LLC, Surgery Center Holding LLC, Surgery Center at Cherry Creek LLC, Surgery Center at Cottonwood LLC, Surgery Center at Grove Creek LLC, Surgery Center at Kissing Camels LLC, Surgery Center at South Ogden LLC, Surgery Center at St. Vincent LLC, Surgery Center of Boca Raton Inc., Surgery Center of Colorado Springs LLC, Surgery Center of Des Moines LLC, Surgery Center of Easton LLC, Surgery Center of Ellicott City Inc., Surgery Center of Fairfield County LLC, Surgery Center of Fort Collins LLC, Surgery Center of Lexington LLC, Surgery Center of Louisville LLC, Surgery Center of Maui LLC, Surgery Center of Mt. Scott LLC, Surgery Center of Muskogee LLC, Surgery Center of Rockville L.L.C., Surgery Center of Southern Pines LLC, Surgery Center of The Woodlands LLC, Surgery Centers of Des Moines Ltd. an Iowa Limited Partnership, Surgery Centers-West Holdings LLC, Surgical Care Affiliates, Surgical Care Affiliates LLC, Surgical Care Affiliates Political Action Committee, Surgical Care Partners of Melbourne LLC, Surgical Caregivers of Fort Worth LLC, Surgical Center of Greensboro LLC, Surgical Center of San Diego LLC, Surgical Center of South Jersey Limited Partnership, Surgical Center of Tuscaloosa Holdings LLC, Surgical Eye Experts LLC, Surgical Health LLC, Surgical Health of Orlando LLC, Surgical Hospital Holdings of Oklahoma LLC, Surgical Management Solutions LLC, Surgicare LLC, Surgicare of Central Jersey LLC, Surgicare of Jackson LLC, Surgicare of Jackson Ltd. a Mississippi Limited Partnership, Surgicare of Joliet Inc., Surgicare of La Veta Inc., Surgicare of La Veta Ltd. a California Limited Partnership, Surgicare of Minneapolis LLC, Surgicare of Minneapolis Ltd. a Minnesota Limited Partnership, Surgicare of Mobile LLC, Surgicare of Mobile Ltd., Surgicare of Oceanside Inc., Surgicare of Owensboro LLC, Surgicare of Salem LLC, Surgicenters of Southern California Inc., Symphonix Health Holdings LLC, T.M. Carr M.D. P.C., THE SURGICAL CENTER OF THE TREASURE COAST L.L.C., THR-SCA Holdings LLC, TeamMD Holdings Inc., TeamMD Iowa Inc., TeamMD Physicians of Texas Inc., TeamUP Insurance Services Inc., Tecnologia de Informacion en Salud S.A., Texas Health Craig Ranch Surgery Center LLC, Texas Health Flower Mound Orthopedic Surgery Center LLC, Texas Health Orthopedic Surgery Center Alliance LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Alliance LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Bedford LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Chisholm Trail LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Irving LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Las Colinas LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Preston Plaza LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Rockwall LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Southwest Fort Worth LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Waxahachie LLC, Texas Health Surgery Center Willow Park LLC, The Advisory Board Company, The Alaska Hospitalist Group LLC, The Chesapeake Life Insurance Company, The Eye Surgery Center of the Carolinas L.P., The Intensivist Group of Langhorne LLC, The Lewin Group Inc., The Outpatient Surgery Center of Hilton Head LLC, The Polyclinic MSO LLC, The Surgery Center of Easton L.P., The Surgical Center of Connecticut LLC, Thomas Johnson Surgery Center LLC, Three Rivers Holdings Inc., Three Rivers Surgical Care L.P., Tmesys LLC, Topimagem Diagnostico por Imagem Ltda., Touchpoint Health Plan, Trails Edge Surgery Center LLC, Trauma Surgery Affiliates LLC, Travel Express Incorporated, Treasure Valley Emerald Properties LLC, Treasure Valley Hospital Limited Partnership, Tri-City Medical Center ASC Operators LLC, Tri-County Surgery Center LLC, Trinity Cardiovascular Care PLLC, Tufts Health Freedom Insurance Company, Tufts Health Freedom Plans Inc., Tuscaloosa Surgical Center L.P., U.S. Behavioral Health Plan California, UCSD Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, UCSD Center for Surgery of Encinitas L.P., UCSD Surgical Center of San Diego LLC, UCSD-SCA Holdings I LLC, UCSD-SCA Holdings II LLC, UHC Finance Ireland Unlimited Company, UHC International Services Inc., UHC of California, UHCG Holdings Ireland Limited, UHCG Services Ireland Limited, UHCG  FZE, UHG Brasil Participacoes S.A., UHG Holdings UK IV Limited, UHG Holdings UK V Limited, UHG Holdings UK VI Limited, UHIC Holdings Inc., UMR Inc., UPHT-SCA Holdings LLC, USHEALTH Academy Inc., USHEALTH Administrators LLC, USHEALTH Advisors LLC, USHEALTH Career Agency Inc., USHEALTH Funding Inc., USHEALTH Group Inc., USMD ASC IV1 LLC, USMD ASC IV2 LLC, USMD Administrative Services L.L.C., USMD Affiliated Services, USMD Holdings Inc., USMD Hospital at Arlington L.P., USMD Hospital at Fort Worth L.P., USMD Inc., USMD PPM LLC, Unidad Medica Diagnostico S.A., Unimerica Insurance Company, Unimerica Life Insurance Company of New York, Unison Health Plan of Delaware Inc., United Behavioral Health, United Behavioral Health of New York I.P.A. Inc., United Group Reinsurance Inc., United Health Foundation, United HealthCare Services Inc., United Medical Park ASC LLC, United Resource Networks IPA of New York Inc., United in Advancing Health Equity Foundation, UnitedHealth Advisors LLC, UnitedHealth Group Employee Assistance Fund, UnitedHealth Group Incorporated, UnitedHealth Group International Finance Ireland Unlimited Company, UnitedHealth International Inc., UnitedHealth Military & Veterans Services LLC, UnitedHealthcare Benefits Plan of California, UnitedHealthcare Benefits of Texas Inc., UnitedHealthcare Children's Foundation Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of California Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Georgia Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Ohio Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Texas L.L.C., UnitedHealthcare Consulting & Assistance Service Beijing Co. 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Full coverage of the Delphi murders: Look back at 5 years of stories

See how the Delphi murders and investigation unfolded through our coverage that began the day Abby and Libby went missing.
Top ranking government officials led by Ministers from the 19 COMESA Member States will be converging in Lusaka, Zambia in the next two weeks for the annual decision-making meetings. They will be taking part in the 37th COMESA Council of Ministers meeting, the Intergovernmental Committee (IC) and the Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Matters.

The Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Matters will be the curtain raiser and takes place from Thursday to Saturday 26-28 October 2017. It will be followed by the IC from Monday 30 October to Wednesday 1st November 2017 and the Council of Ministers meeting on Thursday and Friday 2nd and 3rd November 2017.

The theme for the meetings is COMESA Towards Digital Economic Integration. It seeks to refocus attention on the need to harness the potential of information communication technologies in addressing the existential challenges of regional integration. It comes at a time when the COMESA Secretariat has embarked on a digitization drive that has so far transformed all its meetings to paperless.

Further, it has introduced softwares to capture small scale trade data using smart phones to promote e-business; launched a Short Messaging Service (SMS) for reporting trade barriers and working on a digital Free Trade Area Application that will incorporate e-Commerce, e-Legislation and e-Logistics.

Delegates in the Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Matters will deal with budget of the Secretariat including Member States assessed contributions. It is expected to come up with innovative ways of financing regional integration programmes given the challenges that some member States have in meeting their financial obligations to the Secretariat and its institutions.

The Intergovernmental Committee will bring together Permanent or Principal Secretaries designated by each of the 19 Member States. It is responsible for the development of programmes and action plans in all fields of co-operation except in the finance and monetary sector. The IC will review various status reports on the implementation of regional integration programmes.

The recommendations of the IC meeting which will incorporate that of the administrative and budget matters will be presented to the Council of the Ministers for decision making. The decisions taken by the Council will be binding to all the Member States and will also constitute the work programme for the COMESA Secretariat in the coming year and beyond.

Development partners that support COMESA programmes will attend some of the sessions.
"It seems most folks use taxis, etc for getting around."

Taxi or a tour van/bus.

"We would like to rent a car at the airport for general Island exploring."

While some people rent cars and like it, I cannot recommend car rental in Jamaica. There are too many issues with renting a car. First, you need to contact your insurance to see if your auto insurance is valid in Jamaica or not (many policies explicitly exclude Jamaica). Second, call your credit card company to see if the credit card company provides any insurance coverage in Jamaica (many cards explicitly exclude Jamaica). In Jamaica, insurance coverage is required to rent a car. Other issues include goats, potholes, lack of road signs, donkeys, the aggressive style of driving on the island, the condition of many roads, etc. I suggest hiring a qualified Jamaican driver with a car to take you around the island. Your condo rental agent can arrange this for you.
I am travelling with my dad to Hanoi this December and we are intending to visit Ha Giang for about 5 days (including a day journey to Ha Giang as we are only arriving at Hanoi the night before at around 6.30pm).

As we do not have motorbike license, I am exploring the option to travelling around the region by car (Dong Van, Yen Minh, Lung Cu, Ma Pi Leng Pass etc.). Does anyone know of a good rental company to recommend, and is it compulsory to have dedicated driver instead of doing a self-drive, though I understand that maneuvering in Hanoi itself is a challenge and therefore recommended to have a local driver. I am trying to compare the price between renting a car vs joining a local tour group as my consideration is on having the flexibility if we are travelling by ourselves. I have tried browsing online for car rentals but I am not sure if they are for driving within Hanoi only or possible to travel out of the city.
Many thanks for the info.

We are aware that Halong Bay will be busy - we are actually doing to be on a bit of a backpacker party boat (last time we did a much higher-end package and didn't like it!) - We're 30 so still some party left in us :)

We are not too bothered about beaches, more culture. The reason for this is that we'll spend 2 weeks in South Thailand (again, been before) so no worries there.

One concern alright is that it could be a bit wet in December. We were also there in December last time... it was nice and dry in Hanoi / Halong Bay but friends said it was wet in Hoi An and just wanted to get out of there, but alas, we still want to explore.

Just looking at Google, it appears I can...

Fly Hanoi => Hue

1 - 2 night in Hue

Hue to DaNang to Hoi An

2 nights in Hoi An

Does that make sense, or too rushed?

I notice above you say "Only visit Hoi An" - Is this because of weather fears?

We have kind of written off Phu Quoc on this trip - the original plan was to do a 2 night bike trip (accompanied) from HCMC to Phu Quoc and then fly Phu Quoc back to BKK - the reason we wrote this idea off is we feel it may have been too rushed... but we will look into this. Would this be more of an adventure rather than the suggestion of Hanoi - Hui - Hoi An above?

I have taken on-board your Can Tho suggestion, thank you... going to Google it now to see if it would make sense! -EDIT- Turns out if I do the bike trip from HCMC to Phu Quoc, a stop off here is included!

Edited: 5 years ago
Re: Flying on 1 way ticket from Bangkok to Hanoi - problem?

3. Re: Flying on 1 way ticket from Bangkok to Hanoi - problem?

Sorry but I disagree.

There maybe no problem entering Vietnam without a forwarrding flight but all the LCC are pedantic about oneway tickets and will likely refuse you to board.

Buy an online bus ticket from HCMC to Phnom Penh for under $20 and print that out and your problem is solved.
Hello,

I'm arriving in Ho Chi Minh City on the 6th of January at around midnight and plan to spend around 3 weeks backpacking my way up to Hanoi. However I have plans to also visit Cambodia, but flights from Hanoi to Phom Penh are costly. I would have bought a ticket to arrive instead in Hanoi but chose HCM as the flight from Melbourne was cheap.

Would it be a cheaper option to book a flight from HCM to Hanoiand backpack north to south, then get a bus into Cambodia? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
We are a family who will be travelling to Japan this 2nd week of December and we will be arriving 11pm @ Haneda Airport. On the process now of preparing my itinerary, anyone out there to help me get the cheapest transpo and best option to arrange my free and easy tour for 12 days? Wanted to visit Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto and Tokyo. My departure is from Narita. Thanks in advance.
I would not make a major detour to get there. If you are in Philly or NY and want to swing by for an overnight, that would be fine. If you are visiting during the summer you have the beach, so that could work for a couple of days if the weather is good. There are casinos, so if your goal is just to gamble, that will work. There are some decent restaurants, but nowhere near the quality or variety of Vegas. AC does not have any of the vibe or energy of Vegas.

The Hard Rock has not opened yet, they are still rebuilding it from the former Taj. I have not heard of an opening date yet. Since the closing of five of the casinos the remaining places have become busier and show at least some signs of life. Most would agree that the Borgata offers the most luxury. It is not on the Boardwalk, but in the Marina area, which is a 10 minute taxi ride.
Hi everyone,

I'll be flying to JFK airport in december and will be arriving on a Saturday at 10pm. I booked the HI NYC hostel (891 Amsterdam Avenue, Upper West Side, New York) for that night.

I am a 21 year old girl & I was wondering what you would recommend in terms of getting to my hostel, since I'll be arriving pretty late that night (and still have to pick up my luggage and stuff).

Is the subway doable at that time? And I saw some car share sites as well, does anyone have any experience with that? Or would you recommend staying at another hostel which is easier to get to from the airport?

Thank you so much in advance!
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- Kenyans are set to return to the ballot in one day to elect a president in the repeat presidential election

- The International Community says the Kenyan condition is not favourable for a credible election to take place

- The International Crisis Group agreed that only Kenyan institutions can postpone the election or not, and called on the Supreme Court to consider delaying the poll for another 6 months

The International Community expressed concerns that the Kenyan political climate is not favourable for holding a repeat presidential election on October 26.

According to the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organisation, in spite of this climate, the election must proceed.

"Only Kenyan institutions can decide whether to postpone it or not. The High Court in 2012 delayed elections by 6 months which helped ensure a peaceful vote. The Supreme Court should favourably consider such an extension given the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission Chairman's own acknowledgement that the polling commission cannot guarantee a credible vote within the allotted time," said the ICG as quoted in Daily Nation on Tuesday, October 24

READ ALSO: Revealed: Akombe was involved in intricate plan to force coalition government between Uhuru and Raila

Envoys from United States and United Kingdom hold a press conference in Nairobi on Monday, October 23. Photo: US Embassy Nairobi/Twitter

READ ALSO: Blow to Raila as UK, US say election has to be held within 60 days as enshrined in constitution

The group further called on Kenyan leaders to support such an extension and commit to participate.

"Should the Court grant the delay, then it must be stated clearly that President Uhuru Kenyatta will remain in office pending the fresh vote, and that National Super Alliance presidential candidate will take part in the poll without additional conditions," added the ICG according to a statement seen by TUKO.co.ke.

Speaking separately at a presser on Monday, October 23, United States and United Kingdoms said it was taking time to broker a deal between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga on the repeat election, saying only Kenyan courts can intervene in the matter.

"Attempts to arrive at a solution with Jubilee and NASA leaders yielded little," said US Ambassador Robert Godec on behalf of the envoys.

READ ALSO: Details of Uhuru-Chebukati highly anticipated meeting at State House

President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto during a past presser. Photo: PSCU

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"We have held talks with leaders from both sides. I can say we made some progress but I cannot divulge the details here because there are still some big differences," said US Ambassador Robert Godec who issued the statement on behalf of the envoys.

In a few hours, Kenyans are set to return to the ballot after the Supreme Court nullified President Uhuru's victory in the August 8 poll.

Despite the court victory, on Tuesday, October 10, Raila Odinga withdrew his candidature from the repeat election, saying it was the only way he could ensure a credible election is held in Kenya.

READ ALSO: We are still out of October 26 election, no matter what - NASA tells US

National Super Alliance presidential candidate Raila Odinga. Photo: NASA Coalition/Facebook.

READ ALSO: NASA claims Kenyan embassy in US has written to UN to sack Akombe

NASA claimed the election outcome was already predetermined as the IEBC and Jubilee Party were working together in secret.

The opposition brigade also claimed that the IEBC is acting in bad faith by going ahead with election preparations without addressing the opposition's issues as stated in their irreducible minimum demands.

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Source: TUKO.co.ke
- NASA has been saying there will be no election in Kenya on October 26 if the IEBC does not meet their irreducible minimum demands

- The opposition brigade has been holding demonstrations against the polling commission for weeks now and intend to resume demos on Tuesday, October 24

- According to a group of lawyers, the IEBC can decide to postpone, and not cancel, the presidential election under special circumstances to a later date but at the earliest time possible

A group of 25 lawyers took the initiative to shed lights on a number of " conflicting positions advanced by various parties regarding the October 26 election" as well as give the accurate and legal position on such.

One of the positions is the no October 26 election stand by the National Super Alliance if the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission does not meet their irreducible minimum demands.

According to the lawyers' newspaper advertisement seen by TUKO.co.ke on Tuesday, October 24, Article 38 of the Constitution gives all citizens a right to vote and that also includes the right not to vote. Any Candidate or voter can therefore boycott any election.

READ ALSO: Ensure no ballot boxes get to polling stations - Babu Owino tells NASA supporters

NASA co-leaders have said there will be no election on October 26 if IEBC does not meet their irreducible minimum demands. Photo: NASA Coalition/Facebook.

READ ALSO: Raila is actually preparing to win repeat poll in perfect style - Murkomen warns Jubilee supporters

"In 1997, Stanley Matiba led the 'no reforms no election boycotts. The challenge with NASA's leadership position is that there will be no election. This implies they may try to stop the election and this has already been witnessed where violent disruptions of IEBC training in a number of opposition strongholds was witnessed and Raila's announcement that they will hold demos on election day,

"If violent means are used in effecting the election boycott at the constituency level, the IEBC then can postpone- not cancel- the election in any county,

"Section 55B (1)(a) of the Elections Act 2011 provides that the commission may postpone the election in a constituency, county or ward if they believe that a serious breach of peace is likely to occur, there is a natural disaster or there has been a serious case of election malpractise that will make it impossible for an election to proceed," said the lawyers.

READ ALSO: Details of Uhuru-Chebukati highly anticipated meeting at State House

IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati. Photo: Citizen TV

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The legal team expounded, saying that the IEBC can then arrange for election to take place at a later date but the earliest time possible.

However, unless the IEBC faces the above, then neither can the polling commission, the Constitution, President or any other individual can push for the election to be held past the court ordered 60 day window period.

READ ALSO: ICC confirms receipt of case against Raila and Kalonzo

The IEBC can decide to hold the election for a particular county, constituency or ward at a later date but the earliest time possible. Photo: Standard.

The lawyers further argued that unless the judgement from the presidential election petition filed and won at the Supreme Court is revised, or the constitution amended, then the election must be held within 60 days of the court ruling.

Have something to add to this article? Send to news@tuko.co.ke

Source: TUKO.co.ke
- Acting Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i has issued a new order ahead of the repeat poll

- The CS has banned all political gatherings in the country starting from Tuesday, October 24

- The order by Matiang'i is set to conflict with NASA's anti-IEBC demos which will also resume from Tuesday, October 24

Acting Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi has issues a new ban order ahead of the repeat presidential election scheduled to take place on October 26.

Information reaching TUKO.co.ke indicates that Matiangi issued the order on Monday, October 23, saying that there will be no political gatherings in the country beginning Tuesday, October 24.

This ban date coincides with the date the National Super Alliance co-leaders gave to their supporters, telling them that their anti-Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission demonstrations will resume on the same day.

READ ALSO: Ensure no ballot boxes get to polling stations - Babu Owino tells NASA supporters

Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi. Photo: Nation.

READ ALSO: Raila is actually preparing to win repeat poll in perfect style - Murkomen warns Jubilee supporters

"We are all citizens of this country and have an equal stake in the stability and success of our country. We will not allow these kind of things to happen. Let us tell our brothers and sisters who have different views from us that they have a right to do so but do not have a right to destroy property and lives, and to hurt the good order of society,

"For example, the IEBC gazetted that the official campaign period will end on October 23 and then a political outfit wants to call for a campaign meeting on October 24, that would be an illegal meeting,

"Kenyans should be concerned that we are witnessing an emerging culture which we have to resist - of attacking and downgrading institutions, the belief that if you speak the loudest, you are right - it is neither fair nor right,

READ ALSO: We are still out of October 26 election, no matter what - NASA tells US

Siaya Senator James Orengo leading a demo last week. Photos: TUKO.co.ke

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"Let us tell the country that we will resist this effort to try and bring disorder in our country. All of us, as President Uhuru said, must live by the law," said Matiangi to all the country's Regional Coordinators and County Commissioners during a meeting as quoted on Capital FM.

Matiangi's new countrywide bad comes days after he banned demonstrations in the central business districts of Nairobi, Kisumu and Mombasa counties.

The CS issued this ban after widespread destruction of property and looting was witnessed during NASA demos prior to Thursday, October 12, when he invoked the Public Order Act Cap 56.

READ ALSO: I will only talk to Raila after elections- Uhuru

NASA presidential candidate Raila Odinga told supporters at a rally last week that Kenya will witness the largest ever demonstration in Kenya on October 26. Photo: NASA Coalition/Facebook.

READ ALSO: List of cases filed for or against fresh poll

On Friday, October 13, NASA won a case in which they had filed to lift the Matiangi ban. The opposition leaders claimed Matiangi has no powers to effect such a ban.

The High Court temporarily lifted the ban on the anti-IEBC demos. NASA has been demonstrating against the IEBC, demanding reforms at the polling commission so that a credible election can be held in Kenya.

Failure to effect reforms as per NASA's irreducible minimum demands, opposition leader Raila Odinga maintained that he will not participate in any election and that there will be no election on October 26.

Have something to add to this article? Send to news@tuko.co.ke

Source: TUKO.co.ke
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U.S. newspaper The Washington Post, on the initiative of the Ukrainian Embassy in the United States, has published on its pages a large poster calling for the "next step" in military support for Ukraine, a country that preserves the security of the whole of Europe.

The publication appeared in a printed version in more than half a million copies and was also sent by e-mail to 775,000 recipients, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Ukraine has managed to hold the line against Russian aggression in the eastern region of Donbas, but the cost has been high: more than 10,000 Ukrainian warriors have been killed and wounded. The violence continues. This threat to the people of Ukraine and to the security of Europe must end," reads the illustrated text.

It notes that Ukraine spends 5.6% of its GDP on defense and security. Eight Ukrainian battalions reached interoperability with NATO standards. The U.S. provided AN TPQ counter-battery radars, and U.S. instructors trained more than 4,000 Ukrainian servicemen - and this helped save many lives in Ukraine.

"U.S. military assistance has been vital to Ukraine's defense so far, and Ukraine is ready for the next step," the report says.

Ukraine's Ambassador to the United States Valeriy Chaly said in a comment to Ukrinform on this subject that the released report was "absolutely transparent." It dwells on the achievements of the Ukrainian army, the real benefit of U.S. assistance and the level of bilateral cooperation between America and Ukraine in the defense sector.

"We are waiting for the next step, and I very much hope that such a step will be made," Chaly said.

He also noted that such publications, of course, had their own influence.

"I saw a newspaper opened on this page in some very important offices in the United States. This means that they have definitely paid attention to it," Chaly said.

op
No Ukrainian soldiers were killed, but one serviceperson was wounded in the ATO zone in eastern Ukraine over the past twenty-four hours.

Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Spokesperson for ATO issues Andriy Lysenko said this at a press briefing on Tuesday, October 24, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

As a result of enemy attacks near Marinka, one soldier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was wounded and immediately sent to field hospital. He is in a stable condition, Lysenko said.

iy
The date of delivering the final judgment of the Stockholm arbitration court in Naftogaz of Ukraine v. Russian Gazprom cases related to sale-and-purchase contracts and transportation of gas will be a starting point for liquidation of Naftogaz.

Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Volodymyr Kistion said this in an interview with the Ekonomichna Pravda online Ukrainian newspaper, the Government portal reports.

"I believe it is necessary to conduct de-monopolization. Naftogaz can remain as a legal entity in the gas market segment and work as a gas distributor on an equal footing with other companies," Kistion said.

He noted that the judgment of the Stockholm arbitration court is needed to separate the function of gas transportation from the company which is necessary for the start of the liquidation process.

ol
Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman has said that the growth of Ukraines GDP projected at 3% means that goods and services worth UAH 402 billion should be produced in Ukraine in 2018.

We have projected the growth at 3%. We should produce more goods next year, for the sum of UAH 402 billion, which will create new jobs. This also means taxes to local budgets and wages," Groysman said at a meeting of the Regional Development Council, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

According to him, about UAH 170-180 billion will be transferred to the payroll budget.

At the same time, Groysman noted that the rate of GDP growth can be higher than 3%, but efforts need to be made for this.

iy
Swiss International Air Lines AG, also known as Swiss, will resume flights to Ukraine from March 26, 2018, as reported by avianews.com.

The Swiss airline company Swiss has announced that flights to Ukraine will be resumed from March 26, 2018. On this day the airline company will operate its first Zurich-Kyiv flight after a four-year break. The flights on the said route will be operated four times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, the report states.

The sale of tickets is expected to begin from October 25, 2017.

A reminder that Swiss, which is part of Lufthansa Group, was operating flights from Zurich to Ukraine's Boryspil International Airport between October 2013 and October 2014. The flights to Kyiv were suspended due to economic reasons, as 'business development on the route had fallen short of expectations', according to the company.

mk
Member of the Canadian Parliament Linda Duncan urges to provide citizens of Ukraine with a visa-free travel to Canada.

She said this during a speech in the Canadian Parliament, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"A visa-free regime will facilitate trade between our peoples and will increase opportunities for supporting democratic reforms in Ukraine," Duncan said.

She drew attention to unacceptably high number of refusals to grant Canadian visas to Ukrainians.

"Since May of this year, the European Union has granted Ukrainians visa-free access to the EU, but Canada continues to reject a large number of visa requests of Ukrainians. The reasons for such high level of refusals are not clear, given that the Government praises its trade agreement with Ukraine," the MP stressed.

Duncan urged the Canadian Government to "immediately take measures to introduce a visa-free regime with Ukraine."

ish
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that there will be no early elections in Ukraine.

He said this, while speaking at a meeting of the Regional Development Council in Kyiv on Tuesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"There will be no early elections," the head of state said.

Poroshenko recalled that less than a year remained before the scheduled process on the elections of the president and the Verkhovna Rada and called for this time to be used as efficiently as possible before a "forced pause in reforms and the risk of growing populism."

As reported, the regular elections of the president of Ukraine should take place in March 2019. The elections to the Verkhovna Rada are scheduled for October 2019.

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Ukraine's new ambassador to the alliance has started an important stage in his diplomatic career in the period of bringing the state's policy to the Euro-Atlantic course, the ultimate goal of which is gaining membership of NATO.

In an interview with an Ukrinform correspondent in Brussels, Ambassador Vadym Prystaiko spoke about ambitious plans for political and diplomatic partnership between Ukraine and the North Atlantic Alliance in the face of Russian aggression.

Q: Mr. Ambassador, at the beginning, I have a traditional, but important question. What tasks did the Ukrainian president assign to you after your appointment as head of Ukraine's Mission to NATO?

A: The task is one and very concrete  to do everything to ensure Ukraine's security. How? We have to gain all our capabilities in this organization. And the main political goal is to become a NATO member. But at this stage, we must receive assurances, assistance from the alliance, recommendations so that our country could become more powerful and able to withstand the confrontation that is currently taking place.

Q: What about the issue of Ukraine's proposal to NATO to begin consultations on submitting a bid to obtain a Membership Action Plan (MAP)? Perhaps it is expedient to wait in the context of the so-called strategic patience so as to find a more favorable geopolitical moment for this?

A: Yes, there are different approaches in this process, in particular, on when to do it better. Whether to apply when there is already a result, for example, in 2020, the year which we defined as a stage when Ukraine will meet NATO standards and will be able to demonstrate how far the state has progressed in many areas, first of all, in the defense sector. There is such an idea to use that very moment. This would be a good opportunity to say: you see, we have fulfilled what we promised.

At the same time, this dialogue has already started immediately. Since my first talk with the secretary general of the alliance, when I handed him a letter from the president of Ukraine, it said that our main political task is to get NATO membership. But in order to achieve this, it is necessary to start a dialogue and get a Membership Action Plan and implement it.

We should not forget that for the past ten years we have been implementing our national cooperation programs (ANP) with NATO, which meet the expectations of the allies as part of the MAP. We adapt the program every year, and this year there will be a new, very important stage, when we have a completely new ANP.

Q: What allies in the alliance can openly, unofficially or potentially block the provision of the MAP to Ukraine or even preliminary consultations on this?

A: This question cannot be answered diplomatically, not because we do not want it, but because it harms our work. If we disclose now the positions that we know, then there is one particular ally whose behavior disturbs me. In particular, the issue concerns a statement made by Hungarian Foreign Minister Szijjarto about the intention to block Ukraine in the European Union. I did not hear from the Hungarian minister about the position with respect to NATO. I meet with the Hungarian ambassador this week. I hope that our Hungarian colleagues understand that raising bilateral issues at the level of such an important security organization as NATO is not entirely correct. Let's hope that this will not happen.

Q: This week Brussels will host a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council at the level of permanent representatives, the fifth one since 2014. As is known, the alliance's policy towards Russia remains allegedly unchanged. NATO suspended practical cooperation with Moscow, but leaves open the channels for political and diplomatic dialogue. Regarding this meeting, in terms of Russian aggression against Ukraine, which positions were agreed and coordinated by Kyiv and the alliance so that NATO could bring them to the Russian side?

A: Ukraine's question always remains on the agenda of these meetings. Yes, it is NATO's position to continue such meetings to follow two approaches to Russia, on the one hand, to strengthen defense and deterrence, and on the other hand, there is a need to maintain contact in order to try to understand each other.

The format of the NATO-Russia Council raises a lot of criticism from those who believe that it's not necessary to maintain contact with the aggressor at all. But there are some nations that still believe that it is necessary to explain to Russia so that it understands and leaves Ukraine alone. Obviously, we, as a warring state, do not understand such tactics. But one must realize that NATO as an organization has the right to its own approach and is responsible to its peoples about how to prevent a full-scale confrontation with Russia.

However, Ukraine is always the number one issue. As far as we know, Moscow always tries to drop this issue, but NATO returns to it every time and says it is a prerequisite for holding the meeting. The Russian side agrees with this, but every time it tries to dilute it and reduce the relevance of this issue. But NATO's position remains unchanged - Russia must get out of Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea is not recognized, and Moscow must comply with the Minsk accords.

Q: Last week, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov postponed his first visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels. The NSDC disclosed the reasons for postponing the visit. When can this event happen?

A: There is a technical approach to this issue. High-level visits are being prepared, and there are always risks that they may not be held due to other responsible issues. Our partners take this approach with understanding. Unfortunately, such a visit did not take place for the second time. However, after my request to postpone this visit, the allies are determining other dates. We are working on other alternative options for the arrival of Oleksandr Turchynov and his meeting with the secretary general and allies.

Q: Is the Ukrainian defense minister planning to visit Brussels to participate in a NATO ministerial meeting on November 9-10? What is the agenda for a meeting of the heads of military departments and partners?

A: This visit is still in question. We are planning to organize a high-level visit by the end of the year and hold a NATO-Ukraine Commission meeting at the level of foreign ministers in early December.

Q: What about the initiative of the Ukrainian president on the launch of a new trust fund on assistance from the alliance in conducting psychological rehabilitation of Ukrainian military who repelled Russian aggression?

A: It is still being processed. The country that will do this has to be identified. In general, the issue of filling trust funds is not ideal. The funds are not 100% full. But we work to improve the filling. There are also priorities here, for example, regarding the trust fund for demining. After all, this is connected with the security of our people - both civilians and military. And here there is a real progress.

Q: The NATO secretary general announced the alliance will hold a summit in Brussels on July 11-12, 2018. What agenda for this event can be set for Ukraine?

A: For Ukraine, the priority is to hold a special meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission at the highest level to which the president will be invited.

The mission is currently working on this. The results of the implementation of a comprehensive program of support for Ukraine by the alliance and the work of trust funds will be summed up by that time. It will be possible to declare the fulfillment of a certain stage for us. Also, as planned, by that time we will receive support for our bid to join the Enhanced Opportunity Program. That is, Ukraine should be invited to this program. We are working on it.

Q: Can this be a certain intermediate stage before applying for NATO membership and getting a MAP?

A: I would not call it an intermediate stage. After all, different countries are involved in this program. Some remain within such an enhanced partnership and are not going to get the MAP. But there is a country like Georgia, which seeks to get the MAP, or to step through this stage and immediately become a NATO member.

Q: For several years now, the question of the so-called "military Schengen zone" has been raised and discussed in NATO and in the European Union. In particular, the Dutch defense minister and the former U.S. Army Commander in Europe are actively promoting such a regime for the maximum simplified movement of military contingents, armaments, equipment, materials across the borders of member states, in particular NATO. What is your opinion about this, can Ukraine, as a partner, contribute to this possible international legal order in Europe?

A: The word "Schengen" is used here simply by analogy. And these agreements have nothing in common. The access of armed forces of other states to Ukrainian territory is regulated by the parliament. It is a positive idea for Ukraine to decide how we can join this. But this does not apply to Russian tanks.

Q: Given the military experience gained and the accumulated military potential of Ukraine in confronting armed aggression and the hybrid war unleashed by Russia, how can Kyiv be useful for the alliance and its individual allies and partners?

A: We still cannot become a donor of security, as we need to resolve the issue of security in our own territory. Regarding the real experience gained, it is undoubtedly interesting to NATO. This is also about hybrid challenges and cybercrime, which is supported by the Russian government, Russian special services.

Even the experience of fighting. Europe has not remembered for a long time when troops are fighting or how they dig the trenches...

Unfortunately, Ukraine is passing through this again. This is also about the experience of counteracting the use by the Russians of the latest technology, means of electronic warfare, drones, and everything else that they are testing on us. We are ready to share all these data, no matter how hard they are received, with the alliance, and NATO values it.

Andrii Lavreniuk, Brussels.
A protest rally outside the building of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, has been organized for the purpose of staging a coup in the country.

Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said this at a meeting of the Regional Development Council in Kyiv on Tuesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"The right to a peaceful protest does not mean preparations for a violent coup staged by a small group of people, about 150-200 people, who proclaimed themselves as the only righteous persons and demanded that the state do only what they want to impose on the Ukrainian state, with the support of funding from abroad. I responsibly state that they will not succeed!" he said.

Lutsenko also said that participating in the planned coup was former Head of Odesa Regional State Administration and leader of the Movement of New Forces Mikheil Saakashvili.

"Those taking part in this planned coup are guest actors without any citizenship such as apatride Mikheil Saakashvili, who, while serving as head of the [Odesa] regional state administration, obliged his subordinates to issue permanent residence permits to 20 citizens of Georgia as valuable cultural workers. It is them who are guarding Saakashvili with weapons, staying in the [ten] camp and planning this coup. This will not happen!" he said.

As reported, a protest rally near the Verkhovna Rada began on Tuesday, October 17. Its participants initially demanded the cancellation of bills on the removal of parliamentary immunity, the creation of an anti-corruption court and the change of electoral legislation. On October 21, the demands of the protesters were supplemented by the requirement to submit to parliament a bill on the president's impeachment.

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Lisbon, Portugal (UroToday.com) In the UK, all cancer cases must be reviewed at multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings. The authors report on the efficiency of the renal cancer specialist MDT (sMDT) meetings at their high-volume specialist center.The authors conducted descriptive analysis of 1500 cases discussed from 02/09/2015 onwards at the renal cancer SMDT meeting, which is a weekly meeting with 15 core and 18 extended members. In this meeting cases from 11 referring hospital trusts are usually discussed. The estimated average cost of the meeting was calculated as the number of hours members required to prepare and attend the meeting, using the mid-point of pay band attributable to the attendees (NHS pay scales 2015). The cost per meeting, per case, and per patient was calculated. The annual cost extrapolated.One thousand five hundred discussions took place over 34 meetings (02/09/2015 to 20/04/2016) and represented a cohort of 933 patients: 61.7% male (n=576); mean age 63.8 (IQR 24; range 14-96). One hospital trust referred the majority of patients (n=538, 57.7%). Most patients were referred by urology (n=720, 77.3%). Just above a quarter of discussions (n=399, 26.6%) represented new referrals. Each patient had their case discussed a mean of 1.6 times (range 1-7), with a majority of patients being discussed once (n=563, 60.3%). Only 100 discussions (6.7%) were deferred to subsequent meetings due to incomplete clinical details or unavailability of imaging scans or path reports. 11.1% (n=166) of cases were discharged from care. The estimated average cost of the meeting was: 130,875 per year, 2,517 per meeting, 57 per case discussed, and 92 per patient.In conclusion, an average of 44 cases was discussed per meeting. One discussion was usually sufficient to decide management, deferral of cases was uncommon and, given the low discharge rate, one can infer that referrals to the meeting were appropriate. In a high volume center, the cost per case was modest and represented good value in providing a focused decision making structure for renal cancer patients.Presented by: Joana B NevesAffiliation:Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, London, United KingdomWritten by: Hanan Goldberg, MD, Urologic Oncology Fellow (SUO), University of Toronto, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre.Twitter: @GoldbergHanan at the 37th Congress of Societe Internationale dUrologie - October 19-22, 2017 - Lisbon, Portugal
Cambodian-Americans have expressed concerns over rising authoritarianism in their motherland at community meetings in the United States following the arrest of opposition leader Kem Sokha and likely dissolution of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party.

Bou Watsithi of Woodinville, WA, told VOA Khmer that many Cambodian-Americans saw attempts to dissolve the opposition as illegal and a violation of the countrys commitment to pluralism under the Paris Peace Accords that ended the countrys civil war in 1991.

When the government dissolves a big party it really means that they are abusing democracy and the international community will never stand for that, he said. I believe that the dissolution of Kem Sokhas party and the arrest of Kem Sokha is a violation of human rights and the [2018] election in Cambodia will not be a fair election.

Cambodias ruling Cambodian Peoples Party ordered the arrest of Sokha, president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, on treason charges after a video surfaced where he spoke about receiving advice from individuals in the United States and Canada, which the CPP interpreted as conspiring to overthrow Prime Minister Hun Sen in a color revolution.

The authorities have also shuttered independent NGOs and media outlets in recent weeks, including several radio stations broadcasting critical coverage of the government in rural areas, where it draws much of its support.

Reach Thinath, from Portland, OR, said the international community, which he noted had invested billions of dollars in Cambodias development since the 1990s, would be disappointed by recent developments.

My personal view is that I would like to suggest to the Cambodian government that the opposition ... should not be dissolved in order to let the international community see that our country is among the democratic countries that have an opposition party and a ruling party, he said.

He added that Cambodian-Americans meeting to discuss the ongoing developments in Cambodia should petition the United Nations to lobby signatories to the Paris Peace Accords to apply pressure on Phnom Penh.

Seng Sophan, director of a branch of the Election Committee for Cambodia in Canada, a lobby group, said Cambodians were witnessing a backtracking on rights and democratic oversight not seen since the 1980s.

So it is one-party and dictator rule. People do not have freedoms and the people ... will be the victims altogether because the courts are not fair. So people are the hostages of the dictator.

If we remain silent, they wont know our story, he added. Peaceful struggle does not mean we have to remain silent at all. We have to constantly oppose what is unjust.

Last week, the Inter-Parliamentary Union joined calls for Sokhas release. Previously, the United Nations, United States, European Union and others have expressed concern over the deteriorating rights situation in Cambodia.

Since Sokhas arrest more than half of the CNRPs serving MPs have fled abroad fearing arrest and a politicized justice system.
Contrary to the Chinese governments public support for the crackdown on political opposition in Cambodia, Chinese state media on Sunday published commentary warning of the potential impact of repression on Cambodias hard-won economic growth.

In an article published by the Global Timess Hu Weija warned of the risks of the crackdown on political opponents and civil society would have to the popular destination for Chinese investors.

The article came just days after Beijing held a historic party conference. It also warned of the risks of prolonged strains on relations between Washington and Phnom Penh, adding that the possibility of sanctions cannot be ruled out.

Political stability is a necessity for a nation to prosper and develop, especially a country like Cambodia, whose economy has traditionally been supported by tourism and garment exports, Hu wrote. Letting the situation in Cambodian deteriorate would scare off foreign tourists and investors and deal a heavy blow to the local economy.

The U.S. and E.U. comprised some 60 percent of Cambodias exports in 2016, leading many analysts to warn that economic sanctions against Phnom Penh from the west could have a major impact despite its increasing closeness with China.

China is the main investor in Cambodias garment sector, which produces a large proportion of the exports destined for Europe and North America.

Sweden last week joined other western states in warning that it may revise its relations with Phnom Penh if the government does not change course.

In September, Prime Minister Hun Sens government arrested the opposition leader, Kem Sokha, who now faces treason charges widely seen as politically motivated, while numerous civil society groups and independent media outlets have also been targeted.

Criticism from Western countries may cast shadows over Cambodia's economic future, the Global Times reporter wrote, saying there is a need for appropriate solutions to deescalate the tension to ensure stability.

As an important economic partner of Cambodia, China will pay close attention to the situation in the Southeast Asian country and willingly provide the necessary help, it added.

On Sunday, Hun Sen said the dissolution of the Cambodia National Rescue Party was inevitable, urging opposition MPs and local officials to defect to his ruling Cambodian Peoples Party.

For his critics, Hun Sens pivot to China over recent years is partly to blame for the rising tensions ahead of next years general election. Following Kem Sokhas arrest, Wang Jiarui, a senior Communist Party envoy, reportedly pledged Chinas support for the crackdown.

Em Sovannara, a Phnom Penh-based analyst, said that despite Chinas support for the crackdown, it was not an insignificant sign that a critical article had appeared in state media.

It is not totally reflective [of Chinas position] but it must mean something about Chinas stance, he said.

A foreign ministry spokesman could not be reached.

In July, the International Monetary Fund warned that the Cambodian economy could suffer from election-related uncertainties, pointing to the decline in investment in the first half of 2017.

But Sok Eysan, ruling CPP spokesman, said Chinas stance on current Cambodian government policy was unchanged and that there had been no backdoor whispers to the contrary.

That is the official stance of the Chinese state, he said, referring to Jiaruis comments.

Not everything journalists say is right. That is merely the expression of their opinions. We are thankful that they are worried about the situation in Cambodia, he added.

Chheang Vannarith, a visiting fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, however, said Chinese companies were likely to be worst hit by any economic downturn resulting from the crackdown.

China is concerned over Cambodias political instability, he said. However, China firmly adheres to the non-interference principle. China will continue to support Cambodia in any circumstances.
Kem Sokha, the jailed opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party president, has called on Cambodians to oppose attempts to move the country away from pluralist democracy.

In a letter dated October 23, Sokha, who was jailed in September on treason charges lodged by the government, called on Cambodians to protect the Paris Peace Accords purpose and especially the constitution, referring to the agreement that officially ended Cambodias long-running civil war in 1991.

Following Sokhas arrest, the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party has moved to dissolve the opposition and redistribute its seats to minor parties in a campaign analysts see as a move to one-party rule.

While Sokha used the letter to call for a renewal of the Paris Peace Accords that officially ended Cambodias long-running civil war in 1991, Prime Minister Hun Sen has said the agreement is void.

At a bridge opening ceremony on Monday, Hun Sen said Cambodias 1993 constitution superseded the 1991 agreement, claiming that his governments actions were constitutional.

He said; The Paris Peace Accords were already mixed into the Cambodian constitution. So calling the signatory countries to meet up is outdated and cannot be done unless Cambodia re-creates four parties [that existed at the time]. Not there is only one Cambodia, the government is here.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watchs Asia division, said in a statement on Monday that the Paris accord signatories should act now, and stop Hun Sen from making his destruction of democracy and disregard for human rights the new normal in Cambodia.

On the same day, 55 NGOs asked the U.N. Secretary-General to summon treaty signatories.
Prime Minister Hun Sen and the former co-prime minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, have said they will file a complaint against a senior Funcinpec Party official after a leaked voice recording in which the official claimed party members had received bribes and referred to the late King Norodom Sihanouk as a castrated rooster.

Lu Laysreng, a senior Funcinpec official, allegedly said in the recording that Funcinpec veterans had been given $20,000 each by Hun Sen as part of a deal for them to assume the seats of the opposition in parliament after the Cambodia National Rescue Party is dissolved.

The recording, purportedly of a phone call between Laysreng and Ky Lum Ang, a former Funcinpec lawmaker, was published on pro-government Facebook page Sei Ha.

In the recording, a man alleged to be Laysreng can be heard saying: Lets see if he has courage. If not, he [Hun Sen] should abandon his throne and let another person have it.

The authenticity of the recording could not be confirmed.

Hun Sen responded saying that individuals who insult the monarchy and spread rumors would face legal action.

Laysreng allegedly said in the recording, referring to the deal that would see Funcinpec become the second-largest party in parliament after Hun Sens ruling Cambodian Peoples Party: Those shameless people are accepting the division of the chamber. They will make easy money, as the prime minister bribed them with $20,000 each. It was almost a million dollars [altogether], he said.

Laysreng publicly apologized for the comments on Sunday in a video posted online.

Funcinpec spokesman Nheb Bun Chin said the party was preparing to take legal action against Laysreng, who could not be reached for comment.

Laysreng has reportedly fled to Thailand following the leak, though this could not be independently confirmed.

Sok Sam Oeun, a veteran lawyer, said leaked or tapped phone recordings were usually inadmissible as evidence in court and there was no law governing insulting the monarchy specifically, but that in Cambodia the law was unclear.

While it is illegal to record a private conversation without consent under the criminal code, the Sei Ha Facebook page has never been investigated despite numerous similar leaks in the past.
A U.S. senator has warned that Cambodia could face further travel bans on officials if it does not release opposition leader Kem Sokha ahead of next years general election.

Ted Cruz, who represents Texas for the Republican Party, gave the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen until November 9 to release Kem Sokha, president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party, and to drop legal proceedings against the party that are likely to lead to its dissolution.

He wrote in a letter to Chum Bunrong, Cambodian ambassador to the United States and Mexico, that the U.S. could move to place further travel restrictions on Cambodian officials if the demands were not met.

Washington in September placed visa restrictions on a number of Cambodian foreign ministry officials and their families.

If your Prime Minister does not release Kem Sokha by Nov 9, I will work with my colleagues in Congress and in the Trump administration to see that specified government officials responsible for these actions are prevented from traveling to the United States, he wrote.

The letter is the latest denouncement of Cambodian government policy, which has also seen independent media targeted for closure and U.S.-funded democracy promotion outfit the National Democratic Institute told to leave the country.

From removing independent election monitors and human rights organizations to shuttering hundreds of radio stations, imprisoning Kem Sokha, the Prime Minister has undermined both and is endangering the future not only of US-Cambodia relations but of Cambodia democracy, Cruz wrote.

In a phone interview from France, where he is living in exile, the former CNRP president Sam Rainsy said the government was violating democracy and abandoning the Paris Peace Accords, which ended Cambodias civil war in 1991.

Now Cambodia is not following a democratic path. Cambodia is walking the opposite path so it fully violates the Paris Accords, he said.

I believe that the situation will change because of the free world, democratic countries, are the signatories of the Paris Peace Accords, and will not ignore [them], he added.

If Cambodia wants to have a relationship with them [the international community], wants to receive aid money and loans from them, wants to have their investment, want markets from them, Cambodia needs to respect international laws ... respect international laws, democratic principles that are stipulated in the international treaties that Cambodia signed.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, on a visit to New Delhi, praised the role outlined for India in Washingtons new South Asia strategy, which calls on New Delhi to help bring economic stability and development to the war-torn country.

Calling the strategy a game changer during a speech at a research organization in the Indian capital, Ghani said it was a tribute to New Delhi that Washington had singled out India in this new engagement.

During talks in New Delhi, the Afghan leader and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed a "firm resolve to end the menace of terrorism, and they also emphasized the need to close cross-border sanctuaries to terrorism, according to an Indian Foreign Ministry statement.

The Afghan leader later said Pakistan has come to a key juncture and needs to make a choice, as he referred to accusations the country provides safe havens to terror groups.

India and Afghanistan also reviewed a new development partnership launched last month under which New Delhi is creating 116 new projects in the country, in areas such as health, agriculture and education. The foreign ministry said they are a significant step in building on cooperation between the two countries.

The new projects are part of a longstanding partnership with Afghanistan, under which India has given the war-torn country about $2 billion in aid.

New Delhi, which has trained Afghan defense and security personnel, told Ghani it is ready to extend further assistance, depending upon the needs of Afghan forces.

Ghanis visit to New Delhi came a day after he met U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who made a brief, unannounced stop Monday in Kabul during his ongoing tour of Asia and the Middle East.

While in Kabul, Tillerson said New Delhi is providing important economic activity and that we think they can be a very positive influence on creating the right environment for the future of Afghanistan.

One of the issues on the table Wednesday when Tillerson is scheduled to meet with Indian leaders will be the enhanced role Washington envisions for New Delhi in bringing economic stability to Afghanistan.

The focus of the talks between Tillerson and Indian leaders will not be restricted to South Asia, however, as both India and Washington seek to build on growing strategic ties.

Washington has said it wants to dramatically deepen cooperation with New Delhi and that it sees India as playing a key role in stabilizing not just South Asia, but the Indo-Pacific region.

In a speech last week, Tillerson said India and the U.S. serve as "the eastern and western beacons" for an international rules-based order, which is increasingly under strain.

The U.S. is seeking a growing partnership with India, with an eye on balancing an increasingly assertive China, according to analysts.
Afghanistan, the worlds largest producer of opium, has harvested a record crop this year that more than doubled last years production, a bad omen for fighting terrorism and organized crime, officials say.

Salamt Azimi, the countrys minister for counter-narcotics, told VOA's Pashto service that insecurity kept the government from implementing poppy eradication programs, leading to a 64 percent jump in land dedicated to the lucrative crop to 340,000 hectares.

Analysts like Azimis predecessor, General Khody Dad Hazara, said corruption and weakness of the government were contributing factors to what he called the countrys drug-fueled tsunami disaster.

Shift in tactics



In fighting insurgents, the Afghan government has shifted tactics this year to focus on protecting heavily populated areas. With the Taliban and other extremist groups bolstering their efforts to destabilize the administration, they have managed to seize more land and produce more opium to fund their push.





Last year, poppies were cultivated on 201,000 hectares, yielding 4,700 tons of opium, up 46 percent from 2015. Sources told VOA's Pashto service more than 10,000 tons of opium were produced this year. Opium then can be refined into heroin.

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that opium accounted for some 16 percent of the countrys Gross Domestic Product last year, including more than two-thirds of the entire agricultural sector. In addition to fueling insecurity, violence and insurgency, the drug production is discouraging private and public investment, a UNODC report said.

Afghanistans opium production plunged in 2001 after the Taliban-led government banned it. But it jumped back to pre-ban levels - and higher - after the U.S. led invasion of the country late that year. The U.S. has spent billions of dollars trying to quell the problem by encouraging farmers to raise other crops.

Taliban protection



U.S. anti-drug officials say the Taliban provides protection to traffickers in exchange for weapons, funding and other support. A single kilogram of heroin can generate approximately $1.5 million by the time it reaches users, and the U.S. is trying to cope with a rise in addiction to opiates, both prescription drugs and illegally produced drugs like heroin.

That leads to opportunities to bribe police, judges and customs officials, feeding Afghanistans endemic corruption and scaring off foreign investment.

The main threat to the success of the war (on terrorism) is corruption, John Sopko, who heads corruption watchdog Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the watchdog for the $113 billion that the U.S. has given the country, said earlier this year.
The international aid group Save the Children is suspending its efforts to rescue migrants making the dangerous Mediterranean Sea crossing from Libya.

Tuesday, the organization said the combination of falling numbers of crossings and worsening security forced it to stop sending its ship, the Vos Hestia, out from its port in Italy.

Save the Children said the ship rescued as many as 10,000 migrants over the past year after the smugglers vessels they were in foundered at sea.

The announcement comes just a day after Italian authorities searched the Vos Hestia as part of Romes efforts to deter people smuggling across the Mediterranean. Save the Children said the decision to suspend operations wasnt related to the search and it told journalists that Italian prosecutors had given assurances it is not under investigation. It seems the search might be linked, however, to crew members on the boat.

In August, police seized a boat operated by a German aid organization, saying there was evidence some people smugglers escorted migrants to that boat. Save the Children says it has nothing to do with that case.

Save the Children was one of the first aid groups to sign a voluntary code of conduct with the Italian government to ensure they arent colluding with or encouraging smuggling.

The number of arriving migrants is down about 25 percent so far this year from last year, to around 110,000. And the drop will get worse as the winter closes in. Very few rescue boats are heading out into the Mediterranean now because of falling need.

Tens of thousands of migrants from Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere have struggled to sail from Libya to Italy over the past few years. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have also trekked through Turkey to Europe.

Thousands have died in the sea crossing, prompting both rescue efforts by private aid groups and efforts by the Italian government to staunch the flow.

Rome, with the EUs backing, has helped Libya with efforts to police its vast desert land borders and to patrol its coast to prevent migrants from entering.
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday to grant an undocumented 17-year-old permission to seek an abortion.

The 6-3 ruling reversed an earlier decision by a three-judge appeals court panel to block Jane Doe, as she is known in court to protect her privacy, from having an abortion, which argued that the teen could seek a sponsor in the United States and, under that person's custody, move to terminate her pregnancy. The court said the requirement that a sponsor be found does not "unduly burden" the girl's right to an abortion.

But her lawyers quickly appealed the ruling, arguing that prolonging her pregnancy caused an emotional and physical burden on Doe, and that the government simply had to step aside, as opposed to facilitate, the procedure.

No basis to delay procedure

"There is no basis in Constitution to delay abortion," Jane Doe's lawyer Brigitte Amiri with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told VOA.

"The ACLU actually brought this case as class action to address other girls who have been in the same situation," Amiri said, noting that she was aware of at least three minor girls in this situation before Jane Doe, and that the ACLU hopes this case will prevent the government from "doing this ever again."

"It can be very harmful to delay an abortion  there are medical and psychological effects," Dr. Jenn Conti, ob-gyn and fellow at Physicians for Reproductive Health, told VOA. "The teenager [in Texas] has overcome extreme obstacles, she's come to this country by herself and she's taken steps to get an abortion, but she is still denied and held hostage against her will and forced to carry to term," she said.

Additionally, time is critical in Doe's case because under Texas state law, it is illegal to obtain an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. She is currently 15 weeks pregnant.

Supreme Court next?

The case could still be escalated to the Supreme Court.

Jane Doe has been detained in a refugee shelter in Brownsville, Texas, since Sept. 11, when she was apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Doe, 17, obtained permission from a state judge, in lieu of parental consent, and raised private money to pay for the procedure. But Health and Human Services Department (HHS) has refused to grant her permission to leave the shelter in order to obtain it.

The Department of Health and Human Services has jurisdiction over the welfare of unaccompanied minors who are caught crossing the border.
When Britain's Cambridge University put physicist Stephen Hawking's 1966 thesis on line for the first time Monday, the universitys website collapsed.

Professor Hawkings "Properties of Expanding Universes" has been the most requested item in the universitys library.

To meet the demand, and with Hawkings encouragement, Cambridge made it available on line.

About 60,000 people sought to access it, causing the system to periodically shut down throughout the day Monday.

Hawking is the world's best-known physicist and expert on the cosmos.

His landmark 1988 work "A Brief History of Time" has sold more than 10 million copies.

With his thesis now available for anyone to read, Hawking said he hopes to inspire people around the world to look up at the stars and not down at their feet, to wonder about our place in the universe and to try and make sense of the cosmos.
The U.N. refugee agency says the displacement crisis in Democratic Republic of Congo is worsening and causing havoc and unmitigated suffering for millions of people in key regions of the country.

UNHCR reports that during the past two years the number of people forcibly displaced from their homes in the DRC has more than doubled to nearly four million since 2015. The agency notes almost 430,000 have been displaced in the past three months.

UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told VOA there are many factors behind this alarming surge.

Clearly, the presidential election is among factors one has to consider in the country, but we cannot draw a straight line between that and the displacement we are seeing elsewhere. It seems to be driven by so many different factors including ethnic, political, land-grabbing and a host of other things as well, Edwards said.



The DRC presidential election has been postponed from November 2016 to April 2018, but groups opposed to incumbent President Joseph Kabila, who is legally barred from running for a third term, fear that date is now in doubt.

Edwards warns the risk of further displacement is high because of widespread military activities, unrest and violence fueled by ethnic and political conflict.

Areas of major concern include the eastern province of Tanganyika, where more than 580,000 people are internally displaced, many of them victims of gross abuse, including looting and torture. Other key areas of forcible displacement are found in North and South Kivu provinces and in the Kasai region.

In addition to the millions of internally displaced people, the UNHCR reports more than 620,000 refugees from the DRC have sought asylum in more than 11 African countries.
The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says the families of the four U.S. soldiers killed in Niger deserve a quick and accurate investigation.

Marine General Joseph Dunford spoke to reporters Monday as the Trump administration strives to clear up the still murky details of just what happened on during the October 3rd operation.

Dunford acknowledged that many questions are still unanswered and even the Pentagon does not know exactly what happened and why. He said the probe is also geared toward learning lessons.

The general said the initial assessment is that the U.S. forces were ambushed by local tribal fighters associated with Islamic State.



One question still to be answered is why it took an hour for U.S. forces to call for backup after they first encountered the enemy and why it took another hour for French fighters jets to show up.

"I make no judgement as to how long it took them to ask for support. I don't know that they thought they needed support prior to that time, I don't know how this attack unfolded. I don't know what their initial assessment was of what they were confronted with," the general said.

Dunford also said under the rules of engagement in Niger, U.S. forces only accompany Niger forces when the "chances of enemy, contact are unlikely."

Other questions that need a thorough investigation include whether the U.S. had adequate intelligence and an accurate assessment of the threat in the area -- and why did it take two days to recover the body of Sergeant La David Johnson.

General Dunford says he will have to "redouble" his efforts to get answers to Congress and to Johnson's family. He also promised to look into claims by Johnson's widow Myeshia that she was denied permission to view her husband's body in the casket.

The United States has close to 1,000 forces as part of a French-led mission helping African forces confront Islamic State and al-Qaida in West Africa.

Dunford says Islamic State will try to set up a presence in West Africa since being driven from Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. He says U.S. operations are aimed at training local forces to make sure that does not happen.
Egypt's military targeted an arms convoy crossing the border from Libya, destroying vehicles loaded with weapons and explosives, and killing militants, a military spokesman said Monday.

The airstrikes come a few days after authorities officially announced that at least 16 policemen were killed in a brazen ambush by militants, about 135 kilometers (84 miles) southwest of Cairo.

Military spokesman Col. Tamer el-Rifai said in a statement that airstrikes destroyed eight vehicles and killed suspected militants, without elaborating.

He posted photos on his official Facebook page that showed charred vehicles and weapons allegedly belonging to the suspected militants.

Friday's attack took place near Egypt's vast western desert, where a previous series of attacks were blamed on Islamic militants pouring in from chaotic Libya.



Egypt has long contended that weapons smuggled across the porous desert border with Libya have reached militants operating on its soil.

Also on Monday, el-Rifai said that the military killed six suspected militants in a raid in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula. The military seized weapons and ammunition, he said.



Egypt has been struggling to contain an insurgency by Islamic militants led by a local affiliate of the Islamic State group mostly in the northern region of the Sinai Peninsula, but attacks on the mainland have also recently increased.
Khady Faye was 11 when her mother told her she would soon be getting married.

There was a party but I didnt go. Everyone made beignets, but I went into the forest and cried. I stayed there until dark, " she recalls.



Faye soon found out she was pregnant. Her family supported her decision to divorce her husband and took in her son when he was born.



But her life had been upended.

West and Central Africa have the highest prevalence rates of child marriage on the continent, and the second highest in the world behind South Asia.

Reversing this trend could have major economic benefits, according to experts taking part in high-level meetings in Senegal this week aimed at reinvigorating the campaign to end child marriage in the region.





Lost childhood



Faye says she felt too old to go back to school after her divorce. She didnt want to be in the same class as her little sister so she stayed home to help her mother.



She eventually left her village in the Fatick region of southwest Senegal and end up on the streets. VOA met Khady at the Maison Rose, a shelter for girls and women on the outskirts of Dakar. She is now 23 years old with limited prospects.

Experts gathered in Dakar are taking aim at the economic impact of child marriage.



West and Central Africa is home to six of the 10 countries with the highest prevalence rates worldwide. According to UNICEF, four in 10 girls in the region are married before the age of 18.



In a new study, the World Bank says by 2030, the annual benefit from ending child marriage could reach well above $60 billion for West and Central Africa.

When they marry as children, before the age of eighteen, they tend to have more children over their lifetime and also more children earlier," said Quentin Wodon, a lead economist for the World Bank. "So that reduction in fertility has an impact on population growth, and what happens is that if you reduce population growth, then GDP per capita will increase."



The World Bank estimates that by 2030 governments would also see a benefit of $5 billion annually due to reduced under-five mortality and stunting, both seen as related to early childbearing.

Earning potential



The study also looked at the current earning potential of women like Khady who were child brides. In the six countries that account for two-thirds of the regions population, the World Bank found that women married as girls have lost out on over $8 billion in income and that amount is likely to rise if trends continue.

But economic conditions in the region also help keep the practice alive, says Mabel van Oranje, the chair of Girls Not Brides, a global partnership working to end child marriage.

I think it has to do partially with the enormous levels of poverty here. It also has to do a lot with social norms, tradition. You know its an honorable thing to make sure that your daughter is married at a young age, and parents think that they do the right thing, she said.



She adds that so far only four West and Central African countries have developed national strategies to end child marriage  Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Chad.



Action plan



The World Bank hopes that highlighting the economic impacts of child marriage could push African governments to act.

The findings help us in terms of advocating for funding from the legislative sector so that we get money allocated to these areas, said Hadiza Amino, a technical adviser to Nigerias vice president..

Last year, Nigeria implemented a plan to end child marriage by 2021. But the country is still predicted to have the continent's highest number of child brides by 2050.



At current rates of progress, the U.N. Childrens Fund says it will take over 100 years to eradicate child marriage from West and Central Africa. UNICEF say getting girls to school and keeping them there as long as possible is one of the best strategies for reversing the trend.
Republican Sen. Jeff Flake said Tuesday he would not seek re-election next year, delivering a forceful condemnation of the "flagrant disregard of truth and decency" and bemoaning political complicity in a Senate speech clearly directed at President Donald Trump.

Speaking to a rapt audience of other senators, the first-term Arizona lawmaker spelled out his frustration and disappointment in a floor speech before relaying the news that he would not be on the ballot in 2018.

"There are times we must risk our careers," Flake said. "Now is such a time."

Flake, who has criticized the path that the Republican Party has taken under Trump, said the impulse "to threaten and scapegoat" could turn America and the GOP into a "fearful, backward-looking people" and a "fearful, backward-looking party." Flake didn't mention Trump by name, but clearly was directing his remarks at the president and his administration.

Flake, a former House member, is a conservative who favors limited government and free markets but one known to work on bipartisan legislation. Most notably, he has worked on immigration legislation aimed at finding a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants living here illegally.

"A political career does not mean much if we are complicit in undermining these values," he said. He received applause at the conclusion of his remarks.

His speech came shortly after Trump had joined Senate Republicans at their weekly policy luncheon, and came a few hours after the president had engaged in a war of words with another retiring Republican senator, Bob Corker of Tennessee.

Republicans and Democrats were upset with the news.

"It is one of the most depressing things that has happened during my time in the Senate," said Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., who called Flake a man of great integrity and principle.

Moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she was "extraordinarily disappointed" and called Flake a "person of utmost integrity."

Arizona politics

After bucking Trump in a state the president won, Flake is bottoming out in polls. Republicans may be left with a hard-core conservative challenger that might win the primary but lose in the general election.

Flake was facing a challenge from former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who failed in her effort to take out Sen. John McCain last year but has gained some traction this year. Last week, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon attended a fundraiser for her.

But mainstream Republicans in Arizona believe Ward cannot beat Rep. Krysten Sinema, who is running in her primary as the only well-known Democratic candidate. They've been searching for another candidate to take on Flake, and his decision to step aside opens the door wide for those efforts.

Besides Ward, other potential candidates for Flake's seat include current state university regent Jay Heiler, former state GOP chairman Robert Graham, state treasurer and 2016 Trump campaign CFO Jeff DeWit. Other names that have been floated in recent weeks include Reps. Paul Gosar and Trent Franks, conservative stalwarts who sit in safe GOP seats.

Heiler announced early this month that he was considering a run. He was chief of staff to Arizona Gov. Fife Symington in the 1990s and has been involved in numerous political campaigns.

Former Gov. Jan Brewer was pushing Heiler as a candidate.

"I've known Jeff for a long time and I admire him for his service that he has given to our state," she said Friday. "But I believe it is an opportunity for me to support a different candidate, someone that I've known for a long while, and somebody that I believe will serve Arizona the best."

On Tuesday, she tweeted that "the 2018 Senate race about to get real interesting!"

Herschel Fink, executive director of the Arizona Democratic Party, said Flake's retirement "further exposes the Republican Party's civil war  which will continue in full force in Arizona as the GOP struggles with a field of candidates who go further and further out of touch with voters."
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley warned that Africa's violence and humanitarian disasters could spread into larger security threats to the United States. In order to stem the growing conflicts, the U.S. envoy is traveling to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo in one of the first visits to the continent by a senior member of the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump has said little about Africa since taking office but the killing of four U.S. soldiers during an ambush by Islamic State-affiliated fighters in Niger earlier this month has focused attention on Washington's expanded military presence and counter-terrorism operations against militants in Africa.

After meetings on Monday with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and a senior African Union official, Haley told reporters she hoped this was the beginning of a stronger relationship with the AU and our African partners.

The United States very much sees Africa as a very important part of the world. We see great opportunities in Africa. We see challenges in Africa, but we want to support and help in those situations. But most importantly, we want to see how we can partner together. Whether if that is through economic development, whether it is through strategic practices, whether it is through political solution," she said.

Haley said she also plans to meet with South Sudan President Salva Kiir and Congolese President Joseph Kabila to deliver a strong message that their governments need to stop making the work of aid workers and peacekeepers more difficult.

Our goal is that we should have one voice and one voice is that we have to see peace in South Sudan, we have to see that women are being taken care of. We cant see any more death. We cant see any more famine. Weve got to start seeing the situation get better and I think the pressure is only going to continue until President Kiir makes a difference in that area, she said.

South Sudan plunged into conflict in December 2013 after a dispute in the capital Juba between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and his deputy at the time, rebel leader Riek Machar.

Haley said that the possibility of freezing U.S. aid to South Sudan with a hope it would expedite the peace process must be viewed carefully.

When you look at South Sudan, you have to really think hard before you pull U.S. aid. Because, he [Kiir] doesnt care if his people suffer, and that is the concern we have as we dont know that that will make a difference. About pulling the US aid, that is a conversation we will have. And we are trying to see exactly what will move president Kiir, she said.

Just to the southwest, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been in turmoil since the 1990s. The DRC has never witnessed a democratic, peaceful transfer of power. Instead, this mineral-rich country in the heart of Africa has been plagued by dozens of armed groups vying for power and control, with rape used as a weapon of war, and children recruited as soldiers.



Ambassador Haley said that the U.S. was hoping that President [Joseph] Kabila would do the right thing according to DRCs constitution and have free and fair elections sooner than later as his legacy.
Iran and Syria are developing even closer defense ties as is evident in the recently concluded visit to Damascus by Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Bagheri, analysts say.

The two countries signed a memorandum of understanding announcing plans for closer military cooperation and coordination.

Maj. Gen. Bagheri, who was heading a delegation of some senior officers from the Iranian military, also visited the frontlines in the northern province of Aleppo where most Iran-backed forces are stationed.

The visit occurred shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that he will not tolerate an Iranian military presence in neighboring Syria. Analysts say that the timing of the visit signifies the rationale behind this meeting.

Tehran tries to show that it is not intimidated by threats or having any plan to drop its long-held ambition of implementing an anti-Israel axis in the region, says Babak Taghvaei, a Malta based military analyst.

We will remain in the resistance axis hand in hand against terrorism, said Syrian Defense Minister Fahd Jassem al-Freij during a meeting with the Iranian delegation. He also stressed on the continuing cooperation to resist Zionist aggression against nations of the region.

We are proud of the strategic cooperation between Syria and Iran which achieved the greatest victories.

Some experts believe that the ties between Damascus and Tehran have stretched beyond a friendly relationship and entered a new unprecedented phase.

We have a full scale Iranian involvement in all aspects of the country including military, security and economy level and many Syrian opposition parties call it an Iranian occupation of Syria, says Dr. Radwan Ziadeh, a Washington-based analyst. Iran found this as a chance to annex Syria to its backyard which includes Iraq and Lebanon.

Tehran has been one of Assads strongest supporters since the countrys crisis began in 2011 and has sent thousands of troops including Shi'ite soldiers from its neighboring region to support Assad's regime. Tehran says its forces are in Syria to protect the Zeinab Shrine in Damascus, a Shi'ite holy site.

However, Tel Aviv sees Iranian presence in Syria as a part of greater threat to its existence. In his meeting last month with the UN Secretary General, Netanyahu accused Iran of turning Syria into a base of military entrenchment as part of its declared goal to eradicate Israel.

Some analysts say that by signing a comprehensive military deal, Tehran may also be trying to respond to Washington regarding a harsher new policy the United States adapted toward Tehran.

On Friday, President Trump announced his new strategy toward Iran, adopting a more aggressive stance on everything from the nuclear deal to Iranian ballistic missiles. Trump directed the Treasury Department (IRGC) to impose additional sanctions against Irans Revolutionary Guard Corp. The Treasury designated the IRGC as a supporter of terrorism for its backing of the Quds Force, which conducts operations outside Iran.
Elections for president and parliament in Iraqs Kurdistan will be delayed for eight months after political parties failed to present candidates, the regional parliament said Tuesday.

The vote was previously set to take place November 1, following a September independence referendum in which a vast majority of Kurds voted yes.

The Iraqi government strongly opposed the referendum vote and sent troops last week into several Kurdish-held territories to seize back control for the central government.

The ensuing retreat by Kurdish forces led to the decision among Kurdish politicians to postpone the elections.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking Tuesday while on a trip to Iraq, said he is concerned and a bit saddened by the recent differences experienced between the Iraqi government and the minority Kurds.

We have friends both in Baghdad and in Irbil, and we encourage both parties to enter into discussion and dialogue, he said. I think if both parties commit themselves to a unified Iraq, to the Iraqi constitution, I think all differences can be addressed, and the rights of all can be respected.

The United States, along with Iraqs neighbors Iran and Turkey, all opposed the Kurdish referendum vote.

Amnesty International reported Tuesday at least 11 civilians were killed during fierce clashes between Iraqi government forces and Kurdish militias in Iraqs multi-ethnic city of Tuz Khurmatu on October 16, as Iraqi forces retook the Kurdish-held land.

According to the Amnesty report, the 11 civilians were killed by indiscriminate attacks, while hundreds of properties were looted, set on fire and destroyed in what appears to be a targeted attack on predominantly Kurdish areas of the city.

Tens of thousands of others are displaced and afraid to go back home, the report said.
Islamic State militants have claimed responsibility for an explosion in the Somali town of Bosaso on Tuesday, the fourth attack claimed by the group in two years.

Witnesses said a man pushing explosives hidden on a wheelbarrow approached the central police station of the commercial port town. The explosion killed the bomber and injured six others. A second explosion was heard in the same area believed to be from an improvised explosive device but did not cause any casualties, witnesses said.

The attack comes four days after IS militants based in Somalia attacked Injil village in the Bari region, killing two civilians including a child after accusing their father of collaborating with the regional government, relatives said.

IS militants emerged in Somalia after splitting from al-Shabab in October 2015.

The group claimed its biggest attack in late October 2016 when its fighters seized the ancient town of Qandala from Puntland forces and kept control of it for 40 days.

Islamic State militants in Somalia have bases in the eastern Al-Bari Mountains of Puntland and are led by Abdulkadir Mumin, a well-known cleric who was previously a member of al-Shababs leadership.
The driver of Kenya's Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu was shot and wounded Tuesday, two days ahead of the country's re-run of presidential elections, according to Nairobi police.

Mwilu's driver, identified by local media as Police Constable Titus Musyoka and in some reports described as a bodyguard was shot in the shoulder. Police said it was not yet clear whether the Mwilu was in the car at the time.

Thursday's vote is Kenya's second try this year to elect as president. The Supreme Court threw out the results of the August 8 election because of what it called "irregularities and illegalities."

Last month, the chief justice said judges have received repeated threats since the Supreme Court ruling.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga, who withdrew his candidacy from the re-run, called on his supporters to protest what they perceive are ongoing problems with the election commission. Violence has broken out between police and protesters as authorities banned demonstrations in Kenya's largest cities last week.
Maryland is the latest state to prohibit official business with companies boycotting Israel.

Republican Governor Larry Hogan signed an executive order Monday after the Democratic-led state legislature filed to pass a bill spelling out the policy.

"Boycotts based on religion, national origin, place of residence or ethnicity are discriminatory," Hogan said. "Contracting with businesses that practice discrimination would make the state a passive participant in private-sector commercial discrimination."

The governor said the state will review all existing contracts for any boycotts of Israel.

The head of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Yousef Munayyer, called Hogan's executive order "profoundly disappointing" and unconstitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against an anti-boycott law in Kansas.

Other states that have passed anti-Israeli boycott laws include Illinois, New York and South Carolina.
In a joint operation funded by the United States, the U.N. migration and refugee agencies have repatriated 134 Somali refugees from war-torn Yemen.

A refugee boat carrying 73 men and women and 61 children left the Yemeni port of Aden on Monday and is to arrive Tuesday at the Somali port of Berbera. It is the third voluntary return of Somalis organized by the International Organization for Migration and U.N. refugee agency since September.

IOM spokesman Joel Millman said some previous efforts had to be suspended in the past few years because of the risks involved in organizing an operation such as this in a war-torn country.

Despite security difficulties there and the fact of divided authorities, we were still able to get into an area around Aden that has not always been accessible to humanitarian aid groups and manage this transport, he said.

The U.N. migration agency reports the Somalis came to Yemen in search of a better life, but got caught up in the conflict and often were subjected to abuse by smugglers. The IOM began organizing the voluntary returns in November 2016. Since then, the agency has helped 1,845 Somalis return home.

Millman told VOA Somali refugees receive a reintegration package to help them restart their lives when they arrive home. He said they often receive a grant of $1,100 so they can start a business, buy a cow, or invest in some other form of livelihood. That acts as a big inducement for refugees to voluntarily return, he noted.

It is a strong sweetener because the stigma of going abroad and failing is so great that we find this is a very effective way of lubricating I guess is the best word, this process, he said.

Millman said the cash grant ends up being less expensive for the donor than the cost of keeping a refugee or migrant in detention in Europe. He noted that the repatriation project is funded by a $4.4 million donation from the United States.
Fears of a serial killer have police in Tampa escorting children to school in one neighborhood near downtown, and a city bus changed its usual route.

Three people have been shot to death in the past two weeks within a 1-mile (1.6-kilometer) radius in the normally quiet Seminole Heights neighborhood. Police believe the shootings are linked by proximity and time frame, but they don't have a motive or a suspect.

The three victims did not know each other, but all three rode the bus and were alone when they were shot on the street. None were robbed.

I'm afraid, said Maria Maldonado, who lives near the scene of two of the shootings, about 300 yards apart. The other was less than a mile away.

Maldonado won't let her 7-year-old son play in the yard.

We don't open the door or nothing. A lot of people are scared. I'm scared for my son, for the neighborhood, she said Monday.

Seminole Heights is a working-class neighborhood northeast of downtown Tampa that's slowly becoming gentrified. Run-down homes sit next to renovated, historic bungalows, and trendy restaurants have sprung up near auto body shops.

Residents and business owners say there are car burglaries and fights between kids, but they are not accustomed to anything like the violence that started Oct. 9.

Business owners report a downturn in recent days, as worried residents stay inside.

We don't know what's next, said Majed Foqahaa, owner of the M&M market.

He said two of the victims would come into the store and buy soda and snacks. Foqahaa said he has a concealed carry permit for a handgun, and he keeps it at the store while he is working. When he walks out to his car at night, he holds it in his hand.

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn said the city has put dozens of officers in the area around the clock. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also are helping, he said.

There aren't a lot of facts, or evidence, yet, Buckhorn said as he visited a block where one victim was killed. But it's not for lack of Tampa Police Department trying. We literally have put bodies out here by the dozens. We're going to find this guy and we're not leaving this neighborhood till we do.

He was hesitant to use the word serial killer, but Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan wasn't.

We can call it what we want. If that brings attention to this. ... That's fine, he said.

Police said 22-year-old Benjamin Mitchell was the first person killed on Oct. 9. Two days later, 32-year-old Monica Hoffa was killed in a vacant lot. Anthony Naiboa, 20, was shot and killed Oct. 19.

Lula Mae Lewis, an 80-year-old woman who has lived in the area for 30 years, lives across the street from where Hoffa's body was found.

I heard the shots that Wednesday night, she said. But I was afraid to open my door because they were so loud, it sounded like it was just right here.
The uproar over Indonesia's top military general being denied entry to the U.S. has thrown the countries' bilateral relations relations into the spotlight.

General Gatot Nurmantyo was denied boarding onto an Emirates flight to Washington Saturday at Jakartas Soekarno-Hatta airport as he prepared to attend a counter-extremism conference this week at the invitation of his American counterpart, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph F. Dunford, Jr.

The U.S. ambassador and deputy ambassador to Indonesia both apologized for the incident, which appeared to have been the result of a security screening glitch.

But the diplomatic damage had already been inflicted. Gatot chose not to travel on a rebooked flight after he was denied boarding on Saturday evening. By the next day, anti-America signs had started popping up around Jakarta.

The U.S. Embassy was, and remains, prepared to facilitate the Generals travel to the United States, it said in a statement. We remain committed to our strategic partnership with Indonesia as a way to deliver security and prosperity to both our nations and peoples.

But Indonesias Foreign Ministry said the apology did not go far enough. This issue is very important and we are trying to continue to insist that the U.S. immediately give an explanation, said Minister Retno Marsudi. The Jakarta Post's editorial board has called it a diplomatic scandal and said the embassys response reflects outstanding ignorance of the gravity of the incident.

It will also likely burnish the public image and nationalist credentials of Gatot, a freewheeling general who has frequently clashed with current President Joko Jokowi Widodo and may be eyeing political office himself in 2019.

Unforced error

The incident certainly wouldn't hurt Gatots image. In fact, politically speaking, it has certainly boosted his profile, said Evan Laksmana, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. It has now become a domestic political issue, as most parties and politicians are effectively siding with him in demanding an explanation from the US, claiming that the incident insulted Indonesia, and so forth.

That said, he has been laying relatively low in the past 48 hours, leaving the military spokesperson to do the talking," said Laksmana. "This suggests at the very least that he knows how the incident could quickly become a political issue. Gatot broke his silence on Tuesday to tell reporters that Indonesian President Joko Widodo had told him he no longer needed to travel to America to attend the conference on Indonesias behalf.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said General Gatot's office was warned of potential delays due to security issues, and there has been speculation that he incited the incident to increase his public standing.

Gatot's rejection of the chance to visit the U.S. has the effect of upsetting the White House while showing his courage in putting the U.S. on the spot to his admirers in Indonesia, said Arbi Sanit, a political scientist at the University of Indonesia.

Military relations

The incident comes at the heels of a major release of declassified U.S. Embassy files on the 1965-66 mass killings in Indonesia that were received coolly by the Indonesian defense establishment.

It also comes during a restive time for the Indonesian military, which has been asserting its cultural capital in recent months with what some experts believe are eyes on the 2019 presidential election. Jokowi is the first Indonesian president without military ties.

Military relations between the U.S. and Indonesia, which were strong during the Suharto dictatorship, were scaled back in the 1990s during the East Timor independence conflict. But President Obama resumed financial aid and training for Indonesian forces in 2010.

Fraying ties

The Indonesian Armys official Twitter account posted a quote from the first president, Sukarno, on Monday, that said, If you are looking for a leader, look for one who is hated or feared by foreigners, because," he Tweeted, "such a leader will defend you from foreign interests.

There has been a powerful wave of nationalism across Indonesia in recent years, from diplomacy to nationalizing its vast natural resources. Sukarno himself famously helped to found the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War.

The impact of the Gatot affair will become more clear in coming days as more statements are issued from both governments.

But the lack of clarity from the American side, not to mention the manner in which the denial was delivered via Emirates Airlines, will almost ensure this incident remains a potent political issue, putting Jokowi in a tough spot, said Laksmana. If he doesn't respond forcefully, then he could be painted as yet another foreign agent.
Two women on trial for murdering the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un were taken Tuesday to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport where they allegedly poisoned him.

Wearing bulletproof vests and escorted by heavily armed guards, Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong of Vietnam toured the crime scene along with the judge, defense lawyers and prosecutors.

The purpose of the visit was to give the trial participants a better understanding of the events that took place on February 13, the day the two women allegedly smeared Kim Jong Nam's face with the VX nerve agent.

The judge and rest of the participants retraced the steps taken by Kim and the defendants, including a restaurant where Aisyah was seen with a man identified by police as "Mr. Chang," and the airport clinic where Kim sought help after he was attacked.

Malaysian investigators say four unidentified suspects in Kim Jong Nam's killing are still at large. Lawyers for the two women said they were led to believe they were taking part in a reality television show hoax. South Korea's intelligence agency says Kim was the target of an assassination plot ordered by his brother.

Kim Jong Nam was estranged from Kim Jong Un. He reportedly fell out of favor with their father, the late Kim Jong Il, in 2001, when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport to visit the Disneyland theme park in Tokyo.
An unprecedented Chinese financial and construction effort is rapidly developing Pakistans strategically located Arabian Sea port of Gwadar into one of the worlds largest transit and transshipment cargo facilities.

The deep water port lies at the convergence of three of the most commercially important regions of the world, the oil-rich Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia.

Beijing is developing Gwadar as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, known as CPEC. The two countries launched the 15-year joint mega project in 2015 when President Xi Jinping visited Islamabad.

Under the cooperation deal construction or improvement of highways, railways, pipelines, power plants, communications and industrial zones is underway in Pakistan with an initially estimated Chinese investment of $46 billion.

The aim is to link Gwadar to landlocked western China, including its Muslim-majority Xinjiang region, giving it access to a shorter and secure route through Pakistan to global trade. The port will also provide the shortest route to landlocked Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan, through transit trade and offering transshipment facilities.

Chinese fuel imports and trading cargo will be loaded on trucks and ferried to and from Xinjiang through the Karakoram Highway, snaking past snow-caped peaks in northern Pakistan.

Qualitative change

Gwadar will be able to handle about one million tons of cargo annually by the end of the year. Officials anticipate that with expansion plans under way, the port will become South Asias biggest shipping center within five years, with a yearly capacity of handling 13-million tons of cargo. And by 2030, they say, it will be capable of handling up to 400-million tons of cargo annually.

China has in recent months begun calling CPEC the flagship project of its global Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI. The qualitative change from an experimental project to flagship project underscores the importance Beijing attaches to CPEC, said Zhao Lijian, the deputy chief of mission at the Chinese embassy in Islamabad.

Out of 39 early harvest projects under CPEC, 19 have since been completed or are under construction with a Chinese investment of about $18.5 billion, Lijian told VOA. The progress makes it the fastest developing of all of at least six BRIs corridors China plans to establish, added the Chinese diplomat.

Gwadar is a symbol of regional peace and prosperity because it will connect countries around Pakistan to serve their trading interests, said port Chairman Dostain Khan Jamaldini.



Jamaldini dismissed as not true concerns that skilled Chinese laborers, engineers and businesses will flood Pakistan, hurting domestic industries. About 65 percent of the labor force on construction and other projects at Gwadar is Pakistani, and the number of Chinese is currently just over 300, he added.



Security concerns and Indias claims over some of the territory crossed by the massive project remain key challenges for Gwadar and CPEC in general. Pakistani and Chinese officials dismiss reported assertions that Beijing is expanding its presence at Gwadar to be able to handle naval ships and military transport planes.

The collaboration has no strategic or political aims against a third country, insisted Lijian. He went on to assert that the purpose of CPEC is to help our iron brother Pakistan to improve its economy and to strengthen the bilateral relationship.

Pakistani officials have trained and deployed about 15,000 troops and paramilitary forces to guard CPEC-related projects and the Chinese working on them. Islamabad alleges that the Indian intelligence agency has been tasked to plot subversive acts to derail CPEC.



Sleepy fishing town

Gwadar, with a population of around 100,000, mostly fishermen and boat makers, is often referred to as a sleepy fishing town.

The costal citys poverty-stricken residents are hoping new employment opportunities will be created for them in the wake of the massive development underway in Gwadar.



But their immediate challenges are shortages of clean drinking water and hours long daily power blackouts.

We are happy Chinese are building port, hospitals, schools and roads but right now we out of power during most of the day and limited water availability, said fisherman Khalil Ahmed.

The family, like other fishermen in Gwadar, has been plying unspoiled crystal blue waters of the Arabian Sea for decades with age-old fishing techniques and barely surviving on limited income because financial resources do not allow them to buy modern fishing tools.

However, ongoing massive economic activity will qualitatively change the lives of its poverty-stricken residents for the better, says Mushahid Hussain, who chairs a parliamentary committee on CPEC.

He says a fisheries processing plant is being installed at the port and arrangements are being planned to train and equip fishermen to improve and export local fish to other parts of Pakistan and China.

Senator Hussain believes economic projects under construction in Gwadar will help its people and address long-running grievances of the province of Baluchistan, where the port is situated.

The poverty-stricken largest Pakistani province has long been in the grip of a low-level Baluchistan separatist insurgency, which mainly stems from demands from the federal government for local control over Baluchistans vast natural resources.

Gwadars existing 50-bed government hospital is being extended to 300 beds, a technical and vocational institute is being constructed, a 300-megawatts coal-based power plant and a desalination plant are being installed, a new international airport and a six-lane international standard expressway are being built to connect Gwadar port with the rest of Pakistan and neighboring countries, including Iran and Afghanistan.

Local officials say most of the projects, including the new airport, are being built with Chinese financial grants. The rest of the projects in Gwadar and elsewhere in Pakistan under CPEC are being built with interest-free and soft-loans from China.


The revitalization of the armed forces over the past five years has found special mention in General Secretary Xi Jinping's report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

Focusing especially on the role of technology and innovation in building a stronger military, which is crucial for establishing socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, Xi said "by the year 2020, mechanization" will be "basically achieved" as "information technology application has come a long way, and strategic capabilities have seen a big improvement".

Xi also emphasized the People's Liberation Army must be made comprehensively stronger through technological and independent innovations and forward-looking plans aimed at developing cutting-edge military technology.

Thanks to the remarkable progress it has made in modernizing its national defense, China has realized the importance of technological innovations in building a strong military. That's why China is committed to allowing innovations to play a greater role in building a stronger PLA and developing its combat capability.

IT has become a main battlefield in the new era. Scientific and technological advancement, particularly rapidly developing IT, triggered a new military revolution at the end of the last century. As a result, IT has gradually become a leading factor in military development.

So far, China has achieved remarkable development in the high-tech field, particularly in the IT sector, thanks to the advancement in microelectronics and micro-electromechanical systems, new materials, aerospace and deep-sea exploration. China now has the technology and capability to independently develop and manufacture advanced armaments. For example, China has launched its first domestically developed aircraft carrier and heavy-lift transport jet Y-20, and successfully docked the Tiangong-1, China's first space lab, with Shenzhou-8, Shenzhou-9 and Shenzhou-10 spaceships.

IT-based armaments have become a new factor in the PLA's combat capability, as the PLA is now equipped mostly with second-generation armaments with third-generation hardware making up its core. With the further synthesis of the army, navy, air force and rocket force, the PLA today has an optimized structure and achieved much higher level of modernization.

Besides, China is now focusing on critical high-tech programs to develop strategic, fundamental and key projects of frontier military technology, such as information fusion, stealth and anti-stealth equipment, and high-quality compound materials, which will help improve the PLA's combat capability.

China's defensive strategy, combined with its military progress, has drawn praise from across the world, because no matter how strong it becomes, China will always follow a defensive defense policy and oppose supremacy, hegemony and military expansionism.

The PLA has been playing a big role in maintaining global peace, as proved by its active participation in the United Nations' peacekeeping operations. And a stronger PLA will play a greater role in maintaining global peace by, among other things, cooperating with neighboring countries as well as the United States on security issues.

Whether or not a country with stronger armed forces will pose a threat to global peace depends on its national defense policy. Given this fact, the PLA will be not only a better guardian of national security but also a greater contributor to world peace if China upgrades its national defense policy and armed forces through technological innovations.

The author is an expert on military issues.
Russia used its U.N. veto Tuesday to block a resolution extending the mandate of the investigators probing chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

In a Security Council vote, 11 countries supported extending the mission for another year, while Russia and Bolivia voted against the measure, and China and Kazakhstan abstained.

The investigating team, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism or JIM, is expected to make public a report on Thursday that could identify the party responsible for a deadly April 4 attack in the rebel-controlled town of Khan Sheikhoun in southern Idlib that killed and sickened scores of civilians.

Three days later, the United States launched an airstrike on a Syrian air base which Washington accused the regime of Bashar al-Assad of having used to launch the poison gas attack.

Accountability

While the question of whether sarin or a sarin-like substance is not disputed, who used it still has to be officially confirmed, and it is anticipated the JIM's report could shed light on the matter.

It would be politically embarrassing for Russia, a staunch ally of President Assad, if evidence shows that the regime  and not, for example, Islamic State militants  are responsible for the attack. In Syria, the government is the only party to the conflict that possesses air capabilities. Russia has previously suggested that the gas was released from a bomb on the ground and not in the air.

Russia's U.N. envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, first sought to postpone Tuesday's vote through a procedural measure until after the release of the JIM's report, saying the hastily-called vote was an effort by Washington to embarrass Moscow.

"You need to show up Russia and show that Russia is guilty of not extending the JIM, in fact you are the one who is begging for confrontation," Nebenzia said of the U.S. delegation, which drafted the text and pushed for the vote.

While the procedural vote had the support of China, Kazakhstan and Bolivia, it fell short of the required eight-vote majority and failed to prevent the other vote going ahead, forcing Russia to use its veto.

Eighth veto on Syria

"I want to underscore that today's voting is senseless also, because it won't have any impact on the future of the JIM," Nebenzia said after casting his veto  the eighth time Russia has done so on Syria. "We will return to the issue of extension in the future  we have not stopped it."

The mission's mandate does not expire until November 16, so the council has three weeks to approve an extension without disrupting the team's work, as happened last year when consensus could not be reached on the JIM's extension.

"The question we must ask ourselves is, whether the JIM is being attacked because it has failed in its job to determine the truth in Syria, or because its conclusions have been politically inconvenient for some council members," said U.S. envoy Michele Sison.

"Russia called for the formation of the JIM, they negotiated its terms, they agreed its mission, and yet when faced with the prospect of the JIM revealing the truth, why has Russia alone chosen to shoot the messenger?" asked British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft.

Some diplomats said the move for the vote now was intended to avoid politicizing whatever conclusions the report draws and avoiding having them affect votes for the extension.

All council members expressed the hope that they could return to the issue and reach consensus on extending the JIM's mandate before it expires next month.
Serbia's defense minister on Tuesday criticized remarks by the top U.S. diplomat in the region, who recently called on Belgrade to choose between aligning itself with either Washington and Brussels or Moscow if it intends to secure European Union status.

Addressing Serbian news outlets, Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin, who has been known to advocate a pro-Russian stance, said comments by U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Hoyt Brian Yee represent "the greatest pressure against Serbia yet."

The "statement was not made by a friend or a person respecting Serbia, respecting our right to decide independently," Vulin said, calling Yee's remarks "very undiplomatic."

It was late Monday when Yee, speaking at the Serbian Economic Summit in Belgrade, said EU candidate countries should clearly demonstrate their desire to become members, and not seesaw between two sides.

Calling the U.S. Serbia's partner on the country's path toward the EU membership, "the EU hopefuls should clearly demonstrate that they really want to become members," Yee said. "You cannot sit on two chairs, especially if those chairs are too far apart."

Among the six Western Balkan countries aiming to join the EU  Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania  Serbia may be closest to securing membership. Still recovering from a decade of wars and economic turmoil in the 1990s, however, Serbia also maintains unusually close ties with Russia.

Serbia received MIG-29 jet fighters as a "gift" from Russian president Vladimir Putin just days ago.

Yee expressed concerns that Serbia has turned only halfway toward the EU, and the other half toward Russia, adding "that countries should pick one side regardless of how difficult that might be."

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic's office said that during a meeting Tuesday, the U.S. envoy expressed "perception that Serbia is with one foot on an EU path, and another in a union with Russia."

Vucic's office later issued a statement saying the president carefully listened to Yee's concerns and responded to his remarks "very directly."

"[Vucic] will make his answer public in the coming days," the statement said.

Jaksa Scekic, a Belgrade-based pundit and journalist who has covered Balkan affairs for more than three decades, called the statement "mixed," adding that it was "probably the best sign that it was a joint product with opinions from both sides."

"Serbia has been playing this game for a while now and this is nothing new," Scekic told VOA's Serbian Service. "The country risks staying in isolation and it has to decide. Usually after harsh rhetoric, we will probably see gifts and bribes coming from all sides. We will have to wait and see which gift Serbia will take."

Under pressure from its historic Slavic ally Russia, Serbia, like some of its Balkan neighbors, has been pressured by Russia to stay out of NATO and other Western bodies.

"It is clear from Russia's actions that it wants to have disjointed Balkans, not strong and united," Yee said.
U.S. President Donald Trumps former chief strategist came to the defense of the administrations foreign policy, denying it is either isolationist or Islamophobic, while taking repeated swipes at foreign policy elites for creating a mess he said must now be cleaned up.

I dont think theres anything that President Trump has done in this administration that makes us look isolationist at all, Steve Bannon said Monday in Washington.

As proof, he pointed to a counterterror speech the president gave this past May at a summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, adding it should have put to bed [the notion] that President Trump was an Islamophobe.

Bannon, who left the administration in August, also credited Trump with engineering the collapse of the Islamic State terror groups so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria by changing the U.S. strategy from one of attrition to annihilation.

But the former chief White House strategist admitted much of the fight was carried out by U.S. partners on the ground, including Iraqi and Kurdish forces, which he said would serve as a model for future U.S. actions.

Thats once again what President Trump is trying to get across  its not going to have to be America that has to lead here," he said. Its whats in the vital national security interests of the United States is what you should commit to.

Bannon's remarks Monday, coming at the conclusion of a conference sponsored by the Hudson Institute, stood in stark contrast to the thoughts of two other prominent, former officials who spoke earlier in the day.

Were living in a world where there are a huge number of flashpointsprobably more flashpoints than weve seen since the end of World War II, warned Leon Panetta, a former secretary of defense. It demands very strong U.S. leadership."

Panetta, who also served as CIA director in the Obama administration, further warned President Trump to lower the volume of rhetoric with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over Pyongyangs nuclear weapons program.

The former commander of U.S. Central Command and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, retired General David Petraeus, also noted U.S. leadership is vital, especially in the fight against terrorism.

The U.S. invariably has to lead, Petraeus said. We have the assets that are proving to be the most valuable of all.

But Bannon rejected such criticism, blaming geniuses of both political parties for creating what he called a slew of messes, from North Korea to the long-running war in Afghanistan.

President Trump in his whole candidacy from the very beginning  was a repudiation of the elites, he said. A repudiation of this concept weve had of this rules-based international order of which the American middle class and working class underwrite with their taxes and more importantly with the blood of their children.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson undertook his inaugural visit to Pakistan to urge the country's leaders to step up counter militancy and counterterrorism efforts.

Tillerson led his delegation into meetings Tuesday with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, the country's military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and the head of the spy agency and other top officials.

They discussed continued bilateral cooperation and partnership, and expanding economic ties between Pakistan and the United States, said a U.S. embassy statement.

"The Secretary reiterated President Donald Trump's message that Pakistan must increase its efforts to eradicate militants and terrorists operating within the country," the statement said.

To address those concerns, it added, Tillerson outlined Washington's new South Asia strategy and the vital role Pakistan can play to facilitate a peace process in Afghanistan that can bring stability and security to the region.

"Pakistan and the United States share common interests in establishing a stable, peaceful Afghanistan, defeating ISIS in South Asia, and eliminating terrorist groups that threaten both Pakistan and the United States," the statement quoted Tillerson as telling Pakistani officials.

Continuing engagement

A separate statement issued by the prime minister's office quoted Abbasi as underlining the importance of high-level engagements between Pakistan and the United States and expressing satisfaction on the progress made during these interactions in recent months.

"The two sides agreed to build upon the understandings reached in the dialogue process and to continue the pace and scope of high-level engagements in [the] future," according to the Pakistani statement.

It said Abbasi also informed the U.S. delegation of steps Islamabad has taken to promote cooperation and stability in Afghanistan and the region, including enhancement of border security.

The statement quoted Abbasi as saying that progress in promoting peace and stability in the region was linked to the resolution of Pakistan's territorial dispute with India over Kashmir.

Relations between India and Pakistan, almost always on a roller coaster in their 70-year history of independence from the British, seem to be in a downward spiral for the past two years. Both sides used harsh words against each other at the recent U.N. General Assembly in New York, accusing each other of human rights abuses or supporting terrorism.

Indian Pakistani dialogue

Tillerson is scheduled to hold talks with Indian leaders Wednesday in New Delhi, where tensions between India and Pakistan are expected to come under discussion.

"The possibility of an India-Pakistan dialogue will be discussed, and Mr. Tillerson will also brief his Indian counterparts on the outcome of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group [U.S.-China-Afghanistan-Pakistan] meeting on talks with Taliban that took place in Oman on October 16," a source familiar with the planning for the visit told the Indian English-language daily The Hindu.

Tillerson briefly visited Afghanistan on an unannounced trip Monday to meet with President Ashraf Ghani and other top officials of the Afghan unity government.

Speaking to reporters after talks with Afghan leaders, Tillerson said the U.S. relationship with Pakistan will be based on how Pakistan acts, and that the goal is to create the opportunity for peace and stability both there and in Afghanistan.

Pakistan is accused of publicly supporting the U.S.-led international mission in Afghanistan but secretly providing support and shelter to the Taliban, as well as its ally, the Haqqani network. Islamabad denies the charges.

Positive change

In Afghanistan, Tillerson discussed the new U.S. strategy for South Asia.

"I think the U.S. has made it clear in terms of our support for Afghanistan, support for a sovereign, unified, and democratic Afghanistan, charting a path to peace, prosperity and self-reliance. It is imperative at the end that we are denying safe haven to any terrorist organizations or any extremists to any part of this world," Tillerson said.

Ghani said the new U.S. strategy brought a positive change in the region and added, "all stakeholders should carry out their responsibilities sincerely," according to the statement from the presidential palace.

Tillerson is on a multi-nation tour of the Middle East and South Asia. It also included an unannounced trip to Iraq.
U.S. officials have declined to refer to violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar as ethnic cleansing before they complete a review into the issue.

Though multiple senators called the violence ethnic cleansing during a hearing on the conflict Tuesday, representatives from the State Department and USAID said their agencies could not yet make that declaration.

This is ethnic cleansing," ranking member Senator Ben Cardin said, echoing statements by his Senate colleagues and also by the United Nations, who qualified the conflict as ethnic cleansing last month.

"Ethnic cleansing is defined by the United Nations Commission of experts as rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from area," he said at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

Cardin, as well as representatives of the State Department, noted the Trump administration is currently evaluating whether the United States will officially call the violence in Myanmar ethnic cleansing. The Associated Press is reporting that determination could come this week.

The State Department has separately called on the Myanmar government to address the matter, while promising U.S. support for the country's transition to democracy.

"The Government of Burma [Myanmar], including its armed forces, must take immediate action to ensure peace and security; implement commitments to ensure humanitarian access to communities in desperate need; facilitate the safe and voluntary return of those who have fled or been displaced in Rakhine State; and address the root causes of systematic discrimination against the Rohingya by implementing the Rakhine Advisory Commission's recommendations, which includes providing a credible path to citizenship. We are ready to support these efforts," a statement released by State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said.

The United Nations said last week that 589,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh since August 25, fleeing violence amid reports of entire villages being burned. Access to the troubled northern Rakhine state has been severely limited to both aid agencies and journalists.
For more than 50 years, every American president has been forced to grapple, in one way or another, with the quagmire of the Vietnam War. Now it's Donald Trump's turn.



The ghosts of Vietnam are stirring anew, just as Trump prepares to visit the nation on his first presidential tour of Asia.

Vietnam war hero Sen. John McCain, who spent more than five years in a prisoner of war camp after his plane was shot down, this week put an unwelcome spotlight on Trump's five draft deferments to avoid military service. And Trump's prolonged political tussle over the proper way for presidents to honor and grieve with the families of fallen soldiers has focused attention on his lack of military service as well.



Trump tried to set all that aside Monday as he presented the Medal of Honor to retired Capt. Gary Rose, a Vietnam era medic who repeatedly ran into the line of enemy fire and ignored his own wounds to save his colleagues during a fierce firefight in enemy-controlled territory in September 1970.

"Mike, this is serious stuff," Trump said. "Your love for your fellow soldier, your devotion to your country inspires us all."



But the matter of Trump's lack of service wasn't far off stage.



McCain, the Arizona Republican who has frequently clashed with the president, made clear he had Trump in mind Monday as he criticized the Vietnam draft system that forced low-income Americans to serve while the wealthy could avoid war with a doctor's note. Trump, the son of a millionaire developer, received draft deferments, one attained with a physician's letter stating that he suffered from bone spurs in his feet.

"I don't consider him so much a draft dodger as I feel that the system was so wrong that certain Americans could evade their responsibilities to serve the country," McCain said on ABC's "The View." McCain was being pressed about earlier comments on C-SPAN in which he lamented that the military "drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say they had a bone spur."



When a host on the ABC show remarked that people thought McCain had been talking about Trump on C-SPAN because the president had sought a medical deferment, McCain interjected, "More than once, yes."

Over the decades, Vietnam has become shorthand for a bogged-down military conflict, a comparison invoked during more recent struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has served as a cautionary lesson about the political peril for presidents ensnared in prolonged overseas military operations.

President Lyndon Johnson abandoned his re-election quest after an escalation in the war led to more American deaths, while President Richard Nixon took fierce criticism for expanding the conflict. President Bill Clinton's wartime deferment before he entered the Vietnam draft generated considerable heat during the 1992 presidential campaign.



More recently, questions about the service of George W. Bush and John Kerry were prominent in the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard but faced scrutiny over his status and why he was never deployed overseas.

Kerry was a decorated veteran who threw away his medals and testified against the war before Congress. His service record was questioned in campaign ads.



Obama, the first post-Vietnam president, positioned himself as the one who might heal the rift between those who served and those who didn't. Although he, too, was burdened with lessons of the war.



"Let us resolve that when America sends our sons and daughters into harm's way, we will always give them a clear mission; we will always give them a sound strategy; we will give them the equipment they need to get the job done," Obama said at a visit to the Vietnam Memorial in 2012. "We will have their backs."



Trump is slated to make his first presidential trip to Vietnam early next month as part of his 12-day, five-nation Asia tour. He will participate in an international summit in Da Nang before meeting the Vietnamese president in Hanoi. The White House said Monday it had not been decided if Trump would visit any war sites, like the prison where McCain was held.



Trump ignited a feud with McCain in July 2015 when he belittled the senator's time in captivity.



"He's not a war hero," said Trump. "He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."



Trump once compared his ability to avoid sexually transmitted diseases in the Manhattan dating scene of the 1980s and 1990s to the perils of wartime that claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans in Vietnam.



"It is a dangerous world out there," Trump said in a 1997 interview with shock jock Howard Stern. "It's like Vietnam, sort of. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier."



The renewed focus on Trump's lack of service in Vietnam comes as he faces scrutiny over his treatment of the families of America's war dead.



Trump has been pushing back against criticism from the family of slain Army Sgt. La David Johnson, killed this month in Niger, that he was disrespectful in his condolence call to the new widow.

Trump has steadfastly denied the claim. But the Johnsons are not the only family of a slain solider to be angry at Trump.



The family of Capt. Ben Cross of Bethel, Maine, who was one of three Marines killed in an MV-22 Osprey crash in August off the coast of Australia, received a condolence letter from Trump on Friday.



The family questioned the timing of the letter, which arrived via overnight mail after the controversy over Gold Star families had erupted.



"I think that anyone who received five deferrals in order to avoid military service is unfit to be commander in chief and even less qualified to console a grieving family who has lost a loved one defending our country," Cross' brother Ryan said Monday. "He doesn't know the first thing about service or sacrifice."
President Donald Trump is heading to Dallas on the eve of the deadline for release of a final batch of documents that could shed more light on that Texas citys darkest moment.



The trip is ostensibly for a fundraiser expected to raise more than $4 million for Texas Republicans.



But it coincides with a deadline set by Congress for the release of all material relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy almost 54 years ago. By law, Trump has authority to decide whether any of the material should remain secret after October 26, but he has indicated he would allow everything to be made public.





White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders confirmed to VOA that Trump would be speaking at the fundraiser, but declined to say whether he would address the records issue. A local TV station reported that tickets for the fundraiser started at $2,700 and a photo with the president would cost $35,000.



The documents due for release Thursday comprise more than five million pages of records related to Kennedy's murder on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, including photos, sound and video recordings and artifacts in the possession of the National Archives. But thats a tiny fraction of the trove of documents held by the Archives.

Officials say 88 percent of the records have been fully public for decades, another 11 percent are in the public domain, but were redacted to black out names and other sensitive information that will now be revealed. Only one percent has never been seen.

U.S. District Judge John Tunheim, who headed the independent Assassination Records Review Board, says most of the files still under wraps were considered irrelevant to the assassination. Tunheim predicts there will be very little new in the final batch.



There really wasnt very much that we ended up protecting, Tunheim said in a VOA interview. So I dont think this is a large trove of evidence that people are going to be really excited about.

Scholars and conspiracy theorists appear most eager to see documents relating to assassin Lee Harvey Oswalds contacts with foreign governments, in particular a trip he made to Mexico City in the weeks before the shooting when he visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies.

Protection of sources and methods

Tunheim says those files were held back because they revealed sensitive intelligence sources and methods.

The State Department and the CIA convinced us that if we released the details of the intelligence sharing arrangement with the Mexican government that it was likely to bring down the Mexican government at the time because the same party was in charge of the government, Tunheim explained. I dont know if that was true or not, but we wound up protecting those details.

Tunheim, who is currently chief judge of the U.S. District Court for Minnesota, says it is important that the American public know that absolutely everything about the assassination is out in the open, even if it might incidentally reveal some long ago intelligence gathering methods.



He told VOA he doubts the release will put to rest the conspiracy theories that continue to surround the Kennedy assassination. Its so engrained in Americans minds that there must have been a conspiracy; that this 24-year-old loser couldnt have done this on his own, he said.



I think the problem is there were a lot of holes in the original investigation. The quick killing of Oswald ended a lot of opportunity to really learn what was actually going on.

Tunheim says the growing public distrust of government ensures that doubts about Kennedys killing will live on alongside the pantheon of conspiracy theories surrounding the murder of President Abraham Lincoln.

When I was chair of the review board I did a number of radio call-in shows and virtually every time someone called in and said, This is really interesting, but I really want to talk about the Lincoln assassination and what happened to [Lincolns assassin] John Wilkes Booth, Tunheim said.

So its likely 100 years from now people will say, We havent gotten to the bottom of what really happened.

Dan Mahaffee, vice-president and director of policy at Washingtons Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told VOA he worries that America has entered an era of conspiracy theories spurred by the loss of faith in government.

The way that the early sixties, the promise of a new generation of leadership, being cut down by that assassins bullet, and then moving to that era of Vietnam, of racial tensions, and then breakdown in trust in government, be it the Pentagon Papers or Watergate; really at that moment you can write a story about how the American people began to lose faith in institutions, and became focused on cultural wars, the displacement in society, and those rifts in society from Vietnam onwards now endure to this day, Mahafee said.


A trial begins in Istanbul Wednesday for eleven prominent human rights activists, including two foreign nationals, in a case that is drawing criticism from international human rights organizations who say it is part of a campaign by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to silence criticism and scrutiny in Turkey in the wake of last year's coup attempt.

The defendants face prison sentences of up to 15 years in prison.

Amnesty International's chairman in Turkey, Taner Kilic, and Idil Eser, Amnesty Internationals Turkey director, are among those on trial. The case centers on a digital security seminar that was held on Buyukada, an island on the Sea of Marmara near Istanbul, that focused on security and coping with stress. In a 15-page indictment, prosecutors allege the meeting was part of a conspiracy to unseat the government by inciting civil unrest

It's a completely baseless case, there is not a shred of evidence, said Andrew Gardner, Amnesty International's Turkey researcher. "It's an attempt to scare and silence human rights civil society. That's why Turkey's most prominent human rights defenders and human rights organizations have been swept up in this case, he said.

Key members of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, one of Turkeys most respected and oldest human rights groups, are among those on trial Tuesday.

Erdogan has vigorously defended the charges against the activists, portraying the case as an example that no one is above the law and evidence that Turkey faces a threat by international conspirators and unidentified countries following the failed coup. Erdogan on Tuesday lashed out at EU nations whose leaders have been critical of his crackdown and what they see as tightening controls on free speech. We expect European leaders to stop targeting Turkey and to return to common sense," the Turkish leader said at an event in the capital, Ankara, on Monday.

Mounting tensions with Europe

Tuesdays trial is likely to further ratchet up tensions between Turkey and Europe. Two of the defendants are European nationals: Swedish national Ali Gharavri and German Peter Steudtner, both of whom were giving seminars at the meeting where the human rights advocates were arrested. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has strongly criticized the arrests, saying Innocent people are caught up in the wheels of justice, in Turkey.

Linking the work of Steudtner and other human rights activists, who are on trial with him, to the support of terrorism, to imprison and prosecute them, is highly absurd, wrote European Parliamentarian Rebecca Harms in a statement released Tuesday. "The arbitrary detention of foreign citizens in Turkey proves to be more and more a measure by which the Turkish leadership wants to pressure the home countries of those concerned," she said.

Under emergency rule introduced last year following the botched military coup, more than 50,000 people have been arrested and 150,000 others have lost their jobs.

Critics point to what they see as a lack of evidence to justify many of the prosecutions.

"If you look at the evidence, for example, against Idil Eser, Amnesty International's director, it's all to do with an Amnesty International campaign and public documents, said Gardner. "The prosecutors have had three months of investigations to come up with evidence against human rights defenders and came up with nothing.

Among the evidence against the defendants is a Tweet telling participants to turn off their phones and enjoy the boat ride to the island where the seminar was being held.



Courts as intimidation tool

There is a growing suspicion among observers that the trial is part of a campaign to intimidate wider civil society.

"The arrests of the human rights activists, I think, gives us a very bleak picture of the Turkish civic society, or what the regime means by 'civic society,'" observes political scientist Cengiz Aktar. "It's not very different from what we see in Russia, completely curtailed and diminished.

Tuesdays prosecution of human rights advocates comes amid a rash of arrests and trials of journalists. Media freedom groups have dubbed Turkey the world's worst jailor of journalists, claiming more than 150 reporters are imprisoned.

On Tuesday, six more journalists went on trial for reporting on leaked emails that allegedly were written by Berat Albayrak, son-in-law of President Erdogan, and Turkey's energy minister. The emails are considered to be in the public domain, yet observers note the journalists are being prosecuted for publishing state secrets.

The clampdown on media and freedom of expression is drawing further condemnation among Europeans already skeptical of Turkey's readiness to continue its bid to some day join the EU.

There cannot be an effective political debate when journalists cannot report or question political leaders without fear of harassment or arrest, said Tanja Fajon, a Slovenian politician with the Social Democrats and member of the European Parliament. "As Turkeys political situation worsens, it remains imperative to offer support to, and speak about, those imprisoned for their journalism.


The man who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound flight in 2009 with explosives hidden in his underwear is alleging his constitutional rights are being violated in a federal prison.

In a lawsuit filed last week in a Colorado federal court, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, also known as the "Underwear Bomber," claims he's being indefinitely housed in solitary confinement at the supermax prison, is being denied contact with family members, and is not being permitted to practice Islam.

He also alleges he was forced to eat non-halal food and that when he went on a hunger strike to protest his mistreatment, he was force fed.

Abdulmutallab is serving four life prison terms in Florence, Colorado, the highest-security prison in the country.

He tried to detonate a bomb on a flight carrying more than 300 people, but his plan was foiled when passengers and crew members stopped him, as the plane landed at Detroit Metro Airport. The incident caused burns to Abdulmutallab's genitals and legs.

He has said he tried to carry out the bombing in retaliation for the murder by the U.S. of innocent civilians in Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere.

According to the lawsuit, the U.S. government put Abdulmutallab under special administrative measures. They prohibit him from communicating with "more than 7.5 billion people, the vast majority of people on the planet."

The lawsuit names U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, as well as 20 unidentified defendants.
U.S. lawmakers are pressing the Trump administration to declare that ethnic cleansing is taking place against the Rohingya Muslim population in Myanmar  a majority-Buddhist nation also known as Burma, which has seen improved ties with Washington in recent years.

Meanwhile, the State Department is assessing further punitive options, including economic sanctions, against individuals and entities associated with violence and atrocities against Rohingya Muslims.

"What we've seen inside Rakhine state is a collection of serious atrocities," Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asia Patrick Murphy told VOA on Tuesday in a briefing, being careful about the wording.

"All options are on the table on how best to describe this," he added, answering a question about whether considering the terms crimes against humanity or genocide are appropriate in this case.

Murphy, along with U.S. Ambassador Scot Marciel, traveled recently to parts of the northern Rakhine state and saw firsthand the situation there.

While the State Department has identified and announced new and ongoing actions to punish those who have committed atrocities, senior officials declined to refer to violence against the Rohingya Muslims as "ethnic cleansing" on Tuesday, before a complete review is announced.

"I'm not in a position ... to characterize it today, but to me this very closely resembles some of the worst kind of atrocities that I've seen during a long career," said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration Affairs Mark Storella at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, when pressed by lawmakers about whether he viewed the plight of the Rohingya as ethnic cleansing.

"This is ethnic cleansing, it's pretty clear," said Senator Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat. "Yes, I think it's genocide."

The United Nations said last week that 589,000 Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar to Bangladesh since Aug. 25, the day the latest round of violence broke. Subsequent clashes and a military counteroffensive have triggered the exodus of Rohingya villagers to Bangladesh.

Reputable international nongovernmental organizations have reported new satellite images reveal nearly 300 villages were partially or completely destroyed by fire since Aug. 25  more than half of the approximately 470 Muslim villages in northern Rakhine state.

"Genocide is a legal term, it's defined by the treaty  the Genocide Convention. Ethnic cleansing is not a legal term. It is a phrase we use to describe certain kind of atrocities," former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Affairs Tom Malinowski told VOA.

"Therefore, those determinations [ethnic cleansing] are not quite as serious," said Malinowski.

However, a determination of "ethnic cleansing" by Washington would carry a very strong political implication, as the U.S. continues its support of Burma's civilian government, which is under the leadership of Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Aung San Suu Kyi and her government allies have little control over Burma's still powerful military.

"The United States has developed good relations since the transition to democracy in Burma, but using the phrase doesn't carry any particular obligation," Malinowski told VOA.

Participating countries of the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" are advised to prevent and punish actions of genocide in war and in peacetime.

State Department officials said individuals associated with Rohingya violence include Burmese security forces, Rohingya militants, local vigilantes, and the like.

The State Department has cut off travel waivers allowing current and former senior military leaders into the United States. All military units and officers involved in operations in northern Rakhine state are ineligible to receive American assistance.

The current crisis, now under way for two months, has exacerbated longstanding challenges for the Rohingya minorities, who lack basic rights, including recognition as a nationality and citizenship.

The United States has provided $104 million in humanitarian aid for displaced populations in both Myanmar and neighboring Bangladesh since this fiscal year.

The State Department separately has called on the Myanmar government to address the matter, while promising U.S. support for the country's transition to democracy.

"The Government of Burma, including its armed forces, must take immediate action to ensure peace and security; implement commitments to ensure humanitarian access to communities in desperate need; facilitate the safe and voluntary return of those who have fled or been displaced in Rakhine State; and address the root causes of systematic discrimination against the Rohingya by implementing the Rakhine Advisory Commission's recommendations, which includes providing a credible path to citizenship. We are ready to support these efforts," according to a statement released by State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert.

Esha Sarai contributed to this report.
A four-month review of the U.S. refugee program mandated by President Donald Trump ends Tuesday, but with new vetting measures on the horizon.

The State Department and Department of Homeland Security have yet to announce the details of the new screening measures.

However, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the government will require additional biographical data and a more extensive review of refugees' social media accounts prior to their acceptance.

Reuters reports that the U.S. government will require refugees to provide information on their whereabouts going back a decade, twice as long as before.

Executive orders don't stop refugees

Thousands of refugees have entered the United States since January, despite Trump's two executive orders attempting to halt the program. Lawsuits stymied the initial roll-out of the temporary ban. Later, the U.S. Supreme Court determined arrivals could continue as long as the refugees could demonstrate "bona fide" close family ties to the country.

The high court on Tuesday also dismissed a lawsuit by the state of Hawaii against an earlier version of Trump's travel ban  the same one that limited refugee arrivals. The new refugee vetting procedures, and a separate presidential proclamation in September limiting travelers from eight countries, replace much of what the two earlier travel bans attempted.

Last week, a judge in Hawaii involved halted the administration's latest efforts to block travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hear from the top officials in charge of the refugee programs within the State Department, DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement on Capitol Hill this Thursday.

In addition to the forthcoming vetting changes, the Trump administration last month announced it would drop the ceiling on refugee arrivals for the 2018 Fiscal Year to 45,000, the lowest limit ever set for the program.

During the last months of then-President Barack Obama's tenure in late 2016 and 2017, the U.S. refugee program  the most robust resettlement program in the world  was on track to receive 110,000 refugees in the 2017 fiscal year, amid increasing demand for safe third-country relocation stemming from the Syrian civil war and Islamic State violence.

Trump insisted, first as a candidate then as president, the refugee vetting system was inadequate, despite academic studies showing few links to refugees and fatal attacks in the United States. The country's refugee program has overseen the arrivals of more than three million displaced people since 1975.

More Christians

Under the new administration, the refugee program has changed in other ways  including a shift back to accepting more Christians than Muslims, the two leading religions for arrivals since the early 2000s, according to a review of State Department data by VOA.

In 2016, a push to welcome more Syrian refugees bolstered the number of Muslims arrivals to the top spot for only the second time since that demographic data was made publicly available in 2002. Of the nearly 85,000 refugees who arrived between Oct. 1, 2015 and Sept. 30, 2016, 46 percent were Muslims, and 44 percent were Christian.

For the fiscal year that ended last month, however, Christians accounted for 47 percent of the approximately 54,000 refugees who entered the United States; whereas Muslim refugee arrivals dropped slightly to 43 percent during the same period, which included the transition of power from Obama to Trump in January.

Trump has prioritized changes to U.S. immigration and deportation systems since taking office. In addition to limiting refugees, his administration has issued three variations of the travel ban affecting specific countries, ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, and ordered the hiring of 15,000 more immigration and border protection agents.
Zimbabwean protest group, Tajamuka-Sesijikile Campaign, says it has deployed what it calls a crack team of its members in Chitungwizas Unit N where Movement for Democratic Change supporters are being brutalized by suspected ruling party activists, demanding voter registration slips.

In a statement, Tajamuka Sesijikile Campaign said, The crack team has been in Chitungwiza since morning (Tuesday) doing their surveillance in the area. We would like to thank the other Zanu PF faction which assisted us with necessary information soon after their meeting at Makoni Shopping Centre this afternoon (Tuesday) for being very cooperative.

We want to assure all opposition supporters in Chitungwiza to remain calm as the young people's movement is in the area to protect all citizens. Where government fails to honour its responsibility to protect citizens, the young peoples' Campaign will deliver peace for citizens of Zimbabwe.

Tajamuka-Sesijikile Campaign warned that it would take drastic action against suspected Zanu PF youth involved in the politically-motivated violence.

We've activated our hotline 24/7 for feedback and other important information on WhatsApp on +27275409647.

Zanu PF activists are said to be demanding that MDC-T activists should surrender serial numbers of voter slips to them in order to monitor the voting process in next years general elections.

Indications are that they are doing the same in most parts of the country, stressing that it will be easy to see how people vote when they get voter registration numbers from potential voters before the 2018 polls.

Zanu PF spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo and police were not reachable for comment.

MDC-T, several opposition parties have condemned the violence in Chitungwiza, saying it does not make a good reflection on the forthcoming elections.

The Zimbabwe Human Rights Association also condemned the politically-motivated violence saying it is barbaric and designed to intimidate opposition supporters ahead of the polls.

THE Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) calls for early signs of political violence in the country to be taken seriously by the authorities and all stakeholders ahead of the 2018 elections. Previous elections in Zimbabwe have been, more often than not, violent, and it is worrying to witness incidences that indicate the resurgence of political intolerance and violence.

The manifestation of violence negatively affect the participation of citizens in electoral processes, including the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR), and ultimately affect the freeness of the forthcoming elections.

ZimRights said the violence was a gross infringement of the Constitution and constitute a blatant criminal act which should not be tolerated.

ZimRights calls upon all stakeholders such as the Zimbabwe Republic Police, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission to play their public role in maintaining the rule of law and entrenching the enjoyment of human rights by everyone regardless of political identity.
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Republicans are accelerating efforts to fill in key details of their plan for massive tax cuts, but as lawmakers work to turn their proposal into legislation, President Trumps numerous tax promises are proving difficult to keep.

On Monday, Trump promised the party would not touch tax benefits for 401(k) retirement plans, protecting a popular benefit for more than 50 million Americans but also further limiting the areas where Republicans could seek to raise new revenue.

His vow to protect 401(k) plans, made in a Twitter post, comes just days before House Republicans are planning to introduce a bill that would dramatically slash corporate tax rates, consolidate tax brackets for families and individuals, and eliminate the alternative minimum tax and estate tax.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee and is leading initial drafting of the tax legislation, is expected to release the bill as soon as next week and told reporters it remains on track. But he declined to make a firm commitment on timing and said Republicans had not yet made key decisions, such as whether to add an additional income tax bracket for high earners and on how to implement a planned estate tax repeal.

I want to get this to the presidents desk by the end of the year, and were on a schedule to do that, Brady said.



Rep. Kevin Brady R-Tex.) is leading initial drafting of the tax legislation. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

The remaining indecision shows the competing pressures tax writers face as they attempt to deliver the massive tax cuts Trump has promised while also minimizing the effect of the tax cuts on the deficit.

The challenge has become particularly acute now that the Senate has passed its budget resolution, which the House of Representatives is expected to approve by Thursday. This procedural step allows them to eventually pass a tax bill in the Senate with just 50 votes, instead of the 60 typically required to advance major bills.

They must now write legislation that can pass the House and Senate, something they still havent done despite dozens of meetings in the White House and on Capitol Hill. They remain unable to reconcile all of Trumps assurances that there will be massive tax cuts benefiting everyone with Senate rules that limit how much they can do.

House Republicans hope to introduce a bill as soon as next week, but they are still working through key details that could derail the bill if mishandled. Still, GOP congressional aides on Monday expressed confidence that their bill was coming together rapidly.

The budget resolutions allow the tax bills to add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, a large amount nonetheless far outstripped by the more than $5 trillion in promised tax changes Trump has laid out so far.

Now Republican negotiators are looking at cutting back on many of the deductions families and businesses use to limit their taxes to offset the lower rates, but Republicans and the White House are under pressure to back away from some of the demands.

One of the changes Republicans had floated was simplifying the tax benefits tied to retirement benefits, fueling concerns that they could make changes to 401(k) plans. Americans are allowed to contribute up to $18,000 pretax into their 401(k) plans each year as a way to incentivize saving for retirement. Lowering that pretax threshold could raise more revenue but face a backlash from many Americans who use the accounts to save for retirement.

1 of 83 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  Scenes from Trumps second six months in office View Photos A look at the second half of the presidents first year in the White House. Caption A look at the second half of the presidents first year in the White House. Jonathan Ernst Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.

After several news reports in recent days saying the changes were possible, Trump weighed in on Monday and said no changes would occur. Now the tax writers must look for other areas where they can raise money, and their options appear to be dwindling.

You are trying to stuff a $4 trillion or $5 trillion tax cut in a $1.5 trillion box, said Steve Moore, who was one of President Trumps top economic advisers during the 2016 campaign. That means something has to give here.

Senate rules will prevent Republicans from passing a tax bill with a simple majority if it adds to the deficit after 2027. Republicans have already promised not to jettison Americans ability to deduct their mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and now income for 401(k) contributions, limiting the number of other changes they could make to raise revenue.

Party leaders now believe they will only be able to make some of the tax cut changes permanent, and others temporary, expiring after 10 or fewer years.

Business groups are lobbying Republicans to ensure that the corporate tax cuts are permanent, but this could put Republicans in an awkward position of promising companies better tax treatment than families, particularly as Trump has said the plan will primarily be a middle-class tax cut.

They have probably overpromised and are trying to find a way to fit the plan into whatever constraints they have, said Mark Mazur, director of the Tax Policy Center, who was a senior official in the Treasury Department during the Obama administration.

And there are numerous parts of the tax package that will be difficult to enforce, leading to concerns that wealthy individuals could try to game the changes to further lessen their tax bill.

Chief among the problems is finding a way to prevent upper-income households from taking advantage of Trumps vow to slash the rate certain businesses pay.

Lawmakers are concerned the wealthy could take advantage of this change to lower their taxes, even though the rate is supposed to apply to businesses, not individuals. Republicans havent settled on a way to prevent such abuse even though theyve known it was a problem for months, though competing House and Senate proposals could emerge within days.

Negotiators have run into huge problems sorting out several of the White Houses promises.

The biggest one is Trumps insistence on lowering the rate for millions of businesses that pay taxes through the individual income side of the code. Many of these companies now face a top rate of 39.6 percent, and Trump has promised to lower it to 25 percent. But negotiators fear that upper-income people could try to reclassify themselves as a certain type of corporation to pay a lower tax rate than typical households pay.

The White House has not provided any estimates for how it would enforce this or prevent people from improperly taking advantage of the changes. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan think tank that advocates for deficit reduction, has estimated lowering the rate for these companies would lead the government to lose approximately $500 billion in revenue over 10 years.

The GOP tax plan calls for collapsing the seven income tax brackets individuals and families now pay down to three brackets of 12 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent. But congressional Republicans and the White House continued debating whether they should add an even higher rate for upper-income Americans as a way to ensure the wealthy dont disproportionately benefit from the plan. They have not decided how to proceed and are waiting for other details of the plan to come together before they decide whether to pursue the higher rate.

Even with a higher rate, there are numerous other provisions of the package that are expected to disproportionately benefit the wealthy, and they would still pay a lower tax rate on all of their income up to whatever new limit is put in place.

The White House and lawmakers are also trying to decide how to treat income U.S. companies earn abroad. Currently, companies must pay taxes on that income, but they can defer paying if they keep the earnings overseas. Trump has said companies keep more than $5 trillion in earnings overseas in order to avoid paying taxes, and he wants that money brought back to the United States.

To remove the incentive from earning profits overseas, the White House and Republicans are considering the imposition of a foreign minimum tax, which could require companies to pay the U.S. government a portion of their global income, regardless of where it is earned.

Presently, companies can indefinitely defer paying taxes on income earned overseas, so long as they dont try to repatriate those earnings back to the U.S. parent company.

This could have a major impact on multinational firms, particularly technology and pharmaceutical companies, which are organized in such a way that a lot of their income is channeled through overseas subsidiaries in low-tax countries such as Ireland. It is unclear what the rate might be or whether the taxation will be applied differently if income is earned in different countries.

Similarly, the White House and Republicans have not decided whether to impose any restrictions on income that multinational companies bring back to the United States at a lower tax rate.

In 2004, the Bush administration and Congress agreed to a temporary tax holiday that allowed companies to bring foreign earnings back to the U.S. at a low rate, but studies have found that this money did not go toward hiring and new investment. Rather, some of the companies that benefited from the repatriated earnings proceeded to cut jobs, raise dividends, and boost executive compensation.

Some Republican negotiators are considering whether to add some kinds of restrictions to this part of the tax package that requires companies to reinvest some of the earnings back in a way that grows U.S. jobs or wages, people familiar with the planning said.

Despite the lingering differences, Trump administration officials and congressional aides said that months of negotiations, particularly in the past few weeks, have allowed them to make progress in a number of areas.

For example, they believe they have largely addressed complaints raised by Republicans in states like New York, California, New Jersey and Illinois. The lawmakers had complained that taxes for people in their states might actually go up if the new plan prohibits people from deducting their state and local taxes from their taxable federal income. After a number of meetings with concerned lawmakers, GOP leaders think they have found a way to minimize the impact of middle-class residents in these states, though precise details of how this would work could not be learned.

There are a number of other decisions that still need to be made. Negotiators have yet to detail what income levels will qualify for each tax bracket and how an expanded child tax credit will work. These are details that will be necessary for them to try to convince voters of the potential benefits for the middle class, as much of the discussion so far has focused on how businesses will be able to pay less in taxes.

After spending months insisting that the tax-cut plan would not benefit the wealthy, the White House is now giving conflicting assessments of whether this would be the case. Trump has said repeatedly that the wealthy have nothing to gain from the tax changes, but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said otherwise in a recent interview with Politico.

When youre cutting taxes across the board, its very hard not to give tax cuts to the wealthy with tax cuts to the middle class, Mnuchin told Politico last week. The math, given how much you are collecting, is just hard to do.

Brady is holding meetings with Republican colleagues this week as they try to narrow differences and create their first version of the tax bill, which they hope will pass the House next month.

If it passes, the Senate would have to deliberate on their own version through a similar process. Lawmakers are hopeful they can complete the votes by the end of December, but they will need to sort through all of these decisions before then.

There is a lot of desperation on the part of Republicans, and desperation is what will get us over the hump ultimately, Moore said.


Devotions, by Mary Oliver (Penguin )

In Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (Penguin), one of our most beloved writers offers both the best of her work and a spiritual road map of sorts. Spanning more than 50 years and featuring more than 200 poems, the collection shows Oliver, in the early years, turning away from grief and finding in nature a "vast, incredible gift." Over time, as she carefully observes and records, Oliver extols the beauty and complexity around her and reminds us of the interconnectedness of living. She also asks important questions, such as "have you ever dared to be happy/ . . . have you ever dared to pray," and "Tell me, what it is you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?" Those lines resonate as much today as when she first penned them decades ago. No matter where one starts reading, "Devotions" offers much to love, from Oliver's exuberant dog poems to selections from the Pulitzer Prize-winning "American Primitive," and "Dream Work," one of her exceptional collections. Perhaps more important, the luminous writing provides respite from our crazy world and demonstrates how mindfulness can define and transform a life, moment by moment, poem by poem.



A Good Cry, by Nikki Giovanni (William Morrow)

Nikki Giovanni's A Good Cry (William Morrow) may cause readers to weep in places, as when she describes watching her father beat her mother every Saturday night. That experience, which taught a young Giovanni "It will not be/ All Right/ So I must learn/ To cry," forms the emotional center of this book. Other losses  the deaths of friends, the pain of fathers who must bury their sons, aging  also shape her perspective, as do the grandparents, writers and other people who have enriched her life. Giovanni, who has published 27 collections of poetry and received the first Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, covers wide ground here as she celebrates unsung activists and heroes of history, and muses about the future of humanity in space. The work shifts from topic to topic, as if the poet feels compelled to share what she has learned about perseverance, joy and sorrow from decades of writing, teaching and advocacy. Sometimes that includes much-needed wisdom, as in these lines from the poem "The Past . . . the Present . . . the Future": "We cannot undo/ The past we can build/ the future" but "When we decide to thank the Deity/ . . . We will all . . . no matter which/ Ideology . . . wrap our arms/ Around each other." The best writing here is surprising and poignant, and shows Giovanni's strength and originality.

[Can poetry actually save your life?]



Good Bones, by Maggie Smith (Tupelo )

The title poem of Good Bones , by Maggie Smith (Tupelo), went viral earlier this year because its central theme  wanting to believe in the goodness of the world for the sake of one's children  connected with so many people. The other pieces in this collection, Smith's third, provide a fuller understanding of the complexities faced by the speaker, who tries to teach everything a child needs for survival, but admits that "What can I say but stay/ alive? You're new, and there's too much to learn." Sometimes motherhood makes her feel invincible, which she knows is not the case. Or she  like the reader  is charmed and touched by the innocent yet wise perspective of her children, who wonder about the sky, the past and the future. At other times, the writing is heartbreakingly real, as when the speaker mourns the loss of two "dears I was not meant to have" or must teach her children to avoid strangers offering rides or puppies, without destroying their faith in this world. Several poems have a fable-like feel, as hawks, crows, hunters and a mountain family reveal truths about childhood and the fragility of human life. No matter what the style or subject, though, the writing remains honest, compassionate and graceful, and the speaker maintains her determination to "love the world like a mother."

Elizabeth Lund writes about poetry every month for The Washington Post.


Clockwise from top left: Danny Lee at ChiKo in Washington; sisters Hannah and Marian Cheng at Mimi Chengs Dumplings in New York City; Daniela Soto-Innes of Cosme and Atla in New York; Wesley Avila of the food truck Guerrilla Tacos in Los Angeles; Preeti Mistry of Juhu Beach Club and Navi Kitchen in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Top Left: John Rorapaugh/LeadingDC; Top Right: Deb Lindsey For The Washington Post/Bottom left: Fiamma Piacentin; Bottom middle: Dylan James Ho and Jeni Ofuso; Bottom right: Alanna Hale)

Ask Preeti Mistry why she cooks Indian food, and you can almost hear the frustration in her voice.

Well, she explains without hesitation, it all goes back to chai.

Chai?

This is a drink my family, and my grandparents, have been drinking every morning and every afternoon their entire lives, says the mohawked chef of Oaklands Juhu Beach Club and Navi Kitchen in Emeryville. And one day, mysteriously, the Ur-beverage of South Asia began turning up at every coffee shop she encountered.

We werent yet using terms like cultural appropriation, but chai tea marked something of a political awakening. Why, she wondered, are all these white people making money off it?

[Why everyone should stop calling immigrant food ethnic]

You get made fun of in school for being weird, for being different, for having weird smells coming out of your house, says Mistry, who was born in London and raised in the United States. She kept the faith. I knew I would get to the place where I can cook Indian food like the Indian food I love, and people will see theres more.

She was correct that there would be a new generation of diners  foodies  eager to dig their forks into the unfamiliar. There is also a new generation of chefs like Mistry, born or raised stateside, rewriting the script on what that cuisine should look and taste like.

Starting Thursday, the Smithsonian Museum of American History hosts its annual Food History Weekend, which this year focuses on food's relationship with migration and cultural exchange. To mark the occasion, we spoke with several rising restaurateurs about how their experiences growing up in two cultures have affected their cooking and are redefining American food.

[Americans need to stop being defensive about their food culture]

For the chefs, their love affair with food began, as it does for most, at home. One pinched dumplings alongside his mother; another learned to eat adventurously from his father.Their families turned to newspaper clippings and well-worn yard sale cookbooks to make their children lasagna and hamburgers on the nights they didnt serve japchae or roti.

Some of these chefs went to culinary school, some went to business school. And when they finally decided to open their own restaurants, the cuisine they chose to make surprised even them: It was the one theyd grown up with.

I dont think these folks set out to do this thing; its just who they are, says former LA Weekly restaurant critic Besha Rodell, who began to notice the swell of young bicultural chefs a few years ago. Thats what makes it different from fusion. Fusion is taking one thing and banging it into another  like, wasabi in the mashed potatoes. This is authentic in the very real sense of the word, because it is their authentic, lived reality.

Now 41, Mistry is the one making money off her chai, which she serves at Navi Kitchen, with freshly roasted spices, sugar and milk, all boiled, the way it is in Mumbai. You can, if you must, get it with a shot of espresso.



Wesley Avila calls his food Angeleno. (Dylan James Ho and Jeni Ofuso)

Wesley Avila

Guerrilla Tacos, Los Angeles

Wesley Avila has a no-nonsense way about him. When Gary Menes of Le Comptoir asked him about his goals in a job interview, Avila told the chef he wanted to be a taquero  a taco slinger, the furthest thing from the tasting menu Menes would offer.

Menes wanted to serve his guests personally, from behind a counter. So did Avila. Menes gave him the job.

Avila had known taqueros all his life. He was raised in Pico Rivera, a largely Latino suburb in L.A. County. His mother was born just outside San Diego; his dad immigrated from Durango, Mexico, in the 1970s, washing cars at first, and then snagging a job at a cardboard factory that he held for more than 40 years. Listless for years after the tragic death of his mother when he was a teenager, Avila looked like he would put in a life at the same factory; he worked there as a forklift driver for seven years. His father finally intervened. You guys are American, his father told him. You should be able to go to school and have a career, and do something you want to do.

[Make the recipes: Chubbs Tacos and Arbol Salsa]

Avila ultimately quit his job and went to culinary school. He went to Mexico and France and Spain to educate himself and spent years in fine dining. Avila, now 39, launched Guerrilla Tacos in 2012. It took its name from the fact that Avilas taco cart was, at first, a rogue, unpermitted operation. Now a food truck, Guerrilla Tacos might sell a sweet potato taco with French feta and romesco-like salsa one day, or a wild boar taco another.

I really identify as Angeleno  from L.A., he said. What my food represents isnt necessarily Mexican, and it isnt high-end. Its Angeleno; its a melting pot.



Sisters Hannah and Marian Cheng opened Mimi Cheng's Dumplings in New York City. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)

Hannah and Marian Cheng

Mimi Chengs, New York

The newest location of Mimi Chengs dumpling shop is in Nolita, on the edge of New Yorks Chinatown, where dumpling shops seem to occupy every other storefront. This one is bright and cheery, with lush plants, pale walls and a print of a pineapple. It reflects the tastes of its proprietors, Hannah and Marian Cheng, 31 and 29, respectively. So does the menu, which is dotted with Taiwanese fare such as scallion pancakes and beef noodle soup, and also a macro bowl served with lemon-tahini dressing.

The sisters grew up in Upstate New York eating a mash-up of cuisines: Their father was raised in Taipei, where the cooking is light and not particularly spicy, while their mother was raised in Thailand. After Hannah graduated with a finance degree from Georgetown University, and Marian graduated from the University of Maryland having studied international business, they floated the idea of a restaurant. Our parents, says Hannah, were horrified and terrified.

[Should white chefs sell burritos? A Portland food carts revealing controversy.]

They were like, Why are you opening a Chinese takeout restaurant? We sent you to college. 

Theyve adapted the fast casual model for their vision, with collaborations such as a truffle foie gras soup dumpling, crafted with Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park, and a vegan sweet potato-black bean-quinoa dumpling, with the trendy By Chloe.

Complaints about authenticity plague the sisters. Its a running theme in the Yelp reviews, says Marian. Organic chicken, or kale or zucchini, youre not going to find that in Taipei. But its authentic to our family.

Others, sometimes other Chinese or Taiwanese Americans, complain about the price, which can be $12.50 for a bowl of chicken noodle soup. Its a subject that comes up repeatedly for second-generation restaurateurs.

The criticism is frequently an Asian-on-Asian hate crime, Hannah jokes. But in all seriousness, she says, We have a huge gripe with it. Ultimately, its racism.

We use the same meat distributors that the best restaurants in the city are using. We use the same vegetable distributors. So why would our meat be cheaper? Because were Asian?



Daniela Soto-Innes helms two modern Mexican restaurants, Cosme and Atla, in New York City. (Fiamma Piacentin)

Daniela Soto-Innes

Cosme and Atla, New York

Daniela Soto-Innes moved to Houston from Mexico City at age 12, with the blood of a family of cooks in her veins. A great-grandmother, Luz, had traveled to Paris to train as a cook, and her grandmother managed a bakery, she says, while sipping a fresh cashew-milk cappuccino at Atla, the casual modern Mexican restaurant she helms with Enrique Olivera (of Pujol fame).

It was her mother, a lawyer, who enrolled Soto-Innes, 27, in a culinary training program outside Houston when she was just 13. One day, she recalls, a chef came to a class and told them, Youre not going to make any money for eight years. If youre good, maybe five. Perhaps thinking she ought to start early, Soto-Innes bega n pestering the chef, who worked for a Marriott, for a job. It was two years before the hotel relented.

After a stint at Underbelly in Houston, an apprenticeship at Pujol in Mexico City connected her to Olivera, who eventually tapped Soto-Innes to helm his U.S. spinoffs. She would eventually receive a James Beard rising chef award.

At Atla and Cosme, servers and bartenders must frequently lean in to explain dishes  memela, tlayuda  from Oaxaca and Puebla and Mexico City. She has more she wants to teach, from encouraging kindness in the restaurant industry to educating diners that Mexican food can be contemporary. It is already working. One magazines recent headline blared that Atla was a restaurant designed for how New Yorkers eat now.



This is about the journey, says chef Preeti Mistry. (Alanna Hale)

Preeti Mistry

Juhu Beach Club and Navi Kitchen, California

As one of three girls in her Ohio household, Preeti Mistry viewed cooking with suspicion. It was just another household chore I didnt want any part of, she recalls. But I liked to eat. I was always really curious.

It was only at age 19, when she moved with her now-wife, Ann Nadeau, to San Franciscos Mission neighborhood, that she began whipping up vegetarian dishes for their friends. At the urging of Ann and her friends, she enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in London. She landed a job as a chef at Google, then was selected as a contestant on Top Chef, where she was booted in the third episode of Season 6, but had made her name known.

Ann nudged her again, this time to follow through on her dream of opening a pop-up, Juhu Beach Club, in a dodgy liquor store near their place in San Francisco, before it moved to Oakland. The menu includes a fiery riff on Cracker Jack, duck salad in a tamarind dressing and pav, roughly described as Indian sliders. At Navi Kitchen, she serves pizza. What of it?

[Make the recipe: Desi Jacks]

On the walls of Juhu Beach Club, which she will likely close this year, she took pains to hang photos of her family and friends not in exotic settings but as their lives really were, in London, in Trinidad and in the United States.

Im not trying to re-create something that exists in India, she says. This is about the journey.



Chefs Danny Lee, left, and Scott Drewno at ChiKo. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)

Danny Lee

ChiKo, Washington, D.C.

As long as I could remember, our house was always the house that had people over for dinner, says Danny Lee. For my sister and I, some of our best memories are sitting around the kitchen table, just folding dumplings.

Overseeing them was his mother, Yesoon Lee, who grew up in Seoul. She immigrated to Illinois for graduate school in the early 1970s, before meeting her husband and moving to the Virginia suburbs. There, she became a social butterfly with a reputation as a formidable cook.

When Lee was 15, his father died, and to earn more money, Yesoon bought her way into a deli business, Picca-Deli, in Alexandria, and then a pan-Asian eatery at the airport, hawking sesame beef. My moms generation, no one [in America] knew what Korean food was, Lee, 36, says. Her generation, to make money, they couldnt cook Korean food.

But Lee was born here. I cant speak Korean that well. Im, like, the whitest Korean person I know, he jokes. But I grew up eating Korean food. I was immersed in it.

In 2006, his family opened Mandu, the Korean word for the dumplings they once all made together as a family. His mom is its chef.

But at ChiKo on Capitol Hill, opened this summer, only the faintest impression of his Korean upbringing is evident. Lee is one of two chefs: The Ko in the name represents his Korean heritage, while the Chi represents fellow chef Scott Drewnos Chinese cooking prowess. Stainless steel bowls arrive at tables like a stream of consciousness, filled with charred Brussels sprouts or sweet, vinegary slabs of daikon dyed highlighter-yellow with turmeric. One of the most buzzy dishes is brisket, not exactly a staple of traditional Korean cooking. For Lee, the restaurant is a playground, where he can serve a meat more often layered between two slices of rye bread than over a bowl of rice with furikake butter.

A decade ago, this sort of fare might have been called fusion. But Lee and Drewno shrug at the idea of definitions.

Cuisines evolve, says Lee. People have their idea that bulgogi has to be a certain way and bibimbap has to be a certain way, and anything else is fusion. Or Americanized.

We do whatever we want, adds Drewno. Its not really something that keeps us up at night.



From left, Nakul Mahendro, Pawan Mahendro and Arjun Mahendro at Badmaash restaurant in Los Angeles. (Kevin Wong)

Pawan, Nakul and Arjun Mahendro

Badmaash, Los Angeles

Nakul and Arjun Mahendro, Toronto-born brothers of Indian descent, insist that their family's Los Angeles restaurant Badmaash is not that kind of Indian restaurant, though it serves samosas and butter chicken.

That kind of restaurant has a terrible rap. Why has Indian food stayed the same for the past five or six decades? Nakul says. Because, he says, most of the early immigrants pouring into the United States through the 1980s were skilled professionals who couldnt always get work in their fields. They go out and take any job they can, he says. A restaurant job. But they havent dedicated their life to the craft.

Pawan Mahendro, their father, was trained in Mumbai in French and Sichuan cooking, before he arrived in Canada in 1982 in search of better prospects. He mopped floors, made salads, cooked Indian food in apartments for parties. Ive been to so many jobs, and they say, Let me show you how to use parsley. He always humbly took the lesson, no matter how much he already knew.

In Toronto, the whole family worked in restaurants. Nakul was starting out as a busboy, and their mother and Arjun settled in on the business side. Pawan opened an Indian restaurant. Eventually, Nakul says, I wanted to move to New York and work in some fancy restaurant like Jean Georges.

Pawan, whod worked for others for so long, stopped him. Why, he said, would Nakul help some other guy build his restaurant?

Together they settled on a move to Los Angeles, where they opened Badmaash with the notion that Indian food has no singular flavor. They serve lamb burgers and chicken tikka poutine (a nod to their Canadian upbringing) in a space decorated with a Warholian mural of Gandhi rocking shades.

I fought with Yelp to be listed as Indian and also New American, Nakul says. New American kept getting taken off. I kept adding it.

To him, its a sign that while some get what Badmaash is trying to do, theres work that remains. This is the new America, he sighs. Its the old America as well.

Ramanathan will moderate a panel about identity and food at 1:30 p.m. Friday as part of Smithsonian Food History Weekend, Oct. 26-28 at the National Museum of American History, offering discussions, cooking demonstrations and evening celebrations. Most events are free. Constitution Avenue NW between 12th and 14th streets. www.americanhistory.si.edu/events/food-history-weekend.
Not surprisingly, Bill OReilly isnt going down without a fight.

The combative commentator has spent months with a team of advisers marshaling his response to the women who have accused him of sexual harassment, allegations that helped end his 20-year run as the king of cable news in April.

After limiting his public comments for months, Team O'Reilly has made the outlines of its strategy clear in recent weeks, and especially since Saturday when the New York Times revealed that the former Fox News host had settled a new allegation by a former network contributor named Lis Wiehl, reportedly for $32 million.

OReillys basic approach: Denial. Defensiveness. And a bit of dirt.

O'Reilly has called the Times story "a malicious smear" and once again denied any misconduct. "I have been in the broadcast business for 43 years with 12 different companies," he told former Fox host Glenn Beck on Beck's radio program on Monday, "and not one time was there any complaint filed against me. Nothing. Zero. So I think my track record speaks for itself."

In fact, although none of the disputes have gone to court, OReilly and Fox have privately settled with six women who alleged harassment. (OReilly paid three of the women, including Wiehl; Fox paid three others.) In each case, OReilly said he settled to avoid prolonged publicity that would have harmed his children.

O'Reilly has said he cannot discuss monetary figures because of the nondisclosure terms of the settlements. But he told Beck that the $13 million settlement figure, cited by the Times in a story in April that triggered his downfall, was "wildly wrong."

In public statements, OReilly has blamed many for his troubles, including the news media. On Monday night, he added another suspect: God. In his No Spin News podcast, he said, You know, am I mad at God? Yeah, Im mad at Him. I wish I had more protection. I wish this stuff didnt happen. I cant explain it to you. Yeah, Im mad at Him.

In pleading his case to the New York Times last week, OReilly said publicity about the allegations against him could harm his family. He suggested exposure of sexting claims against former Fox News commentator Eric Bolling might have contributed to the death last month of Bollings teenage son. When Bolling objected to this, OReilly backed down and apologized on Twitter.

The defensiveness part is OReillys assertion that the newspaper and other sources are working against him to undermine his attempts to revive his TV career. The New York Times wants to take me out of the marketplace, he told Beck, adding: Media Matters is involved. CNN is involved. That is beyond any doubt.

Since his ouster from Fox six months ago, O'Reilly has assembled a formidable legal and communications team. The group includes President Trump's personal lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz, and crisis-management specialist Mark D. Fabiani, a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton during controversies involving the Whitewater land deal, the White House travel office and campaign fundraising.

The team has researched some of OReillys accusers and has made some of those findings public in an effort to undermine the womens credibility.

One investigation involved a temporary clerical worker named Perquita Burgess, who accused O'Reilly of harassing her at Fox in 2008. At one point, Burgess, who is African American, said O'Reilly called her "hot chocolate." Burgess did not sue, but her allegations received widespread attention when she went public with them in April; she emerged just as Fox's parent company, 21st Century Fox, was considering O'Reilly's fate.

OReillys advisers subsequently found a Detroit police incident report from 2015 in which Burgess was arrested for falsely accusing her boyfriend of assaulting her. A second document involved a tweet sent by Burgess in 2012 in which she expressed an attraction to the actor Laurence Fishburne, saying he could get every oz. of my hot chocolate.

Burgess's attorney, Lisa Bloom, said last month that Burgess's then-boyfriend declined to press charges against Burgess, and Detroit police and prosecutors took no further action. She said Burgess has used many terms to refer to herself in her tweets, but "that does not give others permission to use offensive language about her. She maintains that Mr. O'Reilly, with whom she had no relationship whatsoever, did not have the right to use racially tinged language about her in the workplace."

OReillys team has also released handwritten notes from former Fox anchors Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson in an attempt to mute their criticism of him and to undermine their credibility.

[Opinion | Loathsome: Bill OReilly attempts to shame female colleagues by citing thank-you notes]

What a class act you are, reads one from Kelly, written after OReilly had attended a baby shower for her. . . . You have become a dear friend and I am grateful to have you in my life.

Kellys camp replied that the two notes were written in 2009 and 2012 and that Kelly has questioned OReillys behavior more recently.

An undated note from Carlson to OReilly reads: Thank you for being the calm in the sea. Thank you so much for supporting me. Thank you for being my friend. It means the world to me.

Carlson triggered the ongoing sexual harassment scandal at Fox in July 2016 by filing a lawsuit against the networks co-founder and chairman, Roger Ailes. She later settled for $20 million.

Also in his defense, O'Reilly on Saturday released an affidavit from Wiehl in which she swore under oath that she and O'Reilly have "resolved all of our issues" and that she would "no longer make the allegations" contained in a draft complaint she had drawn up against him a month earlier.

The document does not really clear OReilly; it was signed after OReilly had agreed to settle Wiehls complaint and had paid her an unspecified amount.

Nevertheless, in his interview with Beck, OReilly suggested the document vindicated him. The New York Times should have printed the affidavit up top, but they didnt do that because it would have wrecked their story, which they had already written, he said. We gave them an unbelievable amount of stuff, but they dont care. (The Times referred to the document in its story but didnt publish it in full.)

He added: All I can hope for is that the American people will see that this is an attack on me for political purposes. It has done enormous damage to me and my family.


Dancing With the Stars performer Derek Hough is footloose and fancy free at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Hough contributed to Parks 101, an online program that highlights the National Park Services lesser-known sites. (Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for National Park Foundation)

The National Park Service, which partied hard during its centennial last year, is back with a PSA: Life after 100 can still be a walk  or a hike  in the park. For its 101st birthday, the Park Service and National Park Foundation launched Parks 101, an ongoing online series that will introduce the masses to lesser-known destinations within the 417-site system. The overarching message: With visits up by 50 million between 2014 and 2016, people should stop bunching up in the majors and start spreading out to the minors.

The places that are iconic are well worth visiting, said Will Shafroth, president and chief executive of the foundation, but we wanted to spark interest in the places that hardly anyone knows about.

Shafroth said the series, which includes videos and social media posts by celebrity ambassadors, will focus on destinations that offer a diversity of experiences (It wont be all battlefields, he noted) in both remote settings and urban areas. With at least 300 spots fitting this criteria, Parks 101 is likely extend beyond the Park Services 101st year.

[The essential guide to all 59 U.S. national parks]

To bring the bit players into the spotlight, famous personalities from the sports, acting and dance worlds are heading off into the mild wild. Jordan Fisher, who played Phillip Hamilton in Broadway's "Hamilton: An American Musical," visited Hamilton Grange National Memorial in New York City and the C hannel Islands National Park , off the Southern California coast. Olympic gold medal gymnast Dominique Dawes explored a trifecta of equality-themed sites in Washington: the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument and the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site. Other pairings include Brad Snyder, the Navy veteran and Paralympic swimmer, and Monocacy National Battlefield in Frederick, Md.; country music star Dierks Bentley and Crater Lake National Park in Oregon (his 360 video is scheduled to run later this month or in early November); and Dawn-Lyen Gardner and Rutina Wesley, actresses in the TV drama, "Queen Sugar," and the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park and Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve.

In late September, Derek Hough, the Emmy-winning choreographer and TV dance personality, took a whirl through Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. We spoke with Hough about his recent adventure in the singing sands.



Derek Hough, one of several celebrity ambassadors who have visited smaller national parks, paddles a kayak around Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, which is accessible by train from Chicago. (Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for National Park Foundation)

Q: You grew up in Utah. Have you been a parkgoer your whole life?

A: We have the Big 5, from Zion to the Arches. As a kid, I was a Boy Scout and my dad was very into the outdoors, so we would take these big road trips every year for my birthday and go camping and see all the amazing parks. When someone asks me what my favorite thing about America is, one of my first answers is the national parks. My trips with my dad, listening to U2, Bruce Springsteen, singing and blasting the radio, instilled in me a sense of adventure and an appreciation for our planet and the natural beauty of Earth.

Q: How did you get involved with the 101 series?

A: I wanted to combine my love for adventure and love for the outdoors and do something good with it. They reached out to me after seeing videos I posted on social media and asked me to be part of the series to bring attention to these lesser-known national parks. It's all about finding a local park where you can jump in your car and be there in an hour or two and not have to plan a whole week or weekend trip. I'm all about motivating people to get outside and move and explore.

Q: Did you know anything about the Indiana Dunes before your visit?

A: I didn't know anything about the dunes before, but that's the beauty of this series. To see something like this an hour outside of Chicago is pretty incredible.

Q: What were you most surprised and delighted by?

A: The dunes themselves. I learned about how much they move  it's literally like moving a mountain. They [park rangers] showed me a tree that is completely buried but used to be completely uncovered. It's mind-blowing to think about. Also, the little things like the sassafras plant that smelled like root beer and the leaves that smelled like Froot Loops. I love discovering things like that.

Q: What do you hope viewers learn from the series?

A: To explore more and be an adventurer. Life is a movie and we're the directors of it. What makes a great film is the sense of adventure. When we're out there, we get very connected to our primal selves. America has so much to offer, such beautiful and incredible natural sites. I hope people see that we have so much to be grateful for and to take advantage of it.

Q: If a dunes visitor feels inspired to perform a little happy dance, what would you recommend?

A: I think everyone expresses themselves differently through movement. Your happy dance might not even be a dance. It doesn't have to be literal, just get out there and move and explore your surroundings.

More from Travel:

How to get a National Park Service senior pass

The National Park Service is turning 100. Share your memories.

Alaska's Bristol Bay region is rightly renowned as a fishing Mecca
A sign at the entrance to J.E.B. Stuart High school in Falls Church, Va. (Dayna Smith/For The Washington Post)

At least four members of the Fairfax County School Board say they support renaming a Falls Church school Justice High, erasing a moniker that evoked the Confederacy.

A vote scheduled for Thursday to rename J.E.B. Stuart High will put an end to a long, drawn-out, divisive debate over the Northern Virginia schools name. Board member Sandy Evans, who represents the district where the school sits, said she plans on putting forth the motion that would name the school Justice High.

The school deserves a name that reflects inclusion, tolerance, diversity, Evans said.

Three others on the 12-member School Board  Dalia Palchik, Karen Keys-Gamarra and Jane Strauss  say they intend to support Evanss call. At least one member, Elizabeth Schultz, plans on offering alternative suggestions.

Evans said the name was distilled from some of the top five choices in a nonbinding community vote. One of those top choices: Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court justice.

Calling the school Justice, Evans said, would also recognize others who have championed equal rights  including Barbara Rose Johns, who fought for school integration as a teenager, and Col. Louis G. Mendez Jr., an Army colonel and decorated World War II veteran who was a longtime Fairfax resident. Johns and Mendez were also among the most popular renaming suggestions.

For two years, the Stuart community has been embroiled in debate over the renaming.

Proponents have argued it is inappropriate to honor Stuart, a Confederate cavalry commander and major general, at one of the most racially diverse high schools in the county. Opponents said it was a financially wasteful attempt at erasing history.

Strauss, the School Boards chairwoman, acknowledged the importance of tradition but said having a Justice High would convey a commitment to justice for all  for all races, all backgrounds, all religions and all cultures.

I know traditions are hard, but this is really about more, Strauss said. It is about standing up for the rights of all people.

But its likely that the call to name the school Justice High will face opposition.

Schultz, who represents the Springfield district, said renaming the school Justice would be vague and would not align with residents wishes. When community members voted, she said, they probably intended the school to be named after the Supreme Court justice, not a random word in the English dictionary.

She said she plans on submitting two motions. The first would strip the high school of the initials J.E.B. so that it is simply called Stuart. The School Board previously considered that option, and it was the name that received the greatest support in the nonbinding community vote.

The second would rename the school after Mendez.

Those who have advocated naming the school for Mendez point to its demographics: The school is 54 percent Hispanic, 22 percent white, 13 percent Asian, 9 percent black and 2 percent multiracial, according to Virginia Department of Education data.

Mendez, according to his children, came from humble beginnings before becoming a respected World War II colonel who went on to work in education.

It is the most reasonable, the most laudable, Schultz said. Here is a gentleman who came from nothing, in terms of circumstances and . . . lifted himself up.

The Fairfax County School Board voted three months ago to drop the Stuart name, but that hardly ended the controversy. Picking a new name has been no less fraught.
Gaithersburg would get a new high school  and an old high school in the North Bethesda area would reopen  under a sweeping construction plan unveiled by Montgomery Countys schools superintendent.

The $1.8 billion proposal, which includes 30 building projects, comes amid record enrollment in the states biggest school system.

Montgomerys enrollment surged to 161,936 students this year, a jump of 2,926 students from the previous year, preliminary figures show. It reflects a trend a decade in the making: Since 2007-2008, Montgomery has added more than 24,000 students.

The new high school in Gaithersburg would open on a 30-acre site in the Crown community, while Charles W. Woodward High School would open anew on Old Georgetown Road, where students now attend Tilden Middle School. Tilden would relocate to a new site it will share with Rock Terrace School on Tilden Lane.

Two elementary schools would be built in the Clarksburg area and another in Rockville. More than two dozen schools would get classroom additions, including a major expansion and upgrade at Northwood High School that would increase its capacity by 1,200 students.

Superintendent Jack R. Smith said the six-year plan required difficult choices, seeking to balance funding limitations with the imperatives of enrollment growth. Despite the $1.8 billion price tag, it does not meet all the need, he acknowledged. And thats kind of mind-boggling, frankly, but its true.

It was Smiths first comprehensive capital improvements plan since taking the helm of the Montgomery County schools last year. It encompasses both new and existing projects, at a cost $74 million higher than the districts previous plan.

[In 2015: Montgomery, $1.72 billion pushed for school construction]

While largely aimed at addressing space needs, Smiths plan also has spotlighted a flash point: a changing approach to how officials assess and prioritize renovation projects in the 205-school district.

For years, Montgomery had a scoring system and kept a list that ranked renovation projects in order. That list is essentially gone, leaving some parents dismayed that after years of waiting for their childrens schools to rise to the top, they no longer have a place in line.

Poolesville High School was among those long awaiting a remake. Parents and students testified about the need for years.

Were very disappointed, said Kevin Schramm, a PTA leader who represents schools in the Poolesville area. All of the sudden, theyre changing the way modernizations are done. It sounds like its become a more political process; thats the way were interpreting it.

School officials say they have been rethinking how they approach renovations for years. In 2015, a county oversight office issued a report criticizing the system, saying it was based on outdated information, marred by errors and favored total reconstruction over renovation.

[Report prompts Montgomery to rethink its school modernization list]

District officials said they have not yet settled on a new method. But they say they have discussed the issue publicly at two board meetings and made presentations to parents over the summer.

They noted that five school renovation projects already in the works are continuing. They involve Seneca Valley High, Tilden Middle and three elementary schools: Luxmanor, Maryvale and Potomac.

Two countywide PTA leaders lauded the changing approach to renovation projects, saying the district is looking to do more with limited funding and is often targeting schools with both aging infrastructure and crowded conditions.

There needed to be a more holistic way, said Laura Stewart, chair of the capital improvements program committee for the countywide Council of PTAs. We see it as a positive step in the right direction.

Most of the 30 construction projects that are part of the plan involve classroom additions. Eleven existing elementary school addition projects are included, as are four new ones: at Cresthaven, Dufief, Ronald McNair and Roscoe R. Nix.

Classroom additions are also slated for six middle schools and four high schools. New projects would expand Silver Spring International Middle, Parkland Middle, John F. Kennedy High and Northwood.

Under the plan, an addition project at Col. E. Brooke Lee Middle School would expand in scope.

Jennifer Young, a PTA leader in Rockville, said the plans bombshell is the proposal for a new high school in the Crown community, which she said appears to draw some of its enrollment from existing schools, including Richard Montgomery High.

Richard Montgomery had expected a classroom addition, which is not cited in the plan, Young said. This is a real surprise and a shock to us, she said.

[School year opens in Maryland with enrollment surge in Montgomery County]

The growing student population in Montgomery County at first drove pressures for more space largely at the elementary level but more recently has hit middle and high schools, as large groups of students get older and move to higher grades.

School planners have said the increase is partly driven by birthrate trends and an influx of families with school-age children.

District officials say Montgomery has lacked money to keep pace with demand. Even with funding, the design and construction of a school takes at least four years, officials said.

School board member Patricia ONeill said the growth has left the system facing choices that inevitably leave many families disappointed. The new plan is a stab at it, she said, but it doesnt meet everyones needs. To do that, she added, we need to win the lottery.

Smiths plan, outlined at a board meeting Monday night, will be discussed at a school board work session Nov. 2, with public hearings to follow, on Nov. 6 and Nov. 8. A second board work session is Nov. 14, with a board vote expected Nov. 27.
Luis Sierra sleeps in a classroom Oct. 13 at a school turned shelter after Hurricane Maria left him and other families homeless in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico. (Ramon Espinosa/AP)

Puerto Rico is slated to open about one-tenth of its schools Tuesday  despite not having electricity in classrooms  a small but critical step in returning one of the nations largest school systems to normalcy.

The territorys Department of Education said students will return to classes at 119 campuses in the islands capital, San Juan, and in Mayaguez, on the west coast. Students at an additional 26 schools, which are being repaired, will be transferred to nearby schools that are ready to accept students. Teachers returned to schools Monday to prepare their classrooms.

Before Hurricane Maria hit Sept. 20, the island had more than 1,100 schools that educated 347,000 students, nearly all of whom qualified for free meals. Officials expect that many students have left the island and enrolled in schools in Miami, Orlando, New York and other areas with large populations of Puerto Ricans.

[Puerto Rican schoolchildren could be out of class for months]

Julia Keleher, the education secretary in Puerto Rico, said it remains unclear when the department will be able to reopen the remainder of the schools and said the agency may decide to shutter some permanently.

The Education Department had opened some schools as service centers, places where children could take half-day classes and where teachers and families could meet with federal officials. Other schools were being used as shelters, their classrooms transformed into makeshift bedrooms for displaced residents across the island.

Tuesday is the first time any school will host a full day of classes, albeit without electricity, since Maria.

The storm struck a beleaguered school system. In an effort to save $7 million, Keleher closed 179 schools this year as the island grappled with a deepening debt crisis. About 18,000 students left Puerto Rican schools as their families moved away from the island.

She said waiting for the power to return would have kept students out of classrooms for many more weeks. So rather than keeping the schools closed, she is urging teachers to get creative in their instruction. Some schools were accustomed to outages even before the storm.

We want to try to bring the maximum benefit to the maximum number of students while protecting their safety and well-being, Keleher said.

The Army Corps of Engineers has been assessing school buildings to ensure it is safe for children to return. Keleher said the islands Education Department will reopen schools only after they are deemed safe and found to have clean, running water.

Keleher said she hopes teachers will make the best of the challenging situation and urged educators to abandon outdated teaching methods in favor of more hands-on, project-based learning, which encourages students to find solutions to real-world problems. She sees it as a huge opportunity for Puerto Rico and public education to re-engineer itself and for it to become an uplifting learning opportunity.

The education department has begun to rewrite required curriculum. Keleher said she hopes teachers will incorporate the recovery from the storm into their classroom lessons.

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Authorities in Prince William County are investigating the appearance of hate graffiti at a school, officials said Monday.

Swastikas were found on signs for Early Years Academy and Prince William Academy, said Samia Harris, executive director and founder of both schools. Both signs are on the Early Years Academy campus, which serves younger children, Harris said.

Harris said she was saddened to learn of the vandalism.

I couldnt make sense out of it, Harris said. I was heartbroken. Hurt. Disappointed. Disgusted . . . but mainly really sad.

A Facebook post from the Prince William County Police Department mentions only one spray-painted swastika on a sign, but does indicate additional vandalism occurred.

Officers responded to the scene Saturday night, the Facebook post states, and an investigation found that a swastika was painted on a school sign between Friday night and Saturday night.

Additional vandalisms were located on a neighboring sign and on property in the surrounding neighborhood including two stop signs, a fire hydrant, a mailbox and a vehicle, it read. Some of the vandalism appeared random and illegible.
THE DISTRICT

Man throws Russian

small flags at Trump

An activist was arrested after he threw small Russian flags at President Trump on Tuesday during the presidents visit for lunch with Republican lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol, police said.

Ryan T. Clayton, 36, of Sterling, Va., was charged with unlawful conduct. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Capitol Police said the incident, which occurred about 1:40 p.m., remains under investigation.

A video shows several flags flying through the air as Trump walks down a hallway with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The flags fluttered in front of Trump but did not appear to hit him. Trump and McConnell continued to walk down a hallway and past a group of reporters without breaking stride or commenting.

The man identified by police as Clayton is heard shouting Trump is treason. As police officers detained him, he shouted his name and affiliation with a group called Americans Take Action, which bills itself as a populist organization.

 Peter Hermann

Police ID man

fatally shot

A person who was fatally shot in Southeast Washington on Sunday has been identified as a 24-year-old man, according to D.C. police.

Andre Ricardo Harris, of Southeast, was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly after the shooting, which occurred about 8:40 p.m. in the 1900 block of Savannah Terrace SE, near Congress Heights.

Police said another man also was shot in the incident and was treated at a hospital for injuries that were considered non-life-threatening. No arrests have been made.

 Peter Hermann

MARYLAND

Woman dies in

crash in Laurel

A woman died Monday after a crash in Laurel, police said Tuesday.

About 5:25 p.m. Monday, officers responded to Laurel Bowie Road and Bowie Road for the report of a collision involving two vehicles, Prince Georges County police said.

Lucia Espirtu-Cortez, 46, of Laurel was riding in a van traveling north on Laurel Bowie Road when the driver tried to turn left onto Bowie Road and was struck by a vehicle traveling south, the statement said.

Espirtu-Cortez was taken to a hospital, where she died.

 Justin Wm. Moyer
Paul Weitz, right, with Joseph Kerwin, left, and Charles Conrad Jr., the astronauts who repaired the Skylab orbiting laboratory in 1973. (AP/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Paul Weitz, an astronaut who took part in a tension-filled mission to repair the Skylab orbiting laboratory in 1973 and who returned to space 10 years later as commander of the space shuttle Challenger on its maiden voyage, died Oct. 22 at his home in Flagstaff, Ariz. He was 85.

The cause was blood cancer, said his son, Matt Weitz.

Mr. Weitz, a onetime Navy aviator, was part of a crew originally scheduled to conduct scientific experiments aboard Skylab, which was launched May 14, 1973. It rapidly became apparent that the $2.5 billion space station was seriously damaged.

Electronic signals indicated that Skylabs heat shield, which protected the space laboratory from meteoroids and high temperatures, had been sheared off during liftoff. One of the two solar panels, which produced electricity, also had been torn away, and the other was inoperable.

The mission of Mr. Weitz and his fellow astronauts, Charles P. "Pete" Conrad Jr. and Joseph Kerwin, suddenly shifted from science to something more like an outer-space roadside assistance call. Their launch was delayed several days while NASA engineers assessed problems aboard Skylab and devised tools and equipment for the repairs.



Paul Weitz, foreground, preparing for the launch of the Skylab flight with Charles Conrad Jr. and Joseph Kerwin in 1973. (AP/ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Never before had a spacecraft gone up amid such an atmosphere of last-minute improvisation, Time magazine reported.

The astronaut crew was commanded by Conrad, who was on his fourth space flight and in 1969 had become the third person to walk on the moon. Kerwin was a medical doctor, and Mr. Weitz was the missions pilot.

After the astronauts Apollo spacecraft reached Skylab, Conrad looked at the damage and confidently radioed to NASA flight-control officials, I think we can take care of it.

Mr. Weitz leaned out of the hatch of the Apollo capsule, as Kerwin held on to his ankles to keep him from floating away. It was not unlike leaning out the open door of a car traveling on a highway, trying to repair the engine of a car in the next lane.

Using a long-handled hook, Mr. Weitz reached for the solar panel and gave a mighty heave.

The 30-foot solar panel didnt budge. Next, using a pair of long shears similar to those used for trimming branches, Mr. Weitz attempted to cut through a twisted aluminum strap securing the solar panel.

His curses could be heard on the transmissions back to mission control in Houston. After an hour, it was clear that the effort would be futile.

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I hate to say it, Mr. Weitz admitted, but we aint going to do it with the tools weve got.

The crew regrouped inside the Apollo capsule, then found an unexpected problem: The docking mechanism that would connect the command module to Skylab did not work properly. The astronauts climbed outside their capsule and spent two hours doing mechanical repairs before the space vehicles were linked.

Conrad and Kerwin, working in tandem with a bolt cutter attached to a 25-foot pole, later managed to free the solar panel. The astronauts also worked to install an improvised sun screen on Skylabs exterior.

We had to get the temperatures under control if we were going to salvage Skylab at all, Mr. Weitz said in a 2000 NASA oral history.

The astronauts had three options, with different pipes and fabrics aboard their spacecraft, and ultimately they chose a four-legged parasol designed by Jack A. Kinzler, sometimes called NASAs Mr. Fix-It.

The parasol was mostly a success, although one of its legs didnt extend fully, causing a noticeable variation in temperatures inside the Skylab laboratory.

Once we moved into the workshop, you could tell by feel, Mr. Weitz said. You could outline exactly where the shadow from the parasol was.

Another way the astronauts monitored the heat was by smell. NASA officials warned the crew to be careful about sampling the food aboard Skylab, suggesting that the roast beef, lobster and butterscotch pudding would have spoiled in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.

When the astronauts returned after 28 days  the longest space mission at that time  they were hailed as national heroes.

Paul Joseph Weitz was born July 25, 1932, in Erie, Pa. His father was a Navy chief petty officer, and he was raised primarily by an aunt and uncle in Harborcreek, Pa.

He was drawn to flight from an early age and studied aeronautical engineering at Pennsylvania State University. After graduating in 1954, he became a Navy pilot.

He received a masters degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., in 1964 and piloted planes during the Vietnam War. He retired at the rank of captain in 1976, a decade after entering the astronaut corps.

NASAs space shuttle program began in 1981, with the launch of the Columbia. Mr. Weitz was tapped to be the commander of Challengers first flight in April 1983. Everything went smoothly on the five-day mission.

On Jan. 28, 1986, Challenger exploded 73 seconds after takeoff, killing all seven crew members on board. Mr. Weitz, who had trained the crew while serving as deputy chief of NASAs astronaut corps, testified before a presidential commission investigating the cause of the disaster.

He later served as deputy director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston and retired in 1994 as acting director.

His wife of 61 years, the former Suzanne Berry, died in 2016. Survivors include two children, Matt Weitz of Dallas and Cynthia DiFranco of Flagstaff; and a sister.

During his Skylab mission, Mr. Weitz said he found it impossible to sleep in what he called a make-believe bed mounted on the space capsules wall.

Even though he was in a zero-gravity environment, emotionally I was hanging from the wall, and I could not sleep hanging from the wall, he said in 2000. So every night Id unbuckle my sleep restraint, which had a metal frame, and Id take it out . . . so I was sleeping horizontally.
Outside the Department of Health and Human Services, people protest the Trump administrations policy of not facilitating abortions for pregnant immigrant minors in federal custody. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

An undocumented immigrant teen asking to end her pregnancy is entitled to seek an abortion without delay, according to a ruling Tuesday from a federal appeals court in Washington.

The order from the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit  without oral argument  reverses a decision last week from a three-judge panel of the same court that would have postponed the abortion for the 17-year-old who is being held in federal custody in Texas. The Trump administration had denied the teens request, citing the governments new policy of refusing to facilitate abortions for unaccompanied minors.

The timeline was at issue because the teenager is more than 15 weeks pregnant and Texas law bans most abortions after 20 weeks.

The 6-3 ruling sent the case back to a lower court judge who within hours of the decision had ordered the government to promptly and without delay transport the teen to a Texas abortion provider.

Todays decision rights a grave constitutional wrong by the government, D.C. Circuit Judge Patricia A. Millett wrote.

In the dissent were the courts three active judges nominated to the bench by Republican presidents. Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh said the majority has badly erred and created a new right for undocumented immigrant minors in custody to immediate abortion on demand.

The Justice Department declined comment Tuesday about whether it would ask the Supreme Court to review the D.C. Circuits action.

Lawyers for the undocumented teenager asked the full appeals court to rehear her case after a divided panel gave the Department of Health and Human Services until Oct. 31 to find a sponsor to take custody of the girl.

The Central American teenager, identified only as Jane Doe in court papers, is being held in a government-funded shelter and has been seeking an abortion since late September. She learned she was pregnant shortly after crossing the border where she was detained.

Brigitte Amiri, the teens American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, said the girls court-appointed guardian was thrilled to tell her that she could terminate her pregnancy.

We should never have had to go all the way to a full appellate court to say what we know is the law: that the government cant ban abortion for anybody, Amiri said.

[Detained immigrant teen asks full appeals court to let her get abortion]

The teenagers case has raised tricky political questions involving immigration and abortion law. Democratic lawmakers have demanded answers from HHS Acting Secretary Eric Hargan about why the Trump administration quietly changed federal policy to deny access to abortions for minors in custody.

Scott Lloyd, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the HHS agency that oversees the minors, said in a March email that government-funded shelters caring for the minors should not be supporting abortion services pre or post-release; only pregnancy services and life-affirming options counseling.

Lawyers for the teenager argued the government was violating the girls constitutional right to obtain an abortion. The teenager has already received permission from a Texas judge to bypass the states parental consent requirement and terminate her pregnancy.

Her capacity to make the decision about what is in her best interests by herself was approved by a Texas court , Millett wrote Tuesday.

Millett's position was joined by five other judges nominated to the bench by Democratic presidents. Judge Cornelia T. L. Pillard was recused because her spouse is the ACLU's legal director, according to the ACLU.

In last week's 2-1 decision, Kavanaugh and Henderson gave HHS until Oct. 31 to find a sponsor to take custody of the girl. That would allow her to be released and to seek the abortion.

In his dissent Tuesday, Kavanaugh said the government should be able to expeditiously transfer the teenager to a sponsor  typically a relative or friend  who could help her make a major life decision. The government, Kavanaugh wrote, is merely seeking to place the minor in a better place when deciding whether to have an abortion.

[Appeals court delays abortion for undocumented teen]

Government lawyers had said prospective sponsors have inquired about the teenager. But the girl's lawyers on Sunday filed a sworn statement from the former ORR director during the Obama administration who described the lengthy process of vetting sponsors.

Millett disputed the idea that the sponsorship process would have gone quickly.

"There is nothing expeditious about the prolonged and complete barrier to [the teenager's] exercise of her right to terminate her pregnancy that the panel order allowed the government to perpetuate."

Government officials have also said they are not blocking the girl from getting an abortion because she could voluntarily return to her home country. The government, however, acknowledged that abortion is illegal in the girl's home country, which is not identified in filings.
CHICAGO, IL - MAY 27: Crime scene tape is stretched around the front of a home where a man was shot on May 28, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago police have added more than 1,000 officers to the streets over the Memorial Day weekend, hoping to put a dent in crime, during what is typically one of the more violent weekends of the year. In 2016, 6 people were killed and another 65 were wounded by gun violence over the Memorial Day weekend. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

At least two men were shot Tuesday afternoon while inside a vehicle on a street in the Wellington Park neighborhood of Southeast Washington, D.C. police said.

Police said a third person was injured but it was unclear whether it was by gunfire. Authorities said two of the victims were taken to a hospital in critical condition.

The shooting occurred shortly before 2 p.m.

Police released few details but said detectives think the men were shot at Stanton and Douglas roads, possibly by someone in another vehicle.

They said the driver of the vehicle that came under attack drove a short distance, to the 2500 block of Pomeroy Road SE, where the victims were found.
I feel comfortable with the size of the force right now, said D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham, left, shown at a community meeting. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

The D.C. police department now has more than 3,800 officers, an increase from the previous year when the size of the force fell below that mark for the first time in a decade, prompting concern from city leaders over the thinning ranks.

Police Chief Peter Newsham told Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and council members Tuesday that fewer officers are leaving each month, an indication that the force is stabilizing after years of failing to keep pace with attrition.

I feel comfortable with the size of the force right now, Newsham said during the breakfast meeting at the John A. Wilson Building, where he outlined several incentive programs designed to attract and keep officers.

As of Oct. 1, the start of fiscal 2018, the police force had 3,821 sworn members, an increase of 84 from the previous year. That number includes 71 hires of senior sergeants and senior detectives  retired officers who have been allowed to return under an emergency measure that ends next year. The added time does not affect their pension benefits.

Meanwhile, Newsham said, more civilians have been hired and the pace of departures of sworn officers has slowed, including those who resigned, retired, were fired or left for a different department. The number of departures jumped from 197 in fiscal 2013 to 414 in 2015. In 2016, 388 officers left, and in 2017 that dropped to 335.

I think its a good sign, Newsham said.

At one point in 2016, the size of the force fell to a little more than 3,700 officers. It had been at more than 3,900 in 2015. The drop came during a period of increased robberies and homicides, and it broke a threshold that top officials once warned would be dangerously thin in a growing city.

[D.C. police force drops under 2,800 officers for first time in decade]

District officials blamed the departures on a retirement bubble stemming from a hiring binge in 1989 and 1990 that resulted in hundreds of officers eligible to retire around the same time. In a 22-month period starting in January 2015, more than 760 officers left the D.C. force  more than half retired  while the department hired 562.

Sgt. Matthew Mahl, chairman of the D.C. police labor union, said the District is not yet in the clear.

I think were still desperately short, Mahl said, adding that he thinks the department needs an additional 100 to 200 officers. Whats required of us is more than the manpower we have. I think patrol officers and detectives are the hardest hit. I think they operate on a bare minimum on a daily basis.

Police officials said they can hire and train about 300 officers each year. In addition, there are several new incentive programs that Newsham is crediting for helping retention.

One is a $1 million recruit rental assistance program that gives newly hired officers $1,000 a month for up to six months to help pay housing costs.

[D.C. Council member proposes incentive program to keep retiring officers on force]

Officers and other first responders who want to purchase homes in the District can receive up to $1,500 for every $2,500 they put toward a down payment, with a max of $15,000. Theyre also eligible for a $10,000 forgivable loan that doesnt have to be repaid if the recipient stays in a D.C. home for at least five years. Thats in addition to a $20,000 deferred zero-interest loan available to all D.C. employees who are first-time home buyers and want to live in the city.

D.C. police are also offering officers $12,500 in student loan forgiveness or in tuition reimbursements. The program is aimed at officers most likely to leave  those on the job three to eight years and those nearing retirement. The department has also increased the size of its cadet program to encourage youngsters to join.

D.C. Council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7) says he believes the city needs up to 4,200 officers, because of increased development and population. In April, he proposed a $63 million incentive plan that would include raises and an incentive for officers to stay on the force five years beyond when they can retire by doubling their salary in the fifth year. That bill has stalled in committee.

D.C. Council Member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) said residents in his district, which include some of the most violent neighborhoods, complain about not seeing enough officers. He asked Newsham, What would a healthy, full-capacity police department look like in numbers?

Newsham said he is satisfied with the staffing, noting that even with a city growing in population, officers are responding faster to the most pressing of emergency calls. He said that is one metric he uses to judge whether the size of the force is adequate. He also noted that violent crime has dropped 25 percent this year, notably in homicides and robberies.
A Southeast Washington man accused of attempting to rape an 81-year-old woman in Maryland was arrested in the alleged attack five days after he reportedly tampered with a GPS device issued in the District to monitor him as he awaited trial on an unrelated sex abuse charge there.

Khary Edwards, 23, allegedly broke into a house in Camp Springs on Saturday morning, where a woman returning home found him naked in her garage, according to charging documents. Police said Edwards attempted to sexually assault her and kept a chokehold on the woman as he demanded cash and her car.

Edwards, who has been charged with attempted murder, attempted rape, robbery and other related charges in connection with the Prince Georges County incident, was ordered held without bond during a bail-review hearing Monday. At a D.C. Superior Court hearing Tuesday morning, a judge issued a bench warrant in his case in the District.

Edwardss arrest in Prince Georges came two days after pretrial services in the District alerted court officials that he was violating the terms of his supervision related to a pending sex abuse charge.

Court records show that Edwards has a history of mental illness and had refused medical treatment.

In the Maryland incident, a woman returned to her home before noon Saturday and discovered that a naked stranger had broken in.

What are you doing in my garage? the woman screamed, according to charging documents filed by Prince Georges County police.

The charging documents also state that Edwards started to chase the woman, who locked the door of her home and called 911. As she was on the phone, Edwards climbed in through the kitchen window, grabbed her and began strangling her before trying to rape her, police said.

What do you want? Why are you doing this to me? the woman said, according to the charging papers.

[Man who ran naked from womans home charged with attempted rape, robbery]

Money, Edwards replied after picking up the womans purse from the floor, police said.

The man kept his hands around the womans throat as he demanded her banking and credit card information, as well as her car, police said.

The Defendant continued to maintain a strangle hold on the Victims throat, which the Victim described as making her feel like she was losing consciousness, and that she felt like [she] was going to die, police charging documents state.

When police arrived, Edwards ran out of the house, still naked, with the womans purse, keys, phone and wallet, police said.

Officers lost sight of the man a few blocks away, charging documents state, but he was spotted during a search in the area about three hours later. Edwards, who was by then fully clothed, the records state, ran as soon as he saw a marked police car and was apprehended after a short chase on foot.

Officers found a loaded semiautomatic pistol in Edwardss jacket after he was apprehended, according to charging documents.

Online court records do not list an attorney for Edwards in the Maryland case; the Districts public defenders office, which was representing him in the September case, did not respond to a request for comment. When reached by phone, Edwardss mother declined to comment.

Edwards was arrested Sept. 25 in the District, accused of sexually assaulting an acquaintance when he was supposed to be giving her a ride home. Edwards pulled into a parking lot and assaulted her, according to D.C. police charging papers. The woman briefly left the vehicle and asked for help, but Edwards grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back in the car, police said.

The woman was able to escape from the car again and got help from a stranger, who called police. Investigators later interviewed Edwards at his home, and he admitted to having sex with the woman, D.C. court documents state.

Edwards was ordered to remain under High Intensity Supervision in the District case with a curfew and electronic monitoring, court records show.

On Oct. 16, pretrial services personnel could not get in touch with Edwards and noted that the GPS monitoring bracelet he had been issued appeared to have been tampered with at around 7:30 a.m., online court records in the District show. Pretrial services officials recommended that Edwards be barred from supervision and possibly jailed, according to the online records.

A judge was set to consider Edwardss status at a court hearing scheduled for Friday, online records show.

The Friday court appearance was canceled after a judge held a hearing Tuesday morning and issued a bench warrant for Edwards.

Asked about the Edwards case, spokeswomen for pretrial services and D.C. Superior Court said that they could not comment on a specific case.

D.C. court files show that Edwards was admitted for an emergency psychiatric evaluation in January after his parents called police, worried about their safety. Police arrived at the familys home after Edwards reportedly wouldnt sleep and kept punching walls in his room.

The mental-health case was dismissed six days later, according to the court files.

Peter Hermann contributed to this report.
(Prince Georges Police photo /Prince Georges County police allege 23-year-old Khary Edwards of Southeast Washington tried to sexually assault a woman in her Camp Springs home. )

A Southeast Washington man who police say was seen running naked from a womans home in Maryland has been charged with attempted murder, attempted rape, robbery and other related charges in connection with the reported break-in.

Khary Edwards, 23, broke into a Camp Springs home on Oakland Way, where he attempted to sexually assault a woman shortly before noon on Saturday, according to Prince Georges County police.

An officer called to the home spotted a man running naked from the house, police said. Officers lost sight of the man, but after canvassing the area, they spotted Edwards, who was then clothed, police said. Edwards ran from officers again but was apprehended and taken into custody, police said.

Police said after Edwards attempted to sexually assault the woman, he stole items from her home and ran when officers arrived.

Edwards is being held without bond in a Prince Georges County jail.
A Maryland man was sentenced to 50 years in prison for firing into a crowd at a chicken wing shop and killing someone who was inside waiting for food.

Rasheed Edwards, 22, of Temple Hills, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the slaying of Darryl Allen Hairston II, 20.

Hairston and two others had ordered food at Americas Best Wings on Temple Hills Road on May 4, 2016, when Edwards entered the restaurant, charging documents state. While the group was waiting for orders, Edwards started staring at them in an intimidating manner, according to police charging papers.

Someone in the group asked Edwards if there was a problem, police said. Edwards responded no, apologized and left the restaurant.

[Man in custody in slaying in Prince Georges County]

He returned shortly after with a gun, firing into the shop, police said.

Video of the incident shows customers running to the back of the restaurant and the soda machine spraying liquid after Edwards shoots into the store, said John Erzen, a spokesman for the Prince Georges County States Attorneys Office.

Hairston was struck and taken to a hospital, where he later died.

No one else was injured in the shooting, Erzen said.

The motive in the case still remains unclear, prosecutors said.

Thats the thing that was so crazy about this and makes this so heinous and inexcusable, Erzen said. These are four guys who are just getting wings, minding their own business, when for no apparent reason this guy comes into the restaurant and just starts firing.

Edwards fled the scene and was captured the next month in Georgia, Erzen said.

Thomas C. Mooney, the defense attorney for Edwards, said his clients friend had been killed two days before the shooting and that Edwards was acting erratically because of the loss.

He was there, just like the victims, to buy wings, and there was an exchange of looks, Mooney said. He mistook these guys as the guys who shot his friend. The result was loss of one life and a few others that were forever changed.

Hairston's family has created a memorial foundation in his honor to help crime victims and families impacted by violence.

Due to someones foolish and reckless behavior, I lost a part of my heart, Hairstons father wrote on the website for the Darryl Allen Hairston II Crime Victim Foundation. The pain and grief I must live with everyday cuts deep inside. But I thank God for giving me strength to [bear] the pain. As I heard, its something you never get over, its something you get use to.
A man who was fatally shot in Southeast Washington on Sunday has been identified as a 24-year-old man, according to D.C. police.

Andre Ricardo Harris, of Southeast, was pronounce dead at an area hospital shortly after the shooting, which occurred about 8:40 p.m. in the 1900 block of Savannah Terrace SE, near Congress Heights.

Police said another man also was shot in the incident and was treated at a hospital for injuries deemed non-life threatening.

No arrests have been made. A police report said bullets struck two vehicles. Police were looking for a champagne-colored Lexus.
The man accused of opening fire on his co-workers in Maryland last week, killing three and wounding two, will first be tried in his home state of Delaware, where police say he shot a sixth person and was arrested after a day-long manhunt.

At a news conference Monday, officials announced the decision to first prosecute Radee Labeeb Prince, 37, in Delaware, where he faces charges including attempted murder and weapons charges. If convicted, they said, he could face a sentence of life without parole.

Officials stressed that Delaware does not have parole in criminal cases, while Maryland does. If Prince is convicted in Delaware, officials said in the statement, any sentence will have more certainty.

Prince will ultimately face trials in both states, according to a joint statement from the Delaware Department of Justice and the States Attorneys Office in Harford County, Md., where Prince is accused of shooting workers at a countertop company.

Officials in Harford, a rural area about 40 miles northeast of Baltimore, also used the news conference to push for a return of the death penalty, an unlikely prospect in the heavily Democratic state.



Radee Labeeb Prince, accused of opening fire on his co-workers in Maryland last week, killing three and wounding two, will first be tried in his home state of Delaware, where he is accused of shooting a sixth person. (Reuters)

Harford County States Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly said its frustrating that Maryland does not have what he called a proportional penalty for someone facing multiple murder counts.

Maryland repealed the death penalty in 2013.

Prince is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder in Maryland. If convicted, he would face the possibility of multiple life sentences.

[Victim in Maryland workplace shooting had complained about suspects anger, family says]

The punishment should fit the crime, and I think Maryland took the step in the wrong direction getting rid of the death penalty, Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey R. Gahler said at the news conference.

This most recent shooting rampage, which comes about a year and a half after two Harford County sheriff's deputies were fatally shot, is the reason state Sen. Robert G. Cassilly (R-Harford), said he would introduce "targeted" capital punishment legislation in the 2018 session of the General Assembly. The senator is the brother of the top prosecutor in Harford County.

Gahler said Monday that authorities still have not determined a clear motive for the Wednesday shootings, other than concluding Prince had a perceived feeling that he was not well liked.



Advanced Granite Solutions in Harford County, Md., where Radee Labeeb Prince allegedly opened fire on workers. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

The sheriff has said surveillance video showed Prince, shortly before 9 a.m. that Wednesday, with about 10 of the 29 people who were working with him at Advanced Granite Solutions, in a business park in Edgewood. Prince called the employees to gather around him and, as they got closer, he pulled out his handgun and fired, Gahler described.

Authorities identified the slain employees as Bayarsaikhan Tudev, 53, with a last known address in Virginia; Jose Hidalgo Romero, 34, with a last known address in Aberdeen, Md.; and Enis Mrvoljak, 48, of Dundalk, Md.

[Suspect in shootings of 6 in Maryland and Delaware caught, officials say]

Authorities said Prince then drove to a used-car dealership in Wilmington, Del., where he shot a man in the head and body. The victim, who family identified as Jason Baul, 35, owns Bauls Auto Sales, where the shooting occurred, and had known Prince since childhood.

Our family has been friends with their family since I can remember, since we were walking, Robert Baul, 37, of Atlanta, a brother of Jason Bauls, said Thursday, speaking of Prince. We grew up together.

The two had a contentious history, including a January 2016 report from Baul that Prince had assaulted him in a robbery attempt at the home of an acquaintance, according to a court affidavit filed by a police officer.

Prince was charged with assault and other crimes, but the case was thrown out, according to court records.

The Wednesday shootings sparked a manhunt that continued into the night, with photos of Prince appearing on websites and TV stations. Tipsters eventually called authorities to report seeing the suspect and his vehicle, a 2008 GMC Acadia, in a Newark neighborhood about 20 miles southwest of Wilmington, Del. Federal agents arrested him there after a foot chase, during which Prince tossed away a .380-caliber handgun, authorities said.

In the joint statement, the Delaware and Maryland officials said they would work to provide justice for all impacted by these horrific acts.

Prince pleaded not guilty Thursday in Wilmington to four charges related to the shooting in that city, including the attempted murder count. His bail was set at $2.1 million, and a preliminary hearing was set for Oct. 31.
Nora Sandigo-Otero hugs Andres Jimenez, 10, whose parents are from Guatemala. She was delivering emergency food relief to his family in Homestead, Fla., in June 2014. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

Children of immigrants, who make up 28 percent of all children in Maryland and nearly a quarter of those in Virginia and the District, are more likely to live in chronic poverty and less likely to perform at grade level in school, according to a report being released Tuesday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The report highlights disparities in opportunities for children of immigrants. It also highlights the harder-to-measure impacts of persistent stress on children affected by government policies that result in the profiling, deportation and detention of immigrants.

When you hear conversations about immigration and immigration policies, its rare that you hear about the impacts on kids being discussed, said Laura Speer, associate director for policy reform and advocacy for the Casey Foundation. These kids are going to be our future leaders, our future workforce. We need them to be successful if we are going to be successful as a country.

[Deportations of parents can cast the lives of U.S.-citizen kids into turmoil]

Nationally, there are 18 million children who live with parents who emigrated from another country. Of those, 88 percent are U.S. citizens. About 5 million children have a parent who is undocumented.

While children of immigrants make up less than a quarter of the nations population of children, they account for 30 percent of those from low-income families, the report says.

They are also more likely to struggle in school. Only 8 percent of fourth-graders in immigrant families scored at or above proficient in reading in 2015 compared to 38 percent of children from non-immigrant families. And just 5 percent of eighth-grade children from immigrant families scored at or above proficient in math in 2015 compared to 34 percent of children from nonimmigrant families. The report used English-language learner status as a proxy for determining which students have immigrant parents.

The Washington area mirrors national trends for children of immigrants, with similar disparities in academic performance.

Nonso Umunna, research director at Advocates for Children and Youth, based in Maryland, said language and cultural barriers in public schools could be contributing to the disparities in academic performance.

He also noted the relatively low number of children who are attending preschool, an indicator of future academic success.

In Maryland, 63 percent children of U.S.-born parents attend early education programs. For immigrant children the rate is slightly lower at 60 percent. (For Hispanic children, from both immigrant and U.S.-born parents, the rate drops to 49 percent.)

In Virginia, 58 percent of 3- and 4-year-olds from immigrant families are enrolled in preschool, compared to 61 percent of those whose parents are not immigrants.

And in the District, where all 3- and 4-year-old children can enroll in public preschool programs, the enrollment rate for children born to immigrants was 82 percent, compared to 87 percent of children born to non-immigrants.

Children from immigrant families fare better on some measures.

Nationally, 80 percent of children from immigrant families have two parents at home, compared to 65 percent of those from U.S.-born families. The disparity is more stark in the District  77 of children with immigrant parents live with two parents compared to 38 of those with U.S.-born parents.

The data come from the second triennial Race for Results report, which measures how children from different racial backgrounds are faring in every state across the country. The report creates a composite index score for children of every race in every state, based on how they are faring on a set of 12 key indicators related to health, education and income.

The report showed progress over the six years  2010 through 2015  that it has tracked data. The rate of teenage pregnancy has gone down and household income has increased, but the disparities between racial groups have remained.

The report includes policy recommendations to promote the well-being of children of immigrants, including making it a priority to keep immigrant families together when making decisions about deporting or detaining parents.

It also recommends health and education-related policies to help children meet important developmental milestones, and policies, such as certification programs for foreign-trained workers, that would improve economic opportunities for their parents.
Myeshia Johnson is presented with the U.S. flag that was draped over the casket of her husband, Army Sgt. La David Johnson, during his burial service at Fred Hunter's Hollywood Memorial Gardens in Hollywood, Fla. (Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald/AP)

Columnist

Gerald Merna served 22 years in the Marine Corps.

And his last job was probably the toughest.

It wasnt his time as a platoon sergeant during the bitter, muddy and bloody battle for Outpost Vegas during the Korea War. And it wasnt his 13 months of combat duty at Phu Bai in Vietnam.

Nope. It was the year he was at Joint Base Andrews, serving as one of five casualty notification officers (CNOs)  the guys who knocked on your door with the bad news.

Its an art, really, knowing the right thing to say as the bearer of the worst possible news.

The Procedures for the Army Casualty Program of 2015 reminds the officers they cannot be too personal and they cannot give out too much information.

They need to remember to leave their script in the car and turn their cellphones off. They shouldnt touch the family members, they shouldnt rush through the notification. For children, speak to them at their level, eye to eye. And never, ever use the term passed away.

Always use definitive terms such as killed, died, or dead when making the notification, says Subsection G on Page 23 of the casualty manual.

Training manuals? Is the art of human compassion something to find in the subsection of a military procedure manual?

You know how much training I had? Merna, 87, asked. Zero.

Theres no science to this, he said.

And you not only had to go out and tell them. We lived with them, stayed with them through the arrangements, we got their medals, he said. Its more than just making a call. It was one of the toughest things I did and one of the reasons I retired early.

Merna stopped our phone conversation to turn off the Fox News Channel in his Arlington, Va., home.

Its all thats on the news, this thing, he said, referring to the controversy over President Trump and his conversation with Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson, one of the Green Berets killed in an ambush this month in Niger.

[Gold Star widow said Trump struggled to remember her husbands name]

Myeshia Johnson said the president struggled to remember her husbands name, and she said his clumsy condolence made her staggering loss even more bitter.

The president said, He knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyway,  she said in an interview with ABC Newss George Stephanopoulos.

Merna said he knows how hard it is to say the right thing. Its a horrific job to get just right. And hell agree that the presidents words werent the right ones, certainly not what he or his fellow officers wouldve said. (But I think his heart was in the right place, he said.)

CNOs rarely speak out. But when they do, nearly all of them say the same thing  it was the hardest part of their careers.

Merna remembers the families who cried, the ones who got quiet, the ones who screamed, the ones who got violent.

Theres no two alike, no two families react the same, he said.

When he got the assignment in 1968, he was determined to be personal, compassionate and helpful during his toughest year. Because he also remembered what it was like when his 19-year-old brother was killed in World War II.

A telegram was it, he said. And then a small notification in the local paper.

An officer eventually sent a letter to his mom, with details about his service and anecdotes from his brothers in arms. But that first notice never had the human touch.

When I started doing it, we had four hours to get to the family, he said. It was one of the most humane things the military did.

Embracing humanity is essential to the task. He said hell never forget the family gathering he interrupted in Maryland  a half-dozen family members there, cousins and uncles.

A first cousin got so angry, he hit me, Merna said. And I understood that.

The man calmed down, apologized and shook Mernas hand.

He told me, Im sorry, sir,  Merna said. And I told him I was sorry, also.

Eventually, the Defense Department came up with protocols, scripts and training.

Mernas advice?

Throw it all away, he said. Forget the rule books.

What its really all about is common sense, use your feelings. Go in there with whats in your heart.

Pretend thats your mom youre talking to. Think of how you react if someone knocked on your door with that news.

Merna knew how to take a punch, how to have humility and humanity when facing a fellow Americans lowest moment. Thats called leadership. We could use more of it.

Twitter: @petulad
Metro has experienced a sharp increase in arcing events since last summer. They were a large part of the agencys long SafeTrack rehabilitation project. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Electrical arcing incidents  which can lead to track fires  have more than doubled on Metro since last summer  a spike that undermines the agencys contention that safety and reliability are improving.

Arcing happens when stray electrical current from the tracks third rail finds an alternate path to the ground, usually because of dirt, mud or puddled water.

Between July and September, there were 19 arcing events. During the same period in 2016, there were nine such incidents, according to a safety report released Monday by Metro, covering the first three months of the fiscal year that began July 1.

The sharp increase in arcing events  with their sometimes dramatic displays of smoke, sparks and fire  is particularly concerning because they were a big part of the reason for the agency's year-long SafeTrack rehabilitation program.

The uptick in incidents is happening at a time when agency officials are trying to make the case that the system has gotten safer in the two years since General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld was brought on and safety oversight was handed to the federal government. Metro board member Robert Lauby, vice chairman of the panels safety committee, said he was concerned about the sharp rise.

Were hoping that theres a way to get this problem under control, Lauby said.

Since the end of SafeTrack in June, some types of track fires have decreased, including those caused when trash, tree branches, abandoned pieces of equipment or other debris come into contact with the electrified third rail. There were 11 of those fires in the three-month period this past summer, down 39 percent from summer 2016.

Metro safety officials say the sharp increase in events is probably a product of water leaking into underground tunnels. Several of the arcing incidents this past summer happened at or near the Woodley Park and Medical Center stations, at either end of a stretch of the Red Line tunnel that has been prone to water infiltration since it was constructed.

Metro has struggled for years to contain leakage in this part of the system, with limited success. Maintenance workers cleared out drains and made tunnel repairs during SafeTrack, but those improvements were modest, and Wiedefeld said that part of the system needs more aggressive treatment.

Last summer, Wiedefeld commissioned a short-term exploratory project to test the effectiveness of an experimental strategy that involves drilling hundreds of holes into tunnel walls and injecting them with a sealant that drips down and covers the porous concrete in a waterproof membrane.

[Metro will shut down part of the Red Line for 4 weekends for tunnel repairs]

Wiedefeld says the agency has had preliminary success with the project and is launching a second run of test trials to better determine whether it would be worthwhile to embark on a larger project that would extend the same strategy over the entire leak-prone stretch of the tunnel.

But expanding the pilot would be expensive and take money that Metro, at least now, doesnt have.

It seems to have worked pretty well, Lauby said. And if its going to work and keep the tunnels drier, then thats probably an investment that needs to be made.

[Nov. 2001: Metro Experiencing Flood of Problems]

Nine of this past summers arcing incidents occurred in July, a month, Metro points out in the report, when the Washington area had nine inches of rain. (Average precipitation for July is 3.5 inches, Metro said.)

If you look at the records, a lot of the incidents seem to follow days when we got a lot of rain, said Lauby, who is chief safety officer at the Federal Railroad Administration. All that water has got to go somewhere, and it ends up down in the tunnel, and it seems like it really aggravates the arcing incidents.

Lauby said he has asked Metro for details on what the agency is doing to address the increase, and how quickly it expects to bring the problem under control.

According to the report, there also were a larger-than-normal number of arcing incidents at the Rosslyn station during the time covered in the report. Those incidents were also because of water intrusion, Metro said. And there were two, more serious, electrical cable fires on the system between July and September, one more than in the same period last year.

The increase in arcing incidents and cable fires resulted in a rise in the overall number of fires, which went up 14 percent from summer 2016.

[Metro will shut down part of the Red Line for 4 weekends for tunnel repairs]

The increase in track fires came amid improvements in safety and reliability, according to the report.

Offloads  when passengers are forced to deboard a train experiencing mechanical problems  were down 45 percent, which Metro attributed to increased reliability and the retirement of the problematic 1000- and 4000-series trains.

And from July to September, there was just one red signal overrun, when a train operator shoots past a red signal instead of stopping.

There were seven such incidents between July and September 2016, including near misses that endangered the lives of passengers or workers.

Metro officials say theyve gotten the signal overrun problem under control, in part by retraining train operators, installing bright LED lighting and modifying train cab consoles to add steps that operators must take to bypass red lights.

Still, other significant safety issues remain.

The rate of passenger injuries increased  up 5 percent for rail passengers and 22 percent for bus riders. Most of the injuries on trains or in stations were trips, slips and falls. The largest number of bus injuries resulted from collisions  in particular, an August event in which a bus hit a defective steel plate intended to cover a hole during road construction in Chinatown, resulting in eight passenger injuries.

[March 2017: The untold story of Metros 29-hour emergency shutdown]


U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio R-FL) takes questions from reporters about the relief effort in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria, September 26, 2017 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Two of the Republican Party's highest-profile Latinos are stumping for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie at a time when the Republican is fending off criticism from Latino and immigrant groups, who blast his ads about MS-13 gang violence as fear-mongering and racist.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) will campaign for Gillespie in northern Virginia next Monday, headlining a get-out-the-vote rally in Sterling, a D.C. exurban town in swing Loudoun County. The event is free and open to the public.

It will come days after New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R), the nations first elected Latina governor, is scheduled Thursday to appear with Gillespie at business roundtables and a luncheon in northern Virginia.

Senator Rubio and Governor Martinez are strong, conservative leaders and I am thrilled to welcome each of them back to the Commonwealth in the closing weeks of this critically important election, Gillespie said through a spokesman.

[Interested in Virginias governors race? Follow our Facebook group]

Their appearances on the campaign trail come as Gillespie tries to lock-up support from Republicans, moderates and independents in vote-rich northern Virginia, where Democrats have sought to drive up margins of victory in order to win statewide. Gillespie faces Democrat Ralph Northam on Nov. 7.



Ed Gillespie and Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam prior to gubernatorial debate in McLean, Va. on September 19, 2017. (Photo by Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post) )

On Tuesday, Latino groups announced they would air Spanish language radio ads in Virginia urging voters to support the Democratic ticket.

It is important for the Latino community to understand the major differences between the candidates, said Julio Lainez, state director for Americas Voice Virginia. The hateful campaign being run by Gillespie and the Virginia Republican Party aims to divide Virginians.

Rubio carried northern Virginia counties in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, though he narrowly lost the state to Donald Trump. He has continued to be critical of the president  a divide that Democrats played up.

Gotta sting that Ed would rather campaign with Lil Marco than you, @realDonaldTrump, tweeted Northam press secretary Ofirah Yheskel, referring to Trumps nickname for his former rival during the primary.

Trump tweeted an endorsement of Gillespie, but has not indicated any plans to hit the campaign trail for him and Gillespie has been demurred when asked if he wants the president to stump for him in a state where his approval ratings are below 40 percent.

Vice President Pence, a longtime friend of Gillespie's, joined the candidate for a rally in southwest Virginia, an area that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in November.

Northam, meanwhile, had former president Barack Obama and former vice president Joe Biden campaign with him in the last week.

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada), the nations first Latina senator, met with a small group of Latino students at George Mason University on Monday to plug Northams candidacy.
Smyth County, Va., where the unemployment rate was 5 percent in August, higher than the statewide average of 3.8 percent. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

Republican Ed Gillespie and Democratic Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam opened the final debate of the governors race by clashing on a single topic: Virginias economy.

It may seem odd that the economy is a matter of debate in a state where the unemployment rate has fallen to 3.7 percent, among the lowest in the country and below the national rate of 4.2 percent. And almost 7 in 10 Virginia voters said the economy in their home region is either "excellent" or "good" in a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll.

But that same poll showed that the economy and health care are the issues likely voters are most concerned about this year. And only 44 percent said the state is headed in the right direction, the least-positive assessment in more than two decades of Post polls.

Gillespie regularly hammers Virginias economy, painting a picture of a state that sounds like its about to collapse  slow-growing, losing residents, with policies that take us in the wrong direction.

Even Northam, who defends the legacy of Terry McAuliffe (D), the current governor and his chief patron, has said that its time to get the paddles out and shock rural Virginia back to life.

[In their final debate, Northam and Gillespie spar over economy and taxes]

The truth is that the top-line numbers for Virginia dont paint the full picture. A state that had seemed immune to typical cycles of boom and bust has been vulnerable since the financial crisis of nearly a decade ago. Government work, long the prop for Virginias economy, is no longer reliable in an era of shaky congressional budget deals, sequestration and slimmer defense spending.

Even worse, the demise of legacy industries  coal mining, tobacco, textiles, furniture-making  has left regions of the state facing a generations-long challenge to rebuild. And because of changes in technology affecting companies all over the country, new employers dont bring as many jobs or pay as well as the old industries.

People are working, but at the end of the day their paycheck doesnt feel larger compared to what they were. The sense of many voters is that they are essentially working harder to stand still, said Robert McNab, an economist at Old Dominion University in Norfolk.

That dynamic also helps explain how politically disparate Virginia has become. The urban areas that are doing well  especially Northern Virginia and Richmond  are increasingly blue, tilting toward Democrats in statewide and national elections.

But suffering rural areas are not only red; they also went dramatically for Donald Trump last year, in part because he spoke to their economic desperation. Voters in coal country know theyll never see the thousands of jobs of decades past, but Trumps vow to loosen coal regulations offered at least a shred of relief.

[Deep in Virginias craggy coal country, they saw Trump as their only hope]

View Graphic The latest stories and details on the 2017 Virginia general election and race for governor.

Republicans have tended to say coal, coal, coal . . . and Democrats have just shied away, said Jack Kennedy, the longtime clerk of court for Wise County, in the southwest corner of the state.

Kennedy, a former Democratic state senator, helped bring the final gubernatorial debate to Wise, hoping to highlight the regions plight  and simply to get some publicity for his isolated area. The challenges facing Wise, where the unemployment rate is 7 percent, are a good example of how difficult its going to be to fix parts of Virginias economy.

As the coal industry withered, driven by global changes in energy preferences and competition from cheap natural gas, jobs fled Wise County. More than 1,000 former miners have probably left in just the past three years, said Carl Snodgrass, the countys economic development director.

Revenue from a coal tax imposed on mining companies has plummeted because there simply arent many companies anymore. The tax brought in about $14 million a year, more than one-fifth of Wises annual budget, but its now down to less than $2 million yearly and falling, said David Cox, the countys finance administrator.

Increasing taxes to replace that revenue is not a good option. Local officials dont want to raise taxes on people who dont have a job or are struggling to hang on, Cox said.

The county has raced to attract new employers, to retrain its workers, to get modern skills for young people  before so many leave that no company wants to locate there. Its an expensive proposition. Enrollment at the University of Virginias College at Wise, which has a modern, attractive campus, is stuck at about 2,200. Local officials say it needs to more than double in size to bring in a critical mass of talent and research programs that could lead to job creation. That would require a sizable investment from the state.

There has been some success in wooing new business. Last year, the McAuliffe administration announced that a $70 million data center would locate near Wises Lonesome Pine Airport. It opened this summer, a sprawling facility behind an imposing metal fence. But it employs fewer than 40 people.

And while the county is hoping to attract more data centers to a vast vacant tract nearby, its handicapped by a limited electricity grid and a lack of access to renewable energy, Kennedy said.

Those kinds of complications are why McAuliffes vigorous crusade to lure new business to Virginia during his term has had mixed results. He  and Northam  routinely tout the statistic that theyve created more than 200,000 new jobs in the past four years. Even Republicans praise the governor for his salesmanship; conservative radio host John Fredericks told McAuliffe on his show last week that nobodys been a better salesman for Virginia or worked harder than you have.

But the new jobs dont pay as well as the old ones did, and theyre not enough to counter the loss of major traditional industries or the softness in government work for large contractors.

Since the financial crisis began in 2007, Virginia has had an unusually difficult time making up lost ground. After earlier recessions, going back to 1981, the state returned to pre-recession employment levels in less than three years. This time, it took nearly five years, and the climb since has been slow, according to an analysis by the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, a Richmond-based think tank.

The recovery has been wildly inconsistent around the state. Many metropolitan areas have done fine  Northern Virginia, Charlottesville and Richmond are all at least 6 percent above pre-recession employment levels, the institute found. Harrisonburg and Blacksburg are also up.

But Roanoke and Hampton Roads continue to struggle, with almost no net job growth in the past decade. Lynchburg and rural parts of the state have never recovered lost jobs, according to the analysis.

Hampton Roads is particularly vexing, because some of the forces dragging it down are beyond state control. Flat federal contracting and military spending shackle the regions economy.

[Hampton Roads relied on military spending. Now it must shift its economy.]

Because it relies on big defense contractors, the region has been especially slow to develop a culture of small, entrepreneurial start-ups  the kinds of companies that usually drive job growth, said ODUs McNab.

Breaking that cycle is more difficult because Hampton Roads is so fragmented: seven independent cities in a state that gives little power to local governments.

One of the few tools that localities in Virginia have to raise revenue from businesses  or create incentives for them  is the business/professional/occupational license tax. Both Northam and Gillespie propose sharply limiting or eliminating those taxes, something that every recent candidate for governor has also proposed, McNab said.

But local governments lobby against those changes because they need that small measure of local control, McNab said.

Fixing these long-term problems will be costly and complicated for whoever wins in November, but slow growth is having a worrisome effect on Virginia's finances. The state's general-fund revenue is increasing much more slowly than historical rates, thanks to decreased tax revenue. Lawmakers have had to plug holes in the budget over the past few years, tapping into the state's "rainy day" reserves to help fund things such as pay raises for law enforcement.

That, in turn, has caused Standard & Poor's to put a negative outlook on the state's cherished AAA bond rating. This budgetary tightness is why Richmond insiders are skeptical of any political promises of big spending, and some have cringed at both candidates' calls for tax cuts.

Northam has proposed rolling back grocery taxes for low-income residents, while Gillespie has championed a far more ambitious 10 percent across-the-board cut to state income tax.

Gillespie insists that the states natural growth would make that cut affordable, but he said hed delay implementation if revenue didnt reach certain targets.

The state does not have the resources to make the kind of investment you might expect to address some of these challenges, said Michael Cassidy, president of the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis. The challenge for state lawmakers is to have a clear-eyed view of what it is they can do.

Emily Guskin and Laura Vozzella contributed to this report.
Virginias top public schools official will retire at the end of the year, the Virginia Department of Education announced Monday.

Steven R. Staples, who was appointed as the state superintendent of public instruction by Gov. Terry McAuliffe in 2014, is scheduled to depart at the end of the year. His retirement is effective Jan. 1.

It has been an honor and a privilege to serve in this capacity, and I will be forever grateful to so many for their advice, encouragement and support during my time in this post, Staples, 63, told Virginia Department of Education staff in an email.

In a conference call Monday, Staples said hes retiring to spend more time with family. He decided against requesting a reappointment from the next administration, he said, because hes doubtful he could commit the time.

In a news release, the Virginia Department of Education credited Staples with helping reduce standardized testing and for supporting the state Board of Educations efforts to redesign accreditation standards. Final approval from the board on the revised regulations is scheduled for November.

"I believe we have corrected an overemphasis on standardized testing while maintaining accountability for effective instruction and achievement," Staples, who stepped into office as a vocal champion of testing reform, said in the release.

During Staples tenure, four-year high school graduation rates climbed above 90 percent.

He oversaw the state school system's expansion into computer-adaptive testing, which customizes assessments for students. Under that form of testing, a student's response to a question determines the difficulty of the next item, with a correct response leading to a more challenging question.

Under his guidance, schoolchildren were able to take tests on a greater variety of devices, including tablets.

State education officials and advocates, including Board of Education president Daniel Gecker, lauded Staples for his contributions. Gecker described the departing superintendent's experience as an educator and administrator as invaluable  Staples was a teacher and principal before becoming superintendent of York County public schools in 1991.

He helped the board understand how policy impacts practice and the importance of listening to all stakeholders, Gecker said in the news release.

One of the toughest parts of the job, Staples said, was shepherding policy that would prove beneficial for students across the state.

This job has given me a new perspective on the diversity across the state and trying to reconcile that diversity with state level policy that produces positive results for all, he said.

In a statement, Chris Minnich, executive director for the Council of Chief State School Officers, said Staples displayed a commitment to bettering education for students from all walks of life.

Steve Staples has championed the importance of continuous improvement for all schools, believing that even high-performing schools must continue to strive for excellence for all students, he said.

Staples acknowledged much work remains as he prepares to leave office and cited teacher shortages and diversity in hiring as among the most critical issues facing the next state superintendent.

Frankly, all of our work is for nothing if we cant get qualified teachers in our classrooms, he said.

Before serving as superintendent, Staples was the executive director of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents and a faculty member in the College of William & Mary's School of Education. He began his teaching career in 1976 in Prince George County.

Staples received his bachelors and masters degrees from William & Mary and a doctorate from Virginia Tech, according to the state education department.

Staples doesnt have specific plans for retirement but said it would be difficult to get away from education, entirely.
CONNECTICUT

FBI releases document trove on Sandy Hook

The FBI on Tuesday released more than 1,500 pages of documents related to its investigation of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 20 first-graders and six educators dead.

The documents include reports by FBI agents who interviewed people about shooter Adam Lanza, who killed himself as police arrived at the school. Large portions of many of the documents were redacted, including the names of the people who spoke to the agents.

The documents offer a window into the early days of the investigation, as agents chased false leads and gathered evidence of Lanzas isolation. A year after the massacre, state police released a final investigative document concluding that Lanza was obsessed with firearms, death and mass shootings.

Lanza shot his mother, Nancy, to death in their home before going to the school on Dec. 14, 2012.

 Associated Press

ILLINOIS

Judge tosses 2 of 24 counts in Schock case

A federal judge in central Illinois has tossed two counts in a 24-count indictment of former congressman Aaron Schock, including a wire fraud allegation, but Schock still faces serious charges.

Judge Colin S. Bruce ruled late Monday that prosecutors would have to rely on legislative rules to prove the allegation that Schock wrongly pocketed thousands of dollars by arranging meet-and-greets for his constituents in Washington. Bruce said a judicial ruling on such a count could violate constitutional provisions for separation of powers.

Bruce let stand 22 other counts in the 2016 indictment. The Peoria Republican has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors say Schock illegally sought reimbursement in government funds for lavish spending, including $5,000 on a chandelier for his Washington office, which he redecorated in the style of the TV series Downton Abbey.

 Associated Press

TEXAS

Father of dead toddler changes story to police

The father of a missing toddler whose body was found in a culvert under a road in suburban Dallas has changed his story to say the girl did not wander off two weeks ago but rather choked to death drinking milk in the familys garage.

Richardson police said Tuesday that the Dallas County medical examiners office used dental records to identify 3-year-old Sherin Mathew, whose body was found Sunday by searchers with cadaver dogs. The girl was reported missing by her father, Wesley Mathews, on Oct. 7.

Police said the cause of death is unknown.

Mathews, who adopted Sherin from India in June 2016 with his wife, Sini Mathews, was arrested Monday after he voluntarily revised his police statement on what happened to the girl.

Mathews initially told police he had sent the girl to stand outside at 3 a.m. because she refused to drink her milk. In his revised statement Monday, he said that the girl choked on the milk and that he removed her body from the home after he believed she had died.

Mathews was initially charged with abandoning or endangering a child when he first reported the girl missing. Police charged him Monday with first-degree felony injury to a child, which is punishable by up to life in prison. He was being held on $1 million bond.

 Associated Press
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) announced Monday the withdrawal of what state officials had called a crucial stopgap health plan. The decision adds to turmoil surrounding the sign-up for 2018 coverage in the state. (Bryon Houlgrave/Des Moines Register/AP)

Iowa is abandoning its quest to shed major elements of the Affordable Care Act, after federal health officials failed to approve the plan in time for the insurance-buying season that begins in just over a week.

The state's withdrawal comes two months after President Trump telephoned a top federal health official with instructions to reject Iowa's proposal.

In announcing the withdrawal of what the state has called a crucial stopgap plan to prevent its marketplace from collapsing, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) on Monday did not mention the presidents intervention, instead thanking Trump for trying to repeal the ACA and blaming the law itself for what she called its inflexibility.

The decision adds to turmoil surrounding the sign-up for 2018 coverage in the state that had gone further than any other in trying to jettison ACA rules and create an alternative for residents to buy insurance on their own. Iowa officials already had readied state computers for the switch, and the one company left in the insurance marketplace has been planning to raise its premiums by a whopping average of 57 percent.

The demise of Iowa's proposal comes as the president and his health-care aides have undertaken recent moves to damage the marketplaces created under the 2010 law for Americans who cannot get affordable health benefits through a job. The administration has slashed funds for advertising and enrollment help for the sign-up period that starts Nov. 1. It will be impossible for consumers who already have ACA health plans to switch if they do not shop around during a shortened enrollment period. Longer term, the president wants to make it easier for individuals and small businesses to buy health plans that skirt ACA protections and has ended the law's reimbursements to insurers for subsidies to lower-income customers.

For several months, Iowas insurance commissioner, Doug Ommen, has been saying that he and his staff were working closely with federal health officials, who he said had told him by late August that the proposal met federal requirements.

At a news conference Monday with the governor, Ommen reiterated his prediction that, without the states alternative method in place, up to 22,000 Iowans will lose coverage for the coming year because only one insurance company has agreed to sell ACA coverage, and its prices are high. The healthiest are the first to go, Ommen said.

Monday's announcement in Des Moines ended a bold attempt that Iowa began in June to use a facet of the health-care law that, starting this year, allows states to request federal permission for what are known as "1332 waivers" to achieve the law's insurance goals through different means.

While a few states, including Alaska and Minnesota, have received such permission to try to buffer insurers from high-cost customers, Iowa is not the only state that has not succeeded. Also on Monday, federal health officials ruled that an application was incomplete from Massachusetts, which last month applied for a waiver to allow it to create for 2018 a stabilization fund to offset a potential loss of cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers.

Also late last month, Oklahoma withdrew a proposal, which was not as far-reaching as Iowas. The states health secretary accused the administration of failing to make a decision after months of development, negotiation, and near-daily communication over the past six weeks.

In contrast, Iowas officials assumed a more amicable tone, and the state and federal health officials dispatched a joint statement. Reynolds said that Trump had encouraged Seema Verma, administrator of the Health and Human Services Departments Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to work with Iowa officials. Verma was the member of the administration with whom the president spoke in August after reading a Wall Street Journal article about the states plan, said an individual briefed on the exchange who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose a private conversation.

Under the Iowa Stopgap Measure, the state wanted to stop relying on the ACAs federal insurance exchange and, unlike anywhere else in the country, provide residents federal help in paying for coverage outside the marketplace. The plan would have eliminated the laws subsidies for insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs, instead creating a different type of tax credit. It also would have replaced tiers of coverage with a single level of insurance for customers buying health plans on their own. And it would have created financial buffers for insurers to help them cover customers with particularly high medical expenses.

On the August day that the state filed a final version of its plan, Ommen said that, based on conversations with CMS officials, I am very optimistic that we will have a high level of cooperation . . . [with] the federal authorities.

At Mondays news conference, Ommen said, It now appears that Obamacares waiver rules are as inflexible as the law itself.

He said that, last week, a Treasury official informed the state that they were several weeks away from calculating how much federal money Iowa could receive under its plan. That statement was inconsistent with a letter dated Thursday from CMSs deputy administrator saying that the states waiver request did not meet a federal requirement that any 1332 waiver may not add to the federal deficit.

Reynolds on Monday implored Congress to change the law. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, immediately issued a statement saying that Iowas decision is further evidence that the Affordable Care Act is too restrictive to allow states to help people who need to buy insurance. Alexander is a main sponsor of a bipartisan bill that would restore cost-sharing reduction payments in exchange for giving states more freedom to pursue alternatives to the ACA marketplaces.

For now, one insurer, Medica, will be selling individual health plans statewide in Iowa.
CALIFORNIA

Trial begins in case of shooting on pier

A murder trial started Monday for a Mexican man who set off a national immigration debate after he shot and killed a woman two years ago on a popular San Francisco pier.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 54, has acknowledged shooting Kate Steinle in the back while she was walking with her father on the downtown pier on July 1, 2015.

But Garcia Zarate has said the shooting was accidental. He said he was handling a handgun he found wrapped in a T-shirt under a bench on the pier when it accidentally fired.

Deputy District Attorney Diana Garcia, in her opening statement, said Zarate fired the gun on purpose, adding that a ballistics expert will testify that the only way to fire it is to pull the trigger.

Garcia Zarate is charged with second-degree murder, which could result in a sentence of 15 years to life in prison.

Garcia Zarate had been deported five times and was homeless in San Francisco when he shot Steinle. He had recently completed a prison sentence for illegal reentry when he was transferred to the San Francisco County jail to face a 20-year-old marijuana charge.

Prosecutors dropped that charge, and the San Francisco sheriff released Zarate from jail despite a federal immigration request to detain him for at least two more days for deportation. The sheriffs department said it was following San Franciscos sanctuary city policy of limited cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

The handgun belonged to a Bureau of Land Management ranger who reported that it was stolen from his parked car in San Francisco a week before Steinle was shot.

 Associated Press

FLORIDA

Serial killer has Tampa on edge

Police escorted children to school Monday and a city bus changed its usual route as a neighborhood near downtown Tampa feared a serial killer may be on the loose.

In the past two weeks, three people have been shot to death within a 1-mile radius in the normally quiet Seminole Heights neighborhood. Police think the shootings are linked by proximity and time frame, but they dont have a motive or a suspect.

All three victims, who didnt know each other, rode the bus and were alone when they were shot on the street. None were robbed.

Residents and business owners say there are car burglaries and fights between youths, but they are not accustomed to anything like the violence that started Oct. 9.

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn said the city has put dozens of officers in the area around the clock. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are also helping, he said.

Police said Benjamin Mitchell, 22, was the first person killed on Oct. 9. Two days later, Monica Hoffa, 32, was killed in a vacant lot. Anthony Naiboa, 20, was shot and killed Oct. 19.

 Associated Press

Man accused of plotting to bomb mall

A Florida man who described himself as a sympathizer of the Islamic State extremist group faces terrorism-related charges stemming from a purported plot to bomb a Miami-area shopping mall, according to court documents filed Monday.

Vicente Adolfo Solano, 53, appeared at a brief hearing Monday afternoon on a charge of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction at the Dolphin Mall west of Miami. Solano was arrested Friday after accepting a fake bomb provided by the FBI outside the mall, according to an FBI affidavit.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Chris McAliley said she will appoint a public defender to represent Solano, who is being held without bail. A bond hearing is set Thursday, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Karen Gilbert said the government wants him kept behind bars until trial.

Solano told the judge he works as a painter earning $13 an hour. Court records show Solano has had only minor brushes with the law, most recently in 2014 and 2015 for driving with a suspended license. That document noted he had no felony record.

The FBI began investigating Solano in late September.

 Associated Press
For the sprawling effort to restore Puerto Ricos crippled electrical grid, the territorys state-owned utility has turned to a two-year-old company from Montana that had just two full-time employees on the day Hurricane Maria made landfall.

The company, Whitefish Energy, said last week that it had signed a $300 million contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to repair and reconstruct large portions of the island's electrical infrastructure. The contract is the biggest yet issued in the troubled relief effort.

Whitefish said Monday that it has 280 workers in the territory, using linemen from across the country, most of them as subcontractors, and that the number grows on average from 10 to 20 people a day. It said it was close to completing infrastructure work that will energize some of the key industrial facilities that are critical to restarting the local economy.

The power authority, also known as PREPA, opted to hire Whitefish rather than activate the mutual aid arrangements it has with other utilities. For many years, such agreements have helped U.S. utilities  including those in Florida and Texas recently  to recover quickly after natural disasters.



A resident on Oct. 13 tries to connect electrical lines downed by Hurricane Maria in preparation for when electricity is restored in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico. (Ramon Espinosa/AP)

The unusual decision to instead hire a tiny for-profit company is drawing scrutiny from Congress and comes amid concerns about bankrupt Puerto Ricos spending as it seeks to provide relief to its 3.4 million residents, the great majority of whom remain without power a month after the storm.

The fact that there are so many utilities with experience in this and a huge track record of helping each other out, it is at least odd why [the utility] would go to Whitefish, said Susan F. Tierney, a former senior official at the Energy Department and state regulatory agencies. Im scratching my head wondering how it all adds up.

PREPAs executive director, Ricardo Ramos, and a spokesman did not respond to emails asking why the utility didnt activate the mutual-aid network. On a tour of the idled Palo Seco power plant, Ramos told reporters that Whitefish was the first company available to arrive and they were the ones that first accepted terms and conditions for PREPA.

Ramos said that the utility is completely content with the work Whitefish is doing. The doubts that have been raised about Whitefish, from my point of view, are completely unfounded, he added, saying that concerns about Whitefish were probably spread by jealous competitors.

Whitefish officials have said that the company's expertise in mountainous areas makes it well suited for the work and that it jumped at the chance when other firms were hesitating over concerns about payment. The company acknowledges it had only two full-time employees when Maria struck but says its business model calls for ramping up rapidly by hiring workers on short-term contracts.

Spokesman Chris Chiames dismissed criticism about the companys qualifications. We are taking personal risks and business risks working in perilous physical and financial conditions, Chiames said. So the carping by others is unfounded, and we stand by our work and our commitment to the people of Puerto Rico.

Whitefish Energy is based in Whitefish, Mont., the home town of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Its chief executive, Andy Techmanski, and Zinke acknowledge knowing one another  but only, Zinkes office said in an email, because Whitefish is a small town where everybody knows everybody. One of Zinkes sons joined a friend who worked a summer job at one of Techmanskis construction sites, the email said. Whitefish said he worked as a flagger.

Zinkes office said he had no role in Whitefish securing the contract for work in Puerto Rico. Techmanski also said Zinke was not involved.

Techmanski said in an interview that the contract emerged from discussions between his company and the utility rather than from a formal bidding process. He said he had been in contact with the utility two weeks before Maria discussing the what if scenarios of hurricane recovery. In the days after the hurricane, he said, it started to make sense that there was a need here for our services and others.

On Thursday, Techmanski told CNN simply: "We called each other."

The scale of the disaster in Puerto Rico is far larger than anything Whitefish has handled. The company has won two contracts from the Energy Department, including $172,000 to replace a metal pole structure and splice in three miles of new conductor and overhead ground wire in Arizona.

Shortly before Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, Whitefish landed its largest federal contract, a $1.3 million deal to replace and upgrade parts of a 4.8-mile transmission line in Arizona. The company  which was listed in procurement documents as having annual revenue of $1 million  was given 11 months to complete the work, records show.

Puerto Rico has 2,400 miles of transmission lines across the island, and 30,000 miles of distribution lines with 300 substations. Jeff Hawk, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' power restoration task force, estimated that 80 percent of the grid has been damaged. A month after the storm, about 80 percent of customers remain without power.

With the entire Puerto Rican commonwealth in bankruptcy, and the utility itself in default on $9 billion in debt, spending for the recovery is drawing scrutiny from the Trump administration and Congress. Gov. Ricardo Rossello and Jose Carrion, chairman of the federal oversight board created to resolve the islands long-running financial crisis, were summoned to Washington last week for a meeting with the Office of Management and Budget.

The House Committee on Natural Resources is examining Whitefish's role in Puerto Rico, said Parish Braden, a spokesman for the committee. The hiring of the little-known company has been noted by the trade publications Utility Dive and E&E News.

The size and unknown details of this contract raises numerous questions, Braden said. This is one of many things the committee is taking a close look at as it continues to work with the resident commissioner, governors office, and oversight board to ensure Puerto Ricos recovery is robust, effective and sustained.

Rossello said Wednesday that the island would spend $490 million on the initial phase of repairing the commonwealths grid, adding that a large portion of that would probably go to Whitefish and another contractor. The utility gave Whitefish a $3.7 million initial payment for mobilization of personnel and equipment, the contract says. Whitefish could be paid as much as $300 million for up to two years of work.

Under the contract, the hourly rate was set at $330 for a site supervisor, and at $227.88 for a journeyman lineman. The cost for subcontractors, which make up the bulk of Whitefishs workforce, is $462 per hour for a supervisor and $319.04 for a lineman. Whitefish also charges nightly accommodation fees of $332 per worker and almost $80 per day for food.

Only eight contracts larger than $20 million have been approved for Puerto Rico by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, with half of those for shipments of food and bottled water. Whitefish's contract surpasses the $240 million contract the Army Corps awarded to engineering giant Fluor to "augment ongoing efforts" to repair the power grid.

The commonwealth, strapped for funds before Hurricane Maria hit, is expected to run out of cash as early as the end of the month, according to people familiar with the islands finances. And even if the Senate and the president approve the Houses $4.9 billion aid package for Puerto Rico, the island might need more money in as little as three months.

PREPA did not reach its agreement with Whitefish until Sept. 26, six days after the storm swept through. By comparison, the Florida utility FPL requested mutual aid before Hurricane Irma hit. The result was an army of nearly 20,000 restoration workers, including FPL employees, from 30 states and Canada at work on the first day.

On Oct. 1, FPL had teams assembled to assess damage in Puerto Rico. It posted notices in Spanish and English on its Facebook page: "FPL is ready to help Puerto Rico." Florida Gov. Rick Scott mentioned the offer in a news release.

The Florida utility says it never received a reply. The Puerto Rican utility has not replied to offers of assistance from mutual-aid partners, according to the American Public Power Association, which coordinates such operations.

Techmanski called the damage in Puerto Rico among the worst that I have ever seen in more than 20 years of work rebuilding power lines after storms. According to his LinkedIn page, Techmanski has held leadership roles in utility service companies based in Vancouver, Texas and California.

It will take months, if not years, to repair the entire grid to full operational status, he said.

NBC Montana quoted Techmanski in a report Oct. 1 as saying he had asked Zinke for help in getting personnel and equipment to the territory. Chiames, the Whitefish spokesman, confirmed that "Once the company got the go-ahead from PREPA on September 26 to begin work, company executives did reach out to contacts in case they could help expedite getting qualified linesmen to the island."

Zinkes office said: The Secretary always politely listens when citizens and the small business community approach him with concerns and ideas. Neither the Secretary nor anyone in his office have taken any meetings or action on behalf of this company.

Whitefish's Twitter feed features videos of workers dangling from helicopters and describes its progress but also suggests the work has been challenging.

In one post, a team was reported to have set up six concrete poles, but had all day issues with material. A crane showed up broke and we had to fix it. Equipment in a warehouse had rusted. Narrow roads were cited as a safety concern, as were very large termite nests.

Techmanski said that Whitefish was focusing on fixing key transmission lines and was using helicopters and cranes to reach them. Once we complete those, the efforts going to move on to other transmission and distribution systems, he said. So were just ramping up and providing as many people as we possibly can.

Kent McNellie, an investment professional at HBC, the Texas investment firm that is now the largest financier of Whitefish, said the companys experience reconstructing a one-mile power line destroyed in a wildfire in Washington state was more relevant to Puerto Ricos needs than is the experience of many companies on the mainland. The span in Washington included an elevation change of about 5,000 feet, and the terrain required crews and equipment to be delivered by helicopter.

Most guys go up in a 30-foot bucket truck, and they can do that from Texas to New York, but you dont need an army of bucket trucks, McNellie said. Andy realized you had a transmission problem and that requires 90-foot buckets, 100-foot ladders and helicopters  thats not the typical crew you can get through mutual aid.

Even before the storm swept through Puerto Rico, years of neglect and mismanagement had degraded the territory's electrical grid so badly it was "literally falling apart," according to a consultant's report prepared for the Puerto Rico Energy Commission.

Nonetheless, Rossello said recently that 95 percent of the power would be restored by Christmas.

Techmanski is doubtful.

I dont know where he got that and what information he was using, he said. Without doing a full assessment countrywide, I couldnt fathom how many months, if its going to be two months, three months, five months. . . . Weve been focused in the small areas that weve been working.

Hernandez reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.


A plainclothes police officer with the Nashua Police Department narcotics unit speaks to a man who was spotted allegedly taking part in a drug deal on a bike path in Nashua, N.H., in August. (Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist/For The Washington Post)

 Michelle MacLeod died in a tough part of town known as the Tree Streets, where many of the streets have names like Ash, Palm, Chestnut and Walnut. Kevin Manchester, who provided the fentanyl that killed her, lived on Pine.

After MacLeods death, Nashua police wired her fiance and recorded him telling Manchester that MacLeod had overdosed and died. Manchester kept selling the powerful synthetic narcotic anyway.

Manchester, 27, went to prison for selling drugs that proved lethal  a death-resulting charge that prosecutors are using more frequently as they battle the opioid epidemic.

[Graphic: See how deadly street opioids have become]

He had no pause from what he had done, knowing full well he had killed that girl, said Jon DeLena, the assistant special agent in charge in New Hampshire for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. It didnt slow him down at all.

The DEA points to the Manchester case as a victory, but it also highlights the challenges for law enforcement agencies as they seek to curb the spread of fentanyl. Manchester, a small-time dealer who was using his own product, was part of a wave of addiction that has worsened as the drugs have evolved, with fentanyl posing special problems because it is extremely potent, easily transported and highly desired.

[Fentanyl linked to thousands of urban overdose deaths]

As President Trump prepares to declare the opioid epidemic a national crisis, the law enforcement community is racing to contain the spread of fentanyl, which has largely replaced heroin on the streets here in opioid-ravaged New England and is increasingly the cause of fatal overdoses nationwide.

For dealers, a ripe market

The drug crisis is both a law enforcement issue and a public health emergency, a decentralized disaster that authorities understand they cannot solve with handcuffs and prison bars alone. Because the drug abusers often are themselves the dealers, the localized drug networks turn police work into a game of whack-a-mole.

Much of the fentanyl that winds up in New England is manufactured in Mexico using precursor materials obtained from China, the DEA says. It is then smuggled into the United States.

Some of the illicit fentanyl arrives via the mail. Last week the Justice Department announced charges against two Chinese nationals who sold fentanyl to Americans via the Internet.



Sgt. Keith Dillon, a narcotics officer, while on patrol in Nashua, N.H. (Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist/For The Washington Post)

The opioid crisis here didnt pop up overnight. Residents of the region have always been heavy users of prescription opioid painkillers, DeLena said. The drug cartels realized that this was a ripe market for heroin.

It was garbage heroin: It was 17, 18 percent purity, DeLena said, noting that about two years ago drug dealers began mixing fentanyl into the heroin supply to boost its purity and potency. They started telling people they had a new, cleaner version of heroin. China White, they were calling it.

[From Teddy Roosevelt to Trump: How drug companies triggered an opioid crisis a century ago]

Legally manufactured for medical use, fentanyl can be a godsend for patients in extreme pain, including people at the end of life. But illicit fentanyl is boosting profit margins on the streets. The synthetic opioid is attractive to dealers because, unlike heroin derived from the poppy plant, its not subject to the vagaries of agriculture.

Fentanyl generally comes in a white or off-white powder that can be mixed with other powdered drugs  not just heroin but also cocaine or methamphetamine. Some street-level dealers probably didnt know they were selling drugs laced with fentanyl, authorities say, which has contributed to overdose deaths, including among cocaine users.

But others do know the fentanyl is in the mix, and their addicted customers want the most powerful product even if its potentially deadly. To some addicts, a near-death experience is not an error. Its the dream.



A used syringe under the Joseph W. Casey Bridge in Lawrence, Mass. (Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist/For The Washington Post)

The bad corner

The law-enforcement strategy against drug trafficking is traditionally to go up the ladder from street dealers, caught in the act, to their bosses and ultimately to kingpins.

The fentanyl and heroin in this part of New England often is funneled through Lawrence, Mass., via drug traffickers with ties to the Dominican Republic, according to the DEA and police in Lawrence and Nashua. A major drug raid in May in Lawrence resulted in 34 arrests on drug, gun and immigration charges.





Profits from Lawrence are typically diverted to the Dominican Republic, according to the DEA. Michael Ferguson, special agent in charge for the DEA in Boston, said the agency is working with Dominican authorities to seize property there that has been obtained with drug money.

The old mill town now has what officials call milling operations, and theyre not making textiles as they did many decades ago. A milling operation is typically a rental apartment with as many as 30 blenders. The blenders are used to mix fentanyl with inert fillers or perhaps heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine.

The fentanyl often is unevenly distributed in bags when its sold. That can explain why some people die from overdoses while others survive. As DeLena puts it, describing a situation very much like what happened to Michelle Mac-Leod, She got the bad corner.

[As opioid overdoses rise, police officers become counselors, doctors and social workers]

In Lawrence, drug transactions typically happen not far from one of the freeways. Two drivers will meet on a sleepy side street when people are at work or at school or shuttered inside. The cars face opposite directions, and the drivers do the transaction hand to hand, window to window. A 10-gram package of heroin or fentanyl is called a finger. The exchange is over in 30 seconds or less.

Sometimes the dealer will be on foot.

They typically square the block, and take four lefts and the customer drops him back to where they started, said David Moynihan, a 48-year-old Lawrence police narcotics detective.

The drug dealers use rented vehicles registered to fictitious businesses. Suspects taken into custody often have multiple identities, and police lament that they dont know whom theyve just locked up.

Im on the third generation of arresting people now, Moynihan said. Ive arrested the grandfather, the father, and Ive just arrested the son for selling drugs.



Detective David Moynihan of the Lawrence Police Department's narcotics unit, says drug dealing is a cross-generational problem. (Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist/For The Washington Post)

In the past couple of years, the drug suppliers have essentially deputized the addicts to become the drug distributors, DeLena said. The addicts will travel to Lawrence for product and bring some extra to their home communities, assuming all the risk.

Its the Amway model. They have created this pyramid effect, DeLena said. Addicts used to go to Lawrence to buy just enough for their own use, he said, but now theyre stopping you and saying, Take more, bring back the money when you have it. 



Richard Long, 43, points out heroin left behind in the camp where he lives under a bridge in Lawrence. Long has been clean for two years but lost his wife last year to an overdose of carfentanil, a super-powerful opioid drug. (Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist/For The Washington Post)

I am not a monster

Brian Kenney, head of the narcotics unit in Nashua, said stepped-up law enforcement, enabled by greater funding, has resulted in some progress in stemming the epidemic. But he has noticed something about the overdoses: There arent as many of them, but more of the overdoses are fatal.

The potency of the stuff that is out there is so much stronger that Im still getting my deaths, he said.

Many of the users in Nashua are people who became addicted to prescription painkillers  often after a work accident  and wound up addicted to street drugs, he said. Kenney describes the pitiable scenes when he makes an arrest: They break down talking to me. They say, I cant believe this happened to me. I was a regular guy. 



Brian Kenney, a detective lieutenant of the Nashua Police Departments narcotics unit, on Palm Street. (Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist/For The Washington Post)

The drug epidemic swept up Manchester and MacLeod, who lived a few blocks apart.

He had been prescribed an opioid painkiller after a high school lacrosse injury and then secretively became a drug abuser, according to his lawyer, public defender Sarah Newhall. Drug and alcohol abuse got him kicked out of college in his first semester. He then worked various jobs, found love, started a family and had two children. But after multiple stints in rehab, he was using drugs again by early 2016.

MacLeod, 31, had a fiance and two young children of her own. Her mother, Barbara MacLeod, said in court that Michelle completed cosmetology school but had struggled with depression after spending two years caring for her brothers disabled son.

On Jan. 22, 2016, MacLeod and Manchester pooled their money, and she drove him to the Lawrence area, where he met a source who sold him fentanyl, authorities said. MacLeod was found dead the next day of an overdose. Police used messages on her phone to identify Manchester as the supplier, and they set up a sting operation. Manchester sold the fentanyl four more times.



Officers John Hannigan and Michael Zupkosky take a woman into custody at a park in Nashua. (Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist/For The Washington Post)

Manchester faced a potential sentence of life in prison but agreed to a plea deal with a sentence of 10 to 40 years. In a statement to the court at his sentencing hearing, he said he hadnt intended any harm to anyone. In apologizing, he described his own struggle with drug addiction: I am not a monster.

MacLeods mother, Barbara, addressed the court, choking up as she spoke.

Kevin Manchester has shattered our family, she said. No penalty will bring back my baby girl. We are all Gods children, Mr. Manchester, so my heart aches for you and your family also. They have lost you, too. I can only hope that your incarceration is long enough to save the lives of other children and long enough to repair your damaged soul.

Judge Jacalyn Colburn, in agreeing to the plea deal, said she didnt think Manchester is a monster but that his decision to keep selling the fentanyl after learning it had killed MacLeod cannot be excused.

Colburn lamented that this was yet another tragedy in an ongoing crisis: This epidemic and the families that are caught up in it, its bigger than any of us ever imagined it would become, and it doesnt seem to be going away.
SYRIA

67 civilians found dead in recaptured town

The bodies of at least 67 civilians, many summarily killed by the Islamic State, have been discovered in a central town in Syria that government forces retook from the militant group over the weekend, the government and activists said Monday.

A senior Syrian official described the attack as a shocking massacre, saying that the search for and documentation of those killed in Qaryatayn is still underway and that the number of bodies is likely to climb.

Some were shot because they were suspected of working with the government, activists said.

The Islamic State has been retreating across northern and eastern Syria, days after having been defeated in Raqqa, the de facto capital of the groups self-proclaimed caliphate.

Talal Barazi, governor of surrounding Homs province, said most of the bodies were of townspeople who were government employees or were tied to the ruling Baath Party. It is a shocking massacre, he said.

Syrian troops and allied militias regained control of the town on Saturday. The militants seized Qaryatayn in August 2015.

 Associated Press

PHILIPPINES

5-month militant siege of southern city ends

The Philippine government on Monday declared the end of the militant siege of a southern city that lasted five months, left more than 1,100 people dead and sparked fears of the Islamic State group gaining a foothold in Southeast Asia.

Speaking at a meeting of the regions defense ministers, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said combat operations in Marawi were ending after troops recovered the bodies of the last group of militants.

There are no more militants inside Marawi City, he said.

On May 23, hundreds of militants launched the siege of Marawi, a bastion of Islamic faith in the largely Roman Catholic Philippines.

It had sparked fears that the Islamic State would influence, fund and strengthen local militant groups as it was losing ground in Syria and Iraq. The defeat of the Islamic State-linked uprising comes as a relief to the region.

Still, the length of the siege and the difficulty the military had in ending it have stirred doubts about the preparedness of the armed forces at a time when President Rodrigo Duterte has suggested his country could ditch the United States, a longtime ally.

 Associated Press

ISRAEL

President: Government politicizing everything

In an unusually blunt address to parliament, Israels president accused the government on Monday of delegitimizing vital democratic institutions as part of a campaign to stifle opposition.

Reuven Rivlin opened the winter session of parliament with a scathing critique of his former political home  the Likud party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. To them, he said, everything is political.

Israels president fills a mostly ceremonial role and rarely delves into partisan bickering. But Rivlin chose to focus on the growing divisions in Israeli society, pinning much of the blame on the countrys leaders  and its embattled prime minister.

In this climate of delegitimization, the atmosphere of everything is political trickles down to the public, who receive the message that there is no more statesmanship, that there is only ruling and democracy. And in this climate, democracy means that the strong decides, he said, seated at the dais opposite Netanyahu.

In recent months, Netanyahu has responded to various graft investigations by attacking Israels media, law enforcement, judiciary and other elites he believes are bent on his removal.

 Associated Press

Group suspends migrant rescues in Mediterranean: Save the Children, an international humanitarian group, said it has suspended migrant rescues in the Mediterranean Sea as departures from Libya slow and security conditions worsen. Save the Children has operated a ship since September last year, rescuing more than 10,000 migrants from overcrowded boats launched by people smugglers.

 From news services
SPAIN

Catalan leaders plan to challenge takeover

Catalonias political leaders plan to bring a legal challenge to prevent the Spanish government from removing them from office and taking over running the region to stop its push for independence, a regional spokesman said Tuesday.

Appeals will be lodged in Spains Constitutional and Supreme courts against Prime Minister Mariano Rajoys decision to sack Catalonias government and curtail the regional parliaments powers, regional government spokesman Jordi Turull said.

If the regional government is not successful in Spanish courts, it will pursue the case in international courts, Turull said.

Spains Senate is expected to approve Rajoys plans on Friday, triggering constitutional powers to act against Catalan leaders accused of violating the law by holding a referendum on secession and preparing to declare independence.

Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont has a last chance this week to defend his case before Senate members. But he could instead attend a meeting Thursday at the regional parliament in Barcelona and declare independence.

There is also speculation that Puigdemont may alternatively call an early regional election and avoid central government intervention. Calling such an election would indicate that Catalonia was willing to return to the fold and act under Spanish laws, rather than flout them by declaring independence.

 Associated Press

BURMA

Agreement reached to halt Rohingya outflow

Officials from Bangladesh and Burma agreed Tuesday to halt the outflow of Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh and enable the refugees to return home.

The two sides met in Burmas capital, Naypyidaw, to discuss a crisis in which more than 600,000 Rohingya from Burmas Rakhine state have fled to Bangladesh in the past two months to escape violence.

Myanmar affirms its commitment to immediately halt the outflow of Myanmar residents to Bangladesh, to restore normalcy in Rakhine to enable displaced Myanmar residents to return from Bangladesh at the earliest possible time, the two nations said in a statement. Burma is also known as Myanmar.

Burmese security forces began a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages in August, calling it a response to attacks on police by insurgents from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA.

The statement said Burma declared ARSA a terrorist organization after Aug. 25 and asked Bangladesh to hand over any suspects who may have fled there. Bangladesh said it would continue to cooperate with Myanmar against insurgents, militants and terrorists.

Burmas Buddhist majority denies that Rohingya Muslims are a separate ethnic group and regards them as having migrated illegally from Bangladesh.

 Associated Press

Iran sentences alleged Israel agent to death: Iran's judiciary said a court has sentenced to death an agent for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency. The report on the judiciary's news website quotes Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi as saying that the suspect had relayed information about some 30 key Iranian figures to Mossad in meetings with members of the agency. He said the 30 Iranians, including two killed in attacks in 2010, were involved in research, military and nuclear projects.

Austria's Kurz seeks coalition with right-wing party: Conservative leader Sebastian Kurz said he will try to form a coalition government with the right-wing Freedom Party after winning this month's election in Austria. Both Kurz's center-right People's Party and the Freedom Party campaigned on the need for tougher immigration controls. Kurz's decision to invite the Freedom Party to enter talks on a coalition was widely expected. The 31-year-old is on track to become Europe's youngest leader.

Indonesia parliament endorses strict law on groups: Indonesia's parliament has endorsed a presidential decree that gives officials broad powers to ban groups deemed as threats to national unity. It required parliament's approval to become law. Rights activists have condemned the decree, calling it a "troubling violation" of the rights to freedom of association and expression. It allows officials to sidestep the courts when banning organizations deemed contrary to the constitution. The decree was issued after months of sectarian tensions that hurt Indonesia's reputation for practicing a moderate form of Islam.

 From news services
Columnist

The Trump administration, its foreign policy largely shaped by military men, urgently needs to tell Congress and the American people what were doing in Niger  and where else were doing it.

Like most Americans, I had no idea that roughly 800 U.S. troops were deployed in the arid, landlocked West African nation, where four soldiers were killed in an ambush on Oct. 4. Much more troubling is the fact that many key members of Congress  including Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.)  were clueless as well.

"We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily, and what we're doing," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a champion of the war against terrorism, said Sunday.

President Trump, you will recall, promised during the campaign to scale back military deployments overseas. Of course, he promised a lot of things he cannot or will not deliver. But he has a duty to let Americans know to what ends U.S. military force is being used around the world  and where our troops are being sent into harms way. The weeklong focus on Trumps phone call with the widow of one of the soldiers slain in Niger obscures the central question: Why were they there in the first place?

The Constitution gives Congress, and only Congress, the authority to declare war. U.S. troop deployments in Niger, Yemen, Somalia and many other countries  some we still may not know about  are being justified under umbrella laws, such as the 2001 authorization to use military force against al-Qaeda, or even the 1973 War Powers Resolution.

But the main target of anti-terrorism operations in Niger and elsewhere is the Islamic State, along with its affiliates. Congress needs to do more than investigate the deaths. It needs to authorize this conflict  or shut it down.

Trump is hardly the first president to ignore the Constitution in wielding military power. All recent presidents have done so. But the makeup of the Trump administration makes the need more pressing for Congress to reclaim its war-making powers.

Trumps chief of staff, John F. Kelly, was a four-star Marine Corps general. His defense secretary, Jim Mattis, was another four-star Marine Corps general. His national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, is a three-star Army general. All three men occupy positions usually filled by civilians.

Meanwhile, Trumps secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is a businessman with no prior experience in government, politics or the military. As a practical matter, this means that the administration views the worlds problems mostly through a military prism.

Generals whom Ive met tend to be very smart  and tend not to be reckless with the lives of the young men and women in their charge. But Kelly, Mattis and McMaster have spent their careers wielding the mighty hammer that is the U.S. armed forces. And if what you know best is how to use a hammer, every problem tends to look like a nail.

Thus the generals convinced Trump to send more troops to Afghanistan rather than bring U.S. forces home. They persuaded him to increase our military involvement in Syria. They appear to have changed his whole worldview from "America first" neo-isolationism to conventional hawkishness.

I have mixed feelings about all of this. On most days, I feel that Kelly, Mattis and McMaster (along with Tillerson) are the last line of defense between our great nation and the abyss. Trumps impulsiveness, belligerence and insecurity would be a dangerous combination in any commander, let alone the commander in chief. But the president respects military men, meaning that the generals may be able to keep him from doing something rash and apocalyptic that could get us all killed.

On the other hand, Trump had a point when he pledged to reassess the role of the United States in world affairs. Insofar as hes doing anything, its the wrong thing: Hes giving us more military action and less diplomacy, when it ought to be the other way around. But Trumps generals are not likely to come up with any sort of new paradigm for U.S. foreign policy, and I worry that the default posture is waging endless war in more and more places  such as Niger.

Are U.S. troops necessary to contain the spread of Islamist militancy in the Sahel? Does the presence of U.S. forces win hearts and minds, or does it harden them against us? Are we prepared to stay for months? Years? Generations?

Its past time for the peoples representatives in Congress to give Trump and the generals their marching orders.

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Columnist

A common defense of President Trump points to the positive things he has done from a Republican perspective  his appointment of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and other conservative judges, his pursuit of the Islamic State, his honoring of institutional religious freedom. This argument is not frivolous. What frustrates is the steadfast refusal among most Republicans and conservatives to recognize the costs on the other side of the scale.

Chief among them is Trump's assault on truth, which takes a now-familiar form. First, assert and maintain a favorable lie. Second, attack and discredit sources of opposition. Third, declare victory based on power or applause. So, Trump claimed that Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson's account of his conversation with a Gold Star widow was "totally fabricated." (Not true.) Wilson, after all, is "wacky." (Not relevant.) And Trump won the interchange because Wilson is "killing the Democrat Party." (We'll see.)

The pattern is invariable. President Barack Obama is a Kenyan; the Mexican government deliberately dumps criminals across the border; "thousands and thousands" of people in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 attacks ; Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's father consorted with Lee Harvey Oswald; vaccination schedules can be tied to autism; Obama was "wiretapping" Trump Tower during the presidential campaign; Obama asked British intelligence to spy on Trump; at least 3 million immigrants voted illegally in the 2016 election. Any source that disputes Trump is personally defamed or dismissed as "fake news." And how is truth ultimately adjudicated? "The country believes me," Trump said earlier this year. "Hey, I went to Kentucky two nights ago. We had 25,000 people." Confronted by a reporter about his routine deceptions, Trump answered, "I can't be doing so badly, because I'm president and you're not."

Thirty years ago, University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" began with the words: "There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: Almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative." Bloom found this deeply problematic, because the ability to determine truth from falsehood, right from wrong, is essential to personal flourishing and civic health. I wonder what Bloom would make of a political philosophy in which truth is determined by 25,000 screaming partisans and reality is a function of fabulism. Conservatives were supposed to be the protectors of objective truth from various forms of postmodernism. Now they generally defend our thoroughly post-truth president. Evidently we are all relativists now.

Not quite all. Some of us still think this attack on truth is a dangerous form of political corruption. The problem is not just the constant lies. It is the dismissal of reason and objectivity as inherently elitist and partisan. It is the invitation to supporters to live entirely within Trumps dark, divisive, dystopian version of reality. It is the attempt to destroy or subvert any source of informed judgment other than Trump himself. This is the construction of a pernicious form of tyranny: a tyranny over the mind.

Not that the attempt is fully conscious. Some of this preference for deception may be the result of pathological compulsions. Some of it is surely the intuitive use of trolling to draw attention away from scandals and failures. Some of it may be a strategy to discredit contending sources of truth in Trumps upcoming public battle with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

But here is the cost. When there is no objective source of truth  no commonly agreed upon set of facts and rules of argument  political persuasion becomes impossible. There is no reasoned method to choose between one view and another. The only way to settle political disputes is power  determined by screaming mobs or because Im president and youre not. Politics becomes an endless battle of true believers, conditioned to distrust and dismiss every bit of evidence that does not confirm their preexisting views. The alternative to reasoned discourse is the will to power.

This is the frightening direction of Trumpism. It is the corruption that good men such as White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly are enabling. And it is a source of enduring shame for many conservatives. Sycophancy toward those who hold power, said Bloom, is a fact in every regime, and especially in a democracy, where, unlike tyranny, there is an accepted principle of legitimacy that breaks the inner will to resist. . . . Flattery of the people and incapacity to resist public opinion are the democratic vices, particularly among writers, artists, journalists and anyone else who is dependent on an audience.

Exactly how the conservative movement was broken.

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Columnist

Of all the repellent statements issued by President Trump or his aides, the one that came out of the mouth of Sarah Huckabee Sanders last week was maybe the most chilling. There she stood, asking a White House reporter who the hell he thought he was to question the veracity of John F. Kelly, Trump's chief of staff, who had just smeared a congresswoman. "If you want to go after General Kelly, that's up to you," she cautioned. "If you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that that's something highly inappropriate."

Well, sorry to pull rank, but I would not hesitate to criticize Kelly. In the first place, Kelly was dead wrong to say that Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) made the noise of "empty barrels" when she helped memorialize the death of two FBI agents in a Florida speech. Wilson had not used the occasion to beat her own drum, as Kelly alleged, but instead insisted on proper respect for the slain agents and for the FBI in general.

Had Trump gotten things so bolloxed up it would have been par for the course. After all, he gets almost nothing right. But Kelly is one of the so-called adults, brought in to bring some order to the White House Romper Room. He's the details guy, the one who has taken charge of the paper flow, who would have  had Trump been about to deliver such a speech  checked YouTube to see if Wilson had actually grandstanded in her Florida remarks. This was his task. Yet, he failed miserably.

Did Kelly lie or did he misremember? I prefer the second choice, but either way, the stars he once wore on his shoulder do not immunize him. The rank I referred to above  mere citizen  is the one you and I hold. It is the one George Washington chose when he resigned his commission before becoming president of the United States. It is way higher than general.

Samuel Johnson was wrong when he said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. With Sanders, it is the first. Hers was a blatant attempt to throw the flag over the false and vituperative statements of the White House chief of staff. But as Abraham Lincoln learned during the Civil War and John F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis, some military officers have the common sense of a 6-month-old Lab. Theyll run after anything.



White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press)

But there is something else at work here: the slavish veneration now accorded the military. You can see it every time someone in uniform testifies before Congress. Thank you for your service, comes the chorus of those who treat four-stars as if they were physicians who risk their lives to work with Ebola sufferers. A four-star makes at least $190,000 and gets oodles of benefits, including the very socialized medicine his likely fans vehemently denounce. Its not a bad life, and it is an even better retirement.

Military men and women have become exotics  less than 1 percent of Americans are currently serving. But maybe more to the point, only 18 percent of Congress has ever served. Back in 1971, the figure was 72 percent of the House and 78 percent of the Senate. Those members knew from experience that a star can be just a piece of metal. It is certainly not a halo.

As both a one-time soldier and a longtime journalist, I have met my share of military men. Some awe me  their intellect, their values, their commitment, their patriotism and, of course, their physical courage. Some have appalled me  remember Mike Flynn, Trump's original national security adviser and a three-star? He had to resign after lying to Vice President Pence. And some, such as Gen. Curtis LeMay during the Cuban missile crisis, still scare me. (He advocated bombing Cuba.)

Sanders was relying on the current veneration of the military to deflect criticism of Kelly. It was tawdry of her to do so, if only because it was Kelly and no one else who managed to call into question his vaunted competence. He brought dishonor to his office  the presidency is now too tarnished to dishonor  and signaled he is a better heel-clicker than he is a proud soldier. He should resign  and so, for good measure, should Sarah Huckabee Sanders. She knows how to be a press secretary, but not an American.

Read more from Richard Cohen's archive.
J.D.  SHORT FOR JANE DOE  is a 17-year-old immigrant living in a Texas shelter for undocumented minors. She is also pregnant and seeking an abortion. The federal government refuses to allow her to end her pregnancy.

Under the directorship of E. Scott Lloyd, an antiabortion activist appointed by President Trump to lead the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR began preventing federally funded shelters from "facilitat[ing]" access to abortion services unless Mr. Lloyd approved. Instead, shelters for undocumented minors may support only "pregnancy services and life-affirming options counseling." Mr. Lloyd has personally reached out to several pregnant teenagers to counsel them against seeking abortions, reportedly viewing himself as a "foster father."

J.D. received a Texas judge's approval to receive an abortion in the absence of consent from her parents, who remain in her home country and who she says abused her. Yet the government is preventing her from leaving the shelter to receive the procedure  what the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing J.D., describes as "holding her hostage." J.D. has instead been forced to visit a religiously affiliated crisis pregnancy center and view a sonogram of the fetus. ORR has also contacted her mother to inform her of J.D.'s pregnancy against the daughter's will.

"I feel like they are trying to coerce me to carry my pregnancy to term," J.D. wrote in a court filing. After the government refused to allow J.D. to end her pregnancy, a federal judge temporarily barred ORR from restraining her further. But on Friday, an appeals court gave ORR until Oct. 31 to release J.D. into the care of a government-approved sponsor. The sponsor could then allow J.D. to obtain the procedure, letting the government off the hook.

But J.D. is already 15 weeks pregnant  and Texas bans most abortions at 20 weeks. There's no guarantee that ORR will be able to find an appropriate sponsor for her before the end of the month, which means that the case could drag on even longer. The ACLU is now pushing for the full appeals court to force the government's hand before the clock runs out.

Legally, the government is without a leg to stand on. It argues that J.D. could simply leave the United States and return to her home country, yet it has also conceded that J.D.'s country doesn't allow abortion. It claims that it doesn't want to "facilitate" J.D.'s abortion, but J.D.'s court-appointed guardians are ready to transport her to the clinic and pay for the procedure. Under Roe v. Wade, J.D. has a constitutional right to an abortion. The only thing ORR needs to do is get out of the way.

Mr. Lloyds behavior toward J.D. is not just unconstitutional. It is also a grotesque abuse of government power over a vulnerable young woman far from her home. The government should not need a court order to do what is obviously right. It should allow J.D. access to the medical care to which she is legally entitled, immediately.
Three issues confront President Duterte. They require his urgent attention and actionone, tax reform; two, illegal drugs; and three, the now guerilla war in Marawi. By these three issues will his presidency be measured, either as a success, or as a failure.

For the long term, the most important of the three is taxation.

The Senates version of the Department of Finances Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion or TRAIN has been watered down so that net tax revenues in the first year, 2018, will only be P59 billion (or 0.3 percent of the value of domestic economic output or GDP), down from P157.2 billion (or 1 percent of GDP), proposed by the DOF.

The P59 billion will not be enough to raise tax revenues as a significant percentage of GDP. The Philippine has been under-spending (for infrastructure and other essentials) by P366 billion (2.3 percent of GDP), a year. Compared to what Thailand has been spending on investment, we should be investing at least P1.7 trillion year on infra.

The original TRAIN alone, with P157-billion net increase in revenues by 2018 by the government, would have financed 108,000 classrooms, or 460,947 public school teachers, or 10,383 rural health units, or 83,143 barangay health stations, or 227 provincial hospitals, or paved 6,136 kms of roads, or rebuilt 135,000 kms of bridges, or irrigated 457,627 hectares of land. Imagine how much more brilliant, or more healthy our people would have been, or how a little more comfortable our lives would have been, with TRAIN.

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The senators, of course, are politicians. To them, taxation is a bad word. Half of them will either run again in 2019 or run for president in 2022. A popular senator, Ralph Recto, was defeated after he advocated higher value added taxes (VAT).

The following senators end their term in 2019: Sonny Angara, Bam Aquino, Nancy Binay, JV Ejercito, Francis Escudero, Gregorio Honasan, Loren Legarda, Aquilino Pimentel III, Grace Poe, Antonio Trillanes, and Cynthia Villar. The following senators end their term in 2022: Franklin Drilon, Joel Villanueva, Tito Sotto, Panfilo Lacson, Richard Gordon, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Manny Pacquiao, Francis Pangilinan, Risa Hontiveros, Win Gatchalian, Ralph Recto, and Leila de Lima.

Also, people generally are averse to paying taxes. Why? Because they dont get their taxpayer moneys worth of services. As I keep repeating, it takes days to get a birth certificate, weeks to get a passport, months to get a drivers license or a car license plate, and foreverto travel from Magallanes overpass in Makati to Shaw Boulevard on a busy night. Why part with your money if the service is lousy?

Besides, the government already is awash with cash. The unlamented BS Aquino III presidency left the Duterte government with some P500 billion in unspent cash. The unlamented chairman of the Commission on Elections, Andres Bautista, left P19 billion of unspent money, money that cannot revert to the General Fund because the Comelec, being a constitutional body, enjoys fiscal autonomy.

But then government really needs P1.7 trillion yearly in additional money to modernize the country. Modernization takes time. The Albay airport of Joey Salceda will take 14 years to build. In certain places in Mindanao, circumferential roads take 50 years to finish. Why? Most of the money is pocketed.

TRAIN is the key measure that will convince the world that the Philippines is a serious place to do business in, that life could better for most Filipinos.

If TRAIN is not adopted almost en toto, Duterte will not be able to start or finish the 75 big infra projects under his ambitious Build, Build, Build program.

In fact, even with TRAIN approved in the form desired by the DOF, only three of the 75 infra projects will be completed during Dutertes presidencythe Clark airport, the Clark railways, and the Mindanao railway. Majority of the 75 projects are not even backed by project studies.

Now, on drugs. President Duterte seems to be changing gears. He has stopped the increasingly notorious Philippine National Police from waging the violent war of drugs that has resulted in the deaths of at least 3,811 people (up to 12,000 according to some critics, without presenting evidence). The violence has hurt the image of an otherwise hugely popular president and made him look like a murderous despot and a habitual violator of human rights.

The war on drugs had one basic premisekill the users and you will kill the problem. Demand side, as economists would point out. After all, the Philippines has the highest rate of shabu use in Southeast Asia.

It turns out that the problem is the supply side. This is proven by the P6.4 billion worth of shabu smuggled into the Philippines from China last May this year. The solution then is to kill the supply side. Kill the smugglers, not kill the users. Is Duterte willing to do that?

Given his impetuousness and unpredictable political will, one never knows what Duterte could do next.

On Marawi, the problem is twofoldfinancing the rehabilitation, estimated to be P50 billion, and waging a protracted guerilla war with the Maute terrorists masquerading as a subsidiary unit of the Islamic State of Iraq and Iran. A guerilla war will probably require an extended imposition of martial law on Mindanao island.

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All the Trump administration/Handmaids Tale comparisons seemed overwrought. Then came J.D.

She is a 17-year-old detained by federal authorities after illegally crossing the border in Texas without her parents, who she claims abused her. She is also pregnant  15 weeks and counting  and wants an abortion. In fact, she's been seeking one for nearly a month.

J.D., short for Jane Doe, isnt asking the federal government to pay for an abortion; she just wants the government not to stand in her way.

Instead, federal officials required J.D. to undergo counseling at a religiously affiliated, antiabortion center. Although J.D. said that when her older sister became pregnant in her home country her parents beat her so badly she miscarried, U.S. authorities contacted J.D.'s mother to inform her of the pregnancy. They also threatened to revoke federal funding for the shelter where J.D. is living if it let her leave to obtain an abortion.

In effect, J.D. is being held hostage by antiabortion zealots running the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees unaccompanied minors. The director of the office, E. Scott Lloyd, came to the job with scant experience in refugee issues but a long track record opposing abortion rights.

An HHS spokesman compared Lloyds role of counseling pregnant minors in his custody to that of a foster parent, adding: He is going to make choices that he thinks are best for both the mother and the child. But J.D., with the help of a group called Janes Due Process, has already convinced a Texas judge  Texas!  that she is mature enough to make the choice herself.

The Trump administration has tried to dissuade other minors from having abortions as well. According to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on J.D.'s behalf, in March, another minor at a different shelter obtained judicial approval and took the first medication to induce an abortion  at which point officials intervened to force her to go to an emergency room. The abortion was eventually allowed to proceed.

The government insists J.D. has options that turn out to be no option at all. If J.D. wants an abortion, they say, she is free to leave to return to her home country. Except, as a government lawyer acknowledged last week to a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, J.D.'s home country  its identity is under seal  does not permit abortion.

Alternatively, the government says, J.D. could be released to the custody of a sponsor in this country. Except a sponsor has not been found, and the process of finding someone suitable could take weeks or months, by which point J.D.'s effort to secure an abortion would be moot. Indeed, every day that goes by makes the abortion more complicated, especially because Texas requires that J.D. obtain counseling and then wait 24 hours before proceeding. If her pregnancy proceeds beyond 18 weeks, she would have to travel 250 miles to San Antonio and undergo another round of counseling plus a sonogram including a state-mandated description of the fetus.

People of goodwill are entitled to believe that abortion is the taking of a human life, and work to prevent it. But government officials of goodwill must recognize that the Supreme Court has decided and reaffirmed that the Constitution protects a womans right to make that decision for herself. They dont have to pay for abortions, and they can institute policies that encourage women to choose childbirth over abortion. They just cant stop them from exercising their constitutional rights.

Even if the women are not here legally. In a friend-of-the-court brief, Texas and seven other states made the audacious assertion that "the Constitution does not confer on Jane Doe the right to an abortion." But the federal government does not go that far, and for good reason; it has long been clear that the "persons" protected under the due process clause include anyone present in the United States, lawfully or not.

If due process protections did not apply to undocumented immigrants, as D.C. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett pointed out, "they could be forced to have abortions. They could, if raped by government officials who hold them in detention, then be forced to carry any pregnancies to term."

The governments argument boils down to asserting that it should not be required to facilitate an abortion. But as Millett noted, there is nothing for it to facilitate besides simply letting the procedure take place.

Millett's two colleagues on the panel sided against her , giving the government until the end of the month to find a sponsor for J.D. This is wishful thinking taking precedence over constitutional law. The ACLU has asked the full appeals court to intervene.

Donald Trumps America is not Margaret Atwoods Republic of Gilead. But it is nonetheless chilling how far this administration is prepared to go to compel J.D. to continue her pregnancy against her will.

Read more from Ruth Marcus's archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.
By just before 9 a.m. Tuesday, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) was already a man unburdened.

Corker, the chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had appeared early on three major morning shows  ABC, CBS and NBC  ostensibly to preview his party's tax plan ahead of President Trump's visit to the Capitol on Tuesday for a lunch with Senate Republicans.

But before the morning shows had even wrapped, Corker had ratcheted up his already simmering and deeply personal feud with the president  prompting a flurry of retaliatory tweets from Trump. The spat served to ensure that the chaos and feuding that has come to define Trump's young presidency would yet again distract from a day originally intended to focus on tax reform.

During a trio of harsh television interviews, Corker called Trump "utterly untruthful," expressed hope that he would stand aside to allow Congress to formulate a tax plan, worried aloud about the president's divisive governing style and, speaking about ongoing tensions with North Korea, told ABC's "Good Morning America" that he would like to see Trump "leave it to the professionals for a while."

The president continues to kneecap his diplomatic representative, the secretary of state, and really move him away from successful diplomatic negotiations, Corker said. Youre taking us on a path to combat.



Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Corker R-Tenn.) talks to reporters about President Trump on Tuesday on Capitol Hill. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

In one particularly striking interview with CNN, Corker in the span of three minutes called Trump what he dubbed "the L-word" (the president, he said, "has great difficulty with the truth"), said he would not support him for president again ("no way") and called for Trump's staff to better manage him (he said he hopes West Wing aides would "figure out ways of controlling him").

I dont know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and debases our country in the way that he does, but he does, Corker said, adding that he wasnt sure Trump was a good role model for children.

The Tennessee Republican recently announced that he is not running for reelection, and his lame duck status seems to have liberated him to more forcefully speak his mind.

Corkers succession of brittle comments seemed to enrage Trump  who often spends his mornings flipping between channels  and the president responded with several tweets. Using his favorite diminutive nickname for the short-statured senator  liddle  the president called Corker a lightweight and the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, blaming him for having set the U.S. way back.

Corker, who earlier this month had warned that Trump's recklessness could launch "World War III" and evocatively described the White House as "an adult day-care center," responded in kind on Twitter.

"Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDayCareStaff," Corker wrote after Trump's first missives, essentially calling the president a liar.

The entire back-and-forth took place before lunchtime, when Trump is meeting with Senate Republicans, including Corker, to help push through a tax plan that, if successful, would mark the administrations first major legislative achievement.

Tuesdays back-and-forth underscored just how much Trump and Corkers relationship has deteriorated in recent months  a vitriolic personal feud that has spilled over into public view, threatening to overwhelm the presidents already struggling legislative agenda.

Corker supported Trumps campaign  serving as a human vouchsafe for a man many in his own party did not entirely trust with the nuclear codes  and was initially under consideration both as Trumps vice president or secretary of state. But Corker quietly began to sour on the president, especially as he watched him careen across the world stage, saying Trump was dangerously upending years of global policy.

In August, following the racially motivated violence that left one woman dead in Charlottesville, Corker publicly slammed Trump for saying there were "fine people on both sides. "The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate to be successful," Corker said then.

Then, two months later, in a deliberate interview with the New York Times, Corker laced into Trump again, criticizing him for running the West Wing like a "reality show" and warning that he could be leading the nation down "the path to World War III."

At that point, the relationship seemed damaged beyond repair, although Corker indicated that he might still vote for a Republican tax plan if he believed it wouldnt add to the deficit.

But Tuesdays rift could further complicate Trumps legislative agenda, especially if Corker is giving voice  as he has claimed previously  to concerns other Republicans have but are skittish to articulate aloud.

Corker had no such qualms Tuesday. He said during the CNN interview that Trump, who had never held elected office until winning the White House in November 2016, has not grown into his job as president. He has proven himself unable to rise to the occasion, Corker said. Hes obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president.

If Corkers words were harsh  and, as some in his own party argued, contributing to an unhelpful internecine Republican feud  the Tennessee senator seemed liberated. Later Tuesday, speaking to reporters in the hallways of Congress, he continued his broadside, saying: Ive seen no evolution in an upward way. As a matter of fact, it seems to me its almost devolving.

The White House did not respond to request for comment, but in a Fox News interview, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called Corker ineffective, arguing that Trump is eager to make progress on a host of issues, including taxes, the Iran deal and North Korea.

I think you have one or two people who dont want to see the ball move further down the field, she said. This is a president who wants to be aggressive, wants to take action. And if Sen. Corker doesnt want to be a part of that, then I think thats sad for his constituents, but were not going to let that get in the way of us moving forward.
The Republicans who wished for a show of party unity from President Trump on Tuesday, and maybe a little direction on tax legislation, came away empty-handed after his visit to the Capitol.

Trump provided few policy details on the emerging tax bill at his lunch with the Senate GOP. That was a disappointment to those still hoping for help from the president in their quest to keep power in next years midterms. It was no surprise at all to two Republican senators who long ago gave up hope for any Trump-led parade of achievements.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) didnt wait for the president to arrive at the Capitol to slosh a bucket of gasoline onto his already flammable relationship with Trump, speaking on three network morning news shows.

And Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) waited less than an hour after Trump had left to denounce the president for indecency, his compromising of our moral authority and the overall coarseness of our national dialogue.

Flake announced on the Senate floor that he would not run for reelection next year and would instead dedicate his final months in office to fighting Trump so that his leadership style never becomes politics as usual.



Sen. Bob Corker R-Tenn.) at the Capitol in February. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

I rise today to say: enough, Flake said, drawing tears from several colleagues.

The struggle for Corker and Flake, over the months ahead, is to provide room for more Republican critics to emerge. The struggle for others is to achieve something for their silence.

Many Republicans have privately complained about Trump in similar fashion, but few GOP senators have fallen into public anti-Trump chorus.

They have remained publicly supportive of Trump, for now, to prevent him from declaring them enemies and turning his base against them. They have chosen job security, with the hope that he will support big initiatives such as cutting taxes.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sat expressionless throughout Flakes 18-minute excoriation  then thanked his colleague for being a very fine man with high principles and a great team player.

About 30 minutes earlier, McConnell sidestepped the distraction that Corker had caused with his morning fight with Trump.

If theres anything that unites Republicans, its tax reform, the majority leader said.

Trump didnt talk much about tax legislation during his visit to the Hill. He spent the opening 30 minutes of his closed-door remarks simply reiterating what he considers to be the many accomplishments of his first nine months in office. Most of those things were done through executive actions that took no help from Congress, where the broader agenda items  health care and tax cuts  have stalled.

He went over all of the items the administration has been working on, much of which, I agree with him, the administration hasnt gotten nearly enough credit for, McConnell told reporters after the lunch.

Added Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Mainly he talked about the accomplishments of the first nine months and then tax reform going forward.

Alexander said he has told Trump that presidents have the ability  if they focus like a laser  to simply wear down Congress and get a major piece of legislation passed within the first 15 to 18 months in office.

If they focus, Alexander said.

Trumps morning demonstrated his continued unwillingness to focus on critical issues such as the tax overhaul.

An obsessive consumer of morning TV, Trump saw the coverage of Corkers criticisms and started firing back over Twitter, calling Corker a lightweight who begged for the presidents endorsement but couldnt get elected dogcatcher.

In all, Trump sent five angry tweets early Tuesday, several of which included accusations against Corker that have been proved inaccurate.

[Roy Moores victory, Corkers retirement are fresh indicators of a Senate thats coming apart]

CNN then hunted Corker down in the Senate hallways, where he unloaded further on Trump. He said the president was not a role model for children and that Trump would most be remembered for the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth-telling.

All that was before 10 a.m., three hours before lunch started.

These disputes have become so ordinary that some Republicans just laugh them off, the way Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) did. Tillis purchased a bag of popcorn before the lunch with Trump and posted the picture on social media, treating the event like going to the movies.

Yet Corker and Flakes actions Tuesday demonstrated the growing rage among a few prominent Republican lawmakers willing to speak out against what they perceive to be Trumps degradation of the Grand Old Partys traditionally conservative viewpoints.

Add to their cause Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has grown only more outspoken in his denunciations of Trump since he was diagnosed with brain cancer in July.

Many of the presidents supporters dismiss the criticism as the irrelevant perspective of a trio of senators who will probably never again face Republican voters in a primary  and who enjoy basking in the glow of favorable media attention.

Some of these supporters have already suggested that Corker should retire, right now, for his criticism of Trump.

Corker demonstrated Tuesday that hes willing to absorb the arrows from Trump and others.

And now, Flake can join him and McCain in a full-time effort to confront Trump and allies such as Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House strategist who was trying to defeat Flake.

[Is Trump trying to beat Republican Jeff Flake next year? Flake doesnt care.]

Polls had shown Flake was in a lost-cause reelection bid, trailing a former state senator by large margins ever since he published Conscience of a Conservative, a declaration of war against Trumps nativist ways.

The book crushed his backing among Arizonas conservatives, whose support for Trumps strong stances against illegal immigration runs high. Instead of calibrating his stances to win next year, Flake linked arms with Corker on Tuesday and took up a new fight.

We have fooled ourselves long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it, Flake said in his speech. We know better than that.

When the speeches concluded Tuesday, Corker was the first to greet Flake, shaking his hand as the two leading Trump critics embraced. Corker reached the same conclusion last month, opting to retire at the end of 2018 rather than run for reelection.

Flake pleaded with his colleagues to join him in denouncing the president, rather than excusing his actions as those of a first-time politician.

Too often we forgive and excuse our failures so we might accommodate them and go right on failing, until the accommodation itself becomes our principle, he said.

Read more from Paul Kane's archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Leading House Republicans announced on Tuesday two new probes, one into how the Obama administrations Justice Department handled a deal that gave Russia control over 20 percent of the U.S. uranium supply and the other into how it investigated Hillary Clintons use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

The parallel investigations  both of which involve the House Oversight Committee working in cooperation with another panel  formally revive issues that the Trump campaign used to try to discredit his Democratic rival during the 2016 presidential race and later the conduct of then-FBI Director James B. Comey.

Democrats were quick to charge that the GOP-led probes were designed to distract attention from the various investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including alleged ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

[The Fix: Making sense of Russia, uranium and Hillary Clinton]

These investigations were initiated on a partisan basis, and will shed no light on Russias interference in the 2016 election, but then again they are not intended to do so, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement Tuesday. This may be good politics, but it is a disservice to the far more important cause of investigating Russian interference in our democracy and protecting our elections in 2018 and beyond from outside influence.



House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes R-Calif.) pauses as he speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill on Oct. 24. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

The House Judiciary Committees probe into the Clinton email investigation focuses on well-established lines of questioning, including why Comey decided to publicly announce that the FBI was investigating Clinton but then waited months before making a similar announcement about its inquiries into Trump.

Panel leaders also promised to look into other aspects of the FBIs timeline in deciding when to make key decisions and announcements regarding the Clinton investigation, including when the agency notified Congress about its status.

The House Oversight and Intelligence committees investigation also resurrects allegations that Clinton or others in the Obama administration mishandled a government decision to green-light a deal giving Russia control over a sizable percentage of the United States uranium resources.

[The facts behind Hillary Clintons role in the Russian uranium deal]

Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said Tuesday that the panel has "been looking into this for a while now" but decided to formally start the inquiry in light of new evidence, reported in the Hill, that the FBI had been investigating Russian efforts to influence the American nuclear industry through various corrupt schemes.

Nunes said the first goal of the investigation, for which the Intelligence Committee is partnering with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is to determine whether there was actually an open FBI investigation or not.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), a member of the Oversight Committee, said Tuesday that members have identified a witness who was a confidential informant who wants to talk about his role in this. But he said they were trying to first get the witness released from a nondisclosure agreement with the Justice Department.

The uranium deal in question dates to 2009, when state-owned Russian nuclear energy company Rosatom began buying shares in Uranium One, a company based in Toronto with interests in the United States. The next year, Rosatom sought to assume majority ownership in Uranium One  a deal that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) had to approve. Russia later assumed full ownership of the company.

[Trump suggests FBI may have paid for dossier alleging Russia ties]

At the time, Clinton was secretary of state, leading one of nine government agencies comprising CFIUS. Notably, Nunes did not mention Clinton's name Tuesday as he announced his investigation. He, DeSantis and Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) focused on the involvement of then-Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and the extent to which the Justice Department and the FBI had been scrutinizing the transaction or the entities involved. The Treasury representative chairs CFIUS, and the Treasury Department was the agency to which King and others sent a letter questioning the uranium deal in 2010.

The House is not the first body to resurrect the Russian uranium deal. Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee also announced that it would be investigating the matter.

In a C-SPAN interview Monday, Clinton said the new focus on the uranium deal is baloney and evidence that the Trump administration is worried and trying to deflect attention away from the probes into the Trump teams alleged ties to the Kremlin.

Nunes has become a focal point of such efforts before. Earlier this year, he came under fire for suggesting that the Obama administration had inappropriately unmasked the identities of members of the Trump transition team, and perhaps the president himself, in intelligence reports. He made those allegations after visiting the White House, leading Democrats to accuse him of coordinating his efforts with the Trump administration. Nunes, now the subject of an ethics inquiry for his actions, handed over the reins of the committees investigation of Russian election meddling to Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), but he has not recused himself from the inquiry.

Nunes said Tuesday that he has not spoken with the White House about the uranium matter. But when asked whether he would brief the White House in the future, he said, If appropriate, yeah.

King, appearing with Nunes, insisted the investigation of the uranium deal was a separate matter entirely from the committees ongoing inquiry of Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

This is totally different from the election issue, King said. He stressed that his focus, at the time of the deal and now, was primarily driven by concerns about why 20 percent of the U.S.s uranium supply was being given to a Russian-owned company.

Read more at PowerPost
One Republican senator wants President Trump to light a fire under his colleagues. Another wants clarity on his policy priorities. A third is interested in hearing about tax reform and health care while a fourth would prefer that Trump sticks to just taxes.

When Trump arrives on Capitol Hill for his first visit as president to the Republican senators weekly policy luncheon Tuesday, he will come face to face with dozens of GOP senators eager to hear him address an assortment of matters.

While GOP aides and senators predicted Monday that Trumps visit would center mostly on the ongoing effort to rewrite the nations tax laws, the broad array of topics on their mind, coupled with the presidents penchant for suddenly veering from one subject to another, could open the door to an unpredictable afternoon.

The difficult relationship between Trump and Republican senators adds another layer of uncertainty. Trump has criticized Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sharply for not repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. Republican senators have also thrown some rhetorical elbows at the president.

"I want him to tell us to do our job," said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), a Trump ally who, like the president, has openly voiced his frustration that a handful of Republican senators sank the repeal-and-replace effort. He anticipated the president would argue that the tax- reform push is "bigger than tax," in that it marked a chance for Republicans to prove they can govern, among other things.

When Trump addresses the luncheon the Republican senators attend each Tuesday afternoon in a room near the Senate chamber, its important for him to convey to us the things that he thinks are priorities, and not only with respect to the tax bill, but some of the other things that we are currently working on, said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the third-ranking Republican senator.

[The great dealmaker? Lawmakers find Trump to be an untrustworthy negotiator.]

One of the other things Republicans are wrestling with is health care. Trumps decision to end federal subsidies to help offset lower-income Americans coverage costs led a bipartisan coalition of senators to offer a compromise bill that would authorize those funds. In exchange, states would have broader leeway in regulating coverage under the ACA.

Trump, who phoned Democratic and Republican lawmakers this month to push them to make a deal, has sent mixed signals on the plan, seeming to support it before backing away.

White House officials are urging Senate Republicans to move the bill to the right, by including provisions offering retroactive relief from the ACAs insurance mandates for individuals and certain employers, according to people briefed on the talks.

The White House has the ball right now, said Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), the Republican senator who took the lead on negotiating the bipartisan package. Theyve made some suggestions publicly about what theyd like to see in the bill. Im for all of those things. The question is whether they can persuade Democratic senators to agree to that.

But Alexander, who said that an analysis of his plan by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could be released as early as Tuesday, wasnt expecting to hear Trump sketch out his latest thinking on the framework during lunch. In his view, that would be a good thing. Id like for the president to focus on tax reform, he said.

Others, however, were eager to hear Trump talk health care.

Id like to hear him reinforce the movement to get something done on health care, said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who supports the deal Alexander reached with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

Looming over the luncheon are the mutual hostilities between Trump and Republican senators. On Twitter and in remarks before television cameras, Trump has slammed McConnell and singled out other senators for attacks.

GOP senators have also landed their own blows.

McConnell, for instance, has said that Trump's limited experience in politics created "excessive expectations" for passing landmark legislation. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) has warned that Trump's combative behavior has put the United States "on the path to World War III."

[McConnell says Trump needs to provide clarity on health care]

But lately, both sides appear to be determined to move past their differences and project more harmony. Trump and McConnell sat down for lunch at the White House last Monday and came out for a 40-minute joint news conference afterward. They tried to play down past signs of tension as they looked ahead to their next big legislative target: tax reform.

Republicans are trying to forge ahead in their effort to usher in a sweeping rewrite of the nations tax laws by the end of the year. They took an initial step toward passing a tax bill last week, when the Senate passed a budget resolution allowing them to pursue the tax plan without needing any Democratic votes.

They didnt need any Democratic votes to undo the ACA. That effort still failed because of disagreements among Republican senators. Brewing disputes over tax policy threaten to disrupt if not defeat the tax endeavor in a similar way.

Passing a bill could rest on more unpredictable GOP senators, like Susan Collins of Maine, one of three Republicans who voted against the ACA repeal bill in July.

Im hoping to hear more about his plans on tax reform, with more detail in it, she said of Trump.

Read more at PowerPost
Two months after Kenya's Supreme Court annulled the country's presidential election, a rescheduled vote slated for Thursday holds major implications for East Africa's largest economy and most important political power broker.

But almost nothing has gone as planned in the weeks leading up to the election rerun, and with the vote imminent, the list of uncertainties runs long. Kenya was once seen as among the regions most stable nations, but this years election cycle has left it on the verge of a political crisis.

The opposition leader, Raila Odinga, has said he will not run Thursday, alleging that the electoral commission is biased. The commission's chairman has suggested that the body is not prepared to hold a credible election, and one of its members has fled to the United States after reporting that she received death threats.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court was set to rule on a request for another delay, but remarkably it was unable to convene enough judges to issue a decision, a testament to the pressure facing the judiciary as well as the dysfunction that has plagued every step of the electoral process. The deputy chief justice's bodyguard was shot and injured Tuesday night, sending a shock wave through the court.

This potentially could have been the election that consolidated Kenya as one of Africas most vibrant democracies, and now what youll have is an election with no winners, said Murithi Mutiga, a researcher at the International Crisis Group.



Voters look for their names on an electorate list Tuesday near a polling station in the Mathare area of Nairobi ahead of the presidential election this week. (Siegfried Modola/Reuters)

In early September, Kenya's Supreme Court ruled that an August vote won by President Uhuru Kenyatta had been marred by irregularities. For the first time in recent memory in Africa, a top judicial body demanded a fresh election. It also requested an overhaul of the electoral commission.

[Kenyas Supreme Court on why it annulled election results: It was a mess.]

The surprise ruling was hailed as evidence of Kenya's judicial autonomy, but it precipitated two of the most tumultuous months in the country's modern political history, inflicting a major blow on the country's economy as the currency fell and investors grew nervous. The court's decision has also deepened the tribal rift that defines Kenyan politics, with Kenyatta's Kikuyu tribe and its political allies pitted against Odinga's Luo tribe.

Kenyatta accepted the court's decision but called the judges "thugs." Odinga briefly rejoiced in the ruling but a month later said he was quitting the race because he was not satisfied with the changes to the electoral electoral commission.

The court had outlined many problems with the first iteration of the election. Among them was that roughly 10,000 paper forms from polling stations, each containing the documentation of anywhere from dozens to hundreds of votes, were missing when the results were announced.

Odinga hoped that by withdrawing from the race, he would prompt the commission to delay the vote, ostensibly giving it more time to adopt new measures and him more time to campaign. Political analysts and Western diplomats have suggested that he has run out of money.

But, puzzlingly, Odinga did not sign the required form to withdraw his candidacy, so his name was still printed on the ballots.

Odinga's concerns about the electoral process appeared to be bolstered when the commission's chairman, Wafula Chebukati, said his colleagues had failed to pass sufficient changes. "I am convinced that without critical changes in the key secretariat staff, we may not have a free, fair and credible election," he said last week.

[Why Hillary Clinton thinks the U.S. election was similar to Kenyas flawed vote]

In a speech Wednesday afternoon, Odinga told his supporters, "Do not participate in any way in the sham election." He suggested that his party was going to transform into a "resistance movement" and said another Kenyatta term would be an "electoral dictatorship."

Odinga did not seem to encourage violent protests and instead asked that people "hold vigil and prayers away from polling stations." But many of his followers, particularly in western Kenya, seemed intent on leading public protests Thursday that would probably lead to confrontations with police.

The European Union announced Tuesday that it would reduce the size of its observer mission because of safety concerns.

The result could be an election that Kenyatta wins easily but leaves him with a victory seen as illegitimate by a large portion of the country. In August, Kenyatta won 54 percent of the vote to Odingas 44 percent.

Mutiga worries that a Kenyatta victory in the absence of a competitive election could lead to a slow-burning crisis of legitimacy with a significant portion of the population feeling that the government doesnt represent them.

Already, in recent weeks, Odinga supporters have disrupted several poll-worker training sessions in an apparent attempt to stymie the election.

In a statement Monday, 20 Western envoys expressed some confidence in the commission, known as the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). "The IEBC has made changes in personnel and procedures that address many of the concerns raised and that strengthen its technical ability to conduct an election," they said.

Yet in a statement Wednesday, the diplomats said the election rerun is a pivotal moment: Kenya is at risk of losing much of what it has gained since 2008 unless it comes together at this crucial moment to preserve its democracy and fundamental freedoms.

Across Nairobi, supporters of Kenyatta and Odinga considered their roles in the country's unpredictable election rerun. "We will take to the streets," said Samuel Maina, an Odinga supporter living in the Mathare slum on the outskirts of the city. "Let them kill us. We will be there even with our grandmothers." Like many of Odinga's supporters, Maina said he would not vote in the election.

But some Odinga supporters suggested they would avoid potentially dangerous protests that will only cost them more economically. Already, business has slowed significantly across the country. "How will I close my business to protest? Who will pay me that day?" asked Lillian Ochieng, an Odinga supporter who owns a beauty shop in Mathare. "Even if Uhuru wins, I have to go on with my life."

[At least 24 reportedly killed in Kenya post-election violence]

On the other side of Mathare, where many Kenyatta supporters live, the mood was more buoyant.

Odinga isnt accepting the election because he has been defeated, said Simon Njenga, who owns a mens clothing store.

But concern had crept in that if Odinga does inspire huge protests  and those protests turn violent  another period of uncertainty could begin.

Its obvious there will be violence, and its hard not to be nervous when those who protest have no fear of the police, said Kevin Kariuki, a university student.

Read more

Its been 50 years since Britain left. Why are so many African judges still wearing wigs?

For 5,000 Somali refugees, a Canadian college scholarship was the only way out

He outlasted Reagan, Castro and Gorbachev. Now Angolas 74-year-old leader is stepping down.

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Nikki Haley, right, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Minata Samate Cessouma, commissioner for political affairs of the African Union, at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Monday. (Meklit Mersha/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

The Trump administration has dispatched one of its top diplomatic officials to Africa this week, as it grapples with a brutal civil war in South Sudan that has unleashed the continent's biggest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, began her three-nation swing Monday in Ethiopia, but much of the focus of the trip will be on South Sudan.

Six years ago, with the help of the United States, South Sudan became the world's newest nation, declaring independence from Sudan in a peaceful vote. But since the war erupted in late 2013, a third of South Sudan's 12 million citizens either have fled the country or have been displaced internally. The fighting has left at least 50,000 dead and thousands targeted by sexual violence, and has created a hunger crisis that has tipped into famine in some places. The United Nations has reported that ethnic cleansing has taken place in some areas.

Despite the horrors, little progress has been made toward bringing President Salva Kiir, opposition leader Riek Machar and other rebel commanders to the negotiating table.

On Tuesday, Haley visited a refugee camp in Ethiopia and heard harrowing stories from South Sudanese women who described watching their children be killed during their countrys war.

No human being should live the way these people have lived, should have the memories that these people have and should feel the pain that they have felt. Its just inconceivable, Haley told reporters.

She said that there was only one clinic at the camp for 86,000 people. This is an international crisis, she said.

The Trump administration has signaled that it might attempt to increase pressure on Kiir by withdrawing some of its $730 million in annual humanitarian assistance. Last month, it imposed sanctions on three associates of Kiir, announcing that it was "targeting those who abuse human rights [and] seek to derail the peace process."

So far, those actions have not yielded much. In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Kiir shrugged off responsibility for the conflict, saying, I did not do anything that can make me regret. The government has denied reports of ethnic cleansing.

[South Sudan is a disaster. Its president says: Not my fault.]

Haley, the most senior Trump administration official to visit sub-Saharan Africa, has acknowledged that Kiir might not be influenced by a reduction in U.S. aid.

When you look at South Sudan, you have to really think hard before you pull U.S. aid, because President Kiir doesnt care if we pull U.S. aid. He doesnt care if his people suffer, and thats the concern we have, she said Monday, following meetings at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

On Tuesday, after visiting the refugees in Gambella, near the South Sudan border, she indicated she would press that countrys government for a change.

How can the international community allow this to go on? At some point, President Kiir needs to be held accountable for all of the tragedy that hes caused these people, she said.

For years, beginning in the 1990s, American politicians, activists and evangelical Christians championed the idea of an independent country for southern Sudanese, who are mostly Christian and complained of repression by the predominantly Muslim north.

President George W. Bush invited Kiir to the Oval Office in 2006 and gave him the cowboy hat that has become his trademark. After South Sudan gained independence in 2011, President Barack Obama said, "Today is a reminder that after the darkness of war, the light of a new dawn is possible."

But in late 2013, a clash between Kiir, a member of the Dinka tribe, and Machar, a Nuer who was first vice president, devolved into a civil war that took on ethnic overtones.

A precarious peace deal was reached in August 2015 thanks in part to U.S. diplomatic pressure, but it collapsed less than a year later.

Last November, officials at the U.S. Embassy in Juba saw satellite images of Yei, a city in the country's southwest, showing destruction that they concluded was perpetrated by Kiir's military. At that point, the United States began to pursue an arms embargo against the government of South Sudan. It so far has not passed a U.N. Security Council vote.

Many humanitarian groups, as well as the United Nations, say Kiirs government is one of the major impediments to distributing assistance to hungry villagers.

In a recent op-ed for CNN, Haley wrote that she would tell South Sudanese leaders "to stop making the work of aid workers and peacekeepers more difficult."

The goodwill and generosity of the American people are well-known, and we will continue to help the most vulnerable, she wrote. But we will not do that if our assistance is continuously blocked from reaching people in need.

[South Sudans people are starving, and fighters are blocking aid]

South Sudanese officials have disagreed with her assessment.

We are disappointed that we are receiving this criticism from a friend like America, said Ezekiel Gatkuoth, the minister of petroleum and mining.

Other officials brushed off the impact of any reduction in U.S. assistance.

Maybe Russia will come in, or China will come in. Someone will fill their space, said Martin Lomuro, the cabinet affairs minister.

Asked Tuesday if it would be difficult to tell Trump that more resources were needed for the South Sudanese, Haley said no.

When you tell him the stories, and you tell him what people think, he wants to be helpful, he wants to be someone who brings peace, he wants to hear people and hear their pain, she said.

Haley also has suggested that the United Nations shoulders some of the responsibility for the lack of progress in South Sudan as well as in Congo, also known as the DRC, another war-torn nation that she will visit on her trip.

The U.N.s track record of long-term success is not good. Neither South Sudan nor the DRC has shown any real progress toward political solutions that would stop the violence, she wrote in the CNN op-ed.

The U.N. mission in South Sudan, which includes 11,000 peacekeepers, costs more than $1 billion a year. Haley has made clear her interest in cutting the global U.N. peacekeeping budget.

The United Nations has come under criticism in South Sudan for not doing more to protect civilians. In several cases, when civilians came under attack in the presence of peacekeepers, those troops fled.

Still, more than 200,000 South Sudanese live in protection of civilians sites manned by peacekeepers and managed by the United Nations. Some analysts worry that a reduction in U.S. funding in the country  even if it is used as leverage with Kiir  would lead to more civilian suffering.

The Trump administration has not filled the position of special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan, which many say has left the United States with a weakened voice in the country's affairs. There has not been a U.S. ambassador in Juba, either, since Molly Phee, a career civil servant, left in August.

You need to have someone who can go full time to this, said Princeton N. Lyman, a former U.S. special envoy to the region.

Gearan reported from Gambella, Ethiopia.

Read more

Trumps plan to slash foreign aid comes as the famine threat is surging

South Sudanese civilians fear the U.N. cant protect them from a massacre

In South Sudan, mothers are so hungry many can no longer breast-feed

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister and president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, leaves a news conference at the party's headquarters in Tokyo on Monday. (Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg News)

Shinzo Abe has long held a dream  to redraw Japan's pacifist constitution. And this week, after Japanese voters had given his coalition government yet another decisive election win, it seemed perhaps time to make it a reality.

This is a new beginning, Abe told reporters gathered at his official residence Monday morning. We will implement policies, and we want to deliver results.

But only a few hours later, the prime minister cut a far less optimistic figure. In a news conference celebrating his victory, Abe dismissed a suggestion that he would set a deadline of 2020 to change the most controversial part of the constitution, Article 9, which renounces war and prohibits an army  suggesting instead that it was not bound by any schedule.

That cautious rhetoric is not what might be expected from a politician who is on track to become the longest-serving Japanese prime minister and has few, if any, serious rivals. Abes coalition government easily overcame opposition movements in Sundays election to retain its two-thirds majority in the lower house of Japans parliament.

However, the prime ministers caution on constitutional changes is understandable. Abe has proved himself remarkably adept at maneuvering Japans parliamentary politics  and he probably knows that amending the constitution will require a high level of public support he may not possess.

Even allies are unsure that Japanese citizens can be convinced to amend Article 9. Former defense minister Shigeru Ishiba, a member of Abes Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and a vocal proponent of rewriting the constitution, said in an interview that it had proved extremely difficult to mobilize citizens behind the issue.

In theory, the coalition government's two-thirds majorities in both houses of parliament means it can push through pretty much any legislation it wants, including changes to Article 9. Abe would clearly have the parliamentary support: One analysis found that 80 percent of politicians in the newly elected lower house supported a rewrite of the constitution.

Any changes to the constitution, however, then require majority approval from the public in a referendum. Polls show mixed support for amending Article 9 among Japanese voters. And as the Brexit vote showed Britains David Cameron, winning an election is not the same thing as winning a referendum.

One thing that Mr. Abe does not want is to go out as a failure, said Michael Cucek, an adjunct professor of politics at Temple Universitys Japan campus in Tokyo. Messing up the first attempt to ever amend the constitution would be extremely damaging.

Abe is not the first politician who felt that Japans pacifist constitution needed revising. The document was adopted in 1947 while the country was under U.S. occupation. Seven years later, the LDP  the party Abe leads  was founded with the creation of a new constitution one of its objectives.

The issue later picked up steam in the 1990s with the formation of the reformist group Nippon Kaigi, of which Abe is a member. However, it is largely thanks to the 63-year-old Abe that it has come to the forefront of Japanese politics. During his first term as prime minister in 2007, his ruling coalition pushed through the laws that outlined the referendum process that is now so daunting to him.

In 2014 and 2015, Abes coalition enacted legislation that reinterpreted the role of Japans Self-Defense Forces and allowed them to fight with allies overseas  a move that brought condemnation from opposition lawmakers, activists and neighboring nations such as South Korea and China.

Despite this controversy and other scandals, Abes coalition government has retained power. Earlier this year, on the 70th anniversary of the enforcement of the constitution, Abe said that he hoped to amend it within three years. A powerful victory should give him a larger window of time within which he could push for real constitutional change.

However, the coalition governments enduring supermajority may have overshadowed another aspect of Sundays vote  the emergence of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ), which opposes any amendments to the constitution. That party, formed 20 days ahead of the election, became the second-largest party in parliament, beating the more-hyped (and pro-amendment) Party of Hope led by Yuriko Koike, the governor of Tokyo.

For some, the election felt like a partial victory for the anti-amendment movement. We werent defeated, said Mitsuhiro Hayashida, an anti-nuclear activist and student who worked with the CDPJ ahead of the election. And the ruling parties dont think its totally a victory.

Abe may have another problem in his quest  his own government. While the LDP holds most of the seats in the coalition, it shares the government with its junior partner, Komeito.

Komeitos base has long been skeptical of any amendment to the constitution, in part because of its links to the Buddhist group Soka Gakkai. In an apparent attempt to appease this group and others who oppose amending the constitution, Abe has proposed a compromise that would involve adding language to the constitution to clarify the legal standing of the Self-Defense Forces.

This attempt to add to the constitution rather than amend it brings its own enemies. The LDPs Ishiba is among those who favor rewriting the constitution as a whole, rather than making a compromise. We shouldnt take the easy approach, he said.

Andrew Oros, author of the recently published "Japan's Security Renaissance," suggests that Abe will choose to push forward with a constitutional referendum that focuses not only on Article 9 but also on less controversial aspects of the constitution.

I predict that Abe will use the upcoming visit of U.S. President Trump as a time to talk about the need to revise the constitution to make Japan safer and will use momentum from the Trump visit to push that agenda forward, he said.

But others have their doubts, and Abes personal support for constitutional changes could end up being a liability: Even though his party won handily, an exit poll this weekend showed 51 percent of voters said they did not trust the Japanese prime minister.

Read more

Abe retains supermajority in Japans election, may push to amend constitution

In Japan, a scandal over a school threatens to entangle Abe

Japans push to revise its constitution isnt a bid to deny history, Abe ally says

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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China's Communist Party formally elevated President Xi Jinping to the same status as party legends Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping on Tuesday, writing his name into its constitution and setting up the nation's leader for an extended stay in power.

The move will make Xi the most powerful Chinese leader in decades, with ambitions to tighten party control over society and make his country a superpower on the world stage, with a political philosophy directly opposed to that of the West.

[Latest: Chinas Xi Jinping unveils his top party leaders, with no successor in sight]

The unanimous vote to enshrine Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in a New Era in the constitution came on the final day of a week-long party congress, a gathering of the party elite held every five years in the imposing and cavernous Great Hall of the People on the western side of Beijings Tiananmen Square.

There is no "Little Red Book" of pithy quotations as there was under Mao but instead a mightier, drier tome of Xi's speeches on "The Governance of China." Nevertheless, his ideas will now become compulsory learning for Chinese students from primary school through university.



A poster with a portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping is displayed along a street in Shanghai, China, on Tuesday. (Aly Song/Reuters)

Xis is an explicit rejection of Western ideas about democracy and free speech in favor of Communist Party leadership in every aspect of life, and a desire to challenge the United States preeminent role in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

On Wednesday, more evidence of Xis power will emerge when he introduces to the media the other members of the Communist Partys top leadership, the Politburo Standing Committee. Experts say it is unlikely that a clear successor will emerge or be anointed, leaving Xis preeminent position free of an obvious challenge.

The 19th Party Congress effectively marks the start of Xis second five-year term as party general secretary. But the chances are now higher that this will not be his last  or at least that he will remain the most powerful person in China beyond 2022.

[Xi Jinping and six other men will rule China, but women are left behind]

The amendment of the party constitution effectively confirms Xi Jinpings aspiration to be the Mao Zedong of the 21st century  that means a top leader with no constraints on tenure or retirement age, said Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a political expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The inclusion of Xis name in the party document makes him only the third Chinese leader to be so honored, with his ideology joining Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory as a guide to action.

Chinas Communist Party imposed a system of collective leadership after the death of Mao. It was a party scarred by the madness, cruelty and famine that one man had prompted through disastrous policies, notably the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

As a result, Xis two predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, ruled through consensus  as the first among equals at the top of the ladder  and were limited to two terms in power.

Now the party is moving in the other direction.

[As Xi gets a second term, Chinese wonder if hell be another Putin]

Assertion of authority

Xis power is not unlimited, and many of his key policy measures reflect ideas adopted by the party before he took power. Yet the past week has seen an explosion of sycophancy toward Chinas leader, after his mammoth 3  -hour speech kicked off proceedings last Wednesday. This is a personal style of rule, much like President Vladimir Putins in Russia.

Throughout the week, senior officials lined up, one after the other, to laud what they described as Xis profound, courageous, thrilling, insightful masterpiece of a speech, which shone the light of Marxist Truth and moved some of them from the bottom of their hearts, some said.

In retrospect, it was an overwhelming assertion of authority to a degree unseen since Mao, said Francois Godement, director of the China-Asia program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Xi still would have to overcome significant obstacles if he wants to remain in power beyond the next party congress, in 2022  including a convention that officials retire if they are 68 or older, said Yanmei Xie, a China policy expert at Gavekal Dragonomics in Beijing. By that time, Xi will be 69.

There had been speculation that Xi would break from previous practice by asking Wang Qishan, his right-hand man and powerful head of the anti-corruption authority, to stay on another five years. Yet the 69-year-old Wangs name does not appear on a new list of Central Committee members, implying that the retirement convention remains in place, at least for now.

Xi also would have to amend the constitution if he wanted a third term as president  or appoint a loyal follower to the top job while retaining power behind the scenes, as Putin did in Russia in 2008.

Nevertheless, the fact that Xis name figures in the constitution puts him on a par with the partys immortals, Mao and Deng, who had no term limits and did not retire, said Xie.

And the drumbeat of propaganda about loyalty to his leadership  combined with the constant threat of an unforgiving anti-corruption campaign that has taken down several powerful rivals  makes it more difficult for anyone who dares challenge him.

"The introduction of Xi Thought makes the question of succession while Xi is alive a moot issue," said Bill Bishop, publisher of the Sinocism newsletter. "He is the man with an eponymous theory in the party constitution, so no one will have more authority than him"  no matter what title Xi holds, Bishop said.

Xi Jinping Thought embodies several important principles, experts said: primarily that the party is in control of every aspect of life in China, including the economy, the Internet, politics, culture and religion. The party must be more disciplined and more responsive to peoples needs, but its leadership must not be questioned.

Xi highlighted what he called the principal contradiction in modern China, between unbalanced and unequal development and peoples needs for a better life.

There should be no more blind pursuit of economic growth at all costs, he implied, but a focus on the issues that concern people the most, including the need to curb pollution and provide better education and health care.

Meanwhile, the market will continue to play an important role in the economy, but the party and key state-owned enterprises will remain supreme.

No convergence

But the other big message is that China is on a path to become a true global superpower  very much on its own terms.

Under his reign, there is no more hope of convergence, said Godement, at the European Council on Foreign Relations. That would have seen China becoming more open, more ruled by law and more democratic as it became wealthier, and its interests and political system ultimately converging with those of the West.

The idea of political reform in a Western sense is now firmly out the window: Indeed, Chinese state media no longer hides its contempt for the political and economic systems of the West.

Xis message promotes a nationalist, assertive China with a much stronger military  a country that he says will not threaten the world but will resolutely defend its interests.

By the middle of this century or before, China aims to close the gap economically and militarily with the United States and become the ultimate arbiter in the Asia-Pacific region, said the Chinese University of Hong Kongs Lam.

If Maos era was one of revolution and nation-building, and Dengs was one of reform and opening that set China on the path to becoming a global economic power, Xis era perhaps is one of control and nationalism, of realizing what he calls the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation.

Dengs influence on the course of Chinese history was weighty, but his power was wielded less explicitly, often behind the scenes. As a result, his Theory on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics was not formally incorporated into the party constitution until after his death.

Former leader Jiangs ideological contribution is recognized in the document as the Theory of Three Represents, and Hus as Scientific Outlook on Development, but neither man is mentioned by name.

Read more

Move over, America. China presents itself as blazing a new trail for the world.

Xi Jinping at China congress calls on party to tighten its grip on the country

As U.S. retreats in the Pacific, China fills the void with an ambitious plan

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
An unconscious child receives treatment at a hospital in Khan Sheikhoun, a town in northwest Syria, on April 4, 2017, after a suspected chemical attack. (Omar Haj Kadour/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

Russia used its veto power on the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday to block an extension of efforts by international inspectors to determine who was behind chemical weapons attacks that have killed scores of Syrian civilians.

Moscows veto decision was condemned by the United States, Britain and others as an attempt to shield the perpetrators from answering for the most controversial human rights abuses of Syrias six-year-old war.

Western intelligence officials and U.N. investigators have blamed the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the attacks.

It was the ninth time Russia has used its veto to hinder international action on Syria. Moscow is a key ally of the Syrian government, supporting it militarily, politically and financially.

[U.N. accuses Syrian government of April sarin attack]

A U.N. investigative body is due to release a report Thursday attributing blame for an April 4 chemical attack on the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun.

More than 80 people were killed, and hundreds were injured in the daybreak assault, in which the Syrian government is alleged to have used the banned nerve agent sarin.

Russias U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, had tried unsuccessfully to have Tuesdays Security Council vote postponed until the contents of the report were released.

President Trump ordered retaliatory missile strikes days after the Khan Sheikhoun assault, targeting the Syrian government air base from which the warplanes that carried out the chemical attack were thought to have departed.

[Analysis: A chemical weapons attack in Syria exposes Trumps Assad problem]

A separate U.N. inquiry also has accused Syria of responsibility for the Khan Sheikhoun assault, saying it was one of more than 20 government attacks involving chemical weapons since March 2013, most of them targeting families with no role in the conflict. This investigation, formally known as the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria, is tasked with probing war-crimes allegations and has no mandate to prosecute any party.

The mandate of the ongoing U.N.-backed inquiry into chemical weapons attacks in Syria, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism, or JIM, expires Nov. 17. It also has several other attacks to investigate.

The U.S.-drafted resolution put to a Security Council vote on Tuesday would have extended the JIMs mandate, raising the prospect of accountability for a chapter of human rights abuses that has drawn unparalleled international condemnation.

Amnesty International described the Russian veto as the equivalent of a green light for war crimes.

By preventing the mandate extension of the gas attacks probe they helped set up, Russia has dealt a huge blow [to] justice in Syria and shown once again their callous disregard for all those who have been killed and injured in these attacks, said Sherine Tadros, head of Amnesty Internationals U.N. office in New York.

[Chemical weapons activity monitored at Syrian air base, U.S. officials say]

It was unclear Tuesday whether the United States and allies on the Security Council would try for a second vote to continue the JIMs work.

It is not every day that this council considers an issue that is so horrific, so shocking to the conscience as the use of chemical weapons against civilians, said Michele J. Sison, the deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations, addressing the chamber. We want to know the truth about these attacks regardless of where it takes us.

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Michele J. Sison's name.

Read more

United Nations accuses Syrian government of April sarin attack

For Trump, sarin in Syria prompted a different response to other chemical weapons

Using chemical weapons is risky. So why did Syria use sarin?

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
Stephen K. Bannon, former White House chief strategist and chairman of Breitbart News, speaks during a conference on Qatar in Washington on Monday. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The ongoing Persian Gulf dispute over Qatar is the single most important thing happening in the world, including the current standoff between the United States and nuclear-armed North Korea, former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon said Monday.

Bannon said that Qatar had to be called to account for terrorism financing, and indicated that a plan by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain to cut all ties with Qatar and close their borders to it was transmitted to the administration in advance.

Their action was taken during the first week in June, shortly after President Trump completed a late May summit meeting in Saudi Arabia that also included Qatar and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

In setting up the summit, I took a very hard line on that, said Bannon, who resigned his White House position in August. I thought the U.A.E., Egypt and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had a well-thought-through plan . . . if you cut off funding, you could really have a chance to eradicate funding for terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, he said.

[The Persian Gulf crisis over Qatar, explained]

Bannon spoke at a conference on Qatar, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank. Since leaving the White House and rejoining Breitbart News as its executive chairman, Bannon has concentrated in most of his public appearances on domestic politics and challenges to establishment Republicans who he says are blocking Trumps agenda.

But he returned, at the Hudson conference, to national security and praise of what he described as Trumps record of combating radical Islamic extremism. The reason Trump was elected, Bannon said, was because the American people decided he would be the best commander in chief in a time of war.

Repeating his frequent denunciation of what he called the foreign policy elite, Bannon described as just more pablum speeches last week by former Republican president George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that were indirectly critical of Trumps foreign policy. Within the same 24 hours, he said, Chinese President Xi Jinping, speaking at the Communist Party congress, delivered an adult speech to adults.

At the time of the Saudi-led quartets action against Qatar, the administration said it was not told in advance, although Trump immediately praised it and said he agreed. In contrast, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis declined to take sides and called for immediate negotiations to end the dispute.

Tillerson described the quartets demands as excessive, and has devoted extensive efforts since then to ending the dispute. Trump has largely dropped his public support for the Saudi position, and last month offered to mediate.

After visiting the region during the summer  when he signed a U.S.-Qatar counterterrorism agreement  Tillerson traveled to both Saudi Arabia and Qatar last weekend, but reported no progress.

Trump, he said at a news conference Sunday in Doha, the Qatari capital, has stressed to all . . . that he believes that it is time to find a solution to this dispute. The U.S. is prepared to facilitate in any way we can, he said, but fundamentally, the parties have to come to a point that theyre ready to solve this.

We have additional work to do, but we are quite pleased with the progress and the relationship that has been strengthened between the two countries  Qatar and the United States  to counter terrorism, Tillerson said.

The four countries have demanded that Qatar end what they say is financial support for terrorism, as well as attempts to undermine their governments by allowing their political opponents to live within its borders. They have also demanded that Qatar curtain its relationship with Iran, with whom it shares ownership of the worlds largest natural gas field.

In other remarks at the conference, retired Gen. David H. Petraeus, the former director of the CIA and commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, spoke of Qatari contributions to U.S. military efforts in the region, including the provision of the Central Commands regional headquarters and a major air base.

Although Qatar could make some changes, Petraeus said, I do think we have to be careful not to overdo it. Citing the importance of regional unity to U.S. national security interests, he said of the gulf dispute that Weve got to get this past us. They need to come back together.
The U.S. Special Forces team caught in a deadly ambush three weeks ago in Niger did not request help from nearby French forces for about an hour after the firefight began near a village the Americans had visited during a reconnaissance mission several hours prior, the Pentagons top general said Monday.

It then took the French another hour to get fighter jets over the American troops, according to a new timeline provided by Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The disclosure doubles the amount of time the U.S. troops were believed to have fought without significant additional help.

This is a very complex situation that they found themselves in, and a pretty tough firefight, Dunford said.

Four U.S. soldiers were killed and two others were wounded in the battle Oct. 4. Five Nigerien troops also died. The mission has ignited a political firestorm, raising questions about the U.S. militarys broader mission in Africa and why one of the fallen soldiers, Sgt. La David Johnson, was not recovered for two days.

[Gold Star widow Myeshia Johnson has nothing to say to Trump after controversial condolence call]

Senior U.S. officials are fairly certain, Dunford said, that when the soldiers left their base Oct. 3, their mission was to conduct a routine reconnaissance patrol to Tongo Tongo, a village near Nigers border with Mali. Less clear is whether they deviated from that task, whether they had adequate communications to call for help and how Johnson wound up missing. An ongoing investigation aims to answer those questions, Dunford said.

What tactical instructions a commander on the ground gave at a given time to cause the units to maneuver, and where they may have been when Sergeant Johnsons body was found, those are all questions that will be identified during the investigation, he said, acknowledging the growing perception  both among the American public and lawmakers on Capitol Hill  that the Pentagon has not been forthcoming about the incident.

Several members of Congress have called for a hearing on the Niger operation, even after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis went to the Hill last week to discuss its details with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

[U.S. will expand counterterrorism focus in Africa, Mattis tells senators]

Dunford said that about 50 militants affiliated with the Islamic State launched the ambush in the middle of the morning as the U.S.-Nigerien patrol, comprising 12 Americans and 30 Nigeriens, headed away from the village en route to their base. The militants were armed with machine guns, small arms and rockets, he added.

U.S. officials are examining whether the militants were tipped off by someone in the village.

There are no indications U.S. troops requested help for the first hour, Dunford said. Once they did, a U.S. drone arrived overhead within minutes, he added, and it captured video of the fight below.

It took another 30 minutes to launch the French Mirage fighters that came to soldiers defense, and an additional 30 minutes for them to arrive on scene, Dunford said. So the soldiers were on their own for about two hours.

The Pentagon had said previously that jets were overhead within 30 minutes of the request. Dunford attributed the discrepancy to internal confusion as U.S. military officials assess what happened.

The situations severity became more clear in Washington the night of Oct. 4, after Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, who oversees U.S. Africa Command, called Dunford to inform him that Johnson was still missing and to ask for additional help, Dunford said.

The Pentagon responded by deploying national assets from the United States to assist in the operation, Dunford said. He declined to provide specifics, but he was probably referring to a team of personnel assigned to the elite Joint Special Operations Command.

Dunfords remarks came as a dispute between the White House and Johnsons family continued to boil over Monday.

Myeshia Johnson, the fallen soldiers widow, said in an interview with ABCs Good Morning America that she was very angry about the way she was treated by President Trump in a condolence phone call placed last week. She said the president struggled to remember her husbands name.

Trump fired back on Twitter, saying he had a very respectful conversation with the widow and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!

Dunford declined to address the controversy but struck a markedly different tone. The Pentagon, he said, owes the families of the four slain soldiers  in addition to Johnson, Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson and Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright also were killed  as much information as we find out about what happened.

Dunford also addressed the frustration expressed by Myeshia Johnson on Monday when she told Good Morning America that she was not allowed to view her husbands remains and questioned whether he was in fact inside the casket.

U.S. military policy calls for a casualty assistance officer to recommend at times for remains not to be viewed, but it also says that it is ultimately the familys decision.

I can tell you what the policy is, he said. I dont know what happened in the case of Mrs. Johnson, but we will certainly find out.

Despite the alarm over what transpired in Niger, the United States is unlikely to significantly shift its mission there, one of several countries where the Pentagon has long trained African forces to counter terrorism. There were about 800 U.S. troops in Niger at the time of the incident, and U.S. operations there already have resumed, Dunford said.

Overall, there are about 6,000 U.S. troops across the African continent, Dunford said. More than half are concentrated in Djibouti, with others in Tunisia, Senegal and Somalia.

Dunford promised that the Pentagon will release more information when it can.

We owe the American people an explanation of what their men and women were doing at this particular time, Dunford added. And when I say that, I mean men and women in harms way anywhere in the world  they should know what the mission is and what were trying to accomplish when were there.
A sign marks the Microsoft office in Cambridge, Mass. On Monday, Microsoft announced it will drop its lawsuit against the Justice Department following new guidelines aimed at providing more transparency around demands for customer data stored on tech firms servers. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

The Justice Department has issued new guidelines aimed at providing more transparency around prosecutors secret demands for customer data stored on tech firms servers.

The binding guidance, approved last week by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, ends the routine imposition of gag orders barring companies from telling customers that their email or other records have been turned over in response to legal demands.

It also bans  in most cases  indefinite gag orders that forbid a company from ever telling users that their data has been searched.

The move comes 1  years after Microsoft sued the department, asking a federal judge in Seattle to strike down portions of a major privacy law that govern the secrecy orders. The tech giant argued that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act violated customers Fourth Amendment right that a search be reasonable because it did not require the government to notify them when their records were obtained. The company also argued that the laws gag-order provision violated the companys First Amendment right to talk to its customers.

The new guidance requires prosecutors to tailor their applications for secrecy orders to ensure that they are necessary, and to explain why. For instance, a prosecutor might fear that targets will destroy data if they learn of the probe. Or a target might try to flee. The assessment must be individualized and meaningful.

[Read DOJs new policy on gag orders]

And now there is a time limit: Barring exceptional circumstances, a gag order may be sought for one year or less.

The change is a recognition that privacy laws passed in the 1980s have not kept up with the advent of cloud computing in which people, at the press of a button, create and store data in servers that they do not control.

This update further ensures that the department can protect the rights of citizens we serve, while allowing companies to maintain relationships with their customers by notifying those suspected of crimes, or believed to have information relevant to a crime, in a timely manner that information was obtained relating to their user accounts, Justice Department spokeswoman Lauren Ehrsam said Monday in a statement.

This is an important step for both privacy and free expression, Microsofts president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith, said Monday in a blog post. It is an unequivocal win for our customers, and were pleased the DOJ has taken these steps to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans.

As a result, Microsoft announced that it plans to drop its lawsuit. But it wants Congress to pass legislation to put a 90-day limit on nondisclosure orders unless the government asks for them to be renewed.

[Microsoft sues over law banning tech firms from telling customers about data requests]

When Microsoft filed its case in April 2016, it noted that in the previous 18 months, it had received 5,600 federal demands for data and that almost 2,600 were accompanied by obligations of secrecy. Further, more than two-thirds of those  about 1,750 orders  had no fixed end date.

In short, we were prevented from ever telling a large number of customers that the government had sought to access their data, Smith said.

The policy does not apply to orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or to national security letters, a type of administrative subpoena used in national security cases.

Chris Calabrese, vice president of policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy organization, applauded the move. But, he said, it is no substitute for statutory reform.

The move matters for Americans whose data is secretly obtained in criminal probes that never lead to prosecution but who never find out because of indefinite gag orders. This has become much more of a problem as people store their emails and other sensitive data in the cloud. Theyre not expecting that its an all-you-can-eat buffet for the government, said John McKay, a former U.S. attorney in Seattle who is now a partner at Davis Wright Tremaine.
Pakistan's prime minister pledged his country's cooperation in fighting Islamist militants during talks here Tuesday with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has insisted that Pakistan do more to curb support for terrorist groups or face U.S. reprisals.

The U.S. can rest assured that we are strategic partners in the war against terror and that today, Pakistan is fighting the largest war in the world against terror, Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told Tillerson just before their closed-door talks began. Pakistans army and intelligence chiefs also attended the meeting.

Moments earlier, Tillerson alluded to U.S. concerns that Pakistan is providing safe haven to terrorist groups  a charge Pakistan has repeatedly denied. At the same time, he described Pakistan as having an important role in the Trump administrations strategy and referenced our joint goals of providing peace and security to the region and providing opportunity for [a] greater economic relationship.

On Monday, during a brief and unannounced visit to Afghanistan, Tillerson struck a much harsher tone, saying he intended to make clear in his talks Tuesday that Pakistan's relationship with the United States would suffer  including possible aid cuts  if it did not take specific actions to curb support for militant groups, including the Haqqani network, a Taliban affiliate.

[Tillerson makes unannounced visits to Afghanistan, Iraq]

Tillersons arrival in Pakistan was low key and heavily secured; he landed at a military air base in Rawalpindi, near the capital, at midafternoon with little official protocol or fanfare, and his only visits were to the U.S. Embassy and the prime ministers office in Islamabad. Traffic was blocked across the capital during the official convoys movements.

Pakistans Senate chairman, Raza Rabbani, said Tuesday that Tillersons threatening message the day before seems like that of a viceroys before they visit a country.

Abbasi, though, appeared eager to assure Tillerson that he had heard the message, telling him when they met Tuesday that Pakistans government is committed to the war against terrorism. We have produced results, he said. And we are looking forward to moving ahead with the U.S. and building a tremendous relationship.

Despite the largely cordial tone of their opening remarks, followed by several hours of private talks in the prime ministers office before Tillerson flew to India for a longer stay, the enormous gap between American and Pakistani concerns and priorities has been evident in comments by numerous Pakistani officials and opinion-makers in the past week.

[Tillerson tells Iranian militias in Iraq to go home]

The Trump administration has focused strictly on the demand for more Pakistani cooperation in curbing terrorism and in ending the 16-year conflict in next-door Afghanistan. Many Afghans view Pakistan  which once backed the Taliban regime in Kabul  as a source of violent Islamist militancy and a permanent threat to their countrys stability.

Pakistanis, on the other hand, are far more worried about the threat from India, their larger rival and neighbor to the east, which is led by a Hindu nationalist government. The two countries have fought four limited wars. Both claim the Himalayan border region of Kashmir, and Pakistan has repeatedly accused Indian troops of abusing protesters in the Indian-controlled portion.

Pakistani officials said they intended to raise the issue of India forcefully Tuesday, especially President Trumps overture to New Delhi to become more deeply involved in developing Afghanistan. That gesture has been viewed here as a direct U.S. rebuke to Pakistan and an invitation to India to jointly dominate the conflicted region.

Our job will be to show Tillerson that he is mistaken in thinking that the U.S. can ever defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan by relying only on India, the editors of the News International newspaper wrote Tuesday. Pakistan is still needed to negotiate a political end to the war, they wrote, adding that Washington is looking for scapegoats to blame for its failures in Afghanistan.

Pakistani Defense Minister Khurram Dastgir, who participated in the talks with Tillerson, told a TV news show Tuesday night that we told him the threat of India is very real and that Pakistan wants mutual respect and cooperation, not economic aid, from Washington.

Dastgir said a single meeting was held with Tillerson, including senior civilian and military officials, to give a united message to Washington. Pakistans military establishment cooperates with U.S. intelligence agencies on terrorism issues but has bristled at suggestions from civilian leaders that it allow U.S. troops to operate in Pakistan.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is due to visit Pakistan soon and is expected to reinforce Tillersons demands; he has told Congress several times that Pakistan is still sheltering the Haqqani network, despite its denials. There has been no specific description of likely sanctions on Pakistan if administration officials decide they are not satisfied.

Ever since Trump accused Pakistan in August of harboring agents of chaos, officials here have made numerous efforts to restore American goodwill. Earlier this month, Pakistans military unexpectedly announced that its troops had

rescued an American woman

, her Canadian husband and their three children after five years in Taliban captivity, based on a U.S. intelligence tip. Trump hailed the release as a positive moment in the strained relationship.

But observers in both countries doubt that such efforts will do much to resolve the larger tension between the former Cold War allies, which now fear different enemies and seek contradictory solutions to regional conflict. Any smaller signs of cooperation, wrote columnist Huma Yusuf in the Dawn newspaper this week, are only the piecemeal politics of placation.

Washington has now effectively read Pakistan the riot act, said Michael Kugelman, a Pakistan expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. If the Trump administration decides to take drastic measures, the relationship could plunge into deep crisis, he said. For the moment there is a modest thaw, as indicated by Tillersons visit, Kugelman said, but he added that U.S.-Pakistan relations will soon be put to the test in a big way.

Morello reported from Qatar. Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Once again, Bill Browder has foiled Vladimir Putin, and it will probably not be the last time the British businessman and the Russian president square off.

The Department of Homeland Security has restored Browder's ability to enter the United States without a visa after temporarily blocking him when Russia placed his name on an Interpol list seeking his arrest. The Kremlin apparently was retaliating for Browder's long-running international campaign against Russia and Putin over the killing of Browder's Moscow tax attorney, friend and whistleblower, Sergei Magnitsky, who died from untreated illnesses and beatings while being held in a Russian prison. He was arrested after accusing officials of a $230 million tax fraud.

Last week, Canada passed its own version of a Magnitsky Act targeting corrupt officials and human rights abusers. Putin has branded Magnitsky legislation already in place in three countries as "anti-Russia hysteria."

This marks the fifth time since Browder has started tangling with Putin that Russia has asked Interpol to pick him up for "illegal activity."

Browder said in a phone interview that on Monday evening, he was able to buy a plane ticket and get a boarding pass for a flight from London to the United States without being turned away, as he was last week.

"The boarding pass was as good as being on the plane, as far as I'm concerned," said Browder, who gave his ticket back and got a refund before returning home.

Though he has not been officially notified that his ability to enter the United States has been restored, Browder's successful test came as several members of Congress expressed outrage over his being stopped from flying to Newark last week because of the Interpol listing.

"Putin is seriously rattled about everything I'm doing around the world," Browder said. "It affects his personal interests. He's worried his money will be frozen some day. He sees me as his top enemy in the world, because I found his Achilles' heel."

Browder, a hedge fund manager who had hired Magnitsky to represent his interests in Russia, has become a tireless Kremlin critic in the eight years since Magnitsky was killed. He has lobbied governments around the world to punish those believed responsible for his friend's death.

Three countries have passed Magnitsky legislation, including the United States. The 2012 law bans numerous Russians from traveling to the United States or using the U.S. financial system. In response, Russia convicted Magnitsky posthumously of tax evasion and prohibited U.S. adoptions of Russian children.

On Thursday, a day after Canada passed its version of a Magnitsky Act, Putin appeared at a conference in which he was asked about it and characterized Browder as a criminal. The same day, Browder says, he received an email that his status had changed on his ability to enter the United States under the Global Entry system.

Though born in the United States, Browder immigrated to Britain 28 years ago and relinquished his U.S. citizenship. But he travels frequently to the United States to testify before Congress or speak about Magnitsky. As a British citizen, he has enrolled in the visa waiver program so that he can enter the country for up to 90 days without needing a visa.

After checking on the DHS website for Global Entry and learning his status had been "revoked," he suspected he might also have problems with the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to screen law enforcement systems and determine whether travelers are a security risk.

According to a spokesman for the agency, Browder's status was automatically changed to "pending" after his name showed up on the Interpol list. On Oct. 18, a supervisor personally reviewed it and restored him, according to the spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter.

But Browder said he was denied a boarding pass when he tried to purchase a United ticket for travel to Newark the following day. That's when he checked with acquaintances at Interpol and learned his name had popped up on the list under a provision that lets countries demand a person's arrest, known as a "diffusion." He was added on Oct. 17 by Russia, he said.

Browder said he tried to call DHS to clear things up, but after an hour and a half waiting on hold, he was advised to file a Freedom of Information request.

"It's one big black hole at DHS," he said.

Browder took to Twitter to publicize his plight, accusing the United States of "revoking" his visa. Sens. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) called on DHS to review what had happened. Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) asked the State Department to look into it.

It is cleared up, for now, but Browder expects it to happen again, saying it is easy for countries such as Russia to manipulate the system.

"It's absurd I've been put on the list by Russia five times and they haven't found a way to stop it from abusing their system," he said.

"It's shocking what it says if the system designed to catch criminals is used by criminals to get around the system. How are we going to fight transnational criminals and terrorists when we see how Russia is working the international system for their own criminal and political purposes?"

Interpol did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it will resume accepting refugees into the United States, but said it needs three more months to continue assessing screening procedures for applicants from 11 nations deemed higher risk.

The announcement, made by executive order, comes as President Trump's 120-day freeze on refugee admissions was due to expire. Trump has instructed Department of Homeland Security officials to develop "extreme vetting" procedures to make sure "radical Islamic terrorists" do not take advantage of the program.

Administration officials said all refugee candidates will now face enhanced security screening that will gather more biometric and personal information, including social media use. The measures will also allow for more diligent information sharing among the U.S. agencies tasked with vetting refugee applicants, officials said.

These new measures are part of the administrations effort to raise national security standards for all persons traveling to the United States, and they are designed to intensify screening to keep nefarious and fraudulent actors from exploiting the refugee process to enter the United States, Homeland Security officials said in a statement.

[U.S. plans to cap refugees at 45,000 in coming fiscal year]

During the additional 90-day review period for the 11 high-risk nations, applications from those countries will be considered on a limited case-by-case basis, according to administration officials. Those applicants could be accepted if they conclusively pose no threat and admitting them is determined to be in the interest of the United States.

Officials refused to identify the 11 nations that are considered "higher risk," but they are presumed to include the Muslim-majority countries that have been targeted by the administration for travel restrictions. Federal courts have largely blocked those attempts.

Jennifer Higgins, a senior DHS official who works on refugee issues, said the United States will also deploy more officers abroad who are trained in assessing the credibility and admissibility of applicants, including a more rigorous criminal background check or ties to bad actors. Higgins said the goal would be to develop tailored lines of questioning for each case.

A State Department official said Tuesday the United States will continue to view the "vulnerability" of applicants as the primary criterion for determining whether they should qualify as refugees. The government is also considering additional funding to help refugees already admitted to the United States to improve their language and work skills, the official said.

[Second judge rules against latest Trump travel ban]

The new rules do not adjust the number of refugees the United States will accept in the next 12 months, which Trump has limited to 45,000, the lowest level since the Refugee Act was created in 1980.

U.S. standards for refugee acceptance are considered some of the toughest in the world, and experts say the process typically takes a year or two.

On the campaign trail, Trump told supporters that a massive inflow of refugees was pouring into the United States and warned that extremists could be hiding among them.

We dont want them here, he said, insisting that the United States needed new rules to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas.

We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country and love deeply our people, he said.

Tuesdays executive order cited such justifications for the tougher measures, and said more than 300 U.S. refugees who have entered the United States have been the subjects of FBI counterterrorism investigations.

Since Congress created the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program, about 3 million refugees have resettled in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center.
Ben Murphy aged one bounces back from year of surgeries and heartbreak as his mother is named Wexford Carer of the Year
In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.

He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. ~
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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/10/2017 (1848 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Putting on a mask at Halloween gives you the fun of being someone youre not. Thats also the fun of wearing a mask onstage in the theatre.

But the power of a mask can be so much more.

Ask Chris Sigurdson, 55, a Winnipeg actor, director, educator and mask-maker who is passionate about the magic of the theatrical mask  especially those that come out of the tradition of commedia dellarte, a style of improvised popular comedic theatre that flourished in Italy from the 16th century to the 18th.

Sigurdson says hes always had a comedic streak.

I was the class clown  I had bright red hair and a lateral lisp and a target on my back  and being funny was a way of getting that target off my back and not being the butt of everyones jokes, he says.

His mom encouraged him to take theatre in high school, and from there, he went on to the University of Winnipeg and studied under Reg Skene, who introduced him to commedia dellarte, mime and the use of masks. He says it was different from his other classes.

Youre creating a situation where the audience is complicit  there was something in it I found intoxicating and powerful  and I wanted more of it, he says.

He pursued the object of his theatrical affection, formed a company called Mimeworks, travelled and came across opportunities to learn more about mask-making.

I ran into a company called Faustwork Mask Theatre run by Rob Faust, he says.

I was like a kid in a candy shop  here was a company devoted to the esthetics of mask theatre.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Chris Sigurdson peers out from behind one of his Commedia dellarte masks modelled after his own face. He holds two more expressions.

From Faust, he learned how to make both traditional and contemporary latex masks, and a lot about the finer points of facial architecture.

Id be working on a mask and sculpting it in clay and hed come over and say, No, this doesnt connect. Hed take a sculpting tool and draw a line and show me that eyebrows arent just blobs, they start and they end somewhere; and the line in the cheek, its got to start here  and hed muck up all the work that Id done.

But he was right, he says.

We can have a quite fantastical mask, but if you want the mask to live and you want it to be performed, the audience still has to recognize something in that mask.

The mask-making process hass remained mostly unchanged for hundreds of years. A facial shape is sculpted out of clay, which is then handed to a woodcarver, who carves the shape out of a block of wood. Then, a piece of wet leather is stretched over the carving and attached to the back. Sigurdson has adapted the method slightly, using plaster life moulds of a persons face instead of a wood block.

Then I use a piece of antler and a piece of wood to press the leather against the form, to take the shape, he says.

Once the leather dries, you cut out the eyes and the nose, and you embed a wire into a fold around the perimeter of the mask and attach a strap.

Then I airbrush dye on it to help bring the shapes out.

He can make the masks out of neoprene as well, but he favours leather.

Im a sucker for a good metaphor, and what you are doing with leather is taking a piece of material that was once living tissue and you are forming it into something else and re-animating it, he says.

Once created, it is ready for the performer. The maker chooses a character in creating a mask. The actor looks at the mask to create the character, shaping the body to match.

You must perform the mask so that it comes alive and stays alive when its onstage  even when its still  and remain connected to the audience, he says.

Sigurdsons masks are made to be performed in the tradition of commedia dellarte.

For a good couple of hundred years, it dominated the culture and influenced Shakespeare, Moliere and later, even Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, he says.

In a nutshell, the tradition relies on colourful stock characters using improvised dialogue and familiar frameworks that allow the stories to be retold in different ways over and over again.

There are clown characters, servants and masters, he says.

There are also the lovers portraying the qualities of the masculine and feminine, the trickster, the innocent, the braggart captain, the greedy merchant, the pedantic scholar and others.

What was consistent among the troupes was the embracing of these types, he says.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Eyebrows arent just blobs, they start and end somewhere, says Sigurdson.

They operate in a binary universe  a hierarchy of fabricated linear order over the natural cyclical chaos  two forces that are always trying to come in to balance. Each character belongs to one of these worlds.

The lovers are trying to get together and the servants might be trying to help, but they are battling the hierarchy  and the merchant and the pedant and the military are somehow suppressing this free expression of love, but in the end it all works out happily, says Sigurdson.

He points out that many television sitcoms are based on these comedy traditions.

This love of theatre also led Sigurdson to become an educator and he started teaching mime 25 years ago through the Artists in the Schools program.

A big part of my current activity is a program I call Unmasking Empathy, he says.

Sigurdson began incorporating simple masks created from thick white cardstock, which illustrated different emotions.

Some very interesting things happened, he says.

Students were giving him heartfelt responses when he began to teach them how to make the masks come alive with body language.

I asked: What would make somebody feel sad like this? he says.

One student responded that they just realized theyre the only one at home.

It was something very specific, but there was a nod around the room, and I recognized that it was quite profound, he says.

I just stumbled on this in trying to make the masks relevant: empathy is where theatre and social skills and education kind of link.

And, he says empathy is something that has become really important, so he dug in and developed it.

Were talking about non-verbal communication skills; were talking about emotional intelligence; and were looking at some of the things that we can do  heightening our ability not just to observe, but what we could be compelled to do to help another person, he says.

So we would get suggestions like: we could say something nice to them; or invite them to play; or talk to a grown-up.

Sigurdson says that Unmasking Empathy has led him to greater specialization in mask-making, commedia dellarte and educating.

My nerdiness and my love of masks fills this niche in our school system, where we dont really have a good avenue to discuss how emotions affect us, he says.

Sigurdson says that as a mask-maker, he sees wonderful things.

As soon as people put on the mask  even those who are not actors  they strike a pose without any encouragement or anything and its like, Thats the character! he says.

Or conversely, somebody puts the mask on and you say: I didnt see that! Thank you for showing me a whole other vein of creativity in that mask. 

Twitter: @WendyKinginWpg

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Three Gazan workers were briefly kidnapped by masked gunmen, believed to be jihadists, in a tunnel at Rafah crossing on Monday, before they were released.

Hamas-run interior ministry and eye witnesses confirmed the incident which underlines the security issue on the border between the enclave and Egypt.

Eye witnesses told reporters that gunmen stormed a tunnel near the Salah-a-Din gate of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt and took away three workers

Iyad al-Bazm, spokesman of the interior ministry in a first step mentioned the Islamist movement as the instigator of the kidnapping but later issued another statement that the three workers were found on the border and had been returned to Gaza.

The security situation at and near the crossing has always been a thorny issue between Cairo and Hamas. Cairo accuses Hamas of using tunnels near the crossing to smuggle food, weapons and fighters in and out Gaza. Egypt also says jihadists in the Sinai use tunnels to escape inside Gaza.

Last week, Egypt maintained closed the Rafah crossing after jihadists in the Sinai attacked Egyptian security forces near the border, killing many of them.

Egypt is facing a brazen insurgency in the restive Sinai province where terror groups, including the Islamic State group have been staging attacks on security forces.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/10/2017 (1848 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Airbnb is a global technology platform that is disrupting the hotel industry around the world.

But Winnipegs reputation as a place thats just a step or two behind in adopting new trends in business may be working to its advantage this time, at least as far as the local hotel industry is concerned.

They have no problem with Winnipegs low ranking in Airbnb market penetration, cited in a new study released by the Hotel Association of Canada (HAC).

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Susie Grynol, right, national president of the Hotel Association of Canada, and Scott Jocelyn president of the Manitoba Hotel Association. Grynol is releasing results of a study on the impact Airbnb is having on their industry.

Winnipeg ranks 10th out of 11 Canadian cities covered in the study in terms of Airbnb revenue and most other market presence metrics.

Were not trying to get better, said Scott Jocelyn, president and CEO of the Manitoba Hotel Association. Were pretty happy with where we are.

But that doesnt mean that industry is not working hard to make sure there is a level playing field.

At the associations 89th annual meeting on Monday, Susie Grynol, president of the Hotel Association of Canada, outlined the findings of the first major study of Airbnbs presence in Canada, released by the HAC on Sept. 27.

Hotels just came off a really strong year and we have projected growth into next year, she said. Our concern here is that we have a new player in the market thats not playing by the same rules as the established industry.

The hotel industrys beef is with the way the platform works: the corporation collects the rental fees and pays no GST or PST and the local owners of the accommodations that are being rented through Airbnb do not comply with health and safety standards, do not secure business licences and are not compelled to have the same kind of insurance that mainstream commercial hotels do.

We can compete, Jocelyn said. If we have to do it (pay taxes and comply with regulations), they should have to do it and let the better man win. Its not fair right now.

Grynol is especially concerned with a growing number of commercial interests  those who own multiple units and who are renting them out for extended periods of time  participating in the Airbnb platform.

Its the biggest growth segment within Airbnb, she said. These are (accommodation) businesses running in the midst of communities. When people dont even know who their neighbours are, that is a problem.

In 2016, guests of Canadas hotel properties contributed an estimated $2.2 billion in consumer taxes and fees based on room revenues alone. If the rates were to be applied to Airbnb revenues, Canadas Airbnb sector has the potential to contribute $85 million in consumer taxes and fees to the Canadian economy.

The study estimates that Airbnbs presence in Winnipeg deprived the city of about $410,000 in consumer taxes and fees.

Jocelyn said hes not yet had much dialogue on the subject with Mayor Brian Bowman. He said he was waiting for the national study to be released.

The citys hotels generate about $1 billion in revenue as compared to about $2.2 million last year from Airbnb. But Jocelyn said the sector has its challenges, especially rural hotels. Even though there have been a number of new properties constructed in Winnipeg over the past 10 years, the provincial associations membership numbers remain stagnant mostly because of closures of rural hotels.

Grynol said that the industry has a focused approach now to make sure the Airbnb issue gets on the radar of municipal, provincial and federal governments.

Bed and breakfasts have been around for years, she said. They need a business licence, they have to make sure guests are safe. Even though they are zoned in residential areas, they still have to comply with a set of regulations. They are important and they should be applied to everyone involved.

She said the Airbnb corporate officials have a tradition of pushing back against regulations and, in some cases, have tried to sue governments when they attempt to rein the service in.

Other than a modest breakthrough in Quebec, where Airbnb fees now include a 3.5 per cent municipal tax, there are not really any jurisdictions in the country that have successfully imposed regulations.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/10/2017 (1848 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  The Supreme Court is expected to soon welcome an Indigenous jurist to fill its quota for western and northern Canada, but its unlikely the appointment will come from Manitoba.

It would feel burdensome, Sen. Murray Sinclair said in an interview Monday. It is a tremendous workload.

Sinclair is among the few Indigenous Manitobans who would qualify for the job, and a Toronto Star editorial suggested him for the role in a June editorial.

Patrick Doyle / The Canadian Press Justice Murray Sinclair during an interview in Ottawa in 2015.

In mid-July, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau opened a two-month application period to fill the spot for a judge from either the territories or the West (British Columbia and the Prairies). The regional requirement can be filled by the area of bar membership, judicial appointment or a personal connection.

An advisory committee had planned to present a short list on Monday of three to five candidates.

Trudeau has sought functionally bilingual jurists who are representative of the diversity of Canada, but hes been under pressure from First Nations activists and legal scholars to appoint an Indigenous judge.

Sinclair wouldnt say whether he applied, saying it would violate the process confidentiality rules (by either admitting so, or allowing others to be singled out). But he hinted hes already taken on a series of accomplishments.

Hes troubled the court has lacked an Aboriginal voice since its 1875 creation.

That speaks volumes about the systemic racism in this country, and its about time we address that in the most positive a way that we can, he said, noting the court deals with many Indigenous cases, and broadened its perspective when women joined the bench.

Whomever is chosen, theyll replace Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, who retires in December. Trudeau will then choose a new top judge from the nine justices.

The two names most often discussed in Canadas legal community are John Borrows and Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, both of whom are legal experts with experience in multiple provinces.

Borrows is the Indigenous law Canada research chair at the University of Victoria, while Turpel-Lafond worked as B.C.s child-welfare youth representative for a decade.

Karen Busby, director of the Centre for Human Rights Research at the University of Manitoba, is familiar with both fantastic candidates.

Busby is on a first-name basis with Turpel-Lafond, whom she says was an exceptional academic who was missed when she went into law. She describes Borrows as a rare mix of brilliant academic and warm and approachable.

Typically, Busby says, a Supreme Court judge from B.C. is replaced by another (Alberta-born McLachlin spent almost all her legal career in B.C.).

Sinclair hopes the committee has embraced candidates from outside the courts. They can pick from people who were called to a bar, such as lawyers or scholars, but its much more common to pick from appeal courts. Those make up the most senior judges, and Sinclair says few Indigenous people attain law degrees, let alone become a senior-ranking judge. (Sinclair said he only knows of one, in Ontario.)

That would be an unconscious, perhaps a deliberate, exclusion of a significant number of Indigenous people who are duly qualified.

While Sinclair supports Trudeaus requirement for judges to be functionally bilingual, he said its difficult for First Nations people who grow up on reserves, as Ottawa spends literally nothing for French-language programs in the schools they administer outside Quebec.

Busby said her U of M colleague Aimee Craft has a really good shot at being appointed to the Supreme Court, but believes she is too young for the typical age of appointment.

Craft, who did not return an afternoon interview request, is on leave from U of M as research head for the national missing and murdered Indigenous women inquiry.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Mayor of Ankara and member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Ibrahim Melih Gokcek has announced he would step down from his position after 23 years, as the party leader and countrys president Recep Tayyip Erdogan goes on war against longstanding members.

Gokcek on twitter said he would hand over his position on Saturday.

Inshallah,Ill extraordinarily convene Ankara Municipal Council on Saturday, bid farewell to our Council Members & submit my resignation, he wrote.

He was elected mayor of Ankara in 1994 at the same the time Erdogan was elected mayor of Istanbul.

Gokcek will be the fifth Turkish mayor to resign after President Erdogan called for new blood to be injected in the ruling party.

Kadir Topbay of Istanbul, Edip Ugur of Balikesir, Faruk Akdogan of Nigde and Mehmet Keles the mayor of Duzce have already resigned. Bursa mayor, Recep Altepe is also expected to resign.

All these mayors performed poorly during the April referendum on the constitutional change to give the President more power.

Erdogan won the referendum with a slim margin and blamed some partys longstanding leaders for mental fatigue.

Erdogan in a recent interview noted that he was expecting three mayors to submit their resignations.

The Turkish President has suggested that young people of the party are able to run affairs, as he pushes for the partys overhaul.

Gokcek is known for controversial statements and comments. In July last year, he accused the US of involvement in the failed military coup against Erdogan.

He on many occasions alleged that US ships anchored off Turkeys coasts are responsible for generating the earthquakes that plight Turkey, reports say.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 23/10/2017 (1849 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A financially troubled after-school art program was getting some love  and, more importantly, some money  Monday after funding delays left it with a massive shortfall, forcing suspensions in its inner-city outreach classes.

Businesses, artists and hundreds of others responded by pitching in to help Broadways Art City restore half a dozen free art workshops it put on hold about three weeks ago.

The venerable charity suspended the art programs after $86,000 in funding was delayed this spring.

The payment has been wrapped up in red tape, and is so late in coming that its caused a cash-flow crisis, Art City artistic director Eddie Ayoub told the Free Press on Monday. He declined to identify the funder, to avoid jeopardizing future funding from the same source.

In the Maples, Art City runs an after-school art program at Elwick Village, where a video of the farewell workshop showed a string of disappointed kids running after the van as it pulled away.

At the last meeting, when the program was suspended, said Art City managing director Josh Ruth, one of the kids, whose name is Sincere, said, Well, say goodbye to your favourite place on Earth.

Founded by internationally renowned artist Wanda Koop, the not-for-profit community art studio, which has kept the same address on Broadway since its inception in 1998, grew in response to needs, with a dozen outreach programs all across the city, like the one in Elwick. With five now suspended, the future for the rest looks bleak.

Hundreds of elementary school kids attend the programs, often run out of local neighbourhood community centres. One of the suspended sites, in Centennial, is run out of the Sister MacNamara School Boys and Girls Club, and was integrated with Newcomer Employment and Education Development Services Inc., a community agency for new immigrants.

While the adults took language classes, their kids attended the art workshops.

Art City first imposed austerity measures, like scaling back its popular Halloween party, before suspending programs in the Maples, the west end, Centennial and Central Park areas of the city.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Josh Ruth, Art City managing director, pitches in to help with haunted gingerbread houses.

These are outreach sites. The kids have very little programming at all, let alone any access to art programming We get a lot of kids right after school and we serve a meal. Thats a big part of our service in neighbourhoods where food security is not the best, Ruth said.

They arent giving up yet.

Art City launched a $50,000 crowdsourcing campaign a week ago, the bare minimum to restore programs and keep them running until the end of the year, and word got around the Broadway neighbourhood.

Then, local businesses caught wind of their troubles.

The neighbourhood barber shop, Hunter & Gunn, is donating tips all this week, and Clementine cafe is donating a dollar from the sale of every plate of eggs Benedict, its top menu item.

Sherbrook Streets popular eatery, Tallest Poppy, is planning an afternoon tea, with fancy sandwiches, dainties and possibly a live band in the next week or two, in an effort to raise cash for Art City.

We appreciate what Art City does with the kids. And these kids are adorable to a fault. Not everybody has seen what this program does first-hand. So well invite people in, charge a cover charge, and have the kids there. Then people will understand what the money is for, Tallest Poppy owner Talia Syrie said.

Local bar and cafe Good Will Social Club, in the 600 block of Portage, is selling stickers, like the kind charities sell through supermarkets, to raise money a loonie at a time.

People love our city and theyre certainly responding to this, Good Wills managing-partner, Tyler Sneesby, said.

Weve got dozens of these badges all over the walls right now, and it adds awareness for the cause. People come in and see them, ask about them, and they donate. I know that people are giving way more than $1 or $2 per donation. Some are donating $5 or $20, Sneesby said.

Art City is feeling grateful for the love. Its raised a little over half of its $50,000 goal by crowdsourcing, and called the community response overwhelming.

These are people who dont have a lot of money, but theyre making donations because they believe in the work Art City does, Ruth said.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/10/2017 (1848 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A man and a woman were listed in critical condition in hospital, while another man is stable after a house fire Tuesday in the West End.

Firefighters were dispatched at 5:30 a.m. to the report of a fire inside a home on the 500 block of Simcoe Street at the address and evacuated everyone in the house, and in a neighbouring home.

The fire, however, spread to the neighbouring house before authorities could get the blaze under control.

BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Fire crews and police responsded to a blaze on the 500 block of Simcoe Street Tuesday morning.

In addition to the three individuals sent to hospital, another two were assessed at the scene but declined medical treatment and a pet cat died in the fire.

Police and fire officials had no estimate for property damages to the two addresses.

The fire is under investigation. The cause is not yet known and authorities have not ruled out the possibility of arson.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/10/2017 (1848 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The trial of a Winnipeg man accused of sending letter bombs that severely injured a lawyer who lost her hand will begin today.

Guido Amsel, 51, faces several counts of attempted murder after letter bombs were sent to his ex-wife and two Winnipeg law firms in July 2015. One of the bombs seriously injured lawyer Maria Mitousis, who had represented Amsels ex-wife in a divorce proceeding.

He is also charged in relation to an explosion at his ex-wifes home in 2013.

Winnipeg Police Service / HANDOUT Guido Amsel

Amsels provincial court trial is scheduled to wrap up by Dec. 15, with breaks in between. Amsel has pleaded not guilty to all charges. He will be tried by a judge alone.

Amsel, who was 49 at the time, was arrested more than two years ago after investigators identified him as a suspect in the mailing of three explosive packages  meant for Amsels ex-wife, his ex-wifes lawyer (Mitousis) and his own lawyer, police said at the time.

Mitousis lost her right hand in the blast and had to undergo extensive surgery after a package she opened inside her River Avenue law office exploded July 3, 2015.

Mitousis was in her office with several co-workers nearby when she handled a package addressed to her that contained a bomb reportedly hidden inside a recording device.

Another package, allegedly meant for Amsels ex-wife, was delivered to a Winnipeg auto shop on Washington Avenue and later was detonated by police. A third explosive package, also safely detonated by police, was delivered to Amsels former lawyers office on Stradbrook Avenue.

The series of explosive packages mailed through Canada Post prompted police to encourage the public to be wary of suspicious mail and led to further investigation that eventually resulted in additional charges against Amsel, who has no criminal record.

Court documents reveal Amsel and his ex-wife, Iris, were involved in a nasty, decade-long court battle that began in 2004. The couple had married in Germany in 1988 but stopped living together in 2003. They were parents of a son, Kyle, born in 1995.

There has been a permanent breakdown of our marriage, Guido wrote in his affidavit. He cited unhappy differences between the couple.

Amsel and Iris drafted a separation agreement in which she would retain primary custody, he would pay $500 in monthly child support, and they would divide all their property and assets equally, including the Eurotech Autobody shop they were running together.

In 2010, Amsel had rejected Iriss bid to travel to Germany that summer with their now teenaged son. He called his estranged wife and her parents criminals and expressed concerns they might keep Kyle overseas using stolen money.

That prompted son Kyle to file his own affidavit, criticizing his father for preventing the trip.

I do not believe the accusations, Kyle wrote. My mother tries to keep me out of what is happening between her and my father unfortunately, I am old enough to understand it.

Amsel later accused his ex-wife of stealing more than $3 million from the business they once ran together through erroneous and unexplained transactions. He also accused her of flushing his wedding ring down the toilet and interfering in his new romantic relationship by calling him and pretending to be the boyfriend of his current partner.

Iris responded by calling Amsel unstable, volatile and unpredictable and his allegations were scandalous, irrelevant and inflammatory.

In 2013, Iris filed for additional child support on behalf of Kyle, who was set to begin college in Alberta. She said more help was needed with expenses totalling more than $20,000.

Amsel refused and suggested he shouldnt have to pay because Kyle may not be his son. He requested DNA testing in an exchange of letters with Iriss lawyer  Maria Mitousis.

I have to question the fatherhood of Kyle. I would like to take an example (swab out of his mouth) so I can DNA test him and me to give me peace of mind, Amsel wrote in one letter.

Mitousis rejected the bid.

Ms. Amsel has difficulty accepting that you are now questioning Kyles paternity, she wrote. There is absolutely no basis for this position. My client will not agree to your requesting DNA testing.

The file ended late in 2014 when both parties agree to a revised separation agreement. Amsel was ordered to pay enhanced child support of $583 monthly after financial records showed he was making $60,000 per year, while Iris was only bringing in about $7,000 annually.

The case last appeared on the docket June 22  one week before Amsel allegedly mailed the bombs.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 23/10/2017 (1849 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Uber Canada is ready to go  drivers, cars, apps  the moment Manitoba and the City of Winnipeg make it official.

How many drivers therell be in Winnipeg, how often their cars will be available, what theyll charge and how theyll be regulated  thats all still unclear.

Well be ready when and if if the province and city are ready, were ready, Uber Canada public policy manager Chris Schafer said, a lonely voice Monday night speaking at a legislature committee meeting in support of ride-sharing services becoming legal in Manitoba.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Dozens of taxi drivers gathered at the hearing for the Local Vehicles for Hire Act in protest of the legislation that could open the door for Uber in Winnipeg.

Lonely, except for the Conservative MLAs attending the hearing on Bill 30, the Local Vehicles for Hire Act. The Tories are expected to use their overwhelming majority to pass the bill.

The bill is a violation of property rights that will destroy the livelihoods and lifetime investments of Winnipegs taxi drivers and owners, said Tralochan Gill, speaking for Unicity Taxi.

Cabbie after cabbie after cabbie echoed Gill, imploring the committee not to leave them vulnerable and jeopardize the life savings that an overwhelmingly-immigrant industry has invested in licences and taxis they drive 12 hours a day.

We are your neighbours, your families, your friends, Gill said. People in the taxi industry have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in their licences.

Our drivers have to go through a rigourous training program. Uber cherrypicks and does not serve all the areas of the city, while ignoring the disabled, said Gill.

Uber should not compensate taxi industry: Schafer

The committee hearings had 162 people scheduled to speak Monday night, almost all of them taxi drivers and owners.

Bill 30 will disband the Manitoba Taxicab Board, and give municipalities the authority to regulate taxi and limousine services and allow ride-sharing services, such as Uber and Lyft.

Cabbies packing the committee hearing and spilling out into the corridor were stone-cold silent as Schafer spoke and stared straight ahead as he left.

Schafer was vague about how many prospective drivers Uber has heard from in Winnipeg.

There will be enough and theyll be ready the first day Uber is legal, said Schafer, pointing out Winnipeg and Vancouver are the only large to mid-size Canadian cities without ride-sharing services.

Most Uber drivers work five to 10 hours a week, making extra cash in their own vehicles, Schafer said.

New Democrat MLA Jim Maloway pressed Schafer to agree taxi drivers and owners should be compensated, but he wouldnt budge.

No way should new businesses compensate existing ones, said Schafer, who asked how Winnipeg could expect to attract Amazon and similar companies if they were expected to compensate their local competition.

Organized labour against ride-sharing

Meanwhile, organized labour wants no part of Uber.

We oppose this governments decision to offload costs onto municipalities while failing to protect the safety of both passengers and drivers, said Manitoba Federation of Labour president Kevin Rebeck.

Concerns have been raised about Ubers background checks for drivers, said Rebeck, arguing women, and Indigenous women in particular, already fear for their safety and treatment while in taxis.

Rules should be strengthened, not weakened, he said. These rules are intended to keep drivers and passengers safe, and should be extended to the ride-sharing services.

Allowing companies such as Uber into the market further serves to encourage price-gouging services based on deregulation, and low-income jobs, he said.

Speaking for the Independent Living Resource Centre, Allen Mankewich pointed out taxis which can carry disabled passengers get a break on their costs from the Manitoba Taxicab Board, and cant charge a higher rate than other cabs.

Provincial regulators have a unique opportunity for equitable transportation options. There shouldnt be additional costs placed on riders who have disabilities, he said.

My dad will lose his job

We will remember the way you treat us at next election, cabbie Bhupinderted Mangat warned the politicians Monday. You cannot become a taxi driver overnight. Many of us have invested our life savings in this industry.

Canada gave cabbies and their families a chance to make a living, added Malkeet Makkar. We are working very hard here.

Through a translator, Makkar told the MLAs: They sold everything back home to build a life here. Bill 30 screws these people.

Jaswant Singh said taxi owners follow many rules. Government is not doing anything for us. Now government brings this bill, it is totally unfair.

He told MLA New Democrat Ted Marcelino that he knows many drivers who sold everything they had in the Punjab to buy cabs and licences here, so they can work 12-hour days six days a week.

The only female presenter in the first three hours, Grade 10 University of Winnipeg student Anandjot Dhillon told the hearing: If Uber comes to Winnipeg, my dad will lose his job and be unable to pay my school fees.

Indigenous and Northern Relations Minister Eileen Clarke cautioned Dhillon not to misunderstand the purpose of the legislation. Bill 30 is not a bill about Uber, she said.

Civil engineering student Gohar Aftab told the MLAs: Im working 360 hours a month and Im a fulltime student too. All these people are Punjabi people, and we are hardworking.

Tory backbencher Wayne Ewasko urged the cabbies to recognize that the NDPs purpose in fighting Bill 30 is to somehow get the taxi industry unionized.

The committee plans to sit again Tuesday at 6 p.m. and sit no later than midnight. If it is necessary to hear all 162 presenters  including giving a second chance to the few who didnt show up when their names were called Monday  the committee will sit at 6 p.m. Thursday and possibly even Friday at 10 a.m.

Meanwhile, Manitoba Public Insurance recently told a legislature committee it would have premiums and rates set for ride-sharing vehicles by the end of February.

Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman has said civic officials are preparing a bylaw to regulate the taxi industry, including ride-sharing services, and he wants the province to pass the law to make it possible.

Winnipeggers are telling me they want (taxi) options, they want ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft in our city, Bowman said. I want to let all Winnipeggers know I certainly share those views, that I hear you and that Im with you.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 24/10/2017 (1848 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two big cities fell within 24 hours of each other recently. The fall of Raqqa in Syria, once the capital of all the territory ruled by IS, came after a five-month siege and was no surprise at all. The fall of the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk in Iraq took less than a day and came as a complete surprise.

Possession of Kirkuk was critical for the project of Kurdish independence, because it was the source of most of the oil that would have made an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq economically viable.

The Kurds of Iraq came tantalizingly close to realizing their dream of independence. Since the first Gulf War of 1990, five Kurdish-majority provinces in northern Iraq have been ruled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), which had American support because it opposed Saddam Husseins tyrannical regime. That American support continued, even after the U.S. invasion that finally overthrew Saddam in 2003.

Khalid Mohammed / The Associated Press Iraqi federal troops and Kurdish forces exchange fire at their shared checkpoint on Friday in Alton Kupri, on the outskirts of Irbil, Iraq.

The new government the U.S. created in Baghdad had no control over the KRG, and the would-be Kurdish state almost doubled its territory by taking over the other provinces with Kurdish majorities, including oil-rich Kirkuk, after the Iraqi army fled in panic before a surprise IS offensive in 2014. One month ago, the Kurdish government even held a referendum on independence in both its old and its new territories.

It has been clear for some time that the KRGs Peshmerga fighters would be no match for a rebuilt and combat-tested Iraqi army, which had already recovered all the other territory it lost to IS three years ago. Yet the KRGs president, Masoud Barzani, still went ahead with his referendum on Sept. 25, and 93 per cent of the voters said yes to independence.

But then Iran, which is worried about the loyalty of its own large Kurdish minority just across the border from Iraqi Kurdistan, decided it was time to take the Kurds down a peg or three. As the greatest Shia power, Iran effectively controls a lot of the sectarian militias that make up the new Iraqi army, and the Baghdad government was happy to act as its proxy.

Barzani probably assumed that American support would shield him from Iraqi retaliation when he called the referendum, but it didnt.

When Baghdad sent its troops in on Oct. 15, the Trump administration merely muttered some weasel words about not liking to see friends fight, and by the morning of Oct. 18, the area controlled by the KRG had shrunk by almost half.

Only months ago, the Iraqi Kurds were fighting alongside the Iraqi army in the struggle to free Mosul from IS control, and the Syrian Kurds have been the main American ally in the fight to destroy IS in Syria. But once IS was defeated, those alliances were bound to end: betraying the Kurds is an old Middle Eastern tradition. The only surprise is how fast it has happened, and how comprehensively the Kurds have lost.

There are about 30 million Kurds, but they live on territory that belongs to four of the most powerful states in the Middle East: Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. They have been seeking an independent Kurdish state for a century now, but all the countries that stand to lose large amounts of territory if it ever actually happened are profoundly opposed to that outcome.

Moreover, the Kurds themselves have never really been united, even within the borders of the KRG. In practice, control of the territory has always been split between factions centred on the Barzani or the Talabani clans. Each faction has its own militia, and they even fought a civil war that killed thousands in the mid-1990s.

People talk about the Peshmerga as if it were a Kurdish national army, but it is actually a loose association of separate militias that answer to different commanders. In the past three years they co-operated in the war against IS, but they split over the question of Barzanis referendum, which the Talabani faction thought was too dangerous. That turned out to be right.

There was no joint defence of Kirkuk when the Iraqi army finally moved. Indeed, there was hardly any defence at all; first the Talabani force pulled out, and then Barzanis troops had no option but to follow. The Kurdish dream of independence is at an end, and the Kurds will be lucky if they manage to keep even the autonomy they have enjoyed in Iraq since 1991.

Indeed, they will be lucky if can avoid another civil war over who is to blame for the catastrophe (from the Kurdish point of view) of the past few days.

President Barzani recently gave a speech that said, presumably about the Talabani faction, They want to drag us into a civil war, but we will in no way be doing this.

But a lot of Kurds blame him and his referendum for provoking the disaster, and they will be looking for somebody to punish.

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the countrys main domestic spy agency, used its annual report, released last Wednesday, to further fuel a hysterical media campaign alleging widespread Chinese interference in Australian politics.

ASIOs public reports are always highly political documents. Their purpose is not to disclose the agencys activities, but to promote the anti-democratic agenda of successive governments, including ramping up the powers of ASIO and the entire military-intelligence apparatus.

For the past 16 years, ASIOs reports have centred on declarations that Australia is threatened by Islamist terrorism. Such claims have been used to justify Australias role in predatory US-led wars in the Middle East, and sweeping inroads into civil and political rights.

This years report, while maintaining the war on terror rhetoric, includes vague and unsubstantiated assertions that foreign powers are conducting a wide-ranging campaign of espionage and covert influence operations. It declares that the the scale of the threat to Australia and its interests is unprecedented.

ASIO did not name any foreign powers. But the media outlets that function as little more than adjuncts of the intelligence agencies and the political establishment, filled in the gap.

An article in the Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper was headlined ASIO battling spy threat from China and Russia. The state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) declared that unnamed government officials  believe China is becoming more aggressive with its activities against Australia.

As in previous exposures of supposed Chinese espionage and political interference, the articles provided no evidence or detail for their sweeping assertions. That is because they are part of what can be described only as a long-running exercise in state-propaganda.

The purpose of the repeated anti-China campaigns by the ABC, Fairfax and Murdoch-owned publications has been to legitimise Australias central role in US plans for war in the Asia-Pacific, including against North Korea, and, above all, China.

This is in line with Australias integration into Washingtons pivot to Asia, a vast military build-up in the region, announced by US President Barack Obama in 2011 from the floor of the Australian parliament. Since then, Labor and Liberal-National governments have expanded US basing arrangements and deepened the collaboration between the Australian and American militaries.

ASIOs report coincided with Australian involvement in US provocations against North Korea, including the deployment of two Australian frigates to waters near the Korean peninsula, ready to participate in any US-launched attack.

Because these policies are deeply unpopular, they cannot be discussed openly. To fill the breach, and attempt to create a nationalist and pro-war atmosphere, lies and fabrications are invented out of whole cloth, presenting China as an aggressive power and an imminent danger to Australia.

In its report, ASIO asserts, without evidence: Foreign intelligence services sought access to privileged and/or classified information on Australias alliances and partnerships. It warns of foreign powers clandestinely seeking to shape the opinions of members of the Australian public, media organisations and government officials.

ASIO claims that by seeking to unduly influence public perceptions of issues, these activities represent a threat to our sovereignty, the integrity of our national institutions and the exercise of our citizens rights.

This is in line with several joint investigations, earlier this year, by the ABC and Fairfax, conducted in close collaboration with ASIO. The investigations exposed that a handful of Chinese-born businessmen made donations to the Labor, Liberal and National parties.

These were supposedly part of a coordinated campaign by the Chinese Communist Party to interfere in Australian politics, even though the businessmen named included long-time Australian citizens and avowed opponents of the Chinese government.

University research funded by Chinese companies has been targeted also in the witch-hunt. Fairfax publications and the Guardian recently warned that research into areas such as marine technologies and solar power may, in the future, have military implications.

The ASIO report obliquely concedes that the activities are benign and mundane. It cynically states, activities that may appear relatively harmless today can have significant future consequences.

ASIOs rhetoric mirrors the McCarthyite campaign being waged by the US intelligence agencies, in league with the Democratic Party and the corporate press, against supposed Russian interference in American politics.

In addition to pressing for the Trump administration to escalate the confrontation initiated by the Obama administration against Russia, it seeks to present growing opposition to militarism, social inequality and poverty among ordinary people as the result of a Kremlin plot.

ASIOs report foreshadows a similar crackdown on democratic rights, in the name of combatting an external enemy. It declares that the agency is no longer meeting key performance indicators and demands more resources for personnel security assessments and other measures to counter foreign influence.

In June, the spy agency demanded the extension of sweeping powers, associated with draconian anti-terror laws, to foreign interference investigations. These powers include secret detention and questioning for seven days without charge.

The Liberal-National government this month also issued draft legislation that would give relevant ministers sweeping last resort powers to impose binding directives on owners of critical infrastructure, including barring them from selling assets to foreign companies. The new laws are being advanced on the pretext of combatting foreign espionage, sabotage and coercion.

Last month, the Fairfax-owned Sydney Morning Herald reported that the government plans new legislation to target Chinese sub-espionage, including the creation of a foreign agent registry.

Among those identified by Fairfax as potential targets was a lobby group of Chinese-Australians contesting local elections. Chinese associations previously have been denounced for opposing aggressive US military activities against China in the South China Sea.

Chinese international students, who number an estimated 140,000, have been branded in media reports as a potential fifth column of the Chinese government.

ASIOs report followed by an unprecedented address earlier this month by Frances Adams, the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs, whose remarks were later reinforced by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.

Speaking at the University of Adelaides Confucius Centre, a body funded by the Chinese government, Adams warned international students that the silencing of anyone in our societyfrom students to lecturers to politiciansis an affront to our values.

Adamson was apparently referencing sketchy reports that inflated minor disagreements between Chinese students and lecturers, allegedly over how Chinese foreign policy was presented in classes.

Adamson told the students that when they disagreed with something, they should not blindly condemn, but respectfully engage. The thinly veiled message was that Chinese students are welcome to study and pay their exorbitant fees, but should think twice before disagreeing with the Australian government or its plans for war against China.

A week later, on October 15, reports appeared in the ABC and Fairfax, declaring that Australia was at the centre of a push by the Five Eyes spying network, headed by the US, to counter Chinas pervasive and subversive influence, especially at universities.

The reports were based on statements by an unnamed senior foreign diplomatic figure, who menacingly told the ABC: Its time for the federal government to insist the Chinese comply with Australias values and interests.

The campaign is a warning to students, young people and the entire working class. It presages more direct forms of political repression, as opposition mounts to the criminal and reckless US and Australian preparations for war against North Korea and China.
Ahead of the first sitting of the newly elected parliament (Bundestag) today, more than 10,000 people demonstrated on Sunday in Berlin against the political shift to the right. More than 90 deputies for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) will be members of the new Bundestag. For the first time since the downfall of Hitler, open Nazis, racists and xenophobes will enter parliament.

The participants at Sundays protest included many families and young people. They came with homemade placards and banners. Many expressed their dissatisfaction with current political developments to the WSWS.

Tobias thought it was intolerable that AfD members would be entering the Bundestag. With our history, you cant sit at home when such people are back in parliament again, he said. He saw the cause for the far rights rise in deteriorating social conditions. Fears of social decline have been created with the casualisation of the labour market and creation of precarious working conditions, he added, which are then exploited by the right-wingers with their slogans.

Ann-Christin, 32, works at the League for the Protection of the Environment and Nature. When she saw the election result, she felt compelled to think of her grandmother and the stories from the Second World War. It reminded me of voices which said: you must ensure that something like that never happens again, she said.

Ann-Christin saw it as a big problem that the AfDs positions will now be treated as mainstream with their entry into the Bundestag. All of a sudden it will once again be totally normal for people to have these opinions, she added. This horrifies her. She does not believe that many people agree with the AfD, but considers most of their support to be protest voters.

The Demo against Racism and Hate in the Bundestag was organised by the activist groups Avaaz, Campact and Breaking the Ice, and publicised mainly over Facebook. The main organiser was the teaching student and founder of the group Intercultural Peace, Ali Can, who came to Germany several years ago as a refugee.

None of these forces had a perspective to offer for the struggle against the right. Although the official call for the demonstration warned against racism, xenophobia and historical revisionism in parliament, it completely omitted mention of the political and social roots of the AfDs rise. It concluded by appealing to all, including trade unions and politicians of all parties, to jointly demonstrate for a cosmopolitan and diverse Germany.

Among the official supporters of the demonstration were organisations which are directly responsible for the rise of the far right in Germany and throughout Europe. The German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB) has supported the federal governments brutal austerity policies for years and promotes nationalism. The same applies to the EU parliamentary group DiEM25, which includes politicians from Greeces Syriza, Spains Podemos and the British Labour Party.

Representatives of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) and International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) explained at the demonstration that the struggle against the AfD required a political reckoning with all of the established parties and a socialist perspective. Under conditions of the deepest capitalist crisis since the 1930s, the ruling class has deliberately built up neo-fascist forces so as to enforce their policies of militarism, the strengthening of the domestic state apparatus and social cutbacks, their joint statement declared.

The established parties opinion of the right-wing extremists is shown by their attitude to Humboldt University Professor Jorg Baberowski. Even though he downplays the crimes of the Nazis (Hitler was not vicious), he is not only a welcome guest within the CDU-aligned Konrad Adenauer Foundation, but also at panel discussions organised in the past by the Greens and Left Party. The Social Democratic president of Humboldt University, Sabine Kunst, threatened Baberowskis critics with criminal prosecution, even though a court ruled that he can be fairly described as a right-wing extremist.

A speech by an eyewitness and Holocaust survivor, Peter Neuhof, showed just how alive the experiences are that Germanys ruling elite is trying to revise. With words of warning, the 92-year-old, whose father, a Jewish communist, was murdered in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, recalled the 1930s. At that time, the Nazi party was an Alternative for Germany for many, he said. He referred to Wilhelm IIs statement, The German spirit shall revive the world, and compared it with the man from Braunauthat is Hitler. The result of such politics is well known, he said.

And now Germany for the Germans? Where will this politics lead? Neuhof asked and quoted a survivor from Buchenwald concentration camp, Never again war! Never again fascism! However, he continued, German troops are once again stationed on many fronts, led by a minister who calls herself defence minister. No wonder that a party with the old stench of fascism could establish itself. That is precisely the AfD, for which, to cite Brecht, the womb is still fertile.

Neuhof appealed to his audience not to allow the history of the 1930s to repeat itself. The AfD is a gathering place for right-wing viewpoints, and remaining silent or looking the other way offers no solution, he said. Refugees whose lives are not safe in their own countries are coming here today. They are coming because they dont want to live in poverty anymoreconditions for which our society is jointly responsible, for war and poverty. This was followed by long and sustained applause.
On Saturday, three weeks after the crackdown on the October 1 Catalan independence referendum, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy invoked Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution to suspend Catalan autonomy.

The action drew 450,000 people to a protest demonstration in Barcelona later in the daya sign that the anti-democratic measures to be imposed under Article 155 will provoke a violent confrontation with the Catalan population.

The unprecedented measures allow the Spanish Popular Party (PP) government to sack Catalan Premier Carles Puigdemont and his ministers, assume the right to call regional elections, and take control of Catalonias economic institutions, the regional Mossos dEsquadra police force and Catalan public media. Plans have been finalised to send in Civil Guards and troops to establish a de facto police-military occupation.

This Friday, Rajoys measures will be put to the Spanish Senate, where the PP has an absolute majority, for approval. They have the support of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and Citizens Party, as well as the European Union and the Trump administration.

In the face of the PP onslaught, the Catalan regional bourgeoisie is in turmoil. In an attempt to prevent the response to Rajoy erupting outside of official channels, it has pursued a policy of appealing to the PP and PSOE for dialogue and to the Spanish judiciary and the EU to intervene. On Monday, the European Commission reiterated that its attitude to Catalonia had not changed. The position is well known, a Commission spokesman declared. Weve always said we respect the constitutional and legal arrangement of Spain.

Also on Monday, Catalonias parliament indicated that it will hold a full session on Thursday morning to lay out its response to Madrid. Catalan Republican Left (ERC) spokesman Sergi Sabria accused the PP, PSOE and Citizens of squandering the opportunity for dialogue afforded by Puigdemonts suspension of a declaration of independence last week. He said the best answer to Article 155 and the coup detat is to declare independence.

The petty-bourgeois secessionist Candidatures of Popular Unity (CUP) party is demanding that independence be declared immediately, threatening massive civil disobedience otherwise.

Catalonias minister of foreign affairs, Raul Romeva, told the BBC that Catalan institutions would respond with defiance. He said, referring to the regions population: It is not a personal decision.  It is a 7 million-person decision.

He continued: I have no doubt that all civil servants in Catalonia will keep following the instructions provided by the elected and legitimate institutions that we have right now in place.

Albert Donaire, a spokesman for a section of the regional police force called the  Mossos for Independence, urged the regional government to declare a Catalan republic before Article 155 takes effect and the Spanish Interior Ministry takes control of the Mossos. The Mossos will remain loyal to the [Catalan] parliament and government, Donaire said.

A student strike has been called for October 26 by the Universities for the Republic group to demand the immediate release of imprisoned Catalan activists Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart.

The invocation of Article 155 has caused a crisis in the PSOEs Catalan section, the Socialists Party of Catalonia (PSC). In its heyday in the 1990s, the PSC held 52 of the 135 seats in the Catalan parliament and polled around 38 percent. In the last election in 2015, however, the number of PSC deputies slumped to 16 on 13 percent of the vote, largely due to anger over austerity measures it imposed as part of a regional coalition government.

The PSC is divided over the PSOEs support for Article 155. PSC leader Miguel Iceta has rejected calls from within the party to oppose frontally the imposition of article 155. Instead, he met with Puigdemont, pressuring him to call new elections and claiming this would halt the dissolution of the government and the holding of forced elections. We turn to President Puigdemont with a double option: to call elections based on the current legality or to use the process of a hearing in the Senate to offer a dialogue. This is our position, Iceta explained.

However, the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) is calling for more municipalities to break their coalition arrangements with the PSC. ERC deputy Gabriel Rufian said, You cannot govern with those who participate in the savagery of the state. We have to end the municipal pacts with PSC/PSOE.

On Sunday, a communique signed by seven current and former leaders of the PSC rejected the abusive and absolute application of Article 155, saying that with the Spanish PSOEs support for the PPs hardline policy, the PSC can already bid farewell to building an alternative majority government for many years.

Joan Majo, PSC co-founder and ex-industry minister under PSOE Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez (1982-1986), resigned, saying that without aligning himself with the Catalan independence movement, he has increasingly disagreed with many of the policies of the PSC regarding the relationship between Catalonia and the State.

PSC support for Article 155 has also caused problems for Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, who relies on the PSC to keep her Barcelona en Comu coalition in power. Seeking to deflect criticism over her close relations with the PSC, Colau said she was worried by the drift of PSOE leader Pedro Sanchez. The deputy mayor, Jaume Asens, promised that BComu will undertake to analyse the implications of the application of Article 155.

The application of article 155 has also been threatened in the Basque country. The former minister of health and regional PP party president, Alfonso Alonso, has warned that the region has all the ingredients to end up in the same situation as Catalonia. He declared that it was his partys responsibility to prevent these ingredients from becoming mixed.

Alonso was speaking during celebrations to mark 40 years of democracy in Spain and the sixth anniversary of the moment when the Basque terrorist organisation ETA recognised its defeat and abandoned its weapons.

During his speech, Alonso declared that, as in Catalonia, so also in the Basque country nationalism is in power, referring to the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV). There are radical forces that still justify violent positions, he continued, alluding to EH Bildu (a reincarnation of the ETA political wing Batasuna. He added that the Podemos populists are the third force, and the platform Gure Esku Dago is an incipient Basque National Assembly.

The general coordinator of EH Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, declared that the authoritarian drift of the state in relation to Catalonia will certainly reach the Basque Country. He called for an urgent political responsibility exercise to defend national and democratic unity among the parties opposed to the application of Article 155.
A warning by the governor of the Peoples Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, that the countrys financial system faces a possible Minsky moment has again raised concerns over the level of the countrys debt.

Zhou, who is expected to retire soon from his position as head of the central bank, made his remarks at a sideline meeting during the Chinese Communist Party congress last week.

The term Minsky moment refers to a situation described by the US economist Hyman Minsky in which growth in the economy hides potential financial risks that suddenly reveal themselves and lead to a crisis. It was widely used during the 2008 global financial crisis.

Zhou clearly employed the term to ensure his comments would have maximum impact. Zhou, who has said he will retire soon, has been speaking increasingly candidly about the problems confronting the Chinese economy.

Zhou said asset speculation and property bubbles could pose a systemic financial risk that would be made worse by wealth management products and off-the-books lending. Corporate debt had reached disturbingly high levels and local governments were using tricks to evade curbs on their credit.

If there is too much pro-cyclical stimulus in an economy, fluctuations will be hugely amplified, Zhou stated. Too much exuberance when things are going well causes tensions to build up. That could lead to a sharp correction, and eventually to a so-called Minsky moment. Thats what we really must guard against.

Zhous remarks are particularly significant. In general commentary on the state of the Chinese economy, the prospect of a full-blown crisis is often ruled out because the banks are under government control. This control has been undermined, however, by free market measures introduced by the regime as it seeks to integrate the Chinese economy and financial system more deeply into the global economy.

Zhou himself has been an advocate for greater liberalisation of the Chinese financial system, including the relaxation of government controls on capital movements and increased access for foreign banks, but has faced opposition within government circles.

Zhou was the main force behind the push to have the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recognise the renminbi as an international currency last year. Without the freedom of movement of capital in and out of the financial system, however, it does not have the status of other reserve currencies.

Free capital movement is a two-edged sword. On the one hand it is seen as applying pressure to domestic financial institutions, forcing them to deal with bad debt on their balance sheets. On the other, it runs the risk of creating the conditions for a major outflow of capital, as was seen in the Asian financial crisis of 20 years ago, an occurrence which would have a major impact on the Chinese economy.

Zhous warnings came as the growth rate for the third quarter was reported to be 6.8 percent on an annual basis, well above the governments target of around 6.5 percent. But there are concerns that this higher growth rate has been achieved largely as a result of stimulus measures, relying on the expansion of credit, particularly in the property market, which is creating risks for the future.

Eswar Prasad, economics professor at Cornell University and former head of the China department at the IMF, said the latest growth data painted a reassuring picture of an economy that on the surface, is firing well on all cylinders. But beneath the surface, potential financial market stresses continue to build up but remain at bay for now.

If growth continues at the current level, China will experience its first acceleration in growth since 2010. At that time, the economy expanded rapidly due to stimulus measuresincreased government spending and creditadopted in response to the global financial crisis, which resulted in the loss of around 23 million jobs.

In his remarks last week, Zhou said corporate debt was very high and household debt, while still low, was rising rapidly. While there were no plans to reduce household debt, its quality would need to be monitored as it grew.

The IMF has issued several warnings about the high level of Chinese corporate debt, describing it as dangerous. Last August, it expected Chinas total non-financial debt to rise to almost 300 percent of gross domestic production by 2022, up from 242 percent last year.

Last month, the S&P global ratings agency cut Chinas sovereign credit rating, following a similar decision by Moodys in May. The Chinese finance ministry claimed the S&P downgrade was the wrong decision.

The concerns over the financial system centre on the property market, which is assuming ever-greater significance for the Chinese economy and the banking system. According to official data, 38 percent of all bank loans in the year to August were for home mortgages, while local government bought 18 percent of all residential floor space.

Last August, a senior government legislator warned of the effects of the property boom.

Yin Zhongqing, deputy director of the National Peoples Congress finance and economics committee, said in a speech: The real estate industrys excessive prosperity has not only kidnapped local governments but also kidnapped financial institutionsrestraining and even harming the development of the real economy, inflating asset bubbles and accumulating debt risk. The biggest problem currently facing the country is how to reduce reliance on real estate.

Zhous remarks underscore this warning. Financial Times market columnist John Authers described them as a startling moment of clarity, likening them to shouting fire in a crowded theatre. He said the term Minsky moment should never be used by a central banker.

Authers pointed to the timing of Zhous comments to coincide with the CCP congress. The installation of President Xi Jinping and his supporters for another five years could be the optimum time to take uncomfortable measures that could allow China to avoid a debt unravelling to match the Lehman crisis. The invocation of Minsky was the earliest possible point to send the signal, and a sign of urgency.
Democratic Party primary campaigns are currently underway for the November 2018 Illinois gubernatorial elections. The candidates are preparing for elections to be held next March that will select the opponent of Republican Bruce Rauner, the right-wing billionaire current governor who has declared his intention to seek another term in office.

The leading Democratic Party candidate is Jay Pritzker (net worth $3.4 billion), heir to the Hyatt fortune, tech industry investor and political operative. The various brothers and sisters, fathers and children in the Pritzker family include among them about half of Illinois resident billionaires. They are all close to the Democratic Party. Jay Pritzker chaired Hillary Clintons 2008 presidential primary campaign. His sister, Penny (net worth $2.6 billion), served as commerce secretary under Obama.

Next in line for the nomination is multi-millionaire Chris Kennedy, of the Kennedy political family. Kennedy, lately the chairman of the board of trustees for the scandal-ridden University of Illinois system, has so far focused his campaign on promising a return to law and order by combating corruption and gang violence.

As these various billionaires and millionaires prepared to battle each other over who will escalate the attack on the working class, a revealing episode occurred several weeks ago in relation to one of the candidates currently considered to be a long-shot for the Democratic nomination, Daniel Biss, the Illinois state senator representing the affluent North Shore region.

Biss, a thoroughly establishment Democratic politician, announced on August 31 that he had selected a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, Chicago alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, to be his running mate as lieutenant governor.

Biss entered the Illinois governors race by promoting a proposal to reduce taxes on low- and middle-income earners and increase taxes on the rich, and by declaring his support for the Medicare for All proposal associated with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

These proposals were thoroughly cynical, as Biss, along with the Democratic Party as a whole, is complicit in and supports an escalation of the attack on health care and other social programs. Biss previously supported $1.6 billion in cuts to Medicaid, slashing public pensions, expanding charter school funding, and providing subsidies to energy giant Exelon.

In a campaign dominated by Pritzker and Kennedy, however, Biss figured he could fill a political vacuum by posturing as left. The selection of Ramirez-Rosa was made with similar calculations in mind, and the democratic socialist was eager to oblige. Theres something much more powerful than money and political machines, Ramirez-Rosa declared when the announcement was made, and thats organized people.

Ramirez-Rosa told Hard Lens, a local internet news program, If we come together as a movement of working people, were gonna transform this state for the betterment of everyone and Daniel Biss is the governor to deliver that. The various pseudo-left organizations cheered. Socialism was on the march, in the form of a gubernatorial campaign headed by a long-time Democratic Party operative!

As it turned out, the political marriage was short-lived. Six days after the initial announcement, Biss dumped Ramirez-Rosa after a powerful backer, Democratic US Representative for Illinois Bradley Schneider, pulled his support for the campaign in a public Facebook post, citing Ramirez-Rosas critical attitude towards Israel.

Evidently, among the list of things more powerful than money and political machines did not number the candidacy of Ramirez-Rosa. This is not because Ramirez-Rosa posed any more of a threat to the interests of the ruling class than Biss himself. However, his association with the nationalist Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement directed against Israel was considered unacceptable by at least some of the Democratic Party establishment in Illinois.

Attempting to repair his progressive image, Biss replaced Rosa within a couple of days with Illinois state representative and former social worker Litesa Wallace, an African-American woman.

The six-day rise and fall of Ramirez-Rosa says more about the politics of the DSAand the various organizations that, like the DSA, operate within the orbit of the Democratic Partythan anything else. Representing privileged sections of the upper-middle class, their role is to provide political cover for the Democratic Party. The petty-bourgeois operatives that head these groups are like so many munchkin tailors, desperately seeking to prevent the Democratic Party giants trousers from falling off.

Ramirez-Rosa spoke earlier this month to Jacobin magazine, edited by DSA member Bhaskar Sunkara. Attempting to justify his decision to run with Biss, Ramirez-Rosa declared that Biss had assured him that he had made an about-face from his previous positions. I did not join the ticket until he had publicly said that  he regretted putting forward a piece of legislation that would have slashed public employee retirees benefits for the benefit of Wall Street.

Revealing the cynical calculations that actually formed the basis of the campaign, Ramirez-Rosa said, We have a leading candidate on the Democratic side who seems on a path to win the nomination who is a billionaire, JB Pritzker... It was important that in the Democratic primary, we had a ticket that was actually advocating for substantive policies that would address the needs of working people.

Had Biss been elected with Ramirez-Rosa at his side, however, this would not alter the anti-working class character of the policies of the administration. The DSA, however, would have been a direct participant in the operation, with all the perks, financial and otherwise, that would go along with this.

Since his exit from the Biss campaign, Ramirez-Rosa also spoke to Huffington Post on the Biss campaign debacle, declaring his allegiance to the Democratic Party and his aspirations for the next election cycle: My hope is that five years from now, as a Democratic Party, we are more committed to having these constructive dialogues and allowing for these differences [in relation to BDS] to exist.

These developments in Illinois should be seen in the broader political context. There is a deep and growing social discontent among millions of workers and youth in the United States. During the 2016 elections, this found distorted reflection in the support for Sanders, whose political task was to direct opposition back into the Democratic Party and behind its candidate, Hillary Clinton. In this he was assisted by the DSA, the International Socialist Organization, Socialist Alternative and other organizations of the upper-middle class.

The election of Trump has brought to a head a deep-going political crisis in the United States. Whatever their differences with the Trump administration, the Democrats support the assault on the working class and the expansion of militarist violence. They are currently focusing their efforts on whipping up a campaign over Russian interference in US politics aimed at creating the basis for the repression and criminalization of dissent.

The DSA sees its role as providing a buttress for this rotting system. The ill-fated Ramirez-Rosa campaign for Illinois lieutenant governor is not the first, and it will not be the last, attempt to derail and block the emergence of a genuine socialist movement of workers and youth.

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One of US President Donald Trumps former close advisors, Steve Bannon Monday underlined that the five month-old diplomatic crisis shaking the Gulf region was provoked by President Trumps visit to the region in May, adding that the political shake-up in Saudi Arabia is also consequence of Trumps international maiden tour.

Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist, speaking at a conference on Countering Violent Extremism: Qatar, Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood hosted by the Hudson Institute noted that the Gulf crisis is the single most important thing thats going on right now in the world.

Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain plus Egypt on June 5 severed ties with Qatar on grounds that Doha sponsors terrorism. Qatar has denied the charges.

The crisis erupted few days after President met with Arab leaders in Riyadh in a major conference to mark a revival of strong ties between the Arab world and Washington.

I dont think its just by happenstance that two weeks after that summit, you saw the blockade by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Egypt and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia on Qatar, Bannon said.

The former US official noted that President Trump wanted to set records straight with Qatar for its binary stance.

You cant have it both ways. You cant on one side say youre a friend and an ally and on the other side be financing the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas, he said.

The US has blacklisted the Gaza-based Islamist movement as a terrorist group and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood might also fall within that category according to media reports close to US conservative politicians.

Bannon also stressed that Trumps visit triggered crackdown on critical voices and favored Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salmans steady ascendance to the throne after leapfrogging and crushing his uncle, Mohammed bin Nayef in June.

Two weeks ago or three weeks ago there were a thousand clerics that were rounded up or somehow put under house arrest, he said.

President Trump swiftly at the onset of the Gulf crisis took the Saudi side before backtracking to propose Washingtons mediation to solve the crisis.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has toured the region several times to find a common ground but he Sunday in Doha said that the Saudi-led side is not willing to engage in any talks with Qatar.
Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a televised press briefing Monday afternoon on the US military presence in the West African country of Niger. His hour-long appearance came in the midst of a mounting clash between the White House and the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of the four US soldiers killed in Niger on October 4.

Myeshia Johnson appeared early Monday on the ABC program Good Morning America, following nearly a week of public acrimony between the Trump administration and her family and friends, including Democratic Representative Frederica Wilson, over Trumps arrogant and callous phone call October 17, in which he told the widow that her husband knew what he signed up for when he enlisted in the US Special Forces.

In her interview, Johnson refuted the lies told by Trump about his condolence call and confirmed the account given by Wilson in a series of media interviews last week, saying that Wilsons remarks were 100 percent true. She added that Trump appeared not to know her husbands name, stumbling over it even though he said he had the military report on his death in front of him.

Johnson said the condolence call made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice. The widow added that Pentagon officials had told her nothing about the circumstances of her husbands death or why it took 48 hours to recover his body. The bodies of the other three US soldiers killed in action were recovered in the course of the firefight with Islamist militants.

Nor would the Pentagon allow her to view her husbands remains, she said, even after the coffin was turned over to the family for burial. There could be an empty box, she said. Pentagon rules supposedly give the family final say in whether to see the remains.

She concluded the interview by declaring that she had nothing further to say to the president. Johnson is six months pregnant with the couples third child, who will never know her father. Her husband was buried Saturday in Hollywood, Florida, attended by relatives and members of Johnsons military battalion.

Trump compounded the political damage by responding to Myeshia Johnson in a series of tweets that all but called her a liar, claiming that he had spoken the name of her husband during the call, from the beginning, without hesitation, while denying that anything he said was of a demeaning or dismissive character.

Dunfords press conference had the character of a damage-control operation, with the highest-ranking US military officer, a highly political general who was appointed to a two-year term by Barack Obama and reappointed last month by Trump for a second term, intervening to pull the White Houses chestnuts out of the fire.

Dunford was also responding to comments by an array of senators and congressmen who have claimed they knew little of the US deployment in Niger and were surprised to discover, in the wake of the October 4 debacle, that there were 800 US soldiers protecting a US drone base and engaged in training and reconnaissance missions with the Nigerien military. The deployment in Nigerclearly a war zoneis the third largest US active combat mission, after Afghanistan and Iraq, but larger than Syria, at least in the number of troops deployed on the ground.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs noted that US troops have been operating in Niger off and on for two decades, and permanently since 2013, when the Obama administration prevailed on the government in Niamey to permit the establishment of the drone base, from which US Special Forces and intelligence agencies conduct surveillance throughout the Sahara and Sahel regions from a central location.

Dunford gave few details of the October 4 raid that ended with five Nigerien and four American soldiers killed and two more Americans wounded. He was unable to state how many Islamists had been killed, if any, thus confirming indirectly that the US forces and their allies had been forced to leave the battlefield in the hands of their opponents.

The general revealed that roughly equal numbers of fighters were engaged on both sides, with 30 Nigerien and 12 American soldiers confronted by 50 or so Islamists. Given the disparity in weaponry and the US ability to call in airstrikes, the protracted character of the combat and its bloody outcome suggest that the Islamists took the US-Nigerien force by surprise.

Dunford disputed accounts circulating online suggesting that there was an undue delay in the arrival of air support, in the form of French Mirage jets. The US-Nigerien force did not call for air support until an hour after the firefight began, he said. It took half an hour for the Mirage jets to be prepared for takeoff, and another half an hour to reach the battlefield, at which point they did not drop any bombs because they could not find the Islamist fighters.

Dunford added that the ground rules in Niger were that the US troops were to accompany Nigerien forces on missions only where no resistance was expected, let alone full-scale combat, thus confirming that the operation was carried out on the basis of faulty intelligence.

The main purpose of the press conference was not so much to convey new information, as to take a step back from the confrontational posture of Trump and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired four-star general, and from the suggestion by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders that any questioning of the Niger operation or Trumps handling of the condolence calls was inappropriate, i.e., illegitimate.

General Dunford was at pains to declare that the American people had a right to get answers about the Niger operation. I think we owe the families and American people transparency, he said. He conceded that there was a perception that the Department of Defense has not been forthcoming, and repeatedly reassured the press representatives that they were asking fair questions.

At the same time, the top US general provided precious little information, only appealing for patience while the military continues its internal investigations. The Pentagon has not released many of the basic facts nearly three weeks after the battle. That did not stop the press from making a fawning show of prostration before the military chieftain. A number of reporters began their questioning by thanking the general for deigning to appear before them.

Congressional Democrats pressed ahead with criticism of Trumps phone call and the overall conduct of the Niger operation, as always, seizing the opportunity to attack the Trump administration from the right and portray Trump as insensitive to the needs of the troops. Following the lead of Representative Wilson, they also sought to characterize Trumps attitude to Sgt. Johnson and his widow, as well as Kellys criticism of the congresswoman herself, as racist.

This is a cover-up and a political diversion. Trumps callous indifference towards the tragic fate of Sgt. Johnson is a class issue, not a race issue. It expresses the attitude of the financial aristocracy as a whole to the impact of the profit system on working people: whether it is young men and women sent into battle as cannon fodder, or workers maimed and killed on the job, or families whose livelihoods were destroyed by the financial looting that led to the 2008 Wall Street crash.

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The New York Times Monday published a worried editorial titled Americas Forever Wars that began with a fairly accurate and sobering sketch of the ever-expanding operations of the US military on every continent of the globe.

The United States has been at war continuously since the attacks of 9/11 and now has just over 240,000 active-duty and reserve troops in at least 172 countries and territories, the Times notes. While the number of men and women deployed overseas has shrunk considerably over the past 60 years, the militarys reach has not. American forces are actively engaged not only in the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen that have dominated the news, but also in Niger and Somalia, both recently the scene of deadly attacks, as well as Jordan, Thailand and elsewhere.

It adds the extraordinary fact that the Pentagon publicly lists the countries in which 37,813 troops are currently deployed as unknown, apparently referring to special operations units assigned to secret wars being waged behind the backs of the American people.

So far, Americans seem to accept that these missions and the deployments they require will continue indefinitely, the editorial continues. Still, its a very real question whether, in addition to endorsing these commitments, which have cost trillions of dollars and many lives over 16 years, they will embrace new entanglements of the sort President Trump has seemed to portend with his rash threats and questionable decisions on North Korea and Iran.

Heaping the blame for unbridled American militarism on the American people, the Times asserts that the public is quiet because so few families bear so much of this military burden, and partly because America is not involved in anything comparable to the Vietnam War, when huge American casualties produced sustained public protest. It goes on to note that while in Vietnam and previous wars the draft put most families at risk of having a loved one go to war ... now America has all-volunteer armed forces.

The idea that Americans could be inured to war and all its horrors is chilling, the Times editors bemoan.

Who do they think theyre kidding? Does the newspapers editorial page editor James Bennet (a man with the closest ties to the US state, with a brother who is a right-wing Democratic senator from Colorado and a father who was a top State Department official who headed the Agency for International Development (AID), a frequent conduit for CIA operations) think that the Times readership is plagued by collective amnesia?

The newspaper of record has done everything in its power to inure the American public to war and, whenever possible, to conceal from it the real extent of its horrorsat least when the bloodshed is the handiwork of the Pentagon.

The Times editorial board has played a critical role in selling every US war of aggression for the past 25 years. Its most infamous role was played in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when its senior correspondent Judith Miller conspired with the government to promote and embellish upon the lies about weapons of mass destruction, and its ineffable foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman brazenly embraced a war of choice, justifying it in the name of democracy, human rights and oil. Once the Times got the war it sought, it systematically obscured its real human costs, which included the estimated loss of a million Iraqi lives.

The newspaper subsequently played a similar role promoting US regime change interventions in Libya and Syria in the name of human rights, which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands more and turned millions into refugees.

So why the sudden squeamishness?

In the first instance, the editorial appears to be a response to roiling and bitter public debate that has erupted in the wake of the October 4 deaths of four US special forces troops in a firefight in Niger. The episode, revealing that some 1,000 US troops are deployed in the landlocked West African nationwithout the knowledge, much less the approval, of Congresshas been accompanied by shameful attacks of the White House on the widow of one of the slain soldiers. This has been combined with the open assertions of the unquestionable power of the military and the commander-in-chief, casting a bit too much light on both US militarism abroad and the increasing turn toward military dictatorship at home for the taste of the Times editors.

What does the Times propose? The editorial laments the failure of Congress to debate US imperialisms multiple ongoing wars, and to put the war against the Islamic State, which has broad popular support but no congressional authorization, on a firm legal footing.

In other words, the editorial proposes the passage of another Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). Both Trump and his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, have claimed that the AUMFs passed in 2001 in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks and in 2002 in advance of the Iraqi invasion provided them with all the power they need to wage war anywhere on the planet.

The invocation of these decade-and-a-half-old resolutions has been used to override both the US Constitution, which declares that only Congress can declare war, and the 1973 War Powers Act, passed in the midst of the crisis gripping US imperialism over its debacle in Vietnam. The latter placed strict limits and timetables on interventions ordered by US presidents, requiring that they either receive Congressional authorization or be terminated.

Neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party has shown any interests in challenging this arrogation of dictatorial power to the presidency on the issue of war, and no significant section of Congress has shown any inclination to debate the matter. All of them are well aware that, for their paymasters in Americas parasitical financial oligarchy, global military aggression is a critical instrument in its drive to secure profits, markets and resources.

It is true that the invocation of the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs has become increasingly absurd. The Obama administration utilized these measures supposedly authorizing a war against Al Qaeda to justify interventions in Libya and Syria, in which Washington backed Al Qaeda-linked militias to overthrow secular Arab regimes that, like the one in Iraq, had nothing to do with 9/11.

The real concerns of the Times, however, are indicated by its references to the huge American casualties of Vietnam, the question of the draft and the prospect of new wars against North Korea and Iran. In the face of bloody calamities on the horizon, the newspapers editors believe that at least a pseudo-legal fig leaf of congressional authorization is in order.

Its concerns reflect discussions ongoing within the US military itself. The most recent edition of Parameters, the journal of the US Army War College, includes an article by two Army colonels titled Mobilizing for Major War, citing the conviction within the Pentagon senior command that armed conflict with near-peer competitors is virtually guaranteed at some point and more probable than at any time since the Cold War.

It goes on to note: During both World Wars, conscription enabled the US Army to expand greatly to play critical roles in defeating large-scale aggression. For both political and practical reasons, Congress abolished the military draft in 1973, and transitioned to a large-standing all-volunteer force (AVF) ... The all-volunteer force has not yet, however, had to confront a great power. ... The all-volunteer force has never fought a conflict requiring a full mobilization on short- or no-notice. It is, therefore, not safe to assume todays Army can successfully prosecute such a conflict.

In other words, the preparations for a Third World War include plans for the return of the draft and the dragooning of millions of young Americans to serve as cannon fodder in conflicts that will entail unimaginable carnage. Such measures will inevitably entail the acceleration of the drive toward outright dictatorship, on the one hand, and the eruption of mass revolutionary struggles within working class, on the other.
Three recent reports provide new data on the worsening social crisis in America.

According to the annual update of the Society of Actuaries (SOA) mortality improvement scale, released last Friday, life expectancy for 65-year-old men and women declined from 85.8 and 87.8 years to 85.6 and 87.6 years respectively between 2014 and 2015, the most recent years available. The 1.2 percent jump in the mortality rate was the first year-over-year increase since 2005, and the first by more than one percentage point since 1980.

Previous reports noted that life expectancy at birth also declined in the US between 2014 and 2015, the first decline since 1993, at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Someone born in 2015 is expected to live to 78.8, down from 78.9 in 2014.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the decline was due to an increase in eight of the ten leading causes of death in the US, including heart disease, chronic lower respiratory diseases, unintentional injuries, stroke, Alzheimers disease, diabetes, kidney disease and suicide.

Another study by a team of researchers from the University of Michigan found that middle-age workers ten years away from collecting Social Security retirement benefits are in poorer health than prior generations when they were in their 50s. This includes higher rates of poor cognition, such as memory and thinking ability, and at least one limitation on the ability to perform a basic daily living task such as shopping for groceries, dressing and bathing, taking medications or getting out of bed. The percentage with such limitations jumped from 8.8 percent of people who retired at 65 to 12.5 percent of current Americans ages 56 to 57 who will retire in a decade.

Americans born in 1960 will not be able to collect their full Social Security benefits until they reach 67, instead of 65, because of the increase in the retirement age enacted by the Reagan administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress in 1983. At the time, they claimed the change was necessary because Americans were living longer and would see continual health improvements in their old age.

The opposite is now the case. We found that younger cohorts are facing more burdensome health issues, even as they have to wait until an older age to retire, so they will have to do so in poorer health, said Robert Schoeni, an economist and demographer who co-authored the University of Michigan study.

Inequality among seniors in the US is among the worst in the developed world, according to a report issued last week by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which found that the gap between wealthy and low-income seniors is wider in the US than in all but two of the thirty-five OECD member nationsMexico and Chile. While the rich in America live longer and very comfortably, the poor are working longer, dying younger and increasingly living with pain and ill health.

These are but the latest in a succession of reports documenting higher death rates, higher infant and maternal mortality and declining life expectancy for broad sections of the working population. Meanwhile, Donald Trump routinely hails the record-setting stock market boom as proof of the success of his administration.

There is, in fact, an intimate connection between the spectacular rise in the Dow, the ever-greater enrichment of the top 5 and 1 percent of the country, and the destruction of decent-paying jobs, the lowering of wages and the gutting of social programs. The corporate-financial oligarchy is benefiting from the impoverishment of broad sections of the population.

As CNN Money reported, Declining health and life expectancy are good news for one constituency: Pension plans, which must send a monthly check to retirees for as long as they live. In fact, the health care policies of both political parties are designed to lower life expectancy for the working class and thereby decrease the sums wasted, in the eyes of the ruling class, on retirement benefits and health care for workers who have ceased to be a source of profit.

As the World Socialist Web Site wrote in November 2013, citing think tank studies on the crisis resulting from Americas aging population, underlying the health care counterrevolution set in motion by Obamacare is a basic concern of the American ruling class, a concern that is generally left unstatednamely, that people in the end are simply living too long. The advances of modern medicine have extended lives, often significantly beyond the age of retirement.

For the political strategists of the corporate and financial elite, these years of retirement and medical care are not seen as a good, but as a source of costs that must be slashed, so that they can take that money. This is to be accomplished either by raising the retirement age, by lowering life expectancy so that people die earlier, or both.

The scenes of hundreds of low-wage workers and retirees lining up in Charleston, West Virginia over the weekend for free dental and vision carein some cases for their first treatment in yearsunderscores the scale of the social crisis. In McDowell County, part of the depressed coal mining region of southern West Virginia, life expectancy for males is 63.9 years, only slightly ahead of Haiti, Ghana and Papua New Guinea, due to chronic poverty, ill-health, suicide and drug and alcohol abuse.

The reports on life expectancy, health, etc. provide a measure of the drastic social retrogression resulting from the crisis of the capitalist systema system that is incompatible with the satisfaction of basic social needs.

The working class must take matters into its own hands. What is necessary is a frontal assault on entrenched wealth and the political monopoly exercised by the corporate-financial oligarchy through its two right-wing political parties. The wealth of the financial parasites must be expropriated and the major corporations and banks turned into publicly-owned and democratically controlled utilities, so that the wealth produced by the working class can be used to provide jobs, education, housing and free, high-quality health care for all.
The Australian government is intensifying its threats against about 900 asylum seekers remaining in its Manus Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG) detention centre, attempting to force them into an insecure transit camp or to transfer to Canberras other offshore facility on the remote Pacific island of Nauru.

For weeks, Australian authorities have been closing sections of the Manus Island centre around detainees, shutting basic services and threatening to arrest detainees, in order to push them into a camp in the town of Lorengau, or compel them to return to the countries they fled.

A letter distributed to detainees last Thursday warned that all food, water, sewage facilities and electricity would cease inside the Manus Island centre after October 31. The note, written in Farsi, said the fences would be taken down and the site returned to the control of the PNG Defence Force.

The letter renewed fears among the detainees, who have previously suffered violent attacks by Australian-hired security guards and PNG police and soldiers.

Asked about the issue in the Australian parliament last Monday, Employment Minister Michaelia Cashwho represents Immigration Minister Peter Dutton in the Senateunderlined the threats. She reiterated that the centre would close on October 31 and anybody [remaining] will be removed by lawful means.

Several weeks earlier, the refugees, who have been incarcerated on Manus Island for up to four years, were told they could voluntarily relocate to Nauru. It was a blatant move by the Australian government to break the resistance among the asylum seekers to leaving the Manus camp, despite it being demolished around them.

Canberra is essentially insisting that all those who are being considered for a US refugee swap deal must be transported to another hellhole, thousands of kilometres away in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Signs were posted around the Manus camp stating that those refugees waiting on the approval for US resettlement could make an expression of interest in moving to Nauru by October 23.

The US swap deal, announced last November under the previous Obama administration, is a quid pro quo arrangement. An undisclosed number of refugees imprisoned by the US will be swapped for some heavily-vetted refugees from Manus and Nauru, although the US has no obligation to take any.

The supposedly voluntary Nauru plan is a thinly veiled threat to punish those who refuse to take the transfer offer. It is one of the many thuggish methods the Australian government has used to force asylum seekers out of the Manus camp.

This has included the shutting down of basic facilities such as electricity, English classes and the gym. In July, the Australian government, working in conjunction with the PNG authorities, threatened police violence, reportedly mobilising around 100 guards and police outside the compound.

The Turnbull government announced the Manus closure in August last year, four months after the PNG Supreme Court ruled the facility violated the PNG constitution because it deprived the detainees of liberty without charge or trial.

Many refugees fear for their safety if forced into the so-called Refugee Transit Centre near Lorengau, the major town on Manus Island. There have been numerous reports of asylum seekers in Lorengau being beaten, robbed or abused by the PNG authorities or local people, among whom the authorities have whipped up anti-refugee sentiment.

Behrouz Boochani, an Iranian journalist imprisoned on Manus, told journalists the Nauru plan was the latest political trick to get the refugees out of the Manus detention centre.

Amir Taghinia, another detainee, said that after six deaths on the island the refugees feared for their lives in moving to Lorengau. Two detainees have died in recent months31-year-old Hamid Shamshiripour and 32-year-old Rajeev Rajendran.

We explained over and over again that we would rather stay in the Manus prison without hope than face violence in Lorengau, Taghinia said. Already too many lives have been lost, and the government knows that people are in danger in these camps, whether on Manus Island or Nauru.

The US resettlement deal has been endorsed by the Labor Party, Greens and various refugee groups, which claim it will provide detainees a safe future. In reality, it means removal to the other side of the world, with no guarantee of their conditions upon arrival.

Last month, after months of extreme vetting by US officials, some 50 refugees were transferred to the US from Manus and Nauru. No information was provided as to where the refugees would be permitted to live and work or whether they would become eligible for US citizenship.

Under the Australias border protection regime, no asylum seekers, including those dumped in the US, will ever be permitted to enter Australia.

Any refugee transferred to Nauru will face the same traumatic conditions as those on Manus Island. Numerous reports have documented abuses on Nauru, including sexual assaults, brutality at the hands of the guards and decrepit facilities, such as mouldy tents, inadequate medical facilities and poor access to running water and sanitation.

Despite this Ian Rintoul, a leading member of the pseudo-left group Solidarity and the Refugee Action Coalition, said the facilities in Nauru were marginally better than on Manus Island. He accused Turnbulls Liberal-National government of lacking a resettlement plan, claiming the government was in a rolling crisis, going from disaster to disaster.

In truth, the government is taking to its logical conclusion the regime introduced by the previous Labor government, which re-opened the Manus and Nauru camps and declared that no asylum seekers detained in them would ever be allowed to settle in Australia.
In 1959, when the School of Medicine relocated from San Francisco to a new complex on the university campus, a gallon of gas was 25 cents, Alaska became the 49th state, Doris Day ruled the radio waves and Barbie hit toy stores.

Designed by Edward Durell Stone, the complex integrated outdoor and interior landscapes, with pierced grills, walls of glass bricks and a network of courtyards. But the buildings that compose the complex have not kept up with the accelerating demands of todays medicine, and while the recent addition of structural steel frames to the exterior of the Edwards building makes it seismically safe, the buildings remain functionally deficient.

Our labs were designed in the year Sputnik went up and built during the Eisenhower administration, said Robert Jackler, MD, professor and chair of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery. Needless to say, our needs have changed. Our labs are scattered and out of date. The long-term sustainability of our research mission clearly requires additional space. Its time to decant the building. The complex is at the end of its usefulness.

The Biomedical Innovation Building is the first step in a sequence of new buildings that eventually will replace the outdated complex, which includes the Grant, Alway, Lane and Edwards buildings. The BMI Building will be designed to encourage interdisciplinary studies and quickly move biomedical research into clinical practice.

Creating a contemporary environment

The 215,500-square-foot structure will be located on open space along Pasteur Drive, just steps from the medical schools research buildings and the new Stanford Hospital. With four floors above ground and one below, the building will be a significant step toward replacing outdated research facilities and easing the space crunch. It will house laboratories and support space for nearly 1,000 faculty, students and staff in specialties that include orthopedic surgery, pediatrics, immunology and genomics.
Bill OReilly is opening up about the pain of multiple allegations of sexual harassment he has received over the years  specifically his pain.

Its horrible what I went through, horrible what my family went through, OReilly told The New York Times reporters Emily Steel and Michael S. Schmidt.

The interview followed a Times news report over the weekend of a previously undisclosed settlement between OReilly and Fox News analyst Lis Wiehl totaling $32 million.

Also Read: Bill O'Reilly Paid $32 Million to Settle Sexual Harassment Claim (Update)

The January settlement is the largest known payout to any of OReillys multiple accusers and was reached just one month before OReilly was signed to a new multi-year contract at Fox News parent 21st Century Fox.

OReilly has, however, never been convicted of any crime and has consistently maintained his innocence, saying that his accusers are motivated by money.

Its politically and financially motivated, he told the Times in a statement in response to the Wiehls settlement. Im not going to sit here in a courtroom for a year and a half and let my kids get beaten up every single day of their lives by a tabloid press that would sit there, and you know it.

Related stories from TheWrap:

Fox News' Howard Kurtz Calls Bill O'Reilly's $32 Million Settlement 'Significant Setback for Fox'

Bill O'Reilly Says He Was 'Smeared' by New York Times Report of Sexual Harassment Settlement

Bill O'Reilly's Post-Sexual Harassment Settlement Contract Included Clause About 'Other Allegations'

Bill O'Reilly Paid $32 Million to Settle Sexual Harassment Claim (Update)
Colbert Tries to Figure Out What George W Bush Said to Obama at Disaster Relief Concert (Video)

No one knows what George W. Bush whispered to Barack Obama that caused him to break out into laughter while Bill Clinton delivered a speech on Saturday at the One America Appeal Concert to raise money for hurricane relief. But Stephen Colbert used the top of tonights episode of The Late Show to try and figure it out.

Well, and also to beg all five surviving former presidents to save the country (presumably from Trump).

Also Read: 'Morning Joe' Blasts Trump on Puerto Rico Response: 'National Disgrace' (Video)

Its nice, its really nice that they could all be there together, having fun and HELP US WHY ARENT YOU HELPING US?!, Colbert said after showing a clip of Bush and Obamas private joke moment. Come back! All of you! At once. Please.

That aside, Colbert then set about trying to guess what it was, exactly, that Dubya mumbled that Barry found so funny. Examples:

Hey. Were you born in Kenya?

Twenty bucks if you pants Clinton right now.

Yo real quick, wheres Puerto Rico?

Theres a few more, plus information on donating to hurricane relief< and you can watch the whole clip below:

TONIGHT: When five ex-Presidents teamed up for a hurricane relief benefit, one very funny moment ensued. If only we had the audio #LSSC pic.twitter.com/vjkJdUqsf4  The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) October 24, 2017

Related stories from TheWrap:

Colbert Hijacks 'Hannity' Trump Interview (Video)

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Five teenagers have been charged as adults following the death of a Michigan man.

Kenneth Andrew White was killed after a rock smashed through the window of the car he was in on Oct. 18.

Kyle Anger, 17, and four 15-year-olds Alexander Miller, Mark Sekelsky, Mikaydyn Payne and Trevor Gray have been charged with second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit second-degree murder and malicious destruction of property, according to MLive.

Trevor Grey

PEOPLE has reached out to the Genesee County Prosecutors Office, which authorized the charges.

Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton spoke to Fox News, saying, I dont believe that this was a deliberate attempt to take somebodys life. It was a willful and wanton act that resulted in somebodys death.

Mikadyn Payne

Mark Sekelsky

He continued, These people should have known better. Under Michigan law, this is second-degree murder.

More than a dozen rocks were allegedly thrown from a Michigan overpass, striking multiple moving vehicles, including a van that included passenger White, 32.

Kyle Anger

Alexander Miller

A rock hit his side of the windshield, MLive reported. He was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.

One rock weighed 20 pounds, according to Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell, who spoke to the outlet. They were found in a dead-end street and placed in the flatbed of a pick-up truck.

All five teenagers will be arraigned Tuesday morning, according to NBC 25 News.

Kenneth Andrew White

Whites fiancee Aimee Cagle told Click on Detroit that she had to tell their 5-year-old son that his daddy was not coming home.

He was a good man and a good father, Cagle said. For some senseless act, for it to be just a rock, just to take him so soon.

On a GoFundMe page created to raise money for Whites burial expenses, the young mother spoke of her heartbreak and thanked those who donated for their support.

This was my heart that was destroyed but i just wanted to say thank you to all who have donated! There is still kindness and love out there i just hate that its because of the travesty. He was my best friend and the? love of my life. Thank you to all.

Whites sister, Alicia Waskoski, told The Detroit News that her brother loved being a working man.
Detectives in Tampa, Florida, are searching for the person responsible for killing three people in the span of 11 days.

This is my worst nightmare, he said.

The killings all occurred in The Seminole Heights section of Tampa. The three victims do not have an apparent link to each other, but they were fatally shot within a half mile of each other.

Residents in the area marched together over the weekend, chanting, Whose streets? Our streets.

We are in this for the long haul, Dugan said. We are going to find this person.

Amid fears of more deaths, police are now escorting children to school bus stops in the morning, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

We didnt want anybody walking by themselves to the bus at 6:10 a.m. without somebody nearby, department spokesman Steve Hegarty told the Times.

The first victim, 22-year-old Benjamin Mitchell, was shot and killed at approximately 9 p.m on October 9 while waiting at a bus stop near his home. He was alone at the time. A police spokesperson said in a press conference that he was a good person from a good family.

Two days later, Monica Caridad Hoffa, 32, was shot and killed ten blocks away. Her body was found in a grassy plot of land owned by the city of Tampa. Her life was taken from her with no motive, her family wrote in an online obituary.

On October 19, the third victim, Anthony Taino Naiboa was shot just 100 yards away from where Mitchell was killed. Naiboa, 20, had autism and had accidentally taken the wrong bus home from work. At a vigil for Naiboa on Sunday evening, his father, Anthony, shared his anguish. They killed him just for nothing, he told the mourners. Like hes not a human, like hes nothing.

When a reporter asked Dugan if Tampa had a serial killer on its hands, he raised no objection to classifying the murders in that manner. We are still sifting through evidence, he said. We can call it what we want. If that brings attention to this, thats fine.

Dugan is urging the residents of Tampa to take the streets back. Were not going to be held hostage by whoever is doing this, he said. We need everyone to come out of their homes at night, turn on their porch lights, and just not tolerate this type of terrorism.
Though hes a Hollywood heavyweight and billionaire businessman, George Clooney is proving hes just like any first-time parent.

The actor, 56, gushed about being a dad to 4-month-old twins Ella and Alexander on Mondays Jimmy Kimmel Live, during which he admitted to host Jimmy Kimmel that being a dad is a little scary.

Listen, Im scared to death, its terrifying, he said of navigating parenthood, adding, Youre afraid of breaking them. Theyre so little.

Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter.

The Suburbicon director and wife Amal Clooney welcomed their twins in June, and the father of two has been sharing their babies milestones, including changing diapers.

Clooney said with two babies the frequency of the task has become like cleaning up your dogs poop.

However, dirty diapers have become messier these days after feeding them their first solid food.

Then we introduced the children to solid food on Friday. How that goes in as a carrot and how that comes out the way it comes out is shocking, Clooney confessed. I dont know whats going from here to here. What happens?

George Clooney's TWINS tonight! #SneakPeek #Kimmel A post shared by Jimmy Kimmel Live (@jimmykimmellive) on Oct 23, 2017 at 7:29pm PDT

Also during his appearance, Clooney brought out Suburbicon star Matt Damon as part of a prank to debut the twins to the public.

As Damon walked on with a double stroller the audience cheered, but the little ones were actually at home with their mom.

Suburbicon opens in theaters on Oct. 27.
The five living former U.S. presidents came together for a special hurricane relief benefit concert Saturday night, and were joined by none other than Lady Gaga.

The event, called Deep from the Heart, took place at Texas A&M University and was organized by One American Appeal. The campaign was launched by former presidents Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton in order to raise money for the communities impacted by a string of devastating hurricanes, including those in Florida and Puerto Rico. One hundred percent of tickets sales went to relief efforts.

Nothing more beautiful than everyone putting their differences aside to help humanity in the face of catastrophe. #OneAmericaAppeal pic.twitter.com/2TPdPonvWv  xoxo, Gaga (@ladygaga) October 22, 2017

Gaga confirmed she met with the five former presidents by posting a photograph with them on social media. Beforehand, she also took pictures of the presidents name cards from the event, adding the caption, Now thats what I call an audience.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Sunday revoked Zimbabwes leader, Robert Mugabe, as good-will ambassador for health, days after his nomination sparked scathing criticism around the world.

According to the WHO Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the revocation of the veteran leader comes after the organization has listened carefully to all those who have expressed their concerns, and heard the different issues that they have raised.

The WHO chief said he had also consulted with the Zimbabwean government and decided that rescinding Mugabes position was in the best interests of the WHO.

Robert Mugabe has long faced United States sanctions over his governments human rights abuses, including, violent crackdowns on political dissidents, claims of electioneering, and starkly anti-LGBT policies.

He was appointed last week by Africas first WHO chief to use the role to influence his peers in his region when it comes to fighting noncommunicable diseases  such as heart attacks, strokes and asthma  in Africa.

The Geneva-based agencys decision was met with outrage by twenty-eight major health organizations including Cancer Research UK, the World Heart Federation, Action against Smoking. The organizations have released a statement expressing shock at the appointment.

The United States had said the appointment of Mugabe clearly contradicts the United Nations ideals of respect for human rights and human dignity.

As a reminder, during the first 20 years of his 37-year rule, Mugabe widely expanded health care, but the system has been affected badly by the collapse of the southern African nations economy since 2000.
While many dogs (and their human families) are having a hellish time trying to evacuate from Hurricane Maria-devastated Puerto Rico  with some pups unable to flee with their humans due to size and other restrictions  there is a ray of light. Charitable organizations like the John and Wendy Neu Family Foundation and The Sato Project are working to give street dogs and orphaned pups who were surrendered by their owners a second chance at a happy life.

On Sunday, 53 stray dogs were crated and transported via plane to New York City, where they were taken to Animal Haven, a no-kill shelter in Manhattan.

The John and Wendy Neu Family Foundation chartered a cargo plane to Puerto Rico and stocked it with humanitarian and animal aid supplies, such as generators, gas stoves, water filters, diapers, feminine hygiene products, dog food and horse food. The supplies were donated by the John and Wendy Neu Family Foundation and by Companion Animal Placement, an animal welfare nonprofit led by Wendy Neu.

Once the plane delivered the much-needed goods, Good Samaritans helped fill it with more than 50 stray dogs for its return trip Stateside. The dogs, rescued by volunteers from The Sato Project  a Puerto Rico-based nonprofit that has saved more than 1,600 dogs since 2011  were brought to Animal Haven and will be available for adoption on Tuesday, Oct. 24, though the shelter is accepting applications in advance now.

The fee to adopt is $400, covering the cost of rescue and veterinary services (tests, vaccinations, spay/neutering, microchipping). According to the organization, each rescued canine costs The Sato Project about $1,000.

Anyone interested in adopting the dogs or donating to their care can visit Animal Havens website for more information; those who want to support The Sato Project in its efforts to rescue dogs from Puerto Rico can click here.

Most of the dogs are on the younger side, and were found in the islands eastern region of Yabucoa, according to The Sato Projects Facebook page. The non-profit has evacuated more than 100 dogs from Puerto Rico since Sept. 30, and has also helped families keep their dogs, by flying in supplies and other necessities.

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Pets bring their owners joy and help them relax, especially during the stressful aftermath of natural disasters like Hurricane Maria. This effort will provide comfort to those who are reunited with their beloved pets, and help stray dogs from the island find some respite here in New York City after all they have gone through, said San Juan native and Speaker of the New York City Council Melissa Mark-Viverito.

Meanwhile, another plane chartered by the John and Wendy Neu Family Foundation, also packed with supplies, flew down to Puerto Rico and returned with seven dogs last Thursday. These pups were reunited with their owners, who evacuated the island during Maria but were unable to bring their pets with them.

Animal Haven has recently taken in dogs displaced by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, as well as cats from Turks and Caicos. All the organizations expressed their hopes to continue working together and rescuing more needy dogs from Puerto Rico in the weeks and months ahead.
For more news videos visit Yahoo View.

The set of Morning Joe woke up in a feisty mood Tuesday morning, ripping into First Lady Melania Trumps campaign to curb bullying.

If you are going to pick anything, thats an interesting thing for Melania to pick considering, well, I mean, all the insults, Scarborough said dryly, alluding to her husband, the President of the United States.

Maybe she should start with Patient X, or Patient Zero, (who) she sleeps actually with, the worst bully in America, said Scarborough.

Yesterday, Melania Trump made a surprise trip to Michigan to visit schoolchildren and preach the doctrine of inclusion.

Also Read:'Morning Joe' Says Trump Is 'Excited' About War in North Korea: 'He Wants to Use Nukes' (Video)

I encourage you to find a new friend and eat lunch with the new friends and know a friend, she told middle schoolers in Bloomfield Hills. Ask them what they like, what their hobbies are, so nobody becomes sad or stressed, and everybody feels included.

That all left the set at MSNBC baffled.

[Trumps] constantly cyber bullying, thats fascinating, you have, remember the beauty queen he said was fat, and Liddle Bob Corker, Little Marco,' said Scarborough, who also reminded viewers that some of Trumps nastiest barbs have been directed to show co-host Mika Brzezinski.

Also Read:'Morning Joe' Blasts Trump on Puerto Rico Response: 'National Disgrace' (Video)

I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (dont watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came..  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017

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to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Years Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017

At least Melania stepped out and condemned him oh, wait, said Scarborough.

Oh, wait. She attacked me, said Brzezinski.

The segment concluded with show mainstay Mark Halperin washing his hands of it.

I think a lot these days about how historians are going to write about the Trump administration, he said. This is not a huge thing, in the scheme of things, but its going to be hard for historians to explain this.

Related stories from TheWrap:

'Morning Joe' Says Trump Is 'Excited' About War in North Korea: 'He Wants to Use Nukes' (Video)

'Morning Joe': Mika Brzezinski Calls Trump 'Mentally Ill' (Video)

'Morning Joe' Slams Trump's 'Complete Disconnect' From Humanity After Call to Combat Widow

'Morning Joe' Slams Trump as 'Antithesis' of 'Every Single Thing' Jesus Christ Said (Video)
The mother of a 13-day-old boy and the womans boyfriend have both been charged with murder after the infant was found unresponsive on the couples bedroom floor with a fractured spine and a broken rib, PEOPLE confirms.

On Friday, an arrest warrant was filed for Maria Elena Sullivan and Dylan James Kitzmiller, who are both Utah residents, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE. Both were charged with first degree murder and three counts of child abuse.

Sullivan, 26, was arrested in Cherokee County, Georgia, on Sunday, a sheriffs spokesperson tells PEOPLE. She was seeking medical care at a local hospital when she allegedly made comments that alarmed staff, who soon notified a police officer.

Authorities did not comment on why Sullivan was in Georgia.

Kitzmiller was arrested in Utah on Friday night without incident, a West Jordan Police Department spokesperson tells PEOPLE.

While Sullivan is not believed to have abused the boy directly, officials allege she knew he was being abused by Kitzmiller and did nothing to stop it, according to the warrant.

The baby, who was born on Sept. 4, died on the night of Sept. 17. When he was born, the baby appeared to have no health problems, the warrant states. When he died, the baby had lost a significant amount of weight and was covered in bruises and abrasions, and had a spinal fracture and a broken rib.

According to the warrant, on Sept. 17, authorities responded to a report involving an infant at Kitzmillers home. When they arrived, the baby was on the bedroom floor. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

During police questioning, Sullivan allegedly told officers that her boyfriend abused the baby, and that he was often rough when handling her son, the warrant states. Once, she told police, Kitzmiller allegedly slapped the childs face and bit his hands.

Despite these complaints, police allege Sullivan left the baby in Kitzmillers care.

On the day of her sons death, Sullivan said she found Kitzmiller moving the childs legs in a rough weird bicycle thing, according to the warrant.

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Later that evening, Sullivan told police, the baby was making grunting noises and at some point was gasping for air, the warrant states. He stopped breathing soon after.

When authorities arrived, the baby had obvious bruising and abrasions on his face and body.

 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

Both of them were charged because the girlfriend indicated that there was a level of abuse that was going on, she was aware of this abuse, and she took no steps to stop this or to take the child to safety, District Attorney Sim Gill alleged to FOX13.

During an autopsy, a medical examiner found the child had fractured his spine the day of his death. The cause of death appears to be of severe brain injuries, the medical examiner stated, according to the warrant.

Sullivan is being held without bond in Georgia. A West Jordan spokesperson says she is facing extradition.

Kitzmiller is being held at Salt Lake County Jail on a $1 million bond.

It is unclear whether Sullivan or Kitzmiller have attorneys.
The pregnant widow of U.S. Army Sgt. La David T. Johnson, who was among four soldiers killed in Niger earlier this month, says President Donald Trumps condolence call only made her pain worse.

Myeshia Johnson, 24, spoke out for the first time on Good Morning America Monday and confirmed that Trump said her husband knew what he signed up for, but when it happens it hurts anyway  remarks that caused a media firestorm last week when U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson revealed them publicly.

It made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it, Myeshia said.

He couldnt remember my husbands name.

She added of Trump: I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husbands name and thats what hurt me the most because if my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risked his life for our country, why cant you remember his name?

The White House has denied Wilsons account of the phone call. And, within an hour of the interview airing on ABC, Trump responded once again on Twitter  and disputed the pregnant widows version of events.

I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation! he wrote.

La David Johnson was laid to rest over the weekend in a private funeral service in which nearly 1,200 mourners gathered to remember the 25-year-old who was killed in an Oct. 4 ambush in the West African country.

I want the world to know how great of a soldier my husband was and a loving and caring father he was to our family, Myeshia said, add that she had known Johnson since he was 6 years old.

I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2017

Johnson was initially missing in the wake of the attack, becoming separated from the 12-member team as they were ambushed by 50 ISIS fighters, CNN reports. Nigerian troops found Johnsons body nearly two days later about a mile from the scene of the ambush.

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I want to know why it took them 48 hours to find my husband, Myeshia said during the interview, noting that she has been told very little about her husbands death. Why couldnt I see my husband? Every time I asked too see my husband, they wouldnt let me.

"Whatever [@RepWilson] said was not fabricated. What she said was 100% correct." - widow of Sgt. La David Johnson on Pres. Trump's call pic.twitter.com/fOAmT7c0Bk  Good Morning America (@GMA) October 23, 2017

Myeshias comments come as Trump finds himself embroiled in a heated battle with Wilson, a Democrat. Wilson criticized Trump for his words during the call to Myeshia.

Trump denied Wilsons claim, tweeting on Friday, The Fake News is going crazy with wacky Congresswoman Wilson(D), who was SECRETLY on a very personal call, and gave a total lie on content!

However, Wilson is a personal friend of the Johnson family and was in the car when Myeshia took the presidents call on speakerphone.

Johnsons mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, confirmed Wilsons account of the call and told The Washington Post that President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband.

On Monday, Myeshia said Wilsons account was 100 percent correct.

Why would we fabricate something like that? she asked.

Trump first denied the statements last Wednesday, telling reporters that day, I didnt say what that congresswoman said, didnt say it at all, she knows it.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders last Wednesday called Wilsons account of the conversation was disgraceful and disgusting, but never explicitly denied that the president told the young widow her husband knew what he signed up for.

Wilson has continued to stand by her account. She has also criticized Trump for referring to Myeshia in comments as the woman or the wife, and for calling Johnson your guy in the presidents call to Myeshia.

Story Behind the Story: PEOPLE Editor Corroborates Natasha Stoynoffs Allegations Against Donald Trump

However, in Wednesdays press briefing, Sanders said that just because the president said your guy, I dont think he didnt know his name.

Meanwhile, Trump is facing additional criticism for falsely claiming past presidents did not personally reach out to the families of slain service members.
George W. Bush made Obama laugh during Bill Clintons speech, and the internet is living for it

The Internet is all about the moment George W. Bush cracked Barack Obama up during Bill Clintons speech at a hurricane relief concert attended by all five living former U.S. presidents.

While Clinton spoke at Saturday nights Deep From the Heart: The One America Appeal event at the Reed Arena at Texas A&M University in College Station to raise money for victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, the younger Bush leaned over to Obama and whispered something that made his presidential successor let loose a laugh.

The giggly scene quickly began to make the online rounds, with some who watched the clip tweeting about how much they enjoyed watching the former commanders in chief bond. Bush pulling a dad move, cracking a joke to Obama during Clintons speech, and glancing repeatedly to see his reaction, user Classic Dad Moves wrote.

W cracking a joke to Obama while Clinton gives a speech is me in middle school, user Justin Taylor added.

Bush pulling a dad move, cracking a joke to Obama during Clinton's speech, and glancing repeatedly to see his reaction. pic.twitter.com/Y3dLIkQUAn  Classic Dad Moves (@ClassicDadMoves) October 22, 2017

W cracking a joke to Obama while Clinton gives a speech is me in middle school pic.twitter.com/Sw6uQwXRcf  Justin Taylor (@TheSmarmyBum) October 22, 2017

See some of the best reactions below.

I need to know what George W. Bush whispered to Barack Obama to make him laugh during Bill Clintons speech pic.twitter.com/sm2lIVgwX8  J sh Billinson (@jbillinson) October 23, 2017

Related article: All 5 living former U.S. presidents to attend hurricane relief concert

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Watching George W. Bush making Obama laugh while Clinton speaks is a great way to end your Sunday pic.twitter.com/Jn94lhkX2L  Barstool News (BNN) (@BarstoolNewsN) October 23, 2017

Related article: The internet thinks photos of this Obama, Bush and Clinton reunion feel so good

A gif of Bush telling Obama a joke while Clinton is speaking is something I never knew I needed in my life until now pic.twitter.com/sMVHB3217B  Dylan Snoddy (@DylanSnoddy) October 22, 2017

Bush cracking a joke to Obama during Clinton's speech. Man is a legend @ComfortablySmug pic.twitter.com/O7UtwbW1Yo  Travis Burns (@TravisB06052015) October 23, 2017

Related article: Both Presidents Bush condemn hatred a day after Trumps press conference

Bush's reaction after he gets Obama to laugh at his joke is the ultimate post dad joke face pic.twitter.com/lH7o3EuMCw  spOooOoky steph (@__stephandstuff) October 23, 2017

This article originally appeared in Time.com
The African diplomats accredited to Rabat have distanced themselves from the incomprehensible comments made by the Algerian Foreign Minister, Abdelkader Messahel, against Morocco.

The dean of the African diplomatic corps in Rabat, Ambassador Nimaga Ismaila, condemned such defamatory and insulting statements.

Speaking on behalf of African ambassadors in Rabat, the representative of the Central African Republic noted that such statements only make the situation worse at a time Africa needs more unity to take up the more urgent development challenges rather than squandering energy on more disputes.

Messahel, who was participating Friday at a debate of the Algerian Business Leaders Forum (FCE), shockingly accused Morocco of laundering cannabis money via its banks in the continent and accused Moroccos flag carrier RAM with carrying something other than passengers, alluding to drug trafficking.

In his blunder, he also claimed that African heads of state told him about the money laundering.

In this connection, the dean of the African diplomatic corps wondered how the Algerian official dared to claim that African Heads of State raised the money laundering with him.

Ambassador Nimaga Ismaila said that African heads of state will meet in Addis Ababa soon, and that this will be an opportunity to demand that Algeria gives explanations for their [so-called] involvement in such talks.

For Ambassador Ismaila, the Algerian ministers remarks are all the more incomprehensible that in the African Union, it is with a unanimous voice that African heads of state hailed the return of Morocco, or rather the regularization of its situation, since Morocco has never left his African family.

The dean of the African diplomatic corps also noted the coincidence between the Algerian Ministers slanderous remarks and the tour undertaken in the region by the new UN Secretary Generals personal envoy for the Sahara. The representative of the UN Secretary-General for the Sahara issue will be the eyewitness of what can hinder his efforts, the ambassador said.

These unwelcome statements come at a time when all the international powers have recognized and supported Moroccos autonomy proposal as the most credible and the most reasonable, said the ambassador, adding that Morocco has always advocated the path of negotiation. We encourage them in this direction.

Morocco has firmly responded to the Algerian ministers scandalous comments, as it recalled its ambassador to Algeria for consultation and summoned Algerias Charge dAffaires in Rabat.

Several other sides have come forward to reject the Algerian officials outrageous, irresponsible, and offensive remarks, including the professional grouping of Moroccan banks (GPBM), RAM, the association of Moroccan employers CGEM, and many politicians.

Algerian intellectuals and media have also lashed out at their Foreign Minister for his blunder, criminal remarks, nonsense, and inexcusable allusions, using even harsher words than Moroccans.

They describe the official as a warmonger and blame him for throwing oil on the fire. Some media have called for his immediate dismissal, given the seriousness of the situation.
Trump defended his phone call to Myeshia Johnson after she appeared on Good Morning America this morning

After being thrust into the spotlight when news outlets reported that President Donald Trump said her deceased husband knew what he was signing up for when he was killed in action, Myeshia Johnson appeared on Good Morning America today to clarify what was said during that now-infamous phone call. And, as he often does, Trump quickly responded to Johnsons comments via Twitter.

For context, this is what Johnson said this morning when asked what happened on the call:

It made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it. He couldnt remember my husbands name. I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husbands name, and thats what hurt me the most because if my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risked his life for our country, why cant you remember his name?

Trump responded with the following:

I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2017

Johnson was also asked to clarify if Trump had, in fact, said her husband knew what we was signing up for (as opposed to, say, calling him a hero and offering condolences). Johnson said the account was 100 percent correct.

While this has unfortunately become a he said, she said scenario, many are pointing out that if nothing else, the pregnant widow of a fallen soldier should be left alone  and certainly not called a liar.

She is a widow. She is carrying a child. She hasn't even been told how her husband died. Apologize, you scumbag. #MyeshiaJohnson #GoldStar  Darren Hayes (@darrenhayes) October 23, 2017

It makes me extremely sad that #MyeshiaJohnson is going to be a political target now.

Just let her grieve...  Christie Walker (@LaChristie) October 23, 2017

Just a quick reminder that no one from the White House - Trump, Kelly - has apologized to #MyeshiaJohnson



We must protect her at all cost.  Clayton Perry (@mailmansr) October 23, 2017

For her part, Johnson remained strong during the interview, saying, I want the world to know how great of a soldier my husband was and a loving and caring father and husband he was to our family.

Were listening, Myeshia. We thank La David for his service and are sending all our condolences to you and your family during this difficult time.
To boost your happiness, you might want to move to one of National Geographics 25 happiest cities in the U.S.

To create the list, Dan Buettner, a NatGeo fellow who writes about longevity and health, enlisted the help of Dan Witters, research director of the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index. Witters designed an index of 15 metrics that contribute to happiness, including how often people visit the dentist, take vacations and receive recognition for improving their communities. Then, he analyzed 250,000 interviews  conducted between 2014 and 2015 in 190 metropolitan areas  to see how each city measured up.

Boulder was the clear winner, partly due to its strong sense of community and access to nature, followed by Santa Cruz and Charlottesville. Most of the happiest metros were in the West and along coasts, and lowest-ranking areas were in the eastern central part of the U.S.

See the the 10 happiest cities below and head over to NatGeo for the rest.

Anchorage, Alaska

Residents of Anchorage "take very good care of themselves," Witters told HuffPost. The city has the second-highest exercise rate in the nation, according to his research.

Barnstable Town, Massachusetts

Oral health is a closely linked to overall wellbeing, and this Cape Cod city ranked third in the nation for how frequently its residents visit the dentist, according to Witters. Many residents also report "feeling active and productive every day," he added.

Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, Connecticut

Witters says this metro area ranks within the top five percent of cities nationwide for residents who say they have "someone in their life who encourages health."

Provo, Utah

This beautiful city has the lowest smoking rate in the nation, according to Witters' research.

San Jose, California

More than in any other metro, residents in San Jose said they had "enough money to do everything they want to do."

San Luis Obispo, California

Residents in SLO told Witters that they "eat healthy every day."

Fort Collins, Colorado

Fort Collins residents exercise often, and the city ranked second for how "safe and secure" its residents feel.

Charlottesville, Virginia

Charlottesville ranked second overall for percentage of residents who said they've received "recognition for helping to improve their city or area" in the last year.

Santa Cruz-Watsonville, California

Residents of this coastal city stay mentally active: They're "the best in the nation at learning new and interesting things daily," Witters said.

Boulder, Colorado

Residents in Boulder reported exercising more than in any other city, according to Witters.

Also on HuffPost

Bozeman, Montana

Schaumburg, Illinois

North Arlington, New Jersey

A 15-mile commute from New York City, this pleasant suburb offers great schools and a massive public park with sports, nature and special events galore. You might recognize the local pizza joint from the opening credits of "The Sopranos."

Lone Tree, Colorado

This outdoorsy Denver suburb serves up plenty of sporting opportunities with breathtaking mountain views. The arts center includes a 350-seat outdoor theater that keeps both locals and visitors entertained.

Dickinson, North Dakota

Olive Branch, Mississippi

Franklin, Tennessee

Monterey Park, California

Allen, Texas

If you don't know about Allen yet, you likely will soon: The city is a huge destination for tech companies looking to expand out of nearby Dallas, according to Money. Here, you'll find job opportunities along with awesome leisure spots like a wakeboarding park, golf course and historic heritage village.

Fishers, Indiana

Current residents say this quaint spot is full of young families, and local business are starting to boom. The central Nickel Plate District is a hub for outdoor concerts and festivals.

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The exterior of the Neibolt House from It. (Photo: Warner Bros./New Line)

Some of the most iconic settings from Hollywood horror classics belong not to the movie set but to the real world. They are structures. They are landmarks. They may even be somebodys home (so, be ever mindful of your manners). Heres a look at our favorite Halloween sights  which you can literally see for yourself.

The abandoned house from It

Toronto

For the 2017 big-screen blockbuster, Hollywood converted this historic 105-year-old Canadian mansion, known as the Cranfield House, into Pennywises infamous 29 Neibolt St. spook house. While a run-down facade was built for the exteriors, the Cranfield was used for interiors. Formerly a home for unwed mothers, the currently unoccupied house (and soon-to-be condo) in Torontos Riverdale neighborhood does a lot of movie work these days, to the annoyance of some neighbors.

The Conjuring house

Currie, N.C.

In Rhode Island, where the reputedly haunted farmhouse that saw its story told in the 2013 hit movie is located, the owners of the Conjuring house are very much over The Conjuring. In North Carolina, where the welcome mat seems to be always out for Hollywood, Pender Countys tourism site gives you the address to the 4,840-square-foot single-family home in Currie that stood in for the original possessed house: 405 Canetuck Road.

The abandoned pavilion from Carnival of Souls

Magna, Utah

A post shared by Spencer White (@spencerlagrand) on Mar 31, 2015 at 8:41pm PDT

Should you find yourself on the southern shores of Utahs Great Salt Lake, be sure to swing through the township of Magna (population: 26,505) and up to the concert venue known as the Great Saltair. If youre a cult-movie buff, then youll think you recognize the pavilions Moorish spires from the bleak 1962 black-and-white film, but youll be wrong. The Saltair featured in that film burned down in 1970; the current structure (the third version of the former amusement park site, actually) was erected in 1981. In any case, youll be standing where movie ghouls stood, so Score!

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The Bates Motel and Psycho house

Universal City, Calif.

Yes, these are exterior facades, and yes, theyre located on the Universal Studios backlot, and yes, theyve been nipped and tucked and moved around the lot, but theyre included here because theyre still the real deal. They were built for Alfred Hitchcocks original Psycho movie and used in sequels thereafter (though not in the recent Bates Motel series), and theyre accessible to the public nearly every day via the Universal Studios Hollywood tram tour.

The Exorcist house

Washington, D.C.

A post shared by LLcoolk (@llcoolk_nc) on Apr 25, 2014 at 12:57pm PDT

The brick house on Prospect Street in the capitals stately Georgetown neighborhood has been called a tourist mecca. In another lifetime, it served as the exterior of poor, possessed Regan MacNeils home from 1973s The Exorcist. According to USA Today, the black fence that now surrounds the property was erected to keep the movie-curious public at a distance.

Michael Myerss Halloween house

South Pasadena, Calif.

In Halloween lore, the franchise slasher hails from Haddonfield, Ill. In real life, Haddonfield doesnt exist, and filmmaker John Carpenter shot his original 1978 movie on a shoestring budget in the Los Angeles area, mainly South Pasadena. The key landmark is the Myers family abode, located back in the day on Meridian Avenue and now, after being saved from the wrecking ball and relocated down the road, on Mission Street. Formally known as the Century House, the structure is a local historic landmark and a business office.

The hotel from The Shining

Government Camp, Ore.

A post shared by @timberlinelodge on Nov 3, 2015 at 8:12am PST

In Stanley Kubricks 1980 adaptation of the Stephen King horror classic, Jack Nicholsons writer character lost his mind at Colorados creepy Overlook Hotel. You might lose your mind too, at the awesome sight of the Pacific Northwests 55,000-square-foot Timberline Lodge, which appeared in exterior shots as the Overlook. If you want the hotel that inspired Kings tale, then youll want to book a room at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo.

The Blair Witch Project village

Burkittsville, Md.

Its long been reported that the townsfolk of Burkittsville were not pleased when the original Blair Witch Project name-checked their humble home and made it a tourist destination  even though very little was filmed there. If you visit the village, about an hours drive east of Baltimore, then please mind your manners and seek out a Welcome sign  thats a rare piece of Burkittsville that was actually in Blair Witch. Were afraid the signs dont look like they did in the 1999 movie. The original ones were, sigh, stolen.

The Paranormal Activity house

San Diego, Calif.

The only thing supernatural about Oren Pelis former four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath house with a tidy, tidy front yard in San Diegos Rancho Penasquitos neighborhood is the abundance of good fortune it brought the filmmaker, who shot his 2009 breakout blockbuster here.

The apartment building from Rosemarys Baby

New York City

A post shared by MO (@nomad_mo) on Oct 15, 2017 at 1:31am PDT

This imposing 19th-century co-op at Central Park West and 72nd Street in Manhattans Upper West Side is the famous Dakota. It was already notable for its exclusivity and its tenants, including Hollywood legend Lauren Bacall, when it played the Bramford (in exterior shots) in the 1968 demonic hit. In 1980, the Dakotas legend took a sad real-life turn: John Lennon, who lived in the building with his wife, Yoko Ono, was shot to death at the 72nd Street entrance.

[Editor's note: This story was originally published Oct. 24, 2017.]
The father of a missing 3-year-old Texas girl has been arrested after police said he changed his account of how his daughter disappeared. The arrest comes a day after the not-yet-unidentified body of small child was recovered.

Authorities on Monday said they have charged Wesley Mathews with injury to a child  a first-degree felony  after Mathews showed up to the Richardson Police Station and gave an alternate statement of events about what happened to his daughter, Sherin Mathews.

Wesley Mathews initially said Sherin vanished Oct. 7 after he made her stand outside near a tree, in the middle of the night, as punishment for not drinking her milk, the Associated Press reported. Authorities said Mathews did not alert police about what happened to his daughter until about five hours after she went missing.

Police found the body of a small child Monday morning during a search for Sherin, but the body has not yet been officially identified. Sgt. Kevin Perlich told reporters the body was most likely her. The Dallas County Medical Examiners office did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.

Its unclear what Mathews told police in his new statement. The father was being held in jail with a $1 million bond Monday. He was initially arrested Saturday for abandoning or endangering a child, but had posted bond, Perlich told the AP.
Five teenagers have been charged as adults in the death of a Michigan man who was killed by a rock allegedly thrown off of an interstates overpass last week.

Kenneth Andrew White, 32, was traveling home from work along Interstate 75 in Vienna Township on Wednesday night when a 6-pound rock smashed through the windshield of the car he was riding in and struck him while he sat in the passenger seat, authorities said.

White, a father of four, died from blunt force trauma to the head and chest, Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton said Monday at a press conference.

This photo shows a hole left in the windshield of a car that Kenneth Andrew White had been riding in at the time of his fatal injury. (Photo: Genesee County Prosecutors Office)

The five suspects have been identified as Kyle Anger, 17; Mark Sekelsky, 16; Mikadyn Payne, 16; Trevor Gray, 15; and Alexander Miller, 15. They are all from Clio, Michigan, and face charges of second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit second-degree murder, six felony counts of malicious destruction of property, and two misdemeanor counts of malicious destruction of property.

All five entered not-guilty pleas and a judge declined to set a bond, The Associated Press reported.

These people should have known better. Under Michigan law, this is second-degree murder, Leyton said, later adding that that specific charge carries the potential of life behind bars.

From left: Kyle Anger, 17, Mikadyn Payne, 16, and Mark Sekelsky, 16, could face life behind bars. (Photo: Genesee County Prosecutors Office)

Leyton said a total of 20 rocks were recovered from the scene, the heaviest of which was nearly 20 pounds. Several other cars were damaged but no one else was injured.

You ought to know, a reasonable person would know, that thats creating a very high risk of bodily harm or death, Leyton said, referring to the speed limit of the interstate and the size of the rocks.

Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell told HuffPost that the suspects allegedly threw other items, including a spare tire, from another roads overpass before driving to the I-75 overpass where White was hit. Pickell said the suspects had collected the rocks in advance.

When we got the [911] call, there were already four cars that were pulled off of the highway because they had driven through a debris field, he said.

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From left: Alexander Miller, 15, and Trevor Gray, 15, could face life behind bars. (Photo: Genesee County Prosecutors Office)

Asked if the suspects have expressed any remorse for their actions, Pickell said theres a chance they may now that theyre in jail.

After their rock-throwing incident, they climbed back into the van and went to McDonalds and ate, he said.

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The rock that authorities say struck White is seen resting in a pocket along the car's door, which is splattered with blood. (Photo: Genesee County Prosecutors Office)

At Mondays press conference, Pickell praised Leyton for throwing the book at the suspects and setting an example.

Its not a prank; its second-degree murder. I dont think anybodys laughing, he said. You make a bad decision, you could be spending the rest of your life in prison. This is not a prank.

Frank Manley, Sekelskys attorney, told The Washington Post that he expected an ongoing investigation to unveil facts that would differentiate and distinguish everybodys culpability.

One-size justice does not fit all, Manley said. Its a broad brush theyve painted on everybody, but the facts are going to be more particular.

Kenneth Andrew White, 32, was killed by one of several rocks tossed off of an interstate's overpass last week, authorities said. (Photo: Genesee County Sheriffs Office)

Whites fiancee, Amiee Cagle, expressed both outrage and heartbreak over the incident that killed the father of her 5-year-old son.

He was a good man and a good father, she told WDIV Local 4 News. For some senseless act, for it to be just a rock, just to take him so soon. He took away a childs father, and the love of my life. His stupid act took away a life.

White lived in South Carolina for most of his life before moving to Michigan, according to an obituary. He worked as a construction worker and enjoyed sports, video games and the outdoors.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to help pay for Whites funeral expenses.

This article has been updated with additional details after the suspects were charged. Dominique Mosbergen contributed reporting.

Also on HuffPost

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
In Hollywood, its not uncommon for the actors playing a couple onscreen to transition into a real-life romance, even when theyre in a relationship with someone else.

The latest example is Fargo Season 3s Ewan McGregor and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who were photographed kissing at a London coffee shop in photos published Sunday. The Moulin Rouge star and his wife of 22 years, production designer Eve Mavrakis, share four kids, and, according to People, separated in May. Winstead and her husband of seven years, writer and director Riley Stearns, announced, quite amicably, they would be ending their marriage the same month.

Here are a some other couples who began dating amid controversy after hooking up on screen.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie

Who can forget the drama that went on when the stars of sexy, 2005 action film Mr. and Mrs. Smith stars became a real-life couple (just as he ended his marriage to Jennifer Aniston)? Jolie later explained what happened to People this way: Because of the film, we ended up being brought together to do all these crazy things, and I think we found this strange friendship and partnership that kind of just suddenly happened. I think a few months in I realized, God, I cant wait to get to work.  Anything we had to do with each other, we just found a lot of joy in it together and a lot of real teamwork. We just became kind of a pair. Jolie insisted in the same interview that she and Pitt were only good friends until the official Aniston split in January 2005. Pitt and Jolie eventually married before breaking up in 2016.

Billy Crudup and Claire Danes

The 2004 movie Stage Beauty paired Danes with Crudup, who was living with six-months-pregnant girlfriend Mary-Louise Parker. When Crudup left Parker for Danes, the younger actress faced public backlash. I just was in love with him and needed to explore that and was 24, Danes told Howard Stern in 2015. Didnt quite know what those consequences might be. Its OK. I went through it. Danes and Crudup split in 2006.

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LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian

There could easily have been a TV movie made about the coupling of Rimes and Cibrian on the set of the 2009 Lifetime movie Northern Lights. She left her husband of six years, Dean Sheremet, and Cibrian ended it with Brandi Glanville, his wife of seven years and the mother of his two kids. I understand why people are disappointed in me, especially since I grew up as Americas Sweetheart, Rimes told Shape in 2010. I think any relationship is hard to get out of, and I dont think the way I did it was right. Rimes and Cibrian married in April 2011, and theyve yet to stop feuding publicly with his ex. In fact, Glanville and Sheremet have become friends and co-starred in the reality show My Kitchen Rules this year.

Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott

Lifetime movies have a way of wrecking relationships, as appeared to be the case when Spelling, married to Charlie Shanian, and McDermott, wed to Mary Jane Eustace, co-starred in the 2005 TV flick Mind Over Murder. Spelling would later reveal the two had fallen head over heels for each other and had sex the first night they met. They married in 2006, and, despite some very public struggles on various reality shows over the years, the couple are still together and share five children.

Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe

Months before the 2000 movie Proof of Life hit theaters, the tabloids were all over Ryan and Crowe. Amid rumors the stars were getting cozy while shooting on location in the Ecuadorian jungle, Dennis Quaid, Ryans husband and the father of her son, Jack, filed for divorce. The movie flopped  something that was blamed on the romance  and Ryan, known for her roles in rom-coms such as Sleepless in Seattle, was treated like the Scarlet Woman, she told ABC in October 2000. Alas, she and Crowe were dunzo by December.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton

Old Hollywood is filled with tales of movie stars falling in love on set, but the most infamous has to be the story of Taylor and Burton when they starred together in 1963s Cleopatra. The paparazzi could not get enough of the two on the set together, playing the title character and Mark Antony  this even though she was married to Eddie Fisher (Carries dad) and Burton was married to wife of 14 years, Sybil Williams. The affair so captivated the world that it was condemned by the Vatican. The relationship lasted through two marriages  two!  from 1964 to 1974 and from 1975 to 1976, during which they made Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a movie about a bitter, hard-drinking couple, which had some similarities with the real-life couple known for arguing in public.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
Johannesburg (AFP) - South Africa's murder rate rose by 1.8 percent in the last year, with over 19,000 people killed across the country -- 52 a day -- official statistics released Tuesday showed.

The eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, which is hit by political violence, recorded the highest number of murders, followed by Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria.

"Over the past four financial years, murder has reflected an upward trend. We need a combative and decisive policing when we deal with such crimes," said Police Minister Fikile Mbalula.

A total of 19,016 were killed between April 2016 to March 2017, up from 18,673 the previous year.

"We must not see these statistics just as pure numbers," Mbalula told lawmakers in parliament as he delivered the official statistics.

"Behind the numbers are real feelings, real lives, real hurt, real harm, real losses, deaths."

In the Western Cape, which includes the gang-ridden city of Cape Town, gang-related killings accounted for 19.3 percent of all murders in the province.

A total of 39,828 rapes were reported in the past year -- 109 a day -- down from 41,503.

There were also 16,717 reported carjacking incidents, the highest number recorded in the last 10 years.

The opposition Democratic Alliance questioned whether crime was actually worse than the official figures due under-reporting in the country of 56 million people.

South African police often come under fire for failing to bring down crime levels, although officials insist that the numbers have been declining from before the end of apartheid in 1994.
Say bonjour to your new favorite reason to indulge in a glass of wine.

A small study published last week in the Journal of Psychopharmacology shows that a small amount of alcohol can help people speak a foreign language better. Researchers found that imbibing helped people speak a non-native language more fluently, even when they didnt think they were doing that well.

The studys authors observed 50 native German speakers who were attending a university in the Netherlands, where classes were taught in Dutch. Each person in the study indicated that they drank alcohol on occasion. The participants had also recently passed a Dutch proficiency test.

Each volunteer was asked to engage in a two-minute recorded conversation with an interviewer in Dutch. Half of the volunteers were given alcohol before the chat, and the other half were given water. The amount of alcohol varied depending on the persons body type. (For example, a 150-pound man was given slightly under a pints worth of beer.)

The conversations were then reviewed by two native Dutch speakers, who werent told which participants had drunk alcohol and which hadnt. The participants were also asked to rate their own performances.

Those whod had alcohol didnt rate their performance any better than those whod had water, indicating that they didnt necessarily feel more confident in their fluency than the water-drinkers.

However, the native Dutch speakers saw it differently. They ranked the alcohol drinkers as being more fluent in Dutch than those who drank water  specifically, when it came to pronunciation. On metrics like vocabulary and grammar, the native Dutch speakers said, the two groups were comparable.

There are some caveats here. The amount of alcohol is key, for starters. Researchers theorize that drinking too much can have the opposite effect, making proficiency in another language worse due to slurred words. Its also not clear what the participants stress levels or emotional states were at the time  factors that can help or impede a persons performance. The studys authors note that this experiment should be conducted with other foreign languages to see if the same effect occurs.

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Still, the researchers concluded that a little liquid courage can help when it comes to fluency.

Dont drink? There are other options

If a little chardonnay isnt your thing, there are certainly other ways to get better at speaking a new language. Give one of these a try:

Prioritize rest.

Theres some evidence to suggest that your brain can learn new information while you slumber. This doesnt necessarily mean you can learn Spanish as you drift off, but research has shown that a persons brain can learn and understand new noise patterns even while theyre asleep. The results suggest that hitting the hay is vital for brain power, also. Its a start, right?

Get motivated.

Research shows that a persons level of motivation correlates with proficiency success when learning a new language. If you want to become fluent, get serious about it.

Jot down the words youre learning.

Writing during the learning process can help the brain retain new information. Studies show that when students take notes using pen and paper, theyre better able to recall the information from memory than when they take notes on a laptop.

Study another subject in the new language.

A study of high school students who were learning French found that when the students also took another class taught in French, the students were more motivated to learn French and tested better for listening skills in the language.

The more you know!

Also on HuffPost

Try the "chocolate meditation" technique. This allows you to fully savor the sweet treat. Instructions here.

Write your worries down in a journal.

Peel an orange. Studies show the smell of citrus can help reduce stress.

Read a book for six minutes.

Eat an avocado. The monounsaturated fats and potassium in the superfood can lower blood pressure.

Take a walk in green space.

Hang out with your BFF.

Spend a few minutes focusing on your breath.

Take a power nap.

Bring your dog to work. Research suggests having Fido in the office can lower stress levels throughout the day.

Listen to Mozart.

Try some aromatherapy. One 2009 study found it's an effective stress-relief technique, especially for high school students.

Let out a laugh.

Get a massage.

Give someone a big hug.

Belt it out at karaoke...

...Or sing in your church choir.

Do a small project or craft.

Take up knitting. Research shows the activity puts your brain in a state of flow similar to the one achieved through meditation.

Speaking of which, try a little mindfulness meditation.

Have sex.

Unsubscribe from all of those promotional emails.

Kiss a loved one.

Call your mom.

Do a progressive muscle relaxation exercise.

Take an email vacation. (Bonus: It also makes you more productive.)

Think about something you're grateful for.

Exercise. Research shows it helps boost the body's ability to handle stress.

Be mindful of how you deal with frustration during an argument.

Drink black tea.

Power down that smartphone for a few minutes.

Walk the walk. Research shows if you carry yourself like a happy person, you'll feel happier, too.

Drink some orange juice.

Chew gum.

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Amal and George Clooney - Reuters

George Clooney has disclosed that his wife Amal, the high profile human rights lawyer, faced sexual harassment in the legal world.

The actor's comments came as he discussed the fallout from allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein that sent shockwaves through Hollywood in recent weeks.

"The whole culture of this is going to have to stop. This isn't just showbiz, it's everywhere. It isn't just Fox News, it's in (Washington) DC clearly," Clooney told US television.

"My wife, who is a human rights lawyer, says she's faced those exact kinds of situations in law. So it's everywhere, it needs to be addressed as a problem for all of us.

Clooney added: "My wife is a very smart, very together, very accomplished human rights lawyer and she said There have been times in my life, in the law community, I had to tell someone to knock it off'. So it happens everywhere."

The actor gave no details of harassment encountered by his British-Lebanese wife in the legal world.

Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney with Yazidi survivor Nadia Murad Credit: Lucas Jackson

Discussing Weinstein he added that "Harvey's going to get his and deserves it," and said other people in the industry had helped the producer.

Clooney said: "I want to know who took women up to a hotel room and then left them there for Harvey. I want to know who did that."

Meanwhile, fellow actor Matt Damon said he had known about an incident in which Gwyneth Paltrow said she was harassed by Weinstein.

Paltrow recently described how, when she was 22, the studio chief summoned her to his hotel room and tried to get her to give him a massage.

She told her then boyfriend Brad Pitt, who confronted Weinstein. Paltrow later had a relationship with Damon's friend Ben Affleck.

Damon said: "I knew the story about Gwyneth from Ben. I knew that story. But I was working with Gwyneth and with Harvey on the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley.

"I never talked to Gwyneth about it but Ben told me that whatever or agreement they had come to there was an understanding. And he treated her incredibly respectfully. Always."
A court in Rwanda has denied a bail application for Paul Kagames critic Diane Rwigara, her mother and sister detained in the East African nation since September 22, local media reports.

Diane Shima Rwigara, 35, a leading critic of President Paul Kagame, has been charged with inciting insurrection after she was barred from challenging Kagame in last August elections. She is also accused of forging the registration papers for the election.

Rwigaras mother Adeline and Sister Anne have also been charged with incitement, discrimination and sectarianism. The trio have said charges against them are politically motivated.

Rwigara was the only female challenger in August elections, which Kagame won by a landslide 98.8%.

Diane Shima Rwigara, an accountant, has repeatedly accused Kagame of stifling dissent.

Kagame enjoys huge popularity in Rwanda, which has seen strong economic growth in recent years and improved standards of living.

The former military strongman is praised for turning around the countrys fortune. But rights groups say he has muzzled independent media and suppressed opponents.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a report titled Rwanda Post-Election Political Crackdown and released at the end of September, accused the Rwandan authorities of arresting, forcibly disappearing, and threatening political opponents since the August 2017 presidential elections.
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain on Monday condemned the ongoing controversy surrounding President Donald Trumps call to the grieving widow of a fallen soldier.

We should not be fighting about a brave American who lost his life serving his country, McCain said during an appearance on The View. That should not be the topic of discussion in America today.

Army Sgt. La David Johnson was one of four U.S. service members killed in Niger earlier this month. Trump has been under fire ever since Florida Democratic Rep. Ferderica Wilson said Trump told Johnsons widow that her husband knew what he signed up for  an account Trump has denied but one the widow has confirmed. Myeshia Johnson, the soldiers widow, said Trumps call made her very angry.

There have also been questions about exactly what happened to the soldiers in Niger. Many of the details around Johnsons death remain unclear, but the Washington Post reported that a group of eight to 12 U.S. soldiers was ambushed by about 50 militants as they were escorting local troops on Oct. 4 when a firefight broke out.

McCain said he would like to get more information about what happened to the fallen soldiers. Americans should know whats going on in Niger, he said on Monday. Unless you learn the lessons, youre going to repeat them.
WASHINGTON  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with an undocumented pregnant teenager in a nationally watched case on Tuesday, ordering that she could obtain an abortion. The decision, by the full court of appeals, overrules a divided ruling issued last week by a panel of three federal appeals court judges sitting on the court.

By majority rule, the federal appeals court judges said that a lower appeals court should reissue an order that allowed the undocumented teen to obtain an abortion. The majority ruling said the district court was best suited to promptly determine in the first instance the appropriate dates for compliance with the injunction and that the court would retain full discretion to conduct proceedings and make any factual findings deemed necessary and appropriate to the district courts exercise of its equitable judgment.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America and coalition partners protest last week for Jane Doe's right to get an abortion. (Photo: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The case involves Jane Doe, a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant from a country where abortion is outlawed. Doe, who is now about 16 weeks pregnant, received permission from a state judge to receive an abortion back on Sept. 25, and her abortion has now been delayed for a month as she has moved into her second trimester. Delaying the abortion longer would increase health risks to the 17-year-old and threaten her ability to get an abortion at all. In Texas, where she is in government custody, abortion is illegal after 20 weeks.

In a dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a George W. Bush appointee who was on Trumps shortlist for the Supreme Court, said the majority ruling amounted to allowing unlawful immigrant minors to have an immediate abortion on demand. He wrote that the case was novel and highly fraught and that he thought the panel of three judges made the right decision.

The majority seems to think that the United States has no good reason to want to transfer an unlawful immigrant minor to an immigration sponsor before the minor has an abortion. But consider the circumstances here. The minor is alone and without family or friends. She is in a U.S. Government detention facility in a country that, for her, is foreign. She is 17 years old. She is pregnant and has to make a major life decision, he wrote. Is it really absurd for the United States to think that the minor should be transferred to her immigration sponsor  ordinarily a family member, relative, or friend  before she makes that decision?

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The teen has been in U.S. government custody for nearly two months and two people have been ruled out as potential sponsors. Attorneys said they are unsure whether anyone else is available in the near future.

The Trump administration has refused to allow her to leave government custody to get an abortion, instead sending her to a crisis pregnancy center where she was urged not to terminate the pregnancy. A government attorney said officials are not blocking her access to abortion  she could leave the country to get one, even though it would take her out of immigration proceedings and the procedure is illegal in her native country. The attorney also said she could find a U.S. sponsor, which is out of her hands and controlled by the government.

Judge Patricia Millett, who dissented from the prior ruling by the panel, said the decision by the full court rights a grave constitutional wrong by the government.

Remember, we are talking about a child here. A child who is alone in a foreign land. A child who, after her arrival here in a search for safety and after the government took her into custody, learned that she is pregnant. [Jane Doe] then made a considered decision, presumably in light of her dire circumstances, to terminate that pregnancy. Her capacity to make the decision about what is in her best interests by herself was approved by a Texas court consistent with state law. She did everything that Texas law requires to obtain an abortion. That has been undisputed in this case, Millett wrote.

Millett said the Trump administration had bulldozed over constitutional lines by contending that Jane Doe should be forced to leave the country if she wanted an abortion.

Surely the mere act of entry into the United States without documentation does not mean that an immigrants body is no longer her or his own. Nor can the sanction for unlawful entry be forcing a child to have a baby, Millett wrote. The bedrock protections of the Fifth Amendments Due Process Clause cannot be that shallow.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Jane Doe, argued the government was violating her constitutional right to an abortion.

Last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan sided with them and ordered the government to allow Jane Doe to obtain an abortion promptly and without delay.

The next day, however, the appeals court again delayed her abortion so it could hear the case. The panel then ruled that the government could continue to block the teen from getting an abortion until at least Oct. 31, so long as it searched for a sponsor in the U.S. to take her in.

Blocking Jane Does abortion is part of a larger pattern from the Trump administration.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement, which takes custody of unaccompanied minors apprehended at the border and finds sponsors to take them in, has created new anti-abortion policies under President Donald Trump. Since at least March, the office has disallowed shelters from taking minors to terminate their pregnancies without the approval of its anti-abortion director, E. Scott Lloyd.

Under the previous administration, ORR directors were only involved in decision-making with regard to the use of federal funds for abortions for victims of rape and incest, or if the life of the mother was at risk.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement has taken other measures to deter abortion as well. The agency sent Jane Doe to a crisis pregnancy center where she was urged to reconsider her decision, and barred her from recreational activities, according to her attorneys. Other minors have received direct pressure from ORR officials  including Lloyd himself  not to get abortions.

Read the court order below:

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Clark (Philippines) (AFP) - Australia will train Filipino soldiers in urban warfare to combat the spread of Islamic extremism after months of fierce fighting against militants in the southern Philippines, it was announced Tuesday.

Canberra has since September been helping Manila battle local supporters of the Islamic State group in the southern city of Marawi, deploying two AP-3C Orion aircraft for surveillance while helping in information-gathering and analysis.

Defence chiefs in the Philippines on Monday declared victory after a five-month battle that claimed more than 1,100 lives and destroyed large parts of the city.

While the victory ended immediate fears that the Islamic State would establish a Southeast Asian base in Marawi, concerns remain about its longer-term intentions and capabilities for the region.

Australia has experience tackling the group in Iraq and Syria and Defence Minister Marise Payne said it was crucial the Philippines had the expertise to keep extremists at bay now that the key fight had been won.

She said Canberra would immediately send teams composed of 80 troops to provide urban warfare counter-terrorism training at Philippine military bases.

"The practical training the Australian Defence Force will provide will ensure the Philippines defence force is better able to counter the brutal tactics being employed by terrorists," she told reporters on the sidelines of a regional security meeting in Clark, a northern Philippine city.

"Globally we have seen the effect of extremist ideology and terrorist threats on millions of civilians and it is alarming to see this disruption come to our region."

Payne said the spread of Islamic State-inspired terrorism was a direct threat to Australia and its interests, and Canberra was determined it "cannot establish a geographic foothold in the region".

Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana welcomed Australia's "invaluable support", saying the military would use the assistance to replicate the training locally.

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"While we need troops now to be trained on urban warfare, we also need to build our capacity to train our troops. Part of our programme that we are going to do in the near future is to build our urban (warfare training) centres," Lorenzana said.

The two sides will also work together to enhance intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in the south.

They will also bolster maritime security engagement and bilateral maritime patrols and co-host a seminar on efforts to recover from conflict.

Hundreds of local and foreign gunmen who had pledged allegiance to IS rampaged through Marawi, the principal Islamic city in the mainly Catholic Philippines, on May 23.

They then took over parts of the city using civilians as human shields.

About 400,000 residents were displaced as near-daily air strikes and intense ground combat left large parts of the city in ruins.
Republican Senator Bob Corker and Donald Trump have engaged in a dramatic exchange, with the two Republicans sparring with one another in a scene that is rarely seen between a member of Congress and a president of the same party.

In an interview with CNN, Mr Corker said that Mr Trump is not a positive role model for Americas children, and said that he has difficulty with the truth, amongst other barbs. Mr Trump, meanwhile, repeatedly criticized Mr Corker on Twitter, saying that he was a poor politician, and accusing him of supporting the Iran nuclear deal (Mr Corker opposed that bill).

Read below to see what Mr Corker had to say Tuesday morning.

MR CORKER: We grew up in our family not using the L word, okay? But theyre provable untruths. Provable. So, I mean, on the Iran deal: Everybody knows the role I played there. And theyre working with me, interestingly, right now on tax reform. I made the deal with [Pennsylvania Senator Pat] Toomey that has allowed that to go forward, obviously I want to make sure its done properly. But, and then everything else. I mean, four times he encouraged me to run, and told me hed endorse me. So, I dont know, its amazing. Unfortunately, I think world leaders are very aware that much of what he says is untrue. Certainly people here are because these things are provably untrue. I mean, theyre just factually incorrect, and people know the difference. So, I dont know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and debases our country in the way that he does, but he does and, you know, look, I dont like responding. You can let them go unanswered, but its just not me to, we dont do tweets like that. Weve responded twice to, again, untruths, but its unfortunate that our nation finds itself in this place.

CNN: Is the President of the United States a liar?

MR CORKER: The president has great difficulty with the truth on many issues.

indCNN: Do you regret supporting him in the election?

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MR CORKER: Uhh, well lets just put it this way: I would not do that again.

CNN: You wouldnt support him again?

MR CORKER: No way. No way. No I, I think that hes proven himself unable to rise to the occasion. I think many of us, me included, have tried to, you know, Ive intervened, Ive had a private dinner. Ive been with him on multiple occasions to create some kind of aspirational approach if you will to the way he conducts himself. But I dont think that thats possible, and hes obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president.

CNN: Do you think hes a role model to children in the United States?

MR CORKER: No.

CNN: You dont?

MR CORKER: No, absolutely not. I think that, you know, the things that are happening right now that are harmful to our nation. Whether its the breaking down of  were gonna be doing some hearings on some of the things that he purposefully is breaking down relationships we have around the world that have been useful to our nation. But, I think at the end of the day when his term is over, I think the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth telling, just the name calling, the things, like, I think the debasement of our nation will be what he will be remembered most for, and thats regretful, and it affects young people. I mean, we have young people who for the fist time are watching a president stating absolute non-truth non-stop, personalizing things in the way that he does, and its very sad for our nation.
The public feud between Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and President Donald Trump continued to escalate on Tuesday.

The GOP senator, who warned earlier this month that Trumps behavior could lead to World War III, told CNN that he believes the presidents legacy will be the debasement of our nation.

Hes obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president, Corker said. I think at the end of the day, when his term is over, I think the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth-telling, just the name-calling  I think the debasement of our nation will be what hell be remembered most for. And thats regretful.

.@mkraju: Is President Trump a role model to children in the United States?



Sen. Bob Corker: No absolutely not. https://t.co/dYIEvB6XiP pic.twitter.com/xMEptf8uKt  CNN (@CNN) October 24, 2017

Corker supported Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign, but has since become one of the presidents most outspoken critics among Senate Republicans. He has condemned Trump over his rhetoric toward North Korea as well his response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August.

Corker told CNN that Trump is absolutely not a role model to U.S. children, and when asked if he would support him in another election, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman said no way.

Lets just put it this way: I would not do that again, Corker said of supporting Trump. I think many of us  me included  have tried to intervene ... to try to create some kind of aspirational approach, if you will, to the way that he conducts himself. But I dont think thats possible.

Hours earlier, Corker doubled down on his concern over the presidents inability to lead during an appearance on NBCs Today show.

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I think that there are people around him that work in an effort to contain him, Corker said when asked if Trump was a threat to national security. That would be [Secretary of Defense James Mattis] and [Secretary of State Rex Tillerson] and Gen. [John] Kelly there as chief of staff.

WATCH: "Left to his own devices, do you think the president is a threat to national security?" @savannahguthrie asks @SenBobCorker pic.twitter.com/GxFFZvUTeU  TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 24, 2017

When you kneecap your secretary of state, whose diplomacy you have to depend upon ... you really move our country into a binary choice, which could lead to a world war, he continued. So, yes, I want him to support diplomatic efforts  not embarrass and really malign efforts that are underway.

Trump is scheduled to have lunch Tuesday with the Senate GOP to discuss tax reform. But Corker dismissed the meeting as a photo op.

I think its fine for him to come over, he said. I do look at these things as more of a photo op. Theyre not really about substance, but, you know, more power to him.

Minutes earlier during an appearance on ABCs Good Morning America, Corker defended another statement earlier this month that likened the White House to an adult day care center.

I dont make comments I havent thought about, Corker said. I would just like [Trump] to leave it to the professionals for a while and see if we can do something thats constructive for our country, the region and the world.

"I would just like for [Pres. Trump] to leave it to the professionals for a while." - Senator Bob Corker on President and North Korea pic.twitter.com/qQiC2NwjIX  Good Morning America (@GMA) October 24, 2017

Trump lashed out at Corker in a series of tweets just hours after the Republican lawmakers TV appearances Tuesday.

Corker dropped out of the race in Tennessee when I refused to endorse him, Trump tweeted, and now is only negative on anything Trump.

Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

...Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Corker quickly fired back by tweeting that Trump is an utterly untruthful president.

Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff  Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) October 24, 2017

This article has been updated with more quotes from Corker.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - The body of a toddler found in a culvert beneath a Texas road was likely that of a 3-year-old girl reported missing after her father said he punished her for not drinking her milk by making her stand alone outside at night, police said on Monday.

Police in Richardson, a suburb of Dallas, said the father, Wesley Mathews, 37, was arrested on a new charge of injury to a child, a felony punishable by up to 99 years in prison.

Mathews has already been charged for suspected child endangerment for the treatment of his daughter, Sherin, who went missing in about two weeks ago.

He was released on bond at that time and voluntarily surrendered to police on the new charge on Monday and is now being held in jail on a $1 million bond, said police.

The body was found on Sunday with the help of search dogs about a half mile from the family's house in Richardson.

"It is most likely her," Richardson Police Sergeant Kevin Perlich said, referring to the missing child.

Mathews told police that he disciplined Sherin, who was born in India and adopted by the family, by making her stand near an alley behind their residence, according to an arrest affidavit.

The father told police he checked on her about 15 minutes later and she was gone, the affidavit said, adding he told police he had once seen coyotes in the alley.

About five hours after sending her outside, Mathews called police to report her missing, it said.

A phone call to Mathews' attorney on Monday was not immediately returned.

"We are still awaiting a positive identification from the Dallas County Medical Examiners office for the child's body found yesterday, believed to be Sherin Mathews," the Richardson Police Department said in a statement.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; editing by Diane Craft)
President Xi Jinping was formally handed a second term Wednesday, with no clear successor emerging in a revamped ruling council, cementing his grip on power and setting the stage for him to dominate China for decades to come.

In a highly choreographed event, Xi led the new members of the elite Politburo Standing Committee in front of television cameras at Beijing's massive Great Hall of the People after their selection by 204 party officials in a closed-door vote.

Xi, 64, secured a second five-year term as general secretary of the Communist Party after his political theory was enshrined in its constitution, giving him an inviolable mandate to rule and possibly positioning him to retain power for much longer.

He was also reappointed head of the country's Central Military Commission.

Premier Li Keqiang, 62, retained his seat on the seven-member committee while five other men -- all little known outside China -- replaced comrades who had reached an informal retirement age of 68.

In a speech, as the other members stood expressionless in dark suits, Xi heralded a "new era" for the country under his rule and said the party "must get a new look and more importantly make new accomplishments."

But the new ruling council looked decidedly old, raising doubts that any could succeed Xi.

"Xi Jinping doesn't want to share power. He doesn't want someone breathing down his neck, preparing the succession," Jean-Pierre Cabestan, China specialist at Hong Kong Baptist University, told AFP.

"He wants to keep pressure on everybody and enjoy power for five or 10 years without having his hands tied."

All the committee's members are at least 60 years of age. Under the current rules, they would be too old to serve the customary two terms as the party's leader at the next congress in 2022.

Xi was elevated to the committee in 2007, when he was 54, and succeeded Hu Jintao as general secretary and president five years later.

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- 'Xi Thought' -

The new committee members are Xi confidant Li Zhanshu, 67, vice premier Wang Yang, 62, leading Communist Party theoretician Wang Huning, 62, party organisation department head Zhao Leji, 60, and Shanghai party chief Han Zheng, 63.

Zhao, a Xi ally, was also appointed as head of the anti-corruption agency, which has brought down 1.5 million officials including several of the presidents rivals since 2012.

Despite their promotion to the nation's highest leadership circle, they are likely to have much less influence than their predecessors under a newly empowered Xi.

His reappointment capped a twice-a-decade congress of the Communist Party that gave him a freer hand to accomplish his ambition of turning China into a global superpower with a world-class military by mid-century.

The constitutional amendment to include "Xi Thought", which the congress passed Tuesday, has put Xi in the rarefied company of the nation's founder Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping, the architect of its economic reforms.

"He will use this boost to push forward his ambitious agenda," said Matthias Stepan of Germany's Mercator Institute for China Studies.

"It will guarantee him a place in the history books."

The accolade firmly establishes Xi as the country's locus of power, potentially upending the collective model of leadership promoted by Deng and embraced by Xi's two predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, who both stepped down after two terms.

- Anti-graft crusade -

In the past two administrations, decisions were the result of horse-trading and consultation among members of the standing committee, the council of party elders which has led China since Deng's death in 1997.

But with his name in the constitution, Xi has become the nation's ultimate authority, likely giving him the last word on all major decisions.

The document's "all-round embracing of Xi's thought reflects the high degree of consensus the Party has built around its leadership core," the state-run China Daily wrote in an editorial Wednesday.

During his speech, Xi called for ever stricter management of the party, suggesting his grip on power will only increase.

Over the last five years, he has waged a ruthless campaign on official corruption, but party discipline is "a journey to which there is no end," he said, calling on members to "rid ourselves of any virus that erodes the party's fabric."

At least one important figure did not make the cut, as Xi's right-hand man Wang Qishan, 69, vacated his standing committee seat.

Analysts had thought the leader of the country's anti-corruption campaign might be kept on in defiance of the party's unofficial guideline that cadres retire at 68.

The BBC, The Economist, the Financial Times, The Guardian and the New York Times were denied invitations to cover the unveiling despite wide access granted to other news outlets, according to the Foreign Correspondents Club of China.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that these media organisations have been singled out to send a message, it said in a statement, adding that using access as a tool to punish journalists violated principles of press freedom.
Beijing (AFP) - Xi Jinping was elevated to the pantheon of China's most powerful leaders Tuesday as his name was enshrined in the Communist Party constitution alongside Chairman Mao.

The inclusion of Xi's eponymous guiding philosophy at the end of a week-long congress could set him on course for an indefinite term as China's paramount leader.

He will now have an even stronger hand to lead the nation into a "new era" in which he envisions it becoming a global superpower with a world-class military by mid-century.

Communist China's founder Mao Zedong, and the architect of its market reforms, Deng Xiaoping, are the only other Chinese leaders to have their names in the constitution -- and only Mao was alive when his was included.

Xi, 64, presided over the congress's closing session where some 2,300 delegates approved the constitutional amendment to include "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era".

The concept places a heavy emphasis on the party's role in governing every aspect of the country, from the economy to what people are writing on social media.

"We must work tirelessly and forge ahead on the journey of realising the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," Xi, who is due to be reappointed as party chief on Wednesday, told the congress in concluding remarks.

The honour may allow Xi to stay on as China's top leader even if he gives up the title of party general secretary when his second term ends in 2022 as tradition demands, analysts said.

Or he could carry on as party leader. Xi's time as national president must end in 2023 but there is no official restriction on how long a party chief can serve -- although Xi's two immediate predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, stepped down after two five-year terms.

Jiang and Hu had their concepts included in the constitution, but without their names and only when they retired.

"China has a tradition of combining emperor and teacher, which means that the emperor is also the thought leader. Xi achieved it at the end of his first term. That's rare in our history," Chinese political scholar Hu Xingdou told AFP.

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Xi also managed to get at least two of his cherished programmes written into the constitution: an anti-corruption campaign that has brought down 1.5 million crooked officials since 2012 and the Belt and Road initiative, the massive global trade infrastructure project intended to increase China's influence abroad.

The congress declared the Communist Party China's "absolute leader", a clear sign that it intends to further tighten its grip on the country.

"Those who approve, raise your hands," Xi said during the vote as a flurry of arms shot up in unison. When he asked if anyone was not in favour, shouts of "None!" echoed in the imposing Great Hall of the People.

"Now our country is unified, cohesive, and moving up in the world," northeast Jilin province delegate Li Hualiang told AFP.

- 'New era' -

The congress also elected a new 204-member Central Committee, which included just 10 women. It will elect the party's new ruling council, the Politburo Standing Committee, on Wednesday.

Xi is certain to secure a second five-year term as general secretary and could also consolidate his power by filling the standing committee with allies, possibly without even presenting an obvious heir apparent.

A vast security apparatus was thrown around the congress, with businesses ranging from nightclubs to gyms closing to avoid any incidents and factories shuttered in what turned out to be a failed attempt to clear the city's notorious smog.

When he opened the gathering last week, Xi declared that China had entered a "new era" with the ambitious goal of becoming a "global leader" by mid-century.

Xi has sought to portray himself as a responsible global leader while US President Donald Trump trumpets a nationalist "America First" policy and the European Union grapples with Britain's exit.

His blueprint foresees no change in the single-party political system, and gives no sign that crackdowns on human rights activists will ease.

Some of his goals, such as building a modern military by 2035, go beyond the end of his second term, a hint that he sees himself at the centre of China's political life for years to come.

At the closing session, Xi said the congress established "the goal of securing a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and then embarking on a journey to fully build a modern socialist China".

- 'Full control' -

Despite Xi's rising power, the composition of the Politburo Standing Committee, the body that controls power, will still be crucial to his efforts, said Willy Lam, politics professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Xi and Premier Li Keqiang are expected to remain on the committee while the five other current members are supposed to step down under an informal retirement age set at 68.

There is no agreement among China-watchers about who will end up on the committee, or if anybody will emerge as a potential successor.

If the right allies are named, Lam said, it would show that "he has full control over the Politburo Standing Committee".
The Togolese government on Monday requested the cancelation of the summit of lOrganisation Internationale de la Francophonie scheduled for next month in the West African tiny nation, local media reports.

No reason was given for the decision even though it is widely believed to be linked to recent political protests in the country.

Togo has recently been shaken by anti-government protests demanding the resignation of the president and an immediate end to the Gnassingbe ruling dynasty.

The OIF summit, the highest Francophonie authority, is held every two years and gathers the Heads of state and government of all member countries of the OIF. The Summit serves to develop strategies and goals of the Francophonie so as to ensure the organizations influence on the world scene.

This years summit was expected to discuss Maritime Economy, Security, Safety and Development.

African countries last year adopted a binding charter on maritime security and safety in Lome. The charter initiated by Togo was approved at an extraordinary summit of the African Union.

The OIF is meant to embody the active solidarity between its 84 member states (58 members and 26 observers), which together represent over one-third of the United Nations member states.
Chicago (AFP) - Donald Trump's detractors may label him one of the world's most powerful bullies, but that did not discourage America's first lady from championing the fight against bullying at a Detroit area school on Monday.

Melania Trump has publicly embraced the anti-bullying cause at the risk of drawing unfavorable parallels with a president who routinely resorts to brutal personal attacks and name-calling both on and off social media.

"I think it's important that we choose kindness and compassion," she told students at Orchard Lake Middle School, in a Detroit suburb, during a visit made as part of National Bullying Prevention Month.

"I encourage you to find a new friend," the first lady told the children. "Ask them what they like, what their hobbies are, so nobody becomes sad or stressed and everybody feels included."

Melania Trump, the mother of the president's youngest child, 11-year-old Barron, pledged during the 2016 campaign to make the fight against bullying a priority as first lady, and addressed the issue during a speech at the United Nations in September.

But her choice of a cause to champion has consistently raised eyebrows.

On the campaign trail, Trump displayed a propensity to attack personal traits of his opponents -- be it their stature, ethnic origin or even in one notorious case the physical disability of a reporter -- and since taking office has been regularly accused of using the presidency as a bully pulpit.

To hammer the point home, the Washington Post ran an annotated version of Melania Trump's statement on Monday's visit -- linking to more than a dozen tweets in which Trump variously labelled his opponents with the terms "loser, "idiot," "dummy," "failed," "moron," "dope."
While legislative bodies around the globe  from cities in Australia and Argentina to those in the United States, including Washington, D.C.  have been slowly finding ways to support moms wanting to breastfeed on the job, a city in Wisconsin appears determined to do the opposite.

Catherine Emmanuelle, of Eau Claire, Wisc., aims to stop a resolution meant to ban breastfeeding on the City Council dais. (Photo: Facebook/Catherine Emmanuelle)

At least that seems to be the message being sent from the city of Eau Claire to Catherine Emmanuelle, a two-term City Council member there who has been banned from breastfeeding her infant son while sitting in her legislative seat in council chambers.

I am really perplexed about why the council is focused on how the city is going to put up barriers for particular people versus how we can take down barriers and fold young people into the process, Emmanuelle, 37, tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

When the council member was nearly eight months pregnant, she says, she approached City Council President Kerry Kincaid to say that breastfeeding was important to her and to ask if the council could find a way to support her possibly having to nurse during council sessions. I was told no, she says.

Instead, since her 11-month-old son was just nine days old, Emmanuelle has been nursing him for biweekly meetings within council chambers  but while sitting, at the request of Kincaid, in the public seating area and behind the city clerk, away from her official legislative seat.

During these times, I did not have access to a microphone, ability to ask questions, engage in debate, offer amendments, or have face-to-face contact when citizens were addressing the council she explained in a public Facebook post on Monday. It has become clear that in order to effectively govern, and effectively parent my child, I cannot continue to sit away from my legislative seat when I need to take care of/nurse my baby.

Emmanuelle and her baby in February. (Photo: Facebook/Catherine Emmanuelle)

Emmanuelle, who also has two other children (ages 12 and 17), works full-time at a university and gets paid $300 a month for her service on the City Council, continued, Because I am fully committed to both effective governance and effective parenting, I met with an attorney to discover what my rights were and how I can successfully accomplish both. She explained that it is within my rights to bring my child with me in a public setting, including the legislative table, and including when I need to breastfeed my child.

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Thats because the law in Wisconsin, as in many other states, protects the rights of a mother to breastfeed her child in any public or private location where the mother and child are otherwise authorized to be.

But now the City Council has responded with a resolution, proposed by Kincaid, that would explicitly ban infants and toddlers from the dais and allow only limited, approved exceptions  essentially turning it into a location where the presence of only the mother, and not her child, would be authorized, thus effectively making it a public space to which the breastfeeding law does not apply.

But Emmanuelles lawyer, Carousel Bayrd, tells Yahoo Lifestyle, Unfortunately, you dont get to do that. While Kincaids resolution is claiming that kids have always been banned from the dais and this is just a way of cementing that, Bayrd says that isnt the case, and in fact, this resolution is what lawyers would call pretext, meaning, They state a reason that is a cover-up for a discriminatory, illegal reason. That reason, in this case, is a desire to stop Emmanuelle from breastfeeding on the dais, Bayrd explains.

A vote on the resolution is set to take place as part of the agenda at the City Councils Tuesday afternoon meeting. As far as how Emmanuelle will vote, she feels trapped by all options: A no vote will signal that shes against allowing breastfeeding on the dais; a yes vote will approve of the idea that women must seek permission from their colleagues for an exception to the new rule that would allow breastfeeding; and abstaining would likely remove her from the room and, thus, discussion on the issue.

Im no longer willing to be complicit, she says. I dont want the next mom who wants to run for office to be discouraged because she may not have a seat at the table. Emmanuelle hopes to have the vote indefinitely postponed, noting that its passage would have a chilling effect on women across America by setting up barriers.

[UPDATE: The resolution was passed at the vote on Tuesday  striking the part that would allow for exceptions, thus simply making it against the rules for kids to be on the dais. Im talking to my lawyer to see where we go from here, Emmanuelle tells Yahoo Lifestyle on Wednesday, explaining that she wound up abstaining in protest along with two others who joined her in solidarity. I refused to dignify this type of resolution, that systematically puts up barriers.]

Kincaid explains to Yahoo Lifestyle why she is not in favor of breastfeeding infants on the dais. Based on my responsibility as the chair and on my own feelings as a mother and a parent, I did say she couldnt sit at the dais, Kincaid says, adding that the reasons she took into account include that we are on camera, we are in a physically elevated place, theres a separate entrance, and there are only 11 chairs. Also considered, she says, was the weight of past practice  Roberts Rules of Order [the standard for parliamentary practice], and my responsibility to have a safe and proper work environment in which to conduct business.

She adds, We did accommodate the council member and her child for every meeting she wanted to be at, and notes that Emmanuelles new spot off the dais, behind the city clerk, is a place of importance.

Emmanuelle disputes that she was accommodated, though, for the reasons she noted on Facebook  particularly that of not having a microphone, and thus not being heard as part of the debates on local radio and TV broadcasts. In preparation for the vote, Emmanuelle is encouraging her supporters to reach out to her fellow council members  only two of which have publicly supported her, she says.

She adds that while pumping is sometimes a viable option, its not always predictable with her work schedule and with the babys sleep schedule, and that shes had health issues, including the formation of painful milk calcifications due to not always being able to express her milk when she needs to.

A Change.org petition backing Emmanuelle, started by the national nonpartisan pro-women-candidates group Vote Run Lead, has more than 1,180 signatures. This Tuesday, October 24, the petition states, [Emmanuelle] is being asked to join her council colleagues for a vote that attempts to force her to choose between feeding her child and fulfilling her duties.

Recently, lawmakers from around the world have shown by example that it is possible to simultaneously breastfeed their babies and attend to official in-chamber business  including Australian senator Larissa Waters, who became the first member of Parliament to breastfeed in chambers in May, when a video of her breastfeeding her daughter while moving a motion went viral. Similarly, Licia Ronzulli of Italy, who is a member of the European Parliament, and Argentinian MP Victoria Donda both garnered attention and praise (and some criticism) for their own photos of in-session breastfeeding.

And just this month in Washington, D.C., council member Brianne Nadeau began taking her infant to hearings; she is one of three council members with infants or toddlers  more than at any other time in recent history, according to WAMU.

At a time when we need women in government more than ever, punishing leaders for being moms is not only illegal but holds our country back from having talented mothers step up to run, notes Vote Run Lead founder and CEO Erin Vilardi in the Change.org petition supporting Emmanuelle. No working mother should have her role as parent and her obligations as a leader be pitted against each other, nor be asked to vote on such an insulting proposal! Thats why we are proud to support Councilwoman Emmanuelle.

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By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A 17-year-old illegal immigrant in federal custody in Texas can have an abortion immediately despite the objections of President Donald Trump's administration, a U.S. appeals court decided on Tuesday in a ruling spearheaded by Democratic-appointed judges.

The 6-3 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit split along ideological lines, with Democratic-appointed judges backing the teenager who requested an abortion and Republican appointees siding with the Republican president's administration.

"Surely the mere act of entry into the United States without documentation does not mean that an immigrant's body is no longer her or his own," Judge Patricia Millett, appointed by Democratic former President Barack Obama, wrote in an opinion supporting the ruling.

After the ruling, her lawyers asked a judge to allow the girl, who is about 15 weeks pregnant, to have an abortion as soon as Wednesday. The judge then issued an order saying the girl should be allowed to go to an abortion clinic "promptly and without delay."

The appeals court ruling overturned a decision by a three-judge panel of the same court last Friday that had prevented the girl from having an immediate abortion. The administration still could ask the Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority, to hear the case. A Justice Department spokesman said officials are "reviewing the order" and declined to comment further.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a Republican appointee, said in a dissenting opinion that the court had embraced "a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand."

Another Republican appointee, Judge Karen Henderson, wrote separately that she had little problem concluding that illegal immigrants do not have a right to have an elective abortion.

"To conclude otherwise rewards lawlessness and erases the fundamental difference between citizenship and illegal presence in our country," Henderson said.

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But Millett wrote that Tuesday's decision "rights a grave constitutional wrong by the government." The Supreme Court legalized abortion for Americans in 1973.

The case involves the intersection of two divisive social issues on which Trump has taken a hard line: abortion and immigration. Among the issues the dispute raises is whether illegal immigrant women have the same rights to an abortion as U.S. residents.

The girl, whose nationality has not been disclosed, entered the United States without any family in September and was immediately detained by U.S. authorities and placed in a shelter in Texas for unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors.

'BASIC DECENCY'

"Every step of the way, the Trump administration has shown their true colors in this case. It's clear that their anti-woman, anti-abortion, anti-immigration agenda is unchecked by basic decency or even the bounds of the law," said Brigitte Amiri, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents the girl.

"No one should have to go to court to get a safe, legal abortion," Amiri added.

In Friday's decision, the three-judge panel ruled 2-1 that the girl must delay plans for an abortion while the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) signed off on a person who could act as an official U.S. sponsor, allowing her to get the procedure without government involvement.

The administration said in legal papers that while the girl is in federal custody, she is subject to its policy of refusing to facilitate abortions.

"And the government may legitimately express a preference for childbirth over abortion, even if such a preference may have practical effects or limits on a woman's exercise of her right to an abortion," the government said.

The teenager had sought and received a Texas court order to approve the abortion because she is under 18, and had scheduled a sonogram and consultation with a physician, as required by state law. But the government refused to let her leave the detention center to carry out those steps.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
Riyadh (AFP) - Powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pledged a "moderate, open" Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, breaking with ultra-conservative clerics in favour of an image catering to foreign investors and Saudi youth.

The Saudi strongman, 32, did not mince words in declaring a new reality for the kingdom, hours after announcing the launch of an independent $500 billion megacity -- with "separate regulation" -- along the Red Sea coastline.

"We want to live a normal life. A life in which our religion translates to tolerance, to our traditions of kindness," he told international investors gathered at an economic forum in Riyadh.

"Seventy percent of the Saudi population is under 30, and honestly we will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today and at once," the crown prince said.

"We will end extremism very soon."

Prince Mohammed, known by his initials MBS, said he would see to it his country moved past 1979, a reference to the rise of political Islam in the years following the assassination of King Faisal in 1975.

The early 1970s had ushered major change into the oil-rich kingdom, including the introduction of television and schools for girls.

But that came to a halt as the Al-Sheikh family, which controls religious and social regulation in the kingdom, and the ruling Al-Saud family slowly reinforced the conservative policies Riyadh is known for.

Prince Mohammed's statement Tuesday is the most direct attack by a Saudi official on the Gulf country's influential conservative religious circles, whose stranglehold on Saudi society now appears to face serious challenges.

- 'Return to what was' -

"We are returning to what we were before -- a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions, traditions and people around the globe," he said.

While the Saudi government continues to draw criticism from international rights groups, the crown prince has pushed ahead with reforms since his sudden appointment on June 21.

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Monitors, including Amnesty International, say Saudi Arabia has in parallel stepped up its repression of peaceful rights activists.

Saudi authorities last month arrested more than 20 activists, including two popular Muslim preachers, without disclosing any charges against them.

But the young prince is widely regarded as being the force behind King Salman's decision last month to lift a decades-long ban prohibiting women from driving.

He has vied to modernise certain sectors in the kingdom, hinting that long-banned cinemas would soon be permitted as part of ambitious reforms for a post-oil era that could shake up the austere kingdom's cultural scene.

Prince Mohammed's comments came hours after the opening of the Future Investment Initiative, a three-day economic conference that brings together some 2,500 dignitaries, including 2,000 foreign investors.

Earlier Tuesday, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund -- controlled by MBS -- announced the launch of an independent economic zone along the kingdom's northwestern coastline.

The project, dubbed NEOM, will operate under regulations separate from those that govern the rest of Saudi Arabia.

NEOM covers an uninterrupted coastline of nearly 470 kilometres (290 miles) in northwestern Saudi Arabia and will extend into territories in neighbouring Jordan and Egypt, a statement released by the kingdom's Public Investment Fund said.

Authorities in Jordan and Egypt did not immediately comment on the statement.
Riyadh (AFP) - Powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pledged a "moderate, open" Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, breaking with ultra-conservative clerics in favour of an image catering to foreign investors and Saudi youth.

The Saudi strongman, 32, did not mince words in declaring a new reality for the kingdom, hours after announcing the launch of an independent $500 billion megacity -- with "separate regulation" -- along the Red Sea coastline.

"We want to live a normal life. A life in which our religion translates to tolerance, to our traditions of kindness," he told international investors gathered at an economic forum in Riyadh.

"Seventy percent of the Saudi population is under 30, and honestly we will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today and at once," the crown prince said.

One of the Saudi millennials in attendance was Abdul Aziz, a 27-year-old policy consultant.

He lauded the young prince for "pushing the boundaries of what's possible" in the rigid kingdom and for using the televised speech to highlight what he sees as an abandoned legacy of moderation.

"It showed the political and social change in Saudi Arabia is not a transformation. Saudi Arabia is going back to its original roots of a moderate Islam, a tolerant society," Abdul Aziz told AFP.

Prince Mohammed, known by his initials MBS, said he would see to it his country moved past 1979, a reference to the rise of political Islam in the years following the assassination of King Faisal in 1975.

The early 1970s had ushered major change into the oil-rich kingdom, including the introduction of television and schools for girls.

But that came to a halt as the Al-Sheikh family, which controls religious and social regulation in the kingdom, and the ruling Al-Saud family slowly reinforced the conservative policies Riyadh is known for.

Prince Mohammed's statement Tuesday is the most direct attack by a Saudi official on the Gulf country's influential conservative religious circles, whose stranglehold on Saudi society now appears to face serious challenges.

Story continues

- 'Return to what was' -

"We are returning to what we were before -- a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions, traditions and people around the globe," he said.

While the Saudi government continues to draw criticism from international rights groups, the crown prince has pushed ahead with reforms since his sudden appointment on June 21.

Monitors, including Amnesty International, say Saudi Arabia has in parallel stepped up its repression of peaceful rights activists.

Saudi authorities last month arrested more than 20 activists, including two popular Muslim preachers, without disclosing any charges against them.

But the young prince is widely regarded as being the force behind King Salman's decision last month to lift a decades-long ban prohibiting women from driving.

Prince Mohammed's comments came hours after the opening of the Future Investment Initiative, a three-day economic conference that drew some 2,500 dignitaries, including 2,000 foreign investors, to Riyadh.

Earlier Tuesday, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund -- controlled by MBS -- announced the launch of an independent economic zone along the kingdom's northwestern coastline.

The project, dubbed NEOM, will operate under regulations separate from those that govern the rest of Saudi Arabia.

Stephen Potter, vice chairman of the Chicago-based wealth management company Northern Trust, said he was impressed by the crown prince's vision.

"It sends out a strong message to not just Saudis but the whole world that the kingdom is poised for change," Potter said.

A Saudi attendee was more skeptical.

"Looks very impressive on paper but we'll have to see how it is executed," he told AFP, declining to be named.
The father of a missing 3-year-old girl in Texas has been re-arrested and charged again after a body that police said is most likely the toddler was found earlier this week.

Wesley Mathews reportedly provided an alternate statement of events to police after the body of a toddler was found Sunday morning, Richardson police said. He has since been charged with injury to a child, a first-degree felony, and is being held on $1 million bond.

Read: Police Trying to Identify Boy Found Dead On Beach: 'Someone, Somewhere Knows This Child'

Mathews initially told police that Sherin Mathews disappeared after he put her in an alleyway near their house at 3 a.m. on Oct. 7 for not drinking her milk. He said hed returned to check on her and she was gone.

On Monday night, Mathews voluntarily arrived at the Richardson Police Station with his attorney and asked to speak with detectives. He provided an alternate statement of events from those which he had given previously, regarding the disappearance of Sherin, The Washington Post reported.

Mathews told authorities that Sherin had choked on milk and he believed she had died," an arrest warrant obtained by WFAA said.

He also alleged that he had been trying to get her to drink her milk in the garage and that he "physically assisted" Sherin in drinking it when she wouldn't listen to him, the station reported.

"She was coughing and her breathing slowed," the warrant reads. "Eventually, Wesley Mathews no longer felt a pulse on the child and believed she had died."

Mathews then allegedly admitted to police that he removed the body from the home, the warrant states.

During their investigation, police found that someone had driven the familys SUV away from the home and returned an hour later on the morning Sherin disappeared.

The family did not contact police until five hours after the 3-year-old vanished, authorities said. In that time, he reportedly did a load of laundry, the paper reported. Sherins mother was asleep during the incident, reports said.

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Search dogs found what is believed to be the childs body Sunday in a culvert beneath a road, less than a mile from the Mathews home.

Police have reportedly said they have no reason to believe the body they found is that of another child, but are awaiting a positive identification and autopsy.

Worst news finding childs body, Richardson Police Chief Jimmy Spivey tweeted Sunday.

The chief vowed to bring whoever is responsible to justice in the tweet.

Police had initially charged Mathews with child endangerment and he was released on bond, reports said.

Read: Hikers Found Dead After Months Missing May Have Died in 'Sympathetic Murder-Suicide'

Rafael De La Garza, the fathers attorney, said the father is mourning the death of his child, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Sherin was reportedly adopted from India two years ago. After her disappearance, the couples 4-year-old child was placed in foster care, according to reports. A custody hearing for the 4-year-old, the couple's biological child, is scheduled for November.
On Dancing With the Stars, Vanessa Lachey had a wardrobe malfunction when she accidentally quick-stepped out of her skirt. Lachey was performing a "glitz and glamour" quickstep with her partner, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, when her skirt got caught tangled up in the dancers' legs. The skirt seemed to fall effortlessly onto the stage where it was quickly snatched up by a stagehand. It appears as though the skirt was always destined to come off, just not at that moment. Lachey later danced with other dancers whose skirts match the design of her remaining tassels. Immediately following the performance Lachey said, "Oops I swear, that was not planned to lose my skirt right in front of the judges." Despite losing the skirt she won over the judges. She even reminded Carrie Ann Inaba of a former contestant from way back. Inaba said, "It took me back to season one, when Kelly Monaco had a wardrobe malfunction, and it sent her over the top. You just let yourself go and it was a fantastic performance." Lachey received four 9's from the judges for a combined score of 36.
After the publication of my recent essay titled Is it OK to ask me What are you? I received quite a bit of feedback  both good and bad  which was to be expected. One comment in particular got me thinking. A Latino man wrote to me directly on my Instagram, Nueva Yorka, expressing his disappointment in my article. While he admitted to not reading the entire piece, he felt confident in his assertion about me, saying, Yeah you might be brown but you are white inside. Thank you.

I loved the thank you, so I had to include it here.

I immediately felt defensive, angry, and, to be honest, hurt. I know, Im so sensitive, right?! Im a snowflake of a human being. As I tried to get over myself, I really began to wonder, as a Latina, what is expected of me both within and outside the Latinx community? How are we defining acting white and being brown? What are all these stereotypes and how dangerous are they?

The overarching theme is an idea of homogeneity in the Latinx community despite the fact that it is made up of so many different countries and cultural identities. Chief among these prepackaged ideas are gender characters such as the bad hombre and the spicy Latina. We can all easily rattle off a few commonly held Latina stereotypes. After a quick survey of men and women Im acquainted with (of various ethnic backgrounds), the top slots went to: the maid, loud, curvaceous, emotional, accent (i.e., English as a second language), passionate, sexpot  basically anything attached to sex, sexy, or sexual.

These character tropes are widely portrayed and perpetuated in mainstream media, which is how were all acquainted with them. Arlene Davila, a professor at New York University professor and the author of Latinos, Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People, describes the U.S. marketing machine as an industry that only functions because the white advertising industry continues to ghettoize Latinas and POC (people of color) in their ranks and in their advertising. They have a huge impact because there are very few representations of Latinas that circulate in mainstream society.

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Salma Hayek on the set of From Dusk Till Dawn. (Photo by Dimension Films/Miramax/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

I must agree that in my growing up, I saw very few Latinas portrayed in American film, television, and advertising. I came of age in the 80s and 90s. The icons were Alicia Silverstone, Drew Barrymore, Winona Ryder, Gwyneth Paltrow, and the entire cast of 90210. We watched Friends, My So-Called Life, and Seinfeld. I never really saw many people on big or small screen who werent white. So when they did appear, it made quite an impression. In fact, I can recall the first time I saw Salma Hayek, an idol of mine, in From Dusk Till Dawn. I noticed her hair  wild, dark curls, just like mine. I noticed the curve of her hips  the severe slope  just like mine. It felt good to see it  a Latina on the big glitzy screen. For first time, I felt a part of the commonly accepted hierarchy of beauty  like my particular brand of exotic was being widely represented and agreed upon as attractive. But, attached to this messaging was heavy, heavy sex.

This resonated with what I was seeing on U.S. Hispanic and LatAm programming as well. My parents watched Univision nightly, as well as a popular weekly game show called Sabado Gigante. It was outrageously commonplace to see a variety of scantily clad women draped onstage as if they were plants  heavily objectified and used as props valuated on their sex appeal and consumed playfully without a thought of an implication.

Even after decades, that imagery doesnt seem to be changing. The effects took critical shape for me when I came into my body type and began being noticed by the opposite sex. The very first and most common descriptor for me was sexy. I got sexy constantly, at way too young an age, and I hated it. Moreover, soon after Salma Hayek made her mainstream debut, especially after Fools Rush In, I was compared to her constantly. And with this attachment came an expectation about my sexual prowess. Meanwhile, I was in no way prepared nor desirous to live up to the assumptions being hurled at me about my sexuality. In fact, the rules in my home regarding boys were positively military-like, making the Hoppe girls quite shy (and when I say shy, I mean terrified) about sex in general (sorry, sisters).

But I was also young and rebellious. Sure, I was scared of how I would be perceived, but I also wanted to indulge my need for self-expression, and I used fashion in particular for this. My best friend during my freshman year of high school, Tara, was a beautiful, waif-y blond. We shared a fervent interest in fashion and often went shopping together. Wed wear the same or similar pieces, but the response to each of us was so disparate! While the same clothes on her would be categorized as cute and pretty and she was labeled best-dressed, I was called a slut and accused of attention-seeking. Meanwhile, in my mind I simply preferred knee-high boots to Birkenstocks and, boy, did I love a tube top! It was the 90s!

Jennifer Lopez poses for photographers at the 42nd Annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 23, 2000. (Photo: Vince Bucci/AFP/Getty Images)

I understood I didnt have the same bandwidth as my white peers, and if I didnt want to be perceived a certain way, I had to temper my desire for self-expression. It affected my decision-making about how I was presenting myself  particularly what clothes I chose to wear and how I behaved with boys. My boyfriend once told me to change my dress before a school event because he was not going to take J. Lo to the dance. (This was right around the time Jennifer Lopez wore the now famous/infamous green Versace with the plunging neckline to the 2000 Grammy Awards.) It was clear that being Latina and my style of dress (obviously influenced by my Latinidad) were being conflated, which led to a negative conclusion. In fact, it specifically read: promiscuous. There were no actions to attach to these preconceived notions, only a likeness I demonstrated to an image  an image that is heavily reinforced in mainstream media and one that people agree to and project onto those they meet consciously or subconsciously.

Ana Flores is a media expert and a passionate advocate for gender diversity who has spoken on the topic twice at the White House. I recently sat down with the creator of the We All Grow Latina Network to discuss these stereotypes and the effects on young women. Flores explains, Im not sure theres a culture within the major networks in LatAm and the U.S. to systemically change the propagation of stereotypes affecting Latinas. Many of the top shows in Spanish-language networks here and abroad still highly objectify women. Not only that, but the culture of telenovelas and brazen reality and gossip shows still dominates, positioning women as victims, overdramatic and emotional.

Vanity Fair examined the topic back in 2015 with a cover story on Sofia Vergara and again in a shorter story in 2017. The article celebrated Vergaras resourceful and unapologetic willingness to turn up the satirical volume on her body of work, noting that many white women such as Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, etc. are viewed as stereotypes as well. While I adamantly agree, the difference, I will note, is that throughout history we have seen many white women onscreen, and weve seen progression and variety increase in those images. The same cannot be said for women of color. Therefore, when the highest-paid actress on TV, on the nations most popular show, happens to epitomize the spicy Latina stereotype, it has a significant impact.

Sofia Vergara on the May 2015 cover of Vanity Fair. (Photo: Vanity Fair)

Flores, who spent more than 15 years as a producer creating content for U.S. Hispanic and LatAm networks, confirms that the effects of stereotypes on young women are quite powerful  and the media shoulders a large part of the responsibility. Of course the stereotypes exist, but theyre amplified and propagated by the images and media girls and boys are constantly receiving, she says. If this is the image a young Latina is seeing that represents her, she believes that she needs to fit that mold of whats expected of her. Its our job as creators to amplify the stories of successful Latinas from diverse backgrounds.

As we increase the quantity and prevalence of authentic portrayals of women of color, without obscuring our cultural differences, these stereotypes will lose their mass appeal. And positive qualities that I possess as a Latina will not be credited to the effects of assimilation and labeled contrived whiteness. Because whats even more disturbing than not fitting the stereotypical criteria for Latinidad in America, is that when I demonstrate characteristics that do not mirror these commonly held ideas, Im accused of not being myself. Im accused of acting white.

A few months back, I was on a date with a very nice guy who I liked a whole lot. His ethnic background, for the record, is half-white and half-Korean. We were sitting legs intertwined on the same side of the booth, which I find particularly romantic, when I opened up about a challenge I was facing professionally. Bryan held my hand and responded without a thought, Oh, dont worry about it, you act white anyway. When I asked him to explain what it meant to act white, he defensively barked, Oh, God! Are you going to get all sassy Latina on me?! punctuating the insult with a neck roll and a wagging finger.

Needless to say, the conversation quickly escalated and I never saw him again. I was shocked by his language because most people try not to use racist rhetoric on a third date  especially when aimed at your date  but his assumptions didnt shock me. Sadly, Ive heard it many times. And I dont think the solution is to try to change closed minds such as his  although it still was important for me to treat him kindly, in the hope of inspiring compassion and open-mindedness in him in the future.

My focus today, most especially after my chat with Flores, is on being proactive. Instead of blindly blaming the system, we need to understand our role as the audience and entertain more substantial and complex stories from the POC perspective, as much and as often as possible. And while I can personally attest to the difficulty in publishing POC content in mainstream media, Flores has a wonderful suggestion. She says, The problem is that media is still a game of supply and demand. So, in order to truly get network executives to want to invest in stories that elevate and inspire Latinas, we have to as a society consume and celebrate those stories. Thats why I believe online content creators are so important in moving the needle, because we have no boundaries to share our stories and truly start creating a culture that uplifts us.

Cardi B during Tidal X: Brooklyn at Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Oct. 17. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for TIDAL)

Im a huge proponent of this strategy. Lets call more voices to the table. I personally do not identify with todays most popular Latina celebrities, such as Cardi B and Sofia Vergara, but that doesnt stop public consensus from relating their images back to me  simply based on the premise that theyre Latina and Im Latina. Therefore it is important to offer mainstream audiences more than what is entertaining  theres a responsibility to tell a story that is true. Because the more we spoon-feed people lowest-common-denominator laughs, we make the door to progress and open-mindedness that much harder to open.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - An air raid in the government-held Qusur district of Deir al-Zor city in eastern Syria killed more than a dozen people, Syrian state television and a war monitor said on Monday. State television said jets from a U.S.-led international coalition battling Islamic State carried out the air strike and that it killed 14 civilians and wounded 32 others. A spokesman for the coalition said on Tuesday it had not carried out such a raid, and that its only strike in the vicinity in recent weeks took place in September across the Euphrates from the city. The war monitor, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported that it was not known which aircraft carried out the strike, but that at least 22 people were killed. The Syrian army, backed by Russia, Iran and Shi'ite militias, is fighting Islamic State in the city of Deir al-Zor, as well as in parts of the surrounding countryside. Both Syrian and Russian jets have been hitting Islamic State in that area. The U.S.-backed coalition has been conducting air strikes against Islamic State in support of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias to the east of Deir al-Zor across the Euphrates. The rival U.S.-backed and Syrian army offensives against Islamic State have clashed several times over recent months as they have pushed the jihadists from territory in eastern Syria. The U.S. and Russia have said they communicate with each other to prevent possible points of conflict of violence between the two offensives. (Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
On your wedding day, it's all hands on deck! From coordinators to musicians to servers, a LOT of people will be working together to make your big day everything you dreamed. In most cases, a job well done deserves a little extra appreciation (in the form of gratuity). The last thing you'll want to do during your wedding is figure out who to tip and how much. So we created this cheat sheet to help you plan way in advance. Before you head to the bank, read over your contracts. Some vendors  like bartenders  include gratuity in the fine print. If you're already being charged 10-15%, you don't need to double tip.

onelove photographyOfficiant: You should pay the travel costs for any out-of-town officiant. A $50 gift or gift card is a thoughtful way to show your appreciation. Some clergy members can't accept a direct tip. Honor them with a donation to a meaningful charity instead. Wedding planner, coordinator, or catering manager: Whether your planner has been involved since Day 1 or only the Big Day, she has a big job making your wedding day run smoothly and stress-free. If she owns the business, you're not required to tip. If there's an assistant, consider tipping $75 - $150, depending on how involved she's been. If you're working with a catering or banquet manager through the wedding venue, consider tipping $250-$500 for her services.

Jenny Moloney PhotographyHair and makeup artist: Tip the same as you would at the salon: 10-15%. If you're paying for your bridesmaids' services, keep this in mind while budgeting. If they're paying for their own, you might want to add it to the cost up front. Photographer and videographer: If the photographer or videographer owns the company (which is usually the case), it's not necessary to tip. If they bring an assistant, you could tip the assistant between $50-$75. Bartenders: Check your contract. Bartenders' gratuity is usually included in the overall catering costs. If not, consider tipping 10-15% of the pre-tax bill. (Side note: remove the tip jar! If you're planning to tip, make sure they aren't also collecting tips from your guests during the event.)

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Jose Villa PhotographyCaterer and waiters: Gratuity is almost always included in the contract. If you're feeling generous, consider tipping $10-20 per person. Keep in mind, they're not depending on tips for their payment. Delivery and rental staff: Your catering manager or wedding planner usually contracts these. Since they'll (hopefully) be all set before you arrive, talk to her about the best way to tip. A good rule of thumb is $10-20 per person. Musicians: Sometimes this is included in the contract, so read the fine print. For the ceremony, tip between $25-50. For a longer reception, tip $50-100. Don't forget the sound technician!

Mint PhotographyChauffeur: Whether it's a party bus or a horse-drawn carriage, tip your driver 15% of the pre-tax charge. Restroom or coat check attendants: If you're planning to have a coat check or restroom attendants, plan to tip $1-2 per guest. Place a sign near the coat check to let guests know gratuity has been covered. Security: Whether you're working through the venue or hiring off-duty police, you should tip the people keeping you and your guests safe. A good rule of thumb is 10% of the pre-tax charge or $50 for the night. Florist, baker, calligrapher: Odds are these vendors are business owners, so they're not expecting a tip. If you feel they went above and beyond to deliver your dream, you might want to send them a small tip in the mail after the event (in a thank-you note, of course)! Show extra love to those  like the planner, band, florist, etc.  who did outstanding work by writing a glowing review online. For most vendors, your recommendation is more valuable than gold! Style Me Pretty Contributor - Madeline Littrell is a corporate PR strategist and freelance writer. Born and raised in the South, she loves big hair, country music, and chicken fingers. Madeline lives in Dallas with her Sheltie puppy, Tennessee.
The European Commission announced Monday a 106 million support package  46 million in humanitarian assistance and 60 million for development  to directly assist people in Sudan affected by forced displacement, undernutrition, disease outbreaks and recurrent extreme climatic conditions.

The announcement comes as Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides is currently in Sudan, visiting EU humanitarian aid projects in South Darfur.

Some 4.8 million people in Sudan currently need urgent assistance, said the European Commission in a press release.

Here in Sudan the humanitarian situation continues to be critical. Millions have been displaced for many years in Darfur. Our new EU funding is crucial to respond to the needs of the increasing numbers of refugees, notably from South Sudan, and internally displaced people, as well as of the hosting communities, said Christos Stylianides.

He said the humanitarian aid will help bring life-saving relief to the most vulnerable populations, adding that full humanitarian access throughout the country is crucial so that humanitarian workers can deliver aid safely to those in need.

The European Union is committed to directly support the people of Sudan. Our new development aid will boost our ongoing efforts through the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa. It addresses the needs of the most vulnerable Sudanese communities and offer livelihood opportunities, by better linking the EUs humanitarian and development work in Sudan, said Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development Neven Mimica.

All EU assistance in Sudan is provided to humanitarian and development organizations with no funding going through the government.

Sudan currently hosts the second largest number of internally displaced people (3.3 million) and the third largest number of refugees in Africa (more than 965.000).

Thirteen years since the start of the Darfur crisis, 2.7 million people continue to be uprooted in this region alone, while conflict also affects South Kordofan and Blue Nile. The number of refugees has been steadily increasing over the last years as well, in particular since the South Sudanese conflict started in 2013. More than 180.000 South Sudanese have sought refuge in Sudan since the beginning of this year alone, the large majority of them being children, states the press release.

In addition, acute undernutrition rates in Sudan are among the highest in Africa: 1 in 6 children suffers from acute undernutrition, 1 in 20 from its most severe form which is likely to cause death unless treated. In 2017, 3.4 million people are facing severe food insecurity. In recent months, considerable new humanitarian needs have emerged, linked to the spread of epidemics, a mass influx of South Sudanese refugees and high undernutrition in newly accessible areas of Jebel Marra, Darfur.
Republican Senator Bob Corker is the latest target of Donald Trump's Twitter ire: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Donald Trump has yet again taken to Twitter, this time to slam Senator Bob Corker, a fellow Republican, the same day he plans to ask for party unity on tax reform.

The President tweeted that Mr Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, helped President Barack Obama with the bad Iran deal.

He also said the Senator couldnt get elected dog catcher in his home state of Tennessee.

Mr Corker announced earlier this year that he will be retiring from politics before the next election in 2018 and Mr Trump tweeted that he made the decision based on the Presidents decision not to endorse him.

The President said the Senator, once an early ally of the real estate magnate, is now only negative on anything Trump.

Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

...Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

The Twitter exchange is just the latest round of publicly exchanged barbs between the Oval Office and Mr Corker.

In another appearance early this morning on NBC's "Today" show, Mr Corker advised the President to leave well enough alone on the ongoing tax reform debate.

I think thats the best way for us to have success, said the Republican Senator.

He also went on CNN to say that he felt Mr Trump was "unable to rise to the occasion" as a leader and said that he will not support him in another bid for the Oval Office.

Mr Corker said he does not "know why [Mr Trump] lowers himself to such a low, low standard and debases our country in the way that he does, but he does."

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Mincing no words the Tennesseean commented: "I think the debasing of our nation ... will be what he'll be remembered most for."

He had also previously said the White House was akin to an adult day care centre, implying Mr Trump is a child.

"I dont make comments I havent thought about," he told ABC's "Good Morning America" in doubling down on the "day care" statement.

Specifically on foreign policy, the Mr Corker has criticised the Presidents use of Twitter to inflame tensions with North Korea, referring to leader Kim Jong-un as Rocket Man repeatedly and posting in a way that could be determined as fatalistic towards the use of military action against the isolated nation developing its nuclear weapons programme.

"The president undermines our Secretary of State, raises tensions in the area by virtue of the tweets that he sends out, and I would just like him to leave it to the professionals for a while and see if we can do something that's constructive for our country, the region and the world," Mr Corker told ABC News.

Mr Trump responded in kind by referring to Mr Corker as Liddle and said the Senator begged him for an endorsement for the next election.

The Failing @nytimes set Liddle' Bob Corker up by recording his conversation. Was made to sound a fool, and that's what I am dealing with!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 10, 2017

Senator Bob Corker "begged" me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said "NO" and he dropped out (said he could not win without...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2017

Mr Corker has not tweeted using his official account since 24 September.

The President has tweeted his displeasure with many other politicians as well - most notably Hillary Clinton, whom he has referred to as "Crooked Hillary" on numerous occasions. Other targets of his ire include Republican Senator John McCain, Mr Obama, the NFL, Gold Star families who have lost military loved ones in action, and Democrats.

Mr Trump is going up to Capitol Hill this afternoon to ask for party unity on the administration's tax reform proposal.
A note that Albert Einstein gave to a courier in Tokyo, briefly describing his theory on happy living, has surfaced after 95 years and is up for auction in Jerusalem.

The year was 1922, and the German-born physicist, most famous for his theory of relativity, was on a lecture tour in Japan.

He had recently been informed that he was to receive the Nobel Prize for physics, and his fame outside of scientific circles was growing.

A Japanese courier arrived at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo to deliver Einstein a message. The courier either refused to accept a tip, in line with local practice, or Einstein had no small change available.

Either way, Einstein didn't want the messenger to leave empty-handed, so he wrote him two notes by hand in German, according to the seller, a relative of the messenger.

"Maybe if you're lucky those notes will become much more valuable than just a regular tip," Einstein told the messenger, according to the seller, a resident of the German city of Hamburg who wished to remain anonymous.

One note, on the stationary of the Imperial Hotel Tokyo, says that "a quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest."

The other, on a blank piece of paper, simply reads: "where there's a will, there's a way."

It is impossible to determine if the notes were a reflection of Einstein's own musings on his growing fame, said Roni Grosz, the archivist in charge of the world's largest Einstein collection, at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

While the notes, previously unknown to researchers, hold no scientific value, they may shed light on the private thoughts of the great physicist whose name has become synonymous with genius, according to Grosz.

"What we're doing here is painting the portrait of Einstein -- the man, the scientist, his effect on the world -- through his writings," said Grosz.

"This is a stone in the mosaic."

The two notes will go on sale on Tuesday at the Winner's auction house in Jerusalem, alongside other items including two letters Einstein wrote in later years.
Facebook (FB) has been the subject of a slew of negative headlines recently  from revelations that Russia used the social network to meddle with the U.S. election to a recent survey from Quartz claiming some users dont trust the social network with their private data.

But that doesnt seem to have hurt Facebook in the short term. Facebooks stock is up nearly 50% year-to-date, and the social network was voted earlier this year by Glassdoor as the No. 2 best place to work in the entire U.S., and the No. 1 in tech.

A culture that embraces authentic selves and transparency

Yahoo Finance recently spoke to several Facebook employees, who chalked up their high level of job satisfaction in part to a work culture that encourages them to bring their authentic selves to work.

Im Southern, Im black, Im Jehovahs Witness, I love video games  Im a lot of things  and Im expected to bring all those things to my job every day, explains Tory Hargro, a Facebook product design manager who leads the social networks Live video efforts and creative design team. I dont have to slice myself up and only bring the parts that are acceptable, and that makes Facebook a super unique place to work  because not many workplaces ask you to bring the wholeness of your best self.

Facebook employees from left to right: former Training Specialist intern Vivian Rivas, Product Design Manager Tory Hargro, University Recruiter Oscar Perez, Product Marketing Communications Manager Karri Wells Wane, and Engineering Manager Sophia Chung.

Sophia Chung, an engineering manager at Facebook, appreciates the level of flexibility and transparency it offers employees from day one. When engineering employees first join Facebook, they join a process called boot camp where they spend up to two months exploring the social networks vast code base.

Indeed, where other tech companies may only offer engineers a partial look under the hood, Chung says all Facebook engineers have access to the entire code base on day one  a culture that lets people from different departments and teams come up with ideas from the bottom up.

You explore projects, you meet people and you learn about the company, and at the end of that process, you choose what team to work on, Chung recalls of her own experiences joining Facebook nearly six years ago. Its pretty interesting that you as a newcomer get to choose what team youre on, versus the company telling you what youre working on.

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Free food and nice benefits dont hurt, either

Facebooks offers employees a ton of free food every day, including desserts served up at a dedicated sweets shop.

According to Glassdoor, many employees also appreciate the multitude of free food offered on-campus  Mexican, burgers, a dedicated sweets shop, among others. Facebook also offers extremely competitive salaries  the average software engineer earns roughly $126,000 a year  and comprehensive benefits. Those benefits include four months of paid parental leave for new mothers and fathers, as well as $4,000 doled out to parents for each child birth, and subsidies for pre-school tuition.

Ultimately, though, its not just the excellent pay and benefits that appeal to Facebook employees. Its the open, transparent culture that Facebook has fostered for all employees  a culture that many other companies in Silicon Valley could probably stand to have a little more of themselves.



JP Mangalindan is a senior correspondent for Yahoo Finance covering the intersection of tech and business. Email story tips and musings to jpm@oath.com. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

More from JP:
Nairobi (AFP) - Western nations on Monday warned starkly of Kenya's "deteriorating political environment" ahead of a presidential election re-run, urging the major parties to halt incitement and verbal attacks on institutions.

US Ambassador Robert Godec said that if the electoral commission felt it was not ready for Thursday's poll, it should ask the courts for a delay.

"We would be fine with that," he said.

But with the election commission pushing ahead and both President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga digging in, it looks as if a vote will go ahead -- but without Odinga, who withdrew his candidacy earlier this month.

Godec read a statement from 20 Western envoys, including the 28-nation European Union, calling for political rivals to unite to allow a credible election to take place, after weeks of political drama that has gripped and divided the nation.

Foreign powers are deeply worried for Kenya has a history of political violence that, at its worst a decade ago, left over 1,100 dead.

Kenyans on Thursday are due to hold their second presidential election this year, after the Supreme Court overturned the results of an August 8 vote citing "irregularities and illegalities".

The ruling was a rare victory for veteran opposition leader Raila Odinga, who has since refused to take part in the re-run, accusing the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) of failing to make required reforms.

He has called for mass protests on election day, and wrote on Twitter that his supporters would picket outside IEBC offices on Tuesday and Wednesday, demonstrations banned by the government.

- Deep divisions -

Despite the envoys' pleas, the two sides appear more deeply divided than ever.

The National Super Alliance (NASA) opposition coalition on Monday reiterated that it would not participate in Thursday's vote.

"Our position is final that we do not recognise the election scheduled for October 26 and we shall not participate in it because it doesn't serve the country's interest," said NASA chairman Musalia Mudavadi.

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Meanwhile, after meeting with IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati, Kenyatta said the election must go ahead.

"We made clear that we have no demands or conditions on this subject. We have made funds available for the IEBC to do its job. Now they really should deliver," he said.

The bad blood between the sides was underscored Monday by the charging of Ruth Odinga, the opposition leader's sister, accused of damaging IEBC property and inciting violence.

In their statement the diplomats slammed incidents in which poll officials have been attacked and their training interrupted by opposition protesters.

"Attacks on IEBC staff must cease now. No one is obliged to stand for office, or to vote if they do not wish to," said Godec.

"But no one should use violence or intimidation to disrupt the right of others to vote or to participate. Doing so is profoundly undemocratic, and leaders must tell their supporters to refrain from such actions."

He said the diplomatic community has been working to encourage Odinga to rejoin the election and, despite all signs to the contrary, continues "to hope they will do so in light of the progress made at the IEBC."

- Reform row -

While the IEBC has not conceded to several major demands from Odinga, such as the firing of certain staff, and a change in providers of ballot papers and election technology, Godec said they had made several important changes.

But he also said attempts by the ruling party to change certain electoral laws ahead of the re-run were "unhelpful" and urged Kenyatta not to sign the amendments.

"Unfortunately, the deteriorating political environment is undermining preparations for the new presidential election," Godec said, in the statement issued in the name of the 20 envoys.

"Inflammatory rhetoric, attacks on institutions, and growing insecurity all make holding a credible and fair poll more difficult... it is dangerous, and it must stop."

Speaking Monday, Kenya's security minister, Fred Matiangi, said police and security forces would ensure "a very peaceful election" on Thursday.

The envoys' statement was endorsed by Australia, Austria, Belgium, Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the European Union, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States.

With just days to go before the scheduled vote the IEBC has suffered a series of upheavals.

Last week one of its seven commissioners, Roselyn Akombe, fled the country and quit, saying the election could not be credible. Chebukati afterwards warned he could not guarantee a free and fair poll, while the body's controversial chief executive, Ezra Chiloba, suddenly went on three weeks' leave.

Nevertheless, the IEBC has insisted it is ready to conduct the vote.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has pulled three of its scientists from a major conference on Monday, where they were set to speak about the impacts of climate change on New Englands largest estuary, the New York Times reports.

The last-minute cancellation is raising alarms about attempts to stifle discussion on climate change at the federal regulating body, the Times says. The EPA did not provide a rationale for the change of plans.

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, nominated to the position by President Donald Trump, has been a vocal denier of the scientific consensus that human-made greenhouse gases are a primary driving force of global warming.

Its definitely a blatant example of the scientific censorship we all suspected was going to start being enforced at EPA, John King, a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, told the Times. King chairs the science advisory committee of the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, which is hosting the conference at which the EPA scientists are no longer speaking.

One of those scientists, ecologist Autumn Oczkowski, was scheduled to deliver the conferences keynote address.

Rose Martin, a postdoctoral fellow from the same EPA laboratory as Oczkowski, and EPA consultant Emily Shumchenia, were slated for an afternoon panel on The Present and Future Biological Implications of Climate Change.

All three scientists had heavily contributed to a 400-page report to be launched on Monday, according to the Times.

The move comes just days after the EPA made changes to one of its websites. Dozens of mentions of climate change have been scrubbed, and pages detailing the risks of global warming were either toned down or wholly removed, according to the Times.

The website itself has been renamed from Climate and Energy Resources for State, Local and Tribal Governments to Energy Resources for State, Local and Tribal Governments.
While 143 million US residents were affected by the Equifax breach, they weren't the only ones impacted. Nearly 700,000 UK residents also had their information stolen -- including phone numbers, driver's license numbers, email addresses, user names, passwords and partial credit card details -- and UK authorities are now investigating the company.

Both the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Information Commissioner's Office are conducting investigations into Equifax, Bloomberg reports, and in the case of the former, it can decide to fine Equifax as well as take away its authorization to run credit checks in the UK. "Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK have been affected by the Equifax data breach," Nicky Morgan, chair of the House of Commons Treasury Committee, told Bloomberg. "The FCA is right to investigate the circumstances surrounding it."

In the US, the Equifax breach is currently being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission, the House Oversight Committee and New York's Department of Financial Services while some Senators have also taken an interest. Additionally, a handful of Equifax big shots who dumped loads of stock just before the company announced the breach are being investigated by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission for possibly participating in insider trading.

A spokesperson for the UK's Information Commissioner's Office told Bloomberg, "It is a complex and fast-moving case and we are working closely with other UK regulators and our counterparts in Canada and the US."
Colin Heilbut in front of his former gym. (Photo: Alex Fiore)

When 33-year-old Colin Heilbut moved from Toronto to San Francisco a year and a half ago, one of the very first things he did was transfer his Canadian Equinox gym membership to one in his new American hometown. Heilbut considered himself nothing short of an Equinox enthusiast.

Ive spent close to $10,000 there over the past two years, Heilbut, a tech support worker, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. Ive had a very positive experience. I love Equinox.

Thats taken a sharp turn, though, as Heilbut has just filed a lawsuit against the luxury gym brand, alleging sexual assault by a yoga teacher, as well as the stinging kicker of retaliation: being banned from Equinox for life.

His suit, filed Oct. 12, outlines nine complaints against the gym, ranging from discrimination, gender- and/or sex-motivated violence, sexual battery, emotional distress, assault and battery  and, perhaps most confusingly, retaliation.

Why did [Equinox] take negative action against Heilbut because he complained? They wouldnt state specifically when he asked them point-blank why his membership was being revoked, Heilbuts lawyer, Lawrence Organ, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. They wouldnt say the particular reasons why, but there was sort of an implication that it was his complaint about the abuse and the assault.

Colin Heilbut in San Francisco. (Photo: Alex Fiore)

The purpose of Heilbuts lawsuit, Organ continues, is really to try to change company behavior and company thinking. Men and women who are sexually assaulted in any business establishment in California have rights, and that includes not being discriminated against  and that includes not being discriminated against if you complain.

Organ says that the recent headlines surrounding Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein only confirm why Heilbuts case is necessary.

Its gratifying that when these initial accounts about Harvey Weinstein were published, what we saw was other people who were emboldened to come forward and felt empowered to tell their stories. Thats what we want, he notes. We want women and men who are the victims of inappropriate sexual conduct, including sexual assault, to feel free to come forward.

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Heilbut spoke out about his experience on San Franciscos KPIX on Monday and further detailed his story in an Oct. 13 Medium post, in which he claims it was his filing a complaint about sexual assault and harassment that led to his being banned from the gym he loved. He has also launched a Change.org petition (currently with more than 675 signatures), asking Equinox to publicly commit to not retaliating against members who come forward with sexual harassment complaints.

Equinox tells Yahoo Lifestyle through a spokesperson, Both the San Francisco Police Department and our internal team investigated these allegations and found them to be unfounded. These investigations both included access to extensive video footage. We intend to defend vigorously against the claims in the lawsuit.

Heilbut tells Yahoo Lifestyle that he had studied yoga off and on over the past four years, around the world, when in late July he decided to try an Equinox SF class with a teacher hed never worked with before. He said he found the instructor  named as Kevin Nguyen in the lawsuit  friendly and knowledgeable, and returned for more.

During his third class with this instructor, Heilbuts lawsuit claims, the male instructor did an adjustment on Heilbut in which he cupped [his] genitals under the pretense of providing assistance with a yoga pose.

But, Heilbut tells Yahoo, I just thought it was a stupid mistake. Most yoga teachers are more careful about those things, but I brushed it off as an accident.

On Aug. 3, Heilbut says, class went normally, but that at the end of class a number of students stayed behind to work on inversions. As Heilbut was walking out, the complaint alleges, the teacher asked him if he would like to stay behind for some private instruction.

It seemed unusual, Heilbut says. Most teachers charge $100 an hour for private lessons. But I thought, OK, extra help for free from someone really good. I thought, OK, this is weird, but I dont have much to lose.

Heilbut stayed behind as the remaining students left. After about 10 minutes of private stretching, according to the lawsuit, cleaners came into the room to wipe down the yoga mats and the instructor asked Heilbut to join him in the smaller yoga room next door, to get out of the cleaners way, although it seemed unnecessary.

Once there, Heilbut says, the instructor asked him to do weirder and weirder poses that had nothing to do with yoga and nothing to do with what I wanted help with or had asked him for.

Eventually, he alleges in the lawsuit, the instructor asked him to lie down on the floor on his chest and then sat on top of him. It started to feel weird at this point, he recalls. I thought, This feels strange, abnormal, creepy  but maybe Im just crazy.

The instructor then began giving him an unrequested neck and back massage, the complaint alleges. This was just weird, and I felt frozen there, Heilbut says. I should have jumped up, but I just felt frozen. I just lay there.

Heilbut says the instructor then proceeded to ask him to do a number of additional poses that all involved physical contact with him. It was at this point, Heilbut says, that he noticed the instructors erection. Then, Heilbut claims, the instructor let out a weird, sexual moan. The lawsuit notes that Mr. Heilbut believed this sounded like a noise a person would make while having an orgasm.

At this point, Heilbut says, he finally made his move to leave and quickly exited the gym  walking down several flights of stairs to exit the gym before even realizing that he was barefoot, having left without his shoes as a result of being so flustered, confused, and distressed.

Once at home, he says, he began to think more about what had happened to him over the past week. Only then, he says, did he slowly realize what had happened.

All that unusual attention, asking me to stay behind, isolating me, and then he had an erection  and it was like, Oh, my God, I know what happened here, he tells Yahoo Lifestyle. It was so beyond what Im usually on attention for. I dont consider myself at risk because of my age, my weight, my gender. I didnt consider myself someone at risk for sexual assault.

The next day, Heilbut called the gym and said he would like to report a sexual assault. The person he spoke with on the phone then asked him to come in and meet in person. He met, according to the lawsuit, with two managers so he could recount his story.

Heilbut says he was asked to follow up with a written statement, which he did (to both the local gym and the corporate headquarters in New York), and told that Equinox takes these claims seriously, keeping in touch to update the status of their investigation.

Heilbut eventually went back to the gym to try to get his shoes, at which point he noticed that there was a security camera in the small yoga room where he alleges part of his assault took place. At this point, Heilbut decided to file a criminal complaint with the San Francisco Police Department, claiming that he had been the victim of sexual assault.

I decided it was worth going to the police because what happened to me was more obvious at that point. [And seeing the security camera] made me think that now there was evidence, and not just my word against someone elses, he says.

Heilbut says he also asked Equinox directly for a copy of this security camera footage but that his request was denied.

The San Francisco Police Department quickly closed its investigation into Equinox and Heilbuts alleged assault without any further action or pursuit of criminal charges, according to an SFPD spokesperson, who tells Yahoo Lifestyle that the security footage in question was reviewed by an inspector with the Special Victims Unit and that upon review of evidence and in consultation with the District Attorneys Office it was determined that there was no evidence to support the allegations.

While both Equinox and the SFPD denied Yahoo Lifestyles request to review the security camera footage in question, Heilbuts counsel says he intends to get a copy of the tape as part of the process of Heilbuts lawsuit.

They wouldnt give us the tape voluntarily, so I have to assume it shows something negative, Organ says. If it was something exculpatory for them, they would say, Here  look at the tape. It proves your client wasnt assaulted.

Heilbut says that after several weeks of not hearing back from Equinox about its own investigation, he once again reached out to the gym in a series of emails and phone calls. In late August, he spoke with Jack Gannon, vice president of Equinox West Coast, who told him he had two points to discuss: first, that Equinox had concluded its internal investigation, reviewing the security camera tapes and agreeing that the behavior on the part of the instructor was inappropriate; therefore, they were taking appropriate action based on HR laws but would not specify what those actions were.

The second point, Gannon then allegedly told him, was this: Youre banned for life from Equinox. Or, as the lawsuit notes, Mr. Gannon also informed Mr. Heilbut that he was no longer welcome in Equinox Fitness facilities, and that Equinox Fitness had decided to revoke Mr. Heilbuts membership.

Equinox member contracts stipulate that Equinox reserves the right to revoke and cancel this membership at any time for any reason.

A source with knowledge of Equinoxs internal investigation into Heilbuts allegations confirms to Yahoo Lifestyle that the instructor in question was found to have violated employee policies unrelated to the assault allegations, but was unwilling to further clarify what policies had been violated, other than emphasizing that they were completely separate from the allegations of sexual misconduct.

The source also alleges that Heilbut has on two occasions attempted to illegally record Equinox employees without their consent following the filing of his sexual assault complaint in an attempt to get updates on the status of his allegations of assault and harassment. Heilbut denies these allegations.

Which is why Heilbut and his counsel insist that their suit against Equinox is about forcing a cultural shift, first and foremost.

What struck me about this case thats so clear-cut, even if we dont know exactly what happened, [is that] we know he complained about sexual assault, Organ says. If people complain, thats what we want them to do. If you discriminate against them as an adverse action to discourage complaints, thats what we dont want. This suit is to protect women and men who are sexually assaulted and complain about it.

He continues, Men and women are afraid of retaliation all the time. When you heard the accounts of what happened with Harvey Weinstein, high-profile people felt like they couldnt talk about it. These are A-list actors in the U.S. who were intimidated into not coming forward. It took a lot of courage to stand up, and once someone stands up, we as a society need to protect them and make sure retaliation doesnt occur.

Organ concludes, The ultimate goal here is to change [Equinoxs] behavior and other corporate behavior that condones or tries to hide sexual assault. We need to stop it. Thats the bottom line.

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Memo to Bill OReilly: Your former Fox News colleagues want you to leave them out of your mess.

The latest of those colleagues is Eric Bolling, who said Monday that OReillys claims regarding the recent death of Bollings son are beyond inappropriate and asked he cease discussing it.

Bolling released the statement in response to OReilly blaming The New York Times for the death, a puzzling accusation related to media coverage of Bollings departure from Fox News after Bolling was accused of sending unsolicited lewd text messages to colleagues.

I urge you to think about what you put in your newspaper, OReilly told The Daily, a New York Times podcast. Eric Bollings son is dead. Hes dead because of allegations made  in my opinion and I know this to be true  against Mr. Bolling.

Monday night, OReilly tweeted an apology, which Bolling accepted.

(Photo: Twitter)

Its possible OReilly made the initial claim only in retribution: The New York Times published a damning story this weekend revealing that OReilly had settled a sexual harassment suit for $32 million before his Fox News contract renewal.

I believe it is beyond inappropriate for anyone to bring in the tragic death of my son Eric Chase Bolling, Bolling wrote earlier Monday. Just as Bill OReilly had wanted to shield his children from the allegations against him, I hope he will honor my request and avoid any future mentions of my son.

My parting from Fox News was in no way connected to the tragic news of my sons passing. The coroner has in fact indicated to us that they believe it was an accident.

Eric Bolling responds to O'Reilly statement to NYT that Bolling's son died because of allegations against his father https://t.co/dfzQGkVeHD pic.twitter.com/664jOp21MB  Emily Steel (@emilysteel) October 23, 2017

Bolling ended his statement with a not-so-subtle shot at OReilly, drawing a clear comparison between his own amicable departure from the station and OReillys lengthy, more confrontational exit.

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Unlike others who left Fox News amid public allegations and extensive investigations, I parted ways with Fox News in an amicable way, Bolling wrote, adding, any reference to a firing is flatly wrong.

Earlier Monday, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly defended The New York Times story about OReilly, revealing that she, too, had complained to her superiors at the network about his conduct.

Related Coverage

Bill O'Reilly Shouldn't Have Kept His Job This Long

Eric Bolling Out At Fox News

Eric Bolling's Former Fox News Colleagues Pay Tribute To His Late Son

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Beirut (AFP) - The Islamic State group executed dozens of civilians this month in the Syrian desert, a monitor said Monday, in a gruesome massacre as the jihadists see their "caliphate" collapse.

The extremist group last week lost its key Syrian stronghold of Raqa, the latest in a string of setbacks for the jihadists who are facing multiple offensives in both Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said IS fighters massacred more than 100 people in the desert town of Al-Qaryatain this month before they lost it to regime forces.

"IS has over a period of 20 days executed at least 116 civilians in reprisal killings, accusing them of collaboration with regime forces," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Regime forces retook Al-Qaryatain, which lies in the central Homs province, on Saturday, three weeks after the jihadists had seized control of it.

State news agency SANA published Monday footage from inside the town, showing a ransacked and partially burnt hospital, and roads with rubble strewn across them.

Homs governor Talal Barazai greeted residents, thanking them for their "steadfastness", and pledging to stand by them, as dozens of people queued to receive aid being distributed by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

IS first occupied the town in 2015 and lost it to Russian-backed Syrian forces last year.

"After the regime retook it (on Saturday), the town's residents found the bodies on the streets. They had been shot dead or executed with knives," Abdel Rahman said.

"Most of the IS fighters who attacked the town a month ago were sleeper cells... They are from the town, know the town's residents and who is for or against the regime," he said.

The majority of those killed were executed in the last two days before IS lost the town again, he added.

The regime seized back Al-Qaryatain on Saturday after more than 200 jihadists withdrew overnight, pulling back into the vast desert region that stretches all the way to the Iraqi border.

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Al-Qaryatain was a symbol of religious coexistence before Syria's civil war broke out in 2011, with some 900 Christians among its population of 30,000.

But it was ravaged by IS during the group's eight-month-long occupation of the town in 2015-16, with its Christian sites including a fifth-century church reduced to rubble.

- IS decline -

At the peak of its power in 2014, IS's self-styled "caliphate" in Syria and Iraq was approximately the size of Britain.

But it has suffered a string of major setbacks in recent months, including the loss in July of its most important Iraqi stronghold, the city of Mosul.

Last week, it also lost its foremost Syrian bastion, the city of Raqa, after a campaign of more than four months led by the Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces, a US-backed militia.

The jihadist group is now mostly confined to the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor in the country's east, along the border with Iraq.

IS holds around 40 percent of the province, which was once almost completely in its hands, and faces two separate offensives, including by the SDF.

The US-backed militia is fighting the group mostly on the eastern side of the Euphrates River that slices diagonally across the province.

On Sunday, SDF fighters seized one of the country's largest oilfields from the group.

Syria's regime is conducting a separate, Russian-backed offensive in the province, largely on the western bank of the river.

In September, the offensive ended an IS siege of nearly three years on government-held parts of the provincial capital Deir Ezzor city.

The group now holds just eight percent of the city, according to the Observatory.

Elsewhere in Syria, IS holds just a few pockets of territory, including a handful of recently recaptured villages in central Hama province, and parts of the Palestinian camp of Yarmuk in southern Damascus.

An allied group, Jaish Khaled Bin Walid, is also present in parts of southern Syria.
Facebook came under fire after it admitted that it published 3,000 Russian-linked advertisements designed to influence the US Presidential Election. Those ads pointed to Pages that trafficked in fake news, which has been one of the social network's biggest problems for quite a while. Now, the company has listed a new set of guidelines for publishers/media organizations meant to combat false info from being spread on the platform. Those guidelines come with actionable strategies they can follow to avoid being flagged, as Facebook continues to tweak News Feed's algorithm to be better at burying fake information.

The three new Facebook Publisher Principles are as follows:

People on Facebook value meaningful, informative stories.

People on Facebook value accurate, authentic content.

People on Facebook value standards for safe, respectful behavior.

As part of the second principle, the social network warns that it has added "universal signals" that improve the News Feed algorithm's ability to spot fake news. It will now keep an eye out for clickbait headlines, such as ones that tease a piece of info without revealing it ("You'll Never Believe Who Tripped and Fell on the Red Carpet...") or misleading ones meant to sensationalize a piece of information ("Apples Are Actually Bad For You?!"). The website won't give publishers points for linking to low-quality websites with little content and lots of ads as well.

Facebook is making it "as difficult as possible for those posting false news to buy ads" by using machine learning to detect purchases by spam accounts. It recently disabled non-Publisher Pages' ability to edit their posts' metadata to prevent cloaking, or the redirecting of users to websites that don't lead to what they originally expected to visit. Now, it will also give Pages that cloak their posts very low scores, so they won't appear on people's News Feeds.

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The company is also taking this chance to remind publishers what they can and can't post in an effort to squash abusive content on the platform. Facebook stresses that it will remove posts that contain sexual activity, those that incite violence, bullying or harassment, hate speech and other graphic content.

Facebook explains:
The family of a fallen U.S. soldier received a $25,000 check from President Donald Trump on Monday, fulfilling the promise Trump made to them months ago.

The check was sent from Trumps New York address and arrived at the familys home in Zebulon, North Carolina, Chris and Jessie Baldridge told WTVD, a local ABC News affiliate.

The Baldridges lost their 22-year-old son, Dillon, when he was killed in Afghanistan in June. A few weeks after the death, Trump called the family to extend his condolences, the The Washington Post reported Oct. 18. Chris Baldridge told The Post he expressed frustration that the Defense Departments death gratuity would go only to his ex-wife, and said the President offered him $25,000 from his personal account.

However, when The Post published its story, the family had not received it.

As it turns out, the check was written the same day the Washington Post report was published. In a photo released by ABC reporter Jonah Kaplan, the check Trump sent to the Baldridges is dated Oct. 18.

After the report about the missing check, the White House responded by issuing a statement saying the check was in the mail. The check has been sent. Its disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the President, and using it to advance the medias biased agenda, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in a statement, according to the Post.

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The check came with a letter from the President, in which Trump appeared to blame the delay on his lawyers. I am glad my legal counsel has been able to finally approve this contribution to you, Trump wrote. Enclosed is a check for $25,000 I hope this will make things a bit easier, but nothing will ever replace your son, Dillon. He was an American hero.

In letter to Baldridge family, shared only w/ @ABC11_WTVD, @realDonaldTrump says "I hope this will make things a bit easier." @ABCWorldNews pic.twitter.com/MFu2DpGlQK  Jonah Kaplan (@KaplanABC11) October 23, 2017

The family will put the money toward creating a nonprofit that will make American flags and work with local schools, they told WTVD. They said they are writing a thank you note to the White House now that they have received the check.

We want you to know how grateful we are for this generous gift from you. We also want you to know that we intend to use this money to start a non-profit organization in Dillons name into something you can be proud of, the family wrote, according to WTVD. Our goal is to help as many fellow Americans as possible for the rest of our lives.
Berlin (AFP) - The far-right AfD party vowed a "new era" as it made its debut Tuesday at the first sitting of Germany's newly-elected parliament, where it immediately sparked an outcry by comparing itself to an MP once targeted by notorious Nazi Hermann Goering.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) filed a motion to challenge a change in parliamentary rules that thwarted one of its lawmakers from making the opening speech in the lower house.

Defeated by the rest of the lawmakers, the AfD's parliamentary group chief Bernd Baumann drew an erroneous comparison to a move he claimed Goering made in 1933 to block communist MP Clara Zetkin from opening the sitting.

The quip drew gasps from the floor and was slammed as "tasteless" by Marco Buschmann of the liberal FDP party.

German news agency DPA swiftly corrected Baumann's account, noting that Goering's action had actually blocked a member of his own party rather than Zetkin from opening parliament that year.

Social Democratic Party (SPD) chief Martin Schulz said "this unspeakable reference to Hermann Goering, this calculated reference to the Reichstag's president who led the German Reichstag to a dictatorship, that I find was a disturbing moment."

The flare-up appeared to be a harbinger of future Bundestag sittings. The AfD's leading figures have repeatedly smashed taboos by staking claims to German identity and challenging Germany's culture of atonement over World War II and the Holocaust.

"Take note: the old Bundestag has been voted out. The people have decided, a new era begins now," said the AfD's Baumann.

"From this hour on, the issues will be renegotiated -- not your manoeuvres and tricks on parliamentary business but the euro, massive debt, enormous immigration numbers, open borders and brutal criminality in our streets," he vowed.

- 'Queasy' -

The AfD's arrival in the Bundestag is nothing short of a political earthquake in post-war Germany.

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Railing against the more than one million asylum seekers who have come to Germany since 2015, the Islamaphobic party had capitalised on anger among some Germans over the new arrivals.

Ahead of Tuesday's session, Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said the AfD's presence in parliament gave him a "queasy feeling".

"It's a depressing and unsettling feeling to know that there are now people sitting in the Bundestag who appear to want to hide the Nazi past and to target Muslims and asylum seekers," he told the Juedische Allgemeine, a Jewish publication.

Tuesday's meeting also saw veteran former finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, 75, elected as speaker of the house, as was widely expected.

Schaeuble, known for his caustic wit, was reportedly asked by Merkel to take on the role to stop the AfD running riot at the Bundestag.

When the MPs on Tuesday moved on to electing vice-chairs at the Bundestag, the AfD courted controversy again with their nominee Albrecht Glaser, who has claimed that the fundamental right to freedom of religion should not apply to Islam.

Defending Glaser's view, AfD MP Beatrix von Storch, granddaughter of Adolf Hitler's finance minister, wrote on Twitter: "Islam does not only seek to regulate issues surrounding beliefs, but also legal and societal matters. Religious freedom therefore does not apply here."

Each party reserves the right to nominate a vice-chair of the lower house, but he or she has to be elected by parliament.

All three attempts by the AfD to get Glaser elected failed.

- SPD takes aim at Merkel -

Chancellor Angela Merkel's former coalition partner, the venerable SPD, also took on a combative tone from the opposition benches.

In the party's first speech at the house, senior SPD lawmaker Carsten Schneider ripped into Merkel, saying she is "the reason that we have a right-wing populist party here".

The frontal attack was met with shock by Merkel's CDU party, with general secretary Peter Tauber condemning it on Twitter, saying "First shenanigans not coming from the AfD, but from the elderly aunt SPD. How low has she sunk!"

Merkel is now scrambling to form a coalition with parties that have opposing views on a string of issues from migration to environmental protection.

Coalition talks with the left-leaning Greens and the FDP began last week.

The potential alliance, which would be a first for Germany at the national level, has been dubbed "Jamaica" because the parties' black, yellow and green colours match those of the Caribbean country's flag.
The Daily Beast

Fox NewsThe morning after his network called the Arizona governors race for Democrat Katie Hobbs, Fox News correspondent Kevin Corke seemed to cast doubt on the results while reassuring viewers that MAGA candidate Kari Lake still had an outside shot to win.At the same time, he repeatedly mocked the presumptive next governor of Arizona, throwing barbs at Hobbs while delivering a news report on Tuesday morning.Nearly a week after the polls closed, Hobbs was finally declared the winner on Monday e
The family of a U.S. Army corporal killed in Afghanistan has finally received a check from Donald Trump, months after the president promised to give the soldiers grieving father $25,000 in a phone call.

North Carolinas ABC affiliate spoke with Chris Baldridge, the father of Army Cpl. Dillon Baldridge, who said he received a check in the mail on Monday and a letter signed by the president.

I am glad my legal counsel has been able to finally approve this contribution to you, Trump wrote in the letter. I hope this will make things a bit easier, but nothing will ever replace your son, Dillon. He was an American hero.

The Washington Post first reported last week that Baldridge spoke with Trump shortly after his son and two other soldiers were killed by an Afghan police officer in June. According to Baldridge, the president offered to write a check out of his personal account, after the corporals father said he was frustrated with military survivor benefits.

[Trump] said, Im going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000, and I was just floored, Baldridge told the Post. I could not believe he was saying that, and I wish I had it recorded because the man did say this. He said, No other president has ever done something like this, but he said, Im going to do it.

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Baldridge told the outlet, which published his account on Oct. 18, that he had yet to receive a check more than four months after Trumps promise. The check sent by Trump was also dated Oct. 18.

At the time, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters lambasted the Post for asking about the payment, saying it was disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the president, and using it to advance the medias biased agenda.

The Baldridge family planned to write a letter thanking the White House. Part of an excerpt obtained by ABC 11 reads: We want you to know how grateful we are for this generous gift from you. We also want you to know that we intend to use this money to start a non-profit organization in Dillons name into something you can be proud of  Our goal is to help as many fellow Americans as possible for the rest of our lives.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Declassified FBI documents show that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was targeted by a Russian spy posing as an accountant who wanted access to her and her husband, Bill Clinton.

The FBI affidavit details how the the Russian intelligence service the SVR and the Kremlin sought to influence the Clintons using covert and illegal means between 2009-10, The Hill reported.

Related: Trumps Hillary Golf Ball Tweet Shows How F***ed-Up He Is, Says Stephen King

The female spy, who used a fake identity to get a job with a major Democratic donor, had sought to use the position to gain access to information about the State Department, but she was arrested and deported before she was able to do so.

The unsealed documents identify Cynthia Murphy as alias of the Russian spy who posed as a New Jersey accountant. She lived in New Jersey with her husband and children as part of a ten-member Russian sleeper cell that included Anna Chapman, a Russian spy who also pursued a career as a model.

10_23_Hillary

REUTERS/Rebecca Naden

The unmasking of the ring, which quietly collected information and passed it on to handlers in the SVR, was one of the most important U.S. counter-intelligence victories against Russia.

In February 2009 Murphy sent an electronic message to her overseers in Russia saying she had obtained access to a major Democrat.

Murphy had several work-related personal meetings with [a prominent New York-based financier, name omitted] and was assigned his account, the FBI record states.

The message accurately described the financier as prominent in politics, an active fund-raiser for [a major political party, name omitted] and a personal friend of [a current Cabinet official, name redacted].

Various unnamed intelligence sources told The Hill the cabinet officer was Hillary Clinton while the fundraiser has been identified as Alan Patricof. None of the Americans involved in the episode were suspected of breaking the law.

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Clintons office has said reports on the spy ring and attempts by the Kremlin to gain influence over her and the Obama administration are partisan and aimed at distracting the links between the current administration and Russia.

Nothing has changed since the last time this was addressed, including the rights transparent attempts to distract from their own Russia problems, which are real and a grave threat to our national security, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said Saturday.

In 2010, when the story first arose, Clintons staff said there was no reason to think the Secretary was a target of this spy ring.

Related Articles
(Reuters) - A Honduras citizen with sympathies to ISIS and residing in Miami appeared in federal court on Monday on a charge of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in a planned attack on a crowded Miami shopping mall, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Vicente Solano, 53, planned to detonate an explosive in a crowded area of the Dolphin Mall and if convicted, he could face up to life in prison, it said.

Solano discussed his plot with a confidential source and two Federal Bureau of Investigation undercover employees. Solano provided three videos to the source, in which he makes pro-ISIS statements and expresses anti-U.S. sentiments, the department said.

At his court appearance, a judge appointed an attorney, who has not spoken to media about the case.

As a part of a federal sting operation, Solano took possession of what he thought was an explosive device, tried to arm it and walked toward a mall entrance to launch his attack. He was arrested, the department said.

The device was inert and did not pose a risk to the public, it said.

Solano is scheduled to have a pre-trial detention hearing on Thursday.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Sandra Maler)
By Chris Kenning

(Reuters) - A man charged in the murder of an Iowa teenager who identified as both male and female is scheduled to go on trial on Tuesday in a case that led U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to dispatch a federal civil rights prosecutor.

Kedarie Johnson, 16, a Burlington, Iowa, high school student who occasionally went by the name Kandicee, was shot to death in March 2016. Johnson's family told local papers that the teen had identified as both male and female.

Prosecutors have alleged that the killing was related to Johnson's gender identification.

Jorge Sanders-Galvez, 23, and Jaron Purham, 26, were charged in January in the murder. Sanders-Galvez' trial is due to begin on Tuesday in Keokuk, Iowa.

Curtis Dial, an attorney for Sanders-Galvez, said on Monday that his client maintained his innocence. He said the case had been moved from Burlington because of pre-trial publicity.

Purham's attorney could not be reached on Monday for comment.

The case drew national attention when Sessions assigned Christopher Perras, a Justice Department lawyer with the civil rights division, to join local prosecutors in the case.

Justice department spokesman Devin O'Malley said in a statement on Monday that Sessions had directed civil rights attorneys to focus on cases involving transgender people who were murdered.

O'Malley declined to say if federal prosecutors were weighing federal charges.

(Reporting by Chris Kenning)
Baghdad (AFP) - Iraq on Monday rebuffed a US demand that Iranian militias leave the country, insisting that the paramilitary forces which helped it defeat the Islamic State group consist solely of Iraqi nationals.

"Nobody has the right to interfere in Iraqi affairs," the Iraqi cabinet said in a statement, quoting a source close to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

"The fighters of the Hashed (al-Shaabi paramilitary units) are Iraqis who are concerned for their country and have sacrificed for its defence and for its people," it said.

On Sunday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson demanded that Iranian militias leave Iraq.

"Certainly Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fighting against (IS) is coming to a close, those militias need to go home," Tillerson said.

"All foreign fighters need to go home," he said at a press conference in Riyadh.

The 60,000-strong Hashed was formed in 2014 after IS seized swathes of northern Iraq, routing government forces.

A coalition mostly made up of Iranian-backed militias, it has played a key role in Iraq's successful fightback against the jihadists over the past three years.

It answers to Iraq's prime minister as commander-in-chief of the Iraqi armed forces, into which it has been integrated by a parliamentary vote.

Tillerson's remarks were also aimed at Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards and their foreign operations wing, the Quds Force, according to a senior US official accompanying him.

"The position of the Iraqi government and the position of our government is that there should be a single Iraqi security force answerable to the Iraqi state," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has also hit back at Tillerson's remarks, saying Iran played a crucial role in the fight against IS both in Iraq and Syria.

"If it wasn't for the sacrifices of the Islamic Republic of Iran... Daesh (IS) would have installed its government in Damascus, Baghdad and (the Iraqi Kurdish regional capital) Arbil by now," he said.
By Maher Chmaytelli BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi defended the role of an Iranian-backed paramilitary force at a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Monday in Baghdad. Tillerson arrived on Monday hours after the Iraqi government rejected his call to send home the Popular Mobilisation, an Iran-backed force that helped defeat Islamic State and capture the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk. In his opening remarks at the meeting with Tillerson, Abadi said Popular Mobilisation "is part of the Iraqi institutions," rejecting accusations that it is acting as an Iranian proxy. "Popular Mobilisation fighters should be encouraged because they will be the hope of country and the region," he added. Iraq is one of the few countries allied closely to both the United States and Iran, and Tillerson's effort to drive a wedge between Baghdad and Tehran appeared to have backfired, drawing a sharp statement from the prime minister's office. Tillerson visited Iraq a day after a rare joint meeting with Abadi and Saudi Arabia's King Salman in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. After that meeting, he called on Iraq to halt the work of the Tehran-backed paramilitary units, which have operated alongside government troops in battles against Islamic State and, since last week, in a lightning advance that seized the oil city of Kirkuk from Kurdish security forces. At his meeting with Abadi in Baghdad, Tillerson urged the Iraqi government and Masoud Barzani's Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil to resolve their conflict on Kurdish self-determination and disputed territories through dialogue. "We are concerned and a bit sad," Tillerson said. "We have friends in Baghdad and friends in Erbil, and we encourage all parties to enter into discussion ... and all differences can be addressed." Iraqi forces are deploying tanks and artillery just south of a Kurdish-operated oil pipeline that crosses into Turkey, a Kurdish security official said, the latest in a series of Iranian-backed operations against the Kurds. "Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fight against Daesh and ISIS is coming to a close, those militias need to go home," Tillerson said on Sunday in Saudi Arabia. Abadi's office responded sharply. "No party has the right to interfere in Iraqi matters," a statement from his office read. It did not cite the prime minister himself but a "source" close to him. It referred to the mainly Shi'ite Popular Mobilisation as "patriots". One of the closest groups to Iran within Popular Mobilisation, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, reacted to Tillerson's comment by saying it would be Americans who will be forced to leave Iraq. "Your forces should get ready to get out of our country once the excuse of Daesh's presence is over," said Asaib's leader, Sheikh Qais al-Khazali, according to the group's TV channel, al-Aahd. SAME SIDE The international battle against Islamic State fighters in northern Iraq since 2014 saw the United States and Iran effectively fighting on the same side, with both supporting the Iraqi government against the militants. Washington has 5,000 troops in Iraq and provided air support, training and weapons to Iraqi government forces. At the same time, Iran armed, trained and advised Shi'ite paramilitaries that often fought alongside the army. The latest twist in the Iraq conflict, pitting the central government against the Kurds, is trickier for U.S. policymakers. Washington still supports the central government but has also been allied to the Kurds for decades. Iran is the pre-eminent Shi'ite power in the Middle East. Shi'ites, including Abadi, are the majority in Iraq, but it also has large Sunni Arab and Kurdish communities. In the campaign for the Kurdish referendum, Iran backed the government against the Kurds. Major-General Qassem Soleimani, commander of foreign operations for Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, repeatedly warned Kurdish leaders to withdraw from the oil city of Kirkuk or face an onslaught by Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed fighters, Kurdish officials briefed on the meetings said. IRAN DISMISSES TILLERSON REMARKS Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif dismissed Tillerson's remarks. The paramilitaries could not go home because "they are at home" already, he was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA. Abadi has asserted his authority with the defeat of Islamic State in Mosul and the Iraqi army's sweep through Kirkuk and other areas that were held by the Kurds. The buildup at the Kurdish oil export pipeline is taking place northwest of Mosul, an official from the Kurdistan Regional Government's security council said. The loss of Kirkuk dealt a major blow to the Kurds, who had been steadily building an autonomous region in northern Iraq since a U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, who oppressed them for decades. "We are concerned about continued military build-up of Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces towards the Kurdistan Region," said the Kurdistan Region Security Council in a statement. Elections for the Iraqi Kurdistan region's presidency and parliament set for Nov. 1 will be delayed because political parties failed to present candidates, the head of the electoral commission, Hendrean Mohammed, told Reuters. Parties have been unable to focus on the elections in the turmoil that followed the referendum, a Kurdish lawmaker said on condition of anonymity. (Additional reporting by Jon Landay,; writing by Michael Georgy,; editing by Peter Graff, Larry King)
By Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli military officials were quoted on Monday rowing back from an assertion by the defense minister that Hezbollah was behind a spate of shelling from Syria, which could increase tension on Israel's northern frontier. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been warning that Israel, which has largely stayed out of the six-year-old Syrian civil war, could step up attacks in retaliation for shelling across the frontier, or to block Damascus's Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah reinforcements from setting up bases. That could thrust the Israelis into confrontation with Syria and potential run-ins with its big-power backer, Russia. Israel last battled Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, and has occasionally fired on Syria to attack what it said were Hezbollah or Iranian targets during the civil war, but has mainly avoided direct fighting against Syria since their last war in 1973. Twice last week, mortar rounds or rockets launched from Syria hit areas of the Israeli-held Golan Heights, causing no casualties but drawing Israeli artillery fire against Syrian army posts. Addressing his parliamentary faction on Monday, Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a far right politician, said the Golan shelling was carried out by a Syrian cell on Hezbollah's orders without Damascus having been informed, to stoke Israeli-Syrian fighting. Lieberman did not detail the source of his information. "There was a personal instruction by (Hezbollah leader Hassan) Nasrallah to compartmentalize Assad and his regime from the execution of this shooting ... with the goal of dragging us into the Syrian mire," Lieberman said in the televised remarks. "Therefore I call here both on the Assad regime ... and also on the Russian forces that are present there, to restrain Hezbollah." Within hours, every major Israeli media outlet aired remarks attributed to unnamed military officers casting doubt on Lieberman's account. "NO INFO" SUPPORTING STATEMENT "We have no information supporting Lieberman's statement purporting that the (Syrian shelling) cell was run by Hezbollah personnel," the top-rated Channel 2 television quoted "sources in the IDF (Israel Defence Forces)" as saying. Lieberman's office  did not immediately respond to the comments contradicting him. A Lieberman confidant who requested anonymity told Reuters: "The defense minister spoke based on his own judgment and assessment." Hezbollah did not respond to Lieberman's allegations, but its affiliated TV station Al-Manar noted the Israeli media dissent. In what appeared to be a reference to Israel's efforts to coordinate its actions in Syria with Moscow, Lieberman said Russian military commanders in Syria "have received all the (information) that they need on this matter". There was no immediate comment from officials in Moscow. Syria's Foreign Ministry said after Saturday's exchange of fire on the Golan that Israeli strikes would have "grave consequences". Lieberman says Israel is doing everything in its power to stave off military confrontation on the northern front. (Additional reporting by Angus McDowall in Beirut; Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jeffrey Heller, Alison Williams and Peter Graff)
WASHINGTON  Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., announced he will not be seeking reelection next year in a scorching speech on the Senate floor suggesting that President Trump and his brand of conservatism is a danger to the United States and its vulnerable democratic institutions.

Without ever naming the president directly, Flake shamed his colleagues for their complicity in participating in a new political coarseness that starts from the top and has trickled down, endangering American democracy in the process.

We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country  the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve, Flake said.

There are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles, Flake told his colleagues. Now is such a time.

Flake, who wrote a book earlier this year that was critical of Trump, faced a tough primary challenge from the right to defend his Senate seat in Arizona. Trump, angry over his criticism, and his former adviser Steve Bannon, were planning to back his opponent. 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. Hes toxic! Trump tweeted in August.

Flake joins fellow Republican Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., in retiring from the chamber. Trump spent much of Tuesday morning tweeting insults at Corker, who told TV reporters earlier that the president had trouble with the truth and that he regretted supporting him. Among other things, Trump mocked Corker as Liddle and said he was incompetent.

Flake lamented petty insults in his speech, telling his colleagues Republican that they have lost their way. He called Trumps behavior reckless, outrageous and undignified and warned Republicans that indulging in scapegoating and petty resentments would lead them to become the minority party soon enough.

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Such behavior does not project strength, because our strength comes from our values, the senator said. It instead reflects a corruption of spirit and a weakness.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., announces he will not seek reelection. (Photo: Senate TV via Reuters)

Flake also expressed bewilderment that traditional Republican values of free trade, immigration, limited government and free markets have been set aside, and that Republicans like him face a narrower and narrower path to election.

The Arizona senator said he felt a responsibility to speak up for future generations. It is often said that children are watching  well, they are. What are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, Why didnt you do something about this? Why didnt you speak up?, what are we going to say?

Flake prodded his colleagues to admit that the president would not change.

Mr. President, I rise to say Enough, he said. With respect and humility, I say we have fooled ourselves enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it. We know better than that.

He also despaired of the presidents effect on foreign relations.

Despotism loves a vacuum, and our allies are now looking elsewhere for leadership, Flake said. Why are they doing this? None of this is normal.

After Flakes speech, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rose to say he regretted that Flake was retiring, and praised him as a team player who would be sorely missed.
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) appeared to take aim at President Donald Trumps draft deferrals during the Vietnam War this week, following a series of public rebukes of the Trump administration.

In an interview about the Vietnam War on C-SPAN3, American History TV, on Oct. 22, McCain criticized high income draftees who avoided military service while apparently alluding to the presidents own draft exemption  but he did not mention Trump by name.

One aspect of the [Vietnam] conflict by the way that I will never, ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur, he said, naming the ailment under which Trump received medical deferrals.

That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve, McCain said.

The presidents 1968 medical deferral from the Vietnam War, his fifth, according to the Washington Post, was a frequent source of criticism during the 2016 presidential election.

In an interview with the New York Times in 2016, Trump said he received a very strong letter on the heels from a doctor, referring to the bone spurs. (Trump has also previously referred to avoiding sexually transmitted diseases as his own personal Vietnam.)

McCain, who served 22 years in the Navy, has lashed out repeatedly against the administration in recent weeks. At an award ceremony last week at the National Constitution Center, McCain mourned a shift in American politics to half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.

In July, McCain cast a key late night vote to defeat the Republican skinny repeal attempt to replace the Affordable Care Act.

McCain and Trump have clashed publicly since the presidential primary, when Trump questioned McCains military credentials and reputation as a war hero, claiming to prefer people who werent captured  a reference to McCains five years in captivity as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

McCain has meanwhile suggested that Trump apologize to veterans and military families, which Trump refused. More recently, he called Trump poorly informed and impulsive in an August op-ed in the Washington Post, in which he criticized the presidents response to violence at a white supremacy rally in Charlottesville.
Julianne Moore came forward with her own story about director James Toback, whos been accused of sexual harassment by more than 200 women.

On Tuesday morning, the Still Alice star tweeted at journalist Glenn Whipp, who first reported the story for the Los Angeles Times.

James Toback approached me in the 80s on Columbus Ave with the same language  wanted me to audition, come to his [apartment], she wrote.

I refused. One month later he did it again with the EXACT same language, she added. I said dont u remember u did this before?

@GlennWhipp 1 - #JamesToback approached me in the 80's on Columbus Ave with the same language - wanted me to audition, come to his apt.  Julianne Moore (@_juliannemoore) October 24, 2017

@GlennWhipp 2. I refused. One month later he did it again with the EXACT same language. I said don't u remember u did this before?  Julianne Moore (@_juliannemoore) October 24, 2017

A rep for Moore did not immediately respond to HuffPosts request for comment.

More than 30 women initially came forward with allegations against Toback in Whipps article, published Sunday. Whipp said Monday on Twitter that an additional 193 women reached out to him to discuss the 72-year-old Bugsy screenwriter.

Reports of Tobacks alleged misconduct have been swirling since the late 80s, when Spy magazine reported the director used to approach women and brag about his Hollywood status before asking them to consider appearing in his films and inviting them to meet him late at night.

Similar allegations were reported by Gawker in 2008, 2010 and 2012.

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Toback told HuffPost over the weekend that he is writing something in response to the reports, but did not provide further in information. He did not respond at time of publication for further comment on Moores tweets.

Allegations against Toback surfaced in the wake of similar reports regarding Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein, like Toback, has been accused of sexually harassing scores of women, many of whom he worked with. Weinstein also faces more serious allegations of rape from multiple women, including Italian actress Asia Argento, who came forward with her story in an article published by The New Yorker.

Toback and Weinstein now find themselves among a list of other men in the industry, including Harveys brother Bob and Amazon Studios head Roy Price, who have also been accused of sexual harassment.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated James Toback directed Bugsy. However, Toback wrote the screenplay and Barry Levinson directed.

Also on HuffPost

Ashley Judd

Ashley Judd told the New York Times that Harvey Weinstein invited her to his hotel room and asked her if he could give her a massage or if she wanted to watch him shower.



She told the Times that she thought, How do I get out of the room as fast as possible without alienating Harvey Weinstein?

Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Paltrow told the New York Times that Weinstein touched her inappropriately.



I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified, she said, noting that when Weinstein found out she told her then-boyfriend Brad Pitt, "I thought he was going to fire me."

Angelina Jolie

I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, and as a result, chose never to work with him again and warn others when they did, Angelina Jolie told the New York Times. This behavior towards women in any field, any country is unacceptable.

Kate Winslet

Kate Winslet told Variety that she had heard rumors of Weinstein's behavior for years.



"I had hoped that these kind of stories were just made up rumours, maybe we have all been naive," she said. "And it makes me so angry. There must be no tolerance of this degrading, vile treatment of women in ANY workplace anywhere in the world.

Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep told HuffPost that the women who came forward about Weinstein's behavior are "heroes."



The disgraceful news about Harvey Weinstein has appalled those of us whose work he championed, and those whose good and worthy causes he supported," she said in a statement.

Rose McGowan

Rose McGowan has been vocal about the scandal since the New York Times published its bombshell report on Weinstein's alleged misconduct. McGowan, the Times said, was one of several women with whom Weinstein reached a financial settlement following the alleged abuse.



After The Weinstein Company fired Harvey, the actress and director called on the rest of the studio's board to resign.



"They knew," she said in a tweet. "They funded. They advised. They covered up. They must be exposed. They must resign."

Ben Affleck

"I am saddened and angry that a man who I worked with used his position of power to intimidate, sexually harass and manipulate many women over decades," Ben Affleck posted on Twitter. "The additional allegations of assault that I read this morning made me sick."



Actress Rose McGowan denounced Affleck for implying that he didn't know of the abuse before this week, saying that the pair had previously discussed Weinstein's treatment of her.



"You lie," she tweeted.

Lena Dunham

'Girls' co-creator and star Lena Dunham penned an op-ed for the New York Times calling on more men to speak out against Weinstein and others like him.



"Abuse, threats and coercion have been the norm for so many women trying to do business or make art," she wrote. "Mr. Weinstein may be the most powerful man in Hollywood to be revealed as a predator, but hes certainly not the only one who has been allowed to run wild. His behavior, silently co-signed for decades by employees and collaborators, is a microcosm of what has been happening in Hollywood since always and of what workplace harassment looks like for women everywhere."

George Clooney

In an interview with The Daily Beast, George Clooney said that, for decades, he'd heard rumors about Weinstein, but dismissed them as gossip. Calling Weinstein's behavior "disturbing" and "indefensible," Clooney said he had no idea of the severity of the accusations.



"A good bunch of people that I know would say, Yeah, Harveys a dog or Harveys chasing girls, but again, this is a very different kind of thing," the actor told the Daily Beast. "This is harassment on a very high level. And theres an argument that everyone is complicit in it. I suppose the argument would be that its not just about Hollywood, but about all of usthat every time you see someone using their power and influence to take advantage of someone without power and influence and you dont speak up, youre complicit. And theres no question about that."

Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence won an Academy Award for "Silver Linings Playbook," which The Weinstein Company distributed. She called the alleged harassment "inexcusable and absolutely upsetting."



"I worked with Harvey five years ago, and I did not experience any form of harassment personally, nor did I know about any of these allegations. This kind of abuse is inexcusable and absolutely upsetting," Lawrence said in a statement. "My heart goes out to all of the women affected by these gross actions. And I want to thank them for their bravery to come forward."

Hillary Clinton

Weinstein was a major Democratic Party benefactor, having donated to or raised money for a host of candidates, including Hillary Clinton.



Clinton said that she "was shocked and appalled by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein. The behavior described by women coming forward cannot be tolerated. Their courage and the support of others is critical in helping to stop this kind of behavior."

Barack and Michelle Obama

Weinstein visited the White House multiple times while Obama was in office after having raised huge funds for his presidential campaign. Earlier this year, Malia Obama also reportedly worked for the Weinstein Company.



"Michelle and I have been disgusted by the recent reports about Harvey Weinstein," the Obamas said in a statement. "Any man who demeans and degrades women in such fashion needs to be condemned and held accountable, regardless of wealth or status. We should celebrate the courage of women who have come forward to tell these painful stories. And we all need to build a culture -- including by empowering our girls and teaching our boys decency and respect -- so we can make such behavior less prevalent in the future."

Judi Dench

Judi Dench, who won an Oscar for her performance in the Weinstein-backed "Shakespeare in Love" and was nominated for two other films under his wing, denounced the alleged abuse.



"Whilst there is no doubt that Harvey Weinstein has helped and championed my film career for the past 20 years, I was completely unaware of these offenses which are, of course, horrifying and I offer my sympathy to those who have suffered, and whole-hearted support to those who have spoken out," she said in a statement.

Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo DiCaprio worked with Weinstein on blockbuster films like Gangs of New York, The Aviator, and Django Unchained.



"There is no excuse for sexual harrassment or sexual assault-- no matter who you are and no matter what profession," DiCarpio said in a Facebook Post. "I applaud the strength and courage of the women who came forward and made their voices heard."

Jessica Chastain

Jessica Chastain has been one of the most outspoken critics of Weinstein and of Hollywood's complicity since The New York Times published its damning report.



"I was warned from the beginning" about Weinstein, she said in a tweet. "The stories were everywhere. To deny that is to create an environment for it to happen again."

Julianne Moore

Moore, who starred in the Weinstein-backed film "A Single Man," tweeted that "coming forward about sexual abuse and coercion is scary and women have nothing to be gained personally by doing so. But through their bravery we move forward as a culture, and I thank them. Stand with @AshleyJudd @rosemcgowan and others."

Colin Firth

Calling Weinstein a "frightening man to stand up to," Colin Firth told The Guardian that reading about the allegations gave him "a feeling of nausea."



It must have been terrifying for these women to step up and call him out. And horrifying to be subjected to that kind of harassment. I applaud their courage."

Tamron Hall

Its a womans worst nightmare to be in a situation where you believe someone more powerful has control over your life, former "Today" show host Tamron Hall told HuffPost. She called the allegations against Weinstein "horrifying."

Blake Lively

Blake Lively spoke out against Weinstein in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.



The actress said that she was unaware of the abuse but admitted that "it's devastating to hear."



"It's important that women are furious right now. It's important that there is an uprising. It's important that we don't stand for this and that we don't focus on one or two or three or four stories. It's important that we focus on humanity in general and say, 'This is unacceptable.'"

Julia Roberts

Julia Roberts gave a statement to People, saying, A corrupt, powerful man wields his influence to abuse and manipulate women. Weve heard this infuriating, heartbreaking story countless times before. And now here we go again. I stand firm in the hope that we will finally come together as a society to stand up against this kind of predatory behavior, to help victims find their voices and their healing, and to stop it once and for all."

Ryan Gosling

I want to add my voice of support for the women who have had the courage to speak out against Harvey Weinstein, Gosling wrote in a note on Twitter. Like most people in Hollywood, I have worked with him and Im deeply disappointed in myself for being so oblivious to these devastating experiences of sexual harassment and abuse. He is emblematic of a systemic problem. Men should stand with women and work together until there is real accountability and change.

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Kim Cattrall says she prioritized her role as Samantha on Sex and the City over having children.

The actress, 61, opened up about having considered motherhood during an appearance on Mondays episode of Piers Morgans Life Stories, saying that after she got married to her third husband Mark Levinson in 1998, she thought about starting IVF treatments but decided against it because of the hectic shooting schedule for SATC  which premiered that June.

I thought to myself, Wow, I have 19-hour days on this series.  My Monday morning would start at 4:45 a.m. and go to one or two in the morning. How could I possibly continue to do that, especially in my early 40s?  she said. And then I realized what a commitment it was just to the [IVF] procedures.

I thought, I dont think it is going to happen. It was the first moment  it was extraordinary  in my life where I thought, Maybe Im just not going to do this, she added.

Cynthia Nixon (left), Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Sarah Jessica Parker.

Asked whether she feels maternal, Cattrall replied, Yes, I think its part of being a woman to have that. But obviously fate, timing, luck, destiny, I dont know.

That instinct inspired her to mentor young actresses.

I thought I have a place to be a mom here, not a biological mom but a mom and an auntie and a friend. And that has really given me so much, as much as I give I get two-fold back, she continued.

Also in the interview, Cattrall said that she was never friends with her SATC costars. Weve never been friends, she said. Weve been colleagues and in some way, its a very healthy place to be.

The actress addressed reports that her demands led studio Warner Bros. to kill Sex and the City 3, which she called ridiculous.

I never asked for any money, Cattrall said. I never asked for any projects, to be thought of as some kind of diva is absolutely ridiculous.

Cynthia Nixon (left), Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Sarah Jessica Parker.

However, sources have told PEOPLE that Cattrall made outrageous demands to re-board the movie franchise.

Cattrall was dragging her feet all summer and cast and crew members had put their lives on hold to get ready to shoot the movie, said one source. Then when she made outrageous demands, the studio had enough and pulled the plug. Her demand for them to buy her films in development and to give her a TV deal are what broke the camels back for them.

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Rumors that Samantha (Cattrall), Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) were reuniting for a new film  which would follow 2008s Sex and the City and 2010s Sex and the City 2  had long swirled, with fans hoping to see the fierce foursome reunited again.

But after almost eight years of encouraging words from actors, Parker told Extra on Sept. 28 that any possibility of a third movie is officially over.

As previously reported, Cattrall also called out Parker  who would have been a producer on the film  while appearing on the ITV series.

Kim Cattrall (left) and Sarah Jessica Parker.

And this is really where I take to task the people from Sex and the City and specifically Sarah Jessica Parker in that I think she could have been nicer, she said in previously released footage from the sit-down.

The interview airs in its entirety on Monday night in the United Kingdom.
Moscow (AFP) - The Kremlin dismissed on Tuesday any criticism over the knife attack on a liberal radio journalist as work of a "madman" amid accusations the state fomented an atmosphere of hatred towards dissenters.

Tatyana Felgenhauer, a 32-year-old presenter, was attacked on Monday at the offices of the Echo of Moscow radio station by a man who claimed to have a "telepathic" connection with her.

Writing from her hospital bed at the Sklifosovsky Institute, Moscow's main emergency hospital, she said she would be fine and thanked her supporters.

"Breathing through a tube is even cool," she said in a hand-written note, a copy of which was posted on Twitter.

Felgenhauer underwent surgery on Monday but showed signs of improvements Tuesday, with doctors describing her condition as serious but stable.

"The actions of a madman are the actions of a madman," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"Trying to link them to anything is absolutely illogical and wrong," he said, expressing sympathy to the journalist and the radio station.

The suspect, identified as Boris Grits, a 48-year-old mentally unstable man, broke into the radio station's offices in central Moscow and lunged at the journalist with a knife after blinding a security guard with a spray.

Russian media, citing a relative of the suspect, said Grits appeared to suffer from delusions of persecution.

The assault comes after a string of attacks against prominent figures, the highest profile of which was Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader gunned down on a bridge near the Kremlin in 2015.

- 'Atmosphere of hatred' -

Many commentators blamed the authorities for the attack, saying they had created an atmosphere in which such an assault became possible.

"Insanity does not appear (out of thin air)," Echo of Moscow editor Alexei Venediktov said, noting what he said was an "atmosphere of hatred" against journalists.

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Political editor of top opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Kirill Martynov, said state propaganda effectively sanctioned a witch hunt against dissenters.

"Calls to annihilate political opponents are becoming the norm," he said.

Felgenhauer featured in a smear documentary on the Rossiya 24 rolling news channel that claimed this month that the Echo of Moscow was in cahoots with foreign non-governmental organisations to undermine Russia.

"Tatyana has her own worldview, her opinion. Someone does not agree with her and criticises her in return too. In this case, we treat both points of view with respect," Peskov said.

"We are not part of this discussion."

Another top TV channel broadcasted a series this month about US secret agents in which an opposition female journalist has her throat slit.

"Grits's mental disorder amazingly dovetails with the party line," wrote outspoken commentator Yulia Latynina.

"Today the most important question is: was Grits simply a psycho or a psycho who has been used."

Latynina, who is also an Echo of Mosocw presenter, left Russia this year after attacks on her car and home.

An attack on top opposition politician Alexei Navalny this year left him nearly blind in one eye.

- 'Lost his mind' -

Moscow's Krasnopresnensky district court on Tuesday ruled that Grits should be placed under arrest until December 23, court spokesman Alexei Chernikov told AFP.

The Investigative Committee said Grits had been charged with attempted murder and would undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

The suspect's relative told mass-circulation newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets that Grits, who is a national of both Russia and Israel, arrived in Russia more than a month ago and complained that the Echo of Moscow journalist had been stalking him.

The man said Grits looked jittery three days before the attack, adding he was surprised he had hurt the journalist.

"He never fought, he always ran away from problems," the unidentified man told the newspaper. "There is only one explanation: Boris has lost his mind."

Police on Monday released a video clip in which the suspect is saying he had known the journalist "telepathically" for years and that she sexually harassed him for the past week.

The Echo of Moscow, citing doctors, reported that Felgenhauer's vocal cords had not been damaged and the prognosis was "favourable".
By Maher Chmaytelli BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi pro-government paramilitaries launched an offensive against Kurdish troops on Tuesday near the Turkish frontier, pushing towards a strategic border crossing and oil export pipeline hub that Baghdad says must come under its control. The Iraqi government has transformed the balance of power in the north of the country since launching a campaign last week to seize back territory from the Kurds, who govern an autonomous region of three northern provinces and had also seized a swathe of other territory in northern Iraq. The Kurds held a referendum on independence last month that Baghdad called illegal. Baghdad responded by seizing back the city of Kirkuk, the oil-producing areas around it, and other territory that the Kurds had captured from Islamic State. Prime Minister Haidar Abadi has ordered his army to recapture all disputed territory, and has also demanded central control of Iraq's border crossings with Turkey, all of which are inside the Kurdish autonomous region itself. A Kurdish official said Kurdish security forces known as Peshmerga had successfully beaten back an advance by Iranian-backed pro-government paramilitaries in the region of Rabi'a, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the Fish-Khabur border area. Fish-Khabur is strategically vital because oil from both Kurdish and government-held parts of northern Iraq cross at a pipeline there into Turkey, the main route out of the area for international export, crucial for any Kurdish independence bid. Abadi told a news conference in Baghdad he will discuss the issue of the border crossing with his Turkish counterpart Benali Yildirim on Wednesday in Ankara. The fighting so far has taken place outside the Kurdish autonomous region, but Fish-Khabur is located within it, so any assault on the border crossing would mark a major escalation, bringing government troops into undisputed Kurdish territory. Crude oil flowing through the Iraqi Kurdistan pipeline to Turkey's port of Ceyhan were up slightly at 300,000 barrels per day on Tuesday, about half the level before the Iraqi takeover of Kirkuk, a shipping source in London said. The pumping rate has risen by about 50,000 bpd since Monday. TRICKY FOR WASHINGTON An Iraqi military spokesman denied there had been any clashes in the area. But an Iraqi security source in Baghdad and a rights activist in northwest Iraq said the confrontation had started at dawn and was still going on by midday. "Peshmerga repelled the attack and pushed Popular Mobilisation back in to Rabi'a," tweeted KRG President Masoud Barzani's media advisor, Hemin Hawrami. A military spokesman in Baghdad said in response: "There are no clashes." The fighting between the central government and the Kurds is particularly tricky for the United States which is close allies of both sides, arming and training both the Kurds and the central government's army to fight against Islamic State. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Baghdad this week, but Abadi rebuffed his call for Iraq to reject the role of Iran-backed Shi'ite paramilitaries that fight alongside government troops and have taken a hard line on the Kurds. An Iraqi government security advisor said on Monday Baghdad aimed to bring the three-way border crossing with Turkey and Syria at Fish-Khabur under its control, but he declined to say if a military move was being prepared. The Iraqi government's advance over the past week has been achieved with comparatively little violence, with Kurds mostly withdrawing without a fight. Nevertheless, Amnesty International reported that at least 11 civilians were killed and tens of thousands displaced from Kurdish areas of Tuz Khurmato, a town south of Kirkuk. It said images, videos, photos and dozens of testimonies indicated that hundreds of properties had been looted in a rampage targeting Kurdish parts of the ethnically mixed town. Elections for the presidency and parliament of Iraq's Kurdistan region set for Nov. 1 have been delayed by eight months, the regional parliament announced on Tuesday. The electoral commission said on Monday that parties had failed to present candidates amid turmoil in the region following the Sept. 25 independence referendum. (Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; editing by Peter Graff)
Passwords are one of the weakest links when it comes to our online security, and we may be one step closer to getting rid of them altogether. Today, Lenovo and Intel announced the first built-in authentication for PCs that adheres to FIDO (Fast Identity Online) Alliance standards. It's available in Lenovo's latest computers (including the Yoga 920, pictured above) and works with Intel Online Connect, which is included in seventh- and eighth-generation Intel Core processors.

There are two different approaches users can take with these new online authentication experiences. First, a swipe of your finger over an encrypted fingerprint reader on your Lenovo laptop will securely log you into a site that is compatible with the tech. Second, automatic two-factor authentication allows you to enter your normal username and password into a participating website, such a Google, Facebook and Dropbox. Instead of automatically logging you in, though, the service verifies your identity and asks you to click a button to log in.

The FIDO Alliance, which is backed by companies such as Samsung, Google and Microsoft, supports banishing passwords altogether. It's been slow going (for example, Apple's Touch ID isn't currently compatible with FIDO), but this first implementation of FIDO standards into PCs brings us one step closer to making all of our online activity more secure -- and that's a win.
The tastemakers at travel guide Lonely Planet have released their picks for the best destinations to visit next year, declaring Chile the country of 2018 and Seville, Spain the top city of 2018.

To make the cut on one of the most influential travel lists of the year, destinations must offer outstanding experiences in the year ahead, editors say, be it for a special event, milestone, or new openings and attractions.

Likewise, along with emerging, topical and trending hotspots with wow factor, overlooked and underrated destinations can also score a coveted spot in Lonely Planet's travel yearbook.

In the category of best countries, editors say Chile is poised to steal the travel spotlight next year, when the country marks its 200 years of independence.

"Chile is a sinewy sliver of a nation, isolated from the rest of South America (and indeed the world) by the soaring Andes to the east, the vast Pacific Ocean to the west, the bone-dry Atacama Desert up north and the impenetrable wilds of Patagonia down south" reads an excerpt.

"Thanks to new non-stop flights from both London and Melbourne, it's never been easier to catch a plane, raise a glass of pisco sour and toast the celebration."

Rounding out the top three spots for best countries are South Korea and Portugal.

A scan of the top 10 countries list reveals an interesting cross-section of destinations scattered across the Southern Hemisphere, Asia and Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, the selection of best cities 2018 offers up travel ideas that are largely off the grid for many travelers, with destinations like Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Matera, Italy; and Guanajuato, Mexico.

But taking the top spot overall, is Seville, Spain, which editors applaud for having transformed itself from a gridlocked metropolis to a dynamic city of bikes and trams. The year 2018 is also poised to be a big one for the Andalusian capital, as it will host the European Film Awards and take a star role in the cult fantasy series "Game of Thrones."

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Throughout 2018, Seville will continue to mark the 400th anniversary of Baroque painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo with a series of half a dozen art expositions.

Rounding out the podium for best cities is Detroit, USA and Canberra, Australia.

Here are some of the winners:

Top countries

1. Chile

2. South Korea

3. Portugal

4. Djibouti

5. New Zealand

6. Malta

7. Georgia

8. Mauritius

9. China

10. South Africa

Top cities

1. Seville, Spain

2. Detroit, USA

3. Canberra, Australia

4. Hamburg, Germany

5. Kaohsiung, Taiwan

6. Antwerp, Belgium

7. Matera, Italy

8. San Juan, Puerto Rico

9. Guanajuato, Mexico

10. Oslo, Norway



Top regions

1. Belfast and the Causeway Coast, Northern Ireland

2. Alaska, USA

3. Julian Alps, Slovenia

4. Languedoc-Roussillon, France

5. Kii Peninsula, Japan

Top value destinations

1. Tallinn, Estonia

2. Lanzarote, Canary Islands

3. Arizona, USA

4. La Paz, Bolivia

5. Poland
What Cortes is referring to is the governors decision to waive various other fees, such as the Department of Business and Profession Regulations charges for more than 50 types of professional licenses -- fees that DBPR Secretary Jonathan Zachem has described as burdensome.
@alextdaugherty @joeflech

Miami is out of sand.

Last year, Miami-Dade County depleted its offshore sand reserves, meaning miles of beaches that shrink from erosion must be replenished with sand from outside South Florida.

Rebuilding Miamis beaches after Hurricane Irma will cost millions of dollars, and sand will have to be brought in by hundreds of trucks from a sand mine near Lake Okeechobee due to a longstanding federal law that prohibits local governments from importing foreign sand.

County officials say that sand from the Bahamas can be easily transported to Miami by barge, and importing foreign sand could save taxpayers millions. A bill dubbed the Sand Act that would overturn the restrictions on sand is being sponsored by Republican Sen. Marco Rubio and Democratic Rep. Lois Frankel of West Palm Beach and is cosponsored by every member of Congress from South Florida.
Paris (AFP) - French President Emmanuel Macron backed visiting Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in his country's fight against terrorism on Tuesday and brushed off calls to pressure him on human rights.

The 39-year-old French centrist had faced calls from rights groups to raise torture and political repression in Egypt publicly after the first face-to-face meeting between the pair. But Macron said he would not "give lessons" to a sovereign state.

Instead, Macron stressed how Egypt was a vital partner in the fight against Islamist extremism in the Middle East and Europe, as well as key in the search for lasting political solutions in war-wracked Libya and Syria.

"The first battle that we have in common is the fight against terrorism," Macron said during a joint press conference which underlined their common purpose against extremists that have claimed hundreds of victims in both countries.

Macron said he had stated that combating extremism "should be carried out with respect for the rule of law and human rights," but declined to criticise Sisi's record since he seized power in 2013.

As French president Macron said, "I would not accept that another leader gave me lessons about how to govern my country... I believe in the sovereignty of states and I am not here to give lessons without taking account of the context."

The former investment banker, elected in May, has promised a pragmatic, results-oriented foreign policy, but also one that sees France uphold its historic mission of defending human rights.

Egypt is a major buyer of French military equipment with orders worth more than 5.0 billion euros ($5.8 billion) since 2015.

They include an order for 24 fighter jets from the Rafale series for which France had long struggled to find a buyer.

French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said Tuesday that Macron and Sisi would discuss the possibility of further Rafale orders.

"If there can be new contracts, all the better," he told Europe 1 radio.

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Macron's backing for Egypt's tough stance on security is in line with that of other Western leaders, who see Sisi as a source of stability.

US President Donald Trump memorably praised the Egyptian for doing a "fantastic job" in April.

Human rights groups, however, accuse Sisi of overseeing a crackdown on the media, NGOs and political opponents.

The most populous country in the Middle East is fighting the Egyptian branch of the Islamic State group in the north of the Sinai peninsula and has faced a series of attacks that has affected its vital tourism industry.

At least 16 Egyptian police officers were killed at the weekend in an ambush by fighters in the country's Western Desert in a rare flare-up outside the Sinai.

Macron and Sisi both stressed the need to step up the fight against terrorism in Egypt's lawless neighbour Libya, where IS jihadists have gained a foothold.

- No torture? -

Asked by a French reporter about allegations that an Italian academic researcher found murdered in Egypt in 2016 died after being tortured by the police, Sisi defended his security services.

"We do not practise torture," he said, adding: "The Egyptian people refuses all violent practises or dictatorship and failures to respect human rights."

He also said that journalists and unnamed groups, which he accused of trying to undermine the country, were wrongly fixated on "political rights" in Egypt and overlooked the rights of victims of terrorism.

Sisi ousted the country's first civilian president, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood, and insists that his priority is to restore law and order and provide jobs to ordinary Egyptians.

- Stubborn but discreet? -

Macron raised the cases of 15 activists or journalists behind bars in Egypt in private and would "wait for some progress", an aide told reporters after the talks, on condition of anonymity.

In the lead up to the visit, Macron's aides had stressed that human rights would be discussed behind closed doors.

Rights groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International had urged the French leader to make economic cooperation and military support conditional on improvements in human rights.

The head of Human Rights Watch in France, Benedicte Jeannerod, urged Macron to end "France's disgraceful policies of indulgence toward al-Sisi's repressive government."
Paris (AFP) - French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday declined to publicly criticise the rights record of his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, saying he was in not in the business of giving "lessons".

"We do not give lessons without taking account of the context," Macron said at a press conference with Sisi in Paris, voicing support for Egypt's "fight against violent religious fundamentalism".

France sees Sisi, a former general who ousted the elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, as a key ally in the fight against terrorism and a source of stability in the war-wracked Middle East.

Macron told the press conference that combating extremism "should be carried out with the respect of the rule of law and human rights" and his aides said he raised cases of arrested activists in private during the two-hour talks.

The two countries marked Sisi's visit to Paris with the signature of several agreements on transport, energy and cultural cooperation.

But neither Macron nor Sisi could escape questions over Egypt's record of abuses and repression.

Asked by a French reporter about allegations that an Italian researcher found murdered in Egypt in 2016 died at the hands of the police, Sisi said emphatically: "We do not practise torture."

Egypt is also a major buyer of French arms.
New York (AFP) - McDonald's turned in another strong round of earnings Tuesday following heavy promotions in the US as it ramps up tech-focused home-delivery and mobile pay initiatives.

The fast food giant scored a solid six percent jump in global comparable sales, fueled by gains in several key markets, including the United States, China, Britain and Canada.

"We're building a better McDonald's and winning back customers," said chief executive Steve Easterbrook, who was appointed in 2015 and has been credited with turning around the chain and dousing worries about rival chains and growing consumer enthusiasm for healthier fare.

Net income for the quarter ending September 30 was $1.9 billion, up 47.7 percent from the year-ago period. That included a gain of about $850 million from the sale of China and Hong Kong businesses to franchising companies.

Revenues fell 10.4 percent to $5.7 billion due to the divestments in Asia.

Easterbrook has been praised for successful roll-outs of the chain's popular all-day breakfast option and other new programs, and with efforts to simplify the menu in order to speed visits for customers.

The British-born chief has also reorganized McDonald's international divisions and aggressively pursued store refranchising that has raised funds that have helped to offset the costs of technology investments and higher spending on salaries and worker training.

US sales were lifted by some aggressive discounting initiatives, including the McPick 2 value deal, which charged $5 for two meal-sized items, such as the Big Mac and Chicken McNuggets.

Comparable sales in the US rose 4.1 percent despite lower sales in regions hit by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

The results "are a testament to both (McDonald's) resilience and the soundness of its reinvention strategy," said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail.

"Promotional activity has been key to McDonald's success within the US," Saunders said.

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"While such activity is not new and helped to drive trade during the second quarter, we are encouraged that it still has resonance given the recent increase in the number of offers and deals from fast food rivals."

- McDonald's on demand -

Easterbrook said he has been encouraged by early efforts on home delivery in the US, currently available at 3,700 restaurants, with a target of 5,000 by the end of the year.

He said the service is a "meaningful contributor" to sales at participating restaurants because there are many return customers.

"Given consumer trends, we can already see it growing," said Easterbrook. "We were a little late to enter, but I think we've entered with more muscle and intent than probably most other competitors could probably muster."

McDonald's is also eyeing growth through greater use of mobile ordering and curbside pickup. The program currently has about nine million active users on a monthly basis, said Chris Kempczinksi, president of McDonald's USA.

The chain is focused on training employees "to really understand when a curbside order comes up, how do they take that order? How do they go out and bring that food to the customers?"

The objective is to have the service running effectively by the time it begins publicizing the service in 2018, he added.

"We want to make sure that when we do flip on the marketing switch, we're ready to handle the business," Kempczinksi said.

Shares of McDonald's rose 0.8 percent to $164.67 in afternoon trading.

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Melania Trump has made cyberbullying one of her main causes as First Lady while US President Donald Trump continues to berate people via Twitter: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

First Lady Melania Trump said that it is our responsibility to teach children empathy and "integrity" just one day after Donald Trump called a Congresswoman wacky on Twitter hours after he accused a Gold Star widow was lying.

Ms Trump was speaking at Orchard Lake Middle School in West Bloomfield, Michigan with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos as a kickoff to National Bullying Prevention Month.

Ahead of the event the First Lady said: By our own example, we must teach children to be good stewards of the world they will inherit. We need to remember that they are always watching and listening.

Ms Trump made prevention of cyber-bullying one of her platforms when Mr Trump entered office. She said of the initative: It is our responsibility to take the lead in teaching children the values of empathy and communication that are at the core of kindness, mindfulness, integrity, and leadership.

Critics were quick to point out the irony of this cause of the First Ladys as Mr Trump began to use Twitter as a means of ridiculing Democrats, Republicans who voted against party-sponsored bills, the NFL, Senator John McCain, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and a frequent target - Hillary Clinton, whom he calls Crooked Hillary in several dozen tweets.

His latest focus is the family of Sergeant La David T Johnson, who died in Niger on 4 October.

The recent controversy began with the deaths of Staff Sergeants Bryan Black, Jeremiah Johnson, Dustin Wright and Mr Johnson, who were patrolling with Niger troops when they were ambushed by militants thought to be affiliated with Isis.

The incident is still under investigation as to why Mr Johnsons body was not recovered until 48 hours after the initial rescue operation.

Mr Trump called the pregnant widow of Mr Johnson, Myeshia Johnson, and was said to have said: You know, he mustve known what he signed up for.

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The details of the conversation between the President and Ms Johnson were revealed by Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, a longtime family friend of the Johnsons who was in the vehicle when Ms Johnson received the phone call while on their way to meet her husbands body at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Ms Wilson said: When [Ms Johnson] got off the phone, she said, He didnt even know his name. He kept calling him, Your guy.

Mr Trump vehemently denied the Congresswomans interpretation of the conversation and tweeted that she was wacky or crazy at least three times.

He also retweeted another Twitter users post with a picture of Ms Wilson and Mr Obama, writing People get what is going on!

Wacky Congresswoman Wilson is the gift that keeps on giving for the Republican Party, a disaster for Dems. You watch her in action & vote R!

 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2017

I hope the Fake News Media keeps talking about Wacky Congresswoman Wilson in that she, as a representative, is killing the Democrat Party!

 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2017

The Fake News is going crazy with wacky Congresswoman Wilson(D), who was SECRETLY on a very personal call, and gave a total lie on content!

 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2017

People get what is going on! https://t.co/Pdg7VqQv6M

 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2017

The exact meaning of the tweet is unclear, but it appears to tie Ms Wilson as a last hope representative of Ms Clinton and Mr Obama.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later commented that just because the President said your guy, I dont think that means he doesnt know his name.

But Mr Johnsons mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson told the Washington Post that Mr Trump did disrespect her son and the rest of their family.

Ms Johnson then appeared in an interview on Good Morning America when she confirmed: "Whatever Ms. Wilson said was not fabricated. What she said was 100 per cent correct.

Just after the interviewed aired live, Mr Trump once again took to Twitter in what critics say was another example of a lack of the empathy to which the First Lady had referred.

He wrote: I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!

I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!

 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2017

The First Ladys office has not responded to Mr Trumps several tweets or how it may appear to conflict with her message on cyber-bullying, a campaign she kicked off at the United Nations General Assembly.

Mr Trump had just called Mr Kim Rocket Man in his official speech.

The First Lady said: Nothing can be more urgent nor worthy a cause than preparing future generations for adulthood with true moral clarity and responsibility.

We must live by the golden rule, which is to do unto others as you would have done unto you, Ms Trump said.

The Washington Post annotated Ms Trumps latest statement with examples of tweets from the Presidents account, both before and during his presidency.

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Melania Trump on Monday chatted with students at a Michigan middle school about social isolation and inclusion as part of her anti-bullying agenda, which she has previously said will be a focus of hers as the first lady.

Dont try to copy somebody, Trump said, according to the event's pool report, in a sidebar discussion with a small group of children. The first lady is presumed to be advising children to not succumb to peer pressure since she also added: No drugs. No cigarettes.

RELATED: Melania Trump's anti-bullying school visit



But the slight remark, however, later picked up steam after appearing in the New York Times' coverage of the visit and has since raised some eyebrows.

Folks on Twitter, particularly, found irony in the first lady's instructions, noting a previous speech she gave at the 2016 Republican convention that turned out to be partially lifted from a speech Michelle Obama delivered several years prior.

SEE ALSO: Melania Trump raises eyebrows on Twitter after anti-bullying speech at middle school

Sounds familiar oh thats right, she plagiarized Michelle Obama one person wrote, while another tweeted: Umm, could you excuse me for a sec?

See more reactions to the first lady's middle school visit


On Monday, Melania Trump headed to Michigan to meet with middle school students. Accompanied by the U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who is from the state, the pair kicked off the White Houses Week of Inclusion as part of National Bullying Prevention Month and the first ladys anti-bullying campaign.

Wearing a $2,950 Valentino double breasted wool peacoat in cherry blossom, a similar color to the coat she draped over her shoulders during her inauguration dresss induction ceremony into the Smithsonian, FLOTUS went for a business casual look with gray slacks and a matching sweater to eat lunch with kids at Orchard Lake Middle School in West Bloomfield.

I encourage you to find a new friend and eat with your new friend, Trump said during the meal, according to the Detroit Free Press. Ask them what they like, what their hobbies are. She also noted that there wasnt a lot of mingling of the sexes in the cafeteria. I see tables only girls and tables only boys. Maybe you can get together and become friends. Agree?

FLOTUSs tour of the school included a visit to a classroom of sixth graders as well and told them, I always believe in treating others with respect and kindness and compassion.

Throughout the day, Trump shook hands and posed for selfies with the students. She took to Twitter to share photos after the visit and shared that it was a wonderful experience. Thank you for having me, she added.

Wonderful to see kind children at Orchard Lake Middle School in Michigan! Thank you for having me! #nooneeatsalone pic.twitter.com/0m1k2OwTXZ  Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) October 24, 2017

Before heading back to Washington, D.C., she met with Michigan State Police and posed for a group photo in which her pink coat stood out amongst those in their brown and blue uniforms.

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Thank you for all you do! @MichStatePolice @oaklandsheriff @WestBlmfldPD W Bloomfield Fire Dept & Waterford Police Dept A post shared by First Lady Melania Trump (@flotus) on Oct 23, 2017 at 6:51pm PDT

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With its Learning Tools, Microsoft has developed a few ways to make it easier for students to get a better handle on reading and writing. One tool, for example, can read your words aloud and help you identify common grammatical issues. Another, called Immersive Reading, can also read text aloud while highlighting it in "focused" view (where words are spaced out in a distraction-free environment). The Learning Tools started out as a OneNote plug-in, but Microsoft has steadily expanded it to Office apps on desktops, mobile and the web. Today, the company announced they're headed to Word for iPad.

To begin with, the iPad Word app will get some basic capabilities from the Immersive Reading tool. It'll recite text out loud while highlighting individual words, and you can also change the word, character and line spacing to make it easier to comprehend. They're the sort of features that could help anyone focus. But, in particular, they could be essential for students with ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia or those just learning how to read. The feature will also work for every language supported by Word for iPad.

Additionally, Microsoft unveiled a new study today, produced by RTI International's Center for Evaluation & Study of Educational Equity, that shows its Learning Tools get results in real classrooms. One key takeaway: Students using Learning Tools gained 10 percentile points on average in reading comprehension, while those who weren't using them dropped by 0.62 points.

"Teachers observed that having text read aloud to their students, regardless of grade level or reading ability, helped readers to focus on the ideas in the text," wrote the study's author, Katherine McKnight, PhD. "For struggling readers, features such as highlighted words and word spacing, the pacing of the voice, the gender of the voice, background color, font size, and parts of speech helped to improve reading mechanics."

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Dr. McKnight also notes that the high comprehension gains could be partially due to the lower reading levels in the testing group. Typically, there's more room for growth when you're starting low. And since the study didn't control for differences in how students learned to read in the test cohort, compared to historical data, she can't claim that Learning Tools led to the improved comprehension specifically.

Learning Tools is also available for free across OneNote's apps, Word on the web and desktop, Outlook on the web, and in the Office Lens app on iOS. Microsoft's Edge browser also recently gained the ability to read any webpage aloud with the Windows 10 Fall Creator's Update.
Dishonest businessman telling lies.

Our ethics and political leanings are a part of who we are, and a new survey reveals that oftentimes those beliefs spill over into the workplace.

Aflac (AFL) conducted a study, which measured how often people behave unethically at work. The insurance company also took a look at how outspoken companies should be when it comes to political issues.

The most startling revelation (or maybe not so surprising) is that millennials feel more pressure to act unethically. In fact, 25% of all consumers revealed that they were asked to do something unethical by their employer. From this group, 47% of millennials admit to actually complying with the requests. This compares to just 36% of all other generations.

Millennials are very ethics-conscious, but as they climb the corporate ladder, they feel pressured to not disappoint in a very competitive arena, said Catherine Hernandez-Blades, VP of Corporate Communications at Aflac. This was a very interesting finding, given that millennials are also the group that is most likely to conduct business or invest in companies known for social responsibility.

In other words, millennials are younger, and less secure, leading them to possibly make questionable decisions.

Overall, 19% of consumers say that they have behaved unethically at work, whether they were asked to by their employer or not.

Politics in the workplace

In todays bipartisan, Twitter-fueled world, politics has infiltrated almost every part of our lives. In the last couple of months, weve seen major corporations risk consumer loyalty by speaking out against the Trump administration on a bevy of issues. Google signed a letter asking Trump to stay in the Paris agreement, Amazon spoke out against the travel ban to Muslim majority countries, and Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier left Trumps Business Advisory Council after the white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Va.

In the survey, Aflac found that 77% of consumers and 74% of investment professionals agree that a company has to step up on issues that matter to people if they want to be known as a leader. Going further, 52% of consumers and 61% of investment professionals actually expect companies to speak out on controversial topics.

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Still, even consumers arent exactly sure where politics and business converge. Even though more than half of people think companies should speak out, 58% of consumers and 69% of investment professionals also agreed with the statement, Companies should stick to their business and avoid politics. Talk about mixed messages.

If a company doesnt want to speak out, there are some other consumer-approved ways to take action. Fifty-seven percent of respondents say donating to a group that works on an issue makes a company more responsible, and 53% agree that starting a nonprofit to advocate for its position on an issue is also an effective way to ignite change.

We use this information to not only gauge where Aflac stands with consumers and investors, but also what is expected of corporate citizens, said Hernandez-Blades

The study was done in conjunction with FleishmanHillard, a PR and marketing agency, which surveyed 1,001 Americans at least 18 years old from June 2-13.

Brittany is a reporter at Yahoo Finance.

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WASHINGTON  A tiny, 2-year-old Montana energy company with ties to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and backing from a major donor to President Donald Trump has come under scrutiny after being awarded a $300 million contract to help restore power in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.

Whitefish Energy Holdings, which had just two full-time employees when Hurricane Maria made landfall on the Caribbean island last month, is located in Whitefish, Montana  Zinkes hometown. It is financed in part by HBC Investments, a firm founded by Joe Colonnetta, who donated approximately $25,000 to Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, as The Daily Beast reported Tuesday.

Unsurprisingly, questions have been raised about how such a small operation managed to secure such an important and profitable job over larger, more experienced utilities.

Im scratching my head wondering how it all adds up, Susan Tierney, a former senior official at the Energy Department, told The Washington Post.

In a post to Twitter, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said the story has echoes of early Iraq occupation: key contracts given to politically connected firms, with disastrous results.

Puerto Rico story has echoes of early Iraq occupation: key contracts given to politically connected firms, with disastrous results  Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) October 24, 2017

The Interior Department told The Washington Post on Monday that Zinke and Whitefish Energy CEO Andy Techmanski know one another, and that Zinkes son worked a summer job at one of Techmanskis construction sites.

Asked Tuesday about the two mens relationship, Ken Luce, a spokesman for Whitefish Energy, acknowledged that Techmanski and Zinke know each other. He pointed out that Whitefish only has a population of about 7,000.

Zinke did not do anything to secure a contract or attempt to secure a contract, Luce said. I know thats the assumption.

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At the end of the day, political connections are not what got something done, he added. Rather, he said, Whitefish started talking with Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority about power grid repairs in the wake of Hurricane Irma, which passed north of the U.S. territory in early September but still left more than 1 million people without power. Approximately a week after Maria hit in mid-September, Techmanski flew to Puerto Rico and sat down with PREPA to draft a plan to restore electricity in the islands mountainous areas. One of only two companies that expressed an interest in working with the bankrupt power utility, Whitefish was ultimately given the job, Luce said.

The Interior Department did not immediately respond to HuffPosts request for comment.

PREPAs executive director, Ricardo Ramos, said during a recent tour of a damaged power plant that Whitefish was the first company available to arrive and agree to PREPAs terms and conditions, The Washington Post reports. Ramos also said that PREPA is completely content with the work being done, and that concerns about Whitefish are unfounded and likely being spread by competitors.

However, Luis Vega-Ramos, a member of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives, expressed outrage about the situation. Whitefish seems to be nothing more than a glorified middleman to get the real providers of the services, with which PREPA could have contracted directly, Vega-Ramos told The Daily Beast. It is a cozy sweetheart deal in which Whitefish gets a gratuity for subcontracting the actual providers.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said Tuesday that there is something very fishy about the Whitefish deal, and called on the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate the contract.

Whitefish currently has 300 people  mostly subcontractors  working on the island, with between 13 and 15 new hires arriving daily, according to Luce. Eventually it plans to have a workforce of 1,000 people.

Luce told HuffPost the questions being asked are legitimate, and natural skepticism is warranted. However, he pushed back on the idea that Whitefish is not qualified for the job. Techmanski has 20 years of experience in the power sector and in transmission line repair, he said.

If this was a company who did not have the expertise, then I wouldnt be putting up a report every day as to what the company is doing, he said, referring to the daily updates being posted to the companys Facebook page.

At least 45 people have died in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory that is home to 3.4 million Americans, since Hurricane Maria struck the island. As of Tuesday, roughly 75 percent of the population is without power and one-fourth is without drinking water. Despite widespread criticism about the governments response to the disaster, Trump has given his administration a 10 out of 10 for its performance.

Also on HuffPost

Maria Lopez cries while walking from her house that was flooded after the passage of Hurricane Maria, in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, on September 22, 2017. Puerto Rico battled dangerous floods Friday after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, as rescuers raced against time to reach residents trapped in their homes and the death toll climbed to 33. Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello called Maria the most devastating storm in a century after it destroyed the US territory's electricity and telecommunications infrastructure. / AFP PHOTO / HECTOR RETAMAL (Photo credit should read HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images)

Loiza, PUERTO RICO SEPTEMBER 22: Aerial photo of the floadings in the costal town of Loiza, in the north shore of Puerto RicoHurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

HAYALES DE COAMO, PUERTO RICO - SEPTEMBER 24: Karlian Mercado, 7, rests on the rubble that remains of her family's home after it was blown away by Hurricane Maria as it passed through the area on September 24, 2017 in Hayales de Coamo, Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico experienced widespread damage after Hurricane Maria, a category 4 hurricane, passed through. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Irma Torres poses for a picture at her damaged house after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Local residents react while they look at the water flowing over the road at the dam of the Guajataca lake after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Guajataca, Puerto Rico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

A man looks at damages on his flooded house, close to the dam of the Guajataca lake after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Guajataca, Puerto Rico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

A man sits in a wheelchair next to washing machines at a shelter after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria, in San Juan, Puerto Rico September 22, 2017. Picture taken September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Alvin Baez

LOIZA, PUERTO RICO - SEPTEMBER 22: A resident wades through flood water days after Hurricane Maria made landfall, on September 22, 2017 in Loiza, Puerto Rico. Many on the island have lost power, running water, and cell phone service after Hurricane Maria, a category 4 hurricane, passed through. (Photo by Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images)

People stay at the roof of a damaged house after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

PUERTO RICO SEPTEMBER 23: A devastated house in Morovis Puerto Rico. Hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico leaving behind a path of destruction across the national territory. (Photo by Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO - SEPTEMBER 22: Residents line up for gasoline days after Hurricane Maria made landfall, on September 22, 2017 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Many on the island have lost power, running water, and cell phone service after Hurricane Maria, a category 4 hurricane, passed through. (Photo by Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images)

A car submerged in flood waters is seen close to the dam of the Guajataca lake after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Guajataca, Puerto Rico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

A resident lay on a cot inside a shelter after being evacuated from a home near the damaged Guajataca Dam after Hurricane Maria in Isabella, Puerto Rico, on Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017. Amid their struggles to recover fromiHurricaneiMaria, some Puerto Rico residents found it befuddling that President Donald Trump fired off a number of Twitter rants about professional athletes on Saturday -- yet made no mention of their dire situation. Photographer: Alex Wroblewski/Bloomberg via Getty Images

People stop on a highway near a mobile phone antenna tower to check for mobile phone signal, after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria, in Dorado, Puerto Rico September 22, 2017. Picture taken September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Alvin Baez

A dead horse is seen next to a road after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria in Quebradillas, Puerto Rico September 23, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

An aerial view shows the flooded neighbourhood of Juana Matos in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Catano, Puerto Rico, on September 22, 2017. Puerto Rico battled dangerous floods Friday after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, as rescuers raced against time to reach residents trapped in their homes and the death toll climbed to 33. Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello called Maria the most devastating storm in a century after it destroyed the US territory's electricity and telecommunications infrastructure. / AFP PHOTO / Ricardo ARDUENGO (Photo credit should read RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty Images)

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
The North Korean leader has stepped up its missile and payload testing: Getty

The threat from North Koreas developing nuclear and conventional weapons programme has reached a critical and imminent level, Japans defence minister has claimed.

Speaking in the Philippines, in the company of his US and South Korean counterparts, Itsunori Onodera said it was essential those countries concerned about the threat acted to confront it.

[The] threat posed by North Korea has grown to the unprecedented, critical and imminent level, he said.

According to Reuters, he added: Therefore, we have to take calibrated and different responses to meet with that level of threat.

The comments from Mr Onodera came amid escalating tension between North Korea and the West. Since Kim Jong-un assumed leadership of the country in 2011, he has overseen a rapid escalation of its nuclear weapons programme.

In recent months, it has continued to test intercontinental ballistic missiles, despite repeated calls from the international community not to do so. Many experts believe those missiles - which North Korea has tested by firing them over Japan - could reach the US mainland. At the same time, it has also been testing the nuclear payloads that could be carried by such missiles.

The US has responded by sabre-rattling and a barrage of rhetoric. During his first speech before the United Nations General Assembly, Donald Trump said the US may be obliged to totally destroy North Korea. He has also denounced the outreach endeavours of his top diplomat, Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man, Mr Trump said on Twitter earlier this month, using the nickname he has adopted for the North Korean leader. Save your energy Rex. Well do what has to be done!

Mr Onoderas remarks, which highlighted the deep concern in Tokyo about North Koreas weapons testing, were more outspoken than the comments from US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-Moo.

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Mr Song said North Koreas provocative behaviour is becoming worse and worse. Mr Mattis also renewed criticism of North Koreas tests, saying they threaten regional and global security.

Meanwhile, former US President Jimmy Carter said he was willing to travel to North Korea on behalf of the Trump administration to try and help diffuse the situation, the New York Times reported over the weekend.
Islamabad (AFP) - US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson got a frosty welcome to Pakistan Tuesday after Washington turned up the heat on Islamabad for allegedly providing "safe havens" for Taliban militants.

America's top diplomat was quietly greeted by a mid-level Pakistani Foreign Office official and the US ambassador David Hale at the military airport in Rawalpindi, an AFP photographer saw -- a welcome that, while marked with smiles, was devoid of the pomp that usually accompanies high-level visits.

He was then driven in a convoy amid tight security to the US embassy in Islamabad's diplomatic enclave, before meeting with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, the powerful military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, and other top officials.

It was not clear how long the meeting lasted, but the secretary left Pakistan for India Tuesday evening, less than four hours after landing.

The visit was the first to nuclear-armed Pakistan by a senior Trump administration official and comes months after the US President angrily accused Islamabad of harbouring "agents of chaos" who could attack US-led NATO forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.

It follows on the heels of an unannounced stop in Afghanistan Monday, where Tillerson reiterated America's commitment to the country and warned that Washington has made "very specific requests" of Pakistan over militancy.

Washington and Kabul have long accused Islamabad of supporting Afghan militant groups including the Taliban. They are believed to have links to Pakistan's shadowy military establishment, which aims to use them as a regional bulwark against arch-nemesis India.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied the charge, insisting it maintains contacts only to try to bring the militants to peace talks.

"Tillerson reiterated President Trump's message that Pakistan must increase its efforts to eradicate militants and terrorists operating within the country," a statement from the US embassy said Tuesday.

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But Tillerson also expressed his appreciation to Pakistan for the sacrifices it has made in fighting militancy and for its help in securing the release of a US-Canadian family held captive by the Taliban for five years.

"We are committed in the war against terror. We have produced results. And we are looking forward to moving ahead with the US and building a tremendous relationship," Abbasi replied, according to a pool report.

A statement from the prime minister's office later said the US and Pakistan had "agreed to build upon the understandings reached in the dialogue process" -- but also linked regional stability to Pakistan's dispute with India over the Himalayan region of Kashmir.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of British colonial rule in 1947. Both claim it in full and have fought two wars over the mountainous region.

US and Pakistani sources say Tillerson's visit to Islamabad will be followed later in the year by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis as Trump seeks to send a tough message to its ally.

- No pleasing the US? -

The US-Pakistan relationship has waxed and waned dramatically since Donald Trump took office in January.

Pakistan said the US President had praised its then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif as "terrific" in an effusive phone call when Trump took office in January.

But Trump's blistering speech in August accusing Pakistan of harbouring militants saw Islamabad angrily hit back at the claims, insisting the US took no account of the thousands of lives lost and billions spent in fighting extremism.

Following the August speech, Tillerson cautioned Pakistan that it could lose its status as a privileged military ally if it continued providing support to Afghan militant groups.

As one of 16 "Non-NATO Major Allies", Pakistan benefits from billions of dollars in aid and has access to advanced US military technology banned from other countries.

Political analyst Zahid Hussain said there may be little Islamabad can do at this point to convince the US it is acting in good faith.

"The perception here is whatever they do, it is not going to please the Americans," Hussain told AFP.

Earlier this month Pakistani forces acting on American intelligence said they had rescued a US-Canadian family held by the Taliban for five years, sparking hopes that ties would improve.

The rescue was followed by drone strikes on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border targeting long-time foes of both Washington and Islamabad.

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By Jonathan Landay ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Tuesday reconfirmed Pakistan's commitment to the "war on terror" during a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, saying his country had "produced results" fighting the region's Islamist militants. Relations between uneasy allies United States and Pakistan have frayed in recent years, with Washington accusing Islamabad of turning a blind eye or helping Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network militants who stage attacks in Afghanistan. Pakistan denies doing so. President Donald Trump has vowed to get tough with Pakistan unless it changed its behavior, with U.S. officials threatening further reductions in aid and mooting targeted sanctions against Pakistani officials. Tillerson, on a tour of Asia and the Middle East, arrived in Pakistan on Tuesday afternoon and met with Abbasi, as well as Pakistan's powerful army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa. "We are committed in the war against terror,"," Abbasi told Tillerson, as the two men sat facing each other on a long table. "We have produced results. And we are looking forward to moving ahead with the U.S. and building a tremendous relationship," added Abbasi, who sat next to Bajwa. During a short part of the meeting available to media, Tillerson told the Pakistani delegation that the nuclear-armed nation was an important U.S. ally in the region. "(Pakistan is) important regionally to our joint goals of providing peace and security to the region and providing opportunity for greater economic relationship as well," Tillerson said. As well as support for the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, another sticking point in the relationship has been growing closeness by the United States to India, Pakistan's arch-foe and neighbor. Tillerson said last week that the Trump administration wanted to "dramatically deepen" cooperation with New Delhi, partly to offset Chinese influence in Asia. Trump has also called for greater Indian role in Afghanistan. But this deepening in ties has alarmed Pakistan, which has rejected a greater political role for India for Afghanistan as a "red line" for Islamabad. (Writing by Drazen Jorgic Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
Bratislava (AFP) - Slovakia remains "a pro-European island", said leftist Prime Minister Robert Fico following the election victory of a eurosceptic billionaire in neighbouring Czech Republic at the weekend.

The populist ANO movement led by Andrej Babis, known as the Czech Trump, cruised to victory on an anti-euro and anti-migrant ticket.

"We remain a kind of pro-European island in the centre of Europe," Fico told reporters on Monday, while explaining he was making an "exception" to his rule of not commenting on election results abroad.

He spoke after releasing an unprecedented joint statement with President Andrej Kiska and parliamentary speaker Andrej Danko that said they will promote "clear and responsible communication of the pro-European and pro-Atlantic orientation of the Slovak Republic."

They will also support "Slovakia's future in the core of the European Union and the continual deepening of the Eurozone", as well as a "strong and wise EU budget".

Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which until 1993 formed the single state of Czechoslovakia, belong to Central Europe's so-called Visegrad Four group, whose other members, Hungary and Poland, have both defied Brussels in a series of disputes.

Slovak political analyst Grigorij Meseznikov told AFP on Tuesday that Fico "has lost a partner in the region" after the defeat of the Social Democrats in the Czech Republic.

"The fact that the ruling coalition in Slovakia is relatively stable, gives Fico a chance to promote himself," said Meseznikov, who is an analyst at the Institute for Public Affairs in Bratislava.

"He has basically claimed that 'it is thanks to my government that Slovakia is the island of stability' in the region."
(This version of the story was officially corrected by the Sheriff's office to correct suspect's name to Arron, not Aaron in paragraph 2)

By Bernie Woodall

(Reuters) - A boy was found shot to death in a trailer in rural Ohio on Thursday, a day after three adults were discovered slain there, in an attack that sparked a manhunt for a 23-year-old suspect, authorities said.

The suspect in the four killings has been identified as Arron Lawson of Pedro, a small community in southern Ohio, according to the Lawrence County Sheriff's Office.

A man went to a trailer home in Pedro on Wednesday because he had been unable to reach its occupants, Lawrence County Sheriff Jeff Lawless told reporters. When the visitor arrived, a man believed to be Lawson attacked him with a knife, Lawless said.

The visitor was stabbed in the neck and head before fleeing to another house, according to the sheriff's office.

Police who responded on Wednesday to the trailer house after the attack on the man, found the bodies of three adults inside, the sheriff's office said. The three people, whose names were not immediately released, were shot to death.

The body of a young boy, Devin Holston, was found on Thursday inside the trailer, Lawless told reporters.

It took until Thursday to find the child because investigators at first did not want to disturb the crime scene, Lawless said. Once they returned with search warrants, they combed through the trailer.

"This body was put in a place where it was hidden, so that was what made it difficult for our investigators to discover it at that time," the sheriff said.

The sheriff's office had earlier issued a missing child alert for the boy, which was canceled after his body was found. Lawless said the boy was 8, but local media later reported he was 7.

Lawson was known to visit the mobile home where the victims were found, the sheriff said, and he lived nearby.

Sheriff's deputies early on Thursday spotted Lawson driving a Chevy pickup truck in another part of Lawrence County and they chased him, but he escaped on foot into the woods after crashing his truck into a ditch, Lawson said.

Police have used helicopters and a bloodhound in their manhunt in an area dotted with caves.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; writing by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; editing by Peter Cooney)
Police say that a possible serial killer is terrorizing a Tampa neighborhood after three people were shot and killed in 11 days.

The killings all occurred in The Seminole Heights section of Tampa. The three victims do not have an apparent link to each other, but they were fatally shot within a half mile of each other.

The first victim, 22-year-old Benjamin Mitchell, was shot and killed at approximately 9 p.m on October 9 while waiting at a bus stop near his home. He was alone at the time, He has no criminal background and a police spokesperson said in a press conference that he is a good person from a good family.

Two days later, Monica Caridad Hoffa, 32, was shot and killed ten blocks away. Her body was found in a grassy plot of land owned by the city of Tampa. Her life was taken from her with no motive, her family wrote in an online obituary.

On October 19, the third victim, Anthony Taino Naiboa was shot just 100 yards away from where Mitchell was killed. Naiboa, 20, had autism and had accidentally taken the wrong bus home from work. At a vigil for Naiboa on Sunday evening, his father, Anthony, shared his anguish. They killed him just for nothing, he told the mourners. Like hes not a human, like hes nothing.

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When a reporter asked Dugan if Tampa had a serial killer on its hands, he raised no objection to classifying the murders in that manner. We are still sifting through evidence, he said. We can call it what we want. If that brings attention to this, thats fine.

Dugan is urging the residents of Tampa to take the streets back. Were not going to be held hostage by whoever is doing this, he said. We need everyone to come out of their homes at night, turn on their porch lights, and just not tolerate this type of terrorism.
Sen. John McCain took what appears to be a swipe at President Trump while discussing the Vietnam War draft during an interview that aired Sunday on C-SPAN.

One aspect of the [Vietnam] conflict by the way that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur, said the Arizona Republican, who is battling cancer. That is wrong. That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve.

McCain, a veteran of that war who was captured by the North Vietnamese, did not mention Trump by name in his comments, but the bone spurs comment was something of a tell.

Trump received five deferments during the War. Four while he was attending college and one after a doctor diagnosed him with bone spurs in his heels after he graduated. I had a doctor that gave me a letter  a very strong letter on the heels, he told the New York Times in 2o16.

Trump and McCain have a history of feuding.

In the throes of the 2016 campaign, Trump said McCain is a war hero because he was captured. I like people who werent captured. After the release of an Access Hollywood tape that including audio of Trump seemingly bragging about assaulting women, McCain withdrew his support. Trump responded by calling McCain very foul mouthed in a tweet.

The very foul mouthed Sen. John McCain begged for my support during his primary (I gave, he won), then dropped me over locker room remarks!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016

The feud has only continued. Last week, McCain delivered a blistering rebuke of the presidents approach to politics. While receiving a Liberty Medal from theNational Constitution Center, he decried half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems.

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To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, he said, is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.

After the speech, the president warned that he will fight back when asked about it in an interview. Im being very nice. Im being very, very nice. But at some point I fight back, and it wont be pretty, he said.

Before that, Trump attacked McCain over his decisive vote against a Republican bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act. In a tweet, the president said hed Let Arizona down! when he voted against the bill.

John McCain never had any intention of voting for this Bill, which his Governor loves. He campaigned on Repeal & Replace. Let Arizona down!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 23, 2017

McCain was asked if he voted against the bill in an effort to get back at Trump for questioning his Vietnam War record in an interview with 60 Minutes.

McCain said the vote wasnt personal, but said he and the president had notable differences, Different upbringing. Different life experiences, he said.

He is in the business of making money and he has been successful both in television as well as Miss America and others, he said. I was raised in a military family.

He continued: I was raised in the concept and belief that duty, honor, country is the lodestar for the behavior that we have to exhibit every single day.
President Donald Trump tweeted 75 words about Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker on Tuesday morning, saying at least two things that arent true and two more that are debatable.

The feud between the two former Republican allies began earlier this month when Corker said Trump was treating the White House like a reality show and setting the U.S. on the path to World War III. It reignited this week, after Corker said that the White House should step aside and let Congress handle tax legislation, prompting Trump to fire off three tweets.

Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldnt get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts, Trump said. Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse [sic] when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!

Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

...Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

There are several claims in those three tweets. Here are the facts.

Corker gave us the Iran nuclear deal: False

Trump has previously claimed that Corker helped create the Iran nuclear deal, which fact checkers have said is false.

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Corker, the powerful chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, vocally opposed the deal that President Barack Obama worked on with Iran in July of 2015 and called for his colleagues to reject it in an op-ed in the Washington Post.

He voted against the deal in the Senate and drafted the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which gives Congress more authority to review the agreement before allowing the president to lift sanctions that had been imposed by Congress.

The White House has argued that the review act helped smooth the path for the Iran deal, but foreign policy experts generally agree that it did more to undermine the agreement.

Corker could have trouble getting reelected: Debatable

Trump said that Corker couldnt get elected dog catcher in Tennessee. A quick note: Most dog catchers, nowadays, known as animal control officers, are appointed, not elected.

That said, Corker did face political trouble. A June poll of likely Republican primary voters by the Tennessee Star showed mixed results, with 41% backing him and 42% wanting someone else to run.

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon was also considering targeting Corker in the primary, although many in the Republican establishment think Bannon wont be able to follow through on his threats.

Corker served as the mayor of Chattanooga before winning a bruising race for a Senate seat in 2006. He did not face a serious opponent in 2012.

Corker is fighting tax cuts: False

Trumps new claim was that Corker is fighting tax cuts.

That was apparently in response to Corkers statements on NBCs Today show that Trumps visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday is little more than a photo op and that the White House should step aside and let Congress handle the tax legislation.

Tax writing committees in the Senate and the House are going to be laying out the $4 trillion in loophole closings that need to take place, he said. Hopefully the White House will step aside and let that occur in a normal process.

Corker voted for the Senate budget bill last week that is a crucial step to passing tax legislation with only Republican votes later this session. But he has voiced concern about whether the tax bill would increase the deficit.

If it looks to me like were adding one penny to the deficit, I am not going to be for it, he told NBCs Meet the Press.

Corker dropped out because Trump wouldnt endorse him: Depends who you ask

Trump has also previously claimed that Corker dropped out of his Senate reelection race because Trump wouldnt endorse him. But Corkers staff has said thats not how it played out.

Todd Womack, Corkers chief of staff, told the Washington Post that Trump repeatedly offered to support Corker, including during a phone call asking him to reconsider his decision not to run for reelection.

The president called Senator Corker on Monday afternoon and asked him to reconsider his decision not to seek reelection and reaffirmed that he would have endorsed him, as he has said many times, Womack said in a statement.

Without further proof, its hard to make a definitive assessment of this claim.

Corker now is only negative on Trump: Mostly true

Since the feud began earlier this month, Corker has said that some White House staffers are helping separate our country from chaos, called the White House an incredibly frustrating place, referred to it as an adult day care center, said Trump is setting the U.S. on the path to World War III and acting like the White House is a reality show, said he is castrating Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, said he wouldnt support Trump for reelection, said Trump is not a good role model for children, said that he is utterly untruthful and argued he is debasing the nation.

But I think at the end of the day, when his term is over, I think the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth telling, just the name-calling I think the debasement of our nation will be what hell be remembered most for, and thats regretful, he said Tuesday on CNN.
Elementary school students in Florida are now guaranteed 20 minutes of recess each day  something many kids lacked before a new state law took effect during the summer.

Floridas law and similar recent proposals in several other states are the latest examples of the running debate over the value of recess for young children. In recent years, more parents have begun fighting a trend of reduced recess time and are calling on schools to give children a chance to play.

Last year, Rhode Island enacted a similar law requiring 20 minutes of consecutive recess for elementary-school kids. The Board of Education in Atlanta, where recess was once eliminated, is now considering a rule that would prohibit teachers from withholding recess from students for disciplinary purposes, months after state lawmakers failed to pass a bill that would have mandated 30 minutes of daily recess in schools across the state, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported. And in Arizona, a bill that aimed to expand recess time to 50 minutes passed in the House but met opposition in the Senate this year.

Floridas law was the culmination of a long campaign by parents in the state. One of those parents, Angela Browning, founder of Recess for All Florida Students, said her kids started coming home from school in tears a few years ago, complaining that the day had been too long and that theyd had no time to play with friends. At the time, they were getting 10 minutes of recess twice a week, she said. This year, with 20 minutes of recess each day, their response has been different.

I cannot even begin to explain to you how much adding recess back into their day how much of an effect that had on my kids, she said. When we have these young children and we cant find time to give them a 20-minute break a day, weve lost our way.

Not everyone agrees. Last year, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a similar bill that would have required 20 minutes of daily recess for students across the state. That was a stupid bill and I vetoed it, he said at the time.

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Heres what you need to know:

The debate over recess

In the past 20 years, an increased emphasis on standardized testing as a metric for student achievement has led leaders in some states and school districts to cut into recess in favor of more in-class instruction. In 2007, the Center on Education Policy at George Washington University found that 62% of school districts had increased the amount of time spent on English language arts or math in elementary schools since 2001, while 44% of school districts had cut down on time spent on other subjects. The survey showed that 20% of school districts had reduced recess time. According to the 2016 Shape of the Nation report, just 16% of states require elementary schools to provide daily recess.

The debate over standardized testing grew with the enactment of No Child Left Behind in 2002 and, more recently, with the adoption of Common Core State Standards. Students today take an average of 112 mandated standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and 12th grade, according to an analysis by the Council of the Great City Schools in 2015.

Many health and education experts argue that recess is a necessary activity for child development, and parents have begun to advocate for more recess time.

Some devalue recess because they assume it to be  as they assume play in young children to be  a waste of time, time that could be otherwise more efficiently spent, Anthony Pellegrini, former professor of educational psychology at the University of Minnesota, wrote in a 2008 paper. There is no theory or empirical evidence to support this point of view. The counter-argument, that recess is good, is backed by a large body of theory and empirical research.

What the research says

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children participate in 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per day, and suggested that recess be part of that. Recess is a necessary break in the day for optimizing a childs social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development, the AAP wrote in a 2013 policy statement. In essence, recess should be considered a childs personal time, and it should not be withheld for academic or punitive reasons.

Experts argue that physical education and recess should both be part of a childs schedule. In 2001, the Council on Physical Education for Children and the National Association for Sport and Physical Education recommended that physical education classes not become a replacement for the unstructured playtime of recess.

Quality physical education along with daily recess are necessary components of the school curriculum that enable students to develop physical competence, health-related fitness, self responsibility, and enjoyment of physical activity so that they can be physically active for a lifetime, the groups wrote in a position paper about elementary school recess in 2001.

A 2009 study found that 8- and 9-year-old children who had at least one daily recess period of more than 15 minutes had better classroom behavior. The study also found that black students and students from low-income families were more likely to be given no recess or minimal recess. That report reinforced the results of a 1998 study, which found that when 43 fourth-grade students were given recess, they worked more or fidgeted less than when they were not given recess.

When recess is eliminated or reduced, it is often because a school is allocating more time to subjects covered on standardized tests, aiming to improve student achievement. But a 2010 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found positive associations between recess and academic performance. There is substantial evidence that physical activity can help improve academic achievement, including grades and standardized test scores, the report said.

Another study, from 2016, found that young boys who spent more time sitting and less time playing didnt progress as quickly in reading and math.

Studies also show that recess can improve student nutrition when held before lunchtime. A 2014 study published in Preventive Medicine found that holding recess before lunch increased students fruit and vegetable consumption by 54%.
(The Oct. 20 story corrects dateline and first sentence to reflect that Tangier Island is in Virginia, not Maryland) By Emily Flitter TANGIER ISLAND, Va. (Reuters) - This summer, a delegation of Republican climate activists visited Tangier Island, a speck of grassland in Virginia's Chesapeake Bay, to try to convince its 450 residents to take climate change seriously. At a dinner attended by island residents Aug. 2, the activists from RepublicEn headed by former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis laid out the stakes: The sea level is rising, and some scientists estimate that within decades the island, already suffering severe erosion, will need to be abandoned. The people of Tangier Island were used to this kind of message. Former Vice President Al Gore, a prominent Democratic climate activist, had given the same speech to islanders three days earlier. They were also used to rejecting it. "We'll talk to everybody," said James Eskridge, mayor of the mainly Republican island community. "But they're not going to change many minds here." Residents, he said, do not believe in climate change: they want a new sea wall to prevent erosion, not a lecture about saving the world with solar panels. Tangier Island's steadfast rejection of climate change reflects the rigidity of American opinions about global warming, often defined along political party lines. Reuters/Ipsos polling shows more than a third of Americans, mainly Republicans, reject the scientific consensus that climate change is driven by human activity. Less than a third of Americans believe global warming poses an imminent threat to the United States. These views barely budged after a series of devastating hurricanes this summer. That rift in opinion has proven to be a headwind for U.S. lawmakers seeking broad solutions to stem climate change, like imposing a cost on carbon emissions or encouraging cleaner renewable energy technologies to replace fossil fuels. And while conservatives have long been skeptical about climate change, doubters have a powerful new ally: U.S. President Donald Trump. He has called climate change a hoax and has started withdrawing the United States from a global pact to combat it, citing what he calls the huge economic cost. Eskridge told Reuters Trump called him in June after seeing a report about severe erosion problems on the island, telling him not to worry about sea level rise. "I believe man plays a part in it but not to the extent that others have been talking about - that's what me and Donald Trump were talking about," Eskridge said. (Reuters wider image: http://reut.rs/2yvd0Hf ) 'WE'RE LOOKING TO STAY' An Army Corps of Engineers study in 2015 showed Tangier has lost two thirds of its mass since 1850 because of erosion, a process scientists say is being exacerbated by climate change. Journalists and politicians now view the island as a symbol of the climate crisis. Tangier residents are happy with the attention but believe their problem is simpler. A sea wall built on one side of the island in the late 1980s has prevented the land behind it from eroding, they say, so another sea wall is the answer. "We're not looking to have our light bills cheaper, we're looking to stay here," said Deborah Pruitt, 57, who works at the island's museum, where printouts of news reports about the island are displayed on a wall. Conservative climate activists like Rob Sisson of ConservAmerica and Mitch Hescox of the Evangelical Environmental Network said the rejection of climate change by Tangier residents is not surprising: their groups often have trouble convincing fellow Republicans global warming is a real issue. Often, they say, people object to the idea that humans could possibly change the climate even if they wanted to. Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, one of a handful of Republicans to publicly declare a belief in climate change, said she has a strategy for getting fellow Republicans to think of solutions: "I've found that the best way ... is to not dwell on the causes," she said in an email. (Editing by Richard Valdmanis and David Gregorio)
Residents of Tangier Island reject climate victim label A shanty, once used to sort through crabs, lies destroyed on Tangier Island, Virginia, Aug. 2, 2017. (Photo: Adrees Latif/Reuters)

This summer, a delegation of Republican climate activists visited Tangier Island, a speck of grassland in Virginias Chesapeake Bay, to try to convince its 450 residents to take climate change seriously.

At a dinner attended by island residents Aug. 2, the activists from RepublicEn headed by former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis laid out the stakes: The sea level is rising, and some scientists estimate that within decades the island, already suffering severe erosion, will need to be abandoned.

The people of Tangier Island were used to this kind of message. Former Vice President Al Gore, a prominent Democratic climate activist, had given the same speech to islanders three days earlier. They were also used to rejecting it.

Well talk to everybody, said James Eskridge, mayor of the mainly Republican island community. But theyre not going to change many minds here. Residents, he said, do not believe in climate change: they want a new sea wall to prevent erosion, not a lecture about saving the world with solar panels.

Tangier Islands steadfast rejection of climate change reflects the rigidity of American opinions about global warming, often defined along political party lines.

Reuters/Ipsos polling shows more than a third of Americans, mainly Republicans, reject the scientific consensus that climate change is driven by human activity. Less than a third of Americans believe global warming poses an imminent threat to the United States. These views barely budged after a series of devastating hurricanes this summer.

That rift in opinion has proven to be a headwind for U.S. lawmakers seeking broad solutions to stem climate change, like imposing a cost on carbon emissions or encouraging cleaner renewable energy technologies to replace fossil fuels.

And while conservatives have long been skeptical about climate change, doubters have a powerful new ally: U.S. President Donald Trump. He has called climate change a hoax and has started withdrawing the United States from a global pact to combat it, citing what he calls the huge economic cost.

Story continues

Eskridge told Reuters Trump called him in June after seeing a report about severe erosion problems on the island, telling him not to worry about sea level rise.

I believe man plays a part in it but not to the extent that others have been talking about  thats what me and Donald Trump were talking about, Eskridge said. (Reuters)

Photography by Adrees Latif/Reuters

Photos: Just a 100 miles from the White House, Tangier Island is disappearing into the sea 

See more news-related photo galleries and follow us on Yahoo News Photo Twitter and Tumblr.
Alabama Republican Senate nominee Roy Moore said he believes a Supreme Court ruling allowing loving adults to marry is worse than the courts 1857 decision that upheld slavery.

In a 2016 podcast interview surfaced by Talking Points Memo on Tuesday, Moore said the Supreme Courts Dred Scott decision  which held that black people were property and could not be citizens  was a better ruling than the 2015 Supreme Court case allowing gay marriage nationwide. Scholars regard the Dred Scott decision as one of the Supreme Courts worst.

Moore, who in 2015 was Alabamas chief justice, ordered state judges to defy the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that allowed gay marriage, and he continued to enforce Alabamas ban on same-sex marriage. The stance ultimately led to Moores removal from the Alabama Supreme Court.

After his ouster, Moore spoke to Here I Stand, a podcast run by the conservative Christian Emergency League, to voice his displeasure and to make the gross comparison of the gay marriage ruling with the slavery decision.

I was simply pointing out that in 1857, the United States Supreme Court did rule that black people were property, Moore said on the podcast. And of course that contradicted the Constitution and it took a civil war to overturn it.

But this ruling in Obergefell is even worse in a sense because it forces not only people to recognize marriage other than the institution ordained of God and recognized by nearly every state in the union, it says that you now must do away with the definition of marriage and make it between two persons of the same gender.

Moore also compared the gay marriage ruling with the Dred Scott decision in a 2015 interview with CNN.

Alabama voters shouldnt be surprised by Moores ridiculous opinion. In June 2015, Moore said enforcing the Supreme Courts gay-marriage ruling was the equivalent of following immoral laws in Germany during World War II.

Could I do this if I were in Nuremberg  say that I was following the orders of the highest authority to kill Jews? Moore told an AL.com reporter. Could I say I was ordered to do so?

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When a reporter reminded Moore than the Nuremberg trials were about killing humans, not gay marriage, Moore responded: Is there a difference?

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United Nations (United States) (AFP) - Russia on Tuesday vetoed a US-drafted resolution that would have extended for a year the mandate of a panel investigating who is behind chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

It was the ninth time Russia has used its veto power at the Security Council to block action targeting its Syrian ally.

Russia opposed renewing the mandate of the joint UN-Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) panel before the commission releases a report on a sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, which is expected on Thursday.

The United States, France and Britain have accused President Bashar al-Assad's forces of carrying out the April 4 attack on the opposition-held village, killing scores of people including children.

Following the Russian veto, US Ambassador Nikki Haley accused Moscow of "once again" siding "with the dictators and terrorists who use these weapons."

"Russia has once again demonstrated it will do whatever it takes to ensure the barbaric Assad regime never faces consequences for its continued use of chemicals as weapons," Haley said in a statement.

"By rejecting the renewal of the work of the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM)  an independent, purely technical body  Russia has made it clear that it does not care about stopping the use of chemical weapons in the world."

Russia failed at the opening of the meeting to garner enough support for a measure that would have delayed the vote until next month. The JIM's mandate ends on November 17.

China and Kazakhstan abstained, while Bolivia voted against the renewal and 11 other countries backed extending the mandate. Russia used its veto to block adoption.

A resolution requires nine votes to be adopted at the council, but five countries -- Russia, Britain, China, France and the United States -- can block adoption with their veto power.

- Dishonouring Russia -

Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia accused the United States and its partners of seeking a vote on the measure "to show up and dishonor Russia."

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"What is taking place today is not very pleasant," said Nebenzia. "It stinks, in fact."

The ambassador renewed his criticism of the panel, saying its methodology and "the lack of evidence" in the Khan Sheikhun investigation was "laughable."

Last month, UN war crimes investigators said they had evidence that the Syrian air force was behind the Khan Sheikhun attack, despite repeated denials from Damascus.

More than 87 people died in Khan Sheikhun, drawing global outrage and prompting the United States to fire cruise missiles at a Syrian air base from which the West says the attack was launched.

Russia maintains that the sarin attack was most likely caused by a bomb set off directly on the ground, not by a Syrian air strike as alleged by the West.

While the OPCW has established that sarin was used in the April attack, it does not have a mandate to assign blame for the attack, leaving that determination to the JIM.

The JIM has already concluded that Syrian government forces were responsible for chlorine attacks on three villages in 2014 and 2015, and that Islamic State jihadist group used mustard gas in 2015.

In February, a resolution put forward by the United States, Britain and France to impose sanctions on Syrian officials who were allegedly involved in those chlorine attacks was vetoed by Russia and China.
Prince Mohammed bin Salman is on an aggressive drive to modernise his country - AFP

Saudi Arabias ambitious young crown prince has said he will lead his country back to moderate Islam as he announced plans for a vast new 380 million economic development zone.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman told investors gathered in Riyadh that his economic modernisation plans would go hand-in-hand with with political reforms to guide the conservative kingdom away from severe Wahhabi Islam.

"We are returning to what we were before - a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world," the 32-year-old prince said.

"We will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today," he added. "We will end extremism very soon."

The prince's pledge is a challenge to Saudi's conservative clerics and came as he announced plans for NEOM, a new economic zone that will stretch across Saudis borders into neighboring Egypt and Jordan.

The zone will be 26,500km square, making it bigger than Wales and significantly larger than neighbouring Middle Eastern states like Israel, Lebanon or Kuwait.

The prince made the announcement at an investor conference in RiyadhCredit: AFP PHOTO / FAYEZ NURELDINEFAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images

The project is the latest announcement from Prince Mohammed, who is pushing aggressively to modernise the kingdom and wean it off its dependence on oil as part of his Vision 2030 plan.

He laid out a vision of a futuristic economic zone where robots may outnumber humans, drones will carry passengers and omnipresent high-speed internet will be known as digital air.

Saudi has announced a string of reforms in recent months, including plans to allow women to drive, but it remains one of the worlds most socially conservative societies.

Prince Mohammeds modernising plans have been applauded by many western leaders but some analysts are sceptical that he will be able to push through economic and political changes on the scale he is talking about.

Earlier this year, the royal family backed away from plans to cut benefits for state employees in the face of public anger - a sign of how difficult it may be to reform Saudi Arabias oil-based economy.

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Last week, Saudi authorities said they were forming a council of Islamic scholars who would counter violent interpretations of the Koran and the hadith - a set of lessons learned from the life of the prophet Mohammed.

The government has also eased restrictions on the use of video messaging applications like Skype and Whatsapp.

The investment conference itself was intended as a symbol of modernity and dubbed by some observers as Davos in the Desert. Men and women sat together at the event and it was attended high-profile figures like Tony Blair and Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund.

This initiative is something you couldnt have imagined happening in Saudi Arabia even a few years back, said Mr Blair, who praised the direction of Prince Mohammeds reforms.

His comments were criticised by Reprieve, a British human rights group, which called Mr Blairs praise spectacularly tone deaf in light of Saudi Arabias poor human rights record. The Saudi government has executed hundreds of people in the past few years  including protesters and children, said Maya Foa, Reprieves director.

Prince Mohammed became heir to the throne in June at the expense of his older cousin, the powerful interior minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayaf, who was stripped of his title as crown prince.

His father, King Salman, is 81 and in poor health and Prince Mohammed is widely seen as the effective ruler of Saudi Arabia. He serves as the countrys defence minister and has wide powers to manage its economy.

The prince has led the countrys war in neighboring Yemen, which has seen more than 10,000 people killed. The UN recently blacklisted the Saudi-led military coalition for killing and injuring hundreds of children in the conflict.

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The quality of your sleep could play a role in how your brain responds to fear, which, in turn, could determine how likely you are to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a small, new study suggests.

People in the study who got more "rapid eye movement" (REM) sleep had less activity in the areas of the brain linked to fear in the face of a frightening event, compared with those who got less REM sleep, according to the study, published today (Oct. 23) in the Journal of Neuroscience.

The findings suggest that REM sleep may help keep fear levels low by altering how certain areas of the brain communicate with one another, the researchers wrote. This could mean that scientists could one day use a person's REM-sleep measurements, or how much time the person spends in REM sleep, to predict how resilient that person is to trauma or, conversely, how likely the person is to develop PTSD following a traumatic event, they wrote. [Get Better Sleep in 2017]

The new study "is a very good first step in understanding the mechanism of resilience," said Anne Germain, an associate professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research.

In the study, 17 healthy college students had their sleep monitored at home for between five and 13 days, to establish their baseline sleep patterns, including their levels of light, deep and REM sleep. The students were paid to participate in the study.

Then, the students underwent a "fear conditioning" test: They were shown a series of red, yellow or blue lights that they had been conditioned to associate with mild electrical shocks. In other words, if a mild shock always followed a blue light, the student would anticipate, and likely fear, the shock when shown the blue light. During the test, the researchers monitored brain activity in the participants' amygdala, hippocampus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex  areas of the brain associated with the fear response. (The colored-lights test is a widely accepted model for studying PTSD, Germain told Live Science.)

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Finally, the researchers sent the participants back to bed one more time. They monitored the subjects' sleep for one full night in the lab and then had them repeat the fear-conditioning test. The findings showed a noticeable correlation between the amount of REM sleep a person got and the magnitude of his or her fear reaction to the colored lights: The more REM sleep a person got during the baseline period, the less extreme his or her fear response was.

The finding suggests that REM sleep may play a key role in helping the brain prepare itself for, and withstand the effects of, emotional trauma, the researchers said.

There's growing evidence that the quality of a person's sleep has some link to the occurrence or severity of a number of psychological conditions, ranging from PTSD to depression. However, this study is the first significant one to explore whether a person's pattern of sleep can be used to predict whether he or she might be vulnerable to PTSD, the study authors said. The results of the new study could mean that scientists might someday be able to tell whether someone is suitable for a high-stress profession based on his or her normal sleep patterns, the researchers said.

Still, more research is needed to fully understand how REM sleep and PTSD are linked. It's not clear, for example, if getting more REM sleep could help keep PTSD at bay. [5 Surprising Sleep Discoveries]

Another question is whether a person can get too much REM sleep: Is there a "sweet spot" past whichtoo muchREM sleep might raise a person's risk of PTSD? REM sleep is when dreaming takes place, and there's a known connection between PTSD and intense dreams or nightmares, Germain said.

Germain noted that the researchers looked only at the average amount of REM sleep the participants got over the course of the study, and how this compared to the fear response. So it would be interesting to see if the response would change based on the amount of REM sleep each person got each night.

Still, the results are promising both for the field and people with PTSD, she said.

"This is a really good example of the importance of sleep in maintaining healthy emotional health," Germain said. "Sleep is still considered to be that phase when you do nothing at night. We all tend to cut back on our sleep to do everything that's so important during the day. But by doing that, we're really cutting ourselves short and putting ourselves at a disadvantage when facing important life events."

Originally published on Live Science.

Editor's Recommendations
The American people have had a rough time over the past few years. Fifty percent of Americans consider themselves to be living paycheck to paycheck, while almost a third of voters say they are just $400 dollars away from a financial crisis. Thats not acceptable. Fortunately, there are things we can do about it, starting with comprehensive tax reform.

Comprehensive tax reform is perhaps the single most important thing we can do to provide financial relief to American families and get our economy back on the path to long-term health. Thats why Republicans in Congress have spent several months working with the Trump administration on a tax reform framework that we believe will lead to more jobs, fairer taxes, and bigger paychecks, and why the tax-writing committees in the Senate and the House of Representatives are currently hard at work drafting legislation.

Our tax reform framework prioritizes tax relief for the middle class by ensuring working families receive a much-needed increase in take-home pay. To start with, our plan will lower income-tax rates for hardworking families around the country. We will also double the standard deduction to $12,000 for single filers and $24,000 for married couples who file jointly. While all Americans will benefit from this provision, it will particularly benefit the low-income families who need help the most. Under our tax plan, a family making $24,000 or less per year will not have to pay a dime in federal income taxes.

There is no denying that raising a family in the United States is getting more and more expensive. Thats why we will also help working families by increasing the size of the child tax credit. This will free up money that families can use for anything from dentist bills to college savings. And for low-income families who wont pay income tax under our plan, up to $1,000 of this new, larger child tax credit will be refundable.

In addition to direct relief for working families, our tax plan will also provide for the kind of economic growth needed to give hardworking Americans access to new jobs and opportunities and increase their take-home pay. To start with, our plan will lower tax rates for small businesses and family farms and ranches.

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Small and medium-size businesses are an important engine of economic growth, but our tax code makes things more difficult for these job creators by saddling them with high tax rates  at times even exceeding those paid by some large corporations. By lowering tax rates for these businesses, we can help them reinvest more of their earnings into their operations. The Republican tax plan will also allow small and medium-size businesses to recover their costs more quickly, which will also help free up money they can use to grow their business and create new jobs. This is good news for the American worker.

But theres more that we can do to increase wages, jobs, and economic growth. One key thing we can do is address our high corporate tax rate, which is reducing opportunities for American workers and sending American jobs overseas. Right now, our corporate tax rate is the highest in the industrialized world at 35 percent. Our main foreign competitors pay an average rate of 22.5 percent. That puts American companies at a major disadvantage in the global marketplace, which in turn hurts American workers. Companies struggling to compete with their foreign counterparts dont have a lot of extra money to invest in things like new jobs and boosting wages.

Plus, our uncompetitive tax rate has driven too many companies to move their headquarters and jobs overseas, which means further loss of opportunity for American workers. Lowering the corporate tax rate will help American businesses compete in the global economy, which will in turn help increase jobs, wages, and opportunities for hardworking Americans here at home. According to a recent analysis by the Presidents Council of Economic Advisers, lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent would increase average household income in this country by an estimated $4,000 per year.

Another way we can help keep American businesses competitive globally is by reforming our outdated worldwide tax system. Right now, American companies pay taxes to foreign governments on the money they make abroad, and are then taxed again on part of those profits  again, at the highest tax rate in the industrialized world  when they bring that money back home to the United States. Its no surprise that this discourages businesses from bringing their profits back home to invest in new jobs and increased wages.

Our tax plan addresses this problem by moving our country from a worldwide tax system to a territorial tax system, the kind of tax system now employed by most of our foreign competitors. This move, which has bipartisan support, would eliminate the double taxation companies currently face and encourage them to bring the profits they make overseas back to the United States to invest in American workers.

Americans have spent too much of the past decade struggling with high taxes, stagnant wages, and a lack of opportunity. Its time to give them relief. Right now, we have a unique opportunity to implement pro-growth tax reform policies that will provide more jobs, fairer taxes, and bigger paychecks for hardworking individuals and families across the country. As we move through the legislative process, I will continue to work with President Trump, my fellow members of the Senate Finance Committee, and leadership in the House to ensure that comprehensive tax reform makes it to the presidents desk for his signature.
Eleven senators -- both Republican and Democrat -- introduced new legislation today that calls for substantial reforms to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Reuters reports. Section 702 allows intelligence agencies to monitor the communications of foreign targets living outside of the US, but it also enables those agencies to collect information on US citizens if they happen to be in communication with the non citizens being monitored.

The section in question is set to expire at the end of the year and the proposed legislation -- the USA Rights Act -- led by Senators Ron Wyden and Rand Paul would renew it for four years while also requiring the National Security Agency (NSA) to get a warrant before searching through US citizens' communications. The act would also allow individuals to more easily challenge the law in court and give the Civil Liberties Oversight Board more oversight power. "Congress must not continue to allow our constitutional standard of 'innocent until proven guilty' to be twisted into 'If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.' The American people deserve better from their own government than to have their Internet activity swept up in warrantless, unlimited searches that ignore the Fourth Amendment," said Senator Rand Paul in a statement. Companion legislation was also introduced in the House of Representatives.

While this bill is bipartisan, Section 702 itself is quite contentious. In June, the Director of National Intelligence, the acting FBI Director, the Deputy Attorney General and the NSA Director asked the Senate Intelligence Committee to make Section 702 permanent. And on the other side of the issue, groups like the ACLU have expressed their concern over the sweeping allowances afforded by Section 702 as did 30 companies -- including Google, Facebook, Snap, Uber, Microsoft and Amazon -- who sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee in May asking for increased oversight of the surveillance program as well as an effort to minimize its impact on individuals not suspected of wrongdoing.

In a statement about the proposed legislation, Representative Ted Poe said, "Americans' Fourth Amendment rights are at stake. Our bill protects individual freedoms while maintaining intelligence agencies the ability to continue to protect the United States. The days of government searching through Americans private data while skirting through back doors without a warrant must end." You can read a one-page summary of the USA Rights Act here, a full summary here and the entire bill here.
Two children who told police a man had been stalking them and left an ominous note at their Brooklyn home made it all up, officials said.

Police said Monday night that the 8-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother recanted their story in which an unknown man terrorized the pair over the course of several days.

The pair initially said the man was first spotted following the little girl as she walked with a friend from her home to her school bus pickup location early Friday before attempting to pick up the boy from his school bus later that day.

Read: Woman Gets a Year in Jail After Lying About Kidnapping and Sexual Assault

They also said the man was seen outside their home, where he asked the children where they slept and who they lived with.

The kids told police the man returned on Saturday to leave a note at the home.

Watch out. I am watching you!! Your daughter is cute, the note said.

Authorities appealed to the public to find the man the children said was menacing them, releasing surveillance footage of an unidentified person outside the familys home.

But the childrens story fell apart after the man turned himself in to the 69th precinct saying he was innocent, the New York Post reported.

Read: Mom of Safyre Terry Gets 11 Years in Prison for Lying About Who Started Deadly House Fire

The man reportedly told police he once lived in the home and was just passing by.

After being extensively questioned by police, the man was released Monday without any charges filed.

The children eventually admitted to making up the story and writing the letter found in their mailbox themselves, authorities said.

Sources told The Post that the kids parents  one of whom is a NYPD Special Victims detective  were away on vacation and the brother and sister were unhappy with their strict babysitter.

The children will not be charged with a crime, according to DNAinfo.com.
By Paul McLeary with Adam Rawnsley

B-52s back on Cold War-like nuke alert? The U.S. Air Force is considering placing its nuclear-capable B-52 bombers back on 24-hour ready alert for the first time since the status was rescinded in 1991.

This is yet one more step in ensuring that were prepared, Gen. David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, told Defense Ones Marcus Weisgerber. I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure were prepared going forward.

But can the USAF fly the planes? In the meantime, the Air Force is struggling with a shortage of over 1,500 pilots. On Friday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order allowing Air Force officials to involuntarily recall up to 1,000 pilots on an emergency basis in order to fill the gap.

Long  and constant  deployments, and more lucrative contracts from the civilian airline industry has helped to sap the ranks of qualified fighter and bomber pilots from the service in recent years. The Air Force said on Sunday that they dont expect to take the president up on his offer just yet, however.

CIAs own Afghanistan surge. The Central Intelligence Agency is sending small teams of highly experienced officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces to hunt and kill Taliban militants, the NYTs Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Eric Schmitt and Adam Goldman write.

The new deployments are something relatively new for the agency, which has in the past bristled at waging such an open-ended campaign against the Taliban. But:

The expansion reflects the C.I.A.s assertive role under its new director, Mike Pompeo, to combat insurgents around the world. The agency is already poised to broaden its program of covert drone strikes into Afghanistan; it had largely been centered on the tribal regions of Pakistan, with occasional strikes in Syria and Yemen.

Mayhem in Kabul. Meanwhile, a suicide attacker rammed a car full of explosives into a military convoy in Kabul on Saturday, killing 15 Afghan army cadets. The attack came after another suicide bombing on Thursday killed more than 40 Afghan soldiers at a base in Kandahar. On Tuesday, dozens of security personnel were killed in Taliban attacks on government compounds in Paktia and Ghazni provinces.

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And civilian deaths caused by improvised explosive devices are skyrocketing in Afghanistan, according to internal Pentagon documents obtained by FP.

White House appears to be rushing out condolence letters. In the wake of president Trumps assertion that he has reached out to virtually all of the families of servicememebrs who have been killed under his watch, the White House appears to be rushing out condolence letters to retroactively make his claim true. The Atlantic tracked down several families of servciemembers who have fallen over the past several months, many of whom received rushed packages from the White House on Friday.

Iran, Iran, Iran. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has called on Iranian-backed Shia militias in Iraq to call it a day and demobilize as Iraqs war against the Islamic State winds down, saying those militias need to go home and allow the Iraqi government to begin reconstruction. Tillerson is in the Middle East over the weekend, where he stepped up pressure on Arab countries to further isolate Iran.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is cutting back the budget of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked Khatam al-Anbiya corporation that has served as a piggybank for senior members of the IRGC. The cutbacks appear aimed at reducing the reach of the Guards  often international sanctions magnets  into the civilian economy in order to improve Irans investment climate after the lifting of some international sanctions.

Tour of duty. Heres a crazy story about two Americans who went to fight ISIS with Syrian Kurds how one escaped into Iraq only to be jailed in Erbil, while the other is still in Syria, trying to figure out a way to do the same.

Welcome to SitRep. As always, please send any tips, thoughts or national security events to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or via Twitter: @paulmcleary.

Creepy. The Chinese government is building a national database of its citizens voices so it can instantly identify anyone overhead in a phone conversation, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch. The project, aided by Chinese speech recognition technology firm iFlytek, is still in pilot mode, with tens of thousands of voice samples already collected.

The fugitive. Chinas pursuit of a fugitive businessman in the U.S. who says he has information on corrupt government officials there is laying bare the tensions in the Trump administration over how to approach Beijing. The Wall Street Journal reports that Chinese intel officials visited Guo Wengui in New York, violating the terms of their visas and setting off a debate between the State Department and China hawks from the FBI and elsewhere who wanted to arrest the officials.

Hardball. Russia has listed the man responsible for pushing sanctions legislation against corrupt Russian officials on Interpols wanted list. Bill Browder lobbied for American sanctions against Russia after his Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in prison following accusations of official corruption and has helped pass similar legislation in Canada.

Gun runners. Afghan government officials and an unnamed arms dealer tell The Guardian that Russia has been supplying the Taliban with weapons. Russian engagement with the Taliban reportedly began as early as 2005 in an effort to curtail the rise of Central Asian Islamist militants but has since blossomed into arms supplies, according to one dealer, yielding shipments of at least 300 Kalashnikov rifles to militants in Badakhshan Province.

Tremble again at the sound of our silence. The USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier spearheaded the hunt for a Russian submarine last summer after it launched cruise missiles at targets in Syria from the Mediterranean. The stealthy Kilo-class Krasnodar eventually managed to slip away from its American pursuers, providing an unwelcome reminder of Russias continued investment in its submarine technology despite its tight defense budgets.

Foreign fighters. An official from Britains foreign ministry says that British foreign fighters for the Islamic State are such a threat to the country that unfortunately the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them. Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Rory Stewart told the BBC that foreign fighters had engaged in heinous human rights abuses and that they present a serious danger to us.

Raqqa. Raqqa has inherited the fate of Dresden in 1945, wiped off the face of the earth by Anglo-American bombardments  Russian Maj Gen Igor Konashenkov, criticizing the humanitarian toll of the U.S. air war over the former Islamic State capital of Raqqa.

Smooth move. The Department of Homeland Security prevented Indonesias top military officer General Gatot Nurmantyo from visiting the U.S. despite an invitation from Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford to visit a counterterrorism conference. The U.S. embassy in Indonesia has apologized for the incident but an Indonesian military spokesperson says Gen. Nurmantyo has decided to stay home until there is formal explanation from the United States.

Walkback. The World Health Organization (WHO) has rescinded a symbolic honor to Zimbabwes President Robert Mugabe after an international uproar from human rights and democracy activists. The WHO revoked Mugabes status as an international goodwill ambassador for the organization after critics charged that honoring a head of state with a dismal human rights record sent the wrong message.
Stephen Curry consoles Devin Harris nephew before Mondays game. (Twitter via @KDISAWARRIOR)

Before the Golden State Warriors took on the Dallas Mavericks Monday night, Warriors star Stephen Curry took the time to meet Devin Harris nephew, 9-year-old Brayden, who lost his father in a car crash last week.

Taking a leave of absence from the team, Harris returned to the American Airlines Center on Monday to take Brayden to visit with Mavericks players, as well getting autographed items from Curry, according to The Dallas Morning News.

While visiting with players, a video emerged of Curry appearing to console a young Brayden before heading back into the tunnel.

Stephen Curry praying pregame with a kid who lost his father due to a car accident. pic.twitter.com/Fdn0C0OM0r  alex (@KDISAWARRIOR) October 24, 2017

Harris did not play against the Warriors and told media members he has no timetable when he would return.

I can only sit in the house for so long, Harris told the Dallas Morning News. And these are my brothers, too. I spend every day with them, so just to be able to be around them has to be a healing them for me as well.

I came to spend some time with my nephew to try to get his mind off of it.

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Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger wears a body camera during an interview in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on Aug. 31, 2016. (Photo: Gary Cameron / Reuters)

A new study suggests police body cameras have had no measurable effect in Washington, D.C., when it comes to civilian complaints, use of force incidents, policing activity or judicial outcomes involving the citys Metropolitan Police Department.

The report, touted as the most comprehensive of its kind, has fueled renewed skepticism about whether body cameras are fostering accountability and transparency in law enforcement. Although the research isnt an exhaustive appraisal of the full potential benefits of body cameras, some experts say it shows that police and vendors must do more to prove the equipment is worth the cost.

The Lab @ DC, an organization affiliated with the city government, examined the behavior of more than 2,200 MPD officers, split nearly evenly between those equipped with body cameras and those without. Researchers looked at data between June 2015 and March 2017 and concluded that the devices made no difference across any of the metrics analyzed.

With the city already spending more than $5 million to equip all of its uniformed patrol officers with body cameras, some critics say the study calls the value of that investment into question.

What is the public actually getting for its money? asked Harlan Yu, a principal at Upturn, a firm that works on technology policy issues. Are body cameras actually worth it, or are we just going by our speculation and intuition that theyre actually going to change the way policing is done in America?

Over the past few years, law enforcement officials and police reform advocates have championed body cameras as a tool to help keep cops and civilians honest. The argument holds that people behave better if they know theyre being recorded, and the entire department runs more smoothly as a result.

Smaller studies of police departments in California, Florida and elsewhere have found body cameras to be correlated with substantial reductions in use of force incidents and civilian complaints. And that basic association started to become conventional wisdom as departments around the country moved to develop pilot programs or outfit larger segments of their forces with body cameras.

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But the data out of the nations capital undermines a basic assumption about the effectiveness of body cameras.

You really would expect to see some effect if it were really influencing officer behavior, said Alex Vitale, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College whos written on challenges surrounding policing in the 21st century.

Other police departments that are in the earlier stages of implementing body camera programs might want to pump the brakes, said Yu.

The conversation around adopting body cameras has always been complicated. Civil rights organizations have regularly expressed concern about police using them as an advanced method of surveillance, which could allow departments to vacuum up massive amounts of data on civilians without much transparency about how theyre using it.

Institutional resistance and ineffective policies have beset early body camera programs, making it harder for the devices to bring about any sort of meaningful change. Police in many cities have severely limited public access to video, releasing it only when they see fit. In some cases, officers have failed to record critical footage, or footage has mysteriously gone missing. Departments have made few promises to discipline officers for violating body camera policy.

Body cameras havent done much so far to increase accountability for controversial police shootings. Many of the incidents making national headlines have involved bystander cell phone footage, not body cameras.

But body camera video has begun to play a greater role as more departments adopt the equipment, even though the successful prosecution of officers remains incredibly rare.

There have been three cases this year where an unarmed black person was killed by police and police were charged with a crime, and two of those cases involved body camera video, said Samuel Sinyangwe, co-founder of the racial justice group Campaign Zero. Having video of these incidents is a necessary precondition to be able to charge an officer.

There are also more specific examples of body cameras being used to hold officers accountable. Last year, for example, D.C. prosecutors dropped charges against a woman police had arrested for an open container after body camera footage showed that the alcohol in question was nowhere near her.

Law enforcement officials said they were surprised by the results of the study, but didnt plan to back away from body cameras in light of the new data.

I am a little concerned that people might misconstrue the information and suggest that the body-worn cameras have no value. I dont think that this study suggests that at all, said MPD Police Chief Peter Newsham.

Body cameras could also influence more mundane, yet still problematic behavior, such as discourteousness or an officers use of profanity. Some studies have already examined a few of those nuances. In June, Stanford University researchers published a study of body camera footage in Oakland, California, showing that officers consistently used less respectful language with black community members than with whites during traffic stops.

But its harder to know how the presence of body cameras might influence such behavior, if at all, because these incidents may not result in official complaints.

To me, the measures of improvement should be reduced force, reduced abuse of authority  in other words, making illegal arrests or treating people badly because the police are angry at them, or trying to solve problems in non-lawful ways, said Brooklyn Colleges Vitale.

The D.C. study lays out a few possible explanations for its findings, including officers and civilians desensitization to the presence of body cameras, their awareness of non-police cameras like surveillance or cell phone cameras, and a spillover effect on the behavior of officers not wearing cameras, in which the proliferation of body cameras may have changed the way all officers act due to the knowledge that a colleague could be recording. It also notes that MPD faces heightened scrutiny as the capital city police force, and suggests that previous reform efforts may have already helped address the problematic behaviors body cameras might be expected to prevent.

But if other methods of reform in Washington were so effective that they made body cameras largely useless, the study could suggest that cities would be better off focusing on tactical issues, like improving de-escalation training, revamping mental health responses or empowering civilian oversight groups.

My fear is that this attention on body-worn cameras has sucked all of the oxygen away, and real money and real resources away, from more meaningful remedies that we know already work, said Yu.

Still, some activists say its too early to write off body cameras based on a single study.

This is just the beginning of the technology. Can the body camera be used to automatically turn on when it detects an officers voice or tone raising? Can a body camera be used to call an ambulance or first aid after a use of force? asked Sinyangwe. Theres a lot of potential there that has not yet been implemented, so for that reason, it doesnt make sense to completely discount body cameras, but it certainly does dismantle this sort of belief that theyre gonna be a one-size-fits-all solution to this problem.

For others, support for body cameras depends on a cost-benefit analysis that evolves with new evidence and additional information about how police are using the devices. With that in mind, the D.C. study certainly doesnt help.

I would never make a blanket statement that Im against body cameras, because theres balancing to do, said Vitale. But the ledger is looking less and less appealing the more we look into this.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Earlier this year, Susan Fowler wrote a blog postdescribing her sexual harassment at Uber and revealed disturbing details about the company's sexist environment. That post would lead to an independent investigation of Uber's practices, the firing of over 20 employees and, eventually, to former CEO Travis Kalanick's resignation. For many women in Silicon Valley, Fowler's blog post was the shot heard around the world; a catalyst for change in a toxic culture. And now, Fowler's story will be a movie.



That tidbit was first revealed in a New York Times profile on Fowler this past weekend, but Deadline Hollywood has more details on the film. The production company that landed the story is called Good Universe, and Fowler is said to be involved in the making of the movie. The movie's screenwriter is said to be Allison Schroeder, who's also responsible for writing the script for Hidden Figures. Producer Kristin Burr told Deadline that the movie is described as something like Erin Brockovich meets The Social Network.



In her story, Fowler wrote about how she was approached by a manager about an open relationship with his girlfriend, and how he was really looking for women to have sex with. She then took this highly inappropriate encounter to HR, but was then told that nothing would be done because he was a "high performer." It turns out he was also propositioning other co-workers. She also wrote about how female employees were repeatedly undervalued.



The movie deal was signed amidst a current climate where Hollywood is also taking a hard look at its own sexism. Executive Harvey Weinstein has been accused of sexual harassment and rape, as well as Amazon's former VP of film and TV Roy Price. Both have now lost their jobs. There continues to be stories of allegations of abuse and harassment across all industries, as highlighted by the #MeToo hashtag.



Nicole Lee wrote this article for Engadget.



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Susan Fowlers Uber harassment story is being made into a movie originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 24 Oct 2017 13:52:00 EDT.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk noted on Twitter that Tesla's solar team could indeed outfit Puerto Rico with power facilities that could be used to generate and store power reserves when the existing grid isn't available, as it has been after the U.S. territory faced the devastation of hurricane Maria. Now, Tesla is showing that it's making good on its promise of help, with significant progress being made on one solar generation/storage facility on the island.

Hospital del Nino is first of many solar+storage projects going live. Grateful to support the recovery of Puerto Rico with @ricardorossellopic.twitter.com/JfAu11UBYg  Tesla (@Tesla) October 24, 2017

The facility in question will provide power to Hospital del Nino, with a combination of solar cells and Tesla's Powerpack commercial energy storage batteries. That should mean it can not only generate power from the sun's rays in times of need, but also store up a reserve that can be used to provide power round the clock and throughout varying weather conditions, even when the sun isn't shining.

Tesla noted on Twitter that this is just the "first of many solar+storage projects going live," after the company discussed how it might help with Puerto Rico's ongoing recovery efforts with PR Governor Ricardo Rossello following an exchange between the Governor and Musk on Twitter. Rossello and Puerto Rican Chief Innovation Officer Glorimar Ripoli proposed turning the territory into a flagship example of what Tesla's solar technologies can do for the world.

Tesla has also been shipping its home Powerwall battery storage units to the island for help restoring the grid, and Musk himself donated $250,000 of his personal money to support relief efforts. Tesla also postponed its electric semi truck reveal event to November in order to focus on helping establish facilities like this one in Puerto Rico.

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Elon Musk announced Tesla would provide aid for Puerto Rico as the island recovers from Hurricane Maria. Now we've seen the how the company's renewable energy systems are being implemented.

The company's Twitter account shared a set of new photos showing off a new solar panel installation at Hospital del Nino in Guaynabo, calling it the "first of many" solar and storage initiatives planned to bring power to the people of Puerto Rico.

Hospital del Nino is first of many solar+storage projects going live. Grateful to support the recovery of Puerto Rico with @ricardorossellopic.twitter.com/JfAu11UBYg  Tesla (@Tesla) October 24, 2017

The photos show off rows of newly installed solar panels filling up a parking lot and one of Tesla's Powerpack batteries, three of which were reportedly spotted earlier this month at the San Juan airport. Each Powerpack can can store up to 210 kWh of power, which in this case will be produced by the solar panels.

SEE ALSO: Tesla will build a factory in Shanghai to help bring costs down

CBS News correspondent David Begnaud, who is currently reporting from Puerto Rico, also tweeted out the images. He included some additional details about the power storage system.

The system, which includes 200 kWh of solar energy generation & 500 kWh of storage, will supply power to the Children's Hospital in Guaynabo  David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) October 24, 2017

The system will "generate enough solar energy to power the hospital during the day & store up to 500 kWh of energy as backup"  David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) October 24, 2017

If Begnaud's numbers are accurate, Tesla probably added another Powerpack to the system, along with a number of Powerwall batteries, which can store up to 13.5 kWh of power. The company reportedly sent "hundreds" of the batteries to the island at the start of recovery efforts, along with a team of installers to help put them in place.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Puerto Rico's governor Ricardo Rossello publicly corresponded on Twitter after a fan's suggestion to discuss the company's potential role in relief efforts. Rossello later met with Tesla VP of global infrastructure operations Cal Lankton to continue those discussions, which likely resulted in the hospital project and the "many" others currently in the works.

These projects can be incredibly helpful for Puerto Rico  at press time, only 24.4 percent of the island has access to power. But it's also important to note that Tesla only appears to be creating micro grids with the new installations, which are limited to managing the power of small closed systems, rather than larger networks. Tesla has installed power grid systems on Kauai in Hawaii and Ta'u in American Samoa, but never anywhere as large as Puerto Rico.

We reached out to Tesla for some more details about the new installation, its funding, and the others the company has planned in Puerto Rico. We haven't heard back, but will update the story if and when we do.

The company that appears to be tasked with rebuilding Puerto Rico's power grid at large is Whitefish Energy, which agreed to a $300 million contract with PREPA, the island's power authority. That deal has been called into question because of the tiny Montana company's alleged ties to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

No matter who does the work, however, Puerto Rico needs all the help it can to bring power back to the people. Bringing a renewable system to a children's hospital is a good start.

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By Bernie Woodall

(Reuters) - The Texas father who told police his 3-year-old daughter disappeared after he sent her outside at 3 a.m. as punishment for not drinking milk has now told police she died from choking on the drink, according to an arrest warrant issued on Tuesday.

Wesley Mathews reported that his daughter Sherin went missing on Oct. 7 from the family's home in Richardson, Texas, outside Dallas. Her body was found on Sunday and has been positively identified by the local medical examiner, police said on Tuesday.

Mathews, 37, changed his story about the incident during a meeting on Monday with his attorney and detectives, according to police documents.

He told detectives that the child, who was born in India and adopted by the family, would not obey his instruction to drink the milk while they were in the family's garage but eventually complied with his help.

She then "began to choke. She was coughing and her breathing slowed," the affidavit said. "Eventually, Wesley Mathews no longer felt a pulse on the child and believed she had died."

The suspect admitted moving her body from the home, the affidavit said.

Mathews was charged on Monday with injury to a child, a first-degree felony that carries a maximum punishment of 99 years in prison, police said.

Sergeant Kevin Perlich of the Richardson Police Department said in a phone interview on Tuesday that investigators were seeking answers to many questions, including why the two were in the garage as the child was asked to drink milk.

"By no means do we consider this investigation completed," Perlich said, adding there could be additional charges and arrests.

Mathews' attorney did not return a call on Tuesday requesting comment.

Mathews previously was charged with suspected child endangerment after telling police that he punished the child for not drinking her milk by making her stand next to a tree by an alley near their home.

At the time, he said he checked on her 15 minutes later and she was gone. Police said that he reported her disappearance about five hours later.

Sherin Mathews was identified by dental records after officers using search dogs found her body in a culvert under a road, police said.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Fla; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)
Three-quarters of the island is still without power - a month after the storm struck: Getty

A $300m contract to help fix Puerto Ricos crippled electricity network has been awarded to a tiny Montana firm located in the hometown of a cabinet member of the Trump administration.

Whitefish Energy had only two full-time employees on the day Hurricane Maria struck the island, devastating homes, roads and leaving around 95 per cent of the island without electricity, a figure than has now dropped to 76 per cent.

A month later, the company has 280 workers on the island, a majority of whom are subcontractors, according to a report by the Washington Post.

Continuing to repair lines and towers each day in #PuertoRico. Great progress this week on lines in #Caguas! pic.twitter.com/K3MZHQbLeJ  Whitefish Energy (@WhitefishEnergy) October 24, 2017

The company, located in Whitefish, the home of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, is reportedly financed by a private-equity headed by Joe Colonnetta. Mr Colonnetta was a major donor to the campaign to elect Donald Trump and his wife also donated to Republican election efforts.

The company has insisted its securing of the contract had nothing to do with its political links. But some have questioned by such a major contract would be awarded to such a small firm, rather than a major utility with experience of helping restore power after natural disasters.

The fact that there are so many utilities with experience in this and a huge track record of helping each other out, it is at least odd why [the utility] would go to Whitefish, Susan Tierney, a former senior official at the Energy Department, told the newspaper. Im scratching my head wondering how it all adds up.

The company signed the contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA). Ricardo Ramos, the executive director of PREPA, told reporters that Whitefish Energy happened to be the first firm available to arrive and they were the ones that first accepted terms and conditions for PREPA.

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The doubts that have been raised about Whitefish, from my point of view, are completely unfounded, he said.

Whitefish Energy said in a statement it had been working for PREPA since September 26 2017 to repair and reconstruct electrical transmission infrastructure on the island.

Three hundred Whitefish Energy employees and subcontractors have temporarily relocated to Puerto Rico from all over the United States mainland, it said. Whitefish Energy is mobilising an additional 700 people to support the critical mission of restoring power to Puerto Rico as quickly as possible.

It added: Working side-by-side with the engineering team of PREPA, Whitefish Energy has already repaired several miles of key transmission and distribution lines, bringing the team within days of energising and restoring power to multiple Puerto Rico towns and communities.

Mr Zinke's office said in an email to the Post that the cabinet member and Whitefishs Chief Executive, Andy Techmanski, knew each other, but only because it was a small community where everybody knows everybody.

NBC quoted Mr Techmanski in a report on October 1, saying he had asked Mr Zinke for help in getting personnel and equipment to the territory. Whitefish Energy spokesman Chris Chiames, said: Once the company got the go-ahead from PREPA on September 26 to begin work, company executives did reach out to contacts in case they could help expedite getting qualified linesmen to the island.

Mr Zinkes office said: The Secretary always politely listens when citizens and the small business community approach him with concerns and ideas. Neither the Secretary nor anyone in his office have taken any meetings or action on behalf of this company.


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The owner of a company that buys and sells renewable fuel and fuel credits pleaded guilty to conspiracy for his role in a scheme that generated more than $47 million in fraudulent renewable fuels credits from the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Justice Department said on Monday.

The scheme also generated more than $12 million in fraudulent tax credits connected to the purported production of renewable fuel, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Gregory Schnabel entered his plea in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, it said.

(Reporting by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Sandra Maler)
The Trump administration has failed to place new sanctions on Russia, further deepening allegations the president is soft on Russia.

New sanctions resoundingly flew through both chambers of Congress in July, President Donald Trump signed the Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act on August 2. The bill called for fresh sanctions not only on Russia but Iran and North Korea as well.

But the administration missed the October 1 deadline to issue regulations or other guidance to indicate who from Russias defense and intelligence sectorslike its powerful Federal Security Servicewould be targeted by the new sanctions.

The bill did give Trump until early next year to actually impose new sanctions on specific parts of Russias economy like finance and energy, according to LawFare.

The White House and Treasury Department did not immediately respond to Newsweeks requests for comment.

The bill was a direct result of Russias meddling in last years election, though Trump has not completely accepted Russia and President Vladimir Putins efforts or even agreed with the U.S. intelligence communitys assessment that the Russians intentionally interfered in order to help Trump claim the White House over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

At the time of the bills signing, Trump did not have media or photographers present, unlike many of his other signings, and he lamented the bills challenge to his power as head of the executive branch. The measure included a clause that allowed Congress to review any lifting of sanctions should Trump try do so.

On the campaign trail, Trump spoke about improving relations with Russia and to date has failed to criticize Putin. During the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, in July, Trump met with Putin for the first time and said he asked him twice if Russia had meddled in the election. Putin supposedly denied any Russian involvement, and Trump later said he believed him.

Since signing the bill, Trump has delegated some sanctioning authority, authorizing Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to handle some financial sanctions and for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to administer visa sanctions.

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Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was asked Sunday on NBCs Meet The Press why the president had yet to issue sanctions on Russia. Graham admitted the Trump administration had a blindspot on Russian I still cant figure out, and directly called on Trump to take action while showing support, according to Mediaite.

Mr. President, go after Russia because theyre coming after us, Graham said, though he added, I think hes beginning to understand the threats we face better and better each day.

The administration has taken action against North Korea since the bills passing. Trump signed an executive order expanding sanctions September 22, homing in on its finances and other countries that do business with Kim Jong Uns regime.

Four days later the Treasury Department put eight North Korean banks and 26 people working in four different countries linked to the Pyongyangs financial networks on its sanctions blacklist, specifically citing the authoritarian governments continued nuclear and missile defense programs.

Trump has also called out Kim both on social media and in major speeches. The president first dubbed Kim rocket man on Twitter and repeated the nickname during his first visit and speech before the United Nations General Assembly last month.

Trump has also railed against Iran. The president and administration claimed the Middle Eastern power was in violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the multilateral deal struck during President Barack Obamas tenure that hindered Tehran's development of nuclear weapons in exchange of a loosening of sanctions.

On October 13, the administration tasked Congress with putting new requirements into the deal and if Iran bucks more sanctions would be placed on Tehran. Otherwise, Trump could completely pull the U.S. out of the deal, according to The Washington Post.

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FULL INTERVIEW between @GStephanopoulos and Myeshia Johnson, widow of fallen soldier Sgt. La David Johnson: https://t.co/8fRPhejRl8 pic.twitter.com/8UzCwVDGVp  Good Morning America (@GMA) October 23, 2017

Its been 19 days since Myeshia Johnson, the pregnant widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, was thrown into the middle of a national controversy after President Donald Trump paid her a condolence call. On Monday, just two days after Sgt. Johnsons burial, she appeared on Good Morning America to give her side of the story and had nothing to say to Trump, and the president soon responded.

I asked Master Sgt. Neil to put his phone on speaker so my aunt and uncle could hear as well, Johnson told George Stephanopoulos. The president said that he knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyways. It made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it. He couldnt remember my husbands name I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husbands name, and thats what hurt me the most.

I didnt say anything. I just listened, Johnson said after being asked if she had talked with Trump during his call, which made her very upset and hurt; it made me cry even worse.

Moments after Johnsons appearance on GMA, the president responded via Twitter insisting he knew the fallen soldiers name.

I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from the beginning, without hesitation! he wrote.

I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2017

The controversy started when Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-Fla.) made public the presidents remarks during the condolence call. Trump was quick to refute the representatives remarks saying that her story was totally fabricated. Johnson, during her interview made it clear that Wilsons story was indeed 100 percent correct adding that Sgt. Neil, her aunt, her uncle and the driver were all in the car when the phone call took place.

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This marks Johnsons first public appearance and comments since receiving the call from the president last week. Johnsons husband was one of four U.S. soldiers killed on Oct. 4 after being attacked by Niger Islamic State Militants.

During her interview, Johnson also made it clear that she hasnt been allowed to see her husbands remains. She told Stephanopoulos that she needs answers regarding Sgt. Johnsons death. They wont show me a finger, a hand. I know my husbands body from head to toe and they wont let me see anything.

Johnson ended the emotional conversation by saying that once her daughter is born in January, shell tell her how awesome her dad was and what a great father he was.
President Trumps cruel and unseemly battle with a war widow is shedding new and disturbing light on the proliferation of generals at the top tier of the administration.

Like many observers, I have been ambivalent about the prevalence of generals in senior political posts in the Trump administration. The extent to which U.S. President Donald Trump relies on retired Marine Gen. James Mattis as his secretary of defense, retired Marine Gen. John Kelly as his White House chief of staff, and active-duty Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his national security advisor is unprecedented. McMaster, in turn, replaced yet another retired general  Michael Flynn  and one of his deputy national security advisors, Ricky Waddell, is a general too (in his case, a reservist).

Sure, there have been generals before in high-level civilian positions, from Secretary of State George Marshall in the 1940s to Secretary of State Colin Powell in the 2000s. Oh, and Brent Scowcroft was one of the finest national security advisors ever. But never have so many generals served at once in such positions of authority. This has raised concerns about whether soldiers and marines are usurping prerogatives best left to civilians.

But those worries have been outweighed by sheer relief that responsible, sane, sober individuals like Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster are preventing our impetuous, vain, and ignorant chief executive from doing something crazy. Sadly, the generals have not been able to curb all of Trumps destructive impulses; they could not, for example, stop him from labeling the dictator of North Korea as Little Rocket Man and issuing a series of taunts that make another nuclear war more likely.

On balance, however, I am still glad that the generals are where they are, and I would be very worried if one of them left. Without the checks and balances provided by these military professionals, Trump might very well launch actual missiles rather than simply Twitter insults.

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Still, the extent to which these generals feel compelled to lend their stars and their gravitas to save the president from suffering political damage for his own screw-ups should disturb anyone who cares about the future of the American armed forces.

The problem first became evident in May when Trump was reported to have revealed top-secret information about the Islamic State, provided by Israel, to Russias foreign minister and ambassador. Out walked McMaster  imposing and martial-looking even in civilian clothes  to deliver a disingenuous statement to reporters, refuting claims that the Washington Post, which broke the story, had not actually made. For example, McMaster denied that intelligence sources or methods were discussed with the Russians. But the Post hadnt reported any such thing; all it said was that Trump had shared top-secret information without clearing it with the Israelis or the intelligence community first.

McMaster may not have been lying, but he was certainly misleading  and he was using the respect he had accrued during his military career to shield Trump from well-warranted criticism. He may have felt that he had no choice if he was to maintain the presidents confidence and to keep his job, but his statement nevertheless sullied a general who had a well-developed reputation as a fearless truth-teller.

Now its Kellys turn to serve as a flak catcher after Trump became ensnared in controversy over the way he deals with the families of fallen soldiers. Trump was criticized for waiting 12 days after the deaths of four Green Berets in Niger to speak to their relatives. Instead of offering an excuse  hey, a presidents got a lot on his plate  Trump lashed out, claiming falsely that previous presidents such as Barack Obama never called or spoke to the bereaved. Then when he did call Myeshia Johnson, the widow of fallen Sgt. La David Johnson, Trump rubbed her the wrong way by telling her that her husband knew what he was signing up for. This is not the message that a pregnant mother of two wants to hear. Very upset and hurt; made me cry even worse, she said Monday, describing her reaction.

The widows grief and anger was conveyed to the whole world by Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, a family friend who heard the call on a speakerphone. Instead of simply apologizing for the crossed signals and moving on, Trump, as his wont, again doubled down. He accused Rep. Wilson of having totally fabricated what I said, and claimed to have proof that she was lying  evidence which, needless to say, has not been forthcoming. To defend himself, Trump said that President Obama had never called Gen. Kelly after his sons death in action, thereby making use of his chief of staffs private grief for his own political purposes.

Kelly, who apparently was not consulted before Trump decided to speak publicly about his sons death, then grimly walked out to perform cleanup duty. He proceeded to deliver an emotional statement about the agony Gold Star families go through and to defend the way that Trump had spoken to Myeshia Johnson. So far so good. But then Kelly delivered a cruel and gratuitous attack on Rep. Wilson as an empty barrel who was supposedly guilty of grandstanding during a ceremony inaugurating a new FBI building in Florida. Tape of the event showed that Wilson did no such thing  she instead delivered a tribute to the two fallen FBI agents after whom the building was named.

Kelly has not apologized for his misstatements (Trump thinks being president means never having to say youre sorry), and when asked about them, Sarah Huckabee Sanders  the White House spokeswoman  had a mind-boggling response: If you want to go after General Kelly, thats up to you, she said. But I think that that  if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general, I think that thats something highly inappropriate.

Whoa. Since when did generals rise above criticism? Maybe in banana republics, but not in the American republic. As retired Gen. David Petraeus said on Sunday, We in uniform protect the rights of others to criticize us frankly.

Petraeus knows whereof he speaks. Back in 2007, during the Iraq surge, MoveOn.org ran an advertisement headlined General Petraeus or General Betray Us? This was far more insulting than anything that anyone has ever said about Gen. Kelly, and it no doubt stung given that Petraeus was then leading men and women in desperate battle. But he never claimed that as a general he was above criticism  even unfair, ad hominem criticism, much less the kind of well-justified criticism directed at Kelly for his false statements.

That the White House now makes this remarkable claim  without any public dissent from any of the generals serving in this administration  is typical of this administrations willingness to cross any boundary, to defile any tradition, to say or do just about anything in order to protect Trumps fragile ego. Trump had no problem criticizing generals such as Colin Powell, John Allen, and Martin Dempsey when he didnt like what they said or did. But now that a general is safeguarding Trumps battered reputation, they have become divinities above reproach from mere mortals.

There is a good reason why officers on active duty are forbidden from engaging in the political process, and why even retired generals hesitate to do so. It is because they are acutely aware that as military professionals they are called upon to serve presidents of different parties, and much of their prestige depends on their reputation as warriors who fight to defend the Constitution rather than any particular political agenda. This apolitical reputation, in fact, accounts for the respect in which the military is held by society at large  it is the most trusted institution in America.

Trumps generals  my generals, as he calls them  risk undermining that understanding and setting back efforts to separate the military from the taint of politics. Ironically, by claiming that generals are above criticism, the Trump administration may be subjecting generals to enhanced criticism and suspicion in the future. Count the armed forces as yet another institution that  like the fake media, the civil service (the Deep State), and, above all, the Republican Party  may well suffer lasting damage because of the capricious whims of the least presidential president ever.
President Trump added fuel to his feud with Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., Tuesday, saying the retiring senator couldnt get elected dog catcher in his home state, after Corker suggested the White House let Congress take the reins on tax reform.

Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldnt get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts. Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse [sic] when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump, Trump tweeted Tuesday. Look at his record!

Corker quickly shot back, Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff.

The president wasnt finished. He then added, Isnt it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldnt get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!

Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done, Trump continued. He doesnt have a clue as.. the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us. People like liddle Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!

In an interview with CNN Tuesday, Corker predicted the debasement of our nation will be what [Trump]ll be remembered most for, and thats regretful.

CORKER UNLOADS: He would NOT support Trump again; says Trump NOT a role model; won't say if he trusts Trump w nukes https://t.co/oAGIWVZ8P9  Manu Raju (@mkraju) October 24, 2017

In later remarks to reporters, Corker hinted he regretted his past support for Trump, and repeated that Trump is debasing the nation in the way that he conducts himself and goes to such a low level.

Its obvious his political model and governing model is to divide, Corker said. He has not risen to the occasion  its very evident to me.

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In a contrasting prescriptive to his colleagues, Corker added, The rest of us need to do what we can to act as statesmen.

The barbs escalated the war of words between Corker and Trump. The Tennessee senator had earlier this month likened the White House to an adult day care center after the president went on a Twitter tirade against him.

Trump retorted then that the senator didnt have the guts to run for reelection in 2018. He asserted that Corker was attempting to derail the White House agenda because he hadnt been named secretary of state or received Trumps endorsement in the Tennessee Senate race.

Later that day, Corker, in an interview with the New York Times, said of Trump: I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, its a situation of trying to contain him.

Corker will attend a lunch with Trump and Republican senators on Capitol Hill Tuesday, although he described the meeting as a photo op to NBC News Monday. He implied that Congress, not the White House, should lead tax reform efforts.

You got to remember, tax reform is our agenda, Corker said. Its the Senates agenda. Its a House agenda. This was something thats been on our agenda long before the president ran for president. So, to act as if its his agenda  its our agenda.

Sen. Bob Corker and President Trump (Photos: Drew Angerer/Getty Images; Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Read more from Yahoo News:
Yes, we know twins are supposed to look alike, but these two brothers are making the Twitterverse do a serious double take. The 19-year-old studs stunned everyone with their uncanny resemblance when @ahmedtwinkie wished his older twin  by two minutes  @abdullahtwinkie a happy birthday on Twitter. The post went viral with nearly 60,000 tweets and 13,000 retweets.

Happy 19th birthday to a brother who has the worlds greatest brother, damn you're so lucky pic.twitter.com/DbYfEf9thk  ALMOND (@ahmedtwinkie) October 22, 2017

The post featured several photos of the teens wearing matching plaid shirts and navy slacks. They also wore matching belts and silver chains and rings. The internet had to carefully decipher whether the photo was real or merely edited to create the identical-twin illusion.

Is your brother on the left or on the right? pic.twitter.com/J9lzZFK2Sd  MileyFuckingCyrus (@No1StaysTheSame) October 22, 2017

Usually twins have that one thing u can tell them apart but y'all look like clones  Amina A. Said (@xomina816) October 22, 2017

I feel like I'm looking at one of those spot the differences pictures  Kiara Martin (@Kikidm08) October 22, 2017

So we just gonna act like we aint know one of you is a shadow clone  Dominican_Kai (@_DemiJordan) October 23, 2017

With all the commotion and questions as to whether this twin sitch was real or fake, Ahmed had to set the record straight with some throwback photos of the two.

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Ahmed and his twin Abdullah are from Bosnia but currently reside in Arizona. They go to college and also work part-time. The twins tell Yahoo Lifestyle they didnt expect a simple happy birthday tweet would gather so much attention.

That said, now that it has put them on the Twitterverse map, Abdullah says they want to use their platform to preach good.

I like this fit A post shared by LULA (@abdullahtwinkie) on Jul 27, 2017 at 3:57pm PDT

We want to make a good difference in this world. We want to bring peace and love, and for people to respect each and every religion and race out there, says Abdullah. We want to one day become as financially stable as possible so then we can start many charity organizations for the unfortunate all around the world.

are yall single..?? asking for a friend https://t.co/BHYhTAelXM  JB (@husidic_jen) October 22, 2017

For all the people asking if the twins are single or in a relationship, Ahmed says he is single, but Abdullah declined to comment.

Iooking like a tired father A post shared by ALMOND (@ahmedtwinkie) on May 24, 2017 at 6:06pm PDT

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.




Twitter is responding to political scrutiny over the role it may have played in spreading Russian misinformation, and to a bipartisan Congressional bill proposing new regulations for online ads, with some new initiatives of its own.

So it's launching an Advertising Transparency Center where users should be able to see all the ads running on Twitter, the content/creative of those ads, how long they've been running and which ones are targeted specifically at you. Anyone can then report an ad as inappropriate or simply say that they don't like it.

Twitter also says it will be shining a spotlight on political ads, specifically ads in support of a particular party or candidate. Those "electioneering" ads will be redesigned so that users can identify them as such. (That's a mockup below from Twitter of what ads might look like in the future.)

Twitter political ad

There will also be a special section in the transparency center focused on electioneering, where you can find out additional information like who's being targeted by an ad, more information about the organization buying it and how much they've spent on advertising.

Not every political ad is explicitly endorsing a candidate. On the topic of "Issues-based ads," Twitter writes that there's "no clear industry definition," but it says, "We will work with our peer companies, other industry leaders, policy makers, and ad partners to clearly define them quickly and integrate them into the new approach mentioned above."

Twitter says these transparency efforts will go live in the United States first, but the plan is to make the information available globally. The company's blog post also discusses that Congressional bill:

Last week, Senators Mark Warner (D-VA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John McCain (R-AZ) and Representatives Derek Kilmer (D-WA), and Mike Coffman (R-CO) introduced the Honest Ads Act legislation. We thank these members and others for their foresight in drawing attention to these issues as well as Chairman Hurd (R-TX) for holding a public hearing today on political advertising laws and regulations to facilitate a thoughtful discussion on disclosure policy. We look forward to engaging with Members of Congress and other key stakeholders on these issues as the legislative process continues.

Facebook has also said that it will increase transparency around advertising by allowing anyone to see any ad run by any organization on the social network.
Nicaragua has officially joined the Paris climate accord, leaving just two countries to not support the deal  the United States and Syria.

It is the only instrument we have in the world that allows the unity of intentions and efforts to face up to climate change and natural disasters, Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo said Monday. President Daniel Ortega initially announced his intention to sign in September.

When the agreement was reached in 2015, Nicaragua and Syria were the only countries to refuse to sign. Syria wasnt involved in the negotiations as a result of ongoing conflict in the country, and Nicaragua opposed the agreements non-binding nature and contended it didnt go far enough to fight climate change.

The U.S., under then-President Barack Obama, helped spearhead the agreement. But President Donald Trump, who has referred to climate change as a hoax, in June announced his plans to withdraw from the deal. Formally pulling out of the deal could take years, though, and many have speculated that Trump could still reverse course. The White House has pushed back on those claims.

Leaders worldwide have spoken out against Trumps opposition to the deal. Former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Monday that Trump was standing on the wrong side of history.

The U.S. is the second-largest greenhouse gas producer worldwide after China. Nicaragua, meanwhile, is already a haven for renewable energy, with its high exposure to sun and wind, according to a 2013 World Bank study. Renewables already account for 58 percent of the countrys energy.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
The US is getting ready to put nuclear bombers on 24-hour alert because of increased tensions with North Korea and Russia, it has been reported.

The ageing fleet of B-52 bombers could be put on standby for the first time since 1991 at the end of the Cold War, Defense One reported.

US Air Force chief of staff, General David Goldfein, told the website: This is yet one more step in ensuring that were prepared.

I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure were prepared going forward.

Earlier this month, US president Donald Trump tweeted that only one thing will work when dealing with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

B-52s could be put on 24-hour alert at US Air Force bases (Picture: Getty)

According to the report, General Goldfein and other defence officials insisted the order for the 24-hour alert had not yet been given, but that they are preparing for that possibility.

The plan is said to have been put in place because of increasing tensions with North Korea over its nuclear intentions, as well as moves by Russian to pursue new submarine technology.

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General Goldfein said: The world is a dangerous place and weve got folks that are talking openly about use of nuclear weapons.

Its no longer a bipolar world where its just us and the Soviet Union.

Weve got other players out there who have nuclear capability. Its never been more important to make sure that we get this mission right.

US president Donald Trump has pointed the finger at North Korea on numerous occasions (Picture: Rex)

He made his comments during a six-day tour of US Air Force bases, including Barksdale in Louisiana, where B-52s used to be parked in Christmas tree formation during the Cold War.

Asked about a return for the fighter planes, he said: Really it depends on who, what kind of behaviour are we talking about, and whether theyre paying attention to our readiness status.

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Earlier this month, Mr Trump said: Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid.

He tweeted that it hasnt worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, making fools of US negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!

(Main picture: Getty)
As part of National Bullying Prevention Month, first lady Melania Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos kicked off the Week of Inclusion on Monday at a Michigan middle school, where they participated in lessons about respecting others, kindness, and inclusion.

President Donald Trumps White House might have been a better first stop.

Since taking office, Trump and his administration have announced or implemented several policies that legal challengers say do just the opposite of what the Week of Inclusion purports to promote.

Heres a refresher on some of those decisions:

Trump signed a memo excluding transgender people from serving in the military

In a series of unexpected tweets in July, Trump announced that transgender men and women would no longer be allowed to serve in the U.S. military in any capacity.

He signed a memo the following month formalizing the sweeping ban and tasking Defense Secretary Jim Mattis with determining whether to remove already enlisted transgender individuals from their positions. The policy change will go into effect sometime after January 2018, government lawyers have said.

In the lead-up to its implementation, the exclusionary measure has faced several legal challenges. Most recently, 15 Democratic attorneys general led by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey filed a brief last week arguing the ban is unconstitutional, against the interest of national defense and harmful to the transgender community.

Protesters gather at Columbus Circle on July 29 to protest Trump's transgender military ban. (Photo: Pacific Press via Getty Images)

Trump has defended the ban as a cost-saving measure, and supporters have praised the move as cutting spending on transgender service members treatments and procedures related to gender confirmation. But critics say those arguments arent rooted in any statistical evidence and that the number of service members seeking hormone therapy each year, for example, would result in a mere 0.04 to 0.13 percent increase in the Defense Departments total health care spending.

It wasnt the Trump administrations first affront to transgender citizens. In February, the administration announced it would no longer bar schools from discriminating against transgender students, undoing an Obama-era policy.

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Hes targeted Muslims through his ongoing travel ban attempts

Trumps several attempts at his travel ban have all predominantly singled out people coming into the United States from Muslim-majority countries. Each iteration of the proposed ban, federal judges have found when blocking it, discriminates on the basis of nationality and is not rooted in any evidence that it would protect U.S. interests.

Each new version is just an updated version of the previous ones, and they all have one goal: to keep out people primarily from majority-Muslim countries, Becca Heller, head of the International Refugee Assistant Project, said amid Trumps latest attempt at the ban earlier this month. We will not rest until this cruel and senseless policy is blocked for good.

At Los Angeles International Airport on June 29, volunteer lawyers set up a table to help arriving passengers affected by Trump's executive order targeting travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries. (Photo: Mike Blake / Reuters)

His administration argued against civil rights protections for LGBT employees

In July, Trumps Justice Department filed an amicus brief arguing that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not cover employment discrimination on the basis of a persons sexual orientation.

The brief was filed in the case of Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor who said his employer wrongly fired him after Zarda revealed his sexual orientation to a customer. The Jeff Sessions-led DOJ wrote in its brief that Title VII does not apply in this case.

It does not, as has been settled for decades, the brief read. Any efforts to amend Title VIIs scope should be directed to Congress rather than the courts.

That position constitutes an effort by the Trump administration to allow prejudice against the LGBT community, the American Civil Liberties Union argued.

The Sessions-led Justice Department and the Trump administration are actively working to expose people to discrimination, James Esseks, director of the ACLUs LGBT and HIV Project, said in a statement. Fortunately, courts will decide whether the Civil Rights Act protects LGBT people, not an Attorney General and a White House that are hell-bent on playing politics with peoples lives.

His administration weakened protections for sexual assault victims

In September, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rolled back Obama-era guidance under Title IX directing colleges and universities on how to handle complaints of sexual harassment and assault.

A group of demonstrators gather outside Founders Hall in Arlington, Virginia, where Education Secretary Betsy DeVos delivered a major policy address on Title IX enforcement on Sept. 7. (Photo: Mike Theiler / Reuters)

With that rollback, schools are now allowed to raise the preponderance of evidence standard that the Obama administration guidance established for finding that students had committed sexual assault.

Legal challenges to the new guidance have said the change singles out campus sexual assault victims, the vast majority of whom are women, because it creates a tougher standard of evidence for abuses based on sex than exists for other civil rights violations.

Ironically we have the secretary of education issuing discriminatory rules that apply only to violence against women and subject only victims of sex-based harm to second-class treatment on college campuses, Wendy Murphy, a lawyer who filed a lawsuit challenging the new policy, told reporters in Boston last month. That is unconscionable, that is unacceptable, and it is unconstitutional.

His administration is forcing previously protected immigrants out of the U.S. by rescinding DACA

In September, Sessions announced the administration would phase out Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the 2012 program created to protect undocumented youths from deportation.

The decision was met with several lawsuits, many of which said the White House violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it canceled the program, resulting in a due process violation.

Critics of the decision have argued it is rooted in racist, anti-immigrant beliefs, not in any concern for safety; DACA recipients are legally required to have clean criminal records.

Notwithstanding the occasional claim that President Trump wants to show heart, his administration will invoke whatever views of statutes and executive power maximize cruelty towards the foreign nationals he and his supporters most despise, Cornell University law professor Michael C. Dorf wrote in a Newsweek op-ed assessing the administrations reasoning for rescinding DACA.

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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.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
An innovation strategist, Guy Hirsch is the former director of Innovation Strategy and lead of Retail Innovation at Samsung, mentor at UpWest Labs and two-time venture-backed founder.

Samsungs competition with Apple is on premium phone ($400+) market share, and Apple is crushing Samsung in this market.

Other market share metrics dont really matter all that much because of the simple fact that, according to Counterpoint , Apple dominated the global profit share of mobile phones, holding 65 percent of the global profits with just 9 percent (!!) of the total handset shipments during Q2 2017. Counterpoint also reports that over the summer of 2016, Apple was selling just over 50 percent of the global premium smartphones, and Samsung was selling just under 25 percent. By December 2016, those numbers had grown to 70 percent and 17 percent, respectively.

Samsung spent an astonishing $10 billion on marketing in 2016, and while it doesnt report how much of it was spent on marketing its premium phones, it was likely in the billions -- and probably more than what Apple has spent globally.

So why is Samsungs premium phone market share shrinking? Why do consumers with discretionary spending still prefer Apple in such large numbers?

The reason is not the product. Samsung is a product innovation powerhouse, launching state-of-the-art devices that compete head to head with Apples mobile products and getting rave reviews. The reason for this wide gap in the premium handset market share lies elsewhere: in sales and marketing innovation -- or lack thereof.

Samsung is a South Korean manufacturing company, which relies mostly on channel partners to sell its mobile products. That means that Samsungs leaders see their partners as bearing the responsibility for the buying and servicing experiences. Samsung has been focusing on providing massive marketing air cover in the form of ads, sponsorships and any other activity that is externalizing all the creativity and innovation in sales and marketing to a third-party. Samsung just loves to outspend its rivals with money they give to marketing agencies -- money that isnt invested in internal capabilities.

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But that just doesnt cut it against a sophisticated direct-to-consumer powerhouse like Apple. Apple has been launching state-of-the-art products too, but it is matched by state-of-the-art direct sales and marketing capabilities. Apple is the worlds most successful retailer (sales per square foot), by far. Apple is also showing off these achievements and prioritizes them: In its 2017 event, Tim Cook opened the keynote and before he presented any of the new products, he called on Angela Ahrendts, SVP Retail, to show off the innovation and amazing new experiences of buying and immersing with Apple.

That was before anyone talked about the iPhone X or any other product. In a way, it showed that Tim Cook thinks that the experience of buying from Apple has more long-term impact on the business than the next version of the iPhone. The scaled personal touch with Apple, the consumer interaction, is so important -- and it is the key to its continued wins over Samsung. Samsung leadership simply doesnt care as much about it as Apple.

Case in point: In August, DJ Koh, Samsungs president of Mobile Communications Business, went onstage during the Unpacked event of the Note8 and talked about the product, only to be followed by Justin Denison, SVP of Product Strategy, to talk more about, well, the product. This pattern is consistent throughout Samsungs major keynote addresses at CES and MWC. With rare exceptions, and always low in priority, Samsungs leaders simply dont show off the experience of buying Samsung or getting service at Samsung.

This culture and strategy difference also is manifested in the innovation happening within the brand's sales and marketing departments. It starts with customer data. You cant use the iPhone without having an account with Apple, which means that Apple knows a lot about you. In Samsungs case, it has yielded the customer data benefit to Google, though the benefits of that decision probably outweigh the detriments.

The operating system excuse doesnt let Samsung off the hook. Apple is continuously improving its internal sales and marketing capabilities because it has a straightforward management structure. Therefore, it can experiment as rapidly here as it does with its products (and probably faster). Apple is applying AI and other novel concepts in its operations. Apple was the first among the two to experiment with proximity in its sales operations, and its CRM system is state-of-the-art.

Contrary to that, Samsung depends on its sister company, Samsung SDS, for many of its internal sales and marketing capabilities. This structure causes a lot of friction, and innovation lags significantly behind Apple. Excluding its agencies, Samsung is not using AI in its sales and marketing operations and it has only just started experimenting with proximity (full disclosure: I initiated the development and delivery of this capability). Most of it is no thanks to leadership in Korea but to the creative marketing talent here in the U.S. that is willing to take risks and craves to innovate.

In service, Apples Genius Bar and call center is the standard to match. Samsung was still using pen and paper earlier this year in most of its customer-facing service operations in its flagship location at 837 Washington Street in NYC.

Samsung can close this gap with Apple if its Korean leadership will change the culture, prioritizing and investing in sales and marketing innovation. It should also consider breaking away from Samsung SDS or merging with it (shareholders are pushing for it), simplifying the management structure over its internal IT systems.

Apple proved that in order to be the leader in this premium category, a brand must be investing and committing to providing the best shopping and service experience possible. If Samsung could match its world-class products with a world-class buying and serving experiences, it has a chance of leveling the playing field with Apple in the premium handset market.
Physics is a funny thing. Despite dictating the behaviors and states of everything from atoms to stars, our interpretation of its effects are rooted in very human constructs. Meters, amperes and seconds were all defined using arbitrary terms and methods. For years, the kilogram and meter weren't just terms, they were physical objects held in a Paris vault that some Victorian-era committee just decided would be the standard. But now, for the first time since the international system of units (SI) was launched in 1960, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) is redefining four basic units of measurement, not by any human metric but by the immutable forces of the universe.

"This is the most important decision that the BIPM has made in maybe 100 years, which may be a slight exaggeration, but at least since 1960 when they adopted the international system of units," Dr. Terry Quinn, emeritus director of the BIPM, said.

A committee from the BIPM met in Paris this week and voted on Friday to recommend redefining the kilogram, mole, ampere and Kelvin. The motion will be put up for a vote at the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) next November.

"For the scale that's in your grocery store or bathroom, nothing's going to change," Dr. David Newell of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) said. Instead, as Dr. Quinn explains, "it will give you the ability to make accurate measurements on scales far different from the current scale."

"This redefinition is a major overhaul," Newell said. But it's certainly not the first. For example, we define the second by a specific number of cycles of radiation in a cesium-133 atom (9,192,631,770 periods). It was originally considered to be the fraction 1/86400 of the mean solar day.

The meter used to be a real thing that you could hold (like the kilogram still is) rather than the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458 seconds. "The SI is slowly evolving to the use of the invariance of nature," Newell said, rather than basing our observations on specific, physical artifacts.

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"What is going to change is that with this redefinition, the uncertainties of fundamental constants is either going to go to zero," he said. "Or the uncertainties of the related fundamental constants is going to be drastically reduced."

This means researchers will have far more accurate tools with which to make measurements. That higher fidelity will empower them to go back and reexamine the laws of physics that we believe to be correct and see if they're as accurate as we think they are. "We may actually find that we don't know everything," Newell said. Eventually, we may even take those insights and once again redefine the scientific measurement system when our technology has sufficiently advanced.

Another advantage is these fundamental constants appear throughout nature, Newell explained. Researchers would no longer be tied to the kilogram and would be able to easily scale their units between the macroscopic and microscopic worlds.

"Moreover the present system is explicit unit based -- the second, the kilogram, the meter, the ampere -- and there's definitions for all of them," Newell continued. "The new system is explicitly constants-based -- the transition frequency of a cesium atom is an exact number of hertz, the speed of light is an exact number of meters per second."

Take amperes, for example. An ampere (or amp) is the basic unit of electrical current and is defined by the SI as the equivalent to one coulomb (the base unit of electrical charge) per second. Originally it was defined using a thought experiment.

This is problematic for a couple reasons, PhysicsWorld points out. First, it relies on other units of measure -- specifically kilograms, meters and seconds -- for its definition. This methodology is exactly what the BIPM is trying to get away from. Second, the aforementioned "thought experiment" can never be tested in reality, because it imagines a situation with wire infinitely long, so at some point, you're going to have to approximate.

Instead, the BIPM wants to define amps by the number of electrons that flow through a wire by the exact number of electrons that actually flow through a wire. Recently, a team of researchers from German National Metrology Institute (PTB) in Braunschweig developed a Single Electron Pump. Electrons are generated on one side of a circuit, become trapped as they pass through a series of gates and then are released one at a time on the other side where they can be easily counted. Using this, we can define the ampere as the specific number of single electrons passing through a wire for a given length of time.

Kilograms are equally quirky. The International Prototype Kilogram (IPK) is a cylinder of platinum-iridium sitting in a Paris Vault and is what all other kilograms are measured against. Problem is, materials have a habit of gaining and losing atoms due to chemical interactions with the atmosphere. Of the six official copies of the IPK, one has lost about 5 micrograms while two others have gained more than 50 micrograms of mass. You'd be hard-pressed to notice if someone dropped a 50 microgram weight on your toe but for the scientific community, those fluctuations make a big difference.

The IPK isn't just susceptible to atmospheric reactions. Being a physical object, it can be stolen or damaged. However, "you can't steal Planck's Constant," Quinn quipped.

"If I were to drop [the IPK] on the floor and chip a piece off, the definition of mass would have to be changed because it is defined as this hunk of metal," Dr. Willie May, former director of NIST and current VP of the CIPM, said.

"But, by definition, it can't change," Quinn interjected. "And so what would happen, had Dr. May dropped it on the floor and knocked a piece off, it would have remained the IPK and the mass of the rest of the universe would have changed."

That's where the Kibble Balance comes in. Now on normal balancing scales, you determine the mass of an object by adding mass to the opposite side until they are in equilibrium. In the Kibble balance, the gravitational force generated by the weight on one side is countered with electromagnetic force on the other. With this method, and a bit of math, researchers can measure something called the Planck Constant. Thus we can define kilograms in terms of the Planck Constant rather than a lump of metal.

Kelvin, thankfully, is a bit more straightforward. It's the measure of temperature, terminating at absolute zero when all molecular motion stops. That absolute nature is important, since, unlike mass, relative temperatures don't stack. For example, smash two 10-pound blobs of clay, each heated to 100 degrees Fahrenheit together, the result will weigh 20 pounds but it won't be any hotter. As such, measuring temperatures in Kelvin is more accurate than Fahrenheit or Celsius though it's still being framed in an outdated model.

Should the CGPM approve the redefinition of Kelvin next year, the unit will be defined using an acoustic thermometer. These devices measure the speed of sound waves travelling through a low-gravity gas sphere. Since the speed of those waves is fixed for a set temperature, you can calculate that by measuring the frequency of the resonating sound waves and the volume of the sphere.

Even the mole is getting a makeover. This fundamental unit measures the amount of substance known as the Avogadro constant. Moles are used to bridge the gap between the micro- and macroscopic worlds. It provides a usable frame of reference when dealing with minuscule items. Or, as XKCD once pointed out, a mole of moles would be 602,214,129,000,000,000,000,000 animals (602 trillion trillion moles). That's also the number of sand grains needed to bury the entire UK to a depth of about 40 centimetres, according to the NPL, or the number of human cells on Earth.

The Mole is defined using an experiment known as the "primary method," which involves weighing a material of known composition. However, because this system bases the value of the mole on the mass of the prototype kilogram, the CGPM is considering redefining the unit.

Instead, the group wants to drop carbon (the reference substance for moles) altogether and replace it with a 1Kg, 94-mmm wide, nearly spherical mass of 99.9995-percent pure silicon-28. Since the physical characteristics of the sphere -- weight, diameter, size of the individual crystal lattices -- are known, as well as how much a single silicon atom weighs, these measurements can be used to calculate the total number of atoms in the sphere and, in turn, a revised Avogadro's constant.

This isn't the end of the BIPM's efforts. The group is eyeing the atomic second ahead of the unit's 50th anniversary of being tied to the radiation cycles of Cesium-133. "At the time we used the best atomic clock we could possibly have," Quinn explained. "But a lot of science has taken place, and there are now ways of making atomic clocks 100 times better. And in the next 10 years, I would say, there will be a new definition of the atomic second that is 100 times better."

Such an advancement will have implications in everything from space exploration and cutting-edge physics research to more accurate GPS navigation in your car.

"If we allow the art of the possible," May said, "you open up the future to things you've never even thought of."
The widow a US soldier killed in Niger has confirmed that Donald Trump told her in a phone call, he knew what he signed up for.

Sgt La David Johnson was one of four soldiers killed at the beginning of this month, and the US president has been accused of insensitivity to his wife, Myeshia.

In an interview with Good Morning America to speak about the controversy for the first time, she said her phone call with Mr Trump made me cry even worse.

She also said the president couldnt remember her dead husbands name.

Last week, Democratic representative Frederica Wilson, who was on the other end of the call with Mrs Johnson, said Mr Trump told her: He knew what he signed up for.

"[I was] very upset and hurt. It made me cry even worse."  Myeshia Johnson, widow of Sgt. La David Johnson to @GStephanopoulos pic.twitter.com/JguNqTaYa3  Good Morning America (@GMA) October 23, 2017

Mr Trump later described this account of the conversation as totally fabricated, but his aunt, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, who raised Sgt Johnson from the age of five after his mother died, said Ms Wilsons version was true.

The couple have two children aged two and six and Mrs Johnson is six months pregnant.

Sgt La David Johnson was killed in an ambush in Niger (Picture: AP)

Speaking to Good Morning America, she said she was very upset and hurt by Mr Trumps phone call, adding: It made me cry even worse.

MORE: Boris Johnson says Trump is right to threaten military strike against North Korea

MORE: Eight different prototypes battling it out to be Donald Trumps Mexico border wall

Mrs Johnson said Mr Trump said her husband knew what he signed up for.

She said: And it made me cry. I was very angry at the tone of his voice, and how he said it.

Myeshia Johnson looks down at her husbands coffin (Picture: Rex)

If my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risked his life for our country, why cant you remember his name?

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I didnt say anything. I just listened.

I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2017

In a tweet on Monday, Mr Trump disputed her claim that he had forgotten her husbands name.

He posted: I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!

Sgt Johnson was killed in an attack in Niger by Islamic State militants on October 4. Five Nigerien soldiers were also killed.

Sgt Johnson was buried in Florida on Saturday but his wife said she was not allowed to see his body.

Democrat representative Frederica Wilson at Sgt Johnsons funeral (Picture: Getty)

She told Good Morning America: Why couldnt I see my husband? Every time I asked to see my husband, they wouldnt let me.

They wont show me a finger, a hand. I know my husbands body from head to toe. They wont show me anything.

I dont know whats in that box. It could be empty for all I know.

I dont know how he got killed, where he got killed or anything.

Asked what she will tell his baby daughter, who is expected in January, Mrs Johnson said: I want to tell her how awesome her dad was and how a great father he was and how he died as a hero.

(Main picture: Rex)
By Maria Tsvetkova SEVASTOPOL, Crimea (Reuters) - Vitalina Bordova received a good morning text message from her husband Sergei, a Russian marine major deployed in Syria. Half an hour later, he was hit by mortar fire that killed him. Since he died on April 18, Bordova has been in dispute with the Russian military, trying to get the financial support she believes she is entitled to as an officer's widow. Bordova described the row with the Defense Ministry in an interview with Reuters, becoming the first relative of a Russian serviceman killed in Syria to complain publicly about her treatment since Russia launched operations there two years ago. The ministry did not reply for a request for comment on the dispute. Her case shows how the Syrian war is exacting a greater toll on Russians whose lives are touched by it as the conflict changes from a swift anti-terrorist operation to a longer drawn-out engagement. The true level of casualties in the Syrian conflict is a sensitive subject in a country which was stung by casualties sustained in the Soviet-Afghan war which ended in 1989. According to a Reuters tally, more than 80 Russian fighters, including high-ranking officers and private military contractors, were killed in Syria in the two years of the operation. The official death toll is 39, because the defense ministry does not disclose all deaths. AS WAR DRAWS ON, MORE AFFECTED The government has denied understating casualty figures in Syria, where President Vladimir Putin entered the conflict to support President Bashar al-Assad. Officially, Russia is participating only in an air war over Syria with a small number of special forces and non-combat troops on the ground. Moscow denies that its troops are involved in regular ground combat operations. With the conflict drawing on, more people are being affected as the death toll rises. Bordova, who works as a military psychologist, said her wage is 8,600 roubles ($149) per month. She said that she had previously depended on the wages of her 42-year-old husband to survive. To date, she has received a payment of about $17,000 -- a one-fifth share of compensation that was paid out to her husband's closest relatives -- children from his first marriage and his mother. She has not received the pension to which war veterans' widows are usually entitled, or the apartment to which she argues that she is entitled under Defense Ministry rules. The dispute centers on the fact that she is still officially registered as living in the apartment of her first husband, whom she divorced three years ago. Officials say this means she does not qualify as a person living alone in need of housing support and the pension. BORED WITH DESK JOB However, she argues that this is not the case because she does not live with her first husband, and cannot cash in the share of his apartment which nominally belongs to her. Bordova cannot change her status unless she has her own apartment and only then can she register as living alone. "My wage is very small," Bordova told Reuters in her parents' house, where she lives with her daughter from her previous marriage. "I have no money for lawyers. My husband supported me." She described how she had reacted when her husband, bored with a desk job he had just been moved to, said he wanted to sign up for the deployment in Syria. "He asked me if I would let him go," Bordova recalled. "I said nothing and started crying. Later ... he asked one more time. I told him 'I can't keep you from it and I can't let you go'," Bordova said in the interview. Bordova lives in Crimea, a region of Ukraine that was annexed by Russia in 2014. It was already home to many Russian military families, like Bordova's, before the annexation because Russia's Black Sea Fleet is based there. Reuters has seen an official Russian Defense Ministry response to Bordova, which said she is not eligible for an apartment as she owns one third of her first husband's flat. Bordova says a benefits office issued her with a document stating she is a family member of a military veteran who was killed. As a person living alone with a child, that would ordinarily entitle her to a widow's pension. But the certificate was taken back from her once a local official learnt that she is registered with her ex-husband and therefore officially is not living alone. An employee at the benefits office confirmed to Reuters that Bordova is not eligible, citing the law on veterans. (Editing by Christian Lowe and Peter Millership)
Bob Corker, the Republican Senator for Tennessee - AP

World leaders know much of what Donald Trump says is untrue, a senior Republican senator has said in an astonishing attack on the US President.

Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Mr Trumps presidency would be remembered for the debasement of the country.

He said that Mr Trumps constant non-truth telling means he is lowering the office of the presidency and failing to be a role model for children.

Mr Corker also said he would not support Mr Trump if he ran for the White House again and declined to say he trusted the President with nuclear weapons.

The outburst marks the most heated attack by a Republican Senator on Mr Trump since he entered office after winning the election as the party's candidate.

It came just hours before Mr Trump was due to sit down with Republican senators to discuss his tax cut plans amid hopes a new law can be passed by Christmas.

Donald Trump, the US President Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

It is not the first time Mr Corker - who is not running for re-election next year - has clashed with Mr Trump. He has joked the White House is like an adult day-care center.

On Tuesday morning, Mr Trump renewed his criticism of Mr Corker, saying he couldnt get elected dog catcher and decided not to run after Mr Trump refused to endorse him.

Addressing cameras in the corridors of Congress, Mr Corker rejected the claims and went on to give a scathing assessment of the US President.

Everything he said today was absolutely untrue.  We grew up in our family not using the l words, but they are provable untruths, Mr Corker said.

I think the debasement of our nation is what he will be remembered most for and that is regretful

Bob Corker, the Republican Senator, on Donald Trump

He added: Unfortunately I think world leaders are very aware that much of what he says is untrue.

Certainly people here are because these things are provably untrue, they are just factually incorrect and people know the difference.

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I dont know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and debases our country the way he does, but he does.

Asked whether he would support Mr Trump for the presidency again, Mr Corker said: I would not do that again. I wouldnt. I think that hes proven himself unable to rise to the occasion.

Mr Corker also suggested Mr Trumps constant non-truth telling and name-calling would become his defining legacy.

I think the debasement of our nation is what he will be remembered most for and that is regretful, he said.

Mr Corker also declined to say whether he trusted Mr Trump with Americas nuclear weapons.

The extraordinary row raises questions about the US Presidents relations with senators in his own party as they attempt to work together to secure historic tax cuts.

Mr Trump has proposed major reforms that would see corporation tax drop from 34 per cent to below 20 per cent and the so-called death tax on estates ditched.

However the move could cost up to around $2 trillion, leading to fierce debate about whether extra revenue raising measures are needed amid concerns over the deficit.

The US President, who has expanded much political capital promising the biggest tax cuts ever, was due to attend a lunch with Republican senators lunch on Tuesday to discuss the proposals.

The White House wants to pass a new law by Christmas which would bring in the first major tax reform in 31 years and rebut criticisms of Mr Trumps failure on legislation so far.

However just hours before the lunch, Mr Corker criticized the plans, leading to questions about the level of Republican support for the current proposals.

It triggered a heated response from Mr Trump on Twitter and begun a war of words that continued throughout Tuesday.

How the Twitter row played out

Donald Trump tweets criticism of Bob Corker after he voices concern over the US President's tax cut plan

Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

...Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Mr Corker responds, dismissing the claims and calling Mr Trump the "untruthful president". He later attacks Mr Trump for "the debasement of our nation" in a heated attack to TV cameras.

Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff  Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) October 24, 2017

Mr Trump responds with another bout of tweets, criticising "liddle' Bob Corker".

Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done. He doesn't have a clue as.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017
Harare (AFP) - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe did not know he had been appointed as a goodwill ambassador for the World Health Organization but would have rejected the role that has since been rescinded, state media reported Tuesday.

The WHO on Sunday reversed its decision to award the 93-year-old the honour to help fight disease after widespread global uproar.

"The president was quite surprised that he had been appointed a goodwill ambassador," Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba told The Herald newspaper.

"There was nothing, whether verbal or written, from the WHO intimating that WHO wished to make the president a goodwill ambassador in respect of noncommunicable diseases," he added, saying Mugabe learned of the appointment from the news.

"He was not going to oblige the invitation had it come his way anyway."

Mugabe attended the WHO summit in Uruguay where the UN agency's chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the announcement in a speech on Wednesday that was publicly released.

The Herald last week reported the appointment under the headline "New feather in President's cap".

The honour angered international rights campaigners and opposition parties, who also accuse Mugabe of violent repression, election rigging and presiding over the country's economic ruin.

Zimbabwe's healthcare system, like many of its public services, has collapsed under Mugabe's authoritarian regime, with most hospitals out of stock of essential medicines and supplies.

Charamba added it would have been an "awkward" situation for the WHO to appoint Mugabe as goodwill ambassador, as Zimbabwe is a top producer of tobacco.

Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980, is in increasingly fragile health and makes regular trips abroad for medical treatment.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Zookeepers at Berlins main animal park are hoping to cure a young female pandas habit of walking backwards by introducing her to one of lifes most precious pleasures: sex.

They plan to introduce four-year-old Meng Meng to Jiao Qing, a panda three years her senior, in the hope that romance will help her with the frustrations associated with life in captivity that could be behind her habit.

Meng Meng is in puberty, Berlin Zoo director Andreas Knieriem told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper on Sunday. The reverse walk is a protest against things she dislikes, be it the food or the carers.

(Photo: Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters)

China lent Meng Meng and Jiao Qing to Germany earlier this year. The two bears are a major attraction at the zoos $10-million Chinese compound inaugurated by Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Xi Jinping in July.

Giant pandas in captivity are kept apart except for in the mating season, which occurs between February and May.

By then, Meng Meng will have reached sexual maturity and could focus all her energy on seducing her partner, Knieriem said.

Also on HuffPost

Ye Ye, a 16-year-old giant panda, lounges in a wild enclosure at a conservation center in Wolong Nature Reserve. Her name, whose characters represent Japan and China, celebrates the friendship between the two nations. Ye Yes cub Hua Yan (Pretty Girl) is being trained for release into the wild.

Zhang HeminPapa Panda to his staffposes with cubs born in 2015 at Bifengxia Panda Base. Some local people say giant pandas have magic powers, says Zhang, who directs many of Chinas panda conservation efforts. To me, they simply represent beauty and peace.

Is a panda cub fooled by a panda suit? Thats the hope at Wolongs Hetaoping center, where captive-bred bears training for life in the wild are kept relatively sheltered from human contact, even during a rare hands-on checkup.

Three-month-old cubs nap in the panda nursery at Bifengxia. A panda mother that bears twins usually fails to give them equal attention. Keepers reduce the load by regularly swapping cubs in and outmaking sure each gets both human and panda-mom care.

Wolong Reserve keepers transport Hua Jiao (Delicate Beauty) for a health check before she finishes wild training. The habitat also protects red pandas, pheasant, tufted deer, and other species that benefit from giant panda conservation.

Read more on "Pandas Gone Wild" in the August 2016 Issue of National Geographic.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
MOGADISHU, Somalia  The death toll in Somalia's deadliest attack has risen to 358 while dozens remain missing. Somalia's president will announce a "state of war" against the al-Shabab extremist group blamed for the bombing, the prime minister said.

The United States is expected to play a supporting role in the new offensive that President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed is set to launch on Saturday, a Somali military official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

Somalia's army spokesman Capt. Abdullahi Iman said the offensive involving thousands of troops will try to push al-Shabab fighters out of their strongholds in the Lower Shabelle and Middle Shabelle regions where many deadly attacks on Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, and on Somali and African Union bases have been launched.

The extremist group has not commented on the Oct. 14 truck bombing in Mogadishu, which Somali intelligence officials have said was meant to target the city's heavily fortified international airport where many countries have their embassies. The massive bomb, which security officials said weighed between 600 kilograms and 800 kilograms (1,300 pounds and 1,700 pounds), instead detonated in a crowded street after soldiers opened fire and flattened one of the truck's tires.
We must go back to the days before Operation Protective Edge was launched and before the three Jewish teens were kidnapped in the summer of 2014. Hamas took advantage of the agreement achieved after the previous conflict, in Operation Pillar of Defense, to grow stronger. It increased its rocket range and built tunnels reaching into Israel. Israel exercised restraint.

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Even before the teens were kidnapped, Hamas had launched nearly 70 rockets in March 2014. The restraint continued. It may have been a mistake.

After the teens abduction, Hamas heated up tensions. Those were difficult days. The Right pushed for a wide-scale ground invasion. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded with a calm will be met by calm policy. It was almost a plea to Hamas to stop launching rockets. Hamas insisted on carrying on.

A lot can be said about Netanyahu, but the man isnt trigger-happy (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

The European Union issued a harsh statement demanding a demilitarization of the terror organizations, meaning Hamas. Even after the operation was launched, Netanyahu kept coming up with ceasefire initiatives. He acted against what seemed like his political instinct. After all, the criticism over Israels restraint came mostly from the Right.

Thats who he is. A lot can be said about him, and Im not one of his followers or voters, but the man isnt trigger-happy. So Major-General Amiram Levins recent claims in a Yedioth Ahronoth op-ed , that Netanyahu is leading us to war, are groundless. Netanyahu didnt initiate a single operation, although Hamas grew stronger mainly when the Muslim Brotherhood rose to power in Egypt. Netanyahu didnt respond when the cement for building bunkers began flowing into Gaza from Egypt. Netanyahu exercised restraint when the rocket arsenal kept growing and the range kept increasing.

What Iran is doing in Syria now is much worse. The ayatollah regime is declaring at the top of its voice and in mass protests, just like Hamas, that the goal is to destroy Israel . Under the protection of the shameful nuclear agreement , Iran is becoming a Middle Eastern power. The Iranian chief of staff travels to Damascus to make it clear whos boss. Tehran, fully or partially, controls Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria.

One has to be completely blind not to realize that a strategic problem is being created. The fact that Israel is the strongest country in the region, as Levin mentions, doesnt make the Iranian threat less serious. As no one is planning a conflict in the form of a battle between armed forces, the terror organizationsjust like the terrorist state of Iranhave realized a long time ago that Israels weak spot is being hit with rockets and missiles.

On this background, Levins claim that the government is dragging us to war is more than puzzling. Why its Iran that is moving forces. Why its Iran that is taking steps to change the strategic map. Why its Iran that is repeatedly declaring its intention to destroy Israel. But to hell with the facts.

Levin is pointing an accusing finger at Israel, because an Israeli prime minister is trying to set red lines. It takes a particularly distorted logic to accuse Netanyahu of all people, while Iran is the one who is making more and more moves that can be considered casus belli (an act that provokes or justifies a war).

We can, and we must, disagree with many of Netanyahu's moves. I share Levins criticism on the official response to the agreement between Fatah and Hamas. Israel, I recently wrote , could have taken advantage of the agreement to gain a lot of points, to make it clear that it seeks peace while Hamas seeks to continue the jihad at the expense of Gazas residents.

A political dispute, however, is the basis of every democratic regime. A claim like let every Jewish mother know that the government is dragging us to war is a dangerous and baseless claim. The Palestinians launched an intifada although former Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered them, while breaking a taboo, both a Palestinian state and a divided Jerusalem. And Iran is declaring annihilation although Israel would gladly sign a peace agreement with Tehran, as early as tomorrow. But Levin is announcing in advance that the next conflict will be Israels fault. Such a claim does not befit a member of the Labor Party.

Theres something encouraging in the fact that almost all former defense officials who responded to Levins articleincluding Giora Eiland and Amos Yadlin, who are not among Netanyahu's fansrejected his claims. A lot of things can be said about Netanyahu, and they should be said, but in blaming Netanyahu for the next conflict with Iran or Hamas, Levin crossed a dangerous red line.
In This Post:

 What is Property Tax?

 Types of Property Taxes in Pakistan

 Tax on Sale of Property in Pakistan

 Tax on Property Purchase in Pakistan

UPDATE (Feb. 16, 2021): Good news for non-resident Pakistanis (NRPs)! President Dr Arif Alvi has promulgated Tax Laws (Amendment) Ordinance 2021 to facilitate non-resident individuals who wish to open non-resident Pakistani Rupee Value Accounts (NRVAs). The ordinance has:

 Extended 4 percent super tax on banks indefinitely beyond the tax year 2021

 Imposed withholding tax (Rs 50,000-Rs 200,000) on different engine capacity vehicles on persons who sell locally manufactured vehicles within 90 days of delivery

 Offered tax exemptions for electric vehicles and locally manufactured mobile devices

 Directed a person responsible for attesting, registering or recording the transfer of any immovable property to collect advance tax at the rate of one percent from the seller or transferor. If the buyer or transferee is an NRP holding a Pakistan Origin Card (POC) or a National Identity Card for Overseas Pakistanis (NICOP) or a Computerized National ID Card who acquires the immovable property through a Foreign Currency Value Account (FCVA) or NRVA maintained with authorized banks in Pakistan, the tax shall be the final tax for such a buyer

UPDATE (Sept. 8, 2020): According to an amendment in the Income Tax Ordinance 2002 through the Finance Act 2020, the holding period and tax rate on CGT has been reduced on the disposal of immovable property. For your understanding, a longer holding period means that a property was not bought for the purpose of making any profits and hence it leads to lower taxes, a shorter holding period means a higher amount of CGT earned, which results in a higher tax rate. With the recent amendments, now you can hold an immovable property for no longer than 4 years and the percentages of taxable capital gain have been rationalised with reference to the holding period. The details are shared below:

There is no difference between plots and any constructed property

The holding period for CGT has been reduced to 4 years

100% of capital gains to be taxed if the holding period is less than 1 year

75% of the capital gains to be taxed if the holding period exceeds 1 year but is less than 2 years

50% of the capital gains to be taxed if the holding period exceeds 2 years but not 3 years

25% of the capital gains to be taxed if the holding period exceeds 3 years but not 4 years

No CGT to be taxed after 4 years of holding period

The rate of CGT on the amount of annual gains through the disposal of immovable property has also been reduced by half and can be broken down as follows:

Annual Gains in PKR Rate of Tax on Value of Property Before Finance Act 2020 Rate of Tax on Value of Property After Finance Act 2020 Gains less than 5 million 5% 2.5% Gains higher than 5 million but lower than 10 million 10% 5% Gains higher than 10 million but lower than 15 million 15% 7.5% Gains more than 15 million 20% 10%

Update (Apr 21, 2020): The government of Pakistan usually charges about 5% to 20% Capital Gains Tax (CGT) when selling ready-to-move-in houses and developed plots. But with the introduction of new incentives for the construction industry due to the spread of COVID-19 disease in the country, families who want to sell their house during this period, will not have to go through the hassle of paying the Capital Gains Tax. Apart from this incentive, the sales tax is also being reduced in collaboration with the provincial government.

Plato, a Greek philosopher, said, When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income. Plato was right  you can see the clever ways in which people evade taxes these days. For instance, when buying a property, the seller and the buyer both agree to show less value for the purchased property on the sales deed, just so they can pay less taxes. Withholding tax is to be paid by the buyer and Capital Gains Tax is to be paid by the seller. Now you may ask what these taxes are and how many kinds of property taxes there are in Pakistan. We will discuss all of these in great detail.

Different Types of Property Taxes in Pakistan

Following are the different types of property taxes in Pakistan:

Capital Gains Tax (CGT)

Capital Value Tax (CVT)

Stamp Duty

Withholding Tax or Advance Tax

Paying property taxes is like going to the dentist. It is important although you arent really happy about it. However, if you are trying to find a way of not paying property taxes, you might get into deep trouble with Federal Board of Revenue. FBR receives information  every bit of detail about your income, the investments you have made and real estate transactions. In short, all kinds of details pertaining to money matters. FBR will take some time in matching up your income with the filed tax returns and if there is a disparity, they will send you a notice or they will charge you a penalty fee or they might freeze your assets.

With new policies and developments taking place, there is good news for overseas Pakistanis wanting to tap into Pakistans real estate market. The government has loosened the noose around those expats, who are non-filers of income tax returns. Overseas Pakistanis can now invest in the real estate sector of Pakistan with ease. Before we discuss various kinds of taxes levied on property purchase and also on sale of property, let us look at the topic in view of the current news snippets related to taxes in Pakistan.

Widening gap

Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) realized that there is a huge gap between deputy commissioner (DC) rates and market prices of the said property. Due to this gap, undocumented money circulated in the market. This resulted in tax evasion. Since DC rates were low as compared to the actual market rates, real estate transactions took place based on DC rates, while in reality the actual sum of money traded between sellers and buyers was recorded as per the market value. For instance, if a 240 sq yd plot with a DC rate of Rs 30,000, but a market value of Rs. 70,000 is sold, on paper it shows DC value, while seller gets Rs. 70,000. This difference of Rs. 40,000 is black money. Because of this, neither the government nor income tax authorities could identify the total amount of income sellers were making in real estate sector business.

Bringing provinces into the tax net  a taxing process

To bring those earning black money into the tax net, the government of Pakistan and FBR have revised valuation tables for properties. Abolishing DC rates, these new property valuation rates will determine the actual property value. According to FBR Valuation Tables 2019, property valuation for the real estate sector have seen an increase across 20 major cities of Pakistan. This might result in a slight dip in the real estate sectors business, but these tax policies by FBR should continue. Although for a few days to come there will be a decline in trading activity, property prices may also see a dip. At low property prices, people belonging to the middle class sector can fulfill their dream of becoming a homeowner. For the common man, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Increase in property tax collection

After the establishment of Directorate DGIP, there has been an increase in property tax collection

According to a news report published in The News on April 23, 2019, Tax experts said the establishment of the directorate created a fear and people preferred to declare property values near to the fair market values. They said the valuations notified by the provinces are very low but due to transactions at the higher rates the property tax collection increased significantly.

The same report further revealed Punjab is leading the race by collecting PKR 5.02 billion during the first half of the current fiscal year. Around the same time, Sindh raked in PKR 1.83 billion from July to December. Both the provinces recorded a sharp increase in the amount from the last fiscal year: while Punjab showed a 22.64 percent increase, Sindh witnessed 73.83 percent growth in tax collection. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Balochistan received PKR 450 million and PKR 83 million, respectively.

What is a Property Tax?

Property tax in Pakistan is a provincial tax levied on annual rental value of the property, based on Urban Immovable Property Tax Acts of respective provinces. Tax rates are different for every province. It is either a flat rate, or a percentage of the annual rental value. Rental value does not mean that the property has to be rented out. It simply gives an assessed value by the government of how much rent would be generated, had the building been let out. For each province, rate of taxation differs depending on whether the property is rented out or self-occupied.

According to Excise, Taxation & Narcotics Control Department, Punjab, there is a 5% annual rental value that is levied as tax. Annual rental value is determined by assessing properties based on their type  residential or commercial, locality and whether it is rented or self-occupied. As per the Excise, Taxation & Narcotics Department Sindh, it doesnt matter whether the property is rented out or not. The tax is levied at a rate of 25% of the annual rental value of the property. For a comprehensive breakdown of property taxes, you can check out our blog on understanding property tax rates in Pakistan.

Kinds of tax on sale of property in Pakistan

When it comes to taxes on sale of property in Pakistan, there is Capital Gains Tax which needs to be paid on the gain of profits. Lets discuss it in detail.

Capital Gains Tax (CGT)

It is best to file CGT in time to avoid being a defaulter

Let us now understand what is Capital Gains Tax on property in Pakistan 2018-2019? Capital Gains Tax (CGT) is a federal tax to be paid by the seller. When the seller makes profits on selling property (capital asset), it is the profit (capital gain) which is taxed, hence the name. According to the Finance Act 2017, CGT is levied only when the property is sold within three years of its purchase. The rate of taxation is 10% for the first year, 7.5% if sold during second year and 5% if sold during the third year. These gains are to be calculated according to the fair market value, based on FBRs valuation table. Any property held for more than three years will not make the seller liable for payment of CGT.

Types of taxes on property purchase in Pakistan

When a person decides to buy property in Pakistan, they want to know everything: do they have enough resources? Do they need to apply for a home loan? Are there certain steps to follow when applying for a home loan? Should they buy properties in Karachi? Or should they invest in plots in Lahore? How much tax is levied on property purchase? They want to weigh all their options before making this big decision. Let us discuss property purchase tax in Pakistan in greater detail.

Capital Value Tax (CVT) & Stamp Duty

Those interested in buying property, keep in mind that they have to pay quite a few taxes before becoming owners of the property. Capital Value Tax (CVT) is a provincial tax and is paid by the buyer at the time of buying property. As the name suggests, it is payable on the capital value of an acquired asset. The Capital Value Tax or CVT is levied at the rate of 2% of the recorded value according to Finance Act, 2006.

Property that is transferred as a gift, an exchange or relinquishing the rights on a property all come under Capital Value Tax. However, transfer of property between parents, spouse or any of your blood relatives either as a gift or through inheritance have been excluded. In cases where it is a gift or exchange, or where property value is not mentioned in the transaction, the value of the property is calculated according to the values determined through the valuation tables.

According to Budget 2018-19, federal government had recommended the abolition of DC rates. Recommendations had also been made to reduce the CVT and Stamp Duty to a total of 1%. Neither of these recommendations have been implemented by the provinces so far. So, currently the total of CVT and Stamp Duty for urban property still stands at a total of 5% (2% CVT and 3% Stamp Duty).

Stamp Duty is basically a tax paid on the legal document at the time of purchasing property. Under the Stamp Act 1899, Stamp Duty is levied at 3% of the DC rates of the property.

Withholding Tax (WHT) to be paid by both buyers and sellers

In addition to CVT and Stamp Duty, Withholding Tax (WHT) is of utmost importance. It is a federal tax payable by both buyers and sellers on a property deal. Few points need to be taken into consideration:

Important points to consider regarding Withholding Tax WHT

Homebuyers have to pay 2% if they file an income tax return and 4% if they do not file tax returns.

People who are buying property have to pay WHT, only if the property is valued more than PKR 4 million

Sellers have to pay 1% if they are tax filers, or 2% if they are non-filers

Withholding Tax is to be paid at the time of property deal, when you are registering the sales deed

WHT is known to be an advance tax, which means it acts as an advance on other taxes and, hence can be adjusted into homebuyers tax liabilities and also against the Capital Gains Tax of the seller.

Under the Budget 2018-19, FBR rates were to be abolished, sellers would no longer have to pay Advance Tax and rates would change for buyers as well. However, to ensure that the declared values of properties are fair, the government has formed the Directorate of Immovable Property (DGIP). The plan to establish it was declared in Finance Act 2018. It will be authorized to conduct geo-mapping of plots, apartments and all kinds of housing schemes and projects. It will also determine the valuation of properties. It will also track those areas of real estate where tax evasion is a possibility  especially while collecting Withholding Taxes.

These are some of the most common property taxes in Pakistan. Through the property tax calculator you can also calculate property taxes for 2018-2019 for Sindh and Punjab from the official websites of Excise Taxation and Narcotics Control Department, Government of Sindh and Government of Punjab, respectively. These are a few updates on taxes on property purchase and also related to taxes on sale of property in Pakistan. For more updates, stay tuned to the best property blog in Pakistan.
As the reigning queen of Yellowstone National Park, O-Six roamed the picturesque Lamar Valley for years, escaping predators and scientists alike.

O-Six was a regular celebrity, so to speak, drawing crowds of wolf-watchers from all over the world. Her presence on Facebook and in the news helped give an identity to the wolves living in the national park since 1995 when a formal reintroduction effort started.

Indeed, O-Six was the "most famous wolf in the world," as stated in a New York Times article. In 2012, the beloved animal was killed by an unapologetic hunter, who kept the alpha female's pelt hanging on a wall in his home, a wolf tag receipt pinned above it so there were no questions about the legality of the kill.

The new book "American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West" explores the clash over Canis lupus, the gray wolf, with a story told through the life of O-Six and the humans who loved her. Author Nate Blakeslee, a writer for the magazine Texas Monthly, tells a masterful and elegant tale. Nature enthusiasts or lovers of narrative-nonfiction will enjoy the book.

For hundreds of years, wolves have been the source of political strife in the West.

Environmentalists push for the animal's protection while cattle ranchers and hunters argue otherwise. Throughout our country's history, the wolf has been culled, hunted, poisoned and trapped.

"When the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, there were perhaps as many as two million wolves on the continent," Blakeslee writes. "Most of the early colonial governments, eager to make their settlements safe for livestock, paid bounties for wolf hides; they forced some Native tribes to pay regular tribute in dead wolves."

Today they are on and off the federal endangered species list. O-Six was shot during a period when wolves were not protected. Despite her death, the wolf's legacy lives on bringing awareness to the plight of the species.
The Ghana National Accreditations Board (NAB) has released a list of 47 tertiary schools that are currently operating illegally in the country.

A statement from the Board said none of the listed schools has been accredited to run any courses in either Diploma or any other class.

It added that the listed institutions "are also not mandated to award or issue academic or professional certificates. Neither the institutions nor their programmes are accredited by the National Accreditation Board. Employers and potential students are advised to consult the NAB before enrolling in any tertiary institution in Ghana".

Get more YEN news here.

Among the schools listed by NAB are 45 Ghanaian institutions, with the other two being foreign.

The likes of the Ghana School of Survey and Mapping, School of Social Works and the Institute of Export and Shipping Management are all listed as schools illegally operating in the country.

READ ALSO: 19 'doctors' arrested for practicing without certificate

Below is the full list of illegally operated schools put out by NAB:

LOCAL

1 Academy of Professional Studies Takoradi

2 Africa International College Adenta, Accra

3 Global School of Aviation Tema, Kumasi

4 ACS Professional College Opp. Ghana Tech Univ. College

5 Hac- Holland Institute Accra

6 Haavard School of International Marketing and Language Skills Kokomlemle, Accra

7 Institute of Export and Shipping Management Takoradi, Kumasi, Accra

8 ICPS Tesano, Accra

9 Management Accountancy Technology Institute Dansoman, Accra

10 Oracle University Kumasi

11 School of Management and Professional Studies Kumasi

12 Staff College Consult Kimbu SecTech. Accra

13 International English Language Teaching and Learning University

14 West Africa Computer Science Institute Adabraka- Accra

15 Quince Lincoln University Centre of Distance Learning Education Accra

16 International Christian College Of Excellence East Legon Accra

17 International Institute of Journalism Tamale

18 King Amin Islamic Institute Agona Swedru

19 Teachers and Douaat Training Institute Madina, Accra

20 Uthmang Islamic School Kumasi

21 Abdaullah Bin Masud Centre for Memorisation of the Holy Quran Accra

22 S.M.P.S South Suntreso, Kumasi

23 Delta University College Keta

24 University of Jesus of Nazareth Nursing Training Centre Mankesim

25 Institute of Advanced Communication and Computer Education North Kaneshie

26 Genesis Professional Institute Patasi, Kumasi

27 Dosonee Training Health Institute Lapaz, Accra

28 GIET College Santa Maria, Accra

29 Notting Hill College Avenor Junction, Accra

30 Greenwich University College Tema

31 Amity Institute Of Higher Education Dansoman, Accra

32 All Stars Media College Dansoman

33 Imperial University College of Science and Technology North Legon

34 Ghana School of Survey and Mapping Accra

35 Unicorn University College Kumasi

36 Mumford University of Science and Technology Accra

37 Vine University New Achimota, Accra

38 Achievers School of Journalism Near Caprice, Accra

39 Ballsbridge University Ghana Campus Sunyani

40 Nelchris Science College Accra

41 Crown University College Tumu and; Kanda Campuses

42 Decent College of Health Care Kenyasi, Kumasi

43 St Augustine College of Health Care Koforidua

44 Creativeland School of Media Dansoman

44 Alpha College of Technology Accra

45 School of Social Work Osu

READ ALSO: I lost and so what; even Mahama lost an election' - Bukom Banku

FOREIGN INSTITUTIONS

1 Atlantic International University Hawaii, USA

2 California University, USA

Source: YEN.com.gh
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Hi guys, this is Marta, the voice behind the stunning site In A Faraway Land.

A travel website dedicated to providing information on outdoor activities and photography tips via my Canada, Iceland and New Zealand Travel Guide. Over a year ago I moved to Canada on a Working Holiday Visa with one purpose: to hike and capture the beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains through my camera. Luckily hiking and photography go hand in hand here. In just one year I have managed to walk hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers of trails and Ive narrowed them down in this post to some of my favorite hikes in the Canadian Rockies. Enjoy!

Ive also still got spots left on my autumn photography tour next year in New Zealand. Use code youngadventuress to save 5% on your booking.

1. Berg Lake Trail

One of the first multi-day hikes I completed here in the Rockies was the Berg Lake Trail. It finishes at an icy blue glacial lake at the foot of the highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies  Mount Robson.

Just under 4000 meters, the summit slopes are home to many glaciers, the most prominent being the Berg Glacier. When camping at the nearby Marmot campsite, at night, all you can hear is the sound of your own breath against your sleeping bag and the vibration of your heart beating until suddenly a loud ear-shattering crack, then a deep thunder like rumble, a splash and then several echoes later again complete silence, the unmistakable sound of a glacier carving into a lake. This is the experience camping on the Berg lake trail summed up in one sentence.

Certainly enough to make you sit up alert in your tent. I spent 3 days on the Berg Lake Trail listening to this each night. You can read more about it in my hiking guide to the Berg lake trail, completed with hints and tips about tackling one of the best multiday hikes in the Canadian Rockies.

2. Larch Tree Valley

Ive heard that 95% of people who visit the iconic Moraine lake make it only as far as the famous rock pile at the southern tip of the lake, without realizing how much they are missing out on! The car park of the Moraine lake is where a myriad of hiking trails veer off into the backcountry.

One of the hikes is the Larch Tree Valley. During early fall, usually around mid September, when the larches needles turn from green to yellow, many hikes become absolutely breathtaking.

Larch trees are the only conifers that loose its needles for the winter. The Larch Tree Valley Hike, as the name suggest is full of them and will guarantee a few hours of pure amazement.

3. Lakes Agnes/Beehive/Mount Saint Piran

Theres several great hikes around Lake Louise but these 3 are some of my favorites!

A 3 in 1 mega deal of the Canadian Rockies! That is if you are an early bird! You can start with hiking to Lake Agnes, then continue to Little Beehive and if you still have energy in you, you can even tick off the nearby summit of Mount St Piran from where you can stare at the mind-blogging turquoise color of Lake Louise, and the peaks that tower over it. On the way back down you can stop again at Lake Agnes for afternoon tea and biscuits at the famous teahouse!

All together it shouldnt take you longer than 5-6 hours return. Make sure to leave early. Because of the relatively easy access and minimal views to effort ratio both Lake Agnes and Little Beehive can attract quite the crowd. However only a small fraction of the hikers continues up mount St Piran, so if you are after solitude make sure to complete all 3!

4. Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park

Mount Assiniboine is without a shadow of a doubt my favorite multi-day hike in the Canadian Rockies and one I will be returning to very soon! There are three paths, all similar in length (around 30 km) to get to Lake Magog and the domineering Mount Assiniboine, the main attractions of the park.

The most popular route is from Sunshine Village over the Citadel Pass, the second one is from Mt Shark Trailhead via the Wonder Pass and the third one via the Assiniboine Pass. If you plan a visit to Mt Assiniboine, make sure to spend at least 4 days in the park to fully enjoy the stunning views it offers.

Ive created a hiking and photography guide to Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park including information about the area and how to book a helicopter to fly you in if you cant make the walk.

5. Tonquin Valley

The first time I did the Tonquin Valley trail was during some pretty bad wildfires happening on the other side of the Ramparts  a mountain range in the Tonquin Valley which divides the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. The wind, which was blowing to the east, took the smoke into the nearby valleys, where the 44km long trail ambles through. A thick haze blanketed the mountains. When the sun was high in the sky, the light pierced through clouds striking the haze and creating these incredible sun rays.

I didnt come out with the photos that Id hoped for but I came out with something even better. A story and some unique pictures. As soon as I emerged from the backcountry I headed straight to the nearest cafe and booked another 4 nights on the trail in September.

With so many amazing hikes here in Jasper National Park and with my time in the Rockies running out, to do a trail twice, must mean its a special one! The Tonquin Valley certainly is. Just make sure to plan it correctly.

Tonquin Valley is notorious for mosquitos in July when the trail finally becomes open to hikers. If you want to get the best experience, wait until later in the summer or early autumn. Otherwise prepare for a mosquito battle of biblical scale!

6. Edith Cavell meadows

The Edith Cavell meadows hike offers an incredible view to effort ratio. Because of the collapse of the Ghost Glacier in 2015 that flooded and destroyed the adjacent parking lot, there is currently restricted access to the area.

The visitor center in Jasper gives out 180 permits a day to visitors at varying time slots. On the positive side, it means the trail isnt overcrowded.

In the height of summer, the adjacent meadows turn into a beautiful symphony of colorful blooming wildflowers. Its also a perfect place for spotting the cute pikas and marmots!

7. Pocaterra Ridge

Kananaskis country near Canmore, where I spent most of my time when working on my guide to Canada, is an area often omitted by international tourists. The locals however know it very well! It also happens to be a perfect playground for hiking enthusiasts like me!

Pocaterra Ridge is an undulating ridgeline filled with jaw dropping views in every direction! Its an unofficial hike that starts 80km south of Canmore near the Highwood Pass. Considered by many locals to be one of the best hikes in Kananaskis Country. Ive done this hike in June, when I saw a 24-hour clear weather window in forecast. Unfortunately, the colloquially known June Monsoon didnt agree with my plans and I had a real eventful, and at times scary, realization how treacherous the mountains can be.

I came away with so many beautiful photos though, that I felt compelled to share them in a photo essay along with the full story of my experience on Pocaterra Ridge.

8. Ha ling Peak

The most popular hike in Canmore and certainly one of the best day trips in this area. The views from Ha Ling peak are spectacular, but the hike can get busy. If youre brave, and maybe a little bit crazy, then consider doing it through the night, arriving at the Ha Ling summit for sunrise. If you do, chances are youll be all alone on the trail. Its never easy to wake up early, but youll come away with photographs, and more importantly an experience, that youll be telling all your friends and family for years to come.

9. Indian Ridge

A lesser known hike in Jasper National Park, Indian Ridge starts at the top of Jasper SkyTram. Majority of visitors take the Gondola and hike up the the nearby Whistlers summit.

If you are looking for solitude in the mountains you should break away from the crowds and continue toward the Indian Ridge. I can appreciate views much better when theres less people around me. Less noise, less chaos, less garbage, all in all a much more relaxing. Its not an easy hike though.

A little scrambling is involved and the hike should take around 5/6 hours in total.

10. Parker Ridge

One of the my favorite spots on the Icefields Parkway, the famous stretch of road that connects Jasper with Lake Louise. The short hike takes you away from the road along a very well-maintained trail to a ridgeline, where the Saskatchewan Glacial Tongue can be seen protruding out of the Columbia Icefield.

Its a popular spot to view wildflowers in the summer and should take around 3 hours to complete. The hike is awesome for beginners, who want to experience Canadas rugged landscape. It will give you an opportunity to see a glacier that sadly might not exist in a few decades.

11. Lake Ohara Alpine Circuit

Lake Ohara alpine region might be the most sought after backcountry experience in the Canadian Rockies! Whats the fuss you may wonder? Every square kilometer of this place is filled with the most awe inspiring views.

The added bonus is the shuttle bus that will transport any keen hikers into this alpine paradise. There is a catch though! The bus only runs few times a day, spaces are very limited and prior reservations are mandatory. Only those with perseverance and patience of a saint will succeed in securing a spot. Your efforts however will be rewarded!

Lake Ohara is a place that will always be dear to my heart as thats where I got engaged!

12. Rawson lake/Sarrail Ridge

A favorite hike for instagrammers and another trip in the Kananaskis region that you shouldnt miss. The hike starts along the shoreline of Upper Kananaskis lake.

After a mere 20 minutes, it starts gently climbing up to Rawson lake. A site to behold in its own terms. Those who like me, just cant get enough of beautiful views should keep going. After circling around to the other end of the lake you will start a relentless ascent to the ridgeline. It may seem close, but mountains always like to play visual tricks on you. Its definitely harder and longer than it seems! After another hour you will be compensated for your efforts with some of the best views in the Rockies!

I hope this has filled your mind with possibilities, if youre looking for more advice on hiking check out my Canada Travel Guide. Hiking is something very close to my heart and Ive noticed a huge shift towards the outdoors in recent years. Whether its modern society being influenced by all the Instagrammers posting photos of the mountains or whether its a profound realization that we are part of something bigger, some kind of unified underlying global rising consciousness that we are one with nature. One thing is certain, the more people start to appreciate our beautiful Mother Earth the better, for her, and for us! So if you are planning a road-trip around the Canadian Rockies, make sure to squeeze a hike or two!

Have you been hiking in Canada and the Rockies? Whats your favorite? Share in the comments
North Korea has exploded six nuclear bombs in its quest for military respect. Montanans pass that many well-tested nuclear missiles driving along Highway 89 between Augusta and Choteau.

Retired Ambassador to China Max Baucus doesnt think theres much chance the United States will use force to halt the Hermit Kingdoms atomic saber-rattling. But he does believe the world needs a resolution to Kim Jong-uns disruptive actions, and the United States should get busy.

Theres a real opportunity for President Trump to stop the tweets and the public statements, and privately sit down with the Chinese and say, Weve got a problem, Baucus said, a former U.S. senator from Montana. Hes your problem and hes our problem. Dont call Kim Little Rocket Man, and dont criticize China. Lets think this through here and talk like adults.

Baucus was in Missoula on Tuesday to address both local students and the Montana World Affairs Council on the latest North Korea developments. It was the second gathering in two weeks, following a World Affairs Council session that drew 225 people on Oct. 9.

Its important to remember this is a criminal regime, but a rational regime, with a clear set of strategic objectives, said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea who spoke at the earlier session. Their foremost goal is survival. To stay in power, Kim needs nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. But he also has to keep key elites happy. And to do that, the regime needs hard currency and resources. It extracts those resources primarily through illegal activities and exploiting its own people to the maximum.

That presents real challenges to negotiating a solution. Chinese officials in both government and academic circles say the debate lies only between the United States and North Korea, with the U.S. clinging to Cold War grievances when it should simply settle a peace treaty and move on.

Thats a standard line I heard constantly, Baucus said of his three years in Beijing as ambassador. They advocate a double freeze, where Kim freezes his missiles and the U.S. freezes military operations and deploying the THADD (missile defense) system. Frankly, its a clever dodge so the pressure is not on them. Thats a tactic for buying time, so they dont have to worry about pressuring Kim.

North Korea has its own Iron Dome missile defense system, paid for by the Chinese. By placing most of its nuclear bomb development activity next to the Yalu River border, the North Koreans ensured that any attempted strike on their facilities would be indistinguishable from a preemptive attack on China, to which China would respond with equal force.

But the Chinese do need to worry about Kims world relations for several reasons. For one, a collapse of North Korea as a state would send a flood of refugees into China. If the United States cant stop the nuclear bomb development in North Korea, then Japan, South Korea and other Asian states may feel the need to build their own nuclear arsenals. And if the Korean Peninsula were to reunify, would it do so under a Chinese-aligned North Korean leadership or a U.S.-aligned South Korea leadership?

We need to start talking about the aftermath, Baucus said. Whats the peninsula going to look like if we can reach a deal? Weve got to put different things on the table that right now arent talked about. If we do that, well find a resolution.

Scarlatoiu said thats where human rights might play a strong role. While some nations might waffle about losing North Korean business through international sanctions, they have less wiggle room to ignore the conditions Kim has imposed on his own population.

These are fellow human beings brutalized by their own regime, Scarlatoiu said. Confronting that is legally the right thing to do. Following the two great wars of the 20th century, weve had a system of international laws and regulations to protect the individual human being. North Korea cannot be an exception.

Baucus added that allowing Kims nuclear blackmail to continue wasnt just a war issue. Establishing North Korea as an unstoppable bully would have economic consequences throughout Asia.

Down the road if Kim knows theres going to be no regime change, when hes developed all this (nuclear) stuff, hell be in a position to talk to other countries about his economic health with his hole-card, Baucus said. He will want them to help his country as long as he still has his nuclear capability. The answer is China has to be involved.
Loyola Sacred Heart freshmen hiked up to the L on Mount Jumbo last week to give it a fresh coat of paint. Last years class pulled weeds within a few hundred feet of the trail.

It is one of several traditions at Missoula Catholic Schools that foster a culture of community service. Giving back is a key aspect of Jesuit practice and broader Catholic social teachings the schools have modernized with a focus on personal development. Charitable activities stretch across all grades, culminating in a Senior Vision Project for which each student must design, plan and complete a 40-hour service project.

We didnt have this, senior theology teacher Scott Anderson said, reflecting on his time in Missoula Catholic Schools through his 1978 graduation. We did what we were told by the priests and the nuns and we liked it.

Junior theology teacher and senior adviser Dave Klein agreed.

It was more of a compulsory thing. There wasnt an ownership. It was an obligation you did then, but didnt do after that. It was something you checked off, he said. We hope our students will own it, feel empowered by it, feel proud of it.

He said Missoula has a lot of great schools.

But we have an opportunity to explore that attitude of giving because of our traditions, he said.

For his senior project, Luke Bledsoe, 17, cleared two miles of the Lewis and Clark Trail in Idaho, spending two weeks cutting out trees and carving gentle paths in steep slopes to make it accessible to more members of the public than just teenagers with the energy and time for bushwhacking.

My goal was to try to let elderly people see the beautiful spots, he said, noting that his 85-year-old grandfather was able to walk with him to the terminus. He had been a district ranger and had probably never seen those spots before because it so thick and hard to trudge through.

Kylie Esh, 18, also finished her senior project earlier this month, organizing a workshop for students at St. Joseph Elementary about conscience. Speakers discussed the role of silence in reconciliation, decision-making strategies, and a review of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, among other topics.

I wanted to better the faith of these kids, she said. A lot of schools do a senior project, but its about a topic. Giving back to the community is important.

Service to others is an important lesson for anyone, said Bledsoe, who is not Catholic, along with about third of students.

It helps us grow as individuals and gain more responsibility, he said.

Klein said the focus on personal responsibility means students develop good habits of character the continue beyond graduation. He pointed, as an example, to alumnus Leo John Bird, recently named by Stanford University as one of its 12 most impressive students.

As a member of the student government, Bird investigated the names of campus buildings, including one named for a Catholic priest who founded the Mission System widely credited with suppressing Native American culture and contributing to deaths. Years earlier, Bird's senior vision project also focused on similar themes of cultural diversity and reconciliation, organizing a cultural exchange and service project on the Blackfeet Reservation.

***

The emphasis on service begins early.

Each year, kindergarten students collect food that corresponds to the letter of the week then volunteer at the food bank to help sort items. Last year, the youngsters gathered a school record of 734 pounds. They also gather toiletry items for the Poverello Center throughout the year.

Katie Wardsianis fourth grade class is competing with Christ the King parish to see who can collect the most socks for the Poverello Center as part of SockTober. Donation boxes can be found in the lobby of either Catholic school. The community is invited to participate.

She ran a similar drive at Clinton School last year, collecting 501 pairs. In the first three weeks this year, the Catholic schools had collected 1,288 pairs.

She launched the project by having her students watch a YouTube video with Kid President about SockTober, a nationwide charitable event. Other teachers in the school have done the same. Anastasia Bakos, the volunteer and outreach coordinator at the Poverello, also visited classrooms to talk about what the center is and who they help.

I told the kids that the Poverello Center is in need .., she said. Our students are super-fortunate with what they have. They are, as weve been saying, excited to warm the feet and warm the hearts of those who need more than we do.

Wardsiani grew up in Catholic schools and moved to Missoula from Illinois two years ago. She said the culture of community service is strong here.

They love doing stuff to help people in the community outside the school to be able to be a part of that makes my heart feel so big.

Often, the students report that they receive as much as they give.

This summer, Kenna Guenther, 17, volunteered with elderly Missoula residents, helping with landscaping and other chores. She said that had a bigger impact on her than the several mission trips she has taken.

Its personal. It just is a lot more meaningful, she said. They were happy and very positive people. It made me think about what I want to be like when Im older.

She also shared something with them that inspired her senior project this year.

I live really far from my family and they live really far from their families, so Im going to interview them and make a family tree. And just anything they want their grandkids to know about them and life, she said. Ill make it into a nice book for them around Christmas time.

Seventeen-year-old Shealee Petreys project also was inspired, in part, by earlier service.

Each fall, students collect items for the Missoula Food Bank  St. Josephs for Thanksgiving and Loyola-Sacred Heart for Christmas. Together, they provided weeks of meals for 93 families last year with the high school collecting more than 25,000 pounds. Last year, as a student council member, she helped deliver the boxes of food to homes.

It gave me a different perspective on life, she said. I saw people who were in need and, like, truly needed things, whereas Ive always had food and Ive never had to worry about that.

For her project, she wanted to get beyond the extended family students find at Missoula Catholic Schools to serve others who need it more.

With one of my friends, well get a small group of kids together to do a cooking and crafts class for them, she said. Theres more kids that need help, and in Missoula Catholic Schools there already are a lot of people that are there for them.

Guenther agreed.

We live in a community thats really blessed and we have so much here. Were trying to give back to our community and those who dont have as much as we do, she said. Service is why were here. We serve God through serving our communities.
The ongoing public feud between Sen. Bob Corker and President Donald Trump exploded Tuesday ahead of the President's high-stakes visit to Capitol Hill for tax negotiations, with the Tennessee Republican telling CNN's Manu Raju he wouldn't support Trump for president if given the opportunity again.

The President had earlier accused Corker, who is retiring, of blocking his party's efforts on tax cuts.

The exchange between the two men escalates a rift that has highlighted divisions between Trump and several Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill, threatening to send the President off-message at a critical time for his agenda.

Corker, asked if he should have backed Trump's presidential campaign, said he "would not do that again." He also said Trump has "great difficulty with the truth."

"You wouldn't support him again?" Raju asked.

"No, no way," Corker said.

In a series of tweets, the President accused Corker of fighting tax cuts and called him a "lightweight." Corker responded by again likening the White House staff to a "daycare center."

"Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts....," Trump tweeted. "...Corker dropped out of the race in Tennessee when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!"

Corker soon responded on Twitter: "Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff."

Trump quickly responded by calling Corker a "lightweight."

The President has previously claimed Corker sought his endorsement, which Corker's office has denied, and the "day care" comment refers to criticism the Tennessee senator levied at Trump earlier in the month.

Corker had criticized Trump during appearances on several television shows Tuesday morning ahead of the President's day on Capitol Hill.

On NBC, Corker called Trump's effort to court senators over the White House's tax reform proposal "a photo-op." And speaking to ABC, he suggested that the President butt out of the process.

"(I)f you start taking things off the table before you get started you make that very difficult. So what I hope is going to happen is the President will leave this effort, if you will, to the tax writing committees and let them do their work and not begin taking things off the table that ought to be debated in the committees at the proper time," he said on "Good Morning America."

When asked if the President is a national security threat, Corker told NBC that he needs to be contained by members of his Cabinet; namely, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly.

Both Trump and Corker -- who was once in consideration to become Trump's secretary of state -- have publicly bickered following the Tennessee senator's announcement earlier this month that he would not be seeking a third term in the Senate.

Trump attacked Corker via Twitter at the time, saying he denied the senator's request for an endorsement -- a claim denied by Corker's office. In response, Corker said, "It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning."

In remarks to a New York Times story published a short time later, Corker said Trump was treating the presidency like "a reality show," making reckless threats against other countries that put the United States "on the path to World War III."
KALISPELL  If all the stars finally align, the Flathead National Forest will release its new land-use management plan sometime in the middle of November.

The plan was originally scheduled to be released in June.

A change in administration that included delays in filling the top posts required to sign off on the plan, coupled with a delay in getting a final biological opinion from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, pushed the date back, said Joe Krueger, the Flatheads forest plan revision team leader.

The land-use plan will guide multiple-use management of the 2.4 million-acre national forest for decades to come. The last time the Flathead Forest updated its land-use plan was in 1986.

Krueger said the complicated process to update the plan, which included analyzing about 33,000 public comments, took about four years.

Once the plan is officially released, the public will have 60 days to offer objections. It will take several months for the Flathead Forest to answer those objections and decide if any changes are required.

Flathead Forest officials traveled to Washington, D.C., earlier this month to make the presentations to the new Forest Service chief and other officials before the plan could be formally released.

There was no meddling in the process, Krueger said. We just needed to make sure that they were in the loop and understood why we made the decisions we made.

At this point, Krueger said the documentation is basically wrapped up. Forest officials are really hopeful that it will be released to the public in mid-November.

There are still a couple of things that need to happen, he said. I can control what I can control. I cant control other agencies. That timeframe is what were hoping for.

The land-use plan includes an amendment that addresses management of grizzly bear habitat on the Flathead, Kootenai, Lolo and Helena-Lewis and Clark forests. Krueger said drafting that required a lot of work completed in a compressed time frame by the eight-person team that focused on the project.

The Flathead grizzly plan will be applied to Montan's other northern Rocky Mountain forests to make sure there is consistency.

The land-use plan will guide the Flathead Forests decision-making process on everything from managing grizzly bears to motorized recreation to timber harvest. The plan was developed under new rules established in 2012 under the Obama administration.
Maybe its time to start rewriting history, or at least discuss the possibility.

Confederate monument removals, along with requests by some tribal representatives that a mountain and valley in Yellowstone National Park named in honor of racist men be changed, have sparked discussions about how far such tactics should extend.

I think the fact that were polarized, we need to talk about things we disagree about, said Tim Lehman, a Rocky Mountain College history professor. We need to listen better and feel more empathy with those who disagree with us.

He said the conversations should be about which history we celebrate, not ignoring or erasing whats happened in the past.

I dont think that were in danger of forgetting history, he said. But there are some monuments that are offensive that should be removed or given more context.

Zinkes take

Lehmans comments contrast sharply with the current political climate in Washington, where President Trump almost daily bullies anyone who contradicts him. Some of Trump's views are echoed by his appointees.

Earlier this month, in an interview with conservative Breitbart News, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said no monuments would be removed from federal land during his watch.

Where do you start and where do you stop? he said. Its a slippery slope. If youre a native Indian, I can tell you, youre not very happy about the history of General Sherman or perhaps President Grant.

Both men were known for their tactics meant to remove American Indians from the West, or at least reduce their populations and push them on to reservations. The methods were undertaken to open up development of the West for Euro-Americans  mostly white settlers.

Nobody has ever come to us for our input on those incidents, said Jonathan Windy Boy, an American Indian state legislator from Box Elder. If the Indians do make a hoopla, the powers that be should take everyones input.

Zinke went on to justify his reasoning, telling Breitbart, When you try to erase history, what happens is you also erase how it happened and why it happened and the ability to learn from it.

That wasnt the case at Little Bighorn National Battlefield, a historic site that falls under Zinkes management. Over the past three decades the memorial has been renamed with more explanation given about the American Indian side of the fight, as well as honoring those tribal members who died on the battlefield with a memorial and grave markers.

This is a perfect example of how divorced Secretary Zinke is from the Native community, said Simon Moya-Smith, a writer and editor for Indian Country Today, in an email. Were he intimately familiar with Natives he'd already know that for decades we've called for the eradication of monuments to Native murderers like Andrew Jackson, Christopher Columbus, etc. These statues are a celebration of white domination, and it's time for them to be ripped down. Sec. Zinke should stop using Natives as an excuse to keep racist monuments erected.

An email to Zinkes press secretary for further comment was not answered by press time.

Other changes

In the past, some states have taken on the renaming of geographical features that were offensive to minority groups. Montana and Wyoming removed the derogatory word squaw from creeks and mountains. Should that be extended to other features?

It does open a whole can of worms, said Adrian Heidenreich, professor emeritus of Native American Studies at Montana State University Billings. But I think the discussion should occur.

To further complicate the conversation, though, who would get to choose the new name for a feature? Tribes wandered a long way prior to the Euro-American push westward. The Crow name for a river might not be the same as the Shoshone Tribes.

Should we return to those early names? Thats a big question, Heidenreich said.

Yet he added in a email that, National (or state and local) places, including parks and monuments, should represent all who are (or were) associated with them. The most important issue is not so much any one location name, but overall representation of multiple individuals and groups.

He suggested that names could also be added to more generic sites, such as Rock Creek, to reflect a larger constituency. Establishing intertribal and intercultural guidelines could help move such discussions forward, he added.

Location names should reflect the broad scope of American history, neither supporting white supremacy nor elevating Native Americans to noble savages, Heidenreich wrote. There must be persistent pressure, not just popular spontaneous protests riding on the coattails of events such as removal of Confederate monuments.

More say

Some tribal members spirits seem revived following the Standing Rock Protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota last winter, which drew national and international attention along with some celebrity support. Black Lives Matter protests have also sparked a renewed discussion about how, or if, America has evolved socially since the days of outright racism, which Windy Boy said still exists toward American Indians in Montana.

Where are our heroes monuments? Windy Boy questioned. Going through school and learning the history of my nation, I wondered, Where am I in this history?

Looking ahead, he said maybe the discussion should be less about changing whats on the landscape or written on monuments and more about giving American Indians and other minorities a place at the table where their views can be heard and considered.

The whole story isnt really being told, he said.
Nearly all of the worlds faith traditions call their faithful to protect and offer hospitality to immigrants. Judeo-Christian scriptures urge adherents time and again to welcome the stranger and offer special care for widows and orphans. We are called to welcome our immigrant sisters and brothers with compassion, and to keep families together, regardless of faith or place of birth.

Yet, in communities across our nation, including in Montana, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security routinely employs Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who subvert protocols and training, and terrorize citizenry with arbitrary practices which threaten to destroy the trust that local leaders have built with their communities and should have with local police. As a result, immigrant families and those connected to them may not ask for help or report crimes, fearing the repercussions if local law enforcement would turn them in to immigration officials.

Many methods promoted by the Department of Homeland Security tear apart families, rend the fabric of our communities and threaten policies that would harm our local economies. Many such policies and actions are also opposed by a majority of U.S. citizens.

The Montana Interfaith Network questions budgets which further fund suffering and hate. With the Rev. Jim Wallis of the Sojourners community, of Washington, D.C., we see budgets as moral documents. From private households to municipal, state and federal levels, the way we designate our common resources indicates where our priorities lie, as families, cities and as a nation. Will we designate our common resources and tax dollars for efforts that promote fear, threaten public safety and destroy families? As interfaith leaders, our traditions call instead for us to treat each other with dignity, compassion and peace.

For these reasons, the Montana Interfaith Network urges our national representatives to oppose any expansion of funding to the Department of Homeland Security. Our federal budget should reflect the values of compassion and peace, lift up families and support thriving communities. As Montanans, we do not want our common resources spent on suffering, hate, and division. We are our brother and sisters keeper. We belong to each other. No matter where someone came from or how they arrived in the United States, their life is of value and they deserve to be treated with dignity and compassion.

We ask for an end to budget policies that would further current Department of Homeland Security efforts that incite fear and division, and we urge our federal lawmakers to deny further funding of Immigration and Customs Enforcement practices that do more harm than good. Lets instead designate those common resources, our tax dollars, towards the things that makes us thrive like education, bridges and disaster response, care for our veterans and seniors, and maintaining this beautiful landscape that all of us call home.
The University of Montana's Journalism School isn't what it used to be.

When I was an undergrad, Dean Nate Blumberg, a man of strong liberal convictions, invited a far-right newspaper columnist named Westbrook Pegler to speak to his senior seminar. Later, he invited Norman Cousins, a leading liberal activist, to speak to the same class.

Blumberg did not ask his students if either man's appearance would offend them. Blumberg was dean of his department, a professor and a scholar. He was there to teach his students to open their minds, to listen to different opinions and to be fair-minded journalists. Pegler, Cousins and the then-editor of The New York Times all spoke to us and all were received cordially by the students.

Of all the "diversities" people seek to "celebrate" in a university setting, diversity of thought and opinion are foremost. Critical thinking and intellectualism are impossible in their absence. The present dean of the J-School doesn't understand that. His decision regarding speaker Mike Adams sets the worst possible example for aspiring journalists.

Jeff Gibson,

Butte
If you love to camp, fish and paddle a canoe, Quetico fulfills your wildest dream.

Some 6,000 lakes, 32 waterfalls and 4,467 islands are waiting to be explored only by wind or muscle power. And that's only half of the picture.

Quetico Provincial Park is Ontario's million-acre extension of the million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota. This is big-time canoe country. Paddlers still dip their cups or bottles in the deep-blue middle of Quetico lakes and drink untreated water without consequence.

The BWCA is a paddler's nirvana, too, but Quetico is even more primitive and uncrowded. Canadians allow no signs to mark campsites, portage routes or even the dangerous stretches of flatwater that abruptly transform into waterfalls.

One map-reading error could leave canoeists in a maze of confusion and an unplanned bivouac where the whine of mosquitoes builds near dusk like the revving of Formula One race cars down the home stretch.

Or the predicament might simply be a chance for one more campfire and wilderness walleye tacos.

The favorable 27 percent exchange rate was a mere bonus to the chance in late June to join Minnesotans revisiting their favorite pike-infested waters in Canada from Saganagons to Agnes lakes. Raised in Duluth, they paddle like pros and carry canoes as naturally as moms tote babies.

They cook over wood fires and single-portage when most humans would lighten the load and make two trips. A bottle of insect repellent would last them a lifetime if it weren't for dabbing a little on the ears of their dogs. They are North Woods tough.

And the men are equally impressive.

The canoe played a huge role in opening this country and it continues to be the most efficient vessel for exploring Quetico's sprawl of lakes, many with names originating from Ojibwe or French.

In the first two days of paddling, our group of eight covered 28 miles and nine portages through the Falls Chain into Kawnipi Lake. The canoes took us upstream, downstream, into the wind and through whitecaps, yet they were easily loaded, unloaded and carried on trails that ranged from cruisers to nightmares.

Quetico paddlers must check in at one of six ranger stations around the wilderness perimeter. We hopped a Seagull Outfitters water taxi to an island at the border. From there we paddled to the Cache Bay Ranger Station for permits and orientation by Ranger Janice Matichuk, a 46-year employee with Ontario Parks who first came to the Cache Bay backcountry in 1985 with her five-month old daughter.

"There's never been a better time to visit here," she said.

More than 50,000 visitors a year paddled into Quetico for at least one night of camping in the 1950s, she said. "Quetico got serious about overuse and capped visitation at 20,000."

Last year, fewer than 14,000 campers rolled out sleeping bags in the wilderness.

The BWCA, which had 250,000 camping visitors a year in the heydays, now hosts about 180,000.

Matichuk said 85 percent of the Quetico visitors are from the USA and 60 percent are men ages 50-80.

She checks in visitors ranging from babies to octogenarians, but the numbers of women are noticeably declining. "Children are a rarity."

While her tips on portage trails and routes were valuable to refining our trip itinerary, the ranger refused to recommend her favorite camping spots. "We don't mark campsites on maps and I don't rate them at all," she said. "That would only lead to over-use of some spots."

So we set out to find our first of several homes away from home among 2,200 unmarked backcountry campsites in Quetico Provincial Park.

Group campsites aren't as easy to find as one might expect. Some areas hammered by wildfire years ago were thick with doghair jack pine. But when sites were found, the Minnesotans' canoe camps would spring up much as they have for generations.

Tarps are rigged to shed rain over packing and kitchen areas. Fires are built using birch bark for tinder. Most of the meals are cooked over a wood fire, including Julie Allen's spectacular pot-baked biscuits and blueberry cobbler.

An orange spade for digging cat holes was always available by the base of a tree on the edge of every campsite. Quetico has no latrines.

Pulleys, strong rope and a team effort are the Minnesotan solution to hanging group-size packs of provisions beyond reach of bears and the 20-something paddler with the insatiable appetite.

Every evening was set aglow with a round of something sippable by the fire. Banter eventually faded one by one into personal time and benediction in the twilight where fireflies flurry like campfire sparks in a breeze.

Loons made appearances every day. Their mesmerizing calls would hush fish-catching brag fests. A pair and then a group of three common loons cruised by camp one evening, paddling and calling, freezing our conversation and fixing our gaze. Equally stunning after the echoing calls faded was the silence.

A haunted house can't match a week in Quetico for scaring the crap out of campers. Among our hair-raising experiences were rifle shots that turned out to be beaver tails smacking the water by shore; trees swaying, creaking and cracking in the wind over our tents; a lightning storm that raged just a few bolts short of Armageddon.

When the thunder faded into the distance and the night sky finally went dark again, a single firefly glowed like a slow-pulsing beacon under my tent rain fly where it had sought refuge.

The traumatizing 20 minutes of in-your-face lightning prompted discussion of what to do when hell breaks loose. "Response to lightning casualties is the opposite of triage," Scott Wolff, an ER doctor, said in a teaching moment. "You leave survivors and go immediately to the unconscious. If they're not breathing, you breathe for them in case they're in respiratory paralysis."

The trip involved no major injuries, but there was some significant bloodshed as seen on the inside of our tents. Mosquitoes that had been detected too late were smashed in red smudges against the rip-stop nylon.

Fishing sometimes resulted in even more gore. On a layover day designated for producing a fish dinner, I was carefully adding a northern pike to my stringer when a strung-up walleye lurched up over the gunnel and engulfed my thumb. I had to pry its jaws open as dozens of sharp teeth razor-bladed my skin.

"That's nothing," Wolff said as my blood pooled in the canoe. "Remember when the pike grabbed my toe (while swimming)? That was bad. I still have some of the pike teeth I dug out of my skin."

Any inclinations for skinny dipping after dinner were doused.

Early mornings are a fine time to be out of the tent on a Quetico island. Moose and other critters have left "sign" to read. Swainson's thrushes and winter wrens begin singing at first light, communicating, emphasizing territories before getting about finding food for the day. I heard my first whippoorwill.

The nature show continued as we paddled. Common terns put on a show above. A loon with a chick on its back seemed unconcerned. Spotted sandpipers had a nest at a portage take-out.

We never paddled far without seeing another bald eagle. We were always being watched, as proved any time we filleted a fish on a rock along a remote shoreline. Within minutes of paddling away toward camp, gulls and eagles would home in from long distances to compete for the carcass.

Someone always seemed to be dipping a jig or casting a Rapala. With little enforcement, anglers are expected to be honest in observing rules such as no bass over 13 3/4-inches long could be kept until after July 1 to protect spawners. Only one walleye over 18 inches could be kept a day. Conservation is a matter of trust here.

We found time to explore several of the 52 known pictograph sites in Quetico. We traveled hard and lived simply for eight days. Indeed, we later spent 34 percent of our food expense for a post-trip lunch and beers at a resort off the Gunflint Trail.

During stretches of flatwater paddling that continued for hours, the Minnesotans put on a clinic on the efficiency of short strokes at fast tempo. "It's a lot about using your core," Wolff said as a smattering of rain slowly built to a steady drizzle and ultimately into a pelting shower. Rain jackets donned; sandalled feet bare to the elements. Everything that needed to be dry sealed in waterproof bags. We pressed on.

Ed Kowachek, of Missoula, and I started adding up the trip's adventures on Day 6 during a long sunny stretch of paddling conversation. We marveled at good fishing and hard work followed by wilderness sunsets and the simple pleasures of passing good whiskey around the campfire.

"I'm not sure what the hereafter holds  heaven and all of that  but I'm sure going to miss all of this," he said.

Even the portages are fondly remembered simply for surviving them. Several trails ended just upstream from falls, where a put-in is a serious matter.

"A lot of the accidents here are related to the falls," Ranger Matichuk had told us. "In one case, two paddlers who portaged above a falls put in and one pushed away from the bank before realizing they'd loaded gear on top of their paddles. Before they could recover their propulsion, the current swept them over the falls.

"We average a death every five years," she said. "It's every year in the Boundary Waters. Most are caused by drowning, falling trees or heart attacks. But every year, an unsecured boat is carried off by the wind or current and goes over some falls. Sometimes people go over with them."

We should have no problem with grimly named routes such as Deadman's Portage, she said. "But be very careful of the poison ivy along McKewen Creek, or you'll wish you were dead."

In eight days we saw fewer than a dozen other canoes in Quetico. A bright spot came on a portage when we met a family from North Carolina  grandpa, two daughters, his son-in-law and five grandkids. They were taking a 12-day trip. The kids were pumped, and so was grandpa.

The son-in-law looked like Atlas the Titan under the weight of a huge load. Yet he set his canoe and pack down at the lake shore, chit-chatted a bit and grabbed one of my bags as I hoisted a canoe onto my shoulders. "I might as well carry something back to the other side of the portage," he said.

All of the portage trails were mini-adventures of hiking, wading, mucking and balancing on wet or mud-slimed boulders.

At the swampy beginning for the haul to McKewen Lake, my foot wedged under a root submerged in muddy water and I toppled forward in a belly-flop splash. My chin missed an angular granite boulder by inches as 50 pounds of Kevlar canoe came crashing down on top of me.

Muddy goo and water drained out of my shirt and pants as I scrambled to my feet and kept going. The Minnesotans were ahead, carrying twice the weight, and I had to catch up.

Upon reaching the other side of a ridge, I'd carried the canoe 1.2 kilometers, or 1,200 meters, or 239 rods, give or take a few cubits, depending on the unit of measurement you prefer.

As required, we navigated to Cache Bay and checked out of Quetico before paddling back to the U.S. In the ranger station I mentioned the 1.2k portage to veteran Ontario Parks ranger Janice Matichuk.

"You did that portage?" Matichuk said, snapping her head up from filling out a report. "You stud muffin!"

But before my chest had a chance to swell, she smiled and said, "Last time I did that trail I was six months pregnant."
After an emotion-filled, hour-long hearing, a judge Monday sentenced a man to the Montana State Prison for 40 years for running over another man with his own pickup south of Rocker in June 2016.

District Judge Brad Newman imposed concurrent 40-year prison sentences on William Luke Segna with no chance of parole for at least 15 years. He must also pay Scott Cunningham and his family $177,528 in restitution, if he is ever able.

Segna had earlier pleaded guilty to one count of robbery and one count of aggravated assault in exchange for prosecutors dropping six other charges.

"He is going to continue to violate the law unless and until he is stopped," Newman said. "Mr. Segna, I have asked this court to stop."

Cunningham, who lost part of his foot and suffered a broken jaw, femur, and ribs among other serious injuries, was in court with his wife, Christine, on Monday, and both urged Newman to impose the toughest sentence possible.

Segna, 33, also spoke, first turning to the Cunninghams while crying and saying, "I am so sorry." He said he knew before the recent crimes that drugs were killing him and told Newman he needed help with his addiction.

His attorney, Brian West, said 10 years in prison was enough.

But Newman said Segna had several prior convictions, was a "persistent felony offender" under Montana law, and had repeatedly failed probation and treatment programs.

According to police, Segna fled a traffic stop in a stolen vehicle on South Rocker Road on the evening of June 24, 2016. A 911 call later reported him driving a stolen ATV in the area, and a neighbor and his wife in a pickup managed to corner him.

When the man  Scott Cunningham  stepped out of the vehicle to confront him, Segna jumped into the man's truck, and his wife jumped out.

Now behind the wheel, Segna then ran over Cunningham, breaking his femur, jaw, and ribs and partially severing his foot before driving through barbed wire fences and crashing into a ditch near the Mount Moriah Cemetery where he was arrested.

Cunningham was taken to St. James Healthcare but then flown by helicopter to a hospital in Great Falls, where a trauma team took over. According to his family, he spent three weeks there before going to Missoula for more hospital care and physical therapy.

In a written victim impact statement, Cunningham's oldest son, Cody, said the family spent "41 days sitting next to a hospital bed with a man that had just enjoyed Father's Day with his three grandkids the weekend before, fishing and playing like any grandpa would."

Christine Cunningham told Newman that she cries often now and life hasn't been the same for her or her husband. She said Segna has had "multiple chances of getting his life in order" but had not.

"I don't understand how a man could live his life so wrong," she said.

Scott Cunningham also spoke, walking to the courtroom podium with a cane and pronounced limp. He was bound to a wheelchair at first, he said, but still awoke each day in pain, unable to fish and take in the mountains of southwest Montana like he once did.

"I often wonder whether I will be able to do the things I enjoyed before this event," he said.

Segna said he understood that the Cunninghams wanted him "locked up for a long time." He said drugs had been his downfall but, "I never hurt anybody before this, physically."

"I do want help. I want help more than anything," he told Newman.

Phil Keating, who said he runs a charity to help people stay out of prison, testified for the defense in Monday's sentencing hearing, saying Segna knew he suffered from the disease of addiction.

"He knew he was sick, but there was no help for him," Keating said. He could still be rehabilitated through a structured, controlled treatment program  a much better option than sending him to prison to rot  Keating said.

But Deputy County Attorney Samm Cox said Segna had blown multiple chances to change.

"This is not about addiction," he said. "This is about callous indifference."
Stephanie, Giavanna, Marietta, and Isabella Sorini have made a leadership gift to Montana Tech to name a room in the Student Success and Living & Learning Center in honor of Peter M. Sorini, MD.

Dr. Sorini attended local schools and graduated from Butte High School. He attended Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he graduated with a degree in Latin and philosophy. He then went on to medical school at the Medical College of Wisconsin. His next step was Phoenix, Ariz., for an internship where he joined the Neurosurgery Residency Program. Sorini did his Neurosurgery Residency at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona and Buffalo, New York. He returned to Auburn University receiving his Master's degree in Health Care Administration in May of 2013.

Sorini loved Butte, loved education, loved life, and loved family.

"He left us all too soon in February 2016 after an extremely courageous and long-fought battle with a glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor,'' the news release said.

While the family asked that the amount of the gift not be released, they said the contribution goes to a project that aligns with Sorini's beliefs.

Pete was always furthering his education and wanted to make sure others had the same opportunities he did. He believed in giving students from ordinary beginnings an opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, said his widow, Stephanie Sorini. Knowing that the Student Success Center will allow students to learn, achieve and thrive makes our family happy and we are pleased to make this donation to Montana Tech. Our family will continue to believe and be Sorini Strong.

The Montana Tech Student Success and Living Learning Center (SSC) will be a place for students to learn and study, to relax and play. When completed, Montana Techs SSC will become the heart of our campus. The 25,000-square-foot facility will complete the student life experience on campus, providing an inspiring environment for students to live, dine, socialize, cultivate valuable leadership skills, and forge lifelong friendships. The SSC will assist Montana Tech in recruiting, retaining, educating, and graduating more problem-solvers, innovators, healers, trailblazers, and leaders.

Dr. Sorini loved his hometown, loved education and loved Montana Tech, said Joe McClafferty, president of the Montana Tech Foundation. With a heavy heart, we are very thankful to Stephanie, Gia, Marietta, and Bella for this donation as it will help so many Montana Tech student advance their knowledge.

For more information about the SSC, visit http://foundation.mtech.edu/ssc/ or contact the Montana Tech Foundation at 406-496-4276.
The U.S. Forest Service has the authority to exclude motorized travel, including snowmobiles and mountain bikes, from areas recommended for wilderness, a Missoula judge ruled last week.

U.S. District Judge Dana L. Christensen rejected a challenge from snowmobilers and others who sought to overturn wilderness recommendations for areas on the Kootenai National Forest and Idaho Panhandle National Forest in northern Idaho.

Christensen ruled the Forest Service does have broad authority to manage recommended wilderness areas to preserve their wilderness values, including limiting motorized and mechanized use in the remote areas.

The judge also ruled that the Kootenai Forest will need to reopen public comment on its plan to include segments of two tributaries to the Bull River  Callahan and Ross Creeks  before the agency can recommend them for protection under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

The Kootenai Forest erred by adding the two creeks late in the land-use revision process, which didnt give the public the opportunity to offer its opinions on the recommendation, Christensen ruled.

The Kootenai National Forest released a revision of its land-use plans in 2015 that included provisions that excluded motorized use from the 89,000 acres of land of recommended wilderness adjacent to the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness and the Scotchman Peaks area and another 26,000 acres of the 34,000-acre Ten Lakes wilderness study as recommended wilderness.

That same year, the Ten Lakes Snowmobile Club, an irrigation district and other off-road vehicle organizations filed a lawsuit that said the agency had erred in prohibiting motorized and mechanized recreation in the areas recommended for wilderness.

The lawsuit claimed the Forest Service lacked clear guidelines on defining a potential wilderness area and therefore had no way to justify banning snowmobiles and mountain bikes from areas where they had historically been used, including the Ten Lakes area.

Christensen ruled the agencys decision to restrict snowmobiles and other mechanized used in the recommended wilderness areas to avoid degradation of wilderness characteristics was adequately explained by the Forest Service, and its decision was not arbitrary or capricious.

The judge pointed to the 2006 USFS Handbook: Any inventoried roadless area recommended for wilderness  is not available for any use that may reduce the wilderness potential of an area. Activities currently permitted may continue, pending designation, if the activities do not compromise values of the area.

On the Kootenai Forest, Christensen said the agency considered the potential impacts of snowmobiling on grizzly bears and other big game. On the Panhandle, the agencys analysis focused more on lynx and wolverines.

Several conservation organizations filed as interveners in the lawsuit.

We are pleased that the court rejected this unfounded attempt to limit the Forest Services authority to manage recommended wilderness areas to preserve their wilderness values, said Peter Aengst, The Wilderness Societys Northern Rockies Region senior director. Protecting the wilderness character or recommended wilderness areas is essential to the long-term preservation of these irreplaceable landscapes for present and future generations.

Amy Robinson of the Montana Wilderness Association agreed.

This decision validates longstanding efforts of our members and volunteers to ensure non-motorized, wilderness protection for the most wild and deserving areas of the Kootenai National Forest, Robinson said. This includes lands adjacent to the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, areas in the Yaak and Scotchman Peaks. By affirming the Forest Services authority to manage recommended wilderness to protect wilderness values, this decision ensures that these areas will maintain the potential for future wilderness designation.

Headwaters Montana director Dave Hadden said: This court decision demonstrates that the Forest Service can and should protect the last vestiges of wilderness land on our national forest. The Kootenai and Panhandle forests are heavily devoted to timber and motorized recreation. This decision protects the small percentage of wild country for wildlife and for people seeking a wilderness experience.

Paul Turke of Boise served as the attorney for the snowmobile groups that filed the lawsuit.

He said the debate over recommended wilderness and wilderness study areas is far from over.

Turke is working on a similar legal challenge on the Bitterroot National Forest focused on the agencys decision to prohibit mountain biking on both wilderness study areas and areas recommended for wilderness. That decision was made when the Bitterroot Forest released its updated travel plan.

In both cases, Turke alleges the national forests were using a policy created under the radar in the Forest Services Northern Region to eliminate non-conforming uses under a formal wilderness designation.

Christensen rejected that notion as unfounded and purely speculative.

The judge said the record demonstrated the Kootenai and Panhandle forests considered site-specific impacts of motorized and mechanized vehicles and omitted some areas that had been recommended as wilderness under early land-use plans.

While there was some historical motorized use in the areas recommended for wilderness, Turke said none of it is being used extensively by snowmobilers.

These are the most remote of the remote areas in the dead of winter, Turke said. Were not talking about a large number of people or conflicts between backcountry skiers and snowmobilers. What we are talking about is the kind of a peak experience for a handful of people.

Our view is that the Forest Service is playing politics when it calls balls and strikes on wilderness areas, he said. My clients appreciate wilderness values, too. They want them to remain in as good a condition as they are now, if not better. There should be other ways to address these issues rather than closure.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders is from Arkansas, and she frequently likes to spout regional sayings as she deflects tough questions about her boss. President Donald Trump is about as un-Arkansas as any person can be, but that doesn't stop Sarah from employing the faux folksiness that she heard in her childhood to evade the truth about his latest outrage. She learned it from a distance, from the governor's mansion, but she still has the affectation down pat.

So it was when she was defending factual inaccuracies in White House chief of staff John Kelly's takedown of Rep. Frederica Wilson. The Democrat Wilson has become a "rock star," to use her own words, ever since she harshly criticized President Trump's consolation call to the wife of Army Sgt. La David Johnson. Sgt. Johnson was killed during an ambush in Niger. Rep. Wilson, who was listening in, along with Johnson's family members, described Trump as insensitive during the brief conversation. When Kelly decided to respond and defend his boss, he went after Rep. Wilson. In the process of slamming her, he accused Wilson of falsely claiming credit for arranging the federal funding needed to build a new Miami FBI field office during the building's dedication in 2015. However, a videotape of her speech showed that she did no such thing. Faced with that evidence, Huckabee-Sanders tried to gloss over Kelly's inaccuracy in Trumpian fashion: She went on the attack against Rep. Wilson and her history of wearing distinctive -- no, make that outlandish -- hats.

We don't know whether Sarah needed to consult her book of quaint farmer put-downs, but she was ready with one, declaring that Wilson was "all hat and no cattle." For those city folks who have no earthly idea what she was saying, it means Wilson is all show and no substance.

I, too, am from Arkansas, so I know from Southern speak. I can say "y'all" with the best of them and put on a drawl whenever it suits my purposes. There are a lot of these banalities. One of my favorites is, "Why bless your heart." What that really means is, "What you just said is truly stupid." Reporters had asked if former Marine Gen. Kelly could face them again and explain the obvious discrepancies in his takedown of the congresswoman, and this is Sanders' exchange with a persistent CBS correspondent Chip Reid (full disclosure: Chip and I are longtime friends):

"If you want to go after General Kelly, that's up to you," Sanders said. "I think that if you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general --"

Reid interrupting: "That would be great if he would come out here and do it."

Sanders finishing her sentence: "-- that's inappropriate."

Why bless your heart, Sarah. It's not inappropriate at all. Members of the media are not supposed to salute smartly when a general speaks. We need to ask them the same impertinent questions we ask all our leaders. How else are we going to gather the "fake news" your boss is always talking about. Why bless your heart, Donald, by the way.

The fact is, members of the White House press acted beyond appropriately when Kelly was defending his boss's call, even to the point of accepting his limitation that questions come only from those who knew a Gold Star parent. That was in deference to the fact that Kelly is one; he lost a son, who was killed in Afghanistan combat seven years ago.

But now it was time for him to explain or defend his charges about Rep. Wilson, which apparently included false information. Did he get what the military calls "faulty intelligence"? It would seem he'd be anxious to maintain his reputation as a straight shooter and as a man who has spent his life defending American values, including the open government one, which is enforced mainly by skeptical journalism.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the president don't share that reputation. Returning to her "all hat and no cattle" description, it's fair to say that her reporter briefings are not meant to enlighten, that they are usually a way of spreading a load of male cattle excrement.

(c) 2017 Bob Franken

Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
When Silver Bow Creek Headwaters Coalition received the favorable decision from Judge Brad Newman that Buttes Silver Bow Creek was in fact a creek and thus protected as waters of the State of Montana in the Montana Constitution, he wrote some very significant and eye-opening statements.

 This litigation seeks to ensure that the State of Montana and its agencies follow the law.

 In this case the Plaintiffs stand in the shoes of government. They are seeking as a private attorney general to force the State to act appropriately with respect to the States waters held in trust for the public.

Sister Mary Jo McDonald, Ron Davis and I filed this action as private citizens because we felt strongly this was the only option for our community to receive the quality Superfund cleanup and restoration our community deserved and needed and in fact was not receiving.

Our goal was simple -- Make Butte a better and more environmentally safe place to live. Cleanup of the creek and removal of all contaminated tailings was an essential part of that goal.

Bill Everett and Steve McNeece, Anaconda community leaders, have taken a strong pro-active stance demanding Anaconda receive the quality cleanup and restoration the community deserves. Including; addressing school and Benny Goodman Park contamination, as is required under federal/state environmental laws and the Montana Constitution. It is time for the Butte-Silver Bow Council of Commissioners and Chief Executive to do the same!

If the past weeks Superfund activities in Butte or better put, lack of activity, did not serve as wake up call for our leaders, I dont know what would. We learned;

 The State of Montana may not have the resources to do its proposed band aid removal of the Parrot Tailings behind the Civic Center.

 We learned the Montana Pole cleanup solution was in fact not working -- even though our leaders have been told by me and others for many years that is the case.

 Finally we learned the West Side Soils cleanup of Buttes west side and flats have not even received a cursory review as required under Superfund law.

The only solution I see at this point is for the council to remove the cloak of confidentiality and closed door secret meetings as the Anaconda leaders have done and take a strong pro-active transparent involvement in the situation. That pro-active involvement requires legal action against the EPA and the State. It is our only option and our only weapon!

I believe we have now passed the crossroads of cleanup in Butte and are headed in the wrong direction. The environmental and economic future of Butte depends on us changing that direction. I strongly believe Butte deserves better.

Sadly, with the current Trump Administration, our challenge will be more difficult. The saddest part to me, however, is that the folks from the past administrations, federal, state and local, who could have and should have done what is right, did not.

Is it too late to change that failed direction? Who knows? However, I believe only legal action by the local leaders can accomplish that goal and change that direction!

Butte folks like me who offer constructive information are not the enemy! We dont write letters, op-eds, and emails to be critical or negative. We only write them because we care and are concerned about Buttes future.

I believe if no legal action is taken by the council, we will continue down the same failed path as written in 2005 a position paper titled Cut and Run. They wrote: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is prepared to walk away from the nations largest Superfund site. More precisely, EPA is prepared to allow the responsible party, Atlantic Richfield Company (now British Petroleum/ARCO), to walk away without fully cleaning up the site. As a result, millions of cubic yards of mine tailings, smelting slag and other wastes will drain in perpetuity into the headwaters of the Clark Fork and Columbia Rivers. And the City/County of Butte-Silver Bow (and Anaconda) will be relegated into an industrial waste heap with dim economic prospects for recovery.

The ball is in the councils court!

-- Fritz Daily, of Butte, a former state legislator, is a longtime watchdog of Superfund cleanup in Butte.
Members of our group, the Public Land/Water Access Association, feel that State Land board member Matt Rosendale torpedoed the Keogh Conservation Easement proposal at the September Land Board meeting. Three generations of Keogh Ranch family, 10 miles north of Whitehall, have always allowed recreational use of their property and worked around the large numbers of elk, deer and antelope on their extensive ranch.

Although Rosendale did a thorough research of the easement proposal, in my opinion, he opposed the proposal for all the wrong reasons. The money that would be used for a portion of the easement would come from hunting license dollars within the Habitat for Montana program. All groups at the hearing including the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, the Jefferson Valley Sportsmens Association and the DNRC, as well as others, were in favor of the proposal.

It appeared that Rosendales priorities clings to his background as a developer as is sometimes all too typical of a new to Montana landowner. He also adheres to his party platform plank which mandates transfer of public lands. The transfer of public lands in Montana to private ownership absolutely inhibits recreational opportunities. Rosendale should understand that Montana recreationists are willing to Pay-to-Play and that Montanans want to keep their public lands in public hands. The Keogh Conservation Easement Proposal included access to adjoining Forest Service and BLM lands recreational uses which would be available into perpetuity.

If the Keogh Conservation Easement would have been accepted by the Land Board, it would have protected key elk, deer and antelope habitat as well as water rights and existing agricultural uses forever. Now, existing and future generations of recreationists will be the biggest losers.

-- Tony Schoonen, of Butte, is director of the Public Lands/Water Access Association, Southwestern Montana.
Why aren't people supporting Trump's tax reform?

Why are people not supporting President Trump's tax reform? Here are a few key points that make up the framework for the proposed tax reform plan:

1. Lowers rates for individuals and families; puts more money back in the pockets of Montana families and workers

2. Eliminates special interest loopholes, protects bedrock provisions for the middle class

3. Repeals the death tax and Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)

4. Creates a new lower tax rate for small businesses to boost the economy, create jobs and promote competitiveness

5. Brings profits back home

Why would anyone not want a simpler tax code, besides CPAs?

-- Brian Bonner, Butte
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MUSCATINE  Community stakeholders met Monday in Muscatine High School's Howe Commons to celebrate the new partnership between Muscatine Community School Foundation and the Community Foundation of Greater Muscatine.

Members of both foundation boards, donors of established scholarships, and faculty, staff and students of the district attended to learn about the recent administrative takeover.

"Today's event is to officially mark the partnership between the school foundation and the Community Foundation of Greater Muscatine," said Shelly Maharry, associate director of the Community Foundation. "The announcement is to really encourage donors who have funds established to ask questions and to begin having that conversation about increasing the scholarship opportunity to students in Muscatine."

Since August, the district's foundation has been transferring assets to the Community Foundation. In the future, the Community Foundation will hold all the 58 of the existing scholarship funds formerly associated with the Muscatine Community School Foundation. It will assume sole responsibility for its investment under the direction of the Community Foundation's investment committee.

"This partnership is really going to help our mission of making sure students have support for after high school training," said MCSD Superintendent Jerry Riibe. "That is really an investment in our community which is what the community foundation is all about. It's really a great way for all of us to work together so that Muscatine continues to be strong community."

Maharry explained that the foundation would be in charge of assisting scholarship recipients in how to claim their award. This would include verifying enrollment and credit hours, to include academic standing and degree specific coursework.

Though the administration of the scholarships will be taken over by the Community Foundation, the high school guidance department will continue to oversee the scholarship selection process.

Two weeks ago at the school board meeting, Maharry detailed the Community Foundation's plan to offer an online scholarship portal through CommunityForce, a cloud based scholarship and grant contractor. She hoped that come the beginning of 2018, students will be able to create accounts in the system and fill out a common application to apply to local scholarships. She explained that with access to the money simplified, hopefully, students will be able to access that scholarship money more easily.

According to Maharry, the money that funded the CommunityForce contract was paid for by a donor. She explained that the foundation upon realizing the need, reached out to donors that might be interested in the project.

"A benefit of our partnership is that one thing we do really well is that we have the ability to connect donors who care to causes they care about," Maharry said.

Executive Director of the Community Foundation Judi Holdorf explained that by extending their assets to education funding, the Community Foundation is diversifying the ways it is able to endow the community.

"We've been building assets and all of our assets are the assets of the community and this is an opportunity to go even farther," Holdorf said. "If we are securing futures, you have to consider the youth. Investing in scholarships is the a good investment in the youth."
MUSCATINE  Lawyers in the class action lawsuit against Grain Processing Corporation continue to argue residents' options in suing over the Oregon Street plant's emissions. However, the period to decide whether to stay in the suit has passed.

In 2012, eight Southend residents sued GPC, seeking compensation for the loss of enjoyment of their properties due to the plant's emissions. The Iowa Supreme Court certified the case as a class action in May, and hundreds of residents also began filing individual suits. Residents sought compensation for damages not covered by the class, such as property damage or personal injury claims.
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MUSCATINE  Monday morning during second period, four students were comparing notes on arguably the most important coming-of-age ritual in the teenage universe: driving.

For Korissa Burton, a 17-year-old from Muscatine, a driver's licence was a matter of showing up at the DMV and passing a test. But for the other three, each exchange students from Stuttgart, Germany, it was a little more demanding. The three would have to take driving lessons that could amount to thousands of Euros, and once they had received the necessary hours of practice, they pass a long driving exam.

Kevin Stot, 18, hasn't even started taking driving lessons. Sophie Osmaton, 17, said she looks forward to driving.

"If we don't pass, we start over," said Sara Lauer, a 17-year-old exchange student.

These three exchange students are among a cohort of 20 who will be in Muscatine until Nov. 2. Muscatine High School German teacher Milaena Reade, the U.S.-side coordinator, explained that this exchange program has been going on for years.

"They come in odd number years and we travel in even number years," Reade said. "There has always been some sort of an exchange. This is just the newest one."

In 2013, Reade received a Fulbright scholarship to visit Germany, where she established the contacts that led to the exchange.

"Living with the family, you think everyone is like you," Reade said. "And they look like us. You just dont realize how different cultures are. Its kind of the same thing with language. They may learn English but they do it so differently. Learning to listen. You really have to listen to them. What is communication but learning to listen closely."

Reade said that exposure to people who live differently teaches students something that can't be taught in school.

"It's more than just, 'I'm learning German,'" Reade said. "We are trying to effect an outcome years from now."

She said that these exchanges teach global skills: problem solving, critical thinking and tolerance.

As for Osmaston, Stot and Lauer, they are already making observations about their host country.

"In Chicago, the streets were very big and very crowded and the cars are just driving and the people are just walking and it's all like very weird," Lauer said. "In Germany, everything is a bit smaller. Even the streets are smaller. And this, this is like wow."

"I think Americans are more open than Germans," Stot said. "We are more closed. Americans are open. They are more talkative. In my host family, they are just very open to me. And they spend a lot of money for food."
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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 []
Clover Sonoma has partnered with the Redwood Empire Food Bank to help distribute food to those affected by the recent wildfires.

In addition to Clover Sonoma product donations, the company provided its refrigerated food trucks to be used by the nonprofit. Clover Sonoma is also raising funds within the company to support employees who lost their homes -- $25,000 from Clover with a $25,000 match by employees.
My prayers are with those who have lost family members, homes, businesses and belongings during our recent wildfires.

The loss of life and property from the recent has been devastating to many, and we have all been affected in some way.

I know of an associate who was days away from closing escrow on a home his clients were purchasing, which was then destroyed in the fire.

So what does a tenant, landlord, buyer or seller do when a property is destroyed?

A client who also is a real estate attorney, Stephen M. Flynn, sent me his timely newsletter discussing purchases and leases of real estate destroyed by the fires.

Using what I found in Flynns newsletter, I decided to dig a little deeper.

After review of the contracts I use in my business for purchasing and leasing of real estate, I found the following in each contract about damage, destruction or loss of property:

Basic commercial lease

According to the California Association of Realtors (CAR) commercial lease, if total or partial damage occurs to the premises, at no fault of the tenant, the landlord has the right to restore the premises within 90 days.

If the landlord elects not to restore the premises or cannot do so within 90 days, the tenant can terminate the lease. The tenant does not need to pay rent during the restoration period.

Detailed commercial lease

According to the American Industrial Real Estate and Commercial Real Estate (AIR CRE) standard commercial/industrial lease, within 30 days of damage the landlord must notify the tenant whether partial or total damage has occurred.

If partial damage occurred for an insured loss, that which could be repaired in six months or less, than the landlord shall commence with repairs at her cost.

If the damage is less than $10,000, the tenant has the option to repair. The lease shall remain in full force and effect.

If partial damage occurred for an uninsured loss (the negligent or willful act of tenant), the landlord can repair the damages and collect costs from tenant while the lease remains in full force and effect.

The landlord also has the choice to terminate the lease. There are additional provisions for notices and timing so read your lease.

If total damage occurred, the lease is terminated 60 days following the date of destruction.

The landlord can recover costs of the damage if caused by the tenants negligence or willful act.

Residential lease

According to the CAR residential lease or month-to-month rental agreement, if total or partial damage occurs to the premises, at no fault of the tenant, either party may terminate the agreement. Rent shall be abated at time of damage.

If the agreement is not terminated the landlord can choose to repair the premises and reduce the rent accordingly during repairs.

The landlord has the right to terminate the lease and will not provide a rent abatement when the damage is caused by the tenant.

Purchase agreement

Various CAR purchase agreements contain no provisions if damage or destruction were to occur before the transfer of title.

The AIR CRE commercial purchase contains provisions as noted below.

The Uniform Vendor and Purchaser Risk Act (Uniform Act) (Cal. Civ. Code  1662) is the default rule that would apply.

However, there are provisions in most purchase agreements allowing the buyer to terminate an agreement.

A buyer is purchasing the property as-is in its present physical condition as found on the date the offer was accepted.

If the property condition differs from what was expected before the closing of escrow, the buyer could require the seller to correct the issues or terminate the agreement.

The buyer usually retains contingencies for a period to perform inspections or secure financing. The buyer could exercise his right to terminate the agreement if the damage or destruction occurred before the expiration of the contingency period.

Though not a contingency of the sale, many agreements include a final verification of condition allowing the buyer to confirm the condition of the property usually within several days of closing escrow.

The buyer can verify the property is in the same condition as when the offer was accepted, regular maintenance has occurred, and seller completed any required repairs.

The AIR CRE standard offer does include provisions if destruction, damage or loss occurred.

If the damage is less than $10,000, the seller would need to repair before the closing of escrow.

If more than $10,000, the buyer can choose to continue with the sale or terminate the agreement. If the buyer decides to proceed with the sale he would be entitled to any insurance proceeds.

My recommendation is to review your lease and purchase agreement promptly.

If you have any real estate questions, please contact me. If you have legal questions, please contact me and I will put you in touch with Flynn.
Foley Family Charitable Foundation and Foley Family Wines announced a donation of $225,000 in support of the communities recently devastated by the Northern California fires.

A total of $225,000 will be divided among the Community Foundation Sonoma County, the Napa Valley Community Foundation and the Sonoma County Grape Growers Foundation.

The Foley Family Charitable Foundation has also set up a GoFundMe account to support those affected by fires in the community. Employee contributions to this fund will also be matched up to $75,000.

"We are deeply saddened by the destruction and devastation we see all around us, and our hearts go out to our wine country community," said Bill Foley.
Napa land-use authorities on Thursday will work toward a framework to decide where medical cannabis can be sold  and pot products perhaps made  in the city.

The Planning Commission will review an ordinance that would enable one or more dispensaries to sell marijuana for medicinal purposes, reviving a drive that stalled in 2013 when Napa backed out of the effort rather than run afoul of a federal ban on the drug. The policy change would bring Napa in line with the 2015 package of state laws that will set rules for growing, manufacturing and selling cannabis products, and is scheduled to launch state licensing of marijuana-based businesses in 2018.

Napas latest move toward legal marijuana sales got a push in May from the City Council, which declared an openness toward dispensaries in certain parts of town as well as permitting residents to grow personal-use plants outside as well as inside their homes.

According to a memorandum by Napas community development director Rick Tooker, the ordinance would decriminalize commercial marijuana sales rather than legalize them. Napas sales ban would technically stay in place, but the city would provide immunity from the ban for sellers as long as they obey local and state laws.

That distinction, Tooker wrote planners, should help Napa avoid the clash with federal law that derailed the citys earlier attempt to sponsor the opening of a dispensary  a move that ran aground after a state appeals court in 2011 threw out a similar dispensary ordinance in Long Beach for contradicting the U.S. governments existing marijuana ban.

Two kinds of businesses would be eligible for such city clearance  retailers selling to patients with a doctors recommendation or their caregivers, and small-scale manufacture of cannabis-based products such as edibles (pot-laced foods consumed as a smoking alternative) as a sideline to the making of food or non-alcoholic beverages. Napa would not extend protection to businesses involved in cannabis growing, warehousing, transport or testing.

Each clearance of a marijuana-related business would last a year and require annual renewal, and cannot be transferred to another business.

Napas ordinance would allow medical dispensaries in three types of zones  those marked for medical offices (like those on Trancas Street near Queen of the Valley Medical Center), light industry (such as the California Boulevard-Industrial Way crossing) or industrial parks including those near Napa Valley Corporate Drive.

Cannabis sellers would have to be at least 1,000 feet away from schools, parks and playgrounds, more than the states 600-foot minimum. Dispensaries also would not be allowed next to or across the street from homes or residential lots, but would be allowed behind existing residential properties.

Planners also will discuss how to bring the city in line with state laws guaranteeing residents the right to grow up to six marijuana plants at their homes for personal use. Napas proposed ordinance would allow indoor cultivation but require homeowners to obey building and construction codes, limit grow lighting to fewer than 1,200 watts, and keep the kitchen, all bathrooms and at least one bedroom free of pot plants.

In November 2016, California voters passed Proposition 64 allowing state residents 21 and older to grow up to six marijuana plants in their homes, for both medical and recreational use. Cities keep the right to allow or forbid outdoor cultivation on residential properties.
The Napa Police Department has been awarded a $115,000 grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety for a year-long program of special enforcements and public awareness efforts to prevent traffic-related deaths and injuries.

After falling to a 10-year low in 2010, the number of persons killed on roadways has climbed nearly 17 percent across the state, with 3,429 fatalities in 2015, police said. Pedestrian and bicycle fatalities now comprise nearly 25 percent of all traffic deaths.

Activities that the grant will fund include: Educational presentations, DUI checkpoints, DUI saturation patrols, bicycle and pedestrian safety enforcement, motorcycle safety enforcement, distracted driving enforcement, seat belt and child safety seat enforcement, speed, red light, and stop sign enforcement.

While alcohol remains the worst offender for DUI crashes, Napa Police Chief Steve Potter said prescription medications and marijuana can also be impairing by themselves, or in combination with alcohol, and can result in a DUI arrest.

Funding for this program is from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The American Red Cross has opened a Client Service Center for residents impacted by the Pocket, Tubbs, and Nuns Fires at the United Methodist Church, 625 Randolph St., in Napa.

The center, which opened Tuesday, will be open daily from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. through Saturday, Oct. 28.

The Red Cross Service Center offers affected families the opportunity to meet one-on-one with trained Red Cross caseworkers who will assess their disaster-caused needs, offer recovery information and referrals to other agencies, and provide some financial assistance to those who qualify. Please bring proof of pre-disaster address like a utility bill, electric bill, etc.

Red Cross volunteers will be handing out cleaning and comfort items in the hardest-hit communities devastated by the Pocket, Tubbs, and Nuns Fires. These items are free, and include water, snacks, and clean-up items such as gloves, trash bags and dust masks.

Red Cross volunteers will also be handing out meals over the next few days in the neighborhoods in Sonoma County hardest-hit by the fires.

-- Overnight, more than 450 people sought refuge from wildfires in five Red Cross and community shelters across the state.

-- Since the fires began, the Red Cross, community and government partners have provided more than 27,300 overnight stays in emergency shelters.

To help people affected by the California wildfires, visit redcross.org, calling 1- 800-RED CROSS or texting the word CAWILDFIRES to 90999 to make a $10 donation.
In Afghanistan in 2007, an immigrant and fellow U.S. soldier who I was helping obtain his U.S. citizenship mentioned to me that his wife was having trouble getting their child to the doctor. They were married right before we deployed, and she hadn't obtained the dependent military identification card that would allow her access to our stateside post and the doctors who provided the health benefits to which his son was entitled.

"Sergeant Smith," he told me, "she doesn't have an ID card."

And, he went on, she couldn't get one. I started to explain a few different ways that his wife could get an identification card without him being physically present in the United States to sponsor her, but after a perplexing back-and-forth I realized what the issue was: His wife was an undocumented immigrant.

This soldier had found his way to the United States from Central America, joined the military after gaining legal permanent resident status - his "green card" - volunteered for the airborne infantry in a time of war, and left his undocumented spouse and newborn child in uncertainty on combat orders that placed his life at risk, all so they could become Americans faster. This month, the military has announced that it is going to make that process harder. It's a slap in the face to immigrants who serve.

When I served with the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan, I took on the duty of helping brave immigrants apply for and expedite their citizenship process, literally creating new Americans while in the combat theater. Troops who submitted paperwork early on in our deployment left home as green-card holders and returned home as full-fledged citizens, often taking the oath of citizenship in the combat zone, in uniform, with rifles slung across their backs. Of everything I did during my service, there is nothing I'm prouder of than this.

Think about it: Men and women who aren't yet U.S. citizens volunteer to sacrifice on behalf of the vast majority of us who never put on the uniform. Recognizing these immigrants' service by clearing the path toward citizenship is simply the right thing to do.

And until a couple of weeks ago, green-card holders in the military were eligible for certification of their honorable service, for the purposes of having the citizenship process expedited, after "one day of service." But two weeks ago, the Defense Department announced that active-duty troops would have to wait at least six months -- a full year for reservists -- before getting certified. That's on top of a new requirement that green-card holders have their background investigation completed and receive their military security suitability determination "prior to entry in the active, reserve, or guard service"; before, they could ship out to basic training while their background check was still in progress. And as The Washington Post's Alex Horton reported last week, what the Defense Department didn't announce is that the Army -- the service branch in which I proudly served -- has a new policy that "halts indefinitely all enlistments involving green-card holders seeking to join the Army Reserve and National Guard."

The military's stated concern is about security -- not something to take lightly. But it's a sweeping policy that comes in response to relatively few reported cases of immigration fraud involving service members or recruits.

The net effect is that immigrants will wind up being discouraged or potentially, in some cases, prevented from serving in our armed forces, to the detriment of our military.

It has long been our country's policy and practice not just to allow but to actively encourage non-citizens to serve in our armed forces. Leaders in the earliest days of the republic recognized that immigrants bring immense benefit to the military community. George Washington enlisted the expertise of Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a former Prussian military officer, to organize and train his troops at Valley Forge. Von Steuben later became inspector general of the Continental Army. According to the Center for American Progress, 18 percent of Union troops during the Civil War were immigrants. During World War I, more than 192,000 immigrants acquired citizenship through military service. As of 2012, around 5,000 green-card holders were enlisting each year.

Aspiring Americans strengthen our forces with skills that are in high demand and low supply, such as translation and cultural expertise. According to the Immigration Policy Center, in the years following 9/11, immigrants helped the military meet recruitment goals in key military occupations.

The guys whose status as Americans I helped codify were from all over the globe. One of my fellow soldiers was an infantry team leader from Sudan. Another was a logistics specialist for an infantry company engaged in some of the fiercest fighting in the combat theater; he ensured that trigger-pullers on the front line had the food, water and ammunition they needed to survive. Originally from Nigeria, he supported his extended family on a private's salary. He initially joined the Army Reserve, and, it's worth noting, later requested transfer to active duty during basic training. If the Army's new green-card rules were in effect then, he might not have arrived for the first day of boot camp.

This latest policy shift falls right in line with the same shortsighted devaluing and weakening of the fortifying diversity of our armed services that we've seen when President Donald Trump says he's thinking about banning transgender troops from serving.

Since the inception of our nation, military service has been a ladder of opportunity for people from all walks of life. With these new rules, there might as well be "Aspiring Americans Need Not Apply" placards on the doors of military recruiting station. It's a shocking contradiction of American values, and the force we trust to protect us will be weaker because of it.
SAN FRANCISCO  A woman who was sexually exploited by law enforcement officers from multiple departments across the Bay Area has dropped her lawsuit against the Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office in light of a judges ruling to dismiss the criminal case against a former deputy.

The womans sexual encounters with police officers began when she was underage, leading to an expansive scandal that resulted in discipline for a dozen Oakland police officers and criminal charges for seven current and former officers from three departments.

Three officers faced felony charges, including Contra Costa County sheriffs Deputy Ricardo Perez. Perez, 29, was initially charged with oral copulation with a minor and two counts of engaging in lewd conduct. In August, the Alameda County District Attorneys Office added another charge of oral copulation with a minor based on evidence that came to light during a preliminary hearing.

But a judge dismissed the criminal case against Perez earlier this month, finding that prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence that Perez knew the woman was underage when he had sex with her. With the collapse of the case against Perez, prosecutors also dropped felony charges against Oakland police Officer Giovanni LoVerde, who remains on the force.

The woman already won a nearly $1 million settlement against the city of Oakland. In August, she filed lawsuits against the Richmond Police Department and the Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office.

The womans attorney, John Burris, said Mondaythat he decided to no longer pursue the lawsuit against Contra Costa County further because of the judges ruling.

He lost his job, so hes no longer a police officer, he got humiliated by all the sexual transgressions that came forth, Burris said.

From my point of view, this is just one of a number of cases we have and we think that she would be better served if we pursued the case against Richmond and all the officers there.

The woman sued Richmond in August, alleging substantial misconduct by multiple officers, including that some officers had sex with her in exchange for protection and others had asked her to disrobe when they came by her house.

The suit also accused her school resource officer, Terrance Jackson, of groping her at her home.

No Richmond police officers faced criminal charges, though several were disciplined.

Burris said that because the case against Richmond police involved multiple officers, there was a more clear systemic failure on the part of the department as opposed to the case in Contra Costa County, which involved only the single deputy.

Perez was placed on leave in June 2016 as details of the scandal emerged and resigned later that month. In court documents, prosecutors said that he had sex with the woman about 10 times in a dirt turnout near Fish Ranch Road in the Oakland Hills, a popular location for sexual activity by teenagers.

After the lawsuit against Contra Costa County was filed in August, Sheriff David Livingston said that the department would vigorously defend itself against the lawsuit, stressing that Perezs conduct was off-duty and that he had resigned in lieu of termination.

Asked for comment on the lawsuits dismissal Monday, sheriffs spokesman Jimmy Lee said he hadnt heard it had happened.
The St. Helena city managers proposal regarding community participation is one I agree with. However, the bureaucratic and the political process is very cumbersome. At this point, most of the energy, financial and intellectual resources are dealing with the sins of our fathers. We are drowning in our problems. There is no room for creative, out-of-the-box thinking.

The St. Helena Community Forum, to be effective, has to be free of politics, bureaucracy. It has to be led by a group of independently functioning individuals, without the limitations and destructive forces of the political and bureaucratic elements.

A think tank should be with individual responsibility and dedication. Thinking requires no money and no permission; it is free for all those who are willing. Give the community a chance, let it be.

We had many different committees dealing with the economy, water issues, environment and several other issues. All these committees have not discovered, and did not reveal anything we did not know beforehand, and we do not know now. We wasted time and money with these illusions and delusions.

The St. Helena Public Library, a political neutral zone, is the place for the St. Helena Community Forum, as the center of communication, reflection and understanding. The focus of the St. Helena Community Forum has to be the future of St. Helena.

We will introduce talking points that are the building blocks of our economic and intellectual existence. The St. Helena Chamber of Commerce is more of a fitting independent entity to play a leading role in the formation of a plan that generates the The Future of St. Helena. The Chamber needs a purpose to justify its existence.

The future of our town is the responsibility of all of us, individually and collectively. Creating our future must be a collaborative effort by the community and government, led by and inspired by all of us in our community.

We need creative, out-of-box ideas and approaches that can come only from our community.

The St. Helena Community Forum has to be an ongoing affair, no time and restriction, we can attend, one of us, two of us, or many of us, for a free-flowing exchange of ideas. Relevant information will be available for all to reflect on, contemplate and understand. This approach assures continuance and an ongoing meeting of the minds.

Thanks for listening, considering and understanding.

Ferenc Brunner

St. Helena
An old English proverb suggests: It's an ill wind that blows nobody good.

The recent fires throughout Napa and Sonoma counties qualify as Ill winds.

It is common practice for Cal Fire officials to name fires by their place of origin. Ergo, the fire that destroyed over 3,500 Santa Rosa homes and businesses began near Tubbs Lane in Calistoga. However, it quickly exploded into a firestorm driven by a 70 mph Diablo Wind. The name of the wind could not be more perfect: Devils Wind.

Devil Winds are atypical winds that result when high-pressure builds over the Nevada desert and causes air to move toward a low-pressure zone over the Pacific Ocean. As the wind rushes down the western Sierra Nevada slope, it is compressed and gets hotter, drier and faster. This condition is the opposite of prevailing westerly winds that typically blow moist, ocean-cooled air over hotter California climes.

Diablo Winds typically occur in the summertime when the combination of higher heat, higher wind velocity and extremely low humidity create a potentially disastrous formula for wildfires in California. In Southern California, they are known as the Santa Ana winds.

The Tubbs firestorm destroyed a several-mile-wide swath, devouring forests, vineyards, homes and ranches on its 15-mile rampage to the north edge of the city of Santa Rosa. Reaching the northeast outskirts of the city, it mysteriously veered south in a fiery inferno that consumed over 2,500 homes. Many residents had to flee with only the clothes they were wearing.

The fire is still active, and along with several other fires in Sonoma County, the number of homes, structures and businesses destroyed has exceeded 3,500. It has the potential of being the worst wildfire in California history.

Although Sonoma County lies west of Napa County, Napa Valley was covered in a thick blanket of smoke since the first Sunday night of the fires. The smoke was bothersome, but a trifling inconvenience compared to the total devastation that thousands of Sonoma residents and business owners are struggling to cope with.

This all changed Wednesday, Oct. 11. We thought we were safe until a spot-fire erupted eight miles west of us, near the junction of St. Helena and Calistoga roads. It was headed in our direction and posed a threat to our home and the town of St. Helena. I drove four miles to the top of Spring Mountain Road where a Napa County sheriffs deputy had blocked the road. He described the fire and said that it was rapidly approaching upslope. He went on to say that pilots were desperately trying to suppress it with fire retardant, but if they failed he would have to close Spring Mountain Road. He didnt have to tell me that if the fire crested over the ridge, its downslope path led directly to our home and the heart of St. Helena.

I was confident that if this happened, we could pack up prized possessions and evacuate to our daughters home in Tiburon. My wife was not convinced, and so we packed up and fled, not knowing if we would ever see our beloved home again.

Although our Tiburon family welcomed us warmly, the night was long and sleep was interrupted with images of our house going up in flames. Finally, morning arrived and we were able to call our neighbor, who opted to wait for the mandatory evacuation order. It never came. Evidently, the amazing pilots were able to stop the blaze on the Sonoma side of Spring Mountain and possibly save our home and the town of St. Helena.

Upon returning home, walking through the house was a surreal experience. When we left, we had to concede the possibility that it would not survive the fire. But it did and we felt a bit like we were in a Twilight Zone.

The horrific event has created a schizophrenic dilemma. Of course, we are grateful that our home was not destroyed, but heartsick over the misery and trauma that so many have been forced to deal with.

Existentialists might dismiss the cause of the horrific conflagration as simply a capricious whim of Mother Nature. However, I suspect that poets, sages and seekers are more likely to describe the massive destruction as the result of the Devils Wind: It's an ill wind that blows nobody good.

Lowell H. Young
1956-2017Ursula Christine (Carbone) Meade, loving and devoted wife, mother and grandmother, died unexpectedly on October 15th in her Pope Valley home at the age of 61.

She was born in Norwood, Massachusetts on June 7th, 1956. Ursula grew up in a large, loving family to Stephen Louis Carbone and Ursula (Gately) Carbone. She graduated from Norwood High School in 1974 and attended New England Deaconess School of Nursing in Boston, graduating in 1977. Ursula made many friendships in nursing school that lasted until this day. Shortly after graduation, Ursula and her sister Liz visited their brother Stephen, in the Napa Valley. While visiting, Ursula met her future husband, Patrick Meade, and canceled her return flight home. Patrick and Ursula married in 1979 and began their life together in Pope Valley.

During her 40-year nursing career, Ursula was a compassionate and dedicated caregiver whose patients truly loved and appreciated the care she provided. She worked in many areas of nursing over the years at both the Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa and St. Helena Hospital. She had a passion for cardiac rehab was most recently working as a Cardiac Rehab Lead Nurse.

In addition to the time she devoted to raising her two beloved sons, Ursula was an active board member for the Pope Valley Scholarship Fund and she enjoyed volunteering with Pat at the Pope Valley Fire Dept Dinners and Dances. Ursula kept in touch with all her siblings and visited her East Coast family often and recently attended the 62nd Carbone family reunion in July.

Ursula was overjoyed at the arrival of her two grandchildren born just days before her death and the last week of her life was one of her happiest.

Ursula is survived by her husband of 38 years, Pat Meade; son Dan, daughter-in-law Reis, and granddaughter Daniella of Santa Rosa CA; son Chris, daughter-in-law Gina, and grandson, Lucas of Napa CA; mother-in-law, Bea Meade of Lafayette CA; her brother, Stephen Carbone of Middletown CA; sisters Elizabeth Carbone, Mary Beth Curran and Ann Cirillo all of MA; brother and sister-in-law, Joe and Arleen Carbone of MA; sister and brother-in-law, Susan and Jeff Beattie of VT, and sister-in-law and her husband Cathy and Edward Fitzgerald of Martinez CA. She is also survived by many loving nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her parents, her baby brother, Paul, and her father-in-law, Ray Meade. Ursula will be remembered by her family and many dear friends for her extremely caring and self-sacrificing personality.

A memorial and celebration of life will be held at the Pope Valley Farm Center, 5800 Pope Valley Road, Pope Valley, on Saturday, December 9th at 11 a.m. with a reception to follow. A local charity fund will be setup in Ursulas name, in lieu of flowers donations may be made in her memory. More information to follow at the celebration of life.
Arsonist who set fires in California an illegal alien who was deported five times but California gave him sanctuary

As Democrats on the far Left freak out over the Trump administrations ongoing efforts to do something radical regarding immigration law  which is to say, enforce it  the top U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, Director Tom Homan, has confirmed that the deadly, ruinous wildfires ravaging California were allegedly started by an illegal alien who had been deported at least twice before.

As reported by Breitbart News, the fires have devastated Californias vaunted and legendary wine country and have cost the state some $1 billion in damages. But all is good, you see, because California  the sanctuary state  would never think of disrespecting anyone who was in our country illegally.

Even if they kill a bunch of people after intentionally starting the states worst wildfire ever.

In talking with the media, Homan confirmed that ICE had arrested a man in connection with starting a fire in Sonoma County Wine Country who is an illegal alien from Mexico, his home country.

Homan also said his agency had issued detainer requests for the suspect, Jesus Fabian Gonzalez, five times just in the past year, including one issued on Oct. 16 after authorities suspected him of being involved in starting at least one fire. All of his previous arrests were made by Sonoma County on various felony and misdemeanor charges, Homan said.

Though Gov. Jerry Moonbeam Brown, a Democrat, recently signed legislation making the entire state a sanctuary for illegal aliens, Sonoma County in the past was always a sanctuary jurisdiction, meaning police and authorities there did not cooperate fully with federal immigration officials  including honoring detainer requests from ICE.

The agency was never notified of Mr. Gonzalezs various releases, Homan wrote in a statement. (See more related information regarding the nations illegal immigration problem at InvasionUSA.news.)

Several fires have burned through the region so it isnt yet clear what role Gonzalez allegedly played as regards the entire disaster.

In his statement, Homan made sure he mentioned just how uncooperative Sonoma County authorities have been in the past regarding the honoring of federal detainer requests, and how that very likely led to the devastation the county has now experienced:

Once again, a non-cooperative jurisdiction has left their community vulnerable to dangerous individuals and preventable crimes. ICE lodged a detainer against Jesus Gonzalez with Sonoma County jail officials on October 16, following his arrest on felony charges for maliciously setting fire to a property. This is especially troubling in light of the massive wildfires already devastating the region. Over the past year, ICE has lodged detainers against Mr. Gonzalez after four separate arrests by Sonoma County on various felony and misdemeanor charges. ICE was never notified of Mr. Gonzalez various releases. Additionally, Mr. Gonzales has been returned to his home country of Mexico on two separate occasions. The residents of Sonoma County, and the state of California, deserve better than policies that expose them to avoidable dangers. Non-cooperation policies  now enshrined in California state law  ensure only one thing: criminals who would otherwise be deported will be released and left free to reoffend as they please.

The path forward for any Californian who has lost a loved one or property because of these fires seems clear: Brown and every lawmaker who voted in favor of the statewide sanctuary bill must be held legally liable for the damages. There is simply no other way around it.

They are accessories to the crimes and to the losses of life and property, and it should not matter that they are elected officials because federal law prevents them from doing exactly what they did  implement a non-cooperation policy with immigration enforcement agents.

If a Republican governor and legislature, or President Donald Trump, were responsible for implementing an illegal and irresponsible law that led to massive death and property destruction, Democrats would act like barbarians at the gate in order to bring justice to the situation.

The same thing needs to happen now: Americans concerned about institutionalized Democratic lawlessness must insist they be held responsible when they kill people and destroy property.

J.D. Heyes is editor of The National Sentinel and a senior writer for Natural News and News Target.

Sources include:

Breitbart.com

NaturalNews.com
Turkish Opposition Urges Dialogue Over Iraq's Kirkuk

A Turkish opposition party leader on Tuesday called for Iraq's central government to lead dialogue and negotiations over the disputed province of Kirkuk, a recent flashpoint of conflict between the Erbil-based Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and Baghdad. At his party's parliamentary group meeting, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli warned against ethnic and sectarian conflict in the oil-rich Kirkuk province, where Iraqi joint forces -- including army troops, Federal Police units, and Hashd al-Shaabi fighters -- established "full control" over the city center on Oct. 16 following a tactical withdrawal by Peshmerga forces. "A dialogue, meeting, negotiation process on defining the governmental and political status of Kirkuk should be launched under the leadership of Iraq's central government," said Bahceli. Bahceli noted that the historical presence of ethic Turkmen in the region must be taken in account when deciding Kirkuk's status. "Also the Turkmen must be involved in the process," he said. Bahceli also said all PKK terrorists should be eliminated from Kirkuk. The PKK has waged a terror campaign against Turkey for more than 30 years, during which more than 40,000 people have been killed. He added, "Within this process of defining the final status of Kirkuk, as a first step, normalization should be provided, and it is essential to deal with the demographic structure in Kirkuk which was damaged before." Territorial integrity During the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Peshmerga forces seized Kirkuk, prompting an influx of Kurds into the city, and in 2014 it was seized by KRG Peshmerga as Iraqi forces fled in the face of Daesh's advance. Kirkuk's population is mainly made up of ethnic Turkmen, Arabs and Kurds. Bahceli also stressed Iraq's territorial integrity, saying: "It is an essential to find a solution for the status of Kirkuk within the independence, territorial integrity and national unity of Iraq." Bahceli said that the rights of Iraq's constituent ethnicities -- including Turkmen, Arabs and Kurds, as well as Assyrians and Chaldeans -- should be secured within the status of Kirkuk. He said: "Kirkuk should have a special status independent of any province." The retaking of Kirkuk by Iraqi forces last week was supported by Turkey, which, along with other regional powers and Baghdad, opposed an illegitimate referendum last month on Kurdish regional independence. Although the KRG's autonomy is recognized under the Iraqi Constitution, some territories -- including Kirkuk -- are disputed between Baghdad and Erbil. 'US should make up its mind on Turkey' Turning to tensions between Ankara and Washington, Bahceli said, "The U.S. should decide whether we are friends or foes." "If we are allies, strategic partners, everybody must immediately display the morals, politics and virtue to do what is necessary and pulls his weight," said Bahceli, urging the U.S. to abide by the rules of alliances. Bahceli also criticized the U.S. over Metin Topuz, a local U.S. Consulate employee arrested over alleged links to the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), the group led by U.S.-based Fetullah Gulen and behind last year's defeated coup in Turkey. The U.S. recently asked Turkey to return Topuz's cellphone. "If the phone is so valuable, here you should give [Turkey] traitor Gulen and get your phone," said Bahceli. Ankara has long complained that the U.S. is dragging its feet on extraditing Gulen. Bahceli added: "[With this phone] you can talk to any terrorist group [ranging] from Daesh to FETO, and from the PKK to the YPG, all night long." Turkey has also complained of U.S. support for the PKK/PYD, Syrian branch of the terrorist PKK. Washington recognizes the PKK as a terrorist group, but claims the PKK/PYD is a "reliable ally" in the fight against Daesh. FETO and its U.S.-based leader Fetullah Gulen orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016, which left 250 people martyred and nearly 2,200 injured. Ankara accuses FETO of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary.
President Jimmy Carter, Emory University Distinguished Professor, visited campus Oct. 11 to give his candid thoughts on media and "loving thy neighbor" for a project created by Emory College students. Photo by Loli Lucaciu.

When you make a mistake  even if it takes a lot of courage  to admit the mistake is better for you in the long run.

Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States and Emory University Distinguished Professor, delivered this advice to a team of Emory students conducting an on-camera interview of the 93-year-old statesman earlier this month.

The students, members of film and media studies lecturer Rob Barracanos Film Practicum class, filmed Carters thoughts on topics including the battle over truth in reporting, social medias influence on the current political climate and the real-world implications of the Biblical call to love thy neighbor.

The Carter interview, conducted Oct. 11, will be part of a larger project Barracanos class has created to respond to divisions in the country following the presidential election. A collection of filmed meditations on love and acceptance entitled the Love Your Neighbor Project will eventually be published on its own website.

Carter, who still teaches a regular Sunday school course at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, was a natural fit for the project.

I think that having a voice of authority speaking to young minds is super important, says Emory College senior Urmi Chatterjee, a student in the class and head producer of the Carter interview. Especially talking about loving thy neighbor when theres so much hate going on. I loved what he said about how it doesnt matter what religion youre from or what you believe, Jesus teaches [that we are] to love everyone.

The class also probed Carter with questions addressing the medias role in our democratic system and the phenomenon of fake news.

I think during the time I was president the media was much more united in trying to tell the truth, Carter said. Theres no doubt that in a democracy, the truth does matter. The success of democratic principles is dependent to a great degree to the access the majority of the people have to the facts as they pertain to a certain issue.

The assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy happened just before I ran, so people were looking for the truth, Carter went on to explain. As far as I know, when I was in office, I never told a lie.

Carter surprised students with his knowledge of social media and his assertion that if platforms such as Twitter and Facebook had been available to him during his political career, he would have used them to the best of [his] ability.

I didnt expect him to know so much about memes, laughed Chatterjee.

When asked what advice he had for young people beginning careers in media creation, Carter came back to the need for honesty: Its better in the long term to tell the truth and to be accurate in reporting.
For the past decade, the Emory Alumni Board (EAB) has awarded scholarships to Emory students making a positive impact on their community. This year, the $10,000 award recipients are a diverse group and all will graduate this spring.

One is an undergraduate who has been involved in almost every aspect of Emory life since he stepped foot on campus as a first-year student. One graduate student is working to implement race-based curricula and is committed to inclusion and diversity work alongside her own studies.

Another recipient is back for her second Emory graduate degree and spent the years in between programs as a highly committed alumna in Beijing and Shanghai. And the fourth recipient works toward the goal of ensuring health care is a right for the most vulnerable populations.

We asked the four winners to answer five questions about their time at Emory and their future plans.

Elizabeth Odunaiya 18PH

New York native Elizabeth Odunaiya comes from a line of strong women with a background in the medical arts. Her grandmother was a nurse. Her mother was a pharmacist and her older sister is an anesthesiologist. So, its only natural that Odunaiya finds herself in health sciences.

Shell graduate this spring from the Rollins School of Public Health with a master's degree in public health in behavioral science and health education and a certificate in human rights. During her time here, Odunaiya has been active in student government, furthering student diversity and inclusion efforts and working to develop race-based curricula at Emory.

Why Emory?

What I like most about Emory, particularly Rollins, is the acceptance of people from diverse backgrounds and experiences. Diversity and inclusion are two things that Rollins takes pride in. Coming from New York City, I am surrounded by people of different ethnicities, those who are gender non-conforming, people with different abilities, and that is something that Im truly appreciative of.

In the ideal world, where do you see yourself in five years? In 10 years?

In an ideal world, I will be the woman that can do it all! I would be invested in a company or organization that is also invested in me. I would be leading the fight to end gender-based violence and creating a new world view of the meaning of feminism. I would be empowering the next generation of black and brown women, providing them with opportunities to be the best versions of themselves. I would also have a family of my own, a loving husband, and have time to travel the world.

What do you see as your relationship with Emory after graduation?

I hope to be in a position to give back to the community that has invested in me and given me the tools I need to succeed. Volunteering on the alumni board would be the perfect way to ensure that other students are given recognition and the opportunities that they may not receive elsewhere.

What is the biggest benefit for you from the EAB Scholarship?

The biggest benefit for me is the new network of hardworking and visionary people I will now be connected to. Being at Rollins School of Public Health can sometimes put people in a bubble. I am honored to be able to interface with people from various disciplines and learn the stories behind what drives them to do what they do.

What is one word to describe your time at Emory?

Intentional.

May Pang 09B 18L

A Chinese native, May Pang is back for her second Emory graduate degree. A 2009 Goizueta Business School alumna expecting to complete her law degree this spring, Pang spent the years in between her 2009 graduation and her return to Atlanta as an active alumna.

She served in various leadership capacities in the Shanghai chapter, then was instrumental in launching and leading the Emory alumni chapter in Beijing. As she built a career in finance, she kept her Emory ties strong, serving as a representative to the Emory International Leadership Conference, hosting former President James Wagner and helping to welcome current President Claire E. Sterk. When I considered legal study, Emory is the only law school I considered," she says.

Why Emory?

For business school, it's because I heard that Goizueta Business School has a culture that people are very close to each other and the community is a very friendly one. For law school, it's because I'm a loyal alumna and Emory is always my first choice whenever I want to continue my study.

Favorite things about Emory?

Emory has an open and friendly culture. People I meet here are intelligent, nice and interesting. Alumni are awesome and warm-hearted.

In the ideal world, where do you see yourself in five years? In 10 years?

I want to do something that can make more impact in the risk solutions financial-tech area. Especially when I see there are many cross border opportunities between the U.S. and China.

What do you see as your relationship with Emory after graduation?

I used to serve as president of the Emory Alumni Association Beijing Chapter and will continue to involve myself with the Emory Alumni Association no matter where I go.

What is one word to describe your time at Emory?

Memorable.

Jeffrey You 18B

From his very first days on campus, New England native Jeffrey You, who graduates in May with a bachelor's degree in business administration from Goizueta Business School, has immersed himself in Emory life.

Hes served in leadership roles in his fraternity, executive roles with the Student Alumni Board (most recently as current co-president), played violin with the symphony orchestra, and most recently was an orientation leader for the incoming first-year class. And if he hasnt led an organization in some way, hes helped oversee their activities as student manager of Emorys Dobbs University Center.



Why Emory?

First, the class size really appealed to me. Second was the city of Atlanta. I enjoyed all the attractions it had to offer in terms of different types of cultures and Atlanta is home to the third-largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies. Especially studying business, Atlanta would be a great city to be near. Third was the campus environment. Walking down Emorys campus for the first time, you would never guess its proximity to a major metropolitan city.

What do you like most about Emory?

I like the people at Emory the most. Everyone here is so friendly and sincerely wants to get to know you and be there for you. It is a very collaborative environment; although many people here are very intelligent, it is wonderful to see the sharing of knowledge in a we all succeed together mentality.

In the ideal world, where do you see yourself in five years? In 10 years?

In the short term, I hope to continue working after graduation. In the long term, I see myself going back to school for some type of graduate study and in the very distant future, using the skills and knowledge I have acquired to positively impact society in a meaningful way.

What do you see as your relationship with Emory after graduation?

Through my involvement in the Student Alumni Board and interactions with the Emory Alumni Board, it is very clear to me that alumni help keep the spirit of the university alive. During my freshman year, I volunteered at the Class of 1965 reunion. I was stunned by all the 50-year alumni who had come back to Emory and how much interest they had in my undergraduate career and what I was pursuing.

This experience helped me realize that students want help from alumni but may be afraid to ask, while alumni want to help students but may not know how. I hope to stay involved with Emory as an alumnus after graduation to continue bridging that gap and strengthening the relationship between students and alumni.

What is one word to describe your time at Emory?

Journey.

Regina Zuniga de la Cerda 18PH

A trained and practicing physician in her native Guatemala, Regina Zuniga de la Cerda focused her skills on the reproductive and maternal health of indigenous women in rural settings. This led to her interest in public health, focusing on the right to health care in vulnerable populations.

During Zuniga de la Cerdas time here at Emory, she has been engaged in a study of African American women in the post-partum period, studying health care from the womans perspective. She will graduate in the spring with a master's degree in public health.

Why Emory?

When I came to visit Emory, I fell in love. I loved the green campus, the art displayed in its wall and most importantly the people working and studying at Rollins School of Public Health. In addition, Emory offered more opportunities for international students. And faculty seemed particularly interested in each individual.

What do you like most about Emory?

The diversity of students and faculty. I have learned so much outside of the classroom, discussing topics such as religion, health, politics and cultures from around the globe. There is an infrastructure dedicated for research. You learn from the primary investigators, who have years of experience in different countries and projects.

In the ideal world, where do you see yourself in five years? In 10 years?

Its hard to plan for five or 10 years ahead. There is no ideal world and I believe you make the best of the time and opportunities you have at the present moment. I have also experienced that as time passes, you change and so do your priorities. And that exactly explains why I came to Emory for my MPH. I just hope I can keep being true to myself in the pursuit of my own goals and in such a way that I will be able to ameliorate the pain of the ones around me, in one way or another.

What do you see as your relationship with Emory after graduation?

Emory is a place that will help you become whomever you wish to be. I want to keep engaged in this community and help others experience what I have.

What is one word to describe your time at Emory?

Worthwhile.
- U.S takes strong action against Myanmar military amid Rohingya crisis.





- Withdraws military assistance to Myanmar.





- Calls for individuals and groups to be held accountable for the crisis.

The United States has disclosed that it is withdrawing military assistance from all Myanmar military units and officers that have been involved in the widespread violence against the Rohingya Muslims living in Rakhine State that has led to a massive humanitarian crisis in the region.





This is the United States government's strongest action so far against the Myanmar government and military for their role in the ongoing Rohingya crisis the the country's Rakhine State.





"We express our gravest concern with recent events in Rakhine state and the violent, traumatic abuses Rohingya and other communities have endured," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in announcing the punitive measures.





"It is imperative that any individuals or entities responsible for atrocities, including non-state actors and vigilantes, be held accountable."





The U.S. last week also called for the Myanmar military to be held accountable for their role in the ongoing Rohingya crisis that has led over 600,000 Muslims to flee into Bangladesh.





In addition, the U.S. will also be cancelling previously issued waivers to senior Myanmar Military officials and is also considering economic measures against the country.





The US has also rescinded invitations to senior members of Myanmar's security forces to US-sponsored events and is pressing for "unhindered access" to the affected areas for a United Nations fact-finding mission, international organisations and the media.





"The government of Burma, including its armed forces, must take immediate action to ensure peace and security; implement commitments to ensure humanitarian access to communities in desperate need; facilitate the safe and voluntary return of those who have fled or been displaced in Rakhine state; and address the root causes of systematic discrimination against the Rohingya," Nauert said.
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Superintendent Endorsement Program earns national recognition, certification

by Christi Mathis

CARBONDALE, Ill.  Southern Illinois University Carbondales recently redesigned Superintendent Endorsement Program has recently been evaluated, earning certification and national recognition.

The Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation replaced the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education as the accrediting agency for the superintendents program in 2016, setting forth more stringent standards. In addition, Illinois law regarding the program structure changed and SIUs updated program reflects and implements those modifications. They include higher admission standards and more detailed internship experiences for program participants, according to Saran Donahoo, associate professor and chair of the College Student Personnel Program and doctoral program in the Department of Educational Administration and Higher Education within the College of Education and Human Services.

Donahoo said CAEP emphasizes practical preparation, communicating and assessing clear learning objectives and ensuring that candidates are job ready when they complete the superintendents program. The evaluation process requires a self-study that includes information on what we teach, how we teach, who we have taught, how these students performed, how we assessed their performance and how they applied this knowledge in their practical experience, Donahoo said.

The work of faculty, staff and administrators in redesigning the superintendent program, which prepares participants to be school superintendents and administrators, paid off in multiple ways. The Illinois State Educator Preparation and Licensure Board, an Illinois State Board of Education unit, approved the redesigned program this fall. The SEPLB includes teachers, school administrators and higher education faculty and administrators and their review ensures that the program thoroughly addresses both the academic and practical components.

In addition, SIUs superintendent program earned National Recognition Status from CAEP, the first program within the college to do so.

The fact that the superintendent program has obtained national recognition shows that SIU remains at the forefront of implementing updated national and state standards, Donahoo said.

SIUs education program covers the entire gamut for people who want to teach and/or be school administrators. The university offers teaching programs for all age levels as well as a Principal Preparation Program and the Superintendent Endorsement Program.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-23 23:12:47|Editor: Zhou Xin

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MADRID, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said on Monday there was still "a chance" for Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont to avoid Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution being applied to his region.

The Spanish government on Saturday agreed to apply the article to suspend regional control of key Catalan institutions, such as the treasury, police, and regional TV network TV3, giving the control to Madrid as well as sacking Puigdemont and his government, in the wake of the Oct. 1 independence referendum in the area.

This will be ratified by the senate, (where the ruling People's Party has a comfortable majority), on Friday.

But Saenz de Santamaria said article 155 could still be avoided if Puigdemont "went to the senate to make the declarations which he believes to be opportune."

She said that the senate "has the capacity" to adapt to circumstances and "modify the measures until the last moment," but added that there has been no contact between the central government in Madrid and the Catalan regional government in the wake of the approval of article 155.

Sources from the Catalan authority have ruled out calling a snap regional election as a way of stopping article 155.

On Monday, radical Catalan Nationalist Party CUP issued a communique calling the article an "aggression" against not just the Catalan regional government, but all of the Catalan people and demanding both the proclamation of a Catalan republic "as soon as possible," and "a reply in the form of massive civil disobedience."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 00:33:29|Editor: Zhou Xin

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NEW YORK, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Cisco Systems, the world's largest networking gear producer, said on Monday that it has reached a deal to acquire U.S. software company BroadSoft for 1.9 billion U.S. dollars.

Cisco said it will pay 55 dollars per share, in cash. Shares of BroadSoft rose 1.41 percent to 54.675 dollars in early trading after the announcement, while Cisco's stock gained 0.96 percent to trade at 34.575 dollars per share.

The acquisition was expected to close during the first quarter of 2018. Upon completion of the transaction, BroadSoft employees will join Cisco's Unified Communications Technology Group.

Analysts said the deal allows Cisco to further diversify away from its stagnating switches and routers business by giving it a stronger foothold in selling unified communications software to big telecommunications firms, according to CNBC.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbinstold said on Monday that the deal will help Cisco's enterprise clients and small businesses connect better with consumers.

"Every customer, when they think about their digital strategies, they think about how they interact with their customers," said Robbins.

"This acquisition of BroadSoft actually gives us the most comprehensive set of collaboration solutions for our customers," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 04:19:45|Editor: yan

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DAMASCUS, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- At least 14 civilians were killed and 32 others wounded on Monday in a U.S.-led airstrike in Syria's eastern city of Deir al-Zour, the state TV reported.

The strike targeted the government-controlled Al-Qosoor neighborhood in the city, said the report.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the identity of the warplanes, which carried out the airstrike, is unknown.

The United States has been backing the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in their push to drive out the Islamic State (IS) militants from areas in the northern countryside of Deir al-Zour.

Meanwhile, the government forces continued to advance against IS in the southeastern countryside of Deir al-Zour, after stripping IS of the al-Mayadeen city, one of the IS key strongholds in Deir al-Zour province.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 04:34:49|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- States must fulfil legal responsibilities for the right to food, and impunity must be removed for those who use hunger as a weapon of war, a UN expert said Monday.

The world is facing the most severe humanitarian crisis since the creation of the United Nations as 20 million people are under severe famine, said Hilal Elver, special rapporteur on the right to food for the UN Human Rights Council, in her annual report to the UN General Assembly.

She put South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and northeast Nigeria, plus parts of Syria as countries and regions of great danger for famine, all of which had arisen from conflict.

She called for an urgent shift in thinking away from crisis reactions and toward famine prevention. "Contrary to popular belief, casualties resulting directly from combat usually make up only a small proportion of deaths in conflict zones, with most individuals in fact perishing from hunger and disease," said Elver.

She asked for international action to fight impunity on the deliberate use of food as a weapon of war.

Although there are provisions in international humanitarian law and international human rights law, there is wide-spread impunity, she said. The International Criminal Court has never indicted any individual in relation to famine, she noted.

"The international community should make a serious kind of act to make clear that this is a war crime or crime against humanity," she told reporters in a briefing on her report. "Otherwise we will give a certain kind of permission to countries or other actors (for the use of food as a weapon of war)."

"The human right to adequate food is a core right, indispensable for the enjoyment of all other human rights," Elver said. "Freedom from hunger is accepted as part of customary international law, rendering it binding on all states."

She added that the most serious cases should be referred to the International Criminal Court for investigation and possible prosecution.

"If the international community is serious about the imperative character of the right to food and the eradication of food insecurity in times of war and peace, steps must be taken to encourage the implementation of existing standards and to codify international law principles applicable to the right to food," she said.

The special rapporteur urged all governments to focus on long-term policies to break the vicious cycle of recurring famines.

"Human rights violations, war crimes, repression and gross forms of inequality are conditions that frequently give rise to famine," she said. "The attention and commitment of the international community must, as a matter of the highest priority, be directed toward eliminating the root causes of famine, and not limited to ad hoc responses to the agonizing symptoms of the latest food emergency."

Special rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 05:15:00|Editor: yan

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ADDIS ABABA, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley here on Monday discussed regional security issues with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and senior African Union (AU) officials.

Speaking at a joint press briefing with Minata Samate, AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, at the AU headquarters in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, the U.S. ambassador expressed her country's interest to work together with the AU and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) so as to bring lasting solutions to Somalia, where the terrorist group, Al-Shabaab, causes much damage.

Haley, who is in Ethiopia as part of her visit to three African countries that are Ethiopia, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, also expressed the need to put pressure on South Sudan's two warring factions towards peace and security in the world's youngest nation.

According to state news agency ENA, Haley, during her meeting with Desalegn in Addis Ababa on Monday, discussed issues that include peacekeeping efforts that are underway to bring sustainable peace and security in South Sudan, Somalia and the region in general.

The ambassador is expected to start her visit to South Sudan and the Democratic Republic Congo starting from Tuesday.

Haley's visit to Ethiopia and AU, where she discussed the current situation in Somalia, coincided with Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed's visit to Ethiopia, who arrived in Addis Ababa earlier on Monday.

Mohamed, speaking to reporters upon his arrival, has urged the international community to unite against Al Shabaab and its brutality following the group's attack that killed over 300 civilians and injured more in what was dubbed as the worst single explosion in Mogadishu's history.

"This threat is not only a threat to Somalia but also to our neighboring countries. That is why I am here to seek support and solidarity from our brothers here in Ethiopia," Mohamed said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 05:20:02|Editor: Zhou Xin

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China's Deputy Minister of Commerce Qian Keming (L) shakes hands with Jordan's Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Imad Fakhoury on the signing ceremony of the Programme for Development, Economic and Technical Cooperation between China and Jordan for the years 2018-2020, in Amman, Jordan, Oct. 23, 2017. (Xinhua/Lin Xiaowei)

AMMAN, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- China is committed to providing technical and financial support to Jordan, said China's Deputy Minister of Commerce Qian Keming on Monday.

The minister made the remarks at the 7th session of the Joint Committee for Economic, Commercial and Technical Cooperation between Jordan and China, which focused on key areas for increased cooperation.

Calling Jordan "a key partner" in the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China, Qian reaffirmed China's keenness to boost cooperation with Jordan in various areas.

Jordan's Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Imad Fakhoury said the two sides discussed increased aid to Jordan to implement projects of priority, including upgrading civil defence vehicles and inspection devices at the Customs Department under a 70-million-U.S. dollar grant provided by China.

Fakhoury said the discussions also covered the need to increase Chinese investment in Jordan in the fields of gas, shale oil, renewable energy, and potash and phosphate fertilizers.

The two sides agreed to start technical meetings to draw a draft concerning their cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative.

Meanwhile, several agreements were signed with regard to increasing China-Jordan future cooperation in sectors such as tourism.

They also signed the Programme for Development, Economic and Technical Cooperation for the years 2018-2020.

A development assistance deal was also signed to finance the road project (Salt al Ardah) in Jordan, with a total budget of 31.6 million U.S. dollars, which will be implemented by Jordanian and Chinese companies.

From 1999 to 2016, China had provided Jordan with grants and loans worth a total of 225 million dollars.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 06:50:24|Editor: Hou Qiang

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CARACAS, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Venezuela's regional election results have not been officially contested by the opposition, despite their public claims of fraud, the head of the election body said on Monday.

Tania D'Amelio, one of five rectors on the National Electoral Council (CNE), called on opposition parties alleging vote tampering to use official channels to challenge the results.

"As of today, Monday, absolutely no one has contested the CNE, so this can't be political preaching to destabilize the country and generate conflicts," D'Amelio said in an interview broadcast by state VTV.

"I call on the political parties, above all the opposition, who are the ones saying there is fraud, to contest the process before the CNE," she added.

The Oct. 15 elections saw the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) snap up the vast majority of gubernatorial races, winning 18 of 23 states. The remaining five went to the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD).

"The Venezuelan electoral process is the most audited in the world by all of the political organizations that participate in the polls," said D'Amelio, referring to the different safeguards built into the system.

The official presented the document the CNE issued with the final results, saying it was "endorsed with the headings of representatives of all the political organizations, both revolutionary (ruling and reform parties) and opposition," she said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 09:05:43|Editor: Zhou Xin

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U.S. President Donald Trump (R) shakes hands with visiting Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as they deliver joint statements at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States, on Oct. 23, 2017. The two leaders held talks at the White House to further boost cooperation between the two countries on economic, trade and defence issues. (Xinhua/Ting Shen)

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- As "the most important bilateral relationship in the world," good U.S.-China ties will benefit the region and the world, said visiting Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Monday.

Lee made the remarks in joint statements with U.S. President Donald Trump, who will kick off his first Asia trip next month since assuming the presidency.

Sound relations between the two big countries will "enable countries in the Asia Pacific, including America and China themselves, to enjoy regional stability, peace, and prosperity," Lee said.

Lee said he also hoped that the United States will be able to "maintain a stable and constructive relationship with China, engaging each other at the highest levels, building trust, establishing institutional mechanisms."

In the statements, Lee also noted the mounting tensions on the Korean Peninsula. "There is no quick and easy solution," he said, adding that "pressure is necessary but so is dialogue."

Lee was on a six-day visit to the United States starting from Saturday.

Earlier in the day, Trump and Lee witnessed the signing of an agreement between Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Boeing for SIA to purchase 39 Boeing aircraft worth 13.8 billion U.S. dollars.

The two leaders also held meetings to discuss further cooperation on economic, trade and defense issues, according to a statement released by the White House.

Trump's trip to Asia is slated for Nov. 3 to 14, during which he will attend a meeting of leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies in Vietnam. He will also join gatherings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Philippines.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 10:20:59|Editor: Zhou Xin

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- A student burned down a school building in northern Brazil to revenge being reprimanded for lateness by a teacher, local news site G1 said on Monday.

The incident took place on Saturday evening in the small town of Feijo in Acre state. As the fire occurred during the weekend, no one was injured.

The 13-year-old eighth-grade student had assistance from an adult, who was identified as 19-year-old Carlos da Luz Ribeiro. The name of the minor was not disclosed in accordance with Brazilian law.

According to G1, the building of the Vicente Brito de Sousa State School was burned to the ground, and all school facilities and food supplies were completely destroyed. Some 100 students were left without classes.

The incident took place less than a week after another noteworthy episode of violence in Brazilian schools, which had a much more tragic ending: a 14-year-old boy, armed with the gun of his mother, a police officer, shot at several of his classmates in Goiania, midwestern Brazil. Two 14-year-old boys died and four other teens were injured.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 10:51:03|Editor: Zhou Xin

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KUALA LUMPUR, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- At least eight people were killed and 33 others injured in a bus collision along the expressway in the Malaysian northern state of Penang on Tuesday morning, local newspaper New Straits Times (NST) reported.

The accident took place at around 5:30 a.m. local time. A bus ferrying Indonesian and Nepalese workers, had stopped on the left side of the road after an engine problem, while another bus failed to brake in time and rammed into it, NST quoted a police officer as saying.

It was reported that the the two buses were carrying factory workers from Sony and Plexus, which both have manufacturing business in the Penang state.

The victims, among which 23 sustained serious injuries, have been sent to hospitals.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 10:51:04|Editor: Zhou Xin

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YANGON, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Myanmar government pledged on Tuesday to continue working with the United Nations in its endeavor to achieve the socio-economic development of the country.

Oct. 24, 2017 marks the 72nd anniversary of the United Nations. Speaking on the occasion, Myanmar President U Htin Kyaw said the theme of the debate of the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly in September gives further impetus to Myanmar's efforts for peace process and reconciliation, democratization, promotion and protection of human rights and economic development.

The theme of the 72nd UN General Assembly is "Focusing on people-- Striving for peace and a decent life for all on a sustainable planet".

U Htin Kyaw hoped that in accordance with the theme, the United Nations will be able to enhance its support for the peoples of member states in their nation building and development efforts in line with the host country's priorities.

He pledged commitment to sustainable conservation of environment and promoting and protecting human rights including respecting fundamental rights of an individual.

The president also vowed to work together with UN agencies, international organizations, non-governmental organizations and individuals for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals.

Noting that Myanmar, as a fledgling democracy, is still confronting with so many challenges, he said the Myanmar government would make effort to successfully overcome those challenges with the active participation of the people and the continued support of its friends around the world.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 11:21:10|Editor: Zhou Xin

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SYDNEY, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- A global medical collaboration involving Australian researchers has discovered 72 genetic variants that put women at higher risk of breast cancer.

Researchers from the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane co-led the study, which collected and analyzed data from 275,000 women worldwide, the institute said in a media release on Tuesday. The findings have also been published in the Nature and Nature Genetics scientific journals.

"This work helps us to understand why some women are more at risk of developing breast cancer than others and what genetic markers we should be looking for in order to assess that risk," the institute quoted Professor Georgia Chenevix-Trench, the coordinator of its genetics and computational biology department, as saying.

"We know that breast cancer is caused by complex interactions between these genetic variants and our environment, but these newly discovered markers bring the number of known variants associated with breast cancer to around 180."

"Our hope is that in future we will be able to test for these genetic variants in order to inform preventative approaches and treatment for women who may be at a higher risk of breast cancer."

Breast cancer is the most frequent cancer among women, affecting more than 1.5 million women each year and causing the greatest number of cancer-related deaths among them, according to the World Health Organization.

The disease claimed more than 2,800 lives in Australia in 2014 alone, according to the Cancer Council Australia health organization.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 11:51:17|Editor: ZD

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TAIPEI, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- More than 50 percent of Taiwanese expressed dissatisfaction over the island's leader's handling of relations with the Chinese mainland, a recent poll showed.

About 52 percent of the 1,068 respondents were dissatisfied with the policies of Tsai Ing-wen, the island's current leader, on cross-Taiwan Strait ties, while only about one-third approved of her performance, according to a poll conducted in mid-October by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation.

The share of dissatisfied respondents has outweighed that of satisfied respondents since last November.

Meanwhile, the share of respondents dissatisfied with Tsai's overall administration grew by 0.9 percentage points compared with September.

The survey also pointed out a growing crisis in confidence among Taiwanese over the current elite, including entrepreneurs, government officials and public opinion representatives, with none of them earning the approval of more than half of respondents.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 12:51:38|Editor: Zhou Xin

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HOUSTON, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Gasoline prices fell for the sixth consecutive week, quickly approaching levels before Hurricane Harvey caused widespread price spikes, said a report on Monday.

Average gasoline prices dropped more than 5 cents per gallon in the Houston area in southern United States. Nationally, they slid about 2 cents per gallon according to data collected by GasBuddy, which tracks fuel pricing.

The average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline in the Houston area is 2.21 U.S. dollars, about 11 cents higher than before Harvey, while the national average is 2.44 dollars, also 11 cents above its pre-storms average.

Harvey knocked out nearly a quarter of the nation's oil refining capacity, causing gasoline prices to surge nearly 20 percent, but nearly all of that refining capacity is back online now.

Patrick DeHaan, GasBuddy's head of petroleum analysis, noted that the United States has maintained fuel costs below 3 dollars a gallon for nearly three consecutive years now.

"In fact, the national average may continue to decline for a few weeks before leveling off as gasoline inventories continue to heal after Harvey," he added.

Hurricane Harvey blew ashore on Aug. 25 as the most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in the south central region of the United States in more than 50 years, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and damaging some 200,000 houses in a path of destruction that stretched for more than 480 km. The Houston area suffered severe flooding after heavy rainfalls.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 13:06:40|Editor: Lu Hui

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The closing session of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 24, 2017. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The curtains are falling at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, but China is rising like it never has before.

About a week ago, Xi Jinping announced the new era: China has stood up, grown rich and become strong. It will move toward center stage and make greater contributions for mankind.

By 2050, two centuries after the Opium Wars, which plunged the "Middle Kingdom" into a period of hurt and shame, China is set to regain its might and re-ascend to the top of the world.

The Communist Party of China, the ruling party that has led China to awe-inspiring achievements, on Tuesday concluded its 19th National Congress with calls for confidence, aspirations and action.

The baton will be passed to the new leadership. The Party has gained a new addition to its guiding ideology: Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.

Xi said the aim is to build China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful.

Though it will take immense work, the picture is clear -- China is set to become the world's largest economy, and incomes will be high with an effective social welfare system, a responsive and people-serving government, clean politics ensuring people's rights, and a beautiful country loved by its citizens.

The genesis of China's development miracle is socialism, not other "-isms." The country succeeds not by rigidly copying the original ideas of scientific socialism, but by adapting it to China's reality. Xi Jinping's thought will be China's signature ideology and the new communism.

The China approach has been successful, both politically and economically, and will continue to serve the country's future well. Despite the suspicion and attacks it has drawn, it has benefited the rest of the world in commerce, trade, investment and international peace.

By the end of 2016, there were 13 countries whose populations exceeded 100 million. Ten of them are developing countries. China's success proves that socialism can prevail and be a path for other developing countries to emulate and achieve modernization.

China is now strong enough, willing, and able to contribute more for mankind. The new world order cannot be just dominated by capitalism and the West, and the time will come for a change.

In the new era, China needs to tackle the new contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life. China will need to prove it can survive the middle income trap.

As China solves its own problems by increasing its economic weight, boosting its technological prowess, attaining green development, and opening up further, the world only stands to benefit.

The Chinese dream is one of the nation's development, not one of hegemony. A stronger China will only have positive effects.

Those expecting China to fall will be disappointed. Fingerpointing and questioning the legitimacy of the Chinese way are of no avail. It is time to understand China's path, because it appears it will continue to triumph.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 13:16:44|Editor: Lu Hui

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SHENYANG, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Northeast China's Liaoning Province has obtained dedicated airspace for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, at the Shenyang general aviation industry base, local authorities said Monday.

"Industrial drones will be allowed to conduct test flights below an altitude of 3,000 meters in the airspace," said Liu Guoyin, deputy director with the administration committee of the base.

Liu said that the previous drone test flight bases in the country mainly target civilian drones, which are required to fly below 150 meters.

The Shenyang general aviation industry base was built in 2010 in Faku County with an area of 68 square kilometers. It has built facilities such as runways, terminals and parking aprons, attracting 20 aviation firms.

The overall market for drones is expected to reach 75 billion yuan (around 11 billion U.S. dollars) by 2025 in China, according to an iResearch report last year.

In the booming drone market, researchers and manufacturers need a dedicated place to host test flights for their products. In late August, Shanghai also set up a test flight base for civilian drones.

Liu said the airspace for industrial drones in Shenyang aviation base will help it become an industrial cluster for producers of unmanned vehicles.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 13:26:47|Editor: Lu Hui

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BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) has included Xi Jinping's military thinking and the Party's "absolute" leadership over the armed forces into its Constitution, according to a resolution approved by the 19th CPC National Congress on Tuesday.

According to the resolution, the CPC shall uphold its absolute leadership over the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and other people's armed forces and implement Xi Jinping's thinking on strengthening the military, as part of the amendments to the CPC's fundamental document for its over 89 million members.

The development of the PLA shall be strengthened by enhancing its political loyalty, strengthening it through reform and technology, and running it in accordance with the law, the resolution read.

The CPC shall build people's forces that obey the Party's command, can fight and win, and maintain excellent conduct to ensure that the PLA accomplishes its missions and tasks in the new era, it said.

The inclusion of these statements into the Party Constitution will "help ensure the Party's absolute leadership over the people's armed forces, [and] modernize national defense and the military," it said.

In addition, the amendment to the CPC Constitution also clarified that Chairperson of the Central Military Commission (CMC) assumes overall responsibility over the work of the Commission and that the CMC is responsible for Party work and political work in the armed forces.

This complies with the realistic requirement to ensure the CMC fulfills its responsibility for Party self-supervision and self-governance after the military reform, the resolution said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 13:36:49|Editor: ying

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CHENGDU, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have successfully bred pearl-banded rat snakes, an endangered species native to China.

This is the first time China has bred the species since it was discovered a century ago.

The one-month-old snakes are about 33 centimeters long with dark green skin. The black stripes that have given them their name resemble black pearls.

The species was discovered by an American biologist in 1929, but disappeared until the 1980s. Over the past decade, fewer than 30 live pearl-banded rat snakes have been found, and the only pair in captivity was captured in Labahe Nature Reserve in Sichuan's Ya'an City in 2014.

Scientists at Chengdu Institute of Biology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences waited three years before the pair laid eggs in late July, and two months later, the baby snakes were born.

According to Ding Li, deputy researcher at Chengdu Institute of Biology, breeding the snakes marked an important step in understanding the mysterious species and proved China has made great achievements in ecological protection.

Ding said the snakes will start to hibernate in about a month.

Native to China, pearl-banded rat snakes share the same habitat with wild giant pandas. They live in forests in western Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces at altitudes between 1,600 and 2,700 meters above sea level.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 13:56:53|Editor: ZD

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by Abdul Haleem

KABUL, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Taliban outfit fighting the government forces to regain power and re-impose its iron-hand rule in Afghanistan, contrary to expectations, has downplayed the U.S. new strategy and pushed for war to drive out the U.S.-led coalition forces stationed in the war-hit country.

The armed militant group which dismissed the U.S. new strategy on Afghanistan as warmongering and vowed to continue Jihad or the so-called holy war, launched series of deadly offensives in Kabul and other cities in the past week, killing more than 100 people including security personnel and injuring more than 200 others.

U.S. President Donald Trump in his strategy on Afghanistan announced in August, besides terming Taliban as a terrorist group and vowing to target the militants and their supporters, also promised to increase the troops' number in the insurgency-plagued country.

Taliban militants have increased activities since the unveiling of U.S. new strategy on Afghanistan. Just over the past week, they attacked high profile targets including police center and army bases in the fortified capital city of Kabul as well as in Ghazni and Kandahar provinces.

In the latest waves of deadly offensives, the Taliban militants organized a suicide attack against a bus of Marshal Fahim Military Academy of the national military college in Kabul on Saturday, killing at least 15 cadets and injuring four others.

The Taliban outfit which claimed responsibility for the deadly attack, had earlier stormed police headquarters in the eastern Paktia's provincial capital Gardez on Tuesday and a military camp in Maiwand district of the southern Kandahar province on Thursday, leaving scores of security personnel dead.

Afghan observers believe that increasing Taliban activities and their attacking high profile targets in the wake of Washington's new strategy on Afghanistan virtually demonstrates the armed outfit's resolve to fighting in the country.

"In fact, the recent increase in Taliban deadly attacks reveals the armed group's strength in the war against Afghan government and the U.S.-led coalition forces stationed in Afghanistan," political analyst Khan Mohammad Daneshjo told Xinhua recently.

Daneshjo who is editor-in-chief of the weekly Abbadi also believed that the "Taliban militants and their supporters have downplayed the U.S. new strategy on Afghanistan by escalating deadly attacks and give the message that they have the ability to continue the war".

Echoing Daneshjo, another analyst Nazari Pariani, the editor-in-chief of the leading newspaper the Daily Mandegar, said "Taliban fighters by increasing attacks want to demonstrate their power and give the message that the group is capable to attack any target at any time if it wants."

Nevertheless, he was of the view that "Poor management in security apparatus and disharmony among those at the helm of affairs have also paved the way for the militants" to conduct lethal attacks elsewhere in the country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 14:06:58|Editor: ZD

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SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and several others injured, including a highway patrol officer, in a shooting spree Monday in Lake County in the U.S. state of California, local media reported.

The two men killed were found in a residential neighborhood in western California that the gunman has a connection to, Lake County Sheriff Brian Martin was quoted by local media as saying. The names of the victims were not released immediately.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 14:17:03|Editor: Zhou Xin

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MAIMANA, Afghanistan, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- An Afghan forces' air-raid killed at least 13 Taliban militants in the northern province of Faryab, an army source said Tuesday.

The airstrike was carried out on Monday evening in Shirin Tagab district of the province, leaving 13 insurgents dead, Nasratullah Jamshidi, spokesman of the army 209 Shaheen Corps based in the region, told Xinhua.

"Four Taliban hideouts and three motorcycles, used for attacks, have also been eliminated during the raid," the source said, adding no civilian suffered casualties in the incident.

Taliban had not commented on the incident.

Fighting has escalated in Afghanistan as the Taliban insurgency spreads from its traditional strongholds in the south and east to the once peaceful region in the north.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 14:32:07|Editor: Zhou Xin

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SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Two people were killed and several others injured, including a highway patrol officer, in a shooting spree Monday in Lake County, about 140 km north of San Francisco, western California, the United States, local media reported.

The two men killed were found in a residential neighborhood that the gunman has a connection to, Lake County Sheriff Brian Martin was quoted by local media as saying. The names of the victims were not released immediately.

The gunman was arrested after opening fire at multiple locations, including a winery, several houses and gas stations during the shooting rampage, police said.

The police identified the suspect as Alan Ashmore, who is 61 years old.

"There are a total of seven different crime scenes," Martin said.

The first reports of gunfire were made in an area near the Clearlake Oaks post office.

A female resident was shot in the same area and the suspect allegedly fired into several other residences before shooting an unidentified person at a nearby gas station.

Then, the gunman opened fire at people at another gas station, but there were no known injuries at that location, Martin said.

Additionally, the police were reported that the gunman fired his gun at the employees of a winery, but it's not known whether any injuries were caused.

A California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer responded to the incident and was shot in the leg. He was later rushed to a hospital without life-threatening injury.

Two other people suffered minor injuries and are being treated at a local hospital, Martin said.

Ashmore was detained on two homicide counts and multiple other counts of assault with a firearm. He was found to have hide several weapons in his car, and the police believed Ashmore used at least one of them in the killings, Martin added.

The motive of the shooting rampage was still under investigation, Martin said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 14:37:08|Editor: Zhou Xin

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SEOUL, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's exports of industrial parts and components hit a new record high for the first nine months of this year, a government report showed Tuesday.

The parts and component exports reached a new high of 208.9 billion U.S. dollars in the January-September period, up 12.5 percent from the same period of last year, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

In the same period, imports increased 11.1 percent to 125.4 billion dollars, sending the trade surplus in the sector to a fresh high of 83.5 billion dollars.

In the July-September quarter alone, the industrial parts exports touched a new quarterly high of 74.7 billion dollars.

Exports of transport machine parts and electrical machine components declined in the January-September period, but those for electronic parts and chemical materials posted a double-digit increase, leading the record-high exports.

The ministry said the exports dependence on China and the United States, South Korea's top two trading partners, reduced while exports to Europe and Southeast Asian countries increased.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 14:42:09|Editor: ZD

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BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Companies listed on the country's major exchange reported surging profits in the first three quarters, pointing to strength in the overall economy.

Nearly 100 companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange have released their Q3 results, reporting combined revenue of more than 450 billion yuan (67.9 billion U.S. dollars) for the Jan.-Sept. period, up 20 percent year on year.

Combined profits of these firms surged 47 percent to more than 50 billion yuan.

In breakdown, cyclical industries including steel, coal and non-ferrous metals reported fast expansion, as overcapacity cuts in these industries boosted market demand and raised prices.

Xiamen Tungsten Co. Ltd, for example, saw its revenues up 80 percent year on year in the first three quarters, while profits jumped 284 percent thanks to inventory cuts in the tungsten industry.

Emerging sectors, including pharmaceutical manufacturing and information services, also maintained the fast pace of expansion in Q3, as China shifts to a sustainable growth model that relies more on innovation and services.

A total of 11 Shanghai-listed companies in the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry reported combined profits of more than 6 billion yuan, up 20 percent year on year.

Shenzhen Goodix Technology, a company that specializes in man-machine interaction and biometrics authentication, earned profits of 763 million yuan, up 26.6 percent year on year.

The robust Q3 results were in line with a stabilizing Chinese economy, which expanded 6.9 percent in the first three quarters, well above the government target of 6.5 percent for the year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 15:32:27|Editor: Mengjie

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LHASA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- October's recent national holiday proved a good week for Dibu, a Nepalese merchant in Burang, a Tibetan county sharing 400 km of border with Nepal and India.

As the third generation in his family to do business in Burang, the only port of entry for foreign trade in Ngari Prefecture, Dibu has worked in the family business since he was 19 years old. Now, he is 54.

Winter is coming, and Dibu is busy purchasing goods before heavy snow cuts off the mountain road back to his home. The Chinese commodities should help him make a fortune by the end of the year.

"We can make 300,000 to 400,000 yuan (45,230 to 60,307 U.S. dollars) a year, far more than what we can earn in Nepal," he said.

The per capita gross national income in Nepal was 730 U.S. dollars last year, according to the World Bank data.

"Burang port is getting more prosperous as China promotes the Belt and Road Initiative. I am sure our business will continue to grow in the future," Dibu said.

Tibet, which is seeking a bigger role in the Belt and Road Initiative, has seen its economic growth on the fast track despite a slowing national economy in recent years.

Tibet's GDP has been one of the best performing in China over the past three years, with this year's half-year GDP growth reaching 10.8 percent, underpinned by strong investment in infrastructure and robust consumption, according to the region's statistics bureau.

Tibet Customs said the region's foreign trade rose 22.1 percent year on year to 4.7 billion yuan in the first three quarters.

General trade surpassed petty trade to become Tibet's main foreign trade this year. In the first three quarters, imports and exports of general trade soared by 80.5 percent to hit 3 billion yuan, taking up 63.4 percent of Tibet's total foreign trade.

The fast growth in foreign trade benefited from a better business environment, infrastructure and trade policies, according to Yin Weifeng from Tibet Customs.

Reforms in customs procedures are being carried out to push forward the building of an economic belt in the Himalayan region and Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor. A China-Nepal cross-border economic cooperation zone is also being created.

The Belt and Road Initiative has opened more opportunities for the border region. China is aiding Nepal in a series of infrastructure projects including roads, power grids, bridges and industrial parks, all of which will become important channels to strengthen China-South Asia trade, where Tibet is an important gateway.

Tibetan enterprises are taking advantage of these opportunities to enter the overseas market.

In September last year, Libo Construction, along with several domestic companies, jointly undertook construction of a high voltage power line project in Ethiopia, becoming the first private enterprise in Tibet to enter Africa.

"All our achievement should be attributed to the Belt and Road Initiative, which gave domestic companies the confidence to walk out," said Tang Guozhong, chairman of Libo Construction.

Gaining confidence from Libo's success, 10 companies in Tibet have stepped into the overseas market, and many more are willing to follow suit.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 15:57:32|Editor: Song Lifang

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RAMALLAH, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has stressed that the reconciliation between his Fatah Party and the Hamas movement must lead to a single authority with one law and one army.

Abbas made the remarks in a recent joint interview with the Chinese media representatives based in Palestine.

On October 12, Fatah and Hamas signed in Cairo, Egypt a reconciliation agreement that requires Hamas to hand over of its authority in the Gaza Strip to the consensus government headed by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.

"There must be one authority, one law and one gun, and there shouldn't be militias or others ... we want to be like other countries in the world," Abbas said.

Any state who wants to provide aid to the Palestinians should go through the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) only, Abbas insisted, adding that the Palestinian leadership "doesn't want to turn the Gaza Strip into the militia model, because it is not successful."

Over the past decade, the cause of seeking an independent Palestinian state has been set back by an internal division between Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, and Fatah, which has been ruling the West Bank. Hamas has been receiving aid from countries like Qatar, Turkey and Iran.

The Palestinians do not to want to have "anyone intervening in our internal affairs because we don't interfere in others' affairs," Abbas said.

On the Egypt-brokered reconciliation deal, Abbas said its implementation is "moving forward" in order to end the decade-long internal division has hurt the Palestinian cause so much.

The agreement is "very important" as it includes all the details related to the reconciliation, and "we are going forward towards the implementation," the Palestinian leader said.

"The Palestinian position is clear and solid that there will be no Palestinian state in Gaza only and there will be no Palestinian state without Gaza," Abbas added.

Before signing the agreement in Cairo, Hamdallah and some Palestinian cabinet ministers and security officials visited the Gaza Strip and took over the ministries in the coastal enclave that has suffered from decade-long of blockade by the PNA and Israel.

"Reconciliation is going ahead and we carry out steps on daily bases to implement it, where ministers from the West Bank go now to Gaza to function there in order to reach at the end to one state with one system," Abbas noted.

The Palestinian leader pledged to do his best to accomplish the goals of the reconciliation, which he said is fully supported by major countries such as China and Russia, as well as European and Arab countries.

"All want to see reconciliation is accomplished and we will do our best to accomplish it," he vowed.

However, Abbas called for patience, citing that the process of implementing the reconciliation deal "needs time and patience and we don't want to hurry up."

Under the deal, the consensus government led by Hamdallah, which was formed in June 2014, will gradually start ruling the Gaza Strip, including taking over the crossing points, ministries and establishments there. It is expected to fully take over the rule in the enclave on December 1.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 15:57:33|Editor: Mengjie

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Xi Jinping presides over the closing session of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 24, 2017. (Xinhua/Lan Hongguang)

BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) concluded Tuesday, enshrining Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era into the Party Constitution and installing a new Central Committee and a new Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).

At the closing session presided over by Xi Jinping, 2,336 delegates and specially invited delegates selected 204 members and 172 alternate members of the 19th CPC Central Committee.

"We believe that all the decisions and plans the congress has made and all the outcomes it has achieved will play a vital role in guiding and ensuring success in our major endeavors," Xi said in a closing address at the Great Hall of the People.

As is customary, the new Central Committee will hold its first plenary session the following day of the conclusion of the Party congress.

According to the CPC Constitution, the plenum elects the Central Committee's general secretary, members of its Political Bureau, and members of the Political Bureau Standing Committee. The general secretary shall be chosen from Political Bureau Standing Committee members.

Tuesday's closing session also passed a resolution on an amendment to the Party Constitution, which enshrined Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as a new component of the Party's guide for action.

The CPC also included Xi's military thinking and the Party's "absolute" leadership over the armed forces, as well as other statements including "following the principle of achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration, and pursuing the Belt and Road Initiative" into its Constitution.

The Party must "make comprehensive efforts" to ensure that "the fight against corruption keeps going," according to the revised Constitution.

The CPC, which was established in 1921 and took power 28 years later, has routinely amended its Constitution at past national congresses to keep up with the times.

"Through these many years of struggle with tenacity, our Party has united and led the Chinese people and the Chinese nation in ending once and for all the miserable plight of old China, which had been bullied by foreign aggressors following the Opium War of 1840, and in walking completely out of poverty and weakness," Xi said.

Delegates to the congress also passed resolutions on a report of the 18th CPC Central Committee and a work report of the CCDI, fully approving the work the Party had done in past five years.

"In our Party, each and every one of us must always breathe the same breath as the people, share the same future, and stay truly connected to them," he said.

"The aspirations of the people to live a better life must always be the focus of our efforts," Xi said.

Xi noted that the central committees of China's other political parties, the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce and public figures from all ethnic groups and all sectors in China offered their congratulations during the congress.

"Many countries' leaders, political parties, organizations, and prominent figures also sent us congratulatory messages. The presidium of the Congress wishes to extend heartfelt thanks to each and every one of them," he said.

The five-yearly congress, which opened on Oct. 18, was held during the decisive stage when China is building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and at a critical moment as socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era.
Palestinian reconciliation must lead to single government with one law and one army, Abbas told Xinhua in an interview. (Xinhua Photo)

RAMALLAH, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has stressed that the reconciliation between his Fatah Party and the Hamas movement must lead to a single authority with one law and one army.

Abbas made the remarks in a recent joint interview with the Chinese media representatives based in Palestine.

On October 12, Fatah and Hamas signed in Cairo, Egypt a reconciliation agreement that requires Hamas to hand over of its authority in the Gaza Strip to the consensus government headed by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.

"There must be one authority, one law and one gun, and there shouldn't be militias or others ... we want to be like other countries in the world," Abbas said.

Any state who wants to provide aid to the Palestinians should go through the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) only, Abbas insisted, adding that the Palestinian leadership "doesn't want to turn the Gaza Strip into the militia model, because it is not successful."

Over the past decade, the cause of seeking an independent Palestinian state has been set back by an internal division between Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007, and Fatah, which has been ruling the West Bank. Hamas has been receiving aid from countries like Qatar, Turkey and Iran.

The Palestinians do not to want to have "anyone intervening in our internal affairs because we don't interfere in others' affairs," Abbas said.

On the Egypt-brokered reconciliation deal, Abbas said its implementation is "moving forward" in order to end the decade-long internal division has hurt the Palestinian cause so much.

The agreement is "very important" as it includes all the details related to the reconciliation, and "we are going forward towards the implementation," the Palestinian leader said.

"The Palestinian position is clear and solid that there will be no Palestinian state in Gaza only and there will be no Palestinian state without Gaza," Abbas added.

Before signing the agreement in Cairo, Hamdallah and some Palestinian cabinet ministers and security officials visited the Gaza Strip and took over the ministries in the coastal enclave that has suffered from decade-long of blockade by the PNA and Israel.

"Reconciliation is going ahead and we carry out steps on daily bases to implement it, where ministers from the West Bank go now to Gaza to function there in order to reach at the end to one state with one system," Abbas noted.

The Palestinian leader pledged to do his best to accomplish the goals of the reconciliation, which he said is fully supported by major countries such as China and Russia, as well as European and Arab countries.

"All want to see reconciliation is accomplished and we will do our best to accomplish it," he vowed.

However, Abbas called for patience, citing that the process of implementing the reconciliation deal "needs time and patience and we don't want to hurry up."

Under the deal, the consensus government led by Hamdallah, which was formed in June 2014, will gradually start ruling the Gaza Strip, including taking over the crossing points, ministries and establishments there. It is expected to fully take over the rule in the enclave on December 1.
Source:Xinhua| 2017-10-24 16:22:10|Editor: Yamei

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BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Following is the full text of the Resolution of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on the Report of the 18th Central Committee adopted Tuesday at the just-ended 19th National Congress of the CPC.

Resolution of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on the Report of the 18th Central Committee

October 24, 2017

The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China approves the report delivered by Comrade Xi Jinping on behalf of the Party's 18th Central Committee. The Congress holds high the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics and is guided by Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, the Scientific Outlook on Development, and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. On the basis of an analysis of the developments in the international and domestic environments and a review of the Party's work and the historic change over the past five years, the Congress forms the major political judgments that socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era and the principal contradiction in Chinese society has evolved into one between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life. The Congress elaborates on the Party's historic mission in the new era and establishes the historical position of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. It sets forth the basic policy for upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, and establishes the goal of securing a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and then embarking on a journey to fully build a modern socialist China. The Congress also sets out an overall plan for advancing the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the great new project of Party building in the new era.

The report of the 18th Central Committee approved by the Congress sketches out an impressive blueprint for securing a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and striving for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, thus charting the course for continued progress in the cause of the Party and the country. The report is a crystallization of the wisdom of the whole Party and the Chinese people of all ethnic groups. It is a political declaration and a program of action for the Party to unite the Chinese people and lead them in upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era. It is a guiding Marxist document.

The Congress believes that the theme expounded on in the report is of enormous importance to the Party leading the people toward a stronger China through tireless and groundbreaking efforts. Every one of us in the Party must remain true to our original aspiration and keep our mission firmly in mind, hold high the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, strive for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, and work tirelessly to realize the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation.

The Congress applauds the work of the 18th Central Committee. The five years since the 18th National Congress have been a truly remarkable five years in the course of the development of the Party and the country, with historic achievements made in reform, opening up, and socialist modernization. Over these five years, the Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has demonstrated tremendous political courage and a powerful sense of mission as it has developed new ideas, new thinking, and new strategies, adopted a raft of major principles and policies, launched a host of major initiatives, and pushed ahead with many major tasks. It has thus solved many tough problems that were long on the agenda but never resolved, accomplished many things that were wanted but never got done, and prompted historic shifts in the cause of the Party and the country.

The Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has acted with courage to confront major risks and tests facing the Party and to address prominent problems within the Party itself. With firm resolve, it has tightened discipline and improved Party conduct, fought corruption, and punished wrongdoing, and removed serious potential dangers in the Party and the country. As a result, both the intraparty political atmosphere and the political ecosystem of the Party have improved markedly. The Party's ability to create, power to unite, and energy to fight have all been significantly strengthened; Party solidarity and unity have been reinforced, and our engagement with the people has been greatly improved. Revolutionary tempering has made our Party stronger and it now radiates with great vitality. With this, efforts to develop the cause of the Party and the country have gained a strong political underpinning.

The achievements of the past five years have touched every area and broken new ground; the changes in China over the past five years have been profound and fundamental.

The Congress stresses that, with decades of hard work, socialism with Chinese characteristics has crossed the threshold into a new era. This is a new historic juncture in China's development. As socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, the principal contradiction facing Chinese society has evolved into one between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life. This represents a historic shift that affects the whole landscape and that creates many new demands for the work of the Party and the country. Building on continued efforts to sustain development, we must devote great energy to addressing development's imbalances and inadequacies, and push hard to improve the quality and effect of development. With this, we can be better placed to meet the ever-growing economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological needs of our people, and to promote well-rounded human development and all-round social progress.

The Congress stresses that the Party has been presented with the profound question of what kind of socialism with Chinese characteristics the new era requires it to uphold and develop, and how it should go about doing it. In answering this question of an era, our Party has adopted an entirely new perspective to deepen its understanding of the laws that underlie governance by the Communist party, the development of socialism, and the evolution of human society. It has worked hard to undertake theoretical explorations, and has achieved major theoretical innovations, ultimately giving shape to Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.

Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era builds on and further enriches Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development. It represents the latest achievement in adapting Marxism to the Chinese context, and encapsulates the practical experience and collective wisdom of our Party and the people. It is an important component of the theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and a guide to action for all our members and all the Chinese people as we strive to achieve national rejuvenation. This Thought must be adhered to and steadily developed on a long-term basis.

The Congress highlights the 14 points that form the basic policy underpinning our endeavors to uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era. They are: Ensure Party leadership over all work; commit to a people-centered approach; continue to comprehensively deepen reform; adopt a new vision for development; see that the people run the country; ensure every dimension of governance is law-based; uphold core socialist values; ensure and improve living standards through development; ensure harmony between human and nature; pursue a holistic approach to national security; uphold absolute Party leadership over the people's forces; uphold the principle of "one country, two systems" and promote national reunification; promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind; and exercise full and rigorous governance over the Party. All our members must fully implement the Party's basic theory, line, and policy so as to better steer the development of the Party and people's cause.

The Congress points out that the period between now and 2020 will be decisive in finishing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects. We must follow the requirements on building this society set out at our 16th, 17th, and 18th National Congresses; focus on priorities, address inadequacies, and shore up points of weakness. We must take tough steps to forestall and defuse major risks, carry out targeted poverty alleviation, and prevent and control pollution, so that the moderately prosperous society we build earns the people's approval and stands the test of time.

The Congress believes that the period between the 19th and the 20th National Congress is the period in which the timeframes of the two centenary goals converge. In this period, not only must we finish building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and achieve the first centenary goal; we must also build on this achievement to embark on a new journey toward the second centenary goal of fully building a modern socialist country.

Based on a comprehensive analysis of the international and domestic environments and the conditions for China's development, we have drawn up a two-stage development plan for the period from 2020 to the middle of this century. In the first stage from 2020 to 2035, we will build on the foundation created by the moderately prosperous society with a further 15 years of hard work to see that socialist modernization is basically realized. In the second stage from 2035 to the middle of the 21st century, we will, building on having basically achieved modernization, work hard for a further 15 years and develop China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful.

The Congress endorses the report's plans for promoting socialist economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological advancement in China. It stresses that we must apply a new vision of development and develop a modernized economy. We should put quality first and give priority to performance, pursue supply-side structural reform as our main task, and work hard for better quality, higher efficiency, and more robust drivers of economic growth through reform. We should accelerate the building of an industrial system that promotes coordinated development of the real economy with technological innovation, modern finance, and human resources, and endeavor to develop an economy with more effective market mechanisms, dynamic micro-entities, and sound macro-regulation. With this we can steadily strengthen the innovation capacity and competitiveness of China's economy. We should further supply-side structural reform, move faster to make China a country of innovators, pursue a rural vitalization strategy and the strategy for coordinated regional development, accelerate efforts to improve the socialist market economy, make new ground in pursuing opening up on all fronts, and strive to achieve better quality, more efficient, fairer, and more sustainable development.

We should improve the system of institutions through which the people run the country and develop socialist democracy. We should uphold the unity of Party leadership, the people running the country, and law-based governance. This requires us to strengthen institutional guarantees to ensure the people run the country, give play to the important role of socialist consultative democracy, and advance law-based governance. We should deepen reform of Party and government institutions and the system of government administration, consolidate and develop the patriotic united front, and consolidate and enhance political stability, unity, and vitality.

We should build stronger cultural confidence and help socialist culture to flourish. We must hold firmly the leading position in ideological work, cultivate and observe core socialist values, and raise intellectual and moral standards. We should work to see socialist literature and art thrive, promote the development of cultural programs and industries, and inspire the cultural creativity of our whole nation.

We should grow better at ensuring and improving people's wellbeing and strengthen and develop new approaches to social governance. We must focus on the most pressing, most immediate issues that concern the people the most. We should give priority to developing education, improve the quality of employment and raise incomes, strengthen the social security system, win the battle against poverty, carry out the Healthy China initiative, establish a social governance model based on collaboration, participation, and common interests, and effectively safeguard national security. With this we should see that our people always have a strong sense of fulfillment, happiness, and security.

We should speed up reform to develop sound systems for building an ecological civilization, and build a Beautiful China. We should promote green development, solve prominent environmental problems, intensify the protection of ecosystems, reform the environmental regulation system, and work to develop a new model of modernization with humans developing in harmony with nature.

The Congress stresses that, confronted with profound changes in our national security environment and responding to the demands of the day for a strong country with a strong military, we must stay committed to the Chinese path of building strong armed forces, fully implement Xi Jinping's thinking on strengthening the military, adapt military strategy to new conditions, build a powerful and modernized army, navy, air force, rocket force, and strategic support force, develop strong and efficient joint operations commanding institutions for theater commands, and create a modern combat system with distinctive Chinese characteristics. With this we can fully advance the modernization of national defense and the military and transform our people's armed forces into world-class forces.

The Congress stresses that, to maintain long-term prosperity and stability in Hong Kong and Macao, it is imperative to fully and faithfully implement the policies of "one country, two systems," "the people of Hong Kong governing Hong Kong," "the people of Macao governing Macao," and a high degree of autonomy for both regions, and to act in strict compliance with China's Constitution and the basic laws of the two special administrative regions. We shall see that our compatriots in Hong Kong and Macao share both the historic responsibility of national rejuvenation and the pride of a strong and prosperous China. We must uphold the principles of "peaceful reunification" and "one country, two systems," expand economic and cultural exchanges and cooperation between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits, encourage people from both sides to work together to promote Chinese culture, work for the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations, and advance the process toward the peaceful reunification of China. We will never allow anyone, any organization, or any political party, at any time or in any form, to separate any part of Chinese territory from China.

The Congress endorses the report's analysis of the international situation and the guiding principles it sets out for China's foreign affairs. The Congress stresses that China will keep to the path of peaceful development, hold high the banner of peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit, and uphold its fundamental foreign policy goal of preserving world peace and promoting common development. China remains firm in its commitment to strengthening friendship and cooperation with other countries on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. It will actively promote international cooperation through the Belt and Road Initiative, and continue to take an active part in reforming and developing the global governance system. It will work toward a new form of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice, and win-win cooperation and a community with a shared future for mankind, and work together with the people of all countries to build an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity.

The Congress stresses that it takes a good blacksmith to make good steel. For the Party to unite the people and lead them in carrying out our great struggle, advancing our great cause, and realizing our great dream, we must unwaveringly uphold and improve Party leadership and make the Party still stronger. The general requirements for Party building for the new era are: Uphold and strengthen overall Party leadership and ensure that the Party exercises effective self-supervision and practices strict self-governance in every respect; take strengthening the Party's long-term governance capacity and its advanced nature and purity as the main thrust, take enhancing the Party's political building as the overarching principle, take holding dear the Party's ideals, convictions, and purpose as the underpinning, and take harnessing the whole Party's enthusiasm, initiative, and creativity as the focus of efforts; make all-round efforts to see the Party's political building enhanced, its theory strengthened, its organizations consolidated, its conduct improved, and its discipline enforced, with institution building incorporated into every aspect of Party building; step up efforts to combat corruption and continue to improve the efficacy of Party building; and build the Party into a vibrant Marxist governing party that is always at the forefront of the times, enjoys the wholehearted support of the people, has the courage to reform itself, and is able to withstand all tests.

The Congress stresses that we must put the Party's political building first. All of us in the Party must strengthen our consciousness of the need to maintain political integrity, think in big-picture terms, follow the leadership core, and keep in alignment. We must uphold the authority and centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, closely follow the Party's political line, strictly observe its political discipline and rules, and closely align ourselves with the Central Committee in terms of political stance, direction, principle, and path.

The Congress calls on the entire Party and the Chinese people of all ethnic groups to rally closely around the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, hold high the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and earnestly study and put into practice Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. We will keep on working with great determination to accomplish the three historic tasks of advancing modernization, realizing China's reunification, and preserving world peace and promoting common development, and make continued efforts to secure a decisive victory in finishing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, strive for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, realize the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation, and see that our people realize their aspirations for a better life.

Related:

Full text of resolution on CCDI work report
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 16:17:39|Editor: huaxia

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Hi, here's what you should know about China for the past 24 hours.

BEIJING -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) on Tuesday unveiled a new leadership, electing the 19th CPC Central Committee to lead the Party for the coming five years.

Elected by 2,336 delegates at the closing session of the 19th CPC National Congress, the new CPC Central Committee includes 204 members and 172 alternate members.

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BEIJING -- An amendment to the Constitution of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was approved Tuesday, making Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era a new component of the Party's guide for action, according to a resolution of the 19th CPC National Congress.

Unanimously agreed by Party delegates, the amendment juxtaposed Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era along with Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development.

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BEIJING -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) says in its revised Constitution that the Party must "make comprehensive efforts" to ensure that "the fight against corruption keeps going", according to a resolution approved by the 19th CPC National Congress on Tuesday.

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WASHINGTON -- As "the most important bilateral relationship in the world," good U.S.-China ties will benefit the region and the world, said visiting Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Monday.

Lee made the remarks in joint statements with U.S. President Donald Trump, who will kick off his first Asia trip next month since assuming the presidency.

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CHANGSHA -- The world's first driverless Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit system started a test run in the city of Zhuzhou in central China's Hunan Province Monday.

The electric vehicles run on an Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit, an urban transport system that has been described as a cross between a bus, train and tram.

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COPENHAGEN -- The world's leading mobile payment platform Alipay was launched in Denmark on Monday, enabling its Chinese users to enjoy its fast and convenient payment service when they travel to the Nordic country.

Operated by Ant Financial Services Group, an affiliate company of China's Alibaba Group, Alipay users can hail a taxi, book a hotel, buy movie tickets, pay utility bills, make appointments with doctors, or purchase wealth management products directly from within the app. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 16:17:39|Editor: Song Lifang

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HANOI, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- A send-off ceremony for security guards and a counter-terrorism exercise were held in Vietnam's central city of Da Nang on Tuesday to ensure security at the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' Week.

Speaking at the ceremony, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc asked authorities to be fully aware of the importance of the series of meetings slated for Nov. 6-11, with the participation of leaders and some 10,000 delegates from 21 APEC member economies, Vietnam News Agency reported.

The authorities must ensure absolute security for this event, the prime minister said.

The ceremony and exercise involved thousands of police officers from the Ministry of Public Security along with local residents.

Deputy Minister of Public Security Bui Van Nam said a sub-committee for security and health care has worked with four other sub-committees and the APEC 2017 National Secretariat to ensure security for the APEC meetings this year.

Vietnam, which joined APEC in 1998, is hosting the APEC events in 2017 under the theme of "Creating New Dynamism, Fostering a Shared Future."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 16:22:42|Editor: Song Lifang

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TORONTO, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Canada's Ontario provincial parliament will discuss the designation of Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day this week to commemorate the mass killing of 300,000 Chinese by Japanese aggressor troops in Nanjing in World War II, a lawmaker said Monday.

"This Thursday afternoon approximately 3 p.m., I will be leading a debate on my motion No. 66 on the Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day," Soo Wong, a member of the parliament of Ontario province, told a press conference here Monday.

Wong is the first female Chinese-Canadian to be elected to the Ontario legislature. She serves as deputy speaker and parliamentary assistant to the Ontario minister of community safety and correctional services.

Wong has devoted her efforts to introducing a private member's Bill No. 79 to designate every December 13 as Nanjing Massacre Commemoration Day in Ontario province in southeast Canada.

She said the designation of Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day will provide an opportunity for all Ontarians, especially the Asian community, to remember and honor the victims and families affected by the Nanjing Massacre.

Ontario is home to Canada's largest Asian community. It is reported that there are nearly 3 million Asian Canadians, about one third of them of Chinese origin.

The Nanjing Massacre is also known as the Rape of Nanking in the Western world. In December 1937, Japanese troops captured the city of Nanjing, then capital of China, and committed mass murder and raping with more than 300,000 local Chinese being killed.

The bill passed the second hearing last December, and will go through a third hearing in December this year. If passed, December 13 will become an official commemorative day in the province. Up to date, more than 90,000 signatures have been collected across the province in support of the bill.

However, the bill has encountered strong opposition from Japan. Some Japanese lawmakers reportedly have sent a letter to the Ontario government against the bill and will lobby against the third hearing.

"My motion is very similar to what I introduced last year Bill 79. It's no difference. If passed, the motion will recognize every December 13 Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day in Ontario," she said.

Dr. Joseph Wong, founder of Toronto Alpha (Association for Learning and Preserving the History of the Second World War in Asia) said Bill 79 is still at the committee level. "The motion does not replace Bill 79. This motion not only is important locally and in Canada as well, it is very important internationally."

"A large number of our students, particularly in schools, come from Asia. It's so important for these students to know what happened in the past. To pass this motion of Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day is really a significant step in education. That encourages and supports educators to learn and teach this part history," said Gerry Connelly, who is ALPHA education board member and former director of education at the Toronto district school board.

Peter Lin, president of the Confederation of Toronto Chinese-Canadian Organizations told Xinhua, "Our Canadian Chinese community fully support the motion. On May 29, we have organized over 1,000 people to Queen Park for a peace rally to support Bill 79. As well as gathered over 100,000 signatures to support MP Soo Wong. This is the most petition signatures received in the Ontario legislature history."

After Bill No. 79 passed the second hearing last December, Wong met with Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown and New Democratic Leader Andrea Horwath in the Ontario parliament. Both leaders, he said, have promised their support for the bill without reservation.

But, Wong said a meeting with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne made him feel that she was reluctant to let it pass.

Wong said that the premier was concerned the bill adoption would be "divisive" for Ontario's Japanese and Chinese communities.

Joy Kogawa, who is Japanese Canadian and an author in Toronto, said that she fully supported the bill.

"The facts are the facts, and it is wrong to deny them," said Kogawa, who's been awarded the Order of Canada and Japan's Order of the Rising Sun.

It's time for atrocities in Asia to be as well-known as those in Europe or Canada, Kogawa said, adding she has met and argued with many Japanese people who think the Rape of Nanking did not exist.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 16:27:46|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Catchphrases of China's economy have changed with the time, the latest one being "developing a modernized economy."

When outlining objectives for the next five years and beyond at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Xi Jinping spoke of a new vision of development and a modern economy for a new era.

What does this actually mean for China and the world?

A modern economy is an urgent requirement for a smooth economic transition and a strategic goal, according to Xi's report delivered at the opening of the congress. It will be achieved through supply-side structural reform, innovation, a socialist market system and opening up.

The need for a modern economy is clear in the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life.

In the past, the contradiction existed between the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and backward social production.

Wang Xiaoguang of the Chinese Academy of Governance said that while the economy had fulfilled people's basic needs, it must now provide a better quality of life.

Hu Angang, director of the Center for China Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said a modernized economy serves the Chinese people. It carries strong socialist characteristics.

In September, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation opened a large oil refinery in Huizhou in south China's Guangdong Province.

Chen Yiwei, Party secretary of Huizhou and a delegate to the congress, said that for his city, a modern economy would mean breathing new life into traditional industries, the new refinery plant being just one example.

Xi spoke of standing at a pivotal point in the transformation of the growth model, with improved economic structure and new growth drivers, but a modern economy also means making China into a country of innovators.

Xi highlighted the importance of research in science and technology and strengthening applied sciences.

In the first three quarters of 2017, cellphone shipments by Huawei exceeded 100 million, up nearly 20 percent from a year ago. Sales revenue rose over 30 percent, almost on par with Apple and Samsung.

Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business group, said that on the back of strong research, Huawei is confident of making more products for high-end users.

More opening-up is also imperative. A negative list approach will be applied across the board, significantly easing market access and protecting the rights and interests of foreign investors.

Harley Seyedin, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in South China, said there used to be a lot of uncertainties. People were worried and did not invest too much.

"But all of those uncertainties seem to be going away at this point and I think with the 19th CPC congress, we'll have a very clear map and direction for what is going forward," he told Xinhua.

"China has made great progress over the past 30 years, but it is just the warm-up. I expect China to continue its growth and make a great contribution to the world, economically and politically, and help people improve their lives around the world," he said.

Liu Zhiqin, a senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies with the Renmin University of China, said opening up had been critical to China's growth for three decades and foreign capital had helped the country learn about market mechanisms, enabling Chinese to go out and do business around the world.

As the United States closes its doors and withdraws from free trade agreements, China is further opening up its market and embracing economic globalization to confront the "America First" stance, Liu argued.

When developing a modernized economy, China will become deeply intertwined with the rest of the world. An open China will have far-reaching significance for the global market and manufacturing, said Wang Jun, a researcher at China Center for International Economic Exchanges.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 16:32:51|Editor: Song Lifang

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JAKARTA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia is aiming to tap more tourists from neighboring country of Singapore by taking part in the upcoming Internationale Tourismus Borse (ITB) Asia slated from Wednesday to Friday this week, a senior official with the tourism ministry said.

Southeast Asia Market Development Assistant Deputy Minister Rizki Handayani said that Indonesia would send large mission in the Business-to-Business event organized by Messe Berlin (Singapore), comprised of at least 90 representatives of tour agencies, regional governments and hotel managements.

"We would be presenting our utmost in the ITB Asia as it has been listed as part of our prioritized tour selling events," she said in a statement.

The event would gather sellers and buyers in tourism industry that include MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Exhibition), leisure and corporate travel markets as well.

Indonesia Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said the upcoming ITB Asia would give Indonesia more opportunities to promote its tourism.

Singapore has been supplying significant number of tourists to Indonesia with 1.8 million tourists recorded in 2016, higher than 1.5 million in 2015.

The ministry recorded that the number of Singaporean tourists visited Indonesia in the first eight months this year have reached 939,231.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 16:52:59|Editor: Mengjie

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SHENZHEN, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- China's leading new-energy carmaker BYD announced Tuesday that it would build a monorail transit system in Egypt, the company's second overseas monorail order.

The Shenzhen-based company has recently signed an agreement with the government of Alexandria, a coastal city in Egypt, to build a 128-kilometer monorail, the company said.

The cost and other details of the project were not revealed.

The carmaker has spent around 5 years and 5 billion yuan (750 million U.S. dollars) to develop the system named Yungui (Skyrail). Monorail trains can run at a maximum speed of 80 km per hour.

Compared with a subway system, a monorail requires only one-fifth of the building cost and one-third of the construction time, according to BYD.

"BYD began to produce and sell passenger vehicles in Egypt many years ago. Nearly one-third of taxis in Cairo are made by BYD. Our brand popularity, product reliability and local manufacturing experience have made this new order possible," said Huang Zhixue, general manager with BYD's Middle East and Africa Auto Sales Division.

It was not the first monorail contract BYD has obtained in the overseas market.

In August, the company announced that it would build a monorail in the Philippine city of Iloilo and expected the first phase of the 20-km monorail to be put into operation in 2019.

In addition to overseas contracts, the company has signed agreements with more than 10 Chinese cities, such as Yinchuan, Guilin and Shantou, to build monorail system.

The first such monorail has been put into operation in Yinchuan, capital of northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.
Conflict between Israel and Syria triggered by stray shells appears to have been contained. (Xinhua Photo)

JERUSALEM, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- After a tense weekend in which Syria fired five rockets into Israel and the Israeli military retaliated, it appears the violence on the border is being contained.

There were no injuries or damage from the shooting on the Israeli side. Syrian media reported damages from the Israeli strike on military artillery positions.

On Monday, Israel's Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman blamed the Lebanon's Hezbollah group for the incident, although the Israeli military did not confirm this.

According to a report on Israeli Channel 2, there was no fighting going on at the time within Syria, lessening the likelihood of more shells into Israel.

If that is the case, the incident was the first of its kind since the Syrian civil war began 6 years ago.

Throughout the Syrian civil war which has been ongoing in recent years, there have been numerous incidents of shells fired between rivaling factions in the country that landed on the Israeli side of the border.

Israel has made its policy to respond to every fire towards its northern part of the territory, whether intentional or not, claiming a breach of its sovereignty.

Hezbollah has been an active member in the civil war, helping Assad stave off stubborn rivals.

Last weekend's exchange came days after the Syrian army fired at Israeli planes that were flying over Lebanon. The planes were unharmed, but the military struck back at an anti-aircraft battery.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attempt was "unacceptable," and he vowed that Israel "would continue to operate in the area in order to protect ourselves."

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war.

The international community does not recognize Israel's hold over the territory but has largely acquiesced its knee-jerk military response to every spill-over incident.

According to Dr. Shaul Shay from the Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and Former deputy head of the Israel National Security Council, the Israeli policy has not changed, while things in Syria have.

"The other players are attempting to define new rules in the arena. Israel has maintained a very consistent policy, it has not changed in recent years," Shay tells Xinhua in an interview.

While the events of recent days have thus far not escalated further, the potential exists.

"Israel is taking calculated risks and until now has been successful in doing so," Shay adds.

The Syrian-Lebanese arena has become increasingly complicated. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is battling several combatant factions attempting at overthrowing his regime. The increased Russian presence in recent months on behalf of Assad has Israel treading more carefully.

The Israeli Prime Minister's office has said there is close coordination between Israel and Russia in order to avoid any incidents above Syrian and Lebanese airspace.

Israeli military planes fly frequently over Lebanon on intelligence missions and at times in order to carry out airstrikes targeting the militant Hezbollah organization.

Hezbollah and Israel fought a war in 2006.

"For Israel, one of its red lines is to prevent Hezbollah or Iran from fortifying its position in Syria," Shay tells Xinhua.

But all the parties involved in the Syrian strife are deeply entrenched in it. This leaves Israel with a relatively free hand, within the limits of the unwritten rules of the conflict, to retaliate if and when it sees fit.

According to Dr. Shay, an escalation now would "stir things up" and is too risky for any of the sides. The wild card is Iran.

"If there will be a very serious escalation in the Iranian-American conflict, Iran might have in interest in signaling to the US that increased pressure may lead Iran to ignite the Middle East," is Shay's assessment.

U.S. President Donald Trump is urging Congress to de-certify the Iranian nuclear agreement, a move that may back Iran into a belligerent corner.

For now, the isolated incidents and controlled fire are kept under control by all sides, with each carefully maintaining the delicate balance. This can change very quickly.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 17:34:15|Editor: Yamei

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BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Following is the full text of the Resolution of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on the Revised Constitution of the Communist Party of China adopted Tuesday at the 19th National Congress of the CPC.

Resolution of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on the Revised Constitution of the Communist Party of China

October 24, 2017

The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China deliberated on and unanimously adopted the revised Constitution of the Communist Party of China proposed by the 18th Party Central Committee and decided that it shall come into effect as of the date of adoption.

The Congress notes that since the Party's 18th National Congress, Chinese Communists, with Comrade Xi Jinping as their chief representative, in response to contemporary developments and by integrating theory with practice, have systematically addressed the major question of our times-what kind of socialism with Chinese characteristics the new era requires us to uphold and develop and how we should uphold and develop it, thus giving shape to Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. The Thought is a continuation and development of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development. It is the latest achievement in adapting Marxism to the Chinese context, a crystallization of the practical experience and collective wisdom of the Party and the people, an important component of the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and a guide to action for the entire Party and all the Chinese people to strive for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and must be upheld long term and constantly developed. Under the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, the Communist Party of China has led the Chinese people of all ethnic groups in a concerted effort to carry out a great struggle, develop a great project, advance a great cause, and realize a great dream, ushering in a new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

The Congress unanimously agrees that, Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, in addition to Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development, shall constitute the guides to action of the Party in the Party Constitution. The Congress urges all Party members to use the Thought to achieve unity in thinking and action, be more purposeful and determined in studying and applying it, and put the Thought into action throughout the drive toward China's socialist modernization and in every dimension of Party building.

The Congress affirms that the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics is a key part of socialism with Chinese characteristics and a powerful source of strength that inspires the entire Party and the Chinese people of all ethnic groups to forge ahead courageously. The Congress approves the incorporation of the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics into the Party Constitution, along with the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics. This addition will help all Party members deepen their understanding of socialism with Chinese characteristics and fully grasp its implications. The Congress stresses that all Party members must cherish deeply, uphold long term, and continue to develop this path, this theoretical system, this socialist system, and this culture, which the Party has developed through great hardship; hold high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics; have firm confidence in the path, theory, system, and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics; and implement the Party's basic theory, basic line, and basic policy.

The Congress holds that national rejuvenation has been the greatest dream of the Chinese people since modern times began, and that it is a solemn commitment our Party has made to our people and to history. The Congress endorses the inclusion of the two centenary goals and the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation into the Party Constitution.

The Congress holds that a major political conclusion is drawn in the political report to the 19th Party Congress that the principal contradiction facing Chinese society has evolved and is now that between the people's ever-growing needs for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development; it reflects the realities of the development of Chinese society, and serves as an important basis on which we formulate major policies and long-term strategies for the Party and the country. The Party Constitution is revised accordingly to provide important guidance for us to better understand the new historic juncture in China's development and its particular features in the current stage and to further advance the cause of the Party and the country.

The Congress holds that statements on our people-centered philosophy of development; on innovative, coordinated, green, and open development that is for everyone; on coordinated efforts to finish building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, comprehensively deepen reform, fully advance law-based governance, and strengthen Party self-governance in every respect; and on all-out efforts to build a great modern socialist country, represent the ultimate purpose, vision, overall strategy, and overarching goal of the Party in upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Also incorporated into the Party Constitution are statements on the need to achieve better quality and more efficient, equitable, and sustainable development, to improve and develop the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, to modernize China's system and capacity for governance, and to pursue reform in a more systematic, holistic, and coordinated way. This will help all Party members closely follow, in both thinking and action, the well-conceived assessment and strategic plans of the Central Committee, uphold and put into practice the new development philosophy, and continue to break new ground in reform and development.

The Congress holds that since our 18th National Congress, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core has developed new ideas, new thinking, and new strategies for promoting economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological advancement. The Congress agrees to add to the Party Constitution the following statements: we shall give play to the decisive role of market forces in resource allocation and ensure the government plays its role better; advance supply-side structural reform; establish a system of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics; advance extensive, multilevel, and institutionalized development of consultative democracy; nurture and practice core socialist values; promote the creative evolution and development of fine traditional Chinese culture; carry forward our revolutionary culture; develop an advanced socialist culture; enhance our country's cultural soft power; hold firmly the leading position in ideological work; help our people gain an increasingly stronger sense of fulfillment; strengthen and develop new approaches to social governance; pursue a holistic approach to national security; and fully understand that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets.

These statements are of great importance in helping all Party members more consciously and determinedly implement the Party's basic theory, basic line, and basic policy, and coordinate the implementation of the five-sphere integrated plan.

The Congress notes that since the Party's 18th National Congress, Comrade Xi Jinping has set forth a series of important ideas and viewpoints on strengthening national defense and the armed forces, ethnic unity, "one country, two systems" and national reunification, the united front, and foreign affairs, charting the course for staying committed to the path of building strong armed forces with Chinese characteristics; for safeguarding and developing socialist ethnic relations featuring equality, unity, mutual assistance, and harmony; for promoting national reunification; and for building a community with a shared future for mankind.

The Congress agrees to include into the Party Constitution the following statements: The Communist Party of China shall uphold its absolute leadership over the People's Liberation Army and other people's armed forces; implement Xi Jinping's thinking on strengthening the military; strengthen the development of the People's Liberation Army by enhancing its political loyalty, strengthening it through reform and technology, and running it in accordance with the law; build people's forces that obey the Party's command, can fight and win, and maintain excellent conduct; ensure that the People's Liberation Army accomplishes its missions and tasks in the new era; foster a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation; uphold justice while pursuing shared interests; work to build a community with a shared future for mankind; follow the principle of achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration; and pursue the Belt and Road Initiative.

The inclusion of these statements will help ensure the Party's absolute leadership over the people's armed forces, modernize national defense and the military, promote ethnic unity, and develop an open economy of higher standards.

The Congress holds that since its 18th National Congress, the Party has made steady progress in exercising full and rigorous governance over the Party, taken all-around measures to explore the strengthening of Party building, and gained abundant successful experience and achieved major outcomes, which must be included into the Party Constitution in a timely manner and therefore become the common will and rule of the whole Party.

It is affirmed at the Party's 19th National Congress that the Party must firmly exercise self-supervision and practice strict self-governance in every respect; strengthen the Party's long-term governance capacity and its advanced nature and purity; and take enhancing its political building as the overarching principle and make comprehensive efforts to ensure that the Party's political work is stressed, ideology is strengthened, organizations are consolidated, conduct is improved, discipline is maintained, institutional development is always emphasized, and the fight against corruption keeps going. The Congress agrees to add the above statements to the Party Constitution.

Also included into the Party Constitution are: The Party must constantly strengthen its ability to purify, improve, reform, and excel itself; use Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era to achieve unity in thinking and action; keep firmly in mind the need to maintain political integrity, think in big-picture terms, uphold the leadership core, and keep in alignment, and firmly uphold the authority and centralized, unified leadership of the Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core; strengthen and regulate political activities within the Party; make intraparty political activities more politically oriented, up-to-date, principled, and effective; cultivate a positive and healthy intraparty political culture; and foster a sound political ecosystem featuring honesty and integrity within the Party. Firmness in exercising strict self-supervision and self-governance is included into the Party Constitution as a fundamental requirement the Party must work with firm resolve to meet in building itself.

The incorporation of these statements will ensure the Party has a clearer goal and a more complete plan for building itself. They will help the whole Party advance Party building with more well-conceived ways of thinking and more effective measures, so as to continuously improve the quality of Party building and ensure the Party is always full of vigor and vitality.

The Congress holds that the leadership of the Communist Party of China is the most essential attribute of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and the greatest strength of this system; the Party exercises overall leadership over all areas of endeavor in every part of the country. The Congress agrees to add this major political principle to the Party Constitution, which will help heighten the Party consciousness of every Party member, and ensure unity of thinking, political solidarity and concerted action of the whole Party. It will also help enhance the Party's ability to innovate, power to unite, and energy to fight; ensure the Party always provides overall leadership and coordinates the efforts of all involved; and offer the fundamental political guarantee for all areas of work of the Party and the country.

The Congress notes that in view of the successful experience gained in Party work and Party building since the 18th Party Congress and in compliance with the revisions to the General Program, appropriate revisions to some articles of the Party Constitution are necessary.

To conscientiously study Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, to consciously observe the Party's political discipline and rules, to have the courage to reveal and correct any statements and actions violating the Party's principles, to lead the way in practicing core socialist values, and to advocate traditional virtues of the Chinese nation, are obligations of Party members. Upholding political integrity as the primary criterion is the major principle that must be adhered to in admitting new Party members.

To ensure the full coverage of discipline inspection and carry out inspections at central, city (prefecture), and county levels is practical experience gained in the Party's discipline inspection work; it must be upheld and developed.

To clarify that Chairperson of the Central Military Commission assumes overall responsibility over the work of the Commission and that the Central Military Commission is responsible for Party work and political work in the armed forces, complies with the realistic requirement to ensure the Central Military Commission fulfills its responsibility for Party self-supervision and self-governance after the military reform.

To fully reflect the achievements of Party work and Party building since the 18th Party Congress, revisions are made to: adjust the term of office of general Party branch committees and Party branch committees; regularize and institutionalize the requirement for all Party members to study the Party Constitution, Party regulations, and General Secretary Xi Jinping's major policy addresses and to meet Party standards; define the status and role of Party organizations in state-owned enterprises; elaborate on the functions and responsibilities of primary-level Party organizations in social organizations; explicate the responsibilities of primary-level Party organizations in offices of the Party or the state at every level; demonstrate the position and functions of Party branches; set out new criteria and requirements for selecting officials; and adjust and elaborate on provisions related to the Party discipline and Party organs for discipline inspection.

These revisions will help all Party members grasp the guiding ideology of the Party and keep up with the times, align themselves with Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and use it to guide practice and advance work, see primary-level Party organizations become politically stronger, and move further forward with the full and rigorous governance over the Party.

The Congress urges Party organizations at all levels and all Party members to, under the firm leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core, hold high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, follow the guidance of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, the Scientific Outlook on Development, and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, and more purposefully study, observe, apply, and uphold the Party Constitution. The Congress urges the entire Party to uphold and strengthen the overall leadership of the Party, ensure the Party's strict self-supervision and strict self-governance in every respect, and keep working to secure a decisive victory in finishing building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, to strive for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, to realize the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation, and to see our people fulfill their aspirations for a better life.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 17:33:13|Editor: Yamei

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BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Foreign leaders, political parties and organizations around the world have sent congratulatory messages on the occasion of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

The messages speak highly of the CPC's leadership as well as China's socio-economic development and global contributions, and express full confidence that the CPC will lead China to even greater prosperity.

The following is an edited version of some of these messages.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, chairman of the Justice and Development Party:

"This CPC congress will become a landmark event to show the world China's resolve for its development."

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, chairman of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela:

"In the process of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, the decisions of the 19th CPC National Congress will help China complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects and turn it into a modernized socialist country."

Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, leader of the Peruvians for Change party:

"The 19th CPC National Congress will surely accomplish the great achievements the Chinese people are longing for."

Gambian President Adama Barrow:

"Gambia has irreversibly embraced the one China Policy and 'the bonds of friendship and cordial relations that so happily exist' between Gambia and China 'shall remain unshakable.'"

Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic:

"China will surely maintain a sustainable socio-economic development, complete the mission of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2020, and substantiate the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation."

Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi:

"I believe the important internal and external policies to be made at this CPC congress will not only boost China's progress and prosperity, but also promote global peace and harmony."

Sher Bahadur Deuba, president of the Nepali Congress party and Nepali prime minister:

"I believe the 19th CPC National Congress will have an in-depth analysis of both international and domestic situations, and formulate action programs and major policies that can meet the requirements of the times to lead China to a new height of prosperity and development."

Vincent Meriton, president of the Parti Lepep and vice president of the Republic of Seychelles:

"We note with a lot of admiration that the CPC's courageous and consistent implementation of its clearly-defined policies has provided China with an unparalleled economic growth over a number of years. We strongly believe that the 19th CPC National Congress will map out the development blueprint for China and bring great benefit to the Chinese people."

The Central Executive Committee of Myanmar's National League for Democracy:

"We sincerely expect the CPC's greater achievements in the construction of all areas such as economy, politics, culture, society and ecological civilization."

Vlad Plahotniuc, chairman of the Democratic Party of Moldova:

"I am fully confident that the efforts the CPC is putting in promoting and implementing its policies will consolidate the global leadership position of China."

Demeke Mekonnen, deputy prime minister of Ethiopia and deputy chairman of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front:

"I believe that the 19th CPC National Congress will set a new milestone in the CPC's endeavors for inclusive growth and social progress."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 17:43:17|Editor: Song Lifang

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TOKYO, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Japanese government has tasked industrial standards-approved bodies to carry out inspections at Kobe Steel Ltd.'s plants in an effort to deal with the company's wide-reaching falsified inspection data scandal, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Hiroshige Seko said Tuesday.

"We will keep an eye on the result of the review," Seko told a news conference.

He added that Kobe Steel should set up its own objective measures to ensure industry standards are kept, warning that if standards are not maintained then a certification organization will have the authority to withdraw its certificate and halt shipments of Kobe Steel products.

Keiichi Ishii, minister of land, infrastructure, transport and tourism, told a separate news briefing that inspections had begun at plants in Japan.

"Japan is primarily responsible for the safety of domestically produced aircraft," Ishii said, with reference to a plant in Mie Prefecture that produces aluminum used in the Mitsubishi Regional Jet passenger jet.

"We will take all possible measures to assure product quality in mass production," Ishii said, adding that data obtained from Kobe Steel will be verified by the government.

Kobe Steel Ltd. had initially admitted to falsifying inspection data on a number of its products, including aluminum, copper, steel powder and special steel products.

It also came to light late last week that the embattled steel maker's own investigations revealed cover-ups and more incidents of data falsification.

Companies ranging from automakers and airplane manufacturers, to defense equipment and Shinkansen bullet train makers, have been affected by the scandal.

Kobe Steel had already admitted that its products, with falsified data about their strength and durability, have been sold to around 200 companies globally.

Initial investigations revealed that Kobe Steel knowingly shipped at least 20,000 tons of aluminum and copper products with fabricated inspection data.

The firm also admitted that an internal probe had revealed that 140 tons of iron powder shipped in fiscal 2016 did not meet customer specifications.

It also said that one of its subsidiaries, Kobelco Research Institute, had falsified data related to the production method of liquid crystal displays, DVDs and other electronic equipment.

In Japan, major railway operators Central Japan Railway and West Japan Railway have stated that their Shinkansen bullet trains contained aluminum parts sourced from Kobe Steel that did not meet industry standards.

Beyond automakers and trains, Kobe Steel has also been implicated in fabricating data for aerospace and defense-related products.

Kobe Steel was founded in 1905 and has been a bastion of Japan's manufacturing sector.

The revelations of the data fabrication scandal, however, has cast doubts over corporate governance in the manufacturing industry and beyond in Japan, and cast serious aspersions over Japan's once stellar reputation for precision manufacturing, industry experts said.

A recent scandal about unauthorized inspections carried out by Nissan Motor Co, Ltd. and rigged fuel economy tests at Suzuki Motor Corp. last year and an almost identical scandal at Mitsubishi Motors Corp. have further revealed an inherent culture of lax and neglectful procedures at Japan's once-revered blue chip firms, industry authorities also said.

On the back of Takata Corporation's fatal airbag inflator scandal, Japan's reputation as a global leader in the manufacturing industry may now be a thing of the past, experts on the matter also attested.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 18:08:23|Editor: Song Lifang

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WINDHOEK, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Namibia rejects a widely circulating allegation from the media that the country has not submitted a report on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) for over a year to the United Nations Security Council(UNSC)'s Sanctions Committee.

The Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation said in a statement issued on Tuesday that the government has submitted reports to the UNSC's Sanctions Committee, the last being on April 8 this year.

Namibia has terminated contract with the Korean Mining Development Trading Corporation (KOMID) and Mansudae Overseas Projects (MOP) in Namibia, for as long as the UNSC sanctions against the DPRK are in place, and all DPRK nationals have departed from the country, as part of the implementation of the UNSC sanctions resolutions, the statement further read.

The ministry's acting permanent secretary, Lineekela Mboti, said that Namibia is committed to complying with all relevant UN resolutions on the DPRK, and has, therefore, invited a panel of experts to visit the African country to assess its compliance with the UNSC resolutions.

"The experts acknowledged our invitation and regretted that their calendar could not allow them to visit Namibia. The invitation still stands," Mboti said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 18:18:29|Editor: Song Lifang

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by Bedah Mengo

NAIROBI, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- University student Sylvans Omolo on Monday received a message on his phone which alleged that there was marking of ballot papers somewhere in western Kenya ahead of the Oct. 26 polls.

Omolo, a fourth-year education student, forwarded the message immediately to members of at least four WhatsApp groups he belongs to.

Each group has at least 50 members, so by a split of a second, Omolo spread the message which he could not verify its veracity to about 200 people.

And the people he spreads the message to similarly shared to others, with the content spreading across the country like bushfire.

"I share the messages to spread the content which I believe people should know. I get up to five such messages daily and I forward them," said Omolo, noting that he does not believe he is doing something wrong.

Other messages spreading on social media in Kenya include those castigating some communities, hate, fake news, threats and insults.

The fast spread of such messages as the east African nation heads to one of the most contentious polls on Thursday poses fresh challenges to the country divided along political party and tribal lines ahead of the Oct. 26 polls, which the opposition National Super Alliance (NASA), headed by Raila Odinga, has boycotted.

Citizens are either backing the ruling Jubilee Party's President Uhuru Kenyatta, who has vowed to ensure elections take place, or Odinga.

And social media is at the center of it all, with citizens discussing their partisan positions openly on platforms that include WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook.

"Voting is already underway in Mandera yet elections are three days away," a message with a photo circulating on WhatsApp was shared widely on Monday.

As with all other messages, there was no verification about the claims of rigging spread by the photo.

Aware of the threat social media platforms pose ahead of the elections, the government has moved to curb spread of hate, fake news and other messages.

The Communication Authority (CA) and the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) on Tuesday warned citizens against the propagation of hate speech and other undesirable content on social media.

"As the Oct. 26 presidential election approaches, the attention has been drawn to misuse of electronic communications networks, particularly the social media platforms, to propagate hate speech and other undesirable content," said CA director-general Francis Wangusi and NCIC chairman Francis ole Kaparo in a statement. "Hate messages have potential to polarize the country along tribal lines and to perpetuate fear."

They urged bloggers, online news sites, political leaders and their followers to exercise restraint during this period.

"Website and blog administrators are asked to take extra caution by authenticating and validating source and truthfulness of content prior to publishing to limit spread of rumors," said Kaparo and Wangusi.

According to the 2008 NCIC Act, anyone who contravenes the law is liable for a fine of 9,708 U.S. dollars or imprisonment of three years.

Prior to the Aug. 8 polls, social media posed similar challenges with the CA threatening to shut the internet during the elections.

The problem has doubled ahead of the Oct. 26 polls as the opposition has boycotted the elections and urged its supporters to do so, with the online contest taking tribal lines.

Kenya has close to 10 million social media users, according to estimates by Social Bakers.

The majority of these users are aged between 18-24 and 25-34 years with 64 percent of them being male.

Odinga has opposed the gag on social media users, saying the platforms enhance freedom of expression.

"People should be allowed to speak freely," he said recently. "What is this animal called hate speech? It has not been defined."

Analysts noted that while social media has been used in Kenya to propagate good, it has also been used to promote the negative that include hate and fake news.

"The real shame of social media is that even those with nothing useful or constructive to say have the platform to share their ignorance, bias, foolishness and prejudice with everyone in a free-for-all public sphere," said Sam Kamau, a digital journalism lecturer at Aga Khan University.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 18:23:31|Editor: Song Lifang

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NAIROBI, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Kenya plans to woo foreign investors into its capital markets through the introduction of innovative products.

Capital Markets Authority (CMA) CEO Paul Muthaura told a media briefing in Nairobi that some of the products include the Global Depository Receipts that allow foreign companies to easily trade their shares in Kenya.

"Our target is to get more portfolio inflows into the country so as to raise Kenya's profile as an emerging investment destination," Muthaura said during the release of the Third Quarter Capital Markets Soundness Report (2017).

According to the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE), foreigners currently own approximately 25 percent of the market capitalization.

Muthaura noted that more financial flows into the capital market will indicate to international investors that Kenya has a favorable investment climate.

"The net effect will be that foreigners will also flock to other sectors of the economy such as hospitality, manufacturing and construction sectors," he added.

The regulator noted that the market capitalization of all the listed firms at the NSE are equivalent to 50 percent of Kenya's gross domestic product (GDP).

"More foreign investments will help to push the figure to 90 percent of GDP as per the Capital Markets Authority Master Plan," Muthaura said.

CMA Senior Market Development Officer Justus Agoti said that Kenya's primary equities market has displayed minimal activity over the past 10 years.

"The CMA is therefore implementing measures such as the Business Incubator and Accelerator on the Listing Experience and the transformation of the Growth Enterprise Market Segment (GEMS) market to enhance the capacity of capital markets to enable small and medium-size companies to join the capital markets," Agoti said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 18:33:34|Editor: Song Lifang

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MOGADISHU, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) on Tuesday reiterated its commitment to building the capacity of the Somali National Army (SNA), ahead of its planned exit.

AMISOM Force Commander Osman Noor Soubagleh also lauded the cordial working relations between AMISOM and SNA, in the effort to rid the country of Al-Shabaab and to restore peace and stability to the Horn of Africa country.

"As AMISOM we remain committed to supporting the SNA whenever needed, within the available means to ensure a smooth transition," Soubagleh said in a statement released after meeting new SNA Chief of Defense Forces (CDF) Abdiweli Jama Hussein in Mogadishu.

The AMISOM force commander pledged to continue fostering the good working relations.

"Your appointment comes at a time when the focus is on beginning the exit of AMISOM from Somalia and handover to the Somali National Security Forces," he said.

As part of its exit strategy, AMISOM will reduce its troops by 1,000 by December, followed by further cuts next year, an exercise expected to end by 2020.

However, AMISOM's exit is also pegged on the ability of the Somali National Security Forces, particularly the SNA to ably take over the security of the country.

Soubagleh noted that both AMISOM and SNA have a common enemy, the Al-Shabaab militants, who are linked to the recent bomb attack that killed more than 300 people.

Speaking at the meeting, Abdiweli pledged to work closely with AMISOM to build the capacity of the SNA, to enable it to take over the security responsibilities of the country.

"As time approaches for AMISOM to exit, we will continue to work hard together with AMISOM so that the SNA can assume responsibility for the security of the country," he said, stressing the need to eradicate Al-Shabaab to pave the way for a smooth AMISOM exit.
Source:Xinhua| 2017-10-24 18:41:05|Editor: Mengjie

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Tourists visit the Fragrant Hills Park in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 24, 2017. As local temperature dropped, red leaves enriched the autumn palette of the park and attracted many tourists. (Xinhua/Zhang Chenlin)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 18:43:36|Editor: Song Lifang

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HARARE, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe has rubbished the recent withdrawal of goodwill ambassadorial role that had been bestowed on President Robert Mugabe by the World Health Organization (WHO), saying that he would have rejected the appointment anyway if he had been informed about it prior to the announcement.

Secretary for Information, Media and Broadcasting Services George Charamba told state media that Mugabe had not been formally told about the appointment as WHO goodwill ambassador for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Africa and only got to know about it from the media.

If he had been informed, he would have rejected it because it was not in Zimbabwe's national interest to do so, Charamba was quoted saying in Tuesday's Herald newspaper.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhainom Ghebreyesus last Wednesday announced Mugabe's appointment as goodwill ambassador during a WHO conference on NCDs in Montevideo, Uruguay.

However, he rescinded the appointment four days later following pressure from Western powers and organizations.

Ghebreyesus said he had also consulted with the government of Zimbabwe and they had concluded that this decision was in the best interests of WHO.

"The president was quite surprised that he had been appointed a goodwill ambassador by the WHO," Charamba said.

"There was nothing, whether verbal or written, from the WHO intimating that WHO wished to make the president a goodwill ambassador in respect of NCDs."

Foreign Minister Walter Mzembi, who accompanied Mugabe to the conference, said on Sunday that the United Nations system needs to be reformed.

He was responding to Ghebreyesus' announcement of the decision to withdraw the appointment.

"What has happened is the reason why the UN system has to be reformed and democratized so that it does not pander to the whims of a few powerful nations," he said.

"It is clear that the UN agencies are not independent and can be rail-roaded into making decisions that please a few nations," Mzembi said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 18:58:44|Editor: Song Lifang

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BEIRUT, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri said Tuesday that Lebanon and Australia will look to increase economic and trade ties, following a meeting with visiting Australia Governor Sir Peter Cosgrove.

According to a statement from Hariri's media office, Hariri welcomed Cosgrove and his accompanying delegation to the Grand Serail in an official reception before the two held closed-door talks.

"They discussed regional and international developments as well as the Syrian crisis and its negative effects on Lebanese, especially the Syrian refugee crisis," the statement said.

The Australian official met with President Michel Aoun Monday where the two discussed the ongoing refugee crisis and the need for refugees to return to their country.

Cosgrove and his wife Lady Lynn Cosgrove arrived in Lebanon Sunday for a three-day visit.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 19:18:51|Editor: Mengjie

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HONG KONG, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) aims to launch a new profits tax system in April when the new year of assessment starts, the HKSAR Chief Executive Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said on Tuesday.

The amendment bill to facilitate the launch of a new two-tier profits tax system is expected to be tabled at the Legislative Council by the end of this year, she told the media before an Executive Council meeting.

Lam called on legislators to examine the amendment bill with efficiency.

The new profits tax system will cut tax rate for the first 2 million HK dollars (256,410 U.S. dollars) of company profits from 16.5 percent to 8.25 percent.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 19:28:54|Editor: Song Lifang

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JAKARTA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Indonesian police on Tuesday arrested nine alleged terrorists, including financier and the plotter of an attack on a police station, a senior police officer said.

Some other alleged militants planned to take parts in the attack, police spokesman Brigadier General Rikwanto said.

All of the nine militants were captured in the provinces of Central Java, East Java, South Sulawesi and Riau, the general said.

"The nine persons were arrested in four provinces," he said in a statement.

Muhammad Khoiruddin, captured in Kendal of Central Java province, allegedly provided funds for Hendro Fernando terrorist group linked with East Indonesian Mujahiddin group from 2015 to 2016, said Rikwanto.

Yoyok Handoko, alias Abu Zaid, was the plotter of the strike on a police station in Riau province, said Rikwanto.

Wawan, alias Abu Afif, and Beni Samsu Trisno, alias Abu Ibrohim, had instigated other militants to launch the attack, he added.

Police would conduct investigation and interrogation against the nine suspects.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 19:33:56|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has received good wishes from foreign leaders, political parties and organizations around the world.

The messages speak highly of the CPC's leadership as well as China's socio-economic development and global contributions, and express full confidence that the CPC will lead China to even greater prosperity.

The following is an edited summary of some of these messages.

S. Sudhakar Reddy, general secretary of the Communist Party of India:

"The international community believes that the policies established by the 19th CPC National Congress will help maintain world peace and security, and promote common development."

Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist):

"The 19th CPC National Congress will profoundly analyze the current international and domestic situations and comprehensively study the new requirements of China's future development and the new expectations of the Chinese people."

Narayan Man Bijukchhe, president of the Nepal Workers Peasants Party:

"Under the wise leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping, China's progress in economy, defense and other fields has been significant for safeguarding world peace."

C.P. Mainali, general secretary of the Communist Party Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist):

"Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the CPC, under the leadership of the Central Committee with General Secretary Xi Jinping at the core, has achieved great success in building socialism with Chinese characteristics, which has entered a new development phase."

Jose de Venecia, co-chairman of the Standing Committee of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), and Mushahid Hussain Sayed, vice chairman of ICAPP:

"Guided by the grand vision of the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation, the CPC has led China to great achievements."

Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, secretary-general of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) in Malaysia:

"Malaysia strongly agrees with the new governance concepts, thoughts and strategies of the CPC Central Committee with General Secretary Xi Jinping at the core, and believes that Xi will certainly lead China to greater achievements and more contributions to world development."

Liow Tiong Lai, Malaysian transport minister and president of the Malaysian Chinese Association:

"The new central leadership to be elected by the 19th CPC National Congress will lead the Chinese people to achieve the goal of building a moderately prosperous society and realize a new historic leap of the Chinese nation."

The Republican Party of Armenia:

"Throughout its development process, the CPC has managed to inherit traditions, stay true to its founding mission, and advance with the times. The CPC's thoughts and theories are extraordinary in that they are capable of drawing from ideas and cultures around the world."

Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, deputy chairman of the Pakistani Senate and secretary-general of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) party:

"The all-round achievements China has made in recent years are attributable to the CPC's determination and endless efforts to serve the nation and its people."

Mian Shehbaz Sharif, president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz's Punjab chapter and chief minister of Punjab province:

"The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a crucial part of the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping, has been an embodiment of the CPC's commitment to opening up and inviting more members of the international community to share China's economic achievements. It highlights the CPC's vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind."

Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King's College London:

"A stable, prosperous China has never before been so important for the world. So the 19th CPC National Congress will be an opportunity for the outside world to understand more about the policy priorities of China as it proceeds towards achieving the first centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects."

Heinz Fischer, former Austrian president and president of the Austria-China Friendship Association:

"The 19th CPC National Congress and its achievements will have a crucial influence on China's development and the role it plays in international society, as well as on the relations between Austria and China."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 19:33:56|Editor: Song Lifang

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PARIS, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- French President Emmanuel Macron will discuss with visiting Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sissi an eventual new deal of 12 Rafale fighter jets, Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said Tuesday.

"If there can be new contracts, so much the better. That will be discussed today by the President of the Republic and the president (al-Sisi)," Le Maire told local broadcaster Europe1.

Asked about media reports saying France was blocking the deal of 12 Rafale fighters jets because of the paymetn terms asked for by Egypt, French minister said "It's normal that Bercy (French economy ministry) ensures that Egypt is able to pay for these aircraft orders."

Under the former Socialist government, France had signed in 2015, a 5.6-billion-euro (6.58 billion-U.S. dollar) accord to provide Cairo with 24 Rafale combat jets.

The 2015 Rafale contract, France's first export contract of the fighter jet made by Dassault Aviation SA, included the option of selling another 12 fighter jets.

According to Le Maire, during al-Sissi's three-day visit, "all subjects are on the table" including sensitive human rights issue.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 19:54:07|Editor: Mengjie

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by Levi J. Parsons

SYDNEY, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- China will make a positive and constructive contribution to the global economy and continue to be Australia's most important trading partner, said Steven Ciobo, Australian minister for trade, tourism and investment.

"Australia welcomes China's growth," he said, "Both our countries have a long standing trading relationship that helps strengthen our economies."

Since 2012, a number of steps have been implemented to bolster bilateral ties, including the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement and the "2017 Year of Tourism Partnership," he added.

Ciobo also pointed out that foreign investment by China at that time helps support local job creation, which has soared to 87 billion Australian dollars (67.74 billion U.S. dollars) at the end of 2016.

But it's the two-way trade relationship that has continued to underpin the prosperity of Australia with almost one third of its exports bound for China, Ciobo stressed.

Australia's rich natural resources, Ciobo said, have also played a vital role in China's growth story as an important input to its manufacturing base.

"Australian resources and energy exports have powered China's economic growth over the past 30 years. Australian companies not only supply resources used in China's industrial sector, but are also developing resources projects jointly with Chinese companies," he added.

However, as China looks to transition out of the manufacturing industry towards new technology innovation and the services sector as part of its rejuvenation strategy, Ciobo sees this transition as an opportunity to build further cooperation and partnership with China.

"This will pave the way for a new era of trade growth between the two countries that is increasingly based on services, innovation and exchange of new ideas between Chinese and Australian institutions and businesses," Ciobo said.

"The launch of Australia's Shanghai Landing Pad and the opening of China's Torch Innovation Park at the University of New South Wales are already good examples of our investment and innovation cooperation," he said.

The Australian Landing Pad is a program established by the government which aims to nurture creativity and start up companies. The first Australian start-ups arrived at the Innovation Landing Pad in Shanghai in February, connecting both sides' investors, technologies and markets.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 19:54:08|Editor: Song Lifang

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BEIRUT, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- A UN peacekeeping force commander in Lebanon said Tuesday that peace between Lebanon and Israel is still elusive.

Commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and head of mission Maj. Gen. Michael Beary made the remarks on Tuesday.

Speaking on the occasion of UN Day, Beary noted that UNIFIL would continue its role in reaching a permanent ceasefire and implementing Security Council Resolution 1701.

UN Security Council resolution 1701 was adopted in 2006 and halted all military operations between Hezbollah and Israel following a 33-day war in July of that year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 19:59:12|Editor: Song Lifang

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TRIPOLI, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Libya has seized 280 illegal immigrants bound for Europe in the western cities of Ajelat and Sabratha, a senior Libyan official said Tuesday.

"Investigators of the Anti-Illegal Department, in cooperation with the military police, carried out a raid on an immigrants trafficking camp in Sabratha and found 93 illegal immigrants," Bassem Al-Gharabli, head of Sabratha's Anti-Illegal Department, told Xinhua.

"The investigators also found 187 illegal immigrants in the neighboring city of Ajelat, after coordinating with a security directorate in the city," Al-Gharabli added.

The department managed to control the flow of migrants, Al-Gharabli said.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Libya announced last week that over 8,000 illegal immigrants of 23 African and Asian nationalities have been voluntarily deported from the country this year so far.

The Libyan navy also confirmed that nearly 9,000 illegal immigrants were rescued off Libyan coast in the first half of 2017.

Following the 2011 uprising that toppled former Gaddafi's regime, Libya has become a preferred point of departure for illegal immigrants wanting to cross the Mediterranean towards European shores, due to the insecurity and chaos in the country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 20:04:13|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Wolfang Schaeuble (C) delivers a speech at the Reichstag building in Berlin, capital of Germany, on Oct. 24, 2017. Ex-Finance Minister Wolfang Schaeuble (CDU) has been elected as the president of Germany's new Federal Parliament (Bundestag) during its constituting session on Tuesday. (Xinhua/Shan Yuqi)

BERLIN, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Ex-Finance Minister Wolfang Schaeuble (CDU) has been elected as the president of Germany's new Federal Parliament (Bundestag) during its constituting session on Tuesday.

As was widely anticipated, Volker Kauder, the leader of the joint Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/ Christian Social Union (CSU) parliamentary faction nominated the 75-year old Schaeuble for the prestigious post.

A total of 501 out of the 704 delegate votes were cast in favor of Schaeuble. In his subsequent election speech, Schaeuble described himself as a "passionate parliamentarian". The veteran CDU politician further warned against a sharpening of tones in public debate and the resulting challenge to Germany's democratic institutions.

Citing philosopher Immanuel Kant, Schaeuble called on delegates to follow the "categorical imperative" to always act in line with principles which could be generalized as a moral framework for the wider population.

The constituting meeting of the 19th Federal Parliament follows a strict protocol, consisting of a speech by the interim chairman by seniority, the election of the president of the parliament, the election of the parliamentary vice-presidents, and a subsequent reception for delegates.

Early into the session, however the AfD launched an unsuccessful motion to prevent Herrmann-Otto Solms (FDP) from opening and presiding over the parliament as its interim chairman by seniority.

The AfD complained about the abandonment of a historical practice of handing the post in question to the oldest member of parliament, as opposed to the member with the longest record of service as a delegate. The far-right party is represented in the Federal Parliament for the first time after securing 12.6 percent of the vote in elections on Sept. 24.

According to AfD delegate Bernd Baumann this change under the "Lex AfD" in the last parliament discriminated unfairly against his party.

"That was a trick which they used to exclude the AfD" Baumann complained. He warned that the "people had spoken" on Sept. 24 and that a "new epoch" in German politics had now begun.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 20:04:15|Editor: Song Lifang

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DHAKA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh is experiencing slow Internet as the country's first undersea cable, SEA-ME-WE-4, has been shut down Tuesday afternoon for repairs, an official said.

The official of the Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd (BSCCL) told Xinhua that Internet users in capital Dhaka and elsewhere in the country would likely face poor connectivity for the next three days from Tuesday.

The SEA-ME-WE-4, which for the fist time in its history of 12 years, was shut down for repairs at a depth of 115 km in the Bay of Bengal from its landing station in Cox's Bazar district, 292 km southeast of capital Dhaka, he said.

The (BSCCL) official said the second submarine cable, SEA-ME-WE-5, however, remains fully operational.

Bangladeshi State Minister for Telecoms Tarana Halim had ealirer said internet speed in Bangladesh may slow between Oct. 24 and Oct. 26 due to repairs on the first submarine cable.

Bangladesh was connected with its second submarine cable system called South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5 (SEA-ME-WE 5) with a design capacity of 1,500 Gbps in September this year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 20:19:20|Editor: Song Lifang

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CLARK, the Philippines, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The defense ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) formally launched on Tuesday a hotline designed to provide quick response cooperation in emergencies, especially in maritime operations.

Formerly known as the ASEAN Direct Communications Link (ADI), the ADI is designed to allow the defense ministers to communicate instantly through secure hotline.

A statement issued by the ASEAN defense ministers said ADI "will further foster cooperation and diffuse possible misunderstandings among ASEAN member states."

"One of the main characteristics of the ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting (ADMM) and the ADMM-PLus that we are proud of is that these meetings go beyond the ministerial platforms for dialogue, and actually serve as mechanisms for practical cooperation," said Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana.

Lorenzana chaired the two-day ADMM and the ADMM-Plus that ended Tuesday.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. ADMM-Plus includes ASEAN's eight security partners - Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and the United States.

ASEAN defense ministers adopted the ADI during the eighth ADMM in Myanmar in 2014, which allows ASEAN defense ministers to directly contact his or her counterpart in another ASEAN state during emergencies in land or at sea.

As the highest defense consultative and cooperative mechanism, the ADMM promotes regional peace and stability through dialogue and cooperation.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 20:24:22|Editor: Mengjie

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RAMALLAH, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday stressed Palestine's support for a Chinese proposal for peace in the Middle East.

The four-point proposal put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping for peace between Israel and the Palestinians "are very good points," Abbas told Chinese reporters in an interview at his office in Ramallah.

"We agreed to carry on with supporting it and take it forward because it is suitable for resolving the Palestinian question and the conflict in the Middle East," said Abbas.

Xi raised the proposal during the July 17-20 visit to China by Abbas.The proposal includes China's continued support for a two-state solution to the Palestine issue, for building an independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, and China's concrete measures to back Palestine's economic development.

Abbas praised China's consistent support for a political settlement of the Palestinian issue, saying "since the beginning, China, its people and the Communist Party of China have stood on the side of Palestine and its cause, something that we are so proud of."

"China as a great country showcases its position and power in the world as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council," he added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 20:29:24|Editor: Song Lifang

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CLARK, the Philippines, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines and Russia signed on Tuesday two defense agreements, officially cementing military and technical cooperation between Manila and Moscow.

In a statement, the Philippine Department of National Defense (DND) said Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu signed an Agreement for Military-Technical Cooperation between the two countries on the sidelines of the fourth Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Defense Ministers' Meeting (ADMM-Plus) in Clark city.

"The document contained provisions on various areas of military and technical cooperation such as research, production support, as well as the possible exchange of experts and training of personnel for joint programs," the statement read.

In addition, it said the two governments also signed a contract for the Philippines' procurement of defense articles from Rosoboronexport, a Russian state-owned company.

The statement did not say what defense equipment and articles are included in the contract.

Lorenzana and Rosoboronexport director general Alexander Mikheev signed the agreement, the statement said.

Lorenzana and Shoigu had a bilateral meeting on Tuesday.

During Shoigu's visit, three Russian warships, including two anti-submarine vessels, are docked in Manila to unload 5,000 assault rifles a million rounds of ammunition and 20 army trucks that Russia donated to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) as part of a new defense relationship between Moscow and Manila.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

ADMM-Plus includes ASEAN's eight security partners, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and the United States.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe attends the ruling ZANU-PF Youth League National Assembly meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Oct. 7, 2017. (Xinhua)

HARARE, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe has rubbished the recent withdrawal of goodwill ambassadorial role that had been bestowed on President Robert Mugabe by the World Health Organization (WHO), saying that he would have rejected the appointment anyway if he had been informed about it prior to the announcement.

Secretary for Information, Media and Broadcasting Services George Charamba told state media that Mugabe had not been formally told about the appointment as WHO goodwill ambassador for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Africa and only got to know about it from the media.

If he had been informed, he would have rejected it because it was not in Zimbabwe's national interest to do so, Charamba was quoted as saying in Tuesday's Herald newspaper.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhainom Ghebreyesus last Wednesday announced Mugabe's appointment as goodwill ambassador during a WHO conference on NCDs in Montevideo, Uruguay.

However, he rescinded the appointment four days later following pressure from Western powers and organizations.

Ghebreyesus said he had also consulted with the government of Zimbabwe and they had concluded that this decision was in the best interests of WHO.

"The president was quite surprised that he had been appointed a goodwill ambassador by the WHO," Charamba said.

"There was nothing, whether verbal or written, from the WHO intimating that WHO wished to make the president a goodwill ambassador in respect of NCDs."

Foreign Minister Walter Mzembi, who accompanied Mugabe to the conference, said on Sunday that the United Nations system needs to be reformed.

He was responding to Ghebreyesus' announcement of the decision to withdraw the appointment.

"What has happened is the reason why the UN system has to be reformed and democratized so that it does not pander to the whims of a few powerful nations," he said.

"It is clear that the UN agencies are not independent and can be rail-roaded into making decisions that please a few nations," Mzembi said.
People participate in an anti-crime rally in Pretoria, South Africa, June 10, 2008. (Xinhua/Liang Shanggang)

CAPE TOWN, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- South Africa has seen a rise in violent crimes in the 2016-2017 financial year, with murders and aggravated robberies up 1.8 percent and 6.4 percent respectively, Police Minister Fikile Mbalula said on Tuesday.

The level for murders and aggravated robberies remains a concern, the minister said while presenting crime statistics to Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police.

The trio crimes of car-jacking, and residential and non-residential robberies are also up again, Mbalula said.

Car-jacking was the most serious, almost climbing back up to late 1990s levels, according to Mbalula.

But he said there has been a 1.8 percent decrease in community-reported serious crimes, driven mainly by reductions in contact crimes.

Following two successive years of increases in contact crimes, there's been a 2.4 percent reduction in this category during the 2016-2017 financial year, Mbalula said.

Most contact crimes are social in nature as they occur among people who know one another, the minister said.

For this reason, it is extremely difficult for the South African Police Service (SAPS) to prevent the levels of such crimes alone, Mbalula said.

Sexual offenses were also down 4.3 percent, with incidents of rape decreasing by 4 percent in particular, said Mbalula.

The minister vowed to intensify anti-crime operations, warning criminals that they will be dealt with in a "proportional response."

Responding to calls for deployment of the South African National Defense Force (SANDF) in gang-stricken areas, Mbalula said it is still the president's prerogative to deploy the SANDF, not his as police minister.

But he pledged that police would work hard not only to bring stability back to areas hard hit by gang violence, but also stamp out violent gangs.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 20:44:29|Editor: Song Lifang

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GAZA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Qatar backs the Egyptian-brokered Palestinian reconciliation deal reached in Cairo between Hamas movement and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Fatah Party, a senior official said Tuesday.

Qatari ambassador Mohamed Ammadi, chairman of the Qatari Committee to reconstruct Gaza, told a news conference that Qatar supports the Palestinian reconciliation agreements.

"Qatar will keep standing to the side of the Palestinians until they establish their independent Palestinian state on the borders of the fourth of July 1967," said Ammadi, who is visiting in the Gaza Strip for few days.

Qatar has been accused by several Gulf states that it backs Hamas movement, which had violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in mid 2007.

"Our goal has been always easing the hard living situation in the Gaza Strip," he said, adding "we would like to see the Palestinian consensus government taking over in the Gaza Strip."

The Qatari diplomat called on the Palestinian consensus government to resolve the sticky issue of Gaza employees, adding that "any financial support to resolve this issue will certainly goes directly to the Palestinian consensus government."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 20:54:32|Editor: Song Lifang

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ISLAMABAD, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in Pakistan on Tuesday for talks on bilateral and regional issues.

It is Tillerson's first visit to Pakistan since the new U.S. administration assumed office and the first visit by a senior U.S. official after President Donald Trump announced the new strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia in August this year.

The U.S. state secretary is scheduled to hold talks with his Pakistani counterpart Khawaja Asif at the foreign ministry. He will also meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Army Chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, Pakistan's state radio reported.

It would be Asif's second meeting with Tillerson in less than a month. The two met in Washington earlier this month and had detailed discussions on bilateral relations and regional security situation, including Afghanistan and Pakistan-India relations, according to the foreign ministry.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 21:09:35|Editor: Mengjie

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QINGDAO, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- A natural history museum opened Tuesday in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao.

Behring Natural History Museum, named after Kenneth E Behring, an U.S. philanthropist and wild animal specimen collector, covers an area of 7,200 square meters and costs 164 million yuan (24.7 million U.S. dollars).

It was built by Qingdao Shibei District Government, Chinese Academy of Sciences Qingdao institute of sciences and arts, and the U.S. Global Health and Education Foundation.

Based on more than 400 specimens donated by Behring, the museum has 32 exhibition sections.

Behring is president of U.S. Global Health and Education Foundation and Wheelchair Foundation World, as well as a member of the China Foundation for Disabled Persons.

Behring has donated many specimens to Chinese museums and universities in recent years.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 21:24:40|Editor: Song Lifang

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CLARK, the Philippines, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The defense ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) formally launched on Tuesday a hotline designed to provide quick response cooperation in emergency situations, especially in maritime operations.

Formerly known as the ASEAN Direct Communications Link, the ASEAN Direct Communications Infrastructure (ADI) is designed to allow the defense ministers to communicate instantly through the secure hotline.

A statement issued by the ASEAN defense ministers said ADI "will further foster cooperation and diffuse possible misunderstandings among ASEAN member states."

"One of the main characteristics of the ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting (ADMM) and the ADMM-PLus that we are proud of is that these meetings go beyond the ministerial platforms for dialogue, and actually serve as mechanisms for practical cooperation," said Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana.

Lorenzana chaired the two-day ADMM and the ADMM-Plus that ended Tuesday.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

ADMM-Plus includes ASEAN's eight security partners - Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and the United States.

ASEAN defense ministers adopted the ADI during the ADMM in Myanmar in 2014. Brunei initiated the idea of the ADI in 2013 when it chaired the ADMM during that year.

ADI allows ASEAN defense ministers to directly contact his or her counterpart in another ASEAN state during emergencies in land or at sea.

As the highest defense consultative and cooperative mechanism, the ADMM promotes regional peace and stability through dialogue and cooperation.

ASEAN ministers expressed hope that the new communications system will speed up responses to calamities and emergencies in the region.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 21:29:44|Editor: Mengjie

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by Xinhua writer Liu Xinyong

BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Gabriela Fonseca, a journalist with the Mexico Daily, knew little about the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region (Jing-Jin-Ji) before her visit to an agricultural logistics park 100 km northwest of Beijing.

Tasting fruit while listening to the introduction of Hebei Xinfadi, she began to realize the reason for moving the agricultural wholesale market from the national capital to neighboring areas.

Just like Fonseca, hundreds of international journalists covering the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) had traveled in and outside Beijing over the last week to get first-hand knowledge about China's development that has entered a "new era."

JING-JIN-JI COORDINATED DEVELOPMENT

Taking up a vast swathe of land outside the fourth ring road in the southern part of the capital, Beijing Xinfadi has been China's largest wholesale agricultural produce market for 14 years in terms of both transaction volume and value.

However, its large size puts pressures on the capital's traffic, population and environment.

The Hebei logistics park opened two years ago to take over part of Beijing Xinfadi's functions, helping reduce the capital's population and traffic pressure, while contributing to local employment and income.

"It is a smart idea to solve the problem of highly-populated cities, especially capital cities," Fonseca said.

Moving the non-capital functions away from Beijing to neighboring Tianjin and Hebei Province is an important component of the Jing-Jin-Ji coordinated development plan unveiled in 2015. Jing is for Beijing, Jin is for Tianjin and Ji, is a traditional abbreviation for Hebei Province.

The coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region has made notable progress, according to a report delivered last week by Xi Jinping at the opening of the CPC congress.

The report also said that China would further drive the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

The Jing-Jin-Ji coordinated development is a unique case in human history that involves such an amount of people, said Brazilian political journalist Diego Vinicius Martins, adding the coordination of the region will reshape the northern part of China and create a large and influential city cluster.

CARE FOR THE PEOPLE

In other parts of the Jing-Jin-Ji region, international media witnessed a high-speed train that goes from Beijing to Tianjin in 35 minutes, an elderly care center integrated with a hospital in Hebei and the China-Singapore Tianjin eco-city.

Martins said China had focused on innovation to seek better quality and efficiency. He said, with innovation, "you'll have a better economy and more convenient life for the people."

"What I saw from the report and my visits is that the CPC is putting the people first and seeking greater benefits for the people, including better education and medical services," said Carlos Penaloza, director general of Radio International in Spain.

The report stated that "the original aspiration and the mission of Chinese Communists is to seek happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation."

"One thing I like about China is that it takes the people and job very seriously here," Fonseca said.

EXAMPLE FOR THE WORLD

"The report not only has profound impact on China's future development, but also (is) an example for the whole world, as it explains how China grew into one of the world's largest economies and lays out the development plan until 2050," Penaloza said.

During the past few years, China has maintained its position as the world's second largest economy and contributed more than 30 percent of global economic growth.

Apart from that, China champions the development of "a community with a shared future for mankind" and encourages improvements of the global governance system.

Abdulwaheed Odusile, president of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, said China's development in the new era was "encouragement" for other developing countries.

"If China can do it, other countries can do it as well. Beyond that, the development in China will be a lesson for other developing countries," Odusile said.

"I'm planning to write about how modern China has become and is becoming more and more important for the world," Fonseca said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 21:29:45|Editor: Mengjie

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HONG KONG, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Hong Kong Customs seized about 6.7 kg of suspected cocaine at Hong Kong International Airport on Oct. 21 and Oct. 23 with an estimated market value of about 5.96 million HK dollars (about 766,000 U.S. dollars), it said here Tuesday.

Customs officers inspected an air mail parcel from Peru on Oct. 21 and found about 5.2 kg of suspected cocaine mixed in with 10 candles, and arrested an 18-year-old man suspected to be related to the case on Monday.

Meanwhile, a 27-year-old male passenger arrived in Hong Kong from Doha, Qatar, Monday afternoon. Upon examination, Customs officers seized about 1.5 kg of suspected cocaine from the metal frame and wheels of his two pieces of check-in baggage. The man was arrested.

The two cases are under investigation.

Under the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance, trafficking in a dangerous drug is a serious offence. The maximum penalty upon conviction is a fine of 5 million HK dollars and life imprisonment.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 21:39:50|Editor: Song Lifang

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DOHA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Qatar is grateful for Turkey's supportive stance on the Kuwaiti mediation to resolve the Gulf crisis, Qatar News Agency (QNA) quoted Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad bin Abdurrahman Al-Thani as saying on Tuesday.

Al-Thani made the remarks when meeting his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu on the sidelines of the third session of the Supreme Strategic Committee at the ministerial level between Qatar and Turkey held in Ankara on Monday.

The Qatari foreign minister also stressed that dialogue is the only way to resolve dispute in the Gulf region.

For his part, Cavusoglu said Turkey will continue its diplomatic efforts to resolve the Gulf crisis as soon as possible.

The Saudi Arabia-led Arab quartet, which also includes the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, cut diplomatic ties with Qatar on June 5 and has imposed an air, sea and land embargo against the tiny gas-rich Gulf state, citing Doha's support to terrorism and extremists.

Qatar has strongly denied these charges and has been seeking diplomatic and economic support from Turkey and Iran, which is Saudi's arch rival, to break the blockade.

Kuwait has been acting as a mediator since the Gulf crisis.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 21:39:51|Editor: Song Lifang

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ABUJA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Six crew members of a German ship were kidnapped in Nigeria when suspected pirates attacked their vessel in the port of Onne in the country's oil-rich state of Rivers, maritime sources said on Tuesday.

Fewer than 10 pirates on a speedboat attacked the ship early Saturday, according to the sources.

The ship is operated by Peter Doehle Group, a German firm.

One source, who could not clearly state the nationalities of the victims, noted the master of the attacked ship, its chief officer, second officer, second engineer, bosun, and cook were taken away by the gunmen.

Nigerian officials are yet to comment on the pirate attack.

Another source said the Liberia-flagged ship was headed to Monrovia, the Liberian capital city, when it was attacked. It had originated from Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Gulf of Guinea, which is believed to hold as much as 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, has been plagued by pirates, smugglers, and other criminals.

The socio-economic agitations in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria have contributed to the rise in attacks on oil facilities and vessels, in addition to kidnapping, crude oil theft, illegal bunkering and refining in recent years.

In July, in a bid to end pirate attacks on local and international merchant ships in the Gulf of Guinea, the Nigerian navy deployed warships and troops in a massive operation aimed at patrolling the Nigerian waters.

According to government data, four successful attacks were recorded out of 16 attempted pirate attacks between January and June.

In the first half of last year, a total of 36 successful attacks were recorded out of 55 attempted ones.

The International Maritime Bureau, in its first quarter 2017 report on piracy and armed robbery in the Gulf of Guinea, said there was a decline in attacks.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 21:39:52|Editor: Yang Yi

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HARARE, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwe's ruling ZANU-PF party cherishes its longstanding ties with the Communist Party of China (CPC) and wants to learn from China's success, said the party's spokesperson.

In an interview with Xinhua prior to the 19th CPC National Congress that concluded Tuesday, Simon Moyo said, "We take this congress to be our congress as well because we are so close to China."

"We want to take this opportunity to convey to our counterparts all the best and look forward to a successful outcome of the congress," the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Moyo, who is also Zimbabwe's minister of information, media and broadcasting services, thanked China for its support to Zimbabwe during the African country's liberation struggle in the 1970s and in the post-independence era.

"We have continued to enjoy these excellent and cordial relations between Zimbabwe and China," the minister said, adding that the two countries' ruling parties -- the ZANU-PF and the CPC -- should continue to strengthen their ties through frequent exchange of visits.

"I believe these visits should not stop. We should continue to hold workshops to exchange views and notes so that we can promote this solidarity between the two parties," he said.

The minister also highlighted China's growing support to Zimbabwe's economic development, saying Zimbabwe is grateful for the booming cooperation with China under the CPC's leadership.

In addition, the Zimbabwean official expressed appreciation for China's principled stand of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states, which was reiterated in the report Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered on Oct. 18 at the opening session of the 19th CPC National Congress.

"China has been an example to all of us and the progressive mankind. We take this position with great delight and great respect," Moyo said.

Besides, China's rapid economic development in recent years offers great inspirations to developing countries, including Zimbabwe, added the minister.

"There is a lot that we can learn from China in terms of its economic growth and we applaud for what you have achieved in such a short period of time," he said, noting that the CPC's fight against corruption is another area from which Zimbabwe can draw lessons.

The minister also called for greater cooperation between Zimbabwe and China in the area of media and information exchange.

It is important that China and Zimbabwe strengthen their collaboration in building responsible media that help build -- rather than destroy -- the world, Moyo said.

"We must avail information to each other in a responsible manner," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 21:39:54|Editor: Yang Yi

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Photo provied by Chinese Embassy in the Philippines shows that Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua (R) hands over a key which stands for the donated equipment to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) in Manila, the Philippines, Otc. 24, 2017. The Philippines thanked China on Tuesday for donating 47 sets of heavy equipment to help rebuild the devastated southern Philippine city of Marawi.(Xinhua)

MANILA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines thanked China on Tuesday for donating 47 sets of heavy equipment to help rebuild the devastated southern Philippine city of Marawi.

Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua formally handed over the dump trucks, cement mixers, excavators and bulldozers valued at 20 million renminbi or around 3 million U.S. dollars.

Now that Philippines authorities already declared victory in Marawi against terrorists, Zhao said the government can start the reconstruction and rehabilitation process.

"We believe that under the Duterte administration, Marawi City can reborn as new," Zhao said, adding that China will be "a sincere friend and partner of the Philippines."

Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and Philippine Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez expressed their gratitude to China on other occasions.

Dominguez said the equipment will be tentatively held at the Iligan Port in Iligan City later this month.

Zhao turned over the equipment to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) during a simple ceremony in Manila. DPWH is tasked to oversee the use of equipment.

Dominguez said the end of the Marawi conflict will further boost investors' confidence in the economy, and that the government can focus on a comprehensive plan to reconstruct Marawi and provide economic opportunities for its returning residents.

The five-month conflict in Marawi that broke out in May has killed more than 1,200 people, including 165 soldiers and policemen. The war also ruined the city, displacing thousands of residents.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 21:44:56|Editor: Song Lifang

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SOFIA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Bulgaria's Deputy Interior Minister Krasimir Tsipov said here Tuesday the European Union (EU) should take measures to strengthen its preparedness for an inevitable increase in migratory pressure.

There are four main causes and drivers of international migration flows, said Tsipov when addressing a conference on the refugee crisis and the development of migration processes.

First, the wars, including civil wars and local conflicts, Tsipov said.

Second, economic and financial contrasts, he said.

"Third, social and economic development of the so-called developing countries, which allows more people to move compared to earlier periods of time," Tsipov said.

And fourth, the demographic imbalance that led to the movement of people from poorer countries with a young and rising population to richer countries with an aging population, he said.

"None of these factors are expected to disappear soon. On the contrary. Their expansion is expected," Tsipov said.

Therefore, without falling into an unnecessary panic, the EU would have to strengthen its preparedness for an increase in migratory pressure, Tsipov said.

To address the issue, the EU needed joint solidarity actions, that would be well coordinated between member states and all European institutions, he said.

In particular, the EU had to build good contacts with countries of origin and transit to ensure the return of migrants, and provide financial support and investment to these countries in order to stop the economic migrant flow, Tsipov said.
ABUJA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Six crew members of a German ship were kidnapped in Nigeria when suspected pirates attacked their vessel in the port of Onne in the country's oil-rich state of Rivers, maritime sources said on Tuesday.

Fewer than 10 pirates on a speedboat attacked the ship early Saturday, according to the sources.

The ship is operated by Peter Doehle Group, a German firm.

One source, who could not clearly state the nationalities of the victims, noted the master of the attacked ship, its chief officer, second officer, second engineer, bosun, and cook were taken away by the gunmen.

Nigerian officials are yet to comment on the pirate attack.

Another source said the Liberia-flagged ship was headed to Monrovia, the Liberian capital city, when it was attacked. It had originated from Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Gulf of Guinea, which is believed to hold as much as 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, has been plagued by pirates, smugglers, and other criminals.

The socio-economic agitations in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria have contributed to the rise in attacks on oil facilities and vessels, in addition to kidnapping, crude oil theft, illegal bunkering and refining in recent years.

In July, in a bid to end pirate attacks on local and international merchant ships in the Gulf of Guinea, the Nigerian navy deployed warships and troops in a massive operation aimed at patrolling the Nigerian waters.

According to government data, four successful attacks were recorded out of 16 attempted pirate attacks between January and June.

In the first half of last year, a total of 36 successful attacks were recorded out of 55 attempted ones.

The International Maritime Bureau, in its first quarter 2017 report on piracy and armed robbery in the Gulf of Guinea, said there was a decline in attacks.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 22:00:00|Editor: Song Lifang

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BAGHDAD, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The parliament of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan in Iraq on Tuesday postponed the regional presidential and parliamentary elections for eight months, local media reported Tuesday.

The parliament also extended its own legislative term for eight months, the Kurdish media Rudaw reported.

A majority, or 60, of 68 Kurdish lawmakers attending the session voted in favor of delaying the general elections and extending the parliament term.

The postponement came after the Iraqi security forces took control of the oil-rich Kirkuk province and most of the disputed areas. It also paved the way for the electoral commission to prepare for the presidential and parliamentary elections, Rudaw said.

Major Kurdish opposition groups, including the Gorran (or Change) Movement and Kurdistan Islamic Group, did not attend the session of the 111-seat regional parliament, Rudaw added.

On Oct. 18, the Kurdish regional electoral commission halted preparation for the elections scheduled to be held on Nov. 1, due to the recent violence in Kirkuk and other disputed territories.

The elections, which were set to include the disputed areas outside the Kurdistan region, came after the Kurdish independence referendum held last month that sparked tensions between the Kurds and the central Iraqi government in Baghdad.

On Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, also the commander-in-chief of Iraqi forces, ordered the government forces to enter the oil-rich Kirkuk province in northern Iraq to regain control of the ethnically-mixed disputed areas.

Disagreements between Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government have been running high for years.

The ethnic Kurds consider the northern Kirkuk province and parts of Nineveh, Diyala and Salahudin provinces as disputed areas and want them to be incorporated into their region, a move fiercely opposed by the Arabs and Turkmens in the region as well as the central government.

The independence of Kurdistan is opposed not only by the Iraqi central government, but also by most of other countries as it would threaten the territorial integrity of Iraq and undermine the fight against the militant group Islamic State (IS).
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 22:00:02|Editor: Song Lifang

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NAY PYI TAW, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar and Bangladesh on Tuesday agreed to promote cooperation in border security and rule of law following a meeting between Myanmar Home Minister Lt. Gen. Kyaw Swe and his visiting Bangladeshi counterpart Asaduzzaman Khan.

The 10 points agreed upon at the ministerial meeting held in Nay Pyi Taw cover combating terrorism, illegal border crossing, repatriation and verification of citizenship for those people who were displaced to Bangladesh, triggered by the conflict in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state as well as opening of border liaison offices.

The meeting came after Minister at the State Counselor's Office U Kyaw Tint Swe met with Bangladeshi Minister of Foreign Affairs Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali in Dhaka earlier this month.

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army extremist terrorists launched attacks on police outposts in Myanmar's Rakhine State on Aug. 25, displacing a vast number of residents to areas bordering Bangladesh.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 22:15:05|Editor: Song Lifang

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NAIROBI, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Africa is on the verge of eradicating polio if the current momentum is sustained through improved surveillance, vaccination and public awareness, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Tuesday.

WHO Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti said the majority of African countries are likely to be declared polio free by 2019 if they step up prevention of and treatment interventions for the disease.

"The African region had made tremendous progress towards polio eradication, from accounting for almost half of the global polio burden with 128 cases in 2012, to 4 cases in 2016," Moeti said in a statement released in Nairobi.

She warned that complacency may trigger new infections in remote corners of the African continent where surveillance is weak.

Africa witnessed a recurrence of polio in 2016 when four cases were recorded in northern Nigeria, where the risks of an outbreak are higher due to insecurity and unregulated cross-border movement.

Moeti noted that timely response that included vaccination of children coupled with public education on improved hygiene options averted deaths in northern Nigeria and a large swathe of Lake Chad basin.

"In an example of best practice, political and community leaders were engaged to ensure the success of the largest ever polio campaign in Africa," she said.

"Over 190,000 polio vaccinators simultaneously immunized more than 116 million children under five in 13 countries in coordinated effort in west and central Africa," said Moeti.

She noted that African countries that are prone to polio outbreaks are yet to put in place globally recognized surveillance measures while insecurity and poverty could worsen their vulnerability to the disease.

"As a region, our surveillance efforts are presently not meeting the mark. A number of countries have sub-optimal surveillance in both secure and insecure areas," Moeti said. "They should recommit to strengthen surveillance urgently."

Early this year, African leaders endorsed a comprehensive pact to promote immunization against debilitating diseases like polio.

Moeti said the international community will rally behind African-led interventions aimed at eradicating polio by 2019.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 22:20:08|Editor: Song Lifang

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MADRID, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Spanish anti-corruption prosecutor Concepcion Sabadell concluded Tuesday that it had been "clearly" shown that the ruling People's Party (PP) of Mariano Rajoy had used a parallel system of accounts to syphon money taken from a cash-for-favors scandal and illegally finance the party.

Speaking after all of the witnesses had given their evidence in the ongoing "Gurtel" corruption trial; Sabadell said the existence of a so-called "B" parallel accounting system had been "clearly and overwhelmingly accredited in the PP."

The trial examines only the first half of the Gurtel scandal, which mainly affects the regions of Madrid and Valencia, in which businesspeople paid PP politicians bribes in return for lucrative public contracts.

Rajoy made history in July when he became the first serving Spanish prime minister to give evidence in a criminal trial and in which his party stood accused of obtaining benefits, albeit unknowingly.

"There is solid proof that the PP has benefited from criminal activity in the Town Hall of Majadahonda (just outside of Madrid): the PP, not the local authority," concluded Sabadell in her report.

She signaled former PP treasurer Luis Barcenas as a key player in the scandal, saying he obtained illicit funds "for his work as an intermediary in adjudications," and "theft of funds from the PP's B-accounts."

She adds that the former PP Mayor of Mahadajonda, Guillermo Ortega, obtained 1.6 million euros from supposed bribes and "has not given a reasonable explanation of its origin... nor provided documents to justify an operation."

Sabadell also concluded that Barcenas, who managed to accumulate 48.2 million euros in Swiss bank accounts in the year 2007, had obtained "funds of an illegal origin and hidden the benefits with false bills." (1 euro=1.18 U.S. dollars)
File Photo: Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong arrives at Hangzhou International Expo Center to attend the G20 summit in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, Sept. 4, 2016. (Xinhua/Xing Guangli)

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- As "the most important bilateral relationship in the world," good U.S.-China ties will benefit the region and the world, said visiting Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Monday.

Lee made the remarks in joint statements with U.S. President Donald Trump, who will kick off his first Asia trip next month since assuming the presidency.

Sound relations between the two big countries will "enable countries in the Asia Pacific, including America and China themselves, to enjoy regional stability, peace, and prosperity," Lee said.

Lee said he also hoped that the United States will be able to "maintain a stable and constructive relationship with China, engaging each other at the highest levels, building trust, establishing institutional mechanisms."

In the statements, Lee also noted the mounting tensions on the Korean Peninsula. "There is no quick and easy solution," he said, adding that "pressure is necessary but so is dialogue."

Lee was on a six-day visit to the United States starting from Saturday.

Earlier in the day, Trump and Lee witnessed the signing of an agreement between Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Boeing for SIA to purchase 39 Boeing aircraft worth 13.8 billion U.S. dollars.

The two leaders also held meetings to discuss further cooperation on economic, trade and defense issues, according to a statement released by the White House.

Trump's trip to Asia is slated for Nov. 3 to 14, during which he will attend a meeting of leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies in Vietnam. He will also join gatherings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Philippines.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 22:25:11|Editor: Song Lifang

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ADDIS ABABA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopia sent 200 peacekeepers over the weekend to South Sudan to help stabilize the war-torn east African nation, an Ethiopian official said on Tuesday.

Meles Alem, spokesperson for the Ethiopia Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Xinhua that the peacekeepers were sent in line with a United Nations resolution to stabilize South Sudan.

The UN Security Council unanimously adopted resolution 2327 on Dec. 16, 2016, which called for an increase in the overall force levels of United Nations Mission in South Sudan to 17,000 military and 2,101 police personnel.

The resolution also extended the UNMISS mission until December 2017 and gave stronger mandate to the peacekeeping mission to protect civilians.

Africa's youngest nation South Sudan has been embroiled in a major conflict since December 2013, after clashes between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and his ex-deputy, Riek Machar, spiraled into an all-out civil war.

Several rounds of peace negotiations mediated by the African Union, the regional body Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and the UN have so far failed to stop the bloodshed.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the civil war. Four million others have been displaced internally and fled to foreign countries.
File Photo: Photo taken on Dec. 13, 2016 shows the scene of state memorial ceremony for China's National Memorial Day for Nanjing Massacre Victims at the memorial hall for the massacre victims in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province. (Xinhua/Li Xiang)

TORONTO, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- Canada's Ontario provincial parliament will discuss the designation of Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day this week to commemorate the mass killing of 300,000 Chinese by Japanese aggressor troops in Nanjing in World War II, a lawmaker said Monday.

"This Thursday afternoon approximately 3 p.m., I will be leading a debate on my motion No. 66 on the Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day," Soo Wong, a member of the parliament of Ontario province, told a press conference here Monday.

Wong is the first female Chinese-Canadian to be elected to the Ontario legislature. She serves as deputy speaker and parliamentary assistant to the Ontario minister of community safety and correctional services.

Wong has devoted her efforts to introducing a private member's Bill No. 79 to designate every December 13 as Nanjing Massacre Commemoration Day in Ontario province in southeast Canada.

She said the designation of Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day will provide an opportunity for all Ontarians, especially the Asian community, to remember and honor the victims and families affected by the Nanjing Massacre.

Ontario is home to Canada's largest Asian community. It is reported that there are nearly 3 million Asian Canadians, about one third of them of Chinese origin.

The Nanjing Massacre is also known as the Rape of Nanking in the Western world. In December 1937, Japanese troops captured the city of Nanjing, then capital of China, and committed mass murder and raping with more than 300,000 local Chinese being killed.

The bill passed the second hearing last December, and will go through a third hearing in December this year. If passed, December 13 will become an official commemorative day in the province. Up to date, more than 90,000 signatures have been collected across the province in support of the bill.

However, the bill has encountered strong opposition from Japan. Some Japanese lawmakers reportedly have sent a letter to the Ontario government against the bill and will lobby against the third hearing.

"My motion is very similar to what I introduced last year Bill 79. It's no difference. If passed, the motion will recognize every December 13 Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day in Ontario," she said.

Dr. Joseph Wong, founder of Toronto Alpha (Association for Learning and Preserving the History of the Second World War in Asia) said Bill 79 is still at the committee level. "The motion does not replace Bill 79. This motion not only is important locally and in Canada as well, it is very important internationally."

"A large number of our students, particularly in schools, come from Asia. It's so important for these students to know what happened in the past. To pass this motion of Nanjing Massacre Commemorative Day is really a significant step in education. That encourages and supports educators to learn and teach this part history," said Gerry Connelly, who is ALPHA education board member and former director of education at the Toronto district school board.

Peter Lin, president of the Confederation of Toronto Chinese-Canadian Organizations told Xinhua, "Our Canadian Chinese community fully support the motion. On May 29, we have organized over 1,000 people to Queen Park for a peace rally to support Bill 79. As well as gathered over 100,000 signatures to support MP Soo Wong. This is the most petition signatures received in the Ontario legislature history."

After Bill No. 79 passed the second hearing last December, Wong met with Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown and New Democratic Leader Andrea Horwath in the Ontario parliament. Both leaders, he said, have promised their support for the bill without reservation.

But, Wong said a meeting with Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne made him feel that she was reluctant to let it pass.

Wong said that the premier was concerned the bill adoption would be "divisive" for Ontario's Japanese and Chinese communities.

Joy Kogawa, who is Japanese Canadian and an author in Toronto, said that she fully supported the bill.

"The facts are the facts, and it is wrong to deny them," said Kogawa, who's been awarded the Order of Canada and Japan's Order of the Rising Sun.

It's time for atrocities in Asia to be as well-known as those in Europe or Canada, Kogawa said, adding she has met and argued with many Japanese people who think the Rape of Nanking did not exist.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 22:35:14|Editor: Zhou Xin

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CHENGDU, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- A joint China-Pakistan coal-fired power plant signed a loan contract with banks in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

Hubco Coal Power Plant raised 1.5 billion U.S. dollars from a consortium of banks led by China Development Bank.

Construction of the power plant, costing about 2 billion U.S. dollars, began in March by China Power Hub Generation Company, a joint venture between Pakistan's Hub Power Holdings Ltd. and China Power International Investment Ltd.

With a total capacity of 1.32 gigawatts, the project comprises two coal-based power plants with capacity of 660 MW each.

The power plant is expected to start operations in August 2019, eventually producing 9 billion kwh, meeting needs of 4 million Pakistani households and create 10,000 jobs in the country.

It is also one of the projects of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which connects Kashgar in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region with Gwadar Port.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 22:50:18|Editor: yan

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ALGIERS, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Algerian troops killed a terrorist on Tuesday, bringing to five the number of terrorists killed in a major anti-terror operation launched since Sunday.

Two children hostages, aged five and seven respectively, were set free in the Tuesday operation conducted in a densely wooded area in the Jijel province, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

"Following the effective operations being conducted by our units in Jijel and Batna, a detachment of the National People's Army shot dead on Tuesday in Jijel a dangerous terrorist carrying a Kalashnikov pistol and a quantity of ammunition," the ministry said in a statement.

Jijel is located about 380 kilometers to the east of Algiers.

So far a total of five terrorists have been killed and seven others, including five women, have been arrested in the large-scale operation.

In addition, six Kalashnikov machine guns, two automatic guns and a quantity of ammunition were retrieved, it was disclosed.

Located in a region plagued by unprecedented insecurity and political instability, Algeria faces ongoing terror threats.

A number of militants affiliated to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the terror group Islamic State (IS) are still taking refuge in the dense woods in the north, as well as remote desert areas near the borders with Libya and Mali.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 23:00:20|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Russia on Tuesday vetoed a Security Council draft resolution that would have renewed for an additional year the Joint Investigative Mechanism of the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Russia's proposal to postpone the vote was rejected by the Security Council 8-4 with three abstentions.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 23:10:24|Editor: yan

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JUBA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The South Sudanese government is finalizing preparations for the establishment of a National Defense University College, an official told Xinhua on Tuesday.

The decision to establish a military college was endorsed on Friday during a cabinet meeting chaired by President Salva Kiir, Information Minister Michael Makuei said.

"This project is proposed by the Ministry of Defense and Veteran Affairs and will be funded by the government," Makuei said.

He did not say how the project would be funded.

Makuei said the cabinet has directed the defense minister to seek technical assistance from other relevant institutions to make all necessary preparatory work for the establishment of the university.

"The university will offer a variety of courses, and the major one will be in National Security and organized forces course, though the university will also offer other diploma courses as constituent college in the country," Makuei told Xinhua.

In May, President Salva Kiir restructured the top echelon of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) to pave way for its professionalization after struggling to shed off the guerrilla tag within its ranks.

South Sudan descended into violence in December 2013 after political disputes between President Kiir and his former deputy, Riek Machar, led to fighting that pitted mostly Dinka ethnic soldiers loyal to Kiir against Machar's Nuer ethnic group.

A 2015 peace agreement to end the violence broke down in July 2016 when the rival factions resumed fighting in the capital forcing rebel leader Machar to flee into exile.

The conflict has left tens of thousands of people dead and more than six million others displaced, both internally and outside the country.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 23:10:25|Editor: Zhou Xin

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KIEV, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The State Migration Service of Ukraine has rejected a political asylum application from former Georgian president and ex-governor of Ukraine's Odessa region Mikheil Saakashvili, a top Ukrainian prosecutor said on Tuesday.

While speaking in front of reporters in Kiev, Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukrainian prosecutor general, explained that the rejection means that Saakashvili could be deported or extradited from Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Saakashvili wrote on Facebook that he had not received an official document on the asylum rejection from the State Migration Service.

Saakashvili's lawyer Markiyan Galabala said earlier this month that the politician, who had earlier lost his Ukrainian citizenship, submitted the political asylum application to the State Migration Service in September.

According to Galabala, Saakashvili can not be extradited to Georgia until the State Migration Service considers his application.

Saakashvili, 49, served two terms as Georgian president from 2004 to 2013. He was granted Ukrainian citizenship in May 2015 and appointed governor of Odessa.h On July 26, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko revoked Saakashvili's Ukrainian citizenship for allegedly submitting false information while applying for a Ukrainian passport.

Later in September, the Georgian Chief Prosecutor's Office asked Kiev to take measures for Saakashvili's extradition.

In Georgia, Saakashvili faces charges of corruption, abuse of power and embezzlement.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 23:25:28|Editor: Yang Yi

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Chairman of Egyptian General Authority for Investment Mona Zobaa (3rd L, front) visits the stand of the China Railway Group Limited at the China Trade and Investment Exhibition in Cairo, Egypt, on Oct. 24, 2017. Egypt launched Tuesday the largest trade fair for Chinese investors, as Chinese companies in Egypt showcased their products and services to local consumers. (Xinhua/Meng Tao)

CAIRO, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Egypt launched Tuesday the largest trade fair for Chinese investors, as Chinese companies in Egypt showcased their products and services to local consumers.

The inauguration ceremony of the China Trade and Investment Exhibition held at the Cairo International Fair Ground was attended by a number of Egyptian and Chinese businessmen as well as officials from both countries.

The participant Chinese companies and manufacturers displayed various products such as textile and garments, furniture, home electronics, building materials and cars.

"China ranks 21st among foreign countries investing in Egypt and we are targeting to have China among top 10 investors in Egypt," Mona Zobaa, chairman of Egyptian General Authority for Investment, told Xinhua.

She added that China and Egypt are currently strengthening cooperation in trade and economic spheres through improving investment climate, creating investment opportunities and furnishing investment map in Egypt.

China is Egypt's largest trading partner with a trade volume of about 11 billion U.S. dollars in 2016 and about 5.2 billion dollars in the first half of 2017.

Xie Manding, managing director of China COSCO shipping company in Egypt, said his company, which opened a branch in Egypt about two decades ago, hopes to increase its operations in Egypt under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China.

China COSCO provides various services ranging from container shipping, customs clearance to logistics for Chinese enterprises exporting goods to Egypt.

Xie said his company is "now mulling new regional shipping routes, including an Egypt-Ukraine-Russia-Turkey route and a route linking Egypt to Northern European countries through Morocco."

This will facilitate Egypt's efforts to sell its products to more countries, as China has promised to share development opportunities with other countries under the Belt and Road Initiative, he added.

The initiative, proposed in 2013, aims to build a trade and infrastucture network that connects Asia with Africa and Europe along the ancient Silk Road trade routes to seek common development and prosperity.

The three-day exhibition is co-organized by the Egyptian Chinese Trading Center in Egypt, Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, the China Development Bank, Egyptian Chamber of Commerce, China-Egypt Friendship Association, and the Al-Ahram Foundation.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 23:40:33|Editor: Hou Qiang

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JAKARTA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Officials of Chinese and Indonesian anti-drug agencies held their first official bilateral meeting here on Tuesday to implement a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on anti-drug cooperation signed by the two governments in 2012.

The initial meeting in Jakarta that gathered senior officials from China's National Narcotics Control Commission (NNCC) and Indonesia's National Narcotics Agency (BNN) served as the cornerstone for the following meetings to be held annually in the two countries.

Speaking on the sidelines of the meeting, Head of the NNCC delegation Wei Xiaojun said the meeting has formulated mechanisms for the following meetings, including the appointment of direct contact persons of the respective agencies related to bilateral anti-drug cooperation.

"The meeting serves as the concrete way to specify contents of our bilateral drug control cooperation in the future," Wei said.

Wei added that the meeting would further specify the guidelines of bilateral cooperation in the sector.

A document containing matters approved by the NNCC and BNN delegations during the meeting was signed by Wei Xiaojun and head of the Indonesian delegation Arief Wicaksono Sudiutomo.

Arief said besides mechanism and direct contacts in the two agencies, the two delegations also identified ways to expand the bilateral cooperation in drug control, among others, by capacity building and extending the cooperation in the ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) level.

"We may invite NNCC to take part in ASEAN Airport Interdiction Task Force (AAITF) activities," Arief said on the sidelines of the document signing, referring to the ASEAN organization, which is tasked to tackle illicit drug distribution through commercial flights in the region.

Arief said the BNN and NNCC have previously established intensive cooperation through intelligence information exchanges that resulted in fruitful drug crackdown operations in Indonesia.
Assyrians Wounded in Clash Between Kurdish and Shiite Militias

Assyrian Civilian Christians have been wounded in the fighting between Sunni Muslim Kurds and Shia militias/Iraqi Army forces in the village of Teleskof in the Assyria Nineveh Plain. The Assyrian Christians who had started to return to Teleskof after the Mosul fight were greeted by mortar rounds landing in the market of Teleskof earlier today. The shelling was a result of the fighting between Sunni Muslim Kurds and Government of Iraq (GOI) units. Kurdish commanders who decided to battle the Iraqi Army in the city would have known in advance that the fighting would put Assyrian Christian civilians at risk. This incident casts doubt on the sincerity of the Kurdish claims that the Kurds are the protectors of the Assyrian Christians in Iraq and that Assyrian Christians support Kurdish aspirations for statehood. The Assyrian have currently fled the city in mass for the relative safety of the village of Deshata Qutane and the city of Dohuk/Assyria Nohadra. This will be third time since 2014 that the Assyrian Christians have been forced to flee Teleskof because of fighting in the area. Until the world polities begin advocating for an Assyrian State/region in a federalized Iraq in accordance to the Iraqi constitution the Assyrians will never feel free and or safe under the GOI and or the KRG and the Assyrian Genocide story will continue in Iraq.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-24 23:50:36|Editor: yan

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TEHRAN, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Iran's judiciary has sentenced a person to death for spying for Israeli Mossad intelligence agency, Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said on Tuesday.

"The person has been convicted to death because of cooperation with Mossad intelligence agency," Dolatabadi was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency.

"One of the charges against the person was providing the address and names of 30 Iranian nuclear and military researchers to Mossad officers," Dolatabadi said, adding that it has led to the assassination of some of the Iranian scholars.

Dolatabadi said that the convict has confessed to his charges and has expressed "regret" over his role in the assassination of some of the Iranians.

"The person has also said that he had held several meetings with eight Mossad officers and transferred sensitive information pertaining to the activities in the Iranian military sites and Iran's Atomic Energy Organization," Dolatabadi said.

In return, he received money and a promise for being granted a Sweden residence permit, the Iranian judiciary official said without elaborating on the name or the nationality of the convict.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 00:25:43|Editor: Zhou Xin

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CAPE TOWN, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Amid a rise in violent crimes, South African Members of Parliament (MPs) on Tuesday urged President Jacob Zuma to appoint the National Commissioner of Police, a post that has been vacant for two years.

The appointment of the National Commissioner of Police by the president "is of vital importance in dealing with the challenges affecting policing in South Africa," Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Police said.

This came after Police Minister Fikile Mbalula told the committee that South Africa has seen a rise in violent crimes in the 2016/2017 financial year, with murders and aggravated robberies up 1.8 percent and 6.4 percent respectively.

"The Committee is concerned that the trio of crimes have increased, with carjacking increasing by 14.5 percent, robbery at residential premises increased by 7.3 percent, and robbery at non-residential premises increases by 5 percent," Committee Chairperson Francois Beukman said.

Beukman emphasized that the increase in murder nationally is a huge concern and indicative of the level of violence in society.

He indicated that the South African Police Service (SAPS) lacked a stable and effective leadership, which he said "is critical to address the challenges."

The SAPS has been without the National Commissioner of Police since October 2015 when Zuma sacked Riah Phiyega pending the outcome of inquiry into allegations of misconduct, her fitness to hold office and her capacity to execute official duties efficiently.

Phiyega is blamed for defects in police tactical plan which were believed to be among the factors that led to the Marikana tragedy in which 44 people were killed during mining unrest in Marikana near Rustenburg, North West Province in 2012.

Two persons have been named acting National Commissioner of Police, with the latest being Lesetja Mothiba.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 00:25:44|Editor: yan

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CLARK, the Philippines, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese military will continue to enhance its friendly exchanges and pragmatic cooperation with other countries' military forces across the world, including those in the Asia-Pacific region, a senior Chinese official said here on Tuesday.

Chang Wanquan, Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister, who is attending the 11th ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting (ADMM) and the 4th ADMM-Plus meeting held in the Philippines, said the peaceful development of China is closely linked to the future of the Asia-Pacific region, as it is the largest developing country in the world.

"We will enhance exchanges and cooperation with other countries, in the hope of building better mutual understanding and mutual trust, safeguarding peace and stability in the region and the world, and achieving a common prosperity," Chang told a meeting with 10 ASEAN defense ministers and other seven from the ADMM-Plus.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. ADMM-Plus includes ASEAN's eight dialogue partners - Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and the United States.

"China will stick to the principles of peace, development, cooperation and win-win, unswervingly follow the path of peaceful development, and is committed to building a community with shared future with other countries," Chang said.

Chang also noted that China is in favor of security cooperation featuring co-building, mutual sharing and win-win, adding all parties should abandon the zero-sum mentality and manage risks by dialogue and consultation.

He also held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from Russia, Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea, respectively.
Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia (C, front), vetoes a Security Council draft resolution at the UN headquarters in New York, Oct. 24, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Russia on Tuesday vetoed a Security Council draft resolution that would have renewed for an additional year the mandate of the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) of the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Among the 15 members of the Security Council, 11 voted in favor, two voted against, and two abstained. As Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council, its "no" vote means that the resolution was rejected. Bolivia also voted against the draft resolution.

Prior to the vote, Russian ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia proposed a postponement, arguing that the extension of JIM's mandate should be discussed after the publication of the JIM report, which is only two days away. Russia's proposal was put to vote and was rejected by the Security Council 8-4, with three abstentions.

The JIM mandate expires on Nov. 17, 2017.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 00:45:48|Editor: yan

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JOHANNESBURG, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) closed lower on Tuesday as the market remained cautious ahead of the medium-term budget policy statement on Wednesday.

At close, the all share index was 0.16 percent lower at 57,904.72 points and the blue-chip top 40 shed 0.14 percent to 51,597.49 points.

General retailers dropped 0.5 percent, food and drug retailers 0.35 percent, resources 0.21 percent. Gold mining lost 0.96 percent and banks gained 0.36 percent. The industrial and financial indices also lost ground. The industrial index was 0.12 percent softer and the financial index 0.22 percent down.

Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba is preparing for his first mid-term budget policy statement on Wednesday. The market is waiting to see whether this new minister is able to rescue South Africa's economy.

Some of the other dual-listed shares hardly moved. Naspers was only 0.04 percent higher at R3,275 and Steinhoff traded 0.39 percent higher at R61.4. Richemont added 0.2 percent to R123.58.

British American Tobacco traded 1.13 percent lower at R873.64.

Anglo added 0.46 percent to R263.03. Kumba Iron Ore tumbled 2.84 percent to R266.57, ArcelorMittal shed 4.44 percent to R5.60.

Among gold stocks, Harmony added 1.09 percent to R22.19 but Sibanye lost 0.41 percent to R16.83.

Among banks, Standard Bank advanced to settle at 0.96 percent to R166.41, FirstRand climbed 0.02 percent to R52.98.

Woolworths fell 0.35 percent to R57.06. The share is down 19.5 percent in 2017.

Group Five advanced 2.98 percent to settle at R11.99. The group recouped after Friday's 14 percent drop.
The inauguration ceremony of the China Trade and Investment Exhibition held at the Cairo International Fair Ground was attended by a number of Egyptian and Chinese businessmen as well as officials from both countries. (Xinhua photo/ Meng Tao)

CAIRO, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Egypt launched Tuesday the largest trade fair for Chinese investors, as Chinese companies in Egypt showcased their products and services to local consumers.

The inauguration ceremony of the China Trade and Investment Exhibition held at the Cairo International Fair Ground was attended by a number of Egyptian and Chinese businessmen as well as officials from both countries.

The participant Chinese companies and manufacturers displayed various products such as textile and garments, furniture, home electronics, building materials and cars.

"China ranks 21st among foreign countries investing in Egypt and we are targeting to have China among top 10 investors in Egypt," Mona Zobaa, chairman of Egyptian General Authority for Investment, told Xinhua.

She added that China and Egypt are currently strengthening cooperation in trade and economic spheres through improving investment climate, creating investment opportunities and furnishing investment map in Egypt.

The inauguration ceremony of the China Trade and Investment Exhibition held at the Cairo International Fair Ground was attended by a number of Egyptian and Chinese businessmen as well as officials from both countries. (Xinhua photo/ Meng Tao)

China is Egypt's largest trading partner with a trade volume of about 11 billion U.S. dollars in 2016 and about 5.2 billion dollars in the first half of 2017.

Xie Manding, managing director of China COSCO shipping company in Egypt, said his company, which opened a branch in Egypt about two decades ago, hopes to increase its operations in Egypt under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China.

China COSCO provides various services ranging from container shipping, customs clearance to logistics for Chinese enterprises exporting goods to Egypt.

Xie said his company is "now mulling new regional shipping routes, including an Egypt-Ukraine-Russia-Turkey route and a route linking Egypt to Northern European countries through Morocco."

This will facilitate Egypt's efforts to sell its products to more countries, as China has promised to share development opportunities with other countries under the Belt and Road Initiative, he added.

The inauguration ceremony of the China Trade and Investment Exhibition held at the Cairo International Fair Ground was attended by a number of Egyptian and Chinese businessmen as well as officials from both countries. (Xinhua photo/ Meng Tao)

The initiative, proposed in 2013, aims to build a trade and infrastucture network that connects Asia with Africa and Europe along the ancient Silk Road trade routes to seek common development and prosperity.

The three-day exhibition is co-organized by the Egyptian Chinese Trading Center in Egypt, Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, the China Development Bank, Egyptian Chamber of Commerce, China-Egypt Friendship Association, and the Al-Ahram Foundation.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 00:55:53|Editor: Hou Qiang

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DUBLIN, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- A local police station in north Dublin was evacuated on Tuesday afternoon as part of a security alert, Irish police said.

Irish police said in a statement that a man arrived at Finglas police station, carrying a suspicious device which he found near his home.

As a precaution, local police evacuated the building and put a cordon around the station, they said.

The army's explosive ordnance disposal team was requested to the scene and traffic diversions were put in place locally, they added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 01:00:54|Editor: Hou Qiang

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KATHMANDU, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FNCCI) has assured a team of Chinese investors that it was ready to help in tackling problems faced by the Chinese investors.

According to a press release issued by the FNCCI on Tuesday, Nepali traders have held discussions with the Chinese delegation on increasing investment in the areas of hotel and tourism, infrastructure development, agriculture energy and information technology.

FNCCI Vice-President Shekhar Golchha asked the Chinese delegation to increase their investment in Nepal.

"Nepal has established itself as a nation where investors can earn good profit," he said.

During the discussion, the Chinese delegation had sought information about legal provisions and practical issues related to land acquisition and forest clearances for the infrastructure projects, according to the FNCCI press release.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 01:00:55|Editor: Zhou Xin

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WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Feud between U.S. President Donald Trump and influential Republican senator Bob Corker escalated on Tuesday as they attacked each other bitterly via Twitter and TV networks, casting a shadow over the president's bid to woo Senate Republicans on tax code reform.

In a morning interview on NBC's "Today", Corker urged the president to "step aside" so as to give lawmakers space to craft tax reform, saying Trump's involvement will make it harder for the Congress to pass the taxation bill.

"Tax writing committees in the Senate and the House are going to be laying out the 4 trillion U.S. dollars in loophole closings that need to take place," Corker told NBC. "Hopefully the White House will step aside and let that occur in a normal process."

Corker is recognized as a key vote on a tax overhaul. As a member of the Senate Budget Committee, he has said he will not support a plan that blows a major hole in the budget deficit. The Senate Republicans can only afford to lose two votes and still pass the tax legislation.

Shortly after Corker's remarks on NBC, Trump issued a series of tweets accusing that the veteran Tennessee lawmaker was trying to stymie the White House agenda.

"Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done. He doesn't have a clue as the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us." Trump tweeted.

Meanwhile, the U.S. president repeated his claim, though it has been denied by Corker's office, that the senator decided not to run again when Trump refused to endorse him.

"Corker dropped out of the race in Tennessee when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!" Trump tweeted.

In response to Trump's tweeting storm, Corker immediately upgraded his criticism, calling Trump a serial liar and "has great difficulty with the truth".

"Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president", Corker fired back on Twitter.

"Unfortunately I think world leaders are very aware that much of what he says are untrue," the senator said on CNN. "I don't know why he lowers himself to such a low standard. It debases our country."

Asked whether he considered Trump to be a good role model for children, Corker answered with a quick "No".

Does he regret voting for Trump in 2016? Corker said: "Let's just say this: I would not do it again."

Corker also dismissed that Trump refused to support his reelection bid. Instead, the senator said the president asked him at least four times to reconsider his decision not to run.

The new round of war of words between Trump and Corker came just hours before Trump's key meeting with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill over their tax-overhaul efforts. Corker earlier described the meeting as a "photo op."

Corker's feud with Trump erupted into the open earlier this month after he announced he will retire. He has previously said the White House was an "adult day care center" and expressed concern that Trump could lead the country into "World War III."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 01:00:56|Editor: Hou Qiang

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KAVRE, Nepal, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Connectivity of China with South Asia under the Belt and Road Initiative can only make a better Asia, experts said here on Tuesday.

Addressing a two-day seminar entitled International Conference on South Asia - China connectivity for Regional Economic Social Development, which was organized by Kathmandu School of Law (KSL), experts stressed on finding the common grounds and visions for partnership between South Asian nations and China.

"South Asia is geographically connected but psychologically divided. All the South Asian countries including India should move ahead together with China to realize the dream of creating the Asian Century," Dr. Yubaraj Sangroula, head of the KSL said in the inaugural ceremony.

Sangroula, also a former attorney general of Nepal, said China needs to understand South Asia better, and vice versa for which Nepal can play a role of vibrant bridge.

The China- proposed Belt and Road Initiative has created new hopes in the whole region, an academician from Bangladesh, Zakir Hossain, said in his speech.

"It is not just about connectivity of roads or seas but connectivity of economies which can improve the lives of people of the whole region," said Hossain, the former dean of Bangladesh's Chittagong University.

Muhammad Amir Rana, director at Pakistan's Pak Institute of Peace Studies, said South Asian nations should learn how China transformed its economy.

"China's success story can lead other nations to reform or modernize the economy. We should follow their vision of change to achieve socio-economic development," Rana said.

On the occasion, Prof. Chen Xiaochen of China's Renmin University said the Belt and Road Initiative is all about common development through international cooperation.

"Cooperation is the major need today which can fill the gap of development in the world."

Nearly 40 students and professors representing universities of China and South Asian countries are attending the seminar.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 01:16:00|Editor: Zhou Xin

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MADRID, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont on Tuesday was offered the chance to debate in the Spanish senate over the application of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution.

The action would see him and his government sacked and see control of key Catalan institutions being handed over to the central government in Madrid.

Puigdemont has been invited to appear on Thursday evening or Friday morning, before the senate votes to approve the article.

Vice president of the Spanish senate Pedro Sanz said: "It would be an honor to have the president of the Generalitat (Catalan government) here to be able to participate in the debate."

However, it is still uncertain whether Puigdemont will travel to Madrid. Following Sanz's comments, Catalan government spokesman Jordi Turul said Puigdemont's idea "was to go to the senate, but they are making it harder for us all of the time".

The Catalan parliament announced on Monday that it would hold a session on Thursday to debate the "current situation", in which Puigdemont may reportedly make a unilateral declaration of independence or call for fresh regional elections in the hope of avoiding the application of article 155.

The possibility of regional elections in Catalonia has caused divisions between the ruling People's Party and the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE).

PSOE sources said such a move would make it unnecessary to apply the article, while Spanish Justice Minister Rafael Catala insisted this was not the case and that what was needed was a "return to legality".
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 01:16:01|Editor: Hou Qiang

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LAMU, Kenya, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan soldiers destroyed a Al-Shabaab camp in the coastal Lamu region and killed four militants on Tuesday, said Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) spokesman David Obonyo.

Obonyo said the raid, which took place in the general area of Mararani in Lamu County, also saw the soldiers recover four AK 47 rifles, six magazines, three grenades, three car batteries, rolls of cable, three mobile phones and assorted foodstuffs.

"It is believed that several other terrorists escaped with injuries. The camp is believed to be training and operations base for the terrorists," Obonyo said in a statement.

Obonyo said the raid was conducted by soldiers who have been combing the vast Boni forest used by Al-Shabaab as their hideout and also to launch attacks against the locals.

He said the training camp is believed to be the launching base for recent attacks on Kenyans in the area.

"KDF appeals to the local population to report any suspicious individuals with injuries and or seeking medical attention in the area to security agencies within their reach," Obonyo said.

He assured the public that the operations against the Al-Qaida allied terrorist group will continue until peace is realized in the Lamu enclave.

The Al-Shabaab have changed tactics and resorted to using improvised explosive devices to carry out attacks in parts of the coast region and North Eastern, according to police.

The militant group is believed to have fighters operating in the area's Boni forest that has poor communication network and terrains slowing down police operations.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 01:16:02|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ma Mingqiang (R) receives a crest from Joe Thomas (L), executive director of the Partners in Population and Development (PPD), as he visits the permanent secretariat building of PPD in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, on Oct. 24, 2017. The permanent secretariat building of PPD is ready to open, according to officials. PPD, a global inter-governmental organization of 26 developing countries, is with deep commitment to promote the south-south cooperation. (Xinhua/Salim Reza)

DHAKA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The permanent secretariat building of the Partners in Population and Development (PPD) is ready to open, officials have said here.

PPD, a global inter-governmental organization of 26 developing countries, is with deep commitment to promote the south-south cooperation.

China has contributed 2.2 million U.S. dollars to the 2.5-million-USD PPD secretariat building project.

Member countries including Bangladesh, India and South Africa have also donated fund for the PPD building construction.

Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ma Mingqiang Monday visited the construction site.

"PPD is an important inter-government organization. I do hope that with this secretariat building, PPD will be able to carry out its works and contribute more in cooperation particularly in the south-south cooperation. And China of course will remain committed to support PPD," said the Chinese ambassador.

Joe Thomas, PPD executive director, said the dream of the building was materialized due to a significant and substantial grant from China.

"We hope that this building will help our efforts to continue support toward future south-south cooperation in various areas such as the health and population issues," said the PPD official.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 01:21:04|Editor: yan

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WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Two more Republican-led congressional committees have launched investigations into a deal on selling part of U.S. uranium production capability to a Russian state-run energy company by the then Barack Obama administration, it was announced Tuesday.

Republican Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that he'd be linking up with the House Oversight panel in the probe of the deal.

The news came days after reports suggesting that under the Obama era, there was a broader bribery plot around the deal in Russia's bid to gain a foothold in the U.S. energy industry. The GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee has already said it would look into the case.

In response, Democrats widely dismissed the issue as a GOP attempt to distract from the ongoing investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. 2016 presidential campaign.

On Monday, Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, called the reports questioning the sale of U.S. uranium mines to Russia "baloney". The deal was reached during her time as secretary of state.

The U.S. State Department had a role in approving the deal while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, though there's no evidence she was personally involved, according to a ThePolitico report.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 01:31:08|Editor: yan

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ZAGREB, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- At the end of the second quarter of 2017, Croatia's public debt dropped by 4.5 percentage points, which is the largest decrease among European Union member states, Eurostat reported on Tuesday.

Croatia's public debt totaled 287.25 billion HRK (45.03 billion U.S. dollars) and it now amounts 81.9 percent of the country's GDP.

Croatian Finance Minister Zdravko Maric said on Tuesday that the latest Eurostat data shows that a positive trend of debt to GDP ratio decrease is continuing in 2017.

He added that the government plans to further reduce the general deficit and that he expects the public debt to be around 80 percent of GDP at the end of the year.

"This is also important from the perspective that we are on the verge for the next step, to increase the credit rating," Maric said.

He said that he would continue to cut debt to GDP ratio by 2.5 to 3 percentage points a year, which means the government is ready to fulfill its program and reduce the share of debt so it gets below 75 percent of the country's GDP.

Compared with the first quarter of 2017, seven EU states registered an increase in their debt to GDP ratio, 20 a decrease, while the debt ratio in Britain remained stable, according to Eurostat.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 01:31:09|Editor: yan

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CAIRO, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Egyptian security forces arrested on Tuesday 12 suspected militants in Fayoum province southern Cairo over plotting terror operations in support of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, said a police statement.

According to the statement, the dozen belong to "Hasm Vanguards," a cell of Hasm militant group which emerged late 2016 and is seen by the police as the Brotherhood's armed wing. Hasm has claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks that killed several policemen in Egypt.

"Leaders of the terrorist group have recently assigned their members in Fayoum province who belong to the newly created 'Hasm Vanguards' militant group to intensify their aggressive activities in order to destabilize the country," it explained.

The police also seized 13 guns in their possession including nine machine guns, a Heckler gun and three cartouche guns, and defused two improvised explosive devices.

The raid comes a few of days after 16 Egyptian policemen were killed, 13 wounded and one missing in confrontations with militants last Friday in a desert area on the outskirts of Giza, which also left 15 militants either dead or injured.

Egypt has been fighting against a wave of terrorism that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the military toppled Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently blacklisted Brotherhood group.

Terror attacks have been centered in North Sinai before spreading nationwide and targeting the Coptic minority as well, with most of them claimed by a Sinai-based group loyal to the regional Islamic State (IS) militant group.

The Egyptian military and police have killed hundreds of militants and arrested a similar number of suspects as part of the country's anti-terror war declared by President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief then, following Morsi's removal.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 01:51:11|Editor: yan

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ARUSHA, Tanzania, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) said on Tuesday that overall elephant poaching in Africa gradually declines for the fifth year in a row, and drops in eastern Africa to pre-2008 levels.

The announcement is based on new reports of the CITES MIKE (Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants) Programme and the Elephant Trade Information System (ETIS), and updates on the conservation status of elephants provided by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

According to CITES, Tanzania has registered a 55-percent decrease in the number of elephant carcass compared to 2015 due to reduced poaching and illegal killing, remaining the sub-region's stronghold for elephant populations.

However, the news is not so positive for Central Africa where dramatic losses of elephant populations have been reported over the last 10 years, and levels of illegal killing remain very high.

The announcement also said that Africa's elephant populations continue to fall due to continued illegal killing, land transformation and rapid human expansion. African elephants declined by 111,000 over the past 10 years.

According to the report, overall trends in the poaching of African elephants show that the sharp increase in the levels of illegal killing of elephants witnessed since 2006, and peaking in 2011, was first halted, then stabilized, and is now in decline, but at levels that remain too high when viewed continent-wide, with overall elephant population likely to have declined in 2016.

Robert Fyumagwa, Principal Research Officer at the Arusha-based Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (TAWIRI) attributed the decline of poaching and other related activities to sound enforcement in national parks and game reserves.

Fyumagwa noted that law enforcement has taken it up a notch compared to previous years where complacency was the order of the day. "Recently, our law enforcments units and rangers have become more vigilant in protecting the endangered species," he observed.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 01:56:14|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- In his first United Nations Day message, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on people around the world to overcome their differences to address global challenges that go beyond national borders.

"Our world faces many grave challenges. Widening conflicts and inequality, extreme weather and deadly intolerance, and security threats - including nuclear weapons," said Guterres in a video message.

"We have the tools and wealth to overcome these challenges. All we need is the will."

In his message, the UN chief said that the challenges faced by the world transcend borders and, therefore, everyone needs to transcend their differences to transform our future.

"When we achieve human rights and human dignity for all people - they will build a peaceful, sustainable and just world," he added, urging humanity - noted in the Charter of the United Nations as 'We the Peoples' - to make this vision a reality.

The 24th of October, the day in 1945 when the UN Charter entered into force, is celebrated annually as United Nations Day. In 1971, the General Assembly recommended that the day be observed by UN Member States as a public holiday.

Around the world, governments and UN offices mark the day through various programs and events on the core pillars of the Organization.

As part of this year's celebration for the special day at the UN New York Headquarters, the Organization's Department of Public Information will organize a concert featuring the Slovak National Folklore Ballet, Lucnica, with the theme of "Potential in Diversity".

Also, Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed, on behalf of the Secretary-General, will present the 2017 Secretary-General Awards in categories, including innovation and creativity; implementing efficiencies; gender equality and parity; and champion of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
File Photo: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks on new Iran strategy at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States, on Oct. 13, 2017. (Xinhua/Ting Shen)

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Feud between U.S. President Donald Trump and influential Republican senator Bob Corker escalated on Tuesday as they attacked each other bitterly via Twitter and TV networks, casting a shadow over the president's bid to woo Senate Republicans on tax code reform.

In a morning interview on NBC's "Today", Corker urged the president to "step aside" so as to give lawmakers space to craft tax reform, saying Trump's involvement will make it harder for the Congress to pass the taxation bill.

"Tax writing committees in the Senate and the House are going to be laying out the 4 trillion U.S. dollars in loophole closings that need to take place," Corker told NBC. "Hopefully the White House will step aside and let that occur in a normal process."

Corker is recognized as a key vote on a tax overhaul. As a member of the Senate Budget Committee, he has said he will not support a plan that blows a major hole in the budget deficit. The Senate Republicans can only afford to lose two votes and still pass the tax legislation.

Shortly after Corker's remarks on NBC, Trump issued a series of tweets accusing that the veteran Tennessee lawmaker was trying to stymie the White House agenda.

"Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done. He doesn't have a clue as the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us." Trump tweeted.

Meanwhile, the U.S. president repeated his claim, though it has been denied by Corker's office, that the senator decided not to run again when Trump refused to endorse him.

"Corker dropped out of the race in Tennessee when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!" Trump tweeted.

In response to Trump's tweeting storm, Corker immediately upgraded his criticism, calling Trump a serial liar and "has great difficulty with the truth".

"Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president", Corker fired back on Twitter.

"Unfortunately I think world leaders are very aware that much of what he says are untrue," the senator said on CNN. "I don't know why he lowers himself to such a low standard. It debases our country."

Asked whether he considered Trump to be a good role model for children, Corker answered with a quick "No".

Does he regret voting for Trump in 2016? Corker said: "Let's just say this: I would not do it again."

Corker also dismissed that Trump refused to support his reelection bid. Instead, the senator said the president asked him at least four times to reconsider his decision not to run.

The new round of war of words between Trump and Corker came just hours before Trump's key meeting with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill over their tax-overhaul efforts. Corker earlier described the meeting as a "photo op."

Corker's feud with Trump erupted into the open earlier this month after he announced he will retire. He has previously said the White House was an "adult day care center" and expressed concern that Trump could lead the country into "World War III."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 02:11:18|Editor: yan

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DAR ES SALAAM, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The government of Tanzania on Tuesday banned a fourth tabloid in less than one year for what it described as publishing false information.

Hassan Abbas, the Director General of Information Services and Chief Government Spokesperson, announced the ban on the tabloid called Tanzania Daima for 90 days. Tanzania Daima is loosely translated into English as Always Tanzania.

He said the government banned the tabloid for its continuous publication of false information, including last Sunday's story headlined: Asilimia 67 ya Watanzania wanatumia ARVs, literally translated into 67 percent of Tanzanians were on ARVs medication. Antiretroviral drugs or ARVs are used to asuppress the HIV virus and stop the progression of HIV disease.

In September, the government of Tanzania banned a weekly tabloid called Raia Mwema for 90 days over publication over what the government termed as a cooked article.

The government's decision to ban the weekly tabloid came hardly 10 days after another weekly tabloid, Mwanahalisi, was banned from publication for two years over publication of seditious news.

Abbas said the ban on Mwanahalisi which published seditious news and failed to adhere to professionalism extended to the tabloid's online publications.

Another Mwanahalisi publication, Mawio, was banned earlier this year.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 02:46:25|Editor: yan

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WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- America's Heavy machinery company Caterpillar posted 25 percent jump in revenue in the third quarter on Tuesday, thanks to synchronized economic expansions all around the world.

Sales in North America, Caterpillar's biggest market, rose by 27 percent in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, while sales in Asia Pacific region ballooned by 31 percent thanks to huge demand from China. Sales in Europe, Africa and the Middle East jumped by 22 percent, and sales in Latin America rose by 24 percent.

Products of Caterpillar are wildly used in construction and mining industries, which are highly associated with overall economic performance. The Deerfield, an Illinois-based company, projected 2017 sales of 44 billion U.S. dollars, marking a third straight increase in annual revenue forecasts.

The sales report from Caterpillar is the latest sign of synchronized economic expansions all around the world. In its latest World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised its forecast of growth rate of the world economy in 2017 to 3.6 percent.

"We see an accelerating cyclical upswing boosting Europe, China, Japan, and the United States, as well as emerging Asia," IMF chief economist Maurice Obstfeld said, adding that the current global acceleration is notable "because it is broad-based more so than at any time since the start of this decade."

"We've got pretty good economic growth all over the world," David Solomon, president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., told Bloomberg Television on Tuesday. "The expectation for growth was not as strong as growth has actually come in."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 03:06:32|Editor: yan

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MOGADISHU, Oct. 24 (Xinhua ) -- The United Nations staff in Somalia marked the UN Day in Mogadishu on Tuesday with a pledge to continue their support for Somalis in their quest for lasting peace and security.

Speaking at the event, heads of the UN missions in Somalia also paid special recognition to the Somali national staff for their contribution to the UN in the country.

Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General (SRSG) for Somalia Michael Keating urged UN colleagues to work closely with Somalis in developing their country, adding that the deaths of so many innocent civilians in the Oct. 14 Mogadishu bombings should not be in vain.

"What we are trying to do in Somalia is to put these values in effect, in the way we work with the Somalis and help them build peace," said Keating, who is also the Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM).

According to a statement from UNSOM, Keating lauded the staff for their hard work and urged them to continue upholding the organization's values and ideals that are enshrined in the UN Charter.

United Nations Day is observed each year to mark the anniversary of the coming into force of the UN Charter in 1945, which culminated in the formation of the UN after the charter was formally ratified.

Head of the United Nations Support Office in Somalia (UNSOS) Hubert Price urged the staff to serve as good ambassadors of the organization and help to promote the core values of the organization.

"For some people, the face of the UN is the Secretary-General or the Security Council or something lofty. But for many people around the world, you and I are the face of the UN, and I hope that you make the most of that. Enjoy it and embrace it and be proud of this day," Price said.

Assembled staff members observed a moment of silence in honor of the victims of the Oct. 14 explosions, and Keating and Price expressed wishes for a full and speedy recovery by all Somalis who sustained injuries in the attacks.

"We send our deepest sympathies and condolences to all our Somali colleagues," said Keating stated, and he praised all UN staff who took part in the response to help the people of Somalia in one of their darkest hours.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 03:11:35|Editor: yan

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DUBAI, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum on Tuesday met with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama to discuss bilateral relations, UAE state news agency WAM reported.

Sheikh Mohammed, also the UAE prime minister and ruler of Dubai, exchanged views with Rama in means to enhance ties, especially in the tourism, commercial, industrial, and infrastructure sectors, said the report.

The vice president emphasized the UAE's keenness "on welcoming friendly countries that want to build partnerships between them."

He also said that the UAE is a country that promotes "the noble values of tolerance, love and peaceful coexistence."

The Albanian prime minister welcomed the extension of new cooperation and opportunities to develop and enhance mutual ties.

He also stressed possible cooperation in the fields of UAE expertise, including infrastructure, aviation and ports.

Rama also expressed wish that the UAE's international carrier Emirates Airline shall add Albania to its network of destination, news channel Dubai One reported.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 03:11:36|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Russia on Tuesday vetoed a Security Council draft resolution on the extension of the mandate of an independent investigation mechanism to determine who was responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

The draft resolution sponsored by the United States sought to extend the mandate of the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) of the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for another year.

Among the 15 members of the Security Council, 11 were in favor, two were against, and another two abstained. As Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council, its "no" vote means that the draft resolution was rejected. Bolivia also voted against the draft resolution. China and Kazakhstan abstained.

Prior to the vote, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, proposed a postponement till Nov. 7, arguing that the extension of JIM's mandate should be discussed after the publication of JIM's report, which is only two days away. He told the council that a hasty vote was intended to "dishonor" Russia.

British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft repudiated the Russian position, saying that a vote on Tuesday was intended to de-link the JIM report and the extension of its mandate, thus avoiding the "politicization" of the issue.

U.S. deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Michele Sison, also rejected the Russian proposal, saying there is no time to waste.

"It's not every day that this council considers an issue that is so horrific and so shocking to the conscience as the use of chemical weapons against civilians. We need to keep this important work of the JIM on track."

Russia's proposal was put to vote and was rejected by the Security Council 8-4 with three abstentions, giving the green light for a vote for the draft Security Council resolution.

After the Russian veto, the U.S. and British representatives attacked Russia and asked to preserve JIM. Nebenzia, the Russian ambassador, regretted the vote, saying that the Russia veto did not mean an end to JIM.

"We will return to this matter ... (we) will examine what the mandate of JIM should be so that it fulfils its work in a professional, objective and impartial way," he told the Security Council.

The Security Council unanimously approved JIM in 2015 and renewed its mandate for another year in 2016. Its mandate expires on Nov. 17, 2017.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 03:16:37|Editor: yan

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JUBA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations senior envoy in South Sudan on Tuesday called on leaders to put aside their political differences by ensuring that peace is restored across the country as local staff joined the rest of the world in celebrating the UN Day in Juba.

The UN personnel working across South Sudan came together with local leaders and communities to celebrate UN Day and the work the organization is doing to protect civilians, build durable peace, and create stability and development within the young nation.

Speaking during the event in Juba, Special Representative of the Secretary-General David Shearer urged the government of Transitional Unity and the warring parties to put the interests of the South Sudanese first and serve their people.

"The recent Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) initiative to bring the parties together in a High Level Revitalization Forum is a welcome step to move the peace process forward. But an immediate ceasefire between all the parties is a precondition," Shearer said.

He said the National Dialogue can complement the peace process, but needs to remain truly inclusive and be a meaningful forum for the South Sudanese to express their grievances and aspirations.

"We all have a role to play in South Sudan. And I commit to ensuring that the UN makes a positive, constructive impact," he said.

The UN envoy paid tribute to the professionalism, commitment and courage of the thousands of staff working for more than 20 UN entities in often remote and dangerous locations across South Sudan.

"This year alone, UN agencies and humanitarian partners are providing life-saving health, nutrition, education, and water and sanitation services to 4.7 million South Sudanese in need. Those achievements are testament to the commitment of dedicated aid workers, many of whom are South Sudanese nationals," said Shearer.

"Lifesaving support is needed, but we must also seize opportunities to stabilize areas affected by violence so that people can return to their homes. We must support people's ability to pursue their livelihoods so they can forge their own future," the UN envoys aid.

South Sudanese political and community leaders as well as members of the public joined in the 72nd anniversary celebration held in Juba as well as at UN bases across the country under the theme: "United Nations and South Sudan Building the Future Together."

"Their efforts would not be possible without the generous contribution of donor countries. The humanitarian response needs in 2017 total 1.6 billion U.S. dollars," he said.

The UN has been working in what is now the country of South Sudan, for over 50 years, providing vital services such as food, access to clean water, sanitation, education, health care, infrastructural development, peacekeeping, policing, demining, human rights and other forms of advocacy.

"To my colleagues here today, I wish to express my immense gratitude for your efforts and compassion. This is a dangerous place. Since the war broke out in 2013, 86 of our fellow aid workers have been killed while helping others. We mourn their loss," Shearer said.

The UN envoy said while the many South Sudanese people he had met were from different regions and backgrounds, they all wanted one thing -- peace.

"People want to return home. They want their children to go to school. They want to be productive citizens. They want to be self-reliant. That is why the South Sudanese are urging their leaders to silence the guns and give peace a chance," Shearer added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 03:21:38|Editor: yan

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LAGOS, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Nigeria's road commission has confirmed the death of 11 people in a motor accident on the Auchi-Okene highway in the central north state of Kogi.

Olusegun Martins, Sector Commander of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC), who disclosed this to reporters in Lokoja on Tuesday, said 23 others sustained various degrees of injuries in the accident, involving a total of 34 people.

Martins said six of the victims died on the spot, while five others died in hospitals.

He said two vehicles, a trailer loaded with cows, foodstuffs and passengers and a Toyota Corolla car were involved in the accident.

He said all the dead victims were from the trailer coming from Abuja, Nigeria's capital city, while the driver of the car and its other occupants escaped unhurt.

Martins said the accident occurred when the trailer hit the car from behind before losing control and crashing into a nearby bush.

Nigeria is among countries of high death rates in traffic accidents, mainly due to careless driving, crumbling roads or invalidity of some vehicles used in public transportation.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 03:21:39|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa attends a debate of a no-confidence motion in Lisbon, Portugal on Oct. 24, 2017. The Portuguese government survived a vote of no confidence over forest fires in parliament on Tuesday. (Xinhua/Zhang Liyun)

LISBON, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Portuguese government survived a vote of no confidence over forest fires in parliament on Tuesday.

The motion was brought about by the center-right Central Social Democratic-Popular Party (CDS-PP) following the death of more than 100 people in forest fires in four months.

For the motion to pass, the CDS-PP needed a parliamentary majority, meaning the support of at least 116 of 230 lawmakers. The government would then have fallen.

In the event, 122 lawmakers backed the Socialist Party government in a vote held after a 3-hour parliamentary debate.

Forest fires on Oct.15 raged through northern and central Portugal, killing 45 and devastating 500,000 hectares of land. In June, 64 people perished in a conflagration in the Pedrogao Grande area of central Portugal.

The CDS-PP claimed the motion was "an act of political indignation" brought on behalf of the Portuguese people. Introducing the bill, Assuncao Cristas, leader of the CDS-PP, said "the government had failed" due to "profound incompetence and mismanagement at the political and operational level."

Prime Minister Antonio Costa responded by promising reform to forestry policy, but calling for consensus. "Deep reform can only come through institutional cooperation and the best of scientific knowledge," he said.

Catarina Martins, leader of the Left Bloc (BE), which supported the government, called the motion "obscene" in reference to the fact that Cristas, as Minister for the Environment in the previous government, removed restrictions on eucalyptus planting. Eucalyptus trees are highly flammable and their prevalence was a major factor in both tragedies.

The Portuguese Social Democrat Party (PSD) voted with the CDS-PP. Luis Montenegro of the PSD said the government "deserved censure" for its handling of the crisis.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 03:26:41|Editor: yan

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TIRANA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Albanian government has partially exempted small businesses from value-added tax (VAT), Finance Minister Arben Ahmetaj told reporters Tuesday.

Businesses with an annual turnover up to 2 million leks (176,000 U.S. dollars) would not be included in the VAT scheme, he added.

Few weeks ago, the Albanian ministry of finance presented the budget for 2018 and its accompanying fiscal package where it was stated that all small businesses operating in Albania would be subject to VAT.

But following complaints and concerns raised by representatives of small businesses as well as economic experts, the government has amended the fiscal package for 2018, local media reported.

"Ambulatory salesmen, municipality food markets, artisans, will be left out of the VAT scheme. We are going to include only 9,000 businesses from 70,000 in total," Ahmetaj told the press conference.

He further informed that the proposed draft budget and fiscal policy had received approval at the Council of Ministers' meeting and was forwarded to parliament.

Small businesses make up a major part of industry in Albania.
Russian ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia, holds up the Russian Federation name plate demanding to speak during a Security Council meeting at the UN headquarters in New York, Oct. 24, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Russia on Tuesday vetoed a Security Council draft resolution on the extension of the mandate of an independent investigation mechanism to determine who was responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

The draft resolution sponsored by the United States sought to extend the mandate of the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) of the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for another year.

Among the 15 members of the Security Council, 11 were in favor, two were against, and another two abstained. As Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council, its "no" vote means that the draft resolution was rejected. Bolivia also voted against the draft resolution. China and Kazakhstan abstained.

Prior to the vote, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, proposed a postponement till Nov. 7, arguing that the extension of JIM's mandate should be discussed after the publication of JIM's report, which is only two days away. He told the council that a hasty vote was intended to "dishonor" Russia.

British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft repudiated the Russian position, saying that a vote on Tuesday was intended to de-link the JIM report and the extension of its mandate, thus avoiding the "politicization" of the issue.

U.S. deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Michele Sison, also rejected the Russian proposal, saying there is no time to waste.

"It's not every day that this council considers an issue that is so horrific and so shocking to the conscience as the use of chemical weapons against civilians. We need to keep this important work of the JIM on track."

Russia's proposal was put to vote and was rejected by the Security Council 8-4 with three abstentions, giving the green light for a vote for the draft Security Council resolution.

After the Russian veto, the U.S. and British representatives attacked Russia and asked to preserve JIM. Nebenzia, the Russian ambassador, regretted the vote, saying that the Russia veto did not mean an end to JIM.

"We will return to this matter ... (we) will examine what the mandate of JIM should be so that it fulfils its work in a professional, objective and impartial way," he told the Security Council.

The Security Council unanimously approved JIM in 2015 and renewed its mandate for another year in 2016. Its mandate expires on Nov. 17, 2017.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 03:46:50|Editor: yan

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KAMPALA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Uganda's ministry of health on Tuesday said two health workers in the eastern part of the country have developed signs of the deadly Marburg fever.

Jane Aceng, minister of health, told reporters that the health workers interacted with the index case which died on Oct. 11 at Kapchorwa hospital.

"Blood samples have been taken off and sent to Uganda Virus Research Institute for testing," said Aceng, noting that in the interim, the health workers have been isolated and are being monitored.

The number of cumulative cases currently stands at two - with one confirmed and one probable case, according to the ministry.

The minister said a total of 155 people who got into contact with the index case are being monitored.

The last Marburg outbreak in Uganda was reported in central and western parts of the east African country in 2014.

Marburg is a severe and highly fatal disease caused by a virus from the same family as the one that causes Ebola hemorrhagic fever, according to the World Health Organization.

According to the global health body, the illness caused by Marburg virus begins abruptly, with severe headache and malaise.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 04:06:57|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Tripoli, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Head of UN Support Mission in Libya Ghassan Salame on Tuesday said he is glad that a joint committee is formed representing Libya's House of Representatives and the Higher Council of State.

Salame made his remarks while speaking to journalists following a meeting on Tuesday with the Libyan Foreign Minister Mohamed Sayala, in the Libyan capital Tripoli.

"I am glad that after two years of the Skhirat agreement, a joint committee is established in accordance with the agreement. This is a good precedent for the future," Salame said.

"There are several articles in the political agreement that clearly call for consultations. The two delegations found it their duty to consult the two councils in Tubruq and Tripoli before returning to us with a negative or positive answer," Salame added.

The second round of discussions on the amendment of the Libyan political agreement was concluded on Saturday in Tunisia, with sponsorship of the UN Support Mission in Libya.

Salame proposed an action plan in mid September to end Libya's political stalemate. The plan includes amending the current UN-sponsored political agreement, holding a UN-sponsored national conference for all of Libya's political factions, adopting a constitution, and electing a president and a parliament.

Sayala said the meeting discussed "the results of the recent discussion sessions ... as well as the UN efforts to find a consensual solution in accordance with the political agreement."

Libya has been struggling to make a democratic transition following the 2011 uprising that toppled the late Gaddafi's regime. The north African country is plagued with insecurity and political division.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 04:11:59|Editor: yan

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BEIRUT, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Australia granted the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) 30 million Australian dollars (about 23 million U.S. dollars) to support education of Lebanese children, a UNICEF statement said on Tuesday.

The statement said the announcement was made during Australian Governor-General Peter Cosgrove's visit to a Lebanese public school accompanied by Lebanese Education Minister Marwan Hamadeh and UNICEF's representative in Lebanon Tanya Chapuisat.

More than 1 million Syrian refugees have fled war to neighboring Lebanon, straining local resources.

Among them, tens of thousands of Syrian children now attend Lebanese public schools.

Cosgrove lauded the Lebanese government's efforts in hosting Syrian refugees and said at the school that "what we see here today is the best proof of this support."

Chapuisat said "it's only through education that societies can end intergenerational cycles of poverty and discrimination."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 04:17:00|Editor: yan

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RABAT, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Morocco's King Mohammed VI dismissed on Tuesday four ministers over their involvement in delays of development projects in the northeastern city of Al Hoceima.

The dismissed are ministers of education, health, national planning, and a secretary of state in charge of vocational training.

In 2015, Morocco launched Lighthouse of the Mediterranean, a large-scale development program in Al Hoceima, but many of its projects have been marred by "delay or failure," according to an official investigation committee set up by the king in June.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 04:27:09|Editor: yan

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ABUJA, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Two policemen were killed Tuesday when gunmen stormed a construction site in central Nigeria, according to local police.

A Portuguese working on the construction site in the central Nigeria's state of Kogi was also abducted, police spokesman William Aya told Xinhua.

The gunmen, numbering 15 or more, stormed the construction site from a nearby bush and opened fire on the security personnel on guard at the place, Aya said.

The Portuguese, a civil engineer, and some locals were inspecting a road construction project in Kabba area of Kogi State when the gunmen struck.

The local police have launched an investigation into the incident in order to apprehend the culprits, Aya said.
Smithfield Foods, wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary of the world's largest pork company WH Group Ltd., joins hands with China's largest retailer JD.com on Oct. 24, 2017 to launch online sales of U.S. produced pork in China. (Xinhua/Xu Xingtang)

NEW YORK, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The world's largest pork company WH Group Ltd. said on Tuesday that its wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary Smithfield Foods joined hands with China's largest retailer JD.com to launch online sales of U.S. produced pork in China.

The fresh food division of JD.com, JD Fresh, will become the exclusive online sales platform for Smithfield's pork products in China, according to a tripartite agreement signed here by Smithfield, JD.com and China's Henan Shuanghui Investment and Development Co.

Photo taken on Oct. 24, 2017 shows pork products of Smithfield Foods, wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary of the world's largest pork company WH Group Ltd. (Xinhua/Xu Xingtang)

In addition, the parties will sell more than 10 kinds of exclusive products on JD.com, and further cooperate on big data, cold chain logistics and foods traceability.

Kenneth Sullivan, President and Chief Executive Officer of Smithfield, said, "Through this partnership, Smithfield Foods will take yet another step in developing its e-commerce business and expand its presence in China, as we meet consumers where they shop."

"Smithfield has a strong food safety platform and we take this even further to deliver products consumers enjoy and feel good about sharing with their families," he said.

Sullivan said that since Smithfield was acquired by WH Group in 2013, it has created more than 1,000 new jobs in its local community.

Richard Liu, JD.com chairman and chief executive officer, said the products sold on JD will include bone-in cuts and variety meats, with a focus on small packaged frozen products. These are all products which Smithfield specializes in, and includes the types of products in highest demand in China.

He said that JD Fresh is the largest direct sales fresh food platform in China. In the first half of 2017, gross merchandise volume from direct sales of meats on JD increased more than 780 percent year-on-year. It is now the largest online pork retail platform in China.

According to the agreement, JD will leverage its big data insights to help Smithfield in areas including data analysis and categorization of on-shelf goods and to carry out precisely targeted marketing campaigns based on in-depth study of consumers' shopping behaviors.

In order to ensure product quality and safety, JD and Smithfield will work on seamless cooperation in cold chain logistics.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 04:32:10|Editor: yan

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HELSINKI, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The current controversy between the European Union (EU) and Poland over reforms in the country was high up in the joint press conference of Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and his visiting Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda in Helsinki on Tuesday.

Niinisto hoped that a speedy solution would be found between Poland and the EU as the EU faces serious external challenges in security, arrival of refugees and the climate change. The EU should be united tackling these problems, he said.

Niinisto noted that when countries join the EU they commit themselves to certain principles. "And if these criteria are adopted once, they should be valid also in the future", Niinisto said.

The Copenhagen criteria include protection of democracy, rule of law and human rights, among others.

Answering questions from the media, Polish President Duda said the legal reform in Poland is an internal judicial matter and demanded that the union should be balanced. "I would like to see all EU countries subjected to such an appraisal process as Poland," he said.

Duda assured Poland is respecting civic freedom, freedom of speech and the media. He said that with the reforms the Polish government is only implementing the pledges it made prior to the 2015 election. "If that is not democracy, what is", he remarked.

The EU has demanded that Poland respect the legality principle of the union and, for example, not shift appointments of judges to be made by politicians. The EU has not yet responded to the latest suggestion by Poland on finding a solution.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 05:17:26|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Russia on Tuesday vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution on the extension of the mandate of an independent investigation mechanism, which was tasked to determine who was responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

The draft resolution sponsored by the United States sought to extend the mandate of the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) of the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for another year.

Among the 15 members of the Security Council, 11 were in favor, two were against, and another two abstained. As Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council, its "no" vote means that the draft resolution was rejected. Bolivia also voted against the draft resolution. China and Kazakhstan abstained.

Prior to the vote, Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, proposed a postponement till Nov. 7, arguing that the extension of JIM's mandate should be discussed after the publication of its report, which is only two days away. He told the council that a hasty vote was intended to "dishonor" Russia.

British ambassador Matthew Rycroft repudiated the Russian position, saying that a vote on Tuesday was intended to de-link the JIM report and the extension of its mandate, thus avoiding the "politicization" of the issue.

U.S. deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, Michele Sison, also rejected the Russian proposal, saying that there was no time to waste. "It's not every day that this council considers an issue that is so horrific and so shocking to the conscience as the use of chemical weapons against civilians. We need to keep this important work of the JIM on track."

Russia's proposal was put to vote and was rejected by the Security Council 8-4 with three abstentions, giving the green light for a vote on the draft resolution on JIM.

After the Russian veto, the U.S. and British representatives attacked Russia and asked to preserve JIM.

"The United States deeply regrets that one member of this council vetoed against this text, putting political considerations over the misery of Syrian civilians who have suffered and died from the use of chemical weapons. The reasons offered fool no one this morning," Sison, the U.S. representative, told the council after the vote.

She defended JIM and questioned Russia's motive of criticizing the investigators. "The question we must ask ourselves is whether the JIM is being attacked because it has failed in its job to determine the truth in Syria or because its conclusions have been politically inconvenient for some council members," she said.

"These attacks are not intended to get us closer to the truth; they are intended to hide the truth. They are not designed to get us closer to accountability for chemical weapons use in Syria; they are designed to shield the perpetrators for some of the worst war crimes of our century."

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who was absent from Tuesday's vote, launched a harsh attack against Russia.

In a statement released through her mission, Haley said Russia's veto "once again demonstrated it will do whatever it takes to ensure the barbaric Assad regime never faces consequences for its continued use of chemicals as weapons."

"By rejecting the renewal of the work of the Joint Investigative Mechanism ... Russia has made it clear that it does not care about stopping the use of chemical weapons in the world."

Rycroft of Britain noted that it was Russia that initiated JIM. He accused Russia of abusing its veto power to side with Syria, which he said has no regard for international norms.

"Why has Russia alone stopped an investigation whose work is not yet complete? Why has Russia brought an end to a mechanism that they initiated and we all created and mandated when there are still questions to answer?" he asked.

Nebenzia, the Russian ambassador, defended his country's position and explained that the Russian veto did not mean an end to JIM. "We will return to this matter ... (we) will examine what the mandate of JIM should be so that it fulfils its work in a professional, objective and impartial way," he told the Security Council after his veto.

He said Tuesday's vote was "senseless" and was intended to embarrass Russia. He regretted that "others chose the path of confrontation and division within the Security Council," referring to the rejection of his proposal for a postponement.

He promised that his country's veto has no influence on the fate of JIM.

French ambassador to the United Nations Francois Delattre said Russia's veto is a lost opportunity for the international community.

He said the non-proliferation regime is one of the greatest achievements in past decades and the very backbone of international peace and security. "Let's not allow the different policies or technical short-term calculations make the regime a precarious one."

He called for a renewal of JIM's mandate. "The mechanism has shown its mettle. We have the responsibility of building the necessary consensus to put an end to the use of chemical weapons in Syria but also preventing its re-emergency elsewhere."

Wu Haitao, the charge d'affaires at the Chinese permanent mission to the United Nations, said China, which abstained from the vote, is opposed to the use of chemical weapons and supports JIM.

The draft resolution contains positive elements, but also issues of concern by certain members of the council. The council could have continued consultation so that the text wins unanimous support, he said.

"Regretably, however, the council rushed to vote on the draft resolution in the absence of consensus," he said, noting that the practice is not conducive to unity of the Security Council.

The Security Council unanimously approved JIM in 2015 and renewed its mandate for another year in 2016. Its mandate expires on Nov. 17, 2017.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 05:27:28|Editor: yan

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RABAT, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Morocco's King Mohammed VI dismissed on Tuesday four ministers over their involvement in delaying development projects in the northeastern city of Al Hoceima that was rocked by protests for months.

In an unprecedented move since his ascension to the throne in 1999, the king dismissed four running ministers, five former ministers and 15 public officials.

According to a statement from the king's office, the dismissed ministers are Mohamed Hassad, minister of education, El Houcine Louardi, minister of Health, Nabil Benabdallah, minister of housing, and Larbi Bencheikh, Secretary of State in charge of Vocational Training.

The king also reprimanded five other former ministers, who are also incriminated by the investigation commission.

The list of dismissed officials includes also director-general of National Office of Electricity and Water Supply and 14 other lower level public service officials.

In 2015, Morocco launched Lighthouse of the Mediterranean, a large-scale development program in the northeastern province of Al Hoceima, but many of its projects have been marred by "delay or failure," according to an official investigation committee set up by the king in June.

The investigations have revealed not only big delay in launching projects, but also absence of the majority of these projects, which were not even launched.

Yet, the investigations concluded that there are delays in some projects and failure to implement others, while excluding any act of embezzlement or fraud.

The delays were strongly criticized by the protest movement, which sparked a year ago when fish vendor Mouhcine Fikri was crushed to death after climbing into a rubbish lorry to retrieve his swordfish confiscated by police.

The king has asked the head of government to make propositions to replace the ministers that have been dismissed.

Currently returning to calm, Morocco has not witnessed any protest of this size since the pro-democracy demonstrations during the Arab spring in 2011.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 05:42:31|Editor: yan

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CARACAS, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday hailed a new era of political coexistence following months of bitter political disputes between the ruling socialist party and the right-wing opposition.

"A new era of coexistence, of harmony, of cooperation with an important sector of the Venezuelan opposition has begun, and I applaud that," said Maduro.

The president spoke at a gathering with 18 newly-elected governors allied with the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and after meeting with three of four opposition governors who took the oath of office before the National Constituent Assembly (ANC).

The fact that the four governors accepted the political superiority of the ANC, an all powerful body elected to draft a new Constitution, has caused further cracks in the opposition.

While Maduro spoke of a new era of cooperation between the two camps, the four governors have had to defend their actions, and even risk being penalized by their conservative parties.

The opposition governor of western Tachira state, Laidy Gomez, complained to reporters at a separate press conference that opposition parties "are criminalizing us for going out to defend the votes we won in our regions."

In Oct. 15 regional elections, the ruling party snapped up to 18 of 23 states. The remaining five went to opposition candidates, all members of the Democratic Action (AD) party, and Juan Pablo Guanipa (Zulia) of the Justice First (PJ) party, who declined to be sworn in by the ANC.

Gomez said the PJ "did not authorize" Guanipa to take the oath and he was forced to toe his party's line, but "we will not abandon the votes of the people."

Maduro acknowledged "there are those who maintain that we should not dialogue, nor talk, nor respect each other, that here we should kill each other."

However, he appeared optimistic after speaking with the opposition governors about "cooperation between the two levels of government," the federal and the regional.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-10-25 06:47:40|Editor: Zhou Xin

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LA PAZ, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- Bolivian President Evo Morales on Tuesday urged the international community to do more to compel the United States, "the world's biggest polluter," to abide by the Paris climate agreement.

In June, U.S. President Donald Trump, who once called climate change a "hoax," announced his country's withdrawal from the landmark accord, arguing that it hampered American businesses.

"It is urgent that the United Nations take drastic steps to return the United States to the Paris Agreement. As the world's biggest polluter, it must accept its responsibility ... respect the agreements, the commitments and implement them," said Morales.

The Bolivian leader made the remarks at a ceremony marking development cooperation between the UN and the South American country.

"The arrogance of any president or state has to end," said Morales, adding that "mankind cannot live without Mother Earth, though the planet can live better without mankind."

The Paris Agreement, reached in December 2015, commits almost every country in the world to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, a leading cause of climate change.

The United States and Syria are the only two holdouts on the global climate pact after Nicaragua signed the Paris climate agreement on Monday.

The Trump administration's anti-climate stance was widely criticized both at home and abroad.
Iraqi Assyrian Politicians Denounce Church's Intervention in Politics

BAGHDAD -- Christian activists and politicians recently have been objecting to the greater involvement of religious leaders in Iraqi political affairs. Following the redeployment of Iraqi federal forces in Kirkuk, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako issued a statement Oct. 19 calling on Iraqi leaders in Baghdad and Erbil to proceed with genuine national reconciliation to put the political process on track. He stressed that it is important to preserve human beings and not oil wells, in reference to the recent dispute over the Kurdish independence referendum, which ended with federal government control of Kirkuk. The title of the statement, "An Appeal to Iraqi Leaders," shows the nature of the patriarch's view of his role as a national and moral guide for politicians on all sides, and his view of himself as a leader of Christians amid a Christian political split over the referendum and its results. In conjunction with the crisis of the Kurdish independence referendum, a group of Christian clerics launched a political project in which they formally demanded separation from Iraq. Some others have called for joining the new Kurdistan state. Assyrian activist Muna Yaku, a member of the committee writing the constitution of the Kurdistan Regional Government, criticized the intervention of the Christian clergy in political affairs in a post on her Facebook page. She said decisions regarding the political future of Iraq's Christians should be made by politicians and political parties, not Christian clerics. Read the full story here.
President of Afghanistan calls on the President of India Ram Nath Kovind

New Delhi, Tue, 24 Oct 2017 NI Wire

His Excellency Mr Ashraf Ghani, the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, called on the President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, at Rashtrapati Bhavan today (October 24, 2017).

Welcoming the Afghan President to India, the President expressed admiration for the astute leadership that he has provided to Afghanistan through difficult times. He also commended Mr Ghani for strengthening bilateral relations between India and Afghanistan.

The President said that for India, Afghanistan is not just a strategic partner, but a nation that evokes endearing affection. He recalled President Ghanis speech at the Heart of Asia Summit in Amritsar in December 2016, and his visit to the Golden Temple. He added that civilisational links and people-to-people contacts provide a strong foundation to our ever-growing friendship.

The President said that in recent times, the two countries have deepened their strategic partnership. The India-Afghanistan Trade and Investment Show in New Delhi brought our businessmen together and generated business worth over US $ 200 million.

The President expressed happiness at the opening of the air freight corridor between Kandahar and Kabul and Delhi. He also noted that the Afghan cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat have been connected directly by air to Delhi.

The President said that securing sustained peace and security remain the key fundamentals in leading Afghanistan on the pathway of economic recovery and growth. Unfortunately, mindless and senseless violence is being imposed on the people of Afghanistan. President Kovind strongly condemned recent terror attacks in Afghanistan, including in the provinces of Kabul, Kandahar, Ghazni and Paktia,that have resulted in over 200 innocent people being killed.

The President said that India itself has been victim of state-sponsored, cross-border terrorism for decades. We can fully empathise with the ongoing quest of the Afghan people to secure peace. India believes that whatever initiatives are taken for bringing peace in Afghanistan should be Afghan-led and Afghan-controlled.

Source: PIB
Satya Pal Singh said that the new education policy is in final stages and it would be announced in December

Thiruvananthapuram, Tue, 24 Oct 2017 NI Wire

New Education policy by December: MoS HRD Satya Pal Singh

Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development Satya Pal Singh has said that the new education policy is in final stages and it would be announced in December. Inaugurating a 'National Academic meet' in Thiruvananthapuram yesterday, Dr. Singh said the policy envisages to 'correct' the course of education system in the country, that has followed a colonial mindset. He pointed out that unfortunately after independence, most of the academicians followed the footsteps of British and Western scholars and deliberately denigrating Indian culture. Stating that the biggest challenge being faced by the education system and the government is 'how to de-colonise the Indian mind' and the government is working on the policy in this regard. The Minister said it will be the first education policy that was discussed layer by layer and threadbare.

Dr. Singh said improving the quality of education from the primary level, making higher education affordable to people and accessing higher education to more are some of the major issues faced by the education system. He said skill development is one of the major areas the government has given thrust upon.

To prevent the exodus of students to foreign countries seeking education, Dr. Singh said the higher education institutions should be developed to the standard of Centres of International Excellence. He said accessibility to higher education in the country is only 25.6 per cent while in USA 86 per cent Germany 80 and in China 60 per cent. The Minister pointed out that the aim of the government is to improve the higher education system in the country to make available to more students. Stating that higher education is very expensive, Dr. Singh said it has to be made more affordable to all sections in the society.

Indicating that changes are necessary in the Right to Education Act, Dr. Singh said the Act lacks teeth. The Act provides right to compulsory primary education. But what is the remedy if parents do not send their children to school. So many things have to be done in improving the primary education in the country', he added.

The meet was organised by Bharatheeya Vichara Kendram as part of the navathi celebration of P Parameswarn, Director of Vichara Kendram.

Source: PIB
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Amnesty International has denounced the racial and discriminatory crackdown launched by Algerian authorities against sub-Saharan migrants, rounding up and forcibly expelling more than 2,000 of them to Niger and Mali over the past three weeks.

Those expelled include more than 300 minors, among them at least 25 unaccompanied children, said Amnesty in a press release issued Monday.

The new wave of arrests started on September 22 when Algerian police and gendarmes began arbitrarily detaining migrants in the capital, Algiers, and neighboring suburbs.

Research by Amnesty International indicates they made arrests on the basis of racial profiling as they did not seek to ascertain whether the migrants had the right to stay in the country, either by checking their passports or other documents. Some of those arrested and deported are undocumented migrants, while others have valid visas.

There can be no justification for rounding up and forcibly deporting hundreds of people based on the color of their skin or their assumed country of origin  a blatant case of mass racial profiling, said Heba Morayef, North Africa Research Director at Amnesty International.

This and the chilling scale of arbitrary arrests and summary mass expulsions in recent weeks reveal the Algerian authorities deeply discriminatory attitude towards migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. They must urgently halt these unlawful arrests and deportations.

The latest wave of mass arrests and expulsions comes just few weeks after more than 1,000 people  mainly nationals of Niger  were returned to their native country in August 2017. Arrests also took place during the first weeks of September.

On September 22, more than 600 migrants arrived in Agadez, Niger, according to International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Niger. They included nationals from Niger, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Benin. More than 100 women and 200 minors were among them.

Also in September, the Algerian Ministry of Transport issued an order barring undocumented migrants from using public transport.

In July, Ahmed Ouyahya, who is now Algerias Prime Minister, uttered heinous remarks describing Sub-Saharan migrants as a source of crime, drugs and other calamities. Persisting on the same xenophobic remarks, Foreign Minister Abdelkader Messahel accused Sub-Saharan migrants of involvement in crime and drug trafficking.

Even worse, Head of Algerias human rights commission Fa-rouk Ksentini made scandalous statements, bluntly accusing sub-Saharans of spreading HIV and diseases in Algeria.

Meanwhile, at the level of the public, there has been an alarming number of xenophobic comments by Algerian social media users blaming migrants for spreading HIV and taking Algerians jobs.

Under international law, no one can be forcibly expelled from a country without being given a fair opportunity to challenge their expulsion. In addition, no one can be returned to a country where they would face a real risk of serious human rights violations.

Instead of trampling over the rights of migrants and carrying out mass expulsions, the Algerian authorities should be trying to counter racial discrimination and hate speech against sub-Saharan Africans and reform laws on the rights of migrant workers to stay in the country, said Heba Morayef.
Morocco has sent an emergency medical assistance to Madagascar to help the country cope with a pneumonia plague outbreak.

The emergency medical aid granted by Morocco, at the instruction of King Mohammed VI following the outbreak of the pneumonia plague in the African country, was handed over to Malagasy authorities in Antananarivo airport on Tuesday, in the presence of several cabinet members, headed by Prime Minister Olivier Mahafaly Solonandrasana.

The assistance, airlifted by three jets of the Royal Armed forces, comprises 34 tons of medicines, medical devices and protective equipment conform to World Health Organization standards.

This medical assistance translates the relations of friendship and solidarity between Morocco and Madagascar, which witnessed a new momentum following the Moroccan Kings visit to Madagascar in November 2016.

The Malagasy government, through the voice of Minister of Health Lalatiana Andriamanarivo, expressed heartfelt thanks to King Mohammed VI for his fraternal gesture, which reflects the excellent historical relationships that have always existed between the peoples of the two countries.

The aid granted by Morocco is likely to help the Malagasy government to respond, under the best conditions, to the medical needs of the people, the Health Minister said in a statement to MAP correspondent.

The Malagasy Minister, who underlined that bilateral cooperation has been steadily growing since the royal visit, hailed Moroccos valuable contribution to improving health infrastructure in his country. He mentioned, in this connection, the construction of a hospital and a vocational training complex in Antsirabe, stressing that these infrastructures are now a reference in Madagascar.

This gesture of active solidarity with Madagascar on the part of Morocco evidences, if need be, the Kingdoms constant mobilization and commitment to African countries and African peoples.
Wahaabist cuck? Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Steve Bannon is delivering a wake-up call to the rootless cosmopolitans of the Trump administration: The forgotten men and women of the Saudi royal family must be forgotten no longer.

The former White House strategist hasnt been shy about confronting his old colleagues when their globalist instincts lead them astray. From his soapbox at Breitbart, Bannon has implored the president to honor the demands of his working-class base: America-first trade agreements to restore our nations industrial base; a border wall to protect Americans wages, culture, and security; and a blockade of Qatar to prevent Al Jazeera from promoting thought crimes against the House of Saud.

According to Riyadh, the Saudi and UAE governments have blocked resources from entering Qatar by air, land, and sea because they are outraged by the Qataris role in funding Islamist terror groups. According to virtually every expert on the Middle East, this is a laughable conceit. The Saudis are every bit as complicit in funding international terrorism as Qatar is, and the kingdoms real concern is Dohas friendly relations with Iran, support for journalism critical of Riyadh, and broader refusal to comport itself as the Saudis vassal state.

Donald Trump initially took the Saudis side, ostensibly because he was eager to claim credit for the Gulf States finally getting tough on terrorism. But his administration desperately sought to end the blockade and normalize relations between Americas Gulf allies. The United States has little use for a conflict between Riyadh and Doha  not least because Qatar hosts one of Americas largest air bases in the Middle East. In recent weeks, Trump has softened his rhetoric toward Qatar and called for a speedy resolution of the conflict.

But on Monday night, at the Hudson Institute think tank in D.C., Bannon gave voice to the Republican bases passionate support for Saudi hegemony.

The original 12 demands that were put out  I think these demands are, quite frankly, pretty straightforward, Bannon said of the Saudis ransom, according to BuzzFeed News. I think the single most important thing thats happening in the world is the situation in Qatar  Qatar finally had to be called to account for their continual funding of the Muslim Brotherhood, their continual funding of Hamas.

If youre skeptical that Brietbarts attention to this issue is driven by overwhelming reader interest  or that Bannons passion on the subject reflects that of Trumps nationalist base  there is an alternative explanation for both. As McClatchy reports:

The UAE is paying $330,000 to a firm with the same parent company as Cambridge Analytica, the business Trump employed to reach voters with hyper-targeted online messaging during the campaign, to blast Qatar on Facebook and Twitter, among other sites, according to federal records.

 Bannon, who served as White House chief strategist until August, retained an ownership stake in Cambridge Analytica worth $1 million to $5 million when he entered the White House, according to his financial disclosure report.

So: Billionaire Robert Mercer owns SCL Social Limited, a company that just took $330,000 to wage an anti-Qatar influence campaign. Mercer also bankrolls nearly every venture that Steve Bannon draws paychecks from. Now, Bannon is undermining Americas access to a critical air base, by parroting the talking points of a totalitarian, Islamist state with ties to 9/11.

Its enough to make you wonder whether Bannon  a former Goldman Sachs banker and Hollywood money-man  might be a profit-seeking self-promoter first, and a right-wing nationalist second.
Senator Bob Corker talks to reporters as he heads to a vote on amendments to the fiscal year 2018 budget resolution. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Tennessee senator Bob Corker visited the morning shows on Tuesday, where he suggested Trump should step aside on tax reform and refused to back down from his comments earlier this month where he suggested Trump was leading America on the path to World War III. Corkers candor inevitably escalated his feud with Donald Trump, who, of course, embarked on a lengthy Twitter rant against the lightweight senator.

Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

...Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Corker fired back by basically calling Trump a liar and a child (for the second time).

Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff  Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) October 24, 2017

But off Twitter, Corker unleashed. Heres a quick roundup of all the shade the Tennessee senator flung back at the president Tuesday morning.

Corker Would Like Trump to Leave Governing to the Professionals, Especially When It Comes to Anything That Involves Other Countries

In an interview on Today, host Savannah Guthrie asked Corker if he thought the president is a threat to national security. Corker did not say yes  but he didnt not say yes, either.

I think that there are people who are around him who work in an effort to contain him  that would be Secretary Mattis, Tillerson, and General Kelly there as chief of staff, Corker told her.

WATCH: "Left to his own devices, do you think the president is a threat to national security?" @savannahguthrie asks @SenBobCorker pic.twitter.com/GxFFZvUTeU  TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 24, 2017

That almost seems to accept the premise of the question: He needs to be contained? Guthrie responded.

I do think, Corker replied, when youre having the kind of issue were having with North Korea where we have a very unstable leader there, when you send out tweets into the region to raise tension, when you kneecap your secretary of state whose diplomacy you have to depend upon  you really move our country into a binary choice which could lead to a world war.

Corker reiterated that sentiment with George Stephanopoulos on ABCs Good Morning America, when asked if he had any second thoughts about his previous criticism of Trump. When you look at the fact that weve got this issue with North Korea, and the president continues to kneecap his diplomatic representative, the secretary of State, and really move him away from successful diplomatic negotiations with China  which is key to this  youre taking us on a path to combat, Corker said.

"I would just like for [Pres. Trump] to leave it to the professionals for a while." - Senator Bob Corker on President and North Korea pic.twitter.com/qQiC2NwjIX  Good Morning America (@GMA) October 24, 2017

The president undermines our secretary of State, raises tensions in the area by virtue of the tweets he sends out, he continued, and I would just like him to leave it to the professionals for a while and see if we can do something thats constructive for our country, the region, and the world.

That Goes for Tax Reform, Too

Stephanopoulos also asked Corker what he thought about Trumps promise of no limits to 401(k) contributions, to which the senator basically said Trump should sit this one out, too. What I hope is going to happen is the president will leave this effort, if you will, to the tax writing committees, Corker said. Let them do their work, and not begin taking things off the table that ought to be debated in these committees at the proper time.

Corker was a bit more blunt on the Today show, where he indicated Trumps visit to Capitol Hill to talk about tax reform on Tuesday was essentially a photo op. Tax writing committees in the Senate and the House are going to be laying out the $4 trillion dollars in loophole closings that need to take place, Corker said. Hopefully the White House will step aside and let that occur in a normal process.

WATCH: I do look at these things as more of a photo op. Theyre not really about substance. @SenBobCorker on Trumps tax reform lunch pic.twitter.com/qrxn4Z1LKB  TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 24, 2017

Matt Lauer pressed Corker, asking him if his message to the president was to leave well enough alone.

I would recommend that based on recent history and  interactions, Corker replied. But I think its fine for him to come over. I do look at these things as more of a photo op, theyre not really about substance. But you know, more power to him.

Corker Plays Taboo With the Word Liar

CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju caught up with Corker after Trump blasted the senator in his tweetstorm. Corker tested the limits on how many times you can call someone a liar without actually calling them a liar. The president has great difficulty with the truth on many issues, Corker said, when asked point-blank by Raju if Trump was a liar. (He also said we grew up in our family not using the L-word.)

When asked about Trumps accusations from this morning, Corker said, Nothing that he said in his tweets today were truthful or accurate. He knows it. People around him know it. I would hope the staff over there would figure out ways of controlling him when they know that everything he said today was absolutely untrue.

Corker just now: "The President has great difficulty with the truth on many issues." https://t.co/GnPoByj9IL  Meg Wagner (@megwagner) October 24, 2017

Corker took issue with his characterization of the Iran deal, and well, everything else. Four times he encouraged me to run and told me he would endorse me, Corker said. I dont know. Its amazing. Unfortunately, I think world leaders are very aware that much of what he says is untrue. Certainly people here are because these things are provably untrue. I mean, theyre just factually incorrect, and people know the difference. I dont know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard, and debases our country in the way that he does, but he does.

Corker Wont Vote Trump 2020

.@mkraju asks if @SenBobCorker regrets supporting Trump in 2016. "I wouldnt do that again."  Kate Bolduan (@KateBolduan) October 24, 2017

Hes proven himself unable to rise to the occasion, Corker summed up.

Trumps Legacy, So Far, Is the Debasement of Our Nation

Absolutely not, Corker pointedly said when asked by Raju whether Trump was a good role model. I think the things that are happening right now that are harmful to our nation, whether its the breaking down of  we are going to be doing hearings on some of the things that he purposely is breaking down  relationships we have around the world that have been useful to our nation, Corker said. But I think at the end of the day, when his term is over, I think the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth-telling, just the name-calling  I think the debasement of our nation will be what hell be remembered most for, and thats regretful.

Corker Wouldnt Say Whether He Trusted Trump With the Nuclear Codes

Corker did decline to say whether he trusts Trump with the nuclear codes. But, he explained, in our hearing process, certainly were going to be addressing the fact that he, with only one other person on the defense side, has tremendous powers.

CORKER UNLOADS: He would NOT support Trump again; says Trump NOT a role model; won't say if he trusts Trump w nukes https://t.co/oAGIWVZ8P9  Manu Raju (@mkraju) October 24, 2017

Again, I dont want to carry this much further, Corker continued. But, look, I expressed concerns a few weeks ago about his leadership and just his stability and lack of desire to be competent on issues.

Trump appeared to catch Corkers CNN interview. Shockingly, he did not let liddle Bob Corkers comments go unanswered.

Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done. He doesn't have a clue as.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

...the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us. People like liddle' Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

In the next episode, Corker and Trump will sit down face-to-face for lunch on Capitol Hill.
Won a tremendous landslide despite being widely reviled among the electorate. Photo: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe scored a big win in Sundays general election, with his Liberal Democratic Party and its allies retaining a two-thirds supermajority in Parliament. The victory could put Abe on track to become the countrys longest-serving prime minister, and he will likely leverage it to renew his ambition to amend Japans constitution to allow for a larger military while continuing his economic-reform program.

Thats why Sundays election matters to Japan. But here in the U.S., we might want to pay attention to Abes victory for another reason: The circumstances that enabled it could easily be replicated here in 2020 and help carry Donald Trump to a second term in the White House.

For one thing, neither Abe nor his policies are particularly popular. Just a few months ago, Abes approval rating was in the gutter, dipping as low as 20 percent in the wake of a series of corruption scandals. North Koreas nuclear brinkmanship changed all that, however: After the regime in Pyongyang overshot Japan with a ballistic missile and tested an apparent hydrogen bomb in early September, Abes popularity surged as he was seen handling the situation proactively. Still, it peaked in early September, when a poll put his favorable/unfavorable numbers at 50/39, and the latest poll puts him back in the negative, at 40/46.

While Abenomics  a mix of loose monetary policy, fiscal stimulus, and structural reforms  has been credited with pulling Japan back from the brink of economic oblivion, the programs impact has been a mixed bag overall, with the country still suffering from deflation and wage stagnation. Businesses have also balked at some of Abes reforms, including womenomics, a concerted effort to radically increase the number of women in the Japanese workforce. A planned consumption tax hike has proven controversial. Most Japanese voters want a review of these policies.

Neither is Abes approach to foreign and security policy much beloved. His proposed amendment of the constitution, which would remove an article that has limited Japan to a relatively tiny army since World War II, is highly divisive and represents a dramatic break from the past 70 years of policy. Abe has the two-thirds supermajority in Parliament he needs to change the constitution, but an amendment would also have to pass a public referendum, and its prospects there are much less certain.

In addition to his North Korean poll bump, Abes main weapon going into Sunday was the total disarray of his opposition. The LDPs traditional opponent, the Democratic Party (which is, confusingly, liberal whereas the LDP is conservative) has collapsed, and new parties, including Tokyo governor Yuriko Koikes Party of Hope, have formed to challenge Abes government.

While shiny new parties, like French president Emmanuel Macrons En Marche, can sometimes be attractive to voters upset with the status quo, Japans voting system makes it hard for them to break through. Most seats in Parliament are allocated by winner-takes-all votes in each district, which disadvantages parties without some institutional presence. Turnout was also at a near-record low of around 53 percent: Koike and the other new challengers failed to drive voters to the polls and, as such, failed to achieve an upset. Given the collapse of the Democratic Party, the LDP rout was pretty much a foregone conclusion. Indeed, many observers believe Abe called these early elections precisely to take advantage of the chaos among the opposition.

In the U.S., of course, the president doesnt have the luxury of calling elections whenever it suits him or his party, so Trump will stand for reelection in 2020 with whatever cards he holds at that time. However, its not hard to imagine a scenario in which many of the same factors that helped Abe hold onto power despite lacking robust public support redound to the benefit of Trump and the Republicans in three years, even as the president remains historically unpopular and even if the economy doesnt continue to cooperate.

The worst-case scenario for Trump opponents begins, in an echo of 2004, with a national-security crisis or a war beginning in the year or so prior to the election (a further escalation with North Korea, a war with Iran, or a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil are all possibilities), inflating Trumps poll numbers and turning out hawkish Republican voters. It continues with the Democrats failing to coalesce around a strong consensus candidate and dividing once again into liberal-centrist and leftist camps. Jill Stein and Gary Johnson (or some other version of them) run again, drawing more voters from the Democratic candidate than from Trump. Turnout is depressed due to Republican voter-suppression tactics and the bad feelings generated among Democrats by a nasty open primary.

Throw in some fake news and Russian trollbots, and before you know it, Trump has won a very similar victory in 2020 to the one he eked out in 2016. In case they didnt learn this last year, Democrats need to be acutely cognizant of the fact that under the right set of (fairly likely) circumstances, Trump, like Abe, can win even with relatively bad fundamentals.
Hes had enough. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call,Inc.

Senator Jeff Flake, a Republican who has been one of the harshest intraparty critics of President Trump, announced on Tuesday that he would not seek reelection to his seat next year.

In a blistering speech on the Senator floor, Flake took aim at President Trump while criticizing his colleagues for allowing an ongoing erosion of political norms.

Full video of Sen. Jeff Flake's expansive speech this afternoon on the Senate floor --> https://t.co/RBRIvLntsn  Kailani Koenig (@kailanikm) October 24, 2017

There are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time, Flake said.

Silence can equal complicity. I have children and grandchildren to answer to and so, Mr. President, I will not be complicit or silent, he continued.

He added that anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy, and bemoaned the flagrant disregard for truth and decency in politics.

When the next generation asks us: Why didnt you do something? Why didnt you speak up? What are we going to say? he asked.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan both offered praise for the departing senator. But White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said his retirement was probably a good move. She called Flakes comments petty, and said he was just looking for a headline on his way out the door.

In an interview with the Arizona Republic before his speech, Flake said there may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party.

Flake recently published a book, The Conscience of a Conservative, which took aim at the nativist, anti-intellectual forces that have recently animated his party. But his tangible contributions to the anti-Trump cause were not always clear.

His seat was one of the few held by the GOP that was seen as vulnerable to a Democratic challenge in 2018. Flake had already drawn a top-tier Democratic challenger. And he faced a serious primary challenge from his right in Kelli Ward, a Steve Bannonbacked challenger with a history of inflammatory statements.
Photo: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Accessing New York Citys broken transit system will soon be a bit more convenient. On Monday, the MTA announced its intention to replace MetroCards with electronic payments within the next six years. The first phase of the plan is set to begin in late 2019, when 500 subway turnstiles and 600 buses will be equipped with technology that will allow riders to pay their fare by waving their phones or bank cards at a reader. All subway stations and buses are supposed to have the new equipment by 2020. MetroCard dispensers and readers will remain usable until they are retired in 2023.

MTA officials told the New York Times that people will be able to make payments through apps like Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay, as well as with credit and debit cards; the MTA plans to start issuing its own card in 2021. Cubic Transportation Systems, which created the MetroCard and Londons Oyster card, will be responsible for installing the new system, which will eventually include the Long Island Railroad and the Metro-North.

Theres so many good reasons to do this, I dont know where to start, MTA board member Andrew Albert told the New York Daily News. You wont have to pay employees to clean the turnstiles, you wont have to be stuck behind someone who doesnt know exactly the right way to swipe. According to MTA head Joe Lhota, Another potential advantage was that fare readers could be installed near the back doors on buses to allow for all-door boarding. That would let buses pull away from bus stops sooner than they do now, reducing travel times. And, of course, there will be no more waiting in line to refill your MetroCard every month.
Donald Trump didnt come out of nowhere. Photo: Daniel Acker

I recently wrote a mixed assessment of How the Right Lost Its Mind, a quasi-confessional account of Republican derangement by conservative former talk-radio host Charlie Sykes. I was eager to probe Sykes for responses to my critique, and he generously agreed to an interview. Sykes is disturbed by the racist and authoritarian elements Trump has exploited, but we dont fully agree on their sources. Below, we discuss where Trumpism comes from and how the party lost its mind:

Chait: My review of your book mixed praise and criticism. I praised its spirit of questioning and reassessment of where the Republican Party has gone wrong. But my conclusion is that you understate, or perhaps misstate, the role conservative dogma has played in the trends you aptly identify. I would argue that the heroes of your story, such as William F. Buckley and the founders of the conservative movement, had more in common with todays conservative leaders than you allow for.

Sykes: You quite accurately describe my disillusionment and note that I am left with more questions than answers.

Chait: Maybe we should start with Buckley, since he is such an important figure in your account. My argument is that Buckley defended segregation, and that he played a very delicate and gentle game with the John Birch Society, much like Trump and the alt-right.

Sykes: In the book, I specifically noted his segregationist rhetoric. And the fact that he later said he regretted it. But I do acknowledge that this planted seeds in the movement that generated poisonous growths later. But I guess I would challenge the notion that there is anything like a straight line from Buckley to Ann Coulter, or from Buckley to Trump.

Chait: Thats right. My quibble is that you portray him as having learned from the defeat of segregation. I think his subsequent support for apartheid shows that he merely applied his pragmatism to the situation and saw segregation in the U.S. as a lost cause, but a cause that could still be won in South Africa 20 years later.

Sykes: I do think distinctions need to be made. Both Hubert Humphrey and Che were men on the left. But they ought not be conflated.

Chait: No doubt. Ive been writing recently about the importance for progressives to understand different strains of right-wing thought.

Sykes: Buckleys position on apartheid was morally wrong and historically dumb. But I cite him at length for two main reasons: (1) he sought to give some thoughtful coherence to conservatism, (2) he made efforts to push out the crackpots.

Trump represents (1) the replacement of thought with erratic demagoguery, and (2) he embraced and emboldened the worst elements  the paranoid conspiracy theorists, racists, anti-Semites. You suggest that I was oblivious to the connections between Trump and the pathologies of conservatism. I freely admit that there were a lot of things that I missed or downplayed. But rather than oblivious  I would describe myself as obsessed with those pathologies, which obviously contributed significantly to Trumps success.

Chait: Let me stick with Buckley for a second, because I think he gets at the root of my disagreement. I think Buckley represented a politics of reflexive and unbending opposition to progressive social change. Any reordering of social or economic power was bad, whether in the American South, or South Africa, or through any expansion of regulations or the welfare state. This was quite a change from the Eisenhower Republicanism that he overthrew. Eisenhower was more selective, sometimes favoring more government, and sometimes not. Once your party is controlled by a movement that rules out any progressive social change, it is in the grips of a radical dogma.

Whats more, this left the party opposed to popular government programs, as you briefly note. That unpopular stance on the role of government required the GOP to embrace white grievance in order to compete for votes. And it has left many conservatives suspicious of democracy, for the same reason.

So, I conclude that the triumph of the radical conservatives is the cause of the phenomenon you describe quite well.

Sykes: I think Buckley was more complicated than you suggest. He took many positions that would be regarded as heretical today. But I think he also helped fashion a useful critique of the role of the state in society and the fusionist idea of ordered liberty was an important counterbalance to the passion for, and faith in, central government planning.

But I think the nub of your argument, which I think is important, is that the GOP embraced or at least tolerated white grievance because its underlying policies were unpopular. Here, I think it might be useful to break out (1) conservative theorists, (2) cynical GOP politicians, and (3) the larger GOP-voting base.

Chait: Go on.

Sykes: Starting with Hayek, and extending to Milton Friedman, I think there was a principled critique of the limits of government knowledge and, hence, of the ability of the central state to run the economy. There was also an attempt to fuse together various branches of conservatism into the concept of ordered liberty. These thinkers (and I would include people like Jack Kemp later) genuinely thought that limited government, free markets, and economic freedom would provide the greatest scope and opportunities for Americans. But, as you suggest, these ideas were indeed hard to translate into policies that could win elections.

This brings us to the politicians. Richard Nixon, who embraced the most aggressive versions of the Southern Strategy, was not a conservative of this school, but I do think that there was a temptation among the political class to use both cultural and racial issues to substitute for other issues. Conservatives too often gave in to that temptation. Even those who did not turned a blind eye to the grievances among folks whose vote they needed.

Fast-forward to 2016. Trump deftly exploited those grievances, and continues to do so. Rather than talk about health care, he attacks the NFL. Its very much the old pattern.But: This doesnt mean that people whose views were shaped by Hayek, von Mises, or Friedman are therefore responsible for the alt-right.

In other words, there is a conservative tradition that is clearly separable and distinct from Trumpism. But it is a tradition that clearly has been abandoned by much of the political class and GOP electorate.

Chait: Obviously Trump is an outlier from his party and right-wing politics in all sorts of ways  his extraordinarily blunt lies, his wild anti-intellectualism, courting of Nazis as fringe members of his coalition, and so on. I think we agree there are also elements of continuity. Sarah Palin took us pretty far down the road toward Trump, for instance.

Sykes: Agree. Lets talk about Palin. She could be Patient Zero is this current epidemic.

Chait: To be clear, I see the epidemic as having begun long before her. But, yes, her candidacy is important. One key difference is that Palin was sprung on the party as a fait accompli, while Trump had to fight for the nomination over a long period of time. This means some conservatives had a chance to consider and evaluate Trump, which did not happen with Palin. There was very little dissent about her on the right.

Sykes: Yes, it did begin before her. But thats why Trump was a symptom. Remember that I wrote this: In other words, did Trump represent continuity or discontinuity? Was he a logical development in conservatism, or a radical, ominous break with that tradition? Or was it a combination of both?

First a confession: When I set out to write this book, I was prepared to argue that Trumps victory was a black-swan event, a hostile takeover of the conservative movement. But that position no longer seems tenable; the roots for the populist/nationalist putsch run too deep.

Chait: What about the paranoia and disdain for truth of Joe McCarthy, which conservatives like Buckley and Irving Kristol defended?

Sykes: To be clear: Im open to a variety of alternative explanations, including some that you have floated.

Chait: The dismissal of the mainstream media by Nixon, Agnew, and Ziegler was quite similar  they simply didnt yet have an alternate infrastructure in place, but they very much wanted to create one. Weve already discussed race. But dont you see these as earlier precursors?

Sykes: Not sure about Irving Kristol. But Buckley was caught up in Cold War anti-Communist politics. I think his attack on the Birch Society was a recognition that things could spiral out of control.

Chait: Well, as I noted, he did not attack the John Birch Society. He deliberately steered clear, defending the group while criticizing its leader, as Alvin Felzenberg recounts in NR.

Sykes: On the media attacks: yes, they were very much precursors. The attacks on the MSM has been a staple of the conservative movement from the very beginning  actually long before Nixon. I spent so much time on the history of the conservative media (relying on Nicole Hemmers excellent history) to show how deep that suspicion went.

We dont need to relitigate this. As the headline there says, he excommunicated the kooky Birchers. He also tried to separate the leaders from the followers, which was hardly unusual.

Chait: I think its significant because, to me, it reads very similar to the way figures like Bannon have treated the extreme right. Bannon is dismissive of outright Nazis but also wants to retain support from people who follow them. This is almost exactly how Buckley treated the John Birch Society. You could quote Bannons denunciations of the far right and say he purged them, but that would be inaccurate.

Sykee: We disagree on this. I knew Buckley, he was a friend of mine, and Steve Bannon is no William F. Buckley. Buckley marginalized the kooks. Bannon empowered them. Unfortunately, as we found out, the kooks never really went away. And there is no one with Buckleys clout to marginalize the new generation.

Chait: And, as you note, once you have dismissed the mainstream media as hopelessly biased, there is no longer any possibility of doing so.

Sykes: Once you have de-legitimized the MSM and discredited any source outside of the alt-reality bubble, yes, its nearly impossible. This is at the heart of the rights disease.

Chait: I found your aside about Reagan to be intriguing  the moment of peak conservative success came when there was no real right-wing media. To me, that means Republicans need to return to a politics where listening to the mainstream media is legitimate. But thats also incompatible with complete control of the party by the conservative movement. Because Reagan betrayed conservative dogma repeatedly.

Sykes: Yes, I found that fascinating as well. Reagan did not have to rely on or cope with talk radio, Fox News, Breitbart, or any of the other trolls that now dominate conservative politics. I think that meant he had more scope to compromise and maneuver.

Chait: Movement conservatives were still just a faction within the party. There were figures in the White House who were not conservative, and they jockeyed for influence and sometimes prevailed.

Sykes: Well, yes. But movement conservatives are still just a faction in the party today.

Chait: Is there a prominent Republican who would not identify as conservative, other than Susan Collins, maybe?

Sykes: Interesting question. Probably not, but the term has a lot of different shades these days, doesnt it? I think of John McCain as a conservative, but he is clearly not the same kind of conservative as, say, Rand Paul. The word is close to losing almost all meaning. (edited)

Chait: Well, political scientists who measure this believe the party has moved far, far to the right almost continuously since the 1970s. The arch-conservatives of 30 or even 20 years ago are now relative moderates. But theyre all part of the conservative movement in one form or another.

Sykes: I dont think Trump is a conservative. I think he is a man without any fixed principles. And to the extent he does have any ideology, it owes far more to European-style National Front right-wing politics than to American conservatism. But yes. Your point on the movement to the right is correct.

I dont think the answer is a return to Eisenhower-ism. But I do think we need more pragmatic, reality-based, center-right figures who do not always pander to our worst instincts and make outlandish promises they cant keep.

Chait: The congressional party is totally controlled by movement conservatives, and they have set the agenda for Trump.

Sykes: Dont underestimate the extent to which they have also bent to Trumps agenda.

Chait: Would you agree that every other right-of-center party in an industrialized democracy is Eisenhower-esque? They all, unlike the Republicans, are willing to increase revenue in certain conditions, agree with climate science, and in favor of universal health insurance.

That unique radicalism of the GOP is the quality that stands out to me and other critics.

Sykes: I could attempt an answer, but I suspect it would stretch my actual knowledge beyond acceptable limits. Yes, other conservative parties are more flexible, but as you acknowledged in your piece, I cant imagine even a moderate conservative movement in this country that would embrace single payer. But, yes, there is a unique radicalism of the GOP. And Trump is just one indication of that.
Iowas GOP governor Kim Reynolds wanted relief from a pending premium spike caused in no small part by the president. But the presidents people said no. Photo: Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images

An application for a far-reaching waiver from Obamacare regulations was withdrawn in a joint decision by the Trump administration and the state of Iowa today. Obamacare proponents feared that granting the waiver would lead to the unraveling of that legislations main underpinnings. President Trump feared that granting the waiver would make Obamacare look better.

Both Trumps health-care-regulation chief Seema Verma and Republican governor Kim Reynolds agreed to blame the waivers failure all on Obamacare.

Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) said in a joint statement with Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma that ObamaCares rules are too restrictive for the request to work.

Iowa pursued state flexibility through the Stopgap Measure, but ultimately, Obamacare is an inflexible law that Congress must repeal and replace, Reynolds and Verma said.

Aside from the fact that they could have reached this conclusion months ago (its not like Obamacare has changed this year), the lets blame Obamacare spin continues to be undermined by reports Trump himself ordered the waivers rejection on grounds that it would help Obamacare work.

Yes, its a pretty convoluted situation. Taking seriously widespread speculation that the Trump administration would be quicker than its predecessor to give states leeway to suspend specific Obamacare requirements so long as they meet its major objectives, Iowa applied for a very broad super-waiver under a state innovations section of the Affordable Care Act.

It was indeed a reach: The proposed waiver sought to head off a huge premium increase by the one Obamacare private insurer left in the state by eliminating many basic features of Obamacare and also authorizing very large out-of-pocket expenses for consumers. In many respects, it would have taken the individual insurance market back to the pre-ACA status quo ante, where ability to pay would deny people who dont qualify for Medicaid meaningful access to health coverage. Indeed, the single biggest thrust of the Iowa plan appeared to be holding down premiums for higher-income consumers and giving them access to the public subsidies that Obamacare limited to low-income consumers. In a way, the waiver schemes attempt to fix Obamacare was like attempting to treat a broken arm by amputating it.

Previously, in Weird Obamacare Schemes... Iowas Obamacare Waiver Could Test Tolerance for High Insurance Deductibles

But because it would prop up an Obamacare program he kept pronouncing as dead, the president reportedly instructed HHS to deny it. One of multiple ironies here is that Trump himself had contributed significantly to the premium spike in Iowa by refusing to promise to continue reimbursements to insurers for cost-sharing-reduction subsidies they were required to give low-income consumers, and then, more recently, killing the CSR payments altogether. And when a Republican Iowa governor tried to respond with the classic conservative formula of encouraging high-deductible health-care plans that cover less, the administration said no to that, too.

So long as Trump continues to oppose the Alexander-Murray legislation to restore CSR payments and to make broader state-waiver applications even more welcome  thats the quid pro quo in the legislation  then Iowa is indeed stuck with a premium spike. And no matter how loudly Republicans in Des Moines and Washington try to blame Obamacare, its their own presidents mess now.
Government has renewed the contract of National Social Security Fund (NSSF) managing director Richard Byarugaba for another five years.



Byarugabas contract was renewed by minister of Finance Matia Kasaija effective December 1, 2017. Byarugaba was reappointed as NSSF MD in 2014 after a controversial 10-month long search process. Byarugaba was first appointed to the position in 2010.

Meanwhile, Kasaija has declined to renew Byarugabas deputy, Geraldine Ssali Busuulwa who has had a volatile relationship with the Fund and her boss.

Richard Byarugaba (C) with Finance minister Matia Kasaija

Ssalis six-year contract with NSSF ends this month on October 29 and has been replaced with Patrick Ayota the Fund's chief finance officer.



Mid this year, the High court ordered NSSF to pay Ssali all her legal costs after she quashed a board decision to send her on forced leave in 2016.



Justice Stephen Musota annulled the NSSF board decision, describing it as illegal, irrational and procedurally improper since the board had no mandate to take such decision.



In 2016, NSSF wrote to Ssali asking her to take immediate leave yet she had just completed her maternity leave.

In 2016, Justice Musota ordered the NSSF board chairman, Patrick Kaberenge, and managing director Richard Byarugaba to pay her Shs 200 million for being in contempt of court orders.



The duo had stopped Ssali from accessing her office. Ssali is reportedly unhappy with the decision not to renew her contract and may consider legal action.

Richard Wejuli Wabwire has been reappointed as the Funds corporate secretary.
India ready to talk with Hurriyat leaders

NEW DELHI: The Modi government on Monday rowed back on its three-year-old pledge to never talk to the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, as Home Minister Rajnath Singh named a new interlocutor with a brief to consult all stakeholders, including the separatists, in India-held Kashmir.



In a clear indication that the right-wing Hindu revivalist government was willing to reboot its Kashmir policy, ex-intelligence chief Dineshwar Sharma was named as interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir with complete freedom to talk to all groups and individuals, including the Hurriyat, the group New Delhi sees as an agent of Pakistan.



There is no bar on him to talk to one group and not another... We want to understand aspirations of people of Jammu and Kashmir, Mr Singh said, announcing the government initiative at a hurriedly-convened media conference. The move follows a rare meeting between Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj last week with Pakistans High Commissioner Sohail Mahmood.



Local reports said Ms Swaraj discussed the current state of affairs in bilateral relations with Mr Mahmood, who officially took charge as Pakistans envoy to India only last month. The minister also touched upon Indias concerns over alleged cross-border terrorism and asked Islamabad to quickly bring to book the accused in Mumbai and Pathankot terror attacks.



Reports said the meeting with Mr Mahmood took place on Monday last week after her office was approached by the Pakistani envoy. Ms Swaraj reportedly mentioned the need for Pakistan to review its position on Kulbhushan Jadhav, the alleged Indian spy who remains in Pakistans custody.



It remains to be seen if the fresh and sudden move on held Kashmir too is linked with the suggested overall improvement in the ties. The decision to hold talks with the Hurriyat leaders after their meeting with the Pakistani envoy three years ago set off a new low in bilateral ties is also being seen as a response to the Trump administrations signals on a new South Asia policy.



As a representative of the government of India, Dineshwar Sharma will initiate a sustained interaction and dialogue to understand legitimate aspirations of people in Jammu and Kashmir, Mr Singh said.



A third-generation police officer, Mr Sharma, 63, retired in December 2016 after leading the domestic spy agency, the Intelligence Bureau, for two years.



This is the first conciliatory initiative by the Modi government in three years to reach out to Kashmiris and comes after a long period of heightened standoff between Kashmiri militants fighting Indian rule and the security forces.



Reports said Mr Singhs outreach indicates a shift in the central governments approach to handle the Kashmir issue from the prism of security operations without a matching political overture from the other side. It has been welcomed by Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti. Dialogue is a necessity of the hour and the only way to go forward, she said.



Former chief minister Omar Abdullah, however, said he would keep an open mind and wait to see results of the dialogue process.



In a series of tweets, Mr Abdullah said the dialogue process started by the centre was a resounding defeat of those who could only see use of force as a solution, a swipe at BJP leaders seen as loud advocates of a hardline policy on disturbances in the occupied valley.



Explaining why the government had appointed the interlocutor, Mr Singh said there had been suggestions from across the political spectrum that the government should hold dialogue with all stakeholders in held Kashmir.



Mr Singh also called the move a follow-up to Prime Minister Narendra Modis Independence Day address in August where he had stressed that Kashmirs problems can only be solved by embracing Kashmiris, not bullets or abuses.
Ishaq Dar to reply by October 30 to accountability court

ISLAMABAD: The accountability court on Monday directed Finance Minister Ishaq Dar to furnish his reply by October 30 on a plea of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), seeking to freeze all his movable and immovable assets.



When Court Judge Muhammad Bashir resumed the hearing on graft reference against Dar, NABs prosecutor Imran Shafique pleaded that orders may be issued for freezing all assets of the accused Finance Minister, in accordance with the directions of Bureaus chairman.



The court then directed Dar to reply to the NABs plea on next hearing and recorded the statements of two more prosecution witnesses, who testified against Dar.



Both the witnesses Masood ul Ghani of Habib Bank and Abdul Rahman Gondal of Allied Bank, were later cross- examined by Dars senior counsel Khawaja Haris Ahmad.



During the cross examination, heated exchange of harsh words took place between the NABs prosecutor and Khawaja Haris, when Haris asked some technical questions from the prosecution witnesses.



NAB prosecutor contended that Haris was creating a hostile atmosphere by cross examining the witnesses in a hostile manner. Haris then asked the prosecutor to address media if he wanted to make the headlines.



The prosecutor claimed that the witnesses were being influenced by the defendant. The witness Abdul Rehman Gondal submitted details of an account owned by Dar in a bank situated inside the Parliament House. He told the court that he first appeared before the NAB investigator along with the relevant record on August 17, 2017.



He stated that he provided bank statements of Dar from March 25, 2005 to August 16, 2017 to the NAB investigator. The details of bank transactions provided by the witness were made part of the case record by the court, besides directing him to also appear on next hearing with additional record, duly certified by the bank.



The second witness, Masood ul Ghani, told the court that he has also provided all available details of Dars bank account to the NABs investigator.



In his cross-examination, Khawaja Haris contended that the verified copies of bank documents presented by Ghani were different from the originals submitted to NAB. The court then directed the witness to also appear on next hearing with the original and additional documents.



The court noted that the evidence of both the witnesses was not being closed and directed both of them to come up on next hearing with additional documents and evidence.



The objective of recording statements of various bank officials was to collect the bank data of the accused and compare it with his declared assets to ascertain the wrongdoing, if any, the judge noted.



The court also summoned two more witnesses- Faisal Shahzad and Muhammad Azeem Khan- both from banking sector- for the next hearing, and adjourned further proceedings till October 30.



The NABs through a fresh application told the court that while exercising powers under Section 12 of the NAB Ordinance of 1999, NAB chairman has passed order on October 18, for freezing the assets, properties, bank accounts and investments of Dar, and requested the court to issue order for seizing all assets of Ishaq Dar.



It was seventh appearance of Dar before the court. The court has so far recorded the statements of five witnesses out of total 28. Earlier, Ishtiaq Ali of Bank Alfalah, Shahid Aziz of National Investment Trust and Tariq Javed of Al Baraka Bank, had recorded their statements.
Discussion about wargaming and military history, primarily WWII in North Africa. Also discussion about AFV's and artillery.
From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As...
A PEACE Ambassador and Executive Director of Nigeria Business Forum-Ghana, Chief Oyeyemisola Fatuyi, has lashed out at African Presidents and religious leaders for keeping quite over the inhumane treatment being meted out to some youth in Togo, which has led to many deaths and injuries.



Addressing the media at the Accra Mall on Saturday, the Ambassador stated that the ongoing crisis in Togo was one that needed the iron hands of Presidents in Africa, but they had kept quiet over the crisis, a development he described as repugnant.



I do not think President Gnassingbe is older than President Akufo-Addo or President Buhari or most African leaders; he is, in fact, quite younger than most of them. So why cant they [African leaders] sit him [Gnassingbe] down and have closed door discussions with him to agree on the constitutional reforms the citizens are calling for? he questioned.



The Executive Director entreated the youth in Africa to rise up and raise their voices against the crisis going on in Togo because we are one people and whatever the outcome is, the crisis has the tendency of spreading to neighbouring countries.



According to Chief Fatuyi, it is very disheartening that majority of our youth are behind these derogatory actions; it is this same senseless young people who are employed into the police service, military and other security services and they are used against their fellow youth.



We are young people and should be able to make our stands clear to our governments. Be it through social media campaigns or engaging in movements, we should employ any option available to us that would help us battle conflicts not only in Togo but other African countries too.



Chief Fatuyi expressed disgust at religious leaders in Africa, saying The western religion has overshadowed ours and most of our traditional leaders are in bed with politicians. Why then cant a politician threaten to dethrone a traditional leader?



Instead of all denominations of churches coming together to fast and pray, all they do is organise conferences, summits, and revivals to harvest offerings and donations from the poor people, he stated.



The Executive Director criticised the international community as not caring and called on Africans not to rely on them to come and solve our problems for us.



The United Nations and other western influencers claim to be supporting us with aids and grants but where does the money go? Why would they not make sure that unscrupulous leaders are dealt with?



Its a pity that each time I have to go and join a line at the gate of western embassies with all kinds of inhumane conditions just because I want to travel abroad for business or pleasure, while the same westerners enter our countries without visa, he bemoaned.



Chief Fatuyi, who is currently in Abuja for a Peace Ambassadors Conference, shared in the interview with the DAILY HERITAGE how he was contributing in his role as a peace ambassador.



He said he was in talks with some elders and opinion leaders to organise various youth in Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria to sensitise them to international laws, their rights and how to properly call constitutional reforms.



He also said he believes that the creation of an Economic Community of West African States youth network that would cater for young men and women in times of crisis like this would be very instrumental.



Our leaders are drunk with power, and the only way to liberate ourselves is if we change our mindset and realise that nobody can help us if we do not help ourselves, we are the young leaders of this continent, let us unite for a better Africa tomorrow.

Source: Daily Heritage









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Chavez Cuanto te queremos!



Por culpa de Chavez



Cerveza Polar







Algun dia Colombia volvera a la ideologia de Bolivar







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LOS REVOLUCIONARIOS NO TOMAN CACA-COLA No se trata solamente de un capricho, sino de una sana actitud en todos los sentidos. Desde la solidaridad con el pueblo colombiano donde la empresa Caca-Cola ha cometido los mas grandes abusos contra sus trabajadores incluyendo el presunto secuestro y asesinato de los dirigentes del sindicato, hasta la proteccion de la salud de nuestros hijos, enviciados por ese jarabe de cola y azucar, que les produce obesidad prematura. Pensemos tambien los revolucionarios, que ese dinero que gastamos en los refrescos es utilizado por esas empresas para financiar el terrorismo en nuestro pais. Es cierto, no se trata solo de la Caca-Cola, sino tambien de la cerveza, de los cigarrillos y todos esos articulos innecesarios y mas que eso, daninos para nuestra salud. Podriamos incluso pensar en un dia de parada para cada uno de ellos. Es cuestion de irnos organizando. Pero para empezar, que tal si dejamos de comprar Caca-Cola y sus similares?



























Cuando lo extraordinario se vuelve cotidiano...



Discurso del Acto de Grado en Barinas en 12 de Febrero del 2005 Queridos Graduandos:



Mas que un discurso, quiero dirigirles algunas palabras que escribi anoche, despues de visitar en las clinicas, a los estudiantes heridos, a consecuencia de los enfrentamientos con la policia de hace apenas dos dias.



Me ha tocado por razones del destino, ser la persona que les otorgue el titulo que bien merecieron con sus estudios. Y me siento sumamente orgulloso de serlo. Me consta que la Universidad de Los Llanos Occidentales Ezequiel Zamora, a pesar de lo dicho por los enemigos de esta universidad, es una universidad de primera.



No tendremos la mejor planta fisica, en los salones hace calor. En el comedor hace calor. Pero no es en lo material que las cosas deben valorarse. El mayor capital es el ser humano. Y en eso, nuestra UNELLEZ, lo digo con conocimiento de causa, esta sobrada. Los llaneros venezolanos son nobles, valientes, de coraje.



En la UNELLEZ hacen vida, en este momento, aproximadamente 67000 personas. El 97% de ellas son estudiantes. Jovenes que, como Ustedes hasta el dia de hoy, buscan ese titulo, que constata los anos de dedicacion y de estudio.



Los jovenes son el rio de la vida, ustedes graduados deben ser los capitanes de esos barcos que naveguen por el rio de la vida.



Nuestra Patria atraviesa momentos muy dificiles porque decidio dejar de ser esa matrona de edad vetusta y complaciente, para ser joven, rebelde y altanera. Nuestra imagen ya no es la de una acaudalada ricachona mayamera. En nuestro rostro brilla ahora la sonrisa del Che Guevara, con su diente delantero torcido, su pelo largo y su boina con la estrella.



Entender esto, a mi me ha tomado practicamente toda la vida. Tengo 53 anos, y ya perdi mi oportunidad de derramar sangre joven a causa de un ideal.



Ustedes son jovenes, estan en la flor de la vida. No cometan por favor el error de renunciar a su instinto de rebelion. El Che Guevara fue Ministro de a Economia en Cuba. Los billetes y las monedas se adornaban con su rostro. Nada de eso le importo. Primero fue a Angola donde paso un penoso ano de combate. Despues se fue a Bolivia, donde encontro la muerte. El Che era el ultimo que comia, el que cargaba la mochila mas pesada. Siempre se sacrificaba por los demas en un estoicismo que mas parecia fervor religioso que ideologia marxista.



Si quieren un modelo de vida. Ahi lo tienen.



Dije hace unos momentos que el 97% de la poblacion de la UNELLEZ es estudiante. Se imaginan Ustedes la Universidad que podriamos tener si todos los estudiantes tuvieran la abnegacion, la combatividad del Che?



Los momentos que se avecinan van a requerir de una gran unidad del pueblo venezolano. La alternativa de continuar siendo libres o regresar a la pobreza se nos planteara en los proximos dias de forma enmascarada, o quizas peor, desenmascarada, vestida con uniforme de soldado del Imperio.



Por nuestra parte podemos esperar lo mejor. La macroeconomia no podria ir mejor, la justicia social ha mejorado notablemente. Las misiones ocupan un papel muy importante en el pago de dicha justicia social. Aqui en Barinas ya hemos cumplido con dos de las misiones, la mision Robinson y la mision Sucre. No hay analfabetismo y no hay exclusion en la educacion superior, en estas tierras de Zamora.



Pero ay malhaya! Son precisamente estos exitos los que nos hacen mas antipaticos al Imperio. Para ellos, somos inclusive un mal ejemplo que se esta contagiando al resto del continente y cuidado sino al resto del mundo.



Nunca venceremos al Imperio. Estara siempre ahi, acechando. Por lo menos hasta que el mismo no se autodestruya. Porque, sepanlo senores, el neoliberalismo es canibal. Cuando le ataque el hambre, se devorara a si mismo.



Ustedes, queridos graduandos, a partir de hoy pasan a conformar la elite profesional que debe sostener este pais en los proximos cuarenta o cincuenta anos. Anos decisivos para el logro de nuestra libertad y del rescate de nuestra Soberania.



No se dejen comprar. No se dejen corromper. No se dejen gritar. No se dejen pisar. Que nadie les diga que comer, o que vestirse, o que leer. Sean siempre autenticos, rebeldes, contestatarios. Pero eso si, profundamente patriotas, dignos de ser hijos de Bolivar.



Muchas gracias y que Dios los bendiga.





Alguna duda?



Medio siglo de Holocausto Palestino



Oscar Zanartu Nacio en Caracas en 1960. Ha realizado exposiciones individuales en las galerias Minotauro, Clave y San Francisco, y en salas de Coro, estado Falcon, y Puerto Ordaz, estado Bolivar. En Paris su obra ha sido exhibida en el Centro Cultural Tanagra, en la Exposicion Cite Internationale des Arts, en las galerias De Mars y Arver Space, al igual que en la Galeria Municipal Levallois, en Levallois Perret (Francia). En muestras colectivas, su obra se ha expuesto en Belgica, Francia, Estados Unidos y Venezuela; en Caracas intervino en la exposicion "Del genesis a la memoria", 1995, organizada por la Fundacion La Previsora. En 1982 obtuvo el Premio Nacional Critven y en 1990 la Mencion de Honor Jose Antonio Paez, en la Embajada de Venezuela en Paris. En 1991 se le concedio el primer premio de Pintura Itinerante, en Levallois Perret, Francia.



OZ1



OZ2



OZ3



OZ4



Homenaje a Jason Galarraga



La Victoria de Samotracia



Odalisca



Mas fotos de la nevada del pasado agosto 2008



























La Sierra Nevada de Merida



Nuestro precioso Churum Meru



Homenaje a Picasso



Autoretrato



Sabes lo que bebes en una Coca-Cola?

La formula de la Pepsi tiene una diferencia basica con la de la Coca-Cola y es intencional, para evitar el proceso judicial. La diferencia es a proposito, pero suficientemente parecida como para atraer a los consumidores de Coca-Cola que prefieren un gusto diferente con menos sal y azucar.

Mi profesion?

Tuve que aprender quimica, entender todo sobre componentes de gaseosas, conservantes, sales, acidos, cafeina, enlatado, produccion, permisos, aprobaciones y muchas otras cosas. Monte mi propio mini-laboratorio de analisis de productos.

Sal en la Coca Cola?

A patadas. El Cloruro de Sodio no solo refresca sino da mas sed, como para pedir otra gaseosa. Y no resulta desagradable porque la sal mata literalmente la sensibilidad al dulce... del que por cierto tambien tiene mucho: 39 gramos de azucar.

De los 350 gramos de producto liquido, mas del 10% es azucar, o sea que en una lata de Coca-Cola mas de un centimetro y medio es puro azucar en polvo. Aproximadamente tres cucharadas soperas llenas de azucar por lata!!La formula de la Coca Cola es muy sencilla:

Concentrado de azucar quemado caramelo- para dar color oscuro y gusto

Acido fosforito (para darle el sabor acido)

azucar (HFCS-jarabe de maiz de alta fructosa)

Extracto de hojas de la planta de Coca (Africa e India) y otros pocos aromatizantes naturales de otras plantas

Mucha Cafeina

Conservante que puede ser Benzoato de Sodio o Potasio

Dioxido de Carbono en cantidad para sentir freir la lengua cuando se bebe

Sal para dar la sensacion de refrigeracion

El uso del acido fosforito y no del acido citrico como en todas las demas gaseosas, es para dar la sensacion de dientes y boca limpia al beber. El acido fosforito literalmente frie todo y dana el esmalte de los dientes, cosa que el acido citrico lo hace en menor grado.Trate de comprar acido fosforito para ver las mil recomendaciones de seguridad que te dan para su manipulacion (quema el cristalino del ojo, quema la piel, etc...). Esta prohibido usar el acido fosforito en cualquier otra gaseosa; solo la Coca Cola tiene permiso. Porque claro, sin el acido fosforico, la Coca Cola sabria a jabon.El extracto de coca y otras hojas casi no cambia en nada el sabor. Es mas bien un efecto cosmetico. El extracto forma parte de la Coca-Cola porque legalmente tiene que ser asi. Pero sin el, no se nota ninguna diferencia en el gusto, que esta dado basicamente por las cantidades diferentes de azucar, azucar quemada, sales, acidos y conservantes.Sabor a que...? ja, ja, ja.

Aqui en Bartow, sur de Orlando, hay una empresa quimica que produce aromatizantes y esencias para zumos. Envian diariamente camionadas de sales concentradas y esencias para las fabricas de helados, gaseosas, jugos, enlatados y comida colorida y aromatizada.Cuando visite por primera vez la fabrica, pedi ver el deposito de concentrados de frutas, que deberia ser inmenso, especialmente los de naranja, pina, fresa y tantos otros. El encargado me miro, se rio y me llevo a visitar los depositos inmensos... pero de colorantes y componentes quimicos.

Las gaseosa de naranja no contiene naranja.

En los zumos dizque de fresa, hasta los puntitos que quedan en suspension estan hechos de goma (una liga quimica que envuelve un semi-polimero).

Pina, es un popurri de acidos y goma.

La esencia para helado de aguacate usa peroxido de hidrogeno (agua oxigenada) para dar la sensacion espumosa tipica del aguacate.

Bebidas Light?

Quieres saber la cantidad de basura que tiene un refresco 'light'? Yo ni siquiera los uso para destapar mi lavaplatos pues temo que danen los tubos de PVC. Los productos endulzantes 'ligth' tienen una vida media muy corta. Por ejemplo el

Despues de toda mi experiencia con la produccion de bebidas embasadas, puedo afirmar sin dudar un segundo: la mejor bebida es el agua, como tambien los jugos exprimidos de naranja o limon. Nada mas, cero azucar y cero sal.



Publicado por loretahur



En realidad, la formula secreta de la Coca-Cola se puede detallar en 18 segundos en cualquier espectrometro optico, y basicamente la conocen hasta los perros. Lo que ocurre es que no se puede fabricar igual, a no ser que uno disponga de unos cuantos millones de dolares para ganarle la demanda que te metera la Coca-Cola ante la justicia (ellos no perderian).La formula de la Pepsi tiene una diferencia basica con la de la Coca-Cola y es intencional, para evitar el proceso judicial. La diferencia es a proposito, pero suficientemente parecida como para atraer a los consumidores de Coca-Cola que prefieren un gusto diferente con menos sal y azucar.Tuve que aprender quimica, entender todo sobre componentes de gaseosas, conservantes, sales, acidos, cafeina, enlatado, produccion, permisos, aprobaciones y muchas otras cosas. Monte mi propio mini-laboratorio de analisis de productos.A patadas. El Cloruro de Sodio no solo refresca sino da mas sed, como para pedir otra gaseosa. Y no resulta desagradable porque la sal mata literalmente la sensibilidad al dulce... del que por cierto tambien tiene mucho: 39 gramos de azucar.De los 350 gramos de producto liquido, mas del 10% es azucar, o sea que en una lata de Coca-Cola mas de un centimetro y medio es puro azucar en polvo. Aproximadamente tres cucharadas soperas llenas de azucar por lata!!La formula de la Coca Cola es muy sencilla:Concentrado de azucar quemado caramelo- para dar color oscuro y gustoAcido fosforito (para darle el sabor acido)azucar (HFCS-jarabe de maiz de alta fructosa)Extracto de hojas de la planta de Coca (Africa e India) y otros pocos aromatizantes naturales de otras plantasMucha CafeinaConservante que puede ser Benzoato de Sodio o PotasioDioxido de Carbono en cantidad para sentir freir la lengua cuando se bebeSal para dar la sensacion de refrigeracionEl uso del acido fosforito y no del acido citrico como en todas las demas gaseosas, es para dar la sensacion de dientes y boca limpia al beber. El acido fosforito literalmente frie todo y dana el esmalte de los dientes, cosa que el acido citrico lo hace en menor grado.Trate de comprar acido fosforito para ver las mil recomendaciones de seguridad que te dan para su manipulacion (quema el cristalino del ojo, quema la piel, etc...). Esta prohibido usar el acido fosforito en cualquier otra gaseosa; solo la Coca Cola tiene permiso. Porque claro, sin el acido fosforico, la Coca Cola sabria a jabon.El extracto de coca y otras hojas casi no cambia en nada el sabor. Es mas bien un efecto cosmetico. El extracto forma parte de la Coca-Cola porque legalmente tiene que ser asi. Pero sin el, no se nota ninguna diferencia en el gusto, que esta dado basicamente por las cantidades diferentes de azucar, azucar quemada, sales, acidos y conservantes.Sabor a que...? ja, ja, ja.Aqui en Bartow, sur de Orlando, hay una empresa quimica que produce aromatizantes y esencias para zumos. Envian diariamente camionadas de sales concentradas y esencias para las fabricas de helados, gaseosas, jugos, enlatados y comida colorida y aromatizada.Cuando visite por primera vez la fabrica, pedi ver el deposito de concentrados de frutas, que deberia ser inmenso, especialmente los de naranja, pina, fresa y tantos otros. El encargado me miro, se rio y me llevo a visitar los depositos inmensos... pero de colorantes y componentes quimicos.Las gaseosa de naranja no contiene naranja.En los zumos dizque de fresa, hasta los puntitos que quedan en suspension estan hechos de goma (una liga quimica que envuelve un semi-polimero).Pina, es un popurri de acidos y goma.La esencia para helado de aguacate usa peroxido de hidrogeno (agua oxigenada) para dar la sensacion espumosa tipica del aguacate.Quieres saber la cantidad de basura que tiene un refresco 'light'? Yo ni siquiera los uso para destapar mi lavaplatos pues temo que danen los tubos de PVC. Los productos endulzantes 'ligth' tienen una vida media muy corta. Por ejemplo el aspartamo , despues de tres semanas mojado, pasa a tener gusto de trapo viejo sucio.Para evitar eso, se agregan una infinidad de otros productos quimicos, uno para alargar la vida del aspartamo, otro para neutralizar el color, otro para mantener el tercer quimico en suspension porque sino el fondo de la gaseosa quedaria oscuro, otro para evitar la cristalizacion del aspartamo, otro para realzar el sabor, dar mas intensidad al acido citrico o fosforito que perderia su sabor por el efecto de los cuatro productos quimicos iniciales... y asi sucesivamente.Un consejo final !!Despues de toda mi experiencia con la produccion de bebidas embasadas, puedo afirmar sin dudar un segundo: la mejor bebida es el agua, como tambien los jugos exprimidos de naranja o limon. Nada mas, cero azucar y cero sal.Publicado por loretahur

MARGARINA o MANTEQUILLA La margarina fue producida originalmente para engordar a los pavos; cuandolo que hizo en realidad fue matarlos.Las personas que habian puesto el dinero para la investigacion quisieronrecobrarlo asi que empezaron a pensar en una forma de hacerlo.Tenian una sustancia blanca, que no tenia ningun atractivo como comestible,asi que le anadieron el color amarillo, para venderselo a lagente en lugar de la mantequilla.Que tal esa?... Ahora han sacado algunos nuevos sabores para vender mas alos incautos como usted y yo.CONOCE USTED la diferencia entre la margarina y la mantequilla?Siga leyendo hasta el final... porque se pone bastante interesante!Comparacion entre mantequilla y margarina:

1.- Ambas tienen la misma cantidad de calorias.

2.- La mantequilla es ligeramente mas alta en grasas saturadas: 8 gramos,comparada con los 5 gramos que tiene la margarina.

3.- Comer margarina en vez de mantequilla puede aumentar en 53% el riesgo deenfermedades coronarias en las mujeres, de acuerdo con un estudiomedico reciente de la Universidad de Harvard.

4.- Comer mantequilla aumenta la absorcion de gran cantidad de nutrientesque se encuentran en otros alimentos.

5.- La mantequilla provee beneficios nutricionales propios mientras lamargarina tiene solo los que le hayan sido anadidos al fabricarla.

6.- La mantequilla sabe mucho mejor que la margarina y mejora el sabor deotros alimentos.7.- La mantequilla ha existido durante siglos mientras que la margarinatiene menos de 100 anos.

Ahora... sobre la margarina:

1.- Es muy alta en acidos grasos trans. (Si, esos que recien ahora loscientificos descubrieron que son malisimos y los gobiernoscomenzaron a prohibirlos) .

2.- Triple riesgo de enfermedades coronarias.

3.- Aumenta el colesterol total y el LDL (el colesterol malo) y disminuye elHDL (el colesterol bueno).

4.- Aumenta en cinco veces el riesgo de cancer.

5.- Disminuye la calidad de la leche materna.

6.- Disminuye la reaccion inmunologica del organismo.

7.- Disminuye la reaccion a la insulina.

Y he aqui el factor mas inquietante (AQUI ESTA LA PARTE MAS INTERESANTE! ):A la margarina le falta UNA MOLECULA para ser PLASTICO...!!Solo este hecho es suficiente para evitar el uso de la margarina de porvida, y de cualquier otra cosa que sea hidrogenada (esto significaque se le anade hidrogeno, lo cual cambia la estructura molecular de lassubstancias).Usted puede ensayar lo siguiente:Compre un poco de margarina y dejela en el garaje o en un sitio sombreado.Dentro de unos dias notara dos cosas:

* No habra moscas; ni siquiera esos molestos bichos se le acercaran (esto yale debe decir a usted algo).

* No se pudre ni huele mal o diferente porque no tiene valor nutritivo; nadacrece en ella. Ni siquiera los diminutos microorganismos puedencrecer en ella.Por que? Porque es casi plastico!!



No a la guerra, Si a la Paz



Misterios de la ciencia...



Los costos de la guerra



medicos y capitalismo...



Capitalismo...



medicos (2)



Quien educa a nuestros hijos?



Los Medios...



Sin Palabras...



Chistes feministas

- Cual es el problema, Eva?

- Se que me has creado, que me has dado este hermoso jardin, todos estos maravillosos animales y esa serpiente con la que me muero de risa... pero no soy del todo feliz...

- Como es eso, Eva? - replico Dios desde las alturas.

- Me encuentro sola, y ademas estoy harta de comer manzanas...

- Bueno Eva, en tal caso, tengo una solucion... creare un hombre para ti.

- Que es un hombre?

- Un hombre sera una criatura imperfecta, con muchas artimanas. Mentira, hara trampas, sera engreido... vamos, que te va a dar problemas... Pero, va a ser mas fuerte y rapido que tu y le gustara cazar y matar cosas... Tendra un aspecto simple, pero como te estas quejando, le creare de tal forma que satisfaga tus... eh... necesidades fisicas... Y tampoco sera muy listo, y destacara en cosas infantiles como pegarse o dar patadas a un balon... Necesitara tu consejo siempre para actuar cuerdamente.

- Suena bien - dijo Eva, mientras levantaba la ceja ironicamente.

- Cual es el truco?.

- Pues... que lo tendras con una condicion.

- Cual?

- Como te decia, sera chulo, arrogante y muy narcisista... asi que le tendras que hacer creer que le hice a el primero... recuerda... es nuestro secreto... de mujer a mujer.





Por que a los hombres no les puede dar la enfermedad de las vacas locas?  Porque todos son unos cerdos

Un dia, en el Paraiso, Eva llamo a Dios: Tengo un problema.- Cual es el problema, Eva?- Se que me has creado, que me has dado este hermoso jardin, todos estos maravillosos animales y esa serpiente con la que me muero de risa... pero no soy del todo feliz... - Como es eso, Eva? - replico Dios desde las alturas.- Me encuentro sola, y ademas estoy harta de comer manzanas...- Bueno Eva, en tal caso, tengo una solucion... creare un hombre para ti.- Que es un hombre?- Un hombre sera una criatura imperfecta, con muchas artimanas. Mentira, hara trampas, sera engreido... vamos, que te va a dar problemas... Pero, va a ser mas fuerte y rapido que tu y le gustara cazar y matar cosas... Tendra un aspecto simple, pero como te estas quejando, le creare de tal forma que satisfaga tus... eh... necesidades fisicas... Y tampoco sera muy listo, y destacara en cosas infantiles como pegarse o dar patadas a un balon... Necesitara tu consejo siempre para actuar cuerdamente.- Suena bien - dijo Eva, mientras levantaba la ceja ironicamente.- Cual es el truco?.- Pues... que lo tendras con una condicion.- Cual?- Como te decia, sera chulo, arrogante y muy narcisista... asi que le tendras que hacer creer que le hice a el primero... recuerda... es nuestro secreto... de mujer a mujer.Por que a los hombres no les puede dar la enfermedad de las vacas locas?  Porque todos son unos cerdos

Ellas...



Ellas (2)...



Tres venganzas femeninas VENGANZA NUMERO 1

Hoy mi hija cumple 21 anos y estoy muy contento porque es el ultimo pago de pension alimenticia que le doy, asi que llame a mi hijita para que viniera a mi casa y cuando llego le dije:

-Hijita, quiero que lleves este cheque a casa de tu mama y que le digas que: Este es el ultimo maldito cheque que va recibir de mi en todo lo que le queda de su puta vida!!! Quiero que me digas la expresion que pone en su rostro.

Asi que mi hija fue a entregar el cheque. Yo estaba ansioso por saber lo que la bruja tenia que decir y que cara pondria.

Cuando mi hijita entro, le pregunte inmediatamente: -Que fue lo que te dijo tu madre?

-Me dijo que justamente estaba esperando este dia para decirte que no eres mi papa!



VENGANZA NUMERO 2

Un hombre que siempre molestaba a su mujer, paso un dia por la casa de unos amigos para que lo acompanaran al aeropuerto a dejar a su esposa que viajaba a Paris.

A la salida de inmigracion, frente a todo el mundo, el le desea buen viaje y en tono burlon le grita:

- Amor, no te olvides de traerme una hermosa francesita Ja ja ja!!

Ella bajo la cabeza y se embarco muy molesta.

La mujer paso quince dias en Francia.

El marido otra vez pidio a sus amigos que lo acompanasen al aeropuerto a recibirla.

Al verla llegar, lo primero que le grita a toda voz es:

- Y amor me trajiste mi francesita??

- Hice todo lo posible, - contesta ella - ahora solo tenemos que rezar para que nazca nina.



VENGANZA NUMERO 3

El marido, en su lecho de muerte, llama a su mujer. Con voz ronca y ya debil, le dice: - Muy bien, llego mi hora, pero antes quiero hacerte una confesion.

- No, no, tranquilo, tu no debes hacer ningun esfuerzo.

- Pero, mujer, es preciso - insiste el marido - Es preciso morir en paz.

Te quiero confesar algo.

- Esta bien, esta bien. Habla!

- He tenido relaciones con tu hermana, tu mama y tu mejor amiga.

- Lo se, lo se Por eso te envenene, hijo de puta!!!



machismo y cibernetica



Chiste machista La NASA ha enviado al espacio una mision experimental tripulada por dos monos y una mujer.Apenas abandona la atmosfera, se establece comunicacion con Houston.

-Atencion, simio 1, verifique sistemas hidraulicos, controle adecuada presion de los propulsores de arranque. A 60.000 pies disminuya un 25% la velocidad.

El simio hace la sena de OK.

-Atencion, simio 2, nivele al cruzar la estratosfera y active sistemas anticongelantes. No olvide monitorear sistemas de comunicacion e indicadores de presion. Comprendido?.

El simio hace la sena de OK.

-Atencion, Houston llamando a mujer: no se olvide.

-Mujer: Si, si, ya se! -interrumpe enojada- que no me olvide darles de comer a estos monos de mierda y que no se me vaya a ocurrir tocar nada!.



.Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti.

Un abogado mantiene un romance con su secretaria.Al poco tiempo, esta queda embarazada y el abogado, que no quiere que su esposa se entere, le da a la secretaria una buena suma de dinero y le pide que se vaya a parir a Italia.Esta pregunta: Y como voy a hacerte saber cuando nazca el bebe ? El abogado responde: Para que mi mujer no se entere, tan solo enviame una postal y escribe por detras: Spaghetti. Y no te preocupes mas, que yo me encargare de todos los gastos.

Pasan los meses y una manana la esposa del abogado lo llama al bufete, algo exaltada: Querido, acabo de recibir el correo y hay una postal muy extrana viene desde Italia. La verdad, no entiendo que significa.El abogado, tratando de ocultar sus nervios, contesta:Espera a que llegue a casa, a ver si yo entiendoCuando el hombre llega a casa y lee la postal, cae al suelo fulminado por un infarto.Llega una ambulancia y se lo lleva. Ya en el hospital, el jefe de cardiologia se queda consolando a la esposa y le pregunta cual ha sido el evento que precipito tan masivo ataque cardiaco.

Entonces la esposa saca la postal y se la muestra diciendole: No me explico, doctor; el solamente leyo esta postal. Vea usted mismo lo que trae escrito.Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Spaghetti."Tres con salchicha y albondigas y dos con almejas



Gol !!!!



Chistes de Borrachos Entra un borracho a su casa todo manchado con lapiz labial por todos lados hecho un desastre, y la mujer le pregunta:-Hombre que te paso?Y el borracho le responde:-No me vas a creer, me pelee con un payaso!



Este es un borracho que entra en un bar y le dice al camarero:-Me da cinco copas de whisky?Al rato:-Me da cuatro?Al rato:-Me da tres copas?Despues:-Me da dos copas?Luego le dice:-Me da una copa?Y le dice al camarero:-Ves? Cuanto menos bebo, mas borracho estoy!


For Immediate Release

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today condemned Russias veto of a draft United Nations Security Council resolution extending the mandate of an investigative group looking into multiple chemical weapons attacks in Syria. The Joint Investigative Mechanism, established by the Council to look into who committed those attacks, is scheduled to release a report this week on the chemical attack that killed dozens of people in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017.

The following statement is attributable to Marianne Mllmann, PHRs director of research and investigations:

Russias veto is yet another shameless power-move to block investigation into war crimes committed by its lawless ally, the Syrian government. This is the ninth time Russia has vetoed a Security Council resolution aimed at ensuring even a minimum level of accountability for atrocities committed in Syria, essentially holding the Council hostage to its interests and whims. As a member of the Security Council, Russia shares in the Councils duties to ensure international peace and security, a duty it has repeatedly and flagrantly violated when it comes to the Syrian conflict.

After the April chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, PHR researchers spoke with doctors and first responders at the site, and PHR medical experts analyzed evidence that pointed to a likely chemical attack against a civilian population. Despite Russias disgraceful attempt to quash efforts to assign responsibility for these attacks, the truth will emerge. PHR will continue to work tirelessly with our partners until all the evidence is uncovered and the perpetrators are brought to justice.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a New York-based advocacy organization that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations. Learn more here.
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QUEENSBURY  The Hannaford supermarket at 190 Quaker Road will celebrate 30 years of service on Nov. 2.

This was the company's first store, in 1987, to open in New York state, and at that time it was called Shop 'n' Save.

There will be several local vendors sampling their products throughout the day, as well as giveaways for customers to enter to win.

At 1 p.m., there will be a $500 gift card presentation to three local nonprofit organizations. The organizations selected are FACT Animal Rescue, WAIT House and Community Action Food Pantry.

The store will also honor six associates who have been working in the store from the day it opened.
GLENS FALLS  Two Glens Falls natives plan to redevelop the former Look TV building at the corner of Glen and Park streets for retail, office and possibly residential space.

The project will go before the Planning Board at its meeting at 4:45 p.m. Nov. 7. It is part of a busy agenda that includes review of Argyle Cheese Farmers plans to relocate its processing facility to 7 Pruyns Island Drive and Hanks Quality Floorings plans to move into space at 28-30 Elm St.

Dr. Dan George, an orthopedic surgeon based in Connecticut, and New York City-based architect Joe Serrins purchased the building, according to EDC Warren County Executive Director Edward Bartholomew. The price was $475,000 and the sale was completed in December, according to tax records.

Bartholomew said their tentative plan is for retail on the first floor and offices on the second and third floors, or possibly residential on the top floor.

Weve been working with Dr. George probably since last fall, he said.

The renovation project is estimated to cost about a half-million dollars, according to the application filed with the city.

Planned improvements to the nearly 14,000-square-foot building include facade renovations, installation of a new elevator and staircases, and minor finishes.

The plan also calls for reconfiguring the parking lot, including a new entrance on Park Street, a new building entrance from the parking lot with a canopy over the entrance and new windows facing the parking lot on the ground floor, according to the application.

The property was home to Look TVs downtown television studio until late 2011. It then fell into foreclosure. It was once home to R.G. Landry. Both George and Serrins are Glens Falls natives. Bartholomew said Georges family used to own the Blue Sky restaurant.

The project may come before the Glens Falls IDA after the site review and architectural review processes, according to Bartholomew. Two other redevelopment projects are progressing. Argyle Cheese Farmer is seeking to move its artisan cheese and yogurt processing facility into vacant space at 7 Pruyns Island Drive. It would retain its family farm in Argyle. Marge and Dave Randles could not be reached for comment on Tuesday. They said previously that they hoped to increase the employment from 10 to 17 workers over the next three years. Code Enforcement Officer John Ward said the second floor will be office space and the processing facility will be located on the first floor in back.

Sheetlabels.com is also located at the facility.

The renovation will cost about $350,000, according to the application, and consists mainly of interior fit-up. New exterior doors would be added. Bartholomew said he anticipates that Argyle Cheese Farmer will be coming to the Local Development Corp. by the end of the year seeking a grant. Under the Downtown Revitalization Initiative, the city has a pot of about $125,000 that it can award to businesses seeking to expand.

That money can be used toward upgrading the building and purchasing additional machinery.

Hanks Quality Flooring will also be before the board seeking architectural review of proposed facade renovations of the building it is moving into at 28-30 Elm St.

Bartholomew said he is excited about their application.

Thats a new kind of retail niche in our downtown area, he said.

Bartholomew said there is twice as much space at the new building than at the current site at Upper Glen Street. The business is considering expanding into furniture.

What Hank liked is the great front windows that they can have to display some of the carpets, some of the flooring, he said.

Ward said the business is going to do some work on the facade and windows and install new clapboard siding on the top, stonework on the bottom and a couple of canopies on the front.

The cost is about $40,000, according to the application.

Hank Marler did not return a message seeking comment on Tuesday, but an official at the business said he hoped the move would occur in mid-December. Marler is seeking gap financing from the LDC.
THURMAN  Two people, including a former Thurman town employee, were arrested Saturday in connection with spray painting of large political signs in the town of Thurman, according to State Police.

James Desourdy, 56, of Thurman, was charged with two misdemeanor counts of making graffiti after police received a phone call Saturday night about vandalism of signs at the intersection of Athol Road and Route 418.

Desourdy and his son, Kylelee J. Combs, 23, of Thurman, were also charged with misdemeanor counts of making a false written statement for allegedly lying to state troopers during the investigation, authorities said.

Both were released pending prosecution in Thurman Town Court.

The charges were filed after the hand-made signs were found defaced with spray paint Saturday night, and a person on whose property they sat notified State Police they saw Desourdy near them with a can of spraypaint, authorities said.

Someone painted large circles with lines through them over the names of town supervisor and town board candidates Susan Shepler, Gail Seaman and Douglas Needham, a group of challengers who are opposing the incumbents.

Desourdy told police that he had stopped by the signs to take pictures of the vandalism, and was not responsible for the vandalism, according to police. He was charged with making a false written statement after police concluded a timeline that they were given was false, authorities said.

Seaman said the signs were seized by troopers as evidence in the criminal case.

They were handmade for us by a resident, they glowed in the dark, she said.

Desourdy worked for the Turman Highway Department for a number of years, ending in 2015. A phone message left at his home was not returned Tuesday.

Shepler is running on the Republican and Financial Stability parties lines against incumbent Cynthia Hyde, who is on the Democratic and Teamwork parties lines.

Needham and Seaman are on the Republican lines as well, and Seaman is also on the Teamwork Party line. Joan Harris, Brenda Ackley and Mary Eddy are also running for Town Board slots (corrected).

Patrick Wood is running for highway superintendent.

The vandalism was the latest clash between two factions that have been vying for control of town government for years.
WASHINGTON (AP)  In a furious exchange of tweets and counter-tweets, President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Republican Sen. Bob Corker "couldn't get elected dog catcher," and the senator fired back that Trump was "utterly untruthful."

Here's the latest on their ongoing Twitter battle:

Corker, R-Tenn., said on NBC's "Today" Tuesday that the Republican-led Congress should set the course on taxes after Trump shot down at least one GOP idea on retirement plans on Monday.

Asked if Trump should leave well enough alone, Corker said, "I think that's the best way for us to have success."

That prompted an angry Twitter response from the president:

Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

...Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Corker took to his own Twitter account to respond:

Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff  Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) October 24, 2017

The latest contretemps come ahead of Trump's planned lunch with Republican senators on Capitol Hill, as Congress turns its focus to overhauling the nation's tax code.

Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations chair, has previously dubbed the White House an "adult day care center" and charged that Trump could be setting the nation on a path to World War III.

It's a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.  Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) October 8, 2017

Trump has called Corker "Liddle' Bob Corker," a "lightweight" and "incompetent."

The Failing @nytimes set Liddle' Bob Corker up by recording his conversation. Was made to sound a fool, and that's what I am dealing with!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 10, 2017

Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done. He doesn't have a clue as.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

...the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us. People like liddle' Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Nonetheless, Republicans and the Trump administration are determined to get tax legislation into law this year, and all sides seem to think they can unite around that goal.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., implicitly criticized Trump on Monday, though not by name, for getting a draft deferment during Vietnam for bone spurs in his foot. And Trump spent much of August lashing out at Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and blaming him for the Senate's failure to pass legislation to repeal and replace "Obamacare."

No. 3 Senate Republican John Thune of South Dakota said he hopes to hear Trump "drive home the message that he wants to be a partner, a constructive partner that helps us get accomplishments that help everybody."

"If you have people who are running for re-election next year, whether it's a House member or one of the senators who's up this year, I think the best thing you can go back and talk about is that you got results," Thune added. "And I think that to the degree the president delivers that message it will be very well received by Republican senators."

The tax plan crafted by Trump and Republican leaders calls for steep tax cuts for corporations and potentially for individuals. It would double the standard deduction used by most Americans, shrink the number of tax brackets from seven to three or four, and repeal inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates. But crucial details of the plan have yet to be worked out, notably what income levels would fit with each tax bracket.
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A little more than two months before the 2018 Iowa Legislative session gets underway, two state legislators brought some tough news about funding to Monday's Pleasant Valley School Board meeting.

Sen. Rita Hart, a Democrat from Wheatland, and Rep. Gary Mohr, a Republican from Bettendorf, told board members they face a challenging budget year, with little or no growth anticipated for K-12 public schools.

The lawmakers predicted tight funding in several aspects of the state budget, including in mental health care for students. Brian Strusz, assistant superintendent, said 20 percent of the district's students are impacted by mental health issues, and it needs to be "funded at the highest level possible."

Strusz said while Vera French now supplies therapists to schools in Scott County, there are some days it is hard to find a therapist. In addition, appropriate in-hospital treatment is a continuing concern.

Mohr asked if the situation would be helped if Genesis Health System added beds, and when Strategic Behavioral Health is built. In July, the state approved construction of a 72-bed psychiatric hospital in Bettendorf.

The continuum of care is an emerging issue, Superintendent Jim Spelhaug said, and how that impacts a student's ability to succeed in school.

Hart suggested a new program to keep in mind. The peer program, where people who have mental health issues but "are in a good place," could help others who suffer. That might be useful on the school level, she said.

When PV officials asked about school funding, Hart said the legislature is facing "a terrible budget situation."

Mohr said the state reappropriated dollars as one of the first actions taken in January. "We might have to shave off $35 million this year," he said, "again, we might save K-12 funding."

Hart said one solution would be to fund schools at a higher level because "when you scrabble over every penny it's an issue. But this year is no time to do that."

On the topic of TIF, or tax-increment funding districts, Spelhaug said Pleasant Valley supports increased transparency in the program. He said that TIF funding programs could be improved if counties were given the vote on TIFs.

"I don't like to see cities and school districts to be in adversarial positions on TIFs," he said, suggesting that Scott County would have a larger vantage point to make the decisions.

Mohr said he is personally involved in revising TIF in Iowa, and suggesting changes.

"We don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water," Spelhaug said.

Mohr told the PV board members that he is in constant communication with Spelhaug during the legislative session. "We don't advertise this, but I think it's critical," he said.

Hart and Mohr pointed out that Pleasant Valley is in the position of growth, with enrollment increases every year. "Most areas of the state are in declining enrollment, and the whole state is not growing in population," Hart said.
Way better than expected.

Invited to crochet colorful circles of yarn to be stitched onto a hickory tree at Augustana College, response from Quad-City residents was so overwhelming that project organizer Claire Kovacs bought more yarn, added more trees, including in Davenport, and hired more "bombers" to do the stitching.

The creative act of "yarn bombing"  covering an object such as a tree, parking meter, or even a mass transit bus with colorful yarn  came into the street art lexicon in 2004. Among the first practitioners was Ohio-based artist Carol Hummel who won a public art competition by covering the trunk of a tree outside of a city hall from the base to the highest branch in red, yellow, pink and blue knit.

Hummel's idea took hold and spread, and last year Augustana's Kovacs, director of the Augustana Teaching Museum of Art, proposed a project for the Quad-Cities.

She secured a grant to hire Hummel to figure out patterns, colors and yarn amounts for the Augustana tree and to travel to the Quad-Cities for the installation.

When the 41 kits that Kovacs and an assistant had prepared to distribute at the first of five workshops, or "crochet-ins," held during August, September and October, were immediately snapped up with requests for more, she realized the project could be bigger than she originally imagined.

"It warmed by heart," she said. "I was hoping we would have engagement, but I have been humbled by how many people from across the Quad-Cities wanted to help."

She secured more funding  about $5,000 in addition to the original matching grant of $15,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts  for more yarn (actually, a heavy-duty nylon cord) and for more installation help. In addition to artist Hummel and her daughter, a third assistant was hired, and their contract was extended.

Melissa Mohr, director of education for the Figge Art Museum, Davenport, where several of the crochet-ins were held, said that "from our perspective, the project has gone way above and beyond expectations at every step."

When employees set up for the first one, they thought they'd have maybe 30 or 40 people, but "there must have been a hundred," Mohr said. "It warms my heart to see the community respond in this way," she said. "To come together so quickly with such an immediate, high energy.

"It's hard keeping up with something this big, and they (Kovacs and her staff) have done it, and so gracefully," Mohr said. "She (Kovacs) is a powerhouse in our community."

Installation is under way

Installation began last week and by today, the vibrant, outlined-in-yellow circles had been stitched around a tree at Rock Island's Longfellow Liberal Arts Elementary School, around six trees at the Figge plaza, and around the first 12 or so feet of the 40-foot hickory tree at Augustana.

Installers will go as far up into the tree as they can.

The first trees required only ladders, but as work progressed on the taller Augustana tree, installers used a mechanical lift donated by Sun-Belt Rentals.

As people walking along Rock Island's 7th Avenue on Friday paused to ask artist Hummel what she was doing, she obligingly stopped stitching and answered questions.

She explained how the competition she won in 2004 "went viral," with people "all over the world" asking her to do similar projects in their communities. "And why not?" she said. "The reason is community-building. That's where I get the most satisfaction. People meet new people, make new friends.

"It's art by the people, for the people," she said. "It's a symbol of unity and positivity, and it makes the world a little nicer place to be in."

Asked what she thinks about other artists copying her idea, Hummel said that "if it brings everybody together, it's a beautiful thing."

Community-building definitely was one of the goals Kovacs had in mind in proposing the project. In addition to creating something beautiful to brighten or personalize a drab space, she wanted to bring unrelated people together to work on a common goal.

Volunteer crocheters

That is an aspect of the project that really appealed to the 15 or so students enrolled in the Davenport Community School District's Creative Arts Academy who crocheted circles, Heidi Hernandez, visual arts teacher for sixth, seventh and eighth graders, said.

"They were pumped up about the idea of bringing unlikely people together," she said. And all students were impressed with the "master class" artist Carol Hummel presented to them. "She was so accommodating and inspiring," she said.

Joscelyn Welshons, a retired computer programmer from Walcott, was drawn to learn to crochet and make circles for the project because "it was a little bit out of my comfort zone," she said.

"I have a technical background, but I like things that involve art," she said. "I'm a firm believer in developing both sides of my brain."

Among those helping out at the workshops to teach people to crochet or just oversee the work was Rowen Schussheim-Anderson, chairman of the Augustana Art Department.

A fiber artist herself, she is thrilled with the attention the project brings to fiber arts. "That doesn't happen every day," she said. And, as a left-handed person, "I was very helpful for the lefties" who came to learn, she said with a laugh.

Most the crocheters who came to the workshops were women, but not exclusively, Kovacs said. And there was wide variety in age.

Support and money for the expanded project came from Kovacs' colleagues at Augustana, the college's partnership with Longfellow and the college's art department, humanities fund, and institute for leadership and service, as well as the Figge and the Creative Arts Academy, Kovacs said.

Connecting a community through art is something of a trend; the Figge hosted 30 community workshops from December 2016 through April, inviting people to craft a total of 1,260 cornstalks made of green plastic soda bottles that were part of an installation at the museum over the summer.
A good, but chilly, Tuesday to all. Between the cooler temps and the breezy conditions it will feel downright cold today. Here are the weather details from the National Weather Service.

1. Rain, wind and cold  a yucky combination

Today we'll see rain before 1 p.m. The chance of precipitation is 90 percent with new precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. It will be breezy with a high near 47 degrees. Northwest winds around 20 mph will gust as high as 40 mph.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy then gradually becoming mostly clear with a low around 35 degrees. Northwest winds between 10 to 15 mph will gust as high as 20 mph.

Wednesday will be mostly sunny with a high near 57 degrees and a low around 40 degrees.

2. Q-C responds to 'yarn bomb' project in big way

Way better than expected. Invited to crochet colorful circles of yarn to be stitched onto a hickory tree at Augustana College, response from Quad-City residents was so overwhelming that project organizer Claire Kovacs bought more yarn, added more trees, including in Davenport, and hired more "bombers" to do the stitching.

The creative act of "yarn bombing"  covering an object such as a tree, parking meter, or even a mass transit bus with colorful yarn  came into the street art lexicon in 2004. Read more.

3. Road detour coming in Rock Island

The city of Rock Island reports that beginning Thursday a section of 14th Avenue between 32nd and 35th streets will be closed to traffic for a sanitary sewer repair.

Local traffic will be maintained along 14th Avenue up to the repair just east of the intersection with 32nd Street.

Eastbound thru traffic along 14th Avenue will be detoured south on 32nd Street, east on 15th Avenue, north on 35th Street and then reconnect with eastbound traffic at 35th Street and 14th Avenue.

Westbound thru traffic along 14th Avenue will be detoured south on 35th Street, west on 15th Avenue, north on 32nd Street and then reconnect with westbound traffic at 32nd Street and 14th Avenue.

Travel delays can be expected during the construction at or near this location. The road is expected to be reopened by Friday.

4. Bettendorf man pleads guilty in federal bomb threat case

A Bettendorf man has pleaded guilty to sending a bomb threat to Scott Community College in 2015.

America Yegile Haileselassie, 39, pleaded guilty Friday to interstate communication of a threat in U.S. District Court, Davenport, according to court records. The charge is punishable by up to five years in prison.

He will be sentenced Feb. 15. Read more.

5. Two sentenced in 2015 Chorus Line strip club assault

Two Davenport brothers have been sentenced in connection with an assault that left a man seriously injured at a Davenport strip club in 2015.

Trenton D. Shelton, 32, was sentenced Friday in Scott County District Court to up to 15 years in prison for willful injury resulting in serious injury as a habitual offender and up to five years in prison for assault while participating in a felony. The charges will run back-to-back.

He must serve at least three years in prison on the willful injury charge before he is eligible for parole. Trenton Shelton also was ordered to serve up to five years in prison for violating his probation in a 2012 drug case. That charge will run at the same time as the other charges.

Juan D. Shelton, 33, was sentenced to up to 15 years in prison for willful injury resulting in serious injury as a habitual offender. He also must serve at least three years in prison on the charge before he is eligible for parole.

The two pleaded guilty to the charges in July in Scott County District Court.

In exchange for their pleas, prosecutors dismissed a charge of attempted murder at sentencing.

Police say Juan and Trenton Shelton and their brother, Kamden, were involved in a fight with Joshua Sutton, 41, early on Oct. 15, 2015. Read more.

6. Illinois 84 closure this week

The Illinois Department of Transportation says Illinois 84 just south of U.S. 30 will be closed to all through traffic beginning today and continuing until Friday.

The closure will allow Union Pacific Railroad to perform needed maintenance to their double mainline at-grade crossing located in the area commonly known as "East Clinton".

To allow continued traffic movement, a detour will be posted utilizing U.S. 30, Dakin and Ward roads.
Iowans have voted to add a right to keep and bear arms into the state constitution, a move that will make it more difficult to pass gun restrictions.
Thank you to Quad-City Times editorial board for its editorial on Sunday, "In Illinois, only billionaires can run for governor," highlighting the disturbing evidence that vast personal wealth appears to be a prerequisite for running a competitive campaign for the highest elected office in Illinois. Unfortunately, access to big money -- whether from personal wealth or access and appeal to an incredibly small pool of elite megadonors -- is increasingly critical to run competitive campaigns at all levels of government.

A recent analysis by Illinois PIRG Education Fund found that, so far this year, 97 percent of money raised by gubernatorial candidates came from donors giving $1,000 or more, while less than 2 percent has come from donors giving less than $150. While some variation exists among candidates, the general pattern is crystal clear: The money fueling campaigns for governor is coming from a small number of donors who have the resources to give at levels average citizens just cannot afford. This runs counter to the democratic principle that we all have equal say, and the size of your wallet does not determine the size of your voice in public life.

Through this "money primary," candidates are sorted and filtered by their ability to raise big money from elite donors before voters have the opportunity to weigh in. In response, good government groups have coalesced around small donor empowerment reform efforts, which allow candidates to run competitive campaigns even if they do not have access to, or choose to forgo, big money, while having a strong base of grassroots support.

There are successful, proven models to empower small donors so that their voices play a more central role in our democracy. For example, in New York Citys 2013 City Council campaigns, small donors were responsible for 61 percent of participating candidates contributions when funds from a matching program were included. All but two of the winning candidates participated in the program, showing that candidates are able to raise the money they need to win without looking for large-dollar contributions.

On May 16th, the Illinois Senate passed bipartisan legislation that would create a small donor matching system for Illinois state-level elections. While such a system would never allow small donor funded candidates to raise the same level of campaign funds as a self-funding billionaire, it would allow them to run more competitive campaigns, giving voters more viable choices.

While I welcome a complete overhaul of our campaign finance system at the federal level, as the editorial board called for, Illinois can, and should, take reform into their own hands. Our democracy depends on it.
As a graduate of Western Illinois University and from a middle-class family, the Quad-City Times editorial,  In Illinois only billionaires can run for governor  hit home.

I also think it is important to point out that billionaires are most likely to live in Chicagoland and will not necessarily relate to agriculture or downstate.
Bill Honerkamp, a staunch and spirited advocate for the state travel industry who earned the informal title of Mr. Tourism for the Black Hills and South Dakota, died Tuesday at the age of 73, after a short illness.

If there was anything you wanted to know about tourism in the Black Hills or in South Dakota, he was the one you went to, because he was an encyclopedia for tourism in this area, said Michelle Thomson, president and CEO of Black Hills & Badlands, the states oldest tourism association. Honerkamp led the organization for 30 years.

Thomson said Honerkamp richly deserved to be called an innovator in tourism marketing.

He is credited for setting up the nation's first tourism toll-free 800 number. He also inaugurated what is known as the annual literature swap, a pre-travel season gathering to distribute informative brochures to tourism-oriented businesses.

He led the effort to build the Black Hills Information Center east of Rapid City and helped write state tourism tax legislation in 1995 to generate funding for the state Office of Tourism.

He was an amazing person, an absolute pioneer of the tourism marketing industry for South Dakota and the Black Hills, Thomson said. He loved this place that he lived in, and it was his greatest passion to promote the Black Hills.

According to a biographical tribute on the BH&B website, Honerkamp was seemingly preordained for the state tourism industry.

He was born in South Dakota and grew up in a camping resort in the Black Hills. He studied journalism and communications at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, then joined the Navy where he also served as a reporter, covering everything from Apollo moon mission splashdowns to presidential visits. He was also in harms way accompanying combat camera teams on missions to Vietnam.

He returned to South Dakota in 1972 where he began work as a publicist with the South Dakota Division of Tourism. Within a year he was promoted to state travel director.

In 1981, he returned to the Black Hills to take over Black Hills & Badlands, where he served as president and CEO, retiring just after his 66th birthday in October 2010.

Julie Schmitz Jensen recalls working with Honerkamp both in Pierre when she worked for then-Gov. Richard Kneip and later in Rapid City when she joined the Rapid City Visitors and Convention Bureau, now Visit Rapid City.

He was brilliant, Jensen said. He was one of the best journalists in his ability to spin a yarn. He was a folksy writer, and I just loved reading his press releases and even just listening to him address groups. He was just so down-home and personable, she said.

Black Hills author, historian and Journal reporter Tom Griffith said Honerkamp was the face of the Black Hills and South Dakota for decades' worth of visitors and travel journalists.

He was an ambassador whose love for this place seeped from every pore and was found in every sentence he uttered, Griffith said.

Honerkamps love for his home state indeed showed in an October 2010 interview with the Journal, when he described his job as a happy occupation."

It's fun showing off your home corner of the planet and bragging it up, especially when it's a place as beautiful as the Black Hills. They're a wonderful product to promote, Honerkamp said.

Even in retirement, Honerkamp couldnt stay away from the tourism industry, working part time driving Buffalo Jeep safaris for Custer State Park resorts.

He loved buffalo, and he loved talking to visitors, Thomson said.

Honerkamp was honored with the A.H. Pankow Award and the Ben Black Elk Award from the governor's office, and was also inducted as a Black Hills Tourism Pioneer by the BH&B board of directors.

Honerkamp, who lived in Piedmont, is survived by his mother, Marie; wife, Paula; and daughters, Cory and Andrea.

Funeral services are pending.
SIOUX FALLS | Some residents of a Sioux Falls neighborhood are unhappy about a gas station's plan to open a video lottery casino on its premises.

City planners granted an alcohol sale permit to convenience store owner Gary Cones earlier this month. South Dakota requires people seeking a video lottery license to have a special on-sale alcohol permit, the Argus Leader reported.

Cones plans to add video lottery room to his Hilltop BP gas station.

Neighbors upset with the plan have asked the city council to reconsider the decision because they worry the casino could bring crime to the neighborhood.

"I've seen a lot of changes in the neighborhood," said Judith Kock, who has lived across Cones' gas station for decades. "There's been robberies ... and now you're going to bring a criminal element into our neighborhood worse than it is now by allowing a casino."

City Hall said alcohol sales can be permitted at the store because there are other businesses in the immediate vicinity.

Cones said the concerns are overblown.

"It's my home also, and I would never want anything to happen where we have a bar where people are going to be getting drunk," he said.

Cones said he plans to close the casino when the gas station closes at 10 p.m. He said he also doesn't expect casino users to consume much alcohol.

"We're not going to keep it as a bar. People who play at casinos don't drink a lot of alcohol," he said. "But in order for us to acquire a lottery license, we have to have an on-sale beverage license."

The city council will discuss the matter Nov. 7.
BELLE FOURCHE  Come to Belle Fourche for the first annual Pumpkinfest sponsored by Tri-State Museum and Visitor Center, the Belle Fourche Chamber of Commerce, and Black Hills Roundup. This is the first of what is hoped to be an annual Pumpkinfest event.

The fun starts Saturday, October 28 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the parking lot of the Museum and Visitor Center, on the lawns and inside the building.

The event will include food vendors, craft booths and Halloween decor. There will also be games including Mummy Bowling and Scarecrow Ring Toss. A Mad Scientist table will provide children an opportunity to learn a little about chemistry and make green slime.

A number of contests, with prizes, will take place during the event. The Black Hills Roundup will have a booth with a pallet of free pumpkins and decorating materials for a pumpkin contest. The Eighth Avenue Bakery will have cupcakes for purchase, which can be decorated and judged for awards. Jennifer Gabriel of First Western Insurance will oversee a calf lassoing dummy contest.

Bring your camera and take your Halloween photos with a giant pumpkin or witchs cauldron, provided by Chad Carr from Carr Coatings.

The kids can bounce on inflatables of various kinds, provided by Nathan Stern. Bring the young ones out for a fun ride on the childrens train.

Be ready to be spooked by the Haunted Johnny Spaulding Cabin, which was decorated by the staff of the Tri-State Museum for your haunting pleasure.

An original play The Ghosts of Minnesela will be performed by the Tri-State Performers at noon and 2 p.m. Prepare to hear the story of Minnesela  once a rival to Belle Fourche but now a ghost town  and also the eerie story about a clock that chimes 13 times each Halloween night.

Pumpkinfest will also include be a costume contest. Judging will take place at 1:30, with contest winners announced at 2:30, following the final performance of The Ghosts of Minesela.

Goodie bags of candy and Halloween novelties will be available for children who attend Pumpkinfest, if you can get them from the scarecrow!

For further information, contact the Belle Fourche Chamber of Commerce at 605-892- 2676 or the Tri-State Museum and Visitor Center at 605-723-1200.

Plan to attend and have a spooktacular time!
A woman accused of vehicular homicide, along with a host of other charges in connection with a fatal September accident, requested a preliminary hearing on the felony charges during her most recent appearance in Dawes County Court.

Kimberly Eagle Bull, 32, of Pine Ridge, S.D., requested the hearing, which will determine if there is probable cause for the felony counts against her, Oct. 18. In addition to the vehicular homicide charge, Eagle Bull is charged with driving under the influence, transporting a child while intoxicated, three counts of child abuse and false reporting. All are felonies except for transporting a child while intoxicated and false reporting.

Judge Russell Harford scheduled the hearing for Nov. 1 at 10 a.m. Eagle Bull remains in jail on a $50,000 bond, and her attorney, Jerrod Jaeger asked the judge to reconsider bond.

Her ability to pay is minimal, he said, adding that his client was scheduled to have knee surgery before the accident and would be able to proceed with that if she were out on bond. If released, he said, she would live with family in Rapid City and care for her two children. Barring a bond reduction, Jaeger argued for a temporary furlough to allow her to have her surgery.

County attorney Vance Haug objected to lowering the bond, citing Eagle Bulls lack of ties to the Chadron community, and even to the state. The judge agreed.

You are charged with some really serious felonies, said Judge Harford, noting that she could potentially be sentenced to 50 years in prison if convicted. People facing serious charges like that are less likely to return to court, he said, and
DEADWOOD | The sudden closure of actor/director Kevin Costners Midnight Star casino in Deadwood this August is being blamed for an overall dip in September gaming revenues.

In a report released Tuesday, the South Dakota Commission on Gaming showed bettors wagered $95.2 million on slot machines in September, down nearly 2.8 percent from the same month last year. Year to date, gamers have bet $797.6 million on slots, off 2.4 percent from September 2016.

Conversely, table game action surged in September. Players of popular games such as blackjack, roulette and poker plunked down $6.2 million in wagers last month, an 8.6 percent spike from September 2016, the Gaming Commission reported. However, year to date, table gamers have bet $52.7 million, down 3.2 percent from the same point last year.

An industry spokesman said Tuesday that the downturn in gaming in September could be attributable to the closure of Costners Midnight Star.

Total device (slot) numbers for September are down 84 from August, probably a reflection of a recently shuttered Main Street casino, which impacts overall gaming revenues, said Mike Rodman, executive director of the Deadwood Gaming Association. Regardless, 2017 continues to be a difficult year for Deadwood as year to-date revenues are down 2.5 percent.

Meanwhile, hotel occupancy rates held steady at 75 percent last month when compared with September 2016, according to reports from the Deadwood City Finance Office. Of the 45,810 available room nights, lodging properties had guests for 34,492 room nights during the month, the report stated.
PLEASE NOTE!

Due to the March 23, 2020 NM DOH Public Health Order, These Event Listings Are Not Accurate!

All non-essential businesses are closed, public gatherings are prohibited!

(One day some of these events will be rescheduled or will resume, but they are not happening now!)
LINCOLN, Neb. | The Nebraska prison director is cautioning inmates on the effects of smoking synthetic marijuana.

Scott Frakes sent a letter to inmates in September to warn them about the dangers and effects of synthetic marijuana, also known as K2 or potpourri, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.

"Spending your final moments on earth covered in your own vomit, convulsing and sliding into respiratory failure is a sad legacy," he said.

Employees at Lincoln prisons said they see the adverse effects of the drug, including combativeness, disorientation and seizures on inmates using it. Staff members at the Nebraska State Penitentiary said more than 20 adverse reactions that required emergency responses were reported within hours of each other earlier this month.

"We get called when staff find them (inmates) laying on the floor, or something like that, and they are in enough discomfort that they want to go to medical," said John Wright, an associate director of nursing at the Lincoln Correctional Center.

Frakes said he knows scare tactics won't convince users to stop, so he's aiming his message at inmates who don't use it in hopes they can convince their friends of the potential harm.

"If you are tired of having other people interfere with your time, if you hate seeing your visitors treated as potential drug smugglers, if you don't want to spend another evening sitting in your cell because someone was smoking K2 and had to be taken to the hospital, tell us where the problems are," Frakes said.
Ride-hailing services such as Lyft and Uber could begin picking up passengers in Rapid City by the end of the year, as efforts are underway to amend a city ordinance that would allow the companies to operate here.

City Councilman Jason Salamun said in a tweet Tuesday morning that "we will soon have an ordinance before City Council."

A revision that would allow the ride-hailing services to get a license in Rapid City could be introduced at the next council meeting on Nov. 6, city spokesman Darrell Shoemaker said. If it moves forward and passes a second reading at the council's Nov. 20 meeting, the ordinance could take effect as soon as late December.

Mayor Steve Allender supports efforts to bring ride-sharing services to Rapid City, Shoemaker said.

He cited several reasons. Lyft and Uber would offer the large number of tourists who visit the Black Hills every year another option for transportation. It would also be a service that local residents could use.

"Rapid City is a pretty large community, so sometimes it's hard to get from point A to point B," Shoemaker said.

Lyft began operating Tuesday in Sioux Falls, where Mayor Mike Huether and City Councilor Christine Erickson were the first customers. The company announced earlier this month that it had received a sales tax license from the state Department of Revenue and would begin recruiting drivers in the Sioux Falls area.

South Dakota is one of the last states in the country to get ride-hailing services.

In addition to Salamun and Allender, Rapid City Police Chief Karl Jegeris has also expressed his support for bringing ride-hailing services to Rapid City, saying in a tweet: "Im hopeful @lyft will expand to RC and will improve traffic safety. #<DUI."

Shoemaker said the revised ordinance would establish rules for operation for ride-sharing companies. For example, drivers would only be able to accept pre-arranged rides. Street hails would not be allowed. Transactions would only be processed electronically, and established fares would need to be set up prior to the ride.

Salamun said he and city staffers had been discussing the necessary ordinance changes and the possibility of a ride-sharing company coming to the area for the past couple of years.

This isnt anything that caught us by surprise, Salamun said, adding that the city was simply waiting for a company like Lyft or Uber to express interest in expanding to Rapid City. Weve had the language for some time.

Lyft said in a news release Tuesday the company was "officially launching throughout the entire state of South Dakota today at 12 p.m. CDT."

They (Lyft) move very quickly, Salamun said, adding that he believed South Dakota was the last state to have a ride-sharing service. Now, the city must make sure its ready to welcome, and regulate, the industry.

We want to protect our community, Salamun said of the proposed ordinance changes, expressing optimism that it will pass through the council without much difficulty because of the help Sioux Falls  which has had a similar ordinance for about two years  provided. Salmun credited Erickson in particular for helping craft the ordinance.

Why is this a benefit to the community? is probably the biggest question we should be asking, Salamun said of the council. A reduction in drunken driving, increase in local transportation access and an economic boost to the tourism industry, area businesses and citizens looking to make some extra money were some of the benefits that had Salamun excited.

Its better late than never, he said.

Even though the company doesn't currently have a license to operate in Rapid City, Shoemaker said the city would not punish Lyft drivers who are already doing business in the area.

"We're not going to go out and cite them," Shoemaker said.
A step toward a formal student suicide prevention strategy was taken Monday as the Rapid City Area School Board engaged two nationally known experts to assess the districts needs.

Consultants Scott Poland and Richard Lieberman led recent efforts to address a contagion of student suicides around Fort Collins, Colo. Between 2013 and 2015, 29 students there committed suicide.

The initial RCAS contract calls for up to 10 hours of work from each consultant at an individual rate of $100 per hour.

RCAS began moving toward a suicide prevention program following the deaths of three male high school students in July and September.

Matt Seebaum, RCAS assistant superintendent for educational services, said the districts objective was to have a prevention plan ready to implement by the end of the school year and operating by September 2018.

After initial planning, Poland and Lieberman will be employed for a second and larger phase of using webinars to roll out the district program.

The ultimate goal, Seebaum said, is to involve students in prevention.

How do we help students help us help their peers?

In other action, the board voted 4-2 to set Aug. 29 as the student start date for the 2018-19 school year. Initially, some board members raised concerns about the effect on students of a short week followed by a three-day holiday weekend. That kicked off a discussion about the desirability of easing kids, especially elementary students, back into a tougher schedule.

Other concerns included the needs of the tourism industry for student employees before Labor Day and the desire of parents to end the school year before Memorial Day. A minimum number of days are needed.

Ultimately, however, the debate centered on whether students would be better served if the district opted for a year-round school calendar. Research has shown that poor students, especially, tend to backslide on educational progress during summer vacations.

Board members Amy Policky and Christine Stephenson voted against setting the 2018 start date as a means of furthering a larger school calendar discussion.

Board member Ron Riherd said a need for more funding to pay for year-round school would figure into that discussion.

Policky urged the creation of a study session that could soon begin a full review of the 2019-20 school calendar.
A local nonprofit is facing thousands of dollars in repairs after its building and several vehicles used to transport kids were battered with stones.

The Youth & Family Services facility, 120 E. Adams St., was vandalized late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, according to Rapid City police. An officer patrolling the area Sunday morning noticed the damage, which included four shattered windows on the west side of the building and broken glass on seven of the nonprofit's vehicles.

The vehicles include vans and buses that are used to pick up children from school and bring them to the Youth & Family Services facility, said communications coordinator Brianna Nelson. Most of the broken windows have been repaired, she said.

The nonprofit serves more than 14,000 kids and families in 24 western South Dakota counties during its fiscal year, Nelson said. It helps "close the opportunity gap for children and families," she said, providing food, access to health care, counseling, trauma training, and education and recreational programs.

Youth & Family Services has insurance, but for now Nelson said that the money used to pay for the repairs will be taken from sources that are used to fund services and programs for kids.

"That's our biggest heartache with this," she said.

Plywood has been placed over the broken windows on the building, and Nelson said all of the nonprofit's programs are continuing as normal. The total cost of the damage is still being assessed. "It's going to be in the thousands of dollars," Nelson said. "Glass is not an inexpensive repair."

No one has been arrested in connection with the vandalism. Police spokesman Brendyn Medina said he was not aware of any surveillance cameras that may have caught video of the rocks being thrown.

Youth & Family Services is located in a residential area on the northeast side of Rapid City. Police are asking residents who live in the neighborhood to be on the lookout for suspicious activity.

Its troubling to think that someone would want to target a local nonprofit organization that does so much for our community, Lt. Mark Eisenbraun, of the police department's Criminal Investigation Division, said in a release. We hope that the community can come together to help us find who did this so they can be held accountable for their actions.

Anyone with information about the vandalism is asked to call Detective Seth Walker at 394-4134. An anonymous tip can be sent by texting RCPD and the information to 847411.
A common defense of President Trump points to the positive things he has done from a Republican perspective  his appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch and other conservative judges, his pursuit of the Islamic State, his honoring of institutional religious freedom. This argument is not frivolous. What frustrates is the steadfast refusal among most Republicans and conservatives to recognize the costs on the other side of the scale.

Chief among them is Trump's assault on truth, which takes a now-familiar form. First, assert and maintain a favorable lie. Second, attack and discredit sources of opposition. Third, declare victory based on power or applause. So, Trump claimed that Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson's account of his conversation with a Gold Star mother was "totally fabricated." (Not true.) Wilson, after all, is "wacky." (Not relevant.) And Trump won the interchange because Wilson is "killing the Democrat Party." (We'll see.)

The pattern is invariable. Barack Obama is a Kenyan; the Mexican government deliberately dumps criminals across the border; "thousands and thousands" of people celebrated the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey; Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's father consorted with Lee Harvey Oswald; vaccination schedules can be tied to autism; Obama was "wiretapping" Trump Tower during the presidential campaign; Obama asked British intelligence to spy on Trump; at least 3 million immigrants voted illegally in the 2016 election.

Any source that disputes Trump is personally defamed or dismissed as "fake news." And how is truth ultimately adjudicated? "The country believes me," Trump said earlier this year. "Hey, I went to Kentucky two nights ago. We had 25,000 people."

Thirty years ago, University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" began with the words: "There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: Almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative." Bloom found this deeply problematic, because the ability to determine truth from falsehood, right from wrong, is essential to personal flourishing and civic health.

I wonder what Bloom would make of a political philosophy in which truth is determined by 25,000 screaming partisans and reality is a function of fabulism. Conservatives were supposed to be the protectors of objective truth from various forms of postmodernism. Now, they generally defend our thoroughly post-truth president.

Some of us still think this attack on truth is a dangerous form of political corruption. The problem is not just the constant lies. It is the dismissal of reason and objectivity as inherently elitist and partisan. It is the invitation to supporters to live entirely within Trump's dark, divisive, dystopian version of reality. It is the attempt to destroy or subvert any source of informed judgment other than Trump himself. This is a tyranny over the mind.

Some of this preference for deception may be the result of pathological compulsions. Some of it is surely the intuitive use of trolling to draw attention away from scandals and failures. Some of it may be a strategy to discredit contending sources of truth in Trump's upcoming public battle with special counsel Robert Mueller.

But here is the cost. When there is no objective source of truth  no commonly agreed upon set of facts and rules of argument  political persuasion becomes impossible. There is no reasoned method to choose between one view and another. The only way to settle political disputes is power. Politics becomes an endless battle of true believers, conditioned to distrust and dismiss every bit of evidence that does not confirm their pre-existing views.

This is the frightening direction of Trumpism. It is the corruption that good men such as chief of staff John Kelly are enabling. And it is a source of enduring shame for many conservatives. "Sycophancy toward those who hold power," said Bloom, "is a fact in every regime, and especially in a democracy, where, unlike tyranny, there is an accepted principle of legitimacy that breaks the inner will to resist. ... Flattery of the people and incapacity to resist public opinion are the democratic vices, particularly among writers, artists, journalists and anyone else who is dependent on an audience."

Exactly how the conservative movement was broken.
Alleged assailant of Russian journalist Felgenhauer detained

MOSCOW, October 24 (RAPSI)  Alleged assailant, who wounded prominent Russian journalist Tatyana Felgenhauer with a knife, Boris Grits, has been detained for two months, RAPSI correspondent reports from the Presnensky District Court of Moscow on Tuesday.

Grits has been charged with attempted murder. He pleaded partially guilty.

According to investigators, on Monday Grits sneaked into the Echo of Moscow radio station and stabbed his victim in neck with a knife. Felgenhauer survived the attack and was transported to a hospital, where she underwent a surgery. Currently, she is in a serious but stable condition.

The defendant will stay in detention until December 23.

The Council of Europe called for a thorough investigation of the attack on the journalist.
Russian Supreme Court to review ex-Yukos security chiefs case after ECHR ruling

MOSCOW, October 24 (RAPSI)  The Supreme Courts Presidium will reconsider the case against ex-Yukos security chief Alexey Pichugin sentenced to life in prison on November 8 following the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, according to the information published on the Russian courts website.

Two criminal cases have been opened against ex-Yukos security chief in Russia on charges of organizing murders and attempted assassinations. In 2005, he received 20 years in prison in the first case. In 2007, he was sentenced to life in prison in the second case.

In June, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) awarded over 15,000 in compensation including costs and expenses to Pichugin. He has complained over alleged breach of presumption of innocence and assessment of evidence by Russian courts in the second case against him.

In July, Pichugin was denied pardon. That was his second petition for pardon. The previous one was dismissed in the summer of 2016.
State Duma MPs to draft bill on palliative care for gravely ill persons

MOSCOW, October 24 (RAPSI)  The State Duma lawmakers are working on a bill that writes down a right of patients to receive palliative care on the whole territory of Russia, the statement on the official VKontakte account of the lower house of parliament reads on Tuesday.

The bill introduces a special status for patients requiring palliative care and regulates procedures related to organization and provision of this type of care for both children and adults.

MP Petr Tolstoy expressed hope that work on the document will be completed before the New Year. He added that there is a need for clear rules regulating sensitive fields such as oncology and palliative care not only for officials but for doctors too.
Retired Butte police officer Tim Tracy, 52, missing since Thursday, has been found dead in the area of Homestake Lake, east of Butte, from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, Sheriff Ed Lester said Monday afternoon.

Tracy was last seen at approximately 4 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 19. He had left his Butte residence to go for a ride in this pickup truck.

During his tenure as a police officer, Tracy was written about several times in The Montana Standard for good deeds.

On one occasion in 2011, Tracy and officer Josh Moore used a rowboat to rescue a golden retriever that apparently fell through thin ice in a pond just south of Interstate 15-90. Tracy was bitten in the hand as he pulled the dog into the boat, saving its life.

In 2009, Tracy received praise from the Safe Space Domestic and Sexual Violence Program for his kind treatment of victims of domestic abuse.

Funeral arrangements are pending, the sheriff said.

Tracy's death comes on the heels of that of former Anaconda police chief Tom Blaz, who took his life with a self-inflicted gunshot Monday evening, Oct. 16, in the Anaconda Common park in downtown Anaconda. Blaz had been suffering from cancer.
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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.
Attention Canadian genre enthusiasts! The Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival is gearing up with another round of high-quality feature films. The festivals 8th edition (November 15-18) is a four-day event that simply overflows with genre goodness.

The 2017 program opens with Tyler MacIntyres Tragedy Girls, a surefire crowd-pleaser that is equal parts winking slasher spoof and skewering of social media obsessed millennials. High-octane action from South-Korea is sure to leave viewers gobsmacked as The Villainess makes her way to the Broadway Theatre. Miike Takashis Blade of the Immortal will step in to slice and dice any and all remaining pieces while Bad Black brings levity and a distinctly African approach to filmmaking in unison with its hail of bullets.

On the more bizarre end of the spectrum we find Rainer Sarnets November, a fantasy drama based on an Estonian bestseller (Rehepapp), and Marianna Palkas feminist satire Bitch. Teemu Nikkis The Euthanizer  an offbeat thriller that speaks out against animal cruelty in surprising ways as it condemns utterly misguided notions of manhood  is a discovery that shouldnt be missed.

Read on for the press release and full lineup, but rest assured: if you're in Saskatchewan, looking for something fun to do, Saskatoon Fantastic has you covered.

Some of the other films at the festival include the Quebec made French zombie film Les Affames film from Robin Aubert, the ridiculously fun German action flick Plan B , the divisive anti-horror horror film The Honor Farm , the challenging look into what makes a serial killer, My Friend Dahmer , one of the best art designed independent films of the past few years in quirky offbeat Dave Made a Maze , the epic 100th film from Takashi Miike Blade of the Immortal , as well as 11 other films pulled from the best festivals around the world.

Every year we really want Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival to be its own beast. The programming team loves films that strive to push some boundaries and elevate genre film. Our goal has always been to help our audience develop and grow as film fans by experiencing something different. Well give them some crowd pleasers but well also keep them thinking about us long after with the films that challenge and stick with deep in their memory. said festival founder and Director John Allison.

This years festival will open with Tyler Macyntyres gory comedy horror Tragedy Girls which has been bringing terror and laughs across the festival scene since it first premiered at SXSW.

Saskatoon  October 23rd, 2017 - Saskatoon Fantastic Film Festival, Saskatchewans only genre film festival had announced its film lineup. The 8th edition of the festival returns to the hallowed hall of the Broadway Theatre from November 15th through 18th. This years lineup features a diverse selection of genre films pulled from some of the best film festivals around the world.

Feature Film Line-Up

Les Affames (The Ravenous)  Canada

In a small, remote village in upstate Quebec, things have changed. Locals are not the same anymore  their bodies are breaking down and they have turned against their loved ones. A handful of survivors goes hiding into the woods, looking for others like them.

Bad Black  Uganda

The story of a ruthless crime boss whose reign is challenged by an army of police, a kindly American doctor, and a scrappy local boy named Wesley Snipes who teaches commando-approved kung fu. Bad Black is filled with prison riots, motorcycle chases, gun fights, poo-poo, and insanely entertaining hype-man narration.

Beyond Skyline - Canada, USA, Indonesia, Singapore

Los Angeles Detective Mark Corley thought bailing out his eighteen-year-old son, Trent, was the worst part of his day. But on the subway ride home, the skies above fill with a strange blue light. Within moments, the entire citys population is vacuumed up into a massive alien ship. In the aftermath, father and son lead a band of survivors to the marina. But when Trent is abducted, Mark relentlessly storms after his son onto the nightmarish warship. As the aliens move across the planet, feeding off the remnants of humanity, the resilient Mark battles through the bizarre environment, uncovering their horrific secrets. Before long, he forges an alliance with an unlikely ally. Together they are able to crash the ship and rescue several abductees, including an infant girl who holds the key to defeating the aliens power. Landing in Southeast Asia, they encounter a highly skilled resistance force, led by the deadly Sua. In a race against time, these warriors from different sides of the world must unite to save their families and take back the planet once and for all.

Bitch - USA

Jill, a lonely, distraught housewife with four unruly children, paces on her dining room table with a belt around her neck, contemplating a desperate end to her wretchedness. Her husband, Bill, focused on his identity as breadwinner and an affair with a lusty co-worker, is as oblivious to Jills growing terror that she will do something destructive as he is to the panic at his unraveling company. Meanwhile, dogs bark and howl through the night, as one persistent mutt continually stalks the familys yard. When Jills psyche finally breaks, she takes on a vicious new canine persona.

Blade of the Immortal - Japan

Manji, a highly skilled samurai, becomes cursed with immortality after a legendary battle. Haunted by the brutal murder of his sister, Manji knows that only fighting evil will regain his soul. He promises to help a young girl named Rin avenge her parents, who were killed by a group of master swordsmen led by ruthless warrior Anotsu. The mission will change Manji in ways he could never imagine

Dave Made a Maze  USA

Dave, an artist who has yet to complete anything significant in his career, builds a fort in his living room out of pure frustration, only to wind up trapped by the fantastical pitfalls, booby traps, and critters of his own creation. Ignoring his warnings, Daves girlfriend Annie leads a band of oddball explorers on a rescue mission. Once inside, they find themselves trapped in an ever-changing supernatural world, threatened by booby traps and pursued by a bloodthirsty Minotaur.

The Endless  USA

Following their acclaimed debut RESOLUTION and their follow-up, the Lovecraftian modern cult classic SPRING, writer/directors Moorhead and Benson star as brothers who receive a mysterious message inspiring them to pay a visit to the cult they escaped as children. As unsettling events and phenomena begin to occur, the brothers are forced to question whether the cults supernatural beliefs might not be entirely made up  and if, now that theyve returned, theyll be allowed to leave again.

Euthanizer  Finland

Euthanizer is a violent summer noir. It tells the story of Veijo Haukka, a 50-year-old mechanic, whose second job is to put sick pets to sleep. But what happens when he decides to save the wrong persons dog? The themes revolve around animal rights, suffering and death. But the real story is not about good or evil  its about the stupidity of absolute men.

The Honor Farm  USA

When Lucys prom night falls apart, she finds herself jumping into a hearse headed for a psychedelic party in the woods. Looking for a thrill, the party wanders deeper into the forest, to a haunted prison work farm. A secret wish and a summoning of the dead sends the group on a mind-bending trip that may be a dangerous trap.

Housewife - Turkey

Hollys mother murdered her father and her sister when she was only seven years old. Two decades later, now an adult who has problems telling reality from the nightmares that are haunting her, Holly will meet a famous mentalist, who claims hes destined to help her. With Housewife, Can Evrenol delves deep into the psyches domains with the savageness that characterizes him.

Lowlife  USA

The sordid lives of small-time criminals collide when an organ harvesting caper goes very, very wrong.

My Friend Dahmer  USA

Jeffrey Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys in the American Midwest, becoming one of historys most infamous serial killers. This is the story before that story. Jeff (Disney Channels Ross Lynch) is an awkward teenager struggling to make it through high school with a family life in ruins. His bizarre behavior at school attracts unexpected friends, a group of band-nerds who form The Dahmer Fan Club, headed by Derf Backderf (Alex Wolff, Patriots Day). But as they near graduation, Jeffs depravity continues to take hold, and he spirals further out of control. Based on Backderfs critically acclaimed 2012 graphic novel and written for the screen and directed by Marc Meyers, MY FRIEND DAHMER is the haunting, sad, funny, true story of Jeffrey Dahmer in high school.

November - Estonia

In this tale of love and survival in 19th century Estonia, peasant girl Liina longs for village boy Hans, but Hans is inexplicably infatuated by the visiting German baroness that possesses all that he longs for. For Liina, winning Hans requited love proves incredibly complicated in this dark, harsh landscape where spirits, werewolves, plagues, and the devil himself converge, where thievery is rampant, and where souls are highly regarded, but come quite cheap. With alluring black and white cinematography, Rainer Sarnet vividly captures these motley lives as they toil to existis existence worth anything if it lacks a soul?

Plan B  Germany

When three young action stunt men go on a hunt through Berlin to free their friend from the clutches of an unscrupulous gangster, they are involved in a conspiracy that takes them to the underworld of Berlin.

Poor Agnes  Canada

Agnes Poelzl is a vicious psychopath. She lives in a state of dreamy contemplation, her powerful mind twisted by insanity. Mike Mercer is a private investigator researching a cold case. When his investigation leads him to Agnes, he has no idea what hes getting himself into. Agnes seduces, captures, and locks Mike in her basement. She then begins a regimen of brutal psychological torture meant to brainwash him into a state of total compliance.

Tragedy Girls  USA

Sadie and McKayla are two social media-obsessed best friends who will stop at nothing to build their online following. The self-titled Tragedy Girls kidnap Lowell, an unambitious local serial killer, and force him to mentor them into modern horror legends by committing murders to blow up on the internet. As the bodies fall, the girls become national news and panic in their small town hits a fever pitch  just then, Lowell escapes! Now with the local Sheriff closing in and their relationship on the rocks, the girls must rethink their plan before they find themselves the latest victims of their own killing spree.

The Villainess  South Korea

Bloody revenge is at the heart of this stylish, kinetic action-thriller that gives a welcome shot of adrenaline to the classic femme fatale story. Honed from childhood into a merciless killing machine by a criminal organization, assassin Sook-hee is recruited as a sleeper agent with the promise of freedom after ten years of service  and she jumps at the chance for a normal life. But soon enough, secrets from her past destroy everything shes worked for, and now nobody can stand in her way as she embarks on a roaring rampage of revenge.
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 Many (but not all) Massachusetts DAs come out against eliminating certain drug mandatory minimums and other proposed reforms | Main | US Sentencing Commission releases new report on "Mandatory Minimum Penalties for Drug Offenses in the Federal System" 

October 24, 2017

Can a defendant be given two maxed-out consecutive manslaughter sentences for killing one person?

The puzzling question in the title of this post would appear to be the remarkable issue that is now going to be considered by the top court in the Old Dominion State according to this local story headlined "Virginia Supreme Court will rule on Gregg sentencing." Here is the press report that I am still trying to wrap my mind around:

Almost two years after a Fauquier jury found a Marshall man guilty of manslaughter, the legal debate over his prison sentence will go to the states highest court. The Virginia Supreme Court announced Friday that it will hear the prosecutions appeal of a decision that would void one of two homicide convictions of Carroll E. Tootie Gregg Jr. in December 2015. The circuit court jury recommended a 10-year sentence on each. Judge Herman A. Whisenant Jr. exercised a state code provision that allowed him to add three years on each conviction, which he suspended. Mr. Gregg got a 26-year prison sentence, with six years suspended. He shot and killed Junior Jordan Montero Sanchez, 23, just after midnight June 6, 2014. Mr. Sanchez and a towing company coworker had gone to Mr. Greggs Conde Road apartment to repossess a pickup truck for delinquent loan payments. But, Warrenton defense attorneys Blair Howard and T. Brooke Howard II immediately objected to the pair of manslaughter sentences, contending that the U.S and Virginia constitutions protect individuals from being punished twice for the same crime. A Virginia Court of Appeals panel last December ruled that the dual convictions  on two involuntary manslaughter charges, one of them for unlawfully shooting at an occupied vehicle wherein death resulted  constituted double jeopardy. The panel sent the case back to Fauquier County Circuit Court, where the prosecution would choose which conviction to apply. But, the state attorney generals office appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, which last week agreed to take the case.... It will indeed be interesting to see the outcome in the Virginia Supreme Court, Fauquier County Commonwealths Attorney James P. Fisher said. The attorney generals office handles most appeals of criminal cases that start with local prosecutors. Mr. Fisher has argued that the vehicle shooting conviction has different elements, even though state code labels it involuntary manslaughter.

The Virginia Court of Appeals ruling in this case is available at this link and it strikes me as eminently sensible. Moreover, it has never really dawned on me to imagine that prosecutors could try to ramp up the punishment for a single killing by seeking multiple convictions and multiple consecutive sentences for every different type of possible homicide that the single killing might constitute. (For example, here in Ohio, we have nine different types of homicide and a drunk driver who kills one person might readily be found guilty of six different types of homicide. I could never imagine a prosecutor looking to convict such a drunk driver of six different counts and asking for six max sentences to run consecutively on each count for a single killing.)

Perhaps I am missing something when I suggest it seems crazy for a defendant to be sentenced to two maxed-out consecutive manslaughter sentences for killing one person. The local prosecutor and the sentencing judge obviously did not think this kind of doubling up was crazy. Moreover, it would seem that Virginia Attorney General's office believes there is a legally defensible basis for pursuing a state Supreme Court appeal in order to preserve the double-max sentence imposed by the sentencing court.

I would be grateful to hear in the comments if and how anyone can make the principled case for a double-max manslaughter sentence in a case involving only a single killing.

October 24, 2017 at 07:10 PM | Permalink

Comments

The opinion, of course, summarizes the prosecution's arguments.

Does seem pretty patently wrong but what do I know?

Posted by: Joe | Oct 24, 2017 8:23:56 PM

(It is apparent the prosecutor's arguments is not found convincing -- which I surely won't disagree with -- but perhaps a word on WHY they are so patently unprincipled.)

Posted by: Joe | Oct 24, 2017 8:25:36 PM

Re: WHY SO unprincipled

Because there is no open season on such people 

Some pay $Thousands to hunt & Kill an innocent game animal ;

Yet at present , prosecutors appear answerable only to God/G-d , or the laws of nature on kinetic energy 

In theory , they answer to the licensing entity of their practice venue , which is about as effective as asking a trespassing alien to Not trespass 

Kindly , DJB

Nemo Me Impune Lacessit

2017.10.24T2334R (-0400 EDT)

Posted by: Docile the Kind Soul | Oct 24, 2017 11:34:56 PM

Joe, do you really see a principled basis for double punishment based on two different ways to describe a single fundamental harm? If you steal $1 from me, should prosecutors be able to double punish you with a max sentence consecutive for BOTH stealing $1 AND stealing a thing of value? Heck, let's really max this out with 5 consecutive punishments: one for stealing $1, one for stealing four quarters, one for stealing ten dimes, one for stealing 20 nickels, and one for stealing 100 pennies. Can that possibly be justified?

As I see it, homicide laws address the harm of causing a death. Consequently, I cannot see a principled justification for double punishing based entirely/solely on the causing of one death. We are not here talking about one punishment for killing with an aggravating enhancement based on related conduct such as the use of a particular weapon. Rather, at issue here is a 10 year max sentence imposed twice and run consecutive simply by giving different descriptions to the same fundamental act of causing a death. And so I ask again for an account of how this can be justified as a matter of principle or some explanation as to what I am missing to support the efforts by the VA AG office to preserve the original sentence.

Posted by: Doug B. | Oct 25, 2017 12:17:50 AM

I see the prosecutor as engaging in standard and ubiquitous stacking. In this example, a beneficial act gets a stacked prosecution.

https://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2015/06/12/prosecutors-charge-stacking-and-plea-deals/

Posted by: David Behar | Oct 25, 2017 1:12:38 AM

I've seen before in Virginia where a defendant is charged with Murder as well as Aggravating Malicious Wounding (causing a serious permanent bodily injury with the intent to maim, disfigure, disable, or kill). Obviously, a case where a wounding kills someone would factually support both, but it's also very clearly stacking. Under the Blockburger test, though, there are different elements (one requires a killing, the other requires a wounding).

20-30 years ago, the court would probably have said the intent of the legislature was to make an either/or situation. There are some less serious charges where things can merge together (an assault can merge into an abduction if the assault was just to keep the person there, a reckless driving was considered a lesser included of a DUI, etc). Now, they tend to be more formalistic towards the Blockburger test, particularly when it involves Common Law crimes.

Posted by: Erik M | Oct 25, 2017 9:52:33 AM

"Heck, let's really max this out with 5 consecutive punishments: one for stealing $1, one for stealing four quarters, one for stealing ten dimes, one for stealing 20 nickels, and one for stealing 100 pennies. Can that possibly be justified?"

Sure it can be justified: one is a crime against pennies, one is a crime against dimes, and one is a crime against quarters, etc. That makes as much sense as crimes against pigs, devils, and goats; something that the law--both among the schoolmen and the Romans--once allowed. Fundamentally, if one is going to allow suits against a class of things (money, animals) one can plausibly assert a claim of action against a subset of that class as both are functions of line drawing.

What changed in history is social attitudes. I don't believe that current social mores would allow for such justifications but @david's response is spot on. Social mores can change, maybe they are charging now???

Posted by: Daniel | Oct 25, 2017 10:01:55 AM

This is what you get when you adopt a criminal code but keep common law offenses -- lack of clarity as to legislative intent and to Blockburger.

In my state, we have two clearly separate offenses -- involuntary manslaughter for recklessly causing death (mental state applies to death, location of victim not a fact) and unlawful use of a weapon for shooting from or into motor vehicle (mental state of knowing applies to the shooting into vehicle regardless of whether there are occupants) with an aggravated punishment if anybody dies as a result (no mental state as to death). Additionally, we have a statute expressly covering when cumulative punishments are permitted (essentially incorporating Blockburger). Because of our express statutes, there would be a clear argument in my state that there is no double jeopardy violation. As to principled reasons for the statutes (and I am making the assumption that legislative bodies actually act on principles as opposed to the fad du jour, a dubious assumption) -- one statute is directed at the harm of a homicide and the other statute is directed at the harm of drive by shootings (which potentially place a large number of people at risk).

Posted by: tmm | Oct 25, 2017 4:38:43 PM

This also highlights the absurdity of the proliferation of criminal offenses like "shooting into a vehicle" or "intoxication manslaughter." If there is really a need to consider these offenses separately from their standard or common-law-type counterparts (even if statutory), viz manslaughter and intoxication manslaughter, do it with sentencing enhancements rather than separate, cumulative, overlapping crimes.

There's so much pandering going on in criminal legislation, it's absurd.

Posted by: Fat Bastard | Oct 26, 2017 12:36:01 AM

So long as each offense requires proof of a fact that the other doesn't, they prescribe different offenses (Albernaz v. United States (March 9, 1981)), correct?

So you can be charged with (1) conspiracy to commit murder, (2) possession of an illegal gun during the commission of a crime, (3) using an illegal gun in the commission of a crime,(4) murder, (5) violating a person's civil rights not to be killed because they're black, etc. even though it's all part of the same event?

If using a gun in a crime necessarily includes possessing it, isn't punishing for both possession and usage still punishing twice for the same event?

Posted by: Vital Illinoise | Oct 26, 2017 6:36:42 AM

Sounds like the answer is a bit more complicated than it might look to be at face value.

Posted by: Joe | Oct 26, 2017 1:13:37 PM

And ... what about Gore v United States 1958 ????

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/357/386.html

Posted by: Claudio Giusti | Oct 26, 2017 3:22:30 PM

Is that still good law?

Posted by: Joe | Oct 26, 2017 4:27:44 PM

Joe, because there are so many criminal laws that cover a range of related harms, this can get complicated in ways that Vital Illinoise suggests when there are many ways to describe components of criminal activity. But I do not think you could get a maxed out double sentence for possessing and using a gun -- e.g., 18 USC 924(C)(1)(A)(ii), provides minimums for gun possessing (5 years), brandishing (7 years) and discharging (10) in conjunction with another crime. I have never heard anyone claim that, based on single discharge of a brandished/possessed gun, a defendant could face 22 years (10+7+5) under the federal provisions.

The critical point here is that there is one harm (a death) and one fundamental crime in play (manslaughter). This case has an added 3 years for use of a gun, and that added punishment arguably raises some of the complications you may have in mind. But I continue to be dumbstruck by the notion that a defendant can be given a double max sentence for two ways to describe a single killing that amounts to manslaughter. And I continue to wait to hear a principled explanation about how this makes any sense beyond the formalities of saying that there are technically different elements in each form of the crime.

Posted by: Doug B. | Oct 26, 2017 4:36:28 PM

I missed your original reply Mr. B., but my "complicated" comment is a result of a long comment thread. For instance, tmm's comment noted:

"As to principled reasons for the statutes (and I am making the assumption that legislative bodies actually act on principles as opposed to the fad du jour, a dubious assumption) -- one statute is directed at the harm of a homicide and the other statute is directed at the harm of drive by shootings (which potentially place a large number of people at risk)."

This would in theory not be "a" harm, but two harms. I'm not accepting that argument here, but it suggests the whole thing isn't bloody obvious. My original comment was that I do not wish to defend the government, but the opinion did put forth the arguments made to defend the prosecution and judge. They thought they were being "principled."

The "formalities" point might be talking past them on that point. The opinion seems to place strong importance on that factor. "Where a legislature intends to impose multiple punishments for the same course of conduct, the imposition of multiple punishments does not violate the Constitution." (citing USSC precedent)

Posted by: Joe | Oct 26, 2017 5:40:48 PM

Doug, much as I hate to say this, Joe is probably right that it's more complicated than meets the eye. My gut tells me this violates DJ, but I am not sure about that. I hope it goes up to SCOTUS.

Posted by: federalist | Oct 26, 2017 6:25:02 PM

I appreciate the continued engagement, but I would love to hear a response to my Ohio drunk driving hypo, and I will keep it simple by just focusing on the prospect of a Ohio drunk driver who kills being clearly subject to conviction for (1) involuntary manstaughter, ORC 2903.04(c), and (2) reckeless homicide, ORC 2903.041, and (3) aggravated vehicular homicide, ORC 2903.06(A)(1)(a). Each of these statutes requires proof of something the other does not, but can it really be the case that a prosecutor could (and should?) charge all three in every drunk driving case and that a judge could (and should?) stack max sentences so that every DD death case has a triple max sentence than these counts each provide?

I get the way a person kills might have all sorts of aggravating factors that can prompted extra charges and extra sentences --- indeed, that happened in this VA case with the gun specs that add 3 years to the 10 year manslaughter max sentence. But the fact VA has two different ways to define what makes for "involuntary manslaughter" cannot mean that a defendant can be double punished for one killing using that same label twice under different definitions if there is to be any base logic to what we call "a crime." Perhaps I am putting too much stock in the fact that the state uses the term "involuntary manslaughter" in both settings and I get that VA seemingly has a confusing criminal code layered on top of common law crimes makes this all a mess. But I am still struggling to understand how killing one person in one can lead to a double max sentence as if he killed two people.

Posted by: Doug B. | Oct 26, 2017 8:06:31 PM

In my opinion: Prosecutors are generally illegal in the eyes of the people, their Oath of Office is to preserve, protect and defend the people and their rights according to State and Federal law.

Posted by: LC in Texas | Oct 26, 2017 9:53:57 PM

I believe the case referenced by Erik M was my case. The facts were that my client stabbed the victim one time in the heart. The victim did not die immediately from the wound, but survived another nine months in a persistent vegatative state before dying.

The Virginia Court of Appeals affirmed holding that Blockberger is the default method of analysis in cases where the legislative intent can't be determined. The Virginia Supreme Court affirmed by Order without issueing an opinion. At oral argument, the Supreme Court, although hostile to the prosecution arguments, kept coming back to the fact that the aggregate of the two sentences of 40 years was the statutory maximum for 2nd degree murder, which implied that my client in effect received only one sentence. It would have been nice to have had an opinion to consider rather than trying to infer the Court's reasoning from oral argument.



Posted by: Fred | Oct 26, 2017 10:38:41 PM

The Texas Penal Code seems to handle this in Chapter 3. http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PE/htm/PE.3.htm That chapter provides that the sentences for multiple offenses in a "criminal episode" shall run concurrently, but carves out a few exceptions.

Many moons ago, it is/was my understanding that the Texas Penal Code was closely modeled on the Model Penal Code, but with some definite Texas twists. As dysfunctional as Texas often appears to be (and is) legislatively and politically, we have a pretty solid and well-thought out and organized set of statutory laws.

On the rare occasion that I am forced to cull through another states' statutory laws, I am usually appalled at the lack of organization.

Posted by: Fat Bastard | Oct 27, 2017 12:10:22 AM

Doug, I have been in trial and am late in coming to the discussion of double jeopardy overreaching by the State. It happens frequently, and certain prosecutors think they are so clever. For example, for years our appellate courts have approved consecutive sentences for attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill for the same victim in the same incident. Seems to me one is a common law crime and the other a statutory crime, both dealing with trying to kill someone and not succeeding.

In my opinion, we need to abandon the Blockburger test and instead employthe more functional standard in Brown v Ohio. Brown says that if the proof of one crime automatically proves another crime, the two offenses are the same for Fifth Amendment purposes.

I remember vividly the lecture by professor Peter Low at UVa law school forty five years ago. He said Blockburger is a great example of a case which has come to stand for the headnotes, not the text of the opinion. The opinion talks about same facts, the headnotes talk about elements. (I recall your antipathy for the term "element" in a conversation we had in Raleigh many years ago)\

Since you know my tendency to find Apprendi issues under every bush, I'll submit there is a connection between Apprendi and the double jeopardy issue of bootstrapping punishment. Apprendi, in my opinion, ushered in the functional era of criminal jurisprudence, rejecting the formalistic, angels on a pin ideas of Blockburger. Stevens wrote, "Our inquiry is one not of form but of effect."

Under the functional approach I suggest the following scenario. Think of the jury room deliberation of a charge of Attempted Murder and Assault with intent to kill. Attempted Murder has two "elements" an intent to kill and an overt act designed to bring about the killing. Suppose the overt act is an assault. The foreman asks people to deliberate on the charge of attempted murder and they all agree that the def is guilty of attempted murder, so the foreman checks guilty on the attempted murder verdict sheet.

Then the foreman picks up the Assault with Intent to kill verdict sheet and says we'll now deliberate whether the def assaulted the victim with the intent to kill. In an Emperor has no clothes moment, some juror says, "We have already decided that the def assaulted the victim with intent to kill, so let's check that verdict sheet "guilty" and all go home.

Bruce

Posted by: bruce cunningham | Oct 27, 2017 3:40:27 AM

The "eminently sensible" ruling said this:

"Where a legislature intends to impose multiple punishments for the same course of conduct, the imposition of multiple punishments does not violate the Constitution." (citing USSC precedent)

Does Mr. B. agree with this statement?

Posted by: Joe | Oct 27, 2017 10:24:20 AM

I think, Joe, this is a reasonable way to approach legislative intent, but not constitutional limits if the "course of conduct" cannot or is not described by the legislature as involving multiple harms. I definitely think it fine, to use one of many possible examples, for the feds to say that downloading child porn carries a mandatory 1 year sentence for each image downloaded and then to say the downloading of 5 images with one click of a file calls for 5 of these 1-year sentences to run consecutively. Here, as I see it, the course of conduct involves 5 harms that can be allowed to carry 5 punishments.

But I do not think a legislature should be allowed to describe/punish the downloading of a single image as one crime committed five different ways by one act --- e.g., the legislature should not be able to say it is a crime "possess" CP of a kid who under 18, or under 16, or under 14, or under 12 and/or under 10 and then stack sentences for these 5 crimes if/when an offender has a single pic of a naked kid aged 9.

I want to make clear, as many comments reinforce, that this can get real complicated in a lot of setting when the statutory/legal descriptions of crimes are distinct and can be reasonably thought to reflect legislative efforts to address distinct harms. But in this case, the guy is going down and getting punished for two count of involuntary manslaughter for causing one single death. I have never seen or heard of a case in which a single killing leads to TWO consecutive max punishments for homicide offenses. Can anyone point to any case in US history in which a defendant killed one person as got max punished under homicide laws (not assault laws) as if he killed two?

Posted by: Doug B | Oct 27, 2017 10:50:24 AM

tmm offered a possible way for "multiple harms" to be present.

Anyway, it seems to me that you have a strong opinion on the matter that I'm not refuting as such. But, it isn't clear to me that it overlaps current Supreme Court doctrine. Bruce's comment reinforces my inclination there to the degree he thinks the doctrine needs to be clarified. What "should" be the case is not clearly what is the case.

And, what is the case under current doctrine is what is being applied, especially to the degree a prosecutor and lower court judge can be "principled" if wrong.

Posted by: Joe | Oct 27, 2017 11:29:29 AM

What sets apart American jurisprudence from the rest of the world is the notion that the "intent of the legislature" is irrelevant to whether or not a statute offends the Constitution.

One of my favorite zingers penned by Justice Scalia is from his concurrence in Ring v Arizona. "I believe that the fundamental meaning of the jury trial guarantee of the Sixth Amendment is that all facts essential to imposition of the level of punishment that the defendant receives--whether the statute calls them elements of the offense, sentencing factors, or Mary Jane- must be found by the jury beyond a reasonable doubt."

The legislature can be crystal clear that they intend for double punishment under a certain scenario, but if it violates the Fifth Amendment, it is unenforceable.

This is what Marbury v Madison is all about. And Apprendi for that matter.

Apprendi was the "course correction" for the misguided McMillan v Pennsylvania, which invented the term "sentencing factor." Chief Justice Rhenquist defended the Pennsylvania system by saying, "The statute gives no impression of having been tailored to permit the visible possession finding to be THE TAIL THAT WAGS THE DOG of the substantive offense."

Justice Scalia, in Blakely, unmercifully, and humorously, destroyed Rhenquist's faulty logic. He wrote "To be sure, Justice Breyer and the other dissenters would forbid those increases of sentence that violate the constitutional principle that tail shall not wag dog. The source of this principle is entirely unclear. It precise effect, if precise effect it has, is presumably to require that the ratio of sentencing factor add-on to basic criminal sentence be no greater than the ratio of caudal vertebrae to body in the breed of canine with the longest tail. Or perhaps no greater than the average such ratio for all breeds. Or perhaps the median. Regrettably, Apprendi has prevented full development of this line of jurisprudence."

We all need to eliminate any concern of the intent of the legislature from our minds.

Bruce

Posted by: bruce cunningham | Oct 27, 2017 12:39:40 PM

I'm no fan of people who kill people.

That said, isn't there some principle that unless the law is clear, you go with the more lenient interpretation?

Seems like that ought to apply here.

Posted by: William Jocksuch | Oct 29, 2017 11:37:13 PM

Post a comment
 "Resolving Judicial Dilemmas" | Main | Can a defendant be given two maxed-out consecutive manslaughter sentences for killing one person? 

This Boston Globe article, headlined "In harsh letter, DAs pan Senates criminal justice proposal," reports on a notable letter signed by most of the District Attorneys of Massachusetts to oppose a set of state criminal justice reform proposals. Here is the start of the article (which includes a link to the letter to legislators):

In a blistering public rebuke, nine of Massachusetts 11 district attorneys came out Monday against major parts of the state Senates sweeping criminal justice bill, which is aimed at reducing the number of people caught in the system. In a six-page letter that comes days before the chamber is set to take up the legislation, top law enforcement officials railed against what is a Senate priority.

Although they praise some aspects of the bill, overall it undermines the cause and pursuit of fair and equal justice for all, largely ignores the interests of victims of crime, and puts at risk the undeniable strides and unparalleled success of Massachusetts approach to public safety and criminal justice for at least the last 25 years, the DAs wrote.

The letter also marks a break among the top prosecutors, with the signatures of Northwestern District Attorney David E. Sullivan and Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan  who is the chief law enforcement official of the states most populous county  notably absent.

The nine DAs are against eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug crimes such as trafficking up to 100 grams of cocaine  one proposal in the legislation scheduled for a Thursday vote in the Senate. And they expressed particularly vociferous opposition to the part of the bill that would make those changes retroactive, allowing hundreds of drug dealers the opportunity to get out of prison early . Where exactly are the residents eager for violent drug traffickers to be returned to their neighborhoods? they wrote.

Advocates and senators say mandatory minimums are a failed tactic from the war on drugs, one that has unnecessarily ensnared generations of people, particularly from communities of color, in the criminal justice system. And making the repeal of certain drug mandatory minimums retroactive is important for equity, they say.

The DAs energetically oppose the provision that would raise the age of criminal majority to 19, meaning all but the most serious offenses committed by 18-year-olds would likely be adjudicated confidentially in front of a juvenile court judge.

Advocates and Senate leaders say scientific research shows young peoples brains keep maturing into their 20s, and it is appropriate for the law to acknowledge that evolution. They say its just common sense to treat all high school kids the same way, instead of punishing an 18-year-old much more harshly than a 17-year-old for the same crime.

But the DAs wrote that adopting a law that enables anyone to declare that I am not responsible for my actions, my brain is! is something no rational parent would accept, and creates a slippery slope.

The DAs vehemently oppose rewriting the states statutory rape law, which currently makes sex with anyone under 16 against the law. The bill would legalize consensual sex between teens close in age  an 18-year-old and a 15-year-old, or a 15-year-old and a 13-year-old, for example. That provision is both unnecessary and dangerous, especially to girls and young women, the nine DAs wrote. But advocates say a so-called Romeo-and-Juliet law is sensible, and criminalizing the sexual contact young people inevitably have with each other is not the best way to respond to it.
 "Is There a Rational Punishment for My Rapist?" | Main | "Resolving Judicial Dilemmas" 

October 23, 2017

New study of Pennsylvania death penalty finds disparity based on race of victim and type of representation

This new local AP article, headlined "Study: Victim's race factor in imposing death sentences in Pa.," reports on some interesting findings of a big forthcoming report about the death penalty's application in the Keystone State. Here are the details as reported by the AP:

A new study of capital punishment in Pennsylvania found that death sentences are more common when the victim is white and less frequent when the victim is black. The report, which drew from court and prosecution records over an 11-year period, concluded that a white victim increases the odds of a death sentence by 8 percent. When the victim is black, the chances are 6 percent lower. The race of a victim and the type of representation afforded to a defendant play more important roles in shaping death penalty outcomes in Pennsylvania than do the race or ethnicity of the defendant, according to the 197-page report obtained by The Associated Press. Penn State researchers produced the $250,000 study for the Interbranch Commission for Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness, and its findings are expected to be incorporated into a separate, ongoing review of the state's death penalty that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has said could affect the death penalty moratorium he imposed shortly after taking office in 2015. The report also found the prosecution of death penalty cases varies widely among counties, calling that variation the most prominent differences researchers identified. A given defendant's chance of having the death penalty sought, retracted or imposed depends a great deal on where that defendant is prosecuted and tried, they concluded. In many counties of Pennsylvania, the death penalty is simply not utilized at all. In others, it is sought frequently.... Researchers with Penn State's Justice Center for Research said there was no overall pattern of disparity by prosecutors in seeking the death penalty against black or Hispanic defendants, but did detect a Hispanic victim effect in which prosecutors were 21 percent more likely to seek death when the victim was Hispanic. Black and Hispanic defendants who killed white victims were not more likely than a typical defendant to get a death sentence. In nearly a quarter of all cases, defense lawyers did not present a single mitigating factor to push back against the aggravating factors that must be proven in order to justify a death sentence.... With the exception of Philadelphia, which has a unique system for providing lawyers to those who can't afford them, defendants represented by public defenders were more likely to get a death sentence than those with privately retained lawyers. Unlike studies in some other states, the researchers said there was no clear indication that defendants with private attorneys  as opposed to court-appointed counsel  were more likely to get a plea deal with prosecutors that avoided a death sentence.

Notably, the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association released on Monday this press release about the report titled "PA Report Refutes Death Penalty Myths." Here is how it starts:

A study on capital punishment decisions in Pennsylvania found there is no racial bias in prosecutors decisions or in defendants who receive death penalty sentences. The findings of the report are in direct contrast to the racial-bias narrative pushed for years by anti-death penalty advocates and are important new facts any discussion about capital punishment must recognize. This reports conclusion is clear: capital punishment in Pennsylvania is not disproportionately targeted against defendants of color, said PDAA President and Berks County District Attorney John Adams. For so long, those who have sought to abolish the death penalty have argued that the race of the defendant plays the critical role in decisions about who gets the death penalty. This report squarely debunks that theory. The report, prepared by Penn State University researchers for the Pennsylvania Interbranch Commission for Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness, has not yet been made public but was provided by an unknown source to the Associated Press. In it, the report clearly states that [n]o pattern of disparity to the disadvantage of Black or Hispanic defendants was found in prosecutorial decisions to seek and, if sought, to retract the death penalty. Similarly, according to the report, [n]o pattern of disparity to the disadvantage of Black defendants with White victims was found in prosecutorial decisions to seek or to retract the death penalty.

October 23, 2017 at 11:57 PM | Permalink

Comments

The does flag a possible regional bias issue.

As to the race disparity, if the specific situation in Pennsylvania is positive, that would be appreciated. Would like to see a reply from those defense attorneys and the like. Also, there is this from the article:

The study noted that blacks make up about 12 percent of the Pennsylvania population, yet they make up more than half of those sentenced to death.

Wolf has said he was concerned about what he called a flawed system that has been proven to be an endless cycle of court proceedings as well as ineffective, unjust, and expensive.

Researchers with Penn State's Justice Center for Research said there was no overall pattern of disparity by prosecutors in seeking the death penalty against black or Hispanic defendants, but did detect a Hispanic victim effect in which prosecutors were 21 percent more likely to seek death when the victim was Hispanic.

So, the report cites various possible problems [going by the summary] and even the summary flags a possible racial effect of some sort. Of course, we are going by a summary based on a leaked report, so final conclusions should be hedged.

Posted by: Joe | Oct 24, 2017 2:48:33 PM

Isn't the sentence written into the criminal statute, so if you're found guilty of violating the statute, you get the death penalty?

Unless the judge and/or jury can deal out sentences discretionarily rather than by statute, you'd expect men and women to get the death penalty at the same rate, whites and blacks to get it at the same rate, etc.

Posted by: discretionary sentencing is bigotry | Oct 24, 2017 2:55:30 PM

The self evident remedy to condemn more blacks who kill blacks to death.

Posted by: David Behar | Oct 24, 2017 3:07:37 PM

hahahahahahahaah!!!!!!!!!



Posted by: Claudio Giusti | Oct 24, 2017 3:22:50 PM

"Isn't the sentence written into the criminal statute, so if you're found guilty of violating the statute, you get the death penalty?"

Juries have discretion. https://law.justia.com/codes/pennsylvania/2015/title-42/chapter-97/section-9711/

As usual, their is discretion in the front end, when prosecutors determine what to charge.

Posted by: Joe | Oct 24, 2017 4:38:17 PM

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KRON 4 reports that a dentist's office in San Francisco was targeted by some vandals, who painted a racist slur and a swastika on the office's window.

According to the report, the graffiti was composed of a swastika, the n-word, and then the word "die." The office belongs to Dr. Jeff Cox, who told KRON 4 that he's the first African-American dentist to set up an office in the city's financial district. The graffiti was first spotted by employees of the office, who took a photo and quickly washed it off. When asked how he felt about the graffiti, Dr. Cox said, "Its stunning at first. Its a little bit of a shock because you feel its not necessarily a San Francisco type of thing that you would see."

Given this past year, though, it seems all bets are off as to what "a San Francisco type of thing" might be these days. You'll remember late last year, shortly after the election, a man was arrested for spray painting a racial epithet and symbol on the outer wall of a business in Bayview. Shortly before that there was also the Dolores Heights homeowner who flew a Nazi flag over his home as "a comment" on the Trump victory. Or, over in the East Bay, ahead of the so-called "Free Speech Week" demonstration at UC Berkeley, part of the campus was covered in anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion, anti-immigration chalk graffiti. On top of that, there's also the Temple Sinai in Oakland, which was tagged with anti-Semitic graffiti after a Rosh Hashanah celebration in September.

In Alameda, swastika flyers began popping up in August, targeting the area's Muslim community. At the same time, there were reports of vandalism at one Alameda synagogue, Temple Israel. Rabbi Steven Chester later commented on the vandalism, saying that neither he nor his congregation were scared of the potential threat underlying the acts.

Dr. Cox shares in that sentiment, as he explained to KRON 4, "I dont take it personally and it doesnt anger me. Very disappointing though that there are people like that. The bigots are becoming emboldened in todays society and frankly I feel a little sorry for whoever would use such a vile word with little regard for the beautiful diversity of humanity."

Related: Hackers On Twitter Send Out Swastikas From Major Accounts Like UNICEF, BBC, British Parliament
According to a Facebook fan who sent me this photo, the person who was caught using @SFBART as a public  has struck again. pic.twitter.com/jQgYJvCU5K  Stanley Roberts (@SRobertsKRON4) October 20, 2017

Faithful newshounds might recall last month's tale of a seemingly troubled woman who repeatedly used BART's trains as restrooms. We now have an update, it seems, as BART has announced they've nabbed the alleged culprit.

Back in September commuter Allen Nunley went to BART with video he captured of the woman copping a squat as she rode the train, but after no response from the transit agency he took his video to the media, saying As BART riders, we pay a lot of money to ride BART, and its just really ridiculous that BART staff cannot do anything about that."

"Everyone on the train is just covering their mouths and everything. They just cant deal with it either. This particular time I just had enough.

Nunley is likely pleased, then, to hear that BART staff has done something: According to KRON 4, the woman was arrested by BART police Friday, after yet another rider posted photos of the suspect as she went about her business.

This time, it was BART rider Susan Greenlee Edwards who caught the suspect on camera "after watching her urinate at around 5:53 a.m. on the Pittsburg-Bay line heading into San Francisco." She sent the photos to KRON 4's Stanley Roberts, who posted them to Facebook and Twitter.

It was shortly after that that BART says they arrested the woman, taking her "into custody for a no-bail warrant."

But while BART tweeted happily regarding the catch...

This is an example of how our riders can help us keep BART safe and clean! BPD was alerted and responded. Great team work.  SFBART (@SFBART) October 20, 2017

...it turns out the arrest us un-pee-related. Instead, Roberts reports, she was arrested by BART police for "active warrants" including the no-bail one, which was for "fire related crimes."

She also had "methamphetamine products" on her person, BART spokesperson Alicia Trott (who, interestingly, says the situation only came to BART's attention "about a week ago" despite a September report on the woman's alleged behavior) says.

But since the suspect wasn't ticketed for her alleged bathroom behavior  according to Roberts, despite the ample photographic evidence BART cops won't ticket her unless they see her dropping a load in person or riders make a "citizen's arrest"  she won't be banned from the system. That means that when she's released from jail, there's nothing stopping preventing her future pit stops on one of the transit agency's trains.

Previously: Outraged Commuter Records BART Rider Using Train As Restroom
You are unlikely to enjoy any television advertisement you see today as much as you will the one-minute spot seen above, an advertisement coming to a TV commercial break near you and unapologetically calling for the immediate impeachment of President Donald Trump. According to the Associated Press, the ads are financed by cigarette tax advocate, climate activist, and Democratic megadonor Tom Steyer, the host of the 2013 fundraiser at which Barack Obama declared Kamala Harris to be attractive. Details of the ads channels and run dates were not announced in the report, but the AP describes it as a national television advertising campaign in which Steyer will invest at least $10 million.

A Republican Congress once impeached a President for far less, a stern Steyer says, looking earnestly into the camera in the ad. Yet today, people in Congress and his own administration know that this president is a clear and present danger who is mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons. And they do nothing.

Steyers front-and-center presence in the ad is probably no accident. The AP also notes that his investment comes as he considers running against U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a fellow Democrat, in the 2018 U.S. Senate race for DiFis seat. Perhaps Steyer is who Willie Brown was referring to in his latest San Francisco Chronicle homily wherein he claimed that Feinsteins list of possible 2018 opponents included dark horses "wealthy enough to mount a sustained negative campaign." (Steyers net worth is listed as $1.6 billion.)

Unsurprisingly, Republicans are dismissive of the impeachment ads. If Democrats want to appease the far left and their liberal mega-donors by supporting a baseless, radical effort that the vast majority of Americans disagree with, then have at it, Republican National Committee spokesperson Michael Ahrens told the AP.

Houston-area representative Al Green (D) does not wish to stay together with Trump, and did introduce articles of impeachment in early October. But a vote is not scheduled, and the resolution is considered symbolic. Lets be honest, a Republican congress will not impeach Trump no matter how often he goes full racist or insults them on Twitter. Trump can be impeached, alright, but not unless the Congress turns Democratic in 2018.

And to Tom Steyer, those 2018 elections are what these ads are likely really all about.

Related: Bay Bridge Gets New Billboard Calling For Donald Trump's Impeachment


Former SF Startup CEO Zain Jaffer is facing multiple crimes including Child Abuse, sexual assault on a minor and Battery on a Police Officer pic.twitter.com/TMvqFfZBrA  Sergio Quintana (@svqjournalist) October 21, 2017

Zain Jaffer, now-former CEO of Vungle, a San Francisco-based video ad platform, was arrested late last week, as prosecutors charged him with sexually abusing and assaulting his 3-year-old-son, writes the Chron. Jaffer was removed from his position as CEO of Vungle last week as well, shortly following news of his arrest.

According to San Mateo County's inmate lookup system, Jaffer is specifically being charged with the following: assault with a deadly weapon, child abuse, battery upon an officer and emergency personnel, lewd act upon a child, and oral copulation of a person under 14. The Chron also says that Jaffer was also initially charged with attempted murder, but prosecutors dropped that charge as they believe there isn't sufficient evidence to prove his intent to kill, according to San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe. Per VentureBeat, Wagstaffe also said that the battery charge stems from Jaffer resisting arrest.

A spokesperson from Vungle spoke with VentureBeat, emphasizing that the company has already dismissed Jaffer. They said, "While we do not have any information that is not in the public record at this point, these are extremely serious allegations, and we are shocked beyond words. While these are only preliminary charges, they are obviously so serious that it led to the immediate removal of Mr. Jaffer from any operational responsibility at the company. The company stressed that this matter has nothing to do with Mr. Jaffers former role at the company." Additionally, Jaffer's attorney, David Olmos, said that his client will be pleading not guilty, and that he has no public statement to issue at this time.

Forbes' report on the arrest says that it was allegedly Jaffer's father who called the police to his home in Hillsborough. Wagstaffe tells them that when the officers arrived, they allegedly found Jaffer "engaged in the illegal contact with the minors."

You can read Vungle's full statement below, which they shared in a tweet.

Related: Recent SF Startup Staffer Busted For Child Porn Possession, Distribution
SFPD says female driver who struck two boys this am on Bay St.- charged with DUI. #abc7now pic.twitter.com/up7S4yq8Vu  Cbarnard (@CornellBarnard) November 4, 2015

It's been nearly two years since a San Francisco debutante allegedly mowed down two kids in a Marina crosswalk as she drove her SUV while allegedly under the influence. But other than a brief booking the day of the crash, the suspect hasn't spent a day in jail, continuing to plead not guilty as the case makes its slow way to trial.

A refresher, for those of you who'd forgotten the case: It was 8:30 a.m. on November 4 of 2015 when witnesses say that then-30-year-old Sea Cliff resident Kirsten Andereck struck two Marina Middle School 7th graders who were walking in the crosswalk at Bay and Buchanan Streets.

According to police reports that the time, an ice cream delivery truck had stopped in the westbound lane of Bay Street to allow 12-year-olds Peter Nguyen and Julian Melendez to cross. Witnesses say that Kirsten Andereck instead passed the truck on the left and struck the kids with her white Volkswagen Tiguan SUV.

The collision was hard enough, ABC 7 reported at the time, that "the boys were launched into the air by the impact, thrown across the intersection. Their backpack, clothes, and shoes left scattered in the street."

Andereck, who'd graduated from St. Ignatius College Preparatory in 2001, was a debutante at a Cotillion event hosted by the Cotillion Club of San Francisco in 2004. She was most recently employed as a teacher at several kindergarten and elementary schools in the city, and has a masters degree in bilingual education from the University of San Francisco.

Her parents are Helga Andereck and Dr. William Andereck, who at the time of his daughter's arrest was an internist and the medical director of California Pacific Medical Centers Program in Medicine and Human Values.

She was arrested at the scene on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, police said at the time.

The next day, Andereck was released on $230,000 bail, after being charged with two felony drunk-driving counts, with one of those regarding the causation of great bodily injury, as well as two counts of child endangerment with enhancements of allegations of great bodily injury. She pled "not guilty" on November 10, represented at the time by two private defense attorneys: V. Roy Lefcourt (a defense attorney featured in this 1998 SF Weekly cover story on gang homicides) and Betsy Wolkin (perhaps best known as Ross Mirkarimi's defense lawyer during his domestic violence case).

This has been an exceptionally emotional time for Andereck, Lefcourt said following her appearance in court to enter her not guilty plea. According to media reports at the time, Andereck was in fact so distraught by the case that she's "had to be hospitalized the last few days," Lefcourt said.

Meanwhile, the kids were also being hospitalized, in their cases for broken bones and "traumatic injuries," an attorney for their family said. They had both returned to school by August of 2016, when their families announced a civil lawsuit against both Andereck and the city of San Francisco, as they say safety improvements to the intersection might have prevented the collision.

And that brings us to today, where the wheels of justice continue to turn. A look at court records shows that the civil suit brought by the victims against Andereck and SF continues, the most recent filings made on October 12 of this year.

But what of the criminal case, tweeted so openly by the District Attorney's office when charges were filed? That, too, winds on, as DA's spokesperson Max Szabo tells SFist that Andereck's next appearance in court is November 16 (it's case number 15024617, to be called at 9 a.m. in Department 23 at the 850 Bryant courthouse, the court website says).

But that appearance is just a hearing, Szabo says. He confirms that Andereck "hasnt changed her plea" to any of the charges, which means that unless a plea deal is reached, a trial is inevitable. When asked about a possible trial date, however, Szabo said regretfully that he had no details on timing of a "final outcome," meaning that we might expect this case to drag on for some time to come.

Previously: Families Of Boys Struck By Alleged Drunk Driving Debutante Sue Driver, San Francisco
The national spotlight returns to San Francisco and the trial of an undocumented immigrant that became a flashpoint in the debate over immigration and sanctuary city policies. Monday was the first official day in court for Jose Inez Garcia Zarate, following two years in which he was arraigned and faced preliminary hearings, and following months in which prosecutors and public defenders faced off over the admissibility of various details in the case. As the New York Times and others have reported, Day One in the trial of the murder of 32-year-old Kate Steinle was a dramatic one, featuring the outlines of the competing narratives most of us already know  the prosecution says that Garcia Zarate set out intent on killing someone on July 1, 2015, while the defense says that he had only just found the gun moments before the shooting, and that it went off accidentally, and Steinle was killed by a ricocheting bullet.

The Associated Press reports on the emotional testimony of Steinle's father, Jim Steinle, the prosecution's first witness and one of the last people to see his daughter alive. Steinle had been with his daughter on Pier 14, standing beside her, when he says he heard "a loud 'bang,' and his daughter collapsed in his arms, saying 'help me, Dad.'" He told the court Monday, per the AP, that he didn't know what had happened as his daughter fell to the ground and suddenly had difficulty breathing. "I couldnt figure out what was wrong," Mr. Steinle said, tearfully. "She didnt have any health problems." He wouldn't realize what had happened until he rolled her over and lifted her shirt to find a small bullet wound.

Garcia Zarate was arrested soon after, and has admitted from to firing the gun since one of his earliest interviews with police, however he says that it went off accidentally. Key to the defense's case will be expert testimony about the gun itself, a .40 caliber SIG Sauer P329, which is said to have a hair trigger. Garcia Zarate says he found the gun under a bench near the pier, wrapped in a t-shirt. Immediately after Steinle was shot, Garcia Zarate tossed the gun into the Bay.

Deputy District Attorney Diana Garcia began her opening statement showing off the gun, per the AP, saying, "Its a very reliable, high-quality gun. Its one that wont go off on accident."

As we heard last week as jury selection was being completed, Judge Samuel K. Feng is doing all he can to keep politics out of the courtroom for the duration of the trial, forbidding discussion either of the immigration debate or gun control, though keeping these topics out of jurors' minds seems like an impossibility.

The gun, we know, was stolen from the vehicle of a federal Bureau of Land Management agent, John Woychowski, who after some debate will included among the witnesses for the defense.

As ABC 7 reports, Jim Steinle is expected back on the witness stand today, Tuesday, as the trial resumes at 10 a.m.



All previous coverage of the Kate Steinle shooting on SFist.
A new UC Berkeley study has shown that gun violence in certain areas of California spike immediately following the opening of a gun show in Nevada. For about two weeks following a Nevada gun show, the occurrence of gun-related injuries and deaths sees an increase of up to 70% in towns "within convenient driving distance" of the border, says the study.

Researchers suspect that this has to do with Nevada's looser gun control laws, which, at the time of the study (2005-2013), didn't require background checks for "private sale" gun purchases. California requires background checks for all gun purchases made in the state, regardless of the type of sales. NBC Bay Area notes that since then, Nevada has passed a law requiring background checks for all sales, but it hasn't gone into effect quite yet. The study's lead author, Ellicott Matthay, wrote about the findings and their implications: "The study suggests that travel to less-restrictive states may threaten the effectiveness of firearm laws within California. When a less-restrictive is next to a state that is more restrictive, there may be spillover effects." Matthay continued: "Better understanding the long-term effects of gun show policies, and the patterns of acquisition and use of firearms, would provide important evidence to inform future efforts to prevent firearm injuries."

This study comes merely a few weeks after terrorist Stephen Paddock opened fire on Las Vegas concertgoers, killing 59 people and injuring 527 others. A few of his firearms were legally acquired, according to NBC News, who spoke to employees at two Nevada gun shops, where they attest that he passed the required background checks when he purchased weaponry them. It's unconfirmed whether the guns he purchased from those Nevada shops were used in the mass shooting, or if they were from the other gun shops he patronized  New Frontier Armory in North Las Vegas and Guns and Guitars in Mesquite, writes NBC News.

Last year, Governor Jerry Brown signed six gun reform bills into law, tightening restrictions and outright banning the sale of certain weapons in California. But just before the holiday, right before the laws were scheduled to take effect, the state saw a spike in the sale of semi-automatic rifles, with 364,643 rifles sold, as compared to the 153,931 in 2015.

What's clear is that while state law can only do so much, that doesn't reduce or eliminate the importance of having those laws in the first place. The LA Times spoke with Drs. Ali Rowhani-Rahbar and Frederick Rivara, who are both pediatricians and epidemiologists at the University of Washington, Seattle. They told them, "Laws regulating access to guns matter and do make a difference." Without federal law controlling the sale of guns, California's regulations could easily be circumvented. "It does not reduce the importance of the laws but does reduce their impact."

Related: Facebook Engineer Fights For Gun Groups After Company Bans Sales Between Users
Just days after an Uber driver was shot at the entrance to Pacific Heights' Lafayette Park, a second shooting has occurred in the area  this time during an early-morning mugging attempt.

"This is an unusual occurrence for this neighborhood, certainly," San Francisco Police Department Lieutenant Amy Hurvitz told ABC 7 Saturday, after the driver of an Uber was shot by two suspects at Laguna and Clay Streets, near the entrance to the 11.49 acre park. But it appears the occurrence is swiftly becoming more usual, as police say a man described only as in his mid-20s shot another man as he crossed the park at 2:15 this morning.

According to the SFPD, the 20-year-old victim "was walking in the park" when one of the suspects approached him "on foot and asked to use his phone." When the victim pulled out his mobile device, the suspect attempted to snatch it and a struggle ensued.

Over the course of the struggle, police say the suspect "pulled out a gun." Seeing that, the victim turned to flee, as the suspect fired at him, striking the victim at least once.

The victim was transported to San Francisco General Hospital for injuries police say are not life-threatening. The suspect remains at large, police say, and as with the Uber shooting, no arrests have been made in the case.

Related: Uber Drivers Shot In Pacific Heights, On 380 Near SFO
An allegedly violent shoplifting team was taken into custody Sunday, after a showdown at one of San Francisco's most troubled Safeway grocery stores.

According to the San Francisco Police Department, officers were called to a business on the 800 block of La Playa Street at 3:15 p.m. Sunday on reports of a disturbance.

There's only one business on that block  the Safeway grocery store, located at 850 La Playa Street, also known as one of the city's "Sketchiest Safeways," and adjacent to a violent mugging this past August.

This time, the issue was inside the establishment, police say, as two 32-year-old men "stole merchandise from store." When the suspects were confronted by a 24-year-old male store security guard, they hit him with a chain, leaving him injured.

Officers with the SFPD were already on the way, however, and arrested the crime team on the spot. The guard was determined to have suffered injuries that are not considered life-threatening, and is expected to recover.

Related: SF's Sketchiest Safeways, Ranked
SIOUX CITY | Two California residents were arrested Tuesday on charges related to two recent burglaries in Sioux City.

Police believe Jerardo Ceja, 30, and Marianne Wiseman, 45, are also involved in a number of other burglaries throughout the Midwest.

Early Tuesday, Sioux City Police responded to a commercial alarm at the Half Moon Bar and Grill, 714 South Lewis Blvd., where a forced entry was discovered and items were removed. No suspects were located.

Three hours later at 10:33 a.m., police were called to a burglary in progress at Jim's Lounge, 4505 Stone Ave., and Ceja and Wiseman were apprehended.

Investigators believe the two are connected with numerous other burglaries throughout out the Midwest.

Police ask if you have additional information on these alleged crimes or any other crimes call 712-258-TIPS.
SIOUX CITY | The city of Sioux City has sued an engineering firm, claiming the company's actions cost the city a $200,000 state grant for a street construction project.

The city says that Olsson Engineering, of South Sioux City, did not notify potential bidders of an Iowa Department of Transportation requirement to make efforts to utilize small businesses owned by women, minorities or people with disabilities as contractors. Because that information was not included in bid packages, the IDOT pulled its commitment for the grant, forcing the city to pay the $200,000 from its own funds.

In a response to the lawsuit, Olsson denies that bidding services were among the firm's duties included in its agreement with the city.

The suit, initially filed in September in Woodbury County District Court, was moved to U.S. District Court in Sioux City upon Olsson's request earlier this month.

According to the suit, the city signed an agreement with Olsson for $48,700 in April 2013 for engineering and consulting services on a project to improve the intersection of War Eagle Drive and Iowa Highway 12, more commonly known as Riverside Boulevard.

The city, the suit said, had previously secured an agreement with the IDOT to receive grant funding for the project under the Urban-State Traffic Engineering Program, or U-STEP. As a condition of receiving grant funds, the city was required to make efforts to solicit bids from or use the services of Targeted Small Businesses, those owned by women, minorities or disabled persons.

In its agreement with Olsson, the city asked the firm to serve as the city engineer in the project because the city engineer position was vacant at the time. When preparing and distributing the bidding packages for the intersection project, Olsson didn't inform potential bidders of the IDOT's small business requirements, the suit said.

In December 2013, the city awarded the bid for the project to Knife River Midwest for $559,469. When the city submitted the winning bid package and contract to the IDOT, it did not include small business information, so the IDOT didn't award the city U-STEP grant funding.

The city claims that Olsson was in breach of contract and failed to perform its duties because the firm didn't include the required documents in the bidding packages.

In its response, Olsson admitted that the required documents were not included in the bidding packages, but city representatives who would have been aware of the IDOT requirements reviewed the packages before they were sent to potential bidders and did not insert them. The city was responsible for including the required documents, and Olsson should not be held responsible for the city's omission, the firm said.
The incident occurred at 2:26 a.m. Monday in the 1500 block of Hamilton Boulevard.

Sioux City Police Sgt. Jim Cunningham said police believe shots were fired into a car, and one unidentified person was struck with a bullet. Cunningham did not have information on the condition or status of the victim.
OMAHA | A Walthill, Nebraska, man was sentenced Monday to more than two years in federal prison for failing to register as a sex offender.

Newton Dale, 31, must serve 30 months in prison after being convicted of the charge in U.S. District Court in Omaha.

Dale was convicted of statutory rape on the Omaha Indian Reservation in 2013, and when he began his supervised release earlier this year, he was required to register as a sex offender. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, Dale maintained residences on the Omaha Indian Reservation and in Norfolk, Nebraska, but did not register as a sex offender with authorities in either location.
SIOUX CITY | The Sioux City School District is adding six reading/math interventionists to boost the Reading Intervention Program for lower-performing readers.

The Sioux City School Board approved the six hires in a Monday board meeting. The board also is continuing to offer some reading software, in which students not using the interventionists can, on their own, get reading curriculum help in nine schools.

District administrator Brian Burnight said data from this year shows students who work with both reading/math interventionists and the Lexia Core software program experienced improved reading levels. Burnight added that 71 percent of district teachers who responded to a survey said the reading interventionists met the needs of students.

Currently, 890 students in the district receive daily instruction from the existing 32 interventionists. Burnight said roughly 180 more students could be served by the six incoming people.

The school district will use Title I funding from the federal government to pay for the additions. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act provides financial assistance to schools with high numbers of children from low-income families, so all children can meet challenging state academic standards.

"We decided to focus those dollars on elementary schools...so we are getting the biggest bang for our buck," district Superintendent Paul Gausman said.

The district in the 2017-18 year is receiving $4.2 million in federal money for Title I. The addition of the six interventionists will bring the total of those variety of workers in the school district to 38, who will be paid a combined $2.4 million.

Burnight said the interventionists primarily spend most of the day on reading, "but occasionally there is some support for math as well."

He said some lower functioning pupils may not get one year of reading growth in one school year, but the help may click for them in a subsequent year to boost reading in a substantial way.

The school district will aim to make the new hires in November.
SERGEANT BLUFF | Danielle Dempster, 42, loves the trails surrounding her Sergeant Bluff home.

The wife and mother of two is able to keep off the 85 pounds she recently lost by walking these trails every day.

The winding roads also represent the unusual path Dempster's life took once she enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1997.

"Growing up, I never once considered joining the military," the Mansfield, Ohio, native remembered. "I was a 22-year-old music student who had dropped out of college, was working at Walmart, and could barely pay my rent most months.

"In other words, I had no degree, no marketable skills and was living a life in which I was merely going through the motions," Dempster said. "Enlisting in the U.S. Army was my Plan B."

At boot camp, Dempster realized she had made the right decision.

"Most people hated boot camp but I loved the structure of it," she said. "I gained 20 pounds of muscle from eight weeks of boot camp."

However, Dempster hesitates when people ask where she was stationed.

"I served the U.S. Army Signal Corps as a 31F (Network Switching Systems Operator/Maintainer) in Honolulu, Hawaii," she said. "Was I living and working in the one of the most beautiful places in the world? Yes, but we still felt isolated."

During her stint, Dempster began experiencing severe problems with her knees. She was granted an "early out," and received a medical discharge from the U.S. Army.

"I felt guilty because I didn't finish my two-year enlistment," she said. "I felt guilty for a long time."

Following her honorable discharge in 1999, Dempster enrolled at Morningside College. In 2002, she graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in human resources management.

"Throughout college, I worked for Iowa Workforce Development, helping U.S. veterans gain employment after their military service," she explained.

This experience came in handy when Dempster became a county veteran service officer for the Woodbury County Commission of Veteran Affairs. She has been the organization's executive director since 2010.

From offices located at 1211 Triview Ave., she works with service people who can range in age from 18 to 95.

"Our job is to help veterans understand what benefits they're entitled to and how to fill out paperwork to get the benefits," she said.

Through this work, Dempster discovered her true passion.

"When I was young, I felt my life was drifting away from me," she said. "Serving in the U.S. Army took me out of my comfort zone and allowed me to experience life in a more meaningful way."

Despite not finishing her enlistment, Dempster no longer feels guilty.
DES MOINES  Gov. Kim Reynolds said Monday she would prefer to avoid cuts to K-12 education and commitments for local property tax relief if she and the Republican-run Legislature have to look at trimming spending this fiscal year due to continued weakness in the states revenue growth.

Weve made a promise to them (K-12 schools) and theyve built their budgets on that so I think we have to honor that commitment, Reynolds said in an interview after Mondays Iowa Executive Council meeting.

Likewise, she said, cities, counties and school districts have built their current year budgets on the states commitment to fill in the projected loss of revenue tied to 2013 legislation that reduced commercial property tax rates and made other tax adjustments.

The possibility of a new round of belt-tightening for the budget year that ends June 30 was raised last week when a panel that estimates the amount of tax revenue the state will collect in fiscal years 2018 and 2019 pared back expectations by $133 million.

A revised fiscal analysis issued by the Legislative Services Agency said the downward revenue growth projections, coupled with other adjustments, would erase a $98 million ending balance the Legislature and governor approved in their $7.26 billion budget and would create a potential shortfall of $34.6 million for fiscal 2018.

Its a snapshot in time, said Reynolds, who noted there remains a lot of volatility in the numbers given the continued weakness in the farm economy and uncertainty over a number of national and international issues. She said her administration plans to monitor state finances, especially fluctuations in Medicaid costs.

In the meantime, the governor said she wants to address barriers she said are a drag on the states economy, such as a shortage of skilled workers to fill vacant positions and an income tax structure impeding business growth.

Hopefully, we can continue to look for opportunities to grow the economy, she said. That is what we ultimately have to do and that will help solve a lot of the problems.

The state Revenue Estimating Conference is slated to meet again in December to revisit the projections and set a fiscal 2019 revenue estimate that will be the level the governor and Legislature will use for budgeting purposes during the 2018 session. Initially, the panel expects the state to take in $7.349 billion in fiscal 2019, which would be a 4.1 percent increase of $298.8 million.
DES MOINES  Thousands of Iowans face paying significantly more for their individual health insurance premiums  or going without coverage  after a state effort to win federal waivers of some Affordable Care Act provisions to prop up Iowas collapsing marketplace ended Monday.

Iowa Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen and Gov. Kim Reynolds called a Statehouse news conference to announce that Iowa was withdrawing its stopgap proposal  first made in June  to stabilize the individual market in part by attracting healthy Iowans needed to temper rate increases.

We were doing something no state had tried to do, Ommen said. The health law popularly known as Obamacare has caused our market here in Iowa to collapse, and unfortunately now its inflexibility is preventing us from picking ourselves up and making the adjustments that are needed in order to attract healthy people back in.

Ommen said Iowa offered an innovative approach, but Reynolds said Obamacare provisions proved too inflexible to overcome.

Im extremely disappointed, said Reynolds, who added that Trump administration officials gave Iowa a fair hearing.

It came down to the law. As its written, it just does not afford the flexibility that we need to be creative, she said. The bottom line is we need Congress to do their job. They need to act and they need to act sooner rather than later.

In a statement, U.S. Sen, Chuck Grassley joined his fellow Republican in asking for Congress to try again.

As written, the law hamstrings the administrations ability to help Iowa, Grassley said. I hope Congress will act soon to repeal and replace this unworkable and unaffordable law.

However, the news also comes about two weeks after the Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump personally called the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services in August to direct that Iowas application be denied, as one of several actions he has taken to unravel the health insurance law.

Iowas withdrawal comes only a week before this years enrollment period opens Nov. 1 and despite the state insurance divisions warning that without the plan, 22,000 Iowans will drop out of the market.

Ommen said the Trump administration informed the state last week it was still several weeks away from determining how much federal funding the state might receive, a key part of the proposal.

Mondays announcement means that Minnesota-based Medica will be the only statewide insurer in the Affordable Care Act marketplace in Iowa for 2018.

Medica said its premium rates would go up an average of 57 percent in 2018, partly because Trump also has ended cost-sharing subsidies to the insurance companies that held rates down.

State officials had complained that large of an increase would significantly hurt people who dont buy on the marketplace or dont qualify for federal tax credits.

We certainly understand the states desire to improve the individual market in Iowa, and we are appreciative of being a part of those discussions, said Larry Bussey, Medicas communications director. While this is not the preferred outcome for the state of Iowa, we want consumers to know that Medica is ready.

Bussey said consumers who previously purchased coverage through healthcare.gov will receive information from the government and Medica over the next week explaining options.

We strongly encourage consumers to see if they qualify for a premium subsidy that could dramatically reduce costs for those found to be eligible, he said.

Reynolds said the lack of the waiver will hit farmers, self-employed Iowans, early retirees and others who rely on individual insurance coverage. She said the state continues to explore short-term options to help Iowans get some type of affordable health-insurance coverage, but most require waivers.

Newly installed state Senate Democratic Leader Janet Petersen of Des Moines said Democrats are ready to work with Reynolds to find a workable, bipartisan solution. But, so far, she said, Republicans have done everything possible to undermine Obamacare.

But Republican Party of Iowa spokesman Carlos Cruz said the blame falls to the failure of Obamacare  and he applauded Reynolds and Ommen for trying.

State Sen. David Johnson, an Ocheyedan independent, said the situation calls for presidential leadership but the current approach appears to be to allow Obamacare to fail in hopes the GOP-led Congress will replace it.

I dont believe thats a winning strategy  that failure leads to success, Johnson said.
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.
ANNAPOLIS

(Oct. 23, 2017)Governor Larry Hogan today announced he has directed 100 soldiers from the Maryland National Guard to deploy to the U.S. Virgin Islands to assist with ongoing recovery efforts from Hurricane Irma, at the request of Governor Kenneth Mapp. Soldiers from the 200th Military Police Company from Catonsville will be deployed for potentially 30 days to assist with local law enforcement and guarding critical infrastructure as the island works to rebuild from the widespread devastation caused by the hurricane in early September."The recovery efforts in the Caribbean will be lengthy due to the level of destruction caused by the recent hurricanes, and Maryland is proud to help our neighbors and friends in their time of need," said Governor Hogan. "We are incredibly grateful to the dedicated men and women of the Maryland National Guard for their selfless servicethey truly represent the very best of our great state."Last week, Governor Hogan authorized members of the Maryland National Guard's 729th Quartermaster Composite Supply Company to assist in the water purification efforts in Puerto Rico. Fresh water has been in critically short supply in Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria made landfall on September 20th. The National Guard members are assigned with converting hazardous water into water that is safe for drinking, cooking, and hygiene by using two tactical systems capable of purifying 1,200 gallons of water per hour.Maryland is providing this support in accordance with the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC). EMAC is a national mutual aid and partnership agreement that allows state-to-state assistance during governor- or federally-declared state of emergencies. Maryland Emergency Management Agency coordinates the request from the states and territories with the state agency that has the resources in Maryland that can respond.The Maryland National Guard has deployed thousands of soldiers and airmen for overseas contingency missions and here at home for natural disasters. The Maryland National Guard has supported the state during every Maryland state emergency and with authorization can provide assistance to other states and U.S. territories during moments of crisis. Currently, the Maryland National Guard has more than 400 members serving overseas in the Middle East and Africa.Governor Hogan established Maryland Call to Action: Relief & Recovery , a website with information about what Maryland is doing and how Maryland citizens can assist with hurricane relief and recovery efforts. For more information, please visit governor.maryland.gov/relief-and-recovery/
Carlos Deangelo Bell of Waldorf, Md.

LA PLATA, Md.

(Oct. 23, 2017)Tony Covington, State's Attorney for Charles County, Maryland, in conjunction with Charles County Sheriff Troy Berry and Superintendent of Charles County Public Schools Dr. Kimberly Hill, advises that on Friday, October 20, 2017, the Grand Jury for Charles County returned a 206 count indictment for Carlos Deangelo Bell of Waldorf. This third indictment against Bell includes the previous allegations found in two prior indictments filed on June 30, 2017 and July 28, 2017, as well as charges for additional victims uncovered during the ongoing investigation.The 206 count indictment covers 28 identified alleged victims and 14 unidentified alleged victims. The time frame of the alleged conduct spans approximately 2 years from May of 2015 through June of 2017. The ages of the alleged victims at the time the offenses were committed range from 11 years old to 17 years old.In open Court today, Bell was served with this latest indictment and served with the State's notice that, if he is convicted of certain crimes alleged in the indictment, the State will be seeking a life sentence. Bell is still being held without bond. Trial on these charges is scheduled for January 8, 2018.At this time, the State is not aware of any alleged victim having tested positive for human immunodeficiency virus. Previous reporting to the contrary made by certain media outlets was inaccurate.The investigation into Carlos Bell's activities is still ongoing. The Sheriff's Office continues the effort to identify any and all alleged victims in this matter. The State's Attorney's Office strongly encourages parents/guardians to speak with any child that may have had contact with Carlos Bell and immediately report any relevant information to the Sheriff's Office.The following is a table summarizing the latest indictment. The table lists the 11 categories of crimes charged, how many counts for each category of crime and the maximum penalty for each category of crime.Sexual Abuse of a Minor; 22 counts; up to 25 yearsSecond Degree Sex OffenseForce; 19 counts; up to 20 yearsSecond Degree Sex OffencesAge; 19 counts; up to 20 yearsThird Degree Sex Offense; 7 counts; up to 10 yearsSecond Degree Assault; 3 counts; up to 10 years and/or $2,500 fineChild PornographyFilming; 97 counts; up to 10 years and/or $25,000 fineSolicitation of a Minor; 6 counts; up to 10 years and/or $25,000 fineDisplaying Obscene Item to Minor; 13 counts; up to 1 year and/or $1,000 fineAttempted Transfer of HIV; 5 counts; up to 3 years and/or $2,500 fineContributing to Delinquency Minor; 8 counts; up to 3 years and/or $2,500 fineDistribution of Marijuana; 7 counts; up to 5 years and/or $15,000 fine
ANNAPOLIS (Oct. 24, 2017)Maryland Attorney General Brian E,. Frosh today announced that on August 25, Earnshaw Bros., Inc., a septic installation and maintenance company based in Bryantown, was found guilty of discharging a pollutant into the waters of the State for pumping approximately 400 gallons of mixed sewage and water from a residential sewage holding tank onto the ground near Flag Harbor. Calvert County District Court Judge Robin E. Riddle, sentenced the corporation to three years of probation and ordered a fine of $25,000, suspending all but $15,000 to be paid to the Maryland Clean Water Fund.



Under no circumstances may sewage be deposited directly onto the ground and instead must be disposed of by a licensed hauler at a licensed facility, according to state laws. Even diluted sewage contains bacteria that present both environmental and public health dangers.



Attorney General Frosh thanks Calvert County Health Department's Matthew Cumers and Maryland Department of the Environment's Don Hammerlund for their assistance in this case.
PRINCE FREDERICK, Md.

(Oct. 24, 2017)Transportation Secretary Pete K. Rahn today met with Calvert County officials to discuss the Draft FY 2018-2023 Consolidated Transportation Program (CTP), which details the Maryland Department of Transportation's (MDOT) draft six-year capital budget. Today's meeting was part of MDOT's annual tour of 23 Maryland counties and Baltimore City to update local officials and the public on the Hogan Administration's $14.7 billion investment over the next six years in transit, highways, Motor Vehicle Administration facilities, the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore and the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI Marshall). Officials also discussed the Maryland Transportation Authority's $2.6 billion additional investments in Maryland's toll roads and bridges."The annual CTP Tour lets us engage with our customers about their transportation priorities," said Secretary Rahn. "We actively dialogue with Marylanders throughout the year, and this lets us talk face-to-face with them about transportation issues that are important to us all."MDOT team members representing the agency's business units were: Transportation Secretary Rahn and State Legislative Officer Tom Curtin from The Secretary's Office; Administrator Greg Slater and District Engineer Corren Johnson from the MDOT State Highway Administration (MDOT SHA); Field Operations Director Rhashad Johnson from the MDOT Motor Vehicle Administration (MDOT MVA); Local Transit Support Deputy Director Jeannie Fazio from the MDOT Maryland Transit Administration (MDOT MTA); and Executive Director Kevin Reigrut from the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA).Secretary Rahn outlined key updates on the transportation investments. Statewide, there are 846 airport, highway, transit, port, bicycle, and motor vehicle construction projects underway with a value of $9 billion.In addition to these projects, Secretary Rahn announced funding for Calvert County's local priorities, including: $5.1 million in Highway User Revenues and grant dollars, which includes the additional $550,000 grant recently awarded by the Governor. He also discussed highway safety grants recently announced by Governor Hogan and administered through MDOT MVA, including $37,500 to the Calvert County Sheriff's Office and $5,100 to the Calvert County Alliance Against Substance Abuse. MDOT MTA makes a significant investment in Calvert County by providing $922,747 in operating and capital grants to support the local transit system. This funding includes replacement and enhancement of buses, ongoing preventative maintenance and supports the Rideshare program.Secretary Rahn also touted the latest records at the Port of Baltimore, including the port handling 10.1 million tons of general cargofrom autos and heavy machinery to containersin FY 2017. The port remains number one in the nation for autos and roll on/roll off machinery, and just one year after welcoming the first mega ship from the newly expanded Panama Canal, port container business is up 10 percent. He also highlighted key Calvert County companies count on the port to conduct business here in Maryland, including Dominion Cove Point, Play House Gallery, and Yesteryear Furnishings.At BWI Marshall, he highlighted steadily growing passenger traffic with new airlines and service to new domestic and international markets. In FY 2017, BWI Marshall set a new all-time annual record for passenger traffic with nearly 25.7 million passengers, and it has seen strong growth continue with 24-straight monthly passenger records through June.On the highway side, Secretary Rahn said that under Governor Hogan's leadership, Maryland is making record investments in highways and bridges. Of the 69 structurally deficient bridges the Hogan Administration identified in June 2015, 41 have been rehabilitated or replaced and are no longer structurally deficient. The remaining 28 are in various stages of design and actively moving toward construction or repair.Secretary Rahn also provided an update on important major projects and system preservation projects in Calvert County, where MDOT SHA is continuing work to replace the structurally deficient MD 261 Bridge over Fishing Creek. The $28 million project should be complete early spring 2019. Earlier this year, MDOT SHA completed a $4 million project on MD 231 and Church Street through Prince Frederick, including the addition of new sidewalk and the realignment of MD 231 at MD 765A to improve safety and reduce flooding. Next spring, MDOT SHA will start work on a $42 million widening project on MD 2/4 between Fox Run Boulevard and South Commerce Lane in Prince Frederick, including access to the county-sponsored Armory Square development. The project is anticipated to be complete by the end of 2020.At MDTA, Governor Hogan's toll rate reductions have saved Marylanders $122 million since 2015. Toll rate reductions will continue to save Maryland citizens and businesses approximately $54 million annually. With lower tolls, more people are using MDTA's toll facilities, driving up revenues higher than expected, allowing us to replace the Nice Bridge and study a new Bay Bridge crossing. A Tier 1 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) study of location and funding options for a third Chesapeake Bay crossing began in January 2017 and will take up to 48 months to complete. MDOT anticipates advertising a design-build contract for the new Nice Bridge in 2018, starting construction in 2020, and opening a new, wider, and safer bridge in 2023.Secretary Rahn also applauded Calvert County officials for crafting a Strategic Highway Safety Plan in order to save lives. The 522 roadway fatalities Maryland experienced in 2016 is unacceptable, and a highway safety plan would help target the most common causes of roadway fatalities in Maryland: impaired driving; speeding; not wearing seat belts; distracted driving; and not using crosswalks.Officials and residents met today in the Calvert County Courthouse in Prince Frederick. The tour launched September 25 in Queen Anne's County and will conclude November 13 in Harford County. Meetings are planned at various locations in all 23 Maryland counties and Baltimore City. For a complete list of dates, times, locations and directions, click here: ow.ly/lEDN30e8SF3. To view the draft CTP, visit: mdot.maryland.gov/newMDOT/Planning/CTP Each fall, MDOT presents its draft six-year capital program to every county and Baltimore City for review and comment. Following input from the 24 local jurisdictions, MDOT prepares a final budget to present to the General Assembly in January.
WASHINGTON (Oct. 24, 2017)As legislative and court battles rage over the question of whether transgender people are fit to serve in the military, two service members with ties to Maryland are at the heart of the fight.



Regan Kibby, a student at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, and Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Brock Stone, stationed at the U.S. Army's Fort George G. Meade in Maryland, are plaintiffs in two of the cases working their way through federal court.



After the July announcement by President Donald Trump that transgender people would no longer be allowed to serve in the military in any capacity, transgender individuals currently serving as well as prospective service members are left in limbo while the Department of Defense reviews the policy.



"When I came out as transgender I was relying on formal policies by the Navy and the secretary of defense that service members could no longer be separated or dismissed for being transgender," Kibby said in a declaration filed in Doe v. Trump in Washington, D.C. against the ban.



Kibby, 19, is a student double-majoring in English and history at the Naval Academy and one of several plaintiffs involved in the suit. His goal upon graduation and receipt of his commission is to serve as a surface warfare officer on a naval ship.



After the 2015 announcement by the Department of Defense that soldiers could no longer be discharged based on gender, Kibby began to allow himself to explore his own identity. With the support of commanding officers, Kibby came out as transgender and began developing a treatment plan and medical leave of absence in order to transition with support of the academy.



Now, even completing his education is uncertain due to the ban.



"I have not been able to obtain any assurances from my chain of command about my return to the academy or my future military service," Kibby said in the declaration. "They have been silent because they have not known how the previously announced policies will change."



When Kibby saw the president's tweets announcing the ban on transgender service, he said he was "devastated."



"The entire future I had planned for myself was crumbling around me," said Kibby. "To be told that you are less than, that you are not worthy, is a terrible feeling."



Maryland joined 14 other states and the District of Columbia last week to file a joint amicus brief in support of Kibby and the plaintiffs involved in Doe v. Trump. It is one of three cases filed around the country seeking to block the implementation of the ban.



"The attorneys general strongly support the rights of transgender people to live with dignity, to be free from discrimination, and to participate fully and equally in all aspects of civic life, and argue that these interests are all best served by allowing transgender people to serve openly in the military," the office of Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh said in a press release.



The friend-of-the-court brief argues that the proposed service ban is unconstitutional and interferes especially with the readiness of the National Guard, which operates as a hybrid blend of state and federal service members.



The ACLU of Maryland filed a separate lawsuit, Stone v. Trump, on behalf of six transgender service members in the United States District Court of Maryland on Aug. 28.



Stone, a resident of Anne Arundel County in Maryland, is the lead plaintiff in the case.



Stone is stationed as a computer analyst at Fort Meade, said Josh Block, senior staff attorney with the ACLU LGBT Project.



"Brock Stone has an incredibly story, as do all our plaintiffs," Block said. "A lot of these folks, including Brock, planned to serve until retirement and now they are threatened with having their entire careers cut short."



"Brock has extensive military training and is a decorated service member," Block said. "Just his story alone makes any notion that these service members might not be fully deployable false."



Stone has served in the Navy for 11 years, including deployment to Afghanistan. He began to receive medical care for his gender transition in 2016 after the announcement of open transgender service.



"These men and women served admirably and honorably under active duty," Block said. "Under Trump's ban, they feel like they're being pushed back into the shadows again."



Block stressed to Capital News Service the importance of realizing that transgender service members are being singled out, beyond the same care and treatment that soldiers with medical disabilities receive.



"They are not even being treated the same way," Block said. "They are being deemed administratively unfit for duty."



According to the case documents, Stone was close to finalizing a treatment plan with support of doctors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, that would have included "medically necessary surgery in 2018" for his gender transition.



Now, the entire treatment plan is on hold.



"I can't imagine serving in the military and accomplishing what they've accomplished," Block said. "To have the courage to step forward like this when you're under attack from your own commander-in-chief is just incredibly brave."



Many of Maryland's leaders have been outspoken against the implementation of this ban. On July 28, Maryland Democratic Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin joined a bipartisan group of more than 40 senators in a letter opposing Trump's Twitter announcement.



On Oct. 10, more than 100 members of the House of Representatives, including Maryland Democratic Reps. Anthony Brown, John Delaney and Jamie Raskin, sent a letter to the Department of Defense requesting all communication around the ban. Their goal is to find "whether the president's transgender ban announcement reflected a breakdown in communication."



Paula Neira, a veteran naval officer and transgender woman, believes that the Trump policy will not deter transgender people from joining the military. Neira chose to resign her commission in 1991, after graduating from the Naval Academy with distinction in 1985, in order to live authentically as a woman.



"They'll hide who they are because wanting to serve your country is so strong that you'll make those compromises," Neira said. "You'll tell yourself that 'I can hold this. I can keep this compartmentalized.' Thousands of us did it. My story is not unique in that way."



Neira served in the days before "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was implemented. She now works as a nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.



"My calling in life was to be an officer in the Navy, and my oath of office did not end when I hung up my uniform" Neira said.



Neira told Capital News Service she did not begin to accept her gender identity until she was 28 years old.



"The running joke in my life is that I want to be this dispassionate advocate like what lawyers are supposed to be, to have this steely-eyed, cold warrior persona. And it just doesn't work," Neira said. "Even now, 20-something years later, I can't talk about this without having my voice crack. The pain of having to sacrifice my career is still so raw."



"It was the hardest decision of my life," she added. "And it was because for no other reason than ignorance and bigotry, which is right back where we're at right now with what the White House wants to do."



Neira cautioned lawmakers and advocates alike not to lose sight in these conversations of the central issue of transgender military service: namely, service.



"You're talking with a group of people who are dedicated to defending the country and serving with honor, and with that, the mission always comes first," Neira said. "You're not talking about transgender people who happen to be in the military. You're talking about soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines and Coast Guardsmen who happen to be transgender. It's that simple."
(EDGE) A number of LGBTQ actors are speaking out about sexual harassment in Hollywood in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein controversy.

During the GLSEN's annual Respect Awards at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, Calif. Friday, out actors spoke with Variety about inappropriate behavior they've experienced in Hollywood over the years.

"My So Called Life" actor Wilson Cruz, who sits on the board of GLSEN, said, "...[E]arly on when I was a little twink there were people who made suggestions about how they could help me. And, you know, clearly I didn't take them up on that because I would be far more famous than I am now!"

He added there were "older gentlemen of a certain age who made offers. I did not take them up on it, but it was uncomfortable. I was in my 20s, and I thought: 'Is this what one does?' And also: 'Am I going to ruin my career by not doing it?' In the end, I politely said no and kept on my way.

"But, you know, it definitely happens," Wilson told Variety. "I think it's been quietly accepted as the norm in a lot of ways. People are like: 'Oh, it happens' and you brush it off. [But] I didn't feel safe. I was trying to maneuver my way through Hollywood as an openly gay actor, and there weren't many examples for me at the time. I was juggling a lot of worries."

"Teen Wolf" and "The Leftovers" star Charlie Carver said he's "no stranger to [harassment]."

"This will hopefully open up a discussion about men and power dynamics in general - maybe it has to do with exerting masculinity," he told Variety at the event. Carver said his experience shook him, but he was able to work through it.

"Through the support of talking with other people who have been through the same thing," he added. "I wouldn't say I was traumatized. But it was definitely a lesson, something to move through.

"In this political climate more than ever, we need to reward our allies and the people who are visible in the community so that young people feel like they are being seen and that they have peers and support," he said.

Earlier this month, British model and actress Cara Delevingne spoke out about Weinstein, saying the disgraced movie mogul told her that her sexual orientation could harm her career. (Delevingne identifies as bisexual). She said a year or two later, Weinstein asked her to kiss another woman and that he allegedly tried to kiss her when she tried to leave the hotel where they were.
Thousands of fitness enthusiasts gathered at Fort Lauderdale Convention Center over the weekend to share their passion for working out.

People are shocked theres a gay vendor here, said Roger Roa, Development Director at the Pride Center.

Roa stood behind a table inside the convention center offering condoms and lube to passers-by. The Pride Center was one of 141 exhibitors at TheFitExpo. Claritza Valle, a marketing coordinator from Miami, was glad to see the Pride Center in attendance.

Its very nice to see representation of the LGBT community at TheFitExpo, said Valle, who identifies as a lesbian. I feel supported and am excited to see them at more events.

Valle worked for Betancourt Nutrition at the TheFitExpo. She offered amino acid samples to attendees and posed for pictures with fans. Valle has almost 14,000 followers on Instagram.

Shes great, said Roa, who has just over 16,000 followers on Instagram.

Its a lot of hard work, Roa said of his social media following. You have to post every day.

Between Roa and Valle on the expos exhibitor floor plan was Flex Comics. Owner Jeremy Flex, visiting from Phoenix, declared his presence as the bridge between geekdom and fitness.

A lot of us geeks like to lift, Flex said.

At the Flex Comics table, cleverly designed tank tops were available for purchase. Flex described his comics main character as an anti-hero along the lines of Wolverine and Deadpool.

Hes kind of like me, Ill do the nice things but Ill gripe about it the whole time, Flex said.

Meanwhile, strength competitions were held across the convention center. The U.S. Air Force sponsored a powerlifting demonstration and had staff on hand to recruit for special operations.

Recruits, tour manager Shannon Ross said, must have what it takes to pull someone out of a bad situation. Ross said new recruits would learn how to safely execute a HALO (high altitude low opening) jump.

Standing next to Ross under an Air Force tent was Taylor Thomas, a slim young man who made the trip from Central Florida to attend the TheFitExpo as a brand ambassador.

Its lively, Thomas said when asked about the expo. Its exciting to see all these people getting amped up on chemicals and having a really good time.

Thomas said he does yoga and enjoys calisthenics. Along with powerlifting and calisthenics sections, the expo contained space for kids, group training, model searches, celebrity meet and greets and health screenings.

Cigna, a health services organization, offered expo attendees free screenings for blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and body mass index. A representative for Cigna declined to be quoted by the press but said Cigna had a goal of saving 100,000 lives by getting 100,000 people tested through annual biometric screening.

The TheFitExpo travels to Los Angeles for its next convening, Jan. 6-7, 2018. The expos schedule next year also includes stops in Philadelphia, Chicago, San Jose, Anaheim and San Diego. For more information, visit www.thefitexpo.com.
The legalization of same-sex marriage may be brand new to American history, but that doesnt mean its anything unique.

Rachel Hope Cleves, a professor of history at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, has been studying the love story of two seemingly ordinary women: Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake. After meeting in Vermont in the late 1700s, the women were inseparable and essentially lived as wife and wife for four decades.

In 2014, at the cusp of the Defense of Marriage Act being overturned in the United States, Cleves published Charity and Sylvia  a reminder that LGBT people are nothing new to history.

When did you first learn about Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake?

I first learned about Charity and Sylvia in the course of researching my first book, The Reign of Terror in America. I was reading the letters of Charity Bryants nephew, the poet William Cullen Bryant, and I came across his account of visiting his aunts in Weybridge, Vermont, where they lived.

What interested you about them?

Bryant described his aunts' relationship in language that echoed the familiar marriage ceremony rites from the Book of Common Prayer  for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part. I was immediately struck by Bryants description because Id never heard of any relationships between same-sex partners during the first half of the 19th century that were so explicitly likened to a marriage. I immediately became curious about how Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake's marriage worked: how did they meet, how did they form their relationship, what did their family and friends make of it?

You wrote Charity and Sylvia in 2014, why was it important to you to tell their story?

When I began working on the book, a lot of opponents to same-sex marriage were using history as a weapon against equal marriage rights. They argued that legitimizing same-sex marriage contravened countless millennia of history. I thought it was vital to challenge this false claim and show how same-sex couples found ways to marry in the past, and to be accepted and valued by their communities and families.

What are people's reactions to hearing about a same-sex couple 200 years ago?

A mix of surprise and affirmation. People are surprised because our myth of the past is that is was impossible to live in an open loving same-sex partnership until modern times. But, people also have a deep belief that there must have been people like themselves in the past, and that brings the sense of affirmation that many readers have expressed to me after learning about Charity and Sylvia.

Why are stories like Bryant and Drake's important today?

I think that claims about the newness of LGBTQ people and lives is an ideological instrument used by reactionaries to enforce a certain narrow vision of normal sex and gender. The truth is that the past is filled with examples of people of diverse genders and sexualities, who oftentimes experienced persecution or hostility, but who also found ways to live and flourish. Excluding the stories of diverse genders and sexualities from the past is a way to silence such expressions in the present and future. Its important that we tell a more inclusive story of the past in order to open and affirm possibilities for people living in the present and in the future.

This is a part of our LGBT History Month special package. Check out sfgn.com/2017historymonth daily for new stories.
Paraguays Ministry of Education moved this week to ban books and other materials in schools that promote gender ideology.

Education minister Enrique Riera, who introduced the bill on Oct. 10, said the country has a responsibility to teach about traditional families, according to LOGOs NewNowNext. The bill violates the Montevideo Consensus, an agreement Paraguay entered in 2013, which requires included countries to stop discrimination on the grounds of gender or sexual identity.

Riera said that he would burn books that promote gender identity and doesnt support the idea of gender as a social construct. The law draws parallels to Russian laws on similar issues, which ban images and other materials which the state deems gay propaganda.

Under cover of the malicious expression gender ideology, what is really happening here is the suppression of education about equality and discrimination, which is an international obligation of the Paraguayan state, said Amnesty Internationals Erika Guevara Rosas. Excluding education on equality from the curriculum is tantamount to state promotion of violence and discrimination, with extremely grave consequence.

Currently, homosexuality is legal in Paraguay, but gay marriage is constitutionally banned. There are also no laws in the country protecting discrimination against LGBT people, according to NewNowNext.
NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 19 October 2017 - Final Spacewalk Before November Cygnus Launch. NASA

Four Expedition 53 crewmates huddled together and made final preparations the day before the third and final spacewalk planned for October. Meanwhile, NASAs commercial partner Orbital ATK has announced Nov. 11 as the new launch date for its Cygnus cargo carrier to the International Space Station.

Commander Randy Bresnik and Flight Engineer Joe Acaba are reviewing procedures and configuring tools before their spacewalk set for Friday at 8:05 a.m. EDT. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Paolo Nespoli from the European Space Agency will assist the spacewalkers in and out of their spacesuits and guide the duo as they work outside.

The spacewalk was originally set for Wednesday before mission managers replanned a new set of tasks due to a camera light failure. Bresnik and Acaba will now replace the camera light assembly on the Canadarm2s newly installed Latching End Effector and install an HD camera on the starboard truss. The duo will also replace a fuse on Dextres payload platform and remove thermal insulation on two electrical spare parts housed on stowage platforms.

Orbital ATK is targeting the launch of its eighth Cygnus resupply mission to the station for Nov. 11. Cygnus will make a nine-minute ascent to space after launch, then begin a two-day trek to the station where it will be installed for a month-long stay after its capture by the Canadarm2.

On-Orbit Status Report

Circadian Rhythms: Yesterday a crewmember instrumented themselves with Thermolab Double Sensors and mounted the Thermolab Unit to their belt, which began 36 hours of monitoring for the Circadian Rhythm investigation. Circadian Rhythms investigates the role of synchronized circadian rhythms, or the biological clock, and how it changes during long-duration spaceflight. Researchers hypothesize that a non-24-hour cycle of light and dark affects crew members circadian clocks. The investigation also addresses the effects of reduced physical activity, microgravity and an artificially controlled environment. Changes in body composition and body temperature, which also occur in microgravity, can affect crew members circadian rhythms as well. Understanding how these phenomena affect the biological clock will improve performance and health for future crew members.

Fine Motor Skills (FMS): Today a 51S crewmember completed a Flight Day 85 FMS session which was executed on a touchscreen tablet, where the subject performs a series of interactive tasks. The investigation studies how fine motor skills are affected by long-term microgravity exposure, different phases of microgravity adaptation, and sensorimotor recovery after returning to Earth gravity. The goal of FMS is to answer how fine motor performance in microgravity trend/vary over the duration of a six-month and year-long space mission; how fine motor performance on orbit compares with that of a closely matched participant on Earth; and how performance trends/varies before and after gravitational transitions, including the periods of early flight adaptation, and very early/near immediate post-flight periods.

Space Headaches: The crew completed the weekly questionnaire for the ESA Space Headaches investigation. The Space Headaches investigation collects information that may help in the development of methods to alleviate associated symptoms and improvement in the well-being and performance of crewmembers in space. Headaches during space flight can negatively affect mental and physical capacities of crewmembers that can influence performance during a space mission.

USOS Extra-Vehicular Activity (EVA) #46 Preparations: Today the crew conducted a review of EVA procedures and a conference with ground teams. They also inspected tethers, configured tools, printed cuff checklists, and prepared the equipment lock in preparation for tomorrows EVA. The goals of USOS EVA #46 include Removal and Replacement (R&R) of the Latching End Effector (LEE) A Camera Lens Assembly (CLA).

Tablet Updates: As part of the ongoing efforts to update the operating system on the onboard tablets, the crew performed steps to update and configure those tablets.

Remote Power Control Module (RPCM) P12B-B R&R: Wednesday morning, ground teams completed the robotic activities to swap RPCM P12B-B with P13A-G. On Monday night RPCM P12B-B was extracted and installed into empty truss slot P11A-D and the replacement RPCM was removed from slot P13A-G, however it could not be inserted into the P12B-B at that time. Robotics activities resumed on Tuesday afternoon and teams were able to successfully install the replacement RPCM in the P12B-B slot after 47 wiggle and push attempts. The new P12B-B RPCM powered up nominally. Ground teams then removed the failed RPCM from the P11A-D truss slot and relocated it to the P13A-B slot successfully. The power up of the P13A-G RPCM was also performed nominally. This completes the RPCM swap activities.

JEM Airlock (A/L) Reconfiguration: Today, the crew removed the MBSU from the JEM A/L where it had been stowed after the I-Level maintenance was performed in early September. The Kaber plate and adapter plate were then installed on the A/L slide table in preparation for installation of the KE2M satellite on Monday. After KE2M and SIMPL, another JEM A/L-deployed satellite, are deployed next week, the MBSU will be returned to the JEM A/L for transfer and installation externally at External Stowage Platform 2 (ESP2).

External Robotics Operations: Overnight, robotics ground controllers stowed the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (SPDM) and configured the SSRMS to be in position for the EVA tomorrow. The SSRMS is now based on LEE B, at Mobile Base System (MBS) Power Data Grapple Fixture 4 (PDGF), Worksite 6. LEE A is ready to receive a new LEE CLA.

Todays Planned Activities

All activities were completed as scheduled unless otherwise noted.

Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Reminder for EVA In-Suit Light Exercise (ISLE) Preparation

US Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Tether Inspection

Fine Motor Skills Experiment Test  Subject

ISS crew and  (RSA Flight Control Management Team) weekly conference(S-band)

MICROVIR. Retrieval of Cassette-M No.3-3 and No.3-4 from - No.05 and setup on interior panel. Photography of upper cells. Tagup with specialists

Hardware Gather for Kestrel Eye 2M (KE2M) Installation on JEM Airlock Slide Table

iPad Air 2 Install Part 1

Installation of protective guard on 28-120 voltage converter on the RS. Note 8

iPad Air 2 Food Intake Tracker (FIT) Update

Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) Cuff Checklist Print

MICROVIR. Photography of Cassette-M lower cells No.3-1, No.3-2 and stowage in - No.05 at +4

XF305 Camcorder Setup

JEM Airlock Slide Table (ST) Extension to JPM Side

PRODUTSENT. Removal from - No.02 (+29 ) and Transfer to - No.05 at +4 C

In Flight Maintenance (IFM) Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) Cover Build

PRODUTSENT. Deactivation and Removal of - S/N 02

Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) Removal from JEM Airlock Slide Table

Miscellaneous Hardware Cleanup

Progress 437 (DC1) Priority and US Cargo Items Transfers and IMS Ops

JEM ORU Transfer Interface (JOTI) from the JEM Airlock Slide Table

BIOPLENKA. Removal of samples from thermostat, fixation of Constanta cassette No.4-6 biofilm. Tagup with specialists

Collect SM and FGB air samples using -1 sampler

Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Tool Configuring

JEM Airlock Kaber Plate and Adapter Plate Installation

 Air Sample Collection for Ammonia in SM

SM Air Sampling for FREON Using -1 Sampler

JEM Airlock Slide Table (ST) Retraction from JPM Side

MATRYOSHKA-R. Deployment of Tritel P/L. Configure electrical connections. P/L activation.

Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Tool Audit.

ESA Weekly crew conference

ISS HAM Service Module Pass

Environmental Health System (EHS)  Coliform Water Sample Analysis 44 +/- 4 hours post processing

Crew Medical Officer (CMO) On Board Training (OBT)

Replacement of  filter unit in gas analyzer 2106

CONSTANTA-2. Cassette No.3-1 retrieval from - and setup on panel for 1-hour warmup

Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Procedure Review

Gathering and deployment of PILLE sensors prior to EVA

 maintenance

 condensate pump water fill.

IMS Tagup (S-band)

CONSTANTA-2. Preparation and Execution 1. Tagup with specialists

Test activation of Vozdukh Atmosphere Purification System Emergency Vacuum Valves

Growth Chamber Locate

EVA Lens Taping

Inventory Management System (IMS) Conference

24-hour ECG Recording (termination)

24-hour BP recording (terminate)

PILOT-T. Experiment Ops.

Space Headaches  Weekly Questionnaire

Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Procedure Conference

Equipment Lock (E-LK) Preparation

CB/ISS CREW CONFERENCE

Completed Task List Activities

VEG-03 Plant Pillow Water

Ground Activities

All activities are on schedule unless otherwise noted.

Standard commanding

Three-Day Look Ahead:

Friday, 10/20: USOS EVA #46

Saturday, 10/21: EMU Water Charge, EVA Debrief, Airlock Reconfig

Sunday, 10/22: Off duty

QUICK ISS Status  Environmental Control Group:

Component  Status

Elektron  On

Vozdukh  Manual

[] 1  SM Air Conditioner System (SKV1)  Off

[] 2  SM Air Conditioner System (SKV2)  Off

Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab  Standby

Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3  Operate

Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab  Idle

Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3  Operate

Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA)  Process

Urine Processing Assembly (UPA)  Standby

Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab  Full Up

Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3  Off
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Last weekend, more than two thousands global manufacturers gathered in Milan to showcase their products at HOST Milano, one of the biggest hospitality conferences in Europe. This is where the worlds cutting-edge coffee technology companies come to debut their latest products, and with hundreds of coffee brands spread over four pavilions in an area of roughly 60,000 sqm, there was certainly no shortage of new gear to discover at HOST Milano 2017.

Our London-based writer Giulia Mule was in Milan to report back on the most innovative and exciting coffee products which got baristas talking and which are expected to hit the market next year. This is part one of her reportingwell have even more content on product launches and public debuts from brands like Nuova Simonelli and La Marzocco in the coming days.

DALLA CORTE DC PRO XT

My journey at Host Milano 2017 began at Dalla Corte, one of Italys leading brands of espresso machines, whose factory is situated not far from Milans exhibition centre. Dalla Corte has invested heavily in research, innovation, and technology over the last few years, with a focus on the speciality coffee market. The results are two exciting products: MINA Smart Bar and DC PRO.

At the heart of Dalla Corte DC Pro espresso machine is a multi-boiler technology (two separate boilers for espresso and water), which allows control over water temperature as well as consistency and quality of extraction. Higher control equals lower energy consumption: the DC PRO is far more cost effective than traditional espresso machines.

The new DC PRO XT, previewed at Host Milano 2017, takes the machine one step further adding an extreme temperature control system. In addition to the temperature sensor of the existing DC PRO, we now have an element that looks at the amount of water that is dispersed during extraction, and measures the amount of power needed to control it. The expectation from Dalla Corte is to have a water control system that is two to three times more accurate than any other on the market.

The DC Pro XT will be available in March-April 2018.

SANREMO REVO

Back in 2015, Sprudge reported on an innovative grinder prototype by Sanremo called Revolution. Fast-forward to today, REVO1 and REVO3 are finally unveiled at HOST Milano with a completely new design and improved technology.

John Gordona multi-year UK Barista Champion and products specialistfirst developed the idea of a grinder with electronic weighing and multiple hoppers five to six years ago. He brought the idea to Sanremo and started working on this project, alongside the Opera espresso machine, whose 2013 HOST launch was covered right here on Sprudge. We couldnt look at traditional grinders as inspiration, so it was like starting from scratch, Gordon tells me. Its been a long process, but the new grinders are finally here and they were such a hit at HOST Milano 2017 that the company had to keep them hidden away in a room within their exhibition stand.

The three-hoppers coffee grinder features (among other things) touch-screen digital display, high performance 98mm burrs, three grinding rotation speed, pre-set grinding sizes, pre-weighing system (developed by Acaia Coffee), and Sanremos exclusive digital micrometric regulation. The individual hoppers can be used for espresso and filter coffee or to create personalised espresso blends.

The word of mouth among baristas and coffee professionals at HOST Milano 2017 is that the new Sanremo REVO3 grinder is a game changer. Winning the buzz war at HOST is no small feat, but this was one of the shows most talked about new products. Get ready for its release in Spring 2018.

FAEMA E71 Essence

The Faema coffee machine factory opened in Milan in 1945. The historic brandpart of Cimbali Groupmade a big splash in the US specialty coffee market this year with the FAEMA E71, presented at the Global Specialty Coffee Expo in Seattle in April.

FAEMA E71 is a top-of-the-range professional espresso machine blending cutting-edge technology with traditional features and an iconic Italian design. Its main features are Faemas divalent thermal control system, a touch-screen mode and a manual mode for optimal use. Following the E71 success in the speciality coffee market, Cimbali Group decided to gather feedback from baristas and distributors and develop an improved model at a lower price point: the FAEMA E71 Essence.

Presented at HOST Milano 2017, the E71 Essence machine features a new user interface, though the technology is the same of the E71. There are longer steam wands, which work faster and also allow the barista to stand by the edge of the machine, leaving space behind the grouper so that two baristas can comfortably work side-by-side. The front panelavailable in either steel or woodhas also been simplified compared to the E71 version.

The E71 Essence espresso machine will be released for the European market in June 2018 and for the US market in November 2018.

COMPAK PK LINE

Barcelona-based coffee grinding company Compak was at HOST Milano 2017, sharing a stand with Alpha Dominche and Slayer Espresso. Their beautiful line of PK grinders (available in white, black, grey and pastel blue colours) caught my attention and so I decided to stop by for a chat with Compak America Managing Director Josh Fields, to find out more about the range.

The new PK line features three models with built-in grind-by-weight technology. The PKF and PKE models have 83-millimeter burrs and 800-watt motors, while the PKR has 100-millimeter burrs and a 935-watt motor. With larger flat burrs than Compaks on-demand grinders, the PK machines are ideal for high production and high extraction yield.

The PKR in particular is designed to be a uni-grinder: the bigger grind adjustment (compared to PKE and PKF) allows the barista to go from a fine grind for espresso to a coarse grind for drip, with very little retention of coffee in the machine.

The PK line will be available in January 2018.

CEADO

First-time visitors to HOST Milano, like me, can easily be over-whelmed by the sheer amount of exhibitors. All the usual suspects, ie. the worlds leading coffee manufacturers, showcase their most exciting product releases at HOST every other year. I was keen to find new names of companies launching innovative products and I was pointed in the direction of CEADO, a Venetian coffee grinding company.

The E37Z HERO is the latest generation of Ceado products, a single-dosing grinder operated via a separate control box. This machine allows high precision and zero retention.

The grains are pre-weighed, then lightly hydrated with a water spray (this is essential to break the static electricity) before going into the hopper. High precision means that one whole bean of coffee going in equals exactly to one ground bean of coffee out. There is no contamination with other coffees previously used in the machine, which is very appealing to baristas working with expensive single origin beans.

The E37Z HERO is available in two version: one for espresso with a micro-adjustment ring and one ranging from espresso to French Press with a larger ring. There are two main controls in the machine: speed regulation and a cooling fan (which can be activated or not depending on work volumes).

Ceado E37Z HERO will be released on the market in early 2018.

IBERITAL

Vision by Iberital was presented at HOST Milano 2017 as the pioneer of the next coffee machines generation. Its an energy-efficient and easy-to-use espresso machine that will be released on the market next year.

Spanish company Iberital responded to a call for projects launched by European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. Iberital won the funding (one of thirty winners among 3,000 entries) to develop a high-tech coffee machine with three requirements: to focus on sustainability, water treatment, and connectivity. VISION combines all three elements with a distinctive design from ACID Studio.

Behind a simple yet striking surface, there is a sophisticated technology with a multi-boiler system, which allows baristas to program different brewing profiles for each group. Vision can be controlled remotely via the Vision tablet app. Baristas can adjust the machine pre-sets and also share their recipes with other machines.

Vision was presented at HOST as the healthiest machine as several features have been added to the machine to make a cleaner coffee. The boilers are nickel and lead-free; the coffee, water and steam pipes are independent from each other so there is no contamination; every delivery is made from fresh water, so that the extracted coffee wont contain metals and residual salts.

This is part one of Giulia Mules HOST coveragewell have even more content on product launches and public debuts from brands like Nuova Simonelli and La Marzocco in the coming days.

Giulia Mule is a Sprudge.com contributor based in London. Read more Giulia Mule on Sprudge.
Vitry-Sur-Seine (France), Oct 23, 2017 (SPS) -Participants in the two-day European Coordinating Conference of Support to the Sahrawi People (EUCOCO), which wrapped Sunday, showed great solidarity with the Sahrawi people in their struggle for self-determination and independence.

In addition to Algeria, represented in this conference by a large parliamentary delegation, 300 participants from Italy, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, Mauritania, Venezuela and others attended this solidarity event held under the slogan "Self-determination, an inalienable right."

Counsellor at the embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in France, Gabriela Jaramillo reiterated her country's support to the struggle of the Sahrawi people and emphasized "good relations between the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and Venezuela."

For his part, President of the Union of Forces of Progress in Mauritania Mohamed Ould Mouloud said the Sahrawi cause had made significant progress at the international level.

"We are here to confirm the strength of geographical and historical relations between the two countries and renew our party's support to the struggle of the Sahrawi people," said Mouloud, who called on states and democratic forces to back the Sahrawi people's right to self-determination and freedom.

Mayor of French commune Gonfreville l'Orcher, Albane Bruneau affirmed her commune's support to the struggle of the Sahrawi people and regretted the absence of French media and the media blackout on the Sahrawi issue.

"It is important to hold this event in France to officially put it in front of its responsibilities," she stressed.

Italian MP Romanini Giuseppe called on Morocco to comply with the Decision of the European Court of Justice to stop the plunder of Western Sahara's resources, stressing the need to inform the public opinion of the violations of human rights in Western Sahara. (SPS)

062/SPS/APS
The National Capital Region Harness Horse Association (NCRHHA) hosted a Racing Community Update at Rideau Carleton Raceway on Monday (October 23) with the Rideau Carleton Management Team (Richard Gardner, Peter Andrusek), Alliance Leadership (Jamie Martin, Ian Fleming, Scott McKelvie), COSA (Bill ODonnell), Standardbred Canada (Dan Gall) and the NCRHHA (Gordon McDonald, John McMillan, Brian and Michelle Jerome).

The meeting, chaired by NCRHHA President Gordon McDonald, was attended by 40 members of Rideaus racing community who were briefed on the 2018 funding model, racing schedule, backstretch renovation plans, association operations & future amalgamation discussions, Standardbred Canada initiatives and, perhaps most importantly, plans to implement the centralized Race Office model beginning mid November 2017.

There was a healthy exchange of information and questions with the Panel, which served to clear the air for our racing community members who are pleased with recent purse adjustments and the very strong support we continue to receive from Rideau Carleton and our Alliance partners, said McDonald.

The NCRHHA and the members of its Rideau Carleton racing community wish to thank the panel members who came to Ottawa for this event. "We look forward to a productive relationship as we move forward to grow the Standardbred racing industry at Rideau Carleton and across Ontario," said McDonald on behalf of the organization.
New Documentary, 'Christ Revealed,' Explores Scientific Evidence for the Resurrection

Contact: Katie Martin, 972-267-1111PARK CITY, Utah, Oct. 24, 2017 / Standard Newswire / -- A new nine-part documentary from Revealed Films, "Christ Revealed," explores the scientific evidence for the resurrection of Christ. Featuring top Christian apologists and historians and filmed on-location in Israel and across America, the docu-series is an epic journey of revelation about the truth of one of the Bible's most controversial claims.The resurrection of Christ has long fascinated the world, and it has been the focus of many movies and television series including "The DaVinci Code" and History Channel's "The Bible." However, over one-third of Americans are unconvinced of the resurrection's veracity, according to Rasmussen Reports."The Resurrection of Christ is one of the most discussed events in history, and it is the cornerstone of the world's largest religion," said Jeff Hays, director and executive producer of "Christ Revealed." "While Christians believe in the resurrection in faith, we wanted to see what scientific evidence was out there to support whether this event occurred."The series is produced by the award-winning David Brookwell, who has produced projects such as "Soul Surfer" and "That's So Raven!" Releasing Nov. 9, the series will be available exclusively online at www.ChristRevealed.com . Viewers who register on the website will be able to access the full series for free for a period of nine days."Christ Revealed" features top historians and apologists including Dr. Sean McDowell, Associate Professor in the Christian Apologetics program at Biola University, and Greg Koukl, founder of Stand to Reason."Through discussions with leading Christian thinkers, we explore the history, evidence and inspiration of Jesus Christ," said Patrick Gentempo, host of "Christ Revealed." "The project is epic in scope and covers Jesus' life from birth to resurrection."For more information on "Christ Revealed," please visit www.ChristRevealed.com
One-Time Rebel Invites Others to Follow in Her Risk-Taking Footsteps in Taking Gospel to Unreached

Troubled teen-turned-medical missionary aims to inspire others to trust God in new book chronicling her adventures in faith



Contact: Darin Campbell, 512-785-8350, dcampbell@inchristcommunications.com



COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Oct. 24, 2017 /Standard Newswire/ -- A reformed rebel with a taste for adventure is looking to inspire others to step out and make a difference in the world.



Photo: Sheila Leech tells how she went from being a teenage rebel to vice president of international healthcare for missions agency Reach Beyond in her new book, God Knows What I'm Doing Here.



Sharing some hair-raising stories from more than 35 years' missionary service in a new book, Sheila Leech hopes others may be challenged to follow in her footsteps, helping take the gospel to those who have yet to hear about Jesus.



Vice president of international healthcare for missions agency Reach Beyond, Leech tells of being held up at gunpoint by an armed rebel in Ecuador, living in a tribal community as a single woman, and leading medical teams into disaster zones around the world in God Knows What I'm Doing Here.



Founded in 1931 as broadcasting ministry, Reach Beyond later expanded into healthcare and leadership development and now has a major focus on unreached peoplesthose lives where the gospel hasn't been proclaimed.



That emphasis means "we are asking people to go to some difficult and sometimes dangerous areas of the world," Leech acknowledges. "But if we are really serious about reaching the unreached, we need to sit down and consider what that might mean."



Tracing her journey from her drug-using teenage years to long-term service with Reach Beyond, Leech tells how "God took this broken life of a very rebellious, lost young woman and did something with itand if He can do that with someone like me, what could He do with you?"



After nine years in Ecuador, Leech returned to her native England to train as a nurse so she could be part of Reach Beyond's medical and health ministry back in South America. Later she was appointed to oversee the multiplication of similar programs with Reach Beyond partners in other parts of the world.



Leech has led medical teams in the aftermath of earthquakes in Pakistan and Haiti, a tsunami in Indonesia and civil war in the Middle East. Three years ago, she relocated to Spain to be better situated for her international role.



Providing healthcare and clean water as a practical demonstration of God's love opens doors for the gospel in communities that otherwise might be resistant, she says. "People are more than simply souls to be saved; meeting their physical and emotional needs creates a platform for sharing the gospel."



Recounting how God has led and protected her, Leech quotes the late missionary author Elisabeth Elliot, who said that "the safest place is the center of God's will for you." Still, she recognizes the seriousness of following God to hard places in the world, saying, "I would never ask anyone to do something I have not done or would not do.



"I'm not suggesting people should be foolhardy or careless, but sometimes God calls us to take what seem to be risks and to trust Himand I have found Him to be faithful in that."



Published in England by Authentic Media, God Knows What I'm Doing Here is also available in the U.S. and elsewhere.



Reach Beyond (reachbeyond.org) is a media- and medical-based evangelical ministry with operations on five continents. It spreads the message of Jesus in places that are primarily unreached or unengaged in the gospel. Reach Beyond uses media, including radio broadcasts, webcasts, social media and the distribution of solar-powered, fixed-tuned radios. It also reaches out to the needy throughout its growing network of healthcare services.



To schedule an interview with a Reach Beyond representative, contact:

Darin Campbell at (512) 785-8350 or dcampbell@inchristcommunications.com.


A Kelso woman was arrested Sunday after she was accused of going on a rampage against her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend.

According to Cowlitz County Chief Criminal Deputy Charlie Rosenzweig, Mary Lynn Taylor, 46, reportedly left more than 14 phone messages for her ex-boyfriend throughout the day Saturday. The messages included derogatory statements about the mans new girlfriend, and that she (Taylor) was going to come after her, Rosenzweig said.

At 2 a.m. Sunday, Taylor showed up at her exs Castle Rock home. She allegedly got out of her pickup, hopped in her exs pickup and backed it into the new girlfriends Jeep, damaging both vehicles, Rosenzweig said.

According to law enforcement, Taylor then walked up to the front door, pushed and punched the former boyfriend in the face, and then entered the house in search of the new girlfriend. However, the man removed Taylor from his home and deputies arrested her later that morning. Rosenzweig said he was unclear where deputies arrested Taylor or whether the former boyfriend was injured.

Taylor was booked into the Cowlitz County Jail on suspicion of fourth-degree domestic assault, first-degree burglary, harassment and a hit-and-run violation. Her bail was set at $2,500.
Alleged Long Beach drug dealer Robert Anthony Tony Merrill, who was the manager of Long Beach Go Karts, was arrested near Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, last week and booked into the Pacific County Jail Friday.

According to Pacific County Sheriffs Office Chief Deputy Pat Matlock, Merrill, 52, was caught thanks to a team effort from Pacific County deputies and U.S. Marshal Service.

Matlock said Merrill was originally arrested in April after allegedly selling heroin, meth and other drugs out of his family's bumper cart/go-cart business.

Merrill's parents, who owned Long Beach Go Karts, sold the business to another owner after Tony Merrill's arrest.

After being freed on a $250,000 bond in April, Merrill was put into a drug treatment center in California with the promise from his attorney that he would return and face his charges, Matlock said. After Merrill didnt return, prosecutor Mark McClain forfeited the alleged drug dealers bond.

Merrill is suspected of six counts of controlled substance sale and manufacturing, possession of a stolen vehicle, residential burglary, possession of stolen property and two weapons violations, according to Matlock. The chief deputy said his bail is currently listed at $1 million.
A 32-year-old Toledo man suffered possible head injuries after apparently confronting someone in a pickup Sunday, according to the Lewis County Sheriffs Office.

Witnesses told deputies that the Toledo man was on foot and approached a 2001 Chevrolet S-10 driven by a 50-year-old Vader man in the 100 block of Mulford Road. A 24-year-old Toledo woman also was in the pickup, said Chief Deputy Dusty Breen.

Breen said witnesses saw the pedestrian open the passenger-side door of the vehicle, which then sped away 200 feet before stopping. Witnesses saw the male pedestrian lying on his back, unconscious, Breen said.

According to Breen, witnesses did not see how the 32-year-old ended up on the ground or know whether he was struck by the pickup. The female passenger was the significant other of the pedestrian and they were going through relationship issues, Breen said.

Breen said the 32-year-old was taken to Providence Centralia Hospital, then airlifted to St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma with a possible brain injury.

Breen said the incident remains under investigation.
Editors note: Todays editorials originally appeared in The Walla Walla Union-Bulletin and The Seattle Times. Editorial content from other publications is provided to give readers a sampling of regional and national opinion and does not necessarily reflect positions endorsed by the Editorial Board of The Daily News.

Washington states presidential primary is frustrating.

It occurs too late in the process to mean anything and, even if the timing was better, the two major political parties dont give the results the full attention they deserve.

But Secretary of State Kim Wyman, who oversees the states election system, is pushing for reform that would make the presidential primary more relevant. Her plan has merit.

Wyman, a Republican, was in Walla Walla earlier this month as part of a tour through Washington promoting her agenda for the 2018 legislative session.

One of the biggest priorities is moving the presidential primary earlier. Id like Washington to be relevant, and also would like to see better voter turnout, Wyman said at a recent stop on her tour.

Wyman wants to move the presidential primary to the second Tuesday after the first Monday in March. That would be the week after Super Tuesday, when about 14 states hold primaries. The timing should result in more presidential candidates making campaign stops in the Evergreen State.

The date change makes sense. But whats best about the proposal is that it would allow voters to not have to declare a party affiliation  as they must now  when voting in the presidential primary.

I want to bring back the unaffiliated ballot, Wyman told The Daily World in Aberdeen. Its a relief valve for people who dont want to state their political preference. It would bring back the ballot with all the candidates, and voters can choose whomever they want.

The unaffiliated ballots would be counted and vote totals posted on the Secretary of States Office election website. However, the Democratic and Republican parties would not be required to use them in their respective nominating processes.

While this isnt perfect, it is better than leaving folks on the sidelines who want to have their say.

Currently, Democrats ignore the primary results and allocate delegates based on the precinct caucuses. Republicans consider the primary vote but also have precinct caucuses.

Washington state has a long tradition of voter independence. The state for decades conducted open primaries for all offices in which voters could crisscross the ballot, voting for some Democrats and some Republicans.

But in 2000 the Supreme Court ruled the parties can control who votes in a party nomination election. The ruling allowed the parties to mandate voters declare a party preference.

In 2004, the Washington State Grange, in an effort to bring the power back to the people, sponsored an initiative to establish the top-two system. That system, which has withstood legal challenges from the political parties, is the law in Washington.

In the top-two primary system, the top vote getters, regardless of party affiliation, move on to the General Election. The system has been good for the state.

Having a presidential primary in that spirit would also be positive for voters.

Weakening treaties weakens U.S.

You know things are getting bad when the last Republican president feels obliged to chide the current one on the direction hes taking the country.

Yet thats what former President George W. Bush did in a timely speech last week that didnt name President Donald Trump but spoke to him and those supporting his divisive and isolationist approach.

Bush wasnt known for his oratorical skills, but he eloquently defended Americas lasting values. He called for respectful dialogue and humility and reminded us of the tremendous contributions of immigrants.

Defending international trade and globalism, Bush said we must not forget that conflict, instability and poverty follow in the wake of protectionism.

The latter is of particular concern here in the nations most trade-dependent state and around the Pacific Rim.

Americans should be just as shocked as our allies by Trumps persistent effort to shred, weaken or discard treaties and agreements that provide stability, strength and opportunity.

The list includes the Paris Climate agreement, NATO, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and, most recently, the Iran nuclear deal.

The merits of each of these deals can be debated.

But Trumps dismissive, destructive approach to all of them is causing lasting harm.

This is alienating other nations that were signatories to these deals, often under pressure by the U.S. It weakens our leadership, security, strength and authority to shape future agreements.

U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, experienced this first hand at a recent meeting in Japan with members of its national legislature.

Kilmer said they asked why the U.S. withdrew from the Paris climate agreement and were perplexed by Trumps threats to withdraw from a free-trade agreement with South Korea.

There are concerns when your allies start to question whether your word is good  thats a problem, Kilmer said.

The biggest beneficiaries of Trumps isolationist, disruptive behavior are not displaced factory workers in the Midwest or billionaires in his swamp.

No, the big winners are Russia and China, whose stock as superpowers rises as Trump snips the guy-wires supporting Americas pedestal.

Russia has long sought to undermine the stability and ideals propagated by the U.S. and its Western allies. Chinas ascent is accelerating as it fills the void in global leadership that Trump created and forges economic partnerships across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Americans are kept in a lather over more emotional and ephemeral issues stirred up by Trump. We must not lose sight of lasting damage that comes from turning inward and against each other.

As Bush said last week, our security and prosperity are only found in wise, sustained, global engagement.
American pride

I recently took a trip to Great Britain and was impressed by how patient the people are there. Not only were they kind to me everywhere I went but I noticed it on the highway too. I never heard a horn honk. Not even in the busy cities. There was no tailgating or road rage. I almost dreaded coming home because I knew what it is like here. And it happened  not 30 seconds from the airport the horns started and also the rage.

I went for a walk the other day at Lake Sacajawea and it was so beautiful with all the fall colors. I decided to sit at the bench by the bridge near Martins Dock and noticed someone had dropped potatoes and catsup on the beautiful bricks there. It felt like a violation. What makes a person so disrespectful? It made me think of those violating guns. Is it the same thinking? No respect for anything. Canada has a large population of gun owners but very low gun incidents. Also, if you go to Canada, it is pristine. Great Britain was the same. They seem to take such pride in where they live. Maybe if we did the same we wouldnt be so angry with each other.

Linda Curry

Kelso

Up to you

The Hill family supports and asks you to join us in supporting Longview City Council candidates, Megan Richie, Dianne Quast and Amber Rosewood.

For Kelso City Council, Mike Karnofski, Gary Archer and Dan Vanelli.

The future of our cities is now in the hands of you the voter. These are candidates who care and well suited to face the challenges and they have my familys total support

Kathy and Jim Hill and family

Kelso

Choose wisely

The upcoming Longview City Council races will help shape the future direction of Longview for many years to come as there are three positions up for a vote. We must choose wisely. Public safety, jobs and homeless issues are at the top of the list for our council to make wise decisions. Having lived and worked in Longview most of my life, and as a retired Longview police officer, Ive seen both the good and bad. Ive seen the positive effects of good jobs and the negative effects of the lack of jobs. Ive seen the impacts of homelessness and the way it is managed or mismanaged. We all know the importance of the quality of life and our need for a safe environment. I believe Chet Makinster, Mary Alice Wallis and Steve Moon have what it takes to work hand-in-hand with our first responders to preserve and enhance our neighborhoods and community. Please vote wisely by Nov. 7!

Hal Mahnke

Longview

Arab state

In regard to the Oct. 13 Letter to the Editor, Myths, yes there are myths and there are facts also. The fact is that in 1937, 1947, 2000, 2001 and 2008, Palestinian Arabs have rejected proposals to establish an Arab state. The main reason for this is that they want all of Israel. Another fact is Palestine is not an Arab name, and there has never been a Palestinian Arab state in Israel. Jewish kings and kingdoms reigned in Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria for hundreds of years. Archaeological facts support this, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. Then there is Yousef, son of Hamas founder, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, who switched his allegiance to Israel after witnessing the torture of fellow prisoners by their own Arab-Muslim people. He recently shared his story at the U.N. Finally, a recent survey, conducted by the Konrad Adenaur Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation Center, revealed that most Israeli Arabs prefer living in Israel due to the respectful and humane treatment they receive living under Israeli authority.

Linda Weber Meskew

Toutle
Warrants issued for Apan Jeweller owners Dildar, Azad

Warrants have been issued against Apan Jewellers owners Dildar Ahmed and his brother Azad Ahmed in two cases of money laundering and illegally acquiring wealth.

Dildar Ahmed's son Shafat Ahmed was arrested over charges of raping two university girls at a Banani hotel.

The warrants were issued by the Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate's court on Sunday evening, said the court's General Registration Officer (Gulshan Branch) SI Farid Miah. Dildar and Azad co-own Apan Jewellers with their brother Gulzar Ahmed. Gulzar is also facing cases of money laundering and illegal acquisition of wealth.

The Customs Intelligence and investigation Division, or CIID, began investigating Apan Jewellers soon after the rape case was filed against Shafat Ahmed last May. The CIID has also accused the Apan Jewellers owners of illegally smuggling in gold, jewellery and diamonds. Customs has seized a significant amount of the assets from Apan Jewellers, which has been unable to provide proper documentation for them.

Warrants were previously issued against Dildar and Azad in the cases. On Aug 22, the High Court granted the two bails for four weeks. At the end of the four weeks on Sunday, the suspects' lawyers requested an extension of the bail, but the request was scrapped by the court, which then issued the warrants
Amy Jackson wraps 2.0, in Canada to shoot Supergirl

Actress Amy Jackson, who has wrapped work on Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar starrer 2.0, is now in Canada to shoot a new episode for superhero action-adventure television series Supergirl.

And thats a wrap for 2.0. The past two-and-a-half-years have been an absolute roller coaster... But the outcome will knock ya socks off, Amy tweeted on October 22.

2.0, directed by S Shankar, is a high budget sequel to the 2010 Tamil film Enthiran. The film marks the Tamil debut of Akshay, who will be seen playing the prime antagonist.

Amy is on a roll as she recently bagged the role of Saturn Girl in the third season of Supergirl.In a matter of 26 hours after wrapping 2.0, she said she arrived in Canada to start working on the next episode of Supergirl.
Myanmar: It's time to bring back sanctions

MEP Neena Gill :

A mind-boggling 500,000 people belonging to the Rohingya community - and counting - have fled to Bangladesh in recent weeks.

Flooded with images of unspeakable atrocities, we are overwhelmed by a feeling of powerlessness at the highest outflow of refugees since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Yet, as someone who has been closely following relations with South East Asia and has led negotiations on the European Parliament's most recent resolution on the issue, I believe there is still more that we can do.

While the tragedy has been heartbreaking to watch, we must not forget our own power to act.

The EU Foreign Affairs Council's response to the Rohingya crisis on Monday does not reflect the scale of the crisis. The Council reconfirmed the arms embargo, but this is largely symbolic, given that most military hardware in Myanmar comes from countries outside of the EU, including China. Disappointingly, the Council has not decided to adopt further restrictive sanctions, despite the continued deterioration of the situation, with an additional 200,000 and counting displaced from the region.

To make a real impact, we should focus our leverage on Myanmar's powerful army, who not only hold a strong grip over the country's economy, but also make many key political appointments and reserve 110 seats in parliament for unelected soldiers.

Council conclusions refer to suspending invitations to the military, but to influence the military, we also need to undermine their finances: both through more punitive sanctions and by targeting key industries like jade production, which have helped to finance the conflict.

When Parliament elected Htin Kyaw - a close confidant of State Councillor Aung San Suu Kyi - as president in February of last year, we welcomed the end to five decades of military rule. As a result, it is understandable that a lot of the anger in the international community has been directed at the inaction of Aung San Suu Kyi.

However, given that unelected soldiers still make up a quarter of the assembly and hold veto power, it is clear that she is not in total control. We must not let our disappointment in Aung San Suu Kyi cloud our impetus to act to undermine Myanmar's army.

It is not only through sanctions that the EU can help to end this humanitarian crisis. In addition, we can step up pressure on the authorities in Myanmar to pass legislation that prohibits the military, security services, and their members from enjoying beneficial ownership of natural resource companies.

The Myanmar army dominates the mining sector. Jade production alone is worth 48% of the country's GDP (USD 31 billion in 2014 alone). This not only directly finances conflict, but it is also an important source of income for the military. The reference made in Monday's Council Conclusions to the deeply concerning conflicts in two other states - Kachin and Shan, which are both important in the country's mining sector - proves the importance of passing legislation that prohibits the military from exercising beneficial ownership over companies.

Prioritising natural resource management in the country's peace process would have the two-fold benefit of eliminating natural resources as a source of conflict across the country and squeezing the military financially. A useful step would be to increase coordination with the US, which has been very active on the issue of natural resource management but has not yet actively linked this to the peace process.

A third and crucial step to stop the bloodshed in the Rakhine is to persuade China to stop its unwavering protection for its neighbour at the UN Security Council. China currently protects Myanmar with its veto powers because of the country's major strategic importance in Beijing's new Silk Road plans.

The related deep-water ports, oil and gas pipelines and a Special Economic Zone in the Rakhine state are multi-billion investments. The EU and the US must use Chinese dependence on Myanmar to highlight the importance of stability in the region and pressure it to prevent any long-term continuation of the crisis, which has been described as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

By exerting pressure where it hurts - in the pockets of those responsible for the atrocities - we can restore credibility to the sentence "never again" and end the bloodshed of the men, women and children of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar.

(Neena Gill is a British MEP (S&D)
North Korea threat 'critical, imminent', Japan warns US, South Korea

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un looks on during a visit to the Chemical Material Institute of the Academy of Defense Science in this undated photo released by North Korea\'s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang..

Reuter, Philippines :

The threat from North Korea has grown to a "critical and imminent level" and the United States, Japan and South Korea must address the matter, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told his US and South Korean counterparts in talks on Monday.

Onodera's remarks underscored the deep concern in Tokyo after North Korean weapons tests, including test firing missiles over Japan, as Pyongyang seeks to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States. His comments broke from more measured language on Monday by US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-Moo, as the three men met on the sidelines of a gathering of Asian defense chiefs in the Philippines.

"(The) threat posed by North Korea has grown to the unprecedented, critical and imminent level. Therefore, we have to take calibrated and different responses to meet with that level of threat," he said, speaking through a translator, at the start of talks in the Philippines.

South Korea's Song also acknowledged that "North Korea's provocative behavior is becoming worse and worse," in public remarks before reporters were escorted out of the meeting room. Mattis renewed sharp criticism of North Korea's tests, saying they "threaten regional and global security."

Mattis, who kicked off a week-long trip to the region on Monday, has been eager to emphasize diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis peacefully as escalating tension between Washington and Pyongyang stoked fears of 'armed confrontation.'

Asked about his conversation with Onodera after the two met earlier in the day, before joining South Korea's Song, Mattis said they discussed "maintaining stability and peace in support of the diplomats."

Meanwhile, former US President Jimmy Carter said he is willing to travel to North Korea on behalf of the Trump administration to help diffuse the situation, the New York Times reported.

Mattis has been more cautious in his public remarks than US President Donald Trump, who has been locked in a war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, threatening to destroy North Korea if necessary to defend the United States and its allies.

Kim has blasted Trump as "mentally deranged." Mattis is at the start of a week-long trip to Asia and will attend meetings hosted by defense ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Philippines. ASEAN defence ministers, in a joint statement, expressed "grave concern" over North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes and urged the reclusive country to meet its international obligations and resume communications. They underscored the "need to maintain peace and stability in the region" and called "for the exercise of self-restraint and the resumption of dialogue to de-escalate tensions in the Korean peninsula."

Mattis' trip, which will include a stop in Thailand, comes before Trump's first visit to Asia next month, including a stop in China.

Trump has been pressuring China to do more to rein in North Korea's missile and nuclear programmes. China is North Korea's neighbor and biggest trading partner. Mattis, while in the Philippines, said he will commend themilitary for defeating insurgents in Marawi City on the islandof Mindanao.

The Philippines said on Monday it has ended five months of military operations in Marawi after a fierce and unfamiliar urban war that marked the country's biggest security crisis in years. Some experts see the Marawi insurgency as a prelude to a more ambitious bid by Islamic State loyalists to exploit Mindanao's poverty and use its jungles and mountains as a base to train, recruit and launch attacks in the region. "It was a tough fight," Mattis told reporters on his flight to the Philippines, adding he thought the Philippines' military had sent "a very necessary message to the terrorists."



On Thursday, Mattis will lead the U.S. delegation inThailand for the cremation rites for the late King BhumibolAdulyadej.

North Korea Threat Is 'Critical, Imminent,' Japan Tells US, South Korea

Onodera's remarks underscored the deep concern in Tokyo after North Korean weapons tests, including test firing missiles over Japan, as Pyongyang seeks to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States.




Tillerson wants room for Taliban in Afghan govt

AP, Afghanistan :

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday there is a place for moderate elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan's government as long as they renounce violence and terrorism and commit to stability. He also delivered a blunt warning to neighboring Pakistan, insisting Islamabad must step up action against terrorist groups that have found safe haven within its borders.

Speaking on an unannounced trip to Afghanistan where he met Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah and other senior officials at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, Tillerson said the Taliban must understand that they will never win a military victory and should prepare to negotiate with the government. "Clearly, we have to continue to fight against the Taliban, against others, in order for them to understand they will never win a military victory," Tillerson told a small group of reporters allowed to accompany him from the Qatari capital of Doha. "And there are, we believe, moderate voices among the Taliban, voices that do not want to continue to fight forever.



They don't want their children to fight forever. So we are looking to engage with those voices and have them engage in a reconciliation process leading to a peace process and their full involvement and participation in the government."

"There's a place for them in the government if they are ready to come, renouncing terrorism, renouncing violence and being committed to a stable prosperous Afghanistan," Tillerson said.

Tillerson outlined to Ghani and Abdullah the Trump administration's new South Asia policy, which the president rolled out last month and views the region through a lens that includes Afghanistan as well as Pakistan and India, both of which he will visit later this week. The approach is heavy on combatting and beating extremist groups in all three countries.

"We also want to work with regional partners to ensure that there are no threats in the region," he said. "This is very much a regional effort as you saw. It was rolled out in the strategy itself, demanding that others deny safe haven to terrorists anywhere in the region. We are working closely with Pakistan as well."

Tillerson will visit Islamabad on Tuesday and said he would be telling Pakistani officials that their cooperation in fighting extremists and driving them from hideouts on their territory is imperative to a good relationship with the U.S.

"It will be based upon whether they take action that we feel is necessary to move the process forward for both creating opportunity for reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan but also ensuring a stable future Pakistan," he said. "Pakistan needs to, I think, take a clear-eyed view of the situation that they are confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organizations that find safe haven inside of Pakistan. So we want to work closely Pakistan to create a more stable and secure Pakistan as well."




MYMENSINGH: Mohammad Kalilur Rahman, DC, Mymensingh speaking at a press briefing on district branding organised by District Information Office on Monday.
Myanmar agrees to take back Rohingya refugees: Asad

EXODUS CONTINUES: About 2500 Rohingya refugees including children and women enter Bangladesh\'s border as they stayed at Shahpari Dwip on Tuesday.

Myanmar on Tuesday agreed to take back the Rohingya people, forced out of their homes in the Rakhine state of that country and pushed into Bangladesh, side by side with implementing the Kofi Annan report.

Both Myanmar and Bangladesh would form a joint working group in this regard by November 30. A decision to this effect was taken at a bilateral meeting held at the Home Ministry level between Bangladesh and Myanmar on security and law enforcement matters at Naypyidaw, the capital of the Myanmar.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, now in Myanmar on an official visit leading a 12-member Bangladesh delegation, is scheduled to make a courtesy call on Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi on Wednesday at 10.00 am (local time), according to a message received here on Tuesday from the Myanmar capital.

The title of Tuesday's meeting held between the two countries was "Cooperation with Myanmar and Bangladesh: Ministerial Meeting on Security and Law Enforcement Matters," where the cooperation between Bangladesh and Myanmar including the security and law enforcement issues also came up for discussion. During the meeting, both the sides also signed two Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs), the message sent by Bangladesh Home Ministry's Public Relations Officer Sharif Mahmood Apu said.

Earlier, senior officials of Bangladesh and Myanmar held another meeting at the secretary level. Secretary of public security division of home ministry Mostafa Kamal Uddin led the Bangladesh side, while Myanmar's secretary Yuen Tin mayent led his country's 16-member delegation at the meeting.

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan at the head of a 12-member Bangladesh delegation left here yesterday for Myanmar on a three-day official visit to resolve different issues, including Rohingya crisis, with the Myanmar government.
Ban on using cell phones in exam halls

M M Jasim :

The Education Ministry is determined to check question paper leakage and forgery in the examination halls during the public examinations at any cost with a view to restoring its image and ensure quality education at every level, the ministry source said.

The Ministry has also taken many initiatives to achieve its goal.

Use of mobile phones, especially by students, by teachers and by employees who are directly involved with the examination has been prohibited.

Only the secretary of the centre could use a normal phone to communicate with the other teachers to run the examinations smoothly, the Ministry took the decision from Natioonal Monitoring and Law and Order Affairs meeting on Tuesday. Its direction about using mobile phone will be implemented from the upcoming Junior School Certificate (JSC) and Junior Dakhil Certificate (JDC), Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and Dakhil, and Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examinations.

The Ministry has also asked students to reach at the examination halls before half-an-hour of the examination. Otherwise, no student will be allowed to enter the examination halls after the timeframe.

Sources said, the top bosses of the ministry are passing very embarrassing time as they have failed to check question paper leakage at every public examination. Even they failed to stop forgery during the examination.

"The Ministry is in image crisis now. It wants to overcome the bad reputation. That is why there is no way but to take strict initiative," an official of the Ministry told The New Nation wishing anonymity.

Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid said, "We must take stern action against those persons who will try to do irregularities ahead of any public examination."

Secretary (Secondary and Higher Education Division) of the ministry Md Sohrab Hossain said it is our challenge to check question paper leakage. "I think it is not impossible to stop all irregularities during the public examination," he said.

The Secretary also emphasised on cancellation of Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) as it creates environment irregularities in the examination halls.

The JSC and JDC Examinations-2017 will begin from November 1 across the country.

Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, Dhaka and Bangladesh Madrasah Education Board have already published routines of the examinations.

The examinations, which will start at 10am every day, will end on November 18, according to the routines.
US eyeing sanctions

Agencies :

The United States (US) has announced new restrictions concerning engagement with the Myanmar military over the violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine State.

Washington is also weighing economic measures against those involved in the reported atrocities.

"We express our gravest concern over recent events in Rakhine State and the violent, traumatic abuses Rohingya and other communities have endured. It is imperative that any individuals or entities responsible for atrocities, including non-state actors and vigilantes, be held accountable," State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a statement on Monday.

In the statement, she also outlined the measures that Washington is going to take "in pursuit of accountability and an end to violence."

In particular, the US is withdrawing military assistance programs for Myanmar units and officers "involved in operations in northern Rakhine State." The measure will add to Washington's already limited engagement with the Myanmar military and its long-standing embargo on all military sales.

In addition, the State Department said it has ceased its consideration of travel waivers for senior Myanmar military officials and is weighing economic sanctions against individuals "associated with atrocities."

"The Government of Burma, including its armed forces, must take immediate action to ensure peace and security; implement commitments to ensure humanitarian access to communities in desperate need; facilitate the safe and voluntary return of those who have fled or been displaced in Rakhine State; and address the root causes of systematic discrimination against the Rohingya," Nauert said.

The Rohingya crisis, which actually originated in a conflict from the 19th century, intensified on August 25, 2017, when Muslim insurgents of Rohingya origin attacked security posts in Myanmar's Rakhine State.

Myanmar's subsequent brutal crackdown led to a spate of clashes and the death of hundreds of Rohingya people. More than half a million Rohingya Muslims have already fled Myanmar, crossing into neighboring Bangladesh.
Students get Tk 58 lakh edn scholarship in Bandarban

A Correspondent :

At total of 1,281 students of different educational institutions of the district got education scholarship of Tk 57.60 lakh from Chittagong Hill Tracts Development Board.

According to sources at the Board source, 215 college students and 212 university students of seven upazilas in the district got the much-desired scholarship. The remaining 854 students are the residents of Rangamati and Khagrachchari.

The college-level each student got Tk 4,000 while the university-level student got Tk 5,000 each.

State Minister for Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs Bir Bahadur U Shwe Sing handed over the money to the students at Arun Sharki Town Hall in the district town on Saturday.

Among others, Chittagong Hill Tracts Development Board Vice-Chairman Tarun Kanti Ghosh, District Deputy Commissioner Delip Kumar Banik, Parbattya District Parishad Executive Officer Mohammad Nurul Absar, Additional Superintendant of Police Mohammad Kamruzzaman, Cantonment Public School and College Principal Rezaul Islam, and Government Women College Principal Pradeep Barua were also present.

In his speech, Bir Bahadur said the government has special plan to improve the education standard and raise the literacy rate in the hill tracts districts. The government has already taken decision to build colleges in every upazila.If the plans have been implemented, the education quality will be improved in the districts.

The minister also informed that the scholarship money will be one crore in future.

"Do not raise the quantity, increase the quality," the minister suggested.

Meanwhile, the students said the scholarship money will play a vital role in continuing the study of the poor talented students.

They also urged the authority concerned to remove the teacher crisis in all secondary and higher secondary schools in the districts.




For more global action for Rohingyas more active Muslim leadership needed

Queen Rania of Jordan who visited Rohingya refugee camps on Monday decried the global inaction to stop the genocide as the Myanmar military is 'unfolding it on the world stage to a largely indifferent audience'







This is a shame she said condemning the 'shocking escalation of violence' and called upon the international community to respond effectively, quickly and generously as the spate of violence is creating thousands of refugees daily taking shelter in Bangladesh refugee camps.





But it is highly regrettable that any leader of a big or rich Muslim country is yet to visit the Rohingya camps to suggest they are not taking the human tragedy seriously.





Myanmar is not a big country for the Muslim countries to take on although it is getting arms from Israel to kill Muslims. Muslim countries also can flood Rohingyas with arms. Myanmar must face war against war for ethnic cleansing of Muslims.





Before her Turkish President's wife Emine Erdogan visited the refugee camps and sympathise with the miseries of Rohingyas.





Now came queen Rania of Jordan. She went round the refugee camps and fondly talked to children as they came closer to her and told their stories of escape from killing field. Women told how they were raped and their husbands and grown up children were shot and butchered.





As she sat on a rag in open sky and listened, the environment was soaked with heavy air with memories of their plight. Queen Rania had no word to console the homeless. Her human touch is appreciated by the people of Bangladesh.





She visited Bangladesh as a member of International Rescue Committee (IRC) and an advocate of UN humanitarian agencies. Earlier Turkish First Lady while visiting the refugee camps recently also made similar plea to the global community and the Muslim nations in particular to come forward and mobilize actions in the ground to save the Rohingya people being killed, their women raped and villages torched forcing them to leave their homeland.







This ethnic cleansing is taking place on the eyes of the entire world and Muslim countries are also witnessing it without much success so far to put a plan of action to decisively act to force Myanmar and its supporters to stop it.







Rich countries met in Geneva and made a pledge of $340 million in aid on Sunday for Rohingya refugees, which will be enough to feed them for six months up to February 2018. It is uncertain how Bangladesh will be able to give food and shelter to the more than one million refugees and their number is only rapidly rising.







So the only solution to the problem is to secure the return of the refugees to their home for which international pressure is needed on Myanmar government. But the support of some big powers including India, China and Russia has made Myanmar adamant and helping further aggravating the situation as the clearing operation of Myanmar military continues.







The US government has already started taking targeted sanctions against the Myanmar military to stop the massive violence. Forty-three US lawmakers urged the Trump administration earlier this week to reimpose US travel bans on Myanmar's military leaders and prepare targeted sanctions against those responsible for the crackdown.





State Department said on Tuesday that it is assessing authorities of the relevant law to consider economic options available to target individuals associated with 'atrocities' in Myanmar.







Earlier the European Union (EU) has also imposed targeted sanctions against senior Myanmar military officials and stopped cooperation and sale of military hardware. The EU spokesperson in Brussels said they are waiting reactions before considering more sanctions.







Muslim countries must immediately call an OIC summit to figure out actions and start rolling it in the ground without further wasting time and stomaching insult of the barbaric Myanmar military. Muslims are targeted and discriminated and Muslim leaders have their responsibility to come to their rescue.




[TOP is off for a few days, so I'm posting some "classic" articles to tide you over. Comments are welcome, but won't be posted right away. This essay was originally written in 2005 for The Luminous-Landscape, but hey, 40mm-e lenses never go out of style! :-)

Thanks again to Richard Sintchak for his illustrations. Mike]

Forty millimeters has long been my favorite focal length for 35mm cameras. I got "turned on" to the focal length when I interviewed Sally Mann (right, by Molly Roberts) for Camera & Darkroom magazine in the 1980s. She told me she had supported her artwork in the early days by doing lots of small freelance jobs, including many for the local military academy. She used Olympus OM cameras, and she said that if she were going to do any artwork in 35mm she would use the 40mm /2 Zuiko. We talked about the focal length for a while, but all I remember now is Sally saying that 40mm is "about right." That's what started my interest in 40mms.

A few years later, looking for a "Leica with AE," I became aware of the Minolta CLE. It, too, had a 40mm normal lensthe Minolta 40mm /2 M-Rokkor. This turned out to be one of the best lenses I've ever used, fantastically sharp and smooth. My friend John Kennerdell, a photographer who lived in Bangkok at the time, told me that one Japanese connoisseur had dubbed it "the Water Lens." Curiously, it was one of the only lenses I've ever used that consistently drew positive comments about sharpness and clarity from non-photographers looking at my prints.

The latest addition to the short list is of course the Cosina/Voigtlander 40mm /1.4 Nokton, the first lens of its specification ever. It can be extremely sharp and contrasty when shown off at its best, and for a fast lens it has pretty good bokeha term that just refers to the appearance of the out-of-d.o.f. blur, whatever you may have read elsewhere!

I've found as a general rule that bokeh gets progressively more problematic: a) the larger the aperture, b) the closer the focus, c) the more distant the background, and d) the more contrasty the background. With any lens, we discover our own limits for what we'll tolerate, and then shoot within those limits. For instance, with the 4th-version 35mm Summicron (pre-ASPH), I would never shoot wide open because the contrast was just too low for me (and sometimes the vignetting was objectionable, too). Overall, the more shots I've seen taken with the 40mm Nokton Classic, the more serviceable it seems. If you keep the plane of focus reasonably distant and watch the background, even /1.4 seems usable in point of vignetting, contrast, and center sharpness. Not a bad result at all for a small, fast lens.

Richard Sintchak, Ben and Amy at the Counter, 40mm Nokton S.C. (single-coated)

Of course, no focal length is magic. Many photographers have different favorites. As long as they're in the right hands, most common focal lengths can be used to make pictures that are excellent. So why 40mm? I'd say that the 40mm focal length is special precisely because it's not special. Purely by convention, 50mm has long been considered the "normal" focal length for 35mm photography. Early WA's were 35mm. Many photographers have made a choice between these two focal lengths as their own "normals." Many, like myself, have switched back and forth. The truth is, neither of these common focal lengths are quite "normal" for 35mm. 50mm is just a touch long, and 35mm is just a touch wide. Using the diagonal of the format as the standard, the true normal would be about 42mm (curiously, that's about exactly a 28mm lens on an APS-C digital sensor, although no cameramakers who mainly make APS-C cameras have come out with dedicated 28mm normals for the format). The various oddball "intermediate" focal lengths (38mm, 40mm, 43mm, and 45mm), although much less common, are actually closer to a true normal for the 35mm format.

Why would you want a lens to be "normal," anyway? So what's so special about not being special? Glad you asked.

Taken by Richard Sintchak with a Voigtlander Bessa R3A and 40mm Nokton S.C. on Tri-X.

Getting Past It

These days, we're witnessing an intense interest in digital cameras in online forums. The nexus of this interest, however, is almost always technological, not visual. People want to know about pixel count, bit depth, noise at high ISOs, turn-on time, how many microns each photosite measures, what the buffer speed is, and so forth. This is actually quite typical. Photography has always had a technological side that is endlessly fascinating, and this is as true of digital as it is of traditional photography. What it means is that we photographers often approach photography as if its main interest were technical and technological. We don't look so much at the visual content and the visual effects of pictures as we do their technical properties.

But many of the greatest photographers have "gotten past" the technical aspect of the craft. What I mean by that is that they choose a particular mode of operation, a way of working, and then they concentrate on the visual aspect of the pictures. Think of it. The late Henri Cartier-Bresson was indelibly associated with Leicas and the 50mm lens. Edward Weston made 8x10 contact prints. Eugene Atget and August Sander used more or less the same techniques for most of their important work. Nicholas Nixon and Shelby Lee Adams use large-format cameras with wide-angle lenses to photograph people. We associate Ernst Haas with 35mm Kodachrome, Eliot Porter with the dye transfer process. The point is, these photographers and many other like them don't want you to look at their pictures from a technical perspective. They've chosen the technical properties they like, granted, but they understand that those technical properties are not what make any particular picture good or not-so-good. You don't look at a Cartier-Bresson picture and say, "Gee, look at how sharp that Leica 50mm lens is." You don't look at a Weston and say, "Wow, 8x10 gives you such smooth tonality." The reason you don't is that all Cartier-Bressons were taken with sharp 50s, and all Westons have smooth tonality. It's not that these photographs don't have technical properties, it's that the artists want you to get past that, and look at the subject, the visual content, and the meaning of their photographs.

Illustrations  2005 by Richard Sintchak

Focal lengths, too, impart specialized properties to pictures. You can zoom way in on something that's far off, get so close to something that it looks almost abstract, or use a lens so wide that distortion is part of the "visual toolkit" you're working with. And there's nothing at all wrong with any of this! I'm not arguing against technical experimentation or wildly unusual focal lengths. What I'm saying is that if you're concerned with extremist focal lengths, then your pictures will display certain properties associated with those focal lengths, and people are more likely to see those properties when they come to your pictures. I came across a delightful set of pictures recently by a young Japanese photographer who had bought himself a Bessa R2 and a 15mm Voigtlander lens. He was clearly having an enormous amount of fun experimenting with what the lens could doyou could just sense his enthusiasm and playfulness from his pictures. But of course many of the pictures deliberately exhibited the properties not so much of the real world as seen by the photographer, but of the real world as seen by the lens.

Moderate focal lengths, to my eye at least, serve in part to remove this sort of "specialness" from pictures. They make the angle-of-view and the type of distortion nondescript. And what this allows, in turn, is a concentration on the visual content of pictures. That's what's so special about not being special.

As the tribe of photographers has gotten much larger, it's become more popular to say things like "40mm is the most boring focal length." But turn that around. Isn't that person saying that the pictures he makes with that focal length are boring? Meaning, he can't make an interesting picture without a more extreme focal length lens? Careful with those epithets, pardner.

So is a 40mm "better" than a 35mm or a 50mm, or any other focal length you like? Of course not. Good artists can "normalize" any way (or many ways) of seeing. Ernst Haas used the very slow (ASA 10) speed of early Kodachrome to explore motion blur. Ralph Gibson uses high contrast to make pictures less atmospheric and more graphic. But if you care to remove obvious focal-length effects from your pictures, and "get past" those properties, so that you and the viewers of your pictures concentrate on what you're looking at, how you see as opposed to how the lens sees, then the 40mm true normal might be, as Sally Mann said to me, about right.

Mike

Originally published on The Luminous Landscape. Copyright 2005, 2008, 2017 by Michael C. Johnston, All Rights Reserved.

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Solidarity did not support the removal of the reference to 9.4 in the Water committee report. We opposed the Water Committee report for various reasons, including the charging for 'excessive use' and the retention of Irish Water as a commercial entity. Our position was well explained on the Committee and in the ongoing Dail debate on the legislation. Regardless of the legal situation, we believe that if people organise to oppose the imposition of charges in the future, it can be defeated and the law turned into a dead letter, just as it has been for the last 3 years.



This is an answer Sinn Fein could just as easily come up with. Even Fianna Fail on the face of it were against Irish Water and Water Charges but behind the scenes both conjured up excessive charges, metering and the establishment of Irish Water.



What Mr Murphy or indeed any of the Right2Water TDs did not answer was to explain in detail why subsequent to the Oireachtas Committee debate on January 15th, 2017, in which two Senior Councils advocated the retention of the 9.4 Irish Domestic Water Exemption, that no mention of this can be found in any report, especially the Confidential Draft Final Report.



This is the report Solidarity and R2W TDs fully accepted and supported when Deputies Paul Murphy, Richard Boyd-Barrett, Brid Smith and Mich Barry spoke on video on the night of April 5th 2017 when they rushed to be the first to announce to the world a victory for the Anti-Water Charges campaign.















Solidarity and People Before Profit speaking outside Dail April 5th 2017



Mr Murphy might care to explain his enthusiastic comments on the video that there will be no excessive usage charge. I would think we deserve an answer to that especially in light of their failure to explain Sinn Feins behind the scenes deals with regard to Excessive Charges or indeed Right2Water Unions agreeing with them in the Oireachtas Committee.



In relation to his comment that Solidarity did not support the removal of the reference to the 9.4 Exemption in the committees report, I am not aware of anyone making that specific accusation. My contention was that the 9.4 was never included in the report in the first place and no one complained about it. An altogether serious reality.



I would like Mr Murphy to show me detailed evidence that he fought tooth and nail, subsequent to the legal debate on January 15th , to have the 9.4 Exemption included in any Committee report. A bland statement like our position was well explained on the Committee and in the ongoing Dail debate on the legislation does nothing to clarify his actions in relation to accepting a report with proposed progressive charges in the place of the 9.4 Exemption. The details of his attempts to retain the 9.4 and to have it included in the committees report are now required to justify his so far unsubstantiated claims that he did fight for them. Murphys claim regarding his position to the 9.4 is not documented anywhere, as far as I am aware. I would like to be proved wrong.



Just to be precise the time-frame I am referring to is subsequent to the January 15th session and up to when the Committees Confidential Final Report was published on the 5th of April.



I spoke to the Oireachtas Committee secretary, Mr Thomas Sheridan, on the phone and his reply was confirmed in writing to Michael Mooney that after each session the Committee members would meet in private session and decide and agree which parts of that session would be included in the Oireachtas Committee report.



The most critical of all decision to drop the 9.4 Exemption and any mention of the January 15 debate and replace it with 'progressive charges' was made at that point. It is not unreasonable to think that if there was a deal done behind their backs, Mr Murphy or any of the R2W TDs should have raised hell at that point. They should have explained to the anti water movement what was happening during all those private sessions. And they should now explain why the 9.4 Exemption to water charges was left out of any report. After all how can you have an 'Exemption to Water Charges' and all that it entails and what we now have 'progressive water charges' at the same time. That is a contradiction. Mr Murphy might care to explain his enthusiastic comments on the video that there will be no excessive usage charge. I would think we deserve an answer to that especially in light of their failure to explain Sinn Feins behind the scenes deals with regard to Excessive Charges or indeed Right2Water Unions agreeing with them in the Oireachtas Committee.In relation to his comment that Solidarity did not support the removal of the reference to the 9.4 Exemption in the committees report, I am not aware of anyone making that specific accusation. My contention was that the 9.4 was never included in the report in the first place and no one complained about it. An altogether serious reality.I would like Mr Murphy to show me detailed evidence that he fought tooth and nail, subsequent to the legal debate on January 15th , to have the 9.4 Exemption included in any Committee report. A bland statement like our position was well explained on the Committee and in the ongoing Dail debate on the legislation does nothing to clarify his actions in relation to accepting a report with proposed progressive charges in the place of the 9.4 Exemption. The details of his attempts to retain the 9.4 and to have it included in the committees report are now required to justify his so far unsubstantiated claims that he did fight for them. Murphys claim regarding his position to the 9.4 is not documented anywhere, as far as I am aware. I would like to be proved wrong.Just to be precise the time-frame I am referring to is subsequent to the January 15th session and up to when the Committees Confidential Final Report was published on the 5th of April.I spoke to the Oireachtas Committee secretary, Mr Thomas Sheridan, on the phone and his reply was confirmed in writing to Michael Mooney that after each session the Committee members would meet in private session and decide and agree which parts of that session would be included in the Oireachtas Committee report.The most critical of all decision to drop the 9.4 Exemption and any mention of the January 15 debate and replace it with 'progressive charges' was made at that point. It is not unreasonable to think that if there was a deal done behind their backs, Mr Murphy or any of the R2W TDs should have raised hell at that point. They should have explained to the anti water movement what was happening during all those private sessions. And they should now explain why the 9.4 Exemption to water charges was left out of any report. After all how can you have an 'Exemption to Water Charges' and all that it entails and what we now have 'progressive water charges' at the same time. That is a contradiction.







Enda Craig is an anti-water charge activist who writes @ Buncrana Together.





Follow Buncrana Together on Twitter @buncranatogethr

Deputy Murphys response together with the lack of a credible explanation from those who we were led to believe were the good guys like Solidarity, People Before Profit, Sinn Fein and Independents, to my serious accusations in Buncrana Together, When the Dust Settles where I accused representatives of doing deals in the Oireachtas Water Committee and selling out the anti water charges movement, brings up thoughts of just what these Irish politicians mean when they talk about Peoples Power, Mass Movement or Grass Roots.When it comes to platitudes from the left in Ireland be it Solidarity, PBP or those in the somewhat more hazy left or right category, Sinn Fein, it baffles me what they mean. Especially when I believe that the grass roots are looking for some honest answers. After all when it comes to people's power, honesty and information is the key.You know, to my mind, this is not far away from the bromide one hears, all too often, from the mainstream parties such as Fine Gael and Fianna Fail when they say they are working hard on behalf of the nation, or constituents or to quote an often Sinn Fein cliche, we have a mandate. Euphemisms like these are really for keeping the masses in the dark, cliches to give people the impressing that their opinions count and platitudes to hide what they really want or are doing, like the opposite, acting in their own self interest. But the masses, so long as they are controlled, are needed every so often to march up and down OConnell Street or every four years at election time. It is condescending.
The suspect who was wounded in an officer-involved shooting early Saturday in Carbondale has been identified, according to a news release from the Illinois State Police, which is currently investigating the incident.

According to the release, at about 2:13 a.m. Saturday, a Carbondale Police officer was approaching Curbside Grill, 227 W. Main St., on routine patrol and heard what sounded like gunshots. Upon arrival, the officer saw Jeremy Spivey, 28, of Marion, firing a gun in the direction of a large crowd of people. The Carbondale officer, in response to an active shooter, fired at Spivey, stopping the threat.

Carbondale Police officers performed life-saving medical procedures on Spivey while waiting for an ambulance, saving his life. The release states Spivey was taken to a local hospital, and subsequently flown to a regional hospital, where he is listed in stable condition.

The Illinois State Police Zone 7 Investigations is asking any witnesses to this incident to contact the Illinois State Police District 13 Headquarters at 618-542-2171.

Spivey is currently on parole through the Illinois Department of Corrections. In addition to a parole violation warrant, ISP says in the release that additional charges are anticipated in connection with this incident, pending further investigation and Jackson County States Attorneys review of the case.

Because of the ongoing investigation, the Carbondale Police officer is not being identified.
It is truly a great day in Orangeburg County, state Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, said at Mondays groundbreaking ceremony for Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical Colleges Nursing and Health Science building.

But more importantly, a great day here at OCtech, she said.

The 30,000-square-foot facility will feature a large tiered classroom, computer lab, study rooms, skills practice lab and simulation labs with the latest technology to prepare students for careers as health care professionals.

The $12.5 million building is scheduled to be ready for classes in spring 2019.

One of the things I think is important to mention is that this project, when it was approved by the Commission on Higher Education, was considered a best practice, OCtech President Dr. Walt Tobin said.

The reason it was considered a best practice was because of the variety of funding sources that we received in support of this project, he said.

The funding includes $6 million from the state; $1.96 million from the U.S. Economic Development Administration; $500,000 from Orangeburg County; $32,000 from Calhoun County; and about $1 million from the OCtech Foundation. The remaining money, about $3 million, came from the colleges capital projects fund.

Lower Savannah Council of Governments Executive Director Bill Molnar said that the Economic Development Administration has several projects in the region.

This is one that we are extremely, extremely proud of because of the cooperation  not just in the building itself, but in the programs that go into this building afterwards, Molnar said. The opportunities here to take students and have them be able to go next door (to the Regional Medical Center) and get the practicum is absolutely fantastic.

The new two-story structure will be located between buildings K and M, on the side of the campus near the Regional Medical Center.

This is a pilot program, something we would like to see replicated here in South Carolina and hopefully across the Southeast and the nation, Molnar said.

Cobb-Hunter commended Tobin, area commissioners and the foundation for the great job that yall do in making sure that this institution is ready to meet the workforce needs of the tri-county area.

She said she was also pleased with what the state has been able to do.

When we talk about health care workforce, we know that in rural communities in particular, there is a desperate need for training nurses, PAs and all the allied health professionals, she said.

But we really want to make sure that we do all that we can to retain those trained workforce people in rural communities, she said.

She encouraged everyone to recommend OCtech to students considering health care careers.

We need the help of all of you to make sure that students know what is here right in our own community, she said.

It is a very exciting day today as we look behind us and we hear the bulldozers running and we see the beginning of something very special for OCtech and Orangeburg County, said state Rep. Russell Ott, D-St. Matthews.

OCtech is known as a leader in putting out quality students in the health care profession, he said.

And I think this building is only going to continue with that trend, he said.

Orangeburg County Council Chairman Johnnie Wright Sr. said, We are extremely excited about the opportunity that this building will bring to our region and to our county to open up those educational opportunities to grow our students and hopefully try to keep them close to home.

OCtech Area Commission Vice Chair Margaret Felder Wilson said the construction of the new facility demonstrates the colleges dedication to the diagnosis and treatment of more chronic diseases using advanced technology.

OCtech Foundation Chair Cathy Hughes said the foundation helped find private funding for the building.

Now the foundations emphasis is shifting to raising funds for scholarships for the students wholl soon occupy the building by offering naming rights for rooms in the building, she said.
WASHINGTON -- One person who obviously didn't know "what he was signing up for" is President Donald Trump. Others include Trump voters who believed they were electing a decent human being to be commander in chief.

What Trump reportedly said to the grief-stricken widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, who gave his life for his country, is not some kind of minor miscue or media-fueled distraction. It speaks to the core issue of Trump's character and demonstrates, as clearly as any incident to date, his unfitness for the office he holds -- and dishonors.

Johnson and three other U.S. soldiers -- Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson, Staff Sgt. Bryan Black and Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright -- were killed Oct. 4 in Niger, apparently ambushed by Islamic State-affiliated militants. Exactly what happened is unclear, and Congress should be as dogged in investigating these deaths as it was in probing Benghazi.

For 12 days, Trump said nothing, not even a tweet, about the four Americans killed in action, and had no contact with the loved ones they had left behind. Pressed by reporters to explain his silence, Trump reacted by slandering his predecessors, especially President Barack Obama, falsely claiming that they, too, neglected to console the families of the fallen.

Trump then placed a phone call to Myeshia Johnson, La David Johnson's widow. The truism "better late than never" is not always true.

According to two people who overheard the call, Trump told Johnson that her husband "knew what he was signing up for" although his death must still be painful. One witness who confirms these were Trump's words is the woman who raised La David Johnson as a son, Cowanda Jones-Johnson. The other is Rep. Frederica S. Wilson, D-Fla., who was with the family when Trump called. Wilson was so dumbfounded and angry that she quickly called Trump out publicly for what he had said.

Trump tweeted a denial and said he had "proof," but of course produced none. The president has shown himself to be such a liar that it's impossible to take his word over almost anyone else's.

Wilson was furious because instead of lessening Myeshia Johnson's grief, Trump had deepened it. Surely that was not his intent. But mindless cruelty is still cruel.

Offering succor to the families of service members killed in the line of duty is one of the most solemn exercises a president must undertake. It is a task requiring, above all, a sense of humility. "In the hope that it may be no intrusion upon the sacredness of your sorrow, I have ventured to address you this tribute to the memory of...your brave and early fallen child," Abraham Lincoln wrote to the parents of a fallen Union soldier.

Unlike true leaders, however, Trump seems to associate humility with weakness. When confronted with an error, big or small, he never just says, "I'm sorry, I made a mistake, I apologize," and leaves it at that. He always seeks to deflect responsibility. Somebody else is really at fault. Others who came before him have done worse. Bad people in the media are treating him unfairly.

Trump is a weak, narcissistic man in a job that requires strength and empathy. I'm not sure that empathy is a concept he even understands. He acts as if he believes that feeling someone else's pain is strictly for losers, not winners.

None of this is a surprise. We learned a lot about Trump during the campaign when he attacked the Khan family, who lost a son in Iraq, for having the temerity to attack him politically. We have a president who believes that making the ultimate sacrifice for the nation is less important than supporting or opposing Trump.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that earlier this year, Trump phoned the father of Army Sgt. Dillon Baldridge, who was killed June 10 in Afghanistan. In the course of the conversation, Trump offered to send the father a personal check for $25,000 -- but did not follow through. The check was finally sent this week only after the Post asked about it.

Sadly, that's typical Trump. He makes a grand promise, which allows him to feel big and generous -- which is the whole point. Even in interactions with Gold Star families, it's all about him. Later, having played the role of Trump the Munificent, he forgets about it and goes in search of the next opportunity to shore up his fragile ego.

No one should expect him to grow in office. He's 71. At that age, either you have compassion, self-knowledge and a conscience, or you don't.
Faced with increasingly convincing evidence that electronic voting systems can be hacked to alter election results, most states are wisely moving to adopt voting methods that enhance security, in part by producing a paper ballot record that can be used to audit results. South Carolina should do the same.

In fact, that's the goal of the S.C. Election Commission, if the Legislature will come up with $40 million to purchase the 13,000 new machines needed to serve every precinct in the state. The commission has attempted to get the Legislature's attention for five years about the need to build up a fund to replace the existing machines. So far, legislators have demurred, awaiting the completion of new state standards for voting machine security.

Those standards are expected to be completed in time for legislative review next year. Timely action will be needed if there is to be any chance to replace the 13-year-old touch-screen machines before the next general election in 2020.

The latest state to make that decision is Virginia, which last month decertified the remaining touch-screen voting machines that do not create a paper trail after computer experts demonstrated how easily those particular machines could be hacked from afar.

Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia now require a paper trail for their elections, using a variety of methods, including paper ballots, punch cards, and touch-screen machines that also produce a printed ballot. Virginia is joining them.

Just five states, including South Carolina, still exclusively use voting machines that do not produce a paper trail. In all, according to Reuters, some 44 million voters, one fourth of all eligible voters in the United States, were registered in jurisdictions without a paper audit trail in 2016.

The current interest in securing voting systems is partly due to concerns aroused by evidence of alleged Russian attempts to tamper with U.S. election machinery in 2016. The evidence for that is mixed. For instance, when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security last month called election officials in 21 states to tell them that their systems had come under attack during the 2016 election, it had to issue partial retractions after its conclusions were disputed by Wisconsin, Texas and California. A suspected attempt to intrude into South Carolina's voting databases could not be definitively attributed to hostile action.

DHS has offered no evidence that Russian hackers succeeded in gaining access to the most sensitive elections data, much less in altering outcomes. But one alarming report leaked from the National Security Agency in June says Russian intelligence "executed cyber espionage operations" against a voting machine company in August 2016, "evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions."

That information presumably was used to "launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations." The report does not tell whether the attacks succeeded, but the threat is clear.

However, Virginia's decision to replace its remaining Direct Recording Electronic systems was triggered by the information from a cybersecurity conference where computer hackers showed that those voting machines could be compromised without much difficulty.

South Carolina uses machines from a different manufacturer than Virginia, and S.C. officials insist the voting machines now in use have not been compromised. In addition, S.C. Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire says recent software upgrades have improved the system's security.

Nevertheless, the experience of hacking elsewhere and the general sense of cyber insecurity with voting systems say that the time is fast approaching for the state to upgrade its aging system.

Let's hope legislators can do a better job replacing voting machines than they have aging school buses. A secure voting system is essential.

This editorial is from The Post and Courier of Charleston via The Associated Press.
An Orangeburg resident discussed his concerns with the countys Emergency Medical Services during a meeting last week.

There are too many EMS employees that are afraid to speak out on whats going on over there because they fear repercussions from Orangeburg County, Robert Decelles said.

The citizens of Orangeburg deserve to know exactly whats going on, he said.

Decelles spoke to Orangeburg County Council about the services and an Oct. 8 article about EMS in The T&D.

The article quoted Orangeburg County Administrator Harold Young as saying the county has 10 ambulances but operates only seven due to lack of manpower, Decelles said.

Decelles said thats incorrect as there are seven ambulances and the county operates four. He questioned how that can sufficiently cover an area the size of Orangeburg County, which covers about 1,128 square miles.

Decelles said hes concerned about using revenue from the newly enacted business license to increase pay for EMTs and paramedics.

Whats wrong with the tax dollars we have now? he said. Were not getting what we paid for.

He said there needs to be transparency in the county budget so the public can have a better understanding of where the money is going.

If you were to tell me right now you were going to increase pay and its going to the emergency services, fire, EMS and police, I would probably vote for it, Decelles said.

He wants the county to examine other ways to trim the fat within the budget.

Young said he was misquoted in the article.

In the previous article, Young was quoted saying there are about 28 EMS personnel on 12-hour shifts, but some have to work double shifts due to understaffing.

But last week, Young said, We dont have 12-hour shifts. We have 24-hour shifts.

As to the number of trucks, Young said he was asked how many trucks were available, which is why he gave the number of ambulances as ten.

We have seven available with three backups, he said.

The county is also planning to purchase five additional ambulances.

Young said the business license revenue is going specifically to the EMS employees as promised.

You can talk to any employee for EMS and they will tell you every last employee, after we passed business licensing, every last employee got a raise, Young said. That money definitely went towards them.

Orangeburg County's EMS operates on an annual budget of $2.9 million. The business license is estimated to provide EMS with about $700,000 more a year.
By Azernews





By Sara Israfilbayova

The two-day conference on the theme the International Investment Policies: The Way Forward conference was held in Baku on October 24 co-organized by Economy Ministry and the UN Trade and Development Conference (UNCTAD) discussed the cooperation opportunities between the two structures.

Representatives of about 40 local government agencies, private companies and institutions, international organizations and state structures from 11 countries participated in the conference, which considered the issues of the policy of foreign investments, the resolution of disputes and the study of the experience of the most successful investment projects.

Deputy Economy Minister of Azerbaijan Sahil Babayev, addressing the event said that investments in the Azerbaijani economy have exceeded $233 billion since 1995, $111 billion of which are foreign investments.

The deputy minister spoke about reforms carried out in Azerbaijan in recent years in order to improve the business environment and investment policy, including the creation of industrial parks, as well as the introduction of various customs and tax incentives, and the creation of the ASAN Service and others.

Foreign direct investment in Azerbaijan's economy in 2016 amounted to $7.3 billion, while in 2015 this figure was $7.5 billion. Thus, in 2016, the volume of foreign direct investment in the national economy decreased by 2.7 percent.

About 76.7 percent of foreign direct investment for the reporting period was in the oil and gas sector, and 23.3 percent in the non-oil sector.

He went on to say that today, more than 8,000 foreign companies operate in Azerbaijan, adding that signing of 48 agreements on foreign investment in the country and encouraging investment gives the right to foreign investment.

So far, the country has not encountered large contentious issues on contracts and has not paid large fines. This is an indicator that Azerbaijan is a reliable partner and that the investment climate in the country meets the requirements of the time, according to the deputy minister.

Further, Babayev underlined the importance of relations between Azerbaijan and UNCTAD, as well as prospects for further cooperation.

Head of the Department of Investment Policy of UNCTAD George Weber, in turn, reported on the activities of the organization and its activities.
Vice president of the Senate of the Czech Republic Ji?i Sestak has hailed his country's political relations with Azerbaijan as he met with Deputy Speaker of Milli Majlis, Chairman of the Committee for Natural Resources, Energy and Ecology Valeh Alasgarov.

Sestak recalled the signing of a strategic partnership document, and underlined the prospects for expanding economic cooperation between the two countries, Azertac reported.

Alasgarov described both interparliamentary and intergovernmental relations between Azerbaijan and the Czech Republic as excellent, saying they are developing year by year. He noted that the talks to be held during the visit will contribute to the development of bilateral ties. Alasgarov also underlined the interparliamentary relations and hailed the activities of the friendship groups in this regard.

The two also discussed prospects for developing bilateral relations between the two countries.

They emphasized mutual cooperation of the Azerbaijani and Czech companies, including in the field of transport, underlining the positive impact of this collaboration on bilateral ties between the two countries.
By Trend





The illegal visit of the head of Mexico-Armenia Friendship Group, Blanca Margarita Cuata Dominguez, a member of that group Maria Cristina Teresa Garcia Bravo and another person accompanying them to Azerbaijani lands occupied by Armenia is under investigation, Hikmat Hajiyev, spokesman for Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry, told Trend opn October 23.

In this regard, relevant instructions have been given to Azerbaijani Embassy in Mexico, he added.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
By Azernews





By Kamila Aliyeva

The European Union continues to help Georgia in its intention to develop rural areas.

About thirty representatives of the Georgian government took part in a working meeting in Tbilisi last week which discussed the integration of rural development into the country's national policy, Business Georgia reported.

While the meeting participants recognized the problems associated with the development of rural areas in Georgia, they focused on the effective implementation of the National Strategy for Rural Development for 2017-2020, the development of the Action Plan for Rural Development for 2018-2020 and on further steps to be taken at the national, regional and municipal levels.

The main topic of the meeting was the definition of the best suitable model for a comprehensive rural development policy in Georgia and ensuring its compliance with the European Union Rural Development Policy.

The meeting was organized within the framework of the European Neighborhood Program for Agriculture and Rural Development (ENPARD) and was supported by the United Nations Development Program in cooperation with Georgian Agriculture Ministry.

The EU is supporting rural development in Georgia as part of its ENPARD program since 2013. With a total budget of 102 million euros, the main goal of the ENPARD program is to reduce poverty in rural areas in Georgia.

At present, Strategy of Agricultural Development in Georgia 2015-2020 is the main policy document guiding the sectoral reforms in the country. The main objective of the Strategy is the development of agriculture through strengthening of small households and forming of profitable production chains.

Under the EU-Georgia Association Agreement, Georgia is committed to promote agricultural and rural development, in particular through progressive convergence of policies and legislation, including sharing knowledge and best practices of rural development policies to promote economic well-being for rural communities and enhancing the administrative capacities at central and local level to plan, evaluate, implement and enforce policies in accordance with EU regulations and best practices.
By Trend





Construction of the Haji Javad Mosque in Baku will be completed by the end of 2017, a source in Yasamal District Executive Power told Trend.

Most of the work has already been completed.

Meanwhile, another mosque in the Yasamal district of Baku  the Imam Huseyn Mosque  is being overhauled.
Dubai Investments, a leading, diversified investments company, said it will soon start installing coloured solar panels on buildings across Dubai through its joint venture Emirates Insolaire, as the emirate reinforces its commitment to a sustainable future.



Emirates Insolaire, which manufactures and markets Kromatix coloured solar glass in Dubai  the first-of-its-kind in the world - is in advanced negotiations with authorities and companies on installation plans.



This will be the first time that coloured solar panels will dress up buildings in Dubai, said the company in a statement.



Dubai has already installed photovoltaic panels on 433 buildings with a total capacity of 14.6 MW. The number of panels is expected to double in the future to eventually cover all buildings in the emirate by 2030.



The company, DICs joint venture with SwissINSO Holding, a Switzerland-based pioneer in solar technologies that developed Kromatix, is showcasing the revolutionary solar panel technology, photovoltaic modules and solar thermal collectors at the second edition of Dubai Solar Show.



The event is being held as part of 19th edition of Water, Energy, Technology and Environment Exhibition (Wetex) 2017 in Dubai World Trade Centre. The show and exhibition continues till October 25.



Rafic Hanbali, the managing partner of Emirates Insolaire, said: "Emirates Insolaire is set to play a pivotal role in the regional solar sector growth, as it is the only company in the world which offers the coloured solar panel technology."



"Soon, skyscrapers and buildings in Dubai will have a beautiful coloured dress, which is both aesthetically appealing and sustainable," he added.



According to him, the Kromatix solar glass is expected to become a rage, with year-long sunshine guaranteed in this part of the world.



"The technology has received phenomenal response in Europe, where sunshine is comparatively lower, with many building facades and roofs now with Emirates Insolaire solar panels," he stated.



"The coloured solar panels from Emirates Insolaire promote the use of renewable energy sources that aims to make Dubai a global centre of clean energy and green economy," he added.



The technology from Emirates Insolaire is in line with the Dubai governments initiative to use solar power as a renewable source of energy, and integral to Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050.



The strategy aims to provide 7 per cent of Dubais energy from clean energy sources by 2020, 25 per cent by 2030 and 75 per cent by 2050.



The solar growth in UAE mirrors the surging demand for solar panel technology across the region and globe.



As per an analysis by Frost and Sullivan, the GCC countries are expected to increase their installed solar capacity 50-fold between 2015 and 2025.



Emirates Insolaire has completed installation of Kromatix solar PV modules in several locations in the world, including Lausanne, Basel, Leysin, Austria, Copenhagen and Germany.-TradeArabia News Service
Leading international giants in the energy and construction sector such as state-run Saudi Aramco; China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) and Malaysian energy giant Petronas are among the potential bidders eyeing a major stake in Daewoo Engineering & Construction (E&C), said a report.



The race for the takeover bid began soon after the Korea Development Bank (KDB) posted a sales notice of its 50.75 per cent stake in Daewoo E&C earlier this month, reported Korea Times.



Industry officials said a foreign company will likely win the bid as the price is expected to hit 2 trillion won ($1.7 billion).



According to the current share price, KDBs stake will be valued at around 1.5 trillion won, and the state-run bank can ask for premiums for management rights, stated the Korean daily.



All three - Saudi Aramco, CSCEC and Petronas - are said to be keen on grabbing the Daewoo (E&C) stake and are still conducting negotiations, said the report citing sources familiar to the issue. However they have not made any official announcement, it added.



According to sources, both Petronas and China's CSCEC are lobbying officials of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea. On the other hand, Aramcos strategy is slighly different - offering a higher bidding price than its competitors instead of lobbying politicians, they added.



KDB has decided to sell the construction company at market price regardless of its book value, if a proper bidder shows up. The bank said it will choose the preferred bidder early next year, according to the Korea Times.



Mirae Asset Daewoo and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are jointly managing the sale, it added.
Allied Telesis, a leading provider of networking hardware and software products, has appointed Easa Husain Al-Yousifi & Sons Company as its value added accredited systems integrator exclusively for Kuwait.



Easa Husain Al-Yousifi & Sons Company is one of the leading ICT companies with more than 60 years of rich history in Kuwait. The company offers wide variety of solutions including security, network, surveillance, telecom, video conferencing, smart office and education solutions among others.



Easa Husain Al-Yousifi & Sons company has a division called Engineering Services Group (ESG), providing leading business solutions in Kuwait and represent worlds leading brands in its portfolio such as Panasonic, IBM, Lenovo, Netavis, Dahua, Samsung, Epson, TOA, Televes, PKLNS, York, Nova Light and several others.



EHY Company will be distributing the entire range of Allied Telesis products across the country as an exclusive partner, said a statement.



Sabbahuddin Khan, regional manager at Allied Telesis Middle East, said: The company has become one of the most preferred names in the business and is way ahead of its competitors in addressing the market for networking technologies for physical security and other ELV systems.



With this partnership we look forward to enter into newer market segments and verticals, which enable us to further strengthen our position in the market and help us grab more market share in Kuwait, he added.



Sami Abdou, sales and support manager, Easa Husain Al-Yousifi & Sons, said: Powered with Japanese technology, Allied Telesis has emerged as one of the fastest growing networking brand in the region.



With our strong focus on networking, security and surveillance market prompted us to partner with Allied Telesis for its technical superiority, flexibility and cost competitiveness. The range of the products to cater to ELV requirements bundled with an attractive price points is the right combination, he said.



This association with Allied Telesis compliments our product and technology portfolio and enables us to offer complete solutions to our partners and end-users, he added.



Abdou continued: With our technical strength, we will be able to reach the entire business spectrum in the country and cover lot of market verticals, like government, construction, healthcare, education, retails, telecom and much more.



We have already trained and certified our staff on Allied Telesiss network designs, products, solutions and technology to offer support to our partners and customers in Kuwait, he concluded.  TradeArabia News Service
Turkish Cargo, a leading cargo airlines in the region, was recently recognised with the Overall Carrier of the Year award in the Customers Choice category at the recent 33rd annual Payload Asia Awards, organised by the Payload Asia Group.



The awards are aimed at honouring the carriers for their excellence in the air cargo industry, said a statement.



Awarded with the contribution of the readers, air cargo customers and business partners of Payload Asia, member of the Federation of Asia Pacific Aircargo Association (FAPAA), the awards were unveiled at the annual ceremony attended by distinguished guests from around the world, it said.



The most prestigious award of the year was attributed to Turkish Cargo for its substantial growth, it added.



Along with Turkish Airlines network coverage of 300 destinations worldwide offering belly cargo capacity of 313 aircraft and providing 16 dedicated freighter aircraft to 72 destinations through 60 countries, Turkish Cargo strives to become the most preferred air carrier in the sector, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service
Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), a leading international aluminium smelter, said that it was recognised as the Leading Corporate for Investor Relations  Bahrain at the Middle East Investor Relations Association's 2017 IR Awards (Meira) 2017, held last month, in Dubai, UAE.



Meira, in collaboration with WeConvene Extel, recognises the performances of corporate and individual investor relations (IR) professionals in the region.



In total, 294 qualifying responses from 181 separate organisations (buy-side and sell-side) were received this year, said a statement from Alba.



Albas chief executive officer Tim Murray, said: We view investor relations as a commitment to our shareholders and stakeholders and are honoured to receive this prestigious award for the seventh year in a row.



This award endorses our companys transparent corporate governance policies as well as recognises our continuous efforts in engaging with the investment community, both regionally and internationally, he added.



In 2010, Alba launched its initial public offering (IPO) as well as completed its dual listing on the Bahrain Bourse and London Stock Exchange, it added.



The companys current shareholders are Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company (69.38 per cent), Sabic Industrial Investment Company (20.62 per cent) and the general public (10 per cent).-TradeArabia News Service
Ooredoo, an international communications company operating across the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region said its Palestinian unit Wataniya Mobile, has officially launched its operations in Gaza.



The move comes as part of Ooredoo's continuous efforts to improve and enhance its services in the markets where it operates, said a senior official.



Wataniya Mobile will now be able to provide the residents of Gaza with an alternative option for advanced communications services directly through its shops and authorised dealers in the Strip, stated Sheikh Abdulla bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Thani, the chairman of Ooredoo.



He was speaking at the launch event in Gaza, which was attended by top Ooredoo executives including Group CEO Sheikh Saud bin Nasser Al Thani, Deputy Group CEO Waleed Al Sayed; Group chief officer of SMEs besides Khaled Al Mahmoud and Mustafa Al Qatami, the senior director of Branding and Corporate Communications at Ooredoo Qatar.



"We are delighted and very excited to launch our services in Gaza, as part of our efforts to become the leading integrated ICT provider in Palestine and provide a full range of customised services to our customers," noted Sheikh Abdulla.



"Since 2006, when we announced our intention to grow our business internally, we have worked tirelessly to remove all obstacles that prevented Wataniya Mobile from entering Gaza officially, and we have succeeded," he stated.



Sheikh Saud said: "This great achievement will enable us to meet the digital needs of people there, and provide them with advanced technologies that, undoubtedly, will improve their digital experience and give them access to a whole world of creativity and innovation."



"Our goal now is to enable Palestinian youth to enjoy the internet and help them achieve their dreams and aspirations through the services we provide. We are confident that our services will make a difference in a host of areas, including education, healthcare, women's empowerment, entrepreneurship, and many more," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
UAE-based Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower) said its district cooling capacity has been on the rise and is poised to hit 1.34 million RT (refrigeration tonnes) by the end of this year.



One of the worlds largest district cooling services providers, Empower provides its services to large-scale real estate developments including Jumeirah Group, Business Bay, Dubai International Financial Centre, Ibn Battuta Mall, Dubai Healthcare City and Dubai World trade Centre Residences.



The Emirati group is presently showcasing its latest eco-friendly district cooling technologies at the ongoing Water, Energy, Technology, and Environment Exhibition (Wetex) in Dubai.



Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and the Minister of Finance and President of Dewa, visited the Empower stand along with Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, the managing director and chief executive of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa).



Ahmad Bin Shafar, CEO, Empower, who received Sheikh Hamdan at the Empower stand gave a brief presentation on the companys latest projects and initiatives.



The vistors learnt the companys latest range of district cooling solutions and its commitment towards increasing awareness on the importance of utilising energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly cooling products and services.



"We are truly humbled with the enormous response from the participants and visitors toured Empower stand at Wetex 2017," remarked Bin Shafar.



"The positive responses have inspired us to further our efforts in achieving sustainability, protecting the environment and serving as an example for other companies and organizations to follow," he stated.



"Our presence at the show has allowed us to showcase our latest achievements--including our highly advanced cooling plants in Business Bay, which has garnered wide attention and response from Wetex visitors and participants," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) has called upon the youth in the UAE and around the world to become part of the country's global efforts for a green transition.



The youths contribution in the green economy is vital because innovation and creativity are qualities of youth, and the change we seek is a continuous process, which to a large extent is driven by the youth, remarked Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, the vice chairman of the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy, managing director and chief executive of Dewa.



He was delivering his opening speech at the Youth Dialogue - Going Green: Practical or unrealistic for todays youth held at the fourth edition of the World Green Economy Summit (WGES) on Tuesday (October 24).



As we all know, the youths contribution in the green economy is one of the most important topics on the agenda for the fourth edition of the summit. As such the theme Driving Innovation, Leading Change, illustrates the pivotal role that young people play in the transformation to the green economy, stated Al Tayer, who is also the chairman of WGES.



The youth is the future and hope of our country, and it is imperative that we support them, encourage their views and opinions and strive hard to make them an integral part of the economic, social and environmental development and growth, he added.



Al Tayer pointed out that youth activism and engagement could bring about important social changes.



"As such, it is important that the young population is given a chance to contribute to the growth of a green economy. Each individuals contribution can be a qualitative addition to the development and implementation of green plans and strategies, particularly because todays youth are the leaders of tomorrow and the drivers for change leading us and the generations to come close to a better future," said the Dewa chief.



"We always strive to promote active participation of young people in various initiatives, campaigns and sustainable projects as part of our efforts to achieve the national and strategic objectives of the country, including UAE Vision 2021, UAE Centennial 2071, Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050 and other national efforts," he noted.



According to him, Dewa has launched a number of youth initiatives that have proven to be significant.



"From hosting the Solar Decathlon Middle East to sponsoring the Carbon Ambassadors Program, organising youth seminars and launching the Youth Council which seeks to empower young people and involve them in the process of development, weve always encouraged a green dialogue for and by the youth," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Swiss-Belhotel International (SBI) has signed a deal for Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan, an upscale four-star property.

The announcement was made by Laurent A Voivenel, senior vice president, operations and development for the Middle East, Africa and India, Swiss-Belhotel International.

The property is owned by Cardamom International Property Management and is superbly located in the port city of Jazan with direct access to the beach.

Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan enjoys close proximity to Red Sea coast and is merely 20 minutes drive from Jazan regional airport. Boasting 210 keys including 140 well-appointed rooms and 70 studios plus apartments, the hotel is being designed to cater to a diverse mix of travellers.

Included in its extensive facilities will be an array of business and lifestyle features making it the ideal address for both corporate and leisure guests. On site are four dining outlets, a spectacular ballroom and three meeting rooms, a health club with steam and sauna and a swimming pool. Among these a key highlight is the beautiful marina and restaurant on the beach that will be exclusively dedicated for the hotel guests.

Nawaf bin Mansour bin Saleh Al Sharif, owner of Cardamom International Property Management, stated: We are delighted to collaborate once again with Swiss-Belhotel International and are confident together we will make Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan a preferred choice for residents and travellers to Jazan. It is a market that is currently under supplied in terms of hotels and is, therefore, projected to show strong growth in the near future and we are keen to take advantage of this massive opportunity.

Gavin M Faull, chairman and president of Swiss-Belhotel International, said: As part of our global expansion strategy, we are dedicated to enter new markets and particularly excited about our debut in Jazan with a reputable partner like Cardamom International Property Management. Jazan is witnessing major economic development in KSA and we believe our brand will be ideally placed to cater to the needs of travellers to the city with an exceptional property like Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan.

Voivenel stressed: We are delighted to expand our footprint in Saudi Arabia strengthening further our relationship with Cardamom International Property Management LLC with whom we had recently signed Swiss-Belhotel Al Aziziya Makkah. The new agreement demonstrates the confidence of the owners in the strength of Swiss-Belhotel International brand. Jazan City is a significant market with a growing demand for hotels. The development of Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan will enable us to cater to travellers looking for quality accommodation with world-class facilities at a great value. - TradeArabia News Service
Sheraton Grand Hotel, Dubai, raised $60,670 during a culinary event last week in support of Road to Awareness, Marriott Internationals annual associate fundraising campaign.

The event took place in the Starlight Ballroom on October 17 and was hosted by Dubai Eyes Tom Urquhart, who led a raffle draw and auction.

From a culinary perspective, 19 of Marriott Internationals executive chefs showcased their specialties from their signature restaurants.

Heinz F Grub, General Manager of the Sheraton Grand Hotel, Dubai, said: It was a delight to welcome the very best of Marriott Internationals culinary talent to the Sheraton Grand Hotel, Dubai for this fundraising event. The Road to Awareness associate campaign has been making a positive difference to children in the communities Marriott International operates in since 2008.

All the funds raised through Road to Awareness will be given to the Al Jalila Foundation in support of the Farah project (joy or happiness in Arabic) which will provide financial support for childrens medical treatments in the UAE, said a statement.  TradeArabia News Service
The Dubai Cruise Terminal at Port Rashid, operated by DP World, is expecting 115 luxury cruise ships from 22 ocean-going cruise lines to berth at its terminal over the coming season.

The terminal is one of the worlds top five ultra-luxury ports and a preferred port of call for 650,000 passengers on international cruise liners. The 2017-18 season will kick start on October 25 with the arrival of the Seabourn Encore of the luxury cruise brand, Seabourn Cruises, a Wam news agency report said.

Together with its strategic partners, Dubai General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs, Dubai Cruise Tourism, Dubai Customs, Dubai Police, and Emirates Airline, DP World is dedicated to supporting the vision of Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, to maximise Dubais potential and establish the city as the leading winter cruise tourism destination in the GCC by providing world class infrastructure and logistics support, it said.

Key to this plan is DP Worlds state-of-the-art Hamdan bin Mohammed Cruise Terminal, T3, at Mina Rashid that is set to be the largest terminal in the world capable of handling 18,000 travellers every single day.

Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of DP World, said: "DP World is proud to support and contribute to Dubais vision to become the worlds leading cruise tourism hub. With a goal to attract 20 million tourists a year by 2020, of which at least one million are expected to be cruise tourists, we are committed to providing facilities that are the best in the world and create a truly luxurious cruise experience catering to the tastes and sophistication of visitors."

Dubais cruise tourism market is growing rapidly as the city is becoming a choice destination for cruise enthusiasts from Europe and the US.

Mohammed Abdul Aziz Al Mannai, Executive Director of Mina Rashid, said: "Were expanding our facilities to accommodate more ships by adding new berths while developing our existing two-kilometre long berths in line with the demand from cruise operators. Were also working on connecting our existing terminals with closed corridors equipped with the best in technology to maximise capacity and provide ease of access for passengers across the port.

"Mina Rashid is the Middle Easts leading cruise port, playing a vital role as a hub for tourists looking to explore this region, and has the capacity to anchor seven ocean-sailing cruise vessels at a time. The port also added a luxury yacht marina facility in response to the high demand from luxury yacht owners from around the world, and offers world class mooring and storage space and other associated services."

The Dubai Government rolled out various initiatives to support the cruise tourism sector, making it easier and faster for tourists to process paperwork. The Dubai General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs also implemented simplified visa procedures, including issuing multiple entry UAE visas exclusively for cruise tourists, it said.
The Department of Culture and Tourism  Abu Dhabi has announced the launch of the 2017-2018 Cruise Season with the arrival of luxury cruise liner Seabourn Encore at the Abu Dhabi Cruise Terminal in Mina Zayed.

The department estimates an expected growth of 5 percent in the number of passengers for the 2017-2018 season from the previous years figure of 346,000, said a Wam news agency report.

With four maiden calls scheduled in Abu Dhabi, the emirate is at the forefront of the Arabian Gulfs ambitions to become the leading international alternative winter sun cruise destination. The rise in projected passenger figures follows a series of initiatives to develop Abu Dhabis cruise sector as a primary niche product in its economic diversification, it said.

Seabourn Encore arrived from Muscat, Oman, on Monday morning at the Abu Dhabi Cruise Terminal in Mina Zayed at 8am with a total of 604 passengers.

"We are very pleased to welcome Seaborne Encore from her journey across the Gulf. It is with the great pleasure that we launch the new season of cruise tourism in Abu Dhabi with partners Abu Dhabi Ports and Etihad Airways as we work towards achieving even greater growth in our cruise passenger numbers," said Saif Saeed Ghobash, Director-General of the Department of Culture and Tourism - Abu Dhabi.

Served by the state-of-the-art Abu Dhabi Cruise Terminal, the capital welcomes leading international cruise lines, those originating from Abu Dhabi and visiting the destination as a port-of-call. Abu Dhabi is also home to the regions only dedicated cruise stopover beach on Sir Bani Yas Island in the emirates Al Dhafra Region.
Figuring out whats happening with wildlife based on annual counts is not easy. So many factors affect where and when they travel, from predators to weather, habits to habitat.

So when Yellowstone National Park did its summer count of bison this year, it was somewhat surprising to see that although the animals suffered their second highest culling and killing since 2000  1,274 animals  it was the untargeted central herd that shrank substantially and not the northern herd, which is the main target of the bison removals.

Its unknown what happened, but something changed in Yellowstone this spring that made a whole bunch of bison from the parks central herd decide not to migrate back to their traditional Hayden Valley home. That was revealed in the parks summer bison counts, which showed the central herd declining by 42 percent.

So something really big happened this year to change the distribution dynamic on the landscape, said Rick Wallen, the parks lead bison biologist.

Bison reduction

The first thought was that maybe those central herd animals were disproportionately killed during the winter by hunters outside the parks boundaries and through the Interagency Bison Management Plan agreement that ships a portion of the herd to slaughter. The winter slaughter program, which donates the animals to tribes for meat, is an attempt to reduce the bison population and slow outmigration from the park into Montana.

Nearly 7,500 Yellowstone bison have been killed since 2000. Yet the parks bison have, once again, proven to be incredible survivors. Between 2000 and 2016 the population more than doubled, rising from 2,600 to 5,400 animals. Between 2008 and 2017, the northern herd has increased by 275 percent.

They just know how to survive on our landscape, Wallen said.

That doesnt seem to be the case with the central herd, though. Since 2008 that group of bison has exhibited a lower potential for population growth, according to Yellowstones survey. Maybe they are migrating to the Gardiner area in winter and being slaughtered, killed by hunters, or simply not returning to the central herds usual haunts after winter.

Strangely, out of 12 collared central herd bison, 11 survived the winter and six wintered on the western side of the park, not to the north where the slaughter program takes place.

So it appeared they had high survival, Wallen said. It makes you wonder how many migrated to the Northern Range.

Bison history

More than 100 years ago, only 23 free-ranging wild bison remained alive in Yellowstones remote Pelican Valley. Giving that remnant herd U.S. Army protection was one leg of the parks historic bison restoration, but it wasnt believed to be enough. So the Army imported 21 more bison that were essentially treated like cattle.

That herd started out in the Lamar Valley, where buildings from the Buffalo Ranch still stand to mark that early era in bison management. By the 1930s, with the Lamar herd grown to more than 1,000, the National Park Service decided to set the bison free and let them roam the park as wild animals. Wallen said some of those bison were moved to create the central herd, which now occupies the Madison, Gibbon, Firehole, Hayden and Pelican valleys.

According to research by Texas A&M University, for about 40 years the Northern Range animals, which inhabit the Lamar Valley, Little America and higher elevations in the region, were largely separated from their central herd cousins.

Now that seems to be changing for most, but not all, of the bison.

There was some stirring in the pot of genetics, Wallen said.

Central loyalist

Bison No. 3225 is a central herd stalwart. She was collared 12 years ago and has remained free of the disease brucellosis, which can cause cattle to abort. Brucellosis is the main reason cited for sending bison to slaughter.

The slaughter is a cooperative attempt by the many federal and state agencies to try and keep Montanas cattle herds from being quarantined should a cow test positive for exposure to brucellosis.

Not everyone agrees with the tactics of slaughter, noting that elk roam free between Yellowstone and Montana and also test positive for exposure to brucellosis. But for now, this is the compromise the many agencies have worked out.

3225 has also remained faithful to the old migration route out of Hayden Valley toward West Yellowstone.

I dont remember her ever going on a different movement pattern than Hayden to West, Wallen said. She has stuck to that longstanding pattern of the central herd.

Wallen guessed 3225 could be 15 years or older, and so may be one of the oldest bison in that herd.

There are not a lot that live beyond 12, he said.

One of the reasons bison populations can grow steadily is they have few predators. Wolves and grizzly bears will kill a few, mostly calves but also a few injured or aged adults. Most die after getting injured  either from falling or being hit by vehicles  or contract parasites and cant convert their food into enough energy to survive. One dead bison, which may weigh 1,000 pounds or more, can feed a lot of predators.

Westward expansion

Bison 3225s ancestors tried to pioneer outside the park into the West Yellowstone area in the 1980s, but werent welcomed by the state of Montana until 2015 when Gov. Steve Bullock agreed to let the animals stay year round on about 400 square miles of mostly Custer Gallatin National Forest. Prior to that agreement, bison were annually hazed back into the park by helicopters and horsemen every spring.

Would the central herd have expanded into that forest area and grown in population if it hadnt been repeatedly hazed? Wallen thinks so, and speculated that maybe after being turned back so many times more bison began migrating to join the northern herd.

Theres never been a year we didnt get migrants, Wallen said. The question is how long was it happening?

A removal of about 750 bison in 1997 seems to indicate central herd animals either moved in to fill the missing Northern Range bisons vacancies, or had migrated over in winter and were slaughtered, since the roughly 750 bison in that northern population, in theory, should have been wiped out by such a removal, Wallen said.

They are such social animals, its easy to see how some would stay with the group after hanging out together during the winter, he said.

Yet park biologists rarely see a northern herd animal migrate to the central herds summer pastures, so the flow seems to be largely one-way traffic.

Tracking migrants

In hopes of providing more information to researchers, Yellowstone will collar an additional 15 or so bison before this winter. By being able to track their migration in real time with GPS, the Park Service could reduce its capture of bison for slaughter when those depleted members of the central herd arrive in the Gardiner Basin.

The question is: how many bison does that one collar represent? Wallen said.

The agency has also asked, as it has in the past, that tribal and sport hunters limit their harvest outside Yellowstones western boundary, which is all central herd bison. Park officials are also recommending that no more than 1,250 bison be killed by hunters or shipped to slaughter this winter.

In the future, Wallen said hed like to see the bison use the landscape how theyd like.

But for now, the interagency plan is guiding management as the annual debate over bison slaughter and the carrying capacity of Yellowstones grazing lands continues. A 2000 court-mediated agreement between the secretaries of agriculture and interior and then-Gov. Brian Schweitzer requires Yellowstone to reduce the bison population in Yellowstone to around 3,000 animals. The park has a way to go to reach that figure.

The aerial count of bison in August was 4,816. Of that total, 3,969 were counted in the northern herd and 847 in central Yellowstone. Overall, the population decline from last year was about 12 percent, with 389 bison killed in the Gardiner area and 97 on the western side of the park.

So whats going on? Why is the central herd declining even though fewer are harvested? Why are more central animals migrating north instead of west like they used to do? In the future will the central herd disappear after animals like 3225 die and take with them the habit of moving west? Will bison ever occupy the land west of Yellowstone that has been opened to them?

Its unlikely to see new exploratory patterns to the west if that subgroup is declining in abundance, Wallen said. You need more animals to develop a migratory pattern out to the west to explore some of those new areas.

Bison populations and their migratory habits are always going to change, he added.

Thats part of preserving the ecological processes, letting them figure out how to live in here.
A Casper man faces charges alleging he molested a young girl multiple times over the course of a year.

Hugo Mendoza-Cora, 36, was charged with two counts of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor Monday during his initial appearance in Natrona County Circuit Court.

A third party contacted police on Friday after the girl, who was born in 2005, told them that Mendoza-Cora had touched her in a sexual manner. Mendoza-Cora is related to the girl.

During an interview at the Childrens Advocacy Project, the girl told investigators that Mendoza-Cora touched her genitals and made her touch his, according to court documents. She said he would come into her room at night and that sometimes she wore pajamas with a zipper to make it more difficult for him to assault her.

The girl underwent an exam at Wyoming Medical Center, where nurses found evidence that the girl had been assaulted.

In an interview with police, Mendoza-Cora said he was unsure why there were allegations of sexual abuse and said he never hurt or touched the girl.

Police arrested Mendoza-Cora Saturday. He said in court Monday that he runs a painting company, H&M Mendoza Painting.

Assistant District Attorney Jared Holbrook asked that the bond be set at $100,000 in part because Mendoza-Cora is an undocumented immigrant. Mendoza-Cora responded and said that was a lot of money.

Natrona County Circuit Court Judge Steven Brown set Mendoza-Coras bond at $50,000.

Each charge of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor has a maximum punishment of 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Police are investigating the sexual assault of a female student in the Kelly Walsh parking lot on Monday as a random crime.

The student did not know the assailant, Sgt. Mike Ogden said, and police continued to search for him Monday afternoon.

The assault took place at 11:45 a.m., police said. Ogden said he did not believe the student was physically injured during the attack.

The assailant was last seen running north away from the school, which is on the east side of Casper. The assailant is described as a white male, 6 feet tall, 180 pounds with a gray t-shirt and faded jeans. He has unshaven gray facial hair.

So far, the police investigation has not found any other witnesses to the assault and there is no known surveillance images of the area, Ogden said.

Police had extra officers patrolling the area and other schools, and Ogden said the additional presence will likely remain today unless the assailant is located.

In a Facebook post, the Natrona County School District said the student reported the incident to an adult and district officials immediately called police. Spokeswoman Tanya Southerland said no area schools were placed on lockout, though they were on heightened awareness. Officials in those buildings were told they could go into a lockout situation if they felt it was necessary.

She said the district let families know as soon as they had information from the police. She said authorities had to conduct an investigation before they had information to pass to school officials, which, she said, district officials promptly released to the broader community.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Casper Police Department at 307-235-8278.
LARAMIE  Physics takes up a more prominent role in popular culture than ever  from widespread excitement regarding the discovery of the Higgs boson particle to celebrity astrophysicists such as Neil deGrasse Tyson.

But the U.S. remains behind many other comparable countries when it comes to science and math proficiency among its students, according to the Programme for International Student Assessment  PISA  which releases a triennial report comparing 15-year-old students around the world.

The results of this are felt in the University of Wyoming Department of Physics and Astronomy, particularly within the physics graduate program, where the disparity between domestic and foreign students is perhaps greatest.

Of the 50 students who applied to the physics graduate program in the past cycle, two were domestic students, Assistant Professor of Physics Bill Rice said.

The math and the science are both difficult for students coming out of U.S. high schools, Rice said. A lot of time, the barriers that are encountered, especially in the first and second years, are deal-breakers.

Rice said college-level calculus and physics courses can appear to move at light speed to students who did not study those subjects in high school. He said undergraduates who lack enough preparation, though they might start in physics, end up leaving the program.

I have found, just anecdotally, that students that come in with strong high school preparation tend to stick with physics because then theyre able to see sort of the beauty and usefulness of having such an important background, Rice said. Once they get hooked, especially with research, then they can continue on. Many of our students who are involved with research do continue on to graduate levels.

Its difficult to make the claim, however, that U.S. high schools are inadequately preparing students for college-level physics and math, Department of Physics and Astronomy Professor and Chair Jinke Tang said.

We dont have sufficient data to say, Oh, theyre getting poorly prepared, he said.

Its hard to locate that concrete data to demonstrate that clearly. But there are places where I see can make improvements. For example, they can have more calculus courses.

The PISA 2015 Results in Focus report found the United States science scores were average and its math scores below average among the 72 countries and economies assessed.

Wyoming Superintendent for Public Education Jillian Balow said those results can be partially explained by the fact that some of the countries are outperforming the U.S. because they are not as committed to equity in education.

Some of our international counterparts are focused on excellence of a few or an (upper) echelon of students and not equity and excellence for all students, Balow said. Im not saying that that negates the data by any means, and certainly we want to see more domestic students in those graduate programs at the University of Wyoming and elsewhere.

Singapore, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany are among the countries outperforming the U.S. in the PISA report.

There is a nationwide focus on STEM for a number of reasons, not just STEM in higher education, but STEM going all the way down to pre-K and its for those very reasons, Balow said. We want to make sure that we maintain global comparability in terms of all academic subjects.

Wyoming, for its part, is in the process of implementing updated Science Standards  the states expectations for student ability at each grade level. The lengthy review and formalization process took into account what students would need to know, and what skills they would need to have, to succeed in higher education, as well as in business and industry.

Because our old standards were so old and lackluster, many of our school districts started implementing them before they were even completed ... knowing that they were not where we expect our students to be in respect to science, Balow said.

Wyoming high school students are required to complete three science classes  or four for Hathaway Scholarship eligibility  but are not required to take any specific science classes.

We dont prepare every student for success in a physics or astronomy major, Balow said. The students that  know that they want to pursue physics or astronomy in higher education certainly have, or can find, opportunities to build onto their science repertoire.

Laramie High School physics teachers Pete Kontaxes and Eric Weitzel said most of the students enrolled in their classes were college-bound and the majority of physics classes offered at the school were geared toward preparing those students for higher education.

About 90 percent  or more than 90 percent  of our kids are all pretty much college-bound, Weitzel said.

Kontaxes said one reason for the disparity between domestic and foreign students in physics degree programs could be the lack of lucrative jobs in the field and the surplus of higher-paying jobs available to U.S. citizens.

They could be a stockbroker, they could be a real estate broker, they could be an insurance salesman and they could make a heck of lot more, he said. They go where the moneys at. Theres too many other things in our country that they could get into.

Domestic students were more prevalent in physics graduate programs during the Space Race, Rice said, when there was a large governmental push for funding and students.

Overall, throughout the nation, domestic students are way down from what they used to be, he said. And thats a trend thats been going on for the last several decades. Our high point was during the Sputnik age. Right after Sputnik, there was a large bump and that bump is sort of the high point in physics.

Ideas abound for boosting domestic student enrollment in the physics degree programs  especially the graduate degree program. The updated Science Standards impact on Wyoming public education will not be assessed until all schools have a chance to implement them.

An exchange program with historically black Howard University could boost interest among minority students who otherwise might not be able to envision themselves as physicists, said Rice, who is spearheading the program.

Another program with the California higher education system  dedicated to drawing in otherwise overlooked students, this time for astronomy graduate students  could have a similar effect, while also strengthening the department, said the professors helping with that program.

Other efforts at UW  including Ellen Curranos Bearded Lady Project and Women in Math, Science & Engineering, or WiMSE  could pave the way for more female graduate students in various STEM fields where they are underrepresented. And the Wyoming Department of Educations annual Roadmap to STEM conference aims to improve the states science education, from kindergarten to college.

We know that in the 21st century, there are more and more careers or professions that require in-depth STEM skills, so certainly Wyoming is not immune to that, Balow said. We have a goal that we want our students to be globally competitive, no matter if they go to school in Meeteetse or in Cheyenne.
Proposition 204, known as Strong Start Tucson, would increase the Tucson city sales tax by a half-cent and generate an estimated $50 million a year to help pay for as many as 8,000 young children to attend a high-quality early childhood education programs.

We would like to be able to endorse Proposition 204 and there are reasons to do so, especially because Strong Start Tucson, as far as we can tell, is the only group with early childhood as its focus and with a broad plan.

But, in light of serious concerns and questions about its parameters and governance structure, we find ourselves unable to recommend it.

We do not quibble with the need. It is real and it is worthy. To get the most bang for your education buck, investing in early childhood is the way to go. The benefits are great to the individual student, and, as weve said before, education is a shared benefit to the community.

Every family should have affordable, high-quality child-care available, particularly from birth to 5 years old, when the brain is receptive and rapidly developing.

Strong Start Tucson has logical and satisfactory answers for many concerns about its initiative plan. For example:

All of the sales tax money generated  an anticipated $50 million per year  could be spent only on early childhood education. Most of it would be spent on tuition scholarships for children to attend high-quality programs.

Yes, thats true and its for a good reason: so the money cant be swept and used for another priority. Its meant for kids, and it will be used for kids.

Increasing the Tucson sales tax  by a half-cent  is a lot to ask. Organizers should have sought less, and see how it went before asking for more.

Campaigns are expensive and difficult, so go big or go home. The need is urgent and widespread.

Doesnt First Things First already cover high quality child care?

Its focus is on improving the quality of programs, not on providing scholarships to families.

The tax money would only go to students who live within Tucson city limits. Proposition 204 leaves too many kids out.

Strong Start Tucson organizers say they knew Proposition 204 would lose in Pima County, so better to start in Tucson and expand if possible. We shouldnt refuse to help some kids because we cant help all kids.

Strong Start Tucson makes a solid case. They have reasons  good reasons  for their decisions in crafting the initiative language and scope.

The case begins to waver, however, under the weight of unanswered questions and red flags. Specifically, our concerns:

Proposition 204 would have the Tucson Mayor and City Council create a seven-member commission that would decide what high quality preschool entails. The commission would create the criteria, eligibility, scholarship amounts and distribution and hire a nonprofit organization to operate the program.

Mayor and Council appoints many commissions, but not with the power this commission would hold. There isnt a clear and direct way to hold the members accountable, other than through electing or lobbying mayor and council members.

Additionally, Tucson is bound by state-determined expenditure limits, which means its possible that even if there was money from the Proposition 204 sales tax in the bank, Tucson might not be able to spend it.

Proposition 204 does not give benchmarks or a framework for how the commission would decide what high quality means.

First Things First already has a clear definition of what high quality means in a preschool. We shouldnt have to re-invent the wheel, or leave it open to possible wide interpretation that would set the bar low.

Proposition 204 does not have a sunset, or ending, date.

Strong Start Tucson organizers explained that they did not include a sunset because campaigns are expensive and difficult, and they believe it should be up to opponents to mount an effort to end the program rather than on supporters to keep it going.

We disagree, and this was the fatal flaw to our minds. Every use of tax dollars should require a periodic review and renewal process. Yes, a renewal campaign can be a hassle and yes, it can be expensive. But it is not reasonable or prudent to approve a half-cent sales tax for perpetuity, even for such a worthy cause.

So, while we support Strong Start Tucsons mission and goal, we are not convinced this is the best, or only, way to improve early childhood education opportunities in the Tucson area.
We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some Oct. 24 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.
School letter grades will remain in limbo after the Arizona State Board of Education voted Monday to extend the timeline for appeals and create a separate committee charged with proposing revisions to the new grading system.

Amid a chorus of concerns from schools, the board officially dubbed the new A-through-F school letter grades preliminary  retroactively approving a decision Board President Tim Carter made unilaterally just before the final grades were supposed to be issued to schools earlier this month.

Of the roughly 1,700 Arizona schools that received letter grades, nearly 200 are still under review or appeal  though that number will likely grow as more schools formally appeal their grades under the extended appeal deadline of Nov. 3.

By opening up the formula to a separate technical advisory committee, the board left the door open to changing grades that are not being appealed or reviewed.

But board members cautioned that after spending a year coming up with the original formula, they didnt want the technical advisory committee to go back to the drawing board.

Calvin Baker, the superintendent of Vail Unified School District and a member of the board, said he wanted the committee to review the problem areas, not the entire formula.

Were not suggesting this whole process has to start over from the very beginning. Theres a lot of good work thats been done, he said.

The board identified three major areas of concern that need to be addressed immediately, while leaving the door open to more dramatic changes to the formula, possibly impacting this years school grades.

Ill just plant the seed that at some point in time, there may have to be a very serious discussion about changes, and what years those changes apply. Are we talking about (school year) 2016-17, 17-18, 18-19? Carter said.

The most widespread problem is that more than 100 grades were withheld because of nontraditional grade configurations, such as schools that offer sixth through 12th grades. Because K-8 schools and high schools are graded on different criteria, schools with unusual grade configurations were befuddled about how their grades were calculated.

The board offered several fixes to address that issue, including creating a unique model for each grade configuration, taking the higher of the two scores or averaging the two scores. Ultimately, the board decided to wait for input from the technical advisory committee before making a decision.

Other schools complained that the data the Arizona Department of Education used to calculate their scores were inaccurate, or that the data were correct, but due to coding issues produced inaccurate scores. The latter would be more problematic, board members noted, as the board would likely have to recalculate every schools grade to ensure accuracy if coding errors were found to be the culprit of the problem.

Finally, the board still needs to decide how to deal with more than 70 schools that appealed their grades and those that might file under the extended deadline. Schools were originally told that only tornado-like events would qualify them for an appeal, though after hearing about the data issues, the board decided to take a more inclusive approach to appeals.

But the board also gave the technical advisory committee a broad mandate to review any problematic problems within the formula and make recommendations how the board should address them before issuing final letter grades, which the board now hopes to complete by January.

Charter schools, especially typically high-performing ones, have been among the most vocal opponents of the new grading system. Theyve argued that the formulas emphasis on student growth means schools that already have high-performing students are penalized, and that that component of the grade formula needs to be revisited.

Sherry Ruttinger, regional director of the charter school network Imagine Schools, which has 13 charters in Arizona, argued that all grades should be suspended until the revisions are final.

Charter schools especially are affected by current grades, she told the board.

Eileen Sigmund, president of the Arizona Charter Schools Association, told board members that beyond penalizing high-performing schools, the current formula also bars many smaller charter schools from receiving grades, which means they cant be considered for additional performance funding for schools with A grades.

Though they make up roughly 30 percent of schools in the state, charters comprise nearly 60 percent of the schools listed as under review either because of formal appeals or their unusual grade configuration.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, critics noted that the student-growth formula doesnt go far enough to equalize the impact of socioeconomic status on school grades.

Board member Patricia Welborn noted that under the current formula, only 5 percent of high-poverty schools received an A, while roughly 25 percent received Ds or Fs. By contrast, half of low-poverty schools received As, 90 percent received As or Bs, and none received an F or a D.

Im very concerned that one of the fundamental rules that we intended not to happen, has happened. And I would like us to look at this issue, she said.
Throughout the ongoing saga of national health-care reform, a force of more than 100 volunteers in a small clinic on Tucsons south side has been working to ensure that no one is left untreated.

At Clinica Amistad, we see people with no health-care insurance who dont have many options. For one reason or another they are unable to get insurance: They cant afford it or they do not qualify or if they have insurance, they cant afford out-of-pocket co-pays. We provide care and medications at no charge to them . ... We are a safety net for people who might otherwise be limited in the care that they are able to access, said Raymond Graap, M.D., medical director of Clinica Amistad.

Clinica Amistad, located at the El Pueblo Neighborhood Center at 101 W. Irvington Road, Building 3, has been providing no-cost primary and preventative health care, education and medications since 2003.

Open from 5 to 9 p.m. every Wednesday and Thursday and from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. the first Saturday of each month, the nonprofit clinic served more than 1,700 patients in 2016; it is on track for more than 2,000 this year. Nearly 60 percent of those served have an annual household income of $20,800 or less and the majority are Spanish-speaking.

Basically we serve the health-care needs of the underserved in the greater Tucson area. We are a primary health-care clinic and if we are not able to treat patients, we refer them out to specialized practitioners with whom we have arrangements to offer services at reduced rates. Additionally, we often assist patients in paying for health-care needs outside of the clinic, said Larry Jagnow, a member of the board of directors.

Clinic patients have access to necessary screenings, laboratory tests and imaging services, and a comprehensive array of specialists in more than 15 fields including cardiology, dermatology, endocrinology, pulmonology and more.

Graap said the clinic philosophy is based on an integrative model of care that combines traditional medicine and education aimed at prevention with alternative therapies and treatments for common chronic conditions. Therapies such as body work and energy therapy (Bowenwork and Zero Balancing), acupuncture, and nutritional counseling are intended to promote optimal health and wellness. Clinica Amistad also offers information about social services, personal counseling and other services.

Graap said the integrative model can be helpful in improving quality of life in a patient population battling chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. About 38 percent of Clinica Amistad patients have high blood pressure and 44 percent are obese; while 38 percent are diabetic (compared to a national average of 9.3 percent).

Clinica Amistad also helps patients to access medications such as insulin that have grown increasingly expensive, according to Graap. He said that long-lasting insulins like Lantus and Levemir can cost up to $367 per month and must be used in combination with short-acting insulins that may cost up to $425 monthly, making them cost-prohibitive for many.

So many people require insulin and the rates that the pharmaceutical companies charge are outrageous. We dont use designer insulins; they are way too expensive for our patients. The co-pays are so high even for people who have insurance that they have trouble getting their medications. We have found an outlet that provides standard older insulin that is excellent at $25 per month, he said.

Graap said that the services provided by Clinica Amistad are cost-effective not only for patients, but for the entire community since the clinic care can help to preclude high-cost visits to emergency rooms.

He credits generous local health-care providersphysicians, nurses, licensed nurse practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists, body work specialists and othersalong with students from the University of Arizona and other community volunteers for making the services possible by donating their time and expertise.

Health-care providers are very receptive to helping; they spend their days seeing patients and many come in to our clinic operation after that. Kudos to them for pitching in to help even after a full day, said Graap, 81, an internal medicine physician and endocrinologist who began working at the clinic after retiring from his practice in 2010.

Aside from volunteers, clinic operations are made possible by grants from philanthropic foundations and contributions from local businesses, churches and private individuals. Supporters have included the Womens Foundation of Southern Arizona and Southwest Gas.

Overall, Graap views the clinic as a positive example of collaboration and thinks that it is imperative for the country to come to an agreement that will provide cost-effective health care on a national level.

As a country, we are way behind the eight ball in providing care for everyone in the nation. Every other advanced Western nation has universal care of one type or another so that people arent left out. If it werent for the financial interests of insurance companies and big pharmaceuticals, we would have had Medicare for everyone a long time ago. Medicare is not perfectany health plan is a matter of continual improvementbut it is a sound base for providing medical care that is a huge help to an awful lot of people, he said.
A free community event for Tucsonans struggling to make ends meet will be held Saturday, but the venue has changed and no dental care will be offered.

Hope Fest 2017 will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Tucson Convention Center, 260 S. Church Ave.

The event, which offers free haircuts, groceries and medical services, among other things, regularly attracts 10,000 to 15,000 people.

For the past 13 years, Hope Fest has been held at Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium. Organizers are trying to get the word out about the change of location to the TCC, and also about the loss of free dental services this year.

The event actually started at the TCC parking lot and has been at TCC a couple times in years prior to Kino. So, were glad to be back, said Lisa Chastain, executive director of the event, which is operated by the nonprofit Hope Network Inc.

No dental

Chastain said free dental care has traditionally been offered by private dentists in the community who volunteered their skills, but those resources wont be available this year. She said Hope Fest leaders are determined to bring the service back in 2018.

The dentists needed a break this year, she said. It may return in a different way.

The dental service was so in demand in recent years that organizers had to limit it to the first few hundred people to arrive at the event, and people routinely camped at the site overnight.

Hope Fest has long prohibited overnight camping  and its a rule again this year  but people desperate for dental care in the past have often done it anyway. The most popular dental services performed in past years were tooth extractions and denture fittings.

Arizona does not cover comprehensive dental care as part of its Medicaid health-insurance program for low-income adults over age 21. One in four Pima County residents is enrolled in Medicaid.

Starting Oct. 1, the state began offering an emergency dental benefit of $1,000 per year to Arizonans enrolled in Medicaid, which in Arizona is called the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS).

The benefit doesnt cover preventive services like teeth cleaning. Rather, its for dental services related to pain and infection, such as root canals and crown replacement to eliminate pain due to a tooth fracture.

The 2015 Pima County Health Needs Assessment, released last year, says that one in seven Pima County adults between the ages of 35 and 44 has gum disease.

People with advanced gum disease and other serious dental problems are vulnerable to heart and kidney disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and even premature death.

Those most vulnerable to dental problems are people living in poverty. At nearly 19 percent, Pima Countys poverty rate is higher than both the state and national averages.

Pregnancy, HIV testing

This years 25th annual event will offer clean, gently used clothing, bottled water, personal care and hygiene items, canned food, diapers and stuffed animals.

Volunteer doctors, nurse practitioners and nurses will be on site to check vital signs, measure blood pressure and glucose levels, provide HIV and pregnancy testing, and to perform basic eye and hearing tests. Organizers are also hoping to offer flu shots.

An added offering at this years event will be an employment area where attendees will be able to network with employers, register for job readiness services and get help with basic computer skills, job searches, job applications and resumes.

A Pack the Parking Lot donation drive is scheduled for Friday, also at the convention center, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Additional drop-off locations will be at Sam Levitz Furniture, at its West Orange Grove and North Thornydale roads and East Broadway and North Pantano Road locations.

Organizers are looking for donations of gently used clothing, shoes, accessories, canned food, bottled water, stuffed animals and personal-care items such as shampoo, soap and toiletries.
The University of Arizona was ranked 77th out of 1,250 schools in 74 countries in the newest U.S. News and World Report Best Global Universities ranking.

ASU ranked 134 and NAU ranked 654.

Harvard was ranked No. 1 overall, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford and the University of California-Berkeley. The United Kingdoms University of Oxford was ranked No. 5.

Earlier this year, the 2018 U.S. News and World Report ranked the UA the 124th-best college in the country, and ASU 115th. So why is the UA ranked higher in this ranking, when universities from around the globe are added to the equation?

The scoring system is different.

The schools that rank the highest in the Best Global Universities rankings are those that emphasize academic research, including by partnering with international scholars to produce highly cited articles, said Robert Morse, chief data strategist at U.S. News, in a statement.

This is different from the Best Colleges rankings, which measure the overall quality of undergraduate institutions in the U.S. and focus on student outcomes such as graduation and retention rates, he said.

U.S. News collected a pool of 1,295 schools for ranking. Of those, 250 were taken from the top results of Clarivate Analytics global reputation survey.

The schools considered were required to publish a minimum of 1,500 papers between 2011 and 2015. Because of this criteria, a few graduate-only schools were eligible for inclusion in the final rankings.

Once the schools were identified, the rankings were determined by 13 factors of varying weight to measure global research performance, which roughly broke down to reputation and academic opinion of other departments; international collaboration; and number of publications, conferences and references by other academics.

The U.S. leads the rankings with a total of 221 universities, followed by China with 136, Japan with 76, The U.K. with 73 and Germany with 58.

The University of Arizonas No. 77 ranking slipped slightly from the 2017 list, when it ranked 73rd.

You can find the full ranking list, FAQs and detailed methodology here: usnews.com/education/best-global-universities
President Donald Trump discussed tax reform and the opioid epidemic, but not his bitter feud with Sen. Bob Corker, during lunch with Republican senators on Tuesday.

The session was hotly anticipated because of the early morning war of words between Trump and the senior Republican on the foreign relations committee.

But as the lunch meeting broke up, senators said the spat didn't arise. Instead, they said the President focused his remarks on selling lawmakers on a tax reform plan he hopes will become his first major legislative achievement after a series of disappointments.

"We're here to try to accomplish things for the American people," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who himself has been subject to Trump's harsh criticism.

"We're all on the same page on the issues I mentioned," he said, naming economic revival as an area of common interest for Senate Republicans and the President.

Facing multiple questions about the divide between members of his GOP caucus and the President, McConnell turned the focus back to tax reform, which he said Republicans had long sought but now, finally, have an opportunity to pass.

"If there's anything that unifies Republicans, it's tax reform," he said. "We've been looking for the opportunity to do this literally for years. We now have a president who will sign it, who believes in what we're trying to do and we're going to concentrate on what our agenda is and not any of these other distractions that you all may be interested in."

Trump was accompanied to the Hill by chief of staff John Kelly, legislative affairs director Marc Short and press secretary Sarah Sanders, according to a White House staffer. Not present were the two men who have been leading the administration's tax reform efforts: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Chairman Gary Cohn, the staffer said.

"I thought it was very positive, upbeat," said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who insisted there was no discussion during the talks about Trump's disputes with Republican senators.

Tensions rose earlier Tuesday thanks to a war of words between Trump and Corker who, in terming the White House an "adult day care," has implied Trump may be drifting into senility.

The latest spat was prompted by Corker's televised rebuke of Trump's skepticism over a plan to alter 401(k) retirement plans, which came as lawmakers continue to draft tax reform legislation that both sides agree is a necessity. Corker implied Trump was getting ahead of policymakers in his declaration that 401(k) plans would not change under the new law.

Trump responded by firing off volleys on Twitter that labeled Corker a backer of the Iran nuclear deal and an incompetent politician who "couldn't get elected dog catcher."

On the Iran deal charge, Trump's statement was misleading; Corker was an opponent of the 2015 accord negotiated by President Barack Obama's administration. And Trump's claims that he refused to endorse Corker for re-election have been refuted by the senator's staff.

But the remarkable barrage of insults laid bare the tenuous relationship between the President and members of his own party, who will determine his success in passing a massive tax reform passage
PHOENIX  Bisbee is violating state law by outlawing the use of plastic bags, Attorney General Mark Brnovich concluded today.

In a new ruling, Brnovich pointed out that state legislators voted specifically to bar local governments from regulating "auxiliary containers. That includes not only the plastic bags that the Bisbee ordinance forbids but also paper bags which the city says retailers can offer, but only with a 5-cent fee.

City officials have acknowledged the conflict. But in a response to the attorney general's initial inquiry they said there is a legitimate reason: the need to prevent wind-blown trash.

But Brnovich said none of that matters.

Lawmakers get the last word on matters of "statewide concern he said. And he said lawmakers made it clear they believe local regulation of bags fits that definition.

Today's ruling sets the stage for a legal battle.

In issuing his ruling, Brnovich gave the members of the Bisbees city council 30 days to rescind the ordinance. If they do not, he will tell the state treasurer to withhold the community's state revenue sharing dollars and redistribute them to other communities across the state.
Convenience fees are the way of the future for online government services. This is not because the government agencies want to increase the cost to the public, but the cost of doing business using services provided by private, third-party contractors. For some, the fees are not optional, but the cost of doing business.

The Arizona Supreme Court now requires attorneys filing most civil lawsuits in this county to use electronic filing. The company that provides the service, by contract, receives a user fee for many of the documents filed online  anywhere from $1 to $6 for subsequent filings and up to 10 percent of the filing fee for new cases. If a party needs to request the court to defer their filing fee due to economic necessity, that person is (by law) assessed a $28 fee for filing their Motion for Waiver of Court Costs. You're reading it right, the poor man pays an additional $28 for his voice to be heard.
Columnist Jonathan Hoffman claims charity funding of public services would be more in line with what made our country great. Other than the forced charity of slave labor, Americas greatness was not derived from private donations, it was funded by tax revenue. It was a 90 percent marginal tax rate on the rich that built the interstate highway system and gave us the worlds best public education system.

Ever since Ronald Reagan cut tax rates on the rich, this country has been spiraling down the drain. At the state level, since 2008, the Legislature has cut an estimated $2 billion from K-12 funding and given it to the rich via tax breaks. Private charities have not made up for that gargantuan shortfall. If Prop. 204 fails, the solution is not charity, its a Legislature committed to the common good, a concept that, apparently, is beyond the comprehension of todays conservatives.
Sgt. La David Johnson was one of four American servicemen killed in the remote nation of Niger. Press coverage has largely centered on how insensitive  or consoling  our president was in his call to Sgt. Johnson's widow, and the comments of a congresswoman. What has been missing is answers to the questions: Why were our troops there? What was their mission? Why did our people have no intelligence about an impending attack? Why were they not protected?
Re: the Oct. 23 letter to the editor "Lawmaker was wrong to politicize phone call."

The letter writer feels and believes that Rep. Frederica Wilson shouldn't have expressed the contents of the phone call the widow of LaDavid Johnson received on her way to the airport to retrieve her husband's coffin. Congresswoman Wilson is a friend of the Johnson family and was in the car to lend support to a grieving widow, who was the one to have the speaker phone on.

Shame that the president's words were so uncaring and he didn't know the name of Sgt. Johnson. Who would have a platform to present the truth to the public? Certainly not the grieving widow. Is this the type of callowness that conservatives have? They support a world of alternative facts that Gen. John Kelly then stated, of which video evidence proves he's lying! I'm proud to be a progressive supporting facts!

Ian Cooke

Southeast side
Abusive behavior in the workplace and on the homefront is occurring and growing at a fast rate. Mayor Jonathan Rothschild asked why we speak more about the victims instead of the abusers? Victims are frequently blamed for the abuse, while nothing is spoken of the psychological damage done by the abuser. These abusers need stricter consequences.
Sen. Jeff Flake announced that he will not seek re-election. Flake made his announcement on the Senate floor and levied mean spirited and nasty parting shots at President Trump. Flake and his cohort, Sen. John McCain, have been constant critics of Trump since the election. Flake is part of the inside the beltway establishment Republican Party, something that Trump is not, thus despised by them.

After 10 months in session, the Senate has yet to pass any of its big agenda items. It is the Republican Senate that is dysfunctional and incompetent, and Flake is part of that. He realized that he would likely lose to Kelli Ward in the upcoming primary election and THAT is why he is not seeking re-election! The same reason Sen. Corker is not seeking re-election in Tennessee, as he could not get elected dog catcher there right now.
New US sci-fi Star Trek: Discovery has been renewed by CBS: All Access but there is speculation a second season may not surface until 2019.

Producers have previously noted every episode takes three to four months to complete, including production and VFX.

The latest Star Trek incarnation, led by Sonequa Martin-Green, features a new ship and new characters. So far it has been well-received in reviews and fan feedback.

Screening on Netflix in Australia, it is airing in two chapters with the final episode due on Monday, Nov. 13.

The remaining six episodes are coming in January 2018.
Former Bargain Hunt host Tim Wonnacott is in Adelaide this week attending local antiques events.

But he has also hinted at some filming, without divulging what programme he is referring to.

The jungle drums in SA are tapping away. I cannot deny that we might do some filming here  but we should keep very quiet about this, just between you and me and your readers, he told News Corp.

Wonnacott departed Bargain Hunt in 2015, amid bullying claims, and replaced by rotating presenters.

I think the folk in South Australia are particularly attuned to this collecting  thanks to your very rich cultural links with Europe.

These people are busting a gut to buy some of these things because they  feel it enhances their lives.

Wonnacott will appear at the Adelaide Showground from Friday.
Prison officers across England and Wales are to receive body-worn cameras as part of a 3m investment to improve safety in jails, the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) has announced,

1m is to be invested in handcuffs and restraints to reduce the need for staff to use physical holds while the majority will be spent on 5,600 cameras hoped to help in prosecutions against prisoners who committed crimes while acting as a deterrent to others.

Four prisons  HMP Wealstun, HMP Risley, HMP Preston and HMP Hull  will also be trialling the use of incapacitant spray for dealing with violent offenders.

The move comes after prison violence reached record levels, with violence against staff soaring by a third from last year to 20 a day.

However, while the Prison Officers Association has welcomed the introduction of such measures they say the central issue remains with the number of guards.

"While we welcome protective measures such as PAVA spray and body-worn cameras, the 30% cut to staff since 2010 and the increase in violence and riots during that period still has to be addressed and equipment is no replacement for staff," they said in a statement.

The Government says 1,290 extra prison officers have been recruited, but admits that number is below its own target of 2,500.

Why is there so much violence in prisons?

This is no wonder when you take into consideration the conditions in which inmates are being subjected to.

A riot which took place at Bedford prison recently has been said to be fuelled by "disgraceful conditions" including being locked up for 23 hours a day as well as a failure to provide basic items such as toilet paper and soap according to a report by Bedford's independent monitoring board.

Meanwhile, Peter Francis, the Governor of Walton Prison in Liverpool has recently been removed from his post after a surprise inspection discovered that prisoners were being forced to live in filthy conditions with cockroaches and overcrowding, according to a National Audit Office (NAO) document.

Why is overcrowding such a big problem?

Overcrowding, in particular, remains one of the key issues needing to be dealt with in Britain's prison system. Almost 21,000 of the total 85,000 prison population are being held in crowded conditions, according to a report recently released by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons. The vast majority of multi-occupancy cells do not meet the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) standard of four-square meters per person.

21,700 people have also been recalled to prison over the last year in line with the 2015 probation overhaul whereby supervision on release from prison was extended to offenders serving sentences of less than a year.

As a result of some offenders being sent back to prison for 14 to 28 days for breaching their bail conditions on minor issues such as getting a getting a taxi without permission or being late to meet their probation officer, exacerbating the overcrowding Problems.

What are the consequences?

These conditions have also been linked to the concerning rise self-harm and suicide cases within the prison population. Self-harm has increased by 73% between 2012 and 2016 while the number of those who have taken their own lives has risen by 32% in a single year between 2015 and 2016, according to a number of advocacy groups.

Although there are no official statistics of those with mental health issues within the prison population, ministers are unable to pinpoint how much is being spent on mental health care.

The unsanitary, degrading and inhumane conditions have also led to a stark rise in drug abuse according to the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Peter Clarke.

Who has the worst experience?

Black and Muslim prisoners are also twice as likely to have negative experiences in Jail than their white counterparts with the figure almost four times as high for black Muslims, a major new survey by equality think tank, The Runnymede Trust and the University of Greenwich has revealed.

Almost a third of Muslim prisoners did not have prison jobs or attend education courses  which can have a positive impact on rehabilitation  compared to 17% of Christian prisoners.

Meanwhile, black prisoners are more likely to be on the lowest tier of the prison rewards and punishments scheme and more likely to be restrained and put into segregation, the report has revealed.

Transgender inmates also seem to have some of the most difficult experiences in prison with a spate of suicides in recent years.

The cold hard truth

What I fail to understand is that if we are racist towards inmates, lock them up in an overcrowded cell for 23 hours at a time, not provide them with basic essentials such as toilet paper, not offer them any adequate mental health care and not have enough staff for rehabilitation opportunities such as education courses and prison jobs - how do we teach inmates about respect for society if we fail to respect them?
The preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the governing document on global human rights, states: Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. For the past 40 years, the Iranian Regime has waged a bloody war against these values. The ruling theocracy has been labeled the worlds most active state sponsor of terrorism. It has established a reputation as an intolerant, fundamentalist regime that has institutionalized extremism.

Horrific rights abuser

It is also one of the worlds worst abusers of human rights and executioners of children, according to Amnesty International. Yet the regime continues to act with impunity on these fronts and has never been tried for the crimes it has committed in its perverse efforts to retain power. In 1988, one of the worlds worst atrocities since World War Two took place in iran. On orders from former supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini, 30,000 political prisoners were summarily executed while incarcerated. The victims were activists of the leading opposition the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and were killed for their pro-democracy beliefs.

The commissions of death

Amnesty International reported in 1990 that the first question that the prisoners were asked by the death commissions, set up to handle the executions, was: What is your political affiliation? If they answered that they supported the MEK, they were taken away and quickly executed.

In subsequent years, the regime was hell bent on covering up its crimes. Many of the masterminds behind this terror continue to serve as top officials in the regime, and the mass graves that have been found are off limits to the citizens of Iran.

Last year, a recording was leaked where Khomeinis heir apparent at the time, Hossein Ali Montazeri, was heard condemning the murders in August 1988.

Now is the time to bring the Iranian regime to task, and make those responsible answer for crimes that even the mullah regime's no. 2 could not stomach. Human rights experts, including the UNs Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran, have written multiple reports on the criminal erosion of human rights in Iran.

The UN's current stance is to propose the ruling regime launch its own investigation into the crimes committed by its own officials. The very suggestion belittles the suffering experienced by the victims and their families, many of whom have been persecuted for speaking out and demanding that their loved ones graves be identified. And it makes a mockery of the vision established in 1945.

International criminal negligence

To ignore or reject these facts is not only shameful, but criminally negligent, and makes every nation that does so complicit with the Iranian regimes atrocities and an accessory after the fact to the murders. Human rights are not a political issue, and they are not a strategic consideration.

Human rights are universal and inalienable. The nations that believe they can curry political favor with killers are dangerously naive and blind.

In the 1940s, the world saw the result of appeasing a brutal regime in Germany. Now, we ask why those nations did not take action in 1988, and have not taken action since with regards to the evil, religious fascism ruling Iran. Have they not seen the terrible aftermath of their lack of political courage? Every nation that claims to trumpet the importance of human rights loses its credibility when it refuses to speak to the crimes committed in Iran. The issue with the Iranian regime is not simply its nuclear program.

Search for justice

Without human rights, our civilization cannot sustain itself.

Our liberties and rights form the bedrock of mutual respect upon which human society sits. To view human rights abuse as a vice, to be indulged in when convenient, is inhuman. We must be absolute in our quest for the truth, and uncompromising in our belief that the Iranian people deserve justice and accountability from the regime that brutalizes them.

To this end, the stakeholders in this years Iran human rights censure at the United Nations must include a reference to the 1988 massacre in the resolution, and call for a commission of inquiry for the purpose of holding the perpetrators, who are current regime officials, to account. No consideration, economic, political or otherwise justifies inaction in this regard.
Amid some typical controversies surrounding US President Donald Trump, his Approval Rating has dipped yet again, this time to a nearly all-time low. Gallup conducted a poll on Saturday in order to get new figures on the Presidents approval rating from the American voting public. The new rating has shown that Trumps popularity amongst the American people has taken a dive  yet again.

Trumps approval rating this time is not quite the lowest it has ever been, but it is close to an all-time low, as the survey shows that his approval rating is at just 35%.

Last week, it was 38%, so its gone down from there. This is a really pathetic approval rating. His lowest ever was 34%, so this is at least one point higher than that, but its still nowhere near good.

Presidents of recent memory, like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and even George W. Bush, have tended to middle at around the 50% mark, as voters from their own party liked them and voters from their opposing party didnt. Thats generally the way it should be. Thats what democracy is all about. But Trump cant even maintain the approval of his own party!

Trumps disapproval rating is near an all-time high, too

It wasnt enough that Trumps approval rating was almost as low as its ever been  his disapproval rating is almost as high as its ever been, too!

So, his approval rating is one single percentage point higher than his all-time low, and funnily enough, his disapproval rating is just one single percentage point lower than his all-time high. The highest its ever been was 61%, back in the early days of September, and its now 60%.

The Gallup tracking survey that keeps on top of Trumps approval and disapproval ratings processes its data through the poll results of 1,500 American adults and it acknowledges that its published figures have a margin of error of up to 3% either way, up or down.

Data website FiveThirtyEight counts Trump a little higher on the popularity scale. FiveThirtyEight uses information from all the polls to get a more accurate approval rating and disapproval rating by aggregating the results and taking into account the quality, recentness, sample size, and potential political ideological leanings of each poll.

FiveThirtyEight counts Trumps approval rating at slightly higher than Gallup at 37.8%, which is 1.2% higher than his all-time lowest rating as counted by FiveThirtyEight. The site counts the Presidents disapproval rating at 56%, which is closer to that of other Presidents.

Trump is least popular of all recent Presidents

Even with the leeway offered by the aggregated ratings provided by FiveThirtyEight, Trump is still the least popular President of the United States of recent memory. The way that modern polling works means that we dont have an approval rating in this style for the likes of Lincoln or Roosevelt or Kennedy, but we can compare Trumps ratings with that of other recent Presidents, and all of theirs were better than Trumps on the 274th day of their Presidency.

The closest recent POTUS to Trumps scored was Gerald Ford, husband of rehab tycoon First Lady Betty Ford, whose score was just 38.4% at this point during his first Presidential term. However, Trumps is still lower. Gerald Ford is the guy who pardoned Richard Nixon for Watergate, and Trump is still considered to be a worse President than him. That would take some doing.

Sometimes its almost like Trump is trying to be a terrible President, like he wants most of America to hate him. But thats not true, because he relishes the support he gets from the backwoods hicks who are dumb enough to turn up at his rallies and believe his lies and wear his stupid red Make America Great Again hats.
Without naming names exactly, Senator John Mccain (the Republican Presidential candidate who ran against Barack Obama in 2008) has called out US President Donald Trump for his deferment in the Vietnam War. McCain is a veteran of the war and was tortured as a POW by the Viet Cong. Hes also an outspoken critic of Trump and his policies, particularly Trumpcare and his fight fire with fire views on torture.

McCain told C-SPAN that the one aspect of the Vietnam War that he will never, ever countenance (admit as acceptable or possible) is the fact that the lowest income level of America was drafted, while the richest (ie Mr.

Trump) found a doctor that would say they had a bone spur. Lo and behold, that is exactly what Donald Trump did when he got drafted. Bone spur. McCain called this wrong and said, If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve.

That is wrong, says McCain

Trump famously got a deferment from being drafted into the Vietnam War a whopping five times. The first time was because of a medical reason, even though he was in pretty good health at the time. He got a doctor to diagnose him with bone spurs, which Trump himself referred to as a foot thing. In an interview with the New York Times, the US President could not remember the name of the doctor and said that the problem was minor and temporary. After it cleared up, he couldnt use that as an excuse anymore, so his further four deferments were because he was in education at the time.
US President Donald Trump is not happy with Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee. Corker has criticised Trump as leading America into World War III and called the White House as Adult Day Care centre. Today, Corker is standing by those comments, saying, I dont make comments I havent thought about.

Early on in the 2016 Presidential election race, Corker endorsed Trump, but now, when its too bloody late, hes decided that he was wrong all along (like we all knew since the beginning), because of the whole North Korea thing. Corker is, in particular, unhappy that the President continues to kneecap and undermine Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State.

Corker urged Trump to leave it to the professionals for a while.

Trump has hit back at Corker

Senator Corker has faced retaliation from Trump for his comments. The President said that Corker couldnt get elected dog catcher in Tennessee. Last month, the Senator announced that he would not be running for a third term and will retire from politics when his current term ends next year. But thats his decision. Trump also accused the Senator of help[ing] President O give us the bad Iran deal. Corker wants Trump to stay out of the tax debate, but the President refuses and has stepped in to announce on Twitter that there will be NO change to the 401(k) tax break system.
The story about the Russian spy plot to gain access to the Clintons reads like a plotline from The Americans. The Hill is reporting that Vladimir Putin targeted Bill and Hillary Clinton to achieve influence over the then powerful political power couple in 2009 and 2010. Part of the operation was legal, albeit unseemly, involving lobbying the State Department to get the Uranium One deal. The effort provided a lot of support for the Clinton Global Initiative and helped to ensure Bill Clinton with a $500.000 payday for a one-hour speech in Moscow.

Part of the effort was covert and illegal.

The spy ring that targeted the Clintons

The gentle reader may recall an instance when a Russian spy ring was unmasked by the FBI and expelled from the United States. A model turned spy named Anna Chapman was the public face of the ring, mainly because of her physical beauty. But another deep cover Russian agent, pretending to be an accountant named Cynthia Murphy. Murphy acquired access to a prominent New York financier, Democratic fundraiser, and personal friend of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named Ian Patricof. Patricof is not suspected of wrongdoing and did not know at the time his accountant was working for Moscow. Murphy was not planning to get a job inside the State Department for fear that the vetting process would expose her.

She was looking for inside information on Hillary Clinton and her work on foreign policy.

Why the Clintons?

From the point of view of Putin, the Clintons were apparent targets for spying. In 2009 Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state and was in direct charge of the so-called reset of American-Russian relations. She was also considered the most likely next president of the United States, an opinion many people held up to election night 2016.

If the Russians could gain access and, better yet, influence with the Clintons, the result would be intelligence gold.

It didnt stop with Murphy

The spy ring that Cynthia Murphy and Anna Chapman were part of was exposed and expelled in 2010. However, Hot Air is reporting that among the people that Robert Mueller is looking at as part of his Russia collusion investigation is Tony Podesta, the brother of Clinton consigliere John Podesta, the owner of a lobbying firm.

Podesta is suspected of violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The surmise by Hot Air is that if Mueller is looking at the Podestas, his brief has expanded beyond the 2016 election and Donald Trumps campaign. A lot of well-connected people in the orbit of both the Clintons and former President Obama could be swept up in the investigation.
Over the nine months that Donald Trump has been in office, First Lady Melania Trump has remained mostly out of the spotlight. On Monday, the White House announced that Melania will officially kick off her anti-bullying campaign, which was quickly met with mockery from critics.

Melania on bullying

It all started just over two and a half years ago when Donald Trump kicked off his campaign for president on the floor of Trump Tower in New York City. With his family by his side, the former host of "The Apprentice" went on to label illegal immigrants from Mexico as "rapists" and "murderers," which quickly set the groundwork for how he would act moving forward.

Whether it was his battles with the media, Hollywood celebrities, Democrats, or fellow Republicans, Trump made a habit out of mocking and insulting his critics, either on social media, in private, or in front of the camera. Due to this, it came as a surprise when Melania Trump decided to combat bullying with a focus on cyberbullying as her number goal as first lady. Critics were quick to point out the hypocritical irony considering the actions of the president, but Melania has decided to take action regardless of the response. According to The Hill on October 23, Melania will officially kick off her "anti-bullying" campaign this week.

In a report by The Hill, Melania Trump will make her way to a middle school in Detroit, Michigan on Monday to start what the White House has labeled the "Week of Inclusion" as well as "National Bullying Prevention Month." The first lady will be promoting the social media hashtag "NoOneEatsAlone," in an attempt to bring students together and curb bullying in local schools.

"We must teach children to be good stewards of the world they will inherit," Melania said.

Twitter reacts

Once the news broke of the anti-bullying campaign starting this week, those who oppose Donald Trump and the administration wasted no time firing back. "Is trump-anti-bullying an oxymoron?" one tweet wondered about Melania Trump's efforts.

The fact that Melania Trump is running an anti-bullying campaign without a speck of irony boggles my mind  Mia (@MiaGettenberg) October 23, 2017

@MELANIATRUMP .. anti-bullying is important, maybe you should start with your husband.  belinda (@pnbsmith1161) October 23, 2017

I hope the kids ask @MELANIATRUMP about all the bullying @realDonaldTrump does and why she is SILENT about it.  BubbaWubba (@bubba_wubba) October 23, 2017

"Have 2 wonder if she chose this cause bcuz she's bullied by him," a Twitter user added.

"The fact that Melania Trump is running an anti-bullying campaign without a speck of irony boggles my mind," another tweet noted.

Your anti bullying campaign is as much a joke as your husband, @MELANIATRUMP @FLOTUS. You continue to condone and encourage bullying. Leave.  Michael Boykin (@mlboykin) October 23, 2017

Melania Trumps Anti Bullying Campaign would be like Pablo Escobars wife pushing a Anti Drug Campaign & having Pablo drive her to events  romeo (@arthuromeo) October 23, 2017

Melania TRump giving a speech to kids on bullying? Are you kidding??!! She needs to give that speech to her husband!  John N Ralph (@thecoach91) October 23, 2017

"Anti-bullying is important, maybe you should start with your husband," an additional tweet stated.

"Your anti bullying campaign is as much a joke as your husband, @MELANIATRUMP @FLOTUS. You continue to condone and encourage bullying. Leave," yet another tweet read. As the negative reaction continued, it only highlighted the wide political divide in the United States that shows no signs of slowing down.
According to the Miami Herald, the senate race shaping up in Florida between Sen. Bill Nelson, the incumbent Democrat, and Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican who is term-limited, is a dead heat more than a year out, 37 percent to 36 percent. The same poll showed that 20 percent of Florida voters are not aware of who their choices are. However, since Nelson has won his Senate races comfortably in 2012 and 2006 after winning narrowly for the first time in 2000, the poll suggests that he is in trouble.

Why is Nelson in trouble?

As has been previously reported, Senator Nelson is a moderate who is in a party that is increasingly being dominated by the far left.

Moreover, Scott would be a formidable opponent with a huge money advantage and name recognition. Nelson has made a political mistake by dragging his feet on the nomination of Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Oklahoma for NASA administrator. Bridenstine would be the chief of the space agency as it begins to seriously undertake deep space exploration under the new Trump administration push to return to the moon. Nelson, who has cast himself in the role of a friend of NASA, risks alienating aerospace workers who have helped to elect and re-elect him to the Senate.

What can Nelson do now?

Nelson has a couple of options available to him. He can run his 2018 campaign like he has his previous ones, as a sensible Democrat who does not offend the values of Florida voters and who brings home the bacon in the form of aerospace and other contracts.

Or Nelson can tack just a little to the left, hoping to pick up enough liberal voters, including new immigrants from flood-ravaged Puerto Rico, to put him over the top. Each strategy has perils inherent within them. The moderate Nelson would not motivate liberal voters to go to the polls. The liberal Nelson would risk turning off moderate Democrats, causing them to either stay at home or vote for Scott.

More than a year remains until election day

To be sure, campaigning season for the 2018 midterms is long, with the election more than a year away as of this writing. Anything can happen in the months that follow until November 2018. However, both Nelson and Scott have to know that the results of the election are not a sure thing. They will have to work to remain senator in the first case and to become one in the other. The Florida senate race will thus be one of the more closely watched contests for next year's midterms.
Last year, researchers in Germany made a discovery that was so stunning and confusing that they held off on publishing their research until now. They found a pair of 9.7 million-year-old Teeth that have the potential to rewrite everything we assumed about human origins. On Friday the research team, led by lead author Herbert Lutz, release a preprint of these findings on ResearchGate, a social networking site for scientists and researchers to share their work,

How the ancient teeth were discovered

According to their released preprint, the ancient human teeth were discovered by researchers last September when they were digging through gravel and sand along the Proto-Rhine River near the municipality of Eppelsheim, Germany.

One of the teeth is a molar, while the other is a canine. The 9.7 million-year-old canine tooth resembles those of Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old skeleton of an extinct primate species (Australopithecus afarensis) related to humans that was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974.

To made matters even more mysterious, the teeth did not resemble any other known species ever discovered in Europe or Asia. According to Mental Floss, they were able to date the teeth by using the remains of an extinct horse species found in the same location.

German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported that it was due to these reasons that confused scientists held off on publishing their findings. The teeth will now be on display at a state exhibition before heading to be put in the Natural History Museum in Mainz.

What this means for human history

According to The Independent Lutz told local German media that, They are clearly ape teeth, their characteristics resemble African finds that are four to five million years younger than the fossils excavated in Eppelsheim. He added of the discovery that it was a tremendous stroke of luck, but also a great mystery and that the real work to discovering the secret behind the teeth has only just started.

There has been a large amount of fossil evidence found through Europe to show that great apes were roaming the continent millions of years ago. However, there has never been a confirmed case of hominins species closely related to modern humans found in Europe.

The current consensus that scientists have agreed to is that modern day humans evolved out of East Africa between 400,000 to 200,000 years ago before they spread out across the world as recently as 70,000 years ago. For now, the team of researchers who discovered the teeth plan to keep examining them for clues.
President Trump awarded the Medal of Honor to Army Capt. Gary Michael Rose, 71, for saving the lives of dozens of soldiers during the Vietnam War. Capt. Rose was honored for risking his own life while saving others during Operation Tailwind in 1970. Capt. Rose was a medic in the 5th Special Forces Group and ran into enemy fire on the battlefield to save soldiers using his own body and giving critical medical care to those in need.

President Trump during the ceremony said, " Rose's family and brothers in arms that this award will enshrine him into the history of our nation," Trumps said

Trump also said, "Your will to endure, your love for your fellow soldiers, your devotion to inspires us all.

I have to tell you, that is something. Nations are formed out of the strength and patriotism that lives in the hearts of our heroes," via NBC News.

.@POTUS awarded the Medal of Honor to retired Army medic who risked his life to provide care during the Vietnam War pic.twitter.com/SiT6axUVRM  USA Association (@USAAssociation) October 23, 2017

Operation Tailwind

Operation Tailwind was a covert mission in Laos. The mission occurred between September 11- 14, 1970, during the Vietnam War. The operation was to divert the attention of the North Vietnamese away from Operation Gauntlet. The idea of the mission was to stop weapons from being transported along the Ho Chi Minh trail which was a major route.

The Studies and Operation Group was sent in and before being able to be dropped off while still in the helicopters they were fired upon by the enemy. That began the four-day battle.

Capt. Rose without hesitation started working on wounded soldiers while under enemy fire. Capt. Rose never focused on himself possibly being hurt himself, his main concern was keeping our soldiers safe and giving medical treatment.

Capt. Rose stated," my job was to focus on the individuals that were hurt."

Rose continued to state, "when you focus on those kinds of circumstances, you don't concern yourself about being hurt or killed, because if you dwell on that or think about that, you are not going to be able to focus on what you're supposed to be doing and you're probably going to be hurt or killed," reported by WBUR.

Four days after the covert mission began, Marine helicopters came to evacuate the soldiers out of Laos. Capt. Rose got in the last helicopter when it arrived, The helicopter he was on was hit and crashed, He began working on injured Marines who had been shot when the helicopter went down and saved their lives. No lives were lost during the mission because of Capt. Rose's actions.

Capt. Gary Michael Rose

Capt. Gary Michael Rose enlisted in the U.S Army in 1967. He did his basic training at Fort Ord in California before being sent to Fort Benning in Georgia, At Fort Benning, he went to Airborne School. Rose and began training at Fort Bragg for Special Forces where he graduated and became a Special Forces medic.

In 1970 Rose was sent to the Studies and Observations Group, 5th Special Forces Group stationed in Vietnam.

Rose's military career continued in 1973 he attended officer school at Fort Benning and became a second lieutenant in Field Artillery. He then went to Fort Sills in Oklahoma attended Field Artillery Officer School. he retired from military service in 1987. During his career, Rose received many awards, medals, and ribbons. He received the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, National Defense Medal, the Palm Combat Medical Badge, the Good Conduct Medal and much more.

Capt. Rose married in 1971 and has three children and is a grandfather.
Donald Trump spent part of his day on Monday at the White House presenting the Medal of Honor to a Vietnam War veteran. As this was taking place, critics of the president took time to give their thoughts on social media.

Trump and Vietnam

When Donald Trump first announced his plan to run for president, he did so with a few talking points in mind. One talking point Trump focused on was his love of the military and veterans, while vowing to be the greatest president for those who serve for the United States. During the 2016 presidential campaign, the former host of "The Apprentice" often spoke out about veterans and the military while on the campaign trail, but did receive heavy backlash for his comments about Sen.

John McCain. When asked about McCain's service in the Vietnam War where he became a POW, Trump replied that the senator was "not a war hero," stating, "I like people who weren't captured." As expected, many hit back against Trump, with some pointing to the fact that he received five deferments to avoid having to serve in the military during the war in Vietnam. Fast forward to this week where McCain took a jab at Trump, ridiculing those who seek medical deferments to avoid service. As reported by NBC News on October 23, Trump awarded the Medal of Honor to a veteran of Vietnam.

WATCH: President Trump awards the Medal of Honor to retired Army Capt. Gary M. Rose, medic during Vietnam War https://t.co/b7Wrlwvnle  NBC News (@NBCNews) October 23, 2017

On Monday afternoon, Donald Trump welcomed Vietnam War veteran Army Captain Gary Rose to the White House to accept his Medal of Honor.

Rose served as an Army medic during the war in the 5th Special Forces Group. In addition to his Medal of Honor, Rose has received a Purple Heart after getting shot during the last day of his mission. Rose's service in the Army spanned over 20 years, and has finally received recognition.

Twitter reacts

While Donald Trump honored Gary Rose with the Medal of Honor, critics were not impressed with the president due to his history of avoiding service.

"Mr Bone Spur. I would hold out for a legitimate president," one tweet read.

We the people of the United States of America award Trump the of dishonorable corrupt illegitimate president n history of  Impeach45  2theHill (@Bernade97386460) October 23, 2017

What about the wife of the fallen soldier he just insulted?  Ruben baeza (@Rubenbaeza8) October 23, 2017

Mr Bone Spur. I would hold out for a legitimate president.  Maggie Klaus  (@Maggie_Klaus) October 23, 2017

"Gonorrhea was Trump's Vietnam," another tweet added.

"What about the wife of the fallen soldier he just insulted?" one social media user asked.

The timing of this could not be any worse!  @patriotmom (@patriotmom53) October 23, 2017

Gonorrhea was Trump's Vietnam.  Hombre (@ephmen) October 23, 2017

"The timing of this could not be any worse!" yet another tweet stated. "We the people of the United States of America award Trump the medal of dishonorable corrupt illegitimate president in history of US Impeach45," a post read. The backlash continued as it was more than clear that many Americans weren't impressed with Donald Trump in regards to his lack of time in the military.
The feud between Donald Trump and Republican Sen. Bob Corker has been going on over the last few weeks, and it doesn't look to be slowing down anytime soon. On Tuesday morning, the two men exchanged words in a series of tweets as the bad blood continues to flow.

Trump on Corker

When Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker announced he was going to retire at the end of his term, he didn't waste anytime taking the metaphorical gloves off to give his honest opinion about Donald Trump. Corker went on to warn that the former host of "The Apprentice" was on his way to starting World War 3 due to his careless and reckless rhetoric and policy proposals.

In return, Trump accused Corker of "begging" him for support in his reelection, and only deciding to retire when the president refused to stand by his side. The two went on to trade jabs in the media, highlighting yet another rift between the commander in chief and a member of the Republican Party. As seen on his Twitter feed on October 24, Trump wasted no time reigniting the issues between the two.

Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

...Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Taking to Twitter on Tuesday morning, Donald Trump took time to attack Bob Corker in several tweets.

"Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts," Trump tweeted. "Corker dropped out of the race in Tennessee when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump," he added, before tweeting, "Look at his record!"

Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Not stopping there, the president went on to send out three more tweets, labeling Bob Corker "incompetent" as the head of the Foreign Relations Committee, and blaming him for the entire world allegedly "laughing" at the United States.

In conclusion, Donald Trump referred to Corker as "liddle," before accusing him of setting the United States back in the process.

Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done. He doesn't have a clue as.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

...the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us. People like liddle' Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Corker's answer

In response to Donald Trump's criticism, Bob Corker didn't hold back his thoughts.

"Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president," Corker tweeted, before using the hashtag "#AlertTheDaycareStaff." Just hours later while speaking to a reporter from CNN, Corker doubled down on his thoughts on Trump, adding, "I dont know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard, and debases our country in a way that he does."

Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff  Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) October 24, 2017

Next up

While Donald Trump continues to insult members of his own party on social media, he has many more important issues to worry about. The future of health care and tax reform remain uncertain, as the billionare real estate mogul has been unable to convince enough Republicans to support his plans on both issues.

With potential war with North Korea still hanging in the balance, Trump's standing with the American people remains low, as his approval rating has been stuck at around 35 percent in recently released polling.
On October 4, Islamic militants attacked a group of 12 American and Nigerian troops in West Africa. Four U.S soldiers were killed and two others were wounded. Ten Nigerian troops were also killed in the ambush. About 50 extremists ambushed the unarmored truck on its way back from the capital of Niamey. The ISIS-affiliated militants were carrying guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

The four U.S soldiers who died in the attack were Sgt. La David Johnson, 25; Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, 35; Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson 39; and Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright, 29.

Condolence Call

The White House was criticized for their sloppy response to the death of the four soldiers. President Donald Trump was silent for nearly two weeks until Wednesday when a Democratic congresswoman from Florida and the mother of Sgt. La David Johnson said that the President was insensitive in how he expressed his condolences to the widowed wife of the soldier.

The widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, Myeshia Johnson, finally made her first public statement two days after the burial of her former husband. She recalled her conversation with the President who called her on the same day the remains of the soldiers were flown to the United States.

Mrs. Johnson expressed her disappointment in the Presidents remarks, saying his tone of voice was insensitive.

She recalled him saying that her husband knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyways. According to Business Insider, the widow was hurt when the President seemed to stumble remembering her husband's name. She said that it pains her knowing that her husband died for his country, yet the President cannot remember his name.

President Trump took to his Twitter account to say that he had been very respectful in his conversation with Mrs. Johnson and insisted that he knew her husband's name from the beginning.

Mrs. Johnson said that she had not seen the remains of her husband and that authorities would not let her see them each time she asked. She said that she has a lot of further questions that need to be answered.

On-going investigation

Sgt. Johnsons body was found 48 hours after the attack, about a mile away from the ambush scene. The Pentagon is still investigating the exact circumstances regarding the death of Johnson who was separated from the 11 other members of the Special Forces and 30 Nigerian partner forces.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford refused to comment about the investigation's details in a press conference at Pentagon on Monday. He apparently asked for a bit of patience as they continue with their probing.

Sgt. La David Johnson was a mechanic in 3rd Special Forces Group that was consorted with the forces in Niger. He was expecting a baby girl from his wife who is now six months pregnant. He was also the father of a two-year-old son and a six-year-old daughter.
Former General David Petraeus stated on the ABC News program "This Week" that it is the incumbent "right" of citizens to criticize the military. Petraeus emphasized the fact that the function of the military is to protect the rights of citizens to question and criticize the military and the government. Petraeus was referring to the Constitution and the First Amendment protections of Americans' rights to free speech. He also was referring to the First Amendment protection of Americans' rights to free assembly.

The retired general was reminding viewers that the military is not just protecting a population of citizens within the geographical boundaries of the United States, but that it also is protecting the ideals upon which the nation was founded, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

Petraeus sums it up

Petraeus summed it up this way: "I think we're all fair game," according to ABC News on Sunday. The underlying meaning of Petraeus' statement is that the Founding Fathers crafted the Constitution and the nation such that the military is subject to civilian control. The Commander-in-Chief of the military is a civilian who is elected by the People of the United States. The Founding Fathers set it up this way deliberately to ensure that the Commander-in-Chief, and thereby the People, have oversight over the military and the important and relevant decisions pertaining to it.

When the Founding Fathers set up the American government in this manner, they were mindful of the dangers of a "military run military." They had seen the manifestations of a military that runs itself with no civilian oversight in Europe.

The American Revolution had just concluded and Napoleon Bonaparte, a strong military leader, was quickly rising to power in France, unchecked by any semblance of civilian control. Consequently, civilian control of the military with an elected, civilian Commander-in-Chief, became the law of the land in the United States.

Unite behind our Gold Star families

General Petraeus urged President Donald Trump and the American People to unite behind the Gold Star families. Trump, whose chief confidant Steve Bannon was criticized by Senator John McCain, (R-Az.), for describing America as a land of "blood and soil," was the center of much consternation for his handling of a call to a grieving widow last week.

The widow, Myeshia Johnson of Florida, lost her husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, when he was killed in action in Nigeria earlier this month. According to Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, (D-Fla.), Trump stated to Myeshia Johnson, "He knew what he signed up for," according to ABC News on October 18, 2017. According to Congresswoman Wilson, Trump then concluded his remarks by saying that he guesses that "it still hurts."

The controversy over the alleged remarks by Trump still is brewing and is not likely to subside soon. Trump has denied that he ever said anything of the kind, and Wilson, whose claims are backed up by Myeshia Johnson and her mother-in-law, is sticking to her story as well.

Petraeus has advised his Chief Of Staff John Kelly to "turn down the volume" in his well-publicized public debate with Wilson over Trump's remarks to Myeshia Johnson.

Kelly has repeatedly denied that Trump said anything pertaining to Johnson's knowing what he signed up for in press conferences and interviews. Petraeus has advised Kelly to drop it and to focus on "what's important to the country overall," according to ABC News on Sunday.

Trump lashes out at Tillerson

While Petraeus is speaking about citizens' rights to criticize the military and the government, President Trump has been criticizing his own Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Senator Bob Corker, (R-Tenn.), told Trump not to "castrate Tillerson in public." Trump had overtly questioned Tillerson's efforts to negotiate with North Korea, calling them "a waste of time," according to The Huffington Post on October 13, 2017.
Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Brad Pitt after they broke up in September 2016 following an alleged altercation involving their son Maddox. The divorce is still pending, but the former couple has been the subject of controversy including one that the 53-year-old actor is smitten by Ella Purnell. The 21-year-old English actress portrayed the young version of Angies character in the 2014 film Maleficent. Since then, she was dubbed as Angies look-alike and an insider recently told In Touch Weekly that the actor moved heaven and earth just to cast her in the new series that he executive produce titled Sweetbitter. However, recent reports suggest that they are not dating and whats between them is nothing personal.

Brad is not dating Ella

Recently, an insider revealed that Brad Pitt is definitely not dating the young actress.

By all accounts [hes] not dating Ella, a source told Hollywood Life. Sure, he admires her work and theres no denying shes gorgeous, but everyone around him is saying theres no truth to this story of them dating. Earlier reports suggest that the actor was enchanted by the British actress beauty, who has a striking resemblance to his wife Angie, 42.

Angie is reportedly upset

A separate insider previously told Hollywood Life that Angie is upset that her estranged husband is dating Ella, who is 32-years younger than him. It is said that although shes been told that there is no truth to the dating rumors, the Salt actress is still disappointed. Earlier reports from Metro UK suggest that she has been crying in the shower throughout her divorce from Pitt.

She also admitted that its been hard for her as she is not used to being single. Fans have noticed she appeared to be thinner than before and everyone suggests that the divorce might have taken a toll on her body.

Brad is moving on

Brangelina was one of the most famous couples in Hollywood, but it seems that its already the end of an era.

The actor is reportedly ready to date again, but Angie is not thrilled, especially that she hasnt moved on from him. Reports say that as a competitive woman, she doesnt want him to beat her to the punch. Additionally, the idea that he might be dating someone whos twice as young as the actor, it may not sound good to her.

Whats your hunch about Brad Pitt dating the Angelina Jolie look-alike actress Ella Purnell? Do you think its time for Angie to move on now that her estranged husband is up for dating women again?
Loyal Julexis fans may soon have something to rejoice about on "General Hospital." Spoiler alerts from Celeb Dirty Laundry are stating that Scott Baldwin will bring exciting news to Alexis within the next two weeks. William Devry is slated to return to the show during November Sweeps so this most likely indicates that Julian is being released from prison. DeVry had issues with contract negotiations during the summer, and by the time a deal was reached, his character had been off screen for several months. Now that he is returning, viewers are sure to see a romantic reunion between the mobster and his lawyer wife.

Julian and Alexis are considered a super couple

Julian Jerome and Alexis Davis have one of those relationships that the fans just can't get enough of on the show. Their past history, as well as their on-screen chemistry, has given them the status of being a super couple. When it was rumored that Julain might leave Port Charles for good, loyal fans set up a Facebook page in honor of Julexis. They also e-mailed William DeVry, as well as "General Hospital" executive producer Frank Valentini, begging them to work something out and keep this beloved character on the show.

Spoiler alerts teased that fans probably had seen the last of "Julexis," but those who love this couple never gave up hope for a grand reunion.

Eventually, an agreement was reached, and now Alexis and Julian can give the viewers more of those passionate love scenes they are famous for. When Julian went straight to prison, some viewers felt cheated out of a final love scene with Alexis, but now there is the opportunity to make up for lost time.

Julian is paying for Oliva's crimes

Julian is being punished for the crimes that his sister Olivia Jerome committed. When he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, Alexis looked as though her heart was breaking. By that time, however, fans had already heard the news that William DeVry had signed a new contract. It had been reported that he would return in October, along with Steve Burton, but spoilers now say Julian will be back in Port Charles in November.

Spoiler alerts do not indicate what will get the mobster out of prison but suggest his appeal may be approved. Alexis will probably have mixed emotions when Scott gives her the good news. She has tried to forget her husband, and Sam has even pushed her to move on by dating Dr. Bensch. Once Julian returns, however, his wife will not be able to deny the passion that burns between them. Julexis fans will be eagerly awaiting that first passionate reunion between their favorite couple.
"Megyn Kelly Today" has been airing on NBC since September 25, and the ratings are less than desirable. They have been reported to be at an all-time low. Page Six claims that the ratings have fallen from .77 points on Monday to .54 last Tuesday. That's a big drop in such a short period of time. That means her ratings are affecting the ratings not only of her show but for the "Today" show brand on NBC. Megyn's ratings are even lower than her Fox cable show ever was.

Negative press

Megyn Kelly has gotten bad press since the very first week when she took over the third hour of the "Today" show.

She was criticized for her interview with Debra Messing and her group during her very first week on the air. In fact, Messing agreed to go on the show because she thought her interview was going to be on the "Today" Show with Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie instead of being with Megyn Kelly.

Also, during the first week, Kelly asked 79-year-old Jane Fonda about plastic surgery when the iconic actress was on the talk show with her co-star Robert Redford to promote their upcoming Netflix movie, "Our Souls at Night." The 46-year-old journalist was criticized by Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb for bringing down their ratings because her show is a lead in to their fourth hour.

Unless something changes very quickly, the ratings are likely to continue to go down.

Variety reported that several influential publicists have told clients not to appear on "Megyn Kelly Today" because of the low ratings the show is receiving. One publicist said he is not sending anyone to the NBC talk show because of the negative press.

Viewers not impressed

So far, viewers are not impressed. A recent poll suggests that Kelly is less popular than anyone has ever been as an NBC talk show host.

Some officials agree that when new shows first start, it takes them a while to get their footing. However, it is rare for it to take as long as "Megyn Kelly Today" is taking.

Some are convinced that the show can eventually get on the right track, but the longer it takes the harder it will be for it to gain ground. The show needs some positive feedback as soon as possible to keep the ratings from going down.

Something needs to happen to begin pushing the ratings up.

The patience of some viewers is wearing thin, and they are about ready to find something else to watch. According to social media, some people are willing to give the show a chance. Perhaps something will be said or done in the near future to give the show the big push that it needs.
Over the past few weeks, over 40 women have come forward to accuse Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment. The victims include big names such as Angelina Jolie and Gwenyth Paltrow who both claim they managed to avoid assault in the 90s. Others say they are not so fortunate. Six women have claimed they were assaulted by the now-disgraced Hollywood producer who admitted himself to therapy following his exposure. While he shared a statement saying he wanted to "get better," reports showed that he wasn't putting in much effort at the facility.

Launched investigation

According to the LA Times, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened a civil rights investigation into the Weinstein Company as of Monday. A subpoena was issued as the attorney general is looking into any misconduct in the company following the dozens of sexual harassment claims Weinstein has faced.

"If sexual harassment or discrimination is pervasive at a company, we want to know," said the state official. He does not believe anyone should enter a workplace feeling fearful. The attorney general is asking the Weinstein Company to release all documents associated with complains of sexual harassment as well as the settlements between Weinstein and his alleged accusers.

The subpoena is also asking the company to release documents detailing its casting process, as most stories that have come out about Weinstein have been related to gaining movie roles.

Weinstein is out of the picture

Harvey Weinstein was fired from the company he co-founded two weeks ago, but that didn't stop the attorney general from questioning the company.

The producer has not released any public statements since he admitted himself to therapy recently.

Reports of the status of the Weinstein Company have been all over the place, as many believe its reputation is now soiled. There has been much talk of it being sold to another company, but this investigation could change a lot.

LAPD has also opened an investigation, though it's focused on Harvey directly and not his company.

The number of accusers as well the multiple investigations could lead to bad things for both Harvey and his old company.

Bob Weinstein claimed to have not known anything about his brother's behavior but Hollywood stars like Quentin Tarantino have admitted that everyone close to him knew. This could easily be one of the reasons the Weinstein Company is being investigated.
HMD Global-funded nokia has explored both mid-range and high-end segments when it comes to smartphones. The firm launched Nokia 3, Nokia 5 and Nokia 6 in the mid-range category. At the same time, they introduced Snapdragon 835-backed Nokia 8 in the high-end section. They plan on expanding their line-up of premium smartphones with another device named Nokia 9. According to Tech Radar, the Finnish tech giant is now working towards exploring the low budget category. They will be seen launching an entry-level model called Nokia 2. The report states that the handset may be priced at around $99.

Price

Nokias lowest-priced smartphone until now was the Nokia 3. It came for a price of $250. If the company does end up introducing Nokia 2 at $99, then it will be a whole $150 dollars cheaper than the cheapest offering by the company. Nokia is believed to target first-time smartphone buyers with the launch of this smartphone. Nokia will introduce two primary color variants, Black and White with Nokia 2. As for the specifications, the device is speculated to feature a 5-inch HD display. The front panel will further pack on-screen navigation buttons. This is the first time this year that Nokia is introducing such a feature. Rest of the other Nokia-branded smartphones feature capacitive touch buttons.

The smartphone will be powered by a 1.4GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 212 chipset. Storage wise, users can avail 1GB of RAM along with 8GB of internal memory. Nokia is expected to introduce the option of expanding the devices memory. The device will pack an 8-megapixel rear camera along with a 5-megapixel front camera.

Android smartphone

The smartphone is initially rumored to run on Android 7.1.1 Nougat OS. Later on, Nokia is expected to deploy the latest Android Oreo update. The device is rumored to be home to a massive 4,000mAh battery. The company wont include a fingerprint scanning feature with this one. The device has already been spotted on a US-based online website called B&H.

Carrying the model number, TA-1035, the handset made its way on the official website of FCC last week. The Finnish giant is also rumored to be working for the launch of Nokia 9. It is expected to be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor and will be unveiled in January 2018. The device will feature a camera system provided by the official Carl Zeiss technology. Its pricing and other details are not yet known.
Watch out North Korea, because South Korea is about to receive another big boost this week, courtesy of the advanced anti-ballistic missile system. The US military announced that it has completed the full deployment of Thaad in South Korea as a response to the growing threat spurred by the North Koreas nuclear weapon program.

According to Star and Stripes, the US forces stationed in South Korea have just confirmed to the world the deployment of THAAD or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system. The local news agency Yonhap reported earlier that an official ceremony was held to transfer the control of the THAAD missile battery from Fort Bliss in Texas to the 35th Air Defense Artillery Brigade in South Korea.

This is not the first time the anti-ballistic missile setup has been deployed in South Korea. The high-tech interceptor was deployed in South Korea since 2016, however, the military specialist that manned the system was not fully engaged at that time. Additionally, at that time, the missile had not yet received clearance for full deployment in South Korea.

Unfortunately, theres some growing concern about the latest THAAD deployment. The missile deployment in South Korea has received strong opposition from the neighboring countries of China and Russia, who cited national security concerns over the missile deployment, according to Sputnik News.

About the advanced anti-ballistic missile system

Developed by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, THAAD or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense is a highly accurate anti-ballistic missile defense system.

Other subcontractors and contributing companies include Aerojet Rocketdyne, Boeing, BAE Systems, Honeywell, Oshkosh Defense, Oliver Capital Consortium, MiltonCAT, and Raytheon. THAAD was designed primarily for intercepting incoming missiles. Using advanced sensors and radar system, the missile seeks and destroys short, medium, and intermediate range ballistic missiles in their terminal or reentry stage.

But unlike the Patriot PAC-3 missile system which carries a small explosive warhead on board, the advanced missile carries no warhead at all. Instead, the missile relies on kinetic energy, using the traditional hit-to-kill approach to destroy the incoming missile. The kinetic energy approach could also minimize the risk of warhead explosion in a conventional warhead and even in a nuclear-armed ballistic missile.

The missile was first designed in 1987, but it entered full development after the missile experience during the Gulf War in 1991. Originally, the THAAD was part of the US Army program but later came under the umbrella of the Missile Defense Agency, the Americans premier missile defense system agency. The missile has been deployed to some key military bases and potential hotspots, like in Turkey, UAE and more recently, in South Korea.

The 900-kg, 6-meter missile has an operational range of about 200 miles (125 km) and can reach an altitude 93 miles. It has a top speed of about Mach 8.24. The THAAD anti-ballistic system consists of two mobile tactical operation centers, AN/TPY-2 ground-based radar system and six launcher vehicles, each equipped with up to 8 missiles.

It used an X band AESA (active electronically scanned array) radar, which was first developed by US defense contractor Raytheon. Additionally, the missile can also work with the US Navys AEGIS Combat System and Patriot missile defense system, in a 3-layered missile defense setup.

South Korea added Global Hawk to its inventory

In other military-related news, the South Korea Air Force announced that it has acquired four brand new Northrop Grumman-developed RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs. Sputnik News has learned that the acquisition of the first two drones is set to take place in December of this year, while the other two will arrive in 2019. The high-tech Global Hawk will be based in South Chungcheong province, a known military stronghold of the South Korea.

South Korea has been beefing up its military defense and capability in the past years, as a response to the growing tensions spurred by its rival country, North Korea. The THAAD and the Global Hawk are just some of the latest additions to the South Koreas combat readiness. In addition to the THAAD deployment, the Pentagon has also sent the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group to deter any potential military action by North Korea. The carrier battlegroup also includes the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with AEGIS Combat System, which was designed for intercepting incoming ballistic missiles.
Walter Ruck, left, president of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce and Industry, shakes hands with Zhang Yongming, president of CCPIT Beijing, at a signing ceremony held in Beijing on Oct 23, 2017. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Austria's Vienna Chamber of Commerce and Industry signed a cooperation agreement with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Beijing sub-council in Beijing on Monday.

The cooperation agreement, known as the Beijing Consensus, is formulated for members of the Belt and Road Alliance of Municipal Chambers of Commerce, a cooperation platform established by municipal chambers of commerce and organizations from countries involved in or interested in the Belt and Road Initiative.

Walter Ruck, president of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said as the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative is bringing new vitality to the involved countries, the chamber wants to encourage its member enterprises to participate and seize business opportunities.

He said the signing of the agreement is a big step for both China and Austria, narrowing the distance between the two markets.

"Many Chinese companies, from big corporations such as the railcar manufacturer CRRC Corp to small restaurants, are operating businesses in Austria," Ruck said in an interview with chinadaily.com.cn. "Based on the agreement, we can help both Chinese and Austrian companies to open channels of communication and perfect the communication mechanism."

He said the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is in talks with the chamber to set up a branch in Vienna.

"Once the branch is established, it will bring opportunities for local companies to get financing," Ruck said.

Zhang Yongming, president of CCPIT Beijing, said at the signing ceremony that "the Belt and Road Alliance of Municipal Chambers of Commerce is a platform that can promote mutual trust and cooperation among enterprises as well as a bond that can form a joint force of business services.

"By establishing smooth information cooperation, the alliance enables enterprises to communicate and obtain accurate, authoritative information, which can make cooperation more convenient and effective."

In addition, the alliance, marshalling the strengths and business advantages of different countries, regions and cities, can provide comprehensive services for cross-border operations and cooperation of enterprises, he said.
At 12.35 am Oct 18, the report delivered by Xi Jinping to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China ended to the sounds of warm applause. As journalists calculated, this three-and-a-half-hour speech was "interrupted" more than 70 times by the audience's applause.

Among the key points, one paragraph attracted broad attention: "China will never pursue development at the expense of others' interest, but neither will China ever give up its legitimate rights and interests. No one should expect China to swallow anything that undermines its interests." How should we understand this new stance on Chinese interests and foreign policy?

Reviewing Chinese diplomacy during the past five years, there has clearly been a great transformation from "keeping a low profile" (tao guang yang hui) to "striving for achievements"(di li fen jin). In domestic affairs, as Xi asserts, "The principal contradiction facing Chinese society in the new era is that between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life." Accordingly, Chinese foreign policy should also evolve from "serving the development" to a more comprehensive and holistic target  "serving the national rejuvenation".

This transformation means that in the new era, Chinese diplomacy should not only construct a peaceful and stable external environment for development, but also shape the global and regional environment and international order more proactively. This will provide creative solutions to chronic problems which have put sand in the wheels of improving China's strategic environment, securing the core national interest.

Has China made it? Yes. The conference on diplomatic work for neighboring countries, held on Oct 24, 2013, announced regional Chinese strategy for the coming five to 10 years. China deepens relations with its neighbors in accordance with the principles of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit, inclusiveness and a policy of forging friendship and partnership with its neighbors. Thus, China and its neighbors have built a series of cooperative projects, such as the "2+7 cooperation framework", the "Lancang-Mekong Cooperation(LMC)"and more.

However, China is also ready to defend its bottom line. As Xi underlined, "China never gives up its legitimate rights and interests. No one should expect China to swallow anything that undermines its interests."

Reviewing China's major country diplomacy over the past five years, it's clear the path has not been smooth. However, under the leadership of a great helmsman, the grand vessel of the Chinese people has passed through violent storms and waves, one after another. At this moment, the Party and the country, with unprecedented confidence in their institutions, theory, path and culture, are standing on the threshold and embracing the brilliant prospects of rejuvenation.

Notably, China in rejuvenation is neither an evil fire-breathing dragon, as some western politicians suggested, nor the "sick man of East Asia" from a century ago. I prefer to think of it as a "Kung Fu Panda". Since China is a panda, it displays an essence of kindness, so as Xi promised "China's development does not pose a threat to any other country. No matter what stage of development it reaches, China will never seek hegemony or engage in expansion". Meanwhile, the "kung fu", representing Chinese wisdom, grants the panda solid determination and strength to protect its legitimate rights and interests. What is more, we are looking forward to seeing the "Kung Fu Panda" cooperate with its partners to build a community with a shared future for mankind, creating a bright tomorrow for all.

Wang Peng is a research fellow at the Charhar Institute and the China Institute of Fudan University.
BEIJING - Top leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC) will meet the press Wednesday morning.

Members of the Standing Committee of the 19th CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, who will be elected at the first plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, are scheduled to meet Chinese and foreign journalists at the Great Hall of the People at about 11:45 a.m. Wednesday.

The meeting will be broadcast live on Chinese television and radio as well as online.
The report General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered to the opening session of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has aroused huge attention from both home and abroad. The report is set to have a far-reaching impact in the country's future development. China Daily reporters interviewed delegates, experts and officials to seek their opinion on the importance of the report and how it will contribute to the development of China and the world.

A worker works at a glassware factory in North China's Hebei province, Aug 22, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

Economy: Innovation a road map showing best way to sustain development

By He Wei and Zhong Nan

While contributing significantly to global economic growth, China will continue to be a major source of the innovation, free trade and investment that underpin global sustainable development, analysts and delegates of the 19th National Congress of the CPC said.

Innovation is the primary force driving development, and it is the strategic foundation for a modernized economy, CPC Central Committee General Secretary Xi Jinping said in a report at the opening of the congress on Wednesday.

Xi also called for more efforts to develop advanced manufacturing; promote further integration of the internet, big data and artificial intelligence with the real economy; and foster new growth areas and drivers in medium-to-high-end consumption, innovation-driven development, the green and low-carbon economy, the sharing economy, modern supply chains and human capital services.

In trade and investment, Xi said China will break new ground in pursuing opening-up on all fronts since "openness brings progress, while self-seclusion leaves one behind".

"We will adopt policies to promote high-standard liberalization and the facilitation of trade and investment," Xi added.

China's stellar rise in e-commerce and mobile payment technology offers a Chinese solution and experience for the world to draw upon and brought benefits through trade facilitation, job creation and candid people-to-people exchanges.

According to eMarketer, China's digital retail will continue to lead the world with an exponential $2.42 trillion in sales by 2020.

Online shopping platforms not only source worldwide goods and rapidly deliver to people's doorsteps, they also bridge consumers around the world with state-of-the-art Chinese products.

By acquiring Lazada Group, Southeast Asia's largest e-commerce firm, China's e-commerce giant Alibaba has empowered the region's e-commerce sector through providing training to small businesses and individuals, and looking to enhance its logistics might.

Chinese mobile payments dwarfed those in the United States at nearly 50 times their market size last year, according to Forrester Research.

"China's ubiquitous digital payment is clearly in the driver's seat worldwide ... so that Chinese traveling abroad aren't used to not being able to pay for bills with the cellphone", said He Lifeng, minister of the National Development and Reform Commission and Party congress delegate.

The country's stance of continuing to open up its economy also constitutes a vital driving force for the world economy, which is menaced by rising protectionism.

"Despite the current trend of protectionism, President Xi has again also championed harmony through economic stability and globalization. China's economic stability and commitment to free trade can only benefit all countries," said Helen Sawczak, National CEO of the Australia China Business Council.
Florence Fang, one of the founders of the US-China Strong Foundation, shakes hands with John Holden, the foundation's new CEO, who is a seasoned China expert with decades of experience in US-China business and political relations. CHANG JUN / CHINA DAILY

Although there are uncertainties and maybe setbacks ahead, China and the US need to facilitate cooperation and reduce friction because this bilateral relationship is the most consequential of its kind in the world.

This consensus, a strongly held belief among founding members and governance at the US-China Strong Foundation, explains why this Washington-based nonprofit, since its establishment in 2013, has worked so hard to invest in and empower young people in the US and equip them with the knowledge and skills to engage with China.

"If we want to strengthen the relationship between China and the US, we need to start with our children," said Florence Fang, a San Francisco-based businesswoman who is also one of the founders of the foundation.

"If our future American leaders understand China well, know Chinese culture and make friends with their Chinese counterparts, I don't see the possibility that the world's two biggest economies will become foes."

In 2013, President Obama initiated the 100K Strong program, setting the goal of sending 100,000 American students to study in China by 2014, a goal that was met ahead of schedule.

In 2015, President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama announced a more aggressive program, the 1 Million Strong, to expand by fivefold Mandarin-language instruction in US K-12 schools from approximately 200,000 to 1 million by 2020.

"We relaunched this initiative in 2016 and took a new name, the US-China Strong Foundation," said Fang, adding that the foundation now leads three signature campaigns that "focus on supporting the full spectrum of American youth, ranging from our youngest students through young professionals entering China-related careers".

In September, the foundation announced the appointment of a new CEO, John Holden, a seasoned China expert with decades of experience in US-China business and political relations.

Holden joins the foundation from Peking University, where, as associate dean, he helped launch the school's Yenching Academy, a full-fellowship graduate-level program in China studies. He traveled widely to recruit students from more than 60 countries. The first group of students graduated with their master's degrees in July.

"I'm honored to join US-China Strong and work on its important mission to ensure that future American leaders have the tools to engage productively with China," said Holden.

"I have been a witness to the development of US-China relations since I first visited China in 1974, and know firsthand the benefits of productive relations between our two countries. Now, more than ever, we must invest in programs that facilitate cooperation and reduce friction in this most consequential bilateral relationship," he added.

Holden, a nonresident senior fellow in the Carnegie Asia Program, served as president of the National Committee on US-China Relations from 1998 to 2005.

Under his leadership, the committee expanded its scope to include the US-China Young Leaders Forum, the Foreign Policy Colloquium and Track II Dialogues and programs on topics ranging from health and the environment to education and judicial reform.

On Sept 30, Holden received this year's Chinese Government Friendship Award - China's highest honor granted to a foreigner - for his contribution to the nation's development.

"Premier Li Keqiang met with all 50 recipients of this award at the Great Hall of the People," said Holden.

Li said that China and the rest of the world are a community of common destiny, and they should learn from each other.

Looking forward, Holden and Fang will "collaborate with our partners, stakeholders and supporters to enhance the US-China relationship".

Contact the writer at junechang@chinadailyusa.com.
Ohio State China authority looks to 19th Congress and beyond

What do you feel has been China's biggest achievement over the past five years? What's the most notable change you've observed?

Recalibration of the economy towards domestic consumption. This is a transition that many experts thought would be difficult if not impossible, but China has shown that it can transform its model, a critical capability for escaping the Middle Income Trap.

What three words would you use to describe China today?

Resurgent, reflective, transformative

What's the biggest challenge China faces, and how do you feel the country can go about overcoming this difficulty?

Achieving greater economic equity. This will require an even more radical reshuffling of the existing system, from healthcare to pensions, so as to encourage mobility, for instance by further transforming the hukou system.

What are your expectations for the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China? What are the key issues you care about most?

Because it comes at the midpoint of a strong administration, the congress is an opportunity for making fundamental changes.

The issues I care about: (1) China's opportunity to undertake a globally responsible leadership role, for instance, vis--vis North Korea and Iran. (2) The opportunity to develop the countryside. (3) The opportunity to transform China into a global climate leader. (4) Achieving the most important leadership role - moral leadership, by showing a good example both home and abroad.

What is your impression of President Xi Jinping?

He is obviously a very strong leader who is a strategic thinker.

How do you view China's role in today's world?

China has transitioned from an observer to having a voice in global affairs, but it has a long way to go before it becomes a global leader whose influence matches its economic power. China has a great opportunity to show moral and pragmatic global leadership by helping to achieve its own declared goal of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Do you believe that some of China's experiences or practices could be used to solve pressing global problems? If so, what are they?

Yes, of course. An example would be eradication of poverty and illiteracy in the developing world.

What do you think China will be like in five years' time? How do you view China's longer-term future?

In the next five years I expect more of the same, that is, economic growth and a very cautious and limited global engagement. I don't expect a radical change but rather more "crossing the river by feeling for stones". In the longer term, China is destined to restore its position as a world power. My hope is that it will also be a moral leader.

What's the most unforgettable experience or moment you've ever had in China, or related to China?

My first "aha moment" was when studying Chinese in the early 1970s and realizing that the dialogue we have learned was rooted in a 5,000-year history. That this was at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, another millennia old civilization, gives it a special flavor and appreciation.

Note: Oded Shenkar is the Ford Motor Company Chair in Global Business Management and professor at the Fisher College of Business of Ohio State University. Shenkar and Simi Ronen are authors of the 2017 book Navigating Global Business: A Cultural Compass, published by Cambridge University Press.

chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
The breadth of contemporary Chinese culture was on display at the first Creative China Festival, a three-month event geared toward fostering collaboration between young artists from China and the United States.

The festival concluded its run recently in New York after tours in Boston and Los Angeles.

"I know a lot about traditional Chinese culture and arts, such as Chinese calligraphy and painting, but I didn't know Chinese contemporary arts could be so interesting and creative," said Vincent Marchetti, a young designer from New York who attended Eating the City - an art exhibition by the Beijing-based multimedia artist Song Dong at Mana Contemporary in New Jersey.

Song, who has been building model cities around the world using biscuits, cakes and candies and has invited participants to eat them in his series exhibition since 2003, is at the vanguard of contemporary Chinese art.

"Eating is a very important part of Chinese culture," said Song. "There's an old saying in ancient China that goes: 'Food is the first necessity of people (Min Yi Shi Wei Tian).'"

Song said that when he first went overseas, he could not speak English, but everyone he met seemed to be very interested in Chinese food.

"So, the idea came to me - combining food with the art as a way to communicate with people around the world, because the food is essential to everyone," Song added.

Song's exhibition was just one part of the festival hosted by The Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation and supported by the Chinese Ministry of Culture as part of the China-US Social and People-to-People Dialogue framework. The festival featured movies, music, fashion and design, contemporary art, and a focus on the city of Nanjing.

For instance, in the design exhibitions sector, a coterie of young Chinese designers, including Lu Yang, whose work featured a balance of intense color, body parts and Asian motifs; and Angel Chen and Wu Min, represented a new generation of internationally influenced Chinese artists.

"There are not many exchanges between the young generation in China and the US as well as fields such as contemporary arts and urban culture," said Cui Qiao, the president of the Beijing Contemporary Art Foundation. "We want to change that, and we want the festival to be a platform that enables young Chinese to collaborate with American institutions and individuals.

"Young Chinese artists now have a more international outlook," Cui said. "They are very active in the international sphere such as exhibiting their work overseas and collaborating and communicating with institutions in other countries."

Cui said that when Americans think about Chinese culture, they think about the traditional culture in the abstract. So the festival brought many works from young artists in China and exposed a different side of Chinese culture - one that is more creative, dynamic and fresh.

"American audiences were really surprised and inspired by these works," Cui said.

ruinanzhang@chinadailyusa.com
Corn and soybean farmer Rick Kimberley welcomes visitors to his 4,000-acre farm in Maxwell, Iowa. [May Zhou/CHINA DAILY]

Rick Kimberley had to cut short his visit to China in September - it's harvest season and he needed to get back to the soybeans and corn from his 4,000-acre farm in Maxwell, Iowa.

However, despite the busy harvest followed by the holiday season, Kimberley said that he likely will go to China again for the fifth time this year, in December. The China-US Demonstration Farm finally broke ground in Chengde, Hebei province last month, and there is a lot to do.

"We need to make preparations for the demo farm. I will consult them on the way I farm here, the modern techniques and equipment we use. We have to lay out the demo farm area - where to put demonstrations for farming, equipment, seeds and products we will use. A lot needs to be designed and laid out the way we want," Kimberly said from his farm in Iowa.

The idea of a demo farm was originated when President Xi Jinping visited Kimberley's farm in 2012. Xi hoped to modernize China's farming, and believed Kimberley's farm could be a good model for that.

That idea changed Kimberley's life as an ordinary Iowa farmer. Since then, Kimberley has visited China 11 times and has come to view himself as an ambassador of sorts to build a better relationship between the peoples of the two countries.

"I probably visited more than 50 cities all over China. There is quite a difference in different regions," observed Kimberley.

The demo farm will be modeled after Kimberley's, right down to his modest farmhouse along with grain bins and John Deere tractors and combines.

It will first focus on corn and soybeans, the two primary crops on Kimberley's own farm.

"We probably will add other things as we go. We will see what works good in those climates," said Kimberley.

"What is going on in China as far as I can see is that none of the young people are staying on the farm," Kimberley said. "The farmers are in their 50s and getting older. In 10 years, if they don't start to use machinery, the farmers will be too old to farm by hand. There are no young people to take over. China needs to change the way it farms."

Most farmers Kimberley encountered in China farm one to four acres per family.

"The farmers live in the village together and go out to work the land separately. That could change. They can put the farms of the village together and be able to farm 300 to 400 acres together with machinery," Kimberley said.

Kimberley's favorite Chinese city is Shanghai, and spicy food and soup noodles are his favorite Chinese dishes.

Having traversed the vast region of China from Shanghai to Urumqi, from Jilin to Guangdong, Kimberley said the visits have impacted him and his family a lot. His wife and his son joined him on some trips.

"By going to China, it helps us to understand the people and the country. It opened our eyes, feelings and hearts to the people of China. It has made us better," Kimberley said.

"The culture is so different. You can read about it, but until you go there, you don't really understand what they are going through," he said.

mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com
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HCM CITY  Emirates Airlines serves more than 100 million meals a year with the same attention to detail for the First, Business and Economy Classes.

Catering for more than 55 million dine-in guests a year travelling to and from 144 cities across 6 continents, Emirates serves destination-inspired cuisine onboard the worlds largest flying restaurant.

With a catering investment of US$1 billion per year, Emirates runs a round-the-clock kitchen with 1,200 chefs based in Dubai whipping up 12,450 recipes. The finely-tuned operation caters for 590 flights a day with authentic local cuisines giving customers a taste of the destination they are going to. The airline also works closely with 25 catering partners around the world to provide the same quality of food for its Dubai-bound flights.

Emirates focus on local flavour means it has food available from every region it flies to. Flights to Japan for example, offer authentic Kaiseki cuisine and Bento boxes served with Japanese crockery, cutlery and tea sets to ensure an unrivalled food experience on board.

Passengers travelling on Emirates flights to Ha Noi or HCM City will have a chance to enjoy local cuisine such as Vietnamese fresh spring rolls, fried noodles with beef, fried banana cakes or shrimp curry from the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta region.

The airline recently launched a new menu for its Australian routes inspired by the breadth of the countrys multicultural flavours and cuisines, after a 14-month process working in consultation with local chefs.

Emirates also offers child-friendly meals for its young customers and dedicated menus for medical or religious meal requirements, which are designed with a team of nutritionists and chefs.

In Viet Nam, Emirates operates daily passenger services from both Ha Noi and HCM City. From HCM City, the airline has been operating daily direct flights to Dubai since 2012, while flights along the Ha Noi-Dubai route have been operational, non-stop from July 2 this year. Both of these services are operated via a two-class Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.  VNS
HA NOI  AIA Viet Nam and VPBank, Viet Nams largest private joint stock commercial bank by market capitalisation, on Monday signed a 15-year exclusive bancassurance partnership agreement.

Through this partnership, VPBank customers can enjoy AIA Viet Nams comprehensive range of life insurance products and services complemented by AIA Vitality, AIAs innovative wellness proposition.

This will make VPBank the first bank in Viet Nam to offer insurance integrated with wellness across its entire nationwide network of 215 branches and transaction offices and all bank segments, including retail, SME Corporate, household and digital banking.

This long-term exclusive partnership will allow AIA Viet Nam and VPBank to jointly invest in and commit to creating a market-leading bancassurance platform that is supported by the integration of digital capabilities, best-in-class training programme and service innovation to serve customers better.

Our strategic partnership with VPBank highlights our commitment to deliver value-added wellness, protection and long-term savings solutions to VPBank customers, and more importantly, to advance the life insurance market in Viet Nam by helping people live longer, healthier and better lives, Wayne Besant, AIA Viet Nams CEO, said.

Nguyen uc Vinh, VPBanks CEO, said: We have always viewed bancassurance as an integral and strategic aspiration for the bank. Life insurance is a vital component and product offering for our target market segments, in particular, the affluent and upper class consumer, as well as the SME and household banking segments. We are very excited to collaborate with AIA Vietnam as part of this bancassurance relationship and look forward to making the best-in-class life insurance products available through our distribution network.. VNS
HA NOI  Continued dependence on raw and auxiliary materials imports will constrain Viet Nam textiles and garment industry from taking real advantage of the various Free Trade Agreements signed by the country, industry insiders say.

It will also blunt the industrys competitive edge further, they add.

According to a 2016 report from the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), by the end of last year, 99 per cent of cotton used in the textile industry, reaching 1.03 million tonnes worth about US$1.7 billion, was imported, a year-on-year increase of two per cent in quantity and 2.5 per cent in value.

Thread import turnover in 2016 also went up 8.8 per cent in volume and 5.9 per cent in value to 861,00 tonnes and $1.6 billion respectively. Import of whole fabric last year increased by 3.2 per cent over 2015 to reach $10.5 billion.

Feeble at home

Currently, Viet Nam is only able to supply 0.3 per cent of domestic cotton demand and 40 per cent of thread demand, so the rest is imported chiefly from the US, China and Taiwan.

Paradoxically, more than 70 per cent of the national thread output of 1.4 million tonnes is exported, while the Vietnamese garment industry imports nearly 0.1 million metric tonnes of high-grade fibre from China, Korea and Taiwan per year.

Each year, Viet Nam earns tens of billions of dollars from textile and garment exports, but businesses make modest profits of less than $2 billion because the garment industry spends more than half of its earnings on importing raw materials, according to the MoIT.

Tran Thanh Hai, Deputy Director of the MoITs Import-Export Department, said in an announcement on the MoITs online portal, that the textile industrys dependence on imported instead of locally produced raw and auxiliary materials has significantly limited its competitiveness and added-value component.

Domestic textile firms produce nearly 2.8 billion metres of fabric each year, meeting 30 per cent of total demand, so Viet Nam still has to import up to 6.1 billion metres of fabric annually, even from countries not participating in the same major FTAS like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the EU-Vietnam FTA, or the Vietnam Japan Economic Partnership Agreement.

Regarding accessories, production facilities for sewing thread, cotton sheets, buttons, zippers, or packaging labels can be found in Viet Nam, but they barely meet domestic market demand, so these have to be imported in large quantities too.

According to a 2016 report of the Viet Nam Textile and Garment Association (VITAS), the industry finds itself in the lowest value-added segment in the supply chain, having 70 per cent of exported products under outsourcing for foreign firms, 20 per cent as domestic production and direct sales without intermediaries, 2.9 per cent as self-designed and self-manufactured products, and just one per cent made and distributed under original brands.

Tied in knots

Nguyen Van Tuan, Chairman of the Vietnam Cotton and Spinning Association (VCOSA), said during the 2016 Vietnam Textile Summit in HCM City, that the textile industry is "knotted" in the middle, i.e. highly productive in terms of making yarn and final products, but stunted in the production of fabric and other materials.

With the industrys annual growth rate at about 8 per cent, by 2025, the amount of fabric needed will double to 18 billion metres, meaning without further investment in domestic production, Viet Nam will have to import 15 billion metres, said Tuan.

He also said that with 7.5 million spindles, the industrys annual output is approximately 1.3 million tonnes of thread; of which more than 800 thousand tonnes are reserved for export, mainly to two major markets  China and Turkey.

Beleaguered sector

Worse still, many countries have intensified their use of trade remedies against Viet Nam. According to the MoIT, from 2007 onwards, Viet Nams yarn and thread exports have faced seven lawsuits  five anti-dumping, one anti-subsidy and one safeguard measure - from Turkey, the EU, India and Brazil.

Therefore, around 80 per cent of Vietnamese yarn is exported to China, since its cotton prices are still relatively high. However, this cannot be seen as a stable market. Once China decides to use the 11 million tonnes of cotton in storage, Viet Nams yarn market share in the country will shrink considerably, according to a VCOSA analysis.

Supporting industries

Some insiders have said that the nations textiles and garments sector can still increase productivity and localisation rate through the development of supporting industries.

VITAS Chairman Vu uc Giang told the Vietnam News Agency a few months ago the FTAs are a driving force for growth, but the textile and garment industry must be prepared for it.

Giang suggested that domestic businesses invest in the dyeing process, implement a solid human resource training strategy as the 4.0 Industrial Revolution gets closer, and focus heavily on building an integrated value chain between domestic producers.

Hoang Ve Dung, Vinatexs Deputy General Director, said at a meeting in August 2017 between Vinatex and the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group, that administrative agencies should coordinate with textile associations to push for appropriate policies on the purchase and production processes, covering both raw materials and finished products.

According to the MoIT, total textile and garment exports in the first six months of 2017 reached $14.58 billion, up 11.3 per cent over the same period in 2016, despite difficulties.

However, industry insiders have said that the turnover of the first 6 months is not sustainable.  VNS
Shrimp exports to the European Union (EU) increased constantly in August and September, making it the biggest consumer of the Vietnamese product, according to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (Vasep). Photo thanhnien.vn

HCM CITY  Shrimp exports to the European Union (EU) increased constantly in August and September, making it the biggest consumer of the Vietnamese product, according to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (Vasep).

Vasep has reported that shrimp exports to the market in June and July came to a standstill due to supply shortage and price hikes, while EU businesses reduced their shrimp imports. However, since August, exports to the EU have been restored with increased supply from domestic businesses.

The countrys shrimp export revenue hit US$2.5 billion in the first nine months, up 21.9 per cent against the same period last year. Exports to the EU grew 32 per cent in this period.

Vasep said that to boost exports to the market, businesses should pay more attention to labels and the quality of products to build brand names and expand markets. They should make proper plans to improve their competitiveness against other exporters, such as India.

The EU tends to increase its shrimp imports in the remaining months of the year to serve cultural and food festivals, offering a chance for domestic businesses to spur exports.

Tran Van Pham, director of the Soc Trang Seafood Joint Stock Company, said an important factor was to provide clean raw materials to the export shrimp processing industry. This means that Viet Nams shrimp industry must invest more in technology and the equipment for processing.

To form a large-scale production system, each enterprise must have a large area with synchronous investment at all stages, and then reduce the production costs to improve the quality of products for higher profits.

Ma Huy, deputy director of Ca Mau Agricultural Extension Centre, said the growth of shrimp exports to Europe promoted domestic shrimp consumption at high prices. The price was VN220,000 per kg (30 units of shrimp) and VN190,000 per kg (40 units).

Shrimp exporters like to buy shrimp that have 70 to 100 units per kg to meet the demands of European consumers.  VNS
There are three main challenges that small and medium-sized enterprises in Viet Nam face with the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, a senior member of the US-ASEAN Business Council has said. Photo baodauthau.vn

HCM CITY  There are three main challenges that small and medium-sized enterprises in Viet Nam face with the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, a senior member of the US-ASEAN Business Council has said.

They are greater access to domestic and international markets to be a part of the global supply chain, access to technology and information communication tools, and access to finance, Michael Michalak, senior vice president of the council, told a workshop in HCM City on Monday.

The workshop, organised by the Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) and the council, was meant to be a platform for SMEs, business groups and organisations to discuss opportunities and challenges for small firms in Viet Nam.

Tran Vinh Tuyen, deputy chairman of the HCM City Peoples Committee, said though SMEs are the backbone of Viet Nams economy -- with around 97 per cent of Vietnamese firms being small or medium-sized -- they still face many challenges with respect to management, human resource training, commercialisation and adoption of new technologies.

US Ambassador to Viet Nam, Ted Osius, said: SMEs, not SOEs, will grow Viet Nams economy. Thats why it is important to help SMEs.

He said to do so three things must be achieved. The first, he said, is for the Government to create an enabling environment.

Bureaucracy must help enhance transparency, reduce the amount of red tape, the number of approval steps, the number of formal and informal fees and the amount of time it takes to register a business.

If this is achieved, companies could spend more time to create new products and new jobs to bring prosperity, he said.

Second is reforming the education system to provide companies with innovative graduates and creative thinkers.

The last thing is to think creatively and think big.

SMEs must understand their market includes not just Viet Nam but the broader world."

Online training

To help SMEs enhance their competiveness and capacity, the US-ASEAN Business Council works with local ASEAN SMEs support organisations such as VCCI in Viet Nam to organise seminars on topics that Vietnamese SMEs are interested in, according to Michalak.

Some of the chosen topics are technology assistance, business planning skills and basic accounting, he said.

The business council helped establish the ASEAN SME Academy in May 2016 to put all the training materials online where SME entrepreneurs can access and learn anywhere and any time using computers, smart phones and tablets.

The online gateway also helps SMEs find networking opportunities and gain access to region-specific information to further grow their business.

However, not every business can easily access or benefit from it due to technological disadvantages, especially women-owned SMEs.

Mai Thi Dieu Huyen of the VCCIs Viet Nam Women Entrepreneurs Council said from her experience working with women entrepreneurs, women-owned SMEs face even more challenges than men-owned ones due to gender issues.

We have talked a lot about challenges faced by SMEs, but not specifically women-owned SMEs.

Some of the common challenges are lack of market information, business knowledge and skills and technology, she said. Women in remote areas who have limited access to high-speed internet cannot easily access online training courses, she said.

What is needed is greater support for SMEs in remote areas to help them grow together with those in urban areas where internet infrastructure is good, she said, adding that it would also help the country achieve its goal of inclusive economic growth.  VNS
Viet Nam will work to raise the quantity as well as quality of applications for inventions in the coming years, delegates said at a seminar in HCM City yesterday. Photo baodaklak.vn

HCM CITY  Viet Nam will work to raise the quantity as well as quality of applications for inventions in the coming years, delegates said at a seminar in HCM City yesterday.

Nguyen Thi Thu Hien, head of the National Office of Intellectual Propertys information department, said that NOIP had received about 500-600 invention applications annually in recent years from Vietnamese individuals, enterprises, research institutes, universities and others, accounting for about 10 per cent of the total invention applications.

However, invention patents from Vietnamese accounted for only 6 per cent of total invention patents granted in Viet Nam, with the number of patents granted for inventions from individuals and businesses increasing significantly compared to those from universities and research institutes

Nguyen Thi Thanh Ha from NOIP said the number of Vietnamese invention applications had increased by 20.2 per cent in recent years, but it remained very modest compared to that in ASEAN countries.

In addition, the quality of invention applications was low as the majority of applications had not met requisite standards of an invention, only utility solution standards, she said.

Research and development activities at research institutes and universities was less effective because of a lack of awareness of or trust in benefits that IP protection can bring, in addition to inadequate rewards for inventors.

In addition, many people have an unclear understanding about invention application procedures, Hien said, adding that many inventors were afraid of leaking their technical secrets if they applied for patent.

Nguyen Quang Tuan, deputy director of the National Institute for Science and Technology Policy and Strategy Studies, said that technology transfer from science and technology organisations to businesses was very modest.

Most Vietnamese companies are small- and medium-sized, and even super-small (micro), and have low awareness about the role of intellectual property rights.

They also have limited financial capacity and technological capacity, and have no demand for buying patented inventions.

On the other hand, the number of Vietnamese patents was still modest, with many not fitting businesses demands, offering limited options for buyers, Hien said.

Ha said Viet Nam had set a target to increase the number of invention applications by 30 per cent per year on average in the 2020-30 period, with those from research institutes and universities to increase by more than 50 per cent.

Delegates at the seminar suggested measures to boost the transfer of patented inventions and encourage the creation of inventions.

This would include incentive policies on taxes, capital and insurance for transferees, and assistance in helping them choose the appropriate technologies.

To boost IP creation, the Government should give priority to sponsoring projects for developing invention patents, and subsidise fees for registering them in Viet Nam and abroad, Hien said.

Offering inventors appropriate rewards and supporting them in commercialising the invention would also be helpful, she added.

Training activities to raise awareness about IP rights at research institutes, universities and businesses are also important.

Similarity, Tuan said that Viet Nam needs to fully tap its policies on intellectual property and encourage businesses to pay more attention to the field.

Le Ngoc Lam, NOIPs deputy director, said IP rights had long been known as an important driving force for socio-economic development.

IP protection gives inventors opportunities to increase their income and provides good momentum to continue innovation.

Under the impact of the fourth industrial revolution, many countries have focused on development of science and technology and innovation, and Viet Nam is no exception.

IP rights will become a tool that determines the competitive strength of technology for all stakeholders, so every organisation and business should find ways to create, acquire and own intellectual property, he said.

With support from the World Intellectual Property Organization, the NOIP is developing a National Intellectual Property Strategy to submit to the Prime Minister for approval.  VNS




HA NOI  Global IT platforms such as Google and Facebook should be required to establish legal entities in Viet Nam in charge of conforming to the countrys laws, a representative of VTC Mobile has proposed.

Nguyen Ngoc Bao, director of VTC Mobile, a Vietnamese mobile game publishing company, was quoted by ictnews.vn as saying this would help ensure fair competition between local and foreign companies.

Bao said that borderless service platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Google and Netflix are providing content services for Vietnamese users, such as online advertising, games and films, with users making payments via credit cards or intermediary payment apps.

This makes it difficult to manage borderless service platforms without legal entities in Viet Nam.

Under Decree 72/2013/N-CP, about the management, provision, use of internet services and information content online, both domestic and foreign firms are required to follow the countrys regulations.

Bao said that it was essential to require global IT firms to establish legal entities in Viet Nam to better manage their operations in Viet Nam amidst rapid technology development which enables borderless services provision. Payments should also be integrated into Vietnamese payment channels, he said.

From the beginning of this year, Google and Apple stopped accepting payments through local channels, such as mobile cards, for purchasing digital content on the Google Play Store and Apple Store.

Instead, only payments through their own payment gateways were accepted and providers would receive payment only when customers transactions were completed and the payment had been processed.

According to Luu Vu Hai, chairman of VTC, the payment policies of Google and Apple create difficulties for local digital content companies, including game publishing companies.
Auditors and land management experts are sceptical about the efficiency and transparency of projects carried out under Build-Transfer (BT) contracts in Viet Nam, after many BT projects have suffered long delays and major problems along the way. Photo baodauthau.vn

HA NOI  Auditors and land management experts are sceptical about the efficiency and transparency of projects carried out under Build-Transfer (BT) contracts in Viet Nam, after many BT projects have suffered long delays and major problems along the way.

BT refers to the practice of exchanging land to investors who pledge to build infrastructure. The projects were introduced to Viet Nam in the early 1990s when localities across the country severely lack funds for developing infrastructure.

According to Ho uc Phoc, Auditor General of the State Audit Office of Viet Nam (SAV), investment projects in the form of build-transfer contracts increased sharply in an effort to reduce the budget deficit and public debt. However, he said, BT projects are easily abused by investors seeking to make huge profits and occupy land at a low cost.

Phoc blame this on the process for appointing contractors and a lack of transparency in the implementation of BT projects.

Many investors are weak in both financial and professional capacity and lack management experience, leading to cost overruns and project delays, he said.

Nguyen inh Hoa, Deputy Director of the Auditing Training Institute, said that with the BT projects, losses during the project implementation were compounded because the infrastructure provided by the BT project offers no competition and does not reflect the market price of the land ceded to investors.

Truong Hai Yen of SAVs General Affairs Department said a recent audit of 21 BT projects found many shortcomings in the implementation of the projects.

The unclear regulations on the time of land transfer has proven problematic, leading to most of contractors receiving land before finishing construction, she said.

The price of land at the time of transfer was usually much lower than the price at the time when construction on the project was completed, which resulted in losses for State budget, she said.

The land prices in BT contracts are usually lower than market prices as they are negotiated between just two parties, rather than through bidding, she said.

She also said the audit of 21 BT projects found they had violated legal regulations, causing over VN3.8 trillion (US$167 million) in financial loss to the State.

Pham Quang Tu from Oxfam Viet Nam pointed out that there are many loopholes in regulations on BT projects.

For example, Item 3, Article 155 of Viet Nams Land Law 2013 states that the State allocates land to investors to develop projects. However, there isnt any regulation specifying what kind of land may be allocated or how its value should be determined.

Le Huy Trong, an auditing expert, said investors have taken advantage of inadequate legal framework to earn more profits.

BT projects are developed by private investors without effective supervision and management of government agencies, she said.

Solutions

According to experts, in order to increase the transparency in BT project implementation, it is necessary to review the regulations allowing investors to propose and formulate investment projects. Current rules give investors too much influence, increasing the risk of losses for the State.

ang Hung Vo, former deputy minister of Natural Resources and Environment, said that BT projects should be stopped altogether in developed areas. To increase transparency in investment projects, BT projects should only be allowed in some localities with weak budgets and a lack of infrastructure, he told the Viet Nam News.

The main disadvantage of BT projects is the depletion of land resources, he said. Thus, it was necessary to develop a mechanism for determining the value of infrastructure works and the value of land paid to investors.

Moreover, all public-private partnership projects must be fully publicised and put under the supervision of local people, and relevant state agencies must fulfill their obligation to explain issues raised by the people.

ang Van Thanh, chairman of Viet Nam Association of Accountants and Auditors said regulations on BT projects should be improved, adding that inspections on the BT projects must be strengthened during the approval and implementation phases of the projects.

Echoing Thanhs suggestion, Tu said the completion of a legal framework on BT projects under the auspices of the Public Investment Law 2014 or Law on Public Asset Management and Usage was a must.

He also called for better law enforcement and tightened inspections, particularly on decisions by State agencies to grant licences for BT projects.

Meanwhile, Trong said it was necessary to put up land for auction so that potential BT investors must bid on the opportunity. Land value accounts for less than 50 per cent of BT projects investment, and the remaining capital comes from the State budget or Government bonds, he explained.  VNS
HA NOI  A delegation of Vietnamese fruit and vegetable export firms will travel to three European countries -- France, Germany and Poland -- to explore business opportunities there, baodautu.vn reported.

During the upcoming trip, these enterprises will have an opportunity to get updated with the latest technical information from the three mentioned markets and study consumer trends to draw up effective business strategies to boost exports.

The firms will be offered a chance to exchange business opportunities and establish new partnerships.

The visit, which is on from late November to December 2, is organised by HCM Citys Centre for Investment and Trade Promotion Centre.

The EU is considered a large market with great potential for Viet Nams fruits and vegetables, along with other large markets such as the United States, Australia and Japan.

However, experts said, the country could face technical barriers if it failed to meet the EUs food safety and hygiene standards.

Vietnamese exporters should improve hygiene standards of their products to avoid technical barriers imposed by the EU market, they said.

Fruit and vegetable exports led to a turnover of US$2.64 billion for the country over the past nine months, a year-on-year surge of 44.2 per cent, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD). China, the United States, Japan and South Korea were the largest import markets of Viet Nam, which together occupy 85.4 per cent of the total vegetable and fruit export value.

Strong export growth was recorded in Japan (64.6 per cent), the United Arab Emirates (64.4 per cent) and China (60.2 per cent).

Vegetable and fruit export revenue is expected to hit a new record of $3.6 billion in 2017, with bumper crops forecast for the rest of the year.  VNS
HA NOI  The General Department of Customs (GDC) on Monday signed a co-operation agreement with five commercial banks to implement a 24/7 e-tax payment scheme.

The banks include Vietcombank, Vietinbank, BIDV, MBBank and Techcombank.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, GDC Deputy General Director Nguyen Duong Thai announced that the 24/7 e-tax payment scheme is piloted from Monday on the website: https://epayment.customs.gov.vn/epaymentportal/login. With the new service provided by the five banks, enterprises can access the website to pay tax.

Thai expects that the banks will continuously promulgate to make their customers aware of the new payment services.

Representatives of the banks also said that the application, which is a step taken by the customs agency to accelerate the reform of its procedures, helps them have a new product to support the best for customers.

With the new form of tax payment, enterprises can pay tax directly at anytime and anywhere with Internet access. The customs authority will directly support enterprises to make payment documents from the original data and minimise errors in money transfer procedures.

The form of tax payment will also ensure the integrity and confidentiality of all taxpayers information during the transaction and customise information fields in exchanging for one or more forms to reduce their working time with banks.

This scheme will help tax agencies reduce personnel for tax collection and simplify related processes. It will ensure that tax is correctly settled right after taxpayers fulfil their duties, hence avoiding mistaken coercion. It will also minimise information errors in tax forms besides increasing the degree of satisfaction of businesses and international investors.

The new service is the next reform step of the customs sector to help enterprises quickly clear goods and carry out extensive cross-sector reforms to reach the ASEAN 4 level of export and import facilitation, as guided by the government.  VNS
Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh has assured Lao Deputy Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone that the Vietnamese Party, State and Government give top priority to developing ties with Laos. VNA/VNS Photo An ang

HA NOI  Deputy Prime Minister Truong Hoa Binh has assured Lao Deputy Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone that the Vietnamese Party, State and Government give top priority to developing ties with Laos.

During talks in Ha Noi, Binh suggested the two sides realise agreements reached by their leaders and the outcomes of the 39th meeting of the Viet Nam-Laos Inter-Governmental Commission.

He called for a review of bilateral co-ordination in 2017, proposing breakthrough measures to improve co-operation in 2018 and accelerating the implementation of the Viet Nam-Laos co-operation agreement for 2016-2020.

The two nations should enhance their partnership in politics, national defence-security, economy, trade, investment, transport and tourism, he said, adding that Viet Nam is ready to share experience with Laos in stabilizing the macro-economy, increasing investment, boosting tourism and manufacturing in tandem with rural development.

Siphandone, who is visiting Viet Nam from October 23-29, vowed to do his best to foster friendship between the two nations.

He agreed that the two economies need to increase connectivity in terms of trade, investment and transport.

He expressed his wish that Viet Nam will share its experience in management, macro-economic development programmes, and manufacturing models in combination with tourism and agricultural development in rural areas.

Both sides agreed to celebrate the Viet Nam-Laos Year of Solidarity and Friendship 2017, including preparing for the upcoming Viet Nam visit by Lao Party General Secretary and President Bounnhang Volachith and educating young generations on Viet Nam-Laos solidarity.  VNS
HCM CITY  The Ministry of Transport plans to seek approval for funding from the South Korean government for a portion of Belt Road 3 from Tan Van District to Nhon Trach District in ong Nai Province, according to the Ministry of Transport.

The ministry is seeking approval of the South Korean investment from Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

Around 8.7km of a 17.8-km section of the Belt Road 3 project would be funded by loans from the Republic of Korea and the rest from investments under a BOT (build-operate-transfer) model, according to Tran Van Thi, CEO of the transport ministrys Cuu Long Corporation for Investment, Development and Project Management of Infrastructure.

The PM has approved detailed planning for Belt Road 3, which will have a total length of 89.3km and pass through HCM City and the provinces of ong Nai, Binh Duong and Long An.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has funded a total of 47km for the Belt Road 3 project from Binh Duong Provinces Thuan An District to National Road 22 in HCM Citys Hoc Mon District, as well as from National Road 22 to Long An Provinces Ben Luc District.

The first phase of the road project will include construction of four lanes, while the second phase will add four more lanes, Thi said.

Six lanes of the road will be used for commuting and two lanes for emergency stops. The road, which will connect highways and national roads, is expected to reduce congestion in the inner city and boost inter-provincial transport services.

The project has total investment of VN55.805 trillion (US$2.46 billion) sourced from the State budget, Official Development Assistance and the private sector.  VNS
HCM CITY  Former VN Pharma chairman of the Board of Directors-cum-general director Nguyen Minh Hung and former director of H&C International Marine Trade Company Vo Manh Cuong on Monday afternoon received temporary arrest warrants issued by the Judicial Council during a trial relating to their involvement in VN Pharmas fraudulent cancer drug import.

The arrest warrants are valid for 90 days to serve investigation and trial processes.

It is the second time Hung and Cuong have been temporarily arrested. The first arrest was conducted on September 19, 2014 for the charge of smuggling cancer drugs but they were later released on bail on March 17, 2017.

Right after hearing the issuance of the arrest warrants, Hung tumbled down and only recovered after receiving medical aid.

The appeal trial against pharmaceutical company VN Pharma for smuggling and forging documents to import 9,300 boxes of H-Capita 500mg in 2013 last Thursday by the high-level Peoples Court in HCM City.

It was scheduled to close on Monday but on Monday morning the judge postponed delivering the judgment and continued the trial, saying the court needed clarification on several matters.

Besides Hung and Cuong, seven other defendants are involved in the case.

During the first hearing in August, the HCM City Peoples Court sentenced Hung and Cuong to 12 years in prison for smuggling and forging documents to import a cancer drug. Cuong bought the drugs from an overseas source and later sold them to VN Pharma. Hung asked his company personnel to make up fake technical documents for the imported cancer drug H-Capita so that they could submit the required dossier to the Ministry of Healths Drug Administration of Viet Nam.

Hung and Cuong appealed against the courts judgment at the first trial hearing, asking for a lighter sentence.

On September 22, the high-level Peoples Procuracy in HCM City protested against the courts judgment, asking for a clarification on Hungs charge, which should have been smuggling or manufacturing and/or trading in fake goods claiming to be curative medicines, preventive medicines.

The Peoples Procuracy also asked for clarification on the alleged irresponsibility of the drug administration in allowing Hung and other defendants to import the alleged fake cancer drugs into Viet Nam, while also giving commission to doctors to prescribe the drug to patients.

On Monday morning, Hung denied the accusation that the company spent VN7.5 billion (US$330,000) to give commission to doctors.

He said the company earned the sum by increasing the price of the medicine and that amount was given to the companys sales personnel.

Former vice director general of VN Pharma Ngo Anh Quoc confirmed this information in court. However, the testimonies on Monday conflicted with previous ones, and therefore the judge asked prosecutors to further investigate the matter.

Cuong showed the court a licence granted by the Drug Administration of Viet Nam (DAV) on June 18, 2014 to Helix Canada - the foreign company that provided the cancer drug to VN Pharma.

The licence for foreign companies conducting operations in medicines and raw medical material in Viet Nam was granted to Helix Canada, but the Ministry of Public Security has confirmed that Helix Canada was a fake company, particularly after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs found no Helix Pharmaceuticals Inc at 392 Wilson Ave, Toronto, Canada, the head office address stated on documents submitted to DAV.

This means the origin of cancer drug H-Capital 500mg caplet, imported by VN Pharma, was unknown.  VNS
CA MAU  Fatal electrical accidents have been increasing at an alarming rate at shrimp ponds and crop fields in the Mekong Delta recently.

Local farmers are being blamed for the problem, due to their carelessness and unsafe use of power cables. In many cases, local residents tried to connect electricity to their fields or farms without considering technical and safety issues, leading to accidents.

In February, a farmer was killed after accidentally touching worn electrical wire near his shrimp pond in Soc Trang Provinces Vinh Chau Town.

Previously, another farmer in the same town died when fixing an engine in his shrimp pond.

These were among 25 fatal electrical accidents reported in the first nine months of this year, resulting in 25 deaths, according to the provincial branch of Electricity of Vietnam (EVN).

The number has increased rapidly compared to last year, which saw eight accidents with six deaths.

In Ca Mau Province, the key shrimp farming area of the Mekong Delta region, the number of deaths was even higher.

Figures from the provincial EVN branch revealed that 34 accidents occurred since early this year, leaving 26 people dead and eight others seriously injured.

Phu Thi Trang, a farmer in Ca Mau Provinces Luong The Tran Commune told the Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper that her three shrimp ponds had been abandoned since her husband, Tran Van Muoi, and her nephew, only known as Nguyen, died.

They were killed due to an electrical short circuit.

Careless power use

Local residents use electricity very disorderly and negligently, chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee Nguyen Tien Hai said when asked about the high number of electrical accidents in the province.

Most of the victims illegally connected electricity from their house to their farms, ignoring warnings that electricity was extremely powerful and could be deadly if not connected out by qualified professionals, he added.

Thieu Van Minh, deputy director of the provincial EVN said that as many as 150 households had illegally connected electricity from their houses to their farms since early this year. Of the figure, 50 households repeated their violations twice and 10 repeated their violations three times.

The situation is similar in ong Thap Province.

In April, Le Van Long, a farmer in Thap Muoi Districts Hung Thanh Commune died when connecting power to a modified mouse trap in his rice field. A day earlier, Nguyen Van Kieu, in Tan Kieu Commune, was killed when he touched his modified electric mouse trap.

A father and a son in Binh Thanh Commune were also killed near their fish farm in May due to faulty electric wires that the father illegally connected from his house to the fish ponds.

In the first nine months of this year, 13 fatal accidents occurred, killing 14 people. Most of the victims were reported to have used electricity carelessly to make modified mouse traps or operate engines to supply oxygen to fish ponds.

In some rural areas where the national grid network is not connected, this method has become popular, regardless of its dangers.

In Soc Trang Provinces My Phuoc Commune, hundreds of households in the commune sent power through temporary electric poles, made of bamboo or iron sticks, to their farms.

Pham Minh Ket, chairman of the communal Peoples Committee said that illegal power connections could lead to the overload of the power supply lines, causing electric leakage and shortcuts or surges, especially during storms.

Huynh Minh Hai, director of the provincial Power Company said that all illegal electricity connections did not have required safety protection features. Most farmers only cared about saving money and ignored safety issues.

After a period of use, most electric wires would become worn, posing dangerous risks.

Nguyen Tien Hai, chairman of Ca Mau Provinces Peoples Committee said that it was necessary to re-examine all shrimp farm electric wiring systems and cut violators power supply.

Nguyen Van o, director of the provincial Department of Trade and Commerce said the power sector and local authorities plan to revise the priority list of rural wiring construction, bringing power supply to 10,810 shrimp farming households with total investment capital of VNDD358 billion (US$15.7 million).

Of the figure, in 2018, the power sector will invest VN 126 billion ($5.5 million) to build power lines to nearly 1,000 households.

Nguyen Van Hop, president and CEO of Electricity of Vietnam Southern Power said the power sector, in co-operation with authorities, planned to connect the national power grid to all rural areas by 2018.

The power sector will continue to raise awareness of local residents by disseminating information about safe power usage, he added.  VNS
HA NOI - A series of resettlement houses in Ha Noi remain partially empty as their intended residents have not moved in, wasting State resources, the Kinh Te o Thi (Economic & Urban Affairs) newspaper reported.

Three six-floor resettlement buildings constructed by the Ha Noi Housing Development and Investment Corporation 3 (Hacinco3) have been left empty for more than ten years, surrounding by fields of grass and garbage. The complexs facilities, including electronic cabinets and hygienic equipment, have degraded.

A representative of Ha Nois Construction Department told Kinh Te o Thi that the resettlement area with 150 apartments was built between 2001 and 2006 to accommodate residents who had to give up their land for the Sai ong Street expansion project. Due to disputes in the site clearance process, residents refused to receive the houses, while there has been no progress on the Sai ong Street expansion project.

It is only one of many abandoned resettlement areas in the capital city.

A security man at the Hoang Cau resettlement area said that most of the apartment buildings have been handed over to residents, but only a few of them have moved in.

Many of them sent me the keys and asked me for help to sell their apartments, he said.

According to the citys Construction Department, there are nearly 1,000 resettlement apartments left uninhabited. Authorities blame legal issues relating to the land clearance for projects such as Ring Road 2 (Nga Tu So-Nga Tu Vong) and Nhon-Ha Noi Railway Station elevated railway project. At the moment, authorities have no plans to use as many as 76 of the resettlement apartments.

Most of the land clearance projects have been behind schedule. Since residents see no progress on construction, they refuse to leave their homes for the resettlement houses. This leaves the resettlement houses empty and causes their subsequent degradation, the department said.

Professor ang Hung Vo, former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, said that house sellers buy resettlement houses at low prices then sell them to earn profits. Because the homes are purchased by people the State is not responsible for resettling, State resources are wasted.

People in need of resettlement are turning their backs on resettlement houses. The policy of resettlement houses is appropriate but has not been implemented thoroughly, said Professor Tran Chung, head of the Quality Department, Viet Nam Construction Association and former head of State Department for Construction Quality Supervision of the Ministry of Construction.

It is a sacrifice for the residents to give their land and move to a place far from the main road, and give up their business locations while their children must travel far to attend school, he said.

The resettlement house model we have used in the past does not truly reflect the spirit of settlement, which means providing a place for residents to settle down and set themselves up in business. The majority of people the State resettles have to move to hard-to-access areas, he said. Many do not want to move because their homes are located on high floors, preventing them from easily running businesses.

Wasting and threatening

The abandonment of resettlement houses is not only a huge waste of the State budget, but also imposes potential risks for people who do end up moving in.

Pham Hung Cuong, deputy principal of Construction University said that high rises must follow maintenance careful maintenance procedures. Installed technical systems such as pipes and electricity that have not been put into use and maintained will degrade and be unsafe for users. This is a particular concern in Viet Nams humid, tropical weather.

First we waste money for building resettlement houses. Then we waste money for maintenance work for abandoned houses. The waste is doubled, Tran Chung said.

Proposal to remove

Ha Noi aims to complete more than 9,000 resettlement apartments by 2020, at a cost to the State budget of dozens of billions of ong. This number exceeds the citys budget, which slows down construction progress on the resettlement houses.

Pham Sy Liem, former Deputy Minister of Construction and Vice Chairman of the Viet Nam Construction Association, said that if construction on the resettlement apartments is behind schedule, residents will be reluctant to hand over land. However, when the resettlement houses are completed too far ahead of schedule, residents are worried about the quality of degraded homes.

While many residents are in desperate need of resettlement houses, a lot of the houses have been deserted, Liem said, noting the paradoxical nature of the situation.

Tran Chung said that the State should give residents a specific amount of money to buy suitable commercial houses. The residents will then be able to purchase accommodations similar to what they already use.

Ha Noi recently proposed to the Prime Minister putting in place a special mechanism to build 22,300 commercial apartments, which would help add to the housing stock for resettlement. There will be 20 projects with 14,525 ordered apartments, basically meeting the demand of resettling people between 2017 and 2020.

The citys Construction Department proposed dismantling 150 uninhabited apartments of Hacinco3 resettlement project to reduce damages for the investor and to make room for the commercial houses to be ordered by the Government.

A financial expert told the Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper that the dismantlement is a huge waste worth hundreds of billions of ong.

The department also proposed withdrawing deserted resettlement apartments after two years past completion.

Chung said that to solve the deserted house problem, we should not build any more new resettlement areas but utilize the budget to deal with degradation.

Chung also said that site clearance should be conducted together with building resettlement areas to avoid early completion of resettlement houses, which leads to their desertion. - VNS
YEN BAI  As people in flood-hit provinces struggle to piece together severely disrupted lives, local authorities are calling out for urgent help to deal with major damage suffered by dykes, irrigation works and other constructions.

A Vietnam News Agency report says that the recent downpours and resultant flooding have inflicted severe damage in Yen Bai Provinces Tram Tau District, with 13 people dead or missing, 130 houses and 115 irrigation works destroyed and 530ha of crops in danger.

The report said that hundreds of metres of dams and dykes, as well as irrigation works in Hat Hamlet, Hat Luu Commune have been swept away, leaving nearly 570 households and 25ha of rice crop without water. This would expose the households to a food shortage in the coming months.

After the floodwaters receded, like hundreds of families in Hat Luu Commune, the seven-member family of Hoang Thi Quy are lost.

Its a disaster. My family spent thousands of hours working on 5,000sq.metres of rice. But weve lost everything, Quy said.

There is nothing left. Now we have to pin hopes on the next crop, if the irrigation works are repaired soon, she said.

Irrigation priority

Local administrations have been carrying out several measures to help people overcome the floods consequences and restore production.

They are giving top priority to repair damaged irrigation works and provide water for people and crops.

Lo Van Chien, chairman of Hat Luu Commune Peoples Committee, said they were only able to restore irrigation works that had suffered slight damage.

The severely damaged works needed financial assistance from the central government, either for major repairs or building new ones, he said.

Pham Minh Quang, director of Nghia Van Company Ltd, which manages irrigation works in Yen Bais Van Chan, Tram Tau and Mu Cang Chai districts as well as the Nghia Lo Township, said that so far they had repaired 50 works that were slightly damaged, but another 65 works needed financial support from the province.

In Thanh Hoa Province, residents of Thach inh Commune in Thach Thanh District returned home 10 days after they were evacuated to find that most or all of their property and/or crops had been swept away.

Nguyen Thi Hao of the communes Tien Thanh Village said her family had harvested just four of 9ha of their rice crop before the floodwaters came. However, the harvested rice had sprouted because theyd not been dried.

Pham Lam ong, secretary of the communes Party Committee, said the floods had destroyed 15ha of rice crops and 30ha of vegetables and killed thousands of heads of cattle and poultry. Hundreds of houses and dikes were severely damaged.

The local administration has instructed relevant offices and people to clean wells and ensure water for daily lives and agricultural production as well as prevent from disease outbreak.

Some 150 families in the central province of Ha Tinh were isolated for a week after the only bridge that connected them to the rest of the world fell into the floodwaters.

Earlier last week, part of the Khe Buom Bridge in the provinces Huong Tho Commune in mountainous Vu Quang District also collapsed. The broken bridge has kept 150 households away from their daily activities of farming and trading.

Nguyen Hung Cuong, deputy chairman of the communes Peoples Committee, said local authorities had submitted a report to district authorities, asking for funds to repair the bridge, which had been sponsored by Hong Kong Oxfam in 2001.

He said nearly 800 families of the province will get funds from local authorities to construct flood-resistant houses.

The provincial Peoples Committee has decided to fund 776 families in flood-prone areas to build houses that can withstand floods. Of these 550 houses will be newly built and the remaining will undergo proper repairs.

Residents of Vu Quang, uc Tho, Huong Son, Huong Khe, Can Loc, Cam Xuyen, Ky Anh, Thach Ha and Loc Ha districts, will benefit from the fund, which has thus far accumulated a total of VN23 billion (US$1 million) from the local budget and private sponsors.

Poor households and under-privileged families who are social welfare recipients will benefit from the fund, which requires them to build house foundations higher than peak floodwater levels in the region.

ang Ngoc Son, deputy chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee, said the fund will help minimise the loss of lives and property in lowland areas. He said the fund allocation is part of the provinces sustainable poverty elimination policy

The money will be disbursed to residents late this month, with a request to complete works before August 2018.

Yesterday, power supply was restored to 57 households of My uc and Chuong My districts in Ha Noi after 10 days. -- VNS
THUA THIEN- HUE  Eighteen outstanding artisans in central Thua Thien-Hue Province have been honoured for their technical inventions that helped ease work in various production fields.

The provinces Union of Science and Technology Associations honoured the artisans yesterday for the first time for their significant contribution to the local technical and processing sectors. They were selected from among 60 prominent artisans around the province.

The 60 artisans were shortlisted based on several criteria. Firstly, their innovation could be applied to practical production in the locality this year and would not consume the local governments budget. At the same time, they must not be involved with any research centres and not trained in a professional institute.

At the meeting, kite-making artisan Nguyen Van Hoang was noticed for his flying and ornamental kites, which were presented at kite festivals held in France, India and Thailand. Hoang has 16 different types of flying kites, which the meeting organisers said were appraised by the locals and visitors to Hue. He also created ornamental kites in the shapes of dragons, Vietnamese legendary figures, such as Son Tinh, Thuy Tinh, Au Co and Lac Long Quan, and various insects.

Artisan Nguyen Van Chu was honoured for his outstanding woodcarving skills. Chu has his own workshop in the province, which is home to more than 100 practitioners from disadvantaged families, and he created many tools that have helped produce excellent carving works. The organisers said Chu was honoured for his smart use of natural wood stripe to feature his ideas.

Farmer Le Huu Minh was honoured for his inventions of hydraulic peanut oil refining tools and ginger drilling machine. The organisers noted that Minh did not complete his secondary school education and stopped at Grade 8, but his innovations have helped thousands of farmers throughout the province to reduce the time period consumed by manual work.  VNS
A LAT  Workers were seen working at a site in Central Highlands a Lat City on Monday even though construction was suspended.

The workers were working on the construction of a conference centre, located inside the five-star Dalat Palace Hotel on Tran Phu Street, despite the city Peoples Committees decision to suspend work following an illegal extension last Friday, the Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper reported.

The project was allowed to have two storeys and two levels of basement, but its investor, L Royal JSC, built an extra part on top of the building without a permit.

The city Peoples Committee, on Friday, decided to impose a fine worth VN40 million (US$1,760) on the company for the violation. It also requested the company to prepare paperwork required for a building permit for the extended part of the convention centre.

The extension must be removed if the authorities deny permission, the committee said.

The committee also requested the head of the citys urban management division and chairman of the Peoples Committee of Ward 3 to identify personnel that did not fulfill their management responsibilities in connection with the extension.

Nguyen Bao Son, deputy director of L Royal JSC, told the Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Monday that the workers were working on permitted parts of the construction site, and not on the extension.  VNS
HA NOI  Two middle aged women died and another was left injured early Tuesday morning after being hit by a speeding rescue vehicle.

The vehicle was travelling on the approach road to National Highway No 5 from Vo Nguyen Giap Road in Ha Nois ong Anh District.

The women were reportedly doing their morning exercises on the pavement, when the driver lost control and swerved the car onto the pavement.

The driver reportedly fled the scene after the incident.

Local police examined the scene, and ensured traffic returned to normalcy.  VNS
NINH THUAN  Police in the central province of Ninh Thuan said that they had launched an official investigation into the rape of a 14-year-old girl in Ninh Hai District.

The incident took place on September 30. Seven out of the ten suspects arrested reside in Khanh Hai Town, Ninh Hai District, and the oldest one is 16 years old. Three of the suspects have been released on bail, as they are minors.

The suspects admitted to the police that on the evening of September 30, they invited the girl to an outdoor party at the sea dyke. When the girl wanted to leave, one of the suspects offered to drive her home on a motorbike but soon after, the bike ran out of petrol.

Another suspect chased the girl who was walking along the sea dyke and then raped her. The others reportedly also joined in.

The girl was taken to her home early the next morning. Her family reported the case to the local police after she narrated it to them.

According to Viet Nams Criminal Code 1999, Article 112 states that those who rape a child aged between 13 and 16 will be given seven to 15 years of jail time.  VNS
WATERLOO  The wife of a Waterloo man who was shot and killed during a dispute with neighbors in 2015 said the death has taken a toll on her family.

Samantha Harrington said she used to love life and saw the good in everyone, but that changed when her husband, 43-year-old Donald Harrington, was shot by Steve Fordyce.

I feel like Im just a walking, talking shell of a person now, Samantha Harrington said. My daughter and I can no longer live in the home we called a home for the last 14 years. I have watched helplessly as our children have become resentful and angry and struggle to move forward in their lives.

She said her daughter, who was 11 at the time of the shooting, heard the gunshots. Now, she falls apart every time she hears loud noises.

There is nothing I can do as a mother other than comfort her as much as I can, but all she wants is her daddy. This is the most helpless felling you can have as a mother, Samantha Harrington said Monday as Fordyce was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter.

Prosecutors said Fordcye, 39, of Denver, had been visiting his sister, who lived next door to the Harringtons relatives in Waterloo on Aug. 14, 2015, when he was involved in a confrontation with Donald Harrington. Fordyce drove off but then returned and told his sister about the encounter, and she and a family friend walked next door. Fordyce, who had a license to carry weapons, followed them. According to testimony at trial, Harrington, who was unarmed, approached Fordyce and told him he was going to kill him, and Fordyce opened fire.

Fordyce was charged with first-degree murder, and during a bench trial, Fordyces attorneys argued he acted in self defense. Judge David Odekirk dismissed the self-defense claim and found Fordyce guilty of voluntary manslaughter.

During Mondays hearing, Fordyce apologized and said he wished both families could learn from the tragedy.

I felt terrible for Donald and the Harrington family, Fordyce said in a raspy voice. Donald is and will always be my first and last thought in prayer for the rest of my life.

Samantha Harrington and other relatives walked out of the courtroom as Fordyce spoke.

Other family members, apparently upset over the lesser verdict, exited as the judge read the sentence.

Before the sentencing, Fordyces attorneys asked the judge to reconsider the verdict, arguing the states new stand-your-ground statute  which was put in place after the slaying and does away with the duty to retreat before using force  should have applied in his case.

Defense attorney Christopher Kragnes also argued the delay in the verdict  the case was under consideration for 11 months after testimony ended before the verdict was handed down in August  violated Fordyces rights.

The system failed Mr. Fordyce in the amount of time it took to render a verdict in this matter, Kragnes said. He asked what affect the delay had on the courts ability to remember the facts.

Judge Odekirk, who heard the case after Fordyce waived his right to a jury trial, said he compiled the findings of fact within weeks of the trial.

No doubt the decision took a lengthy amount of time, and the court will acknowledge more time than I would have ever wanted it to take, Odekirk said. It was the consideration and the analysis of the law as to those facts, which ended up taking additional time. In fact, in this case I can assure both parties that the court spent a great deal of time wrestling with the application of the law, the evidence that was presented.
TOLEDO  The last suspects have been sentenced in connection with a ring that brought hundreds of pounds of high-grade ice methamphetamine to Iowa from Mexico.

Investigators said the group moved about 339 pounds of meth between November 2012 and August 2016, and the government is seeking more than $360,000 from the defendants through forfeiture.

Last week, Kyle Anthony Chyma, 29, and Kelbie Leonard Struve, 25, both of Toledo, were sentenced to prison in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids. Chyma was sentenced to 15 years in prison, and Struve received seven years and 10 months in prison.

Others charged under the indictment were sentenced in August and September.

Edgar Fabian Hernandez, 31, of Toledo, received the most time of the group, landing 21 years behind bars to be followed by five years of supervised release.

During sentencing, the government said Hernandez was the leader of a large-scale drug trafficking organization who connected others in the operation to a drug supplier in Mexico. He allegedly made more than $100,000 from meth sales, court records state.

Hernandez has appealed his case.

Hernandez and Chyma received sentencing enhancements for having leadership roles in the ring, and Hernandez, Chyma and another person --- Scott Steuhm, 26, of Tama, who received 13 years and four months in prison --- received enhancements for importing meth from Mexico, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office for Northern Iowa.

Others indicted in the case include Alejandra Castillo-Hernandez, 46, of Marshalltown, five years in prison; Kailyn Struve, 25, of Toledo, four years in prison; Marlene Hernandez, 25, of Toledo, 15 months in prison; and Tyler Walz, 23, of Tama, 15 months in prison.
AMES (AP)  The Iowa Board of Regents on Monday chose the dean of Iowa State University's agriculture college as the school's next president.

The board appointed Wendy Wintersteen as Iowa State's 16th president, filling a position left vacant when Steven Leath took a job as president of Auburn University. She will be the first female president since Iowa State's founding in 1858.

The 61-year-old Wintersteen has been dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences since 2006. During this time, the regents noted in a news release that she had helped raise more than $247 million from donors and that undergraduate enrollment in the agriculture college had grown by 90 percent.

"My goal is that we will make Iowa State University the best land grant university in the nation," Wintersteen said during a brief announcement ceremony on the Ames campus.

Following that ambitious goal, Wintersteen said she looked forward to meeting with Gov. Kim Reynolds and the Legislature to "communicate the important successes that occur every day and the value of Iowa State University to our communities and developing increased economic activity in this state."

Last session, the Legislature reduced year-over-year state funding to Iowa State, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa by about $30 million. The universities plan to increase tuition to offset the funding cut.

Wintersteen's contract is for five years, and she'll be paid $525,000 in her first year, $550,000 in her second year and $590,000 in year three. She'll also receive a package of deferred compensation that will increase from $125,000 in year one to $200,000 in the third year.

Leath had an annual salary of $525,000 and a compensation package, which he forfeited by voluntarily resigning. Leath served 5 years as president and oversaw a surge in enrollment to more than 36,000 and fundraising success, but also controversies about his use of university planes and the purchase of land with help from a former regent president's company.

Wintersteen was chosen from 64 applicants and four finalists.

Wintersteen has spent much of her career at ISU, starting in 1979 and leaving only briefly in 1989 and 1990 to work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington.
WATERLOO  The Board of Education has cleared the way for the purchase of a house adjacent to the Education Service Center property.

It approved an agreement Monday with Wynette L. Kauten to buy the house at 653 W. 11th St. for $50,000. The property is just north of the driveway leading into the parking lot for Waterloo Community Schools administration offices at 1516 Washington St. Officials pursued the purchase when they learned the house was on the market.

Its one of those issues when an opportunity comes along you do consider it very seriously, said Michael Coughlin, the districts chief financial officer. Earnest money of $5,000 has been placed in trust with possession of the property to be given to the district on or before Nov. 1.

School board approves house purchase north of Orange School WATERLOO  The Board of Education has approved purchasing a house adjacent to the new Orange

It was a good opportunity for us because its adjacent, said board member Shanlee McNally. The house will be demolished and the property used to ease some of the districts space constraints.

Probably we would look at parking, also a broader entrance. That is really tight right now, said Superintendent Jane Lindaman. We have not determined a timeline for demolition.

The district also has purchased other houses in recent years to enlarge its school properties, but no demolition has occurred yet. Earlier this year, it bought a house just north of Orange Elementary School. In addition, three properties adjacent to Kingsley Elementary School were bought by the district in 2009, 2010 and 2012.

That is the plan that those would be demolished at some point, said Lindaman. The work would be paid for with physical plant and equipment levy or 1 percent sales tax funds. She noted officials will look at the projected cost of tearing down the houses so they can be fit in the timeline as money allows.
CHARLES CITY  A fire Monday afternoon caused major damage to an animal outbuilding owned by a Charles City business.

The Charles City Fire Department said it responded to a report of smoke and fire coming from a building at 2640 7 Mile Road around 4:57 p.m.

The building is owned by Zoetis, which makes medicine and vaccines for animals.

When firefighters arrived, they found smoke and fire engulfing most of the western half of a building, the department said. No one was in the building when the fire started.

With the building outside city limits, water supply was hampered by the lack of hydrants.

Gusty west-northwest winds caused the fire to spread rapidly through the rest of the main building, which housed chickens. The building was recently built and opened in March.

Due to the size of the fire and the initial shortage of water, firefighters called in other area departments to assist  Colwell, Marble Rock, Nashua, Nora Springs, Osage, Rockford and Rudd.

One person was hurt  a firefighter was treated and released at the scene for a minor lower leg injury, the department said.

Zoetis spokesman Bill Price said Tuesday from the company headquarters in Parsippany, N.J., no employees of the animal health company were injured. He said several thousand chickens that produced eggs for vaccine manufacture were killed.

Charles City Fire Chief Eric Whipple said an arcing electrical wire started the fire.
OSAGE  Mitchell County may join a class-action lawsuit targeting opioid manufacturers.

The suit is being brought on behalf of cities and towns who are choosing to sue opioid manufacturers, County Attorney Mark Walk said during the Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday.

If the county chooses to join it, Walk said there would be no cost.

Mitchell County Sheriff Greg Beaver said Osage has all kinds of costs related to drugs, from crime to housing inmates.

People get hooked on painkillers like oxycontin, and when they stop being able to get it, they switch to things like heroin, Beaver said. Ninety percent of crimes around the county  the domestic abuses, the robberies  could be solved if we could get rid of the drugs.

A New York City firm is filing the suit and sending similar letters to cities and towns across the countries. The firm says opioid manufacturers knew there was no way the population of small towns could be supporting the amount of pills that were being sent to them.

The firm says on its website: similar to the successful lawsuits launched against tobacco companies decades ago, they seek compensation for tremendous societal costs such as increased health-care costs, emergency medical services, rehabilitation and law enforcement to name just a few areas.

It should have been a red flag, supervisor Shannon Paulus said. Im not surprised about the class-action suit; we have been discussing the opioid epidemic at the substance abuse coalition and how much it has grown. I feel like this is going to be a message to the manufacturers.

They should have known, just with the amount of prescriptions going out. They convinced the medical profession of this new product, but they werent careful of how much of this potent drug was getting out there.

I want it to change, Paulus said.

The supervisors will revisit the potential for joining the lawsuit at next weeks meeting.
WATERLOO  One of the city administrations longest debates over stop signs in at least 25 years has finally reached a conclusion.

Waterloo City Council members voted 5-1 Monday to approve the final reading of an ordinance to install four-way stop signs at the intersection of Ansborough Avenue and Shaulis Road.

The change in the traffic code, which was heavily debated over four consecutive meetings, followed an Aug. 29 car-pedestrian accident at the intersection that claimed the life of 27-year-old firefighter Greg Freshwater.

Fallen firefighter named firefighter of the year WATERLOO  When Greg Freshwater followed in his fathers footsteps and joined Waterloo Fire 

Councilman Ron Welper cast the lone vote against the ordinance, while Councilman Steve Schmitt was absent. Schmitt had opposed the four-way stop during previous meetings.

Welper said he would have preferred taking the stop signs off Shaulis and putting them instead on Ansborough, while installing flashing warning lights. Shaulis carries more traffic than Ansborough now.

Im trying to have some traffic flow here and still maintain safety, Welper said. Weve got too many stop signs. People are getting so sick of them theyre just driving straight through them.

While Councilman Pat Morrissey said he was OK with the addition of warning lights, he wanted to stop all four directions of traffic.

Were trying to make this intersection here as safe as possible, Morrissey said.

Traffic Engineer Mohammad Elahi, who conducted a traffic study at the location, said the four-way stops would be more safe and more efficient. While more cars would stop, the average wait time for vehicles was less than waits with two-way stops.

The best solution  is the four-way stops, Elahi said.

Waterloo stop sign debate turns contentious WATERLOO  Tempers boiled over as city leaders once again debated whether to install stop si

Interim Public Works Director Sandie Greco said there have been five crashes at the intersection over the last four years, including four that were caused by a stop sign violation. That did not include 2017 data or the Freshwater accident.

Greco said her staff also indicated the traffic controls at Shaulis and Ansborough should be reviewed every other year for potential changes based on development and traffic patterns.

Community Planning and Development Director Noel Anderson said that area is ripe for growth. The citys business park is on the northeast corner of the intersection and residential growth is expected nearby.
1-woman show

today at UNI

CEDAR FALLS -- "They Call Me Q," a one-woman show, will be presented at 7 p.m. tonight at the University of Northern Iowa campus in the Commons Ballroom.

The event is free and open to the public.

"They Call Me Q" is about a girl from Bombay growing up in the Bronx and seeking a balance between cultural pressure and wanting to be accepted into American culture. The show's actress is Qurrat Ann Kadwani, who has received accolades and awards for her work. She is first South Asian woman to have a solo play produced Off Broadway.

"They Call Me Q" has been performed more than 200 times in 35 states.

REAP assembly

meets tonight

WATERLOO -- The Regional REAP Assembly is set for 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. today at the Cedar Valley SportsPlex, 300 Jefferson St.

Region 7 includes Black Hawk, Bremer, Buchanan, Butler, Chickasaw and Grundy counties.

The REAP Assembly is held in the fall of every odd-numbered year to provide reports to the public on the program, to seek public input regarding priorities for the program and to elect delegates and alternates for the upcoming REAP Congress in January. The public is welcome.

REAP -- Resource Enhancement And Protection -- is an Iowa program that invests in the enhancement and protection of the state's natural and cultural resources. Several Cedar Valley area trails and parks were developed with REAP funds.

Satellite voting

slated at UNI

CEDAR FALLS -- The Election Division of the Black Hawk County Auditors Office will operate a satellite absentee voting location at the University of Northern Iowa for the Nov. 7 elections.

The satellite absentee voting location will be open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday in Maucker Union. All Black Hawk County ballots will be available.

Satellite voting allows people to vote prior to the election at a location other than the county courthouse.

The votes cast at satellites are absentee ballots, and voters have to fill out both a ballot application and an affidavit envelope.

Voter registration forms also will be available at the satellite.

Trick or treat

at CF market

CEDAR FALLS -- The College Hill Farmers Market will celebrate Halloween from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday at the corner of College and West 22nd streets.

Trick or treating is planned.
Red Kettle chili cook-off Friday

CEDAR FALLS  The Salvation Army of Waterloo/Cedar Falls and Main Street Social Club are joining forces to launch the inaugural Red Kettle Chili Cook-Off at the Cedar Falls AMVETS Post 49 at 5 p.m. Friday.

The event marks the beginning of the annual Salvation Army Christmas campaign in the Cedar Valley.

A $5 ticket purchases all-you-can eat chili, cornbread and dessert. Tickets can be purchased in advance at the Salvation Army, 89 Franklin St., Waterloo, or at the AMVETS Post 49 in Cedar Falls. Tickets also can be purchased the day of the event. Celebrity judges, including the mayors of Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Evansdale will be on hand to judge the chili.

Cedar Valley residents are invited to enter a crock-pot full of their favorite chili in the competition. Those who wish to enter need to sign up at either the AMVETS or the Salvation Army by Friday.

Prizes, provided by the Waterloo Black Hawks, will be awarded to each category, with a grand prize going to the best overall chili.
Ta-Nehisi Coates new book, We Were Eight Years in Power, focuses on the complexity of the maxim every immigrant and minority has had ground into him or her: You have to be twice as good as white people to get a fair shot in this country. By Coates reckoning, its a false promise.

The argument made in much of this book is Good Negro Government  which Coates earlier explains is the notion if blacks are polite, educated and virtuous, then all the fruits of America will be open to them  often augments the very white supremacy it seeks to combat.

The rest of the book presents a strong, maybe even water-tight, case this is true. Its a painful read wrapped in irresistible charms.

We Were Eight Years in Power is a trip back through Coates essays for The Atlantic, with the benefit of hindsight, and ends up being far more than the sum of its previously published parts. With the author now in the full bloom of his role as Americas top public intellectual on race matters, he shares how rocky the road to such heights really was.

In the first chapter, we learn the author had felt like a failure all of my life  stumbling out of middle school, kicked out of high school, dropping out of college. I had learned to tread in this always troubled water.

As he describes his decision to write a blog and how it evolved from a place to gather loose threads that would sometimes come to nothing and other times become the basis for grander artistic pursuits to a paying gig for The Atlantic, we see Coates transform from answering questions for his own edification to writing so readers will question everything they thought they already knew.

To my delight, Chicago looms large in many of the essays, each of which is representative of a particular year from the Obama administration.

From the love notes to Chicagos storied middle- and upper-class black neighborhoods (Coates explains how Michelle Obamas comfortable upbringing in a well-functioning black community can cause racial identity to recede in importance on a day-to-day basis) to the inclusion of Timuel Black, Chicagos premier civil rights historian (and national treasure, in my opinion), Coates tells the success story of many of the blacks who arrived in The Windy City after the Great Migration.

But he drives home the ugliness, too. For instance, he explains in detail how Chicagos black homeowners were preyed upon by unscrupulous flippers who sold properties on contract, cheating countless of the most vulnerable residents out of their homes, savings, dignity and, worst of all, their belief in the attainability of the American dream.

Its all tough to reckon with, and not just because it recounts some of our nations worst sins toward blacks. This is a book that requires empathy for the authors own pain, because without it, one can start to wonder whether Coates grim view of America and whiteness itself doesnt start to look a bit like the very stereotyping and discrimination he feels keep blacks down.

Still, despite his inability to empathize with Barack Obama  who grew up trusting, loving and being loved by whites  Coates admits: It is, I think, the very chaos of America that allowed me to prosper. I could come to New York and declare myself a writer, and while a degree from Harvard might have helped, it was not essential. The chaos of America, and perhaps more aptly the chaos of New York, made it seem that anything could happen. Often that meant the worst. But sometimes it meant the best. I suspect, though I do not know, that the lack of both ceilings and safety nets is how we got a black president. I suspect it is how, at least for these eight years, I came to thrive.

The epilogue to this collection of scholarly and heart-wrenching works is featured in the October issue of The Atlantic as The First White President, but the book includes an extended ending.

To blunt some of the ample pessimism and hopelessness evident in Coates writing, he closes with a sort of wish that hints at a belief in its attainability: I see the fight against sexism, racism, poverty, and even war finding their union not in synonymity but in their ultimate goal  a world more humane.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Oct. 23, 2017 | MURRAY, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Oct. 23, 2017 | 01:14 PM | MURRAY, KY

A pursuit that started in Henry County, Tennessee Sunday morning ended in Calloway County with the arrest of three people.



At about 3 am, the Calloway County Sheriff's Department was notified by the Henry County Sheriff's Department that the pursuit was headed toward the state line. They learned that the pursuit was initiated by suspicion of an aggravated burglary by someone in the vehicle.



Deputies deployed stop sticks at Eldridge Lane to flatten the vehicle's tires, although one of them was already flat when the suspects crossed the state line. Calloway County Deputies took over the pursuit at Old Salem Road as it continued on Highway 121 to Murray, then Highway 641 to Utterback Road to North 16th, where the vehicle was disabled.



Three people were arrested on multiple charges, including drug offenses for two people from when they were searched before being booked into Calloway County Detention Center.



Twenty-eight year-old Michelle L. Robins of Martin and 40-year-old Emily L. Blackard of Dresden were charged with fleeing or evading police in a vehicle, 3 counts of wanton endangerment, changing drivers with a car in motion, disregarding a stop sign, not wearing a seat belt, and driving on a suspended or revoked license. Robins also faces 3 counts of disregarding a traffic control device, criminal mischief, and not having vehicle insurance. Blackard faces additional charges for possession of methamphetamine and promoting contraband.



A passenger in the vehicle, 33-year-old Shanda Bomar of Paris, faces of possession of methamphetamine and promoting contraband. There was also a bench warrant for her arrest for failure to appear in court.



The investigation by the Henry County Sheriff's Department is ongoing.
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Oct 24, 2017 | By Benedict

ACEO, a brand of German chemical company Wacker Chemie AG, has developed a 3D printing process for multi-material silicone printing. The silicone additive manufacturing technology will be demonstrated at the upcoming formnext 3D printing event in Frankfurt, Germany.

After releasing an industrial silicone 3D printer last year, German 3D printing specialist ACEO was left at a crossroads: it could refine its silicone 3D printer, move into other material territories, or do something else entirely.

We now know what ACEO has been up to since the launch of that groundbreaking machine, and it surely wont disappoint anyone in the silicone 3D printing game.

At the upcoming formnext powered by tct event in Frankfurt, ACEO will unveil its latest technology: multi-material silicone 3D printing. Described as a unique process and a milestone in 3D printing with silicones, the technology is purportedly ideal for functional prototypes, biomodels, and small product series.

The multi-material 3D printing process will purportedly allow industrial users to create much more complex parts with a range of properties across different areas of the part.

This latest development is yet another milestone in ACEOs history, commented Dr. Bernd Pachaly, Head of Project 3D Printing at ACEO. Silicones of different colors, hardness, or even chemical or physical properties can now be placed independent from each other at any given point throughout the process, which allows sharp as well as merging gradients.

Wacker Chemie brand ACEO launched its first silicone 3D printing technology in 2016, alongside some 3D printable elastomers that offered temperature and radiation resistance as well as biocompatibility. These special 3D printable silicones were designed to be processed on the original ACEO Imagine Series K 3D printer.

The Series K printer works by depositing single silicone voxels on a building platform, which flow together smoothly and form a homogeneous surface. Once a printed layer is finished, UV light cures the silicone material, after which the process repeats for the next layer. ACEO calls it a drop-on-demand process.

The Series K 3D printer is also able to simultaneously print water-soluble support materials for creating complex structures, but the forthcoming multi-material 3D printing technology will presumably allow both support material plus several other structural materials to be printed at once.

The silicone additive manufacturing process also involves a post-curing stage, during which an elevated temperature is used to produce the required mechanical properties.

ACEO runs a 3D printing service through which customers can order silicone parts by sending the company their 3D model files. At present, the Series K 3D printer is not commercially available to purchase.

But ACEO does more than just send off models like Shapeways. In July 2017, the German 3D printing company opened its Open Print Lab in the German town of Burghausen, to offer tailor-made 3D printing programs for customers. The Lab offers customers advanced training sessions on the subject of silicone printing.

Now, with its multi-material silicone 3D printing technology ready to go, ACEO can offer its customers new options in silicone product production.

In Pachalys own words, the introduction of multi-material silicone 3D printing will ultimately lead to even more freedom of design in the construction of objects with multiple materials 3D printed in one single processin particular soft and hard segments.

Curious about silicone 3D printing? Look out for ACEO at formnext, November 14-17.

Posted in 3D Printing Technology

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Alex Andriesse at The Millions:

A review of Elizabeth Hardwick is almost obliged to begin with the following facts: (1) she was born in Kentucky in 1916 and moved to Manhattan in the early 1940s with the self-declared aim of becoming a New York Jewish intellectual; (2) in 1963, along with Barbara and Jason Epsteinand Robert B. Silvers, she helped found The New York Review of Books; (3) for more than two decades she was married to the famousand famously confessionalpoet Robert Lowell. Notable though these facts may be, however, they are hardly the reasons why Hardwicks writing continues to be read. As the 55 essays gathered in the new Collected Essays make clear, Hardwick was one of the most penetrating literary critics of her time. Whether she was writing about Henry James or Renata Adler, Edith Wharton or Joan Didion, every assignment got Hardwick at full sail, as Darryl Pinckney says in his introduction. She was a writers writer without questiona prose stylist par excellence.

Hardwicks style is not for everyone. Her wit is subtle, her syntax sinuous, her learning deep, which is no doubt why her work is so seldom taught in the classroom. It is, in the best sense, un-teachable. The essayist, Hardwick once wrote, distinguishing him from the journalist, does not stop to identify the common ground; he will not write, Picasso, the great Spanish painter who lived long in France. Such refusal to stop and explain might easily be mistaken for snobbery today; Hardwick, however, saw it as a gesture of respect. She was not only a writers writer, she was alsosilly though the phrase may bea readers writer. She addressed her readers as equals, never wanting to bore them with what they already knew, or what, in the course of their reading, they would soon enough find out for themselves.

more here.
USF Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) raises A Horror by Jayson Musson this month as part of their year-long Pledges of Allegiance public art project in which they will hoist a different artist-made flag each month. In sync with Creative Times national public art initiative as a response to current political issues, this is the fifth flag raised in the series. Be on the look out for the next ones.

With things lingering in the night around Halloween, Cass capitalizes on this holiday for their Masked Intentions exhibition on Oct. 27. A handful of the around two dozen artists include Anthony Lister, Missvan, Patricia Ariel and Tes One, with the show theme revolving around opaque interpretations and masked meanings.

Black light isnt just for kids laser tag games anymore. Illuminated is Illsols Halloween-inspired party on Oct. 28, celebrating the holiday with black light art, musicians and competitions for best glowing costume.

Whittling down the artists in the recent Skyway: A Contemporary Collaboration exhibition across three institutions, the Tampa Museum of Art (TMA) will be presenting Skyway Selections: Curators Choice opening on Nov. 2, featuring the thick, textural paintings of Claudia Ryan and Rob Tarbells smoke drawings.

See the abstracted quilts of Coulter Fussell in her solo exhibition Four Quilts at Cunsthaus, through Nov. 11. If you cant schedule an appointment to visit, you can get in on Nov. 3 during First Friday in the Heights.

Looking for a good locally made gift for the holidays? Temple Terrace Arts & Crafts Festival might be a good place to start, featuring 100 makers throughout Nov. 11-12.

Ben Folds brings his Paper Airplane Request Tour to the Straz Center in Tampa on Nov. 11. As a king of piano tappin and musical improv (if youre familiar with his Chatroulette work), feel free to toss your song requests at him in the form of a paper projectile.

If youre a fan of horror and Monty Python, The Curse of Frankensteins Castle is the perfect play for you. Enacted by the Carrollwood Players, they bring a sketch comedic sensibility to this classic horror movie. You can find dates on the weekends from Oct. 27-Nov. 4.

Storytelling can bring up embarrassing moments and times we wish we could forget. It can bring tears to our eyes, or make us laugh until we cry. Yet, one thing is for certain: spoken work has the power to evoke empathy and connect us to our human roots.In coordination with their upcoming Under the Cuban Sun exhibition, the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts will be hosting Voices of Cuba: Open Mic Night on Nov. 3 from 5-7 p.m. to experience Cuba through the authentic spoken word of those who have lived there, from poetry to music and everything in between.Under the Cuban Sun is a group show of black-and-white photography exemplifying what makes Cuba Cuba from the 1930s to the present from both artists of Cuban heritage and those of an outsider perspective.There are several ways we came up with this event to become a productive support of the exhibition. We wanted the community to be heard and create a platform to exchange opinions. Also, we feel that Cuba is such a close neighbor to us and there are many similarities, so there is a natural connection. Photography is already a storytelling medium, so we wanted to create this concert of telling stories through images and community exchange, says FMoPA Executive Director Zora Carrier.Moderated by spoken-word artist Andresia Real Moseley, this event is free for members and $10 for non-members. Under the Cuban Sun will be open through Dec. 31.This event brings the focus back to the audience. Cuba is such a broad term and it can be so many things, so its about what Cuba means to people in our region, Carrier says.


Announces C$12.0 Million Bought Deal

Perth, Oct 24, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Cardinal Resources Limited ( ASX:CDV ) ( TSE:CDV ) ("Cardinal" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Clarus Securities Inc., on behalf of a syndicate of underwriters (collectively, the "Underwriters"), pursuant to which the Underwriters have agreed to purchase, on a "bought deal" basis, 18,461,600 Ordinary Shares (the "Ordinary Shares") of the Company at a price of C$0.65 per Ordinary Share (the "Offering Price") for aggregate gross proceeds to the Company of C$12,000,040 (the "Offering").



The Company has agreed to grant the Underwriters an over-allotment option to purchase up to an additional 2,769,240 Ordinary Shares at the Offering Price, exercisable in whole or in part at any time for a period ending 30 days from the closing of the Offering. In the event the over-allotment option is exercised in full, the aggregate gross proceeds of the Offering will be C$13,800,046.



The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Offering to continue exploration and development at its Namdini Gold Project and the Company's other Ghanaian properties, and for general working capital purposes.



The Ordinary Shares will be offered by way of a short form prospectus to be filed in each of the provinces of Canada, other than the Province of Quebec, by way of a private placement in the United States, and in those jurisdictions outside of Canada and the United States which are agreed to by the Company and the Underwriters, where the Ordinary Shares can be issued on a private placement basis, exempt from any prospectus, registration or other similar requirements. The Company proposes to issue the Ordinary Shares under its 7.1 and 7.1A capacity, being 30,884,556 Ordinary Shares.



The Offering is expected to close on or about 14 November 2017 and is subject to certain conditions including, but not limited to, the receipt of all necessary approvals, including the approval of the Toronto Stock Exchange (the "Exchange").



The securities have not been, and will not be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States without registration under the U.S. Securities Act and all applicable state securities laws or compliance with the requirements of an applicable exemption therefrom. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities in the United States, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.





About Cardinal Resources Ltd





Cardinal Resources Ltd (ASX:CDV) (TSE:CDV) (OTCMKTS:CRDNF) is a West African gold exploration and development Company that holds interests in tenements within Ghana, West Africa.

The Company is focused on the development of the Namdini Project with a gold Ore Reserve of 5.1Moz (0.4 Moz Proved and 4.7 Moz Probable) and a soon to be completed Feasibility Study.

Exploration programmes are also underway at the Company's Bolgatanga (Northern Ghana) and Subranum (Southern Ghana) Projects.

Cardinal confirms that it is not aware of any new information or data that materially affects the information included in its announcement of the Ore Reserve of 3 April 2019. All material assumptions and technical parameters underpinning this estimate continue to apply and have not materially changed.


CEO Presentation TechKnow Roadshow

Sydney, Oct 24, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - In accordance with the requirements of Listing Rule 3.1 Australian Bauxite Ltd ( ASX:ABX ) submit the attached material being presented at the TechKnow Invest Roadshow in Melbourne and Sydney.



Mr Ian Levy, CEO is making the presentations.



Melbourne - 24 October 2017 - 2:00pm

Grand Hyatt Hotel Melbourne, Victoria



Sydney - 26 October 2017- 9:05am

Radisson Blu Hotel Sydney, New South Wales



The public are welcome to attend the presentations.



Ian Levy will be providing an overview on the development of bauxite beneficiation and refining technology to produce Aluminium Fluoride used in aluminium production and in lithium ion batteries, as reported briefly in the June Quarterly Report released on 28 July 2017. A patent application was lodged on 5 June 2017.



Key points include:



- an engineering firm has begun final designs and costings for the Stage 1 plant design. Due end Feb'18; and



- ABx will continue wide consultations before making and announcing final funding strategies which must create value for ABx shareholders.



ABx has no current plans for capital raisings.



To view the presentation, please visit:

http://abnnewswire.net/lnk/62LK7O8X





About Australian Bauxite Ltd





Australian Bauxite Limited (ABx) (ASX:ABX) has its first bauxite mine in Tasmania & controls the Eastern Australian Bauxite Province. ABx's 11 bauxite tenements in Queensland, New South Wales & Tasmania totalling 662 km2 are all 100% owned, unencumbered & free of third-party royalties. ABx's bauxite is gibbsite trihydrate (THA) bauxite that can be processed into alumina at low temperature.

ABx has committed a large proportion of its expenditure into Research and Development to find ways to capitalise on the main strengths of its bauxite type which is very clean, free of all deleterious elements and partitioned into layers, nodules, particles and grains of different qualities that can be separated into different product streams using physical, chemical and geophysical methods.

ABx has declared large Mineral Resources in northern NSW, southern NSW, Binjour in central QLD & in northern Tasmania.

ABx's first mine commenced at Bald Hill near Campbell Town, Tasmania in December 2014 - the first new Australian bauxite mine for more than 35 years.

ABx aspires to identify large bauxite resources in the Eastern Australian Bauxite Province and has created significant bauxite development projects in 3 states, Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania. Its bauxite deposits are favourably located for direct shipping of bauxite to both local and export customers.

ABx endorses best practices on agricultural land, strives to leave land and environment better than we find it. We only operate where welcomed.
President John Magufuli has appointed chairman of the board of Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) to head countrys central bank; Bank of Tanzania (BoT).

Prof Florens Luoga will assume office from January next year in replacement of outgoing Prof Benno Ndulu whose tenure at the head of the BoT will come to an end in January 2018.

President Magufuli made the announcement during a recognition ceremony to celebrate members of the team that negotiated an agreement between the government and Barrick Gold Mining Corporation following a mineral export dispute.

Prof Luoga was appointed chairman of TRAs board in July by the President who sacked Benard Mchomvu and dissolved the board of director in November.

The new governor is also University of Dar es Salaams Vice Chancellor (Academic).

Prof Luoga is an expert in taxation law. He will be assisted by Dr Yamungu Kayandambila, the deputy governor responsible for Economic and Financial Policies (EFP), and Dr Benard Kibesse who is in charge of Financial Stability and Deepening (FSB), the Tanzanian president noted during the ceremony.
Osman Mirgani, current editor-in-chief of Al-Tayar daily is waiting for police to haul him in jail for six-month after the judiciary Monday sanctioned the daily for publishing an article accusing President Omar Bechirs family of corruption.

Mirgani said he was given the choice to pay 10, 000 SDG ($1,499) for fine or spend six months in jail for an article public in the daily in 2012. He told AFP that he preferred the jail to the fine.

The author of article, Mohamed Zine El Abidine has been handed a conditional three-year prison sentence.

Authorities launched an investigation and sued the newspaper which is one of the countrys leading independent media.

The media in 2015 was suspended for publishing critical articles on Khartoums decision to scrap gas and power subsidies. The Supreme Court ruled in 2016 ruled in favor of the daily.

Countrys powerful intelligence service, NISS in 2014 assaulted the medias office and bit Mirgani, reports say.

Reporters Without Borders in 2016 classified Sudan as the 174th country out 180 on the press freedom index.

For its 2017 rankings, the charity further decreases Sudans Credit, classifying the North African country among countries such Egypt, Bahrain and Syrian where press freedom is seriously in danger.
The French government on Monday provided a boost to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, giving him a warm welcome to France, amid pressure and criticism from rights groups over Egypts human rights abuses.

The visit of the Egyptian leader will enable him to discuss subjects of common interest such as regional crises and the fight against terrorism, but also the human rights situation, the French presidency said.

Al-Sisi and Emmanuel Macron will attend the signing of 17 cooperation agreements in different fields, including in investment and the economy and arms purchases.

Ahead of Al-Sisis visit, human rights organizations at home and overseas have accused France, under Macron, of remaining silent in the face of increasing violations of freedoms by Al-Sisis administration.

At a press conference on Monday in Paris, Amnesty International has urged Macron to speak out about human rights.

The French presidency said in a statement that France is particularly vigilant about human rights issues.

Since the July 2013 coup that ousted elected President Mohamed Morsi, a police crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood has left hundreds dead and tens of thousands in jail. Rights groups have repeatedly accused former army chief Al-Sisi of repressive policies against unarmed civilians.

Last year, a UN investigation found that Egypt engages in the continuous persecution of women, human rights activists and journalists. Human rights groups estimate that at least 40,000 political prisoners have been detained by Al-Sisis government.
NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal and IAS officer Radheshyam Mopalwar can heave a sigh of relief after fake stamp paper scam kingpin Abdul Karim Telgis death as he had made allegations against them for their involvement in the Telgi scam. After Telgis narco-analysis test he had claimed Pawar and Bhujbal of receiving payments but they denied. Telgi also had made allegations against Mopalwar who had issued stamp vendor licence to him. It is alleged that licence was issued to Telgi a month after the receipt of application in February 1995 bypassing hundred other applications that were not cleared for at least two years. As per a probe conducted by Special Investigation Team (SIT) it has been revealed that licence was granted to Telgi within a month due to the recommendation of the then revenue minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. When four cases were filed against Telgi and his associates Mopalwar was the superintendent of stamps. He was the first person to lodge a complaint against Telgi. Telgi had filed an application to take action against Mopalwar as an accused in the case.

Anil Gote, BJP MLA said, When Telgi scam had occurred the then Congress government was in power. At that time, I had demanded Sharad Pawar and Chhagan Bhujbals narco-analysis test should be conducted for ascertaining the truth. The real culprits are roaming scot-free. I have already forwarded a letter to PM and court to take action against them.



Justice BG Kolse-Patil, former Bombay High Court judge said, No action will be taken against legislators due to lack of evidence. Narco-analysis test enables the police to conduct investigation properly. Most often action is not taken against accused politicians.

SM Mushrif, retired IPS officer and former IGP Maharashtra said, When Telgi was arrested in Pune in 2002 then I was deputed in crime branch. I was probing the cases of corruption against Telgi from 1992-93 onwards. When I was carrying out further investigations about him I was ousted from crime branch. If CBI can start fresh probe then more information can be unveiled. The findings of narco-analysis test cant resolve this case but CBI should investigate it thoroughly.

Raju Shetti, Swambimani Shetkari Sanghatana chief said, The Telgi case has not been investigated properly. The accused have siphoned off tax payers money by indulging in corruption activities. People were thinking that they were contributing to state exchequer by purchasing stamp papers but Telgi derived benefit out of it. If a narco-analysis test is conducted today then more people can be nabbed.

Advocate Abbas Kazmi said, Action can be taken against Sharad Pawar and Chhagan Bhujbal if evidence is available against them. It has to be mentioned to the court that their name has appeared in the evidence and then they can be arrested.
Maharashtra government on Tuesday issued a government resolution (GR) that allows Mumbai police to accept donations from corporates under the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy.

The government has issued a resolution allowing Mumbai police to set up a welfare foundation for police personnel.

The government resolution also mentions that there shall be no conflict of interest while collecting these donations.
After languishing 13 years in jail, Abdul Karim Telgi departed from this world. He had shot to fame after his name had surfaced in the multi-crore fake stamp paper racket scam. Almost 15 years ago a reporter discovered something fishy in Nashik bungalow and then exposed this fiddle; and now we know it as the Telgi scam. There was a bungalow in Nashik, Maharashtra which used to remain locked all the time. No one lived there; some people would come in cars and tempo-vans late in the night and then leave in the morning. This caused some qualms and subsequently a newspaper report was tipped off. So this reporter kept an eye and one day decided to make the way in Bungalow. When he could enter inside there was no one around. The place was filled with boxes and bags of stamp papers. He took some as samples and also clicked pictures. It was later discovered that Telgi was printing these in his press in Mumbai. He owned a printing press business for wedding cards, business cards, etc. In the nights he used to load up the machines with real stamp paper plates and print them. These were then transported to this Nashik bungalow. Nashik is the place under influence of Bhujbals, then home minister.

Later on there was another report that says, few employees within the Nashik Security Press (which prints our currency) were involved in this scam. The press discards old machinery and buys new after specific years of usage. So they purposely declared a few machines and plates as worn and torn and sold it off in the usual auction process. Telgi and his buddies purchased these machines. It was all pre-planned. Also the plates were to be destroyed as per procedure, but that was deliberately not done. The corruption in administration has always compromised the integrity of government. So Telgi and his clique had real printing plates and real printing presses for printing genuine stamp papers. So the stamp papers being produced were real, but just that the Indian government was not printing them.

Well the bungalow we were talking about is next to Bhujbals bungalow. Bhujbals associates own that bungalow. The NCP leader had intimate knowledge and even participated in all of this. In fact, a DCP and ACP from Mumbai Police were also involved. The chain was quite big as this was not a simple thing to do. There were Nasik Security Press personnel, Bhujbal, Pawar, the police and many stamp paper vendors in the scam. Anil Gote, a former MLA, politicians Sharad Pawar and Chhagan Bhujbal were alleged for the links with the kingpin Abdul Karim Telgi. Gote flashed a photograph in the court purported to be that of Pawar with Azim Telgi, brother of Abdul Karim Telgi, at a function at Khanapur in 1994. He claimed before Special Judge Chitra Bhedi that neither Antim Totla nor Prakash Jakhade was accused or witnesses in the case, yet the two had been subjected to narco-analysis tests. Gote argued that the names of Bhujbal and Pawar had figured in narco-analysis tests of Telgi conducted in Bangalore in 2003 which were recently aired by television channels. Hence, they too should be subjected to similar tests. Amidst of controversy, both Pawar and Bhujbal have denied meeting Telgi.

Telgi had shot to fame when in 2002 he had showered as much as the Rs 93 lakh in one night on one bar girl in a dance bar in Mumbai. He lived with all lavishes, though he was born in lower middleclass family and lost his father at a very young age. He educated himself and got into printing business in Mumbai and thats how his doors were opened in multimillion scams. Telgi not only dropped names, he also explained his modus operandi, revealed places where he operated, his business associates, how he started his racket, the number of bank accounts he had, and what he owned. Telgi was arrested in 1991. Other big names, which found mention in Telgis confession, were those of Lok Sabha speaker P A Sangma, Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sameer Bhujbal, nephew of Chhagan Bhujbal.

In 2002-03, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) busted his racket after tapping a number of phones. Telgi was sentenced to a 30-year jail term for printing counterfeit stamp papers in India and selling them on to various institutions. The amount involved was then estimated to be worth billions of rupees. A fine of Rs 202 crore was imposed on Telgi. He started off by selling stamps at his vending stall and later he started fulfilling large statutory and legal requirements demand for stamp papers which government was not providing in enough numbers to meet the huge demand in the country. The size of the scam was reportedly said to be somewhere between Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000 crore. All of this was happening right from the early 1990s. Telgi moved to more complexes counterfeiting when he began to counterfeit stamp paper. He appointed 350 people as agents who sold the fakes to bulk purchasers, including banks, insurance companies, and stock brokerage firms. The size of the scam was estimated to be more than Rs 200 billion ($3.1 billion).One aspect of the scandal that caused much concern was that it required the involvement of many police officers and other government employees including Nikhil Khotari. For example, one Assistant Police Investigator was found to have a net worth of over Rs 1 billion ($16 million), despite earning a salary of only Rs 9,000 ($140) per month. Then police officer S M Mushrif, known for the book Who killed Karkare took decisive measures on this case.

Telgi, a small-town lad from Khanapur in Belgaum, Karnataka, sold peanuts at railways stations in the 1980s to make a living. He got into racketeering in the 1990s by selling fake stamps that cost him the proverbial peanuts to make. Telgis methods were simple. His army of unscrupulous young men, many of them are ambitious MBAs who approached financial institutions and large private organisations and struck up deals with the clerks in charge of stamps. The clerks were told they could avoid the hassle of running around to buy the stamps; instead the executives would deliver them to their offices. Even from inside prison, Telgi had managed to keep the wheels of his business moving. The interrogation of four of his foot soldiers who were arrested in October 2002 in Delhi revealed that each sold fake stamps worth Rs 50,000 on average each day. During the subsequent seizure, Delhi Police recovered fake stamps worth Rs 216 crore. Since early 2001, fake stamp dealers, all part of Telgis empire of deceit, have been arrested in Karnataka, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Delhi, Punjab and Haryana. Among Telgis clientele have been United India Insurance Co., Life Insurance Corporation, New India Assurance, National Insurance, Oriental Insurance, Max New York Life Insurance, Reliance Insurance, Tokyo General Insurance, IFFCO, Development Credit Bank, Bank of Baroda, State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Bharat Overseas Bank Ltd, Bank of Maharashtra, Global Trust Bank and Union Bank of India. Telgi has 35 properties in Maharashtra and Karnataka and many more should come to light. Investments were liberally made in film financing in Bollywood  it turns out that Sana Film Financial Corporation, named after Telgis daughter, had generously pumped money into the industry.

Till he lived, may it be in jail or hospital; he maintained his wealth flowing in all directions, now after his death the legacy may halt. But with his death many questions related to scam goes unanswered.

(Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com)
The US on Tuesday announced that it has initiated actions against Myanmars military leadership involved in violence against Rohingya Muslims that has triggered a grave humanitarian crisis in Bangladesh. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said that the US is in consultations with its friends and allies on the accountability options.

The US will continue to support Myanmars transition to democracy, as well as efforts to resolve the current crisis in Rakhine State, Nauert said in a statement.

However, the Burmese Government, including its armed forces, must take immediate action to ensure peace and security; implement commitments to ensure humanitarian access to communities in desperate need; facilitate the safe and voluntary return of those who have fled or been displaced in Rakhine State, she said.

More than 600,000 members of the minority Muslim group have fled across the border into Bangladesh in an intensifying crisis that began in late August.

Militant attacks on Myanmar security forces in Rakhine sparked a major army crackdown on the community.

The US expressed concern over recent events in Rakhine State and the violent, traumatic abuses Rohingya and other communities have endured.

It is imperative that any individuals or entities responsible for atrocities, including non-state actors and vigilantes, be held accountable, Nauert said.

Accordingly, in addition to existing restrictions on its already-limited engagement with Burmas armed forces and its long-standing embargo on all military sales, the United States is taking several actions in pursuit of accountability and an end to violence.

Since August 25, the US has ceased consideration of travel waivers for current and former senior leadership of Myanmars military.

It is also assessing authorities under the JADE Act to consider economic options available to target individuals associated with atrocities, she said.

As per Leahy Law, the US Government find all units and officers involved in operations in northern Rakhine State to be ineligible to receive or participate in any US assistance programmes, she said.
by John Stone

"However, another authoritative source British National Formulary/National Institutes for Healthcare Excellence (BNF NICE) listing this season's products states that all the suspensions "may contain" thiomersal. The position is ambiguous to say the least."

A row has apparently blown up in the media between a mega star that I have never heard of, Calvin Harris, with 12.7 million twitter followers and British health officials. Harris has apparently claimed that there is mercury in the 2017 UK flu shot. No such claim I would like to make clear has ever been made on this website. While it is difficult to find out exactly which products are being given I have just checked through the ingredients of ten products I was able to identify and none had mercury, thiomersal or thimerosal listed.

Perhaps Mr Harris was basing his claim on the situation in the US where officials seem more inclined to brazen it out. It may be pointed out as well that the same health officials who are out now trying to re-assure people that there is no mercury in the shot are very likely the same ones who were previously trying assure them it was perfectly safe.

Post Script: This appears to be the bottom line. There is a letter 20 March 2017 signed by representatives of the UK Department of Health, Public Health England, NHS England (Dame Sally C Davies, Prof Paul Cosford and Prof Sir Bruce Keogh). On pages 24-6 there is a list of products with one or two additions to those I linked to. Underneath is the statement p. 26:"None of the influenza vaccines for the 2017/18 season contain thiomersal as an added preservative"

The odd wording suggests the possibility that thiomersal may have been used in the preparation of some of the products, perhaps as a sterilising agent, and therefore could be present at trace levels.

Post Post Script: However, another authoritative source British National Formulary/National Institutes for Healthcare Excellence (BNF NICE) listing this season's products states that all the suspensions "may contain" thiomersal. The position is ambiguous to say the least.

Suspension for injection All products
Aiken, SC (29801)

Today

Rain showers this evening with overcast skies overnight. Low 44F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Rain showers this evening with overcast skies overnight. Low 44F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
October 23, 2017

CAIRO  Egypt is preparing for the handover of 15 Egyptian children from Libya in early November. Their Islamic State-affiliated parents were either killed or arrested during the Libyan armys operations against the organization in Misrata.

The family members of terrorists are highly stigmatized. They can be denied social and professional opportunities such as joining the police, armed forces or judiciary. For children, early interaction with terrorists can leave traces of aggression, antisocial behavior and misconceptions about Islam.

After liberating Misrata in December 2016, the Libyan army found 125 children, including 15 Egyptians, 22 Tunisians, 13 Sudanese, 17 Algerians and 12 Libyans, among other European and African children.

After the liberation operation, the children were sent to a rehabilitation camp, where a psychological and educational program was to help reintegrate them into their local communities. The program has been running since January 2017 under the auspices of the Libyan Red Crescent.

According to a Sept. 25 report by Egypt's ad-Dostor newspaper, the children suffer panic attacks and psychological troubles due to severe physical injuries. They exhibit behavioral problems as a result of extremist indoctrination. For instance, 8-year-old J.H. became deeply withdrawn and had panic attacks after living in IS camps, where she witnessed crimes and feared pursuit by security forces. H.M., 7, was aggressive toward therapists and his peers. He threw his toys at others as though the toys were grenades.

Journalist Ahmed Atef Ramadan told Al-Monitor, I followed the psychological situation of these kids after rehabilitation. I can confirm that the program has been successful, and we are getting ready to welcome these kids in coordination with the Red Crescent and Libyan security and army, after Egyptian security carries out a background check on their families to make sure they do not harbor extremists.

Ramadan added, If there are terrorist members in the children's families, I think they will be put in orphanages so that they wont be re-exposed to extremist thought. They will also undergo psychological examination by the Egyptian Ministry of Health as soon as they get to Egypt, which will continue to follow up on the rehabilitation and treatment of those who need it.

An informed source at the Ministry of Health told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, The crisis is that we do not have specialized care centers for such cases. There are conventional orphanages in Egypt where ordinary children who lost their parents are raised and educated. The special cases like IS children require specialized treatment, care and supervision. I think their interaction with other children in the absence of supervision would delay their treatment and would also harm the other children. We need specialized centers to treat these cases.

Magdy Morshed, a member of the parliamentary health committee, told Al-Monitor, We need such care centers as these kids would grow into terrorists if they do not become disciplined. They must be cared for to ensure they will be well-behaved citizens who are not under the influence of terrorist groups because they are not guilty of their parents crimes. There must be a global strategy to tend to the kids since the problem threatens not only Egypt and the Arab region but the whole world, as IS members include Europeans.

The Observer reported Oct. 7 that 5,000 Syrian and Iraqi women have had children by European fathers who have died in Syria. The widows have asked for shelter for themselves and their children in their husbands' countries, but were denied.

Ramadan said, I hope the concerned parties will establish care centers for Egyptian children whose parents were members of IS because it is not their fault. I think there is a will to establish such centers and develop rehabilitation programs to help the children develop and prevent them from becoming a threat to society. I believe many Egyptians are now keener on the integration of these children in society. The stigma has become less of a hazard. They can become officers and judges, and society no longer fears this possibility.

Mohammad Abu Zoukia, who is in charge of the psychological rehabilitation of children at the Libyan Red Crescent, told Al-Monitor, Egypt is capable of following up on childrens psychological rehabilitation because Egyptians in the Egyptian Red Crescent played a part in training the Libyan Red Crescent in many fields.

Egypt plays a pivotal role in this training, and many of those interested in the future of IS members children hope Egypt will establish specialized care centers and instate rehabilitation programs. Abu Zoukia said, The success of the integration of these children in society is central to the treatment and rehabilitation process.
October 24, 2017

Human rights organization Gisha has found an original way to inform Israelis about the distress and hardships of factory owners in the Gaza Strip. In partnership with the sweets manufacturer Al-Awda (The Return), it produced an animated short film titled Gazas Candy Kingdom. Thus, the organization that works for the freedom of movement of Palestinians in the West Bank and especially in the Gaza Strip, which is often subjected to closure, hopes to crack the wall of indifference among Israelis about what is happening an hour and a half drive from Tel Aviv.

In the film, a girl named Noor (which means light in Arabic) finds a 10 shekel coin (about $2.85) while on the way home from school. With glee, she goes to buy an ice cream cone and wins a ticket to visit the large sweets factory owned by Muhammad Tilbani, who greets her with open arms.

I dont know if you know, he tells the surprised little girl, but I decided to give you the whole factory as a gift. During a tour of his factory, she is exposed to the impossible task of manufacturing in Gaza  that is, running a factory under the conditions of closure, war and the lack of a reliable supply of electricity, which has caused the factory to abandon modern technology and return to the days of the 19th-century Industrial Revolution.

Tilbani is a real person. He has owned Al-Awda for 40 years. Two years ago, Gisha, with whom I worked for years, approached me and suggested making a film centered on my factory. I agreed immediately, he told Al-Monitor. According to Tilbani, he knew that other factory owners in Gaza, who experienced a similar struggle for survival, would reject the offer out of fear of incurring even greater economic disaster in the form of retaliation by Israel.

I said, what do I have to fear? Its all true, Tilbani recalled. If theres one lie here, take me to court. Everything [in the video] is true to life, from our reality in Gaza, managing a factory and maintaining the livelihood of our workers.

According to Tilbani, Israeli businessmen with whom he trades have reproached him, claiming that the animated film based on his character and focused on his factory damages the image of Israel. Tilbani told them that the film shows only a small part of the suffering experienced by every factory owner in Gaza, small and large, and that he, like his colleagues, has struggled for a decade to continue to earn a living and to provide a living for others.

In the film, Tilbani asks Noor, Shall we go on the tour? She jumps for joy. As they stand by the elevator, the light goes out, and they have to take the stairs. Im sorry, its that time of the day, he tells her. In another eight hours, the electricity will return. Later, Tilbani shows Noor a machine that had stopped working and was simply pushed aside, because there is no way to get replacement parts into Gaza. At another point he explains to her, Here is where the packing machine was supposed to be, but its been stuck for months in a port in Israel. They [the Israelis] dont allow such machines to enter Gaza.

Im not opposed to security, Tilbani told Al-Monitor, Let them check with all the means possible, but be logical. A part of my machine broke, and the factory abroad [that makes it] shipped me the part I need. Your security checked it and finally released it from the port. After that, they asked where am Im going to put the part, so I photographed the machine and sent the photo with an explanation. Finally they told me to come to the Erez crossing and get the part. The night before, they called and said, Dont come. Theres no authorization. But its an air compressor that operates the whole factory. What am I supposed to do?

Tilbani worked as a laborer in Israel in his youth and saved his money. In 1977, he opened Al-Awda as a small business from his home and grew it into a factory that employs 400 workers who make sweets and ice cream. He says his products are inexpensive and are meant for Gaza residents who cant afford to buy sweets that cost more than a shekel (29 cents) or even less.

Before the Gaza closure, introduced in 2007, Tilbani exported 65% of his products to the West Bank. For a decade now, he hasn't been able to export products, but he has also not laid off a single worker.

How can I lay off a worker who works for me and earns a living for his family? he said. If I fire him, that would send him off to die of hunger. What would happen to his children? I cant sentence a worker of mine to death. Tilbani therefore made the decision to employ every worker for half a month, so that everyone could continue to earn money. His employees earn between 400 and 1,000 shekels ($114 to $285) a month. The factory hangs on, with great difficulty given the low demand for his products in Gaza, where most residents don't even dream of buying sweets.

There are kids here whose dad cant give them half a shekel to buy a sweet, Tilbani said. In Gaza, there are hundreds of thousands of people who have nothing to eat, who havent seen meat for many, many years, except maybe for [the Muslim holiday of] Eid al-Adha. Tilbani occasionally invites people for dinner at his home, and 20 other people come whom he didnt invite. Could I send them home? he asked. At the end of the meal, they take the leftovers to give to their kids.

Tilbani gives 2.5% of the profits from his factory to charity, and on Ramadan he hosts a meal for 3,000 Palestinians for whom it will be the only big meal that includes meat for the whole year.

Gazas Candy Kingdom tries to project optimism. Toward the end, Noor looks out of the factory window and sees bulldozers. Tilbani explains that part of the factory was bombed in 2014, during Operation Protective Edge, and proclaims, But well rebuild everything. Noor decides to pass on the prize of owning the factory and offers that instead shed be happy with free ice cream for life. Tilbani comforts her, saying, As long as people need ice cream, well be here to make it, in order to make their life sweet.
October 23, 2017

CAIRO  Egypt's rumored plan for a joint military exercise with Israel is raising a lot of criticism from opponents of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's regime.

Opposition website Egyrep.com published an article Oct. 8 that said, Sisi breaks the armed forces doctrine with the first military exercise with Israel. Al-Quds al-Arabi reported Oct. 6 that Sayyed al-Toukhi, a leader of the opposition Democratic Current Alliance, posted on Facebook that the military exercise with Israel is a big shame on this president and all leaders who are of the same mind.

It all started when Greece's Minister of National Defense Panos Kammenos told the press Oct. 1 that Greece is planning joint military exercises with Cyprus, Egypt and Israel.

No comment on a joint Egyptian-Israeli military exercise was posted on the official Facebook pages of the military spokesman of the armed forces or the Egyptian Defense Ministry. Nevertheless, speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, a source close to Egypt's military establishment said, The Egyptian military media is characterized by a high degree of transparency. The armed forces would never take part in such exercises, even if they were to be confidential, because such an event cant be hidden. Military exercises are viewed as a major event involving the armed forces' equipment, weapons, soldiers, officers and commanders. It would be impossible for Egypt to pressure all these parties in four countries to keep such an exercise to themselves.

Mounir Mahmoud, a researcher specializing in Israeli affairs at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told Al-Monitor that perhaps Kammenos meant that Greece plans military exercises with Israel, Egypt and Cyprus separately, or that he was referring to a Greek offer that Egypt has not agreed to yet. However, the Times of Israel ran a story about the subject under the headline "Israel to conduct joint air force drills with Greece, Cyprus, Egypt," and recent news stories have highlighted Israeli overtures to Egypt, such as Israel's condemnation Oct. 21 of a terrorist attack that killed 16 Egyptian police.

Mahmoud noted that it's possible Kammenos was sending a message to Turkey that regional powers such as Israel and Egypt are in favor of Greece's stance opposing Turkey, as Greece perceives Turkey to be stealing its right to gas in the eastern Mediterranean.

Egypt is indeed likely to favor Greece in light of Egyptian-Turkish political differences, highlighted when the Egyptian armed forces ousted the Muslim Brotherhood and then-President Mohammed Morsis regime following 2013 mass protests, which Turkey viewed as a military coup.

Furthermore, Israel and Greece have common interests. Israel seeks to export natural gas to Europe through pipelines crossing the Mediterranean Sea and Greece. These interests, however, do not seem enough for Israel to favor Greece, as Israel also is considering a similar project to export gas to Europe via Turkish territory.

In an Oct. 6 story, French public radio station Monte-Carlo Doualiya linked news about the possible Egyptian-Israeli joint military exercise to Sisis meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in September. The same month, news surfaced that a Saudi prince secretly visited Israel the same month  news Riyadh hasn't denied. Stories also implied that such developments correlate with US President Donald Trumps remarks on the "deal of the century" to resolve the Middle East crisis.

"The problem is that the deals details remain undisclosed, and the US side contented itself with the talk on Saudi-Egyptian-Israeli-Palestinian cooperation to bring about peace and stability to the region in the face of Iran," the Monte-Carlo Doualiya story said.

Speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, an Egyptian journalist specializing in Israeli affairs said there are many indications that Egypt and the Gulf countries are on the path toward normalization with Israel to counter the risks coming from Irans influence."

"These [indications] include the fact that Saudi Arabia, the UAE [United Arab Emirates] and Israel rushed to express their stances favoring Trumps Oct. 13 remarks that he will not recertify Irans nuclear deal.

The journalist said, however, that normalization wouldn't mean Arab states would cast aside their own constants, such as the Gulf countries opposing diplomatic ties with Israel or the Egyptian armed forces viewing Israel as a historic enemy. He explained that any shift in those stances could cause resentment among Gulf citizens or dissatisfaction within the Egyptian armed forces ranks.

It's noteworthy that many Egyptian military leaders continue to describe the Israeli army as a historic enemy. Most recently, on Oct. 13, air force commander Younes al-Masry described the Israeli army as an enemy many times during his interview with military editors of multiple newspapers on the date marking the 44th anniversary of the October 1973 war.

Mansour Wahhabi, a professor of Israeli studies at Ain Shams University in Cairo, believes there will be no joint Egyptian-Israeli military drill.

The objective behind any military exercise is to learn about the other armies weaponry. While the majority of the Israeli weapons are either from Europe or the US, Egypt has in its possession many similar weapons, in addition to its Chinese and Russian weapons. This means that the Egyptian armed forces have no interest in a joint exercise, [especially given] the damage the regime would have to face due to the [negative] public opinion and perhaps the armys rejection of further normalization," he told Al-Monitor.

Also, Wahhabi said, the economic, security and political rapprochement with Israel to counter terrorist groups doesn't mean that the Egyptian, Israeli, Turkish and Iranian armies haven't been competing to achieve military supremacy in the region. This competitiveness would make the countries loathe to unveil the power of their armies in a military drill.

That same reason is perhaps behind the absence of joint Iranian-Turkish exercises, despite the countries' trade agreements in recent years and their rapprochement under some circumstances, for instance, the issue of Iraqi Kurd's potential influence on their countries. The competition could also be behind the absence of Israeli-Turkish training exercises with US participation; such drills haven't been repeated since 2008.

There's another issue that would make it difficult for joint military drills to take place: Egypt's support for and role in a Palestinian reconciliation and Netanyahu's rejection of reconciliation, Wahhabi noted.

The long-standing Sunni-Shiite conflict has not prevented a practical rapprochement between the Sunni-dominated regime in Turkey and Shiite-dominated regime in Iran. An example of this came when the Kurds in Iraq voted for independence in September, which posed a threat to both countries. The same approach applies to Egypt and Israel, historic enemies who currently engage in mutually beneficial political, economic and security cooperation at their border. Pragmatism, however, will not be able to erase historical enmity anytime soon, let alone allow for military cooperation and joint drills.
October 12, 2017

RAMALLAH, West Bank  The relationship between Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem and All Palestine and the Greek Orthodox community in the Palestinian territories and Jordan is closer than ever to escalating into all-out war. Theophilos, who assumed leadership of the church in 2005, has presided over the church while a number of deals have been reached to sell or lease church property to Israel, private Israeli citizens and investors. The patriarch is responsible for the management of all church endowments as stipulated by Jordanian Law no. 27 (1958). The church owns property in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Gaza and in Israel. Fed-up members of the Greek Orthodox community have organized in opposition to Theophilos in an attempt to remove him and encourage Jordanian and Palestinian authorities to withdraw their recognition of him.

Haaretz reported on Oct. 13 that six dunams of land with dozens of businesses on it around the clock tower in Jaffa as well as 430 dunams in Caesarea, including large parts of the Caesarea National Park and Amphitheater and a Roman amphitheater, were sold to anonymous foreign companies. The land in Caesarea was being leased to Israel, which was not notified of the sale. This followed a deal to sell 500 dunams of land in the Talbiya and Rehavia neighborhoods in West Jerusalem. Previous deals were reached in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, including for land near the Mar Elias Monastery, in Bethlehem.

The opposition movement  spearheaded by the Arab Central Orthodox Council and Arab Orthodox Youth  received a significant boost with the participation of Palestinian and Jordanian political factions and figures in the one-day National Conference to Support the Arab-Orthodox Cause in Palestine. The more than 200 attendees confirmed their opposition to the patriarchate being represented by Theophilos and called for his dismissal and trial for his role in selling church lands. The conference, held in Bethlehem on Oct. 1, included participation by Mahmoud al-Aloul, Fatah vice president and Central Committee member; Mustafa al-Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative; Qais Abdul Karim, deputy secretary-general of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP); and a number of leaders from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The conference concluded with participants issuing 14 decisions and recommendations, including considering the Greek Orthodox case a strategic national issue of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), akin to the issues of Jerusalem and refugees and withdrawing the recognition of the patriarch as a first step toward removing him from his position, holding him accountable, refusing him participation in any religious ceremony and considering him and his followers outsiders to the national equation. The conference formed a committee consisting of 17 members from Jordanian and Palestinian political factions, the Greek Orthodox Council, and the Greek Orthodox Youth Movement to follow up on conference decisions at the political, judicial and popular levels.

Alif Sabbagh, spokesperson for the National Conference and the Greek Orthodox opposition movement, told Al-Monitor, The conference is the first of its kind. It has succeeded in mustering Palestinian and Jordanian forces to support the Greek Orthodox movement and add the issue of church properties to the PLOs agenda because it is considered of national rather than religious importance.

Aghlab Khoury, an activist with Greek Orthodox Youth, told Al-Monitor, This conference mainly aimed at withdrawing the patriarch's popular legitimacy and regarding him as persona non grata based on Palestinian and Jordanian national sentiments. Another important outcome is calling on Jordanian and Palestinian authorities to withdraw official recognition from Patriarch Theophilos III and engaging with Greek Orthodox institutions around the world to expose him. In an Oct. 4 press release, the Lebanese Orthodox Council, led by Robert al-Abiad, expressed its solidarity with and support for all decisions and recommendations issued by the National Conference. The council also condemned the sale of the holy land trodden by Jesus Christ.

Khoury further noted, The committee emerging from this conference has the mission to arrange a visit with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and King Abdullah II of Jordan in order to communicate to them all the decisions of the conference and to request them to withdraw confidence from the patriarch. Meanwhile, the Greek Orthodox opposition movement will lobby to pressure Palestinian and Jordanian political leaders into fulfilling conference demands.

Khoury noted, The coming period will witness intense movement to hold meetings and symposiums with local institutions so that they offer their support to boycotting the patriarch and pressuring political authorities into answering the popular demand of removing him from his position.

After participating in the conference, the DFLP's Abd al-Karim told Al-Monitor, The [opposition] movement is no longer restricted to the Orthodox sect since the churchs property does not exclusively belong to this sect, but is part of a bigger national cause to preserve [Palestinian] ownership of land. He added, The conferences recommendation of not working with the patriarch and its requests that the relevant authorities, namely Palestine and Jordan, withdraw their recognition of the patriarch will be added to the agenda of the PLOs Executive Committee. The committee will study these points and consult with Jordan in order to issue a common decision that can be executed.

The Greek Orthodox opposition movement has already filed a complaint with PA Attorney General Ahmad Barrak to hold Theophilos legally accountable. Law no. 27 stipulates the patriarchs management of the church properties, but does not mention a patriarchs right to sell or lease church lands. According to Sabbagh, the complaint, signed by 309 people and submitted Aug. 30, requests that Barrak investigate Theophilos for his involvement in diverting church land to Israelis. He added, We will also file a complaint against the patriarch with the Jordanian attorney general, and we will raise the issues of the patriarchs lack of transparency in managing church land and his administrative and financial corruption.

The Greek Orthodox opposition is planning to reinforce the above activities by organizing marches and protests against Theophilos. Such events will run up to Christmas and intensify during the holidays, at which time protesters will attempt to obstruct his entering churches on the West Bank and in Israel.

The movement held its first protest on Oct. 8 in the Arab village of Reineh in Israel. Christian and political figures, including Knesset member Jamal Zahalka, participated in the demonstration, as did political activists from the Balad (National Democratic Assembly), the Islamic Movement and the PFLP. The demonstrators sought to block the patriarch from entering a church in the village that day. The Israeli army intervened to ensure his safety.

The field movement against the patriarch shall continue and reach its peak over Christmas as we will not allow the patriarch to set foot in the Church of the Nativity, said Sabbagh. We will raise the Palestinian flag over the Church of the Nativity and Greek Orthodox churches under Palestinian sovereignty instead of the Greek flags. Sabbagh also remarked, In the previous Christmas celebrations, we allowed the patriarch inside the church after President Abbas interfered, but this year, we will not accept any intervention. As an Orthodox sect supported by Palestinian forces, we will ban the patriarch from entering the church.
October 23, 2017

On Oct. 17, a motorcycle parked on the side of the road exploded just as a shuttle bus for police officers was passing by the city of Mersin on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. The remotely activated bomb injured 18 people. The Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council promptly instituted a gag order on all media coverage of the attack. On Oct. 19, Minister of Development Lutfi Elvan said 11 suspects were taken into custody. Elvan added that early signs indicated the attack was the work of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist group by Turkey and the United States.

The Mersin explosion became a trending topic on social media the day of the attack. One hashtag was particularly telling: #TerrorunAdiABD  "The name of terror is USA."

The hashtag came with potent yet simple images associating the United States with the Islamic State (IS). For example, one tweet said, The goal is to destroy Islam and below was an image of a chess board populated with soldiers of IS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and the Free Syrian Army being maneuvered by a hand labeled with the US flag.

This was followed by the ultranationalist Aydinlik daily advising readers to consider the Mersin attack and its timing while remembering one of US Ambassador to Turkey John Bass departing statements.

On Oct. 11, just four days before Bass left Turkey, he praised the hard work of Turkish security forces and law enforcement and said their cooperation with American and other allies networks had prevented IS attacks on Turkish soil for 9 months. His attempts to show appreciation, to say that the cooperation had direct and positive results, however, were interpreted by the pro-government media at best as a thinly veiled threat.

Bass statement was presented as an admission that the United States created and controls IS and, if it wanted to, could allow IS to attack Turkey again.

So the Mersin bus attack, taking place within a week of the ambassadors words, was a nightmare come true, providing "evidence" to all the conspiracy theory-loving crowds linking the "threat" with the attack. That is how the Aydinlik view was shared on social media, along with other provocative statements.

For example, an anonymous Twitter user who supports the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) wrote just after the attack, The culprits are at the US Embassy! For nine months there were no bomb explosions, so what has happened now?"

Another account shared a short video clip with Bass in the background and red subtitles on the screen reading Ambassador Threatens Turkey, with a television host repeating the "no attack in Turkey for the last nine months" line and asking, So the question now is, did the US have a hand in the previous attacks in Turkey? The Twitter user added, Bass said no attack in the last 9 months in Turkey and left. As soon as he left, a terror attack happens.

Right after the Mersin attack, social media was tense. However, none of the pro-government newspapers, columnists or advisers of Erdogan and AKP lawmakers openly joined in on The US is behind the Mersin bombing conspiracy. And the next day, there were no rallies or protests. This indicates a controlled reaction and once again raises the question of whether public anger and mob attacks are haphazard or manipulated events in contemporary Turkey.

Though the administration chose not to promote the Mersin conspiracy angle, there are still a number of issues with the United States that are weighing on Ankara's nerves. One is the visa crisis  and what is widely considered to be its origin. The Financial Times reported Oct. 9 that the arrest earlier this month of a US consulate employee in Turkey "confirmed suspicions that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan considers US detainees in Turkish prisons as a bargaining chip in its increasingly hostile negotiations with the United States over the extradition of Mr. Gulen and the trial of a Turkish-Iranian citizen with ties to Mr Erdogans inner circle."

Since the July 2016 failed coup, the West  most of all the United States  has been portrayed as supporting the Gulen movement, which Turkey blames for the coup attempt. The Turkish government is angry over its failed efforts to extradite the movements leader, cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is Turkish but lives in the United States. Turkey also wants to extradite businessman Reza Zarrab and Turkish banker Hakan Atilla, who are currently imprisoned in the United States for allegedly making illegal transactions through US banks to help Irans government and other entities in Iran skirt sanctions.

It seems the unpredictability of what might be revealed through the US court cases is a crucial reason behind Ankaras relentless anger, growing allegations and arrests of US Embassy personnel working in Turkey. Intensified anti-American rhetoric helps to discredit any information flow coming from the United States, thus protecting Erdogan and his inner circle from what they fear might be revealed during the Iran sanctions case. Erdogan has gone to great trouble himself to discredit all things Western. For example, in September he labeled all those who study in the West and return back home as spies"  even though this group includes all of his own children. On Oct. 21, he declared the United States an uncivilized country for issuing arrest warrants for his bodyguards, who are accused of assaulting protesters in the United States.

As Al-Monitor reported in August, US bashing has reached a new peak in Turkey, where potential American suffering is seen as a reason to rejoice. Now, it is reflected in ordinary individuals daily lives. Some of these images are captured and shared in celebration or disbelief. For example, one photo from a restaurant appeared on forums after the owner posted signs in Turkish and English saying Americans aren't allowed to eat there. In Samsun province, several barbers have declared they will not cut hair in the style called American haircut. (This is the name for a popular cut for men in Turkey where the sides are shaved and the top is spiked. Some barbers instead offer an "Ottoman-style" haircut as an option for those protesting the United States.)

Although these actions were ridiculed on social media, they provide clues about the Turkish mindset. Years of openly and falsely blaming the United States and using profanity against the United States and its representatives on public forums have left a deep mark on Turkish hearts and minds. Even if the two countries resolve their problems smoothly through diplomacy, Turkish distrust of the United States will require years of American efforts to correct.
October 24, 2017

Americas gauche stabs at placating Turkey have triggered fury with another ally, the Syrian Kurds, deepening suspicions that once the battle against the Islamic State is over, they may become dispensable in Washingtons eyes.

Syrian Kurdish politicians and fighters have aired their anger against the United States for belittling imprisoned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan in statements and videos that are being widely shared via social media.

As a woman, I can never imagine life that is worth living without him, said a young Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fighter in a video circulated by the group's press office. The resistance here is first and foremost for him.

Another male fighter proclaimed that without Ocalan, we cant even breathe.

They were responding to an Oct. 21 statement from the US Embassy in Ankara that noted, The United States Government works closely with Turkey to fight terrorism and increase regional stability. The PKK is a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, and Ocalan is in prison in Turkey for acts of terrorism as part of the PKK. He does not merit respect.

The woman fighter in the video riposted: Those who think Reber Apo [leader Apo] doesnt deserve respect are unworthy of respect themselves. Apo means uncle in Kurdish and is widely used as an affectionate honorific when referring to Ocalan.

The Movement for a Democratic Society, the top governing body in the Syrian Kurdish-controlled territories, declared in another statement: "With his ideas and philosophy, leader Ocalan represents hope for all the peoples in the region ... the American [embassy's] statement violates democracy and human rights."

An SDF official who responded to Al-Monitors questions on condition that he not be identified by name confirmed that women fighters in particular were extremely upset by the embassys statement. They are the ones who are sacrificing their lives in this battle. They have a right to celebrate their victory as they so please, he said in a Whastsapp exchange. And of course it leads many to ask is this partnership one of strict convenience for [the Americans].

The furor over Ocalan erupted on Oct. 17, when fighters from the Syrian Kurdish Womens Protection Units (YPJ), the YPG's all-female affiliate, became the first to declare victory against the jihadis in Raqqa, the erstwhile capital of their crumbling caliphate. In an impassioned speech, YPJ commander Nesrin Abdullah dedicated the liberation of Raqqa to women worldwide and to Ocalan, who is a dogged if unlikely champion of radical feminism and embraced by many Syrian Kurds as their leader, too.

During the course of the ceremony, the women unfurled a giant yellow banner featuring the mustachioed Ocalans face in Raqqas central plaza, where IS had carried out public beheadings.

Turkey seized on the spectacle as further proof of Washingtons connivance with terrorists. The Syrian Kurdish group is closely allied with the PKK, which is waging a ruthless and bloody campaign for self-rule in Turkey. As noted by the embassy, the PKK is on the United States list of terrorist outfits but the YPG and the YPJ are not. The omission has smoothed the path for what has become an unquestionably effective military partnership against IS. But it has also poisoned relations with a key if increasingly difficult NATO ally, Turkey.

In an apparent bid to smooth ruffled feathers, the US Embassy in Ankara posted its controversial statement but only in Turkish not in English as well. Similar rebukes came from the coalition spokesman, Col. Ryan Dillon. He said, The Coalition does not approve of the display of divisive and symbols and imagery at a time in which we remain focused on the defeat of [IS] in Syria."

Many Kurds would beg to differ, and some analysts agree that if anything, Ocalan is a unifying symbol. Aliza Marcus is the author of Blood and Belief, one of the most authoritative books on the PKK. She told Al-Monitor in an interview, The bigger the movement gets and the more territory it controls, the bigger need for ideology to hold together a more disparate group of fighters and backers. Ocalan is useful in that regard.

A growing number of Arab fighters are joining the YPG and the YPJ rather than their fellow Arabs in the Syrian Arab Coalition. The latter is fighting alongside the Syrian Kurds under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces. One of the fighters featured in the YPG video described the US view of Ocalan as a mistake and a bit behind the times.

Ocalan has remained in an island prison off the coast of Istanbul since his capture by Turkish special forces in 1999. The CIA tipped them off on his whereabouts at the Greek ambassadors residence in Nairobi, Kenya. He has remained incommunicado since April 2015 after the latest round of peace talks between the Turkish government and the PKK collapsed. Turkish authorities continue to deny access to Ocalan despite growing worries about the 69-year-old inmates health.
Birmingham is one of 238 city-state-regional entities vying for Amazon's HQ2 headquarters, but the city's campaign to reel in the online retailer is already turning heads.

Newsweek, for example, included the city among its list of the "Five Most Bizarre Bids" because of its...ardor, you might say.

Consider a few tweets from the Bring A to B twitter site, attached to the city's campaign:

A dinner at Bottega is how babies are made, Amazon. #bringatob  Bring A to B (@BringAtoB) October 23, 2017

Amazon, we got a 100% match on Bumble. Wanna go on a date? #BringAtoB  Bring A to B (@BringAtoB) October 22, 2017

Tuck us in to bed, Amazon. #bringatob  Bring A to B (@BringAtoB) October 21, 2017

Hey Amazon. Boop. #bringatob  Bring A to B (@BringAtoB) October 22, 2017

You get the idea. You might expect Huntsville, for example, to tell the city, "Get a room."

Anyway, Newsweek took this a step farther, noting the city's romantic pitch.

"Birmingham, Alabama set up giant replicas of Amazon's Dash buttons around the city for people to press," the news site wrote. "More than 600 pregenerated tweets were sent to the company every time the buttons were pressed, including: "Amazon, we got a 100% match on Bumble. Wanna go on a date?" and "We are Chipotle and these other cities are Taco Bell, Amazon."

Last month, Amazon announced it wanted to open a second North American headquarters, with as many as 50,000 jobs and $5 billion of investment.
Corporate Realty has purchased a parcel adjacent to Baker's Row near Regions Field in downtown Birmingham for future redevelopment, the company announced.

A two-story warehouse currently sits on the property located along the railroad tracks on 14th Street South across the street from Railroad Park.

Construction on the project will begin in the third quarter of 2018, the company said.

The terms of the sale, which closed on Tuesday, weren't immediately available.

"Bringing life to the western edge of Railroad Park with vibrant Class A mixed-use tenants in the coming year will greatly complement the Parkside District," Corporate Realty Chief Operating Officer Meredith Calhoun said in a statement.

The western edge of Railroad Park has become a hot spot for development. The Baker's Row Building, a joint partnership between LIV Development and Corporate Realty, at the corner of 1st Avenue South and 14th Street South is 100 percent leased.

Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, KPS Group, Under Armour and Corporate Realty has offices there.

"We envision the western edge of the Parkside District becoming a tremendous statement for the city," Corporate Realty Chief Development Officer Brian Wolfe said. "We are meeting regularly to collaborate with developers of projects within this area, between 14th South and I-65, to ensure proper and best uses while preventing duplication of efforts."

Corporate Realty is meeting with such groups as Shannon Waltchack, Third & Urban and REV Birmingham on infrastructure assessment, land planning, development concepts, and improvements to the area at large.

"All are working in sync to see the district come together in the best possible way," Wolfe said.
A German political delegation will be making several planned stops in Alabama Wednesday to discuss trade and business ties.

In all, the delegation will be making stops in Birmingham, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa as part of a swing through the U.S. from California to Washington, D.C.

Its theme is "The Future of the Automobile - Trade, Production and Technology." Included in the Alabama stops are a business roundtable in Montgomery tomorrow morning and an evening reception in Birmingham hosted by the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama.

Michael Johnson, a shareholder in Baker Donelson's Birmingham office and Honorary Consul of Germany for Alabama, will accompany the delegation, headed by Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, minister of economic affairs of Baden-Wurttemberg, a state in southwest Germany bordering France and Switzerland.

Alabama's trade exports to Germany are on the rise, and it is Alabama's top international investor. The delegation's visit also comes shortly after the announcement of a $1 billion investment in Mercedes-Benz's Tuscaloosa plant.

Economic bonds between the U.S. and Germany became an issue earlier this year when in May, the German news outlet Der Spiegel quoted President Donald Trump as saying during a closed-door meeting in Brussels that "the Germans are bad, very bad."

"Look at the millions of cars that they sell in the U.S.," he was quoted as saying. "We're going to stop that."

The statement was attributed later to a translation error. Instead Trump was said to be stating problems with the German trade surplus of $65 billion. But among the topics the Alabama delegation is expected to discuss will be Washington's impact on foreign direct investment, and why German businesses "feel Alabama is a second home," according to a news release.

The delegation will include 30 German state, business and media representatives, and is expected to meet with Gov. Kay Ivey, Alabama Secretary of Commerce Greg Canfield, Birmingham Mayor William Bell and members of the German American Chamber of Commerce.

Also on the agenda will be automotive, aviation and manufacturing trends in the global market as well as Alabama's role in Germany's industrial sectors.
Birmingham Mayor-elect Randall Woodfin on Monday announced the creation of three citizen-led committees to address neighborhood revitalization and public safety, social justice and transparency and efficient government.

"It is time to take those priorities we heard from the people and put together a process to fully understand and address them in a way that will improve the lives of our citizens in all 23 communities and all 99 neighborhoods," Woodfin said.

Over the next 100 days, these committees are charged with evaluating current city services within their respective areas, identifying world-class best practices and opportunities for the city and develop accountability measures and budget metrics to help achieve success, said Ed Fields, Woodfin's transition coordinator.

Woodfin will take office on Nov. 28.

Woodfin said he made a pledge during his campaign to be committed and focus every day on neighborhood revitalization.

"To me there is nothing more important than helping to improve all 99 neighborhoods in our city," he said. "We want our neighborhoods to be safer and for our residents to have afforded opportunity for educational ... gains. We must demand that city services that are needed to improve the quality of life for every Birmingham family be non-negotiable."

The mayor-elect said he is working to make city finances transparent. He said the city's checkbook and monthly financial statements will be posted online.

"What we want to do is overcommunicate," Woodfin told AL.com. "Transparency is not hard. We have nothing to hide. These are public dollars. These are tax dollars. The public deserves to know how it is spent at all times. Whatever it is."

Here are the committees:

The Neighborhood Revitalization and Public Safety Committee will focus on blight, affordable housing, public safety, small business development and transportation.

Co-chairs are Herschell Hamilton and Birmingham police Detective Ralph Patterson.

Hamilton is the managing partner of BLOC Global Group, a commercial real estate development and consulting services firm. Patterson performs investigations for the city's business compliance unit, City Council public safety committee and other city departments.

The Social Justice Committee will focus on expanding access to quality healthcare, addressing poverty, human and civil rights, environmental concerns, homelessness, equality and other issues that plague Birmingham.

"We can be a social justice hub for the nation," she said.

Co-chairs are Dr. Nancy Dunlap and human rights attorney Richard Rice.

Dunlap has practiced medicine for more than 25 years. She is professor emerita of medicine and scholar for the Lister Hill Center for Health Policy at UAB. She is the former dean of the School of Medicine for the University of Virginia.

The Transparency and Efficient Government Committee will lead the implementation of Operation Restore Trust to increase transparency and accountability at City Hall. The committee will also lead the effort to reform city regulations and processes to make sure Birmingham is open for business expansion.

Co-chairs are Daniel Coleman and Annie Allen.

Coleman is the former CEO of KCG Holdings. He is currently a lecturer at Birmingham-Southern College. Allen is owner of iSeek Solutions, a management consulting firm.

Fields said the committee co-chairs will immediately work to appoint residents to their committees. The committees will present an initial report on their findings by mid-December and an updated report in mid-February. Final reports are due in early March, he said.

Anyone interested in being involved is asked to send an email to transition@randallwoodfin.com.

Other committees will be announced in the coming weeks.

Woodfin said these other committees will address education, workforce development and training, economic development and entrepreneurship.

Addressing violent crime

Patterson said residents will be able to see a difference in their police department on the first day Woodfin is in office. "They will see a visibility they have not seen before. They will see a presence they have not seen before," he said.

This will happen utilizing personnel that the police department already has, Patterson said. There will be overt and covert operations. "We will have to use our resources to get them on the streets with additional hours," he added.

Patterson said making more visible police presence will help reduce violent crime in public places.

"All crime occurs because of opportunity," he said, "and we have to be able to work to remove those opportunities."

Patterson said the police department has to start recruiting area students. He said there's room to add more in the police academy.

"There are approximately 850 members of the Birmingham Police Department," Patterson said. "We are going to be very resourceful in the utilization of each and every individual that is a part of the Birmingham Police Department. In doing so, we will provide greater visibility. We will provide a presence in each and every neighborhood. We will be effective. We will be efficient. We will be very professional in our approach."

Earlier this month, Woodfin announced that retired Gen. Charles Krulak - credited for saving Birmingham-Southern College and a decorated Marine - and Bobbie Knight, a former Alabama Power vice president, would lead his transition team.
A Birmingham teen succumbed to his injuries following a single-vehicle wreck in Talladega County on Monday, Alabama State Troopers said.

Jakwuan Trevarius Humphery, 19, was driving a 2000 Chevrolet Impala on Interstate 20 west when his vehicle left the road and struck an embankment at 5 a.m. Troopers said Humphery was not wearing a seat belt at the time and later passed away because of his injuries. The accident happened five miles east of Lincoln.

Troopers did not release additional information since the wreck is still under investigation.
The body of an Etowah County man who was missing since Friday was found Tuesday in a crashed vehicle, authorities said.

The family of 26-year-old Alex Messier said the Altoona father was last seen about 10 p.m. Friday at Jemison Demsey Metals in Gadsden.

At that time, he was sleeping in his 1995 burgundy four-door Chevrolet Blazer in the company parking lot.

Messier had a young son and another baby on the way. The family filed a missing person's report in Etowah County.

Alabama State Troopers on Tuesday said Messier was found dead Tuesday in his Chevrolet Blazer, which was overturned in a ravine. Troopers said they believe the crash happened about 11 p.m. Friday on U.S. 278 three miles north of Attalla but was not reported until Tuesday.

The crash remains under investigation.
A 24-year-old suspect accused in the traffic death of a Birmingham man has now been indicted in the case.

A Jefferson County grand jury indicted Cody Allen Abney on a reckless manslaughter charge. The indictment was issued Oct. 20, and made public Tuesday. Abney is charged in the June death of 69-year-old Fred Cornelius Wilson II, who died following a series of wrecks Abney caused, police said.

According to the indictment, recklessly caused the death of Wilson by driving a motor vehicle at an excessive rate of speed, while fleeing a scene, and under the influence of Alprazolam and/or Clonazepam and/or Lorazepam.

Wilson was killed on June 8. Police at the time said Abney was driving a truck stolen out of Hueytown when he hit a car on Bessemer Road and fled the scene. Abney then got on the interstate and exited off of Arkadelphia Road. A lookout bulletin was issued to other officers in the area.

A nearby officer on patrol saw Abney hit four vehicles, including the officer's patrol car, between the 600 and 800 blocks of Seventh Street West around 5 p.m. Wilson was hit and pinned under a white truck that the suspect hit.

Wilson was taken to UAB Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly before 3 a.m. the following day.

An Alabama Power employee who was on a routine call was sitting in his work vehicle when it was struck by the suspect as well. The employee was taken to the hospital for observation, but was Ok.

According to court records, Abney was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty in 2015 to second-degree forgery and second-degree theft of property. He was released on Sept. 16, 2016.

Abney has been jailed on $90,000 since his June 9 arrest. A trial date has not yet been set.
UPDATE March 18, 2021: This case was dismissed.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: A Jefferson County high school teacher arrested in a Hoover road rage incident now faces another charge.

Amol Kaushal, a 23-year-old history teacher at McAdory High School, has been arrested on a second charge of menacing in connection with a second road rage incident, Hoover police said Tuesday. On Monday, authorities announced the first menacing charge against the recent Samford University graduate.

The incident that led to the newest charge against Kaushal happened about 6 p.m. on Aug. 30. A female victim told police she was traveling on Ross Bridge Parkway when a vehicle began tailgating her. The suspect - now identified as Kaushal - passed her in a no-passing zone. As he did so, said Capt. Gregg Rector, he made an obscene gesture and pointed a handgun at her.

Kaushal was arrested in that incident about 9:50 a.m. Tuesday at his home in the 2800 block of Ashby Lane in Hoover.

He was also arrested Friday by Hoover police in a similar incident. Police said on Oct. 12 they were notified of a possible road rage incident on John Hawkins Parkway earlier that day. The victim in the case said the suspect - Kaushal - was driving erratically on Ross Bridge Parkway and continued to do so after they both turned onto John Hawkins Parkway.

While the victim was stopped in traffic, Kaushal pulled up next to her in his vehicle and waved a pistol out of the window before driving away. She was able to write down the suspect's tag number and gave that information to police.

Kaushal is a first-year teacher at McAdory. School officials have not responded to requests for comment. His status at the school was not immediately available.

In both cases, Kaushal is charged with menacing. His bond on each charge was $1,000.

Alabama law says a person commits the crime of menacing if, by physical action, he intentionally places or attempts to place another person in fear of imminent serious physical injury.

"This suspect clearly has some anger issues and his outrageous behavior in our city will not be tolerated,'' Rector said. "So far we've had two known victims who have had the misfortune of coming into contact with Mr. Kaushal while driving. They were simply obeying the traffic laws and minding their own business when they got a handgun waved at them."

"We're glad they came forward and we encourage any others who had a similar experience to do the same,'' he said. "Road rage encounters can be extremely dangerous and for anyone who commits this type of maniacal act, we'll do everything we can to find you and arrest you."

Anyone with additional information about this case or similar crimes is asked to call Sgt. Clint Blackmon at 205-444-7582.
A Miami couple took impersonating law enforcement to a new level by detaining, interviewing and even taking DNA swabs from their victims, according to police and court documents.

A Jefferson County grand jury on Friday indicted Elayna Barone, 37, and Glen Lambert, 35, on charges of impersonating a peace officer and second-degree robbery. Homewood police identified two victims in the cases, but said there are at least seven other victims they have not been able to find.

The indictments stem from an investigation, and subsequent arrests, that took place one year ago. Homewood police spokesman Sgt. John Carr said it began when authorities were notified by Prattville police who were armed with some unusual evidence.

Officers in Prattville, as part of an investigation in their city, came upon a video recorder in a hotel room. The footage showed what initially appeared to be police investigating a prostitution sting, but Prattville detectives didn't recognize the officers involved and soon learned they weren't officers at all.

Elayna Barone

The information on the camera led them to contact Homewood police, who started their own probe. Investigators turned up two men who had been victimized by the pair in October 2016 at the Hampton Inn on State Farm Parkway.

Carr said detectives learned that Barone would pose as a prostitute in online advertisements. When the victim showed up in the hotel room, Lambert was hiding in the closet and would emerge, posing as an immigration officer. He was holding what looked like a police radio which he was talking into and then donned gloves to collect evidence. He also was videoing the entire time.

Lambert, he said, even used Q-tips as he pretended to take DNA swabs from the inside of the victim's cheek. While Lambert was doing his detective work, Carr said, Barone was collecting evidence which including the victim's wallet and other personal belongings.

The victims were told they weren't being arrested at that time, but they would receive a bond notice at a later date and then their property would be returned to them. Both victims lost $160.

One of the victims was a white male; the other a Hispanic male. Police believe the couple targeted Hispanic victims because of their reluctance to report the crime to law enforcement.

Homewood police obtained warrants against Barone and Lambert, and the U.S. Marshals fugitive task force arrested them in Miami. Barone and Lambert were booked into the Jefferson County jail in January, and have remained there since their arrests. Barone's bond is set at $160,000. Lambert is held without bond.

The month before police believe the pair carried out the crimes in Alabama, North Carolina police issued a lookout bulletin for Barone and an unidentified accomplice. According to Fayetteville police, their Human Trafficking Unit was investigating Barone. The North Carolina victim told police he responded to an advertisement and met Barone at a Fayetteville hotel. While in the room, an unknown male posed as a law enforcement officer and allowed the victim leave after seizing his money as part of the alleged investigation.

Fayetteville detectives charged Barone with solicitation for prostitution and obtaining property by false pretenses. They were asking for the public's help in finding her, and identifying her accomplice. At the time, they said, she was believed to be traveling between New York and Florida, with frequent stops in Fayetteville.

Carr said there's no telling where else the pair went. "I'm sure they've been all over,'' he said.

He said he has no idea why they went to such elaborate measures to rob someone. "They were very good actors, very convincing,'' Carr said. "It's crazy."
A Warrior man pleaded guilty to a lesser charge Monday for the 2014 death of a 1-year-old boy.

James Ryan McCord, 23, was originally charged with capital murder in 1-year-old Canaan Wilson's death. McCord's trial was scheduled to begin this week, but Monday he pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide, which is a misdemeanor.

McCord was ordered by Jefferson County Circuit Judge Stephen Wallace to serve one year in the Jefferson County Jail.

"It was a good resolution for both sides," McCord's attorney Charles Salvagio said. "There are no winners when a child dies. Mr. McCord was the last person with the child, and he took responsibility for that."

Jefferson County Deputy District Attorney Deborah Danneman said the toddler died after suffering an injury while in McCord's care. "My heart is with victim's family and I hope that this brings them closure so they can begin to heal," she said.

Canaan died Sept. 25, 2014. McCord's indictment states that he caused the death of Canaan "by causing blunt force trauma to his head by beating, and/or pushing, and/or shoving, and/or striking him with his hands and/or feet and/or an unknown object."

One of McCord's previous attorneys said the toddler's death was caused by a fall down stairs and was an "unfortunate accident." McCord was indicted after he waived his preliminary hearing in April 2016.

McCord has remained free on a $100,000 bond while his case was pending.
A 47-year-old man was arrested this past weekend after running from police and sheriff's deputies in Madison County.

Raabe (Madison County Jail photo)

Clifton Raabe was driving a Camaro on Hobbs Island Road without the headlights turned on Friday evening when a Madison County deputy attempted to pull him over, authorities said. Raabe, a 47-year-old from Owens Cross Roads fled and entered the Huntsville city limits, said sheriff's Lt. Brian Chaffin. The deputy lost sight of Raabe and Huntsville officers joined the search.

Raabe later returned to the Hobbs Island Road area, was spotted by deputies and again fled, Chaffin said. The suspect got out of the Camaro and jumped into the Tennessee River, the lieutenant said.

Raabe was captured and taken to the Madison County Jail on charges of driving under the influence of a controlled substance, reckless endangerment, running a red light, expired tag and improper passing. He has been released on bail.
n Monday, the Russian film Matilda finally premiered in St Petersburgs Marinski Theatre amid heavy security. Its release, originally scheduled for autumn 2016, had been postponed three times. Over the past year, the film has faced a string of controversies culminating in threats against cinemas and acts of violence that have left some Russian observers puzzled.

The film tells the story of the romance between prima ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya and the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II. With a budget of $25m, the participation of some 2,000 extras, the use of 7,000 costumes and scenes shot in the Kremlin and lavish royal palaces, Matilda was supposed to be a simple state-sponsored romantic drama showing off the splendour of Tsarist Russia. Instead, it faced a campaign calling for it to be banned.

In the months after the trailer for the film was released in April 2016, various conservative voices denounced it on social media, pointing out that Nicholas II, who along with his family was executed by Bolsheviks in 1918, was canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000.

Natalia Poklonskayas campaign against Matilda

But it was when Natalia Poklonskaya, a member of the State Duma, took the case to the General Prosecutors Office in early November 2016 that the controversy grew.

Poklonskaya first made international headlines in 2014 when at age 34 she was appointed prosecutor of Crimea. The video of the press conference where she announced her appointment went viral and turned her into an anime heroine. In September 2016, she took a seat in the Duma as a member of the ruling United Russia Party. Poklonskayas main accusation against the film was that it insults believers feelings, which is a criminal offence in Russia, according to a law passed in 2013.

As her campaign against Matilda gained momentum, Alexei Uchitel, its director, sought legal help.

The first statements of Poklonskaya evoked laughter because, from the point of view of logic, they looked really bizarre, said lawyer Konstantin Dobrinin, who started working on Uchitels case in early December 2016.

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Poklonskaya was persistent. Within a year she filed 43 complaints against the film, despite receiving rejections from the prosecution each time. She wrote posts opposing it on her personal account on the Russian social media network VKontakte, including ones that accused German actor Lars Eidinger, who plays Nicholas II in the film, of Satanism.

Poklonskaya has received support from various public figures, including Chechen President Ramazan Kadyrov, Orthodox Church clerics, and the head of the public council of Russias culture ministry.

In February, a little known Christian organisation called Christian State started sending threatening letters to cinemas warning them against screening Matilda. According to Dobrinin, the authorities did not take action against the threats.

In the following months, the government also stayed away from the controversy. When asked about the film in June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would not get involved but that he knew Uchitel as a patriotic and talented man. Uchitels protests to the authorities and Dobrinins complaint against Poklonskaya to the ethics committee of the State Duma did not yield any results.

Then on August 31, Molotov cocktails were thrown at the building where Uchitels studio is located in St Petersburg. A week later a man drove a truck full of explosive substances into a cinema in the city of Ekaterinburg (1,800km east of the capital, Moscow). On September 11, two cars parked under Dobrinins office in Moscow were set on fire; notes left at the scene of the arson said Burning for Matilda. Immediately after, two cinema chains announced that they would not be screening Matilda; Russias state-owned Channel One had also said that it would not be showing the film. The two leading actors, Eidinger and Michalina Olszanska, who played Matilda, declared that they would not be attending its premiere in October.

According to Dobrinin, Poklonskayas campaign and claims that the film is blasphemous and insulting to believers encouraged psychologically unstable people to carry out the attacks.

Poklonskaya, who did not respond to requests for comment from Al Jazeera, did publicly condemn the violent acts, but continued with her campaign.

Just two days after the last attack, Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky released a statement, denouncing the violence: Ive been accused of being too conservative, and as a conservative, I would like to say that such [violent] activists discredit the states cultural policies and the Church.

The statement also said that there was no reason for the ministry to deny Matilda a screening permit.

Within a week of Medinskys statement, the police had arrested three members of the Christian State organisation, including Alexander Kalinin, its leader.

State support for conservative values

But what puzzled some observers is that a campaign against a state-sponsored film was allowed to go on for so long. The films budget was part public money which came from a state cinema fund and part private  with some alleging that that too came from the Kremlin via an offshore company.

There is still no clear answer [why this happened]. It all looks weird, says Mikhail Fishman, a Russian journalist and presenter on independent Russian TV channel Rain.

What was weird about the whole thing was that [Uchitel] is part of the system, [] hes connected to the state, funded by the state, or by groups really close to the state. Poklonskaya is also part of the state system. And she starts attacking, its like one attacking the other, explains Fishman.

He also says he is puzzled by the involvement of the Christian State group because he had never heard of the organisation prior to the threats it issued against the film.

Ivan Otrakovsky, the leader of another Orthodox political organisation Svetlaya Rus, told Al Jazeera that he knew Kalinin well, as he was active in church and monastery gatherings and events. He says he does not follow his violent means but agreed that the film should be banned and those who made it excommunicated from the Church.

These liberal forces, they detest the rthodox and the Muslims, I call them Satanists  those who purposefully destroy the Russian soul. And Im convinced its this type of people who are behind the film, Matilda, says Otrakovsky.

According to Fishman, the Matilda controversy is linked the growing state support for conservative values. Conservative attacks on cultural events, arts and books have happened before in Russia, but never on this scale, he says.

Russia is a hub of traditional values, that is [Putins] point since he came back to power in 2012 [] He uses it as a tool, Fishman says.

But, in his opinion, Putin probably has nothing to do with the Matilda controversy. He thinks it might be the result of a clash of factions within the ruling elite, one of them possibly using Poklonskaya as a front.

In mid-September, Russian journalist and commentator Yury Saprikin wrote that the campaign against Matilda might be used to rally support for the planned creation of a new conservative party or public organisation.

But regardless of whether there is indeed a clash within the Kremlins walls or a new political project emerging, the controversy surrounding the film made it the most anticipated Russian motion picture. Russias most popular film website Kinopoisk gave it an anticipation rating of 86 percent, the highest among upcoming Russian films. Its premiere at the Marinksy Theatre was sold out.

Follow Mariya Petkova on Twitter: @mkpetkova
Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh  Since August 25, about 600,000 Rohingya refugees have crossed over into Bangladeshs southeastern districts from Myanmar.

More than half are women, and 60 percent of these are girls under 18. They have faced a treacherous journey across the border, fleeing violence in northern Rakhine State in Myanmar.

This story follows Laila, who is five months pregnant, and her two children. Laila arrived in Bangladesh in late September. She spent a night on an island, taking shelter in a local school, before travelling by boat to mainland Bangladesh, her fare paid by locals aiding the refugees.

Laila received food and a piece of tarpaulin before being transported to Balukhali camp, where she arrived after dark.
Xi micromanages China in a way that separates him from previous party leaders. This is both his strength and weakness.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the worlds largest political party as well as one of the longest ruling. With a membership of almost 90 million, it is larger than the population of most countries in the world. It has thus far been able to withstand strong challenges caused by rapid social and economic change as well as the fallout from the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the Soviet Communist Party.

In fact, in recent years the CCP has strengthened and centralised its grip, reaching into every corner of Chinese society. Through an internal and rigorous appointment system the Party also controls the Chinese political system at all administrative levels and from the basic township level up to the national level, no leader is appointed without the consent of the CCP. For these reasons, the current 19th Party Congress is a major event whose significance can be compared with the US presidential election.

At the congress, or rather at the first meeting of the new Central Committee elected at the congress, the CCPs current leader, Xi Jinping, will be appointed general-secretary for a new five-year period. At the National Peoples Congress in March next year, he will also be reappointed president of the Peoples Republic of China. He will also continue as chairman of the powerful military commission and of a number of other important commissions and leading groups.

Xi Jinping has been called the most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping. But actually, Xi Jinpings way of ruling China is fundamentally different from Deng Xiaoping. Deng was never formally number one in the party or in the government apparatus. He held informal power and ruled from behind and, in fact, seldom participated in formal meetings. Xi Jinping is Chairman of Everything and micromanages China in a way that separates him from previous party leaders in China. This is both his strength and weakness.

China has not turned capitalist under Xi. by

When Xi Jinping, in 2012, was appointed general-secretary of the CCP, China was in the middle of a deep political crisis. Important Party leaders such as Bo Xilai were plotting to advance their own career based on populist campaigns and were protected by the powerful security tsar and member of the standing committee Zhou Yongkang.

In the military, top generals were engaged in severe corruption, which among other things involved buying and selling of positions. Former party leaders such as Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin saw the writing on the wall and gave Xi Jinping green light to clean up the political system and the military establishment.

Xi has used this to conduct an intensive anti-corruption campaign, which, so far, has involved hundreds of thousands of CCP cadres and has resulted in the purge of more than 200 ministerial-level officials. Less known is his campaign to create a party where the focus is on quality rather than quantity. The growth of the party has been reduced and new and strict rules for recruiting and training party members have been implemented, including regulations for demoting and disciplining Party cadres.

Xi has also spearheaded a centralisation of Party leadership. He has emphasised that the Party should be presented at all levels and in all types of organisations, agencies and enterprises in China. Even private and foreign-funded companies are now required to have a Party committee, which has to be consulted on major issues regarding running the company.

He is also stressing a policy of overlapping positions between Party and state and between Party and business, so that the Party secretary in a province or county also serves as chairman of the local peoples congress and the Party secretary in a state-owned company also serves as chairman of the board.

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This process has evolved to such an extent that some analysts have started talking about the stratification of the Party. In his recent speech to the Party congress, Xi emphasised that Party and government bodies at the provincial, prefectural and county levels should work together as one office. This is also different from Deng Xiaoping who advocated the separation of Party and government.

In November 2013, Xi put forward an important document which indicated that he was in favour of market reform: in the future, the market should not just play a basic role, it should actually play a decisive role. However, it also stipulated that the public sector and the state should control the market. Since then state ownership has been strengthened.

The big state-owned enterprises have not been broken into smaller competitive companies as envisaged by the reform proposal; rather a process of consolidation and of merging the big state-owned enterprises has taken place.

Some scholars like to talk about the dominance of the private sector in todays China. Yet, the strategic sectors of the economy are still completely dominated by large state-owned companies and through share-owning and other mechanisms they control numerous companies that formally appear as privately owned.

China has not turned capitalist under Xi. Capitalist economic forms such as market forces are playing an important role in the economy. However, this is done in an effort to develop productive forces in order to create a more affluent society, which is the precondition for laying the foundation for the socialist transition. This is still the ultimate goal of CCP leadership. It is wishful thinking on the part of Western observers to believe that Chinese leaders are only paying lip service to this goal and actually should be seen as capitalist roaders in disguise. They are part of a hegemonic ideological system which currently is being reinforced rather than weakened.

This system relies on the ubiquitous power of the Party. Nothing in the documents and speeches from the Party congress indicates a weakening of the Partys role in the coming five-year congress period. It is also hard to find evidence that Xi Jinping, after having finally consolidated his power, might introduce basic economic and political reforms in an attempt to introduce Western-style democracy. On the contrary, in his speech to the Party congress he stated that socialism with Chinese characteristics offers a new and better option for countries who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Washington to withdraw military assistance to Myanmar forces as it considers measures against human rights abuses.

The United States is considering sanctions against Myanmar authorities for its violent, traumatic abuses of the majority Muslim Rohingya in restive Rakhine state.

Washington may use a human rights law to target leaders or groups involved in the violence in the western state, the US Department of State said in a statement on Monday.

We express our gravest concern with recent events in Rakhine state and the violent, traumatic abuses Rohingya and other communities have endured, the statement said.

It is imperative that any individuals or entities responsible for atrocities, including non-state actors and vigilantes, be held accountable.

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Since August 25, the Myanmar army has waged a brutal military campaign in Rakhine against the Rohingya.

More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled the country, most arriving in Bangladesh by foot or by boat, with aid agencies struggling to cope with the influx.

We are exploring accountability mechanisms available under US law, including Global Magnitsky targeted sanctions, Heather Nauert, State Department spokesperson, said.

Under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, the president can block or revoke the visas of certain foreign individuals and entities or impose property sanctions on them.

The US government last imposed sanctions on Myanmar in 1997 when it was under a military dictatorship. Following a transition towards democracy, the measures were lifted in October 2016 by then President Barack Obama.

Benjamin Zawacki, an independent Southeast Asia analyst, said while the proposed sanctions are far more appropriate, if imposed, they come a month late.

Any preventative element of these sanctions has long passed its sell-by date, he told Al Jazeera, speaking from Thailands capital, Bangkok.

The only thing left now is the punitive element, and it remains to be seen whether they will be felt as such by these generals that have been targeted.





The US also announced that it is withdrawing military assistance to Myanmar officers and units operating in northern Rakhine.

Zawacki suggested that an arms embargo would be effective against the military.

If there is, in fact, no punitive effect on these generals, they [sanctions] need to be strengthened and widened by way of military force projection, he said.

Last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the US holds Myanmars military leadership responsible for its harsh crackdown of the Rohingya.

The UN describes the Rohingya as the worlds most persecuted people.

The minority group has suffered years of discrimination and have been denied citizenship in Myanmar since 1982.

In Mondays statement, the US urged the safe and voluntary return of those who have fled or been displaced in Rakhine, as well as a credible path to citizenship.
Zeid Raad al-Hussein, the United Nations rights chief, has threatened to push for international intervention as Myanmars military reportedly continues carrying out atrocities against Rohingya civilians.

Zeid Raad al-Hussein, UN rights chief, has threatened to push for international intervention as Myanmars military reportedly continues carrying out atrocities against Rohingya civilians.

The violence has forced more than 600,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh and created a major humanitarian crisis.

International aid organisations in Bangladesh are sounding the alarm and asking the international community for more funding.

Al Jazeeras Mohammed Jamjoom reports.
A widowed mother rues her inability to provide for her children living under siege by Houthi rebels in Taiz.

Mona al-Zoraigi stands, a forlorn figure in the dilapidated kitchen of her bombed-out apartment, consumed with guilt that she cannot provide her youngest child with the one thing he has been yearning for most.

Zakaria wont be celebrating his seventh birthday, she tells Al Jazeera. We cant afford to. The last time I even bought the children clothes was at Eid al-Fitr last year [July 2016].

Food is more important to us.





Al-Zoraigi has been the sole provider for her family of five since her husband, Saif, died prematurely while undergoing medical treatment for a manageable form of diabetes.

He was only 38 when his kidneys failed, and their local hospital in Taiz, Yemens second largest city, could not provide basic medical assistance to nurse him back to health.

Im all alone, she tells Al Jazeera, choking back tears.

We were happily married for 13 years. He was my life, my childrens protector. I feel lost after his death.

For the past five years, the local community has tried to help whenever possible, but in the throes of war and amid a debilitating siege, resources in Taiz have been stretched wafer thin.

Mona came to us around 18 months ago complaining she didnt have an income and the means to provide for her family, Maeen al-Shahari, a local official, told Al Jazeera. She now lives off the goodwill of others. Its a miserable situation.

I've met parents who've had to choose between getting one child treated in a hospital or whether to feed their other child. This is the most difficult decision a parent could ever have to make. by Rajat Madhok, UNICEF

Al-Zoraigi added: When my kids see others eating sweets and playing with new things, they rush to me hoping I can give them the same. I cant. I dont know what to do.

For almost three years, Houthi rebels have besieged Taiz, a city that has become one of the major front lines in the battle for control of Yemen.

Forces loyal to the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi have been unable to dislodge the rebels from the strategic city, which overlooks the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a narrow chokepoint through which around 3.8 million barrels of oil pass daily.

Everyone is a victim

A Saudi-imposed land, naval and air blockade has also failed to deal an economic blow to the rebels who control the capital Sanaa  instead causing food prices to soar and pushing millions to the brink of famine.

Taiz has been devastated by the war, and everyone is a victim, Mohammed al-Ahmar, a local official in Taizs Madinat al-Noor neighbourhood, told Al Jazeera. Children and the elderly are the worst affected, suffering from depression and other terrible psychological disorders.

The conflict has taken a severe toll on Yemeni youth, with the United Nations warning that 80 percent of the countrys children are in desperate need of aid and two million are facing acute malnutrition.

The life of a child growing up in Yemen is far from normal, Rajat Madhok, a spokesman for the UN Childrens Fund (UNICEF), told Al Jazeera.

Two million children are out of school, another two million are suffering from acute malnutrition  With the ongoing crisis and dire humanitarian situation, prices of commodities have gone up, people have lost their jobs  Ive met parents whove had to choose between getting one child treated in a hospital or whether to feed their other child. This is the most difficult decision a parent could ever have to make.

Now, al-Zoraigi just prays that next year she can give Zakaria the birthday party he deserves, or at the least, a cake with some candles.
Chinas President Xi Jinping is at the centre of the partys image and the story of his rise to power has been carefully crafted, highlighting his early years living with poor farmers in the rural village of Liangjiahe.

Chinas President Xi Jinping is expected to be confirmed in his position for another five years at the Communist Party congress in Beijing this week.

Xi is at the centre of the partys image and the story of his rise to power has been carefully crafted, highlighting his early years living with poor farmers in the rural village of Liangjiahe.

Tourists flock to Liangjiahe, now an open-air tribute to where Uncle Xi started his long march, where they take tours and learn more about their leader.

Al Jazeeras and Andrew Thomas reports from Liangjiahe, China.
Gui Minhai was reportedly released after two years in Chinese jail, but her daughter says his whereabouts are unknown.

The daughter of Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai has expressed deep concerns about the wellbeing of her father, saying his family has not heard from him even though it has been a week since his reported release from Chinese custody.

This week I have slept with my phone on my pillow waiting for my father to call, Angela Gui said in a statement posted on social media on Tuesday. I will continue to do so until he does.





In a related post on Twitter, she wrote that her family had been informed about the release of Gui  who is a naturalised Swedish citizen  but insisted that he is NOT free.

Sofia Karlberg, a spokesperson for Swedens foreign ministry, confirmed to Al Jazeera that her office received information about Guis release, and is working to get more information about his case.

Karlberg confirmed that the foreign ministry is in touch with Guis family and the Chinese government, but added, We dont go into the details about the case.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Swedens Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom also said her office is seeking further clarification from China.

Mysterious disappearance

Gui had disappeared while on holiday in Thailand in October 2015.

He was one of five people to have gone missing that year from a Hong Kong bookstore and an affiliated publishing company, which specialises in political books critical of Chinas ruling Communist Party leaders.

Three months after his mysterious disappearance, Gui turned up in China claiming on state media that he voluntarily turned himself in to answer to a drunk-driving incident in 2003, which reportedly resulted in a death of a student.

Gui was later sentenced to two years in prison. The other individuals later reappeared in Hong Kong.

Guis detention and the disappearances of the other individuals prompted fears that Chinese authorities have been using tactics that infringe on Hong Kongs legal system.

At that time, Angela Gui, who is based in Britain, told reporters she suspected her father was abducted, and that his detention was related to his work in Hong Kong.

Strange phone call

In her statement, Angela Gui said that after receiving the news of her fathers impending release on October 17, Swedish embassy officials headed to the detention facility, where they had previously visited Gui on three different occasions.

However, as they arrived in the morning of the 17th, an official told them that my father had already been released at midnight, she said.

They were also told that he was free to travel and that they had no idea where he was.

Then, on Monday, Swedens consulate general in Shanghai reportedly received a strange phone call from someone claiming to be Gui, according to his daughter.

The caller reportedly informed Swedish officials that he would be applying for a passport, but that he needed to spend time with his mother, who is ill.

To my knowledge, my grandmother is not ill. My father is not in fact with her. It is very unclear where he is. I am deeply concerned for his wellbeing, Guis daughter wrote.





Al Jazeera contacted the Chinese embassy in Sweden for comment but did not receive a response.

Meanwhile, Chinas Foreign Ministry said in a statement released to Reuters: According to what we understand, because Gui Minhai has served his sentence for the crime of causing traffic accident casualties, he was released on Oct. 17.

Patrick Poon, China researcher at Amnesty International, said Guis reported release was a positive development but added that it must be treated with caution.

It remains to be seen if he is genuinely free, he said.

From the time Gui went missing to his reappearance in China and the release of his televised confession, authorities have shown a flagrant disregard for due process, Poon said.

The system is designed to break people and force them to go along with the Chinese governments version of events if they are to have any chance of being released.

If Gui Minhai is truly free, he must be able to leave China if he wishes and contact his family, free from any harassment by the Chinese government.
The number of people crossing the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa to southern Europe has been steadily increasing since the defeat of armed groups which combated illegal migration in the western coastal city of Sabratha.

The number of people crossing the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa to southern Europe has been steadily increasing since the defeat of armed groups that combated illegal migration in the western coastal city of Sabratha.

Refugees and migrants are fleeing onwards to Europe to escape life-threatening dangers and dire economic conditions plus widespread exploitation and abuse in Libya.

Al Jazeeras Mahmoud Abdelwahed reports from Tripoli, the Libyan capital.
Shortages in food and medicine are increasing the suffering of hundreds of thousands in besieged suburbs of Damascus.

The baby girls skin crinkled like thin paper, as their tiny mouths opened in pain. Their bodies could no longer cope with Syrias war.

Abeeda Fawaidar and Sahar Devdeh both died this week after just a month of life  the latest victims of the Syrian regime-imposed siege on the Eastern Ghouta area of rural Damascus.

Yahia Abo Yehia, a doctor at the hospital in Eastern Ghouta that treated the two babies, said they died because of malnutrition and a lack of equipment to treat intestinal complications.

There is no medical treatment for these cases, he told Al Jazeera. There is a lack of specialist equipment for measuring electrolytes and blood composition or for scanning.

Aid supplies met only five percent of nutritional needs in the region, Abo Yehia said, and children were severely lacking in vital nutrients.

As a paediatrician, I feel that the children of the world are my children. I suffer for their suffering, he said. How do you feel if your child dies before your eyes and you cannot give him anything? It is something painful.

Four-year siege

Eastern Ghouta, once renowned for its fertile soils and rich agricultural production, has been surrounded by Syrian government forces for four years. Once-abundant food supplies have dwindled, and medical supplies are almost completely gone.

We have many diseases to work on. There is no possibility of kidney dialysis, treating tuberculosis, liver inflammation, blood pressure disorders or diabetes, Abo Yehia told Al Jazeera.

The facilities in the centres are very bad. There are no sterilisation devices. There is no fuel to run the appliances.

Eastern Ghouta was supposed to be one of the de-escalation zones brokered a year ago by Iran, Russia and Turkey. But civil defence workers in the area report almost daily artillery fire and air raids, often resulting in civilian fatalities. They estimate that 955 surface-to-surface missiles have been dropped on Eastern Ghouta since July and 126 people killed.

Siege conditions in Eastern Ghouta have continued to deteriorate, constricting food, medical and educational supplies to hundreds of thousands of people, observers say.

In the past, food and necessities entered, at inflated prices, via intermediaries and dealers, local activist Abed al-Mayeen told Al Jazeera. Three months ago, the siege tightened, and since then little food or medicine has entered the area. The situation is getting worse; there is a shortage of food, medical supplies, milk and food supplements. This is truly the worst the siege has ever been.

Rising frustration

A 42-truck aid convoy operated by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations was allowed to enter some areas of Eastern Ghouta in late September. It delivered food, school supplies and childrens clothing to 25,000 people in three besieged towns. But that is a small proportion of the estimated 400,000 people in the area.

Al Jazeera spoke with multiple residents in various areas of Eastern Ghouta about the prices for basic goods in their hometowns.

Aosus, a civil society organisation in the region, said a bag of bread cost 1,100 Syrian pounds ($2.10), a kilo of sugar 4,600 pounds, and a kilo of bulgur wheat 1,800. Eyad Swrewel, a media activist in Douma, one of the areas worst hit by the siege, cited even higher prices, putting the cost of a kilo of sugar at 6,000 Syrian pounds ($11.60).

Residents in Eastern Ghouta have grown increasingly frustrated with what they see as insufficient action by the international community.

Siege and starvation have been used as a tactic of war by the Assad regime for the past six years, Jamal Malek, an aid worker in Eastern Ghouta working under a pseudonym, told Al Jazeera.

I cant believe the United Nations and international community is unable to do anything to help us. I am a father, and I look at my 16-month-old girl and say to myself, this is her fate too [malnourishment] if the siege continues.

The Syria Institute, which co-produces quarterly reports on sieges in Syria with the Netherlands-based NGO, PAX, said the area risked becoming the next eastern Aleppo unless the international community, including the UN Security Council, increased political pressure on besieging parties and their allies.

We are crying

Valerie Szybala, executive director of the Syria Institute, said the siege on Eastern Ghouta has tightened in the past few months, marking a particularly worrying case of a besieged community in Syria, where countrywide, more than 800,000 people live under blockade.

Recently, the lack of basic needs has become more acute since the government cut off the limited commercial trade at al-Wafideen checkpoint around three months ago, Szybala told Al Jazeera.

On top of the government-imposed siege, the situation is complicated by internecine fighting between the rebels controlling Eastern Ghouta.

Eastern Ghouta was plagued throughout the reporting period by fighting between armed opposition groups, said the latest siege report from the Syria Institute and PAX. The outcry from civilians in the form of protests and mediation initiatives had little success in stemming the simmering tensions, which are likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Talk of de-escalation zones and aid deliveries mean little to those not benefiting from them. Many in Eastern Ghouta are still watching month-old children waste away.

We are crying now, but we cant do anything, al-Mayeen said. There is no way of comprehending what it is like inside here.
Migrants have moved on to the area of Ouistreham due to tight security in the city of Calais, where the so-called jungle refugee camp was destroyed a year ago.

A small port town in northern France has become the new transit point for refugees trying to reach Britain.

Migrants have moved on to the area of Ouistreham due to tight security in the city of Calais, where the so-called jungle refugee camp was destroyed a year ago.

Some locals are not impressed with their new neighbours, while others are welcoming them.

Al Jazeeras Natacha Butler reports from Ouistreham.
Maryland governor introduces latest legal move in string of anti-BDS laws across the country.

Rights groups and Palestine advocacy organisations have blasted a Maryland executive order that bars state contracts for firms that boycott Israel as part of a legislative assault that targets the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

On Monday, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan signed the executive order (pdf), which accuses firms that boycott Israel of posing undue risks as contracting partners.

Surrounded by leaders of pro-Israel groups and Jewish organisations, Hogan addressed a press conference after signing the order.

There is no place in our state for boycotts and threats, he said, as reported by the Baltimore Sun.

At the time of publication, Hogans office had not replied to Al Jazeeras request for comment.

Brian Hauss, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), described the governors order as part of a legislative assault weve seen over the past few years on the right to boycott, citing a string of legal measures in states across the US.

Speaking to Al Jazeera by telephone, he described the measure as blatantly unconstitutional, referring to the US Constitutions First Amendment, which guarantees the freedom of expression.

BDS is a global campaign that was launched in 2005 with the intent of holding Israel accountable for violations of international law and Palestinian human rights.

Drawing from the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa, the movement calls for boycotting, divesting from and sanctioning Israel until it ends its decades-long occupation of Arab land, provides Palestinian citizens of Israel with full equality and allows Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.

Wave of legislation

In recent years, the movement has grown in the US, particularly on university and college campuses. In response, pro-Israel organisations have lobbied for measures that target students and state bills alike.

Throughout the last two years, at least 22 states have passed laws or implemented executive orders that target BDS activism.

These laws are examples of the state leveraging financial resources to coerce people to move away from political movements the state does not favour, Hauss said.

Whatever you think about the BDS movement, there is clear evidence of government viewpoint discrimination, he added.

Thats something that the First Amendment clearly prohibits.

Last week, Dickinson, a city in Texas, posted an application for hurricane relief funds that mandated applicants to sign an agreement promising they will not boycott Israel. The city cited a Texas law that prohibits state agencies from contracting companies that boycott Israel.

The move prompted widespread condemnation from rights groups, including the ACLU.

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In July, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper signed a law that prohibits state agencies from doing business with companies that engage in BDS.

A month earlier, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed HB 2409, a similar law which requires both state-contracted individuals and companies to provide a written certificate proclaiming that they are not participating in a boycott of Israel.

Earlier this month, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Kansas law on behalf of Esther Koontz, a public high school teacher who advocates a consumer boycott of Israeli products and international goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.

Chilling effect

Jack Saltzberg, executive director of the Israel Group, an organisation that lobbies against BDS, argued that anti-BDS legislation has nothing to do with curbing free speech.

It is generally legislation that constricts governmental institutions and beneficiaries from divesting from Israel, or at least following certain guidelines, he told Al Jazeera.

Therefore, when passed by a state, students in that states universities can freely say anything they want about Israel, or even vote to divest from Israel.

Rahul Saksena, a staff attorney at the US-based Palestine Legal, said that the wave of anti-BDS laws is designed to intimidate Palestine solidarity activists by creating a chilling effect.

Speaking to Al Jazeera by telephone, Saksena explained that the host of laws and bills follow in the tradition of anti-Palestinian measures that have targeted student activists in recent years.

Those measures include banning advocacy groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and suppressing pro-Palestinian protests and educational activities.

In May 2015, Canary Mission, a pro-Israel website, was created to track Palestine solidarity activists and dash their future employment prospects.

Since 2015, however, pro-Israel advocacy organisations have increasingly focused their efforts on supporting anti-BDS legislation, according to Saksena. Most of the legislation, he said, has enjoyed the support of both the Republican and Democratic parties.

The problem is that boycotts for Palestinian rights, like all boycotts, are protected by constitutional rights. by Rahul Saksena, staff attorney at Palestine Legal.

Saksena said efforts to stifle Palestine solidarity activism are evidence that pro-Israel organisations are unable to make their case on moral grounds.

Whats behind [this] is an unwillingness to confront the issue of Palestinian rights on its merits, he said. Instead, they want to silence the conversation.

He added: Rather than engaging in the conversation and having a debate about human rights abuses and violations of international law, they pour resources into pressuring universities and lawmakers to shut down the conversation.

Earlier this year, the federal Israel Anti-Boycott Act  a bill that seeks to criminalise boycotting Israel  was introduced in both the US House of Representatives and the Senate.

Signed by at least 100 civil society groups and human rights organisations, a joint statement published in August called on Congressional legislators to oppose the Israel Anti-Boycott Act.

Saksena said: The problem is that boycotts for Palestinian rights, like all boycotts, are protected by constitutional rights.
As Kenya heads to another election, politicians have ignored a grave health crisis compounded by a long protest.

Isiolo County, Kenya  Bedridden Amina Adan lifts her weak breasts in an attempt to squeeze a drop of milk for her hungry children.

The 37-year-olds seven daughters and sons, all of whom are younger than 15 years old, surround her narrow bed. They need their mother to be well.

All Adan owns is the familys one-bedroom village house, made of mud and an iron-sheet roof.

A drought killed most of her livestock; she has no food to feed her children. Her husband left home a few weeks ago with the only livestock that had remained, seeking pasture far away.

And now, a nurses strike that began more than four months ago has compounded her challenges of living in a harsh climate with poor infrastructure.

I started bleeding last Monday, she says. I was standing in the house doing my chores and all of a sudden a saw clots of blood dropping down my legs, the bleeding was so heavy that I lost consciousness. My children rushed and called neighbours who came to my rescue.

The strike by government nurses began in June over pay disputes  a low-paid nurse earns around $200 a month  and has seen the number of mothers dying from childbirth double, children miss out on vaccinations and the return of diseases such as malaria.

As Kenya prepares for another presidential election on Thursday, the question of ending the nurses strike has not been addressed comprehensively.

Neither ruling President Uhuru Kenyatta nor opposition leader Raila Odinga has pledged to revive the health sector.

When the strike started in June this year, I had planned to visit a clinic because I had missed my [period] for almost two years. Sadly, nurses went on strike, and I had nowhere to seek help. See, now I cannot walk. I am very weak, Adan says through tears.

Well-wishers from the neighbourhood took her to Merti Catholic Dispensary. The only public health facility in Merti district was deserted because of the strike.

At the dispensary, I was charged 1,500 shillings ($14.50). They put me on a drip and inserted a piece of cotton wool in my vagina to help control the bleeding. They referred me to Isiolo for specialised treatment. But in Isiolo, I dont have money to hire a car, and there is no ambulance here, so I am waiting to die. I have no help coming, says Adan.

Medical records indicated that Adan could have had a tumour in her cervix, saying she needed further examination and an urgent blood transfusion in a more advanced facility.

But a 240km drive in rough terrain lies between Adans village of Manyatta Sakuye and Isiolo town. Only four-wheel drive vehicles can manage the road, which has poor mobile phone coverage.

I wish the government ends the strike

As he walks through empty corridors, Peter Marete, a clinical officer at Merti Health Centre, confirms to Al Jazeera that most services at the hospital ground to a halt in June.

He attends to the most urgent cases with the help of just two co-workers  a laboratory technician and an administrative staffer. He has to give several children injections for kala-azar, the second largest parasitic killer in the world after malaria.

As you can see the situation is very bad here, he says. These children have come from very far with their parents.

Kala-azar is a very serious disease and if not treated can be fatal. It is very common in villages here and can only be treated at a public facility like this one.

Normally, it is nurses who give injections.

I am very aware of the many cases of patients like Amina who are stuck in the villages because of the strike and have no vehicles to ferry them, Marete says. We have no ambulances in the whole of this district, and this puts at risk the lives of patients who need urgent attention.

Services such as vaccinations, family planning and maternity have closed at his facility.

This nurses strike will have a very big impact on these services because many women are dying in their homes while delivering and no vaccination is going on for the children. I wish the government ends this strike immediately because people here have no alternatives, he says.

Isiolo County officials, including county deputy governor Abdi Ibrahim Issa, did not respond to Al Jazeeras request for comment.

As long as these politicians don't access public healthcare, they have no time to push a public healthcare agenda. A very sad situation indeed by Seth Panyako, secretary-general of nurses' union

More than 25,000 nurses of the Kenya National Union of Nurses demanded in June that the government signs a collective bargaining agreement (CBA), but were turned down. The CBA included requests for uniform and health risk allowances, which officials said would burden the taxpayer.

Instead of the CBA being signed, it was politicised. The prolonged strike is because the government has been insincere, says Seth Panyako, Kenya National Union of Nurses secretary-general.

On the coming election, he notes that privileged Kenyans use private healthcare and therefore have no concerns about the public sector.

As long as these politicians dont access public healthcare, they have no time to push a public healthcare agenda. A very sad situation indeed, he says.

The collapse of almost 95 percent of the public health sector has led to outbreaks of diseases such as malaria, Panyako says with concern.

Our primary healthcare has been broken down. Unless the government takes serious steps, we will see Kenyans continue to suffer.




While some are boycotting the vote rerun because they have no confidence in leaders, others say business is suffering.

Nairobi, Kenya  Politicians are crisscrossing the country, holding rallies as poll day fast approaches, but many Kenyans have had enough and want to see an end to the political crisis gripping the country.

TIMELINE: August 8: 15 million Kenyans cast votes in presidential poll August 12: Uhuru Kenyatta declared winner taking 54 percent. Raila Odinga, his nearest challenger, wins 45 percent September 1: Supreme Court nullifies results citing irregularities and illegalities in the election process. Orders rerun to be held with 60 days September 4: Electoral commission announces new presidential elections to take place on October 17 September 21: Electoral commission moves presidential election to October 26 saying it needs more time to meet the requirements set by Supreme Court October 10: Opposition leader Raila Odinga withdraws from election rerun, saying electoral officials failed to make necessary reforms October 12: Kenya bans protests in the three major cities as election fallout continues October 18: Roseyln Akombe, a senior commissioner at the electoral body, resigns and flees the country

A presidential election rerun is expected to take place on October 26 after the Supreme Court annulled the results of the Augusts poll won by Uhuru Kenyatta, citing illegalities and irregularities in the voting process.

Im boycotting the election. I have no confidence in them [the electoral body]. They are the same people that conducted the last election, Dolphin Anyango tells Al Jazeera.

She sits on the cement floor outside her one-bedroom house in the East African countrys biggest slum, Kibera, praying for a lasting solution to the political impasse.

For the first time in more than 15 years, Anyango, 35, will not be casting her vote.

She has pressing reasons for wanting to see an end to the political dispute between President Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga.

I look after two orphans. I make jewellery that I sell to foreign tourists and foreigners dont come to places with tension and violence, Anyango says.

Before the dispute, I used to make 2,000 shillings a day ($19). Now I make nothing. And I still have rent and taxes to pay, she adds.

Before September, presidential election results had never been thrown out.

The opposition has called on their supporters to boycott the October 26 vote, claiming the polls will not be free and fair.

Odinga, President Kenyattas main challenger, has also withdrawn from the race.

But the government has said the election will proceed and called on people to exercise their democratic right.

Aida Abdu Noor, a grandmother of five, lives a short drive from Anyangos home and looks forward to casting her vote.

If there is no violence, I will go out and vote because it is my right, Noor, a cloth seller, tells Al Jazeera.

No election is perfect. In every country, there are claims of votes been stolen. In Tanzania, it was like that. In Uganda the same thing. This problem exists everywhere, the 56-year-old says.

Unlike previous elections, campaign posters are mostly missing from billboards on major roads in the capital, Nairobi.

But street demonstrations have been frequent and deadly.

Businesses hurt

The country has been in election mode since the start of the year and businesses are hurting.

I used to travel to Tanzania and Uganda to buy and sell clothes. But out of fear, I havent been travelling lately. Im waiting for the election to finish, Noor says.

Analysts say it is understandable that Kenyans are not excited by the poll rerun.

Ordinary Kenyans must really feel short-changed by whats happened, Irungu Houghton, a political analyst, tells Al Jazeera.

We did think we had had a fair and free election, he says. But obviously what has happened is a number of illegalities and irregularities that went into the election have left most Kenyans worried about whether the election this time around will be something that we can be proud of.

For Anyango, the jewellery maker, she just wants things to go back to normal.

We want peace. We want democracy. But more than anything we want an end to this so we can go back and make a living, she said.
A Palestinian film festival on Sunday cancelled the screening of a movie by a Lebanese-French director following pressure by activists who opposed his previous work in Israel.

A Palestinian film festival on Sunday cancelled the screening of a movie by a Lebanese-French director following pressure by activists who opposed his previous work in Israel.

The Insult, Lebanons Oscar submission, and the latest movie by director Ziad Doueiri was set to close the Palestinian Days of Cinema festival on Monday and was competing for the festivals top award.

Last month, Doueiri was briefly detained and questioned by Lebanons military court on grounds he could have broken the law by filming a movie in Israel several years ago.

Ramallahs municipal government decided to ban the screening, on the grounds of preventing civil unrest.

Al Jazeeras Harry Fawcett reports from Ramallah.
Leader of UK Labour party and long-standing critic of Israel, chose not to attend event organised by pro-Israel group.

Palestinians in the UK have welcomed Jeremy Corbyns decision not to attend events organised by a pro-Israel group celebrating the Balfour Declaration centenary.

WHAT IS THE BALFOUR DECLARATION? For supporters of the Zionist cause, the declaration marks the first milestone leading to the creation of Israel in 1948. The declaration was contained in a letter dated November 2, 1917, to leading English Zionist Lord Walter Rothschild from British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour, promising British help in creating a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The letter conditioned British assistance so that there be no prejudice against the rights of existing non-Jewish populations living in the area. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire during the first world war, the UK became the dominant power in the region and established Mandate rule in Palestine.

A long-term critic of Israels occupation of Palestinian land, the leader of the opposition Labour Party has not yet explained his reasons for not attending About Balfour 100  a series of country-wide events in October and November marking the occasion including lectures, dinners, film screenings, and Jewish religious services.

November 2 marks 100 years since the declaration.

Ben Jamal, the director of the UK-based Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC), told Al Jazeera that others should follow Corbyns example.

Its highly appropriate that Jeremy Corbyn has refused the invite and shameful that any British politician would consider participating in an event that celebrates the declaration, he said, describing the Balfour statement as an act of imperialism by which Britain disregarded the rights, wishes, and claims of the Palestinian people who made up nearly 90 percent of the population of Palestine in 1917.

Pro-Palestinian groups have pressured Britain to apologise for the 1917 declaration, which promised the Zionist movement a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine.

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Foreign office officials have previously told Al Jazeera that the British government considers the declaration a historical statement and one it would not apologise for.

Supporters of the Zionist movement commemorate the declaration by then-British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour as the first step in the eventual creation of Israel.

However, for Palestinians, the declaration represents the moment an imperial power promised their land away to another people.

They hold Balfour responsible for their subsequent expulsion, displacement, and occupation.

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According to Jamal, the declaration and subsequent British occupation of Palestine created the framework for dispossessing Palestinians that continues to this day.

For Palestinians, Balfour was an action of betrayal and its anniversary should prompt sombre reflection on a shameful episode in British history, said Jamal.

To celebrate is to reinforce the message to Palestinians that their rights are still regarded as second class.

Historic struggle

Jamals roots stretch back to West Jerusalem but his family was forced out of the city by Zionist militias in 1948, and his relatives were thereafter scattered across the region.

His great-uncle, Shibli Jamal, was secretary of a delegation of Palestinians which unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate the revocation of the Balfour Declaration with Winston Churchill, who was then secretary of state for the colonies.

The delegation made clear to Churchill that the policy Britain was building would lead inevitably to the dispossession of the Palestinian people, a prediction made real in 1948 when over 700,000 Palestinians, including my grandparents, were driven into exile, said Jamal.

The people of Palestine will not be satisfied with promises that some control of their destiny will be given to them in the future. They will never admit the right of any outside organisation to dispossess them of their country by Shibli Jamal's letter to Winston Churchill

In the year the group spent in the UK, the delegation organised what Jamal believes was Britains first rally in support of Palestinian rights.

Before leaving the UK, Shibli Jamal wrote to Churchill promising Palestinians would never give up the struggle for their land.

The people of Palestine will not be satisfied with promises that some control of their destiny will be given to them in the future. They will never admit the right of any outside organisation to dispossess them of their country, his letter read.

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I would like Corbyns reasons

Although Corbyn has refused to justify his decision, he has in the past unequivocally condemned Israels violations of Palestinian rights.

Al Jazeera contacted the Labour Party requesting an explanation of Corbyns reasons for not attending, but the issue was not addressed.

A spokesperson said: Jeremy is unable to attend this event, but Labours Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry will be attending.

Malaka Mohammed, a Palestinian studying in England, said she was slightly disappointed by Corbyns response.

I would not call it a significant step [but] I think its a step in right direction that Corbyn has not bowed to pressure and accepted the invitation, the PhD candidate at Exeter University told Al Jazeera. Its the least I expect from someone who has been campaigning for justice throughout his life.

The fact that we are dispersed and scattered all over the world, unable to go back home or live a stable life is a consequence of the 1917 Balfour Declaration by Malaka Mohammed

As a Palestinian who has been directly affected by the Balfour Declaration, I would like a statement explaining his reasons for rejecting the invitation  I think it should be condemned by himself and the Labour Party.

Mohammed described how her relatives were forced from their homes in what is now Israel to the Gaza Strip, from where they were never allowed to return.

The fact that we are dispersed and scattered all over the world, unable to go back home or live a stable life, is a consequence of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, she said.

Its a grave injustice we are subject to. My land is not a land I am allowed to visit, all I know of it is through the stories my grandparents would tell me when I was a kid.

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Mohammed and Jamal are now focused on the British government and its behaviour as the centenary approaches.

Jamals PSC is organising a rally in London on November 4 to protest the UKs role in displacing Palestinians.

For Mohammed, nothing less than a British apology will suffice.

We as Palestinians rightfully want a British apology, she said. It has shaped our experience as Palestinians by signing our country over to a European colonial settler enterprise.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is on his first official visit to South Asia.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is on his first official visit to South Asia.

Tillersons next stop is Pakistan, where fighting the Taliban and US requests for counterterrorism support are expected to dominate talks with Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Pakistans new prime minister  recently elected in August.

Then on to India, where the Trump administration hopes to expand ties, to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Al Jazeeras Natasha Ghoneim explains.
Presidential spokesperson says Zimbabwes leader was never officially asked to become UN health agencys goodwill envoy.

Robert Mugabe was never officially asked to become a goodwill ambassador for the World Health Organization (WHO), his spokesman has claimed, adding Zimbabwes president would have turned down the role anyway.

The UNs health agency on Sunday said it was reversing a decision to appoint Zimbabwes 93-year-old leader to the largely ceremonial post to help in the fight against non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Africa.

The move came after widespread criticism by WHO member states and human rights groups who noted that the health system in Zimbabwe has suffered from severe challenges under Mugabes decades-long leadership.

Tedros Adhanom, WHO director, said in a statement he had decided to rescind the appointment of Mugabe after listening carefully to all who have expressed their concerns, and heard the different issues that they have raised.

Awkward request

But George Charamba, presidential spokesperson, insisted on Tuesday that WHO had never formally asked Mugabe to take up the position.

There was nothing, whether verbal or written, from the WHO intimating that WHO wished to make the President a goodwill ambassador in respect of NCDs, Charamba told The Herald, a state-run newspaper.

Charamba went on to say that Mugabe would not have accepted the role, as it would require him to campaign against the production and export of tobacco, a major source of foreign currency earnings for Zimbabwe.

As a matter of fact, had anything been put to the President in the direction of helping WHO by the way of being a goodwill ambassador, the President would have found such a request to be an awkward one, said Charamba.

His comments came despite The Herald reporting last week that Mugabe had accepted a request by WHO to be its goodwill ambassador in Africa.

Calling it a new feather in the Presidents cap, The Herald said Mugabe was going to spearhead the fight against NCDs on the continent.

Following Charambas comments, some social media users in Zimbabwe took to Twitter to question his version of events.

Hahaha George Charamba, I just love that spin doctor. Muwedzerei mari mukomana uyu https://t.co/Aley6EfX9R  Carja (@ShoriwaC) October 24, 2017
Mohammad bin Salman says the country will be open to all religions and eradicate extremist thoughts.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday said Saudi Arabia would return to a moderate Islam that is open to all religions  comments likely to rile staunch conservatives in the Gulf kingdom.

The crown prince also announced Saudi Arabia would eradicate promoters of extremist thoughts, saying the country was not like this in the past.

We are returning to what we were before  a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world, the 32-year-old heir to the throne said.

Crown Prince: We will revive our true moderate and tolerante Islam.#discoverneom#SPAGOV  SPAENG (@Spa_Eng) October 24, 2017

Crown Prince: We will not waste another 30 years in dealing with extremist thoughts.#discoverneom#SPAGOV  SPAENG (@Spa_Eng) October 24, 2017

Bin Salman, also known as MBS, made the remarks during a Future Investment Initiative (FII) summit in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

FII is an international event at which Saudi Arabia seeks out investment into the kingdom from around the world.

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During Tuesdays event, Salman voiced his confidence in Saudi Arabias younger generation and its ability to adjust to a post-oil world, mentioning, among other things, the benefits of solar power.

Bin Salmans remarks come a month after Saudi Arabia made a landmark decision to allow women to legally drive vehicles starting in June 2018, a move that was criticised by some conservative voices on Saudi social media but welcomed by rights activists.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world where women are not allowed to drive.

MBS was appointed crown prince in June this year.

Despite pledges of reform, critics have highlighted the continuing crackdown on human rights activists and others challenging the status quo.
Prime ministers trip to Ankara reaffirms strong ties between the two countries, analysts say.

Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire is set to visit Turkey on Wednesday and meet Somalis who are being treated there, after being wounded in a massive truck bomb attack in Mogadishu last week.

At least 358 people were killed in the October 14 blast, in what was the deadliest single attack to ever hit Somalias capital.

Hundreds of others were also wounded in the devastating explosion, with many suffering severe burns.

A day after the attack, Somali officials said that Turkey had responded positively to a request for medical assistance.

Shortly after, Ankara sent medical supplies and an ambulance plane which airlifted 35 of the most badly wounded to Turkey for further treatment.

Minister of Health of #Turkey arrives in #Mogadishu as a solidarity with victims of the barbaric attack on 14 October 2017  Turkey has won the hearts and minds of Somali people by providing direct support that is visible and genuine pic.twitter.com/PZ3etGu3LM  Abdirahman O. Osman (@engyarisow) October 16, 2017

During his visit, which will last until Friday, Khayre is also scheduled to meet Binali Yildirim, his Turkish counterpart.

Analysts said the trip reaffirms the strong relations the two countries have enjoyed in recent years, at a time when Ankara seeks to assume a leading role and increase its foothold in the strategic Horn of Africa nation.

Turkey has used its humanitarian foreign policy, a discourse widely used by Ankara in the past few years, as soft power in Somalia through aid and investments, Galip Dalay, research director of Al Sharq Forum, told Al Jazeera.

Lucrative interests

Last month, Turkey set up its biggest overseas military base in Mogadishu.

The camp cost $50m and will be used by Somali soldiers for training purposes, according to reports in state media.

But just as it seeks to strengthen its ties with Somalia and extend its reach as a regional power, Turkey is also eyeing further economic opportunities.

In recent years, it has offered aid and made a number of large investments, including the building of an airport terminal, hospitals, schools and other infrastructure.

The volume of trade, meanwhile, between the two countries was $118m last year, according to Bulent Tufenkci, Turkeys minister of customs and trade.

Hamza Egal, a Nairobi-based Somalia analyst, said that Ankara has been a strong ally in Somalias state building, but it also seeks mutually lucrative interests with the fragile state.

The strategic location of Somalia and its political impasse has made it an attractive location for foreign entities that have geopolitical interests in the region, said Egal.

Coup bid reaction

Turkeys pivot towards Somalia was signalled in 2011 when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was a prime minister at the time, visited the Horn of Africa country at a time when Somalis were experiencing one of the worst famines of the region.

Since then, Erdogan has travelled to Somalia twice more.

Through the policies in the 2010s, Turkey put Somalia under international attention, a country that has gone through multiple humanitarian crises and a big armed conflict, said Dalay.

In response to the Turkish help in the wake of the Mogadishu blast, Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo called Erdogan his brother and expressed his heartfelt gratitude  for standing with us this tough time.

Turkey has been consistently supportive, he said.

The close ties between Erdogan and Somalias leadership were also on display straight after a failed coup attempt in Turkey last year, blamed by Ankara on Fethullah Gulen, an exiled religious leader and businessman based in the US.

Right after the coup bid, Somalia shut down two schools and one hospital owned by Gulens organisation and extradited suspects with alleged links to his group.

Ankara accuses Gulen of masterminding the coup attempt  an allegation he denies.

Al Jazeeras Umut Uras contributed to this report.
Marawi City, Philippines  ISILs Southeast Asian oblates may have failed at their first attempt to carve out territory here, but their defeat was by no means final.

With the Philippine government delaying a peace deal that would give a predominantly Muslim southern region more autonomy, experts, rebels and even officials warned of possible attacks from several armed groups that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

Al Haj Murad Ebrahim, leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), told Al Jazeera, Radical groups emerged whenever there were failures in the peace process. Leaders with radical ideologies exploit the peoples frustration at these failures.



The MILF fought decades with the government of the Christian-majority country, first for independence and then for autonomy. It broke away from the original Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in 1977 when the MNLF settled for autonomy after years of fighting for a separate state.



Now, the MILF is steps away from sealing a deal that will expand the autonomous region and give its government more substantial powers.



Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte promised to sign the deal into law after his predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, failed to do so. However, Dutertes allies in congress have not prioritised passing the measure.



There is consistent prejudice against the Bangsamoro people, Ebrahim said, referring to the southwestern Mindanao region that is home to several Muslim ethnic groups collectively called Moro.

Telltale signs



Ebrahim and other Moro leaders said the attack on Marawi should not have come as a surprise; they all made public warnings about the emerging ISIL presence in their region, and pro-ISIL groups had been publishing propaganda about their plans of setting up a caliphate in the Philippines.



Agakhan Sharief, owner of a university in Marawi and a respected religious leader, knew the young men who eventually became the leaders of the pro-ISIL Maute group of fighters who laid siege to the city.



Sharief told Al Jazeera, the Maute brothers attended a rally that he led in the summer of 2015 to protest a setback in the Bangsamoro peace deal following a botched military operation that aroused public suspicion against the MILF.



Sharief said Omar, Abdullah and Madi Maute approached him earlier and asked him to join an armed group they were forming. Sharief refused.



During the rally, Shariefs voice boomed on loudspeakers, warning that a group of young men with dark plans would wreak havoc on the country if the government did not follow through on the Bangsamoro peace deal.



True enough, on May 23 this year, the Maute group of fighters launched the attack on Marawi that would last five months and lead to the deaths of at least 1,000 people.



Why do some government officials blame the war on us Moros? Sharief asked. They should have acted on the information we gave them.



Lessons learned



At the height of the battle to retake the city, Philippine defence chief Delfin Lorenzana admitted he and other security officials failed to appreciate intelligence reports on local ISIL-linked groups.



After the military killed Omar Maute and his conspirator Isnilon Hapilon, Lorenzana told a press conference that lessons had been learned from the war in Marawi about the threat posed by pro-ISIL groups.



We used to ignore those threats. From now on, we will take them very seriously, Lorenzana said.



The Philippine government received help from countries including China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia and the United States in winning Marawi back from the attackers.



However, significant help in pushing back pro-ISIL fighters is coming from the governments former enemy: the MILF.

In a marshland in Maguindanao province, some 200km from Marawi, Commander Wahid Tundok recently led an elite MILF unit in reclaiming territory from a pro-ISIL splinter group.

Their guard was still up when Al Jazeera visited them for an interview. Tundok and his troops constantly patrol a wild and vast area unfamiliar to government forces.



It takes a Moro to fight a Moro, Tundok said ruefully of battling their kin who submit to ISILs ideology.



This is our sacrifice  to fight our own brethren and shed our own blood for the sake of lasting peace, he added.

Terrorism is everywhere

Critics believe the Bangsamoro peace deal is crucial in cutting ISILs influence on armed groups, but it is unclear whether Duterte thinks so.

Duterte faces the daunting task of pre-empting terror plots by remnants of the ISIL-affiliated movement  and needs to rekindle the deadlocked peace negotiations with the MILF, said Richard Heydarian, political science professor at De La Salle University in Manila.

The president has acknowledged he is aware of what his country is up against.

Terrorism is everywhere, Duterte told an audience recently, warning them to be ready for possible attacks.
The USs top general says he believes a group linked to ISIL is behind the ambush that killed four soldiers on October 4 in Niger.

The USs top general says he believes a group linked to ISIL is behind the ambush that killed four soldiers on October 4 in Niger.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, warned that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, known as ISIS) group was trying to establish a physical presence in Niger, as the group loses ground in Iraq and Syria.

Meanwhile, the widow of one of the fallen soldiers has made a television appearance, in which she accused President Trump of being insensitive in a condolence call.

Al Jazeeras Gabriel Elizondo reports from New York.
Qatars investment in Turkey exceeds $20bn, the second highest by any country.

Qatar and Turkey have a deliberately strategic relationship at the political, economic and military levels.

In 2015, Qatar and Turkey established the Supreme Strategic Committee to look after and enhance the relationship. The committee holds regular meetings between the two countries leadership.

Al Jazeera examines the key areas of collaboration between the two countries.

Qatari investments

In May 2017, Qatars Chamber of Commerce Vice Chairman Mohamed bin Twar said: Turkish companies here are handling projects worth about $11.6bn in Qatar, most of which is put into FIFA World Cup 2022 projects.

Qatars investment to Turkey is over $20bn, the second highest value of investments by any country in Turkey, bin Twar added.

Turkish media reported Qatar would invest a further $19bn in Turkey in 2018, with $650m going to agriculture and livestock.

Due to its attractive investment advantages as well as its strong relations with Qatar, the Qatar Chamber encourages Qatari businessmen to invest in Turkey.

In August 2018, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani pledged to invest $15bn in Turkey, which struggles with a currency crisis that made the lira fall by 45 percent against the US dollar.

We stand by the brothers in Turkey that have stood with the issues of the Muslim world and with Qatar, Sheikh Tamim said in a tweet after meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara.

Turkey is also one of Qatars top customers for non-oil exports, according to Qatars Chamber.

Qatari-Turkish relations are distinct and can serve as a model for other countries by Mohamed bin Twar, Qatar Chamber vice chairman





Military ties

In an extraordinary session on June 7, 2017, two days after the start of the Gulf crisis, Turkeys parliament ratified two earlier agreements allowing Turkish troops to be deployed in Qatar and another approving an accord between the two countries on military training cooperation.

The agreements aimed to raise Qatars defence capabilities, support counterterror efforts and maintain security and stability in the region.

The first batch of Turkish troops arrived at the Tariq ibn Ziyad military base in 2015. On June 18, 2017, f ive armoured vehicles also arrived in Doha while the base can accommodate up to 5,000 soldiers.

In January 2018, the Turkish ambassador to Qatar said that Turkey will also deploy air and naval forces in Qatar .

Qatar The blockading countries have set the closure of the Turkish base in Qatar as one of 13 conditions to restore relations with Doha.





Food security

When the Gulf crisis erupted, and Saudi Arabia closed Qatars only land border, it blocked many vital imports from reaching Qatar, including basic food supplies. To avoid potential food shortages, in less than 48 hours of the blockade Turkey sent cargo planes full of milk, yogurt, and poultry.

Turkish exports to Qatar increased by 90 percent in the four months since the blockade started (June to September) , according to statistics released by Turkeys Aegean Exporters Association.

Because of longer import routes, Qatari food and beverage prices jumped 4.2 percent in August. Turkish ambassador to Qatar, Fikret Ozer, said on Monday: We are bringing many products here, but there is no land route between Turkey and Qatar. But now there is a cooperation between Qatar and Iran and Turkey, and there will be a new route between these countries.

Qatar has invested $444m in a 530,000sq metre food storage and processing facility at its Hamad Port.

Turkey hopes its improved trade relations with Qatar will outlive the blockade. The Turkish products [we export] are of very high quality. Even if the embargo [on Qatar] is [lifted], our products will be permanent there, said Sinan Kiziltan, chairman of the Aegean Aquatic Products and the Animal Products Exporters Union.

As part of its National Food Security Programme, Qatar is aiming to produce 70 percent of its food requirements by 2024.

We started to import food, milk... from Turkey on the first day of the blockade by Qatar's Minister of Economy and Trade told Al Jazeera in an interview





E-commerce portal

Government-owned Qatar Post inaugurated a new e-commerce website on January 1, launched in cooperation with Turkeys General Directorate of Post and Telegraph Organization (PTT).

Through the website, customers in Qatar can shop online for products shipped from vendors in Turkey. PTT Chairman Kemal Bozgeyik said that Qataris will reach many products in Turkey thanks to the website being promoted  Trade between our countries will develop.

Qatari Transport Minister Jassim Saif al-Sulaiti said the products will reach the customer in seven days, and they are working on shortening the waiting time.

High-level meetings

In August 2018, Sheikh Tamim was the first foreign head to visit Turkey since a stand-off between Ankara and Washington started.

In January 2018, Qatars emir met the Turkish president in Ankara on a one-day visit.

third meeting of Turkey-Qatar Supreme Strategic Committee. In November 2017, Erdogan arrived in Qatar to attend theof Turkey-Qatar Supreme Strategic Committee.
Described as EUs toughest stress test European Council President Tusk says the onus to stay or leave is on UK.

It is up to the UK if talks to end EU membership result in a good deal, no deal or no Brexit, Donald Tusk said on Tuesday, reviving the possibility Britain may not leave the bloc after all.

Senior EU leaders addressed legislators at the European Parliament in Strasbourg who were debating last weeks EU summit, during which leaders declared insufficient progress had been made in Brexit talks to immediately advance to trade discussions.

There are three separation challenges that need to be negotiated: the UK has to settle its accounts before exiting, statues of EU citizens in the UK and Britons in the EU must be determined, and a decision must be made regarding what happens with the Northern Ireland border once the UK exits the EU.

Despite the challenges ahead, European Council President Tusk emphasized the importance of unity, describing the UKs planned departure as the EUs toughest stress test.

We have managed to build and maintain unity among the 27. But ahead of us is still the toughest stress test. If we fail it, the negotiations will end in our defeat, Tusk said.

It is, in fact, up to London how this will end: with a good deal, no deal or no Brexit. But in each of these scenarios, we will protect our common interest only by being together, he added.

The European Council president also said there would be a special EU summit in February next year to decide how the composition of the European Parliament should be changed after Brexit.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker insisted the European Commission is not negotiating in a hostile mood.

We want a deal. Those who do not want a deal  the no-dealers  they have no friends in the Commission, he said, continuing: We want a fair deal with Britain and we will have a fair deal with Britain. The no-deal is not our working assumption.

British Prime Minister Theresa May told British lawmakers on Monday she is positive and optimistic about moving on in Brexit negotiations.

British voters opted to leave the EU in a referendum over a year ago and Brexit negotiations are expected to be finalized in March 2019.
Pair broke into a BAE airbase in January in an effort to prevent a war crime in the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Two British activists could face jail terms of up to 10 years after attempting to disarm BAE fighter jets heading to Saudi Arabia, where they would have been used to support the kingdoms ongoing bombing campaign in Yemen.

Sam Walton, a Quaker activist, and Daniel Woodhouse, a Methodist minister, were arrested in January after breaking into a BAE Systems airbase in Warton, Lancashire, with hammers and crowbars as they tried to prevent a war crime in the Arabian Peninsula state.

The pair managed to get beyond fences, closed doors and CCTV camera at the site, which they claim was housing 13 fighter jets scheduled to be sent to Saudi Arabia.

We brought a hammer and a crowbar and were intending on disarming the jets by hammering their noses, which houses the radars, as well as the side panels and the cockpits, Walton told Al Jazeera.

We got within five feet of them  but as we started to go at a door with our crowbars, we alerted security, and they found us.

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Walton said the duo were scheduled to appear at Burnley Magistrates Court on Tuesday on charges of criminal damage and could face up to 10 years in prison.

The duo entered the base 21 years after four women  known as the Ploughshare Four  caused more than 1.5 million pounds ($2m) in damage to a Hawk fighter jet destined for Indonesia.

The women argued the jet would likely be used to kill civilians in East Timor and were later found not guilty of criminal damage under the Genocide Act.

This could have been one of the largest conspiracies to commit criminal charges cases in UK legal history, Walton said.

There was close to a $1bn worth of planes in that hanger, but weve been charged with 1,000 pounds (around $1,300) worth of damage  a mickey-mouse offence  because BAE wants this case to go away.

BAE did not immediately respond to Al Jazeeras request for comment on the case.

Since Saudi Arabia launched its military intervention in Yemen, UK weapons companies, including BAE systems and Raytheon, have earned revenues exceeding $8bn, generating profits estimated at almost $775m.

Conflict as a business opportunity

The UK has approved sales of the Tornado aircraft, which is partially manufactured by BAE systems; BAEs Tactica armoured vehicles, valued at $580,000; vehicles and tanks; and $1.48bn worth of grenades, missiles and bombs.

Andrew Smith, a spokesperson for the Campaign Against Arms Trade, told Al Jazeera that the real crime was the UK governments decision to keep arming and supporting Saudi Arabia.

While aid organisations have done everything they can to help the people of Yemen, BAE has seen the conflict as a business opportunity and a means to sell more fighter jets, Smith said. What Sam and Daniel did was to try and stop those jets, something they should have never had to do in the first place. The government should have done that.

The war in Yemen has killed more than 10,000 people and injured more than 40,000 to date, according to the United Nations.

The country is also facing a deadly cholera outbreak, a direct consequence of the war, that has claimed about 2,000 lives and affected more than 500,000 people since late April.

The UK cant continue building its economy on the bodies of the innocent, Walton said.
Detained in August 2013 over alleged role in Cairo protests, Halawa returns to Dublin singing pop number in celebration.

An Irishman who was detained in Egypt for more than four years has finally returned home after being acquitted in September.

Ibrahim Halawa, arrested at the age of 17 as part of a deadly crackdown on protests in Cairo, had faced the death penalty.

He flew into Dublin Airport on Tuesday to a welcoming party, having travelled on the plane with Sean O Regan, ambassador of Ireland to Egypt.

Writing on his Facebook page, he said: Thank you so much to all the amazing people who made it today and to those who didnt i will be having a homecoming party for all  thank you for everyone who made this happen  much love to all.

Earlier, he posted a video of himself aboard the plane singing lyrics from Coming Home, a pop number by Skylar Grey.

Halawa is now 21 years old.

Four years later, Ibrahim Halawa has arrived home pic.twitter.com/BrtnKRlrSH  Grainne Ni Aodha (@GNiAodha) October 24, 2017

Ibrahim has been through a hellish ordeal, said Maya Foa, director of Reprieve, a UK-based rights group that campaigns against the death penalty.

Arrested and tortured, he faced a death sentence in a mass trial of 494 people for attending a protest when he was just 17. His release and return home to Ireland is long overdue.

Halawas case highlighted human rights abuses carried out by the Egyptian government, Foa said.

Ireland and the international community should call on Egypt to end these abuses, she said.

Arrested in August 2013 along with hundreds more, the tall, crop-haired student went on trial for an alleged role in violence during protests in Cairo  charges he, witnesses, and his lawyers, all denied.

During his time in jail, Halawa launched a hunger strike to protest his detention.

Egyptian officials repeatedly denied Halawas health was ever at risk, but his family members and Irish politicians supporting his case claimed he was near suicide at one point.




Cancellation comes after activists launch boycott campaign over directors normalising approach towards Israel.

Ramallah  A film festival in Ramallah has ended without the screening of a movie by a Lebanese director following calls by Palestinian activists to boycott his work over his normalisation with Israel.

The Insult, directed and cowritten by Ziad Doueiri, was scheduled to close the Days of Cinema festival on Monday.

But on Sunday, the citys municipality, which is a partner in the annual event, decided to scrap the screening at Ramallahs cultural palace citing its responsibility to preserve civil peace and social coherence.

The cancellation came after the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and other activists launched a campaign against the showing, opposing the directors previous work in Israel.

Doueiri had spent several months in Tel Aviv filming his previous movie, 2012s The Attack.

Since Ziad Doueiri is still defending normalisation, then the screening of his film by Arab festivals  regardless of intentions  can only be seen as encouraging him to continue his destructive and normalising approach, BDS said in a statement published in Arabic on Sunday.

In their call, the activists had urged the festivals organisers to stop the planned screening  until a new formula for boycott is adopted, with consultations of civil society, to deal with a case like this one.

Right to watch

The Insult touches upon the sensitive relations between the Palestinian and Lebanese societies in the aftermath of Lebanons civil war.

It earned Palestinian actor Kamel El Basha a Best Actor Award at this years Venice Film Festival.

At a press conference organised by Filmlab: Palestine, the festivals organisers, during Mondays closing ceremony, Basha said he is not against the principle of boycott but called for the formation of a countermovement to the excluding and selective ideology of BDS.

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BDS does not represent me, he said.

The boycott has a criteria and the BDS movement has not abided by it, added Basha. We are defending our freedom.

When asked by Al Jazeera whether The Insult will be screened at a later a date, Basha said, we intend to screen the movie here in Palestine, but we have not decided where or when.

In a statement, Filmlab said: Since its launch four years ago, Days of Cinema has been committed to [selecting] the participating films with accordance to special criteria, that takes into consideration the current guidelines of The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel -PACBI.

Palestinian actress, Areen Omari, who attended the closing ceremony, said the audience had a right to watch the film.

Its a shame the level we have reached  this was supposed to have been a celebration, she said.

Hanna Attalah, Filmlab: Palestines artistic director, said in a statement read during the ceremony that the organisers viewed the repercussions of this decision with a serious concern.

Filmlab: Palestine also urged the official cultural institutions, the civil society and all those who care about the cultural landscape, freedom of expression and thought, to move and assume their responsibilities towards preserving the Palestinian cultural achievements and preserving freedom of expression.

The BDS movement began in 2005 when a coalition of 170 Palestinian civil society groups issued a call to people of conscience around the world.

It seeks to end the occupation and dismantle Israels illegal wall and settlements, demands full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and calls for the rights of Palestinian refugees to be upheld.
After election win for his party and coalition partner, the PM signaled a push towards reforming the constitution.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took a gamble when he called early elections this year.

But that gamble paid off on Sunday, when his party and coalition partner won more than two-thirds of the seats in parliament.

He the win is a vote of confidence from the public  one he sees as a green light to change Japans pacifist constitution.

Abe is particularly keen on the move given the threat posed by nearby North Korea.

But what would a stronger Japanese military mean for the region?

Presenter: Jane Dutton

Guests:

Kotaro Tamura  Former Japanese senator

Richard Weitz  Director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute

Alessio Patalano  Senior lecturer in Department of War Studies at Kings College London
Top US diplomat Rex Tillerson is on first Islamabad visit as Washington considers boosting Indias role in Afghanistan.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillersons visit to Pakistan and India on Tuesday was as much about Pakistans neighbours as US-Pakistan relations.

In particular, Tillerson wants the Pakistani leadership to stop Taliban fighters launching attacks in Afghanistan from their side of the border.

At the same time, Pakistans Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi is trying to dissuade the US from inviting India to play a bigger role in Afghanistan.

So, will Islamabad bow to Washingtons pressure?

Presenter: Jane Dutton

Guests:

Ayaz Wazir  former Pakistan ambassador to Afghanistan

Mushtaq Rahim  political analyst and a specialist on regional security

Larry Korb  senior fellow at the Center for American Progress
Four days after Richard Spencer told an audience in the Phillips Center for the Performing Arts that he believed in an Aryan state, a group of pastors denounced his ideology, which they deem hateful, and promoted unity.

About 16 representatives of Alachua County churches, which make up the Alachua County Christian Pastors Association, stood outside the Phillips Center at 10 a.m. Monday to issue an official statement regarding Spencer. Leading up to Spencers speech on Thursday, about 60 churches participated in the ACCPAs #prayandstayaway campaign, which urged Christians in the community to pray for the event and avoid the area upon Spencers arrival, said Phil Courson, vice president of the ACCPA. Now, the association asks the community to move forward in love, peace and unity.

Were here to let the folks know that bigotry, racism, any type of what we would look at as sin issues concerning those things, are directly opposed to scripture, and we stand on the word of God, Courson said.

The Rev. Karl Anderson said the churches in the county are already doing their part to promote unity and bridge the gap between races and socioeconomic classes. On this years National Day of Prayer, members of the ACCPA went to Dignity Village to pray and speak with residents. Members of the various congregations also consistently participate in each others events, Anderson said.

Although Courson doesnt agree with Spencers ideology, he is appreciative that UF President Kent Fuchs allowed him to speak on campus.

Just because you dont agree with my thoughts or my philosophies or someone elses thoughts or philosophies doesnt mean you shut them down just because you consider it hate speech, he said. You cant be the free speech police.

Courson believes it is an individuals responsibility to promote peace and unity, and said UFs campus ministries support that work. He said that the fight to end racism and division will continue long after Spencers visit.

Its not just going out and protesting when you have a speaker you dont like, but its every day being intentional to go out and talk to somebody and connect with somebody that is totally different than you, he said.

Cady Boe, a UF elementary education junior, is a member of The Navigators at UF, a christian campus ministry. On the day of Spencers speech, The Navigators held a joint prayer event with other campus ministries and a night of worship and discourse about the days events.

Boe, 20, feels that denouncing hate is important, but it shouldnt be the only action taken.

I dont necessarily think that the action has to be protesting there, but I do think action needs to happen in order to make a big difference, she said.

Boe said ignoring hate isnt an option for the Christian community. Prayer and love are a Christians most powerful tools when it comes to fighting hate, she said.

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I think as Christians we should approach the situation with love and out of love, she said.

@jessica_giles_

jgiles@alligator.org










English News Chinas crackdown on corruption on wheels takes effect

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 24 Octobre 2017



The car reform called for government departments to scrap the use of vehicles for regular government affairs and to keep only a few vehicles on hand for special uses, such as, emergency disposal, classified mail correspondence; technical supports and law enforcement.

By Huang Fahong from Peoples Daily Thanks to Chinas reform on use of government cars, a total of 3,868 official cars across 140 central government departments have been taken out of service over the past five years, accounting for over 60 percent of all government vehicles, said the latest data from the National Government Offices Administration.

Besides the central authorities, 29 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have almost completed the car reforms, and the focus has shifted to public institutions and state-owned enterprises, the administration added.

This crackdown on corruption on wheels has been part of Chinas campaign to tighten party discipline since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

By replacing the outdated management model with a new economic way, the reform has fundamentally solved the difficulties in car management previously faced by government departments at all levels, the administration added.

The car reform called for government departments to scrap the use of vehicles for regular government affairs and to keep only a few vehicles on hand for special uses, such as, emergency disposal, classified mail correspondence; technical supports and law enforcement.

The government is instead expected to allocate a "proper amount" of subsidies for public servants to allow them to choose their own means of transportation.

Those spared cars, after their legal documents are verified, have been auctioned.

In order to further prevent the government cars from use for private affairs, some authorities even put special stickers or signs to mark government vehicles, or installed GPS trackers.

So far, nearly 20 provinces have adopted the first method, while Guangdong, Gansu, Hunan, Sichuan and some other provinces chose the latter, in a bid to tighten the supervision on misuse of official vehicles.



Pic:

Handan, city in north China's Hebei Province, launches car reforms by making a requirement to mark government vehicles with special stickers, in order to put the use of government cars under public oversight. (Photo by Peoples Daily Online)



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English News CPC enjoys profound friendship with international community: senior official

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 24 Octobre 2017



We have also kept traditional friendly exchanges with the Workers' Party of Korea of DPRK , Guo told the press, adding that it depends on mutual needs and the convenience for both sides to decide when and on what level the two parties would carry out exchanges.

By Bai Yang from Peoples Daily The Communist Party of China (CPC) enjoys profound friendship with the international community, a senior Chinese official told a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing 19th CPC National Congress.



Since the congress opened on October 18, the CPC has received congratulations each day from foreign political parties as well as political heavyweights including the Heads of State , government leaders and principals of international organizations, said Guo Yezhou, vice minister of the international department of the CPC Central Committee.



Sending best wishes to the CPC, they also made constructive suggestions on the future development of state-to-state relations and party-to-party exchanges, he said.



Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committeemade clear in his report to the 19th CPC National Congress that the Party will strengthen exchanges and cooperation with political parties and organizations of other countries.



The CPC has established relationships with more than 400 political parties in more than 160 countries. Guo pointed out that the CPC gives importance to communication with not only political parties sharing similar ideas but also those that hold different philosophies.



Diplomatic contacts with neighbors have been high on the agenda of the CPC and Chinese government, according to Guo. He said the CPC has hosted regular seminars on theoretical studies and rolled out specific measures on personnel training with the Communist Party of Vietnam and Lao Peoples Revolution Party. The CPC maintains close dialogue and exchanges with major political parties in Mongolia and Russia, said the official, adding the inter-party relationship between China and Japan is also a special feature of the ties between the two countries.



We have also kept traditional friendly exchanges with the Workers' Party of Korea of DPRK , Guo told the press, adding that it depends on mutual needs and the convenience for both sides to decide when and on what level the two parties would carry out exchanges.



Asked to comment on communication between Chinese and Japanese political parties, the vice minister said that the sixth China-Japan ruling party talks were held this August in Japan during which both sides expressed willingness to improve ties after extensive communications.



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English News Seeing a better China through Delegates passage

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 23 Octobre 2017



Describing the new passage as a kind of progress, Hans Hendrischke, professor of Chinese business and management at the University of Sydney Business School, told Peoples Daily that it allows Western society to learn more about the CPC National Congress through a more open and transparent information releasing mechanism.

By Zhang Penghui, Li Feng, Qu Song, Huan Xiang from Peoples Daily The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) set up a delegates passage on where delegates could answer questions from the press.



The passage can help improving the transparency of the CPC and display a three-dimensional China, said Anil Sigdel, a political scientist and columnist from the US.



Thanks to the passage, both officials and grass roots are free to express their viewpoints on specific agendas and respond to topics concerned by domestic and international societies, Sigdels said, pointing out such voices are more convincing.



The voices from those delegates can deliver the concerns of people from different walks of life comprehensively, said the columnist, adding that this was a reflection of democracy.



Describing the new passage as a kind of progress, Hans Hendrischke, professor of Chinese business and management at the University of Sydney Business School, told Peoples Daily that it allows Western society to learn more about the CPC National Congress through a more open and transparent information releasing mechanism.



Chinese President Xi Jinping, in his report to the 19th National Congress of the CPC, stressed the importance of exercising strict governance over the Party and improving the Partys ability to govern and lead.



Yuri Tavrovskiy, a professor with Russia-based RUDN University, said he was touched by Xis pledge and also agreed with comments on party governance by Ling Jiefang, a Chinese writer and a five-time delegate to the Congress.



Ling said, "If we look back on the history of China, there has never been a time that such amount of effort was made to fight against corruption like we've been doing in recent years. There has never been a CPC-led people's war against corruption like we are having now."



The tough battle against corruption launched by the CPC in recent years is not a temporary move, but a continued endeavor to solve the problems in a fundamental way, the writer said.



Pic:

Foreign journalists report on the 19th CPC National Congress in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. (Photo by Lei Sheng from Peoples Daily)



Dans la meme rubrique : < > China sees prosperous development of offshore wind power generation China speeds up efforts to expand, renovate expressways 'First-store economy' leads consumption upgrade Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)










English News Xi Jinpings conclusion on new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics a wise judgement: scholars

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 24 Octobre 2017



China has basically made it possible for people to live well-off lives, but the definition of a better life has also been expanded , Xie said, the public has not only material and cultural needs, but also increasing demands for democracy, rule of law, fairness and justice, security, and a better environment.

By Liu Junguo from Peoples Daily The conclusion that socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era drawn by Chinese President Xi Jinping is a wise judgement based on reality as well as historic changes, two veteran scholars said in an article published on the Peoples Daily on Friday.



With decades of hard work, socialism with Chinese characteristics has crossed the threshold into a new era. This is a new historic juncture in China's development. Xi declared in his report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on Wednesday.



This is a correct conclusion considering the reality of Chinas development, commented Xie Chuntao, professor with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.



After nearly 40 years of development since the launch of the reform and opening up policy, China has become a global leader in terms of economic and technological strength, defense capabilities, and comprehensive national strength, the professor pointed out.



Chinas international standing has risen as never before, President Xi also stressed in his report on behalf of the 18th CPC Central Committee, elaborating that our Party, our country, our people, our army, and our nation have changed in ways without precedent.



Such changes, according to Xie, also served as a vital evidence to prove that the socialism with Chinese characteristics has really come to a new time.



Han Qingxiang, also a professor of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, believed that it is the historic achievements and historic changes China has undergone which propel the socialism with Chinese characteristics into a new era.



The judgement on the new era is also grounded on the evolution of the principal contradiction facing Chinese society, Xie added.



As socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, the principal contradiction facing Chinese society has evolved. What we now face is the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life, President Xi highlighted in his report.



Previously the principal contradiction was described as one between "the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and backward social production".



China has basically made it possible for people to live well-off lives, but the definition of a better life has also been expanded , Xie said, the public has not only material and cultural needs, but also increasing demands for democracy, rule of law, fairness and justice, security, and a better environment.



From the long-term, the unbalanced and inadequate development in China still constrains the country to meet the peoples increasing needs for a better life. This reality will direct the country to adopt a more comprehensive and balanced development approach, and better satisfy the publics demand for a more prosperous life, Xie noted.



Han believed the new judgement made in the new historic juncture will endow the theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics with stronger vitality.



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The proposed Commission of African Registrars General is a welcome development that will ensure the advancement of Africas civil registration agenda, Zimbabwes Home Affairs Minister, Obert Mpofu, said Friday. Speaking at the end of a meeting that brought together African Registrars General to deliberate on how to improve civil registration as part of implementing the []http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric...
My AFDI Jessica Mokdad Human Rights conference on April 29, 2012 in Dearborn, Michigan was the first (and only) conference of its kind dedicated to increasing awareness of honor killings and gendercide under sharia. When we first called the conference, the only attention the media paid to it at all was to give a platform to Jessica Mokdad's family, which was angry that Jessica's name was being used and claiming that Jessica's murder was not an Islamic honor killing. Jessica's father threatened to sue me. But now Jessica's mother has contacted me to confirm that it was indeed an honor killing and to thank me for standing for her daughter.

She Facebook-messaged me:

My daughter is Jessica mom dad and she was killed by her step father a muslim from Iraq, in Warren, Michigan. I was muslim at that time, but I felt I was brain washed into it. I'm a Christian again Thank JESUS! I believe you had a meeting here in Dearborn in 2011. I wish I was thinking then the way I do now. I'd like to thank you for all u do! I hate Islam and everything it stands for! I was in in for 16 years! I regret every minute! God bless you and all u do!

We always knew this to be true, but now the Muslims and leftists who complained about my event are exposed as liars. I named the conference after Jessica because she was the victim of an honor killing. Her family should have been standing with us instead of denying this. Darwin Jiles, a close friend of Jessica and a powerful speaker at our conference, said, "Jessica was someone who wanted to have liberties, like every other young lady that is born in America outside of the traditions of Islam are able to do, to pursue her own happiness, and to pursue her own dreams." About Jessica's stepmother, Cassandra, who claimed that it was not an honor killing, Jiles said, "Cassandra really is portraying a false picture. And Pamela has every right to place the conference to be named after Jessica in regards to this, because it was Islam that caused her death."

I recently spoke with Wendy Wasinski, Jessica's mother. She has left Islam and returned to Catholicism. She told me that Jessica's stepfather, Rahim Alfetlawi, who murdered Jessica, "wanted us to pray and learn to fast and all this, but he wasn't doing it."

Wendy recalled Alfetlawi's attitude toward Jessica: "He would yell at her a lot...it was mental abuse. He was a mental abuser, big time. He would just play all these head and mind games. He made us believe that he was psychic."

He backed this up with subterfuge. Says Wendy: "I found a little tape recorder. ... He had been recording conversations with me and my daughter, and I'd get mad at him. I'm like, 'What's the point of that?' And I'm like, 'So, what are you trying to tell me? You're not really psychic, then?" And he'd, like, blow up and get all mad about it. I'm like, 'Why do you have to find out what we're talking about? Like, nobody can have privacy?'" She adds: "It was all control. It was all about, you know, him controlling both of us."

There was also some physical abuse. Wendy said that Alfetlawi "had slapped her a couple of times here and there over the years, but it wasn't anything hard or continuous." But that runs counter to what Jessica's texts revealed during the trial. Jessica wrote, "He's obsessed with me. He would punish me, and make me cry every day. I'd like to see his ass beat like he's done to me all these years."

And Alfetlawi was deceptively nonchalant about Jessica not wearing the hijab: "He was so calm and cool and he told me, 'Don't worry about it if she takes the scarf off now. We just need her to be, you know, comfortable.' He didn't blow up like I thought he was gonna. In front of me, he kept it a cool, a calm, and a cool collected attitude." But Jessica's texts reveal something else: Mokdad wrote that Alfetlawi made a surprise visit and "found out I don't wear a scarf."

Alfetlawi's outward calm may have been an attempt to cover for his own actions. "She told me the night before she was killed that he had raped her," and Jessica told her mother, "[I]f I tell you, he would kill you, mom." "They couldn't prove it, obviously, because of the, you know, time that elapsed. And when I told her, you know, don't tell anybody, just keep cool, because I was devising a way to get away from him, and then me and her go away." But Alfetlawi discovered this plan: "I think he knew that. And I think that, that's why he left within two hours after we talked, me and her. ... And I think he wanted to shut her up, if you want my honest opinion. I think he wanted to shut her up."

Alfetlawi kidnapped her; he abducted her and forced her to return to his Minnesota home. Wendy explained: "He threatened us both. And my mom overheard him tell her, 'If you don't come with me right now ... I'll kill you.' My mom testified to that. He was nuts. He really was."

"Nuts" is an understatement. He forced Wendy to put spyware on Jessica's computer and told Jessica he would kill Wendy. Wendy recalls: "He was like, 'I'll bring your mom in front of you and I'll kill her.' That killed me, too, inside, thinking that my daughter was protecting me."

Jessica left at that point. Recalls Wendy: "Well, she had moved out[.] ... First, she was with her dad  her real dad, Mohammed. And then there was a problem between his new wife, which was only three years older than Jessica[.] ... And I think he was jealous because Jess had a new relationship. They were becoming bonded, her and her father, biological father; they were becoming very close. And I think that bothered her. Because she was taking her time off ... [y]ou know, time from him and her. ... So, basically, when I came to visit at Christmastime, I said, 'Okay. Grandma said you can come and live there, you and Mikey,' her boyfriend. Her husband in Islam. Whatever you want to call it."

Wendy continues: "I helped her move[.] ... I moved them to my mom's house, and at that point, she was living with my mom and helping her and stuff like that. And they actually enjoyed being around each other, and, you know, it was nice. It was good for them, and they helped my grandma, too, because my grandma lives only a mile away. So it actually worked out nicely." But the difficulties continued: "It was hard, though, because she was trying to get close to her real dad, but his wife just ... couldn't tolerate it."

What's more, Jessica's biological father had been physically abusive to Wendy. She recently discovered that he had had a son by another woman. The son told Wendy that he didn't want to have anything to do with his father anymore. "And I said, 'Well, I don't blame you, you know, 'cause he was physically abusive to me.' ... I have a scar on my  under my nose from him throwing a stick at me."

While living with her grandmother, Jessica became more observant in Islam. "As far as I knew, even when she was with her boyfriend at my mom's, she said that they even fasted together and stuff, and I'm like, 'Oh, that's great,' you know? So I guess she tried, but she wanted the scarf off. She wanted to feel what it was like without it, and I was like, 'Okay,' you know? At first, I was mad[.] ... I was more showing that I was mad about it, just because, you know, at the time, I was into it."

But Alfetlawi told Wendy: "'Just leave her.' He'd tell me this on my own. Like, she's here in Michigan, and we were in Minnesota, and he'd tell me, 'Just calm down. Don't worry about it. Let her do what she wants to do. She'll ... [y]ou know, she'll come around.' See, these were the things that he told me, and that's why it shocked me. I felt like it was 'cause he wanted to shut her up. That's what I felt about, about the rape, because if anybody really knew that he had raped her, that would be the biggest disgrace."

Wendy recalls that Jessica "was very kind-hearted, you know? Like, she would help my grandma, my mom, all the time[.] ... The elderly, you know?" When Alfetlawi killed her, Jessica was going to clean Wendy's grandmother's apartment. "She'd help clean out my grandma's apartment. My grandma died eleven days before that. ... She was helping. 'Cause my mom was there and my cousin, and then him and her, and they were just cleaning out the apartment, because she had a senior apartment, and so everything was going back to my mom's house in the garage. ... She was a good kid. She really was."

Wendy recalls: "He would've killed me, too, because he begged me to come with him." This was on the day he murdered Jessica. "And I said 'no,' because I hate going. Wait 12 hours' drive and only stay for one or two days, because I couldn't get off work. I said, I wanna go there for at least five days. At least. You know, my mom, my  my grandma, my  my daughter. I can't. I can't just be there for one day and say, 'Bye. See ya later.' You know, I can't. It pulls at my heart, you know? That's what I told him. But he begged me to come there. I often wonder what would've happened."

Wendy concluded: "I thank God every day I'm not in that relationship anymore." She gave me some advice for other women who convert to Islam and marry Muslims: "I'm totally against it. They have no idea what they're in for. I don't care what they tell you. They can sweet-talk you, they can promise you the world, but that's all going to change mighty fast ... either when they marry you or get you pregnant, or whatever else, you know?" Wendy told one woman considering marrying an Egyptian Muslims, "Being with a Muslim person is not what you think. Believe me, I poured my heart and soul into every text to, you know, try to reason with her, to try to save her. I told her, it'll be the worst mistake of your entire life if you go over there and marry him."

Pamela Geller is the author of the bestselling book Fatwa: Hunted in America and publisher of Geller Report. She is president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI). Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.
Once again, as in the case of Hillary and Uranium One, the search into alleged collusion between Team Trump and Russia has backfired with the announcement that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Tony Podesta, the brother of former Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, and the Podesta Group and its connections with Ukraine. Even Robert Mueller and his team of Democratic donors and operatives sometimes go where the evidence really leads:

The probe of Podesta and his Democratic-leaning lobbying firm grew out of Mueller's inquiry into the finances of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, according to the sources. As special counsel, Mueller has been tasked with investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Manafort had organized a public relations campaign for a non-profit called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU). Podesta's company was one of many firms that worked on the campaign, which promoted Ukraine's image in the West. The sources said the investigation into Podesta and his company began as more of a fact-finding mission about the ECMU and Manafort's role in the campaign, but has now morphed into a criminal inquiry into whether the firm violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, known as FARA.

There is more to this story than the legacy media has been willing to report to this point, including John Podestas dealings with Russia and Hillary and the Democratic Partys collusion with Ukraine to slime Team Trump. John Podesta is the doofus whose password was found to be password in the Russian hacking investigation and may have violated federal disclosure laws for not disclosing he was paid to sit on the board of various Russian entities:

Hillary Clintons campaign chairman, John Podesta, may have violated federal law when he failed to fully disclose details surrounding his membership on the executive board of Joule Unlimited and the 75,000 common shares he received. The energy company accepted millions from a Vladimir Putin-connected Russian government fund. Podesta joined the executive board of Joule Unlimited Technologies -- a firm partly financed by Putins Russia -- in June 2011 and received 100,000 shares of stock options, according to an email uncovered by WikiLeaks. Podestas membership on the board of directors of Joule Unlimited was first revealed in research from Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large and Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President Peter Schweizer. Podesta never disclosed his position on Joule Unlimiteds board of directors and failed to include the stock payout in his federal financial disclosures, as required by law, before he became President Obamas senior adviser in January 2014 -- a possible violation for federal law, according to the Daily Caller News Foundations Investigative Group (TheDCNF).

John Podestas dealings with Russia warrant serious and immediate Congressional inquiry as well as the Podesta Groups dealings with Ukraine. It is Podesta, not Paul Manafort, who colluded with foreign governments to enrich himself while attempting to derail Team Trump:

During a heated Fox Business interview with Maria Bartiromo, Hillary Clintons former campaign chief John Podesta made a series of misleading statements when questioned about his involvement in a company that received $35 million from the Russian government while Clinton served as secretary of state. On Jan. 18, 2011, a small green-energy company named Joule Unlimited announced Podestas appointment to its board. Months later, Rusnano, a Kremlin-backed investment fund founded by Vladimir Putin, pumped $35 million into Joule. Serving alongside Podesta on Joules board were senior Russian official Anatoly Chubais and oligarch Ruben Vardanyan, who has been appointed by Putin to a Russian economic modernization council WikiLeaks documents reveal that when he joined the Obama White House, Podesta transferred his Joule shares to an LLC controlled by his adult children. He also resumed communicating with Joule and Joule investors after leaving the White House and joining Clintons campaign. Theres also this inconvenient fact: In 2016, Russias largest bank, Sberbank, where Joule board member Reuben Vardanyan formerly served as head of its investment banking division, had a $170,000 lobbying contract with the Podesta Group -- which is owned by John Podestas brother, Tony Podesta.

Oh, what tangled webs Team Clinton have woven: if you want real collusion with a real trail of evidence of people trying to do real things interfering with the 2016 campaign, try Hillary Clintons real collusion with the Ukraine to derail and besmirch Team Trump. As Politico reported in a story that went nowhere at the time:

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clintons allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found. A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation. The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manaforts resignation and advancing the narrative that Trumps campaign was deeply connected to Ukraines foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russias alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.

Here you have a meeting between a DNC operative in a foreign embassy receiving materials used to defame and derail the Trump campaign. This meeting had real consequences, as opposed to the case of the Trump meeting, which bored its participants to death.

Was anyone interested? Certainly not MSNBCs Brian Williams and Andrea Mitchell, who were puzzled as to what Donald Trump was referring to when he tweeted about Team Hillarys collusion with Ukraine:

On MSNBC Wednesday morning, two of MSNBCs most prominent anchors admitted they had no idea what Trump was referring to, when he tweeted out that the Clinton campaign also sought out information from foreign government officials to help boost her campaign, during the 2016 election. After reading the tweet, Brian Williams asked Andrea Mitchell if she knew what he was talking about. Im hoping you can help me decipher this, he asked. Its hard to figure out what this is about, Andrea Mitchell quizzically responded.

It wouldnt have been so hard if the crack investigative reporters at MSNBC and CNN had followed the facts and the named sources in the Politico report instead of unnamed sources who produce fake news about Team Trump which result in stories being retracted and reporters resigning. As MRC/Neswbusters reported:

Trumps tweet was referring to a seven-month old report from Politico, which found that Ukrainian officials worked with the DNC to help do opposition research on Trump in order to help Clintons campaign. This research was also leaked to several American journalists, according to the report. Politico found that a veteran DNC operative, Alexandra Chalupa, sought out information to damage the Trump campaign after media reports speculated Paul Manafort had ties to Russia. She sought out help to do this from the Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. and one of his top aides, with the DNCs encouragement, Politico reported. Chalupa spoke to Politico, which recalled: She [Chalupa] said that, when Trumps unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trumps ties to Russia, as well. She occasionally shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clintons campaign, Chalupa said. The report went into further detail, but the long and short of it explained how Ukrainian officials admitted to working very closely with Chalupa, who then shared this information with the DNC. One official, Andrii Telizhenko told Politico: They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa. Telizhenko recalled that Chalupa told him and Shulyar that, If we can get enough information on Paul [Manafort] or Trumps involvement with Russia, she can get a hearing in Congress by September.

Say what? This is what you really call evidence of collusion with a foreign government -- inviting them to interfere in the 2016 election. Yet the legacy media ignores it, Congressional Democrats avert their eyes, and many Congressional Republicans, afraid of their own shadow, let Democratic bottom feeders like Rep. Adam Schiff and Rep. Chuck Schumer beat up on President Trump without any meaningful response or defense.

Instead of Russia, Russia, Russia, the chant should be Podesta, Podesta, Podesta and Hillary, Hillary, Hillary.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investors Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.
Harvey Weinstein is a Boomer Leftist, which means that he came of age around the Sixties, the time of love and peace propaganda. Love was good, hate was evil, and peace would come when we all imitated the Bonobo chimps of the jungle and spent our free time... entertaining each other. Love was the answer.

We have the word of Harvard psychology professor Steve Pinker that some of the love and peace crowd of the Sixties mainly went along with the crowd for girls and sex (or perhaps boys and sex.)

So we can imagine Harvey and brother Bob going to the anti-Vietnam demonstrations to shout slogans and score as many chicks as they could imagine. All you had to do is say the magic words, and the gates of heaven would open to you.

Trouble is, they forgot to read the psychiatric literature on sexual addiction, which went back before Freuds time to a book by Kraft-Ebing called Psychopathia Sexualis. (Sexual psychopathology, or sexual mental illness.) Sigmund Freud saw a lot of sexual mental illness among his patients in Vienna, and wrote case histories about some of them.

But sex addiction has a long, long history, whenever some political power group can exploit some lesser tribe or class of society. All the girls, boys, and sheep you can ever imagine.

The trouble is that the same cute girl over and over again gets boring, so you need an even cuter girl, or one who knows how to pull your strings better, or the daughter of the powerful warlord next door or.... it's addictive escalation, and we even know the brain basis of it today. Its called the "dopamine reward pathway" and it seems to be involved in all kinds of addictive behavior: cocaine, opium and heroin, meth, on and on and on. Sexual orgasm can kick off the dopamine pathway, and you need bigger and bigger stimulation for that same old kick. So you have to escalate, even if you have to ruin your life. (See: Tony Weiner, Bill Clinton, and many others.)

If you get into the Hollywood scene, there are plenty of pretty sex objects willing to put out for an acting gig. But then you need more, and younger, and less legal, and more boundary-breaking, and more mixed with your coke habit, and pretty soon you start doing bad things, but you don't care, really. The stories coming out about Harvey Weinstein (and others) show his increasingly self-destructive behavior, more and more trouble, more fights with his family and powerful corporation, more out-of-control hostility, more violations of law and ordinary decency.

There's nothing new to historians and psychiatrists. Human beings are boringly predictable, and the Roman Emperors Nero and Caligula followed the same path, along with the Athenian narcissist Alcibiades, who is actually a character from real life, depicted in Plato's little play The Drinking Party (The Symposium).

Among the Athenians attending the party are Alcibiades the sex addict.

Hippocrates, the Father of Western Medicine, is also one of the speakers at the drinking party, and his speech is about "Nothing in excess." You can bet he was looking at Alcibiades at that moment.

One reason why Afghanistan is ungovernable today is the competition for cute boys from low-status tribes, who can be recruited by rich males with a taste for variety. Male sexuality tends to be more roving anyway, and there's nothing to stop believing Muslims from engaging in dominant gay sex. (Submissive gay sex is strictly forbidden in Islam, and can get you pushed off a tall building in Iran or Saudi Arabia.)

So Harvey W. is an addict. The definition of "addiction" is a behavior that becomes destructive of oneself and others. When your cravings for crack cocaine get so bad that you have to murder your dealer, or yourself, that is by definition an addiction. Addictions are not limited to illegal substances. Escalating sex is also addictive, and for some people, political power might be addictive.

So Harvey is an addict just as much as that skinny kid shooting up in a back alley downtown. Recently he made a public promise to go to a treatment center, but he still can't help himself. He keeps doing destructive things. https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/harvey-weinstein-hobbes-nasty-brutish/

He is not the only one. Both history and psychiatry tells us about epidemic addictions that destroy whole cultures. The Roman Empire was destroyed in part by a dysfunctional ruling class, and in part by invading barbarians who did not share those particular addictions. One reason why Christians and Jews of those times turned against Greco-Roman culture is that they did not want to destroy themselves.

The Greeks and Romans went down, the French aristocracy went down, and the Weimar Republic gave way to Hitler. The American Founders knew all about French decadence, since Jefferson and Franklin served as U.S. ambassadors to Paris. French sexual addiction was France. Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat who rationalized criminal abuse if it gave him pleasure.

The U.S. Founders emphasized personal discipline over and over again. George Washington kept a diary of all the ways he fell short of his own ideals. Scoring chicks wasn't one of his ideals. If it was, the British might have won.

So when somebody talks about Love and Peace forever, tell them to read a little history.
I dont believe in conspiracy, except where Hollywood and HW and the Democratic Party are concerned. And anyway, it wasnt a real conspiracy: everybody knew, except us rubes.

But I am interested in something that comes closer to a conspiracy, the notion that former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon was kinda, sorta shoved out the door at the White House in August.

I dont believe it. I think that the shoved out the door meme was a cover story. After all, why signal the Democrats that something is up with: Trump Sends Bannon Out to Elect Populists to Senate in 2018. What would Sun Tzu say about that?

Its much better to promote Bannon as an unguided missile that is a bit too hot to handle at the White House. That way, if he fails to elect a bunch of populist economic nationalists to the Senate in 2018 you can say that he was really too much of a wild man to help the president. But if he succeeds in nuking the GOP establishment types, then you can open your eyes in wonder and say: wow, I had no idea! It just shows that there are millions of patriotic Americans out there that want to help the president Make America Great Again.

So now we see a range of stories appearing in the media. There is the standard Breitbart fare that Bannon will rout the establishment Republicans. Here is Bannon wowing California Republicans with this message.

Then there is the AP darkly predicting another crop of whackjobs like in 2010 and 2012. Or the Los Angeles Times with the usual some Republicans are nervous approach.

Then there are confident Democratic predictions that Bannon is a gift to the Democrats that will deliver the Senate in 2018.

But think of the strategic situation of President Trump. The Democrats seem to be united in opposition to everything he does. But the Republicans are a looser coalition, and clearly many Republican officeholders in Washington dont think they owe Trump anything. Last week President Bush and Sen. McCain (R-AZ) gave speeches just to remind us that they just dont get it. So if you were Trump what would you do?

Its obvious. You would send out your best man to put the fear of electoral defeat into the minds of your Republican opponents and fence-sitters. If his guy successfully primaries a couple of Mitchs men and he picks up a few of the 21 Democratic seats that are up in 2018 the president changes the correlation of forces in Washington DC in 2019.

And while you are at it, you figure that it doesnt hurt to burnish your best mans reputation as a crazy wild man by hinting to the NeverTrumpers that Bannon reads the notorious fascist theorist Julius Evola.

Yeah. Thats the thing about Steve Bannon. He hasnt just done a lot in his life, from the Navy to finance to Hollywood. He also reads a lot.

Now I am a guy that has not really done a lot; but I do read a lot. And my judgement is that you cannot change the world unless you have read enough to develop a worldview that is different from the usual conventional wisdom on offer. You cannot jump the tracks of the conventional wisdom unless you can outfit your vehicle with a nice set of tracks for cross-country travel. Its the Andrew Breitbart doctrine: politics is downstream from culture.

The point of the right rebellion, from Trump to Brexit to the weekends elections in Austria and the Czech Republic, is that conventional right-wing culture and politics has failed, that gentlemanly conservatism and libertarianism doesnt move the needle; it only perpetuates the ratchet whereby every left government moves the needle leftwards, but right governments dont move the needle back as far.

The assumption that Breitbart made and Bannon makes is that you have to win the cultural battle before you can win the political battle.

Now, I assume that Steve Bannons mind is fizzing with ideas he has read. Great, so he has ideas. But Steve Bannon is also a fearless Man of Action, if not a Man of Steel.

And one thing Bannon knows is that we cannot continue to kow-tow and apologize when the liberals use their cultural hegemony to brand you as a racist or a white supremacist or the swamp brands you as an extremist. Politics is civil war by other means and the weapons of todays politics were forged years ago by some guy writing a book.

And that is why I think that the GOP establishment, the Democratic Party, and the Democratic Party operatives with bylines in the media should be very afraid.

Because if there is any man in America who can hand them their hats it is Sreve Bannon.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.
Guatemala faces many challenges -- a 59 percent poverty rate, deadly drug trafficking, the lowest literacy rate in Central America, and topographic realities where only five percent of the soil can support permanent crops, yet agriculture accounts for half the jobs.

On top of that, its low-growth economy and violent, largely unchecked drug trade have convinced a generation of Guatemalans to look elsewhere for peace and prosperity. Today, nearly eight people leave the country for each one that comes in. By comparison, nearly 16 people move to the U.S. for every person who moves out.

Considering this epic drain of talent and resources, it is puzzling that Guatemalas government, with the acquiescence if not approval of some elements of the U.S. government, has shut down the third-largest silver mine in the world in San Rafael in southern Guatemala on some fairly suspicious grounds.

In July, CALAS, an anti-mining organization, convinced the Supreme Court of Guatemala to issue a provisional decision closing the mine pending the outcome of a lawsuit it filed that claimed the Xinca indigenous community was not properly consulted before the mine was built.

The decision came despite the fact that, according to the most recent Guatemalan census, 98.6% of the area is nonindigenous and no Xinca are party to the lawsuit.

The court overturned the decision in early September, but protesters have formed a roadblock near the mine, blocking entry a la the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in South Dakota. Also, Guatemalas Ministry of Energy and Mines has declined to renew the mines export credential, which expired during the time the suspension was in effect.

The result is that nearly 8,000 people who live in one of the poorest parts of the Western Hemisphere and benefit financially from the mine are idled because activists from international groups such as United for Mining Justice, Mining Injustice Solidarity Network, the Center for International Environmental Law, and others convinced a court to stop work on a project because people who do not live near a mine and had not expressed any problems with the mine were perhaps offended.

The company is paying the workers for now, but the cash-starved government of Guatemala is missing out on $9 million per quarter in royalty payments and tax revenue, and Tahoe Resources, which operates the mine, is deferring a $12 million investment in the region.

President Trump has called for reducing immigration at its source -- in part by helping countries such as Guatemala become more hospitable to industry that could provide growth and keep residents from wanting to migrate. But hisaAmbassador there until recently, Obama-holdover Todd Robinson, seemed to work against those principles.

According to an article in the Daily Caller, Robinson made clear to Guatemalan lawmakers that Washington wanted Gloria Porras, an activist lawyer who had scandal problems of her own, to lead the Constitutional Court, Guatemalas highest judicial body. One lawmaker said Robinson went so far as to supervise the vote and make clear to members they could lose their U.S. visas if they went against the ambassador.

Trumps ambassador, who recently just arrived in Guatemala, should make it clear that the new administration will support American interests in the region -- making good on a promise to put America first.

Guatemalas Supreme Court has acknowledged CALAS does not have a case, but its Constitutional Court is now headed by a lawyer who is expected to side against the mine.

These cases -- this state-sanctioned harassment of legally operating businesses -- dont come without costs.

Losing high-paying jobs will mean a massive hit on government budgets, the elimination of $1 billion in American investment dollars and another generation of Guatemalans heading north in search of menial jobs in the U.S. or worse.

The government is already so cash-strapped that the U.S. militarys second-largest drug program is hindered by the Guatemalans inability to help. The president, Jimmy Morales, has said jobs, business and economic development are the keys to recovery and to stop the nation from hemorrhaging its young residents.

Guatemala cant do much in terms of crops, but it is blessed with unique natural resources. Those resources cant bring prosperity by themselves, but they can provide good-paying jobs that get the country up and running, improve its educational attainment, brighten its prospects and cause young Guatemalans to be excited about staying put in their home country.

Well soon know if Guatemala takes its responsibility to its young seriously. In late-September, the Supreme Court clarified that the mine had to reach out to Xinca communities in just four municipalities and denied a request by the mine to renew its export credential. The Constitutional Court, with its American-influenced corrupt chief judge, is expected to rule by the end of the year.

The Trump administration does not have a lot of options when it comes to intervening in a court case in Guatemala. But it should inform the people there that our ambassador and our policies have changed, and we dont support the loss of high-paying jobs for thousands of people in one of the worlds poorest regions.

Brian McNicoll is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va.
How do we make sense of this statement made by the Democratic Socialists of America (The the largest socialist organization in the United States, according to itself)?

Electoral tactics are only a means for democratic socialists.

This piece is also set within the context of the rise of the British radical socialist, democratic socialist and Leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn MP. (According to his followers, Corbyn almost won the British election in June 2017.)

Democratic socialism itself must also be seen within the context of 20th century communism and Stalinism.

What I mean by that is that there has been a brazen attempt to separate socialism and even communism itself from Stalinism -- and from all the other forms of socialism which have led to dictatorships or totalitarianism. Interestingly enough, even Trotskyists have also almost entirely defined themselves in opposition to Stalin and the Soviet Union. Of course, virtually no kind of socialist/communist is ever going to explicitly commit himself to dictatorship or totalitarianism and hardly any socialist/communist ever has. (Even the National Socialist Adolf Hitler and the International Socialist Josef Stalin never explicitly committed themselves to totalitarianism.)

At one point in history, even self-described communists began to recognise the Problem of Stalin. In actual fact, they really recognised the Problem of Communism. This meant that Stalin became communism's very-convenient scapegoat. In the end, it was all down to Stalin and to no one else! Marx, for example, had absolutely nothing to do with oppression, dictatorship, and even the victims of class war. Indeed, many socialists have also claimed that Lenin, Trotsky, and many other Marxist/socialist oppressors were entirely blameless. As I said, Stalin became -- and still is -- the ultimate bogeyman and scapegoat for many -- though certainly not for all (e.g., the British Labour Party's Seumas Milne and Andrew Murray) -- socialists and communists.

Yet even the radical French structuralist and philosopher, Michel Foucault, thought otherwise.

In the Gulag one sees not the consequences of any unhappy mistake, but the effects of the truest of theories in the political order [i.e., Marxism/communism].

Despite the above, Mikhail Gorbachev still described his own perestroika as a "new, humane and democratic socialism. It was partly because of this that many other communists and Marxists suddenly began to class themselves as democratic socialists.

Democratic socialism?

The basic thing is that no matter how the word democratic -- in democratic socialism -- is defined or used, it's still deemed to be an aspect of socialism. That is, socialists believe that the means of production, education, transport, all the public services, the utilities, the (entire?) media and probably much more should be owned by the state. (Or, as its sometimes inaccurately -- or even deceitfully -- put by the followers of Corbyn, all these things should be socially-owned/publicly-owned.)

So now let's update to 2017 and the United Kingdom.

With the rise of the British Shadow Prime Minister and Member of Parliament, Jeremy Corbyn, there's been a strong emphasis on the words democratic socialism. This is a relatively new emphasis; though the words democratic socialism do date back decades.

Indeed, some of Corbyn's followers have also had the audacity to claim that Corbyn is a social democrat who believes in social democracy. This means that the supporters of Corbyn are intentionally  perhaps cunningly -- fusing democratic socialism with social democracy. Corbynites even cite the Scandinavian countries as being an influence on Corbyn. However, there's a small and inconvenient fact here: no Scandinavian government is democratic-socialist, let alone outright socialist. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are all parliamentary (representative) democracies with constitutional monarchies; with two Kings and a Queen as heads of state. These countries are also run by Social Democratic, Liberal, and Conservative parties.

So what, exactly, is democratic socialism and how does it differ from plain socialism and communism?

The Democratic Socialists of America

Take the Democratic Socialists of America, which was formed 1982 and is still with us today. In the past, the DSA has endorsed Jesse Jackson, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama and, more recently, Britain's very own Jeremy Corbyn.

I mentioned earlier that many of Corbyn supporters state that Corbyn is a social democrat who believes in social democracy. So it's worth noting that the Democratic Socialists of America has its roots in a split with the Social Democrats, USA. The SDUSA was deemed to be too right-wing. The group which arose from the split was called the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC); and that group led to the Democratic Socialists of America.

The Democratic Socialists of America endorse what Michael Harrington called the "left-wing realism which is found today in the Democratic Party. Similarly, many Marxists, Trotskyists and communists back the left-wing realism which is found in Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.

What about the politics of the Democratic Socialists of America?

The following is the DSA'S view of democratic socialism:

"We are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit, alienated labor, gross inequalities of wealth and power... We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution... We believe that such a strategy must acknowledge the class structure of American society and that this class structure means that there is a basic conflict of interest between those sectors with enormous economic power and the vast majority of the population."

We can see that this passage might have come straight out of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto -- if in a slightly updated form.

That means that when it comes to the Democratic Socialists of America (at the least), the term democratic socialism firstly means acknowledging and then winning the class war. It also means the total control of all resources and production; alongside complete economic planning. Doesn't all this sound very familiar to you?

So where, exactly, is the democracy in the DSA's democratic socialism? The Democratic Socialists of America's answer to that will no doubt be as simple as this:

No state or government which allows capitalism -- in any shape and form -- can be truly democratic precisely because it allows gross inequalities, alienated labour and the conflict of interests.

Quite simply, the Democratic Socialists of America believes that democracy will not exist until socialism -- in its complete form -- is put in place.

And like the activist group Momentum within the Labour Party (which once said that it "exists to build on the energy and enthusiasm from the Jeremy Corbyn for Labour Leader campaign), the DSA places its cards on the table in this way:

Much of progressive, independent political action will continue to occur in Democratic Party primaries... democratic socialists will support coalitional campaigns based on labor, women, people of color and other potentially anti-corporate elements... Electoral tactics are only a means for democratic socialists [my bold]; the building of a powerful anti-corporate coalition is the end...

In the United Kingdom, this is called entryism. That word is defined in this way:

Entryism is the infiltration of a political party by members of another group, with the intention of subverting its policies or objectives.

Indeed, the overall role of the Democratic Socialists of America (just like Momentum in the British Labour Party) is to realign the Democratic party and make it, well, outrightly socialist/Marxist.

There are other democratic socialists who believe in such non-electoral radicalism too.

The socialist activist and Marxist, Hal Draper, for example, actually used the words "revolutionary-democratic socialism" as a term for his own political position. And we mustn't forget here that many communist regimes in the 20th century classed themselves as democratic. (E.g., the Lao People's Democratic Republic, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, the Democratic Government of Albania, Democratic Kampuchea, etc.)

Conclusion

Thus these -- and many other -- socialists don't see any conflict at all between outright revolution/radicalism and democracy. Indeed, they don't see any conflict or contradiction between their democratic socialism and revolution. All this must surely mean that such people simply can't be believers in social democracy (in the Scandinavian or European sense) in any historical or meaningful sense of that term. In other words, the word democratic in democratic socialism is pretty much a pretense. Indeed, most of the history of socialist states, ideology and practice shows us that very clearly.

Paul Austin Murphy is a writer on politics and philosophy. He's had articles published in The Conservative Online, Intellectual Conservative, Human Events, Faith Freedom, Think-Israel, Brenner Brief (Broadside News), New English Review, etc. His philosophy blog can be found here. His blog on politics can be found here.
GOP tax writers are "scrambling to find new revenue sources" to pay for tax cuts, as chicagotribune.com reports, which explains why limiting tax-deferred 401(k) retirement plan contributions was such a "juicy target" before the idea was "shot down" by the president on Monday.

According to the Tribune, the tax deferral for 401(k) accounts "cost the government $82.7 billion in lost revenue in the recent budget year ending Sept. 30, 2016  a potentially juicy target for Republican tax-cutters."

Reports circulating over the weekend that House Republican tax-writers were "considering a plan to sharply reduce the amount of income American workers can save in tax-deferred retirement accounts" led President Trump to tweet that "[t]here will be NO change to your 401(k)." The president added, "This has always been a great and popular middle class tax break that works, and it stays!"

Tax-deferred 401(k) contributions, which are "shielded" from taxes "on the front end" but taxed "on the back end when the money is withdrawn," would have been reduced from a limit of $18,000 "for most workers" to $2,400, according to news reports. The alternative for taxpayers would likely have been to "switch to Roth IRAs, which are taxed on the front end but are shielded from taxes on the back end when the money is withdrawn," as nypost.com relates.

There is more than $5 trillion in 401(k) assets held by 55 million Americans, in a program that began some 35 years ago. As Chris Farrell at forbes.com has observed, it would be hard for tax legislators "on a hunt for revenue" to "ignore the nearly $584 billion in estimated lost tax revenue from defined contribution plans like 401(k)s over the 2016 to 2020 time frame."

The 401(k) "trial balloon" that "crashed" Monday follows a proposal to eliminate the deduction for state and local income taxes that "has run into heavy opposition from GOP House members from high-tax states, threatening the enactment of tax legislation," the Tribune observes.

The budget passed by the Senate last week and up for a House vote this week "only allows a tax bill to add up to $1.5 trillion to the deficit over a decade," as thehill.com reports, and the Republican tax-writers have a long way to go to fit the net tax cut into that budget.

An analysis by Tony Nitti at forbes.com looks at how the tax-writers can potentially fit an initial estimate of $2.5 trillion in tax cuts into that $1.5-trillion budget. To begin with, the GOP had been counting in the initial estimate on $1.3 trillion in additional tax revenue (over ten years) from eliminating the deduction for state and local income taxes. If that deduction remains, then the GOP is $2.3 trillion over the $1.5-billion budget limit for tax cuts.

Mr. Nitti suggests a six-point plan to close the "$2.3 trillion gap":

"Cap," rather than repeal, the deduction for state and local income taxes, which Nitti figures would save $800 billion of the original $1.3 trillion for the deduction.

"Don't eliminate the estate tax," which would save $240 billion.

"Add a fourth tax bracket" for high earners, saving another $500 billion.

Citing several complications of the proposed "25% rate" on pass-through "business income," Nitti figures eliminating that would yield a savings of $760 billion.

"Enhance the Child Tax Credit," at a cost of $250 billion, offset by increasing the proposed corporate tax rate from 20% to 22.5%, at a cost of $250 billion.

All of that magically adds up to "bridge the $2.3 trillion gap between the current $3.8 trillion in tax cuts contained in [the GOP] plan" (assuming that the deduction for state and local income taxes remains) and "the $1.5 trillion of cuts permitted by the Senate budget."

The forbes.com analysis is very broad-brush and makes a lot of assumptions along the way, but the magnitude of the numbers involved shows what Republican tax-writers are up against. The GOP has to shoehorn the tax cuts into the budget in order to pass the tax bill with 51 votes under reconciliation rules, which explains why a projected savings of at least $83 billion annually from cutting back the 401(k) tax deferral is so tempting to the tax-writers.

Dan McLaughlin, writing at nationalreview.com last month, says removing the tax deferral aspect of 401(k) contributions "discourages self-reliance" for retirement savings and would "unsettle plans made in reliance on the existing code by lots of people"  not to mention that it would be a significant tax increase on hardworking Americans saving for retirement.

Fortunately, the president shot down the idea before the Democrats could take it to the political bank.
My family has been in Texas for many generations. Andrew Kent was my great-great-great grandfather.

Andrew Kent repeatedly answered the call when Texas needed him most.

Kent was a judge who chose delegates at Texas constitutional convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos. He was also no stranger to battle. He was one of the first Texas Rangers and on October 2, 1835, he and a few of his neighbors faced off against Santa Annas soldados at Gonzales. You may have seen the flag they flew: "Come and Take It."

Kent also took part in the siege and battle of Bexar and helped capture an old mission that was turned into a fort -- the Alamo.

But the battle for Texas freedom was far from over. By February 1836 the fort that Kent had helped capture was surrounded by the enemy. Its commander, Lt. Col. William Barret Travis, dispatched a letter desperately calling for reinforcements. Kent and 31 other men from Gonzales heard the call and rode to Travis aid. They were the last men to enter the Alamo. On March 6, 1836, my great-great-great grandfather passed from this earth and became one of the Immortal 32. He reinforced the Alamo in its darkest hour.

Now, the Alamo needs reinforcement again. Time and weather threaten the Church and Long Barrack, which are all we have left from 1836. The field on which my ancestor and the other Defenders bled and died is now under streets and sidewalks, and occupied by businesses that provide jobs but do not belong on sacred ground. The Alamo deserves better. Many of us Defender descendants have done everything we can to make it better.

The good news is, there is a plan to make it better. Land Commissioner George P. Bush is working on a plan for the Alamo that will do three things. Bushs plan will preserve the Alamo Church and Long Barrack. This plan will recapture the Alamo battlefield from the streets and Plaza that now cover it up. This plan will reinforce the Alamo and its 1836 story. Our story.

Andrew Kents name is etched on the Cenotaph that stands on the Alamo battlefield. Its the Defenders empty tomb. I bring my children and grandchildren to the Alamo often to see his name and hear about his sacrifice for Texas. While I prefer to see the Cenotaph stay where it is and am working toward that, the city of San Antonio, which owns it, may move it from the battlefield to where the Defenders funeral pyres are located, a short distance to the south. I think that would be out of sight, and out of mind. A better site on the grounds would be right outside what would be the main gate. That way, the battleground would be more like it was and the Cenotaph would have even more prominence. Either way, the Cenotaph will always stand. In fact, it will be saved, it will be repaired, and more Defenders names will be added to it.

The battle in 1836 makes the Alamo what it is: the Cradle of Texas Liberty. It defines Texas. In a few years time, if Bush's plan succeeds, we will see the Alamo become the sacred place it should be. No more carnival distractions. No more trucks driving through the battlefield and rattling and damaging the Alamo Church. It will have the museum it deserves with the Phil Collins collection. The Alamo will be the world's largest exhibit on the Texas Revolution.

Because of the battle in 1836, the Alamo is the heart of Texas, I think George P. Bush understands this, and his plan ensures that it always will be.

Forrest Byas is an Alamo Defender Descendant
Evidently, the lack of self-awareness at CNN has reached a critical stage, leading the cable news pioneer to embarrass itself while trying to put down President Trump. No doubt, the fake news label applied to CNN by Trump really stings. But by adopting a tone of Olympian infallibility as a reporter of facts, while by implication looking down on Trump, the 30-second promotional video CNN tweeted out yesterday enters the realm of self-satire:

Condescension as a communications strategy is rarely useful, and when dealing with a mass audience, always a mistake. It is simply too easy to discredit this pose as truth-tellers by the track record of the network. David Harsanyi, for example, takes us down memory lane to ten times CNN told us apples were bananas. A sample:

Were not talking about Candy Crowley arguing with Mitt Romney during a presidential debate, and misleading millions of voters by mangling the facts. Were not even talking about transparently partisan reporters like Jim Sciutto or Jim Acosta. Were talking about CNN political analysts like Julian Zelizer, who claimed this summer that President Trump never made an Article 5 commitment to our NATO allies a month after Trump did. Rather than correcting what may have been an oversight (if we give him the benefit of the doubt), Zelizer rationalized his definitive assertion by alleging that POTUS has sent mixed messages and there is reason to question his commitment.

Trump said: I am committing the United States to Article 5. Even if you dont trust the president, a banana is not an apple.

Were talking about CNN host Chris Cuomo, who, in addition to his hopeless bias, regularly offers factually impaired assertions on every media platform available to him. During the presidential race, Cuomo arguedthat while it was illegal for citizens to look at WikiLeaks emails, the media was afforded special protection with illegally obtained documents. Its different for the media, Cuomo explained, So everything you learn about this, youre learning from us.

You might also remember that after an anti-Islamist was shot in Texas a few years ago, Cuomo, who has a law degree, did a bit of victim-blaming by arguing that Hate speech is excluded from protection under the First Amendment. Instead of admitting that his aversion to speech critical of Islam had led him to say something untrue, Cuomo attempted to walk it back by offering examples that had absolutely nothing to do with his initial comment.
US aerospace company Boeing inked two deals with Iranian carriers to manufacture 110 planes for $20 billion. The huge contracts would ensure the jobs of up to 120,000 workers.

But one of the carriers, Iran Air, has been caught ferrying Revolutionary Guard and Hezb'allah fighters to hotspots in the Middle East, raising questions about whether a US company should be facilitating terrorism.

Now that the Trump administration has refused to recertify the Iranian nuclear deal, there is a renewed effort in Congress to get the administration to nix the deals entirely. The House has voted several times against the Boeing deals, but have failed so far to convince the Trump administration to block the sale.

Washington Free Beacon:

The Trump administration's recent decision to increase economic pressure on Iran and rework the nuclear agreement has prompted a shift in thinking on the Boeing sales, which require special licenses from the Treasury Department to move forward, according to U.S. officials and those in Congress who are familiar with the shift in thinking on the issue. The Trump administration is said to be viewing the sales with an increasingly critical eye and is moving, at this point, toward killing the sales, according to these sources, who pointed to concerns over Iran Air's use of commercial airplanes for terrorism purposes. While the sale could create new American jobs, U.S. officials and others told the Free Beacon the administration and Congress will not permit any business deal that enables Iran's military efforts and pursuit of regional dominance. The Free Beacon first disclosed in August that Congress has been investigating new evidence that Iran Air has been ferrying militants to Syria and other regional hotspots in violation of international laws. It is likely that the Obama administration withheld information about this behavior in order to help promote the nuclear agreement. There is mounting concern in the Trump administration and Congress that Iran would use a fleet of new Boeing planes to boost its regional intervention in hotspots such as Syria, where Iranian-backed militants have repeatedly attacked American coalition forces. While a final decision has not yet been made on whether to kill the deal, top officials have been critical of the Boeing agreement and do not view it as in the United States' national security interests. "This is a careful consensus, ongoing process," according to one source familiar with administration deliberations on the issue. "They're adding up everything in all the columns. They're not just deciding well it's more important for Boeing to make money' or well it's more important to prevent Iran from sending troops to Assad.'" "But I wouldn't count on the Trump to administration to easily allow any company, let alone an American company, to fuel Iran's war machine. Their priority is the opposite," the source said.

Iran has also made deals with European aerospace giant Airbus for an additional 73 planes. Supporters of the Boeing deal point out that if we can't sell the planes, Iran will just turn to Airbus or other airline manufacturers for the planes. But Airbus spends 42% of its aircraft-related procurement on US parts. The Trump administration could refuse Airbus those parts if they were used to build aircraft for Iran.

What about all those jobs? Layoffs are a fact of life in the aerospace industry. Boeing will be hard pressed to find other orders to make up the entire loss of the Iran contracts, but should be successful in making up some or most of the slack given the robust civilian passenger jet market at the moment.

Certainly Boeing should have expected opposition to this deal regardless of which party held the White House. Congress was never going to let the deal slide through without something to say about it. That's why nixing a $20 billion aircraft deal is not going to be as serious a blow to the aerospace giant as you might expect.
Galileo Galilei may have declared, Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the universe, but Professor Rochelle Gutierrez of the University of Illinois sees sinister white privilege in the language of math. Toni Airaksinen of Campus Reform spotted the latest absurdity to make its way down from the ivory tower to the unwashed masses:

A math education professor at the University of Illinois argued in a newly published book that algebraic and geometry skills perpetuate unearned privilege among whites. Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Illinois, made the claim in a new anthology for math teachers, arguing that teachers must be aware of the politics that mathematics brings in society. On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White, Gutierrez argued. Gutierrez also worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, fretting that curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans."

Oddly enough, this Euro-bias or white privilege does not seem to have prevented East Asians from excelling at math, as any glance at the classrooms at MIT or CalTech will demonstrate. But according to Professor Gutierrez:

evaluations of math skills can perpetuate discrimination against minorities, especially if they do worse than their white counterparts. If one is not viewed as mathematical, there will always be a sense of inferiority that can be summoned, she says, adding that there are so many minorities who have experienced microaggressions from participating in math classrooms [where people are] judged by whether they can reason abstractly.

Sorry, Professor, but analytical reasoning is an incredibly important skill in an era where technology is continually revolutionizing life. The beauty of math is its anchoring in pure reason, available to anyone who cares to take the logical steps and is capable of understanding them. The problem for the racialists is that functional math skills are very unevenly distributed among various demographic slices. One hopes that this is a matter of cultural conditioning, not innate ability. But whatever the origins of the demographic contrasts, the hard reality is that math is difficult, it requires concentration, focus, and the ability to reason. It is hard work that not everyone is prepared to make the sacrifices for.

But Professor Gutierrez sees a different reality:

Gutierrez stresses that all knowledge is relational, asserting that Things cannot be known objectively; they must be known subjectively."

Would Professor Gutierrez like to be the first person to cross a bridge engineered by someone who felt that math was relational and that things cannot be known objectively? How about boarding an airplane designed by someone with her own convictions?

Western civilization gained the power to transform the world thanks to hard-won intellectual achievements rooted in math and science. The peoples of the world had available to them the entire cornucopia of benefits of this intellectual achievement. Some of those non-western peoples chose to adapt to the available intellectual bounty and throw themselves into the realm of science, engineering, entrepreneurship, and achievement, with Japan as the prototype. Race had nothing to do with their success. Other nations and groups have followed suit, with great success.

The opposite posture, alas, one of victimization and rejection of the value of the world-changing knowledge, is a trap. And Professor Gutierrez not only fell into the trap, she is baiting it for her students and those who follow her lead.
The illegal alien who shot and killed Katie Steinle, thus igniting a debate over illegal immigration, went on trial yesterday in San Francisco. The defense is claiming that Jose Ines Garcia Zarate did not deliberately shoot Steinle, that the gun discharged and the 32 year old woman was killed by a richochet.

The prosecution says the shooting was a deliberate act.

San Jose Mercury News:

The undocumented immigrant accused of shooting and killing Pleasanton native Kate Steinle was aiming toward her and knew what he was doing, a prosecutor argued Monday at the start of a politically charged murder case that sparked a nationwide debate over immigration policy. But a defense attorney said Steinles death was the result of an accidental gunshot and a freakish ricochet of the bullet that struck her. The trial of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, who allegedly shot 32-year-old Steinle on San Franciscos Pier 14 in July 2015, kicked off on Monday with opening statements and brief but emotional testimony from Steinles father, who was walking with her during the shooting. The closely watched case has attracted national attention because of its connection to immigration policy  Garcia Zarate, a Mexican citizen, was released from a San Francisco jail two and a half months before the shooting instead of being deported because of the citys sanctuary city policy. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and other conservatives seized on the shooting as an argument for tougher immigration laws. But inside Courtroom 13, the focus was on ballistics, not politics. Neither side in the trial referred to the political furor surrounding the shooting, and Garcia Zarates immigration status was barely mentioned. Garcia Zarate, 45, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, and his lawyers argue that the shooting was an accident  a single shot that ricocheted off the pier into Steinles back. The prosecution will try to convince jurors that Garcia Zarate shot recklessly at people, the standard necessary for a second-degree conviction. Assistant District Attorney Diana Garcia started her at times dramatic opening statement by lifting up the gun, a plastic tag through its trigger. She described the beautiful summer afternoon that Steinle, her father, and a family friend took a walk in San Franciscos Embarcadero neighborhood. The group passed by Garcia Zarate on the pier, she said. Garcia Zarate, who was spinning around in a chair on the pier, aimed towards Steinle with the gun and fired, Garcia argued. Steinle, who was walking with her father, fell forward. The only thing she could say was dad, help me, help me,' Garcia said. Those would be her last words.

The main point will not be discussed in this trial; that Zarate should not only not have been on the pier, but had no business even being in the country. Illegal immigration and sanctuary city policies will almost certainly be left out of the prosecutors brief because the judge is more than likely to rule that the information is "predjudicial" to the defendant's case.

Even if those issues are never mentioned, they will hang over the trial anyway.

Under the rules established by the Obama administration, Zarate should have been deported. That he wasn't shows the callousness of city officials who would rather pander politically to a powerful constituency than keep citizens safe. Perhaps a trial like this will open a few eyes among voters who are the victims of this policy and might not appreciate city officials making them targets.
Sometimes, I feel as though God is laughing at the mainstream media, but I know it is actually much simpler than that. Those who dedicate themselves to propagating lies and false perspectives eventually run smack into reality. And that is exactly what happened to MSNBC reporter Jacob Soboroff. Andrew Kugle of the Free Beacon explains:

MSNBC reporter Jacob Soboroff went to preview the [8 border wall] prototypes that are being built between two existing border fences along the U.S.-Mexico border. During the segment, Soboroff was interviewing border patrol agent Roy Villareal when several migrants were caught on camera jumping the existing fence into the United States.

"A small group of three people just jumped over in the middle of the day," Soboroff noted. "So can you explain to me what's going on?"

"This is the reality of everyday border enforcement. The United States is the draw for people with dire situations where they are at," Villareal said. "We are going to continue to witness this. It plays out on a regular basis for us."

NBC has pulled down the video on YouTube chronicling the moment.

Their embarrassment is showing.
A gushing new biography of Hillary Clinton for children seeks to rewrite history so as to create a litany of "accomplishments" for the former first lady and indoctrinate the young about them from the start. Here is a screen photo of Hillary Rodham Clinton: Some Girls Are Born to Lead, by Michelle Markel.

It's nothing but a leftist bid to indoctrinate the young on Hillary Clinton as some sort of role model to salvage her legacy in the wake of her 2016 presidential election loss.

The publisher Harper Collins, calls it "an inspiring portrait" as Clinton "paved the way for women everywhere"

The contents begin like this:

In the 1950s, it was a mans world. Girls werent supposed to act smart, tough, or ambitious. Even though, deep inside, they may have felt that way. And then along came Hillary. Brave, brilliant, and unstoppable, she was out to change the world. They said a woman couldnt be a mother and a lawyer. Hillary was both. They said a woman shouldnt be too strong or too smart. Hillary was fearlessly herself. It didnt matter what people saidshe was born to lead.

The Daily Wire, which first spotted the book, noted that:

The author might want to note successful women were around before Hillary  a few examples: Nobel Prize in Physics, 1903: Marie Curie Nobel prize in Literature, 1909: Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlof Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1911: Marie Curie American womens suffrage: 1920 Nobel Peace Prize, 1931: Jane Addams Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel: 1969 Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of England: 1979

and added a choice tweet to sum up:

http://<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Apparently, women contributed NOTHING to science, art, or society before Hillary Clinton. <a href="https://t.co/Mq3V0Yjwhf">pic.twitter.com/Mq3V0Yjwhf</a></p> Beth Lynch (@BethLynch2020) <a href="https://twitter.com/BethLynch2020/status/922518730822881280?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 23, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>





...from a feminist socialist no less, probably a Sanders supporter.

The disgust was pretty significant, to consider the collection of other tweets the Daily Wire curated in its piece.

It's actually pretty redolent of Hillary's phony persona in general. Voters after all, tended to shun Hillary Clinton at the 2016 polls because they didn't trust her. Even the Sorosians, taking the plunge to try to figure out why people voted for Donald Trump, came to that conclusion, as I noted here.

Claiming Hillary has any accomplishments is absurd. She flunked the bar multiple times, was kicked off the Nixon impeachment team, married into political talent rather than develop her own, went on to become a widely disliked Arkansas first lady, then a scandal-mired U.S. first lady, riding on her husband's political talents. From cattle futures profits, to smearing her husband's sex harassment accusers, to misplacing her Arkansas billing records to keep them out of prosecutors' hands, to firing the White House travel office, to winning a Senate seat on her name recognition, to doing absolutely nothing in the Senate, to losing a winnable nomination for president in 2008 to a political neophyte, to serving as an especially incompetent Secretary of State, famous mainly for her pay-to-play access and rolling donations to her foundation and her mishandling of the Benghazi terror attack, this isn't exactly a distinguished record of accomplishment.

Rejected by voters who got wise to her, rewriting history and indoctrinating youth about it seems to be the only thing left. Yet it's as fake as her useless claims to have endured Bosnian gunfire and to have been named after Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand.

Even the illustrations in this book are problematic. To examine the cover picture, Clinton in her Yalie youth with her striped hippie pants is depicted as carrying a backpack, which wasn't widely done in the 1960s and riding a man's style ten-speed bike, which wasn't around at that time either.

The claim implied from the pictures that black men had it easy compared to Clinton is problematically ahistorical, too.

This hasn't stopped gushing from reviewers featured by Harper Collins, however. Get a load of the valentines:

Critical Praise Smart and snappyas inspiring as it is delightful.  Booklist (starred review) Concisely outlines Clintons journey from activist to First Lad of Arkansas and on to Washington, D.C.Phams (the Freckleface Strawberry series) watercolors are steeped in period detail.  Publishers Weekly Both for fun and educationgo-girl power and a good read.  Kirkus Reviews [An] honest and open portrayal  Bulletin of the Center for Childrens Books

It takes hagiography to a whole new level.
Peggy Noonan wrote an intellectually challenged column comparing President Trump to Sarah Palin. She said about Palin that:

Support for her cooled due to antic statements, intellectual thinness and general strangeness.

She said about Trump that:

The same may well happen or be happening with Donald Trump. One reason is there is no hard constituency in America for political incompetence and that is what he continues to demonstrate.

I believe Trump is certainly showing more competence on domestic and foreign policy than either Obama and Hillary have ever shown.

Trump knows that by allowing people and businesses to keep more of the money they earned the economy would thrive and minorities, the young, the poor and middle class would all have a better chance to move up the economic ladder. Neither Obama or Hillary seemed to understand that. Obamas economic policies yielded the slowest economic recovery in 70 years. Is that competence?

Trump understands that Congress passes immigration laws and the president and Justice Department are supposed to enforce those laws. Obama seemed to agree with that in his statements, but never followed through. That certainly looks incompetent or dishonest to me.

Trump and the military are taking out ISIS and other terrorist groups. Obama was so incompetent that he called them the JV team and allowed them to build up.

Trump is not the incompetent President who went around lying to the public that if Obamacare passed that premiums would go down and people would be able to keep their doctor and health plan if they liked them. Only a completely incompetent, ignorant or congenital liar would look at Obamacare and not understand that premiums would skyrocket when competition was reduced.

Obama and previous incompetent Presidents continually gave North Korea stuff if they pretended they would stop building nuclear weapons. You would think that after 15 years of North Korea violating its promises that Obama, Hillary and Kerry would have learned -- but they didnt. It is left up to Trump to fix the mess he was left.

Only an extremely incompetent, intellectually challenged President would look at what North Korea did and do the same thing with Iran, which also pledges death to America.

It took the competent Trump to get NATO to pay closer to the share of defense spending that they have promised. Of course, almost all reporters and Democrats told Trump he shouldnt have done that.

Trump was not the incompetent President that drew a red line in Syria and whispered that he would have more flexibility with Russia if he was elected. After Obama was in for four years, he laughed at Romney when he said Russia was a threat. That shows how truly incompetent and ignorant Obama was about Russia.

I havent seen Trump blame a video for deaths of Americans.

I would challenge Peggy Noonan and any other reporter to list the foreign and domestic achievements of Obama or Hillary that indicate competence and/or intelligence. I am having trouble thinking of any that helped America in the short or long term.

Noonan talks about Trump being unpopular in polls. Where does she think that Obama or Hillary would have been if over 90% of the stories had been negative as they have been about Trump?

This article certainly would make Peggy more popular with reporters and Democrats but it shows minimal if any analysis on her part.
In the 1920s, the Soviet government began searching for an isolated place where they could build a military complex to test biological weapons. The ideal location for such a complex would be a remote island surrounded by sparsely populated desert, and located well within the Soviet Union far from the Unions borders with other nations. A number of islands were shortlisted including one in the White Sea and another one on Lake Seliger, but the one that eventually became the site for the world's largest biological-warfare testing ground was Vozrozhdeniya Island on Aral Sea.

Photo credit: ACTAK MC/Panoramio

In 1948, a top-secret biological weapons laboratory, nicknamed Aralsk-7, was established here. Until its closure in the 1990s, the laboratory tested some of the deadliest pathogens known to man, including plague, anthrax, smallpox, brucellosis, tularemia, botulinum and Venezuelan equine encephalitis. Others were genetically modified to make them resistant to existing medication.

Gennadi Lepyoshkin, a physician, microbiologist and retired colonel in the Soviet Army, who spent 18 summers supervising teams of researchers on Vozrozhdeniye Island, told a journalist of The New York Times.

We used monkeys, about 200 to 300 each year. Our staff would take them out to the range and they would put them in cages next to devices that measured the concentration of germs in the air. Then after they were exposed, they were taken to the labs, where we would test their blood and monitor the development of a disease in them. They would die within weeks, and we would perform autopsies

In its heydays, the laboratory complex employed some 1,500 personnel who lived on the islands only town, Kantubek. The town had a social club, a stadium, a couple of schools and shops. It was a beautiful place,'' Lepyoshkin recalled. ''The water was clear; it came right up to the town, and we used to swim and sunbathe after work.

Today, the entire complex lies in ruins and stripped to the bone by scavengers. The island itself doesnt exist anymoreit was absorbed into the surrounding desert as the Aral Sea slowly dried up.

When the bioweapons complex was erected here, in the mid-20th century, the Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world with an area of 68,000 square kilometers. But an ill-planned irrigation scheme began to suck disproportionally large amounts of water from the rivers that fed the lake, and the Aral Sea began to shrink. Consequently, Vozrozhdeniya Island began to grow, from 200 square kilometers to nearly ten times its original size. In the early 2000s, the channels to its south dried up completely and the island became part of the mainland.

Despite the islands hazardous past, Vozrozhdeniya is frequently visited by scavengers who pilfer the islands laboratory buildings as well as those on Kantubek, which also lies in ruins.

According to experts, most of the agents responsible for the deadly diseases tested on Vozrozhdeniye are likely dead by now, killed by the intense ultraviolet radiation of the sun and the regular summer temperatures of 60C. The exception is anthrax, a spore that can survive in soil for centuries. When the Soviets left the island back in the 90s, they hastily buried tons of anthrax spores here to cover the violation of a 1972 treaty that banned all biological arms. In the early 2000s, official from the US and Uzbekistan came to Vozrozhdeniya Island and set to fire several warehouses containing test tubes, bottles and petri dishes, in an effort to destroy any remaining pathogens. The U.S. Defense Department believes that the spores have been destroyed, but nobody can say for sure.

Lepyoshkin and others who worked on the Soviet bioweapons program say that the super-resilient, weapons-grade bubonic plague bacteria could still be spreading from generation to generation of rat families, just waiting to be passed on to humans. The scavengers, who work among the ruins and broken petri dishes with no protection, are at high risk of infection and starting an epidemic. As a matter of fact, a more contagious and antibiotics-resistant variety of plague already affects a handful of people each year in Central Asia.

Worse still, the Kazakh government is luring the oil industry with promises of great finds below the Aral Sea, and some exploratory drilling were already conducted. Remember those barrels of anthrax the Soviets hid somewhere on the island? No, thankfully, that didnt come up, but who knows what they will dig up next?

Vozrozhdeniya Island as in 2017.

Photo credit: ACTAK MC/Panoramio

Photo credit: ACTAK MC/Panoramio

Photo credit: ACTAK MC/Panoramio

Photo credit: ACTAK MC/Panoramio

Photo credit: ACTAK MC/Panoramio
(ANSA) - Rio de Janeiro, October 24 - A ruling on former leftist terrorist Cesare Battisti's bid to avoid extradition to Italy may be delayed, Brazilian judicial sources said Tuesday.

Brazil's supreme court had been expected to rule on Battisti's lawyers' 'habeas corpus' plea later Tuesday but the federal prosecutor has asked for more time to prepare his case, the sources said.

On Monday Battisti said "the Italian jail officers will kill me".

Battisti, 62, is wanted in Italy to serve two life terms for four murders committed in the 1970s 'Years of Lead' of rightist and leftist terror.

The supreme court is expected to lift Battisti's political-refugee status, granted by former president Luiz Incio Lula da Silva in 2010.

Then the final word would be up to Brazilian President Michel Temer, who reportedly backs Battisti's extradition.

On October 13 the Brazilian government said Battisti had betrayed its trust in trying to flee to Bolivia earlier this month, while Battisti blasted "arrogant" Italy for thinking it will be easy to extradite him.

Battisti "broke the relationship of trust" with Brazil by trying to leave the country "without a precise reason" last week, Justice Minister Torquato Jardim told BBC Brazil.

Caught on his way to Bolivia in a taxi, Jardim said, "he said he was going to get fishing equipment, but he broke the relationship of trust because he committed an illegal act and was leaving the country with money above the permitted limit, without an apparent motive".

Battisti's extradition to Italy is a "sovereign act" on the part of the Brazilian government under a bilateral treaty between the two countries, Jardim told BBC Brasil, confirming President Temer's intention to send Battisti back.

Italian Justice Minister Andrea Orlando hailed the shift in Brazil's position on extraditing Battisti as stated by Jardim.

Orlando voiced the hope that extradition would now be carried out, having made all the necessary moves.

Democratic Party (PD) leader and former premier Matteo Renzi urged Brazil to "give us back" Battisti.

"Prison is awaiting him," said Renzi.

Battisti told ANSA he didn't think he owed an apology to any of the relatives of his four murder victims, reiterating his claim the murders were committed by others.

"All murders are deplorable, but there's no reason for me to apologise for something that other people committed", he said, adding that he felt more Brazilian than Italian after almost 10 years spent there as a refugee, and that all there was in Italy for him were "hate and resentment".

Alberto Torregiani, son of one of the four victims, Milan jeweler Pierluigi Torregiani, said he would not "rejoice" until the former terrorist had been extradited from Brazil to Italy.

"My goal is to get justice for myself and for the others," he said.

Torregiani added that it would be a "turning point" if Battisti were to "finally" ask forgiveness for the murders he has been convicted of committing.

The former terrorist told a Brazilian daily Italy is "such an arrogant country" that "they are convinced it will be an easy task for them to get me out" of Brazil.

Speaking to Folha de S.Paulo, Battisti said Italy's attitude towards him was one of "pride and vanity".

Temer has an opportunity to "make a great act of justice and humanity" towards him in letting him stay on as a political refugee, Battisti told the Brazilian daily.

"I would like President Temer to become deeply aware of the situation, also because he has all the judicial and political instruments to carry out an act of humanity and leave me here" in Brazil, said Battisti.

Sao Paulo Mayor Joo Doria said after meeting Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala in Milan that Battisti is a criminal who must be extradited.

"Now we have a democratic government in Brazil and we can't give protection to a criminal. The extradition must be done," said Doria.

Battisti, formerly a successful crime writer in France, has said extradition to Italy would be like "a death sentence".

Battisti, born in the hilltown of Sermoneta south of Rome, was a member of the leftist militant group Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC).


(ANSA) - Sao Paulo, October 24 - The Brazilian supreme court on Tuesday put off till next week its review of the case of Italian former leftist terrorist Cesare Battisti who is facing extradition to Italy for four 1970s murders.

The federal supreme court had been expected to rule on Battisti's lawyers' 'habeas corpus' plea later Tuesday but the federal prosecutor has now asked for more time to prepare his case, judicial sources said.

On Monday Battisti said "the Italian jail officers will kill me".

Battisti, 62, is wanted in Italy to serve two life terms for the four murders committed in the 1970s 'Years of Lead' of rightist and leftist terror.

The supreme court is expected to lift Battisti's political-refugee status, granted by former president Luiz Incio Lula da Silva in 2010.

Then the final word would be up to Brazilian President Michel Temer, who reportedly backs Battisti's extradition.

On October 13 the Brazilian government said Battisti had betrayed its trust in trying to flee to Bolivia earlier this month, while Battisti blasted "arrogant" Italy for thinking it will be easy to extradite him.

Battisti "broke the relationship of trust" with Brazil by trying to leave the country "without a precise reason" last week, Justice Minister Torquato Jardim told BBC Brazil.

Caught on his way to Bolivia in a taxi, Jardim said, "he said he was going to get fishing equipment, but he broke the relationship of trust because he committed an illegal act and was leaving the country with money above the permitted limit, without an apparent motive".

Battisti's extradition to Italy is a "sovereign act" on the part of the Brazilian government under a bilateral treaty between the two countries, Jardim told BBC Brasil, confirming President Temer's intention to send Battisti back.

Italian Justice Minister Andrea Orlando hailed the shift in Brazil's position on extraditing Battisti as stated by Jardim.

Orlando voiced the hope that extradition would now be carried out, having made all the necessary moves.

Democratic Party (PD) leader and former premier Matteo Renzi urged Brazil to "give us back" Battisti.

"Prison is awaiting him," said Renzi.

Battisti told ANSA he didn't think he owed an apology to any of the relatives of his four murder victims, reiterating his claim the murders were committed by others.

"All murders are deplorable, but there's no reason for me to apologise for something that other people committed", he said, adding that he felt more Brazilian than Italian after almost 10 years spent there as a refugee, and that all there was in Italy for him were "hate and resentment".

Alberto Torregiani, son of one of the four victims, Milan jeweler Pierluigi Torregiani, said he would not "rejoice" until the former terrorist had been extradited from Brazil to Italy.

"My goal is to get justice for myself and for the others," he said.

Torregiani added that it would be a "turning point" if Battisti were to "finally" ask forgiveness for the murders he has been convicted of committing.

The former terrorist told a Brazilian daily Italy is "such an arrogant country" that "they are convinced it will be an easy task for them to get me out" of Brazil.

Speaking to Folha de S.Paulo, Battisti said Italy's attitude towards him was one of "pride and vanity".

Temer has an opportunity to "make a great act of justice and humanity" towards him in letting him stay on as a political refugee, Battisti told the Brazilian daily.

"I would like President Temer to become deeply aware of the situation, also because he has all the judicial and political instruments to carry out an act of humanity and leave me here" in Brazil, said Battisti.

Sao Paulo Mayor Joo Doria said after meeting Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala in Milan that Battisti is a criminal who must be extradited.

"Now we have a democratic government in Brazil and we can't give protection to a criminal. The extradition must be done," said Doria.

Battisti, formerly a successful crime writer in France, has said extradition to Italy would be like "a death sentence".

Battisti, born in the hilltown of Sermoneta south of Rome, was a member of the leftist militant group Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC).


(ANSA) - Sao Paulo, October 24 - The Brazilian supreme court on Tuesday put off till next week its review of the case of Italian former leftist terrorist Cesare Battisti who is facing extradition to Italy for four 1970s murders.

The federal supreme court had been expected to rule on Battisti's lawyers' 'habeas corpus' plea later Tuesday but the federal prosecutor has now asked for more time to prepare his case, judicial sources said.

Earlier Tuesday a Brazilian regional court ruled that Battisti should remain free provided he stays in the area he lives in and reports to a judge regularly. Battisti, who lives with a Brazilian woman and their five-year-old child, said "I won't flee Brazil, I have my home and my family here".

He said "if I was thinking of fleeing Brazil, would I be building a house here to live with my family," he said in an interview with Brasil de Fato from Cananeia, on the Sao Paulo beachside, where he has settled down.

On Monday Battisti said "the Italian jail officers will kill me".

Battisti, 62, is wanted in Italy to serve two life terms for the four murders committed in the 1970s 'Years of Lead' of rightist and leftist terror.

The supreme court is expected to lift Battisti's political-refugee status, granted by former president Luiz Incio Lula da Silva in 2010.

Then the final word would be up to Brazilian President Michel Temer, who reportedly backs Battisti's extradition.

On October 13 the Brazilian government said Battisti had betrayed its trust in trying to flee to Bolivia earlier this month, while Battisti blasted "arrogant" Italy for thinking it will be easy to extradite him.

Battisti "broke the relationship of trust" with Brazil by trying to leave the country "without a precise reason" last week, Justice Minister Torquato Jardim told BBC Brazil.

Caught on his way to Bolivia in a taxi, Jardim said, "he said he was going to get fishing equipment, but he broke the relationship of trust because he committed an illegal act and was leaving the country with money above the permitted limit, without an apparent motive".

Battisti's extradition to Italy is a "sovereign act" on the part of the Brazilian government under a bilateral treaty between the two countries, Jardim told BBC Brasil, confirming President Temer's intention to send Battisti back.

Italian Justice Minister Andrea Orlando hailed the shift in Brazil's position on extraditing Battisti as stated by Jardim.

Orlando voiced the hope that extradition would now be carried out, having made all the necessary moves.

Democratic Party (PD) leader and former premier Matteo Renzi urged Brazil to "give us back" Battisti.

"Prison is awaiting him," said Renzi.

Battisti told ANSA he didn't think he owed an apology to any of the relatives of his four murder victims, reiterating his claim the murders were committed by others.

"All murders are deplorable, but there's no reason for me to apologise for something that other people committed", he said, adding that he felt more Brazilian than Italian after almost 10 years spent there as a refugee, and that all there was in Italy for him were "hate and resentment".

Alberto Torregiani, son of one of the four victims, Milan jeweler Pierluigi Torregiani, said he would not "rejoice" until the former terrorist had been extradited from Brazil to Italy.

"My goal is to get justice for myself and for the others," he said.

Torregiani added that it would be a "turning point" if Battisti were to "finally" ask forgiveness for the murders he has been convicted of committing.

The former terrorist told a Brazilian daily Italy is "such an arrogant country" that "they are convinced it will be an easy task for them to get me out" of Brazil.

Speaking to Folha de S.Paulo, Battisti said Italy's attitude towards him was one of "pride and vanity".

Temer has an opportunity to "make a great act of justice and humanity" towards him in letting him stay on as a political refugee, Battisti told the Brazilian daily.

"I would like President Temer to become deeply aware of the situation, also because he has all the judicial and political instruments to carry out an act of humanity and leave me here" in Brazil, said Battisti.

Sao Paulo Mayor Joo Doria said after meeting Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala in Milan that Battisti is a criminal who must be extradited.

"Now we have a democratic government in Brazil and we can't give protection to a criminal. The extradition must be done," said Doria.

Battisti, formerly a successful crime writer in France, has said extradition to Italy would be like "a death sentence".

Battisti, born in the hilltown of Sermoneta south of Rome, was a member of the leftist militant group Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC).


- Tel Aviv - The film Insult by Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri was not screened in Ramallah on Monday evening as part of the event 'Days of Cinema' in five Palestinian cities. The decision was taken directly by the Ramallah municipal authorities on the request of activists calling for the "academic and cultural boycotting of Israel" and of the Palestinian group 'Young people against normalisation'. The film tells of the long dispute in Beirut between a Palestinian refugee and a Lebanese Christian that degenerates into a complex political, judicial and legal battle. Opponents of the film asked for it not to be screened on grounds it "encourages the normalisation of relations with Israel" as it was largely filmed in the Jewish state. Doueiri was also arrested briefly on returning to Lebanon from the Venice Film Festival in September.
UNESCO sites seek sustainable tourism, from Pompeii to Petra Med Archaeological Tourism Bourse kicks off in Paestum 26/10

(ANSAmed) - NAPLES, OCTOBER 24 - The culture ministers of Serbia, Iraq and Bahrain will be meeting at the Mediterranean Bourse of Archaeological Tourism in Paestum in an attempt to open inter-cultural dialogue.



The 20th edition of the event begins on Thursday.



There will also be a meeting on sustainable tourism with the heads of UNESCO sites in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Jordan, Italy and Peru as well as a look at underwater archaeology in Europe. There will be both events to discuss technical aspects and ones to inform, with leading players in the sector from around the world. One of the highlights will be a conference on ''Sustainable Tourism for the Development of World Archaeological Sites'' under the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).



As part of the UN's 2017 International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, there will be special focus on UNESCO sites, which are often put at risk by overcrowding of visitors. The issue will be discussed by the heads of such places as Pompeii, Petra, Aksum and Tiya, Angkor Wat. On the first day, there will be a meeting on the theme of ''Inter-cultural dialogue, the universal value of identity and cultural heritage'', which will be taken part in by Mai bint Mohammed Al-Khalifa, the president of Bahrain's Culture and Antiquities Authority, Moncef Ben Moussa, director of Tunis's Bardo Museum, UNWTO Secretary General Taleb Rifai, Iraqi Antiquities Minister Fryad Rwandzi and Serbian Culture and Information Minister Vladan Vukosavljevic.



Among the issues to be looked at in Paestum will be underwater tourism, which is seeing a surge in popularity even in Italy's Campania region, such as at the Underwater Archaeological Park of Baia. The entire Mediterranean has underwater cultural heritage, however, which will be discussed in collaboration with Sicily's regional superintendent for the sea. (ANSAmed).




- New York - More collaboration is needed in the Sahel in the fight against terrorism and trafficking of people, drugs and weapons, according to a UN Security Council mission to the region led by Italy, France and Ethiopia. Stability in the Sahel is key to managing and halting the flow of migrants towards the Mediterranean. Some 80% of migrants arriving on Italian coasts come from this part of Africa. The ambassadors leading the mission met with the presidents of Mali and Mauritania.



In Bamako they also took part in a meeting with the Follow-up Committee on the Agreement on Peace and Reconciliation in Mali, which brings together the signatories to the agreement and the mediators. The mission came ahead of the start of Italy's one-month rotating presidency of the UN Security Council on November 1.






- Istanbul - The operation launched by the Turkish army in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib on October 8 "is largely complete", President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday. Now it is the turn of the neighbouring Kurdish enclave of Afrin, added the head of state, confirming Turkey's intention to intervene militarily against the PYD militias after entering Idlib province within the framework of the de-escalation zone agreed at the Astana talks with Russia and Iran.


ANSAmed - Today's events in the Mediterranean

(ANSAmed) - ROME, OCTOBER 24 - These are some of the main events scheduled for today in the Euro-Mediterranean area: PALERMO - Convention center Villa Igiea at 9 am - Start of the OSCE Mediterranean conference to discuss migrant and refugee flows in the Euro-Mediterranean area with the participation of Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano.



ANKARA - Visit by Greek Foreign Minister, Nikos Kotzias, who meets his colleague, Mevlut Cavusoglu.



DUBAI - World Green Economy Summit 2017 (Wges) (also on the 25th).



ROME - EU, summit on 'Water and climate: meeting of the great rivers of the world' (until the 25th).



ROME - Congress on 'Migrations, the global phenomenon and the peculiarity of the Italian case' (also on the 25th).



(ANSAmed).




- Beirut - Lebanon is independent and "does not accept any form of guardianship", Premier Saad Hariri has said in response to a reported statement by Iranian President Hassan Rohani that nothing can be done in the Middle Eastern country without the backing of Tehran. "Rohani's claim that no decision is taken in Lebanon without Iran is unacceptable," Hariri said in a Tweet. "Lebanon is an independent Arab state that does not accept any form of guardianship and refuses to let its dignity be wounded," he added. In a speech on Monday Rohani said Iranian influence in the region is stronger than ever.



"In Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, North Africa, in the Persian Gulf region - where can action be taken without Iran?" he said.






Madrid could use force to restore legality in Catalonia Government to take control of Catalan police, Mendez says

(ANSAmed) - BARCELONA, OCTOBER 24 - The government of Madrid is not ruling out the use of force to "restore legality" in Catalonia after imposing direct rule on the rebel region, government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo said in an interview with the Times. "Governments must enforce the law, and if there are people who don't want to respect it the police will have to restore legality," he said. Mendez confirmed that Madrid will take control of the Mossos d'Esquadra, the Catalan police. (ANSAmed).




Netanyahu 'backs Kurdish aspirations' Iraq, Turkey and Iran against

(ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, OCTOBER 24 - Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu reiterated his support for Kurdish aspirations during a speech in the Knesset on Tuesday, state television reported. Netanyahu said that Kurds ''show national maturity and international moderation'', adding that ''we have a great deal of support for their aspirations. The world must look after their safety and their future''. Iran, Iraq and Turkey - all of which have sizeable Kurdish populations - are instead strongly against an independent Kurdish state and were against the recent referendum held in Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) territory. (ANSAmed).






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Among them are Apollo 15 Command Module Pilot Col. Al Worden, USAF-Ret; George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic; Dr Mohammed Al Ahbabi, Director General of the UAE Space Agency and Omran Sharaf, Project Manager, Emirates Mars Mission, Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC).

In addition, the UAEs investments in space technologies have already exceeded AED 20 billion (USD 5.4 billion) while its ambitions include the Mission to Mars Hope mission planned for 2021.

I am excited to attend the Dubai Airshow for the first time, to see first-hand how the UAEs vision for leadership in aerospace and aviation supports this world-class event, and to see how the event creates excitement and support around the world for the UAEs vision, said Col. Worden. I am especially honoured to be invited to participate in the shows Space Pavilion Conference as an advocate for STEM education. For explorers of all ages, on earth and across the universe, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math are the most vital tools of the trade.

The Space Conference at the Dubai Airshow takes place 13-14 November and is accompanied by a dedicated pavilion within the exhibition hall, where relevant companies including the UAE Space Agency, Centre national d'etudes spatiales (CNES) and ISS Reshetnev will be exhibiting side-by-side for the whole five days.

The addition of the Space Conference and Pavilion is one of the new features for 2017 that is ensuring the Dubai Airshow continues to represent all sectors of the aerospace industry, said Michele van Akelijen, managing director of show organisers Tarsus F&E LLC Middle East.

We are proud to be able to include Col. Worden in the event and look forward to hearing about his unique experiences as the UAE Space Agency leads the country towards an exciting future.
The group, which was composed of 16 senior diplomatic representatives and CEOs from major Korean companies, looked towards learning more about DAFZA--its strategic role, experiences and the services that it provides to the international investment community, especially for the Korean business community. The delegation was met by Nasser Al Madani, Assistant Director General, DAFZA, who briefed them about DAFZAs latest offerings, services and incentiveskey factors that has helped position the freezone as a highly preferred investment destination for foreign investors. These services include specialized facilities such as warehouses, light industrial units, advanced infrastructure, easy visa &licensing processing and incentives dedicated to businesses, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to facilitate the set-up of their businesses in the UAE.

Al Madani expressed DAFZA's continuing commitment to play a pivotal role in the move to enhance cooperative ties between the Republic of South Korea and the UAE, particularly across reinforcing investment and trade relations. He pointed out that the strong ties between the two countries are reflected in the UAE being South Korea's largest trading partner from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. In fact, recent industry reports have shown that the country's exports to Korea reached USD 8.6 billion in 2015, while exports from South Korea to the UAE reached USD 6.08 billion. The positive outlook placed in the economic cooperation of South Korea and UAE is also backed by the total foreign trade activity of USD 4.7 billion recorded during the first half of 2016 including free zones.

Al Madani said: DAFZA offers attractive incentives, privileges and key facilities that have helped in making it a highly preferred investment destination for foreign direct investment (FDI). These drivers have facilitated in attracting Korean companies hailing from various sectors who have chosen Dubai as their regional base to enter the GCC, Middle East and Asian markets. The DAFZA Industrial Park, a new industrial zone, has been designed according to the highest standards to attract and serve vital industries wanting to set up in Dubai. These potential investors will gain key benefits from the advantages that we offer, which include knowledge and innovation-based services, as well as advanced infrastructure, strategic location, security, and the dual licenses to enable investors to operate across Dubai.

Amna Lootah, Assistant Director General - Finance, Commercial and Customer Relations Division Foster of DAFZA Innovation & Future Unit, added: Since its inception, DAFZA has successfully driven strong investment relationships; become a strategic incubator for more than 20 active economic segments; and has strategically positioned itself as a hub for leading international companies present in the region--including top South Korean companies.

She added that key value is placed in the presence of Korean companies in DAFZA, which has significantly contributed to driving in growth to the economy and complements the vision of the UAE's wise leadership. Amna also commended the strong bilateral relations that the UAE enjoys with South Korea.

These relations are witnessing great progress in various fields to build strategic partnerships in different economic and investment sectors--including vital fields such as oil & renewable energy, construction, environment, transportation, telecommunications, information technology and others. In line with its national role and position as a leading supporter of national policies and trends, DAFZA remains steadfast in its commitment to enhance cooperation and explore investment opportunities with South Korea by providing support to Korean companies and investors wishing to establish businesses in the UAE and the region, said Lootah.
From 2007:

I dont have a problem with writers block, but sometimes I do have a problem with laziness. Yesterday I traveled from a fancy hotel room in Chicago to an empty apartment in New York. (Mrs. T is still up in Connecticutthe doctor ordered her to stay in bed and take antibiotics.) I dropped off my bags, checked my e-mail, grabbed a sandwich, picked up nine packages and a bag of laundry, and returned home to finish writing a Wall Street Journal drama column about the two shows I saw in Chicago on Sundayonly I couldnt make myself write another word. Which is, of course, an evasive way of saying that I didnt want to write another word, having already cranked out two pieces in Chicago and part of a third on the plane yesterday.
The visit is being seen as a strong signal by both countries to Pakistan that they will not be cowed down by terror attacks.

New Delhi: In the wake of a string of terror attacks on the Afghan security forces masterminded by the Pakistan-backed Taliban, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani will undertake a surprise one-day visit to India on Tuesday. The invitation was extended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Afghan President and was conveyed personally by national security adviser Ajit Doval when he had visited Kabul recently. Mr Ghani will meet President Ram Nath Kovind and hold detailed delegation-level talks with Mr Modi on Tuesday, when the entire gamut of bilateral ties will be discussed. The Afghan President will also give an address at a think tank in New Delhi. The visit is being seen as a strong signal by both countries to Pakistan that they will not be cowed down by terror attacks.

The external affairs ministry said in a statement on Monday: Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, will be on a one-day working visit to India on 24 October at the invitation of the Prime Minister. During his visit, President Ghani will meet wRashtrapatiji and have detailed delegation-level talks with the Prime Minister, who will also host a lunch in honour of President Ghani. External affairs minister will call on the visiting dignitary. The invitation on behalf of Prime Minister Modi for President Ghani to visit India was extended by the national security adviser when (he) visited Kabul on 16 October.

The MEA added: The visit will build upon the recent high-level bilateral exchanges between the two countries, including the recent visits of Dr Abdullah Abdullah, chief executive of Afghanistan, on September 27-29 and that of foreign minister Salahuddin Rabbani September 10-11 for the bilateral Strategic Partnership Council meeting co-chaired by the external affairs minister.

It added: Both sides will have the opportunity to review the entire gamut of multifaceted bilateral strategic partnership, including the New Development Partnership; hold consultations and coordinate on furthering the shared objective of promoting peace, security, stability and prosperity in Afghanistan and efforts to combat the menace of terrorism; and discuss regional and global issues of mutual interest.
Nitin Patel also accused the Congress of bringing back the KHAM theory (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim) of the 1980s.

Saeed, the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks mastermind, is chief of the Jamaat-ud Dawaa, which was declared a foreign terrorist organisation by the US in June 2014. (Photo: File)

Gandhinagar: Gujarats deputy chief minister Nitin Patel on Tuesday accused the Congress of indulging in caste-based politics in the state and said it could even go to the extent of inviting terrorists like Hafiz Saeed if they feel it can help them form the government.

If Congress feels that they can win the assembly polls in Gujarat by joining hands with Pakistan-based terrorists like Hafiz Saeed or any other such people, they would send them invitation without any hesitation, Patel said at a press conference.

Saeed, the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks mastermind, is chief of the Jamaat-ud Dawaa, which was declared a foreign terrorist organisation by the US in June 2014. The US has also offered a $10 million bounty for Saaed for his alleged role in the Mumbai attacks.

Patel also accused the Congress of bringing back the KHAM theory (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim) of the 1980s, saying they want to divide Gujarat on the basis of castes just to gather the support of the people.

As the BJP is practicing Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas, the Congress is continuing to indulge in the divide and rule policy which existed during colonial rule. In spite of having such strong roots, people have lost their faith in Congress leadership, he said.

Commenting on the inclusion of OBC leader Alpesh Thakor into the Congress, Patel said the opposition party is desperately looking for a new leadership to campaign for them.
Dineshwar Sharma is, incidentally, the fourth interlocutor named by the Centre since 2002.

New Delhi: In line with Prime Minister Narendra Modis August 15 address in which he said the Kashmir problem cant be solved either through goli ya gaali (bullets or abuses) but only by embracing all Kashmiris, the Centre has now decided on a sustained dialogue with all stakeholders to help resolve the vexed issue. On Monday, the Centre named Dineshwar Sharma, a former Intelligence Bureau chief, as its special representative to initiate the talks.

Announcing this, home minister Rajnath Singh said the representative would have complete freedom in deciding whom to have a dialogue with, including separatists and Hurriyat hardliners. The home minister also clarified that Mr Sharma will hold the rank of Cabinet Secretary.

Mr Singh claimed that the Centre has shown complete conviction and consistency in handling the Kashmir issue and the appointment of an interlocutor was part of taking forward the same policy.

Mr Singh also referred to the Prime Ministers Independence Day speech this year, in which Mr Modi had said the government was sensitive to all issues related to Jammu and Kashmir. The Prime Minister, the home minister added, had held a number of meetings with political representatives from all sides on the Kashmir issue and they all wanted the dialogue process to start in the Valley.

Asked why such initiatives had failed earlier, Mr Singh said: Please take it from me that whatever we do, we will do with saaf neeyat aur neeti (good intentions and clear policy). On the question of the reports of earlier interlocutors gathering dust in the home ministry, Mr Singh said: You cannot pre-judge that this initiative will not be successful. Our announcement shows how serious we are about initiating a dialogue.

The special representative, Mr Singh said, would hold detailed talks to identify the legitimate aspirations of people, particularly the youth, and try to address them even though no timeframe has been fixed. He also clarified that there was nothing wrong in a former police officer holding talks since he was an apolitical person having no political affiliation ... which is his greatest advantage. Besides, he is well aware about the internal security situation of the country.

Mr Sharma is, incidentally, the fourth interlocutor named by the Centre since 2002. The first was former Union minister K.C. Pant, while the second was N.N. Vohra, who is now governor of J&K, and the last was the trio of former bureaucrat M.M. Ansari, academic Radha Kumar and late journalist Dileep Padgaonkar.

Sources said that there was a growing view within the government that after sustained operations by the security and enforcement agencies against separatists and terrorists in the past few months, the time was now right to initiate a dialogue with different stakeholders in J&K.

The move also assumes significance as the BJP is part of the coalition government in the state with the PDP and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti had, in her meetings with the Prime Minister and home minister, been insisting on a dialogue process with different groups in the Valley.

The security forces have had huge successes against militant groups in the last few months and the NIAs investigations into a terror funding case have hampered the activities of separatist elements. Incidents of stone-pelting and other violent protests are also down, and the trend should continue in the winter season. So the timing was right to initiate a dialogue process to find a solution to the states ongoing problems, a senior official said.

Reacting to the development, former J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah said acceptance of the political nature of the issue was a defeat for those who saw force as a solution. The Centre announces an interlocutor to engage with stakeholders in J&K. Will keep an open mind and wait to see results of the dialogue process, Mr Abdullah said in a tweet. The former CM also wanted to know what implications the interlocutors appointment would have on the NIA investigations into terror funding cases in the Valley.

The Congress said Mondays move indicated realists in the government had prevailed over the hawks. Party spokesman Manish Tewari tweeted: Aptt of interlocutor in J&K is indicative that realists in Govt have prevailed over Hawks. Hard Power is not an end but means towards an end. Former home minister P. Chidambaram also tweeted: With appointment of interlocutor, I hope government has finally admitted muscular approach has failed in J&K.

Meanwhile, the new special representative, Mr Sharma, a Kerala-cadre IPS officer who was IB director from 2014 to 2016, said on Monday: Its like a homecoming for me. I am sure that I will be able to fulfil the expectations of the government and people of the country.

Mr Sharma, 63, currently the Centres pointperson for dialogue with Assam-based militant groups, said he feels honoured he has been assigned such a challenging task.

Asked if he would talk to separatist groups in the Valley, Mr Sharma told PTI: The modalities are being worked out but I would like to talk to everyone who is interested in bringing permanent peace in the Valley.

He added: Let me make it clear that peace is the priority and for that my doors will be open to everyone.
The two leaders also discussed ways to further the shared objective of promoting security and stability in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, wave at the media prior to their luncheon talks, in New Delhi on Tuesday. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday discussed a range of bilateral, regional and global issues and expressed their

"firm resolve" to end the menace of terrorism.

The two leaders also discussed ways to further the shared objective of promoting security and stability in Afghanistan.

"Furthering 'neighbourhood first' policy with a strategic partner. Prime Minister Modi receives president Ghani at Hyderabad House," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson

Raveesh Kumar tweeted.

"Prime Minister Modi and president Ghani discussed range of bilateral, regional and global issues, express firm resolve to end menace of terrorism," he added.

Earlier, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called on Ghani, who is here on a one-day working visit.

Ghani also met his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind. Ahead of his visit, the ministry had said both sides will have the opportunity to review the entire gamut of multifaceted bilateral strategic partnership, including the New Development Partnership. They would hold consultations and coordinate on furthering the shared objective of promoting peace, security, stability and prosperity in Afghanistan and efforts to combat the menace of terrorism.
Accusing Jagmeet of trying to destabilise Punjab by creating strife with his ill-conceived and confrontational remarks.

Chandigarh: Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh has condemned Canadas NDP leader Jagmeet Singhs remarks on self-determination for Punjab, saying he was obviously totally disconnected from the ground realities in India, where Sikhs hold a place of pride with their excellent achievements in every field.

Accusing Jagmeet of trying to destabilise Punjab by creating strife with his ill-conceived and confrontational remarks, Captain Amarinder Singh said the Canadian authorities should take serious note of such disruptive elements who were using their soil to spread discord in India.

Jagmeets statement that he considers self-determination to be a basic right in places such as Punjab, Catalonia or Quebec was clearly designed to spread trouble in Punjab, said Captain Amarinder Singh, asserting that his government would not allow any such attempt to succeed at any cost.

At a time when Punjab was working on a holistic development and revival agenda, Jagmeet was trying to whip up negative passions among the Sikh community, the chief minister said.
Plans nationwide stir against Centres policies.

New Delhi: Opposition leaders on Tuesday declared that they will observe November 8, the first anniversary of demonetisation, as Black Day across the country.

Stepping up his attack against the government over GST, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday took the Gabbar Singh analogy further by referencing the Bollywood villains dialogue to say it was a tax that coveted peoples earnings.

Congress GST is Genuine Simple Tax while Modijis GST is Gabbar Singh Tax that is give me your earnings, Mr Gandhi tweeted.

Addressing a press conference, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said, One can say this is a scam of the century. Eighteen political parties have decided to hold protests in every state in their capacity against the governments decision, which caused hardship to the people. Never ever in the world people have died because of a government policy. Sharad Yadav of the breakaway faction of the JD(U) and Trinamul Congress leader Derek OBrien were also present at the press conference along with Mr Azad.

We will observe it as Kalo Dibas, Black Day in Bengali. History of modern India will remember the scam which took place on November 8. We had raised a number of questions and our doubts regarding the policy, but the government could not answer or erase our doubts, Mr OBrien said.

Reacting sharply to the utterances of Mr Gandhi, finance minister Arun Jaitley said that those who are used to monumental scams in 2G spectrum and coal allocation will have objections to legitimate tax. He also chided the Opposition parties decision to observing November 8 as a Black Day, saying the move displays their faith in cash economy.

Addressing a press meet on the state of the economy Mr Jaitley said, The people who had got used to 2G (telecom) and coal block (allocation) scams, will have objections to legitimate tax
A circular to this effect was issued by the directorate of education on October 17 to comply with the seventh Central Pay Commission recommendations.

New Delhi: The Delhi governments decision to allow recognised unaided private schools on Delhi Development Authority (DDA) land to increase their fees by 15 per cent as an interim measure has drawn severe criticism from the Opposition, which said that the measure will open up Pandoras box of harassment and trouble for the parents. A circular to this effect was issued by the directorate of education on October 17 to comply with the seventh Central Pay Commission (CPC) recommendations.

The circular, however, reads that the general instruction for all private unaided schools, irrespective of their land status, is that, a fee hike is not mandatory for recognised unaided schools in Delhi. All schools must, first of all, explore the possibility of utilising the existing reserves to meet any shortfall in payment of salaries and allowances, as a consequence of increase in the salaries and allowances of employees, it reads.

Schools in Delhi have to comply with the 7th Cent-ral Pay Commission recommendations, which ask for a nearly 25 per cent in-crease in salaries of school teachers. The arrears will need to be paid with 7.5 per cent of tuition fees of students, while the new salaries will be funded by the 15 per cent fee hike, with effect from July 1, 2017, the circular reads.

Leader of the Opposition Vijender Gupta said the city government by permitting interim fee hike in private schools has once again opened a Pandoras box of harassment and trouble for parents.

Mr Gupta alleged, with this order, the government has paved the way for earning of money by school management and exploitation of teachers and staff.

As this is an interim order issued arbitrarily by the government, it contains large number of defects and infirmities which has the potential for unending legal battle, the senior BJP leader said.

Insisting that the gover-nment must review its decision, he alleged the government has arbitrarily increased the fee without taking into account whether reserve funds are available with schools.
The US proposes to widen the discussion with the involvement of other regional powers.

US secretary of state Rex Tillerson arrives in India later this week, just after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. Last month, India had hosted US defence secretary James Mattis.

Although US President Donald Trump will bypass India on his five-nation Asian jamboree, from November 3 to 14, the visits of two major US Cabinet secretaries underlines Washingtons continued interest in US-India relations.

The presence of the Afghan President reminds us that when President Trump announced his new Afghan policy on August 21, he, after detailed analysis, emphasised the larger South Asian context and the need for a regional solution while, of course, applying military pressure on the Taliban and their cohorts.

The United States realises that Afghanistan simply cant be stabilised unless the regional powers are on board. On October 16, the US convened the Quadrilateral Coordination Group, that comprises Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and the US, in Muscat to kickstart the reconciliation process in Afghanistan.

The US proposes to widen the discussion with the involvement of other regional powers. The inhibiting factor is the deterioration of Iran-US relations, which will inevitably impinge on an Iranian role, considering its open channels to the Taliban.

Mr Tillerson provided the curtainraiser when he spoke on October 18, at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He saw India as a partner for far-reaching implications for the next 100 years. He called the US and India the bookends of stability, with the potential to be increasingly global partners with strategic convergence. The intent became apparent when he compared the rise of India as a peaceful, democratic power abiding by the existing rules-based system to the rise of China, trying to rewrite parts of the same system in keeping with Chinese interests and historical predilections.

China, seen as a challenge, has evolved much since the presidency of George W. Bush when it was an unstated factor behind a nuclear deal with India.

This reverses the US policy on China crafted by President Richard Nixon after his 1972 China visit, arguing that China, with access to Western capital and technology, would inevitably become a more open and productive member of the international system.

Mr Tillerson is now declaring that China needs to be contained the way the erstwhile USSR was during the Cold War, the difference being that there cannot be unbridled opposition as Sino-US relations rest on tremendous linkages of trade and investment. For instance, while President Trump will engage President Xi, he has, meanwhile, ordered Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative, to investigate, under Section 301 of the 1974 US Trade Act, Chinas unfair trade practices. Mike Pompeo, director of the CIA, provided the counterpoint with his remark that China has shown real progress in the DPR Korea (North Korea) issue, and as Chinese President Xi Jinping consolidates more power he also gains the capacity to do more good.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, in his address to the 19th Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, restated Chinese prescriptions for an Asian security order. He said it must be all-inclusive, based on regional integration and development and not on absolute security for any single country.

The target was clearly the US as it is the current offshore guarantor of Asian security. China, on the other hand, wishes to construct, using the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a Sino-centric order.

Mr Tillerson used his CSIS address to debunk BRI by arguing, as India has in the past, that the region really needs alternative financing measures for infrastructure development. BRI, unlike project financing by the World Bank, he reasoned, overlooked poor governance, environmental and humanitarian questions arising in the nations and regions it traversed. In joint statements with India in the past, the US had flagged the breach of sovereignty of some nations. But the question remains about the source of alternative funding. Mr Trumps America First slogan implies rhetorical support combined with exhortations to regional powers to fund their own defence or development.India, reared on nonalignment, has to make policy choices in how and to what extent to rely on the Trump-tweaked US doctrines. It is true that the convergence of interests between India and Australia, Japan and the US is for India as a potential tool to shape its Asian environment. Mr Tillerson correctly emphasised the importance of bilateral India-US relations as evidenced by two-way trade touching $115 billion last year, the US having over 600 companies in India and hosting 166,000 students in the United States.

The path has been also cleared for the transfer of cutting-edge technology in the field of defence, among other areas. Cooperation in counter-terrorism has expanded exponentially since I dealt with it as coordinator for counterterrorism in 2005-07. But President Trumps visa policy is a new hurdle stymieing the free flow of human resources and has hurt the export of Indian software and services.

From this complex scenario, India has to devise a policy to play the new balancing game between the powers of the Indo-Pacific, consisting of China and Russia on one side and India, Japan and the US on the other. India is, as was a rising Germany in the 19th century, a swing power that can work with the other four.

Mr Trumps Asian sojourn shows his immediate priority is to defang North Korea and rebalance relations with China. The moral for the Narendra Modi government is that it must regain the trust of the Opposition and rebuild a national consensus.

A united India abiding by its liberal values as enshrined in the Constitution is the counterweight to an assertive China.

Swing powers need soft, hard and smart power to win allies and thwart foes. Germany did that under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Under lesser men who followed, Europe slipped towards the world wars. South Asia and beyond countenance the same dilemma.
During a short part of the meet available to media, Tillerson told the Pak delegation, the nuclear-armed nation was an important US ally.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson shakes hands with Pak PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, before their meeting at the Prime Minister's residence on Tuesday in Islamabad. (Photo: AP)

Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Tuesday told US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that Pakistan was committed to the war on terror.

In a meeting with US Secretary of State in Islamabad, Abbasi said Pakistan had produced results fighting the militants in the region.

Pak-US relations have frayed in recent years, with Washington accusing Islamabad of turning a blind eye or helping Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network militants who stage attacks in Afghanistan. Pakistan denies doing so.

President Donald Trump has vowed to get tough with Pakistan unless it changed its behaviour, with US officials threatening further reductions in aid and mooting targeted sanctions against Pakistani officials.

Tillerson, on a tour of Asia and the Middle East, arrived in Pakistan on Tuesday afternoon and met with Abbasi, as well as Pakistans powerful army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

We are committed in the war against terror, Abbasi told Tillerson, as the two men sat facing each other.

We have produced results. And we are looking forward to moving ahead with the US and building a tremendous relationship, added Abbasi, who sat next to General Bajwa.

During a short part of the meeting available to media, Tillerson told the Pakistani delegation that the nuclear-armed nation was an important US ally in the region.

(Pakistan is) important regionally to our joint goals of providing peace and security to the region and providing opportunity for greater economic relationship as well, Tillerson said.

As well as support for the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, another sticking point in the relationship has been growing closeness by the United States to India, Pakistans arch-foe and neighbour.

Tillerson said last week that the Trump administration wanted to dramatically deepen cooperation with New Delhi, partly to offset Chinese influence in Asia. Trump has also called for greater Indian role in Afghanistan.

But this deepening in ties has alarmed Pakistan, which has rejected a greater political role for India and for Afghanistan as a red line for Islamabad.

An official statement said the meeting discussed matters of bilateral interest; cooperation in different sectors and regional situation.

Earlier on the arrival of the US Secretary of State, Minister for Foreign Affairs Khawaja Muhammad Asif welcomed him.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, Defence Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Inter-Services Intelligence chief Naveed Mukhtar, secretary to PM Mussadiq Malik, foreign secretary Tehmina Janjua and other officials were present in the meeting.
Nawaz Sharif will hold important meetings in Jeddah before heading back to Pakistan in a couple of days.

Islamabad: Ousted Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif left for Saudi Arabia on Monday  changing his plan to return home.

Nawaz Sharif on Monday left London for Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah (mini-pilgrimage). The ousted PM, who left for London earlier this month to see his ailing wife, was scheduled to arrive in Lahore on Tuesday (today).

Nawaz Sharif will hold important meetings in Jeddah before heading back to Pakistan in a couple of days.

Mr Sharif is due to appear before an Islamabad-based accountability court on October 26 along with his daughter Maryam Nawaz and son-in-law Mohammed Safdar in connection with corruption references filed by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) on the instructions of the Supreme Court.

On October 26, the top graft-buster will produce witnesses against the accused in the Avenfield Flats and Flagship Investment Limited references, and the ones concerning Al-Azizia Company Limited and Hill Metals Establishment.

In its July 28 verdict in the Panamagate case, the apex court had directed the NAB to prepare and file four references against the Sharifs and finance minister Ishaq Dar on the material collected and referred to by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) in its report pertaining to Panama Papers.

Meanwhile on Monday, National Accountability Bureau chairman Javed Iqbal ordered to freeze Mr Dars assets, and the report has on Monday (today) been submitted in the accountability court during the hearing of the graft reference against Mr Dar.

The reference was filed by NAB following the Supreme Courts July 28 orders in the Panama Papers case. Ishaq Dar reached the accountability court of Judge Mohammad Bashir at the Judicial Complex in Islamabad for his seventh appearance today. Heavy contingents of police have been deployed outside the NAB court for security purpose.

It has been sktated in the NAB report that all moveable as well as immoveable assets of the finance minister have been frozen. Furthermore, two prosecution witnesses, private banks officers Abdur Rehman Gondal and Masood Ghani, have appeared in the court.

The statement of Abdur Rehman Gondal has been recorded by the court in which he said he appeared before NAB on August 17 with all documents that it asked for.

He told the court that a Current Account was opened on Ishaq Dars name on March 25, 2005 and he has handed over 12-year bank statement of Mr Dars account to NAB.

Meranwhile, the Dan reported on Monday the NAB ordered an inquiry into the corruption allegations levelled against Mr Sharifs Shahbaz Sharif in the Multan Metro Bus Project, and the controversial selling of a flight-worthy Pakistan International Airlines' (PIA) aircraft.
Many Pakistanis feel betrayed that its traditional ally is now cosying up to India over Afghanistan.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan, a staunch US Cold War ally and key player in the US-backed invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has watched warily as Washington has in recent years pivoted towards its arch-foe. (Photo: PTI/File)

Islamabad: As US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to Pakistan on Tuesday to pressure Islamabad to act over terrorists targeting Afghanistan from its soil, anxious Pakistanis may be equally interested in dissuading Washington's deepening ties with India.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan, a staunch US Cold War ally and key player in the US-backed invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has watched warily as Washington has in recent years pivoted towards its arch-foe.

Islamabad views its much-bigger neighbour as an existential threat and the two nations have fought three wars since their violent separation at the end of colonial rule in 1947.

Tillerson, due to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Pakistan's powerful military chiefs in a one-day visit, is expected to urge Pakistan to do more to root out Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network terrorists operating on its soil.

But he is also expected to hear Pakistani officials warn him that drawing nuclear-armed India deeper into Afghanistan would destabilise the region and do little to end the 16-year war that is now America's longest military conflict.

"Bringing India into the mix is like adding kerosene to fire," said Miftah Ismail, a state minister and close ally of Prime Minister Abbasi.

"It's a complete red line. India has no political role to play in Afghanistan as far as we are concerned."

Many Pakistanis feel betrayed that its traditional ally is now cosying up to India over Afghanistan. But the anger runs both ways.

The United States accuses Pakistan of playing a double game since 2001, offering public backing to Washington while turning a blind eye, or even at times assisting, the Afghan Taliban and other terrorists who carry out deadly attacks against US forces and their allies in Afghanistan.

Last Chance

Pakistan supported the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s as a hedge to Indian influence in Afghanistan, and analysts say its military and security services maintained ties long after the Taliban regime was toppled in 2001.

Pakistan denies providing a safe haven for Afghan Taliban and other terrorists.

Read: Stable and peaceful Afghan will create better condition for India-Pak relation: Tillerson

Tillerson, during a visit to Afghanistan on Monday, said Washington has made some "very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support the Taliban receives and other terrorist organizations receive".

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis earlier this month said the United States would try "one more time" to work with Pakistan in Afghanistan, before opting for more punitive measures. President Donald Trump has vowed to be tougher on Pakistan than his predecessors.

The United States has threatened further military aid cuts and US officials have mooted targeted sanctions against Pakistani military figures, but in the past two weeks there have been hints of a slight thawing in ties.

US Vice President Mike Pence and Tillerson last week called Abbasi to thank Pakistan after its army rescued a US-Canadian couple who were held hostage by the Taliban-allied Haqqani network for nearly five years, along with their three children born in cap tivity.

Relations were further boosted when Omar Khalid Khorasani, leader of the lethal Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) group who Islamabad had been trying to catch for years, was killed by a US drone strike last week.

Hostile Neighbours

India has increased aid to Afghanistan in recent years and last year promised to ship more arms.

Such moves have aggravating fears in Pakistan that it will find itself wedged between two hostile neighbours.

Islamabad bristles at the idea that India holds the key to ending the Afghanistan conflict, and fears US meddling could unsettle a delicate balance of power in South Asia.

Read: US desire to inject India in Afghanistan would be detrimental, says Pak PM

"Promoting a higher involvement of India in Afghanistan will only worsen the historic strategic rivalries playing out in the region," said Sherry Rehman, Pakistan's former ambassador to United States and a senior member of the opposition Pakistan People's Party.

Pakistan points to the 3.5 million Afghan refugees it hosts as proof that it has more than anyone else to lose from chaos in Afghanistan, and has emphasised the need for greater cooperation and intelligence sharing with United States and Afghanistan.

But while Pakistan may not like it, India looks set to continue playing a role in Afghanistan, according to Sushant Sareen, a foreign policy analyst at the Vivekananda International Foundation, a think-tank with ties to the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"The message is very clear that India is an important player when it comes to coordinating policies between Afghanistan and Washington," said Sareen.
Ahead of his Pak-India visits, secretary of state meets President Ghani to discuss new US Afghan policy.

Secretary of state Rex Tillerson talks with the pilots as he sits in the cockpit of C-17 aircraft on Monday on the way to Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. (Photo: AP)

Kabul: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Monday to discuss Washingtons new strategy with President Ashraf Ghani.

Mr Tillerson reiterated the US commitment to working with the Kabul government and regional partners to achieve peace in Afghanistan and deny safe havens to terrorists who threaten that goal, said a US embassy statement posted on Twitter.

The meeting took place at Bagram Airfield, Americas largest base in Afghanistan, as the resurgent Taliban step up attacks on Afghan police and troops in response to the US strategy announced in August.

Clearly we have to continue to fight against the Taliban, against others, in order for them to understand they will never win a military victory, Tillerson told reporters after the meeting that was also attended by Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah.

It was Tillersons first trip to Afghanistan as secretary of state and comes several weeks after US defence secretary Jim Mattis also paid an unannounced visit.

The closed-door talks covered Ghanis reform programme, his anti-corruption strategy and preparations for parliamentary elections due to take place next year.

US President Donald Trump has declared that we are here to stay until we can secure a process of reconciliation and peace, Tillerson said, adding: Its not an unlimited commitment.

Mr Tillersons unannounced visit follows one of the bloodiest weeks in Afghanistan in recent memory.
North Korea, which has threatened to sink Japan and fired two missiles over its northern islands.

Tokyo: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged on Monday to work with the US, China and Russia to contain North Koreas nuclear threat with strong, resolute diplomacy, as he humbly accepted his landslide victory in a snap election.

Fresh from clinching a two-thirds super-majority that enables the nationalist Premier to realise his dream of revising Japans pacifist Constitution, Mr Abe vowed to forge a national consensus on the divisive issue.

Addressing reporters on his election win, Mr Abe said he would confirm close co-operation on North Korea with Donald Trump when the US President visits Japan next month and then discuss the issue with the Chinese and Russian leaders.

I have renewed my determination to secure peoples lives and peaceful living, no matter what, said the 63-year-old.

North Korea, which has threatened to sink Japan and fired two missiles over its northern islands, dominated the 12-day election campaign that Mr Abe eventually won comfortably. We will solve North Koreas missile, nuclear and abduction issues with strong, resolute diplomacy, he said in reference to the abduction of Japanese by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s.

Mr Abes conservative coalition was on track to win at least 313 seats with only a handful left to call, according to public broadcaster NHK, giving him the coveted two-thirds majority in the Lower House of Parliament.

He is now on course to become Japans longest-serving Premier, winning a fresh term at the helm of the worlds third-biggest economy and key US regional ally.

North Korean belligerence helped the ruling coalition because people are scared and voted for Mr Abes hardline stance, said Gerald Curtis, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University.

I focused on the national defence issue, because I am concerned about North Korea. So I chose the party that will work firmly on this issue, one voter, 66-year-old pensioner Tsuyoshi Ushijima, said. However, while local media acknowledged what was described as a landslide victory, many attributed Mr Abes win to a weak and ineffective opposition and urged caution.

The voters didnt think the opposition parties were capable of running a government... they chose Prime Minister Abe, who is at least better, even if they had some concerns about the ruling coalition, said the Nikkei daily.

The Asahi newspaper said: The Abe brand is not as strong as it was before. There are some signs that voters are seeking a change in the situation whereby Mr Abe is the only decent option.

According to an exit poll by Kyodo News on Sunday, 51% of voters said they do not trust Mr Abe with 44% saying they did.

Turnout was expected to be only a fraction higher than the all-time low in the 2014 election.
by Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz*

A book by historian Jan Mikrut reveals how Latin and Byzantine Catholics remained faithful during the turmoil of Soviet-era atheism, to this day. The volume comes out during the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution

Rome (AsiaNews) - Between November 7 and 8, 1917, the Bolsheviks led by Lenin established a revolutionary government ("October Revolution", according to the Julian calendar), ending the Tsarist empire and establishing the Soviet republic, which then became the USSR. 100 years since that date, on November 8 a book by Prof. Jan Mikrut, titled "The Catholic Church in the Soviet Union from the Revolution of 1917 to Perestrojka" (Verona, Gabrielli Editori, 2017) will be presented at the Gregorian University. With the contributions of several scholars, it tells how Catholics resisted the "yoke" of a regime that wanted to reset all religions, exposing the heroic testimonies of martyrs and faithful in the Latin and Greek- Catholic communities. The preface to the book is by Msgr. Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, bishop of Minsk and Mahileu (Belarus). By kind concession of the author, below we publish some excerpts.

The volume "The Catholic Church in the Soviet Union from the Revolution of 1917 to Perestrojka", by Prof. Jan Mikrut of the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome, presents the Via Crucis that the Catholic Church, of the both rites, traversed in that era, chronologically and thematically. The Via Crucis is populated by numerous figures who have already been raised to the glory of the altars, but also by others whose beatification process is still ongoing and thousands of unknown heroes of the faith whose story we will never know.

I recall the memories of the late Card. Kazimierz Swiatek, Bishop of Pinsk in Belarus, who, in recounting his arrest, described particular fact: ... I was detained in Brest prison. There was a fly with me. Her buzz brought me some comfort and joy. After a while, however, the fly settled on the parapet and stopped giving any signs of life. I was alone. Then I was deported to Siberia.

A curious story came to me from Ukraine. After Yuriy Gagarin carried out the first space flight, non-believers wanted to exploit the event to promote atheism. And so one of them went to an orthodox church, and told the pastor he was to inform the faithful that Yuriy Gagarin had been to space and had not seen God and therefore God did not exist. He threatened that if the failed to give such an announcement they would close the church. The humble priest therefore, at the end of the Sunday liturgy, told his faithful: Dear brothers and sisters, Yuriy Alekseevich Gagarin flew into space but did not see God. But the Lord saw him, blessed and therefore Gagarin returned happily to earth.

Working as a vicar in the chapel of Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn in Vilnius, I often welcomed the testimonies of the faith of the simple people who, despite the persecution, kept their faith intact. Once an old lady confided to me in the sacristy that she knelt on her knees and prayed in the church of St. Casimir, which had recently transformed into a Museum of Atheism. A museum clerk approached her, saying that she was not allowed to pray in that place as it was a museum of atheism. The old lady, however, answered resolutely that even if that was a museum for some, for her it would always be a church and therefore a house of prayer.

I will forget never the blessing ceremony of the first stone of the new church in the town of Marx on Volga, which took place in the early 1990s. Before the liturgy I was approached by the older people, begging me to put a simple brick in place of the angular stone. When I asked why they had this desire, as most usually wish the cornerstone to originate from some holy place, they proceeded to tell a truly moving story. During the religious persecution in the USSR, the old Marx church was destroyed. The inhabitants of that city, however, brought bricks from the ruins to their homes. They put them in the visible places and for long decades they prayed in front of those simple bricks. So, thanks to those bricks, the faith could be preserved and passed on to young people. We want the new church under construction to have a bond with the old, destroyed one, they told me.

Today, the Catholic Church in Russia has its own structures and is developing dynamically. Despite many difficulties it is very active in pastoral, cultural and editorial fields. Hundreds of Russian-language publications, as well as the first Catholic Encyclopedia, also in Russian, are evidence of the great concern of the clergy for the development of Catholicism and the Church in those territories.

The Greek-Catholic Church in Ukraine lived in a similar situation to that of the Latin Church and was also forced to operate in secret. The testimonies of the martyrdom of the members of those Churches have great significance. Despite all the pressure and persecution, Catholics never renounced their loyalty to the Holy See.

The volume "The Catholic Church in the territory of the Soviet Union. From the Revolution of 1917 to Perestrojka" tells the difficult history of the Church in those territories. We must remember our history because it is our Mother Teacher. If there were no heroes of the faith at the time of repressions, there would never have been such rapid rebirth of the Church, it would have been condemned to annihilation, and the territories already Christianized in the tenth century would have been destined to become a spiritual desert. Thus modern times confirm the maxim of Tertullian: the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians.

And yet, from a human point of view, it seemed that with the death of the priest, the Church would have disappeared from the map of the USSR, God wanted to show that he knows how to guide a straight road through the mists of history. Because He, and not someone else, put the last dot on the "i".

I hope that this volume becomes a testimony of faith in times of persecution, of which the modern world is so greatly in need.

* Metropolitan of Minsk and Mahilju (Belarus)
Released pending appeal, scheduled for 7 November. Sentenced to months in jail for having demonstrated in 2014. Activists protests continue: justice serves Beijing.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Joshua Wong and Nathan Law, two of the three democracy activists sentenced to August to months in prison, have been released on bail. The High Court issued the temporary bail, pending the appeal hearing presented by the three student leaders. Following a request by the government to increase the initial sentence to forced labor, the ruling triggered protests and accusations of the justice system being orchestrated by Beijing.

Supreme Court President Geoffrey Ma granted the two pro-democracy activists temporary release on $ 50,000 Hong Kong bail [about $ 5,450] per head. Wong and Law are facing six and eight months of imprisonment. Their companion Alex Chow did not apply for bail.

The final hearing will be held on 7 November.

The three were arrested for crossing the Hong Kong government building fence on September 26, 2014, triggering a series of sit-ins in the central area known as Occupy Central or the umbrella movement (used by young people to defend themselves from the police water cannons). The demonstrators were demanding the direct election of the head of the territory's executive, currently elected by a committee of 1200 people, mostly pro-Beijing.

On October 1, thousands of people marched in protest showing signs and photos of Hong Kong's secretary of justice, Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung, calling for his resignation, accusing him of "political persecution," and being a "puppet" at Beijing's service.
Tillerson had hoped for the expulsion of Shiite fighters from the country. The Iraqi Prime Minister defends their role in the fight against the Islamic State. They are local paramilitaries, not Iranian allies, and should be "encouraged". Iranian Foreign Minister claims the role of "peace and stability" exercised by Tehran in the region.

Baghdad (AsiaNews / Agencies)  The Iraqi Prime Minister has rejected the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's words and defended the role of Shiite militias supported by Iran in the struggle against the Islamic State (IS, formerly Isis) in the north.

Earlier, during a three-day summit in Riyadh, the head of US diplomacy had strongly criticized the fighting militias and called for their expulsion from the country or enlistment in the regular army.

During an official visit to Baghdad, Tillerson met Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi late yesterday. During the face to face, two days after the Saudi Summit, the head of government called Shiite fighters "the hope of Iraq and the region."

Iraqi Popular Mobility Units (PMU, Shia majority and close to Tehran) in recent months joined the offensive launched by the Iraqi government for the liberation of Mosul and the Nineveh plain in the north. Their role was decisive in the context of the military campaign, which ended with the liberation of the territories in the hands of jihadists for over three years.

Recently Shiite militias contributed decisively to the capture of Kirkuk, the country's oil center, wrested from Kurdish forces.

During the meeting in Baghdad with the US Secretary of State, Abadi stressed that paramilitary troops are Iraqi - not Iranian allies - and must "be encouraged" because they are a source of "hope for the country and the region." The fighters, continues the government note, defend "their country and made a great sacrifice for the defeat of the Islamic State"

The Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also commented on the issue defending Tehran's role in ensuring regional "peace and stability". "The people of Syria, Iraq and the Kurdish autonomous region - he added - have been able to withstand the onslaught of the Islamic State through the contribution of Iran." Without the contribution of the Islamic Republic, he concluded, the flag of the Caliphate would fly today "over Damascus, Baghdad and Erbil."

Last but not least, the PMUs response to the United States was to demand an "apology" for their inappropriate comments on their commitment to fighting jihadism. PMU spokesman Ahmad al-Asadi, stressed that Tillerson's words "on the presence of Iranian forces in Iraq are unacceptable".

He added that there are "false and groundless" allegations, because "all those fighting in the field are Iraqis". These words of the head of US diplomacy, reflect the lack of knowledge and experience of the United States in local affairs, and renewed the demand for Washington's apology for these statements.
by Melani Manel Perera

For the past 233 days, some Tamil Hindu mothers have been engaged in a sit-in in front of the Governors House. They want to know what happened to their missing children. In Trincomalee alone, 1,800 people went missing. The mothers want to know if there is justice for all.

Trincomalee (Asia News)  With the festival of Diwali, Hindus mark the start of the New Year in autumn. The festivity is the most popular event in Hinduism.

Spiritually it means the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, hope over despair. But for some Tamil Hindu mothers it is not. They do not celebrate any festivity, but live in pain, mourning their missing children.

After years, they still know nothing about their fate, and demand forcefully justice, even if it appears as something so far away.

The women addressed the governor asking clear questions. Eight years after the end of the civil war, they want information about their missing children, and they demand to be treated as human beings.

The women said that they have paid bribes, ranging from two to eighty thousand euros, to Navy soldiers, now in detention awaiting trial.

My three children are all gone, said Sadanandarasa Parameshwari of Periyakulam. My heart has been pierced by a great pain that I cannot bear."

The mothers' stories are legion. They share the same suffering and pain. Their poverty prevents them from defending themselves.

Since they cannot pay for a lawyer, they know very well that their demands will fall on deaf ears. Still, they are also certain that perhaps, if they stand united, they will be able to give a voice to their demand for justice.
There is no room for further expansion of the road network, already covering 12% of the territory. The population has grown almost 40% since 2000, reaching about 5.6 million people. In 2016, than 600 thousand private and rented cars on the streets more. Permission to own a car limited and auctioned by the government.

Singapore (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The authorities of the smallest City- State of Southeast Asia will no longer allow car registration from February 2018, citing the low availability of land and billions of dollars allocated for public transport. The Singaporean Transport Authority (LTA) has announced the resetting of the allowed vehicle growth rate. So far it has been 0.25% per annum for cars and motorcycles. The data will be reviewed in 2020.

Singapore applies strict controls to its vehicle population by setting an annual growth rate and through a system of bidding for the right to own and use a vehicle for a limited number of years. It is one of the most populated nations on the planet and already has an extensive public transport system. According to LTA, currently 12% of Singapore's total area is occupied by roads. "Taking into account the constraints imposed by the territory and the needs, there is no room for further expansion of the road network," the authorities say.

The population of Singapore has grown almost 40% since 2000, reaching about 5.6 million people. Last year, the government registered more than 600,000 private and rented cars on its roads. A mid-range car in Singapore can usually cost four times the price it would have in the United States. Singapore requires automobile owners to acquire permits, called Tenure Certificates, allowing them to hold vehicles for 10 years. These permits are limited and auctioned by the government. Last week, the concession for smaller vehicles cost 41,617 Singaporean dollars (26,000 euros).

The Lta said that the zero growth target will only affect cars and motorcycles. The growth rate of freight and bus vehicles will remain at 0.25% per annum until March 2021. This will allow businesses time to improve the efficiency of operations and reduce the number of commercial vehicles. Singapore has expanded its rail network by 30% and added new routes to the bus network. Lta said that over the next five years, the government will continue to invest $ 20 billion (12.5 billion euros) in new rail infrastructure, 4 billion (2.5 billion euros) to renew operational fleets, and 4 more billions of dollars in contractual subsidies for buses.


(kwest/Shutterstock.com) (kwest/Shutterstock.com)

South Australia wants to attract more people to its small cities and country towns and could adopt a radical plan to boost populations in these areas, including offering more visas for jobs.Enticing more people to move from overseas could work well for the State as many automatically want to move to places such as Sydney and Melbourne, but it is regional areas where there are shortages of workers.A plan outlined by think tank, the SA Centre for Economic Studies, recommends offering an easier path to citizenship and opening up job visas for more occupations as part of a regionally focused migration programme as well as introducing a State specific temporary visa.It says that visa changes due to come onto force in March 2018 that will restrict the number of temporary visas granted as well as the occupations, are a gut reaction to problems relating to housing and infrastructure in cities like Sydney and Melbourne but could cut population growth in places such as South Australia where migration was needed to balance an ageing population and people moving interstate.The report also states that concerns about migrants making unemployment rates worse were not supported by the evidence which actually shows migration has no impact on the employment rates of the non-migrant population and a very small but positive impact on average wages.'In many cases the announced (visa) changes exacerbate the existing situation of South Australian employers, particularly in regional areas, not always being able to access employees with the skills they require,' the report points out.Migration Solutions chief executive Mark Glazbrook, who organised funding for the research, said it was obvious the current structure of the migration program did not support South Australian businesses.'Unmet demand for workers, regional depopulation and our ageing population would benefit greatly from the introduction of a new migration program which is based on genuine demand. For too long there has been a widespread misunderstanding that migration takes jobs, However this research shows that under the right settings, rules and regulations that migration can stimulate economic growth and prosperity,' he explained.The report says that it is not just highly skilled professionals that are needed. There are labour shortages for semi and low skilled occupations as well as skilled occupations.'Our research found a number of aspects of the current migration system that did not meet the needs of the South Australian economy or South Australian employers, in particular that the use of a single level for the minimum wage level for jobs to be eligible temporary skilled visas (called the TSMIT) means that many positions in lower wages areas, which is most of South Australia, are locked out of the skilled migration system,' the report says.'The current migration system lacks regional flexibility and is focussed on jobs with unmet demand nationally, whereas the skills gaps identified by many regional South Australian employers are often in different areas which are not typically eligible for skilled worker visas,' it adds.It recommends the introduction of a temporary work visa that gives greater flexibility to regional needs, and allows local employers to address their own unmet demand, rather than positions in demand in the major cities.It also suggests creating a State start-up visa for those in the country temporarily on other grounds, allowing them temporary right to remain to pursue a business idea and increasing regional flexibility in migration policy settings, including through the use of region specific occupations in the skill lists.
Harold Pierce covers education and health for The Californian. He can be reached at 661-395-7404. Follow him on Twitter @RoldyPierce
Much of the rest of the state may be on the edge of a cultural revolution now that recreational cannabis is legal in California.
President Uhuru Kenyatta Meets IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati. PHOTO | PSCU

We only insist the election be held on October 26 ...," Kenyatta said.

President Uhuru Kenyatta met the IEBC Chairman in an awkward move. The President expressed his fears of not having elections on 26th October 2017 citing that the country will plunge into a political crisis. He ordered the IEBC to conduct elections by any reasonable means.The President insisted that election will be there whether the IEBC chairman thinks the elections will not be credible."Elections will there as long as my government has given you money to perform it otherwise those funds would have been used in empowering people in other projects." President Uhuru said.He urged the IEBC to shut down their ears and perform what took them to the office. The International convoy had a message to the Kenyans towards the elections."When this election is held, Kenyans may choose to vote or not; to support whichever candidate they choose, or none; to express their views peacefully to whoever will listen, in whatever forum they think best. Now and after the election, we urge Kenyans to renew and redouble their national dialogue about how to unite the country, end the ethnic and tribal conflict, and allow everyone to share in the countrys bounty," the envoys said in a joint statement.President Uhuru Kenyatta insisted that No matter what will take to have the elections on 26th October 2017, his government will avail to avoid the political crisis. He commanded that election will be there on Thursday.If we get 70+1 votes, will anybody question the legitimacy of my victory? Don't be misled by speculation. This time around, we will get 70+1 votes, whether Raila Odinga will be on the ballot or not, Uhuru said."There will be no dialogue with Raila until after elections. The government will not be formed in the boardroom. The people of Kenya will elect the government they choose," Uhuru said.The IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati was confused over the President remarks about the Thursday polls. He was commanded to do elections in whichever way possible.While it is his right, we must think beyond him and think of the six million Kenyans who will feel disenfranchised by this action. Do we just go on as if his withdrawal means nothing? Chebukati asked.I will not sit at the helm of the Commission as we plunge the country into a possibly worse situation than we had in 2007-08. It is difficult to guarantee a free, fair and credible election, Chebukati said.I have refused and said I am not interested in dialogue with Raila Odinga. I am interested in the decision of Kenyans. If you are tired with your work in the IEBC that is not the Problem. Elections must continue as planned. If he wants to lead this country, he must accept that leadership is granted by the people through voting, Uhuru said.We will talk later after voting. We will never talk on how to deny the people their democratic right to vote for their leader. Let the people decide. Uhuru stated.The IEBC has been left with the burden of how the Elections will be conducted. The Jubilee government dedicated to providing all necessary tools and resources to make sure the Polls proceed as planned.This meeting comes just a few days ago where the IEBC Chairman threatened to quit. The decision for the two leaders to dialogue did not bore any fruits, further, he was forced to do the election in whichever means possible.
NASA leaders to provide the last statement before the polls tomorrow in Uhuru Park at 2.00pm. Raila Odinga said the demonstration will pause tomorrow and they will give directions if the demonstration to continue or not on the polling day.Siaya Senator Hon. James Orengo has urged the opposition supporters to stay calm and wait for the tomorrow directions. Speaking in Machakos, the NASA principles urged their supporters to stay at home tomorrow in various towns waiting for the last statement before the Jubilee opinion polls on Thursday."We are staying the course and will stop at nothing less than a credible election. We urge those aiming to suppress our cause to acknowledge that as it's currently constituted, the IEBC is incapable of delivering a credible poll." Raila Odinga said."The promises we've made to the Kenyan people remain binding and we intend to deliver on each one. There must be electoral reforms to enable this nation to move forward," he added."With steady resolve and firm conviction, we march on towards Canaan, our destination. The aspirations of the Kenyan people will soon be realised as our victory comes closer with each passing day. We say again no October election!!!" Raila Odinga stated.Raila Odinga has denied saying that there will be Demonstrations on the poll day. More than 3000 GSU officers and Kenya Defense Forces have been deployed in Nyanza ahead of the polls. More than 1000 officers were also deployed in Eastern and Coast region while leaving the rest from Kahawa, Lang'ata barracks and GSU camps in Nairobi and Kajiado counties as alleged by the senior counsel James Orengo.
The Florida Institute of Oceanography is welcoming a new addition, one that it hopes will help train and develop Florida's next generation of marine scientists.

New research vessel "Hogarth" will replace older ship

Vessel contains both wet and dry labs, can map ocean floor

Costs shared by State of Florida, City of St. Petersburg

FIO's is getting a new floating lab named "Hogarth." The $6 million vessel is named after the Institute's former director, Bill Hogarth.

"It's quite an honor," Hogarth said. "And most of the time you don't have ships named after you until you've passed away."

The 78-foot, 139-ton vessel, which features both wet and dry labs, was constructed in the Bay area, at Duckworth Steel Boats in Tarpon Springs. The state-of-the-art vessel will replace a research vessel that's more than 40 years old.

Hogarth can map the ocean floor, and is equipped with fisheries eco-sounders and a dynamic positioning system.

Bill Hogarth, former director of the Florida Institute of Oceanography, and the inspiration behind the new vessel's name. (Josh Rojas, staff)

"Very stable, very fast, very quiet and it's going to represent just a tremendous improvement in terms of what students will normally experience getting out to see and that's critical," said FIO's Dr. Philip Kramer. "The first time a student goes out to sea you want it to be a positive experience."

The ship can sleep 10 scientists along with a crew of four, and will be a good investment for Florida, according to the man with whom the ship shares its name.

"I think a lot of people saw the need for it," Hogarth said. "You're surrounded by water, you got red tide, you've got hurricanes and environmental disasters and blah, blah, blah. I think people realized that you need it."

The state paid for nearly half of the new vessel. The remainder came from the City of St. Petersburg, the Institute, the University of South Florida, and other university members.

The ship will conduct sea trials over the next few months before assuming its role as Florida's floating laboratory, hopefully training marine scientists for decades to come.


Manatee County natives Ariana Czaia and Christian Hightower joined very select company this past hurricane season, but not by choice. They survived not one, but two Category 5 storms.

Czaia, Hightower sailing around Caribbean when Irma developed

Couple took shelter in St. Marteen, where their sailboat was destroyed

Couple evacuated to Puerto Rico just in time for Maria's approach



"Ive never been scared for my life ever," said Czaia. "There's never been a moment where I thought 'oh my gosh, this could be it' and I definitely felt that, for sure," said Czaia.



We first met Czaia and Hightower in the middle of their 11-month sailing adventure around the Caribbean. Their adventure took a frightening turn when it placed them in the path of Hurricane Irma.



They tied down in St. Maarten, where Czaia and Hightower took shelter in a hotel, their sailboat, "Mischief," left in the hands of Mother Nature.

Like the rest of the island, which experienced near-total destruction, Mischief was also destroyed.



Shes gone," said Czaia. "We dont know what were going to do, but were very happy that we're alive and okay."



Almost a week later, the couple evacuated to Puerto Rico, only to learn they were then square in the path of another Category 5 storm, Maria.

Czaia made it back to the Bay area before Maria hit, but Hightower stayed behind to help a friend prepare for the storm.



"I didn't think I would see anything like I saw in St. Maarten, and I did -- I saw almost exactly the same thing in Puerto Rico, said Hightower.



After Maria, Hightower spent almost a month on the island, starting the non-profit "RBC Maria Relief" to help clean up.

He plans to return to the islands in the next few weeks to continue helping with the relief efforts.
A St. Petersburg police officer who was fired for not obeying instructions, adjusting his schedule without permission and allegedly lying about getting his car washed was reinstated with back pay after secret audio recordings of meetings with his supervisors surfaced, according to internal affairs records.

Officer Richard Miranda also filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and a whistleblower lawsuit against the City of St. Petersburg, Police Chief Tony Holloway and four supervisors.

Officer Richard Miranda fired Feb. 23, since reinstated

Bay News 9 obtains audio recording through public records request



Miranda believes he was the target of retaliation

PDF: Read the lawsuit

Miranda was fired on Feb. 23 by Chief Holloway for falsification and insubordination.

"You said you did not tell your supervisor you did PM on your vehicle, you only did maintenance on your vehicle," Holloway said at the Command Review Board hearing. "To wit: you washed your vehicle but those two supervisors swear under oath that you did tell them that you did PM service."

Officer Miranda told Chief Holloway that he never used the term PM, which stands for Preventative Maintenance. It's a scheduled time to drop off police cruisers for work to be done by a city mechanic. Instead, Miranda said he used the term MRS, which stands for Mechanical Rail Services. That's the facility where PM is done. It's also where officers wash their cruisers and fill up with gas.

"I did not say anything about doing PM to my vehicle sir," Miranda said.

That's the same thing Miranda told internal affairs Det. Annetta Perry during an interview last November.

"Do you have any idea why they would assume you were having your car PMd rather than just," Perry asked.

Miranda interrupted, "I did not use that term, so I don't know. Why their assumption is strictly to that, I don't know.

"No one asked me why was I at MRS I went to MRS, part of the maintenance of the vehicle is (to) wash it and I washed the cruiser."

Sgt. Candace Marklin and acting Lt. William Burris told Perry during their interviews that Miranda said he came in early on March 30, 2016, without permission, to PM his cruiser.

"He told me and Lieutenant Burris at that point that he had to PM his car," said Sgt. Marklin.

"He said without hesitating, he said, Well, I had to get PM'd,'" said acting Lt. Burris. "I specifically told him, 'Look, if that's what you have to do, you just ask and we will nine times out of 10 tell you 'No problem.' But you have to ask, you can't just make up your own schedule."

"In no uncertain terms, he lied to both of our faces."

"No one asked me why was I at MRS I went to MRS, part of the maintenance of the vehicle is (to) wash it and I washed the cruiser." - Officer Richard Miranda during recorded conversation

At the time, those two supervisors did not realize that Miranda had secretly recorded their meeting. Through a public records request, Bay News 9 obtained that audio recording which proves Miranda never used the term "PM."

The conversation happened in a meeting room at district headquarters on April 7, 2016.

"Last extra night, everybody was working an 8-to-6," Marklin said. "And you came in and worked a 7-to-5."

"Yeah, I had to go to MRS," Miranda replied.

That was the only exchange where the maintenance term came up during the 50 minute secretly recorded conversation between Miranda, Marklin and Burris. The City decided to reinstate Miranda after his attorney, Patrice Pucci, presented that recording at a grievance hearing in April.

"The supervisors were not aware that grievant recorded those conversations," hearing officer Kristen Mory wrote in a letter. "The audio recordings were presented as evidence to demonstrate that Officer Miranda did not provide false testimony at the Chain of Command Board hearing related to vehicle maintenance."

Mory's letter went on to state, "The resolution includes removal of the falsification rule violation from the previous employee notice, reinstatement effective July 31, 2017, and back pay from the time grievant was terminated up until his reinstatement."

In an effort to keep his employees from secretly recording each other again, Chief Holloway amended the general orders in July to state: interception and disclosure of wire, oral or electronic communications (is) prohibited.

"It's easier for employees now to audio or video record at work to try to get evidence of an employment law claim. I think we're going to see this not just in the law enforcement setting, not just in the public employer setting but also in the private employer setting." - Stetson University College of Law Professor Jason Bent

Even though Miranda got his job back, he was still found to be insubordinate for not following his supervisors' instructions and adjusting his schedule without permission.

According to the public records, Miranda believes he was the target of retaliation for filing a discrimination complaint against Lt. Karen Eichler. That supervisor had Miranda inactivated from the field training unit for declining to teach a class about runaways. An emotional Miranda admits in the secret recording that's one reason he was being difficult with his supervisors.

"Just deal with it. If it pisses me off and it makes me act up, deal with it," Miranda said. "I have never been so stressed in my life with this bulls**t. I dont give a s**t. I come here because I have a family and I love my job."

An internal affairs investigation found there was no evidence to support the allegation of racial discrimination against Lt. Eichler and the case has been closed per the Chief. Mirandas attorney filed an amended lawsuit on Friday alleging retaliation in violation of Floridas Public Whistleblower Act, negligence, tortious interference and race discrimination under Florida's Civil Rights Act against the City of St. Petersburg.

Pucci said Mayor Rick Kriseman was served on Friday and Chief Holloway along with Karen Eichler, Candace Marklin, William Burris and Luke Williams will be served this week. Police spokeswoman Yolanda Fernandez said Holloway declined a request for an interview.

"The Chief would like to speak with you about this matter. However, there's a pending lawsuit and legal has advised him not to say anything at this time," Fernandez said. "However, once all of that is resolved, hes willing to sit down with you and answer any questions you might have."

Miranda also declined a request for an interview but his attorney released a statement.

"Officer Miranda's reinstatement was agreed upon to minimize the damages," Pucci stated. "And does not affect/settle Officer Miranda's other claims against the City."

Stetson University College of Law Professor Jason Bent, who specializes in employment law, said this is the first case he's seen where an officer secretly recorded other officers while at work.

"I think it's a really interesting case and one of the most fascinating aspects about this case to me is the recording by employees, because this is a sort of rapidly developing area of law," Bent said. "When you're talking about a police officer recording another police officer for employment related claim purposes, that's the first time I've seen that."

Professor Bent said with the rise of smartphones it could be a new trend.

"I think it's a trend to watch. It's easier for employees now to audio or video record at work to try to get evidence of an employment law claim," he said. "I think we're going to see this not just in the law enforcement setting, not just in the public employer setting but also in the private employer setting."

Bent warns that unless you fall under a specific exception, secretly recording a conversation in Florida is generally illegal.

"If I were advising an employee in a two party consent state like Florida, I would tell them to be very careful about this," he said. "We need to make sure it fits an exception before you go recording someone because if not, you're committing a crime."

Pucci provided case law exceptions for Miranda's case, stating police officers do not have an expectation of privacy while on the job and the Florida Supreme Court ruled the legislature did not intend that every oral communication be free from interception without the prior consent of all the parties to the communication.
Jaime Laboy Torres is more than 1,000 miles from home.

But he is finally getting the medical care he needs.

Humanitarian flight brings Jaime Laboy Torres to Florida

He is first Puerto Rico Maria patient

Will stay with son in Orlando after he is discharged

Link: Doctors for Puerto Rico



The 76-year-old, who is battling prostate cancer, is from Villalba, Puerto Rico. The small town was devastated by Hurricane Maria. The storm indefinitely postponed a scheduled surgery, and Laboy Torres wasn't getting the medication he needed.

"Here, everything is excellent," Laboy Torres said in Spanish from his hospital bed at Tampa General Hospital. "The attention, the nurses, I am friends with all of them. This hospital is 1,000 years ahead of Puerto Rico."

Earlier in October, Dr. Elymaris Perez Colon and a group of local physicians traveled to Puerto Rico to bring supplies and administer healthcare to those on the island. They started a Facebook page called Doctors for Puerto Rico: A Hope and Health Project. Laboy Torres' granddaughter, who lives in Jacksonville, reached out to the page asking if they could help her grandfather.

"Just living without electricity, without portable water, relying on whatever little they can get from donations is just not the optimal conditions for a patient like him," Perez Colon said.

Perez Colon was able to get Laboy Torres on a humanitarian flight, and he became Tampa General Hospital's first patient from Puerto Rico.

"This came to us through (Perez Colon). God is with us," Laboy Torres said.

Laboy Torres, who is a retired teacher, said although he's getting the medical care he needs, it was hard leaving his wife of more than 50 years back home. It's difficult for him to talk about what his city has endured.

"A lot of sadness," Laboy Torres said. "I cry when I see the pictures. I cry because why is this happening? We were already bad and Maria finished us. Villalba was in pieces."

Perez Colon said they are working to bring Laboy Torres' wife to Florida along with a few other patients in need of cancer treatment.

When Laboy Torres is discharged from the hospital, he will stay with his son in Orlando.

Perez Colon and other physicians are returning to Puerto Rico this weekend.


Officers from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, Nederland Police and Jefferson County Narcotics Task Force raided Optimum Medical Weight Control and Family Wellness on Tuesday.



A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Texas said no additional information about the search was available.



Nederland Police Chief Darrell Bush said he couldn't divulge the details of the search warrant and deferred questions about the investigation to the DEA, a federal agency that enforces controlled substance laws and regulations.



The Nederland Avenue business specializes in "personalized weight loss tailored for the individual," according to its website.



Optimum's site lists Kevin G. Morgan as the clinic's chairman. Morgan, 33, has been a registered nurse since 2008, according to the Texas Board of Nursing.



The board filed formal charges against him on Oct. 20, according to board's website, but his license is still active. The board declined to release information about the charges Tuesday.



Morgan could not be reached for comment.



LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.com

Twitter.com/LizTeitz
A new 1.4m library and museum at Benburb Priory will be opened next week by Ireland's two Archbishops of Armagh

A new 1.4m library and museum at Benburb Priory will be opened next week by Ireland's two Archbishops of Armagh.

The facility will celebrate over 1,000 years of history and will house several unique historical collections of national and international importance, including Servite, Marian and O'Neill collections and archives.

It will be opened by the leader of Ireland's Catholics, the Most Revd Eamon Martin, and the Church of Ireland primate, the Most Reverend Richard Clarke on Thursday, October 26.

The money to fund the development was raised over an eight-year period, and the new centre in east Tyrone is based in the refurbished stables at the centre of the priory estate.

Its exhibits also include a collection of Irish literature, and a wide range of religious books. The archives date back over 150 years, and include the complete records of the Servites, one of the five original Catholic mendicant orders, in Britain and Ireland.

Fr Colm McGlynn, the Prior of Benburb, said: "The development of the library and museum is a further extension of the community outreach which has been central to the priory since its establishment here in 1949, and it will enhance and broaden the experience and knowledge of visitors to the priory, which is open to all.

"The Servite Community is very grateful for the funds which made this important project possible and for the dedication and hard work of the Project Team."

Professor Gerry McKenna, chair of the Management Board, said: "This represents a major development not just for the priory, Benburb village and the wider community but also for the local, national and international community of individuals, researchers and groups - including schools - who are interested in the heritage represented within its collections."

He added: "The establishment of the Stables Coffee Shop will also be a focal point for greater social interchange within the village and between visitors from near and far."

The priory, which is owned by the Servites, is a cross-community centre, and the new library and museum has been developed with this ethos.

The priory estate is of considerable historic interest. It was originally a Plantation estate, which was later bought by the distiller James Bruce in the late 19th century. Bruce built the manor house and stables and also remodelled Benburb village.

After a period of relative disuse, the estate was used in the Second World War as a field hospital for British, Belgian and US troops. It was bought by the Servites in 1947, and a priory and seminary was opened in 1949.

The priory has evolved over the years in functional terms, and since the 1980s it has been a major community centre and meeting place for over 30 community groups. It has over 20,000 visitors annually.
Jonny Elliott and Antonia Koemdzhieva outside their new restaurant, Edo, on Upper Queen Street

A top chef who has worked with Gordon Ramsay and Gary Rhodes and ran the kitchen on board a Russian billionaire's Mediterranean yacht is bringing some sunshine to Belfast with the opening of a new 58-seater tapas restaurant.

Jonny Elliott has opened Edo (pronounced Aye-doh) - which is Latin for 'I eat' - on Upper Queen Street, Belfast, employing 11 staff.

The former Balloo House and Howard Street chef, and his partner Antonia Koemdzhieva, opened the restaurant without fuss to allow them to 'fine-tune' the service before a promotional drive.

"I've worked all over Europe and in London with Gordon Ramsay and Gary Rhodes, which was very stressful. That was long hours and a lot of hard graft so I wanted to go back to the place where I really loved to cook," Mr Elliott said.

And that place was on board a yacht belonging to a Russian businessman who travelled the coasts of Italy, Spain, Turkey, Tunisia and Sardinia.

"I would go ashore to the markets and pick up the freshest stuff around the Mediterranean and I wanted to bring that to Belfast. It doesn't matter that we don't have the climate, we can still enjoy the food and the freedom of tapas dining," he said.

The theme at Edo is a 'feeding and sharing style serve' amid 'cosy surroundings'.

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"But we also allow for those who are used to traditional services to order their food and have it served as a starter and main," Mr Elliott explained. Edo is just one of a handful of restaurants in Ireland to use a Bertha oven, which allows chefs to cook with apple and pear wood to give dishes a distinctive flavour.

"It gives a unique, earthy smokiness flavour to the meat," Mr Elliott said.

He said weekend trade is busy but Tuesdays and Wednesdays are proving to be a challenge.

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"There's a bus shelter out the front of the restaurant so the buses can block us in and that means many people don't see us," he said. "We are getting a sign to allow people to know we're there and word of mouth so far has been great." Mr Elliott will be looking for more front of house staff, a manager and a supervisor, as well as a barman, as business grows.

Edo is just one in a string of new restaurants popping up in NI ahead of the festive foodie season. Michael Fletcher and Michael O'Connor of The Barking Dog are one step closer to opening their second Belfast establishment at the revamped Weaving Works on Ormeau Avenue as applications reveal they have applied for a liquor licence.

And food fans are gearing up for the launch of Michelin-starred chef Danni Barry and Stevie and Cristina Higginson's Clenaghan's Restaurant in Aghalee , Co Antrim, next month.
Inside the abandoned venue, which is now on the market

The owner of a derelict hotel in Northern Ireland is looking for developers to come forward to help him transform the once popular site.

The Drumnagreagh Hotel in Glenarm has been derelict for more than 10 years, but a private investor from the area is looking to partner with developers to restore the buildings.

Gavin Weir, from GVA NI property consultants, said: The site was sold during the downturn to a locally-based private investor who liked the location, and he is now going to do something more proactive, get planning consent and try and develop the site. He has had a number of approaches previously, some of them leisure related, some of them healthcare related and a lot of people looking at it as a residential site. It would be suitable for all three.

So the investor has decided to put it out there and invite some expressions of interest and then either develop it out with them or possibly sell the site, but he is open to a variety of options.

It is a unique site, just off the Coast Road, so it is hard to gauge what sort of quirky uses could be done with it.

The current owner bought the hotel in 2009, shortly after a fire engulfed the disused building and completely gutted the interior of the property.

It took fire crews more than 12 hours to contain the blaze.

Mr Weir said: The hotel is completely derelict, so it is really a redevelopment opportunity.

You would be starting from scratch again.

The original old house is pretty bad due to the fire a number of years ago.

He added: The property is right on the Coast Road. The road itself has benefited from a huge influx of tourists and day trippers, so there may be opportunities for leisure uses.

Im not saying someone is going to build a grand hotel again, but there maybe something built, like a restaurant or a coffee shop.

Because it was such a substantial building there are quite a few commercial uses for it from a planning point of view.

The property has been advertised as a unique coastal residential or commercial development opportunity with unrivalled sea views.

Other development opportunities currently advertised include lands at Banbridge Road, in Gilford, Co Down.

The eight-acre site, listed by Frazer Kidd, previously secured planning permission for a housing scheme, comprising of 48 dwellings, but that has since expired.

Another residential site has been listed at Summerhill Drive in south west Belfast near the Stewartstown Road.

The 0.34 acre site, also listed by GVA NI, had been given planning permission to build 18 apartments in March 2017.

A property in Market Square in Lisburn has also been listed for sale by GVA NI.

The property is suitable for retail, office and leisure uses and has on-site car parking at the rear of the property.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland Construction firm Moorefield Contracts is building a new 5m Premier Inn Hotel, close to Belfast International Airport, and developing a 10m hotel, retail and leisure development in Dungannon.
The owners of Belfast's Bullitt Hotel have created 30 new jobs with a 1.75m investment in what they say is Ireland's largest rooftop bar.

The new space, called Babel, which includes an indoor bar, open-air terrace with views of Belfast, a retractable roof and a corner VIP room, has just opened its doors to the public. It's the latest development by Merchant Hotel-owner Beannchor.

It also features a 'living wall' made up of 300 fresh plants which will be used to garnish and flavour its wide cocktail range, as well as serving up small plates of south and east Asian cuisine.

And a new extension will see a further 31 bedrooms added to the hotel later this year, which will bring the total number to 74.

Conall Wolsey, director of Beannchor, said: "Our vision for the hotel was for it to be a place where people could work, relax and socialise and the new rooftop bar adds to this offering, transforming a formerly unused space into a vibrant new venue in the heart of the city centre."
Shaping up: the size of someones waist could be a better way to judge their health, some experts believe

Shaping up: the size of someones waist could be a better way to judge their health, some experts believe

BMI (which stands for Body Mass Index) charts have for decades been used as an indicator of whether we are underweight, a healthy weight, overweight or obese - the system was devised in the 19th century and coined in a medical paper in 1972. But it's also long been a topic of debate because it works purely on weight and height measurements (age is taken into account too) and doesn't distinguish between fat and muscle.

The simple measurement is your weight in kilograms divided by height in metres, and divided by height again. Below 18.5 is classified as underweight, over 25 is overweight, and over 30 means you're in the obese category.

What is BMI helpful for?

BMI is currently recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. Being overweight or obese is associated with a higher risk of major conditions like heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes, and BMI scales can help identify if someone is more likely to be at risk.

It provides invaluable insight into a general overview of the population as a whole - figures released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) last week showed that childhood obesity has increased 10-fold in the past four decades. It's worth noting, BMI in children is measured slightly differently to adults (using BMI centile on a child growth chart). World Obesity Federation data shows that obesity is steadily climbing in adults too, and by 2025 it's predicted that 41% of UK adults will be obese.

What are the disadvantages of the BMI system?

In short, people are categorised based purely on measurements, without taking into account things like their build and fitness levels, which may be very important.

If someone has a lot of muscle (which weighs more than fat), the BMI index will be overestimated by the calculation - so a fit, strapping rugby player could have relatively low body fat levels but a high BMI, for example.

While athletes will probably be well aware of how healthy they are regardless of BMI, where fat appears on someone's body is important in determining health and risk of disease. A 2014 study by the Mayo Clinic in the US found that people with a normal BMI but a large belly (ie. those who carry most of their body fat around the middle) were more likely to die younger or from weight-associated illnesses.

The NHS website says a healthy waist circumference for men is less than 94cm (37 inches) and less than 80cm (32 inches) for women. Your middle is a particularly dangerous place to carry excess fat, compared to, say, your bottom or thighs. This visceral fat makes you more likely to develop heart disease or diabetes.

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Are there any better ways to measure who is at risk?

As the BMI index doesn't correspond to the same degree of weight in different individuals, Public Health England recommend that it's not the only method you can use to work out whether or not you're overweight or obese.

The University of Wolverhampton's Professor Alan Neville, who specialises in biostatistics for health, sport and exercise, has written a paper on the need to redefine age and gender-specific overweight and obese BMI index cut-off points. He says that although monitoring BMI is sensible and will help identify people who are overweight, in most cases he believes waist circumference (divided by height, square-rooted) would be a more accurate measurement.

"Waist circumference would be a much more sensitive measure for people who are carrying too much fat and are much more sensitive to metabolic risk. There's very little (chance) muscle could interfere with a waist circumference measurement," he says.

BMI may also be more or less relevant depending on your age. "It's quite easy to show that younger people with a BMI over 30 don't have as much fat as older people over 30," Professor Neville says. "While younger people will carry a higher proportion of muscle in their 20s than someone in their 50s."

"I've done calculations that show some people in their 20s with a BMI of 33 or even 34 in the case of males, have the same fat as the people in their 40s (with the same BMI). And someone (in their 50s) with a BMI of 29 could actually be at more risk than someone with a BMI of 32 who is younger."

Other methods for measuring body fat are available, but they're more expensive.

The DEXA (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) Body Scan claims to be the most accurate way of measuring visceral fat - it reveals the amount and distribution of fat and muscle mass, and rates the result for your age, height and gender.

It's not as cheap as a quick calculation though; a scan with a consultation is 159 (bodyscanuk.com).
Leo Varadkar has been told to start pulling his weight rather than "attempting to throw his weight around" on the Irish border issue after Brexit.

DUP MP Ian Paisley said the Taoiseach was potentially damaging his economy more than that of Northern Ireland, as he pressed Theresa May to raise the issue with her Irish counterpart.

Mrs May said Britain would work with the Irish Government and the European Union to ensure there was no return to the border of the past.

North Antrim MP Mr Paisley asked Mrs May: "Has the Prime Minister taken the opportunity to remind the Republic of Ireland's Taoiseach that it is about time he started to pull his weight in the interests of the Republic of Ireland, rather than attempting to throw his weight around on the issue of the border?

"Because all that he is doing is damaging, potentially, his economy more than the economy of Northern Ireland." Mr Paisley also warned Labour it was "playing with fire" by saying that the peace process could be at risk because of Brexit.

Mrs May replied: "It is very important that all sides on this issue are very clear that we must ensure the Belfast Agreement is put into place and is recognised and respected in its entirety.

"It's also important, and we want to ensure, that peace programmes that have been possible through our membership of the European Union can continue in the future.

"And of course when it comes to the border, and resolving the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, it will of course be for us to work with the Republic of Ireland Government and with the European Union more generally to find the solution we all want to see, which is, as I say, no physical infrastructure at the border and no return to the borders of the past."
Queen's University Belfast is giving students "trigger warnings" that material on some courses may offend or cause distress.

History and politics undergraduates at the university have been told they may be upset by modules on the far right movement in Europe and North America.

Two of the political groups studied in this module hold political views and positions that are extreme and may offend, a warning said.

Medical students have also been told they might find modules about euthanasia "upsetting" and they may have to talk to patients about life-threatening conditions. While those on forensic pathology courses are told autopsy material could be upsetting. Law students were also issued with a warning of content about sexual offences.

The warnings were revealed in a Daily Mail report which made Freedom of Information requests to each of the prestigious Russell Group of universities.

In a statement to the Belfast Telegraph, Queen's said: "In certain degree modules, students are advised that there may be potentially offensive or distressing subject matters.

Queen's is not the only institution to issue such warnings to students.

Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics have all reportedly primed students of potentially offensive material coming up though the course of their third level education.

Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, told the Mail he feared that the practice was now so widespread in the UK that it was viewed as normal. He added that trigger warnings had a destructive effect and "infantilises young adults".
In the 2016/17 Health Survey the response rate was 59% with 3,888 individuals aged 16 and over taking part.

The latest Northern Ireland Department of Health survey has revealed that 63% of adults are either overweight or obese.

The survey, which has run annually since 2010, includes questions relating general health, mental health and wellbeing, obesity, smoking, physical activity, medicines and planning for social care etc.

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In the 2016/17 report the response rate was 59% with 3,888 individuals aged 16 and over taking part.

Statistics show that over a quarter of adults (27%) are classed as obese with a further 36% classed as overweight.

Obesity levels have shown an upward trend over the last decade, with 24% recorded in 2005/06.

Around three-quarters of children aged 2-15 were classed as normal weight or underweight, while 17% were classed as overweight and 8% classed as obese.

Fidelma Carter, Public Health Director at Northern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke commented: "It is worrying to see that almost two-thirds of adults in Northern Ireland are either obese or overweight.

"Being overweight is one of the main risk factors in heart disease and stroke, as well as other health conditions including certain cancers, so it really is an ill health time-bomb."

Ms Carter added: "We call on everyone in Northern Ireland, those is power and at a corporate, community and individual level, to work together to defuse it."

Prevalence of cigarette smoking has fallen to 20%, from the 22% reported in 2015/16.

This is the first drop in prevalence since 2013/14 and represents a continuation of the general downward trend seen since the 1980s when a third of respondents smoked.

The survey also revealed 80% of the population in Northern Ireland, aged 18 and over, drink alcohol. An increase on the 2015/16 findings of 74%.

Colette Rogers, Strategic Lead for Tobacco at the Public Health Agency (PHA) said: "We, at the PHA, are delighted with the reduction in the percentage of people in Northern Ireland who smoke.

"Smoking is the single greatest cause of preventable illness, premature death and health inequality throughout Northern Ireland and sadly one in every two smokers will die of a tobacco-related disease so it is very encouraging to see that more people every year are successfully quitting."
The father of Angela's Ashes author Frank McCourt tried to get a pay-out for his IRA service in Co Antrim but was unsuccessful, the latest tranche of military archives reveal.

Malachy McCourt claimed that he was in active service for the IRA during the War of Independence - in Three Company, Four Battalion.

His address in the documentation was given as Moneyglass, Toome, Co Antrim. He made an unsuccessful application under the Military Service Pensions Act, according to archivist Robert McEvoy.

The application form that he filled out is contained in the new archives released today.

Malachy McCourt claimed that in 1914, "he would have been a member of the Sinn Fein club, and that during the War of Independence he took part in raids for arms, raids to intercept mail, the burning of barracks, raids for poteen and the disarming of Special Constabulary at Moneynick, in Co Antrim".

Mr McEvoy also said that Mr McCourt "claimed that his home was raided by British Forces". However, he would have been refused a pay-out because the service that he carried out wouldn't be up to the qualifying standard.

General membership and routine activities would not be enough to qualify an individual for a pension.

On the form, Mr McCourt gives dates of continuous service from September 1919 until March 31, 1921, and gives the names of three referees who could testify to his statements.

Frank McCourt died in his adopted city of New York in 2009 at the age of 78, having charted his bleak childhood growing up in Limerick city in his memoir Angela's Ashes.
Dr Trung Duong, based at Queen's University, has been working on a communications system which can defy extreme weather and natural disasters

A scientist from Queen's University Belfast has been shortlisted for the Newton Prize for creating a communication system which can battle through hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.

The prestigious accolade rewards scientific breakthroughs which help developing countries and will be given to at least five scientists who will receive up to 200,000 to spend on their research.

Dr Trung Duong, who is originally from Vietnam and based at the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology at Queen's, has been leading a team of researchers developing a communications system which can work even when extreme weather and natural disasters strike.

During natural disasters, communications systems often face blackout amid power cuts and signal disruption which can hamper rescue efforts as emergency services face difficulties in co-ordinating.

Dr Duong's team designed an integrated heterogeneous wireless system capable of transmitting, even in these conditions.

He said: "Our research at Queen's University Belfast is helping to solve the global problem of communicating during a natural disaster.

"The system which we have created has many potential applications in disaster, climate change and carbon dioxide level monitoring and management, as well as in the provision of e-health services.

"It has been fantastic to lead this international project and I am very pleased that academic staff and students from 20 universities throughout Vietnam have now been trained in the system and several leading telecommunication companies are interested in bringing it into production."

The Newton Prize is an annual award worth a total of 1 million to celebrate discoveries and research which help support the economic development and social welfare of developing countries.

At least five winners will be selected to receive prize money of up to 200,000 which they will be able to spend on developing their research further.

All of the prize winners will be announced next month.
Sarah Ewart with Patrick Corrigan of Amnesty International outside Belfast Crown Court at a previous hearing

A legal challenge claiming Northern Ireland's strict abortion laws are in breach of women's human rights will open in the UK's highest court today.

The Supreme Court case is being brought by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC).

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It will argue the current legislation on cases of rape, incest or fatal foetal abnormality is in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Abortion is unlawful in Northern Ireland unless it is to preserve the life of the woman, and carries a potential sentence of life imprisonment.

Last year 724 women from here travelled to England for abortions.

In 2015 a High Court judge in Belfast ruled that the current law was in breach of the ECHR in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities or where women are pregnant as a result of sexual crime.

After the Department of Justice and the Attorney General successfully appealed the ruling, the NIHRC has now taken its case to the Supreme Court.

Sarah Ewart, whose first pregnancy was given a fatal foetal diagnosis, meaning she had to travel to England to terminate her pregnancy, said too many women continue to be affected by abortion laws here.

"I am an ordinary woman who suffered a very personal family tragedy, which the law in Northern Ireland turned into a living nightmare," she said.

"I feel that we have been abandoned by our government, whose duty it is to protect our rights. The failure of our politicians to legislate for change has left me with no option but to turn to the courts to have my rights upheld.

"I hope that the Supreme Court will bring about the change that I and other women so desperately need and have been waiting on for so long." Grainne Teggart, Amnesty's Northern Ireland campaigns manager, claimed women here continue to be treated as second-class citizens.

"It is time for the Supreme Court to step in and do what our government has failed to do - protect the long-neglected human rights of women and girls in a part of the UK," she said.

However, pro-life campaigners accused the NIHRC of mounting a "relentless crusade" against unborn babies. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children urged the UK Government to review the commission's operations.

SPUC development officer Liam Gibson said: "It is now time that Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire urgently took it upon himself to mount a full-scale review of the commission.

"The commission stands accused of abandoning genuine human rights and instead using public funding to target disabled babies for abortion."

Meanwhile, more details of a scheme to provide free abortion services in England for women travelling from Northern Ireland have been released at Westminster by the Equalities Minister Justine Greening.

They include travel and accommodation costs to be covered for women on low incomes; procedures free at the point of delivery, rather than paid for upfront and reimbursed, and a central telephone booking system through which clients will be able to arrange an appointment with a healthcare professional in England.

The scheme will be in place by the end of this year.
The family of a man left in a critical condition after being assaulted as he tried to stop a brawl have described him as "a big-hearted hero" as he continues to fight for his life.

Danny Payne, a father of three in his 30s, was assaulted by a number of men in Newmarket Street in Londonderry shortly after 2am on Sunday.

Yesterday, his brother-in-law Chris McElwee said the family are 'hoping and praying' that Danny survives, after he suffered serious head injuries in the attack.

Yesterday evening, police said two teenagers had been arrested in connection with the assault.

Last night, Mr Payne remained in a critical condition at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast after undergoing an eight-hour operation to relieve the pressure on his brain. His wife Sarah, who had her retina torn in the attack, was by his bedside.

"Danny was rushed to the Royal Victoria Hospital on Sunday morning," Chris said. "He had to get emergency brain surgery - have a part of his skull removed - to relieve the pressure. He was eight hours in theatre.

"Doctors have told Sarah that the surgery went well. He is still in an induced coma in Intensive Care."

Chris says that his sister Sarah and Danny had been out celebrating a friend's birthday in the city centre when the assault took place.

"They were going to get a taxi around the corner when Danny had seen two fellas standing arguing and pushing one another," he added.

"He was going over to see if he could stop the scuffling. A man punched Sarah in the face - they tore her retina - and Danny got beaten by two or three men.

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"Danny is fighting for his life. We were told at Altnagelvin Hospital that he has serious injuries and that they had done everything they could, to contact his mother and the rest of the family as they didn't know if he was going to make it through or not.

"And we still don't know that he will make it through.

"We are just hoping and praying that he recovers.

"Sarah and Danny have three children aged 13, 10 and three. They know that their daddy is in hospital and he had to go for an operation but don't know how serious it is."

Chris appealed for anyone who saw the incident to contact police.

"This is happening far too often," he added.

"We don't know why it happened. I can't see the people who did this handing themselves in, but if there are any witnesses out there, please come forward and speak to someone.

"Danny is fighting for his life today. He is the type of person who would have been friends with everybody. If you needed help, Danny was there in a second, no matter who you were.

"He was a volunteer in Foyle Search and Rescue and was always doing something for charity.

"He was out every single day searching for young Jack Glenn, who had went into the River Foyle, until he was found.

"He once went in and rescued a man who had jumped into the river over at the railway station, putting his own life at risk.

"Danny could have just left the two fellas fighting to get on with it and walked on past. But Danny is not like that. He is a selfless, big-hearted, good Samaritan, a hero.

"The people who did this to him need to face justice."

Last night, detectives from PSNI's Serious Crime Branch investigating the incident arrested an 18-year-old woman and a 19-year-old man.

They are assisting police with their enquiries.

Earlier, Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell said: "I am appealing directly to a man and a woman who were in the vicinity of the assault to come forward to police as they may be able to assist with the investigation.

"The man was wearing a coat and T-shirt - both dark in colour - and blue jeans while the assault was taking place in Newmarket Street. However, directly following the assault, he was seen walking in William Street not wearing his coat. At this stage a large tattoo was clearly visible on his left forearm.

"The woman has long, dark coloured hair and was wearing blue jeans, brown shoes and a three-quarter length green coat."

Anyone with information on the case can contact detectives at Strand Road on 101 quoting referenc e 209 22/10/2017.

Information can also be passed anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Concerns have been raised over a Titanic-themed escape room coming to Belfast, where the original doomed liner was built.

Timescape will launch its escape rooms in December, where you and a team have an hour to complete a mission.

The Titanic: The Final Hour escape is advertised as: "It's 11:39pm on April 14, 1912 and you're on the Captain's Bridge at the helm of the RMS Titanic. Suddenly, the words ring out, 'Iceberg, right ahead'. The placid sound of night is broken forever.

"You and your shipmates try desperately to avoid the iceberg but are unable. Now you only have 60 minutes to seal the water tight doors, radio for help, put on your lifejackets; release the davits and get every woman and child into the lifeboats. You must hurry but must not panic as the water rises and time runs out."

President of the Belfast Titanic Society Susie Millar, whose great grandfather Thomas Millar was lost in the Titanic disaster, expressed concern.

She said: "I would have my reservations about the Titanic story being used here in Belfast as the basis for an escape room game. It doesn't sound like a good way to commemorate the loss of the ship."

And John Creamer of the British Titanic Society added: "My personal thoughts are this is a very distasteful idea, and highly disrespectful to the memory of those who died. The Titanic disaster was not a game."

However, the company said the room is "respectful".

There will be three rooms at the facility in Castle Street, with Titanic: The Final Hour being the only permanent room. The others will rotate annually with other themes including futuristic and murder mystery.

You and your team of up to six people are closed in a room for the duration and the best team will be "the one that works together".

Timescape said it could "sympathise that there may be concern".

It said: "At Timescape we have taken great care and effort in carefully recreating an authentic, historical and educational environment that is respectful and allows visitors to experience and appreciate the Titanic and the tragic events of that fateful night.

"We again have taken great care to be respectful to those who perished and those affected. Our room and its props are as historically accurate as possible, and Titanic enthusiasts will surely be impressed with the level of detail and accuracy.

"The Titanic is a huge part of our own heritage and history and we are aiming to further enrich that here right in the heart of Belfast city."

Previous Titanic-themed attractions have been met with criticism. Most recently, a theme park in China shelved plans to create an "iceberg experience" which would allow guests to feel what it was like when the ship sank after complaints it would be in bad taste.

Titanic went down after hitting an iceberg on her maiden voyage on April 14, 1912, with more than 1,500 lives lost.
MP Gregory Campbell has described former UDA leader Glenn Barr, who has died aged 75, as a 'tireless campaigner'.

Mr Barr, who died at Altnagelvin Hospital, in Londonderry, played a key role in the Ulster Workers Council strike of 1974.

In recent years he was involved in reconciliation projects in the North West.

The strike caused the collapse of the Sunningdale powersharing administration, due to the disruption it caused.

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Mr Campbell said: "Glenn Barr, or 'Glenny' as he was affectionately known, was moving on from his political involvement as I moved into mine in the late 1970s.

"He worked hard at cross community work helping to build capacity in working class unionist areas. Glenn was a tireless campaigner and vigorous in defence of his own views.

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"Less than three weeks ago, we shared many reminiscences at a family wedding, he will be very sadly missed by us all."

The DUP MP added: "My deepest sympathies go out to his wife, Isa and his children and grandchildren."

During the Troubles, Mr Barr was a UDA leader for the North West area and visited Libya for talks with Colonel Gaddafi as part of a UDA delegation.

In the 1970s he became a politician in the Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party.

In recent years, he became an advocate for peace and reconciliation and was involved in community work, including setting up an employment and training scheme in Derry for local young people.

He also helped set up the Messines project which used the experiences of soldiers in the First World War to call for peaceful resolution to conflicts.

DUP councillor Drew Thompson described Mr Barr as a man with a "great vision."

The Londonderry representative said: "I had received the news last week that Glenn wasn't well and had been taken into hospital, then I got a phone call around 9am this morning that he had passed away.

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"I've known Glenn for over 50 years, back when he was only a young man, and a close friend of the family.

"He was very involved in community programmes. He developed a community based organisation where young people with no jobs or trades could come to see what was available to them.

"The man had a great vision to bring people together."

Councillor Thompson added: " I had a lot of time for him.

"He was a true leader always looking at ways to promote peace and reconciliation and encouraging young people into employment."
A Lisburn woman saved by her teenage daughter who learnt CPR at school has urged others to train in first aid.

Clare Hamilton (38) went into cardiac arrest two months ago and would likely have died had it not been for the actions of her quick-thinking 14-year-old, Melissa Doyle.

Melissa had been taught CPR at Fort Hill Integrated College just months earlier. She recognised her mum was having a heart attack and sprang into action.

The youngster had been taught CPR by school nurse Eileen McConnell using the British Heart Foundation (BHF) NI's Call Push Rescue training kit, a free resource for post-primary schools here.

Clare credits Melissa's training with saving her life.

"Melissa had slept beside me the night before and as my alarm went off I pressed snooze to go back to sleep," she said.

"The next thing I knew I was waking up in intensive care.

"As I'd pressed snooze I had had a cardiac arrest.

"Melissa heard me making a gasping sound.

"She thought I was snoring and then she realised something was wrong.

"She tried to wake me up but couldn't. She then shouted for my husband when she realised I had stopped breathing."

Clare's husband called 999 and the operator wanted to talk him through CPR, but he couldn't do it.

"Melissa said: 'I've learnt this in school, let me do it'," explained Clare.

"So straight away she and my husband got me off the bed and onto the floor and got on with it and started doing chest compressions.

"Melissa did CPR for a good five minutes before police arrived with a defibrillator and then the ambulance arrived.

"We were told at the hospital that if Melissa hadn't bought me time and done CPR immediately I wouldn't be here now.

"I'm so proud and grateful to her.

"I dread to think what would have happened if Melissa hadn't been sleeping next to me that night. It was just meant to be.

"If it wasn't for Melissa learning CPR in school thanks to her school nurse and the BHF NI kits I might not be here today.

"It's so easy to learn and I'm so grateful that Melissa was taught it at such a young age."

Fewer than one in 10 heart attack victims survives in Northern Ireland, and new figures show that 58% of people here would be reluctant to perform CPR for fear they would do it wrong.

If a person has a heart attack in front of a bystander who starts CPR immediately, their chances of survival can double. Jayne Murray, head of BHF NI, said: "Melissa's brave actions saved her mum's life.

"She is a credit to her family and her school, and we are incredibly proud she learned these lifesaving skills through our Call Push Rescue training.

"Most people think that if they had to perform CPR it might be a stranger in the street, but actually most cardiac arrests happen at home and it's your mum, dad, child or sibling whose life will hang in the balance unless you act quickly."

School nurse Ms McConnell said: "We are so proud of Melissa and the courage she displayed."

To find out more about CPR, visit bhf.org.uk/cpr
Police have been granted an additional 36 hours to question a man over the suspected murder of Charlotte Murray.

The man was arrested on Monday in Dungannon on suspicion of murder.

He was then taken to Dungannon Police Station where he is being questioned by detectives.

Charlotte vanished five years ago without trace.

She was 34 years old when reported missing.

Ms Murray, from Omagh, has not been in contact with her family since late 2012.

Last week the PSNI launched a fresh appeal for information, and on Monday detectives revealed they had made an arrest.

Ms Murray, who had been living in Moy, Co Tyrone, last made contact with her family in late 2012. She was reported missing in May 2013.

The last contact Charlotte had with her family was at Halloween 2012 when she called her mother and told her she had split up with her boyfriend and was moving out of the home she shared with him in Moy.

Police arrested a 44-year-old man in 2015 and then announced they were concentrating on a murder investigation in a move that sent shockwaves through the communities of Omagh and Moy. The suspect was later released without charge.

Detectives have appealed for information on two personal items - Charlotte's engagement ring and her mobile phone - a Samsung Galaxy YS5360.

It is understood police recently searched a house and a business in Moy looking for Charlotte's mobile phone and a computer believed to have a connection to her disappearance.
Police officers at the scene of on the Upper Springfield in west Belfast following reports of a suspicious object in the area on October 24th 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Police officers at the scene of an ongoing incident on the Upper Springfield in west Belfast following reports of a suspicious object in the area on October 24th 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Police officers at the scene of an ongoing incident on the Upper Springfield in west Belfast following reports of a suspicious object in the area on October 24th 2017 (Photo by Kevin Scott / Belfast Telegraph)

Police have said nothing was found in a security alert in west Belfast.

The Upper Springfield Road was sealed off for a period on Tuesday by police.

Officers conducted a search of the area but found nothing.

Inspector Jocelyn Wise added: I would ask anyone with information or who may have noticed any suspicious or unusual activity in the Upper Springfield or Hannahstown areas in recent days to please get in touch. The number to call is 101.
A convicted rapist has been jailed again for failing to tell police he was back in Northern Ireland

A convicted rapist has been jailed again for failing to tell police he was back in Northern Ireland.

Michael McMoran (38), previously jailed for 11 years in May 1998 after being convicted of raping a disabled teenager, arrived from Scotland in July.

He was arrested in Belfast earlier this month with a small quantity of heroin on him.

McMoran, of Plunkett Court in the city, admitted charges of failing to comply with a requirement to notify police of a change of address within a three-day period, and possessing a class A drug. A judge at Belfast Magistrates Court sentenced him to six weeks' imprisonment.
The 500th anniversary of the Reformation provides us with a fresh opportunity to look critically on its religious and historical significance in a more reflective way than in the past.

This is immensely important in a Christian society like our own, that was divided primarily on religious grounds.

A society which, without the Reformation, might have had an entirely different history.

As a student in the 1960s at St Malachy's College, Belfast, I was taught from the Catholic Reference Encyclopedia (1968) that the "so called reformation was a tragedy for Christianity".

Perhaps surprisingly, there was no sense of Martin Luther being the villain of the piece. The Reformation was tragic, unfortunate and destructive of Christian unity, but not evil.

That is not to say that Luther was presented as a positive figure, because he was not. Luther was presented as gifted, but a neurotic and overly scrupulous priest, obsessively concerned about his own salvation.

Also, it was honestly and sadly accepted that the Church, and in particular the Papacy, was also responsible for the break up, being institutionally corrupt and in need of reform. It was accepted that Luther was frustrated in his appeal for that reform, but went too far and accidentally established his own Church, which was not his intention.

Looking now at contemporary scholarship on the history of the Reformation is both enlightening and intriguing. According to Diarmaid MacCulloch's magisterial book, Reformation: Europe's House Divided (2003), there were "very many reformations", including the Counter Reformation, nearly all of which would have said that they were simply aimed at recreating authentic Catholic Christianity.

Once one gets into the detail of the period from 1517 onwards the confusing complexity of what one calls the Reformation becomes self-evident. It was certainly not one event, but a series of events and an historic religious and political process that didn't end until at least 1648, with the Treaty of Westphalia and the end of the religiously inspired slaughter of the Thirty Years War.

Much Christian blood was perversely shed in the name of Christ, the Prince of Peace, whose mission on earth was to reconcile man to God and man to man. With Europe, exhausted and sickened by the war, Westphalia provided, albeit imperfectly, for the toleration of religious minorities.

The various theological disputes regarding the doctrine of justification by faith, the disputes over the nature of the Eucharist and the Mass, the centrality of the Bible, were all considered as steps too far by the orthodoxy of the Catholic Church.

But by today's thinking, much of the disputed issues are not considered that great a difference in Christian thinking.

In particular, a common understanding about the doctrine of justification by faith has now been reached between the Catholic Church and the Lutheran Churches and others.

Some of those historic disputes now seem abstract and irrelevant today. That is not to say that these differences were not real 500 years ago, but rather that they have lost the passion and energy that they once inspired.

However, we still are living with the consequences of that division in 1517 and that is expressed in the continued confessional divide between Catholics and Protestants.

However, ecumenical growth over the past century has led to a healthy and mature reconsideration of the Reformation by all and an easing of the inter-Church tensions.

It is still my belief that the Reformation was a tragedy for all Christians. Sadly division remains a living reality today and scandalously defies Christ's own words in John 17:21-22: "May they all be one. Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you, so that the World may believe it was you who sent me."

This article is from a series of contributions on the Reformation curated by Evangelical Alliance which can be viewed at www.reimaginingfaith.com
Northern Ireland councils are wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by giving staff over-generous mileage allowances, according to a public spending pressure group.

Research published today by the TaxPayers' Alliance reveals that at least nine of the province's 11 councils are paying a higher mileage rate to staff than that recommended by the Government.

Five years ago HM Revenue and Customs set the approved mileage rate for cars and vans owned by employees and used for business journeys at 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles.

At that time the Department for Communities and Local Government advised councils in England to stop paying above HMRC's approved rate.

However, five years on, at least nine of our local authorities are still paying employees a casual rate of up to 65p per mile - 20p per mile or 45% above the recommended rate - for vehicles above 1200cc.

Nine councils - Antrim and Newtownabbey (335,786); Belfast (223,470); Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon (558,297); Lisburn and Castlereagh (304,822); Fermanagh and Omagh (363,835); Derry City and Strabane (337,211); Newry, Mourne and Down (363,407); Ards and North Down (375,633), and Mid Ulster (456,179) - spent a combined total of 3.31m on mileage expenses in 2015-16.

Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council led the way with 558,297 - more than twice the amount handed over by Belfast City Council at 223,470.

In 2016-17 the figure spent on mileage by these nine local authorities leapt to 3.49m, with Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon again topping the table at 600,723, and Belfast coming in lowest at 228,636.

Lisburn and Castlereagh Council spent 347,341 during that period, followed by Derry and Strabane with 350,417. Newry, Mourne and Down paid out 359,978, and Fermanagh and Omagh spent 399,616.

Ards and North Down spent 373,385, while Antrim and Newtownabbey paid out 344,870. For Mid Ulster the figure was 489,111.

In total, the nine councils spent over 6.81m on mileage expenses for staff over two years.

No figures were available for Causeway Coast and Glens or Mid and East Antrim Borough Councils at the time of going to press.

TaxPayers' Alliance chief executive John O'Connell said that while high fuel prices and vehicle excise duty made driving "extremely expensive", there was "no excuse for councils to pay more than HMRC's approved rate for mileage".

He added: "It's simply not credible for local authorities to plead poverty and raise council tax while paying over the odds for basic expenses, especially when the Government has been telling them to rein in these payments for the past five years.

"Councils must continue to root out wasteful spending like this so that they can deliver tax cuts for hard-pressed residents."

Councillor Darryn Causby, chairman of Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough's governance, policy and resources committee, said he was "shocked" at the amount spent on staff mileage.

"If you compare councils, I would suspect that it is because of the size of the geographical area of the council and the significant rural community we serve," he said.

"Also, we have 1,500 employees on the council, so it would be interesting to see a breakdown of the spend by council departments.

"Some employees, such as dog and litter wardens, would be out and about on a daily basis travelling a significant number of miles."

He said he intended to raise the matter with the council's chief executive.

"I would be minded to want to know a bit more over whether we have given the advice to reduce the mileage due consideration, or whether it has been completely disregarded. I totally understand why questions are being raised, and I am shocked at the figures quoted," Mr Causby added.

Representatives of Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon; Belfast City; Lisburn and Castlereagh; Derry City and Strabane; Mid and East Antrim, and Antrim and Newtownabbey Councils said the rates paid were set by the negotiating body for local government staff, the National Joint Council (NJC), in a collective agreement that allowed for the payment of up to 65p per mile in mileage costs.

Belfast City Council said that employees were paid a mileage rate for approved business miles of between 36.9p and 65.0p per mile for the first 8,500 miles, and between 13.7p and 16.4p per mile after 8,500 miles.

Mid Ulster Council said the rate paid to casual users of cars above 1200cc in 2015/16 and 2016/17 was 65p per mile for the first 8500 miles and then 16.4p. It added that "current Mid Ulster District Council mileage allowances for employees are a term and condition of employment which has been carried through from three legacy councils".

Derry City and Strabane District Council disputed the amount the TaxPayers' Alliance said had been claimed by staff, stating that a total of 267,261 had been claimed in 2015/16 and 279,036 in 2016/17.

The NI Local Government Association (Nilga) said it was not aware that HMRC had issued specific "advice to reduce the mileage paid to 45p per mile".

"The amount set by the NJC is determined based on the actual costs of running a vehicle and is set by an independent panel of experts," it added.

"This forms part of a collective agreement with trade unions. The same is the case for the NHS, incidentally.

"The rates set have been the same since 2010, and are guidelines, with some work presently being done to take into account rates for electric cars and changes of this type, mindful that other details like whether the car is essential to the public service or not are all taken into account.

"At all times we seek to apply policies which are fair to employees using their cars for the delivery of public services and to taxpayers, with rates which are independently assured."

No responses had been received from Newry, Mourne and Down; Fermanagh and Omagh and Ards and North Down Councils at the time of going to press.

Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council requested that a Freedom of Information enquiry be submitted.
Hopes of a deal to save Stormont are fading rapidly with little chance of Sinn Fein and the DUP reaching a compromise, political sources have said.

With just six days to go until the Government's deadline for a breakthrough expires, Stormont insiders last night said they couldn't see any agreement being reached.

Sinn Fein yesterday claimed London and Dublin were set to present the Northern Ireland parties with their version of a deal to restore the power-sharing executive.

But DUP sources said they were unaware that any such development was on the cards and thought it unlikely.

Republicans warned that any paper drawn up by London and Dublin was likely to fall short of what was required to break the political deadlock. Newry and Armagh Sinn Fein MLA Conor Murphy accused both governments of trying to shape the media agenda on the talks process by briefing and spinning falsehoods.

Sinn Fein appears increasingly ill at ease about the fall-out from the negotiations. Talks sources said the party was extremely concerned about being blamed for a return of Tory direct rule.

Secretary of State James Brokenshire has said if there is no deal by next Monday, he will move to pass a budget for Northern Ireland at Westminster.

When asked about Sinn Fein's claims that a paper was this week to be presented to the parties, a UK Government spokesman would only say: "We continue to assist the parties in efforts to reach agreement."

With no sign of a talks' breakthrough imminent, Mr Murphy said he believed the two governments might try to present a framework agreement and urge the Stormont parties to sign up.

"We strongly suspect that the two governments are shaping up to produce a paper for these talks which would fall short of what is required to have sustainable institutions returned, we have told them that privately," he said.

He warned that if Mr Brokenshire did step in to set a budget, that would be a clear sign the negotiations to restore power-sharing had failed and "run their course".

Asked if passing a budget would mean a return to direct rule, Mr Murphy insisted direct rule was not currently an option under legislation and that London and Dublin should instead work on the basis of "co-stewardship" of Northern Ireland going forward.

But he said Sinn Fein was still committed to the talks.

"We are not about a failure, we are here this week to try to secure an agreement," he added.

The negotiations have been between the DUP and Sinn Fein, with the other parties not involved.

Earlier, SDLP leader Colum Eastwood challenged the two big parties to publish what progress has been made.

He called on them to be straight with the public about the behind-closed-doors talks or else offer a "plan B".

"Week after week, we have heard that they have made 'progress' but with no detail and no substance. They need to put their cards on the table," he said.

"The time for negotiating behind the scenes is over. The public deserve to know why they are paying the price for political failure."
Anti-abortion activists demonstrate outside the the Supreme Court in central London on October 24, 2017 where a case on the abortion regime in Northern Ireland is being heard. Pic: Getty

Northern Ireland's strict abortion law criminalises "exceptionally vulnerable" women and girls and subjects them to "inhuman and degrading" treatment, the UK's highest court has heard.

A QC told a panel of Supreme Court justices in London on Tuesday that human rights were being breached, with those affected being forced to go through "physical and mental torture".

Nathalie Lieven, who represents the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC), is asking the court to rule that a prohibition on abortions where a pregnancy arises from rape or incest, or "involves a serious foetal abnormality", is unlawful.

At the start of a three-day hearing, Ms Lieven argued that the existing criminal law on termination of pregnancy in Northern Ireland discriminates against women and girls on the grounds of sex, and also amounted to an "unjustified" breach of their personal right to autonomy.

Ms Lieven told Supreme Court president Lady Hale, deputy president Lord Mance and five other justices that v ictims of serious sexual crime who have to carry a pregnancy to term were being forced to live with the consequences of that crime for the rest of their lives.

The QC said: "In the case of pregnancies involving a serious foetal abnormality, they are carrying a foetus with a serious, and often fatal, abnormality to term, knowing that it may not survive at all, or for long - or that if it does survive it will be left with serious disabilities.

"In the case of a fatal foetal abnormality, they must carry to term a foetus that, by definition, cannot survive independently and may, by the time of delivery, be dead."

She argued: "The potential to travel elsewhere in the UK for an abortion cannot be treated as a 'get out clause' for the law in Northern Ireland."

Unlike other parts of the UK, the 1967 Abortion Act does not extend to Northern Ireland. Abortion is illegal except where a woman's life is at risk or there is a permanent or serious danger to her mental or physical health.

Anyone who unlawfully carries out an abortion could be jailed for life.

The commission argues that the current law's effect on women is incompatible with rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Belfast's High Court made a declaration in December 2015 that the law was incompatible with Article 8 of the ECHR, the right to respect for private and family life, because of the absence of exceptions to the general prohibition on abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities and pregnancies resulting from sexual offences.

But that decision was overturned in June this year by three of Northern Ireland's most senior judges.

The Northern Ireland Assembly voted in February last year against legalising abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality and rape or incest.

The Stormont Executive's senior legal adviser, Attorney General John Larkin QC, with the Justice Department, argue that the commission does not have legal power to bring the case and that it has failed to identify an unlawful act.

Submissions will be made to the Supreme Court by a number of bodies - including seven of the UK's leading reproductive rights organisations, Humanists UK, Bishops of the Roman Catholic Dioceses in Northern Ireland, and the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.
Balbriggan Beach in north Dublin amid warnings about sewage from the Environmental Protection Agency

About 10 tonnes of raw sewage and water from sinks and drains is pumped into rivers and seas around Ireland every minute, environment watchdogs have warned.

A review of the standards of waste treatment in towns and cities found 16 plants which were due to be built or upgraded this year have been delayed until 2021.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said sewage from 120,000 people - on average 120 litres per person - still enters the tides and rivers untreated at 44 areas each day.

The scale of the problem was laid bare yet again months after the European Commission warned it was taking Ireland to court over the practice and leaving the country potentially liable for millions of euro in anti-pollution fines.

That case relates to missed deadlines for sewage plants to be built or upgraded by the end of 2000 and 2005.

But in its latest report on waste water standards for last year the EPA said five towns are hoping to see work on new sewage treatment plants finish this year - Youghal, Belmullet, Rush, Bundoran, and Killybegs.

But David Shanon, an EPA inspector, said: "There's not enough money being invested in waste water treatment.

"We are spending 100 million euro less per annum than we are a decade ago.

"We have this legacy of under-investment. We need to see more money going in."

The EPA said four swimming spots - Loughshinny in north Dublin and Merrion Strand near Ringsend on the south side and Clifden beach and Ballyloughane in Galway - were not safe enough for bathing because of the sewage issue.

The report warned that waste water treatment at 50 of the country's 185 large towns and cities misses pollution and public health standards.

Gerard O'Leary, director of the EPA's Office of Environmental Enforcement said: "Wastewater from over half our population failed to meet environmental standards.

"For many years Ireland failed to address the deficiencies in wastewater treatment. Substantial and sustained investment is now required to protect our valuable waterways and protect public health."

The EPA also warned about Ringsend, where a relatively new treatment facility is operational.

But the facility is essentially overloaded as it was designed for a population of 1.6 million but handles sewage from two million and also does not have specialist treatment to remove specific nutrients from water being pumped into Dublin Bay.

Irish Water's head of asset management Sean Laffey said: "The EPA report correctly reflects the size and scale of the challenge facing Irish Water as we work to meet the needs of homes and businesses around the country and facilitate future growth."

It said it was spending about 326 million euro on the issue up to 2021.
A "trusted" IRA member who purchased in a "surreptitious manner" the car used in the murder of prison officer David Black has been jailed for five years.

Mr Black, a 52-year-old father of two, was shot dead in November 2012. He was driving to work at Maghaberry prison when he was killed.

Vincent Banks (49), of Smithfield Gate Apartments in Dublin 7, was convicted in July by the Republic's non-jury Special Criminal Court of membership of an unlawful organisation, namely the IRA, on December 18 2012.

At a previous trial, in 2014, he was cleared of withholding information related to the murder of Mr Black.

The court heard that after the killing, the PSNI established a forensic link between the shooting and a Toyota Camry, which was found burnt out.

Gardai learned that Banks had bought the car off a man in the Tallaght area of Dublin.

He had earlier bought a SIM card used solely to call the vendor of the car and later, when he signed the car's log-book, Banks used his left hand and signed the name Paul McCann, with an address on Rathgar Road in Dublin.

Gardai spoke to the landlord of the premises. He said that no resident with the name Paul McCann lived there.

He showed them a letter addressed to that name. The envelope contained the car registration certificate for the Camry. Banks' right thumb print was found on the document.

The Camry had ended up in Carrigallen, a village in Co Leitrim, near the border with Northern Ireland.

That November, Banks was seen driving a friend's car from Carrigallen to Dublin.

Gardai searched the friend's house and Banks' apartment in Smithfield. In the friend's car gardai found Banks' jacket and an ordnance survey map with the page displaying Co Leitrim torn out and Banks' fingerprints on it.

In Banks' apartment, gardai found a copy of the Evening Herald open at a story about the murder of Mr Black.

The court also heard from Chief Superintendent Gerry Russell that it was believed Banks was a member of the IRA on the date in question

Also part of the evidence were interviews conducted under Section 2 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1998. The section allows a court to draw inferences if an accused person fails or refuses to answer material questions related to suspected IRA membership.

The defence had submitted that one of the reasons for Banks' acquittal on the earlier charge of withholding information was the absence of any evidence he knew the car was to be used in a murder.

Sentencing Banks yesterday, Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy, presiding at the three-judge court, said that the accused was a "trusted member of an unlawful organisation, in the position to seek out and obtain in a surreptitious manner the vehicle used in the murder of Mr Black".

A mitigating factor was his lack of relevant previous convictions, the court heard.

Banks was jailed for five years. The sentence was backdated to April 16, 2016 to take account of the time he has already spent in custody.

Mr Black, who was killed on November 1, 2012, was the first prison officer to be murdered in Northern Ireland in almost 20 years.

An organisation calling itself "the IRA", formed during the summer of 2012, later claimed responsibility for Mr Black's murder.
Irishman Ibrahim Halawa arriving back at Dublin Airport after being released from an Egyptian jail following four years behind bars. Brian Lawless/PA Wire

An innocent Irishman released from an Egyptian jail after four years behind bars has vowed to work for other prisoners overseas.

Ibrahim Halawa was freed late last week, about a month after he was acquitted of all charges related to a mass Muslim Brotherhood protest in Cairo in 2013.

The 21-year-old flew into Dublin Airport for an emotional private reunion with his family before being brought to meet friends and supporters.

And after seeing his mother Amima in a wheelchair, he said his priority was to spend time at home with her.

"I'm going to take some time off, my mom is sick, so I'll be taking some time by her side," Mr Halawa said.

About 150 people gathered in the basement of the arrivals hall in Dublin Airport for an emotionally charged return.

Mr Halawa, from Firhouse in Dublin, had flown back to Ireland with Ambassador to Egypt Sean O'Regan and his sister Nasaybi.

His release from Wadi el Natrun prison in Cairo was initially delayed for several weeks as Egyptian authorities claimed all those convicted or acquitted in a controversial mass trial had to be processed in order.

Mr Halawa's repatriation was further delayed last week after his release as he had to wait for new travel documents.

But flanked by his father, prominent Dublin Muslim cleric Sheikh Hussein Halawa, and waving the Irish Tricolour, Mr Halawa issued passionate messages of thanks to the Irish Government, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, President Michael D Higgins and Foreign Minister Simon Coveney among others.

He also had a special mention for journalist Peter Greste, who was incarcerated with him for more than a year after being detained in the midst of the protests.

And while being swamped by well-wishers, Mr Halawa revealed what was going through his head.

"It still feels like a dream," he said.

"This is a moment I've waited for for four years - a free man, acquired after four years.

"I have left a lot of cellmates behind. There's a lot of innocent people behind bars around the world, not just in Egypt."

Mr Halawa added that his experience of incarceration abroad has made him want to work for Irish prisoners overseas and the homeless.

"Even if they are criminals or if they have been convicted, I'm going to be asking for them to come back to do their time in Ireland," he said.

"I felt how it is to be away from home.

"I was always hoping that the least I could get would be prison at home so at least I could see my family."

Mr Halawa said he had written a large section of a book and wanted to complete it and get his "life straight".

He said that he was looking forward to a plate of fish and chips.

Mr Halawa also praised the work of Irish diplomats and Sinn Fein MEP Lynn Boylan, who has been involved in campaigns for his freedom since the start.

She fought back the tears after embracing the free man.

"He's missed out on four important years. So I think that's going to be difficult for him and he's going to need help to come to terms with that," she said.

Mr Halawa was jailed after being arrested in a mosque amid protests over the removal of the then Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi. He was one of almost 500 people in a protracted mass trial.

Three of his sisters, Somaia, Fatima and Omaima, were also arrested during the crackdown on the 2013 protest but were later released on bail and returned to Dublin.

They were acquitted following trial in absentia.

Mr Halawa said he was feeling mixed emotions after touching down in Ireland.

"It's a dream come true," he said.

"Every day in prison I would imagine this day - how it's going to be. It's what made me go forward."

Mr Halawa added: "I'm looking forward to the future but I can't forget the past.

"It's going to make me work harder in the future.

"I feel hurt but I feel happy, obviously, reunited and back home."

Mr Halawa said he did not feel safe after his release from prison last week.

"I'm back into a new world. I was taken away from life and then, one second, you're back. It's going to be hard to recover."

Ireland's Children's Minister Katherine Zappone was one of those to greet Mr Halawa on his arrival home.

"The Government are here to support him every step of the way," she said.

"He and his family are extraordinary. They are inspiring us as a Government and I think also the country."
Irishman Ibrahim Halawa - who has spent the last four years of his life in an Egyptian prison - is set to arrive home to Ireland.

The 21-year-old is due to arrive back in Dublin on Tuesday at around 11am, and will meet first with his family before being greeted by a crowd of wellwishers.

Early on Tuesday morning Mr Halawa wrote on Instagram: "Finally on my way home - thank you to everyone hwo has caused this moment I love you all so much - looking forward to finally coming home - I will arrive Dublin at 11!"

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Mr Halawa, from Firhouse in Dublin, is flying home with his sister Nasaybi and Irish ambassador to Egypt Sean O'Regan.

He was 17 years old when, along with his three sisters Somaia, Fatima and Omaima, he was jailed in a 2013 crackdown amid protests over the removal of then Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi.

His three sisters were later released on bail and allowed to return to Dublin, and were acquitted in abstentia.

Following a drawn-out legal battle, in which Mr Halawa was part of a mass trial alongside almost 500 others, he was last month acquitted of all charges against him.
Leo Varadkar has used his first visit to Paris as Taoiseach to highlight the importance of Ireland's relationship with France post Brexit.

After talks with President Emmanuel Macron in the Elysee Palace, Mr Varadkar stressed how supportive France had been in backing Ireland's position in the negotiations.

"I leave Paris feeling very strongly that, while we may not agree on everything, we do have a very strong ally in France," he said.

"After the UK leaves the EU, the nearest EU country to Ireland will be France, so this is going to be a really important relationship into the future."

Keeping with the mood of strengthening links post-Brexit, the discussions included the planned Celtic energy interconnector between the two countries.

Issues where opinions diverge were also addressed, such as tax policy in relation to multinational internet companies.

Mr Varadkar said the issue should be tackled on a worldwide level, by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), while he said France favoured a more European approach.

The Fine Gael leader said he did not want to see a new tax on internet companies that would ultimately benefit non-EU states.

"We obviously have a difference of opinion on digital taxation," he said.

"We agree that internet companies should pay their fair share of tax, but it is our strong view that global companies that operate on the World Wide Web need a worldwide solution to taxation, and we'd like to see that through the OECD process rather than through the European Commission."

On his visit to the French capital, the Taoiseach also attended a business event organised by the Irish Embassy in partnership with Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland (Industrial Development Authority), Tourism Ireland and Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board.
A Scot who was sentenced to three months in a Dubai jail for touching a mans hip has been freed, according to his representatives.

Ruler of the emirate Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum made a special order for cases against Jamie Harron to be dismissed.

The 27-year-old from Stirling was arrested in July over the incident in which he said he put his hand on a mans hip to avoid spilling a drink in a crowded bar.

Campaign group Detained in Dubai (DiD) said he was sentenced to three months imprisonment at court on Sunday, but has now had his passport returned.

Radha Stirling, CEO of DiD, said: We wish to express our deepest gratitude to Sheikh Mohammed for his personal intervention in this case, and for exonerating Jamie at long last.

This was a courageous and honourable decision on the part of Sheikh Mohammed, and while it highlights the urgent need for judicial reform in the country, it is also a hopeful sign that the United Arab Emirates leadership possesses the will and vision to pursue such reforms in the future.

The electrician had been working in Afghanistan and was on a two-day stopover in the United Arab Emirates at the time of the incident.

A public indecency charge was made after Mr Harron is said to have been holding a drink moving through a crowded bar and held a hand in front of him to avoid spilling it on himself or others. He then touched a man on his hip to avoid impact.

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He was initially jailed for five days and then released on bail with his passport confiscated.

After his arrest, he lost his job and was told he could have faced up to three years in jail.

Before his hearing on Sunday, he had already been sentenced in absentia to 30 days in prison for failing to appear in court for making a rude gesture and drinking alcohol during the same July incident.

DiD had said both decisions would be appealed against, but Mr Harron was then called by police in Dubai on Monday morning telling him the cases against him had been dismissed and he could collect his passport.
Chancellor Philip Hammond should consider creating a child funeral fund in his upcoming Budget to help grieving families deal with the costs of burying their children, a Tory former minister has said.

Helen Grant said the loss of a child can be very traumatic and can lead to extreme financial hardship for families.

The Maidstone and The Weald MP made the suggestion during a Westminster Hall debate on local authority funeral charges, led by Labours Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden).

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Ms Grant asked: Does she think that the Chancellor should consider setting up a child funeral fund in his coming Budget to assist with these very high expenses in the case of children?

Ms McDonagh said she would absolutely agree.

Justice minister Phillip Lee, responding to the debate, said it was a matter directly for the Treasury.

Ms McDonagh described variations in burial fees across local authorities, and said: For the average burial fee of 419 in Northern Ireland to 3,806 in London, there is a stark and immoral postcode lottery in the cost of dying.

I think its absolutely abhorrent that councils capitalise on lifes two certainties, tax and death, to plug the gaps in their funding and make up for widespread Government cuts.
Business tycoon Lord Sugar has questioned the competence of British negotiators involved in the talks to get a Brexit deal.

At question time, the star of BBC Ones The Apprentice said it seemed they were politicians and civil servants who had spent their whole lives in politics and possibly have no clue to negotiation tactics.

But Brexit minister Baroness Anelay of St Johns leapt to the defence of the negotiating team, praising their great expertise.

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She told Lord Sugar: I cant say whether they would meet your standards on your programme on television but they certainly meet mine.

Lord Sugar, an independent crossbench peer, said: It was the UK who made the decision to leave the EU. It wasnt the other 27 members asking us to leave.

We are now trying to negotiate an exit with 27 entities who have no urgency or incentive to provide us with a good deal.

He asked what negotiating experience and skills those handling the talks on behalf of the UK had, adding: Please correct me if Im wrong. From my perspective it seems they are politicians and civil servants who have spent their whole life in politics and, with respect, possibly have no clue to negotiation tactics.

Lady Anelay said the UKs negotiating team was several hundred strong and has already shown their great expertise.

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For the Opposition, Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town said that without changes to the Governments land grab over whats coming back from Brussels that ought to be going to the devolved administrations, the Scottish and Welsh governments had said they would withhold consent for the withdrawal legislation.

She urged ministers to accept amendments tabled in the Commons so we respect and retain the devolution settlement.

Lady Anelay said the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill was drafted to do precisely that by protecting the current constitutional arrangements.

She said it was important to achieve agreement on a common framework and insisted there had been real progress in discussions with the devolved administrations.

We are all working together for the best of the whole United Kingdom, she told peers.
On a recent visit to Hawaii, actor Sam Neill was offered a unique opportunity to make his holiday unforgettable.

When at the car rentals desk in Honolulu airport, he was asked if hed like to try The Jurassic Experience  presumably a tour of locations from the movie.

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The only trouble is, Neill played one of the main characters in the film, paleontologist Dr Alan Grant, so youd think he would have had the ultimate experience.

Politely, he said nothing. Instead he chose to share the amusing moment with fans on Twitter.

Fans reacted brilliantly, posting a range of jokes and gifs related to the film franchise.

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Maybe the rental team need to watch the movie a few more times before offering the tours in future.
A photo of the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is raising questions after reports that it has been digitally manipulated.

Tillerson made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan on Monday where he met with the Afghan leader and other senior officials to discuss the Trump administrations new South Asia policy.

Images and video posted by the US State Department show the politicians in a windowless room at Bagram Airfield  the biggest American military base in Afghanistan.

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Tillerson and Ghani are sitting under a digital clock and a red fire alarm.

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But the Afghan government website posted a similar photo  except the clock and the alarm was missing.

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The digital clock in the US State Departments images shows Zulu time  which is the military term for GMT.

Hany Farid, a professor at Dartmouth and an expert on doctored images, told The New York Times: There is no question that the photo has been manipulated.

According to the NYT, the altered photo could be seen by many Afghans as evidence of a government effort to twist facts to package a positive narrative, both to its international partners as well as its citizens.

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The apparent doctoring of the image suggests an attempt to give the impression that the meeting took place in Kabul, rather than a US military base.

Neither side has offered an explanation about the discrepancy, although both sides initially said that the meeting took place in Kabul.

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The US State Department later issued a correction, saying it had taken place at Bagram.
Government officials from Bangladesh and Burma have agreed to halt the flow of Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh and enable the refugees to return home.

The two sides met in Burmese capital Naypyitaw to discuss a crisis that has seen hundreds of thousands of Rohingya flee to Bangladesh over the past two months to escape violence in Burma's Rakhine state.

"Myanmar (Burma) affirms its commitment to immediately halt the outflow of Myanmar residents to Bangladesh, to restore normalcy in Rakhine to enable displaced Myanmar residents to return from Bangladesh at the earliest" possible time, the sides said in a joint statement.

More than 600,000 Rohingya from northern Rakhine have fled to Bangladesh since August 25, when Burmese security forces began a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages.

Burma's government has said it was responding to attacks on police outposts by insurgents from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, or ARSA, but the United Nations and others have said the response was disproportionate.

The joint statement said that Burma declared ARSA "a terrorist organisation" after August 25 and asked Bangladesh to hand over any suspects who may have fled there.

Bangladesh said it would "continue to co-operate with Myanmar against insurgents, militants and terrorists".

Earlier this month, the two sides agreed to set up a working group on the repatriation process.

Burma's Buddhist majority denies that Rohingya Muslims are a separate ethnic group and regards them as having migrated illegally from Bangladesh, although many families have lived in Burma for generations.

The exodus of the Rohingya has become a major humanitarian crisis and sparked international condemnation of Burma.
The world's most famous sled dog race has become engulfed in a doping scandal involving a four-time champion's team of huskies.

The furore has given animal rights activists new ammunition in their campaign to end the gruelling, 1,000-mile Iditarod event in the US state of Alaska.

The governing board of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race disclosed on Monday that four dogs belonging to Dallas Seavey tested positive for a banned substance, the opioid painkiller Tramadol, after his second-place finish last March.

It was the first time since the race instituted drug testing in 1994 that a test came back positive.

Mr Seavey strongly denied administering any banned substances to his dogs, suggesting instead that someone may have sabotaged their food, and race officials said he would not be punished because they were unable to prove he acted intentionally.

That means he will keep his titles and his 59,000 US dollars in winnings this year.

But the finding was another blow to the Iditarod, which has seen the loss of major sponsors, numerous dog deaths, attacks on competitors and pressure from animal rights activists, who say the huskies are often run to death or left with severe infections and bloody paws.

"If a member of the Iditarod's 'royalty' dopes dogs, how many other mushers are turning to opioids in order to force dogs to push through the pain?" People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said in a statement on Tuesday.

It added: "This doping scandal is further proof that this race needs to end."

"The race is all about winning and getting to the finish line despite the inhumane treatment towards the dogs," said Fern Levitt, director of the documentary Sled Dogs.

Earlier this year, the Anchorage-to-Nome trek lost a major corporate backer, Wells Fargo, and race officials accused animal rights organisations of pressuring the bank and other sponsors with "manipulative information" about the treatment of the dogs.

Five dogs connected to this year's race died, bringing total deaths to more than 150 in the Iditarod's 44-year history, according to Peta's count.

And last year, two mushers were attacked by a drunken man on a snowmobile in separate assaults near a remote village.

One dog was killed and others were injured.

The attacker was given a six-month sentence.

Mr Seavey won the Iditarod in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016.

He finished second this year to his father, Mitch, and has had nine straight top-10 finishes.

Dogs are subject to random testing before and during the race, and the first 20 teams to cross the finish line are all automatically tested.

"I have never given any banned substance to my dogs," the 30-year-old Mr Seavey said in a video posted on his Facebook page.

He said that security is lax along the route and that someone might have tampered with his dogs' food.

He added that he would not be "thrown under the bus" by the race's governing board and that he has withdrawn from the 2018 race in protest.

Mr Seavey said he expects the Iditarod Trail Committee to ban him from the race for speaking out.

AP
Russia has vetoed a US-sponsored UN resolution that would extend the work of inspectors seeking to determine who was responsible for chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

Moscow accused Washington of calling the vote "to show up and dishonour Russia".

Russia's UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia tried unsuccessfully to postpone the vote until next month, after the joint body comprising investigators from the UN and the chemical weapons watchdog issues a report on October 26.

The resolution was put to a vote on Tuesday and received 11 Yes votes, two No votes - from Russia and Bolivia - and two abstentions.

Mr Nebenzia said Russia has criticised the Joint Investigative Mechanism but does not want it terminated. It wants its mandate amended.

The resolution was sparked by the April 4 chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun which killed more than 90 people.

US ambassador Nikki Haley, who is in Africa, pressed for a vote before the JIM report.

She said last week that Moscow wanted first to see if the report blames Syria for the Khan Sheikhoun attack, in which case it would have no faith in the JIM.

She called this position unacceptable.

"We can't work like that," she told reporters. "We can't go and pick and choose who we want to be at fault, who we don't."

Mr Nebenzia repeated and sharply criticised Haley's comments, telling the council: "We never, ever, ever put it in such a way.

"It's not us who pick and choose, it's you, the United States, you decided on the first day."

The US blamed the Syrian military for the attack in Khan Sheikhoun and launched a punitive strike days later on the Shayrat air base where it said the attack was launched.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has denied using chemical weapons

The attack in Khan Sheikhoun sparked outrage around the world as photos and video of the aftermath, including quivering children dying on camera, were widely broadcast.

A fact-finding mission by the chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, reported on June 30 that sarin nerve gas was used in the Khan Sheikhoun attack, but the mission was not authorised to determine responsibility. That job was given to the JIM.

Russia, a close ally of Syria, has repeatedly accused the US and its Western allies of rushing to judgment and blaming the Syrian government for sarin use in Khan Sheikhoun.

It has also criticized the June 30 report by the fact-finding mission as "very biased".

Ms Haley said in a statement after the vote: "Russia has once again demonstrated it will do whatever it takes to ensure the barbaric Assad regime never faces consequences for its continued use of chemicals as weapons.

"This is the ninth time Russia has protected Assad and his team of murderers by blocking the Security Council from acting.

"In doing so, Russia once again sides with the dictators and terrorists who use these weapons."

AP
A Russian TV host who wants to become a presidential candidate has opened her first news conference by demanding the release of all political prisoners.

Ksenia Sobchak announced her presidential bid last week, arguing that Russia has grown tired of its political elite.

Critics said her run would further fragment the opposition while lending the March election a veneer of legitimacy.

Ms Sobchak is the 35-year-old daughter of President Vladimir Putin's mentor, former St Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak. Her mother is a legislator at the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament.

She first became known as a fashionable socialite before launching a successful TV career.

She has joined anti-Kremlin protests and has been often critical of the government, but she has largely avoided criticising Mr Putin.

He has not yet said whether he will seek re-election but he is widely expected to run.

Speaking in a packed room, Ms Sobchak told reporters that at least 30% of Russians remain without representation and voting for her should change that.

She has named Igor Malashenko, one of the pioneers of post-Soviet television and the man behind the 1996 re-election of Boris Yeltsin, as her campaign chief.

Ms Sobchak would not say how much she expects the campaign to cost, saying only that she planned to receive funding from anonymous businessmen.
A bullet hole in the back window of the car in which the Spanish tourist was travelling (AP)

Two military police officers have been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of a Spanish tourist who was on a guided tour of one of Brazil's largest slums, an official said.

Police said Maria Esperanza Jimenez Ruiz was shot in the neck on Monday when the vehicle she was travelling in failed to stop at a police checkpoint in Rio de Janeiro's Rocinha neighborhood.

The 67-year-old was taken to hospital but died from her injuries.

Officers said they could not see inside the car because it had darkly tinted windows, according to Fabio Cardoso, an inspector with the civil police force, which investigates crimes.

The driver has said he never saw the checkpoint or a request to stop.

"I want to be clear that a car not following a police order does not justify shooting," Mr Cardoso told reporters at a news conference.

He said Lieutenant Davi dos Santos Ribeiro fired the fatal shot and was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.

Another officer, who has not been named, shot into the air and was also arrested, Mr Cardoso added.

Six firearms have been seized.

The death will increase scrutiny of military police officers, who are accused by many critics of shooting first and asking questions later, and also of tour companies that take curious foreigners to areas with frequent conflicts.

Ms Jimenez Ruiz, from El Puerto de Santa Maria, was with her brother and sister-in-law and a guide as they left the Rocinha slum after a tour, Mr Cardoso said.

After the shots were fired, the car continued for about 30 metres before stopping at another police checkpoint, at which point the passengers realised Ms Jimenez Ruiz had been hit.

Rocinha has been the scene of intense firefights between police and drug traffickers, and the army has occasionally been called in to support police operations.

Authorities say they are investigating why a tour company would take tourists to what they have labelled a "conflict area" and will consider criminal charges.

Valeria Aragao, an inspector with the tourism police, has said the tourists may have thought the heavy police presence in Rocinha meant it was safe, when it actually signals the opposite.

For years, tourist visits to slums, or favelas, were common. Many of the areas are culturally and architecturally rich, and include top samba schools, musicians and artists.

However, amid Brazil's economic crisis in recent years and a rise in violence, visits to favelas have become much less frequent.

AP
The US Senate has given a preliminary green light to a 36.5 billion dollar (27.6 billion) hurricane relief package that would provide Puerto Rico with a much-needed infusion of cash.

The 79-16 procedural vote set the stage for a final vote, most likely on Tuesday.

The measure also provides 18.7 billion US dollars (14.1 billion) to replenish the Federal Emergency Management Agency's rapidly dwindling emergency disaster accounts.

On Monday, Fema announced more than 500 million US dollars (378 million) in aid to Puerto Rico, including 285 million US dollars (215 million) to help restore power and water services to the devastated island. An additional 16 billion US dollars (12 billion) would permit the financially troubled federal flood insurance programme to pay an influx of Harvey-related claims.

But the bill rejects requests from the powerful Texas and Florida congressional delegations for additional money to rebuild after hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

Florida Democrat Bill Nelson, whose state's citrus industry endured significant losses during Irma, sought to add three billion US dollars (2.2 billion) in immediate agriculture assistance to the measure, but was denied by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said money for crop losses would be in subsequent aid measures.

Senate passage on Tuesday would send the measure to President Donald Trump for his signature.

There was urgency to move the measure swiftly - rather than add more money to it at this time - because the government's disaster response and flood insurance reserves are running out. Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said that would happen "in a matter of days" without action.

Still, members of the Texas and Florida delegations in Congress are unhappy because the measure failed to address extensive requests for additional hurricane rebuilding money. Texas, inundated by Harvey in August, requested 19 billion US dollars (14 billion), while Florida sought 27 billion US dollars (20 billion).

"I'm pretty disappointed with what the House sent over," Texas Senator John Cornyn said last week. But later, after speaking to both Mr Trump and White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, Mr Cornyn said he was promised that the White House would issue another disaster aid measure next month for Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. A fourth, and perhaps final, measure is likely to anchor a year-end spending bill.

"The victims of these hurricanes can continue to count on our support," said Mr McConnell said.

Up to five billion US dollars (3.7 billion) of the measure's total could be used to assist Puerto Rico's central government and various municipalities that are suffering unsustainable cash shortfalls as Maria has choked off revenues and strained resources. An additional 150 million US dollars (113.5 million) would help Puerto Rico with the 10% match required for Fema disaster relief.

More than one-fourth of the island's residents do not have potable running water and only 17% have electricity, according to Fema Just 392 miles of Puerto Rico's 5,073 miles of roads are open. Conditions in the US Virgin Islands are bad as well, with widespread power outages.

But Mr Trump last week graded his response to the Puerto Rico disaster a 10 on a scale of 10.

"President Trump seems more concerned about claiming credit for a job well done than the actual situation on the ground deserves, particularly in Puerto Rico," Mr Leahy said. "This is the hard part of governing," he added. "We dig in for the long haul, we stop patting ourselves on the back."

AP
The patron saint of healing Raphael is an archangel of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. He is considered the healer of physical ailments, emotional distress and is considered a divine healer of the entire angelic world. Archangel Raphael is not only one of the most formidable leaders in Heaven, but the angel is involved in supporting our overall health. You can always call upon the patron saint of healing who is mentioned in the Book of Tobit, a book that is part of the Catholic and Orthodox Biblical canon. The healing angel wants you to know that he is with you today as you walk in total health and happiness. Raphael is also the patron saint of travelers and matchmakers as well. Here are 5 things you didn't know about the patron saint of healing.
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Should Christians celebrate Halloween? This is a very common and highly debated topic in Christian circles. Many Christians struggle with whether to celebrate, particularly because of its pagan origins. They see it as a satanic holiday established to worship evil spirits and promote darkness and wickedness. While some see it as a day filled with dark influence, others see it is a harmless day for candy and fun costumes. So who is right and is it possible to celebrate Halloween without compromising your faith?

The first place we should turn to is Scripture. While the Bible doesnt speak at all about Halloween, it does give us some principles on which we should turn to. In the Old Testament, witchcraft was a crime punishable by death. The Bible tells us, You should not permit a sorceress to live (Exodus 22:18). The Bible also tells us, Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the LORD your God (Leviticus 19:31). We can also find examples throughout the New Testament. One can be found in Acts 8:9-24. The story of Simon shows that occultism and Christianity dont go together. The account of Elymas the sorcerer in Acts 13:6-11 reveals that sorcery is violently opposed by Christianity. We know that Halloween, no matter how commercialized it is has almost completely Pagan origins. While the day may seem innocent for many, it is not something to be taken so lightly.

So should Christians celebrate Halloween? While there is nothing evil about a Christian dressing up as a princess or a superhero and going around the block for candy, there are things about Halloween that should be avoided. If you choose to allow your child to participate in Halloween, be sure to keep them away from the darker aspects of the day. If your child is going to take part in Halloween, their attitude, dress and most importantly, their behavior should still reflect Christ. How can the Church take advantage of the opportunities Halloween provides? Here are a few things that you can do at Halloween that still reflect Christ:

Harvest Festivals

Many churches around the country host alternative family fun events on or near Halloween. These festivals or events incorporate costumes, but in a godly environment. They are promoted as safe options for families, ideal for those concerned about their children wandering dark neighborhoods at night. Some provide a clear faith focus for their events, while others take the opportunity simply to connect with their communities in a positive way. Some churches go all out featuring Christian concerts, food vendor booths and carnival rides. Regardless of the size of your church, you can easily host a harvest event. It is a great alternative for your community.

Fall Decorating

If youre looking for a more family-centered Christian alternative to Halloween, you might consider planning a pumpkin carving project. This would be a more personal time of fellowship with the members of your family. The festivities can conclude by partaking in a slice of homemade pumpkin pie.

Some churches will also hold youth fundraisers around Halloween. These can be organized pumpkin patches that create an exciting Christian alternative to Halloween. The church youth can sell the pumpkins and the profit can go towards funding youth events.

Hand Out Candy and Tracts With Gospel Messaging

Halloween is a great opportunity to reach children who dont know Jesus. Thats why some Christians use this opportunity to share the Gospel by handing out candy with Gospel-messaging. The kids will be super excited receiving candy and cartoons with the message of Christ. You can simply drop a tract or two and some candy into their bags and youll be giving the gospel to kids and their families without leaving home. Many Christians see this as a once a year opportunity to reach kids and their parents with the gospel. When handing out tracts on Halloween, consider the ages of the trick-or-treaters when deciding which tracts to drop in their bags. While some tracts are designed for young children, others are better suited for older kids and teens.

Have a Community Party

Some church communities have redefined how they interact with Halloween. Instead of retreating to the shelter of their building or their homes, they engage with their neighborhoods. Their children get dressed up and go door to door in the neighborhood asking for candy, and people in the community sit on their front lawns talking with their neighbors. For these people, Halloween isnt just another day; rather it is the one day of year when all the neighbors are out in the streets practicing community with one another. This provides a unique opportunity for interacting with everyone.

Have a Reformation Day Party

October 31st is not only Halloween. It is also Reformation Day, the anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses on the door of All Saints Church  an event that sparked the Protestant Reformation. For many Christians, this time of year can be a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the Reformation. This can include books, interactive activities including plays, crafts, treats and costumes for the occasion.

Its totally fine to choose to not celebrate Halloween. Its also ok to consider alternative approaches to Halloween. You can use the day as an opportunity to engage your community and reach those who may not know Christ.

Lesli White is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth with a Bachelors degree in Mass Communications and a concentration in print and online journalism. In college, she took a number of religious studies courses and harnessed her talent for storytelling. White has a rich faith background. Her father, a Lutheran pastor and life coach was a big influence in her faith life, helping her to see the value of sharing the message of Christ with others. She has served in the church from an early age. Some of these roles include assisting ministry, mutual ministry, worship and music ministry and church council.
India fully backs Bangladeshs efforts to deal with an unprecedented influx of Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar, the Indian High Commission in Dhaka said Monday, signaling an apparent policy shift on the issue.

New Delhis embassy came out with the statement a day after visiting Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that Myanmar must take back the Rohingya people.

This is a big burden for Bangladesh. How long will Bangladesh bear it? There should be a permanent solution to this crisis, Swaraj told Hasina on Sunday, the first day of a two-day trip to Bangladesh, according to a statement posted online by the Indian foreign ministry.

Just over 600,000 stateless Rohingya Muslims have fled to southeastern Bangladesh since late August, when Myanmars military launched a crackdown against suspected Rohingya militants in Rakhine state, which lies along the border.

On the issue of displaced persons from Rakhine state, [the] External Affairs Minister reaffirmed Indias continued support in responding to the influx, the Indian High Commission said without using the term Rohingya. Myanmars government does not recognize members of the minority group as citizens.

The statement marks a change in Indias stance toward the crisis in southeastern Bangladesh, which U.N. officials have described as the worlds fastest growing refugee emergency.

On Aug. 26, a day after Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) insurgents attacked about 30 police outposts in Rakhine, India said it stood by Myanmar in the hour of crisis while assuring Myanmar of its backing in the fight against terrorism.

But on Monday, as Swaraj inaugurated the chancery complex at the Indian High Commission, she said: India is following a policy of neighbors first and among the neighbors Bangladesh is foremost.

Following her meeting with Bangladeshi Foreign Minister A.H. Mahmood on Sunday, Swaraj said India was deeply concerned about the spate of violence in Rakhine.

We have urged that the situation be handled with restraint, keeping in mind the welfare of the population, Swaraj told reporters in Dhaka. She, too, preferred not to use the word Rohingya to refer to the minority.

Myanmar, whose security forces have been accused of carrying out pogroms to drive the Rohingya people out of the country, blamed ARSA for the violence that has pushed refugees across the border since the last week of August.

It is clear that the normalcy will only be restored with the return of displaced persons to Rakhine state. In our view, the only long-term solution in Rakhine state is rapid socio-economic and infrastructure development that would have a positive impact on all the communities living in the state, she said.

India urged Myanmar to take back members of the Muslim minority even as the Indian government planned to deport an estimated 40,000 Rohingya refugees who are settled across the country. New Delhi cited national security issues as the reason for the plan that has drawn sharp criticism from human rights groups.

Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj (left) visits with Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the prime ministers residence in Dhaka, Oct. 22, 2017. [Focus Bangla]

Beating around the bush

However, Indian and Bangladeshi analysts were skeptical about New Delhis promised support for Bangladesh.

Given Indias economic and strategic interests in Myanmar, I think it will be difficult for India to support Bangladesh and put pressure [on Myanmar] to address the Rohingya problem, Ameena Mohsin, an international relations professor at Dhaka University, told BenarNews.

The Indian minister used diplomatic words such as repatriation, and displaced persons instead of addressing the refugees as Rohingya, Mohsin said.

Bangladeshs former foreign secretary, Mustafa Kamal, said that only time could tell if India would act on its promise of supporting Bangladesh and not Myanmar.

Surely, this is a good development. But we have to wait and see its reflection at the grassroots, Kamal told BenarNews.

The Hindu nationalist Indian governments policy toward Rohingya refugees was motivated by politics of religious antagonism, another expert opined.

Anti-Muslim politics is the main plank of the ruling [Bharatiya Janata Party] government, which nurtures the cause of turning India into a Hindu nation, New Delhi-based political analyst Y.S. Gill told BenarNews.

With her statements in Dhaka, Swaraj is merely beating around the bush. Genocide is taking place in Myanmar. Instead of giving refuge to people fleeing the violence, you are asking them to go back to the death and devastation they are trying to run from, Gill said, adding that Indias stand was abhorrent and condemnable.

But another expert differed.

What Swaraj has said must not be seen with political overtones. Her statement is in line with its foreign policy. It is absolutely right on Indias part to urge Myanmar to take back its nationals, Dushyant Nagar, a political commentator from New Delhi, told BenarNews.

Shashi Tripathi, an expert on South Asian affairs, seconded Nagars view, saying that the governments statement was welcome.

India should in fact take up the matter directly with Myanmar, warning it that if it doesnt act in a concrete manner and take its nationals back, India would snap trade ties with it. The international community should also exert pressure on Myanmar to take back Rohingya, he told BenarNews.

An arc of suffering and rejection

Meanwhile in Geneva, United Nations officials announced Monday that donors had pledged at least $340 million in money that needed to be raised urgently in responding to the humanitarian crisis in southeastern Bangladesh, where more than one million Rohingya refugees are now concentrated.

In addition, several donors have committed more than $50 million in in-kind assistance to Bangladesh and Myanmar, Mark Lowcock, the U.N.s under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, told reporters covering an international pledging meeting in Geneva devoted to the crisis.

William Lacy Swing, the head of the International Organization for Migration  the U.N.s migration agency  and other U.N. officials said the statelessness of Rohingyas made the crisis unique.

These people are trapped in an arc of suffering and rejection from northern Rakhine state well into Bangladesh, at Coxs Bazar, Swing told reporters, according to a video posted by U.N. News.

[A]midst eight or nine armed conflicts worldwide, it is the one that pulls at our heart strings the most because of what it represents in terms of total rejection of one of the most rejected people in the world, he said, adding that the volume of the influx of refugees was expected to exceed a million fairly shortly.

U.N. officials in Geneva said they also supported Bangladeshs efforts to negotiate with Myanmar over the safe repatriation of Rohingya refugees. However, it must include a solution to the question of citizenship for Rohingya, said Filippo Grandi, the U.N.s high commissioner for refugees.

As the pledge-making meeting was happening in Geneva, Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal was traveling to Myanmar where he was to hold talks with government officials over the crisis.

We believe this crisis must be addressed comprehensively by the international community , Shameem Ahsan, Bangladeshs ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, told Mondays meeting, according to a video recording released by the U.N.

While humanitarian assistance  very, very essential  must continue, it is of paramount importance that Myanmar delivers on its recent promises and work toward safe, dignified, voluntary return of its nationals back to their homes in Myanmar.

Jhumur Deb in Guwahati, India, and BenarNews staff in Washington contributed to this report.
Indonesias military chief, Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo (second from right), walks with President Joko Widodo during the 72nd anniversary of the Indonesian military in Cilegon, Banten, near Jakarta, Oct. 5, 2017.

Updated at 8:15 a.m. ET on 2017-10-24

Indonesias military chief was initially stopped from boarding a flight to the United States over the weekend due to security protocols, but he decided to cancel the trip after the issue was quickly resolved, U.S. homeland security officials said Monday.

American officials gave no further explanation about the incident at Sukarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta that caused a diplomatic spat, but U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and embassy officials apologized for it on Monday.

Still, Indonesian officials pressed Washington to explain why Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo was denied permission to travel to the United States despite an invitation from the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. On Monday, Indonesian officials said that an apology from the U.S. embassy to Gatot did not go far enough.

Gatot was preparing to fly to Washington via Dubai on Saturday to attend a two-day conference on countering violent extremism, as the guest of Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., Americas highest-ranking military officer.

In a statement emailed to BenarNews by a spokesman, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the embassy had informed Gatots office that due to U.S. security protocols when he arrived at the airport he may be delayed in his ability to board his flight.

The issue with his boarding approval was quickly resolved, the statement said. The passenger was rebooked on another flight and cleared to board. He chose not to travel.

The statement did not elaborate on the term security protocols, but it emphasized Washingtons dedication to ensuring that all persons traveling to the United States are screened and properly vetted.

We regret that the passenger and his wife were inconvenienced, it said. We are committed to our Strategic Partnership with Indonesia as a way to deliver security and prosperity to both our nations and continue working to further deepen that relationship.

We apologize

Gatot and his wife were set to board an Emirates flight from Jakarta, when his delegation received a notice from U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials denying them entry to the United States, despite having proper visas, according to Maj. Gen. Wuryanto, the spokesman for the Indonesian armed forces (TNI).

We are still waiting [for an explanation], he told BenarNews, explaining that the general did not encounter any issues during his previous U.S. visit in February last year.

The conference, organized by the Hudson Institute, a conservative think-tank, started on Monday in Washington. It featured former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and former CIA Director David Petraeus, a former Army general, as keynote speakers.

On Sunday, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta said that U.S. Ambassador Joseph Donovan had apologized to Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi for any inconvenience to General Gatot.

Retno summoned Erin Elizabeth McKee, the deputy U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, on Monday.

During the meeting, McKee apologized for the inconvenience that this incident caused but did not explain what precipitated the denial of entry, Marsudi told reporters.

General Gatot is able to travel, there are no restrictions and the United States welcomes his participation in the conference that General Dunford invited him to and there are absolutely no issues with his ability to travel to the United States, McKee told reporters after meeting Marsudi at the Indonesian Foreign Ministry office.

We apologize, she said. I also apologized again to Minister Retno.

During an ASEAN-Plus meeting of defense ministers in Manila on Monday, Mattis, the American defense chief, apologized to his Indonesian counterpart over the incident involving Gen. Gatot and guaranteed there would be no recurrence of it, the Jakarta Post reported.

Humiliation

Gatots airport experience was humiliating for Indonesia, according to Indonesian experts on foreign affairs.

Its embarrassing. It ruins the ethic of bilateral relations, Teuku Rezasyah, an international relations analyst from the University of Padjadjaran in West Java, told BenarNews.

It was unethical, he said, considering that the information about the generals denial of entry was delivered by airline representatives, not U.S. authorities.

If there is a good intention, it should have been conveyed directly through government institutions, he said. From Pentagon to TNI headquarters, for instance."

Hikamahanto Juwana, an international relations expert from the University of Indonesia, questioned how a government official could be denied entry despite an official invitation from a top military officer.

The Indonesian government must protest strongly against this incident, but the public must be patient and give the government the opportunity to take steps to safeguard the state honor, Juwana said.

Meanwhile, Fahri Hamzah, the deputy speaker of the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR) called on the government to demand that Washington reveal the reasons for Nurmantyos entry denial, saying the country should not be satisfied with an apology from the ambassador.

The foreign minister should conduct a further investigation because it is impossible for this mistake to be solely technical and administrative, Fahri told CNN Indonesia.

I suspect there is a certain reason [for] refusing the arrival of Gatot, Fahri said, without elaborating.

Another lawmaker, Abdul Kharis Almasyhari, told BenarNews that Indonesia should demand that the reason be made transparent.

If he cannot enter, why was he invited? he said. Thats totally unethical.
There is no case against a financier close to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak who was named in American lawsuits that seek to recover more than $1 billion in assets tied to the troubled sovereign wealth fund 1MDB, the countrys deputy prime minister said Monday.

Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told parliament that police had sought Interpols support in locating Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho (alias Jho Low). Zahid also issued a statement saying the Malaysian investigation against the financier was closed and an Interpol search was no longer necessary.

We are very confident that Interpol has acted professionally and police have yet to receive any detailed information, Zahid told members of parliament.

But we are confident that whatever has been done  especially by intelligence agencies, has been concluded and we are confident the case is no longer relevant.

Low has been named in U.S. court documents in which the United States Justice Department claims that about $4.5 billion was misappropriated from the state fund known as 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). Najib was not named in the lawsuits but has been identified as Malaysian Official 1 by a U.S. government source.

Najib has denied any wrongdoing regarding 1MDB.

Lows name appeared in court documents tied to 1MDB that were filed in 2016 and 2017. The original lawsuits seek the forfeiture of a jet, penthouses and condominiums in New York City, properties in Beverly Hills, Calif., including a mansion, artwork by Vincent Van Gogh and paintings by Claude Monet.

More recently, U.S. court documents filed in August alleged that 1MDB officials and others had arranged for the fraudulent transfer of more than U.S. $1 billion to a Swiss bank account held in the name of Good Star Limited under the pretense of investing in a joint venture with PetroSaudi International, a private Saudi mineral extraction company.

That Good Star account was not owned by PetroSaudi or the joint venture, but by Low Taek Jho (alias Jho Low), a Malaysian who had no formal position with 1MDB, but who was involved in its creation and exercised significant control over its dealings, the court document stated.

Other countries including Singapore, Switzerland and Luxembourg are investigating how the 1MDB funds were allegedly diverted.

Low could not be reached for comment on Monday but has denied breaking any laws linked to 1MDB.
In the hospital from hell

BILD report on the suffering of the Rohingya refugees

BILD report on the suffering of the Rohingya refugees |

Von: By Paul Ronzheimer and Robert King (currently in Coxs Bazar / Bangladesh)

It is a place that, at least in this form, shouldnt exist.

More than one hundred malnourished children and babies are lying in a stuffy room. It smells of excrement. Many of the children are crying. Others arent crying because they are already too weak.

Looking into their eyes is unbearable.

Coxs Bazar  the refugee hotspot at the border with Myanmar. The worst cases end up in the hospital here. Among the Rohingya refugees are 200 000 children and babies. Many of them have already suffered more than any human being should ever have to endure.

Some call it the hospital from hell, because so many terrible things were done to those currently seeking help here.

Bullet wounds, burns, torture.

Gul Bahar (28) sits on one of the dirty beds with her baby, Shahida (15 months old). Her sad gaze wanders across the room. The military killed my husband. Then we ran for ten days until we reached the border. Shahida has been sick ever since; she is losing blood. I am so scared that I will lose her, too.

Auch interessant

Death, displacement, flight.

Everyone here has their own dramatic story. They have now arrived in a country that itself counts as one of the poorest in the world.

Physician Mohammed (36) is overwhelmed by the number of patients. It is like an onslaught. Mohammed: All of the children and babies here are malnourished  look at their bodies, its dramatic. There are also many infections.

Next to Mohammed stands Radhid (40). In despair, he fans air towards his son Amin (5). The boy can hardly move. Radhid: The children do not even get enough to eat here, not to mention medicine. The international community must help us more.

Aid agencies are also warning that the situation could become even more dramatic. The UN, Doctors Without Borders, MSF, the Red Cross  all of them are on the ground by now and are trying to help. Their biggest concern is that cholera could begin to spread, since the hygiene conditions in the camp are abysmal.

Particularly severe cases are treated in sick bays surrounding the camp, but there are even worse cases within the camp.

While fleeing, Abdul Karim (19) was hit by a bullet, which injured his arm. Soldiers also shot him in the leg. 14 days later, he somehow managed to reach Bangladesh, but there was no medical treatment for him. They didnt treat my leg for days. At some point, they simply amputated it.

Selim (26) also could not find a doctor to properly treat his bullet wound. Now he is sitting in the dirt of the camp, hoping that the wound will not get infected any further. In Myanmar, I pretended to be dead when the soldiers saw me. I will also survive this.

International organisations are particularly concerned about the traumatic experiences of many Rohingya refugees. Thousands of women have experienced not only violence, but also brutal rape.

Like the sisters Nur (18) and Mubaraka (12), who prefer to hide in one of the bamboo huts during the day, so that nobody will see them. Nur: They killed our parents. When we came back to our village, we saw the soldiers. We could not flee in time and were raped several times.

There is so much drama here, so much suffering, so many unfathomable stories  they are also hard to bear for the international helpers and doctors.

One doctor, who has been working in crisis zones for 20 years and has been in Bangladesh for two months now, says: I thought I had seen it all. But what I am witnessing here, what people are telling me, goes beyond what I could have imagined.
Immediate Release, October 24, 2017



Contact: Nathan Donley, (971) 717-6406, ndonley@biologicaldiversity.org

European Parliament Votes to Ban Glyphosate STRASBOURG, France The European Parliament, representing 28 countries and more than 500 million people, voted today in support of phasing out glyphosate over the next five years and immediately banning its use in households. The European Parliament has correctly acknowledged the magnitude of glyphosates risks, said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. Now European regulators charged with protecting human health and the environment must follow the parliaments brave leadership and phase out the gross overuse of glyphosate. The vote by the European Parliament, which is made up of the elected representatives of the European Union, is an advisory vote intended to influence a scheduled vote on Wednesday by experts from the 28 EU countries on whether to follow a recommendation by the EUs executive commission to reauthorize glyphosate for another 10 years. But following todays overwhelming vote in support for banning the pesticide, the EU Commission has dropped its recommendation, instead calling for EU member countries to regroup and come to a consensus about how to move forward on the issue. Todays action was prompted by the World Health Organization's finding that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is a probable human carcinogen. The WHO's cancer research agency is widely considered to be the gold standard for research on cancer. The WHOs finding came after an analysis of publically available studies by independent scientists of glyphosates health risks. Because the scientists conducting the WHO analysis did not include in their assessment the findings of Monsanto-funded studies that have not been made available for public review, the pesticide maker has attempted to undercut the validity of the review process. This wasnt just a vote against glyphosate, said Donley. This was a vote supporting independent science and a vote against an industry that has manipulated, coerced and otherwise soiled independent decision-making in Europe and the rest of the world. European and U.S. regulatory agencies have come under intense scrutiny lately as evidence has surfaced that Monsanto heavily influenced their safety assessments of glyphosate. Europes food safety authority, EFSA, plagiarized text from Monsantos renewal application when it concluded in 2015 that glyphosate does not cause cancer. And recently released emails indicate that the head of the U.S. EPAs cancer review committee on glyphosate was in close contact coordinating with Monsanto employees during the analysis and even promised, apparently successfully, to suppress an investigation into glyphosate by another governmental agency.
For Immediate Release, October 24, 2017 Contact: Leigh Anne Tiffany, Defenders of Wildlife, (202) 772-0259, ltiffany@defenders.org

Joseph Vaile, Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, (541) 488-5789, joseph@kswild.org

Amaroq Weiss, Center for Biological Diversity, (707) 779-9613, aweiss@biologicaldiversity.org

Danielle Moser, Oregon Wild, (503) 283-6343, dm@oregonwild.org

Scott Beckstead, Humane Society of the United States, (541) 530-8509, sbeckstead@humanesociety.org Conservation Groups Join Reward to Catch Oregon Wolf-killer Reward for Information Jumps to $15,500 PORTLAND, Ore. Conservation organizations are bolstering a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services reward for information on the illegal killing of OR-33, a federally protected gray wolf in southwestern Oregon. The Service has offered a $5,000 reward, and five conservation organizations have contributed an additional $10,500, bringing the total to $15,500. Since 2015 at least eight wolves have been poached or died under mysterious circumstances in Oregon. Those include OR-33, OR-28, OR-22, OR-34, OR-31, an uncollared sub-adult wolf from the Walla Walla pack, and two wolves known as the Sled Springs pair. Poaching is an acute problem in Oregon, which demands serious attention from lawmakers and wildlife management officials  to strengthen and enforce wildlife laws, and to deter and fully prosecute criminals. Poaching is a huge and growing problem in Oregon. We need everyones help to catch this killer. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and conservation groups alike are working together to bring justice for OR-33, and send a message that this vile act wont be tolerated in our state, said Quinn Read, Northwest representative of Defenders of Wildlife. We can only hope that this reward helps stop the next protected wolf from being killed, said Joseph Vaile, executive director at the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center. This is a heartbreaking loss for Oregons wolves. Wolf recovery in Oregon depends on wolves like OR-33 making their way west and thriving, so his death is a major setback. We hope someone will do the right thing and come forward with information, said Amaroq Weiss, West Coast wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. We are helping contribute to the reward fund in the hopes of finding the perpetrator and bringing them to justice. Going forward, we encourage the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to take wolf poaching more seriously, said Danielle Moser, wildlife coordinator for Oregon Wild. The senseless killing of one of Oregons iconic wolves is an appalling and serious crime. We are grateful to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for their diligent efforts to find those responsible and bring the offender or offenders to justice, said Scott Beckstead, senior Oregon state director for the Humane Society of the United States. Anyone with information about this case should call the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at (503) 682-6131 or Oregon State Police Tip Line at (800) 452-7888. Background

OR-33 was found dead of gunshot wounds near Klamath Falls on April 23. Details about this illegal killing were released on Oct. 11 after the Fish and Wildlife Service completed a necropsy. OR-33 was a 4-year-old male gray wolf. He dispersed from the Imnaha Pack in northeast Oregon in November 2015. Although he had a collar, it stopped functioning in August 2016. Killing a gray wolf in the western two-thirds of Oregon is a violation of the Endangered Species Act. It is also a violation of Oregon state game laws and is subject to both criminal and civil penalties. The investigation of this crime is being conducted by the Oregon State Police and the Fish and Wildlife Service. Defenders of Wildlife is dedicated to the protection of all native animals and plants in their natural communities. With nearly 1.2 million members and activists, Defenders of Wildlife is a leading advocate for innovative solutions to safeguard our wildlife heritage for generations to come. For more information, visit newsroom.defenders.org and follow us on Twitter @DefendersNews. KS Wild protects and restores wild nature in the Klamath-Siskiyou region of southwest Oregon and northwest California. More at http://www.kswild.org. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.5 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. Recognizing the ecological importance of wolves, bears and other carnivores, the Center uses science-based advocacy to defend these magnificent animals from persecution, exploitation and extinction. Find out more about our Carnivore Conservation campaign here. Oregon Wild works to protect and restore Oregons wildlands, wildlife and waters as an enduring legacy for all Oregonians. For more information, check out http://www.oregonwild.org. The Humane Society of the United States is the most effective animal protection organization, as rated by our peers. For more than 60 years, we have celebrated the protection of all animals and confronted all forms of cruelty. We and our affiliates are the nations largest provider of hands-on services for animals, caring for more than 150,000 animals each year, and we prevent cruelty to millions more through our advocacy campaigns. Read about our more than 60 years of transformational change for animals and people. http://www.HumaneSociety.org
Jem's Birding & Ringing Exploits in the Eastern Province and elsewhere in Saudi Arabia
Unemployment and poverty are serious concerns for the continent, where more than 70% of the working age population is unemployed or has no job security, prompting the UN to declare 2016-2025 as the Third Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA III).

African leaders, UN officials, and representatives of international finance institutions and of the private sector met this month at the United Nations headquarters to reaffirm their commitment to a broad-based international partnership to industrialise Africa in a socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable manner.

During yesterdays meeting, African leaders and development partners reiterated the importance of industrialisation to eradicate poverty and to ensure that Africas fast-growing population yields its demographic dividend.

Ethiopias Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said: The lack of skills is the major problem in Africa. With an integrated industrial strategy, African states will hopefully mobilise funds, build the capacity of local employment and promote small, medium enterprises with domestic development projects.

Speaking at the meeting, the African Unions Commissioner for Trade and Industry, Albert M. Muchanga, said: Let me stress that, in line with the theme of this event - from political commitment to action on the ground - and the underlying principle of inclusiveness, it is my expectation that resources mobilised under the Third Industrial Development Decade will be deployed so as to significantly show benefits accruing to the ordinary Africans on the ground through decent employment, and access to high-quality, safe and affordable manufactured goods that are made in Africa, among other direct and tangible benefits.

With an integrated industrial strategy, African states will hopefully mobilise funds, build the capacity of local employment and promote small, medium enterprises.

The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), which is tasked with leading the implementation of IDDA III, proposed implementing its new innovative approach to bring about the necessary structural transformation.

The approach is based on a country-owned model known as the Programme for Country Partnership (PCP) that leverages financial and non-financial resources, promotes regional integration and mobilises co-operation among Africas development partners.

UNIDO director general LI Yong said: It is high time to move the IDDA III agenda steadily forward in order to foster inclusive and sustainable industrial development in Africa. Todays presence of high-level participants from the public and private sectors, development financial institutions, the United Nations system, and bilateral and multilateral institutions confirms that Africas industrialisation is of global importance.

A joint communique signed by leaders of UNIDO, the African Union Commission, the African Development Bank (AfDB), the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), and the Office of the UN Special Advisor on Africa (OSAA) acknowledged that the implementation of the ambitious goals of the Decade will require the mobilisation and deployment of significant amounts of resources and expressed their supported to scale-up of the PCP in the context of IDDA III.

AfDB vice-president, Power, Energy, Climate and Green Growth, Amadou Hott said: The African Development Bank recently adopted an ambitious Industrialise Africa strategy, developed together with UNIDO and UNECA, which aims at more than doubling industrial GDP of the continent within the next decade. We strongly believe that partnering with governments, the private sector, regional organizations and other development partners is key to address the major bottlenecks in the area of industrialisation for a more prosperous Africa.

The World Bank Group also announced their strong support for the implementation of the decade, amongst other Development Finance Institutions.

Participants also agreed on the importance of strengthening private sector engagement, in view of its fundamental role in driving growth, creating jobs, generating income and wealth, and contributing to fiscal revenue.
The consumer-facing sector has been pivotal to Africa's growth story, with McKinsey & Company estimating it accounted for almost 50% of GDP expansion between 2010 and 2014. But recent years have seen a combination of low commodity prices and droughts dampen the prospects of many countries, leading some to question whether the continent still holds promise for consumer brands.

Keith Dilkes.

One company with a good vantage point of the sector is Polyoak Packaging, a South African-based operator with a footprint in numerous markets across the continent. Polyoak produces rigid plastic packaging for a wide variety of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) items, including milk, dairy products, soft drinks and sauce condiments. How we made it in Africa recently sat down with Keith Dilkes, Africa export sales manager at Polyoak, to get his perspective on the trends impacting the consumer goods industry. Here are the main takeaways from the conversation.

1. Products becoming more sophisticated

The regions FMCG industry is growing in sophistication  especially when it comes to packaging.

While this trend is partly driven by the growth of modern retailers (which dont want yoghurt leaking from tubs all over their shelves), Dilkes says it is also encouraged by the younger members of established family-owned businesses.

East Africa specifically has numerous family-owned consumer-goods companies that have been trading for decades. Many of these businesses have become extremely successful and wealthy. The owners offspring are often sent overseas to study, and it is in these American, British and European markets where they are exposed to innovative, new packaging. When they return to the continent to rejoin the family enterprise, this next generation then looks at introducing these new ideas into their local markets, explains Dilkes.

2. Modern and informal retail to continue existing side by side

Informal retail channels  such as markets, kiosks, table-top sellers and street hawkers  dominate sales in sub-Saharan Africa. The industry is, however, slowly modernising. The past decade has seen the development of numerous western-style shopping centres and the entry of international food and clothing chains.

Dilkes says that while retail is becoming more advanced, informal trade shouldnt be ignored, as it remains the channel of choice for the majority of shoppers. The wealthy would go there, but the local mass market typically still dont shop at these big malls.

Items in modern shopping centres are usually priced at a premium, and are therefore unaffordable for many people. Some segments are incredibly cost-conscious. They would steer away from value-added packaging in a bid to reduce cost wherever possible, notes Dilkes.

He says that although disposable incomes are slowly rising, poverty remains widespread. For instance, in a country such as Malawi, over 70% of the population live on less than US$2 a day.

Dilkes also highlights the challenges faced by oil-dependent economies, such as Angola and Nigeria, which continue to struggle because of the drop in the price of crude oil from over $100 a barrel in mid-2014 to lows of less than $30 at the start of 2016.

Unfortunately, due to the wealth generated from the oil and gas during the good times, the farming and manufacturing sectors were completely ignored and neglected.

3. Local manufacturing sector growing

Thousands of containers of consumer goods still arrive at Africas ports every month. While the continent is likely to be a significant importer for the foreseeable future, Dilkes highlights growing momentum towards local production. For instance, both Zambia and Zimbabwe are large dairy producers, Ghana is becoming a significant fruit-juice maker, and Cote dIvoire is focusing on cocoa-based products and nuts.

Existing FMCG producers are also expanding and diversifying their portfolios. You might find a company that has done really well over the years with an ice-cream range, now decides to diversify into yoghurt or carbonated soft drinks, because it has already done most of the hard work  with refrigerated trucking and the successful listing of their product with the chain stores. So it really makes sense to expand their range, explains Dilkes.

He gives the example of a Zambian company that started out by producing washing powder and then diversified into all sorts of consumer goods from biscuits to carbonated soft drinks. These type of businesses are also not frightened to spend money on advertising and promotion, which creates healthy competition with the majors that have dominated certain sectors over the years.

4. Dont write off Zimbabwe

Asked to identify the countries with the greatest opportunities, Dilkes highlighted Zimbabwe as having high potential. This might come as a surprise to some, given Zimbabwes economic troubles. However, despite its current challenges, Dilkes is optimistic about the countrys long-term outlook. He also believes conditions in neighbouring Zambia, which has recently struggled with low copper prices and a drought, will improve.

Another country offering potential is Uganda, where Dilkes believes there are significant opportunities to commercialise and export its already substantial agricultural output. Similarly, Angola can exploit its vast tracts of fertile land and ample fresh water resources, to diversify the oil-dependent economy into farming and manufacturing. And despite pervasive poverty, Malawi also has strong potential, especially in terms of tourism.

Dilkes further singles out Ethiopia. They recently inaugurated a new railway line from Addis Ababa to Djibouti, and Addis Ababa must be the only city in Africa with its own metro-line system. It is a vast country with a population of over 90 million and its already attracting the attention of the US as a possible new manufacturing market.
The Chartered Institute of Customer Management (CICM) has launched Zimbabwe's first of its kind Customer Satisfaction Index.

 Jakub Jirsak via 123RF

The 2016 National Customer Satisfaction Index report was compiled according to a nationwide survey conducted by CICM in partnership with Select Research. This will be the main highlight of the Customer Service Week, an international event celebrated worldwide (Zimbabwe included) during October under the theme Building Trust.

The research findings will showcase all the sectors in the Zimbabwean Industry and how individual companies are rated against others as they gear towards the 6th edition of the Service Excellence Awards (SEA) hosted by Contact Centre Association of Zimbabwe (CCAZ) and CICM.

The Awards have earned global recognition as CICM also hosts the same awards in different countries across Africa. Other highlights of the breakfast meeting program include new board elections for CCAZ.

Prior to the introduction of the Zimbabwe Customer Satisfaction Index (ZimCSI), the country had no measure of quality from the perspective of the customer. According to its developers, the index will also measure the quality of economic output as a complement to traditional measures of the quantity of economic output. CICM chief executive officer, Ricky Harris said the index will be the countrys scientific standard of customer satisfaction.

This annual survey will set the baseline for industry data. Our aim is to have these country survey reports in all English speaking countries in Africa. We will also include all sectors going forward.

Inaugural index

The inaugural index revealed found out that Zimbabwes customer satisfaction index current ranking averaged at 75.5%. This basically means that the majority of local customers are happy with the services that they are receiving from their current service providers.

Ricky Harris said the ZimCSI - an independent national benchmark of customer satisfaction of the quality of products and services - will benefit multiple players both public and private sector within the local economy, as well as foreign investors eyeing the countrys markets.

Zimbabwean companies can use the ZimCSI as a tool to optimise customer satisfaction, which in turn drives customer loyalty and thereby corporate profitability. The Index also is used for competitive and cross-industry benchmarking.

Its also critical for foreign investors who need to understand the relationship between a companys current condition and its future capacity to produce wealth. In capitalistic free markets, sellers that do well by their customers are rewarded by more business from buyers and more capital from investors, he said.

The ZimCSI will also benefit Government, which needs to know how best to encourage economic growth and living standards for its citizens.
D&AD has launched 17 new creative briefs for the 2018 New Blood Awards 2018. The Awards gives budding young creatives and students an opportunity to have their work seen and judged by some of the world's leading companies and top thinkers and doers, and to win a highly coveted Pencil.

D&ADs partners this year include returning favourites BBC, John Lewis, Nationwide and Pearson, as well as new partners including Adidas, Bacardi, JCDecaux and Microsoft. Hasbro, who ran its first brief in 2017 is also returning with a brief to redesign a traditional board game to appeal to iGens and millennials.

The New Blood Awards briefs are written with leading creatives to reflect industry trends, and challenge the next creative generation to hone and apply their skills to tackle a wide range of business challenges and societal issues. Challenges include putting paper at the heart of a tactile experience to inspire creatives to rethink the medium; shaking up the in-store experience for future shoppers; using graphic design to champion a cause; empowering older generations through informal learning; bringing the #LondonIsOpen message to life on Oxford Street.

First ever New Blood Side Hustle

D&AD is also pleased to announce the first ever New Blood Side Hustle, run in partnership with Adobe. More than just a creative brief, the New Blood Side Hustle looks for creatives with an entrepreneurial spirit. Entrants will provide details on their project  an innovation, a product, a start-up, an app, a zine, a podcast, a brand, an event. Winners stand to win a share of prize money, as well as D&AD training courses relevant to their field, a D&AD judge to serve as their mentor and their work promoted on the D&AD website and in the 2018 Annual.

Open to young people aged between 18 and 24, and to students and recent graduates of any age, the New Blood Awards briefs are a great way for emerging new talent to experience the reality of the creative industry, to understand the pitch process, the competition, the demands from clients and to develop executions that are both engaging and elegantly delivered.

D&AD Foundation director Paul Drake comments: The New Blood Awards are a unique opportunity for emerging creatives to cut their teeth on real projects with some of the worlds leading brands. They challenge entrants to work on complex themes and develop them into great ideas, beautifully executed. And winning gets you noticed. Plenty of those shaping the industry now got their break thanks to bagging a New Blood Pencil.

New Blood Awards 2018 partners

Adobe

Adidas

Antalis in collaboration with Conqueror

Bacardi

BBC

Beano

Burger King

Digital McKinsey

Dropbox Paper

giffgaff

Hasbro

Hellmann's in collaboration with WPP

Hotel Indigo

JCDecaux

John Lewis

Mayor of London

Microsoft

Nationwide in collaboration with Shelter

Pearson

Click here to find out more and view all the 2018 briefs. Entrants have until 5pm GMT on 20 March 2018 to submit their work. The winning work will be selected by a panel of judges and awarded a Wood, Graphite, Yellow, White or Black Pencil. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony in early July 2018 in London.
Emirates has launched a $15m campaign, running in key markets around the world since 15 October, to inspire travel and promote the airline's network of global destinations, including its home and hub, Dubai.

Boutros Boutros, Emirates divisional senior vice president for corporate communications, marketing and brand, said: Emirates and Dubai have always been inextricably linked. Each day, Emirates operates more than 500 flights that connect Dubai to the world, and the world through Dubai. Since day one, Emirates has proudly and actively promoted our hub. Dubai offers a great experience at our world-class airport, and the city has become a top global destination because it continually invests to bring new attractions and supporting infrastructure for international visitors.

We go behind the scenes of the campaign with Boutros:

Why Dont stop me now?

The campaign is backed by the iconic soundtrack Dont stop me now by British rock band Queen, which was found in a scientific study to be the most uplifting or feel-good tune on the UK charts in the past 50 years.

What's the aim of the campaign?

We believe that people have a strong desire to travel and experience the world for themselves. They want to be inspired, to discover, and to have fun. That is why we chose to use the Queen soundtrack and specific creative approach, both of which are uplifting and energetic, to remind people of the excitement of travel and when they travel, to do so with Emirates.

Travelling is in itself an emotional experience, and we simply went back to using storytelling to inspire people to travel and make experiences...

How was it made and who is behind the making of it?

The ad spot utilises clever camera work that seamlessly transitions between key destinations and Emirates onboard features, reminiscent of a visual storytelling style that show a picture within a picture. The ad culminates in Dubai, with a soundbite on how Emirates connects the world via Dubai.

It was conceptualised and scripted in-house and shot by award-winning director Vaughan Arnell. The no-cuts continuous camera transitions were supported by cutting-edge computer-generated imagery (CGI) work from MPC in London, the studio responsible for the Oscar-winning SFX (special effects) work for the Jungle Book.

How important is storytelling in a campaign like this?

The use of stories in the context of this campaign, whether its about a particular experience on a flight or at a particular destination, is a critically important part of creating an emotional connection between the audience and the message you want to convey. Travelling is in itself an emotional experience, and we simply went back to using storytelling to inspire people to travel and make experiences, while at the same time highlighting the expanse of our network, services and award-winning hospitality.

Whats next?

Besides welcoming the delivery of our 100th A380 aircraft next month, which is a major milestone for the airline as the worlds largest operator of this popular and iconic aircraft, we have several other exciting product campaigns lined up.

All we can say right now is watch this space.
Every family has their go-to guy; the person whose name gets called every time mom or dad needs something, big or small.

This is the premise of Takealot.coms new campaign, developed by M&C Saatchi Abel and directed by Michael Middleton for Jump Productions. At the heart of the campaign is a 45 TVC which tells the story of Sibusiso, a young man living at home with his parents in Soweto. As the youngest, he has the responsibility of running to and fro for his parents - that is, until he shows them how to the get the things they want, at the touch of a button, on the Takealot.com shopping app.

A lot of South Africans still havent tried online shopping, its just not something they do. Our new ad presents Takealot.com as a convenient way to get almost anything you can imagine delivered directly to you, explains M&C Saatchi Abels Gordon Ray. Its about normalising online shopping and making it accessible to everyone.

The TVC is part of a fully integrated campaign that will be supported by Takealots other marketing channels leading up to Christmas, including broadsheet inserts in community press, national and regional radio advertising, email newsletters, PPC, social media, YouTube promoted video content and more.

The agencys creative team, Ntobeko Ximba and Kayli Levitan, say, One of the reasons the ad is receiving so much love is because it feels real. It has a distinctly authentic look and feel. We didnt over-style the Soweto location; we simply captured what was already there. A lot of the cast members were first-timers, which adds to the commercials warmth and charm.

Takealot.coms Chief Marketing Officer, Julie-Anne Walsh, describes the campaign as a watershed moment for the leading online store. Our objective this year was clear: to present online shopping as a genuine, everyday part of South African life. By increasing our brand awareness and attracting new customers to Takealot.com, we hope to also grow the South African e-Commerce market as a whole.

When crafting the campaign, it was crucial that we told a local story, presented in a real and relevant way so that it resonates with South Africans. The message is simple: with millions of products; many safe, easy ways to pay and delivery wherever you are, everyone  from any generation  can shop at Takealot.com. Weve become incredibly proud of Sibusiso, his family and their story, and cant wait to unveil each episode to South Africa as the festive season unfolds.

Weve already convinced South Africas early adopters to shop online at Takealot. The challenge now is to grow online shopping further still, so that the brand evolves from the countrys largest online e-tailer, to the countrys largest retailer. Walsh concludes.

View the TVC here:






In a move that will strengthen the integrated offering from FCB Africa's agencies in the Western Cape, Hellocomputer has appointed a new Chief Creative Officer and Associate Creative Director.

Mike Barnwell, currently Executive Creative Director at FCB Cape Town, becomes Chief Creative Officer for both FCB Cape Town and Hellocomputer while new arrival Nthabiseng Lethoko joins the team as Associate Creative Director.

Camilla Clerke stays on as Hellocomputers Creative Director.

Making the announcement, Hellocomputer Managing Director Robyn Campbell said: For the last five years Hellocomputer has been one of the leading digital agencies in South Africa, consistently creating work that is both innovative and effective in breaking through the cluttered online marketing space.

With the recent departure of Executive Creative Director Simon Spreckley, the opportunity presented itself to expand the agencys repertoire while still maintaining the high standards we have always set ourselves.

Im confident Mikes talent and leadership, supported by Camilla and Nthabiseng, is the beginning of a new chapter in our story of continued growth and creative success. Faith in this new leadership team underpins our vision for Hellocomputers future.

Barnwell brings a wealth of experience having built some of South Africas favourite brands with a number of award-winning campaigns over his 20-plus years in the industry. Since joining FCB Cape Town as Executive Creative Director in 2012 he has guided the agency to its first-ever Loerie Grand Prix and has driven consistent performances at Cannes, One Show and Clios.

Ive become a huge fan of Hellocomputers work over the past few years having had the opportunity to partner them on a number of key projects, said Barnwell. Im looking forward to building on an already strong relationship between the two agencies and helping the teams push boundaries across all platforms.

Lethoko joins the team fresh from Johannesburg where she amassed over a decade of experience in the industry as a well-respected designer, both above-the-line and in the digital space. I think its an exciting time for Hellocomputer and FCB. I cant wait to see what innovative ideas and storytelling come out of this new venture, she said.

FCB Cape Town and Hellocomputer currently share the Wesgro and Western Cape Government accounts and their integrated approach has already proven successful, with the CANSA Testi-monials campaign winning major honours at both the Loeries and Cannes award ceremonies.




#Newsmaker: Buitendach, Singiswa win Sikuvile Journalism Award for presentation of Financial Mail covers

Sarah Buitendach and Vuyo Singiswa of Tiso Blackstar Group recently won a Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Award in the Presentation category for the 2016 Financial Mail covers they worked on together.

All the Standard Bank Sikuvile Journalism Awards 2017 winners! 19 Oct 2017 Here, a conversation around what this recognition means to them and what the design process entailed Buitendach: I just think its so great that our visual teams did so well (our cartoonist and photographers also won). I think traditionally our industry hasnt been so focused on design and I hope this shows that is changing. Singiswa: Ask me again after Ive recovered... I cant feel my legs. Describe the design. Describe the design.

Singiswa: Sarah was actually very instrumental in helping me see the light. You get stuck in your ways and cant see beyond. She helps elevate you beyond that place, kicking and screaming.

Buitendach: Thanks V! I think we try and make our covers punchy, newsworthy and fun. I dont think we take ourselves too seriously and we like to riff off contemporary pop culture, design movements, movie posters, design movements and songs. We even went through a stage of having song lyric coverlines. Go figure.

What did the process entail? What did the process entail?

Singiswa: Waiting for ideas to fall from heavens, trying out ideas, arguments over what works. I cant remember exactly but it was a long process.

Buitendach: Exactly what Vuyo said. And he is extremely long-suffering and kind and puts up with a lot of me or the team saying, So V, I was thinking, how about if we try this?

Singiswa: 'Lol' yes and rolling my eyes... There are other designers, subs, readers, writers, editors, Sarah and so forth, so you never quite suffer alone. In the end you get out only what youve put in.

Sarah Buitendach and Vuyo Singiswa

What led you to your career in design? What led you to your career in design?

Singiswa: I love magazines and newspapers.

Buitendach: Me too! I grew up in a family that consumed an awful lot of media. They still do. I started out in design and decor journalism as a writer but was always involved in visual stuff as well. Working on news brands is my favourite though.

What do you love most about it? What do you love most about it?

Buitendach: Our team is fantastic. They are really inspiring to work with. And I love that aha moment, when youre talking about a story or a cover and a cool idea just solidifies. That happened with our Brexit cover (one of the winning entries). We were talking about the drama in England as it unfolded and suddenly we were like, lets face it, Britain just got punked So what if we use the most iconic British punk album (from the Sex Pistols) and reference it on our cover?

Singiswa: That magic shes talking about...

What has been your most noteworthy learning in the space? What has been your most noteworthy learning in the space?

Singiswa: I think for me its mostly patience, letting go of my ego, actually understanding the meaning of teamwork, and that youre never too old to learn. It's a tough lesson but one Im still trying very hard to put into practice.

Buitendach: That journalists (the writing kind) can really benefit from design and visual training. It certainly helped me in my writing and editing career and Im sure it would benefit others too.

What trends do you predict for the industry in 2018? What trends do you predict for the industry in 2018?

Singiswa: Yoh, youre asking me about trends! Im not a design guru, lol!

Buitendach: Geez, Im not sure either. I feel like no one really knows whats actually going to work in this world of uncertainty. One minute its free online content, next paywalling works. Then everyone is obsessed with long-form storytelling, then its infographics that are the golden child. Next minute, advertorials are the magic bullet. Beyond excellent content never going out of fashion, who actually knows?

What are you currently reading/listening to for work? What are you currently reading/listening to for work?

Buitendach: I read magazines for design inspiration. Mostly Vogue, Esquire, Bon Appetit and some Aussie decor titles. Books and podcasts are mostly not about work stuff at all.

Singiswa: Nothing specific but I think graphic design is everywhere if you look properly.

Tell us something about yourself not generally known.

Buitendach: I can recognise a song in about four notes. I think Id win Noot vir Noot if I knew more Afrikaans songs.
Genetic testing is invaluable in predicting health disorders and tailoring treatment best suited to the patient's DNA, and, although South Africa isn't there yet, it can play a role in determining your insurance premiums.

Britain's chief medical officer, for example, calls for genetic testing to be routinely offered to cancer patients to help select the most effective treatment". This is according to a recent article published on Sky News where research suggests that in 60% of Britains cancer cases, the genomes of cancer patients reveal actionable data which can shape the future of precision treatments.

It therefore comes as no surprise to read about scientists who are able to determine, via genetic testing, if an individual has a high probability to develop Huntington Disease. Even more astounding is the fact that scientists from Georgetown University Medical Centre in the US can determine, via a simple blood test, if a person is likely to develop dementia within three years from when the test was conducted according to their research findings that were published in the Nature Medicine journal. According to them, the differences in a persons blood biomarkers may signify the early stages of Alzheimers disease  a condition which affects 35-million people wordwide.

Hence, young women with a predisposition to breast cancer can now benefit from early detection using an imaging scan called the digital infrared thermal imaging (Diti) method. These cameras are similar to those used at airports to scan travellers although the software used is different. Traditional methods of diagnoses, like mammograms, often detect cancer at a fairly advanced stage. This technology can detect most breast disorders at an early stage.

Reflecting on what is available out there makes it difficult to comprehend that these breakthroughs are even possible. However, this is not science fiction but a reality of our time. Looking at all the possibilities that emerge from these scientific and technological developments, one cannot help but think about the impact that this might have on the life insurance industry.

What this means to the insurance industry

Unlike other countries including the States and Britain, genetic testing is not a component of the long-term insurance industrys current underwriting processes in South Africa.

However, during 2009, the Association for Savings and Investment South Africa (ASISA) released a standard for genetic testing. This stipulated that an insurer is obligated to review the terms of a policy if an applicant provides the results of a predictive genetic test. Furthermore, when assessing an individuals risk profile, the insurer should take the value of specialist surveillance, medical intervention and successful treatment into consideration.

In addition, the insurer may not request an applicant to undergo a genetic test to support an application for insurance, whether this is in order to obtain a lower than standard premium rate or to indicate the presence or absence of a suspected genetic condition.

Although these standards are not legally binding, support for the various parties is provided through the Long-term Insurance Ombudsman, whose role includes mediating disputes between insurers and the insured life. This includes cases where there is a concern of genetic discrimination or adverse selection.

We do not foresee sending clients for genetic testing, but there might be instances where clients do specific genetic tests to prove they are a lower risk than what we attribute to them based on their family history. But those tests are done voluntarily and initiated by the client," says George Kolbe, head of marketing for life insurance at Momentum.

Our underwriting research and development unit, in collaboration with our product development team, is focused on keeping abreast with changes in the medical/insurance arena and on finding ways to pass the benefit of any learning on to our clients. Also, industry underwriting practices are regulated by the ASISA and as a result we adhere to their standard.

Genetic discrimination

Genetic testing is not undertaken lightly and is normally only done after extensive counselling where physical signs and symptoms of a disease exist or where a risk for developing a disease exists. This is most often suggested in the clients family history. Momentums normal underwriting practices will scrutinise a clients family history and the information will be utilised as a proxy to determine the probability of developing any hereditary medical conditions," explains Janet Brodie-Thompson, chief underwriting officer for product development at Momentum.

We do expect clients who have had genetic testing done to disclose this to us and also to divulge the result but we will not request a client to have a genetic test done.

From a consumer perspective, numerous fears can crop up regarding genetic testing once the test results have been disclosed to an insurer. These may include the fear of genetic discrimination that limits access to insurance by ways of medical underwriting, impacting the claims process, sacrificing privacy regarding medical information as well as affecting affordability of cover.

"Herein lies the dilemma: genetic testing and other new-generation tests impacts on an ethical, regulatory, social, constitutional and emotional level and leaves us with the burning question: In this day and age of revolutionary medical testing and technology, how does one find a balance of fairness for both the insured life and the insurer? concludes Kolbe
Pick n Pay has expanded its partnership programme with independent spaza store owners to the Western Cape. The programme's first spaza to be opened in the region came with the launch of Nozinga Market in Gugulethu on Monday morning. The spaza conversion programme modernises spaza stores to meet the needs of the customers and communities, is helping to build a new generation of modern retail entrepreneurs.

This marks the launch of phase 2 of the partnership, combining the capability and systems of one of South Africas largest retailers with the spaza owners intimate knowledge of the needs of township customers to create a new shopping experience, grow township economies and boost employment.

Pick n Pay has worked with its suppliers to upgrade the store with new refrigeration and IT systems and it will stock 1,300 lines of edible and non-edible groceries, fresh produce and perishables. In addition to having a liquor licence, once approved, Nozinga Market will offer a full Value Added Service range, including money transfer, ticketing, airtime and data, bill payments, lottery tickets and the sale of prepaid electricity.

Impacting lives of township entrepreneurs

Owners of converted stores in Gauteng, where the programme was piloted last year, have reportedly performed well and their customers have benefited from a significantly expanded range of quality products at competitive prices, close to where they live.

For Gugulethu businesswoman Pumla Rudah, who calls herself a born entrepreneur who was always trading this and that, the opening of Nozinga Market has turned a burning ambition to own her own business into reality. Rudah left the corporate world in 2008 to follow her dream, trading pre-packed fruit in the informal market, before she turned to catering and then to helping other entrepreneurs to formalise their businesses.

Despite these strong entrepreneurial roots, she says the training shes received from Pick n Pay in preparation for the store opening has been a great learning curve, giving her new insights into owning and running a sustainable business. She has taken on 15 permanent staff, most of them from Gugulethu and Langa, and a share of her profits will go to the previous owners of the store, well-known traders in the area since the 1960s.

A collaborative success

This collaborative effort between Pick n Pay, the Old Mutual Foundation, Masisizane Fund, Brimstone Legacy Fund, the Western Cape Department of Economic Development and Tourism and the City of Cape Town follows the success of the same model in Gauteng.

Pick n Pay deputy CEO Richard van Rensburg said: We are delighted to be opening our first market store in the Western Cape. This very successful project is about creating the business leaders of the future. The success of the project lies in helping independent entrepreneurs stay independent, but even more successful with a range of trading and financial assistance.

Successful township businesses help the broader community by providing great services, creating jobs and building vital skills in technology, customer service, and more traditional retail areas such as learning to be butchers and bakers. We are helping independent entrepreneurs to make their businesses successful and play a greater role in growing our economy.

Alan Winde, Western Cape Minister of Economic Opportunities, said his department was delighted to partner with Pick n Pay and local entrepreneurs in this programme.

This is the kind of public-private collaboration we need to stimulate economies across the Western Cape, grow small businesses and create jobs. I am particularly encouraged by the support we are providing to new, independent store owners to enhance their business skills. This partnership shows the opportunities we can unlock when big business and emerging entrepreneurs work together. Its an exciting model that holds a lot of promise for the future.
Former Eskom boss Brian Molefe insists that he was a permanent employee at Eskom and therefore qualified to be a member of its pension fund.

Photo: Destiny Man

Molefe's R30.1m "golden handshake" and his membership of the Eskom pension fund is being scrutinised by Parliament's public enterprises portfolio committee, which is conducting an inquiry into the capture of state-owned enterprises.

Last week, the committee heard from the Eskom Pension and Provident Fund that the utility had misrepresented Molefe's employment status, which allowed him to be a member of the fund.

Molefe was employed on a five-year contract and, according to the fund's rules, only permanent employees qualify. The fund's executives told MPs that Eskom had submitted Molefe's file when he joined, which was marked PPX, denoting that he was a permanent employee, but, in fact, he was on a five-year contract.

Trade Union Solidarity approached the courts earlier in 2017 to declare all Eskom payments in favour of Molefe to the pension fund as well as payments from the pension fund to Molefe unlawful. The Solidarity application lists Molefe, Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown and Eskom among the respondents. The matter is to be heard in November.

Molefe has also approached the Labour Court to challenge his dismissal from the power utility. He claims the move was contractually illegal and was politically motivated.

In the Solidarity matter, the Eskom Pension Fund has submitted a supplementary affidavit stating that because Molefe was a temporary employee he was not an eligible member of the fund and therefore should not have received any pension payouts in the first place.

In the answering affidavit filed last week at the High Court in Pretoria, Molefe said he had received a letter from Brown in October 2015 containing no limitation on the period of employment. At about the same time, he had also received a letter from the then Eskom board chairman Ben Ngubane confirming his appointment as CEO.

He said the letter also contained no restriction on the term of employment. He had subsequently received a contract from Eskom which stated that his employment would continue for an indefinite period.

"I am confident I signed this contract of employment and returned it to Eskom, who will have the signed copy in its possession". I was employed in a permanent position [as CEO] without limitation on the term of [employment]," Molefe said.

In November 2015, Brown had written to Ngubane stating the Cabinet's decision that his contract be altered to a five-year contract, he said. What then followed was a second letter of employment, which he signed on March 7 2017.

"My original contract of employment concluded with Eskom expressly stipulated open-ended employment, which would have been until age 65. It was this contract that determined my eligibility for membership of the [Eskom pension fund]. The subsequent alteration of the term of my employment " did not make me a temporary employee as contemplated in the rules of the fund, nor did it alter my status as an eligible employee," he said.
A sharp increase in forest fires stoked record losses in global forest cover equivalent to the area of New Zealand in 2016, a Global Forest Watch report said on Monday, 23 October.

The alarming pace of destruction - 51% higher than the prior year with a loss of 73.4-million acres, according to data from the University of Maryland - was partially due to climate change that has increased the risks and intensity of wildfires by triggering temperature rise and drought in some places, the monitor said.

The 2015-2016 weather phenomenon El Nino, one of the strongest on record, also played a role, having created particularly dry conditions in the tropics.

Many of those tropical areas are not naturally prone to catching fire - but vulnerability increased due to poor management and was exacerbated by El Nino.

Deadly blazes in Brazil and Indonesia were among those contributing to the loss. This year, deadly blazes have again devastated regions of Portugal as well as California.

Brazil's Amazon region lost 9.1-million acres of tree cover - more than three times that of 2015.

And Portugal saw some 4% of its forests go up in smoke in 2016, the highest proportion of any other country.

Nearly half of all forests burned in the European Union in 2016 were in Portugal, where fire-prone eucalyptus and pine plantations along with poor soil encouraged the deadly flames.

The country is set to break the record for destroyed forests in 2017, with recent disasters killing dozens of people.

Early 2016 saw one of the largest fires ever recorded in Central Africa, destroying 37,000 acres of forest in the Republic of Congo.

Last year's Fort McMurray fire in Canada ravaged more than 1.5-million acres, causing $8.8bn in damage.

Deforestation resulting from agriculture, logging and mining also contributed to the losses.

The report urged improving fire and forest management, including early warning systems, fire bans during dry seasons and more augmented investment in forest protection and restoration.

Source: AFP
If given the thumbs-up by the National Disaster Fund, the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality plans to pump more than R7bn into infrastructure aimed at relieving drought conditions and preventing taps from running dry in the future.

The municipality's Drought Disaster Mitigation Plan was approved during a council meeting on Thursday, 19 October.

It included a detailed outline of projects to the tune of R7.05bn that will be rolled out over the next four years. The cheaper projects include reviewing the water restrictions currently in place - at no capital expense to the municipality - while the most expensive proposals are the construction of three desalination plants across the metro, totaling R3.23bn.

Mayoral committee member for infrastructure and engineering Annette Lovemore said the municipality had already approached officials from the National Disaster Fund on a provincial and national level and was now waiting to hear if the application was successful.

"As of [yesterday] the combined level of our dams stand at 31.5% capacity. We have compiled a list and prioritised the projects in such a way to try to alleviate the pressure on our water supply system as efficiently as possible.

"This list includes projects that can be tackled, or even completed, within the next 12 months, while others could take up to the next four years before we are able to give them the necessary attention," Lovemore said.

Some of the projects on the list are already receiving attention, such as repairs and maintenance of aging infrastructure and the city's ongoing water-saving campaign to raise awareness and implement punitive measures against over-consumers.

Another project, scheduled to roll out within the next 12 to 24 months, is the construction of wellfields next to the Churchill and Groendal dams.

This would see boreholes drilled next to the dams so that the water extracted from them could be fed directly into the existing water treatment facilities.

This could add a potential 18 megalitres of water to the city's daily supply.

Phase three of the Nooitgedagt water treatment facility near Addo could also be fast-tracked for an additional 20 megalitres daily.

"The municipality has also established a drought action task team that meets every two weeks to discuss the disaster and look at ways of improving the situation.

"The task team will be meeting [today] to discuss a number of issues, including revision of the [current] water restrictions and also looking at what additional restrictions and penalties could come into play once our dams drop to 30%, and subsequently 25% capacity."

Lovemore said industries identified as high water users had already been warned to reduce their consumption if they wished to avoid penalties.

She said car washes across the city had been warned to come up with ways to recycle their water or face the possibility of closure.

Source: Herald
Only 53% of wage earners think their place of work helps their productivity. And with good reason, said workplace strategist and change manager Nigel Oseland , speaking at the GBCSA's 2017 Green Building Convention held earlier this month. The broad and ongoing Leeseman Index joins the dots between Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the most common employee complaints about their surroundings.

Nigel Oseland, workplace strategist and change manager

Only once we meet our lowest level of needs can we go on to achieve our potential. Its got to do with health at the bottom of the pyramid  so air, light and water, explained Oseland.

A quantified relationship between productivity and air quality, noise and temperature, established by more than 200 studies shows the average 57% increase in employee productivity easily covers any cost premiums of working in a healthy space that assists attention and concentration, Oseland said.

Advantages to each element of office space

Deep buildings with windowless workspaces must disappear. These buildings, by definition, lock in a chemical soup of materials and occupant activities with serious consequences for human health. From asthma, to skin and eye irritations, to reproductive health and cancer, warned Professor Vivian Loftness of the Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They do this by locking out the natural conditioning resources of passive solar heating, daylight, ventilation and passive cooling.

1. Shorter hospital stays in sunny rooms

Natures renewables are at the centre of human health and environmental resiliency. As humans we have a natural affinity to nature, known as biophilia, she said. We will rediscover the engineering and art of effective daylight design, and not only because studies show that if you are in a sunny hospital room youll have a 26% reduction in length of stay, but because it can displace between 3075% of lighting needs, and 2575% of heating demands. We should not have to turn on lights in the daytime.

2. Daylight restores sleep cycles

Our brains are stimulated by daylight, Loftness continued, citing research linking exposure to morning sunlight to an improved sleep time by more than 30 minutes in six-year-old learners. In a separate study, poor performing learners slept 25 minutes less and went to bed 40 minutes later on school nights than good performers.

3. Natural air flow brings better concentration

In 2015 a double-blind office study on increased outdoor air ventilation rates and controlled VOCs identified a 42% increase in average cognitive scores when working in a green building, and 51% increase when in a deep green building, verses a conventional building.

Besides increased worker performance, natural ventilation saves 2040% of cooling, and 70% of ventilation costs. Net zero buildings will be designed for natural ventilation as the dominant ventilation and cooling strategy for every possible hour, enhancing productivity, human health and community, she predicted. Typical improvements brought about a financial return of 756%.

4. Views from desks help focus

Call centre agents had a 67% improvement in handling time simply by having seated access to views through larger windows with vegetation content, amounting to an ROI of 299%, Loftness said, citing a study explaining why a visual connection to nature is important.

Markets growing demand for green

Its beyond dispute that people with access to the natural environment are healthier and it facilitates productivity. It is expected that future tenanting requirements will include above ground views, window and outdoor access, operable windows, natural ventilation, mixed-mode conditioning, daylight and indoor plants. And, considering associated productivity gains, the payback period is sometimes measured in months, she said.

Tenanting requirements linked to the advantages of green buildings brought a strong response from property firms, including Growthpoint. By end-2017 Growthpoint will have at least a four-star Green Star certification for 100 of its buildings, said head of sustainability and utilities at Growthpoint, Werner van Antwerpen, at the convention.

Green buildings offer real benefits: reduction in electricity and water costs, improved air quality and increased productivity. As such we have a free app which benchmarks the energy-water rerformance rating of our green buildings for clients so they can see their savings per square metre.

Whether or not your work environment helps, or hinders, your productivity and that of your team, it is likely no surprise that natural lighting and fresh air increases capacity for work. Although, who would have thought that the simple act of rolling up a blind and opening the window could make the difference between finishing your work promptly  or not?
The winners of the 2017 WWF-SASSI Trailblazer Awards were announced at the Harbour House in the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town on 23 October 2017. The SASSI Trailblazer Awards recognise and celebrate chefs who actively champion sustainable seafood practices in their restaurants.

SASSI programme manager at WWF-SA Pavitray Pillay commented: Our partnerships with chefs are inspired by a love of seafood and a shared commitment to help restore our overexploited seafood species. The chefs we are recognising have gone the extra mile in advocating the sustainability message.

Philip Alcock, Robert Giljam, Massimo, Giles Edwards, Julie Carter

The 2017 WWF-SASSI Trailblazers are:

Philip Alcock - SeaBreeze Fish & Shell

Robert Giljam - Societi Bistro

Julie Carter  Ocean Jewels

Giles Edwards  La Tete

Massimo- Massimos

John McArdle- The Big Mouth

Graham Neilson  9th Ave Bistro

A previously awarded trailblazer and now mentor, chef Brad Ball added: Chefs serve as the gatekeepers for the food and hospitality industry and therefore play a critical role in leading market forces and influencing popular taste. The reality is that chefs who support and promote ocean-friendly seafood can help ensure that there are fish to catch and enjoy tomorrow. My role is to do this, and to make up-and-coming chefs aware of whats at stake.

The criteria for the awards were:

The restaurants seafood sustainability policy

The effectiveness of their communication of their seafood sustainability practices to their customers, employees, and suppliers

Their level of engagement in communicating their seafood sustainability practices to a wider audience

The trailblazer factor (those chefs and restaurants that are going the extra mile in promoting and supporting seafood sustainability)

The SASSI Media Award for 2017 went to Anna Trapido, a well-known journalist who writes extensively about food and sustainability in South Africa. Trapido covered sustainable seafood issues in many articles in magazines, print, TV, and radio.

Awards organiser Clare Mack of Spill Communications said: Its gratifying to see, in the fifth year of these awards, that many restaurants are adopting sustainable practices in seafood, without any intervention or prompting. Sustainability is now mainstream; it has really caught on.

wwfsassi.co.za
A group small-scale farmers in Mpumalanga and Limpopo participated in an agricultural upskill initiative which introduced them to tobacco farming and has seen significant changes in their lives. A research study conducted by academics from the University of the North West who looked into how participation in an incubation project over a period of three years had led to a marked improvement in the lives of the farmers and their families, contains evidence of their success.

fetcaldu via pixabay

Introducing emerging farmers to tobacco and other crops

The farmers were part of an experimental project run by British American Tobacco South Africa which partnered with Mobile Agri Skills Development and Training (MASDT) - one-stop centre for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the agricultural sector, whose task is to provide support to emerging farmers in rural areas. Along with partner, Limpopo Tobacco Processors, they pioneered the Emerging Farmers Initiative aimed at transforming the agricultural sector by introducing emerging farmers to tobacco and other crops.

In total, 74 incubation projects were established in Bufflespruit, Badplaas and Steynsdorp in Mpumalanga; Nzhelele and Mianzwi in the Vembe area of Limpopo, as well as Groblersdal. Farmers that participated in the incubation received practical skills training in cultivating larger tracts of farmland and a deeper understanding of various crops. They also received resources such as fertilisers, pesticides, seeds, farming equipment and financial support.

Other benefits of the incubation included assistance with plant production, tobacco production, poultry and care of livestock. Alternate non-tobacco crops including maize, butternut, cabbage, peppers, beetroot, onions and spinach were added to a rotational cropping plan to help the farmers augment their income.

Around R50m has been invested in the project which since 2011 has facilitated the planting of over 500 hectares of tobacco leaves and 300 hectares of vegetable crops. BAT buys all the tobacco leaf produced by participating farmers. The projects have created over 2,500 jobs whose beneficiaries support in excess of 3,900 dependents.

Incubation sees positive impacts on social, communal and economic development

Professors Hendri Coetzee and Werner Nell, independent researchers from the University of the North West, visited 22 of the projects to conduct an in-depth study on the impact of the initiative on emerging farmers. In their findings, the academics discovered that farmers that participated in the incubation had recorded drastically increased crop yields due to the skills acquired in the project. They were able to manage larger tracts of farmland, apply proper irrigation practices, control pests and diseases.

Their understanding and management of their personal finances had improved vastly. They were now able to save and actively invest their own money, something they were unable to do before. They were able to use money earned from their agribusiness to buy new homes or renovate their existing ones, to purchase new vehicles, and generally improve their farms by installing additional irrigation systems to secure water supply.

Farmers in Badplaas region plagued by crop theft were able to hire private security to guard their crops, control access (to their farms) and protect agricultural assets. They could also hire additional staff to assist on farms, the research found.

Profits earned from the projects also allowed the farmers to send their children to school and higher education institution, provide for their families and afford better healthcare. They were also able to employ additional labour from within their communities to assist them on the farms.

Female farmers that were part of the incubation recorded less reliance on their husbands or on government social grants for support. The outcomes of the MASDT project were found to have a number of cumulative and/or secondary outcomes that resulted in positive impacts on a broader social and communal level, such as supporting local economic development and empowering women, the research concluded.
Africa must double its spending on infrastructure over the coming years, the Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA) said on Thursday, 19 October, warning that overall investment in transport, energy, water and IT/communications fell back last year.

In 2016, total investment in these four sectors - from public and private sources and international institutions - was $62.5bn, compared with $78.9bn in 2015, it said.

"A spending requirement of around $120bn-$140bn (at 2015 dollar rates) (is needed) in the short-term," said the report, entitled Infrastructure Financing in Africa 2016.

Chinese investment fell sharply last year, to $6.4bn from $20.9bn in 2015, a year that was exceptional.

Averaged out over the five years from 2011-16, China invested $12bn annually, making it the biggest single investor in African infrastructure.

African states invested $26.3bn in 2016 after $24 bn in 2015.

Transport accounted for 39.2% of infrastructure investment in 2016, followed by energy (31.9%), water and sanitation (16.9%) and information technology/communications (2.6%).

The ICA was launched at the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland with the aim of spurring infrastructure investment in Africa from all sources.

Its members include G8 nations, South Africa, the World Bank, the European Commission and European Investment Bank (EIB), the African Development Bank (AfDB) group and the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA).

Source: AFP
Uber has announced the appointment of Lola Kassim as its new general manager for West Africa.

 dennizn via 123RF

Most recently, Kassim worked as a management consultant with McKinsey and Company where she led teams providing strategic business advice and implementing organisational and operational improvements in the energy, public, and financial services sectors in West and Southern Africa.

A seasoned professional with over 10 years of global experience working in senior private sector and government levels in Africa and Canada, Kassim will be responsible for driving Uber's overall strategy for West Africa, which includes improving reliability and service levels for uberX and creating additional value-adds for driver-partners.

"Creating sustainable, alternative modes of mobility"

"I am immensely pleased to be joining Uber at a pivotal point in the company's growth and expansion curve. My vision for West Africa, in particular, is to ensure that we are aligned with Uber's overall objective of creating sustainable, alternative modes of mobility. In addition to creating value for driver-partners and riders, I will also be focused on ensuring that we continue to engage with our key stakeholders and relevant partners with a view to continued positive impact across West Africa," Kassim said.

Speaking on her appointment, Uber's general manager sub-Saharan Africa, Alon Lits, said: "As a company that is deeply committed to diversity and inclusiveness, we are excited to have Lola join the team of other incredible women at Uber - who are pushing the envelope towards achieving the global vision of creating value for riders and driver-partners alike. In West Africa, Lola will be supported by a highly skilled and enthusiastic team covering Operations, Marketing, Communications, Legal and Policy. As we often say at Uber, we are #superpumped."

Prior to joining Uber, Kassim spent over three years as a management consultant at McKinsey and Company. She also worked as a governance advisor with the Liberian Presidency through the Africa Governance Initiative, supporting a unit driving delivery of presidential infrastructure priorities. She began her career with the Canadian government where she served as policy advisor to senior officials and managed units developing policy, strategy, and business cases regarding socio-economic development programming for Canada's Aboriginal communities and foreign policy.

A Nigerian-Canadian, Kassim holds a Bachelor's degree from Harvard University and an MSc from the London School of Economics, where she was a Chevening Scholar.
The Department of Labour Inspection and Enforcement Services (IES) branch will host a session on employment equity (EE) with private and public sector employers and organised labour to establish why it is difficult to comply with EE legislation.

Labour Deputy Minister iNkosi Phathekile Holomisa will deliver a keynote address at the breakfast session on Monday.

The session, which will be held under the theme, 'We strive for transformation', is part of the departments IES branch advocacy sessions.

The advocacy will enable the department to come up with strategies and interventions that will assist in transforming the workplaces going forward.

The goal of the EE breakfast session is to:

strengthen EE implementation and compliance mechanisms;



foster redress transformation for economic development of the country; and



provide an outcome on the DG Reviews conducted on the 50 JSE Listed companies.

IES Branch is currently as part of its work plan, conducting Director-General Reviews to designated employers where 72 JSE Listed Companies operating in different sectors were identified as subject of reviews.

Thus far, 50 companies that have been reviewed, none was found to be compliant and as such DG Recommendations were issued with expected time frames of compliance and others were referred directly for prosecution for failure to prepare Employment Equity Plans.

The companies were in Finance and Business sector, Electricity, Gas (Chemical) and Water, Construction, Manufacturing, Retail & Motor Trade, Catering and Accommodation Sector.

During the last financial year, 2016/17, the Branch conducted a similar session in Cape Town where EE Managers were invited to engage on EE issues and the lack of transformation in their respective workplace as they are mandated to transform as per section 24 of the Act.

The IES plans to extend its advocacy nationally.

The breakfast session is targeting heads of Departments, Chief Executives and Managing Directors of Companies; organised business and employers, Human Resources and Practitioners, EE Forum members, assigned senior EE managers and community constituencies, among others.

The EE Act is currently a subject of discussion at Nedlac ahead of amendments to give teeth to legislation to ensure compliance.
Cocreating the CapeTalk conversation in the digital decade

Talk radio is intense as it's largely based on current affairs - and with the rise of social media, there's a deluge of that 'breaking news' information to sift through. You need to be ready to switch focus at the drop of a hat - even while on-air. Tessa van Staden, programming manager at CapeTalk, talks us through the first two decades on air for the only talk radio station on the AM frequency, and how they're moving with the digital times.

Van Staden explains that the bulk of her role entails quality controlling everything that comes out of the speaker, but she is also responsible for training and managing staff, finding new talent and giving existing hosts and teams feedback, approving commercial campaigns, listening to audio and scripts before they go live on air. In terms of content, all the shows use social media quite interactively. Tessa Van Staden. Images supplied. So while theyre on air, they ask listeners to call, to SMS, to send WhatsApp voice notes. Social media really has become integrated into the offering. Its no longer just someone speaking into a microphone or doing an interview. The audience actually co-creates shows in a very real way, every day. Thats how they stay in touch with listeners. You're probably nodding along as that makes sense for a radio station in today's digital age, but talk radio on AM frequency is chalk and cheese to commercial stations that broadcast on FM frequency. Andre du Toit, CapeTalks head of technical elaborates on AM radios benefits as follows: One single transmitter covers a massive area as opposed to FM, which is basically line of sight.

Mountainous terrain does not affect AM as adversely as it does FM.

AM coverage is extended even further at night due to sky waves. People as far as Namibia can receive Cape Talk at night and the station recently received an email from someone who picked up Cape Talk in Lapland, which is approximately 16,000 km away!

AM has a bandwidth of approximately 7.5kHz and FM approximately 15kHz, which is why AM is really suited for talk radio over music.

The bandwidth of human speech falls nicely into the AM bandwidth whilst you require at least double that for decent music listening. Hello from Finland! CapeTalk signal picked up 15,000km away Issued by Primedia Broadcasting 11 Oct 2017 Platform understood, Van Staden lets us in on John Maythams role at the station since its inception, how their 20in140 campaign is being received and how CapeTalk is incorporating the latest channels of communication into the mix. Elaborate on the #20in140 campaign and how listeners are reacting to those memories of the iconic stories of the past two decades. Elaborate on the #20in140 campaign and how listeners are reacting to those memories of the iconic stories of the past two decades.

I have been so moved by some of the stories people have shared. With the Planet Hollywood bombing in 1998, for example, we had a listener call in to say that his daughter was the manager on duty that night, and she had stood behind a wall, so she was protected from the blast. He recounted where he was when he got the call and how he and his wife rushed through to wait for her. Her arms were bandaged and she was bloody, they had to take her to hospital

We had a call from a police reservist who was one of the first two responders on the scene.

DJ Bobby Brown also lists the Planet Hollywood bombing as a standout moment for him:

Truthfully, we get in so many interesting moments. Its always interesting to hear from listeners and get their perspective on the stories and how they were touched by them. So on the one hand, we are speaking to the newsmakers and the journalists who covered the story, but we are also hearing the more personal stories from listeners. Often, you dont realise how people are impacted by a particular story.

John Maytham was an actor before turning to radio  elaborate on his success as a host since then. John Maytham was an actor before turning to radio  elaborate on his success as a host since then.

In a way, hes considered to be the father of the station, having done its first broadcast. As he is an actor, John is able to use his voice  one of the most important instruments as a broadcaster  to great effect. Hes an audio chameleon. That makes the experience of listening to him always interesting, hes never boring or staid.

Click here to listen to a short snippet from the stations first ever broadcast, by Maytham!

His intelligence and general knowledge also comes into it, so his listeners respect him. The audience is often aspirational and dont necessarily have a point of view about something, but listening to Maytham helps them form an opinion.

He has fun on air, and often finds quirky stories  thats very important as its often a foil to the harder news issues and brings variety to the programme. He also sounds genuinely interested. Whether hes talking about a cookbook or to a new author, he brings interesting information to the conversation because he has done the research. I feel like Im learning all the way. When I eventually, at the end of the show, get out of my car or tune out, I feel like Ive gained something.

So your role isn't to merely sit in studio for a set shift. Whats the best and worst part of your day? So your role isn't to merely sit in studio for a set shift. Whats the best and worst part of your day?

The best part of my day is when I hear a magical moment on air. That could be receiving an unexpected call from a listener with a surprising memory or story, or when we have a fascinating interview with experts about something weve never had on air before, and somehow that experts information or story or contribution sheds light on something. Thats the best part of my day.

Images supplied.

The worst part is crisis managing, sometimes late at night, getting a call 30 minutes before someone is meant to go on air to say suddenly they cant do their show. We also went through a period in August where we had signal woes, but thats all been sorted. So the worst part of my day is crisis management, but if Im honest with myself, I do also enjoy the crisis management aspect. Theres very little about my job that I dont enjoy.

Images supplied.

If someone does call to cancel, we do have one or two people as standby hosts in our team. On a few occasions weve had another team member going on air at 3am if theres a crisis. Were a small team and we work really well together and we are in constant communication. I strongly believe in helping others so when you require help in return, theyre eager to assist. Its happened before that we suddenly have the PM drive show host doing different show and then getting someone else to fill in for him. In these instances its a case of musical chairs.

Speaking of 'musical chairs', how do you deal with the constant flood of 'breaking news' in these times of fake news and user-generated content on social media? Speaking of 'musical chairs', how do you deal with the constant flood of 'breaking news' in these times of fake news and user-generated content on social media?

Were very careful where we dont yet have the facts. If its a breaking news story that someone has called us about, but which they have not yet verified - for example - we thank the caller for alerting us and inform them we will have to check their account with the authorities. We wont necessarily take the call to air, either. The stations producers function as very important gatekeepers, so only 10% to 15% of the calls make it to air, with about 85% of calls taken behind the scenes. This means our producers do a lot of screening, and if anything seems newsworthy or interesting, we alert Eyewitness News (EWN) and work very closely with them overall, both in Cape Town and in Johannesburg. So we double-check things with them.

Our producers and technical producers are also very good at checking. If someone calls in with something and we know we cant take it to air yet, we will call the police or disaster management. If someone calls in with an allegation about someone doing something dodgy, we will call to check first.

Sometimes if its breaking news on TV  say, for example, the Grenfell Tower collapse in London  sometimes you see something unfolding on television, youre seeing the visuals of it so its verified.

One of the most interesting radio broadcasts I remember was on Friday, when I was still in the news team  I was off that day and driving around but listening in. John Maytham was on air and it was the Ysterplaat Air Show where a pilot crashed into the sea. People started calling the station and what you heard was blow-by-blow coverage of what people were seeing, what had happened, where the plane went down. Someone with a telescope in Fresnaye called, people from Milnerton called in  so you had this very interesting coverage by ordinary radio listeners, who were calling in to tell us what they were seeing.

Images supplied.

Our audience and listeners often become eyewitnesses or reporters. The interesting thing about radio, unlike other mediums, is that its pace and immediacy means we are able to incorporate social media, so theres no delay. Its not like were only going to print this evening and we cant include this incredibly powerful voice note, which someone has sent through now. Or if a story is breaking on Twitter now, were able to reflect that and it becomes part of the show, to which we then get reaction from listeners. Social media and WhatsApp voice notes, in particular, give our radio programmes more texture.

The challenge for the hosts, at times, is having to respond to a deluge of information in real time. They have a planned show which was set up prior to going to air. But when callers contribute, along with twitter and breaking news, you need to change track while on air. Its tricky juggling all of that and making changes  while youre behind the mic  while ensuring it still sounds interesting rather than becoming a hot mess. The producers are integral to and an invaluable part of this process. They are the directors of the programs.

Whats next for CapeTalk and talk radio in particular?

For Cape Talk, we are very aware that our audience online and on social media is bigger than our terrestrial audience.

We are constantly looking for innovative and interesting ways of getting people who have never listened to the station to sample the station, so watch this space!
Peter Ogwang--a torture victim

Last week the High Court in Uganda awarded a shillings 1.8 billion or $500,000 compensation to 22 victims of torture by Museveni's security forces. The 22 had been arrested in connection with the still unsolved murder of Uganda's Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIGP) Andrew Felix Kaweesi and gruesomely tortured by security operatives to extract confessions.

Torture is a criminal offense under the Prohibition and Prevention of Torture Act 2012 and carries a maximum sentence of 15 years imprisonment. Torture in all its forms has been the trademark of the Yoweri Museveni regime for the last 31 years. It is a tool for suppressing political dissent through the spread of fear amongst the population.

This is not the first time courts of law have awarded compensation to victims of torture by security operatives. The regime does not honor such awards and both the courts and victims have no powers of enforcing such orders. Year after year, security agencies have been competing in scoring the highest incidents of torture with the police consistently trouncing other agencies in recent years to win top honors. To escape criminal responsibility, in 2016 the police issued a circular to the effect that individual police officers were to pay any court fines awarded for torture by security operatives.

As if that was not enough, the Uganda police set up a professional standard unit (PSU) and the police disciplinary tribunals as a cover-up for culprits of serious crimes against the population. That way the regime guarantees the immunity and protection of its officers in as far as torture is concerned.

The regime will not honor the $500,000 compensation to the victims. Instead the ruling worsens the already bad situation for the 22 victims of torture. As usual the police will instead tighten its grip by continuously holding their victims in detention. Even when the Courts of law sets them free for one reason or the other, the regime typically re-arrests them on fresh trumped up charges. Behind the curtains the regime will instead coerce the victims to give up their push for compensation in return for their freedom.

The regime will continue pressuring the courts so victims are unfairly either kept in detention or get convicted. The regime offers the facade of upholding the rule of law by allowing courts to award compensation to victims of torture even though it does not intend to pay a dime. That is why the regime has not only kept silent but has not bothered to appeal the court order.

Ugandans who are tortured must still sue the regime if nothing else to establish the facts and have a record.
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The Russian-built fifth generation fighter aircraft. A Sukhoi photo

NEW DELHI (PTI): State-run aerospace behemoth Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) has strongly pitched for going ahead with the fifth-generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) project with Russia, though the Indian Air Force (IAF) is understood to have reservations over it.



HAL Chairman and Managing Director T Suvarna Raju said the multi-billion dollar co-development project with Russia will be an opportunity as no country has ever offered such critical technology to India.



"We are still hopeful. It is an opportunity for the industry as well as for the country. This is an opportunity for us to go in for this kind of (high) technology which has not been offered to us by any other country (except Russia)," he said on Monday.



Asked about IAF's reservations about the project, Raju did not give a direct reply and insisted that it would help India's aerospace sector to a great extent.



"The impact of the project will be very positive. FGFA (Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft) is my dream, I am hopeful about it," Raju told reporters on the sidelines of an event.



He said it will take three years for the first FGFA to fly from the day the Government gives the go ahead to the project.



A high-level committee set up by the Government to examine various aspects of the project has recently submitted its report and the Defence Ministry is likely to take a call on it soon.



In 2007, India and Russia had inked an inter-governmental pact for the FGFA project.



In December 2010, India had agreed to pay US$ 295 million (Rs 1,897 crore) towards the preliminary design of the fighter, which is called in India as the 'Perspective Multi-role Fighter'.



However, the negotiations faced various hurdles in the subsequent years.



In February last year, India and Russia revived talks on the project after a clearance from the then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar.



Raju also said that HAL was looking at utilising the Sukhoi manufacturing facility for carrying out maintenance of the fleet as there was no future order for the jet.



On the Indo-Russian joint venture to produce 200 Kamov light-weight multi-role military helicopters, he said things are moving fast and that a request for quotation (RFQ) is likely to be issued by the Government soon.



In October last year, India and Russia had finalised a broad agreement for a joint venture between HAL and two Russian defence majors.



India is procuring Kamov choppers to replace its ageing Cheetah and Chetak helicopters.



Sixty Kamov-226T helicopters will be supplied to India in fly-away condition, while 140 will be manufactured in India.






PITHORAGARH, UTTARAKHAND (PTI): Indian Army is one of the strongest armies in the world, thanks to its committed regiments and personnel like those in the 3 Kumaon Rifles, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat has said.



The Army Chief was in Pithoragarh on Monday to honour soldiers, retired personnel and veer naris (wives of soldiers killed on the line of duty) of the 3 Kumaon Rifles, which is celebrating its centenary year.



He also released a postage stamp on this occasion.



In his 45-minute speech, General Rawat spoke highly about the valour and glorious history of the 3 Kumaon Rifles.



"The valour displayed by Kumaunis of 3 Kumaon Rifles and Kumaon Regiment in battles right from the first World War to those fought in the post-independence era bears testimony to their exemplary contribution in securing the country's borders," he said.



The jawans of 3 Kumaon Rifles also held a parade to mark the event.



General Rawat also asked officers to dispose of matters related to pension and other benefits of ex-soldiers on priority basis.



"No delay in these matters will be tolerated," he added.



The 3 Kumaon Rifles organised several programmes on the occasion including an attractive parade, band display, dog show and exhibition of handicrafts by local artisans.






NEW DELHI (PTI): Russia's technology transfers to India in the defence sector have been without any strings attached and there is scope for further deepening of the military ties, Vice Chief of the Indian Air Force Air Marshal S B Deo has said.



His comments come at a time when leading defence manufacturers from across the globe are eyeing India's growing market by offering technology transfer and joint ventures for developing fighter jets, submarines and other military platforms.



"When it comes to technology transfer, Russia really offers everything they have from the heart without any strings attached," Deo said on Monday at an event to celebrate 70 years of diplomatic ties between India and Russia.



In May, the Government had unveiled the strategic partnership model under which select private firms will be roped in to build military platforms like submarines and fighter jets in India in partnership with foreign entities.



Noting that there was scope for expansion of India's defence ties with Russia, Air Marshal Deo also said the relationship should be developed focusing more on commercial aspects.



"The time has come for the relationship to be more on a commercial basis. It can be a win-win situation for both Russia and India," he said.



The Indian Air Force (IAF) will start the process soon to acquire a fleet of single engine fighter jets and Swedish defence giant Saab and US firm Lockheed Martin are seen as major competitors for the project.



Russia is keen on offering its new fighter jet MiG-35 to India.



At the event, the 50th AL31FP engine, manufactured from raw materials by Sukhoi engine division of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (Koraput), was handed over to the IAF as part of the celebration of the 70th year of India-Russia ties.



"The AL31FP engine powers Su-30 MKI jets and is manufactured from raw material stage at the HAL Koraput," said HAL Chairman and Managing Director T Suvarna Raju.



Speaking at the event, Defence Production Secretary AK Gupta said Russian defence firms should come forward for entering into strategic partnerships with Indian companies for developing various defence platforms.


More senior women are needed in the Bank of England, the Tory chairwoman of the Treasury Select Committee in the UK has said.

Nicky Morgan spoke of the "importance of role models" as she raised the gender pay gap issue in the Commons during Treasury questions.

The former education secretary also reminded Chancellor Philip Hammond to respond to her letter regarding appointments to the Bank of England.

She said: "The chief executive of Virgin Money Jayne-Anne Gadhia has this morning given evidence to the Treasury Select Committee on the Treasury's women in finance charter, she is the Government's women in finance champion.

"Now ministers will know that one way of tackling the gender pay gap is to make sure we have more women in senior roles.

"So could I say to the Chief Secretary if she could urge the Chancellor to reply to my letter I wrote to him last week about appointments to the Bank of England where more senior women are needed because the evidence this morning gives the importance of role models."

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss said she would urge Mr Hammond to reply "asap".

She said: "Well first of all can I congratulate her on the work she did as women's minister in promoting these issues and I think it would be great to see other professions such as legal services looking at the success of the women in finance charter and seeing what they could do as well and I will urge my colleague to reply to your letter asap."
The head of Germany's financial regulator has warned that firms in the City of London are at increasing risk of a "cliff-edge" Brexit, as he urged banks wanting to relocate to the country to speed up their applications.

Felix Hufeld, president of Bafin, said that the regulator is currently preparing for the worst, given the lack of progress from the last five rounds of Brexit talks.
Spanish low-cost carrier Volotea has confirmed that their weekly service from Verona to Cork will increase for summer 2018.

Flights to Verona from Cork Airport will operate every Saturday from May 26 to August 29, with an additional flight on Wednesdays during peak season, commencing June 27.
Calling all Eimears and Eamons - all of those years of slowing pronouncing your name has finally paid off.

One Dublin cafe has decided that you all need to be celebrated and are offering you a free lunch from 10am to 3:30pm every day this week.
TV fitness instructor Francis Usanga has been found guilty of attacking his former partner who told a court she was punched in the face when she confronted him about cheating.

In the aftermath of the attack, mother-of-two Emma Murphy made a video about her ordeal which went viral on the internet and she appeared in ITV's Loose Women.

She told a trial today that if she hadn't spoken out she would have remained in an abusive relationship with Usanga.

Her former partner, Usanga a 31-year-old Dubliner and former Today show fitness expert was accused of assault causing harm to model and blogger Emma Murphy, which he had denied. Usanga, with an address at Lanesboro, Finglas, went on trial before Judge Bryan Smyth at the Dublin District Court.

Francis Usanga (left) and Emma Murphy.

The court was told she was punched in the face and left with a black eye after she confronted him about cheating.

Judge Smyth did not accept the five feet 10 inches tall fitness instructors claim he pushed her away because he was in fear of her or the argument that this was justifiable force. He had also told the court that he was surprised by her injuries which he thought was make-up.

Sentencing was adjourned to allow Ms Murphy prepare a victim impact statement in writing.

The attack took place while they had a row outside his former workplace at FX Fitness gym in Santry in north Dublin on July 3 in 2015, Judge Smyth was told.

In evidence, Ms Murphy told Judge Smyth that Usanga was the father of her two young children and they had been in a relationship for three and a half years which she described as really bad, toxic.

On the day, she went with her children in the car to the gym where he worked to talk to him about their relationship and his cheating, she said.

She asked him if there was a girl in the gym and he said no, she told the court. She said there was loads of verbal abuse and he had told her to "f*** off" after she asked for his phone.

She told the court there had been a crazy amount of cheating going on and she wanted to call one of his friends to ask him if Usanga had been with him over the previous Fathers Day weekend.

She said she needed to get to the bottom of it because it was not fair on me, it was not fair on my children. She said at the gym he gave her a phone and she went outside with it and she claimed she discovered more cheating.

Emma Murphy. Pic: Collins.

I said, you cheated on me again, she told the court. She said she was disgusted and threw the phone in his direction and he then punched her in the face. He straight up punched me with his hand, his fist, she said.

She told the court she was hit on her left eye and was utterly distraught. She said her children, then aged six and 18 months, were in the car. It was bad enough that he was cheating and then it came to another black eye, she said.

She told Judge Smyth her former partner said you broke my f***ing phone and as he went to pick it up she got in her car and drove away. Her eye was swelling and going red at the time, she recalled. She said she put ice on it and her brother Carl took photos of her injuries.

In cross-examination with defence solicitor, Michael Hanahoe, she agreed she had thought Usanga had been unfaithful. He put it to her that this angered her but she replied she was very emotional.

She admitted it was possible that she was angry.

The court heard they had an earlier meeting that day at the Ikea car park in north Dublin. She accepted that Usanga agreed to meet her there because he did not want her making a scene at the gym.

She rejected several claims put to her by the defence: that when she got there she was confrontational and angry and forced him to leave in his car and she sped after him in her own car with her children on board and tried to cut him off at the gates.

I did not try to cut him off, she said.

It was suggested to her that she intended to frighten him and she said she was extremely emotional, absolutely all over the place.

She said she drove down a one way street while he was going in the other direction but she did not try to cut him off at a gate. She said she then went to the gym to sort out their domestic matter, not for another confrontation.

The solicitor put it to her that she could not be placated and Usanga eventually gave her the phone she demanded. He suggested to her that she confronted him again but she replied, I simply threw the phone, I could not take any more.

She denied that she came at him and said the phone was thrown in his direction.

She answered not true when the defence put it to her that Usanga had pushed her with the palms of his hands. I was punched in the face because I threw the phone, she said.

Asked why she later told a doctor that she could not recall whether she was struck with an open or closed fist, she said she was in shock at the time.

It was put to her that he had been a celebrity and she broke into his Facebook account telling his 10,000 followers she had been assaulted by him and that was the type of person he was. She agreed that she shared a video.

The defence suggested this was an attempt to destroy him but she replied, it was my attempt to get out of an abusive relationship, if I had not I would probably still be there.

His solicitor said that while she said she was all over the place in 2015 she was still able to do talk on TV and radio. Sharing a story can help other women, she answered.

In the witness box she held up a photo of her injuries and said: This is me, this is my black eye.

Her brother Carl took photos of her later that day and in evidence he said she had a black eye and was shaking, upset and emotional.

Usanga, in evidence, claimed he was in fear for his life of Ms Murphy and during the earlier meeting at Ikea she drove towards his car and feigned to hit me but stopped at the last second.

He described her as angry and raging and after she threw the phone at him, I felt my life was in dangers. He pushed her away, he maintained. I used my hands to push her away, I didnt know what she was going to do," he claimed.

A former BScene model, he also appeared in Jennifer Maguires dating series, One Night Stand, in 2010. He formerly worked at FX Fitness, in Santry, north Dublin but the court heard today that he is currently unemployed.

He told the trial that at the time of the incident he had not reached the pinnacle of his career and was not yet worldwide but just a local health and fitness guy in Ireland.

I pushed her to stop attacking me, he claimed.

Asked by the prosecution solicitor if he was surprised by the injuries she suffered he said: Yes, because I thought it was make-up.

He showed no emotion as the judge gave his verdict while his former partner with her head bowed was hugged by her family members and supporters at the back of the courtroom. The offence at district court level can carry a 12-month prison sentence.

Pleading for leniency, the defence solicitor asked the judge to note that Usanga has already "suffered immeasurably" and has no prior convictions for this type of offence.

Judge Smyth also asked Garda Inspector Michael Mulligan, who was in charge of the investigation, to see if Ms Murphy would like to receive some compensation for what happened.

In the days after the attack Ms Murphy uploaded a video to Facebook and Youtube to speak out about her ordeal. It went viral and as a result she gave numerous media interviews including an appearance on ITVs Loose Women in the UK.
Update 11am: A suspect arrested after an eight-hour manhunt in West Dublin is believed to have been carrying a large sum of cash.

Gardai are continuing to question the man in his 30s after his dramatic arrest in front of a crowd of shoppers in Citywest yesterday afternoon.

During the pursuit, a man was assaulted with the butt of a gun and six cars were hijacked or stolen.

It is believed he had about 2,000 in cash with him during the chase, with its purpose unknown.

Earlier:

Gardai are continuing to hold a man in connection with yesterday's series of armed incidents in west Dublin, writes Cormac O'Keeffe.

A suspect in his 30's was tackled by armed Gardai at City West shopping centre yesterday, following an eight hour rampage.

The man, armed with a machine pistol, stole and crashed a number of cars as Gardai tried to track him down.

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan has praised Gardai for bringing the incident to an end, without loss of life.

The eight-hour crime spree involved six carjackings.

Gardai called out to customers, including mothers with their children, in the Citywest Shopping Centre to get down, get down as they pursued the man, arresting him as he emerged from an exit.

A firearm, believed to be a loaded submachine gun, was recovered from the man as six officers managed to restrain him and take him into custody.

The 37-year-old criminal had earlier carried out an aggravated burglary, in which he bashed a man in the head with the butt of the gun, and later pointed the weapon at another man.

He was being questioned last night and is expected to be brought before court to face serious charges.

The man has multiple convictions in Ireland and Britain, for violent robberies and carjackings, as well as a petrol bomb attack.

His arrest marked the end of a terrifying ordeal which began at 6.20am, when he attacked his partner at her home in Brookfield, west Tallaght, and stole her car.

He crashed her car a short distance away on Russell Square in nearby Jobstown.

There, he carjacked another vehicle and it is thought he drove down onto the N81, abandoning it soon after on Whitestown Way, near the Tallaght Stadium.

He walked a short distance behind the Sean Walsh Park into Watergate Estate, in the Old Bawn area. There he kicked in the door of a house and carried out an aggravated burglary.

A man was in the house at the time along with his daughter and her child.

It is understood the man went to the front door and that during a confrontation, the burglar kicked in the glass panel of a porch and forced entry.

He struck the owner in the forehead with the butt of his gun.

The burglar took the mans 162-reg black Renault Kadjar.

Senior officers in Tallaght scrambled all units and called in the Armed Support Unit, the Emergency Response Unit as well as the Air Support Unit.

They assisted local uniform and detective officers in piecing together the mans movements.

He was later spotted on the Ninth Lock Road in Clondalkin, some 8km north of Watergate Estate.

At some stage, he abandoned that Renault Kadjar at a restaurant on the Naas Road and hijacked a Volvo.

He then abandoned that vehicle at a car showroom, pointed the gun at the salesman and stole a Subaru Impreza.

He later transferred from this car to a Mercedes E-Class.

Garda units pursued him into Citywest, west Tallaght, where he was forced to abandon his car and fled into Citywest Shopping Centre.

He was chased and arrested shortly after 2pm when he emerged from one of the exits.

He was taken to Tallaght Garda Station and detained under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act. He can be held for up to 72 hours.

Garda Representative Association president Ciaran ONeill said: Well done to those colleagues in the apprehension of an armed man in Tallaght. Just shows the dangers we face every time we go into work.

Local Fianna Fail TD and spokesperson for Dublin, John Lahart TD, said: I commend the work of each the members of An Garda Siochana that were involved in [the] successful operation. I am relieved that there was no loss of life or major injury and that the armed suspect involved is now in Garda custody.

This story originally appeared on the Irish Examiner.
By Ann O'Loughlin

Disgraced solicitor Michael Lynn used around 3m belonging to his Kendar Holdings foreign property company to fund his personal lifestyle, the High Court heard.

The expenditure included stg25,000 on his own private box at the redeveloped Wembley Stadium in London and some 301,000 in a pension fund for his retirement.

The struck-off solicitor, who fled the country in 2007 leaving an estimated 80m in debts and who is still in a Brazilian prison fighting efforts to extradite him, paid the money into two pension schemes with Canada Life and Aviva between 2004 and 2007, the court heard.

Kendar Holdings liquidator Martin Ferris, who has spent several years trying to find where the money went, was today granted an order by the High Court that Canada Life and Aviva pay the surrender value of those pension funds to the liquidator in order to recover some money for the creditors.

Andrew Fitzpatrick SC, for Mr Ferris, said among those creditors are people who paid deposits for holiday homes in Hungary and Portugal where Kendar's business model was to fund construction of these properties using deposits. Included in the creditors list is 278,500 paid in deposits while there is another 1m owed to unsecured creditors.

The liquidator discovered that someone had removed the computer servers for Kendar which meant there were very few books and records to work on to trace where the money went.

However, counsel said, trial management accounts were created based on various bank accounts, including Lynn's own personal account into which various large cash payments were made.

Under companies legislation, this was a very clear case of fraudulent disposition of company property which gave the power to the court to order the pension monies be paid to the liquidator, counsel said.

Mr Fitzpatrick said the liquidator had written to Mr Lynn, who the court heard is still incarcerated in Cotel Prison, Recife, seeking assistance in tracing monies.

While Mr Lynn had offered assistance he never actually gave any information. In fact, Lynn demanded information from the liquidator and made various allegations against the liquidator, counsel said.

Mr Ferris, in his investigations, discovered many serious matters concerning Mr Lynn, primarily that he used some 3m of company money for his own personal expenses, including the box at Wembley, counsel said.

Mr Fitzpatrick also said there was no question of impropriety on the part of Canada Life and Aviva who were prepared to return the money provided it was by court order.

Papers in the application to have the funds paid to the liquidator were served on Mr Lynn in prison but he was not represented in court.

Ms Justice Marie Baker said she was satisfied that the payments into the pension fund were done to deprive the company of money and were therefore a fraudulent disposition under Section 608 of the 2014 Companies Act providing the power of the court to order the return of those assets.

She said the amount to be paid out is to be whatever the invested value the fund stands at on the date of the perfection of the court order.

The judge also said it was clear the pension payments were excessively large having regard to the size of Kendar Holdings and its turnover.
Update 3.48pm: Ibrahim Halawa has said people who criticised him for supporting the rallies in Cairo in 2013 made him stronger.

The 21-year-old Irish man arrived at Dublin Airport this morning after spending four years in an Egyptian prison.

"I really want to thank the haters," he said. "They made me stronger, to come out and be ready for everything.

"Like they say, sticks and stones will break my bones..."

Mr Halawa said the sight of his mother in a wheelchair was difficult to take.

"It was depressing for me," he said.

Mr Halawa said he was feeling mixed emotions.

#IbrahimHalawa hugs his best friend "I left him shorter than me" #iestaff via @JoyceFegan pic.twitter.com/9YOC3ND2Bt  Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) October 24, 2017

"It's a dream come true," he said. "Every day in prison I would imagine this day - how it's going to be. It's what made me go forward."

Mr Halawa added: "I'm looking forward to the future but I can't forget the past.

"It's going to make me work harder in the future.

"I feel hurt but I feel happy, obviously, reunited and back home."

Mr Halawa said he did not feel safe after his release from prison last week.

"I'm back into a new world. I was taken away from life and then, one second, you're back. It's going to be hard to recover."

"It just feels great to be innocent. I'm as Irish as can be" #ibrahimhalawa #iestaff via @JoyceFegan pic.twitter.com/pflw9Ckrrg  Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) October 24, 2017

Earlier: Ibrahim Halawa has arrived in Dublin airport after spending four years in an Egyptian prison.

"When I was on the plane & I saw the green land, it's so green, it's so beautiful. I haven't the green in so long," #ibrahimhalawa #iestaff pic.twitter.com/DI0AyP4hRD  Irish Examiner (@irishexaminer) October 24, 2017

Halawa told reporters on arrival: "It still feels like a dream... this is the moment I've waited for for four years."

He then outlined what he intends to do now that he's back in Ireland.

He said: "I've still left a lot of cell mates behind, there is still a lot of innocent people behind bars around the world, not just in Egypt.

"I'm going to hopefully be working to help release all the innocent people around the world."

Ibrahims return has been a long time coming for his family and friends.

They gathered at Dublin Airport with large signs to greet as he passed through the arrival gates.

The moment Ibrahim Halawa arrived home to Dublin pic.twitter.com/RoTYgYyCKE  RTE News (@rtenews) October 24, 2017

His older sister Fatima is overjoyed at her brother's return.

She said: "It's amazing we've thought of this moment for so long but nothing can compare to actually seeing him and physically touching him and being in his arms once again, its beyond describable.

"Today is a big celebration, it is a day we will never forget."

His mum, dad, five sisters, brother, nieces and nephews were all there to greet him at Dublin Airport and got a private moment before Ibrahim faced the media.

His other sister Somia cant believe hes home.

She said: "I can't express how happy I am, I feel like I was born again today."

Ibrahim also left behind many close friends when he was imprisoned.

School friend Keith Maloney was among the first to hug him.

He said: "Four years, I've dreamt about it, lost sleep over it.

"If pure happiness is a thing, this is the closest I have got to it."

Ibrahim Halawa hugging his best friends on return pic.twitter.com/UZfutHr3YQ  Stephanie Rohan (@StephGrogan3) October 24, 2017

The family are now going to get away from a few days to allow Ibrahim recover.

Fatima says they may never let him out of their sights again.

Pete Maloney went to school with Ibrahim, and said it's an emotional day.

He said:"I spent years in school with him and I spent years out of school with him, we grew up together.

"When he left we wern't the same height, I was small and short, I haven't seen him in four years and the first thing he said was 'you're tall now, what happened my small friend?'

"He was always the big one and I was the small one but we worked, he is the best guy to have back, I couldnt be happier."

Ibrahim said the first thing he wants to eat back in Ireland is an old fashioned fish and chips.

The 21-year-old also said he will spend time with his ill mother and thanked the Government and his student's union before revealing that he hopes to go back to college.

Halawa flew back to Ireland with his sister, Nasaybi, and Ambassador to Egypt Sean O'Regan.

They landed in Dublin around 11am this morning.

Dawn. A new day. A new beginning. It was a pleasure to see you home safely Ibrahim. All very best for the future. #Halawa #IbrahimHalawa pic.twitter.com/NsR1VoI4wr  Sean O Regan (@SeanOReganIRL) October 24, 2017

Minister for Children and Independent TD Katherine Zappone was also there alongside Ibrahim's family to welcome him home.

With Ibrahim Halawa family...Welcome Home.... pic.twitter.com/HePuHNxmgl  Katherine Zappone (@k_zappone) October 24, 2017

Crowds gathered at arrivals in Dublin airport to greet him.

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan is happy Ibrahim has returned home after a difficult four years in Egypt.

He said: "I am delighted that Ibrahim Halawa has returned home to his family in Ireland after a long and extremely difficult ordeal in Egypt.

I have met the Halawa family many times and I know they have longed for the day when Ibrahim would be back in Dublin with his family. This is a very special day for Ibrahim and his loved ones.

During Ibrahims time in prison he received exceptional levels of consular care from officials in Cairo and Dublin; I thank all those involved.

I wish Ibrahim all the best for the future.

Earlier: Ibrahim Halawa will arrive back in Ireland today after four years in an Egyptian prison.

The Dubliner was released last week, and is due in Dublin Airport this morning.

Aged just 17 Ibrahim Halawa was arrested in 2013 and spent the next four years in prison after repeated delays to his mass trial.

Along with 500 others he was charged after a protest against a military coup in Cairo.

Mr Halawa, the son of prominent Dublin Muslim cleric Sheikh Hussein Halawa, was a student at the time.

His three sisters, Somaia, Fatima and Omaima, were also arrested during the crackdown on the 2013 protest but later released on bail and returned to Dublin.

They were acquitted following trial in absentia.

Ibrahim Halawa was cleared of all charges last month and on Thursday was released from prison.

His family have said they are preparing their home for his return as he gets ready to touch down on Irish soil for the first time in four years.

In an Instagram post Ibrahim Halawa thanked everyone who has helped him to get home, and says he is looking forward to arriving back in Dublin.
By Conor Kane

International boxer Michael OReilly has been given a five-month prison sentence after admitting causing criminal damage to a caravan following an engagement party last year.

The sentence was imposed on OReilly (24) from Mountrath, Laois, at Thurles district court on Tuesday but he walked free from court pending an appeal to the circuit court.

His father, Michael OReilly Snr (45) of Portlaoise was given a three-month prison term for causing criminal damage during the same incident on April 18, 2016, but also went free after giving notice of an appeal.

A brother, James OReilly (18) of Portlaoise was bound to the peace for a year, for criminal damage, while a bench warrant was issued for another other, Bernard (24) who also admitted criminal damage but has left the jurisdiction for the UK since evidence was heard last June.

Father-of-three Michael OReilly was due to fight for Ireland in the Rio Olympics last year but sent home on the eve of the games when it was confirmed that he had failed a drugs test before leaving this country for the event.

He said after Tuesdays court proceedings that he was not commenting on the possibility of making a boxing comeback but confirmed that he was appealing the prison sentence imposed on him by Judge Elizabeth MacGrath for criminal damage.

The boxer pleaded guilty in June to a single count of causing criminal damage to a caravan on April 18 of 2016.

The case was adjourned on that occasion to allow the defendants bring compensation to court: 879 for damage to a Nissan Micra, 664 for damage to a Citroen, while the cost of damage to a caravan was disputed.

The court heard on Tuesday that the injured parties in the case put the damage to the caravan at 7,260 but defence solicitor Philip Meagher, for Michael OReilly Snr and James OReilly, said his clients would place it at no more than 1,000. They had done a Google search for a similar caravan and found one for sale in the UK for 1,500 Stg. They had consulted with three or four people in the trade in Ireland about getting an independent valuation for repairs, but the moment they heard the background to the matter and why the valuation was required, they indicated that they would prefer to stay away from the matter, Mr Meagher said.

Michael OReilly Snr had brought 150 in compensation to court. He had bought a vehicle for conversion into a family car but ended up with a Revenue debt of 3,000 as a result, the court heard. He has been dealing with that particular debt over the last number of months and has sought the help of a loan shark, for want of a better phrase, to fund some of that.

JJ Fitzgerald, solicitor for Michael OReilly Jnr, said his client had brought 100 to court. It would have been more, but his wife recently gave birth to their third child and a lot of that money went on the baby expenses.

Judge MacGrath said the amount of compensation offered by the defendants was totally inadequate and totally unacceptable.

After hearing that Michael OReilly Jnr had 37 previous convictions, mostly for road traffic offences but also for theft and fraud and public order, she imposed a five-month prison sentence.

Michael OReilly Snr had two previous convictions, for minor road traffic matters, and received a three-month sentence.

I have given the parties a way to avoid a custodial sentence by dealing with it in a particular way, and this hasnt happened, Judge MacGrath said.

Both Michael OReilly Snr and Jnr indicated they intended to appeal the sentences and recognisances were fixed on their own bonds of 500 each.

The court heard in June that the defendants had been attending an engagement party in Littleton in Co Tipperary and the gardai were called to an incident at 5am.

Michael OReilly Snr and his sons were ordered to leave the area earlier, and did so, but as they passed an area where their relatives, the Doyle family, had caravans parked they started throwing rocks and stones over the fence.

There was shouting and stones and bottles were also thrown from the other side of the offence. During the incident, damage was caused to a caravan which was excessive, the court heard in June.
Update 4.19pm: The Minister for Finance says he is not satisfied with what he has heard from the five banks he met over the last two days on the tracker mortgage scandal.

Paschal Donohoe has updated the Dail in the last hour and says he will engage further with the banks in the next 24-hours before making a statement to the house tomorrow evening.

Bank CEOs leaving the Department of Finance earlier refused to say what deadlines or demands the Minister had laid down.

Minister Donohoe says the banks have acted disgracefully.

"What I'm aware of is the hurt that has been caused to citizens in our state," said the Finance Minister.

"Too many people are waiting for their money back. Too much confusion still exists regarding where this issue stands.

"In the engagement that I have had with the banks, I have made clear to them that this is a disgrace. It should have been resolved by now."

Update 3.07pm: Government: Gardai will take appropriate action if crime has been committed in tracker scandal

The government says the Gardai will take appropriate action if a crime has been committed in the tracker mortgage scandal.

The issue of trackers has dominated proceedings in the Dail this afternoon where Simon Coveney was taking leader's questions in place of the Taoiseach.

Earlier the chief executives of Ulster Bank and AIB apologised to their customers over the scandal.

Minister Coveney says the government's meetings with the banks are not just for show.

"The Central Bank is engaging with other statutory bodies in relation to the tracker mortgage examination, including An Garda Siochana, and they will take the appropriate action," said Mr Coveney.

"And I can assure the Minister for Finance was not mincing his words yesterday when he briefed Cabinet on this issue.

"This is not going to be a case of a number of days of grandstanding."

At a Cabinet meeting last night, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe made it clear that the previously deferential attitude towards the banks is at an end.

Update - 11.35am: Latest: AIB CEO apologises to tracker customers but disputes group of 100 are on wrong rate

The Chief Executive of AIB has apologised to customers affected by the bank wrongly taking them off tracker mortgages.

Bernard Byrne made the comments as he left a meeting with the Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe.

AIB removed 3,200 customers from trackers and to date 3,100 have returned to the rates, but the bank disputes another group of customers are on the wrong rate.

Mr Byrne would not disclose if Mr Donohoe asked for fresh action and said he will make a full statement tomorrow.

He said: "We have apologised several times before and I've apologised again for what has happened with respect to tracker customers.

Allied Irish Bank Chief Executive, Bernard Byrne, arriving at the Department of Finance after being called over the tracker mortgage scandal. Pic: RollingNews.ie

"We listened to what the Minister had to say and we are going to make a fuller statement tomorrow in respect of that.

"For the moment what we are able to confirm is that we are fully committed to working in line with the framework that exists and we are confident we will be able to make significant progress again."

FF publish their tracker mortgage motion.. Govt has said it will accept it #iestaff pic.twitter.com/TWIHjtpETo  Daniel McConnell (@McConnellDaniel) October 24, 2017

Earlier: Ulster Bank and AIB are the latest mortgage-lenders to face questions over the tracker mortgage scandal.

Ulster Bank's exectutives are set to meet with Finance Minister, Pascal Donoghue later today.

Delegations from Bank of Ireland, KBC and Permanent TSB met Mr Donoghue yesterday.

Amid growing public anger, they are being asked to explain how they are dealing with the issue, and how they plan to compensate customers who were wrongly taken off tracker mortgages.

The Central Bank Governor Phillip Lane says he hopes the majority of those affected will be repaid by Christmas - but details of compensation have not been revealed.
Leo Varadkar has used his first visit to Paris as Taoiseach to highlight the importance of Ireland's relationship with France post-Brexit.

After talks with President Emmanuel Macron in the Elysee Palace, Mr Varadkar stressed how supportive France had been in backing Ireland's position in the negotiations.

"I leave Paris feeling very strongly that, while we may not agree on everything, we do have a very strong ally in France," he said.

"After the UK leaves the EU, the nearest EU country to Ireland will be France, so this is going to be a really important relationship into the future."

Keeping with the mood of strengthening links post-Brexit, the discussions included the planned Celtic energy interconnector between the two countries.

Issues where opinions diverge were also addressed, such as tax policy in relation to multinational internet companies.

Mr Varadkar said the issue should be tackled on a worldwide level, by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), while he said France favoured a more European approach.

The Fine Gael leader said he did not want to see a new tax on internet companies that would ultimately benefit non-EU states.

"We obviously have a difference of opinion on digital taxation," he said.

"We agree that internet companies should pay their fair share of tax, but it is our strong view that global companies that operate on the World Wide Web need a worldwide solution to taxation, and we'd like to see that through the OECD process rather than through the European Commission."

On his visit to the French capital, the Taoiseach also attended a business event organised by the Irish Embassy in partnership with Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland (Industrial Development Authority), Tourism Ireland and Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board.
The President has announced an Irish embassy is to be set up shortly in New Zealand.

Michael D Higgins has begun a five day state visit to the country along with his wife Sabina.
People shopping for Halloween costumes over the next week are being reminded to check they have been made safely.

The warning follows the seizure of 700 items that customs destroyed after finding they didn't have the required safety marks.
The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre has criticised the leniency of the sentence handed down to Tom Humphries.

The former Irish Times journalist was jailed for two-and-a-half years for sexually abusing a young girl in his Dublin home after grooming her for two years.

Humphries, of Corr Castle, Sutton, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to four counts of inviting a child to participate in a sexually explicit, obscene or indecent act between January 2010 and March 2011. This offence comes with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

He also pleaded guilty to two counts of defilement of the child at a place in Dublin between December 5, 2010 and February 19, 2011.

These took place when the victim was aged around 16 and Humphries was aged 47.

Noeline Blackwell, from the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, said: "We may need to look at sentencing, but certainly just the implementation of sentencing is what's important about this case.

"A view was taken that because the person had had a high position that wasn't anymore, that seemed to be the key that was deciding the length of the sentence, not the level of harm that this man purposely did many, many times to a young girl."

In 2015, Niamh Nic Dhomhnail's ex-boyfriend Magnus Meyer Hustveit was given a seven-year suspended sentence after admitting several counts of rape and sexual assault. The following year his sentence was raised to 15 months in prison after the DPP said that the sentence was "unduly lenient".

Niamh says days like today undoubtedly make it harder for victims to come forward.

She said: "Whatever I have read seems to go into great detail into how Tom Humphries has been affected by this. The judgement mentioned he has lost his livelihood, his reputation, the judge considered letters from close friends and considered the impact on his family and his health issues.

"And at the very end, from the news reports that I have seen, there was a small amount on the damage done and the harm done to the individual in question.

"It just shows that they don't get it."
The Taoiseach travels to Paris today for his first bilateral meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Among the matters to be discussed is the issue of getting a good deal for Ireland and Europe in the Brexit talks.
Women's rights groups in Portugal have reacted angrily to a court decision that quoted the Bible in justifying a suspended sentence for a man convicted of assaulting his ex-wife with a spiked bat because of alleged adultery.

The man was given a 15-month suspended sentence and a fine of 1,750 for using a bat spiked with nails to assault the woman in the street in 2015, leaving her covered in cuts and bruises.

The prosecutor had argued the sentence was too lenient and asked an appeal court for prison time of three years and six months, but judges rejected his request.

In a written ruling, the judges expressed "some understanding" for the attacker, saying a woman's adultery is "a very serious offence against a man's honour and dignity".

They noted the Bible says an adulterous woman should be punished by death and also cited a 1886 Portuguese law that gave only symbolic sentences to men who killed their wives for suspected adultery.

The judges at the appeal court in Porto, Portugal's second-largest city, wrote that they were making reference to the Bible and an old law "to stress that a woman's adultery amounts to conduct which society has always condemned and condemned very strongly".

The written ruling became public this week and sparked outrage on Portuguese social media, with rights groups speaking out.

The Women's Alternative and Response Union described the ruling as "inadmissible" because it legitimised violence against women and blamed the victim.

It said the separation of powers in Portugal means there is no place for the Bible in the courts.

The group plans to stage street protests on Friday.

Portugal's Superior Magistrates Council, an oversight body, said it had taken note of the "vivid criticism from broad sections of public opinion", but added courts are independent and it could not intervene, even when faced with "archaic, inappropriate or unfortunate" comments by judges.

The woman could appeal to Portugal's higher courts.

AP
It is up to the UK to decide whether there is a good Brexit deal - or even if the country decides to leave the European Union at all, Donald Tusk has told British MEPs.

The European Council president said it was up to Theresa May's Government whether there is a "good deal, no deal or no Brexit" at all.

Meanwhile, the EU's chief Brexit negotiator indicated that agreement on a free trade deal with Britain after it leaves the European Union will take years to complete.

Michel Barnier said the discussions would be very different from the first phase of the negotiations on the terms of Britain's withdrawal and would entail "risks".

His comments came after Mrs May told British MPs there could be no transition period after Britain leaves the EU unless there was agreement on a trade deal.

In a Commons statement, the British Prime Minister said she remained confident that a deal was possible following the latest EU summit last week in Brussels.

However, her remarks caused consternation among opposition MPs who warned the UK was heading for a "cliff-edge" break with the EU which businesses have been desperate to avoid.

Updating the European Parliament on last week's Brussels summit, Mr Tusk stressed his obsession with the unity of the 27 members who will remain in the EU after the UK's departure.

"Ahead of us is still the toughest stress test. If we fail it, the negotiations will end in our defeat," he said.

"We must keep our unity regardless of the direction of the talks. The EU will be able to rise to every scenario as long as we are not divided.

"It is in fact up to London how this will end: With a good deal, no deal or no Brexit.

"But in each of these scenarios we will protect our common interest only by being together."

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker moved to reassure the UK that there was no "hostile" agenda from Brussels and a "no-deal" scenario was "not our working assumption".

Mr Juncker told MEPs in Strasbourg: "The Commission is not negotiating in a hostile mood. We want a deal. Those who don't want a deal - the no-dealers - they had no friends in the Commission."

Leaders of the other 27 EU member states agreed on Friday to begin discussions among themselves on a possible transition period - prompting hopes in Downing Street that they will agree to move on to trade talks in December.

In an interview with France's Les Echoes newspaper, Mr Barnier said agreement on a time-limited transition period after Britain leaves the bloc in March 2019 should be possible.

"If we reach an agreement on the orderly withdrawal of the United Kingdom, such a period, both short and framed, is possible," he said.

"To my mind, it makes sense that it covers the financial period, so until 2020. It would leave us more time to prepare for the future relationship."

However he warned that the negotiations would continue to be "difficult" and that agreeing the future relationship between the EU and the UK would take time.

"The two phases are difficult. The second will be very different and will last several years," he said.

"It is truly unique because, instead of promoting regulatory convergence, it will aim to frame a difference.

"It will involve risks, including about its political ratification, making all the more necessary transparency around these topics."
Elephant poaching in Africa has declined for the fifth year in a row, experts have said.

But elephant populations continue to fall due to illegal killing and other human activities, while seizures of large scale illegal ivory shipments were at record highs in 2016, a new report reveals.

In East Africa, where elephant populations have nearly halved in a decade, illegal killing has dropped back to pre-2008 levels.

In southern Africa, elephant numbers are stable or increasing, but in central Africa illegal killing remained very high, the report from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) said.

It also revealed that global illegal ivory trade transactions remained as high as in the previous years, which could be down to scaled up enforcement efforts, or to a "panic sell-off" by traffickers as domestic bans come into place in key countries.

With the US, China, the UK and Hong Kong among the parts of the world already implementing or planning the closure of domestic ivory markets, there are also reports that the price of ivory has plummeting 50% in the past few years.

But there is also evidence that ivory is being processed in Africa for Asian markets, with smaller volumes of "worked" ivory already made into ornaments which can be carried through air check-in and carry-on luggage or couriers.

Cites general secretary John Scanlon said: "Eastern Africa has been badly affected by the surge in poaching over the last 10 years, and has experienced an almost 50% reduction in elephant population.

"There has, however, been a steady decline in poaching levels since its peak in 2011, and the analysis from 2016 concludes that overall poaching trends have now dropped to pre-2008 levels.

"This shows us what is possible through sustained and collective front-line enforcement and demand reduction efforts, coupled with strong political support."

He added the rising amount of illegal ivory seized could be down to more enforcement, a time lag between poaching and trafficking or stockpiles entering the illegal trade.

"But the spike in seizures of illegally traded ivory in 2016 may also be an indication that ivory trafficking has been influenced by the prospect of greater controls, the imminent domestic ban in several countries and anticipation of continued drop of price.

"As a result, international syndicates behind this poaching and smuggling may be involved in a panic sell-off as they realise that speculating on extinction was a bad bet, with an ever-increasing risk of getting caught", he added.

Colman O Criodain, WWF wildlife policy manager, said: "The news that poaching is in decline may appear positive, but the reality for elephants is far more complex.

"While some regions are showing promising signs that frontline efforts to prevent poaching are working in hotspots such as Central Africa, the killing of elephants for their tusks continues unabated."

And he said that while strides were being made to close legal ivory markets, the emphasis now was on enforcing such legislation and closing loopholes that allowed trade to continue.

"With an average of 55 elephants being killed every day, there is no time to waste, we must act now", he urged.
British Police are investigating after hackers stole data from a cosmetic surgery clinic, whose celebrity clients include Katie Price.

London Bridge Plastic Surgery says it's "horrified" its patients were targeted in the cyber attack, reported to police last Tuesday.

No arrests have been made as of yet.

The group, known as The Dark Overlord are threatening to release photos from the clinic's celebrity customers.

The firm has said it has been hacked and that it is working to establish exactly what has been stolen.
French president Emmanuel Macron has warned British prime minister Theresa May it is up to her to find solutions for the Irish border crisis, as he insisted the issue remains "at the heart" of the EU discussions, writes Fiachra O'Cionnaith.

Speaking alongside Taoiseach Leo Varadkar after a bilateral meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Mr Macron said France stands firmly behind Ireland's interests on the issue.
Abortions have risen to an "alarming level", leading Catholics in the UK have said.

In a statement marking the 50th anniversary of the UK's 1967 Abortion Act, Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland said that when the Act became law "few envisaged" the current rate of abortions.

In 2016, there were 190,406 abortions carried out in England and Wales and 12,063 in Scotland, according to figures from the British Department of Health and NHS Scotland.

The joint statement from the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales and the Bishops' Conference of Scotland said: "Even despite the concerns raised at the time, it would, perhaps, have been difficult to predict that the number of abortions in our countries would have increased to such an alarming level."

They also said that the term "choice" had come to mean "doing whatever I feel to be right for me" and rather than taking into account a "wider set of fundamental values".

Meanwhile the bishops also said that there has been an "erosion of respect" for medical professionals who conscientiously object to participate in an abortion.

Medical and healthcare workers face "increasing difficulty" combining their work and personal convictions, they added.

"Over the last 50 years, the bishops of our countries, along with many other people, have spoken consistently in favour of the intrinsic value of human life and both the good of the child in the womb and the good of the mother," they said in their statement.

"This anniversary provides an opportunity to lament the loss of life due to abortion and seek a change of minds and hearts about the good of the child in the womb and the care of mothers who are pregnant.

"Fifty years ago, few envisaged the possibility that there would be almost 200,000 abortions in Great Britain.

"Every abortion is a tragedy and few consider that abortion is the desirable or best solution to a pregnancy, which may be challenging on account of many different factors.

"Today the language of 'choice' dominates discourse about marriage, gender, family and abortion. This needs further exploration.

"Choice has come to mean doing whatever I feel to be right for me - a very subjective view of the good - rather than taking into account a wider set of fundamental values.

"This is a very inadequate understanding of free choice, which requires an education in important truths about what is truly good and the possibility of other options.

"In this case, these must include the good of the unborn child, care and support for pregnant mothers and the responsibility of the father."

They added: "This 50th anniversary needs to bring about a new debate to change attitudes towards human life in the womb, to promote what it means to make good and authentic choices, and to protect and care for mothers and their children."

In 1968, the year the Act came into effect, there were 23,641 abortions in England and Wales.

This rose to 54,819 the next year.

The number of abortions in England and Wales peaked in 2007 when there were 205,598 pregnancy terminations..

In Scotland there were 1,500 abortions in 1968 and the figure peaked in 2008, when there were 13,908.
The University of Bristol has signed a new three-year partnership agreement with Santander Universities which will build on a decade of partnership working and philanthropic support.

Over the course of ten years, Bristol and Santander have been working together to support mobility, scholarships, internships and enterprise at the University.

The relationship began in 2008 when the University received funding to support scholarships for postgraduate students from Central and South America, Portugal and Spain. This philanthropic support has continued to grow with Santander Universities donating over 1 million to support a diverse range of initiatives that have enriched the lives of Bristol students, and encouraged them as they work to fulfil their potential.

This week the University and Santander signed a new agreement that will see the close partnership continue for a further three years with support for undergraduate mobility, scholarships, internships, the New Enterprise Competition and the Students Union awards.

Since 2008 Santanders philanthropic support has had a tremendous impact including:

Offering 663 undergraduate year-abroad travel awards

Providing 222 scholarships to Bristol students

Supporting 111 internships at 71 companies

Directly supporting 44 new enterprises through our New Enterprise Competition

Professor Hugh Brady, Vice-Chancellor and President at the University of Bristol, said: We are delighted that Santanders support of the University will continue. Our ten-year anniversary provides a great opportunity to look back on what we have achieved together, celebrate our successes, and reflect upon the ways in which we can continue to provide the kind of university education that sets our graduates apart. It also offers us a fitting opportunity to say thank you to Santander Universities for a decade of generosity.

Matt Hutnell, Managing Director of Santander Universities, added: Santander is committed to supporting higher education as well as local communities across the UK. Our partnership is a great example of how two very different institutions can work together and run joint programmes that help both our students and support our local community. We are delighted to extend our collaboration agreement with the University of Bristol and very much look forward to this relationship developing further in the coming years.

As part of the 10th anniversary celebrations the University also took the opportunity to induct Matt Hutnell and Santander Universities into the Dorothy Hodgkin Circle of Discovery.

Stephen O'Connor, Director of Development and Alumni Relations at the University of Bristol, said: This is one of our newly launched Giving Circles which formally recognise our donors and honour their generosity.

It is very fitting that Matt and Santander Universities will be included in the Dorothy Hodgkin Circle because of the immense contribution they have made to our students in enriching their studies and time at Bristol.
Latest News Regional hotspots record sharp falls in value, new data shows Value declines have become more geographically broad-based over the three months to October

How many Aussies don't regularly review finances? Money also a big source of stress, NAB survey reveals

Consistency, clarity and a client-by-client focus have been named as key factors behind how National Australia Bank ( NAB ) seeks to grow the third party channel.We want to become the bank for brokers, NAB executive general manager of broker partnerships, Anthony Waldron , told Australian Broker. We want to be that bank that everybody knows is supporting the industry.As the broking industry has grown and been thrust into the spotlight, there is opportunity to harness that growth, he said.NAB has built trust with brokers through a consistent strategy and clear focus around growing the industry through periods of change such as the Sedgwick report and the ASIC remuneration review, he added.In terms of building trust with consumers, Waldron said NAB has committed to a client-by-client focus.We appreciate the fact that brokers have trusted their clients with us. Weve got to win that trust and vindicate the decision that theyve made to recommend NAB every single time they bring a customer to us.To do this, NAB has select bankers whose sole job it is to welcome broker-introduced customers and ensure they get the right service to meet their needs.We dont want to see conflict across the different channels and so were trying to do our best to remove that. Were not perfect. We know that but were working on it. Weve implemented a model which is very different to other banks to make sure that we continue to try and get it right.NAB also aims to build trust by taking an active role in leading the industry through significant change over the next few years, he said.An example of this is the Combined Industry Forum which is progressing well, Waldron noted.Its fantastic to see the industry come together. This is something that weve learnt from other industries: that we need to come together and be represented as one.Waldron concluded, stressing the need to be proactive around industry-led regulation and ensure that customer outcomes are met.Its incredibly important that we stay ahead of that curve and focus on making change that makes a better outcome for the customer, makes it easier for customers, and ultimately helps brokers make sure that they are capturing all of the right information on a customers circumstances.
How you can help Give A Christmas to Lower Bucks families in need
A 24-year-old man is facing a slew of felony charges for illegal straw purchase of 21 guns at gun stores, almost exclusively in Bucks County. Leonard Truesdale was arraigned on Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2022, on 21 counts each of making false statements on firearm purchase forms, criminal conspiracy to make false statements on firearm purchase forms and selling or transferring...
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October 31, 2022

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How Neanderthals influenced human genetics at the crossroads of Asia and Europe

Western Asia. A new study examines the DNA that modern human populations in this region inherited from Neanderthals. The area holds a unique position in the story of human history: It may be where the ancestors of modern humans first interbred with Neanderthals. Credit: Keepscases , via Wikimedia Commons

The region holds a unique position in the story of human evolution

As far as human history goes, this area was the stepping stone for the peopling of all of Eurasia. 

BUFFALO, N.Y.  When the ancestors of modern humans migrated out of Africa, they passed through the Middle East and Turkey before heading deeper into Asia and Europe.

Here, at this important crossroads, its thought that they encountered and had sexual rendezvous with a different hominid species: the Neanderthals. Genomic evidence from past studies shows that this ancient interbreeding occurred, and scientists believe that Western Asia is the most likely spot where it happened.

Now, a new study is exploring the legacy of these interspecies trysts, with a focus on Western Asia, where the first relations may have taken place. The research, published on Oct. 13 in Genome Biology and Evolution, analyzes the genetic material of people living in the region today, identifying DNA sequences inherited from Neanderthals.

As far as human history goes, this area was the stepping stone for the peopling of all of Eurasia, says Omer Gokcumen, PhD, an assistant professor of biological sciences in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences. This is where humans first settled when they left Africa. It may be where they first met Neanderthals. From the standpoint of genetics, its a very interesting region.

As part of the project, scientists analyzed 16 genomes belonging to people of Turkish descent.

Within these genomes, the areas where we see relatively common Neanderthal introgression are in genes related to metabolism and immune system responses, says Recep Ozgur Taskent, the studys first author and a UB PhD candidate in biological sciences. Broadly speaking, these are functions that can have an impact on health.

For example, one DNA sequence that originated from Neanderthals includes a genetic variant linked to celiac disease. Another includes a variant tied to a lowered risk for malaria.

The bottom line? The relations that our ancestors had with Neanderthals tens of thousands of years ago may continue to exert an influence on our well-being today, Gokcumen says.

He led the study with Taskent and Mehmet Somel, PhD, from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. Co-authors included Nursen Duha Alioglu and Evrim Fer from the Middle East Technical University, and Handan Melike Donertas from the Middle East Technical University and European Bioinformatics Institute.
On 31 October, a judicial review will decide the fate of Newsons Timber Yard, the oldest surviving historic timber yard in the country. The review will determine if a decision made by Westminster City Council to allow The Grosvenor Estate to redevelop the timber yard is still valid.

In 2016, a Westminster City Council planning committee led by Chair Councillor Robert Davis, granted permission to the Grosvenor Estate to redevelop Newsons Timber Yard into two 10,000 sq ft retail spaces and expensive residential apartments. Councillor Davis has since been moved on from planning department responsibilities by new council leader Councillor Nickie Aiken.

Newsons Timber Yard was opened in 1845 by entrepreneur John Newson and has supplied the RHS Chelsea Flower Show since it began in 1911. The yard has provided the materials used to build modern Belgravia, surviving a fire in 1877 and the Blitz. It was taken over by Travis Perkins in 1998.

Martin Meech, Group Property Director at Travis Perkins, said: The loss of Newsons Timber Yard would be a significant blow to local businesses and the community, but it is also indicative of a wider threat to essential services across the capital.

We have worked alongside the local community in a hard-fought campaign to convince Westminster City Council that Newsons Timber Yard should be saved. Over 2,000 local residents signed petitions urging the Grosvenor Estate to withdraw their planning application, and 350 written objections were submitted by the public to the Council. People in the community want the yard to remain because of the essential service it provides.

The branch plays an important role in the local economy, and has also hosted a number of events for the community  from art competitions in local schools to a commemorative event celebrating its relationship with the Chelsea Flower Show.

Mary Regnier-Leigh, Trustee at the Belgravia Society, added: The Belgravia Society remains united in its conviction that Newsons Timber Yard is part of the heritage of Belgravia and is of significant historical value and should remain for future generations. We have campaigned alongside over 300 objectors, local councillors, trade associations and Travis Perkins to save the timber yard from redevelopment.

We are publishing on our website in the next few days our detailed objections to the development by Grosvenor and our application to list the timber yard as an Asset of Community Value  both rejected by Westminster Council.
Dedicated staff from the Farnham branch of groundwork and civil engineering materials supplier Rudridge have been recognised for their fifteen years combined service.

Lauren Summerfield, senior sales executive, celebrates ten years service while colleague Amanda Till, sales administrator, has been with the firm for five years.

The two employees were presented with the companys long service pin and certificate. Lauren and Amanda will also receive vouchers for the companys internal employee rewards scheme, which can be used online to purchase items from a choice of over 1,000 different outlets.

Clive Summerfield, Regional Director of Rudridge, commented: Our success is driven by the dedication and loyalty of our amazing staff. Lauren and Amanda set very high standards and the support they give to the Farnham branch and the company as a whole is very much appreciated.

Its a real pleasure to congratulate and reward our team members when they reach important milestones like these. We look forward to working with Lauren and Amanda for many more years to come.
Ocean City's Cris Pannullo could be back on 'Jeopardy!' this week

Ocean City man Cris Pannullo has 11 consecutive wins. His reign was paused while 'Jeopardy!' switched to the annual Tournament of Champions
Seventy-seven-year-old jewellery brand Nathella has shut shop due to a financial crunch, closingseven branches across the Tamil Nadu, prompting customers to lodge a complaint against the company and its management. They have been gathering outside the company's outlets, seeking repayment of their deposits for a few days now.

Two days back, a few customers lodged a complaint against the Tambaram branch for defrauding them of their deposits against gold saving schemes.
The Supreme Court on Monday said it "must be clarified" whether the multi-crore six-lane Yamuna Expressway, connecting Greater Noida with Agra in Uttar Pradesh, belonged to a Jaypee Group firm, which wanted to hive it off.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra posed the query to Jaypee Associates after the counsel appearing for IDBI Bank raised objection over the proposal to hive off the 165-kilometre long expressway by the applicant firm.

The apex court was hearing a plea by Jaypee Associates seeking its permission to "hive off" the Yamuna expressway in order to generate money. The company has said it has an offer worth Rs 2,500 crore for hiving off the property.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Jaypee Associates, told the bench that the company has a proposal worth Rs 2,500 crore for the property.

The counsel, appearing for the IDBI Bank, opposed Sibal's contention and claimed they cannot be permitted to hive-off the expressway as the property does not belong to the firm which has come before the court to seek its nod.

"It must also be clarified whether the property belongs to you (Jaypee Associates)," the bench, also comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, asked Sibal.

Sibal argued that the priority of the firm was the homebuyers who had booked flats in their housing projects and they wanted to help them.

He said that Rs 2,500 crore would be used to complete the projects and hand over possession of flats to the buyers.

Meanwhile, the IDBI Bank contended that the group was earlier directed by the court to deposit money by October 27.

The bench, after hearing the brief submissions, asked Sibal to hand over copy of the proposal to Attorney General K K Venugopal and posted the matter for hearing on October 26.

The apex court had on September 11 directed Jaypee Associates, the parent company of Jaypee Infratech, to take prior approval of the court if it wished to sell any asset or property to raise funds to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore to be deposited by it in the apex court registry by October 27 to pay off the troubled home buyers.

Earlier, the Jaypee Group had told the apex court that the company needs to raise funds to deposit Rs 2,000 crore in the apex court registry for paying the troubled home buyers.

The apex court had on September 11, while hearing a plea of home buyers of Jaypee's Wish Town project at Noida in Uttar Pradesh challenging the insolvency proceedings initiated against Jaypee Infratech, had restricted the directors of firm from leaving the country.

It had revived insolvency proceedings against Jaypee Infratech Ltd and given its management control to the Interim Resolution Professional (IRP), appointed by the National Company Law Tribunal, with immediate effect.

The top court had also asked Jaypee Infratech to hand over records to the IRP for drafting a resolution plan, indicating protection of interests of over 32,000 hassled home buyers and creditors.

The apex court while passing slew of directions had stayed any other proceedings instituted against the company for any purpose in any forum like the consumer commission, as IRP has been given control of the company's management.

The court had then said it was not concerned about the interest of company but of the hassled home buyers, who mostly belong to the lower and middle-class strata.

Flat buyers, under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code of 2016, do not fall in the category of secured creditors like banks and hence they can get back their money only if something is left after repaying the secured and operational creditors, one of the pleas filed by some home buyers said.

Hundreds of home buyers have been left in the lurch after the National Company Law Tribunal, on August 10, admitted the IDBI Bank's plea to initiate insolvency proceedings against the debt-ridden realty company for defaulting on a Rs 526 crore loan, the plea said.
The Infosys board on Tuesday cleared former chief executive Vishal Sikka of all allegations of governance failure in the Panaya acquisition, which had led to his exit in August after a prolonged tussle with the companys founders.
Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy on Tuesday expressed his disappointment after the companys board led by Nandan Nilekani gave a clean chit to former chief executive Vishal Sikka over allegations of governance failure in the Panaya acquisition.
Infosys on Tuesday named independent director D Sundaram as the chairperson of the audit committee with immediate effect, replacing Roopa Kudva, not citing any reason for the change.
Infosys Technologies, Indias second-biggest information technology services company, on Tuesday, reaffirmed the previous findings of external investigations into the alleged wrongdoings in the firms Panaya deal and a severance payment to former chief financial officer Rajiv Bansal.
Insolvency: Tatas, Ruias submit bids for debt-laden Essar Steel



Tata Steel and the Ruias themselves have put in bids for debt-laden Essar Steel after the company was put up for sale under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC). Sajjan Jindal-led JSW Steel, aggressive in bidding for Monnet Ispats and Bhushan Steels businesses, is said to have skipped submitting a resolution plan for Essar Steel. (More details)



Inter-state supply may come under GST composition



The composition scheme for small taxpayers that offers easier compliance and a flat rate of tax looks set to be made more attractive as its ambit may be expanded to include inter-state supplies of goods. Besides, the facility of input tax credit may be made available under this scheme. A ministerial panel, led by Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, is expected to finalise the contours of the revised structure in its next meeting on Sunday. (Read more)



From road building to logistics, NHAI to get a makeover



The Union government is planning to enlarge the role of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) beyond just highway construction. It not just wants NHAI to go in for international business but also plan for logistics parks. The NHAIs enhanced role would come along with greater financial autonomy, including raising funds from overseas and renewed focus on building expressways. (Full report)



Infosys likely to name next CEO today



Infosys is likely to name its next chief executive officer on Tuesday. Finding a CEO was among the key tasks taken up by co-founder and Chairman Nandan Nilekani when he took charge in August.
With demand for carbonated soft drinks falling, is shifting focus to value-added packaged water. To begin with, it has launched two vitamin-fortified flavoured drinks  a category it hopes will grow faster in the coming years.
After posting its best-ever quarterly results in the second quarter of the current fiscal year when net profits surged past 300 per cent at Rs 50.78 crore, RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group owned Ltd (PCBL) has earmarked at least Rs 800 crore to further its production capacity.

As part of its brownfield expansion plan, the company will be investing Rs 300 crore over the next 12 months to up its production capacity by 80,000 tonne in Mundra and Palej plants in Gujarat. In a second, PCBL will be coming up with a greenfield plant with an expected 1,20,000 tonne capacity in south India where an investment of Rs. 500-600 crore will be made.
While Amul has been toying with the idea of launching camel milk for quite a while, Bikaner-based Aadvik Foods has beaten the dairy giant to bring not just camel milk, but even milk powder and chocolates to the Indian breakfast table.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan, a staunch US Cold War ally and key player in the US -backed invasion of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has watched warily as Washington has in recent years pivoted towards its arch-foe.
Along the historic streets on the periphery of the famed Old Town Square here, tourists stroll past dozens of souvenir shops, many displaying the same stuffed toy of a wide-eyed and cheerful-looking mole.
It was a pleasant night in September and many Edmonton residents, knowing the long winter was just around the corner, didnt want to miss a chance to enjoy a beautiful evening. The fun came to a tragic halt when five people, including a policeman, were injured following a terrorist attack that played out across the city.
Fighter and transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) today performed breathtaking touch-and-go landings on a stretch of the Lucknow-Agra Expressway here, showing that highways can be used as landing strips in case of any emergency.

Over a dozen IAF planes, including Mirage-2000 fighters and Sukhoi 30s, besides 35,000 kg C-130J Super Hercules aircraft, took part in the exercise near Bangarmau in the district, about 65 km from Lucknow.

Garud Special Forces commandos secured the landing zone as part of the special drill.

The top-of-the-line Sukhoi 30s and Mirage 2000s took off after touching down on the expressway, while the C-130J transport aircraft landed on it.

An Indian Air Force transport aircraft, a C-130 Hercules lands on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway during an IAF drill in Bangarmau, in Unnao district. Photo: PTI

The transport aircraft are meant for humanitarian assistance and relief operations during floods or any other natural calamity, PRO, Defence (Central Command), Gargi Malik Sinha had said.

"The aircraft can bring a large amount of relief material. It can also help evacuate people," she said.

The exercise will test the readiness of the Air Force in situations like war, humanitarian assistance or disaster relief, she said.

The three-hour-long exercise began with IAF's Special Forces Garud commandos getting off the C-130J transport aircraft with their vehicle and taking "positions" on either side of the expressway to secure "their airstrip" for the fighter aircraft.

An Indian Air Force Mirage 2000 fighter jet lands on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway during an IAF drill in Bangarmau, in Unnao district on Tuesday. Photo: PTI

The exercise simulated an emergency situation when airbases, the first target of bombs and missiles, would not be available for air operations, necessitating use of highways as landing strips.

This is the first time a transport aircraft -- a Super Hercules which can carry 200 commandos -- landed on the expressway. Inducted into the Air Force in 2010, each plane costs nearly Rs 900 crore.

Personnel display skills as they return to an Indian Air Force Hercules C-130J aircraft that landed on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway, during an IAF drill in Bangarmau, in Unnao district. Photo: PTI

Mirage-2000 fighters and Sukhoi-30 MKI -- which form the backbone of the IAF's fighter fleet -- have landed on the Yamuna Expressway in the past too, but it was for the first time that a transport aircraft landed on it.

A Mirage-2000 had landed on the Yamuna Expressway near Delhi for the first time in 2015. A similar exercise was conducted in May 2016, when a Mirage-2000 fighter plane touched down on the expressway.

Last November, six Sukhoi-30 jets touched down on a 3.3- km stretch of the Lucknow-Agra Expressway.

Indian Air Force Sukhoi aircraft fly over the Lucknow-Agra Expressway during an IAF drill in Bangarmau, in Unnao district. Photo: PTI

(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.)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said he will visit India in January, six months after his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi visited the Jewish state.

Netanyahu would be only the second Israeli Prime Minister to visit India. His visit next year would be happening almost 15 years after Ariel Sharon visited New Delhi in 2003.

"In the past year, I have visited all the continent besides Antarctica," Netanyahu said at the opening of the Knesset's (Israeli parliament) winter session yesterday.

"And in January, I will make a reciprocal visit to my dear good friend, Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, whose population is a significant part of humanity," he added.

Modi's standalone visit to Israel in July this year celebrated 25 years of establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The Indian Prime Minister skipped Palestine during his trip leading many analysts to say that New Delhi was changing its rules of engagement in the region.

Modi's visit, the first by an Indian Prime Minister, was termed by many as de-hyphenation of New Delhi's ties with the Palestinians.

(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.)
Vijay starrer 'Mersal' has been in the news for a while now. First there was the row over the use of the title, then there was the one over the regulation of ticket prices and finally, once the movie released, its woes continued with the protest by the doctors, and the latest, by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state unit for its dialogues referring to The Goods and Services Tax and Digital India. However, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, senior party leader P Chidambaram, DMK working president M K Stalin, veteran star Kamal Haasan and a host of Tamil cinema industry representatives have come out in support of the film crew on the issue.
In what is being seen as a shift from its previous policy on (J&K), the Modi government on Monday announced it would start a "sustained dialogue" process with all stakeholders, including separatists, and appointed former Intelligence Bureau (IB) director Dineshwar Sharma as its special representative.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani will hold detailed talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday furthering the shared objective of promoting security and stability in Afghanistan, and efforts to combat the menace of terrorism.
Modern-day elections are increasingly defined by two sides  those who trust traditional media and those who rely on the social networks to provide an alternative, which is far more likely to deliver . While in the US, the nature of the conflict is clouded by the social medias prevalence, Germany is an example of a society where the battle lines are clearly drawn.
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In a move that is likely to bring down voice calling charges further, sectoral regulator the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has clarified that  including voice calling  can be provided by telecom operators using any internet connection and not just through their own networks.
One of the major promises of the Bharatiya Janata Party government when it came to power in 2014 was to be coal surplus by increasing production and improving supply. State-owned monopoly Coal India was given a tall target of 1 billion tonnes of coal production by 2019; three arterial railway lines were started from Odisha, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh; and a plan was drafted to increase the number of railway rakes for coal supply to power units.
Collections under the goods and services tax (GST) rose by Rs 1,481 crore to Rs 92,150 crore in September against Rs 90,669 crore in the previous month. However, these were marginally lower by Rs 133 crore than Rs 92,283 crore in July.
Contrary to the perception that India has not gained from the free trade pact with South Korea, a government study shows New Delhis exports of aluminium and man-made yarn, among other zero-tariff items, has seen a rise since the pact came into being seven years ago.
The urgent need for a totalisation agreement, besides the long pending issue of higher charges for H-1B visas, will be taken up by India in its first ministerial-level deliberation with President Donald Trump-led United States later this week.
The Indian Railways just can't seem to catch a break, be it unfortunate accidents that have cost lives or contaminated and poor quality food being served to passengers.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the Rs 600 crore roll-on, roll-off (RoRo) Ghogha-Dahej ferry service as the first of its kind, not only for India but also for Southeast Asia, while inaugurating the project during his recent visit to Gujarat.
A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the shocking currency ban on November 8 last year, a CEO of a large textile company called a meeting of his core team in his Mumbai office. The agenda was to discuss how to handle the currency ban in such a way that it should not impact his companys sales. The meeting, which included the chief financial officer and chartered accountants, made a plan on how to ring fence the company from any negative impact of the currency ban.
The NDA government has a much better track record than the previous UPA regime in budgetary allocation and spending in the farm sector, Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said at the Business Standard Agriculture Round Table On Doubling Farmers Income by 2022 on Tuesday.
The plan chalked out by Suresh Prabhu as railway minister to garner Rs 15,000 crore as revenues over the next 10 years through a rail display network (RDN), enabling real-time information to passengers, has been delayed with the new minister, Piyush Goyal, planning to change the terms of the contract.
After seeing a fall for three months in a row, ready-made garment (RMG) exports rose by 25 per cent in rupee terms and 30 per cent in dollar terms in September. But exporters say this will not be sustainable since government policies are not favourable.
Discussions between US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who arrived in New Delhi on Tuesday evening, and the Indian leadership are likely to see a congruence of views on the situation in South Asia and the need to strengthen security collaboration in the Indo-Pacific area.
In her first foreign trip as defence minister, fired shots across the bows of both China and Pakistan on Tuesday, without naming the two countries.
The governments recapitalisation plan can give a big push to the anaemic credit growth in the system, as now will have enough money to take care of their stressed loans as well as to support green shoots of recovery in certain pockets in the industrial sector.
Government of India and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Sign $300 Million Loan to Promote Further Fiscal Reforms in West Bengal

The Asian Development Bank and the Government of India signed a $300 million loan today to continue a series of fiscal reforms in the State of West Bengal to improve the quality of public service delivery.

The Second West Bengal Development Finance Program targets a further increase in public investment through reduction of unproductive expenditure, and savings from efficiencies in revenue collections. The Program will build on earlier intervention under Phase I of the project through the $400 million Program that targeted a comprehensive fiscal consolidation program in the state.

The Program aims to further deepen the reforms with focus on expenditure rationalization, improvement in revenue administration, and facilitation of more private investment in the state said Mr. Sameer Kumar Khare, Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance who signed the loan on behalf of the Government of India.

The new Program will create the fiscal space necessary to sustain higher public investment in the State which could put the states finances on a balanced and sustainable path, said Mr. Kenichi Yokoyama, ADB Country Director for India, who signed for ADB.

The program agreement was signed by Mr. Parwez Ahmad Siddiqui, Secretary, Finance Department, Government of West Bengal.

ADBs first Program focused on augmenting public investments that reached almost 1.3%, as a percentage of gross state domestic product, in FY2016 from 0.5% in FY2012 while the fiscal deficit reduced to 2.2% from 3.4% in the same period. The new Program will not only target public investment but would also support private investments more directly by creating an infrastructure facility to support project preparation, development, and appraisal, with emphasis on public-private partnerships in health and education. It also seeks to simplify the registration and licensing procedure for micro, small and medium enterprises.

Spread over two years, the Program will also carry forward reforms such as linking medium term expenditure plans to actual budgets, supported by strengthening internal audit system, and enhancements in the integrated financial management system (IFMS). Other activities under the program include improved tax monitoring and continued support for information technology systems in strengthening tax and land administration.

Capital outlay as a percentage of gross state domestic product is expected to rise to 2.2% by FY2022 under the second program, with improved budget allocations geared toward development expenditure.

Accompanying the loan is a technical assistance grant of $500,000 to strengthen key institutions responsible for carrying out fiscal management reforms in the state.
IAF Landing Operations on Agra-Lucknow Expressway

Indian Air Force carried out major landing operations on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway, about 60 km west of Lucknow, today. The series of landings took place close to Bangarmau in Unnao District of Uttar Pradesh, where a 3 km stretch was specially prepared for such operations. The landing operations commenced at around 1015 hrs and continued till about 1200 hrs. A total of sixteen aircraft participated in the operation which comprised IAFs frontline Air Superiority Fighters including the Sukhoi-30, Mirage-2000 and Jaguar fighter aircraft. These aircraft took off from Bareilly, Gwalior and Gorakhpur respectively. In addition, the IAF carried out drills in which Garud Commandos were inserted and extricated for ground operations, by the C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft which took off from Hindon airbase.

A team of Senior IAF Officials headed by Senior Air Staff Officer HQ CAC, IAF Allahabad Air Marshal AS Butola were present to oversee the operations. While the operation was conducted under the aegis of HQ CAC, Bamrauli Allahabad, Air Force Station Bakshi Ka Talab Station Commander, Gp Capt J Suares and his team, were responsible for the overall control and coordination of the exercise.

On site arrangements were made for a Mobile Air Traffic Control, Radar Control, Meteorological Facility, Aerospace Safety and Security Control. In addition, to deal with any situation, crash, firefighting, rescue and medical teams were positioned. IAF sought assistance from State Government authorities for temporary closure of the expressway and other matters like crowd control, etc. A large number of police personnel were stationed along the stretch to ensure smooth conduct of operations.

The exercise commenced with an impressive short landing by the C-130 which on its landing roll itself started off loading the Garud Commandos and their vehicle in manoeuvre called Combat ERO (Engine Running Offload). Immediately on disembarking from the C-130, the Commandos took up position on either side of the airstrip to cordon it off for the fighter operations. This was followed by two sets of 3-3 Mirages, five SU30s and three Jaguars. All 14 fighter aircraft carried out a roller/touch and go manoeuvre on the expressway.

The C-130 then returned for another short landing to extricate the Garud Commandos.

Over the past few years, IAF has been increasing its efforts to utilise certain straight stretches of National Highways for emergency landings. Such highway stretches are planned to be used in emergencies, if an active airport is not available for some reason. These operations increase the flexibility in the use of Air Power. In addition, use of transport aircraft for quick insertion of forces for Human Assistance and Disaster Relief into civil area and Special Forces in case of contingencies has been validated.

IAF had already carried out landings by fighter aircraft for the first time on the Yamuna expressway on 21 May 2015. The stretch of Agra  Lucknow expressway was earlier activated for the first time for IAF operations in November 2016 in which six fighter aircraft of the IAF landed on the expressway. However, in this exercise, IAF included the Jaguar fighter aircraft for the first time. Also for the first time, IAFs C-130J transport aircraft participated in highway landing operations for insertion and extrication of Garud Special Forces. While the operations on 24 October 2017 required the closure of the portion of the expressway for road traffic, through the excellent support of the UP State Government and UPEIDA, once the planned works are completed, such road traffic closure will not be required henceforth. Two diversion roads on either side of the airstrip are near completion. In addition, wire fencing on both sides is also being undertaken to keep the airstrip clear of stray animals. Two parking areas for aircraft at both ends of the airstrip are also nearing completion.

Several countries like Germany, Sweden, South Korea, Taiwan, Finland, Switzerland, Poland, Singapore, Czechoslovakia, Pakistan, etc. have dedicated stretches on their highways and expressways for aircraft to land and take off in emergencies or war like events.

This operation has majorly boosted IAFs capability to undertake unhindered operations even during non-availability of standard runways. It has demonstrated the expert flying skills of its fighter and transport aircrew, and the capability of its ground crew in activating such expressway airstrips on short notice. Such activations of highway stretches all across India are planned to be practised regularly by the IAF in future.

MJPS/NA/GM/PCJ/RP
INS Sukanya at Indonesia for Coordinated Patrol of IMBL

In pursuance with Indias Act East Policy, Indian Naval Ship Sukanya under the command of Commander SA Deodhar, NM arrived at Belawan Indonesia this morning to participate in the 30th edition of CORPAT (Coordinated Patrol) and 3rd Bilateral exercise between the Indian Navy and the Indonesian Navy. The exercise is aimed to foster closer maritime ties with countries located on the rim of the Indian Ocean.

The upcoming bi-lateral exercise CORPAT scheduled from 24 Oct 05 Nov 17 is a demonstration of Indias commitment to its ties with Indonesia and to the maritime security in the Indian Ocean Region. The two navies have been carrying out Coordinated Patrols (CORPAT) on respective sides of the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) twice a year since 2002.

The aim of the CORPAT is to enhance mutual understanding and inter-operability between the navies, prosecute vessels involved in unlawful activities, conduct SAR and take measures against Sea Pollution.

Defence relations between India and Indonesia have been growing steadily with regular joint activities and interactions between the armed forces of the two countries. These interactions would also provide opportunities for extensive operational and training engagements and contribute substantively to the maintenance of good order at sea. The exercise seeks to strengthen the existing bonds of friendship between India and Indonesia, and underscore Indias partnership and solidarity with friendly countries of the region. As part of the Indian Governments vision of SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region), the Indian Navy has also been involved in assisting countries in the Indian Ocean Region with EEZ surveillance, Search and Rescue and other capability enhancement activities.

During the stay at Port Belawan, various activities such as official calls, formal reception on board ship, ship open to visitors, guided tours for Indian naval personnel and professional interaction between naval personnel of both the nations have been planned.

CGR/VZ/126-17
PM greets UN on United Nations Day

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Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has conveyed his greetings to the UN on United Nations Day. .

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Greetings on UN Day. We appreciate UNs efforts in promoting world peace and laud the wide range of initiatives under its guidance", the Prime Minister said. .

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His Excellency Mr Ashraf Ghani, the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, called on the President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind, at Rashtrapati Bhavan today (October 24, 2017). .

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Welcoming the Afghan President to India, the President expressed admiration for the astute leadership that he has provided to Afghanistan through difficult times. He also commended Mr Ghani for strengthening bilateral relations between India and Afghanistan. .

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The President said that for India, Afghanistan is not just a strategic partner, but a nation that evokes endearing affection. He recalled President Ghanis speech at the Heart of Asia Summit in Amritsar in December 2016, and his visit to the Golden Temple. He added that civilisational links and people-to-people contacts provide a strong foundation to our ever-growing friendship. .

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The President said that in recent times, the two countries have deepened their strategic partnership. The India-Afghanistan Trade and Investment Show in New Delhi brought our businessmen together and generated business worth over US $ 200 million. .

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The President expressed happiness at the opening of the air freight corridor between Kandahar and Kabul and Delhi. He also noted that the Afghan cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat have been connected directly by air to Delhi. .

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The President said that securing sustained peace and security remain the key fundamentals in leading Afghanistan on the pathway of economic recovery and growth. Unfortunately, mindless and senseless violence is being imposed on the people of Afghanistan. President Kovind strongly condemned recent terror attacks in Afghanistan, including in the provinces of Kabul, Kandahar, Ghazni and Paktia,that have resulted in over 200 innocent people being killed. .

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The President said that India itself has been victim of state-sponsored, cross-border terrorism for decades. We can fully empathise with the ongoing quest of the Afghan people to secure peace. India believes that whatever initiatives are taken for bringing peace in Afghanistan should be Afghan-led and Afghan-controlled. .

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The Western Air Command, Station Commanders Conference was held on 23 and 24 Oct 17 at New Delhi. Air Officers Commanding / Station Commanders of all Air Force Stations under Headquarter Western Air Command and all Principal Staff officers at HQ WAC attended the conference. The Chief Guest, Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa, PVSM AVSM YSM VM ADC, Chief of Air Staff was received by Air Marshal C Hari Kumar, AVSM VM VSM ADC, Air Officer Commanding in Chief of Western Air Command. On arrival, the CAS was presented a ceremonial guard of honour..

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Addressing the Commanders, the CAS emphasized the need to enhance mission capability of all platforms and weapon systems. He reiterated the need for development and upkeep of operational infrastructure and continuous orientation of human resource so as to absorb induction of new technologies for a smooth transition of the IAF into a potent Aerospace power. The Chief re-emphasized the importance and pivotal role of Western Air Command in all future conflicts and in humanitarian assistance and Disaster Relief Missions. He appreciated the aerospace safety record of WAC and urged the commanders to continue the earnest efforts towards creating an environment for safe operations. He appreciated the rapid response and untiring efforts of Western Air Command in providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in recent times, which included numerous casualty evacuation and transportation of live organs. He exhorted the commanders to revise their plans in consonance with lessons learnt during various exercises to bolster the mission capability of WAC. CAS made a special mention on the need to maintain very high levels of vigil to ensure security of our air bases in the backdrop of the existing internal security situation. .

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During the conference, discussions and reviews were focused on critical analysis and measures to enhance operational preparedness, further improvement in maintenance practices and ensuring fool-proof physical and cyber security..

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The CAS was accompanied by Mrs Kamalpreet Dhanoa, President Air Force Wives Welfare Association (AFWWA), who was received by Mrs Devika Hari Kumar, President AFWWA (Regional). Mrs Kamalpreet Dhanoa presided over the Board of Management Meeting of AFWWA (Regional) and reviewed various welfare activities undertaken by local AFWWA Units of Western Air Command. She also interacted with the Sanginis of WAC..

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Chinese President Xi Jinping, front row center, leads other cadres to raise their hands to show approval of work reports during the closing ceremony for the 19th Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. (Photo: AP|PTI)
EU President Donald Tusk said on Tuesday that the outcome of fraught talks was "up to London" and that abandoning the EU divorce remained an option for the UK.

"The EU will be able to rise to every scenario as long as we are not divided," Tusk told MEPs at a session of the European Parliament in the eastern French city of Strasbourg.

"It is in fact up to London how this will end: with a good deal, no deal or no Brexit," he said, reiterating the controversial idea that the EU was open to backtracking on Britain's decision to leave the bloc.

"We have managed to build and maintain unity among the 27 (remaining EU members), but ahead of us is still the toughest stress test," said former Polish prime minister Tusk.

The comments come just days after European Union leaders threw British Prime Minister Theresa May a lifeline in talks, agreeing to start preparations for the next stage of negotiations on post- trade and a transition deal.

Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, also in European Parliament, strongly underlined that the commission, which handles the talks for the EU, was approaching the negotiations in good faith.

"The commission is not negotiating in a hostile mood," said Juncker, who on Monday had to firmly deny a media report saying May begged him for help in the talks.

"We want a deal. Those who don't want a deal, the no dealers, they have no friends in the commission," said Juncker.

The slow progress in the two years of Brexit talks has stoked fears Britain could leave the European Union in March 2019 without a deal in place, risking economic and legal chaos.

May is meanwhile struggling to contain divisions within her government and the belief among Brexit hardliners that Britain can afford to take a tough stance with Europe.
Former Finance Minister was elected speaker of Germany's lower house of parliament on Tuesday, tasked with keeping order in a body where decades of conciliatory conventions are under threat from the arrival of the far right.


For decades, has filled homes across the world with bookcases, beds, cardboard boxes and countless tea lights. The companys business model, based on huge production runs of identical stock, allowed it to export Scandinavian style at an affordable price.
Is President Trump a Twitter addict? He may not know  but he could find out, as could members of the general public concerned about their own use of social media.
The threat from North Korea has grown to a critical and imminent level and the United States, Japan and South Korea must address the matter, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told his US and South Korean counterparts in talks on Monday.
In a hard-hitting attack on Pakistan for its support to terrorism, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday said time has come for Islamabad to make a clear choice, suggesting the country may have to pay a price under the US' new South Asia policy if it does not stop backing terror groups.

Hailing India's role in Afghanistan, he said the new US policy was an important tribute to importance of New Delhi in bringing peace and stability to the region, hit by the spectre of terror.

In an address at Vivekananda Foundation, Ghani said if Afghanistan was not given transit access to Wagah and Attari for trade with India via Pakistan, then Kabul will also restrict Islamabad's access to central Asia.

Identifying terrorism as a major challenge facing the region, Ghani, in a clear reference to Pakistan, said unfettered support is being provided to the terror groups which are destabilising the entire region.

"Sanctuaries are provided, logistics are provided, training is provided, ideological base is provided...Pakistan has come to a juncture and it needs to make a choice," he said, asserting, "Our reaction will be determined by its choices."



Talking about the peace process, Ghani suggested that he does not ignore India's role in bringing peace and stability to the war-ravaged country. He said the next round of Kabul process will be held in January next year.

He said the South Asia strategy announced by the Trump Administration was a "game changer" as it recommends multi- dimensional condition-based approach for the region.

"It (the strategy) singled out India for engagement in this approach," he told the select gathering of a number of foreign envoys, former diplomats, strategic affairs experts and intellectuals.

Asked about defence cooperation with India, he referred to supply of four attack helicopters to Afghan Air Force by India.

"Our collaboration with India is very open. We are delighted with the four helicopters. More Mi 35 helicopters are welcome," he said refusing to elaborate further.

The Afghan president also rejected suspicion in Islamabad that India and Afghanistan have joined hands against Pakistan.

"There are no secret agreement between Afghanistan and India. There are no secret Indian facilities. There is no destabilisation of any neighbours from Afghanistan taking place through implicit or explicit collusion. Lets get out of the word of fiction," he said.

Talking about the fragile peace process in Afghanistan, he said effort will be to win the war morally.

"We would like to see a push back from Pakistan vis-a-vis Taliban and not a Pakistan managed peace process with the Taliban. We want peace with Pakistan and that is a fundamental issue for our stability," said the Afghan president.

Seen as a message to Pakistan, he said if the "hand of peace" is rejected, then he was "ready to serve with honour as the commander in chief to the last breadth into the last drop of blood."



Ghani said lack of a regional consensus has eluded peace and stability in Afghanistan and rued about "fragmented response" to terrorism.

"Our objective is to pursue the goal of a stable and peaceful Afghanistan within the context of a stable and peaceful region," he said.

Ghani said connectivity was key for integration of the Asian economy and all stakeholders must work unitedly to realise the true potential of trade and commerce of the region.

"We are clear, we want to be what we call an Asian roundabout. This is important for integration of the Asian economy," he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping declares the closing of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at the Great Hall of the People on Tuesday | Photo: Reuters
Shares of smallcap companies continued their upward movement with the S&P hitting a new high of 17,240 on the BSE in intra-day on Tuesday.
Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday morning arrived in Delhi.

President, Ghani, who is in India for a one-day official visit will build upon bilateral ties between the two countries.

During his visit, President Ghani will meet President Ram Nath Kovind.

Later, he will hold delegation level talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will also host lunch in the honour of the Afghan leader.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will also call on President Ghani.

President Ghani will also give a public address at Vivekanand International Foundation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani met his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday.

President Ghani, who is in New Delhi on a day-long official visit, also met India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj earlier in the day and discussed bilateral and regional issues.

The visiting dignitory is expected to hold delegation-level talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The visit has come at a time when the Afghanistan leadership is focusing on stabilising the war-torn country and brokering peace with the Taliban rebels.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Afghanistan Ministry of Defense (MoD) has welcomed reports suggesting that United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has decided to increase targeted attacks on Taliban leaders.

As per Khaama Press, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defense Gen. Dawlat Waziri said that Afghan security forces will also increase operations against the Taliban militants.

Afghan security forces are presently conducting airstrikes, special operations and night raids on militants' hideouts, informed Waziri.

Reports had been circulating that the CIA was sending small teams of highly experienced officers and contractors to track down and eliminate Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

Notably, CIA Director Mike Pompeo earlier said that the US wants to coerce the Taliban into negotiating peace with Afghan government by beating them in the battlefield first. It also forms an integral policy measure of Trump administration.

"President (Trump) has made it very clear. We are going to do everything we can . to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table in Afghanistan with the Taliban having zero hope that they can win this thing on the battlefield," the CIA chief said during his speech at a US think tank last week.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Women Activists on Monday applauded the decision of Supreme Court in connection with Bilkis Bano gangrape case.

Speaking to ANI, Women activist Ruby Mukherjee said, "Supreme court now wants to know whether she has got relief and justice. Moreover, Supreme Court must give her a lump sum compensation because all of her family people died after the Godhra incident and she was being raped."

The Supreme Court sought a detailed reply from the Gujarat Government within four weeks in connection with the case.

"The Supreme Court has asked Gujarat government what departmental action was taken against the policemen, who were on duty but did not stop the crime from happening and did not come forward to protect Bilkis Bano.

They may not have been tried under Indian Penal code but department action was nonetheless required to be taken for dereliction of duty," said another activist Abha Singh.

The apex court also directed the state government to apprise it about the departmental action taken against the policemen found guilty of negligence of duty.

In March 2002, Bilkis Bano was gang raped and left for dead alongside 14 members of her family, including her 3-year-old daughter, during the Gujarat riots.

She was then five months pregnant, when rioters attacked her in Vadodara.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Errors and small clues left behind by hackers and other types of cyber attackers can reveal a lot about a cyber espionage attack in terms of attribution and providing valuable intelligence on the people behind it, says a Kaspersky Lab senior researcher who is based in Australia.

In an interview given to ANI on the sidelines of the recently organised the third annual APAC Cyber Security Weekend, which was held on the theme "Cyberespionage in APAC: A Real Threat, recently in Phuket, Thailand, Kaspersky's Senior Security Researcher Noushin Shabab said,"Cyber security researchers examine cyber espionage campaigns by chasing trails of clues and careless mistakes. Once we have all the necessary pieces of the puzzle, we share evidences with fellow experts to be able to know the spies behind an attack, their main objectives and techniques.

Shabab further said, "All the historic information gathered through investigating targeted attacks, helps us discover the truths and the myths of cyber espionage in the Asia Pacific region."

She listed four key factors that construe careless mistakes and clues that reveal much about individuals involved in cyber espionage. These were:

 Apparent military connections

 Organisations engaged in undercover threat activity for state security

 Private companies offering intelligence services

 Cyber espionage campaigns that consist of a variety of people with different skilled roles and responsibilities

During her interaction with ANI, she also defined a cyber spy as being a person who gets unauthorised access to information and important or relevant documents. Such people could be found in intelligence agencies; in companies living a double life and private companies involved with cyber espionage.

Insofar as the social media space is concerned, Shabab said cyber espionage could be conducted through photos or work-related photos; personal or work-related information; reusing of usernames, passwords and e-mail addresses and use of social networks.

On what motivated people to go in for cyber espionage, Shabab listed four factors which were

. Intolerance

. An arms race between countries

. Pursuit of a political agenda aimed at empowering a government or a company

. Activity aimed at giving the economy a boost

Kaspersky Lab's researchers have been tracking advanced cyber espionage operations originating in and targeting Asia Pacific countries for the last 10 years, and have undertaken a review of the contribution made by attackers' careless mistakes.

For example a threat actor called "Dropping Elephant", likely operating from India,reported by Kaspersky Lab in July 2016,targeted high profile diplomatic and economic entities in countries including Australia, China, Bangladesh, Taiwan and more.

Clues revealed traces of three individuals where one in particular carelessly disclosed a personal document that led Kaspersky Lab researchers to find the faces behind "Dropping Elephant".

Kaspersky Lab also published a report on Naikon APT in 2015. This cyberespionage campaign has been tracking geo-political intelligence in countries around the South China Sea for over half a decade, Later that year, an alleged connection discovered by ThreatConnectresearchersshowed a domain name used in Naikon APT, was also found across several social media accounts.

These social media accounts carried more than 700 posts and 500 photos whichenabled researchers to track down an official'sreal location and work address.

In order to protect your personal or business data from cyberattacks, Kaspersky Lab advises the following:

? Implement an advanced, multi-layered security solution that covers all networks, systems and endpoints.

? Educate and train your personnel on social engineering as this method is often used to make a victim open a malicious document or click on an infected link.

? Conduct regular security assessments of the organisations IT infrastructure.

? Use Kaspersky's Threat Intelligence that tracks cyberattacks, incident or threats and provides customers with up-to-date relevant information that they are unaware of. Find out more at intelreports@kaspersky.com. (ANI)

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A case has been registered against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Divisional President Pradeep Bhatt in Guna, Madhya Pradesh for clicking picture of a woman.

As per reports, the BJP leader was taking photographs of a woman and harassing her while the woman was defecating. This woman is also a prime witness in a case where the BJP leader is accused of assaulting another woman.

The case has been registered under Section 354c, and 294 of Indian Penal Code (IPC).

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Accusing the Congress party of indulging in caste-based politics in Gujarat, the state's Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel said the Congress party can go to the extent of inviting terrorists like Hafiz Saeed, if they feel it can help them form the government in the state.

"If Congress feels that they can win the Assembly polls in Gujarat by joining hands with Pakistan-based terrorists like Hafiz Saeed or any other such people, they would send them invitation without any hesitation," Patel said while addressing a press conference here.

Patel also alleged the country's grand old party of bringing back the KHAM theory (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim) of 1980s, and said they want to divide Gujarat on the basis of castes just to gather support of the people.

"As the BJP is practicing 'Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas', the Congress is continuing to indulge in the 'Divide and Rule' policy which existed during colonial rule. In spite of having such strong roots, people have lost their faith in Congress leadership," he said.

Commenting on the inclusion of OBC leader Alpesh Thakor to Congress, Patel claimed that the opposition party is desperately looking for a new leadership to campaign for them, and cited this as the reason for Rahul Gandhi's visit to Gujarat.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria has been appointed to head a 15-member Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance Select Committee.

The Rajasthan Government yesterday tabled the controversial ordinance that seeks to shield serving and former judges, magistrates and public servants from being investigated for on-duty actions without prior sanction.

The ordinance triggered widespread criticism with the Congress party creating ruckus in Rajasthan assembly against tabling of the bill.

Senior lawyer in Rajasthan High Court AK Jain has filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against the Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance in the high court.

The ordinance also sought to bar the media from reporting on accusations against the judges and bureaucrats till the sanction to proceed with the probe is obtained.

The ordinance is an amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A two-day workshop on 'India Bangladesh Border

The workshop is jointly organised by Department of Journalism and Mass Communication of Tripura University (TU) and OKD Institute of Social Change and Development, Guwahati in collaboration with Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF) of Japan.

Vice Chancellor of Tripura University Professor A K Ghosh, said that the workshop has been organised to promote people to people relation and for that the Tripura University has started spreading the culture between the two nations.

He informed that the TU already have few students' including for Ph.D from Bangladesh and is going for exchange of faculties and scholars with various universities of Bangladesh for strengthening the bond between the two nations and for better understanding.

Meantime, SPF representative Jui Nakamura said that peace is an integral and most important for development of the region and along with it is security issues which are very complicated but the governments have to look into it.

She added that keeping in view of China growing an immerging power the development of India-Japan bilateral relationship is very vital.

She said that in spite of the differences between China and Japan with complex geo-political difference on various issues there should be continuous people-to-people dialogue in neighouring nation and that should continue whatever may be the situation as it is vital for peace and development.

Various issue related to the growing multilateral Indo-Bangladesh relationship including people-to-people will be discussed and the draft will be submitted at various levels in both the nation for further improving ties between the two nations.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a veiled attack on Shiv Sena, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday said a "Generous foe is better than a selfish friend."

Fadnavis also took the occasion to praise Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar for his contribution to the state despite being in the Opposition.

"A Generous foe is better than a mean friend. Sharad Pawar is our generous opponent. There are only few leaders in Indian politics that go beyond the realm of politics and forge a friendship. During issues concerning the welfare of the state, I have personally discussed issues with Sharad Pawar many times and he has always suggested me remedial measures," the Chief Minister said while addressing an all party gathering in Amravati, and appreciated the NCP chief for his contribution to the Parliament for over five decades.

The Chief Minister also said that his comments should not be misconstrued.

"Sharad Pawar looks beyond politics and parties. Every state should have one such leader," he added.

He further said, "Though loan waiving is not the only solution to help farmers, but the decision of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government to waive farmers loans was necessary."

Meanwhile, Sharad Pawar also praised the Chief Minister for assuring the farmers for the strictest action against those responsible for Yavatmal district tragedy, which claimed lives of 18 farmers over the past three months owing to an alleged exposure to a toxic pesticide.

On October 19, the Maharashtra government released Rs 4,000 crores under the first phase of the farm loan waiver scheme. It is expected to benefit more than eight lakh farmers of the state.

Chief Minister Fadnavis announced that the remaining Rs. 800 crore of the schemes will be in the form of incentives for 3.78 lakh farmers, who are paying back their loans on time.

(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 on Tuesday condemned the West Bengal government's directive for a CID investigation into the October 13 encounter between GJM members and West Bengal Police that killed Sub-Inspector Amitava Malik, and appealed for a CBI investigation instead.

"We protest the CID investigation. Instead, I appeal for a CBI investigation because West Bengal government has been exercising dictatorial rule on our party, and it will increase its dictatorial politics through CID," Gurung said in an audio tape.

In the audio tape, Gurung appealed the Centre and state government for a CBI investigation into the incident as well as into the bomb explosions in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and other areas of the state.

Gurung also alleged that the incident was part of a conspiracy to frame GJM party, and enforce dictatorial rule.

"We lost 11 people, and appealed for CBI investigation, but no action was taken. Now there is a CID investigation into the death of one person, whose killing was a part of the plan. The 13th October incident was a conspiracy," Gurung said, adding that local police was also complicit in enforcing dictatorial politics, by creating havoc for GJM members in different parts of the state.

Addressing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Gurung said, "We are not anti to demand Gorkhaland. It is within our fundamental right."

On October 23, probe into the killing of Sub-Inspector Amitava Malik was handed over to West Bengal's Criminal Investigation Department.

On October 13, an exchange of fire between GJM supporters and West Bengal Police in Darjeeling's Takvar resulted in the death of Sub-Inspector Amitava Malik, while at least two others were injured.

GJM leader Bimal Gurung was implicated in Malik's death, with Additional Director General (ADG) of Police, West Bengal, Anuj Sharma stating that Gurung had instructed his cadres to attack police parties and personnel.

Sharma said that acting on the information that Gurung was hiding in the area, the police had conducted raids, during which the GJM supporters fired and pelted stones.

The October 13 violence was the first major incident of violence after the 100-day-long strike was lifted in Darjeeling.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a bid to ease the checkout process while making payments through mobiles, US-based tech MNC Google announced the launch of 'Pay with Google', a new payment method encompassing all saved payment methods under a single window payment, thus enabling app developers and retailers implement the same using basic lines of code.

The feature, which is currently available for mobile apps and Chrome, may help users facilitate payments on mobile devices, using any card they have on file - including those saved to their Google Account via products like Google Play, YouTube, Chrome, or Android Pay, backed by the Google payment API that was announced earlier this year at Google's I/O developer conference.

Apart from speedier checkout for mobile users, Google, through this launch, aims to increase conversions for retailers, by allowing Google users to tap into any payment card a customer has on file with Google, rather than those they've specifically saved to Android Pay. The feature is also expected to ease online shopping through Google Assistant.

"Payments is a key capability of the user's Google account. Our goal is to enable users to pay with their Google account across devices, platforms and interfaces. We are starting with Chrome but plan to bring this experience to other browsers as well. Stay tuned," Pali Bhat, Vice President of Payments at Google, told TechCrunch.

To use the new payment option, users can check out using "pay with Google," following which a list of payment cards saved in their Google account would appear. To continue, one can tap the card wished to be used, and Google sends this information, along with your shipping address, to the merchant, who then manages the rest of the transaction.

Google also partnered with over 40 payment providers to make integrations simpler for merchants who want to offer "pay with Google." The payment providers - including PayPal's Braintree, Stripe, Vantiv, Worldpay, Adyen, and Groupe Paysafe - will continue to process the transactions as before.

While the 'pay with Google' option isn't available everywhere yet due to non-availability of its payment API, the company is offering a host of other services for faster checkout to customers via their apps and mobile websites, when loaded in Google Chrome.

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Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Monday said that the growth rate of the state has been in two digits since last eight years.

"We have noted that the growth rate of Madhya Pradesh has been in two digits since last eight years. The growth rate in the field of agriculture since last five years is 20 plus. I believe that Madhya Pradesh has become an example for the whole world, which has attained 20 plus growth in agriculture," said Chouhan, while addressing the Seminar on Integral Humanism here.

Chouhan also spoke about the various government schemes, including 'Make in India', 'Startup India', 'Clean India', 'Aam Admi Bima Yojana' (AABY) and 'Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana' for the development of the society.

"In Madhya Pradesh we have decided that the poor will be given Rs.1 kg rice and food grains. Madhya Pradesh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have also decided that by 2022, no poor will live without cemented houses. They will have their own roof," he said.

"I have made on scheme in Madhjya Pradesh Prime Minister Medhavi Chhatra Protsahan Yojana and have decided that those children who get 75 percent in class 12th, if they get selected in medical college, IIT college, NIT , law college or any other good institute, then their fees would be paid by the state government," he added.

On Tuesday, Chouhan will be part of an interaction with Senior Business Leaders of US in a session organised by US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) and CII to promote investment in Madhya Pradesh.

Thereafter, he will be departing for New York, while making a quick stop at

the Akshardham Temple in New Jersey.

On Wednesday, Chouhan will be attending an interaction session with Senior Business Leaders of US in a session organised by US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) and CII to promote investment in Madhya Pradesh, followed by lunch. Later, he will be visiting the Incubation center at Columbia University.

On Thursday, Chouhan will be holding a series of meetings with Amazon representatives until lunch. In the evening, he will be attending a 'Friends of MP' interactive session at the Indian Consulate in New York, followed by dinner.

On Friday, Chouhan will again be attending a series of one-to-one meetings, and will depart for Mumbai from Newark Airport on Saturday.

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The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday rejected Pakistan Finance Minister Ishaq Dar's second petition challenging his indictment by an accountability court in a corruption case pertaining to ownership of assets beyond his known sources of income.

A two-judge division bench, comprising Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb, had reserved the verdict on the petition on October 11 after completion of arguments, the Dawn reported.

Dar's lawyer said the minister would approach the Supreme Court against the high court's decision.

"Islamabad High Court did not even hear our stance," the Dawn quoted Advocate Abdul Rehman, as saying and adding that it was Dar's constitutional right to fulfil constitutional obligations.

The Islamabad High Court had earlier this month dismissed Dar's first application challenging his 'swift indictment' by the accountability court in the assets reference.

The NAB had filed a reference against Dar and three separate references against ousted prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his children, earlier this month after the Supreme Court, while disqualifying Sharif had asked the bureau to file references in accountability court within six weeks on the basis of the material collected and referred to by the Joint Investigation Team (JIT).

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Terrorists on Tuesday hurled a grenade at a police patrol party in Tral area of Jammu and Kashmir.

As of now, no loss of life has been reported.

Earlier on October 20, suspected militants hurled grenade at the residences of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) MLAs in Shopian district and Pulwama district.

(Further details awaited...

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Journalists held a protest march in Jaipur, Rajasthan on Tuesday against the Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance that was tabled in the state assembly on Monday.

Holding black placards printed with "Kala Kanoon"(black law), protesting journalists said they will continue their march towards the state Assembly.

Journalists urged the BJP government to retract the proposal, saying the law is completely unjustified and muzzles the press.

"I will call this dictatorship if a journalist is awarded two years imprisonment for investigating and writing anything against corrupt bureaucrats. The government will have to bow down and remove its proposed 'black law'," Journalist Neeraj said.

"The government cannot seize our constitutional rights to hide its own mistakes," he added.

The Rajasthan Government, in the current legislative session, passed an ordinance that protects both serving and former judges, magistrates and public servants in the state from being investigated for on-duty action without prior sanction.

The ordinance also sought to bar the media from reporting on accusations against judges and bureaucrats till the sanction to proceed with the probe is obtained.

The ordinance is an amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.

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In the wake of the recent wave of rising cyber threats, uncovered a number of compromised servers being used by infamous cybercrime group-Lazarus-, part of their global command and control infrastructure.

The hacked servers are located around the world, including in the Asia Pacific region, namely in Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, which could be used by Lazarus to launch targeted attacks against a company or organisation.

The researchers discovered that the servers had been infected using malware called Manuscrypt, a family the threat actor is known to have used since 2013. They believe that the Manuscrypt malware was installed using an exploit for CVE-2017-7269, a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 that was patched by Microsoft on June 13, 2017.

Many servers worldwide remain at risk of this exploit. According to an open source intelligence, three of the top five countries that still have servers carrying this vulnerability are in the APAC region: China (with 7,848), India (1,524), and Hong Kong (1,102). The US tops the list with the most vulnerable servers (11,949), while United Kingdom ranks fifth with 805.

If the exploit is successful, the malware can hand control of the compromised host to the attacker and easily implant additional malware on the server. researchers have also found several tools on the servers, including an information harvester. Using this kind of information gathering tool, the attacker can steal information from the victim's own infrastructure.

Lazarus is believed to be behind massive and high-profile attacks like the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures, the million-dollar Bangladesh Bank heist in 2016, and the recent WannaCry destructive ransom ware epidemic. The Korean language group is thought to be state-sponsored.

"Companies are increasingly worried about being hit by advanced targeted attack groups like Lazarus. Unbeknown to them, their own corporate servers could be infected and manipulated by the hackers against them, or used to launch attacks on others," said Seongsu Park, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab's Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT).

Park predicts that with these incidents targeting enterprise networks, IT security priorities and processes will need to adapt as customers will require technology that is combined with intelligence and expertise, to protect them from both known and unknown threats.
A mosque committee in Kerala's Malappurran district called for boycott of a Muslim family after married off their daughter in a Christian family.

On October 19, the secretary of the Madarul Islam Sangham's Mahallu committee (the mosque's administrative committee) issued a special circular urging all people connected with the mosque to break off all contact with Kunnummal Yusuf and his family who had marry off his daughter Jaseela to one Tiso Tomy.

A circular printed in Malayalam read, "Since Kunnummal Yusuf has agreed to his daughter's wedding to a non-Muslim, we have decided that people need not cooperate with his family, neither for mosque-related affairs, nor for other matters."

The couple got married at a local office of the state registration department on October 19.

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The Communist Party (NCP) on Tuesday slammed the election commission for not announcing the dates for the Gujarat assembly polls.

"I don't think that the Chief Election Commissioner was expected to say that there is pressure. It is absolutely ridiculous to expect that he would say that he working under pressure. He is bound to say so because he is part of it. He is equally guilty of succumbing to pressure and we have been finding day-in, day-out now that why Gujarat schedule is being differed. Every day is important. You have no justifiable reason. You say Diwali, or flood; all these are excuses which appear lame," said Majid Memon.

"Everyday some of the gifts, incentives are being announced by the Centre because it is having great interest in Gujarat. Prime Minister is from Gujarat and therefore the election commission is deemed to be under pressure," Memon added.

Achal Kumar Joti, the Chief Election Commissioner, had, on Monday, rejected the opposition's charge that the country's top election body was working under the pressure of the ruling Democratic Alliance (NDA).

"No, I am not under any sort of pressure. The opposition can only question us if we stop them from campaigning. The opportunities are equal for all. All parties make poll promises, even the opposition parties are promising lot of things we are not stopping anybody," Joti said.

The opposition has been criticising the EC for not announcing the dates for the Gujarat Assembly elections since October 13, when it announced November 9 as the date for Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls.

Further questioning EC, another NCP leader Nawab Malik said, "Prime Minister Modi said he wants one nation, one election. All elections in the country should be at one time. The election commission has said they are ready for one nation one election in 2018, but the way Himachal dates are declared, still Gujarat dates are pending. It shows if you are in a position to take election of all assemblies in a parliament at one shot, you are not in a capacity to take election of Gujarat and Himachal together? Questions will be raised by the people."

"If they want to deny the allegation from the political parties, they have to declare election of Gujarat as soon as possible," he added.

The 14th legislative assembly polls in Gujarat are to be held by the end of 2017 as the term of 13th assembly ends on January 22, 2018.

Due to the ensuing assembly elections, Gujarat is witnessing high voltage political activities these days.

While the ruling BJP is leaving no stone unturned to retain power in Gujarat, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is heading his party's poll campaign in Gujarat, eyeing to dethrone the ruling BJP.

The last Congress government in Gujarat was led by Chhabildas Mehta from February 17, 1994 to March 13, 1995.

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Former Intelligence Bureau chief, Dineshwar Sharma on Tuesday said that his role as Kashmir interlocutor will be separate from that of investigation agency (NIA).

While talking to media here Sharma said, "NIA's probe is totally different. Our talk is a separate issue, they both are two different issues."

Sharma yesterday said his priority would be to restore peace in Jammu and Kashmir and find a permanent solution to incumbent problems.

"The priority is to restore peace in Jammu and Kashmir and find a permanent solution. The rank does not matter as the Government of India has given me a very big responsibility. Nothing can be better than the improvement of situation in the state," Sharma told ANI.

He added that he would go to Kashmir in eight-to-ten days.

"Firstly, I would assess here, how things can be taken forward. I hope I will be able live up to the trust the Indian Government has showed and will be able to fulfill expectations of the public," Sharma said.

The Centre yesterday announced plans to start a dialogue process in Jammu and Kashmir and appointed Sharma as its representative for talks with "all" stakeholders in the state.

"The government has decided to start a sustained dialogue in Jammu and Kashmir. Former IB director Dineshwar Sharma will be Government of India's representative. Rank of Dineshwar Sharma will be equivalent to that of a Cabinet Secretary," Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh told the media.

He added that Sharma would initiate the dialogue with elected representatives of Jammu and Kashmir, political parties, different organisations and public.

Singh said that as the government's representative, Sharma would initiate the sustained interaction and dialogue to understand the legitimate aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

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Following the sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has launched a civil rights investigation on Monday into Weinstein Company.

The state's top prosecutor issued a subpoena as part of an investigation into whether officials at the New York-based film and television company violated state civil rights and New York City human rights laws.

"No New Yorker should be forced to walk into a workplace ruled by sexual intimidation, harassment, or fear," Scheiderman said in a statement, as quoted by Los Angeles Times. "If sexual harassment or discrimination is pervasive at a company, we want to know."

The attorney general's subpoena is seeking all documents related to complaints of sexual harassment and other types of discrimination against employees, said a person familiar with the probe not authorized to comment.

The report further said that the probe is also looking for all records of how such complaints were handled by the company, and all documents concerning settlements. In addition, it is seeking the company's records related to hiring and casting criteria.

This move comes about two weeks after Weinstein Co. fired its namesake co-chairman, following the sexual harassment allegations against him.

Weinstein, however, has "unequivocally denied" allegations of non-consensual sex, according to his representative.

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Pakistan once again violated ceasefire on Tuesday in Kupwara in Jammu and Kashmir.

The ceasefire violation took place in the Nowgam sector of Handwara area.

Earlier in the day, terrorist hurled a grenade at a police patrol party in the Tral area of Jammu and Kashmir.

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Hollywood actor Ryan Reynolds, who marked his 41st birthday yesterday, celebrated the special day with his signature humour in a post on his Twitter account.

The 'Deadpool 2' star took to his Twitter profile and wrote how his daughters Ines and James were planning something to surprise him, but he snuck out to start a new life instead.

Taking it to Twitter, he wrote, "My kids tried to surprise me for my birthday this morning. I totally heard them coming and snuck out to start a new life somewhere else."

In reality, Ryan has a lot of love for his family and has previously admitted that he would be really thrilled to add more "females" to his brood in the future.

"If I could have nine daughters I would be thrilled. Really, like I genuinely would be. There's more love, there's more diapers. There's more all that stuff, you know? [Fatherhood] is the best thing. It's the best thing that could ever happen to you," noted Reynolds.

Meanwhile, on the professional front, Ryan Reynolds will be next seen in 'Deadpool 2' alongside Josh Brolin, Zazie Beetz, Morena Baccarin, T. J. Miller, Leslie Uggams, Brianna Hildebrand and Stefan Kapicic.

Helmed by David Leitch, the film is slated to hit the theatres on June 1, 2018.

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An NIA spokesman said Shahid, 42, who is employed with the Department of Agriculture of the Jammu and Kashmir government, was summoned to the agency's headquarters, and was arrested after questioning with regard to allegedly receiving money from his father.

He will be produced before a designated NIA court tomorrow.

The NIA has alleged that Shahid had received funds through a US-based international wire transfer company from Aijaz Ahmed Bhat, another accused in the case who is absconding and based in Saudi Arabia.

The NIA claimed so far that he had received a total of nearly Rs 4.5 lakh through eight international wire transfers.

The case, registered by the NIA in April 2011, relates to the transfer of money from Pakistan to Jammu and Kashmir through hawala channels via Delhi, which the agency believed was used in funding terrorism and secessionist activities.

The agency had filed a charge sheet against 10 people including Syed Salahuddin in the April 2011 case.

In the recent case, the NIA arrested 10 people, including some close relatives and aides of Geelani.

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday is likely to hear an appeal, filed by Maharashtra Government, challenging the acquittal of Bollywood actor Salman Khan in a 2002 hit-and-run case, two years after he was acquitted.

On July 5, 2016, the apex court admitted the appeal by Maharashtra Government, challenging the Bombay High Court's verdict.

In December 2015, the Bombay High Court acquitted Salman Khan of all criminal charges, on account of lack of substantial evidence.

On May 6, 2015, a sessions court had held him guilty in the case, but Khan moved the High Court challenging the verdict.

The Bollywood actor was accused of running his Toyota Land Cruiser over people sleeping on a sidewalk outside a bakery in Mumbai's Bandra, in the wee hours September 28, 2002.

One labourer died, while four others were injured in the accident.

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The Shiv Sena on Tuesday again castigated the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government for hasty roll out of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Quoting Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia the Shiv Sena in its editorial Saamna said its out in the open that the Centre will have to rework the entire GST rate structure .

Averring that the common will require at least a year to adhere to the new tax reform Shiv Sena said, "Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia has admitted that the GST will take a year to stabilise. The Revenue Secretary has also said that the GST rate structure needs to be reworked. Due to demonetisation and the GST people of the country have suffered a lot.

The two reforms have also left a negative impact on the economy of India. It has been four months and still people and traders are suffering due the introduction of GST."

After the introduction of GST on 1 July, several rounds of changes have taken place.

According to the GST Council, the rate structure and its various provisions need to be reworked in order to restructure the system.

According to reports, Adhia also feels that GST needs to be reworked.

Prime Minister Modi first termed the GST as a 'good and simple tax' on July 1 at its launch gala event.

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External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday called on Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who is in New Delhi on a day-long official visit. The two leaders discussed bilateral and regional issues.

During his visit, President Ghani will meet his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind.

Later, he is scheduled to hold delegation-level talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will also host lunch in the honour of the Afghan leader.

The visit has come at a time when the Afghanistan leadership is focusing on stabilising the war-torn country and brokering peace with the Taliban rebels.

Ghani is also expected to give a public address at the Vivekanand International Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank.

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If your father is suffering from migraine and treatments have failed, then Ketamine - a medication commonly used for pain relief - maybe helpful to relieve the misery of headaches, suggests a recent study.

According to researchers from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Philadelphia, the horse tranquiliser, used illegally as a party drug, may be an effective treatment for those who fail to respond to other medications.

The findings indicated that Ketamine made the debilitating headaches less painful for nearly three quarters.

It offers hope of an effective remedy, with many desperate sufferers using alternative treatments as a last resort for their pain, including acupuncture and lavender oil.

Lead author Dr. Eric Schwenk said that Ketamine may hold promise as a treatment for migraine headaches in patients, on whom other treatments have been lesser effective.

Dr. Schwenk added that the study focused only on short-term relief, but it is encouraging that it might have the potential to help patients in the long term.

The team analysed 61 male migraine patients, who were in their 40s and had been admitted to hospital.

They found their pain rating, recorded on a scale of zero to 10, had more than halved, in patients given Ketamine during their hospital stay.

They were treated with regular infusions of Ketamine after being fitted-up with a drip for either three or seven days.

When they were admitted, their migraine pain was 7.5 on average. This dropped to 3.4 by the time they were discharged.

During a migraine, people are often very sensitive to light, sound and may become nauseated.

The research was presented at the ongoing ANESTHESIOLOGY annual meet in Boston.

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Tamil Nadu advocate moved the Supreme Court on Tuesday against a Madras High Court order forbidding a probe on former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa's death.

The lawyer, Joseph sought the apex court's direction for constituting a commission by a retired judge.

Joseph urged the state assembly to decide on formation of the probe enquiry commission.

In September, retired Madras High Court judge Justice A Arumugasamy was appointed to probe the death of Jayalalithaa after the present chief minister E Palaniswamy announced that a judicial probe would be ordered in the matter.

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For all the people concerned about the state of the world today, Hollywood actor Tom Hanks has a special message for you all.

The 62-year-old actor, who was present at the National Archives Foundation's annual gala in Washington, spoke of the importance of learning from the past as a way to navigate the complexities of the present, reports CNN.

Hanks said, "People are upset about what's going on today. They're furious, they're frustrated, they're worked up. If you're concerned about what's going on today, read history and figure out what to do because it's all right there."

Adding, "As we continually move towards a more perfect union, That magnificent document (the US Constitution) out there, that might be the only self-correcting, open-ended document anywhere on the planet Earth (that) keeps us going, that keeps saying that we're going to learn how to do that one thing we've already sort of done, we're going to become better and better and better."

When asked about the issues surrounding the legacy of Confederate monuments and statues of Christopher Columbus, Hanks noted, "Let's have that discussion, let's have that be part and parcel to an ongoing re-examination about what is taught about [America's founding]. But the destruction, the destruction is anti-social, period, the end. Be intelligent, and be smart, write about it, bring it up, talk about it."

The Oscar-winning actor was honored by the National Archives Foundation with the "Records of Achievement Award" at their annual gala.

The Records of Achievements Award is the National Archives Foundation's top honor, one reserved for individuals "whose work has cultivated a broader national awareness of the history and identity of the United States through the use of original records."

"No actor has covered the span of 20th-century American history as broadly as honoree Tom Hanks," David Ferriero, archivist of the United States, said in a statement.

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Toppr, a comprehensive mobile app for personalized learning for school students raised Rs. 45 crore in its second round of Series B funding, led by its existing investors SAIF Partners, Helion Ventures and FIL Capital Management, to be channelised towards expanding its geographical footprint and accelerate user acquisition.

Toppr had raised a cumulative USD 12 million in May 2014 and 2015 in its Seed and Series B funding rounds, and used those funds to fuel the adaptive platform with over two million registered users, and over one million app downloads.

The platform's community of 8000 odd educators from across the country has contributed one million learning pieces, including questions, solutions, concepts, and videos for the students signed up on the app.

Users spend nearly two hours a day on the platform and 90 percent students renew their subscriptions when going to a new class.

"This is a second round of series B funding by our existing investors. It is the reflection of our healthy unit economics and a reinforcement of the belief that the investors have in us. This capital will be used to expand the geographical foot print and accelerate user acquisition. We expect this capital to take us to full profitability," said CEO and founder Toppr, Zishaan Hayath.

The company is pursuing aggressive expansion plans to reach out to students across the country and open centers in 30 cities by December 2017. Toppr projects 20-fold growth in its junior grades and 15-fold growth in its senior grades subscription by 2021, making it a company with over USD 500 million in revenue in the next four years.

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United States President Donald Trump on Tuesday has proclaimed 24 October 2017 (GMT-4) as the 'United Nations Day' and urged "the Governors of the 50 States, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the officials of all other areas under the flag of the United States", to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

A release by the White House read: "On United Nations Day, we recognise the more than seven decades of contributions the United Nations has made to peace and security among nations. The United Nations was founded on the vision that diverse nations could cooperate to preserve sovereignty, enhance security, build prosperity, and promote human rights and fundamental freedoms. Its purpose remains as essential today as ever before. As the faces increasing transnational threats -- including the spread of terrorism and mass atrocities around the globe, the risk of famine and humanitarian crises, and nuclear proliferation by rogue regimes that threaten others with the most destructive weapons known to humanity -- we call on all member states to reaffirm their commitments to the obligations and responsibilities enshrined in the United Nations Charter."

President Trump also urged the member states to work together as the founders of the United Nations intended and confront those who threaten chaos, turmoil, and terror.

"We continue to believe that the United Nations can play an important role in resolving international disputes and that its success depends on a coalition of strong sovereign nations. This year alone, the United States has led efforts at the United Nations to strengthen and expand sanctions against North Korea, review the mandates of peacekeeping missions to make sure they are achievable, and promote an ambitious campaign of reform, including with respect to the United Nations Human Rights Council," the release further read.

"The United Nations Security Council, of which the United States is a permanent member, remains, as ever, a valuable forum for responding to threats to international peace and security."

"On United Nations Day, we also pause to acknowledge the men and women who serve in faraway peacekeeping missions, who provide humanitarian assistance to people in war-torn countries, who endeavor to keep the safe from weapons of mass destruction, and who protect innocent children. Through their effort and personal sacrifice, they bring hope and relief to countless people in need," it added.

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Kurdish and Arab powers, supported by the United States, said they have caught Syria's biggest oil field from ISIS, the most recent of the setbacks for the jihadists in the east of the nation.

As stated by CNN, spokeswoman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, Laila al-Abdullah on Sunday said the oil field has been "liberated" by the group in the Syrain territory of Deir Ezzor, driving ISIS contenders "out of the fields with little damage".

She added that the SDF powers were functioning to oust the aggressors from the close neighborhood, where they had taken asylum.

According to the report, the capture of the oil field was confirmed by the US coalition in a statement on Monday, including that ISIS' oil production had been "reduced from a peak of approximately 50 million dollars per month to currently less than four million dollars per month."

ISIS, in 2014, took over the custody of country's largest and most important oil facility, Al-Omar oil field that once had the capacity to produce 75,000 barrels of oil per day.

Since then, the terror group has greater part of the region it once controlled in Syria and Iraq, including its last major urban fortress of Raqqa a week ago.

Many ISIS fighters are presently holed up between the US-supported SDF on the eastern side of the Euphrates River and Russian-supported Syrian administration powers on the west in small pocket of Deir Ezzor.

SDF on Friday declared "total liberation" of Raqqa, which was the de facto capital of ISIS for over three years.

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Ahead of the formation of the Labour-New Zealand First coalition government, Winston Peters is set to become Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, as incoming Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Peters sign their coalition deal.

While the actual allocations will not be revealed until Wednesday, it is believed that Peters has again got Foreign Affairs, the portfolio he held when New Zealand first supported the 2005 - 2008 Labour Government.

Local media reports suggest that incoming Prime Minister Ardern is slated to sign a confidence and supply deal with Green Party leader James Shaw, which will set out their policy agreements and portfolios.

Ministerial numbers suggest that there will be 16 Labour leaders in the cabinet and five outside, along with four New Zealand First ministers in the cabinet with one under-secretary and three ministers in cabinet representing the Greens with one under-secretary.

On the outset, Labour had conducted specific negotiations with New Zealand First and the Greens to ensure that both sets of agreements were compatible.

On a related note, Ardern and her ministers are expected to be sworn in at Government House on Thursday.

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Key benchmark indices traded with modest gains in afternoon trade. At 13:15 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex gained 93.01 points or 0.29% at 32,599.73. The Nifty 50 index rose 27.35 points or 0.27% at 10,212.20.

Market edged higher in early trade on firm Asian stocks. Stocks extended gains in morning trade. Indices traded with modest gains in a range-bound manner later during the session so far.

The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index rose 0.24%, underperforming the Sensex. The S&P BSE Small-Cap index advanced 0.74%, outperforming the Sensex.

The breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, was positive. On the BSE, 1,482 shares rose and 1,115 shares declined. A total of 121 shares were unchanged.

Capital goods stocks were mostly higher. ABB India (up 1.8%), BEML (up 1.49%), Bharat Heavy Electricals (up 1.15%), Praj Industries (up 1.1%), Siemens (up 0.67%) and Bharat Electronics (up 0.46%) edged higher. Thermax (down 0.99%) and L&T (down 0.37%) edged lower.

FMCG stocks were mixed. Tata Global Beverages (up 2.02%), Hindustan Unilever (up 1.51%), Dabur India (up 0.63%), Godrej Consumer Products (up 0.58%) gained. Marico (down 1.31%), Colgate-Palmolive (India) (down 0.89%), Britannia Industries (down 0.66%) and Nestle India (down 0.15%) edged lower.

HDFC Bank was down 0.12% at Rs 1,860.35. The stock had hit a high of Rs 1,876.95 and a low of Rs 1,854 so far. The bank's net profit rose 20.13% to Rs 4151.03 crore on 16.55% growth in total income to Rs 23276.18 crore in Q2 September 2017 over Q2 September 2016. The result was announced during market hours today, 24 October 2017.

Premier Explosives advanced 3.12% at Rs 449.90 after the company said it got nod for setting up manufacturing facility at Katepally village in Hyderabad. The company would manufacture HMX, ammunition, solid propellants and warheads at this Greenfield project which is located about 80 km from Hyderabad. Premier Explosives had already received industrial licenses for these products. With receipt of this approval, the company can now start construction of the plant and plans to complete it by December 2018. The announcement was made during market hours today, 24 October 2017.

Overseas, European stocks opened lower as investors continued to monitor the latest corporate earnings reports and kept a close eye on Spain's constitutional crisis. Spain's central government took the unprecedented step of firing the government of Catalonia on Saturday in a last-ditch effort to prevent the restive region's push for independence. In response, Catalan separatist leaders called for mass civil disobedience.

Most Asian stocks shrugged off overnight declines in the US stocks, where a gauge of equity volatility climbed as market participants assessed the recent rally in global stocks before a slew of earnings reports. China's ruling Communist Party approved an amendment to its constitution directly mentioning Chinese President Xi Jinping's name and his Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristcs for a New Era.

Japanese manufacturing activity expanded in October at a slower pace than the previous month, a preliminary gauge of activity showed. The Markit/Nikkei Japan Manufacturing flash Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) fell to a seasonally adjusted 52.5 in October from a final reading of 52.9 in September.

US stocks began the week with losses yesterday, 23 October 2017 as industrial and technology companies and retailers all stumbled. The Chicago Fed national activity index for September improved to 0.17 in September from negative 0.37 in August.

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It has been under active consideration of the Reserve Bank of India to set up a transparent and comprehensive public credit registry (PCR) - an extensive database of credit information for India that is accessible to all stakeholders - that would help in enhancing efficiency of the credit market, increase financial inclusion, improve ease of doing business and help control delinquencies.

The Statement on Developmental and Regulatory Policies, issued on October 04, 2017 as part of the fourth Bi-monthly Monetary Policy Statement 2017, had announced the constitution of a High-level Task Force on Public Credit Registry for India.

The Task Force may invite any experts from World Bank / ECB etc. if required, with the permission of the chairman.

The terms of reference of the Task Force are:

(i) To review the current availability of information on credit in India.

(ii) To assess the gaps in India that could be filled by a comprehensive PCR.

(iii) To study the best international practices on PCR.

(iv) To determine the scope / target of the comprehensive PCR: type of information to be covered along with cut-off size of credit, if any.

(v) To decide the structure of the new information system or whether the existing systems can be strengthened / integrated to get a comprehensive PCR.

(vi) To suggest a roadmap, including the priority areas, for developing a transparent, comprehensive and near-real-time PCR for India. The Task Force would have its secretariat at Department of Statistics & Information Management and it will submit its report within six months from the date of its constitution, i.e., by April 04, 2018.

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In pursuance with India's 'Act East Policy', Indian Naval Ship Sukanya under the command of Commander SA Deodhar, NM arrived at Belawan Indonesia this morning to participate in the 30th edition of CORPAT (Coordinated Patrol) and 3rd Bilateral exercise between the Indian Navy and the Indonesian Navy. The exercise is aimed to foster closer maritime ties with countries located on the rim of the Indian Ocean.

The upcoming bi-lateral exercise CORPAT scheduled from 24 Oct - 05 Nov 17 is a demonstration of India's commitment to its ties with Indonesia and to the maritime security in the Indian Ocean Region. The two navies have been carrying out Coordinated Patrols (CORPAT) on respective sides of the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) twice a year since 2002.

The aim of the CORPAT is to enhance mutual understanding and inter-operability between the navies, prosecute vessels involved in unlawful activities, conduct SAR and take measures against Sea Pollution.

Defence relations between India and Indonesia have been growing steadily with regular joint activities and interactions between the armed forces of the two countries. These interactions would also provide opportunities for extensive operational and training engagements and contribute substantively to the maintenance of good order at sea. The exercise seeks to strengthen the existing bonds of friendship between India and Indonesia, and underscore India's partnership and solidarity with friendly countries of the region. As part of the Indian Government's vision of SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region), the Indian Navy has also been involved in assisting countries in the Indian Ocean Region with EEZ surveillance, Search and Rescue and other capability enhancement activities.

During the stay at Port Belawan, various activities such as official calls, formal reception on board ship, ship open to visitors, guided tours for Indian naval personnel and professional interaction between naval personnel of both the nations have been planned.

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Increasing demand, higher steel prices and improved profitability will underpin the continued stable outlook for the European steel industry into 2018, says Moody's Investors Service.

"Keeping our outlook on the European steel sector stable reflects the expectation that steel consumption will grow by around 1.5%-2% in 2017-18 on the back of improving economic prospects and demand growth from the automotive, construction and capital goods markets," says Gianmarco Migliavacca, Vice President -- Senior Credit Officer at Moody's.

European steelmakers should also see a boost in profits as demand growth, stable raw material prices and anti-dumping duties look set to support higher steel prices for the next 12-18 months. The supportive operating environment should translate into higher average steel spreads in 2018 compared with 2016, although at slightly lower levels than in 2017 as we assume a moderation in European steel demand next year compared to 2017.

Average capacity utilization rates at European steel mills should remain below 85%, which is within our range for a stable sector outlook. Structural overcapacity and rising imports from countries not subject to EU anti-dumping tariffs, like South Korea, Turkey and India, remain constraining factors.

According to trade body Eurofer, imports rose by 5% in the 12 months to May 2017, although the growth rate was slower than the 10% recorded in 2016.

In addition, M&A in the sector is unlikely to translate into immediate reductions in the industry's overcapacity. ArcelorMittal's (Ba1 stable) acquisition of Ilva (unrated) aims to increase steel production in southern Europe rather than rationalize production. Similarly, thyssenkrupp AG's (Ba2 developing) planned joint venture with Tata Steel Ltd. (Ba3 negative) may only consider consolidating production after 2020.

Potential protectionist US trade policies could also pose a threat to Europe's steelmakers. Import restrictions could create ripples, currently difficult to quantify but potentially large, in the global market likely to weaken the European steel sector, especially if they lead to increased imports into Europe from countries which would have targeted the US market instead.

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While expressing displeasure over tardy progress in critical areas of strategic importance, The Union Steel Minister Shri Birender Singh said, SAIL must ramp up production from New Rail Mill in Bhilai without wasting any more time, and meet all the requirements of its major customers. Company should chalk-out a time bound action plan to cater to the Indian Railways' increasing demand. SAIL must take its joint ventures at international level to logical conclusion at the earliest. Company must leverage its position in the industry, instead of not being able to fulfill its commitments and agreements. The Minister directed to the company management to submit quarterly plans and targets, which will be reviewed after every three months.

Steel Minister will also be meeting CEOs and EDs of Steel plants next month, to get direct feedback about constraints, bottlenecks and issues of concern.

The CEOs have to understand their direct accountability and responsibility for performance of the Unit under their charge, the Minister added. Shri Singh emphasised that accidents in the Plants must be curtailed and highest safety standards must be adhered to in all Units. Safety should be a prime focus of all the plant heads and stress should be given on repair and regular maintenance to avoid unforeseen breakdowns, downtime and resulting loss of production. SAIL should focus on ensuring raw material security to avoid the vagaries of coal supplies currently afflicting the company, he added.

Shri Birendra Singh said that SAIL should explore possibilities for developing new markets by adopting new technology and adding value added products to its basket, like non corrosive steel products for construction in coastal areas. SAIL should also focus on product differentiation to create value for the shareholders, thereby creating an exclusive space for the company. Efficiency improvement and product quality improvement at individual plant level should be focused upon to meet the customer requirements and to improve the financial performance of the company.

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At least 23 terrorists from Taliban and Islamic State (IS) group have been killed as infighting between the rival groups continued in a northern Afghan province, a media report said on Tuesday.

According to Governor for Qush Tepa district Aminullah, the infighting was still underway in the district situated in the northern Jawzjan province, Xinhua news agency reported.

The clash, according to the official, flared up on Monday evening after Taliban began house-to-house search in several villages of the district to find IS terrorists and the step triggered heavy fighting.

Aminullah also contended that so far 13 terrorists loyal to the IS and 10 Taliban fighters have been killed and several others injured.

Neither Taliban nor IS has made comments on the report.

--IANS

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The powerful Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday entered the league of China's greats Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping as the Communist Party incorporated his political thought into its constitution.

On the last day of the week-long 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), nearly 2,300 delegates at the Soviet-style Great Hall approved to include Xi's doctrine into the constitution which so far carried the philosophies of only Mao and Deng.

The move will take Xi's stature to another level and give more ammo to his growing power in China's closed .

With the inclusion of "Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era", Xi has surpassed veterans like Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.

"The Congress unanimously agrees on Xi Jinping's 'Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era' in addition to Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong, Deng Theory," the amendment to the constitution read.

"The Congress urges all Party members to use the Thought to achieve unity in thinking and action, be more purposeful and determined in studying and applying it."

Xi has amassed power like no other leader after Mao and Deng in China.

Last year, Xi was accorded the title of "core" leader, a distinction given only to Mao, Deng and Jiang.

This honorific puts Xi at the top of China's inner ruling circle.

Xi is one of the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee, China's most powerful body.

Five of the super seven are to retire due to the unofficial retiring age of 68. Xi, 64 and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, 62, will stay on.

It is to be seen who all are in, but it is speculated most of them will be Xi loyalists.

The composition of the Standing Committee will matter a lot to Xi's growing clout.

It is not known if Xi will announce his successor when he retires as the party General Secretary in 2022 when he turns 69.

The retirement age of top political bodies of the CPC is 68.

"Domestically, it signifies that Xi has no serious rivals and the system has a consensus behind him which is unusual even in a highly authoritarian state like China," old-time China watcher David Kelly told IANS.

However, Kelly says Xi cannot be compared to Mao.

"I was a student here in the 1970s when Mao was still alive. Xi simply does not have the passionate belief.

"Mao was almost a religious figure. Young people of that time, who had very limited exposure to the outside world, thought of him as almost supernatural."

Steve Tsang, Director SOAS China Institute, said Xi was yet to be tested.

"Xi has not yet faced great challenges in the way Mao did, like the one over the Korean War, or Deng did in the form of Tiananmen protests of 1989," Tsang told IANS.

"Xi's game is to make sure that he will not be so tested."

In a brief address to the party delegates, Xi said: "Our party shows strong, firm and vibrant leadership."

"Our socialist system demonstrates great strength and vitality. The Chinese people and the Chinese nation embrace brilliant prospects."

Also on Tuesday, the CPC unveiled a new leadership, electing the 19th Central Committee to lead the party for the next five years.

The 19th Central Committee will, in turn, elect the Political Bureau, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau and the General Secretary at its first plenary session on Wednesday, reports Xinhua news agency.

According to the Party Constitution, the highest leading body of the CPC is the National Congress and the Central Committee it elects, and all constituent organizations and members of the Party are subordinate to the National Congress and the Central Committee.

The number of delegates to the National Congress and the procedure governing their election shall be determined by the Central Committee.

--IANS

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The Arab League (AL) called on Arab States on Monday to reactivate boycott of Israel, describing it as a peaceful resistance to press Israel to abide by resolutions.

AL Assistant Secretary General for Palestine and the Occupied Arab Territories Affairs Saed Abu Ali made the remarks at the 91st meeting of the Arab boycott offices in Cairo, Xinhua news agency reported.

He said that the boycott of Israel had achieved success at both popular and official levels.

He noted that the conference coincided with the latest crucial development taking place in Palestine, featured by the Egypt-sponsored Palestinian internal reconciliation.

Ali reiterated the continuing Arab support for the struggle of the Palestinian people to end the Israeli occupation and to establish a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

He praised the UN Human Rights Committee for preparing a blacklist of "all business enterprises" that had enabled or profited from the expansion of Israeli settlements.

The companies who backed the Israeli occupation were challenging the law and undermining the two-state solution, he said.

The AL official added that people around the world had expressed their solidarity with the Palestinian people through boycotting those companies that supported Israeli occupation.

Ali spoke highly of the role that the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement played in achieving a qualitative leap during the past four years in academic, cultural and economic fields.

--IANS

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The Defence Ministers of the ASEAN on Tuesday formally launched a hotline designed to provide quick response cooperation in emergencies, especially in maritime operations.

Formerly known as the ASEAN Direct Communications Link (ADI), the ADI is designed to allow the Defence Ministers to communicate instantly through secure hotline, Xinhua news agency reported.

A statement issued by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Defence Ministers said ADI "will further foster cooperation and diffuse possible misunderstandings among ASEAN member states".

"One of the main characteristics of the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting (ADMM) and the ADMM-PLus that we are proud of is that these meetings go beyond the ministerial platforms for dialogue, and actually serve as mechanisms for practical cooperation," said Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana.

Lorenzana chaired the two-day ADMM and the ADMM-Plus that ended on Tuesday.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. ADMM-Plus includes ASEAN's eight security partners - Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and the US.

--IANS

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Healthy off-take in banking sector stocks over expectations of further recapitalisation measures pushed the key Indian equity indices higher on Tuesday.

According to market observers, other factors like expectations of positive quarterly results and a rise in global markets enhanced investors' risk-taking appetite.

The 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) edged higher by 101 points or 0.31 per cent.

The wider Nifty 50 of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) gained 22.85 points or 0.22 per cent at 10,207.70 points.

The Sensex of the BSE, which opened at 32,619.26 points, closed at 32,607.34 points, higher by 100.62 points or 0.31 per cent from Monday's close at 32,506.72 points.

The Sensex touched a high of 32,670.37 points and a low of 32,502.08 points during the intra-day trade.

"Markets ended with modest gains on Tuesday after bouncing back from Nifty lows of 10182. Positive global cues supported gains on the domestic bourses. Stocks of PSU banks rose on hopes of early recapitalisation of banks," Deepak Jasani, Head - Retail Research, HDFC Securities, told IANS.

"Technically, with the Nifty bouncing back after the recent weakness, the bulls seem to be making a comeback."

Dhruv Desai, Director and Chief Operating Officer of Tradebulls, told IANS: "Benchmark indices gained ahead of October F&O expiry and Infosys results."

"Sensex and Nifty rose on Tuesday for the second consecutive session as expectations have built up on announcement of healthy quarterly results."

In terms of investments, provisional data with the exchanges showed that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) sold scrips worth Rs 1,306.76 crore while domestic institutional investors (DIIs) purchased stocks worth Rs 592.28 crore.

On the currency front, the rupee remained flat. It inched lower by 2 paise to close at 65.06 against the US dollar from its previous close at 65.04.

Sector-wise, the S&P BSE banking index surged by 167.61 points, followed by oil and gas index by 101.48 points and metal index by 80.07 points.

On the other hand, the S&P BSE IT index fell by 79.74 points, consumer durables index by 57.58 points and automobile index by 49.61 points.

Major Sensex gainers on Tuesday were: Asian Paints, up 4.10 per cent at Rs 1,220.50; State Bank of India, up 3.56 per cent at Rs 254.50; NTPC, up 2.83 per cent at Rs 181.65; ONGC, up 2.56 per cent at Rs 176; and Hindustan Unilever, up 1.81 per cent at Rs 1,271.25.

Major Sensex losers were: Tata Motors DVR, down 1.66 per cent at Rs 230.90; Tata Motors, down 1.54 per cent at Rs 415.80; Infosys, down 1.37 per cent at Rs 926.75; Sun Pharma, down 1.07 per cent at Rs 534.45; and Mahindra and Mahindra, down 1.06 per cent at Rs 1,352.50.

--IANS

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Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Mayawati on Tuesday accused the BJP governments at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh of promoting RSS ideology.

Addressing a public rally here, the second of her series of 11 public interactions, the former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister said BJP governments in states were out to promote Hindutva agenda and hurting the country's secular fabric.

She also accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of victimizing and targeting the minorities and Dalits.

Referring to the caste conflict in Shabbirpur village in Saharanpur, Mayawati said Dalits were attacked there. When she tried to raise the issue in the Rajya Sabha, she was not allowed to, forcing her to resign from the Upper House.

The BSP leader also alleged that the BJP had conspired to physically harm her.

--IANS

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A Briton who fought against the Islamic State (IS) terror group in Syria has been killed while clearing landmines in Raqqa, a media report said on Tuesday.

Jac Holmes had been fighting with Kurdish militia the YPG since 2015, the BBC said.

Kurdish representatives in the UK said they had been told by YPG officials that the former IT worker from Bournemouth was killed while clearing an area to make it safe for civilians.

His mother, Angie Blannin, said the 24-year-old had been a "hero in my eyes". She told the BBC: "He loved what he was doing there, he loved being a soldier. He had the courage of his convictions."

Ozkan Ozdil, who also fought with Holmes in Syria, told the BBC his friend had become well-known and respected among Kurdish fighting units.

He was one of a number of British volunteers who travelled to fight against the IS with the Kurds during the Syrian conflict.

--IANS

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Networking giant Cisco Systems has said that it has reached a deal to acquire US software company BroadSoft for $1.9 billion paying $55 per share in cash.

Shares of BroadSoft rose 1.41 per cent to $54.675 in early trading after the announcement, while Cisco's stock gained 0.96 per cent to trade at $34.575 per share, Xinhua reported on Monday.

The acquisition was expected to close during the first quarter of 2018. Upon completion of the transaction, BroadSoft employees will join Cisco's Unified Communications Technology Group.

Analysts said the deal allows Cisco to further diversify away from its stagnating switches and routers business by giving it a stronger foothold in selling unified communications software to big telecommunications firms, according to CNBC.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said on Monday the deal will help Cisco's enterprise clients and small businesses connect better with consumers.

"Every customer, when they think about their digital strategies, they think about how they interact with their customers," Robbins was quoted as saying.

"This acquisition of BroadSoft actually gives us the most comprehensive set of collaboration solutions for our customers," he added.
Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu will leave on Wednesday on a three-day visit to the US to meet with his American counterpart Wilbur Ross for the first trade and commerce talks between India and the US administration led by President Donald Trump.

"Tonight, I'm going to the US to meet my counterpart Commerce Secretary as well as Trade Representative of US. This is the first time India is going to have a structured interaction on Commerce and related issues with the Trump administration," Prabhu told reporters here at the launch of the website of the Cell for IPR Promotion and Management (CIPAM).

"Therefore, it is a very important meeting in which we will be discussing issues from their side as well as our side. I will also be meeting a lot of business leaders there from India and the US," he said.

During his visit between October 25-28, Prabhu will also meet US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

Issues like visa, greater market access for goods, and intellectual property rights are expected to figure in the trade policy forum meeting between India and the US on October 25 in Washington.

Prabhu said that on the second leg of the visit, he will visit Cuba, from October 28-31, to hold discussions on boosting bilateral trade.

"I am going to meet quite a few ministers. We have invited them in Havana for meeting them on how can we promote bilateral trade with them," he said.

The Minister also said the government is trying to develop an exclusive portal for startups and working to create a single website for all exports and international trade activities.

"I have already told DGFT (Director General Foreign Trade) Aand they have started working on it. A lot of agencies have to be taken on board, particularly with Customs, because most formalities of import and export are with Customs," he said.

"Soon we want to organise a round-table on startups. Soon, you will hear good news on ease of doing business," he added.

--IANS

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Accusing the government of waging a war against the SC/ST communities, the Congress on Tuesday demanded immediate release of their scholarship arrears and increased scholarship allocations, among other things.

The Congress said the National Democratic Alliance government's "assiduous attack on post-matric scholarship for Dalits and Adivasis is a dastardly attack on promises made in the Constitution of India".

"The NDA government is waging a war against scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, which are fighting for a better future, by placing hurdles in the path of these communities' students quest for education.

"After taking office (in May 2014), this government has drastically slashed funding for University Grants Commission (UGC) by 55 per cent (from Rs 9,315 crore in 2015-16 to Rs 4,286 crore in 2016-17)," K. Raju, Chairman of the SC Department of the Congress, said in a statement.

Raju said: The UGC has thus been forced to drastically slash allocations to universities and for students' welfare. Through this myopic policy, the NDA government has made higher education and research inaccessible to students.

"This deliberate policy of making higher education inaccessible to students is most stark in its decision to withhold Rs 13,107 crore of post-matric scholarships for SCs and STs (Rs 10,236 for SCs and Rs 2,871 for STs) in three years."

He said: "Lakhs of Dalits and Adivasis, who depend on scholarships and bursaries in their quest for a better future, have been denied governmental financial support. A large number of SC scholars have not received monthly scholarships for over six months. This policy has also deprived needy students and those from minority communities of a better future."

The Congress leader said the Centre has also slashed funding for research centres across the country that pursue research on Dalits, B.R. Ambedkar's philosophy and social justice.

"It is surprising that a party desperate to position itself as pro-Dalit/Adivasi party is repeatedly doing everything in its power to disempower SCs/STs. Young and promising SC/ST scholars are being subjected to unnecessary tribulations and pressures to access what is rightfully theirs," Raju said.

"Slashing and delaying scholarships, staffing institutes of higher learning with under- qualified Hindutva cronies, cutting down budgetary allocations to higher education and cracking down on students who raise voices against the government's apathy towards education are all part of the NDA government's multi-pronged strategy to ensure atrophy in higher education in India."

--IANS

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The Ahmedabad Metropolitan Court on Tuesday issued summons to all the accused in a criminal defamation case filed by Jay Shah, son of BJP President Amit Shah, against news portal The Wire for publishing a story that the turnover of Jay Shah's company jumped 16,000 times after the Modi government took office.

The summons to the reporter and editors of the online news portal were issued under Sections 500 and 114 of the Indian Penal Code as well as Section 202 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

According to S.V. Raju, advocate for Jay Shah, they contended in the court that there was a prima facie case of defamation and the article was published with the intent and knowledge to defame.

"There was an ulterior motive in publishing the article and the timing was deliberate to make it an issue for the (Gujarat) elections," Raju told reporters.

He told the court that Jay Shah's reply was not considered while publishing the article.

The Wire published an article on October 8 written by Rohini Singh which claimed that the revenues of Shah's company had risen 16,000 times from Rs 50,000 to Rs 80 crore within a year after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014.

He then filed a defamation case in the metrpolitan court on October 9 against Rohini Singh, the author of the story, Founding Editors Siddharth Vardarajan and M.K. Venu and owner of the online media outlet The Wire, Federation for Independent Journalists (FIJ).

Jay Shah and his lawyers, who were not present at the last hearing on October 11, attended the court on Tuesday to argue the case. Two witnesses, Jaimin Shah and Rajiv Shah, were also there.

After Jay Shah verified his complaint, Jaimin Shah submitted that he had received a weblink of the article from his friend and after going through it he felt it could harm the reputation of Jay Shah.

Rajiv Shah said he received the article link on his mobile phone and he found it defamatory for Jay Shah, whom he described as a "simple" person and a "man of repute" in the society.

The next hearing has been posted for November 13.

--IANS

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China on Tuesday elevated the stature of President Xi Jinping by including his political ideology in the Communist Party constitution.

At the end of the pivotal 19th CPC National Congress meeting, party delegates voted unanimously on Tuesday to make "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" a guiding principle for the party, reports CNN.

The move puts Xi on par with Chairman Mao Zedong who founded the People's Republic of China in 1949.

China's previous two presidents did not had their ideas enshrined in the constitution in this way.

Earlier on Tuesday, the CPC also elected a new Central Committee, a group of around 200 members (plus some 170 substitutes) that runs the ruling party.

--IANS

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There will be 565 sites for Delhiites to perform Chhath Pooja on Thursday, said Delhi Development Minister Gopal Rai, adding that the number is almost double compared to last year.

Legislators, SDMs and officers of the Irrigation and Flood Department will be on special duty on Thursday and Friday at Chhath Pooja sites, Rai told the media here on the Chhath Pooja arrangements.

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will also visit the areas on Thursday.

The Minister said arrangements had been made for doctors, life guards and disaster management teams at the prayer sites.

Rai said that in 2016, 268 areas were made available for pooja by the government. This year it had allocated Rs 20 crore for Chhath Pooja arrangements.

He added that the government was building 50 permanent ghats to offer prayers and tendering process had been completed for 26 of them.

--IANS

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Actor-comedian Kapil Sharma on Tuesday denied the infamous and controversial fight with Sunil Grover.

At the trailer launch of his second film "Firangi", Kapil opened up about the incident in which during a flight from Australia to Mumbai, Kapil had reportedly physically assaulted Sunil.

Clarifying his stance, Kapil said: "When you move with such a huge team, you have to manage a lot of things and I am really bad at it, I will say that much. Touchwood, we have been working together for many years and I would like to repeat it one more time, I didn't actually fight with Sunil Grover at all. It didn't happen."

Sunil famously essayed the role of Mashoor Gulati, a doctor, in "The Kapil Sharma Show".

Narrating what exactly happened during the flight, Kapil said the fight happened with comedian Chandan Prabhakar, and not with Sunil.

He said: "When we reached Australia, since the first day, my mood was really bad. I was juggling so many things, I was shooting the show and for other things. During that time, my film's artiste died. I was so nervous and turned so negative.

"I wanted to cancel the Australia show but couldn't and before the show, a girl came to me complaining about a guy who happens to be my childhood friend, Chandan. I scolded him.

"I had to perform for one and a half hours and that girl and boy artiste had 10-minute stints. My whole thing was, 'You are bothering me with this when I have such a long performance ahead'. I am a little impulsive.

"Chandan went missing for five days. I wanted to meet him and apologize because I didn't listen to his side of the story. I saw him one hour before the Australia flight and I lost it again and I used cuss words again".

Kapil also said he has no issues with Sunil.

"I love him. I like to work with the best of people. When I was doing 'Comedy Circus', I used to tell people, 'I met this guy Sunil Grover in 'Hans Baliye'. 'Let's get him, I saw his show, I liked him'. When you work with the best, you learn a lot.

"Sunil and I, we have known each other for nine years now, and we have been working together for five years. I don't have any problem with Sunil, but had I been in his place, I would have definitely asked one time that 'I haven't seen you like this in five years, why are you behaving like this?'

"Maybe nothing would have happened. But still nothing has happened, I love him," Kapil stressed.

Kapil also took a dig at the media for the speculation regarding the 'fight'.

He is currently excited about "Firangi", a period drama film set in the year 1920. Directed by Rajiev Dhingra, the movie also features Ishita Dutta and Monica Gill. It will release on November 24.

--IANS

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday imposed a fine of Rs 2 lakh on the Environment Ministry for not fixing emission norms of Sulphur Dioxide and Nitrogen Oxide for 34 categories of industries -- important to mitigate air pollution in Delhi and the NCR.

Imposing the fine, the apex court also banned the use of pet coke and furnace oil in the National Capital Region (NCR).

The court, in its May 2 order, recorded the submission by amicus curiae that Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan would not object if the court prohibits the use of pet coke and furnace oil in their areas coming in NCR, said Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh.

The emission norms are significant as these industries, engaged in producing fertilisers, nitric acid and other hazardous activities, use pet coke and furnace oil.

Describing the Ministry of Environment and Forests' delay in issuing the norms as "lethargic and lazy", the bench of Justice Madan B. Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta took exception to the Ministry issuing draft norms on October 23.

The court said failure to pay Rs 2 lakh would invite serious consequences. The court also expressed its "surprise" that the Ministry was sitting on the recommendations of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) made on June 27.

The draft norms issued on October 23 provide for 60 days for the public to raise objections. Thereafter, the Ministry will examine the objections before taking the final call on fixing the emission norms.

The apex court in its May 2 order had directed the central government and the CPCB to fix SO2 (sulphur dioxide), NOx (nitrogen oxide) and SOx (sulphur oxide) standards 34 categories of industries in view of the provisions of the Environment Protection Act, 1986.

The CPCB in its affidavit to the court on Tuesday said the emission norms for SO2 and NOx for nine categories of industries had already been notified.

These industries include thermal power plants (in 2015), Dye and Dye Intermediate (2010), Cement (2016), Copper, Lead or Zinc Smelter (2011), Iron and Steel (2012), Coke oven (covered under Iron and Steel sector) (2012), Sulphuric Acid (2008), Petrochemicals (2012) and Pesticides (2011).

Asking the central government to fix the emission norms by June 30, 2017, the court had by its May 2 order had said the emission norms would be fixed after hearing a limited number of authorised representatives of the said industries.

--IANS

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European Council President Donald Tusk on Tuesday said the future relationship between the UK and the European Union (EU) was dependant on the former and suggested that Brexit could be halted.

Speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Tusk stressed the importance of unity among the remaining 27 EU member states irrespective of which way negotiations go,reports Efe news.

"It is in fact up to London how this will end: with a good deal, no deal or no Brexit," said Tusk.

He said the bloc could take on "every scenario as long as we are not divided."

It was not the first time since the Brexit process began that the top official has floated the possibility of the UK remaining in the EU; he touched on it after an EU leaders summit in June, drawing inspiration from John Lennon's song "Imagine".

Tusk had said that some of his British friends had asked him if Brexit was reversible and if he could imagine the UK being part of the bloc in the future.

He said that he had replied that the EU was "built on dreams that seemed impossible to achieve," continuing: "So, who knows? You may say I'm a dreamer, but I am not the only one."

In his speech on Tuesday, the President of the Council, which represents all the countries belonging to the EU, said he was an "incurable optimist".

He ended his address on the future make-up of the European Parliament, faced with the prospect of the UK's withdrawal, with British officials currently filling 73 of the 750 seats.

"I take all the proposals seriously that have surfaced in this debate, they are all interesting and pro-European ideas," he added.

--IANS

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Healthy buying in banking stocks, along with expectations of positive quarterly results buoyed the key Indian equity indices on Tuesday.

According to market observers, healthy buying was witnessed in banking, oil and gas and metal stocks.

The 30-scrip Sensitive Index (Sensex) edged higher by 101 points or 0.31 per cent.

The wider Nifty 50 of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) gained 22.85 points or 0.22 per cent at 10,207.70 points.

The Sensex of the BSE, which opened at 32,619.26 points, closed at 32,607.34 points, higher by 100.62 points or 0.31 per cent from Monday's close at 32,506.72 points.

The Sensex touched a high of 32,670.37 points and a low of 32,502.08 points during the intra-day trade.

"Benchmark indices gained ahead of October F&O expiry and Infosys results," Dhruv Desai, Director and Chief Operating Officer of Tradebulls, told IANS.

"Sensex and Nifty rose on Tuesday for the second consecutive session as expectations have built up on announcement of healthy quarterly results."

--IANS

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The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) under the Environment Ministry has suspended the proposal to release the Genetically Modified variety of Mustard -- Dhara Hybrid 11-- for commercial cultivation, official documents showed.

It its meeting held on May 11, the GEAC, a regulator under the Ministry, deferred approval for the release despite the sub-committee giving the GM Mustard technical clearance last year.

"Subsequent to receipt of various representation from different stakeholders, matters related to environmental release of transgenic Mustard are kept pending for further review," the GEAC said in the minutes of the meeting published on the Ministry's website.

The development comes as a setback to Deepak Pental, a geneticist at Delhi University, who developed the Dhara Hybrid 11.

Earlier, it was reported that the GEAC had recommended commercial release of the GM- Mustard variety and the Environment Minister was supposed to take a final call on it.

The Central government had in July this year told the Supreme Court that it would take a decision in a month-and-a-half on whether to allow the commercial roll out of GM mustard crop in the country.

There have been voices against the commercial cultivation of GM crops raising fears that it may have an adverse impact on the health of the people and biodiversity in the country

In June this year, the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, an agriculture think tank of 650 scientists, had urged the government to allow commercial use of GM mustard and to support scientists to develop such hybrids in the future.

--IANS

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The German Parliament elected a veteran centre-right politician as its President on Tuesday at a time when the chamber included a far-right party among its ranks for the first time in decades.

Wolfgang Schauble has been a member of parliament with the Christian Democratic Union since 1972 and a minister for 12 years, most recently as Finance Minister.

He was voted in with the backing of 501 lawmakers, while 173 cast their ballots against him, 30 abstained and one vote was annulled, Efe news agency reported.

"I am happy to have this new task," Schauble said. "The heart of democracy beats in Parliament," he added, describing himself as "a passionate lawmaker."

He called on all members of parliament to carry out the necessary democratic battles within the rules accepted by all.

The new Bundestag, following the September 24 elections, has six parliamentary groups, of which the largest is the CDU, the party of Schauble and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 92 seats in the vote, meaning the far-right was represented in Parliament for the first time in decades.

According to Electoral Commission data, this is the largest Parliament to date, with 709 members who have an average age of 49.4 years, of which 30.7 per cent are women.

A deal is yet to be struck between conservatives, liberals and greens to form a coalition led by Merkel, though talks between them are expected later on Tuesday.

The parties' very different approaches to issues like migration, European integration and energy means negotiations are expected to extend to the end of the year.

--IANS

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The government is considering a proposal to build 50 more border outposts on the India-China border, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Tuesday.

He also said that Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel deployed on the border were being taught Chinese language during their training to remove communication hurdles during face-offs with the People's Liberation Army.

"We are committed to enhancing your (ITBP) operational and infrastructure capabilities. Recently, we got a proposal to build 50 new border posts for the force and we are working on it," the Minister said on the occasion of ITBP's 56th Raising Day celebrations.

He said the government was considering using technology to ensure that a temperature of at least 20 degrees Celsius was maintained in all high-altitude ITBP posts so that forward border posts were not abandoned during extreme snow and cold.

"We have created a model border post in Ladakh where a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius can be maintained. We will create more such BoPs (Border Outposts) in Sikkim and the eastern sector of this border," he said.

At present, there are 176 border posts along the winding and disputed India-China border.

He said construction work of 25 border roads in Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand was also going on at a fast pace.

The Minister announced a slew of steps to bolster the capabilities of ITBP, including special lightweight winter clothing for personnel deployed above 9,000 feet and an enhanced fleet of snow scooters to patrol the high-altitude areas on the 3,488 km border.

He said 35 old border posts of ITBP at very high-altitudes were being upgraded as "composite" units and the government was working to enhance road, mobile and satellite connectivity in the border areas for the ITBP.

Rajnath Singh asked the ITBP personnel to maintain good relations with border dwellers as they were "strategic assets" and important stakeholders in keeping the borders safe.

Official sources say the recent standoff with China at Doklam forced the government to consider giving satellite bandwidth to security forces at the border for real time monitoring.

The sources say that several rounds of meetings had taken place in the Home Ministry along with BSF, ITBP, SSB and Isro officials during which it was discussed whether a single satellite would be enough to monitor activities on the borders or if each force needed to be provided a dedicated satellite bandwidth.

The ITBP chief said the Home Ministry had also approved the ITBP's proposal to hire helicopters for high-altitude border posts and the paramilitary force was also enhancing its intelligence set-up.

--IANS

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Nearly nine months after it won the bid, the GVK-led Mumbai International Airport Ltd on Tuesday got the green signal to start work on the Rs 16,000-crore Navi Mumbai International Airport, officials said here.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who presided over the cabinet meeting said that the City & Industrial Development Corporation will be the nodal agency for the project and the greenfield airport is expected to be operational by December 2019.

In the original tendering process, the bidders were GMR Airports, Hiranandani Group, Zurich Airport International AG, MIA Infrastructures (Vinci Airport & Tata Realty Company) and GVK-led MIAL.

The GVK, which currently manages the Mumbai International Airport LTd, submitted the highest revenue sharing model of 12.6 per cent per annum over its sole closest competitor GMR (which manages the New Delhi International Airport) which had quoted a figure of 10.44 per cent.

The new airport coming up on 1,160 hectares, will be constructed on a public-private-partnership model (PPP) for which CIDCO will foot the pre-development expenses that will be later recovered from GVK.

An official said that based on the detailed evaluation of the bid, the Project Monitoring & Implementation Committee recommended MIAL for the project, which was granted cabinet approval on Tuesday.

The CIDCO will get 12.6 per cent share in the annual revenue and 26 per cent equity shares in the project.

--IANS

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The government's decision to infuse Rs 2.11 lakh crore in public sector banks and spend Rs 14 lakh crore on infrastructure projects has received the thumbs up from India Inc.

"This milestone announcement on recapitalising banks in one-go is a bold and courageous move and was indeed the need of the hour," said Rajnish Kumar, Chairman of the State Bank of India.

"It will generate balance in overall demand and supply by bringing more investments in sectors like infrastructure. These funds will also help in efficiently managing risk and credit capital related requirements of the banks."

According to Kumar, the step will also encourage private participation "thus boosting growth going forward".

"The thrust to infrastructure will generate direct and indirect positive cascading effects for lot of related sectors and will create feel good factor for all stakeholders," Kumar said.

Industry body Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) welcomed the move which it said will kickstart the credit cycle and facilitate private investments.

"The Cabinet decision to address a vital issue is very timely and welcome. We are especially pleased with the announcement of recapitalisation bonds, which CII had recommended strongly, among other measures," said Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII.

"A three-pronged strategy to encourage investments is evident in the announcement of expanding public expenditure on infrastructure, boosting private investments and addressing delayed payments to the MSME sector."

Banerjee said the government's decision to enhance spending on roads and highways in a strategic manner including port connectivity, border and cross-border roads will have a "big multiplier impact" on economic growth.

"We also appreciate the government's decision to encourage registration of MSME in 50 clusters and promote registration of PSEs under TReDS (Trade Receivables Discounting System)," added Banerjee.

"This would aid formalisation of the economy as also alleviate the issue of delayed payments. CII hopes that the current requirement for MSMEs to register under GST in all states to participate in e-commerce will be addressed."

Another major industry chamber Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) said that it hoped that the Reserve Bank of India will also pro-actively seek to boost investment and consumer demand through an easing of the repo rate.

The decision to invest in PSU (public sector undertaking) bank recapitalisation should result in increased lending, especially to the MSME (micro small and medium enterprises) sector," said Pankaj Patel, President, Ficci.

Welcoming the emphasis placed by the Finance Minister on increasing public spending, Patel said the government can afford to ease the fiscal deficit to GDP ratio from the stated 3.2 per cent to 3.5 per cent without any serious negative macro-economic consequences.

The day's announcement of recapitalisation along with a booster dose of Rs 14 lakh crore expenditure will prove to be a mega turnaround point for the Indian economy which was tackling issues out of GST and demonetisation, said D.S. Rawat, Secretary General, Assocham.

"The bank recapitalisation would lead to a massive sentiment turnaround as the decision by the Union Cabinet ... is a great enabler for PSBs to resume lending, especially to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which are in immediate need for funding," he said.

A whole lot of infra industries like cement and steel would get a boost. Besides, it would also generate jobs at informal levels of the economy and generate demand at the bottom of the pyramid.

"These measures would surely set the stage for revival of private sector investment," said Rawat.

--IANS

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Indian Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said nations that helped North Korea in nuclear proliferation should be investigated and held accountable, even as she did not name any country.

Sitharaman was speaking at the Asean Defence Ministers' Meeting (ADMM-plus) being held in the Philippines. This is her first international tour after taking charge as the Defence Minister.

North Korea has conducted several tests in recent times. "The nuclear and missile tests conducted by North Korea in violation of its international commitments, have triggered serious concern," Sitharaman said.

"India has deplored these tests. We remain concerned about the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted India's national security and that of the entire region. It is important that North Korea's proliferation linkages are investigated and those who have supported its nuclear and missile programme are held accountable," she said.

Pakistan has been accused of transferring nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, and China's involvement as an ally of Pakistan has also been questioned.

Speaking at the meeting, being held in the Philippines which has been involved in a territorial conflict with China in the South China Sea, Sitharaman said that India supported freedom of navigation and rule based order.

"Maritime security continues to be another key concern. India supports freedom of navigation, overflight and commerce throughout the region. Nations should resolve maritime disputes peacefully and in accordance with international law. We support a rules based order for oceans and sea that is critical for the continued growth and development of the Indo-Pacific region," she said.

The Philippines had approached the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) concerning certain issues in the South China Sea including the legality of China's "nine-dotted line" claim. A ruling was given in favour of the Philippines, which was rejected by China.

Sitharaman called upon all nations in the region to be prepared for conventional as well as non conventional threats to security and added terrorism and radicalisation posed a major threat. "There are no good terrorists," Sitharaman said.

"Terrorism is now a trans-national phenomena which requires strong collective action by all members of the global community," she said adding that social media and cyberspace have expanded the threat.

"India has taken resolute measures to fight the scourge of terrorism from across its borders. We fully recognize the role of joint mechanisms with our partners and the role of international and regional forums in fighting this menace," she said.

The forum ADMM-plus includes defence ministers from the 10 Asean member countries and counterparts from countries such as Australia, China, India, Japan, US, South Korea, New Zealand and Russia.

--IANS

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Rome, Oct 24 (IANS/AKI) Italy has pledged 7 million euros to help more than half a million Rohingyas, mainly women and children, who have fled to Bangladesh to escape conflict in Myanmar, Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said.

"We are deeply concerned about the situation of the Rohingya people. During the last few weeks, over half a million people, mostly women and children, had to leave Myanmar and find refuge in Bangladesh," he said.

Alfano's remarks came as the UN and the European Union called a Donors Conference in Geneva to raise over $430 million to help the mainly Muslim Rohingya refugees who have fled a deadly military crackdown in Myanmar's Rakine state since August 25.

"In Geneva, Italy pledged 7 million euros in humanitarian aid to finance emergency relief activities to assure food, healthcare and protection by the specialised UN Agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross both in Bangladesh and in Myanmar," Alfano said.

Italy's diplomats will also work within the EU and the UN Security Council to ensure that Myanmar's security forces respect human rights, that civilians were protected and that the UN gains humanitarian access to the area, the Foreign Ministry said.

Italy will also try to help Rohingya refugees return to Myanmar as quickly as possible and "in conditions guaranteeing their security and dignity", the Ministry said.

--IANS/AKI

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Rome, Oct 24 (IANS/AKI) Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano spoke with his country's ambassador in Tehran after an Iranian researcher affiliated with a university in Italy, Ahmadreza Djalali, was sentenced to death for spying.

"I will see our ambassador in Iran in the next few days. I have just spoken to him and we will not cease to bring up the issue with the Iranians," Alfano said on Monday.

"We have repeatedly raised the case - at diplomatic level through our ambassador and at government level through the Italian Foreign Ministry," Alfano said.

Djalali was sentenced to death on Saturday by an Iranian revolutionary court for spying for Israel, according to Djalali's wife Vida Mehrannia and Italian diplomatic sources. They say he has 20 days to appeal against the sentence.

Djalali is affiliated with the University of Eastern Piedmont in Novara and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. A Swedish resident, he was arrested in April last year during an academic visit to Tehran.

He works on improving hospitals' emergency responses to armed terrorism and radiological, chemical and biological threats.

--IANS/AKI

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday greeted the Indo-Tibetan Border Police on its raising day, saying it has special affinity with the Himalayas and prowess at high altitude operations.

"Greetings to ITBP family on their Raising Day. The Force has distinguished itself through its bravery and humanitarian ethos," Modi said in a tweet.

"The ITBP stands out for its special affinity with the Himalayas and prowess at high altitude operations."

The ITBP was raised on October 24, 1962, and is presently deployed on border guarding duties from Karakoram Pass in Ladakh to Jachep La in Arunachal Pradesh, covering 3,488 km of the India-China border.

--IANS

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The Odisha government is all set to launch flight services to Jharsuguda, an industrial hub, by November-end under the central government's UDAN scheme, said an official on Tuesday.

Holding a review meeting here, Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi said he has ordered expeditious infrastructure development in the airstrips of Rourkela, Jeypore and Utkela for making those ready for Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) flights.

"We will be ready to start the operation to Jharsuguda by November. We are yet to get confirmation from the private operators. As soon as they get ready, the services will be launched," said Padhi.

The state-based operator Air Odisha is likely to launch its flight services in the UDAN scheme from November. In the first phase, it will operate from Ahmedabad to Bhavanagar, Jamnagar, Diu and Mundra, said informed sources.

"For Rourkela, we are sorting out issues with Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) which had initially agreed to manage the airport," Padhi said.

According to data, five airstrips of Odisha including Biju Patnaik International Airport were selected for UDAN scheme in Phase-I. The four other airstrips are Rourkela, Jharsuguda, Utkela (Kalahandi) and Jeypore (Koraput).

It is expected that subsidies and financial assistance would make the ticket cost affordable. According to informed sources, the average price of a ticket would be around Rs 2,500.

--IANS

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Actor Matt Damon says he knew Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, accused of sexual harassment by many actresses, was a womaniser, but was not aware that he was a predator.

"When people say like, 'Everybody knew,' Like, yeah, I knew he was an a**hole," Damon told ABC News in a joint interview with actor George Clooney, reports variety.com.

"He was proud of that. That's how he carried himself. I knew he was a womaniser. I wouldn't want to be married to the guy. But this level of criminal sexual predation is not something that I ever thought was going on. Absolutely not," Damon added.

Clooney said Weinstein talked to him about women he had affairs with though Clooney didn't believe him.

"I didn't really think that they were going to have affairs with Harvey, quite honestly. And clearly they didn't. But the idea that this predator, this assaulter, was out there silencing women like that, it's beyond infuriating," Clooney said.

Damon worked with Weinstein on "Good Will Hunting", the 1997 film that launched Damon's career.

Damon said: "You had to spend about five minutes with him to know that he was a bully. He was intimidating. Miramax was the place, really the place, that was making great stuff in the 1990s. And it was like, 'Could you survive Harvey?'"

Damon said Weinstein's "darkness" was done in private and he never saw it take place, reports variety.com.

"What makes something like this so horrific is that these are women and actresses who are pursuing their dreams. They're doing everything right. And suddenly they found themselves alone with a predator," Damon said.

--IANS

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Winter has set in early in the city for a clutch of schools affiliated to the ICSE board, thanks to panic over dengue.

To prevent schoolchildren from the bite of the dengue vector, the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the Association of ICSE Schools in West Bengal has recommended certain sartorial measures for schools in the city.

"We are spreading awareness wherever the menace is. They (students) should wear the winter uniform from now without the sweater or blazer. The awareness is on a local scale since the issue is local," Nabarun De, Secretary, Association of ICSE Schools in Bengal, told IANS.

For girls, stockings or leggings have been suggested while boys of junior sections have been advised to dress in full-length trousers. "Students are advised to don full sleeve shirts," said De.

The association has 285 member schools.

The Heritage School, in its notice dated October 21, says: "Children should go outdoors only in long-sleeve clothes. Students should wear a white full sleeved vest and the school track suit to school for the next two weeks."

Drawing flak for its handling of the dengue menace in the city, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation on Monday maintained it has been effectively able to control its spread. It alleged a "deliberate attempt" at misinformation about its tackling of the disease that has claimed at least 30 lives in West Bengal.

--IANS

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A man has been arrested for killing a call centre owner here after he refused a partnership deal, a Delhi police officer said on Tuesday.

Police said the accused has been identified as Rahul Rai, a resident of Sector 35 in Rohini. He was arrested on Saturday from Nagaldargu village in Haryana's Narnaul following a tip-off.

The incident took place on October 19, when one Bittoo informed police regarding a quarrel in a call centre in Badli area.

When the police reached the spot, they found the body of Priyanshu lying in a pool of blood.

"During investigation, Bittoo, a friend of Priyanshu who used to stay in the call centre premises, told police that he along with Priyanshu was running the call centre," Deputy Commissioner of Police Rishi Pal said.

A local bully, Rahul Rai, was threatening them to accept his offer of partnership in the business and attacked Priyanshu when he refused, he said.

"Rai was later apprehended from Narnaul with the help of technical surveillance," Pal said.

During interrogation, Rai disclosed that he wanted to take over the business of Priyanshu.

He had initially tried to kidnap and force Bittoo to sign an agreement but failed. Priyanshu, on the other hand, tried to defer the deal to avoid direct confrontation with him, the officer added.

"On the day of the crime, Rai came to talk to Bittoo and Priyanshu but they refused his partnership deal. Rai then asked for the customers calling data from Priyanshu."

"When he refused to hand it over, Rai stabbed him multiple times with a knife. He then escaped with his laptop and other documents after Bittoo raised an alarm," he added.

--IANS

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A massive fire was reported on Tuesday at a private yarn factory building in Punjab's industrial city of Ludhiana, police said.

The building is located close to the popular Shringar cinema hall.

At least 12 fire brigade vehicles were engaged in controlling the fire.

Police sources said that the fire was so intense that a portion of the building collapsed.

No casualties were reported so far.

Goods worth lakhs of rupees were completely destroyed in the fire.

--IANS

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Rapper Meek Mill has had his assault charge wiped out after performing community service.

The 30-year-old was arrested in March and charged with misdemeanour assault after having a physical altercation with someone who tried to get a photograph of him at St. Louis International Airport in Missouri, reports tmz.com.

Mill's lawyer Joe Tacopina said that he struck a deal for Meek to perform community service at the Veterans Association in Philadelphia, in return for having the charges dropped.

Meanwhile, it was earlier revealed that Meek's arrest record will be cleared in his reckless driving case if he stays out of trouble for six months.

The star was charged with reckless endangerment after allegedly riding a motorbike irresponsibly in New York without a helmet, in August.

--IANS

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Appreciating the UN's effort in promoting world peace, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday extended his greetings on the 72nd UN Day.

"Greetings on UN Day. We appreciate UN's efforts in promoting world peace and laud the wide range of initiatives under its guidance," Modi tweeted.

He also said that "India is proud of the steadfast support and active participation in several UN initiatives aimed at making our world a better place".

UN Day marks the anniversary of the entry into force of the UN charter in 1945. October 24 has been celebrated as UN Day since 1948.

--IANS

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The Myanmar government on Tuesday pledged to continue working with the United Nations in its endeavor to achieve the socio-economic development of the country.

Speaking on the occasion of the 72nd anniversary of the United Nations, Myanmar President U. Htin Kyaw said the theme of the debate of the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly in September gives further impetus to his country's efforts for peace process and reconciliation, democratization, promotion and protection of human rights and economic development, Xinhua reported.

The President hoped that the United Nations will in accordance with the theme be able to enhance its support for the people of member states in their nation building and development efforts in line with the host country's priorities.

The theme of the 72nd UN General Assembly is "Focusing on people-- Striving for peace and a decent life for all on a sustainable planet".

He pledged commitment to sustainable conservation of environment and promoting and protecting human rights, including respecting fundamental rights of an individual.

He vowed to work together with the UN agencies, international organisations, non-governmental organisations and individuals for implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals.

The President said the Myanmar government would make efforts to successfully overcome all challenges with the active participation of the people and the continued support of its friends around the world.

--IANS

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The NIA on Tuesday said it seized Rs 27.90 lakh from the houses of Shelly Sumi, wife of Niki Sumi -- the self-styled General of the banned outfit NSCN-K -- and others in Nagaland's Dimapur district.

The raids were part of its ongoing case against them for extorting people and sending the money to Myanmar to fund the activities of the terrorist organisation.

"We conducted searches at the houses of Nikki, Ikheli Yeptho, Shutoli and Hozheli at Naharbari Basti in Dimapur earlier in the day and recovered cash amounting to Rs 27.90 lakh," a National Investigation Agency (NIA) statement said.

It said the seized money was suspected to have been extorted from the public or government servants, meant for sending to the NSCN-K camps in Myanmar to fund activities "prejudicial to the sovereignty and integrity of India".

A total of 12 mobile phones, three laptops, one hard disk and 33 incriminating documents were also seized, it said.

The statement said the NIA got intelligence inputs in April that Shelly was believed to be carrying huge amounts of money to Myanmar to fund the NSCN-K. Later, the agency filed a case against her and others.

NSCN-K is the major insurgent group operating in Nagaland.

--IANS

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A Maharashtra government panel for farmers on Tuesday sought the NITI Aayog's urgent intervention to ensure discussions with all stakeholders before bringing about the changes in the proposed Pesticide Management Bill, 2017.

The proposed Bill would be introduced by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Vasantrao Naik Shetkari Swavalamban Mission (VNSSM) Chairman Kishore Tiwari has written to the NITI Aayog that unless all the stakeholders are involved, the bill would fail to reflect the crises in the farmlands which have claimed the lives of more than 40 farmers in Maharashtra alone due to inhaling fumes of toxic pesticides.

"The deaths of farmers here is due to gross negligence in pesticide management in the country, which is now becoming a chronic problem. Every year, there are around 10,000 cases of pesticide poisoning and in 2015, more than 7,000 died due to accidental intake of insecticides/pesticides," Tiwari wrote to the NITI Aayog.

Holding the Ministry of Agriculture (both central and state) solely responsible for the unsafe use of pesticides, he said the deaths can be prevented if some crucial gaps in the regulations and their implementation are fixed on priority.

"The matter was discussed with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis this week in detail and he has assured to raise it with the Centre, especially since Maharashtra is witnessing so many deaths," Tiwari said.

The VNSSM pointed out how deadly pesticides like Monocrotophos, Oxydemeton-Methyl, Acephate and Profenofos are allegedly responsible for the deaths and illnesses in the state.

The pesticides Monocrotophos and Oxydemeton-Methyl are considered Class I hazardous pesticides by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and further classified as extremely hazardous (IA) and highly hazardous (IB).

He said the classification is based on acute toxicity of pesticide-active ingredients and since Class I pesticides can be fatal even at a very low dose, they are banned in many countries.

For instance, Monocrotophos is banned in 60 countries, Phorate in 37 nations, Traizophos in 40 nations and Phosphamidon in 49 countries but in India, their use continues.

"In 2015-2016, eighteen types of hazardous pesticides were allowed to be used in India, including 7,717 tonnes of technical grade and 2,254 tonnes Class I, without bothering to comply with the International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management, released by WHO and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), warning of extreme precautions to be exercised by the handlers," Tiwari said.

However, since it is impossible for the small farmers to make use of personal protective equipment, he said the Class I hazardous pesticides should have been banned long ago in India.

Interestingly, the VNSSM's letter to the NITI Aayog comes a day after former Union Agriculture Minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) President Sharad Pawar slammed the central as well as state governments for the easy availability of deadly pesticides which have claimed so many lives in the state.

--IANS

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The Opposition, including the Congress and Left, on Tuesday voiced doubts at the government's "intent and sincerity" behind its sudden Kashmir initiative and wondered if it was linked to the visit of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad on Tuesday said the Modi government after three years of "hot pursuit" was talking of dialogue for the sake of publicity, while Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI-M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury termed the Modi government's approach on Kashmir as a "flip-flop policy".

Commenting on the government's fresh initiative of dialogue on Kashmir, Azad, a former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, summed up his feelings through an Urdu couplet.

"Tamannao me uljahaya gaya hoon/khilone dekar behlaya gaya hoon (I have been trapped in wishful thinking/I have been mollified by toys)," Azad said, underlining his views on the government's dialogue initiative which he said has come too late and lacks a fixed timeframe.

"For three-and-a-half years, the Modi government followed hot pursuit. Now, towards the fag end of its term the government is talking of dialogue to garner some publicity. We seriously doubt the government's intent and sincerity," Azad said at a presser here in which Trinamool Congress leader Derek O'Brien and Janata Dal-United (JD-U) rebel Sharad Yadav were also present.

In a sudden shift of its tough stand, the Union government on Monday said it would start talks on Jammu and Kashmir with all parties, including separatists, and appointed former intelligence chief Dineshwar Sharma as its pointsman for the troubled state.

Azad said that for the past three years, the opposition parties, including the Congress, had been stressing on the need of confidence building measures in Kashmir but it fell on deaf years.

"Kashmir is a political issue and no political issue across the world has ever been resolved by hot pursuit or muscle power. If this government had listened to us earlier, so many precious lives of soldiers and of civilians would not have been lost and hundreds of children as young as three and four years would not have lost their eyes to pellet guns," Azad said.

He said the Modi government has "no policy at all" on Kashmir.

Addressing the media separately, CPI-M chief said the overnight sudden shift in the government's policy on Kashmir coincided with US Secretary of State Tillersons' visit to India.

Tillerson arrives in India on Tuesday night on a three-day official visit.

"The Modi government's Kashmir policy has been a flip-flop policy. Given the background of this government and the flip-flop, we don't know whether it will be a flip or a flop. We will have to wait and see," Yechury said.

"In 2016, I and some colleagues met some of the separatist leaders and they objected to it. Now they say interlocutors will talk to all stakeholders, which I presume includes separatists. In which case why did they not not do it earlier?" Yechury said.

He said that the CPI-M supports "any move or measure taken to restore normalcy in Kashmir", but it was still not clear as to "what is the mandate given to the interlocutors, or what is the framework under which they have to act".

"There is a sense of betrayal amongst the people in Kashmir because this government has not implemented the promises it itself made earlier. Last year, after the all-party delegation returned from Kashmir, two promises were made.

"One, immediately a political process will start of talks with all stakeholders, and through political dialogue we will try to come to a solution. Two, immediate confidence building measures would be introduced including finding a substitute to pellet guns and creating employment avenues for the youth," he said.

The Left leader said that more than a year has passed and "none of this has begun to be addressed at all".

"Naturally, there is a sense of complete betrayal and alienation is deepening...Now overnight there is a shift in the government's policy that interestingly coincides with the visit of US Secretary of State to India," Yechury said.

--IANS

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The government said on Tuesday that a universal affordable housing scheme will give a big boost to the construction industry as 1.2 crore dwellings will be built in three years under PMAY's urban component and another 1.02 crore units under its rural component by March 2019.

"The universal affordable housing for all will give a big boost to the construction industry," Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa told the media in the presence of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley after a Union Cabinet meeting here.

Lavasa said 1.2 crore units under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana or PMAY (Urban) would entail an expenditure of Rs 1,85,069 crore in three years.

He said under PMAY (Gramin) 1.02 crore units would be built at a cost of Rs 1,26,795 crore by the Centre and states by March 2019. Lavasa said 51 lakh units will be built this year.

The government last month announced a new PPP (Private Public Partnership) Policy for Affordable Housing that allows extending central assistance of up to Rs 2.50 lakh per house to be built by private builders even on private land, besides opening up immense potential for private investments in affordable housing projects on government land in urban areas.

The government had launched "Housing for All" in rural areas in November 2016 under which the government proposes to provide an environment friendly and secure house to every rural household by 2022.



The government had in June 2015 given its approval for "Housing for All by 2022" for urban areas which provided for rehabilitation of slum dwellers, promotion of affordable housing for weaker sections through credit-linked subsidy and subsidy for beneficiary-led individual house construction or enhancement.
Pankaj Tripathi, who has won the Best Actor title at the Cape Town International Film Market and Festival for "Mango Dreams", says appreciation of talent anywhere in the world always feels good.

"If an actor's work is appreciated anywhere in the world, it always feels good. A lot of hard work goes behind every project and it takes years of perseverance and dedication to achieve success.

"The fact that I have been recognised on an international level, is very humbling," Pankaj told IANS over phone from Mohali where he is currently shooting a new film.

"Mango Dreams", directed by John Upchurch, is about a Hindu doctor with dementia and a Muslim auto-rickshaw driver who form an unlikely friendship as they cross India in search of the doctor's childhood home.

Pankaj essays the auto-rickshaw driver, while the role of the doctor is essayed by theatre veteran Ram Gopal Bajaj.

The actor's work in "Newton" and "Bareilly Ki Barfi" has been widely appreciated in the recent past. He is also excited about the selection of "Newton" as India's official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars.

--IANS

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On his maiden visit to Bengaluru after taking office, President Ram Nath Kovind will interact with scientists at the renowned Indian Institute of Science (IISc) on Tuesday.

"The President, who will be on a two-day visit to (Karnataka), will participate in an hour-long roundtable discussion with about 30 scientists from our institute and other institutions in the city," IISc spokesman Veeranna told IANS here.

Kovind will first visit the nano-science and materials laboratory in the sprawling campus of the century-old institute for a first hand account of the work being carried out in the dust-free facility.

After reaching the state-run HAL airport, the President will pay floral tributes to the founder of Bengaluru Kempegowda at the main civic office of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike.

On Wednesday, Kovind will address members of the Karnataka Legislature at a joint session to mark the diamond jubilee (60th year) of the iconic Vidhana Soudha, the imposing structure of the legislative building and the state secretariat.

--IANS

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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday announced it has imposed a penalty of Rs 6 crore on Yes Bank and fined IDFC Bank Rs 2 crore for not complying with the directions of the central bank.

While Yes Bank delayed reporting an information security incident involving its ATMs and failed to comply with the RBI's direction on Income Recognition Asset Classification (IRAC norms), IDFC Bank was penalised for breaching regulatory restrictions related to loans and advances, the apex bank said.

"RBI has imposed on October 23, 2017, a monetary penalty of Rs 60 million on Yes Bank for non-compliance with the directions issued by RBI on Income Recognition Asset Classification (IRAC) norms and delayed reporting of information security incident involving ATMs of the bank," an RBI release here said.

"This action is based on deficiencies in regulatory compliance and is not intended to pronounce upon the validity of any transaction or agreement entered into by the bank with its customers," it said.

According to the RBI, a statutory inspection of the bank's financial position revealed violations of various regulations issued by the RBI in the assessment of non-performing assets (NPAs), or bad loans.

"A cyber-security incident involving ATMs of the bank was also not reported by the bank within the prescribed timeframe," it said.

In a separate release on IDFC Bank, the RBI said it has imposed "a monetary penalty of Rs 20 million on IDFC Bank for contravention of regulatory restrictions pertaining to loans and advances."

"Based on the status report, a notice was issued to the bank dated August 07, 2017 advising it to show cause as to why penalty should not be imposed on it for non-compliance with directions issued by RBI," it said.

--IANS

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Questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence on the Women's Reservation Bill issue, the Congress on Tuesday demanded that the Bill be introduced in the Winter Session of Parliament and be fully implemented before the next general elections.

The Congress also alleged the "anti-women mindset" of the RSS and the "Pracharak in Modi" was stalling the bill.

On Monday, 41 Mahila Congress functionaries submitted 32 lakh signatures to President Ram Nath Kovind to seek his support for the Women's Reservation Bill and urged him to expedite the process to pass the Bill.

All district Mahila Congress presidents will submit a memorandum to the Prime Minister through the district collectorates demanding swift action in passing the Bill on October 31, which marks the Martyrdom Day of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

"Modi government has not only betrayed the youth, farmers and the poor. It is also deceiving the political aspirations of 586 million women of this country," said Congress spokesperson and All India Mahila Congress president Sushmita Dev.

"The BJP manifesto explicitly states it is committed to 33 per cent women's reservation in Parliament and state assemblies through a Constitutional Amendment. Three and half years have passed, what happened to this commitment?" she asked.

Dev said that Congress President Sonia Gandhi had on September 20 in a letter to Modi extended support of the party to this bill in the Lok Sabha.

"Till date there has been no response or acknowledgment to the letter. Why is the Modi government not implementing what could be the biggest social reform in the largest democracy in the world," Dev asked.

"Despite the support of the largest opposition party in Lok Sabha and also having absolute majority, why is the Modi government not introducing the Bill in Parliament," she asked.

"We have heard various statements from union ministers and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj that BJP has two women ministers in the Cabinet Committee on Security. Will the women leaders of the BJP convince the Prime Minister to take affirmative action to give half of the population of India their right to become a part of legislative institutions at all levels," she asked.

--IANS

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South Korea, Japan and the US on Tuesday began a joint missile warning exercise, which would help bolster their ability to track and detect missiles in the event of attacks by North Korea.

The two-day trilateral manoeuver began in waters off the South Korean and Japanese coasts, with four vessels equipped with the Aegis combat system, according to a statement issued by the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

"The latest exercise is designed to prepare against growing nuclear and missile threats by North Korea in accordance with the agreement made during the 48th Security Consultative Meeting between South Korea and the U.S. in October 2016," Efe news quoted the statement as saying.

During the operations, no actual missiles will be fired as the four vessels have been deployed only to detect and track computer-simulated missiles, and rehearse their information-sharing protocols, said the JCS.

This is the fifth joint missile warning exercise between the three countries since their first drill in June 2016.

The missile-warning exercise comes at a time of lingering tension on the peninsula following the ongoing series of weapons tests carried out by Pyongyang this year, which triggered a harsh response from US President Donald Trump, who threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea.

The regional tension has significantly eased off since Pyongyang fired its latest missile over Japan a month ago on September 15.

--IANS

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Punjab Police on Tuesday booked over a dozen people following an assault on a Sikh leader inside a gurdwara complex in Gurdaspur district.

The assault on Johar Singh, President of the managing committee of Chhota Ghallughara Gurdwara at Qadian, took place late on Monday night.

A number of men and women assaulted Singh. His turban fell down during the attack and most of his clothes were torn, the police said.

A video of the attack went viral within hours.

Singh belongs to a camp of Sikh leadership who are seen as rivals to the hold of the SGPC (Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee) and the Akal Takht, the highest temporal seat of the Sikh religion.

The police had to intervene on October 12 at the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar as rival Sikh groups clashed.

The incident at the complex, where the holiest of Sikh shrines 'Harmandir Sahib' is located, left several people injured.

Singh was summoned by the 'parallel jathedars' to clarify his stand over the ruckus created at the Qadian gurdwara in August following allegations of involvement of a member of the gurdwara management in immoral activities.

The 'parallel jathedars' were appointed by hardline Sikh groups in 2015. The SGPC and Akal Takht do not recognise them.

--IANS

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Around 1,900 branches of IDBI Banks across the country were shut on Tuesday due to a strike by employees demanding wage revision, said a leader of the All India IDBI Officers Association (AIIDBIOA)

The employee unions - officers and staff - are on strike on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"The bank has 15,000 officers and around 2,000 staff members working in the 1,900 branches spread across the country. All the branches are closed due to strike," protest leader Vithal Koteswara Rao A.V. told IANS.

Wage revision for employees and officers of IDBI Bank is due for the period from November 1, 2012 to October 31, 2017, on the lines of the settlement in all other banks.

In the case of all other Banks, not only wage revision was settled in May 2015 with effect from November 2012, the negotiation for the next wage revision due from November 1, 2017 was also underway.

According to Rao, the bank handles around 250,000 instruments valued around Rs 1,800 crore daily.

"Nearly 60 per cent of that have been affected due to the strike," he added.

--IANS

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US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in Pakistan on Tuesday for talks on bilateral and regional issues.

It is Tillerson's first visit to Pakistan since the new US administration assumed office and the first visit by a senior US official after President Donald Trump announced a new strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia in August, Xinhua news agency reported.

The State Secretary is scheduled to hold talks with his Pakistani counterpart Khawaja Asif. He will also meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Army Chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, Pakistan's state radio reported.

It would be Asif's second meeting with Tillerson in less than a month.

The two met in Washington earlier this month and had detailed discussions on bilateral relations and regional security situation, including India-Pakistan relations and Afghanistan, according to the Foreign Ministry.

--IANS

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US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Monday that Washington was keen on dialogue between Iraqi government and the Iraqi Kurdish region to solve the Kurdish issue.

Tillerson made his remarks in his discussion with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi over the tension between Baghdad and the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, Xinhua news agency reported.

In a statement by the Prime Minister's Office, Tillerson said that the US supported Iraq's unity and called for the importance of adherence to the constitution.

For his part, Abadi said what Baghdad did in Kirkuk was redeployment and imposition of state power, which are legal and constitutional procedures.

"We do not want to fight a battle with any (Iraqi) components, all of them are our sons, and when we entered Kirkuk we sent a clear message that the Kurdish citizens are Iraqis and we deal with them like other components," Abadi said.

The statement said that the two sides also discussed "enhancing bilateral cooperation in various fields and the war against terrorism."

Abadi told Tillerson the paramilitary Hashd Shaabi unit "is an official institution which is part of the Iraq institutions. We have to encourage the (Hashd Shaabi) fighters because they will be the hope for the country and the region."

--IANS

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The US was considering sanctions against Myanmar, particularly against its military, over the ongoing Rohingya crisis, according to a State Department statement.

The statement issued on Monday expressed concern over the violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state that has led to over 600,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh since August 25, reports Efe news.

"We express our gravest concern with recent events in Myanmar's Rakhine state and the violent, traumatic abuses Rohingya and other communities have endured.

"It is imperative that any individuals or entities responsible for atrocities, including non-state actors and vigilantes, be held accountable," the statement said.

In Monday's statement, the US said it is considering activating the Global Magnitsky Act that includes suspension of visa and other sanctions on those responsible for human rights violations anywhere in the world.

Meanwhile, the State Department has already withdrawn US aid to Myanmar military units in Rakhine, suspended visa exemptions of top generals and former members and withdrew invitations to Army commanders to participate in activities in Washington.

The US was also "consulting with allies and partners on accountability options at the UN, the UN Human Rights Council, and other appropriate venues", added the statement.

Earlier in 2017 and weeks before he left office, former US President Barack Obama had lifted government sanctions against Myanmar citing substantial improvement in the human rights situation in the country.

--IANS

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With the Alappuzha district collector in her report indicting Kerala Transport Minister Thomas Chandy of land grab around his plush resort at Alappuzha and the opposition Congress and BJP demanding his ouster, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will have to take a call on the issue.

While Vijayan has all along being strongly defending Chandy both inside and outside the Assembly, the issue is set to figure before Vijayan and his cabinet on Wednesday.

On Monday night, Alappuzha Collector T.V. Anupama handed over her report to state Revenue Minister E. Chandrasekheran, who is one of the four CPI nominees in the Vijayan cabinet.

While the contents of the report are yet to be made public, according to reliable sources, Anupama has recommended strong action against officials who have remained "mute witness to the violations" that have taken place in the resort located around Marthandam Lake.

The Communist Party of India has now left it to Vijayan to take a decision.

State Congress president M.M. Hassan has been demanding tough action against Chandy including his ouster, while Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala visited the site and has also demanded that Chandy quit or Vijayan should remove him from the post.

State BJP president Kummanem Rajasekheran has also visited the place and called for Chandy's ouster.

However, Vijayan has strongly defended Chandy, first on the floor of the Assembly and last week he said he stands by what he said in the Assembly.

Chandy, who has all along been saying he has done no wrong, is now trying to wriggle out by approaching the court and expects to stall any immediate action by getting a favourable order.

However, the Congress-led UDF has been recounting that in the previous Left government (2006-11) under V.S. Achuthanandan, in a similar case of usurping of land the then State PWD Minister T.U. Kuruvilla had quit as Minister.

But CPI-M State Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan told reporters on Tuesday that the state government has already begun to look into the issue and appropriate steps would be taken.

"Last year, our own CPI-M Minister E.P. Jayarajan quit as Minister after reports surfaced against him. Then it was his decision to quit and was done to uphold the dignity of the party," said Balakrishnan.

--IANS

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A British former assistant of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein says she was paid $165,200 to keep quiet after accusing the movie mogul of sexual harassment.

Zelda Perkins told Financial Times that she signed a non-disclosure agreement in 1998 after making the accusations, reports bbc.com.

She said he asked her to give him massages and tried to pull her into bed, but she "was made to feel ashamed for disclosing his behaviour".

Weinstein has denied any allegations of non-consensual sex "unequivocally".

The former assistant said she reported her allegations after a female colleague told her she had also been sexually harassed by the film producer.

The two women subsequently sought damages and were awarded a sum of $330,500, split equally, but also signed a non-disclosure agreement, prohibiting them from discussing the allegations.

By breaking the agreement, Perkins could be liable to repay the settlement, and potentially pay damages and other legal fees stipulated in the contract.

"I want to publicly break my non-disclosure agreement. Unless somebody does this there won't be a debate about how egregious these agreements are and the amount of duress that victims are put under," she said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Vice-President hosted a lunch for political leaders on Tuesday. Naidus lunches are eagerly awaited affairs for Delhis media corps and the political class for their sumptuous vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. Thank U @VPSecretariat @MVenkaiahNaidu Ji for the lunch you hosted for ministers and Opposition leaders. In your favourite rhyme, no meeting, only eating, Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member Derek OBrien tweeted after the lunch.
Accusing the Congress party of indulging in caste-based in Gujarat, the state's Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel said the Congress party can go to the extent of inviting terrorists like Hafiz Saeed if they feel it can help them form the government in the state.

"If Congress feels that they can win the Assembly polls in Gujarat by joining hands with Pakistan-based terrorists like Hafiz Saeed or any other such people, they would send them invitation without any hesitation," Patel said while addressing a press conference here.

Patel also alleged the country's grand old party of bringing back the KHAM theory (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim) of 1980s, and said they want to divide Gujarat on the basis of castes just to gather the support of the people.

"As the BJP is practicing 'Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas', the Congress is continuing to indulge in the 'Divide and Rule' policy which existed during colonial rule. In spite of having such strong roots, people have lost their faith in Congress leadership," he said.

Commenting on the inclusion of OBC leader Alpesh Thakor to Congress, Patel claimed that the opposition party is desperately looking for a new leadership to campaign for them, and cited this as the reason for Rahul Gandhi's visit to Gujarat.

(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 day after describing the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as "Gabbar Singh Tax", Congress Vice President on Tuesday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi again over the pan-India tax regime, saying it was designed so as to grab peoples' earnings.

Congress GST= Genuine Simple Tax Modi ji's GST= Gabbar Singh Tax =''    "  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) October 24, 2017

Gandhi's remarks highlighted the difference of the GST proposed by the previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime and the one implemented by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government.

The Congress has said its proposed GST was a single tax of 18 per cent across the nation with few forms to be filled, while the one implemented by the BJP-led NDA government has 28 per cent tax and several return forms.

ALSO READ: In campaign mode, Rahul Gandhi terms GST as 'Gabbar Singh Tax'

On Monday, the Congress leader while addressing a rally in Gandhinagar, described GST as Gabbar Singh Tax.

"Ye jo inka GST hai, ye aam aadmi pe bojh hai... Ye GST nahi, ye Gabbar Singh Tax hai," Gandhi had said.

Gandhi said Modi imposed demonetisation last year on a personal whim, pushing lakhs of people into distress.

And if this was not enough, he introduced the GST in a tearing hurry.

He called the Modi government anti-poor and said it was working against the interests of the common people.

Welcoming the trinity of Alpesh Thakore, Hardik Patel and Jignesh Mevani, who are leading agitations in Gujarat, Gandhi began his speech with 'Jay Mataji, Jay Sardar and Jay Bhim'. The three terms are popularly used as community greetings of the Kshatriyas, Patels and Dalits, respectively.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi are not the only trailblazers in the run-up to the crucial Gujarat Assembly elections. The state is also set witness a political slugfest between Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his immediate predecessor Akhilesh Yadav.
Reminiscent of the conclaves of non-Congress chief ministers in 1983-84, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has asked non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief ministers to come together to protect the rights of the states from being eroded further.
The DMK, an ally of the Congress, today said it would observe November 8, the first anniversary of demonetisation, as 'Black Day' and stage demonstrations in all district headquarters of Tamil Nadu.

In a statement, DMK Working President M K Stalin said party workers, wearing black shirts, would observe November 8 as "Karuppu Dhinam" (Black Day) and stage protests.

He invited the public "affected by the note ban" to join the agitations by sporting black arm bands.

Stalin's statement is in line with the Congress' announcement in Delhi that it would observe November 8 as 'Black Day'.

Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "Eighteen political parties have decided to hold protests in every state in their capacity against the government's decision which caused hardship to the people."



A group of 18 opposition parties has been standing together against the government and formed the seven-member coordination committee comprising leaders of the Congress, TMC, SP, BSP, DMK, the Left and the breakaway JD-U faction.

The coordination committee of opposition parties had met yesterday in the Parliament House, where it authorised Azad to talk to other parties and finalise the protest plan on November 8.

Stalin said, "This unilateral decision (of demonetisation) by the BJP government has affected the unorganised sector, daily-wage labourers and farm workers, besides hurting MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises)."



"The country's economy is sluggish today," he alleged.

The DMK leader said former prime minister Manmohan Singh had warned of the ill-effects of the note ban and many political leaders had also expressed concerns about it then.

He claimed that people stood in ATMs for long hours and wasted their precious time while those without debit cards, such as villagers, were further affected.

The BJP government had not come forward to condole in Parliament deaths which occurred in queues in banks and ATMs, Stalin alleged.

Taking a dig at the BJP, the DMK leader also alleged the party had not implemented its pre-poll promises such as "depositing Rs 15 lakh in each Indian's bank account" and ensuring economic growth.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi Transport Department today caught 24 buses of different state roadways for not meeting Pollution Under Control (PUC) norms, amid concerns over the national capital's air quality.

The state roadways concerned are being issued notices about their buses failing the PUC test, said a transport department official.

The PUC is a certification mark issued to motor vehicles in India that meet emission and pollution control norms.

The official said that 50 buses belonging to state roadways of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Chandigarh, Punjab and Rajasthan were checked and 24 vehicles failed the PUC test.

Ten of the 13 buses from UP were found not complying with PUC norms, while the 17 buses from Haryana, seven failed the test, he said.

The transport department's enforcement wing has set up a mobile pollution testing machine at the Kasheme Gate Inter- State Bus Terminal (ISBT) to check vehciles arriving from different states.

The buses that failed the PUC test will not be allowed to enter the ISBT unless they obtain fresh PUC certificates, the official said.

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More than 32,000 personnel from the central armed forces such as the CRPF and the BSF, and around 55,000 from the state police are expected to be deployed for the upcoming Gujarat assembly elections, an official said on Tuesday.

For the Himachal Pradesh polls on November 9, around 10,000 personnel from central armed police forces and 14,000 from the state police are expected to be deployed.

As per the requirement of the Election Commission, around 320 companies of central armed police forces are likely to be deployed in Gujarat and 100 companies of security personnel in Himachal Pradesh, a senior government official privy to the development told PTI.

Several rounds of deliberations between the poll panel and the Union Home Ministry have taken place, and the total number of security personnel to be deployed in the poll-bound states will be finalised once the schedule for the Gujarat assembly elections is declared, the official said.

Around 55,000 state police personnel are likely to be deployed in Gujarat and 14,000 state police personnel are expected to be deployed in Himachal Pradesh.

Elections to the 68-member Himachal Pradesh assembly will be held on November 9, while the schedule for the 182-member Gujarat assembly is expected to be announced within the next few days.
ABB India on Tuesday reported an 18.16 per cent jump in its net profit to Rs 83.39 crore in the quarter ended September 30.

The company's net profit was Rs 70.57 crore in the same quarter last fiscal, ABB India Ltd said in a BSE filing.

The company said the unaudited for the quarter ended September 30, 2017 was approved by its board in a meeting held today.

According to the statement, the company's total revenue from operations declined to Rs 1,915.37 crore in the quarter from Rs 2,197.64 crore in same period last year.

The company follows financial year from January-December fiscal format. Its net profit for January to September period this year stood at Rs 248.43 crore up from 211.66 crore year ago. The company's profit in 2016 fiscal ended on December 31 was Rs 374.47 crore.

It said its total revenue from operations stood at Rs 6,593.16 crore in the nine month period ending September 30, 2017, up from Rs 6,547.49 crore last year.

ABB is a technology leader in electrification products, robotics and motion, industrial automation and power grids, serving customers in utilities, industry and transport & infrastructure globally.
Low-cost airline AirAsia has decided to increase the frequency of its Bhubaneswar-Kuala Lumpur flight services from October 26, S C Hota, the director of Biju Patnaik International Airport said today.

The Malaysia based airline had launched direct flights between Bhubaneswar and Kuala Lumpur on April 27 this year with four flights a week.

The private airline took the decision to increase the frequency of its flights after it received overwhelming response from its four flights a week, said Hota.

The low-cost carrier, on February 17, had signed an agreement with the Odisha government for operating direct flights from Bhubaneswar to Kuala Lumpur.

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The Akal Takht -- the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs -- has asked the community not to extend support to an RSS event to mark the 350th birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh in New Delhi on October 25.

The event being organised by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in Delhi could never be supported, Akal Takht head Gurbachan Singh said in a statement issued here today.

He cited an edict issued in 2004 by the then Akal Takht head and said the Sikhs would never extend support to an outfit which tries to interfere in the internal affairs of the community.

The RSS is organizing the event "with a motive to create mess and nothing else", he said.

He said the Sikh community has a separate identity and it has "never interfered in any religion and would never allow any religion or outfit to meddle in its religious matters".

The Akal Takht has never announced to extend support to RSS events and would never do so in the future, Singh said.

Meanwhile, radical Sikh outfit Dal Khalsa's spokesperson Kanwarpal Singh community members against the RSS, saying it wanted to penetrate "the rank and file" of the community.

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The Arunachal Pradesh cabinet has approved creation of 1309 teaching and non-teaching posts for various types of government schools.

Of them, 1130 are for teaching staff which include 349 posts for science and mathematics.

Nines posts of principals are approved for higher secondary schools, government spokesman Bamang Felix said in a statement today.

Secondary schools will get 857 posts including 83 head masters/vice principals and 744 trained graduate teachers.

The cabinet meeting held yesterday also approved creation of 57 new posts of teaching and 55 non-teaching staff in State Council for Education Research and Training, District Institute of Education and Training and Block Institute of Teachers' Education.

The cabinet further approved for creation of 18 new posts under Directorate of Elementary Education.

In order to fill the required posts after creation of new districts, a total of 49 posts of various categories was approved by the cabinet.

The cabinet decided to complete the recruitment process through Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission as per norms, Felix added.

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Actor Asin Thottumkal and husband Rahul Sharma today welcomed their first child - a baby girl.

The "Ghajini" star and Sharma, co-founder of tech company Micromax, confirmed the in a statement.

"We are ecstatic to announce the arrival of our angelic baby girl earlier today. The last nine months have been most special and exciting for the both of us and we would like to thank all our wellwishers and everyone who has been part of our journey for all their love and support," the statement read.

The couple tied the knot last year on January 19 in a Christian wedding ceremony followed by Hindu rituals near Delhi.

Asin's "Khiladi 786" co-star Akshay Kumar served as Rahul's bestman at the low-key ceremony.

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Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal today invited investors to seize investment opportunities in the state and said his government is aiming to turn Guwahati into an investment hub in the country.

The chief minister urged investors to take advantage of the state's liberalised investment policies, ready-made infrastructure and improved business environment.

Sonowal was speaking at a curtain raiser for the 'Advantage Assam: Global Investors' Summit 2018' scheduled for the first week of February next year.

"Assam is no more a land of extremism. It has become a land of 3 P's -- Potential, Prosperity and Possibility," he said.

The government wants to make Guwahati the country's leading investment hub, the CM said adding that the state has roped in industry body FICCI to promote investment in the state.

Sonowal said, "You (investors) must know the North-East is a focus area of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was being neglected earlier but now every union ministers come to the region... The PM takes report from the ministers about their visit. All this counts, helps in ease of doing business and getting better returns."



Sharing the investment figures in the last 1.5 years, the CM said, the investment of over Rs 6,500 crore by major companies like ITC, Dabur, Hindustan Uniliver, Ajanta Pharma and others is an example of state's improving business environment.

The state chief minister assured investors of healthy environment for business.

Assam Industries Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary said, "I will personally see that skilled workforce is available for the green-field projects that come across various sectors."



There are 230 blocks and there is a skill development centre in each block that imparts training to youth in various sectors, he informed investors.

The strategic location of Assam, presence of ancillary industries, existing demand within the state, neighbouring states and countries provides conducive opportunity for setting industries in eight focus sectors, according to a document released at the event.

The pharma and medical equipment sector will reach USD 55 billion in the years to come, it said. The state grows most of the herbs which can be used by this industry to produce new products and export it to ASEAN countries. There is also a proposal to set up a 120-acre Pharmaceutical Park at Chaygaon.

The plastics and petrochemicals: The plastic park at Tinsukia with allocable land of 4.8 lakh acre provides immense opportunity as the state under its Plastics and Petrochemicals Hydrocarbon Vision 20130 is looking to increase its production from 6 MTPA to 14 MTPA.

The government also sought investments in the power sector where said projects of 1901.5 MW are in the pipeline.

Next is the river transport and port township. The government will develop inland waterways terminals, townships at ports, river taxis are also on the list and developing river front, the industries minister said.

The fifth sector is IT (Information and Technology) and ITes (Information Technology Enabled Services). The investors have an opportunity to invest at the proposed IT Parks at Guwahati, Dibrugarh and Silchar. Besides, there are 'Rural BPO' coming up at 15 locations in Assam.

The investors can also take the benefit of the government's MUDRA scheme and set up handloom production units, apparel garment making centres, he said adding Assam ranks 3rd amongst raw silk producing states.

Ravi Capoor, Additional Chief Secretary, Industries & Commerce, Assam, said the state government was keen to develop Assam as the regional aviation hub and was looking at ways to establish direct air connectivity with neighbouring countries where the flying time was between 1.5 to 2 hours.

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The UN children's agency says Australia has granted it 30 million Australian dollars, or about USD 23 million, to boost access to education for vulnerable children in Lebanon over the next three years.

Today's UNICEF statement says the announcement was made during Australian Governor-General Peter Cosgrove's visit to a Lebanese public school.

More than one million Syrian refugees have fled war in their country to neighboring Lebanon, straining local resources. Tens of thousands of Syrian children now attend Lebanese public schools.

Cosgrove lauded the Lebanese government's efforts in hosting Syrian refugees and said at the school that "what we see here today is the best proof of this support."



Tanya Chapuisat is UNICEF's representative in Lebanon. Chapuisat said it's only through education that societies can end intergenerational cycles of poverty and discrimination.

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Bentley Systems Inc, the US-based infrastructure engineering solution provider, plans to expand its business in India and will add more engineers to its staff to tap the huge opportunities in the country, senior company officials said.

Bentley will focus on urban development especially rail, airports, metro systems, highways, roads and water-waste water plants.

"India is a very unique market to us. The world's best engineering companies now have their value engineering centres in India. We want to be part of that big increase in developments," said Kaushik Chakraborty, Vice president South East Asia and India.

The group also plans to increase expertise adding more engineers to its over 400 staff at offices in Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

It would also be setting up academies supporting each mega project for Building Information Modeling or Better Information Management (BIM) in collaboration with local developers and contractors.

Its first BIM Academy is at the Nagpur Metro under a collaboration with Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Ltd.

The latest BIM Academy will be introducing ISO55000 standards in India.

Chakraborty sees each BIM Academy in India routed through Bentley's global network for tapping world-class technologies, engineering solutions and best practices for projects in India.

He noted the power of Indian engineers supporting mega projects for international contractors, working out of their home bases.

"We want to create opportunities and take that talent, develop it and deliver to infrastructure projects in India as development in the country picks up," he said.

The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation is among Bentley's major clients.

It used Bentley's engineering solutions to test structural integrity of its 256 offshore platforms and plants as part of ongoing field rejuvenation programme, he said.

"ONGC uses our world class SACS (structural analysis and design) software solution to test and extend the life-span of structures," said Anne-Marie Walters, Bentley's Industry Marketing Director for & Resources.

In addition, Bentley has built a lot of core technologies and engineering capabilities in India, she pointed out.

"That is what gives us the confidence to go into the Indian market and deliver good solutions because we know we have the best engineers available working on global projects and supporting our projects in the country," said Walters.

Bentley is involved in helping design, build, operate and maintain infrastructure assets such as building, campuses, airports, railways, oil & gas facilities, power generation and water-waste water plants.

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Welcoming the appointment of former IB chief Dineshwar Sharma as the Centre's special representative in the state, the Jammu and Kashmir unit of the BJP today asked all stakeholders to "give peace a chance".

All stakeholders must come forward to meet the central interlocutor and put their points across, said the BJP state unit's chief spokesperson Sunil Sethi.

Violence and the culture of separatism had destroyed the economy and peace of the region, he added, asking stakeholders to avail of the opportunity to usher in peace.

The vast majority of the population in Kashmir was yearning for peace for the sake of the future of their children, Sethi said.

"The atmosphere in the Valley has been deliberately vitiated for personal and political gains which has caused immense loss to the Kashmiri culture of peaceful coexistence," he said in a statement.

"The land of saints and rishis has been spoilt... and time has come to wash it clean again," he added.

The solution to the problem has to be within the Constitution, Sethi stressed. Any demand which is beyond the Constitution or has the "attribute of secession" will never be acceptable to the BJP, he said.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh yesterday announced Sharma's appointment for a "sustained dialogue" with all stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir.

Sharma would have complete independence in deciding who to hold talks with, Singh said.

He said this in response to a question on whether Sharma would hold talks with the separatist Hurriyat Conference.

Sharma would initiate sustained dialogue to understand the legitimate aspirations of people, especially the youth, and try to fulfil them, the minister had said.

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A British man fighting against the Islamic State terrorist group has been killed while clearing land mines in the Syrian city of Raqqa, days after the dreaded outfit's de facto capital was liberated, his mother has said.

Jac Holmes was a painter and decorator in the sea-side town of Bournemouth on the southern coast of England when he decided to travel to Syria to join the Kurdish militia People's Protection Units (YPG) in 2015.

The 24-year-old's mother told the BBC that she was proud of what he had done in Syria when his death was announced by the International Peshmerga Volunteers, who are fighting ISIS alongside Kurdish forces in Iraq, on their Facebook page today.

They reported that Holmes was killed while he was clearing an area of land mines in Raqqa to make it safe for civilians.

"He loved what he was doing there, he loved being a soldier. He had the courage of his convictions," said Angie Blannin.

"He was just a boy when he left the UK, a little bit lost. He told me he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. But by going out there, he found something that he was good at and that he loved," she said.

Holmes' mother said she had been in touch with her son online and he had been planning to visit home after the liberation of the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa in Syria recently.

"We thought with any luck he'd be home for Christmas. It had been so tough since he had been away but I was always 100 per cent behind him. After all this, he had said he might go into politics, or perhaps into close protection security. He'd seen so much for a boy of his age," she added.

Several Britons are believed to have joined the YPG, widely lauded for fighting against ISIS but the group is also linked to the PKK, an insurgent group in Turkey.

Ozkan Ozdil, who fought with Holmes in Syria, said he had become well-known and respected among Kurdish fighting units.

"Everybody knew Jac. By his third tour out there his Kurdish was fluent. We had a bit of a laugh that he was my Kurdish translator," he said.

Holmes,also known by his Kurdish adopted name of Sores Amanos "sores" meaning "revolution",fought in operations to push Islamic State (ISIS) out of Syrian towns and villages including Tel Hamis, Manbij, Tabqa and Raqqa.

He said he knew he could face arrest by the UK authorities for fighting abroad, but said in the past that he hoped that the British justice system would work in the "correct way".

Seen as among the earliest and highest-profile recruits to the YPG, Holmes regularly posted live broadcasts from inside Syria on his Facebook page.

The Syrian Democratic Forces with the support from the US-led international coalition declared on Friday the "total liberation" of Raqqa, which for more than three years was the de facto capital of ISIS terror group.

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Catalonia's political leaders intend to bring a legal challenge to prevent the Spanish government from removing them from office and taking over running the region to stop its push for independence, a regional spokesman said today.

Appeals will be lodged in Spain's Constitutional and Supreme Courts against Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's decision to sack Catalonia's government and curtail the regional parliament's powers, regional government spokesman Jordi Turull said.

If the regional government is not successful in Spanish courts, it will pursue the case in courts, Turull said.

Spain's Senate is expected to approve Rajoy's plans on Friday, triggering previously untapped constitutional powers to act against Catalan leaders accused of violating the law and court orders by holding a secession referendum and preparing to declare independence.

"We are going to respond in a very solid way," Turull said at the end of the regional government's weekly cabinet meeting. "We will exhaust all internal ways in order to turn to the justice if needed."



Speculation has increased in recent days that Catalan regional President Carles Puigdemont may call an early regional election to avoid the central government's intervention.

More details about the effect the political crisis is having on Catalonia emerged today when Caixabank, Spain's third-largest bank, reported it suffered a "moderate" but temporary run on deposits due to the crisis over the region's independence bid.

The ban until recently was based in Catalonia, but transferred its headquarters to the Valencia region on October 6.

Presenting the company's earnings for the first time in the city of Valencia, CEO Gonzalo Gortazar declined to give details on the value of the withdrawn deposits, but said the losses had "been reversed" and the bank continued to grow.

Gortazar said the headquarters relocation was definitive.

Local media reports quoted him as saying the bank does not currently plan to move any jobs out of Catalonia.

Caixabank, a second bank, Sabadell, and more than a thousand other companies have moved their official bases out of Catalonia to ensure they could continue operating under European Union laws if Catalonia breaks away from Spain.
The Central Bureau of Investigation today arrested a Chandigarh police sub-inspector for allegedly accepting Rs 2 lakh as bribe.

It is alleged that the SI was demanding a bribe of Rs 9 lakh from a property dealer to help him in connection with a police case against his employees.

"The complainant (the property dealer) has alleged that a case dated September 17, 2017 was registered at Police Station, Sector 31, Chandigarh against three of his employees and six others. A police team visited his business premises to nab his employees and also harassed the complainant," a CBI spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said it was further alleged that the sub-inspector had demanded Rs 9 lakh for not "harassing" him and for favouring his employees during investigation.

The SI also informed the complainant that Rs 1 lakh of the said bribe money was meant for himself and the remaining for the SHO, the CBI alleged.

"The CBI laid a trap and caught the SI red-handed while demanding and accepting the bribe of Rs 2 lakh. Searches are being conducted on the premises of the accused," he said.

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The central and Karnataka governments want declaration of an international year of millets to help spread the message on richness of the foodgrains' nutrients and health benefits across the world.

A proposal in this regard has been submitted to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), an agency of the United Nations, Karnataka Agriculture Minister Krishna Byre Gowda said today.

Gowda, who participated in the FAO annual meeting earlier this month in Rome, said he along with the Union food secretary made a pitch in this regard.

"We have made a collective pitch along with the Government of India that there should be an international year of millets so that the message of millets spreads to the entire world.

"We find millets are there in China, Indonesia, Iran, Poland, Ukraine, vast parts of Africa and many more countries. They have been there in different parts of the world for thousands of years and these ancient 'super foods' cannot be forgotten and we need to reacquaint ourselves with them," he said.

"So, we are making an international push. The Karnataka government and the Government of India together have requested the FAO to declare one year as an international year of millets as soon as possible.

The FAO is of the view that it takes time to decide. We have also appealed to them to have an international day of millets every year," Gowda told PTI here.

"We are following up as well and trying to initiate a process to talk to other countries...we are making an effort."



He said the FAO has promised they will start working on it. "We are not sure when it will happen. We are talking to Government of India secretary (agriculture) to put together a group of like-minded countries in Africa and Asia which have long association with millets. If at least 20 countries come together and form an interest group then we will be able to push the international body (to take a decision)."



"We want to spread the message around the world that millets are good for our health, good for farmers and good for the environment," the minister maintained.

Earlier, there has been a year on quinoa and also on pulses. Similarly, if we can do a year on millets, the message on its benefits will get spread around the world and that will generate a lot of demand for millets and millets-based products and ultimately benefit farmers, he explained.

Karnataka is a major producer of millets like jowar, ragi and bajra in the country.

According to him, due to the awareness campaigns on millets in the last one year the demand for millets and millets-based products and also organics has increased rapidly. About 50 organic stores have opened in Bengaluru alone in the past six months catering to increased demand and similar scale-up can be seen in some other southern states.

The Karnataka government is organising an 'International Trade Fair - Organics and Millets 2018 ' in Bengaluru from January 19 to 21, Gowda said.

"We are making wider effort to bring more stakeholders into this movement. We are inviting companies and (state) governments for the event."



"In all southern states the millets-producing area is shrinking for decades and we need to revive through not only by talking to farmers but by spreading the awareness. Consumer -driven demand is also needed," Gowda added.

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China's ruling Communist Party today endorsed a second five-year term for President Xi Jinping and amended its Constitution to add his name and ideology, elevating him on par with party founder Mao Zedong and his successor Deng Xiaoping.

Xi's concept of "socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era" was added to the party's Constitution at the end of the Communist Party's week-long once-in-a-five-year Congress.

The amendment to the CPC's Constitution was approved making 64-year-old Xi's ideology as a new component of the party's guide for action, according to a resolution of the 19th CPC National Congress.

The inclusion of Xi's name along with his ideology has elevated him to the same political league as Mao and Deng.

Mao and Deng are the only other Chinese leaders whose names and thoughts are included in the party Constitution.

"The Chinese people and nation have a great and bright future ahead," Xi told party delegates as the meeting came to a close at the Great Hall of the People, the seat of power of China's Communist leadership.

"At this great time, we feel more self-confident and proud. At the same time, we also deeply feel a heavy sense of responsibility," he said.

The Congress attended by about 2,300 delegates endorsed a second five-year term for President Xi and appointed a new set of leaders backed by him.

The CPC elected a new Central Committee to lead the party for the coming five years. The 19th CPC Central Committee will in turn elect the Politburo, the country's top ruling council, the Politburo Standing Committee, and the General Secretary at its first plenary session tomorrow.

Xi along with Premier Li Keqiang, 62, ranked number one and two in the CPC's hierarchy, would continue based on two five-year tenure convention for top leaders. Five new members will be elected to the seven member Standing Committee of the party which rules the country.

The new Standing Committee would be unveiled for China and the world tomorrow when they would formally appear in front of the media during a live telecast.

Xi and Li took over power in 2012 and set to continue till 2022.

According to the party's Constitution, the highest leading body of the CPC is the National Congress and the Central Committee it elects, and all constituent organisations and members of the party are subordinate to the National Congress and the Central Committee.

Xi, regarded as the most powerful Chinese leader in recent times heading the party, presidency and the military too is expected to retire by 2022 after his second term.

But speculation is rife that he would break that retirement age convention and may continue for a third term considering his powerful stature in the party.

Former Chinese leaders Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin also had their own ideologies incorporated in the Constitution. But unlike Mao and Deng their names were not included.

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Cochin International Airport Ltd along with its subsidiary Cochin Duty Free and Retail Services Ltd has made a profit of Rs 179.45 crore after interest for the financial year 2016-17.

CIAL, the first PPP (Public Private Partnership) model to run an airport, had registered total revenue of Rs 669.09 crore for the financial year 2016-17, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, also the company Chairman, said in a Facebook post.

The company handed over a Demand Draft of Rs 31 crore to the government as its profit share at a function here today, he said.

The company has been giving the profit share to the government, which has 32.42 per cent equity share in it, since 2003-04.

Vijayan said that the company has declared a dividend of 25 per cent to its 18,300 shareholders.

A total of 89.4 lakh passengers used Kochi International airport during the period, an increase of 15.06 per cent over the previous year.

State Minister Mathew T Thomas, who is also the Director of the company, handed over the Demand Draft to the Chief Minister.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani today expressed their "firm resolve" to end the menace of terrorism while emphasising that closure of cross-border safe havens and sanctuaries were essential for lasting peace.

The two leaders also "positively assessed" the support extended by India in the defence and security fields, including training of thousands of Afghan defence and security with New Delhi agreeing to extend further assistance depending upon the needs of the Afghan defence and police forces.

Detailed discussions were held between the prime minister and the president in one on one format, restricted meeting and a working lunch, a statement by the external affairs ministry said.

The Indian leadership reiterated its support for a negotiated political reconciliation in Afghanistan that is Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled, the statement said.

"It was emphasised that renunciation of violence and terror, and closure of cross border safe havens and sanctuaries were essential for any meaningful progress and lasting peace," the MEA statement said, in an obvious reference to Pakistan. However, the statement did not name Pakistan.

During the wide-ranging talks, deep appreciation was expressed for the bravery with which the Afghan forces were fighting terrorism imposed on Afghanistan.

"The support extended by India in the defence and security fields, including training of thousands of Afghan defence and security personnel was positively assessed. The Indian side agreed to extend further assistance depending upon the needs of the Afghan defence and police forces," it said.

MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted, "Prime Minister Modi and president Ghani discussed range of bilateral, regional and global issues, express firm resolve to end menace of terrorism."



This was President Ghani's fourth visit to India in the last 3 years and 12th personal interaction between the two leaders, the ministry said.

Ghani's visit also assumes significance as it comes ahead of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's talks with Indian leadership tomorrow. The US wants India to play a greater role in Afghanistan.

Tillerson had also made an unannounced trip to Kabul yesterday and had met the Afghan president.

Reiterating their commitment to their strategic partnership, the two sides positively assessed the outcomes of the recent high level bilateral exchanges, including the visits of Afghan chief executive Abdullah Abdullah and Foreign Minister Rabbani to India last month and that of the National Security Adviser to Afghanistan last week.

The two sides agreed to further deepen the bilateral strategic dialogue and consultations at all levels in order to achieve the shared objectives, it said.

The New Development Partnership that was launched at the meeting of the Strategic Partnership Council on September 11 was assessed as a "significant step" in building upon the highly successful development cooperation of the past 16 years.

The new generation India-assisted projects, including in the fields of health, agriculture, drinking water supply, education, renewable energy, infrastructure development, skill development and capacity building, among others will further contribute to Afghanistan's reconstruction, economic development and effective governance.

The statement said that the two sides agreed that the recent convergence and alignment of views at regional and international arenas have created opportunities for bringing peace, security and stability in Afghanistan.

Issues related to connectivity were discussed in detail with the two countries acknowledging the establishment of the air freight corridor as an important factor in providing Afghan farmers a direct and easy access to the Indian market.

"The efforts for early operationalisation of the Chahbahar Port, including the shipments of wheat in coming weeks to Afghanistan through the Port was considered as a step that would shape new trade and transit opportunities for landlocked Afghanistan," the statement said.

The Indian side reiterated the readiness of its Integrated Check Post at Attari for receiving Afghan trucks carrying goods to and from India.

The two sides agreed to work closely with the regional and international partners; and consult, coordinate and cooperate in various international fora, with the view to further the objective of seeing Afghanistan emerge as a stable, peaceful, united, progressive, prosperous and pluralistic nation.

Earlier in the morning, President Ghani met his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind and received the external affairs minister.

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Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar today said that the state government has decided to revise the collector rates of rural and urban areas twice in a financial year.

He said this will be done to ensure uniformity, transparency and avoiding any major gap between the market price and the collector rates.

The chief minister was replying to an issue concerning collector rates raised by INLD MLA Ranbir Gangwa during the ongoing winter session of the Haryana Assembly here.

He said that deputy commissioners in the state have been directed to review and revise the collector rates twice in a year.

Meanwhile, the House today unanimously passed four bills on the second day of its session.

The Haryana Management of Civil Amenities and Infrastructure Deficient Municipal Areas (Special Provisions), Amendment Bill, 2017 was passed to further amend the Haryana Management of Civil Amenities and Infrastructure Deficient Municipal Areas (Special Provisions) Act, 2016.

The Haryana Municipal (Second Amendment) Bill 2017 was passed to further amend the Haryana Municipal Act 1973 and the. the Haryana Municipal Corporation (Second Amendment) Bill 2017 to amend the Haryana Municipal Corporation Act 1994.

The Assembly has also passed the Indian Stamp (Haryana Second Amendment) Bill 2017 to amend the Indian Stamp Act 1899, in its application to the state of Haryana.

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Over a dozen Congress MLAs are sitting on an overnight dharna inside the Rajasthan Assembly, demanding the state government withdraw a bill that seeks to protect judges and public servants from investigation without prior sanction of the government.

The protesting MLAs said their dharna will continue till 11 am tomorrow when the House resumes for Wednesday.

"We will continue to remain on Dharna inside the Well of the House. It will continue on Tuesday night and we will protest till the House resumes on Wednesday at 11 am. If the state government fails to accept the demands, Congress legislators will continue their protest," Leader of Opposition Rameshwar Dudi said.

Earlier in the day in the House, Congress legislators accused the state government of not being serious on farmers issues as well.

Nearly a dozen of party legislators trooped into the Well of the House, shouting slogans for waiving farm loan and sat on dharna.

"Congress legislators are sitting on the dharna to demand a complete waiver of farm loan and withdrawal of the 'kala kanoon' (black law)," he said, referring to theCriminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill that was tabled in the assembly yesterday to replace an ordinance promulgated on September 7.

Under fire from various quarters, the government today referred the controversial bill to a select committee of the assembly.

Dudi said the state government was about to bring the "black law" to shield corrupt public servants, but it had to bow down to the pressure.

"The law is being brought with ill-intention and state government should withdraw it," he said.

He also said the state government has put the loan-waiver issue on back burner by constituting a high-power committee over it.

"The government is ignorant and farmers are forced to commit suicide. Crop insurance scheme has failed to deliver and insurance firms are looting farmers," he alleged.

TheCriminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill, 2017, seeks to protect serving and former judges, magistrates and public servants in the state from being investigated for on-duty action, without its prior sanction.

It also seeks to bar the media from reporting on such accusations till the sanction to proceed with the probe is given by the government.

The move has been severely criticised by the opposition Congress and National People's Party (NPP) and senior BJP MLA Ghanshyam Tiwari. The Editors Guild of India too opposed the "harmful ordinance" and demanded its withdrawal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress today questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence on the passage of the Women's Reservation Bill in Parliament and alleged the "anti- woman mindset of the RSS" was standing in his way.

Congress spokesperson Sushmita Dev demanded that the Bill be introduced and passed in the winter session of Parliament and implemented in the 2019 general elections.

"The question is, why is the Prime Minister silent till today? I have no doubt that it is the ideals and principles and the mindset of the RSS which has always been anti-woman and against empowering women, politically and otherwise, that is standing in his way," she said.

The passage of the Bill would be just the beginning of the process, she added.

"Passing the Bill is step one there are various other steps after that which have to be taken so that it is fully implemented in 2019," she told reporters here.

The Congress leader alleged that even after ruling for three and a half years, the prime minister had "done nothing" about his "self-proclaimed commitment" to the Bill, also mentioned in the BJP manifesto.

She demanded that the Bill be introduced in the Lok Sabha and constituencies be identified and reserved for women before the next general poll.

"Please make sure it is implemented in 2019," she said.

Dev, who is also the All India Mahila Congress chief, said she along with other party workers submitted a memorandum to President Ram Nath Kovind, carrying signatures of 32 lakh people for the early passage of the Bill.

While the delegation sought Kovind's support on this, she said all Mahila Congress district presidents would submit memorandums to the prime minister through district collectorates on October 31, demanding an early passage.

Dev said Congress president Sonia Gandhi wrote to Modi on September 21, assuring him of her party's support to the Bill, but Modi had not responded to or acknowledged the letter.

"The BJP in its own manifesto in 2014 said they were committed to 33 per cent reservation for women," she said, adding that the ruling party had not fulfilled its commitment towards women even after three and a half years.

"The Modi government has not only betrayed the youth, farmers and the poor but is also deceiving the political aspirations of 586 million women," she said.

Moving on to the social media, Dev asked if the government's National Informatics Centre had hired a private firm for its "online reputation management".

"I want to question the IT Minister ... is the NIC being used to help you with social media trending? Are you spending tax payers money," she asked.

Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad must answer questions raised in the public domain, she said.

Dev demanded an impartial investigation into companies that had allegedly obtained government contracts to do "the personal PR of BJP Leaders" on social media sites.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
City Congress leaders today came forward to protect the rights of hawkers and demanded action against Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) "goons" who are taking law into their hands and forcefully driving vendors away from various railway stations.

Congress MLA Naseem Khan along with hawkers and their representatives met police commissioner Dattatray Padsalgikar today and demanded action against MNS "goons" who are beating and driving away hawkers from near the railway station premises.

Yesterday, MNS leaders had met Padsalgikar and sought action against illegal hawkers operating near railway stations.

Later speaking to media, Khan said, "I apprised the police commissioner on how MNS goondas are terrorising the hawkers and destroying their goods by taking law into their hands while policemen are silent spectators.

"I also demanded arrest of such political hooligans and protection to the hawkers from MNS workers."



Khan, however, clarified that he did not support illegal hawking on the city streets and on railway premises.

"If there are such (illegal) hawkers, then action should be taken by the competent authorities like the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), police or railways," said the MLA.

Khan said, "I apprised the police commissioner that all hawkers are not illegal and Supreme Court has ruled to regularise them."



Later Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam met BMC chief Ajoy Mehta and submitted him a letter informing him of the harassment to hawkers and delay in regularising them.

"The BMC is conveniently turning a blind eye to the Street Vendors Protection (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act 2014, which essentially gives rights to street hawkers as well as licences.

"But surprisingly, not a single survey has been carried out in the past three-and-half years, though the Act mandates the BMC to carry out at least one survey every five-years," Nirupam said.

"The BMC is shielding the goons who are vandalising the property of hawkers. We demand that the hawkers should be able to do their business with dignity," said Nirupam.

In the wake of Elphinstone station stampede, MNS workers have launched a tirade against the hawkers and have been driving them away from nearby railway stations by destroying their valuables.

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Facing flak from various quarters, the Rajasthan government on Tuesday referred a controversial Bill, which seeks to protect public servants and judges from prosecution without its prior sanction, to a select committee of the Assembly.

Amid an uproar from the opposition Congress, the Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill was tabled in the Assembly by Home Minister Gulabchand Kataria on Monday to replace an ordinance promulgated on September 7.

At the beginning of the Question Hour on Tuesday, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Rajendra Rathore informed the House that Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje had held a meeting of ministers last night to discuss the Bill and that the home minister would apprise the House of the development.

The home minister said that prior approval of the President was sought before introducing the ordinance in September.

Independent MLA Manik Chand Surana had yesterday raised the point that no approval of the President was attached with the Bill.

As the opposition MLAs rushed into the Well of the House demanding withdrawal of the Bill, Kataria said the government would consider the suggestions put forward by the members.

He then moved a proposal to refer it to the select committee. The proposal was passed by the Assembly.

The select committee has been asked to submit its report in the next session.

The Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance, 2017, seeks to protect serving and former judges, magistrates and public servants in the state from being investigated for on-duty action, without its prior sanction.

It also bars the media from reporting on such accusations till the sanction to proceed with the probe is given by the government.

The move has been severely criticised by the opposition Congress and People's Party (NPP) and senior BJP MLA Ghanshyam Tiwari. The Editors Guild of India too opposed the "harmful ordinance" and demanded its withdrawal.

Earlier today, BJP MLA Ghanshyam Tiwari protested when he was not allowed to raise a point of order. He objected to Speaker Kailash Meghwal giving permission to the home minister for giving his statement during the Question Hour.

After the proposal for referring of the Bill to the select committee was passed, the Speaker called for listed questions but the Congress members raised the issue of farm distress.

Congress Deputy Whip Govind Singh Dotasara said the government was not serious on the issues of farmers and demanded agriculture loan waiver.

Amid continued protest and disruption during the Question Hour, the Speaker adjourned the House till 1 pm.

In the 200-member Rajasthan Assembly, BJP has 160 MLAs while the Congress has 24 members.
China's ruling Communist Party today endorsed a second five-year term for President Xi Jinping and appointed a new set of leaders backed by him.

64-year-old Xi's second term was endorsed by the party at the end of its week-long once-in-a-five-year Congress.

The conference attended by over 2,350 delegates ended at the Great Hall of the People, the seat of power of China's Communist leadership.

Xi along with Premier Li Keqiang, 62, ranked number one and two in the Communist Party of China's hierarchy, would continue based on two five year tenure convention for top leaders. Five new members will be elected to the seven member Standing Committee of the party which rules the country.

Xi and Li took over power in 2012 and set to continue till 2022.

The new Standing Committee would be unveiled for China and the world tomorrow when they would formally appear in front of the media during a live telecast.

Reports in the Hong Kong media said that Xi may not have his way at the Congress as his closest aide Wang Qishan, who led the massive anti-corruption campaign in which Xi's opponents were allegedly crushed, is likely to step down from the powerful Standing Committee belying speculation that he would be retained by overriding the 68-year retirement rule.

Also the Congress may keep the number of the Standing Committee members to seven, contrary to reported preference of Xi to reduce its number to five.

The new seven-member committee may retain balance of power among various factions within the party though Xi may still remain powerful with the induction of some of his close associates into the Standing Committee, the reports said.

Xi, regarded as the most powerful Chinese leader in recent times heading the party, presidency and the military too is expected to retire by 2022 after his second term.

But speculation is rife that he would break that retirement age convention and may continue for a third term considering his powerful stature in the party, equalling that of the party founder Mao Zedong and his successor Deng Xiaoping.

Xi also is set to have his own ideological thought enshrined in the CPC Constitution, elevating him to the same political league as Mao and Deng.

Former Chinese leaders Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin also had their own ideologies incorporated in the Constitution. But unlike Mao and Deng their names were not included.

As China enters a new era, the CPC must write a new chapter of 21st century Marxism with a broader vision to achieve the goals set at the milestone Congress, Chen Shuguang, a professor with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee told state-run Xinhua agency.

Liu attributed the CPC's success in maintaining vitality and creativity to the ability to advance with the times, saying it is the "magic code" for the CPC to lead China toward becoming a great modern country.

The 19th Congress of the CPC which ended today will make great contribution to the world thanks to the concepts mentioned in a key report to the congress, Xinhua quoted analysts as saying.

Hu Angang, director of the Center for China Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said "a community with a shared future for mankind means a community of shared interests and development.

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The shelving of the Dadupur Nalvi canal scheme dominated the second day proceedings of the Haryana Assembly today, with the BJP government accusing the previous Congress dispensation for making the irrigation project "unfeasible".

However, opposition parties, the Congress and the INLD, stepped up their attack against the treasury benches for scrapping the project.

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, amid the din, defended his government's decision of shelving it in the House, saying it is a "pro-farmer" move.

He hit out at the opposition benches and accused them of "playing politics" over the issue.

Dissatisfied with Khattar's replies, Congress and INLD members walked out of the House after an over three-hour long discussion on the adjournment motion on the scheme.

The Congress vowed to revive the scheme after coming to power in the next assembly polls and asked the Haryana government to not commit a "sin" by scrapping the project which was conceived for irrigation and water-recharge in the Ambala, Yamunanagar and Kurukshetra areas.

The opposition benches, while declaring the shelving of the project as "illegal", asked how the state government could denotify the land acquired for it when the President had not given assent to the changes in the law.

However, Khattar said that the required amendment in the relevant law for denotifying the land acquisition had been sent to the President for approval.

In his reply on the adjournment motion moved by INLD leader and leader of opposition Abhay Chautala on the issue, the chief minister said the scheme was conceived with good intentions.

Turning the table on the previous dispensation, he claimed that the Congress-led government in 2008 had delayed the project by deciding not to acquire 1,200 acre of land for construction of minors in 2008.

The chief minister also blamed the scheme's revision in 2004 in which it was decided to construct unlined channels for the Kharif season.

"The scheme received a major setback in 2008, when the acquisition of land for constructing distributaries and minors were shelved due to resistance of land owners... the result was the minors could not be constructed and the intended purpose of irrigation could not be fulfilled," Khattar said.

Against the proposed plan of irrigating 46,266 hectare with the canal, he claimed that under the scheme, only 357.5 acre had been irrigated in the last five years.

Defending his government's decision, Khattar said already more than Rs 303 crore had been spent over the past 30 years on this scheme which has been declared "unfruitful" by the CAG.

"Any farmer who wants land back, shall have to pay to the government only the actual compensation received by him without any interest.

"The amount to be returned will be worked out by valuing land at the rate of Rs 8 lakh per acre," Khattar said.

The Haryana cabinet on September 27 had decided to scrap the scheme after approving a proposal of the Irrigation and Water Resources Department to denotify 1,019.2994 acres of land acquired for constructing the canal.

The decision to scrap the project was taken after the government found that the scheme was "not feasible".

To a question from opposition benches, the chief minister said the recharging of water can be done by laying underground pipes.

The adjournment motion was moved by Chautala after the question hour and he sought from the Haryana government to reconsider its decision of scrapping the scheme.

Heated exchanges took place between the treasury and Congress members when the Speaker stopped opposition MLA Raghubir Kadiyan when he was speaking on the issue.

Congress MLAs, including Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Kiran Choudhary, took an exception to it and urged the Speaker to let Kadiyan complete.

Chautala asserted that it was his party's right to speak first on the canal scheme as they moved the motion.

During the discussion, he claimed that the state was still facing shortage of 22 million acre feet of water for its requirements.

Chautala said that if farmers do not use canal water, they will be ruined.

Members of the INLD and treasury benches traded barbs after the opposition party took a potshot at the government for allegedly bringing "fake" farmers who were happy with the scrapping of project.

Chautala claimed that the state government cannot denotify land acquired for any purpose and that it had been ruled by the courts as well.

The INLD MLA also raised a question over the committee which recommended the state government for denotifying the land acquisition.

"You should immediately reconsider the decision of scrapping the Dadupur Nalvi canal project, otherwise you will have to face consequences," Chautala said.

Kadian criticised the Haryana government for scrapping the scheme and asked the treasury benches to cite a single project in which the acquired land was denotified.

Congress MLA from Palwal Karan Singh Dalal claimed that the denotification of land for the project was at variance with the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013.

"The land in question is not unutilised land. Therefore, it cannot be denotified. Do not commit a sin of scrapping this project," said Dalal.

Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda described the move of government as "anti-farmer" and declared that Congress after coming to power in next assembly polls, would ensure completion of Dadupur Nalvi project.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Lt Governor Anil Baijal has approved the Delhi government's proposal to declare October 26 a public holiday on the occasion of Chhath puja in the city, an official said today.

Delhi government offices will be shut on October 26 in the national capital.

Last year too, the AAP government had declared the public holiday on the occasion of this festival in Delhi.

"The L-G has approved the government's proposal to declare a public holiday on October 26 on the occasion of Chhath Puja," said the official, who did not wish to be named.

Meanwhile, with the beginning of the four-day festival in the city, the Delhi government said that it has chalked out a plan to check arrangements at all ghats by the ministers, including the chief minister, MLAs and officers concerned.

Development Minister Gopal Rai said that the government had developed 565 Chhath ghats across the city which include 50 permanent ghats.

The remaining are semi-pucca ghats. These have been made for the ease of the people for performing the puja, he told reporters here.

Rai said that the AAP government had allocated Rs 20 crore in its Budget for developing the Chhath ghats.

"MLAs, SDMs, assistant engineers, junior engineers will inspects all the ghats in their respective areas and will take stock of situation on October 25 and 26, while the chief minister and all the ministers will inspect the ghats next day, during the celebration," he said.

According to the minister, the revenue department and the Delhi Tirth Yatra Samiti will arrange for the tents, temporary toilets, ambulances, lighting, seating arrangements, drinking water and other requisite arrangements.

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The Delhi government has allowed recognised unaided private schools on Delhi Development Authority (DDA) land to increase their fees by 15 per cent as an "interim" measure to comply with the seventh central pay commission (CPC) recommendations.

A circular to this effect was issued by the Directorate of Education on October 17, following which the opposition BJP today alleged that the move opens up a "Pandora's box of harassment and trouble for parents".

The circular, however, reads that the general instruction for all private unaided schools, irrespective of their land status, is that, a fee hike is "not mandatory" for recognised unaided schools in Delhi.

"All schools must, first of all, explore the possibility of utilising the existing reserves to meet any shortfall in payment of salaries and allowances, as a consequence of increase in the salaries and allowances of employees," it reads.

The Delhi government circular defines two categories of such schools.

One running either on private land or on DDA/Land and Development Office (L&DO) allotted land, but not having a condition to seek prior sanction of the Director (Education), and the other running on land allotted by the DDA/government land-owning agencies having condition to seek prior sanction of the Director (Education), before any fee hike.

"Schools in Delhi have to comply with the 7th Central Pay Commission recommendations, which ask for a nearly 25 per cent increase in salaries of schoolteachers. The arrears will need to be paid with 7.5 per cent of tuition fees of students, while the new salaries will be funded by the 15 per cent fee hike, with effect from July 1, 2017," the circular reads.

Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta said the city government by permitting 15 per cent interim fee hike in private schools has "once again opened a Pandora's box of harassment and trouble for parents".

In a statement, Gupta, also the president of the Delhi Abhibhavak Mahasangh, alleged, with this order, the government has "paved the way for earning of money by school management and exploitation of teachers and staff".

"As this is an interim order issued arbitrarily by the government, it contains large number of defects and infirmities which has the potential for unending legal battle," the senior BJP leader said.

Insisting that the government "must review its decision" in the larger public interest, he alleged the government has "arbitrarily increased the fee without taking into account whether reserve funds are available with schools".

The circular, says, "In order to avoid any further delay in giving benefits of the seventh CPC to teachers and other employees, and to ensure that the burden of payment of arrears does not accumulate on the parents due to further delay in extension of the seventh CPC to the employees, an interim fee increase subject to following upper limits, is permitted to the school."



It, however, adds, the interim increase is to be "levied only if it is felt that in case of schools not having sufficient reserves or accumulated funds available from any other source", in accordance with the clauses mentioned in it.

Besides, the fee hike would be subject to scrutiny in the records of the school if the need arises, to see as to whether there was any necessity to increase the fee having regard to the financial position of the said schools, the circular states.

It also states that "the managing committee of the school shall hold a meeting with the group of teachers and parents which would include at least one parent representative from each section of the school and will present the detailed budget of the school".

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The Delhi University is behaving like an ostrich by "sticking its head in the sand" instead of taking action against a law student accused of intimidating teachers on several occasions, Delhi High Court said today.

"There is complete lawlessness and you have stuck your head in the sand like an ostrich," a bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Deepa Sharma told the university.

It also told the varsity that the court "would not permit lawless elements to roam free in the campus".

The court was hearing a plea initiated by it on an alleged assault on the Dean and some professors of DU's Law Faculty by some students last year.

The Delhi Police also felt some heat from the bench which said this was a "law and order situation" and the courts cannot be expected to "police the law faculty" in DU.

"Should we wield the baton now," it asked the police.

The court told the agency that it had earlier also observed that "inevitability of punishment would be the only deterrent" against lawless behaviour.

The remarks from the bench came after the police told the court that the student in question, former DUSU President Satender Awana, continued to intimidate the teaching faculty despite several FIRs against him.

It also told the court that it has filed two chargesheets against Awana in connection with the incidents of violence against the law faculty members, including Dean Ved Kumari.

The police, represented by its standing counsel Rahul Mehra, said that chargesheets were filed on October 17 in the trial court and the next date of hearing there was on January 9, 2018.

The bench, thereafter, listed the matter for further hearing on November 15 so that the amicus curiae appointed by it can peruse the chargesheets filed by the police.

Delhi police was also given time to file a status report in the matter.

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In an emotional reunion, German globetrotting couple Janin Scharrenberg and Steffen Kagerah were reunited here with their pet dog Luke, a black Labrador-mix which went missing in July at the Marina beach.

A nearly three-minute video on the reunion posted on Facebook by animal welfare activist, Shravan Krishnan shows the deep bond and love between the couple and their pet dog.

"After three months, they are finally reunited. Unbelievable. Found it hard to control my tears. Luke is finally home. Vijaya Narayanan aunty you're an angel !!!! Janin Scharrenberg," Shravan said in his Facebook post.

The efforts of Vijaya Narayanan, an animal lover and entrepreneur, culminated in finding the missing dog.

The video shows Janin Scharrenberg entering Vijaya Narayanan's house last night, calling out 'Luke'. The 20-month old dog, which went missing on July 8, comes running from another room, quickly recognises her and Steffen.

The dog walks around the couple repeatedly, wagging its tail and makes noise apparently expressing joy.

Relieved at finding their pet, the couple are seen patting, gently stroking and hugging the dog.

Shravan said the German couple will leave the city shortly.

In a video shared with PTI by Shravan, Janin and Steffen thanked everyone.

"I just want to say thank you to everyone," Janin said in the video in which she was seen alongwith her husband and their pet dog adding "we are so happy."



Recalling how they found Luke as a puppy, their journey to India and how they lost their pet, Janin thanked animal lovers and the public for aiding their efforts to trace the dog.

Vijaya Narayanan said she got in touch with the couple when she came to know that their dog went missing.

"I offered to help them and began advertising in newspapers, distributed flyers, pasted posters visited veterenarians, and pet shops," she said.

She and her team "got lucky," after three months of concentrated efforts.

On October 21, Vijaya received a call from a person who said the dog was seen with some boys at the Marina Beach.

She said the informer acceeding to her request brought the dog. "We checked his micro chip number and it matched (with the number given by Janin), we felt jubilant," she said.

Janin and Steffen have been travelling across the world since April 2016.

They found Luke in Greece and adopted it.

On July eight, when Steffen had gone somewhere in the city, Janin was waiting in a vehicle on the Marina. An autorickshaw driver reportedly removed Luke's leash and took it away.

The couple later filed a police complaint, and after frantic searches stretching for several days, they left for Sri Lanka and from there to Nepal and stayed there to be able to return to Chennai in case the dog was found.

Animal lovers, the couple and police circulated posts on social media, distributed notices, and pasted posters seeking information on the lost dog.

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The Madhya Pradesh government is planning to take out an 'ekatm yatra' for the collection of metal pieces to install a 108-feet tall statue of Adi Shankaracharya at Omkareshwar in the state's Khandwa district.

The statue of the great saint is proposed to be set up on the banks of river Narmada in the famous temple town of Omkareshwar, located around 290 kms from here. It houses one of the 12 revered 'jyotirlinga' shrines of Lord Shiva.

"The state government has decided to take out an awareness campaign, named 'ekatm yatra', in December-January to collect the metal pieces for making the statue of Adi Shankaracharya at Omkareshwar," an official of the state public relations department said.

A state-level organising committee of 98 members, including religious leaders, ministers, chairpersons of various boards and corporations, elected representatives, administrative officers, experts and educationists, has been set up to conduct the yatra effectively, he said.

While addressing the 'Namami Devi Narmade-Sewa Yatra' at Amarkantak in the state in February this year, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had announced to install the grand statue of Adi Shankaracharya at Omkareshwar.

"It was in Omkareshwar that the young Shankara met his guru Govinda Bhagavatpada in a cave and attained highest spiritual elevation. He founded the four 'math' (monasteries), which helped in the historical development, revival and spread of Advaita Vedanta," Chouhan had then said.

He had also announced to set up an institute of eminence at Omkareshwar in the memory of Adi Shankaracharya and introduce a course on him in the school syllabus.

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Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today said that the Skill Development Department should ensure 20 lakh jobs by 2022.

Presiding over the second meeting of Jharkhand Skill Development Mission Society here, Das called for ensuring the goal, an official release said here.

Higher Education and Skill Development Department Secretary Ajay Kumar Singh said that out of the 71,400 youth skilled this year, 14,618 have been employed by different institutions and many others have been connected with employment.

They have been provided loan from MUDRA, PMEGP etc, the release said.

The Chief Minister said that big malls, schools and hospitals are coming up in the state and training should be given, keeping this in view.

Das directed that the children of 6.5 lakh building construction workers should be connected with education.

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European Parliament chief Antonio Tajani today demanded an international investigation into the car bomb murder of Maltese journalist and anti-corruption campaigner Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The call comes after the family of Caruana Galizia accused Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of being complicit in the killing, with fears rife that the assassination will not be fairly handled by national investigators.

"I expect the Maltese authorities to spare no effort in getting to the bottom of what happened," Tajani told the European Parliament in the eastern French city of Strasbourg.

"Every lead must be followed up. In my view, Europol must also be involved, as part of an international investigation in which all police forces can work together to bring those responsible to justice," the senior MEP from Italy added.

Caruana Galizia, 53, had made repeated and detailed corruption allegations for years against Muscat's inner circle, and had recently turned her investigative scrutiny on the opposition as well.

After her death her family accused Muscat of filling his office with crooks and creating a culture of impunity that turned Malta into a "mafia island".

Much of Caruana Galizia's recent investigations revolved around the Panama Papers leak that cast a light on Malta's role as a hub for alleged money-laundering and tax evasion.

"Daphne's murder must not go unpunished. How can we credibly claim to defend journalists around the world if we cannot even offer them protection and justice here at home," Tajani said.

As a tribute, Tajani said the European Parliament press room in Strasbourg will be named after Caruana Galizia.

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The foster father of a missing 3- year-old Indian girl in the US was on Tuesday arrested and charged with first-degree felony injury to a child, a day after the body of a small child was found in a culvert less than a kilometre from the family's home.

Wesley Mathews, 37, was arrested after he changed his story about his adoptive daughter Sherin's disappearance, Texas police said.

Mathews, who hails from Kerala, provided "an alternate statement of events" about Sherin to detectives after the body of a small child was found, police said, without providing any additional details.

He had previously claimed that Sherin went missing after he sent her outside their home at around 3 a.m. on October 7 as punishment for not drinking her milk.

Sherin, who has developmental issues and limited verbal communication skills, was last seen outside her family's backyard in Richardson city in Texas on October 7.

Mathews reportedly adopted Sherin two years ago from an orphanage in Bihar.

He was today charged with first-degree felony injury to a child, a crime punishable by up to life imprisonment. Bond was set at $1 million for him, Richardson police Sgt Kevin Perlich said.

Yesterday, the Richardson Police announced that they discovered the remains of a small child in a tunnel beneath a road, expressing apprehension that it was "most likely" that of Sherin. They, however, did not confirm the identity.

The body was discovered in a culvert beneath a road with the help of search dogs. Police have not released any details about how the child died.

The body was found about one km from the house of Mathews.

"This afternoon, Wesley Mathews was arrested and charged with Injury to a Child (TPC 22.04), a first degree felony punishable by life or from five to 99 years in prison," according to Richardson Police.

"He voluntarily arrived at the Richardson Police Station with his attorney and asked to speak with detectives. He provided an alternate statement of events from those which he had given previously, regarding the disappearance of Sherin," police said.

"Mathews is currently in the Richardson City Jail and his bond has been set at USD 1,000,000. We are still awaiting a positive identification from the Dallas County Medical Examiners office for the child's body found yesterday, believed to be Sherin Mathews," a police spokesman said.

Investigators are awaiting confirmation that the body of a child found in a culvert is that of the missing girl.

The father was previously arrested and charged with felony endangerment to a child and was placed on electronic ankle monitoring. He surrendered his passport as a condition of making bond on October 9. He was later released.

Child Protective Services took custody of the Indian- American couple's other biological daughter, age 4, shortly after Mathews was arrested.

Sini Mathews, the girl's mother does not face any charges. She was in the house at the time, but was reportedly asleep and unaware of what her husband was doing, police had said earlier.

The older sibling of the missing girl will remain in foster care for at least three more weeks.

A Dallas County judge today postponed custody hearing until November 13 for the sister of Sherin to allow their father to hire an attorney.

Sherin's case also caught the attention of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

"We are deeply concerned about the missing child. Indian Embassy in US is actively involved and they keep me informed," Swaraj tweeted on October 19.

"We are closely monitoring the Sherin Mathews case. We have established contact with the community and authorities," India's Consul General in Houston, Anupam Ray had tweeted.
The foster father of a missing 3- year-old Indian girl was today arrested and charged with first-degree felony injury to a child, a day after the body of a small child was found in a culvert near their home in suburban Dallas.

Wesley Mathews, 37, was arrested after the Indian- American changed his story about his adoptive daughter Sherin's mysterious disappearance over two weeks ago, police in Richardson city, Texas, said.

Mathews had previously claimed that Sherin went missing after he sent her outside their home at around 3 a.m. on October 7 as punishment for not drinking her milk.

"He voluntarily arrived at the Richardson Police Station with his attorney and asked to speak with detectives. He provided an alternate statement of events from those which he had given previously, regarding the disappearance of Sherin," Richardon Police Department Spokesman Sergeant Kevin Perlich said.

The particulars of his statements that might have led to the charge have not yet been explained by authorities.

Mathews, who hails from Kerala, was booked into the Richardson City Jail on a USD one million bond.

First-degree felony injury to a child is punishable by up to life imprisonment or from five to 99 years in prison, US media reported.

Sherin, who has developmental issues and limited verbal communication skills, was last seen outside her family's backyard in Richardson city on October 7.

Mathews and his wife Sini reportedly adopted Sherin two years ago from an orphanage in Bihar.

Yesterday, the Richardson Police announced that they discovered the remains of a small child in a tunnel beneath a road, expressing apprehension that it was "most likely" that of Sherin. They, however, did not confirm the identity.

The body was discovered in a culvert beneath a road with the help of search dogs. Police have not released any details about how the child died. The body was found about one km from the house of Mathews.

"We are still awaiting a positive identification from the Dallas County Medical Examiners office for the child's body found yesterday, believed to be Sherin Mathews," Perlich said.

The father was previously arrested and charged with felony endangerment to a child and was placed on electronic ankle monitoring. He surrendered his passport as a condition of making bond on October 9. He was later released.

Child Protective Services took custody of the Indian- American couple's other biological daughter shortly after Mathews was arrested.

Sini Mathews, the girl's mother does not face any charges. She was in the house at the time, but was reportedly asleep and unaware of what her husband was doing, police had said earlier.

Earlier in the day Mathews and his wife, Sini, attended a court hearing to determine whether they could regain custody of their 4-year-old biological daughter who was placed in protective custody after Sherin went missing.

But the judge at a Dallas County court decided that the older sibling of Sherin will remain in foster care for at least three more weeks.

The judge postponed custody hearing until November 13 to allow Mathews to hire a civil attorney.

The girl will remain in foster care until that hearing or until a judge orders a change in custody, said Marissa Gonzales, a spokeswoman for Child Protective Services.

"We do have the names of some relatives who have expressed interest in taking care of her," Gonzales said.

"We can begin looking into those relatives, but it is entirely up to the judge where she is placed," she said.

On Monday evening, people gathered near the culvert where police found the body of a small child.

Many people expressed shock at the father's second arrest.

"Justice should be done for this little child," said Indian-American Anthony Sabu. "This little child has gone through the worst things in her life. She was abandoned when she was born and this family adopted her, and this is not what we expected," Sabu was quoted as saying by NBC .

Sherin's case also caught the attention of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

"We are deeply concerned about the missing child. Indian Embassy in US is actively involved and they keep me informed," Swaraj tweeted on October 19.

"We are closely monitoring the Sherin Mathews case. We have established contact with the community and authorities," India's Consul General in Houston, Anupam Ray had tweeted.

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French aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation and Anil Ambani-promoted Reliance Aerospace Ltd will this week lay the foundation stone of an aerospace park which will manufacture aircraft components for the Indian and the global market.

French Defence Minister Florence Parlay, top officials of Dassualt Aviation and Chairman of Reliance Group Anil D Ambani are scheduled to attend the event in Nagpur on Friday, an official said.

The Dhirubhai Ambani Aerospace Park (DAAP) is being set up in the city's Mihaan Special Economic Zone.

The joint venture is being set up as part of Dassault's offset obligations for the Rs 58,000 crore deal to supply 36 Rafale fighter jets to India. The deal was signed in September last year.

Spread over 289 acres, DAAP is touted to be the largest greenfield aerospace project in India. The joint venture will be the leading entity to execute the Rafale offset programme.

The aerospace park will have assembly lines and manufacturing facilities for fixed wing aircraft and will produce aircraft components for global markets, said the official.

The Dassault-Reliance partnership will bring in not only high level transfer of technology but also help develop the eco-system of the domestic aerospace sector and feed into the global supply chain, he said.

A large number of Indian MSMEs are also expected to set up facilities at DAAP.

The Dassault-Reliance JV has already shortlisted large number of vendors, mostly small- and medium-size enterprises, to be part of the supply chain at DAAP.

Production at the facility is expected to start in the first quarter of 2018; phase one will be fully operational by the third quarter of 2018, said the official who wished not to be named.

The Rafale combat aircraft will come with various India- specific modifications.

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Freedom fighter and lawyer Gaur Kishore Ganguli died here at his residence, his family said today.

Ganguli was 96.

His last rites was performed with state honours this afternoon.

During Lakshmi Puja he had gone to his native village in Purulia in West Bengal, where he slipped and received major internal injury. He returned here and died in a cardiac arrest last night.

Ganguli is survived by his wife, four daughters and widowed daughter-in-law and a grandson. His only son had died 10 years ago.

Born on October 21, 1923 in Purulia in West Bengal Ganguli was influenced by his father Sasodhar Ganguli, a freedom fighter. He joined the Quit India movement in 1942 when he was 19 years old and a student of Ranchi College.

He served a two-and-half-year long jail term along with his father in the prisons of Ranchi, Hazaribagh and Patna.

He began practising in Dhanbad district court after the reorganization of states in 1956 and was a member of the bar association.

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Goa is all set to hold its first ever LGBT parade - Goa Rainbow Pride Walk 2017- on October 28 here.

According to an organiser, the initiative is aimed at raising awareness about the rights of the LGBT community.

In the parade that will be taken out from the Old Secretariat to Miramar beach (approximately five kms), members of the LGBT community and general public are expected to take part.

"It is happening for the first time in Goa. We want to create awareness about the rights of the LGBT community. There are several wrong notions about the community, which need to be addressed through this event," Alexander Fernandes, one of the organisers of this event, said.

A film festival will also be held in the state capital, in which 4-5 movies on the struggles of the LGBT community, will be screened. A party will also been organised in one of the beach villages, he said.

According to Fernandes, 80 per cent of the LGBT members are not ready to openly speak about their preferences fearing backlash from the society, friends or family.

"People are skeptical about admitting that they belong to the LGBT community...We want to tell the world that it is absolutely okay to be an LGBT. They are not the people, who harm others as is presumed," he said.

The organiser claimed that attacks on transgenders in the state is common and it is sad that they have to face people's wrath.

The parade will pass without causing any hindrance to the traffic movement, the organisers said adding, the participants have been allowed to use masks, if they want to hide their identity.

However, they have forbidden the participants from wearing costumes that are linked to religious and political personalities.

Fernandes said that after Goa, similar parades will be organised in Bengaluru and Delhi soon.

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The government is looking into a proposal for 50 temperature-controlled posts along the India-China border for ITBP jawans who guard the Himalayan heights in sub-zero temperatures, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said here today.

Addressing personnel of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, established on this day 56 years ago to guard India's borders with China, the home minister announced a slew of other measures to boost the capabilities of the force.

These include the construction of 25 border roads in Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

There are 176 border posts along the India-China border, from Karakoram Pass in Ladakh to Jachep La in Arunachal Pradesh.

According to Singh, the government is considering using technology to maintain a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius in the proposed new posts. These will be located in high-altitude areas where ITBP jawans have to bear the brunt of snow blizzards and sub-zero temperatures.

"We are committed to enhancing your operational and infrastructure capabilities. Recently, we got a proposal to build 50 new border posts for the force and we are working on it," the home minister said.

The setting up of more posts is aimed at ensuring that they are not abandoned during extreme snow and cold.

The government is also considering special lightweight winter clothing for troops deployed above 9,000 feet and an enhanced fleet of snow scooters to patrol the high-altitude areas of the 3,488-km Sino-Indian frontier.

The force guards the border in altitudes ranging from 9,000 feet to 18,700 feet in the Western, Middle and Eastern sectors of the Indo-China Border.

Singh said he is not satisfied with housing and infrastructure facilities and is "seriously" working to improve these areas.

The minister said 35 old border posts in very high- altitude areas are being upgraded as "composite" units.

"We are working to enhance road, mobile and satellite connectivity in the border areas for the ITBP," he said.

The minister asked ITBP troops to ensure and build good relations with border dwellers as they are "strategic assets" of the country and important stakeholders in keeping the borders safe.

Singh lauded the ITBP for introducing Mandarin during basic training of its troops. This was done so they can converse with the Chinese Army during face-offs.

He also asked ITBP officers to take the responsibility of at least one family of those killed in the line of duty.

The ministry is working tohelp jawans who have suffered 50 per cent disability during operations through the Bharat Ke Veer benevolent fund, he said.

ITBP Director General (DG) R K Pachnanda said the force has been nominated as the "nodal agency" for obtaining and channelising satellite communication for all border-guarding forces in the country.

He said the home ministry has also approved the ITBP's proposal to hire helicopters for high-altitude border posts.

The paramilitary is enhancing its intelligence set-up, Pachnanda added.

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Gurdwara Chhota Ghallughara management chief Johar Singh, who was declared guilty of religious misconduct by the Akal Takht recently, was allegedly assaulted by a dozen people on the premises of the Sikh shrine at Qadian near here, police said today.

He was allegedly beaten by the activists of the Gurdwara Bachao Sangarash Committee last night, they said.

The police said Singh, a former MLA, has lodged a complaint, claiming that he was changing his clothes in a room in the gurudwara when around a dozen people forcibly entered the shrine and started beating him.

On his complaint, the police registered a case under various sections of the Indian Penal Code against the accused.

On October 12, Singh was called by Akal Takht Jathedar Gurbachan Singh to appear before him after a senior functionary of the trust was caught with a woman at the gurdwara on August 11.

Singh claimed he did not consider Gyani Gurbachan Singh as Jathedar Akal Takht as he was removed by the Sarbat Khalsa which appointed Gyani Dhian Singh Mand as Jathedar Akal Takht.

He claimed that he had appeared before Dhian Singh Mand who declared him 'tankhahia' or guilty of religious misconduct on October 12 and asked him to perform 'sewa' or service at Harmandar Sahib, to wash utensils at the community kitchen hall, clean shoes of the 'sangat' and listen to 'kirtan'.

However, Singh asserted that the SGPC task force did not let him perform 'sewa'. Later, Mand advised him to organise 'akhand path' at Gurudwara Chhota Ghallughara and he was about to recite it today morning but was assaulted by the group last night.

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Industrialist and CMD of Manikchand Group Rasiklal Manikchand Dhariwal passed away due to multi- organ failure this evening in a private hospital here, said doctors and family sources.

He was 79 and is survived by wife Shobha, a son and four daughters.

According to the hospital, where Dhariwal breathed his last, he was admitted on September 4 and was suffering from cancer.

"His cancer spread all over his body and today he died due to multi-organ failure," said a doctor at the hospital.

Born in Shirur in Pune district of Maharashtra, Dhariwal inherited a bidi factory with 20 workers from his father and went on to become a gutkha baron.

He spotted potential in tobacco products and further diversified his business and ventured into gutkha business, where he made a name for himself.

Not limiting his business to gutkha, whose manufacturing and sale was banned in Maharashtra a few years ago, Dhariwal forayed into newer domains such as packaging, roller flour mills, real estate, wind energy, packaged drinking water and pet preforms (for water and edible oil).

Through his philanthropic entity the Rasiklal M Dhariwal Foundation, the industrialist launched projects in the areas of healthcare, education, environment and disaster management, among others.

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The Madras High Court today issued notice to T Mariyappan, a gold medal-winning Indian paralympic high jumper, in connection with the death of a youth in June.

Justice M S Ramesh issued the notice, returnable by November 14.

The judge had on September 11 impleaded Mariappan as a respondent in the case while admitting a petition from M Muniyammal, mother of the deceased.

The Salem-based petitioner had alleged that after Mariyappan and his associates assaulted her son M Satish Kumar, he was found dead near a railway track in the district.

The alleged assault occurred after her 19-year-old son accidentally rammed his two-wheeler into Mariyappan's car, which damaged its 'door-handle' and it led to a quarrel.

Muniyammal contended that her son fell over the car after losing control of his motorcycle due to bad condition of the road and an obstruction.

However, Mariyappan and his friends thrashed Satish and when he escaped and reached home, they again attacked him brutally, she alleged.

When Mariyappan and his associates snatched his mobile phone, he ran behind them and since then he was missing. Satish was later found dead near a railway track in the vicinity of the village, she claimed.

Muniyammal sought police protection, alleging that Mariyappan, two of his associates and unidentified "henchmen" continuously harassed her and family and threatened them with dire consequences.

She alleged that police did not act on her complaint against Mariyappan as he was a celebrity sportsman.

As there was no effective action, she filed the criminal original petition to implead Mariyappan and his friends as parties in the case, she added.

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The Delhi High Court today allowed telecom major Ericsson's plea seeking to constitute a 'confidential club' to ensure limited access to the documents in its ongoing patent tussle with Chinese handset maker Xiaomi.

The high court said there was no impediment if the confidential club was created and access to the documents would be limited by adopting an eight-point procedure.

"The law... furthers the argument of the plaintiff (Ericsson) that such confidential club though can be created but the access to information may be restricted, especially in patent cases," Justice Yogesh Khanna said.

The court's order came on Ericsson's application that such confidentiality clubs have been constituted even in the past in cases involving patents and trademarks and in disputes involving fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) issues.

The application was filed by Ericsson in a pending suit for permanent injunction against Xiaomi seeking to restrain it alleging violation and infringement of its various patents.

Ericsson's counsel had argued that it was legitimate for the courts to constitute a confidentiality club to ensure that the sanctity and confidentiality of business and commercially sensitive information, filed by a party, is maintained.

Though Xiaomi Technology was not averse to constitution of such a confidentiality club, it said it should be made a party to such a club or granted access to the information.

The eight-point procedure to be adopted includes that all confidential license agreements relating to similarly placed parties be permitted to be filed in a sealed cover and kept in the safe custody of the registrar general of the high court.

"Each party be directed to provide on an affidavit, a list of no more than five lawyers (who are not and have not been in-house lawyers of one of the parties) and no more than three external expert witnesses, who alone will be entitled to see the aforesaid confidential documents/patent license agreements," it said.

The court said those lawyers and expert witnesses will be bound by its confidentiality orders and not make copies or disclose the contents of the confidential documents/patent license agreements to anyone else, including in other legal proceedings, communications to the press and blog publications so that the spirit of confidentiality regime is preserved.

The court said the parties will be allowed to inspect the patent license agreements only through the confidentiality club members and no copies will be made of such confidential documents or license agreements.

"The parties would give copies of the confidential documents/patent license agreements to the members of the confidentiality club only after redacting the confidential information including the name of the parties. However, the rates/products will not be redacted," it said.

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Security forces today arrested a Hizbul Mujahideen militant from Tral area of Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district, an official said.

"Arizoo Bashir was arrested by the police and security fores from Tral," a police spokesman said.

He said that Bashir was a Hizb militant and had been active for "quite some time".

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The holdup over next months Baliyatra festival here on account of hike in rent of leased land was removed today as the district administration decided to slash the rate by another 50 paise per square foot.

The Baliyatra Traders Association, which was spearheading the protest against the rent hike, called off its protest following the cut in the proposed hike and indicated that the traders would start booking spaces in the festival grounds from tomorrow.

The proposed hike in rent was slashed by Rs 1 in two phases due to our consistent resistance, said the Association secretary Debi Prasad Das after a meeting with the district collector. He said the rent, license fee, users fee for the trades would not be hiked for the next three years.

Announcing the decision of slashing the rent hike, Cuttack Sadar Tehsildar Sanjeebita Ray said a trader would now pay Rs 27 per square foot of land to be taken as lease to erect the make-shift stalls for the week-long festival beginning from November 4.

The tehsildar said of the Rs 27 collected, Rs 2 each would go towards sanitation and users fee of the civic body and fire department, respectively. The remaining Rs 23 collected per square foot would be shared between the tehsil office and the city civic body.

The annual Balijatra festival is held in Cuttack at Gadagadia Ghata of the Mahanadi river, to mark ancient 'Sadhabas' (Odia mariners) setting sail to distant lands of Bali, as well as Java, Sumatra, Borneo (in Indonesia), and Sri Lanka for trade and cultural expansion.

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Shooting with veteran actor Dharmendra for "Yamla Pagla Deewana Phir Se" was an exhilarating moment for Kriti Kharbanda.

"Yamla Pagla Deewana Phir Se" is the third film in the "Yamla Pagla Deewana" franchise which features 81-year-old Dharmendra along with his sons Sunny and Bobby.

Kriti has joined the franchise and has already finished her first shooting schedule.

In an interview with PTI, Kriti says, "When I did a scene with Dharam sir for the first time, I actually cried! I was very nervous, it was our one-on-one scene, where my back was facing the camera. The cinematographer noticed that I was in tears, it was an intense scene too and he said 'relax, don't worry'.

"Someone later told him that Kriti was crying as she was nervous about acting with you and he was like, 'Kharbanda, what happened girl'? He calls me 'Kharbanda', he doesn't like calling me Kriti. I find it very sweet, it's the first time someone has done that," she says.

Working with Dharmendra not only made the 28-year-old actor happy but also made her family proud.

"Never in my wildest dreams I thought I would work with Dharmendra sir. I remember the first selfie I took with him, I posted on our family WhatsApp group. My father couldn't stop beaming with joy. I could feel it. Everytime I see them proud, it makes everything so worth it," she says.

Kriti, who made her Hindi debut with "Raaz: Reboot" opposite Emraan Hashmi, featured in "Guest Iin London" this year. The actor is currently gearing up for the release of "Shaadi Mein Zaroor Aana", which also stars Rajkummar Rao.

"This year has been really good for me. 'Guest Iin London' didn't work but it got me more work, it helped me grow as an actor. One movie should lead to two movies and I am really happy for that.

"With time, I am getting to work with actors who are known for their work. I am liking that, enjoying every bit and I want to soak it all in. Sometimes I can't believe all of this is happening," she says.

"Shaadi Mein Zaroor Aana" is scheduled to release on November 10.

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Actor Kim Cattrall said she has never been friends with her "Sex and the City" (SATC) co- stars, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon.

The 61-year-old actor, who portrayed Samantha Jones in the hit HBO TV series, said she is not in touch with any of the cast members.

"We've never been friends. We've been colleagues and in some ways it's a very healthy place to be. I don't see them. The common ground we had was the series and the series is over," Cattrall said during an appearance on "Piers Morgan's Life Stories".

The actor said she will never take on the role of Samantha again, but admitted she has "no regrets" about the show.

She also said it was sad how she was made out to be the villain in impeding the development of a third film in the franchise and was portrayed as "demanding or a diva" in the media.

Cattrall said, "This is really where I take to task the people from 'Sex and the City' and specifically Sarah Jessica Parker, is that I think she could have been nicer. I really think she could have been nicer. I don't know what her issue is.

"The thing that still bothers me is this feeling of being in some way made to be the baddie. I never asked for any money, I never asked for any projects, to be thought of as some kind of diva is absolutely ridiculous."



She echoed producer Ryan Murphy's sentiments, saying if the makers want to go ahead with the film they should cast a different actor to play Samantha in the future.

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Eminent filmmaker I V Sasi, who died today, has left behind a legacy of blockbusters as well as revolutionary films which captured the imagination of cinema lovers.

Sasi, 69, dominated the Malayalam film scene for four decades, since 1970s with a wide variety of films through his close association with veteran writers like Jnanpith laureate M T Vasudevan Nair, late T Damodaran and P Padmarajan.

With over 150 movies to his credit, Sasi made a mark in the industry through the path breaking movie "Avalude Ravukal", a sympathetic look at the life of a sex worker.

Though the movie dealt with a risque theme, Sasi, made the film a success with his deft handling of the subject.

Seema, the reel-life heroine in that new wave movie, later became his partner in real-life. They had a successful on-screen collaboration throughout their careers.

Sasi's films stood out for their elaborate sets and ensemble cast. The stories that he primarily dealt with were about the struggles of the working class.

The director, who began his film career as an art director, went on to become one of the most sought after filmmakers from 1970s to mid 1990s.

His first directorial venture, "Ulsavam" (1975), a love story, starred by Vincent and late Sreevidhya and was a hit.

A native of Kozhikode district, Sasi, whose full name was Irruppam Veedu Sasidharan, was a diploma holder from Madras School of Arts.

Some of his well-known blockbusters include "Alkoottathil Thaniye", "Kanamarayathu", "Aksharangal" and "Vadakaykkoru Hrudayam", "Itha Ivide Vare", "Angadi", "Ee Nadu", "Vartha", "Devasuram" and "Avanazhi".

Sasi blurred the divide between the commerce and art in Malayalam films and was instrumental in moulding several superstars of the industry such as Mammootty, Mohanlal and veterans like late Jayan and Sukumaran.

"Vellathooval", released in 2009, was Sasi's last movie, which he directed after a long gap. He also had some Tamil and Hindi movies to his credit.

Sasi, who was planning a comeback to the industry in recent times, was a winner of national and state awards.

In 2015, the Kerala government presented him with the J C Daniel Award, the highest film honour in the state, in recognition for his overall contribution to the film industry.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan condoled the demise of Sasi and said he was a filmmaker who rewrote the conventional formula in the Malayalam film industry.

Sasi's long-term friend and Tamil superstar Kamal Haasan tweeted: "My friend for 45 years I V Sasi is no more. The industry and I mourn a great technician. My support and love to my sister Seema Sasi and family."



Mourning his death, Mammootty said, "I feel sad on the demise of my beloved friend."



Calling him the "master of Malayalam movie industry", Mohanlal said, "Portraying the life of commoners, IV Sasi was a man who created wonders on the silver screen. I salute the master of Malayalam movie industry who made the viewers and actors, including me, understand the basics of cinema."



Mammootty's son Dulquer Salmaan wrote on Facebook, "RIP Sasi uncle! He created an Era of his own in Malayalam Cinema. Have fond memories of him from my childhood."



Sound designer Resul Pookutty tweeted, "The man who rewrote the course of mainstream Malayalam cinema IV Sasi is no more. We had been in discussions on a film together, it's my personal loss!"



"One of the greatest film makers of mainstream Indian cinema bids goodbye. We will miss you Sasi sir! So many personal memories!" Prithviraj Sukumaran posted.

Young actor Nivin Pauluy tweeted: "RIP Sasi Sir. You will be truely missed.

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The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) today launched a programme on artificial intelligence and machine learning for technology professionals.

The 'Foundations for Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning' would be executed in association with TalentSprint, a technology-driven organisation involved in skill development.

"Every corporate, every company is investing very heavily into artificial intelligence and machine learning. You would have heard about the efforts by the big corporates...," IIIT-H director P J Narayanan told reporters.

"But, beyond that, every company, whether you are working in banking, whether you are working in manufacturing, whether you are working in services, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) can do a lot for you, can make your work far more efficient," he said.

The institute had earlier conducted two-day classes for senior people from the industry on artificial intelligence and it wanted to scale up the effort in view of the heavy demand, the director said.

The four-month programme, with its hands-on teaching approach, would enable engineers in the industry to build "deep ML programming capabilities in their companies", a release issued on the occasion said.

"It has been repeatedly said in the last year that AI/ML is the next industrial revolution. We believe this programme is a bridge that will help today's technology professionals successfully cross over to the new era of automation and intelligent systems," Santanu Paul, the co-founder and CEO of TalentSprint, said.

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Over 500 scientists from various organisations will explore the role of innovation in developing composite materials during an international conference to be held here in December.

The Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, will organise the three-day conference from December 27 on composite materials, which have wide applications in medicine, space, aircraft and automotive structures.

The theme for the international conference is 'Recent Advances in Composite Materials and Structures', IIT Hyderabad Director Prof U B Desai said in a release.

Scientists from Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and National Aerospace Laboratories along with research scholars, students and industry representatives will participate in the event.

"Within engineering domain, composites have revolutionised traditional design concepts and made possible an unparallelled range of new and exciting possibilities as viable materials," Prof Amirtham Rajagopal, the organising secretary of the conference, said.

Composite materials is an interdisciplinary area where chemists, material scientists, chemical engineers, mechanical engineers and structural engineers contribute to the overall product, he said.

The conference would be a forum to bring together the users, manufacturers, designers and researchers involved in understanding structures or structural components manufactured using composite materials, Desai said.

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Eminent jurist and former Attorney-General of India Soli Sorabjee today said that India should join the Hague Convention dealing with inter-parental child abduction, which has been signed by over 90 countries globally.

The Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, signed on October 25 in 1980, provides for a mechanism to return a child internationally abducted by a parent from one member country to another.

The signatories to the multilateral treaty include the US and the UK, and there has been a debate over whether India should join it or not.

"India should join the Hague Convention. So, many countries, over 90 of them have signed it. India has not done it, since there are a few notions attached with it. I do not see any reason, why our country should not be a signatory to it," Soli told PTI on the sidelines of an event.

At the panel discussion on -- Reconciling Domestic Violence and Cross Border Removal of Children -- held late evening at the IIC here, Supreme Court judge justice A K Sikri said, a domestic legislation related to the issue was needed first before addressing it through global measures.

"India is a in a state of flux. There is 'India vs Bharat' situation. While the India is shining and prospering, the other part ('Bharat') is still struggling and so there is a wide gulf between the rich and the poor," he said.

The debate on whether India should join the Hague Convention, is "sharply divided", the apex court judge said.

Sikri said in an era of globalisation, the situation is not confined to mere two Indian parents settled abroad. Today there are women, who are earning more than their husbands and there are women, who are not economically capable of meeting challenges resulting out of any domestic violence.

"But, should few cases block our vision and we should not sign the convention? Which aspects should we consider while taking into account the welfare of the child, (in case of marital dispute)," he asked.

Besides Sorbajee, a senior US official and a Chicago- based attorney also pitched for India to join the convention.

"The Hague Convention is not a miracle remedy but it is better than not signing it... We (the US) encourage all countries, including India to join the convention," said Joseph M Pomper, Minister-Counselor for Consular Affairs at the US Embassy here.

US-based lawyer Molshree Sharma, another panelist, said, "India should sign the convention.

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Nepal's former ambassador to India Deep Kumar Upadhyay has said New Delhi will extend full support for the upcoming provincial and parliamentary elections in the Himalayan nation.

Upadhyay said the electoral alliance forged between CPN- UML and CPN-Maoist-Centre ahead of the polls would not be a matter of concern for India.

"This alliance seems to be forged for winning upcoming polls, it is not wise to put false accusations on anyone," he said referring to the Leftist alliance.

"India has officially said they would extend their support for the polls," the former ambassador said.

"Currently, Nepal-India relations are smooth, people will judge my performance of two-year stint as a diplomat (in India)," said Upadhyay.

He also said he could contest the upcoming polls from Kapilavastu as his resignation has already been accepted by the council of ministers.

He expressed the view that ruling Nepali Congress party should have contested elections on its own rather than forging electoral alliance with other parties.

"Winning or losing are part and parcel of elections, more importantly, the nation, people and democracy have to win," the former diplomat said.

Upadhyaya had resigned as ambassador to India on October 6.

He was appointed as envoy to India by former prime minister Sushil Koirala's government in April 2015. He was recalled by the subsequent government under CPN-UML's K P Oli in May, 2016, which accused him of working against the country's interest.

He was reappointed last year by Prachanda's government.

Upadhyay had played a key role in reducing tensions between Nepal and India when the Himalayan country had suffered a blockade on its southern border following the promulgation of its new Constitution.

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India is expected to have 478 million air passengers in 2036 on the back of strong demand, global airlines' grouping IATA said on Tuesday.

The country is projected to see a staggering growth from 141 million passengers in 2016.

Releasing its 20-year passenger forecast, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said globally a total of 7.8 billion passengers are expected to travel in 2036, with Asia-Pacific region leading the demand.

China is expected to fly the highest number of passengers at 1.5 billion, of which 921 million would be the new ones followed by the United States with 1.1 billion, including 401 million new passengers) in 2036, IATA said.

India would be the third fastest growing market, with an expected addition of 337 million new passengers, taking the total to 478 million, it added.

According to IATA, Indonesia with 355 million passengers, including 235 million new ones would be the fourth fastest growing aviation market in 2036. It would be followed by Turkey where the total is expected to be 196 million passengers, including 119 million new passengers.

Noting that the Asia-Pacific region would be the biggest driver of demand, the grouping said the region would be the source of more than half the new passengers over the next two decades.

"The point at which China will displace the US as the world's largest aviation market (defined as traffic to, from and within the country) has moved two years closer since last year's forecast.

"We now anticipate this will occur around 2022, through a combination of slightly faster Chinese growth and slightly reduced growth in the US. The UK will fall to fifth place, surpassed by India in 2025, and Indonesia in 2030," it said.

Further, the grouping said that routes to, from and within Asia-Pacific would see an extra 2.1 billion annual passengers by 2036, for an overall market size of 3.5 billion.

"Its annual average growth rate of 4.6 per cent will be the third-highest, behind Africa and the Middle East," IATA said.

IATA's Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac said all indicators lead to growing demand for global connectivity.

"The world needs to prepare for a doubling of passengers in the next 20 years. It is also a huge challenge for governments and to ensure we can successfully meet this essential demand," he added.
Home to around 253 million adolescents, India will host the World Congress on Adolescent Health this year from October 27-29.

Billed as the biggest global event in adolescent health, it is held once every four years and the International Association for Adolescent Health's 11th World Congress will be organised on the theme -- 'Investing in Adolescent Health



the Future is Now'.

The world is home to 1.2 billion adolescents, and India has the largest population of adolescents in the world -- 253 million -- with every fifth in the world being an Indian and every second being an Asian, Professor Susan Sawyer, President of the International Association for Adolescent Health, said.

"India has been chosen as the venue for the conference as it has the largest number of adolescents in the world. Policies in India are changing in favour of adolescents.

"When IAAH started in Australia 30 years ago as a resource to help build capacities in the field of adolescent health, we had people only from high-income countries, but now there is participation from across the world," Sawyer said here.

Over 1,000 delegates from 65 countries across the world will share their experiences and learnings during the conference.

The World Congress seeks to cover issues like 'Global adolescent health: Opportunities and challenge', 'Toward a gendered approach to adolescent health', 'Mental health and adolescents' and 'Social media, sexting, addiction, Oh My! Adolescent Health in the Digital Age'.

There will be debates on topics, including the need for parents' consent in their child's clinical care or participation in health research and the role of brain imaging in adolescent care and health promotion.

Dr Sunil Mehra, Executive Director, MAMTA Health Institute for Mother and Child, said, "It is an appropriate time to choose India as the venue for the conference since the country is faced with challenges such as early marriage, early pregnancies, malnutrition and obesity and violence."



The event is being organised with the support of the Ministry of Health and MAMTA Health Institute for Mother and Child is hosting the World Congress with a consortium of partners.

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Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh today said the newly-appointed interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir, Dineshwar Sharma, would decide whom he engaged with in the state.

Asked if Sharma would hold talks with the Hurriyat Conference, as suggested by some state politicians, Singh said, "It depends upon him whom he talks to or engages with.

Sharma, a former director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), was appointed by the central government as its representative yesterday to initiate a dialogue with all stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir.

The retired 1979-batch officer of the Indian Police Service was the IB director from December, 2014, to December, 2016.

The minister dodged questions by reporters on what signals the Indian government sought to send to Pakistan with the appointment of the interlocutor.

Singh was speaking on the sidelines of the 56th Raising Day parade of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police here.

Sustained dialogues would be initiated by the government for a solution to the Kashmir issue, Singh had said yesterday.

The home minister had also made it clear that Sharma, who would hold the rank of a cabinet secretary, would have a free hand in deciding whom to engage with.

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The Centre today said it was left to the newly-appointed interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir to decide whom to engage with in the troubled state even as the Congress alleged that the move was "only for publicity".

Former Intelligence Bureau(IB) chief Dineshwar Sharma was yesterday appointed by the Centre as its special representative for a "sustained dialogue" with all stakeholders in J and K, in a fresh move aimed at bringing peace in the border state.

The J and K government welcomed Sharma's appointment, observing that dialogue was the only way forward to address the Kashmir issue in the larger interest of peace and stability in the state while the state unit of the BJP asked all stakeholders to "give peace a chance".

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh when asked by reporters if Sharma would hold talks with the Hurriyat Conference, as suggested by some state politicians, responded by saying, "It depends upon him(Sharma) whom he talks to or engages with.

Singh was speaking on the sidelines of the 56th Raising Day parade of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police in Greater Noida, near Delhi.

The minister ducked questions by reporters on what signals the Indian government sought to send to Pakistan with the appointment of the interlocutor.

Sustained dialogues would be initiated by the government for a solution to the Kashmir issue, Singh had said yesterday.

The home minister had also made it clear that Sharma, who would hold the rank of a cabinet secretary, would have a free hand in deciding whom to engage with.

But the main opposition party Congress said it doubted the "intent" of the NDA government in resolving the Kashmir issue, and alleged that it appointed an interlocutor towards the end of its rule "only for publicity".

Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said the Congress and other opposition parties had asked the government to talk to all stakeholders to resolve the "political issue" in the Valley through confidence-building measures rather than "hot pursuit", but it "wasted" three- and-a-half years during which many precious lives were lost.

"We are not opposing the decision of the government. But at the fag end of their tenure, they have done this. This is only for publicity. This government has no Kashmir policy. They have no policy on demonetisation, GST, farmers issues and unemployment. We doubt their intent as they have no policy," Azad said at a joint press conference of opposition leaders in Delhi.

Azad, who was flanked by Derek O'Brien of the TMC and Sharad Yadav of the breakaway JD-U faction, said that had the government taken steps as suggested by the Congress-led opposition, many precious lives of soldiers and civilians could have been saved as well as the eyesight of many young girls who lost them due to pellet guns.

"For three-and-a-half years, the BJP is talking about 'hot pursuit'. We all opposition parties both inside and outside of Parliament have been talking about 'confidence building' measures, besides 'hot pursuit'," he said.

Azad said they had maintained that this was a "political issue" and should be resolved politically.

A meeting of the J and K Cabinet chaired by Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti last evening welcomed the Centre's decision, an official spokesperson said in Srinagar.

The Cabinet observed that dialogue is the only way forward to address the issue in the larger interest of peace and stability in the state.

It noted that the initiative is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech that laid emphasis on embracing the people of J and K.

BJP state unit's chief spokesperson Sunil Sethi said all stakeholders must come forward to meet the central interlocutor and put their views across.

Violence and the culture of separatism had destroyed the economy and peace of the region, he said, asking stakeholders to avail of the opportunity to usher in peace.

The vast majority of the population in Kashmir was yearning for peace for the sake of the future of their children, Sethi said in a statement released in Jammu.

The Jammu High Court Bar Associationgave a guarded reaction, saying only time will tell how successful will be Sharma's endeavour.

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Late comedienne Joan Rivers' letters to celebrities such as Tom Hanks, David Letterman, Bo Derek and Meryl Streep will be published in a new book.

Titled "Joan Rivers Confidential", the book will be penned by Joan's daughter Melissa Rivers and Scott Currie.

The duo has been granted permission to publish the letters the actor wrote and received from prominent Hollywood personalities, according to PageSix.com.

One of the letters that is likely to feature in the book is Joan's message to actor Kathy Bates, who was miffed with her joke on the movie "Titanic" that the ship would not have sunk had Bates' character not boarded it.

Joan died on September 4, 2014 from cerebral hypoxia.

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Journalists today held a protest wearing black arm bands against a controversial bill of the Rajasthan government, which seeks to protect public servants and judges from prosecution without its prior sanction.

The Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill was tabled in the Assembly by Home Minister Gulabchand Kataria yesterday to replace an ordinance promulgated on September 7.

Hundreds of journalists took out a protest march from the Pink City's press club to the assembly. They were detained near the Vidhan Sabha building and dispersed later.

Calling the ordinance as 'Kala kanoon', Press Club President L L Sharma said, "We are against the ordinance. The government should withdraw it.

The controversial bill also has the provision for barring the media from publishingany details identifying an accused till the government gives its nod for investigation and its violationwould call for two years imprisonment.

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IT security software maker Kaspersky has detected some servers in India that were used by notorious cyber criminal gang Lazarus which is believed to be behind large scale cyber attacks across the world including recent WannaCry ransomware.

While researching the latest activities of the infamous cyber criminal group Lazarus, Kaspersky Lab has uncovered a number of compromised servers being used as part of the threat actor's global command and control infrastructure, the software company said.

"The compromised servers, found in Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, among others, could be used by Lazarus to launch targeted attacks against a company or organisation," Kaspersky Lab said in a statement.

Korean speaking Lazarus group is believed to be behind recent high profile cyber attacks like the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures, the million-dollar Bangladesh Bank heist in 2016, and the recent WannaCry destructive ransomware epidemic, as per the statement.

The criminal group by name of Guardians of Peace had claimed responsibility on Sony Picture. It had demanded Sony to pull down film 'The Interview' which was a comedy about a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Kaspersky said that Lazarus which is also Korean speaking group "is thought to be state-sponsored".

The US, China and India are top three countries housing maximum number of compromised servers, the Kaspersky Lab report said.

"According to open source intelligence, three of the top five countries that still have servers carrying this vulnerability are in the APAC region: China (with 7,848), India (1,524), and Hong Kong (1,102). The US tops the list with the most vulnerable servers (11,949), while United Kingdom ranks 5th with 805," the report said.

Kaspersky Lab said that researchers have discovered that the servers had been infected using malware called Manuscrypt, which could have been installed using a vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Information Services that was patched by Microsoft on June 13, 2017.

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Actor Kenneth Branagh will be honoured at the 25th Camerimage international cinematography festival festival.

The "Dunkirk" actor will receive the Krzysztof Kieslowski Award, a distinction presented to versatile actors and actresses, at the festival which will be held at Bydgoszcz, Poland, according to a release posted on the festival's official website.

Branagh will also receive Camerimage Cinematographer - Director Duo Award along with his frequent collaborator Haris Zambarloukos.

Both the director and cinematographer will be showcasing their latest venture "Murder on the Orient Express" -- based on the best-selling Agatha Christie novel of the same name and headlined by a stellar cast including Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Michelle Pfeiffer, Judi Dench and Branagh himself -- at the Camerimage Opening Night.

The duo have collaborated on films such as "Thor", "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit" and "Cinderella".

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Managing Director of Kochi Metro Rail Limited Elias George today announced his decision to step down after a five-year tenure which saw operationalisation of a new urban mobility system in the coastal city.

George, a 1982-batch IAS officer, has been serving as KMRL MD since 2012.

"I have been at the helm of the KMRL for the last five years. Now a new talent and new energy is required for completion of various phases of the project including the ambitious water metro project," George said.

The first 13.26 kilometre Metro stretch from Aluva to Palarivattom was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June this year.

The second reach of the Metro was commissioned by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan this month.

With the second stretch getting operational, Kochi Metro station now covers 18 km from Aluva to Maharajas College station.

He said an integrated transport system, comprising the metro service and waterways, would be a game changer as far as Kochi city was concerned.

George, who took over the reins of KMRL in August 2012 when KMRL and Delhi Metro Rail Corporation shared a strained relationship,took the lead in implementing several initiatives under the guidance of the state government, the Union Urban Development Ministry and 'Metroman' E Sreedharan.

Under his leadership, Kochi Metro broke new ground in gender justice by opening up employment opportunities to hundreds of women and nearly two dozen transgenders.

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A section of law students here today offered Rs one crore to the producers of the film 'Mersal' and actor Vijay, if they proved that Singapore is providing free medical care.

If they failed to prove, the producer and Vijay should give them Rs one crore for giving wrong information to the public through their film without any basis, the students said in a petition submitted to police today.

A dialogue in the film says medical care is free in Singapore, which was incorrect, they said.

By giving false information, the film was inciting the people against the Government, they said.

Stating that the film also wanted to construct hospital in the places of temple, thus speaking ill against Hindu places of worship, the students said that the actor denigrated the sanctity of the shrines by entering with chappals on.

In view of this, police should register a case against the director, actors Vijay and Vadivelu and the producers Thenandal Films for giving false information and hurting the sentiments of Hindus, they said.

Meanwhile, Hindu Makkal Katchi president, Arjun Sampath also took serious objection the way the film has projected the digital India and GST.

The BJP had protested against the film over dialogues allegedly flaying the GST.

Tamil Nadu BJP leaders, including state unit chief Tamilisai Soundararajan and national secretary H Raja, have strongly opposed references to the GST in the just-released Tamil movie and claimed dialogues in it were "highly inappropriate.

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Explosions of ordnance left in the ruins of Raqa have killed 14 people in the week since the Syrian city was retaken from the Islamic State group, a spokesman said today.

"At the end of last week, nine civilians were killed," Mustefa Bali, spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces that retook the former jihadist bastion, told AFP.

The US-backed force has banned access to the devastated northern Syrian city to displaced residents wanting to return but Bali said that "unfortunately some civilians are managing to slip back in."



He did not specify in how many blasts the nine were killed but said they had returned to assess the condition of their homes.

Raqa, IS's main Syrian hub, was retaken after a more than four-month-old operation and suffered extensive damage. Planting booby traps in homes and roadside bombs was the centrepiece of IS's defence system.

Bali said the mine-clearing effort only started officially today and added that five other people had already been killed in the ordnance disposal process.

"Five people were killed, three fighters and two technicians," he said.

The technicians were civilians working with a Syrian Kurdish organisation specialised in ordnance disposal.

The United Nations reacted to the civilian deaths today by expressing concern for displaced residents they said might be tempted by the dire conditions in displacement camps to return to Raqa prematurely.

"The UN is concerned for the safety and protection of civilians at risk of death and injury from unexploded ordnances reportedly planted throughout Raqa city neighbourhoods," a statement from the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

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Veteran Malayalam director I V Sasi, best known for his films "Avalude Ravukal" and "Devasuram" died here today, sources close to the family said. He was 69.

Sasi had problems in breathing and passed away around 11.15 am on his way to the Surya hospital here.

In his more than three-decade career, Sasi directed over 150 films in Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and Hindi and worked with stars such as Mohanlal, Mammootty, Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth.

Born on March 28, 1948, in Kozhikode, Kerala, Sasi started his career as an art director. His debut directorial venture was "Ulsavam", which released in 1975.

Amongst his biggest successes was the 1978 film "Avalude Ravukal", which established him in the Malayalam film industry.

The film, which starred his then would-be-wife Seema, was later dubbed into many other Indian languages, including Hindi.

The filmmaker gave Mohanlal one of his early breaks as a co-hero in "Ineyengillum". The director-actor duo went on to work in films such as "Devasuram", "Aalkkoottathil Thaniye" and "Uyarangalil".

Mammootty and Sasi collaborated on more than 35 films, including "Mrugaya", "Inspector Balram" and "Ee Nadu".

He also directed Haasan in films like "Guru," "Allauddinum Arputha Vilakkum", "Karishma" and "Eeta".

In 1979, Sasi worked with superstar Rajinikanth in the Malayalam film "Allauddinum Albhutha Vilakkum".

He helmed Hindi movies such as the Mithun Chakraborty starrer "Patita" and "Anokha Rishta", featuring Rajesh Khanna.

The filmmaker won the Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration in the year 1982 for his movie "Aaroodam".

Sasi directed Bollywood star Katrina Kaif in the 2006 Malayalam film "Balram vs Tharadas".

Mourning his death, Mammootty said, "I feel sad on the demise of my beloved friend."



Calling him the "master of Malayalam movie industry", Mohanlal said, "Portraying the life of commoners, IV Sasi was a man who made wonders on the silver screen. I salute the master of Malayalam movie industry who made the viewers and actors, including me, understand the basics of cinema."



Kamal Haasan wrote on Twitter, "My friend for 45 years IV Sasi is no more. The industry and I mourn a great technician. My support and love to my sister Seema Sasi and family."



Sound designer Resul Pookutty tweeted, "The man who rewrote the course of mainstream Malayalam cinema IV Sasi is no more. We had been in discussions on a film together, it's my personal loss!"



Mammootty's son Dulquer Salmaan wrote on Facebook, "RIP Sasi uncle! He created an Era of his own in Malayalam Cinema. Have fond memories of him from my childhood."



"One of the greatest film makers of mainstream Indian cinema bids goodbye. We will miss you Sasi sir! So many personal memories!" Prithviraj Sukumaran posted.
A Motor Accident Claims Tribunal (MACT) here has awarded over Rs 12 lakh to a tea seller who lost his right leg in a road mishap three years ago.

MACT Presiding Officer Vidya Prakash asked the New India Assurance Company Ltd, insurer of the truck involved in the accident, to pay Rs 12,01,000 to north Delhi resident BirjuYadav considering that he had suffered 40 per cent disability.

"In view of his disability in right lower limb, he would not be able to do any type of activity requiring him to walk, doing field job, to stand for long duration or to lift weight or to travel, doing his day to day activities etc. Hence, his functional disability is taken as 40 per cent with regard to whole body," the tribunal said.

The petition alleged that on January 7, 2014, 42-year old Yadav was riding his bike to the tea shop. When he reached Narela in north-west Delhi, a truck driven in a rash and negligent manner hit him. The accident resulted in the amputation of his right leg below knee.

However, the driver of the offending vehicle claimed he was falsely implicated in the case.

The insurance company failed to show if any terms or conditions of the insurance policy were breached or violated by the driver or the owner of the offending vehicle.

"Keeping in view the existence of valid insurance policy, insurance company becomes liable to pay the compensation amount, as it is liable to indemnify the insured," the tribunal said.

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A jewellery shop employee was arrested from his hideout in Kalyani in Nadia district, almost two months after he escaped with a gold bar from the shop located in the south Kolkata, police said today.

Liton Mondal (32) was arrested late last night from his hideout at a guest house in Kalyani for allegedly stealing a gold bar weighing around 697 grams with an estimated value of Rs 18 lakh in August, a senior officer of Kolkata Police said.

Mondal, who was working at the jewellery shop in south Kolkata's Muchipara area for more than 2.5 years, had been on the run since the day he committed the theft, the officer said.

"He remained untraced and our officers had a tough time finding his location in different places northern India. But he frequently kept changing his hideouts thus making it quite difficult for us to track him," the officer said.

Finally, acting on a tip-off that the accused, a resident of Nimta in North 24 Parganas, has returned to the state, police conducted a raid at a guest house at Kalyani and nabbed him last night, he said.

Police recovered about 400 gms of the bar from him. The accused was remanded to police custody till November 1.

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A man was today arrested from the city with 255 gm heroin and unaccounted cash, police said.

Acting on a tip-off, Umesh Mallick (38) was arrested from the Mallick Ghat Flower Market in North Port police station limits after 940 small packets containing the banned narcotic were seized from him this morning, a Kolkata Police officer said.

Cash amounting to Rs 15,240 was also recovered from him, he added.

"The money possibly is the amount he had received selling some more packets to customers who fled during our raid there. We are looking into the matter," he said.

Mallick, who will be taken to court tomorrow, has been booked under relevant sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.

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A 23-year-old man was today arrested for allegedly killing a two-and-half-year-old girl here after abducting and sexually assaulting her, police said.

The accused, Ajay alias Bablu Rameshwar Choure, works as a painting labourer and was arrested from Satara district of western Maharashtra, a senior police official said.

The girl was abducted from her house, while she was sleeping next to her mother here near Kudale Mala in Dhayari area off Sinhgad Road on Saturday night. She was found dead a day later, barely 50 to 70 metres from her residence.

"Choure used to live in the same building where the victim's family lives but left the place two to three months back. However, he often used to come to the vicinity and knew the place.

"While probing the case, we interrogated at least 30 to 40 people living nearby and zeroed down on him. He was apparently was present on that night in the area," Additional Commissioner of Police (South Region) Ravindra Sengaonkar said.

He claimed that Choure has confessed to the crime and said he had come to the area on Saturday night and consumed liquor with one of his friends.

"His friend left, but Choure again headed to the liquor shop and bought alcohol. He knew the area and the building where victims' family lived and later he sneaked inside the house and took away the girl," he said.

He added that according to Choure, the door of the house was open.

"He took the girl near an under-construction site near Kudale Mala, where he sexually assaulted her and strangulated her to death. He then threw the body in the bushes," he added.

He said after the crime the accused slept in the same area and left the city next day.

"We will now verify the sequence of events and facts," said Sengaonkar, adding that the accused would be produced in the court tomorrow.

On Saturday night, the mother of the girl had woken up to find her missing. She then went to her husband and uncle, who were in the same house. Later, a search of the girl resulted in her body being found a few meters away from their home.

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Hollywood star Matt Damon has revealed that he knew that media mogul Harvey Weinstein had sexually harassed Gwyneth Paltrow.

The 47-year-old star had initially dismissed the reports that he knew about the disgraced producer's misconduct towards women when the scandal first broke out.

In an appearance on "Good Morning America", Damon said that he learned Weinstein had abused Paltrow from his friend Ben Affleck, who was in a relationship with her.

"I knew the story about Gwyneth from Ben, because he was with her after Brad, so I knew that story. But I was working with Gwyneth with Harvey on 'Ripley'. I never talked to Gwyneth about it. Ben told me.

"I knew that they had come to whatever agreement or understanding that they had come to. She had handled it and she was the first lady of Miramax. He treated her incredibly respectfully. Always," the actor said.

Damon, however, said that Weinstein's womanising nature was known to the industry.

"When people say everybody knew, yeah, I knew he was an ahole. He was proud of that. That's how he carried himself. I knew he was a womaniser. I wouldn't want to be married to the guy, but that's not my business, really. But this level of criminal sexual predation is not something that I ever thought was going on. Absolutely not."



According to Damon, Weinstein was on his best behaviour around the actor. He, however, apologised for being unaware of the misconduct that women suffered at the producer's hands.

"He didn't do it out in the open. If there was ever an event where there was something I was at with Harvey in public and he was doing this thing and I missed it, and there's some woman who was somehow assaulted and was at the Golden Globes or something and I somehow missed it, then I'm sorry."



The actor, along with actor Russell Crowe, was under fire for killing a 2004 expose by The New York Times on Weinstein's alleged history of sexual abuse, an allegation he denied.

Weinstein's previous company Miramax had produced Damon and Affleck's breakout film, "Good Will Hunting".

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Targeting the BJP, BSP chief Mayawati alleged today that there was a conspiracy to eliminate her during her visit to the Shabbirpur village in Saharanpur district, which saw caste clashes earlier this year, a charge rubbished by the ruling party.

Addressing a rally here, Mayawati claimed that according to reports she had received, the conspiracy behind the caste clashes in Saharanpur district was to get her eliminated.

The plan was that when Dalits will be harassed in large numbers, their leader will go there to wipe their tears, she said.

"BJP people thought that when I will go to Shabbirpur and speak in favour of the Dalit 'samaj' which will arouse passions and there will be a bloodbath, during which along with the Dalits, their leaders will also be eliminated," the former chief minister alleged.

Mayawati said that since she was not allowed to speak on this matter in Parliament, she resigned from the membership of Rajya Sabha.

Reacting to the BSP chief's statement, UP BJP spokesman Rakesh Tripathi in Lucknow said, "Mayawati is making such statements as she is left with no issue to deliberate upon. She is feeling frustrated. Most of the founder members of BSP have already left the party, and she is feeling isolated and lonely".

Tripathi claimed that Mayawati's "casteist politics" had badly failed and she was worried that the BJP government will start investigations into the cases of alleged corruption committed by her.

He said that it was a BJP MLA, Brahmadutt Dwivedi, who had saved her life but she was singing a different tune today.

In her speech in Azamgarh, the Lok Sabha constituency of Samajwadi Party veteran Mulayam Singh Yadav, it was the BJP that was Mayawati's prime target.

The BSP chief said that she would convert to Buddhism along with her supporters if the BJP did not change its attitude towards the backward sections. She also claimed that the atmosphere in the country was worse than the situation during the Emergency days.

She also accused the BJP of weakening constitutional institutions and the media to serve its political motives.

The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister alleged that the saffron party was misusing government machinery and agencies like the CBI, Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax to make the country free of Opposition by creating dissension in other parties.

She claimed that the BJP could begin the construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya or bring back fugitive Dawood Ibrahim before the next elections to serve its electoral interests.

"To serve its political motives, the BJP has now weakened the constitutional institutions and the media. They have also weakened democracy to a great extent...Things are being done in an autocratic and arbitrary manner...Conditions today have surpassed those prevailing during the Emergency in 1975," she said.

Alleging that the BJP had again started its campaign to mislead the poor and the middle classes in view of the next Lok Sabha polls and Assembly elections in some states, Mayawati said that it was now clear that the party will no longer get its 'acche din' (good days) back.

She asked her workers to foil the BJP's plans by exposing them in the public and claimed this "autocratic functioning and narrow RSS agenda" can only be checked in this manner.

Mayawati said the Narendra Modi government had not fulfilled even a fourth of its election promises, and added that the GST and demonetisation had weakened the economy.

The BJP, which has failed to fulfil its promises, could start Ram temple construction in Ayodhya before the next Lok Sabha polls or bring back Dawood Ibrahim or could even go in for another surgical strike for the sake of votes, she claimed.

She said that the Lok Sabha polls could be advanced this time and asked her workers to start preparations before hand so that the party performs well in the local bodies' elections and also trounces the BJP in the 2019 parliamentary polls.

At the rally, Mayawati said the BJP should change its mindset towards the Dalits, Tribals and backward classes or else she would be forced to convert to Buddhism like Bhimrao Ambedkar.

"I throw an open challenge to the BJP to change its casteist and communal mindset towards Dalits, Adivasis, Backwards and also those who have changed their religion, or else, I will also have to take a decision towards changing my religion to Buddhism," she said.

Recalling Ambedkar, she said that after witnessing discrimination in the caste system in Hinduism, he had called on the Shankaracharyas and seers to modify it. Since it was not done, Ambedkar, a little before his death, converted to Buddhism in Nagpur along with his followers, she said.

Accusing the BJP of taking the "casteist agenda" of the RSS forward, she blamed it for the suicide of Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad and the Una case of Gujarat where some Dalits were assaulted resulting in outrage and protests.

She claimed the BJP had fielded a Dalit associated with the RSS as its presidential candidate to garner votes and added that because of this, the Congress and other opposition parties had also fielded a Dalit candidate.

Mayawati also took a dig at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath saying that he will look after the development of the state when he gets time from "puja paath" (worship) in temples.

"Despite being a representative from the backward Purvanchal area, he has not been able to give attention to its development...He can focus on it only when he gets time from his puja paath in temples. Sometimes he is in his Gorakhnath temple or in Ayodhya or Chitrakoot. Leave alone Purvanchal, the entire state cannot develop under such circumstances," she said.

She claimed that the BJP leaders can go for prayers to temples in Ayodhya, Mathura and Varanasi to hide their shortcomings but the people would not be misled by their "religion card".

The previous Samajwadi Party government was not good, but the present government is worse and is even lagging behind them, she said.

She alleged that an atmosphere of fear and terror had been created everywhere in the name of religion and culture.

Muslims and minorities are finding it difficult to sustain, so much so, that they have stopped keeping cows out of fear of cow vigilantes and even Hindus are desisting from it, she added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Home Ministry has asked all states to ensure safety and security of journalists in exercising freedom of speech and expression, in the wake of incidents of attacks on mediapersons.

In an advisory to the states, the home ministry also said all cases of attacks on journalists should be investigated promptly to ensure that criminals get "persecuted in a time- bound manner".

"Fourth Estate is an important institution of the democracy. It ensures that citizens are able to express their opinions freely without any fear and coercion as provided under the Constitution of India.

"It is the duty of the state to ensure safety and security of the journalists who ensure that the Fourth Estate discharges this key duty," the advisory said.

The central government's missive was sent in the wake of the killing two journalists, Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru and Shantanu Bhowmik in Agartala.

The ministry said from time to time, incidents of attacks on journalists and mediapersons were reported and all such cases need to be investigated promptly "to ensure that criminals get persecuted in a time-bound manner".

"States should also take all preventive and deterrent action as deemed required. States are already empowered to provide security to individuals based on threat perceptions," it said.

The ministry said while police and public order are state subjects under the Constitution, in view of its importance, it is drawing the attention of the state governments and Union Territory administrations from time to time towards the need for a robust criminal justice system with emphasis on prevention and control of crime.

"The state administrations are requested to... ensure that a peaceful environment prevails, allowing journalists/media personnel to exercise freedom of speech and expression in their professional pursuit; ensure that the investigations are concluded in a time-bound manner and public trust in criminal justice system is maintained," it said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The foster father of a 3-year-old Indian girl, who is missing for over two weeks, has told police that his daughter choked on milk and he "believed she had died", according to a media report today.

Wesley Mathews, 37, the father of Sherin Mathews, was re-arrested and charged with first-degree felony injury to a child due to a conflicting statement to police.

The arrest came a day after the body of a small child was found in a culvert near their home in suburban Dallas and police fear that it could be that of Sherin.

An arrest warrant obtained by local TV Station WFAA detailed the "conflicting story" that led to the re-arrest of Sherin's father.

The warrant states that Mathews told police that his daughter choked on milk in the early morning hours of October 7 and he "believed she had died."



He said he "physically assisted" Sherin in drinking her milk when she wouldn't listen to him, according to the warrant.

"She was coughing and her breathing slowed," the warrant reads. "Eventually, Wesley Mathews no longer felt a pulse on the child and believed she had died."



He then admitted to police that he removed the body from the home, the warrant reads.

Mathews had previously claimed that Sherin went missing after he sent her outside their home at around 3 am on October 7 as punishment for not drinking her milk.

He was arrested then and charged with felony endangerment to a child and was placed on electronic ankle monitoring. He also surrendered his passport as a condition of making bond on October 9.

He was re-arrested for felony injury to a child after providing investigators at the Richardson Police Department with the conflicting story.

"When they came in, they provided us with some information that was contrary to what we had previously been told regarding her [Sherin Mathews] disappearance," said Kevin Perlich, Richardson Police Department spokesperson.

His bond has been set at USD 1 million and he was booked into the Richardson City Jail.

"It is possible that he could bond out again," Perlich said.

When asked yesterday about the milk story Mathews originally told police, Perlich wouldn't provide specifics because it was an ongoing investigation. All he could say was that "it was not what he told us originally."



Perlich said police still did not have a positive identification on the child's body that was found Sunday at 11 am in a culvert underground during a search operation in the area of Spring Valley and Bowser Road.

The FBI seized dozens of items from the family's home and their vehicles between October 8 and 12, including a washer and dryer, electronics and DNA swabs.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani today discussed a range of bilateral, regional and global issues and expressed their "firm resolve" to end the menace of terrorism.

The two leaders also discussed ways to further the shared objective of promoting security and stability in Afghanistan.

"Furthering 'neighbourhood first' policy with a strategic partner. Prime Minister Modi receives president Ghani at Hyderabad House," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.

"Prime Minister Modi and President Ghani discussed range of bilateral, regional and global issues, express firm resolve to end menace of terrorism," he added.

Earlier, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called on Ghani, who is here on a one-day working visit.

Ghani also met his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind.

Ahead of his visit, the ministry had said both sides will have the opportunity to review the entire gamut of multifaceted bilateral strategic partnership, including the New Development Partnership. They would hold consultations and coordinate on furthering the shared objective of promoting peace, security, stability and prosperity in Afghanistan and efforts to combat the menace of terrorism.
The Congress today launched a blistering attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying "Modinomics" has destroyed India's growth story.

The main opposition party also termed as a "shoddy attempt" by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to defend the "decimation" of the economy after he reeled out economic indicators to support the government's contention that GDP growth slowdown has bottomed out and economy is turning around.

"'Modinomics' has destroyed India's growth story. A shoddy attempt of a desperate finance minister Arun Jaitley to defend the decimation of economy has failed to impress either the Indian industry or common people. The growth as projected by the government is only on paper," Congress' communications department incharge Randeep Surjewala said.

Surjewala said decisions like noteban and "poor" implementation of GST hurt the core of macro and micro economic fundamentals, and expressed concern over growing NPAs of public sector banks.

The bank recapitalisation plan announced by the finance minister neither has a roadmap nor a timeframe, he said, asking the government to do a reality check and share a targeted framework of bank recapitalisation rather than engage in "hyperbole and high-sounding syllables".

On Jaitley's claim that the macro economic fundamentals of economy are very strong, he said, "On the contrary, mindless and unsound decisions like demonetisation and the poor implementation of GST has hurt the core of the fundamentals of macro and micro economic fundamentals."



The Congress leader alleged common people were being made to suffer, jobs were in peril, and medium and small industries in dire straits, as economy stuttered due to demonetisation and GST roll out. "Time has come to travel from empty jumlas (rhetoric) to meaningful governance," he said in a statement.

Congress spokesperson Sushmita Dev said if the prime minister or the finance minister were claiming "all is well", they should go to Gujarat and listen to what the people were saying.

"Today, if the economy is turning around, then why is there 'no feel good factor among the people. I will tell the prime minister and the finance minister that all is not well," she said.

Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said on Twitter, "If Economy was a wish-horse Arun Jaitley could have ridden it. Fact- in 41 months he created a new bumper sticker 'Hey honey I sunk the Economy'."



Surjewala said the NPAs of public sector banks jumped from 36 per cent in March 2014 to 82 per cent in June 2017-- from Rs 36,000 crore to Rs 8.35 lakh crore.

Noting that the money given for recapitalisation of banks will increase the fiscal deficit, he said, "This is a desperate move by a finance minister groping in the dark as demonetisation and GST failed to bring in the promised Rs 4-5 lakh crore."



Jaitley today announced a Rs 2.11 lakh crore bank recapitalisation plan to revive investment and growth.

Accusing the government of waiving loans worth Rs 1,88,287 crore of wilful defaulters in the last three years, the Congress leader asked, "Is the government risking taxpayers' money for more such loan waivers without commitment to MSME and agrarian sectors?"



On Bharatmala project, he said it is completely debt driven with the burden falling on people of India.

Bharatmala is an umbrella programme under which 34,800 km of highways will be constructed at a cost of Rs 5.35 lakh crore.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A private bus rammed into a motorcycle on the Badaun-Bijnore road here, instantly killing a mother and her son, police said today



Dhan Devi (55) and her son Avdhesh (35) were killed on the spot when their motorcyle was hit by the bus near Siddhpur village last night, Bilsi police station in-charge Krishna Gopal said.

The bus driver has been taken into custody, he said.

The bodies have been sent for post-mortem.

(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.)
Maharashtra cabinet today decided to form a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to raise funds for its ambitious Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi corridor project.

The state cabinet chaired by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today approved the proposal to establish Nagpur-Mumbai Super Communication Expressway Limited, the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) which will work as a secondary company of Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC).

According to an official from the Chief Minister's office, the SPV will be registered under the Registrar of Companies Act.

The SPV will work as a fund raiser and will supervise the completion of the project within the stipulated time frame, the official said.

The ground breaking ceremony of the project is expected in January 2018 and MSRDC has set a target to complete it within 30 months.

"Fifty one per cent share capital of SPV will be owned by MSRDC. The members of SPV will be the commissioner of MMRDA, Chief Executive officer (CEO) of Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), vice president and CEO of Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority (MHADA), managing director of Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) and MD of CIDCO," a statement issued by the Chief Minister's office said.

The 700-km Samruddhi corridor will pass through 392 villages across 11 districts.

The MMRDA has acquired 980 hectares land from farmers through direct purchase.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy today expressed disappointment that none of the questions raised by him on "poor governance" had been answered by the company's board with transparency.

Murthy's comments came after Infosys board, under chairman Nandan Nilekani (considered to be a close confidant of the founder), today gave a clean chit to the company's USD 200 million Panaya acquisition. The board also refused to put out additional details of the probe, as had been demanded by Murthy.

Murthy, in a late evening statement, said that he stood by every question on poor governance raised in his speech to Infosys investors dated August 29, 2017.

He asserted that the core question still remained on "how and why the Infosys board approved an unusual and unprecedented severance payment agreement of 1000 per cent (of the standard Infosys employment contracts) to the former CFO...".

Murthy had launched an offensive against the the previous Infosys management over allegations of corporate governance lapses and had questioned the high severance pay out to former top executives of the company.

The stand-off has culminated into a sudden exit of Infosys' then CEO Vishal Sikka followed by erstwhile Chairman R Seshasayee.

Murthy today also questioned why the board did not disclose information (about the severance pay) "proactively and much earlier".

"Sadly, it appears we will no longer know the truth," Murthy said in his statement.

Announcing its second quarter earnings today, Infosys had said that it concurs with the previous findings of an external probe that there is no merit in the allegations of wrongdoing with regard to the Panaya deal.

"After careful consideration led by our Chairman, the board reaffirms the previous findings of external investigations that there is no merit to the allegations of wrongdoing" Infosys had said.

Reacting on the outcome of board meeting, Seshasayee said "The company now deserves a period of stability and undistracted focus on the business. I wish the company all the best".

It may be recalled that Murthy had demanded that the full report by Gibson Dunn and Crutcher on whistleblower allegations pertaining to the USD 200 million Panaya acquisition be made public.

But, Infosys today said that after a "careful re- consideration" it has concluded that putting out more details of the probe would "inhibit the company's ability to conduct effective investigations into any matter in the future".

Further, the company emphasised that its review had confirmed that "appropriate" and "timely disclosures" were indeed made on severance payments to the former CFO.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Around 7.5 lakh people have been issued cochlear implant (hearing aid) through 5,500 camps held across the country under the accessible India campaign, Union minister Krishan Pal Gurjar said today.

Speaking at an inauguration of two-day national conference at Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), the Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment listed out various government initiatives aimed at benefitting persons with disability.

"Five-year-old children with disability shall be sponsored with Rs 6 lakh for cochlear implants by the government," Gurjar said in a statement.

He said that elderly BPL family members with disability will be taken care of for their every needs. "12-13 camps in India have been established in this regard," he said.

"The government has now increased the reservation from 3 to 4 per cent in central government services and to 5 per cent in education for them," he said.

The seminar on topic - Vocational Rehabilitation and Economic Inclusion of PwD in India - was jointly organised by IGNOU's National Centre for Disability Studies (NCDS) and National Handicap Finance and Development Corporation (NHFDC).

IGNOU Vice Chancellor Ravindra Kumar said, "The government has provided Rs 77 crore worth scholarships to 13,140 students of NHFDC who underwent 3-6 months training course along with a stipend of Rs 2,000 per month.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Cybercriminals reportedly hacked into the electronic fund transfer system of a major private sector bank in Nepal, prompting the country's central bank to issue an alert, officials said on Tuesday.

According to the officials of the Nepal Rastra Bank, the country's central bank, hackers tried to make illegal payment worth millions of rupees from the bank accounts of NIC Asia Bank Ltd using the SWIFT electronic money transfer system.

The NRB, they said, has asked foreign central banks not to make any payments sought.

"It has been found that transactions of NIC Asia Bank have been carried out from various banks in six countries by hackers using SWIFT, an banking network," said Rajendra Pandit, deputy spokesperson of the NRB.

"We have already requested the central banks in those countries to stop processing payments to the parties requested by the hackers. Even payments which have already been made are likely to be retrieved," Pandit said.

The hackers reportedly broke into the SWIFT system of the NIC Asia Bank and siphoned off an undisclosed amount last week during the Diwali holidays.

Both the NRB as well as the NIC Asia bank have played down the cyber heist.

"We have decided to take down our server for the SWIFT system after suspecting an intrusion into the system, which is completely different from our core banking system where client information and bank balances are maintained," said Roshan Kumar Neupane, an official at the NIC Asia Bank.

He said the attacks have been on the 'Nostro' accounts maintained in foreign banks for payments in business activities like letters of credit (LC).

"The financial losses have not been as damaging as feared as the balances in such accounts are very low," said Neupane, but did not disclose the amount that was siphoned off.

The NIC Asia Bank Ltd has also commissioned a forensic investigation by KPMG, a global firm providing audit, tax and advisory services, according to the officials.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is a global financial messaging system that thousands of banks and commercial organisations across the world use to transfer billions of dollars every day.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today said Israel had "great sympathy" for Kurdish aspirations and that the world should concern itself with their wellbeing.

Netanyahu was speaking at a memorial ceremony for far- right Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi, assassinated by Palestinians in Jerusalem in 2001.

Zeevi, he said, went on a secret mission Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region in the 1960s and supervised the setting up of an Israeli army field hospital there.

"The visit made a deep impression on him," Netanyahu's office quoted him as saying in Hebrew.

"He came face to face with warm expressions of support for Israel which continue to this day.

"The Kurds demonstrate national maturity and international maturity," said the Israeli leader.

"We have very great sympathy for their desires and the world needs to concern itself with their safety and with their future."



Israel has been the only country to openly support Kurdish independence, with Netanyahu last month backing "the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state of its own."



He did not specify how and where such a state should come into being.

Parliament in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region decided today to postpone planned legislative elections for eight months amid tensions with the central government in Baghdad over disputed territories.

The elections were originally set for just over a month after a September 25 referendum in the Kurdish areas which resulted in a massive "yes" for independence.

The non-binding referendum was strongly opposed by Baghdad.

The United States, a key ally of both Baghdad and Kurdish forces in the battle against the Islamic State group, also opposed it as did Iraq's neighbours Iran and Turkey.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The National Green Tribunal today slammed the Delhi government and the East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) for their inaction on the recent fire that broke out at the Ghazipur landfill site.

A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar pulled up the civic body and the AAP government for shifting blame from one to another and putting the lives of residents at risk.

"You have again put the landfill site on fire. Why don't you people think what you are doing. We are talking about the national capital. Why don't you people do something," the bench said.

Advocate Balendu Shekhar, appearing for the EDMC, told the tribunal that immediate action was taken when fire was noticed on October 19 at 2 pm and fire tenders were called instantly.

However, the fire tending vehicles arrived at the landfill site at 2:30 pm and the second extinguisher reached only by 6:00 pm, the EDMC lawyer said.

To this, the bench said, "Should we ask the Delhi government to send the fire tending vehicles? You people just keep on passing the hat from one to another."



The blaze at Ghazipur landfill in east Delhi erupted on October 19 and 20 and was later extinguished after hours of fire-fighting operations by the fire tending vehicles.

The tribunal also asked the EDMC whether it had started bio-stabilisation of municipal solid waste at the landfill site as per its direction.

Irked at the approach of the authorities, the green panel had earlier directed the EDMC to immediately start the work of "segregation, compaction and bio-remediation of the municipal solid waste" with the help of the Delhi government.

"We direct deployment of JCB-like machines (mechanical excavators) and other mechanical process for the said purpose. It should be ensured that the waste, stated to be nearly 45 m in height, must be provided with proper vents to ensure that methane gas does not get accumulated and causes further disaster.

"They shall also cover the waste with soil. There shall be deployment of proper trained staff with complete equipment around the site, day and night, to ensure that there is no danger resulting from this huge dumped waste to the public at large and the environment, any further," the bench had said.

It had directed the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to open tender for deciding on the agency to carry out the segregation of waste at the Ghazipur landfill site, subject to receiving sanction from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.

"Immediately thereafter they should award the work and ensure that the operation or segregation at the site would start without any further delay. Looking at the severity of the problem arising out of massive municipal solid waste, we do hope that the ministry would act expeditiously," it said.

On September 4, the NGT had come down heavily on the AAP government and the EDMC over the Ghazipur landfill collapse in which two persons were killed, saying "nothing can be more humiliating than people being killed under a garbage hill".

A portion of the 45 m-high garbage dump in east Delhi's Ghazipur collapsed on September 1 because of heavy rain, killing two people and pushing a car and three two wheelers off the road and into a canal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An 11-year-old Nigerian student was allegedly sodomised by a man on the premises of a private school here today, police said.

The accused, who works as a book seller in the school in Sector Pi, has been arrested, they said.

A police official said that a complaint was made in the case after which the accused man was booked under Indian Penal Code Section 377 for unnatural offence.

The student is from Nigeria, said Girish Kumar Kotiya, the station house officer of Surajpur police station.

Further details were not immediately available.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
India on Tuesday sought a probe into North Korea's nuclear proliferation linkages and demanded that those responsible for it be held accountable, in a veiled reference to Pakistan.

Nirmala Sitharaman, who is on her first foreign visit since taking over as India's first woman defence minister last month, said here in the capital of the Philippines that the nuclear and missile tests conducted by North Korea were in violation of its international commitments and have triggered serious concerns.

North Korea has launched a series of ballistic missiles that potentially can strike the US mainland and recently conducted its largest ever underground nuclear explosion, triggering a fresh round of sanctions on Pyongyang from the international community.

US President Donald Trump told the U N General Assembly last month that if America was "forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."



Addressing the 4th ASEAN Defence Ministers' meeting here, Sitharaman said India had criticised North Korea's nuclear and missile tests.

"India has deplored these tests. We remain concerned about the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted India's national security and that of the entire region," she was quoted as saying by an official statement.

"It is important that North Korea's proliferation linkages are investigated and those who have supported its nuclear and missile programme are held accountable," she said, in a veiled reference to Pakistan's links with Pyongyang.

Pakistan had secretly supplied North Korea with nuclear enrichment technology when A Q Khan headed the country's nuclear programme.

According to western media reports, Pakistan supplied vital machinery, drawings and technical advice to North Korea, allowing Pyongyang to enrich uranium as early as 2002.

Earlier, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had also raised India's concerns over North Korea's nuclear proliferation and demanded that those responsible for it be held accountable.

Swaraj's remarks came during her trilateral meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and her Japanese counterpart Taro Kono on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in New York last month.
The Calcutta High Court today asked the CBI why it was opposed to handing over investigation into the theft of Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel Prize medal to a West Bengal government agency when it had closed its own probe in 2009.

A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Rakesh Tiwari and Justice Harish Tandon directed the central investigating agency to submit its reasons for being unwilling to hand over the probe to a state government agency in the form of an affidavit within a week.

Hearing a PIL seeking an order from the court to transfer the probe into the theft of the medal from a museum of Visva Bharati University at Santiniketan in 2004, the bench directed the petitioner to file an affidavit in reply within another week after the CBI's submission.

The matter will come up for hearing two weeks later.

The bench asked the CBI counsel as to why it was opposed to an investigation by a state authority when it had failed to achieve any breakthrough in the case and had closed the probe twice.

CBI counsel Ashraf Ali submitted that the state government had given consent to a CBI investigation and once granted, the permission cannot be withdrawn.

The court said the Nobel prize medal was a national treasure and an investigation for recovering the medal was always welcome.

Stating that the central agency considers the matter to be of huge importance, Ali submitted that since the state government claimed to have more clues in the case, it should share the same with the CBI and if found to be of consequence, then the case might be reopened.

Ali prayed that the CBI be allowed to file an affidavit stating its position on the matter.

Appearing for the state, Advocate General Kishore Dutta submitted that though the CBI had closed investigation into the matter, it was refusing to hand over the probe to a state agency.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had last year said the state government was willing to take up the investigation for recovering the stolen medal which was awarded to Tagore in 1913.

The CBI which was entrusted with the investigation after the theft had closed the case in 2007 after failing to make much headway.

The agency reopened the case in 2008 after criticism from different quarters, but closed it again in 2009.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As part of initiatives to help investors set up facilities in the state, the Odisha government has built up a 1 lakh acre land bank, a senior official has said.

Keen on attracting investments in the mineral-rich state, the government has offered various sops and incentives to investors who were showcased advantages of setting up ventures here, Department of Industries, Odisha, Principal Secretary Sanjeev Chopra told PTI in an interview.

"I am sure investors will understand our policies. When investors will come to set up industries, land will be required in huge amount. We don't have any issues related to land and have already created a land bank of 1 lakh acre," he said.

The state has ensured that the land has been given all clearances and is ready-to-use, Chopra said, asserting that projects will not face any delays due to hurdles.

South Korean steel giant Posco had suspended its $12 billion steel project in Odisha, citing delays in various regulatory approvals and land hurdles in setting up a 12 MTPA steel plant at Jagatsinghpur.

Chopra said Odisha has no dearth of land and the government will keep on adding more of it to the bank.

"The government is using policy of engagement not confrontation. It will engage the locals and tell them the purpose for acquiring their land," Chopra said, alleging that a handful of locals with vested interests were creating differences among the villagers and the government.

The government is not only trying to attract domestic investors but is wooing offshore investments too.

A state government delegation led by Industries Minister Niranjan Pujari and Chopra would be soon heading for Japan where they will apprise investors on the state's business-friendly policies.

Last month, the two had met officials of Japanese companies operating in the country at the Embassy of Japan in the national capital and informed them about the mega industrial projects coming up in the state.

The state government had also held meetings with over two dozen downstream companies at Tata Steel plant premises at Kalinganagar in Jajpur district to showcase the business ecosystem, available incentives and infrastructure facilities in the state



More than 70 downstream and ancillary companies had attended a conference on Ancillary and Downstream Opportunities in Aluminium last week in Bhubaneswar.

The government had assured investors of uninterrupted supply of raw materials for their projects.

According to the Odisha government, master planning of National Investment and Manufacturing Zone, Kalinganagar, Dhamra Port- based industrial region and Infovalley has been completed while that of petrochemical investment region at Paradip is underway and will be wrapped up in the next 3-4 months.

Other projects such as plastic park at Paradip, electronics manufacturing cluster at Infovalley and aluminium park in Angul are ready for investments.
Odisha will be the Focus State in the World Food India (WFI)-2017 event being held in the national capital next month, according to MSME Minister Prafulla Samal.

Samal said this while chairing the preparatory meeting for the event.

The World Food India-2017 is an international mega food event being organised at New Delhi on November 3-5, 2017.

More than 200 global companies and 41 global CEOs from 30 countries will be participating at the event, Samal said adding, the event will receive 21 ministerial/ business delegations.

Over 450 domestic companies and leading R&D institutes along with 95 Indian industry captains are likely to participate in the event.

Additional Chief Secretary of MSME department LN Gupta said that as a Focus State, Odisha will be setting up its own pavilion with 12 stalls showcasing various processed food items like spices, cashew, confectionery, agro and sea food.

Odisha Sea Food Exporters' Association, along with Directorate of Fisheries, will also showcase the potential in sea food sector.

Similarly, the Directorate of Horticulture and APICOL (The Agricultural Promotion & Investment Corporation of Odisha Limited) along with local industry will showcase the processed agro food items as well as spices that are produced in Odisha.

Gupta said a seminar on "Potential of Food Processing Sector in Odisha" is also being organised during the event on November 3 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi.

Besides, the business delegates visiting from the states will hold meetings with investors/ entrepreneurs of other states and countries, Gupta said.

Gupta said that Japan, Denmark and Germany are partner countries in the World Food India-2017 while Italy and the Netherlands are 'Focus Countries'.

Besides, official/ business delegations will be visiting from Poland, South Korea, Sri Lanka, UK, France, Netherlands, among others.

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Several opposition parties today announced that they would observe November 8, the first anniversary of demonetisation, as 'Black Day' and would hold protests across the country to highlight its "ill-effects" on the economy.

Announcing the decision at a joint press conference of the opposition coordination committee, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said, "This particular announcement made on November 8 is the scam of the century, which is why we are observing this as Black Day."



He described the note-ban decision as the NDA government's "most ill-conceived and hasty decision".

"One can say this is a scam of the century. Eighteen political parties have decided to hold protests in every state in their capacity against the government's decision which caused hardship to the people. Never ever in the world people have died because of a government policy," Azad said.

Azad, flanked by Sharad Yadav of the breakaway faction of the JD-U and TMC leader Derek O'Brien, said, "Each political party will try to give a regional name to observe this as a 'Black Day' and will hold protests and processions."



O'Brien said his party would observe the day as "Kalo Dibas" which is 'Black Day' in Bengali.

"History of modern India will remember the 'scam' which took place on November 8. We had raised a number of questions and our doubts regarding the policy but the government could not answer or erase our doubts," he said.

O'Brien also said that all the 18 parties would interpret the day in different ways "in the true federal structure and will take it forward".

Asked why the opposition was not planning a joint and united protest on the day, Azad said the opposition had been "forced" to call November 8 as 'Black Day' and that the parties were united on the issue.

"Since opposition leaders from all parties including regional ones cannot be in Delhi. That is the reason the coordination committee has decided to have protests at every state according to the capacity of various opposition parties. Our purpose is to show our unity," he said.

"When we raised this issue in Parliament, we visualised the problems but general public did not have apprehensions initially. All political parties were branded as if we all are corrupt and we are all black money hoarders.

"This is how the prime minister tried to project those who opposed demonetisation. Each of them has felt the pinch and realised how much damage we have suffered due to it," he said.

The coordination committee of opposition parties had met yesterday in the Parliament House, where it authorised Azad to talk to other parties and finalise the protest plan on November 8.

The group of 18 opposition parties has been standing together against the government and formed the seven-member coordination committee comprising leaders of the Congress, TMC, SP, BSP, DMK, the Left and the breakaway JD-U faction.

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Hospitality company OYO has launched its first remote tech development centre in Hyderabad.

"The development aligns with the company's vision to build cutting edge in-house technology to solve supply-demand imbalance in real-estate and hospitality," it said in a statement.

"Primarily an engineering centre, it will focus on developing innovative products for customers, partners and employees," the company said.

OYO has appointed Priyank Choudhary, who joins the company as vice president engineering, to head the centre.

Additionally, he will lead Micro Markets and New Products technology.

Anil Goel, CTO of OYO, said, "Our new tech development centre in Hyderabad will drive our operations across the country and internationally.

"It will serve as the COE for machine learning and artificial intelligence initiatives of OYO. Our focus will also be on developing effective customer engagement strategies, understanding their behaviour better and offering a personalised and superior experience.

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The report of a parliamentary standing committee has "persuasive" value but it is neither binding, nor can it be used to prove disputed facts, some pharma companies told the Supreme Court today.

The submission was made before a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, which is to decide questions including whether the court can rely on or refer to parliamentary committee reports in judicial proceedings.

The issue whether a parliamentary panel report can be relied upon in judicial proceedings had arisen after the petitioners had referred to the 81st Report of Parliamentary Standing Committee, issued on December 22, 2014, allegedly indicting some pharma firms for conducting trials of the controversial Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine.

"The report of a standing committee of Parliament has persuasive value and it is advisory in nature," senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for some pharma companies, told the bench, which also comprised Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan.

He said the report of a parliamentary panel was not binding on Parliament and the court and hence cannot be relied upon to prove disputed facts.

Senior advocate Anand Grover, appearing for one of the petitioners who is opposing controversial HPV vaccine, said he was not relying on the parliamentary panel report but had rather referred to it.

Earlier, the Centre, in its affidavit, had said the reports of parliamentary panels should not be used as evidence in a court of law.

The case came up for hearing in the apex court in 2012 and centered around aspects relating to action taken by the Drugs Controller General of India and the Indian Council of Medical Research pertaining to the approval of HPV vaccine manufactured by M/s GlaxoSmithKline Asia Pvt Ltd and MSD Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd for preventing cervical cancer in women.

The hearing remained inconclusive and would resume tomorrow.

While referring the matter to the five-judge bench on April 5, the top court had said it "might be crossing the boundary of federal structure" if it acted on the basis of a parliamentary committee report in a PIL.

It had said that it was of the "prima facie view" that the Parliamentary Standing Committee report may not be tendered as a document to augment the stance on the factual score that a particular activity was unacceptable or erroneous.

The top court had then framed two questions -- one, whether in a litigation filed before it either under Article 32 or Article 136 of the Constitution, the court can refer to and place reliance upon the report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee.

The second question framed for the constitution bench was "whether such a report can be looked at for the purpose of reference and, if so, can there be restrictions for the purpose of reference, regard being had to the concept of parliamentary privilege and the delicate balance between the constitutional institutions that Articles 105, 121 and 122 of the Constitution conceive".

The court was hearing two PILs filed by activist Kalpna Mehta and Sama-Resource Group for Women and Health.

The issue of untimely death of some people and the grant of compensation to their families had arisen in the hearing in which the attention of the court was drawn to the Report of Parliamentary Standing Committee.

The Centre and state governments have maintained their stand that the vaccine was necessary and steps have been taken to avoid any kind of hazard.

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Initiatives for bringing peace in Afghanistan should be led and controlled by Afghans, President Ram Nath Kovind said while welcoming his counterpart from the neighbouring country Ashraf Ghani in Rashtrapati Bhavan today.

He "strongly condemned" recent terror attacks in Afghanistan including in the provinces of Kabul, Kandahar, Ghazni and Paktia that have claimed lives of over 200 people.

Kovind said India has been a victim of state-sponsored, cross-border terrorism for decades and can fully empathise with the ongoing quest of the Afghan people to secure peace.

"India believes that whatever initiatives are taken for bringing peace in Afghanistan should be Afghan-led and Afghan-controlled," a statement from Rashtrapati Bhavan quoting the President said.

Securing sustained peace and security remains the key fundamentals in leading Afghanistan on the pathway of economic recovery and growth, Kovind said.

"Unfortunately, mindless and senseless violence is being imposed on the people of Afghanistan," he said.

Kovind expressed admiration for Ghani for the astute leadership that he has provided to Afghanistan through difficult times and commended him for strengthening bilateral relations between India and Afghanistan.

Recalling Ghani's speech at the Heart of Asia Summit in Amritsar in December 2016 and his visit to the Golden temple, he said for India, Afghanistan is not just a strategic partner, but a nation that evokes endearing affection.

The president added that civilisational links and people-to-people contacts provide a strong foundation to our ever-growing friendship.

The two countries have deepened their strategic partnership in recent times, he said.

The India-Afghanistan Trade and Investment Show here brought the businessmen of two countries together and generated business worth over USD 200 million, Kovind said.

He expressed happiness at the opening of the air freight corridor between Kandahar and Kabul and Delhi and also noted that the Afghan cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat have been connected directly by air to Delhi.

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The national capital will host a special literary and cultural festival to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Penguin Random House India from October 26 with the likes of Arundhati Roy, Perumal Murugan, Ruskin Bond and Shashi Tharoor scheduled to participate.

According to Hemali Sodhi, senior vice president (marketing) and publisher - children's at Penguin Random House India, the calendar has an eclectic and vibrant mix of authors and books for everyone.

Penguin Fever 2017 is a special edition of the annual Spring Fever organised by the publisher from October 26-31.

The library of books will be open from 11 am, followed by evening sessions every day.

The opening day will feature Roy, whose "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" failed to make it to the Booker Prize shortlist.

Murugan, Kannan Sundaram, Bibek Debroy and Shamsur Rahman Faruqi will participate in a session titled "The Line of Beauty", to be moderated by Namita Gokhale.

Bond will talk about his life, writing and his love of lemon cheesecake in a conversation with Sanjoy Roy.

An interesting session called "Zara sa jhoom loon main" will see Shobhaa De in conversation with Vidya Balan and talk on turning 70.

Tharoor will attend a session "The Rise of the Elephant" along with Gurcharan Das and Sonu Bhasin.

The other sessions include one on environment featuring Sunita Narain, one having Ravinder Singh, Durjoy Datta and Sudeep Nagarkar and another on criminal minds with Hussain Zaidi, Brijesh Singh, Ravi Subramanian and Novoneel Chakraborty in conversation.

The six-day event will be hosted at the India Habitat Centre.

"Spring Fever, titled Penguin Fever this year, is a festival very close to our hearts, and one readers and authors alike look forward to with great anticipation. This year we've timed it to coincide with our 30th anniversary week in October," says Sodhi.

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A court in neighbouring Palghar district has awarded life imprisonment to a 30-year-old man for killing a housewife after robbing her of her valuables in 2013.

Additional Sessions Judge M P Divate of the Vasai court yesterday awarded the punishment to Devendra Ramchandar Mishra, a plumber, after pronouncing him guilty under IPC sections 302 (murder), 396 (dacoity with murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence).

The judge also imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on him.

Prosecutor Ujwala Moholkar told the court that the victim, Anjana Rajiv Shinde (35), and her husband had bought a flat at Nariya Nagar in Nala Sopara area of Palghar district.

The flat required some plumbing work for which the accused was called.

On January 23, 2013, Mishra, on the pretext of carrying out the plumbing work, entered into the bathroom of the apartment. He then dragged the victim into the bathroom and attacked her with a hard and blunt object, killing her on the spot.

The accused later dragged the body into the flat's living room and fled after taking away the woman's mobile phone and jewellery.

The case rested on circumstantial evidence and the prosecution argued that the motive behind the murder was robbery.

The blood stains on the clothes of the accused matched with that of the victim and the stolen items were also recovered from the him, according to the prosecution.

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Congress Rajya Sabha member from Uttarakhand Pradeep Tamta today claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was taking credit for development projects in Kedarnath which were initiated by the Harish Rawat government.

Prime Minister Modi laid foundation stones for reconstruction projects worth Rs 700 crore in Kedarnath on October 20, which the Congress claimed were already launched during its government's tenure.

Congress' Harish Rawat was the chief minister of the state from February 2014 till the assembly election this year. There were two brief spells of president's rule during this period.

"Though inauguratingprojects initiated during the previous Congress regime, the prime minister is silent on rehabilitation of over 350 villages that weredevastated by the Kedarnath tragedy," Tamta told a press conference here.

Sudden floods had ravaged the state in 2013 killing thousands of people.

Tamta said if the prime minister genuinely felt for the people of the state, he should either restore its special category status or give it a financial package to compensate for the losses.

"Stripping the state of its special category status has caused financial losses to the state besides adversely affecting employment generation schemes," he said. "If Modi really feels for the state he should revive that status or give it a compensation package."



The prime minister is scheduled visit the state later this week when he would be in Mussoorie for two days on October 26 and 27.

Tamta alleged the prime minister has increased the frequency of his visits to the state to divert people's attention from the problems he hadpromised to solve during state election campaign earlier this year.

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Union minister Suresh Prabhu will leave tomorrow on a three-day visit to the US where he will hold 'structured talks' with his counterpart Wilbur Ross over trade and commerce.

During his visit, between October 25-28, Prabhu will also meet US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and interact with top Indian and American business leaders.

"Tonight, Im going to the US to meet my counterpart Commerce Secretary as well as Trade Representative of US. This is the first time India is going to have a structured interaction on Commerce and related issues with the Trump administration.

"Therefore, it is a very important meeting in which we will be discussing issues from their side as well as our side. I will also be meeting a lot of business leaders there from India and the US," Prabhu said while addressing a conference here.

He was speaking at the launch of the official website of the Cell for IPR Promotion and Management here.

Later in the day, the minister also released a book on trade analysis of the comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA) between India and Korea here.

Issues like visa, greater market access for goods, and intellectual property rights are expected to figure in the trade policy forum (TPF) meeting between India and the US on October 25 in Washington, according to officials.

The trade policy forum was set up in 2005 and the meeting is co-chaired by the Indian commerce minister and the US Trade Representative (USTR) with an aim to expand bilateral trade and investment.

On the second leg of the visit, the minister will visit Cuba, from October 28-31, to hold discussion for boosting bilateral trade.

"I am going to meet quite a few ministers, we have invited them in Havana, Cuba for meeting them on how can we promote bilateral trade with them," Prabhu said.

Besides, the minister expressed confidence that India is on a growth trajectory, admitting that there are challenges because global economy is not as strong as it should be.

"Quarter here and quarter there, you should not worry too much," Prabhu said.

"We are very happy that over the last quarter, the growth rate in exports is good, not only petrochemicals but it is broad based growth, top ten commodities if you analyse they (exports) are actually growing," said the minister.

Sharing details about his recent visit to Stockholm, he said Swedish firms are keen to invest in India.

"They (Sweden) themselves have reiterated and confirmed that they would like to invest in a huge way in India," he added.

Observing that the growing interest of countries in India was evident, the minister said two major delegations from Korea and Japan comprising top business leaders are expected to visit in January next year.

The commerce minister also said the government is trying to develop an exclusive portal for startups and working on creating a single website for all exports and international trade activities.

"I have already told DGFT and they have started working on it. A lot of agencies have to be taken on board particularly with Customs because most formalities of import and export are with Customs," he said.

"Soon we want to organise a round-table on startups. Soon, you will hear good on ease of doing business," Prabhu said.

India has time and again raised the issue of H-1B visa with the US authorities and asked them to liberalise their visa regime as Indian IT companies contribute significantly to the American economy.

Trade between the two countries increased to USD 64.51 billion in 2016-17, from USD 62.11 billion in the previous fiscal.

However, foreign direct investment from the US into India dipped to USD 2.37 billion in 2016-17 from USD 4.19 billion in 2015-16.

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President Ram Nath Kovind today urged scientists not to compromise their quest for knowledge, from atoms to galaxies, as society demands solutions to daily problems.

"These two endeavours are not contradictory. We have seen how ISRO has succeeded through the efforts of late Dr Satish Dhawan in combining cutting-edge science with helping farmers," he said in at a round-table discussion with scientists here.

"Today you have the opportunity to pioneer a revolution where all the scientific institutes in Bengaluru work together. They can share their strengths and show by example how science and technology can take us to new heights," he said.

The President said knowledge, discovery, innovation and society were the four wheels that take a country forward, but slightest misstep by one will take the nation in wrong direction or stall it.

"As scientists, you have an immense responsibility. You are directly in charge of three wheels. But unless you connect every day with the fourth, we have no future," he said.

Kovind said the size of a challenge to lift people out of poverty and ensure food among other aspects, was enormous.

"Today, India is in an unusual situation. We face enormous challenges. We are to lift our people out of poverty, ensure their health and well-being and ensure our food and energy security. The size of the challenge is enormous," he said.

Kovind said the India was among the world's best in nano-science and materials science due to Professor C N R Rao.

The President said India was a leader in generic drugs and vaccines, and the biotech start-up ecosystem was extraordinarily vibrant in Bengaluru.

Kovind said, for thousands of years, from the age of Aryabhatta and Charaka, India has embraced science and its sense of inquiry.

"From eminent scientists such as C.V. Raman to S Chandrashekar, G N Ramachandran to Obaid Siddiqi and Rao to my illustrious predecessor Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, it is the investment in curiosity driven science that has paid off to society. The saga continues with younger scientists today," he said.

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Rebutting opposition charges about non-procurement of 'bajra', the Haryana government said today that it had procured three times more crop than what was purchased last year.

"The state government is conscious about the welfare of farmers and has not only procured about three times more bajra than last year but also covered more mandis. This year, bajra was procured in 14 mandis of the eight bajra producing districts in the state," minister for Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Karan Dev Kamboj said here, on the second day of the Assembly session.

He was replying to a calling attention notice moved by three INLD MLAs including Abhay Singh Chautala and nine Congress members including Raghuvir Singh Kadiyan in the Haryana Vidhan Sabha today.

Kamboj said the state government had procured 19,056 metric tonne (MT) bajra (millet) as compared 5,968 MT last year.

"The state government has not stopped the procurement of bajra in the mandis but due to apprehension of trading in bajra by the traders, the government is verifying the quantity of bajra lying in the mandis of Jhajjar, Narnaul, Rewari, Bhiwani, Dadri, Gurugram, Mewat, Faridabad and Rohtak districts," he said.

Directions have been issued to the deputy commissioners concerned, DFSCs and district heads of all procurement agencies to immediately verify the bajra lying in the mandis, and, if it conforms to the specifications and belongs to farmers, it should be purchased immediately.

There is no distress sale of bajra in the state, Kamboj claimed.

Intervening in the debate, Parliamentary Affairs minister Ram Bilas Sharma said that procurement of bajra in Jind, Hisar, Taoru and Firozpur Jhirka would commence from October 31, 2017.

Earlier, Congress MLA Geeta Bhukkal claimed that over 75,000 quintals of bajra was lying unsold in the market in Jhajjar.

"Farmers have submitted all required documents for selling the crop to Hafed but the procurement is not being made for the past seven days," she said while claiming that farmers were forced to sell crop to private buyers at a loss of Rs 300 to 400 per quintal.

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To speed up work on railway projects, the national transporter has substantially shortened the tendering process for any venture that costs up to Rs 2 crore, according to a letter from the Railway Board to the sector's general managers.

The move comes days after Railway Minister Piyush Goyal lashed out at officials for an 18-month long delay in the tender process for a new foot-over-bridge (FOB) at Mumbai's Elphinstone Road Station, where 23 people were killed in a stampede last month.

The FOB was a part of the 2016 Railway Budget.

The letter dated October 23 said for projects worth up to Rs 1 crore invited through e-tendering, the tender notice period could be reduced to 21 days by the Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) or the Chief Administrator Officer (CAO) without seeking financial approval and up to 14 days with the concurrence of the finance department.

For tenders valued Rs 1-2 crore, the tender notice period can be reduced to up to 14 days by the CAO or the DRM with the concurrence of the finance department.

The existing tender notice period is at least a month for large projects. However, for works of up to Rs 50 lakh, CAOs and DRMs are empowered to reduce the notice period with the approval of the finance department.

Speaking soon after the September 29 stampede on the FOB at Elphinstone Road station, Goyal had questioned why it took months to finalise a tender and indicated that the process of tendering in the Railways would be reviewed.

The proposed Rs 9.5-crore, 40-foot wide Elphinstone Road station FOB was part of a Rs 45-crore fund earmarked for escalators, FOBs and automatic ticket vending machines for the Mumbai suburban section in the Budget.

Its tender, however, was floated on September 29, the day of the stampede.

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Home Minister Rajnath Singh today honoured two four-legged heroes a horse and a dog - of the border-guarding force ITBP for rendering exceptional services.

Horse 'Black Beauty' from the force's basic training centre near Chandigarh and canine 'Machhli' from the 29th battalion deployed in Chhattisgarh were conferred with 'Best Horse' and the 'Best Canine' medals.

While the horse ferries rations for troops on border, the dog helps detect explosives in Naxal-hit areas.

Singh, officiating as the chief guest at the 56th Raising Day celebrations of the force at its camp here, got down from the dais to decorate the 'special soldiers' and put medals around their necks.

The nine-year-old horse has been with the Indo-Tibetan Border Police since birth and is part of the animal transport unit of the force which is considered as the lifeline for the high-altitude posts.

The seven-year-old Belgian shepherd dog conducts special sniffing operations as she assists patrol teams detect explosives in naxal-hit areas of Chhattisgarh.

Recently, 'Machhli' had found five kg of explosives and saved the lives of many soldiers in Chhattisgarh's Rajnandangaon village, a senior ITBP officer said.

'Black Beauty' had won a silver medal at the national riding games recently.

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Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi today appealed to state adoption bodies to ensure that all orphanages are registered under the Juvenile Justice Act by December 1.

Gandhi was addressing a meeting held to review implementation of adoption regulations. State Adoption Resource Agencies (SARA) from 29 states and union territories were present.

"You have (time) till December 1 for registration of all the unregistered bodies," Gandhi told the representatives of various SARAs.

She said according to a survey carried out by the ministry, 4,000 of the total 9,000 child-care institutions were not registered under the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, and were operating illegally.

There were nearly 21,000 girls and 19,000 boys at these unregistered homes, as per the findings cited by her.

With under 2,000 children enrolled with the nodal body for adoption in the country, Child Adoption Resource Agency (CARA), there are concerns about rampant trafficking. There are, however, at least 17,000 parents who have applied to CARA and are waiting in a queue for adoption.

Gandhi has been an advocate for adoption and has been working to ensure that abandoned and orphaned children in need of care and protection unite with families through legal means.

The Union minister also suggested that SARAs with "quickest and largest adoptions" could be given financial incentives and instructed each of these state bodies to register "1,000 children in a month".

"You do a sweep and get those children into your system...All these children should be off the street, in a home," Gandhi said.

A SARA is headed by the principal secretary of a state government and is responsible for promoting and regulating the adoption programme.

As per Section 41(1) of JJ Act, 2015, all institutions, whether run by the state government or by voluntary or non- governmental organisations, for housing children should be registered under the Act. The in-charge of the orphanage could face a one-year jail term or fine upto Rs 1 lakh for violating the law.

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US officials are preparing a recommendation for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to declare that "ethnic cleansing" is occurring against Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims.

That assessment would raise pressure on the Trump administration to consider new sanctions on a country that had been lauded for its democratic transition.

Tillerson could receive the recommendation as early as this week, said officials familiar with the process. He will then decide whether to adopt the advice of his agency's policy experts and lawyers. At a Senate hearing today, outraged US lawmakers pressed the administration to unequivocally adopt the term.

A declaration of "ethnic cleansing" by the top US diplomat would mark a reversal of fortune in American relations with the country also known as Burma, whose civilian government has been under the leadership of Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for more than a year.

But Suu Kyi and her government allies have little control over Myanmar's still powerful military, which is blamed for a brutal crackdown on Muslims in Rakhine State that has caused more than 600,000 refugees to flee to Bangladesh.

Patrick Murphy, a senior US diplomat for Southeast Asia, told the hearing: "My bosses have said it appears to be ethnic cleansing. I'm of that view as well." But he added he could not make that call himself until the department finalises its determination.

"In the meantime, we conclude there have been atrocities, massive displacement, depopulation of villages," he said. "We are pursuing all avenues for accountability."



The "ethnic cleansing" recommendation is being prepared as US lawmakers urge fresh sanctions on Myanmar's military and are calling on the Trump administration to sever already restricted military ties.

"If we don't do something to end this cycle of violence with impunity, it will happen again. The next country is going to do it," said Sen Ben Cardin, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's top Democrat.

He described the crackdown in Rakhine as "genocide," which the UN defines as the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.

The US officials, who weren't authorised to speak publicly on the internal process and requested anonymity, said the State Department won't make a call yet on whether crimes against humanity in Myanmar have occurred. Such a determination would be even more detrimental to Myanmar's military, as it could force the US to push harder for legal accountability.

Attacks by Rohingya insurgents on security forces in late August triggered what human rights groups have called a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages. Amnesty International has reported that hundreds of Rohingya men, women and children have been systematically killed.

Calls for a US determination of "ethnic cleansing" have intensified, as the United Nations and leading Western governments have used the term. Six weeks ago, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said it "seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing."



French President Emmanuel Macron echoed that opinion, as have leaders of many in the Muslim world.

US officials have been more reticent. Tillerson, who last week said that perpetrators will be held to account for atrocities, has referred to the violence as "characterised by many as ethnic cleansing."



UN envoy Nikki Haley told the Security Council last month it was "a brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority."



But that's as far as the administration has gone as it prepares for President Donald Trump's first trip to the region next month.

According to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention, "ethnic cleansing" isn't recognized as an independent crime under international law, unlike crimes against humanity and genocide.

It surfaced in the context of the 1990s conflict in the former Yugoslavia, when a UN commission defined it as "rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area." Before the latest exodus, roughly 1 million Rohingya lived in Myanmar.

The Buddhist majority believes they migrated illegally from Bangladesh, although many Rohingya families have lived in Myanmar for generations. They were stripped of their citizenship in 1982.

Sarah Margon, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, said a US "ethnic cleansing" determination "is long overdue," but should only be a first step.

"The real question is what concrete response is there going to be," she said.

Starting in 2012, the Obama administration lifted long- standing sanctions against Myanmar to reward its shift from military rule. The transition culminated in 2015 elections and a civilian government led by Suu Kyi.

US officials who are focused on Asia policy remain leery of punishing Myanmar for fear it could undermine Suu Kyi's efforts and push her country away from the United States and closer to rivals such as China.

The recent violence has prompted the US administration to reverse a policy of waiving visa restrictions and allowing members of Myanmar's military, including commander in chief Gen Min Aung Hlaing, and their families to visit here.

The State Department also announced yesterday that all units and officers involved in the operations in Rakhine were ineligible for US assistance, and it has rescinded invitations for senior Myanmar security forces to attend US-sponsored events.

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After losing major strongholds and key urban areas across Syria, including its self-proclaimed capital, the city of Raqqa, the Islamic State group now controls only 5 per cent of the country's territory, according to Russia's defence minister.

That's a dramatic decline from the height of the rise of IS in 2014, when the extremist group seized about a third of both Syria and Iraq, before its downfall began.

The remarks by Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu came as Russia-backed Syrian troops are pushing deeper into the eastern Syrian town of Mehkan, one of the few still held by IS.

Speaking at a conference in the Philippines, Shoigu said yesterday that "terrorists", a term the Syrian government and its allies use for all armed opposition, including militant groups such as IS and al-Qaida's Syria affiliate controlled more than 70 per cent of the country before Russia launched its air operation at the end of 2015 to support President Bashar Assad's offencive against IS militants and opposition forces.

In Syria in 2015, IS briefly held nearly half of the country's territory after the militants captured the historic city of Palmyra, parts of the northern Kurdish town of Kobani, the central desert and reached the city of Hassakeh in the northeast.

Later that year, IS started suffering setbacks that culminated with the fall last week of the northern city of Raqqa, the extremists' de facto capital. IS has also lost wide areas it once controlled in Iraq, including the northern city of Mosul, the largest city the group had ever captured. US- backed Iraqi government forces retook Mosul in July.

Today, Syria's state agency SANA said government forces captured several points inside the town of Mehkan just south of Mayadeen, the IS stronghold that Syrian troops captured earlier this month. Government forces are now advancing toward the town of Boukamal, the last that is still fully held by the extremists.

Russia has played a main role in helping government forces capture wide areas from IS in northern and central Syria by giving them air cover. In September, Syrian troops and their allies reached the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, where the extremists had long besieged the government- controlled part of the city.

However, Raqqa fell last week to the US-backed Kurdish- led Syrian Democratic Forces, which have also been effective in eastern and northern regions of Syria.

Now, with the IS "caliphate" rapidly crumbling, a race is on between the US-backed Kurdish forces and the Syrian government troops in the oil-rich Deir el-Zour province.

Syria's state TV said warplanes of the US-led coalition have bombed a government-controlled neighbourhood in the city of Deir el-Zour, the provincial capital, killing 14 civilians.

US military spokesman Col Ryan Dillon denied the report, tweeting that the coalition has not bombed the city, of which IS currently controls a small part, since September.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group that tracks the conflict in Syria, said a last night airstrike killed 22 people but stressed that it was not clear whose warplanes were involved.

Last year, the US-led coalition bombed Syrian army positions near the city of Deir el-Zour, killing at least 62 Syrian soldiers and leaving more than a 100 wounded.

More than 400,000 people have been killed in Syria and half the country's prewar population displaced since the conflict erupted in March 2011.

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Syed Shahid Yousuf, son of globally wanted terrorist Syed Salahuddin, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency today in connection with a 2011 terror funding case for allegedly receiving money from his father.

An NIA spokesman said that 42-year-old Shahid, at present working in the Jammu and Kashmir government's agricultural department, was summoned to the headquarters today after which he was placed under arrest.

The NIA alleged that Shahid used to receive funds through international wire money transfer from Aijaz Ahmed Bhat, an absconding accused, at present based in Saudi Arabia.

The agency alleged that Shahid is "one of several Indian contacts of Bhat" who have been in telephonic contact with him to receive the money transfer codes.

The case, registered by the NIA in April 2011, relates to transfer of money from Pakistan to Jammu and Kashmir through Hawala channels via Delhi which was suspected to be used in funding terrorism and secessionist activities.

The NIA has so far filed two charge sheets against six people which included G M Bhat, a close aide of pro-Pakistan separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mohammed Siddiq Ganai, Ghulam Jeelani Liloo and Farooq Ahmed Dagga. All the four were in judicial custody.

Besides them, two others -- Mohammed Maqbool Pandit and Aijaz Ahmed Bhat -- have also been chargesheeted by the NIA but both of them were absconding. An Interpol Red Corner notice has been issued against both.

Shahid's father Mohammed Yusuf Shah -- better known as Syed Salahuddin -- was declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US Department of State in June this year.

Besides heading terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, he is also the chairman of United Jehad Council (UJC), a conglomerate of various terrorist outfits operating in the Kashmir Valley.

The NIA has also registered two others cases related to terror funding -- one in November 2011 and another in May this year.

The agency has already filed a charge sheet against 10 people which included Syed Salahuddin in the second case of 2011.

In the recent case, the NIA has arrested 10 people including some close kin and aides of Geelani.

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Superstar Salman Khan has booked Eid 2019 as the release date of his next film, "Bharat".

The 51-year-old star will play the title role in the movie, which will be directed by Ali Abbas Zafar.

With "Bharat", the actor is continuing with the trend of releasing his films on Eid.

The movie is an official adaptation of 2014 South Korean film, "Ode to My Father", which narrates modern Korean history from the 1950s to the modern day through the life of an ordinary man and events such as the Hungnam Evacuation during the 1950 Korean War.

The film will also depict the government's decision to dispatch nurses and miners to West Germany in the '60s and the Vietnam War.

"Bharat" will be backed by Atul Agnihotri, who attended the South Korean film's screening at Berlin Film Festival, where it was identified as potential content for the Indian masses.

Agnihotri says their adaptation will be inspired by the original movie but the story will be based closer to home.

"It's the journey of a country and also a person, both of whom go by the name of Bharat.

"That film is just the starting point for ours but since it was an inspiration, we wanted in all fairness to officially own it and acquired the remake rights before going ahead with Bharat," he said in a release.

The producer also said Salman was the right choice to play the role of the protagonist, given his long association with his brother-in-law as an actor, producer and director.

The actor-producer duo's film will hit the celluloid on the festive period once again post the blockbuster 2011 "Bodyguard".

"It's a character that I thought would resonate with him. It's a huge responsibility making a film with Salman as there are big expectations that come with the job.

"I'm very conscious about Salman's fan base and what they want. And once again, I'm convinced that being a family film it's worthy of coming during the festive time. And anyway, an Eid release is always every producer's preferred choice."



Agnihotri added director Zafar is excited and "passionate" to a part of the project.

"Ali is a friend, I love his work and eventually it's all about connecting with the source. If you speak to him, you will realise that Ali is far more passionate about the material," he said.

Salman has worked with Zafar in 2016's blockbuster "Sultan" and their much-awaited film "Tiger Zinda Hai" up for release on December 22.

"Bharat" will be shot on elaborate sets in Abu Dhabi and Spain, besides Punjab and Delhi in India.

"Casting will be our main agenda over the next three months and since it's a character-driven story, we will take actors who fit the part," he added.

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Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has defended his bold reform plans, including the kingdom's decision to lift the ban on women driving, saying that "we were not like this in the past."



The prince said that "we want to go back to what we were: moderate Islam," speaking during a rare public appearance at a major investment conference in Saudi Arabia today.

The heir to the throne says the kingdom will work to defeat extremist ideas and ensure that young Saudis live in harmony with the rest of the world.

"We will eradicate the remnants of extremism very soon... We represent the moderate teachings and principles of Islam," he said.

He addressed a panel that included business titans Stephen Schwarzman of US private equity firm Blackstone and Masayoshi Son of Japan's technology conglomerate SoftBank. The panelists later lavished praise on the 32-year-old prince for his "passion", "vision" and "enthusiasm" but he interjected, saying he is only "one of 20 million people. I am nothing without them."



The Crown Prince has announced plans for a new USD 500 billion city to be built in the country's northwest that will be run entirely on alternative energy and be an innovation hub for the future.

The project, dubbed Neom, will be built on untouched land along the country's Red Sea coastline near Egypt and Jordan. The ambitious project could lead the way in the use of drones, driverless cars and robotics.

The kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, which the crown prince chairs, the Saudi government and global technology firms will help build the city.

Prince Mohammed announced the project today at a major investment conference in Riyadh aimed at shining a spotlight on the kingdom's efforts to diversify its revenue streams away from dependence on oil exports.

Saudi Arabia has opened a major investment conference aimed at shining a spotlight on the country's efforts to diversify its revenue streams and overhaul its economy and society.

At the heart of these reforms are plans to build the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. The kingdom hopes to do this by listing less than five per cent of state-owned oil firm Aramco and transferring control of those funds to its Public Investment Fund, or PIF as its known.

The fund grabbed headlines with a USD 3.5 billion investment in ride-hailing service Uber last year.

The conference, dubbed the Future Investment Initiative , starts today and runs for three days. It's being attended by giants in the business world, corporate managers from some of the world's largest firms and top Saudi officials.

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The Supreme Court today directed the governments of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan to ban the use of pet coke and furnace oil in the industries and made it clear that their failure to do so would force it to ban these materials from November 1.

A bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta, which slapped a fine of Rs two lakh on union environment ministry for not finalising pollution emission standards for industries using pet coke and furnace oil in the national capital region (NCR), asked the three states to ban the use of these pollution causing materials.

The bench made it clear that it would ban the use of pet coke and furnace oil in the three states from November 1 if the respective governments did not prohibit their use in the industries by then.

Advocate Aparajita Singh, who is assisting the court as amicus curiae in the matter, said the three states have been asked by the court to ban the use of pet coke and furnace oil in the industries.

Earlier, the apex court-appointed Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA), in its report to the top court, had recommended that "distribution, sale and use of furnace oil and pet coke would be strictly banned in NCR".

The court, in its May 2 this year order, had noted that the use of furnace oil and pet coke was prohibited in Delhi.

The bench was also told that governments of UP, Haryana and Rajasthan had no objection if a ban was placed on the use of furnace oil and pet coke. It had granted them the liberty to place such ban.

The court was hearing a PIL filed in 1985 by environmentalist M C Mehta who had raised the issue of air pollution in the Delhi-NCR.

Earlier, the court was told about the ill-effects of pet coke and furnace oil used in the industries on ambient air and it was said that emissions from such units were highly toxic as these discharged high sulphur content.

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Bill O'Reilly's sexual harassment scandal is causing more headaches for 21st Century Fox's USD 14.8 billion bid to take full control of UK cable network Sky Plc.

Revelations that US-based Fox renewed O'Reilly's contract after he settled a sexual harassment lawsuit for $32 million came just a month after Britain's culture secretary asked competition regulators to review the takeover.

Karen Bradley said one of the reasons for her decision was that Fox News' handling of a broader sexual harassment scandal raised concerns about corporate governance at Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox.

Soon after The New York Times broke the story about O'Reilly's contract renewal, a senior member of Britain's opposition Labour Party said he planned to ask the regulator to reject the takeover.

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A scuffle broke out between members of Dalit party VCK and BJP workers here today over holding of a demonstration against the state president of the saffron party.

Trouble broke out after BJP objected to VCK cadres insisting on holding the demonstration at a site very close to a premises where the BJP State Executive meet was on.

Police said senior BJP members, including state president Tamilisai Soundararajan and union minister Pon Radhakrishnan were attending the meeting when VCK workers tried to organise the demonstration without police permission.

After a heated argument, a scuffle broke out



VCK workers later tried to block traffic, following which they were arrested.

The incident led to tension in the area for some time.

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Sebi has barred Milan and Milan International and its present and former directors from the capital markets for at least four years and asked them to refund the money raised from investors without complying with the public issue norms.

Besides, they have been restrained from associating themselves with any listed public company from the date of the order till the expiry of four years from the date of completion of refunds to investors, Sebi said in order dated October 23.

Apart from the company's present and former directors; Sebi has also barred its two promoters --Shamshad Ali and S K Izak -- from the securities markets for at least four years.

The present directors are -- Sangram Keshori Samal, Bhikari Charan Lenka and Jagdish Sarang -- and Nizamuddin Khan is a former director.

The regulator noted that the company had issued redeemable preference shares (RPS) to 260 investors during 201011 and raised Rs 14.52 crore.

Since the shares were issued to more than 50 people, the offer of RPS qualified to be a public issue and required compulsory listing of the securities on a recognised stock exchange. However, the firm did not comply with the provision.

Among other requirements, the firm was to register a prospectus with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) under the Companies Act, which it failed to do.

The firm and its present and former directors have to refund the money raised from investors with an annual interest of 15 per cent, as per the ruling.

After completing the repayments, they have been directed to file a report of such completion with Sebi, within a period of three months, certified by two independent Chartered Accountants.

In case, these entities fail to comply with the order, Sebi may recover such amounts in accordance with provisions of securities laws. Besides, it may initiate appropriate action against them, including adjudication proceedings.

Also, it would make a reference to the state government or local police to register a civil or criminal case agaisnt these entities for offences of "fraud, cheating, criminal breach of trust and misappropriation of public funds".

In an interim order passed in January 2016, Sebi had restrained the company and its present and former directors; and promoters from accessing the securities market and directed the firm not to mobilise fresh funds from the investors "till further directions".

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State-of-the-art laboratories were unveiled today in the Netherlands to help millions of families track down loved ones missing in conflicts and disasters around the world through new, sophisticated DNA tests.

It is the latest step for the non-governmental organisation the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), born out of the conflicts in former Yugoslavia and set up in 1996 in Sarajevo by then US president Bill Clinton.

Having moved to The Hague last year, the organisation is completing the transition and relocating its labs from the Bosnian capital to the Dutch city where they will be equipped with cutting-edge technology.

"It's called massively parallel sequencing or next- generation sequencing," the head of the DNA lab, Rene Huel, told AFP.

"Basically what that is enabling us to do is increasing the amount of genetic data we can get from a sample."



The new technology, donated by the Dutch holding company Qiagen, enables scientists to better extract DNA from "even challenging bone samples. Ones that are decades old," Huel explained.

It also provides a huge number of genetic markers, meaning that even if family samples are from more distant relatives, such as a grandchild or even a third cousin, it is "possible that you will be able to conclusively ID somebody."



The extracted DNA is cross-referenced against ICMP's existing data base of about 100,000 samples from relatives to see if there is a match.

The organisation has already succeeded in identifying some 70 per cent of the 40,000 people who went missing in the Balkans conflicts of the 1990s, including 90 per cent of the 8,000 killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

But over the past years it has been increasingly lending its expertise to other tragedies, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami or the devastating Hurricane Haiyan which hit the Philippines in November 2013.

Being able to "garner attention for this global challenge of missing persons ... and ensure that all governments recognise that there are thousands, if not millions of persons, missing around the world from conflicts, from human rights abuses, from natural disasters, from human trafficking ... is a huge step forward for us," the organisation's director general Kathryne Bomberger said.

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The Satyajit Roy Film and Television Institute is ready to hold talks with agitating students on all issues but will not budge from its decision of shifting women to a separate hostel, its Director, Debamitra Mitra, said today.

The SRFTI director told PTI that the students will have to withdraw their eight-day long agitation and allow the institute to function. They will have to show the intention to hold fruitful talks, she added.

"We are not in favour of taking any drastic action against our students like calling the police. We can definitely talk on the 27 points raised by them. But the decision of shifting the girls to the new hostel is non- negotiable," she said.

Asked if the administration was willing to revoke the expulsion of the 14 girls over their refusal to shift to the new hostel, Mitra said the students' body would first have to give up their demand for withdrawal of the segregation order and allow the institute to function.

"At a faculty meeting last evening at my residence, we decided to ensure resumption of academic and administrative activities at the earliest. We are asking the agitating students to cooperate," she said.

Mitra had yesterday claimed that she was not allowed to enter the campus by students who demanded the expulsion of the girl students be withdrawn and the segregation order put on hold.

Asked if the information and broadcasting ministry was aware of the situation, Mitra said, "We are taking decisions we deem fit and the I&B Ministry is aware of the developments."



The authorities decided to build a separate girls' hostel, upgrade curriculum and infrastructure at the institute after receiving approval from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in 2013.

Earlier, boys and girls had separate accommodation in the same block of the old hostel. After receiving the I&B ministry's approval, a new girls' hostel was built.

Mitra stated that the objective behind shifting the girls to the new hostel was to ensure their safety.

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Lexus, the luxury vehicle arm of Japanese auto major Toyota, today said it is studying the possibility of setting up assembly facility in India.

"...I do not know when it will (happen) but we are studying...Taxation is so hard so we are now studying," Lexus President Yoshihiro Sawa told reporters here.

He was replying to a query that if the Japanese firm was also looking at having assembly facilities in India like its competitors have in the country.

When asked about the duty structure in India, he said it is a problem "but eventually, government maintained the current condition, which is good for us, so we can continue our business".

He also said that now India has become very active and the leadership look fantastic.

"In India, there are many affluent guys there, so I think it was a good start (for Lexus). TKM and Toyota Motor India tried to expand dealership," Sawa said.

Pointing out the potential of Indian market, he added: "I hope Lexus will grow but we are just standing at the start point now, we do not sell so much Lexus right now but we try to push it together with more vehicles..we would try to add more in the future."



Currently, the company imports models into India from Japan.

Lexus marked its India entry in March this year with the introduction of a hybrid-focused line-up of vehicles featuring sedan ES300h, crossover RX450h and SUV LX450d. The company has opened four showrooms in Mumbai, Bengaluru, New Delhi and Gurugram.

Additionally, it also plans to establish service centres in Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kochi.

Later in September, the company announced restructuring of its operations in India to go independently from the parent brand, Toyota.

Commenting on company's performance in emerging markets as compared to the evolved ones, he said it is still very slow in countries like India and Indonesia.

"So we are gradually expanding our dealership in Asia and India. However, volume wise still it is small," he said, adding the biggest markets for the company remain the US, Europe and china.

"Rest of the market is small but growing very fast," Sawa said.

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Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh today said talks can be held even with those separatists arrested by the NIA, as the Centre asserted that the newly-appointed interlocutor will decide on whom to engage with in the troubled state.

The main opposition party Congress, meanwhile, said it doubted the "intent" of the NDA government in resolving the Kashmir issue, and alleged that it appointed an interlocutor towards the end of its rule "only for publicity".

Former Intelligence Bureau(IB) chief Dineshwar Sharma was yesterday appointed by the Centre as its special representative for a "sustained dialogue" with all stakeholders in J and K, in a fresh move aimed at bringing peace in the border state.

The J and K government welcomed Sharma's appointment, observing that dialogue was the only way forward to address the Kashmir issue in the larger interest of peace and stability in the state while the state unit of the BJP asked all stakeholders to "give peace a chance".

"As far as dialogue is concerned, if it is felt that those people, even if they are behind the bars, they can be consulted, no problem in that, because it is happening. It happens everywhere," Nirmal Singh told reporters in Srinagar.

He was responding to a question as to whether Sharma would hold talks with the separatists who have been arrested by the National Investigation Agency(NIA) or are under the investigating agency's scanner.

"Actually, we must not link the two things (talks and NIA investigations) because NIA is an autonomous body. It has its mandate and NIA has found certain acts which are not as per the law. So, NIA is taking action," he added.

Nirmal Singh said talks could be held with the separatists and they should come forward with their grievances with an open mind.

"If there are grievances, then they should be placed on table with an open mind and there are no preconditions. Talks should be held and what would happen would be decided later."



"As our Home Minister (Rajnath Singh) has said that all stakeholders can come. In our (PDP-BJP) Agenda of Alliance, on whose basis our government was formed, we have made it clear that the Jammu and Kashmir government will try to create an environment in which talks can happen because talks are the only solution," he said.

The deputy chief minister termed the announcement of talks as a right step in right direction.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh when asked by reporters if Sharma would hold talks with the separatist organisation Hurriyat Conference, as suggested by some state politicians, responded by saying, "It depends upon him(Sharma) whom he talks to or engages with".

Singh was speaking on the sidelines of the 56th Raising Day parade of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police in Greater Noida, near Delhi.

The minister ducked questions by reporters on what signals the Indian government sought to send to Pakistan with the appointment of the interlocutor.

Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said the Congress and other opposition parties had asked the government to talk to all stakeholders to resolve the "political issue" in the Valley through confidence-building measures rather than "hot pursuit", but it "wasted" three- and-a-half years during which many precious lives were lost.

"We are not opposing the decision of the government. But at the fag end of their tenure, they have done this. This is only for publicity. This government has no Kashmir policy. They have no policy on demonetisation, GST, farmers issues and unemployment. We doubt their intent as they have no policy," Azad said at a joint press conference of opposition leaders in Delhi.

A meeting of the J and K Cabinet chaired by Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti last evening welcomed the Centre's decision, an official spokesperson said in Srinagar.

The Cabinet observed that dialogue is the only way forward to address the issue in the larger interest of peace and stability in the state.

It noted that the initiative is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech that laid emphasis on embracing the people of J and K.

BJP state unit's chief spokesperson Sunil Sethi asked stakeholders to avail of the opportunity to usher in peace.

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A teacher of a government vocational higher secondary school at Koyilandy in the district is introuble for distributing books allegedly containing 'distorted'version of Indian history to the students.

An inquiry was conducted against the teacher K K Murali, accused of distributing the books, byDistrict Educational Officer, Vadakara.

The Deputy Director of Education here today said "wehave submitted an inquiry report to the Director of Public Instructions for further action."



The book was meant to be a reference material for the 'Sanskrit Jnana Pariksha', a scholarship examination for students from standards five to eight, held on October 21 by Vidhya Bharati, a RSS outfit.

The book reportedly has in its cover a map showing "Akanda Bharat" with Pakistan being a part of it.

It has also contents saying that the mosque in Ayodhya was built after demolishing a Ram temple.

Similarly, the mosque in Mathura was built by the Mughalruler Aurangazeb after demolishing a Krishna temple, it said.

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Tejashwi Yadav, son of RJD leader Lalu Prasad, today skipped his scheduled appearance before the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the its money laundering probe in the railway hotels allotment corruption case, officials said.

The former Bihar deputy chief minister has now been summoned to appear on October 31, they said.

The agency had registered a case against Lalu Prasad, his family members and others under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) sometime back.

Tejashwi's mother and former Bihar chief minister Rabri has been asked by the ED to appear before it on October 27 for questioning in the case.

Tejashwi was once grilled by the ED for over nine hours in connection with the case.

Rabri Devi has skipped the ED summonses at least four times.

In July, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had registered an FIR and conducted multiple searches on the properties of Lalu Prasad, who is also a former Bihar chief minister, and others.

The CBI FIR has alleged that Lalu Prasad during his tenure as the railway minister handed over the maintenance of two Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) hotels to a company in 2004 after receiving a bribe in the form of a prime land in Patna through a 'benami' company owned by Sarla Gupta, wife of Prem Chand Gupta, a former Union minister.

The ED had registered a criminal case against his family members and others under the PMLA, based on the CBI FIR.

The CBI also recently recorded the statements of Tejashwi and Lalu Prasad in this case.

The ED is investigating the alleged "proceeds of crime" generated by the accused, purportedly through shell companies, according to officials.

Others named in the CBI FIR include Vijay Kochhar, Vinay Kochhar (both directors of Sujata Hotels), Delight Marketing company, now known as Lara Projects, and the then IRCTC managing director P K Goel.

The CBI FIR was registered on July 5 in connection with favours allegedly extended to Sujata Hotels in awarding a contract for the upkeep of the hotels in Ranchi and Puri and receiving premium land as 'quid pro quo'.

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Terrorism and radicalisation through social media pose a "serious" security challenge to all countries and a strong collective action is required to fight the "scourge", Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said today.

Speaking at the 4th ASEAN Defence Ministers' meeting in the Philippines, Sitharaman said the global strategic and security situation was constantly evolving and had thrown up fresh and serious challenges.

"The defence and security scenario in our shared region has also witnessed significant changes recently. Our countries now need to simultaneously prepare for traditional (military) and non-traditional threats," she said.

Terming terrorism a "trans-national phenomena" which needed strong collective action, Sitharaman praised the Philippines for resolutely addressing the threat posed by terrorists in the southern part of the country.

"New developments in social media and cyberspace have expanded the threat, as these are exploited by terrorists to develop less visible but lethal ways and means of manipulating minds of the people," she said in a statement.

"I wish to commend the Philippines for reiterating India's zero tolerance for terrorism anywhere and under any circumstances. There are no good terrorists," she said.

Sitharaman said the transnational activism of terrorist groups and the "spectre" of returning foreign fighters as well as the conduct of irresponsible states that provide safe havens, funding and even encouragement to terrorist groups all needed to be addressed jointly and comprehensively.

"Terrorism anywhere is a threat everywhere," she said.

"India has taken resolute measures to fight the scourge of terrorism from across its borders. We fully recognise the role of joint mechanisms with our partners and the role of international and regional forums in fighting this menace.

"The recent, BRICS Summit Declaration condemning all forms of terrorism and identifying a number of terrorist organisations engaged in dastardly acts was a positive step... We should be clear and unequivocal in our condemnation of terrorism," she was quoted as saying in the statement.

Sitharaman said the maritime security was another key concern and India supports freedom of navigation, overflight and commerce throughout the region.

"Nations should resolve maritime disputes peacefully and in accordance with international law. We support a rules based order for oceans and sea that is critical for the continued growth and development of the Indo-Pacific region," she said.

Sitharaman also said that the nuclear and missile tests conducted by North Korea were in violation of its international commitments and have triggered serious concern.

"India has deplored these tests. We remain concerned about the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted India's national security and that of the entire region.

"It is important that North Korea's proliferation linkages are investigated and those who have supported its nuclear and missile programme are held accountable," she said.

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Congress MP Shashi Tharoor today urged the Delhi High Court to stop journalist Arnab Goswami and his channel Republic TV from "misreporting" his wife Sunanda Pushkar's death, saying his "right to be left alone" and "right to silence" must be respected.

The submission was made before Justice Manmohan, who reserved the verdict on Tharoor's plea seeking to restrain Goswami and his channel from airing any or debate about the death of Pushkar.

The journalist and the channel, on the other hand, said they had only placed the actual evidence and the police report while broadcasting the .

The Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha MP has filed an interim application for stopping the channel from broadcasting the incident in the pending Rs two crore civil defamation suit against the TV anchor and Republic TV.

Senior advocate Salman Khurshid, appearing for Tharoor, submitted that the court must direct Goswami and the channel not to mention the expression "murder of Sunanda Pushkar", as it is yet to be established by a competent court that her death was "murder", and ensure that the trial is not prejudiced.

"Goswami and channel must not involve in rhetorical assertions," Khurshid contended.

Senior advocate Sandeep Sethi, appearing for Goswami and the channel, said they have neither "condemned" Tharoor, nor suggested that he was involved in the death of his wife.

The counsel also submitted that the Congress leader was not called "the killer" of his wife by the journalist or the channel, as claimed by Tharoor.

After hearing the arguments of all the parties, the court reserved its order.

Tharoor has filed three different applications through his counsel Gaurav Gupta seeking various directions, including not to make any defamatory publication against him in any manner.

Pushkar was found dead in a suite of a five-star hotel in south Delhi on the night of January 17, 2014. The matter is still under investigation.

Tharoor had on May 26 this year filed the civil defamation suit against Goswami and Republic TV in the High Court.

He had also sought a direction from the high court to restrain the TV channel from broadcasting any show relating to the death of his wife till the investigation is completed by the Delhi Police.

Tharoor has referred to the broadcasting of news items from May 8 to 13 when the TV channel claimed to have aired an expose connected to the death of his wife.

The politician has alleged that despite assurances given in the court on May 29 by the counsel for Goswami and Republic TV, they were engaged in "defaming and maligning" him.

The court had on May 29 said the journalist and his news channel could put out stories stating facts related to the investigation of Pushkar's death, but could not call the Lok Sabha MP a "criminal". It had also told their counsel to reduce the rhetoric.

Goswami and the channel had in their affidavit said that they have abided by the court's direction and in "no manner misreported or misled the viewers as the facts were correctly reported".

They have also claimed that the suit has been "instituted with an oblique and ulterior motive and is a misguided attempt to muzzle a media channel and the dissemination of true facts to the public".

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Japanese auto major Toyota today said it will act as a student to Suzuki when it comes to India where it's compatriot is a "master".

Earlier this year, the two auto majors had agreed to begin concrete examinations for business partnership in areas of environment, safety and information technology along with supply of products and components.

Suzuki's Indian arm, Maruti Suzuki is the market leader in the country commanding almost 50 per cent of the passenger vehicles segment there. The company has set a target of selling 2 million units by 2020. It crossed 1.5 million units last fiscal.

"So, Suzuki is a master of India" and Toyota can learn a lot of things from them as "they are teacher, we are students," Hiroyuki Fukui, Managing officer, Toyota Motor corporation, CEO, Asia, Middle east and North Africa region, told reporters here.

He said that competition in Indian market is very fierce.

Suzuki has a long history in India and they know the country's market and consumers well, he added.

On Toyota's partnership with Suzuki, he said: "We have just announced the collaboration but we do not rush to make a conclusion so we know each other and what is a good point, what Toyota would like to do, what Suzuki would like to do, it will be a win win solution."



When asked whether the company would look for Daihatsu in future for India, he said "possible. Nothing is impossible".

He added that the company is exploring India's potential as "We do not rush".

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Former Hurriyat Conference chairman Maulana Mohammad Abbas Ansari today said tripartite talks between India, Pakistan and representatives of the people of Jammu and Kashmir can lead to a resolution of the Kashmir issue.

"We want good relations with both India and Pakistan, we won't go with either of them. For resolving the Kashmir issue, talks should be held between India, Pakistan and representatives of Jammu and Kashmir," Ansari told reporters.

The former Hurriyat chairman was reacting to the appointment of former IB chief Dineshwar Sharma as the Centre's representative for initiating sustained dialogue with stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir.

Ansari said he did not have much hope that the present government will go ahead with tripartite talks as was done in 2005.

"When I was the chairman of Hurriyat (in 2005), we visited Pakistan and also had talks with Delhi. We also visited Azad Kashmir (PoK). That is how to move forward, " he added.

Separatist leaders - Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Mohammad Yasin Malik -- have not so far reacted to Sharma's appointment.

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Donald Trump made a rare trip to Congress today to lobby for his tax reforms, but the president's efforts were overshadowed by an explosive new war of words pitting him against a top senator from his Republican Party.

Trump arrived on Capitol Hill to attend the Senate Republican caucus lunch for the first time since his inauguration, to rally support for passing a tax overhaul before year's end.

But attention instead has swerved to a brutal back-and- forth with Senator Bob Corker, who charged in response to a Twitter attack from the president that Trump is an "utterly untruthful" leader who "debases" the nation.

Corker, an influential Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has emerged as an outspoken critic of the president, excoriated him earlier this month as dangerously impulsive and branded the White House an "adult day care center."



He appeared to further antagonize Trump when he told ABC early Tuesday that he would like the president to stand clear of the debate over tax legislation and "leave it to the professionals" to finalize the plan.

Trump rounded on Corker in a series of tweets, and the war of words was on, playing out on television and social media in real time.

"Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts," Trump tweeted.

"Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president," shot back Corker.

"I don't know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and debases our country in the way that he does, but he does," Corker went on to tell reporters at the Senate. "He has proven himself unable to rise to the occasion."



Corker -- who himself is not running for re-election next year -- expressed regret for supporting Trump's presidential bid, and said he would not vote for him again.

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President Donald Trump would reaffirm the American leadership in promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific region during his maiden trip to Asia next month, the White House has said.

Ten months into the world's most powerful executive office, the US president would embark on a two-week-long trip to Asia.

"The president's travel is going to underscore his commitment to longstanding United States alliances and partnerships and reaffirm the United States leadership in promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific," a senior administration official told reporters in a preview of the trip.

Trump himself told reporters in a joint media appearance with the visiting Prime Minister of Singapore that he is looking forward to his trip to Asia from November 3 to 14.

"This trip will be the president's longest to date, underscoring the importance that he places on the Indo-Pacific region," the senior administration official said.

While his visits to Japan, South Korea and China, are bilateral one, during his stops in Vietnam and the Philippines, Trump will be participating in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the US ASEAN Summit.

In Vietnam and Philippines, Trump also plans to hold bilateral and tri-lateral meetings with other world leaders, details of which are still being worked out.

Trump would embark on his Indo-Pacific sojourn on November 3 via Hawaii wherein he will receive a briefing from the US Pacific Command.

He will also visit Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial.

The president will officially commence his visit to Asia beginning with Japan on November 5.

In Japan, "he is going to affirm the US-Japan Alliance as the cornerstone for regional peace and security," the official said addingthat he will focus on ways for the US and Japan to work together to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific Region.

During his state visit to South Korea on November 7, Trump will participate in bilateral meetings with President Moon Jae-in and also visit American and South Korean service members.

The next day, he will speak at the National Assembly in Korea, where he will celebrate the enduring alliance and friendship between the United States and the Republic of Korea and call on the international community to join together in maximising pressure on North Korea.

Trump is likely to highlight the enduring strength of the US-South Korea alliance, which is stronger than ever in the face of North Korean aggression, the official said.

Trump would fly to Beijing the next day for a series of bilateral, commercial and cultural events including meetings with President Xi Jinping.

"I anticipate that the president will seek to secure China's commitments to exert more pressure on North Korea and to rebalance our economic relations.

The visit will send a clear message that for bilateral economic relations to be sustainable over the long term, China must provide fair and reciprocal treatment to US firms and cease predatory trade and investment practices," the official said.

The president will then travel to Da Nang in Vietnam on November 10, where he will participate in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation APEC, economic leaders meeting and deliver a speech at the APEC CEO Summit.

"In the speech, Trump will present the United States commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region, and underscore the important role the region plays in advancing America's economic prosperity," the official said adding that Trump's engagements at APEC will reinforce the US commitment to an equitable, sustainable and rules-based international economic system based on market principles.

On November 11, Trump will travel to Hanoi, where he's going to have an official visit and bilateral engagements with President Tran Dai Quang and other senior Vietnamese leaders.

President Trump will arrive in Manila in Philippines on November 12, to participate in special gala celebration dinner for the 50th anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The next day on November 13, the president will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the US-ASEAN relations at the US-ASEAN Summit, and will participate in bilateral meetings with President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines.

"The president's participation in ASEAN events will advance US leadership, promoting Indo-Pacific trade and security architecture that's based on freedom and openness and adherence to the rule of law," the official said.

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President Donald Trump will skip a key Asia summit at the end of his trip to the region next month.

The White House said yesterday that Trump will be returning to the United States on Nov 14, which is the same day as the East Asia Summit (EAS) in the Philippines. Trump is slated to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, which is also in the Philippines, the day before but he will not stay the extra day.

Another US delegation that will attend the EAS, which will include more than a dozen Asian nations as well as Australia, New Zealand and Russia. The White House did not give a reason as to Trump's absence.

The Philippines will be the final stop of Trump's 12-day, five-nation trip his first to Asia. The trip is expected to be dominated by Trump demanding that American allies in the region increase pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions.

But for all of President Trump's overheated talk about North Korea's Kim Jung Un and the country's nuclear program, Trump will likely not make the customary presidential visit to the heavily fortified border between North and South Korea known as the Demilitarised Zone.

Trump has derided Kim as "Little Rocket Man" and threatened to unleash "fire and fury" on Pyongyang if its leaders do not abandon the weapons program.

If Trump doesn't go while in South Korea, he would be breaking from recent presidential custom. All presidents but one since Ronald Reagan have visited the DMZ, which has separated the North and South for 64 years.

He will also advocate American economic interests during his trip, which include stops in Japan and China before travelling to Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings.

The trip will conclude in the Philippines, where the president is slated to meet with President Rodrigo Duterte, who has been accused of human rights abuses, including killing suspected drug dealers. The White House said Trump could raise concerns about the program.

The Washington Post first reported Trump decision's to skip the East Asia Summit, which mostly focuses on general strategic issues rather than the economic matters at APEC. The White House said Trump may attend some meetings related to the East Asia Summit before the gathering officially begins.

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Two persons were today arrested for allegedly duping a man from Tamil Nadu on the pretext of providing him a job overseas, police said.

Mohammed Zeeshan Ali (37) and his associate Shariq Ahmed (27) were arrested from the city after a Tamil Nadu resident Packeer Mohamed Ali (37) lodged a complaint against Ali for taking money promising him a job in the Maldives, an officer of Kolkata Police said.

"Zeeshan acted as the proprietor of an organisation and took money amounting to Rs 4.10 lakh from the complainant on the pretext of arranging for him a job in the Maldives," he said adding that by questioning Zeeshan police go through to his associate Shariq.

Zeeshan and Ahmed also forged documents, fabricated visas, work permits, company appointment letters, he added.

Huge documents including fake visas, counterpart of deposit slips, agreement papers, offer letters meant for other candidates, air tickets as well as 13 bounced bank cheques and documents related to a hotel in the Malidives were also seized from Zeeshan, the officer said.

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Issues related to sexual violence against children would be discussed by activists led by a UK expert during workshops to be organised here and two other cities from tomorrow.

Individuals across the country working to address sexual violence against children in their professional or community capacity would participate in the UK-supported knowledge and expertise sharing workshops, the British Deputy High Commission here said in a release today.

The workshops, being supported by the British High Commission in India, would be held in Bengaluru on Oct 26, in New Delhi the next day. It would be a four-day event here starting from October 30.

UK expert Donald Findlater would be the lead facilitator at the workshops being organised by city-based Tulir-Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse, New Delhi-based Butterflies and Enfold Proactive Health Trust.

The workshops will be attended by experienced and emerging practitioners from across the country involved in addressing child sexual abuse, the release said.

According to Findlater, Child Safeguarding Consultant, Lucy Faithfull Foundation, UK, "Communities worldwide are starting to face up to the challenge of child sexual abuse, a global epidemic that harms one in ten children."



Indian Council of Child Welfare President and Tulir's trustee Andal Damodaran said considering the 'universality' of child protection issues, it was important to adapt approaches of addressing sexual violence against children from other countries to the Indian context.

British High Commissioner to India Sir Dominic Asquith said he was "pleased" that their support to Tulir offered the chance not only for the UK to share experience with interested individuals across India on the issue but also for the UK to learn from India's own experience.

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Britain said today it wants swift agreement on the principles of a post-Brexit transition deal with the EU to reassure businesses, even if the details may not be finalised for at least a year.

The country's biggest business lobby group, the CBI, said yesterday it wanted a deal by December to assuage fears of a radical change in the trading relationship with the EU after Britain leaves in March 2019.

Prime Minister Theresa May told MPs yesterday that arrangements for an implementation period could only come as part of a final deal on Britain's future relationship with the EU.

She accepted such a deal was not likely to be reached until the second half of next year -- although EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier warned that it could take "several years".

"The implementation period is about building a bridge, and obviously in order to do that you need to know what the future relationship is going to look like," May's spokesman said today.

"But what we would also say in terms of the broad outline of an implementation period, we believe that we can agree that quickly."



Finance Minister Philip Hammond added in the House of Commons: "We want to agree the principles of that period as soon as possible."



European leaders have yet to approve the formal start of talks on post-Brexit trade with Britain, saying there has not yet been enough progress on the divorce issues of money, Ireland and EU citizens' rights.

But they agreed at a summit in Brussels last week to start internal preparatory work on a trade and a transition deal, which May has proposed could last around two years.

"Together with the broad support for the idea in parliament, this (decision by the EU) should give British businesses confidence that we are going to provide them with the certainty they require," Hammond said.

Barnier has said that any Brexit deal must be wrapped up by October 2018 to leave time for its ratification by the EU Parliament -- and Britain still insists a trade deal is possible by then.

Barnier told France's Les Echos financial newspaper yesterday that the transition period could go up to 2020, up until the end of the current EU budget period.

"It will give us a little more time to prepare the future relationship," he said -- adding that the latter negotiation would take "several years".

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UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres arrived in the Central African Republic to assess the country's fragile security situation as violence between militias threatens to intensify.

Crowds of people braving heavy rain lined the road from Bangui airport to the capital to greet him.

On the first day of his visit, which coincided with United Nations Day, Guterres led a wreath-laying service in honour of peacekeepers killed in action.

"There is nothing more precious than peace. There is nothing more noble than working to maintain peace, even if the work means sacrificing lives," he said Tuesday.

"As we have unfortunately seen, there are times when troops have been killed while building peace here in Central Africa."



During his four-day stay, the UN chief will hold talks with political leaders in Bangui and visit the southeastern town of Bangassou, one of the worst-hit regions for violence.

Guterres is also expected to meet victims of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers -- part of an effort to address damaging allegations that have hit the blue helmets in several missions.

In the run-up to Guterres's visit, Christian and Muslim leaders urged the United Nations to overhaul its peacekeeping strategy, which some have criticised as being too passive.

"A revision of strategy" has to go hand-in-hand with a mandate for UN troop renewal, Protestant leader Nicolas Guerekoyamene-Gbangou told AFP during a joint interview on Saturday with the country's Muslim and Catholic leaders.

The UN has a force of some 12,500 troops and police on the ground in CAR to help protect civilians and support the government of Faustin-Archange Touadera, who was elected last year.

Known as MINUSCA, its mandate -- which expires on November 15 -- is due to be renewed, and Guterres is looking for reinforcements.

CAR, one of the world's poorest nations, has been struggling to recover from a three-year conflict between nominally Muslim and Christian militias that started after the 2013 overthrow of Francois Bozize.

Between 2013 and 2016, acting under a UN mandate, France intervened militarily to push out the Muslim Seleka rebels and the United Nations launched its peacekeeping mission in 2014.

But the country remains plagued by violence.

Thousands have lost their lives and half a million people have been displaced, according to the UN, out of a population of roughly 4.5 million.

Since May, renewed clashes in the southeast have pitted armed groups against each other as they compete for control of minerals and areas of influence, while claiming to protect communities.

"The religious stance has been used only for political ends, for looting and for making off with the riches beneath the soil," said Oumar Kobine Layama, head of the Islamic Conference in CAR. "This is not a religious conflict."



The UN chief's stay will be his first visit to the Central African Republic since taking office on January 1, although he regularly visited the country as former head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

In his latest report to the Security Council on CAR, Guterres requested reinforcements of 900 troops, but whether this will have a decisive impact on the ground is unclear.

Aid organisations say they are extremely worried about security.

"Humanitarian law is no longer being respected in CAR," Frederic Manantsoa Lai from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) told AFP, warning that humanitarian groups can no longer access many parts of the country due to armed militias.

"We are reaching our limits in terms of humanitarian aid because of a lack of security," he said.

"Since September 2016, we have seen a dozen intrusions in MSF hospitals -- two women forcibly removed from Bangassou hospital and killed outside... in Zemio, a two-year-old child brutally murdered in hospital. The population is completely surrounded, and we are more and more exposed, we are taking more and more risks.

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The Congress's Uttar Pradesh unit today said that it will mark November 8, the first anniversary of



demonetisation, by observing a 'Black Day' in the state, and hold processions to highlight its "ill-effects".

Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the scrapping of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes on November 8.

"We will observe November 8 as a 'black day for the economy' throughout the state, and take out a candlelight march at 8:00 pm. During the day, meetings, processions and nukkad sabhas will also be held.

"On this day, we will pay tributes to martyrs (balidaaniyo) of demonetisation," Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee chief Raj Babbar told reporters here.

Terming the GST (Goods and Services Tax) as "Gabbar Singh Tax", he said, "The implementation of the GST has hurt the traders in general, and the small traders in particular. Owing to demonetisation, people have lost their lives either in police action or due to heart attack. The promise that things will change and improve in 50 days was also not fulfilled."



Babbar also said that if voted to power, the Congress will change the GST in such a way that it does not attack the common man and also usher in job revolution.

The Uttar Pradesh Congress chief said a memorandum will be given to the Prime Minister's office demanding families who lost their members during demonetisation be paid Rs 25 lakh as compensation and the next kin be given a job.

"The people of the country had put their faith in the prime minister, but they have been betrayed," he said.

There were no benefits of demonetisation, but only losses. There was unemployment, development came to a standstill and farmers are feeling harassed, Babbar claimed.

Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, "We demand that the PM tender an apology to the people for causing damage to the economy."



"We also demand compensation for those who died due to demonetistaion. The PM should be sensitive. A situation should not arise that elections are held on choosing the tolerant and intolerant, instead of being held on issues," he said.

"On November 8, 2016, the prime minister declared that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes would be reduced to mere pieces of paper. This type of 'farmaan' (announcement) has not been made by any prime minister. This is the job of the RBI or the finance minister," Babbar said.

Economists in India and other countries, including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that due to demonetisation the GDP growth rate will decline by 2 per cent, the Congress leader said.

"BJP leaders, at that time, made various comments. Not even a year has passed, and the GDP growth rate has declined by more than 2 per cent, and the economy has virtually collapsed," he said.

On the recent controversy surrounding the Taj Mahal, Babbar said, "When we speak of shahzaade, they start talking about 'Shah Jahan'. We talk about issues pertaining to the public, they start talking about Taj Mahal.

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To expeditiously redress the problems of the people, the Yogi Adityanath led Uttar Pradesh government will soon start a chief minister's helpline service.

The UP Cabinet in a meeting presided over by Chief Minister Adityanath approved a proposal in this regard today.

The UP Cabinet also gave its nod for the constitution of a Prayagraj Mela Pradhikaran (Prayagraj Mela Authority).

Regarding the helpline service, in the first phase, a call centre will be established in Lucknow.

Giving details, UP Energy minister Shrikant Sharma said, "For redressal of problems of the common public, a toll-free Mukhyamantri Helpline Seva will be started. In the first phase, a 24-hour call centre will be established in Lucknow".

A person sitting in any region of the state can register his or her complaint, he said.

"After this the complaint will be forwarded to the relevant department for redressal. Once the department says that the complaint has been resolved, the call centre will contact the complainant, and if the problem is not solved then action will be initiated against the concerned official," Sharma said.

He also informed that the call centre will be monitored by the chief minister and his office.

"The Cabinet has given its approval today. Soon the toll-free helpline number and call centre will be started," Sharma said.

UP Health minister Sidhartha Nath Singh said that the "Ardh Kumbh Mela will now be called Kumbh Mela, while Kumbh Mela will be known as Mahakumbh. The Cabinet has also given its approval for constitution of Prayagraj Mela Pradhikaran. The preparations for the Mela have already started, and the 2019 Ardh Kumbh Mela will be of international standards and earn laurel for the state from tourism point of view."



Singh said that the Cabinet approved the filling up of vacant posts in nine homoeopathic medical colleges of the state on contract basis.

Similarly, vacant posts of teachers in non-government but aided schools will be filled through contract basis, and the age-limit has been fixed at 70 years, he said.

Singh also said, "The Cabinet in its meeting held today has also made a framework for participation of private sector in Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, so that by 2022 housing for all is ensured.

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The United States will maintain its large military presence in Niger to assist local forces despite the deaths of four American soldiers in an ambush, the Pentagon's top officer has said.

Nearly three weeks after jihadists attacked a joint US- Niger patrol in a sensitive border area, General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US is firmly committed to supporting Nigerien forces in counter- insurgency operations.

With some 800 US forces deployed in the country, "our intent is to continue operations there," Dunford told a conference yesterday.

The October 4 clash, the deadliest US combat incident since President Donald Trump took office in January, has shocked many Americans unaware of the military presence in the African country, the largest US deployment on the continent.

The four troops died on a reconnaissance patrol on the Niger-Mali border directly north of Niamey. Dunford said five Nigerien solders were killed, and another two Americans wounded.

The 12 American and 30 Nigerien soldiers on the mission were attacked by about 50 fighters Dunford characterized as locals associated with the Islamic State group.

Questions have been raised over why it took hours before backup support reached the patrol, and why one US soldier's body was left behind and only recovered the following day.

Dunford said the October 3-4 mission was originally approved based on an intelligence assessment that they were "unlikely" to come into conflict with any local forces.

The unit went to a village near the border and was attacked as they returned to their base to the south.

Dunford said that, based on what investigators know so far, the patrol did not call for support until one hour after first being attacked, suggesting perhaps they believed they could handle the situation.

A surveillance drone was sent to the location quickly after they did call for support, and two French Mirage jets arrived overhead an hour later.

But Dunford gave no details of what took place on the ground, and said he did not know, for example, why the French jets did not drop bombs.

"This is a very complex situation that they found themselves in," he noted.

"When they didn't ask for support for that first hour, my judgement would be that that unit thought they could handle the situation without additional support."



The incident has drawn calls from Congress for an investigation into the US presence in Niger.

A US special operations raid on Mogadishu in 1993 became a massive firefight leaving 19 US soldiers dead and resulted eventually in the pullback of US forces from Somalia.

The 800 deployed in Niger are part of around 6,000 US forces on the continent, mostly there to train local partners.

"We mitigate the risk to the US forces with specific guidance that we will only accompany those (local) forces when the prospects of enemy contact is unlikely."



Dunford said the Niger clash reflects the globalisation of the fight against IS, even as it loses ground in Syria and Iraq.

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India is taking steps to address the challenges posed by climate change and all countries, including the US, must do their part to save the world, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has said.

Chouhan, who is on nearly a week-long visit to the US, reminded integral humanism philosophy of the BJP's ideologue and its relevance in contemporary world at an event organised by Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies (FIIDS), an American think-tank, in association with the Embassy of India.

"All nations including the US would have to pledge (to secure and protect mother earth), or else this planet would not be livable for anyone," Chouhan said in his keynote address to the note inaugural Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Dialogue.

The dialouge "Integral Humanism: Indian Thought for the 21st Century Society, Economy and Politics" was held yesterday at the historic Kennedy Caucus room of the Senate Russell building here.

Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya said that the nature be treated with respect and dignity, Chouhan said.

"Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya has said that not to exploit the nature but to make the best use of the nature," he said at the event attended by lawmakers, Congressional aides and Indian-American community members.

Referring to the decisions taken by the international community at Paris on climate change, Chouhan said the whole world is worried about the destructive impact of global warming on mankind.

In this materialistic society, there is a mad race to exploit the nature.

"This poses a serious question if we would leave behind a secure earth for our future generations," he said.

India, he said, is aware of the dangers and is taking steps to address this.

"Are not we going to leave a secure future for future generation, just for our short-term benefits, is the most important question today," he said.

Asserting that the philosophy of integral humanism is most relevant in the 21st century, Chouhan said inclusive growth is possible only when everyone is treated equal.

In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is working to implement this philosophy, he said.

In his opening remarks, BJP General Secretary Ram Madhav said the philosophy of integral humanism of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya has three distinct idea dignity, freedom and unity.

In their remarks Congressmen Raja Krishnamoorthi and Pete Olson underscored the importance of integral humanism in the development of a country.

Arvind Panagariya, former Vice Chair of NITI Aayog along with Pravin Krishna from John Hopkins University and many others participated in a panel discussion on the occasion.

Khanderao Kand from FIDDS said the inaugural dialogue focused on key political and economic issues facing the world.

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US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson today arrived in Pakistan on a whirlwind visit to normalise bilateral ties strained after President Donald Trump accused the country of providing safe havens to terrorist groups.

Tillerson's crucial visit to Islamabad comes days after he made a major policy speech on America's growing strategic relations with India and Trump's move to offer a bigger say to India in war-torn Afghanistan.

During a surprise visit to Afghanistan yesterday, the top US diplomat indicated that he will firmly tell Pakistan to stop providing safe havens to terror groups on its soil to improve bilateral ties.

"We have made some very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support that the Taliban receives and the other terrorist organisations receive in Pakistan," he told reporters travelling with him at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

Islamabad needed to "take a clear-eyed view of the situation that they are confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organisations that find safe haven inside the country," he said.

Tillerson is visiting Pakistan on the invitation of Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif.

During his four-hour stay here, he will also meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Asif, and Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Tillerson's visit to Islamabad marks the first by a senior member of the Trump administration.

Radio Pakistan reported that Pak-US relations, stability in Afghanistan and regional security issues will be discussed during the meetings.

Foreign Office sources said the discussions would focus on improving security and economic relations but "cooperation against militants would be prominent during talks".

Tillerson's visit is significant as it would clarify Trump's policy and set a course for future Islamabad- Washington relations.

In August, Trump had unveiled his Afghanistan and South Asia policy in which he had hit out at Pakistan for providing safe havens to "agents of chaos" that kill Americans in Afghanistan and warned Islamabad that it has "much to lose" by harbouring terrorists.

Pakistan regularly denies that it hosts terror groups fighting the US and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

Trump's criticism led to further strain in US-Pakistan relations with a peeved Islamabad saying the president ignored its efforts in the war against terrorism.

But bilateral relations improved slightly after a meeting between Prime Minister Abbasi and Vice President Mike Pence on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month.

Ties also improved after Pakistani troops rescued an American-Canadian family from militants who had held them captive for over five years.

There was another step forward when the Quadrilateral Coordination Group of Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, and the US held its meeting last week in Oman after a hiatus of over a year to help start peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban.

The US also met a major demand of Pakistan for action against militants operating against it from Afghanistan when a drone strike killed the chief of Jamaatul Ahrar Umar Khalid Khurasani last week.

The top militant was involved in several terrorist attacks in Pakistan including the Peshawar school attack in 2014 that killed 150 people, mostly schoolchildren.

In Pakistan, officials said they are wary of demands by the US without taking into consideration Pakistani concerns about the increasing role of India in Afghanistan.

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West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh today criticised the state government for allegedly failing to control the dengue outbreak and said the state government is busy "hushing up dengue cases".

The state government and the health department should ensure proper treatment and diagnosis of dengue patients, he said.

"The state government has completely failed to tackle the outbreak of dengue in the state.... My question is why is the state government trying to hush up the matter, instead of providing better treatment facilities to patients," he said.

West Bengal BJP yesterday staged a protest rally in Salt Lake area of North 24 Parganas district against the 'failure' of the state government to tackle the outbreak of dengue.

The party also demanded resignation of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from the post of health minister.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Xi Jinping today attained iconic status enjoyed by modern China's founder Chairman Mao Zedong, with his name and ideology enshrined in the Constitution of the ruling CPC, as he secured a second five- year term with sights firmly set on an unprecedented third.

The once-in-five-years Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on its final day approved Xi's ideology to be written into its Constitution, which is in addition to the title of "core leader" conferred on him last year that analysts say enhances his leadership status above other leaders of the party.

Till now, only the thoughts of Mao and his successor Deng Xiaoping were enshrined in the Constitution of the world's longest ruling Communist Party, interpreting the complex doctrine of Marxism with Chinese characteristics.

The thoughts of Deng, China's reformist leader, were added posthumously.

CPC historians compare 64-year-old Xi with party founder Mao.

The thoughts of two of Xi's predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, were mentioned in the Constitution but not their names. This makes Xi only the third leader to have his thoughts on governance enshrined, which will now be part of school textbooks all over China.

But Xi, who is regarded as the most powerful leader heading the party, presidency and the military in the last five years did not have his way in the Congress as he had to settle for a compromise to let his closest aide, Wang Qishan, 69, to retire in an apparent trade off with other powerful factions in the party to get his name enshrined in the Constitution.

The name of Wang, who headed the massive anti-corruption drive targeting "tigers and flies" in the party in which over a million officials punished, was not found in the 204-strong list of elected members of the Central Committee, the top most policy body of the CPC.

The "election" to the Central Committee held in a most secretive functioning of the party, is essential to get into the 25-member Politburo and the seven-member Standing Committee which virtually rules the country.

The names of the Politburo and the Standing Committee will be formally announced tomorrow.

Xi and Premier Li Keqiang, the number one and two in the party hierarchy, have been elected to the Central Committee ensuring their second terms mostly based on the unofficial two-term norm for top leaders followed by the party.

Tomorrow, Xi and Li along with other members of the Standing Committee would make a formal appearance before the media in a nationally televised event.

It is not yet clear whether the Standing Committee will have five members as Xi reportedly preferred, or seven like in the outgoing committee, or nine as under previous president Hu's tenure.

Like in the inaugural session the of week-long Congress on October 18, Hu and Jiang along with a host of retired leaders shared the front row with Xi and Li, in a show of unity.

While speculation was rife that Xi may have to settle for a seven-member Standing Committee with candidates representing the factions of Jiang and Hu in the Standing Committee as a compromise, analysts said Xi's masterstroke enshrining his name in the Constitution firmed up his position as a leader above the leaders, denting the collective leadership system followed by the party till now.

This may ensure his reported plans to continue beyond two terms securing his place similar to Mao. Xi's thoughts were stated to be a new guideline for the party to continue in power in the modern era, specially in the next few decades to ensure the country, currently the world's second largest economy, becomes moderately prosperous.

Unanimously agreed by party delegates, the constitutional amendment juxtaposed 'Xi Jinping's Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era' along with Marxism- Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development.

In response to contemporary developments and by integrating theory with practice, Chinese Communists, with Xi as their chief representative, have given shape to 'Xi Jinping's Thought on Socialism' since the last CPC National Congress, the resolution said.

It has "systematically addressed the major question of our times -- what kind of socialism with Chinese characteristics the new era requires us to uphold and develop and how we should uphold and develop it," it said.

Putting the significance of the constitutional amendment in perspective, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, author and long-term American scholar on China who moved closely with Chinese leaders and scholars, said the inclusion of Xi's thoughts in the Constitution and his "core leadership" conferred on him by the party previously puts him "substantially ahead of others" in the CPC.

"Being the originator of the new concept and the arbiter of what constitutes social Chinese characteristics for a new era and his being core, those two factors put Xi substantially above anybody else or any combination of people," Kuhn, who is based in China, told PTI after the CPC concluded its Congress.

Though Xi may settle for candidates from other groups in the Standing Committee as part of attempts to restore balance, his status puts him far above others, Kuhn said.

He also said "there is no term limit for your name in the Constitution" referring to the iconic status enjoyed by Mao and Deng, which meant that Xi could set his sights beyond a second term.

Since 2002, all top Chinese leaders have followed a convention of retiring after two terms with 68 unofficially agreed as the retirement age. So this many not be applicable to Xi, he said.

"I would say Xi is in position for the rest of his entire life to guide China in the direction that he feels so," Kuhn said.

"Having his name in the Constitution weighed so strongly and being core, it is pretty much your way and I think he is very satisfied with his structure," he said.

He also said while leaders from other groups in the party may have different loyalties, they all worked together in the last three decades and share close relationships which minimises any factional squabbles in running the government.

As for the world, Kuhn said it is no longer a secret how Xi tried to push China in the world and the countries around it have to learn to deal with him and a rising China.

"He is not secretive. You don't have to wonder anymore about what he is going to do because he is telling you that China is moving to the centre of the world and it is a big message," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(Reuters) - Infosys Ltd, India's second-biggest software services exporter, reported a surprise 3.3 percent rise in second-quarter profit, beating analysts' estimates.

Profit rose to 37.26 billion rupees ($573.03 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30, from 36.06 billion rupees a year earlier, Infosys said on Tuesday. http://bit.ly/2iviVpc

Analysts on average had expected a net profit of 35.23 billion rupees, according to Thomson data.

Revenue from operations rose 1.5 percent to 175.67 billion rupees.

The results are the first since Vishal Sikka quit Infosys as CEO in August after a lengthy feud between the board and the company founders that also led to a reorganisation of the board. Nandan Nilekani, a co-founder and a former CEO, was named chairman with the company continuing to search for a new CEO.

($1 = 65.0225 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Tanvi Mehta and Jessica Kuruthukulangara in Bengaluru; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By John Miller

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss drugmaker Novartis is moving closer to spinning off the ailing Alcon eyecare business it bought from Nestle for $50 billion in 2010, but said on Tuesday a final decision would depend on the unit's continued sales growth.

A 7 percent rise in Alcon sales in the third quarter pushed Novartis's overall revenue up 2 percent to $12.4 billion, the company said, beating the $12.2 billion average in a poll of analysts.

Now, Chief Executive Joe Jimenez wants to see Alcon's sales recovery continue before pulling the trigger on a spin off for a unit he has suggested could be worth $25-$35 billion. The unit would be sold without prescription eye drugs, which Novartis moved to its main medicines unit last year and plans to keep.

"What we would be considering right now is a separate listing," Jimenez, who on Feb. 1 will hand over the CEO job to Vas Narasimhan, told reporters on a call.

"A standalone company with a separate listing, and those shares would go to our current shareholders," he said, adding that that could happen in the first half of 2019.

Jimenez said Novartis was still reviewing potential locations for a possible Alcon listing and that proposed U.S. tax reforms -- U.S. President Donald Trump's plan promises up to $6 trillion in cuts -- would play a role in a final decision.

In 2016, Novartis swapped out top Alcon management and began investing to reverse persistent sales declines that it has blamed on lacklustre customer service and stagnating innovation.

Investments at Alcon, including on marketing and new hires in customer support continued to bite, with the unit posting a $50 million operating loss.

Novartis shares fell 1.3 percent by 0815 GMT, which analysts said may reflect investors unhappy that an Alcon spin off will not come as early as next year.

"The timing of an expected spin/IPO may disappoint some investors that were hoping for this in 2018," Deutsche Bank analysts wrote in a note.

2018 GROWTH

Novartis reported third-quarter core net income rose to $3.02 billion, compared to the average analyst estimate of $2.93 billion in a poll.

The Swiss group also confirmed its full-year outlook, with core operating income seen broadly in line or slightly declining compared with 2016 before a promised return to growth in 2018.

Novartis has been suffering through a patent expiry on its former top seller, blood cancer drug Gleevec, whose third-quarter sales plunged by nearly half to $445 million as competition from generic copies intensifies.

Meanwhile, newer psoriasis drug Cosentyx generated $556 million, up 83 percent from a year ago and beating market estimates.

Analysts said the trend looks promising.

"We continue to see the company on track to successfully exit the 2017 transition year before returning to growth in 2018," said Bruno Bulic, a Baader Helvea analyst with "buy" rating.

While sales of heart failure drug Entresto more than doubled to $128 million, they again missed market expectations amid a slowdown in July and August.

Jimenez acknowledged revenue must accelerate for Entresto to hit its 2017 target of around $500 million, though he still expects Entresto to eventually become a $5 billion-per-year medicine.

"It's not going to be a rocket ship that has that Cosentyx-like trajectory, but it will be a steady grower and contributor to the next growth phase of the company," he said.

(Reporting by John Miller; Editing by Michael Shields and Jon Boyle)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Sudarshan Varadhan

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday banned the use of petroleum coke, a dirtier alternative to coal, in and around New Delhi in a bid to clean the air in one of the world's most polluted cities.

The court, which recently banned the sale of firecrackers in the New Delhi area, also ordered a ban on the sale and use of furnace oil - another dirty refinery by-product - in and around the capital and ordered implementation of strict emission norms by the end of December.

"It is a big win for clean air," Sunita Narain, an environmental activist and a member of a committee set up by the government which recommended the ban of such fuels around the Indian capital, told .

The order comes after the Environment Protection Authority (EPCA), a government-appointed body, in April recommended to the court that it ban the fuels due to high sulphur levels.

India is the world's biggest consumer of petroleum coke, a dark solid composed mainly of carbon, which emits 11 percent more greenhouse gases than coal, according to the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. Burning it also emits several times more sulphur dioxide, which causes lung diseases and acid rain.

Annual demand for the fuel, which is more energy efficient than coal, has nearly doubled over the past four years to more than 27 million tonnes.

India tops deaths from pollution globally, according to The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, with 2.5 million Indians dying early in 2015 because of pollution. (http://reut.rs/2zyeKMV)

Indian health ministry data shows that respiratory issues killed about 10 people per day in the year ended March 2017 in the National Capital Region - a rapidly urbanizing and polluted area around New Delhi that is a third the size of New York state, but houses 2.5 times more people.

Those deaths could be the result of pollution from many sources, including coal, or have other causes.

The ban on the sale and use of petcoke, which will be effective from Nov. 1, could hit the country's small and medium scale industries, which employ millions of workers and operate on thin margins.

Sulphur-heavy petcoke and other cheap, highly polluting fuels such as furnace oil are widely used by cement factories, dyeing units, paper mills, brick kilns and ceramics businesses.

Puneet Gupta, founder of online coal and petcoke marketplace CoalShastra, said "per-unit delivered energy for petcoke is much cheaper when compared to the next alternate, coal," making it attractive for buyers. Users say they also prefer the fuel over coal because of its assured supply.

Such companies say banning cheap fuel might stunt their ability to expand and hire more staff, just as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to create jobs.

Petcoke demand fell in August after Hurricane Harvey hit shipments from the United States, the biggest exporter to India, but analysts and traders say consumption is likely to recover and continue growing, unless there is a country-wide ban.

(Reporting by Sudarshan Varadhan; Additional reporting by Suchitra Mohanty; Editing by Susan Fenton)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
OSLO (Reuters) - U.S. companies are still among the most ambitious in setting targets to combat global warming despite President Donald Trump's plans to quit the 195-nation Paris climate agreement, a 2017 survey showed on Tuesday.

U.S.-based firms made up a fifth of those in a 2017 "A list" of 159 companies judged to have ambitious policies on limiting climate change and protecting water resources and forests, according to London-based non-profit CDP.

This made U.S. firms the biggest single national group and was similar to levels in 2016, according to CDP, which tracks companies' environmental performance and was formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project.

"We don't see U.S. companies faring worse in our analysis" since Trump took office, said Marcus Norton, chief partnerships officer and general counsel at CDP.

"The business case for climate action remains despite a lack of support in the federal level," he told .

Trump has said he will pull out of the 2015 Paris deal and instead bolster the U.S. fossil fuel industry.

The U.S. president doubts mainstream findings that climate change will cause more floods, droughts, wildfires, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

U.S. companies on the 2017 list include Philip Morris International , Microsoft , Bank of America and Biogen Inc . Norton said the criteria for inclusion on the CDP list were made tougher each year.

Separately, CDP said French cosmetics giant L'Oreal and Anglo-Dutch consumer goods group Unilever were the top performers on the global ranking, scoring straight "A"s on a scorecard that rates corporate policies on preventing climate change, ensuring water security and protecting forests.

The two demonstrated "how business can reduce carbon dioxide emissions, increase water security and tackle deforestation while making a profit," CDP said.

The two firms have often scored highly.

Overall, CDP said 89 percent of companies in a wider survey of more than 1,000 companies had some form of carbon emissions targets, up from 85 percent in 2016.

And 14 percent were committed to aligning their goals with climate science, which requires deep cuts in emissions to achieve Paris agreement goals, up from 9 percent last year.

(Reporting By Alister Doyle; Editing by Edmund Blair)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The government today announced a massive capital infusion plan of Rs 2.11 lakh crore over the next two years for the public sector banks (PSBs). The idea, says the government, is to strengthen the lending capacity of government owned banks. Here goes what it actually means for the market, banks and the economy.

1. Challenge to raise equity from market

The government plan includes Rs 76,000 crore through budgetary and market raising. There is no break up given, but the government has budgeted Rs 10,000 crore from the budget in 2017-18 and under the revised plan it has mentioned some Rs 18,000 crore. So there is a likelihood of Rs 8,000 crore of additional money coming in this year from the budget. Going forward, there is a big challenge for PSBs to raise equity capital either through divestment or through equity expansion. Barring SBI, no other bank has strong financials to raise money at a higher valuation.

2. Bulk of the fresh capital to go down the drain

Most of the new capital will go down the drain as more than half a dozen PSBs are under the preventive corrective action (PCA) of the Reserve Bank of India. The RBI puts banks under PCA when there is a drastic fall in the capital levels, lower profitability and losses and higher NPAs. The asset quality review and bankruptcy proceedings have already put additional NPA provisioning burden on banks. The capital is already getting absorbed in provisioning as NPAs are only growing quarter after quarter.

3. Low credit off take and over-leverages India Inc

The economy has been witnessing historically low levels of credit offtake. The credit off take has plunged to single digit in the last few years because of over-leveraged corporate, lower capacity utilization and slowdown in the economy. There is actually no demand for credit. In the last three years, only one engine - retail banking - is growing whereas the corporate side is mostly refinancing or working capital loans.

4. More clarity needed on recap Bonds

Under the plan a bulk of Rs 1,35,000 crore is to come from repitalisation bonds. There is no clarity on the issuers of these bonds and who will subscribe to such bonds. Will they be interest bearing and who will pay for the interest and how much will be the interest? These will have implication for the issuer (if government issues it) in terms of widening of fiscal deficit.

5. Need of the hour is governance and HR reforms

The PSBs have been suffering because of government ownership and archaic systems and processes. The Bank Board Bureau (BBB), which was set up to look into many of these issues has not seen any success. There is no accountability in the PSBs today. The credit standards are quite weak, resulting in banks sharing bulk of the NPAs in the system. In fact, these banks also lack in technology and digital banking, which is already transforming the banking industry. They are already miles away in the race when it comes to Fintechs or private banks. There is lot of catching up to do by PSBs. Capital alone won't resolve these issues.
A misleading and factually incorrect claim has been made in Washington on October 12 by Nandan Nilekani, former chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), who said that the UID/Aadhaar project enjoys bipartisan support and how it saved about $9 billion by eliminating fraud in beneficiary lists. The following facts reveal that the claim of bipartisan support is an exercise in factual misrepresentation:

Seventeen eminent citizens issued a Statement of Concern seeking to halt of UID/Aadhaar project on September 28, 2010



Around 3.57 crore signatures against Aadhaar/UID were submitted to the Prime Minister on March 14, 2013



The West Bengal Assembly passed a unanimous resolution against coercive Aadhaar December 2, 2013



Supreme Court's nine-judge Constitution Bench recorded that Kerala, Karnataka, West Bengal, Punjab and Puducherry supported the petitioners who sought the scrapping of UID/Aadhaar. In its verdict on August 24, 2017, the apex court said that the right to privacy is an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty, which was vehemently opposed by the proponents of Aadhaar.

Rajya Sabha has vociferously opposed Aadhaar, and its objection was illegitimately overruled by getting Aadhaar Act enacted as the Money Bill

Opposition parties in the Lok Sabha bitterly opposed the enactment of Aadhaar Act, 2016



Senior leaders from the main opposition party are contesting the Aadhaar Act in the Supreme Court

The Multiparty Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance had examined the Aadhaar project and trashed it

MPs in Rajya Sabha, during a Short Duration Discussion, demonstrated using the government's data that government's claims about savings from Aadhaar are questionable

Several citizens' declarations and resolutions against Aadhaar have been passed at the meetings of people's movements, employees and trade unions

As for the claims regarding savings from UID/Aadhaar project, insincerity has been evident from the very outset. During Nilekani's tenure at UIDAI, Yashwant Sinha headed the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance. Its 69th report on the 'Demands for Grants (2013/14)' said: "A provision of Rs 2,620 crore has been allocated in the Budget Estimates or BE (2013/14) for the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and a major part of the Budget provision for Rs 1,040 crore is earmarked for 'Enrolment, Authentication and Updation', out of which an amount of Rs 1,000 crore has been earmarked under the head 'other charges'." The total budgetary allocations for the UIDAI, from its inception to March 31, 2014, was Rs 5,440.30 crore.

For the year 2014/15, the budget estimate was Rs 2,039 crore. The budget estimate of expenditure on the project being implemented by the UIDAI was Rs 2,000 crore in 20015/16. For the year 2016/17, the budget estimate was Rs 990 crore (it included Rs 190 crore first supplementary). As of February 2017, the UIDAI has incurred a total cumulative expenditure of Rs 8,536.83 crore. It includes undefined "other charges", pointed out by the Parliamentary Committee. Should not the UIDAI provide the details of the expenses incurred under "other charges"? Take the case of the year 2009/10 when the budget estimate was Rs 120 crore, and the final expenditure was Rs 26.21 crore. In 2015/16, the budget estimate was Rs 2,000 crore, but the final expenditure was Rs 1,679 crore. In 2016/17, when the budget estimate was Rs 990 crore, the final expenditure up to February 2017 is Rs 877.16 crore.

The Parliamentary Committee on Finance wondered in its report why inflated targets were given consistently. It observed: "The total budgetary allocations made for the UIDAI since its inception up to BE 2013/14 is Rs 5,440.30 crore, out of which Rs 2820.30 crore has been utilised up to 31.03.2013 and the remaining amount of Rs 2,620 has been allocated in BE 2013/14. The Ministry informed that the average cost per card was estimated to range from Rs 100 to Rs 157. Taking the average cost per card to be Rs 130, the total expenditure for the issue of 60 crore cards is estimated to about Rs 7,800 crore. Thus, the expected requirement of funds during 2013/14 is Rs 4,979.70 crore, whereas only Rs 2,620 crore has been kept for BE 2013/14, which is, thus, grossly inadequate." It is apparent that there is more to it than meets the eye. These are the expenditure details so far.

The total estimated budget of the biometric UID/Aadhaar number project has not been disclosed till date despite repeated demand for it while seeking the cost: benefit analysis. In any case, unless the total estimated budget of the project is revealed, all claims of benefits are suspect and untrustworthy. How can one know about total savings unless the total cost is disclosed?

The recent meeting at the World Bank on digital identity, where more than a dozen companies were represented, underlines the Bank's central role in the promotion of internalisation of digital-biometric identification by some developing countries such as India and Pakistan.

When one learnt about UIDAI's Founding Chairman Nilekani's lecture - organised by Washington-based Center for Global Development (CGD) on Societal Platforms: Building beyond Aadhaar for Sustainable Development - to be held on October 13, 2017, with Paul Romer, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, World Bank, as one of the panellists, it gave a sense of deja vu. The event was organised in partnership with the World Bank Group, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Omidyar Network.

In November 2009 Tariq Malik was awarded the ID Outstanding Achievement Award at the Global Summit on Automatic Identification in Milan. He received one of the highest awards in IT, Sitara-e-Imtiaz (Star of Excellence), from the President of Pakistan in 2013 for innovative, citizen-centric ICT application and services rendered for Pakistan. Nilekani was given ID Limelight Award at the ID World International Congress, 2010, in Milan, Italy, on November 16. Malik headed the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) in Pakistan. Nilekani headed the UIDAI.



Interestingly, Safran Morpho (of the Safran Group) was a key sponsor of the ID Congress. Its subsidiary called Sagem Morpho Security was awarded a contract for the purchase of biometric authentication devices on February 2, 2011, by the UIDAI.

But let us go back to Malik who became General Manager, Networks, at NADRA in April 2008. Within three months, they promoted him from Head of Technology to Deputy Chairman, NADRA. Later, he became the Chairman. Before joining NADRA, he worked in the US in the ICT space.

Nilekani, too, became the Chairman and held the rank of a Cabinet Minister.

In another apparent coincidence, both Malik and Nilekani spoke at the meetings of CGD in April 2013 and July 2014, respectively.

In his lecture titled Technology in the Service of Development: The NADRA Story, Malik said, "By 2008, we improved the data architecture to include the full set of 10 fingerprints and a digital photograph. This technology was powerful enough to enable full deduplication of the national database and greatly reduced the prevalence of dual identities and identity theft. We asked the people to register and framed this in terms of a strategic partnership with the state, which in turn would recognise them as citizens. Registration was still technically voluntary, but people could not open a bank account without an ID card or obtain a passport or enter into any transaction with the state. An ID card was also needed to obtain a gas or electricity connection and to pay utility bills. These requirements made it very difficult to function without enrolling and caused people to register.

"At the same time, we developed a system to scrutinise candidates contesting the election that would connect the databases of NADRA, the Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR), the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the State Bank of Pakistan."

According to him, "Security versus privacy is a very hotly debated issue these days. From Pakistan's perspective, extraordinary security circumstances demand extraordinary steps to revamp governance. The state is eroding very fast, and it has to restore its writ to avoid collapse at the hand of outlawed and terrorist groups. At the same time, it is my strong belief that privacy of citizen data must be guaranteed in a fragile state like Pakistan. It is sad that Pakistan does not yet have an official data privacy law."

It is clear from his lecture that the biometric identification project called NADRA is a convergence project. It has put all the people Pakistan under surveillance by admittedly making registration under NADRA "technically voluntary" but structuring its implementation in a way that it has coerced Pakistanis to register with NADRA to get social benefits, services and subsidies by converging pre-existing databases.



In his lecture titled Can Technology Leapfrog Development? The Aadhaar story, Nilekani said, "A lot of people ask about privacy and security and all that. Fundamentally, this is just an ID system, it gives you an ID and verifies that ID. So the UID database does not collect all kinds of data about you - (it only collects) very basic information about you (name, address, DoB, sex and biometrics) and provides verification services with a yes or a no.

"Similarly, from a security perspective, also a lot of work has happened to make it secure. We came to the conclusion that if we take sufficient biometric data of an individual, that person's biometrics will be unique across a billion people. Now we have to find that out - we haven't done it yet - so we'll discover it as we go along. And our belief now is that accuracy across the entire billion people is 99.99 per cent in terms of not having duplicates," he added.

"The purpose of this project is twofold. One, to give millions of people IDs, which they can have to get access to entitlements and services, and second, to improve the quality of expenditure by the government on various public programmes," added Nilekani. Prophetically, he disclosed, "You can use it for train tickets or mobile connections. We expect that in the next few years, this will be used as the basic KYC (know your customer) for all kinds of services. For voting, bank accounts, mobile connections. It is using tech to reach out, and reach out to a large number of people." Besides this address, Nilekani had delivered another lecture at the World Bank headquarters on April 24, 2013, in the presence of World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and Chief Economist Kaushik Basu.

It emerges that India's UID project is an imitation of Pakistan's project. Biometric UID/Aadhaar is a convergence project that has put all the residents of India under surveillance using social benefits, services and subsidy as a fish bait while keeping it "technically voluntary" but has coerced Indian residents to register for the Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) of UID/Aadhaar numbers structurally. As in Pakistan, India, too, is implementing this biometric identification project without having a right to privacy law in place. Both countries display a similar lackadaisical approach towards peoples' privacy. India is imitating Pakistan about the erosion of authority, which is being hollowed out by transnational commercial tsars and by compromising national security by showing unpardonable callousness towards the privacy of present and future generation of legislators, soldiers and heads of governments and the State.

Coincidentally, both Malik and Nilekani were speakers at the National Identification Conference, an international conference organised by Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights in collaboration with other Harvard schools from November 19 to November 21 in 2015. Ajay Bhushan Pandey, current Director General of UIDAI who has been promoted and given the status of Secretary, Government of India, was also a speaker at that conference.

In an interview, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, informed Imran Khan about the grave act of omission and commission. Assange said, "we discovered a cable in 2009 from the Islamabad Embassy. Prime Minister Gilani and Interior Minister Malik went into the [US] embassy and offered to share NADRA. The system is currently connected through passport data, but the government of Pakistan is adding voice and facial recognition capability and has installed a pilot biometric system as the Chennai border crossing, where 30,000 to 35,000 people cross each day. The NADRA system is the voting record system for all voters in Pakistan. A front company was also set up in the UK called International Identity Services, which was hired as the consultants for NADRA to squirrel out the NADRA data for all of Pakistan. What do you think about that? It seems to me that that is a theft of some national treasure of Pakistan, the entire Pakistani database registry of its people."



Whenever Nilekani or other proponents of UID/Aadhaar speak, they simply articulate whatever has been voiced by the head of NADRA. Every word spoken and every step taken by the UIDAI are an exercise in imitation of Pakistan's initiative.

Biometric unique identification (UID) initiative, branded as Aadhaar, has its roots in Washington. At the outset, inspired by the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto Polar's 2000 book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, Nilekani began arguing that a national ID system would be a big step for land markets to facilitate the right to property and undo the 1978 abolition of the same, which will bring down poverty! But he never explained the rationale of this unique proposition. In the post-Capitalist and the post-Socialist era, such assumptions of triumph have been found to be deeply flawed. In fact, even the title of the book sounds weird in the post-financial crisis era. Nilekani published these arguments in his book. The 76-year-old de Soto, known for his work on informal sector 'extralegal economies', is the Honorary Chair of Washington-based World Justice Project, an initiative of the American Bar Association (ABA) that is working to advance the rule of law around the world. He has worked with the World Bank and appears to be an advocate of property rights-based democracy.

In a 2012 article, de Soto concluded, "We need increased truth-telling: increased recognition of what exists and who owns it." Such propensity creates a compelling argument against centralised databases, which will be hard to defend in the face of big data predators. He fails to acknowledge like Slavoj ZIzek, the Slovenian philosopher who thinks radical changes for the betterment of humanity happen outside the realm of legal rights framed by existing institutional mechanism, which is being captured by commercial tsars. It is evident that the World Bank is lending support to projects, which make even the right to have natural rights conditional on being biometrically profiled to secure beneficial owners of all ilk from future battles.



It may be recalled that after Nilekani took charge as the Chairman of the UIDAI at the invitation of the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Robert B. Zoellick, the then World Bank chief, met him on December 4, 2009. What transpired at these meetings is not in public domain.

Nilekani was appointed as the Chairperson of UIDAI on July 2, 2009, and he assumed charge on July 23. At the time, IT behemoth Infosys announced that "Mr Nandan M. Nilekani will relinquish the position of Co-Chairman and Member of the Board at Infosys". The company added that "the Board of Directors today accepted Nandan's resignation. The resignation will be effective from July 9, 2009." Notably, if Nilekani was appointed the chairperson of the UIDAI on July 2, his resignation from Infosys was effective from July 9, and he assumed charge of the UIDAI on July 23, his work and his meetings during that period seem to merit scrutiny.

Subsequently, the World Bank's e-Transform Initiative (ETI) was formally launched on April 23, 2010, in Washington for converging private sector, citizen sector and public sector, and the Interpol's e-identity database project. This initiative and the then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's announcement in January 2011 for voluntarily seeking the full-fledged Financial Sector Assessment Programme by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank appear to be linked. The e-identity of the Bank and UID/Aadhaar-related projects are part of the same Washington-based initiative.

The World Bank's ETI seeks to leverage ICT to build a knowledge-sharing network that helps governments of developing nations to leverage best practices and improve the delivery of social and economic services. The knowledge-sharing network will focus on areas such as electronic Identification (eID), e-procurement, e-health and e-education, areas vital to promoting the participation of citizens in democratic processes such as voting, and helping undocumented citizens get access to health and welfare programmes. The World Bank reported it was funding 14 projects related to e-government and e-ID around the world. Are citizens supposed to believe that the World Bank Group is working to ensure that India's national interest and its citizens' rights are protected?

"The speed and precision with which developing countries administer services are dependent upon many factors, not the least of which is the ability to verify the identities of those receiving services," said Mohsen Khalil, Director of the World Bank's Global ICT Department, in a statement at the launch of the ETI.

Like Nilekani and Pandey, Malik, former chairman of NADRA in Pakistan, also has been the tried, tested and failed dictum of "technology is the answer". This dictum has consistently failed because its proponents did not know the questions in the first place.

It is noteworthy that a task force for preparation of Policy Document on Identity and Access Management under the National e-Governance Programme (NeGP) was constituted by Office Memorandum dated October 31, 2006, by the central government, which was supposed to submit its report by December 25, 2006. Coincidentally, the Processes Committee of the Planning Commission, which was set up in July 2006, commissioned the task of preparing "Strategic Vision: Unique Identification of Residents" to IT giant Wipro during the same period. The task force submitted version 7 of its 65-page long report in April 2007.

This report states: "The Identity Information is stored by multiple agencies in multiple documents like ration card, driving licence, passport, voter's card, birth certificate, etc. The purpose of the Project Unique ID (UID), initiated by the Planning Commission, is to create a central database of resident information and assign a Unique Identification Number to each such resident (citizens and persons of Indian origin) in the country. The appropriate Identity Aggregations and Synchronisation should be used to integrate systems to share their identity information." The report also revealed that the "National UID Project has been initiated with Voter ID Numbers and BPL households in the first instance." It is evident that long before the arrival of Nilekani in July 2009 as Chairman of the UIDAI, the UID/Aadhaar project was already unfolding. He just came, and the credit for the UIDAI was imposed on him.

Notably, this report discloses that each registered judicial court has a unique identification (UID) number, including Subordinate Courts, High Courts and the Supreme Court. This effort seems to be part of profiling and surveillance of judicial institutions. Curiously, this report also talked about "Citizen Identities" and "Owner of identities".



So far legislators and citizens have failed to bring the World Bank Group and other international financial institutions (IFIs) under the legislative oversight. A situation is emerging where, if the pre-existing databases like an electoral database, census and other databases under preparation are converged, these unaccountable and undemocratic financial institutions will never come under parliamentary scrutiny. The identification and surveillance technology providers and IFIs appear to be aiding an empire of a kind where every nano activity is under the vigilance of the Big Brother. They will have people believe that cyber-biometric panopticon is for the good of humanity like they will have us believe that "voluntary" is mandatory and "voluntary consent" is consent forever, which cannot be withdrawn, paving the way for an ideal democracy based on Pakistan's success.

The author is a public policy and legal researcher, convenor, a member of Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties and editor of www.toxicswatch.org
Last week Deloitte announced one of its largest investments at US$20 million over three years in Singapore to create a Future of Work Centre of Excellence in Singapore. Last month Mercer announced the formation of Mercer Digital to offer digital solutions for the workforce of the future.

A Google keyword search on "HR Digital" shows HR digital results from Deloitte, Accenture, Aon, Mercer and many others on the first page.

What is happening here? Let me share three personal experiences.

Situation 1:

While reviewing Lenovo's Employee Benefits Program of an Asian emerging market country, I found that we have a policy to annually reimburse glasses and frames. I was curious to learn about the annual usage of this benefit (do employees change glasses/ frames annually, do employees especially value this benefit especially - a predominantly millennial workforce - and do we have a high ROI for this benefit linking it to engagement and retention)? My primary question was: do I have the means to get all the above information easily using HR data analytics?

Situation 2:

Last week I saw a Facebook post of an exasperated colleague stuck in traffic in Whitefield, Bangalore at 10 am. Soon there were comments from his colleagues and ex-colleagues chiming in on his post about his plight. One of them cheekily commented, "A good way to communicate to your boss that you are late to office ?". Is Facebook becoming the preferred way to collaborate and communicate through mobile platforms in our ever increasingly integrated work and life? Is there something for the HR organization to learn from this?

Situation 3:

Last year, HBR published an article on 'Empathy Index' ranking companies on creating empathetic cultures. The primary source of the HBR article was data from the social employee feedback site Glassdoor.com and not using the services of any Engagement Survey Partner? Is employee feedback data from social sites the new normal replacing expensive engagement surveys from the HR engagement Survey partners?

What is the common thread connecting these three situations? Welcome to digital HR.

Each of these situations offers new ways in which HR is becoming 'digital.' HR organizations today have a huge untapped opportunity to improve engagement and productivity through seamless delivery of rich and personalized content and applications on integrated social, digital and mobile collaborative platforms supported by underlying HR analytics.

Situation 1: Using HR Analytics and Bots in HR Digital

Can an HR bot supported by HR analytics provide deep insights, for example listening to a question in natural language (via Alexa, Android and Google Chrome, Siri or Cortana) and then translating it into queries that can run across multiple datasets? (Rhizabot, a sales AI company acquired by Nielsen already does that for sales). OK, let me ask our hypothetical HR bot:

'HR bot, give me the usage analysis of the employee benefits on reimbursing spectacle glasses by gender, age and frequency." (HR bot accesses deep data analytics from Lenovo's employee benefits data sets).

"HR bot, how many companies offer this benefit in this country?' (HR bot runs analytics on external benefits provider data sets and provides benchmark analysis).

"HR bot, tell me should I continue or discontinue the annual employee benefits of offering frames and lenses to employees?" (HR bot analyses current usage patterns from benefits data set, future anticipated need from Lenovo's workforce planning dataset, and external health analysis of the nation's visual health reports).

Is this future or fiction? It's the future of digital HR.

Situation 2: Using Collaborative Platforms in HR Digital

When my colleague posts a message on Facebook about being stuck in traffic and his colleagues, ex-colleagues and friends reply, it actually offers valuable insights for HR.

Companies offering a social collaboration tool that's intuitive, easy to use and can facilitate the connection of a person's work and home life - indeed blending the two to create value would certainly lead to higher engagement and productivity

Today we are blending personal and work life more than ever. Companies offering a social collaboration tool that's intuitive, easy to use and can facilitate the connection of a person's work and home life - indeed blending the two to create value would certainly lead to higher engagement and productivity. Social collaboration tools should help people to get things done in their personal life projects too. And the more people become familiar with a social collaboration tool at home, the more it will be adopted inside the enterprise to the benefit of organizations.

In this new world with a growing millennial workforce and distributed global teams, employees (particularly millennials) want to access from any device and from any location.

Mobility experts state the global mobile workforce will reach 1.87 billion people - 42.5% of the total global workforce - in 2022 [see footnote 3]. As workers go mobile, so do their primary work devices (smaller, portable and wearable) In this new world with a growing millennial workforce and distributed global teams, employees (particularly millennials) want to access from any device and from any location.

Online tools such as Slack, Github, Box, Microsoft Yammer and Google Hangout are now growing at an unprecedented rate further confirming the untapped potential for HR to leverage social collaboration and improve organizational productivity and employee engagement.

Situation 3: Using Crowdsourced Social Data in HR Digital

In the HBR article where crowdsourced social data from Glassdoor.com data was used to index companies on empathy, there are many areas in HR where crowdsourced data is showing astounding results.

Talent searches: Networking and finding candidates should now happen not just via social media, but also using techniques like mobile recruiting, gamification crowdsourcing job descriptions, candidate referrals and of course the assessment/interview process. Google, Marriott, Unilever, Deloitte and others are increasingly using gamification in their recruiting strategy in an effort to increase candidate engagement, shorten screening time, and build brand awareness.

Organization culture: Glassdoor.com and Indeed.com offer rich real time data on organization culture. At Lenovo, the HR analytics team reviews the feedback from these sites and offers visually rich insights to HR leaders for building real time actions.

Employer branding: Prospective employees, especially the millennial generation, rely on crowdsourced sites for an accurate view of an organization before applying or deciding to join.

Organization values: When a company refreshes its core values, rather than having a top down approach, it's possible to reach out to a very large section of employees faster and more effectively to contribute to the value building process. In 2003 when I joined IBM (through the PwC Consulting acquisition), IBM executives held a worldwide IBM values "jam" to engage its huge global workforce to help refresh company values. For three days, tens of thousands of employees logged onto a company intranet to participate in an instant-message-style session. This was long before social sites like Facebook or Twitter or collaborative social platforms like Yammer or Hangout were in existence.

Recognition: Lenovo leverages social recognition platforms replete with social and collaborative recognition features, ranging from simple peer-to-peer appreciation/wishes/gifting to complex nominations, and voting through a workflow using crowdsourcing feedback.

Compensation: Third parties like PayScale.com, GlassDoor.com, Comparably.com and Indeed.com collect crowdsourced data and aggregate individual salary information to supplement traditional compensation surveys. The recent alliance of Mercer with PayScale (which provides real time crowdsourced salary data using data science) illustrates the growing interest to balance traditional compensation data with real time social data.

If the opportunity is so huge, why is HR adoption to HR digitization so low?

There are many more examples of how digitization in HR would deliver significant improvement to employee experience, productivity and engagement. If the opportunity is so huge, why is HR adoption to HR digitization so low?

I will share my perspectives on the challenges to adapting to HR digitization in my next article. The very fact that all HR consulting companies are building their HR digital practice is a cue to what is coming. Stay tuned!

Article is written by Subhankar Roy Chowdhury, Head Human Resources, Lenovo-Asia Pacific
The Department of Telecom (DoT) has approved the merger of Sistema Shyam Teleservices with Anil Ambani-led Reliance Communications. RCom in its filing with the BSE on Monday said: "Reliance Communications Limited (RCOM) has received the Department of Telecommunication's (DoT) approval for the demerger of the wireless business of Sistema Shyam Teleservices Limited (SSTL) into RCom." After the merger, the number of mobile operators in the country will come down to ten.



According to PTI, the merger was cleared by the DoT on October 20. Under the deal, all wireless business assets of SSTL will now be owned by RCom. However, MTS, the telecom services brand of SSTL, will continue its operations. Moreover, SSTL will also get 10 per cent stake in RCom.

"Rcom will acquire approximately 2 million customers and additional annual revenues of around Rs 700 crore. In addition, RCom will acquire 30 MHz of the most valuable and superior 800/850 MHz band spectrum, ideally suited for 4G LTE services, to complement its own unique nationwide footprint," the statement said.

This merger of SSTL will also extend validity of RCom's spectrum portfolio in the highly valued 800 and 850 MHz band in eight major telecom circles across the country - Delhi, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Kolkata, UP-West and West Bengal - by a period of 12 years from 2021 to 2033. This specific spectrum is best suited for delievering 4G LTE services.

RCom has assumed the liability to pay Rs 390 crore per annum for the next eight years to the DoT which is due for specrtrum purchased by SSTL. The transactions related to the deal are expected to close by the first week of November 2017, RCom said.

The approval could be the much-needed breather for RCom, which has been battling debt and faced a failed merger deal with another telecom operator Aircel earlier this month. In October, Reliance Communications called off merger talks with Aircel, citing "legal and regulatory" delays. "Merger of mobile business of RCom and Aircel lapses with mutual consent," the Anil Ambani-led firm had said.

RCom and Aircel had signed binding agreements in September 2016 for the merger of mobile business. "Legal and regulatory uncertainties, and various interventions by vested interests, have caused inordinate delays in receipt of relevant approvals for the proposed transaction," RCom had said.

RCom blamed high level of competition as one of the reasons for termination of the merger talks. "Unprecedented competitive intensity in the Indian telecom sector together with fresh policy directives, adversely impacting bank financing for this sector, have also seriously affected industry dynamics. As a result of the various factors aforesaid, the merger agreement has lapsed," RCom said.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  School officials in Utah say theyve taken appropriate action against teenagers shown yelling a racial slur and expletive on a cellphone video, but they wont say what was done.

Weber School District spokesman Lane Findlay said Tuesday that privacy laws prevent them from detailing what administrators did after their investigation into the 10-second video made by high school students, three of whom are cheerleaders. All appear to be white.

He says the girls recorded themselves saying a nonsensical phrase and an app played it backward to produce the offensive words. It was made a year ago on fall break and posted recently on Instagram and caught widespread attention from there.

Findlay says the girls are very apologetic. The district is considering anti-discrimination training for students and staff.
In late August, Chechnyas ruler Ramzan Kadyrov issued several statements on his Instagram profile appealing to fellow Muslims to support publicly the case of persecuted Myanmar (Burmese) Muslims, Rohingya, while prompting Russian authorities to take an international stand on their behalf. Shortly thereafter, unapproved mass demonstrations, inspired or organized by Kadyrov, took place in downtown Moscow and Grozny, during which siloviki treated protesters unexpectedly gently. Kadyrov went so far as to make a controversial statement challenging Russias international stance on the issue. Kadyrov soon softened his tone, yet his appeals were unprecedented  even by the standards of Chechnyas strongman. They outraged many in Russia, pointing to Kadyrovs impunity not only for actions on the domestic and federal scenes, but increasingly also for meddling in Russias international affairs.

BACKGROUND: On September 3, up to a thousand protesters, mostly Chechens, North Caucasians, and Central Asians of Muslim background, gathered in front of Myanmars embassy in Moscow. The protesters were apparently organized  or at least inspired  by Kadyrov and his associates, and manifested against what they referred to as the ongoing genocide of the Rohingya Muslims by Myanmars authorities. They also chanted slogans like Allahu Akbar.

Unlike other unauthorized demonstrations, police did not interfere to disperse the demonstrators. Importantly, Russian media and authorities initially commented neither on the persecution of the Rohingya, nor the demonstration itself. In addition, Kadyrov made a bold statement claiming that if Russia (which a few days earlier vetoed a UN resolution against the Myanmar government on the Rohingya issue) is against (Burmese) Muslims, he would turn against Russia. He also appealed to Russian authorities to weigh in and support the Rohingya Muslims and even deplored that he could not deploy the army to Myanmar.

Russian authorities behaved atypically calm, apparently fearful of making statements or taking actions that would outrage Kadyrov, known as Putins protege. In response to Kadyrovs remarks, Putins Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov responded in an unexpectedly diplomatic manner. Putin himself, while at the BRICS summit in China, commented that every head of a Russian region has the right to comment on the nations foreign policy. Two days later, on September 5, around 100,000 people gathered in Grozny, with Kadyrov urging Russian authorities to take a reasonable stance against Buddhist terrorism. He also reiterated his status as Putins soldier, loyal to him and the nation.

IMPLICATIONS: These recent developments give rise to two notable observations. First, Kadyrovs unprecedentedly close association with Putin has allowed him to become a strongman in federal politics, against whom federal authorities, siloviki, and media hesitate to interfere. The Chechen leader has long displayed an interest in Russias foreign policy, an interest that he is now seemingly taking concrete actions to promote. The organization of mass demonstrations not only in Grozny, but also in Moscow, in order to protest (indirectly) against Russias foreign policy direction and its diplomatic actions at the UN, has shown Kadyrovs capacity to act beyond his frequent twitter comments related to foreign policy issues.

Second, many Russians interpreted the hesitation on the part of Moscow authorities to crack down on the Muslim protesters as a sign that Muslims in Russia in general and Kadyrov in particular are given special treatment, and that Putin himself is unwilling or unable to intervene in order to restrain Kadyrov. For Russians who revere Putin as a strong leader, this was a sign of weakness while Russian nationalists, an important segment of the Russian electorate, interpreted these statements and the subsequent demonstrations as a sign of decay. Finally, Russias political opposition and other critics of the president viewed the anti-Myanmar demonstrations as another indication of the growth of Kadyrovs power and Putins unwillingness to curb it.

There are several possible explanations for this move. According to political commentator Sergei Shelin, Moscow used Kadyrov (who apparently crossed all lines by questioning Russias foreign policy and Putins motivations) as a bottom-up tool to change its policy toward Myanmar. Myanmar holds no major importance in Russian policy  no geopolitical interests are at stake there, while Moscows attitude to the issue in the UN could potentially to antagonize its Muslim allies, for instance Iran. For this reason, the Kremlin ostensibly either encouraged Kadyrov to speak out on the issue or tolerated it because it matched Moscows changed priorities with regard to the Rohingya issue.

The problem with this explanation is that Moscow is already facing troublesome relations with much of the Sunni world due to the ongoing civil war in Syria, while its pragmatic alliance with Iran is strong enough to survive the different attitudes of the two states towards an essentially marginal issue. Moreover, changing Moscows policy through Kadyrov would expose Moscows weakness and Kadyrovs strength. Nevertheless, since the protests took place in Russia, Moscow has balanced its rhetoric on the Rohingya issue and as Shelin has observed, Kadyrov has used the Rohingya issue as a demonstration of strength, reaching out to his support base and reminding the siloviki of Putins unflinching support for him.

Kadyrov may also have used the issue to profile himself in federal politics, reminding the nation of his ambitions and demonstrating his political clout to potential rivals. He therefore mobilized Russian Muslims whom he increasingly sees as his power base  now even beyond the North Caucasus. In fact, this was the first mass gathering of Russias Muslims in order to express an opinion on an international issue. Kadyrovs masterminding and organization of this event adds further weight to the Chechen leader as a Muslim leader at the international level. While there is some merit to this explanation, Kadyrov appears to have worsened even further his relations with siloviki, while personally questioning Putins policy. If this was a rational move by Kadyrov, it was a risky one.

Finally, as a Muslim leader, Kadyrov may have felt compelled to take a stance on this heavily mediatized issue, given its sensitivity among Russias Muslims. He therefore made an impulsive move, which he then tried to play down. Shelin has specifically argued that, several days of demonstrations would be enough for Kadyrov to confidently advance his objectives of presenting himself as a leader of Russias Muslims, shaking up federal authorities, and identifying himself as an international political actor. Yet having achieved his goals, it would make no sense for Kadyrov to exacerbate the issue further. A recent analysis in Novaya Gazeta hints at this conclusion, pointing out Kadyrovs reluctance to expand the issue, his unprecedented reading of a prepared text during the Grozny meeting, and his apology and consequently submissive attitude towards the Kremlin and Putin. Importantly, while initially paralyzed, Russian siloviki later dispersed the Muslim protesters in downtown Moscow. This also explains Kadyrovs most recent appeal to refrain from carrying out any unapproved demonstrations. Indeed, Kadyrov even stated publicly that he would not condone further public protests on the Rohingya issue unless there will be a need to do so.

CONCLUSIONS: Whether the mass mobilization of Russias Muslims to protests against Myanmars government treatment of Muslims was a coordinated and carefully planned move on Kadyrovs part, or the result of a miscalculation, Kadyrov seems to have achieved short-term gains from the events. Not only did the Chechen leader manage to solidify his position as a leader of Russias Muslim community and to portray himself as an international player and champion of the worlds Muslims, with political reach far beyond federal confines. He also reminded siloviki and his rivals of his unprecedented strength. Along with his relatively recent posture as a human rights defender, Kadyrov also reinstated his loyalty to Putin and confirmed that he remains an obedient federal subject. While Kadyrovs recent moves may raise concerns in the ranks of siloviki and rivals at the federal level that he is becoming uncontrollable, these steps indicate that Kadyrov is confident in Putins backing. Although it remains possible that the events resulted from a miscalculation on Kadyrovs part, the fact that he suffered no consequences is the best indicator of Kadyrovs impunity stemming from what seems to be Putins infinite support for him.

AUTHORS BIO: Emil A. Souleimanov is associate professor at the Department of Security Studies, Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University. His recent publications include Irans Azerbaijan Question in Evolution: Identity, Society, and Regional Security. Huseyn Aliyev is a political scientist based at the Centre for Security Studies (CSS), Metropolitan University Prague.

Image source: By kremlin.ru accessed on 10.24. 2017
| BY Ricki Green |

Mandie van der Merwe and Avish Gordhan take the helm as Creative Directors at the Sydney office of Australias largest independent agency, Cummins&Partners. The pair first joined Cummins&Partners in August 2015.

van der Merwe and Gordhan succeed Tom Martin and Julian Schreiber who leave to join Special Group.

After two years producing outstanding campaigns for FoxSports, QT Hotels & Resorts, Allianz, Go Gentle Australia with Andrew Denton and PUMA Oceania, their ascendancy comes at an exciting time for the agency having recently won HBF, Podravka Foods, University of Tasmania and fintech start-up Lodex.

Gordhan and van der Merwe have been recognised at almost every major international and local award show. Their work includes the critically acclaimed #ShotBySound campaign for David Jones, the controversial Stop The Horror project for Go Gentle Australia, and the darkly comedic Last Dictator Standing campaign for Nandos South Africa, among others.

Before joining Cummins&Partners Sydney, the pair worked at TBWA\ Sydney and some of the most renowned agencies in South Africa including TBWA\ Hunt Lascaris and Black River FC.

Says Sean Cummins, founding partner, Cummins&Partners: I have watched from afar the meticulous and thoughtful work of Mandie and Avish and it truly represents where we want to be as an agency.

The creative scene in Australia has been a bit one note for too long and there is a bigger and more diverse world that exists beyond the watering holes of Sydneys adland. There has been recent excitement about agency sell-outsbut the true shift in advertising doesnt happen because a consultancy buys a hot shop. It happens person-by-person, brief-by-brief, day-by-day. Avish and Mandie are exquisite thinkers, insightful outsiders and real people.

Says Gordhan: Upon hearing of our promotion, Mandie patted me on the back then said, now, lets get back to work. It sums up our approach to the role. Its a great honour to be recognised but the real reward is not the position itself. Itll be succeeding in it by making excellent work that works for our clients, and challenges our industry.
| BY Ricki Green |

Australians with a smartphone are being urged to embrace their DreamJob and help fight cancer while they sleep, in a new campaign developed by J. Walter Thompson Sydney, for the DreamLab app, which uses a smartphones processing power to solve cancer research problems while the handset is idle.

The DreamJob awareness campaign, supported by fellow WPP AUNZ agencies Hill+Knowlton Strategies, MEC and Webling, aims to get one million people using the DreamLab app. It comprises TVC, OLV, press, digital, and PR, and features actress, model and cancer survivor, Tessa James.

As a symbol of participation, the DreamJob campaign will also see a wave of job title changes on LinkedIn to Cancer Researcher at DreamLab App in a move designed to spread awareness to millions of Australians who can now take part in this worthy cause.

Says Simon Langley, ECD, J. Walter Thompson (and Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab app): We needed to create a compelling way to ensure as many Australians as possible download the app. Utilising the LinkedIn platform felt like the perfect place to do it.

Its a simple concept with far reaching and important consequences, and a campaign weve been incredibly proud to work on. We often remark in our working lives that were not curing cancer, but now thanks to DreamLab we can help Garvan speed up cancer research.

The DreamLab app, which is now available on iOS and Android, combines the processing power of Australian mobile devices to create a smartphone distributed supercomputer that solves cutting-edge cancer research problems. When your smartphone is idle, like when youre asleep, it can be put to work speeding up cancer research. The more people who download and use the app, the faster it can help find safer and more effective cancer treatments. It is supported by the Vodafone Foundation and The Garvan Institute of Medical Research.

While anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection can use DreamLab, Vodafone Australia is also supporting the campaign further by making the mobile data to use DreamLab free on its network for customers.

Says Alyssa Jones, head of Vodafone Foundation Australia (and Cancer Researcher at DreamLab app): Its never been easier for Australians to contribute to a cause that touches so many of us. We all want to play a part in overcoming this horrible disease and what makes the DreamLab app unique is that its an easy way to support cancer research.

Luke Smorgon, CEO of Transpire, the company that built the app, said the the app was a cutting-edge way of contributing to research aimed at solving a global problem.

Says Smorgon: Smartphones are now used by more than eight in ten adults in Australia, and the large majority of us have it plugged in and idle every night. The DreamLab app taps into this unused processing power.

We did a lot of user testing that helped us refine the design journey  adding motivational landmarks and a gamification element for example  to give people a real sense of the tangible contribution they are making to help solve cancer.

We are delighted to have partnered with Vodafone Foundation again to develop a smart piece of technology to help speed up cancer research.

The campaign goes live from this week.

J. Walter Thompson, Hill+Knowlton Strategies, MEC and Webling are all part of WPP AUNZ, Australasias leading marketing communications agency.

J. Walter Thompson

Simon Langley, Executive Creative Director & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Will Edwards, Creative Director & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Chris Badger, Creative Director & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Simon Hayes, Art Director & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Giles Clayton, Copywriter & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Ana Lynch, Group Account Director & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

James Ansell, Senior Account Director & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Rebekah OGrady, Account Manager & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Carly Yanco, Planning Director & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Brona Kilkelly, Strategic Planner & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Amanda Slatyer, Producer & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

MEC

Matt Benning, Group Business Director & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Mat Linnett, Investment and Activations Director & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Alisha Imam, C&C Manager & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Tanya Douglas, Senior Digital Manager & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Justine Cowie, Digital Analyst & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

The POOL COLLECTIVE

Simon Harsent, Director & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Cameron Gray, Executive Producer & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Ian Ford, Lines Producer & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Penny OBrien, Stills Producer & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Webling

Carlos Guedes  Digital Creative Director & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Hill+Knowlton Strategies

Penelope Holloway, Managing Director & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Helen Reiher, Director & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Emma Miller, Account Manager & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Watercolour Artist

Sarah Hankinson & Cancer Researcher at the DreamLab App

Transpire
| BY Ricki Green |

Special Group has lured Tom Martin (left) and Julian Schreiber (right), two of Australias most respected creative leaders, to join Cade Heyde, Dave Hartmann and Lindsey Evans as partners in the Australian business.

Schreiber and Martin join from Cummins&Partners Sydney where they helped establish a strong business with some great talent; attracting clients like Puma, HBF, Tourism Noosa and University of Tasmania to name a few.

Prior to joining Cummins&Partners in April 2015, they were ECDs with Johannes Leonardo in New York where their work for clients like TripAdvisor, Sony PlayStation, Adidas and google helped them to significantly grow that business. The pair joined Johannes Leonardo in November 2013 from Clemenger BBDO, Melbourne.

Says Lindsay Evans, founding partner and CEO, Special Group: Our global search led us to the perfect partners just around the corner. Their experience, ambition and shared values are second to none and there is perfect alignment in approach to creativity, culture and commerce. Tom and Jules are creative problem solvers in the truest sense.

Their international reputation was built in the early days of their career at Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, where they created highly effective work including the SXSW & Best in Show AWARD awarded Remote Control Tourist, the Cannes Grand Prix winning NAB Break Up campaign, the multiple gold lion winning Guide Dogs Support Scent and the FourN Twenty Salad Plate. With over 200 advertising awards to their names, their more recent ones include 21 Cannes lions, a D&AD black pencil, multiple One Show pencils and Clios. Also notably, both as a creative team and as creative directors, theyve won the Best of Show award at Australian AWARD three times.

The pair take over from Matty Burton and Dave Bowman, who exited Special Group to join Google in April this year.
I complained to Access Canberra a couple of weeks ago that I was left number one in their telephone queue for 12 minutes. They have now resolved this problem by removing the advice about where you are in the queue. Recently they refused to answer questions in the Legislative Assembly about their average waiting times. What will it be like when we start paying for the tram?
"It's a concern to us that before we find out they were planning to take this step, that we have media crews lined up outside the union offices," Mr Walton said. He said the union believed the Registered Organisations Commission's investigation and raids were politically motivated and designed to attack the reputation of Mr Shorten.
"We would actually send that information on behalf [of the union] and we would only send it on an opt-out basis, so staff would obviously be able to opt-out and to choose not to receive any information."
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

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Not only is Singapore one of the most expensive places in the world when it comes to overall living costs, its also well-known for exuberantly high car prices.



Now it seems, it will become even more difficult to purchase an automobile if you happen to live in the city-state, and according to Reuters, the shift will occur in February 2018.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) is planning on cutting Singapores vehicle growth rate from the current 0.25% all the way down to 0% per year, for both cars as well as motorcycles.

One obvious reason for this decision is the city-states land scarcity and the billions of dollars already invested in planned public transport. Singapore is also one of the most densely populated nations on the planet, with roughly 7,987 people per square km, trailing only Monaco (15,254) and Macau (20,848).

As of last year, no fewer than 600,000 private and rental cars were driving the streets of Singapore, a number that includes cars driven by ride-hailing services, which are gaining in popularity.

Right now, if you want to buy even a small SUV, youll need to first purchase a special certificate from the government, which can cost as much as 50,000 Singapore dollars ($37,000). As for the SUV, it alone can set you back more than 100,000 Singapore dollars ($74,000), as reported by CNN.

The new 0% yearly growth rate wont be reviewed again until the year 2020.

PHOTO GALLERY
Photo: Trevor Rockliffe - Kelowna

The RCMP Federal Serious and Organized Crime (FSOC), along with Canada Border Services Agency, held a joint news conference in Kelowna this morning (Thursday) to announce a "significant" seizure of the synthetic drug known as Bath Salts.

This new type of drug has recently made an impact in British Columbia, and law enforcement officials announced they seized 16 kilograms of the drug last month.

The seizure took place in Vancouver when Canadian Border Service Agency officials seized three packages mailed from China and destined for a business address in West Kelowna.

Two women associated with the West Kelowna address were arrested on Sept. 19, but they cannot be named as charges have yet to be filed.

CBSA spokesperson, Heather Ardiel, says the investigation into the importation of the drug began Aug. 23 when officers at the International Mail Centre in Vancouver intercepted a parcel.

"The parcel, declared as sodium chloride, or table salt, was examined by border services officers," says Heather Ardiel, spokesperson for CBSA.

Photo: RCMP Some of the bath salts seized by RCMP.

"The light brown, crystal substance was wrapped in plastic then commercially sealed in foil pouches. It was field tested by our officers with a positive result for amphetamines."

Two more packages, addressed to the same businesses in West Kelowna, were intercepted Aug. 26.

RCMP Federal Media Relations Officer, Sgt. Peter Thiessen, says the women have been arrested and processed and charges are pending.

He says prior to the arrest, "Bath Salts" were primarily seen in the UK and the United States with small amounts recovered in the Maritimes and Ontario.

Ardiel says amphetamines are seized at the border on a regular basis - in 2012 there were 149 such seizures across the country including 52 at the Vancouver Mail Centre.

"Some of them would have been in that format but I don't have the numbers to say how many of those 149 amphetamine seizures were actually Bath Salts," says Ardiel.

"I can tell you this was the largest interception going to a single importer."

Ardiel says there were a number of indicators that officers noticed independently of each in deeming the packages as being suspicious.

"They had the use of an X-Ray and they noticed anomalies in the E-ray that caused them to refer the parcel for further examination," says Ardiel.

"When they were able to see it was a large quantity of a powder - it was declared as table salt but it didn't look like or smell like sodium chloride. They persisted with the field tests and subsequently the lab tests which confirmed their instincts."

Thiessen wouldn't go into details as to the street value of the drugs seized or potentially how many doses could be derived, saying only the seizure was 'significant.'

"This is a new type of amphetamine, a new type of drug that seems to be making its way into Canada. Any illegal drug coming into the country and into British Columbia is a concern,"says Thiessen.

"This one appears to be growing in the volume we are seeing here today. It is a focus of our Federal Serious and Organized Crime Unit within our federal policing branch in the province."

Bath Salts are made from a potentially lethal combination of amphetamine type stimulants and other unknown ingredients.

"This drug is very dangerous. Users of this particular drug can experience elevated heart rate, high blood pressure, chest pains and psychiatric symptoms such as paranoia, hallucinations, psychotic and violent behaviour," says Thiessen.

"They are also highly addictive and users can easily overdose."

He says the seized drugs could easily have been destined for the streets of the Okanagan, BC or across the country.

Click here to see the complete video from the press conference.
This company has the Wow factor. I visited this location about a week ago today, getting there a half hour before opening and finding a line out the door. Getting a tire changeover for winter is usually my husbands job but I am thankful that on this day I was the one to request service. I found myself mesmerized by the smiles, patience and appreciation by the Fountain Tire Staff.

On this particular day the reception area was full; seniors, middle aged and young adults all requesting some kind of service and each being met with a smile, how can we help you and a thank you. Conversation

flowed between patrons about the day and about Fountain Tire and I can attest that the comments were all fantastic. It was so refreshing to walk in the door and be met with a head nod and acknowledgement from more than one staff member and the kindest smile of Tyson. I witnessed Tyson jump from his stool more than once to get an answer, direct at a service bay, and most impressively to assist a senior gentlemen using a cane, with returning to his vehicle after service completion.

I am greatly impressed by this company and their respect for their customer and how I heard them speak to each other. Fountain Tire Kelowna and Tyson are an example of what makes a successful company and manager. I have never written a letter to Castanet before but I was compelled to do so by the lasting impression that was made on me that day.

The website of Fountain Tire Kelowna has a picture of Tyson smiling and I promise you that his smile is sincere. Fountain Tire lives up to their promise, values and visions and Kelowna should be proud.

Shauneen Hicks
Photo: CTV

The Duke Point ferry terminal in Nanaimo is shut down due to a hydraulic fluid spill.

Ferry traffic is being redirected to the Departure Bay terminal.

Orange spill booms were seen in the water around the Duke Point terminal.

Foot passengers are being provided with transportation to Departure Bay.

Delays are expected.

 with files from CTV Vancouver Island
Photo: CTV

British Columbia has appointed a team of environmental and industry advisers to help the New Democrat government set and meet legislated pollution reduction targets.

Environment Minister George Heyman says he plans to introduce climate legislation next spring that aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent below 2007 levels over the next 13 years.

He says the legislation will also include targets to cut emissions from buildings and homes by 50 per cent, and 30 per cent from industry and transportation.

Former premier Gordon Campbell introduced legislation nine years ago to reduce the emissions by 33 per cent by 2020, but the former Liberal government of Christy Clark said it won't hit that target.

Heyman says the new advisory committee includes representatives from industry, environmental, Indigenous, rural and academic communities who will meet regularly with the government about reaching its climate targets.

B.C. is set to increase its carbon tax by $5 per tonne next April, raising the tax to $35 per tonne.
There will be no more homeless camping in Linear Park on 25th Avenue as of Feb. 1st, 2018, Vernon city council decided Monday. Council is also strongly in favour of creating a homelessness task force to come up with some solutions to the visible problem in the city.

Mayor Akbal Mund's motion to ban camping in the park was unanimously approved by council, and followed an appearance by the owner of Dean's Tailor Shop on the 2900 block of 33rd Street who complained bitterly about the street people and the subsequent loss of business.

The downtown is a drug apocalypse, Vicki Eide told the council meeting which was packed with business owners and managers as well as the head of Vernon RCMP detachment. We're asking for protection and help.

She described arriving at work in the morning and then cleaning up human feces, urine and needles.

They're bold, they're aggressive, Eide said of many of the new street people who have been hanging out in her vicinity which is just a few blocks away from the Upper Room Mission. If you want to go into the back of your business, there are people shooting up and having sex.

Eide said she was losing between $1,500 to $2,000 per month while another owner claimed she had lost $10,000 in business over the summer due to customers' fears of being accosted during their shopping trips.

I'm a little concerned that the message getting out there is Vernon is an unsafe place, I don't believe that it is, said Coun. Brian Quiring.

Lucky for you, responded a few people in the audience.

There's a misconception that the City of Vernon isn't doing anything but we're advocating on your behalf with the provincial government, said Coun. Juliette Cunningham.

She pointed to the efforts councillors made at recent meetings with provincial cabinet ministers, pleading for help with housing.

Cunningham also urged business owners to call the police if there was criminal activity.

She called the homeless situation and the subsequent problems a divisive issue when everyone should be working together.

Coun. Catherine Lord received backing for her call for the establishment of a homelessness task force that would include members of downtown businesses as well as social service agencies and politicians. Terms of reference for the task force will be presented at council's next meeting.

While the camping ban at Linear Park won't go into effect until February, Coun. Scott Anderson was pleased with the move, stating it would send a message for next year.
Photo: CTV

A Vancouver woman faces second-degree murder charges following the discovery of a body in a West End apartment, Friday.

Marline Mars was found dead in the unit near Jervis and Harwood streets.

Several uninjured people were in the unit and are considered witnesses, the Vancouver Police Department says.

Brooklyn Golar, 20, is charged in the death and is in police custody.

Homicide detectives are still investigating the death.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: Chantelle Deacon

A Penticton brewery is hosting events Tuesday and Wednesday to raise money for Monday Night Dinners at Nanaimo Square.

Monday Night Dinners at Nanaimo Square occur weekly, providing a hot meal for those in need.

"We always want to do local charity work and we have never done anything with this group before," said Ian Dyck, an owner of Cannery Brewing. "Its a super worthy cause and I think the event will go well."

Cannery Brewing on Ellis St. will host two movie nights, with 100 per cent of the $10 cover charge going towards Monday Night Dinners at Nanaimo Square.

"We have been trying to do a movie night for quite a while, but in the summer we are just so smoking busy we cant fit anything else in," Dyck said. "Now that it's a little bit slower we are trying to do some more stuff like this, to help support the community."

Each night there will be two back-to-back films, starting at 6 p.m. and finishing at 10 p.m.

The fundraiser will feature a complimentary, unlimited popcorn bar, with food and drinks available for purchase.

Tuesday, Oct. 24.

6 p.m. - Creepshow (1982)

8 p.m. - Halloween (1978)

Wednesday, Oct. 25
Photo: Facebook

A Fraser Valley school trustee is slamming B.C.'s trans-friendly curriculum as "biologically absurd."

Chilliwack's Barry Neufeld says the curriculum, designed to discourage bullying and educate children about gender identity, is the product of "radical cultural nihilists."

Neufeld, who has been a trustee for 25 years, posted the rebuke to his Facebook page, Monday.

"At the risk of being labelled a bigoted homophobe, I have to say that I support traditional family values and I agree with the (U.S.) College of Pediatricians that allowing little children choose to change gender is nothing short of child abuse," he wrote.

The lesson plan recognizes the right of students to self-identify gender and be addressed by their preferred gender pronoun, which is protected under the Human Rights Code.

"If this represents the values of Canadian society, count me out! said Neufeld, a church subdeacon and prison chaplain.

Education Minister Rob Fleming defended the curriculum, saying anti-trans bullying needs to be addressed.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: Vimeo Taylor Lane with his cigarette butt surf board

A California surfer has won a recycled surfboard contest with an entry covered with 10,000 cigarette butts.

"This is the most polluted item picked up on the beach," creator Taylor Lane told the Orange County Register. "And no one thinks twice that you can do anything with it."

Lane, 24, from Santa Cruz had the top entry amid an assortment of boards made from potato sacks, used packaging and stuff picked up from Dumpster dives. An Australian entry was made from an old bathroom door.

The entries were for the third annual "Creators & Innovators Upcycle Contest," hosted by the Vissla surfing gear brand and the non-profit Surfrider Foundation.

A dozen entries were displayed last Friday at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano.

"Who would have thought cigarette butts would have been beautiful?" said visitor Karyn Buky of Rancho Santa Margarita, California. "It gives you an awkward feeling, that something so pretty is so icky at the same time. It's amazing."

Lane and his friend, Ben Judkins, spent the summer plucking butts from the sand, beach parking lots and local paths in Santa Cruz. The board also uses Styrofoam from fish markets.

"It's visually disgusting  but awesome in how gross it is," Judkins said. "It just ties together surfing and something we care about  the environment, the ocean and the health of the ocean."

Contestants had three months to make their surfboards.

Last year's winner, Francois Jaubert of France, came in second with a board made with wood from a box that once held carrots. His entry last year was made from scrounged cardboard.

"I did this with garbage. We can have a little bit of thinking, a little bit of creativity," Jaubert said. "And it's way more fun to give a new life to a dead material. This used to hold carrots. Now, it's surfing."

"We should be smart enough to use what society gives us for free," he said.

Vissla founder Paul Naude said the contest was designed to encourage creative thinking about sustainability. "This new culture is asking questions today. What are we doing to the environment?" Naude said.
Photo: CTV

A fire that heavily damaged a vacant Shaughnessy mansion in Vancouver was deliberately set, investigators say.

Its a set fire. Thats what happened here, assistant fire chief Ray Bryant told CTV.

The weekend fire gutted the interior of the $14-million mansion, starting in the basement, he said.

The sprawling mansion was built in 1913 and was sold to a Chinese investor in 2012.

It was listed for rent at $12,000 a month last year and later put on the market at $13.75 million, but didnt sell. It has been empty since then.

Heritage rules stipulate that if less than 60 per cent of the home is burned, it must be preserved. If more, it can be demolished.

Its a real shame. A real shame, former neighbour John Beaddie told CTV. These houses are one of a kind.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: Lark Group

The District of Summerland will be obtaining a third-party review of the impact of the controversial Banks Crescent development will have on the local hatcherys water source.

Council passed the motion Monday, but held off on discussing the project at length until Wednesday, when it will receive a presentation from staff on how the proposed 400-unit seniors development will work into the districts water, wastewater, electrical and road networks.

"The people that we are in part concerned about are requesting a third-party review on that basis," said Coun. Janet Peake, voting in favour of the review.

"I would prefer to see it move forward tonight because I think that would clarify some questions that not only I have, but council has and the public has."

Thousands of residents have signed a petition against the proposed the Lark Group project, with concerns revolving around traffic and the sheer size of the building.

But the largest hurdle the project faces would be the local trout hatchery, which has come out opposed to the project while it demands more information on how its water source will be protected.

Council's special infrastructure meeting is at 7 p.m. on Oct. 25.
Photo: CTV Drive-thru voting in Calgary.

Drive-thru voting is being proposed in the Vancouver Island community of Saanich.

Municipal elections are just under a year away, and Saanich Coun. Judy Brownoff wants to follow Calgary's lead with drive-thru polling stations to make voting easier.

a"Municipalities are the closest level of government to our residents," Brownoff told CTV. "Whether university or college students or seniors or someone with mobility issues, voting is a democratic right which we have in Canada and do take seriously."

Only 35 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot in Saanich in the 2014 election.

B.C. voters go to the polls on Oct. 20, 2018.

 with files from CTV Vancouver Island
Photo: CTV

Police and security guards cleared out a Chilliwack homeless camp, Monday.

The camp on private land has been the subject of complaints for years. About 20 people were living there.

Sandhu Farms, which leases the property, ordered the squatters out over safety and pollution concerns.

Emotions ran high as the campers were cleared out, and 72-year-old Marita Herrling had to be taken out on a stretcher by paramedics.

Her daughter died in the camp last winter when heavy snow crushed her shelter.

"I lost my daughter out here, and I just won't go," Herrling said.

Heavy machinery was brought in to dismantle the makeshift structures.

The Salvation Army says there are 220 homeless people in Chilliwack and only 46 shelter beds.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: Facebook

A Utah mom in her final days of pregnancy gave her baby an eviction notice and made it official with a judge's signature. Incredibly, the baby obeyed.

Kaylee Bays was pregnant with her third child, a girl, and thought she was going into labour last week, but it stopped.

She went back to work to her job as a judicial assistant at the Fourth District Court in Provo, and jokingly asked Judge Lynn Davis to serve an eviction notice on her baby.

He did. And It worked. Less than 12 hours later, baby Gretsel was born, the Daily Herald reported .

Bays said Davis told her it was his first baby eviction notice in his 31 years as a judge.

"He told me, 'If it really works, I want it framed.' It did, and I'm going to frame it for him," Bays said.

Bays said the eviction notice gave her baby three days to "vacate the premises."

The notice was addressed to Gretsel at Mommy Belly Lane, in Womb, Utah.

"She came 12 hours later. So far, she's a good listener," she joked. "She didn't want to be in contempt of court."
Photo: 7 News

A massive great white shark was thrashing in the water on top of an upended kayak. But an Australian dad couldn't see his daughter.

In a matter of seconds, 15-year-old Sarah Williams surfaced and was rescued by her father and brother from the attack she says was "everything you picture in the 'Jaws' movie."

The 4.5-metre shark struck from beneath the kayak, tossing Sarah into the water Sunday off the coast near Normanville in South Australia state.

"I saw it when I was in the water with it. I saw what it was and I saw its fin," she told Nine Network television on Monday.

She survived the ordeal with scratches and bruises.

Her father Chris Williams said on Tuesday he powered toward her in a motor boat as she clambered back on to the kayak.

Williams said his son Mitch dragged his sister across the shark's back somewhere between its nose and dorsal fin to get her into the boat.

"I am having trouble coming to terms with how my son and I were able to get her off that kayak and over the shark and into the boat without her getting seriously hurt," Williams said.

Williams said the boat was about 25 metres from the kayak when the shark attacked. He estimated his daughter was rescued 30 seconds later, and doubted she would have survived for another 10 seconds.

"This thing came in and hit the kayak from underneath, catapulted my daughter and the kayak into the air and when I turned around ... all I could see was the shark had launched itself on top of the kayak and thrashing its tail around and it was all white water and no daughter," Williams said.
Photo: The Canadian Press

American aviation officials are investigating after an Air Canada flight from Montreal landed on a San Francisco runway after being told not to.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor says Air Canada flight 781 was inbound to San Francisco International Airport on Sunday night and was initially cleared for landing.

But Gregor says air traffic control later instructed the Air Canada crew to abort the landing because the controller wasn't sure whether a previous flight would have completely cleared the runway before the Air Canada jet reached it.

He says the Air Canada crew did not acknowledge any of the controller's instructions over the radio, so a supervisor then used a red light gun to alert the crew not to land.

But again, the crew didn't respond, and Gregor says the flight landed immediately.

After landing, the Air Canada crew told the control tower that they had a radio problem.

Gregor says that a radar replay showed the previous arrival was clear of the runway when the Air Canada flight landed.

Representatives from Air Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Kid Rock says he's not running for U.S. Senate in Michigan.

Kid Rock told SiriusXM host Howard Stern, "Are you kidding me?" during an expletive-laden interview Tuesday.

The Detroit-area rocker has been teasing the public for months. At a Sept. 12 concert, Kid Rock was introduced as Michigan's "next senator" and talked about running for president.

According to the Detroit Free Press , Kid Rock said his staff knew there wouldn't be a run for office. But with all the attention, and a new album in the works, he says he told them: "Let's roll with it for a while."

Kid Rock, whose real name is Robert Ritchie, was a target of protests during recent Detroit concerts because of his use of the Confederate flag.
Photo: The Canadian Press A grizzly bear fishes along a river in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park near Bella Coola, B.C. Friday, Sept 10, 2010. The long-term health of British Columbia's grizzly bear population is the focus of an audit by Auditor General Carol Bellringer set for release today. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

British Columbia's auditor general says the biggest threat to the province's grizzly bear population is not hunting but loss of habitat.

Carol Bellringer says in a report that expansion of communities and in industries such as oil and gas and forestry makes it more difficult for grizzlies to find food, raise their young and results in increased human-bear conflicts.

She makes 10 recommendations, including reviewing legislation to clarify the management and protection roles of the forests and environment ministries to reduce overlapping responsibilities.

Bellringer's report says government has not fulfilled commitments to a bear management program in the North Cascades area in B.C.'s southwest and concludes there's an absence of provincewide grizzly monitoring and inventory strategies.

She says grizzly populations are increasing in some areas of B.C. but that is likely occurring independently from an adequate government management plan.

The New Democrat government responded in the report with a pledge to accept the 10 recommendations and develop a grizzly bear management plan with clear objectives, roles and responsibilities.
Photo: file photo

Two people are in custody following a traffic stop in Penticton.

RCMP members spotted a Chevrolet Astro van on the 300 block of Main St. on Oct. 17 at 5:35 p.m. The vehicle had been associated with numerous crimes in the Okanagan and fled from police before being stopped on Eckhardt Ave.

Thirty-seven-year-old Andrew Sanderson was found to be in breach of several court imposed conditions, including driving while prohibited and warrants for arrest from Vernon and Salmon Arm.

A 36-year-old female passenger was also arrested for breaching conditions.
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Covestro delivered the strongest quarter in the companys history in the third quarter of 2017 as the positive trend of the first six months carried on. At EUR 491 million, net income was up 89.6% on the prior-year quarter. At the same time, EBITDA was 50.2% higher, and sales rose 16.9% over the same period the previous year. Core volumes increased 2.6%. The boost in sales was primarily due to higher selling prices, mainly in the Polyurethanes segment, with a positive effect of 18.4%. FOCF amounted to EUR 658 million, up 1.9% over the prior-year quarter. Based on these strong results, Covestro decided to review its announced target to deliver EUR 5 billion of cumulative FOCF until year-end 2021. However, on Group level, the company reiterates its guidance for the full year 2017.

This outstanding performance is attributable to the ongoing robust demand in the companys main customer industries and positive margin performance, also mainly in the Polyurethanes segment.

We are currently enjoying tremendous growth momentum and we are delivering records in revenues, profitability and cash generation. The extraordinary cash generation provides us, earlier than originally expected, with the opportunity to return significant amounts of cash to our shareholders while preserving the ability to consider bolt-on acquisition opportunities, says CEO Patrick Thomas. Therefore we decided to start a share buyback for either up to EUR 1.5 billion or up to 10% of the outstanding stock capital without further delay.

We are actively working on a strategy update to further benefit from the generational opportunity our current momentum offers. Digitization will be an integral part of our corporate strategy. We aim to give our customers a simpler, more efficient way to shop for our standard products. Currently, we are developing the new online platform which is expected to generate around one billion euros in sales as early as the end of 2019, explains Dr. Markus Steilemann, member of the Board of Management overseeing marketing, sales and innovation.

In this context, Covestro has identified three dimensions of digitization: digital business processes, digital customer experience and new, digital business models.

Polyurethanes and Polycarbonates highly profitable

In the third quarter, core volumes in the Polyurethanes segment were up 4.3% over the same quarter of the previous year. The TDI product group above all contributed to this development. The segments EBITDA more than doubled to EUR 556 million from the prior-year quarter, a development largely due to higher margins as a result of a generally positive supply and demand situation. In the course of doubling MDI capacity at its Brunsbuttel facility in northern Germany to around 400,000 metric tons per year by the end of 2018, the company already held a topping-out ceremony to celebrate the completion of shell construction at the plant.

The Polycarbonates segment recorded an increase in core volumes of 1.5% compared with the prior-year quarter. As expected, this growth was at the level of the second quarter of 2017. The segments EBITDA saw an upturn of 8.8% to EUR 211 million. Higher margins and an increase in volumes sold had a positive effect. In this segments key customer industries, Covestro works closely with designers to develop the products of the future. The company launched an online platform for industrial design for this purpose in September, among other projects.

Core volumes in the Coatings, Adhesives, Specialties segment decreased by 5.0% from the prior-year quarter due to a challenging competitive environment. At EUR 119 million in the second quarter, EBITDA was 12.5% below the previous years figure. The Group pushes boundaries to continually update its product range: Recently, a solar-powered car designed by students at RWTH Aachen University participated in the nearly 3,000-kilometer World Solar Challenge through the Australian desert, protected by Covestro coatings.

Very positive first nine months of 2017

Covestro showed an excellent performance in the first three quarters of 2017. Core volumes rose by 3.2% over the prior-year period due to continued healthy demand. Sales jumped 19.5% to EUR 10.6 billion, and EBITDA increased by 57.4% to EUR 2.6 billion. FOCF also grew significantly, by 23.8% to EUR 1.2 billion. Thanks to the control termination agreement reached with Bayer AG in September, Covestro has taken a further step toward complete independence.
Sears Holdings Corp. is the business world's embodiment of the adage "death by a thousand cuts."

Industry analysts predict the money-losing and shrinking owner of Sears and Kmart is heading for bankruptcy court. But no one can say what will finally trigger its financial demise.

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Will it happen if the chain racks up lackluster holiday sales this year? When the company runs out of assets to sell? Or after CEO Edward Lampert decides he can no longer be Sears' lender of last resort?

Perhaps it will be Sears' decision to stop selling Whirlpool brands including Maytag, Kitchen Aid and Jenn-Air. The breakup, disclosed Tuesday, will greatly damage one of Sears few ongoing marketing advantages: Its reputation as a destination for home appliances.

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Right now, there are industry questions over how Sears and Kmart sales will fare this holiday season, especially if the shelves are not well-stocked enough to attract and satisfy the chain's already-shrinking shopper base.

Earlier this year, Sears disclosed it had "substantial doubt" about its ability to continue as a going concern, which rattled some suppliers who attempted to pull back from the company.

Sears has sued a couple of jittery vendors, including a provider of some Craftsman tools, for allegedly pulling out of some longstanding deals. It is pressing frosty vendors to keep their products coming this year.

The contentious corporate divorce from Whirlpool, ending a 100-year-plus relationship with Sears, could be a turning point in the retailer's long march to the retail boneyard  even though it doesn't see it that way.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 33 Three covers, showing different years, of the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog. From left is 1894, 1927 and 1896. The 1927 cover is a Norman Rockwell painting. (Sears, Roebuck and Co.)

Sears contends Whirlpool sought to "use its dominant position in the marketplace," which would have "prohibited" the retailer from selling the appliances at a reasonable price, according to a memo addressed to Sears employees and sent to me by the company.

In response, Whirlpool CEO Marc Bitzer told investors on a conference call Tuesday that losing Sears is no biggie only 3 percent of its global revenue.

"The entire Sears business declined over time," he asserted.

The Michigan-based appliance company expects to find plenty of competing retail and home improvement chains eager to accept its wares. It will continue to manufacture some Kenmore-branded products for Sears.

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Meanwhile, Sears is hoping to rescue itself by partnering with Amazon, the retail and shopping mall industry's biggest nemesis. The retailer recently agreed to start selling a full line of its signature Kenmore goods through the e-commerce giant.

Teaming up with Amazon shows some much-needed marketing creativity.

Yet even if the Amazon affiliation is a rousing success it's unlikely to reverse Sears' continuing run of bad decisions and financial ills.

Over the past few years, the Hoffman Estates-based chain has lost more than $10 billion, sold or closed scores of stores to cut costs, failed to invest in or spruce up many existing retail outlets, spun off signature brands, including the Craftsman line, to other companies to cover operating expenses, and borrowed heavily from hedge fund guru Lampert's financial interests to stay afloat.

Last week it was announced that a respected Sears director  investor Bruce Berkowitz  is exiting the company's board. His equity fund group owns about 27 million shares of Sears' stock, which is nearly a fourth of its outstanding shares. A few days later, Sears revealed in a regulatory filing that it was getting another loan  the second this month and this one for $40 million  from affiliates of Lampert's hedge fund, ESL Investments.

Over the last year, Sears' stock price has tumbled by more than 9 percent, to around $5.95 per share.

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Everyone, including Sears' brain trust, should have a clearer picture of the company's fate after this year's holiday sales report. Predictions are industry sales will rise an estimated 4 percent over last year, with online getting much of the action, and department store chains  including Sears  fighting to stay competitive.

Sears isn't making any sales forecasts but gamely asserts it is ready for an active buying season. It will be unveiling various store promotions to woo shoppers even before the traditional Black Friday sales craziness.

In a statement sent to me, Sears management points with pride to this year's cost cuts of around $1.2 billion, and stresses the corporation's lines of credit and cash positions are improving.

When it comes to the Big Store, it can be exhausting trying to figure out which of its many systemic problems threatens to bring down the storied franchise.

Nonetheless, one of these days those thousands of cuts  like dropping the Whirlpool lines  are bound to be fatal.

roreed@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @ReedTribBiz

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Sears won't sell Whirlpool appliances anymore; brands split after 100 years 

Sears borrows another $40 million from its CEO 
Hundreds of consumers are offering some simple and direct advice to federal regulators eyeing Sinclair Broadcasting Groups proposed acquisition of locally-based Tribune Media: Kill this awful deal  now.

Theyre right.

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As this column stated in August, a Sinclair-Tribune merger will create the countrys largest television group  an anti-consumer and anti-competitive broadcasting powerhouse with access to an unprecedented 72 percent of the U.S. households.

Nothing much has happened to change the basic construction of this agreement. But in recent weeks, the battle lines between stakeholders and shareholders have gotten sharper.

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Tribune Media investors recently voted in favor of the estimated $4 billion pact, and you cant really blame them. They are voting their pocketbooks, which is what shareholders are supposed to do. With Tribune Medias 42 TV stations, the new company would have a whopping 233 TV stations.

Meanwhile, anxious individuals, businesses and other public-interest players continue to aggressively prod the Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department to scuttle the bid, which includes WGN-TV.

Bending to consumer outcry, the FCC stopped its 180-day transaction clock, the time frame the agency typically sets for reviewing applications, for 15 days and is allowing public comments until Nov. 2.

And boy, are people commenting.

Over the years, Ive covered many types of industry mergers and its not unusual for orchestrated opposition from employees, communities, unions and so on.

Still, its rare to see such a grass-roots campaign  more than 1,500 comments and counting, and the vast majority coming from concerned individuals. Mostly, they are tremendously worried about the quality of their local news, weather and other information should a Sinclair-Tribune merger come to be.

Yes, even in a world of streaming, cable and other communications razzle-dazzle, studies show there is a huge swath of people dependent on over-the-air news and information.

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Protesters fret Sinclair will hack away at their stations by cutting costs to the bone, dumping well-known and trusted talent and providing homogenized, one-size-fits-all content that doesnt relate to their markets or concerns.

Those worried about such matters wont get much comfort from Sinclairs Oct. 5 FCC filing.

The 400-plus page document nods to the possibility of selling some TV stations to get government approval (theres about 10 markets where Sinclair and Tribune stations overlap). Its also raring to start cutting costs once the deal is approved  although in the FCC document it redacted the exact amount it intends to lop. (The Chicago Tribune is separate from Tribune Media.)

Sinclair intends to whack at high-level duplicative corporate jobs, eliminate unnecessary facilities or real estate and reduce the number of suppliers, according to the filing. Sinclair goes on to say it wont get into staff reductions until after its reviewed Tribune Medias operations, but states that the merger will facilitate the streamlining of Sinclairs news gathering infrastructure.

Anyone hear an axe sharpening?

While the majority of the anti-merger FCC comments are from individuals, there are also groups rallying against the sheer size and sweep of the deal. Its a coalition that includes satellite, cable and wireless industries, media organizations, content producers and distributors, independent broadcasting groups and some public-interest organizations.

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Cable and satellite providers worry Sinclair-Tribune will charge much higher rates for the newly configured networks content. Producers fear the company will use its market dominance to pay a lot less for on-air shows and content.

What continues to bug people is the Sinclair-Tribune pact came to life only because in April the FCC reinstated the so-called UHF discount, which helps a combined Sinclair-Tribune entity get get closer to the ownership cap that blocks a single broadcaster from controlling stations reaching more than 39 percent of TV households nationwide.

Others argue that Sinclairs hard-right political bent, which espouses an ultraconservative point-of-view within commentaries and features that it insists on airing throughout its network, is going to lack editorial balance and strongly favor the Trump administrations policies.

Sinclair dismisses such political contentions as overblown.

Pretty soon, the public venting will be over and federal regulators are going to have to make a decision, probably by years end.

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If I had to bet, chances are this deal will be approved with some face-saving tweaks, especially if President Donald Trumps handpicked FCC chairman supports the transaction.

Still, it isnt over until its over.

The FCC and the Justice Departments antitrust department should realize how deeply unhappy and concerned the American public is about a booming Sinclair-Tribune franchise.

They should listen hard to whats being said and then kill this bad deal.

roreed@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @ReedTribBiz

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Workers are manufacturing clocks at Chicago Lighthouse Industries, a social enterprise, providing employment to people who are legally blind. Some Chicago-area Target stores are selling some of the clocks. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune). (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune)

When Juanita Ferrel gets a moment to herself at work, she checks on the clocks.

Weaving in and out of the rows of newly minted timekeepers, she runs her hands over their faces and along the rims, leaning them off the makeshift walls they adorn and reaching behind to check the motors. She's searching for imperfections, trying to catch inadequacies before the clocks are sold. And she does it all by touch.

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Ferrel, clockmaker at Chicago Lighthouse Industries, has been legally blind since she was 14.

"My eyes are my hands. I do everything with my hands," said Ferrel, who has worked at the clockmaking facility for 27 years. "I don't have to look at it."

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Chicago Lighthouse works with and employs people who are blind or visually impaired. Its sister agency, Chicago Lighthouse Industries, has been making clocks since 1977. As part of a federal contract, it supplies clocks to federal agencies, U.S. embassies and military operations. The clocks also are sold to schools, on Amazon and in Lighthouse's gift shop, among other places.

In August, Target started selling the clocks  a big get for a social services organization that puts most of the revenue from the clocks toward its programming.

"Getting into places like Target  gets us out into the mainstream," Lighthouse President and CEO Janet Szlyk said. "Every dollar is so precious."

Ferrel is one of about two dozen workers  85 percent of them legally blind  at the clockmaking operation in the Illinois Medical District.

The clocks are being sold in three Target locations for now: two in Chicago and one in Wheaton.

Lighthouse had been trying to get their clocks into Target for years, Szlyk said. "It's not easy," she added.

They came up with a line of 21 new designs for Target to sell for $29.99 to $39.99. There are kids' clocks with rainbows and stars and cartoon animals. There's a clock with a rooster and one with a pile of vegetables. Some feature Pantone colors, and others have different snapshots of Chicago, like the lion statues in front of the Art Institute.

The models that are really "selling like hotcakes" are adorned with the Chicago flag and Chicago Transit Authority map, Szlyk said. As of the end of September, revenue from the clocks sold at Target amounted to about $20,000.

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Target spokeswoman Kristy Welker said in an email that the retailer offers "products from local makers and vendors ... in select stores throughout the country in an effort to create locally relevant experiences."

Including the products sold to the government, about 600 clocks roll off the facility's assembly line daily. The clocks bring in annual revenue of about $3 million.

There are boxes full of clocks piled high on the assembly room floor, unattached faces strewn about the printing room, bearing images such as the seal of Cook County or logos for agencies like NASA. And all along the assembly line, employees put the clocks together using a sense of touch, adeptly attaching nuts, bolts and motors without hesitation.

amarotti@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @AllyMarotti
Lord & Taylor's flagship store in Manhattan, known for its holiday displays along Fifth Avenue, is being sold to the office space sharing company WeWork.

The nearly 100-year-old building will be converted to WeWork headquarters, with less than a quarter of the space remaining for a Lord & Taylor store. Right now, 10 of the building's 11 floors are devoted to retail.

WeWork attracts millennials who are looking to share office space, a consumer segment that Lord & Taylor owner Hudson's Bay and other department stores want to attract. So store executives expect the stores to benefit from WeWork members going in and out of the building, and hopes they'll be shopping.

"This is a sign of the future," said Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of the retail group at Douglass Elliman Real Estate. She predicted that other department stores will likely lease some of their space to corporate groups that cater to millennials. "They're building their own traffic generators."

Lord & Taylor will keep the whole building with its usual operations through next year's holiday season. And the holiday displays will go on this year and next year, the company said. It didn't say what happens beyond that. Lord & Taylor was the first to create Christmas windows for sheer entertainment, rather than for selling merchandise. It also pioneered the animated window display back in 1938.

While shoppers may have been drawn to Lord & Taylor's windows, Consolo said she wasn't sure how much they were shopping. Many would buy cosmetics on the first floor but didn't often venture to the upper floors, she said. Hudson's Bay Co., which owns Lord & Taylor , Saks Fifth Avenue and Canada's Hudson's Bay, said in June it was cutting 2,000 jobs in North America as it shaves costs and tries to adjust to changes in how people shop.

The $850 million sale announced Tuesday is part of a plan by Hudson's Bay to pare down debt and reinvigorate sales. Company officials declined to say what the redesigned Lord & Taylor store of about 150,000 square feet will look like.

Richard Baker, chairman of Hudson's Bay, told The Associated Press that WeWork will also lease space in the upper floors in three of the company main stores  Hudson's Bay stores in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada, as well as its Galeria Kaufhof in Frankfurt, Germany.

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Department stores have been struggling to follow their customers online, with many closing stores and selling lucrative real estate. Big chains like Macy's had been under pressure from shareholders to get more value out of their real estate holdings. But Consolo agreed with Baker that the Hudson's Bay deal with WeWork is a dramatic change in how retailers are trying to capitalize on their real estate.

"We definitely think there is a future for department stores for people who reinvest in the business," Baker said.

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On Friday, Hudson's Bay had said that CEO Jerry Storch would step down at the end of the month.
Harvey Weinstein attends the "Reservoir Dogs" 25th anniversary screening during the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival in New York on Oct. 14, 2016. (Charles Sykes / Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Harvey Weinstein. Bill OReilly. Roger Ailes. Bill Cosby. The Catholic church.

All were able to skirt years and sometimes decades of allegations of sexual harassment or assault through the use of settlements or contracts that included nondisclosure agreements: legal provisions that swear employees or alleged victims to secrecy.

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Those cases  and especially the unfolding Weinstein scandal  have sparked criticism that the agreements allow powerful companies and individuals to stave off scrutiny and continue abusive practices. Now, there is a move afoot to place clear restrictions on their use.

Last week, a group of Weinstein Co. employees, in a letter published by the New Yorker last week, sought to be released from their signed nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs.

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We ask that the company let us out of our NDAs immediately  and do the same for all former Weinstein Company employees  so we may speak openly, and get to the origins of what happened here, and how, the unnamed employees wrote.

These confidentiality agreements have become a ubiquitous legal tool for purposes both controversial and benign, such as protecting trade secrets or confidential financial information.

Nondisclosure clauses in employment contracts and severance agreements prevent employees or former employees from badmouthing their bosses. Generally, as part of a private settlement, one party agrees to drop potential or unresolved legal action in exchange for a payment  and their silence.

The latest high-profile instance of such an agreement surfaced late last week when it was reported that in January, former Fox News anchor OReilly paid $32 million in a confidential settlement over a threatened sexual harassment lawsuit.

Cathy Schulman, an Oscar-winning filmmaker who is president of the Women in Film advocacy group, said such deals are part of a silencing culture in Hollywood.

If a person complains about their work culture, what they usually hear is: Its time to move you to another workforce. Lets settle this out, Schulman said. They are asked to make a deal with the devil. They are asked to sign and shut up. And then you plan your exit, Ive done it myself.

But in some cases, signing these secret agreements can benefit an individual victim, even if it allows bad behavior to continue, said Gloria Allred, the high-profile L.A. attorney whose firm has negotiated confidential settlements  and who is representing some of Weinsteins accusers.

If she resolves it in a way thats positive for her and that she feels good about, then thats whats most important, said Allred, who has a reputation for litigating in the press when she feels its in her clients interest. And yes, it may mean that others may not know. But should it be mandated that no settlement should be confidential? We dont think its a good idea.

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Without confidentiality agreements, many companies and high-profile individuals will choose not to settle and instead take their chances in court, which is not right for every victim, she said.

The alternative is facing years of litigation and the risks inherent to that and the expense inherent to that, she said. Thats going to be hard on our clients.

In fact, there are already limits on confidentiality agreements, though individuals who sign them may not be aware  a fact that can make NDAs more effective in practice than they might be in theory.

Wayne Outten, a New York employment lawyer and co-founder of the nonprofit Workplace Fairness, said all such agreements, whether in a severance contract or a private settlement, allow victims to report harassment, discrimination and criminal activity to authorities.

No matter what somebody has signed, theyre free to go to the government, Outten said. Its a matter of public policy.

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For instance, employees can report alleged harassment to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, crime victims can file reports with the police and corporate whistleblowers can contact the Securities and Exchange Commission.

What's more, under California law, confidentiality agreements are not enforceable if they are attached to civil settlements involving some potential crimes, including felony sexual assault and child sex abuse.

In such a case, if a victim broke the confidentiality agreement, a court could reject a breach of contract lawsuit. Theres no law forbidding confidential settlements in matters that dont rise to the level of a felony, though there may be a push in Sacramento next year to bar such settlements in harassment cases too following the Weinstein scandal.

Still, regardless of various exceptions and even in cases where an agreement might be invalidated by a court, people who sign nondisclosure agreements tend to abide by them.

An attorney can say a confidentiality agreement is not enforceable, but a victim might say, I dont care, Im not saying anything, said Assemblyman Mark Stone (D-Scotts Valley), who authored a 2016 law that added child sex abuse to the list of potential crimes where a confidential civil settlement is not allowed.

Attorneys say many individuals who sign them believe an NDA applies more broadly than it truly does.

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Ive seen plenty of confidentiality agreements that dont mention any exceptions whatsoever, whether ones that are agreed to or that the law recognizes, said Sherman Oaks litigator David Krause-Leemon. I dont know if the intent is to create a perception that there are no exceptions, but from a defense point of view youd be better off if the plaintiff had that perception.

That can make someone hesitant to speak even when theyre allowed to.

Los Angeles consumer attorney Brian Kabateck said hes sometimes had trouble getting people who have signed NDAs to testify in court  something such agreements generally must allow.

Theyll avoid service of the subpoena. Theyre terrified, he said, and with good reason. Breaking a nondisclosure agreement can be expensive.

The agreements often spell out the financial consequences of a breach, and the recipient of the settlement could have to pay damages that exceed the amount received initially.

Still, its rare for companies to take action when nondisclosure agreements are broken, in part because it would look bad, said Helene Wasserman, a partner at Littler Mendelson, a law firm that specializes in representing companies in employment matters.

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Ive never had a client say, We know this person breached confidentiality, lets go after them, she said. I cant imagine many companies would want that kind of publicity. And those are the cases that would get publicity.

While such cases are rare, theyre not unheard of.

In one high-profile case, Bill Cosby last year sued one of his accusers for breach of contract, saying she had violated a decade-old nondisclosure agreement by agreeing to be interviewed by local prosecutors in Pennsylvania.

Andrea Constand had sued Cosby in 2005, accusing him of drugging and sexually assaulting her. The two reached a settlement, complete with a confidentiality agreement, the following year. In 2015, after numerous women came forward to accuse Cosby, investigators with the Montgomery County district attorneys office re-interviewed Constand.

Cosbys lawyers argued that Constand had no legal obligation to cooperate with investigators because she is a Canadian citizen and that her cooperation amounted to a breach of the confidentiality agreement.

A federal judge threw out that claim, saying a confidentiality agreement that forbids speaking to law enforcement is not enforceable.

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But Kabateck said that the fact that Constand was even threatened with a breach of contract suit illustrates why some victims  even when protected by the law  are unwilling to step forward.

It has a chilling effect, he said.
Cosmo Goss, pictured in 2012, had been planning to leave One Off Hospitality Group for a new restaurant, Pacific Standard Time, a deal now under review. ((Alex Garcia / Chicago Tribune))

Cosmo Goss, executive chef of five Publican-branded businesses, has been fired by parent company One Off Hospitality, months after an incident that violated a staff members privacy and respect, according to a statement from the Chicago-based restaurant group.

Another employee, Antonio Molina, general manager of Publican Anker in Wicker Park, also had his employment terminated by One Off in relation to the incident. Eater first reported the news.

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The firings can be traced to an employee at a One Off restaurant sharing an inappropriate photo of a coworker without her permission among staff. That happened in late 2016, according to separate statements by both One Off and Goss. But the incident didnt come to light until early this fall when the subject of the photo reported it to company human resources, and One Off started an investigation immediately, according to a One Off spokeswoman.

The employee who shared the photo was fired earlier this year for unrelated personal performance issues. Neither the fired employee or subject of the photo were managers.

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After a three-week-long outside investigation, One Off removed Goss and Molina from their positions. Goss, who helmed the five Publican-branded kitchens in One Offs stable of restaurants, was not allowed in any of the companys Wicker Park properties (Big Star, Doves Luncheonette, Violet Hour, Publican Anker), during the investigation.

(Goss) thought it was a fleeting incident, said the spokeswoman in an interview, but the reason this is so concerning is he was executive chef. He didnt report the incident, or fire the person (who took and shared the photo). He discussed it with other employees.

A One Off employee for seven years  he was named executive chef last year  Goss is also a co-author of the recently released cookbook, Cheers to The Publican, alongside One Off partner and chef Paul Kahan. Goss is no longer part of the books promotional tour.

The old mantra is that its just kitchen culture, that its just the way it is. It is actively counterproductive to perpetuate that, said the spokeswoman. This is a societal issue, and as you see examples of people stepping up in other industries, it makes one optimistic that this pervasive culture can be changed.

One Off already mandates harassment training for managers, but will be examining its employee training and handbooks.

In his statement, Goss admits to treating the incident of viewing the inappropriate photo as a fleeting moment that was wholly unprofessional and unacceptable. He wrote that he is deeply sorry to the woman portrayed in the photograph and the other individuals whom these consequences have affected.

Goss was already planning his exit from One Off for a venture announced in February with Erling Wu-Bower, formerly chef of Nico Osteria, another One Off restaurant  their project is called Pacific Standard Time. One Off, a partner in that restaurant, is supporting the project; for now, says the spokeswoman, the partnership and operating agreement are under evaluation and Goss position is under review.

Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. >

As for that project, Goss wrote in his statement, My partners and I will bring an overdue perspective with a strict set of standards to our next venture. These standards include professional, human resources counsel, and continual training in areas of sexual harassment, hostile work environment and all-encompassing sensitivity  for all employees.

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One Offs news comes amidst increased scrutiny of workplace sexual harassment via the viral #MeToo hashtag movement, started last week in response to allegations leveled against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

On Monday, chef John Besh of New Orleans, resigned from the company he built, Besh Restaurant Group, after 25 women came forward with sexual harassment allegations against him, other managers and the company for fostering a culture of sexual harassment, reported Brett Anderson for the Times-Picayune after an eight-month investigation.

This is the first complaint weve heard of this nature, said One Offs spokeswoman.

We want to acknowledge the severity of these actions, and want this person to feel that her story is being heard. Just because youre beloved and a rising star doesnt mean youre not held accountable just like everyone else.

jbhernandez@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @joeybear85
As a child, Anthony Stefani regularly spoke with his father, restaurateur Phil Stefani, about bringing Rome back to Chicago. Enter Bar Cargo, the younger Stefanis debut in the family business, which will showcase Romes signature pizza style.

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Noted for its crispy bottom crust, fluffy interior and creative toppings, Roman-style pizza is not new to Chicago  the renowned pizzeria Bonci opened its first outpost in the West Loop over the summer  but Stefani hopes to offer a different experience at his River North spot, which opens Nov. 2.

We really want to show the authenticity, said Stefani, managing partner. Its really the crust and the dough that were selling.

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What sets these pizzas apart from others, like the thin crust Neapolitan-styles found at other Stefani properties?

According to Stefani, the dough sees a 72- to 96-hour rise, which results in the light-as-air base. To perfect this recipe and to train staff in proper technique, the Stefanis have tapped 1998 World Pizza Champion Massimo Moresi from Rome. In addition to the crust, Moresi will develop a number of toppings, from a spicy arrabiata sauce with zucchini to pepperoni, seldom seen in Rome itself. Unlike Bonci, which sells pizza by weight, Bar Cargo serves its 12 pizzas in piccolo (small, serves one or two people; $14 to $18) and grande (large, serves three or four; $26 to $32) sizes.

Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. >

Although the Roman-style pizza is the focal point, Bar Cargo will also serve salads, pastas and a number of arancini, traditional and reimagined (like one made with pasta carbonara).

Cocktails will be Italian-inspired, and a rotation of 35 Italian craft beers will be offered, like Birrificio Italianos La Fleurette, a spiced ale. An outdoor patio will be open next year, with plans for a walk-up, takeout window in the works.

Named after the shipping containers in which the restaurants two Castelli Forni ovens, special flour blend, cheeses and tomatoes were imported straight from Rome, Bar Cargos decor is inspired by industrial transportation elements. The 5,000-square-foot space is flush against another Stefani property (Flamingo Rum Club) and is decorated with industrial lighting, reclaimed wood and colorful steel sheets throughout. Two shipping containers are also incorporated into the design, fitted to house the kitchen and part of the dining room, which seats 125. The outdoor patio will seat an additional 25.

Bar Cargo, 605 N. Wells St., 312-929-0065, barcargo.com

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gwong@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @GraceWong630

[ Bonci serves Roman-style pizza on light-as-air crust ]

[ We tried peas and mayo pizza, because someone had to ]

[ Chicago's Best Pizzas ]
Penny Pollack, who has been Chicago Magazines dining editor since 1994, is retiring.

Pollacks career with Chicago Magazine goes back 30 years, when she was hired as a part-time dining assistant. As editor, she created Morsels, one of the very first online dining reports, and later created the electronic newsletter The Dish.

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About the only thing that hasnt changed on the restaurant scene in 30 years is my appetite, Pollack said. Nothing more exciting than going to a new restaurant  Gibsons Italia opened last night  or spotting a trend  kale, Brussels sprouts, burrata, community tables.

In a statement, Pollack said she relished the opportunity to take a whack at the pile of books on my nightstand and finally sort out my contacts on my iPhone.

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Presumably pizza is part of her post-editing plans; Pollack is a huge fan of pizza and co-wrote Everybody Loves Pizza with Jeff Ruby, a Chicago Magazine contributor. And Pollack said she looked forward to shedding her anonymity at long last.

Halloween, you ask? she joked. Im going as Phil Vettel.

pvettel@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @PhilVettel

[ Chicagos retiring dining editor, 70, on DIY trends, anonymity, and Italian beef ]
Rick Bayless, chef and co-owner of Frontera Grill and several other Chicago restaurants, says the culinary training program will provide a pipeline into cooking jobs (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

The Hatchery, a food incubator in East Garfield announced over the summer, officially broke ground today. The 67,000-square-foot and 34-million-dollar project aims to provide logistical support for new food-related businesses. It also hopes to employ 150 in its first year.

If that weren't enough, The Hatchery just announced that it will offer a culinary training program for low-income high school and college age students run by Rick Bayless.

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The program will cost a "nominal fee," according to the press release, and will offer basic culinary skills, like knife work and cooking techniques. It will also provide a "pipeline to internships in the kitchens of Chicago's premiere restaurant groups." Names mentioned include such heavy hitters as Paul Kahan, Grant Achatz and Stephanie Izard, among many others.

According to the release, Bayless believes the program can provide opportunities for some of Chicago's poorest residents, while also helping local restaurants find more cooks. I believe our city is rich with untapped resources," says Bayless. "If we can develop a way to cultivate them, both our restaurants and our community will be the better for it.

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The Hatchery plans to open in the fall of 2018, and the culinary program is set to launch at the same time.

nkindelsperger@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @nickdk
Star Jones speaks onstage at Gabrielle's Angel Foundation's Angel Ball at Cipriani Wall Street on Monday in New York City. (Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images)

TV personality Star Jones said Monday she is not talking about her engagement to Ricardo Lugo, who recently worked in the Cook County States Attorneys Office.

Were engaged, Jones told Us Weekly at the Angel Ball in New York City. Not talking about it.  Hes wonderful. Im happy and thats all anybody outside of my family needs to know.

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Jones, who used to co-host The View, teased the engagement in a June Instagram post. There appears to be a heatwave going across the Midwest. The extra heat is from the sun shining on my heart. The bells of happiness are ringing right now, she wrote to accompany a picture of herself flashing a sparkly ring.

Lugo was employed as an assistant state's attorney from April to August, according to a States Attorneys Office spokesperson. He was one of 17 prosecutors laid off because of county budget issues.

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Jones, 55, was married to Al Reynolds from 2004 to 2008.

tswartz@tribpub.com

Twitter @tracyswartz

[ RELATED: Star Jones trains Cook County prosecutors, but fiance cant make it ]

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George Gershwin penned "Porgy and Bess" and dozens of other American classics, all of which are being restored by the University of Michigan. (AP)

Nine years ago, a University of Michigan alumnus reached out to his alma mater with a proposal that stands to change our understanding of American music.

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Todd Gershwin, great-nephew of brothers George and Ira Gershwin, cold-called the school of music, recalls Mark Clague, a professor at the School of Music, Theatre & Dance.

He said: The family is talking about how to curate the legacy of my uncles  we want to be able to get somebody to take on this project.

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By this project the Gershwin descendant meant preserving the brothers legacy via state-of-the-art editions of their complete oeuvre. For though Gershwin masterpieces such as Porgy and Bess, An American in Paris, Rhapsody in Blue and a deep library of songs are performed, studied and revered around the world, various versions of the scores contain errors, inconsistencies, missing music and other flaws that cry out to be corrected.

How could music so famous be so flawed?

For starters, the work of great composers often requires intensive study and scholarship to produce scores that are as close to the creators intentions as possible. Compositions often are written in haste, revised, misprinted or otherwise published in less-than-ideal form. Scholars, for example, to this day debate phrasings, note choices, melodic ornamentation and other details in the works of Beethoven, who continuously revised his manuscripts with a tangle of overlapping hand markings.

In the case of George Gershwin, the issue was magnified by the sheer pace and profusion of his work, the man moving briskly from one Broadway show or concert piece to the next and spending little time finalizing publishable editions. That Gershwin died tragically young, in 1937 at age 38, of a brain tumor compounded the problem, denying him opportunity to oversee improved editions of his scores.

To its lasting credit, the University of Michigan embraced the challenge from alumnus Todd Gershwin, establishing the Gershwin Initiative to begin work on The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition. To date, An American in Paris has been completed and performed; Rhapsody in Blue is scheduled for publication in 2018; and a concert test reading of a performance edition of Porgy and Bess will take place at the school, in Ann Arbor, on Feb. 17, 2018 (a premiere of the new performance edition at the Metropolitan Opera in New York is planned for the 2019-20 season, with the critical edition several years in the offing).

No Gershwin work holds greater promise for this process of restoration than Porgy, for Gershwin himself saw a complete version of his masterwork only once: opening night in a Boston preview on Sept. 30, 1935. Running more than three hours, the piece was deemed too long by producers and was cut in Boston and ever after.

They emasculated it, Mitch Miller  who played oboe in the orchestra  told me in 1989.

When the opera opened at the Alvin Theatre in New York on Oct. 10, 1935, the critics were not kind.

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Gershwin does not even know what an opera is, wrote Virgil Thomson, with monumental condescension. Critic Paul Rosenfeld deemed the work an aggrandized musical show, and Samuel Chotzinoff dismissed it as a hybrid.

Why did Gershwin face such hostility for a piece eventually recognized as the quintessential American opera, even in its truncated form?

The main reason was that they thought: How dare a popular Jewish songwriter write an opera? How dare he write serious works? Miller said.

The critics did the same thing with Georges American in Paris and the Concerto in F. They went out of their way to destroy George  they had a field day. All the musicians in the orchestra were very depressed, because here was a guy who tried to say something differently, and no one was ready to listen.

Indeed, Gershwin was intertwining jazz and classical idioms with an unprecedented level of sophistication and complexity. If Rhapsody in Blue of 1924 was his opening salvo in merging these worlds, Porgy was its apotheosis.

The fact that the show had an all-black cast was part of it, Todd Duncan  who originated the role of Porgy  told me in 1989. Remember, that was 54 years ago, a time when Negroes werent allowed into this theater or that, into this church or that restaurant. It was a sick time, but I still dont think that was the only reason.

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George Gershwin was a great success  he had never had a failure, but he had been Tin Pan Alley, he had been Broadway, and now he was coming out with something that he insisted was opera, and many of the erudite simply said: George cant do that.

They thought: This cannot be opera. George thinks it is, but it isnt, and so they went about proving it. That, plus the fact that youve got a double problem going there  a Jewish composer and Negro themes  and thats a lot of ammunition.

Gershwin suffered at this response to the most ambitious work of his career.

He was hurt, because he had worked on Porgy so hard, he had done it entirely by himself and was thrilled about that, Frances Gershwin Godowsky, his last surviving sibling, told me in 1998, when she was 91 (she died in 1999). He even had a special desk built for writing that opera, it meant so much to him.

Not until 1989 did the world hear a complete recording of this music  or as complete as was known at the time. Simon Rattle conducted a cast that performed Porgy at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera in a revelatory reading, restoring vast swaths of music to a piece that is harder to play than (Alban Bergs) Wozzeck, and yet (performers) do so from fairly simply written-out jazz materials, he told me.

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For the February concert reading, presented by the school in conjunction with the University Musical Society, professionals and students will perform all the music known to exist for Porgy. Studying this material has been a revelation to those involved with it.

I think it will change performances of the piece going forward, says Clague. People will be able to trust the performance score in a way they havent. Now its a score thats almost totally in tatters. It will invite rethinking Porgy and Bess.

What have Clague and colleagues learned so far?

This is our third pass through the entire score, says Clague, who has several students working as editorial assistants in crafting a performance edition that stretches nearly 800 pages.

Ive been stunned at how precise and detailed George is. You would think that the reputation of George as a jazz guy, and also how fast he was working, that the (notation) would be incomplete.

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What I found is that the manuscripts are impeccable, visually and in terms of precision of notation. Theyre also visually beautiful, because George was a visual artist.

Indeed, Gershwins painted portraits of Arnold Schoenberg, Jerome Kern, himself and others point to a man of multiple gifts.

The calligraphy of even the section headings is gorgeous, adds Clague, referring to Gershwins Porgy manuscript.

As for musical matters, Clague notes that the new editions will reconcile divergences between Porgys piano-vocal and orchestral scores: During the orchestration process, writes Clague in an email, Gershwin adjusted the music throughout, creating dozens of discrepancies, so the two dont match.

In addition, the new editions will include a critical line of dialogue from Bess that had been cut; a doubling of the number of first violins, adding to the melodic sweep of the work; and an onstage band playing picnic-scene music that long has been overlooked.

All these Porgy revelations, and others, encompass decades of research by retired Library of Congress music specialist Wayne Shirley, whos working on the critical edition.

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Add to this all the effort that will go into editing the Gershwins Broadway shows and other material, and Clague estimates it will take three to four decades to finish the job (though, in a way, its never really finished, as new scholarship continuously raises new questions).

Yet theres something quite timely about the Gershwins oeuvre in general  and Porgy, in particular. For the Gershwins dared to transcend social barriers that remain contested to this day, their work quite applicable to this moment in America, observes Clague.

Their ability to see past boundaries of black and white, of Jewish and Christian, these social things that are dividing us today  they either broke through naturally or didnt even pay attention to, says Clague.

The significance of this will be examined during symposiums exploring the place of Porgy and Bess in our culture and our times (occurring during the Porgy weekend).

Lots of the energy of Porgy and Bess came from mixing elements that other people hadnt thought of, adds Clague.

We want to look at fault lines in our culture in creating dialogue across those fault lines.

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And what an appealing way to do so  via a newly restored Porgy and Bess.

For details on the concert reading of Porgy and Bess, visit www.ums.org/porgy

Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.

hreich@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @howardreich

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Earlier this month, Ta-Nehisi Coates appeared on The Late Show, where he seemed to rattle Stephen Colbert by refusing to say that he had hope for the United States. As Coates rightly pointed out, hes not the guy to ask for that promise of redemption, instead suggesting that if one needs spiritual balm, a pastor or friends would be a better place to start.

Black Ensemble Theater has long felt like a cultural church, and its also one of the most welcoming venues in town. So it makes sense that those seeking hope in the post-Obama era can find some glimmers of it in founder Jackie Taylors latest show, The Black Renaissance (A Musical Resistance Against Racism).

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The title contains echoes of the Harlem Renaissance, but while the show includes shout-outs to numerous African-American politicians, writers, activists and artists, the cast of 13 mostly embodies the story of black people in America who didnt necessarily make it into the history books. Through several original songs by Taylor (who also directs), The Black Renaissance traces resistance and rebirth, from the enslavement of Africans whose labor and pain built the nation, to Black Lives Matter and the disturbing open embrace of white supremacy by our present leaders.

The show opens with a clip of President Barack Obamas stirring call for unity at the 2016 Democratic National Convention  and quickly shifts to an image of our current president with his Make America Great Again cap. This suggests the framework of Coates recent collection of essays, We Were Eight Years in Power, in which the promise of the Obama presidency was followed by racist backlash  just as the gains of the eight years of the post-Civil War Reconstruction led to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and white terrorism as a tool of social and political control.

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There is a lot of power and wit and defiance blended together in this show. But as of yet, it feels like Taylor hasnt quite worked out the balance between historical recitation and musical celebration and catharsis. Some of the observations on racisms toxic roots and lingering effects on American life feel a tad generic, when specificity might help them land with even more power.

Still, there are also snippets that let us see how the institution of slavery has shaped racial narratives and relationships throughout our history. A section from the memoir of Benin-born Olaudah Equiano anatomizes the difference between his experiences as a slave of African tribes and as a slave in colonial South Carolina. Equiano notes that, while he was kept separate from his African enslavers, he lived much as they did, whereas his life in America exposed him to unimaginable brutality at the hands of the slavers designed to remind black people of their dehumanization.

That dehumanization, Taylor shows, was deliberately crafted to turn African-Americans against each other. One of the most compelling segments finds the cast in conversation about the violent deaths of so many young black people in Chicago. While deflecting the lazy shorthand of black-on-black crime, they lay out the complexities of centuries of inequality and despair  what one musical number calls The Slave Syndrome Blues that create the cyclone of violence. They also provide a short list of practical approaches (from gun control to training in skilled trades) to pulling at-risk kids from the center of that cyclone.

Wendell Jacksons performance as the elder of the group serves as a reminder of past racial iniquities and as a lifeline to the future. A section where the cast takes turns breaking it down by reciting a litany of tone-deaf racist statements (such as I dont see color) has sharp-elbowed sardonic wit to spare, reminding us that even white allies have a long way to go in confronting institutional racism.

Taylors score, which has hints of everything from soul to gospel to reggae (the latter in the spirited Pull It Out by the Root) gets supple support from musical director Robert Reddrick and three accompanying musicians. At times the internal momentum in the show stops to give us, for example, definitions of other isms that divide us, which make it feel more like a college symposium on institutional bias.

But perhaps in dark days, a defiant insistence on looking for renaissance is the best resistance going. Late in the show, the words of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf  the first woman elected head of an African nation  flash on the rear wall. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough. Taylor isnt afraid to dream big, and despite some narrative hiccups, The Black Renaissance combines those dreams with some important historic truths.

Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.

ctc-arts@chicagotribune.com

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Review: The Black Renaissance (A Musical Resistance Against Racism) (2.5 stars)

When: Through Nov. 26

Where: Black Ensemble Theater, 4450 N. Clark St.

Running time: 2 hours

Tickets: $55-$65 at 773-769-4451 or www.blackensemble.org

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When Jose Guadalupe Olivares walked into his Harvard University admissions interview, he was hit with a million memories at once. The first-generation student remembered being told he had to be in special education classes because he did not speak English, and being picked on as one of the few Mexican-Americans at his Calumet City, Ill. school.



He had expressed those struggles in a poem he wrote for Louder Than a Bomb, a poetry festival held by Young Chicago Authors (YCA), a non-profit that encourages youth to express themselves through creative writing and performance, which he joined in his early teens.

"When I was young, the fact that I spoke Spanish was my weakness; the food that we ate at home was also my weakness, and so I tried to cover it up by just being as good as possible," recalled Olivares, now a marketing manager and programming coordinator at YCA. "As I began writing, I realized I could be a part of a loving community. It didn't have to be me against the world, it was a community trying to build a new world for everyone we love."

And so at his Harvard interview, Olivares read that poem, which landed the son of immigrants from Jalisco, Mexico, a spot at one of the worlds most prestigious universities.



YCA played a huge part into getting me to Harvard, because poetry became such a huge part of who I was, he said.



While at Harvard, Olivares found few Latinx professors and mentors he could turn to for guidance.





I realized that if I wanted to be a part of a community of Latinx artists, not just myself, but to foster an actual community of Latinx artists, I would have to be a part of creating those pathways, Olivares said.



Soon after graduating college, Olivares returned to YCA as a teaching artist and in February 2017, he assumed his current role, becoming the only Latino in his position with the organization.



That same month he coordinated Louder Than A bomba, a Chicago poetry slam featuring all Latinx performers.



It was such a beautiful thing to see how rich the artistic community is here in Chicago in terms of Latinx artists, he said. The response was overwhelming: Everyone in the audience was like, wow, Ive never been to anything like this before and I want more of this.



Continuing his commitment to fostering Latinx artists, Olivares helped to create YCA On the Block, in collaboration with Yollocalli, a youth initiative of the National Museum of Mexican Art that offers arts and culture programming to teens and young adults.

The goal of the program, which was inaugurated on October 13 at La Catrina Cafe, 1011 W. 18th St., is to build an artistic community that supports and encourages young Latinx writers, by coming to their neighborhoods and hosting free writing workshops every Friday from 6-8 p.m. for 8 weeks. Every other Friday, there will be an open mic to showcase the pieces crafted during the workshops.



I realized that if I wanted to be a part of a community of Latinx artists...to foster an actual community of Latinx artists, I would have to be a part of creating those pathways.  Jose Guadalupe Olivares

We are going to read poems and books by Latinx artists, use work that is bilingual, invite people who speak both English and Spanish or a mix of both and we are not going to make them translate, said Olivares. We want to allow them to tell their story in their words without having to explain themselves, he said.



Another goal of the program, Olivares said, is to find more artistic mentors for young Latinx writers and poets. Three young Louder Than a Bomb participants, Ken Munoz, Luis Carranza, and Vicky Peralta, will help lead the On the Block workshops, as they expand to Little Village, Cicero and Back Of The Yards.



The art of writing is so important because we want to foster in young people creativity, an instinct of empathy and the willingness to celebrate and honor the richness of the world, Olivares said. Writing gives you a space to grow. It opens the door to feel: We can be sensitive, kind, mad, he added.



Olivares book, Citizen Illegal is set for publication with Haymarket Books year. His poems revolve around the feelings and meanings of being Mexican-American.



How beautiful is it for someone who grew up with Vicente Fernandez to be able to celebrate that in writing, through art, as opposed to having to feel shameful or having to change it? he said.







@LAURA_N_ROD/Larodriguez@hoyllc.com
State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, who signed the letter outlining rampant sexual harassment in Illinois politics, said she plans to file a resolution this week urging lawmakers in Springfield to look at  and address  the culture that allows for such incidents to occur. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)

An open letter outlining rampant sexual harassment in Illinois politics began circulating Monday and garnered signatures from more than 160 women and men vowing to demand better.

Every industry has its own version of the casting couch, the letter reads. Illinois politics is no exception.

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The letter details harassment that female candidates, consultants, fundraisers, lobbyists and others have endured in the course of political work in Illinois.

It looks like a male legislator  a chamber leader  asking a female staffer out to dinner under the guise of offering mentorship, then proceeding to explain his open marriage to her and ask if shes single.

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It looks like a committee chairman, with the power to kill her bill, telling a female staffer nice ass as she walks through the hotel hallways fresh from her morning workout, the forced intimacy of staying in the same hotels leaving little room for privacy or refuge.

It looks like the candidate who slides his hands across the body of his fundraising consultant during call time. Who calls and texts her in the middle of the night, and refuses to pay her what she is owed because his advances are rebuked.

And so on.

State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz, who signed the letter, filed a resolution Tuesday urging lawmakers in Springfield to look at  and address  the culture that allows for such incidents to occur.

I think we need to talk about it publicly under the dome, she told me Monday evening. We have to kind of hit the reset button, if you will, and create zero tolerance for this behavior. We can do better.

The signatures arent publicly visible, but an administrator told me 162 people had signed by Tuesday afternoon.

Katelynd Duncan, founder of political fundraising organization KJD Strategies, is among those who signed the open letter. She also shared some of her harassment experiences on a private Illinois Say No More Facebook page.

A lot of us felt like it was just us  we were being singled out because we were young or we were alone or we were single, Duncan told me. This demonstrates solidarity that theres not a woman in this industry we know who hasnt had this experience. Its a testament to how long weve been experiencing this in the shadows and behind closed doors and keeping it to ourselves.

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A similar letter alleging rampant sexual harassment in Californias legislature was signed by more than 140 women last week. On Monday, the state hired two outside firms to investigate the allegations.

I think Harvey Weinstein has triggered this combustion of women coming out and finally speaking about the pink elephant in the room, Feigenholtz said. As a person who wants to see more women in government, more women in the policy arena, this is very painful. These women are the future and to see what theyre going through  its some very painful stuff.

The letter demands better.

This election cycle, we need to commit to challenging every elected official, every candidate, and every participant in our democratic process who is culpable, it reads. Illinois deserves responsible stewards of power.

House Speaker Michael Madigan issued a statement in response to the letter Tuesday, saying members of the House are required to develop and enforce sexual harassment policies for their offices.

However, he wrote, we can and should do more to ensure no individual is the target of sexual harassment in the Capitol or anywhere else.

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Because harassment thrives in silence, we are continually working to eliminate all forms of harassment from our statehouse and our legislative offices. With this in mind, we will be advancing legislation that will require everyone  from legislators, to staff, to lobbyists  to complete yearly comprehensive sexual harassment training. We will also be requiring lobbyists develop and submit their own sexual harassment policies, just as legislators currently do.

In each of the explosive sexual harassment and sexual assault stories that have captured the public attention since Weinsteins downfall, weve tended to focus  rightly  on the dehumanizing, demoralizing effect of power players preying on their less powerful subordinates.

But we shouldnt ignore the equally dangerous chilling effect on womens professional success, particularly as were made aware just how many industries the harassment and assault cut across.

Women in politics are taught very early on there will be negative repercussions for speaking up, Duncan said. This type of behavior and this type of culture really deeply changes how women feel about themselves in the workplace, and they limit the opportunities they expose themselves to. You dont want to go out to dinner with candidate x, y or z. You dont want to stay out for drinks. You dont want to meet them at their house to pick up some papers.

You worry constantly about sending the wrong message, she continued. Thats whats really horrifying is how this has subtly informed all of our behaviors.

Its a reality her male counterparts, several of whom signed the open letter, dont have to grapple with, Duncan said.

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When have our male colleagues been made to feel totally humiliated and physically threatened and made to smile and laugh it off? she said. Over and over and over again?

Feigenholtz said she takes the letter very personally.

These women are amazing, brilliant, successful, accomplished and powerful, she said. To even see one or two of them snuffed out  its horrifying.

The letter is a start.

We need to let people feel safe discussing this publicly instead of in the shadows, she said. The shadows are never a good place. People do much better with the truth.

hstevens@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @heidistevens13

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Kimberly Lowery and Shawn Uldridge wanted The Publishing House to feel like a home, not a hotel. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)

The rise of the West Loop has been largely rooted in its restaurants.

Finally, we have a place to sleep after filling the belly.

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Accommodations began to emerge in the West Loop three years ago, with the opening of Soho House, on Green Street. In recent months, the neighborhood has added a bed and breakfast with Australian roots and a hip, artsy Ace Hotel.

Up next are several more projects: a 119-room Nobu, expected to open next August; a 175-room Hoxton, slated for March 2019; a hotel from the Equinox fitness chain, also on deck for 2019; and a 16-story Hyatt, likely in 2020, that will largely be an extended-stay hotel serving the new McDonald's global headquarters being built on the site of Oprah's old Harpo Studios.

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Until then, here's a look at the two most recent additions.

Publishing House B&B

The Publishing House traces its roots to 2008, when Kimberly Lowery decided to rent out her Melbourne, Australia, home on a new website called Airbnb. By the time the first bookings arrived, Lowery was out of town, which left her husband, Shawn Uldridge, to handle the guests.

Uldridge wasn't sold on the idea at first. Why should they share their home with strangers? But he quickly became a convert.

"When people are traveling, they're in a good mood all the time," Uldridge said. "You get to see the city you live in through new eyes."

The Melbourne native was working as a stockbroker on the Australian exchange at the time, but the seeds were planted for his next act. By early 2013, he and Lowery, who grew up in Wisconsin, were living in Chicago and decided to launch a B&B. They initially looked for buildings along Milwaukee Avenue from downtown through Logan Square. But the building where they landed  16,000 square feet at the corner of Washington Boulevard and May Street, formerly the Museum of Holography  was ideal.

Uldridge and Lowery bought the property for $2.35 million, then spent another $4 million in renovations. The result is an eclectic, quirky and cozy 11-room B&B in a neighborhood where a B&B would have been unthinkable 10 years ago. In the basement, the couple opened The Press Room wine bar.

The B&B's third-floor communal space is the heart of the action, boasting comfortable furniture, a fireplace, a piano for guests to dabble ("Not used as much as I'd like," Uldridge said) and broad windows that both flood the room with natural light and offer a grand view of the Chicago skyline. It's elegant and ornately funky, which is little wonder  Lowery ran a vintage furniture store when the couple lived Down Under.

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Fun accouterments fill the rooms: a pink claw-foot tub (accompanied by a massive shower), a century-old sink rescued from a general store in northwest Wisconsin and, in vivid green letters, the words MINT MOSS on one wall. (Lowery's store was called Mint & Moss. The ampersand disappeared during the move.) Much of the furniture was sourced over 18 months at flea markets in Texas, Massachusetts, Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri and Tennessee.

Why put in so much effort?

"So it didn't look like a hotel," Uldridge said.

Uldridge and Lowery live on-site, in a three-story space that includes a handsome kitchen, where they make breakfast for guests each morning. It's also their personal kitchen, which they make their own again by sliding shut noise-canceling glass doors.

Since the B&B opened in June, they've had guests from Tuscaloosa, Ala., Austin, Texas and Cincinnati. The entire property has already been booked for five weddings next year (the cost to take over the entire property ranges between $2,750 and $3,250 a night).

From their front door, Uldridge and Lowery have watched the forthcoming Hyatt rise a block away.

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"The block will be transformed," Uldridge said. "I love it. If you've got 200 long-stay rooms and we have 11 individual rooms, that can only help us, not hurt us."

108 N. May St., 312-554 5857, publishinghousebnb.com. Rates range between $169 and $325 a night.

Ace Hotel

Yes, there are guitars. And turntables. It wouldn't be an Ace Hotel otherwise.

An early progenitor of the charming "lifestyle" hotel concept, the Ace brand has been one of the most influential in American hospitality during the last 20 years, all the way down to its in-room guitars, turntables and locally sourced record collections. Ace finally opened in Chicago, its ninth location, in July.

Ace hotels are mostly built in existing historic buildings, but the chance to sit across from Chicago's Google headquarters in Fulton Market was too much to resist. The result is the largest ground-up construction in the chain.

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At first, it's oddly simple: white, black, glass, steel, vertical lines. But when Claire Henry, whose title at Ace is "cultural engineer" (yes, really) states the inspiration, it makes sense: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the German architect whose sleek, powerful style dots downtown Chicago.

The theory behind the design, Henry said, was "if Mies were to create a hotel today, what would it look like?"

The result is hip (of course), sleek and unafraid to embrace the color black. Though much of the interior is dark, it's also long on reflective surfaces to brighten the space.

At 159 rooms, it's a decent-sized hotel, but midsized for the Ace brand. The rooms adhere to an urban motif, with wood, metal and concrete ceilings that were pressed with plywood for an unfinished texture.

"We're nothing if not intentional," Henry said.

A seventh-floor bar, Waydown, is open to the public. The bar, named for a song by Illinois native John Prine, is one of the better spots for a post-work drink, with its outdoor patio and skyline view.

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Right off the hotel lobby is the dining room for City Mouse, a restaurant from the team behind the Logan Square eatery Giant.

Keep in mind that only about one-third of the guestrooms have guitars and one-third have turntables. If you want either, make sure to note your request when booking.

To help stave off the looming winter doldrums, Ace has announced a 20-percent-off sale that runs Oct. 27 to April 8 (blackout dates apply). Rooms must be booked by Friday.

311 N. Morgan St., 312-764-1919, acehotel.com/chicago. Rates start at $199 in low season (December to April) and $299 in high season (May to November).

jbnoel@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @hopnotes

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FBI agents are talking to Des Plaines police about a Facebook post in which a Des Plaines man allegedly threatened to lynch U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson.

Special Agent Garrett Croon said Tuesday that FBI agents are aware of a social media posting generated in Des Plaines, IL and are in contact with local authorities"  potentially raising the stakes for 54-year-old Tom Keevers, who denies posting the racist message on Facebook last week.

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Keevers on Monday told Chicago Inc. that he was set up by a stranger who created a phony Facebook post attributed to him and then shared it on Twitter, where it quickly went viral. But he gave conflicting accounts, at times saying he had never threatened to lynch Wilson and at other times saying he could not remember what he wrote in a since-deleted thread about the congresswoman, while insisting the post appeared to him to be a harmless joke.

Wilson has been in public fight with the White House since giving a damaging account of a phone call President Donald Trump made to Myeshia Johnson, the grieving widow of Army Sgt. La David Johnson.

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Des Plaines police said Monday that they were investigating the post, which reads Need ten good men to help carry out a lynching. Must have own horse and saddle. Rope will be provided.

Tuesdays FBI statement pointedly says the post was generated in Des Plaines, a line that Croon stood by when told that Keevers denies authoring the post.

Keevers did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Threatening a member of Congress is a federal crime that can carry a sentence of up to five years in prison.

kjanssen@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kimjnews

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The inspector general for Chicago Public Schools found that dozens of employees who were barred from the district found working in new jobs at city charter and contract schools last year. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

More than 160 Chicago Public Schools employees who were barred from the district because of alleged abuse, misconduct or poor performance were found working in new jobs at city charter and contract schools last year, according to a report from the district's inspector general.

The list included three workers who were fired or resigned and blocked from being re-hired at CPS because of sexual abuse accusations, according to the report, which was released Tuesday. Twenty-two were put on a "Do Not Hire" list "due to improper corporal punishment or physical abuse of students," according to the report.

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Nearly 80 others were blocked from returning to the district due to incompetence or violating school rules. That included a list of probationary teachers who were blocked from future employment at CPS because of poor performance.

The 163 unidentified employees  98 of them teachers  represented a small fraction of the workforce at the city's publicly funded but independently operated charter and contract schools, the reported noted.

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But Inspector General Nicholas Schuler's office also found that CPS had no system for those schools to determine if their potential employees had been blacklisted by CPS with the "Do Not Hire" designation. Despite preliminary steps taken to fix the problem, the IG's office said CPS has not finalized a policy on how to handle such situations.

The report did not name schools that hired the former district employees. Officials from three of the city's largest charter school operators either declined to comment on Schuler's report or said their schools conduct criminal background checks but don't have access to CPS' list of prohibited employees.

Kelley Quinn, spokeswoman for the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, said in a statement that "charter schools have not had access to the Do Not Hire list, but are required to run independent background checks for all staff, which they have done."

"We also look forward to working with the district to ensure charter public schools have timely access to the Do Not Hire list in the future." Quinn said.

A district spokesman said CPS conducts background checks for more than half of all charter and contract operators. In those cases, job candidates agree to share whether they're blocked from working at CPS.

Schuler's office said CPS is "developing a protocol" for alerting independently run schools of job candidates who are prohibited from working in the district. The IG said CPS also hopes to cover current charter and contract school employees as well.

It's not clear how many employees on the Do Not Hire list are still on the job at charters or contract schools. The IG's office reached its conclusions after reviewing a list of charter and contract school employees from last winter.

The three school workers accused of sex abuse are no longer working at the charters that hired them, the IG said.

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"The charter data that we asked for was effective in December of last year," Schuler said in an interview. "It's a snapshot date in December of last year. Therefore, we're unable to say exactly how many of these people in the (group of) 163 are still at the charters today."

One challenge, Schuler noted, is that the law allows charter schools "considerable latitude" on their hiring decisions.

State law prohibits schools from hiring candidates who have been convicted of certain criminal offenses. CPS also elects to bar a range of other offenders from being hired, though charter schools are not required to follow suit.

"Although the Board decides not to hire those individuals, it does not have a statutory basis to require charter schools to defer to the Board's conclusions about the risks presented by those individuals," Schuler's office said.

jjperez@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @PerezJr

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Motorists stopping at the Prairie View rest area on Interstate 57 near Monee, Ill., say the accommodations are fine though the bathrooms could be updated and that truckers need more slots for their rigs. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune) (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

The state of Illinois is considering how to rehab, or possibly close, some state rest areas, and has even launched a public survey about travelers' likes and dislikes of the Interstate highway stops  drawing thousands of responses so far.

"Many of our rest areas have reached a point where it's time to evaluate their future," said Illinois Transportation Secretary Randy Blankenhorn, in a statement.

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The state has received nearly 4,500 responses to its survey in less than two weeks, and roadside restrooms have proved to be a popular topic.

Many of the state's 30 public rest areas and 11 welcome centers on highways throughout Illinois are 30-40 years old, said Illinois Department of Transportation spokeswoman Kelsea Gurski. They are open 24 hours a day and have restroom facilities, picnic areas, maps and security cameras, along with parking for recreational vehicles and commercial trucks.

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They offer a green, parklike alternative to retail locations such as fast-food outlets along the highway.

"As they reach the end of their useful life, we want to know how best to meet the needs of the traveling public  what features are valued by the public," said Gurski. She said this will help the state develop plans to figure out what do with them in the next five to 20 years.

IDOT spokeswoman Gianna Urgo said in an email that the survey will be part of a comprehensive rest area study to analyze the existing system. She said a schedule for when rest stops may be rehabilitated cannot be determined until the end of the entire study, which will look at the costs of maintaining the rest areas compared to the services they provide.

This will include analyzing the survey results, documenting existing rest area services, identifying other available facilities, collecting traffic volumes and parking use, interviewing the trucking industry, collecting fatigue-related crash data and talking with other states to identify all possible options, Urgo said.

"Once the data has been collected and analyzed, strategies can be made about the future of the rest area system," she wrote in an email.

Urgo said the survey, announced Oct. 11, received 4,417 responses as of Tuesday morning. The state will keep taking responses at idot.illinois.gov through Sunday, Oct. 29. Paper copies of the surveys are available at some rest areas or can be mailed upon request by calling 402-399-1405.

The 20-question survey asks travelers about the importance of family restrooms with diaper-changing stations, water fountains, playgrounds, maps and historical information. It also asks if travelers would like private businesses to be developed at or adjacent to the areas, which current law does not permit.

Exterior of the Prairie View rest stop on southbound I-57 near Monee, Ill. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune )

Rest areas were constructed as part of the Interstate Highway System beginning in the late 1950s and modeled after roadside parks, according to the website restareahistory.org, which is maintained by Joanna Dowling, a Chicago-based historian. Following the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, each state was required to develop a master plan for rest area development. Illinois built most of its rest areas in the 1970s and mid-1980s, Urgo said.

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Closing rest areas and welcome centers is a growing trend in states seeking to address budget shortfalls, according to restareahistory.org. The road trip landscape has changed, with more fast-food chains and other retail destinations being built off highway ramps.

Ohio had 294 rest areas on its highways in 1961  today it has 89, said Ohio transportation department spokesman Matt Bruning. He said this was due to changing driver demand.

"The private sector has done more and more to develop rest areas around our exit ramps," Bruning said. "The need for a state-facilitated rest area has gone down."

A representative of the Metropolitan Planning Council said the Chicago-based public policy research group would prefer that the state not close any rest areas, or at least do a careful analysis before making any decisions.

"Rest areas provide a place for people to avoid crashes caused by fatigue," said Audrey Wennink, the council's transportation director. She said they also provide an opportunity for people to make calls and send texts while they are stopped, which is much safer than doing that while they are driving.

Out at the Prairie View Rest Stop southbound off I-57 in Monee, the reviews were mixed. Linda Tucker of Cicero stopped at the facility on a recent weekday to stretch her legs but would not use the women's bathroom, which was poorly lit by three overhead florescent lights. Two corners, one by the sinks to the left and the other at the end of the stalls to the right, were dark and smelled of stale urine, masked just barely by a floral scent.

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Though Tucker said she often passes the stop on her way to her son's home in Kankakee, she rarely uses the bathroom because it is "like a dungeon."

Tucker, 59, a grandmother of eight, joked with other travelers that they might be better off relieving themselves out of doors.

"Go out back where the dogs go," said Tucker. "It's much better."

She said the current human facilities are too dark and dingy. "It needs an upgrade."

A pay phone and a state map are seen at the Prairie View rest stop on southbound I-57 near Monee, Ill. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune )

There were additional problems discovered by a reporter during a recent visit, such as the condition of the indoor water fountains. One was out of order, while the other was covered in a dusty film with flies circling the spout.

Some travelers said they wished the facility supplied bags to pick up after dogs  some visitors bring their own bags, but others don't bother and let pets leave messes.

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Other visitors expressed gratitude for Prairie View, one of the state's oldest. It was built in 1970. The one-building facility is unremarkable, and its beige, brown and brick interior is a bit dull. But most travelers said they did not care; they just needed a place to use the restroom.

A couple of truckers at the stop expressed concern that there were not enough parking places for them to take federally required rest breaks.

"It's more trucks, more trucks every year more trucks  and we need more spots," said Peter Fornal, a truck driver out of Florida . "It's very hard for us to find a spot and take the rest, you know."

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The grounds behind the building are grassy and well-tended, with a few picnic tables and a playground. Just off the roaring interstate, the spot is an idyllic respite for travelers, said Jon Olsen, a retired Chicago paramedic.

Olsen, who regularly travels south to his winter home in Fort Myers Beach, Fla., in a recreational vehicle, stops frequently to let his two dogs take a walk. He said he had found that states farther south have closed many rest stops.

"I don't expect them to be perfect," Olsen said. "I'm just glad they haven't closed this one down."

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Additional reporting by Terrence James of the Chicago Tribune.

mwisniewski@chicagotribune.com

@marywizchicago

@essayolumhense
Adam Furtick is pictured with his wife, Gina, on their wedding day, March 11, 2016. (Family photo)

Adam Furtick was out with two friends on the night of Oct. 8, enjoying the rock band UFO at the Concord Music Hall on Milwaukee Avenue.

A father of three and an avid rock and metal music fan, the 34-year-old Furtick was driving home when his wife called. He told her he was lost, but when he figured it out, hed call me back, said Furticks wife, Gina, 33.

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It was the last time she talked to her husband, a man shed known much of her life and married last year.

Furtick was fatally shot early on Oct. 9 on Chicagos Southwest Side, about 16 miles from where he watched the concert hours earlier and not far from his familys suburban home.

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Two weeks later, no arrests have been made as police investigate if Furtick died in a road rage incident.

Furtick was driving near 79th Street and Pulaski Road in the Scottsdale neighborhood around 1:15 a.m. when a vehicle pulled up alongside him, police said. Someone inside the other vehicle opened fire, striking Furtick in the abdomen.

Furtick crashed his vehicle a few blocks away at Rainey Park, near 79th and Kostner Avenue. Officers found him barely alive, and he was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.

After not hearing from her husband, Gina Furtick called him repeatedly. Finally, an officer answered his phone and told her what happened.

My heart fell into my stomach," she said. "I think I pretty much fell to my knees. I started crying. Just the thought of him being hurt, hurt me.

I was just trying to get to the hospital as fast as I could, she said. I just sat there and prayed. Thats all I could do.

Five hours later, her husband was pronounced dead.

He was a wonderful husband, Gina Furtick said. He was allowing me to be a stay-at-home mom, so I mean there were times when he was working two or three jobs so I wouldnt have to.

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She said her husband had no enemies and described him as a hard-working family man and die-hard Cubs fan.

He was a manager for a food company that served sheriff's deputies at Cook County Jail, she said. When her husband wasnt working, the couple was caring for their 4-year-old son, Blake. Adam Furtick had two other children from a previous relationship, 13-year-old Daniel and 12-year-old Taylor.

He was very much loved, his wife said. He would just make you laugh. His laugh alone would make you laugh.

He was the type of guy that would have friends from one group and friends from a different group that didnt like each other, but they would manage to get along because they were around Adam.

Furtick also worked part time for a company that set up concert equipment for musical acts that came to the Chicago area. He helped set up concerts for Paul McCartney and John Mayer as well as the pop rock band Train, his wife said.

In his younger years, he loved to play the drums in a band with friends, she said. The band was just a bunch of guys in a garage making noise, she joked, but it reflected her husbands longtime love for metal music. In the summer, her husband attended all three days of the annual Chicago Open Air music festival in southwest suburban Bridgeview, featuring Slayer, Megadeth and Kiss.

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Gina Furtick said the grief of her husbands loss is not anything to accept or even process. As for their young son, she said, theres so many things that Adam wanted to teach Blake.

He had plans for him, she said. I just hope whoever did this is caught and that my husband has justice because he definitely didnt deserve this. He was a hard-working man, a great husband, a great father, a wonderful friend. I mean, he couldnt even hurt a fly.

Police could not provide a description of the suspect or the vehicle involved in the killing. Anyone with information was asked to call Area Central detectives at 312-747-8380.

jgorner@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @JeremyGorner

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A man has targeted women to forcibly take cellphones at least twice this month in Logan Square and Lakeview on the North Side, police said.

The incidents both happened Friday. The first was around 2:40 p.m. in the 3500 block of North Ashland Avenue in the city's Lakeview neighborhood.

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Next, police believe the same man struck again around 3:30 p.m. in the 1800 block of North Campbell Avenue in the Logan Square neighborhood.

The suspect approached women who were on their own, grabbed the phone and hopped in a stolen getaway car that carried at least two other people, according to a community alert from Chicago police.

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The man was described as black with brown eyes and black hair, about 16 to 23 years old, standing between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighing between 140 to 170 pounds. He wore a gray hoodie and baggy blue jeans.

The car, which was reported stolen, was described as a gold Honda Odyssey minivan with an Illinois license plate of H855843, police said.

Police ask anyone with information to call Area North detectives at 312-744-8263.
This video from a dashboard camera of a Chicago police squad car shows Officer Marco Proano shoot at a moving car, wounding two teens inside it, on December 22, 2013 near 95th and LaSalle streets in the Princeton Park neighborhood. (Courtesy of the Chicago Reporter) (Chicago Tribune)

A Chicago police officer convicted of excessive force for firing 16 times into a moving vehicle filled with teens is a scapegoat "sacrificed to the furor" over police misconduct and should not be punished for alleged systemic problems in the department, his lawyer wrote in a court filing seeking probation.

Prosecutors, however, are seeking up to eight years in prison, saying Officer Marco Proano could have killed all six teens when he fired indiscriminately into a reportedly stolen Toyota but that by "sheer chance" the bullets wounded only two.

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The 11-year department veteran was convicted by a jury in August of two felony counts of using excessive force in violation of the victims' civil rights. The December 2013 shooting was captured on video by a police dashboard camera. Proano is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 20.

In asking U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman for probation, Proano's attorney, Daniel Herbert, said in a court filing late Monday that the married father of three had a decorated career before it was derailed amid protests against police violence and a civil rights probe by the U.S. Department of Justice  all sparked by the court-ordered release in November 2015 of video of the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

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The timing of Proano's September 2016 indictment "could not have been worse for him," Herbert wrote, adding that he should not have to "shoulder the blame" for a Police Department that the Justice Department, in its scathing report earlier this year, said has a decadeslong history of mistreating citizens.

"It would be naive to ignore the facts here and fail to recognize that Mr. Proano served as somewhat of a scapegoat in this case," said Herbert, who also represents the officer charged with first-degree murder in McDonald's shooting. "The situation was at a boiling point and Mr. Proano was sacrificed to the furor."

But prosecutors said Proano's actions that night  as well as his attempts to later justify the shooting  were egregious violations of his training that further undermined public trust in the police.

"(Proano) gave the community reason to doubt law enforcement's intentions and reason to believe that it cannot have faith that law enforcement will serve all citizens equally," Assistant U.S. Attorneys Georgia Alexakis and Erika Csicsila wrote in the 23-page sentencing memo. His actions "impugned the integrity" of other officers "who go to work every day and fulfill their oath to serve and protect," according to the filing.

Proano, 42, was the first Chicago police officer in memory to be convicted in federal court of criminal charges stemming from an on-duty shooting. He also was the first officer to go to trial in any shooting case since the release of the McDonald video sparked protests, political turmoil and promises of systemic change from Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The Police Department is seeking to fire Proano, who was placed on unpaid suspension after he was criminally charged more than a year ago.

During Proano's weeklong trial, prosecutors said the dashcam video of the shooting  which unfolded in about nine seconds  showed Proano violated all of the training he received at the Police Academy, including to never fire into a crowd, only fire if you can clearly see your target and to stop shooting once the threat has been eliminated.

Chicago police Officer Marco Proano, 42, leaves the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on Aug. 28, 2017, after a federal jury convicted Proano of using excessive force in firing 16 shots at a stolen car filled with teenagers in December 2013, wounding two. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

The video  played several times for jurors, including in slow motion  showed Proano walking quickly toward the stolen Toyota within seconds of arriving at the scene while he held his gun pointed sideways in his left hand. Proano can be seen backing away briefly as the car went in reverse, away from the officer. He then raised his gun with both hands and opened fire as he walked toward the car, continuing to fire even after the car had rolled into a light pole and stopped.

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Proano did not testify in his own defense. Herbert, however, argued that the officer did exactly as he was trained  to stop the threat and also protect the life of one of the teens, who he said was hanging from a passenger window as the car reversed.

In their recent court filing, prosecutors said Proano has shown no remorse for his actions. The officer told court officials in a pre-sentence interview that he initially aimed his gun sideways as a tactical maneuver because he is left-handed, according to the filing. He also indicated in that interview that he sees himself as the victim, saying he felt "a sense of 'betrayal'" because he'd served the community for many years and "is now 'left out in the cold,' " prosecutors wrote.

Records show the 2013 incident was Proano's third on-duty shooting in three years. In 2010, he was one of five officers who opened fire on a car after a chase and crash in the 700 block of West 91st Street. The driver  32-year-old Garfield King, a convicted felon  was killed, according to a database of police-involved shootings compiled by the Chicago Tribune. Proano, meanwhile, fired five rounds into the vehicle, wounding a 19-year old woman riding in the passenger seat of King's car.

Less than a year later, in July 2011, Proano fatally shot 19-year-old Niko Husband at close range during a struggle as police tried to break up an unruly dance party on the South Side. Proano said Husband had tried to pull a gun.

Proano was cleared in both shootings by the now-defunct Independent Police Review Authority, records show. He was also given a superintendent's award of valor for Husband's shooting  which Herbert said in his filing is granted for acts of "outstanding bravery or heroism."

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A Cook County jury later ruled the shooting of Husband was unjustified and awarded his mother $3.5 million in damages. But the judge overseeing the case set aside the jury's verdict  a ruling that's being appealed.

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Twitter @jmetr22b

Jury convicts Chicago cop of excessive force for firing 16 shots at car, wounding 2 teens 

Judge refuses to reinstate $3.5 million jury verdict in fatal police shooting 

Teen shot by cop: 'He told me, I'm lucky that he didn't kill me' 

Timeline: Chicago police controversies during Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration 
Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli, left, and States Attorney Kim Foxx warn that their offices could be affected by steep budget cuts after the pop tax was rolled back. (Chicago Tribune)

The Cook County's public defender, whose office represents low-income defendants, warned Monday that she would stop accepting some new criminal cases if a new round of proposed countywide budget cuts go through.

In a letter to the county board, Amy Campanelli said her office could become the largest in the country to refuse appointments, which would either force the county to hire private attorneys or likely trigger a class-action lawsuit similar to one filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in New Orleans.

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"The delays in resolving cases would increase, the average length of stay at the County Jail would skyrocket, and the likelihood of ineffective representation of counsel would increase," Campanelli said.

The proposed cuts come after the county passed and then quickly rolled back a controversial tax on sweetened beverages, leaving a $200 million hole in the budget.

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State's Attorney Kim Foxx told the Tribune on Monday that the proposed layoffs would force her to shutter her office's 65-person civil division  which defended the county in a legal challenge to the soda tax  and farm out the work at higher cost to private law firms. She also said the day may finally have come to shutter all or most of the branch courts  a cost-saving measure that has been discussed for years.

"We cannot, on the one hand, know as a city that we have to do something around public safety  and have the state's attorney's office continue to decline," she said. "It's not a logical use of resources."

The alarm bells come just days before the start of Cook County Board hearings to consider board President Toni Preckwinkle's proposed $5.4 billion spending plan for the 2018 fiscal year that starts Dec. 1.

There's a $200 million hole in that plan, after the board voted last week to repeal the unpopular soda pop tax. Preckwinkle, Foxx's political mentor, repeatedly told commissioners before the repeal that getting rid of the tax would harm the county's criminal justice and public health systems.

Preckwinkle said the repeal would trigger layoffs of prosecutors, public defenders, doctors and nurses  a warning that left several commissioners decrying a "sky-is-falling" mentality by the Preckwinkle administration.

The budget hearings start Monday, with presentations from Preckwinkle's top financial officials. A presentation from the state's attorney's office is scheduled for Wednesday. Commissioners have until Nov. 30 to bring the budget into balance  either with higher taxes, layoffs or a combination of the two  so the ultimate effects of the repeal remain to be seen.

A Preckwinkle spokesman said the board president has been clear that public safety is one of the county's "core functions" and that she intends to work to "minimize any damage to their operations."

In New Orleans, the underfunded public defender announced early last year that he would no longer accept the most serious felony cases. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in federal court soon after, but it was dismissed this year by a federal judge who found he lacked the authority to order the state to pay for private attorneys.

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Foxx said her office is already stretched thin  the office has 719 prosecutors, down from around 1,000 just seven years ago  which has meant the number of cases over two years old is rising once again and about a quarter of the courtrooms at the Leighton Criminal Court Building are staffed by two prosecutors instead of three.

"It's a real crusher as far as the morale," Foxx's criminal prosecutions chief, Joe Magats, said. "They're constantly having to do more and more with fewer resources."

Magats said the number of murder cases pending more than two years jumped 18 percent in the first six months of this year. And there are now only three prosecutors handling nearly 1,000 post-conviction cases while six prosecutors sit on the conviction integrity unit  which has seen a 500 percent increase in referred cases since Foxx took office last year.

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"What goes on here is too complicated and we're talking about the rights of individuals and we're talking about public safety," Magats said. Budget cuts, he added, are "absolutely the worst way to go."

Assistant State's Attorney Eric Sacks, who became a Cook County prosecutor three years ago after two decades at a top private law firm, is working in a two-person felony courtroom with prosecutor Kimellen Chamberlain after the third prosecutor left to help the understaffed felony review unit.

"One of us or both of us are working on the weekend every weekend," he said. "Long term it's not a sustainable model, you'll burn out lawyers. The risk of making a mistake or having something fall through the cracks  that risk goes up."

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Chicago Tribune's Hal Dardick contributed.

sschmadeke@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @SteveSchmadeke

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[ County officials spar over budget cuts in wake of pop tax repeal  ]
Police are searching for two men suspected of robbing people at gunpoint on the West Side.

The four attacks occurred:

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 In the 2300 block of West Monroe Street on the West Side about 4:15 p.m. Sunday.

 In the 1400 block of West Carroll Avenue in West Town about 7 p.m. Sunday.

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 In the 1300 block of West Fulton Street in West Town about 12:20 a.m. Monday.

 And about 25 minutes later in the 300 block of South Hoyne Avenue on the West Side.

In some of the robberies the men wore blue surgical mass and blue surgical gloves, police said in a news release.

The robbers were described as anywhere between 18 to 29, weighing 140 to 210 pounds and between 5-foot-7 and 6-foot-3.

Anyone with information can call Area Central detectives at 312-747-8382.
A day after formally launching his re-election bid, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner returned to a familiar theme of bashing Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan but this time added a twist.

Three neighboring GOP governors are the ones doing the attacking. Republican Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Eric Greitens of Missouri and Eric Holcomb of Indiana each deliver a sarcastic "thank you" to Madigan for "raising Illinois taxes" and "helping create new jobs" in their states.

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Rauner, who has slumping approval ratings, does not appear in the ad, continuing a trend from his previous two campaign commercials. Instead, Greitens makes mention of Madigan "blocking Rauner's reforms" without specifying the changes Illinois' Republican governor has unsuccessfully pushed.

Holcomb contends "Hoosiers love you Mike Madigan," while Walker adds, "Cheeseheads love you Madigan" and Greitens says, "Big fans here in Missouri. Big Time. Thank you, Mike." Then a logo reading "Stop Mike Madigan" appears onscreen.

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Since his first run for governor in 2014, Rauner has continuously tried to tie the state's problems to Madigan, the nation's longest-serving speaker of the House who has served in the role for all but two years since 1983. Rauner, a former private equity investor, has used his wealth and that of his allies to promote the theme. He's also helped fund GOP legislative candidates, seeking to link Democratic rank-and-file members to the House speaker, who also serves as state Democratic chairman.

In a statement Tuesday, Madigan said the new Rauner ad highlights the governor's "own failure to lead, and fully embraces the race to the bottom being led by his role models from states where middle-class wages are a fraction of what they are in Illinois."

"It's deeply disappointing that Gov. Rauner would rather work with right-wing governors from other states than with legislators seeking bipartisan compromise right here in Illinois. But his actions ultimately reaffirm our resolve in the legislature to continue our work in a bipartisan way without the governor's involvement  just as we have for many months now."

Records show that in September 2016, Rauner gave $100,000 each to the campaigns of Greitens and Holcomb. In addition, the three governors each represent right-to-work states where union membership is not a mandatory precondition for some jobs. A court case involving a challenge to Illinois' status, backed by Rauner, is before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Despite Democratic majorities in the House and Senate making approval nearly impossible, the Republican governor initially pursued right-to-work status for Illinois and later unsuccessfully sought union-weakening measures in an effort to terminate a major source of campaign cash and manpower for Democrats.

Rauner's ideological battle against Madigan was a major factor in the state's historic two-year budget impasse, which ended when some Republican lawmakers rejected the governor's plea for unity and joined with Democrats to enact a spending and tax hike package in July. The state income tax rate rose by 32 percent, going from 3.75 percent to 4.95 percent. That will cost an extra $1,200 a year for a family with a net income of $100,000.

"Even now, after a bipartisan group of lawmakers agreed to make the tough decisions the governor was unwilling to make, Gov. Rauner would still rather play political games than work cooperatively to repair the damage he has done," Madigan said in his statement.

In his statement, Madigan hailed a bipartisan compromise for producing "Illinois' balanced budget." But Rauner maintains the budget enacted over his veto is $1.7 billion out of whack and it counts on $500 million in savings from a new pension program that cannot be implemented quickly.

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Rauner's latest ad comes as social conservatives among the rank-and-file Republicans are looking to field a primary challenger to him after he signed a bill expanding taxpayer-funded abortions.

Despite Rauner's considerable campaign cash, state Rep. Jeanne Ives of Wheaton is actively considering a run against Rauner if she can get pledges for significant financial backing. Ives has reported starting October with nearly $8,500 in her campaign and raised an additional $14,000 since. Rauner began the month with $65.6 million and has since gotten $284,000 in donations.

As for the new ad, federal records show Rauner has committed spending more than $213,000 for 174 TV ads alone on ABC-Ch. 7 in Chicago through Nov. 5. He's also spending $134,000 during the same period for 134 spots on CBS-Ch. 2 Chicago.

rap30@aol.com

Twitter @rap30
Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, speaks during a City Council meeting June 22, 2016. Chicago's African-American aldermen question the need to spend $1 million on a municipal ID program to help Latino immigrants and others. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)

Several African-American aldermen on Tuesday again questioned the need for a city ID program aimed primarily at helping Latino immigrants who entered the country illegally.

The complaints resurfaced during a hearing on Mayor Rahm Emanuels 2018 budget, which includes nearly $1.1 million to get the program off the ground. Emanuel has been courting Latino voters ahead of a 2019 re-election bid.

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I just think this is a horrible idea, a waste of taxpayers money, said Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th, who noted the $1 million in costs already incurred and those envisioned, contending such a program would be better handled by the Illinois secretary of state. I dont know why were trying to create something thats not an issue for the entire city of Chicago and to throw a couple of million dollars at it? A waste of money, a waste of resources and a waste of effort.

Clerk Anna Valencia, an Emanuel appointee who will run the program, defended the new ID as a way not only to help immigrants, but also the homeless, seniors, teenagers, veterans and people getting out of jail or prison. The cards could be issued to upward of 150,000 people in the first year and would be linked to city library privileges and the CTAs Ventra fare card, she said. Discounts for senior citizens might also be linked to the card, she added.

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He and I will never agree, but thank you for your comment, Valencia said after Beale vented on the issue.

South Side Ald. David Moore said his 17th Ward is about 11 percent Hispanic, and no one was knocking down my door saying this was an issue. Two other African-American aldermen also questioned the need for the program, prompting Budget Committee Chairman Carrie Austin, 34th, at one point to ask: OK, its a bad idea, everybody gonna say its a bad idea?

There were defenders, though, including Ald. Joe Moore, 49th, a mayoral ally, who repeated the mayors mantra about Chicago being a welcoming city. And Ald. Gilbert Villegas, 36th, expressed some bemusement at the debate.

Madam clerk, I think you found the secret sauce on how to get some of my colleagues (to be) fiscal hawks throughout this municipal budget, Villegas said. All youve got to do is attach a municipal ID line-item to every item, and well see all these questions related to the expenditures.

Later, Ald. Patrick OConnor, 40th, the mayors City Council floor leader, said he understood the perspective of black aldermen who oppose the ID program. They think the violence issue isnt getting the attention it needs, OConnor said.

Some aldermen also expressed concern about the citys financial future, beyond the 2018 budget, noting the big projected increase in city pension contributions early in the next decade. Taxpayer contributions to the city's worker pension funds are expected to grow by $864 million over three years starting in 2020, according to the city's latest annual financial analysis.

Those aldermen asked Treasurer Kurt Summers for his thoughts on the issue.

Its important that we not only look at this years budget, but the foundation that were building for the future, and in that respect we still have work to do, said Summers, referring to a recent report by the Standard & Poors debt rating agency that dubbed the mayors spending plan largely status quo and highlighted the pension issue. I agree with the sentiments of the credit ratings agency that clearly state that this budget stabilizes in the near term, but more action is needed for us to be truly on the path of fiscal sustainability and responsibility for Chicago.

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Esther Tokpah, 11, an orphan, weeps before her release from an Ebola treatment center in Monrovia, Liberia, in September 2014. She lost both parents to Ebola. (Michel du Cille / Washington Post)

The government ministers were facing a new infectious disease outbreak. The mysterious virus was sickening and killing people with alarming speed. Some patients had to be placed on ventilators to help them breathe. The new virus seemed resistant to antibiotics and antiviral medicine.

Within a week, officials had closed a major hospital and schools and quarantined thousands of people. Fear and panic spread quickly as people in neighboring countries became infected and died.

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That scenario was part of a pandemic simulation held during the World Bank's annual meeting in Washington this month. It's not the kind of event that people would typically associate with the World Bank. But it's the fourth such exercise the bank has helped organize in the past year, reflecting what experts say is the growing awareness outside the traditional global health sector of the increasing threat and economic disruption posed by a global pandemic.

The chaotic and "horrendously inefficient" early response to the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa was the catalyst for the simulations, said Tim Evans, senior director for health, nutrition and population at the World Bank.

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"We realized that people were just making it up as they were going along, including us," Evans said, referring to the Ebola response. The bank wanted to "move from a history of panic and neglect to one where we're going to start to prepare much more systematically to be ready for the 100 percent probability we will be dealing with this again," he said. "Probably sooner than we expect."

Outbreaks of life-threatening infectious diseases are spreading faster and with more unpredictability than ever.

An unusually large plague outbreak in Madagascar has killed 106 people since August. About 70 percent of the cases are the more virulent form of pneumonic plague that spreads by coughing, sneezing or spitting and is almost always fatal if untreated with antibiotics.

In Uganda, officials are on high alert because of a recently reported outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus that has killed one person and may have exposed hundreds more at health facilities and during traditional burial ceremonies. Marburg is a highly infectious hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola and is among the most virulent pathogens known to infect humans.

For the World Bank simulation, organizers looked at the impact on travel and tourism of an outbreak of a mysterious respiratory virus in a hypothetical country. Participants included finance, health and tourism ministers from about a dozen countries, and officials from organizations including the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the International Air Transport Association.

Discussions during the 90-minute session were off the record. But in interviews after the event, organizers said the step-by-step scenario made the theoretical possibility seem very real for participants. In particular, it drove home the need for speedy, accurate information-sharing and strong coordination within and across governments and institutions.

In today's fast-paced world, information flows through unofficial channels much faster than through official ones, said Ron Klain, who was the United States' Ebola czar during the epidemic and served as the moderator for the simulation.

"Government officials need to be more in sync with that and adjust to that," Klain said. Officials who rely on once-a-day updates in outbreak situations need to understand the importance of releasing accurate information in real time, he said.

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"I think the exercise clearly flagged that, and the ministers and others really focused on that," he said.

Participants in the simulation were shown hypothetical social media posts. One news story about a cruise ship passenger who worked in a lab researching the virus was seen by thousands of people within minutes of being posted on Instagram.

That part of the simulation was similar to what happened during the Ebola epidemic. A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter and plane were dispatched to a cruise ship off the coast of Mexico to obtain blood samples from a passenger on vacation. She had, 19 days earlier, been working in a lab at a Dallas hospital and possibly had come in contact with a sealed vial of blood belonging to Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian who died in October 2014, the first person to die of Ebola in the United States.

She had no symptoms, and blood tests later confirmed what doctors already knew: She did not have Ebola. (The only two people who caught Ebola in the United States were nurses caring for Duncan.)

The World Bank conducted its first pandemic simulation for finance ministers at its annual meeting last year. In January, the bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted another simulation for chief executives of major companies at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in January. In July, they worked with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to conduct a pandemic simulation for health ministers at the G-20 governments meeting, which traditionally focus on finance and economics.

In the past, some countries have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks or delayed reporting them because of politics or worries about tourism and trade. In countries dependent on tourism, there is also political and economic pressure to take action that may turn out to be counterproductive for their economies, said Ryan Morhard, project lead for global health security at the World Economic Forum, which helped organize the World Bank simulation.

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Imposing quarantines or closing borders may be seen as aggressive action, but those measures wouldn't necessarily be effective against a disease that spreads without symptoms, and could be "equally devastating to that economy," Morhard said.

Coordination also requires health ministries to work across the government with the finance and tourism sectors. "But that's not the way governments are usually set up any place in the world," Klain said. Most government systems "are really built in silos, nationally and internationally."

Although there is more awareness about the issue, experts agree that the world is not prepared for the next pandemic.

"We still are not ready for the big one," Klain said, noting that next year is the centennial of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 -1919 that killed at least 50 million people worldwide.

"We're frankly not ready for a medium-sized one. The threat is still out there."
"Sen. Bob Corker doubles down on Trump critique; on North Korea 'I would like him to leave it to the Professionals for a while'"

- George Stephanopoulos (@GStephanopoulos) October 24, 2017

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., made the rounds on the morning shows Tuesday, all the while diplomatically doubling down on his recent criticisms of President Donald Trump.

Perhaps as striking was his overall message to the president: Just back off.

On NBC's "Today" show, Savannah Guthrie asked him directly: "Left to his own devices, do you think the president is a threat to national security?" Corker's answer was decidedly not, "No."

"CORKER: I think there are people around him that work in an effort to contain him. That would be [Defense] Secretary [Jim] Mattis and [Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson and General [John] Kelly, there  his chief of staff. I do think ...

"GUTHRIE: Well that almost accepts the premise of the question  if he needs to be contained?

"CORKER: I do think when you have the kind of issue we have in North Korea, where we have a very unstable leader there, when you send out tweets into the region to raise tensions, when you kneecap  which is what he's done, publicly  when you kneecap your secretary of state, whose diplomacy you have to depend upon to really bring China to the table to do the things that need to be done  back-channeling in some cases to North Korea  when you kneecap that effort, you really move our country into a binary choice which could lead to a world war. So yes, I want him to support diplomatic efforts - not embarrass and really malign efforts that are underway to try to get some kind of diplomatic solution here. And I think most people would agree with that."

Appearing separately on ABC's "Good Morning America," Corker more bluntly urged Trump to just stay out of it.

"You're taking us on a path to combat," he said, adding: "I would just like for him to leave it to the professionals for a while and see if we can do something that's constructive for our country, that region and the world."

Asked if he was telling Trump to leave things alone, Corker agreed.

"GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Your message to the president: Just leave well enough alone?

"CORKER: I would recommend that, based on recent history and just interactions."

Corker then made a similar plea on tax reform: "Hopefully the White House will step aside and let that occur in a normal process. I know recently the White House in a couple cases has been taking things off the table."

While criticisms of Trump from Republicans have proliferated in recent days, Corker's is different. His is a much more substantive and practical critique. He's basically urging the president to neuter himself and stay behind the scenes, letting senators and his top officials work through the important issues of the day. He's suggesting things would basically work better if the president didn't involve himself at all. That's a remarkable lack of faith in the chief executive.

And Trump doesn't appreciate this critique, judging by tweets he fired off shortly after Corker's interviews.

"Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts...."

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

"...Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!"

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Corker responded:

"Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff"

- Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) October 24, 2017

Corker wouldn't say directly that Trump is a threat to national security, but the idea that the president is an obstacle to a peaceful resolution  and, on a legislative level, to getting tax reform done  is clear from his remarks.

One thing Corker did say it was okay for Trump to do was visit Congress during tax negotiations. But in giving the go-ahead, he suggested it was more of a "photo op."

"I do look at these things as more of a photo op," Corker said. "They're not really about substance, but more power to him."

Or, as Corker would seem to prefer, less power to him.
I just returned from a four-day trip delivering supplies and food from the people of Chicago to towns in Puerto Rico such as Loiza, Comerio, Dorado and Toa Baja.

More than a month after Hurricane Maria hit on Sept. 20, power is still out on most parts of the island and the people in mountainous areas  which make up two-thirds of Puerto Rico  have barely been reached. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has not, as far as anyone can tell, helped restore the power grid or rebuild bridges destroyed by the storm. Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel  who individually are doing heroic work  have not received orders from above to help Puerto Ricans in the most important ways, which right now would include helping the sick, elderly, disabled and vulnerable leave the island for safety, hospitals and their families on the mainland.

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Millions of Americans have no power and many have no safe housing or reliable source of water. They lack food, cash and transportation, and their children are not in school. The most basic comforts, such as sleeping on a dry mattress or having a tarp to sleep under, are a luxury, especially outside of San Juan.

After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 and breached levees caused massive flooding, 8 out of 10 people were evacuated. They went to cities across the U.S.  especially Houston  where they had hospitals, hotel rooms and schools for their children. It took eight months before schools reopened in New Orleans. But the evacuation of Puerto Rico is not happening in any organized manner, and people are pretty much on their own. FEMA has not instituted a plan to give people travel and hotel vouchers as they have in previous emergencies, and people are living in deplorable conditions.

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My constituents  and the Puerto Rican constituents of other members of Congress from all over the country  are asking for help getting loved ones out of Puerto Rico. Indeed, those who have money have probably already helped their loved ones evacuate, and many have resettled here in Chicago, my own extended family included. But for those without enough money  or a credit card, or a cellphone that works or access to the internet  getting out of Puerto Rico is very, very difficult. The flights are full. And yet, I hear every week from the relatives of elderly and sick Puerto Ricans that they want to get their people on a plane.

The volatility of the American president is part of the problem. President Donald Trump has tweeted and said things that have put the governor of Puerto Rico on notice that the presidents interest in helping Puerto Rico is limited  while emphasizing that Puerto Rico is a burden to his ambitions. Gov. Ricardo Rossello, in turn, is in an impossible situation. He appears reluctant to ask for too much or to appear in any way ungrateful to Trump. This is understandable. Our president is the grievance-collector-in-chief, and history tells us that saying the wrong thing or asking for more could get Puerto Rico blackballed.

But I do not have that constraint, and neither do the American people who have been raising their voices on behalf of our Puerto Rican brothers and sisters. By focusing national attention on this crisis, we can help Puerto Rico break through the presidents inaction, the medias short attention span and Congress tendency to spend too little too late. Right now, people who want to leave should be allowed to fly to the mainland and receive help getting resettled, especially the sick and elderly. And cities like Chicago are ready to help.

While I have been the presidents chief critic for his handling of this crisis, I am immensely proud of the city of Chicago and the way our citizens and our government have responded. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, aldermen and city personnel are accommodating evacuees, sending volunteers to the island and helping in many ways above and beyond the call of duty.

Chicago, the city of broad shoulders, has stood up and done more for the people of Puerto Rico in their hour of need than any other city I know of, and based on my two visits to Puerto Rico, the people of the island appreciate it. The mayor has said he wants Chicago to be for Puerto Rico what Houston was for New Orleans after Katrina, if FEMA agrees to help people who want to leave the island to do so.

Chicago has a bond of family and humanity with Puerto Rico that has sparked an outpouring of compassion, even as compassion has eluded the White House. Ever since the United States decided to invade the island 119 years ago and eliminate the existing civilian government, we have had a responsibility to Puerto Rico that compels us as a nation to help. Trump complains through Twitter that we cannot help Puerto Rico forever. Puerto Ricans have fought and died for the U.S. in every war since 1917. Most Americans understand that the United States must be committed to Puerto Ricos rebuilding for as long as it takes  with or without leadership from President Trump.

Luis V. Gutierrez has represented the 4th District of Illinois in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1992 and was previously a Chicago alderman. In the 1950s, his parents migrated from Puerto Rico to Chicago, where the congressman was born.
Myeshia Johnson has a lot of questions  really good questions, actually  about why her husband, U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson, a member of an elite Special Forces unit, and three of his American comrades were killed during a murky military mission in the central African nation of Niger earlier this month.

I don't know how he got killed, where he got killed or anything, Johnson, who is six months pregnant with her late husband's child, said in a recent interview with ABC News. I don't know that part. They never told me, and that's what I've been trying to find out since Day One, since Oct. 4.

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What's appalling is that the powerful people who should be able to answer these simple questions seem to be completely clueless  and not just about what happened in the town of Tongo Tongo on that fateful day. Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee and the most influential member of Congress on defense issues, said the Trump administration has given him few details about what happened in Niger, while other key senators  including Democrats Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Republican Lindsey Graham  made the more shocking admission that, in Graham's words, they had no idea  that there are more than 800 U.S. troops in Niger. Late Monday afternoon, the nation's top uniformed officer, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held a muddled news conference that raised more questions about the deadly events of Oct. 4 than were answered and also failed to offer a rousing defense of this broader mission halfway around the world.

There's one question that no one has adequately answered  the most important one of all.

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Why are we in Niger?

More broadly, what is the explanation and the broader strategy behind the ever-expanding U.S. military presence in Africa, where an umbrella of American troops now spreads from parts of Somalia, a largely lawless nation that has famously caused America heartbreak in the past, to Djibouti (where we have a large permanent base), Cameroon and elsewhere, with a growing air force of unmanned drones that can spy on various African militias or villages or rain down weapons if needs be  none of this debated by a largely in-the-dark American public, and none of this directly authorized by Congress, which is supposed to share in the power to wage war?

It's a serious, life-or-death question that calls for thoughtful answers by serious people. That conversation should start with this: Under what authority are some 6,000 U.S. troops (a level of strength that America didn't hit in Vietnam until midway through the John F. Kennedy administration) and our fleet of flying death robots now serving in Africa? The pat answer that you'd get from the Pentagon and previously from the Obama administration (which carried out a good bit of our military expansion in Africa, with little or no fanfare) and now the Trump administration would be the near-unanimous 2001 congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force, which launched what used to be called the war on terror  and is now increasingly called our  forever wars.

That resolution, of course, only really addressed the original al-Qaida group that was led by the wealthy Saudi, Osama bin Laden, and which was well-organized and well-funded and showed not only on 9/11 but in lesser operations like the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that it was a threat to Americans at home and abroad.

That was 16 years ago this autumn. Now, bin Laden is dead, with his original group barely existent, and it's been replaced by various coalitions of bad actors and wanna-be warlords who seem a lot less capable of striking U.S. citizens  until we send our troops into their remote villages on military missions.

Obama did publicly announce in 2013 that he was sending 100 U.S. troops to Niger. In failing to address a militaristic U.S. policy that sees every problem around the globe as a nail to be pounded by an $800 Pentagon hammer, Obama passed the torch to the reckless President Donald Trump, who has given the generals carte blanche to expand the front line and the deadliness of our tactics; the number of innocent civilians killed by the American military has skyrocketed since January, and an expanded role for the Pentagon  from sending more troops into the sinkhole that is Afghanistan to putting America's nuclear bombers on 24-hour alert for the first time since the end of the Cold War  has become a dominant theme of Trump's America.

And yet with all these operations all over the globe for so many years  longer than a typical high school sophomore has been alive  do we feel any safer? And how can we afford this  Congress recently showered the Pentagon with a whopping $700 billion, more even than Trump had asked for  when our trains and our train tracks are constantly breaking down, ridiculous college costs are bankrupting our youth and health care for the working class is treated like a luxury?

If and when the despicable widow-bashing ever stops and after the Pentagon gets its story straight about what happened in Tongo Tongo, Trump  or maybe Defense Secretary James Mattis, who comes off as a lot more trustworthy and honest  should go on national TV with a sweeping address that, while not compromising military tactics, should answer these three seemingly simple questions. Why are we in Niger? Why are we in Africa? In what nations is the U.S. military  more than 16 years after the 9/11 attacks  still waging war against terrorism, and what is the strategy and perceived end dates of these conflicts?

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Then, that strategy needs to be written down in a new AUMF bill that needs to be sent to Congress and properly debated  not for a few hours but for several weeks, with committee hearings and expert testimony  and then voted up or down. Or, better yet, amended to an anti-terrorism policy that actually makes sense. That's the way the Founding Fathers envisioned it going down when it came to the United States fighting wars.

While I've tried to ignore most of the back-and-forth, I was struck by Trump's apparent comment in his now-infamous phone call with Myeshia Johnson, in which he apparently said that her late husband  knew what he signed up for. Many said that was insensitive, but we're missing the broader point. La David Johnson didn't know what he signed up for in Niger. None of us does. That needs to change right away.

Tribune Content Agency

Will Bunch is a senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and the author of its political blog called "Attytood.
Zaza Motha said she became a journalist because of the death of her mother in Soweto, South Africa. (Gerald Ntsimane photo)

One bright day in May, 26 years ago, I stood in the living room of a simple concrete home in the township of Soweto in South Africa, staring at the body of a young mother as her six small children cowered on a sofa.

At the time, I was the Chicago Tribunes Africa correspondent, and this is how I began the story I wrote:

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SOWETO, South Africa  There was another pointless death here Thursday morning.

This time it was a woman named Sindisiswe Motha, a 37-year-old mother of six, shot as she went to answer the telephone in the cramped living room of her home in this sprawling black ghetto.

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For a while, her small body, covered by a dirty pink blanket, lay on the cement floor exactly where it fell when the bullet pierced her chest. Then the police came and took her away.

This puzzles me. This really puzzles me, Timothy Motha, the victims husband, repeated softly, trying not to look where his sister was kneeling as she mopped up the puddles of his wifes blood.

I only went out for a few minutes and then I came back, and everything was finished, Motha said. I don`t know how this can happen.

History wont record Mrs. Mothas death, because no one is writing the history of all the people being killed in South Africas townships during the current upsurge in fighting among political factions.

I scarcely remembered that story from among the thousands I have written over my long journalism career  until a few days ago, when I received this Twitter message, with the story attached, out of the blue.

Hi Howard, I hope you are well. You dont know me but you wrote about the death of my mother in this article. Im not sure if I have the rht Howard Witt. Can you please send me your email address? Thank you.

The message came from Zaza Motha, one of the daughters of the woman I had written about. She was 7 at the time. I met her on that terrible day, but she could not have remembered that.

A few hours later, Zaza emailed me:

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I became a journalist because of the death of my mother. I still remember the day but didn't have the details. I finally put the pieces together after reading your article a few hours ago. I'm working on something and have been for all of my life which has required a lot of focus and energy.

Today I wanted to quit  until I read that article and you reminded me why I should carry on. I saw a news bulletin about the death of my mother when I was seven years old. I don't know what happened that day but I vowed that I will tell the world my story. Through difficulties in life and growing up without a mother, I created my own media platform  to tell the stories of other young women as I feel we don't have a strong collective voice.

I guess I wanted to say thank you for telling my mother's story, it reminded me of why I started my journey. My dad has since passed on but it is very interesting to hear his voice in this piece. It's only now that I'm really grasping the pain that he went through.

I've received plenty of responses to my work over the years, but never anything quite like this.

It prompted me to think of what humanity had to accomplish over the past generation to enable this remarkable communication to take place across space and time.

Nelson Mandela had to lead South Africa from murderous white supremacy to flourishing democracy, so that Zaza could grow up, find her way out of Soweto, and earn scholarships to attend university and then launch her journalism career.

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The internet had to be created, and the Chicago Tribune had to post this old story to its website. Then countless readers had to support the newspaper with their subscription dollars so that the story could remain online to this day.

Google had to be invented, so Zaza could find the story. Then Twitter had to be invented, so she could find me.

It is so easy today to grow despondent about the state of the world, and America in particular.

Yet this tiny, simple episode  of two strangers connecting across oceans and history  reminds me that epochal revolutions, driven by profound human aspirations and inextinguishable ingenuity, are constantly happening all around us.

Surely, Zaza has reminded me, better days can't help but come.

Howard Witt is managing editor at the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, a think tank that studies the American presidency. He worked at the Chicago Tribune for more than 20 years. To support Zaza Motha in her projects to empower young women in South Africa, email her at zazamotha@gmail.com.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel should continue to downsize Chicago Public Schools to better educate all students. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

The latest school enrollment figures for Chicago Public Schools are in, and theyre worse than expected.

Enrollment this fall is down nearly 10,000 students from last year, to 371,382. Last fall, enrollment plunged nearly 11,000. Thats 21,000 students who have vanished from CPS classrooms in just two years. Thats not a blip; it continues a long-term trend: In 2002, the district had 438,589 students.

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Which brings to mind a famous, too-often-cited quote from Mayor Rahm Emanuel: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is its an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.

Were sure the mayor is tired of hearing that one. But 

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Yes, Springfield came through this year with hundreds of millions of dollars more for the district. Chicago taxpayers, too, will face higher property taxes to stabilize the systems finances.

But too many half-empty schools continue to operate. CPS pours money into fixing and maintaining these buildings for ever-fewer students. The mayor and school board should seize this moment  this crisis, this opportunity  to take another whack at right-sizing the district.

Close or consolidate poorly performing, sparsely attended schools.

Reduce the districts footprint as enrollment shrinks.

Divert savings to classrooms.

CPS closed nearly 50 elementary schools in 2013. That angered many parents, teachers, union leaders and students. So the mayor and education leaders promised  unwisely  not to close any more until 2018.

Now 2018 nears. The school system is still deep in debt. Its annual payments into the teachers pension system, an estimated $784 million in fiscal 2018, are projected to rise until 2059. Thats not a misprint. 2059.

CPS students cant afford millions flowing into half-empty classrooms in largely abandoned schools.

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Mayor Emanuel can rightly boast of higher CPS graduation rates and a whittled-down central office. He is pushing CPS grads to compose a post-graduation plan in order to earn a diploma. Far more CPS grads are enrolling in college, but many still need help to earn a degree. Thats the next frontier for CPS leaders. We like this ambition.

"If you change expectations, it's not hard for kids to adapt," Emanuel says. Agreed.

No one relishes closing more neighborhood schools. No one planning to run for mayor in 2019  as Emanuel is  would underestimate the fury that could be directed his way.

Teachers union leaders are already girding for a fight.

But CPS has proved it can close large numbers of schools and move those students safely to better ones.

After a recent Tribune Editorial Board visit, we asked Mayor Emanuel about this crisis and reminded him of his famous quote. Have I ever rested on anything? he responded, reciting a list of educational accomplishments.

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Emanuel now has a chance to add another feat to his resume by resuming the hard work of downsizing CPS to better educate all students. Mayor Emanuel, take advice from your younger self: This crisis is too urgent to be wasted.
Actor Keegan-Michael Key plays the part of Luther, President Barack Obama's anger translator, during the president's remarks at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner on April 25, 2015. (Associated Press)

Remember how critics used to argue that President Barack Obama was more reserved and dispassionate than he ought to be? Nobody says that about President Donald Trump. If anything, the president would do well to take some of his passion down a few notches.

Thats why it has occurred to me that our current president needs a suggestion of the sort that Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele of Comedy Centrals Key & Peele created in the character of Luther, Obamas anger translator.

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Luther was based on the racial and political reality that Obama, as an African-American, had to be extra-conscious of his need to keep his cool. Maybe all he needed, Key and Peele figured, was for someone else to get impassioned on his behalf.

Enter Luther, who translated Obamas courtly and diplomatic public statements into hilarious bursts of colorful rage that Key and Peele figured he almost certainly had to be thinking.

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They apparently werent too far off, either, judging by the ease with which Obama invited Key to re-create his Luther role with the real president at the 2015 White House Correspondents Association Dinner.

When, for example, Obama told his audience, Because despite our differences, we count on the press to keep us informed on the most important issues of the day, Luther chimed in with,  And you can count on Fox News to terrify all white people with some nonsense!

Indeed. Whether Luther was expressing what Obama really was thinking or not, he said what a lot of Obamas supporters wished Obama would have said.

Restraint has not been Trumps problem. He doesnt need a Luther. He needs a Luther-in-reverse. He needs someone who can step up and say, What the president really means is  and translate Trumps Twitter and vocal outbursts into something that wont keep Americans awake at night with fears of nuclear war.

That seemed to be the task of Trumps chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, when he faced reporters last week. Trump sensibly had turned to the highly decorated Kelly for advice on how best to console Myeshia Johnson after her husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, was killed along with four other soldiers on a mission in Niger.

Kelly, himself a Gold Star father after losing a son, Marine 2nd Lt. Robert Kelly, in Afghanistan in 2010, movingly described to reporters how he described his own experience to President Trump. He recalled how a military official reassured him that his son was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed on a mission with his buddies and knew what he was getting into by joining that 1 percent when the nation is at war.

Unfortunately Trumps notorious tin ear for empathy may have mangled that message. Instead of comforting Johnsons widow, U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Florida Democrat and friend of the womans family, said Trump had upset her by seeming to forget her husbands name and adopting an insensitive tone by saying Sgt. Johnson knew what he was signing up for.

Myeshia Johnson confirmed Wilsons account in an interview Monday on ABCs Good Morning America.

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Even if you think, as some do, that the congresswoman was wrong to rush to make the conversation public, Trump made matters only worse by attacking the congresswoman and insulting the family. Unfortunately Kelly blew his reverse-Luther role by wading into the mess that Trump had created. He accused Wilson of being a grandstanding empty barrel who took credit in 2015 for securing funding for a federal building in Miami named for two slain FBI agents. But a video of that event, which Kelly also attended, showed quite the opposite of the boasting that Kelly described.

Maybe his flawed memory was at fault, but whatever the reason, it was another unforced error by an administration in which Kelly has the mammoth task of bringing order and dignity to an Oval Office that often seems mired in chaos.

Worse, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later brought a ridiculously Orwellian tone to her office by declaring it highly inappropriate to question a retired four-star general. In fact, generals are just as accountable to the public as any other public official.

Thats why Trump needs his spokespeople to be reverse-Luthers, people who can calm the waters he constantly roils. Thats not easy, but they, too, know what they signed up for.

Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/pagespage.

cpage@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @cptime
White House chief of staff John Kelly got every important point wrong last week when he attacked Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., for a speech she made more than two years ago.

Kelly, digressing from an effort in the White House press room Thursday to rehabilitate President Donald Trump's controversially inartful condolence call to the family of slain Sgt. La David Johnson, turned on Wilson, who had overheard the call on speaker phone and spoken critically about it to the media.

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Kelly recalled being present when Wilson spoke at the April 10, 2015, dedication of a new FBI building near Miami. The building was named for agents Benjamin Grogan and Jerry Dove, who had been killed in the line of duty.

Kelly said Wilson "stood up, and in the long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there and all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President (Barack) Obama, and on that phone call he gave the money  the $20 million  to build the building. And she sat down, and we were stunned. Stunned that she had done it. Even for someone that is that empty a barrel, we were stunned."

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Alas for Kelly, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel located a video of Wilson's nine-minute, roughly 1,000-word speech that day. A review of that video reveals:

1. Wilson did not mention funding for the building, much less take credit for securing it. (Congress appropriated the money before she was elected.)

2. Wilson did not claim to have spoken to Obama or to have any pull with him.

3. Though Wilson did devote about 300 words near the beginning of her speech to explaining how she led the effort in Congress to expedite the naming process for the building, she pointedly shared credit with then-House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, Rep. Carlos Luis Curbelo, R-Fla., Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., as well as Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

She was justified in taking a small bow. As then-FBI Director James Comey said in his remarks from the stage that day. "Wilson truly did the impossible, and we are eternally grateful."

Nevertheless, Wilson said in her speech, the point was that the rapid action in Washington spoke "to the respect our Congress has for the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

4. She did not sit down after finishing this story, as Kelly claimed. Indeed she spoke for nearly five more minutes, honoring the bravery of Grogan, Dove and all first responders  "Stand up now," she said to the men and women of law enforcement in the audience, "so that we can applaud you and what you do. Stand up! We are proud of you. We are proud of your courage."

She said, "Today it is our patriotic duty to lift up Special Agent Benjamin Grogan and Special Agent Jerry Dove from the streets of South Florida, and place their names and pictures high where the world will know that we are proud of their sacrifice  sacrifice for our nation ...

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"Special Agents Grogan and Dove embody the sacred motto for which the agency has become known. Please repeat it after me. Fidelity. Bravery. And integrity."

She concluded "God bless the FBI. And God bless America."

I can think of no charitable reason that Kelly found this speech empty or unpleasantly stunning, or that he got so much wrong in his retelling.

At best, he was extremely careless with the truth when he embroidered his account with specifics that he didn't recall accurately. At worst he flat-out lied in an effort to deflect criticism of his boss, thinking there wouldn't be a video record to expose his treacherous deceit.

Either way it reflected poorly on him. An apology was in order and would have gone some distance in maintaining his moral standing  as a retired Marine general who has lost a son to war, Kelly came to the White House in late July with the presumption that he was a disciplined, ethical, serious person.

His failure in the days since to apologize to Wilson or correct the record has been surprising, disappointing and scary.

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Surprising and disappointing because many of us hoped Kelly would be a stabilizing force in the West Wing, the Trump whisperer who moderated the rash, narcissistic and mendacious president. Instead, Kelly showed himself to be yet another enabler ready to throw away his reputation for momentary political advantage.

Scary because his refusal to apologize signals that he shares Trump's stubbornness, vindictiveness and lack of humility, traits that can lead a nation headlong into nuclear conflict.

Seriously.

Kelly was supposed to be the man of integrity and reflection  the foot on the brake, not the pedal to the metal.

Oh well. Those of us looking for someone to save the country from Trump's worst impulses are just going to have to keep looking.

ericzorn@gmail.com

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Twitter @EricZorn

What makes Trump dismiss black pain? White rage. 
A Kane County investigator in a former Aurora priest's sex abuse case may have destroyed some notes while withholding others, according to the former priest's lawyer, who is seeking information about the investigator's recent resignation from the Kane County State's Attorney's Office.

Alfredo Pedraza Arias, 51, is scheduled for a November trial on felony charges he sexually abused and assaulted two young girls between 2012 and 2014 while a priest at Sacred Heart Church in Aurora. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include multiple counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse.

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Immigration officials revoked the temporary religious worker visa for Arias, who is from Colombia. His trial has been repeatedly delayed while he faces deportation. Prosecutors have accused Arias of trying to use his deportation to avoid trial.

In a hearing earlier this month, Kane County Circuit Judge Linda Abrahamson said the recent disclosure about the notes was "like an atomic bomb" and that the trial may be affected by whether lawyers have access to the man who investigated the case for the Kane County Child Advocacy Center.

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The Kane County State's Attorney's Office would not confirm the investigator's employment status, stating they don't comment on personnel matters.

Material newly disclosed earlier this month included notes about interviews the investigator conducted that weren't turned in when they should have been, said Arias' attorney, David Camic.

After completing initial reports, the investigator allegedly made statements to police or prosecutors which narrated or described what Arias is accused of doing, according to a recent motion.

The defense has learned the investigator may have destroyed certain notes, memos, computer entries or other information narrating or referencing his investigation, after the defendant's request to preserve it, the motion states.

The defense is asking a judge to order prosecutors and witnesses to disclose further evidence, including any the investigator may not have previously disclosed, and correspondence referencing any information that has been destroyed, along with the date of destruction.

They're also asking for copies of any documents prosecutors have that explain or describe "the nature of the internal investigation which resulted in the resignation of (the investigator)" from the child advocacy center and the state's attorney's office.

hleone@tribpub.com

Twitter @hannahmleone
A house has been removed on this lot in the 1000 block of Ridgeway Drive in Aurora in preparation for a proposed employee parking lot for ATMI Precast, a long-time Aurora West Side company. (Steve Lord/Beacon-News )

The Aurora City Council is set to approve an annexation and plan to build a parking lot on an unincorporated piece of property across the street from ATMI Precast.

Approval, which is up for a vote at the City Council meetingTuesday would allow the company to build a new parking lot for employees.

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ATMI is in an industrial area on the West Side, not far from Prairie Avenue and the Aurora University campus.

The plan is for ATMI to annex a .18-acre site along Ridgeway, across from its plant and a current parking lot, to build a 52-space lot for employees. Because of the company's growth, the parking lot has become full and employees have been parking on nearby residential streets.

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"The goal is to get as many of our employees off the street, and make the area a little safer," a company spokesman told Aurora aldermen at a Committee of the Whole meeting recently.

The company already has removed a house on the property in anticipation of the city approving the annexation and the plan for the parking lot.

The lot would have one driveway entrance, as it did when the house was there, but it would be relocated further west on the lot, city official said.

The parking lot would include three aisles with parking on all sides. The landscape plan includes the addition of canopy trees, evergreen trees, and understory trees on the yards to the north and east to provide buffer for the neighboring residential properties. Hedgerows would be added on the ends of the parking aisles.

Aldermen appeared to be receptive to the plan.

Ald. William Donnell, 4th, pointed out that ATMI has "been in the 4th Ward a long time."

"This company's growing, which is about the best thing you can say," said Ald. Richard Mervine, 8th.

The City Council meets at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the council chambers, City Hall, 44 E. Downer Place.

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The national governing body for organized gymnastics has dropped the membership of a gymnastics school in Aurora for violating a rule intended to protect minors, USA Gymnastics officials said this week.

USA Gymnastics terminated the membership for American Institute of Gymnastics in Aurora effective Oct. 11 because the gym owners violated a requirement that member gyms don't associate in any way with a person who is permanently ineligible for membership in USA Gymnastics, said Toby Stark, director of safe sport for the national organization.

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"That Member was made permanently ineligible by USA Gymnastics ... due to a plea or conviction of a charge related to child abuse or of a law or regulation specifically designed to protect minors." according to an email signed by Stark that was sent to parents of gymnasts at the Aurora facility.

Stark confirmed the authenticity of the email obtained by the Beacon-News, but declined to answer further questions.

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Owners of the Aurora gym provided a written statement this week, but declined additional comment.

"A client, who absolutely has no legal restrictions put upon him in any way, came and attended a class with his child. USAG felt this was not following a bylaw in which an ind(ividual) who is not eligible for a membership should be able to do," according to the emailed statement from American Institute of Gymnastics.

At least six people who have lived or worked in Illinois are currently ineligible for membership with USA Gymnastics, according to the organization's website.

Member clubs of USA Gymnastics aren't supposed to hire or associate in any way with anyone who is permanently ineligible for membership in USA Gymnastics or who is listed on a federal or state sex-offender registry, according to the organization's "safe sport" policy, which was updated in June.

"Membership in USA Gymnastics is a privilege granted by USA Gymnastics," states the email Stark sent to parents. "That privilege can be withdrawn by USA Gymnastics at any time where a member's conduct is determined to be inconsistent with the best interest of the sport of gymnastics and of the athletes we are servicing. There is no interest in our sport more compelling than the safety of our athletes."

The decision to drop American doesn't change the USA Gymnastics memberships held by individual athletes. But all participants in USA Gymnastics-sanctioned events must belong to member clubs in good standing, meaning athletes aren't eligible to participate in those events through American Institute of Gymnastics, according to the email.

Someone reported the situation to USA Gymnastics, which followed up with a letter to the owners seeking more information, Stark said. In their response, the gym's attorney confirmed the association, she said.

"USAG decided on their own with no legal right, to revoke our current USAG competitive status," according to the emailed statement from the Aurora gym. "This specific status in no way, shape or form interferes with the running of American Gymnastics."

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Twitter @hannahmleone
Superintendent John Sparlin, in a 2016 file photo, said there would be no cost to add Oswego to the district's name when new school buses are purchased. (Sarah Freishtat / The Beacon-News)

Community Unit School District 308 board members are talking about putting Oswego back into the district's name.

The School Board in 2014 dropped the village's name when it approved a new district logo as part of a rebranding move intended to incorporate all of its communities it serves.

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The logo on the district's website is SD 308 Community Unit School District. The district covers all of Oswego and parts of Aurora, Montgomery and Plainfield as well as portions of Joliet and Yorkville. The change was made under then Superintendent Matthew Wendt.

A group of retired educators, alumni and parents have collected approximately 650 signatures in an online petition that encourages the School Board to recognize the legal name of the district and use it.

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Oswego Community Unit School District 308 is still the "legal and official" name of the district. The name was approved by voters in 1961.

Retired educator Terry Tamblyn gave the board a pop quiz about District 115 to show how difficult it is to identify a public school system by its designated number. Tamblyn said Yorkville School District 115 might be a right answer but there are actually four other school districts in Illinois that were formed with the same number.

He said likewise there are two other public school systems with the 308 designation in the state that people could easily confuse one with another.

Tamblyn said people are "upset" with the district dropping Oswego from the district's name.

"For many it is the deep personalization of one of our major institutions that defines the community of learners. It's impossible to get engaged with a number 308," he said.

Tamblyn said identity is particularly heightened in the "digital age" when people are concerned about fragmented relationships and lack of connections between people and neighborhoods. He said it's the role of public institutions to help provide the "cohesion" to encourage differing interests to have a common focus.

"The whole purpose of establishing Oswego in the name was to anchor through geography the areas of the newly formed district," he said.

He said "Oswego" is represented in the names of the district's two flagship high schools  Oswego and Oswego East.

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"People feel disconnected and depersonalized by SD 308," he said.

The retired educator said while the School Board's attempt to recognize all of the communities was a move done in good faith, it has actually done the opposite.

"It has really created angst," Tamblyn said.

Tamblyn said the district's name essentially has been "watered-down" and is not recognizable.

Superintendent John Sparlin said after speaking with representatives of the group he purposely introduced himself as superintendent of SD 308 at a recent Springfield conference to gauge the reaction of people.

"Nine out of 10 people didn't know where it is," Sparlin said.

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Sparlin said there would be no cost to add the name when new school buses are purchased or to make changes to electronic documents.

Board members raised the point that the name Oswego wasn't always in the district's logo and they would not be supportive of rebranding the logo and website.

However, they would support putting the name back onto the school buses when new ones are purchased and into the header of documents whenever there are policy changes.

No formal vote was taken on the issue.

"I am OK with putting it back on the school buses at no cost to the district," School Board member Toni Morgan said. "I think it is important to think about the inclusion of the district and be sensitive to those other communities that are part of our district."

She also said any cost related to a name change needs to be considered.

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"I caution the board not to do things that would cost money," Morgan said.

Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
Pueblo rejects ordinance to ban sitting or lying in downtown

Proponents cite safety and accessibility concerns, while others say the rule would criminalize homelessness and is unconstitutional.
The new Chinese translation of Little Johannes was published recently, around 90 years after late Chinese writer Lu Xun's original was first published. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Described as the "poem without rhyme, a fairy tale for adults" by modern Chinese writer Lu Xun (1881-1936), a new Chinese translation of De Kleine Johannes (Little Johannes) was published in September, around 90 years after Lu Xun's original was first published.

Written by Frederik van Eeden, Little Johannes is a classic Dutch fairy tale from the 19th century. It's a fantastical adventure of the boy, Little Johannes, who lives with his father, his dog and a cat, and one night starts a journey to find the book that can "solve all the questions of mankind".

Little Johannes meets Windekind, Wistik, Pluizer and Doctor Cypher in his fantasy world, all symbols for the different stages of life while growing up.

He faces the harsh realities of the world and the emptiness of hopes for a better afterlife, but in the end chooses to embrace the bittersweet reality of life.

The story is a reflection of Eeden's own experience of youth, where he was urged to leave behind his childhood fantasies and grow up and learn more about the world.

As one of the most popular writers in the Netherlands, Eeden was also a doctor and a psychoanalyst. Published in 1887, Little Johannes has proved popular ever since and has often been referred to as the 19th century's Le Petit Prince.

Published by Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House, the new Chinese version of Little Johannes has been translated by Jing Wen, who admits to falling in love with the story from the first time she read it.

"It's a noble artistic work that combines beautiful poetic prose with profound philosophical thought," Jing says.

"Little Johannes' love goes beyond mankind, gods, gender, animals and plants. In the end, he is not a pure child any more. He turns out to be brave and responsible enough to face the difficulties of life."

As the planner behind Selected Works of Lu Xun, Jing first read Lu Xun's translation of Little Johannes in 2011.

"It's like a pretty person in ancient clothes. No matter how antiquated the clothes are, the pure beauty inside cannot be hidden," Jing says.

Lu Xun first read Little Johannes in 1906 in a German literature magazine and became fascinated by the story. It took him 20 years to translate it from German and publish the story in Chinese.

Inspired by the fairy tale, Lu Xun set aside his sharpened style and wrote a soft prose collection entitled Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk.

Lu Xun even refused a nomination for the Nobel Prize in literature because of the book, which he said he could improve on and regarded unfair to accept since Eeden had never been awarded the prize.

Lu Xun's translation from German was written in a half-literary, half-vernacular style, so Jing decided to translate the work into contemporary language to allow more people to enjoy its beauty.

Starting in 2015, it took Jing two years to translate the book from English. Since the Dutch version could not be found in China, she enlisted the help of the Dutch Literature Fund.

"They sent me precious material in English about the writer's life and comments about him from contemporary writers," Jing says.

Li Xinyu, a scholar of Lu Xun and professor at Nankai University, says: "Jing Wen's translation is fluent and vivid as the original writing of the book and also keeps the essence of Lu Xun's version."

Ineke van de Pol, head of the Press and Cultural Department at the Dutch embassy in Beijing, says: "Little Johannes is first and foremost a children's book. It teaches very important values to children about the good and the bad, the search for happiness, the importance of nature and positivism.

"On the other hand, its topics are relevant for people of all ages."

In 2011, the Netherlands was the focus of the Beijing International Book Fair and the Dutch Fund for Literature organized a major literary showcase in the Chinese capital.

"The Dutch Fund for Literature has invested a lot in the Chinese market in the past decade, which has resulted in numerous translations and an ever-growing interest in Dutch literature of all genres," Van de Pol says.

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the Netherlands.

Bas Pulles, deputy head of mission from the embassy of the Netherlands in Beijing, says the history of relations between the two countries can be traced back far longer than that.

"Ties have traditionally been built on trade, but in recent history more and more exchanges in cultural fields including literature have taken place," says Pulles.

The Netherlands is well known for its children's stories and 25 percent of all books sold in the country are children's books. Miffy by Dick Bruna is an iconic example and is loved by many Chinese people.

"There are now over 200 Dutch children's books which have been translated and published in China. I'm delighted that Little Johannes is one of those," Pulles says. "The book is a true classic, and its theme is universal."

"It's also our goal to encourage more collaboration with China in this field by building partnerships with publishing houses."
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A new China-Vietnam cross-border trade zone in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has opened, local authorities said Monday.

The Longbang-Tra Linh trade zone in the border city of Jingxi covers an area of 50,000 square meters and involves investment of 60 billion yuan (9 billion U.S. dollars).

Construction began in 2013 and trial operation in September this year.

Residents living within 20 kilometers of the border will be able to exchange commodities at the trade zone and enjoy a duty-free policy if spending less than 8,000 yuan per day.

Compared with other China-Vietnam trade zones, Longbang-Tra Linh will offer a better customs clearance, said Tran Dai Nghia, chairman of Vietnam VCI Logistics Joint Stock Company.

China is a huge market and exports from Vietnam will reach Chinese consumers faster through the trade zone, according to the company.

The trade zone will create about 100,000 jobs and help lift 350,000 people out of poverty in the border area.
Tesla Inc confirmed on Monday that it is in talks with the Shanghai authorities for local production of electric vehicles.

A driver uses Tesla's charging station in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province. [Photo/China Daily]

The US firm is exploring the possibility of establishing a manufacturing facility in Shanghai to better serve the Chinese market, said a representative at its China operations referring to a statement made by the company in June. "As we have said before, we expect to more clearly define our plans for production in China by the end of the year."

The representative declined to comment on a Wall Street Journal report on Sunday that Tesla has already reached a deal with the Shanghai city government and would build a wholly-owned manufacturing facility in the city's free trade zone.

If the plans are indeed true, it would allow Tesla to slash the production and shipping costs of its cars sold to China. But since the cars would be manufactured in the city's free trade zone, it would not get exemption from the import tax of 25 percent.

At present, Tesla has just one manufacturing facility globallyin California, which has been facing several production bottlenecks.

The company is also looking to better expand its presence in the Chinese market, home to about 1 million new energy cars by the end of 2016.

On Monday the carmaker unveiled in Shanghai its largest charging station, which can accommodate 50 Tesla cars at the same time. So far Tesla has 700 charging posts in 170 Chinese cities.

Last week Tesla announced that it has modified the charging hardware on Tesla vehicles built for the Chinese market so that they can make use of the public charging infrastructure in the country.

If Tesla were to build a wholly-owned plant in China, it would be a major change in the country's industrial policies which only allow foreign firms to set up joint ventures with local partners, be it inside or outside the free trade zones.

Last month the Ministry of Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission had said that China would further open up the new energy vehicle sector.

Yale Zhang, managing director of consulting firm Automotive Foresight, said Tesla's localization efforts, because of lower costs, will benefit its sales in China and the plant would also become a hub for other Asian markets.

Tesla delivered 13,500 cars in the first nine months of 2017 in China, more than double from a year earlier, according to the China Passenger Car Association.

Zhang said the move will also help boost China's new energy car sector as a whole. "For instance, Tesla is more likely to work with local suppliers instead of shipping parts from overseas," he said.

John Zeng, managing director of LMC Automotive Shanghai, said Tesla will set a good example for China's new energy carmakers, most of whom are producing low-end cars.
Electric vehicle maker BYD Co Ltd is planning to start trial runs of its SkyRail monorail mass transit solution in Egypt soon, making it the second overseas destination for the Chinese company after the Philippines.

Demand for mass transit systems has been increasing in both the countrieskey markets in China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. BYD officials told China Daily that the company was confident of further cooperation with these countries in the future.

The transportation authority of Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with BYD for the project on Oct 21. The MoU envisages a monorail project spanning 128 kilometers and plans to conduct feasibility studies. It also marks the first time that SkyRail is being showcased in the African continent.

Alexandria is a well-known historic and cultural city, but plagued by frequent traffic jams. In 2013, local authorities began exploring options to relieve transportation pressure.

"BYD's SkyRail is a clean, affordable and safe way for people to commute. It also utilizes limited road space in towns and cities while minimizing disruption to local communities," said AD Huang, general manager of BYD Middle East and Africa Auto Sales Division.

Thirteen years ago, the carmaker started manufacture and sales of passenger vehicles in Egypt. Nearly one-thirds of the taxis in Cairo are made by BYD.

Khaled Eleiwa, chairman of the Alexandria Passenger Transportation Authority, said he expects the SkyRail to start operations in the seaport city as soon as possible.

Unlike subways, BYD's Sky-Rail requires only a fifth of the cost and one third of the construction time, according to the company.

One is currently operating in Yinchuan, capital of the Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

Monorail is now among BYD's four key business sectors which also include cars, mobile phone components and batteries. According to Securities Times, BYD has received intent orders from 10 cities so far.

Wang Liusheng, chief analyst for the automobile industry at CSM Securities, said he expects BYD's monorail operations to realize profits and generate income this year.

But he admitted that the profits would be minuscule for now and it would be difficult to gauge whether the same would grow as per market expectations in the future.

BYD's shares declined by 3.69 percent and 2.39 percent in the Hong Kong and Shenzhen stock exchanges on Monday.
For the first time, a dozen universities based in Shanghai have decided to launch a joint recruitment drive for professors in the United States, reports thepaper.cn.

Fudan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai University and other 9 post-secondary institutions in the city are running the recruitment drive from October 21 to 23. The 12-university delegation has been recruiting at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.

Fudan University has reportedly received nearly a hundred resumes since the recruitment drive began.

Zhao Luwei, the deputy dean of the Institute of Atmospheric Sciences at Fudan University is in the US on behalf of his institution.

"Chinese students studying overseas have a strong will to return to China for development," said Zhao.

"We are not limited to recruiting only Chinese students, but also foreign experts with higher academic levels who fall within our recruitment requirements," said Lu Qi, the deputy director of Human Resources at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. "When young people choose their future career development, the first consideration is not necessarily money, but how their career might develop," added Lu Qi.
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U.S. President Donald Trump's possible trip to the Demilitarized Zone separating the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and South Korea during his upcoming Asia tour next month is "still being worked out," said a White House senior official on Monday.

Trump is "most likely to visit" Camp Humphreys, a military base about 60 km south of Seoul, capital of South Korea, said the official on condition of anonymity.

The time limit may not permit Trump to do both, the official added.

Trump's travel to Asia is slated for Nov. 3 to 14. It will be his first trip to the region since becoming president, during which he will attend a meeting of leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies in Vietnam. He will also join gatherings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Philippines.
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Britain and the European Union are within touching distance of resolving the fate of millions of EU citizens living in Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May told the House of Commons Monday.

May was giving a report to members of parliament about the latest talks with leaders of the EU member states ahead of Britain's withdrawal in March, 2019.

Speaking about citizen's rights, May said: "Both sides share the same objective of safeguarding the rights of EU nationals living in the UK and UK nationals living in the EU. The negotiations are complicated and deeply technical, but in the end they are about people, and I am determined that we will put people first."

"We are united on the key principles, and while there are a small number of issues that remain outstanding, we are in touching distance of a deal."

The issue is crucial for the estimated 3 million European nationals currently in Britain, as well as British people living in EU states in mainland Europe.

May also insisted there will be no physical infrastructure at the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, adding that the Common Travel Area between Britain and Ireland will continue.

She told MPs that at last week's EU summit, member states agreed to start their preparations for moving negotiations onto trade and the future relationship.

May said she is ambitious and positive about Britain's future and the negotiations.

"I believe that by approaching these negotiations in a constructive way -- in a spirit of friendship and co-operation -- we can and will deliver the best possible outcome that works for all our people," she said.

But May insisted that the British government continued to prepare for every eventuality, and the so-called "no deal" scenario.

May concluded her statement: "While we must and will prepare for every eventuality, I am confident that we will do so in a smooth and orderly way and that we will be able to negotiate a new, deep and special partnership between a sovereign United Kingdom and our friends in the European Union. That is my mission."

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, was critical about the length of times talks were taking and the lack of progress.

He told MP: "We are still no clearer on when negotiations on the future relationship with our largest trading partner will begin."
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White House said on Monday that there was "nothing planned" for the Trump administration to send former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on mission to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The remarks from a senior White House official came after the 93-year-old former president told media earlier this month that he is willing to travel to the DPRK on behalf of the current administration to help diffuse the escalating situation on the Korean peninsula.

The White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said that Trump is still seeking a peaceful resolution of the DPRK standoff.

In an interview, Carter said that he had spoken to Trump's National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster but so far has got a negative response.

Carter, who was president from 1977 to 1981, has been to Pyongyang for three times.

The DPRK successfully tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles and a hydrogen bomb this year, triggering two new economic sanctions by the UN Security Council.
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Chinese-funded educational supplies were distributed on Monday to around 86,000 Syrian refugee students in Lebanon, said the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in a statement.

The aid was delivered by Chinese Ambassador to Lebanon Wang Kejian, who was joined by Lebanese Education Minister Marwan Hamadeh and UNICEF representative in Jordan Tanya Chapuisat.

The donation was made through Lebanon's Reach all Children with Education campaign (RACE), an ongoing collaborative effort between the Lebanese Ministry of Education and the United Nations.

Through RACE, the Lebanese government is striving to enable all children in Lebanon to attend school regardless of nationality.

Chapuisat hailed China's "generous donation" that reached 86,000 Syrian refugee students in Lebanon this year, according to the statement.

For his part, Hamadeh thanked China for its continuous support to Lebanon.

"We thank China for its ongoing support to Lebanon in many fields since the refugee crisis. It is coming from a brotherly country that loves Syria and Lebanon as well," he said.

Wang said that the Chinese donation, which expressed China's sympathy and support to the Syrian refugees, aimed at helping Lebanon to deal with the refugee crisis.

"We truly wish for the return of the Syrian refugees to their homeland with acceleration of the political solution process in Syria so these refugees can live in a secure, peaceful and prosperous atmosphere," the Chinese enovy said.
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday that Washington was keen on dialogue between Iraqi government and the Iraqi Kurdish region to solve the Kurdish issue.

Tillerson made his remarks in his discussion with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi over the tension between Baghdad and the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.

In a statement by the prime minister's office, Tillerson said that the United States supported Iraq's unity and called for the importance of adherence to the constitution.

For his part, Abadi said what Baghdad did in Kirkuk was redeployment and imposition of state power, which are legal and constitutional procedures.

"We do not want to fight a battle with any (Iraqi) components, all of them are our sons, and when we entered Kirkuk we sent a clear message that the Kurdish citizens are Iraqis and we deal with them like other components," Abadi said.

The statement said that the two sides also discussed "enhancing bilateral cooperation in various fields and the war against terrorism."

Abadi stressed that the fight against terrorism "is still a priority for us and we will continue to liberate the remaining areas of the country and secure the borders."

Abadi told Tillerson the paramilitary Hashd Shaabi unit "is an official institution which is part of the Iraq institutions. We have to encourage the (Hashd Shaabi) fighters because they will be the hope for the country and the region."

Earlier in the evening, Tillerson arrived in Baghdad on unannounced visit to meet with Iraqi leaders following last month's independence referendum held by the Kurdistan regional government, according to an Iraqi Foreign Ministry official who spoke to Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Tillerson would also discuss the reconstruction efforts after the defeat of the Islamic State (IS) group in the major IS strongholds in the country, the official said.

Hundreds of U.S. troops are already in Iraq, serving as trainers and advisers, in an attempt to help the country win the battle against IS militants.

The U.S.-led international coalition has also been conducting air raids against IS targets in both Iraq and Syria.

The independence of Kurdistan is opposed not only by the Iraqi central government, but also by other countries as it would threaten the integrity of Iraq and undermine the fight against IS militants.
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Brazilian military police shot and killed a Spanish tourist early Monday in a favela, or slum, in Rio de Janeiro, local media reported.

Maria Esperanza Jimenez Ruiz was reportedly shot after the car she was driving "broke through a police road block" in the Rocinha favela around 10:30 a.m., Agencia Brasil said on its website.

Jimenez was taken to a hospital but died of her injuries.

The incident came on the heels of a gunfight between police and local criminals, which left two officers wounded.

Authorities are investigating the incident. Meanwhile, the Spanish consulate in Rio told the agency it was offering assistance to the victim's family, as well as to two other Spanish tourists who were in the car at the time.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that he is "very, very close" to making a decision on who is going to lead the Federal Reserve.

Trump made the remarks when asked about the timeline for Fed chair decision at the beginning of a meeting with Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the Oval Office.

Trump's choice for the next Fed chair is narrowed down to a short list of three to five people, including current Fed chair Janet Yellen, whose term expires in February.

In an interview with Fox Business, Trump responded to question on the next Fed chair choice and said that "most people are saying it's down to two: Mr. Taylor, Mr. Powell. I also met with Janet Yellen, who I like a lot. I really like her a lot. So, I have three people that I'm looking at, and there are a couple of others."

Trump recently has had interviews with Yellen, current Fed governor Jerome Powell, Stanford University economist John Taylor, and former Fed governor Keven Warsh in discussion about the Fed chair job. White House's National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn is also under consideration for the job.

Local media went that Powell and Taylor were the front-runners for the Fed chair job.
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A senior Russian National Guard lieutenant was shot dead after killing four fellow servicemen at a military base in the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya in southern Russia, Russian media reported Monday, quoting the National Guard's press service.

According to preliminary information, the senior officer fatally injured four of his fellow servicemen at one of Chechnya's military units at around 4:00 p.m. local time (1:00 p.m. GMT).

"The serviceman who opened fire in the barracks was eliminated by the on-duty team," a National Guard spokesman said.

The military investigation service has launched an inquiry into the incident, but no immediate information about the causes of the incident or the shooter's motive is available for the moment, according to the spokesman.
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday denied a widow's account of the condolence call he made to her days after her husband was killed with three other U.S. soldiers in Niger earlier this month.

"I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!" Trump said on Twitter.

His tweet came shortly after Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, said Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America" that Trump stumbled on her husband's name during the phone call which made her "very angry."

"What he said was - yes the president - said that he knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyways. And I was - it made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it," Johnson told the TV program.

"He (Trump) couldn't remember my husband's name," the widow said. "The only way he remembered my husband's name is because he had my husband's report in front of him and that's when he actually said La David. I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband's name. And that's what hurt me the most. "

She also confirmed Democratic lawmaker Frederica Wilson's description of the call "was 100 percent correct."

Trump denied Wilson's account last week after the congresswoman revealed Trump told the widow that her husband "knew what he signed up for."

"Whatever Ms. Wilson said was not fabricated, what she said was 100 percent correct," the widow told ABC host George Stephanopoulos.

"Why would we fabricate something like that?" she later added.

Trump tweeted last week that Wilson's account was "totally fabricated," although the fallen solider's mother said it was accurate.

Besides, Johnson, who is expecting a daughter this January, said she's still waiting for answers regarding the circumstances of her husband's death.

"The questions that I have that I need answered is I want to know why it took them 48 hours to find my husband," she told Stephanopoulos. "Why couldn't I see my husband? Every time I asked to see my husband, they wouldn't let me."

"They won't show me a finger, a hand. ...I don't know what's in that box," she said. The couple had known each other since she was six years old.

The Pentagon is still investigating into the exact circumstances of how and when Sgt. La David Johnson and three other Americans were killed in an ambush by some 50 Islamic State fighters in Niger on Oct. 4. Enditem
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Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will pay an official visit to China from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2 at the invitation of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson announced Tuesday.

Premier Li and Medvedev will hold the 22nd China-Russia Prime Ministers' Regular Meeting, said spokesperson Geng Shuang at a daily news briefing.
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Two people were killed and several others injured, including a highway patrol officer, in a shooting spree Monday in Lake County, about 140 km north of San Francisco, western California, the United States, local media reported.

The two men killed were found in a residential neighborhood that the gunman has a connection to, Lake County Sheriff Brian Martin was quoted by local media as saying. The names of the victims were not released immediately.

The gunman was arrested after opening fire at multiple locations, including a winery, several houses and gas stations during the shooting rampage, police said.

The police identified the suspect as Alan Ashmore, who is 61 years old.

"There are a total of seven different crime scenes," Martin said.

The first reports of gunfire were made in an area near the Clearlake Oaks post office.

A female resident was shot in the same area and the suspect allegedly fired into several other residences before shooting an unidentified person at a nearby gas station.

Then, the gunman opened fire at people at another gas station, but there were no known injuries at that location, Martin said.

Additionally, the police were reported that the gunman fired his gun at the employees of a winery, but it's not known whether any injuries were caused.

A California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer responded to the incident and was shot in the leg. He was later rushed to a hospital without life-threatening injury.

Two other people suffered minor injuries and are being treated at a local hospital, Martin said.

Ashmore was detained on two homicide counts and multiple other counts of assault with a firearm. He was found to have hide several weapons in his car, and the police believed Ashmore used at least one of them in the killings, Martin added.

The motive of the shooting rampage was still under investigation, Martin said.
The Guardian

Tom Phillips in Beijing and agencies



Tuesday 24 October 2017 07.09 EDT

First published on Monday 23 October 2017 22.33 EDT

Joshua Wong granted bail with fellow activist Nathan Law after they were jailed for their roles in 2014 democracy protests

The Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong has vowed to continue his struggle against Communist party suppression after being released from prison while he appeals against his sentence for unlawful assembly.

Wong and Nathan Law, a fellow activist, were jailed in August for their roles in a demonstration that helped spark the citys large-scale umbrella movement pro-democracy protests in 2014.

Joshua Wong speaks to reporters outside

the courthouse in Hong Kong.

Photograph: Jerome Favre/EPA

On Tuesday, Hong Kongs chief justice, Geoffrey Ma, who heads the court of final appeal, granted the pair bail while they appeal their six-month and eight-month jail terms respectively, saying there was no flight risk.

Speaking outside the court, Wong, 21, said: Although I obtained temporary freedom, there is a chance that I will go to jail again this year  Regardless, we will face suppression under the authoritarian regime calmly.

He added, according to the Hong Kong Free Press website: This may not be the first time we go to jail, there may be more young people going to jail in the future  but we will press on with our beliefs and fight together on the path to democracy.

Prison is an inevitable part of Hong Kongs exhausting path to democracy

Joshua Wong, Pik Uk correctional institution, Hong Kong

The local broadcaster RTHK reported that Ma required Wong and Law to post 50,000 Hong Kong dollars (4,860) as bail, surrender their travel documents and report to police once a week. Their appeals will be heard on 7 November.

On emerging from the courthouse, Law said there had been unpleasant times in prison and that he was looking forward to a meal with his family.

He said the result of the appeal would depend on the implementation of one country, two systems, the semi-autonomous deal that guarantees Hong Kong rights unseen on the mainland. China has been accused of trampling the arrangement, made when Britain handed back Hong Kong in 1997.

I hope the result of the case showcases the protection of human rights in our law system, Law told reporters.

Supporters outside punched the air at news of the pairs release. Wongs father, Roger, who has heavily criticised his sons imprisonment, was at the court.

Eddie Chu, a lawmaker, said their release on bail was encouraging news for supporters of democracy. We need them out here with us to fight these battles, he said outside the court.

The jailing in August of Wong, Law and Alex Chow, leaders of the Chinese-ruled citys democracy movement, dealt a blow to the youth-led push for universal suffrage and prompted accusations of political interference. Tens of thousands of people demonstrated locally, and there was an international outcry.

Wong gained fame for his prominent role in the Hong Kong protests while still a teenager. Law was elected last year to the legislature, becoming the citys youngest ever lawmaker, but was disqualified from office after a government legal challenge over irregularities in his oath.

Chow had not applied for bail.





Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

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Holden cars sit in the yard of a Holden car dealership in Sydney, Australia. [Photo by Willian West/For China Daily]

Analysts debate 'perfect storm' of driving factors

The last mass-produced car designed and built in Australia rolled of General Motors Co's production line in the industrial city of Adelaide on Friday, as the nation reluctantly bid farewell to its auto manufacturing industry.

GM Holden, an Australian subsidiary of the United States automotive giant, built its last car almost 70 years after it created Australia's first, the FX Holden, in 1948.

Since then, an array of carmakers including Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Chrysler and Leyland have built and closed manufacturing plants in Australia.

After the last gleaming red Holden VF Commodore, a six-cylinder rear-wheel drive sedan, left the plant in the Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth that had grown over decades to provide its workforce, 955 factory workers clocked of for the last time.

"It's pretty tragic really that we've let go probably one of the best cars around the world," an auto painter who identified himself as Kane told reporters.

The 36-year-old worked at Holden for 17 years and starts a new job with an air conditioner manufacturer on Monday. But he knows many other former Holden employees won't find jobs so quickly.

Thousands of jobs in businesses that have supplied components and accessories to Australian auto manufacturers are also at risk.

"It's not the easiest thing. Life will go on," Kane said. Dozens of Holden enthusiasts gathered outside the factory, bringing with them generations of Holdens dating back to favored FJ models that were built between 1953 and 1956.

South Australia State Premier Jay Weatherill said car manufacturing was seminal to the state's industrial know-how.

"It has provided the backbone for our manufacturing capability in this state," Weatherill told reporters. "It's given us ... the capacity to imagine ourselves as an advanced manufacturing state."

Holden is an iconic Australian brand and has been a source of national pride for generations.

The V8 Holden Commodore has sold in the United States since 2013 as the Chevrolet SS.

The brand will survive, although Holdens will all now be imported from GM plants around the globe.

Holden retains design and engineering teams, a global design studio, a local testing ground, 1,000 employees and a 200-strong national dealer network.

The brand that became known as "Australia's own car" accounted for more than half of the new cars registered in Australia by 1958.

The reasons behind the demise of Australian auto manufacturing are numerous.

The first Holden cars were built in an era of high Australian tariffs and preferential trade with former colonial master Britain, which encouraged global carmakers to set up local factories to increase market share.

Australian import tariffs have since tumbled through bilateral free trade deals with car-manufacturing countries like the United States, Japan, China, South Korea, Thailand and Malaysia.

The Holden workers' union blames a lack of government support through subsidies for GM's decision to end manufacturing. There had been debate about whether the 7 billion Australian dollars ($5.5 billion) that the government spent on the car industry in subsidies since 2001 was worth the jobs that it created.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the closure was due to a "perfect storm" of factors.

The factors included the value of the Australian dollar, which due to a mining boom was for the first time stronger than the greenback in 2013 when the last three carmakers GM, Ford and Toyota announced that they would close.

Other factors were high production costs, a small domestic market in an Australian population of 24 million, and the most competitive and fragmented auto market in the world, with more than 60 car brands on sale. "You can't get away from the emotional response to the closure," Turnbull told Melbourne Radio 3AW on Friday.

The Associated Press
General Secretary Xi Jinping said at the opening of the 19th CPC National Congress that the establishment of free ports should be considered within free trade zones, and experts say the experiences of predecessors such as Singapore and China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region may help FTZs advance toward that goal.

Shanghai's Party chief Han Zheng said during the sidelines of the 19th CPC National Congress that the establishment of a free port within the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone has entered the planning stage and needs a green light from the central authorities before moving forward.

The State Council released a plan in March to comprehensively advance the opening-up of the Shanghai FTZ. The plan pointed out that a free port will be set up in the Yangshan bonded area and Shanghai Pudong International Airport bonded area.

According to the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation (CAITEC), which is affiliated with the Ministry of Commerce, Singapore and Hong Kong have rich experiences in free ports.

CAITEC said that they may provide successful examples in terms of more optimized government functions, a more international investment environment, a higher level of financial freedom, a higher level of free trade, an improved supervision environment, an optimized tax environment, a more complete legal system and the free flow of individuals.

As explained by the experts from the academy, the free ports in Singapore impose lower requirements concerning the registration capital and few limits on the operation range on the companies to register in the ports.

The advanced financial services, a free trade settlement system, and the high efficiency at the customs have attracted foreign companies to establish operations at the free ports in Singapore.

Chen Limin, strategy analyst at Nanjing-based Huatai Securities, pointed out that Hong Kong has adopted the free port policies in free trade.

"General import and export goods will not face any tariff or value-added tax in this regard," she said. "General goods are not subject to import quota or other import certificate regulations."

The local authorities at Shanghai have also studied the experiences from world leading free ports.

Zhu Min, deputy director of Shanghai Municipal Development and Reform Commission, said that these free ports share many things in common, such as the integration between a high level of opening-up and high efficiency in supervision, the cooperation between government and companies, as well as a global distribution function that is based on the combination of airports and harbors.

Wu Wei, deputy director of Shanghai Municipal Office for Port Services, said at a news conference in May that local authorities have been focusing on breakthroughs in customs supervision, inspection and quarantine to build a free port in Shanghai FTZ.

He said that the purpose is to come out with a significantly shorter list of goods to inspect, shorter time spent at Customs and a mutually recognized and exchanged information system between different supervision departments.

A free port, which is a form of free trade zone, is set up within a country or a region's borders but outside the Customs. It is open to all commercial vessels on equal terms. Goods may be unloaded, stored and shipped without payment of Customs duties here.
AMMAN  China is committed to providing technical and financial support to Jordan, said China's Deputy Minister of Commerce Qian Keming on Monday.

The minister made the remarks at the 7th session of the Joint Committee for Economic, Commercial and Technical Cooperation between Jordan and China, which focused on key areas for increased cooperation.

Calling Jordan "a key partner" in the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China, Qian reaffirmed China's keenness to boost cooperation with Jordan in various areas.

Jordan's Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Imad Fakhoury said the two sides discussed increased aid to Jordan to implement projects of priority, including upgrading civil defence vehicles and inspection devices at the Customs Department under a $70 million grant provided by China.

Fakhoury said the discussions also covered the need to increase Chinese investment in Jordan in the fields of gas, shale oil, renewable energy, and potash and phosphate fertilizers.

The two sides agreed to start technical meetings to draw a draft concerning their cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative.

Meanwhile, several agreements were signed with regard to increasing China-Jordan future cooperation in sectors such as tourism.

They also signed the Programme for Development, Economic and Technical Cooperation for the years 2018-2020.

A development assistance deal was also signed to finance the road project (Salt al Ardah) in Jordan, with a total budget of $31.6 million, which will be implemented by Jordanian and Chinese companies.

From 1999 to 2016, China had provided Jordan with grants and loans worth a total of $225 million.
LHASA - October's recent national holiday proved a good week for Dibu, a Nepalese merchant in Burang, a Tibetan county sharing 400 kilometers of border with Nepal and India.

As the third generation in his family to do business in Burang, the only port of entry for foreign trade in Ngari Prefecture, Dibu has worked in the family business since he was 19 years old. Now, he is 54.

Winter is coming, and Dibu is busy purchasing goods before heavy snow cuts off the mountain road back to his home. The Chinese commodities should help him make a fortune by the end of the year.

"We can make 300,000 to 400,000 yuan ($45,230 to $60,307) a year, far more than what we can earn in Nepal," he said.

The per capita gross national income in Nepal was $730 last year, according to the World Bank data.

"Burang port is getting more prosperous as China promotes the Belt and Road Initiative. I am sure our business will continue to grow in the future," Dibu said.

Tibet, which is seeking a bigger role in the Belt and Road Initiative, has seen its economic growth on the fast track despite a slowing national economy in recent years.

Tibet's GDP has been one of the best performing in China over the past three years, with this year's half-year GDP growth reaching 10.8 percent, underpinned by strong investment in infrastructure and robust consumption, according to the region's statistics bureau.

Tibet Customs said the region's foreign trade rose 22.1 percent year-on-year to 4.7 billion yuan in the first three quarters.

General trade surpassed petty trade to become Tibet's main foreign trade this year. In the first three quarters, imports and exports of general trade soared by 80.5 percent to hit 3 billion yuan, taking up 63.4 percent of Tibet's total foreign trade.

The fast growth in foreign trade benefited from a better business environment, infrastructure and trade policies, according to Yin Weifeng from Tibet Customs.

Reforms in customs procedures are being carried out to push forward the building of an economic belt in the Himalayan region and Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor. A China-Nepal cross-border economic cooperation zone is also being created.

The Belt and Road Initiative has opened more opportunities for the border region. China is aiding Nepal in a series of infrastructure projects including roads, power grids, bridges and industrial parks, all of which will become important channels to strengthen China-South Asia trade, where Tibet is an important gateway.

Tibetan enterprises are taking advantage of these opportunities to enter the overseas market.

In September last year, Libo Construction, along with several domestic companies, jointly undertook construction of a high voltage power line project in Ethiopia, becoming the first private enterprise in Tibet to enter Africa.

"All our achievement should be attributed to the Belt and Road Initiative, which gave domestic companies the confidence to walk out," said Tang Guozhong, chairman of Libo Construction.

Gaining confidence from Libo's success, 10 companies in Tibet have stepped into the overseas market, and many more are willing to follow suit.
BEIJING - China's private investment funds amounted to 10.32 trillion yuan ($1.58 trillion) at the end of last month, up by 860 billion yuan in the third quarter, data from the Asset Management Association of China (AMAC) showed.

The sector picked up speed from a 710-billion-yuan increase in the previous quarter.

Funds for private equities and venture capital stood at nearly 6.48 trillion yuan as of September, which accounted for about 63 percent of the total, while those for securities continued to shrink, down by 27.1 billion yuan in September alone and 547.2 billion yuan in the first nine months.

By September, the number of private fund managers rose to 21,216, up by 3,783 from the end of 2016. Total employees in the sector grew to 232,400.

Unlike publicly offered funds, private funds have a higher threshold for investors and invest in a variety of target companies including start-ups.
This file photo taken on Jan 30, 2011 shows US currency viewed in Manassas, Virgina. [Photo/VCG]

Finance Ministry to discuss details with potential investors in HK on Wednesday

The Ministry of Finance will kick-start its plans to issue US dollar-denominated sovereign bonds worth $2 billion by holding investment and financing discussions with potential investors in Hong Kong on Wednesday.

Half of the $2 billion in debt will consist of five-year bonds and the other half will be 10-year bonds. It would mean a re-opening of the financing channel connecting the international capital markets by adding an important investment and risk-hedge instrument, said a statement released on the ministry's website on Tuesday.

The bond offering will support a much more balanced structure of China's sovereign bonds, said the statement.

It would also be the first time that the Chinese government has issued US dollar-denominated sovereign bonds in the last 13 years.

The last offering of a similar bond was for $1.7 billion.

"The priority is not to raise capital, as there is no strong need for the Chinese government to borrow from overseas based on its current stable economic growth and supplementary foreign exchange reserves," according to the ministry. "So this time the total issuance amount is not quite large. The funds that would be raised will be used for general government expenditure."

The bond issue is more of an indication that the country's financial sector will be further opened up to global investors, while also fulfilling the purpose of international financing to support the development of China's real economy, said Liang Hong, chief economist with China International Capital Corp.

The ministry's statement said that there has been strong demand from international investors for China-issued sovereign bonds, as the issuer has strong economic foundations as well as a top-level credit rating among emerging markets. "Global investors are willing to better understand the development situation of China's whole economy and financial sector," it said.

Lian Ping, chief economist of Bank of Communications, said the issue would set a benchmark for China's sovereign bond pricing and improve the foreign currency-denominated bond's yield curve.

It is also expected to improve financing efficiency for Chinese enterprises when they need to raise funds from global capital markets, said Lian.

By the end of last year, the foreign debt of China's central government totaled $18.1 billion, accounting for 1.06 percent of total treasury bonds.

Nearly 85 percent of the foreign debt is yuan-denominated which was issued in the offshore market.

"China's current foreign debt ratio is much lower than the international level," the ministry said.

By choosing to launch the bond issue in Hong Kong, the central government has also reaffirmed its commitment to maintain the region as a global financial center, the statement said.
Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong province, is competing to become a production base for new energy vehicles in the coming years.

According to the city's blueprint, the southern metropolis has plans to be capable of manufacturing more than 300,000 new energy cars annually by 2020, and the city's new energy car ownership is estimated to come to more than 200,000 within three years.

"Guangzhou is expected to become a new, foreign-oriented 'new energy and intelligent Internet Plus' innovative automobile industrial development zone," according to the Work Plan for the Development of the New Energy Vehicles in Guangzhou 2017-20.

The plan was passed by the executive conference of Guangzhou's city government earlier this month.

Guangzhou, home to a total of nine whole car production facilities, including plants of Japan's three major carmakers Toyota, Honda and Nissan, reached an annual automobile industrial production worth 434.63 billion yuan ($66.87 billion) in 2016.

The city produced more than 2.63 million cars last year and its output of new energy cars was up 86.3 percent over the previous year.

In term of new energy cars alone, Guangzhou has the production facilities of Guangzhou Automobile Group Co Ltd (GAC), BAIC Motor (Guangzhou), BYD and Japan's Nissan.

GAC, one of the major car makers in China, has plans to develop 10 new models of new energy cars in the coming five years and construct special production platforms for those vehicles.

More than 500,000 new energy cars were sold in China last year.

Zhao Fuquan, an automobile specialist from the prestigious Tsinghua University, said environment friendly new energy cars will be the development trend in China in the future.

"Carmakers will have great potential for development" by focusing on the production of more new energy cars," Zhao said.

Adding "internet+big data" will be the competitive core for many automobile companies, he said.

Guangzhou's improving investment climate and ecology has been attracting more big name automobile and internet companies to the city in recent years.

Last month, internet giant Tencent signed a strategic cooperation agreement with GAC to jointly develop the industry and provide the services involved in auto-related internet services, intelligent driving, cloud platforms, big data and ecocars.

On Sept 17, two of World Top 500 companies, Hitachi and Honda, signed a contract to jointly develop a motor system projectfor carmakers around the worldin Guangzhou's Zengcheng district.

According to the contract, a new joint venture company will be set up by Hitachi Automotive Systems Ltd and Honda Motor Co in November while construction of the project will officially kick off next year. Commercial production of the project is expected to start in 2020.

And on Oct 13, construction of the southern base of China Automotive Technology and Research Center formally began in Zengcheng. The project, which cost more than 1.85 billion yuan, is a base as regional headquarters and a public technology service platform for testing whole cars, automobile parts and new energy cars.
By Cheng Yu in Beijing and Yang Jun in Guiyang | China Daily | Updated: 2017-10-24 08:14

A "time tunnel" effect is displayed at Guizhou province's big data demonstration center in Guiyang. [Photo/Xinhua]

Guizhou province takes advantage of new technology to develop economy, boost employment and combat poverty

Guizhou in Southwest China struggled with unemployment and poverty before big data created a big future for the province.

Nestled in a mountainous region, it has been transformed in the past three years into an innovation hub as major global companies, such as Apple Inc, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Hyundai Motor Group, flocked to the area.

"Big data has helped relieve local poverty as it has brought huge opportunities to impoverished areas and created jobs at the same time," said Jing Yaping, deputy director of the bureau responsible for Guizhou province's big data development.

Innovation and cutting-edge technology has fueled economic growth across China with big data playing a crucial role.

This transformation is in line with General Secretary Xi Jinping's remarks during the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

Xi emphasized that innovation is the primary force driving development.

"We will move Chinese industries up to the medium-high end of the global value chain, and foster a number of world-class advanced manufacturing clusters," he said.

Xi called for more efforts to develop advanced manufacturing, promote further integration of the internet, big data and artificial intelligence with the real economy.

Guizhou has certainly adopted this approach to achieve rapid growth.

Official data showed the industrial output of large-scale digital information manufacturing in the province was at 5.26 billion yuan ($800 million) in the first half of this year, a jump of 64 percent compared to 2016.

It was first time the sector had contributed double-digit numbers to industrial growth.

"In Guizhou, big data has become the new growth engine for economic transformation," said Qin Rupei, executive vice-governor of Guizhou, and a delegate at the Congress.

Figures also revealed that software and IT services produced revenue of 15.59 billion yuan in the first half of 2017, a 36.4 percent increase year-on-year.

"Thanks to big data, Guizhou has been able to rejuvenate itself," Jing, of the big data bureau, said.

An hour's drive out of the provincial capital of Guiyang is Guian New Area, a 1,795-square-kilometer industrial technology park, packed with blue-chip brands.

Hyundai is one of the latest big names to open a big data center there. The South Korea-based automotive company plans to collate and analyze massive data for its advanced automated vehicles. It will also use the information for research and development.

"Hyundai Motor's knowhow in big data analysis, coupled with Guizhou province's push into (the sector), will surely accelerate development in connected car technologies," Hwang Seung-ho, executive vice-president and head of the auto intelligence division at Hyundai, told the company's website.

Earlier this year, China Daily reported that more than 400 companies in the big data industry had set up in Guian New Area, including Apple, Microsoft, Alibaba, Tencent Holdings Ltd and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd.

China's major telecom operators, China Telecommunications Corp, China Mobile Communications Corp and China United Network Communications Group Co Ltd, also have centers there.

Up to 20 Fortune 500 companies and 14 of China's top 500 firms have a presence in the technology park.

Apple, for example, invested $1 billion on its first big data center in the country. The Guian setup will be used to help meet growing demand for advanced cloud services.

The global tech giant's decision to ramp up investment in China comes at a time when it is losing ground to domestic rivals such as Huawei.

Still, this move will cement its place in the market here.

The China International Big Data Industry Expo 2017 in Guiyang attracted more than 310 enterprises and institutions. [Photo/Xinhua]

"The big data industry will play an important role in helping Guian build a modern industrial system, create more jobs and improve administrative efficiency," said Ma Changqing, then head of the administrative committee of Guian New Area.

"We are developing a smart city," Ma added.

Another high-profile business in Guizhou is FAST or the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope. The installation recently celebrated its first anniversary there.

Known as the world's largest radio telescope, it is able to collect celestial big data by detecting emissions from stars and galaxies across the cosmos.

FAST has also been used to study pulsars, which is short for pulsating radio stars.

"New discoveries, such as pulsars, have been made by FAST, which is of great importance to solving key physics problems," the National Astronomical Observatories of China stated in a media conference.

Back on earth, leading cloud service provider Baishan Cloud has increased its sales volume by more than 50-fold since opening up in Guizhou in 2015, although the private company declined to disclose further financial information.

Indeed, firms such as Baishan Cloud have helped create jobs and fuel the province's economy.

Last year, e-commerce turnover in the province's rural areas increased by 27.1 percent and helped the added value side of the agricultural processing industry.

Statistics from Guizhou Poverty Alleviation Office also showed that poverty rates dropped from 26.8 percent in 2012 to 10.6 by the end of last year. Additionally, up to 1,500 villages have been removed from the poverty-stricken list.

"We have made significant progress in fighting poverty in the past few years through industry development," said Qin Rufang, deputy director of Poverty Relief Office of Guizhou province.

Dong Xianwu contributed to this story.
By Cheng Yu in Beijing and Yang Jun in Guiyang | China Daily | Updated: 2017-10-24 08:38

The opening ceremony at the Big Data College of the Guizhou Institute of Technology on Sept 15, 2017. [Photo provided to China Daily]

A group of 295 freshmen at the Big Data College in Guizhou's provincial capital of Guiyang are going through a unique experience.

These undergraduates are attending China's first higher education establishment dedicated to one of the driving forces of innovation and technology in the 21st century.

In a move to cultivate talent in the field of big data, the college has put a partnership together between industry, universities and research institutes.

Last month, it opened its doors for the first time after being founded by Guizhou provincial government, the Guizhou Institute of Technology, online giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and educational platform Huikedu Group.

The college's main mission is to train technicians and scientists of the future.

"We are different from other colleges as students will not only get diplomas in big data but also certificates from Alibaba," said Long Fenjie, president of Guizhou Institute of Technology.

"This will be beneficial to their careers in the long term," he added.

Up to 2,500 big data and cloud computing students are expected to graduate, as well as another 10,000 in related professions, during the next three years.

Majors in network engineering, or cloud computing, as well as data science and big data technology are on the curriculum for the four-year bachelor's degree course.

Part of which will also include tutorials from senior Alibaba technology staff.

"We will dispatch core technology experts, and contribute to the research and development of teaching materials," said Michael Yang, vice-president of Alibaba Cloud Computing.

The company plans to recruit stellar students from the program, Yang pointed out, or recommend them to other high-tech firms.

Apart from cooperating with Alibaba, Guizhou has agreed a partnership deal for an electronics college with the National Institute of Information Technology in India.

A China-United Kingdom data park, which will house 30 companies, is also being developed for healthcare-related technology.

"More high quality resources will be integrated into Guizhou with the help of such collaborations," Long, of Guizhou Institute of Technology, said.

"This will inject energy into future big data development in the province," he added.
Chinese bike-sharing company Mobike announced on Oct 20, 2017, it had signed a contract with the CCPIT Beijing. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Chinese bike-sharing company Mobike announced on Friday it had signed a contract with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, Beijing Sub-council, as part of its efforts to enter the global bike-sharing market.

CCPIT Beijing said it will build a bridge for Mobike to work with local governments worldwide, through its relationships with international chambers of commerce. Mobike will promote its experience in technological innovation, big data analysis and urban traffic management internationally, with CCPIT Beijing's assistance via its global platforms.

Wang Xiaofeng, founder of Mobike, said that the company has been committed to innovating its business model, product and technology. Focusing on facilitating public travel and traffic planning, Mobike will pave its way to entering the global market, Wang added.

"With the support of CCPIT Beijing, we will accelerate our global strategy, striving to launch our bikes in more than 200 global cities in total by the end of 2017. By then, our intelligent platform will accelerate efforts to benefit other countries," Wang said.

Lin Bin, deputy director of CCPIT Beijing, said that the sub-council has built up business ties with a large number of well-known companies, but this is the first time it has cooperated with an innovation-driven company such as Mobike.

"We saw the power of innovation in Mobike and we are very happy to work with them. We will treasure this cooperation and will work together to develop China's Belt and Road Initiative and going-out strategies, making contributions to China's opening-up strategy and the globalization of outstanding companies in Beijing."

Since launching two years ago, Mobike has placed 7 million shared bikes in more than 180 foreign cities in nine countries. With more than 200 million registered users and 30 million rides per day, the company has become a major mobile app-based travel platform.

Mobike can monitor every bike connected to its platform through its internet-based and big data technologies, which is highly convenient for urban traffic managers. Hundreds of variables that influence traffic flows  such as the time, location, weather conditions  can be mined and analyzed from the data collected through its platform.

Mobike was founded in 2015 in Beijing, kicking off its first bike-sharing program in Shanghai in 2016. After that, the company promoted its shared bikes around China and foreign countries including Singapore and the United Kingdom. In June 2017, it was awarded the World Wildlife Fund's Climate Solver Sustainable Urban Mobility Special Award, in recognition of the impact of its innovative technology and promotion of sustainable transportation.

At present, CCPIT Beijing has established business ties with 192 chambers of commerce in 80 countries. It has also built up multilateral platforms, including the Beijing International Conference of Friendly Chambers of Commerce.

It was founded in 1978 under the support of the Beijing municipal government, to serve an array of different purposes, ranging from promoting foreign trade, exchanging advanced technologies and boosting economic cooperation. It now has 4,000 member organizations scattered across 14 Beijing counties and districts. Its staff members include representatives from Beijing economic and trade institutions, companies, associations and groups.
Robots, made by iFlytek Co Ltd from East China's Anhui province, on display at an industry expo held in Beijing. [Photo/Xinhua]

Leading Chinese artificial intelligence company, iFlytek Co Ltd, has announced it will set up a 1.02 billion yuan ($150 million) fund to support software and hardware developers. The move is part of its broad push to accelerate the application of AI in consumer electronics, healthcare and other industries.

The announcement came after the company's AI-enabled user interface platform accumulated 460,000 third-party developer teams in the past seven years.

Hu Yu, executive president of iFlytek, said the fund will be used to finance startups that have core technologies but lack business know-how, or companies that excel in commercializing products but are unable to integrate AI into their devices.

"As a company born out of the (Hefei-based) University of Science and Technology of China, we have been focusing on voice recognition technologies for 18 years. We know what problems technology-oriented startups will face and how to help traditional companies upgrade themselves through AI," Hu said.

The company's efforts are in line with General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee Xi Jinping's call to turn China into a country of innovators and to reach the frontiers of science and technology.

Innovation is the primary force driving development, Xi said in a report delivered to the 19th CPC National Congress on Oct 18. He called for more measures to cultivate young scientists, engineers and high-performing innovation teams.

Li Deyi, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said because AI is being increasingly used in manufacturing, healthcare and other traditional industries, China is now in need of roughly 1 million AI specialists.

"Nurturing more AI professionals is key to being a world pioneer in cutting-edge technology," Li said.

According to iFlytek, it will partner with local governments across the country to build incubators to accelerate startups' growth. For instance, it has a 10,000-square-meter space in Changchun, capital of Jilin province, to help companies learn how to develop AI-enabled systems or gadgets for automobiles.

"We will not only offer software support and financial guidance, but also hardware components and an online AI curriculum," Hu said.

According to Hu, the company is partnering with Cambridge University in image recognition technology, and is planning to expand its presence in Europe by first entering into the United Kingdom.

On Tuesday, iFlytek also unveiled a smart microphone named Morfei, which has built-in voice recognition and natural language understanding technologies. The device is designed to lower the threshold for home appliance-makers and hotels to integrate AI technologies into their products.
Tom Clifford [Photo/China Daily]

Congresses are about legacies and planning. There are many ways to measure a country's greatness: GDP, military strength, standard of living. My favorite is education, from kindergartens to colleges. More than any other aspect of a society, it shows vision, foresight, ambition and caring. China has arrived economically, and its education sector is reaching out in ways that would have been unimaginable until recently. A primary engine of growth for international higher education, China is leading the way in student recruitment, English and Chinese language programs, transnational education and short-term study abroad.

The Ministry of Education launched the Study in China plan in 2010, with the aim of attracting 500,000 students by 2020.

They are well on the way to that, with 442,773 international students studying in China last year. Countries, especially the United States, are sending students to study in China, and perhaps some of these students would in the past have chosen the United Kingdom, other countries in Europe, or stayed in the US. This outreach is not a global trend. In the UK, the number of incoming international students has hit a plateau, according to figures from the UK Council for International Student Affairs. This is against the backdrop of increasingly rigid visa regulations for international students and the Brexit vote aftershocks.

A report this year by the American Association of College Registrars and Admissions Officers says four out of 10 US colleges reported fewer international applications.

China is bucking the trend. The plan's goal is to make the country an attractive destination for degree-seeking international students. Policy initiatives to ensure this are in the works, including bilateral partnerships, additional scholarships for one-year language preparation courses, more programs in English, and easier access to the job market for international students.

I write as a journalist, but speak as a father. My son is taking a degree course in Beijing. Two of his foreign friends that he went to school with are also taking degree courses in the capital. This suggests to me a changing world, one that is offering a new horizon of opportunities to young people. New horizon? Maybe a new landscape.

More than 600 Chinese universities are working in partnership with foreign institutions to offer hundreds of joint programs for bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. This approach will shake up global education.

I saw firsthand a small example of this. The Irish embassy in Beijing has a deserved reputation as a welcoming place that gathers people to socialize in friendly and welcoming surroundings. It recently held a reception for Irish students coming to spend time in China to learn the language and culture. I talked to many of them. All were agreed that China will play a major role in their lives, and they wanted to see and experience the country. That single response differentiated them from previous generations.

New initiatives including Silk Road partnerships are set to create further opportunities for engagement with China. Chinese students help many foreign institutions meet their international student recruitment goals.

This year will see 8 million students graduate from Chinese higher-education institutions, a record number that is more than twice that of the US.

But it is not just overseas where change is coming. Alongside China's vast investments in elite higher-education institutions, the country is also developing transnational higher education, both within and beyond China. One example is Zhejiang University. One of the country's oldest and most prestigious universities, it has opened a new international campus in Haining, two hours from the original campus, which opened in 1897.

This new campus has established partnerships with elite institutions from across the world, including the University of Edinburgh, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Pennsylvania, which are opening joint research and teaching institutes and providing dual degree programs. This type of approach is being repeated in campuses across the country.

As with any endeavor, lessons will be learned along the way, but one important one has been learned already: China is a global classroom nurturing a new generation of internationally minded students.
Giant Panda National Park will primarily protect giant pandas in their native habitat. Area: 27,100 sq km, including parts of Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces.[Photo/Xinhua]

China is pushing forward the establishment of four national parks that would cover about 2 percent of the nation's territory to protect precious natural resources, including wildlife such as giant pandas, Siberian tigers and Tibetan antelopes, a senior official said on Monday.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, has personally reviewed plans for the four pilot national parks and required preservation of the integrity and original condition of the local ecological system, said Yang Weimin, deputy head of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Finance and Economic Affairs.

"The aim is to give about 215,000 square kilometers of land back to nature, to give roughly 2 percent of China's territory to giant pandas, Siberian tigers and Tibetan antelopes, and to give our future generations a larger area of pristine land," he said at a news conference on the sidelines of the 19th CPC National Congress.

"That's something unprecedented in the history of the Chinese nation."
The closing session of 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China starts in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing Tuesday morning. [Photo/Xinhua] More photos on the closing ceremony

The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China approved an amendment to the Party Constitution which enshrines Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.

The amendment was approved on Tuesday during the closing session of the congress.

The congress elected a new Central Committee and a new Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, announced the completion of the election at the closing session of the congress.

The delegates applauded after Xi made the announcement.

The 19th CPC Central Committee will in turn elect the Political Bureau, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau and the General Secretary at its first plenary session on Wednesday.

CPC congress passes resolutions on Central Committee report, CCDI work report, Constitution amendment

Delegates to the congress Tuesday passed resolutions on a report of the 18th CPC Central Committee, a work report of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and an amendment to the CPC Constitution, at the closing session of the congress.

CPC Constitution enshrines Xi's thought as part of action guide

An amendment to the Constitution of the CPC was approved Tuesday, making Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as a new component of the Party's guide for action, according to a resolution of the 19th CPC National Congress.

Xi's military thinking, Party's 'absolute' leadership over army written into CPC Constitution

The CPC has included Xi Jinping's military thinking and the Party's "absolute" leadership over the armed forces into its Constitution, according to a resolution approved by the 19th CPC National Congress.

CPC congress establishes historical position of Xi's thought: resolution

The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China establishes the historical position of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, according to a resolution approved by the congress.

'Belt and Road' incorporated into CPC Constitution

The CPC has incorporated pushing for Belt and Road development into its Constitution, according to a resolution approved by the 19th CPC National Congress.

The congress agreed to write into the Constitution "following the principle of achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration, and pursuing the Belt and Road Initiative," according to the resolution.

Proposed by Xi Jinping in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes. It comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

CPC Constitution says 'fight against corruption keeps going'

The CPC says in its revised Constitution that the Party must "make comprehensive efforts" to ensure that "the fight against corruption keeps going", according to a resolution approved by the 19th CPC National Congress.

Since its 18th National Congress, the Party has made steady progress in exercising full and rigorous governance over the Party, taken all-around measures to explore the strengthening of Party building, and gained abundant successful experience and achieved major outcomes, which must be included into the Party Constitution in a timely manner and therefore become the common will and rule of the whole Party.

The Party must firmly exercise self-supervision and practice strict self-governance in every respect, the revised Constitution says.

Opening the congress on Oct 18, Xi Jinping called corruption "the greatest threat" the Party faces.

The Party will work for the adoption of national anti-corruption legislation and create a corruption reporting platform that covers both disciplinary inspection commissions and supervision agencies, he said.

Disciplinary authorities have investigated 440 officials at or above provincial or corps level for corruption over the past five years, who included 43 members and alternate members of the CPC Central Committee, as well as nine members of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), said Yang Xiaodu, deputy secretary of the CCDI, at a press conference on the sidelines of the 19th CPC National Congress.

CPC pushes fundamental improvement in Party's political ecosystem: resolution

The CPC will work toward a fundamental improvement in the political ecosystem of the Party, said a resolution on a report on the work of the 18th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

The 19th National Congress of the CPC reviewed and approved the report, and fully endorsed the commission's work, according to the resolution passed at the closing session of the congress.
The southern province of Guangdong is well equipped to lead China's modernization drive, Hu Chunhua, the provincial Party chief, said on Thursday.

He attributed his confidence to its key strengths, having achieved robust growth under a market-oriented economy, being highly international, and possessing a steadily growing innovation-driven economy.

Guangdong took the lead in the country's reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, and it will continue to act as a pioneer in endeavors to achieve socialist modernization, he said.

Hu made the remarks on the second day of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in response to a reporter's question. He and other members of the delegation from Guangdong discussed the report delivered by General Secretary Xi Jinping at the opening of the congress. The delegation's discussion was open to the media.

In the report, Xi stressed that innovation is the primary force driving development and a strategic factor underpinning the building of a modernized economy.

Ma Xingrui, the governor of Guangdong, said the province invested more than 200 billion yuan ($30.14 billion) to support research and development last year.

In the overall development of the province's innovation-driven economy, Shenzhen stands out. Wang Weizhong, the city's Party chief, said the city will increase R&D investment from the current 4.1 percent of GDP to 4.2 percent over the next five years, to enhance basic research.

Meanwhile, the city will also allocate resources for its development into a world-class innovation hub with an output value of 4 trillion yuan, an increase of 1.3 trillion yuan from the current level, Wang said.

In addition, Wang said Shenzhen will work with neighbors Guangzhou and Dongguan to carry out the blueprint for the Guangzhou-Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Corridor. The corridor will tap into the potential of each city to achieve optimal results in the development of an innovation-driven economy.

Within the corridor, Guangzhou will focus on intensifying basic research, as it is home to many higher-education institutions; Shenzhen will translate innovation advances into goods and services; and Dongguan, a city boasting a highly developed manufacturing industry, is expected to be responsible for production.

Ren Xuefeng, Party chief of Guangzhou, said the city will also strengthen its role as a pivot, integrating resources from neighboring cities like Foshan and Zhongshan.

Ren and Wang said both Shenzhen and Guangzhou will take full advantage of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to strengthen cooperation with cities involved in this national-level development blueprint.

The bay area, announced by Premier Li Keqiang in March, is composed of nine cities in Guangdong  Guangzhou, Foshan, Zhaoqing, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Huizhou, Zhuhai, Zhongshan and Jiangmen  as well as the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions.
Shen Mingquan, Party secretary of Anji county and a delegate to the 19th CPC National Congress, gives an interview at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Oct 18 before the congress opens. [Photo/Xinhua]

Shen Mingquan, Party secretary of Anji county in Huzhou, Zhejiang province and a delegate to the 19th CPC National Congress, shared the county's experience in promoting green development in an interview in Beijing on Oct 18.

Twelve years ago, President Xi Jinping, then Party secretary of Zhejiang, proposed the famous "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" theory in Yucun village in Anji. From then on, the county unswervingly has been marching along the path of sustainable development.

Shen communicated with Yucun villagers prior to the congress and found the residents live an abundant and harmonious life there. Moreover, they feel pleased with the well-preserved natural environment.

When asked for details of the practices and experience, Shen made three points. He said Anji is known for its good ecology and the county government has held fast to environmental protection for years. In the process of matching its ecological advantages to the forces of development, Anji insists on green development by greatly promoting environmentally friendly industries like eco-agriculture and tourism. In addition, to enhance the sense of happiness of both urban and rural residents, the government has been devoted to building beautiful countryside to narrow the gap in living conditions between the two groups of people.

"It's a great honor and responsibility for me to attend this historic event," said Shen, hoping the 19th CPC Congress could further promote the green and sustainable development concept.
A flag guard formation consisting of officers and soldiers from the army, air force, navy and rocket force of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) attends a military parade to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the PLA at Zhurihe training base in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region, July 30, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING  The Communist Party of China has included Xi Jinping's military thinking and the Party's "absolute" leadership over the armed forces into its Constitution, according to a resolution approved by the 19th CPC National Congress on Tuesday.

According to the resolution, the CPC shall uphold its absolute leadership over the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and other people's armed forces and implement Xi Jinping's thinking on strengthening the military, as part of the amendments to the CPC's fundamental document for its over 89 million members.

The development of the PLA shall be strengthened by enhancing its political loyalty, strengthening it through reform and technology, and running it in accordance with the law, the resolution read.

The CPC shall build people's forces that obey the Party's command, can fight and win, and maintain excellent conduct to ensure that the PLA accomplishes its missions and tasks in the new era, it said.

The inclusion of these statements into the Party Constitution will "help ensure the Party's absolute leadership over the people's armed forces, [and] modernize national defense and the military," it said.

In addition, the amendment to the CPC Constitution also clarified that Chairperson of the Central Military Commission assumes overall responsibility over the work of the Commission and that the CMC is responsible for Party work and political work in the armed forces.

This complies with the realistic requirement to ensure the CMC fulfills its responsibility for Party self-supervision and self-governance after the military reform, the resolution said.


Wu Xiaoguang, delegate to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the chief designer of China's first domestic aircraft carrier, meets the press in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing October 24, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

Chinese naval shipbuilding technology will leap into the global front ranks in the near future, a senior naval engineer said on Tuesday.

Naval ships, such as aircraft carriers, are considered "instruments of national significance, and China has achieved great development in naval shipbuilding since 2012,"said Wu Xiaoguang, the chief designer of China's first domestic aircraft carrier.

"An aircraft carrier is the crown jewel of military engineering, it is extremely complex and intricately designed,"he told reporters on the sidelines of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

"Everything on the carrier, down to every special metal plating, electronics, equipment, as well as planes, missiles, and sea mines are all products of Chinese ingenuity,"he said.

On April 26, China launched its first domestically developed aircraft carrier in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning province. On June 28, China launched its Type 055 class large guided-missile destroyer, one of China's newest and most advanced warships.

"China is fully capable of producing mid-to-large size aircraft carriers and large size destroyers,"he added.

China is a major maritime nation, with 80 percent of all goods transported via sea, Wu said. At the same time, China is the world's largest trading nation, with huge migration of workers and tourists.

As the Belt and Road Initiative progresses, China's overseas investment and workers will increase dramatically, "they will need protection from naval ships", he said.

China did not have an overseas logistic facility until its Djibouti base opened in August. All of the previous naval training, as well as peacekeeping and escort missions required sailors and ships to sail for months without logistical support, he said.

"But our navy has always completed their missions with flying colors,"he said. "In a way, this shows our technical achievements and progress."

In recent years, China has been constantly dishing out new vessels because "many of our ships are outdated or passed their service years,"he said. Still, Wu is hopeful that his teams, which have an average age of 37, will continue to contribute to China's growing naval capability.

"In the near future, I am confident that our shipbuilding technology will leap into the front ranks of the world,"he said.
As Chinese students flock to elite universities overseas, China's own higher education sector should improve its talent-cultivating system to build more world-class institutions to draw students back home, a university president said on Tuesday.

Jin Donghan, delegate to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party and president of Shanghai University, meets the press in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing October 24, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

The increasing number of Chinese students attending foreign universities has exposed the lack of top-notch higher education institutions at home and more world-class universities should be developed at home to meet the people's need for high-quality education and the country's demand for elite talents, said Jin Donghan, president of Shanghai University, after the closing session of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

"A world-class university should put cultivation of world-class talent at the core of its development in a system where academic teaching, core value building and occupational ability training shall be combined," said Jin, who is also Party secretary of the university.

According to the 2016 Report on the Development of Chinese Students Studying Abroad, China had a total of 1.26 million students overseas by the end of 2015, accounting for 25 percent of the world's total number of students attending colleges outside their native countries.

Due to expensive tuition, tough employment prospects and security concerns, most Chinese parents are actually not willing to send their children abroad but the lack of elite choice domestically have forced them to do so, said Jin

By the end of 2016, China had 2,880 higher education institutes, but only 45 of them ranked in the top-500 list of the Academic Ranking of World Universities' 2017 version.

"The top leadership of our country has reiterated that to build a strong education system is the fundamental project of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," said Jin. "We need a massive number of excellent politicians, scientists, entrepreneurs as well as a skillful and innovative labor force to contribute to the great cause. We need to build more and more world-class universities to cultivate enough talents on our own."

In November 2015, the State Council, China's Cabinet, released a plan to help a number of universities and academic disciplines enter the world's top level by 2020 with financial support from central and regional governments.
China's military technologies are helping to improve the everyday lives of the people, a senior military scientist said on Tuesday.

Xue Chenyang, delegate to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party and professor from North University of China, a school dedicated to military engineering, meets the press in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing October 24, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

Some military technologies are closely related to the people's daily lives, said Xue Chenyang, a professor from North University of China, a school dedicated to military engineering.

For example, carbon fibers used in satellites are now being widely used in manufacturing and China's Beidou navigation system is also being used in bike sharing apps, he said on the sidelines of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

Speaking from his personal experience, Xue once worked on a computer chip-sized electronic underwater sensor that can pick up sounds under the sea and be used in sea-floor observation.

He later expanded this technology to be able to detect very faint sounds from the human body. "Such technologies worked very well during testing, and can detect sounds that are too faint for traditional stethoscopes,"he said.

These sounds are then uploaded to a cloud network for analysis and could help produce a more accurate diagnosis. "This technology is already on its way to reaching the market,"he said.

"We hope other sensors and transmitters that are used in rockets and deep sea exploration can reach the civil market,"he said.

However, there are two major hurdles. The first is that these high tech gadgets were designed to serve a specific project, so engineers did not think about how they could benefit the lives of ordinary people during the design phase.

Secondly, scientists are not very good at marketing, so they are not very active in pushing their creations to market, he said.

"The report from the congress states that we have to blend military and civilian technologies, and find ways to integrate them,"he said. "I think those issues will be solved in the future."

"As a scientist, our creations not only have a duty to serve the military and national defense, but also help people live better lives,"he said.
Tuesday not only saw the conclusion of the 19th CPC National Congress in Beijing, it also marked the dawning of a new era for China.

For it was on this day that the Party formally gained a new addition to its guiding ideology: Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.

I, alongside an array of reporters from countries many and varied, were there to bear witness as the congress' delegates resolved to amend the Party's Constitution and enshrine within it this "crystallization of the practical experience and collective wisdom of the Party and the people", as it was described.

"The Thought is a continuation and development of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development," the resolution said.

No less momentous than this announcement was the feat of logistics and organization that had brought us all together for this occasion - shepherding journalists being, in my experience at least, about as easy as herding cats.

That everything went without a hitch speaks volumes for how well the event was organized, especially given the veritable United Nations of reporters, photographers and assorted media personnel I saw around me - bringing with them, as they do, the attendant confusion of tongues.

Hundreds of foreign journalists from all over the world were invited to cover the congress - a logical move, given that China is taking an ever greater role in global affairs.

They were welcomed with open arms and provided with a rare insight into the inner workings of China's political system. For some, it will have been for their first congress - it certainly was for me.

Never before had I witnessed a political event of this magnitude firsthand. It put the likes of the United Kingdom's weekly Prime Minister's Questions - the only large scale political event I ever had the chance to attend in my homeland.

And the fact that the congress happens but twice a decade only added to the sense of import, and the honor each attendee felt because they were a part of it.
The closing session of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on Tuesday marked the opening of another chapter in China's forward march under the Party's leadership.

It was honor to be present as the congress amended the Party Constitution, and elected a new Central Committee and a new Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

It was a monumental moment that will direct how China will change in the years to come.

The unanimous adoption of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as an amendment to the Party Constitution heralds a significant juncture in the history of China  and the world.

It will chart the course of the country's future.

Amendments to the Party Constitution include the two centenary goals  that China achieves moderate prosperity by 2020, a year before the Party's centennial, and that it becomes a great modern socialist nation by 2049, when China will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding.

Indeed, the Party's guiding document has been revised to reflect the realities of China's changing development needs under the leadership of the Party with Xi as its core.

The nation has made sufficient progress on its mission of serving the people that the time has come for a new era to be enshrined in the Party Constitution as a new paradigm to chart the way forward.

And forward is where we go from here.

From this moment in the Great Hall of the People on, Party members at all levels will roll up their sleeves and tackle the hard work of advancing China's development in a new era.

I'm fortunate to have witnessed the country's incredible progress under the Party's leadership during my 11 years working as a journalist in China  especially the outstanding transformations of the past five years.

And I'm eager to see how the outcomes of the congress' close in the Great Hall on Tuesday will manifest on the ground throughout the country in the years to come.
Yang Baofeng, a delegate from Northeast China's Heilongjiang province and head of Harbin Medical University

"Amending the Party's Constitution is to keep it abreast of the times. It's the guiding principle for the future of the Party and our country, and accords with the national conditions, popular sentiments and the aspirations of the Party."
Delegatesto the 19th CPC National Congressvote to amend the Party Constitution in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Tuesday before the congress adjourned. XU JINGXING / CHINA DAILY

The Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era was written into the Constitution of the Communist Party of China as a new component of the Party's guide for action, according to a resolution of the 19th CPC National Congress.

Unanimously agreed upon by Party delegates, the amendment to the Constitution  the CPC's fundamental document for its more than 89 million members  juxtaposed Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era with Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents and the Scientific Outlook on Development.

In response to contemporary developments and by integrating theory with practice, Chinese Communists, with Xi, also China's president, as their chief representative, have given shape to Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era since the 18th CPC National Congress, the resolution said.

It has "systematically addressed the major question of our times  what kind of socialism with Chinese characteristics the new era requires us to uphold and develop and how we should uphold and develop it," according to the document.

It "must be upheld long term and constantly developed," said the resolution.

"The Thought is a continuation and development of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development," it said.

"It is the latest achievement in adapting Marxism to the Chinese context, a crystallization of the practical experience and collective wisdom of the Party and the people," it said.

The resolution hailed the new era thought as "an important component of the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and a guide to action for the entire Party and all the Chinese people to strive for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation".

Under the guidance of Xi's new era thought, "the CPC has led the Chinese people of all ethnic groups in a concerted effort to carry out a great struggle, develop a great project, advance a great cause, and realize a great dream, ushering in a new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics," it said.

In the resolution, the CPC urged all Party members to use new era thought to achieve unity in thinking and action and be more purposeful and determined in studying and applying it throughout the drive toward China's socialist modernization and Party building.

According to the resolution, a wide range of new ideas, thinking and strategies put forward by the CPC Central Committee with Xi at the core have also been added to the Constitution, such as giving play to the decisive role of market forces in resource allocation, advancing supply-side structural reform and enhancing the country's cultural soft power.

Xi Jinping's military thinking and the Party's "absolute" leadership over the armed forces also have been included in the Party's Constitution.

According to the resolution, the CPC will uphold its absolute leadership over the People's Liberation Army and other people's armed forces and implement Xi Jinping's thinking on strengthening the military.

The development of the PLA will be strengthened by enhancing its political loyalty, strengthening it through reform and technology, and running it in accordance with the law, the resolution read.

The CPC will build people's forces that obey the Party's command, can fight and win, and maintain excellent conduct to ensure that the PLA accomplishes its missions and tasks in the new era, it said.

The inclusion of these statements in the Party Constitution will "help ensure the Party's absolute leadership over the people's armed forces, (and) modernize national defense and the military," it said.

In addition, the amendment to the CPC Constitution also clarified that the chairperson of the Central Military Commission assumes overall responsibility over the work of the commission and that the CMC is responsible for Party work and political work in the armed forces.

This complies with the realistic requirement to ensure the CMC fulfills its responsibility for Party self-supervision and self-governance after the military reform, the resolution said.

Congress delegates also agreed to write the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics into the CPC Constitution, along with the path, theory and system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

In addition, the amendment included an assessment of the change in the "principal contradiction" facing Chinese society, which serves as an important basis on which the CPC and China formulate major policies and long-term strategies.

The CPC said the contradiction facing Chinese society is "between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing need for a better life".

Previously the maxim, which had stood for 36 years, was described as one between "the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and backward social production."
Aircraft carriers give military new capabilities to better protect China's national interests around the world

Chinese military shipbuilding technology will leap to the front rank globally in the near future, a senior ship designer said on Tuesday.

Ships, such as aircraft carriers, are "instruments of national significance", said Wu Xiaoguang, chief designer of China's first domestic aircraft carrier. The country has achieved great progress since 2012, he said.

On April 26, China launched its first domestically developed aircraft carrier in Dalian, Liaoning province, according to the Ministry of National Defense. The new carrierthe largest and most sophisticated vessel China has ever builtis undergoing a thorough trial run at sea. It's name will be provided once it is commissioned.

It follows the CNS Liaoning, the country's first carrier, which was refitted from a partially built Soviet ship.

"An aircraft carrier is the crown jewel of military hardware. It is extremely complex and must be designed with great attention to detail," Wu told reporters on the sidelines of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. "And everything on the new carrierevery steel plate, the electronics, equipment, aircraft, missiles and mineswas produced on our own."

With a displacement of 50,000 tons, the carrier is classed as midsize. A large one typically has a displacement of at least 80,000 tons.

On June 28, China launched its Type 055 class guided-missile destroyer in Shanghai. The 10,000-metric-ton warship is equipped with advanced air defense, anti-missile, anti-ship and anti-submarine weapons, and it is regarded as one of China's most powerful surface combat vessels, the ministry said.

"China is fully capable of producing midsize and large aircraft carriers and large destroyers," Wu said.

China depends heavily on the sea, with more than 80 percent of its exports and imports ferried by water, he said. At the same time, it is the world's largest trading nation, with massive migration of workers and movement of tourists. As the Belt and Road Initiative progresses, China's overseas investment and number of workers will increase dramatically, and "they will need protection from our naval forces", Wu added.

In recent years, China has been turning out a steady stream of new vessels because "many of our ships are outdated or have exceeded their service life", he said.

Wu said his teamswhose members' average age is 37 yearswill continue to contribute to China's growing naval capabilities.

"In the near future, I am confident that our shipbuilding technology will leap to the world's front rank," he said.

Major General Ma Gang, a professor at the People's Liberation Army National Defense University, said a strong naval force is a hallmark of a strong nation, but China will not use its Navy to impose Chinese influence or pursue hegemony.

"The Navy is committed to protecting China's interests and national sovereignty," Ma said. "At the same time, a strong Navy can shoulder more escort and peacekeeping duties and contribute more to regional and world peace."




President's mention of cutting-edge satellite stokes pride among researchers

Scientists work on China's first quantum science satellite at a research center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai in May last year. [Photo/Xinhua]

On the morning of Oct 18, around 100 Party members who are faculty and students from the University of Science and Technology of China gathered in the meeting room at the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale to watch the live broadcast of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

Outside the meeting room was a model of the Micius quantum science satellite, which was launched on Aug 16, 2016. The satellite, named after the ancient Chinese scientist and philosopher Micius, or Mozi, was the world's first quantum science satellite.

The gathering at the laboratory was merely one of more than a dozen such gatherings at the university watching the live broadcast.

Several minutes after General Secretary Xi Jinping started to deliver his report, the quantum satellite was mentioned as one of the major scientific breakthroughs achieved by the country since 2012 when the 18th National Congress of the CPC was convened.

Pride was noticed among the people who were watching the live broadcast in the meeting room.

"Though the quantum satellite has appeared many times in news headlines over the last year, it was a great honor for our USTC scientists that it could be mentioned in Xi's report," said Wang Xilin, a scientist from the laboratory's division of quantum physics and quantum information, after watching the broadcast.

Wang, 33, a member of the team led by Pan Jianwei, vice-president of USTC and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said it has been a great honor for him to participate in the university's fruitful research on quantum physics and quantum communication.

Encouraged by Xi's mentioning the quantum satellite in his report, Wang said the USTC scientists will continue to strive for breakthroughs.

"Quantum physics is a broad scientific scope that includes many specific areas. Chinese scientists have been world leaders in some of the areas, while in other areas we are still not the best," said Wang, adding that he hopes for more breakthroughs by the USTC scientists in the next five years.

Liu Mei, a doctorate candidate working with the USTC-based laboratory, said after watching the broadcast that she was greatly encouraged by the multiple major scientific breakthroughs mentioned in Xi's report.

"Doing better scientific research is what I can do to serve the country and I will stay true to my mission", said Liu, 27, who joined the Party five years ago.

Thanks to the USTC team's years of efforts, China has taken a huge step toward building a space-based quantum communication network that would be virtually uncrackable.

Since the launch of the 640-kilogram satellite, it has been serving multiple scientific purposes, including testing the technology that distributes quantum keys, which can be used to encrypt or decrypt data, between ground and space.

With the satellite, China has become the first country in the world to establish photon entanglement at a distance of more than 1,200 kilometers between ground and space, paving the way for ultrasecure, long-distance quantum communication.

The world's first 2,000-km quantum communication line went into formal operation in September, and it will serve as the backbone connecting Beijing and Shanghai. The backbone also passes by Jinan in Shandong province and Hefei in Anhui province, Pan said.

In a report by Xinhua News Agency on Thursday, Xu Wu, Party chief of USTC and a delegate to the 19th National Congress of the CPC, said the Chinese scientists will soon make a new breakthrough in quantum communication.

Due to the attenuation of optical fiber, relay stations are needed to extend the distance of quantum communication. There are more than 30 relay stations on the Beijing-Shanghai line, with an average distance of about 80 km between them, according to the Xinhua report.

The research team led by Pan is working to extend the distance between two stations to between 300 km and 500 km to cut the number of relay stations and the overall cost, Xu said.

USTC was established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1958 in Beijing and moved to Hefei, capital of Anhui province, in 1970. It was established as a strategic action by the country's top authorities to meet China's science and technology needs and increase the country's international competitiveness.

Since its establishment, the university's motto has been "politically sound and professionally competent."
Teaching faculty and students at Shanghai International Studies University said General Secretary Xi Jinping's report at the Communist Party of China's 19th National Congress inspired them to become stronger in national and regional studies.

At the opening session of the congress, the country's most important political meeting in five years, Xi said: "We respect the diversity of world civilization. We aim for civilization exchanges rather than civilization barriers, mutual understanding of civilizations rather than conflicts, and coexistence of civilizations rather than superiority."

Jiang Feng, Party secretary of SISU, said, "As a foreign studies university on the way to joining the world's first echelon in national and regional studies as well as global knowledge, we feel very much encouraged by Xi's report to better achieve our mission, and we believe that there will be bright prospects in what we have and will be continuously committed to."

Li Yansong, president of the university, said that to realize such a target they will stick to empowering the students with foreign language skills and competency in a professional field to make them become outstanding talented people on the international stage.

Chen Zhi, who teaches Spanish at the university and is touring South America speaking on Chinese culture, said that she found people there have a great interest in China's development model and are notably eager to learn about China's culture and history as well as its wisdom.

"As part of SISU, I hope I can do my best to spread the stories in China today to those who are interested in our country, which is a new world power and global player and is continuously becoming more prosperous and thriving," said Chen, who is now in Chile.

Students at the university, including those in exchange programs abroad, said they feel proud that they will contribute to the country's development, especially in intercultural communication, diplomacy and internationalization.

"The report showed the world the open-mindedness of China as a global power that cares not only about its own interests but strives to build cooperation and exchanges between regions," said Zhou Xiaochen, a college junior who is now on an exchange in Portugal.

Foreign faculty at the university said parts of the "Chinese dream" are being realized as the country has made eye-catching achievements in the past few years.

"I'm hopeful that continued encouragement and trust in hard work, motivation, and ingenuity of Chinese people will continue to propel China forward as a reasonable and responsible major global influence," said Steven Joe, a professor of intercultural communication from the United States who has been at SISU since 1993.
The sector has grown rapidly as filmmakers developed and embraced new techniques and subject matter, as Xu Fan reports.

Wolf Warrior 2 is the highest-grossing film in the history of China's movie industry, with box-office receipts of more than 5.5 billion yuan ($830 million). [Photo/China Daily]

The rapid development of China's movie industry in the past five years has seen the number of silver screens rise to 49,000, the highest in any country, according to Zhang Hongsen, vice-minister of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television.

From The Taking of Tiger Mountain to Operation Mekong to Wolf Warrior 2, China has seen a surge in domestic blockbusters, and the achievements have attracted attention across the globe, he said, speaking at a media briefing during the 19th Communist Party of China's National Congress.

According to the State-owned online movie news portal 1905, the latest figures show that there are 8,260 cinemas nationwide.

Between Jan 1 and Oct 16 box-office takings topped 46 billion yuan ($7 billion), and industry observers predict that the figure will rise to 55 billion yuan by the end of the year, signaling stable, continuous growth from 2012, the year China's movie industry underwent two pivotal changes.

The first was China overtaking Japan to become the world's second-largest movie market, while the second was the administration's decision to raise the annual quota of foreign moviesusually Hollywood blockbustersfrom 20 to 34.

In addition, Lost in Thailand, a comedy by actor-turned director Xu Zheng, was China's highest-grossing movie in 2012, becoming the first film in the history of Chinese cinema to make more than 1 billion yuan and ushering in a new era for domestic blockbusters.

So far this year, 13 homemade movies have taken more than 1 billion yuan and the number is expected to rise by the end of December.

Box-office boost

Figures from the administration show that the annual box-office take rose to 49 billion yuan last year from 17 billion yuan in 2012, signaling average year-on-year growth of 30.35 percent.

Chinese are also more willing to head to movie theaters now than they were five years ago; annual visits rose to 1.37 billion last year from 466 million in 2012.

Homemade films have now dominated box-office takings for three successive years.

Following the success of Monster Hunt, which beat the Hollywood hit Furious 7 to top box-office earnings in 2015, The Mermaid made by Stephen Chow, Hong Kong's "king of comedy", more than doubled the box-office revenue of Disney's Zootopia to become the most successful movie in China last year.

In addition, the homemade Special Forces-themed action movie Wolf Warrior 2 is now the highest-grossing film in Chinese movie history, with box-office receipts of 5.68 billion yuan.

"Chinese movies have gained unique influence and power thanks to the rapid development of the movie industry (in the past five years)," said Zhang at an earlier meeting in Qingdao, Shandong province.

He added that China may overtake the United States, or even the entire North American market (the US and Canada), to become the world's biggest movie market by 2019.

Rise of domestic titles

For many industry insiders, filmmakers and decision-makers, the rise of domestic blockbusters is reflected in a number of ways, including a wider list of genres, bigger budgets and higher-quality production values, scripts and acting.

Jiao Hongfen, president of China Film Group Corp, the largest State-owned studio, said the development of the domestic movie industry accords with the country's economic rise.

"Now Chinese people are leading better lives they look forward to seeing more-interesting stories on the big screen," he said.

As a greater number of foreign hits enter the Chinese market, local moviegoers are becoming more discerning. Last year, 90 foreign movies were shown in China's movie theaters, a rise of 45 percent, compared with 62 in 2015.

Moreover, a number of major Hollywood "tent poles"movies that support a studio's less-successful workshave been released in China.




A machine harvests cotton at a field in Shawan county, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, earlier this month. [Photo/Xinhua]

URUMQI - Machines are replacing hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who pick cotton in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the nation's biggest cotton production base.

At this time of year, Xinjiang's growers usually begin hiring workers to pick the crop. However, 116,000 hectares of cotton fields in Shawan county have already been harvested using machines.

"In the past, the cotton harvest lasted at least 45 days from October to November. Now, the machines can harvest a 15-hectare cotton field in a day," said Lin Hongru, head of Caohu village.

One machine can do the work of 2,000 manual laborers every day, he said.

"The cotton harvest was once the busiest time of the year. Cotton growers in my village hired migrant workers from Gansu, Sichuan and Henan provinces to help. People worked in the fields from dawn to dusk," Lin said.

Roaring machines now move swiftly through in the fields, stripping the cotton from the stalks and collecting it in large containers.

Xinjiang produced 3.59 million metric tons of cotton in 2016, accounting for 67.3 percent of China's cotton production, up from 62.5 percent in 2015, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

There was a decrease in growing area last year, yet cotton yields increased by 151 kilograms per hectare thanks to the use of irrigation and machinery.

China accounts for about 30 percent of the world's cotton output but has only 15 percent of the world's cotton-growing land.

In Shihezi county, cotton farmer Bao Yucheng said he used to pay 160,000 yuan ($24,000) to hire more than 20 laborers to harvest his 13,000 hectares of fields. This year, he paid about 50,000 yuan to rent a machine.

Agricultural technicians took advantage of the harvest season to demonstrate a new generation of machine that can pack the cotton into 2-ton bales in real time.

Gao Yongjian, an agricultural technician, told farmers that the machine is more efficient than the older models. Large-scale farming is increasing in Xinjiang as farmers become more interested in joining rural cooperatives to share machinery, he said.

Xinhua


TAIPEI -- More than 50 percent of Taiwanese expressed dissatisfaction over the island's leader's handling of relations with the Chinese mainland, a recent poll showed.

About 52 percent of the 1,068 respondents were dissatisfied with the policies of Tsai Ing-wen, the island's current leader, on cross-Taiwan Straits ties, while only about one-third approved of her performance, according to a poll conducted in mid-October by the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation.

The share of dissatisfied respondents has outweighed that of satisfied respondents since last November.

Meanwhile, the share of respondents dissatisfied with Tsai's overall administration grew by 0.9 percentage points compared with September.

The survey also pointed out a growing crisis in confidence among Taiwanese over the current elite, including entrepreneurs, government officials and public opinion representatives, with none of them earning the approval of more than half of respondents.
CHENGDU  Chinese scientists have successfully bred pearl-banded rat snakes, an endangered species native to China.

This is the first time China has bred the species since it was discovered a century ago.

The one-month-old snakes are about 33 centimeters long with dark green skin. The black stripes that have given them their name resemble black pearls.

The species was discovered by an American biologist in 1929, but disappeared until the 1980s. Over the past decade, fewer than 30 live pearl-banded rat snakes have been found, and the only pair in captivity was captured in Labahe Nature Reserve in Sichuan's Ya'an city in 2014.

Scientists at Chengdu Institute of Biology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences waited three years before the pair laid eggs in late July, and two months later, the baby snakes were born.

According to Ding Li, deputy researcher at Chengdu Institute of Biology, breeding the snakes marked an important step in understanding the mysterious species and proved China has made great achievements in ecological protection.

Ding said the snakes will start to hibernate in about a month.

Native to China, pearl-banded rat snakes share the same habitat with wild giant pandas. They live in forests in western Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces at altitudes between 1,600 and 2,700 meters above sea level.
File photo: a wild finless porpoise.[Photo provided by the Institute of Hydrobiology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences]

A scientific expedition to the Yangtze River to study wild finless porpoises and their habitats will be launched on Nov 10.

The 40-day expedition, which will be organized by the Ministry of Agriculture, will be conducted in the main stream of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze spanning from Yichang in Hubei province to Shanghai, as well as the river's large tributaries and the lakes of Dongting and Boyang.

Two scientific research vessels will set off from Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province, on Nov 10 and the journey will cover approximately 3,400 kilometers.

Hao Yujiang, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Hydrobiology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that visual observations and acoustic investigations will be conducted. Water samples, substrate sludge and sounds will be collected every 50 km along the river.

Unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with surveillance cameras will also be deployed to observe the habitats of finless porpoises, the most basal living member of the porpoise family.

A separate expedition in 2012 found that the population of the finless porpoises living in Yangtze had shrank to about 1,045, or 13.7 percent less than six years before.

Scientists said that the threats faced by finless porpoises include insufficient food, the use of illegal fishing tools, destruction of their habitats, water pollution and the construction of water conservancy projects that interrupt their migration channels.

During the 8th World Freshwater Dolphin Day on Oct 24, representatives from the World Wildlife Fund, China Wildlife Conservation Association and the Chinese Academy of Sciences attended a conference at the Shanghai Natural History Museum where they shared their experiences on the protection of these finless porpoises.

He Qi in Shanghai contributed to this story.
Teaching faculty and students at Shanghai International Studies University said General Secretary Xi Jinping's report at the Communist Party of China's 19th National Congress inspired them to become stronger in national and regional studies.

At the opening session of the congress, the country's most important political meeting in five years, Xi said: "We respect the diversity of world civilization. We aim for civilization exchanges rather than civilization barriers, mutual understanding of civilizations rather than conflicts, and coexistence of civilizations rather than superiority."

Jiang Feng, Party secretary of SISU, said, "As a foreign studies university on the way to joining the world's first echelon in national and regional studies as well as global knowledge, we feel very much encouraged by Xi's report to better achieve our mission, and we believe that there will be bright prospects in what we have and will be continuously committed to."

"It gives us a clear direction of who we cultivate the new generation of talent for, what kind of talent to cultivate and how to cultivate the young generation," he said.

Li Yansong, president of the university, said that to realize such a target they will stick to empowering the students with foreign language skills and competency in a professional field to make them become outstanding talents on the international stage.

"We hope that our graduates will have profound knowledge in humanistic knowledge at home and abroad and be excellent in both intercultural communications and professional areas. They will become a new generation of successors in a new era in building socialism with Chinese characteristics," he said.

Chen Zhi, who teaches Spanish at the university and is touring South America speaking on Chinese culture, said that during this tour she found people there have a great interest in China's development model and are notably eager to learn about China's culture and history as well as its wisdom.

"As part of SISU, I hope I can do my best to spread the stories in China today to those who are interested in our country, which is a new world power and global player and is continuously becoming more prosperous and thriving," said Chen, who is now in Chile.

Students at the university, including those in exchange programs abroad, said they feel proud that they will contribute to the country's development, especially in intercultural communication, diplomacy and internationalization.

"The report showed the world the open-mindedness of China as a global power that cares not only about its own interests but strives to build cooperation and exchanges between regions. China's attitude of joining hands with other countries to build a new world of prosperity gives us young people unprecedented opportunities along with responsibilities," said Zhou Xiaochen, a third-year student who is now on an exchange in Portugal.

Foreign faculty at the university said parts of the "Chinese dream" are being realized as the country has made eye-catching achievements in the past few years, including the development of one of the most extensive and fastest rail systems, incredible urbanization and modernization, and visionary plans for the Belt and Road Initiative.

"I'm hopeful that continued encouragement and trust in hard work, motivation, and ingenuity of Chinese people across the land and throughout the world will continue to propel China forward as a reasonable and responsible major global influence," said Steven Joe, a professor of intercultural communication from the United States who has been at SISU since 1993.
CAIRO - In his first remarks after a deadly attack on the country's police force, Egypt's president vowed on Sunday to press ahead with the country's war against terrorism, secure its borders and hunt down militants.

President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi's remarks came nearly 48 hours after authorities officially announced that at least 16 policemen were killed in a brazen ambush by militants southwest of Cairo.

Sisi called for intensifying security and military efforts to prevent any infiltration attempts by terrorists via the country's borders.

He also affirmed that the sacrifices of those policemen, who were killed in the attack, will not go in vain.

Security officials said the death toll reached 54, making it one of the worst attacks against Egypt's police in years. However, it wasn't immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting reports.

Chairing a meeting attended by the top security officials, including defense and interior ministry representatives, Sisi said: "Egypt will continue its confrontation against terrorism and those financing and standing behind it, with strength, decisiveness and efficiency, until it's curbed."

The ambush began when security forces acting on intelligence moved against a purported militant hideout 130 kilometers outside Cairo. Backed by armored personnel carriers and led by senior counterterrorism officers, the police contingent drew fire and rocket-propelled grenades, according to the security officials. What happened next has not been clarified, but many officers were killed and others injured.

The Interior Ministry said 15 terrorists were either killed or injured in the armed clash.

"As soon as the first mission approached the location of the terrorist elements, they sensed the arrival of the forces and targeted them using heavy weapons from all directions," the ministry said.

No militant group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack near Egypt's vast western desert, where a previous series of attacks were blamed on extremism militants pouring in from Libya.

However, a local affiliate of the Islamic State group is spearheading an insurgency across the country.

Egypt has been fighting against a wave of terror activities that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the military toppled former Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule and his currently outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.

Terror attacks in Egypt used to be centered in North Sinai before spreading nationwide and killing hundreds of policemen and soldiers over the past few years.

Security raids have killed hundreds of militants and led to the arrests of a similar number of suspects as part of the country's anti-terror war.

AP - Xinhua - Reuters

(China Daily 10/24/2017 page11)
Visitors attend the press preview of the exhibition Harry Potter: A History of Magic at the British Library in London last week. [Photo/Agencies]

LONDONHarry Potter fans owe a debt of gratitude to Alice Newton.

Alice was 8 years old when her father, a Bloomsbury Publishing executive, brought home a new manuscript for her to read.

"The excitement in this book made me feel warm inside," she scrawled in a note to her dad. "I think it is probably one of the best books an 8/9 year old could read."

Based on this glowing review, Bloomsbury published Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, launching a literary juggernaut that brought magic to a generation of children.

Alice's penciled note is part of the British Library's new exhibition, Harry Potter: A History of Magic. The show, which coincides with the 20th anniversary of the publication of J.K. Rowling's first book, is an unabashed celebration of the stories and their antecedents.

"There are some rich historical traditions behind the magic in the Harry Potter stories, which J.K. Rowling was aware of," says Alexander Lock, one of the exhibit curators, who adds that he was impressed with Rowling's ability to layer information and offer depth. "They go into the stories and make them so rich."

The exhibition, which opened on Friday, includes Rowling's outline for the book, her personal drawings of characters and a map of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

It also looks at magic and the nature of belief, revealing that many of the things Harry Potter fans thought were imaginary were actually based in factor folklore. It includes rare books and manuscripts from around the world, together with cauldrons, broomsticks, crystal balls and potion manuals that offer insight into Rowling's inspiration and how the books came to be.

"I've taken liberties with folklore," Rowling says in a video that opens the show.

The show is divided into rooms based on the subjects studied at Hogwarts, the setting for Rowling's novels following the adventures of Harry, the orphan who learns at age 11 that he is a wizard. Sections include Potions, Herbology, Divination, Care of Magical Creatures and Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Each section touches on the legends and beliefs that Rowling wove into her stories, with historical objects illustrating the scholarship behind the narrative.

The potions section, for example, features a Bronze Age/Iron Age Battersea Cauldron on loan from the British Museum. It sits beneath cauldron light fixtures that flicker in the subdued light and offer the viewer a chance to get into the Halloween-like aura of it all.

There is also a display about alchemy, the medieval forerunner of chemistry, which features the Ripley Scroll, a 6-meter long manuscript from the 1500s that describes how to make a Philosopher's Stone.

Nearby is the tombstone of Nicolas Flamel, a real alchemist who features as a character in Rowling's first book, and various witch accoutrements.

Another display about astronomy includes a celestial globe made in 1693as well as 21st-century augmented reality technology supplied by Google Arts & Culture to help visitors examine the ancient constellations that gave their names to key Harry Potter characters, such as Sirius Black and Draco Malfoy.

Being hosted at the British Library meant the exhibition featured some amazing bookson palmistry, tea leaf readingand, of course, witches.

Tanya Kirk, another co-curator, says working on the exhibition gave her a whole new appreciation of witches. "I think all of the things I learned about witches is that they get quite a bad rap through history, and it was quite hard to find positive accounts," she says with a laugh. "The Harry Potter books have done a lot to change that."

The exhibition runs from Oct 20 to Feb 28, 2018. It will then travel to New York to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the book's title in the United States.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tianyige, in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, is believed to be the country's oldest surviving library. [Photo provided to China Daily]

After seven years' preparation, the first comprehensive history of the nation's libraries was published by the National Library of China earlier this month.

The 2-million-character-long A History of Chinese Libraries travels back more than 3,000 years to discover the origins of Chinese book collections and follows the development of libraries throughout the centuries right up until 2009.

The new book comes in four volumes covering the ancient, modern and contemporary eras, and an additional appendix.

"Uniquely, the book guides readers from ancient times through the ages to the present day using an abundance of references," Han Yongjin, director of the NLC and editor-in-chief of the book, said at its launch at the Beijing institution earlier this month. "It aims to present a fair and panoramic record of how libraries developed in China."

Han says the reason why studies of Chinese libraries in ancient and modern times remained separate for so long was because many scholars considered the notion of a library Western, and ancient Chinese institutions housing books should not be included in the term.

The major argument for this supposition is that while modern libraries have mainly been established to serve the public, ancient Chinese cangshulou (which literally means a building to store books) functioned instead as private study rooms, with their doors firmly closed to the outside.
Children learn to make Chinese lanterns at China Day in Japan on Oct 21, 2017. [Photo/Chinaculture.org]

People in Tokyo were offered a chance to experience authentic Chinese culture as the China Day festival was held in the Japanese capital from Oct 21 to 22.

More than 100 stalls were set up at Yoyogi Park in Shibuya to showcase Chinese culture, tourism and businesses.

Four exhibitions were hosted by the China Cultural Center, covering topics including the One Belt, One Road, Chinese folk arts and crafts, and photography.

One highlight of the show was the interactive demonstrations from Chinese folk artists, teaching local people ways to make traditional Chinese paper-cutting and dough modeling. In the special experience zone, visitors also made Chinese lanterns and facial masks.
The annual Fashion Awards, a major international overhaul in the industry, has revealed on Monday its potential winners for this year's event.

Hosted by the British Fashion Council (BFC) and Swarovski, this year's awarding ceremony is expected on Dec 4 in London's iconic Royal Albert Hall.

Among the few surprises of the nominees this year is that Supreme has been nominated for the first time in the urban luxe brand category, alongside Rihanna's Fenty x Puma.

In the Model of the Year category, newbie Kaia Gerber is a front runner amongst others. For the second time, Bella Hadid goes head-to-head with her sister Gigi Hadid for this title, also against Adwoa Aboah and Winnie Harlow.

The Designer of the Year nominees also comprises stalwarts and newcomers.
Yang Tuan, a social policy researcher at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, played a major role in pushing through China's first Charity Law. [Photo/Xinhua]

The law should protect the rights of citizens to carry out charity and public services, which can be achieved only through the wide participation of citizens in the process of legislation, said Yang Tuan, a researcher on social policy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Yang has played a major role in pushing through China's first Charity Law.

The 69-year-old has worked in public welfare and charity sector for more than 20 years. Since 1993, she has held influential positions successively in China Population Welfare Foundation and China Charity Foundations.

In 1998, she became a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government-supported think tank.

"At that time, there was no research on charity in the country," said Yang.

When she began working in the charity sector, Yang heard a lot of negative voices about charity. Some people equaled it to "people doing it out of compassion" and "hypocrisy".

Yang said the society's attitude toward charity took a turn in 1998, when massive floods broke out in several major rivers across the country, killing about 3,000.

When people learned the news of the scale of the disaster, they donated more than 11 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) to help the victims. It marked the first nationwide charity movement in the history of the New China.

In the decade from 1998 to 2008, the idea of charity came into the horizon of more and more people. After the magnitude-7.8 Wenchuan earthquake jolted Sichuan province on May 12, 2008, the donation nationwide amounted to more than 100 billion yuan.

People started to realize that charity was not only "a private and individual behavior", rather, it could be "an action carried out by many people for the benefits of many people", said Yang.

China's first Charity Law came into force in September 2016. It is seen as the fundamental law of China's philanthropy, aiming to promote philanthropic culture.

The law eases restrictions on the fund-raising and operational activities of charity groups, tightens supervision of their internal management and promises tax benefits for the sector.

Yang said the law was a landmark because it was the result of "an open-door legislation". She said before the law was passed by the nation's top legislature, it had been discussed widely in the civil society.

"In the past, all big issues were pushed forward and decided by the government," said Yang. "The legislation of the Charity Law marked a positive change in the mechanism driving forward the society".

It was the first time that non-governmental organizations worked out their own versions of the law before an official draft was rolled out to solicit public opinions. It is an example of synergetic governance, in which the civil society plays a positive role in social governance along with the government, she said.

Yang said average citizens now play an increasingly important role in the society by voluntarily setting up groups of various kinds. Though many of these groups are not registered officially, they link up individuals and breathe fresh air into the soil of society.

Yang predicted that in the era of internet, a large number of self-organized groups will reshape the charity landscape, because the internet brings together people sharing same values and goals no matter where they come from, which is a tremendous force in pushing for philanthropic culture in the country.
LI MIN/CHINA DAILY

China should speed up "reform of the system of developing an ecological civilization, and building a beautiful China", General Secretary Xi Jinping said in his report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Promoting green development is one of China's five key development concepts, and "beautiful" has become part of the goal of a "modern socialist China". This means ecological civilization has risen higher in the Party's agenda for China's development.

Thanks to almost four decades of reform, China has transformed from a planned to a market-based economy with an unprecedented economic growth rate, which helped it meet all the Millennium Development Goals by 2016. From 2003 to 2016, China's GDP increased from less than 15 trillion yuan to more than 74 trillion yuan ($11.2 trillion), and its per capita GDP from more than 10,000 yuan to over 52,000 yuan.

But this phenomenal economic growth has come at a very high environmental cost. According to the World Health Organization, China faces severe air pollution, which is a health hazard for its people. Water pollution, too, is pervasive. In 2014, 15.7 percent of the country's groundwater was classified as "very poor" and another 44 percent relatively poor.

But while air and water pollution is visible, soil pollution is not, because even heavily contaminated soil can have as lush and green vegetation as a healthy one. And although air and water pollution can be controlled within a decade, soil cleansing is a very long-term and expensive affair. For example, it took 21 years and millions of dollars for the United States to clean only 1,200 cubic meters of soil across 6.5 hectares in Love Canal in New York.

Other developed countries have gone through similar economic development-environmental deterioration cycle. In the late 1960s, environmental pollution in the Western world was pervasive, and it was accepted as a price for development.

Western countries woke up to the importance of the environment in the 1970s after they were industrialized and their citizens became aware of the heavy economic and health costs of environmental damage. China has now entered a similar stage.

As the effects of environmental pollution in China became more devastating and visible, the government strengthened law enforcement of the Environmental Protection Law in 2015. The new law stipulates that local officials who are complicit in environmental transgressions can be fired or demoted, and business leaders who don't control pollution can be detained for 15 days, even prosecuted. Moreover, the law doesn't put a cap on the fine that can be imposed on factories, and says companies violating environmental standards can have their utilities cut and equipment seized, and gives them six months to comply with the eco-regulations or face closure.

Earlier, pollution-related fines were so low that it was cheaper for factories to pay the fines than take corrective actions, and the law's enforcement was weak and often non-existent. In addition, the central government had limited real power over local government officials who were on the frontline of implementing the environmental law, and the main performance indicator for the local officials was economic growth. Since polluting companies often were important economic drivers, the local officials had reason to turn a blind eye to environmental damage.

Premier Li Keqiang has said China will declare war on pollution and fight it with the same determination as it battled poverty, and environmental pollution has become nature's red-light warning against the model of inefficient and blind development.

Xi has told all the ministers and governors that pollution control would be one of the country's top three priorities in the coming years, along with poverty reduction and financial-risk management.

In 2016 and 2017 inspectors from the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Party's anti-corruption watchdog and personnel unit were dispatched to different provinces and autonomous regions to see what measures the local officials were taking to protect the environment.

According to the news conference on Monday, during the four rounds of inspections, about 80,000 pollution cases have been well resolved.

The inspection teams proved effective because they included Party officials who could punish municipaland provincial-level officials for not taking their environmental responsibilities seriously. Such punishments are a blot on the career of officials and bar them for promotion from six months to years. Besides, environmental protection carries a lot more weight today in officials' performance evaluation.

After environmental protection was made a yardstick to evaluate their performance, officials, especially those eyeing promotion, have started taking environmental issues very seriously.

The courts, too, have started discussing measures against polluters. In July last year, a court in East China's Shandong province imposed a record penalty of 22 million yuan on glass manufacturer Zhenhua Ltd for emitting toxic gases containing 255 metric tons of sulfur dioxide, 589 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 19 tons of dust particles, between November 2013 and February 2015. A month later, the factory was ordered to shut down.

Similar strong actions by the government are changing the industrial structure, by forcing low-end polluting industries to either become more environmentally efficient or shut down.

Owing to these new environmental safeguards, China requires some policy adjustments, many of which have been outlined in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20). They include introducing services and measures to reduce all types of environmental pollution with specific targets, making the use of energy and other resources more efficient, and improving access to healthcare and education, which could reduce the annual growth rate target for the 13th Five-Year Plan period from 7 percent to 6.5 percent. This shows the focus will now be on the quality of growth to build a "moderately prosperous society" by 2020 and doubling the GDP from 2010 to 2020.

This will affect the supply chain in the short term, for one to two years. But the emphasis on eco-management will expedite the establishment of new industries for environmental protection, monitoring and other management services which, over the medium term, will more than make up for the short-term losses in employment and economic activities because of the economic rebalancing.

China has no option but to take the existing environmental problems head-on, because with business as usual, the economic, social and health costs will become prohibitive in the coming years.

As the Western countries learned, both economically and socially, it is far less expensive to live in a clean environment than in a polluted one.

And based on the current trends, China seems set to curb environmental pollution to build "a beautiful China" to provide the people with healthy living conditions.

Asit K Biswas is the distinguished visiting professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, and Cecilia Tortajada is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Water Policy, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gestures during a press conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, November 21, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's landslide victory in Japan's lower house election on Sunday has further consolidated support for his ultra-right political agenda and will no doubt embolden him to raise the status of Japan's defense forces, a prospect that will not be regarded as good news in the region.

As is known to all, Abe has been advocating constitutional revisions for years. In 2014, his administration reinterpreted Article 9 to give Japan the right to exercise collective self-defense. One year later, he forced the passage of controversial security-related bills through parliament, allowing expanded overseas roles for Japan's Self-Defense Forces.

Now, Sunday's victory has granted Abe's conservative coalition a two-thirds majority in the lower house of parliament. The result comes as no surprise, as the opposition is weak and fragmented, and no match for Abe's ruling coalition, but it means Abe now has the opportunity to try and change the country's "pacifist" Constitution.

However, Abe should bear in mind that the Japanese public is strongly opposed to any amendment, as manifested both in polls and in the massive protests over the security bills in 2015. On top of that, any attempt to change the Constitution would also trigger a strong backlash in the region, drawing the ire of neighboring countries including China.

Abe has from time to time articulated the wish to improve bilateral ties with China, the latest example being his expression of hope of achieving an exchange of visits by leaders from both sides.

But as a seasoned politician, he should understand that he holds the key for improving ties in his own hand, as he has single-handedly thrown bilateral ties off balance with his stance and actions.

Rather than simply paying lip service to improving ties, Abe needs to match his words with actions and adopt a proactive policy to restore neighborly relations with China.
A SHOE-MAKING factory in Zhejiang province reportedly produces two similar models of shoes, yet their prices vary greatly because one model is subcontracted for a German brand while the other is produced for a local brand. Rednet comments:

The two different models are made with the same materials and using the same technology. They even meet the same quality standards. Yet the shoes subcontracted for the German brand sell for 300 yuan ($45.2) while the other, for a domestic brand, sell for 50 yuan.

Just as the manager of the company said, Chinese products do not lag behind their Western competitors but their brands do.

This should remind us to pay more attention to our brand power.

China has long been emphasizing that its enterprises should improve their products and services, but the job of cultivating brand names is relatively ignored. That's what we need to do in the coming few years.

It should be noted that famous brands are of strategic importance to a nation. The more famous brands a nation owns, the mightier its economy is viewed as being. Seen from a global perspective, almost all developed countries have famous brands with global influence.

Of course, famous brands are not made in a day. To have their own well-known brands, domestic manufacturers must work hard to improve the services they provide customers, so as to accumulate enough trust in the market. Besides, Chinese consumers should be encouraged to buy domestic brands instead of foreign ones, so as to help domestic brands grow. As domestic products continue improving, the days when imported goods equal higher quality are long gone. It is time to support our own national brands.
A housing project in Qingdao, Shandong province. [Photo/VCG]

THE GOVERNMENT is to solicit nationwide public opinions on draft regulations for the housing rental market. The regulations are expected to elaborate on leasing terms and tenants' rights while urging local governments to disclose the average rent in their areas on a regular basis. Beijing News commented on Monday:

Many people believe the rights of landlords override that of tenants. Such a longstanding perception points to the fact that the rights of tenants have been poorly protected in the past. That explains why most home-renters prefer a short-term lease and the country's rental market remains underdeveloped and immature.

The truth is that the interests of owners and tenants are in essence equal when it comes to residency rights. What homeowners have is a long-term lease on their property, while tenants have a short-term lease, hence they should not be treated differently.

The poorly developed rental market is one of the reasons for the overheating of the country's real estate market.

The rental market is supposed to help regulate the real estate market, but the lack of protection for tenants' rights has inhibited the growth of the rental market, whose role in recalibrating property prices has thus been much reduced.

High hopes are pinned on the new regulations for China's rental market trial, which is designed to keep at bay further turbulence in the real estate market.
International students come to China to study in Sino-foreign joint-venture universities. [Photo provided to China Daily]

AT A NEWS conference of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing on Sunday, Chen Baosheng, the education minister, said that Chinese education's international influence has continuously increased over the past five years, and China has become the destination for the third-largest number of foreign students. Beijing Youth Daily comments:

In fact, China became the destination for the third-largest number of overseas students three years ago. Statistics from the Ministry of Education show more than 377,000 overseas students studied in China in 2014, and the number hit about 443,000 last year.

However, the marked rise in the number of overseas students should be attributed more to the increasing attraction of China with the enhancement of its national power, than to the improvement in China's education.

The ministry's statistics indicate that 47 percent of the foreign students studying in China last year were studying for degrees and the rest came for short-term training of the Chinese language, or were studying Chinese culture out of personal interest.

China, as the world's second-largest economy, has bright development prospects and rich development opportunities. That explains the fast increase in the attraction of China's education in the world. Fluency in Chinese may mean more opportunities in career development.

In contrast, more than 70 percent of the Chinese students going abroad last year were studying for degrees, with nearly 36 percent studying for master's and doctoral degrees.

An important indicator of the competitiveness of a country's education is the proportion of foreign students in the total number of students on campus. The proportion is about 10 percent on average in developed countries. But the share is only 0.4 percent in China.

Also, more than 90 percent of the Chinese students studying abroad are concentrated in 10 developed countries. And only 24.71 percent of the overseas students studying in China come from developed economies.

These gaps prove the Chinese universities still have considerable potential to improve their education and research quality, and competitiveness in the world.

It is too early to take pride in China's status as the destination for the third-largest number of overseas students without explaining the driving force behind the boom.




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Feike Sijbesma, CEO of Royal DSM, a global science-based company active in health, nutrition and materials, based in the Netherlands Which three words would you use to describe China today?

Prosperity. Innovation. Sustainability. And, if I might add a fourth word, vitality. Economic prosperity has always been the country's goal. As part of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), the focus of the government's domestic development has been on reducing inequality, recalibrating the economy for more inclusive, stable growth, and addressing urbanization. At the same time, this includes reducing the environmental impact of China's rapid development as it emerges as a key player on the global stage.

Innovation also has a key role. China is emerging as a tech and innovation pioneer, which is a challenge as the country is now seen mainly as a "manufacturing machine". Innovation will need a different approach, skills and mindset.

Sustainability has been vital. Also, as part of the five-year plan, the Chinese government is seriously addressing pollution and sustainability, as well as reforming the (manufacturing) supply chain.

Finally, vitality. China is becoming more agile, transparent and efficient. The Belt and Road Initiative is having a huge impact on all the countries involved. The Made in China 2025 strategy is also being implemented, with smart technologies driving the country's manufacturing from quantity to quality.

What is the biggest challenge China faces, and how can the country overcome it?

The potential slowdown in global economic growth, and the rise of anti-globalization will create challenges. Also, addressing food security, pollution, climate change and global warming requires attention. Adding innovation to China's "manufacturing machine" will require new skills as well. Still, as the world's second-largest economy, I trust the country will continue its active role on the global stage to promote globalization and sustainability.

How do you view China's role in the world today?

As the world's second-largest economy, China is playing an increasingly important role on the global stage when it comes to political, economic and cultural issues. A stable, developing China is of vital importance for the country, as well as the rest of the world. It is remarkable with what speed and conviction China is addressing climate change, while other countries are hesitating.

What is the most unforgettable experience you have had in China?

I have visited the country many times during the past 30 years, and I have seen a great deal of changes. I have met President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang many times. I also feel honored to have been a member of the Global CEO Council of the China People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries for the past five years. In addition, I have attended the World Economic Forum (or Summer Davos) for six consecutive years. All of these experiences have enhanced my trust in China's future.

What factors will boost growth this year and in 2018, and what are the challenges facing China's economy?

Positive economic policies and a stable investment environment are the strongest guarantees for steady and rapid growth. Another key area to stimulate the economy is supply-side reform, addressing institutional barriers and supporting innovation. The service economy is also key field. I trust the world will continue to foster globalization as a source of prosperity for all.

What sectors offer the most opportunities for development?

Food and agricultural industries, (such as human nutrition and farming feed additives), and new green materials and technologies will provide great opportunities for China, as well as for Royal DSM. The alternative energy sector, such as solar and biofuels, will also (be crucial).
Image taken on March 2, 2015 shows people visiting an exhibition promoting tourism in Beijing, capital of China, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. [Photo/Xinhua]

China's gross domestic product grew 6.8 percent in the third quarter, according to official data. Over the same period last year, the increase was 6.9 percent, above the 6.5 percent target for this year. The increase means a GDP worth 80 trillion yuan ($12.1 trillion), as President Xi Jinping stated at the opening of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the country's most important political event in five years.

It is the ninth straight time that China's quarterly growth has fluctuated between 6.7% and 6.9%. For those accustomed to double-digit growth for the country, it seems low, but this is the new normal, a path adopted by Beijing to achieve sustainable growth. In this context, how will Brazil be positioned, with China as its largest trading partner since 2009? What will this mean for its commodities?

Exports from Brazil, which sells 25 percent of what it produces to China, should not be affected. "The dynamics of Brazil's trade with China are more related to what happens in the steel market because of iron ore, and what happens to consumption in general, because of soy and oil. Steel continues record production, so the demand for ore remains," said Andre Soares, a non-resident fellow of the Atlantic Council's Adrianne Arsht Latin America Center and a former coordinator of the Brazil-China Business Council.

Tulio Cariello, a CEBC research coordinator, believes there will be no significant change to the Sino-Brazilian relationship in the short term. "China should continue to import mainly agribusiness products, natural resources and oil, which are key to China's food, energy and mineral resource security, Cariello said. It should be noted such products can show drastic price fluctuations, which may eventually cool Brazilian exports in terms of value.".

But the analyst reminds us of another factor: the current composition of GDP and the opportunities presented to Brazil. Consumption is central in this respect. According to Xi, from 2013 to 2016 final consumption contributed to 55 percent of the country's economic growth. In the first half of 2017, this figure jumped to 63.4 percent.

"This sets the precedent for Brazilian companies to think about diversification strategies, and to explore new areas such as the high-end products and service sectors in order to serve a growing Chinese middle class," Cariello said.

In an article published on Friday in the Brazilian newspaper Valor Economico, Soares also mentions the importance of consumption as a key driver, even though China maintains state investments as fundamental engine for economic development. Consumption and innovation could mean another reconfiguration in the pattern of growth, perhaps an adjustment of the annual GDP to a level 5 percent. This is a move the researcher, while not pointing out as certain, believes could be taken thanks to the political goodwill after the congress.

Consumption and innovation have received increased attention. According to official data released on Oct 20, China's spending on research and development accounted for 2.1 percent of GDP in 2016, reaching $233 billion. Of this total, 78 percent came from companies.

"Innovation policy is at the heart of contemporary China's economic thinking, Cariello said. In a way, it very much resembles Japan's strategy, which went from a post-war factory floor to one of the most important players in technology and innovation in the world, allowing the small island in the Pacific to be the second-largest economy in the world, a position now occupied by China."

For professor and researcher Ricardo Muccillo da Silva, who recently defended his doctoral thesis on Chinese innovation at the Federal University of Rio Grande, the ability to generate technological innovations is treated as essential for China's economic development.

"The 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) reinforced the government's strategic thinking to promote an ecosystem conducive to innovation and technological modernization of the country, Silva said. In addition, issues were addressed on tackling the environmental problems caused by the country's heavy pollution. The 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) also has special concern with environmental pollution and the provision of basic natural resources for the sustainability of the country's growth.".

Silva points out important points of the 13th plan that targeted innovation: strong investment in new alternative sources of energy and "green technology"; popular entrepreneurship with the creation of new businesses; creation of social technologies with the intention of solving local problems; an increase in the country's capacity to generate native innovations, reducing technological dependence; the creation of global Chinese trademarks and constant improvement in the country's educational indicators. In higher education, the goal is to put China's educational institutions among the best in the world. Finally, the plan aims for greater integration of civil and military industries. This item represents a great investment from the country for the development of the defense industry and its integration with the National Innovation System.

Janaina Camara da Silveira is a communication consultant at Radar China and a development researcher as a Master in Economics candidate at Unisinos University, Brazil.

The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and don't represent views of China Daily and China Daily website.
Five-month battle has seen 1,100 killed, 400,000 residents displaced

CLARK, the Philippines - Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana declared the last of the pro-Islamic State group militants in southern Marawi City "finished" on Monday, exactly five months after the start of the siege that sparked fears of the group gaining a foothold in Southeast Asia.

Speaking at an annual meeting of Southeast Asian defense ministers, Lorenzana said troops recovered 42 bodies of the last group of militants.

"Those are the last group of stragglers of Mautes and they were caught in one building so there was a firefight, so they were finished," he said.

Two security officials had said earlier on Monday that troops had found the bodies after capturing the building where the militants made their final stand.

Lorenzana said the last hostages the militants had been holding were recovered earlier. "There are no more militants inside Marawi City," he said.

The siege had sparked fears the IS group would influence and strengthen local militancies while losing ground in Syria and Iraq. The defeat of the IS-linked uprising and the deaths of its leaders have been a relief to the region.

Fighting terrorism is high on the agenda of the Southeast Asian defense ministers' meeting at the Clark freeport north of Manila. As the meetings opened, the head of the Brunei delegation expressed condolences for the loss of lives in Marawi but congratulated the Philippines for being able to liberate the city.

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the siege was a wake-up call for the region. "We have to be very careful. What happened in Marawi can happen anywhere," Hussein said.

Hundreds of militants, many waving the IS group-style black flags, launched the siege on May 23 in Marawi, a bastion of Islamic faith in the south of the largely Roman Catholic Philippines, by seizing the lakeside city's central business district and outlying communities. They ransacked banks and shops, including gun stores, looted houses and smashed statues in a Roman Catholic cathedral, according to the military.

The fighting has left at least 1,109 people dead, including 897 militants, 165 soldiers and police and 47 civilians. At least 1,780 of the hostages seized by the militants, including a priest, were rescued. The final group of 20 captives were freed overnight, Army Colonel Romeo Brawner said at a news conference on Sunday. That left the gunmen with none of the hostages they had used as human shields to slow the military advance for months.

The disastrous unrest, which has displaced more than 400,000 Marawi residents, erupted as the Philippines was hosting annual summit meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this year, along with the 10-nation bloc's Asian and Western counterparts, including the United States and Australia. The two governments have deployed surveillance aircraft and drones to help Filipino troops rout the Marawi militants.

Last week, troops killed the final two surviving leaders of the siege, including Isnilon Hapilon, who is listed among the FBI's most-wanted terror suspects in the world, and Omarkhayam Maute. Following their deaths, President Rodrigo Duterte traveled near the main scene of battle and declared Marawi had been essentially liberated.

DNA tests done in the US requested by the Philippine military have confirmed the death of Hapilon, according to the US embassy in Manila. Washington has offered a bounty of up to $5 million for Hapilon, who had been blamed for kidnappings for ransom of US citizens and other terrorist attacks.

Among the foreign militants believed to be with the remaining gunmen in Marawi were Malaysian militant Amin Baco and an Indonesian known only as Qayyim. Both have plotted attacks and provided combat training to local militants for years but have eluded capture in the south.

Lorenzana said on Monday the identities of the final 42 bodies had not been determined and some were beyond recognition.

AP - Xinhua - AFP - Philippine Daily Inquirer / ANN
KATHMANDU - A Turkish Airlines plane that crash landed at Kathmandu airport two years ago will be welcoming ticket holders on board again - not for a flight but as the Nepali capital's first aviation museum.

The Airbus A330 was carrying 224 passengers when it skidded off the runway at Kathmandu's airport in March 2015, coming to a stop with its nose buried in the grassy verge on the edge of the tarmac.

No one was hurt, but the crash shut Nepal's only international airport for four days as technicians struggled to move the plane.

It was eventually dragged to a disused corner of the airport where it sat rusting for two years - until pilot Bed Upreti had an idea.

"It is unfortunate that the aircraft (had) an accident and was grounded, but I saw a perfect opportunity," Upreti said.

He bought the metal carcass and has invested $600,000 to turn it into an aviation museum.

Upreti's first task was moving the 63-meter plane across the road from the airport to the museum's lot - which proved harder than expected.

He previously brought an abandoned Fokker 100 - about half the size of an Airbus A330 - and transported it 500 kilometers to Dhangadi in Nepal's far west, where he also set up a museum, though on a smaller scale that this one.

"Transporting that plane across districts was much easier than relocating the Airbus meters away from the airport," Upreti said.

Working only at night when the airport was closed, it took a team of engineers from Turkey six weeks to dismantle the plane into 10 pieces, before loading them onto trucks for the 500 meter journey across the road.

It took two months to put all the pieces back together.

With the seats stripped out of the belly of the plane, the new museum feels surprisingly spacious.

The business class section of the plane will feature a model of the Wright Brothers' first aircraft - the first machine to successfully take to the sky - and in the tail there will be a cafe.

More than 150 miniature display planes will chart the history of aviation as well as the story of Nepal's flying industry.

"It (the museum) will give a chance to some Nepalis who might never fly to step into a plane," said engineering student Shyam Rauniyar, 22, who was part of the team that put together the replica of the Wright Brother's plane.

Upreti hopes that the museum will inspire young minds to become pilots and engineers, and is confident that it will be a hit with visitors.

"Passers-by are already peeking to get a glimpse," he said.

Agence France-presse
SYDNEY - An ambitious long-term strategy to transform Sydney into three separate but interconnected cities was launched on Sunday, with the goal of creating communities that are within 30 minutes of services and job opportunities.

Drafted by the New South Wales government's transport and planning departments, along with the Greater Sydney Commission, the Future Transport 2056 strategy is actually based on an old concept.

Long before British settlers arrived in Australia, Aboriginal people thought of Sydney as three different areas.

The eastern side of the harbor was known as the salt water region, the area now called Parramatta was recognized by its muddy waters and the far west was known for its clear waters.

"Reshaping Greater Sydney as a metropolis of three cities - Eastern, Central and Western - will rebalance it, fostering jobs, improving housing affordability, easing congestion and enhancing our enviable natural environment across the entire region," GSC Chief Commissioner Lucy Turnbull said in a statement.

"This is particularly exciting for Sydney's west, with an entirely new city to emerge west of the M7 motorway, where the new Western Sydney Airport and the surrounding aerotropolis will support tens of thousands of jobs."

The plan will also focus on transforming the furthest outer edge suburbs of Penrith, Liverpool and Campbelltown into thriving university towns with bustling business districts, which means "even greater opportunity for young people", Turnbull said.

With Sydney's population expected to double and surpass 8 million within the next 40 years, transport and infrastructure planning remain key to the city's success.

NSW Minister for Planning and Housing Anthony Roberts said: "We need these plans to ensure we deliver the housing, jobs, transport services, schools and medical facilities Sydneysiders will need."

Xinhua
LONDON - Britain can only come up with a figure for a financial settlement with the European Union when Brexit has been agreed, trade minister Liam Fox said on Sunday, warning leaders not to believe London is bluffing over a no deal.

Prime Minister Theresa May won a reprieve last week in the talks to unravel more than 40 years of union, when EU leaders offered a signal that the negotiations could move on to a discussion of future ties in December.

But the British leader, weakened after losing her Conservatives' majority in a June election and failing to reset her agenda at an ill-fated party conference, faces several hurdles at home before being able to force the talks forward.

She must get legislation to sever ties with the EU through both houses of parliament, and, on Sunday, the opposition Labour Party said it would team up with Conservative rebels to try to force changes to the EU withdrawal bill.

Fox, speaking on ITV television, said Britain would offer the other 27 EU members "further assurance" on its divorce before the next summit in December to unlock the talks to make way for a discussion of future trade ties.

"I don't know what that number is but it's very clear that we could only have that final number as part of a final agreement, we would want to know what the end state is," Fox said.

"Away from the hyperbole around the divorce bill there is actually a great deal of cooperation going on between us," he said, adding that the government would show the EU that "we are moving in the right direction" on the first phase of talks.

But he also said the EU should not believe that Britain was bluffing by saying it was preparing for a no deal, describing trading according to World Trade Organization rules as "not exactly a nightmare scenario".

May faces a delicate balancing act, not only in Brussels, where she must respond to the EU's demands for more concrete pledges on the so-called divorce bill, but also at home, where some of her lawmakers want her to walk away from the talks.

Upping the pressure on her, Labour's Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer said the party would back Conservatives hoping to amend the EU withdrawal bill.

Starmer said he wanted six changes to the bill, including parliament getting a final vote on any deal and a "completely different approach" to the use of the powers the government will have under the legislation, which will not be put before parliament until next month.

"I believe there is a consensus in parliament for these changes," he wrote in the Sunday Times newspaper.

Reuters
KABUL - Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani met with visiting US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Monday on matters of mutual interests, the Presidential Palace said.

At the meeting also attended by senior Afghan officials including Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, matters relating situation in Afghanistan, Afghan peace process, bilateral relations, regional cooperation and the war on terror were discussed, the palace said in a statement.

"The Secretary of State stated at the meeting that the new US strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia makes clear the United States' commitment to work with the government of Afghanistan and with its partners in the region to achieve peace in Afghanistan," it added.

Welcoming Tillerson, who is on a surprise visit to Afghanistan, President Ghani noted that all the partners should cooperate to stabilize peace and security in the region.

In his strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia announced in August, US President Donald Trump termed Taliban as terrorist group and vowed to mount pressure on the armed outfit and its supporters, besides increasing the number of troops to Afghanistan.

This is the first visit of Tillerson to Afghanistan as secretary of state amid increasing militancy in the country. The Taliban and Islamic State offensives have killed 150 people and injured more than 200 others over the past week.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (L) listens as Iraq's President Fuad Masum (R) speaks during their meeting in Baghdad, Iraq, Oct 23, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

BAGHDAD - US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday that Washington was keen on dialogue between Iraqi government and the Iraqi Kurdish region to solve the Kurdish issue.

Tillerson made his remarks in his discussion with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi over the tension between Baghdad and the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.

In a statement by the prime minister's office, Tillerson said that the United States supported Iraq's unity and called for the importance of adherence to the constitution.

For his part, Abadi said what Baghdad did in Kirkuk was redeployment and imposition of state power, which are legal and constitutional procedures.

"We do not want to fight a battle with any (Iraqi) components, all of them are our sons, and when we entered Kirkuk we sent a clear message that the Kurdish citizens are Iraqis and we deal with them like other components," Abadi said.

The statement said that the two sides also discussed "enhancing bilateral cooperation in various fields and the war against terrorism."

Abadi stressed that the fight against terrorism "is still a priority for us and we will continue to liberate the remaining areas of the country and secure the borders."

Abadi told Tillerson the paramilitary Hashd Shaabi unit "is an official institution which is part of the Iraq institutions. We have to encourage the (Hashd Shaabi) fighters because they will be the hope for the country and the region."

Earlier in the evening, Tillerson arrived in Baghdad on unannounced visit to meet with Iraqi leaders following last month's independence referendum held by the Kurdistan regional government, according to an Iraqi Foreign Ministry official who spoke to Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Tillerson would also discuss the reconstruction efforts after the defeat of the Islamic State (IS) group in the major IS strongholds in the country, the official said.

Hundreds of US troops are already in Iraq, serving as trainers and advisers, in an attempt to help the country win the battle against IS militants.

The US-led international coalition has also been conducting air raids against IS targets in both Iraq and Syria.
US President Donald Trump (R) and visiting Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong deliver joint statements at the White House in Washington DC, the United States, on Oct 23, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

WASHINGTON - As "the most important bilateral relationship in the world," good US-China ties will benefit the region and the world, said visiting Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Monday.

Lee made the remarks in joint statements with US President Donald Trump, who will kick off his first Asia trip next month since assuming the presidency.

Sound relations between the two big countries will "enable countries in the Asia-Pacific, including America and China themselves, to enjoy regional stability, peace, and prosperity," Lee said.

Lee said he also hoped that the United States will be able to "maintain a stable and constructive relationship with China, engaging each other at the highest levels, building trust, establishing institutional mechanisms."

In the statements, Lee also noted the mounting tensions on the Korean Peninsula. "There is no quick and easy solution," he said, adding that "pressure is necessary but so is dialogue."

Lee was on a six-day visit to the United States starting from Saturday.

Earlier in the day, Trump and Lee witnessed the signing of an agreement between Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Boeing for SIA to purchase 39 Boeing aircraft worth $13.8 billion.

The two leaders also held meetings to discuss further cooperation on economic, trade and defense issues, according to a statement released by the White House.
US President Donald Trump (R) shakes hands with visiting Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as they deliver joint statements at the White House in Washington DC, the United States, on Oct 23, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

WASHINGTON - Singapore Airlines inked deal on Monday with US aircraft maker Boeing in Washington to purchase aircrafts worth $13.8 billion.

Boeing's chief executive officer signed paperwork at the White House with the CEO of Singapore Airlines, which agreed to purchase 20 Boeing 777s and 19 Boeing 787s.

US President Donald Trump and visiting Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong witnessed the signing of the agreement, according to a statement from the White House.

"We do a lot of business with Singapore. The relationship now is at its highest point and it will continue," Trump told reporters before his working luncheon with Lee.

The US president also noted that the deal will create 70,000 jobs in the United States.

The relations between the United States and Singapore are "prospering," said Lee, who also vowed to deepen bilateral ties in the future.
Syrian refugee students receive Chinese-funded educational supplies at a school in Beirut, Lebanon, on Oct 23, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIRUT - Chinese-funded educational supplies were distributed on Monday to around 86,000 Syrian refugee students in Lebanon, said the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in a statement.

The aid was delivered by Chinese Ambassador to Lebanon Wang Kejian, who was joined by Lebanese Education Minister Marwan Hamadeh and UNICEF representative in Jordan Tanya Chapuisat.

The donation was made through Lebanon's Reach all Children with Education campaign (RACE), an ongoing collaborative effort between the Lebanese Ministry of Education and the United Nations.

Through RACE, the Lebanese government is striving to enable all children in Lebanon to attend school regardless of nationality.

Chapuisat hailed China's "generous donation" that reached 86,000 Syrian refugee students in Lebanon this year, according to the statement.

For his part, Hamadeh thanked China for its continuous support to Lebanon.

"We thank China for its ongoing support to Lebanon in many fields since the refugee crisis. It is coming from a brotherly country that loves Syria and Lebanon as well," he said.

Wang said that the Chinese donation, which expressed China's sympathy and support to the Syrian refugees, aimed at helping Lebanon to deal with the refugee crisis.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will pay an official visit to China from Oct 31 to Nov 2 at the invitation of Premier Li Keqiang, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang announced on Tuesday.

During the visit, Premier Li and Medvedev will hold the 22nd regular meeting between Chinese and Russian prime ministers.
The Rohingya crisis in Myanmar, where thousands of people have fled the killing in the country, is genocide, said Azeem Ibrahim, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy.

Ibrahim, in a column for CNN, said while the crisis has long been described an ethnic cleansing, the situation has turned into genocide.

The United Nations 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide as acts that are committed with intent to destroy in the whole or part of a national, ethnical or racial or religious group by killing, causing bodily injury or mental harm, imposing measures to prevent births.

Though the Rohingya situation has met most of the above criteria for being described as a genocide under international law for a number of years now, the label has been resisted until now because we think of genocide as one huge act of frenzied violence, like the machete insanity in Rwanda or the gas chambers of Nazi Germany, he said.

Ibrahim says in Myanmar that Buddhist monks are preaching that the Rohingya are reincarnations of snakes and insects and killing them is a sort of pest control.

The duty of any good Buddhist who wants to maintain the national and religious character of Myanmar is to prevent the Islamist takeover, and thus to help remove the threat posed by the vermin, he says.

Some 600,000 Rohingya have been driven out of Myanmar because of the violence and persecution.

More than half of an entire population has been removed from their ancestral lands in just eight weeks, Ibrahim says.

Just like we did in Rwanda, just like we did in the Balkans, we are once again seeing a genocide happen before our very eyes, he added. And we will do nothing about it. We will bury our heads in the sand, and when our children will ask us why we let this happen we will plead ignorance. Once the final act of killing starts, it is usually too late. For the Rohingya, the final act is in full swing. And still we are in denial about what is happening.

Photo courtesy: Thinkstock/fotocelia

Publication date: October 23, 2017
Who would have guessed that the religious liberty and free-speech rights of Americans would be tested in a dispute over the baking of a wedding cake? A case will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court this term involving whether a baker in Colorado can be compelled by the state to make a cake for a same-sex wedding reception when the baker has religious and free-speech objections to using his artistry that way.

Jack Phillips has been baking cakes and other confections for 22 years in his business, Masterpiece Cakeshop, located in Lakewood, Colorado, west of Denver. Mr. Phillips says that he makes, on average, 200 custom cakes a year, and they are not cheapoften running $500 apiece. That is because they are one-of-a kind artistic creations.

Phillips became a Christian in the 1970s. His faith puts limits on what he will bake. For example, he refuses to bake cakes that portray witches and ghosts for Halloween or sexually suggestive images. In keeping with his Christian convictions that marriage should between a man and woman, he would not help in the celebration of gay unions by baking a wedding cake for such occasions.

In July 2012, Jacks baking world changed abruptly. Two gay men, Charles Craig and David Mullins, tried to order a wedding cake from Phillips for their same-sex marriage reception. Phillips politely told them, according to a Daily Signal interview: Sorry, guys, I dont make cakes for same-sex weddings. According to Phillips the two angrily stomped out of his shop referring to his business as a F-ing homophobic cake shop. They translated their outrage into a legal charge filed against Phillips with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission under the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA). Phillips, they claimed, had discriminated against them because of their sexual orientation when he refused to bake a wedding cake for them. (In response, another bakery donated a rainbow cake to them for the occasion.)

The commission, and eventually the Colorado Appeals Court, rejected Phillips claim that his free speech/expression rights and religious liberty rights under the First Amendment would be infringed upon by requiring him to bake the cake for Craig and Mullins. The order of the Colorado administrative law judge stuck. The order was specific and intrusive. It said that if Phillips bakes cakes for opposite-sex couples he must do the same for same-sex couples and that he must retrain his staff to do likewise. In addition, the order required Phillips to report to the commission every cake order he declined for two years. Therefore, to maintain his conscientious stance, Phillips has not baked any wedding cakes, thus avoiding a violation of his religious scruples about baking cakes for same-sex unions. Not surprisingly, he says that this has meant a considerable loss of income for his business.

Although the religious-liberty aspect of the case has received the most attention, and will be discussed below, the case also raises the question of whether being compelled to bake a custom-made cake for a same-sex wedding should be regarded as an infringement of freedom of speech and, therefore, protected from the commissions order. At first blush, it may seem a stretch to regard cake-baking as speech. However, the courts long ago recognized that the meaning of speech does not end at the spoken or written word. Engaging in conduct that intends to express an idea is speech. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld as protected speech the right of students to protest the Vietnam War by wearing black armbands to school and the right of laborers to peacefully picket in a labor dispute, both examples of conduct in which words may not be spoken.

In addition, besides being free to speak, citizens also have a right to be free from being compelled to speak a message provided by the government or another person. The oldest and best-known case embodying this ideacalled the compelled speech doctrineis W. Va. State Board of Education v. Barnett . There the court ruled that public-school children, who (in this case) were Jehovahs Witnesses, could not be required to salute the flag and say the pledge of allegiance, which was against their religions teachings. The court based its decision not on religious liberty per se but upon the students being obliged by law to express a message that was contrary to their own beliefs and convictions. Phillips said that he should be protected in the same way.

The Colorado Court of Appeals did not think so. Amazingly, it claimed that Phillips had not shown that by baking the cake he would be conveying a message celebrating same-sex marriage. The court called Phillips baking conduct and not speech at all, suggesting it contained no message. In light of the fact that a variety of federal courts have found everything from tattooing to nude dancing to be speech, this seems to be an indefensible position by the court.

Secondly, the Colorado court asserted that even if such a message were said to exist, it would likely be attributed to the customer and not to Masterpiece Cakeshop. Furthermore, if it were attributed to Masterpiece, observers would know that Masterpiece was simply complying with the law, not endorsing a view in favor of same-sex marriage. To top things off, the Colorado court said that Phillips could always post a sign in his window declaring his position on same-sex marriages even though he would have to keep baking cakes for gay marriages.

Frankly, the Colorado courts message to Phillips makes a mockery of the compelled speech doctrine. In short, it says to him: you must bake cakes for same-sex weddings and any supportive message conveyed will not be attributed to you, or at the very least, customers will know you baked against your convictions because you can post a sign to that effect in your window.

Phillips second claim is that his religious liberty has been denied him by Colorados Anti-Discrimination Act. Unfortunately, winning this argument was made more difficult by a 1990 Supreme Court decision, Employment Division v. Smith. There, two defendants claimed that their free exercise of religion was infringed upon because they were criminally prosecuted for taking an illegal drugpeyoteduring a Native American religious ceremony. The Supreme Court upheld their conviction saying that the law in question was neutral and generally applicable and persons who disobeyed such a law would not be protected by the free exercise clause of the First Amendment as long as the government could show a rational reason for the law. The Colorado Appeals Court in the Masterpiece case relied heavily upon Smith claiming that the Colorado Anti- Discrimination Act had been applied to Phillips bakery in a neutral and generally applicable way and that Colorado had a rational aim, namely, ending discrimination.

Masterpiece Bakeshop, however, has countered Colorados claims of neutrality and general applicability. Masterpiece argues that the very Civil Rights Commission that condemned the refusal to bake by Jack Phillips found nothing legally objectionable about the refusal of three secular bakeries to create custom cakes which contained messages disapproving same-sex marriage. That is hardly neutrality and general applicability.

Furthermore, the Smith decision, upon which Colorado has relied, recognizes that religious claimants can combine their claims for religious liberty with free-speech claims in what is called a hybrid-rights argument. Phillips lawyers have forcefully made such a claim for protection. Why would that make a difference? Because under this part of the Smith decision, the prospect of a state government curtailing two guaranteed First Amendment rights would require the Supreme Court to insist that Colorado provide what is called a compelling reason for its actions. In short, Colorado would have to convince the court that merely allowing Phillips to refuse to bake a cake celebrating a union to which he had credible speech and religious objections would fundamentally undermine its anti-discrimination policy. Moreover, Colorado would have to maintain this position even though Phillips sold other baked goods (without messages) to gays, and even though the gay plaintiffs introduced no evidencethat same sex-couples have problems accessing cake artists in the area.

Should a majority find in favor of Phillips and Masterpiece, the Supreme Court will be upholding the right of Americans to be free from being compelled by the state to express a message against ones beliefs, whether that right is regarded as freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, or a hybrid of the two.

Dr. John A. Sparks is the retired dean of Arts & Letters at Grove City College and a fellow for The Center for Vision & Values. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and a member of the State Bar of Pennsylvania. He is a frequent contributor of articles based upon U.S. Supreme Court developments.

Courtesy: The Center for Vision & Values

Photo courtesy: Thinkstock/AmberClark

Publication date: October 24, 2017
Jason Greenblatt, the U.S. Special Representative for International Negotiations, is putting the world on notice that Hamas is now begging Iran for help to destroy Israel.

Commenting on the visit of several Hamas leaders to Tehran over the weekend, Greenblatt on Monday took to Twitter saying:

Hamas, which has only brought ruin and misery to Palestinians, now begs Iran for help and again vows to destroy Israel. 1/2

Palestinians deserve so much better than this. We must find a better path forward toward peace and prosperity. 2/2

The visit to Tehran comes as Hamas and Fatah, rival Palestinian factions, have recently reached a deal over political reconciliation. The two groups have split rule over the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, respectively, for nearly a decade.

Fatah is committed to a peaceful, political path forward in its fight for Palestinian statehood. Founded by Yasser Arafat in 1959, Fatah is an acronym for Palestinian National Liberation Movement. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas currently leads Fatah.

Hamas believes violence is the path forward to claim Palestine from Israeli occupation. Hamas is an acronym (spelled backward) for Islamic Resistance Movement. Founded in the late 1960s, Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group's official charter, adopted in 1988, calls for the destruction of Israel and raising the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.

In recent days, Hamas has renewed its commitment to destroy Israel through violent means.

Laura Lacey Johnson is an experienced radio broadcaster, television news reporter, and Bible study leader who writes regularly about news, culture, and faith at www.lauralaceyjohnson.com.

Photo courtesy: Thinkstockphotos.com

Publication date: October 24, 2017
Last week, as this New York Times editorial reports, a federal appeals court argued that a young pregnant woman who has illegally immigrated to the United States and is requesting an abortion has the constitutional right to obtain one. As Albert Mohler points out on his podcast The Briefing, this claim of the young womans constitutional right not only shows a warped view of U.S. law but also reveals the ideology of secular culture.

In the opening paragraph of the article, the New York Times editorial board claims that [t]he Constitution grants her that right [to an abortion] and that the Trump administration is determined to subvert it as part of its war on womens reproductive rights. In his discussion of the editorial, Mohler draws attention to the writers total disregard of the actual content of the United States Constitution when it comes to this issue. Their claim overlooks the fact that no language in the Constitution guarantees the right of abortion to non-citizens or even actual U.S. citizens. In fact, the Constitution says absolutely nothing about such rights, says Mohler.

Nevertheless, the editors argue for the abortion of this young womans child because, in their worldview, the right of a woman to abort an unborn child is crucial to liberating women as a race. Mohler writes, Any infringement of that right, any restriction of that right, any recognition of the right to life of that unborn child, even any legal recognition of the child, is considered to be the great impediment to the liberty that women are owed under the U. S. Constitution, and that is central to the modern liberal, secular understanding of what it means to be human, and in- in particular what it means to be a woman.

The strong ideological dedication to this right of abortion explains the strong language used by the editorial board in the article. From the beginning to the end of the article, they are quick to condemn their ideological opponents of injustice and discrimination. Mohler calls their words bellicose language, the language of war, noting their readiness to pull these strong terms into the conversation.

So, although the writers blame the administration of warping policy to their beliefs, advocates on their own side of the ideological divide have tried to do just the same by insisting on the right of both citizens and non-citizens to abort unborn babies on United States soil.

Leah Hickman is a 2017 graduate of Hillsdale Colleges English program. She has written pieces for multiple Hillsdale College campus publications as well as for BreakPoint.org, ChristianAnswers.net/Spotlight, and the Discover Laura Blog. Read more by Leah at aworldofgrasspeople.blogspot.com.

Photo courtesy: Thinkstock/interstid

Publication date: October 24, 2017
I have written before that, as a seminarian, I quit subscribing to Christianity Today when it relocated decades ago from Washington, DC, to Carol Stream, Illinois. At the time, I thought it irresponsible to leave the corridors of national power, where I believed evangelicals should be if they were to remain relevant to the culture.

In retrospect, moving from DC was wise. Had we remained there, we would have felt increasingly tempted by partisan politics, taking one side or another and along the way self-righteously condemning those who disagreed with our particular political solutions. We would have become Christian Politics Today.

Instead, our calling as a magazine is to speak the truth in love (beautiful orthodoxy!) on all manner of issues, grounded not in political opinion but in the great teaching of Scripture, looking for Jesus not in the halls of Congress but in his work in and through his church, the one institution he promised to remain with.

We do not ignore politics, to be sure. But the climate today is more politicized than ever, and the temptation to be political is ever present. Thus we remind ourselves that the most political thing we Christians do every week happens in worship, when we recognize that Jesus is Lord.

That said, some Christians certainly do need to be in the corridors of power. And that is why locating the Museum of the Bible there is a good move. To have a Bible-centered museum in the same place as the Smithsonian museums, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum suggests rightly that you cannot understand America unless you are familiar with the Bible. Its part and parcel of our national heritage.

The founders of the Museum of the Bible are, of course, hoping for more than a tip of the hat to heritage. They believe, as do we, that simple exposure to the Bible is enough to do wonders. It remains alive and active (Heb. 4:12), a means by which people encounter the living God.

The Bible enters into nearly every piece in this issuefrom an examination of Micah 6:8 to pieces on suicide and antibiotics. Sometimes the connection is obvious and direct. At other times biblical teaching is more or less assumed. In either case, the Bible for us is not a mere museum piece, let alone a stick upon which we raise a partisan political flag. We hope that whenever it is read or referenced in our pages, readers will meet Jesus Christ anew. No matter where our offices are located.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.
When my seven-year-old adopted daughter, Ruth, died without warning in her sleep from complications related to cerebral palsy, I was devastated. Not only had I lost my smart, funny, beloved daughter, my surviving children had lost their sister. Their grief compounded my own, and I worried about how Ruths death would affect them long-termparticularly as Ruth had died in bed with her same-age sister.

A recent article in The New York Times highlighted the enduring effects of childhood sibling loss. In the article, Aaron E. Carroll, a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University of Medicine, discussed how families that lose a child often struggle with social deprivation and poor health. Even a decade after losing a child, parents (especially mothers) face an increased mortality rate. But such loss may be hardest on children, Carroll said, with preteens exhibiting higher levels of depression and anxiety and adolescents being more likely to show attention problems and anger.

Unthinkable as it may be, between 5 and 8 percent of American kids will experience the death of a brother or sister during their childhood. In addition to the emotional and psychological impact, sibling loss actually raises a surviving siblings risk of early mortality. A study by JAMA Pediatrics, which focused on children in Denmark and Sweden, found that those whod experienced the death of a sibling before age 18 were more than 70 percent more likely to die during the course of the nearly four decade study than those who had not lost a sibling. (The elevated risk was highest in the first year following a siblings death, in part due to genetics as many children died of the same disease as a sibling.)

Health care professionals should be aware of childrens vulnerability after experiencing sibling death, especially for same-sex sibling pairs and sibling pairs with close age, the studys authors concluded.

Reading this, my heart shrank, particularly as negative health outcomes due to sibling loss appear more pronounced in girls than in boys, and especially when a daughter loses a sister, as did my daughter, Lydia.

Trans-Atlantic twins

Lydia was less than three weeks older than Ruth. Trans-Atlantic twins, my husband, Dana, and I called them, because Lydia was born in Maine and Ruth in Uganda. Abandoned at birth, sent to an orphanage, and diagnosed with cerebral palsy, Ruth arrived in Maine at one year old for six months of physical therapy. Our family met her through friends and decided to adopt. Never mind that Ruth was also deaf, couldnt sit up, talk, walk or use her hands to signwe adored her. After a year of prayer, fundraising, and a whirlwind trip to East Africa, Ruth was officially ours. I naively believed that nothing could take her away.

Dana and I had been warned against adopting a child who was the same age as our daughter. Yet, Lydia never seemed to see her sister as a rival. Even as a toddler, she heaped toys in Ruths lap, helped uncurl her tightly clenched fingers to hold a rattle, and acted as her interpreter, one day asking from the back of the van where the girls sat in side-by-side car seats, Does a smile mean I love you?

I guess so, I said, driving. Why?

Then that means Ruthie loves me very much, Lydia said.

And she did.

The girls were inseparable. Lydia found the most ingenious ways to include Ruthsitting on Ruths lap in her wheelchair and spinning the wheels with her feet to roll around the living room, playing with cardboard cosmetics that Lydia applied to Ruths grinning face, and decorating Ruths wheelchair like a queenly carriage, which she pulled around the house on all fours while pretending to be a horse.

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During the early years, the girls shared a bedroom. But when they turned six and it became too difficult to carry Ruth up the steep stairs of our century-old New Englander, we moved Ruth to a queen-sized bed downstairs. A couple of nights later, Lydia picked up her doll and pillow and marched downstairs to sleep with her sister.

And thats where she was, the frigid February morning six years ago, when Ruth stopped breathing in her sleep. Lydia didnt even know what had happened until Dana led her out of the room, we called 911, and an ambulance took Ruth away.

How do you get over that? Ever?

My husband and I have four additional childrenall boys, one born three years after Ruths death. Since that time, one of our children has acknowledged struggling to believe in a God who would allow such a loss. Another has disclosed times when the grief triggers overwhelming tears. Still another says little, which is no less distressing. And why should they not struggle, when I myself continue to wrestle with the physical, mental, and spiritual anguish of losing a child?

Now, in the face of worrisome statistics suggesting that the effects of sibling loss arent likely to disappear, how are we to help our children?

Helping children heal

Children will have different needs and different ways of expressing their grief at different ages, observed Susan Giambalvo, the director of programs and operation for The Center for Grieving Childrena nonprofit, volunteer-led program that provides free, peer-led support groups in Portland, Maine, not far from where I live. But all children will benefit from as much safety, love, and routine as you can provide them.

In the early days and months after losing Ruth, Dana and I encouraged our children to express their grief however they needed tothrough conversation, art, music, and climbing in bed with us at night. As I sorted and put away Ruths clothes, Lydia folded and put away Ruths dolls clothes. She galloped through the house on an invisible horse, racing her now invisible sister. And she continued sleeping downstairs for most of the following year.

At the time, I knew only one other family that had lost a childfriends whose baby had died of SIDS. But I was too encumbered by my own grief to ask how they had handled theirs or to seek help. In the years since, Ive learned that my experience of isolation is common among grieving parents. Another mom, Kim Findlay, of Crystal Lake, Illinois, told me she felt similarly bewildered about how to go on after her five-year-old daughter, Emma, died in a house fire. Her surviving daughter, then an adolescent, met briefly with a school social worker but is still working through her grief 12 years later and struggles with anxiety and depression.

Theres a definite sense that if she moves on, so to speak, shell leave Emma behind, said Findlay, who wrote about her experience in a memoir, Breathing in Ashes. But we also talk about Emma as often as we need. We always have. We tell stories. We cry. We visit her grave. I think weve moved through that piece in a relatively healthy way.

Findlays main support was her church, which offered encouragement, remembered Emmas birthday, and provided a safe place to heal. For some, such community and family support may be enough, said Giambalvo, suggesting that one way parents can support grieving children is to let them know that it is okay to talk with them about their sibling, how they are feeling, and what they need.

Shelly Wildman, of Wheaton, Illinois, recalled receiving no formal support 43 years ago when her 9-year-old brother, Chris, drowned at camp when she was 11. Back in 1974, people didnt go to counseling, Wildman said. My parents were struggling to keep it together, and I never wanted to do anything to hurt them or to bring up the pain of it all, so I mostly kept quiet.

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Thats a common response. According to Giambalvo, Sometimes children are concerned about talking with their parents because they do not want to make them sad, or they dont want to be a burden on an overwhelmed parent. To keep children from feeling overlooked when a loss happens in the family, she said, They need to be assured that they are still important.

The comfort of routine and making sure children get to do the things that are important to them are also essential, said Giambalvo. So is recognizing that each person grieves in their own way and that grief is a lifelong journey. Call on other supportive adults to help your children when you own resources are likely depleted, she said.

Support groups, such as those led by the Center for Grieving Children, provide a safe place where children and adults can talk about their loss with peers. They also help promote resiliency and reduce feelings of isolation, grief, and loss. Such groups can be found nationwide through the National Alliance for Grieving Children.

Healing and the gospel

Both Findlay and Wildman said that relying on their faith in God was crucial in helping them navigate their loss.

It was truly a lonely season, said Findlay, who said she dove into her faith and Scripture after the death of her daughter. But the way Scripture came to life and how God spoke to me during those years, was healing, transforming, life altering.

Wildman, also an author, said that she is a Christian today in part because the early loss of her brother helped make the gospel real to her. During a high school mission trip to Mexico, Wildman, whose father was a farmer, shared about her brothers death.

Your dads a farmer and he doesnt have a son to give the farm to? a girl asked.

No, Wildman answered. He was my dads only son.

Instantly, she said, the familiar words of John 3:16 flooded her mind. I knew right then that the sacrifice that God gave was not something to be taken lightly, Wildman said. For who would ever give their most precious child for the salvation of others?

Yet, in the first year after losing Ruth, I struggled to believe in God at alllet alone believe that he was good. Desperate for answers, I turned to the most melancholy parts of the Bible I could find: Davids grief-stricken psalms; Ecclesiastes, in which the writer declares that life is meaningless; and Lamentations, written in the form of a funeral dirge. While few Bible stories focus on the loss of a sibling, many acknowledge our sorrow and vulnerability while pointing toward Gods mercy. I clung to Lamentations 3:32, For if He causes grief, Then He will have compassion according to His abundant lovingkindness (NASB).

Dana and I spoke with our children of Ruths ultimate healingof having faith that their sister was no longer in pain, no longer struggling but in the presence of the one who would wipe away every tear in a place where there is no more death or sorrow or crying or pain (Rev. 21:4). And because of Christs death and resurrection, we will one day be with her again.

The more I read the Bible, the more my faith grew. And, in time, happy memories outnumbered sad ones.

Do you remember how Ruth would lick you? Lydia asked one day.

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And I would laugh? I said, recalling Ruths way of exploring the world using one of the few muscles she could control.

Yeah! Lydia grinned.

Even as we struggle with the long-term effects of loss, we look toward the future with hope because of Gods compassion and lovingkindness. And while it is important to acknowledge the ongoing and future risks associated with sibling loss and to access support, those alarming statistics are not the only long-term effects of grief.

My painand my childrensis a reminder of how deeply we loved Ruth. Memories of the six miraculous, challenging, and rewarding years we shared together also last a lifetime. And because of the gospel, we look forward to the day when we will be together again.

Meadow Rue Merrill is the author of Redeeming Ruth: Everything Life Takes, Love Restores. A former newspaper reporter, Merrill writes for children and adults from a little house in the big woods of midcoast Maine. Connect at www.meadowrue.com.
One-Time Rebel Invites Others to Follow in Her Risk-Taking Footsteps in Taking Gospel to Unreached Troubled teen-turned-medical missionary aims to inspire others to trust God in new book chronicling her adventures in faith



Contact: Darin Campbell,

512-785-8350



COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Oct. 24, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- A reformed rebel with a taste for adventure is looking to inspire others to step out and make a difference in the world.



Photo: Sheila Leech tells how she went from being a teenage rebel to vice president of international healthcare for missions agency Reach Beyond in her new book, God Knows What I'm Doing Here.



Sharing some hair-raising stories from more than 35 years' missionary service in a new book, Sheila Leech hopes others may be challenged to follow in her footsteps, helping take the gospel to those who have yet to hear about Jesus.



Vice president of international healthcare for missions agency Reach Beyond, Leech tells of being held up at gunpoint by an armed rebel in Ecuador, living in a tribal community as a single woman, and leading medical teams into disaster zones around the world in God Knows What I'm Doing Here.



Founded in 1931 as broadcasting ministry, Reach Beyond later expanded into healthcare and leadership development and now has a major focus on unreached peoplesthose lives where the gospel hasn't been proclaimed.



That emphasis means "we are asking people to go to some difficult and sometimes dangerous areas of the world," Leech acknowledges. "But if we are really serious about reaching the unreached, we need to sit down and consider what that might mean."



Tracing her journey from her drug-using teenage years to long-term service with Reach Beyond, Leech tells how "God took this broken life of a very rebellious, lost young woman and did something with itand if He can do that with someone like me, what could He do with you?"



After nine years in Ecuador, Leech returned to her native England to train as a nurse so she could be part of Reach Beyond's medical and health ministry back in South America. Later she was appointed to oversee the multiplication of similar programs with Reach Beyond partners in other parts of the world.



Leech has led medical teams in the aftermath of earthquakes in Pakistan and Haiti, a tsunami in Indonesia and civil war in the Middle East. Three years ago, she relocated to Spain to be better situated for her international role.



Providing healthcare and clean water as a practical demonstration of God's love opens doors for the gospel in communities that otherwise might be resistant, she says. "People are more than simply souls to be saved; meeting their physical and emotional needs creates a platform for sharing the gospel."



Recounting how God has led and protected her, Leech quotes the late missionary author Elisabeth Elliot, who said that "the safest place is the center of God's will for you." Still, she recognizes the seriousness of following God to hard places in the world, saying, "I would never ask anyone to do something I have not done or would not do.



"I'm not suggesting people should be foolhardy or careless, but sometimes God calls us to take what seem to be risks and to trust Himand I have found Him to be faithful in that."



Published in England by Authentic Media, God Knows What I'm Doing Here is also available in the U.S. and elsewhere.



Reach Beyond (reachbeyond.org) is a media- and medical-based evangelical ministry with operations on five continents. It spreads the message of Jesus in places that are primarily unreached or unengaged in the gospel. Reach Beyond uses media, including radio broadcasts, webcasts, social media and the distribution of solar-powered, fixed-tuned radios. It also reaches out to the needy throughout its growing network of healthcare services.



To schedule an interview with a Reach Beyond representative, contact:

Darin Campbell at (512) 785-8350 or dcampbell@inchristcommunications.com.



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home World Muslim group in Australia receives terror threats after announcing plans to buy church hall

A group of Muslims in Queensland, Australia has reportedly received terrorist-style threats after announcing plans to buy a church hall and turn it into an Islamic community center.

According to a report from Daily Mail, the Muslim community in Gympie, north of Brisbane, were looking to buy a building in the area, and distributed a promotional flyer for an event to raise money for the sale. But the group began to be harassed on Facebook and in phone messages because the flyer had described the plans for the community center as the "Gympie Mosque Project."

Gympie accountant Shahid Kahn said that the Muslim community has been running a center in a property near the new building's Lady Mary Terrace location for over a decade, but has never encountered a problem.

"I've been living in Gympie since 1984 and I've had nothing but acceptance and long standing friendships. I don't see how owning our own hall is going to change anything," Kahn told The Gympie Times.

The flyer that was posted online mentioned that the small Muslim community had a "big hope" to find a place where they could conduct Jumma prayers.

Kahn noted that many of those attending the group's congregational worship on Fridays are professional people in medicine and business.

Kahn said that the mention of the word "mosque" to describe the building they wanted to buy had simply been a mistake.

"It's not a mosque, it's a church hall we want to buy from the Church of England. I probably did not take the mistake seriously enough and didn't do enough about clarifying it," Kahn said.

"Mosques don't have toilets or kitchens in the same building, nor do Christian churches. We don't have an imam and we are not in a position to have five prayers a day," he continued.

The building that the group was planning to buy is believed to sit on approximately 1,518 square meters (.375 acres) of land, and comprise of a 20-meter hall, large kitchen and toilets.

Gympie Times noted that Kahn was unwilling to pose for pictures after the threats he received, but the accountant contended that Islam and Christianity have so much in common that it is "ridiculous" that they should be in dispute.

This was not the first time that Queensland residents had a dispute over a mosque. In June, up to 400 residents protested plans by the Islamic Multicultural Association Gold Coast to expand a mosque in Worongary to cater for 200 worshippers.

The expansion plan was backed by a councilor, but the mayor objected to the proposal, noting that the council had already decided to reject the original application for the mosque in 2012.
Yana Paskova/Getty Images

CarMax, a used-car retailer with six stores in the Houston area, is looking to hire 85 full-time employees in the local market as part of a goal to fill more than 2,000 jobs nationwide.

Most of the new and open positions are for sales consultants, technicians, detailers and inventory associates. Passion about customer service is a key factor for getting hired, according to the company.
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When I first arrived in Azerbaijan in November 1994, assigned by the U.S. oil company Amoco Corporation to a joint venture consortium, signs of economic crisis were everywhere. Grocery store shelves were bare. Infrastructure was in decay after years of neglect under Soviet rule.

Now, more than 20 years later, Azerbaijan and its capital Baku are hubs of economic activity, providing the West with a reliable trade and energy ally in an uncertain region. The country's oil and gas industry has largely driven its transformation and growth.

In the mid-1990s, after restoring domestic order and forging a ceasefire with Armenia, then-Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev made oil a national priority. Amoco and nine other companies joined with Azerbaijan's state energy company, SOCAR, in a billion-dollar bet to develop oil in the Caspian Sea. At the time, this deal was referred to as the "contract of the century," bringing economic potential to Azerbaijan and the region.

Last month, the consortium partners of the original agreement expanded and renewed their collaboration for another 25 years. The original deal helped Azerbaijan prosper. Today's deal will offer Europe long-term energy security.

Western Europe is dependent on Russian oil and gas. Russian state-owned Gazprom supplies more than one-third of the energy needs of the UK, Spain, Germany and many other EU nations. But Russia is an unpredictable partner. President Vladimir Putin has demonstrated that he will weaponize Gazprom if it suits his political needs, or satisfies his personal grudges.

Once in 2006, and again during the bitterly cold winter in January 2009, Gazprom turned off its energy pipeline, freezing gas exports to Europe for several days over a pricing dispute with Ukraine. The 2009 cutoff halted 60 percent of Europe's gas supply and darkened homes, hospitals and businesses. In 2014, after Russia illegally seized Crimea, Moscow used Gazprom to further manipulate Ukraine and cut off energy supplies to that nation for a time.

The punitive nature of Russia's regime and its manipulation of access to its oil and gas puts Europe and the safety of its citizens at risk. It is critical that Europe diversify its energy resources and engage multiple sources and modes of delivery. The latest deal, signed in September and anchored by Azerbaijan, assures both.

In addition to SOCAR, the consortium now includes BP (which bought Amoco in 1998) from the U.K., ExxonMobil and Chevron from the U.S.; Inpex and Itochu from Japan; Statoil from Norway, TPAO from Turkey and ONGC Videsh from India.

The consortium operates in the Caspian Sea's Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) field, about 75 miles off the coast of Azerbaijan, the largest source of the country's oil production. Azerbaijan's bountiful Caspian fields were untapped during the Soviet occupation because the USSR lacked the required capital and deep-water technology.

Since the contract of the century was signed, the ACG field has produced about three billion barrels of oil along with associated natural gas.

When the first deal was signed, former President Aliyev set the ambitious goal of initial oil production within three years. There was much to be done. Infrastructure needed to be fixed, an existing Soviet-era offshore platform had to be rebuilt and outfitted with modern production facilities, a pipeline had to be laid to shore and a terminal to receive the oil had to be built. In addition, a pipeline to the Black Sea port of Supsa, Georgia, had to be constructed and an existing pipeline to Russia needed refurbishing.

All of us connected with the project logged endless work weeks to overcome the many obstacles. It was indeed a billion-dollar experiment because we would have to spend that much to prove that Western companies could operate in this post-Soviet country.

President Aliyev made it clear that our project was a top priority for his country. Senior representatives of the Azerbaijani government and SOCAR removed barriers and helped us in every regard. Azerbaijan negotiated crucial transmission agreements with then-Georgian President Eduard Shevernadze and then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

The success of the first billion-dollar oil project paved the way for additional tens of billions of dollars in investments by Western oil companies. With the guidance of current Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, many additional projects followed the initial contract, including the full-field development of the ACG complex, the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan main export pipeline to the Mediterranean Sea, development of the giant Shah Deniz natural gas field and the construction of the Northern Gas Corridor to transport natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe.

President Ilham Aliyev also led the renegotiation of the latest deal. Under it, the consortium partners will pay Azerbaijan $3.6 billion and SOCAR's stake will increase. It's a good deal for Azerbaijan and a great deal for Europe.

The contract of the past century helped Azerbaijan achieve wealth and prosperity that was barely imaginable when I arrived in 1994.

The contract of this century will help Europeans sleep a little easier on cold winter nights, knowing they are not completely dependent on a unilateral, arbitrary Kremlin for their energy needs.



Art McHaffie is a former senior Amoco executive and now an honorary consul for Azerbaijan.
The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will sell leases for some 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling, the largest sale of offshore leases in U.S. history.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the sale, scheduled for March, would open an area the size of New Mexico to drilling, including all unleased areas on the Gulf's outer continental shelf. The Gulf's outer continental shelf is estimated to hold recoverable reserves of more than 48 billion barrels of oil and 141 trillion cubic feet of gas.
Ellen DeGeneres caused an eruption in Houston after tweeting on Monday that she'd be at the University of Houston Campus on Tuesday giving away tickets to the World Series.

Though she has since shared another tweet saying her show would be on campus at 3:30 p.m., DeGeneres' original tweet didn't include any specific information, so people began gathering as early as 9 a.m. in hopes of meeting the comedian.
The National Human Trafficking Hotline has reportedly received 2,200 calls concerning sex trafficking with connections to Mexico or Latin America since it was set up in 2007.

Polaris, the organization that operates the hotline, plans to target these demographics, with emphasis on the Houston area, in its latest anti-trafficking campaign, according to a news release from the group.

In partnership with Hispanic Communications Network, a social media marketing company serving U.S. Hispanic communities, Polaris will be releasing all-Spanish public service announcements, social media strategies, celebrity endorsements and survivor testimonies throughout the next few months, geared toward raising awareness in the Hispanic community nationwide, according to the Polaris news release.

"When communities are equipped to recognize the signs of sex trafficking and know there's a trusted resource available to them 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they can play a critical role in the fight against this crime," said My Lo Cook, Polaris' strategic initiatives director for Mexico, in the release.

"This awareness campaign is the first step toward empowering Latino communities that are particularly affected by this form of trafficking with the knowledge and tools to join the solution."

Join the Solution, or Unete a la Solucion, is the campaign's official title.

Through the decade-long operation of the hotline, Polaris has identified sex trafficking of young women  often minors  from Mexico and Latin America as one of the most prevalent forms of exploitation, said Polaris CEO Bradley Myles in the release.

"If we want to identify more victims and stop this brutal crime from recurring, we have to raise awareness of how sex trafficking manifests in our communities, and that help is available through the National Hotline," Myles said in the release.

Data collected by Polaris has identified more than 4,300 sex trafficking victims with ties to Mexico or Central America. Of those victims, more than 88 percent were women and 45 percent were minors.

"I hope that, through this campaign, the public will understand that we are a lifeline for victims," said trafficking survivor and campaign spokesperson, Carmen, in the release. "We must be aware and speak up because this could happen to us some day  and then who will be there for us?"
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The Ellen DeGeneres Show is coming for the Cougars.

After dropping an Astros-themed hint with a post to Twitter on Monday, DeGeneres said her show planned to give away World Series tickets at the University of Houston on Tuesday.

"Everything's bigger in Texas!" she wrote on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon. "Wear the biggest outfit for a chance to win tickets to one of the big games!"

The show's stop is just the latest for college campuses. In February, her show asked Longhorns at the University of Texas at Austin to show off their best Beyonce costumes for tickets to the Grammy Awards.

Now Playing: Astros fans gather at UH campus in costume to try to win playoff tickets from Ellen. Video: Brandpoint

But it may come at just the right time for Astros fans -- especially for Houston's tuition-paying college students who probably can't afford to shell out money for World Series tickets.

As my colleague Matt Young reports here:

The cheapest ticket to get into any of the World Series games at Minute Maid Park - Games 3, 4 and 5 - on StubHub or Vivid Seats are $541 as of Monday morning, and that's a standing room only ticket. The cheapest ticket on either site that comes with an actual seat is $745.

Of course, that seat is about as high and far away from home plate as you can get. If you want to sit in the Crawford Boxes, those tickets are coming in at nothing less than $1,200. The cheapest tickets on the lower level behind the Astros dugout are selling for $2,000.

(Emily Foxhall has more on the hunt for tickets here.)

UH spokesman Mike Rosen said the university was expecting several hundred students to turn out.

On Twitter, fans and students said they were ready for the promotion.

One woman held a sign that read "Ellen Pick Us," while another bemoaned that she was "not sure where to look" for DeGeneres.

Lindsay Ellis writes about higher education for the Chronicle. You can follow her on Twitter and send her tips at lindsay.ellis@chron.com.
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Three industrial cranes standing 270 feet from dock to apex arrived Monday at Barbours Cut Container Terminal.

The cranes, costing a total of $33.5 million, can unload ships wide enough to carry 22 rows of containers.

The equipment departed China on July 23 and, once installed, will give Barbours Cut seven cranes capable of loading and unloading the larger ships that can now traverse the expanded Panama Canal.

At HoustonChronicle.com: Simulator gives Ship Channel pilots glimpse into the future

Also on Monday, Port Houston Executive Director Roger Guenther reported that September container activity increased 22 percent at Port Houston's Barbours Cut and Bayport facilities. He spoke during a meeting of the Port Commission of the Port of Houston Authority.

Port Houston facilities, overall, handled 28.8 million tons of cargo year to date, a 9 percent increase over the first three quarters of 2016, according to a news release. Container volume recorded an 11 percent increase compared with last year, and in September surpassed the 1.8 million 20-foot-equivalent unit mark.
A Cincinnatti woman got an engagement proposal she'll never forget thanks to the world's most famous hippo.

Nick Kelble and his girlfriend Hayley Roll had their engagement photos photobombed by baby Fiona at the Cincinnati Zoo Oct. 8.
WILLIS  Nearly 40 elementary school students escaped serious injuries Monday as their school bus slammed into the back of a stopped truck on Texas 75.

A Willis ISD school bus was northbound on the state highway just south of Cargill Drive around 4 p.m. when it slammed into the back of a silver Dodge Ram, entrapping the driver of that truck and thrusting it into a chain reaction that involved two other vehicles in the crash. There were 39 elementary schoolchildren on the bus at the time of the crash, all of whom suffered only minor injuries, according to Precinct 1 Constable Philip Cash, who was on scene within minutes.
As'ad's Bio

As'ad AbuKhalil, born March 16, 1960. From Tyre, Lebanon, grew up in Beirut. Received his BA and MA from American University of Beirut in pol sc. Came to US in 1983 and received his PhD in comparative government from Georgetown University. Taught at Tufts University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Colorado College, and Randolph-Macon Woman's College. Served as a Scholar-in-Residence at Middle East Institute in Washington DC. He served as free-lance Middle East consultant for NBC News and ABC News, an experience that only served to increase his disdain for maintream US media. He is now professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. His favorite food is fried eggplants.
Houston police have released surveillance video and photos of a suspect vehicle wanted in connection to the fatal shooting of a man on Oct. 12.

The victim, Eugene Duke, 65, was pronounced dead at the scene at about 10:50 a.m.
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A Houston woman sentenced earlier this year to 27 years in prison for fatally stabbing her husband in a staged home invasion is expected back in court Tuesday as her lawyers argue that she deserves a new trial.

Among other reasons laid out in an 85-page appeal, lawyers for Sandra argue that jurors relied on their own experiments and prosecutors shifted the burden of proof to the defense.

According to jurors interviewed after the verdict, they tried to reenact tying themselves up at home and did a demonstration during deliberations before convicting the 58-year-old Melgar of murder then sending her to prison.

A juror said "that many of the jury members had tied themselves up to see if it was possible to get loose from the bindings," according to an affidavit from one of Melgar's lawyers, Allison Secrest. The juror also told them that the jury had done a demonstration leading to a female juror being tied up and rolling around on the floor to figure out how long it would take to get untied.

The contention is a shocking because jurors in every criminal trial are cautioned from the moment they are empaneled to not conduct their own investigations or experiments.

The juror who was tied up later said she was concerned about how hard the deliberations were and said "only God knows who is guilty and what happened,"

In their appeal, Melgar's attorneys said that because the jury did their own experiments Melgar did not receive a fair trial.

They also argue that prosecutors impermissibly shifted the burden during closing arguments by saying the defense criticized the investigation but never found "the real killer."

After the verdict, a juror told the defense that they should have persuaded him by doing their own investigation and pointing the finger at someone they believed to be real killer.

"He asked why we (the defense) did not find the real killer," Secrest wrote in her appeal. "He added, that had the defense 'found the real killer' it would have been the only thing that would have changed his mind about his verdict."

A hearing on the appeal is scheduled in state District Judge Kelli Johnson's court.
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The Houston man charged with plotting to bomb a Confederate statue in Hermann Park this summer will be transferred to a mental health facility in Louisiana while he awaits trail, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

Andrew Cecil Schneck, 25, stood briefly before U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Wm. Smith while attorneys on both sides agreed to the secure inpatient facility was suitable and appropriate.

"Any questions?" the judge asked Schneck, who stood with his head down, shackled and an olive green jail uniform.

"No, your honor," Schneck said, then sat at a counsel table and raised his handcuffed hand to swear he was telling the truth on bond paperwork.

Schneck, who is being held a federal detention facility in downtown Houston, will likely be fitted with an electronic monitoring device later this week before his transfer to Lake Charles Memorial Hospital.

Defense attorney Philip Hilder declined to discuss his client's mental health history, other than to say, "I think he just needs a complete workup."

Schneck's parents -- whose South Hampton home, near Rice University, was searched by investigators for bomb-making materials after his arrest -- were not present in court. But Hilder said that wasn't because they were not in contact with him.

"His family is extremely supportive of him and is concerned for his well being," Hilder said.

Schneck was arrested in August after a park ranger reportedly spotted him kneeling with explosives in hand near the 1905 marble statue of Major Richard Dowling, who fought for Confederacy at the Battle of Sabine Pass. He told law enforcement officers he didn't like Dowling , court documents state. His arrest coincided with a mobilization by civil rights protesters around the country aimed at removing statues of Confederate officials from civic spaces.

Schneck is is charged with attempting to maliciously damage or destroy property and faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted. His trial was tentatively set for Nov. 6, but that could change at his next scheduling conference on Friday.
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Texas next month is poised to execute a Mexican national convicted of rape and murder in a case that could further inflame border tensions over apparent violations of the Vienna Convention and international law.

The Mexican government is now funding legal efforts by Ruben Cardenas Ramirez to halt his execution after authorities neglected to notify Mexico about the arrest and failed to hold a review required by the United Nations' international court in The Hague.

"It is as if the United States were thumbing its nose at the government of Mexico and the United Nations," said Sandra Babcock, a Cornell Law School professor specializing in international issues surrounding capital punishment. "And when I say the U.S., I should be clear that we're talking about Texas."

PLOT: Judge grants 90-day stay of execution for 'Tourniquet Killer'

Now Playing: Isiah Factor Uncensored Video: Fox 26 Houston

To make matters worse, the condemned man's lawyer is alleging that he didn't actually commit the crime that earned him a death sentence in the first place.

But according to Hidalgo County prosecutor Ted Hake, the U.N. ruling is "not enforceable" and there's no mechanism to hold the required review under Texas law.

"There's no point," he said. "This guy is guilty as sin."

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has weighed in with a recommendation that the U.S. vacate the death sentence, and the Mexican government has pleaded for an opportunity to be heard, according to court filings by defense counsel Maurie Levin.

The Mexican consulate this week declined to comment.

The former security guard was arrested for the 1997 slaying of his 15-year-old cousin, Mayra Laguna, whose body was found in a canal after she was abducted by a man who slipped in through the bedroom window.

The case has been plagued by claims of unreliable forensic evidence, conflicting statements and witnesses, concerns about ineffective lawyers, and allegations of a coerced confession.

Yet it was the concerns about treaty violations and international repercussions that pushed the U.S. Department of State to meet in February with Hidalgo County prosecutors. For now, the Nov. 8 execution date still stands.

"It makes us a clear human rights abuser," said Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that has been critical of the administration of the death penalty.

Human rights concerns

Authorities in Hidalgo County first collared Cardenas hours after the abduction, but did not immediately notify him of his right to talk to his country's consulate, according to court documents  an apparent oversight that violates Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

A 2004 U.N. World Court ruling known as the Avena case  an issue Babcock argued for Mexico  mandates that foreign nationals who weren't told of their consular rights are allowed a review to examine whether that oversight influenced the outcome of the criminal case.

And for Cardenas, there's some chance that it could have. Hidalgo County never told Mexico about the arrest, Levin said. Instead, they found out on their own after five months, long after Cardenas had given multiple, conflicting confessions that Levin argues were coerced.

Repeatedly, Cardenas asked for a lawyer, but authorities ignored his pleas until 11 days after his arrest, instead pushing on in their interrogations without telling him about his consular notification rights, Levin wrote in court filings.

Although the treaty violation could have international repercussions, a 2008 Supreme Court decision deemed it unenforceable, unless Congress takes legislative action  and they haven't.

In the meantime, some states have complied, but others have not.

"There are Mexican nationals whose rights under the Vienna convention have been violated and they have been executed," Levin said.

Conflicting evidence

Yet the Cardenas case stands out.

"This is the first case where there has been a really substantial miscarriage of justice in that Cardenas really could be innocent," Babcock said. "Although there is a confession, that confession is inconsistent with the physical evidence, the statements are inconsistent with each other, and he himself is of low intelligence. And then on top of that you have a lack of physical evidence."

Now, Cardenas has few remaining shots at avoiding the death chamber.

There's a motion pending in Hidalgo County court for DNA testing of scrapings taken from beneath Mayra's fingernails. The prosecution has already opposed the request, which came coupled with a motion to call off the execution.

"To permit Mr. Cardenas's execution to proceed without permitting this testing would fly in the face of the most fundamental concept of justice," Levin wrote in a scathing filing.

At the same time, there's a long-shot plea for a reprieve and sentence commutation in front of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and a request for a 30-day reprieve pending before Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

If the capital sentence goes forward as scheduled, some worry it could have ramifications abroad.

"When we allow executions to occur in situations like this," Dunham said, "we place Americans in danger abroad because we risk that other countries will mistreat our nationals the same way our courts are mistreating theirs."
The University of Houston-Downtown's new president announced a $25 million capital campaign on Monday to support student completion and faculty development, among other goals.

The campaign, which will formally begin Tuesday, follows a historic fundraising year that brought in the university's largest gift ever, a $10 million donation from Houston businesswoman Marilyn Davies to support its business school. The school now bears her name.

"Hope you're all carrying your checkbooks," Juan Sanchez Munoz, the new president, quipped Monday in a speech to faculty, staff and a few students.

UH-Downtown said later Monday that the university had already raised more than $21 million over six years in quiet fundraising for the campaign.

Raising the remaining $4 million in less than three years may pose a challenge for the university. The $10 million gift this year was an anomaly; UH-Downtown raised about $1.2 million in the 2016 fiscal year and about $2.5 million in the 2015 fiscal year.

Local philanthropists are also focused on Hurricane Harvey recovery after the August storm, potentially strapping existing donors.

Munoz added in a statement that providing opportunity for low-income students through college completion "is a compelling mission" for philanthropists despite Harvey.

The $25 million goal is a pared-back objective from the $30 million goal that UH-Downtown set in 2012. The university said in a statement that $25 million is an "achievable target" to meet.

The campaign was one of several goals Munoz introduced on Monday, about six months into his presidency.

He said he aimed to increase enrollment to 15,400 by 2020.

Fall enrollment at UH-Downtown has declined since fall 2014, shortly after the university introduced admissions standards for incoming students. About 14,440 students enrolled that semester.

About 14,250 enrolled last fall, and 13,920 students are enrolled today after 158 students withdrew due to Hurricane Harvey, a spokesman said.

Several steps will comprise the rebound, Munoz said.

First, UH-Downtown this week plans to launch a marketing video that urges students to finish their degrees at the university.

Second, a four-day intensive orientation for new students aims to grow community and awareness of the university's student resources so that students may be less inclined to drop out years later.

"It builds a cohort, it builds identity," he said.

Munoz has also said that he plans to visit all high schools in a 50-mile radius of UH-Downtown to speak with graduating seniors.

So far, he's met with students at about six, he said, noting that Harvey delayed his visits.

His message?

"How many presidents have come to recruit you?" he said.

In April, Munoz came to UH-Downtown from Texas Tech University, where he served as vice provost for undergraduate education and student affairs and led diversity efforts. He will earn $300,000 annually.

Hurricane Harvey, he said, showed him the strength of UH-Downtown's community. The university provided financial support to 349 students, faculty and staff, he said. The student support fund drew in $53,000.

"We're not a small university by any means, but it's hard not to become friends with fellow UHD Gators," he said. "We're a community, we're a family. And that was most evident during Harvey."
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A southeast Houston man was shot inside a home during a Monday night drive-by, police said.

Officers responded to the shooting call around 10 p.m., Houston police Lt. Larry Crowson told reporters. When officers arrived in the 5000 block of Higgins, they found a wounded man, who was rushed to the hospital.

He is expected to survive.

"Right now it appears that he was inside of the house when there was some kind of a drive-by shooting and shots were fired into the house," Crowson said.

Authorities did not offer information on a vehicle description or possible motive.
A new yoga studio is coming to The Woodlands, Conroe and Montgomery area. Located at 3600 FM 1488, Ste. 175, Conroe, Body & Brain will open during the first week of November with a sampling of classes, private introductory sessions and holistic healing for clients seeking a personalized experience. A full class schedule is planned for December.

The owner, Cherie Clark-Moore, is excited to bring a sense of community to the area and aims to create a space where people feel welcome. Unlike studios where individuals simply work out and leave, Body & Brain provides an environment where members can get to know each other.

Body & Brain is "a bit slower paced in terms of people stay and they have a cup of tea afterwards... and we talk about how they're doing," Clark-Moore said. "We look at each other, we know each other's names."

A typical class includes stretching and exercises like most yoga studios, but at Body & Brain a third of the class is devoted to meditation, mindfulness and breathing. The longer meditation portion of class helps students learn to control their thoughts and mind.

The philosophy of Brain & Body is that "everyone has a natural healing power within them, so we try to help people understand more about their bodies," Clark-Moore said.

Both holistic and energy healing will be offered at the studio. Holistic healing helps to align mind and body. Energy healing helps people move some energy blockages, relieve stress and tension, and become aware of emotions they're holding onto in their bodies.

"Through the practice, either coming to classes or the private sessions, people can understand a bit more about their bodies and then work to improve their physical, and their mental and actually their spiritual health," Clark-Moore said.

One of Clark-Moore's favorite clients is an 88-year-old woman who has arthritis in her knees and was fearful about things she couldn't do as she got older. However, through her participation in Clark-Moore's classes, she has been able to move more easily and discovered that she worries less about the future.

"Benefits [of yoga] can vary widely, things like lowering blood pressure, anxiety, insomnia... physical conditions, back pain, shoulder aches," Clark-Moore said. "A lot of people come for very different reasons, but when they get there what they thought that they were there for might not be have been the case. They might find other benefits. For example, they might realize that the pain in their shoulders is actually coming from stress so the mindfulness and meditation helps them relieve the stress which then helps their actual physical condition as well."

Clark-Moore moved to the United States from Australia about three years ago. She began attending classes at the Body & Brain studio in Grogan's Mill for her own mental health and decided to open her franchise in order to help people live an authentic life and be truer to themselves.

"I found that I got a lot more in touch with who I really am. Like sometimes we've got all these masks on, we need to be mom, we need to do this, we need to do that... I lost myself for a little while so through my own practice I found I could connect a bit more to who I am." Clark-Moore said.

Once her studio opens, Clark-Moore plans to put an emphasis on member care. She will check in with clients regularly to ask about their progress, see in what ways she can help them grow and in some cases suggest specific exercises.

"Member care is really important," Clark-Moore said. "So if someone is going to take the time and invest the money to get a membership with Body & Brain then I have a duty to look after them. You know, whatever goals they want to achieve, I will check in with them at least once or two times a week just to see well how are things going."

For the first two weeks, Clark-Moore will hold some free open classes for people to try. Afterwards, the first class for newcomers will be offered for $10. Individual classes cost $20 and membership rates vary depending on the package a person buys. One package for $450 provides unlimited access to all classes for three months. Clark-Moore recommends attending two or three classes a week for three months to see results.

For more information call 832-283-2761 or email conroe@bodynbrain.com. Visit the website at www.bodynbrain.com/conroe or find Body & Brain Conroe on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bodybrainconroe/.
On 24 October a solemn ceremony of donating Armenian style carpets took place at the Artsakh Republic President's residence, Central Information Department of the Office of the Artsakh Republic President stated.

October 24, 2017, 11:59 Solemn ceremony of donating Armenian style carpets took place at the Artsakh Republic President Residence

STEPANAKERT, OCTOBER 24, ARTSAKHPRESS: President Sahakyan expressed gratitude to ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the Republic of Armenia to Vatican Mikael Minasyan and president of the "Megerian Carpet" company Raffi Megerian for bringing the initiative to life underlining that through such undertakings our historical and cultural heritage is being presented to our society, the world as well as maintained and developed.

According to the Head of the State weaving such beautiful carpets had been a painstaking work, involving a big, consolidated and patriotic team.

Bako Sahakyan noted that these pieces of arts would serve our nation for decades as an integral part of national historical and cultural heritage.





On the same day the President discussed with the guests issues related to the development of carpet weaving in Artsakh highlighting within this context the cooperation with such famous organizations as the "Megerian Carpet" company.

Primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan and other officials were present at the event and the meeting.
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WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate gave preliminary approval Monday to a $36.5 billion aid package for states and territories hit by a series of hurricanes and natural disasters, including Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico.

The 79-16 procedural vote sets up all but certain final passage on Tuesday.

The disaster relief vote comes more than a week after the House passed a similar measure, but still falls short of the money Gov. Greg Abbott and many Texas lawmakers sought for immediate recovery efforts from Hurricane Harvey.

President Donald Trump has assured state officials that another round of Texas-specific disaster relief is forthcoming in November, as lawmakers ready a budget resolution intended to pave the way for a major Republican tax cut bill.

Now Playing: 08:00:00 Video: Fox 26 Houston

Responding to increasingly urgent calls for federal aid to recover from Harvey, which submerged much of Houston, Abbott and the Texas congressional delegation have pressed for $18.7 billion in recovery aid specifically for areas hit by the August hurricane.

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While Trump has yet to commit to a specific amount, Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, has placed a hold on Trump nominee Russell Vought to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Cornyn's hold on Vought is one of two placed by senators trying to secure hurricane relief for their states. The other was placed last week by Florida U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, in an effort to secure money for his state's citrus industry, which was heavily damaged by Hurricane Irma.

Cornyn has come under attack from supporters of Vought, an outspoken Christian conservative who has said Muslims have a "deficient theology" and "stand condemned" because they do not accept Jesus Christ as the son of God.

Cornyn said he does not oppose Vought's nomination, but placed the hold as leverage on Trump Budget Director Mick Mulvaney to ensure "OMB will satisfy Texas' needs."

Though Senate holds are fairly unusual - especially from senators of the president's party - the chamber's rules grant its members wide latitude in blocking presidential nominees, at least temporarily. As the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, Cornyn also has considerable influence over the floor schedule.

$18.7 billion sought

The new disaster aid package was approved by the House earlier this month after Abbott accused the Texas delegation of getting "rolled" by not securing more money specifically for the victims of Harvey.

Abbott and Texas lawmakers in Washington signed a letter earlier this month seeking $18.7 billion in funding specifically for relief and recovery efforts from Hurricane Harvey.

Cornyn has not said whether the administration has to meet that figure next month in order for him to release his hold on Vought.

The package cleared Monday includes $18.7 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) disaster relief fund - including nearly $5 billion for a disaster relief loan account. Another $16 billion is for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), and $576.5 million is to help with wildfire recovery efforts. The bill also provided $1.27 billion for disaster food assistance for Puerto Rico.

Texas lawmakers said that although current aid package provides money for all the areas hit by natural disasters, including the California wildfires, at least $15 billion could be claimed by Texans, who were the first to be hit and file claims through FEMA and the flood insurance program.

So far, the state has benefited mainly from a $15.25 billion emergency appropriation that Congress approved in September. Abbott and other Texas officials estimate that the overall price tag from Harvey will top $100 billion.

'Bailout' draws fire

Dissatisfaction with the latest congressional action is not confined to Texas, Florida or Puerto Rico, whose leaders have sparred with Trump over the island's slow recovery. Conservative Republicans in the House and Senate have railed against the $16 billion in the aid package that is earmarked for the flood insurance program, which is nearly $30 billion in debt.

Conservative groups like Heritage Action have termed the spending as a "bailout" that subsidizes continued building in flood-prone areas. In the House, 69 Republicans voted against the aid package, including six from Texas.

Meanwhile, Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz joined Cornyn on Monday in urging Texans impacted by Harvey to register with FEMA in order to qualify for federal disaster assistance by the agency's new Nov. 24 deadline, which has been extended 31 days from its earlier October 24 deadline.

The Federal Housing Administration also announced Monday that it is extending its initial 90-day foreclosure moratorium for FHA-insured homeowners impacted by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria for an additional 90 days due to the extensive damage and continuing needs in hard-hit areas.
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On Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz endorsed Alabama Judge Roy Moore, a controversial candidate for U.S. Senate best known for his support of the Ten Commandments and opposition to gay marriage.

Cruz announced his support of Moore the same day that Talking Points Memo resurfaced a 2016 podcast interview in which Moore said the Supreme Court's 2015 same-sex marriage ruling was "even worse" than an 1857 court decision that upheld slavery.

"Yes, sir. I was simply pointing out that in 1857 the United States Supreme Court did rule that black people were property. And of course that contradicted the Constitution and it took a civil war to overturn it," Moore told the "Here I Stand" podcast last November.

HEAD TO HEAD: Ted Cruz takes on Bernie Sanders in debate over tax cuts

"But this ruling in Obergefell is even worse in a sense because it forces not only people to recognize marriage other than the institution ordained of God and recognized by nearly every state in the union, it says that you now must do away with the definition of marriage and make it between two persons of the same gender," he continued.

In previous comments, Moore said "homosexual conduct" should be illegal and compared it to bestiality.

Now Playing: On Tuesday, Roy Moore won the Senate GOP runoff election in Alabama  claiming victory over Donald Trumps prefered candidate, Senate Luther Strange. The former justice chief of Alabama has made headlines on more than one occasion for his statements on hot-button issues, one of which led to his removal from the Alabama Supreme Court bench. In 2005, Moore had this to say about homosexuality: Homosexual conduct should be illegal. It is immoral, it is defined by the law as detestable. Video: Mic

"This December, the People of Alabama have a clear choice," wrote Ted Cruz in his endorsement of Moore. "They can choose a liberal Democrat, who will stand with Chuck Schumer to raise taxes, weaken our military, open our border, and undermine our constitutional rights. Or, they can choose to elect Judge Roy Moore, a conservative who will proudly defend Alabama values."

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FUNNY EXCHANGE: Ted Cruz tweets image of Zodiac Killer letters

Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice, is tied in the Senate race against Democratic candidate Doug Jones, according to a Fox News poll last week.

Alabama voters go to the polls on Dec. 12.

See where Houston ranks among Texas most and least LGBTQ-friendly cities above.
Police is Central Texas say a man offered $25,000 to an acquaintance to kill his ex-girlfriend.

The Travis County Sheriff's Office said in a Monday press release that Keith James Cote is accused of offering an unnamed person $10,000 to murder his ex-girlfriend. Police said he offered at additional $15,000 "to watch him put a bullet in her head."
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WASHINGTON  Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, emerging as one of the key players in congressional negotiations on an immigration deal to shield Dreamers, came under attack Tuesday from hard-liners opposed to any accommodations for the Senate's Democratic minority.

Cornyn, part of Senate working group on immigration, rankled some conservatives by suggesting that demands for an immediate employment verifications system known as "E-Verify" could scuttle a deal to protect young immigrants brought into the country illegally as children.

"There are large segments of some important sectors, like agriculture, where we need to do E-Verify with immigration reform to make sure that there's an adequate legal workforce," Cornyn told Politico in an interview. "And if we start adding too much stuff to the DACA-border security approach, then we get back into comprehensive immigration reform and nothing happens."

DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program President Donald Trump has vowed to end unless Congress can come up with a legislative fix by next March.

Cornyn is among top Republican leaders who have been discussing ways to protect the young immigrants from deportation while beefing up border security and tightening immigration rules.

Cornyn has long favored an incremental approach to immigration reform, arguing that sweeping bills attempting to address all immigration issues at once have tended to fare poorly in Congress.

That approach, however, came under fire Tuesday from Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, who blasted Cornyn for "unilaterally taking E-Verify out of the discussion."

"President Trump needs to clearly state that Cornyn's bad deal is no deal at all," Manning said. "DACA is the leverage, not the deal. The top priorities of any immigration legislation need to be building the wall, getting national E-Verify and ending chain migration in addition to bolstered border security and enforcement."

While Manning is not a member of Congress, his group is influential with conservatives in Congress, particularly the House Freedom Caucus, a hard-right faction that could help sink any compromise between the White House and Democrats.

Meanwhile, Democrats and immigration activists oppose any GOP demands to protect Dreamers at the expense of other immigrants living in the country illegally. Those concerns have made Cornyn a target of immigration protesters in Houston.

The immigration talks, still in the initial phase, have followed a reported agreement between Trump and top congressional Democrats last month to find a way to help Dreamers in exchange for tougher border security short of a wall.
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AUSTIN  Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller's Facebook feed now includes a cartoon of a Florida congresswoman dancing on the coffin of a slain American solider.

Miller, a statewide elected Republican known for making controversial statements on social media, posted the political carton Monday, weighing in on the feud between President Donald Trump and Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., who has criticized how the commander-in-chief handled a phone call to the widow of a soldier killed in Niger this month.

Trump and Wilson have gone at each other since then. Wilson has slammed the president for being insensitive when talking to the deceased Army sergeant's family, while Trump has called the congresswoman "wacky" and said she lied about what he said during the conversation. The mother of Sgt. La David Johnson, who was one of four American soldiers killed, said the president "did disrespect" her family.

The cartoon depicts Wilson as dancing on the grave of a casket draped in an American flag while wearing a barrel and waving signs that read "Impeach Trump!" and "Take Out Trump!"

The picture appears on Miller's campaign Facebook page and captioned as, "The cartoon of the day...#madhatter." It has received more than 640 likes on Facebook and 50 comments, most critical of Wilson.

"She politicizing the tragic death of an American soldier and we believe it's inappropriate. That's not the way you should treat gold star families, as political pawns," said Todd Smith, Miller's campaign spokesman.

Asked what the commissioner's position was on what Trump said to the family, Smith said, "I don't think Commissioner Miller was privy to the phone call. It was a private phone call."

Miller has a large social media following. As of Tuesday, more than 629,500 people have liked his Facebook page.

Miller was under fire last year for a profane tweet about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, which he blamed on a staffer. He has also drawn criticism for a Facebook post comparing Syrian refugees to rattlesnakes and shared another post with a picture of an atomic bomb blast accompanied with a caption that read, "Japan has been at peace with the U.S. since August 9, 1945. It's time we made peace with the Muslim world." The post was taken down the next day.

Andrea Zelinski covers politics and the courts for the Houston Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook. Send her tips at andrea.zelinski@chron.com.
Michael Ciaglo/Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN -- For the next two days, the Texas Senate will be delving deeper into the state's recovery from Hurricane Harvey.

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to investigate how funding is being used to deal with relief and recovery efforts. Additionally, the committee is evaluating the storm's long term impact on the Texas economy.
BY PETER KRANZ



I DON'T KNOW what you think of unidentified flying objects  UFOs - but in 1959, Papua was the location of one of the best observed and witnessed UFO encounters on record.

The veracity of Father Gill's testimony has never been questioned and to this day the Boianai sightings are one of the strangest episodes in the annals of UFOlogy.

On 5 April 1959, at the Anglican mission village at Boianai, Papua, one of the most well-documented cases of alien visitation began. The Anglican Church had sent Father William Booth Gill to lead the mission. He would be the main subject of an amazing series of UFO sightings with alien beings.

During the summer of 1959, Gill's assistant Stephen Moi reported to him that he had observed an "inverted saucer-shaped object" which was hovering above the mission. Gill thought nothing of it at the time.

On 26 June, Father Gill again saw a bright light to his northwest. Evidently, rumours of the previous sighting by Moi had spread among the villagers, and soon they were beside Gill, watching the light above.

Sworn statements of this event listed 38 individual witnesses who saw a disc-shaped UFO the size of 5 full moons strung together. The UFO had four legs, like landing gear, but was high in the sky.

An enormous object was hovering over the mission. Soon, four beings, similar to humans, emerged from the object. They appeared to be working on something on their ship. The beings would go inside the object, and then soon return, as if fetching tools. At regular intervals, a blue light shone up above the UFO. This craft was visible for 45 minutes, vanishing at 7:30 pm.

Forty-five minutes later, many of the witnesses remained, still pondering the sight they had seen. Soon, several objects smaller than the previous UFO appeared in the sky.

About 20 minutes afterward, the first UFO was back in view. The sighting of the larger UFO would last four hours, as witnesses would come and go. Twenty-five witnesses signed their testimony to the sighting. A heavy cloud cover ended the event.

Incredibly, the next night the giant disc-shaped UFO returned at 6 pm. Two of the smaller objects flanked it. Father Gill, with many of the witnesses from the night before, watched the unbelievable sight.
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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The head of an Auburn landmark is one of 14 people who will serve on the national Women's Suffrage Centennial Commission.

Karen Hill, president and CEO of the Harriet Tubman Home, was appointed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand supported Hill's selection.

Gillibrand, D-N.Y., called Hill a "champion for women's rights."

"Her dedication to preserving Harriet Tubman's legacy and the history of the Harriet Tubman Home and national historical park shows her commitment to lifting up the ideals of the Underground Railroad conductor and suffragist," she said.

Schumer, D-N.Y., added: "Having worked side-by-side with Karen Hill for many years as we fought to establish the Harriet Tubman Home as a national historic park, I know firsthand how dedicated she is to public service. I am honored to appoint Karen to the Women's Suffrage Commission and I have no doubt she will use her role to help all Americans celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment's ratification."

The Women's Suffrage Centennial Commission will be tasked with developing educational programs to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the U.S. ratifying the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.

The 19th Amendment was ratified in August 1920.

In a phone interview Tuesday, Hill said she believes her appointment was based on the work to establish the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn. Gillibrand and Schumer cosponsored legislation that led to the formal establishment of the park.

"I think it will bring more attention to Tubman's legacy," Hill said. "I think it will bring greater attention for the need of active programming to make sure that we're embracing freedom as a fundamental element of our rights as American citizens. And it will also shine a great light, I believe, on the fact that Harriet Tubman was a part of the Freedom Church, which is what the A.M.E. Zion Church is known as."

Hill recalled being approached about serving on the commission a few months ago. As Senate minority leader, Schumer has the power to appoint two members of the commission. Each congressional leader  House speaker, House minority leader and Senate majority leader  will appoint two members. The president will select two members, too.

The remaining seats will be filled by the librarian of Congress, the archivist of the United States, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service director.

As of Tuesday, Hill is the lone New Yorker to be appointed to the panel.

The legislation to establish the women's suffrage commission was included in a larger spending bill earlier this year. Gillibrand was a cosponsor of the measure to create the commission.

The commission's initial meeting will be held no more than 30 days after the 14 members have been appointed. Following the inaugural gathering, the commission will meet at least once every six months.

The group's main focus will be programs to celebrate the centennial. They will also encourage private entities and state and local governments to commemorate the anniversary.

Hill said her role on the commission could bring more attention to Tubman and the sites in Auburn. The Tubman park, which will include the abolitionist's former residence and the Home for the Aged on South Street, is expected to be farther along in its development around the time the country is marking the women's suffrage centennial.

"It's a good day, and this will lead to a level of curiosity and momentum as we build toward 2020," she said.
Copiii cu nevoi speciale din Stefan Voda au conditii de reabilitare mai bune, datorita UE si Fundatiei Soros Moldova
A bill that would have allowed Syracuse commuters to use the Thruway for free has been vetoed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The legislation sponsored by state Sen. John DeFrancisco and Assemblyman Bill Magnarelli would have established short-term commuter permits for Syracuse-area drivers using the Thruway between exits 34A and 39. With a permit, a motorist would not have to pay tolls for using the highway.

There would be limits on when commuters could use the permits to access the Thruway. Free tolling would be available only during peak commute hours, such as the morning and afternoon rush hours.

DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, touted the effort to provide free tolls for Syracuse-area commuters as a way to reduce congestion on local roads and ease stress on local infrastructure. He also believed it would improve safety.

"The New York State Thruway is one of the safest roads in the state based on accidents per mile data," he said in June. "However, many commuters in urban areas choose to bypass the Thruway in favor of local roads and highways because of the cost of tolls."

But in his veto message, Cuomo aired his concerns about the bill. He said prohibiting the Thruway Authority from collecting tolls in the Syracuse area would violate the state's Public Authorities Law. He also believes it would have an adverse impact on the authority's finances.

"Passage of this bill would also serve as a catalyst for other jurisdictions to seek similar toll reductions, thus resulting in further and more expansive toll revenue loss," he wrote.

In a phone interview Tuesday, DeFrancisco disagreed with Cuomo's rationale for the veto.

The Syracuse Republican dismissed the Democratic governor's statement that commuter passes would hurt the Thruway Authority's finances. The cost, DeFrancisco said, would be small compared to the Thruway's bonds.

"That, to me, is not a legitimate claim," he added.

DeFrancisco suggested that the benefits would outweigh the costs. If motorists remain on the Thruway for their Syracuse-area commute, they would avoid local streets and that could reduce congestion. And it could reduce emissions from cars waiting for traffic signals.

He also believes free tolling could help alleviate traffic as the federal and state governments decide what to do with the Interstate 81 viaduct in Syracuse. The state is studying options for the future of the highway.

"It's even a greater reason to have this commuter pass as we're moving into the decision and construction phase," DeFrancisco said. "There's even more of a reason to keep these vehicles off of city streets as long as you could."

While he opposes free tolls for Syracuse-area commuters, Cuomo offered alternatives to address congestion and encourage more drivers to use the Thruway.

He reiterated his support of "open road, cashless tolling." The state is in the process of implementing cashless tolling in select areas. Most recently, plans were announced to install cashless tolling systems on the Grand Island Bridge in western New York.

Cuomo believes cashless tolling will help the state improve safety and reduce congestion on its busiest highways.

"This will address many of the commuter transportation issues facing motorists in the Syracuse area, and would avoid a corresponding loss in revenue that would significantly impair the (Thruway Authority's) ability to comply with its statutorily mandated obligations and repay its bond holders."
AKRON, Ohio - Akron Public Schools, Akron Fire Department and the American Red Cross are working to mobilize thousands of Akron Public Schools students to help eliminate house fires in Akron.

In the past year, Akron fires have claimed 14 lives -- nine of them children, according to Akron Fire.

Akron Fire already partners with the American Red Cross to provide and install smoke alarms and distribute fire safety education to Akron residents. The project -- Sound the Alarm, Save a Life -- aims to reduce the number of fire-related fatalities throughout the community over the next three years.

Now, Akron Public Schools has equipped every student with educational materials from Save a Life to take home and share with parents and guardians.

"When our students learned that we lost two more students in a house fire -- and remembered the other seven who died this year in similar fashion -- they wanted to do something to make a difference; to make our community a safer place to live," said Superintendent David W. James in a news release.

Under the free program, residents simply call the Red Cross hotline at 330.535.2030 to make an appointment and trained Red Cross volunteers or Akron firefighters will come to the home an install smoke detectors, said Red Cross Executive Director Rachel Telegdy in the release.

The program partners hope that with the addition of about 21,000 Akron school kids checking their own homes for fire prevention devices, the likelihood of reducing house fires will increase.

"We're done wringing our hands," said Akron Public Schools spokesman Mark Williamson. "Whatever we can get is going to be good. If we had had three more smoke detectors nine more kids might be alive."

Teachers and principals throughout the Akron Public School district have come up with other ideas and will be working with students in other ways to achieve the same outcome: smoke alarms in every home.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio - The city's addition of new bike amenities on the Detroit-Superior Bridge, which started Monday, marks the latest step in a long-running city planning saga that once pitted cyclists and pedestrians against trucking interests.

It was 16 years ago that the nonprofits Cleveland Public Art (now LAND Studio) and EcoCity Cleveland proposed turning the two outer lanes of the five-lane Detroit-Superior Bridge into dedicated bike and pedestrian routes to create a stronger link between Ohio City and downtown for recreation and commuting.

Pushback from trucking interests along the Cuyahoga River in the Flats diluted that project, which resulted in the creation of a single, raised path for bikes and pedestrians on the north side of the bridge, separated from traffic lanes by curb.

The happy resolution

On Monday, however, the city began work on modifications that will finally bring up-to-date bike lanes to both sides of the bridge, improving safety for cyclists, pedestrians and motorists.

"It's been a long haul," said Lillian Kuri, former director of Cleveland Public Art and current vice president at the Cleveland Foundation for grant-making, arts and urban design initiatives.

Most of the work will be done within two weeks, although a portion on the east side of the bridge will be finished in the spring, city officials said.

Making strides

The $81,000 city-funded project, designed with technical help from the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency, shows how far Cleveland has come since 2001 in making itself a pedestrian- and bike-friendly city.

Moreover, the project is vastly cheaper than the original $2.2 million proposal for the bridge back in 2001 (see document at bottom of this post), and cheaper still than the 2012 addition of a $4.5 million, 17-foot-wide sidewalk and bike path on the north side of the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge.

"It's beautiful and great and I'm glad it's there," Jacob VanSickle, director of the nonprofit Bike Cleveland, the city's leading bicycle advocacy organization, said of the Lorain-Carnegie improvement.

Transformation on a budget

But he said the new work now under way on the Detroit-Superior Bridge shows "that you can do things just as easily and cheaply with paint and bollards and have just as transformative an effect."

Elements of the new project include:

- A new westbound bike lane measuring 7 to 8 feet wide with no traffic buffer, but green textured paint on pavement at "strategic points."

- A new eastbound bike lane increasing from 7 to 15 feet wide separated from traffic approaching the central bridge arch with curbing and delineator posts. Green textured paint will be used for bike symbols and pavement in strategic spots.

- A bike signal at West 9th Street and Superior Avenue allowing bikes to go on their own signal.

- Two-stage left-turn bike boxes, delineated by green paint, at West 9th and Huron Road and at Detroit Avenue and West 25th Street.

- Traffic will use three lanes running through the central bridge arch.

VanSickle said the bike signal, plus the green bike lanes and bike boxes for left turns are firsts for Cleveland.

"It speaks volumes about what we could do on other streets across the city to improve safety," he said. "We were really pleased the city prioritized this and pushed hard to get it done this year."

Responding to outcry

VanSickle said his organization pushed for the modifications after incidents over the past few years in which a cyclist was hit by a car on the bridge and another was struck by a cab's side-view mirror.

"We've done a couple of member surveys and when we asked people what's the most dangerous road you bike on, Detroit-Superior Bridge has always been at the top of people's responses.

Kuri said the new bridge project shows "how far this city has come and where we want to go as a city that values a walkable bikeable public realm."

Changing climate for bikes

Marquee projects such as the Towpath Trail and the Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail are nearing completion.

VanSickle said the city is on track to complete 70 new miles of bike paths it promised to create by the end of 2017.

"I think we're making steps," he said. "This bridge project with a bike signal and green bike lanes points us in the right direction to see those things on other streets as well."
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Trump administration plan forcing wholesale electric markets to buy from FirstEnergy and other traditional power companies at above-market prices would violate federal law, destroy competition and lead to much-higher customer prices, contends a group of 20 trade groups representing natural gas, wind and solar power industries.

"We see this proposed rule filed by the U.S. Department of Energy as doing nothing other than propping up uneconomic power plants and increasing costs to consumers to solve a problem that does not exist," said Malcolm Woolf, vice president of Advanced Energy Economy, one of the trade groups, during a Tuesday teleconference.

"Some might consider us strange bedfellows," he said of the group that even includes a trade organization representing independently owned competitive coal plants. "Yet we are united in opposing this proposed rule...a proposal ... based on a false premise, that the electric power system faces an emergency in reliability and resilience."

The real reason for the plan, which the DOE unveiled in August and then ordered the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to adopt in 60 days, is just to "prop up" old power plants that cannot generate power at prices as low as gas turbine plants, wind farms and solar, he said.

The hastily created alliance of trade groups argues in a

to the FERC that the agency is under no obligation to adopt the DOE proposal because the administration failed to show there are any problems with the existing system, a mandatory step before any changes can be made.

That power delivery system, overseen by FERC and managed by independent companies such as Pennsylvania-based PJM Interconnection, always chooses power from the lowest-cost power plants in day-ahead and minutes-ahead competitive bidding over the Internet.

In deregulated states such as Ohio, local delivery utilities such as the Illuminating Co. and Ohio Edison, neither of which own power plants anymore, buy power through a series of competitive auctions overseen by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. Customers can take that power or sign their own contracts with other companies.

PJM and other regional transmission organizations also are charged under federal law to make sure there is enough power available to meet demand at any given second and to keep the high-voltage multi-state grids operating when there are power plant or transmission line failures by re-routing power from other areas.

PJM currently has a reserve margin of 20 percent, meaning it can turn to power plants that are not running every day, or customers who will lower demand, during emergencies.

Still, the DOE proposal argues that the large, old coal and nuclear plants, which run 24 hours a day, add "resiliency" to the grid, enabling it to keep operating despite weather disruptions, or even disruptions caused by terrorists.

The trade groups counter that there is just no evidence that allowing the old plants to shut down and retire would in any way weaken the reliability of the high-voltage grid, echoing an earlier PJM analysis that the grid it manages in Ohio and 12 other states would be fine if 86 percent of the power came from gas turbines.

The trade groups also argue that it will be sophisticated technology and massive energy storage -- not old power plants -- that will add resiliency to the grid, giving PJM and other regional transmission organizations abilities to deal instantly with downed power lines and power-plant failures.

The Ohio Public Utilities Commission, which less than three years ago accepted a FirstEnergy deal forcing customers to buy more expensive power from the company's coal and nuclear plants -- only to see the FERC intervene -- is also critical of the DOE plan.

In a

with the FERC this week,

that gas turbines have actually diversified the state's mix of power plants, making the system less dependent on coal. The PUCO notes that PJM has for some time been working with members on resiliency and urges the FERC to allow that process to continue rather than buy into the DOE proposal.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A federal judge says he anticipates hearing from Cleveland public safety Director Michael McGrath on why the city continuously fails to improve investigating citizen complaints against officers.

U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. set a Nov. 21 date for a hearing to discuss deficiencies with the city's Office of Professional Standards, a part of the city's Department of Public Safety that receives and investigates citizen complaints against police.

A one-paragraph order issued Monday to set the hearing says Oliver "requests the presence of those responsible for managing OPS, including Director of Public Safety Michael McGrath and OPS Administrator Damon Scott, and anticipates possible testimony from them."

Revamping OPS is required in a settlement the city reached with the Justice Department. A Justice Department investigation found that investigators too often failed to property look into and handle citizen complaints.

The city has agreed to take steps to clear a backlog of hundreds of open cases stemming from citizen complaints. But the team monitoring the city's progress under the settlement, known as a consent decree, asked Oliver to hold a hearing last week so that city officials involves with OPS can "be called to testify regarding the City's lack of progress," according to a motion.

The monitor has saved some of its harshest criticism for OPS in the past. In June, it wrote in a progress report that it "has run out of words to capture the depth and breadth of the progress that needs to be made to cure the current inability of Cleveland residents to have complaints about City employees fairly and fully addressed in a timely manner -- and pursuant to the City's own Charter."

The monitor's request appears to signal the city is unable to meet the expectations to which it agreed to fix the problems within the office. It is also significant because the team has never asked Oliver to intervene. The judge has previously encouraged the monitor, city and Justice Department to hash out any issues in private.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cuyahoga County's medical examiner, facing an increasing number of opioid deaths, is spending $306,000 to purchase a second instrument that detects small amounts of drugs.

The county's board of control on Monday approved the purchase of a ThermoFisher Scientific TSQ Quantis Liquid Chromatograph Triple-Stage Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer.

The instrument is used for finer molecular substances, Hugh Shannon, administrator of the medical examiner's office, said on Tuesday.

"When testing actual drugs the sizes are large and the standard gas chromatograph is sufficient," he said. "But once drugs start to break down in the body the molecules degrade and get smaller and smaller. Synthetic opioids are more difficult to detect because of the finer molecule sizes."

The spectrometer is used in all of the office's toxicology screenings, he said.

Through September at least 396 people have died from heroin/fentanyl/analog or in combination, the medical examiner's office reported in its monthly report issued Oct. 5.

That compares to 366 through end of September 2016.

The medical examiner predicts about 780 deaths this year, which would exceed the record of about 666 deaths in 2016.

Cuyahoga County has seen 590 more fentanyl-related deaths in the past 23 months than the previous 10 years, the office said.

"Within the last three years, the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office and Regional Forensic Science Laboratory has experienced an unprecedented drug abuse epidemic including; heroin, fentanyl, cocaine and the extremely potent synthetic designer opioids (e.g., carfentanil), which has resulted in a record number of drug abuse deaths," the office wrote in its request to the board of control.

The spectrometer will be purchased with money in the office's laboratory fund, which includes revenue from other counties who pay Cuyahoga County to conduct autopsies, Shannon said.

The purchase of a second instrument is "essential to meet the demands of the increasing caseload and to produce timely toxicological results for many of these difficult to analyze drugs of abuse as part of the time-sensitive medical examiner investigations into the cause and manner of death," the request said.

Cases have been backed up, delaying the determination of the cause of death and trials, the office said.

Shannon said the current spectrometer has no down time unless it needs maintenance.

"The more cases, the more runs and the more maintenance and breakdowns," he said. "We knew we had to get a second machine sooner or later and a series of breakdowns over the summer necessitated it."
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled he will bring the bipartisan Alexander-Murray bill to a vote if he knows President Trump would sign the Affordable Care Act stabilization legislation, but Trump has sent mixed signals on whether he will.

"I'm not certain yet, what the president is looking for here, but I'll be happy to bring a bill to the floor if I know President Trump would sign it. If there is a need for some kind of interim step here to stabilize the market, we need a bill the president will actually sign," McConnell told CNN's "State of the Union."

There is a need for an interim step to stabilize the market. The bill, negotiated by Republican Sen Lamar Alexander and Democrat Sen. Patty Murray stabilizes the market by maintaining the Obamacare subsidies Trump intended to cut, for two more years, in exchange for more state flexibility, to give Congress more time to pass a permanent replacement or repair plan for Obamacare.

Last week, Trump made multiple conflicting statements about the bill in the span of 24 hours. Trump initially called Alexander-Murray "a very good solution." But soon after Trump tweeted: "I am supportive of Lamar as a person & also of the process, but I can never support bailing out ins co's who made a fortune w/O'care.

Trump's flip flop on Alexander-Murray appeared to be the direct result of opposition from Conservatives in his administration and in the House, led Rep. Paul Ryan.

Alexander maintains Trump had encouraged him to pursue the bipartisan deal. "I appreciate the President's encouragement to create a short-term bipartisan solution and his willingness to consider it."

In the Senate, Alexander-Murray is now also backed by Sens. Lindsay Graham, John McCain, Lisa Murkowski, Al Franken, Claire McCaskill, Joni Ernst, Richard Burr, Heidi Heitkamp, Tammy Baldwin and Amy Klobuchar.

Trump, Ryan and the hard right in the House view Alexander-Murray as a bailout of insurance companies and Obamacare. What they're not recognizing is that it also may be bailing out Republicans from losing their majority in the House and Senate.

Republicans risk losing control of Congress if they come to be seen as now owning Obamacare after breaking it by cutting subsidies, hurting millions of Americans, including Trump voters, right as the midterm elections season commences.

Trump, Ryan and House Conservatives are looking the bipartisan Alexander-Murray gift horse in the mouth when they should be riding it.
LAKEWOOD, Ohio -- A 29-year-old woman was charged in connection to vandalizing The Mission Boutique in Lakewood.

Samantha Buehner, of Lakewood, was arrested Monday on five warrants for criminal damaging, according to a news release from Lakewood police.

She is accused of spray painting the words "slut," "repent" and "repent whores" on the front windows and side door of the clothing store which opened up in 2000.

She also is accused of spray painting two other walls and a city garbage can as well, the release says.

Buehner committed the crimes between Oct. 16 and Oct. 17, the release says.

A police officer noticed the words just before 8 a.m. Oct. 17. She can be seen on Mission Boutique's security camera about 4:30 a.m. that same morning. Owner Martin Lansky did not know his business was tagged until a cleveland.com reporter contacted him later that morning.

Investigators were able to use a city surveillance camera on Madison Avenue to identify her, the release says.

She is being held in Lakewood City Jail. Court records do not say when she will make her first appearance.

"Graffiti is an affront to all the members of our community. The Lakewood Police Department takes these investigations seriously and our Detectives worked very hard on identifying the person involved to stop her from doing more damage," Lakewood Police Chief Tim Malley said.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Tuesday's crime and courts comments section.
A bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. John Katko to examine Cuba's aviation security is a step closer to becoming law.

The House of Representatives passed the Cuban Airport Security Act of 2017 by voice vote Monday. The legislation would require the Trump administration to review security equipment and procedures at Cuba's airports that provide service to the U.S.

Katko's bill also would mandate the standardization of Federal Air Marshal Service agreements and urges the U.S. representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization to advocate for stronger aviation security measures.

"No matter how strong our domestic airport and aircraft security is, we must continue to raise the standard of global aviation security for foreign countries and last point of departure airports," Katko, R-Camillus, said on the House floor Monday. "It is imperative that aviation security standards are robust, and that these standards are commonplace in foreign countries, especially those with flights to the United States."

The main focus of the bill, however, is Cuba.

After the Obama administration announced that commercial flights between the U.S. and Cuba would resume after a half-century, Katko raised concerns about the island nation's aviation security standards. At a subcommittee in May 2016, he criticized federal homeland security officials for not being transparent about Cuba's airport security.

With little information being shared about equipment and security guidelines, Katko attempted to travel to Cuba to get a firsthand look. However, Cuba denied his request for a visa after explaining that he was planning to go there to review the aviation security system.

Not long after the denial, Katko introduced the Cuban Airport Security Act. The first version of the bill would have prohibited commercial flights between the U.S. and Cuba until the Transportation Security Administration could review Cuban airport security.

Katko's bill received support from U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. The former 2016 Republican presidential candidate is the son of Cuban parents and criticized the Obama administration's efforts to restore ties with the communist country.

The legislation didn't advance in Congress. Katko reintroduced the revised bill in July.

There is a new reason why Katko is concerned about Cuba's airport security. Sonic attacks targeted U.S. diplomats and their families in Cuba. The attacks affected two dozen Americans, some of whom had mild brain injuries or hearing loss.

"We have to ask ourselves if Cuba is unable to ensure the safety and security of foreign citizens and diplomats, how can it possibly prevent terrorists and other nefarious actors from accessing its airports and infiltrating flights bound for the United States?" Katko asked.
October 23, 2017

 Paul Weitz, a former NASA astronaut who lived on board Skylab before commanding the maiden mission of space shuttle Challenger, died on Monday (Oct. 23). He was 85.



Weitz died peacefully at his home in Flagstaff, Arizona, as reported by his daughter, by way of a family friend. He had been diagnosed with Myelodysplastic Syndromes, or MDS, a form of cancer.



A member of NASA's fifth group of astronauts selected in April 1966, Weitz served on the first crew to live and work aboard an American space station. He flew as pilot on the Skylab 2 (SL-2) mission in 1973, helping to save the orbital workshop, while also setting a record for the longest single spaceflight, 28 days, at the time.



Ten years later, Weitz led the STS-6 crew on the first flight of Challenger, NASA's second space shuttle orbiter to fly.



In total, Weitz logged 33 days, one hour and 13 minutes in space, including 2 hours and 16 minutes on spacewalks.







NASA astronaut Paul Weitz seen suited up for training. (NASA)

Weitz' first launch, on May 25, 1973, was aboard an Apollo command module atop a Saturn IB rocket from Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Originally scheduled to lift off the day after Skylab entered orbit, the station was damaged during launch, leading to an 11-day delay while a plan was quickly devised for Weitz, Charles "Pete" Conrad and Joseph Kerwin to repair their home on orbit.



"We had to get the temperatures under control if we were going to salvage Skylab at all," said Weitz in a 2000 NASA oral history.



During launch, the Skylab workshop's micrometeorite and thermal shield, as well as one of its two large solar arrays were torn off and the remaining array did not deploy.



After arriving at Skylab, Weitz conducted a "stand-up EVA"  his head and body protruding out the Apollo command module's hatch while Kerwin held him by the ankles from inside  in an attempt to free the stuck array.



"We got down near the end of the solar array and I got a hold of it with the shepherd's crook," Weitz recalled. "But what we really hadn't thought about was, in heaving on it, trying to break the thing free, what I was doing, in effect, I was pulling the command module in toward the workshop."







Paul Weitz aboard the Skylab orbital workshop in 1973. (NASA)

Having no success with that approach, Weitz switched to using a pruning shears-like tool to try to cut a strap holding the array to the side of the station.



"[I] just didn't have enough muscle with that thing, because it was about 6 or 8 feet [1.8 to 2.4 meters] out ahead of me and I was pulling on a line to try to do it. We just couldn't get it through," he said.



Ultimately, Weitz rejoined his crewmates in the command module, leaving the array to be freed on a later spacewalk by Conrad and Kerwin. And, after several failed attempts docking to Skylab, the three men entered the space station and deployed a collapsible parasol through a small airlock to act as a sunshade.



"It turned out [that] when we deployed the parasol, it had four extendable booms on it to put it out in a rectangular shape," Weitz described. "Well, one of them didn't extend all the way. It's kind of like the old-timey legs on a tripod, where they 'click, click, click' and they pulled out [and] one of them didn't extend that last segment."



"So, it didn't cover the whole side of the workshop ... you could tell once the temperatures got down, once we [had] moved into the workshop, you could tell by feel. You could outline exactly where the shadow from the parasol was," he recalled.







NASA portrait of Skylab 2 pilot Paul Weitz. (NASA)

Despite the problems, including having to work with limited power until the stuck array was freed during a spacewalk halfway through the mission, Weitz, Conrad and Kerwin completed almost 400 hours of science experiments and captured 29,000 images of the sun. Weitz and Conrad also conducted a one hour and 36 minute spacewalk on June 19, 1973, to retrieve film from an exterior telescope.



Weitz and his two Skylab crewmates returned to Earth on June 22, 1973, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near their recovery ship, the USS Ticonderoga, after circling the planet 404 times.



Weitz' second spaceflight came a decade after he returned from Skylab. Assigned command of the sixth space shuttle mission, Weitz led the first flight of OV-099, "Challenger," on a 5 day, 23 minute and 42 second flight in April 1983.



Weitz' STS-6 crew, including pilot Karol "Bo" Bobko and mission specialists Story Musgrave and Donald Peterson, were tasked with deploying the first satellite in the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). The flight also included the first EVA, or spacewalk, from a space shuttle, performed by Musgrave and Peterson.



"It really was an evaluation flight, pretty much a test flight, obviously not the first one, but, nevertheless, it still was," said Weitz. "We flew the first flight on Challenger, so it was a vehicle shakedown flight also."



After 80 orbits and 2.1 million miles (3.4 million kilometers) traveled, Weitz landed Challenger on the concrete runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California on April 9, 1983.







NASA portrait of STS-6 commander Paul Weitz. (NASA)

Paul Joseph "PJ" Weitz was born on July 25, 1932 in Erie, Pennsylvania.



Weitz earned a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 1954 and received his master's in aeronautical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, in 1964.



He was commissioned as an ensign through the NROTC program at Pennsylvania State and served for one year at sea aboard a destroyer before going into flight training and being awarded his wings in September 1956. He served in various naval squadrons, logging more than 7,700 hours flying time  6,400 hours in jet aircraft, until his selection among the 19 astronauts chosen by NASA in 1966.



Prior to his Skylab flight, Weitz served on the support crew for Apollo 12, the second moon landing mission. Though it was canceled well before assignments were made, Weitz may have been considered for command module pilot on the Apollo 20 moon mission, based on the crew rotation schedule at the time.



Weitz served as deputy chief of NASA's Astronaut Office from 1981 to 1987, deputy director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston from 1987 through 1993, and the acting center director from 1993 to 1994. He was serving as the center's acting associate director when he departed NASA in 1994.







Paul Weitz, left, and Don Peterson aboard STS-6, the maiden flight of the space shuttle Challenger, in April 1983. (NASA)

Weitz retired from the U.S. Navy in 1976 with the rank of Captain.



Weitz was a recipient of the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. He was honored alongside his Skylab crewmates in 1973 with the Collier Trophy by the National Aeronautic Association and in 1975 with the Goddard Memorial Trophy by the National Space Club.



Weitz was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in October 1997.



Weitz married the former Suzanne M. Berry, with whom he had two children, Matt and Cindy.
The Auburn YMCA will offer a free chronic disease self-management program from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesdays, Nov. 1 through Dec. 13.

Developed by Stanford University, the six-week workshop teaches pain and fatigue management, healthy eating, weight management, communication skills, how to deal with depression and difficult emotions, the mind-body connection, preventing falls and improving balance. It is ideal for adults with chronic conditions like arthritis, diabetes and hypertension.
AURELIUS  The first words Carly Fleischmann ever wrote: "Hurt. Help."

The 11-year-old Toronto girl with severe autism connected her thoughts to written words for the first time by typing on a computer, opening up her world to the outside.

"People look at me and assume I am dumb because I can't talk," she spelled later on.

Suddenly, the little girl whose family and therapists thought would never be able to communicate was explaining, one letter at a time, how she feels trapped in her body. Sometimes her skin feels on fire, so she moves erratically, flails her arms and jumps around. Sight, smell and sound, too, can be overwhelming. That's why she hums or bangs her head, she wrote, to drown out the sensory input.

The video, first broadcast on ABC News in 2009, ended. Then, Bill Cannata and Jimmy Donohoe looked out at the faces of dozens of law enforcement personnel from Cayuga, Seneca, Onondaga, Yates and Ontario counties. The two showed Fleischmann's story as part of an Autism & Law Enforcement Education Coalition training held Tuesday, Oct. 17, at Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES.

Cannata is the program director of the coalition in Westwood, Massachusetts, as well as a firefighter, while Donohoe is the special projects sergeant for the Pensacola Police Department in Florida. Both also have children with autism, and are members of the Autism Society of America. Their goal, they said, is to educate emergency responders and law enforcement about the disorder, which affects about one in 68 people to varying degrees, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

"We take that, apply it to their work situations, and that's the important piece," Cannata said. "They want to know how's this going to affect them and my work. That's what our job is."

Besides understanding autism, one safety consideration the two hope everyone remembers is to search water first if a person with autism goes missing. Of those that die, Donohoe said, about 99 percent drown. It's because, as Fleischmann pointed out in the news segment, their skin sometimes feels like it's crawling or on fire. Without the same sense of danger and safety, too, they may flee to water to get relief.

"Another misconception on TV, they put out this message that you've got to wait 24 hours until a child is missing, but that's hogwash," Donohoe said. "You can report them right away. You need to check water first, and get everybody going to water."

Road patrol officers with the Cayuga County Sheriff's Department, Brian Myers and Matt Sloan, said they have encountered individuals with autism during calls. They aren't always told if a person is autistic, Myers said, which can make it difficult. But once they do know, officers can change their approach to questioning and give the person more time to react.

"It's good to know that's some of the stuff that they're going through," Sloan said, "so you can kind of be patient with them and get through the process while you're dealing with an incident."

The event was organized by the Seneca County Sheriff's Office, the Arc of Seneca Cayuga, Ontario ARC and Lyons National Bank. Jeff Friend, senior vice president of Lyons National Bank, said one of the bank's branches had misunderstood some actions of an individual, whom they later discovered had autism.

"We had raised some concerns," Friend said. "The result of that was this partnership with the ARC. The more we talked about it, I started seeing it on TV, and awful things where this misunderstanding was there. Both Ontario and Seneca-Cayuga (Arc) got them talking, and they all saw the need, and it turned into a wonderful opportunity."

Ed Sayles, director of development at the Arc of Seneca Cayuga, said the organizations all plan to hold a similar training again in the next couple of years. He hopes, too, that the program will help raise awareness in the community and remind people that they can notify their local law enforcement if they themselves or a loved one has autism or any kind of physical or developmental disability. That way, responders are equipped with that information before they get to someone in case of an emergency.

"If a community is safe for all of its residents, then that allows all residents to contribute to a community to the maximum of their potential," he said. "The more we understand each other and our differences and our strengths, it becomes a much more inclusive place to live. It allows us to tap the full human resources of a community."
AUBURN  The Cayuga County Legislature is still on the fence about joining a statewide lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies that produce opioid medications.

Three New York City law firms met with the body's Government Operations Committee in executive session earlier this month, and while the committee majority had chosen to recommend a law firm and proceed with the litigation to the full Legislature, committee members have since backtracked.

Ways and Means Committee Chair Aileen McNabb-Coleman presented an overview before the Legislature and Cayuga County high school seniors attending Student Government Day Tuesday morning. She explained that some of the law firms are targeting manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies and doctors, while others are focusing solely on the manufacturers and distributors of opioid pain medications.

Staff, she added, would have to collect specific data on how the issue has impacted the county financially. The time needed to do that, she said, is a concern. But the county would not be responsible for any financial obligation should it join, including attorney's fees. Government Operations Committee Chair Ryan Foley said the law firms estimated that litigation could take between two and six years.

Legislator Tucker Whitman said while Cayuga County has a heroin problem, he was not sure that would translate with this lawsuit dealing with opioid prescriptions.

"I think we're going to be disappointed in spending the next two to six years dragging ourselves through this lawsuit," he said. "I think we're going to regret it, and all we're going to do is make a bunch of attorneys rich in the meantime."

Judicial and Public Safety Chair Patrick Mahunik disagreed, and said the point of the lawsuit is about sending a message.

"I don't care if we see a penny out of this lawsuit, because that's not what this is about," he said. "It's about correcting the problem and sending message and putting those people on notice that are writing these prescriptions on a whim."

Legislator Andy Dennison and Tim Lattimore supported litigation, too, pointing to the spike in drug overdose deaths in Cayuga County recently. Dennison said with the potential for the lawsuit to last years, the problem will likely continue.

Despite his skepticism, Whitman said the only way he would support the lawsuit is if any monies awarded to the county was put back into rehabilitation expenses for addicts and "not on renovating the county office building." Many other legislators agreed.

The Legislature did not vote on whether to join the lawsuit, but rather opted to contact the three law firms again to present in executive session at November's full meeting.
State government has a responsibility to foster job creation and spur economic prosperity. Efforts must be made to enable businesses to put people in jobs, allowing families to put food on tables. But government also has a responsibility to be honest about its performance in that critical role.

Gov. Cuomos narrative about New Yorks economic development efforts has moved from bravado to hyperbole to downright fantasy. Speech after speech, press conference after press conference, the governor insists the states economy, especially upstate, is on the right track. The facts tell a vastly different story.

UPSTATE JOB GROWTH STILL STAGNANT

The governor has spent a great deal of time and energy lately traveling upstate and touting his investment of public money and the great economic turnaround those efforts have generated. But two recent reports indicate that New Yorks economic climate and success pale in comparison to whats happening across the rest of the nation.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released statistics showing upstate job growth has been an embarrassing 0.3 percent since the beginning of 2016, a rate that shows a bad situation getting even worse. Between 2010 and 2016, upstates annual job growth was only 0.6 percent while the rest of the country added jobs at a rate of 1.6 percent. According to the report, job growth in Buffalo has slowed to a crawl, and the Rochester region has actually lost jobs in the past two years.

The statistics are bad enough. But what makes the situation worse is that New York is pouring billions of taxpayer dollars into economic development programs that clearly arent working. New Yorkers are experiencing a return on investment that would get a private-sector CEO fired.

On top of stagnant job growth upstate, New York once again has one of the two worst business climates in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation. The punishing climate in which New York business owners are forced to operate stands in stark contrast to the incessant Open for Business claims this administration has made for several years.

AN UNSUSTAINABLE AND EXPENSIVE APPROACH

The Assembly Minority Conference has rallied year after year for broad, wholesale tax cuts and regulatory relief. New York needs permanent policy solutions to fix our ailing business climate, rather than gimmick programs that pick winners and losers. We will continue to fight for permanent policies that make doing business more affordable.

The states economic development programs lack accountability and transparency, and are not living up to lofty promises. Job-creation statistics show a miserable return on investment for the billions of taxpayer dollars pouring into these programs. This failing approach has become a colossal waste of your hard-earned money. Ribbon cuttings and rhetoric make for great sound bites, but they dont help New Yorkers put food on the table.

What do you think? I want to hear from you. Send me your feedback, suggestions and ideas regarding this or any other issue facing New York State. You can always contact my district office at (315) 781-2030, email me at kolbb@nyassembly.gov, find me by searching for Assemblyman Brian Kolb on Facebook, and follow me on Twitter.
Im not sure who the state and OCFS are trying to fool with their proposed facility in Sennett. They are trying to portray it as a residential/rehabilitation facility. This facility is being pursued as a result of King Andy passing the raise-the-age law, which means that the clientele that this facility is going to house is actually individuals who are convicted in a court of law (aka felons). Before this law was passed these individuals would be housed in state correctional facilities. The state is basically trying to sneak a medium security prison into our backyard by labeling it a residential facility. This facility is going to be surrounded by a razor wire fence like a prison and will house offenders convicted of all nature of serious crimes.

Throughout the state these types of facilities are being placed in correctional facilities under the management of both the departments of OCFS and DOCCS. For those who dont know, DOCCS is the department of corrections, which runs all of our states prisons. Due to the passage of the law these types of facilities are mandated. My concern isnt with the need for these facilities but rather with the placement of this particular facility. This facility will basically be in the backyard of a preschool/elementary school. Who in their right mind would decide to place this type of facility in this location?

We currently have numerous closed correctional facilities throughout the state (thanks to King Andy) including nearby Butler, which are designed as correctional facilities and would cost less to update/renovate for this type of facility. Instead the state proposes to spend $12 million to make a round peg into a square peg. When all is said and done that $12 million will surely increase after construction overruns and issues that come up with renovating an old/shuttered building. This facility will house 24 offenders, so by simple math thats $500,000 an offender for renovations. Seems a bit pricey to me.

Typical move by the state to overspend and mismanage our current resources, not to mention most likely cause a small private school to close due to someones lack of foresight by placing this facility in this location. The view of the razor wire fence from the schools playground will be amazing Im sure. I strongly urge the state to reconsider the placement of this facility!!

James Kelly

Sennett
SOUTH STORMONT, Ontario  On October 23, 2017 at 4:30pm Stormont, Dundas & Glengarry (SD&G) Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officers responded to the scene of a single vehicle fatal collision on Highway 401 MM 792 (McConnell Avenue  off Ramp), South Stormont Township.

Preliminary investigation has indicated that a passenger vehicle travelling east on Highway 401 left the roadway from the McConnell off ramp causing the car to rollover and come to rest in the median.

The adult male (61) driver of the passenger vehicle was pronounced deceased at the scene of the collision.

The identity of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next-of-kin.

Highway 401 Eastbound  on and off ramps at McConnell Avenue are closed to traffic.

The SD&G OPP officers and OPP Technical Collision Investigators (TCI) and an OPP Reconstructionist are assisting in the investigation.
CORNWALL, Ontario  Cornwall City Council received a report at their meeting on Monday, Oct 23 that outlined the currenty state of Cornwall Transit and suggested a path for the future.

The report was a part of the Cornwall Transit Master Plan formulated by Stantec and presented by Graeme Masterton. Masterton explained that the City of Cornwall would be better served by focusing on other transit objectives besides creating Sunday service.

You have a bunch of other things to do first to set your system up successfully, Masterton said.

He explained that despite apparent demand, the use of Sunday service would not match.

Sunday ridership is pretty narrow, Masterton said. Saturday ridership 50 percent of weekday ridership, Sunday ridership 50 percent of Saturday. Five percent of people who say they would use Sunday buses would actually use them.

He went on to say that Sunday service was something that could be considered for the long term and rolled out once there was a viable plan for it.

Masterton gave the councillors options they could do in the immediate and short term to improve service, such as ensuring that bus times are reliable, simplify the route system and increase route frequency to every 20 minutes.

Simplifying the route system would involve ending the practice of having all routes go to the downtown terminus and then heading back out. Instead routes would go on loops. Route 1 for example would start north of Hwy 401, follow Pitt St. and then end at St. Lawrence College and go back. Masterton said some of these changes could be implemented immediately.

In the long-term, the report suggesting things such as adding Wifi to all buses and making regular buses more handicap accessible.

Councillors received the report warmly and made suggestions such as changing the transfer system, so that riders can transfer in other locations other than only downtown. Councillor Mark MacDonald suggested reducing fares.

As it stands now, Cornwall Transit has 20 riders per hour, a revenue of $1.1 million and expenses of $4 million.

Masterton offered three guiding principles for the new Transit Master Plan: Simplify system, create more travel opportunities, and build ridership. He offered the option of buying two new buses in the short term, which would increase the budget by 10 percent, but would increase ridership and therefore income by 15 percent.

If we build it, they will use it, he said.
BAINSVILLE, Ontario  On the evening of October 11, 2017, officers with the Cornwall Regional Task Force (CRTF) observed a suspicious vessel coming to shore in the area of Bainsville in South Glengarry Township. The occupants of the vessel were observed meeting with two individuals on land and were seen loading cargo from the vessel to a van. Officers intervened and arrested two individuals.

Police seized 65 black garbage bags filled with 1,148kgs of contraband fine cut tobacco. Two 46 year old males, Gonzalo Edwardo PEREZ and Jean-Guy PEPIN, from Laval, Quebec, were arrested and subsequently charged with possession of unstamped tobacco under the Excise Act. Both were released to appear in court at the Cornwall Provincial Courthouse on November 21, 2017.

On Thursday, October 12, 2017, the CRTF observed suspicious activity occurring at the shoreline of a private property in the Bainsville, Ontario area. Subsequently, an investigation under the Customs and Excise Acts uncovered 40 bags filled with 619kgs of contraband fine cut tobacco. Maxime MAROIS (24 year old) and Alexandra GRATTON (22 year old) of Lachine, Quebec, were arrested and subsequently charged with possession of unstamped tobacco under the Excise Act. Both were released to appear in court at the Cornwall Provincial Courthouse on November 21, 2017.

All accused individuals also face charges under the Ontario Tobacco Tax Act.

If you have any information regarding criminal activity in your area, you can contact the CRTF at 1-613-937-2800 (daytime), 1-800-387-0020 (after hours) or call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

The CRTF is a joint forces partnership that includes the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ontario Ministry of Finance.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Xiaopeng Motors, a start-up which focuses on Internet vehicles, announced yesterday that it hired machine learning expert Junli Gu as the vice president for its research and development on self-driving. The expert will report directly to its president Mr. He Xiaopeng, who was also the founder of UC Web.

Doctor Gu will be responsible for setting up a self-driving R&D team for the company and lead its study on artificial intelligence innovation and self-driving software to speed the application and iterative upgrading of the companys self-driving technology.

In February, 2016, Doctor Gu joined Tesla to lead its Autopilots self-driving tech. Gu established the electric vehicle makers machine learning team and managed to develop Autopilot 2.0 and realize its application on many Tesla vehicles.

Gu graduated from Tsinghua University with her doctorate degree and once worked in Googles headquarter. From July, 2012, Gu had been leading a team at AMD for four years and responsible for the research and development of big data and machine learning.

On October 12, Xiaopengs first mass-produced SUVs rolled off the production line. Up to now, the company has completed key systems research and development for Internet vehicles. Based on its superb Internet vehicles, the company wishes to attract customers with a refreshing experience with our new technologies, new designs and new business models.

In May, Xiaopeng Motors said its vehicle production base would be located in Zhaoqing, Guangdong province. In June, the company got RMB 2.2 billion for its A round fund raising. The president said its R&D team will have a total of 1,500 members in Guangzhou, Beijing and Silicon Valley by the end of next year and the number are expected to be doubled in 2019.
As the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) on the for River Valley Projects, under the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC), deliberated on the proposed Pancheshwar project in Uttarakhand as the world's second highest dam on Tuesday, a group dissenting protestors outside insisted, they too should be heard. Talking with media persons, Vimal Bhai of Matu Jan Sangathan, which has been in the forefront in the campaign against the dam, said, "We are here to ask how the committee will take a decision in 45 minutes about a project on which Rs 40,000 crore are going to be spent, and which is going to determine the fate of 50,000 people in two countries -- India and Nepal.""Several affected communities, environmental groups, and people's organizations have sent in written objections voicing serious concerns over the the 5040 MW Pancheshwar multipurpose project", said Vimal Bhai.The EAC at its meeting is said to have discussed on how quickly to provide environment clearance for the project.The scoping clearance for the dam, in the pipeline for decades ,was granted in October 2016. While the EAC in May 2017 seemed to raise some environmental issues, even set up a joint Indo-Nepal mechanism for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), it reversed its decision, apparently under political pressure, on the ground that it would "unnecessarily" delay the project."Since then it has become clear that the MoEFCC, the state administration, and the project proponents are in a rush to push the project", said Vimal Bhai.Added Shankar Kharayat of the Mahakali ki Awaaz, another people's organization opposed to the project, "The project-affected villages in this part of Uttarakhand lack proper road connectivity and are suffer from landslides during monsoon. Yet, they held a public hearing for the project in August, in monsoon, when it was difficult for the affected people to reach the public hearing venue."Said Kharayat, "There was lack of availability of complete information about the project, including relevant documents (EIA report in Hindi, executive summary in Hindi and Social Impact Assessment Report in Hindi), as well as lack of clarity about the objective of the public consultation process."Informed sources estimated, 31,000 families would be adversely impacted by the project that would also submerge 11,600 hectares (ha) of land in 134 villages on the Uttarakhand side alone. Additionally, three districts of Nepal are going to be impacted.Already, hundreds of people have protested against the earlier three public consultations that were organized in closed premises in Champawat, Pithoragarh, and Almora district headquarters. Very few people could make their submissions, and yet the written submissions alone go well into 650 plus pages."People made oral testimonies, which did not come on record even", said Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP), who has in his submission critiqued the "shoddy" EIA study done by Government of India consultants, WAPCOS.The Pancheshwar dam on Mahakali river is a pet project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been singing its paeans at various fora at a time when the hydropower sector is in a massive slump. As many as 13 projects are being considered for a bailout package of Rs 26,000 crore due to their financial unviability, especially in the Himalayan region.It is being undertaken despite the massive Kedarnath tragedy four years ago, which led experts to point towards the fragile ecology and geology of the Himalayas, which has been tampered with by large-scale construction and development activities.
Shanghai (Gasgoo)-An increasing number of countries announced the timetable of banning the fuel-powered vehicles in the future, and take the NEVs as an alternative. Under this background, more and more automakers started to put forward their NEV development plans. As the largest auto market, China is considered as a promising NEV market by car manufacturers and investors in terms of its NEV policies.

Chinese government has boosted the development of NEVs since 2009, and provided financial subsidies for NEVs since 2010. Thanks to the NEV subsidies and the corresponding policies, China boasted a total sales volume of NEVs up to 1 million units by the end of 2016, boasting the most NEV parc worldwide.

In the past two years, since quite a number of NEV companies defrauded government's subsidies, Chinese government now has adjusted their supportive policies. It is known that Chinese government is embarking on troubleshooting the production capacity of NEVs to check whether it is over produced. Definitely, China now tends to make restricted adjustment policies.
Northern Arizona University is asking students to think before they don their costumes this Halloween.

The Universitys Office of Housing and Residence Life has put out a poster campaign reminding students that costumes that make a caricature or stereotype out of another culture may be offensive and cultural appropriation.

The posters which were put up around campus and in dorms, features the phrase We are a culture not a costume. It also has a picture of four people of different nationalities holding photos of examples of costumes that present a stereotype of their culture, such as a Pocahontas outfit, a "Chinaman" outfit with a pointed hat, a Mexican senorita with a sombrero and whats supposed to be an African outfit with a black curly wig.

A similar poster gives students pointers on how to determine if their costume might be offensive or cultural appropriation, such as does it perpetuate a racist stereotype? Does it misrepresent a culture? Does it show love for a culture, but also prejudice against that cultures people? Is it hurtful or offensive to others?

Answering No to these questions doesnt mean appropriation isnt happening, the poster states.

Kim Ott, the assistant to the president for Executive Communications and Media Relations, said the posters are not new.

NAU is not policing Halloween costumes. No one is going to do anything to any student that chooses to ignore the poster campaign. This is simply an educational campaign with voluntary participation, Ott wrote in an email. We have been doing a campaign like this for several years in an effort to help students think about their costumes before they create them.

NAUs Office of Housing and Residence Life website uses a quote from Introduction to Cultural Appropriation by Bruce Ziff and Pratima Rao to define cultural appropriation as The taking  from a culture that is not ones own  of intellectual property, cultural expressions or artifacts, history and ways of knowledge.

NAU is not alone in putting out a reminder to be sensitive to other cultures during Halloween. The University of St. Thomas has put out a similar poster. Diversity groups at several universities, such as the University of California at Santa Barbara and Princeton University are holding voluntary workshops to discuss cultural appropriation and stereotypes.
Lockheed Martin overcame weaker revenue at its Sikorsky Aircraft subsidiary to lift overall revenue 5 percent to nearly $12.2 billion in the third quarter.

Profits totaled $939 million, down from $2.4 billion a year ago, with the previous years earnings including a $1.2 billion gain from the sale of its former Information Systems & Global Solutions business.

Lockheed Martin is the largest corporate employer in southwestern Connecticut via its Stratford-based subsidiary Sikorsky. The Bethesda, Md.-based conglomerate is the largest U.S. defense contractor with its production extending to ships, trucks, drones, weaponry and guidance systems.

Lockheed Martin said Sikorsky contributed $85 million less to net sales in the third quarter due to the mix of aircraft Sikorsky sold during the period. Sales were flat at $3.3 billion for the rotary and mission systems division that includes Sikorsky, but Lockheed Martin increased an earlier sales forecast for the division by $250 million for the entirety of 2017, to between $13.85 billion and $14.15 billion.

Sikorsky was coming off a second quarter in which the U.S. Department of Defense put in a new $3.8 billion contract for nearly 260 helicopters over five years, with options for more that could tack on an additional 100 aircraft for an additional $1.2 billion.

The Pentagon also authorized the purchase of two initial CH-53K King Stallion helicopters after successful flight tests on four prototypes, with the Marine Corps envisioning as many as 200 of the big helicopters in what could amount to $25 billion in contracts.

During a Tuesday conference call, the chief financial officer of Lockheed Martin cited the CH-53K program as one Lockheed Martin is counting on to produce big revenues in future years, after a slow ramp-up to full production.

The 53K ... (has) got one of the slowest starts on a program that large that Ive ever seen, said CFO Bruce Tanner. We are literally talking two aircraft in the (first) contract; I think it grows to four in the next one. Its a very, very slow growth rate.

During the third quarter, Sikorsky conducted for the first time flight tests of the VH-92A helicopter designed to replace the aging fleet used by the White House, with more than 20 aircraft required and production expected to commence in 2020. And Sikorsky is assembling its first prototype for the U.S. Air Force to be deployed globally to rescue downed pilots and other missions in hostile territory.

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman
As we report today on the front page, the pothole season isnt just nearly upon us again. To many drivers in the Flagstaff region, it never left this year.

A trip along I-17 and I-40 in any direction from Flagstaff provides the proof. Dozens of little white patches dot each mile of the right-hand travel lanes, some crumbling into divots and crevices. Meanwhile the passing lanes are nearly as full of vehicles as the travel lanes  who wants to bounce and swerve all the way to Williams when relief is just a lane away, even if it does create dangerous passing conditions?

ADOT says the past winter had an unusually high number of freeze-thaw cycles. They have put down a new surface on I-40 in sections this summer between Flagstaff and Williams and will work on I-17 south of Flagstaff next year.

But civil engineers like Flagstaffs Mark Woodson say the state hasnt been keeping up with the timely maintenance that winter roads require and now ADOT is paying more to resurface and rebuild the roadways. Its not only more costly in the long run but dangerous to drivers  the crumbling pavement is blamed for a rising number of high-speed accidents, not to mention blown tires and broken axles.

FAILED LEADERSHIP

Whats really at issue, though, is not just unfilled potholes but failed leadership on a sustainable way to finance roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure. The state gas tax of 18 cents a gallon hasnt been raised since 1991, and more efficient vehicle engines since then have meant that revenues from gasoline purchases havent kept pace with the explosion of miles driven each year. Arizona drivers put 67 billion miles on their vehicles last year, up 12 percent in just the past five years, while gas tax collections have remained flat.

Meanwhile, state elected officials continue to divert gas taxes and vehicle fees meant for cities and counties to the Highway Patrol  some $86 million is proposed this year. Yet they block a statewide vote on a 10-cent-per-gallon hike in the gas tax that would raise about $300 million a year. By comparison, ADOT spent $282 million over the past three years on maintenance and repairs statewide.

But didnt Flagstaff and Coconino County just pass in 2014 a higher sales taxes for local road repairs? True, in part because the Legislature has never restored the localities full share of gas taxes after the recession. So now the talk is about getting legislative permission to put a gas tax hike on the Coconino County ballot, then dedicate it to the state roads that ADOT is neglecting. (Like the income tax, a gas tax at the local level has been pre-empted by the Legislature.)

TAX HIKE OR TAX REFORM?

This approach, of course, lets the state off the hook for meeting basic infrastructure obligations, just as lawmakers and the governor have not made up shortfalls in state school funding since 2009 but refuse to support higher taxes. Its why the Arizona constitution allows citizens' initiatives, and maybe its time to talk about a gas tax hike on the ballot along with a dedicated schools tax.

Some economists have talked of comprehensive tax reform that shifts the gas tax from per-gallon to price-based while expanding the reach of the state sales tax from goods to services, but at a lower overall rate and a deep cut in income taxes. Such a consumption tax would not only be more fair in a state like Arizona with a service-based economy but tap some of the luxury services used by wealthy retirees. But other retirees on limited incomes that arent taxed much anyway are not likely to support a new tax system that raises prices on haircuts and car repairs.

As for the county gas tax, before anything goes on the ballot, wed be interested in a few protections for local drivers and taxpayers. One would allow the county to use the extra funds to hire its own contractors on its own speeded-up timetable to fix potholes on the interstate lanes within its boundaries. And a second would prohibit the Legislature from backing out from Coconino Countys share of state highway funds the amount the county raises from the extra dime on gasoline sales.

PAY NOW OR LATER

With those caveats in place, wed urge local elected leaders to put authorization of a county gas tax election on their legislative wish list for the coming session. The White House talks a good game about a big infrastructure push, but winter is getting close in northern Arizona and so far all weve heard is talk. As for ADOT, they are falling further behind on winter repairs with no increase in spending on the horizon. An extra dime a gallon would cost the average driver about $40 a year. So we can pay at the pump or at the tire shop, and the last time we checked, $40 wouldnt even buy half a tire.
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BRIDGEPORT  City high school students will have to take a half-year course in African American Studies, Caribbean/Latin American Studies or Perspectives on Race to graduate, beginning with the Class of 2022.

The new mandate, approved unanimously by the city school board Monday, makes the district one of the few in the country to require the course of study.

Philadelphia public schools have required students to take an African American history course since 2005. In Los Angeles, students are required to take an ethnic studies class.

It is going to make a great deal of difference to our children and our families, Sauda Baraka, vice chairman of the school board, said of the local decision. It will really help us with the learning process. Cultural competency has been shown to change the direction of young people and make them more interested in learning.

Baraka, who will leave the school board in December after 12 years on the panel, has been urging the adoption of a such a course of study for some time.

Board member Dennis Bradley also spoke in favor of the mandate. Throughout his schooling, he said, history was taught in a very Euro-centric fashion. Discussions of African Americans were framed around issues of slavery or Civil Rights, little else.

Ben Walker, chair of the boards Teaching and Learning committee, said the work to make a proposal would have come sooner had the board not suspended meetings for four months last fall due to a boycott led by Bradley.

The planning also coincided with new state graduation requirements that by 2023 will require students to take more courses. Local officials were uncertain if there would be room for the new local requirements and some consideration was given to making it a middle school requirement instead.

A curriculum committee led by Jay Lipp, a Fairchild Wheeler principal, and Christine Morrone, until recently director of social work, found ways to make it work at the high school by pairing the requirement with a mandated half-year civics class.

The idea will be to give students a choice between the three courses  African American Studies, Caribbean/Latin American Studies or Perspectives on Race  which would be paired with a half year course in civics.

Before the courses can be offered, teachers have to write the curriculum, books have to be purchased and as many as six teachers must be trained in teaching the courses.

The district plans to seek assistance from Fairfield University and others and will seek grants to cover the price tag which could reach higher than $180,000.

I do believe it is the right direction to go in, Schools Superintendent Aresta Johnson said of the plan. We are excited about the work.

Just about half of the districts 21,000 students are Latino and 35 percent are African American.

Walker said eventually, the plan is to add a middle school component and more in-depth high school electives.

The district now offers a smattering of electives in African-American studies, Latin American studies and African-American Literature.

Shaun Mitchell, a teacher at Central High, teaches the African-American Literature course, and said a mandated course on Racial Perspectives can be a really good thing.

As diverse as we are in Bridgeport, I still think we misunderstand our racial and cultural identities  even within our own cultures. And given the political climate of our country, any understanding of who we are as people can only be beneficial, Mitchell said.

Baraka said during one committee meeting she was part of a group forced to take an African-American studies course in high school. It changed her direction, she said, leading her to major in African-American studies in college.

I know it will change the lives of our children, she said. The three courses together will be incredible.
FAIRFIELD  A jury has ordered a medical group to pay $1 million to the family of a retired college professor who died after being prescribed the wrong medication.

The six-member, Superior Court jury deliberated about two hours before announcing the verdict against Dr. Peter Tortora and the Fairfield Medical Group for causing the death of 86-year-old Richard Tyler of Fairfield.

On the witness stand, Tortora broke into tears as he apologized for causing Tylers death, telling the jury that Tyler had been a wonderful, man.

The lawyers for both sides declined comment. The Tyler family left the courtroom as Judge Richard Arnold was thanking the jury for its service.

The medical group did not deny negligently causing Tylers death.

However, the medical group contested the amount of damages arguing that Tyler, who had a history of heart problems, had at best just a couple of years to live even if they had done nothing wrong.

In May 2013, Tyler, a retired professor of management at Fairfield University, went to see Dr. Tortora for a duodenal ulcer, according to the lawsuit. Following the office visit Tortora mistakenly prescribed Tyler Coumadin, a blood thinner used to treat blood clots.

After taking the Coumadin, the suit states that Tyler began to bleed internally and was rushed to Bridgeport Hospital. At the hospital Tyler required numerous blood transfusions, the suit states.

He died at the hospital a short time later.

Tyler earned a masters degree in education from Boston College, and a masters in business administration from New York University. He worked with Sikorsky Aircraft and then with the Perkin-Elmer Corp.

In 1977, he embarked on a second career, joining the faculty of Fairfield University as an assistant professor of management in the Charles F. Dolan School of Business.
STRATFORD  A council member who is being sued by a developer for libel and slander will be represented by the town attorneys office.

Tina Manus, the District 10 council member, is being sued by developer Gerard J. Kiley Jr. of Stamford, who has accused Manus in his civil suit of slander, libel and tortious interference with business expectancies.

It was earlier thought she would have to pay for her own representation, but state statues require municipalities to defend their public servants in cases of this nature.

Town officials confirmed Monday the suit will likely cost the town more than $10,000, and quite likely a good deal more. Kiley has hired a Boston attorney to help out with his case, and some people familiar with the matter say it could be a long slog before the suit is finally resolved.

But Manus told Hearst Connecticut Media the town attorneys office should have stepped forward sooner to fight the lawsuit as they are required to under state statues, she said. She was quick to add because of the delays, she missed important opportunities in court to defend herself.

Until this week  the suit was filed Aug. 23  Manus was listed as representing herself. She said a friend of hers urged her to press the town for representation. She is being represented now by attorney John-Henry M. Steele, of Dey Smith Steele in Milford. The firm was hired to represent Manus by the law office that represents the town, Berchem Moses & Devlin.

All volunteers, be they appointed commissioners, committee member or elected officials, must be protected according to the state statutes when working on behalf of the town or constituents, she said. We represent others, always. If we are not indemnified by our town, who would ever volunteer again?

The suit is over a imbroglio that occurred after a Zoning Commission meeting March 28 between Manus and Kiley, in which she called police saying she felt threatened. In court papers, Kiley accused Manus of lying to police and that she also made untrue and defamatory statements that night. No one was arrested at the meeting.

Manus was at the meeting to speak against an apartment building Kiley had proposed for the site behind the Big Y supermarket on Hawley Lane; Manus lives in a adjoining neighborhood. After the Zoning Commission meeting that took place Town Hall, Manus said Kiley threatened her.

The zoning panel has since turned down Kileys plan.

At the meeting, Manus introduced herself as Tina Manus, town councilor, District 10, 315 Fox Hill Road. Manus received a letter from the town attorneys office in April saying that ... the town will ... provide defense to any claim brought against you.

But until this week, Manus said the town attorneys office has not pursued her defense.

Although Manus is getting her representation paid for by the town, there is a catch. According to Christopher M. Hodgson, one of the lead attorneys who represents Stratford, she could find a bill in her mailbox if she loses the case.

If theres a judgment against her for malicious, willful or wanton acts, state statues state that the municipal officer shall reimburse the town for defense costs, he said.

Meanwhile, Manus, a Democrat, is fuming over the timing of all of this  just 15 days before the election. She is running against Republican Laura Dancho, and the voters in her North End district are more Republican-leaning than those in other parts of town.

This has nothing to do with the election  this is the law and the town has to follow it, she said.

The case was filed in state Superior Court in Stamford.

jburgeson@ctpost.com
MILFORD  As the opioid epidemic soars, school districts in Connecticut and around the nation are increasingly carrying the antidote naloxone, under the brand name Narcan, in high schools and some middle schools, but Milford is among the first in Connecticut to make it available in elementary schools, district officials said.

Milford Health Director Deepa Joseph and the schools medical coordinator, Dr. Andrew Carlson, made the call because they want to watch out for the safety of all.

Joseph, who verified Milford is on the forefront with the elementary school policy, said they decided to have it in all school nurses offices because it can be used for staff or visitors.

Connecticut Chief Medical Examiner Dr. James Gill said this summer that he estimates there will be 1,078 fatal drug overdoses by the end of 2017 in Connecticut, an enormous number when compared to 2012, when fatal overdoses totaled 357.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the country is in the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic. Since 1997, 300,000 people in the UNited States have died of opioid overdose, the CDC reports.

Opioids killed more than 33,000 people in 2015, more than any year on record, the agency website states.

Naloxone, the best known antidote for opioid overdose, now is available in more settings than before because it can be administered through a nasal spray.

According to the Connecticut Department of Health website, the antidote  which has no street value  is a short acting medication which revives a person within a minute or two and allows a window of opportunity to access medical help.

John Frassinelli, the state Department of Educations bureau chief of health, nutrition, family services and adult education, said there currently is no central database for Connecticut schools regarding individual districts naloxone policies, but its (the opioid epidemic) certainly on the front burner of many conversations.

Frassinelli said part of the school nurse training done at the state level in 2016 included conversation on the opioid epidemic and his advice was for each to assess the situation in their own communities, and bring all the community providers together for the discussion.

Its a local decision, he said. It cant hurt to have it.

At a recent Board of Health meeting Joseph and Carlson were praised for their forward thinking on the matter.

A board member involved in the school nurse circuit said that while the elementary school availability is catching on elsewhere in the country, its rare in Connecticut.

Mayor Ben Blake said Monday that all the citys first responders now carry the opioid antidote, including police officers, because of the availability of spray. There was a time only paramedics could administer the antidote because it had to be done intravenously.

The National Association of School Nurses recommends schools incorporate the measure because nurses have the expertise to recognize emergencies and convey the happenings to emergency personnel, the organizations website states.

Since 2015, pharmacists in Connecticut have been allowed to dispense and prescribe naloxone, as part of the states effort to increase availability of the medication.

Among opioid deaths in Connecticut, in June 2016, three people died in a single day of opioid-related overdoses and about two-dozen more were treated at Yale New Haven Hospital department and survived.

According to a story by Connecticut Health I-Team writer Lisa Chedekel published in the Register, Connecticut was the 5th-highest among 30 states in the rate of opioid-related emergency department visits  254.6 per 100,000 population in 2014, well above national rate of 177.7. For inpatient stays related to opioid use, the state ranked 7th-highest among 44 states, at 337.5 stays per 100,000  above the national rate of 224.6.
WASHINGTON  The Bureau of Land Management on Friday recommended closing 53,300 acres of the Sonoran Desert National Monument to recreational shooting, but keeping the remaining 443,000 open to shooters.

It is the latest twist in a years-long legal and administrative fight that saw federal officials at one point trying to prohibit shooting over the entire monument, only to reverse course and propose shooting throughout the site. That decision was subsequently halted by a federal court, which allowed shooting over much of the monument while ordering a bureau review.

The latest plan, posted Friday in the Federal Register, calls for making 11 percent of the monuments land off-limits to shooting. Hunting is not affected by any of the proposals considered by the bureau, and would be allowed anywhere in the monument with the proper permits.

Gun groups that were contacted Friday declined comment on the latest proposal because they had not seen it.

But an official with the Sierra Club worried that increased shooting could harm plants and wildlife in the monument and questioned the need for more shooting spaces given the huge amounts of open land in the area already.

Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Clubs Grand Canyon Chapter, said that in addition to recreational shooting presenting a public safety hazard, there has been well documented damage to the environment, as people have used cactus and monument rocks for targets. Cultural sites and vegetation have been disrupted, she said.

Bahr said the original proposal was to ban shooting throughout the monument, and that officials made a strong case for it. But after groups like the National Rifle Association got involved, she said the bureau started backing off.

Its not an undue burden, Bahr said of proposals to limit shooting in the monument. We think its necessary to protect resources.

The Sonoran Desert National Monument was created in 2001 by President Bill Clinton, who called it a magnificent example of untrammeled Sonoran desert lanscape. His proclamation establishing the monument said that, in addition to archeological and historic sites, it is the most biologically diverse of North American deserts and is home to endangered species as well as forests of iconic saguaro cacti.

The latest decision on shooting in the monument comes just one month after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke issued a directive that ordered agencies to increase opportunities for hunting, fishing and shooting on public lands where possible.

After considering a series of options that ranged from allowing wide-open shooting to banning it entirely, the bureau chose an option the middle that leaves most of the monument open to recreational shooting. The decision is in line with Zinkes directive, while protecting resources and public safety in the monument, the notice said.

Friday started a 30-day protest period for the public to voice concerns or support for the proposal, as well as a 60-day legal review by the governor, said Adam Eggers, a spokesman for the BLM Arizona.

This is by no means the end of the process, Eggers said.

After the protest period is over, the bureau will review all public comment before making a decision. Eggers said Fridays notice was just another stop in a long process, a process that will zero value if it does not have input from as many different groups as possible.

Nothing has been finalized, he said.
It was supposed to be an evening of celebration, a gala presentation of a movie which won its star, Palestinian Kamel El Basha, the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival last month.

The screening of "The Insult," at Ramallah's showcase Cultural Palace, would bring the curtain down on the fourth Palestinian "Days of Cinema" film festival, the biggest and most successful to date.

Instead, the talk now is of censorship and shame, after the festival's organizers were told by city authorities to pull the film.

The reason given by officials was that they could not guarantee security at the screening, after a series of threats against the festival and against El Basha himself.

He was due to be recognized for his Venice award -- the first time an Arab actor had been given the accolade -- with a ceremony at the conclusion of the film Monday evening.

"The Insult" is a movie that focuses on a dispute between a Palestinian construction worker and a Lebanese Christian car mechanic that evolves into a courtroom thriller touching on questions of guilt and honor.

And yet, ironically perhaps, "The Insult" is not the real cause of the hostility. Instead, the anger comes from an earlier film, "The Attack", which examined the aftermath of a suicide bombing and was made by the same Lebanese filmmaker, Ziad Doueiri.

"The Attack" was mainly filmed in Israel, and led to accusations by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement that Doueiri was normalizing relations with Israel.

The BDS movement aims to generate economic and political pressure on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories.

BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti told CNN that Doueiri has yet to apologize for his past movie-making in Israel, and therefore his work should be boycotted.

"This film was made by a filmmaker who has crossed our nonviolent picket line," Barghouti told CNN. "We ask filmmakers to stay away from Israel until it respects international law," he added.

The BDS movement had added its weight to a campaign on social media that had been building pressure on the festival for weeks, using a slogan which translates into Arabic as #itwillnotbescreened.

CNN has tried to reach Doueiri for comment but has so far been unsuccessful. He has not written anything on his Facebook page in response to the screening's cancellation.

Festival director Hanna Atallah had maintained he was mindful of BDS criteria when selecting "The Insult" to close the festival program.

The film itself had not been made in Israel and so did not, he argued, break BDS rules.

"We are very proud that we don't have censorship of films in Palestine," he told CNN, but admitted that the order to pull the film was a worrying development that could make censorship on political or religious grounds more likely.

"Every Palestinian citizen [should have] the right to watch a product and decide whether it is good or not," Atallah said.

El Basha told CNN he was furious and ashamed at the decision to cancel the screening.

"I have grown up under occupation," he told CNN. "I am fighting all the time ... struggling against the occupation, struggling against Arab regimes, preventing me from living a normal life."

Referring to the BDS movement, he added: "There is a bunch of people, a small group of people that have succeeded in forcing their opinion on the municipality of Ramallah ... to censor our movies and our job. It is a catastrophe for our struggle and for our life."
The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Friday, Oct. 20:

President Donald Trump may or may not have said something insensitive or excessively blunt to the widow of a soldier killed earlier this month in Niger. We dont know. No one has produced a transcript of the conversation yet.

But when Trump called the widow of Sgt. La David T. Johnson, Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida also listened in.

Thats one more person on the line than ideal. The congresswoman is reportedly a close friend of the family, but also a noted Trump detractor. That injects politics where it shouldnt be.

But our point is a larger one than whether Trumps remarks were misconstrued, inartful or inappropriate.

The fact is, Trump made the call  even after his chief of staff, John Kelly, a retired Marine general whose son was killed in Afghanistan in 2010, advised against it. Trump made the call after Kelly told him that other presidents didnt always call every family of a fallen soldier. Kelly said that when his son was killed, his family did not get a call.

If you elect to call a family like this, it is about the most difficult thing you could imagine, Kelly said. Theres no perfect way to make that phone call. When I took this job and talked to President Trump about how to do it, my first recommendation was he not do it. Because its not the phone call that parents, family members, are looking forward to.

Kelly elaborated: Typically the only phone calls the family receives are the most important phone calls they could imagine, and that is from their buddies. In my case, hours after my son was killed, his friends were calling us from Afghanistan telling us what a great guy he was. Those are the only phone calls that really matter, and yeah, the letters count to a degree, but theres not much that really can take the edge off what a family members going through.

Kelly said Trump asked him what he should say. Kelly responded with something that every American should hear, something that his casualty officer said to him when his son was killed: He was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1 percent. He knew what the possibilities were because were at war, and when he died  he was surrounded by the best men on this earth, his friends.

He was where he wanted to be, doing what he wanted to do. Strip out the politics and thats the essence.

Lets all take a deep breath, set aside political rancor and honor the four soldiers who died serving this country in Niger.

Taking #MeToo movement to next level

The following editorial appeared in The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday, Oct. 17:

The past few days have witnessed an online phenomenon that brings out the best in social media. Countless women from every walk of life have posted two simple words on their timelines: Me, too.

To this we hasten to add our own statement: Us, too.

Women are posting messages on social media to show how commonplace sexual assault and harassment are, using the hashtag #MeToo to express that they, too, have been victims of such misconduct.

These women are saying publicly what for years has been reserved for quiet talks among friends. They add up to a frightening reality: Sexual harassment is a near-universal experience for women in American workplaces.

No, that does not mean every woman in every job is held to a set of rules that dont apply to men. It doesnt mean that every workplace has a male boss willing to use his power to humiliate, harass or harm women. Of course not.

But women are saying clearly that these kinds of things happen so often that accepting, combating or somehow navigating around such conduct has become a necessary part of workplace survival for nearly all women.

That should stop, and stop now. The Harvey Weinstein saga has been disgusting. We hope it can become a catalyst, too. Women are changing already. Simply declaring Me, too helps eats away at the silence on which such predatory behavior always depends.

It is a moment of action for men, as well. The #MeToo meme is stripping the blinders away so that all men should be fully aware that the women they love and respect have likely had to endure some level of harassment or abuse  from unequal treatment or pay or all the way up to criminal assault.

With that knowledge must now come a conversion to full-on ally.

We add our voice here, too, because this is a phenomenon that affects all women. Lets recognize the extent that these experiences have on womens lives  in the work setting, in personal relationships and beyond.

By saying Me, too, women are inviting their male colleagues to say with them: Not anymore.

Time for a less hacker-friendly Social Security system

The following editorial appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Wednesday, Oct. 18:

Last months announcement by Equifax that its consumer-credit database suffered a catastrophic hacking attack meant that nearly half of all Americans had their Social Security numbers and vital financial information exposed to theft. The threat of massive-scale identity theft is very real.

Equifax is only the latest of multiple, large-scale data-hacking incidents. Its time for the federal government to come up with a more secure identification code to protect citizens. Thats not just our assessment; the White House cybersecurity coordinator, Rob Joyce, also has concluded that the Social Security numbering system has outlived its usefulness.

Think about your own Social Security number and the hundreds of times youve shared it with companies, schools, doctors, government agencies or other institutions that insisted they had a legitimate need for it. Always with the promise to keep it confidential, of course. Older Americans can recall when their Social Security numbers were used on their drivers license or university IDs. There were those nine digits, for all to see.

Really industrious hackers can find Social Security numbers by accessing old court documents. No one is safe, and it really comes down to whose number hits on the hacking roulette wheel of chance. There has to be a better, more secure way.

Its a flawed system, Joyce told The Washington Post this month. If you think about it, every time we use the Social Security number you put it at risk. By interacting with it, youve given a key piece of information out publicly.

Joyce wants the government to consider more modern means of providing citizens with a unique identifying code that can be used for transactions but also remain protected from hackers. He calls it a modern cryptographic identifier.

The longer the nation delays such an update, the greater the vulnerability we all will face. Right now, anyone who accesses basic information on Facebook or a simple Google search can identify where you grew up. That helps identify where you lived when your Social Security number was issued. That simple information helps reveal the first three digits of your Social Security number because those numbers were assigned geographically.

The last four digits are numbers we all routinely give out when speaking to customer service representatives to straighten out, say, credit card or phone billing questions. So seven of the nine digits already are vulnerable. Programmers have designed a computer algorithm that can accurately guess peoples Social Security numbers 44 percent of the time.

Thats scary. Americans are far too vulnerable. The potential losses from the Equifax breach alone could wind up in the billions of dollars. The cost of modernizing Social Securitys numbering system also wouldnt be cheap.

Hackers around the world are betting the government will continue delaying and dithering. Sadly, theyre probably right.

Keeping Spain intact

The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Saturday, Oct. 21:

The crisis in Catalonia has gone from simmer to steady boil. Spains government threatens to take emergency steps to end a bid by secessionists in the countrys wealthiest province to break away. The Catalan leader behind the separatist drive isnt backing down and warns that regional lawmakers are poised to formally endorse secession. Without a cool-down, a European Union nation of 46 million people could be on a path toward civil conflict. How did the home to sunny Barcelona and the beaches of Costa Brava get into this mess?

Breaking away from Spanish rule has been on the minds of Catalans for 300 years. Catalans have their own language and culture, and many dont see themselves as Spanish. Today, the region enjoys a degree of autonomy. But Catalans complain that, as Spains richest region, they pay to Madrid more in taxes than they get back. On Oct. 1, Catalans overwhelmingly voted in favor of secession.

Was it really overwhelming? Turnout was just 42 percent. Spains Supreme Court had previously declared the vote unconstitutional and therefore illegal. As a result, large numbers of Catalan people who oppose independence opted not to vote; they viewed the referendum as a sham. A week after the vote, hundreds of thousands of defiant Catalans filled the streets of Barcelona, demonstrating against independence.

Instead of talking, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont have been exchanging threats in a perilous game of brinkmanship. Whats at stake? The heart of the Catalan region is Barcelona, the vibrant Mediterranean tourist oasis thats vital to Spains economic health and national brand. The region also is home to several of Spains pharmaceutical, chemical and metalworking industries. Take away Catalonia, and Spain loses 20 percent of its economy.

The Catalans must understand that secession will lead to chaos and, potentially, violence. Rajoy has Spains constitution on his side, and if the Catalans dont back down, hell have to enforce the law. However, there remains room for talk. Madrid can still offer Catalans greater autonomy. Its a compromise that avoids conflict, and one that Catalans would be wise to accept.

Austria shifts: Immigration anxiety fuels a rightward turn

The following editorial appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Wednesday, Oct. 18:

Results of elections held in Austria on Sunday show a strengthening of the right-wing parties in that country, including a first-place finish by the Peoples Party and a larger vote for the Freedom Party.

The next question will be whether Peoples Party leader Sebastian Kurz, 31, will choose as his necessary coalition partner the Social Democrats, ousted from power, or the Freedom Party. Betting is  based on the fact that immigration appears to have been the key issue for voters  that he will choose the Freedom Party, but that isnt clear yet.

There will inevitably be a certain amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the political left and in the center in Europe and in the rest of the world at the ascendancy of the right, at least in Austria, that the successes of the Peoples Party and the Freedom Party represent. They come on top of the improved position of the right-wing Alternative for Germany in that countrys elections in September, the nationalist British referendum vote last year to leave the European Union, and whatever interpretation is put on Americas election of Donald Trump as president last November.

It is, however, important to recall that it is this time a question of a vote in Austria. Freedom Party right-wing extremists have surfaced prominently before in Austrian politics. Kurt Waldheim, a former secretary-general of the United Nations, served as president from 1986 to 1992 even after his complicity with Nazi war crimes was revealed. Another extremist, Jorg Haider, had his moment in the sun in the mid-2000s before dying in a car accident. A pre-World War II prime minister, Engelbert Dollfuss, was considered an Austrian Nazi before he was assassinated by real fascists in 1934.

What many Austrians considered to be excessive hospitality to immigrants was and is a real issue in that nation of 8.5 million in these elections. Austria is intensely Catholic and strong-willed about preserving its culture, in spite of its European Union membership and outward sophistication. In practice, its new government will probably turn out not to be as buttoned-up and conservative as it looks at this moment.
Locals gather to commemorate 'Palestine Solidarity Week' with a week-ending block party. The event was hosted by Memphis Voices for Palestine to spread awareness in Memphis of foreign conflict.

Arabic pop music and the aromas of traditional Palestinian cuisine filled the the parking lot of First Congregational Church Oct. 21 as locals gathered to celebrate the finale event commemorating aPalestine Solidarity Week.a

Lois Charm Locals gather to commemorate 'Palestine Solidarity Week' with a week-ending block party. The event was hosted by Memphis Voices for Palestine to spread awareness in Memphis of foreign conflict.

Hosted by Memphis Voices for Palestine (MVP), the event was held in conjunction with three previous events during the week of Oct. 16 to spread awareness in Memphis about the foreign strife of Palestinians.

Due to Israelas occupation of Palestinian territory, more than 5 million Palestinians have lost their native rights, according to MVP. Members of MVP stressed that Israel has the power to change policy that would end the on-going bloodshed and mistreatment of Palestinians within the area that makes up Israel and Palestine. They also stressed that U.S. taxpayer money is being used to support the nation of Israel, andA the group believes this has a direct effect on the issues Palestinians are currently facing.

A Dahia Helou, 26, is a community advocate for Palestinians in the Mid-South and in Palestine. She said she does not believe city officials do enough to support the Palestinian community in Memphis.

aThe Israelis continue to occupy Palestinian territory and oppress the Palestinians, and the U.S. continues to give them money,a she said.

Lois Charm An illustration displays the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. MVP's 'Block Party' was the last of four events last week meant to raise awareness in Memphis of the conflict.

Helou said she and other members of MVP want Americans to know how their money is being used. Helou spoke at a recent town hall meeting in August hosted by Memphis-area Congressman Steve Cohen. There, she spoke to the board about an estimate that the U.S. gives $3 billion a year to Israel.

aWe hope to let Americans know that their money is going to the continual oppression of the Palestinian people,a she said.

Sales contractor Faiz Abbad, 55, came to the block party show support for his culture. A native of Jerusalem but of Palestinian background, Abbad has lived in Memphis for the past 32 years.

aFamily and friends brought me here, and I also brought my children because I wanted them to know more about their family background and where they come from,a Abbad said. aI want them to see the music, customs and traditional dress, so when they go overseas, theyall have an idea of the culture already.a

Abbad said he supports MVPas efforts to spread awareness in Memphis about Palestinian struggle, but he said he doesnat see an issue with the way Memphis has responded to the Palestinian community in the city.

aI believe that they [city officials] are doing a good job,a Abbad said. aIave been here for a long time, and in general, people here are very nice. I havenat noticed any tensions, and I believe that we as Palestinian people have been given freedoms like everyone else in this city.a

Another MVP advocate, Heather Jendoubi, said it is important that Americans realize the severity of the current state of Palestine.

aPalestinians tend to be extremely marginalized also, considering that they donat even have a nation,a Jendoubi said. aPeople should see the bigger picture concerning the state of Palestine because it is actually really scary right now over there.a
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A fellow doctor had the nerve to tell me on national radio yesterday that health tourism is an insignificant problem for the NHS.

Listeners to the Today programme on Radio 4 heard her claim that ineligible patients from overseas account for just 0.3 per cent of the health services budget.

Thats what many doctors like to believe. And even if this were the case, 0.3 per cent would amount to some 360 million, enough to pay for thousands more doctors and nurses in our overstretched health service.

But the truth is actually far worse: health tourism costs the NHS in the region of 2 billion. And it is contributing hugely to a crisis in our capacity to provide care as patients are turned away because beds are full and operating theatres are not available.

Hospitals under the most pressure from health tourists are ones close to major airports in London, Birmingham and Manchester

Changes were introduced yesterday by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to tackle the problem of health tourism, obliging hospitals to identify and charge up front any foreign patient not eligible for free treatment.

But as I will show, these measures go nowhere near far enough to protect the NHS against health tourists  people who fly to Britain from all over the world to take advantage of our health care system, with no intention of paying for it.

Let me be clear that I am not talking about emergency treatment. This should always be free on the NHS, to whoever needs it and wherever they come from, as well as treatment for genuine asylum seekers and certain disadvantaged groups.

I am talking about people from abroad who target the NHS because they will often get better treatment than at home  and for free.

The abuse is particularly bad in maternity and cancer wards. At St Georges hospital in Tooting, South London, deliveries by mothers from outside the European Union totalled a fifth of all births, according to figures released by the NHS board last year.

Measures do not go far enough to protect the NHS from people who fly from all over the world to take advantage of the health care system, the former consultant writes

Around 900 women were treated, costing the hospital 4 million in unpaid bills. It beggars belief that so many patients were seen  nearly three a day for an entire year  yet no one appeared to care whether they were eligible for NHS treatment.

But in my experience this is not unusual. Many young NHS doctors take the attitude that its our responsibility to provide care for everyone, regardless of where they come from or whether they meet the criteria for free treatment  as if any other attitude was tantamount to racism.

Despite daily experience of staff shortages, bed shortages, overcrowding and endless waiting lists, they behave as if it is Britains responsibility to extend free health care to the whole world. As with so many utopian ideals, the reality of this approach causes actual hardship and suffering.

To give a stark example: the BBC documentary Hospital, which aired last February, featured a Nigerian mother Priscilla who had fertility treatment in her home country. She arranged to have her quadruplets delivered by Caesarean section in Britain, although she didnt qualify for NHS care. One baby was stillborn. Two died after months of intensive care in a neonatal unit. The fourth required care for much longer.

At the lowest estimate, the cost to the taxpayer in Priscillas unpaid medical bills was nearly 500,000, but that to me is not the real issue. What really matters is capacity: in this case, the three cots with numerous specialist staff and vital equipment that were not available for other babies.

To be fair, the policy introduced yesterday is an attempt to tackle such abuse. It means that, for the first time, NHS staff including doctors will have a responsibility to report patients they think may not be entitled to free care.

The latest policy designed to clamp down on abuse of the NHS by health tourists doesn't go far enough, says J. Meirion Thomas

The guidance also makes it clear that NHS staff facilitating health tourism may be committing fraud. Yet in most ways, the new policy will do next to nothing to solve the problem. When they register, patients will now be asked if they have lived in the UK for more than six months.

If they answer no, they will be sent to an overseas visitor manager (OVM) who will ask to see their passport or proof of address.

If they answer yes, they will receive treatment with no further questions asked.

To say this is open to abuse is an understatement of almost comic proportions.

In fact, what was designed as a deterrent will become an incentive to health tourists, as news spreads that it is this easy to take advantage of Britains hospitality.

It is incredible to me that simple proofs of identity will not be required. A utility bill to prove residency and a passport to exclude identity fraud do not seem excessive requirements: they are necessary to open a bank account, after all. Without them, the policy is as good as useless.

A doctor told Radio 4 that health tourism is not a significant problem for the NHS, but J. Meirion Thomas says otherwise

Nor will the new rules do anything to prevent widespread identity fraud already taking place across the NHS, as health tourists from abroad turn up at hospitals with false names and addresses, often of a relative who is entitled to free NHS care.

The hospitals under most pressure from health tourists are the ones close to major airports, in London, Birmingham and Manchester.

Frustratingly, these are the very hospitals least likely to be following the guidelines.

Six weeks ago, I sent Freedom of Information requests (FOIs) to 17 health trusts in these three cities, asking how many overseas visitor managers (OVMs) were employed by each to check on health care entitlement, and how many new patients were seen weekly.

The answers were shocking. I learned that Bolton NHS trust, for instance, sees 3,966 new patients weekly, and employs just one OVM. There is also just a single OVM at University Hospitals trust in Birmingham, where 4,124 new patients are seen each week.

The Christie Hospital, one of the largest cancer centres in the country, which serves Greater Manchester and Cheshire, also employs one OVM . . . and treats 44,000 patients annually. One can only feel sorry for the beleaguered individuals trying to do their impossible jobs, all alone in these immense hospitals.

'The Health Secretary expects a tiny bandage to cover a gaping wound in the health service.'

Perhaps that is why three Manchester health trusts (Wythenshawe, Stockport and Tameside and Glossop) confess they do not employ any OVMs, though all admit more than 2,000 new patients a week  and why the Pennine NHS Trust, with its weekly rush of 6,046 new patients, employs one part-timer, two-and-a-half days a week.

Yet the Governments guidance on Jeremy Hunts latest policy places so much responsibility directly on the OVMs. They are expected to undergo additional training, and then teach other staff about the new strategies. How is this possible, when the OVMs themselves do not exist?

The Health Secretary expects a tiny bandage to cover a gaping wound in the health service. He must be aware none of the basic NHS targets are being met nationwide: emergency patients should be seen within four hours, cancer patients should start treatment within 60 days and patients who undergo elective surgery should start treatment within 18 weeks.

These are not mere statistics. They are the promises made to British healthcare users, who pay for the NHS in the first place, and they are all being broken. The cost in human lives is inestimable.

Fixing the National Health Service is a gargantuan task. But the introduction of simple ID checks would be a major step towards combating health tourism.

Doctors must stop dismissing it as an insignificant problem. It isnt: it costs countless lives and it is undermining the whole of the NHS.
Government minister Rory Stewart believes dealing with Britons who fled to join ISIS means killing them before they return

Government minister Rory Stewart says the only way to deal with British jihadis who flew out to join Izal is to kill them all before they get the chance to return home.

Sounds good to me  and I suspect to most of you, too. Every single one of our fellow citizens who signed up to fight for our enemies is guilty of treason and has forfeited the right to the protection of British law.

As Stewart, an International Development minister, puts it: These are people who have essentially moved away from any kind of allegiance towards the British Government.

They are absolutely dedicated, as members of the Islamic State, towards the creation of a caliphate, they believe in an extremely hateful doctrine which involves killing themselves, killing others and trying to use violence and brutality to create an eighth century, or seventh century, state.

These people are executing people in the back of their heads, have held women and children hostage, are torturing and murdering, trying by violence to impose their will.

They are a serious danger and the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them.

Hallelujah. How wonderfully refreshing to hear a politician speak his mind, and speak for Britain, without feeling the current obsession to pay obeisance to the modern pieties of yuman rites idiocy.

This column has long maintained that those who travelled abroad to join Izal should be stripped of both their passports and their citizenship and denied re-entry to this country. Ideally, they should be captured with extreme prejudice, put up against a wall and shot through the head in whichever disgusting desert hell-hole they have chosen to make their home.

Failing that, they should be blown to Kingdom Come by the kind of drone strike which vapourised that dopey bird known as the White Widow  exciting a bout of predictable Left-wing hand-wringing.

Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

Frankly, the only kind of international development Id like to see in vast swathes of the Middle East is turning the whole place into a car park.

Maybe its time Stewart was elevated from his relatively minor department and put in charge of both the Ministry of Defence and Britains anti-terror strategy.

At least he appears to be on our side, which is more than can be said for most of the two-bob, gutless clowns running the show these days. Only last week, some overpaid liberal brief called Max Hill QC, who is supposed to be reviewing our terrorism legislation, bleated that young British jihadis should be allowed to come home and be reintegrated into society.

They are guilty, according to Mad Max, of nothing more than naivety. They have been brainwashed, he said, turning them  not the people they have beheaded and worse  into the real victims of the worldwide Islamist death cult. Poor lambs.

The authorities best guess is that 850 of these terrorist wannabes joined Izal  and half of them are now back home, where they have the capacity to bring murder and mayhem to the streets of our towns and cities.

Do you want them reintegrated into society? Me neither.

A view of heavily damaged buildings in Raqqa, once ISIS's de-facto capital, but now captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces

But the official line is that we should forgive and forget  presumably until one of these model citizens reintegrates himself by blowing up a Tube train, or stabs to death innocent people enjoying a jolly night out at Borough Market, or drives a Transit into pedestrians walking across Westminster Bridge, or (fill in your atrocity of choice).

Meanwhile, we are supposed to have some sympathy with the parents of Jihadi Jack, the British Muslim convert who joined Izal last year.

Theyre currently on hunger strike on the steps of St Pauls Cathedral in protest at the Governments refusal to help him, after he was arrested by Kurdish fighters as he fled the Izal capital of Raqqa in June.

Shame he didnt get a cruise missile up his fundament.

As a dad myself, I feel for them, up to a point. But shouldnt they be asking themselves: why did our son turn his back on the country of his birth and decide to travel thousands of miles to team up with a bunch of deranged religious maniacs hell-bent on genocide and world domination?

If Im passing St Pauls in the next couple of weeks, I might chuck them a Big Mac, from the goodness of my heart, but thats as far as it goes.

They can starve to death, for all I care, and their son can rot in a Kurdish cell until he pegs it, too.

Sorry if it upsets the bien-pensant brigade  and those allegedly on our side who are desperate to appease them  but my support goes solely to those brave souls serving in our Armed Forces, who are betrayed at every turn by our spineless Government.

At the same time as we are being told we must roll out the welcome mat for returning Izal jihadis, military police are flying to Afghanistan to investigate allegations that the SAS were a bit over-enthusiastic when topping a few Taliban members.

Over-enthusiastic is what we want the SAS to do for a living, especially when it comes to dealing with filth like the Taliban.

But this kind of grovelling, knee-jerk investigation is typical of the institutionalised betrayal we have come to expect  from the ridiculous, trebles-all-round, IRA-appeasing Bloody Sunday inquiry to the fake Daily Mirror photos alleging war crimes by British troops in Iraq.

Still, its all par for the course. Weve even been subjected to the BBCs Mickey Mouse version of the Gunpowder Plot as imagined by a Guardianista IRA stooge, who once turned up on a murder charge (convicted and then acquitted on appeal). Our cultural commissars have never met a terrorist they didnt like.

How long before 9/11 and the bombing of the London Transport network in 2005 are portrayed as the work of romantic freedom fighters?

No doubt those who planned the slaughter at the Ariana Grande concert will soon be given the freedom of Manchester, on the grounds that they werent really evil, bless em, they were just naive.

Heres the deal. Theyre not British, theyre not our fellow citizens, theyre not naive, theyre not brainwashed. Theyre the enemy, the Nazis of our day. The scum of the earth.

Im with Rory Stewart.

Kill them, kill them all.

Reading the papers over the past few days, my life has flashed before me. For as long as I can remember, Ive been running the annual Mind How You Go Awards, dedicated to acknowledging extreme examples of police stupidity and incompetence.

Ive uncovered a chapter of a book called You Couldnt Make It Up, that I wrote as long ago as 1995.

The chapters called Mr Plod Has Lost The Plot. Nothings new in the world.

These days, its difficult keeping up. Painted nails to raise awareness of slavery, 18 hi-viz fools riding the dodgems in Hull, a couple of soppy coppers wearing animal masks, senior officers sporting red high heels to sympathise with the gormless, self-absorbed #MeToo movement.

To be honest, I wouldnt know whether to file any of this lunacy under Mind How You Go or You Couldnt Make It Up.

As Jack Regan said in the last episode of The Sweeney: I am utterly and abjectly pissed-off with this little lot. Ive given the best years of my life to the job . . .

Mind how you go.

Death Wish II. Speaking of Plod, I see theyre now investigating Michael Winner and Benny Hill for historic sex crimes. Far be it from me to point out that Michael Winner and Benny Hill are both, like Jimmy Savile, still dead.

Next week, Scotland Yard sets up an inquiry into Two-Ton Ted from Teddington, an evil-looking man, who drove the bakers van.

A lady known as Sue, who lived all alone in Liddley Lane, has come forward to allege that he tempted her with his treacle tarts and his tasty wholemeal bread. She nearly swooned at his macaroons, and, apparently, when she saw the size of his hot meat pies . . .

Why is the British Government lobbying the rest of the world to have expectant mums rebranded as pregnant people?

Our bureaucrats have utterly lost their minds over the trans agenda. Apparently, this is in response to two  yep, just two  trans-men with wombs and ovaries having babies before they did whatever it is they did to become men.

Except theyre not men, whatever they claim. And pretending they are is an insult to everyones intelligence.

Here in the real world, people with wombs and ovaries are called women.
White privilege is evident in society whether or not people choose to see it but in the case of a student who got into medical school, the accusation was misplaced.

In a Facebook post that has since gone viral a determined student was cruelly shamed after she shared her excitement over getting into Yale medical school, saying, 'Thank you everyone for all your support!! I'm so happy to say after years of hard work I have been accepted into Yale med school!!!'

But instead of a congratulatory post, one friend on the platform commented that she only got into the prestigious university program because of her 'white privilege'.

Shamed: A recent Yale medical school admit was discredited for her acceptance after her friend said it was because of her 'white privileged background'

She said: 'Good job, might I add a shout out to your white privilege for you,' followed by the hand clapping emoji.

But the accomplished graduate wasn't having it and defended herself in a series of posts shedding light on her incredibly troubled upbringing, revealing how she has remained resolute in her studies throughout the years.

In a Facebook thread, she told Melissa, the girl who accused her of getting into med school because she was white, that she had grown up in a foster home after her alcoholic parents gave her up when she was five years old.

'Melissa, I grew up in a foster home. Both my parents were alcoholics and gave me up when I was five,' she wrote.

She continued: 'I had to take care of my brother for two years until we got adopted and even then we were both abused by that family and had to go back into the orphanage for another two years.'

She earned it: People took to Facebook to share their disdain for the thread with one saying 'she earned it'

Ignore the negatives: Another Facebook user advised for the med school student to disregard the comments

But even through her less than ideal upbringing, the hopeful doctor still managed to get good grades, go to a decent college and get scholarships to help pay for her tuition.

'I spent long nights studying and working part-time in high school just to support myself and my brother,' she said. 'I was lucky enough to have good grades to get into a decent undergrad.'

She spent her high school and college careers staying up late but rather than at parties, she lost sleep during study groups and her job until she 'finally got accepted to her top choice' medical school.

And instead of taking this as a moment to apologize or simply explain her point of view on a controversial topic she continued to patronize the med student.

She said: 'Umm okay sweetie, you claim to understand privilege but you can't even self critique [sic] buh bye.'

People took to Facebook to share their disdain toward Melissa who felt the need to diminish her friend's accomplishments.

One Facebook user said: 'Oh my gosh this p****d me off so bad. She didn't get into Yale because she is white. She got into Yale because she worked her butt off and earned it.'

You deserve it: And other shared his disgust for those who try to make people feel like they don't deserve their achievements

Off to Yale: A picture of the prestigious university's Sterling Memorial Library in a photo taken in June 2015

Another said that med school admit should be congratulated for achieving 'all she has' because she worked hard to get where she is. The post continued by advising her to not listen to negative comments.

But all comments weren't negative as another person bothered by the exchange, shared the thread and their frustration over the situation saying, 'Congrats to this girl for getting into Yale Med. Simply disgusted by whoever is trying to make them feel like they don't deserve it.'

In the Facebook thread defending herself, she mentioned that instead of being helpful and explaining her perspective, Melissa was being 'condescending' when she said she understood the concept of white privilege.

A concept that other young white women have acknowledged recently.

Colgate University sophomore Jenny Lundt, was praised online after candidly revealing how her white privilege enabled her to run around a campus with a dangerous weapon - while a black student was accused of being a dangerous gunman after carrying a glue gun around the same college.

The picture was shared the day after the lockdown and depicted Jenny posing with one leg up on a chair and a sword held aloft with a caption that read: 'THIS is what white privilege looks like.'

This picture, however, offers a more accurate example of the white privilege in discussion and helps foster the idea that it can be recognized by those who aren't minorities.
FBI KEPT RUSSIAN BRIBERY PLOT UNDER WRAPS BEFORE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION APPROVED NUCLEAR DEAL WITH MOSCOW:

The Obama administration signed a controversial nuclear deal with Moscow despite prior FBI findings that Russian officials were bribing their way into the U.S. atomic energy industry, according to government documents just published by The Hill.

http://www.newsweek.com/fbi-kept-russian-bribery-plot-under-wraps-obama-approved-nuclear-deal-moscow-686660
An illustrator who began drawing as a way to pull herself from a 'dark place' when she lost her father and went through a break-up has won the hearts of hundreds of thousands of fans with her incredibly relatable art.

Mari Andrew, 31, is a writer and artist based in New York City. The California native has 624,000 followers on Instagram, an upcoming book, and a firmly established spot in the online creative communityyet, she never went to art school and began drawing as a hobby.

Through her art, the talented Andrew has explored themes such as break-ups, death, and awful dates, but also resilience, life in New York City, and life's simple joys.

Touching: Mari Andrew, 31, has won the hearts of hundreds of thousands of fans with her incredibly relatable art, which chronicles the highs and lows of life

Illness: The California native recently shared this drawing, which illustrates her struggle with GuillainBarre syndrome, an autoimmune disorder that left her paralyzed for two months

Feelings: Through her art, the talented Andrew has explored themes such as break-ups, death, and awful dates, but also resilience, life in New York City, and life's simple joys

After years of trying to find her 'thing' throughout her twenties, Andrew decided to experiment with various activities that made her happy. She bought a cheap watercolor set and got starting, drawing in addition to her day job in marketing.

At that time, she was dealing with her father's death and her break-up, which happened within a small time frame. Andrew also found out she had to get cancerous cells removed during a 'pretty traumatic' surgery, as she recounted in a video.

'I felt like I was at the bottom of a pit,' she told Nylon in a previous interview. 'I had to pull myself out. It took months to decide what was going to bring me out of this. I just wrote lists of things that make me happy. I liked to draw. I wanted to learn how to play guitar. I wanted to learn how to dance. So I just started all these hobbies. The doodling one stuck.'

The artist has since explained that while drawing soothes her, it's not her passion, or even a passion.

Joy: After years of trying to find her 'thing' throughout her twenties, Andrew decided to experiment with various activities that made her happy

Process: The artist has since explained that while drawing soothes her, it's not her passion, or even a passion. She enjoys sharing one illustration a day on Instagram

Experiences: When she started drawing, Andrew was dealing with her father's death and her break-up, which happened within a small time frame

'I always felt a lot of pressure to find MY THING throughout my twenties,' she wrote in a post in August. 'I'm 30 now and still haven't found it. So if you're feeling pressure: I've learned that a passionate life doesn't mean finding ONE THING that is the center of your life. YOU are the center of your life, and all your interests and curiosities can float around you like good company and consistent friends.'

At the beginning of her drawing career, Andrew resolved to post one illustration a day on Instagram.

She kept up with this self-imposed challenge, not by putting pressure on herself, but by relying on drawing to bring joy into her life.

'That was the amazing thing about having such a tough year, I just didnt care anymore,' she told Nylon. 'I didnt have to have a career. I didnt have to have a boyfriend. I didnt need to have abs. I can exercise because it makes me happy. I can start drawing because it makes me happy. It was very freeing.'

Honest: Andrew recommends using one's toughest experiences as inspiration, and often touches on grieving, dating struggles, and other difficulties in her drawings

Experiences: Earlier this year, the illustrator was forced to stop drawing for two months after being struck by Guillain-Barre Syndrome while traveling on her own in Spain

Little by little, Andrew gained more followers, and she now has more than half a million people following her daily drawings.

Earlier this year, the illustrator was forced to stop drawing for two months after being struck by Guillain-Barre Syndrome. She was traveling on her own in Spain (solo traveling is celebrated as a source of joy in her drawings) when the autoimmune disease, which results in paralysis, started manifesting itself.

'The symptoms felt like something was really wrong with my limbs,' Andrew told SELF after recovering. 'Both my legs and hands felt really heavy. I could barely draw, and it just felt like I couldnt control my hands. I couldnt walk very well, either.'

Feeling weaker and weaker, the artist, who was staying in a small town, tried to catch a bus to Granada, but collapsed as she tried to leave her hotel. She first landed in a local hospital before being transferred to Granada.

There, her symptoms got worse at first, then started easing, and Andrew made a 'remarkably fast' recovery.

Her experience with the illness eventually inspired some of her drawings, including one in which she explained how alienating it can be to be branded 'inspiring' when you have a disability.

'Having a disability doesn't automatically make you inspiring, and hearing "You're strong" wasn't a great consolation prize when I really just wanted to be dancing and drinking sangria,' she wrote in a post.

Multiple outlets: Andrew, who has also expressed her creativity through writing throughout her life, has a book of essays coming out in 2018

Hope: 'All of my favorite things I've created came from a deep place of pain or plaguing confusion,' Andrew said about her creative process

'I learned (once again) how good it feels to be listened to while I was afraid and in every way weak, and not pressured to be a beacon of inspiration while going through something I certainly didn't sign up for.'

One of Andrew's most recent drawings, which she shared two days ago, shows her in a wheelchair at the bottom of a mountain. At the top of a mountain is a sign that reads: 'Life! Is happening here!'

'Self-portrait, March 2017. Except I couldn't use my hands then so I drew this in my head,' the artists wrote. 'If you have trouble walking, I'm thinking of you. If you assist someone who has trouble walking, I'm thinking of you. Even going to a coffee shop in March was a very scary event for me, and just as challenging for my mom (who had to wheel me there). So much of regular daily life felt so, so far out of my reach. It really meant a lot when someone would help get the door.'

Andrew, who has also expressed her creativity through writing throughout her life, has a book coming out in 2018. While she drew the cover art, the book is filled with essays she has written about various topics including finding oneself, dealing with heartache, and feeling at home in a new city.

She also has an online course, in which she teaches how to use drawing as a self-discovery tool. Andrew recommends using one's toughest experiences as inspiration.

'All of my favorite things I've created came from a deep place of pain or plaguing confusion,' she told her friend Susana Alexandra. 'You may think "I'm working this lame job, I'll never be a true artist." But what you don't realize is that your lame job will become part of your art. I'm serious! If you keep creating throughout the hardest, loneliest, ugliest, directionless times of your life, you'll some day wake up and realize you paved a highway heading toward a really spectacular place.'
When it was announced back in January that Tristram Hunt was to resign as a Labour MP to become the V&A's director, critics sniped he had no experience of running such a celebrated institution.

Hunt, 43, is wasting no time in shaking up the ancient regime at the Victoria & Albert Museum, however.

According to a memo leaked to this column, Hunt plans to allow children's comic The Beano to 'take over' the 165-year-old museum in South Kensington, London, next summer.

The show will feature a string of 'exhibits' that have horrified some staff.

A leaked memo reveals Victoria and Albert Museum director Tristram Hunt (pictured) plans to have the iconic London museum taken over by The Beano, writes Sebastian Shakespeare

The memo, sent by V&A festival manager Sophie Reynolds, reveals its plaster cast of Michelangelo's David sculpture will be fitted with a speaker to emit the sound of someone breaking wind when a visitor passes by.

A spokesman refuses to disclose if The Beano's publisher, DC Thomson, is paying the museum to hold the show, which will include a display of catapults of the kind famously used by character Dennis the Menace.

One of the V&A's most valuable objects, Leonardo da Vinci's notebook, will have its case covered in vinyl comic book signs.

'Frankly, some of the things in this memo are disgusting,' a source tells me. '

While it's important to encourage children to visit, farting statues are definitely not the way to do it.

Sources have slammed the decision to let the Dennis the Menace characters and his friends dominate the Kensington museum

'It's crass and pathetic.' With the subject line 'Beano takeover', Ms Reynolds' memo reads: 'I am working on The Beano takeover of the V&A, which will take place in August 2018. This will consist of a trail of installations/interventions throughout the museum.

'We are working with The Beano creative team to set the route and choose the locations they would like to use.

'They are very keen to include the cast of David and the notebook of Leonardo da Vinci.'

She goes on to list some of the planned features, which include: 'display of catapults'; 'how to make a catapult video'; 'notebook of Leonardo da Vinci  vinyls on case'; and 'motion-activated speaker near to David  farting noise'.

A V&A spokesman says: We are in discussion with Beano about the possibility of a collaboration, but the proposed activity is in development and not confirmed.

Sangster son races to the altar

Girl-about-town Eveie Longdon (pictured left), 28, has tied the knot with Robert Sangster's son Max, 27 (pictured right) in an Ibiza ceremony this last weekend

Robert Sangster was known for his generous hospitality  so no doubt the late billionaire racing tycoon would have been proud of his son Max's opulent wedding in Ibiza at the weekend.

Financier Max, 27, is the son of glamorous blonde socialite Susan Sangster, who was unkindly labelled a 'career divorcee' after amassing a fortune through her four marriages.

Happily, that did not deter girl-about-town Eveie Longdon, 28, who is close friends with Princess Eugenie, from tying the knot with Max in a ceremony on the Spanish island where Susan owns a sprawling six-bedroom villa.

Princess Diana's favourite designer, Bruce Oldfield, had been keen to make the dress, but Eveie opted for a spectacular gown by Zuhair Murad, complete with a long train and lace veil (pictured)

Princess Diana's favourite designer, Bruce Oldfield, had been keen to make the dress, but Eveie opted for a spectacular gown by Zuhair Murad, complete with a long train and lace veil.

Eveie will not have had any trouble sourcing seductive frillies to wear underneath: she launched her own lingerie brand, Bare London, which sells a lacy white knicker and bra set for 100.

Minnie's first-class stamp of approval

Minnie Driver missed out on an Oscar for her role in Good Will Hunting, but the actress can now claim a rarer honour: her face has appeared on a postage stamp.

After being told of the accolade by a fan, Minnie shared this image of the stamp, which was issued in the Ivory Coast in 2009.

'My mind has just been blown because it turns out I was on a stamp,' exclaimed the 47-year-old. 'How did I not know this? You could have at least sent me a letter.' Was it lost in the post?

Hollywood star Minnie Driver has achieved the unusual accolade of having her face on a postage stamp (pictured) from the French-speaking African nation Ivory Coast

Condemning Harvey Weinstein while promoting her new film directed by Woody Allen  who was accused of abusing his child  is proving awkward for Kate Winslet.

The actress didn't turn up to the afterparty of Wonder Wheel following its premiere in New York.

'Kate didn't want anyone asking her about Allen and Weinstein, so celebrated with friends,' claims my mole.

After Weinstein was exposed, Winslet called his behaviour 'shocking', but she has sung the praises of Allen, who also married his partner Mia Farrow's adopted daughter, and Roman Polanski, a child rapist. Winslet's spokesman declines to comment, but a friend insists: 'She was always going to celebrate privately.'

Clooney's red-carpet date with Amal...and her mum

Some men avoid their mother-in-law at all costs  but George Clooney is clearly happy to embrace Baria Alamuddin.

The Hollywood star, 56, was joined at the LA premiere of his new film Suburbicon on Sunday by his lawyer wife Amal, 39, and her journalist mother. While George wore a suit, new mum Amal highlighted her figure in a strapless blue gown.

Meanwhile, Baria showed where her daughter gets her sense of style in a dark-green maxi dress with dyed ostrich feather detail.

And it seems Amal's daughter, Ella  who was born in June, along with twin brother Alexander  will follow in their fashionable footsteps. Speaking recently, George revealed: 'Ella is very elegant and dainty. . . She looks like Amal.'

George Clooney (pictured left), 56, was joined at the LA premiere of his new film Suburbicon on Sunday with his wife Amal (pictured), 39, and her mother (right)

The X-Files star Gillian Anderson has been tipped to replace Claire Foy as the Queen in the next series of hit Netflix drama The Crown, which is written by her boyfriend, Peter Morgan.

Now Morgan tells me: 'We worked together on [2006 film] The Last King Of Scotland, but at the time we were both married and that was a lifetime ago. I would work with her again.'

The screenwriter, 54, who has been courting Anderson, 49, since last year, insists: 'I've no idea who we'll cast in the third series.'

The X-Files star Gillian Anderson (pictured) has been tipped to replace Claire Foy as the Queen in the next series of hit Netflix drama The Crown

Which actor could convince as Mick Jagger? I hear plans are afoot to film the memoirs of Dame Antonia Fraser's daughter Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni, with whom the Rolling Stone, now 74, had an affair while he was courting Texan model Jerry Hall.

'I've had a lot of film interest in this book,' reveals Natasha, 53, who recounts how she was seduced by Jagger at 17 in After Andy: Adventures In Warhol Land.

'These things can take time, so nothing's been signed yet.'

Historian Orlando Figes was mortified by the BBC's drama-documentary Russia 1917: Countdown To Revolution. 'I was in it, but I wish I hadn't been,' says the Birkbeck College professor. 'A crass, simplistic, cliche-ridden rendering of October 1917.' Will contributors Martin Amis and Simon Sebag Montefiore similarly disown the Beeb's feeble effort?

Author Jilly Cooper (pictured), 80, says she 'always splashes cold water on her breasts after a hot bath'

Bonkbuster author Jilly Cooper has an invaluable tip to pass on. 'I always splash cold water on my breasts after a hot bath,' says the 80-year-old. 'At 18, I read in a magazine this stopped them drooping. Even at 80, mine still point upwards.'
She announced her unexpected pregnancy on social media.

But Australian mummy blogger Constance Hall revealed the baby news took a turn for the worse after she came under attack by vicious trolls.

The Perth mother is expecting her first child with fiance Denim Cooke, a father-of-two who she met at a skate park earlier this year.

On Monday, the outspoken writer - who shares four children with her estranged husband Bill Mahon - shocked fans when she revealed details about her initial intentions of getting an abortion.

Mummy blogger Constance Hall is expecting her first child with fiance Denim Cooke (right)

The outspoken writer shares four young children with her estranged husband Bill Mahon

'We are not ready for this and I am petrified, babies terrify me,' she wrote.

'But are we happy? Pigs in s***. Well.... I'm hormonal, I considered having an abortion this morning because Densy slept in.'

Many were unimpressed, with some slamming the mother-of-four over her 'distasteful' announcement.

'The worst part of this is that someday the tiny human will learn via internet that it was an accidental pregnancy & that it's "parent" considered an abortion,' one wrote.

Another said: 'Glad the child was an accident. Would hate to think she was reproducing intentionally.'

'Such RESPONSIBLE parenting! NOT! No doubt she will tell this poor child he/she was an accident and make a JOKE of it!' one posted.

And another wrote: 'She's not very intelligent because her child will grow up to read the title of this article and will be hurt to read that they were a "mistake".'

Shortly after she was bombarded with cruel remarks, Ms Hall shared a 'snippet of what I have to live with in the public eye'

The mother met her now-fiance Denim Cooke, a father-of-two at a skate park earlier this year

Shortly after she was bombarded with cruel remarks, Ms Hall shared a 'snippet of what I have to live with in the public eye'.

'Thank you for all of your lovely comments of support,' she wrote.

'We regularly receive messages about how this forum helps women survive, leave or just carry on. I believe in this page and it's Queens.

'Don't ever think your kindness towards me falls on deaf ears, it keeps me alive.'

Following the backlash, Ms Hall issued an apology, saying her pregnancy announcement was just a tongue-in-cheek post

Following the backlash, Ms Hall issued an apology, saying her pregnancy announcement was just a tongue-in-cheek post.

'A lot of people are angry that I joked about abortion. Actually, I was dead set serious, I did consider an abortion this morning,' she said.

'I even called my sister and told her I was considering one. Yes I was hormonal and upset. And I use humour to lighten situations.

'I am pro choice, I always have been and I believe in normalising abortions, they shouldn't be a dirty secret that we don't discuss in public forums.

'That said, I consider abortions and miscarriages/fertility issues two very separate topics. And I would never joke about the latter.

'So I am sorry for offending those that were offended.It wasn't intended to offend.'

Earlier this year, Ms Hall revealed she and her estrange husband of six years Bill Mahon were separating following their marriage breakdown (pictured together)

On Monday, she revealed her unexpected pregnancy to more than a million of her Facebook fans

Her apology comes after she revealed her unexpected pregnancy to more than a million of her Facebook fans.

'The commune is welcoming another baby,' the post read.

'We have no idea how it slipped through. We tried everything, on and off bouts of the pill (until it flared my colitis too much), withdrawal, morning after pills.

'We actually have no idea how this baby slipped through. But it did. I think I'm about eight weeks, haven't been to a doctor or anything yet.'

But despite her concerns, Ms Hall reassured her fans she 'loved this mother f*****, with every inch of my bloated body.

'We are our kids biggest fans and we don't see the harm in putting a new little soul right in the middle of it all,' she continued.

'Expect complaining... a lot of complaining. Baby number 7 is due sometime around June.'

Earlier this year, Ms Hall revealed she and her estrange husband of six years were separating following their marriage breakdown.
She was suspended from her work at Channel Seven in extraordinary circumstances, having her phone removed and being escorted from the building, after she made a sexual harassment complaint against an older male colleague.

And now, 27-year-old Amy Taeuber, has spoken about how alone she felt after her abrupt dismissal by Seven News last year.

Writing for Mamamia, the talented cadet journalist said she felt most 'isolated and betrayed' by other women.

27-year-old former Channel Seven journalist, Amy Taeuber (left with her sister, Kate), has spoken about how alone she felt after her abrupt dismissal by Seven News last year

When she found herself suddenly out of work, the talented cadet journalist said she felt most 'isolated and betrayed' by other women (pictured left and right)

'In a time when I needed the sisterhood the most, I felt as if it had failed me,' Ms Taeuber (pictured reading the news) wrote

'In a time when I needed the sisterhood the most, I felt as if it had failed me,' she wrote.

'What was worse was trying to grapple with the feeling that some female staff, who I considered close friends, had actually helped cement my fate,' she added, candidly.

Amy Taeuber had been a Seven News cadet in Adelaide for a less than a year in March 2016 when she objected to a man allegedly asking, in the presence of other staff, if she was a lesbian.

The 27-year-old journalist's identical triplet sister, Sophie, who worked casually at the network, was present in the newsroom when her male colleague is alleged to have remarked on her single status.

27-year-old Amy Taeuber (pictured left) was suspended by Channel Seven, while one of her triplet sisters, Sophie (right) stopped getting casual work after she lodged a complaint

After lodging a complaint, several weeks later, Ms Taeuber was dismissed by a human resources manager.

She said she was denied a support person in the meeting in which she was suspended and was presented with a series of written allegations she'd never heard of before.

Ms Taeuber also claimed she was denied the right to know the full details of new allegations levelled against her by the Seven Network.

In order to protect her legal rights, Ms Taeuber placed her mobile phone on the table and pressed record.

A female human resources officer then told her she would be relieved of her duties and she was told to hand in her phone and security card, surprising the 27-year-old.

Ms Taeuber said her faith has been restored in the sisterhood after she has connected with the likes of Tracey Spicer (both pictured)

Amy Taeuber (right) was accused of bullying fellow Seven News cadet Peter Fegan (left), when her story featured on the ABC's 7.30 programme

Recently, Ms Taeuber's story came to light on the ABC's 7.30 programme, which played the recording of her dismissal, and said Seven had gone through her emails and alleged she had bullied fellow cadet Peter Fegan, who is based in Sydney.

However, a Seven Network spokesman Simon Francis has denied that allegation.

'On the record we can say that there was an investigation into alleged breaches of Amy Taeuber's employment contract,' he said in a statement.

'Amy was dismissed because of what she said during the investigation which conflicted with the facts and not for the reasons suggested.

'Seven's HR team did not try to build any case against her and their investigation was not related to any complaint made by Amy about other staff.'

Ms Taeuber concluded by saying it's important to choose the moral high ground, and trust and join the sisterhood (pictured with her sisters)

Towards the end of her piece for Mamamia, Ms Taeuber said that 'just when I thought the sisterhood was dead, my faith was restored by the amazing women I met along my journey'.

These women included the journalist, Tracey Spicer, as well as Amber Harrison and her 'beautiful triplet sister, Sophie, who I was thrilled to call a colleague at Seven'.

Ms Taeuber concluded by saying it's important to choose the moral high ground, and trust and join the sisterhood.

'There is no reason for women to endure what I had to from other members of the female media, who need to join the sisterhood ASAP,' she wrote.
A baby girl who was born prematurely weighing just 592 grams has defied the odds of survival as she reunites with her twin brother.

Baby Mila has miraculously pulled through after spending the first 10 months fighting for her life at the Monash Children's Hospital in Victoria.

Their mother Nola went into labour early before she gave birth to twins at 29 weeks after her baby daughter struggled to grow in the womb.

Mila - who was slightly bigger than a pen - tipped the scales at just 592 grams while her twin brother Kai weighed a healthy one-and-a-half kilograms.

Baby Mila was placed in intensive care after being born prematurely weighing just 592 grams as her healthy twin brother got to go home

Little Mila (right) has since defied the odds to reunite with her twin brother Kai (left)

Little Mila was placed in the hospital's intensive care unit for the next 10 months after suffering lung problems and infections.

'We were sort of told throughout that she might not even make it,' her mother said.

Her father Peter added: 'Statistically, they said the was a 40 per cent chance she would not go home, ever.'

But against all odds, the brave girl proved herself to be a fighter - with the love of her twin brother - after her condition improved.

Mila tipped the scales at 592g while her twin brother weighed a healthy one-and-a-half kilos

Parents Peter and Nola were told to prepare for the worse - but little Mila has proved herself to be a fighter - with the love of her twin brother - after her condition improved

Little Mila (left) now weighs more than six kilograms as she prepares to come home with her doting family for the first time in two weeks time

'Throughout it all, she just kept reminding us how strong she was and how much she wanted to get through this, and tough it out,' her mother said.

Little Mila now weighs more than six kilograms as she prepares to come home with her doting family for the first time in two weeks time.

By sharing the story, the family wanted to raise awareness for the hospital's new campaign called Imagination Appeal.
First Dates viewers were awestruck by the 'bravery' of the latest single to visit the restaurant - a female firefighter who helped to save several lives on the night of the tragic Grenfell Tower fire.

Nikki, 31, from Southampton, was on call the night of the devastating blaze in Kensington, London, on June 14, which saw an estimated 80 people lose their lives and many more seriously injured, and left hundreds of families homeless.

It was an emotional moment for Nikki as she told her date, 35-year-old rugby player Ross, from Salisbury, about how she and her colleagues 'could literally not have given any more' physically and mentally while tackling the blaze.

'I did manage to bring somebody out  more than one  so if I've done something that's saved somebody's life then I can call upon that to help me through a bit,' she explained Monday night's show.

Nikki said the experience saw her resolve to 'take more of an active role in my future', and admiring viewers were thrilled to learn at the end of the episode that she and Ross are still seeing one another, with the rugby player describing the 6ft firefighter as his 'blonde superhero'.

Firefighter Nikki was on call the night of the tragic Grenfell Tower fire in June - she spoke about how she rescued several people

The six-foot-one blonde was on a date with rugby player Ross - who was more than a match for her height at six-foot-five

The pair hit it off and it was revealed at the end of the show they were still dating - with Ross joking that he hadn't yet received a fireman's lift from Nikki

'You can still do the best you can do but it's not good enough to save everybody,' Nikki said on the show. 'That's the hard bit.

One viewer watching at home tweeted: 'Nikki is a true hero. Listening to her emotional account of Grenfell just reinforces how incredible our emergency services are.'

'Massive creds to the lady on First Dates who fought the Grenfell fire, our public service workers are actual superheroes,' said another.

'First Dates love that the female firefighter found love with a giant man that called her his real life Super hero. CLASS,' added one.

A sombre Nikki added of the fire: 'It shouldn't have happened like that.'

Viewers watching First Dates took to Twitter to praise Nikki for her bravery, leaving them in awe as she spoke about the events

Firefighters Grenfell tower block in West London where a number of people died after a fire broke out in the tower at Lancaster West Estate in North Kensington

'I was on the FSU that night, which is fire rescue and it was announced over the tannoy 'make pumps twenty'. That means twenty fire appliances have been ordered to one fire.

'When you hear that over the tannoy, you know that's big.

'I think the moment I was most scared was when I was driving along and it came into view,' she told the cameras.

She then said to Ross: 'I had never seen anything like it. I was like "s*** how is this going to be okay?"

As Nikki recalled the harrowing moment she saw the inferno viewers said they couldn't 'imagine the things' she had seen

Nikki and Ross hit it off on the date finding lots of things in common - even down to how they used their knife and fork

Nikki was thrilled that rugby player Ross was taller than her and the pair agreed to see each other again

'How are we going to save as many people as we can and get out of it ourselves. It was huge,' she said.

'I looked at it and I knew I had to go in and go up as high as I could go, and the conditions were ridiculous, it was super hot, there were so many things you have to take in.

'There are so many things you have to get over while you're carrying on climbing and climbing.'

At the end of the show the pair revealed they were 'officially a couple' and had been on lots of dates

The harrowing events affected Nikki more than she thought, and she reflected: 'It wasn't really until the next day that it hit me that I need to take more of an active role in my own future.'

Six-foot-one Nikki had been struggling to find someone who matched her height, but when in walked six-foot-five Ross - her jaw dropped.

The pair hit it off, with Ross calling her his own 'blonde superhero', and at the end of the show it was revealed the pair were 'officially a couple' having found love with each other.

First Dates returns next Monday on Channel 4 at 10pm
It may be her sartorial choices that command attention at public engagements but eagle-eyed royal fans have noticed something rather unusual about the Duchess of Cambridge's style.

Indeed, Kate's fans noted that she never wears coloured nail varnish and instead always plumps for natural or nude shades.

According to Marie Claire, there's a very specific reason behind her seemingly subconscious choice - and it's all down to the Queen.

Eagle-eyed royal fans have noticed that the Duchess of Cambridge never wears coloured nail varnish and instead always plumps for natural or nude shades

The magazine reports that only natural-looking nails are permitted at official royal events.

If Kate isn't wearing the Queen's trusty Essie Ballet Slippers shade on her talons, she likes to mix two polishes together.

Kate learnt the manicure trick from Camilla's manicurist, Marina Sandoval who worked at the Jo Hansford hair salon in Mayfair around the time of the royal wedding and now works at Nicky Clarke. The Duchess of Cornwall arranged for Marina to drive over to Clarence House to give both women's hands the once over ahead of the royal wedding back in 2011.

She treated Kate to a 36 signature manicure, which includes a luxury soak and exfoliation of the hands, a deep tissue massage to stimulate growth, followed by filing, buffing and polishing.

Only natural-looking nails are permitted at official royal events and the Queen has always favoured the same Essie shade, which the brand say Kate has also bought

KATE'S NAIL COLOUR COMBO Bourjois no 28 Rose Lounge, 4.99, a 'feminine and soft pale pink that oozes elegance and sophistication' Essie 423 Allure, 6.57, a 'seductive sheer with a natural finish fit for royalty' Advertisement

Marina revealed that she blended together a special mixture of colours to apply to Kates nails including Bourjois no 28 Rose Lounge, and Essie 423 Allure.

Catherine wanted something very natural looking and I felt these matched her skin colour beautifully. She wanted something off-white and bridal, so these were absolutely perfect, she explained.

She was very pleased with the result and told me that it looked beautiful and elegant.

The Queen has certainly set a precedent by choosing to exclusively wear Essie's Ballet Slippers since 1989.

According to the polish brand's website, Queen Elizabeth's hairdresser sent Essie a letter in 1989 requesting a bottle of the polish, stating that it is 'the only colour Her Majesty would wear'.

Essie describes the Queen's choice as a 'classic pale pink polish', that is 'graced with a subtle, sheer finish'.

The brand told ES Magazine that both Kate and the Queen have purchased the polish, saying: 'We're incredibly proud that the Queen and Kate Middleton have enjoyed our products over the years.'
A man who thought he was happy working as a female model reveals how his brother's tragic suicide made him finally 'choose happiness' and transition.

Barnaby Royce, 26, from Kenosha, Wisconsin, was living as a 'femme' lesbian and working as a model for a gaming company when his sibling committed suicide.

Royce says he knew while still at school that he was going to transition one day but decided to be the 'best female version of himself' until he summoned the courage to come out.

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Barnaby Royce, 26, from Wisconsin thought that he was happy living as a 'femme lesbian' and working as a model until his brother's tragic death proved a wake-up call he needed to come out as trans

As a teenager, Barnaby, who was known as Emily, says he was teased about being a 'dyke' and he decided to be the 'best female version of himself' he could be

Life-changing: Barnaby says his brother taking his own life pushed him to live his to the full. Pictured right, with his girlfriend Jacqueline Farruggia

However, the family tragedy made his reassess what was important to him and Barnaby finally came out as trans in 2015.

'My path to starting my transition is a long one,' he explains.

'Before I started high school I used to get bullied as I wasn't the most feminine girl. Around 2009, the year I graduated I came out to a dear friend about being transgender.

'I knew I always felt different and that my sexuality didn't exactly pinpoint it. My friend was the only person I told of my plans to transition in a few years.

'I figured if I was going to identify as female until then, I was going to be the best woman I could be. So after I graduated high school I came out publicly as a lesbian.

Barnaby says he 'pushed' his 'comfort in femininity' falling for the acceptance and positive attention I received for being the 'femme lesbian'.

He says: 'I thought I was happy because I was getting to travel, paid to look pretty at events and receiving positive attention. It was temporary happiness.'

Barnaby was born Emily and as she went through her teenage years, she assumed she was a 'femme' lesbian. She says she enjoyed the attention of working as a model but knew there was something that wasn't right

Barnaby, who used to be known as Emily Jean Royce, knew he wasn't happy as a woman but it wasn't until his brother's suicide and subsequently his travels that he really found himself.

'I was rushed home where I stayed for a week for the funeral with my family,' he recalled.

'I moved home to my family only for the differences in our grieving to conflict. I then moved to Indianapolis, Indiana where I trained in acrobatics with the Indy community.

'A few months after I found myself living at a yoga retreat campgrounds. I lived in a yurt on the grounds out of a duffel bag for a few months. I sometimes spent weeks at a time on the campgrounds completely alone.

Barnaby has already undergone surgery to have his breasts removed, something which he thinks has left him feeling free and more comfortable

After having his first masculine hair cut, Barnaby's confidence to live as a male grew and he embarked upon a course of hormone treatment

Mid-transition with girlfriend Jacqueline; the couple now live in Greylake, Illinois

Locker room talk: Barnaby says men are so convinced by Barnaby's gender switch that they now treat him like 'one of the guys'

'I really started to learn more about myself. Toward the end of the fall season I met two beautiful humans that invited me on a month long road trip from Illinois to Oregon.

'After returning to Illinois, I had a completely different mindset. Through all the struggles and the joy I truly started to find my happiness.

After my brother's death, I promised myself that my happiness came first and no more living to make anyone else happy... Barnaby Royce

'After living out of a duffel bag for half a year, my feminine appearance became less important to me. I realized how unhappy I was trying to be something I wasn't. I only did it for everyone else and the positive attention I received.

'My brother also lived to make other people happy. He did everything he could to live that 'American Dream' life. He was also bullied in school until he changed his life to please everyone else. I promised myself that my happiness came first and no more living to make anyone else happy.'

Barnaby made the first change at 24 by cutting all his hair off and then starting hormone treatments. He has since had three hours of top surgery and plans to have a hysterectomy next.

The bearded Amazon worker says that his first step towards becoming male was cutting off his long brunette locks and coming out to friends and family

He now lives with his girlfriend, Jacqueline Farruggia, in Grayslake, Illinois and explained how the transition changed his life.

'Before my top surgery I had a very hard time with my dysphoria,' he said.

I personally find my former self to be one of my inspirations and idols. She worked hard, overcame a lot and found the courage to let herself go to give me life... Barnaby

'Before surgery I was between a B and C cup. I wore a binder for two years and I couldn't wear tank tops because even with a binder I had visible cleavage.

'I would over heat in the summers and at work in warehouses. Now I find great joy in just feeling the breeze flow through my shirts. The surgery was life changing and incredibly freeing.

'It has changed my life in many ways: how I view myself and how others view me, my jobs and interactions with men and women, my relationships with friends and family, my interactions in bars and LGBTQ community. I am now viewed as a cis-male. I make more money than when I was female. I notice women avoid me on streets at night. Men use locker room talk around me.

'I feel happy now. I am feeling more and more at home in my body. I no longer feel uncomfortable with the gender I present. It feels like this is who I have been all my life and people are finally seeing me for who I really am. I'm much more confident now.'

Barnaby finally feels at home in his own body; he says yoga retreats have helped him find his spiritual side

Barnaby's family all accept him for who he is and use his correct name and the correct gender pronouns. He had a message for anyone on the same path as he was.

'Trust the process,' he said. 'Be patient. Love yourself. Stay strong. It gets better. I am amazed by the changes I continue to see as more time passes.

'Don't let anyone define your happiness. Find your community that makes you feel at home, it makes a world of difference. Transitioning can be hard but not living as your true self can be so much harder.

'Reach out to your community, my fellow Trans brothers are my extended family. It is so great getting to relate to someone when the process can make you feel so alone.

'Be proud of who you are and are becoming. I personally find my former self to be one of my inspirations and idols.

'She worked hard, overcame a lot and found the courage to let herself go to give me life. I couldn't have made it this far with without her.'
A woman who dressed as a Muslim for a week as part of an experiment for a Channel 4 documentary has admitted she was 'ignorant' about the community she was once 'fearful' of.

Katie Freeman, who previously backed calls for a ban on the burka, spent seven days living with with Saima Alvi, 49, and her family for the show My Week as a Muslim.

The 42-year-old appeared on ITV's This Morning along with Saima, after the controversial programme aired on Monday night, to defend her reasons for taking part and respond to criticism of her transformation - which saw her don prosthetics and fake tan in order to assume her new identity as a Muslim woman.

On the daytime show on Tuesday morning, Katie said the negative opinions she once held about Muslims had been formed thanks to media influence and social conditioning.

'When terror atrocities happen people always point the finger towards Muslims, and because you read it you dont know any better,' she said.

'Through mine it was a lot to do with ignorance because I didnt know any better, that is kind of the way I got my views and opinions.'

Katie Freeman, left, spent seven days living with Saima Alvi, right, and her family in My Week as a Muslim

Katie was transformed for the Channel 4 show, donning prosthetics including a fake nose and teeth as well as fake tan to appear darker

Katie said her opinions changed markedly after filming, during which she was taunted in her hometown of Manchester by punters at a pub she used to frequent.

She was targeted by drinkers while wearing a hijab - including one who asked if she planned to 'blow them up' - in the same week that the Manchester terror attack rocked the city.

Katie, who was joined on the sofa by her host Saima, admitted on This Morning that she used to be frightened of the Muslim community.

'At the beginning I was fearful, on public transport I just presumed they were all out to harm us. If I saw someone in a shop in a burka Id straight away feel on my guard.

'I was generally frightened.'

She also stood by the use of the prosthetics used to transform her from a white woman into one of Pakistani heritage - including a fake nose and teeth.

Katie said it made her more immersed in the experience: 'Nobody could predict how I would feel at the end of it. Nobody told me where I should go.

Katie said having the makeover made her more immersed in the experience and that she wouldn't have understood the abuse Muslims received otherwise

'Disgusting': Katie was subject to Islamaphobic abuse from punters when she walked past her local pub wearing a hijab as part of the Channel 4 documentary My Week as a Muslim, pictured

'Looking back the things I said were completely unjustified.

'To be on the receiving end of the abuse, thats why I think [without] the prosthetics it wouldnt have worked. I wouldnt have got that - how could I explain how I felt if it hadnt happened to me personally.'

Saima agreed, adding she feels Katie would have been recognised were it not for the dramatic makeover: 'It possibly wasnt ideal, but radical methods have to be used to get out the message.'

As part of the documentary, cameras followed Katie as she grappled to integrate with the community - including during a stint as a chaperone on a 'date' between two young Muslims looking to marry.

By the end of the documentary she had become friends with her Muslim hosts, and was left convinced that white and Muslim Brits need to put on a 'united front' in the face of adversity and terrorism.

Horrified: Dismayed viewers took to Twitter to express their horror at the vile taunts

Katie said she felt 'sickened' by the taunts outside the pub and viewers agreed those responsible should be 'ashamed'.

But others claimed it was Katie who should feel embarrassed, after she initially struggled to accept Saima's way of life.

One scene saw Katie explain that she did not think her Manchester-born host 'dressed British', prompting viewers to brand her 'ignorant'.

Just 10 minutes into the hour-long programme, one viewer posted: 'This woman is so awful I can barely watch it.'

The positive outcome also prompted tweets from viewers who praised Channel 4 for creating an 'eye opening' show.

Heckled: Katie said she was left 'sickened' by the abuse she received from pub regulars

Bigots: Viewers were horrified by the abuse - but others said they were not surprised

'Ignorant': Katie felt uncomfortable when Saima's family prayed, pictured, saying she associates 'Allahu Akbar' with suicide bombers

Blasted: Katie was criticised by viewers over her lack of understanding of the Muslim faith

Welcomed: Katie, third from right, stayed with Saima Alvi, 49, third from left, for a week

Alien experience: Katie said she felt like she was 'in another country' living with Saima

Horrifying: Katie and Saima watched the news of the Manchester attack unfolding together

At the beginning of the documentary Katie admitted her prejudices about Muslims, confessing that she had once left a shop because her daughter was left 'frightened' when a woman wearing a burka entered.

She said at the start: 'Banning the headdresses and burkas, I think it would make a lot of people feel a lot happier, a lot safer.

'I wouldn't want to sit next to them because I'd automatically assume they're going to blow something up.'

Katie took part in the experiment in a bid to learn how it feels to be a Muslim in modern Britain, in an age of terrorist attacks and rising instances of anti-Muslim hate crimes.

Immersed: Katie, third from right, joined Saima and her friends for prayers at the local mosque

Reality: Katie became concerned to learn that one woman in niqab feared going outside

The programme drew criticism online when it emerged before it aired that Katie would be given a makeover to look Pakistani; a process that involved darkening her skin and wearing a false nose and teeth.

Her changed appearance made life difficult for Katie, who began experiencing abuse while out and about, particularly in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Manchester Arena, which killed 22 people.

Newfound respect: By the end of the show Katie, right, and Saima had struck up a friendship

Praise: The documentary was hailed as 'positive' and 'amazing' by some viewers

She felt uncomfortable when Saima's family prayed, saying she associated 'Allahu Akbar' with suicide bombers.

The documentary ended with Katie telling her mother about the experiment and revealed herself in her Muslim disguise.

Her mother began crying and said she was 'frightened' of her own daughter, saying: 'I just don't like it Kate. I just look at you and, it's horrible, but i couldn't live in a family like that.'

But Kate had begun to see Muslims in a different light, and said she feels both the White and Muslim communities need to unite.

She said: 'You can't blame the whole of the Muslims for one person's mindless act of terror can you? Just because they choose to live their life differently to me doesn't mean they're any less welcome to be here.

'We have to be strong and put on a united front.'
She is well known for her adventurous approach to fashion but today saw Queen Maxima take a really wild turn.

The Queen of the Netherlands stepped out in a plum coloured ensemble with her dress featuring a feather trim at both the neckline and the hem.

Never afraid to make a statement, Maxima's dress also featured a bold maroon print on a cream background.

Known for her adventuruous approach to fashion Queen Maxima made a bold fashion statement during her engagement today wearing a feather trimmed dress

The mother-of-three showcased a piece from her expansive piece of millinery in the form of deep purple wide-brimmed hat for her engagement today.

Sticking with the colourway the 46-year-old draped a chic wine coloured coat over her shoulders to keep out the October chill.

Always a stickler for detail Maxima completed the ensemble with a pair of plum coloured court shoes and a complementary quilted velvet purse.

The Queen of the Netherlands joined husband King Willam Alexander for a trip to the region of Eemland on Tuesday

Maxima opted for a myriad of plum accessories for her outing today topped with a piece from her expansive millinery collection

A delighted Maxima was given an elegant posy of seasonal blooms by one excitable onlooker

She swept her famous honey coloured locks back into a low chignon and opted for a glamorous makeup look of a smokey eye and a slick of berry lipstick.

The Argentinian born royal joined her husband Kind Willem Alexander, 50, for a visit to region of Eemland in The Netherlands.

The king put on a dapper appearance in a classic navy suit paired with a baby blue tie as he shook hands with locals.

The king put on a dapper appearance in a classic navy suit paired with a baby blue tie as he shook hands with locals

The mayor of the town was present to greet their royal highnesses who joined him for a spot of tea and cake on Tuesday

The cheerful couple received a warm welcome from locals who had lined the street to witness their arrival.

A delighted Maxima was given an elegant posy of seasonal blooms by one excitable onlooker as she arrived at her engagement.

The mayor of the local town was present to greet their royal highnesses who joined him for a spot of tea and cake on Tuesday.
Olivia may be the most popular girls' name in the UK, but another moniker is so beloved that it tops the charts in eight countries even though it's outside the top 10 here.

According to research by babynamewizard.com, Sofia is the top name for parents in eight countries: Mexico, Russia, Chile, Estonia, Slovakia, Argentina, Italy and Switzerland.

The site's experts established Sofia's prevalence by researching national name data from countries around the world, but did not give any reason for the widespread use of the name.

Variants of the name - Sophia and Sophie - are number 11 and 14 in the UK respectively, but Sofia is only the 29th most popular choice, according to Office For National Statistics figures for 2016.

It's a common misconception that the name is Italian, and it's sometimes confused with the Arabic name Safiyah, meaning pure, which is sometimes spelled Safia.

However, Sofia is derived from the Greek word for wisdom and is widely spelled with an 'f' rather than a 'ph' throughout Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Spain - whose former Queen, wife of the former King Juan Carlos - bears the name.

Sofia is the most popular name for baby girls in eight countries according to research by babynamewizard.com (stock image)

Famous namesakes: Celebrities with the popular moniker include Lionel Richie's model daughter (left) and Modern Family star Sofia Vergara

Sofia may of course become even more popular thanks to celebrities with the name, such as Lionel Richie's daughter Sofia, actress Sofia Vergara and director Sofia Coppola.

While variants of Sophie and Sofia are popular with parents, recent research by Baby Centre showed that traditional names such as Ian, Frank and Cynthia are dying out.

No parents who use the site named their children Ian, Ricky or Roger last year.

Girls' names Enid, Dorothy and Bertha were also out of favour.

HOW THE UK'S MOST POPULAR NAMES COMPARE Babynamewizard.com collects data from around the world on the most popular names, although many countries in Africa and Asia do not release such information. While Oliver and Olivia might be favoured by UK parents, here are some of the most beloved names in other countries. Country US Argentina Chile Mexico Republic of Ireland New Zealand Sweden Russia Estonia Slovakia Switzerland France Italy Spain South Africa Israel Top girl's name Emma Sofia Sofia Sofia Emily Olivia Elsa Sofia Sofia Sofia Sofia Louise Sofia Lucia Iminathi Tamar Top boy's name Noah Santiago Agustin Santiago Jack Oliver William Aleksander Rasmus Adam Adam Gabriel Francesco Hugo Junior Mohammed Advertisement

UK popular boys' names According to the Office For National Statistics 1. Oliver 2. Harry 3. George 4. Jack 5. Jacob 6. Noah 7. Charlie 8. Muhammad 9. Thomas 10. Oscar Advertisement

UK popular girls' names According to the Office For National Statistics 1. Olivia 2. Amelia 3. Emily 4. Isla 5. Ava 6. Isabella 7. Lily 8. Jessica 9. Ella 10. Mia Advertisement

MOST UNPOPULAR UK GIRLS' NAMES According to Baby Centre 1. Cilla 2. Bertha 3. Cynthia 4. Janice 5. Anita 6. Marcia 7. Mildred 8. Dorothy 9, Edna 10. Bonnie Advertisement
She was seen doting over an adorable baby over the weekend, as she visited an award-winning village in Spain.

But it was back to business for Queen Letizia as she paid a visit to the World Heath Organization headquarters in Geneva on Tuesday.

The Spanish royal, 45, was impeccably dressed in a chic cream coat and burgundy heels as she arrived at a meeting with WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

She later took off the coat to reveal an elegant red dress underneath, which she co-ordinated with a matching clutch bag.

Queen Letizia was impeccably dressed in a chic cream coat and burgundy heels as she arrived for a meeting at the World Heath Organization headquarters in Geneva today

Letizia has visited the WHO headquarters in Geneva on several occasions in the past, attending a Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative last year.

The mother-of-two has had a busy schedule over the past week, visiting Porenu village in Villaviciosa, Spain, on Saturday.

The royal appeared to enjoy meeting a little baby during the visit with husband King Felipe, leading to suggestions the couple may be considering having another child.

The couple already proud parents to daughters Leonor, 11, and Sofia, 10.

The Spanish royal met with the WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (right)

On Friday, Letizia and Felipe attended the Princesa De Asturias Awards in Oviedo, which recognises the achievements of individuals or organisations in the sciences, arts, literature, humanities and sports.

Letizia wowed in a dramatic white and black gown, which featured an Oriental-inspired leaf print.

Earlier in the day, the royal had enjoyed meeting a canine rescue unit in Oviedo.

The 45-year-old looked in good spirits as she was welcomed by Mr Ghebreyesus on her arrival

Letizia showed off her slender frame in the stylish coat, which was tied up at the front

The royal later removed her outerwear to reveal a red wrap dress, featuring a large collar

Letizia accessorised with a matching clutch bag, adding a berry colour on her lips to finish

The Spanish royal looked ever the professional during her meeting at the WHO headquarters
Queen Mathilde got in touch with her creative side as she attended the preview of an exhibition on Tuesday.

The Queen of Belgian met with Bulgarian artist Christo for her visit to the exhibition 'Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Urban Projects' at ING Art Center in Brussels.

Mathilde, 44, looked her elegant best in a fitted grey marl pencil skirt which she bought to life with a vibrant leopard print blouse.

Queen Mathilde joined Bulgarian artist Christo for her visit to the exhibition 'Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Urban Projects' at ING Art Center in Brussels

Thanks to her suede court shoes Mathilde towered over the Bulgarian artist, 82, but the pair seemed to see the funny side.

The mother-of-four wore her hair in her typical bouffant bob showcasing an elegant pair of drop earrings.

The Belgian royal kept the remainder of her accessories to a minimum taking the form of a brown suede clutch and a delicate gold watch.

Mathilde looked her elegant best in a fitted grey marl pencil skirt which she bought to life with a vibrant leopard print blouse

She and Christo spent time touring the museum together ahead of its official opening on Wednesday

She and Christo spent time touring the museum together ahead of its official opening on Wednesday.

The artist could be seen pointing out and explaining pieces of his work to the royal with his art remaining on display until February 25 2018.

Based on a collection of about 80 original works, this exhibition aims to highlight a certain number of Christo and Jeanne-Claude city projects.

The artist talked the royal through his pieces on display at the museum until February

The exhibition presents a collection of symbolic works, from the first sketches, to the final designs

Their city projects were realized by temporarily adjusting buildings, monuments, public occasions with a high symbolic value.

The exhibition presents a collection of symbolic works, from the first sketches, to the final designs.

Some of these preliminary sketches were presented to the queen today who appeared fascinated by the artist's work.
Riverdale's Camila Mendes has become the latest famous face to reveal that she has suffered through an eating disorder.

The 23-year-old star, who plays Veronica Lodge on the popular CW series, announced on Instagram on Thursday that she is joining Project HEAL, a nonprofit that helps eating disorder sufferers access treatment.

In her announcement she opened up about her own background with the mental illness, saying that she and her older sister both struggled with it.

Putting her fame to good use: Riverdale actress Camila Mendes has opened up about suffering from an eating disorder in the past

Claim to fame: The 23-year-old stars in the popular CW series Riverdale as Veronica Lodge

'Could not be happier about my decision to get involved with Project HEAL,' Camila wrote in the post.

'I can say from experience that eating disorders are serious mental illnesses,' she added. 'Growing up, I watched my big sister suffer from one for many years, and Ive experienced periods of my life when Ive suffered symptoms as well.'

She went on to say that she was joining the project in the hopes that she could help remove some of the stigma surrounding the disorders.

In her first move in supporting the initiative, she pledged to auction off a full day on the set of Riverdale at at gala held at Levi Stadium in Santa Clara on Saturday.

Little ladies: Camila wrote that she had watched her older sister suffer from an eating disorder 'for years'

Some style: The young star also admitted to having 'suffered symptoms as well' in her life

Moving up: Camila revealed that she was about to auction off a day on the Riverdale set to benefit the project

Riverdale, which is loosely based on the wildly popular Archie comics, is currently in its second season and features Camila's character in a relationship with the series' red-headed lead, played by KJ Apa.

Earlier this month, Camila also opened up about another body positivity issue, talking to Teen Vogue about having experienced slut-shaming long before she was famous.

'These two girls who were a few years above us put out this video on Facebook, and they were just like, "Who are freshman sluts? Cami and Kylie,"' she explained.

Riverdalers: The actress is pictured having a racey pizza party with costars Charles Melton and KJ Apa, who plays her onscreen love interest, Archie

Open book: Camila previously revealed that she has also experienced slut-shaming in the past

'They just kind of made this video talking about how much we were sluts ... [when the reality is that] both of us were in relationships, and not even hooking up with anybody but our loved ones.'

Luckily, other people stood up for Camila and her friend and shut down the cruel trolls, but the experience was a lesson.

'[At] the end of the day, my sexuality, my friend's sexuality, was none of their business, and not theirs to judge,' said Camila.
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It takes a VIP to be able to drum up an A-list roster of celebrity guests at your wedding. But it takes a very, very important person to get them to come to your vow renewal a decade later.

Talent manager Guy Oseary, 45, tied the knot with wife Michelle Alves back in 2006, but the lovebirds reaffirmed their commitment with a second wedding on Tuesday in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil  that is speculated to have cost a whopping $250,000.

And they got some of the biggest names in the business to fly in for the lavish affair, including Madonna, Bono, Ashton Kutcher, Matthew McConaughey, Dakota Johnson, and Noel Gallagher.

Guy and Michelle, who have been together since 2002, live in Los Angeles with their four kids: Oliver, 10, Mia, eight, Levi, five, and Jude, three. Guy, a talent manager for Madonna and U2 and a businessman who has invested in the likes of Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, Pinterest and Shazam, married Michelle, a model, in 2006.

They have flown to Michelle's home country of Brazil for the occasion, and managed to get much of Hollywood to follow suit.

Stars including Amy Schumer, Helena Christensen, Karen Elson, Owen Wilson, Red Hot Chili Peppers members Anthony Kiedis and Flea, Alicia Keys, Diddy, Cassie, David Arquette, Chris Rock, and jewelry designer Jennifer Meyer have all been reported to be in town.

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They do! Talent manager Guy Oseary, who is Madonna and U2's manager, tied the knot with wife Michelle Alves in 2006 but the lovebirds renewed their vows on Tuesday in a star-studded ceremony in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Again! Michelle, a Brazilian model, originally married Guy back in 2006 but the two decided to renew their vows. She is pictured here with her sisters and mother

The pre-party: Their star-studded second wedding kicked off with a rehearsal dinner on Monday (pictured)

And a vacation, too: The couple had guests fly to Rio de Janeiro for the event. Among them was Caetano Veloso, a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist, who brought his wife along

Star-studded: The snaps that have popped up on social media show a smiling bride (right) and A-list guests including Caetano Veloso

So many stars: Ahead of the wedding on Tuesday, Bono posed with Helena Christensen (second from left), Dakota Johnson (right), and Roman Abramovich's ex Dasha Zhukova (second from right)

Celeb connections: Helena posed with all of U2, a band Guy manages who obviously flew in to celebrate his big day

Superstar: After the ceremony, Dakota was seen posing by the Christ the Redeemer statue for a fun snap posted on Instagram by her fellow guest, singer and model Karen Elson

Signing autographs: Bono was hounded by fans when he turned up to celebrate his manager's big day

Swanky: Supermodel Helena shared a snap from her room at the luxurious Fasano Hotel on Ipanema Beach

Awkward? Demi Moore (left) is also in town, despite ex Ashton Kutcher also being guest; she is pictured at a local Gucci store

A bit of shopping: Demi was seen buying flip-flops in town before the wedding with two other wedding guests

Madonna brought three of her daughters along, and was snapped with them at the wedding pre-party on Monday night, where she performed.

Few details have been released about the wedding so far, though Guy did share a message for his wife on social media on Tuesday morning.

'Today is a special day in my life: my marriage to my Brazilian princess,' he wrote. 'A new and exciting chapter begins in a few hours.'

Family guy: Guy and Brazilian model Michelle, 39, at an event with their children, Oliver, 11, Mia, eight, and Levi, five, back in 2013

THE BEST CONNECTED MAN IN HOLLYWOOD: WHO IS GUY OSEARY? Money is no object for Guy, who joined Maverick Records as an A&R executive as a teenager and rose through the ranks to become chairman. Under his watchful eye, Maverick has become one of the industry's leading labels, selling over 100 million albums worldwide. He's Madonna, U2, The Prodigy, Alicia Keys, OneRepublic, Pharrell Williams, and Paul Oakenfold's manager, too. He was also a producer of the Twilight movies . He also has an investment company with Hollywood stalwart Ashton Kutcher called A-Grade Investments, which has reportedly turned $30 million into $250 million after putting money into tech startups including AirBnB, Shazam and Uber. He has also penned four books, including one about how to break into the music industry, and coffee table books with photography of Madonna's tours. As well as producing movies, he has also had cameo roles, including one in Charlie's Angels. Advertisement

'Blame is on Rio': Madonna posted a snap of herself in a brightly colored outfit at the pre-party on Monday

Always in the spotlight: She was attention-grabbing in the colorful outfit as she joined Caetano Veloso on stage

The iconic popstar also seems to have performed at the event the night before in a showstopping ensemble

Family affair: Madonna even brought three of her kids along and shared a cute snap with Mercy, Stelle and Estere online

Oh, mom: They posed for pictures together, though her youngest daughters did not seem amused

Thirsty work! The musician said she was 'so happy to be back in Brazil' for the nuptials, and joked about drinking a caiprinha cocktail with her Instagram followers

Dolled up: Before the event, she did a bit of an at-home spa treatment for her Instagram followers

Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. pose during a photoshoot on the roof of the Fasano Hotel ahead of their manager's, Guy Oseary, wedding

TV presenter Heather Parry uploaded this candid snap of the couple looking loved-up on their big day

Among the glamorous guests at the event were comedian Chris Rock and his wife Megalyn Echikunwoke, who is the star of CSI Miami. Demi Moore, right, was also at the event and stunned in a blue floral dress

Mobbed: Brazilian fans waved and took photos on their smartphones as the celebrities passed by

Madonna's adopted 11-year-old daughter, Mercy James, looked down from the balcony at the star-studded event

Could be awkward: Ashton Kutcher and former wife Demi were spotted arriving separately at the luxury hotel oseary has rented out for his guests. Ashton and Guy are business partners and invested $500,000 into Uber and have invested in other start-ups

Eye-popping: Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, 58, was also on the guest list with wife Etty Lau, 42, who busted out of her figure-hugging strapless dress

Will he sing for his supper? Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers paired a pale blue linen jacket with a matching colored silk tie and navy trousers. P Diddy and Cassie made a chic couple, right

What a dress: The singer looked incredible in her floor-skimming floral ensemble

Had assistance: The movie star held onto a security guard as she entered the event and carried a black and gold clutch

Pretty as a petal: Fifty Shades star Dakota Johnson opted for a shimmery dress with a long-sleeved blue bodice featuring a floral design and a dark pink skirt with matching sandal heels

A-list couple: Oscar winner Matthew, 47, was accompanied by his Brazilian wife Camila Alves, who wore a diaphanous sleeveless gown with floral detailing and a plunging neckline

V.I.P. guests: Demi was followed into the private residence by Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, in a purple tie dye suit and matching shoes, and actor Owen Wilson in a jacket and tie

Demi Moore waved to wellwishers and fans as she hopped into a car to attend the nuptials

Star power: Guy is Madonna's long-time manager (pictured in December 2016)

Happy as can be: Bono took to the official U2 Instagram account to share a video of himself and his bandmates at the Fasano Hotel waiting to go to the ceremony

Friends! The band was joined by supermodel Helena, who had gamely posed for pictures with them earlier

Stars shared snaps and videos from inside the big event including P Diddy who shared loved-up snaps with his partner and fellow singer, Cassie

Big names in attendance at the event included Anthony Kiedis, left, who looked dapper in a blue jacket and tie, as well as Hollywood stalwart Matthew McConaughey who arrived with his glamorous wife, Camila Alves

Dakota Johnson, P Diddy, model Karen Elson and Cassie all posed for snaps on social media at the glittering event

Waiting patiently: The Edge also took the change to pose with Helena for Bono's video

Model and singer Karen Elson shared a snap of her catching the bouquet next to Oasis rocker Noel Gallagher

Fancy pants: The reception was held at the mansion of Brazilian TV host Luciano Huck and his wife Angelica (pictured)

Folha de S.Paulo reports that the couple had a joint Jewish (for the groom) and Catholic (for the bride) ceremony, while other outlets have reported that the 'I do's' were held at the food of Rio's famous Christ The Redeemer statue  a prime spot they paid $100,000 to rent.

The party is being held at the mansion of Brazilian TV host Luciano Huck and his wife Angelica, and British DJ Paul Oakenfold is tipped to perform.

A single leaked social media snap from the reception shows the bride in a simple, white, long-sleeve dress with a matching hat.

Her husband, also in white, is pictured standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders while small, elegant bunches of flowers decorate the tables.

Guests are staying at the lavish Fasano Hotel on Ipanema Beach, which the couple has completely rented out  and where fans have camped out in the hopes of snapping pictures.

While most of the stars in town are being discreet on social media, paparazzi have caught several of them enjoying the city and hanging out on the local beaches.

Life's a beach! Anthony Kiedis (left) and Ashton Kutcher (right) went shirtless as they larked around in the surf at Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Tuesday before the wedding

Wave runners: Ashton and a pal (center) chased Madonna's manager and film producer Guy Oseary (right) through the waves ahead of his wedding vow renewal to model wife Michelle

Surf's up: The actor, 39, showed off his impressive pecs and gym-honed six-pack as he braved the large waves on the unusually rainy day

Having a laugh: Ashton enjoyed cavorting in the warm waters of the Atlantic

A big round: Ashton's group of friends laughed and broke out in applause as the hunk walked back up the beach

That's enough: Ashton, Anthony and the gang towelled off as they left the beach

Ashton Kutcher  with whom the groom co-founded A-Grade Investments  was seem enjoying some sand and sun at the beach, as were Anthony Kiedis and Flea. Ashton and Guy notably invested $500,000 in Uber - a stake that is now worth 100 times what they paid. They have also invested in Skype, Airbnb, Spotify, Pinterest and Shazam.

Owen Wilson took a bike ride, and several other guests  including Matthew McConaughey, Chris Rock, and David Arquette  were spotted on their hotel room balconies.

Flea also made a brief trip to his balcony  sans briefs. The 55-year-old musician was seen relaxing outside completely nude, and seemed unfussed by the idea that he could be seen.

More snaps were shared from the pre-wedding celebrations on Tuesday, including one of Bono crouched down beneath a group of beautiful women including Helena Christensen, Dakota Johnson, jeweler Jennifer Meyer, film producer Heather Parry, Karen Elson, and Roman Abramovich's ex-wife Dasha Zhukova.

Bono also posted a video on U2's official Instagram in which he could be seen hanging out with his bandmates, and supermodel Helena while the group waited to head to the ceremony at the Christ the Redeemer statue.

Touching tribute: Guy posted a loving throwback picture of his bride and a sweet message for Michelle on Tuesday, hours before the renewal (left), while she also appeared in a stunning selfie (right) before the wedding

Girls' day: Michelle's bridesmaids seemed happy as they prepared for the magnificent ceremony, which took place at the foot of Rio's famous Christ The Redeemer statue

Say cheese! Michelle was pictured posing for a photograph with her bridal party, who all wore matching leaf-print bathrobes as they got ready for the festivities

He's not getting wet! Matthew McConaughey watched the soggy fun from his balcony at the five-star Fasano in Rio, which Guy has rented out entirely for his celebrity guests

'We're just hanging out, getting ready to go to the wedding,' he told the camera. 'It's not exactly an Irish wedding here in Rio de Janeiro, but it is the wedding of Guy and Michelle which is pretty cool!'

He then proceeded to do a quick tour of the pool area where the group appeared to be waiting, revealing that he was with his bandmates, as well as Helena, who had been taking pictures with the popstars.

However other than a few social media snaps, the couple has kept details like the bride's dress, the food, and the flowers all under wraps - although it is sure to be a decadent affair.

Money is no object for Guy, who joined Maverick Records as an A&R executive as a teenager and rose through the ranks to become chairman.

Under his watchful eye, Maverick has become one of the industry's leading labels, selling over 100 million albums worldwide. He's Madonna, U2, The Prodigy, Alicia Keys, OneRepublic, Pharrell Williams, and Paul Oakenfold's manager, too.

He was also a producer of the Twilight movies. A-Grade Investments, meanwhile, which he runs with Ashton Kutcher, has reportedly turned $30 million into $250 million after putting money into tech startups including AirBnB and Uber.

Jet-set couple: The actor and his wife Camila Alves were wearing white linen ensembles as they arrived at Rio de Janerio Airport earlier in the day

Ready to go: Before heading south to Rio from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Camila posted an Instagram video teasing her upcoming travel

Star-studded: Actor and comedian Chris Rock appeared on the balcony of the luxury beachfront hotel, which the couple have paid $150,000 to hire for their famous friends

And relax! Flea let it all hang out as he chilled out on his hotel balcony totally naked

Nude ambition: The rocker seemed happy and relaxed as he strolled around the balcony, seemingly without a care in the world

Fun in the sun: Actor David Arquette, 46, also looked relaxed as he seemed to enjoy a FaceTime session from his balcony at the luxury hotel

Fans and photographs wait outside the Fasano Hotel for celebrities to head to the biggest wedding of the year
A popular mummy blogger has spoken of the controversial decision she made to chastise another mother's child for hurting her daughter in a play centre.

Laura Mazza, a Melbourne-based mother-of-two, took to Facebook to describe a moment where she warped into a self-confessed 'helicopter parent' when her child was being bullied by two other kids.

While supervising a play-date with her son, three, and daughter, one, the 31-year-old told her thousands of fans she found herself reprimanding a stranger's children - something she claims to have 'never done before' in her life.

Laura Mazza, a Melbourne mother-of-two, (pictured) took to Facebook to describe the moment where she warped into a self-confessed 'helicopter parent' when her child was being bullied by two other kids

While supervising a play-date with her young son and daughter, the 31-year-old told her thousands of fans she found herself reprimanding a stranger's children - something she claims to have 'never done before' in her life (Laura's son Luca is pictured)

'Today I found myself saying the words "hey, that's not nice... please stop" to two little kids. Kids that weren't mine,' Laura wrote on her blog.

'Why? Because no one else was gonna do it. I watched two five-year-olds ram one of those mini driveable cars into my daughter and laugh while she fell over while I was helping my son into the ball pit.'

Laura begins her post by assuring her fans that she is not normally a 'helicopter parent' and admits it is not her responsibility to 'tell off' a stranger's child.

But she confesses after a pivotal moment watching other children blatantly hurt her children, Luca and Sofia, she felt it was her duty to step in.

Laura begins her post by assuring her fans that she is not normally a 'helicopter parent' and admits it is not her responsibility to 'tell off' a stranger's child

But Laura (pictured) confesses after a pivotal moment watching other children blatantly hurt her young kids, she felt it was her duty to step in

'I've never liked to tell a strangers kid off, but if you're gonna pretend you can't see it because you wanna sit and chat, then I'm gonna tell your child off,' Laura goes on to say.

'I've never told another child off in my life. I don't like it. It's not my responsibility. My responsibility, like I said, is to my child.

'If my son snatches, I correct him, if my daughter smacks, I correct her, if my kids are a**holes, I step in. This behaviour is not okay at any age.'

On another occasion Laura says her son was being pushed and smacked by two other children before she scolded them both.

The mummy blogger says she made the controversial decision to step in and scold another person's child for the first time in her life

In her candid post, which garnered nearly 4000 likes, Laura also gives universal permission to all other parents to tell off her child if they witness either of them 'being a jerk'.

'I'm not perfect, not even in the slightest. But I'm polite and I'm not in the business of raising a**holes,' she adds.

'And if you see my kid be a jerk, you tell him off too, or tell me and I'll correct him asap.

Mothers if we don't have each others backs like this, then how can it be a smooth experience for all? This is a village and it only works if we all do our part, that way we can all have a good time.'
One in four women and one in six men aged 65 and over will be physically disabled by 2047, new research reveals.

Their disabilities will be sufficiently severe to affect their day-to-day activities, a study found.

Increasing life expectancies throughout Europe, particularly among women, are thought to be behind the projected handicaps, the research adds.

The findings also reveal regional disparities, with one in 10 women suffering severe restrictions from disabilities in Sweden versus one in three in Slovakia, the study found.

Researchers from the Wittgenstein Centre International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, wrote: '[This] might require several measures to accommodate the needs of an increasing number of people with activity limitations such as expanding infrastructure for disabled people in the public as well as private sectors, training of medical specialists and care professionals.'

One in four women and one in six men aged over 65 will be physically disabled by 2047 (stock)

HUMANS MAY LIVE TO 120 IN JUST 60 YEARS TIME, A LEADING EXPERT CLAIMS Humans may live to 120 in just 60 years time, a leading expert said in May. Research reveals it is possible to slow down our biological, or 'inner', ageing process, which could help us live decades beyond the current life expectancy of 81. Drugs that interact with our DNA maintain the function of our bodies for longer, the research suggests. Experts stress, however, this must be combined with a healthy lifestyle for full effect. Yet, how a 120-year-old life expectancy may impact quality of life is unclear. The side effects of such treatments are also unknown. Several European countries are in talks to start such drug trials within the next three years. Professor Vladimir Khavinson, head of the St. Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology, said: 'It is important to understand that nobody would want to live a long and unhealthy life. 'The main goal for us now must be to allow people to stay healthy for as long as possible into their old age.' Advertisement

How the research was carried out

The researchers analysed data from 26 high and middle-income European countries collected annually between 2008 and 2014.

They also investigated sex-specific life expectancy projections from 2015 to 2050, which were calculated by the UN.

The survey involved questions on long-term health problems that restrict daily activities. The responses of those aged between 55 and 85 were most heavily weighted.

Women suffer more due to living longer

Results reveal around one in four women and one in six men aged 65 and over will have a long-term health issue that restricts their daily activities by 2047.

Women are expected to suffer more severe daily limitations due to their projected disabilities as they tend to live longer.

The findings also revealed substantial variations between regions, with around one in 10 Swedish women over the age of 65 reporting severe disasbility-related restriction in their daily lives versus one in three in Slovakia.

The researchers wrote: '[This] might require several measures to accommodate the needs of an increasing number of people with activity limitations such as expanding infrastructure for disabled people in the public as well as private sectors, training of medical specialists and care professionals.'

The findings were published in the journal BMJ Open.
Statins are being doled out in their thousands to people who do not need them, a study suggests.

One in six patients who started taking the pills between 2010 and 2015 were found to have been at low risk of heart disease  with experts warning of significant overtreatment.

At the same time, many who should have been given statins were not prescribed them.

Just one in six people prescribed statins fall below the threshold according to the Birmingham University study

NHS watchdog NICE says patients who have at least a 10 per cent chance of developing cardiovascular disease over the next decade are eligible to receive the drugs.

But Birmingham University researchers found one-sixth of those prescribed statins fell below this threshold.

A little over a third of patients with a high heart disease risk of more than 20 per cent were given the cholesterol-reducing pills. And of those at an intermediate risk  between a 10 and 20 per cent  just 14 per cent were given the drugs.

The study, published in the British Journal of General Practice, analysed data from 1.4million patients over 40 in England and Wales. They found 217,860 started statin treatment in the 15-year study period.

Statins are incredibly cheap  costing less than 30 a year  and are thought to save 7,000 lives in Britain a year, especially among those who have had heart attacks. But many experts feel the drugs are overused among those who do not really need them. Equally, they estimate six million who could benefit from statins have not been given them.

Some doctors are uneasy with what they describe as the medicalisation of the middle-aged  doling out statin drugs to people just in case they have health problems in later life. The researchers wrote: One in six statin initiations were to low-risk patients indicating significant overtreatment.

The use of cardiovascular risk scoring should result in more targeted prescribing, but there is evidence both of undertreatment of high-risk patients and overtreatment of low-risk patients. It is not possible to establish whether those patients who were above the threshold to be prescribed a statin did not receive treatment because they were not offered it or because they declined an offer.

The study found that prescribing of statins peaked in 2006  after the price dropped. However this rate has since fallen by half, despite a much-publicised push by health officials in 2014 to increase their use.

Doctors are concerned about the amount of middle-aged people being prescribed the pills 'just in case'

They wrote: The initial peak in statin initiations may have been influenced by a dramatic reduction in the cost of prescribing when simvastatin came off patent in 2003.

This may have resulted in saturation of the population of patients who were eligible and willing to take statins over the next few years.

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: Patients should be reassured that GPs are highly trained to prescribe statins. They base their decisions on the circumstances of the individual patient sitting in front of them, including physical, physiological and social factors that might be affecting their health.

This study is interesting because it looks at possible overtreatment and undertreatment, but it simplifies the true situation because it does not include any information about individual patient preferences, other health conditions, or data that was not accurately coded in patient records.
As a typical, fun-loving 18-year-old, Ollie Towler-Jones was used to the occasional hangover  so when he woke up with a crashing headache and nausea after a late night at a music festival in Suffolk, he took a paracetamol and tried to sleep it off.

But when his friends returned to the tent hours later, they found him struggling to breathe and unable to move his legs  which were covered in a purple rash. His mother, Jo, who was also at the festival, arrived at the medical tent to witness a desperate race to save her sons life.

Just eight hours after he had become unwell, Ollie died. He had contracted meningitis W ST-11 (MenW), a strain of meningococcal bacteria that is particularly deadly for teenagers.

It is on the rise  cases have increased fivefold since 2009  and with hundreds of thousands of teenagers now in their first weeks at university, where the risk of spreading the disease intensifies, Ollies heartbroken mother is speaking out to warn others of the dangers.

Missed: Ollie Towler-Jones, then aged 18, with his mother Jo in 2012

It was like a living nightmare, says Jo, 45, a hairdresser from Norwich. I lost my sweet, shy son  my only child.

When Ollie was little, I was paranoid about him catching meningitis. I never expected it to kill him at 18. I was horrified to learn that thousands of kids Ollies age are at risk.

Around a quarter of this years student intake will carry meningococcal bacteria in their noses and throats  and it is spread by close contact such as kissing, sneezing or coughing.

This compares to one in ten of the general population, and although doctors dont know why teens are so prone to carrying the germs, they suspect it is due to living and partying together.

While the death rate for most strains of meningococcal meningitis is around 5 per cent, for the more aggressive MenW ST-11 strain it is 13 per cent  and around one in three teenagers who contract it dies. Others are left with serious long-term problems, such as deafness, blindness, epilepsy, learning difficulties and amputations.

What makes the MenW strains so dangerous is a capsule coating which makes them particularly resistant to the immune system, explains Simon Kroll, professor of paediatrics at Imperial College London and medical director of the charity Meningitis Now.

The infection can spread rapidly. If caught early enough, MenW can be successfully treated with intravenous antibiotics, he says.

Ollie, pictured with Jo over Christmas in 2013, died after contracting meningitis W ST-11

However, the problem is that it often causes gastrointestinal symptoms without the typical headache, rash that doesnt blanch under the pressure of a glass, or aversion to light that most people associate with meningitis.

For this reason, it can look like it isnt serious in the early stages, as vomiting and diarrhoea are common symptoms generally, says Professor Kroll.

A misdiagnosis of gastroenteritis can fatally delay starting life-saving treatment.

Other symptoms of MenW include flu-like illness with fever and shivers, and painful limbs.

MenW is most common in small infants, but teenagers leaving home and going to university are particularly at risk as they are mingling with lots of different people in confined environments, such as university halls and pubs, where germ transfer is increased, says Professor Kroll.

Ollies mother Jo says she and his father Marc, 43, were always overprotective of their son

They are at greater risk of all meningitis strains  but the MenW type has a death rate of 40 per cent among teenagers, often because the symptoms can be easily mistaken for a hangover or stomach bug.

Ollies mother Jo says she and his father Marc, 43, were always overprotective of their son.

When Ollie was three, he had a burning fever and Ill never forget the fear that he had meningitis. I made sure he had the usual vaccinations as he grew up.

Ollie had a booster MenC vaccine at 17, but missed the MenACWY vaccine now being offered to all children aged 13 to 14.

This vaccination programme  which involves a single jab for four different strains of the meningococcal bacteria: A, C, W and Y began in August 2015.

New university students and anyone born on or after September 1, 1996 who  like Ollie  missed their routine school vaccination in years 9 and 10, or the catch-up MenACWY vaccination, can get the vaccine from their GP until their 25th birthday.

Ollie left school to begin an apprenticeship with an IT firm. Jo is convinced he contracted MenW on a holiday with friends in Malia, Crete, in July 2014, to celebrate the end of their A-levels.

The boys were sharing bottles of drink and straws, cigarettes and kissing girls, she says.

When Ollie came home he had a little cough, but appeared fine otherwise, and went to Latitude Festival a week later. Its thought partying and not eating properly might have lowered his immunity in the same way it happens to many university students.

On Wednesday, July 16, 2014, Ollie came home from work, then cheerfully waved his mother goodbye. He exchanged texts with his parents at 7pm on Friday evening, arranging to meet at the festival the next day.

Ollie stayed up until the early hours and when he woke, he tried to sleep off his hangover symptoms. But when his pals returned four hours later, he had vomited and was making grunting noises  one of the signs of meningitis.

His complexion had turned grey, with purple blotches behind his ears.

At 4pm, I had a text from Ollies friend Harry to say he wasnt well and was being treated in the medical tent, says Jo. He said: He is responsive and that really made me panic.

Marc and I ran from the other side of the festival. A nurse came up and asked me if I was Ollies mum. I looked behind her and saw Ollies bare feet, which had turned dark grey. A doctor was cutting off his T-shirt and Ollie had an oxygen mask on.

Ollies bedroom remains the same as the day he left for the festival

I knelt beside him and said: I told you not to peak too early. He smiled and said: Im gutted, Im going to miss Gorillaz, referring to one of his favourite bands.

I told him not to worry and that hed see them later, and with that, Ollie was whisked off on a stretcher to be airlifted to hospital.

At the hospital 20 minutes later, Jo found 20 people working on her son. He was on dialysis because his kidneys had failed, and he had tubes in his ankles, wrists and neck, she says.

The doctors explained he was being put into an induced coma and taken to intensive care, and although they didnt know what was wrong, they thought it was some form of blood poisoning.

We returned to the relatives room. Half an hour later, a nurse ran in to say Ollie had suffered a cardiac arrest. Marc and my dad followed her, but I couldnt move.

After another half-hour, Marc returned to say Ollie had died.

Jo is backing a campaign by Meningitis Now, urging new university students to have the MenACWY vaccine

I had to be sedated and I remember that even the nurses were in tears.

Jo is backing a campaign by Meningitis Now, urging new university students to have the MenACWY vaccine.

Ollie had a MenC booster seven months before he died. If he had been offered the MenW vaccine, I would have insisted he had it. Yet school-leavers are now sent letters inviting them to have the vaccination  and only 33 per cent actually act on it.

Professor Kroll says this is partly because while most parents will protect their babies with vaccines, they dont see robust teenagers as vulnerable.

He adds: Its always difficult to get vaccines to anyone outside early childhood, as young people themselves may not be willing to go for the vaccination.

Mark Hunt, of Meningitis Now, says: It is really important that young people who are starting at university and did not get MenACWY vaccinated before they left home, do so. Student welfare staff at university will be able to provide guidance on how to get the vaccine.

And teenagers should look out for their friends. Teenagers who fall ill often believe they have hangovers, and sometimes A&E doctors could mistake symptoms for drink or drug use, says Professor Kroll. If one of your friends is complaining of a terrible headache and just wants to go to sleep  get medical help.

At her home in Norwich, where Ollies bedroom remains the same as the day he left for the festival, Jo says: Marc and I simply exist now. The only thing we can do is to try to educate other families so no other mother goes through the same as me.
Weak arms: Bake off contestant Val Stones

Her habit of holding up her cake tins to listen to her bakes earned Val Stones the nickname cake whisperer in The Great British Bake Off 2016.

Yet it wasnt just this that caught the attention of viewers: the retired head-teacher also dropped her pans and trays with alarming regularity.

In fact, this was more than simple butterfingers. Like three million others in this country, most of them women, Val has osteoporosis and has twice broken her left wrist and her right humerus  the long bone in the arm  which has weakened her grip.

It was a fact 67-year-old Val decided to keep secret from fellow contestants, producers and the shows presenters, including Mary Berry.

I didnt want it to affect how people treated me, she says. I was cheery on screen, but actually I was gritting my teeth sometimes.

People thought I was a bit dippy dropping things, but that was because of my weak bones. At home, I now have very light tins and trays, but the ones in the Bake Off kitchen were heavy.

With osteoporosis, the dense structure of the bones becomes peppered with holes, like honeycomb, and so can fracture with even a minor injury.

In the UK, half of all women and one in five men over 50 will suffer a fracture, many as a result of osteoporosis.

In those with osteoporosis, old bone is broken down by cells called osteoclasts quicker than cells called osteoblasts produce new bone, so more tissue is lost than is being replaced, explains Sarah Leyland, nurse consultant at the National Osteoporosis Society. The mesh-like scaffolding inside the bone starts to break down and big holes may appear.

The condition is common among post-menopausal women due to the drop in oestrogen, a hormone thought to have a protective effect on bones, but there are other triggers, too.

Some medicines, including corticosteroids, used to treat inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, are thought to slow down the action of the osteoblasts and speed up the osteoclasts, says Sarah Leyland. Low levels of activity may also have an impact. Bone likes being given work to do. Being mobile puts a pull on the bone that keeps it renewing itself. 

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What makes Vals case unusual is that it was detected quickly, when she was in her early 50s  for, according the National Osteoporosis Society, many cases go undiagnosed for years.

Val was 52 when she fractured her left wrist, having taken a tumble over a stile near her home in Somerset. I put out my hand to save myself and landed on it, she says.

Vals arm was put in a plaster cast up to her elbow, and she was referred for an osteoporosis check, an MRI scan and a FRAX (fracture risk assessment) questionnaire, and it was confirmed she had the condition. Val was then put on medication to try to prevent further fractures.

She was one of the lucky ones: osteoporosis is often thought of as a condition of older people, meaning people in their 50s or younger dont get referred for checks after theyve had a fracture  so miss out on the advice and treatment that could prevent further injuries.

Some people can suffer many fractures before medical practitioners put two and two together and diagnose osteoporosis, explains Sarah Leyland.

Val was 52 when she fractured her left wrist, having taken a tumble over a stile near her home in Somerset

The National Osteoporosis Society estimates that one in five women breaks a bone on three or more occasions before being diagnosed. It has called for everyone over 50 who breaks a bone to be assessed for the condition. NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) recommends assessment in women over 65 and men over 75  and in people aged 50 and over only if they have a risk factor for osteoporosis, such as a previous fracture or an early menopause.

But the National Osteoporosis Society claims only 42 per cent of NHS Trusts have such a measure in place. It is shocking that for financial reasons  or simply an unwillingness to implement it more than half of health authorities have no measure to prevent secondary fractures, says Cyrus Cooper, professor of rheumatology at the University of Southampton and president of the International Osteoporosis Foundation.

In his role as director of osteoporosis services at Southampton General, he sees 1,000 women a year in his clinic. Half have a first fracture and the condition has been picked up, so they have not fallen through the net, he says. The other half may have had osteoporosis for an indeterminate number of years.

They may have other conditions which make them high risk  or they may have had several undiagnosed vertebral fractures. These can happen when theyre bending over to pick something up.

Once diagnosed, those with osteoporosis may be given bone-strengthening medication, such as bisphosphonates, which work by slowing down the action of the osteoclasts, or given lifestyle advice.

Sarah Leyland says improving balance can also help, as it reduces the risk of falls. Even little things, such as standing on one leg while brushing your teeth, can help, she says.

After her diagnosis, Val made sure she kept as active as she could. She was treated with alendronic acid, a bisphosphonate drug. I took a tablet weekly and had to sit vertically for 30 minutes afterwards to help prevent gastric reflux, she recalls.

Then in 2013, after 11 years on the tablets, Val was swapped to a bisphosphonate given intravenously once a year. It gave me freedom from heartburn, which was magical, she beams.

But in the same year, she broke her left wrist as well as the humerus in her right arm in a fall. This left her with reduced strength in her wrist and arm, which is why she kept dropping her trays during Bake Off.

Today, Val is determined her condition wont hold her back. She has just walked part of the Great Wall of China this month to raise money for charity.
Pain relief: Mother-of-three Diane Brookes

Diane Brookes used to lose two-and-a-half days every week to crippling migraines. The throbbing pain and violent sickness dominated her life, leaving her incapable of getting out of bed.

It was torture. Our family life was taken over by migraine, recalls the 48-year-old, who lives near Stoke-on-Trent with husband Allen, 46, a company director, and their three children aged 25, five and four.

I couldnt even look after the children. My husband would take them to their parties and send me a video of them playing. It was heartbreaking.

Over the past 25 years Diane has tried more than a dozen drugs and various devices and alternative treatments, yet nothing gave her effective relief.

But now a monthly injection has transformed her life, she says.

Diane took part in a trial for one of a new wave of drugs that are the first specifically developed to prevent migraines.

She received jabs of erenumab, which cut the number, duration and intensity of her migraines by around 80 per cent.

About 8 million people in the UK suffer from migraine, which typically causes throbbing pain and symptoms such as nausea and sensitivity to light.

Painkillers often have little effect during an attack  and even if they work, sufferers may have sufficiently frequent attacks to need a preventative treatment.

However, current preventatives reduce the frequency or severity of attacks by only 50 to 60 per cent, and for some people there will be relatively little benefit.

This makes the new wave of drugs the most significant development in migraine treatment for 30 years, says Professor Anne MacGregor, a specialist in headaches and womens health in the NHS and Harley Street.

Its a big revolution, as there is no drug worldwide that is solely for migraine prevention, she says. Every one was originally developed for another condition.

The main problem with this is the side-effects. Beta-blockers, for example, which can help migraine sufferers by preventing dilation of blood vessels in the brain (which causes pain) were developed for high blood pressure and can also trigger nightmares, hallucinations and tiredness.

Another common preventative drug is amitriptyline. Developed as an antidepressant, it is thought to prevent migraine by blocking reabsorption of the brain chemical serotonin, which plays a role in pain. But it can cause a dry mouth, drowsiness and weight problems.

The new drugs, however, are specifically targeted at migraine  and the studies with erenumab show it has minimal side-effects, with patients given it having lower rates of adverse effects than people taking a placebo (the most common side-effects were headache and chest infection).

During a migraine attack, blood vessels on the surface of the brain dilate, releasing inflammatory chemical messengers that trigger pain. Erenumab is thought to work by blocking a chemical called CGRP (calcitonin gene-related peptide)to prevent the blood vessels dilating.

Erenumab is part of a group of drugs known as CGRP monoclonal antibodies: there are three others  eptinezumab, galcanezumab and fremanezumab.

Studies suggest erenumab can reduce both episodic migraine (attacks that occur for up to 14 days a month) and chronic migraine, where symptoms occur on 15 days or more.

Research presented at the Congress of the International Headache Society last month, funded by the drug company Novartis, gave details of a three-month, gold-standard global trial of 667 patients who had not responded to other treatments.

About 8 million people in the UK suffer from migraine, which typically causes throbbing pain and symptoms such as nausea and sensitivity to light (picture posed by model)

The patients were divided into three groups, receiving either a placebo, 70mg or 140mg of erenumab once a month.

For those on the higher dose, erenumab cut the average number of migraine days by seven per month, and 41 per cent of patients given the higher dose found their number of headache days had halved or more than halved. The placebo group had an average reduction of 2.7 days a month.

Another global trial, published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, involved 955 patients who averaged eight migraine days a month. It reported an average reduction of almost four days of migraine a month on the higher eremutab dose of 140mg. Those on 70mg had 3.2 fewer days of migraine a month. Patients in the placebo group reported an improvement of fewer than two days a month.

There was a range of responses to the treatment, with some patients seeing a major improvement while others reported a much smaller change, says Professor MacGregor, who was not involved in the trial. For those with a good response, their quality of life will markedly change.

Dianes migraines started 25 years ago after the birth of her first daughter, Jessica.

As well as being forced to take to her bed at least two days a week, she had several days of general headache each week. Over the years she tried many treatments. Besides beta-blockers, she took triptans  painkillers developed for migraine that narrow blood vessels in the head.

She also tried acupuncture, which some believe can reduce transmission of pain, and a headband device called Cefaly, which claims to interrupt brain activity associated with migraine. Yet nothing could prevent an attack or stop it once it took hold.

One day, while reading her local paper, Diane spotted an ad that was to change her life.

It gave details of a clinical trial into migraine that was recruiting patients, she recalls.

Diane was accepted for the trial and received the monthly injections into her stomach at the University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust for 15 months, finishing late last year. Within the first month her weekly migraines were down to one bout lasting a few hours: it also stopped the continual violent vomiting that would normally accompany an attack, and reduced the severity of the pain. The other headaches she suffered for about two days a week disappeared.

The difference was huge, says Diane. It massively reduced the intensity and I went from being bedridden for two-and-a-half days a week to just sitting on the sofa for a couple of hours. Then I could get on with my day.

Fayyaz Ahmed, a consultant neurologist at Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, says new treatments such as erenumab will add to the options available to people with chronic migraine. For some people they will make an awful lot of difference, says Dr Ahmed, who was involved in the clinical trial. Whats most exciting is the lack of side-effects.

Monthly injections under the skin, likely done by the patient at home, could also be more attractive to sufferers than another treatment: Botox.

This involves more than 30 injections of the muscle-paralysing drug into the head and neck during every three-month session.

It is not fully understood why Botox works, but it is thought to affect the pathways that pain uses to travel through nerve cells in the brain.

That the new drugs can be given as a monthly injection also means that patients are more likely to stick to a treatment plan than those taking daily pills, adds Brendan Davies, a consultant neurologist at the University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust and a trustee of the Migraine Trust.

Dr Davies, who has been involved in trials of all four new drugs, says: This is a very exciting development for migraine sufferers.

But there is concern that when erenumab is licensed for use in the UK (possibly late next year) it may be extremely expensive.

While the price of the medication has yet to be revealed, Dr Ahmed suggests the high cost of developing the drugs means pharmaceutical companies are likely to make them expensive.

Professor MacGregor shares that view, adding that it is not going to be made immediately available to everyone.

Doctors also caution that even if it is approved for the NHS, it will not be available in the UK for at least a year.

Diane says she will definitely need the drug again. The trial finished a year ago and the effect is starting to wear off.

I will pay privately for it if I have to, she says. Going back to how it was before is unimaginable.
In a medical first surgeons from around the world donned virtual reality headsets to jointly operate on a patient in London.

Last week specialists from across the globe were able to view an operating table in real time and offer their expertise.

The technology, which remotely displays images and patient notes to oversea experts, could be available in hospitals within five years.

By creating medical avatars that move as if they were in the room, specialists are able to discuss any potential complications in real time, which may be particularly helpful during emergency procedures that cannot be considered in advance.

As well as providing surgeon reassurance, the technology is also thought to revolutionise patient safety.

In a first worldwide surgeons donned virtual reality headsets to jointly operate on a patient

HUMAN-LIKE 3D VERTEBRATE ALLOWS SURGEONS TO PRACTICE LIFE-SAVING SPINAL OPERATIONS A human-like 3D vertebrate that allows surgeons to practice life-saving spinal operations could be available next year, it emerged earlier this month. The model is intended to increase doctor's confidence at performing such procedures by allowing them to investigate patients' spines in a risk-free environment before undergoing the operation, according to the researchers. Patients should be assured their surgeon is aware of their specific ailment, with the model hopefully one day being able to be personalised to reflect people's specific condition, such as osteoporosis or sports injuries, they add. Joe Meeks from Nottingham Trent University, who is carrying out the research, told MailOnline: 'From a patient's perspective, a lot of mystery goes into surgery. They can be assured the surgeon knows what your spine looks and feels like. It gives the surgeon and patient confidence. 'Surgeons will be much more confident because theyve practiced these procedures before in a nice, safe environment where theres no life or death situation.' Advertisement

Gives surgeons reassurance and improves patient care

'Avatar experts' from Mumbai and a private London hospital virtually joined Professor Shafi Ahmed at the Royal London Hospital on Thursday as he removed a patient's bowel tumour.

The doctors saw each other moving as if they were in the same room and discussed the operation as it progressed.

They could also draw on scans hovering above the operation table and mention important information in the unnamed female patient's notes. She is expected to be discharged today.

The technology involves Microsoft's Holoens, which are a pair of glasses with built-in sensors and speakers, and sell for 4,500.

Despite the procedure being relatively uncomplicated, Professor Ahmed said the reassurance from other experts that he was performing the operation correctly was helpful.

'Virtual reality has incredible potential'

Professor Ahmed, who has been dubbed the virtual surgeon for his previous technology use, told The Times: 'In other cases, more tricky or complex, we can imagine people giving advice would be very helpful.

'Augmented and virtual reality have incredible potential, not only in the NHS but also to encourage collaboration to improve accessibility, equity and safety in developing countries.'

Although surgical teams discuss operations in advance to assess any potential difficulties, this is often not possible in emergency situations.

Surgeons can discuss procedures via Skype, however, Professor Ahmed believes the virtual reality technology is taking communication one step further to improve patient care.

In 2014 Professor Ahmed wore Google Glasses that allowed students and members of the public to watch while he operated. He also founded the technology company Medical Realities that uses virtual reality to train doctors.
People who sleepwalk are more likely to go operate on autopilot even when they are awake, a new study has found.

Researchers made the discovery after testing the ability of sleepwalkers  medically known as somnambulists  to ignore distractions while walking.

Those who tended to sleepwalk were found to be less affected by having to count backwards while getting to a target object.

Instead, they were able to carry on walking as normal while those who did not sleepwalk were more likely to be thrown off the task by the counting. This suggests they have multi-tasking advantages over non-sleepwalkers.

Sleepwalking  which can involve small gestures, to complex actions such as walking and even getting dressed, driving a car, or playing a musical instrument  is believed to affect between 2-4 per cent of adults.

Sleepwalkers, believed to make up 2-4% of adults, were found to be more likely to go on autopilot even when they are awake (stock photo)

More than 10 per cent of children sleepwalk though most will grow out of it by the time they reach puberty.

Study leader Dr Oliver Kannape, a lecturer in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Central Lancashire, said: Traditionally, little has been known about daytime markers of sleepwalking, mostly because of the difficulty in investigating this condition experimentally.

Our research offers novel insight into this common sleep disorder and provides a clear scientific link between action monitoring, consciousness, and sleepwalking.

THRASHING AROUND IN BED IS AN EARLY SIGN OF PARKINSON'S Kicking, punching and moving around during sleep might be an early sign of Parkinson's disease, recent research suggests. Moving around in sleep, and seeming to 'act out' dreams is a characteristic of a condition called rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder (RBD). Researchers have discovered about half of people with RBD will develop Parkinson's disease or another neurological disorder within a decade of being diagnosed, LiveScience reports. Ultimately, 81 to 90 per cent of patients with RBG with develop a neurodegenerative disorder, they found. 'If you get this disorder and live long enough, you will almost certainly get Parkinson's disease or a condition similar to it  it's an early warning sign,' said Professor Michael Howell, of the University of Minnesota, and co-author of the study. Advertisement

Key findings

Sleepwalking and non-sleepwalking groups were instructed to wear a virtual reality headsets and walk with an avatar towards a visual target.

They were told to then repeat the task while counting backwards in steps of seven.

Scientists recorded their walking speed and accuracy of movement while they did this.

Non-sleepwalkers slowed down significantly when having to count backwards, but sleepwalkers were not affected by the distraction, reported the study which was published in the journal Current Biology.

Co-author Professor Olaf Blanke, head of the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, said: We found that sleepwalkers continued to walk at the same speed, with the same precision as before and were more aware of their movements than non-sleepwalkers.

The research is also a first in the field of action-monitoring, providing important biomarkers for sleepwalkers while they are awake.
A single injection of stem cells could relieve agonising back pain for up to three years and curb the opioid endemic that is spreading in the UK and killing thousands annually in the US, new research suggests.

Stem cell injections into the spine ease the discomfort of around half of chronic lower back pain sufferers for two years, with some even being symptom-free three years later, a study found.

Researchers believe injected stem cells reinflate vertebrae that have dried and cracked by causing water to trap between discs.

Such treatments could resolve the opioid endemic that killed 33,000 people in the US in 2015 alone, with half of such painkiller prescriptions being due to chronic lower back pain.

President Donald Trump announced plans to declare an opioid endemic emergency in August, with experts fearing a similar crisis could be approaching the UK as prescriptions for the strong painkiller are too readily handed out.

Stem cell treatment could relieve back pain for up to three years and curb the opioid endemic

EXERCISE REDUCES CHRONIC LOWER BACK PAIN BY 16% Being highly active reduces the risk of chronic lower back pain by 16 percent, research revealed in July. Regular moderate activity lowers the risk by 14 percent, a study review found. Yet, exercise has no impact on short-term back pain or that which causes hospitalisation or disability, the research adds. Dr Joel Press, physiatrist-in-chief at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, who was not involved in the study, said: 'We were meant to move. We were not meant to be stagnant in any way. 'Generally lower impact, walking type things are probably the starting point. 'Swimming is another low impact activity that puts less load on your back'. Advertisement

How the research was carried out

Researchers from the drug manufacturer Mesoblast in Melbourne injected stem cells into 100 people with degenerative disc disease, which accounts for around 22 percent of cases of chronic lower back pain.

Degenerative disc disease occurs when the spaces between the vertebrae dry out through wear and tear or ageing, causing them to shrink and reducing their ability to absorb shock.

This can lead to trapped nerves and painful inflammation.

The stem cells were extracted from the bone marrow of donors and grown in a lab to create large quantities.

No back pain for up to three years

Results reveal one stem cell injection helped around half of the study's participants to experience no back pain for two years.

Some of the participants have been pain-free for three years.

Almost half of those treated became mobile and dropped 15 points on a 100-scale disability score versus just 13 percent receiving a placebo.

According to the researchers, the donated cells reinflate vertebrae that have dried and cracked by causing water to trap between discs.

Mesoblast's CEO Silviu Itescu said: 'In 100 patients, we've shown substantial improvements in function and pain relief that last two years or more.

'MRI scans found that the cells seemed to rebuild damaged discs in people too.'

The findings were presented at the annual US Spine Intervention Society congress in New Orleans.

A single injection in the spine made some study participants remain pain-free three years on

The opioid crisis

Stem cell treatments may hold hope for curbing the opioid endemic that caused 33,000 deaths in the US in 2015 alone.

Many fatalities occur after patients become addicted to such painkillers following prescriptions to relieve lower back discomfort. Around half of opioid prescriptions are for back pain.

President Donald Trump said in August he intends to declare the US opioid crisis a national emergency, with experts fearing a similar endemic is approaching the UK as prescriptions are too readily handed out.

Australia banned over-the-counter sales of the painkiller from February 2018 after deaths doubled since 2000.

David Thomas, from the opioid and pain working group at the US National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, said: 'We really do need better treatments for lower back pain, so this is encouraging. But we need to see how it works out.'
Three people were rushed to hospital after being bitten by crocodiles in England last year, Government figures show.

One adult was even attacked by the dangerous reptile in a 'residential institution', often used in statistics to define a care home.

The bizarre incidents, normally seen in parts of Africa, Asia and Australia, were released by NHS Digital and formed part of a table of the weirdest hospital admissions.

The report also revealed how there were nearly 900 cases of penis ulcers between March 2016 and April this year, five recorded diagnoses of fetishism - perhaps inspired by the erotic film Fifty Shades of Grey - and 21 cases of paedophilia.

The figures prompted a mocking from Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt who suggested he needed to do more to tackle the spate of cases.

Responding to a tweet about the strange data from all admissions in England, Mr Hunt said: 'Sounds like I need to commission a strategy paper on this one.'

The bizarre incidents, normally seen in parts of Africa, Asia and Australia, were part of a chain of strange statistics released by NHS Digital

Where was the data from?

The data, derived from Hospital Episodes Statistics, encompassed all admissions, appointments and attendances in England between April 2016 and March this year.

There were 98,625,166 diagnoses made across the country in total, the figures show, with many patients having to receive bad news on more than one occasion.

What other bizarre incidents were there?

In addition to the crocodile and alligator incidents, it also showed that 519 people injured themselves by using their powered lawnmowers.

Hospital staff diagnosed 21 people with paedophilia - sexual urges towards children, and 183 people with just a simple bout of sneezing.

It even prompted Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to mockingly suggest that he needs to do more to tackle the spate of cases

While Dr Sarah Holmes, a governor at Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, jokingly drew up a public health campaign to prevent crocodile bites in the future

Mr Hunt's sarcasm prompted a chain of replies from the medical community, including a humorous response from inspectors at the Care Quality Commission

Vibratory urticaria

MR HUNT'S TWEET Mr Hunt's sarcasm prompted a chain of replies from the medical community, including a humorous response from inspectors at the Care Quality Commission. The CQC tweeted: 'When inspecting we ask five key questions to see if care is safe, effective, well-led, responsive, and prepared for crocodiles or alligators.' While Dr Sarah Holmes, a governor at Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, jokingly drew up a public health campaign to prevent crocodile bites in the future. Her plan advised those being chased by the reptiles to run in a zig-zag pattern to give them enough time to 're-evaluate their life'. Advertisement

The figures also showed an 82-year-old developed vibratory urticaria - the outbreak of hives caused by exposing the skin to some form of vibration.

Some 864 unfortunate men were diagnosed with penis ulcers, while 58 people were poisoned from picking berries and eating them.

It was also revealed that seven patients sought medical treatment because they had maggots in their eyes  known as ocular myiasis.

'Victims of lightning'

Fourteen people were deemed 'victims of lightning', and two soldiers were admitted after going on an operation involving nuclear weapons.

Earthquakes in England caused two injuries, while avalanches and landslides were behind nine other admissions to hospital.

The official figures showed there to be five 'victims of volcanic eruption' - despite there being no active volcanoes in the country, suggesting they suffered abroad.

More than 400 cases of people being injured by coming into contact with plant thorns were recorded, alongside 34 accidents using high pressure jets.
Women have fewer children if they live with their mother or mother-in-law, a major new study suggests.

Researchers found, on average, females who live just with their spouse have more children than those who share a bathroom with their relatives.

The findings dismiss widely held theories that sharing a house with a mother or mother-in-law would encourage women to have more children.

Austrian scientists made the conclusion after assessing statistics attained from 2.5 million females across the world.

Researchers found females living just with their spouse to have more children than those who share a bathroom with their relatives, on average

Until now, biologists assumed that a woman who lives with her mother or mother in law would have more children.

But the new study, 'dubbed interesting' and published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, discovered the opposite effect.

Writing in the journal, the researchers said: 'Our data thus point to lower fertility in case of the presence of any mother in the household.

'This is interesting, as one would expect that both mothers should have "some biological interest" in a higher number of grandchildren.

Why does it happen?

Experts blamed reproductive competition behind why many women choose not to have children while living with their own mother or in law.

The University of Vienna team noted how the grandmothers tended to be younger if they were still living with their daughter, or son's spouse.

OPPOSITE FINDINGS... For years, researchers have found that living with parents can affect fertility, most often triggering people to have more. Dutch scientists seven years ago uncovered that having support from grandparents increased the probability of having children. A similar finding was made by a team at Bond University, Queensland after assessing rates of pregnancies in British women two years later 2012. Advertisement

They suggested that a younger grandmother may have children on her own which is more important than raising their own grandchildren.

This may cause a woman to avoid becoming pregnant, as they would perhaps feel they wouldn't receive enough support with their newborn.

How was the study carried out?

Researchers used census data of 2,478,383 married women between the ages of 15 and 34 from 14 countries, including the US, Iraq and Argentina.

Analysis showed a stark cultural difference between which women tend to live with either their parents or in laws. All of the participants lived with their spouse.

Some 1.47 per cent of American women live with their husband's mother, compared to 53 per cent in Iraq, the results revealed.

While the amount of those living with their own mother ranged from 0.79 per cent in Malawi to 17 per cent in Thailand.

The analysis bracket included all women still in their reproductive years, in theory, meaning they had yet to complete their family.

Education, where they lived and their partner's education level were also assessed for any potential effects on the number of children.
A 36-year-old woman is suing her healthcare providers, claiming that both of her breasts and her uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes were removed unnecessarily.

Elisha Cooke-Moore, from Oregon, has a family history of breast cancer and decided with her doctors to undergo genetic testing.

Her lawsuit for $1.8 million, filed on Thursday, claims that her doctors recommended she go forward with a hysterectomy and double mastectomy based on their misinterpretations of her blood work.

It was only after both operations had been done that Cooke-Moore looked through her own medical charts, called the lab, and found out that her tests had been negative for the genetic indicators of cancers, she told Daily Mail Online.

Elisha Cooke-Moore, 36, filed a medical malpractice suit on Thursday against her doctors who, she claims, performed an unnecessary preventative hysterectomy and double mastectomy on her after wrongly interpreting the results of her genetic tests for risk factors of cancers

Cooke-Moore, a mother-of-two in Gold Beach, Oregon, alleges that she was left with a botched breast reconstruction that has required numerous follow-up surgeries to repair in addition to coping with forced early menopause.

'My nipples rotted, my implants were popping out, my skin was ripping,' she told Daily Mail Online. She says that her menopause began three days after the hysterectomy. 'I've been in hell ever since,' she says.

Cooke-Moores mother and grandmother both had breast cancer, so she thought she was taking a proactive approach to her own health by undergoing genetic testing to find out if she had inherited a higher risk of cancer.

After consulting her gynecologist in 2015, she got tested for BRCA1 - the so-called 'Jolie gene' that led Angelina Jolie to undergo a preventative double mastectomy and hysterectomy - BRCA2, and MLH1.

Lori Johns, a nurse, told her she carried mutations of the genes that put her at higher risk for cancers. Johns passed that information along to the doctor she referred Cooke-Moore.

What is a hysterectomy A hysterectomy is a surgical procedure to remove a woman's uterus. The operation is most commonly performed on women between the ages of 40 and 49. More than 20 million American women have had a hysterectomy, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As women approach menopause, the odds that they will develop one of several serious uterine health conditions increases. Doctors may recommend a hysterectomy as a treatment for: fibroids

endometriosis

uterine (endometrial) cancer

chronic uterine pain or bleeding

collapsed uterus In some cases, doctors may suggest a hysterectomy as a preventative measure if a woman has significant warning or early signs of developing one or more of these conditions. When necessary, surgeons may also remove the ovaries and fallopian tubes, if these have also been damaged or are at serious risk of damage. The removal of reproductive organs sends a woman's body into menopause, no matter how old she is. This comes with unpleasant side effects like hot flashes, and many women have to start hormone therapy, taking estrogen to balance out their own hormones. Advertisement

The second doctor reiterated those results and told Cooke-Moore she was at high risk for breast and uterine cancer, the lawsuit claims.

He recommended that she let him perform a hysterectomy to remove her uterus, and sent her to another doctor to have a double mastectomy as well in order to prevent cancers from developing.

In 2016, after she'd had both procedures and a reconstruction, Cooke-Moore claims she discovered that she did not in fact have any of the dangerous gene mutations.

BRCA1 and BRCA2 are known, inherited gene mutations associated with elevated risks of cancer.

Recent studies indicate that between 55 and 65 percent of women with the BRCA1 gene and about 45 percent of women with the BRCA2 mutation will develop breast cancer by the time they are 70, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The MLH1 genetic mutation has received less publicity than the BRCA genes. Its presence in a woman's DNA indicates Lynch syndrome, which puts women at greater risk for developing other cancers, including colorectal and uterine cancers.

The lawsuit Cooke-Moore filed states that MLH1 is not associated with breast cancer, though research on the gene has mixed findings.

Cancer.org lists breast cancer as one of those associated with the gene. Some studies have found that it is not significantly connected, others have reported the MLH1 mutation puts women at a moderately elevated risk of breast cancer.

According to the lawsuit Cooke-Moore received clean mammogram results but was told she was positive for the MLH1 gene mutation.

Lori Johns referred her to Dr William Fitts, for additional breast cancer screening.

Angelina Jolie tested positive for the BRCA1 gene and opted to have a preventative double mastectomy and hysterectomy in 2013, inspiring many women to have their DNA tested and consider the same procedures

It is unclear how Johns, and later Fitts, misinterpreted her results.

'Quite frankly, we are stumped to why they would make this mistake,' Cooke-Moore's lawyer, Christopher Cauble, told the Oregonian.

According to the lawsuit, Dr Fitts told Cooke-Moore that 'her lifetime risk of breast cancer is at least 50 percent, ball bearing cancer 60-70 percent, and endometrial cancer may be as high as 80 percent.'

Speaking to Daily Mail Online, Dr Fitts said 'I got the medical literature to support what I did and we'll see how it comes out in court,' but added 'I'd love to sit down and tell everyone what happened, but that could make me look vindictive.'

Her tests for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes both came back negative too, in February 2016.

Still, Dr Fitts and nurse Johns continued to plan a course of treatment as though Cooke-Moores tests indicated she was at high risk for both breast and uterine cancer, the suit claims.

A total hysterectomy is a surgical procedure to remove a womans uterus, and, if necessary, the ovaries and fallopian tubes.

It is a fairly common treatment for a number of health conditions, including fibroids - non-cancerous growths that women sometimes develop - and endometriosis.

The procedure is becoming slightly more common among younger women as a preventative measure against cancer, but women in the US are most likely to undergo hysterectomies between ages 40 and 49, in the years leading up to menopause.

The operation itself triggers menopause, and after having it done, many women have to start hormone replacement therapy.

The double mastectomy that Dr Carlson performed on Cooke-Moore was supposed to preserve her nipples and she was supposed to get implants at the same time, but she has had several surgeries since to try to correct the reconstruction

In August 2016, when Dr Fitts allegedly performed her hysterectomy, Cooke-Moore was 35 with plenty of time before she would have naturally entered menopause.

In October 2016, Dr Jessica Carlson performed a double mastectomy on Cooke-Moore, removing all of the tissue from both of her breasts and placing implants, according to the lawsuit.

Mastectomies are primarily a form of treatment for women with breast cancers that their doctors judge cannot be kept from spreading by removing just the tumor. Double mastectomies surgically remove all of the tissue of both breasts.

A double mastectomy is a relatively safe procedure, but it is still invasive, requires anesthesia, and comes with risks of infection, long-lasting swelling of the lymph nodes in the arms, numbness, stiffing and, of course, scarring.

Double mastectomy A double mastectomy is the surgical removal of all of the tissue from both breasts. The procedure is a treatment for breast cancer when doctor's determine that partial removal of breast tissue (a lumpectomy) will not be sufficient prevent the cancer from spreading. About one third of women who have cancer in only one breast choose to have the other breast removed as well. Many women choose to have reconstructive surgery at the same time that they have a double mastectomy. After a double mastectomy, hospital stays are usually shorter than three days, though sometimes a little longer if a woman has reconstructive surgery at the same time. After going home, women will have surgical drains for one to two weeks. Full recovery typically takes a few weeks. Single or double mastectomies can lead to lymphedema, a painful swelling of the lymph nodes under the arm. Gentle arm exercises are the best way to prevent lymphedema. Advertisement

In Cooke-Moores case, there was no cancer to remove, she claims. She believed that she was joining the small but rapidly growing ranks of women who have both breasts removed to prevent breast cancer from developing.

Cooke-Moore told Daily Mail Online that she isn't sure when she was handed the paper copy of her test results, but it wasn't until after her surgeries that she found it and called the lab to find out what the results meant.

'I thought I was in good hands, I really did trust her,' Cooke-Moore told Daily Mail Online.

She says that her blood pressure has since sky-rocketed, and that she's been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder.

'It's sad because what can they give me back? Nothing. They took who I was,' she told Daily Mail Online.

Prophylactic, or preventative, mastectomies and hysterectomies are becoming slightly more common, especially after Angelina Jolie, who is positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation, announced in 2013 that she had had both procedures done.

Unlike Jolie, Cooke-Moore claims that her genetic test results did not show that she had inherited gene mutations that would put her at an elevated risk for breast or uterine cancer.

'As a woman, they took what God gave me. I dont even feel like I am one at times,' Cooke-Moore told the Oregonian.

Furthermore, the double mastectomy was supposed to save her nipples for reconstruction, but in a picture of her bare chest after her breasts were removed and replaced with implants, her nipples are barely visible on her scarred reconstructed breasts.

Now, Cooke-Moore is suing her doctors for medical malpractice and $1.8 million in personal damages, the maximum amount she can under Oregon tort law.

Daily Mail Online reached out to the other parties involved in the lawsuit, but did not receive responses.
The world is not ready for an 'inevitable' pandemic, according to the World Bank after simulating four global outbreaks.

In a series of 90-minute sessions, ministers from 12 countries as well as the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tackled 'realistic' hypothetical scenarios of a deadly disease crossing borders, tracking news and social media.

It is an attempt to assess why the global response to 2014's Ebola outbreak was so sloppy, and to fill those gaps before another disaster strikes.

But senior figures involved in the simulations have told the Washington Post we are not ready.

One of the biggest flaws, experts said, is an outdated approach to social media, and the fact that agencies are not accustomed - or not eager - to embrace a culture of publishing information and updates in real time as the general public does.

The four simulations in the last year are part of a broad attempt to assess why the global response to 2014's Ebola outbreak was so sloppy (pictured: Red Cross workers in Monrovia)

'We're frankly not ready for a medium-sized [pandemic],' Ron Klain, President Obama's chief of staff who acted as the Ebola czar during the epidemic three years ago, told the newspaper, when asked if we could handle a global one.

Tim Evans, senior director for health, nutrition and population at the World Bank, agreed with Klain, adding: 'We realized that people were just making it up as they were going along, including us.'

But he warned that the bank is trying to 'prepare much more systematically to be ready for the 100 percent probability we will be dealing with this again. Probably sooner than we expect.'

The issues are so far-reaching it is hard to pinpoint specific targets, experts said.

However, chief among them is an outdated approach to social media.

According to the Post, the latest simulation - held at the World Bank's annual meeting this month - involved a hypothetical Instagram post about a cruise ship worker infected with a deadly disease (similar to a situation that happened during the Ebola outbreak).

Ministers were tasked with reacting to the post by coordinating with the relevant ministers in other departments and countries, as well as making public service announcement to protect the general public and control the threat.

Klain told the Post that seemed to be the underlying problem: government agencies did not know how to use 'non-traditional communication methods' - such as social media and WhatsApp - to impart information in a fluid and speedy way.

Agencies also seemed hamstrung by the culture of sporadic (i.e. once-daily) updates, rather than to-the-minute updates, regardless of the hour of the day.

Nations are also hampered by fears of denting tourism.

During the Ebola epidemic, government officials in outbreak zones were accused of drip-feeding information, for fear of what such a catastrophic outbreak could do to their economy.

A similar accusation was leveled at Puerto Rico last year during the Zika outbreak, when the rate of official cases of Zika diagnoses was far lower than hospitals and newspapers were reporting.

The World Bank has not publicly shared its advice for remedying these disconnects between nations and agencies, and all of the simulations are done off-the-record.

There have been four in the past year - one at last year's World Bank meeting, one in Switzerland in collaboration with the Gates foundation in January, one at the G20 summit in July, and the latest at this year's World Bank meeting.

Experts expect another four, if not more, in the next year amid rising rates of antibiotic resistance and looming fears of a deadly influenza outbreak.
Care homes plan to use robots to interact with the elderly  raising fears they could become a cheap replacement for staff.

A 15,000 robot is to patrol care homes and seek out elderly residents in Southend to talk to.

And a separate British trial starting this month will use robots to bolster staff at homes in the UK, Poland and Greece.

It is hoped that they will eventually be able to monitor pulses and signs of illness in order to alert staff.

Scroll down for video

Lincoln care home resident Jean Clark, 86, is pictured getting acquainted with a new robot that will be helping to look after her

But critics warned that machines should not replace human interaction  and called for funds to be spent on the care crisis instead as the number of older Britons increases.

Lesley Salter, the Southend councillor in charge of care, said the robot called Pepper was 'cute, kind, engaging and learning all the time'.

She said: 'We strongly believe that Pepper can have a positive impact on social care.'

Pepper, which is 4ft tall and gets around on three wheels, will not be used for one-to-one personal care in Southend.

Phil Webster, of the council, said he was developing a memory game for older people involving Pepper.

The robot has cameras with shape-recognition software, as well as four microphones, which allow it to decipher voice tones and expressions in order to determine if people are happy.

Mr Webster said: 'In a residential home he could patrol around and seek out people to talk to.

'He could go up to someone of his own volition and send an email back saying, 'I spent some time with Henry. He says he's happy but he looks sad.' And you could gain more knowledge about the service users.'

But Matthew Egan, of the Unison union, said: 'A smile or a hug from a machine is going to be small comfort to anyone feeling sad and alone.

'Buying robots might be cheaper than training and employing experienced staff, but they're essentially sticking plasters masking a much bigger problem.

Experts are hopeful their state-of-the-art care bots will be able to monitor elderly residents' pulses and spot signs of illnesses. But critics are worried they will lack the same emotional support that can be offered by a human

'As we all live longer, the one million extra care workers needed to look after us all will only materialise when the government provides the funding the system urgently needs.'

The other trial, by Lincoln University, will last about four months.

Lincoln care home resident Jean Clark, 86, who has been introduced to the robot, said: 'The most important thing is health  it will be able to detect the health of the person and maybe communicate that information to a doctor.

'My family don't live in Lincoln so anything that can help me and my disabled husband is fantastic.'

In Japan, a bear-shaped robot is being used to lift people out of beds and into chairs.

Disability charity Scope called for more funding rather than 'pipe dreams of robot carers'.

Age UK director Caroline Abrahams said: 'There's a lot to be said for making smarter use of technology to help people manage health conditions, stay independent for longer and improve the efficiency of back office functions.

'However, technology should only be introduced in situations where it delivers real benefits. When it comes to caring for older people there is no substitute for the human touch.'

Other Pepper models, made by Japanese firm Softbank, are being used to welcome bank customers and take patients to hospital departments.

It can change its eye colour and the tone of its voice to match the mood of the person it is speaking to. It can also interact through touch sensors.
In common with many other news outlets, an article of 5 September stated that Esme Allman, a student at Edinburgh university, had accused Robbie Travers, also a student there, of mocking Isis and being Islamophobic in a complaint to the university. We have since been made aware that although she did complain about Mr Travers, the wording of her particular complaint did not contain these phrases attributed to her. We are happy to set the record straight and apologise for the distress and embarrassment caused to Ms Allman.

To report an inaccuracy, please email corrections@mailonline.co.uk.

To make a formal complaint under IPSO rules please go to www.mailonline.co.uk/readerseditor where you will find an easy-to-use complaints form.

You can also write to Readers Editor, MailOnline, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT or contact IPSO directly at ipso.co.uk
Carving pumpkins is an easy way to get into the Halloween spirit, but, for the eighth graders and their foster grandparents in the basement of the Kensington, things got a little spooky Monday afternoon.

As part of the collaboration between Beatrice Middle School and residents of the Kensington, a group of eighth grader students made the trip up the street to carve pumpkins with their foster grandparents on Monday. About 15 minutes into the carving, the power went out and plunged the basement into darkness while students and seniors were carving and painting their Halloween pumpkins.

Pumpkin carving has been a yearly tradition for the foster grandparents and the students for the past seven years. Seniors at the Kensington went to Korner Pumpkin Patch just outside of Beatrice to pick out a perfect jack-o-lantern pumpkin and bring it back to carve with their eighth graders.

At a table toward the door, Brookelynn Bahnsen was jamming a knife into the top of a long pumpkin, getting ready to remove the stem and take the seeds out with help from classmate, Fatima Lopez, and foster grandmother, Wanda Ivan.

Its going to be a cat, Brookelynn said, pulling the knife from the pumpkin.

At a table in the corner, Loretta Smith and her foster grandchildren, Clare Miller-Petznick, Carlee Kelch and Taylor Oblinger, were scraping the seeds onto an old newspaper. Carlee ran her fingers through the orange and white pile on the table, telling the group that pumpkin guts feel weird.

The group waited for Smith before coming up with a design. Their plan is to carve something scary into the pumpkin, but they werent sure exactly what that would be quite yet.

Smith, who was elbow-deep with a metal spoon in the groups pumpkin said shed been a part of the foster grandparents program for a few years.

Its really fun, she said, gathering a spoonful of seeds onto the pile.

Mike Policky, the eighth grade social studies teacher at Beatrice Middle School, said the foster grandparents program is a great way for kids to learn about the past by talking to people who were there.

For instance, on Sept. 11, the eighth grade students spoke with their foster grandparents about the 9/11 attacks, which happened before they were born.

Now, every two weeks, the students walk two blocks over to the Kensington to spend time and chat with their foster grandparents.

Its a great way to learn about history, Policky said, but even more so, a lot of kids and the foster grandparents end up making lifelong friends.

They come back year after year, Policky said. Sometimes, the residents have family on the East Coast or the West Coast, and the kids become like an extended family on Christmas or Thanksgiving.

This year, Policky will be bringing the class back to the Kensington before the holidays and has plans to dress up like Santa Claus, which has become his yearly tradition.

Trudy Spicer, the program coordinator at the Kensington, said that the pumpkin carving brings back a lot of memories for the kids and their foster grandparents. While a lot of the Kensington residents probably never carved pumpkins as kids, she said, their children almost certainly did, which makes it a lot of fun for both groups.

After the pumpkins are carved, theyll be on display in the lobby where residents will vote on their favorites before they are put outside for the Night of the Great Pumpkin on Oct. 26.

The winner gets a big prize, she said, and though she was not at liberty to divulge what it will be, its going to be pretty exciting.

As kids and their foster grandparents put the final touches on their pumpkins, the lights went out and the 40 or so people gathered in the basement fell silent as the room was lit only by spooky red exit signs.

You know, Spicer told the group when the room went dark and the kids started making ghost noises. Everybody might want to put their knife down for a minute.
Pakistanis anxious over Washington's deepening ties with India will look on with interest as US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to Islamabad on Tuesday.

Tillerson is expected to maintain US pressure on Pakistan to act on militants repeatedly targeting Afghanistan from its soil.

A staunch US Cold War ally, Pakistan has watched warily as America has in recent years pivoted towards its arch-foe and much bigger neighbour - and the country will be keen to dissuade the US from building its relationship with India any further.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has warm words for 'strategic partner' India but warns that Washington will oppose China's 'provocative actions' in the Asia Pacific region

Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Pakistan's prime minister will meet Rex Tillerson on Tuesday

Pakistan, which was a key player in the US-backed invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks, views India as an existential threat and the two nations have fought three wars since their violent separation in 1947.

Tillerson, due to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Pakistan's powerful military chiefs in a one-day visit, is expected to urge Pakistan to do more to root out Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network militants operating on its soil.

But he is also expected to hear Pakistani officials warn him that drawing nuclear-armed India deeper into Afghanistan would destabilise the region and do little to end the 16-year war that is now America's longest military conflict.

'Bringing India into the mix is like adding kerosene to fire,' said Miftah Ismail, a state minister and close ally of Prime Minister Abbasi.

Pakistan is said to be anxious over Washington's growing relationship with India. Pictured: Modi meets Donald Trump at the White House in June

'It's a complete red line. India has no political role to play in Afghanistan as far as we are concerned.'

Many Pakistanis feel betrayed that its traditional ally is now cosying up to India over Afghanistan.

But the anger runs both ways.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj (R) with her Afghanistan counterpart Salahuddin Rabbani after India agreed to provide further assistence to Afghan defence forces

The United States accuses Pakistan of playing a double game since 2001, offering public backing to Washington while turning a blind eye, or even at times assisting, the Afghan Taliban and other militants who carry out deadly attacks against U.S. forces and their allies in Afghanistan.

Pakistan supported the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s as a hedge to Indian influence in Afghanistan, and analysts say its military and security services maintained ties long after the Taliban regime was toppled in 2001.

Pakistan denies providing a safe haven for Afghan Taliban and other militant fighters.

Tillerson, during a visit to Afghanistan on Monday, said Washington has made some 'very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support the Taliban receives and other terrorist organisations receive'.

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis earlier this month said the United States would try 'one more time' to work with Pakistan in Afghanistan, before opting for more punitive measures. President Donald Trump has vowed to be tougher on Pakistan than his predecessors.

The United States has threatened further military aid cuts and US officials have mooted targeted sanctions against Pakistani military figures, but in the past two weeks there have been hints of a slight thawing in ties.

Pakistan looks set to try to dissuade the US from building its relationship with India any further

US Vice President Mike Pence and Tillerson last week called Abbasi to thank Pakistan after its army rescued a US-Canadian couple who were held hostage by the Taliban-allied Haqqani network for nearly five years, along with their three children born in captivity.

Relations were further boosted when Omar Khalid Khorasani, leader of the lethal Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) group who Islamabad had been trying to catch for years, was killed by a US drone strike last week.

India has increased aid to Afghanistan in recent years and last year promised to ship more arms. Such moves have aggravating fears in Pakistan that it will find itself wedged between two hostile neighbours.

India has increased aid to Afghanistan in recent years and last year promised to ship more arms. Pictured is the remains of a bombed mosque in Kabul

Islamabad bristles at the idea that India holds the key to ending the Afghanistan conflict, and fears US meddling could unsettle a delicate balance of power in South Asia.

'Promoting a higher involvement of India in Afghanistan will only worsen the historic strategic rivalries playing out in the region,' said Sherry Rehman, Pakistan's former ambassador to United States and a senior member of the opposition Pakistan People's Party.

Pakistan points to the 3.5 million Afghan refugees it hosts as proof that it has more than anyone else to lose from chaos in Afghanistan, and has emphasised the need for greater cooperation and intelligence sharing with United States and Afghanistan.

But while Pakistan may not like it, India looks set to continue playing a role in Afghanistan, according to Sushant Sareen, a foreign policy analyst at the Vivekananda International Foundation, a think-tank with ties to the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

'The message is very clear that India is an important player when it comes to coordinating policies between Afghanistan and Washington,' said Sareen.
Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani didn't mince his words when he spoke on the issue of regional security and terrorism on his visit to India.

Addressing a public gathering at the Vivekananda International Foundation, Ghani emphasised the need to engage as responsible regional and global stakeholders.

While referring to Pakistan he said, 'Where we haven't made progress, despite trying, unfortunately is with Pakistan.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani

'We held the hand of peace and dialogue but unfortunately saw conflict.'

He said that Pakistan needs to make a choice as state-sponsored terrorism is the biggest challenge to bring peace and stability in the region.

'The distinction between good and bad terrorism is still haunting us', he said.

On Tuesday, bilateral talks were held between the Afghan delegation led by Ghani and the Indian delegation led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi where both sides agreed that 'renunciation of violence and terror; and closure of cross border safe havens and sanctuaries were essential for any meaningful progress and lasting peace.'

In the press statement released by Ministry of External Affairs, the Indian side agreed to extend further assistance depending upon the needs of the Afghan defence and police forces.

'The Indian leadership reiterated its support for a negotiated political reconciliation in Afghanistan that is Afghan led, owned and controlled', the statement said.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is set to visit India

Mentioning about what lies ahead for the nation, Ghani said, 'In various scenarios we have to see if 2018 is going to be the most troubled and dangerous time for Afghanistan or will we see a quiet 2018, but will have to be prepared for a tensed 2019...', he said.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on his visit to Afghanistan on Monday had reiterated the same concerns. Carrying the very same strong message on terror, Tillerson held talks with the Pakistani leadership on Tuesday.

He will be in India on Wednesday.

Ghani also rubbished Pakistan's claims that India and Afghanistan are colluding to work against its interests.

'No secret agreements between India and Afghan. There are no secret facilities, no destabilisation of neighbours taking place through Afghan by implicit or explicit Indian collusion... Let's get out of the world of fiction', he said.

India and Afghanistan held a review meet of their ties on Tuesday to further the objective of seeing Kabul emerge as a 'stable, peaceful, progressive, prosperous and pluralistic nation'.

'India assisted in projects, including health, agriculture, education, infrastructure and skill development, among others and will further contribute to Afghanistan's economic development,' the press statement said.
A city cooperative bank's alleged attempts to 'sugar-coat' fund mismanagement over several years have been uncovered during an internal probe conducted by Delhi's registrar of cooperative societies.

Mail Today has learnt that directors of the Delhi Nagrik Sehkari Bank spent Rs 32 lakh on distributing sweets and dry fruits for Diwali among nearly 350 staff members between 2010 and 2014.

The cooperative bank established in 1969 is already being investigated by Delhi Assembly committees over accusations of fraudulent loans and illegal appointments.

Delhi Nagrik Sehkari Bank spent Rs 32 lakh on distributing sweets and dry fruits for Diwali

'Expenditure on sweets in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 stands at Rs 6,23,200 (7280), Rs 7,18,750 (8396), Rs 9,24,250 (10797) and Rs 9,36,000 (10934) respectively,' revealed the bank officials in a response to the probe conducted by the registrar

Apart from the extravagant expenditure on sweets, the bank also purchased items worth Rs 1,09,025 (Rs 1273) from Metals and Minerals Trading Corporation of India  the country's largest public sector trading body  in November 2012 and gifted them to VIP dignitaries on Diwali.

The expenses incurred were approved by the board of directors and chairman, the report signed by the bank's inspection officer noted.

AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj claimed that the scam unfolded when Sheila Dikshit was Delhis chief minister

MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj from Delhi's ruling Aam Aadmi Party claimed that the then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit knew about the alleged scam that unfolded during her tenure.

'The Vidhan Sabha committee is investigating the matter as we have been informed that the bank fraudulently provided 80 per cent of the loans worth crores based on fake documents,' he told Mail Today.

The website of Delhi Nagrik Sehkari Bank limited mentions that its staff strength currently stands at over 290 members.

The findings of the probe state that the 'so-called suppliers of the sweets and dry fruits do not appear to be genuine' as none of them are registered under VAT.

'How can the number of sweets boxes purchased exceed the available staff by three folds approximately and the procedure followed is alarming,' the inspection officer has pointed out.

Speaking to Mail Today, Upender Garg, CEO of Delhi Nagrik Sehkari Bank Limited, said, 'The amount spent on the sweets and dry fruits is a compilation of expenditure claimed to be incurred by the bank over a period of time.

Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit 'knew about the alleged scam' that unfolded during her tenure

'But the probe is in its final stage and the officials will cooperate to provide all details required.'

The bank purportedly procured 875 packets of sweets and an equal number of dry fruit packets in 2010. The next year, it bank purchased 1,250 kg of sweets and 1,000 packets of dry fruits. It bought 1,200 boxes of dry fruits and 1,250 boxes of sweets in 2012.

In the year 2013, bills enclosed by the bank show purchase of 1,200 boxes of sweets and dry fruits. However, in 2014, the bank paid Rs 780 (9) to each of its 352 employees and did not distribute gifts.
A court has made an order for Sir Hector Sants to provide evidence behind close doors

A City regulator will give crucial evidence about Lloyds disastrous HBOS takeover in secret  meaning details of the deal could remain hidden.

Former Financial Services Authority boss Sir Hector Sants is due to appear in a High Court case over Lloyds 12bn acquisition of failing HBOS in 2008 as the financial crisis raged.

Just months after the acquisition, Lloyds was forced to beg taxpayers for a 20.5bn bailout.

Around 6,000 shareholders are suing Lloyds and five former directors for up to 600m, claiming it should never have bought HBOS and sought to mislead investors over the value of the merger.

Evidence from Sants (pictured) about the run-up to the deal could prove vital and will shed light on why the Establishment was desperate for it to go ahead.

But the 61-year-old  now vice chairman at global consultancy Oliver Wyman  has been granted special permission to give his evidence in secret, with the Press and public excluded from the courtroom.

Even the fact this deal exists was itself previously a secret, and can only be revealed today after the Mail and a group of other news organisations sought to have it overturned.

The court would not reveal why the order had been made.

Santss evidence is likely to include reference to documents which the Government has long sought to keep from public view.

They reveal conversations between the Treasury, FSA and Bank of England as the markets teetered on the brink of collapse and HBOS struggled to stay afloat.

The role played by ministers and watchdogs is key to the court case, with the claimants lawyers suggesting that Lloyds came under heavy pressure to buy what was essentially a tainted asset.

Along with the bank, they are also suing former chief executive Eric Daniels, ex-chairman Sir Victor Blank and three other senior figures.

The shareholders barrister Richard Hill QC has accused Daniels of carrying out a sales job on his own board to persuade them the takeover was a good idea.

Lloyds share price crashed in the financial crisis and investors blame the takeover of crippled HBOS for such a hefty decline

Hill added that the group massaged away problems in meetings with non-executive directors who raised concerns. In reality, he said, HBOS was toxic enough to bring Lloyds down.

As hearings began last week, Hill said: We are saying shareholders were mugged in this acquisition and should never have been kept in the dark.

Lloyds argues the case is fundamentally flawed at every level. The banks lawyers added that the acquisition took place in extremely challenging market conditions and, by necessity, over a relatively short period of time during which the general economic situation changed radically and rapidly.
The boss of the London Stock Exchange has sold 4.5million of shares  just one day after he revealed he was quitting the business.

Xavier Rolet will stand down in 2018 after nine years at the helm, during which time he has amassed a multi-million pound stake in the firm.

The 57-year-old Frenchman has begun to cash in this treasure trove, selling 117,232 shares on Friday for around 4.5million.

It leaves him with a stake worth 16.6million at todays prices owned outright, plus another tranche of stock valued at up to 13.3million if he hits bonus targets. He has overseen LSEs growth from an 800millon company to one worth 13.4billion today.

However, he will also be remembered for a failed effort to sell the 216-year-old exchange to German rival Deutsche Borse.

Insiders insisted his decision to quit was not linked to the collapse of the Deutsche deal.

Rolet is a keen amateur motor racer who has competed in the cross-desert Dakar Rally several times. He also owns 74 acres of vineyards in Provence.
Supplies takeover Medical supplies firm Smith & Nephew has reached a deal to buy Rotation Medical, which makes shoulder tissue technologies, for 94.8million.

Settled claims Australian lender ANZ Bank has settled with the countrys finance watchdog over claims it rigged a national borrowing rate.

Results joy Waste converter Renewi expects results for the year to be above expectations, boosted by September results.

New boss International engineer Assystem has named former General Electric director Robert Plana as chief technical officer of its energy and infrastructure division.

Zinc soars Miner Vedantas subsidiary Hindustan Zinc Ltd has posted a 34pc rise in second-quarter profit to 297m.

Market sale Owner of the New York Stock Exchange Intercontinental Exchange is expected to pay around 200m for RBSs 4pc holding in market infrastructure business Euroclear.

Pension plots Over-50s insurer Saga is reportedly mulling an increase in charges for savers, and a cap on pay-outs when they leave its lucrative defined benefit pension scheme.

Tech tie-up Wall Street lender JP Morgan has signed a deal with London tech start-up Mosaic Smart Data to use the British firms software to analyse data in the search for higher profits.

Vampire prowling Australian investment bank Macquarie, dubbed the vampire kangaroo, is in the running to buy Old Mutuals fund management arm.

Medical deal Pharma firm Clinigen has bought Japanese unlicensed medicines supplier International Medical Management Corporation.

Maria impact Cigarette filter maker Essentra expects to take a 1.2m-1.5m hit from Hurricane Marias impact on its health and personal care packaging sites in Puerto Rico last month.

Diamond woe Miner Petra Diamonds said first quarter revenue fell 17pc after the government of Tanzania seized a consignment of diamonds from its Williamsburg mine after accusing it of undervaluing the stones, which Petra denies.
Japans Shinzo Abe has managed to achieve an electoral success unmatched by the leaders of other advanced economies.

Reforms associated with Abenomics may not have been adopted as quickly as once promised, but the prime minister has delivered growth after years of stagnation with the IMF forecasting 1.5 per cent expansion this year.

Abe benefits politically from the fact that Japan is a less unequal society  prosperity is more evenly spread  than its Western partners. The revival of output, driven by smaller enterprises as well as sectors such as motors, IT and industrial machinery, powered the key Nikkei stock market index to 15 consecutive days of gains, and its best level since 1996.

Shinzo Abe, Prime minister of Japan, has delivered growth after years of stagnation

Abe and the Bank of Japan have kept the monetary accelerator to the floor. A squeeze on consumption is baked in the cake with the commitment to raise sales taxes in October 2019. Some 40 per cent of the proceeds are due to pay for child care. This is seen as essential in encouraging women back to work.

As one of the worlds great exporters Japan is also being supported by a weak yen. The rise of China has tended to obscure Japans role as a global economic power. But even though it may not enjoy the best of political relations with Beijing, it is a big supplier of the industrial equipment which propels the Peoples Republic forward.

Abes LDP stood firm against the challenger Party of Hope headed by Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike. That may give him the opportunity to press ahead with corporate governance reforms. There are signs deflation has been beaten back but prices are still rising at below 2 per cent and wages are subdued.

In Japan, at least the great monetary easing still has a distance to run.

Grandees charter

Readers dipping into the FT City Network survey on capitalism might be forgiven a wry smile. Included among City panjandrums bewailing greed in the boardroom, short-termism and tax avoidance are some serial offenders.

Sir Nigel Rudd, chairman of engineer Meggitt, suggests boards have been hijacked by the management class. As chairman of a variety of public companies including Boots, Pilkington, BAA and Invensys, all sold to overseas buyers, Rudd subjugated the public interest to short-term gains for investors and enriched management.

A neat aspect of takeovers, wherever they come from, is that more often than not they trigger payouts on share options turning managers into multi-millionaires.

Douglas Flint, who has just stepped down as chairman of HSBC, spent much of his time in office clearing up the mess made by some of his predecessors with disastrous takeovers of money laundering banks in Mexico, sub-prime mortgage lender Household and the Safra private banks.

It was on his watch that disclosures of tax avoidance at the Geneva branch of HSBC emerged, including arrangements under which chief executive Stuart Gulliver was paid through Panama to the avoid avaricious eyes of colleagues.

There is joy in the heavens when the sinner is repentant but it is worth noting that many of those named in the survey stuffed their wallets with excessive pay and awards before launching their attack on the next generation. Moreover, particularly in banking, they have done little to curb the pay arms race which is a contributor to the great divide between ordinary citizens and the elites.

It is during their period in office that the forces which produced Trump, AfD in Germany, the Freedom Party in Austria and Brexit were forged.

On a day when corporate bigwigs are being disparaging of short-termism we learn that shareholders in UK-listed firms are in line for record breaking dividends of 94billion this year. This at a moment when business investment is underwhelming and productivity in the soup.

The longer term solution is to invest in technology and equipment, not executive pay and special dividends.

Poor signal

Hang out the bunting, the London Stock Exchange is set to welcome broadcast and telecoms-mast pioneer Arqiva to the listings after private equity owners failed to find a buyer for the 6billion outfit.

Beware of private equity bearing gifts. The 2016-17 accounts show an enterprise weighed down with 5.2billion of debt which paid no UK corporation tax over the last two years. Thats a message which should keep the masts vibrating.
Adrian Whitehurst and his wife lived a luxury lifestyle from debt management firm

A couple who ran a finance firm used their struggling clients cash to fund a luxury lifestyle of holidays, fast cars and designer goods.

Adrian and Christine Whitehursts business First Step Finance went bust in 2014 owing 6million to 4,000 customers with problem debt, who are now unlikely to recover a penny.

The Whitehursts firm offered to help people who found it hard to pay their bills by consolidating all the money they owed into a single pot.

They took regular payments from clients and told them their cash was being safely looked after. But instead, the pair frittered it away on themselves  spending 500,000 on holidays at five-star luxury hotels in Marbella, Venice, Vienna and Greece.

More than 200,000 was blown on luxury vehicles. And the cash was also used to fund a shopping spree which saw the pair spend 50,000 on designer goods.

The Whitehursts  who critics have nicknamed the vampires of debt  have been banned from working in finance by the Financial Conduct Authority watchdog. It has also referred the matter to the City of London Police.
Tidjane Thiam was one of the reported external applicants for HSBC chief exec role

HBSCs appointment of company lifer John Flint as its next chief executive fulfilled my long-held prediction the job would go internally. Not that there wasnt plenty of outside interest. I hear Credit Suisses Cote dIvoire-born chief executive Tidjane Thiam, 55, made a cheeky play for the position, which received a swift non merci from the board. With Credit Suisses share price nearly halving on his watch, Im told 9.6m a-year Tidjanes prospects of another big banking job are not favourable.

The future of Deutsche Borses silver-maned chief Carsten Kengeter, 50, is much discussed in Germany, where he remains embroiled in a 4m insider trading scandal. Colleagues have taken to referring to their embattled boss as Herr Wanngehter, roughly translated as Mr When Will He Go. As nicknames go its hardly a thigh-slapper, but then ze German sense of humour is no laughing matter.

Business tycoon and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, 75, who opens his firms new European headquarters in the City today, describes Britains decision to leave the European Union as the single stupidest thing any country s ever done. Very, very stupid. A tad ungracious? We gave the ungrateful wretch an honorary knighthood as I recall.

Wholl succeed Xavier Rolet as head of the London Stock Exchange when the 6.3m a-year Frenchman tootles back to his vineyard in Provence next year? One suggestion mooted which is likely to raise eyebrows is Blythe Masters, the uber-glamorous ex-JP Morgan executive currently boss of technology firm Digital Asset. The Oxford-born brunette, 48, is credited with inventing the notorious credit default swap, the instrument partly responsible for the 2008 meltdown.

Rupert Murdochs wife Jerry Hall was spotted in the stalls on Friday night at Ink, the brilliant West End play dramatising the media moguls brazen acquistion of the The Sun in 1969. No sign of KRM himself, which is a pity. He would find Doctor Foster actor Bertie Cavells portrayal of him most sympathetic.
Listing activity in the City is certainly gathering pace

A city fees bonanza is on the horizon as a flurry of companies plot stock market listings.

Telecoms tower firm Arqiva, which owns radio and TV transmission masts and counts the BBC, ITV and mobile phone operators among its customers, outlined plans yesterday to join the London Stock Exchange in a 6billion deal next month.

It is the latest company to announce a big UK float in recent weeks, with bosses seeking to raise 1.5billion initially to pay down debts.

Others include Russias EN+, debt collector Cabot, services firm TMF Group and auto parts maker TI Fluid Systems.

The flotations are set to trigger multiple paydays for City advisers including bankers, lawyers and PR executives.

The deal announced yesterday would give Arqiva a market value of 4.5billion, or 6billion with debt, meaning it is likely to enter the FTSE 100 index. It would also resolve a controversial financing structure that has seen the company  owned by vampire kangaroo investor Macquarie and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board  criticised for the amount of taxes it pays. The firm has struggled under more than 2bn of debts to shareholders, posting losses of 1.2billion over the past four years, but the float will convert much of this into equity.

Arqivas network includes about 8,000 masts, used for radio, TV, mobile and the internet of things, as well as emergency and security communications. The company promised generous dividends for shareholders and pledged to invest in fibre broadband cables and 5G mobile internet technology. Rothschild is advising on the float, with HSBC, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan helping to coordinate it abroad.

Hello fresh in 1.3billion deal HELLO Fresh is targeting a 1.3billion stock market float as it seeks to topple American recipe-boxes rival Blue Apron.

The German company has set a target range of 8- 10.24 per share and hopes to raise up to 277million to expand.

Hello Fresh sends a recipes and the food needed to make them to customers homes each week.

Blue Aprons value has dropped by about half since its June public offering. The firms stock soured after it lost customers in the second quarter.

It has also been rattled by rumours Amazon will launch its own recipe box service.

In July the internet giant filed the trademark We do the prep. You be the chef.

Listing activity in the City is certainly gathering pace. Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaskas aluminium and hydropower business EN+ is also planning to raise around 1bn by joining the London and Moscow stock exchanges next month. Citigroup, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, SIB, VTB Capital, BMO Capital Markets, JSC Gazprombank, Societe Generale, UBS and Atonline are all working on the float.

Debt collector Cabot Credit Management announced its intention to go public last week in a 1billion float which Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley , Jefferies, Numis and Lazard are working on.

But the biggest prize for investment banks could be oil giant, Saudi Aramco. Its chief executive yesterday insisted the IPO was still on course for next year, despite doubts. A plan to float 5 per cent has investors salivating over the prospect of a 1.6 trillion valuation.
Dear Annie: My husband and I have had a cat for two years, and it is amazing how close we are to that little furry animal. He is a Persian longhair and full of love. He purrs whenever he is held or sits in your lap. Also, we just adopted a Great Pyrenees dog. We did not know much about this breed but are pleasantly surprised at how gentle she is. She ignores the cat and is wonderful with children. Yet she is a fantastic protection dog. I read that Great Pyrenees protect sheep and other livestock and chase away wolves and cheetahs, so you can imagine how powerful they are. We got her because there have been a series of break-ins in our neighborhood and we were advised that a big dog can be great protection against burglars.

The problem is that our dog, sweet as she is, demands total attention. When either of us holds the cat, she comes over and says, through her body language, "Hold me instead." We're not sure how to handle this so both animals feel loved and appreciated. -- Cats and Dogs

Dear Cats and Dogs: You are blessed to have such loving animals and smart to take their feelings seriously. In a 2014 study, researchers at the University of California, San Diego found evidence that dogs do in fact experience jealousy. So for the cat's sake, as well as the dog's, it is important to reassure your dog by petting her at the same time. Either you or your husband can hold the cat while the other pets the dog. If you are alone, then pet both animals at the same time. As long as you pet them both, your household will literally be in good hands.

Dear Readers: One of the many joys of writing this column is finding out which topics resonate with readers. Most recently, it was business cards. I have chosen two of the many letters I received on this issue. Hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did.

Dear Annie: It was very heartening to read that you strongly recommend business cards and thank-you notes. I have found that the younger generation of business people are not very business-like. The most exasperating lazy habit is that so many don't even sign their email. They expect you to extract their name from their email address. Signature blocks make a business card valuable, and these cards eliminate the need to Google for contact information. -- Dial Generation Nanny

Dear Nanny: You are not alone, as you will see by the next letter.

Dear Annie: This morning, my father walked into the office and handed me your column about handing out business cards. We run and operate a family business that was established by my grandfather in 1959, founded on old-school principles. The importance of networking, being involved in the community, and getting your name out there has been preached to me over the years. It was refreshing to read your opinion that business cards hold a lot of importance and value. And I liked that you mentioned sending a handwritten thank-you card. These small things really do make a big difference. I couldn't agree more, and you've helped put an exclamation point on what my grandfather and my father have been preaching to me. I think it made my father's day, judging by the smile on his face when he handed me the article -- Patrick

Dear Patrick: You made my day -- judging by the smile on my face! Thank you. And you're right; good manners go a long way toward business success.
Shares are on the rise after rumours of a takeover bid circulate

Shares in scandal-hit Spire Healthcare rocketed after the private hospital group rejected an opportunistic takeover offer from a major shareholder.

Spire bosses said the 298.6p-per-share offer from South African private hospitals operator Mediclinic, which owns 29.9 per cent, significantly undervalued the British firm and shareholders should take no action.

Shares leapt 39.7p, or 15.2 per cent, to 301p, having tanked last month when bosses revealed profits slumped almost 75 per cent to 8.9million during the first half of the year.

Spire was hit by fewer NHS referrals as well as having to put aside 27million to compensate patients unnecessarily operated on at its hospitals by rogue cancer surgeon Ian Paterson, 59, who was jailed for 20 years in August.

Yesterday, analysts at Berenberg said prospects for Spire, which runs 38 hospitals and two cancer centres, were strong given predicted NHS demand, and Mediclinic should be applauded for spotting the chance to snap up the group cheaply.

They said they expected the bid to be an opening salvo from Mediclinic, which has until November 20 to make a formal offer. There has also been speculation that HCA is interested in buying Mediclinics stake.

Mediclinic, which is listed in Johannesburg and London, said it was considering its position.

An HCA spokesman said it was unable to comment on market rumour or speculation.
Shocking new details have emerged of an ISIS massacre in a Syrian town where 128 were slaughtered and dumped in the streets in a matter of days.

Terrified residents say children were butchered with knives and women were burned or had their arms broken by extremists after they raided the war torn Qaryatayn community.

Bodies of many of the victims were deliberately left out in the open, piled up in ditches or abandoned on farmland by bloodthirsty fanatics who then fled after being driven out by Syrian forces after a three-week occupation. Families were barred from burying their loved ones.

Many were beheaded or shot while the militants, who had arrived with a hit list, forced people to look at bodies to strike fear into the town.

Shocking new details have emerged of an ISIS massacre in a Syrian town where 128 were slaughtered and dumped in the streets in a matter of days. Pictures show some of the victims covered in blankets

Terrified residents say children were butchered with knives and women were burned or had their arms broken by extremists after they raided the war torn Qaryatayn community

ISIS scrawled slogans on walls and shop shutters in the town during their three-week occcupation. Many victims were beheaded or shot while townsfolk were marched off and forced to look at mass graves created by militants who had come to the town with a hit list

ISIS had stormed the town early in October. By the time they left the town three weeks later, scores of civilians had been executed, apparently in revenge for being linked to the Syrian regime.

Many of the slayings are understood to have taken place in the last 48 hours before they fled.

The killings underscore the ability of the group to inflict heavy losses even when in retreat - and portend more violence as they fight to hang on to their last strongholds in Syria.

News of the massacre began to emerge late on Sunday, after the ISIS death squad had been driven out by advancing government troops.

Terrified residents said they watched the slaughter from their windows or in the streets.

One former resident said his surviving family members walked for miles to find cell phone coverage so they could tell him of the deaths of his uncle, two cousins and a fourth relative. Another uncle remains missing.

The massacre happened over a three-week period in the town of Qaryatayn, north of Damascus

About 200 militants evacuated the town, before government forces (pictured) marched in to retake the town

'They came into town with a hit list,' said Abdullah AbdulKarim, adding that 35 of the 50 militants who overran the town late last month were originally from Qaryatayn. He said the militants accused many of their victims of collaborating with the government but many others were also caught in the revenge killing.

'Our curse is from within us,' he said, speaking to The Associated Press from northern Syria, where he fled years ago.

Once a predominantly Christian town known for its ancient monastery, Qaryatayn has changed hands between ISIS and the Syrian government several times during Syria's civil war. Parts of the 1,500-year-old St. Elian monastery were demolished the first time ISIS took over the town in 2015 and thousands of its Christian residents fled, fearing the extremist group's brutality.

Video captured as Syrian government troops recaptured Qaryatayn on Saturday, showed several bodies lying in the streets. In the video, a town resident said ISIS 'monsters' killed more than 100 people, including soldiers and civilians.

'These are people who don't know God, they don't know anything. They killed children and women with knives, they beat women, broke their arms,' he said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear for his own safety.

News of the massacre began to emerge late on Sunday, after the ISIS death squad had been driven out by advancing government troops

The killings underscore the ability of the group to inflict heavy losses even when in retreat - and portend more violence as they fight to hang on to their last strongholds in Syria

Terrified residents said they watched the slaughter from their windows or in the streets

One reside said: 'They attacked us like animals, they came to kill us.

'They broke the arms of the women, they burned them, they killed various women.

'They killed more than a hundred innocent people from the families of both civilians and militants.'

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had documented the killings of at least 128 people in Qaryatayn, including at least 12 killed by government forces on suspicion of aiding the ISIS militants.

AbdulKarim and Mohamed Hassan, an activist who runs the Palmyra Network News, put the death toll at 75 civilians, saying many more remain unaccounted for.

'It seems it was mostly revenge,' Hassan said.

Another activist network, the Palmyra Coordination Committee, released the names of 67 civilians who were confirmed killed and said the number was likely to rise. It said at least 35 of the dead were found dumped inside a ditch.

Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs province, said ISIS 'terrorised' residents for three weeks, adding that most of the dead were townspeople who were government employees or were affiliated with Syria's ruling Baath party.

He said at least 13 residents remained missing and six bodies had not been identified.

ISIS militants relied on Qaryatayn's strategic location to defend another of their bastions, the historic city of Palmyra. Government troops are pictured after recapturing the town

Two Syrian soldiers walk the street of Qaryatayn, a town in central Syria which was recaptured from ISIS militants on Saturday

ISIS militants relied on Qaryatayn's strategic location to defend another of their bastions, the historic city of Palmyra. With Russian backing, Syrian government troops regained control of Qaryatayn in April 2016. But ISIS, facing major setbacks in Syria and Iraq, launched a new offensive on the town in late September and recaptured it.

AbdulKarim said during the three weeks that ISIS controlled the town, the militants went door to door looking for people they accused of collaborating with the Syrian government.

He said his uncle, who was a local mayor, and two cousins were shot after they were taken to an undisclosed location.

'They took people to show them bodies dumped in an open area to let them know they were killed, but also to terrorise the public,' AbdulKarim said. He said the extremists barred residents from burying their dead.

He said the advancing government troops also killed civilians, but residents were too afraid to report the government killings.

AbdulKarim and the Observatory said the militants took Qaryatayn's police chief, his wife and other security personnel as hostages to negotiate their exit after government troops encircled the town. About 200 militants evacuated the town, before government forces marched in, they said.
Police say that Emanuel Kidega Simon, the 25-year-old bodybuilder who has been charged with murder in connection with a shooting rampage at a Tennessee church, spoke of hearing voices and having visions

The man accused of fatally shooting a woman and wounding six other people at a Tennessee church last month told police he heard voices and had visions, including an image of that particular church, a detective testified in court Monday.

Emanuel Kidega Samson, 25, would not say much else about his vision of Burnette Chapel Church of Christ, when pressed by police during an interview, Nashville Police Detective Steve Jolley said.

'He was just very vague and he didn't really elaborate on anything,' Jolley said at a hearing in Davidson County General Sessions Court.

A judge sent Samson's case to a grand jury Monday. Samson did not appear for the hearing.

Jolley also acknowledged that a note found in Samson's car made reference to a white supremacist's 2015 massacre at a South Carolina black church, a detail that The Associated Press first reported.

The note found on the dashboard read something like, 'Dylann Roof was less than nothing,' Jolley said.

Robert Engle is pictured testifying during a preliminary hearing for Samson. Engle, 22, has been hailed as a hero for helping to stop the attack

Judge Allegra Walker is pictured listening to testimony during Samson's hearing. Samson is being held without bond

Melanie L. Crow, 38, was shot dead in the September 24 shooting. Samson has been charged in her murder

'It was really kind of just vague,' Jolley said.

All of the victims in Nashville were white, but it is still not clear whether Samson, who is black, specifically targeted them based on their race.

Jolley said Samson downplayed the role of race to detectives.

'I asked him specifically and he said that he didn't give much thought to race,' Jolley said. 'I think he also said the same thing about religion. So he didn't indicate to me any particular thing for motivation.'

Samson said nothing in the interview about the fact that he had attended the church previously, only commenting that he might have delivered pizzas there, Jolley said.

Samson also told Jolley he was just tired of driving on the day of the shooting, the detective added.

Though he was otherwise mostly stoic, Samson broke down in tears at one point when another detective asked him about hurt and pain, according to the detective.

Samson said he remembered shooting outside the church, but did not recall shooting inside and wasn't shooting at anyone in particular, Jolley said.

Samson is charged with murder in the September 24 attack at the Nashville church.

Law enforcement gathers around the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ on September 24 after the shooting

Jonathan Wing, left, Kristin Neff, right, defense attorneys for Emanuel Kidega Samson, are pictured listening to testimony

The Sunday shooting rampage left 38-year-old Melanie L. Crow of Smyrna, Tennessee dead.

The FBI and U.S. attorney's office in Nashville quickly opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting.

The judge also heard testimony from Robert Caleb Engle, the 22-year-old church member hailed as a hero in the attack.

A note found on the dashboard of Samson's car referenced Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who shot nine people at an historic African-American church in South Carolina. The note referred to Roof as 'less than nothing,' police say

During the shooting, Engle said he twice confronted the gunman, who was wearing a tactical vest and a motorcycle-style mask with a clown smile on it.

Engle said he grabbed the shooter's arm, at which point he pistol whipped the churchgoer three times in the head.

Later, Engle said he stood up in front of the shooter, whose gun then turned to target him.

Engle said he pushed the gun back onto the shooter and a shot fired, striking the gunman and sending him to the ground.

Engle said his father kicked the gun away, stood on the shooter's hand and told Engle to go get his gun out of his truck.

Engle came back with his weapon, put his foot on the shooter's back and stood guard until first responders arrived.

According to police records, Samson struggled to hold a job and had a volatile relationship with a woman that twice involved police this year, and also had expressed suicidal thoughts in June.

Samson's public records had not listed any criminal charges against him.

Authorities have said Samson came to the United States from Sudan as a child in 1996 and is a U.S. citizen.

Samson had struggled to hold a job and had expressed suicidal thoughts in the months leading up to the shooting, police say

The gunman attended Smyrna High School before studying psychology at Mott Community College. He had lived in Rutherford County and in South Nashville near Burnette Bethel Church of Christ.

He appears to have made a number of cryptic Facebook posts on the morning of the shooting, writing: 'Everything you've ever doubted or made to be believe as false, is real. & vice versa, B.'

In another, he wrote: 'Become the creator instead of what's created. Whatever you say, goes.'

Additional charges are expected. Samson is being held without bond.
Hobart City Council will officially back the bid to change the date of Australia Day from January 26.

Aldermen agreed for the council to formally declare its stance at Monday night's council meeting, The Mercury reports.

The council had not previously formally stated its support for the date to be changed despite submitting motions to urge Tasmanian and Australian councils to lobby the Federal Government to move the celebration to a different date.

Hobart City Council will officially back the bid to change the date of Australia Day from January 26 - and could fund Invasion Day protests. Above, an Invasion Day protest march in Melbourne

However, the council will not stop holding its celebrations and citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day and could even fund Invasion Day protests, according to The Mercury.

'Hobart Is joining a movement that is building,' alderman Anna Reynolds told the local newspaper, adding the city would be on the right side of history.

But others said it was concerning that the council could fund protests  and claimed the Aboriginal community has bigger issues that need to be addressed.

Some said it was concerning that the council could fund protests  and claimed the Aboriginal community has bigger issues that need to be addressed. File photo

But Alderman Tanya Denison claimed that Hobart's stance was having a 'bob each way.'

It comes after the Turnbull government stripped two Melbourne councils - Darebin and Yarra - of its right to host citizenship ceremonies after they decided to snub Australia Day in support of Indigenous people.

A third Melbourne council, Moreland, voted to abandon official Australia Day celebrations - but will retain a citizenship ceremony on the date.
Footage of a mysterious moth-like insect flexing its pulsating tentacles has whipped the internet into a frenzy.

The creature, which is found across Asia and Australia, appears to have the body of a moth with four tufted tendrils sprouting out of its abdomen.

Many social media users were left terrified after seeing the other-worldly insect, with one person declaring: 'I'd burn the house down if I saw this.'

Spooky: Footage of a creepy insect with tentacle-like scent organs has set the internet alight

The bizarre insect has since been revealed to be a moth found in parts of northern Australia

The insect has since been revealed to be a Creatonotos gangis moth.

The moth's unusual tentacles are in fact scent organs, used to produce pheromones in a bid to attract mates.

Footage of the strange insect, filmed in Indonesia and uploaded to Facebook by a user named Gandik, racked up millions of views and thousands of shares.

'Give him the keys and tell him the house is yours,' joked one shocked viewer.

'What devilish creature sent to destroy us is this? I'm leaving Earth by the way... anyone coming?' added another.

The moths are found across Australia's north, including Western Australia, the Northern Territory and parts of Queensland stretching as far south as Mackay.

The moth's unusual tentacles are in fact scent organs which secrete pheromones in a bid to attract mates
Local authorities are wasting millions by offering excessive payments to staff who use their car for work, according to a report.

An investigation has found that 173 councils are paying employees more for mileage than the rate approved by HM Revenue and Customs.

This can make them hundreds of pounds better off than workers in private sector firms  or other town halls  that stick to the limit.

The Government stressed last night that councils should not be paying more for mileage than recommended by HMRC.

Local authorities are wasting millions by offering excessive payments to staff who use their car for work, according to a report (file picture)

Employees who use their own vehicles for business journeys are often reimbursed with mileage allowance payments to cover their expenses, including fuel and running costs.

HMRCs Approved Mileage Allowance rate for cars and vans is 45p for the first 10,000 miles, and 25p thereafter.

This is the amount an employee can receive without paying tax and is designed to prevent firms from using the allowance to pay staff more without incurring more tax.

But an investigation by the Taxpayers Alliance found that 173 councils are paying more than the approved rate, with 73 authorities, including Ashford in Kent, Blaby in Leicestershire and Tewkesbury in the Cotswold, paying 65p a mile in 2016/17.

Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire paid the highest rate at 69p per mile  more than 50 per cent over the approved rate.

An employee claiming for 1,000 miles would be 240 better off before tax than someone paid the 45p rate.

300,000 LOAN TO SELL FRIED CHICKEN A council loaned 300,000 to a DJ so he could open a fried chicken shop  despite there being more than 30 already nearby. Ben Rymer was awarded the sum to open Chicken Town in Tottenham, North London, in 2015 on the grounds it would be paid back once it makes 50,000 a year. Rival outlets criticised the hand-out to the takeaway, a not-for-profit enterprise that offers healthier versions of fried chicken. Haringey Council said it was simply encouraging new businesses. But the TaxPayers Alliance said the loan was grossly unfair on other firms who go to the bank to get businesses off the ground. Advertisement

In total, local authorities handed out 223million in mileage allowances to employees in 2016/17, down from 231million the previous year.

The Taxpayers Alliance says the average council mileage rate is 48.92p.

Chief executive John OConnell said: Its not credible for local authorities to plead poverty and raise council tax while paying over the odds for basic expenses, especially when the Government has been telling them to rein in these payments.

'Councils must continue to root out wasteful spending like this so that they can deliver tax cuts for hard-pressed residents.

Tory MP Julian Knight said: Its staggering that at a time when we have councils telling residents that they have to make savings, some are paying up to 50 per cent more than the HMRC maximum for mileage.

It seems a gross waste of public money and is indefensible.

But the Local Government Association said the findings failed to distinguish between urban and rural councils, where employees need to drive more.

A spokesman said: The average figures used by Taxpayers Alliance are utterly misleading. By failing to weight the data, they have shown they cant tell the difference between a council in London and a council in Cumbria.

Bassetlaw District Council in Nottinghamshire paid the highest rate at 69p per mile  more than 50 per cent over the approved rate

'If they had weighted their figures, they would have found the average is actually 45.7p  just 0.7 pence higher than the HMRC recommended rate.

A Department for Communities and Local Government spokesman said: Authorities ought not be paying more than recommended HMRC levels.

Bassetlaw council said it had reduced the cost of staff mileage by a third in four years and plans to cut its mileage rate.
A 'millionaire' Muslim woman who rorted the public housing system for nearly two decades by posing as a battling single mother has finally been evicted from her taxpayer-funded flat.

Rebecca Khodragha lived in the Punchbowl apartment in south-west Sydney for 18 years, failing to tell authorities her husband owned a lucrative business which reportedly collected a million dollars a year.

Ms Khodragha was found guilty of two counts of fraud in November last year and was sentenced to three months jail, which she served as home detention at the Punchbowl unit.

'Millionaire' Muslim woman Rebecca Khodragha (pictured), who rorted the public housing system for nearly two decades by posing as a battling single mother, has finally been evicted from her taxpayer-funded flat

A man at the Punchbowl unit on Monday was seen loading Ms Khodragha's belongings on to a rental truck

She unsuccessfully appealed her sentence in February and the Department of Family and Community Services said it would immediately commence proceedings to evict the convicted thief.

On Monday, Ms Khodragha finally spent her first night without government-owned housing.

'She is no longer a public housing tenant and she will never, ever be allowed back into public housing,' Family and Community Services' Paul Vevers told Seven News.

A man at the Punchbowl unit was seen loading Ms Khodragha's belongings on to a rental truck on Monday.

Ms Khodragha (pictured) was found guilty of two counts of fraud in November last year and was sentenced to three months jail, which she served as home detention at the Punchbowl unit

A man seen at the unit on Monday raised his arms and refused to comment when asked if the fraudster would pay back the money

He raised his arms and refused to comment when asked if the fraudster would pay back the money she ripped off Australian taxpayers.

Ms Khodragha married husband Khaled in an Islamic ceremony in 1991, but their wedding was unregistered.

Documents revealed Khaled's electrical contracting business, which raked in $1million each year, was registered to the Punchbowl apartment, according to Seven.

The couple also reportedly had two other properties - a Lakemba unit and a Greenacre house - at the time.

The man is seen removing belongings from the unit and taking them to a rental truck

On Monday, Ms Khodragha (pictured earlier this year) finally spent her first night without government-owned housing

She had been living in a Punchbowl housing commission in Sydney's south-west since 1999

'She's not just cheating the taxpayer, she's cheating people in need,' Mr Vevers told the broadcaster in February.

After a tip off from the public, Ms Khodragha was prosecuted and ordered to pay back more than $80,000 in rent.

According to Housing NSW, around 60,000 people are on the waiting list for public housing.
Her latest show may be called At My Table. But Nigella Lawson has admitted she eats her dinner on the sofa in front of the TV - as long as it doesn't require a knife and fork.

Revealing her rules for a TV dinner, the cook said she only eats on the sofa if the food comes in a bowl - such as soup or noodles.

The 57-year-old- who insists she is not a chef - told the Radio Times: 'I'm not really a grazer. I like proper meals.

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Nigella Lawson (pictured) says she is happy to eat her food in front of the TV, but only if it doesn't require using a knife and fork

'I have absolutely nothing against a sofa supper, but I can't do food that needs a knife and fork. If it can be eaten out of a bowl, I'm very happy to eat while I watch.

'But I'm more likely to eat first, at the table, and then watch.'

While she insisted she doesn't 'disapprove of eating in front of the TV', Miss Lawson prefers to 'be absorbed' in what she's eating by staying firmly at the dinner table

But she admitted to often devouring soup or noodles 'hypnotically' while enjoying her favourite programmes  including American drama The Good Wife and spin-off series The Good Fight.

Miss Lawson has two children, Cosima, 23, and Bruno, 21, with former husband John Diamond.

Earlier this month, Mary Berry revealed she too had stopped eating in the dining room - preferring to have her meals in the kitchen.

The 57-year-old (pictured) says she is not against eating while watching TV, but likes to focus on her food at the dinner table

The former Great British Bake Off host said: 'Most of us, I think, live in the kitchen. I do - the homework of my children was done there. My husband will refit a picture in there.

'We've given up our dining room, finally. I don't think my husband agreed with me.

'We used it at Christmas time and occasionally if we're having people round, but it's much easier in the kitchen, isn't it?'

Fewer families than ever are thought to have given up on the dining room, preferring open-plan living spaces where the kitchen merges into the living room.

Nigella: At My Table, will begin on Monday on BBC Two at 8.30pm.
Celebrity photographer Terry Richardson (pictured) has been banned from working with several major fashion magazines

Celebrity photographer Terry Richardson has been banned from working with several major fashion magazines amid resurfacing sexual harassment claims.

Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair are among those who were told to 'kill' any scheduled shoots with the snapper by parent group Conde Nast International.

Richardson has been the subject of widespread allegations of sexually abusing models over his lengthy career -- accusations he has constantly denied.

The 52-year-old New Yorker is known for incorporating explicit themes into his shoots, and directed the sexually-charged music video to Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus - which she later said she regrets.

According to the Daily Telegraph, an email was circulated among staff of Conde Nast International after an article in a Sunday newspaper questioned the photographer's past.

The email, sent by the firm's executive vice president James Woolhouse, said future articles with Richardson should be 'killed or substituted with other material'.

He wrote: 'I am writing to you on an important matter. Conde Nast would like to no longer work with the photographer Terry Richardson.

'Please could you confirm that this policy will be actioned in your market effective immediately. Thank you for your support in this matter.'

Richardson's contract arrangements with Conde Nast had been in discussion for several months - but after an article was posted that questioned why he was still being 'feted by fashionistas' ties were officially cut.

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Richardson (shown left with Eniko Mihalik) has been the subject of widespread allegations of sexually abusing models over his lengthy career, accusations he has constantly denied

Paris Hilton (left), Nicky Hilton (centre) and photographer Terry Richardson (right) are pictured at an event together in 2014

The 52-year-old directed the sexually-charged music video to Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus

Allegations of sexual misconduct against Richardson have resurfaced in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. However, there have been no new claims made against him.

Weinstein brought sexual harassment in the work place back to the forefront after the New York Times published an investigation into sexual assault claims against him.

The disgraced Hollywood mogul is now facing multiple accusations of sexual assault and harassment from more than 40 woman including actress Gwyneth Paltrow.

On Friday, Richardson addressed allegations directed at him in recent days in a blog published on Huffington Post.

He wrote: 'I collaborated with consenting adult women who were fully aware of the nature of the work, and as is typical with any project, everyone signed releases.

'I have never used an offer of work or a threat of rebuke to coerce someone into something that they did not want to do.

'I give everyone that I work with enough respect to view them as having ownership of their free will and making their decisions accordingly, and as such, it has been difficult to see myself as a target of revisionist history.'

On Friday, Richardson (shown left with supermodel Kate Moss in 2011) addressed allegations directed at him in recent days in a blog published on Huffington Post

Richardson, who has worked with some of the biggest names in the music and fashion industry, including Beyonce and Lady Gaga, but also Marc Jacobs and Tom Ford, often appeared in his own work.

He is also known to have a close relationship with Edward Enninful, the editor of British Vogue, who he was pictured arm-in-arm with last month at New York Fashion Week.

Figures from within the modelling industry, including former i-D editor Caryn Franklin, said Richardson's behaviour has become an 'open secret'.

While several models have condemned his conduct during shoots, others, including Daisy Lowe and Noot Seear, have previously come to his defence.

In 2014, Vogue US made it clear they would no longer work Richardson.

'The last assignment Terry Richardson had for US Vogue appeared in the July 2010 issue and we have no plans to work with him in the future,' a statement said at the time.

MailOnline has contacted Richardson's representatives for comment.

Richardson's contract arrangements with Conde Nast had been in discussion for several months - but after an article was posted that questioned why he was still being 'feted by fashionistas' ties were officially cut. He is pictured in 2016 at the Tom Ford Fashion Show in New York

Figures from within the modelling industry, including former i-D editor Caryn Franklin, said Richardson's behaviour has become an 'open secret'. He is pictured on September 8 with his partner Alex Bolotow (right) and Carine Restoin-Roitfeld, former editor and chief of Vogue Paris (left)
Australians fighting with ISIS in the Middle East have been issued a stern warning that they will 'perish on the battlefield' if they make a final stand.

Defence Minister Marise Payne said the coalition were seeking a 'complete defeat' of ISIS and that Australian jihadis in Syria and Iraq would be subject to the same fate, The Australian reports.

It comes as Islamic state's 'capital' of Raqqa was reclaimed by US-backed forces last week after being seized by the terror group in 2014.

Defence Minister Marise Payne (pictured) has issued a stern warning to Australian's fighting with ISIS in the Middle East, claiming they will 'perish on the battlefield' if they make a final stand

Islamic state's 'capital' of Raqqa was reclaimed by US-backed forces last week after being seized by the terror group in 2014 (pictured are the heavily damaged buildings from Saturday)

Ms Payne said the government had updated their rules of engagement to take on more aggressive approach to targeting ISIS fighters.

'The government has ensured the ADF is able to target all members of Daesh, whether they are fighting on the front line or working in a support role in a back office,' she said.

'Australians who have joined Daesh are subjected to the same risks as any other member of the criminal organisation and should expect to perish on the battlefield.'

More than 100 Australian jihadis are believed to still be in Syria and Iraq, with the government tracking foreign fighters since Raqqa's fall.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop confirmed that about 80 other Australians who had joined terror groups in the region had been killed.

'We understand that some of the terrorist fighters fled south. We are certainly tracking those whom we believe to be Australian,' she told The Advertiser.

Ms Payne said the government had updated their rules of engagement, with the ADF now 'able to target all members of Daesh' (pictured is an ISIL fighter in Raqqa in 2014)

More than 100 Australian jihadis are believed to still be in Syria and Iraq, with 80 others confirmed dead (Pictured are Syrian Democratic Forces in a firefight in Raqqa in September)

Intelligence agencies have been monitoring the fighters amid fears they may flee, with Ms Payne saying they could expect prosecution if they returned home.

Among those that may be dead following the capture of Raqqa is an Australian paediatrician who fled to Syria to recruit terrorists for ISIS.

Adelaide trained doctor Tareq Kamleh, dubbed 'Dr Jihad', left Australia in 2015 to pursue life as a terrorist recruiter.

He appeared in several propaganda videos encouraging Muslims to perform terrorist attacks in Australia.
Dear Doctor: I am a 72-year-old male with no health problems other than GERD, which is well-controlled, and neurological problems associated with a back injury and surgeries. But in the past eight months, I've gone from 189 pounds to 142 pounds. Initially, I attributed this to stress over my wife's death six months ago, but now I don't know. A general physical, along with blood tests, CT scans of the chest and head, and X-rays of the chest have found nothing unusual. What should I do?

Dear Reader: I can understand why you're worried. Although unexplained weight loss is relatively common -- an estimated 15 to 20 percent of adults over 65 will have unintentional weight loss if followed over 10 years -- your degree of weight loss needs to be investigated further. After all, you've lost 25 percent of your initial weight.

In 15 to 37 percent of cases, cancer is the underlying cause of unintentional weight loss. The tests you list show that your doctor has searched for a possible malignancy and ruled out many cancers already. He or she should also rule out gastrointestinal malignancies. Together, a colonoscopy and upper endoscopy can detect cancers of the colon, stomach and esophagus.

Other potential causes of weight loss, seen 10 to 20 percent of the time, are stomach ulcers, inflammatory bowel disease or another gastrointestinal disease. I would expect some symptoms with this, such as poor appetite, stomach pain or diarrhea. Again, an endoscopy and colonoscopy can help rule out these causes.

As for infection, that too can be a cause of weight loss, but it's often associated with sweats and fevers, and the imaging studies or blood work likely would have found the cause. Similarly, blood tests would have identified high thyroid levels, uncontrolled diabetes and adrenal insufficiency, all of which can lead to weight loss.

Potential illness aside, studies have shown a consistent small degree of weight loss among people who lose a spouse, especially among older couples. For some, the weight loss is largely a side effect of difficulties in food preparation, especially if the person who passed had been the one preparing the meals. In those scenarios, taking a more active role in food shopping and preparation, or having a service deliver meals, are both good options.

But for many people, the cause is not focused on the practical, but is rather much deeper and more complex. The loss of a partner -- especially if it was unexpected -- is clearly traumatic. For that reason, I want to gently suggest that you not discount psychiatric causes as a reason for your weight loss.

Anxiety and depression can cause a decrease in appetite, which in turn leads to weight loss. Depression can also lead to isolation and dampen the desire for certain activities, such as exercise, which then leads to decreased muscle mass and weight loss. Bereavement groups, other family members or religious organizations can help manage these feelings, as can psychological therapy. For extreme cases, anti-depressants such as mirtazapine might be needed to help boost both mood and appetite.

Because many of the physical causes appear to have been ruled out, and the weight loss coincides with the passing of your wife, I would encourage you to get help adjusting to the changes you've experienced. Difficult though it may be, now is the time to focus on the life ahead.
An undocumented Mexican immigrant who shot dead a woman on a San Francisco pier two years ago fired the gun on purpose, a prosecutor said on Monday as his murder trial got underway.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 54, has acknowledged shooting 32-year-old Kate Steinle in the back while she was walking with her father on the downtown San Francisco pier on July 1, 2015.

But Garcia Zarate has said the shooting was accidental and that he was handling a handgun he found wrapped in a T-shirt under a bench on the pier when it accidentally fired.

Garcia Zarate had been deported five times from the US and was homeless in San Francisco when he shot Steinle.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 54, has acknowledged shooting 32-year-old Kate Steinle in the back while she was walking with her father on the downtown San Francisco pier on July 1, 2015

Her tragic death immediately caused uproar and became a rallying cry for President Donald Trump's immigration policies while on the campaign trail. Trump had cited Steinle's death as a reason to toughen US immigration policies.

Prosecutor Diana Garcia showed the jury the gun that killed Steinle and said she was shot on purpose during opening statements on Monday.

She added that a ballistics expert will testify that the gun would not have gone off accidentally, as the suspect has claimed.

Meanwhile, Garcia Zarate's defense attorney Matt Gonzalez reiterated his client's prior claims, telling jurors the Mexican national didn't realize he had picked up a handgun when it fired.

The lawyer told jurors the gun, which had been stolen from the car of a law enforcement officer, was dangerous because it didn't have a safety and had a hair trigger.

Steinle's parents and brother attended the opening of the trial.

Garcia Zarate (pictured in court in 2015) has said the shooting was accidental and that he was handling a handgun he found wrapped in a T-shirt when it fired

The 32-year-old (pictured above) was shot in the back while she was walking with her father on the downtown San Francisco pier on July 1, 2015

Kate, above with her brother Brad, was shot dead while she walked on a downtown San Francisco pier on July 1, 2015 with her father

Garcia Zarate is charged with second-degree murder, which could result in a sentence of 15 years to life in prison if he is convicted.

He had recently completed a prison sentence for illegal re-entry to the US when he was transferred to the San Francisco County jail to face a 20-year-old marijuana charge.

Prosecutors dropped that charge and the San Francisco sheriff released Zarate from jail despite a federal immigration request to detain him for at least two more days for deportation.

The sheriff's department said it was following the city's sanctuary policy of limited cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Since being elected, Trump has threatened to withhold federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities such as San Francisco, several of which have filed lawsuits to prevent the move.

Liz Sullivan, the mother of Kate Steinle (center) exits a courtroom with Steinle's brother Brad Steinle (left) and his wife Amy (right) on Monday

Jim Steinle, the father of Kate Steinle, is pictured above walking into the courtroom on Monday for the first day of the murder trial

None of that is at issue during the trial, and the judge has barred mention of the politics of immigration and gun control during the proceedings.

Steinle's family had tried to sue the city of San Francisco over her death but their wrongful death lawsuit was thrown out by a judge.

The Steinle family had argued in the lawsuit that the city and former sheriff should be held responsible for her murder.

Lawyers argued that if city officials had notified Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they released the seven-time felon from prison in April 2015, Kate's death could have been avoided.

Garcia Zarate went by the name Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez when he was arrested, but now prefers to be called by his birth name of Zarate.

His murder trial continues.
The architect of the Tories flagship benefit reforms has demanded wholesale changes to prevent claimants waiting so long to get their first handout.

Iain Duncan Smith, the former Work and Pensions Secretary, told ITV News that the waiting time for access to the first Universal Credit payment should be cut.

He blamed George Osborne, the former Chancellor, for making people wait six weeks before getting the first payment.

Mr Duncan Smith said two of the weeks were not wholly necessary - saying a four week delay was what he had envisaged.

Iain Duncan Smith has demanded wholesale changes to prevent claimants waiting so long to gain access to their first Universal Credit payment

The intervention came on the day that Commons speaker John Bercow announced an emergency debate on the controversial reforms.

He has set aside three hours this afternoon after Tory MPs joined with Labour to demand ministers come to Parliament to explain themselves.

The fact that Mr Duncan Smith - a former Conservative leader - has spoken out will pile further pressure on Philip Hammond to make changes to the UC regime in next months Budget.

Ministers have been warned that reports of hardship caused to many tenants by the 42-day wait risks turning the flagship welfare policy into a new poll tax.

Just last week, Theresa May caved in to demands from Jeremy Corbyn and abolished call charges to the UC helpline.

The Labour leader had highlighted the issue in at Prime Ministers Questions, saying it was a scandal that some claimants were being charged up to 55p a minute.

Mr Duncan Smith blamed George Osborne, the former Chancellor, for making people wait six weeks before getting the first payment

One think tank, the Smith Institute, has estimated that on average, UC claimants are 150 in rental arrears because of the delay to payments.

Yesterday, Mr Duncan Smith said the six-week waiting period was unnecessary, saying that one of Mr Osbornes ministers in the Treasury forced it on his department when he was in office.

The idea of the extra days was not something which I or my colleagues came up with, he said.

It was a Treasury matter at the time and I think its certainly worth them reviewing that to see whether or not they can get rid of the waiting days  theyre not wholly necessary.

Other Tory backbenchers have also demanded Mr Hammond review the UC regime.

Hammond's tax rise ultimatum Philip Hammond has warned the Cabinet there will be no extra spending in the Budget next month unless they agree to tax rises to pay for it. Tory MPs fear a backlash from voters if the Chancellor uses the speech to launch a raid on older voters. But Mr Hammond has told colleagues if they are going to spend more they need to raise money, arguing there is not a box of money in the Treasury waiting to be spent. Looming rows over the Budget, which will take place on November 22, come as Mr Hammonds position is looking increasingly precarious as he lacks the unanimous backing of the Tory backbenches over claims he is too gloomy and has been dragging his feet over Brexit. Advertisement

Earlier this month Steven McPartland, MP for Stevenage, called for the taper rate to be changed to make it worth peoples while to take on work rather than staying on benefits.

He said that the current rules meant that hard-working people were effectively being penalised by high tax rates if they took on a job.

And last night a study by two Labour councils in south London piled further pressure on the government.

Southwark and Croydon councils, both used as guinea pigs for the new regime, claimed UC pushing poor tenants deeper into rent arrears and forcing more to attend food banks.

They said that without rapid changes the new system could have a devastating effect across the country as it is rolled out over the next few months.

They said arrears could reach many hundreds of millions of pounds and that tenants could face severe hardship.

One food bank reported an increase in referrals of 97 per cent, their report found.
Australian actress Magda Szubanski accused the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney of 'de-licensing' a priest who spoke of his support of same-sex marriage during a heated debate on ABC's Q&A on Monday night.

Szubanski and Dr Glenn Davies, who is an adamant supporter of the 'no' campaign, butted heads frequently during the hour-long panel discussion centred on the legalization of gay marriage.

Dr Davies told the audience the 'consequences' of same-sex marriage would be 'greater than what people realise,' affecting schools and church clergy.

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Magda Szubanski (pictured) accused the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney of delicensing a priest who spoke of his support of same-sex marriage during a heated debate on ABC's Q&A on Monday night

Szubanski and Dr Glenn Davies (pictured together), who is an adamant supporter of the 'no' campaign, butted heads frequently during the hour-long panel discussion

'In Sweden, for example, the PM of Sweden said to clergy generally if you're not going to marry gay people, then find another job,' he said.

'If you talk about homosexuality from the perspective of the Bible, and that offends a homosexual person, that is seen as hate language and it's a criminal offence.'

A frustrated Szubanski quickly interrupted the former school teacher, telling him he's 'the person that delicensed a priest who dared to speak in favour of same-sex marriage and [is] protected by religious exemptions.'

'You did it,' she said emphatically.

Dr Davies argued her claims were not true, telling the comedian to 'try fact check.'

'Try having a lot of obsessive religious exemptions when ordinary citizens don't,' Szubanski retorted.

A frustrated Szubanski quickly interrupted the former school teacher, telling him he's 'the person that delicensed a priest who dared to speak in favour of same-sex marriage'

Last year, Dr Davies refused to renew the license of Sydney priest Keith Mascord for his support on same-sex marriage, according to the ABC.

'Because of his rejection of the authority of the Bible and the doctrine of Christ [as received by the Anglican Church], the Archbishop formed the view that it is not appropriate for Dr Mascord to hold a licence to preach in the Diocese of Sydney,' the Archbishop said in a statement at the time.

The pair butted heads once again when discussing if the church was telling people across the country what to think

'I don't think the views expressed have been telling anyone what to believeThat's not my job,' the Archibishop said.

'You paid a million dollars to fund the no campaign. I think that, not out of your personal money either,' Szubanski quipped.

Karina Okotel, vice president of both the Federal and Victorian divisions of the Liberal Party, also appeared on the program, during which she contracted herself repeatedly

Dr Davies insisted the money for the campaign came from church funds, not the donations, and was therefore not tax deductible.

Karina Okotel, vice president of both the Federal and Victorian divisions of the Liberal Party, also appeared on the program, during which she contracted herself repeatedly.

A firm 'no' supporter, Ms Okotel confused the audience and panel when she said she would have no problem with a same-sex couple raising children - which has been used as a main argument against legalization.

When pushed, Ms Okotel said it was in situations where couples used IVF to have children that she was concerned, because they may never have contact with their biological parents.

In a rebuttal, Szubanski asked Ms Okotel if she had the same concern for heterosexual couples who undergo IVF to have a family.
The American submarine fired its first torpedo at the Japanese freighter at exactly four minutes past seven on the morning of October 1 1942.

The sonar operator listened intently as the torpedo, carrying 292 kilograms of high explosive, raced at 46 knots over the 3,200 yards through the East China Sea towards the Lisbon Maru.

Knowing that one torpedo might not be sufficient to sink the 7,000-ton ship, the captain of the USS Grouper, Lieutenant Commander Rob Roy McGregor, ordered two more torpedoes to be fired.

Within a few moments, they too were whisking through the water.

The Lisbon Maru was hit by an American torpedo on October 1, 1942, after a submarine captain fired on it - unaware that 1,800 British troops were being held below decks

The crew waited anxiously for the 157 seconds it was calculated for the first torpedo to reach its target. Frustratingly, no explosion came. They waited a little longer, hoping that the other torpedoes would hit the ship. Again, nothing.

Suspecting that the torpedoes were either faulty or running too deeply, a determined McGregor ordered a fourth torpedo to be fired. With the Grouper now much closer to the Lisbon Maru, the torpedo would take just a little over two minutes to hit the freighter.

However, unknown to McGregor, the Japanese crew had already spotted the attack. The first torpedo was indeed faulty, and had bounced off the hull. Nimble manoeuvring had enabled the freighter to dodge the second and third torpedoes, and the ships captain, Kyoda Shigeru, was hoping to do so once more.

When we discovered the fourth torpedo, we did a hard starboard turn, Shigeru recalled, but we were not able to dodge it and it hit the propeller at the starboard stern. This time, the torpedo was not faulty. A huge explosion tore a two-metre hole in the hull, killing a Japanese soldier.

The sound reverberated all the way down the 444ft length of the ship, and was heard by the 800 Japanese troops who were heading back home after having taken part in the capture of Hong Kong the previous December  the same month Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.

But as well as being heard by the Japanese, the explosion was also heard by a further 1,834 men, all of whom were being held deep in the fetid and rat-infested holds of the ship. These men were British prisoners-of-war, who were being transported in brutally inhumane conditions to slave labour camps in Japan.

I was lying on my straw mat in a hold way down near the bilges when I heard a torpedo whir across the ships bows, said Jack Etiemble of the Royal Artillery.

Then I heard a terrific explosion in the coal bunker on the opposite side of the bulkhead where I was trying to sleep. Water started to pour into the bilges below us.

What would happen over the next two days would prove to be one of the most horrific war crimes committed by the Japanese, and one of the largest losses of British lives at sea in history.

We firmly believed that the Japs would not let us drown.. that they could not be so heartless James Miller, survivor and member of the Royal Scots

Although the Lisbon Maru would take 25 hours to sink, the Japanese not only refused to rescue their prisoners, but, shockingly, even locked them in the ships holds to drown.

Those who managed to get off the vessel were callously machine-gunned, or run over by other boats. Hundreds of men were left helpless in the water, where scores were eaten by sharks.

In total, 828 men died  well over half the number who died on the Titanic. And yet while the Titanic is of course widely remembered, very few remember the horrors of the Lisbon Maru.

However, that may soon change if Chinese businessman and film producer Fang Li gets his way. Earlier this month, it was announced Mr Fang had located the wreck of the Lisbon Maru, and he is seeking permission from the Chinese authorities to salvage it.

Everybody would like to see this boat be salvaged, he says. We want to send those British soldiers home. Unfortunately for Mr Fang, not everyone does want to see the Lisbon Maru salvaged, least of all the last known remaining survivor of the shipwreck and subsequent massacre.

It is a war grave and that should be left, Dennis Morley, 97, a former private in the Royal Scots, told a paper. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission agrees, and although it has no responsibility for the wreck, it has requested that the remains of the men who died on the Lisbon Maru are left in peace.

It is hard to disagree. While Mr Fang has said that he wants to respect the family wishes, surely little can be gained by the grisly process of dredging up the corpses of so many dead.

A far better memorial would be for the world to learn what happened 75 years ago and for some vital questions to be answered.

Why did an American submarine attack a ship carrying more than 1,800 British PoWs?

How exactly did 1,000 men survive? And what happened after the war to the Japanese who committed the atrocities?

Answering the first of these questions is relatively straightforward, and, thankfully, absolves the U.S. submarine crew of all blame.

Rather than rescuing their captives, the Japanese left many of the British to their fates - even locking some away and leaving them to drown

Although the attack could technically be regarded as a friendly fire incident, the Japanese had refused to display any markings identifying the Lisbon Maru as carrying prisoners. In addition, the ship was also armed with two guns, which made it a justifiable target for the captain of the Grouper, who believed it to be a troopship.

And what of the Japanese? As the ship took over a day to sink, they were perfectly capable of rescuing all of the PoWs, whom they had a moral and legal duty to protect. Instead, they used the sinking as an opportunity to commit mass murder.

The only death that can therefore be laid at the door of the Americans is that of the soldier who was killed at the moment of impact. But the death of that one man can in no way justify what the Japanese did in the aftermath of the torpedoing, and as the ship was slowly sinking.

As soon as the torpedo struck, the PoWs became immediately aware of two things  the ship starting to list, and the sound of panicking Japanese soldiers.

The torpedo struck at breakfast time so some of the prisoners were on deck receiving rations to take down to their fellow PoWs in the holds. The Japs went berserk, recalled Private Bill Spooner, slapping and pushing us into the hold again.

Even prisoners using the latrines  little more than planks with holes suspended over the side of the ship  were forced to go back into the holds, along with a further 400 sick prisoners who were convalescing on the upper decks.

It is hard to exaggerate quite how disgusting the conditions were in the four holds in which the prisoners were incarcerated. Dysentery was rife, and now without access to the latrines, PoWs suffering from the condition had no choice but to relieve themselves over their fellow prisoners lying on platforms below them.

We were literally covered in filth, recalled George Bainborough, a naval administrator.

To make matters worse, the lights went out, plunging the holds into darkness.

Despite the horror, it appears that the PoWs initially managed not to panic. Besides, at that relatively early stage of the war with Japan, few of the prisoners had any inkling of what their enemy was truly capable of.

We firmly believed that the Japs would not let us drown, said James Miller of the Royal Scots. They could not be so heartless that they would let 1,800 helpless men die. The ship was sinking by the stern, and we waited and waited for the Japs to mount a rescue mission.

But as the prisoners waited in their foul and airless holds, they heard the sound of boats drawing alongside to rescue the Japanese soldiers from the slowly listing ship. No help was to come for the British.

Even the most optimistic would have soon realised what the Japanese intended when, that evening, they heard the trapdoors to the holds being battened down and covered with tarpaulins.

Slowly it dawned on us that the imprisonment was not a precaution against escape, said Lieutenant Hargreaves Howell, but had become a calculated mass murder of unwanted prisoners by drowning.

Howell was absolutely correct. The Japanese undoubtedly meant for all 1,834 men to drown. In order to ensure that happened, a handful of soldiers were left on board to shoot any PoWs if they managed to escape from the holds.

Understandably, panic now started to break out. Officers did their best to keep control, but with the combination of the darkness, the reeking excrement, the further listing of the ship, and the fact that some of the sick PoWs were dying, it was unsurprising that nerves were more than frayed.

We had to calm the people who were erratic, said George Bainborough. Some were so alarmed it was necessary for someone to give them a punch on the chin.

Throughout the night, the PoWs remained in the four holds. Messages in Morse code were rapped on the bulkheads between them, and it became apparent that the sternmost of the holds was filling rapidly with water. Something needed to be done, and urgently.

The following morning, some 24 hours after the torpedo had hit the ship, Lieutenant Howell managed to cut his way out of his hold using a bread knife that one of the PoWs had managed to smuggle aboard.

As he emerged onto the deck, he was shot at. I hurtled across the deck and dived in, he recalled. Once more, a bullet whizzed past my head. I spurted on, and another bullet splashed beside me. It was obvious to the prisoners now coming onto the deck that the Japanese guards needed to be dealt with.

What happened next is not clear as some of the accounts conflict, but it appears that soldiers from either the Royal Scots or the Royal Artillery made a dash at the Japanese soldiers on the bridge, and killed them.

They ran down the sloping deck, recalled seaman Jack Hughieson, and they pushed the two Japanese with their rifles off into the water. But their captain was shot and he fell overboard wounded. Whatever happened to him, I wont ever know. He saved our lives.

With the Japanese on board neutralised, a mad scramble ensued from the two foremost holds that had now been opened. In one of the holds, the ladder snapped under the weight of the men, and the prisoners had to climb up rivets made slimy with excrement.

Many were crushed or fell tens of feet to the bottom of the hold, suffering injuries such as broken legs or backs, which meant that it would be impossible for them to climb out.

Those who did make it up onto the deck faced two options. If they could swim, they jumped into the water, taking whatever pieces of wreckage they could use as floats. Some were unable to swim, and decided to cling onto the ship, which was now rapidly sinking.

According to the most reliable estimate, some 1,750 prisoners made it into the water. As the Lisbon Maru went down, some 84 men drowned with it, most of whom were trapped in the holds.

The swimmers now faced a new danger  rifle and machine-gun fire from the surrounding Japanese vessels.

There was a Japanese destroyer there, said Montague Trescott, an NCO with the Royal Corps of Signals, and as we approached it, we were machine-gunned.

I slipped down into the water, and there were about three or four Japanese landing craft surrounding the ship, some two or three hundred yards away, recalled Alf Shepherd of the Royal Artillery.

So I swam towards one, and as I was about halfway there they started shooting at us in the water. Ping! Ping! Ping! They were using us for target practice. So I swam back to the ship.

It is not known how many men were slaughtered as they swam towards what they supposed to be their safety.

More cruelly still, some Japanese allowed the British to climb on board  and then shot them. Others had their heads kicked in and were then thrown back into the water. Some were run down and chopped up by propellers.

All the swimmers could do was to keep swimming. The only salvation lay in the form of some islands about four miles away, but there were two big obstacles even for those strong enough to get there: currents and sharks. The sharks had been busy, gunner Charles Jordan later recalled, because there were so many bodies floating around.

If the men were not killed by sharks, then the currents swept many out into the East China Sea to their deaths by drowning. Many tried to stick together, if only to provide comfort.

Jack Hughieson recalled how he was with a fellow Scot, an officer from the wireless station in Hong Kong.

He kept saying to me: You know my wife Meg, she lives in Dundee. If I dont make it, youll get in touch with the Ministry of Defence, youll get her address, and tell her I did my best to rejoin her. Well he never did. But I kept to his word. He went under.

After several hours  and in some cases, a couple of days  men started to reach the islands, where they alerted local Chinese fishermen. Initially, the Chinese had supposed that those in the water were the hated Japanese and so they had done nothing.

But as soon as they discovered the men were British, they launched as many junks and sampans as they could, and saved hundreds of lives. Once they had brought the British to shore, the Chinese fed and clothed them, and even applied ointment to severe cases of sunburn.

We housed them in a temple and in ordinary houses, said Shen Agui, a fisherman. They used body language to show they were hungry  rubbing their tummies. But they didnt know how to use chopsticks. They used them like forks!

In total, 1,006 men survived the sinking of the Lisbon Maru. Much of the credit must surely go to the Chinese islanders. Unfortunately, the mens freedom was short-lived, as the Japanese soon came to the islands and took the men away from their saviours.

Most would spend the next three years in Japanese captivity  and many would, of course, die at the hands of their jailers.

Sadly, there was little justice dispensed after the war. The only Japanese who had survived  or could be tracked down  and put on trial was the captain of the ship, who received seven years imprisonment for allowing the hatches of the holds to be battened down. Predictably, his defence was that he was only following orders.

The wreck of the Lisbon Maru and the bodies it still holds should be left in peace. Not only a war grave, it is the scene of a war crime. But allowing it to remain submerged does not mean it should not be remembered.

The Sinking Of The Lisbon Maru: Britains Forgotten Wartime Tragedy by Tony Banham (Hong Kong University Press) is published at 14.56 on Kindle.

A Faithful Record Of The Lisbon Maru Incident, translated by Brian Finch, will be published in November by Proverse Publishing.
Martin Selmayr is known in Europe for his commitment to the cause of integration, and the fear he uses to further this aim

If Eurosceptics had wanted to create someone who embodies the darkest impulses of the EU, they could not have come up with a more sinister figure than the German bureaucrat Martin Selmayr.

As the Chief of Staff to the bibulous EU President Jean-Claude Juncker, he is notorious both for his ruthless, bullying methods and his fanatical devotion to the ideology of European unification. Indeed, hes known as the Rasputin of Brussels.

Wielding more power than many national leaders, 46-year-old Selmayr offers proof the EU is a vast machine that rides roughshod over democracy in its quest to build the German-led superstate.

For Selmayr, nothing should stand in the way of this goal.

Anyone who challenges the creed of integration is treated as a heretic. That is why he has long been so hostile to Britain, which has shown far too great a spirit of independence.

Affronted by Brexit, hes a key architect of the EUs punishment strategy, compromising a refusal to negotiate constructively on one hand and, on the other, an extortionate demand for a so-called divorce settlement.

His attitude makes it believable that he was behind the damaging leak about the May/Juncker dinner.

Selmayr angrily denied he was behind this character assassination.

Yet it seems to fit his anti-British agenda, as well as his record as an intriguer and manipulator.

Its not the first time hes been accused of leaking to the press to undermine the British side in Brexit negotiations. Selmayrs attitude may have been triggered by an incident in his youth, when he was briefly a student in London.

One evening in 1993, he went to hear Margaret Thatcher speak at an event to promote her memoirs.

Although he bought a signed copy, he was appalled to hear her attack the dream of European integration. He came away with a sense that there is a big misunderstanding between Britain and the EU.

Selmayr spotted the potential of working for Juncker as his spongy, erratic character allowed him greater scope to assume power

Contemptuous of national borders, laws, self-governance and identity, Selmayr is the classic European ideologue bent. Like one of Robespierres unyielding revolutionaries during his French Reign of Terror, he is a political zealot, renowned for his dedication and brutality.

Juncker, never one distinguished by his own work-rate, calls him, only half-jokingly, the Monster.

His commitment is matched by his merciless intimidation which has created its own reign of fear in Brussels.

He thrives on such a reputation, boasting that he keeps the Commission and its 35,000 staff under control. As for his Rasputin nickname, he says: If it means there is an efficient manager, somebody who is not a wimp, Im OK with that. Others are not so happy.

Last year, Kristalina Georgieva, the EUs Budget Commissioner from Bulgaria, cited the poisonous atmosphere that Selmayr created.

A central part of the problem is Selmayr  a lawyer by training  often acts like the Commission President himself.

One spoof Twitter account joked that Selmayr is now the Chef de drinks cabinet for Juncker, but that is a gross misreading of the real situation.

With typical ambition, Selmayr has exploited his bosss absences to acquire more political authority than any official in EU history. This, in turn, feeds his epic self-importance.

Do you know the difference between Selmayr and God? God knows that hes not Selmayr German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble

Do you know the difference between Selmayr and God? the long-serving German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble once said. God knows that hes not Selmayr.

That spectacular egotism often comes across as political thuggery.

As with so many authoritarians, Selmayr seems to believe that the end justifies the means. In his case, the end is the creation of a united, federal Europe.

He claims his belief in this vision was fired as a schoolboy, when his maternal grandfather Heinz Gaedecke took him to the First World War battlefields and military cemeteries of the western front, including those at Verdun.

The lesson that young Selmayr absorbed from this trip was that Europe must unify to avoid the blood-soaked lessons of the past.

But Selmayr also had a direct family connection to the darkest episode in Germanys history. During the Second World War his grandfather was a Lieutenant Colonel on the Wehrmachts staff in the Balkans where he won three bravery awards  including the Iron Cross, first and second class.

After the Allies victory, Josef Selmayr was tried by a British military tribunal for war crimes, found guilty and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He served only five years, and on his release helped to create West German military intelligence.

All of Selmayr's characteristics make it possible that he was behind the damaging links over the Theresa May/Juncker dinner, though he vehemently denies this

This painful family experience gives Selmayr another link with Juncker, whose father was conscripted into the Wehrmacht.

But Martins own upbringing was far less clouded by conflict. He has been accused of bossy, whip-smart legalism  his lawyer father was an adviser to the office of the German President. Selmayr joined the EUs bureaucracy in 2004 at the age of 34.

Ferociously ambitious, Selmayr spotted the potential of working for Juncker, whose spongy, erratic character was part of his appeal, as it gave far more scope for his chief of staff to have influence.

Juncker duly became EU President in 2014, despite a strong campaign against his candidacy by David Cameron. His henchman Selmayr has been thwarting Britain ever since. He wants victory for the EU and humiliation for us.

He was one of the diehard opponents of any concessions being granted to Cameron last year during negotiations for a new British relationship. He is just as uncompromising today over Brexit.

But our Government cannot give in to this Teutonic oppression. Martin Selmayrs undemocratic antics must not be allowed to deny us our freedom and sovereignty.
Harvey Weinstein left Kelly Brook 'repulsed' after becoming 'infatuated' with the British model, it has been claimed.

The 37-year-old was cast in Piranha 3D by the shamed mogul in 2010 in what was considered to be her big break in Hollywood.

But the actress 'never had any interest' in accepting more work from Weinstein despite his belief that she 'oozed sex appeal', a Hollywood insider told The Sun.

Speaking about the producer, who is now facing a variety of allegations from as many as 50 women, the source said: 'Harvey was infatuated with Kelly.

Kelly Brook, pictured right, was cast in Piranha 3D by Harvey Weinstein, pictured left, in 2010 in what was considered to be her big break in Hollywood

Brook's starring role in Piranha 3D spawned numerous TV and movie appearances as well as a cover shoot for Playboy magazine

'He thought she oozed sex appeal and was keen to give her more work. But Kelly never had any interest. His demeanour simply repulsed her.

'Kelly believes she got her part due to her work attitude and talent, nothing else.'

Brook's starring role in Piranha 3D spawned numerous TV and movie appearances as well as a cover shoot for Playboy magazine.

Brook, pictured, has previously branded Weinstein a 'beast' while slamming other actresses for not speaking out sooner

Brook described the silence of other Hollywood stars as 'shameful' and said: 'Was a film career and an Oscar really worth protecting this beast?'

Speaking about the producer, who is now facing a variety of allegations from as many as 50 women, the source said: 'Harvey was infatuated with Kelly'

She has previously branded Weinstein a 'beast' while slamming other actresses for not speaking out sooner.

She described their silence as 'shameful' and said: 'Was a film career and an Oscar really worth protecting this beast?'

Alongside that tweet she posted a picture of Gwyneth Paltrow who alleges that the 65-year-old summoned her to his New York hotel room when she was 22 before asking for a massage.

Weinstein denies all the allegations of non-consensual sex acts.
The man responsible for torturing the killer of missing 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe stalked his victim for a month, plotting out the best way to hurt him.

Adam Paul Davidson, 31, poured boiling water on Brett Peter Cowan as he sat at a table playing cards with other inmates at the Wolston Correctional Centre in Queensland.

Prosecutor Mark Whitbread told Brisbane District Court inspiration had struck Davidson when he saw a man pass through the gates of the prison in compression garments.

Adam Paul Davidson (court sketch pictured) stalked child-killer Brett Peter Cowan for a month to decide on the best way to hurt him

After seeing a man in a burns suit with horrific scarring, he decided to pour boiling water on Cowan, who is serving a life sentence for murdering missing teen Daniel Morcombe

The man was covered in horrific scars and wearing a burn suit after a similar attack had been directed at him.

'He would love that scarring to be on Cowan,' Mr Whitbread said.

In sentencing Davidson on Monday, Judge Ian Dearden said every person was entitled to be treated respectfully, no matter how appalling the crimes they had committed.

'We are all precious human beings, it doesn't matter who we are,' Judge Dearden said.

'You have no entitlement to act as a vigilante.'

Davidson attacked Cowan using a a mop bucket filled with boiling water, which he poured over the man's head.

As the child-killer screamed 'why why why', Davidson used the empty bucket to beat him over the head.



Cowan was playing cards with other inmates at the Wolston Correctional Centre in Queensland (pictured) at the time

Davidson said he acted alone in the attack, and referred to Cowan as a 'f***ing grub' (pictured: A cell at the high security prison)

Cowan, 48, received superficial burns to 15 per cent of his body, including on his head, chest and leg, and was treated in hospital to prevent infection.

He was left permanently disfigured.

Davidson told investigators he attacked Cowan 'for a little bit of retribution' and he wanted him 'to feel the pain like someone like Daniel Morcombe has felt'.

'I did it. Only me no one else was involved. He had it coming, he's a f***king grub,' Davidson said.

Davidson was sentenced to three years for his actions, but will be released on parole next month after time served.

Davidson said he wanted Cowan to 'feel the pain like someone like Daniel Morcombe (pictured) has felt'

Daniel (pictured) was just 13 when he was abducted and murdered in 2003. His remains were not recovered until August 2011

Daniel Morcombe's remains were found in August 2011 after an elaborate police operation prompted Cowan to confess and lead undercover officers to where he dumped Daniel's body.

Cowan was found guilty of murder, indecent treatment of a child and interfering with a corpse.

Davidson has been jailed for a series of unpaid hotel bills, which he booked with maxed out credit cards, as well as holding up a Queensland bottle shop using his finger pointed through his pocket in place of a gun.
Americans in the workforce are having much longer careers, forcing the age of retirement to rise, according to a new study.

Data released from the Society of Actuaries and obtained by Bloomberg found, however, that health in the United States is on the decline and more people are forced to endure shorter, less active retirements.

From 2014 to 2015, mortality rates for Americans rose 1.2 per cent marking the first year-over-year increase in the number since 2005. It also marks the second time since 1980 that mortality figure increased by over one percent.

Data released from the Society of Actuaries found that health in the United States is declining and more people are forced to endure shorter retirements (stock)

A recent spike can be seen from around 2015 showing that mortality rates are on a rise in the United States. From 2014 to 2015, mortality rates rose 1.2 per cent marking the first year-over-year increase in the number since 2005

But because life expectancy in the United States becomes more stagnant, millions of Americans in the workforce have forced the number that most retire and claim their Social Security checks to raise from 65 in 2002 to about 67 in 2027.

Additionally, approximately a third of all work-able Americans are still working between the ages of 65 to 69. This percentage drops to 20 per cent for folks in their early 70s.

According to a study done this month by journal Health Affairs, Americans in their late 50s are experiencing the same if not worse health ailments than people at those ages a decade to 15-years-ago.

Conducted by HwaJung Choi and Robert Schoeni, economist from the University of Michigan, the study looked at the 'activity of daily living' (ADL) of middle-age Americans to gauge their health. ADL can involve getting up from sleep, eating, driving or any activity done throughout the day.

Limitation of ADL - the inability to do these tasks - jumped to 12.5 percent for Americans in their late 50s and expecting retirement at 66 from 8.8 percent for people retiring at 65.

Americans aged 58 to 60 - at a retirement age of 66 - rated their health as 'poor' or 'fair' in 25 percent of people. A stat that was 2.6 lower for retirees at 65.

Conducted by economist HwaJung Choi and Robert Schoeni, the study looked at the 'activity of daily living' (ADL) of middle-age Americans to gauge their health

Limitation of ADL jumped to 12.5 per cent for Americans in their late 50s and expecting retirement at 66 from 8.8 per cent for people retiring at 65 (stock)

Researchers also found that cognitive skills were on the decline as 11 per cent of retirees at 66 already had some form of decline at age 58 to 60. That too is up from 9.5 per cent in the other age bracket.

The cause of American health decline is argued by economists who want to connect the issue to obesity, alcohol abuse, drug overdose and suicide, among other reasons.

But for one group - pension plan companies - the health news yields positive results as they won't have to give out checks to retirees as long.

The Society of Actuaries found that life expectancy for pensioners dropped 0.2 years since the last calculations. Pension plan obligations are potentially expected to fall by 0.7 to one per cent.
A kindergarten with mouldy mattresses, grimy tables and an unqualified teacher who smacked a special needs child has been shut down.

Busy Kids Kindergarten and Child Care Centre in Townsville was closed on Monday following a ruling by the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

In a decision published on Monday, the tribunal ruled the centre be closed for three months after a raft of serious safety and hygiene breaches were uncovered.

In addition to the filthy beds, the centre also had rotten fencing, a warm fridge, dodgy playground equipment and a first aid kit that was within reach of children.

Busy Kids Kindergarten (pictured) has been shut down after a raft of safety and hygiene breaches

A tribunal heard the Townsville child care centre had mouldy mattresses, grimy tables, rotten fencing and dodgy playground equipment

According to the decision, a staff member was fired in June last year after smacking a child with severe learning difficulties twice in a row on his nappy.

The child had been 'pulling items off shelves and throwing things around the room in a very agitated state' when he was hit by the 'inexperienced' staff member.

The staff member was later found to be unqualified to look after the 'troubled and challenging child without significant, relevant training' and was fired a month later.

Staff also failed to tell the child's mother he had been smacked, instead claiming he had just been yelled at by the teacher - breaking the law in doing so.

The tribunal also claimed an incomplete and out-of-date first aid kit was in reach of kids. Photographs posted on the centre's Facebook page appear to show the kit being used by children in a fake 'Doctor Surgery' area

In a decision published on Monday, the tribunal detailed an incident last year in which an inexperienced staff member hit a child with special needs. The teacher was fired a month later

In his decision, QCAT member Robert Olding said the smacking incident was a one-off event that on its own did not warrant the centre's closure.

Mr Olding explained that the centre had voluntarily shut down for two months earlier this year to address a number of significant hygiene and safety breaches.

The centre was previously found to have unprotected power points and its first aid kit was incomplete with an out-of-date item.

Other breaches included a filthy nappy change area and broken air cooling vent.

But when departmental staff visited the centre in July for a 'meet and greet', they were met with the same 'systemic' breaches that had still not been fixed.

Busy Kids Kindergarten will open its doors again in January next year, provided it passes industry standards.
A website designed to help Muslim men find second wives in the UK has more than 100,000 users.

Polygamy, where a person has more than one spouse, is illegal in the UK, carrying a possible prison sentence of up to seven years.

Such marriages are only recognised if they took place in countries where they are legal.

Secondwife.com, which markets itself to Muslims, has more than 100,000 users in the UK despite polygamy being illegal

However, there is no law to stop unregistered religious ceremonies taking place.

Currently, there are more than 25,000 British members using the site.

Azad Chaiwala, from Sunderland, who established SecondWife.com, said he was responding to a need.

But campaigners yesterday lambasted the site for encouraging women into abusive relationships that deny them rights given by the law of the land to women in registered marriages.

They say the practise opens women, often younger than their husbands, up to loneliness, physical abuse and even trafficking.

Yesterday, a Daily Mail reporter - who signed up to the site as an 18-year-old woman - was not asked for age verification.

Azad Chaiwala, who founded the website, claims he is providing a necessary service and the arrangement benefits women

They were immediately presented with profiles of local Muslim men aged from 30 to 60.

Yasmin Rehman, of the Centre for Secular Space, called the website deeply dangerous and called on politicians to take action.

She said: I think its deeply dangerous. Hes promoting inequality and exploitation of women and undermining what marriage is about, and hes making money out of it.

Miss Rehman, a Muslim herself, said: I dont think he should be allowed to do it. I think hes flouting the law - anyone else would become subject to polygamy laws. It sits alongside websites like brides from abroad.

I meet women who have been trafficked and prostituted. Im fed up with this being accepted. There are Muslim women across the world fighting this, some at great risk to themselves.

While there are no official figures, it is estimated that there may be as many as 20,000 polygamous marriages in the British Muslim community.

Gina Khan, of One Law For All, who herself has been a victim of polygamous marriage, said: The website is disgusting. Its a medieval practice for Muslim men who want to commit adultery and they are using religion, its an abusive practice.

It sends a shiver down my spine that this can happen to my daughter. This is an epidemic in Birmingham, and it was unheard of in the 1980s.

Its impacting hundreds of British women and its being ignored by the state in this country.

But campaigners say the website is potentially dangerous and 'promotes inequality and the exploitation of women' (file image)

You can bet your life they are vulnerable women. There are a lot of women who I have come across who have had no say in it.

Mr Chaiwala claims his website does not break the law, and brazenly claims it benefits women.

But he also admitted that three quarters of its users are men.

He said:The second wife website came about from my need, and thinking therell be other people in my situation.

There are other deceiving ways of doing it - affairs, prostitution etc. - those are not necessarily good for relationships. Here its more honourable.

Weve got so many successful marriages and so many women signed up themselves they are opting to enter this kind of relationship.

He has previously admitted: There is not a woman on earth who would be totally comfortable with it.

One man, a doctor from South Yorkshire, who found a second wife through the site, told BBC Inside Out North East and Cumbria (pls keep): If I have the ability to manage more than one wife then I would like to have this opportunity.

Its up to the man, as wise as he could be, to treat them fairly and kindly and caringly.

His second wife said she went into the marriage because she wants to have a degree of independence, but she has been left insecure by the contract.

She said: Ive found myself being more insecure... its really affecting me. I wouldnt do it again, because its not easy emotionally, it really isnt.

A spokesman for SecondWife.com said: 'Currently we have 25,000+ active members in the UK. Over the three years we have been running the UK has often been in our top three countries.

Responding to campaigners' comments he said: 'Monogamous marriages currently have the largest proportion of abusers. Far more than those that occur in polygamous marriages. The marriage isnt the cause of any abuse. The abuser is the cause of abuse.'

He denied the website flouts the law, adding: 'It just takes a change in society to have an impact before legislation gets updated.'
Tom Hanks hit out at President Trump in a speech after being honored by the National Archives Foundation on Saturday night.

The Academy Award-winning actor knocked the president's response to the controversy over the comments he allegedly made to a Gold Star Widow last week - calling it 'one of the biggest c**k-ups on the planet Earth.'

'I'm only knowing what I read in the newspapers and what have you, and it just seems like one of the biggest c**k-ups on planet earth, if you ask me,' Hanks said to CNN.

Tom Hanks hit out at President Trump in a speech after being honored by the National Archives Foundation on Saturday night. He is pictured on the stage at the foundation after receiving his award on Saturday

The Academy Award-winning actor knocked the president's response to the controversy over the comments he allegedly made to a Gold Star Widow last week - calling it 'one of the biggest c**k-ups on the planet Earth'

'This is a tragedy of the utmost consequence and it goes much longer beyond who's going to come out on top of the new story.

'I think it's very sad.'

The comments came after Trump allegedly told Gold Star Widow of La David Johnson that her husband 'knew what he signed up for.'

Johnson was killed in battle during a presumed ISIS attack earlier this month in Niger.

The president has been in a war of words with Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson over the call, after Wilson said in an interview that Trump's comments were dismissive.

Wilson is a family friend of the Johnsons, and was in a limousine with the Gold Star widow and her family on the way to the airport to pick up the soldier's body when Trump made the call.

Johnson confirmed Wilson's version of events on Monday, speaking on Good Morning America.

'Whatever Ms Wilson said was not fabricated. What she said was 100 per cent correct,' Johnson said. 'The phone was on speakerphone. Why would we fabricate something like that?'

Johnson said her aunt, her uncle, a master sergeant and Wilson were with her in the car when Trump called the master sergeant .

The call came as they pulled onto the tarmac at Dover Dover Air Force Base to pick up Sgt. Johnson's body, his widow said.

The president has been in a war of words with Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, pictured, over the call, after Wilson said in an interview that Trump's comments were dismissive

Johnson confirmed Wilson's version of events on Monday, speaking on Good Morning America

Johnson was so stunned by the call, she claimed, that she didn't respond to the president. She is pictured kissing her husband's casket at a burial service for him on Saturday

As soon as the interview was over Trump pounced on Twitter. 'I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Army Specialist Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!' he tweeted after the interview ended

Johnson said she asked the master sergeant to put the phone on speakerphone so that everyone in the car could hear Trump.

'The president said "He knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyway,"' Johnson recalled.

'It made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it.

'He couldn't remember my husband's name. The only way he remembered my husband's name was because he told me he had my husband's report in front of him, and that's when he actually said "La David".

'I heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband's name and that's what hurt me most. Because if my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risks his life for our country, why can't you remember his name? And that's what made me upset and cry more,' she added.

Johnson was so stunned by the call, she claimed, that she didn't respond to the president.

She says she left the call feeling even worse than before.

As soon as the interview was over Trump pounced on Twitter.

'I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Army Specialist Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!' he tweeted after the interview ended.

Tom Hanks made the comments on Saturday night after receiving the Records of Achievement Award at the annual National Archives Foundation gala in Washington. Hanks is pictured with Ken Burns Saturday night

'No actor has covered the span of the 20th-century American history as broadly as honoree Tom Hanks,' David Ferriero said in a statement provided by the foundation. Hanks is pictured with Ken Burns Saturday night

Hanks made the comments on Saturday night after receiving the Records of Achievement Award at the annual National Archives Foundation gala in Washington.

The award is said to be the highest honor given by the foundation to an 'individual whose work has fostered a broader national awareness of the history and identity of the United States through the use of original National Archives records.'

'No actor has covered the span of the 20th-century American history as broadly as honoree Tom Hanks,' David Ferriero said in a statement provided by the foundation.

In his acceptance speech Hanks spoke about the importance of 'dialogue' and 'ongoing reexaminations about what is taught about [America's founding.]' He was speaking specifically about Confederate monuments and statues of people like Christopher Columbus.
Tony Goldwyn has revealed he was sexually harassed as a young actor.

The Scandal star said he was in his final year of acting school when an unidentified male abused his power.

Goldwyn, who is one of the latest actors to come forward with a firsthand ordeal, felt compelled to speak out after praising Lupita Nyong'o for revealing she was one of Harvey Weinstein's victims.

In an op-ed for the New York Times, Nyong'o claimed that Weinstein had made unwanted advances to her on more than one occasion and that he once threatened to ruin her career when she turned him down.

Scandal star Tony Goldwyn told Access Hollywood (above) he was in his final year of acting school when an unidentified male abused his power and sexually harassed him

Goldywn tweeted his support for Nyong'o and told Access Hollywood he was 'horrified and moved' by her story.

'It happened to me as a young guy, when I was literally Lupita's age. It happened to me by a man and it wasn't as extended or awful as what Lupita went through, but it was the same thing,' he said.

'It was the casting couch and I didn't understand quite what was going on, or what was happening.

'I thought it was my fault. I thought I was misunderstanding the situation, and only afterwards did I realize what had happened. It took me a couple years to get over it.

Goldwyn was compelled to speak out after praising Lupita Nyong'o for revealing she was one of Harvey Weinstein's victims. He tweeted his support for the actress last week

While speaking out in support of Lupita, Goldwyn revealed he was sexually harassed when he was the same age as her in a 'casting couch' incident

'It was similar in that I got out of the situation. It's something women have to deal with in every situation, in every industry with powerful men.'

Showing his support for Nyong'o last week, Goldwyn tweeted: 'TY @Lupita_Nyongo ! Women need to know your brothers have your backs. Real men aren't 'like that.' End the silence.'

Nyong'o is one of many women to accuse the Hollywood producer of sexual harassment.

She claims he once tried to undress in front of her at his home and told her that to be in the business she had to be 'willing to do this kind of thing'.
A plane that crashed in the Northern Territory killing two people had been transporting a man's body for burial.

The six-seater, single engine Cessna 210 had left Darwin Airport on its way to repatriate the man's body at Elcho Island when it went down near Howard Springs at 1.30pm Monday.

Both the pilot and a passenger onboard died when the light plane lost both wings as it ripped through bushland and crashed on a rural road shortly after take-off.

A light plane that crashed in the Northern Territory and killed two people was transporting a man's body for burial

The six-seater, single engine Cessna 210 left Darwin Airport on its way to repatriate the man's body at Elcho Island when it went down near Howard Springs

Wreckage from the more than 40-year-old Air Frontier plane was strewn either side of Gunn Point Road, with its wings and body found 400 metres apart.

Part of one wing was discovered hanging from a tree with another found nearby on one side of the unsealed dirt road.

A second crime scene spanning 200m was set up on the other side where the plane's fuselage disintegrated upon impact.

Superintendent Tony Deutrom said heavy rain at the time of the crash was being considered as a factor.

'This time of year is quite notorious for inclement weather and that will form part of the investigation,' he said.

'There's obviously a body of work that needs to be undertaken before we can draw any conclusions as to what it was doing.'

The plane had been travelling to Elcho Island (pictured) for the repatriation of the man's body

Wreckage from the more than 40-year-old Air Frontier plane was strewn either side of Gunn Point Road, with its wings and body found 400 metres apart

Supt Deutrom said it's had been a traumatic task for investigating officers and two witnesses, one of whom was an off duty police officer.

'Our thoughts are with the family and the friends of the people who have died today,' he said.

Police are believed to have identified those killed and are working on contacting their next of kin.

The crime scenes will remain until Tuesday afternoon when investigators from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau arrive from Canberra.

The investigation will likely consider GPS data as light planes are not required to carry black boxes, with Supt Deutrom appealing for witnesses to come forward.

One of the biggest charter operators in the Northern Territory Air Frontier owned the plane and declined to comment.

Superintendent Tony Deutrom (pictured) said heavy rain at the time of the crash was being considered as a factor but an investigation was ongoing
The US, South Korea and Japan began a two-day missile tracking drill Tuesday amid rising tensions with North Korea.

The exercises, South Korea's military said, is in preparation for any missile or nuclear threats from the North.

The drill will be held in waters off the coasts of South Korea and Japan, the South Korean military said in a statement.

South Korea, the United States and Japan started a two-day missile tracking drill on Tuesday (stock image)

The moves for the drill were decided at the conclusion of the 48th Security Consultative Meeting between America and South Korea in October 2016.

Included in these drills were the Aegis destroyer Yulgok Yii of South Korea, USS Stethem and USS Decatur Aegis destroyers from the States and a JDS Kirishima destroyer from Japan.

The exercise will have the warships detect and track a target while sharing information.

The drills have been taking place every few months since that agreement.

The United States Air Force will put its ageing fleet of nuclear-capable B-52 bombers on 24-hour alert for the first time since the end of the Cold War, according to its chief of staff.

Amid rising tensions with North Korea and a resurgent Putin-led Russia, General David Goldfein told Defense One that the strategic bomber force will be ready at a day's notice for the first time in 26 years.

Adapting to the 'reality of the global situation', Goldfein's order would see B-52s readied at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and armed with nuclear weapons - something not seen since 1991.

In response to the news, North Korea said President Trump was 'overheated with a war fever' and branded him a 'hooligan' and a 'lunatic'.

The government-owned news agency KCNA lashed out in a furious tirade: 'Dignitaries of White House, and State and Defense Departments of the US are having a hard time cooling Trump overheated with a war fever, but only the south Korean puppet forces are fanning up the lunatic fingering a nuclear button.

B-52s were one arm of the nuclear deterrent force during the Cold War and were used in the carpet-bombings of North Vietnam. During the 1991 Gulf War, they dropped 40 per cent of the ordnance on Iraq. Pictured: The vintage bomber's specifications

'Lunatic Trump is running headlong into ruin, taking America with him, and the poor puppet forces are following him, at the peril of their lives.

'The darkness drooping low over America is sunset, not dawn, and no force can stop America from rushing headlong into downhill after over-living its era.

'No wonder, such hooligan as thoughtless Trump is going on the rampage after becoming owner of White House, rendering the world restless.'

Barksdale - the home of the 2D Bomb Wing and Air Force Global Strike Command - is currently being refurbished in anticipation of the change in defense posture to allow the bombers to 'take off at a moment's notice'.

This is the latest defensive move from the US military, matching the bellicose threats that President Trump has posted on Twitter, putting North Korea, Iran and other American enemies on notice he will use the might of the armed forces.
The ABC sent internal emails reminding staff to remain impartial when covering the same-sex marriage plebiscite - sparking outrage among employees who 'felt very strongly' in favour of supporting the 'Yes' campaign.

The emails revealed by the New Daily show correspondence sent by Mark Maley, director of editorial policy, saying it was important for the national broadcaster 'to be seen as impartial'.

'Please remember that approximately 40 per cent of the population opposes the change and more importantly that the ABC does not have a position on the issue,' Mr Maley emailed to ABC workers.

The ABC sent internal emails reminding staff to remain impartial when covering same-sex marriage - outraging employees who 'felt very strongly' in favour of the 'Yes' campaign

The emails, sent earlier this year, were met with criticism from staff who wanted 'to be on the right side of history' with the controversial plebiscite in majority of the 'Yes' vote

The emailssent by Mark Maley, director of editorial policy, saying it was important for the national broadcaster 'to be seen as impartial'

The emails, sent earlier this year, were met with criticism from many staffers who wanted 'to be on the right side of history' with the controversial plebiscite overwhelmingly in majority of the 'Yes' vote.

Staff were told by Mr Maley that 'low-key participation' in events on either side of the vote was acceptable, as long as they were just 'an anonymous face in the crowd'.

A staff member, who will remain anonymous, contacted editorial director Alan Sunderland over the email referring to Tony Abbott and other anti-same-sex marriage figures as 'bigots'.

'Tony Abbott and his cohort are engaged in gay exceptionalism, given no other social issue has been decided via plebiscite,' the staff member emailed.

'We should be collectively outraged. Isn't the alternative giving undue weight to the opinions of bigots? Let's not forget that Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull will both be campaigning for the YES vote which hardly makes this a political issue.

Being gay is not against the law in any state. Gay people are normal. They should be treated equally. It's simple.'

Staff were told by Mr Maley that 'low-key participation' in events on either side of the vote was acceptable, as long as they were just 'an anonymous face in the crowd'

Philippa McDermott, the ABC's head of indigenous employment and diversity, also objected to Mr Maley's memo and the wordage he used to identify the issue.

Ms McDermott wrote to the company's head of community engagement, Michele Fonseca, preferring the official terminology

'Marriage equality' was incorporated as a term to include gender diverse, especially non-binary and intersex people in to this conversation,' she said.

'I think this would be a good moment to remember that the ABC is not exempt from the Anti-Discrimination Act.'

Other staff also approached their respective heads of department over the office email, with one 'openly gay' employee worried they would not be protected in what would be a 'very traumatic time for us.'

In a statement to Daily Mail Australia, the ABC said the memo was merely a reminder of the journalistic responsibilities of its staff and had provided support to all employees

In a statement to Daily Mail Australia, the ABC said the memo was merely a reminder of the journalistic responsibilities of its staff and had provided support to all employees.

'The ABC has been very conscious from the start of the SSM debate to ensure, in providing a forum for genuine public discussion and for all views to be raised from an appropriate diversity of perspectives, we do not unwittingly become an outlet for hate speech, discrimination or unnecessary offence,' a spokesman said.

'The ABCs approach to such important and deeply personal issues will always be subject to healthy debate both inside and outside the organisation. Any concerns raised were few and far between and provided an opportunity for engagement and explanation.'

'We also told staff they were able to access EAP support services if required, as they can with any issue in the workplace.'

'The ABC is confident this approach has been correct from not only our employees perspective but also our audiences who look for accurate, impartial and independent coverage of this important issue.'
Aging oil tycoon Jack Grynberg is locked in a legal battle with his family over control of his billion-dollar empire, court documents have revealed.

The 85-year-old is battling his wife and three children's attempts to seize the family fortune over claims that he is 'erratic' and has 'questionable judgement', a Monday report in the Denver Post revealed.

Grynberg, who was born in Poland, has claimed that he joined resistance fighters at age 12 and battled Nazis in the forests of Belarus.

He built his fortune partially by suing other oil companies on behalf of the federal government under laws that allow whistle-blowers to take a cut of money recovered from fraudsters.

The tycoon's wife, Celeste, 81, and their three children - Rachel, 56, Stephen, 54, and Miriam, 52 - filed suit against him last year in a play for control over his empire.

The family legal battle centers on three companies Grynberg created: Gadeco, Pricaspian, and RSM, which in all hold about $230 million in cash reserves and drilling rights that are valued in the billions.

Aging Denver oil tycoon Jack Grynberg is locked in a legal battle with his family over control of his billion-dollar empire

The tycoon's wife, Celeste, 81, (left) and their three children - Rachel, 56, Stephen, 54, (right) and Miriam, 52 - filed suit against him last year in a play for control over his empire

The three companies are owned by the children, but given to them under the condition, Grynberg claims, that he be allowed to operate them until the day he dies.

The wife and children contend that Grynberg lacks the capacity to continue running the businesses.

'In recent years, Jack's increasingly questionable judgment and erratic decision-making have caused Jack's wife and children mounting concern,' court papers filed by the family state.

'Jack's words reveal a troubling absence of ethical business judgment' and his reckless business decisions cost them millions, the family said in the filings.

The family claim Grynberg bought a $600,000 house for his secretary with corporate funds.

They also say he refused to pay an IRS bill of $135million last year, and is running up an interest tab of $20,000 a day on the unpaid bill.

Grynberg was charged with sexual assault in a groping claim last year, but the charge was dropped for lack of evidence

Although it's unknown what relation, if any, it has to the civil legal battle, Grynberg was briefly criminally charged with felony sexual contact by force in December, after a former employee told police that he put his hand inside her shirt and bra and grabbed her breast.

Prosecutors later dropped the charge due to lack of evidence.

Grynberg, in an affidavit, blasted 'the complete ingratitude of my children whom I have supported through (their) entire lives, including providing gifts of interests in companies which have earned more than a billion dollars solely through my efforts.'

His daughter, Miriam, 'has not worked a day in her life,' the affidavit says, while his other children, Rachel and Stephen, 'have wasted the education which I provided.'

'Rachel dabbles in art in Denver and Stephen pretends to be a film maker in Los Angeles,' Grynberg's affidavit says. 'Neither do anything productive.  I have decided enough is enough They have no ability to manage these companies.'

Stephen Grynberg recently directed a documentary about mountaineer Ruedi Beglinger, 'A Life Ascending,' and gained critical acclaim for his 1998 film 'Love From Ground Zero'.

Celeste and Jack Grynberg separated shortly after the suit was filed, and now live separately

The elder Grynberg has argued that he built his own fortune from the ground up and should be able to operate the companies as he pleases.

'He has devoted himself to fighting dishonest and improper practices by some of the world's major energy companies in various (US) and international courts and tribunals,' Grynberg's lawyers wrote in court papers.

The court papers say Grynberg made his fortune by 'ruling with an iron fist', while his wife and children 'did literally nothing to create this wealth.'

Celeste and Jack Grynberg separated shortly after the suit was filed, and now live in separate homes.

The suit is set to go to a jury trial sometime in the next month.

'It's sad; he's given them all this money and they're trying to take it all from him and, in the last few years of his life, he can't do what he loves to do,' Grynberg's lawyer Greg Tamkin told the Post.

'For him it's not about the money. For them, it is.'
A convicted paedophile who attempted to rape a 13-year-old boy has been thrown out of a children's gaming arcade.

Horrified parents alerted staff at TimeZone in Mackay, Queensland, when they saw 44-year-old Marcel Schauer walk into the amusement centre on Sunday.

One of the witnesses, who recognised Schauer, told the Sunshine Coast Daily security escorted him out of the arcade as he aggressively 'told them off'.

Marcel Schauer (pictured), a convicted paedophile who attempted to rape a 13-year-old boy, has been thrown out of a children's gaming arcade

'[My mother and I] both saw him and realised he was walking into Time Zone. I went in to speak to the young girl at the counter and there was another man that had gone in as well to let them know,' she told the paper.

'She [the staff member] said they noticed straight away that he was there and called security, they showed him out and then we just saw him yelling at them and he zipped off on his bike.'

The witness said police arrived a short time later.

In 2009, Schauer took a 13-year-old boy into bushland in Queensland with the promise of a cigarette.

He forced himself on the teenager before telling him he was about to be raped.

Horrified parents alerted staff at TimeZone in Mackay, Queensland, when they saw 44-year-old Marcel Schauer walk into the amusement centre on Sunday (stock image)

'Schauer used physical force to subdue the boy,' Crown prosecutor Brendan Manttan said at the time, according to The Daily Mercury.

'He pulled down the boy's pants and underpants and said: "I am going to rape you, little b****".'

By chance, the boy's father was driving in the local area and saw his son's bike before he stopped to save him.

'The boy's father came by, went to the bushland and saw his boy with his bottom exposed, on a coffee table; Schauer was shirtless and was about to pull his own pants down,' the prosecutor said.

The incident unfolded at Caneland Central shopping centre in Mackay on Sunday (stock image)

Schauer is currently out on bail and has since been charged with breaching prohibition orders on various occasions, The Mercury reported.

He has previously been described as of 'borderline intelligence' after he was hit by a car and knocked off his bike as a child.

Queensland Police told Daily Mail Australia they were aware of Sunday's incident but couldn't confirm if the man involved was a registered sex offender.

'Police will act upon and investigate all information received and members of the public are encouraged to make contact with their local police,' a spokesperson said.
A Melbourne mum accused of killing her 13-month-old baby daughter with a stab to the throat has pleaded guilty to infanticide.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, appeared via videolink from Thomas Embling Hospital in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday, where prosecutors withdrew a charge of murder.

The woman entered a plea of guilty to infanticide and was ordered to appear at the Supreme Court on Thursday for a directions hearing.
Embattled property developer Salim Mehajer appears to have recovered from the car accident that rendered him unable to attend court last week.

The former deputy mayor recently missed two court hearings in Sydney after a crash last Monday morning left him in hospital.

But Mehajer finally made into court on Tuesday morning over a civil dispute related to a land transaction.

Mehajer left in the passenger seat of a car, suggesting that he may not yet be fit to drive.

Property developer Salim Mehajer walked into court without his crutches on Tuesday morning

The former mayor left court without using crutches and got into the passenger seat of a car

Mehajer failed to show up to two separate hearings last week on medical grounds, with his lawyer saying he had been in a 'serious' motor accident.

His lawyer produced a medical certificate excusing his absence, and a spokesman for Mehajer later slammed claims the accident was staged as 'evil' and 'ludicrous'.

Mehajer was warned by the magistrate that if he does not show at court this week for review of a lawsuit brought by Jason Tran, then his defence will be 'struck out'.

In that case, Mr Tran would 'be at liberty to apply for a default judgment'.

The media followed Sam Mehajer out of court and into a waiting vehicle on Tuesday afternoon

An injured Salim Mehajer used crutches last week as he recovered from Monday's car accident

The controversial former mayor appeared to have recovered from his car crash last Monday

The former Auburn deputy mayor was due to appear in the Downing Centre Local Court last Monday over charges of assaulting a Channel Seven journalist last year.

But just after leaving his home on the way to court, his white Mercedes 4WD was involved in a crash, trapping him inside for up to 20 minutes.

He was rushed to Westmead Hospital with neck injuries after the accident on Delhi Street, in Lidcombe.

The car crash involving the controversial businessman occurred very close to his residence

Pictures from the scene show Mr Mehajer being pulled from his white Mercedes on a stretcher

The businessman was set to appear in court four times throughout the week for a variety of civil and criminal charges.

The accident happened just streets from Mehajer's house, and his lawyer shut down a press conference last Monday immediately after being asked whether it was simply a coincidence he was in a car crash on a day he was due to be in court.

A fire and rescue crew member holds Mehajer's neck in place while he was trapped in the car

Mehajer was treated at the scene for pain and taken to Westmead Hospital in a stable condition

Mehajer was also a no-show at another District Court dispute, involving the stonemason behind the marble spiral staircase at his Lidcombe mansion.

He told his solicitor he was in 'in Canberra following the death of my grandmother' at the time of that court appearance.

But judge ruled Mehajer would have had 'no doubt' of the hearing date and ruled for him to pay a bill of nearly $670,000 plus legal costs to the tradesman.
Neighbors say there was nothing they could do as they watched a seven-year-old boy get mauled to death by two pit bulls.

'No one knew what to do. Probably 15 people just watching it happen... just screaming,' a resident of the Lowell, Massachusetts neighborhood in which the incident took place on Saturday evening told the Boston Herald.

Meanwhile, the deputy superintendent of the unidentified boy's public school district said in a statement: 'We mourn the loss of a vibrant member of the Lowell Public School community who will be greatly missed.'

A seven-year-old boy was mauled to death by two pit bulls who lived down the street from him in Lowell, Massachuetts

A neighbor said: 'No one knew what to do. Probably 15 people just watching it happen... just screaming'

The boy's aunt, Michelle Reedy, said: 'He was a good kid, we do miss him.' The boy has not yet been identified

A vigil was held for the boy's heartbroken neighbors and family members on Sunday night.

A neighbor told CBS Local that the boy was playing a ball game with his friends when the ball went through the fence of the enclosure in which the pit bulls were kept.

Another neighbor told Fox 25 Boston: 'I heard someone yelling "It's my baby! It's my baby!"'

The incident occurred on Clare Street. The boy lived near the home where the pit bulls were kept.

'[The pit bulls] should have been muzzled,' the boy's aunt, Michelle Reedy, told CBS Local. 'He was a good kid, we do miss him.'

The dogs were owned by an Iraq war veteran and were used for emotional support, neighbors said.

One pit bull was euthanized by police. The other is currently being held by local animal control, officials say.

As of yet, no charges have been filed over the death.

The individual who reportedly lives at the same address as the pit bulls has not commented on the incident.
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Ivana Trump dazzled in a low cut gown at a charity ball in New York City on Monday night.

The first wife of President Donald Trump put on a busty display at the the Gabrielle's Angel Foundation Ball on Monday night in, sporting a glittering dress with mesh covering her cleavage.

The star-studded cancer research fundraiser took place at Cipriani Wall Street, featuring performances and appearances from Gloria Gaynor, Kevin Hart, Kool & The Gang, and more.

Ivana, who was wed to the 45th President from 1977 to 1992, brought along real estate broker Larry Kaiser, who looked dapper in a red velvet jacket and black bow-tie.

The first wife of President Donald Trump put on a busty display at the the Gabrielle's Angel Foundation Ball on Monday night

The four-times married former model hammed it up for the camera, flashing a peace sign and blowing kisses at onlookers

Sealed with a kiss! The Czech businesswoman, 68, teamed the look with a silver envelope clutch and matching metallic heels

A retro chignon, French manicure and full pink pout rounded out her look. Ivana was wed to the 45th President from 1977 to 1992

After keeping a low profile during her ex-husband's election campaign and presidency, Ivana catapulted herself back into the spotlight two weeks ago as she promoted her new book, Raising Trump

The Czech businesswoman, 68, teamed the look with a silver envelope clutch and matching metallic heels.

A retro chignon, French manicure and full pink pout rounded out her look.

The four-times married former model hammed it up for the camera, flashing a peace sign and blowing kisses at onlookers.

After keeping a low profile during her ex-husband's election campaign and presidency, Ivana catapulted herself back into the spotlight two weeks ago as she promoted her new book, Raising Trump.

But what began as an innocent press push to promote her memoir ended up in a spat with First Lady Melania Trump.

During an interview with Good Morning America, Ivana jokingly said she was the real first lady because she had been married to the president first.

Ivana Trump dazzled in a low cut gown at a charity ball in New York City on Monday night

Ivana, who was wed to the 45th President from 1977 to 1992, brought along real estate broker Larry Kaiser, who looked dapper in a red velvet jacket and black bow-tie

The cancer research fundraiser took place at Cipriani Wall Street, featuring performances and appearances from Gloria Gaynor, Kevin Hart, Kool & The Gang, and more

Melania failed to see the funny side and issued a statement through her spokesman shortly afterwards labeling her an 'attention seeker'.

In an extraordinarily sharp response, Melania's spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said: 'She plans to use her title and role to help children, not sell books.

'There is clearly no substance to this statement from an ex. Only attention seeking and self-serving noise.'

Her hasty judgement seemed even more premature when another interview, which Ivana had recorded before making the offending comment, was released.

In that sit-down, she said Melania was 'family' and refused to utter a bad word about her.

Marla Maples, Trump's second wife who he left Ivana for, was however coldly dubbed a 'nobody'.

New look! Ivanka Trump was seen sporting a ponytail instead of her trademark beehive while taking a stroll in new York City on Monday

Casual Monday: The 68-year-old's sporty 'do complemented her purple Adidas tracksuit

The longtime socialite's evening wear Monday was a dramatic shift from her daytime look earlier in the day, when she was spotted walking on the Upper West Side.

For her walk, Ivana donned a Adidas tracksuit featuring the brand's trademark three stripes snaking down the arms of her pullover and the legs of her matching pants.

Although her new 'do wasn't quite as high as her trademark beehive, Ivana's platinum blonde hair was still teased at the top with her bangs framing her face.
Mexican cartels are by far the biggest source of illegal drugs flooding the US market, the Drug Enforcement Agency said on Monday.

In its annual report on drug trafficking, the DEA said of the Mexican criminal gangs: 'No other group is currently positioned to challenge them.'

The report highlighted the strength of the Sinaloa cartel and the growing prevalence of the Jalisco New Generation cartel.

Cocaine use and availability are rebounding in the United States

The Juarez, Gulf, Los Zetas and Beltran-Leyva cartels, which hold territorial influence over large swathes of Mexico, also operate in the United States.

'By controlling lucrative smuggling corridors, primarily across the (southwestern border), Mexican (transnational criminal organizations) export significant quantities of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and possibly fentanyl into the United States annually,' the report said.

'Once these illicit drugs are smuggled into the US, they are delivered to user markets in the United States through transportation routes and distribution cells that are managed or influenced by Mexican TCOs.'

It comes as President Donald Trump cites both drug trafficking and unauthorized immigration as reasons to justify building a wall along the US border with Mexico.

In recent years, Mexican gangs have expanded their influence to different regions of the United States, including the northeastern coast's New England, according to the DEA.

Their market shares has increased, especially in relation to heroin and methamphetamine.

The DEA also found that heroin overdose deaths 'continue to rise' from already high levels, while cocaine use and availability was rebounding.

A Mexican federal police officer stands next to packages that had been removed from a sophisticated clandestine tunnel which passes under the US-Mexico border

'The increased mixing of heroin with analogues of the highly-potent synthetic opioid fentanyl and other synthetic opioids has exacerbated this situation,' it said.

Illicit fentanyl - a narcotic 50 times more powerful than heroin - and other synthetic opioids in the United States are primarily sourced from China and Mexico.

Coca cultivation and production are on the rise in Colombia, the main source of cocaine found in the United States, according to the report.

The DEA warned that 'the long-term implications of the peace process for the Colombian drug trade are uncertain,' referring to November 2016 peace accords signed between the government and FARC guerrillas.

'Some segments of former FARC fighters will likely continue to engage in drug trafficking and other criminal activity, but the degree to which this occurs may depend on the effectiveness of peace accord implementation,' it added.

But currently, Mexican transnational criminal organizations pose the greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States.
Journalist Tracey Spicer has 'been sent audio tapes and email evidence' after vowing to name and shame perpetrators of sexual harassment.

Ms Spicer said she will disclose details of 40 offenders in the Australian media industry in about a month, after more than 400 women came forward to report abuse and assault.

The mother-of-two has been putting together a team of police, victims and legal representatives to hold the culprits responsible, according to Nine Honey.

Journalist Tracey Spicer (pictured) claims to have been sent audio tapes, emails and other evidence after vowing to name and shame perpetrators of sexual harassment in Australia

Ms Spicer said among the victim's accounts were 'dozens of allegations of rape', as well as claims workplaces had ignored their reports.

'It's not only the allegations that are horrific, it's the cover-up,' she said.

'In about 50 per cent of the instances that have been brought to me, the victims have reported it to the workplace, have gone through the whole process, have gone to HR, gone to their managers, diarised it, sent emails, they have evidence,' Ms Spicer said.

The veteran newsreader said she was compelled to bring the perpetrators to justice after visiting a police station while researching a separate story.

An officer had been talking about the accusations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and mentioned her surprise a similar outcry had not happened in Australia.

Ms Spicer said the officer told her there was no statute of limitations for most cases and that victims from '30 or 40 years ago' could report such abuse.

Ms Spicer said she will disclose details of 40 offenders in the media industry in about a month, after more than 400 women came forward to report abuse and assault

The veteran newsreader said she was compelled to bring the perpetrators to justice after overhearing a police officer discussing accusations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein (pictured) and asking why a similar outcry had not occurred in Australia

Since then she has compiled accounts from more than 400 victims, aged from their 20s to their 60s.

And while many involved adults, she said one offender had spent time at schools 'making repugnant comments about girls aged seven, eight and nine'.

The 50-year-old recently described the women's stories as 'an absolute tsunami of sexual assault, intimidation and abuse,' according to The Daily Telegraph.

While she said those accused of the 'horrific' claims were 'household names' well-known throughout the media industry, whether on television or as an executive.

'Many of them are still offending to this day (and) there have been perpetrators in pretty much every one of the past four decades,' Ms Spicer said.

Ms Spicer has since compiled accounts from more than 400 victims, aged from their 20s to their 60s and said one offender had even spent time at schools 'making repugnant comments about girls aged seven, eight and nine'

Herself a victim of workplace harassment, Ms Spicer discussed her own experiences earlier this year in her book, Good Girl Stripped Bare and how she faced lewd comments

Herself a victim of workplace harassment, Ms Spicer discussed her own experiences earlier this year in her book, Good Girl Stripped Bare.

'We're talking about p***y-grabbing stuff in the workplace - and in front of witnesses. It's just ridiculous,' Ms Spicer told The Australian.

One of the men Ms Spicer wrote about in her novel was the late John Sorell, former Nine Network news director and Walkley Award-winning journalist.

Mr Sorell reportedly told Ms Spicer he wanted 'two inches off your hair and two inches off your a***!'.

Earlier this year Ms Spicer also claimed 'sickening' sexual assault occurred while she was one of Australia's most recognised television journalists.

The 50-year-old told Woman's Weekly in April one of her bosses put his hand on her right buttock, asking her if she had 'lost a bit of weight'.

'I actually turned around to slap him, but realised it was one of my bosses. So I just lowered my arm. I said, "Yeah, after my mother died, I didn't feel like eating".'
John Walch, 35, has been sentenced to 192 years in jail after he was found guilty of charges stemming from a January 2015 incident in which he assaulted his girlfriend and shot and paralyzed from the chest down a Good Samaritan who tried to save her

A man who was found guilty of assaulting his girlfriend and then shooting and paralyzing a Good Samaritan who tried to help her has been sentenced to 192 years in a Colorado jail.

John Walch, 35, was sentenced after a jury found him guilty of crimes including attempted first-degree murder in June, 9News reports.

Walch beat his ex-girlfriend and left her along a road in Aurora, Colorado in January 2015.

A man, 52, noticed her bleeding on the side of the road and helped her return to the motel at which she was staying, the Denver Post reports.

The pair made their way to the motel room.

Walch later returned and began to argue with them.

He left and returned with a gun and shot through the room's window.

The Good Samaritan was shot in the back and was paralyzed from the chest down.

He said in a statement to the court: '[Walch] is a very evil man and he deserves to be in prison the rest of his life for the pain he has caused.'

The January 2015 incident took place in Aurora, Colorado. The Good Samaritan addressed the court: '[Walch] is a very evil man and he deserves to be in prison the rest of his life for the pain he has caused'

Walch, a convicted felon, was branded a habitual offender by the court.

'This is a case of such severity that it warrants the most extreme sanctions,' Judge Jeffrey Holmes said.
Nearly three-quarters of all eligible Australians have voted in the postal survey on same sex marriage.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics says about 11.9 million forms have been returned as of Friday October 20, of the 16 million that were sent out.

For a non-compulsory survey, the return rate is astounding. It is higher than eligible Americans who voted in the 2016 election or eligible Brits who voted in the June general election.

It also surges ahead of the turnout for the Irish referendum on same sex marriage. In 2015, only 60.52 per cent of voters cast their ballot.

Australians have always been consistent voters though, with 91 per cent of voters casting a ballot at the 2016 Federal Election.

Nearly three quarters of eligible Australians have voted in the postal plebiscite on same sex marriage

Tiernan Brady, Equality Campaign director said in Brisbane on Tuesday the high numbers showed Australians were keen to see the back of the survey.

'Today's result shows Australians clearly want this issue to be dealt with as quickly as possible,' he said.

'We hope a strong Yes result will encourage Parliament to ensure marriage equality is a reality in Australia by Christmas.'

Equality Campaign Queensland field director Nita Green encouraged people to continue speaking about the survey and encouraging others to vote 'before it's too late'.

She said the high turnout rate so far showed 'Australians are passionate about the important issue of marriage equality'.

The ABS revealed more than 11 million postal surveys have been scanned through their system

Australians have turned out in huge numbers over the past month for rallies in support of same sex marriage

With only four days to go before the recommended deadline for returning surveys, both sides are campaigning harder than ever to ensure their side comes out on top when results are released on November 15.

Coalition for Marriage spokesman Lyle Shelton said in a statement the group would continue to campaign for 'every last vote'.

'There are still millions of Australians who are yet to vote in this survey and there are a lot of people we need to reach,' he said.

'If they, like so many others, are tired of the bullying tactics of the 'yes' camp, then they should make sure they vote 'no' and return their ballots as soon as possible.

'Our campaign continues at full speed. We are going for every last vote,' he concluded.

Crowds have also gathered to argue for keeping the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman

A spokesperson for the Coalition for Marriage said the campaign would continue to fight for every last vote

The Australian Bureau of Statistics recommends all Australians post back their survey by October 27 as voting closes on November 7.

Results will be finalised and released on November 15.

The Federal Government has pledged to introduce a Private Member's bill into Parliament if the majority of Australians vote yes, though the public decision will not be binding, and some MPs have vowed to ignore it.
A Melbourne man accused of supporting Islamic State jihadists in Syria by sending money that was collected online and deposited at a Sydney bank has faced court.

Hampton Park resident Isa Kocoglu, 43, appeared in Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Tuesday charged with supporting persons engaged in the Syrian conflict.

It's alleged Kocoglu was an administrator of a website used by people who support Islamic State ideology when he helped raise funds for a known ISIS jihadist.

Isa Kocoglu, 43, (pictured) was arrested on Tuesday accused of sending money to Islamic State jihadists in Syria that was collected online and deposited at a Sydney bank

AFP agent Rhys Hart alleged Kocoglu helped deposit more than $3000 into an ISIS fighter's PayPal account by making multiple cash deposits at a Sydney Commonwealth Bank branch

'Kocoglu provided funding and support to a member of ISIS, as in a member who pledged allegiance to ISIS and was in fact conducting hostile activities in the state of Syria,' Australian Federal Police agent Rhys Hart told the court.

It's understood the ISIS member is American John Georgelas.

Kocoglu allegedly provided him with financial support between November 2013 and August 2014.

Mr Hart alleges Kocoglu helped deposit more than $3000 into the ISIS fighter's PayPal account by making multiple cash deposits at the Commonwealth Bank branch at Kogarah, in Sydney's south.

It's understood the ISIS member is American John Georgelas, who received financial support from Kocoglu (pictured) between November 2013 and August 2014

The Hampton Park resident (pictured) appeared in Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Tuesday charged with supporting persons engaged in the Syrian conflict

'These funds were then remitted to another associate of the ISIS member believed to have died in a suicide attack in Syria,' Mr Hart said.

The AFP say the money was used by Islamic State to fund their communications.

'They were ostensibly used for the provision of satellite internet,' Mr Hart said.

Some of the money was also used to help an injured ISIS member receive treatment in Turkey for shrapnel wounds to his back.

It was alleged Kocoglu (pictured) provided funding and support to a member of ISIS, understood to be 33-year-old US citizen John Georgelas

The ISIS fighter was smuggled in and out of Turkey before local authorities realised who he was, the AFP agent said.

Kocoglu was arrested during an early morning raid but could be released on bail on Tuesday afternoon.

Federal prosecutor Aman Dhillon told Magistrate Luisa Bazzani authorities do not oppose bail.

Ms Bazzani said she wanted to hear evidence from police before making a decision to release Kocoglu.

The hearing continues.

The AFP say the money was used by Islamic State to fund their communications

Kocoglu, who has a wife and children, was arrested in a dawn raid on Tuesday morning after a 16 month Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team investigation.

During a press conference Tuesday morning, AFP's Commander John Beveredige said it would be alleged Kocoglu donated up to $5000 between April 2013 and November 2014.

Mr Beveredige revealed the suspect receives a disability pension, which could possibly have been used to fund his donations.

Online banking records revealed he had transferred money in five to 10 separate installations intended for John Georgelas and another associate of the ISIS.

Police allege a radical website, which encouraged people to support ISIS, played a 'significant' role in the man coming to acquire an extremist and sympathetic allegiance towards Islamic State.

The 33-year-old US citizen who received money from Australian born Kocoglu is believed to be currently fighting alongside the terror group in Syria.

'The suspect we have in custody we're alleging has provided funds both online from himself and remitted funds from other people as well to this foreign fighter,' Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton said on Tuesday.

'As well as providing support to actually fund the website that the foreign fighter ran, and in addition to that was an administrator of that website.'

Online banking records revealed Kocoglu (left) had transferred money in five to 10 separate installations intended for an American citizen fighting in the Syrian conflict

'We expect the suspect will be charged today and appear before the Melbourne Magistrates Court.'

Police will also conduct an in depth analysis to determine exact details of the man's online financial transactions.

'Funding remitted has been from overseas and there was a number of funds placed into his bank account but we haven't established who they're from,' Commander John Beveredige said.

Officers believe the man's family weren't involved in his online activities, and they're not currently searching for anybody else in relation to the specific case.

The 43-year-old was allegedly supporting individuals involved in the Syrian conflict

The arrest was the result of a Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team investigation which had been under way for more than 16 months.

'These types of investigations are complex and protracted,' AFP Assistant Commissioner Ian McCartney said.

'Our investigators invest countless hours to ensure the safety of Australians, and to bring to account those who seek to harm our community and way of life.'

The man was arrested from his home by the JCTT, which comprises of officers from the Australian Federal Police, ASIO, and Victoria Police.

His arrest will hopefully serve as a warning to others who support the conflict in Syria, according to Victoria Police Deputy Commissioner Specialist Operations Shane Patton.

The man's arrest was the result of a Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team investigation which had been under way for more than 16 months

'This arrest sends a very strong message of deterrence to those who would seek to provide support or fund terrorism that they will be investigated and held to account,' Deputy Commissioner Patton said.

'It is another example of a successful operation involving the Joint Counter Terrorism Team targeting terrorism.'

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews congratulated the AFP and Victoria Police for the arrest.

'It does present us with an opportunity to congratulate and thank (them) ... for the outstanding work that they do every hour of every day to deal with what is a dynamic terrorism threat and to keep all of us safe,' he told reporters.

The man appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Tuesday.

A federal prosecutor told Magistrate Luisa Bazzani that authorities do not oppose bail, and the matter has been stood down for a short time so the prosecution and defence can discuss bail conditions.

He was arrested from his home by the JCTT (pictured escorting him from his home), which comprises of officers from the Australian Federal Police, ASIO, and Victoria Police
A shocked Gold Coast woman has taken a photograph of a monstrous earth worm after a weekend of heavy rain brought it to the surface.

The enormous creature, which resembled a snake more than a worm, was found in the dirt at southeast Queensland's Tamborine Mountain.

Kelli Mace posted a photo of herself holding up the slimy worm with two sticks. It was republished by 7 News and quickly racked up hundreds of comments.

Kelli Mace posted a photo of herself holding up the slimy worm with two sticks

The enormous creature, which resembled a snake more than a worm, was found in the dirt at southeast Queensland's Tamborine Mountain (pictured)

Tamborine Mountain is known for its giant earthworms, which can grow up to two metres long and swell over 30mm in diameter.

Experts claim the specific type of worm, Digaster longmani, live in deep permanent underground burrows and only come to the surface when their holes are flooded.

Rainfall in parts of Brisbane reached up to 50mm on Monday.

Tamborine Mountain National History Association member Paul Lyons previously told the Courier Mail it was common to see the worms in the area.

'They are about a bit over a metre in length, about 30mm in diameter and they live deep in the rainforest soil,' he told the publication.

'They burrow deep in the ground and when it gets too wet down underneath they come up.

'It was quite common to see them but now you don't see as many as you used to because there are more houses.'
A worker from Victoria's Murray Basin Rail Project is dead after being crushed by machinery.

The 58-year-old man died at a Mildura landscape supply business on Tuesday when an asphalt roller he was loading onto a trailer fell on him, police said.

'The incident happened at a landscape suppliers when a bitumen roller, which was being loaded onto a trailer, moved without any warning and pinned the man between the roller and the trailer,' Victoria Police said in a statement.

Paramedics performed CPR on the man but he died at the scene.

A worker from Victoria's Murray Basin Rail Project is dead after being crushed by machinery (stock)

WorkSafe Victoria is investigating the death and police are preparing a report for the coroner.

Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan sent her condolences to the man's loved ones.

'My thoughts are with his family, friends and workmates during this difficult time,' she said, according to The Age.

The rail project involves 'standardising the rail freight lines servicing the Murray Basin region in the north-west of Victoria,' according to Public Transport Victoria.

The man was not on the project's work site when the tragic incident unfolded.

He is the 21st Victorian to be killed at work this year, compared to 24 for the same time in 2016, according to WorkSafe.
Israeli psychic Uri Geller has claimed that he helped the CIA with their investigation into JFK's assassination and that he made 'shocking' discoveries.

The 70-year-old spoon bender says he was hired by a CIA agent in Mexico City to investigate whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or had accomplices when he shot dead President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Geller claims he even met with First Lady Jackie Kennedy at her apartment in New York to inform her of the information that he uncovered.

He revealed he was only now able to go public with his involvement in the investigation following President Donald Trump's decision to unseal thousands never-before-seen documents on JFK's assassination.

Israeli psychic Uri Geller has claimed that he helped the CIA with their investigation into JFK's assassination and that he made 'shocking' discoveries

'For the first time in nearly 50 years, I can go public with my involvement,' he wrote on his Facebook page.

'I was already in Mexico City at the time. One of my roles included being a secret agent for the Mexican treasury department.

'A CIA agent in Mexico City tasked me among other assignments, with investigating whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or had accomplices - including the backing of sub-national organisations such as the Mafia or international organisations such as the KGB.

'This assignment took me in the early 1970's, inter alia, to Mexico City to the Russian Embassy where Oswald had travelled shortly before he shot the American president.

'I was able to shed some light on organisations he may have been in contact with, but these did not include any US agencies, the Mafia or Lyndon Johnson.

President John F. Kennedy waves from his car in a motorcade approximately one minute before he was shot in Dallas in 1963

Geller says he was hired by a CIA agent in Mexico City to investigate whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or had accomplices

'I also met Jackie Kennedy at her apartment in New York. I relayed these findings to her, since she was absolutely determined to discover the truth. She and I stayed in touch, and I still have correspondence from her.'

He then speculated on whether he would be included in the JFK files or whether his involvement would be redacted given the information he delivered to the CIA agent.

'If this is the case, sadly I will never be able to reveal what I discovered, because it is quite shocking,' he said.

It was revealed earlier this year that the CIA had carried out secret testing on him back in 1973 to assess his psychic abilities. The CIA released about 13million declassified documents online in January that detailed the testing on Geller.

He wasn't able to talk about the testing for several decades until the documents were released and made public on the CIA website.

Geller (above in the 1970s) claims he even met with First Lady Jackie Kennedy at her apartment in New York to inform her of the information that he uncovered

He revealed he was only now able to go public with his involvement in the investigation following President Donald Trump's decision to unseal thousands never-before-seen documents on JFK's assassination

Trump revealed at the weekend that he doesn't plan to block the scheduled release of thousands of never publicly seen government documents related to JFK's assassination.

'Subject to the receipt of further information,' he wrote in a Saturday morning tweet, 'I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.'

The National Archives has until Thursday to disclose the remaining files related to Kennedy's 1963 assassination. The trove is expected to include more than 3,000 documents that have never been seen by the public and more than 30,000 that have been previously released but with redactions.

Congress mandated in 1992 that all assassination documents be released within 25 years, but Trump has the power to block them on the grounds that making them public would harm intelligence or military operations, law enforcement or foreign relations.
A defense attorney has died after collapsing during the closing arguments of a murder trial.

Attorney Jean Darby, 64, died on Saturday in Florence, Alabama, after being rushed to hospital during the trial of a man charged with murdering a 77-year-old retired corrections officer.

Her friends called her passionate about her work, and said she was devoted to ensuring that everyone received a fair trial.

Darby was delivering her closing arguments in defense of Alfonso Jarmon when she told the jury that the trial must have been exhausting to them, since it had been for her.

Attorney Jean Darby, 64, (right) died on Saturday in Florence, Alabama, after being rushed to the hospital during the murder trial of her client Alfonso Jarmon (left)

She then suddenly collapsed, grabbing for the jury box as she fell to the floor, WHNT reported. A plainclothes police officer began rendering CPR and she was rushed to an area hospital.

Doctors ruled out a heart condition, but Darby remained in serious condition until she passed away in the hospital on Saturday.

In the meantime, the judge decided to proceed with Jarmon's trial after appointing replacement attorneys.

Jarmon was accused of fatally shooting 77-year-old Charles Hugh Perkins in April of 2016.

Jarmon (left) was accused of fatally shooting 77-year-old Charles Hugh Perkins (right) in 2016

'Now, I need to know from each of you, can you put aside and proceed with the remainder of the trial?' Judge Gil Self advised the jurors on Friday, the day after Darby's collapse, the Florence Times-Daily reported.

'Can you call it down the middle, set aside sympathy and only apply the law to the facts in the case?'

The jurors all indicated that they could and deliberations began.

Jarmon was Perkins' next door neighbor at the time he was murdered in his yard.

During testimony, the jury heard three eyewitnesses tell of seeing Jarmon shove Perkins, grab the victims hand, then pull out a gun and shoot Perkins in the right side of his head.

Forensic experts testified that a .380-caliber pistol found in a plastic bag under Jarmons mattress was the gun that fired the fatal round.

The jury returned a guilty verdict in about 30 minutes. Jarmon is set to be sentenced on December 6.
The Gold Star father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan has finally received a check for $25,000 from the president - months after he first promised to send the money.

Chris Baldridge, from Zebulon, North Carolina told the Washington Post earlier this month that he received a phone call from Trump back in July shortly after his 22-year-old son Dillon was one of three soldiers killed in Afghanistan on June 10 by a police officer.

And now, after initially just receiving a condolence letter, Baldridge told ABC 11 he's 'speechless' that the check actually came.

'We are so moved and grateful, and we promise to use the money to honor Dillon's legacy.'

SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO

Chris Baldridge, from Zebulon, North Carolina, said he finally received a check for $25,000 from the president - months after he first promised to send the money

The check is dated October 18- which is the same day that the Post reported Trump hadn't fulfilled his promise to send Baldridge the check

It came with a letter that said: 'I'm glad my legal counsel has finally approved this contribution to you

The check is dated October 18 - which is the same day that the Post reported Trump hadn't fulfilled his promise to send Baldridge the check.

It came with a letter that said: 'I'm glad my legal counsel has finally approved this contribution to you.

'Enclosed is a check for $25,000 - I hope this will make things a bit easier, but nothing will every replace your son, Dillon, he was an American hero.'

Dillon was one of three soldiers gunned down in Afghanistan in June by an Afghan police officer

This news comes at a pressing time for the president - who has been under fire for the past week for the way he handled the death of four American military personnel in Niger.

He was widely criticized for allegedly telling Sgt La David Johnson's widow, Myeshia Johnson, that her husband 'knew what he signed up for.'

Though he denies telling her that - he has received criticism from across the aisle for being insensitive.

Rep. Frederica Wilson was sitting beside Johnson's widow Myeshia when Trump called and told her that her husband 'knew what he signed up for' by enlisting.

'It was the wrong thing to say, but that's not the worst part,' Wilson told the ABC.

'He did not even know La David Johnson's name. He kept referring to him as your guy. He never called his name. So that was even more painful.'

Heartbreaking footage later showed Johnson's widow, who is expecting the couple's third baby in January, sobbing as she leaned over her husband's flag-draped coffin at Miami airport on Tuesday.

The couple's six-year-old daughter stood by the coffin with her mother, while their two-year-old son waited in the arms of a relative standing nearby.

Trump on Tuesday called the families of the four US troops who were killed in Niger nearly two weeks ago.

Sergeant Bryan C. Black, 35, Sergeant Jeremiah W Johnson, 39, and Sergeant Dustin M Wright, 29, were the other three killed in Niger

President Trump phoned Myeshia Johnson afternoon to give his condolences over the death of her husband Sgt. La David Johnson

Johnson, who is expecting the couple's third baby in January, later sobbed as she leaned over her husband's coffin

Earlier this month Baldridge spoke to the Post, saying that he appreciated the condolences for his deceased son from the President, but that he was disappointed that the check he was promised never came through.

Instead, all he got was a condolence letter.

'I opened it up and read it, and I was hoping to see a check in there, to be honest,' he said.

'I know it was kind of far-fetched thinking. But I was like, "Damn, no check." Just a letter saying 'I'm sorry.''

After Baldridge spoke out, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters told reporters that the check had been sent, but didn't give a time frame for when it was put in the mail.

'The check has been sent,' Walters said in a statement.

'It's disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the President, and using it to advance the media's biased agenda.'

Trump's interactions with the bereaved relatives of soldiers killed in action made headlines this week after he claimed to have called every family
Richard Johnston, 56, has been put on paid leave for bringing a gun to school

An Oregon high school science teacher is on leave for bringing a gun to school.

Richard Johnston, 56, began his paid leave from Sprague High School Monday after students said they saw the science teacher carrying a gun.

Students alerted school officials near the end of the school day Friday to report what they saw.

Lillian Govus, the Salem-Keizer School District communications director, said she could not confirm if the weapon was loaded.

Though Johnston did have a permit to carry, it is illegal to have a weapon or even a lookalike on school property or during school-sponsored events.

Johnston has been a teacher at the high school for 25 years and said he enjoys hiking, fishing and hunting in a previous interview on the school's website.

The science teacher has been teaching at the Oregon school for 25 years and had a permit to carry the concealed weapon

Students at Sprauge High School said they saw Johnston with the gun on Friday during the school day

Govus told The Statesman Journal that officials did not find there was a threat against students or staff.

'We are taking these reports very seriously and are investigating the alleged situation,' Assistant Principal Lillian White said.

District officials have been conducting their own investigation and have not involved police at this time.

Govus said the school district only involves Salem Police when criminal matters are involved.

Parents have mixed emotions on the issue.

Parent Bryant Dehut told FOX 12 that if an individual is trained with a permit, they should be able to carry a concealed weapon on school grounds.

'Does a ''no weapon'' sign stop a bank robber?' Dehut said, 'Does it stop anything, any type of action? No, but as long as we're prepared for it, it should absolutely be allowed.'

Other parents were less supportive of Johnston's actions.

One parent said: 'I really don't think he should have had it. It could've gotten into the wrong hands.'

An autodial message was sent out to parents and employees to explain the details of the situation and assuage any safety concerns.
The woman who took care of a 91-year-old man and his 100-year-old wife who were tied up during a home invasion was arrested for allegedly setting them up.

Suzette Troutman, 45, was arrested on a second-degree murder charge and other charges connected to the burglary that resulted in the death of Waldiman Thompson in his family's Brooklyn, New York, home.

Troutman - the second person arrested in connection to the robbery - was hired two years ago, helping Thompson and his wife Ethlin with shopping and other housekeeping chores.

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Suzette Troutman, 45, was arrested over burglary that resulted in the death of Waldiman Thompson, 91, in Brooklyn, New York. Troutman - the second person arrested in connection to the robbery - was hired two years ago, helping Thompson and his 100-year-old wife Ethlin

She was charged with second-degree murder and two counts of assault and burglary: a charge also faced by 27-year-old Dwayne Blackwood

The Brooklyn native was at the home on October 11 when $5,000 was stolen from the couple as they were tied up by the robbers.

'For two years now, she would go by there and somehow check on them, now and then,' Ethlin Thompson's brother, Garfield Bringle, told theNew York Daily News.

Four men broke into the ground floor apartment of Waldiman, 91 (left), and Ethlin Thompson, 100 (right), Wednesday afternoon

'I met her, talked to her. Looks are deceiving; you can't see people's true colors.'

She was charged with second-degree murder and two counts of assault and burglary.

The same charges are also faced by , 27-year-old Dwayne Blackwood. He is her nephew, according to the NY Daily News.

According to local law enforcement, Blackwood's cell phone placed him at the scene.

At the announcement of Troutman's arrest, Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said that two more suspects were being searched for in connection to the heist.

He added: 'We believe there are at least two others involved, one person who was known to the victim. They are identified. I have detectives right now seeking them out.

'Not a family member, someone known to the family.'.

Waldiman, 91, and Ethlin Thompson, 100, were inside their ground-floor apartment in Brooklyn, New York around 3.30pm when four men broke in.

The men attacked Ethlin first. They sneaked up behind her, put a pillowcase over her head and then tied her up with cord. They then proceeded to do the same thing to her husband.

Ethlin eventually managed to untie herself and ran out onto the street to get help.

Neighbor Paul Paterson, 55, says Mrs Thompson came running up to him and he noticed rope burns on her legs.

The robbers tied the couple up and then ransacked the home

PIX 11 reports that the group was after rent money that the couple collects from tenants, but it's unclear if they found any cash

'I come walking up the block from work and she came running out the house screaming,' Paterson told the New York Post. 'This was the first time I ever saw her screaming. She said, "They robbed me and my husband and tied us up, they came in from the back. My husband laying there and might be dead." I said I can't go in there because it would be a crime scene.'

By the time paramedics arrived at the Bedford-Stuyvesant home, the intruders were gone, and Waldiman was found unresponsive on the floor of his home, still tied up.

He was pronounced dead at the hospital. NY1 reports that he died of a heart attack.

Ethlin was also taken to the hospital for minor injuries, including rope burns.

Ethlin managed to untie herself and ran out onto the street for help

Paramedics found Waldiman tied up and unresponsive on the floor of the apartment and was pronounced dead at the hospital

The Thompsons were landlords and PIX 11 reported that the intruders may have been after money the couple collected from their tenants.

According to the Post, residents said they saw at least two men walking up and down the street before the home invasion.

2nd arrest in Brooklyn home invasion that killed 91y/o man. Suzette Troutmanwho worked as an aide for familyis alleged mastermind. pic.twitter.com/34GkHO5STF  Marcus Solis (@MarcusSolis7) October 24, 2017

The suspects were reportedly caught on surveillance tape and one of the men appeared to be carrying a small box, while another one had a backpack.

Police are still trying to figure out how the men got into the house since there did not appear to be evidence of a break in. It's possible that the intruders knew the couple, since the invasion does not appear to be random, they said.

A nephew was at the home 30 minutes before the invasion and has since been questioned by police but he is not believed to be a suspect.

The couple had been married for decades and moved to the U.S. from Jamaica when they were younger. Mrs Thompson worked as a nurse before retiring.
Disgusted passengers have hit out at scandal-hit Ryanair, accusing the airline of scrapping soap in toilets on flights.

Holidaymakers claim they have been unable to wash their hands in the on-board bathrooms, with staff telling them soap is no longer deemed an 'essential'.

Many criticised the budget airline for failing to provide soap despite serving food, while another said: 'So you've run out of again...when I run out of soap I go the shop and spend 1 on some - spent over 100 for the flight.'

Ryanair has been accused of putting passengers' health at risk after scrapping soap in toilets on flights

Disgusted passengers have hit out at the budget airline, claiming they have been unable to wash their hands after using the on-board bathrooms

Passengers have taken to social media to vent their fury at the lack of on-board hygiene.

Writing on Twitter, Ed Rowlands wrote: 'So you've run out of again...when I run out of I go the shop and spend a quid on some - spent over 100quid for the flight.'

Kay Leedham-Green added: 'Sooo... the air hostess on Ryanair tells me "we no longer stock the toilets with soap" and they're serving food. #ecoli #cdiff #Ryanair'

Ian Harman tweeted: 'Ryanair great flight back from Bratislava, no soap in the toilets. Disgusting! Thank God I had hand sanitizer!'

And Mike Hills said: 'New low for Ryanair? No soap in toilet, reported to staff, reply: "we don't have soap on this flight"!'

Passengers have taken to social media to vent their fury at the lack of on-board hygiene

This comes as the beleaguered airline was slammed for cancelling some 700,000 flight bookings and more than 20,000 flights over the winter.

Earlier this month Ryanairs chief executive Michael OLeary sent an extraordinary letter to current pilots, begging them to stay and offering them better pay and working conditions than at rival airlines.

A Ryanair spokesman said: 'These claims are nonsense. All Ryanair aircraft carry soap, which is replenished as required.'
Lawrence Barilli, 35, is accused of raping and assaulting a woman at least 200 times as she slept but he claims he is a sexsomniac

A man who claims his sexsomnia led him to allegedly rape two women has told a court he is a disgusting human being but that it is 'ludicrous' to suggest he is a rapist.

Lawrence Barilli also told jurors that he was a 'disgrace' as he gave evidence at his trial at the High Court in Glasgow.

The 35-year-old is charged with assaulting and raping two women between 2008 and 2012.

The incidents are said to have occurred in a number of locations including Glasgow's Shettleston and Uddingston, South Lanarkshire.

The women both gave evidence earlier in the case and claimed they suffered physically and sexually at the hands of Barilli.

One alleged victim told jurors that such incidents occurred 'a couple of hundred times' and when she confronted him he said he had not memory of it.

Jurors heard both women allege Barilli told them he suffered from a condition called 'sexsomnia'.

Tony Graham, defending, asked did he always have sex with the latter of the two women when she was 'awake'.

He replied: 'Every single time - always when she agreed.'

The advocate said Barilli may have treated the woman like a 'possession' and 'take her sexually' as he wanted.

But, he told the trial: 'It is absolutely ludicrous that she could say something like that. Rape is absolutely abhorrent. I am not a rapist. It is lunacy.'

He also stated that it was '100 per cent consensual' with the first woman as well. However, Barilli did admit that he had been physically abusive to both.

Mr Graham: 'I take it you accept you behaved as an utterly despicable human being?'

Barilli: 'I was an utterly disgusting human being.'

When asked if he was a rapist, Barilli replied: 'Never'.

Prosecutor Peter Ferguson later questioned Barilli on the 'sexsomnia' claims.

He asked: 'These references...did you use that with the women?'

Barilli: 'No.'

The advocate depute: 'So, that is also an invention?'

He replied: 'I can only give my view - that did not happen 110 per cent.'

Barilli, of Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, denies the allegations. The trial continues.
Silence is golden, or at least according to one Queensland bus service.

In an attempt to silence noisy children Duffy's City Buses has introduced a number of 'silent buses' for school routes in Bundaberg.

'Extreme noise affects a driver's ability to concentrate effectively,' Duffy's City Buses owner Chris Duffy told News Mail.

A sign from one bus observing the policy reads: 'This bus is now a silent bus. This means you cannot make sounds whilst travelling on this service - no exceptions

'Consequently, as safety-conscious bus operators, we have been compelled to put these safety protection measures in place.'

Mr Duffy said the measures have been put in place to protect school children and bus drivers.

A sign from one bus observing the policy reads: 'This bus is now a silent bus. This means you cannot make sounds whilst travelling on this service - no exeptions (sic).

'This rule will be enforced at all times - no exceptions.'

The policy has the support of the Education Department and started last term.

In an attempt to silence noisy children Duffy's City Buses (pictured) has introduced a number of 'silent buses' for school routes in Bundaberg

In a statement the department said: 'The department does not condone any behaviour or activity that puts another student or member of the public at risk.

'Duffy's bus company, in consultation with local principals, have instituted the 'silent safety rule' for before and after-school routes in response to concerns around the level of noise on the buses as students go home for the day.'

If students do not follow the rule their parents will be given warning letters.
The shocking moment a 12-year-old boy was punched in the face by an older classmate has been caught on camera.

Police are investigating the incident at Wagga Wagga High School, south-west of Sydney, after the Year 7 student was punched in the face by a 15-year-old boy.

The video was supplied to 9News, and appears to have been filmed on a smartphone.

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The shocking moment a 12-year-old boy was punched in the face by an older classmate has been caught on camera

Police are investigating the incident in the Riverina, south-west of Sydney, after the Year 7 student was punched in the face by a 15-year-old boy

It shows the two boys facing each other surrounded by other students.

Suddenly the older boy then lashes out at the younger student, striking him in the face with his closed fist.

Seemingly stunned, the 12-year-old leans against a brick wall before falling heavily to the ground.

The boy is recovering at home and is not seriously hurt, his father told 9News.

In a statement, the school said they had a zero tolerance policy towards violence.

Any student who is found to have participated in an offence that puts at risk the safety of another student will be dealt with decisively through their schools discipline code, and if warranted, face further criminal charges.

Seemingly stunned, the 12-year-old leans against a brick wall before falling heavily to the ground

Schools are a place of learning, where both staff and students have the right to feel safe.

The main priority now is the care and recovery of the victim, whose family has asked for privacy.

Police were not called immediately to the scene but are investigating the incident.
The Australian Federal Police is currently raiding the Australian Workers' Union offices in Melbourne and Sydney.

The investigation, which began at 4pm on Tuesday, allegedly relates to whether $100,000 donations made to activist group GetUp were authorised under union rules, the ABC reports.

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has asked GetUp to follow disclosure rules before, which require the group to make public what funding it receives and how it will be spent.

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has asked GetUp to follow disclosure rules before, which require the group to make public what funding it receives and how it will be spent

The Australian Federal Police is currently raiding the Australian Workers' Union offices (pictured) in Melbourne and Sydney

Groups handed these kind of obligations are known as 'associated entities.'

They are defined as a group controlled by one or more political parties, or operating to a significant extent for the benefit of political parties.

The AEC said there was information to suggest GetUp's donations last year could be seen as having benefited Labor and the Greens, the ABC read in a letter.

The investigation, which began at 4pm on Tuesday, allegedly relates to whether $100,000 donations made to activist group GetUp were authorised under union rules

GetUp has since denied the claims and insisted it is an independent movement

GetUp has since denied the claims and insisted it is an independent movement.

AWU Victoria branch secretary Ben Davis said the AFP's decision to raid the building was the wrong choice.

'This is an abuse of power, it is an abuse of process and you have not heard the end of this,' he told the Herald Sun.

Labor workplace relations spokesman Brendan O'Connor seconded that notion by stating the Turnbull government was on a 'witch hunt.'

'They will stop at nothing to attack workers and their representatives.'

Victorian Trades Hall Council Luke Hilakari tweeted: 'This is how democracies are ruined. Campaign groups are silenced, government raids offices, media used to set it up...this is very disturbing.'
Emmanuel Ogunloye had been missing since leaving his home on Saturday afternoon

A 13-year-old boy who went missing for three days after failing to show up at a relative's home has been found safe and well today.

Emmanuel Ogunloye left his home in Stoke Newington, North East London, on Saturday at about 2pm to visit a relative in the south of the capital, but never arrived.

Scotland Yard detectives believed the teenager, who lives on Barbauld Road, is travelling on trains and buses - but was not carrying a mobile phone or any cash.

However, police confirmed to MailOnline this afternoon that he had been found.

Emmanuel is a black male, around 5ft 8in tall and of slim build. At the time of his disappearance he was wearing blue jeans, a black jacket and black trainers.

He has links to Charlton, and his disappearance was said by police to have been 'extremely out of character'.

Detectives had said they were 'growing increasingly concerned' about his welfare.
A stranded whale was finally dragged into the sea after a team of 30 firemen, scientists and volunteers spent 19 hours rescuing it.

The large humpback whale was trapped on the sandy beach of Praia Grande, in the municipality of Arraial do Cabo, in the eastern Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro.

It took a group of 30 people to rescue the beached whale after hours of trying.

The team used a digger to remove sand from underneath and around the whale.

They dug a large hole under the whale and tied a rope around it so that they could safely drag it back into the water.

The area was cordoned off to dissuade people from entering during the rescue operation.

Volunteers, bathers and fishermen used buckets and soaked towels to keep the animal wet.

Mauro Russo, an officer of the Environmental Guard who was coordinating the rescue operation, told local media: 'She was dragged into the water by a fish boat and a touristic boat.

'She was fine and was seen swimming into the deep sea after she managed to get out of the sand.'

The large humpback whale was trapped on the sandy beach of Praia Grand in the eastern Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro but locals came to its rescue

They first dug a hole under the whale and then tied a rope around it while keeping its skin wet by pouring water over it and sponging it down with damp clothes

They then pulled it out to sea, with the help of 30 volunteers, firemen and scientists. Two boats also helped to pull the beached whale safely back out to sea

This is the fourth stranded whale rescued from the beaches of the Brazilian state since last August.

The other three whales, which were all young and from the same species of humpback whales, also known as yubarta whales, were dragged into the water on the beaches of the cities of Buzios, Sepetiba and Ilha Grande.

According to the Yubarta Whale Project, at least 97 whales were stranded between January and September this year in Brazil.

This was the highest number since the project's records began in 2002.

The increase in the number of stranded whales is due to the increase in population of whales in Brazilian waters and the decrease of the krills, the small crustaceans that they eat.

According to Milton Marcondes, the coordinator of Yubarta Whale Project, most of them die in the sea and are dragged by the sea currents to the beaches.

The local people cheered as the whale eventually found deep water again and slapped her tail above the waves as she swam to freedom

It took a team of 30 firemen, scientists and volunteers a total of 19 hours to rescue it
A female sniper known as Snow White has been 'liquidated' in eastern Ukraine while fighting for pro-Putin forces.

Anastasia Slobodyanyuk fought for pro-Russia rebels and was hailed for her 'exceptional courage' in bloody battles in the region.

But the 26-year-old has reportedly been killed by a Ukrainian sniper in the Spartak district of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic after earlier narrowly cheating death in several hot spots.

She was supposed to have been inspired to sign up for the 'self defence' forces by witnessing the funeral of a five-year-old girl killed in the Slavyansk siege in 2014.

A female sniper known as Snow White has been 'liquidated' in eastern Ukraine, according to reports

Anastasia Slobodyanyuk fought for pro-Vladimir Putin rebels and was hailed for her 'exceptional courage' in bloody battles in the region

The 26-year-old was reported killed by a Ukrainian sniper in the Spartak district of the so-called Donetsk People's Republic after earlier narrowly cheating death in several hot spots

'When she saw a photograph of the little girl with bows and in a white dress with a doll in the coffin, she knew that she just could not live at home any longer - she would not forgive herself,' said one account.

She was quoted as saying: 'The unacceptable cannot be accepted. If you don't stop the evil, you become evil yourself.'

In fact, she had earlier fought in the battle for Donetsk Airport, when she was praised for her bravery and 'hatred of cowardice'.

'I saw how this girl worked at Donetsk airport, and I know she can become a warrior,' said an account by journalist Gennady Dubovoy .

'She was wounded when she was taking out an injured person and carried his heavy backpack. And some two hours later she was keen to get back into battle.

'Soldiers from different brigades were there at that time, some had to be pushed. And this girl reacted with disgust to any signs of cowardice.'

She was supposed to have been inspired to sign up for the 'self defence' forces by witnessing the funeral of a five-year-old girl killed in the Slavyansk siege in 2014

The sniper had refused to say why she had chosen the name Snow White but once said: 'I am not from a fairy tale, I am from Crimea.'

She was also the girlfriend of a rebel commander Mikhail 'Givi' Tolstykh, who was killed in February this year by a Shmel flamethrower rocket.

He had been on the EU sanctions list.

Snow White's toll of victims is not known but pro-Ukrainian forces expressed elation when claiming her death.

A Twitter message read: 'Today in Donbass in Spartak district our sniper wiped out 'Snow White, b***h, murderer, sadist. Givi "got back" his sweetheart.'

She had refused to say why she had chosen the name Snow White but replied: 'I am not from a fairy tale, I am from Crimea.'

She was also the girlfriend of a rebel commander Mikhail 'Givi' Tolstykh (pictured), who was killed in February this year by a Shmel flamethrower rocket

Mikhail 'Givi' Tolstykh (pictured) had been on the European Union sanctions list

'It takes years to become a skillful sniper,' she had said.

'Now I am just a good shooter who does not use Kalashnikov but sniper's gun. I am doing my best and I know I will succeed because there is no evil in me.'

After medical treatment in Russia, she vowed to return early to fight again.

'Most of all I am afraid of shame if I did nothing when the fate of country was determined, and the fate of my future children,' she said.

'The war taught me to value the life, to live today because there may be no tomorrow.

'But if I am alive tomorrow, I want to give birth to a son and to bring him up a true man - a Russian soldier who will protect vulnerable and not hide in shelters like the majority of Russian men.'

Reports of her death have not been disputed by officials in the DPR.
Madrid is ready to use force to restore order in Catalonia if separatists resist direct rule, a senior Spanish cabinet minister has said.

Inigo Mendez de Vigo, the Spanish government spokesman and education minister, said Catalan police would be used to stop protests threatening public order, despite regional officials calling for 'mass civil disobedience'.

Spain is also prepared to cut the Catalan government off from all tax income, depriving officials of salaries and the means to fund any secessionist campaign.

Mendez de Vigo said that Spain will make sure 'the law is obeyed' in Catalonia if Spain takes direct rule.

Inigo Mendez de Vigo, the Spanish government spokesman and education minister, said Catalan police would be used to stop protests threatening public order, despite regional officials calling for 'mass civil disobedience'

Catalonia's foreign affairs chief Raul Romeva told BBC radio on Monday that civil servants - including police officers - would follow instructions from local leaders rather than Madrid

'No government wants any acts of violence but the government has to make sure that the law is obeyed and if there are people on the other side who do not want to obey the law, then, through the Mossos d'Esquadra [the Catalan police], we will have to restore the law,' he told The Times.

The 61-year-old said that the regional government would not be immediately replaced, but those who disobeyed the law would be fired.

'The government is not suspending the autonomy. What we are doing is restoring the autonomy. Those who run the Mossos d'Esquadra will be replaced by the interior ministry for now,' he said.

Catalonia's foreign affairs chief Raul Romeva told BBC radio on Monday that civil servants - including police officers - would follow instructions from local leaders rather than Madrid.

Civil disobedience was also backed by far-left party CUP, a key support for Catalonia's pro-independence minority government in the regional parliament, which called Madrid's actions an aggression against all Catalans.

The Catalan government is considering calling a snap election, CUP politician Carles Riera said on Tuesday, though he added that the far-left party would oppose such a move.

'The regional elections are a weapon to cancel the October 1 (referendum) and the will of the majority of Catalonia,' Riera told a news conference.

Meanwhile, Spain prepared on Monday to move on the regional authority's last outstanding source of revenue - taxes and levies it always used to collect directly - tax on inherited property for example, or university registration fees.

In a bid to stop Catalonia breaking away, Spain's Senate is expected to vote on Friday on measures to wrest control away from the semi-autonomous region. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party holds a majority in the upper house of parliament, and the measure is expected to pass without a hitch

Spain prepared on Monday to move on the regional authority's last outstanding source of revenue - taxes and levies it always used to collect directly - tax on inherited property for example, or university registration fees. Pictured above, Catalan President Carles Puigdemont

In a months-long standoff with the northeastern region, the central government already seized control of much Catalan public spending in September.

This was to try and stop an independence referendum that went ahead regardless, and yielded a 'Yes' vote on October 1.

In a bid to stop Catalonia breaking away, Spain's Senate is expected to vote on Friday on measures to wrest control away from the semi-autonomous region.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party holds a majority in the upper house of parliament, and the measure is expected to pass without a hitch.

If this happens, the Catalan tax office will no longer answer to the region's finance minister and vice president Oriol Junqueras, but to the central budget ministry instead.

With Madrid already in control of the rest of Catalonia's tax income, such a move would leave the Generalitat, Catalonia's government, bereft of cash.

Madrid is responsible for collecting the majority of taxes in Spain, which it then distributes among its 17 regions, which in turn pay public servants and make provision for education and social services.

Only the Basque Country and Navarra collect their own tax.

But from September 15, Madrid stopped paying its share over to the Catalan government, opting instead to pay directly for 'essential' services such as hospitals, schools, and police, as well as civil servants' salaries.

Banks received instructions to strictly control all accounts and bank cards of the Catalan executive.

Puigdemont called the Catalan parliament to meet this week to agree on a response to Madrid, something many observers said could pave the way for a formal declaration of independence

Speaker of the regional Catalan Parliament, Carme Forcadell, arrives to the meeting of parties spokespeople at the regional Parliament in Barcelona on Monday. The Catalan parliament will meet again on Thursday to agree a response to direct rule

CATALAN PRESIDENT COULD MEET WITH SPANISH SENATE AHEAD OF DIRECT RULE VOTE Catalan President Carles Puigdemont is considering appearing before the Spanish Senate before it votes on implementing direct rule over the region on Friday. Catalan government spokesman Junts Pel Si said that officials have asked for a special session on Thursday to discuss the direct rule possibility with Spain. 'We have asked for a specific plenary session on Thursday to respond to the aggression made by the decision of the cabinet and its application of article 155 of the constitution,' he said. Puigdemont called the Catalan parliament to meet this week to agree on a response to Madrid, something many observers said could pave the way for a formal declaration of independence. The regional parliament will meet again on Thursday to agree a response to direct rule. Spain's political parties have designated 27 senators to study how the government might intervene in the running of Catalonia and halt the region's bid to declare independence. The commission formed on Monday comprises 15 members of Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy's ruling Popular Party, six from the leading opposition Socialist party, and smaller parties sharing the rest. The Article 155 measures it will study include dismissing the Catalan pro-independence regional government, including Mr Puigdemont and his ministers. The commission is expected to notify Mr Puigdemont of its plans and invite him to defend his case, most likely by Thursday, prior to a Senate vote on Friday to activate the measures. Rajoy's party has an absolute majority in the chamber, thus guaranteeing approval. Advertisement

At the end of last month, fears were high that 170,000 Catalan public officials may not get paid after the Generalitat refused to provide central authorities with a complete employees register.

A deal was reached at the last minute, and everyone got their salary.

If the Senate votes to dissolve the Catalan government, Madrid will have direct access to its personnel registries, and payments should continue problem-free.

But the central government has also said it would stop paying the salaries of separatist leaders - with Catalan President Carles Puigdemont topping the list.

'He will no longer get a cent,' Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said Monday.

Since the 2008 economic crisis, the question of money has been a key reason for growing resentment among Catalans who feel they contribute more to the central purse than they get back.

As Spain prepares to take direct rule of Catalonia, Spanish Justice Minister Rafael Catala said that the political crisis can't be solved simply by calling a regional election.

'Everything is not fixed just by calling an election,' Catala said during a radio interview on Tuesday morning.

Catala said if Puigdemont appeared before the Spanish upper house of parliament, the Senate, it would be a positive step in finding a solution to the conflict between the restive region and Madrid.

Protesters wave pro-independence Catalan Estelada flags during a demonstration in Barcelona on Saturday in support of separatist leaders Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart, who have been detained pending an investigation into sedition charges

Spain announced that it will move to dismiss Catalonia's separatist government and call fresh elections in the semi-autonomous region in a bid to stop its leaders from declaring independence

Puigdemont has called the Catalan parliament to meet this week to agree on a response to Madrid, something many observers said could pave the way for a formal declaration of independence.

The assembly will meet on Thursday to agree a response to direct rule.

Several influential Catalan newspapers called on Puigdemont on Sunday to resolve the crisis by calling a snap election before direct rule becomes effective.

However, Catalan government spokesman Jordi Turull said this was not an option.

It is not clear whether a vote in the region would help resolve the crisis.

Catalan authorities said about 90 percent of those who took part in the referendum on October 1 voted for independence.

But only 43 percent of the electorate and 1 in 3 Catalans participated, with most opponents of secession staying at home.

The Catalan crisis has raised fears among European countries that it could spill over to the rest of the continent.

From Scotland to Flanders and Lombardy, the 2007-09 financial crisis, unemployment and migration have allowed anti-EU and populist parties to feed off discontent with political elites and reopen regional divisions.

Two wealthy regions of northern Italy voted overwhelmingly on Sunday for greater autonomy.

At a European summit last week, leaders sought to minimise Spain's crisis with Catalonia and described the secession bid as a domestic issue.
Pictured: Sayeedah Mahetar, 44, was visiting the school with her teenage daughter who was hoping to study there next year

A Muslim mother-of-five was ordered to leave a sixth-form college open evening because she was wearing a niqab face veil.

St Mary's College in Blackburn, Lancashire, said the garment stopped her from being recognised on CCTV.

Sayeedah Mahetar, 44, was visiting the school with her teenage daughter who was hoping to study there next year.

The pair were welcomed into the entrance of the college but once inside Ms Mahetar was approached by a teacher who asked her to remove her veil or leave the college.

A spokesman for the school said it was part of their safeguarding policy not to allow anyone to wear garments which obstructed their face inside their grounds.

Ms Mahetar said: 'The staff member rushed over to me and whispered to me, 'Are you aware of our dress code policy?' 'I said no and then she said that anyone wearing a veil compromises the safety of students and teachers and that either I remove the veil or I leave.'

She told her daughter to continue the Open Day alone and that she would meet her outside the college premises.

Ms Mahetar said: 'It's a shame as my daughter was speaking very highly of their courses.I don't see the logic in their actions.

'They said they needed to identify everyone coming into the building.

'If they needed to identify me, the woman could have asked me to lift my veil to see me and that would have concluded the matter.

'Even at the airport which is a place of heightened security, women are allowed to wear veils and are asked separately to show their faces when going through security checks.

'No-one else was asked to verify their identity, no-one's bags were checked, no proof of identity was shown when entering the building.

'Anyone could have walked in.'

A spokesman for the school said it was part of their safeguarding policy not to allow anyone to wear garments which obstructed their face inside their grounds. Pictured above, St Mary's College

As she was leaving the building Sayeedah approached the teacher who initially greeted her and her daughter at reception and asked him why she had been permitted entrance initially and then confronted by another teacher.

'He said that an Ofsted ruling says that each school is responsible to ensure the safety of the students and teachers.'

St Mary's College dress code policy is on their website.

Ms Mahetar added: 'In their equal opportunity policy statement they say, 'We will take any and all necessary actions to prevent discrimination or harassment. We are proud of our diversity and will seek to celebrate wherever we can the differences which are such a vital part of who we are.' 'They say that, yet they discriminated against me within five minutes of arriving at the college.'

I wear the niqab as a personal choice. At work I do remove it if I feel it is necessary. However, in my own personal time I should not be asked to remove it

Ms Mahetar said she has not received any acknowledgement or apology from St Mary's College. 'I have five children and I have never encountered this type of discrimination or humiliation to date.

'I wear the niqab as a personal choice. At work I do remove it if I feel it is necessary. However, in my own personal time I should not be asked to remove it.

'What is even more ironic is that the school is in an area where so many Asians and Muslims live.

'Knowing their demographics, if they felt so strongly about the veil, they should have alerted potential visitors on their Open Evening leaflet that they have a strict dress code policy that needs to be adhered to so people could be prepared.'

A statement from St Mary's College read: 'In line with the College Dress Code Policy, that is displayed on our website and referenced in the invitational postcards and other marketing media for our open evenings, it is important that garments which obscure the face such as hats, cycle helmets, hoods, veils or any other items, are not worn on the College premises.

'This enables everyone to be recognised, either in person or by reviewing CCTV pictures, which is vital to the safeguarding of our students and visitors.'
Police are investigating after finding a sophisticated cannabis-growing operation inside a commercial property.

The property on Steel Street in Newcastles west was searched by police at 2am on Tuesday morning after a tip-off.

Police found an extensive number of cannabis plants growing in the building as well as an elaborate hydroponic set-up.

Police are investigating after finding a sophisticated cannabis-growing operation inside a commercial property

The property on Steel Street in Newcastles west was searched by police at 2am on Tuesday morning after a tip-off

Detectives, target action group officers and forensic services were still at the scene on Tuesday afternoon and New South Wales police are investigating.

There was nobody in the building at the time police searched it.

Police found an extensive number of cannabis plants growing in the building as well as an elaborate hydroponic set-up

Detectives, target action group officers and forensic services were still at the scene on Tuesday afternoon and New South Wales police are investigating

Police have asked anyone with any information on the cannabis operation to come forward.

Pictures showing the large number of plants and the sophisticated hydroponic set-up were posted to the New South Wales police Facebook page.

A New South Wales police spokesman said inquiries were ongoing on Tuesday evening.
A hundred migrants are still reaching the UK every week despite the closure of the Calais Jungle camp, it has been claimed.

Charity LAuberge des Migrants said a similar number was arriving each week in Dunkirk and Calais, sparking fears of a new crisis in the region.

Around 10,000 migrants used to live at the Jungle until the squalid camp was pulled down by French officials in 2016 to 'solve the problems'.

The port city camp was popular with migrants who hoped to try to stowaway on trucks in the hope they would reach Britain.

A French charity claims 100 migrants a week are arriving in the UK from Calais despite the closure of the 'Jungle' camp. Pictured are police inspecting a lorry, with thousands of migrants found stowed away on vehicles in recent months

The Jungle, pictured in August 2016, once held around 10,000 migrants but was cleared last yearto 'restore order' to the area and stop Channel crossings

French officials said the destruction of the camp would restore order and end Channel crossing attempts, but several charities have disputed this, although some claim the number trying to cross each week is closer to 50.

In August this year, it was revealed that migrants had made 30,000 attempts to reach Britain from Calais despite costly security measures.

A spokesman for LAuberge des Migrants told The Times: It is because a handful get lucky and reach Britain that the others remain hopeful of doing so.

The day the Channel is completely blocked, it is likely that there will not be any more migrants in Calais.

The camp, pictured in March 2017, was completely cleared but Calais police say the number of attempts to board UK-bound vehicles and ships is still going up

Calais Police has confirmed the number of attempts to board vehicles at the port has increased, with around 1,600 stowaways found in August, more than double since May.

Smuggling gangs are still believed to be operating in the area, charging as much as 2,700 (3,000 euros) per person.

The Road Haulage Association told the Times it wanted French authorities to bring in the military to protect vehicles from being boarded, claiming the security at the port is not enough.

A spokesman said: We advise our members not to stop within 150 miles of Calais. We have had reports of migrants standing on motorway bridges lobbing bricks so that when vehicles stop they can try and get aboard.

The Jungle, pictured earlier this month, is now nearly unrecognisable from before

According to the paper, there are around 700 migrants homeless in Calais at the current time and another 400 in Dunkirk.

Migrants are also trying to get to the UK via other ports around Europe, including Bilbao in Spain, with some arriving in Britain via smaller boats.

But Eurotunnel says tougher security has prevented migrants from boarding UK-bound trains and disrupting services.

Since the Jungle was shut down, there has been a dramatic decrease in the amount of violent crime in the area as a number of migrants have applied for asylum in France or dispersed into other parts of the EU.

MailOnline has contacted the Home Office for comment.
A manhunt is underway in Germany for a father suspected of murdering his two-year-old daughter by slashing her throat.

Police found the butchered toddler when they were called out to a small apartment block in a Hamburg suburb on Monday evening.

Reports in Germany said hardened lawmen broke down at the sight of the dead girl.

German police have launched a massive manhunt for a father who murdered his two-year-old daughter by slashing her throat (file picture)

The mother of the child was discovered in shock and is receiving treatment at a city hospital.

Police using tracker dogs have found out across the neighborhood of Neiwiedenthal in the hunt for the girls killer.

A murder squad formed in the early hours of Tuesday morning has been going door to door seeking information about the fugitive.

Police have so far given no clues as to what triggered the violence.
Gina Millier is Britain's most influential black person according to the Powerlist publication

Controversial anti-Brexit campaigner Gina Miller was today named the UK's most influential black person.

The 52-year-old millionaire led the legal challenge which forced Theresa May to consult Parliament before beginning the formal process of leaving the EU.

And today she came top of the Powerlist's annual publication of the 100 most influential people of African or African-Caribbean heritage in Britain.

Businesswoman Mrs Miller has faced a campaign of abuse since leading the legal challenge and revealed last month that she is afraid to leave her home after thugs threatened to throw acid over her.

But she said: 'It's amazing to get an accolade when what I've done has solicited a huge amount of abuse.

'To have somebody acknowledge me is extraordinarily kind and counters a lot of what I still get on a daily basis.'

Scotland Yard has issued at least eight 'cease and desist' notices to people who have sent her threatening messages.

And in July, Rhodri Colwyn Philipps, the 4th Viscount St Davids, was jailed for 12 weeks after suggesting someone should 'run over' the British-Guyanese campaigner.

Following her in second was Ric Lewis, chief executive of Tristan Capital Partners - while Ismail Ahmed, founder of money transfer company World Remit, came third.

Controversial Anti-Brexit campaigner Mrs Miller led the legal challenge which forced Theresa May to consult Parliament before beginning the formal process of leaving the EU

Also in the top ten were Ofcom chief executive Sharon White, Sheffield Hallam University professor of nursing Laura Serrant and Vogue editor Edward Enninful.

But Powerlist 2018 publisher Michael Eboda said: 'Gina was a shoo-in this year for number one. Brexit is the most important political event to happen this century.

'Gina's role in ensuring the sovereignty of parliament was recognised by the courts, has been monumental and has set a precedent that will last hundreds of years.'

Editor Eva Simpson added: 'Gina is a history maker and an inspirational number one. She has shown what can be achieved with single-mindedness and determination.'

The full 100 list will be revealed tonight at the fourth annual Powerlist Influencers Dinner at Drapers' Hall in the City of London, hosted by TV presenter June Sarpong.

Previous Powerlist number ones include architect David Adjaye, former children's laureate Malorie Blackman, Baroness Amos and last year's number one, Tom Ilube.

UK's most influential black people 1 Gina Miller Business owner and political activist 2 Ric Lewis Chief executive and chairman of Tristan Capital Partners 3 Ismail Ahmed WorldRemit founder 4 Sharon White Ofcom chief 5 Nira Chamberlain Professional mathematician Also in the top ten were Ofcom chief executive Sharon White (left) and Edward Enninful (right), who became the first male editor of Vogue in its 101-year history 6 Jacky Wright HMRC's chief digital and information officer 7 Sandra Wallace Managing partner at DLA Piper UK 8 Laura Serrant Professor of nursing at Sheffield Hallam University 9 Shirley J Thompson Music composer, visionary and cultural activist 10 Edward Enninful Fashion stylist editor-in-chief of British Vogue Advertisement

Mrs Miller lives in London with her financier husband Alan, nicknamed 'Mr Hedge Fund' because he made 30million after starting one of the City's first in 1997.

She launched the legal case with London-based hairdresser Deir Dos Santos and a small group of British expats who had crowd-funded their part in the legal process.

She said she felt compelled to act because the Brexit vote had 'opened a deep vein of ugliness and bigotry' and she worried about the future for her three children.

Mrs Miller was born in Guyana, where her father was the attorney general, but came to Britain to go to boarding school and has spent her adult life in the UK.

She has denied claims she is part of an 'elite' intent on wrecking Britain's exit from the EU, but described the Government's arguments in the legal battle as 'ludicrous'.
A journalist who was slapped by a Mexican television star when asking him questions on the red carpet is going to sue the actor for assault, battery and emotional distress, according to reports.

Mexican telenovela star Eduardo Yanez, 57, slapped Univision reporter Paco Fuentes on the Hollywood red carpet two weeks ago.

He is under criminal investigation by the LAPD but now the Univision reporter is set to bring a lawsuit against the 57-year-old.

According to the lawsuit, Yanez has shown no remorse because he has since claimed 'my private life is not for sale'.

Paco is seen in the video asking questions about Eduardo's son's GoFundMe page when things take a turn.

Mexican soap opera star Eduardo Yanez slapped a reporter on Tuesday

The Univision report Paco Fuentes ended his night in a hospital as a precaution

Eduardo's son set up a GoFundMe page to pay for a car he had recently crashed.

He and his son have a strained relationship that became public back in June after the son accused his famous father on Twitter of being a drug addict, racist and woman abuser.

During the interview, Paco asks Eduardo why his son doesn't just ask his father for the money.

Eduardo responded in Spanish: 'If you're so worried about my son, you send him the money.'

The reporter responds that he's just doing his job and reminds Eduardo the press is the link between public figures and the people.

That's when the soap star accuses the Paco of just trying to make a big deal out of the situation, calling the reporter and 'pure a**' and saying, 'You're not the link between anything and stop disrespecting me.'

The reporter is mid-sentence saying he never disrespected the star when Eduardo lunges forward and slaps him.

After the slap, Eduardo stands tall with his chest out while Paco puts his arms up in a motion of surrender.

Paco Fuented is the reporter for the Univison show El Gordo y La Flaco who was slapped

The GoFundMe was started by the actor's son who was raising money for a new car

The actor's son, pictured, said in the fundraiser that he was embarrassed to ask for money but didn't know what to do

The moment has gone viral, sending fans in a frenzy calling for Paco to sue the actor.

Eduardo tweeted an apology in Spanish that reads: 'I want to ask a sincere apology to the public and the person affected by my action. It was not correct. My personal life is not for sale.'

Twitter users are saying that Eduardo has a history of violence with reporters.

If Yanez is charged and convicted, he could face a maximum of six months in jail.

Another reporter, Lupita Hererra, was on the red carpet and witnessed the whole thing.

She said she interviewed Eduardo immediately before and asked him the same question about his son which also made him angry.

'In my opinion,' Lupita said, 'Fuentes was just doing his job. And Eduardo needs anger management.'

Paco appeared on the Univsion morning show El Gordo y La Flaca to talk with his co-workers and hosts about the incident.

He appeared with a small bruise under his right eye and said his night ended in the hospital to make sure his ear and eye were okay.

Paco told them there is no justification for Eduardo's actions.
Angela Merkel is 'furious' at damaging leaks about Theresa May's secretive Brexit dinner amid fears it could help topple the PM and harm negotiations.

The German Chancellor is said to have 'lost patience' with the Tories as negotiations on how Britain quits the bloc stall.

But she is desperate to keep Mrs May in post as No10 as she fears whoever may replace her as Conservative leader would throw the talks into further turmoil.

It comes after relations between Downing Street and Brussels took a fresh battering after damaging leaks about the PM's private dinner with Jean-Claude Juncker emerged in the German press.

Angela Merkel (pictured today at the Bundestag) is 'furious' at damaging leaks about Theresa May 's secretive Brexit dinner amid fears it could help topple the PM and harm negotiations

The German Chancellor (pictured in the German Parliament this morning) is said to have 'lost patience' with the Tories as negotiations on how Britain quits the bloc stall

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, pictured chatting with Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron at an EU summit in Brussels last week, is said to be furious at the latest explosive Brexit dninner leaks - fearing it could help oust Theresa May from office and damage negotiations

The unflattering account said Mrs May looked 'tormented' and 'begged' the European Commission president for help on the negotiations.

It said the PM looked 'anxious. despondent and discouraged, and that calls she made to other European leaders were 'cries for help.

MAY LOOKS 'STRICKEN AND STUNNED' LIKE SHE DOESN'T WANT TO BE PM ANYMORE Theresa May looks 'stricken and stunned' and appears as if she does not want to be Prime Minister anymore, visitors to No10 have reportedly said. The Prime Minister 'sat in silence for almost ten minutes' during one recent meeting, according to a report in The Times. The newspaper reported that the visitor 'left the meeting deciding she no longer wanted to be Prime Minister'. It comes after an explosive leak to the German press claimed European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker said Mrs May looked 'tormented' and exhausted during his Brexit dinner with her last week. The account will fuel rumours the PM could be thinking about quitting No10 amid continues troubles with the Brexit talks. Advertisement

A source told The Times that Mrs Merkel has been left fuming at the deeply unhelpful account.

They said: 'Angela Merkel is furious at these reports. It is known that she has lost patience with the British Conservatives but the last thing she wants is for Theresa May to be replaced in the middle of Brexit negotiations.'

Meanwhile, Mr Juncker yesterday scrambled to downplay the account, saying it was incorrect and Mrs May looked in 'good shape' for their meeting.

He claimed to be 'surprised' at the leaks - even though explosive details of their previous dinner were also leaked to the same German newspaper.

Speaking to the BBC today, Mr Juncker said: 'I am really surprised - if not shocked - about what has been written in the German press. And of course repeated by the British press.

'Nothing is true in all of this.

'I had an excellent working dinner with Theresa May. She was in good shape, she was not tired, she was fighting as is her duty so everything for me was OK.'

The extraordinary claims were condemned today by Nick Timothy, Mrs May's ex-chief of staff, who named Mr Juncker's top aide Martin Selmayr as the leaker.

Mr Selmayr denied being to blame and insisted the account was untrue today as the explosive new diplomatic row unfolded.

Downing Street refused to deny the reports, insisting it had no comment to make.

Incendiary new leaks from Brussels claim Theresa May (pictured on Sunday in Maidenhead) was 'tormented' and 'begged for help' from Jean-Claude Juncker (pictured right in Spain on Friday) during a furious diplomatic push for a Brexit breakthrough

Mr Juncker and Mrs May (pictured together at the EU summit on Friday) met for dinner last Monday night to try and break the Brexit deadlock. An account of the meeting has leaked

Mrs May's spokesman instead highlighted Mr Selmayr's denial.

The leaks echo similar disclosures made to the German press after a dinner between Mrs May and Mr Juncker in Downing Street.

RASPUTIN OR DARTH VADER? MEET JUNCKER'S MONSTER MARTIN SELMAYR Jean-Claude Juncker's chief of staff Martin Selmayr has a fearsome reputation in Brussels Jean-Claude Juncker's chief of staff Martin Selmayr is known by many names in Brussels. A feared fixer at the European Commission, the German lawyer has been dubbed Rasputin, the Monster and even Darth Vader. As chief of staff to the European Commission President he is a key player negotiating the talks and was one of just four people at last week's dinner with Juncker and Theresa May. Selmayr was blamed for incendiary leaks in the spring that threatened to blow up the Brexit talks before they really began. He has denied involvement in today's leak. Advertisement

On that occasion, a furious Prime Minster stormed out of No 10 to denounce the European Commission for interfering in her snap election campaign.

After last week's dinner, a joint statement was released agreeing to accelerate Brexit talks.

And later in the week, at the European Council summit, EU leaders said they would begin scoping work on future trade talks while making clear to Mrs May that she must make more concessions on Britain's divorce payment for negotiations to progress.

FAZ reporter Thomas Gutschker reveals Mr Juncker found Mrs May 'anxious, despondent and discouraged' by the talks.

His account - written from Mr Juncker's perspective - said: 'She looks like someone who does not sleep for nights on end.

'She rarely laughs, though clearly, she has to for the photographers. But it looks forced.

'Previously, May could literally pour out laughter  her whole body shaking. Now she has to use her utmost strength to avoid losing her composure.'

The story says the dinner was planned at the 'last minute' by Mrs May - in defiance of No 10's earlier claims it had been scheduled for several weeks.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's office was said to have told Mrs May 'dryly' that 'Brexit was not wanted and could not solve the problems of the British' for the Prime Minister.

Mr Timothy, who worked for Mrs May at the time of the previous leak, today said the new disclosure showed there are figures in Brussels who want Britain to leave the EU with either no deal or on terms which would punish the country for Brexit.

The leaks claim Mr Juncker found Mrs May (pictured during her EU summit press conference on Friday) to be 'despondent and discouraged' with 'deep rings' beneath her eyes.

He tweeted: 'After constructive Council meeting, Selmayr does this. Reminder that some in Brussels want no deal or a punitive one.'

But Mr Selmayr responded with his own tweet: 'This is false. I know it does't fit your cliche, @NickJTimothy. But @JunckerEU & I have no interest in weakening PM.

'But it seems some have interest in undermining constructive relations @JunckerEU & PM May. Who? is the real question.'

He denied being behind the leak or that Mr Juncker ever made the comments about Mrs May's emotional sate.

He also dismissed the suggestion the EU was being 'punitive' and claimed it was an attempt to frame the EU side of the negotiations and 'undermine talks'.

The extraordinary claims were condemned today by Nick Timothy, Mrs May's ex-chief of staff, who named Mr Juncker's top aide Martin Selmayr as the leaker in a tweet (pictured)

Mr Selmayr, chief of staff to Mr Juncker, denied being the leaker (pictured) and claimed Mr Timothy wanted to make the facts fit his 'cliche'

Mr Selmayr insisted the account in German papers was untrue today as the explosive new diplomatic row unfolded

Following the dinner, Mrs May and Mr Juncker issued a joint statement hailing 'constructive and friendly' talks.

The European Commission spokesman said he would not enter into a 'game' with reporters when he was asked to make clear that Brussels did not believe the UK Government was attempting to undermine the EU negotiating position.

The spokesman said: 'I will not say a word beyond what I said on the issues we discussed. If we have to say something we do, we don't need to be probed.'

Mrs May was photographed after the dinner in Brussels (left) and Mr Juncker kissed her on the cheek following the meeting (right)
A Polish bodybuilder convicted for firearms offences and attempted murder before moving to Britain has been jailed for six years for walking into a woman's house and raping her.

Career criminal Robert Chodyra punched and raped his terrified victim during a three-hour ordeal of 'cruel, sadistic, prolonged, repeated torture'.

There was 'blood everywhere' and the violent incident had left her feeling 'horrible' after he raped her and punched her up to 15 times, a court heard.

Chodyra, 46, of, Grimsby, Lincolnshire, admitted rape on August 6.

Originally from Poland, Chodyra had been jailed in Germany for eight years in July 2009 for attempted murder and attempted aggravated blackmail by robbery, carrying a semi-automatic handgun and possessing ammunition.

He also spent 'a lot of time in prison' in his native Poland but was able to move to Britain.

Career criminal Robert Chodyra, who was jailed in Germany and Poland for various offences, has been jailed for a raping a woman in Grimbsy after walking into his house

Craig Lowe, prosecuting, told the court that the 31-year-old woman was tired and, at 7pm, went upstairs in her home to take a nap.

She awoke after sleeping for a while and discovered that Chodyra was in her bedroom after walking into her unsecured house.

She asked him what he was doing there and he repeatedly told her that he wanted to have sex with her.

Mr Lowe said: 'She did not think for one moment that he was serious. She realised it wasn't a joke and he was indeed serious.'

Chodyra walked into the woman's house, found her in her bedroom asleep and carried out a terrifying three-hour attack

The woman told Chodyra: 'Please just go away. Leave me. Don't do this.'

She moved around to try to stop him and tried to kick him to stop him raping her.

Mr Lowe continued: 'He was punching her repeatedly to the face.

'He kept hold of her by her shoulder. There was blood everywhere.

'He punched her again. She lost consciousness. She started to cry, pleading with the defendant: 'Please leave me alone. Please leave me'.'

Chodyra continued having sex with her and she tried to run away but he took hold of her and continued.

Mr Lowe added: 'He punched her again in the face.'

The woman believed that her ordeal lasted for about three hours and that Chodyra punched her 10 to 15 times.

After he left, she stayed in bed crying. Her boyfriend later returned home and the police were alerted.

The woman, now 32, said in a statement that she felt 'horrible physically and mentally' and that her daily life had changed as a result.

She was on eight different medications to cope and had considered suicide.

Glenn Parsons, mitigating, said that Chodyra had shown remorse and pleaded guilty at a very early stage.

Mr Parsons said: 'It was serious. Prolonged violence was used.'

Recorder Peter Makepeace QC told Chodyra: 'She begged you to leave. You repeatedly punched her to the face.

'She was obviously distraught and she must have presented to you as incredibly upset, vulnerable and incapable of stopping you but you continued. This was repeated behaviour and throughout she was begging you to stop.

'The effect on her psychologically has been severe. The attack has had a devastating effect on her relationship and her daily life.

'She is seeking counselling to try to deal with the horror of what you did to her.

'What you did was everybody's absolute worst nightmare.

'This case can't be described as anything other than cruel, sadistic, prolonged, repeated torture.

'It's clear you got sexual pleasure not just from the sexual act itself but from the violence and fear you used towards your victim.

'This is a very serious offence of violence.'

Chodyra was jailed for six years and will be on extended licence after his release. He must register as a sex offender for life.
The family of a 'beautiful' young boy crushed to death by an iron gate on holiday face an agonising five-year wait for answers.

Angelo Quirino, from Manchester, was visiting family near Rome when the freak accident happened this summer. The youngster was preparing for a day trip to the beach when the 6ft-high electric gate - weighing 882lbs - collapsed on top of him.

His uncle and neighbours near the property they had hired in Anzio, 40 miles south of the capital, rushed to help after hearing screams, but found him unconscious.

An air ambulance was scrambled to the scene and medics tried to resuscitate the youngster to no avail for more than 45 minutes.

Both a criminal investigation and civil proceedings are now under way in Italy. The gate will be examined by experts to find out how it fell, but the family have been warned it could be up to five years before they come to any kind of resolution.

Angelo Quirino (front) with mother Roberta, brother Diego and younger sister on holiday in Anzio, Italy. This is the last family picture taken before Angelo died in a gate tragedy

The four-year-old boy was crushed to death after a 450lb iron gate fell on him while he played

Angelo (pictured left bottom, with his mother Roberta Host, older brother and baby sister and right, with his parents) was visiting family when the freak accident happened

Fighting back tears, his father Adamo, also known to friends as Amedeo, said: 'I don't think this feeling will ever go away. It's like a part of your soul is missing' he said.

'We just have to try and stick together. But it is so hard. It still makes me angry, angry with God. You look back and think there can't be any reason or explanation for something like this.

'Things just won't be the same without him, but I have to remain strong for my family. I think faith is the only thing that can help you.'

Angelo had been with his mother Roberta Host, brother Diego, eight, and eight-month-old sister Linda on a two-week break in the coastal city of Anzio.

Adamo, who works as a croupier at the Grosvenor Casino, had remained in Manchester to work but was due to join them on the trip a week later.

Roberta and other relatives were just a few yards away from the four-year-old when the gate to their rented holiday home collapsed unexpectedly.

Today, his family spoke about their heartache for the first time and share the last picture of little Angelo on holiday

Angelo, pictured with his mother. He was on holiday with his mother, brother and little sister

Emergency services rushed to the scene but sadly the youngster could not be saved.

Adamo recalled how he dropped everything to make the nightmare scramble from Manchester to the Italian city, in a journey wracked with anguish and disbelief.

Adamo said: 'I was here alone when Roberta phoned me. I had to ask a friend to come round and help me book tickets because I was shaking so much, I couldn't even use the keyboard.

'It was the worst and longest journey of my life. I felt so powerless and so far away from them.

Angelo Quirino pictured on the flight with his mum Roberta and family flying to Italy

'Also, knowing I wasn't there in his last moments. I had the same a year ago when I was told on the phone my dad had died.

When I heard the same again about my son, I just couldn't believe it or take it in.

'It just didn't feel real, I kept telling myself this can't be true. It was like I was in a different reality.

'I arrived the following afternoon and straight away said "where are they" and hugged them all together. And I told them, no one is guilty, this is no one's fault.'

His Italian parents moved to Crumpsall, Manchester, two years ago to raise their family and start a new life in Britain.

Angelo attended Abraham Moss nursery and had been due to start in reception at nearby St Anne's Primary School in September.

Adamo said the emotion and psychological scars of what happened are still very raw for the whole family.

He said: 'He was just so full of life and always so present. Everything we did, he did it with us. If I went to Tesco at 10pm to buy some milk, he would come with me.

'And he was always happy and smiling. He was top of the class at nursery and he was so excited to start at the same school as Diego. He used to love coming to pick him up with me.

'He loved it here. But he would have been happy on the North Pole as long as we were with him.'

Adamo said the emotion and psychological scars of what happened are still very raw for the whole family

Angelo attended Abraham Moss nursery and had been due to start in reception at nearby St Anne's Primary School in September

More than 2,500 was raised for the family in a crowdfunding campaign, set up by close friend Imma Totaro in the aftermath of the tragedy to help pay for funeral costs.

Angelo's funeral took place shortly after his death and was attended by hundreds of people. He was buried in Anzio close to the rest of his family.

Angelo translates in English as Angel and the family plans to have 'My name is Angelo and I am an angel' - something the youngster used to regularly say - inscribed on his gravestone.

Emergency services rushed to the scene but sadly the youngster could not be saved

A memorial service for Angelo carried out by an Italian priest was held at St Mary's Catholic Church in Manchester city centre on Sunday.

And the family say they would like to open a facility such as a children's centre, named after their young son, at some point in the future.

Thanking the community, Adamo said: 'We would like to thank everyone for all their support, in Italy, but here in Manchester as well.

'It's meant a lot and has helped ease the pain a little bit at least.'
A shocking crash between an ambulance racing to an emergency and an impatient driver has been filmed in Russia.

The ambulance drove through an intersection with its emergency siren on and lights flashing as other vehicles made way on Saturday in Novosibirsk.

But a large jeep driver ignored the warning sounds and drove straight through the junction at speed and crashed violently into the emergency vehicle.

The force of the collision toppled the ambulance and sent it spinning across the road.

A woman was pushing a baby in a pram just feet away from the crash and the pair were almost hit by the careening vehicles.

People rushed to the overturned ambulance, and climbed in through the broken doors, which had smashed open in the collision.

One man then climbed on top of the vehicle to open the passenger door from the top and to help the emergency worker out.

It took a group of up to 13 people to push the ambulance back up onto four wheels again.

No one appeared to be badly injured in the incident but seconds before the crash at least five pedestrians, including three young children had crossed the road exactly where the collision took place.

The jeep ploughed straight into the ambulance as it passed through the junction with its siren wailing and its emergency lights flashing

The jeep hit it with such force that it toppled the ambulance over as it skidded across the road

The ambulance finally came to a stop in the middle of the road with its back door smashed open from the force of the collision
Donald Tusk today claimed Theresa May could still reverse Brexit as told EU leaders they must be united to 'defeat' Britain in the Brexit talks.

The Council president said only Britain could decide if there would be a good deal, no deal or whether Brexit could be stopped - but warned the remaining 27 countries they must hold together in the talks.

The next phase of Brexit talks are expected to be even more difficult as differing interests across the EU risk deep splits in what the bloc wants from Brexit.

Mr Tusk's call for unity comes a day after leaks from the European Commission suggested Brussels is worried Theresa May could be replaced by Boris Johnson.

The Foreign Secretary turned out for Cabinet talks on Brexit this morning and appeared in a rush to No 10 as he was pictured walking up Downing Street with his collar out of place.

Mr Johnson's essay on Brexit on the eve of Tory conference earlier this month exploded government divisions back into public view and threw new questions on Mrs May's future.

An incendiary leak from Brussels yesterday suggested Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker fears a takeover by Mr Johnson because he could walk out of talks.

In other developments, Mr Barnier warned trade talks would last for 'several years' and even then would need to mirror an existing relationship the EU has with a third country.

Downing Street today said progress had been made at last week's EU summit and that Mrs May and Mr Tusk had held 'hugely constructive' conversations.

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Donald Tusk (pictured today in the European Parliament) claimed it was up to Britain to decide whether there would be a good Brexit, no deal or even no Brexit at all after last week's summit

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson turned out for Cabinet talks on Brexit this morning and appeared in a rush to No 10 as he was pictured walking up Downing Street with his collar out of place (pictured)

Mr Tusk told MEPs today he was 'obsessed by unity' and said he had worked hard to give David Cameron enough in his renegotiation to keep all 28 countries together.

He said: 'Last Friday all the leaders agreed that the priority for them is unity among 27. This was voiced in unison.'

The President added: 'But ahead of us is still the toughest stress test. If we fail it, the negotiations will end in our defeat.

'We must keep our unity regardless of the direction of the talks.

'The EU will be able to rise to every scenario as long as we are not divided.

'It is in fact up to London how this will end: with a good deal, no deal or no Brexit. But in each of these scenarios we will protect our common interest only by being together.'

NEGOTIATOR BARNIER WARNS OF 'SEVERAL YEARS' OF TRADE TALKS Michel Barnier has warned trade talks will take 'several years' after Brexit and will need to mirror an existing EU relationship with a third country. The EU negotiator told a German paper that negotiating the trade deal with Britain would not be his responsibility as he plans to step down after striking the Article 50 agreement by March. There is speculation the senior Eurocrat wants to be the next President of the European Commission. Mr Barnier warned today the 'second phase' - which will include the trade deal - will be harder than the current phase looking at the divorce deal. Speaking to the German paper Handelsblatt yesterday, he said: 'The two phases are difficult. The second will be very different and will last several years. 'It is truly unique because instead of promoting regulatory convergence, it will aim to frame a difference. 'It will involve risks, including about its political ratification, making all the more necessary transparency around these topics.' Advertisement

Mr Tusk's intervention came as Mrs May met her Cabinet today to draw up plans for the next steps.

Senior ministers gathered in Downing Street early for a 'political' summit ahead of the weekly formal meeting.

Mrs May briefed her Cabinet on last week's summit and yesterday's lengthy debate on it in Parliament.

Her official spokesman said after the meeting: 'The Government is committed to an implementation period. We are clear we want to achieve it and believe we can do so.

'Talks the Prime Minister has had with Donald Tusk have been hugely constructive. We welcome his comments last week that have helped us to take steps forward.

'This needs to be a joint endeavour. We need to work together. We believe a good deal is in the interests of both sides.'

Leaks from Brussels into the German press on Sunday suggest the Commission favours continuing talks with Mrs May and not her Foreign Secretary.

A translation of the report said: 'Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, is quite different: he still tells people that Britain is going to have a ''great future,'' even without a deal.

'Better to negotiate with a realistic May than with the dream-merchant Johnson  that is the calculation on the Continent.

'That was why Mays defeat had to be packaged nicely at least.'

Politico said today Mrs May was eager to help shape the next second phase of Brexit negotiations, set to be focused on trade, by lobbying EU leaders on the rules they should set negotiator Mr Barnier.

Brexit Secretary David Davis will be deployed to Paris on Monday night to work on the French government.

A source told the site: 'We need to influence their position, through conversations in both Brussels and in the 27 capitals.'

Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable said: 'I welcome Donald Tusk's comments in the European parliament.

'No matter what Theresa May says there are still three options on the table. No deal, a deal, or no Brexit.

'The EU have confirmed what we have been saying all along, if Brexit looks like a disaster we can call the whole thing off.

'The Liberal Democrats are the only party offering an exit from Brexit by giving the people a say on the final deal.'

Senior ministers, including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson (pictured today in Downing Street) gathered in No 10 early for a 'political' summit ahead of the weekly formal meeting

Environment Secretary Michael Gove and Education Secretary Justine Greening were both in Downing Street for Cabinet today (both are pictured arriving this morning)

Chief Secretary Liz Truss was in No 10 for the Cabinet meeting this morning

Justice Secretary David Lidington and Aid Secretaryt Priti Patel were pictured in Downing Street as he left this morning's Cabinet meeting

The Prime Minister reported back to MPs last night on the summit, talking up her chances of striking a deal following the crunch talks.

She suggested the two-year transition phase she has promised businesses might not happen if a new post-Brexit trade deal is not reached.

But she insisted the Government is in 'touching distance' of an agreement with the bloc on major issues such as EU citizens rights.

Mrs May told the House: 'The point of the implementation period is to put in place the practical changes necessary to move to the future partnership.

EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was in the European Parliament this morning (pictured) to hear Mr Tusk's speech on the summit

'In order to have that you need to know what the future partnership is going to be.'

Her comments were seized upon by Labour MPs who warned it would mean a 'cliff edge' Brexit.

It comes after the CBI, Chambers of Commerce, Institute of Directors, EEF and Federation of Small Business united today to call for an urgent Brexit transition deal.

After being attacked by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn Mrs May hit back and said: 'We haven't reached a final agreement but it's going to happen.'

Revealing she was citing Angela Merkel and Donald Tusk, the Premier added: 'I'd have a degree of confidence we are going to get to sufficient progress by December.'
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Diplomatic protocol has allowed a string of abandoned embassies in Washington D.C. to languish untouched for years.

Many of these eyesores are in some of the District's most high-end neighborhoods. The Sheridan-Kalorama area, where several are located, is home to former President Barack Obama, as well as President Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and The Washington Post, recently bought a massive house there.

The area's most recent prominent resident is Secretary Of State Rex Tillerson, whose department is responsible for making sure these diplomatic properties are maintained.

But the State Department doesn't have a lot of options. Cliff Seagroves, acting head of the Office of Foreign Missions, said he's largely bound by the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Revoking a property's diplomatic status is an extreme step that could provoke a diplomatic crisis and retaliatory action against U.S. properties abroad.

'We have to balance (local residents' concerns) with making sure we're not making things harder for ourselves overseas,' Seagroves said.

The vacant Pakistani embassy in Washington (pictured) still stands as perhaps the most egregious example of an only-in-D.C. phenomenon, where diplomatic protocol allows a string of abandoned buildings to fester, untouchable and tax-free

A demolition notice is displayed in the window of the vacant Pakistani embassy. The Department of State revoked its diplomatic status in February 2016 and let the city move in and treat the property like any other blighted building

The case of the former Pakistani embassy (pictured) at the corner of 22nd and R streets is an example of a rare success, but also of how bad a situation has to get before the State Department will act

The case of the former Pakistani embassy at the corner of 22nd and R streets is an example of a rare success in dealing with these buildings, but also of how bad a situation has to get before the State Department will act

The large building sticks out like a wart in the otherwise upscale neighborhood. Plywood covers the windows, sleeping bags and empty bottles litter the shuttered doorways and head-high weeds sprout through the asphalt of the empty fenced-off parking lot.

For a solid decade, neighbors and local political leaders complained bitterly about the condition of the former Pakistani consulate. But the city remained powerless to do anything as long as the building was classified by the State Department as a diplomatic property.

That diplomatic designation has since been revoked, according to the State Department, but the building still stands as perhaps the most egregious example of an only-in-D.C. phenomenon.

'Residents, who themselves are under obligation to keep their properties in order, are complaining to me,' said City Councilwoman Mary Cheh, whose Ward 3 contains several such problematic properties. 'Unless the State Department is really committed to the issue, these countries can really string you along.'

Cheh's office has compiled a partial list of vacant and neglected diplomatic buildings and she co-authored a bill calling for creating a comprehensive citywide list. Violators on Cheh's list include properties owned by the governments of Serbia, Sri Lanka, Cameroon and Argentina.

The former Iranian Embassy (pictured) has been empty since the two countries severed ties in 1979

The former Embassy of Cameroon on Massachusetts Ave. and 24th St., NW, is pictured

A building owned by the government of Argentina has sat abandoned at 2136 R St. NW for more than 20 years. Alan Wurtzel, who lives next door, told The Current it's infested with rats and could crumble at any time.

The Argentinian ambassador told Wurtzel and his wife more than a decade ago that the country would gladly get rid of the property's tax burden but that it couldn't because of its 2001 default, which didn't allow it to freely dispose of its assets, according to the publication.

A spokesperson for the Embassy of Argentina told The Current that now that the country's economic situation has improved, they are reviewing what to do with the property, which they will 'probably sell' because 'there isn't use for it anymore'.

A building owned by the government of Argentina (pictured) has sat abandoned at 2136 R St. NW for more than 20 years

The former Sri Lankan Embassy at 2148 Wyoming Ave. NW (pictured), is also abandoned for unknown reasons

The former Sri Lankan Embassy at 2148 Wyoming Ave. NW, is also abandoned for unknown reasons. David Bender, head of the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission told The Current he submitted an inspection request to the regulatory affairs agency, but it was ignored. Since 2016, the property has been taxed at occupied commercial building rates of $1.65 per $100.

The issue is particularly frustrating for members of the city council, who find themselves unable to use the many instruments at their disposal for dealing with neglected buildings. For example, the city has a three-tiered tax structure designed to compel landlords to maintain their properties. Ordinary buildings are taxed at 85 cents per $100 in assessed value; for a vacant property, that rate increases to $5 per $100 and if a property is judged by the city to be neglected or 'blighted' the tax rate jumps to $10 per $100 in assessed value.

But that isn't applicable for a diplomatic building.

'If I have a vacant house in the Shaw neighborhood that's becoming a problem, I can call in the cops, clean it up, throw a fence around it and if necessary seize it for unpaid taxes,' said City Councilman Jack Evans. 'I have a lot of tools in my tool box. But I don't have those tools available to me if it's a diplomatic property.'

The vacant Iranian embassy is seen in Washington. David Bender, head of the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission, said an ambassador once told him that he couldn't afford to fix up a property, but didn't want to sell it because he didn't want to be responsible for downsizing his country's presence in the U.S. capital

The State Department doesn't have a lot of options - Revoking a property's diplomatic status is an extreme step that could provoke a diplomatic crisis and retaliatory action against U.S. properties abroad (pictured is the vacant Iranian embassy)

With limited options, Seagroves admitted that his office is often pleased to see negative press coverage of the issue that he hopes will embarrass intransigent nations into action.

'The shame factor is often our most effective tool in getting these matters resolved,' he said.

Seagroves said the Pakistani Foreign Ministry built a new embassy, moved its consular staff there and 'in effect, walked away' from the old building. After years of nagging, and with the building becoming a magnet for squatters, Seagroves' office finally delivered an ultimatum and a deadline. When that passed, State revoked the diplomatic status in February 2016 and let the city move in and treat the property like any other blighted building.

By June 2017, the property had accumulated more than $70,000 in tax debt. That debt was purchased by an investment group at a tax auction in July 2017, giving the Pakistani government about six months to settle the debt or risk losing the property.

The Pakistani government, in a statement to The Associated Press, said that 'a plan is being worked out' for the building's renovation and it was working with the State Department and District of Columbia government 'to amicably resolve the issue.'

Washington residents and politicians are up in arms about a D.C. phenomenon: a string of former embassies and diplomatic buildings whose governments have essentially abandoned them (pictured is the vacant Serbian embassy)

The former Serbian embassy in Washington sits in similar disrepair with its diplomatic status intact (pictured)

Countries with abandoned diplomatic buildings in DC Serbia Cameroon Argentina Iran Sri Lanka Iraq Egypt Advertisement

However the Pakistani statement also pointed out that all diplomatic properties are exempt from taxation, a contention that seemingly ignores the revocation of the property's diplomatic status.

Repeated queries as to why the building fell into such an extreme state of disrepair went unanswered.

While residents can claim victory there, the fight continues. One block away down R Street, the former Serbian embassy sits in similar disrepair with its diplomatic status intact.

Some of these unused buildings are unused for an understandable reason. The former Iranian Embassy has been empty since the two countries severed ties in 1979 and is now maintained by Seagroves' office. But in other cases, there seems to be multiple reasons why these nations would allow such valuable real estate to sit vacant and neglected.

Bender said an ambassador once told him that he couldn't afford to fix up a property, but didn't want to sell it because he didn't want to be responsible for downsizing his country's presence in the U.S. capital.

Seagroves said one foreign ministry official told him that 'the cost to renovate a particular property in D.C. was equivalent to their entire annual budget for maintaining diplomatic properties around the world.'
Grant Ardern, 60, a father-of-three, is feared to have secretly planned his own death for several weeks, but had decided to wait until he saw his daughter India tie the knot, an inquest heard

A retired police inspector who suffered from bouts of anxiety jumped to his death from a motorway bridge the morning after he watched his daughter get married.

Grant Ardern, 60, a father-of-three, is feared to have secretly planned his own death for several weeks, but had decided to wait until he saw his daughter India tie the knot with her long-term girlfriend, an inquest heard.

Hours after telling his wife how much he enjoyed the wedding day Mr Ardern slipped away from the family home at 6am, dressed in his pyjamas, and drove to a motorway bridge near his home in Warrington.

His body was later found at the foot of the Thelwall Viaduct after a passing motorist saw him jumping off it.

The inquest heard how Mr Ardern, who worked as a community safety manager, had been suffering from work-related anxiety which had worsened due to him having to speak at a public event.

He had been in policing for 30 years and previously worked for the Cheshire constabulary where he had spearheaded campaigns against domestic violence. In recent years he had been working with organisations across the world and advising them on crime fighting schemes.

His wife Deborah, 56, a civilian coordinator for Cheshire Police, said: 'He was so anxious because he wanted to do it but didn't want to upset us before the wedding. That's why I think that he was so anxious and catatonic and mood shifting towards the end.

'The night we had come home from the wedding he was so calm and thinking back, I believe he thought he was ready to go.

'He told me how much of a good time he had had at the wedding, how much he loved the children and how much he loved me and that it had been a perfect day. It's clear to me now that he was saying goodbye.'

The father-of-three took his own life the day after the wedding of his daughter, India (pictured)

She added: 'He decided to go back to the doctor quite a few times in the last six months over small matters that were brought on by the anxiety. He decided that he needed to be on medication again - but medication just made him worse this time. Originally he told me he felt suicidal on the 8th or 9th of April and he said he thought it would be better if he was dead already.

'I can only speculate now but I think he was absolutely determined to do what he did, but he was desperate for no one to know about it.

'I was very shocked and upset when he said it to me the first time. We had been together for 30 years and it was shocking the first time he said it to me. I challenged him about it, and after a long chat he said that he would never do anything to upset me or upset the children by doing that sort of thing.

'When he said it to me and our son Henry, that was when we were trying to get medical professional help and we were hugely concerned.

'At times he could be completely catatonic but then he would snap out of it. We were surprised and shocked at the time, your not really expecting or prepared for suicide.

Mr Ardern's wife, Deborah, said: 'I think he wanted to do it earlier but he was hanging on for the wedding'

'With the benefit of hindsight now I think he must have been clear in his mind what he was going to do. At the time I thought that he wouldn't do that, but now it is clear what he wanted. I think he wanted to do it earlier but he was hanging on for the wedding.'

The hearing was told Mr Ardern had attended Warrington Hospital with his son on April 27 complaining of anxiety.

Nurse Alex McKennaney told the Warrington hearing: 'He said he had no intention for suicide or self harm. He confirmed that he was having anxieties about work and discussed that his anxiety was increasing because of having to speak at a public event.'

Dr Gordon Mills, Mr Ardern's GP at Lakeside Surgery in Lymm said: 'I saw him on the 12 April 2017 when he complained of feeling anxious and finding work stressful but didn't specify on his concerns. He requested fluoxetine as he had previously found it helpful but on April 20 he came back again and saw one of my colleagues still complaining of anxiety.

'He was effectively told to continue taking the fluoxetine but on April 28 he attended at the surgery with his wife and son together and said that he was still feeling anxious. He said he had no thoughts of self harm or suicide but I made an urgent referral to the mental health team.'

Mental health worker Daniel Carter who saw Mr Ardern at his home on April 28 said: 'I spoke to him and he seemed stressed and anxious. He was depressed in mood and is was clear he was very worried as well.

His body was found at the foot of the Thelwall Viaduct after a passing motorist saw him jumping off it

'We planned that he would go to his daughter's wedding the following day and I think on Sunday which would have been the 30th I would contact him so we could confirm a follow up treatment and for the mean time he was prescribed some diazepam if he needed it. He was anxious and seemed depressed and was worrying excessively. But he said he didn't have any plans of self harm.'

Det Sgt Henderson Pierre, of Cheshire Police, said officers attended after getting calls from the passing motorist as well as Mr Ardern's son who reported his father missing.

They found his Ford car parked by the motorway bridge. No suicide note was found.

Recording a conclusion of suicide, Coroner Claire Walsh said: 'He made suggestions to his wife and son that he was suicidal but told health professionals that he didn't have any suicidal or self harm intentions.

'Mrs Ardern made a comment that resonated with me, she believes that he was absolutely determined to do what he did but he was desperate for others and his family to not know. I am satisfied that he knew what he was doing.'

To contact the Samaritans, call 116 123 or visit www.samaritans.org
A 4WD rammed a police car and torn through a car park in a speedy getaway after going on a McDonald's run in Queensland.

The allegedly stolen Holden Colorado was caught on CCTV footage at a drive-thru at Pine Mountain Road, 47km south of Brisbane, before 'dangerously' taking off.

A male driver and passenger along with a female back passenger were seen to be ordering a couple of drinks from the allegedly stolen car at McDonald's at about 10am Tuesday.

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A 4WD (pictured) rammed a police car and tore through car park at McDonald's in Queensland

A male driver and passenger along with a female back passenger were seen to be ordering a couple of drinks (pictured) from the allegedly stolen car at McDonald's at about 10am Tuesday

The allegedly stolen Holden Colorado (pictured) was caught on CCTV footage at a drive-thru at Pine Mountain Road, 47km south of Brisbane

After the trio received their drinks, CCTV footage shows the car suddenly taking off leaving a plume of smoke before it reversed and speeds off again leaving staff appearing shocked.

Queensland Police attempted to stop the white ute at the exit of the drive through, however the ute sped off towards the unmarked police car, hitting another 4WD on the way.

The ute tore through the car park, clipping the back of the 4WD before crashing into a bin along the way.

Two male police officers were not injured during the incident.

A Queensland Police spokesman told Daily Mail Australia a number of people are now in police custody in relation to the incident Tuesday morning.

After the trio received their drinks, CCTV footage shows the car suddenly taking off, charging at an unmarked police car

The ute tore through the car park (pictured), clipping the back of another 4WD before crashing into a bin along the way

'Police located a stolen vehicle, not the Colorado, it's a Ford ... at Carina Heights,' he said.

The people were arrested in Salisbury, about eight kilometres away from the McDonald's incident.

There are reports the trio dumped the white ute and allegedly stole another car which was found by police Tuesday evening.
Sir Michael Fallon said Britons who have travelled to fight with ISIS 'have made their choice' as he backed warnings the way to deal with the terrorists is to kill them.

The Defence Secretary said Britain will ensure militants fleeing the war zones in Iraq and Syria and heading back do not 'pose a future threat to our national security'.

And he warned they have chosen 'terror and murder' and must face the full force of Britain's might as a consequence.

He backed Rory Stewart, an international development minister, who at the weekend said the only way to deal with the militants 'in almost every case' is to kill them.

Sir Michael told MPs yesterday: 'I have made clear that those who have travelled to fight with Daesh (also known as ISIS or Islamic State) in either Iraq or Syria will have been committing a criminal offence.

Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary (pictured yesterday in the House of Commons) said Brits who have fought with ISIS have made their choice and face being killed

'Daesh is a proscribed organisation and we have to make sure that if they ever do return from Iraq and Syria, they do not pose a future threat to our national security.

'But they have made their choice, they have chosen to fight for an organisation that uses terror and he murder of civilians as a modus operandi.'

His stark warning comes after Mr Stewart said the best way to deal with the terrorists is to kill them.

The minister said UK citizens who had travelled to the war-torn country are a 'serious danger' to Britain.

He warned converts to the terror group believed in an 'extremely hateful doctrine', saying fighters can expect to be killed given the threat they pose to British security.

Hundreds of Britons are known to have travelled to Syria to fight with Islamist groups during the course of the six-year conflict.

Rory Stewart MP (pictured) described British ISIS fighters, saying: 'These are people who are executing people, who have held women and children hostage, and who are torturing and murdering'

International Development Minister Rory Stewart MP has said the only way of dealing with most British jihadis is to kill them. Pictured is a ISIS fighter waving the group's flag in Raqqa

Several have been killed by US-led coalition air strikes  including jihadist Sally Jones, known as the White Widow.

British authorities estimate that about 850 people from this country have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with Islamist groups during the conflict.

MI5 chief Andrew Parker said last week that more than 100 UK fighters had been killed and another 250 have returned home.

Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, Mr Stewart said: 'These people are a serious danger to us, and unfortunately the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them.

Around 850 Brits have fled the country to fight for Islamic State in Syria and Iraq over the past six years, one of whom was Sally Jones (pictured), also known as the White Widow. She is presumed dead after a missile strike on Raqqa four months ago

'These are people who are executing people, who have held women and children hostage, and who are torturing and murdering.'

His remarks come just days after the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Max Hill QC, said 'brainwashed' young people who travelled to Syria 'with a sense of naivety' should be spared prosecution and allowed to return.

It was revealed earlier this month how Sally Jones, who was known as a recruiter of would-be jihadists, was killed in a Predator missile strike as she fled Raqqa four months ago.

Jones, one of the world's most wanted extremists, fled the UK with her husband and youngest son, JoJo, in 2013. It is feared the 12-year-old was also killed.

A senior US adviser said foreign ISIS fighters fleeing the group's fallen stronghold of Raqqa must be killed on the battlefield.

Brett McGurk, a top envoy for the American coalition fighting the terror group, said it was vital to kill foreign terrorists to stop them mounting attacks back home.

The comments come after the remaining Islamic State terrorists holed up in their de-facto capital fled after a final bloody standoff.

'Our mission is to make sure any foreign fighter who is here, who joined ISIS from a foreign country and came into Syria, they will die here in Syria,' Mr McGurk said.

'So if they're in Raqqa, they're going to die in Raqqa.'
Rabia Nasimi, pictured, has enrolled at Cambridge University for a PhD 18 years after arriving in the UK in a refrigerated lorry after fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan with her family

A girl who was hidden in a lorry and smuggled into the UK at Dover at the age of five has enrolled as a Cambridge University student 13 years later.

Rabia Nasimi, 23, and her family escaped the Taliban in Afghanistan after fearing they would be killed, hiding in a refrigerated lorry to get into Britain and leaving all their possessions behind.

The family of five eventually reached London and were granted asylum, with Miss Nasimi unable to speak a word of English.

She is now studying for a PhD at the sociology department at Cambridge researching Afghan identity.

Her family left her native land in 1999 and her father Dr Nooralhaq Nasimi set up a charity, the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association, to provide education and support to fellow immigrants from the region.

Dr Nasimi, who grew up in poverty and lived through the Soviet occupation, had only returned to Afghanistan that year after spending 10 years in Ukraine with wife Mahboba studying law and fled after liberals were kidnapped and executed by the Taliban.

Miss Nasimi said: 'The journey to England was quite difficult, my brother was only six months old while we were on the way, and it wasn't very common for families with young children to travel.

'Part of the journey was through water, there were inflated makeshift boats which were only safe for two or three people, but the smugglers put 30 to 40 people in them, which was risky and very dangerous.'

She added: 'I don't really remember it much, but my parents have always told us about our journey story.

'I do remember when we arrived in London and had our photos taken, and when we were greeted by police officers, who gave us sweets, that's the sort of thing you do remember as a child!

'I think while they were making their journey people were talking about different countries, and the UK was one that stood out for them as a country with a lot of diversity and equal opportunities, and that provides people with support when needed.

Miss Nasimi, 23, pictured graduating from a Masters' course at the London School of Economics, is studying a sociology doctorate aiming to improve the lives of fellow refugees

Her father Dr Nooralhaq Nasimi, left, and mother Mahboba, right, left Afghanistan in 1999 fleeing the Taliban. Dr Nasimi went on to set up the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association charity to support immigrants to the UK

'In the model of integration adopted by the UK you can follow your own identity and religion, and also be a British citizen, and that was something a lot of the other European countries didn't have.'

Miss Nasimi helped with English language classes at her father's charity while developing her connection to Afghanistan, and keeping in touch with its diverse national culture.

After developing an interest in sociology at A-level she went on to study the subject at university at Goldsmith's and then gained a Master's degree at the London School of Economics.

After getting to grips with the traditions and eccentricities of Cambridge, she said she is now ready to continue her research into Afghan identity at Lucy Cavendish College.

Miss Nasimi said: 'This week is the first time I have managed to see a bit of Cambridge, and it is quite different to London.

'The buses have only one door, and you can still pay with cash here, and the bikes are quite a big part of my first impressions as well, that's taken some getting used to!'

She said she hopes her work in Cambridge will allow her to better understand Afghan culture, and assist her to help others back home.

When she arrived in England aged five she could not speak English but eventually became involved in her father's charity the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association, helping run English language classes

Miss Nasimi said: 'Quite a lot of my work in the UK has been involved in supporting the diaspora in the UK, but I am also quite interested in researching identity in Afghanistan.

'I have been back around 10 times now with my family, and every time I go back I feel I am learning something new about the country, and every time it is something new for me.

'Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic and quite diverse country, and there are some tensions around ethnic identity, but I think when it's contentious it gives you even more interest to go and research it.'

A fluent Farsi speaker, Miss Nasimi added she hopes to work with the UK Government in supporting refugees in the future.

She has also returned to Afghanistan twice this year and said the country is 'showing signs of improvement' since the Taliban regime.

Miss Nasimi said: 'I think we shouldn't be too negative. All my previous journeys and visits showed me a completely different picture.

'Afghanistan is continually improving and developing, but it is a slow process, and nothing is going to happen very quickly.

'But the international support, especially from the UK, shows the international community are still aware Afghanistan need support.

Miss Nasimi, pictured at her LSE graduation, has also returned to Afghanistan twice this year and wants to improve life for people in the country

'People here have been very supportive. From what I have seen so far there are people that have come from all over the world, so it's really nice to come and sit with people from different backgrounds and experiences.'

Based in London, her father's charity has received government funding to run two Citizens' Advice Bureaus in Kabul and Baghlan provinces.

Miss Nasimi said: 'As a refugee myself, supporting refugees in the UK and supporting Afghans in Afghanistan is a great accomplishment for my family and I, and I couldn't be more proud.

'In the UK we aim to be a leader in the support, development and integration of immigrant communities, including newly-arrived refugees.

'We run various free services such as English language classes, women support groups and legal advice.

'In Afghanistan, we favour a grassroots, localised approach to tackling poverty and promoting human rights.'
A British former IT worker who had been fighting ISIS in Syria has been killed while clearing landmines in Raqqa.

Jac Holmes, 24, left his home in Parkstone, Dorset, in 2015 and - despite having no military training - joined the Kurdish People's Protection Unit (YPG).

He was killed a week after the terrorists' de facto capital was liberated.

The 24-year-old was one of a number of British volunteers who travelled out to fight against ISIS with the Kurds during the Syrian conflict

His mother, Angie Blannin, said: 'He stood up for what he believed in and he had the courage of his convictions to go out and do something where he thought that the West were not doing enough.

'To defeat Isis (another name for IS) he felt that it was not just a Syrian problem, or Middle Eastern problem, it was a world problem.

'He wanted to go and do something about that and not just be a keyboard warrior.'

She added: 'He is a hero in my eyes and always will be.'

'He was just a boy when he left the UK, a little bit lost. He told me he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. But by going out there, he found something that he was good at and that he loved.

'I was on the phone to Jac only on Sunday and we talked about how he planned to come home for Christmas now Raqqa is liberated. Fighting ISIS in Syria was his calling.'

Brave: Mr Holmes quit his job and left Britain shortly before his 22nd birthday in 2015

Informed of his death hours after it happened, she said that according to Kurdish officials, her only child had been clearing mines to help civilians within the city.

'That wasn't his job, his role, he was a sniper,' she said.

'But that is what he was doing, it is all a bit sketchy but I am guessing he stepped on a landmine or one went off close to him, or it was a suicide vest.

'But I don't know. It was an IED that probably covers every base.'

Mr Holmes quit his job working on the service desk for an outsourcing firm which provided services to Bournemouth Council in January 2015.

In a previous interview with MailOnline he discussed his reasons for joining the fight against ISIS.

He said: 'I was learning about the whole Syrian civil war and seeing the grim situation as it developed over the past six months before I came here.

'Every day there was a new atrocity, whether it be perpetrated by Assad or the likes of Daesh (Isis).

'I got sick of seeing what was going on while the British government and the rest of the West did nothing and most people knew nothing of the situation in the region, so I took it upon myself to come out here and do whatever I could to assist the people in their struggle.'

He added: 'In the YPG everyone who takes part in this fight believes what they are doing is right.'

A former IT worker, Mr Holmes had no military training and family and friends tried to stop him leaving back in 2015

Sniper Jac Holmes, from Bournemouth, had been fighting with the Kurdistan People's Protection Units (YPG) since January 2015

As a former IT worker, Mr Holmes had no previous military experience, but he became one of the longest-serving foreign volunteers in the conflict. He was also known by his Kurdish nom de guerre Sores Amanos - 'sores' meaning 'revolution'.

Since 2015, he had travelled to fight with the Kurds three times, and spent more than a year there on his third trip, where he was involved in some of the heaviest fighting of the conflict against ISIS.

Mr Holmes fought in operations to push the murderous group out of key towns and villages including Tel Hamis, Manbij, Tabqa and Raqqa.

He was wounded during a gun battle a year ago.

In a video he published on Facebook last month Mr Holmes revealed the horror of an 'undercover' ISIS attack on YPG troops.

Jac Holmes, who had been fighting with Kurdish militia the YPG since 2015, died while clearing an area to make it safe for civilians

He revealed how terrorists wearing Kurdish militia uniforms staged a bungled suicide bomb attack in Raqqa.

On Sunday, Mr Holmes posted another himself on Facebook walking into Raqqa's central sports stadium for the first time since the long-running battle for the ISIS stronghold city ended.

Alan Sahin, a friend of Mr Holmes, told the BBC: 'We could see how much he grew up while he was out there. He found his purpose there. He turned from a young lad into a man.

Mark Campbell, a pro-Kurdish activist, described Mr Holmes as a 'man who defeated ISIS for us all' in a Facebook post today

'It's gut-wrenching, as Raqqa had just finished...Jac would have gone on to do good things.'

A former soldier, who fought alongside Mr Holmes in Kirkuk, told MailOnline: 'He came over to us in Peshmerga for a short while in Kirkuk, but he made western Kurdistan his home.

'He was with us for about three months from June 2015 and conducted quite a fair few operations where we took villagers from ISIS.

'Jac was a really great bubbly guy. He wasn't ex-military, but you knew that if he had joined the forces he would have fit right in. He was always destined to be a soldier. He was that type of lad.

'Whenever there were guys that were ex-forces that were giving him advice, he took it on board. He was a natural.

'I only recently spoke to him over Facebook, and each time I used to say 'Jac when are you coming back, mate? You've been there nearly three years'. But he said 'maybe one day when this over'.

'His heart was well and truly committed to it, his focus was Raqqa. He refused to do anything else until that area was reclaimed.

'He found home over there with the Kurds, where he hadn't in the UK. He loved the people and what they stood for.

'He has earned his place where our finest go.'

Mark Campbell, a close friend and member of the Kurdish Solidarity Campaign, wrote on Facebook: 'He went a boy and died a man who defeated ISIS for us all! A true hero! Love and the deepest condolences to Jac's mother Angie and her partner Paul and Jac's father Peter and to all Jac's family, friends and comrades. I'm in total shock. Jac's only wish was to defeat Daesh in Raqqa.

'His incredible sacrifice meant the rest of us can sleep a little safer. You got to the end Jack and that is what you wanted. Now you can rest dear friend.'

In a Facebook post the International Peshmerga Volunteers wrote: 'It is with the deepest of hearts that we must announce the passing of sores (Jac Holmes) a British volunteer who was fighting alongside the YPG since the beginning of this conflict.

'We met Jac last year in Erbil upon his release from prison prior to returning back to the UK. Jac was fearless in the face of the enemy but still held onto that compassion and reasoning as to why he traveled to Rojava to take part in the fight.

Jac was present at most of the liberation's which took place across Syria and I can say with the upmost certainty that many of the Kurdish people know, love and will respect this man for eternity. Heaven has gained a bright start while the world has lost a great man, great friend and great warrior.'

The Home Office has warned against all travel to Syria.
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Rare surviving photos of Confederate soldiers have been colorized to bring the destruction of the Civil War to life.

They show bloody bodies strewn across the ground and left to rot after battles against Union fighters.

One moving image shows a dead Confederate lying next the grave of a fallen federal soldier.

Away from the death and destruction of the battlefields, other colorized images include portraits of Confederate generals such as the commander of the Confederate States of America, Robert Edward Lee.

Rare surviving photos of Confederate soldiers have been colorized to bring the destruction of the Civil War to life. Pictured: Soldiers dead in front of Dunker Church after the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, near Sharpsburg, Maryland

This moving image shows a dead Confederate soldier lying next the grave of a federal soldier after the Battle of Antietam

Stark images show bloody bodies strewn across the ground and left to rot after battles against Union fighters. Pictured: A dead soldier in Petersburg, Virginia

The photographs were carefully colorized by Mads Madsen, from Horsens, Denmark.

He spent between 12 to 14 hours colorizing the pictures of the dead men at Dunker Church and Antietam alone.

'You're seeing Confederate soldiers; both good and bad, deceased or alive, out on the battlefield or in a studio getting their pictures taken,' Madsen said.

'Only a handful of Confederate images survived the war, compared to the amount of Union images, so you're getting a rare insight into a time long forgotten.

'I'm pretty good at distancing myself from the subject matter and working in bits and pieces, bit-by-bit - so rather than looking at the image as a whole, I look at it in bite-sized pieces; which definitely makes everything a whole lot easier.'

Other colorized images include portraits of Confederate generals including the commander of the Confederates States of America, Robert Edward Lee (left) and his second son Rooney (right)

Destruction: A Confederate soldier lies dead on next to his rifle and a pile of logs after the Battle of Spotsylvania in May 1864

The American Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865. Pictured: Confederate generals Richard S. Ewell (left) and James Longstreet (right)

The American Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865. The Confederates attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina, closely following the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln, who supported the banning of slavery in all the US territories.

Madesen said: 'The photos are a piece of history, a cultural treasure - it's an insight into a certain set of people who might not agree with the same things we agree with today and who might have made a lot of mistakes, but at the end of the day, they're just as human as you and I.'

'Having studied the Civil War as much as I have, I find it very significant when I find a high quality, well-preserved, and digitalised photograph of a Confederate; so it's a lot more significant than a Union soldier or Officer, which adds to my "need" to bring it to life.'

The striking images feature in a new book titled Retrographic: History in Living Colour by British author Michael Carroll.

The confederates attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina, closely following the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln. Pictured: Robert Lee on his porch

Other fascinating colorized photos bring to life the men and woman who assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

They show the conspirators handcuffed before their trial alongside what is thought to be the last photo of Lincoln before his death.

Another photo shows the moment four of the plotters were hanged in front of a crowd at Fort McNair.

The 16th President of the United States was shot dead at the theater by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865.

David Herold, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt and Mary Surratt were executed for their role in the assassination.

These fascinating colorized photos bring to life the men involved in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Left: David Herold who led Booth's escape. Right: Lewis Powell who failed to kill Secretary of State William Seward

From left to right: Mary Surratt, Lewis Powell, George Atzerodt, David Herold being taken to the scaffold on July 7th 1865

Michael O'Laughlen, Samuel Arnold, Samuel Mudd and Edmund Spangler were imprisoned.

Each conspirator was assigned a different role in the comprehensive assassination attempt of several high-profile government members.

Edmund Spangler helped Booth escape but he was spared death because he didn't know about the assassination in advance. Booth was shot by Union forces after a dramatic 12-day manhunt led by David Herold.

Powell had been responsible for the bungled assassination attempt of the Secretary of State, William Seward on the same night.

Atzerodt had been planning an attempt of the life of the Vice President, Andrew Johnson, but is said to have lost his nerve.

Left: A colorized image of what is thought to be the last photo of Lincoln before his death. Right: John Wilkes Booth

John Bingham, Judge Joseph Holt, and Brigadier General Henry Burnett, prosecutors for Lincoln assassination trial

The conspirators met in a Washington boarding house owned by Mary Surratt. Their trial ended on June 30 with Surratt, Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt all sentenced to death.

They were given a military trial as opposed to a civilian one, though, with much controversy over the way in which it was handled.

'The trial, under military jurisdiction, was controversial in that the defence for the accused was not given time to prepare, the accused were forbidden from testifying in their own defence, a lower level of proof was required to convict than in civilian courts, and only a majority verdict among jurors was required for the death sentence to be imposed,' says author Michael D. Carroll.

'The Southern states accused the North of imposing a military trial to avoid the opportunity for civilian jurors to show clemency towards the accused.

Left: Samuel Arnold pictured before his trial. Right: Conspirator Lewis Powell standing in overcoat and hat

'The prisoners stood for ten seconds before Roth clapped his hands and four soldiers below the scaffold knocked out the supports for the platform they were standing on.

'They dropped and Surratt's rope snapped cleanly, with no movement afterwards.

'Atzerodt heaved before falling still, but Herold and Powell, the chief conspirators, were strangled for five minutes. Powell stuggled wildly, pulling his legs up in towards his chest several times, before he was eventually still.'
Severe thunderstorms slammed the Carolinas on Monday afternoon and evening as they sliced up the East Coast.

Flooding, violent winds and tornadoes tore through North and South Carolina, flipping tractor-trailers and small planes, breaking storefront windows and pushing at least one house off its foundation.

At least 98,000 homes and businesses lost power, forcing some schools and parks to close Tuesday.

No deaths have been reported from the storms. Spartanburg Regional Hospital said it had treated eight people with minor injuries.

The western part of North and South Carolina was slammed by severe thunderstorms on Monday afternoon and evening. Drone footage shows aerial views of the flooding and damage

Flooding, violent winds and possibly tornadoes tore through the Carolinas flipping tractor-trailers and small planes, tearing down power lines and breaking storefront windows

A photo taken in Hickory, North Carolina, shows an SUV flipped on top of another car

Planes and hangars at Hickory Regional Airport were destroyed by the storm. Hickory was one of the hardest-hit towns in North Carolina

A graphic shows different areas where storm damage has been reported in North Carolina

As many as nine tornadoes were reported in the Carolinas, leaving trails of damage, but the National Weather Service is checking to confirm those reports.

Many trees and power lines were brought down by the violent weather on Monday afternoon and evening across the western part of the states.

Small planes were flipped over and their hangars crumpled at the Hickory Regional Airport.

JoAnn Perez arrived home shortly after the storms passed to see her home pushed off its concrete slab, but her dogs and cat inside it were unharmed, in Shelby, North Carolina.

JoAnn Perez, right, hugs friend Melissa Porter in front of her damaged home in Shelby, North Carolina, that had been pushed off its foundantion by storms on Monday. Her two dogs and cats were the only occupants when the storm hit. All three pets were uninjured

A truck was crushed by a tree that was blown over by storms in Polkville, North Carolina. The driver, WIlliam Mark Fox, was on his way home to when the storm hit. Fox left the scene with no injuries, but was taken to the hospital as a precaution

Daily rainfall records were reported in Asheville and Charlotte in North Carolina, as well as the Greenville-Spartanburg area in South Carolina.

Totals ranged from about two inches in Charlotte to more than three and a half inches in Asheville.

Streets were under water in Asheville and Boone, and firefighters rescued drivers from flooded roads in Pickens County in western South Carolina.

The weather service office in Greer, South Carolina, said Tuesday morning that one crew was working to confirm tornado damage in Spartanburg and Cherokee counties in South Carolina and Cleveland County in North Carolina, while a second crew was focusing on the rest of western North Carolina.

The worst problems appeared to be in Spartanburg, South Carolina and Hickory, North Carolina.

The storms closed two state parks in North Carolina, spokeswoman Katie Hall said. Chimney Rock State Park was closed while crews dealt with damage that included a landslide.

Stone Mountain State Park in Roaring Gap, North Carolina, was also closed because of downed trees.

'You could hear it howl through downtown,' Michael Parsons, whose Michael's Jewelers store in North Wilkesboro was damaged when a nearby roof blew off, told WXII News 12, the local NBC affiliate.

Rescue crews in Pickens County, South Carolina, can be seen helping a group of people who were stranded in their motor homes by the deep floodwaters

At least 98,000 homes and businesses lost power, forcing some schools and parks to close Tuesday. No deaths have been reported from the storms

Duke Energy said by late Tuesday morning, its crews were still working to restore electricity to more than 78,000 customers.

About 66,000 were without service in North Carolina and another 12,000 were powerless in South Carolina.

In South Carolina, an apparent tornado crunched buildings, flipped tractor trailers, downed trees and wrecked homes in the Spartanburg area.

The Highway Patrol reported approximately 20 accidents in Spartanburg County, as well as traffic light malfunctions and trees down in roadways Monday afternoon.

After sweeping through the Carolinas, the storms headed up the East Coast, pouring rain on New York and Connecticut on up to Maine.

A weather map shows the thunderstorm moving up through the Northeast on Tuesday
A lunatic driver who overtook in the fast lane of a motorway by swerving into the central reservation has been banned from the road.

Michael Waistell, 32, was caught on a dashcam as he squeezed his Audi A7 past another motorist in a shockingly reckless manoeuvre near Wellington in Somerset.

He tailgated a Volvo driver in the outside lane of the M5, before squeezing past the car in the narrow gap between it and the crash barrier in the middle of the road.

The Audi on the M5 near Somerset is shown warming up to overtake the Volvo in front

The driver straddles the white line separating the central reservation from the fast lane

A cloud of dirt and debris was thrown up by his wheels, causing yet another potential hazard to motorists behind him on August 5 at about 11am.

Waistell thought he had got away with the incident as he sped off, but the footage was handed to police who found him and charged him with dangerous driving.

Waistell, from Oldham, Greater Manchester, admitted the offence and has now been banned for a year and fined 665 by magistrates in Taunton.

Lee Borastero, who filmed the incident, said: 'As he pleaded guilty I think he got what he deserved. I was not expecting jail time, as he had pleaded guilty.

The car squeezes through the space, creating a fourth lane between the barrier and Volvo

After overtaking and spraying tarmac dust on other cars, the Audi speeds off into the distance

'It took a few days to sink in about what could have happened on the motorway.

'There have been some horrific accidents on the M5 this year and in the past few years.

'We travel the M5 quite a bit. I am very wary about the traffic around me now.'

Waistell, who was summonsed to appear before the court, was also ordered to take an extended test before he gets his licence back.
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A series of photographs have revealed the fascinating history behind one of Britain's oldest car manufacturers.

The images show the first ever car produced by Vauxhall in 1903 and shed a light on the company's role in the war effort - with Winston Churchill seen examining a truck off the assembly line.

Photos also show King George VI, in peaked cap and white coat, inspecting a Churchill tank - the only British model whose armour could withstand the German Tiger tanks 88mm tungsten carbide shot.

The company began life as the Vauxhall Iron Works Company in 1897, created to run the bankrupt engineering business founded by Alexander Wilson in 1859.

Having helped fight two world wars and given employment to tens of thousands of people, Vauxhall developed a reputation for producing sporting and luxury cars, and was eventually purchased by the American company General Motors in 1925.

Staff pose with the newly built Vauxhall Cavalier, built in August 1981. The Cavalier replaced the Vauxhall Victor, and was designed to compete with the Ford Cortina. One of the most successful Vauxhall cars ever launched, Cavalier started life in 1975, and became one of Britains best-selling cars. By the time Cavalier III bowed out in 1995, it had debuted platform engineering, and SRi sporting models, 4x4 traction and the first V6 Vauxhall engine, and overseen the end of Opel/Vauxhall dual branding in the UK

In 1971, Ken Dodd helped Ellesmere Port staff celebrate the 'first of the next million' Vauxhall Vivas to be produced, although the target was not achieved. Vauxhall had never made anything so small, yet the Vivas 1057cc engine found huge success. It was cheap to make, cheap to run, simple, reliable and strong. The early HA Viva gave way to HB and HC which lasted until 1979 after a 640,000 production run

Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Charles Bartlett in K-Block watching a MW truck on the K-Block line

King George VI, in peaked cap and white coat, inspects a Churchill tank during testing at Luton Hoo, assisted by Bertie Dean while Charles Bartlett (in suit) looks on Four years work was compressed into one in the design and development of Vauxhalls war-time production tank  the Churchill Marks I  III. The Mark III Churchill of 1942 was the only British tank whose armour could withstand the German Tiger tanks 88mm tungsten carbide shot

General Motors, which also owned the German brand Opel, bought Vauxhall in 1925. After the Second World War, economic turmoil and strike action led to declining sales and General Motors made Vauxhall implement Opel-built products. The last all-British Vauxhall was the FE Series Victor in 1972.

Earlier this year, the French car giant PSA Group bought Opel and Vauxhall from General Motors.

Images from 'Vauxhall: Britain's Oldest Car Maker' by Ian Coomber show some of Vauxhall's historic motors alongside some more recent offerings.

Another shows TV personality Noel Edmunds testing out one of the racing models on a racing track.

Ian Coomber, has been working for Vauxhall for the past 38 years, and has been with the company through thick and thin in that time.

And he says it's nothing short of remarkable that the Vauxhall company has had the kind of longevity it has.

'Vauxhall Motors has been making cars in Britain for longer than anyone else,' he says.

'Today, there are over 3.5 million Vauxhalls on UK roads. Your chances of seeing one are better than one in ten, and the Vauxhall brand has become a household name.

Workers at the Vauxhall factory celebrate the 10,000th car which had been purchased in less than five months, as the company's reputation for producing both luxury and everyday cars gathered pace around the world.

A magnificent chain-drive, four-cylinder 18 hp with landaulet body due to be shipped to Egypt for Mr H. E. Baker, the Norwegian Consul General in Alexandria. The first ever Vauxhall car was the 6HP with its slow-revving single cylinder engine and a chassis that was Forward Thinking  amalgamating the chassis and lower body into a composite steel and wood structure

An early Bedford CA Dormobile camper van conversion by Martin Walter of Folkestone, showing the extendable roof

Television personality and Radio 1 DJ Noel Edmunds testing out one of the racing models - a Dealer Opel Team (DOT) Opel Commodore GS/E - on a racing track

To the modern eye, the interior of the Vauxhall factory appears to be something of a health and safety nightmare. Belt-driven machinery was the order of the day, while skylights provided excellent natural lighting

Former Vauxhall Managing Director Percy Kidner behind the tiller of the newly restored Vauxhall-owned 1904 6-hp car number 04102 outside V-Block in 1950 prior to driving on that year's London to Brighton run. An S model truck model can be seen behind

Works Manager Alfred Ash and his family well wrapped up and about to embark on a journey from Vauxhall House. The car they are driving in is a three-cylinder 12-14 hp, car 3.C.17, finished in blue with an orange lining

A 3-litre TT car in the 1922 Tourist Trophy Race on the Isle of Man, driven by Vauxhall employee Matt Park. The heavy rain saw the temporary addition of front mudguards and a passenger-operated wiper, in a bid to allow the driver to navigate the dangerous terrain

The SMT-sponsored Nova Sport driven by future World Rally Champion Colin McCrae

'For a company to survive for more than eleven decades in the same business is a notable achievement, but to do so in the motor industry is remarkable.

'The journey has required innovation and adaptability as social and economic backgrounds have changed and the market for cars and commercial vehicles has changed with them. It has competed with some of the toughest businesses in the world and survived.

'It has helped fight two world wars and given employment to thousands. Its history is rich in terms of the products, the people, and the effect it has had on the local and national economy.

'The journey from the Thames to today's modern marketing and global manufacturing facilities is a bumpy one, so you had better fasten your seatbelts.

'It features a Plantagenet mercenary, a Victorian steam engineer, bedroom furniture, an early automotive design genius, an American corporate giant, a German bicycle manufacturer, a giraffe, and thousands of 'Vauxhall people' who created and nurtured their Vauxhall. This book is dedicated to them.'
Christian Crawford, 38, has been found guilty of three counts of DUI manslaughter and one count of DUI with property damage

A Florida man faces up to 45 years in prison for crashing into a mobile home and killing a sleeping couple and their unborn baby.

A Manatee County jury found 38-year-old Christian Crawford guilty earlier this month of three counts of DUI manslaughter and one count of DUI with property damage. His sentencing is scheduled for October 30.

At about 2.30am on April 1, 2015, Crawford was driving an SUV north on U.S. 41 when he crossed the median and crashed through the fence at the Lone Oak Mobile Home Park.

The vehicle slammed into the home of 21-year-old Ivan Carlos and 18-year-old Brenda Aviles-Pena, who was nine months pregnant.

Authorities say that Crawford had cocaine and marijuana in his system at the time of the accident.

'I am glad we could achieve some justice for Ivan, Brenda and their unborn baby,' Assistant State Attorney Garrett Franzen said to the Bradenton Herald.

'Their lives were taken all too soon in this senseless tragedy, and hopefully this could bring some closure to their family.'

Crawford had marijuana and cocaine in his system when he crashed into the home of 21-year-old Ivan Carlos and 18-year-old Brenda Aviles-Pena, who was nine months pregnant, killing them instantly

The couple had been living in a shed next to his family's mobile home for a month in an effort to save money for their own home.

Crawford had previously served time for convictions of sale or delivery of cocaine and possession of cocaine within 1,000 feet of a place of worship.

His has also previously been convicted of petty theft, violation of probation, unauthorized use of a credit card and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Crawford has been in custody since his arrest on September 23, 2015.
A jailed sex attacker known as the 'Coronation Street Rapist' has been handed his thirteenth life sentence after DNA advances linked him to an attack in 1982.

Andrew Barlow, better known as Andrew Longmire, has pleaded guilty to the knifepoint rape of a 15-year-old girl who was at home alone 35 years ago.

He was dubbed the 'Coronation Street Rapist' because many of his attacks were on women in terraced houses and streets in the Greater Manchester area and across the Pennines during a seven-year reign of terror.

Barlow, 61, appeared via videolink from HMP Wymott, in Leyland, Lancashire, where he is serving 12 life sentences.

Andrew Barlow (left in 1988 and right this year), who is better known as Andrew Longmire, has pleaded guilty to the knifepoint rape of a 15-year-old girl 35 years ago

He was convicted of 11 rapes in 1988 after two months on the run where he was considered Britain's most wanted man.

He was held after being found hiding in a van. Barlow opened fire on two unarmed police officers who managed to knock him over with their car and arrest him in Bebington on Merseyside.

After a cold case review he admitted a 12th sex attack in 2010.

He had raped a young mum in Sheffield in 1981 as her terrified three-year-old daughter hid behind the settee.

He is now serving a 13th term after DNA advances linked him to an attack on the teenager in Bolton, Greater Manchester.

Barlow burst into the victim's terraced house after her parents had left for work, in April 1982.

David Temkin, prosecuting, said the girl, who was in bed, heard someone climbing the stairs and pretended to be asleep.

He said: 'She was not wearing her glasses throughout the incident but could make out the shape of a person who she described as a 'large dark figure' and she could tell he was male.'

Mr Temkin said the girl tried to switch on a light but the intruder came in and turned it off again.

The court heard she could tell he was wearing a facial disguise and it later emerged that he was wearing gloves.

Mr Temkin said Barlow, then aged around 25, had taken a knife from a kitchen drawer downstairs, which the girl later recalled him holding before the attack.

The girl tried to call out for help but Barlow placed his fist into her mouth and carried out the rape. Afterwards he demanded money from the girl.

Though she handed over a pound note from her bedside table this did not appear to satisfy the man.

Her father later confirmed to police that a number of drawers seemed to have been searched downstairs.

Eventually the man left and the girl plucked up the courage to call for the police, the court heard.

But she found that the telephone wire had been cut so she was forced to call on a neighbour to raise the alarm.

Mr Temkin said the 1982 case was considered as part of the original inquiry into Barlow, under his former name, though no actual charge followed.

He was dubbed the 'Coronation Street Rapist' because many of his attacks were on women in terraced houses and streets in the Greater Manchester area (pictured)

But the court heard that the case was not reopened until 2009 and it was several years after that before DNA evidence, left by him at the scene, could be linked with the Bolton rape.

Barlow, then a serving prisoner at HMP Wymott, was brought to Preston police station to be interviewed about the attack. But he denied all knowledge of the rape.

Appearing via a video link last Wednesday, Barlow pleaded guilty to the charge.

Judge Timothy Clayson, Recorder of Bolton, imposed a life sentence on Barlow, with the minimum tariff given as two years.

Passing sentence, Judge Clayson said: 'This can rightly be described as a campaign of rape.

The minimum time the sex fiend was expected to serve was originally 25 years but this was varied on appeal to 20 years in 2011, the court heard.

Longmire was originally given 11 life sentences in 1988 after he was convicted of carrying out a string of sickening rapes across Greater Manchester.

At the time of his rampage, he was dubbed by the media as the 'Coronation Street Rapist' because many of his attacks took place in terrace houses.

He appeared before Sheffield Crown Court in 2010 after a cold case review by South Yorkshire Police linked him to an attack on a young mum in Sheffield in 1981 and a 12th life sentence was imposed.

His latest victim told police, in a statement, that the ordeal had had a long-lasting impact on her life.
This is the moment two women paraded through a Spanish tourist resort wearing nothing but high heels before taking part in an illegal porn shoot.

The naked women posed for a camera crew in front of landmarks in Seville, southern Spain, including the front of the historical Palace of San Telmo - the seat of the regional government.

They also shocked locals and tourists during their broad daylight jaunt by hopping onto a horse-drawn carriage with no clothes on for another X-rated display.

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Two women paraded through a Spanish tourist resort wearing nothing but high heels before taking part in an illegal porn shoo

The naked women posed for a camera crew in front of landmarks in Seville, southern Spain, including the front of the historical Palace of San Telmo - the seat of the regional government

Town hall chiefs working with the help of local police were today trying to identify the camera crew and two women.

The shoot, which took place without council authorisation, happened on Saturday and moved from place to place so swiftly officers were unable to catch them red-handed after being alerted by astonished onlookers.

Many of the scenes were filmed by a single cameraman, with a second person thought to be the director, in front of families with young children.

Police are understood to be focusing on the fact youngsters witnessed the shoot, which would be considered criminal, rather than the fact the women were naked which is not a crime.

A town hall source said: 'The Spanish Penal Code states that a person who commits or coerces another person into committing acts of obscene exhibition in front of minors, can receive prison sentences of up to a year as well as a fine.'

Police are understood to be focusing on the fact youngsters witnessed the shoot, which would be considered criminal, rather than the fact the women were naked which is not a crime

Many of the scenes were filmed by a single cameraman, with a second person thought to be the director, in front of families with young children

The local council is also studying the possibility of asking state prosecutors to launch a separate investigation

The local council is also studying the possibility of asking state prosecutors to launch a separate investigation.

Police suspect a company specialising in X-rated cinema is behind the shoot. Madrid and Barcelona have been picked for similar unauthorised shoots in the past.

One mother in a park with her young child said: 'I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was really shocking.'

Shop owner Manuel Gonzalez said: 'Two naked women got out of a horse-drawn carriage and began to pose for a cameraman.

'There was a man with the video-camera and another with tripods, lens and clothes for the girls.

'Some people protested but most crowded round and began to record them on their mobiles. They left before the police arrived.'

The local who gave the women a naked horse-drawn carriage ride has been tracked down and interviewed.
Disgraced businessman Salim Mehajer has allegedly threatened to rape a custom car mechanic in a vicious and expletive-ridden phone recording.

Police are investigating after a man, reportedly Mehajer, was recorded making disgusting threats to a staff member at Queen St Customs, a vehicle repair shop in Revesby, in Sydney's west.

'You f****** Shia dog, I'm going to f****** rape you,' the man on the phone can be heard saying.

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Shocking audio, alleged to be the voice of Salim Mehajer, threatens to rape a custom car mechanic in a vicious and expletive-ridden phone recording

Threats were also made to rape the mechanic's mother in the recording which was leaked bySeven News on Tuesday.

'Your mum's going to get f****** raped today you f****** dog.'

In the tirade of abuse, derogatory comments were also made about the man's religion, Shia Islam.

'You're a Shia dog, you mother*****,' were heard on the recording.

The recording is now being investigated by Bankstown detectives.

Detectives reportedly questioned witnesses to the abusive phone call on Tuesday.

In the tirade of abuse, Mehajer (pictured) can also be heard making derogatory comments about the man's religion, Shia Islam

Police are investigating after Mehajer was allegedly recorded making disgusting threats to a staff member at Queen St Customs (pictured), a vehicle repair shop in Revesby, in Sydney's west

The victim of the verbal abuse told Seven News he did not want to be identified.

He also said he was surprised the phone call was leaked and did not know how the police obtained a recording.

Mehajer is no stranger to allegations of abusive tirades.

In 2016 Mehajer filmed himself threatening to rape the parents of his estranged wife Aysha in a shocking video message filmed after the pair separated.

'Aysha, you've got five minutes to give me a call I'm going to rape your mum. Your mum and your f****** dad,' Mehajer said.

In the confronting video, Mehajer also told his estranged wife 'I hoope you die you f****** sl**'.

The video was reportedly sent to Aysha after the former beauty therapist moved out of Mehajer's home in 2016.

Mehajer also threatened to rape the parents of his estranged wife Aysha (pictured together in 2015) in a shocking video message he filmed after the pair separated

Former Auburn Council deputy mayor Salim Mehajer leaves court in Sydney, Tuesday, October 24

Mehajer was rushed to hospital last Monday after he crashed his car on his way to court.

He failed to show up to two separate hearings last week on medical grounds, with a spokesman for Mehajer slamming claims the accident was staged as 'evil' and 'ludicrous'.

He appeared in court on Tuesday over a civil dispute related to a land transaction.

Mehajer was rushed to hospital last Monday after he crashed his car (pictured) on his way to court

Salim Mehajer is seen being taken away in a stretcher by paramedics after his crash on Monday

In September 2015, Salim Mehajer was also accused of making vicious threats to a man at his gym.

Mehejar reportedly threatened to kidnap Lindt siege survivor Joel Herat after an incident with Mr Herat's father Bruce at a gym in Burwood, Sydney's inner-west.

Mr Herat told a Burwood court Mehajer told him 'I'm going to find where you live motherf***** and I'm going to kidnap your children'.

Mehajer was not convicted, telling the judge 'those certain words don't exist in my vocabulary'.

Mehejar reportedly threatened to kidnap Lindt siege survivor Joel Herat (pictured)
Britain cannot protect itself from a surprise attack from Russia or China because ministers have failed to adapt to the changes in warfare, a former defence chief today warned.

General Sir Richard Barrons, former head of Joint Forces Command, said the UK has not carried out a full assessment of military needs since the end of the Cold War.

He slammed the Government for not having the 'profoundly important debate' and said it urgently needs to invest to take on the new threats like cyber.

Without proper investment the UK will be unable to defend the homeland or come to the aid of allies abroad, he warned.

His intervention piles pressure on Chancellor Philip Hammond to find cash in next month's Budget to beef up Britain's Armed Forces.

Downing Street said the Government was committed to giving the Armed Forces what they need to defend Britain.

General Sir Richard Barrons has warned that Britain's military has not been prepared to take on the changing threat of war such as cyber (file pic)

Sir Richard told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme: 'Nobody in Government is having the profoundly important debate that we need to have about how the world is changing and how the UK is at greater risk and what we need to do in the future.'

Describing the threat, he said: Its very straight forward  the risk today and more so in the future is that countries like Russia and China already have capability that could hold the UK homeland at military risk at very short notice.

'We can't really deal with that.

'And we also run the risk in the future for British citizens or our friends abroad would be in great jeopardy and need military help and we would have removed our ability to help them and out place in the world would be much diminished.'

Theresa May's official spokesman said: 'We are spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence every year.

'We are committed to continue doing so. We are committed to providing the Armed Forces what they need to protect this country's interests.'

Under the leadership of Valdimir Putin Russia has launched a series of military interventions across the world (file pic of troops marching in Red Square in Moscow)

Chinese President Xi Jinping, at the Communist Party Congress. Under his leadership China has set his sights on being a global power

Sir Richard's warning comes as Russia and China both increasingly flex the muscle abroad as they try to carve themselves out a bigger role on the world stage.

Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has invade Crimea and sparked a civil war in Eastern Ukraine, as well as launching ferocious airstrikes on Syria to prop up his ally Assad.

In September, Russia launched its biggest show of military might since the end of the Cold War when it staged military maneuvers in Belarus near Nato's eastern border.

While under Xi Jinping China has set its sights on becoming a world player and has built up military islands in the South China Sea.

Sir Richard said that after the end of the Cold War in 1989 Britain has been lulled into a false sense of security because the long period of relative stability.

He added: 'The truth is the world is becoming much more challenging, unstable and unpredictable.

He warned that cutting the British military's amphibious vehicles would hamper efforts to rescue stranded Brits hit by future hurricanes in Caribbean.

And he said that the military should not drop below troop numbers of 82,000 with a reserve of 30,000.

But he said far more important than discussions about troop numbers is the military kit and equipment the armed Forces have.
Sabah Khan pleading guilty to murdering her sister at the Old Bailey today

A woman stabbed her older sister to death and cut off her hand at their family home while her children slept upstairs.

Care worker Sabah Khan, 27, cut the throat of mother-of-four Saima Khan, 34, at the home they shared in Luton.

As Saima was murdered by her sister, the rest of the Khan family were attending a funeral of an elderly aunt at the local mosque.

Sabah is believed to have virtually cut her older sister's neck in half and severed her hand in the savage attack.

Saima was found slumped in a pool of blood in the hallway of her semi-detached home at around 11.30pm on 23 May last year.

Detectives sent to the scene initially investigated claims a burglar had broken into the property and carried out the horrific killing.

Sabah Khan now faces a life sentence after pleading guilty to murdering her sister at the Old Bailey today.

Saima, who was also a care worker, had moved to England from Holland and lived with her sister, their parents, her children and her taxi-driver husband Hafeez Rehman.

She was described by neighbours as a 'quiet but friendly lady'.

Saima Khan, 34, (pictured) was brutally murdered by her sister. Saima had moved to England from Holland and lived with her sister, their parents, her children and her taxi-driver husband Hafeez Rehman

Saima, who was also a care worker, was found slumped in a pool of blood in the hallway of her semi-detached home in Luton at around 11.30pm on 23 May last year

Detectives sent to the scene of the murder initially investigated claims a burglar had broken into the property and carried out the killing

Sabah will be sentenced at the Old Bailey on Thursday.

Judge Christopher Moss QC told her: 'You will appear before this court again on Thursday at 10am and you must remain in custody.'

After the case the senior investigating office, Detective Inspector Adam Gallop described the murder as 'a horrific crime.'

He added: 'This is any family's worst nightmare  it is beyond comprehension for the family to hear that one daughter has brutally murdered another.

'It has been a horrendous ordeal for them and we are pleased that we have received the guilty plea today.

'We continue to support the family, I'm not sure there can ever really be a closure, but what I do hope is that after sentencing they can hear what happened that night and start to move forward.'

Shortly after her death Mrs Khan's husband Hafeez paid an emotional tribute to his wife.

Detective Inspector Adam Gallop described the horrific murder as a 'horrific crime'. Pictured, police at the Khan's house in Luton

As Saima was murdered by her sister, the rest of the Khan family were attending a funeral of an elderly aunt at the local mosque

The community in Luton was left horrified by the savage murder, which detectives described as 'any family's worst nightmare'

He said: 'She was a loving mother to four beautiful children, a devoted wife, a beloved daughter and the most caring of sisters.

'She has been taken from us at the age of 34 and my children have been deprived of their mother.

'This was a junction in our lives where we intended to watch our children grow, to love them and spend quality time as a family and make memories.

'We have been left with a gap in our lives and we can only pray that she is resting in peace.

'As everyone can appreciate and understand that the circumstances have torn our hearts apart.
A Brisbane family have spoken about their 'beautiful' son who died after his plane fell out of the sky.

Darcy McCarter was killed alongside another pilot on Monday afternoon after the Cessna 210 aircraft they were flying crashed outside Darwin airport.

The young man had been travelling to Elcho Island, off the coast of the Northern Territory, where he was based.

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Darcy McCarter (pictured) was killed alongside another pilot on Monday afternoon after the Cessna 210 aircraft they were flying crashed outside Darwin airport

The Cessna 210 aircraft that crashed on Monday afternoon (not the actual plane)

The light plane lost both wings as it ripped through bushland and crashed on a rural road shortly after take-off.

It is believed to have been carrying a dead body to the island for burial.

His father Phillip McCarter, who is an air traffic controller at AirServices Australia, wrote a Facebook post to honour his son, describing himself as 'empty' now that Darcy is gone.

'Many of you will already know, but we lost our beautiful boy yesterday,' the post began.

'Many of you will already know, but we lost our beautiful boy yesterday,' the post began

Hundreds of friends of the family have shared their deepest condolences beneath the post, many of whom spoke of special memories they had shared with Darcy (pictured left)

'He was flying out of Darwin to Elcho Island, where he was based as a pilot serving the local community. We don't know what happened, but the plane crashed and the two pilots on board didn't make it.

'As you can imagine we are all absolutely heartbroken and cannot believe this has happened. We have lost our darling boy and brother to Ella. We can't imagine our lives without him and love him with all our hearts. We love you.

'I am empty.'

Hundreds of friends of the family have shared their deepest condolences beneath the post, many of whom spoke of special memories they had shared with Darcy.

The six-seater, single engine Cessna 210 left Darwin Airport on its way to repatriate the man's body at Elcho Island when it went down near Howard Springs

A light plane that crashed in the Northern Territory and killed two people was transporting a man's body for burial

Superintendent Tony Deutrom said heavy rain at the time of the crash was being considered as a factor.

'This time of year is quite notorious for inclement weather and that will form part of the investigation,' he said.

'There's obviously a body of work that needs to be undertaken before we can draw any conclusions as to what it was doing.'

Investigators from the Australian Transport and Safety Bureau are on their way from Canberra to investigate the 200m radius crash site.
Horrifying footage has emerged of a distraught father appearing to kill himself with a gun on Facebook live - because his daughter had chosen to marry without his approval.

Ayhan Uzun, from Kayseri, central Turkey, can be seen speaking to the camera and unleashing a tirade of abuse against his family before putting a handgun to his head.

The 54-year-old pulls the trigger on the count of three after saying his final words: 'Goodbye, I am leaving, take good care of yourselves.'

Mr Uzun immediately collapsed to the floor in the footage, which has not been independently verified. He had earlier revealed that the reason for his suicide was the impending marriage of his daughter without his permission.

Horrifying footage has emerged of a distraught father appearing to kill himself with a gun on Facebook live - because his daughter had chosen to marry without his approval

He said: 'I am livestreaming tonight, and it is my will, I do not want the ones who put me in this position to attend my funeral.'

Mr Uzun, who was alone at his home, revealed that he only learned about his daughter's engagement in a telephone call.

Mr Uzun said: 'On my daughter's happiest day (her engagement), they called me and said to me: "Father come have a treat".

'Nobody asked about me. Nobody treated me like a man. My father-in-law took my place and without having a right he approved my daughter's wedding.

'Nobody said this girl's father is alive. Though I would have waited for my daughter and family to say to me: "Come father, be with us".

Ayhan Uzun, from Kayseri, central Turkey, can be seen speaking to the camera and unleashing a tirade of abuse against his family before putting a handgun to his head

'My wife called me and she told me. I said to her why didn't you come to tell me, and she said: "We cannot make a personal visit to you..."

'Maybe some of you will call this a show. I do not want anybody to go through this thing that I am going through.

'A little later I will put an end to my life with the gun I am holding in my hands.'

During his live-streamed speech, friends and relatives sent comments begging him not to take his own life.

But Mr Uzun took no notice and apparently went through with his threat. His family rushed around to the house to find his dead body.

Police have launched an investigation and Mr Uzun's body has been taken to a morgue for an autopsy.
Two actresses told ITV viewers today how the late British film director Michael Winner allegedly demanded to see their naked breasts.

Soap actresses Debbie Arnold, 62, and Cindy Marshall-Day, 50, and a third unnamed woman have spoken out about their alleged ordeals in auditions with Winner.

Arnold from EastEnders and Marshall-Day of Crossroads say they decided to come forward after rape allegations made against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Soap actresses Debbie Arnold (left) and Cindy Marshall-Day (right) and a third unnamed woman have spoken out about their alleged ordeals at the hands of Winner

Arnold from EastEnders and Marshall-Day from Crossroads say they decided to come forward after allegations made against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein

Arnold told This Morning's Amanda Holden and Ben Shephard that in her early 20s she was invited to Winner's house for an audition, which was normal for the time.

She was then taken to an office to meet him, before he allegedly told her: 'Right, I'd like you to go over by the window, I'd like to see you in the light. Now I'd like you to take off your top, and then take off your bra, and massage your breasts.'

'Calm down, dear': Film director worth 45m Michael Winner, who directed more than 30 films during his career, died of liver cancer aged 77 in January 2013. His most well-known films included Death Wish (1974), The Sentinel (1977) and The Big Sleep (1978). He was also famous for the car insurance TV commercial featuring the catchphrase: 'Calm down dear!' Winner's wife Geraldine, who married him two years before his death, was the biggest beneficiary of his legacy, receiving 20million of his 45million. She was left his Holland Park mansion which was sold to pop star Robbie Williams for 17.5 million, a second London home and 5 million cash. Advertisement

She added that he asked her three times, before she was 'very rude' to him and left  as he claimed he would report her to her agent and actors' union Equity.

But Winner is said to have later insisted he had played a trick on Arnold to see how she would react, and that she had coped with it brilliantly.

As Arnold told her story on the show this morning, Holden gasped and Shephard said how the presenters were 'sort of speechless, just trying to work through...'

Marshall-Day added: 'It was just shocking what the man did to young actresses - and it was a modus operandi. He asked me to take my top off.'

Arnold and Marshall-Day joined former police officer Mark Williams-Thomas on the programme to talk about taking historic allegations seriously.

Mr Williams-Thomas said: 'Weinstein has shown the world that even the people that are the most powerful can be held to account.

'People are now saying this is an industry problem - and people who are incredibly powerful have been able to get away with it.'

Speaking last week, Arnold said she was invited to Winner's home in the early 1980s after he got in touch with her mother Mary, who was her theatrical agent.

This Morning presenters Ben Shephard and Amanda Holden (left) interview Arnold, Marshall-Day and police officer Mark Williams-Thomas on the ITV programme today

Winner is said to have later insisted he had played a trick on Arnold to see how she would react

Although she was not trying out for a specific role, she hoped the meeting with the powerful film director in London would help kick-start her acting career.

She went up to the first floor of his mansion in Holland Park where she was asked to stand by a large window so he could supposedly see her in a better light.

She told the Sunday People: 'He asked me to take off my top, then my bra and told me to massage my breasts. I asked him to repeat the question because I thought I was hearing things.

'I started walking away from the window and he asked me why. I told him I couldn't believe what he had said. I thought it was a joke so I was appalled when he repeated the question. I walked right up to him and told him, 'f*** off, you dirty old pervert'.

She said she felt too scared to go police as she feared it would wreck her career, but added: 'It doesn't matter that he is dead, he still needs to be exposed.'

When asked about the allegations last week, Winner's wife Geraldine, who married him two years before his death, said: 'I feel any story you print would be untrue.'
Groups of men in India have voluntarily agreed to be trampled by a herd of cows in a bid to secure future prosperity for themselves and their villages.

Video footage captures the hopefuls as they lay down in the street and face a pummeling from a stream of cattle as they pass over their backs.

The ritual is to mark Ekadashi, an auspicious day after the Hindu festival of Diwali.

Each year, men travel to Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, central India, to celebrate the century-old ritual which is said to represent atonement.

Though many participants are seriously injured by the ritual, it is thought their luck will grow as their ailments heal.

Dozens of men get to together to celebrate Ekadashi by lying on the ground and facing a stampede of cows. The pain of the ritual is said to bring atonement

The video shows people gathered in the street to watch the event as the men lie face down in the street.

Hundreds of cows are then released and rush ahead over the men.

Crowds gather in the streets of Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, to watch the ceremony that is thought to bring good luck to participants and their villages

Herds of cattle are seen rushing over the rows of men as crowds gather round to watch

The cows are decorated with colours, garlands and henna as part of the celebration.

Cows are considered the most sacred animal in Hinduism and by undergoing the pain the men are said to be offering a sacrifice to the animals.

The cows are decorated for the event with garlands, balloons and other colourful accessories
Kendal Scheid, a student at the University of Akron in Ohio, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the death of Duncan Unternaher, 23

A college student has pleaded guilty to stabbing his roommate to death after an argument over fast food.

Kendal Scheid, a 23-year-old student at the University of Akron in Ohio, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the death of Duncan Unternaher, also 23.

The two friends were drunk and got into an argument over the fast food they were eating at their apartment last December.

Family members of both men cried during the initial court hearing, where Scheid entered a guilty plea on the lesser charge.

Scheid's attorney called the stabbing an 'unfortunate accident'. Unternaher and Scheid were roommates for two years, the attorney added.

Scheid, originally from Norwalk, Connecticut, could be locked up for 11 years when sentenced.

Attorneys on both sides plan to argue their suggested length of sentence.

'Kendal and his family feel Duncan's loss every day,' said Don Malarcik, Scheid's attorney. 'This was a terrible, tragic accident  and Kendal is deeply remorseful.'

Scheid stabbed Unternaher at their apartment, according to reports. Unternaher then passed out although it is unclear whether he passed out from intoxication or the wound.

A third roommate in the off-campus apartment called emergency services. The 23-year-old was taken to hospital where he died two days later.
A dangerous rapist is on the loose after taking off his GPS ankle tracker is taunting the police hunting him.

Damien Kennedy wrote 'come get me mortherf**kers (sic)' on Facebook claiming to be in Rockhampton, seven hours north of where he absconded in Brisbane.

The 28-year-old was jailed for nine years in 2008 for rape and assault with intent to commit rape against a 49-year-old prostitute in Brisbane.

Dangerous rapist Damien Kennedy taunted police hunting for him after he cut off his GPS monitor and went on the run from his mother's Brisbane home.

Kennedy was granted parole in January 2013 after completing sex offender rehabilitation programs in prison.

He was being supervised under the Dangerous Prisoners Sexual Offenders Act but removed his ankle monitor and eluded police.

Authorities said his drug addiction 'may give rise to sexually violent reoffending'.

The heavily-tattooed criminal's last known location was a park in the Brisbane suburb of Salisbury at 4.13pm on Monday.

Though he claimed to be in Rockhampton in his Facebook post, police believed he was still in Brisbane's south or nearby Logan.

The 28-year-old was jailed for nine years in 2008 for rape and assault with intent to commit rape against a 49-year-old prostitute in Brisbane

Kennedy was granted parole in January 2013 after completing sex offender rehabilitation programs in prison

He may be travelling in a silver 1999 Hyundai Sonata with Queensland registration 739WQU, possibly with a woman.

Kennedy has a history of misbehaviour while on parole, testing positive for drugs six times, particularly meth and marijuana.

The failed drug tests put him in and out of jail until he was allowed to live with his mother in August and described as a 'work in progress' who was seeking help for his drug addictions.

He failed yet another drug test on Monday morning hours before he cut off his monitor and fled, as he would be sent back to jail.

Kennedy wrote 'come get me mortherf**kers (sic)' on Facebook claiming to be in Rockhampton, seven hours north of where he absconded in Brisbane

He may be travelling in a silver 1999 Hyundai Sonata (pictured) with Queensland registration 739WQU, possibly with a woman

Kennedy was described as being 171 centimetres tall, weighing 125 kilograms with fair complexion and shaven black hair.

He has numerous tattoos all over his body including 'Southside' across his neck, a Chinese demon on his right shin, 'love & hate' on his right-inner forearm, 'RUN A' on his right knuckle and 'Muck' on his left knuckle.

He faces a minimum year in jail once police catch up to him.
The result of Eminems lawsuit against a New Zealand political party is set to finally be revealed, just days after they were shunted from power following the countrys election.

The rap superstars publishers Eight Mile Style are suing the New Zealand National Party after they used a song in a campaign advertisement.

Eminems representatives claim the song is a rip-off of the rappers hit Lose Yourself.

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The result of Eminems lawsuit against a New Zealand political party is set to finally be revealed, just days after they were shunted from power following the countrys election

Lawyers for the National Party claimed the song - called Eminem Esque - was inspired by the track but is different.

The song was used in a National television advertisement that ran ahead of the 2014 general election. It was aired 186 times before it was pulled.

National went on to win the election and Prime Minister John Key was re-elected for a third term as the countrys leader.

The verdict is set to be revealed just days after National and new leader Bill English were ousted from power due to a coalition between Prime Minister-elect Jacinda Ardern's Labour party and New Zealand First.

The advertisement was used ahead of the 2014 election when Prime Minister John Key was re-elected for a third term as the countrys leader

At the time the lawsuit was filed, senior cabinet minister Steven Joyce said he felt Nationals use of the song was pretty legal.

During a two-week trial at the High Court in Wellington in May this year Judge Helen Cull heard musicologists analyse the two songs and give differing opinions on the similarities between them.

A National Party campaign manager said she had received assurances from music and advertising experts that using Eminem Esque was acceptable and that the song had no copyright issues.

The verdict is set to be revealed just days after National and new leader Bill English were ousted from power

But Eight Mile Style lawyer Garry Williams said it was utterly clear National had infringed on copyright.

Jeff Bass, the composer of the opening guitar riff on Lose Yourself, appeared in court and called Eminem Esque a blatant rip-off.

Eminems publishers are seeking an undisclosed cash settlement and an acknowledgment that National breached copyright in their advertisement.

The verdict is scheduled to be revealed on Wednesday afternoon.
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During periods of drought, elephants such as these in a Kenyan national park, are able to walk long distances in their search of a water source.

This herd was seen walking through the scorched Tsavo National Park in September this year, before finally finding a broken water pipe to quench their thirst.

The elephants can be seen walking in a long line before finding a pipe with a small crack in it, taking it in turns to suck the water out of the hole.

Long walk: A herd of elephants are seen walking for miles while searching for water in a national park in Kenya

An adult elephant drinks about 40 to 60 gallons a day, and has no problem travelling for several miles to find a source - usually a river, lake or a watering hole.

Elephants are known to dig for water if need be, and also eat fruits and leaves off trees to re-hydrate.

Photographer Shazaad Kasmani said: 'A small family of elephants traverse the dried Savanna searching for grass and water during this prolonged period of drought in Kenya.

'A mother and her calf come across a water pipe that has a tiny leakage.

All for one: The herd, including at least one calf, was seen walking through the scorched Tsavo National Park in Kenya

Finally: The animals manage to stumble over a broken water pipe, which has a small crack on top of it

Me first: The elephants are taking turn in drinking from the pipe, sucking water out of the crack

A family affair: The elephants traversed the dried Savanna searching for grass and water when they came upon the pipe

Quenching: An adult elephant drinks about 40 to 60 gallons a day, and has no problem travelling for miles to find a source

'They cleverly use their trunks to suck in the water and also take turns to share, sipping the little water that they can get.

'I have not seen this particular behaviour before in the wild - but I am not surprised. Elephants are quite creative and highly intelligent mammals.

'It's very interesting behaviour to watch, but it is also heart wrenching to see what the animals must do to try and survive during the drought.

'The much anticipated monsoon rains did not arrive in many of the Kenyan National Park's this year - so there is practically no grass around.

'Many of the natural waterholes and river beds have been dry for almost a year now as well.'
A divorcee is still fighting for 1million pot of gold that she believes her ex-husband has squirrelled overseas 26 years after they split.

Carole Hayes, 68, and her former husband are still at each other's throats, even though they were divorced more than a quarter of a century ago and both have new partners.

Mrs Hayes and her ex, accountant and computer entrepreneur, Timothy Hayes, got divorced in 1991, when they were both recently turned 40.

Bitter row: Timothy Hayes, left, and his ex-wife Carol, right, are locked in a dispute over whether or not Mr Hayes has squirrelled 1million away overseas

But they are now well past retirement age and still cannot bury the hatchet.

Mr Hayes, 68, has always denied claims that he has got a 1 million 'pot of gold' hidden overseas.

And his ex-wife has hotly disputed his accusations that she has harassed him and his new wife.

Each has also issued separate petitions to have the other declared bankrupt.

After their latest face-off in London's High Court, Mrs Hayes said she fears the battle with her ex will see her into her grave.

Mr Justice Morgan heard that the decree absolute ending the marriage was issued as long ago as June 1991.

Both have found love again since the divorce, with Mr Hayes living with his wife, Margaret in Upper Cambourne, Cambridge.

Not giving up: Despite divorcing 26 years ago, Mrs Hayes has taken the fight to the High Court

Mrs Hayes, 67, lives with her long-term partner, Graham Butters, in a 500,000 house in St Albans.

It looked like any other divorce when the couple agreed to divide their marital wealth 26 years ago.

But they have since been 'embroiled in numerous disputes' which still rage to this day.

In 2005, Mrs Hayes successfully petitioned to make her ex bankrupt for not paying 35,000 in legal costs.

But he has complained about her 'repeated allegations that he has hidden monies in the order of 750,000 to 1 million abroad.'

And he told a judge that relentless court hearings meant he 'was never able to put matters behind him and get on with his life.'

In a High Court judgement in 2014, Mr Justice Nugee said it was Mr Hayes' case that his ex-wife, 'regards the money she claims was hidden as 'a pot of gold' which, if found, would...form a basis for setting aside the matrimonial consent order with a view to seeking an increased settlement.'

Mr Hayes, who was discharged from bankruptcy in March 2006, is now trying to give his ex-wife a taste of her own medicine, and have her declared bankrupt for non-payment of a series of legal costs orders made against her between 2006 and 2015, totaling around 15,000.

Mrs Hayes this week asked Mr Justice Morgan to rule that she should not have to pay up.

But the judge rejected her appeal, saying: 'An order is an order is an order. The orders have gone unpaid. They have not been set aside. They remain enforceable.'

He commented: 'There is a long history of litigation between these two parties.

'It has continued for a long time and has resulted in very many - some would say too many - court appearances.'

But, paving the way for their war to continue, the judge lifted a stay on Mr Hayes' bid to make his ex-wife bankrupt unless she coughs up the 15,000.

Mrs Hayes, outside court, said that she is still planning to fight on against the bill at a County Court hearing set to take place early next year.

'I made him bankrupt in 2005 and now he's trying to do the same to me,' she said. 'I just want it to finish before I die.'
Sebastian Wedding, 25, is pictured in a mug shot. He was sentenced to 55 years in prison on Monday after reaching a plea deal in the stabbing deaths of three people in Indiana

A 25-year-old man has been sentenced to 55 years in prison after reaching a plea deal in the stabbing deaths of three people in northwestern Indiana.

Sebastian Wedding was convicted in the deaths of Justin L. Babbs, 20, Richard Thomas, 23, and Kimberly Spears, 39 after a botched robbery on August 28, 2016.

The bodies of the three victims were found stabbed multiple times in a home in Sumava Resorts, Indiana, about 35 miles south of Gary.

The investigation began after an 80-year-old woman, who lived at the residence and was unharmed, found Babbs bleeding on the living room couch and went for help.

The two other victims were found in a bedroom.

Wedding said he was 'sorry for everything that happened,' before learning his punishment on Monday in Newton County Superior Court in Kentland, Indiana.

Justin L. Babbs, 20, was a father of two. He and two other victims were found stabbed to death in a home following a botched robbery on August 28, 2016

Richard Thomas, 23, was found in the bedroom of the home where the murders occurred

Kimberly Spears, 39, was a mother of three. She was also found in the bedroom at the home

The bodies of the three victims were found by an 80-year-old woman who was unharmed un the home shown above

Wedding agreed to plead guilty to two counts of murder, according to the Post-Tribune.

In exchange for the plea, he avoided a possible sentence of life without parole.

About 50 people filled the courtroom Monday during the emotional sentencing, according to the Post Tribune.

Some of Babbs' family and friends wore red shirts and wristbands that said '#Justice4JustinIN.'

A handful of family and friends attended on behalf of Wedding, who was dressed in an orange jumpsuit with a brown bulletproof vest.

His defense attorney Robert Monfort asked the court: 'I ask straight up, is he a wolf or a sheep?'

He went on to say that Wedding had a troubled past, didn't like violence and turned his pain inward rather than toward others.

'I am convinced you did not want this to happen,' the judge said.

While the judge said Wedding had minimal criminal history and trauma in his past, 'that's all the mercy that is due in this case.'

Family and friends who spoke on behalf of Babbs, Thomas and Spears asked that Wedding receive the maximum sentence allowed in the deal, 60 years in prison.

'I can only hope that you do not survive in prison,' Babbs' grandmother Donna Dillingham said to Wedding.

Alicia White, the mother of Babbs' daughter and his 'soulmate' took the stand with a photo of his two children.

'Every night she would wake up screaming, not just for her dad, but that they'd come for her next,' White said.

His father Rick Babbs read an emotional letter for Babbs' mother that read, 'Grief lasts forever because love lasts forever.'

Wedding's co-defendant, Derrick Cardosi, 25, is scheduled for trial in January on charges of murder, auto theft, and assisting a criminal

A family friend of 23-year-old Thomas said his family gone through a lot with his death. Thomas 'would do anything for anyone,' she said. 'This is just so unfair.'

On behalf of Spears, a mother of three, childhood friend Tracy Guzman said'Sixty years is not enough time.'

Wedding was also charged for taking Thomas' 1997 Mercury, his Playstation, an electronic tablet with a cracked screen and black and red Nike Air Jordan shoes, according to court documents.

Wedding's co-defendant, Derrick Cardosi, 25, is scheduled for trial in January on charges of murder, auto theft, theft and assisting a criminal after he pleaded not guilty in December.
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These are the thieves, conmen and pickpockets who felts the long arms of the law in Victorian and Edwardian-era Scotland.

The fascinating display of criminals' mugshots from the past has formed the centrepiece of a new exhibition in Edinburgh.

It features the faces of thieves, confidence tricksters and pickpockets who were charged and pictured between 1870 and 1917.

The images of the Victorian and Edwardian-era crooks are accompanied by transcripts from criminal trials which reveal fascinating personal details about the offenders, their victims and the society that produced them.

Thomas Queen (left), photographed in 1910, aged 23, was charged with several offences, most of which were theft and robbery. Pictured (right) is 25-year-old James Donovan, born in Mauchline, East Ayrshire. He faced several charges of pickpocketing plus single charges of assault and larceny (theft or personal property) in 1901

Lilly Barr, from Wishaw, was charged with theft at the age of 17 on October 22, 1911. Her mugshot and side profile will be on display

Flat-capped and walrus-moustached Robert Trotter of Berwickshire could be a direct descendent of Only Fools and Horses' Rodney and Del Boy as he was charged with selling stolen goods as well as housebreaking and theft of sheep

The National Records of Scotland (NRS) aims to provide an insight into the development of policing and detection methods in Scotland.

The free exhibition, at General Register House, also sheds new light on the development of photography as a tool by the police.

Among the faces in 'Rogues Gallery - Faces of Crime 1870-1917' is that of 25-year-old James Donovan, born in Mauchline, East Ayrshire.

He faced several charges of pickpocketing plus single charges of assault and larceny (theft or personal property) in 1901.

Flat-capped and walrus-moustached Robert Trotter of Berwickshire could be a direct descendent of Only Fools and Horses' Rodney and Del Boy as he was charged with selling stolen goods as well as housebreaking and theft of sheep.

Bearded William Stewart looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights as he is snapped after being arrested for theft in 1874.

Lily Barr, 17, from Wishaw suffered the same fate in 1911, as did Joan McLean in 1874, scruffy looking Irishman James McGuire in 1906 and Bridget Duffy from Edinburgh.

In January 1900 William Paterson (left), who had an alias of John McDonald, was a 58-year-old Ironmonger whose crime is not disclosed, but he had 10 previous convictions. Joan McLean (right) was charged with theft in 1874.

Bridget Duffy (pictured), from Edinburgh, was charged with theft in 1906, aged 34. The National Records of Scotland (NRS) aims to provide an insight into the development of policing and detection methods in Scotland

Thomas Queen, photographed in 1910 aged 23, was charged with several offences, most of which were theft and robbery.

In January 1900 William Paterson, who had an alias of John McDonald, was a 58-year-old Ironmonger whose crime is not disclosed, but he had 10 previous convictions.

Not all of the pictures show classic dishevelled looking criminals - American Horace William Chapman looks every inch the Edwardian gentleman despite being charged with 'Stg. Pictures, False Pretenses'. It is presumed that 'Stg' refers to stealing.

Likewise Elizabeth Stewart, photographed in 1873, faced charges for 'falsehood, fraud and viceful imposition', but her appearance is more that of a classy Victorian lady than a deceitful crook.

Bearded William Stewart (left) looks like a rabbit caught in the headlights as he is snapped after being arrested for theft in 1874. Elizabeth Stewart (right) was charged with falsehood, fraud and 'viceful imposition' in 1873. Her appearance is more that of a classy Victorian lady than a deceitful crook

Irishman James McGuire (pictured) was charged with theft in 1906, aged 62. The free exhibition, at General Register House, also sheds new light on the development of photography as a tool by the police

Not all of the pictures show classic dishevelled looking criminals - American Horace William Chapman looks every inch the Edwardian gentleman despite being charged with 'Stg. Pictures, False Pretenses'. It is presumed that 'Stg' refers to stealing

Jocelyn Grant, outreach activist at NRS, said the exhibition revealed 'fascinating personal details about criminals, their victims and the society that produced them'.

He added: 'Rogues Gallery demonstrates how much we can learn about people of the past from criminal records and provides an insight into the development of policing and detection methods in Scotland.

'The exhibition also includes a snapshot of the development of photography, as police and their forensic assistants began to realise its potential to record crime scenes and other physical evidence.'
Jesse Galganov, 22, has been missing for nearly a month. He was last seen at a hostel in Huaraz, Peru

Fears are mounting for a Canadian medical student, 22, who has been missing in Peru for nearly a month.

Jesse Galganov wanted to see the world before starting medical school at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, so he decided to take a gap year to travel.

He left his home in Montreal on September 24 for a solo eight-month backpacking trip through South America and Southeast Asia.

But just days after arriving in Peru, he disappeared without a trace.

Last week, his mother flew to South America to aid in the search, and says local authorities believe her son may have been kidnapped.

Alisa Clamen says her son spent the first few days of his trip in Lima, Peru, before taking a bus to Huaraz on September 27.

Security cameras show him arriving at 6:30am and heading towards the Kame House hotel where he planned to stay the night before starting a four-day hike through Huascaran National Park - the world's highest tropical mountain range.

He texted his mom on September 28 to say that he would be out of contact until October 2, when he had a bus booked back to Lima.

That was the last anyone heard from Galganov.

The 22-year-old medical student from Montreal, Canada was on the first leg of an eight month backpacking trip through South America and Southeast Asia

Galganov was last seen at the Kame House hostel in Huaraz (pictured) on September 28. The owner of the hostel at first said Galganov checked in, but later changed his story and said he did not when he was questioned by police

When her son didn't contact her on the day he said he would, Clamen initially wasn't worried, believing that he had just extended his hike a few days.

'Maybe he had taken a longer route but when 10 days turned into 11 and 12 I knew something was wrong,' Clamen told Global News.

Clamen reached out to her son's close friends on October 7, but they hadn't heard from him either.

Julien Miller told Dateline that he was contacting friends through Snapchat since the beginning of the trip, but after the 29th all communication stopped.

'He is an experienced traveler and an excellent communicator,' Miller said. 'We have to assume that if he had access to communication, he would contact us.'

Galganov's mother Alisa Clamen flew down to Peru last week to aid in the search for her son (pictured above together)

On October 14, Clamen filed a missing persons report, and then flew down to Peru on October 17 to aid in the search.

She says local authorities fear that her son has been kidnapped.

'All of (the information) is leading to the conclusion that Jesse, somehow, was abducted,' Clamen told the Toronto Sun. 'It is really the only plausible theory at this point, because nobody really disappears into thin air.'

The investigation into Galganov's disappearance appears to be centered on the hostel where he stayed in Huaraz, Kame House.

The owner of the hostel at first confirmed that Galganov had stayed there, but later changed his story and said he had not when he was questioned by police.

Authorities know that he stayed there because he Snapchatted a friend from the hostel before his disappearance. Other employees at the hostel also gave various reports of when he arrived and left the hostel. The hostel is now under investigation by the local District Attorney's office.

Galganov also didn't register for the 31-mile Santa Cruz trail he planned to hike. Hikers on the popular trail have not reported seeing him.

Authorities also know that Galgavnov did not show up for his bus back to Lima on October 2, or use his ticket for an October 5 flight to Bolivia.

Friends and family say he was on a strict budget, so it was unlike him to deviate from his meticulously planned agenda.

Clamen's mother is now focused on pressuring Apple, Amazon and T-Mobile to give up information on her son's cellphone and Kindle e-reader in hopes that geo-locating technology will help track him down.

Clamen says they have not been cooperating, so she set up a Change.org petition to put pressure on them.

'All these people are offering their help, and yet i have Apple, Amazon, and T-Mobile who are not only not offering their help, theyre impeding us,' Clamen said.

Local authorities in Peru believe Galganov was kidnapped

'Im incredulous, I just cannot believe that these companies are not being co-operative, when the life a 22 year old man is at stake.'

In a statement to Global News, Apple said: 'As we do with emergency requests from law enforcement, we have immediately responded to legal requests for information from U.S., Canadian and Peruvian authorities in this case. We know time is of the essence, and have a dedicated team responding to any exigent request 24 hours a day around the world.'

Apple has provided information that shows Galganov's phone being active in Lima on September 29, the day he was supposed to start his hike seven hours away in Huaraz.

T-Mobile also said they were doing everything in their power to aid in the search, and are cooperating with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Galganov is a dual US-citizen). However, they said the fact that he was using a different network while in Peru means that they don't have much information to give.

'We dont have location information on our partner networks when customers are roaming, but will certainly provide anything else we can to help,' T-Mobile told Global News.

Clamen is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to her son being found. She has plastered about 500 flyers in the country about her son's disappearance.

'People dont just disappear,' she told Dateline. 'Someone will know something. If I can have everyone out there looking for Jesse, then we will find him.'

Galganov is described as being 5'10" tall, 170 pounds with wavy brown hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information about his whereabouts is being asked to email the family at helpusfindjesse@gmail.com.
David Clarke, pictured, 53, appeared in court charged with holding people hostage with a shotgun and Samurai sword

A 53-year-old man has appeared in court charged with holding two people hostage in a bowling alley with a gun and a Samurai sword.

David Clarke is accused of a string of charges after the terrifying four-hour standoff on Sunday.

Armed police rushed to the retail centre at Bermuda Park in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, at around 2.30pm to attempt to free the hostages Joshua Steedman and William Barlow.

The whole area was cordoned off as families were evacuated to a nearby cinema, hotel and restaurant.

A court heard a firearm, samurai sword and knife were also used 'threaten violence' to Peter Brunt during the incident.

He is also charged with two counts of false imprisonment, one count of criminal damage and two counts of possession of an imitation firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence.

Wearing a grey sweatshirt, bearded Clarke spoke only to confirm his name, age and address during the 40-minute hearing at Leamington Magistrates Court on Tuesday.

He was remanded in custody and will attend a further hearing at Warwick Crown Court on November 11.

Chair of the bench Margaret Middleton said: 'Mr Clarke, you will appear at Warwick Crown Court for the following offences: two counts of false imprisonment, one count of criminal damage, two counts of possession of a bladed article, one count of possession of a firearm with intent cause fear of violence and two counts of possession of an imitation firearm with intent to commit an indictable offence.

Armed police rushed to the scene in Nuneaton after receiving reports of a man with a sawn-off shotgun, eventually raiding the bowling alley to free the hostages

Armed police (left) were seen arriving on the scene before entering the alley in Nuneaton (right)

'You will be ordered to attend on November 21 for a preliminary hearing.

'That is the order of the court.'

Around 30 armed police officers attended the scene and all of the roads around the popular leisure park were closed off.

The two hostages were 'uninjured' after being assessed, the West Midlands Ambulance Service confirmed.
Millionaire Duncan Bannatyne has been branded a 'cheapskate' for using Uber

Millionaire and former Dragon Duncan Bannatyne has been trolled and branded a 'cheapskate' after admitting he uses Uber taxis.

The Dragons Den star took to Twitter last night to complain to the company after being 'ripped off' by one of their drivers while using the service in Miami, Florida.

But after hearing that the millionaire's choice of transport, dozens of Twitter users ridiculed Bannatyne calling him a 'cheapskate'.

One user, Richard Green wrote: 'Duncan Bannatyne using Uber. Is that the Scottish in you. #cheapskate.'

Bannatyne hit back asking what evidence proves Uber is the cheapest transport in Miami before Richard responded: 'It's just not a brand I would have associated you with.'

He then claimed: 'Predatory pricing, paying drivers peanuts, avoiding tax. Uber = Cheap = Unsafe'

Another Twitter follower, Sandra Priddle, wrote: 'Well I've heard it all now! Duncan Bannatyne using an Uber, only thing you can do is laugh

Ashton Jones said: 'With the amount they charged you, shoulda just jumped in the chopper!'

Another shocked follower wrote: 'You use Uber over getting a licensed taxi? Your gym's not doing too well then?'

Len Martin wrote: 'Why would a wealthy man use Uber? Graham Long said: 'Multi millionaire using Uber?! Try a Black Cab, the world's finest Taxi service. Fact. #ubered #deleteuber.'

'Poor uni students I can grasp that, but a wealthy man? Why risk your life for a few bob?'

Grumpy: A black cab driver questioned why the former Dragon used Uber and was so desperate for Mr Bannatyne's custom, he offered a promotional code

'Cheapskate': Another black cab driver suggested Mr Bannatyne was being careful with his money because of his Scottish heritage

The 68-year-old, who is believed to be worth around 220m, hit back at the trolls and stood up for his decision writing: 'Licensed taxis are not here in Miami

He also revealed that after contacting Uber's customer services, they managed to deal with his issue within 15 minutes. Pictured above, a black cab driver suggested Mr Bannatyne swapped Uber for a 'Hackney carriage'

The 68-year-old, who is believed to be worth around 220m, hit back at the trolls and stood up for his decision writing: 'Licensed taxis are not here in Miami.

'They don't have Black Cabs in Miami.'

He also revealed that after contacting Uber's customer services, they managed to deal with his issue within 15 minutes.

Uber lost their licence in London earlier this year to the delight of black cabs who had complained Uber bypasses local licensing and safety laws.

In October 2014, Uber received an 'F' rating from Better Business Bureau (BBB) who said unexpectedly high charges and lack of response to customers were part of the problem.
A spurned wife teamed up with her two-timing husband's mistress to take revenge by hiring enforcers to kidnap and torture him, a German court has heard.

Yvonne Schmidt, 39, and her ex-husband's mistress Birgit Koenig, 37, are accused of subjecting Thomas L. to such a brutal ordeal that he is still undergoing psychiatric counseling.

Thomas L. was allegedly kidnapped at a truck stop in Berlin in 2015, stripped naked, bound with gaffer tape, blindfolded and bundled into the back of a refrigerated van which then driven into a remote forest.

Hell hath no fury: Yvonne Schmidt, 39, far left, and her ex-husband's mistress Birgit Koenig, 37, far right, are accused of hiring enforcers to kidnap Thomas L, strip him naked and bundle him into a refrigerated van in Berlin

One of their four 'hired heavies' dragged him outside and told him to 'stop bothering Yvonne or you'll really get it.'

He was then beaten up and told to count to 100, before removing his blindfold to find himself abandoned and naked in two degrees Celsius.

He managed to flag down a car soon afterwards and was taken to a police station and then to hospital where he was treated for severe skull and stomach injuries.

Ms Schmidt, now his ex-wife, admitted the charges at the first day of her trial on Monday.

She said she was abused by him for ten years during their marriage described the kidnapping as a 'spontaneous and unplanned action.'

Brutal revenge: The victim, only known as Thomas L, was beaten up and abandoned in two degrees Celsius after being kidnapped in Berlin (stock image)

She said his harassment of her continued long after they split. She said she felt 'persecuted and watched'.

Ms Koenig is yet to testify why she wanted revenge on her former lover or how the duo came together. But she told police he had been unfaithful to her.

The judge in the case refused to believe Ms Schmidt's testimony that she 'didn't know' the men who assisted in the kidnap and that she had only met them a short time before in a supermarket car park.

He warned her that she faced a heavier sentence if she did not reveal the identity of the men who are still at large.

A verdict is expected early next month. The victim has been too traumatized to attend court.
Loud House creator Chris Savino has broken his silence over claims he sexually harassed female colleagues for decades with a grovelling apology on Facebook.

The 46-year-old was fired by Nickelodeon on October 19 a day after being suspended after the accusations of a handful of different women emerged.

They told how Savino bombarded them with unwanted text messages and threatened to sabotage their careers if they rejected his advances.

On Monday, Savino said he was 'deeply sorry and ashamed' by their criticism.

Chris Savino shared the statement on his Facebook page on Monday after being fired by Nickelodeon last week over claims he sexually harassed female colleagues for a decade

'Although it was never my intention, I now understand that the impact of my actions and communications created an uncomfortable environment,' Savino said in a statement.

'At every stage of my career, I have sought to uplift my colleagues and cultivate a culture of respect.

Twelve women accused Savino (pictured) of bombarding them with sexual text messages and threatening to ruin their careers if they rejected his advances

In this objective, I have failed. I should have known better, I should have acted better and this has been a difficult but valuable lesson,' he went on.

Savino finished by saying he had the 'deepest respect' for the women who had spoken out against him.

'I have nothing but the deepest respect for the bravery of the women who have spoken out, trying to create an environment in which they can thrive and reach their fullest potential,' he said.

Savino's accusers had their accusations published by Cartoon Brew last week.

They included the story of an artist who said he bombarded her with lewd text messages after obtaining her personal cell phone number under the pretense that he needed it for work.

'He got her personal contact information under the guise of helping her develop the project off hours.

'He presented himself as a mentor. He then proceeded to send her unwanted text messages that were lewd and sexual in nature on more than one occasion.

Savino created Loud House, the hit Nickelodeon cartoon, in 2016

Loud House's mostly female cast (above). None have come forward to accuse Savino of any harassment

Loud House's cast includes 37-year-old Jessica DiCicco (left) and 23-year-old Liliana Mumy who shot to fame as a child in the Cheaper By The Dozen films (right). Neither has spoken about the allegations

In his apology, Savino (above launching the series in 2016) said it was never his intention to cause harm

'When she turned down his advances, her development project was let go. He is a classic case of a predatory male using his status and power over a female subordinate,' a friend of the woman's said.

Viacom, Nickelodeon's parent company, at first refused to confirm his suspension. On Thursday, the popular children's network however announced his firing.

' 'Chris Savino is no longer working with Nickelodeon.

'We take allegations of misconduct very seriously, and we are committed to fostering a safe and professional workplace environment that is free of harassment or other kinds of inappropriate conduct,' a spokesman told DailyMail.com.

None of the predominantly female cast of Loud House have commented on Savino's firing.

Liliana Mumy, arguably the most recognizable, declined questions on the subject last week when approached by DailyMail.com.

Before creating Loud House in 2016, Savino worked as an animator on The Powerpuff Girls and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

The Powerpuff Girls was aired by the Cartoon Network between 1998 and 2005.

House of cards: Roy Price, the former head of Amazon Studios, resigned last week amid accusations he sexually harassed staff. Harvey Weinstein (right) has been fired by The Weinstein Company and may face criminal charges over claims he raped and sexually assaulted women over the last 20 years

Savino worked alongside its creator Craig McCracken until he left the show after the first four seasons. Savino oversaw the final two.

The Cartoon Network did not respond to questions surrounding Savino's suspension on Wednesday.

It is the latest in a wave of developments gripping the film and TV industry since the avalanche of allegations against Harvey Weinstein emerged earlier this month.

An executive from Amazon's Studios has also resigned over claims he was complicit in sexual harassment at the company.

Roy Price had been placed on administrative leave last week after claims he ignored Rose McGowan when she said she had been raped and sexually harassed a lesbian producer of one of Amazon's shows.
Eddie Curlin, 29 (pictured), a former Eastern Michigan University student, was arraigned Monday on charges that he placed racist graffiti around the campus on three separate occasions

A 29-year-old former Eastern Michigan University student was arraigned Monday on charges that he placed racist graffiti around the Ypsilanti campus on three separate occasions.

Eddie Curlin, who was an EMU student from 2014 to early 2016, has been charged with three counts of malicious destruction of property, four counts of identity theft and one count of using computers to commit a crime.

According to the university's Chief of Police, Robert Heighes, the acts were not racially or politically motivated.

'It was totally self-serving,' he said at a news conference. 'It was not driven by politics. It was not driven by race.'

The first incident took place in September 2016 when the letters 'KKK' - seemingly referencing the Ku Klux Klan - and underneath in bold black 'leave n*****s' was spray-painted on an exterior wall. The letters 'KKK' were painted in red, white and blue (pictured)

The first incident took place in September 2016 when the letters 'KKK' - seemingly referencing the Ku Klux Klan - and underneath in bold black 'leave n*****s was spray-painted on an exterior wall, reported the Eastern Echo. The letters 'KKK' were painted in red, white and blue.

An October 2016 incident had the message 'leave n*****s' again scrawled outside of a building, this one right next to the campus's monument to Martin Luther King.

The third incident took place last spring in which a racist message was found in a men's restroom stall in Sherzer Hall, according to EMU.

According to the university's Chief of Police, Robert Heighes, the acts were not racially or politically motivated. He said at a news conference: 'It was totally self-serving. It was not driven by politics. It was not driven by race' (Pictured, Eastern Michigan University)

'Our officers have worked on this case extensively since day one. We appreciate that people wanted a fast arrest but, in many cases, that is not the way police work happens,' said Heighes.

'I recognize the anger, fear and frustration that these incidents caused for many of our students, faculty and staff, and I thank them for their patience and understanding as we conducted a thorough investigation.'

Curlin is currently serving a prison term of 18 months to five years on a conviction for receiving stolen property in December 2015, according to a state corrections database.

Nobody received the $10,000 reward the university was offering for information on the graffiti incidents.

Jaiquae Rodwell, an EMU student, told the Eastern Echo he was disappointed that the racial graffiti stemmed from an African-American.

'As a black student, to know that another black person is using the N-word in a negative way is embarrassing,' Rodwell said.
A woman has claimed she married serial killer Ian Brady before he died after nine years of writing letters to the Moors Murderer.

Cheryl Stewart-Brady, 29, says she wed the 79-year-old in 2015 to try to get him to open up about his crimes, although she claims she never loved him.

Brady was jailed for life in 1966 for sexually assaulting and murdering at least five children around Greater Manchester between 1963 and 1965 alongside Myra Hindley.

He died in hospital aged 79 in May and the High Court ruled earlier this month his funeral plans, including having his ashes spread over the moors, could not be carried out.

Moors Murderer Ian Brady, pictured, 'married his penpal Cheryl Stewart-Brady' two years before he died, according to the 29-year-old

Mrs Stewart-Brady said she started writing to Brady, right, who killed at least five children with fellow murder Myra Hindley, left, in 2006 and married him 'to get him to open up about his crimes'

According to the Daily Star Online, Mrs Stewart-Brady made contact with him when she was 20 and their correspondence continued until they agreed to meet at the high security Ashworth Hospital in 2015, where they had their ceremony.

She said: I married him thinking he would talk or open up but I never felt sorry for him. He was there for a reason. The marriage doesn't exist legally speaking, Brady was single when he died.

It was him swearing over a Bible  but I got nothing, just constant moaning about his treatment in Ashworth and reminiscing about his Glasgow days.

She added Brady was not allowed to be cremated with his wedding band but could not retrieve it because it is a closed coffin.

Ms Stewart-Bradys claims are unverified and social media accounts appearing to belong to her have since been removed.

Bradys lawyer Robin Makin refused to comment on the claims when contacted by the Star while Ashworth Hospital said it could not comment due to patient confidentiality.

Mrs Stewart-Brady said the marriage was 'not legal' and consisted of the killer, pictured, 'putting his hand on a Bible'

The killer had been at Ashworth Hospital since 1985 while serial killer lover Hindley died in 2002 after 35 years behind bars.

Last week High Court judge Sir Geoffrey Vos banned Bradys choice of music as he said it could offend his victims families, and ordered that council officials must decide what should happen to his ashes.

The Chancellor of the High Court said Bradys wishes were outweighed by the risk of public anger and unrest if his ashes were scattered on Saddleworth Moor.

Relatives of their child victims said it would be a final insult if Bradys remains were scattered there.

Terry West, whose ten-year-old sister Lesley Ann Downer was among their victims, said: As long as its not on the moor, I dont really care. Let him rot.

Brady and Hindleys sickening crimes caused such anger and revulsion that the judge ordered Bradys cremation and the disposal of his ashes should be carried out in secret, to avoid public disorder.

The killer had asked for a piece of classical music, the fifth movement of Berliozs Symphony Fantastique, to be played during his cremation.

The composer said the piece depicted a witches Sabbath, in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind, which descended into a diabolical orgy.

The judge said the subject and theme of the music meant it would cause legitimate offence to the families of Bradys victims, and banned it from being played.

He said Brady had not made any further requests, and ordered the cremation should be carried out as soon as possible, with no music and no ceremony.

Brady had appointed his solicitor Robin Makin as his executor, and had asked him to arrange the cremation and the disposal of his ashes.

But Mr Makin refused to reveal his clients last wishes to the two councils whose areas cover Saddleworth Moor, or to promise he would not scatter the ashes there, although he told a coroner there was no likelihood of that happening.

The judge said: There is undoubtedly real and genuine public anger and distress about what may happen to the deceaseds body.

It comes days after the High Court rejected Brady's wishes to have his ashes scattered over the moors, pictured, where he killed his victims

The families of the deceaseds victims may well be legitimately offended by an insensitive disposal. There is a real public interest in ensuring that the disposal does not create unrest or disorder.

He added: The deceaseds wishes are relevant, but they do not outweigh the need to avoid justified public indignation and actual unrest.

Brady and Hindley were jailed for life in 1966 for torturing and murdering John Kilbride, 12, ten-year-old Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans, 17.

They went on to admit the murders of Pauline Reade, 16, and Keith Bennett, 12.

With the exception of Edward Evans, all were buried on Saddleworth Moor.

Hindley died in November 2002 and her ashes were later scattered in Stalybridge Country Park in Tameside, just a short drive from the moors.
Donald Trump opened up with both barrels Tuesday on a Republican senator who spent the morning calling his foreign policy amateurish and dangerous.

And his target gave as good as he got.

The president's tweeted broadsides at Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker come as he heads to Capitol Hill to meet with Republicans about a pending tax bill.

'Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts,' Trump tweeted.

'Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse[e] when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!'

'Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!' Trump added later.

Corker won his 2012 Senate election easily with 65 per cent of the vote.

By mid-morning Corker was uncorking at Trump on CNN, saying that 'much of what he says is untrue. ... I don't know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard.'

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President Trump unleashed a new attack on Sen. Bob Corker (left), saying Tuesday that the Tennessee Republican is standing in the way of tax cuts

Corker said that Trump should leave diplomacy 'to the professionals' and stop 'kneecapping' his top diplomat

Trump tweeted Monday that Corker, who has announced his retirement as of next year, 'couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee

By mid-morning Corker was uncorking at Trump on CNN, saying that 'much of what he says is untrue. ... I don't know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard'

Asked if he would support Donald Trump in the future, Corker said: 'Let's just put it this way, I would not do that again. No way. No way.'

'I think the debasement of our nation will be what he'll be remembered most for, and that's regretful,' he said, insisting that Trump is a poor role model for American children.

'We have young people who for the first time are watching a president stating, you know, absolute nontruths nonstop, personalizing things in the way that he does. It's very sad for our nation.'

Corker has minced no words about his disdain for Trump's approach to foreign policy, and said Tuesday morning on ABC that the president should stop 'kneecapping' his top diplomat.

And he insisted the president should abandon his scattershot approach to the North Korea nuclear crisis and leave it 'to the professionals for a while.'

Trump shoved back  hard.

'Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done,' the president tweeted.

'He doesn't have a clue as the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us. People like liddle' Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!'

The Tennessee senator was back to talking about 'day care staff' on Tuesday

Trump fired back less than an hour later

In remarks to reporters as the feud reached a fever pitch, House Speaker Paul Ryan said he hoped the Trump-Corker tensions would calm down over lunch.

'I'm glad the president's coming to lunch because I have long believed that it's best to settle these things in person and I hope they can get the chance to do that,' Ryan said.

Corker, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has already announced that he will not seek another term in office, opening the door for the kind of frank statements that are seldom heard from politicians preparing for re-election.

Trump publicly chided Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this month for being optimistic about a rapprochement with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un

By mid-morning, Trump was attacking Corker on substance, calling him an 'incompetent' Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman

Corker's chief of staff Todd Womack insisted this month that his boss wasn't bowing out because of a lack of support from the White House.

'The president called Senator Corker ... and asked him to reconsider his decision not to seek re-election and reaffirmed that he would have endorsed him, as he has said many times,' Womack said on October 8.

'I want to support these efforts that are underway,' Corker said Tuesday, referring to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's outreach designed to quietly bring North Korea's government to the bargaining table.

But 'the president undermines our secretary of State [and] raises tensions in the area by virtue of the tweets that he sends out,' Corker said on ABC's 'Good Morning America' program.

Sen. Corker unleashes on Trump in stone cold interview w/@mkraju, [Trump] has great difficulty with the truth..." https://t.co/VAhVkQqxwP  Ashley Codianni (@AshleyCodianni) October 24, 2017

Corker smacked the president on Oct. 8, tweeting that the White House had 'become an adult day care center'

'And I would just like for him to leave it to the professionals for a while and see if we can do something that's constructive for our country, the region, and the world.'

Corker and Trump have been engaged in an online war of words this month  with the president claiming Corker failed to stop Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, and Corker firing back that Trump's White House is an 'adult day care center.'

Responding to Trump's tweets on Tuesday, Corker wrote on Twitter: 'Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff'

He softened his language on television but left no doubt about his meaning.

'Really, when you look at the fact that we've got this issue in North Korea and the president continues to kneecap his diplomatic representative, the secretary of State, and really move him away from successful diplomatic negotiations with China, which is key to this, youre taking us on a path to combat,' Corker said.

'It appears to be the governing model of this White House to purposely divide,' he added in an interview on CBS.
The collective shock felt by members of Hollywood in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal has now turned to rage, and calls for the mogul and those who aided him to be punished for their actions.

That charge is being led by George Clooney, who sat down with 'Access Hollywood' to discuss the scandal alongside the stars of his new film 'Suburbicon,' Matt Damon and Julianne Moore.

Clooney once again reiterated that he was unaware of any criminal behavior, but confessed he does know of people who were complicit in supplying Weinstein with victims.

'Most of the rumors I knew, were from Harvey himself. I had an affair with an actress or that actress,' said Clooney.

'Somebody knew. There were people that brought young actresses to his hotel room.'

Scroll down for video

Mad as hell: George Clooney spoke about the Harvey Weinstein scandal on 'Today,' and voiced his anger about the fact that people have known for years

Call for change: Also speaking out with Clooney were the stars of his new film 'Suburbicon,' Julianne Moore and Matt Damon (above)

WATCH: "We should've known this. This is violating women. This is assault." George Clooney talks Weinstein scandal with @nmoralesnbc pic.twitter.com/a3shNYJNwR  TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 24, 2017

Clooney also lashed out at media outlets that knew of this behavior and opted to kill stories on the executive.

'Whoever had that story and didn't write it, should be responsible. I want to know what kind of ad dollars were spent from the Weinstein Company and Miramax,' said the actor and director.

'We should have known this. This is violating women. This is assault. This is - this is silencing women.'

Clooney later said: 'I'm furious. Yeah. He's mean to work with. I knew that for a fact. But the idea that he's, you know, committed these kinds of atrocities. I want to know who knew.'

One of the people who had some idea was his friend Damon, who in his interview repeated the story he told on 'Good Morning America' one day prior.

'I knew the Gwyneth story. We worked on '[The Talented Mr.] Ripley.' But Ben had told me about it. At that point, Harvey was incredibly respectful of her always,' explained Damon.

Morales then asked what he would have done were he able to go back in time, knowing that these potential crimes were being committed by his boss.

'I don't know what I would have done, you know? I heard from Ben, who heard from Gwyneth that this happened,' explained Damon.

'He was a bully. He was intimidating. That was part of who he was. And I've been reading these stories because I am wracking my brain, did I see something? Could I have known something? Is there something I would have done?'

He later noted; 'I hope that he's prosecuted for some of these things. I hope some of the charges stand.'

Moore meanwhile is hoping that this horrific story be viewed as a crime, and that the salacious details do not take away from the awful incidents these women were subjected to by the disgraced mogul.

'I think it's important when we discuss this thing, rather than being salacious conversation, this is criminal behavior,' said Moore.

'That's the most important thing. Rather than continue to discuss what could have happened or whatever, what if, what if. I think it's important to think: What can we do?'

Mad Matt: Damon, who said he knew that Gwyneth Paltrow had been sexually harassed by Weinstein, said he did not know what he could have done at the time

Aiding and abetting: 'There were people that brought young actresses to his hotel room,' said Clooney, later adding he was still 'furious' over the scandal (Weinstein, Clooney and Damon above in 2007 at the Cannes Film Festival)

Damon's revelation that he learned about Weinstein's behavior from his friend Affleck seemed as though it would cause even more problems for the embattled actor as it appears to contradict his initial statement, but thus far there has been no backlash.

'I am saddened and angry that a man who I worked with used his position of power to intimidate, sexually harass and manipulate many women over decades,' said Affleck, almost one week after news of the scandal broke, in a carefully-worded response that seemed to suggest he had never before heard any of the allegations.

Damon's decision to characterize the relationship between Paltrow and Weinstein as 'always' respectful is a bit odd as well, considering her admission that she had been sexually harassed by the mogul was part of the reason the men were sitting down for the interview.

Clooney meanwhile had previously spoken about Weinstein's self-proclaimed voracious appetite for stars on 'GMA.'

'Harvey would talk to me about women that he had had affairs with,' said Clooney.

'I didn't necessarily believe him quite honestly, because to believe him would be to believe the worst of some actresses who were friends of mine, and I didn't really think that they had affairs with Harvey - and clearly they didn't.

He then added: 'But the idea that this predator, this assaulter was out there silencing women like that, it's beyond infuriating. And the fact that the story is coming out now and the more it comes out, I want to know all of it.'

Avoiding: Moore said she was never once left alone with Weinstein (pair above in 2002)

Damon was a bit more blunt in his assessment of Weinstein's persona, having witnessed it first-hand when he starred in a string of Miramax films during the mid to late nineties

He was one of the few that had been part of the exclusive coterie of actor and actresses the studio favored at the height of Weinstein's power.

'He bought "Good Will Hunting" and shot it in '97 and I did three movies after that, he signed me to a three-picture deal,' explained Damon.

'That was the height of his power.'

He continued: 'I mean, you had to spend about five minutes to know he was a bully. He was intimidating. That was his - that was his legend. That was his whole kind of M.O.'

This description of the movie boss also lines up with the accounts given be the victims, who said they could not turn down the powerful executive when he made demands to meet them in a hotel room or asked them to succumb to his demands.

'Like could you survive a meeting with Harvey. Could you survive - could you stand up for yourself with Harvey,' Damon went on to say.

'So when people say, "Everybody knew," like, yeah, I knew he was an a**hole. I mean, he was proud of that. You know what I mean? That's how he carried himself.'

He then stated: 'I knew he was a womanizer. You know, I wouldn't want be to married to the guy but I'm not - it's not my business really.'

Damon later said that many were unaware because the incidents took place behind closed doors.

'He didn't do it out in the open,' said Damon.

'If there was ever an event where there was something I was at with Harvey in public and he was doing this thing and I missed it, and there's some woman who was somehow assaulted and was at the Golden Globes or something and I somehow missed it, then I'm sorry.'

Clooney wrapped up that interview by stating the sexual harassment and assault that is now being revealed in Hollywood is not exclusive to that industry.

'There has to be a comeuppance for all of that, all those people part of the chain and then have to make it safe to feel people can talk about this, and in doing that I think that will scare away that kind of behavior, ' said Clooney.

'But more than anything, you're going to have to have a warning shot over the bow of anyone that would act like that that you will be outed and out of the business and more than that you might be prosecuted.'

He then name dropped his famous wife Amal by going on to say: 'I talked with my wife about this, and she said she could find in her line of work, which is human rights law, there have been plenty of instances where some guy in power has tried to make their move.'

Clooney said that the sad reality is, most women deal with this behavior.

'I think that's a little bit of a surprise to some of us, that it's this big, that it's this prevalent,' said Clooney.

'And maybe that's something else that's good is that we're going to have these discussions and have this conversation and again we'll make it harder for it to happen.'

Talented: Damon and Jude Law with Gwyneth Paltrow on the set of 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' (above)

Paltrow detailed her encounter with Weinstein for the second New York Times expose.

'I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified,' said Paltrow, who revealed that when she was told to meet Weinstein in his hotel room she did not think anything suspicious of it because it came on a fax from Creative Artists Agency.

Once she arrived at the hotel, he began to massage her and then asked her to join him in the bedroom.

She rejected his advance and drove away devastated, thinking: 'I thought you were my Uncle Harvey.'

She told then-boyfriend Brad Pitt about the incident she said, who then confronted Weinstein.

Weinstein came back to the actress and told her to never tell anyone what happened between them again.

'He screamed at me for a long time,' said Paltrow.

'It was brutal.'

A few years later she was a superstar and Oscar winner, but she did not have the power to share her story.

'I was expected to keep the secret,' said Paltrow, who called Weinstein 'alternately generous and supportive and championing, and punitive and bullying.'

She has now decided however to no longer staying quiet.

'Were at a point in time when women need to send a clear message that this is over,' said Paltrow.

'This way of treating women ends now.'

Weinstein is said to be in rehab but there has still been nothing to prove this claim, and now over 60 women have come forward with allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

'Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances,' said a spokesperson for Weinstein.

'Mr. Weinstein obviously cant speak to anonymous allegations, but with respect to any women who have made allegations on the record, Mr. Weinstein believes that all of these relationships were consensual.

'Mr. Weinstein has begun counseling, has listened to the community and is pursuing a better path. Mr. Weinstein is hoping that, if he makes enough progress, he will be given a second chance.'
The owner of an iconic tall ship that crashed into four other boats at a festival in Rhode Island has said the incident was the result of a dock line that became entangled in its two propellers.

The SSV Oliver Hazard Perry, the first ocean-going, full-rigged ship to be built in the U.S. in more than a century, crashed in Newport Harbor during a seafood festival. No one was injured.

A video has emerged capturing the moment.

It shows the 200 foot (61 metre), three-mast ship clipping a much smaller sailboat before backing into a moored boat.

It then moves forward to hit a third stationary boat with its owner on board, as well as a fourth boat.

The crew are seen dropping anchors to steady the boat.

The ship's operators Oliver Hazard Perry Rhode Island, a nonprofit that runs educational programmes, said the ship had run off course when its propellers became entangled in one of its own dock lines.

The group said the ship did not run aground - hit the seabed - but the Coast Guard said shortly after the crash that the ship had grounded.

The ship was leaving its berth at the seafood festival to cross the harbor to its permanent berth at Fort Adams when the incident happened.

Alex Keller, yacht manager and captain of 60 foot (18 metre) boat Jessica, one of those hit, said his ship was pinned against a dock and 'used as a fender' by the tall ship.

The smaller vessel was eventually freed but needs to be checked for structural damage.

The 200 foot SSV Oliver Hazard Perry pictured moored up next to several smaller boats prior to the crash

Mr Keller said that he was surprised the captain of the tall ship was trying to operate it in winds that were blowing at 25 knots and that he would not have done it himself unless it was an emergency.

Jessica Wurzbacher, group executive director of Oliver Hazard Perry Rhode Island, said the ship is a 500-ton (454-metric ton) vessel that regularly operates in windy conditions. She added that the captain determined it was safe at the time.

'I don't think the weather affected the incident,' she said.

The boat crashed into four other boats, some less than a quarter of its size. No one was injured, however, the boats are being inspected for damages

The captain of the Trade Wind, Darius Dupey, was on the small wooden yacht when it was struck by the Oliver Hazard Perry.

In cellphone video of the accident, Dupey tells the Oliver Hazard Perry crew to go forward, then yells 'Oh, my God!' and 'Whoa' as the tall ship gets closer and wood crunches on impact.

He said they won't know the full extent of the damage until the yacht is hauled out of the water and inspected.

The tall ship is named for Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, a hero in the War of 1812, who's remembered for his command: 'Don't give up the ship.'

It was built of steel at a cost of $16 million (13.6 million) and in 2016 became the first ocean-going, full-rigged ship to be built in the U.S. in more than 100 years.

Its main mast is 13 1/2 stories high. It is the largest civilian sail training vessel, accommodating 49 people overnight, and serves as Rhode Island's official sailing education vessel.
An air hostess accidentally fell off from a cabin door and hit on the tarmac yesterday at an airport in southern China.

The crew member from China Eastern Airlines allegedly suffered scratches and bone fractures after plunging from 2.7 metres high (8.9 feet).

The domestic flight was delayed for two hours, arriving at the Kunming Changshui International Airport at 4:28pm on October 23.

A video posted by Beijing Youth Daily captures the moment rescuers rushing to save the injured flight attendant, who can be seen lying on the tarmac at Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport yesterday.

The left rear cabin door was left open, as the video showed.

Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport issued a statement on Weibo, confirming the accident.

The statement said the flight involved was the flight MU 5762 from China Eastern Airlines, which was scheduled to fly from Shenzhen to Kunming.

'A flight attendant accidentally fell on the tarmac from the left rear cabin door when the plane was ready to take-off,' read the statement.

The flight attendant lied on the tarmac in Shenzhen Airport after falling from the cabin door

Paramedics and rescuers carried a stretcher to the tarmac before lifting the air hostess up

It continued: 'She was found suffering bone fractures and was taken to hospital immediately. The flight rescheduled to fly at 2:33pm.'

However, the statement did not mention why the cabin door was left open and how the air hostess fell off from the plane.

Spokesperson from China Eastern Airlines replied to Beijing Youth Daily that the flight was delayed for two hours.

They are also looking into matters for the cause of the incident.

The air hostess had to stay in hospital for observation after suffering from bone fractures

The flight attendant fell off from the rear cabin door on the left of a China Eastern Airlines flight in Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport (file photo)

Professionals working in the field suggested that the flight attendant could possibly 'lost her balance' while closing the cabin door.

Cabin crews are required to do crosscheck to make sure all cabin doors are sealed before take-off.

It's also important to hold on the door handle when it is opened.
A Bernie Sanders campaign organizer and long-time Democrat has filed a lawsuit today accusing the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton of fraud and seeking access to their servers  a move that his lawyer believes will solve the murder of DNC staff member Seth Rich.

Gary Frazier, an organizer with Black Men for Bernie and DNC contributor, claims that the DNC and Clinton committed fraud, negligence, and violated their charter as a non-profit, political organization during the 2016 presidential primary.

He also accuses the DNC of being negligent with his personal and financial information and making it vulnerable to hackers.

On June 14, 2016, the DNC database was compromised by Russian government hackers, security sources told the Washington Post. A Kremlin spokesman ruled out Russian involvement but day later, solo, anonymous hacker 'Guccifer 2.0' took credit for hacking the DNC database, saying it was 'very easy' on his website.

Gary Frazier, 42, has filed a suit against the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton, accusing the two parties of committing fraud, after they allegedly worked against Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential race

Attorney Jack Burman, left, and Gary Frazier, right, are seen speaking to reporters a press conference outside of DNC headquarters on Tuesday morning

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz resigned in July 2016 after a Wikileaks email hack exposed her bias and showed the party had conspired against Bernie Sanders. She was later hired as part of Clinton's campaign days later

A month later, thousands of DNC emails were released by Wikileaks, dealing a damaging blow to Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Among emails from senior DNC officials, including then-chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, were statements that revealed the DNC was actively trying to undermine Sanders campaign to the benefit of Clinton.

Frazier's lawsuit alleges that the DNC was 'anything but impartial' and instead 'devoted its resources to propelling Clinton's candidacy ahead of all her rivals, even if this meant working directly against the interests of Democratic Party members including Bernie Sanders' supporters'.

The suit was filed on Tuesday in D.C. Superior Court by GOP lobbyist and attorney Jack Burkman. He has scheduled a press conference for 11am outside of DNC headquarters.

Frazier, 42, of Camden, New Jersey, told DailyMail.com he had worked tirelessly on behalf of Sanders with hundreds of other volunteers.

'I know that the DNC worked against Bernie Sanders, I was out there on the front line,' he said. 'The DNC blockaded a lot of stuff. For what the DNC and Hillary Clinton have done, we are going to hold them accountable.'

The Bernie supporter said he wanted Sanders's donors to be refunded their DNC contributions and to bring changes to the Democratic Party.

Frazier told DailyMail.com that he had worked tirelessly on behalf of Sanders with hundreds of volunteers. Above he is pictured with Green Party candidate Jill Stein

Frazier, who filed the suit on Tuesday morning, said he wants Sanders's donors to be refunded their DNC contributions and to bring changes to the Democratic Party

The suit also seeks access to the DNC servers, and potentially Clinton's private servers, alleging they hold evidence which proves the primary was rigged against Sanders.

Burkman said the legal complaint was a 'strong bipartisan effort to get justice from the DNC'.

'I am filing this lawsuit on behalf of all Bernie Sanders supporters,' he told DailyMail.com. 'I'm alleging the DNC committed fraud against Sanders's supporters during the primary. The system was rigged from the beginning and they never had a chance.'

And - according to the lawsuit  the servers 'will shed light on the hacking into the DNC during the summer of 2016 and information that will shed light on the role of DNC employee, Seth C. Rich's, possible role in the dissemination of DNC information'.

Burkman believes he will have access to the servers during the discovery phase of the lawsuit and will ask the judge for subpoenas if access is not granted.

The attorney believes that examining the servers will finally lead to answers in the Seth Rich murder case.

The suit was filed on Tuesday in D.C. Superior Court by GOP lobbyist and attorney Jack Burkman in what he's calling a 'strong bipartisan effort to get justice from the DNC'

'With access to these servers, we will finally be able to look at the electronic email trails from the DNC. We can now learn all about Seth as to whether he was the [DNC] leaker and if he released any information. There are so many unresolved questions,' Burkman said.

'There will be a number of collateral social benefits and one of them is the resolution of the Seth Rich case.'

Rich, 27, was fatally shot twice in the back while walking home alone in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of D.C. in the early hours of July 10, 2016. At the time of his death, he was working as a data analyst for the DNC.

Two weeks after his death, Wikileaks released the trove of DNC emails and founder Julian Assange appeared to suggest in an interview that Rich was one of his sources although Wikileaks later clarified by tweeting their 'original and only statement' on the murder.

The timing led to a flurry of theories that Rich had been the leaker and this was somehow connected to his death.

Burkman has set up his own independent investigation into Rich's murder and offered a $100,000 reward to solve the case.

In June, Burkman funded a report, by forensic psychology students, which claimed Rich was probably murdered by 'a hired killer or serial murderer'. The Rich family disputed the claim, Newsweek reported.

DC's Metropolitan Police Department have said the murder was a 'botched robbery' and Rich's parents  Joel and Mary Rich  have publicly supported the findings. They have urged the media to stop spreading conspiracy theories about his death.

Joel Rich said earlier this year that he did not believe that his son was behind the DNC email hack and would not have shared emails with WikiLeaks.

'Anyone who knew Seth knew that wasn't the way he would have handled the problem,' he told Fox News. 'He would not go outside the system.'

At the time of his death, Seth Rich was working as a data analyst for the DNC. Burkman has set up his own independent investigation into Rich's murder and offered a $100,000 reward to solve the case

Rich, 27, was fatally shot twice in the back while walking home alone in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of D.C. in the early hours of July 10, 2016

Burkman is no longer in contact with the Rich family and had not informed them about the suit.

'The family and I are working on separate tracks,' he said. 'I respect the privacy of a grieving family, but I find it unusual that they are committed to the advancement of certain narrative.

'They don't want to look at any other kind of explanations. We are curious as to why they want to suppress other theories. They say the rest are conspiracy theories but I don't know what that word means. I wish they would be more cooperative.'

A Rich family spokesperson responded to DailyMail.com with a 'no comment.'

More than a year later, there are no leads and no suspects in Rich's murder. MPD has no new information to release regarding the Seth Rich case at this time.

Burkman is skeptical of the police's investigation and claims to have information pointing to other explanations.

He said: 'Nothing was taken from Seth  not his wallet, gold chain, credit cards or a sizeable amount of cash. So you know there's no robbery gone awry. Then the question becomes, what was it?'

'We don't know who murdered Seth Rich. We have information leading in a number of directions, we have information leading in the Russia direction. We are investigating the DNC angle.

The timing led to a flurry of theories that Seth Rich had been the email leaker and this was somehow connected to his death. Rich's parents, Mary and Joel Rich, have dispute the claims and have urged the media to stop spreading conspiracy theories about his death

Burkman is no longer in contact with the Rich family and had not informed them about the suit

'We are trying to find out what is Seth Rich's role was in the leak did he give DNC info to Wikileaks, to Guccifer 2.0, to the Russians? We don't know.

He claims that Seth was very angry that Bernie was passed over and unfairly treated by the DNC.

'Seth was a strong Bernie guy, there is very little dispute over that. I think after this lawsuit we'll know who killed Seth Rich.'

Burkman did not wish to disclose many details about his investigation for security reasons.

'We have a number of people reaching out to us and we are analyzing their credibility and talking to these people about what they know. The Russian angle is one of those angles we are investigating,' he said.

Burkman has separately filed a lawsuit against the MPD, demanding access to Rich's medical examiner's report, autopsy documents, video footage and ballistics reports. That lawsuit is ongoing.

Frazier, 42, did not know Rich or have any connection to his family but suggested to DailyMail.com that the murder was linked to the DNC working against Bernie Sanders.

'I was on the front line and I can tell you what happened. Seth Rich was about to expose everything that was happening with the DNC. The establishment of the Democratic Party killed Seth Rich. We know that they did. That's what people are not talking about.'

Frazier said that he was working with Burkman, a conservative Republican, because some matters were of such importance that they transcended party lines.

'There is bipartisanship that goes on across this country all the time. When we can come together and work together for the good of the people, we will do that,' Frazier said.

'I'm an African-American but I was out there with 5,000 whites holding Black Lives Matters banners. That tells me something is wrong with our system and we have been oppressed of our votes all our lives. Bernie was right there with us.

'Another reason I'm right there with Bernie is that he's committed to changing the lives of African-American women but that message wasn't getting to our urban communities and schools enough because if it was, then Bernie would be the president right now.'

DailyMail.com did not receive a response after reaching out to the DNC and Hillary Clinton's representatives for comment.
Britain is home to more jihadis who have returned from Syria than almost all other countries, a new report reveals today.

Only Turkey, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia are home to more people who travelled to fight for ISIS than the UK.

Around 850 Britons travelled to the Middle East to take part in the war and around half are thought to be back in the UK - meaning more than 400 are still at large.

The figure is higher than the 300 returnees to Germany and 271 to France.

The report warns there has also been a surge in the number of women involved in attacks - with nearly a quarter of terror plots in Europe from the start of 2017 to May involving women.

In other developments, the independent reviewer of terror laws Max Hill warned the Government against 'criminalising thought' with a raft of new terror laws as promised in the Tory manifesto.

Mohammed Emwazi, better known as Jihadi John, was among the highest profile Britons who went to Syria to fight for ISIS. He was killed in a US drone strike in November 2015

International Development Minister Rory Stewart MP has said the only way of dealing with most British jihadis is to kill them. Pictured is a ISIS fighter waving the group's flag in Raqqa

Today's research comes after Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon repeated warnings that Britons fighting in Syria could be killed by RAF drone strikes.

A Conservative backbencher today warned a failure to prosecute everyone who returned from fighting for ISIS sent a 'positive signal' they were allowed to fight British soldiers overseas.

The paper, written by Richard Barrett, a former director of global counter-terrorism at MI6, said: 'While returning foreign fighters have not as yet added significantly to the threat of terrorism around the world, the number of attacks inspired or directed by the Islamic State continues to rise.

'All returnees, whatever their reason for going home, will continue to pose some degree of risk.'

Previous research has suggested that overall more than 40,000 individuals travelled to join Islamic State from more than 110 nations both before and after it declared a caliphate in June 2014.

The new assessment calculates that at least 5,600 citizens or residents have gone back to their home countries.

HOW MANY FORMER JIHADIS HAVE COME HOME? Turkey: 900 Tunisia: 800 Saudi Arabia: 760 Britain: 425 Germany: 300 France: 271 Advertisement

It says: 'Added to the unknown numbers from other countries, this represents a huge challenge for security and law enforcement entities.'

The report notes that most returnees 'will be unlikely to experience anything in their lives at home that matches the intensity of their experience as a member of IS, whether or not they were fighting on the front line'.

It adds: 'If on return they begin again to feel as rootless and lacking in purpose as they did before they left, then they are unlikely to settle back easily into a 'normal' life, and as IS increases its external campaign, both through action and propaganda,returnees may be particularly vulnerable to contact from people who were part of the network that recruited them, or appeals for help from ex-comrades in arms.

'It seems probable that the influence and involvement of returnees will grow as their numbers increase.'

Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary (pictured yesterday in the House of Commons) said Brits who have fought with ISIS have made their choice and face being killed

Questions over how returning extremists are managed by the counter-terrorism agencies have intensified as IS comes under fierce military pressure.

Kettering MP Philip Hollobone said his constituents were 'increasingly alarmed' about the number of British jihadists that had joined the terror group in Iraq and Syria and were not prosecuted when they return home.

Kettering MP Philip Hollobone said his constituents were 'increasingly alarmed' about the number of British jihadists that had joined the terror group in Iraq and Syria and were not prosecuted when they return home

Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt said it was not about rounding people up with no legal basis to do so, though anyone who could put the UK at risk should expect to be questioned and monitored by security services.

Backbencher Mr Hollobone said: 'Please correct me if I'm wrong, I don't believe there's been a single prosecution for any offence.

'Can I make the minister try and understand that if no effective action is taken against these people in this country, that is a positive signal for future potential jihadists to say we can go off and fight British services overseas, because nothing will happen to us when we return.'

In reply, Mr Burt said any decision to prosecute would be taken by the police and Crown Prosecution Service on a case-by-case basis.

'That requires evidence of what people have done,' he said.

At the weekend a Government minister suggested the only way of dealing with most British IS fighters in Syria was to kill them.

Rory Stewart, the international development minister, later emphasised that combatants should be dealt with 'in accordance with law'.

His remarks came days after Max Hill QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, called for a focus on 'reintegration' in cases where authorities have decided individuals who return should not face prosecution.

Mr Hill said it was right that security services have left space for those who travelled out of a sense of naivety, at a young age and who return in a 'state of utter disillusionment' to be diverted away from the criminal courts.

In a speech tonight, Mr Hill will warn against a raft of new terror laws.

He will tell human rights campaign Justice: 'We do not, and should not, criminalise thought without action or preparation for action.

'Whilst we can all agree that there should be nowhere for real terrorists to hide, we should also agree that legislating in the name of terrorism when the targeted activity is not actually terrorism would be quite wrong.'
The adoptive father of a three-year-old girl whose body was found near their home this week has admitted dumping her remains but denies killing her, claiming that she choked in front of him as he tried to get her to drink her milk.

Wesley Mathews, 37, changed his story on Monday after police found the remains of his three-year-old daughter Sherin in a drainage tunnel near their house in Richardson, Texas.

He initially claimed that Sherin, who he and his wife adopted from India last June, wandered off from their home at 3.15am on October 7 after he took her outside as a punishment because she did not drink his milk.

At first he said he did not know what had happened to her but suggested to police she may have been taken by coyotes which are known to frequent the area.

On Monday, after police found Sherin's remains, he went to the police station to change his story.

He admitted knowing she was dead all along but denied killing her, saying instead that she choked after he forced her to drink milk in their garage.

Mathews said he realized she was dead when her breathing 'slowed' and her pulse stopped. He then admitted removing her body from their $300,000 home.

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Wesley Mathews (right in his mugshot on Monday) has been arrested for the death of his daughter, Sherin, three, whose body he dumped in a drainage tunnel on October 7. He claims her death was an accident and that she choked on her milk in front of him

'She was coughing and her breathing slowed. Eventually, Wesley Mathews no longer felt a pulse on the child and believed she had died.

'Wesley Mathews then admitted to removing the child's body from the home,' the arrest warrant states.

It is not clear what time in the day Sherin died.

Initially, he said he made the toddler stand outside next to a tree in the middle of the night as punishment for not drinking her milk and that when he returned to find her at 3.15am, she had wandered off near an alley where there were often coyotes.

On Sunday morning, police found the remains of a toddler in a drainage tunnel half-a-mile from the family's rented home which they say are 'most likely' those of Sherin.

On Monday, Wesley showed up at a police station with his attorney and changed his story but detectives will not say if he has confessed to killing his daughter or not.

He has been charged with first degree felony injury to a child, a wide-ranging crime which can be punishable by anything from five years in jail to life imprisonment. His bond was set at $1million.

Wesley and his wife Sini adopted Sherin from India two years ago.

Mathews initially told police that he took Sherin outside of their $300,000 home in Richardson, Texas, (above), on October 7 at 3am. He said she vanished at 3.15am and he went back inside to do laundry before eventually calling police at 8am. On Monday, he changed his story to say she died inside their garage

Sherin, three, was adopted from an orphanage in India last year. Her parents said she had a developmental condition and that they often fed her in the middle of the night if she woke up hungry to encourage growth

Sherin's body was found in this tunnel half-a-mile from their home on October 22

They have another biological daughter, four, who was removed from their care after Sherin's disappearance and is now being looked after by a foster family.

Sini, who is said to have been asleep when Sherin vanished, is not facing charges.

Wesley did not call police to report Sherin missing until around 8am on October 7, five hours after he first claimed she vanished.

On October 12, police revealed their belief that the family's car was used between 4am and 5am on the day of Sherin's death.

Detectives appealed to the couple's neighbors with surveillance cameras for any footage which may have captured the vehicle being driven away from the home.

Initially, Wesley claimed he had put Sherin outside as a punishment because she did not drink her milk.

Police already knew that the family's Acura MDX SUV (file image above) left the home between 4am and 5am on the day Sherin disappeared. On Monday, the girl's father admitted removing her body from their home

Mathews and his wife Sini (right) appeared in court last week where a judge ordered that their other, biological daughter, remain in the care of a foster family for another three weeks pending the investigation into Sherin's disappearance. Sini is not facing any charges

Mathews and his wife Sini adopted Sherin from an orphanage in Bahir, India, last June (above)

The couple's four-year-old biological daughter (above with Sherin) has been placed into foster care

He claimed it was normal for him to feed the girl at 3am because he and his wife were trying to help her overcome a developmental condition which stunted her growth and that as part of their treatment plan, they fed her whenever she was hungry.

After Sherin was reported missing on October 7, police arrested her father for child endangerment because he had left her outside alone in an area where he said there were coyotes. He is pictured in his first booking photo (above)

After taking her outside to stand beside a tree, he said he left her alone and that 15 minutes later, when he went to retrieve her, she was gone.

Rather than call the police immediately, he said he went inside to do laundry and waited for her to come back on her own.

Wesley reported the girl missing at 8am that day.

After giving his first statement, police arrested him for endangering a child by leaving her outside on her own at 3am, as he had admitted to doing.

He was booked into county jail and had a mugshot taken but was released on bail shortly afterwards.

The Mathews adopted Sherin from the Mother Teresa Anath Seva Sansthan orphanage in Bihar last June.

Staff at the orphanage said she was brought to them after being found in a bush by local people, Dallas News reports. It is not known what Mathews does for a living.
Tory whip Chris Heaton-Harris has been accused of trying to undermine academic freedom by sending out the controversial Brexit letter to universities

A senior Tory whip was today accused of a McCarthy-style witch hunt after he sent a 'sinister' letter to universities asking for the names of professors teaching Brexit.

Chris Heaton-Harris, who campaigned for Brexit, also asked for copies of syllabuses and links to online lectures covering the topic.

Furious academics tore into the MP over the letter, which they warned had echoes of the US Cold War witch hunt led by Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Chris Patten, the former Conservative party chairman and Oxford University chancellor, said the Tory MP's 'disgraceful' demand will drive more young voters into the arms of Jeremy Corbyn.

He told BBC radio 4's World At One: 'When I heard about it, I had to check up it was true, because it seemed to me such an extraordinary example of outrageous and foolish behaviour, offensive and idiotic Leninism.

'I couldn't believe that this could come from a Conservative MP - I think he must be an agent of Mr Corbyn intent on further increasing the number of young people who want to vote Labour.

'It's absolutely disgraceful and I'm sure most universities' vice-chancellors will deal with it in the most appropriate way which is to drop it in the waste paper basket.'

He said the letter was a 'pathetic attempt' to cow academics into following the Brexiteer line.

Professor David Green, Vice Chancellor at the University of Worcester, said: 'When I read this extraordinary letter on Parliamentary paper from a serving MP, I felt a chill down my spine.

'Was this the beginnings of a very British McCarthyism?'

He said the apparently innocent request was actually 'so so dangerous' as it risks undermining academic freedom.

He said: 'Here is the first step to the thought police, the political censor and Newspeak, naturally justified as 'the will of the British people', another phrase to be found on Mr Heaton-Harris's website.

'Then I thought that only one response was appropriate, which Churchill spoke so brilliantly for all who love Britain and democracy when he said 'we shall outlive the power of tyranny' and 'we shall never surrender'.

Chris Patten, chancellor of Oxford University, tore into the letter which he said is 'absolutely disgraceful' (file pic)

'That is my reply to Mr Heaton-Harris MP's sinister letter.'

Matthew Goodwin, a senior fellow at Chatham House, said: 'This is outrageous. Britain has long valued, & thrived from, academic freedom. This is not the 1960s McCarthy era.'

Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner branded Mr Heaton-Harris' actions 'unacceptable' and 'ignorant'.

She said: 'Quite frankly governments should keep their nose out of how universities teach lessons.

'I'm sure that students know the difference between indoctrination and the ability to study and learn and challenge perceptions and challenge ideas.'

The letter, which has been widely circulated online, asks for the name of who is teaching Brexit and links to the syllabus and online lectures relating to the topic

Ms Rayner added: 'I think it's a very ignorant comment to make and a very concerning comment when they want to interfere in the way that our universities are run.

'Professors know what they are doing and quite frankly I think it was an ill-judged comment and remark to make and he should withdraw it.'

Jessica Cole, head of policy at the Russell Group, which represents 24 leading universities, said: 'Whether academics supported leave or remain at the referendum has no bearing on their ability to deliver stimulating, challenging courses which include a full range of views and opinions on our relationship with Europe.'

Theresa May's spokesman he scrambled the distance the Prime Minister from the controversial letter.

Tory MP Paul Scully said his daughter was handed pro-Remain book on her university course

He said: 'This was sent in his capacity as an MP, not a government representative.

'What the Prime Minister has always been very clear on is her respect for the freedom and independence of universities and the role they play in creating open and stimulating debate.

'Free speech is one of the foundations on which our universities are built and, of course, it should be protected.'

But Commons leader Andrea Leadom said the letter was not at all threatening.

She told BBC Radio 4s The World At One: That is a courteous letter asking for information, theres nothing sinister about it and I would take it in that light.

Hes not compelling anybody to do anything. Hes asking a question as a Member of Parliament and I personally dont see anything sinister about asking that question.

Universities are bastions of free speech, so to be horrified by somebody asking a simple question does seem to me a bit odd that universities should react in such a negative way to such a courteous request.

Mr Heaton-Harris defended himself by tweeting: 'To be absolutely clear, I believe in free speech in our universities and in having an open and vigorous debate on Brexit.'

While Tory MP for Sutton and Cheam Paul Scully tweeted a picture of a pro-Remain book he says his daughter was given while at university.
Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince on Tuesday vowed to restore 'moderate, open' Islam, breaking with ultra-conservative clerics in favour of an image catering to foreign investors and Saudi youth.

'We are returning to what we were before - a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world,' Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said at an economic forum in Riyadh.

'We will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today,' the 32-year-old, who was appointed Crown Prince in June, added. 'We will end extremism very soon.'

Saudi Arabia has recently started to loosen its ultra-conservative rules, including allowing women to drive and hosting a mixed-gender national day. But it has long been blamed for backing terror organisations around the world.

Saudi Arabia's powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 32, said that he plans to 'destroy' the 'destructive ideas' in the kingdom, which is known for its ultra-conservative rule

It was claimed last year that the Saudi Arabian government had links to the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000. Also, 15 of the 19 men involved in the attacks were from Saudi Arabia.

Additionally, Saudi Arabia is home to more jihadis who have returned from the war in Syria than almost all other countries, figures revealed this week.

Only Turkey and Tunisia are home to more people who travelled to fight for ISIS with some 760 having returned to their homeland, according to a report written by Richard Barrett, a former director of global counter-terrorism at MI6.

And the kingdom is 'at the top of the list' of countries exporting extremist Islam to the UK, a report from earlier this year revealed.

Today, Prince Mohammed, known by his initials MBS, said he would see to it his country 'moved past 1979', a reference to the rise of political Islam in the years following the assassination of King Faisal in 1975.

The early 1970s had ushered major change into the oil-rich kingdom, including the introduction of television and schools for girls.

CROWN PRINCE WANTS TO RETURN SAUDI ARABIA 'TO WHAT IT WAS' Prince Mohammed bin Salman said he would see to it his country moved past 1979, a reference to the rise of political Islam in the years following the assassination of King Faisal in 1975. 'We want to live a normal life. A life in which our religion translates to tolerance, to our traditions of kindness,' he said. 'Seventy percent of the Saudi population is under 30, and honestly we will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today and at once,' the crown prince said. The early 1970s had ushered major change into the oil-rich kingdom, including the introduction of television and schools for girls. But that came to a halt as the Al-Sheikh family, which controls religious and social regulation in the kingdom, and the ruling Al-Saud family slowly reinforced the conservative policies Riyadh is known for. 'We are returning to what we were before - a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions, traditions and people around the globe,' Prince Mohammed said. Advertisement

But that came to a halt as the Al-Sheikh family, which controls religious and social regulation in the kingdom, and the ruling Al-Saud family slowly reinforced the conservative policies Riyadh is known for.

'We are returning to what we were before - a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions, traditions and people around the globe,' he said.

The crown prince's statement is the most direct attack by a top official on the Gulf country's influential conservative religious establishment.

While the Saudi government continues to draw criticism from international rights groups, Prince Mohammed has pushed ahead with reforms since his sudden appointment on June 21.

He is widely regarded as being the force behind King Salman's decision last month to lift a long-standing ban on women driving.

He has vowed to modernise certain sectors in the kingdom, hinting that long-banned cinemas would soon be permitted as part of ambitious reforms for a post-oil era that could shake up the austere kingdom's cultural scene.

In recent months, Saudi Arabia has organised concerts, a Comic-Con pop culture festival and a mixed-gender national day celebration that saw people dancing in the streets to thumping electronic music for the first time.

Saudi Arabia has also made efforts to diversify its revenue streams and overhaul its oil-dependent economy and conservative society.

Earlier Tuesday, Prince Mohammed and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund announced the launch of an independent economic zone along the kingdom's northwestern coastline.

The 380billion ($500billion) project, dubbed NEOM, will operate under regulations separate from those that govern the rest of Saudi Arabia.

Crown Prince Mohammed (pictured) has rocketed to the pinnacle of power in the kingdom, pushing a reform agenda called Vision 2030 which is aimed at weaning the country off oil and introducing social reforms

The 26,500 square km (10,230 square mile) zone, known as NEOM, will focus on industries including energy and water, biotechnology, food, advanced manufacturing and entertainment, Crown Prince Mohammed said.

And despite developing a city based on alternative energy, Prince Mohammed said that he still expects oil prices to rise.

Crown Prince Mohammed has rocketed to the pinnacle of power in the kingdom, pushing a reform agenda called Vision 2030 which is aimed at weaning the country off oil and introducing social reforms.

But critics say Prince Mohammed is not doing enough to liberalise politics in a country where the king enjoys absolute authority.

Monitors, including Amnesty International, say Saudi Arabia has in parallel stepped up its repression of peaceful rights activists.

Saudi authorities last month arrested dozens of activists, including clerics, without disclosing any charges against them.

Still, however, the United States and UK continued to sell arms to the country.

Saudi Arabia has been buying arms from the UK since the 1960s. British sales of military equipment to Saudi Arabia topped 1.1billion ($1.4billion) for the first half of 2017.

In May, US President Donald Trump signed a $350billion (266billion) arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman shakes hands with Klaus Kleinfeld after Kleinfeld was appointed as NEOM's Chief Executive Officer, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund announced onTuesday the launch of, NEOM, an independent economic zone along the kingdom's northwestern coastline

SAUDI ARABIA'S LINKS TO THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS Last year, allegations emerged that appeared to connect the Saudi Arabia's government with the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000. It was claimed that at least two of the 19 men who hijacked four planes and flew them into targets in the two cities in 2001 had contact with Saudi officials before the attack. Additionally, the flight certificate of Al-Qaeda bomb maker Ghassan Al-Sharbi was discovered hidden in an envelope from the Saudi embassy in Washington when they arrested him in 2002. Al-Sharbi, who became an Al Qaeda bombmaker, is believed to have learned how to fly with the 9/11 hijackers but did not take part in the attacks. Shortly before his arrest, he buried a bundle of documents, which is believed to have included the certificate. The cache was discovered by US authorities and details, written in a memo known as Document 17 in 2003, were released without fanfare by investigators in 2015. They were only brought to the public's attention when an activist discovered them and wrote about them on his website. Osama Bin Laden, the founder of Al-Qaeda, the group responsible for the attacks, was born in Saudi Arabia Also last year, 28 formerly classified pages of a 9/11 report were released, revealing a myriad of supposed links between the hijackers and Saudi officials. The documents said two of the hijackers were 'in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi government'. It also stated that the FBI and CIA were aware of possible links between terrorists Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi and two Saudi government officials, one of whom had connections to the Saudi ambassador to the United States Fifteen of the 19 men who hijacked four planes and flew them into targets in the two cities in 2001 were Saudi citizens Both al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 - the plane that was crashed into the Pentagon. The declassified pages also suggest that Osama bin Laden's half-brother, Abdullah, worked for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC, and was in charge of an organisation believed to support terror. They also reveal that the FBI had evidence suggesting a 'close associate' of Abdullah was in contact with Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, who were on board the planes flown into the World Trade Center. Despite the vast collection of evidence, the White House said last year that the documents showed no evidence of Saudi involvement in the attacks. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, a separate US commission also concluded that there was no evidence of official Saudi connivance. Fifteen of the 19 men involved in the September 11 terror attacks were Saudi citizens, though the country has always denied having any role in the attacks. Osama Bin Laden, the founder of Al-Qaeda, the group found to be responsible for the attacks, was born in Saudi Arabia. Advertisement

The kingdom has engaged in a 60-year, multi-million dollar campaign to advance its extremist brand of Wahhabi Islam in British Muslim communities, according to a study by the Henry Jackson Society.

This has been achieved through endowment grants to mosques, the funding of Islamic education institutions and the training of imams, the report authors said.

HUMAN RIGHTS IN SAUDI ARABIA While women are now allowed to drive, they still cannot have any interaction a man who she is not related to without permission from a male guardian, and have no rights in custody battles when the children reach a certain age. The nation is also known for its feared religious police with lashings handed out for infringements as minor as a woman not wearing her hijab. The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, as it is officially known, is responsible for ensuring Islamic laws are not broken in public. But it has repeatedly been accused of human rights violations. In 2002, the committee refused to allow female students out of a burning school in the holy city of Mecca because they were not wearing correct head cover. The decision is thought to have contributed to the high death toll of 15. Another recent case has seen a blogger sentenced to a thousand lashes for insulting Islam having created a website called Free Saudi Liberals. The wife of Ensaf Haidar said the first 50 lashes, which were caught on film, nearly killed her husband. Advertisement

Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, said earlier this month that it would monitor interpretations of the Prophet Mohammad's teachings to prevent them being used to justify violence or terrorism, the Culture and Information Ministry has said.

In a decree, King Salman ordered the establishment of an authority to scrutinise uses of the 'hadith' - accounts of the sayings, actions or habits of the Prophet that are used by preachers and jurists to support teachings and edicts on all aspects of life.

The ministry said late on Tuesday that the body's aim would be to 'eliminate fake and extremist texts and any texts that contradict the teachings of Islam and justify the committing of crimes, murders and terrorist acts'.

Islamist groups such as Islamic State and al Qaeda have used interpretations of hadiths - numbered in the thousands and pored over by scholars for centuries - to justify violence and to urge supporters to carry out attacks.

Saudi Arabia's approach to religious doctrine is important because of its symbolic position as the birthplace of Islam, while its oil exports allow it to fund mosques abroad.

Its ultra-conservative Wahhabi clergy have been close to the Al Saud dynasty since the mid-18th century, offering it Islamic legitimacy in return for control over mosques and universities.

Prince Mohammed is widely regarded as being the force behind King Salman's (pictured) decision last month to lift a long-standing ban on women driving

THE CREATION OF SAUDI ARABIA AND RISE OF POLITICAL ISLAM King Faisal worked to modernise life in Saudi Arabia until his assassination in 1975 Saudi Arabia is considered the 'home of Islam, and is the location of the cities of Mecca and Medina, where Muhammed lived and died. In the 1740s, the founder of the Al Saud dynasty, Muhammad bin Saud, joined forces with the religious leader Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the strict Sunni form of Islam called Wahhabi. The first Saudi state was then formed in 1744, around the area of what is now Riyadh, which rapidly expanded to create the present-day territory of Saudi Arabia. After battling with the Ottoman Empire over territory for decades, a revolt backed by Britain in the early 1900s led to the creation of two states, Hejaz and Nejd. In 1932, the two states were united to create the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The new kingdom's large influx of foreign workers in the the oil industry increased xenophobia. At the same time, the government started spending more money, leading to large deficits and excessive foreign borrowing. In 1953, the Saud of Saudi Arabia became the kingdom's king. He was deposed in favour of his half-brother, King Faisal in 1964. Crown Prince Mohammed has rocketed to the pinnacle of power in the kingdom, pushing a reform agenda called Vision 2030 which is aimed at weaning the country off oil and introducing social reforms King Faisal worked to modernise life in Saudi Arabia until his assassination in 1975. The early 1970s had ushered major change into the oil-rich kingdom, including the introduction of television and schools for girls. But that came to a halt as the Al-Sheikh family, which controls religious and social regulation in the kingdom, and the ruling Al-Saud family slowly reinforced the conservative policies Riyadh is known for. And until recently the country has been known for its strict conservatism, which Crown Prince Mohammed is currently trying to change. Crown Prince Mohammed has rocketed to the pinnacle of power in the kingdom, pushing a reform agenda called Vision 2030 which is aimed at weaning the country off oil and introducing social reforms. But critics say Prince Mohammed is not doing enough to liberalise politics in a country where the king enjoys absolute authority. Advertisement

The traditional Wahhabi doctrine favors a strict version of Islamic law and a return to early Muslim practices, and views Shi'ites as heretics.

But senior clergy have denounced militant Islamist doctrines such as those of al Qaeda or Islamic State, while the government, which vets clerics in Saudi Arabias 70,000 mosques, has sacked many for encouraging violence or sedition.

The government has begun to promote an alternative narrative of Saudi identity that keeps Wahhabism as a central focus, but still allows secular themes such as nationalism and cultural heritage that predates Islam to shine through.

Saudi Arabia also has growing tensions with Qatar over its alleged support of Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood which is listed by Riyadh as a terrorist organisation - charges that Doha denies.

The Muslim Brotherhood represents an ideological threat to Riyadh's dynastic system of rule.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic and transport links with Qatar in June over its alleged support for Islamists including the Brotherhood.

The government toughened its stance following the Arab Spring after it averted unrest by increasing salaries and other state spending but the Brotherhood gained power elsewhere in the region.

SAUDI ARABIA ANNOUNCES 380 BILLION INDUSTRIAL ZONE Saudi Arabia announced on Tuesday a 380billion ($500billion) plan to build a business and industrial zone that links with Jordan and Egypt, the biggest effort yet to free the kingdom from dependence on oil exports. The city will be run entirely on alternative energy and be an innovation hub for the future and operate under regulations separate from those that govern the rest of Saudi Arabia. The 26,500 square km (10,230 square mile) zone, known as NEOM, will focus on industries including energy and water, biotechnology, food, advanced manufacturing and entertainment, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said. Despite building a city based on alternative energy, Prince Mohammed is confident that oil prices will increase, due to a need from petrochemical and other industries, not just for energy production. Image from promotional video as Saudis set $380billion ($500billion) plan to develop border region with Jordan, Egypt 'I do not think demand for oil will decline but will increase between 2030 and 2040,' Prince Mohammed bin Salman told a major investment conference in Riyadh. The ambitious project could lead the way in the use of drones, driverless cars and robotics. The kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, which the crown prince chairs, the Saudi government and global technology firms will help build the city. The announcement came as an international business conference got under way in Riyadh, drawing over 3,500 people from 88 countries. Arranged by Saudi Arabia's main sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the conference is labelled the Future Investment Initiative - an effort to present the world's top oil exporter as a leading global investment destination. Saudi Arabia's economy, though rich, has struggled to overcome low oil prices. Prince Mohammed has launched a series of economic and social reforms - such as allowing women to drive - to modernise the kingdom. Officials hope a privatisation programme, including the sale of 5 per cent of oil giant Saudi Aramco, will raise 228billion ($300billion). Riyadh is cutting red tape and removing barriers to investment; on Sunday, it said it would let strategic foreign investors own more than 10 percent of listed Saudi companies. NEOM could be a major focus of new investment. The Saudi government, the PIF and local and international investors are expected to put more than half a trillion dollars into it in coming years, Prince Mohammed said. Adjacent to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba and near maritime trade routes that use the Suez Canal, the zone will serve as a gateway to the proposed King Salman Bridge, which will link Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the PIF said. 'NEOM is situated on one of the world's most prominent economic arteries ... Its strategic location will also facilitate the zone's rapid emergence as a global hub that connects Asia, Europe and Africa.' There was no immediate comment on the plan from Jordan and Egypt, which are close allies of Saudi Arabia. Riyadh said it was already in contact with potential investors and would complete the project's first phase by 2025. Saudi Minister of Commerce and Investment Majid al-Qasabi talks to the audience at the opening of Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh Prince Mohammed appointed Klaus Kleinfeld, a former chief executive of Siemens AG and Alcoa Inc, to run the NEOM project. Saudi Arabia will need huge financial and technical resources to build NEOM on the scale it envisages. Past experience suggests this may be difficult. Bureaucracy has slowed many Saudi development plans, and private investors are cautious about getting involved in state projects, partly because of an uncertain legal environment. The zone, which will have its own tax and labour laws and an autonomous judicial system, is to power itself solely with wind power and solar energy, PIF said - a goal which may be hard to achieve in practice. But the project underlines Prince Mohammed's ambition to rescue the economy from severe damage caused by low oil prices. NEOM will reduce the volume of money leaking out of Saudi Arabia by expanding limited local investment options, the PIF said. A key source of future investment funds for the PIF, which now has about 1.75billion ($230billion) of assets under management, is the government's planned sale of a roughly 5 per cent stake in national oil giant Saudi Aramco, which could raise tens of billions of dollars. PIF managing director Yasir al-Rumayyan told the conference that Saudi Arabia was still on track to conduct an initial public offer of Aramco shares in 2018, but did not say on which stock markets the company would be listed. Aramco CEO Amin Nasser told reporters that in addition to Riyadh, possible foreign listings in markets such as New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong had been looked at, and a decision still had to be made. Advertisement
A Florida woman was ordered to remove a pro-Donald Trump poster from her property after receiving a code violation.

The homemade sign stands in the backyard of Elaine Simmons, 72, of Minneola, and reads 'toot For Trump' as well as 'proud to be an American' and 'we stand for the national anthem'.

Simmons said she put the sign up back when Trump was a candidate in November 2016 but that she didn't receive any complaints until it was edited to add the latter two slogans.

Elaine Simmons, 72, of Minneola, Florida, was ordered to remove a pro-Trump sign from her property after receiving a code violation. The homemade sign reads 'Toot For Trump' as well as 'Proud to be an American' and 'We stand for the national anthem' (left and right)

Simmons (pictured) said she put the sign up back when Trump was a candidate in November 2016 but that she didn't receive any complaints until it was edited to add the latter two slogans

'To me, if you can't stand for the national anthem and represent the flag for which your veterans have given you freedom, then you need to buy a one-way ticket to somewhere,' Simmons told Fox 35 Orlando.

Simmons said that after she posted a photo of her sign on Facebook, the county received a complaint and issued her a code violation notice.

'No one complained about it until after I put up... that "we stand for the national anthem",' she said.

Simmons received a letter from the Lake County government on October 9 informing her that the sign was a violation because it's been up for almost a year, not because of the messages on it.

'Our code does not permit a temporary sign such as this to be in place for more than 90 days,' a Lake County representative told News 6. 'We are aware that this sign has been up since at least November 2016.'

Days later, Simmons's sign was vandalized with the words 'Grab in by the p***y' in reference to words that Trump was revealed to have said in a 2005 recording.

Simmons's sign was vandalized with the words 'Grab in by the p***y' in reference to words that Trump was revealed to have said in a 2005 recording

Simmons said that after she posted a photo of her sign on Facebook, the county received a complaint and issued her a code violation notice. Lake County says the violation is because it's been up for almost a year, not because of the messages on it

The couple was told they have 14 days to comply with the ordinance or risk being fined. The Simmons' are still unsure what their next step will be.

Simmons referred to the ordeal as a 'live and learn moment' but told Fox 35 that the fact she had to remove her sign is 'really, really sad'.

The controversy surrounding the national anthem began last year when former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, began kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police brutality.

Since then, the movement has spread to virtually every NFL team - some choosing to kneel during 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and others locking arms.

President Trump further ignited the debate in September when he implied that teams should fire any player who refused to stand.
President Donald Trump is ending his administration's refugee ban today and opening the nation's doors to people fleeing violence from most countries in the world.

Applicants from 11 countries will continue to face hurdles for at least another 90 days as the administration continues a review process, a senior official said Tuesday.

U.S. officials would not disclose the countries its flagging during a call with reporters early Tuesday evening, but the list is likely to include the countries affected by Trump's travel bans - Iraq, Sudan, Iran, Chad, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.

The Trump administration is ending its refugee ban today and opening the nation's doors to people fleeing violence from every country in the world. That includes Syria, a country that President Donald Trump targeted in his first travel ban

Trump signed an executive order today instructing his administration to move beyond the current refugee ban and replace it with a plan that officials explained to reporters this evening.

The directive authorized DHS to approve refugees from the 11 undisclosed, 'high-risk countries' that are under scrutiny on a case-by-case basis if they are proven not to be a national security threat.

Federal officials must also prove that accepting the refugees is in the national interest.

Applicants will undergo more aggressive vetting than before. Officials would not describe the enhancements in detail on the call but revealed that they pertain to the application process, the interview and adjudication process and systems checks.

Government reviewers will collect more biographical data to help the government evaluate the truthfulness of the applicants' claims about their criminal history and ties to bad actors, an official said.

Fraud detection officers will now be deployed to certain refugee processing centers overseas, as well, the official added. Enhanced screening will also including social media screening.

The stricter vetting procedures were first outlined in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday morning.

A memo to federal agencies that was released Tuesday evening said that 'improvements to the [refugee] vetting process are generally adequate to ensure the security and welfare of the United States.'

It gave the secretaries of State and DHS permission to 'resume that program' with instructions to 'apply special measures to certain categories of refugees whose entry continues to pose potential threats to the security and welfare of the United States.'

Trump mandated a review of the refugee admissions process in 90 days and annually thereafter.

He ordered his administration to determine 'as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, whether any actions taken to address the risks to the security and welfare of the United States presented by permitting any category of refugees to enter this country should be modified or terminated, and, if so, what those modifications or terminations should be.'

Within 180 days, Trump said he wants his attorney general, with the advice of the secretary of state and the secretary of homeland security, to provide a report on the effect of refugee resettlement that addresses national security concerns, public safety, and the 'general welfare' of the United States.

Trump initially blocked Syrian refugees from coming to the U.S. in the early days of his administration.

After that order was challenged in court on the grounds that the restrictions were intended to be a Muslim ban, Trump ordered a 120-day suspension on all refugee resettlement in the U.S. so his administration could conduct a thorough review of the process.

The review period was set to end on Oct. 24. The administration declined to renew it.

U.S. officials told reporters last month that the Department of Homeland Security will apply extreme vetting measures to residents of eight countries wishing to travel to the United States after their home countries could not or would not meet new vetting requirements.

Those countries are assumed to be on the new list that's being culled by the Trump administration, although officials on the call Tuesday would not say so.

Reuters said in a report last week that the U.S. could also increase scrutiny on women and children claiming refugee status.

Such checks could slow refugee admissions, even though the ban has been lifted.

Refugees are already vetted using biographic information and biometric data at varying levels of intensity.

Trump ordered a 120-day suspension on all refugee resettlement in the U.S. so his administration could conduct a thorough review of the process earlier this year. The review period was set to end on Oct. 24. The administration declined to renew it

Yet multiple sources told Reuters that the government is looking to raise the bar for women and children and bring it closer to the rules the government is applying to men.

U.S. officials across administrations have required adult, males to pass more intense examinations that identify extremist ties and determine the applicants' propensity to become radicalized.

Trump warned repeatedly as he was running for president that Syrian men entering the United States as refugees are a 'great Trojan horse.'

'We have no idea who these people are, where they come from,' Trump said, ignoring the 18 to 24 months of research the State Department does on each Syrian refugee applicant.

He said the U.S. should test prospective refugees to affirm that they 'share our values and love our people.'

The U.S. accepted 18,007 Syrian refugees between 2011, when the country's civil war started, and the end of 2016.

President Barack Obama increased refugee admissions in his second term, finishing out his time in office with a proposed cap of 85,000 in 2016.

He wanted to raise the number of admission even further to 110,000 in 2017.

Trump has said he wanted a 50,000 refugee quota, citing national security concerns. It crossed that threshold for the fiscal year that ended in September last July.

The administration said it would lower rate even more this fiscal year to 45,000.
The Duchess of Sussex told the latest episode of her $30million Archetypes podcast for Spotify that her confidante is the reason why she didn't stop campaigning for 'women and girls' after joining the Royal Family. Meghan did not name the woman who spoke to her on the eve of her wedding day, but there was immediate speculation on social media that it could be Oprah Winfrey or Serena Williams, who both saw her walk down the aisle at Windsor Castle in May 2018 (right). The Duchess of Sussex interviewed British actress and influencer Jameela Jamil and the American-Iranian star of X-Men and 24, Shohreh Aghdashloo, 70. Ms Aghdashloo spoke about the fight to 'bring democracy back' to the country of her birth amid ongoing protests in Tehran and across the country over the treatment of women breaking strict hijab rules. In an episode entitled: 'The Audacity of the Activist', released this morning, she said: 'It reminded me of a message that was shared with me just a few days before my wedding by a very, very influential and inspiring woman who for her own privacy, I won't share who it was with you. But she said to me: "I know that your life is changing but please don't give up your activism, don't give up because it means so much to women and girls". And I kept doing the work for women and girls because it matters, yes, but also because she encouraged me to do so'. Meghan and her guests discussed why activism and 'big ideas' from women are 'often deemed audacious' and used against them to make them 'feel small' - at one point the Duchess claims that women get 'no credit and all the blame'. Meghan also thanked her friend Jameela for 'fighting back' for her after the British actress and influencer claimed the royal has been 'demonised' since she started her relationship with Harry. Miss Jamil, 36, revealed the former Suits star privately reaches out to women 'in our most lonely and desperate moments'.
Australia has sent 80 troops trained in the art of house-by-house combat tactics to the Philippines in an effort to aid local soldiers in the fight against ISIS.

As the fears of jihadist attacks grow in the region of South East Asia, Defence Minister Marise Payne has established a base of mobile training teams there to stop extremism spreading down under, the Daily Telegraph reports.

'The spread of Daesh (ISIS) inspired terrorism is a direct threat to Australia and its interests and we are committed to working with our partners and allies to ensuring Daesh cannot establish a geographic foothold in the region,' she said.

As the fears of jihadist attacks grow in the region of South East Asia, Defence Minister Marise Payne has established a base of mobile training teams there to stop extremism spreading down under

The Australian Defence Force has been slowly but surely creating a presence in the Philippines since July earlier this year, particularly as they have more experience house-to-house style moves the Filippinos are looking to assert dominance in

The Filipino Army and Marine Corps concede that their experience in jungle warfare against the Islamic conspirators are second to none, soldiers were not equipped in training for street fighting.

The Australian Defence Force has been slowly but surely creating a presence in the Philippines since July earlier this year, particularly as they have more experience house-to-house style moves the Filippinos are looking to assert dominance in.

'The ADF will provide mobile training teams that will begin providing urban warfare, counter-terrorism training in the Philippines in the coming days,' Senator Payne continued.

Ms Payne (pictured) has called for Oceania neighbours to support the end of extremist threats in the region

The five-month Marawi conflict, which was being fought against IS invaders, saw the RAAF step into the country to assist in surveillance.

More than 165 soldiers were killed and 900 jihadists during the almost half-year battle.

Ms Payne has called for Oceania neighbours to support the end of extremist threats in the region.
Deidre Murphy, 62, allegedly staged the bomb hoax from a phone box as she was in a group of protesters against the event taking place inside the Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff

A great-grandmother is accused of making two hoax calls to report a bomb in a bid to disrupt a military defence show.

Deidre Murphy, 62, allegedly staged the bomb hoax from a phone box as she was in a group of protesters against the event taking place inside the Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff.

But the court heard there was no bomb inside the 7,500 capacity stadium - and Murphy just wanted the building evacuated.

Prosecutor Suzanne Thomas said: 'At the time the calls were made, the defendant knew there was no bomb in the arena.

'Her intention was to bring about evacuation so that the arms fair would be disrupted.'

Miss Thomas said the arena had been checked shortly after Murphy's calls and security officials found nothing suspicious.

Murphy's first call was to police at 10.43am, before making a second to a local newspaper at 11.21am, from separate phone boxes on March 28.

A jury at Cardiff Crown Court was played both calls.

In the first call, Murphy says: 'I think there's a bomb in the Motorpoint Arena.'

She told the operator that her friend is a cleaner at the venue, and he planted the explosives but hangs up when asked for his name.

In the second call to news company Media Wales, the woman says: 'I would like to report the planting of a bomb.

'I am from Radical Action Against War. We have planted a bomb at the Motorpoint.'

Police traced Murphy after checking CCTV footage from the phone box and she was arrested at 2.30pm the same afternoon.

She told officers: 'I just want to say one little brief thing. I think you have arrested the wrong person. I think the people you should have arrested were the arms dealers.'

The Motorpoint Arena is located in Cardiff city centre and has hosted high profile music acts such as Arctic Monkeys, Stereophonics, Oasis and Kings of Leon, as well as comedian Lee Evans.

Police traced Murphy after checking CCTV footage from the phone box and she was arrested at 2.30pm the same afternoon

Protestors demonstrated against the Defence Procurement, Research, Technology and Exportability conference as they claimed it was an arms fair where weapons were being sold.

Murphy, from Swansea, denies two counts of communicating false information with intent but admits making the calls.

She told the court: 'It was the only peaceful, non-violent thing I could do to prevent arms being traded.'

The trial continues.
Six SAS heroes were prepared to sacrifice themselves by spending 40 days behind enemy lines to divert the Germans from the D-Day beaches.

The elite team were the first to set foot on French soil on June 6, 1944, and their mission was so deadly it was codenamed Operation Titanic as they were unlikely to return.

Their remarkable story has now come to light and can be told, after a lucky buyer chanced upon one of their war medals.

The team's job was to send the Germans on wild goose chases with acts of sabotage and decoy stunts to keep enemy troops away from the Normandy invasion taking place.

Trooper Merryweather, with team leader Norman Poole at the front is in this remarkable picture taken behind enemy lines showing the SAS team and three US paratroopers they met up with post D-Day

Trooper Merryweather's MM and SAS badges, which are set to go up for auction

The men expected to link up with advancing American troops after nine days but they spent six weeks on the run 15 miles into German territory.

The party was eventually captured following a Western-style shoot-out at a barn they were holed up in.

One of them, Trooper Anthony Merryweather, was awarded the Military Medal (MM) for his part.

During the mission and acting on information from the French Resistance he went 10 miles to collect two escaped American PoWs and carried one of them back as he was wounded.

Seventy years later a lucky military collector picked up Trooper Merryweather's MM at an antique fair for next to nothing but didn't know what it was awarded for.

Bernard Pass, from Bosleys Auctioneers in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, said because of its association with the SAS and D-Day, the decoration is valued at 12,000. It could fetch up to 20,000 when it sells next month.

The six men landed near St Lo on the Cherbourg peninsula at 12.11am on June 6, 1944.

They dropped alongside puppet parachutists to make the Germans think more men were landing than in reality.

The SAS men were dropped to the west of the D-Day beaches to draw away German defenders from the area and convince them there was a major parachute operation underway

One of the 400 dummy parachutists called 'Ruperts' that were dropped with the SAS team

The six men landed near St Lo on the Cherbourg peninsula at 12.11am on June 6, 1944

After landing the men activated gramophone speakers to simulate gunfire and set off 20 improvised bombs, all part of the ruse to divert enemy troops away from the beaches.

After a few days the Germans sent a whole company to hunt for the group who could only move position after dark.

They spent the final three weeks living on raw vegetables and broke into a house occupied by sleeping Germans in their hunt for food.

Because the area they operated in was behind enemy lines they also had to face regular shelling from Allied guns.

With the Germans closing in the men decided to make a break for the Allied lines but before they could two enemy paratroopers stumbled upon the barn they were staying in.

The hide out was surrounded and a firefight broke out. Two stick grenades were tossed into the building, wounding four of them, including Trooper Merryweather who suffered shrapnel wounds to his back.

The six Brits gave themselves up, with several of them having to be carried out.

Luckily they were captured by German paratroopers and treated relatively well. Had they been caught by the SS they may have been executed for being saboteurs.

One of the 'Ruperts': They dropped alongside puppet parachutists to make the Germans think more men were landing than in reality

Mr Pass said: 'This Military Medal has come to use from a collector who was in the right place at the right time.

'As a rule Military Medals are generally worth about 1,000, but if it is connected to a particular campaign then that makes it more desirable.

'The vendor thought this one might have been for Arnhem, making it worth about 4,000.

'But when we researched Trooper Merryweather, whose name is on it, then it became clear he was part of this historic D-Day operation.

'His was the first parachutist team to hit French soil on D-Day. Six men were selected for the mission which was called Operation Titanic, a clear indication it was going to be a one way ticket mission.'

Trooper Merryweather was serving in B Squadron 1st SAS when volunteers were called for the special operation.

They were led by Lieutenant Norman Poole and Lt Frederick Fowles. Troopers Merryweather, Hurst, Dawson and Saunders made up the elite unit.

After being captured on July 17, Trooper Merryweather and Trooper Hurst were sent to a military hospital in northern France which was liberated by the Allies in August 1944.

The medal is being sold on November 1.
Two people have been arrested after they allegedly tried to smuggle drugs and mobile phones into a high security Brisbane prison using a stolen drone.

Donald Griffin, 21, and Karlie Cuzzu, 34, were arrested about 1am on Tuesday after they allegedly tried to fly a drone into the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre at Wacol in Brisbane's south-west.

The pair parked a car near Wacol Train Station where they allegedly tried to fly the drone into the high security men's prison, Seven News reported.

Donald Griffin, 21, (pictured) was arrested about 1am on Tuesday after they allegedly tried to fly a drone into the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre

After several attempts, the pair returned to the car where they were arrested with a bag allegedly containing five mobile phones, chargers, prescription drugs and tobacco.

The pair was also accused of exchanging text messages with a prisoner to organise the alleged smuggling service.

The police believe a mobile phone could have been successfully dropped to an inmate at the Queensland prison.

Guards searched every cell in the prison on Tuesday morning but no phone was found.

While the Victorian Government introduced legislation making it a criminal offence to fly a drone over a prison, there was no such legislation in Queensland.

If caught flying a drone over a correctional facility in Victoria, the offender faced up to two years in prison.

Donald Griffin, 21, and Karlie Cuzzu, 34, (pictured) were arrested about 1am on Tuesday after they allegedly tried to fly a drone into the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre
A man has been caught on video attempting to steal piles of donations from outside a charity shop - using a wheelie bin.

The footage shows a man rummaging through a collection of boxes and bin liners outside a closed Cancer Research UK branch in Leicestershire before he is challenged by passersby.

Angela Sherratt, who filmed the incident, said she approached the man to ask him what he was doing but he claimed he didn't understand.

Ms Sherratt, 54, confronted the man, who she described as 'well dressed', with her husband outside the charity shop on Market Street, Ashby-de-la-Zouch in North West Leicestershire.

Angela Sheratt recorded the man on her phone as she confronted him about taking donations from outside a charity shop

She said she had become incensed after the pair saw the man walking around the shop donations just after 7pm on Sunday evening.

'You just don't expect to see that. It's a cancer charity. Everybody knows somebody with cancer. It's just vile,' said Ms Sherratt.

'He didn't really look like he was bothered. He was still looking in the bags as he was putting them back.

'He just said he didn't speak any English and that he didn't understand what we were saying.

Ms Sherratt said that she and her husband John Abell, 50, pointed out that it was a charity shop but said that the thief didn't 'give a damn.'

'He wasn't just taking things out of the bags. He was putting whole bin liners in the bin. There were three or four bags of stuff. That bin was chocker.'

Ms Sherratt, a company director, added that when she insisted the man put the bags back, he continued to look through them.

In the video, he appears to roughly tip out the remains of the wheelie bin before walking away with it down the road.

Ms Sherratt said another man wearing a high vis jacket had also stopped to question the man.

She said she did not believe the man was in need.

'I was asking him, "do you need this stuff?" and shouting, "why do you need this?"

The man is seen rummaging through bin liners of goods that were left outside of Cancer Research UK in Ashby-de-la-Zouch

He is then seen filling a wheelie bin with the stash of toys, clothes and other donations

'He didn't need help. Not at all. He was well dressed and wearing quite trendy jeans.'

She added that she would not hesitate to do the same all over again if she spotted anybody who appeared to be stealing from a charity.

'I wasn't thinking about my own safety, but I'd probably do the same again.

'The bags often get left outside the shop. On a Sunday we'll walk past and see them and say they've got a lot of work to do on Monday.

'But no one would think to steal from there. It's a low life thing to do.'

Leicestershire Police said they are investigating the incident.

After being challenged by Ms Sherratt and other passersby, the man tips the collection of goods into a heap and walks off with the wheelie bin

'If anyone witnessed the theft or knows the identity of the person responsible they are advised to contact 101, quoting crime reference number 17*457588,' a spokesperson said.

Julie Byard, head of trading at Cancer Research UK, described the incident as 'disappointing'.

She also encouraged people to make their donations during opening hours to ensure they are safely received.

She added: 'The stock generously donated by our supporters is of enormous value to us because Cancer Research UK receives no government funding and relies entirely on donations to support our pioneering work into the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

'Donations to our shops are particularly welcome at this time of year as we approach Christmas.'
An Army sergeant accused of trying to murder his wife by sabotaging her parachute during a skydive also tried to kill her by using a set of pliers to cause a gas leak by loosening a valve, a court heard.

Emile Cilliers of the Royal Army Physical Training Corps is on trial at Winchester Crown Court accused of attempted murder of wife Victoria Cilliers during a parachute jump at Netheravon Airfield in Wiltshire.

The 37-year-old also faces a second attempted murder charge and a third charge of sabotaging the gas fitting in a kitchen cupboard at the Cilliers' family home in Amesbury, Wiltshire, a few days earlier.

Today a court heard a set of pliers Cilliers claims to have used to 'tighten' a bolt on the gas valve had actually been used in a 'loosening motion'.

Emile Cilliers, left, used a set of pliers to 'loosen' a gas valve at his Wiltshire home in an alleged attempt to kill his wife via a gas leak, a court heard

The valve, pictured, was also found with blood on which was later confirmed as a match for Cilliers

The trial has heard that Mrs Cilliers, 40, reported smelling gas at the property on March 30, 2015, while her husband had spent the previous night at his barracks because he said he wanted to avoid the Monday morning traffic.

An engineer called to the property found a loose nut on a gas isolation valve in a cupboard next to the oven.

Dried blood was also found on the pipe, which the court has heard was a match for Cilliers.

Forensic scientist Mark Kearsley told the court that he had carried out a microscopic examination of the nut and a set of mole-grip adjustable locking pliers owned by Cilliers.

Cilliers has said he used the pliers to try to tighten the nut when he had returned home before the gas engineer arrived, but had been unable to do so because it was too tight.

Mr Kearsley said impressions left on the nut were a 'conclusive' match for the markings of the pliers but that they had been used in a 'loosening and not tightening motion'.

Emile Cilliers and wife Victoria Cilliers on their wedding day in South Africa (left). Shown right, defense barrister Elizabeth Marsh looks at a main parachute at Netheravon Airfield in Wiltshire

The trial was previously shown a video demonstrating how sabotage of a parachute it could be performed in a toilet cubicle in just over five minutes (pictured)

He said: 'The nut must have been in a tightened position to lead to the impression we had, if the nut was loose it would just have turned with the tool.'

He added a 'significant' degree of force would have been used.

Gas engineer Michael Osborne was called to the Cilliers' home in Amesbury on March 30, 2015, at around 6pm following the leak.

After fixing the leak, Mr Osborne told the court Cilliers asked him if vibrations from building work across the road could have loosened the nut and caused the gas leak, something he believed was 'highly unlikely'.

Mr Osborne said, contrary to what Cilliers later told police in interview, that it was easy to tighten the valve.

He said: 'When I applied pliers to it, it was loose and I just tightened it up. It was not difficult to do up.

'It was a quarter of a turn maximum. It was just a nip it and turn it with a tool.'

He added: 'The gentleman said [after I had finished] people had work going on over the road. He said 'is it possible vibrations from the machinery could have loosened it?' I said it was highly unlikely.'

Mr Osborne added: 'It is quite possible the valve could have been knocked about, it is a kitchen cupboard. I have come across that before where it has come loose.'

Mr Osborne told the court he could not recall seeing blood on the pipe.

The court previously heard Cilliers had text his 'lover' Stefanie Goller, pictured, while his wife was being treated in hospital and was 'continuing to plan a life with her'

Gas safety consultant Howard Reed said he inspected the property and found the valve was not faulty.

Yesterday the court heard that while Mrs Cilliers lay in hospital her husband was messaging his lover telling her he liked 'nude cleaners' and asking if she would refer to him as 'Mr Grey'.

Cilliers sent love messages to Stefanie Goller, whom he met on Tinder in November 2014, and continued to plan a life with her as Mrs Cilliers was waiting for surgery.

Jurors were shown thousands of text messages between Cilliers and Miss Goller about how they wanted to spend their lives together.

In two messages four months before the incident, Cilliers tells Miss Goller, who was in the United States: 'I will sacrifice and give up so much for you... I just never want to let you go.'

Another, a month later reads: 'To be with you, I would do anything.'

Then on April 5, 2015, army physiotherapist Mrs Cilliers plummeted to the ground at Netheravon airfield after her main and reserve parachute failed.

Cilliers denies two counts of attempted murder and a third charge of damaging the gas valve, recklessly endangering life.
A signed note rock legend Jimi Hendrix gave to an English 'Foxy Lady' who bewitched him 50 years ago has sold for 7,000.

Anthea Connell was aged 19 when the American guitarist leapt off the stage and walked over to her in a concert hall in Lincolnshire in 1967.

He signed the back of a guitar strings packet and told her to 'stay sweet' when his band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, were getting ready for a gig.

Mrs Connell, now 69, decided to sell her rare signature. It had an estimate of 3,000 but sold for a hammer price of 5,700. With fees added on the buyer paid 7,239 for the item.

Anthea Connell was aged 19 when the American guitarist leapt off the stage and walked over to her in a concert hall in Lincolnshire in 1967

He signed the back of a guitar strings packet and told her to 'stay sweet' when his band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, were getting ready for a gig

Mrs Connell intends to spend the proceeds on plane tickets to New Zealand for her and husband Steve to see relatives.

She said: 'It exceeded any expectations I might have had. I'd really like to thank Jimi for the memories of meeting him all those years ago and for his very lucrative signature.

'The money will go towards air tickets for a trip to New Zealand. I hope Jimi would approve. It's certainly a bit more rock 'n' roll than buying a new boiler or double glazing.

'I told my dad, who is 102, about the sale and he said "you always liked to be the centre of attention!"'

Mrs Connell, then Anthea Rogers, had gone to the gig with her then boyfriend, Eddie Cooke, whose local band, Sons & Lovers, were supporting Jimi Hendrix at the Starlight Room in Boston, Lincolnshire, on March 25, 1967.

She was sat on her own watching the bands warm up when Hendrix spotted the beautiful young woman.

Mrs Connell was so starstruck she cannot remember what they talked about but Hendrix then asked his band for something to write on.

Mrs Connell, then Anthea Rogers, had gone to the gig with her then boyfriend, Eddie Cooke, whose local band, Sons & Lovers, were supporting Jimi Hendrix at the Starlight Room in Boston, Lincolnshire, on March 25, 1967

Anthea Conell looking shocked after finding out what her Hendrix autograph sold for

Mrs Connell intends to spend the proceeds on plane tickets to New Zealand for her and husband Steve to see relatives

Anthea Connell, from West Bridgford in Nottinghamshire, on the beach in the late 1960s

On the back of the guitar string packet he wrote: 'To Anthea. Love and kisses to you forever. I wish I could really talk to you. Stay sweet. Jimi Hendrix.'

Mrs Connell, from West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, said: 'He started talking to me and I was so shocked I can't even remember what we said.

'I must have mumbled something but have no recollection of it. I was totally awestruck. Jimi Hendrix was a complete icon.

'He turned to his band members on the stage and asked one of the guys to give him something to write on. He came back with a guitar string packets, which may well have been his, and he proceeded to write me this wonderful message on the back.

'I think it was because, at the time, I was the only girl in the ballroom.

'Afterwards, when I told Eddie about the note from Jimi, he said "you ought to hang on to it" - and I did.'

Her husband Steve, who she has been married to for 15 years, said: 'Having seen photos of her in the 1960s (left), I can understand why Jimi went over'

Her husband Steve, who she has been married to for 15 years, said: 'Having seen photos of her in the 1960s, I can understand why Jimi went over.'

Charles Hanson, of Hansons Auctioneers, of Etwall, Derbyshire, which sold the note, said: 'This is a rare and precious piece of music memorabilia that many fans and collectors would love to own.

'Jimi Hendrix, a rock legend, created a special memory that has lasted a lifetime for Anthea. That provenance makes it even more special.'

Hendrix moved to England in late 1966 and within months had earned three UK top ten hits with his band the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Jimi Hendrix signatures are not that common because he died in 1970, aged 27, from an overdose of sleeping pills.
An Uber driver was shot shortly after picking up two passengers at San Francisco International airport.

The female driver was driving westbound along the Interstate 380 in San Bruno when gunshots were fired at 11.10pm on Sunday, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) confirmed.

The driver was shot in the neck and crashed the Toyota Camry just east of the El Camino Real exit local media report. She was taken to hospital where her injuries were described as not life-threatening.

The passengers were not injured in the collision or shooting.

The female driver was driving westbound along the Interstate 380 in San Bruno when gunshots were fired at 11.10pm on Sunday, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) confirmed

Another car was shot multiple times but the people inside ran away before the highway patrol arrived.

CHP Officer Vu Williams said they were investigating the shooting.

It is the second shooting of an Uber driver in the space of two weeks in the Bay Area.

An Uber driver and two passengers had to be rushed to hospital when they were shot in a 'targeted attack' along the Interstate 880 in Oakland.

CHP officers arrived at the scene at around 4.15am following reports of a shooting in the southbound lanes near 23rd avenue.

The partygoers were travelling home when the shooters opened fire. It is not known why they were shot although the driver is was not the original target.
An American professor has told a murder trial how an adopted baby had a vitamin deficiency which can make bones brittle.

Professor Michael Holick, a professor of medicine at Boston University, gave evidence in court over a video link in the trial of adoptive father Matthew Scully-Hicks.

Scully-Hicks, from Delabole, Cornwall, is accused of killing Elsie Scully-Hicks, who was 18 months old when she died in May 2016.

Professor Holick said he believed Elsie could have suffered from Vitamin D deficiency in her bones.

In court today, the professor explained a lack of Vitamin D or calcium in children's bones can lead to rickets, which is a disease that causes bones to become more fragile.

Professor Michael Holick, a professor of medicine at Boston University, gave evidence in court over a video link in the trial of adoptive father Matthew Scully-Hicks

Matthew Scully-Hicks (right) is accused of killing Elsie Scully-Hicks (left), who died last year

Rickets can also have an effect on the healing process of any damaged bones in children.

Defencing Scully-Hicks, Robert O'Sullivan QC asked the professor for his opinion after seeing medical reports from Elsie's admission to hospital.

Prof Holick said: 'In my opinion, with a high degree of medical certainty, if I was to see her with that blood level there is no question she was Vitamin D deficient and extremely high risk for rickets.'

Prof Holick, a former professor of medicine at Harvard University, and who has seen approximately 25,000 patients, confirmed that he was shown reports of medical notes from when Elsie was admitted to hospital in May last year.

He also saw reports of scans that were conducted on Elsie, including her left leg.

He said: 'I came to the same conclusion that the X-ray findings is consistent with metabolic bone disease associated with Vitamin D deficiency.'

Cardiff Crown Court heard Scully-Hicks, 31, allegedly killed little Elsie just two weeks after formally adopting her with his husband Craig.

Fitness instructor Scully-Hicks, who acted as a stay-at-home father while his husband worked away.

The court was also told Scully-Hicks messaged husband Craig to describe Elsie as 'Satan in a baby grow' and also described her as 'a psycho'.

Elsie suffered from three separate areas of subdural bleeding, a skull fracture and fractures to three ribs and her leg.

Scully-Hicks denies one charge of murder

Paramedics attended the Scully-Hicks family home to find Elsie not breathing and no sign of a heartbeat after he dialed 999.

Elsie was taken to University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, but died in the early hours of May 29 last year.

Dr Stephen Rose, a consultant paediatrician told Cardiff Crown Court that it was likely that she had been shaken violently.

He said: 'It's likely that Elsie Scully-Hicks had been shaken violently and that her head had been rocked backwards and forwards so that her head was flexed down on to her chest and flexed backwards.'

The jury at Cardiff Crown Court was read a number of text messages between Scully-Hicks, 31, and his husband Craig, 36, and friends.

In one, Scully-Hicks said: 'I'm going through hell with Elsie. Mealtimes and bedtimes are like my worst nightmare at the minute.

'She has been up there screaming for ten minutes non-stop. She's just stopped but I doubt that's the last I'll hear tonight.'

In a message to his husband, Scully-Hicks described Elsie as 'Satan dressed up in a babygro' and then added: 'Elsie has had two nights of being Satan'.

The couple also joked about 'calling a priest' for Elsie if she did not stop behaving like Satan, the court heard.

Scully-Hicks, of Delabole, Cornwall, denies murder. The trial continues.
Pictured: Andrew Murray, 22, has been jailed for 21 months today

An ex-boyfriend who subjected the daughter of murdered ISIS hostage David Haines to a degrading six-month campaign of abuse has been jailed for 21 months.

Andrew Murray, 22, became 'insanely jealous' when be became Bethany Haines' boyfriend and called her names when she wore clothes he didn't approve of, a court heard.

Perth Sheriff Court in Scotland heard how violent Murray became enraged when he found a scrapbook dedicated to Miss Haines' late father.

Murray ripped it up out of spite after becoming furious some of the photographs, taken at a memorial to David Haines, were of Miss Haines being comforted by her then-partner.

Today Murray was sentenced to 21 months in prison but smirked as he was led down to the cells.

Sheriff Lindsay Foulis also imposed a five year long non-harassment order banning Murray from having any contact with Miss Haines.

The victim, from Perthshire, Scotland, said 'yes' and clapped and outside court after hearing the news.

She said: 'Justice has been done. It has been worth all of the upset and the wait. I just want to get on now with having a happy life.'

Sheriff Foulis jailed Murray after noting that he had shown little remorse for his actions and did not appear to fully accept his guilt.

Bethany Haines (left) leaves court after seeing Andrew Murray plead guilty to stalking her. Her David Haines (right) father was killed by ISIS in 2014

He said: 'The report does not indicate recognition on your part of just how serious this behaviour was. Over a six month period the effect of your behaviour was a noted change in the demeanour and appearance of the complainer.

'Your actions in relation to that scrapbook really are very difficult for anyone thinking normally to understand.'

Murray, 22, tore up her treasured 45-page scrapbook which she had compiled in the wake of her father's death in Syria after being held hostage for 18 months.

She told how Murray had been insanely jealous of photographs of her and her former partner - and father of her son Aiden - attending her father's memorial service.

She said he had cut her ex-boyfriend's head off in the pictures and coloured him in with dark ink to make it look like she was embracing her father's murderer Jihadi John.

The pictures that sent Murray into a jealous rage: Perth Sheriff Court heard how Murray, 22, tore up a scrapbook dedicated to David Haines because they included pictures of a grieving Bethany (above) with her former boyfriend (right) at his memorial service

Miss Haines told the court Murray had cut her ex-boyfriend's head off in the pictures and coloured him in with dark ink to make it look like she was embracing her father's murderer Jihadi John. Above, Miss Haines leaving the memorial at Perth Congregational Church in 2014

Miss Haines said: 'There was a photo of me with my then partner John in that scrapbook as he went to my dad's memorial service with me. He had 'beheaded' him and portrayed him as Jihadi John.

'It was a sick thing to do. Andrew was completely controlling. I wasn't allowed to watch the news or put photos of my dad up in the house. It was like he was jealous of how close me and my dad were.

'I was not allowed to talk about it or see the trauma counsellor, or wear jewellery that my dad had bought me. Obviously I was extremely vulnerable at the time.

She said: 'He took advantage of that fact. In the house he was in control of the finances even though he was contributing nothing. He treated me like a servant with the cooking and cleaning.

'It was especially bad because I wasn't allowed to talk about my dad. Having to hold everything in like that was taking me back to the really dark place I had been in initially after my dad's death. I felt like I was prisoner in my own home.

'I still don't understand how he could have done that to me.'

'She treasured the book': A court heard how Miss Haines (right) created a scrapbook to help her deal with the death of her father (left). She had never shown it to the accused but he managed to find it

The court was told that Murray had started a six-month stalking campaign against his girlfriend shortly after they started dating in January 2016.

The crown accepted his not guilty plea to assault, but Sheriff Lindsay Foulis told the court he had viewed pictures showing injuries to Bethany.

Fiscal depute Sue Ruta told the court Murray had shouted and sworn in Bethany's face and called her vile names while falsely accusing her of sleeping with other men.

She said he had covertly taken a picture of him touching her sexually and had sent it to one of his friends without her knowledge or permission.

Ms Ruta said: 'If she dressed a certain way or wore certain make up he would accuse her of being a slut and being unfaithful to him. He told her to remove male friends from her Facebook which she did.

She let her appearance go, rarely left the house and became hostile. They could often hear him shouting and her crying. He would check her phone and social media messages

'When she moved in February neighbours found her pleasant, outgoing and friendly. He moved in in May 2016. Neighbours, family and friends saw a difference in the complainer.

'She let her appearance go, rarely left the house and became hostile. They could often hear him shouting and her crying. He would check her phone and social media messages.'

Murray, from Perth, admitted stalking the student in the Perthshire town of Coupar Angus between 1 April and 3 October 2016.

During the sinister bullying campaign, Murray tampered with the contacts book on Miss Haines' mobile phone so he could pose as another one of her friends.

He then duped her into having text conversations with him when she believed she was talking to a completely different person.

He punched holes in walls and doors and smashed lamps, coffee tables and photo frames.

Ms Ruta said: 'Bethany Haines is the daughter of late aid worker David Haines who was beheaded by Jihadi John in Syria in September 2014.

'The accused stated on Facebook that he had found her scrapbook, a 45-page tribute to her father. The complainer treasured the book as it was part of her way of trying to deal with the death of her father.

'She had never shown it to the accused. He sent a picture of the scrapbook to confirm he had found it. He was unhappy she had a book containing photos of her and her ex-boyfriend.

'She was at home sorting cushions when she became aware of bits of cut up newspaper. He had ripped off the head and face of the complainer's ex-partner and coloured his body in with black ink.

'She was completely shocked and could not comprehend how he could have done this to the book, given how upset he knew she was about her father's death..'

David Haines, 44, was beheaded by the terrorist dubbed Jihadi John in September 2014. He was the first Briton to die in the killer's propaganda videos.

Former RAF engineer David, from Scone, was in Syria helping civil war victims when he was snatched by the fanatics in Aleppo in March 2013.

David was living in Croatia with second wife Dragana and their daughter Athea, four, when he was kidnapped just days into his humanitarian mission.

London-born Jihadi John, 27 - real name Mohammed Emwazi - killed seven Westerners on camera before he was finally killed in a US drone strike.
A fast-food restaurant that left free meals for the homeless outside its doors have been forced to take them directly to shelters after hungry revellers tucked in to the gifts.

Bosu Body Bar in Manchester specialises in selling healthy fast-food boxes that last up to 72 hours.

Instead of throwing away the leftovers like most restaurants, the team recently started placing the food outside its doors after noticing a sharp rise in people sleeping rough.

This simple act of kindness on the streets of Manchester went viral after the restaurant left food out for the homeless

Siblings Sarah and Michael Beck and business partners Oliver Drummond and Josef Ramzi-Faddoul have now launched The Bosu Project to help people in need by giving away any leftover food at the end of the day.

Their simple act of kindness has gone viral after they posted a picture of some takeaway bags outside the Cross Street shop.

Bosu Body Bar in Manchester promised to leave bags full of food outside for rough sleepers, some of which were taken by revellers

But they've had to start giving the leftover food to homeless charities and shelters, rather than leaving it outside as some hungry passers-by were helping themselves to the goods.

The restaurant wrote on Facebook: 'When we close the doors for the day, we promise to leave bags outside full of tasty food.

The restaurant has encouraged people in the city centre and Didsbury to tell rough sleepers where they can find the free parcels

'If you see anyone on the streets of Manchester or Didsbury who look hungry, let them know where they can find a meal in a bag. Spread the love always.'

Mr Beck said they never expected the huge reaction to the post, which has been shared and liked hundreds of times on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

After a busy day of trading in Manchester, Bosu Body Bar left food outside for the homeless

The restaurant's social media posts about helping the homeless with free food have gone viral

Bosu body Bar said the response to its method of helping the homeless was 'overwhelming'

He told the MEN: 'We post pictures of food all day long and sometimes they don't get any attention, then we woke up the next morning and I've never seen that many likes and shares.

'It was quite overwhelming. We're not the only ones doing it and we're certainly not the only people who care about people in need, but hopefully other people who have seen it will now do the same.

Food not eaten during restaurant hours was left in the street for Manchester's homeless to collect and eat but is now taken to shelters

'It's either that or the bin, it's as simple as that.'

Bosu Body Bar launched in Chorlton in 2015 before branching out to Didsbury. The team have since turned the Chorlton site on Barlow Moor Road into a Canadian-style cocktail bar, Alberta.

The city centre site has a new menu, building on its original protein box premise with meals such as protein burritos, chilli and sweet potato waffle burgers.
The Government was on a collision course with its independent terror watchdog Max Hill (file image) today after he warned against a raft of new laws

Britain's terror watchdog was last night branded 'horrifyingly dangerous' for claiming tough new laws to prosecute extremists would be wrong despite a string of jihadist attacks.

Max Hill, the independent reviewer of anti-terror laws, was rebuked by ministers after raising concerns about Theresa May's plans to create new offences following a wave of Islamist atrocities in London and Manchester.

In a highly unusual intervention, the Government said it 'disagreed' with the top lawyer's controversial remarks  thinly veiled code for deep unhappiness.

The QC's comments came only days after he provoked outrage by suggesting 'naive' militants returning from the Islamic State war zone should be given space to reintegrate into UK communities instead of prosecuted.

Experts said his words would 'give succour to those who wish us harm' and that he was increasing the risk to Britain from terrorism by 'undermining' the work of MI5.

Mr Hill used a speech to a charity in central London to warn against a 'knee-jerk reaction' to the recent terror attacks.

He said introducing new crimes, including a kind of Asbo for jihadists to prevent them radicalising vulnerable people and measures to silence firebrand preachers or groups, should be shelved.

The proposals had been unveiled by the Prime Minister, who vowed to crack down on extremism as the country reeled from the attacks in the summer.

Mr Hill also questioned Home Secretary Amber Rudd's plans to make watching terrorist propaganda such as beheading videos and bombmaking guides online punishable by 15 years in jail.

She has vowed to introduce tougher prison sentences for those convicted of repeatedly viewing sickening jihadist and far-Right content online.

Mr Hill said the law had to draw a distinction between committing terrorism and merely thinking about it. Pictured is the aftermath of the Westminster attack in March

In the aftermath of the London Bridge attack (pictured is the immediate after the terrorists were shot by police), Theresa May vowed 'enough is enough' and promised new laws

Britain has more returning jihadis More Islamic State fighters have returned to Britain than to any other Western country, a report said yesterday. Britain had the highest proportion of returning jihadis in Europe, according to Richard Barrett, a former MI6 director of global counter-terrorism. It was 'inevitable' that some of those returning from Syria and Iraq would remain committed to violent extremism and would pose 'a huge challenge' to security, said his report for the Soufan Centre think-tank and the Global Strategy Network. Globally, it found 40,000 foreign fighters had joined IS since 2011, of whom more than 5,600 had returned home. Around 5,000 were from EU countries, of whom around 1,200 had returned. Some 850 Britons joined the terror network, of whom around 425 were said to have returned. By comparison, 1,910 travelled from France but only 271 reportedly returned  raising questions about why so many more were able to come back to the UK. More than 100 British fighters were believed to have been killed, including notorious IS recruiter Sally Jones, but around 325 remain unaccounted for and could still pose a danger. Advertisement

Mr Hill suggested terrorists who committed 'modest or middle-ranking' offences should not face longer behind bars.

His views are a stark contrast with his predecessor, David Anderson, who warned that returning jihadis were the greatest risk to the nation for years and said extra legal powers might be needed to prosecute hate preachers who encourage violent radicalisation.

In his speech to human rights charity Justice Mr Hill, who took the anti-terror role in February, said the law should be targeted only at those who attempted to commit, or actually carried out, acts of violence. He said: 'Whilst we can all agree that there should be nowhere for real terrorists to hide, we should also agree that legislating in the name of terrorism when the targeted activity is not actually terrorism would be quite wrong.

Mrs May (pictured leaving No 10 yesterday) has promised to stamp out tolerance of extremism in Britain

'We do not, and should not, criminalise thought without action or preparation for action. Thought with steps towards action can be terrorism. Thought without action or preparation for action may be extremism, but it is not terrorism.'

Last night No 10 hit back at Mr Hill. A spokesman said: 'What we want to do is to send a clear message that we will not tolerate terrorism, those who help radicalise terrorists with their extremist views, or those who turn a blind eye to terrorist activity.'

A Government spokesman said: 'Max Hill is independent of Government. His role is one of oversight, not the formulation of policy and we disagree with him on this issue. Extremism is a danger to society and we have a responsibility to protect the public.'

Emma Webb, of security think-tank the Henry Jackson Society, said: 'The independent reviewer is downplaying the fact that non-violent extremism creates an environment in which violent extremism can flourish.

'To suggest measures tackling this problem are beyond the pale of legislation misses the point entirely and gives succour to those who wish us harm.'

Security expert Professor Anthony Glees, of Buckingham University, suggested Mr Hill should be fired. He added: 'He is meant to review counter-terror laws, not pontificate if they are good or bad.'

MI5 has more than 500 live investigations, with 3,000 people suspected of extremist activities.

Mr Hill is a leading barrister who successfully prosecuted the failed July 21 bombers. He was appointed the independent reviewer of anti-terror laws by the Home Secretary.

UK freedom fighter is killed Jac Holmes (pictured) died on Monday A British man who travelled to Syria to fight against Islamic State was killed by an explosion days after watching the fall of Raqqa. Jac Holmes, one of the longest serving Britons fighting with Kurdish militia against the terror group, died on Monday while he was clearing an area of landmines to make it safe for civilians. Hours previously he had written of how he had walked through the liberated streets of Raqqa, the extremists' former capital. The 24-year-old former IT worker from Bournemouth had no military experience before he joined the Kurdish People's Protection Units in January 2015. His mother Angie Blannin called him a hero and said: 'He had the courage of his convictions to go out and do something where he thought that the West were not doing enough.' Advertisement
A Utah couple have been charged with murder after the mother's 13-day-old baby boy died after suffering severe abuse and neglect.

The West Jordan Police Department confirmed Maria Elena Sullivan, 26, and Dylan James Kitzmiller, 21, were arrested Friday night and charged with one count of first-degree murder and three counts of child abuse.

The negligent mother knowingly left her child under supervision of her violent boyfriend who reportedly 'had thrown the baby around, slapped him in the face, bit his hands, swaddled him face down and once covered the baby's mouth with his hand as he cried,' according to Fox 13 Salt Lake City.

Authorities were made aware of the disturbing acts after Sullivan, who had a warrant out for her arrest, made a visit to a local hospital.

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Maria Elena Sullivan, 26, (left) and Dylan James Kitzmiller, 21, (right) were arrested Friday night and charged with one count of first-degree murder and three counts of child abuse

She checked into a hospital that evening and was caught after staff reported alarming statements she told them during the visit.

She later admitted to police to having knowledge of her heroin-addicted boyfriend's behavior - and revealed to a friend the day of her baby's death that she needed to 'get away' from Kitzmiller.

The baby was just shy of two weeks old when he tragically died September 17.

Sullivan said the underfed baby stopped breathing.

The couple called emergency officials, who were not able to retrieve the child.

Kitzmiller was also said to have shot up heroin on a daily basis while 'taking care' of his girlfriend's child

Sullivan recalled seeing the baby boy fidget in discomfort, while making the motions of 'a rough weird bicycle thing' with his legs, according to the news station.

Court documents said Kitzmiller was also abusive toward Sullivan - who was fully aware her boyfriend had been using drugs while alone in the presence of the newborn.

They were 'charged because the girlfriend indicated that there was a level of abuse that was going on, she was aware of this abuse, and she took no steps to stop this or to take the child to safety, a district attorney said.

Court documents said Kitzmiller was also abusive toward Sullivan - who was fully aware her boyfriend was using drugs while alone in the presence of the newborn

Doctors found that 'the boy had lost 14 percent of his body mass in weight in the 13 days since his birth, going from 5 pounds 6 ounces to 4 pounds and 8 ounces at death,' the shocking report said.

'He had abrasions and bruises on his face and body. The boy also suffered a spinal fracture and a broken rib along with a 'massive' amount of swelling in his brain.'

Oblivious neighbor to the family, Kristen Peterson, told Fox 13 she was horrified after learning of the events that took place next door.

'You never really know what's going on two or three houses down from you,' Peterson said.

Kitzmiller is being held at a Utah jail on a $1 million bond, while Sullivan is without bond in Georgia.
A serial sperm donor known as 'the sperminator' who made headlines last year is still hard at work doing what he does best.

Ari Nagel, 42, appeared on The Maury Show on Tuesday to reveal that not only does he have three more children on the way, he plans to keep spreading his seed for another eight years to come.

The New Yorker already has 29 children with 24 women. The children range from 14 years-old to some who haven't been born yet.

He sees some every day, others on a weekly basis and some he has never met - it all depends on how involved their mothers want him to be in his life.

Despite being sued for child support by some of the women (something he makes them promise not to do before he hands over his sperm), Nagel, a professor at CUNY Kingsborough in Brooklyn, has not been put off.

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Ari Nagel, 42, said on Tuesday that he would continue to father children by donating sperm to strangers as he appeared on The Maury Show (above)

'If someone asks me for my semen, I will not turn them down. Women have offered to pay for my flight to Israel, Taiwan, Vietnam and almost every state in the US.

'Any race, any religion, gay or straight - I won't turn any woman away,' he said.

Nagel's child-bearing venture began 13 years ago when he answered a Craigslist ad from a woman who was looking for a donor and it has since spread.

Among his children are three he had with his wife and to whom he is a full-time parent.

Others he sees on weekends at birthday parties and other events where their mothers would like him present.

Some, who do not live with him, also spend time with each other as half-siblings and go on vacations together.

'I am a full time parent to some of the children. Some I see every day, some I see once a week and some I see once a year. It's really up to the moms,' Nagel explained.

It is also up to the mothers how they wish to conceive, he revealed.

Four of the 24 women Nagel has impregnated appeared on the show along with two of their partners and one woman (top left) who hopes to have a child with him soon

Nagel, 42, does not accept money in return for his sperm and will deliver it to women however they like - in the mail, in a cup or 'the old fashioned way' through intercourse

Nagel keeps track of his 29 - soon to be 32 children - in a spread sheet (Above)

Ari Nagel with Maury on the set of his show on Tuesday after vowing to carry on fathering children

Nagel is pictured left with one of his three-year-old daughters (bottom) at her birthday party last week. He is seen, right, with another child he fathered

Nagel, above, with three of his youngest children. He says he remains as involved as the children's mothers want them to be

'I've given my sperm to women in public restrooms, at casinos I even gave it in a solo cup at a cook out.

'Sometimes they want to do it the old fashioned way, sometimes they want it in a cup, sometimes we'd go to a fertility clinic and do it there.

'If someone asks me for my semen, I will not turn them down

'Sometimes I've even mailed it to them,' he said.

At times, the lesbian partners of some mothers have been in the room as he had sex with them.

'Sometimes they want to feel like they're playing a role in helping conceive the child.'

Nagel keeps track of the children, their birthdays and how each was conceived in a spreadsheet.

Nagel says there is not a woman he will turn down. In 12 years, he has fathered 29 children with 24 women and has another three on the way

The only downside is when he is expected to pay child support which he has to for nine of the children currently.

Their mothers reneged on their earlier promises not to sue him, he said.

'Some of the women promised me that they would sue me for child support but they went back on their word.

'I'm currently paying child support for nine kids. That's more than half my pay check,' he said.

Nagel previously boasted about his 'super sperm' which he said doctors told him was 'off the charts'.

A normal sperm count is considered anything above 20 million per millimeter. Nagel's is 85 million per millimeter.

While he is still in demand, Nagel said he will not accept requests forever.

'I'm certainly not going to be doing this when I'm 50 so maybe another two or three years,' he said.

He did not reveal whether or not he was currently in a relationship. When he began offering his services, Nagel was married to the mother of his oldest child. Their romance fizzled out when she learned of his extra-curricular parenting.
French actress Juliette Binoche says she was never a victim of Harvey Weinstein because she had 'learned early to be responsible' as she revealed she was assaulted by another producer when she was 18.

The Le Chocolat star said that she was always cautious around Weinstein as she 'knew very well what beast there was in him.'

'When I worked with Harvey Weinstein, I felt that I knew who I had in front of me', she told Le Monde in an interview in French.

'The kind of guy I will never go to have fun with,' she added. 'I had lunch with him once in one-on-one in his suite, I did not feel any danger, but I did not understand why he wanted to see me,' she said.

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French actress Juliette Binoche (with Harvey Weinstein at the Festival of American Film in Deauville, France in 1998) says she was never a victim of Harvey Weinstein because she had 'learned early to be responsible' and 'knew very well what beast there was in him'

She added that she didn't feel in danger because she knew how to deal with someone like that.

'I was already armed,' she explained. 'The only time I heard a verbal sexual insinuation from him I did not take seriously, I responded immediately with a backhand ball out of bounds.'

Binoche said she'd been shocked by the accusations of rape against Weinstein but 'there may be actresses who are more easily influenced and less prepared for situations with people of power, especially when you start'.

'In the face of Harvey's corpulence, in the face of his energy, his voice, his speed, in the face of the words he uses, his beliefs, in approaching such a power, one must know where one puts one's feet and awaken his intelligence not to be trapped,' she said, adding that being an actress was a dangerous profession.

Binoche (with Weinstein a the Festival of American Film in Deauville, France in 1998, left and in Monaco last year, right) said she quickly realized what kind of man the producer was

She added that she'd never been manipulated by Weinstein because 'I learned early to be responsible'.

Binoche revealed she had been 'sexually touched' from the age of seven, and had been sexually assaulted by a movie director aged 18 and a producer a few years later.

She said: 'I think I soon had a sense of danger in the circumstances that I was able to meet from childhood or when I started as an actress.

At 18, a director, to tell me about a new project, invited me to dinner. At the end of the meal, he jumped on me to kiss me. I pushed him away immediately, saying, 'But I'm in love, I have a lover!

'Another time at 21, I was invited to a producer one hour before a dinner organized for the end of a shoot, he jumped on me savagely, I had to push him likewise. Instinctively, I wanted to be respected in my feelings and in my body.'

Those 'lessons' had stayed with her, both for her career and when she worked with Weinstein on films like The English Patient, which earned her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and Le Chocolat in 2001 which won her a nomination for the Oscar Best actress.

Binoche also revealed she had been 'sexually touched' from the age of seven, and had been sexually assaulted by a movie director aged 18 and a producer a few years later

Binoche worked with Weinstein on films like The English Patient, (left) which earned her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and Le Chocolat (right) in 2001 which won her a nomination for the Oscar Best actress

'I learned... to rebel against male impunity. The rage was not far. But sometimes, unfortunately, everyone does not have this repartee, and some situations can become much more destructive.'

Binoche said she even found Weinstein 'oddly endearing' but knew there was a 'beast' inside him.

She told La Monde that she had even missed out on some movie roles because she refused to respond to certain powerful movie figure's sexual advances.

'I did not respond to the knee blows under the table, because I did not call the cell number that was given to me given after repeating. I missed some movies like that,' she said.

Three's company: Perkins said Weinstein tried to give her a massage in his underwear (Weinstein, Paltrow and Clinton two months after the settlement)

The 53-year-old, a mother-of-two whose partner is American actor and musician Patrick Muldoon, warned that movie producers and directors in cinema wielded great power which she compared to that of a black hole, but warned 'be careful not to be caught!'

Weinstein, who is currently said to be in rehab, has been accused by more than 60 women of sexual harassment and assault.

Gwyneth Paltrow is one of a long list of A listers, which also includes Angelina Jolie and Heather Graham, who said she was harassed by Weinstein, once the most powerful producer in Hollywood.

In a New York Times expose, she said he had invited her to his hotel room, in a fax from the Creative Artists Agency. Once she arrived at the hotel, he began to massage her and then asked her to join him in the bedroom.

'I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified,' said Paltrow, who rejected his advance and drove away devastated, thinking: 'I thought you were my Uncle Harvey.'

She told then-boyfriend Brad Pitt about the incident she said, who then confronted Weinstein.

'Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr. Weinstein. Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances,' said a spokesperson for Weinstein.

'Mr. Weinstein obviously cant speak to anonymous allegations, but with respect to any women who have made allegations on the record, Mr. Weinstein believes that all of these relationships were consensual.

'Mr. Weinstein has begun counseling, has listened to the community and is pursuing a better path. Mr. Weinstein is hoping that, if he makes enough progress, he will be given a second chance.'
The oligarch whose daughter's speeding car rammed into pedestrians at a street crossing says he and his wife were 'on our knees' begging victims' families to 'forgive' the 20 year old heiress.

Sickening videos of the crash showed Alyona Zaitseva's black Lexus plough into the helpless crowd after she jumped a red light.

Five died and six were seriously injured in the tragic crash in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

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Alyona Zaitseva was filmed by local media in Ukraine crying while waiting in a holding cell, in an unseen image from her appearing in court on Friday

The lawyers of an uber-rich oligarch, whose daughter killed five pedestrians while speeding, are working on a 1.1million compensation package, which could see her avoid jail. Alyona Zaitseva (pictured), 20, caused a deadly pile-up after jumping a red light at more than 60mph

This came as relatives began funerals for the four women and one man who were killed in the crash (still of family members at one of the funerals)

Ms Zaitseva faces a possible 10-year jail term following the fatal accident which killed five

Her father Vasily Zaitsev has pleaded with the victim's families for leniency for his daugther

The sociology student -- who had previous fines for speeding -- is held in detention for two months pending a criminal investigation into the crash, and faces up to ten years in jail if convicted.

She was last seen in a court appearance wearing 1,055 Ceinture Ankle Boots by luxury Spanish brand Balenciaga and weeping inconsolably after a judge refused to allow her bail ahead of a trial.

Now her energy tycoon father Vasily Zaitsev, 61, has issued an emotional appeal in the name of himself and his wife Tatiana, 40, vowing cash help for the bereaved and injured from the accident, as a close family friend made clear for the first time that Ms Zaitseva fully accepts she was to blame for the horror.

Now her father Vasily Zaitsev an energy tycoon, pictured left with his wife Tatiana, have been trying to arrange a deal with the victim's families to keep his 20-year-old daughter out of jail

The Ukrainian energy company heiress ploughed her luxury Lexus into another car at a crossing, causing the back-end to spin-out and hurtle into innocent bystanders

The father's move follows reports yesterday that he could be ready to spend 1.1 million in compensation, hoping that the gesture will reduce or negate any jail sentence for his adopted daughter.

In Ukraine this could happen if the hard-hit families drop claims against the girl from the wealthy family.

'A terrible tragedy has taken the lives of people,' said Mr Zaitsev.

'Words cannot describe the terror and grief for the perished and injured.

'On our knees we are asking families of the perished and injured in this horrific road accident to forgive our daughter.'

He vowed: 'We will do everything we can for the families of the perished.

'We are raising money and are ready to provide financial assistance.

'It is terrible, and there are no words to express feelings when you lose loved ones.'

Citing law enforcement sources, Vesti Ukraine TV quoted a legal expert who suggested the aim of the father's campaign was to avoid a jail sentence for the sociology student

The aim would be to persuade the judge both that there were 'mitigating circumstances' for her high speed driving, and that the family has acted to provide unprecedented financial compensation for the victims, said the expert

In a tearful statement in the aftermath of the bloody tragedy, Ms Zaitseva, currently detained for two months pending a criminal investigation, had vowed help for her victims

But he also made clear that he blames the driver of the car that his daughter collided with before her Lexus span out of control, smashing into the crowd and overturning.

Ms Zaitseva, pictured, is facing a possible 10-year jail sentence following the accident

'The Volkswagen hit the car in which our daughter was driving,' he said in a statement to a Kharkiv media outlet .

'Because it was a strong hit, the car was thrown at people on the crossroads.'

The court must take into account that the accident involved 'two participants and two cars', he said.

'We will accept any fair decision of the court,' he said.

'It is terrible for the families of injured -- and for us.'

The driver of the VW Touareg, Gennady Dronov, 49, has admitted he edged forwards before the light turned green, but says he only entered the crossroads, where he collided with their heiress, after the light was green giving him right of way.

'He was physically not able to react to a car that "flew" to the crossroads at such speed,' said his lawyer Sergey Perepelitsa, who made clear his client does not accept blame for the crash.

Dronov suffered head injuries and remains in hospital.

And a close friend of the Zaitseva family said: 'Everyone clearly understands that Alyona is guilty.

'She says that herself: "My car killed people."

'It is as clear as day that she will be liable for what was done.'

In one funeral, grandmother Lyudmila Farbis buried her daughter Alla Sokol, 46, and granddaughter Anastasia Sokol, who would have turned 20 this week (still of a funeral from a victim today)

But the unnamed friend said: 'Another thing is not quite clear: Why has the Touareg's driver avoided any responsibility at all?'

He is currently classed as a 'witness' not a 'suspect'.

Asked if the tycoon was seeking to buy off the wounded and bereaved, he replied: 'Looks like a payoff?

'It will not affect the punishment in any way.

'But those who can be saved, should be saved.'

He also admitted that Ms Zaitseva's mother was 'in shock'.

And he revealed that when she was ten, the heiress had been severely injured in a car crash in which her mother was driving.

'They collided with a taxi and 10-year-old Alyona suffered the most,' he said.

'Doctors literally had to put her face back together piece by piece and make it anew,' he said.

'There are still scars left on her face that she tries to hide with makeup.

'I could not imagine that she would break speed limits after what she went through in her childhood.

'After that accident she started having terrible headaches, and she has been on serious painkillers for 10 years.'

The traces of drugs found in her urine could be from these painkillers, he said.

In one funeral, grandmother Lyudmila Farbis buried her daughter Alla Sokol, 46, and granddaughter Anastasia Sokol, who would have turned 20 this week (still of a funeral from a victim today)
Two House committees announced a probe Tuesday of a uranium deal that the Obama administration approved while an entity at the center of the charges was reportedly under federal investigation as a

Devin Nunes, the Republican who heads the House Intelligence Committee, said the investigation will seek to determine whether there was an FBI probe in progress at the time of the deal, and, if so, why Congress was not notified.

'We're not going to jump to any conclusions at this time,' he said in a Capitol Hill press conference.

That investigation will be jointly conducted by the House Intel and Oversight Committees.

A separate investigation in the House will look at the Department of Justice's handling of Hillary Clinton's email probe. It will be operated by the Oversight Committee and the Judiciary Committee.

Two House committees announced a probe Tuesday of a uranium deal that the Obama administration approved while company at the center of the charges was reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice, Devin Nunes, the Republican who heads the House Intelligence Committee, said on Tuesday

Clinton was secretary of state the time that Uranium One transaction with Russian-owned company Rosatom. She has been accused by President Trump and others of turning it into a quid pro quo opportunity for her family foundation. She said Monday that the charge is 'baloney' during an interview.





The White House said Tuesday afternoon that the probes were a 'move in the right direction.'





Press secretary Sarah Sanders noted at her daily briefing that the White House has said many times 'that if there's any collusion whatsoever during the campaigns of any point, or any collusion at any point with another country, that they should look at the Clintons.





'And so I think that's the right thing,' she commented.

Both chambers of Congress are sniffing around the uranium deal that President Donald Trump has tried to handcuff to Clinton.

A separate investigation in the House lead by Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy will look at the Department of Justice's handling of Hillary Clinton 's email probe. It will be operated by the Oversight Committee and the Judiciary Committee

The Senate Judiciary Committee raised the issue with the Justice Department last week.

That panel is also making inquiries into former FBI Director James Comey's move to draft a statement on Clinton's email case before she was interviewed by investigators.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said Tuesday that they, too, would formally investigate the case that ended without prosecution.

'The law is the most equalizing force in this country. No entity or individual is exempt from oversight,' the Republican lawmakers said in a statement.

Democrat Adam Schiff, the ranking member on House Intel, argued Tuesday that the probes were completely partisan and totally unhelpful.

'Acting on the urging of the President who has repeatedly denied the intelligence agencies' conclusions regarding Russian involvement in our election, they are designed to distract attention and pursue the President's preferred goal  attacking Clinton and Obama,' the California Democrat said.

'This may be good politics, but it is a disservice to the far more important cause of investigating Russian interference in our democracy and protecting our elections in 2018 and beyond from outside influence,' Schiff said.,

The House investigation into the Uranium One deal will spearheaded by New York Republican Peter King, chairman of a subcommittee on emerging threats, and Florida Republican Ron DeSantis, chairman of a subcommittee on national security.

King was the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee when the Obama administration green-lit the deal. He questioned it then, and he still does now.

He said today at a press conference announcing House probe that he wrote to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at the time and was told that the deal was receiving 'full scrutiny.'

'It's important that we find out why that deal went through and certainly in view of recent allegations that have been made or recent questions that have been raised, it's essential that this investigation, this inquiry, move forward,' King stated, referring to Clinton in the abstract.

Ron DeSantis said, 'We do have a witness who is a confidential informant who wants to talk about his role in this, and we're in contact with the Justice Department to release him from a nondisclosure agreement.

'If that doesn't work out in a timely fashion, then we obviously would be able to subpoena him.'

Hillary Clinton was secretary of state the time of the deal. She has been accused by President Trump and others of turning it into a quid pro quo opportunity for her family foundation. She said Monday that the charge is 'baloney' during an interview

Nunes said the House Intel Committee has been looking into the issue for some times now.

'I think, as Mr. DeSantis stated, there is a concern over the nondisclosure agreement,' Nunes said. 'We don't think that is a concern. We think that any American, if they have information, even if it's top secret, at the top secret level, they can come to the House Intelligence Committee and provide that information as a whistleblower if they would like.'

DeSantis chimed in to say that 'last Congress, this really was not investigated, but I'm happy to report that the House leadership is fully behind this current investigation.

'And so I would have liked to have done this a little sooner,' the Republican lawmaker assessed, 'but we are where we are, and we're going to get the facts now with their support.'

The Hill newspaper had previously reported that a key FBI informant, an American businessman with knowledge of the Russian nuclear industry's efforts to woo the Clintons and the Obama administration, was blocked by Obama's Justice Department last year from telling Congress what he knew.

Lawyer Victoria Toensing, who worked in the Reagan Justice Department and was the former chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told the paper last Tuesday she is working with lawmakers to push the Trump Justice Department or the FBI in freeing up her client to speak with members of Congress.

Trump made the controversy national news when he used it to deflect from allegations of Russian collusion against his presidential campaign in comments to reporters last Thursday.

'I think that's your Russia story. That's your real Russia story. Not a story where they talk about collusion, which there was none. It was hoax,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

The Senate is now sniffing around the Uranium One deal, which gave 20 percent of the country's uranium to Russia, as parties associated with the deal were giving money to the Clinton Foundation, and the company making the purchase was reportedly caught up in an FBI probe.

Federal investigators are said to have been probing the Russian nuclear industry's business practices at the time of the sale.

Trump told reporters that it was the story of 'the decade' and slammed the mainstream media for not reporting it.

'Frankly it's a disgrace,' Trump said. 'It's a disgrace, and it's a disgrace that the fake news won't cover it. It's so sad.'

Trump also smacked Clinton on Twitter as he called it the 'biggest story that fake media doesn't want to follow.'

She fired back in a book talk with C-SPAN on Monday.

'I would say it's the same baloney they've been peddling for years, and there's been no credible evidence by anyone. In fact, it's been debunked repeatedly and will continue to be debunked,' she said.

President Trump spoke about the questionable Uranium One deal in the Oval Office last Thursday, calling it 'your real Russia story,' as it hit political rival Hillary Clinton

The deal that took place while Clinton was secretary of state has attracted the attention of the Senate

Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said last Wednesday that he is looking into potential 'conflicts of interest' that Hillary Clinton may have had when she sat on the committee that approved the Uranium One transaction

Clinton said the allegations are a distraction and a diversion cooked up by President Trump and Fox News.

'I'm their favorite target. Me and President Obama, we are the ones they like to put in the crosshairs,' she said.

A number of outlets reported last week that Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley sent letters to federal agencies asking about potential 'conflicts of interest' that Clinton may have had when the State Department approved the Uranium One transaction.

State was just one of nine departments that approved the deal, a Politifact article explaining the dispute says.

As a party to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, CFIUS, the secretary of state - Clinton - would have had a role in the decision. But so did the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Politifact says, the nuclear regulator in Utah, where some of the uranium fields were located and everyone else on CFIUS.

Grassley said his investigation will center on Obama administration approval of he deal despite the ongoing FBI investigation of the company concerned. He also made reference Clinton's family foundation.

'It turns out during the transaction, the Justice Department had an ongoing criminal investigation for bribery, extortion and money laundering into officials for the Russian company making that purchase,' Grassley said during a Capitol Hill hearing. 'While all of this was going on, the Clinton Foundation reportedly received millions of dollars from interested parties in the transaction.'

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is trying to get to the bottom of the Russian uranium deal. He finds it suspicious that involved parties had donated to the Clinton Foundation

Trump picked up on the story this morning, tagging Fox & Friends in one of the messages - an indication that he'd been watching author Peter Schweizer's appearance on the program

Peter Schweizer is the author of the book Clinton Cash. He hopped on Fox this morning to comment on Sen. Chuck Grassley's announcement

In 2010, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States approved a deal that allowed Russia's Rosatom nuclear company to buy Canadian mining company Uranium One, which controlled about 20 percent of the U.S.'s uranium deposits, which was why the multi-agency committee was involved.

Sitting on that committee were former Attorney General Eric Holder and former Secretary of State Clinton, whose husband, ex-President Bill Clinton, had collected speaking fees and Clinton Foundation donations by parties associated with the deal.

Details about the donations were previously revealed in author Peter Schweizer's book, Clinton Cash.

Schweizer appeared last Thursday morning on Fox & Friends, with President Trump tweeting 'Russia sent millions to Clinton Foundation' and tagging the morning show, indicating that he had tuned in.

Trump also tweeted, 'Uranium deal to Russia, with Clinton help and Obama Administration knowledge, is the biggest story that Fake Media doesn't want to follow!'

However, the New York Times had investigated the deal as Schweizer's book was coming out and agreed with many of the authors findings: that interested parties had indeed flowed money to the Clinton Foundation as Secretary of State Clinton made her determination.

'Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown,' the Times report said.

'But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundations donors,' it continued.

Adding a new layer to the story, the Hill reported that the FBI had uncovered a Russian bribery plot in 2009 and 2010, before the committee approved the deal.

The Justice Department also waited until 2014 to bring any charges.

Grassley wants to find out why.

He told his Senate committee last Wednesday, in front of witness Attorney General Jeff Sessions, that he had sent 10 letters out last week asking questions about who in the government knew about the FBI probe and when.

'In my letter, I asked the agencies involved in approving the transaction if they were aware of the criminal probe and the intelligence operation examining Russian activity,' Grassley explained.

Former President Bill Clinton was given Clinton Foundation dollars and speaking fees by parties associated with the Russian uranium deal - while his wife, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, had to approve of it for it to go through

The Iowa Republican also asserted that 'Russians involved in the conspiracy were reportedly coordinating with high-level officials, close to Vladimir Putin.

Turning his attention to Sessions, Grassley asked, 'What are you doing to find out how a Russian takeover of American uranium was allowed to occur despite criminal conduct by a Russian company that the Obama administration approved to make the purchase?'

Sessions said he heard Grassley's concerns and promised they would be reviewed.

'It wouldn't be appropriate for me to comment on any ongoing investigation,' Sessions also said.

If Sessions' Justice Department did probe the deal it would be a marked difference from how the Obama administration's Justice Department handled it, according to the lawyer representing the FBI's informant, according to the Hill.

Toensing said last last week that she has a client who possesses details on how Russian executives facilitated the 2010 Uranium One deal, sending millions of dollars in Russian nuclear funds to an entity that was then supporting the Clinton Foundation.

But last year, during the presidential election, he was not allowed to speak out, having signed a non-disclosure agreement at the behest of the FBI.

'There was corruption going on and it was never brought forward. And in fact, the sale of the uranium went on despite the government knowing about all of this corruption. So he's coming forward,' Toensing told the paper. 'He wants the right thing to be done, but he cannot do it unless he is released from the NDA.'

Schweizer took credit for the FBI's investigation and Grassley's inquiry in his Thursday appearance on Fox. He further urged the FBI to lift its gag order on the secret, Uranium One witness.

'There is absolutely no reason, I think, any justification, for this guy to be under a gag order anymore,' Schweizer said. 'Let him testify before Congress. Let him go to the media and tell his story and then people can decide what they think about what he has to say.'

The Department of Justice did not respond to an inquiry last week from DailyMail.com on the gag order and whether it would remove it.
A van driver has admitted he was 'probably asleep' when he crashed into the back of a stationary car, killing the 25-year-old driver.

Ion Rusu, 41, who was born in Romania but had been living in London, confessed to nodding off at the wheel when he killed Marek Majewski in April this year.

Mr Majewski was stopped on the A9 near Dunblane on April 20 when Rusu drove into the back of his vehicle at 48mph, forcing him into the articulated lorry in front.

Ion Rusu, 41, admitted killing 25-year-old Marek Majewski by slamming into his car as it sat stationary in traffic at this roundabout in April this year

Mr Majewski, a farm worker, was pinned against the steering column and died at the scene, while passenger Sylwia Biernat, 26, suffered severe spinal injuries.

After the crash self-employed Rusu told officers that his job required him to drive for up to 14 hours at a time between Scotland and England and he often felt tired.

The High Court in Glasgow was told that Rusu failed to react to stationary traffic on the approach to the roundabout and drove his Mercedes Sprinter van at speed into the back of Mr Majewski's Honda Civic.

Prosecutor Michael Meehan told the court: 'About 6.20pm an articulated lorry approached the Kier roundabout and the driver encountered stationary traffic.

'The driver brought his lorry to a standstill and Mr Majewski stopped half a car length behind the lorry.'

Ms Biernat said they sat there for a short while before their car was hit from behind.

She told police there was no sound of skidding tyres or braking prior to the collision.

Mr Majewski, who was on his way to Glasgow Airport to pick up friends arriving from his native Poland, died at the scene at 6.49pm.

The High Court in Glasgow heard Rusu had been sleeping in his van for weeks before the accident after losing his house in London and admitted he was 'probably asleep' at the wheel

Passenger Ms Biernat needed to undergo a spinal operation. She has ongoing pain in her legs and back and is unable to sit for any length of time.

Rusu was found in his van unconscious and slumped over the steering wheel.

A GPS tracking device fitted in Rusu's van showed that at the moment of impact it was travelling at 48mph.

Investigators found no evidence that Rusu had tried to brake or carry out an evasive action prior to the crash.

When he was told by police that Mr Majewski had died, Rusu was extremely upset.

Mr Meehan added: 'He told officers he no longer held a tenancy in London and had been sleeping in his van for a couple of months.

'He stated that he had possibly been sleeping at the time of the collision as his job required him to drive for up to 14 hours at a stretch.'

The court heard that Rusu held a full UK driving licence ands there were no defects on his van or the Honda Civic.

Judge Graeme Buchanan deferred sentence until next month at the High Court in Edinburgh for background reports on Rusu, who is in custody.

Defence counsel Drew McKenzie will give his plea in mitigation then.
A retired four-star Army general blasted Donald Trump on Tuesday for what he termed 'inane' behavior following his controversial condolence call to a fallen soldier's widow.

Gen. Barry McCaffrey also criticized Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, who has claimed for a week that the president china-shop-bulled his way through an insensitive call after Sgt. La David Johnson was killed in action in Niger.

'We're cruising toward a war with North Korea, and for eight days we've watched inane behavior by the president, Congresswoman Wilson and the chattering class in Washington,' McCaffrey, 74, told The Washington Post.

McCaffrey suggested, too, that Trump couldn't help but bumble and gaffe his way through what should have been a compassionate moment.

'It really makes me sick, to be honest. I'm sure his phone call with the widow was absolutely disastrous,' retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey said of President Donald Trump's recent condolence call to a newly widowed military wife

Trump claimed McCaffrey, couldn't help but bumble and gaffe his way through what should have been a compassionate moment

Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson didn't escape McCaffrey's wrath; he said hers was part of the 'inane behavior' surrounding La David Johnson's death

'It really makes me sick, to be honest. I'm sure his phone call with the widow was absolutely disastrous,' the general said.

Sgt. Johnson (pictured) was one of four soldiers killed in an ISIS ambush in Niger earlier this month

'He wings stuff. He doesn't have any empathy. But I think there's a larger issue: What are we doing here?'

McCaffrey, who once served as President George W. Bush's director of national drug control policy said the past eight days have made him re-evaluate the stability of the United States.

'I'm starting to wonder if the country's losing its moorings,' he said.

Trump, claimed Wilson, told the widowed Myeshia Johnson that her late husband 'knew what he signed up for' by enlisting in the armed services.

The White House claims that was only one line in a longer soliloquy about the honor due to men and women who willingly put themselves in harm's way to serve their country.

Johnson said Monday that Wilson's account of the phone call, and Trump's tone, was '100 percent correct.'

'Why would we fabricate something like that?' she asked.

Myeshia Johnson kissed her husband's casket at his burial service in Hollywood, Florida

Mrs. Johnson said Monday on 'Good Morning America' that President Trump couldn't remember her late husband's name during a condolence call

Johnson also declared that she doesn't have anything to say to the president whom she beliueves disrespected her and her family.

'No, I don't have nothing to say to him,' she said.

She also claimed that Trump didn't know the dead sergeant's name.

An hour later, Trump tweeted that he had 'had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!'
A 39-year-old father died of meningitis which developed from an undiagnosed ear infection, an inquest heard.

Andrew Broadhurst went to his GP several times after suffering from a blocked ear, headaches and problems with his sight.

Despite repeated examinations over the next three months, medics failed to diagnose middle ear infection, also known as otitis media.

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Andrew Broadhurst, pictured in hospital before his death, was found to have bumps on his brain after suffering from headaches

After collapsing in the bath on March 16 the plasterer from Bartley Green, Birmingham, was rushed to hospital.

Doctors found swelling on Mr Broadhurst's brain and he died the next day from meningitis and encephalitis caused by an ear infection.

His distraught mother Brenda Partridge told Birmingham Coroners Court her sons condition had been 'driving him mad' and he was rocking in pain.

Roy and Brenda Partridge outside Birmingham Coroners Court, where Mrs Partridge recalled her horror at finding her son vomiting the day before his death

'In November and December his ear blocked up, he started to get a lot of pain with his ears,' she said.

'I bought him olive oil, he said: "I have pain in my ear."

'He took some ibruprofen and paracetamol.

'I phoned 111 and they wanted to speak to Andrew and he said it was driving him mad, he was rocking with the pain, holding his ear.

Andrew Broadhurst died aged 39 after an ear infection went undiagnosed despite several visits to his doctor

'After using olive oil he had black gunk out of his ear, I said he has an infection.'

He visited his GP on December 2 and phoned the NHS 111 helpline nine days later.

But violent headaches and visual problems forced him back to the surgery on January 18, 25 and again on March 7.

His condition deteriorated rapidly and he was admitted to Birminghams Queen Elizabeth Hospital on 16 March.

Mrs Partridge said the day before her son died he was pleading with her while his eyes glazed over as he vomited.

'I got up and got ready for work.

'Andrew said he felt rough and I said: "Well why dont you go back into bed?"

'I went back into the bedroom and heard Andrew being violently sick in the bathroom.

'He had positioned himself and let the shower water run down over his head.

'His arms were over his eyes - he looked at me and he was all glazed, saying, "mum, mum, mum".

'I just phoned 999.'

Doctor Kate Corrigan told the inquest she saw Mr Broadhurst twice in the months leading to his death and gave him ear drops.

'He was seen on January 18 when I saw him for the first time,' she said.

'I was reassured by the examination.

'Mr Broadhurst said his ear felt blocked, an examination demonstrated wax. He was given a supply of olive oil ear drops to treat the earwax.

'Nothing was recorded about pain, just blocked.'

Roy Partridge was seen weeping outside the inquest into Andrew Broadhurst's death, where it was revealed his pain was due to an ear infection

She saw Mr Broadhurst again on March 8 and referred him to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.

'My working diagnosis was migraine, so we discussed that and I suggested, and he agreed, with onward referral to neurology,' she said.

'When I was writing the referral letter I made the decision to get blood tests done, it is usual procedure to call patients.'

Doctor Sylvia Chudley, who saw Mr Broadhurst on February 20, told the inquest how shocked she was by his death.

'I knew there was something not right and also could see his headaches had been assessed by Dr Corrigan four weeks previously,' she said.

'He needed this to be sorted.

'I am really sorry we couldnt come up with anything else we could have done differently.

'We took it extremely seriously and we are very shocked at what happened to him.'

Intensive care consultant Dr Abigail Ford recalled how rapidly Mr Broadhurst deteriorated when he was rushed to hospital on March 16.

'The working diagnosis was meningoencephalitis,' she said.

'It is inflammation of the brain itself and meningitis surrounding tissues that cover the brain, it is viral or bacterial.

Doctors discovered bumps on Andrew Broadhurst's brain after he was rushed to hospital following months of pain

'Some of the bumps on the surface of the brain looked smoother which may show swelling of the brain.

'There was no abscess inside of the brain, no bleeding inside the brain.

'The lining round the brain showed up the scan consistent with somebody with meningitis.

'He had been started on broad spectrum antibiotics.

'His blood pressure was supported - that was a sign of worsening condition in his brain.

'A third scan on his brain at 12.40am on March 17, I concluded the smoothing of the bumps were getting worse in keeping with swelling on the brain.

'I saw him about 8.40am - it was a very quick assessment - things had become a lot worse.

'His pupils werent reacting to light.

'We confirmed there was nothing else we could do and I phoned Brenda and her husband.

'When I saw him in the morning, he was already brain dead.

'There was no benefit in surgery at that point.'

Doctor Declan Costello, a consultant at the hospital, said: 'Andrew had a middle ear infection that had moved backwards towards the bone behind the ear, the mastoid bone.

'Because of closeness to the brain it is very easy to spread upwards and cause meningitis.'




Robert Miner, 27 (pictured), of Deerfield Beach, Florida, s facing human-trafficking charges after luring young women with false advertisements for models and dancers and forcing them into prostitution instead

A Florida man is facing human-trafficking charges after luring young women with false advertisements for models and dancers and forcing them into prostitution instead.

Robert Miner, 27, of Deerfield Beach, would post the victims' photos on backpage.com and then force them to perform sex acts with men.

At least five victims, between the ages of 18 and 22 and from various states, told police that after Miner duped them into working for him, they were forced to perform sexual services.

The men would be charged anywhere from $50 to $140 at hotels along Interstate-95, which Miner preferred because they 'made more money', he said, according to court records.

Court records show that one 22-year-old Orlando woman saw an advertisement for swimsuits models needed for a photo shoot and responded to it.

However, on June 12, when Miner picked her up at a bus stop in Fort Lauderdale, he drove her to a hotel room, pulled out a hunting knife and sexually assaulted her.

Authorities say she was forced to commit sex acts with 100 men in four days before fleeing on June 16 and calling Fort Lauderdale police.

In another case, Miner flew another woman to Las Vegas to be prostituted and then pressured her into getting a tattoo of his name on her arm, according to WPTV.

Miner (pictured, in court on Tuesday) would make the women charge anywhere from $50 to $140 at hotels along Interstate-95. Bank records revealed Miner deposited more than $225,000 between January 2015 and his arrest on Sunday

Miner has been charged with human trafficking, armed sexual battery and money laundering, as well as multiple charges related to running a prostitution business. He was ordered to be held without bond on Tuesday (pictured) and faces up to life in prison if convicted

Bank records revealed Miner deposited more than $225,000 between January 2015 and his arrest on Sunday, with no evidence he had an actual job, according to Florida's attorney general.

He allegedly kept all the money the women made and only gave them enough cash to pay for the hotel room.

Miner has been charged with human trafficking, armed sexual battery and money laundering, as well as multiple charges related to running a prostitution business.

He is currently being held in Palm Beach County Jail without bond and faces up to life in prison if convicted.

State records show that Miner had once before been arrested on prostitution-related charges in Broward County, reported The Palm Beach Post. He was arrested in November 2014 on charges that he provided transportation for prostitution. He pleaded no contest.
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Rare photos depicting the rescue efforts after the sinking of the Titanic are set to go up for auction this week.

The photos are included in the scrapbook of New York socialite Louis M. Ogden, who was sailing to Europe with his wife Agatha in April 1912 when their ship got an emergency call from the Titanic, which had struck an iceberg and was sinking rapidly.

The Carpathia arrived at the scene at daybreak, where they started rescuing the survivors who had waited out the night in lifeboats.

Ogden, a lawyer, had bought a new camera for the trip, which was still a rare thing to own unless you were wealthy.

He took pictures of the rescue - showing lifeboats approaching the ship and being brought on deck - including lifeboat no. 6, which had the now famous Margaret Brown on board.

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A Carpathia passenger's photos of the Titanic rescue are set to go on auction this week. One of the photos shows lifeboat no. 6 being rescued (above), which had the now famous Molly Brown on board

Molly Brown (pictured) became immortalized after the Titanic for her insistence that her lifeboat return to look for survivors. She was unsuccessful, but history has looked kindly on her for her efforts

Mrs Brown was later nicknamed the Unsinkable Molly Brown for her courage in standing up to the sailor in charge of the boat, who refused to turn back to look for survivors in the water.

While Mrs Brown was unsuccessful in sparking a mutiny, she has been immortalized for her leadership and for pitching in to row.

Another picture taken by Ogden shows an iceberg on the horizon which he notes is the one that sunk the Titanic, though it's unclear if he was correct.

Many of the pictures show an eerily barren sea, when most were expecting to see a mass of bodies.

Historical records of the rescue operation have painted the Ogdens in a good light, lending their clothing to survivors and serving hot coffee on the deck.

Archibald Gracie IV, a direct descendant of the Archibald Gracie who build Gracie Mansion, the New York City Mayor's official residence, survived the sinking by climbing on top of an overturned lifeboat.

When he was rescued by the Carpathia, he found Ogden, an old friend on board. He wrote about the experience in his book about the disaster, The Truth About the Titanic.

'I am particularly grateful to a number of kind people on the Carpathia who helped replenish my wardrobe, but especially to Mr Louis M. Ogden, a family connection and old friend. To Mrs Ogden and to Mr and Mrs Spedden, who were on the Titanic, and to their boy's trained nurse, I am also grateful. They gave me hot cordials and hot coffee which soon warmed me up and dispersed the cold,' Gracie wrote.

Mr Ogden died in 1946, and after that his wife moved to Florida.

Iceberg ahead? One of the photos included in the collection shows what Mr Ogden believed to be the iceberg that sunk the Titanic in the distance

Mr Ogden and his wife Agatha were traveling from New York to Europe at the time of the Titanic disaster

Mr Ogden bought a new camera for the trip, and used it to document the Titanic rescue

Historical records show the Ogdens helped the survivors who came aboard the Carpathia by lending their clothes and serving hot coffee

While living in Florida she gifted a book about the Titanic to her ophthalmologist, which she annotated, and which he later shared with the Ocean Liner Museum.

The Ogdens are pictured above with the captain of the Carpathia

In the book, she described how her husband was woken in the early morning by the sound of the lifeboats around 4:30am.

'My husband also believed we were on fire, hearing the shocks of the lifeboats overhead and got me up and dressed. We were on deck when the first boat arrived. We had been told it was an accident to the Titanic but did not believe it until we saw the (White Star) insignia on the lifeboats,' she wrote.

Ogden says she gave a first class woman, Mrs Lucile Carter, some of her clothes to wear on the three-day journey back to New York.

During that time, she says some of the Titanic's wealthiest survivors were put up in the Captain's quarters.

'Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Thayer and Mrs. Widener, were put in the Captain's quarters. I lent them clothes and took them flowers and fruit every day,' Mrs Ogden said.

She later added that White Star Line chairman Bruce Ismay, who fled the ship on a lifeboat meant to be loading only women an children, kept to his cabin for the length of the journey.

When they returned to New York, the Titanic survivors disembarked. Twenty-four hours later, the Carpathia restarted its journey to Europe, and Mrs Ogden says only one original passenger decided to forgo the journey.

Mr Ogden also captured the California arriving late to the Titanic scene the morning after it sunk

A few of the pictures show icebergs in the area of the Titanic site, including this long flat one

The Ogdens' scrapbook goes on the auction block Thursday at 7pm. It is being auctioned off by Boston-based auction house Remarkable Rarities.

The Ogdens' scrapbook is currently on the auction block through Remarkable Rarities. The sale concludes October 26 at 7pm.

Mr Ogden's scrapbook includes 500 pictures with notations from his trips to Algiers, the Sahara, Spain, Italy, Argentina, Gibralter, Switzerland, Greece and Austria with his wife in 1911 and 1912.

But the focus for collectors will be the photos that show the Carpathia rescue.

'It's a tremendous archive of first generation photos that not only documents the harrowing rescue, but offers an unprecedented number of iceberg photographs,' said Bobby Livingston, Executive VP at RR Auction.

'Images of the two-peak Titanic iceberg are tremendously rare, and this a truly one-of-a-kind and museum-quality collection,' added Livingston.
An ex-Florida teacher has been accused of having sex with a 17-year-old student and giving her a sexually transmitted disease.

Alex Michael Palomino, 27, who worked at Lake Academy, was charged on Saturday with unlawful sexual activity with a minor.

The Tavares Police Department said the teen's father contacted authorities on October 9 to report that his daughter admitted to the sexual encounters.

Ex-teacher Alex Michael Palomino (left during arrest, and right in 2014), 27, has been accused of having sex with a 17-year-old student and giving her a sexually transmitted disease

According to police, the father told them that his daughter and Palomino had a sexual relationship that lasted six to eight months.

Palomino was working as a behavioral technician at Lake Academy in Eustis when the relationship began, according to the Orlando Sentinel. He then reportedly began communicating with her on Snapchat.

The teen said she was surprised when Palomino reached out to her on the app, where he asked her on the date.

According to the police report, Palomino and the teen met for sex three times at a hotel in Tavares and saw each other every other month.

The teen's mother said her daughter's pediatrician diagnosed her with an STD about a month before the report, according to the Sentinel.

Authorities did not release any other details about the transmitted disease.

A spokesperson for the school district said Palomino no longer worked for Lake Academy and was fired for unrelated issues before the start of the school year, according to WFTV. Its unclear why Palomino was fired.

Palomino was booked Saturday at the Lake County Jail. He was being held Monday in lieu of $45,000 bail.
Juan Ontiveros, 28, (pictured) was arrested Monday for allegedly raping a woman after picking her up from a downtown San Antonio bar and taking her to his home

A Texas Uber driver has been accused of raping an unconscious female passenger.

Juan Ontiveros, 28, raped a woman on February 25 after picking her up from a downtown San Antonio bar and taking her to his northwest Bexar County home, according to police.

He was arrested on Monday and charged with one count of sexual assault.

'She was drunk. I did my job. I took her home,' he yelled to reporters as he was being taken into custody, according to My San Antonio.

The arrest affidavit states that the unnamed woman called police the day of the alleged assault after she woke up in Ontiveros' home and told them her genital area felt 'different', but she had been so drunk the night before that she didn't remember having sex.

A sexual assault nurse investigation, which Ontiveros agreed to, found the victim's DNA on his penis.

But Ontiveros claims the woman, who 'appeared to be very intoxicated' and wasn't 'able to communicate with him coherently', fell asleep during the ride.

When he reached her destination, he woke the woman up and she exited the car looking 'dazed and confused' before getting back into the front passenger seat of the car and falling asleep again, he told investigators.

The unnamed woman called police the day of the alleged assault after she woke up in Ontiveros' home (pictured) and told them her genital area felt 'different'

Ontiveros then drove around the block a few times, he claimed, but when she didn't wake up, he drove her to his home, keeping the Uber tab open so he could increase his earnings.

He told police that when they got to his house she was able to walk on her own and he had her lay on his bed. She then allegedly fell asleep until she woke up, used the restroom, and asked Oltiveros to take her home, which he did.

He denies having sex with the woman.

'She trusted that she would be home safely,' said spokesperson for the Bexar County Sheriff's Office spokesperson, Sandra Pickell, according to Click 2 Houston.

'She did everything she could. In this case, it was a predator that took advantage of the situation. Nothing she did wrong.'

Uber told the Current that they revoked Oltiveros' access to the app as soon as they heard of the allegations of sexual assault.

The Bexar County Sheriff's Office believe there may be more victims and are encouraging them to come forward by calling 210-335-8477.
A man accused of fatally shooting a woman and wounding six other people at a Tennessee church last month had a note in his car calling white supremacist Dylann Roof 'less than nothing.'

Emanuel Kidega Samson, 25, ended up killing a woman while she was running away and injured six others in the shooting at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ on September 24.

Nashville Detective Steve Jolley revealed the note about Roof during a hearing on Monday according to The Tennessean.

Jolley said the note read, 'Dylann Roof was less than nothing,' referring to the 2015 Charleston Shooting where Roof killed nine black parishioners.

A note found on the dashboard of Emanuel Kidega Samson's car, left, referenced Dylann Roof, right, a white supremacist who shot nine people at an historic African-American church

The note was found in Sasmson's car. All of the victims in Nashville were white, but it is still not clear whether Samson, who is black, specifically targeted them based on their race or whether the attack was intended to retaliate against the Charleston attack.

Samson has been charged with criminal homicide although police have yet to determine a motive.

'He was just very vague and he didn't really elaborate on anything,' Jolley said at the hearing.

Jolley said Samson downplayed the role of race to detectives.

Robert Engle is pictured testifying during a preliminary hearing for Samson. Engle, 22, has been hailed as a hero for helping to stop the attack

Judge Allegra Walker is pictured listening to testimony during Samson's hearing. Samson is being held without bond

Melanie L. Crow, 38, was shot dead in the September 24 shooting. Samson has been charged with her murder

'I asked him specifically and he said that he didn't give much thought to race,' Jolley said. 'I think he also said the same thing about religion. So he didn't indicate to me any particular thing for motivation.'

Samson said nothing in the interview about the fact that he had attended the church previously, only commenting that he might have delivered pizzas there, Jolley said.

Samson also told Jolley he was just tired of driving on the day of the shooting, the detective added.

Samson broke down in tears at one point when another detective asked him about hurt and pain, according to the detective.

Samson said he remembered shooting outside the church, but did not recall shooting inside and wasn't shooting at anyone in particular, Jolley said.

Samson is charged with murder in the September 24 attack at the Nashville church.

Law enforcement gathers around the Burnette Chapel Church of Christ on September 24 after the shooting

Jonathan Wing, left, Kristin Neff, right, defense attorneys for Emanuel Kidega Samson, are pictured listening to testimony

The shooting rampage left 38-year-old Melanie L. Crow of Smyrna, Tennessee dead.

The FBI and U.S. attorney's office in Nashville quickly opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting.

The judge also heard testimony from Robert Caleb Engle, the 22-year-old church member hailed as a hero in the attack.

During the shooting, Engle said he twice confronted the gunman, who was wearing a tactical vest and a motorcycle-style mask with a clown smile on it.

Engle said he grabbed the shooter's arm, at which point he pistol whipped the churchgoer three times in the head.

Later, Engle said he stood up in front of the shooter, whose gun then turned to target him.

Engle said he pushed the gun back onto the shooter and a shot fired, striking the gunman and sending him to the ground.

Engle said his father kicked the gun away, stood on the shooter's hand and told Engle to go get his gun out of his truck.

Engle came back with his weapon, put his foot on the shooter's back and stood guard until first responders arrived.

According to police records, Samson struggled to hold a job and had a volatile relationship with a woman that twice involved police this year, and also had expressed suicidal thoughts in June.

Samson's public records had not listed any criminal charges against him.

Authorities have said Samson came to the United States from Sudan as a child in 1996 and is a U.S. citizen.

Samson struggled to hold a job and had expressed suicidal thoughts in the months leading up to the shooting. Samson was also a keen bodybuilder, seen here in a picture from Facebook

The gunman attended Smyrna High School before studying psychology at Mott Community College. He had lived in Rutherford County and in South Nashville near Burnette Bethel Church of Christ.

He appears to have made a number of cryptic Facebook posts on the morning of the shooting, writing: 'Everything you've ever doubted or made to be believe as false, is real. & vice versa, B.'

In another, he wrote: 'Become the creator instead of what's created. Whatever you say, goes.'

Additional charges are expected. Samson is being held without bond.
Caitlan Coleman, the American woman held hostage by Taliban-linked militants for five years before being rescued on October 11, has spoken of her time in captivity in an extraordinary first interview.

The 32-year-old spoke to The Toronto Star on Monday to describe how terrorists murdered her unborn daughter and explained why she and her husband Joshua Boyle had three children in captivity, a decision many have criticized since they were saved.

Wearing a hijab as she was photographed with her months-old daughter Grace on her lap, Coleman also claimed that both the US and Pakistani governments were lying about how the family were rescued.

The woman from Stewartstown, Pennsylvania, refuses to reveal whether or not she has converted to Islam.

In 2012, Coleman was five-months-pregnant with the couple's first child - a boy they named Naejeshi Joanah - when they were kidnapped in Afghanistan. At the time they had told their families they were on a hiking holiday in Central Asia.

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Caitlan Coleman, 32, is pictured in Canada on Monday with her daughter Grace, in her first interview two weeks after being rescued from the Taliban

After their rescue earlier this month, Boyle revealed that he and his new bride at the time were there to bring aid to remote areas of the country that were being terrorized by the Taliban.

After the birth of their first son, Caitlan welcomed another boy and a daughter while being housed in Taliban prisons. They were planned pregnancies. Another pregnancy resulted in her miscarrying a daughter who she and her husband named Martyr.

Coleman believes the pregnancy was deliberately ended by her captors who she claims put high doses of estrogen in her food.

It was payback, she said, because her husband had refused their recruiting attempts.

'They were very angry because Joshua had been asked to join them, to work for them, and he said no. They killed her by dosing the food. They put massive doses of estrogen in the food,' Caitlan told the Star on Monday.

She knew about their attempts, she said, through her husband who understands Farsi and who listened in on them boasting about sabotaging the pregnancy.

High levels of estrogen is known to harm fertility in women but it is not known how it can affect a woman who is already pregnant. Coleman did not explain where she believed the captors obtained the hormone from.

Explaining why she and her husband chose to have sex in captivity, Caitlan said she always wanted to become a mother and did not know when else she would have the chance.

Coleman said she and husband Joshua Boyle (above with their two sons) decided to have children in captivity because they always wanted a big family and did not know what other chance they would get

After returning to Canada from Pakistan last week, she and her children were taken to hospital (above)

The family (above in Canada last week) will not reveal if they have converted to Islam but were all pictured in Islamic clothing

'It was a decision we made. We did think about it and talk about it and its difficult to explain all the reasons, but, for me, a large part was the fact that it has always been important to me to have a large family.

'This took our life away from us  this captivity with no end in sight. And so I felt that it was our best choice at that time.

'We didnt know if we would have that opportunity when we came back. We didnt know how long it would be,' she said.

The couple were rescued along with her and her husband when Pakistani officials ambushed the vehicle they were being driven in by their captors who were members of the Haqqani Network, a sophisticated branch of the Taliban.

President Trump celebrated the mission as a joint effort with Pakistani forces and a show of improving relations between the two countries.

Pakistani officials said they intercepted as the family was brought over the border from Afghanistan - a claim Coleman put down on Monday.

She insists they had been in Pakistan for at least a year before they were saved.

'We were not crossing into Pakistan that day. We had been in Pakistan for more than a year at that point,' she said of their October 11 rescue.

'Right now everybodys shunting blame and making claims. Pakistan says, no they were never in Pakistan, until the end. The U.S. says, no they were always in Pakistan; it was Pakistans responsibility. But neither of those are true,' she said.

She also shared a glimpse of their in captivity where they were sometimes separated and moved around prisons - which they called houses - several times.

When they were apart, their oldest son stayed with her, she said.

'They first took us out of Afghanistan; it was several days drive. They took us to Miran Shah, in Pakistan, where we were kept for more than a year.

Boyle, pictured with their second son last week at his parents home in Ontario, understands Farsi which is how the family was able to understand where they were being moved to and from and what their captors had planned for them, his wife said

'It was very bad. My husband and I were separated at that time. He wasnt allowed to see Najaeshi or spend any time with us,' she said.

In the second location where they were kept, she said their captor was 'very nice' and took their son out for 'sunlight' - a luxury they were not afforded.

'He would take Najaeshi out to get him sunlight and nobody else did that at any other point,' she said.

She claims she was raped while being held away from her husband between 2014 and 2015, by which time she says she had already miscarried Martyr.

The rape was punishment for giving notes to anyone who was not involved in the 'abortion', she said.

'We had a pen they didnt know about and we were taking little scraps of paper and trying to hand out notes to anyone and everyone that wasnt one of the guards or commanders involved in killing Martyr.

'But then they took us, separated us, and beat us and that was when the assault on me happened because they wanted us to stop,' she said.

In their final location, she said they watched as militants carried out training and laughed as one recruit struggled to grasp their commands.

Coleman was five months pregnant with the couple's first son in 2012 when they were captured in Afghanistan (above before setting off on what they told their relatives was a 'hiking trip')

The couple appeared in several hostage videos during their time in captivity. One is shown above

'Outside every day they were doing some training, or something was going on, and some guy was shouting and we laughed because whoever Musa was, he was not doing a good job. He was always yelling, "No, no, no, Musa Musa.""

Coleman and her children were taken to hospital in Canada after they returned to North America on October 12.

Coleman's father Jim previously said it was 'unconscionable' for her husband to take her to Afghanistan when she was five months pregnant in 2012

The family had refused to board a US military plane, despite the US's involvement in their rescue, because Boyle feared he would face arrest if he was brought back to America.

Before he was kidnapped or even married to Coleman, he was married to Zaynab Khadr - the daughter of Canada's 'first family of terrorism' whose father was a close friend of Osama Bin Laden.

Friends of the man have told how he was fascinated with Afghanistan and had an 'academic obsession' with terror when he volunteered to be an advocate for Zaynab's younger brother Omar, a teenager who was jailed in Guantanamo Bay over his involvement in a battle in Pakistan when he was 15.

Coleman's own father condemned the decision during an interview with Good Morning America after they were released and said it was 'unconscionable' for his son-in-law to have taken his daughter to Afghanistan when she was pregnant in 2012.

His daughter did not address the controversy or reveal if she'd seen her parents since settling back in to life with her in-laws in Canada.

Her husband Joshua previously said the older children were adapting well to life in Canada.

He previously explained their decision to have children in captivity by telling The Associated Press: 'We always wanted as many as possible, and we didn't want to waste time. Cait's in her 30s, the clock is ticking.'
A hapless would-be bank robber picked the wrong place to attempt a hold-up when he was violently taken out by a customer almost twice his age.

Surveillance video shows a man believed to be homeless man John Ryall, 38, rushing into Honesdale National Bank in Scott Township, Pennsylvania, wearing a mask and waving a gun around.

As the man gets a clerk to put money in his bag however, he is tackled out of nowhere by Robert Sakosky, 63.

Surveillance video shows a man rushing into Honesdale National Bank in Scott Township, Pennsylvania, wearing a mask and waving a gun around

After the man gets cash from a clerk, customer Robert Sakosky tackled him to the ground

The two men struggle on the floor of the bank as Sakosky tries to take the man's gun

John Ryall, left, was later identified as the robber in the surveillance footage. The vigilante that body-slammed him, Sakosky, is pictured right

After the tackle, Sakosky and the robber struggle off camera. When they come back into view, Sakosky takes the gun from the man and throws the bag of money across the room.

Sakosky managed to get the man's mask off so he let go. The unmasked robber ran out of the bank.

When police arrived, Sakosky directed them to where the robber went.

Officers charged Ryall with robbery, aggravated assault and making terrorist threats. Police say Sakosky and bank employees identified him as the robber.

Ryall reportedly told police: 'I needed the money for my kid, that's why I robbed the bank I need the money, I can't do anything.'

The two continue to struggle as Sakosky gets the on his feet and stands over the robber

Sakosky is ultimately able to disarm and unmask the robber, before throwing the bag aside

The unmasked robber runs into the parking lot. Sakosky told the police which way he headed

Sakosky is the general manager of a local hotel. His employees say they were both shocked and proud of what he did.

'He's definitely a hero, but he's just a normal guy,' Wade Nordahl, a Carbondale Grand Hotel employee, told WNEP. 'I mean, he's personable, he's a good boss, he never gets angry. I'm honestly surprised he did it.'

People living and working near the bank are calling Sakosky a hero.

'He is exceptionally brave to have done that,' neighbor Donna Shaw told WNEP. 'I certainly would not have encountered anybody with a gun, I wouldn't have tried to do it.'

Sakosky, pictured with his wife, is the general manager of a local hotel. He is being called a hero by people in the community
Celebrity photographer Terry Richardson (pictured) has been banned from working with several major fashion magazines

Celebrity photographer Terry Richardson has admitted 'interacting' with models in a sexually explicit way following the decision by Vogue magazine to ban him.

The 52-year-old has been banned from working with several major fashion magazines amid resurfacing sexual harassment claims.

He has now broken his silence after he was effectively sacked by Conde Nast International on Tuesday.

Richardson has been the subject of widespread allegations of sexually abusing models over his lengthy career - accusations he has constantly denied.

But today he admitted he acted in a 'sexually explicit manner' during some photo shoots with young models.

The Telegraph received a statement from his spokeswoman which stated Richardson is an artist 'who has been known for his sexually explicit work'.

She said: 'He is an artist who has been known for his sexually explicit work so many of his professional interactions with subjects were sexual and explicit in nature but all of the subjects of his work participated consensually.'

Referring to the decision by Conde Nast International, she added: 'Terry is disappointed to hear about this email especially because he has previously addressed these old stories.'

Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair are among those who were told to 'kill' any scheduled shoots with the snapper by parent group Conde Nast International.

The New Yorker is known for incorporating explicit themes into his shoots, and directed the sexually-charged music video to Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus - which she later said she regrets.

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Richardson (shown left with Eniko Mihalik) has been the subject of widespread allegations of sexually abusing models over his lengthy career

Paris Hilton (left), Nicky Hilton (centre) and photographer Terry Richardson (right) are pictured at an event together in 2014

The 52-year-old directed the sexually-charged music video to Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus

According to the Telegraph, an email was circulated among staff of Conde Nast International after an article in a Sunday newspaper questioned the photographer's past.

The email, sent by the firm's executive vice president James Woolhouse, said future articles with Richardson should be 'killed or substituted with other material'.

He wrote: 'I am writing to you on an important matter. Conde Nast would like to no longer work with the photographer Terry Richardson.

'Please could you confirm that this policy will be actioned in your market effective immediately. Thank you for your support in this matter.'

Richardson's contract arrangements with Conde Nast had been in discussion for several months - but after an article was posted that questioned why he was still being 'feted by fashionistas' ties were officially cut.

Allegations of sexual misconduct against Richardson have resurfaced in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. However, there have been no new claims made against him.

Weinstein brought sexual harassment in the work place back to the forefront after the New York Times published an investigation into sexual assault claims against him.

On Friday, Richardson (shown left with supermodel Kate Moss in 2011) addressed allegations directed at him in recent days in a blog published on Huffington Post

The disgraced Hollywood mogul is now facing multiple accusations of sexual assault and harassment from more than 40 woman including actress Gwyneth Paltrow.

On Friday, Richardson addressed allegations directed at him in recent days in a blog published on Huffington Post.

He wrote: 'I collaborated with consenting adult women who were fully aware of the nature of the work, and as is typical with any project, everyone signed releases.

'I have never used an offer of work or a threat of rebuke to coerce someone into something that they did not want to do.

'I give everyone that I work with enough respect to view them as having ownership of their free will and making their decisions accordingly, and as such, it has been difficult to see myself as a target of revisionist history.'

Richardson, who has worked with some of the biggest names in the music and fashion industry, including Beyonce and Lady Gaga, but also Marc Jacobs and Tom Ford, often appeared in his own work.

He is also known to have a close relationship with Edward Enninful, the editor of British Vogue, who he was pictured arm-in-arm with last month at New York Fashion Week.

MailOnline has contacted Richardson's representatives for comment.

Richardson's contract arrangements with Conde Nast had been in discussion for several months - but after an article was posted that questioned why he was still being 'feted by fashionistas' ties were officially cut. He is pictured in 2016 at the Tom Ford Fashion Show in New York

Figures from within the modelling industry, including former i-D editor Caryn Franklin, said Richardson's behaviour has become an 'open secret'. He is pictured on September 8 with his partner Alex Bolotow (right) and Carine Restoin-Roitfeld, former editor and chief of Vogue Paris (left)
Saying he would no longer be 'silent or complicit,' Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake announced Tuesday from the Senate floor that he would not be running for re-election.

Flake, who has been a constant thorn in President Trump's side  earning plenty of ire from the president too  noted that he had 'children and grandchildren to answer to.'

'I decided I would be better able to represent the people of Arizona and to better serve my country and my conscience by freeing myself of the political consideration that consumed far too much bandwidth and would cause me to compromise far too many principles,' Flake said.

'To that end, I am announcing today that my service in the Senate will conclude at the end of my term in early January 2019,' he added.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called Flake's diatribe 'petty' and also suggested his departure from the Senate was probably for the best.

'I haven't spoken with him directly since the announcement by Sen. Flake,' Huckabee Sanders said of Trump. 'But I think that based on previous statements and certainly based on the lack of support that he has from the people of Arizona, it's probably a good move.'

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Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., dramatically announced that he would not be running for re-election next year, citing the current, ugly state of politics

Sen. Jeff Flake said he was done being 'complicit,' as he belongs to the same political party of President Trump and thus announced Tuesday he would no be running for re-election next year

And that was surely the case Tuesday as Flake tore into the politics of President Trump through his Senate address.

Flake had previewed his political escape to the Arizona Republic saying earlier Tuesday, 'there may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party.'

He said he hadn't soured on the Senate, but rather the current condition of his Trump-led party.

'This spell will pass, but not by next year,' Flake said.

On the floor, Flake said he had risen to address 'a matter that has been very much on my mind at a moment when it seems that our democracy is more defined by our discord and dysfunction than our own values and principles.'

He began his speech by making the 'obvious point,' that elected political office isn't an indefinite career.

'We are not here to simply mark time,' he noted. 'Sustained incumbency is certainly not the point of seeking offices and there are time when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles.'

'Now is such a time,' he said.

Flake turned and expressed a number of regrets and implored that his colleagues not embrace what he called the 'new normal.'

Among the things that fit the definition: the coarseness of the present dialogue, the undermining of democratic ideals, personal attacks, threats against freedoms and institutions and the flagrant disregard for the truth.

'None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal,' Flake said, adding a 'heaven help us,' if that becomes true.

Then he went after Trump  though never once uttered the president's name.

'We must stop pretending that the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal,' he said. 'They are not normal.'

'Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has been excuse as telling it like it is when it is actually reckless, outrageous and undignified,' Flake said. 'When such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy.'

'Such behavior does not project strength because our strength comes from our values,' Flake continued. 'It, instead, projects a corruption of the spirit and weakness.'

The senator said lawmakers had fooled themselves long enough by thinking 'a pivot to governing is right around the corner.'

For months, first in the Republican primary last year, then during the general election and all through his first nine months in the White House, political watchers have wondered when President Trump would become more presidential. Flake predicted that time would be never.

The Republican looked to his fellow Republicans  though only Sens. John McCain, Bob Corker, both of whom have recently tussled with Trump, along with Sens. John Barrasso, Pat Roberts, Ben Sasse, Rand Paul and Jim Risch were in the room  and asked what would happen if the shoe was on the other foot.

Would his Republicans not speak out if a Democratic president was displaying this behavior?

Democrats were on hand too including Sens. Debbie Stabenow, Tim Kaine, Chris Coons, Jeff Merkeley, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan.

'If I have been critical it is not because I relish criticizing the behavior of the president of the United States,' Flake said. 'If I have been critical, it is because I believe it is my obligation to do so, and as a matter of duty of conscience.'

While announcing that he would not run, Flake also pointed to the narrower and narrower path he would have had to weave through to win, saying his party's settled on a message 'more viscerally satisfying' that of 'anger and resentment.'

'To be clear, the anger and resentment that the people feel at the royal mess that we've created are justified,' he said. 'But anger and resentment are not the governing philosophy.'

He said populist politics often lead to 'mischaracterizing and misunderstanding our problems,' which in turn lead to 'the impulse to scapegoat and belittle,' which in turn lead to turning Americans into a 'fearful, backward-looking people.'

'In the case of the Republican Party, those things also threaten to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking minority party,' he said.

Turning his attention to the top of the party again, he used Trump's campaign motto against the president.

'We were not made great as a country by indulging in or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorifying in the things that divide us and calling fake things true and true things fake,' he said. 'We did not become a beacon of freedom in the darkest corners of the world by flouting our institutions and failing to understand how hard won and vulnerable they are.'

Flake said he planned to spend the 14 months of his Senate career speaking out and ended his speech by quoting President Abraham Lincoln.

'A political career does not mean much if we are complicit in undermining these values,' Flake said.

Senate Majority Leader McConnell sat stone-faced through most of the speech, but applauded when it was over, then rose to salute one of his members.

'Weve just heard a speech from a very fine man,' McConnell said.

McConnell had just invited President Trump to each lunch with the GOP senators, trying to get a tax reform package back on track.

However, before Trump's lunch date, he had reignited his feud with Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, which quickly took over the news cycle.

McConnell, however, tried brushing that under the table as he spoke to reporters after having lunch with the president and the GOP caucus.

'I don't have any observation about that,' McConnell said, before later labeling the feud a 'distraction.'

'I don't know how many times I have to say the same thing, there's a lot of noise out there,' McConnell huffed. 'But hat we're concentrating on is the agenda that the American people need.'

'I think there is great cohesion among Republicans of all persuasions to achieve this goal before the end of the year,' McConnell said.

Several minutes later, Flake announced his plans to drop out of the 2018 race, smacking his party and his president around in the process.

Only a handful of senators were in the room at the time of the speech, with Virginia Democrat Sen. Kaine calling a ' tragedy for the institution.'

'I said to one of my Republican colleagues as we were walking off the floor. We both had the same thought: It was very depressing. A very depressing day,' Kaine told reporters immediately after Flakes speech.

Senate Majority Whip Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a Republican, called it a 'very sad day.'

'He's a very good man, a very good senator,' Cornyn added.

Others went about their business, fielding questions on Puerto Rico and infrastructure even as a member of their 52-seat majority called it quits railing against the new normal.

I was in a meeting, havent heard his speech, said Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who tends to avoid hallway interviews.

Sen. John McCain, Flakes home-state colleague, spoke on the floor immediately after Flakes emotional speech.

'I have seen Jeff Flake stand up for what he believes in, knowing full well there would be a political price to pay,' McCain said. 'I have seen him stand up for his family. I have seen him stand up for his forebearers, who are the early settlers of Arizona.'

'In fact, theres a place called Snowflake, Arizona, and obviously the Flake part comes from his direct predecessor,' McCain said, adding a fun fact.

From the other side of Capitol Hill, House Speaker Paul Ryan shared a similar sentiment.

'I'm saddened Congress is losing my friend Jeff Flake,' the Republican speaker said, heralding Flake's war on earmark spending. 'Jeff's retirement is a loss to the Senate and the greater cause of conservatism,' Ryan added.

The upside to the Arizonan's departure, according to the McConnell-aligned PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, is that Flake's exit would shake up the race, making it harder for the Steve Bannon-backed former state legislator Kelli Ward to win.

'The one political upshot of Sen. Flakes decision today is that Steve Bannons hand-picked candidate, conspiracy-theorist Kelli Ward, will not be the Republican nominee for this Senate seat in 2018,' said the group's President and CEO Steven Law.

Bannon had marked Flake as endangered as he announced that he would field primary opponents for all the Republican incumbents, excluding only Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

A spokeswoman for Bannon did not return DailyMail.com's request for comment.

Former Bush chief strategist Karl Rove  voicing concerns coming from the party's establishment  warned voters about Ward in a strong-worded editorial last week in the Wall Street Journal.

He made fun of a town hall event she hosted as a state senator 'to explore the claim that jet contrails are really chemicals sprayed by the government for weather, mind or population control.'

Karl added that Ward expressed no regrets for lending legitimacy to the zany conspiracy theory.
A judge on Tuesday denied bond to five Michigan teenagers who are charged with second-degree murder in a deadly rock-throwing incident on Interstate 75.

All five suspects in the death of 32-year-old Ken White entered not-guilty pleas in a Genesee County court.

White, a father-of-four from Mount Morris, was a passenger in a van when a six-pound rock thrown from an overpass smashed through the windshield, killing him, last week.

Police say at least 20 rocks were found on the interstate, 80 miles north of Detroit. Other cars were damaged.

Kyle Anger, 17, of Clio, Michigan, one of five teenage suspects in a deadly rock-throwing incident, is led into the courtroom for his arraignment on Tuesday

Mikadyn Payne (left), 16 and Trevor Gray (right), 15, are among five Michigan teenagers charged with second-degree murder, conspiracy and property destruction

Also charged are Alexzander Miller (left), 15, and Mark Sekelsky (right), 16, who pleaded not guilty and were denied bond

The underage suspects are charged as adults. Kyle Anger turns 18 next week. He's accused of throwing the rock that hit the van.

Ken White, a 32-year-old father-of-four, was killed after a six-pound rock thrown from an overpass smashed through his windshield and struck him on Interstate 75 in Michigan

The teens also face charges of conspiracy and property destruction. The others are 16-year-olds Mark Sekelsky and Mikadyn Payne and 15-year-olds Alexzander Miller and Trevor Gray.

Genessee County Prosecutor David Leyton announced the charges Monday, five days after White's killing.

All five suspects could face life in prison for the second-degree murder charge.

'I don't think this was a deliberate attempt to take somebody's life. It was a willful and wanton act that resulted in somebody's death,' Leyton said regarding the charges.

On Tuesday, Genesee District Judge William Crawford II ordered all five young men held without bond, citing 'the seriousness of the nature of these charges and the danger to the public,' reported Fox 2.

From left to right, Trevor Gray, 15, Alexzander Miller, 15, Mikadyn Payne, 16, and Kyle Anger, 17, all of Clio, Mich., appear for their arraignment in front of Judge William Crawford

'Ringleader': Anger, pictured in an orange jumpsuit talking to his lawyer, turns 18 next week. He's accused of throwing the rock that hit the van

Devastated: Ken White's fiancee Aimee Cagle is pictured in the audience during the suspects' arraignment Tuesday

Kenny White (right), the victim's father, is pictured clasping his hands next to his would-be daughter-in-law in court Tuesday

Family members of the victim, including his father Kenny White and his fiancee , and relatives of the five teens attended the suspects' arraignment Tuesday.

Anger, the oldest of the five, is being held in the county jail, while his alleged accomplices are being held in the Genesee Valley Regional Center for juveniles.

They are due back in court on November 2.

White lost his life last Wednesday night when, according to the Genesee County Sheriff's Office, the large rock thrown by the teens struck the father-of-four in the head when it came crashing through the windshield.

White was immediately knocked unconscious. He was then rushed to the Hurley Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead.

Five teenagers have been charged with second-degree murder in connection with the case. Pictured is 17-year-old Kyle Anger. The rest of the teens are 15 years old

Trevor Gray (left) and Mikadyn Payne (right) have also been charged in connection with the case. The five defendants could face life in prison if found guilty of the charge

Alexander Miller (left) and Mark Sekelsky (right) have also been charged. In a statement about the charges, Genessee County Prosecutor David Leyton said: 'I don't think this was a deliberate attempt to take somebody's life. It was a willful and wanton act that resulted in somebody's death'

Officers said the incident happened just before 8.30pm near the Dodge Road overpass in Vienna Township, which is about 16 miles from Flint.

Photos of the scene show a gaping hole in the windshield of a white van with a ladder fastened on top. Two large rocks were also found on the highway.

According to MLive, there were four other vehicles that reported hitting other large rocks on the highway.

White left behind a fiancee and four children. Speaking to WBTV, his fiancee Aimee Cagle discussed the heartbreak of telling her five-year-old son what happened to his father.

Amy Cagle, White's fiancee, teared up while describing how she needed to tell her five-year-old son about his father's tragic death

White had four children, and his youngest is five years old. A GoFundMe account was set up to help his family with burial costs

Aimee Cagle, pictured left, discussed the heartbreak of telling her five-year-old what happened to his father

Authorities said the teens dropped the rocks just before 8.30pm last Wednesday near the Dodge Road overpass (aerial view seen above)

'For some senseless act, for it to be just a rock, just to take him so soon,' she said.

A GoFundMe account was set up for White's family to help with his burial. His youngest child is five years old.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the page has raised about $56,500 of its $70,000 goal.
There have been two sightings of Britain's most wanted fraudster who went on the run after seducing a woman for cash while masquerading as a MI6 agent, police have revealed.

Mark Acklom, 44, allegedly posed as a spy and a Swiss banker in a bid to seduce a 55-year-old divorcee from Bath, Somerset, before fleecing her out of her 850,000 life savings.

Avon and Somerset Police have today claimed he has been sighted twice in Europe, after going on the run with his wife and their two daughters.

Conman Mark Acklom is on the run with his wife, Maria Yolanda Ros Rodriguez, 47, and their two daughters, aged six and eight

After a televison police appeal, the force said in a statement: 'Information has been provided relating to two potential sightings in Europe which we are now actively following up with the help of our partner law enforcement agencies.

'The appeal is still active and we're still extremely keen for sightings or information about Acklom's whereabouts to be reported.'

They failed to reveal whereabouts he was seen.

The career criminal disappeared when his victim went to police and was thought to have gone on the run in Spain but has also been seen in Geneva, Switzerland.

Avon and Somerset Police believe he is with his wife, Maria Yolanda Ros Rodriguez, 47, and their two daughters, aged six and eight.

Detectives have said the yoga teacher could be helping him live in plain sight - as an ordinary family man.

On-the-run British fraudster Mark Acklom (right) was pictured another fugitive Jose Estevez in September

The force has released a photograph of Acklom's wife, who is also known to use aliases including Yolianda Ross, Maria Long and Mary Moss, and said she may be working as a yoga teacher or attending yoga classes.

Both Acklom and his wife have previously set up property businesses and police believe their daughters may be attending a fee-paying school.

Britain's most wanted conman: Mark Acklom Acklom has been on the Crimestoppers Most Wanted list for nearly a year, accused of fleecing a woman of her 850,000 life savings. He met Gloucestershire clothes shop boss Carolyn Woods, 57, in 2012 and over several years persuaded her to hand over her life savings The swindle was the culmination of a lifetime of fraud which began when he was just 16 and posed as a City stockbroker to secure a six-figure mortgage. Advertisement

Detective Inspector Adam Bunting said: 'Mark Acklom is a convincing fraudster and we're working hard to locate him as soon as possible.

'We believe he'll be with his wife, Maria Rodriguez, and their two young daughters, who we know, up until last year's appeal, were enrolled in El Limonar International School in the Murcia area of Spain.

'In the days following the appeal he removed his children from the school and, together with his wife, he disappeared.

'We have significant concerns about the children's well-being given they were uprooted, with no notice, from their school, friends and family. It's highly likely Acklom will have placed his children in another fee-paying school.'

Police are appealing to British expats with children in private international schools, who may have noticed the recent arrival of a family from Spain.

In September it emerged Acklom has been seen in Switzerland with Jose Estevez, another fugitive who is wanted by Spanish authorities for defrauding government departments in Vigo, a city in the north-west of the country.

According to Interpol, Estevez was behind the largest ever scam on the Galician treasury, after submitting 10million (11million euros) in false invoices.

Conman Mark Acklom, 43, alias Marc Ros Rodriguez, who is on the run in Spain, pictured with his wife Maria Yolanda Ros Rodriguez, known as Yolanda Ros, in Ascot's Royal Enclosure

Estevez (left) and Acklom (right) have both been on the run for more than a year

Detectives have said Acklom's yoga teacher wife could be helping him live in plain sight - as an ordinary family man

A photo of the wanted pair sipping coffee together in Geneva was obtained by Sky News , who have been told Europe's lack of internal borders have turned the continent into a 'huge playground' for criminals.

Former Metropolitan Police border control officer Chris Hobbs told the channel: '[You've] got the whole of Europe in which to operate in, work in and hide in. And obviously you can't expect local police to know everybody who is wanted in Europe.

Acklom is accused of promising to marry Carolyn Woods and tricked her into handing over the huge sum of money

'They will know the odds of them actually being detected anywhere in Europe are pretty remote.'

Acklom, now 44, first tried his hand at fraud aged just 16. While studying in Eastbourne, he stole his father's gold Amex card, posed as a stockbroker and hired jets to fly his friends around Europe.

He even convinced a building society to give him a mortgage of nearly 500,000 which he used to buy a small mansion in London.

He was later jailed three times in Spain for a variety of fraud offences and used the name Marc Ros Rodriguez.

He then returned to the UK and, over the course of a year-long relationship, reportedly promised to marry Carolyn Woods and tricked her into handing over the huge sum of money.

Ms Woods said of their romance: 'He has a great presence and charisma, he exudes confidence and the air around him was electric. I was caught up in a whirlwind of excitement.

'One of the most extraordinary things he told me was that it was all a cover and he was an MI6 agent. It sounds very far-fetched, but he convinced me it was true.'

She added: 'I had just sold my house and I offered him a loan of 26,000. In the end I lent him everything I had.'

Carolyn Woods previously told how she was 'caught up in the excitement' of Acklom's claims

But before they could walk down the aisle, he vanished with the cash - leaving Ms Woods emotionally and financially ruined and on the brink of suicide.

The National Crime Agency's website states Acklom is 'wanted by Avon & Somerset Police on suspicion of fraud by false representation'.

If you have any information about his whereabouts you can call Avon and Somerset Police or independent charity Crimestoppers by calling 0800 555 111 or their non-traceable anonymous online form at www.crimestoppers-uk.org
Don Lemon has appealed to Donald Trump to stop attacking the grieving widow of Sgt. La David Johnson who died fighting militants in Niger.

The CNN anchor was fighting back tears as he made an emotional plea to the president to 'please stop' the abuse towards Myeshia Johnson and demanded that he apologize to her for his tweet which 'essentially called her a liar.'

'Think of what Sgt. Johnson would want,' he told Trump in his piece to camera. 'You are putting his widow in the terrible position of having to fight for her dignity when she should be concentrating on taking care of herself, her health, her two children, and the one on the way.

'Mr. Trump, please stop it. Please stop!'

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CNN's Don Lemon got chocked up on camera as he appealed to Donald Trump to 'please stop' bullying the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson

Trump (left) had responded to Sgt. Johnson's pregnant, grieving widow Myeshia Johnson (right) on Twitter after she said that the president appeared to forget her husband's name when he called to offer his condolences

Trump tweeted minutes later that he had a 'very respectful conversation' and said Sgt. Johnson's name 'without hesitation!'  directly contradicting the widow

Trump had responded to Sgt. Johnson's pregnant, grieving widow on Twitter after she said that the president appeared to forget her husband's name when he called to offer his condolences. La David was one of the four American service members killed in an ISIS ambush in Niger on October 4.

Trump almost immediately fired back.

'I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!' he wrote.

Lemon played a clip of Mrs Johnson's interview with ABC where she said she had been moved to tears with anger and frustration at the president's response.

The 51-year-old journalist, who had also mentioned at the beginning of his open letter that he'd also suffered very public criticism from Trump on camera and on Twitter, urged the president to imagine what it was like if Tiffany or Ivanka were in Mrs Johnson's shoes.

The CNN anchor was fighting back tears as he demanded that Trump apologize to Mrs Johnson for his tweet which 'essentially called her a liar'

He also raised the point that 'the only Gold Star families you have attacked are people of color.' 'How does that look?'

'If Myeshia Johnson is mad at you, take it,' he continued. 'Just as President Bush and others did. Take it. It's part of what you signed up for when you decided to descend that escalator and throw your hat in the ring for president.

'You're commander in chief, the President of the United States of America, the greatest country on Earth. Act like it.'

He also raised the point that 'the only Gold Star families you have attacked are people of color.'

'How does that look?'

Lemon ended his emotion-fulled address by offering his own condolences to Myeshia on behalf of America 'since the President seems incapable of finding the right words.' And he urged Trump to follow his example.

From left, Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, Sgt. La David Johnson and Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright were killed in Niger when a joint patrol of American and Niger forces was ambushed by militants believed linked to ISIS

Myeshia Johnson, wife of U.S. Army Sergeant La David Johnson, who was among four special forces soldiers killed in Niger, receives the flag which draped his coffin at a graveside service in Hollywood, Florida, October 21

'We are all sorry for what you're going through,' he said. 'La David, your hero husband, was an awesome soldier, a great man, and a great American.

'He's a role model to me. When his photos come on the TV screen or I see them in the newspapers I am incredibly proud of him and what he accomplished.

'And to be extremely candid, as a black man, I am always looking for role models who look like me, and the latest one I found was your husband. May he rest in peace.

'And may you find peace when you can finally get a good night's sleep, knowing that this is America and we got your back.'
A Melbourne man charged with funding Islamic State fighters in Syria faces at least three months in custody after a magistrate rejected a bail bid backed even by prosecutors.

Hampton Park resident Isa Kocoglu, 43, appeared in Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Tuesday charged with supporting persons engaged in a hostile activity in Syria.

The family man who was arrested at the home he shares with his wife and children in an early Tuesday morning raid was refused bail despite Australian Federal Police agreeing to his release if he agreed to certain conditions.

'I am not satisfied that bail should be granted. 'On the contrary, I think bail should be refused,' Magistrate Luisa Bazzani said.

Before his arrest, Kocoglu, who is accused administering a website that raised money for a known ISIS Jihadist, appeared to be a typical husband and father.

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A Melbourne man charged with funding Islamic State fighters in Syria faces at least three months in custody (pictured is Isa Kocoglu) after a magistrate rejected a bail bid backed even by prosecutors.

Kocoglu (pictured), 43, appeared in Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Tuesday charged with supporting persons engaged in a hostile activity in Syria

He was arrested from his home by the JCTT (pictured escorting him from his home), which comprises of officers from the Australian Federal Police, ASIO, and Victoria Police

The 43-year-old suburban man appeared to be very active on social media, posting images of his family and memes on his Facebook page.

A meme uploaded by Kocoglu poked fun at people's 'fear of Muslims.'

Kocoglu also posted articles about marriage and raising children.

But behind closed doors, police claim Kocoglu was a different man.

It is alleged Kocoglu sent almost $4,000, using online payment system PayPal, to the jihadist - understood to be American John Georgelas - between November 2013 and August 2014.

The 43-year-old received a disability pension, which could possibly have been used to fund his donations, AFP's Commander John Beveredige said.

It is believed Kocoglu was introduced to Georgelas, known as Yahya in Jihadi circles, through a terrorist sympathizer he met online on a discussion page titled 'Aussie Muslims', according to the Herald Sun.

All three men allegedly collaborated to create radical websites and social media pages.

Kocoglu is accused of designing the website, which encouraged people to support ISIS.

Officers believe the man's family weren't involved in his online activities, and they're not currently searching for anybody else in relation to the specific case.

Before his arrest, Kocoglu, (pictured with his father) who is accused administering a website that raised money for a known ISIS Jihadist, appeared to be a typical suburban dad who cared for his family

Kocoglu published numerous jokes, memes and articles to his very active Facebook page (pictured)

Some images poke fun at vegans, while others mock the weather and people's 'fear of Muslims' (pictured)

It is alleged Kocoglu sent almost $4,000, using online payment system PayPal, to the jihadist - understood to be American John Georgelas - between November 2013 and August 2014

The 43-year-old (pictured) received a disability pension, which could possibly have been used to fund his donations, AFP's Commander John Beveredige said

Kocoglu has denied the charges and claims his arrest has been a misunderstanding.

Magistrate Bazzani said on Tuesday she did not grant the 43-year-old bail because she didn't think it was enough to have him to report to police three times a week, stay off social media, and limit his telecommunications to a single mobile phone and a domestic landline.

'This man is an unacceptable risk of reoffending while on bail,' she added.

Kocoglu is due back in court on January 29.

It is believed Kocoglu (pictured) was introduced to Georgelas, known as Yahya in Jihadi circles, through a terrorist sympathizer he met online
A father of two has been caught in an online porn operation in which he allegedly lured teenage girls from across the country into chatrooms before getting them to strip naked.

In one instance, a girl from from Oakland County, Michigan was tricked into posing nude on a webcam for men pretending to be teenage boys.

Christian Maire, 39, a married dad from Binghamton, New York, was charged with numerous pornography crimes after his home was raided on Monday while his wife and kids were at home.

Christian Maire, 39, is accused of being the leader of a group of individuals who used a social media to produce and share child pornography

One of the girls who was allegedly caught up in the porn ring was a 14-year-old girl with whom Marie had numerous explicit conversations with.

The girl who is now 16, told the FBI how the online scam worked, according to the Detroit Free Press.

While visiting an online chat room, the teenage girls would be chatted to by other men pretending to be teenage boys.

She stated that she had 'consistently' been in a chat room with four to five individuals whom she believed to be other male teenagers.

The people who were present then tried to get her to show them her naked body and perform sexually explicit acts while on a webcam.

Maire's home was searched by FBI officials while his wife and two young children were present

In reality, at the other end of the keyboard would be predatory men whose end game would be to try to get the girls to engage in some form of sexual activity.

Once the girls were in the chat room and they were made aware that other teenage boys were online, videos of other male teenagers would be sent to the girls and played for them, acting as though it was boys of a similar age acting for the camera, in real time.

Maire, who was arrested on Monday was allegedly a member of the group whose primary role was to recruit teenage girls using social media websites as 'hunting ground'.

He would send pictures and videos to the teenagers pretending to be a teenage boy and send the girls links to chatrooms.

Maire 'voluntarily spoke' with FBI agents and confessed to visiting websites that had child pornography.

It has since been determined that he exploited at least 50 teens and preteens nationwide across the country.

The FBI have rounded up at least six other men in the Detroit area who have all been indicted on charges of running a child exploitation enterprise.

Maire, meanwhile, has been charged with five child pornography crimes.
A Florida woman has been charged after she reportedly crashed a wedding, poured a drink on her ex-boyfriend and punched a woman in the face.

Shelby McDowell, 20, of Lake Butler, told authorities that Darby Johns - who she identified as her current boyfriend - was attending a wedding at Hammock Beach Resort as a guest on Saturday and she went to spy on him.

McDowell said she saw her 26-year-old boyfriend dancing and kissing another woman, 25-year-old Crystal Munoz, on the dance floor, according to Flagler Live.

Shelby McDowell, 20 (left and right), of Lake Butler, Florida, has been charged after she reportedly crashed a wedding, poured a drink on her ex-boyfriend and punched a woman in the face. She told authorities that her boyfriend, Darby Johns, was attending a wedding at Hammock Beach Resort as a guest on Saturday and she went to spy on him

McDowell said she saw her 26-year-old boyfriend (pictured together, January 2017) dancing and kissing another woman, 25-year-old Crystal Munoz, on the dance floor. She allegedly threw a drink on both of them and punched Munoz in the left eye. She then ran to the women's restroom to hide in a stall

She subsequently walked up to them and allegedly threw a drink on both of them and punched Munoz in the left eye. She then ran to the women's restroom to hide in a stall.

However, several bridesmaids 'pulled her out of the stall by her feet and they began to punch her', according to her arrest report.

Resort manager Kevin Amico said he and Hammock resort security entered the bathroom and saw McDowell allegedly on top of Munoz.

Amico said McDowell was punching Munoz, and Munoz was covering her face to protect herself. In security officer Pasquale Vallone's description, he saw 'two women grabbing and swinging fists at each other.'

Other guests and Hammock resort security broke up the fight.

After McDowell (pictured) went to hide in the bathroom, several bridesmaids 'pulled her out of the stall by her feet and they began to punch her', according to her arrest report. Other guests and Hammock resort security broke up the fight

Munoz (left) told a deputy that she and Johns were walking to the ballroom when 'someone' threw a drink at them and punched her in the left eye. Johns (right) told deputies that McDowell wasn't his girlfriend and that he hadn't been kissing Munoz

McDowell was booked at Flagler County Jail on a misdemeanor battery charge early Sunday morning and released on her own recognizance 12 hours later (Pictured, Hammock Beach Resort)

Munoz told a deputy that she and Johns were walking to the ballroom when 'someone' threw a drink at them. She says she was then 'punched in her left eye twice and when she turned around, she saw a woman running away'.

She was among the bridesmaids who went to the women's restroom where she recognized McDowell by looking under the stall door, reported Flagler Live.

Johns told deputies that McDowell wasn't his girlfriend and that she wasn't invited to the wedding. He also said that he hadn't been kissing Munoz and that they were walking to the dance floor when McDowell attacked them.

McDowell was booked at Flagler County Jail on a misdemeanor battery charge early Sunday morning and released on her own recognizance 12 hours later.
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Thailand is preparing to hold a lavish five-day funeral for its beloved monarch who died last year aged 88.

Crowds have already started camping out on the streets of Bangkok in order to secure a prime viewing spot for the funeral of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, which is expected to draw a quarter of a million people to the capital.

The ceremony, estimated to cost $90million (69million) will feature thousands of performers, royal chariots drawn by hundreds of men, and an artificial palace which will be burned with his remains inside it.

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A quarter of a million Thais are expected to gather on the streets of Bangkok ahead of the cremation of King Bhumibol Adulyadej on Thursday, a year after he died following a long battle with illness

Crowds have already started camping on the streets of the capital in order to say their last farewell to the longest-ruling monarch in their history, and a man many revered as semi-divine

Since his death, King Bhumibol's body has lain in state at the royal palace in Bangkok while the country observed a year of mourning. There is no set period, and it varies depending on the stature of the deceased

King Bhumibol's subjects have been allowed to view his remains and pay their respects at the palace while Buddhist monks performed daily rites. A day of national holiday has also been declared for Thursday, when he will be burned

At the time of his death, Bhumibol was the longest-serving head of state anywhere in the world, Thailand's longest-serving monarch, and the world's richest royal with an estimated fortune of $30billion

Bhumibol was known as the development king, overseeing ambitious public works during his lifetime in order to bring Thailand into the 21st century, while steering clear of communism. He also cultivated a reputation of being down-to-earth, making him immensely popular among his subjects

Two women holding fans handed out specially to mark the funeral sleep in the doorway of a shop in Bangkok as a tropical storm passes over the capital. Thousands have already saved their spot for the ceremony

The crowds are gathering around a giant artificial crematorium where the King's body will be placed on Thursday before it is burned and then placed in an urn

Mourners of the Thai king sit under their umbrellas in Bangkok as they await the funeral of their beloved monarch, which will take place after sunset on Thursday

Those who had already traveled to the capital were undeterred by a tropical storm which struck on Tuesday night, choosing to keep their place in the rain rather than risk losing it

Forecasters have warned that the cremation ceremony may be overshadowed by rain, though that would be fitting for a king who was known for his connection to water - featuring it prominently in the 4,000 public constructions he oversaw

Mourners set up a shrine to King Bhumibol near the Grand Palace in Bangkok on Tuesday they await the start of the funeral ceremonies, which will begin on Thursday

The crematorium has taken a year to build and features multiple water fountains and 500 sculptures of animals, including two of the King's dogs, named Jo Cho and Tong Daen

Since King Bhumibol passed away in October 2016 from a long illness, his body has lain in state in the royal palace in Bangkok while a year-long period of national mourning was observed.

According to the country's traditions the embalmed remains have been constantly attended by Buddhist monks performing funeral rites, with ceremonial music played every three hours.

Until the early 20th century these rites were performed in private, which also allowed time for the body to slowly decompose away from the eyes of the monarch's subjects. Strong incense was burned to cover the smell.

But since the death of King Chulalongkorn in 1910 the palace has been kept open this period of mourning, allowing subjects to come and pay their last respects.

King Bhumibol was the longest ruling monarch in the kingdom's history, reigning for seven decades. During that time he reversed the fortunes of the unpopular monarchy, restoring it to revered status.

King Bhumibol was dearly loved before he died, and the country shut down for days after his death - with many people, including prostitutes, wearing black after business started up again. The same loyalty was on display on the streets of Bangkok as people sat in the rain to save spaces for his funeral

A Buddhist monk shelters from the downpour as he prepares for the funeral. Monks have attended the body of the king every day since his death, chanting funeral rites

The funeral will feature huge royal chariots pulled by hundreds of men which will carry the king's body. Once it reaches the crematorium, smaller version will be used in a stage performance, which is being rehearsed here

Thousands of performers, including musicians, acrobats and dancers will take part in the ceremony honouring their monarch, who passed away in October last year

Thai artists perform the Khon dance, the traditional Thai masked performance drama based on the Hindu epic Ramayana for their final farewell to the late King Bhumibol

By the time of his death he was viewed as semi-divine by his subjects - a man who saved Thailand from communism and dragged it into the 21st century, while remaining in touch with the people.

Despite his down-to-earth reputation, his funeral will be anything but. Preparations began almost as soon as he died, and are only just being completed.

The crematorium in Bangkok has been painstakingly sculpted by master craftsmen, and incorporates dozens of water features to honor King Bhumibol's connection to it - of 4,000 government projects he oversaw, roughly 3,000 featured water.

Sculptors have crafted 500 animals to sit around it, including cows to represent plenty and lions to represent the country's religious code, according to the BBC. The structure will be topped by replicas of the King's two dogs, Jo Cho and Tong Daen.

Replicas of the crematorium have also been constructed around the country for those unable to make it to the capital on Thursday, when it will be burned.

For those unable to make it to the capital for the start of the ceremony on Thursday, smaller versions of the crematorium have been built around the country for people to pay their respects

The Great Victory Royal Chariot is pulled through Bangkok by officers of the Thai army and royal officials as the practice ahead of the funeral

Thai royal guards march next to a mourning portrait of the late King, who will be mourned by millions of subjects this week

Thai army officials participate in a training exercise to pull a royal funeral chariot vehicle, which will be used in the procession

The ceremony will also feature the firing of cannons, as members of the Thai royal guard practice firing them

Raised in Switzerland, Bhumibol ascended the throne aged 18 in 1946 after his elder brother Ananda Mahidol was shot dead in mysterious circumstances at the Grand Palace in Bangkok.

He was crowned four years later, inheriting a monarchy whose power was in steady decline.

By time of his death, all of that had changed.

Bhumibol left behind one of the world's richest monarchies, with the palace the pivot point of Thailand's power networks including the influential military.

'Thailand needed a king as rallying and unifying symbol and a young king found a people to rebuild a kingdom around,' explained Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a politics professor at Chulalongkorn University.

A revival of antiquated palace rituals -- including prostration in his presence -- and spiritual duties gilded the throne, elevating Bhumibol to a semi-divine status.

That deification made scenes of his engagement with ordinary Thais even more remarkable to a nation awed by his work ethic.

Over years spent criss-crossing Thailand, Bhumibol seeded thousands of well-publicised royal projects in a poor, agrarian country that won him the moniker the 'Development King'.
House Democrats are straying into armchair-psychiatrist territory in an attempt to brand Donald Trump as unfit to hold office.

California Rep. Jackie Speier, a reliably liberal member of the House Intelligence Committee, told the Buzzfeed website that she has been consulting with mental health professionals about the president.

Another Democrat, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, made news in June when he proposed convening a special committee of psychiatrists and other doctors whose job would be to determine Trump's sanity.

Speier and Raskin have failed to attract any Republicans to their banners.

'It's one thing from my non-professional, non-clinical standpoint [to] believe that someone does not have the capacity to do the job,' Speier said Tuesday. 'It's another thing to talk to experts and [those] who can deal with mental psychosis on a daily basis, so I wanted to hear from them.'

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California Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier, pictured participating in an animal rights event in July, has begun consulting with mental health professionals in the hope of having Donald Trump declared unfit to serve as president

No doctor has publicly declared anything resembling a psychiatric diagnosis of Trump, who could only be removed via impeachment or the 25th Amendment  which speaks to presidential disability

Separately, Yale University psychiatry professor Bandy Lee said a half-dozen House and Senate Democrats have sought her out.

Yale University psychiatrist Bandy Lee says at least a half-dozen House and Senate Democrats have sought her out to consult about Trump's mental health

And Speier has spoken on the subject with psychologist John Gartner, who founded a political group called Duty to Warn.

That organization hangs its name on the longstanding principle that mental health professionals have an obligation to alert someone when their patients exhibit a likelihood or desire to harm themselves or others.

But that ethical concept requires an in-person evaluation in order to kick in; none of the psychiatrists or psychologists who have publicly opposed the president on mental health grounds have examined him.

Still, Duty to Warn has said Trump is 'deeply and dangerously psychologically disordered.'

The American Psychiatric Association says that a 'duty to warn ... does not apply if there is no physician-patient relationship.'

Buzzfeed, a left-leaning publication, acknowledges that no physician has declared Trump is mentally deficient in any way.

Speier tweeted in August that it was 'time to invoke the 25th Amendment,' making it clear that she wants to make Trump an ex-president

Removing Trump from office is the longest of long-shots, but keeping the idea alive allows Democrats to maintain a public discussion about Trump's erratic eccentricities

The U.S. Constitution's 25th Amendment does allow for a majority of the president's cabinet, or 'such other body as Congress may by law provide,' to decide if an Oval Office occupant is unable to carry out his duties  and then to put it to a full congressional vote.

Vice President Mike Pence would also have to agree, which could slow down the process  or speed it up if he wanted the levers of power for himself.

The 25th Amendment has been around since shortly after the John F. Kennedy assassination, but Congress has never formed its own committee to judge a president's mental health.

Speier tweeted in August that Trump 'is showing signs of erratic behavior and mental instability that place the country in grave danger. Time to invoke the 25th Amendment.'

Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin has a plan that would allow Congress to name a commission with the power to determine if Trump is too mentally ill to hold office

Raskin, a constitutional law professor as well as a legislator, has mad no bones about the fact that his House bill is an attack on Trump specifically

Raskin's bill would allow the four Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate to each choose a psychiatrist and another doctor for a mental fitness panel. Then each party would add a former statesman  like a retired president or vice president.

The final group of 10 would meet and choose an 11th member, who would become the committee's chairman. Together, they could recommend a finding that Congress  and the vice president  would have to agree on in order to move forward.

Gartner, the founder of Duty to Warn, has also formed a '25th Amendment PAC' to support candidates who are willing to help remove Trump from office.

That committee has already made at least one donation of $1,000 to Raskin.

'We hope to be to the 25th Amendment what the NRA is to the 2nd,' Gartner gamely told Buzzfeed of his embryonic effort.
A North Carolina man has been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list after allegedly murdering a co-worker and fleeing to Mexico.

The FBI is offering a reward of up to $100,000 for information on the whereabouts of Alejandro 'Alex' Castillo in connection to the 2016 killing of Truc Quan 'Sandy' Ly Le, 23, in Charlotte.

Authorities warn that Castillo, 18, remains at large and should be considered armed and dangerous.

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Charlotte Murder Suspect Alejandro Castillo (left) faces state and federal charges in the murder case of Truc Quan 'Sandy' Ly Le (right)

Surveillance footage released by the FBI shows images of murder suspect Alejandro Castillo (highlighted in white shirt) crossing the border into Mexico

'This crime was horrific', says Special Agent Marc Weingrad of the FBIs Charlotte Division. 'Sandy was an innocent woman who was shot in the head.'

The investigation initially began after the families of Le, Castillo, and his accomplice all filed missing persons reports days before the victims body was found and identified.

Le and Castillo are said to have met while working together at a restaurant in North Carolina's largest city. According to the FBI, the pair briefly dated before her death.

A joint investigation by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) and the FBI revealed that Castillo had borrowed money from Le. He later arranged a meeting with the victim on the premise of repaying her.

Text messages uncovered by authorities showed that the two had agreed to meet in Charlotte on August 9, 2016.

The FBI cites CMPD Det Brent Koeck as stating that, upon meeting, Castillo had ordered Le withdraw a large sum of money from an ATM.

Investigators estimate that Castillo drove the victim to a wooded area before she was shot in the head.

The FBI on Tuesday named Alejandro Castillo (pictured left in 2015 and right in 2016) to its 'Ten Most Wanted Fugitives' list

Le's body was found in a remote area outside Charlotte on August 17, 2016.

Law enforcement official believe Castillo and Ahmia 'Mia' Feaster, who had also worked with the victim and suspect, fled the state in Le's vehicle and later crossed the US border into Mexico.

The getaway car was found at a bus stop in Phoenix, Arizona.

Surveillance footage captured images of Castillo crossing the border into Mexico, according to the FBI.

He may now reside in San Francisco de los Romo or Pabellon de Arteaga in the Mexican state of Aguascalientes.

Feaster surrendered to authorities in October 2016 in Aguascalientes. Castillo faces state and federal arrest warrants.

Surveillance footage released by the FBI shows images of Alejandro Castillo (highlighted in white shirt) crossing the border into Mexico

On November 2, 2016, the District Court of North Carolina for Mecklenburg County charged him with first degree murder.

The US District Court for the Western District of North Carolina then charged him with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution on February 10, 2017.

Castillo is the North Carolina city's first-ever fugitive named on the notorious FBI list.

Alejandro Castillo (pictured in 2015)

'Our priority is justice for Sandys family and the entire community', says District Attorney Andrew Murray of North Carolina's 26th Prosecutorial District.

'We are hopeful this suspects addition to the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list will be a significant step toward securing that justice.'

Meanwhile, Le's family arrived Tuesday at the FBI's office in Charlotte seeking justice in the case, the Charlotte Observer reported.

The victim's uncle, Bobby Le, said his niece came to the US from Vietnam at the age of 12, according to the Charlotte Observer.

'She's just a (trusting) person', he said. 'That's the problem that I see. She trusts everybody.'

Le had recently graduated from Queens University of Charlotte with a degree in hospital administration, according to her uncle.

The FBI has issued statements in English and Spanish, calling for the public's help in gathering information leading to Castillo's arrest.

A map marking the area where Castillo is thought to have crossed the US border from Nogales, Arizona into Mexico and the regions where authorities say he may be hiding (inset left)

Additionally, billboards in several states bordering Mexico are due to feature wanted ads for Castillo.

Castillo, who is originally from Arizona, is 5-foot six-inches and has black hair and brown eyes. He is said to weigh 180 to 190 pounds and speaks English and Spanish.

His aliases include: Alexandro Castillo, Alex Castillo, Alejandro Rosales, Alejandro Rosales Castillo, Alejandro Rosales-Castillo, Alejandro Rosalescastillo.

Anyone with information on Castillo should call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or Charlotte-Mecklenburg Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600. Tips can also be provided online to the FBI.
Jamie Harron photographed with his thumbs up at Glasgow Airport after being released from Dubai

The British man who was sentenced to three months' imprisonment in Dubai for touching another man's hip has tonight landed back in the UK after the charges against him were dropped.

Jamie Harron, 27, from Stirling, was sentenced in his absence for public indecency in the Middle Eastern country on Monday.

He was arrested following the incident in July and claimed he was simply trying to avoid spilling his drink when he touched a businessman.

The electrician lost his job and racked up debt after having to spend more than 32,000 in legal fees and expenses while stuck without a passport in the UAE.

But he was able to leave the country after the charges were dropped and said he can't wait for 'a good night's sleep in my bed' after landing at Glasgow Airport.

He was photographed on Tuesday evening with his thumbs up at the airport and was pictured embracing his delighted mother Patricia, father Graham and sister Jordan.

Speaking of his ordeal, he said: 'I think it was a bad situation, to be honest. I didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

'I still couldn't believe it had actually happened and what it was that was going on.

'Even now that I'm actually home, I still can't believe that it was actually three and a half months.

'I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep in my bed cause I was sleeping on my mate's couch. The full thing's just mental. I feel very good. I am happy to be home.'

His mother, 55, said it is 'brilliant' to finally have her son home and kissed him on the cheek after he touched down.

Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum is thought to have intervened due to growing international pressure.

His mother Patricia gave him a kiss on the cheek after he landed back in Glasgow on Tuesday night

Jamie Harron smiled when he hugged his mother after he arrived back in Scotland at Glasgow Airport

His mother Patricia and sister Jordan were waiting for him at the airport and he looked relieved to be finally be home

In a statement released through campaign group Detained in Dubai, Mr Harron said: 'No one should go through what I went through.

'Yesterday, I faced months in a Dubai prison cell. Today, I was phoned to say I could collect my passport.

'The past few months have been up and down and full of worry for everyone. I am arranging flights back home now and can't wait to see my family.

'It's going to take me a while to recover. It is hard for my friends to imagine what was going through my head when I was told I would be jailed for months.

'I am struggling to come to terms with being released but will be having dinner with my friends tonight before I leave for good.'

He added that he is delighted to be coming home and wanted to thank Dubai's ruler.

He also said his parents are 'ecstatic' that he is returning after his experience with the 'absolute shambles' of Dubai's justice system.

His mother, Patricia, said she was 'absolutely delighted' at the news.

Harron told her: 'Just stop crying mum, don't be upset anymore. Don't cry anymore.'

He said he put his hand on businessman Emad Tabaza's hip to avoid spilling a drink in a crowded bar.

His Jordanian accuser dropped the complaint, but local prosecutors decided to proceed with the case.

Jamie Harron, 27, from Stirling, was sentenced for public indecency in the Middle Eastern country

Businessman Emad Tabaza (left) had left Briton Jamie Harron in jail (right) over claims of being indecently touched

The electrician had been working in Afghanistan and was on a two-day stopover in the United Arab Emirates when he was arrested in July.

The vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, has exonerated Harron, according to the group Detained in Dubai.

Radha Stirling, who works for Detained in Dubai, said: 'The cases against him have been dismissed, and the sentence imposed by the court yesterday has been nullified.

'We wish to express our deepest gratitude to Sheikh Mohammed for his personal intervention in this case, and for exonerating Jamie at long last.

'It has now been established that the allegations against Jamie were entirely unwarranted, defamatory, and meritless; to such an extent that the ruler of the country found it necessary to step in and correct the wrongful action of the public prosecutor and to quash the judgment of the court.'

She added: 'This was a courageous and honourable decision on the part of Sheikh Mohammed.

'While it highlights the urgent need for judicial reform in the country, it is also a hopeful sign that the UAE's leadership possesses the will and vision to pursue such reforms in the future.'

Harron (pictured left) is now free to leave the country after having his passport returned after an intervention by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (pictured right)

Who is the ruler of Dubai? Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Prince Andrew, Duke of York, at Ladies Day at Ascot Racecourse in 2009 Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is the vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates as well as the ruler of the Emirate of Dubai. The 68-year-old succeeded his brother as leader of the tiny Middle Eastern city in 2006 and has been credited with turning it into a global business and tourism destination. He oversaw the building of the Burj Al Arab hotel and the Palm Islands in Dubai alongside many other projects. As well as being a much-hailed leader, he is also a published poet and a keen equestrian. His family owns the world-famous Godolphin stable, of which he is the driving force. The enormously successful operation has won 4,000 races since it was created in 1992 and has been named British Champion Owner twelve times - in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017. It has stables in Newmarket, Sydney and Melbourne and has its headquarters in Dubai. The sheikh has himself has also won victories on horseback, including a double in the Longines FEI World Endurance Championships at Euston Hall in Thetford five years ago. Advertisement

She said Harron is now considering a civil suit against the businessman and his staff who also accused him of drinking alcohol and making a rude gesture.

When he was sentenced on Monday, he was given two weeks to appeal the decision.

He was said to be 'angry, disappointed, and dreads what may happen next'.

He was initially jailed for five days and then released on bail with his passport confiscated.

The incident occurred at the raucous Rock Bottom bar, popular among Dubai's many wealthy and often tipsy foreign residents and tourists.

Stirling said at the time: 'He has already suffered tremendously as a result of these allegations, and now faces the likelihood of incarceration.

'He feels betrayed and exploited by the system, which did not investigate the reports of key witnesses in his defence and led him to believe that the case would be dropped.'

She added: 'His family was unable to visit him during this critical time because they faced a very real risk of imprisonment themselves under the UAE's cyber crime laws which forbid criticism of the government.'

Harron had already been sentenced in absentia to 30 days in prison for failing to appear at a court hearing for making a rude gesture and drinking alcohol during the same July incident.

Stirling said she believed a decree from Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, had resolved the case.

In Dubai, as in the other seven sheikhdoms that make up the United Arab Emirates, absolute power rests with the hereditary ruler.

'It was just a public-relations nightmare for the country,' Stirling said.

She said of Harron: 'He was understandably nervous; as similar calls from the police in other cases were merely tactics to lure individuals into police custody.'

Mr Harron with his parents Graham and Patricia, who were said to be distraught about their son's legal case

Accused Brit also had his bike taken Yesterday it was revealed that Harron had his garage broken into at his home in Scotland. Writing on Facebook, Jordan Harron said: 'So to add to Jamie's ordeal. His garage has now been broken into with a saw, things stolen one of which his good bike! Police been phoned but can everyone please share!! 'So to add to Jamie's ordeal. His garage has now been broken into with a saw, things stolen one of which his good bike! 'Police been phoned but can everyone please share!! Find out who this low life scum is !!' Advertisement

Dubai, home of the long-haul airline Emirates, long has sought to make itself a tourism hub.

It has the world's tallest building - the Burj Khalifa - as well as man-made islands, an indoor ski slope and miles of air-conditioned walkways in its high-end malls. It also will host the 2020 World Expo, a world's fair held every five years.

Part of Dubai's year-round tourism draw is also its alcohol sales, as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran ban the purchase of liquor and beer. Even neighboring Sharjah, another of the UAE's sheikhdoms, bans it.

However, alcohol possession for foreigners is technically illegal without a government-issued license obtainable only after gaining their employer's permission, though liquor and beer are widely available in bars.
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Intimate shots of British Army life have showcased the finest photographers working with our military as part of an annual competition.

The revealing series of photographs features shows simulated conflict, training exercises and the Trooping of the Colour in pictures submitted for this year's British Army Photographic Competition.

Bombardier Murray Kerr's stunning still of servicemen battling with batons and shields contrasted with his snaps of them sleeping in bunks secured him first place in the Best Amateur Portfolio category.

The 45-year-old from Glasgow served as a gunner in Afghanistan has been a reservist photographer for 13 years and was one of 780 people to enter the competition.

Entries, some of which can be seen below, also featured a portrait of a soldier's piercing stare as he took part in Exercise Northern Strike in America.

The close-up was captured by Sergeant Jonathan Van Zyl, who was an infantry soldier based in Germany for 11 years.

The father-of-two from Andover, Hampshire, said the picture was unplanned.

'It was one of those moments; you just saw it and you took it,' the 35-year-old said.

'It wasn't planned or anything, but it works. I think it's the soldier's eyes, looking into his eyes, it draws you into it.'

Cry Havoc by Bombardier Murray Kerr captures simulated combat as cadets battle with batons and shields in this training exercise documented in his prize-winning portfolio

Sergeant Jonathan Van Zyl, who was based in Germany for 11 years, captured this close-up during Exercise Northern Strike in America

Into the Storm by Sergeant Rupert Frere gives a glimpse into the cockpit in the series of pictures providing an insight into Army life rarely seen by the public

An aerial shot of Chelsea Pensioners paying their respects at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday got first prize in the 'open to the public' category. It was taken by Royal Navy photographer Petty Officer Owen Cooban, 39, from Crawley.

It's a Good Life, by Cadet Sergeant Jess Tappenden-Rowell, shows cadets celebrating their achievements as they take the first steps toward careers in the British Army

Blowing her own Trumpet by Jonathan Van Zyl from Hampshire, who was one of 780 people to enter the British Army competition

Richie Willis called this shot Less Emissions, providing a ground-level perspective of a parachute drop in his submission for the annual competition

Bombardier Murray Kerr photographed these soldiers while they were sleeping after a training exercise at Longmoor Training Area in Hampshire

Corporal Darren Legg shows the humanitarian side of Army life as servicemen assist in the clean-up following Hurricane Irma

Infantry Battle School, Brecon, Wales. The Section Commanders Battle Course 1603, staff and students, are pictured on Fan Dance, a section level competition over 18km in the Brecon Beacons

Bolt, by Sergeant Rupert Frere, shows horses during training at the seaside as captured for 2017's British Army Photographic Competition

Boxing by Norman Brown shows that military service isn't all about what happens in battle, capturing the extra-curricular side of Army life

Prepare to Fight shows soldiers carrying their equipment in a forest, encapsulating the competition's intention to highlight episodes of Army life rarely seen by the public

Another shot from Darren Legg shows the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, the strongest Cape Verde-type hurricane in the Atlantic since Wilma in 2005

Satisfied Soldiers by Sergeant Rupert Frere exhibits a gentler side to Army life as the group appear relaxed and content

Sergeant Rupert Frere's All the Queen's Horses appears to show servicemen during inspection while horses stand patiently in line

Surround the Enemy, shot by Sergeant Rupert Frere, shows soldiers wading through water during a training exercise

Riot shields and protective helmets are donned by baton-wielding servicemen stalking through the night during this exercise captured by Corporal Mark Larner in Waiting for the Off

Advance to Contact by Sergeant Rupert Frere captures soldiers stalking through forestry in this entree for the British Army Photographic Competition

Guy Butler, a contractor based at MOD Lyneham, titled this shot Fist Bump and is currently working as a photographer at the Defence School of Electrical Mechanical Engineers.

Jungle is Massive by Sergeant Rupert Frere shares its title with a song by MC Vapour famously used in the comedy film Ali G In Da House

Monochrome close-up shot 18,000 ft by Ben Houston shows a masked soldier standing next to a propeller in a collection submitted to the annual competition

Sister Selfie by Lucy Waller shows that a method of photography made famous by social media has infiltrated Army life too

British Soldiers 3rd Battalion, The Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, conduct house clearance drills on exercise Northern Strike

Strategy Requires Thought by Bombardier Murray Kerr shows a pensive, quiet side to military service in this thoughtful picture

Corporal Darren Legg once again showcases the aid work carried out in light of Hurricane Irma as one of his competition entrees shows soldiers handing out bottled water

Flying Horsemen beautifully captures this equestrian and her animal leaping over a barrier in this photograph by Sergeant Rupert Frere

Sergeant Rupert Frere's enthusiasm for equestrian activity also inspired him to take this photograph, entitled Why the Long Face?

Maintenance work is carried out by British Army personnel in light of Hurricane Irma, in this shot by Corporal Darren Legg

Boom by Sergeant Rupert Frere shows sparks fly and smoke billow as canon fire through the air in a nod to the history of Army service

Is this picture taken by Jason Bryant, the photographer captures the Trooping of the Colour, offering an intimate insight into one of the Army's proudest traditions

The comically name Waiting to Take a Leak was captured by Sergeant Rupert Frere and shows soldiers patiently waiting in line

This artistic shot was captured by Adam Blackmore and shows a serviceman's face reflected in a ceremonial weapon. It is appropriately titled Reflection

LCL Joe Taylor entered this picture - Casualty - which offers a dramatic snapshot of the efforts undertaken to retrieve wounded soldiers from the battlefield

Pegasus Company candidates are seen at the end of the Log Race in difficult weather conditions on Catterick Training Area, North Yorkshire

Caught off Guard features a rare moment of calm in Army life, as LCL Joe Taylor's portrait shows a soldier folding his arms in a moment of brief respite

Move shows the moment a soldier is required to break away from his hiding place in this intense photograph by LCL Joe Taylor

Fight explores the off-duty life of this soldier, who uses his time away from training to keep fit for the battlefield by boxing

Summer Shower by Guy Butler captures a calm soldier still in the face of oncoming rain as he stands alone on the landscape

Let's Box by Guy Butler shows two servicemen slug it out in the ring while their peers and superior officers watch the spectacle
The Montana Territory Peacemakers will hold a cowboy action shooting match on Saturday, Oct. 28, at the Billings Rod and Gun Club pistol range.

Registration opens at 8 a.m. The match begins at 9 a.m. and is open to the public. The cost is $10.

Round count for the match is 50 rifle, 50 pistol and 25-plus shotgun. A side match following the main match will require additional rounds.

This will be the third annual "Zombie" match in honor of fellow shooter, Buck Bored, who was fatally injured in a motorcycle accident in October 2015. Youth ages 12-18 must be accompanied by an adult. Spectators and photographers are welcome. Eye and ear protection are required.

For additional information visit montanaterritorypeacemakers.org, which also will provide notice in the event the match is canceled. Additional information is also available via email at mtpeacemakers@gmail.com.
Shane Green (pictured outside the Dreamworld first aid clinic) was a first responder to the tragic incident on October 25, 2016, which killed four

A Dreamworld paramedic who was working on the day of the Thunder River Rapids tragedy says he could 'never be prepared' for the horrors he saw.

Shane Green, 48, was the first aid manager for the Queensland theme park when the popular ride malfunctioned, killing four people in October last year.

He has spoken out about the horrific tragedy to honour the team who worked tirelessly to save the victims - Kate Goodchild, 32, her brother Luke Dorsett, 35, his partner Roozi Araghi, 38, and Cindy Low, 42.

Mr Green, a father of two, says he knew from the moment the call came through for assistance that something terrible had occurred.

'The tones in the voices on the radio and the location of the incident had me sprinting to the emergency buggy,' he said.

'My heart was pounding and I had a feeling of dread. I knew that something tragic had just taken place.

'But I was in no way prepared for what I was about to be involved in.'

Mr Green says one year on he is still struggling to come to terms with the horrific scene, and feels 'haunted' by the experience

A suspected malfunction on the popular Thunder River Rapids ride caused a raft (pictured) to flip

Pictured: The doomed raft of the Thunder River Rapids ride is covered in a black sheet as police inspect the area

Just after 2pm on October 25, a suspected malfunction on the Thunder River Rapids ride flipped one of the rafts on a conveyor belt, crushing two and leading to the drowning of two others.

Mr Green said the scene he was confronted with when he arrived has 'haunted him ever since'.

'A few seconds later I pulled up at the Rapids ride and grabbing the resuscitation equipment, I rushed along the exit queue and walked into complete pandemonium,' he said.

The sight that I was confronted with is something I wish I had never seen. It was just something I wasnt prepared for. Something that I could never have been prepared for.

'The photos from the media show the scene, but what it doesn't portray is the chaos, the noise, the sounds and the fear on the faces of the staff and guests.

'It was like a scene from a horror movie. It has haunted me relentlessly ever since.

'The sight that I was confronted with is something I wish I had never seen. It was just something I wasnt prepared for. Something that I could never have been prepared for.'

Mr Green watched one of his team enter the swirling water, which flowed 'rapidly' into drains, before jumping in himself.

Since the incident, Mr Green has left his job and now lives in the snowy mountains, where he is beginning to confront some of the images which continue to haunt him

Pictured: What happened on the Thunder River Rapids ride at Dreamworld in October last year

The medics 'frantically' began resuscitating two of the people they found in the water, even though they felt the odds were against them, and Mr Green says they did everything they could to minimise the damage.

Emergency services arrived soon after, but the 48-year-old said 'even their advanced skills and equipment were ineffective'.

'We tried so hard, we really did,' he said.

After the horrific incident, Mr Green said he couldn't sleep. Not knowing what to do, and feeling unable to go home, the former police officer simply returned to work.

'I had to go to the police station to make a statement and I left at midnight but I couldn't go home,' he said.

'A colleague and I had a coffee at 4am and then we simply returned to work.'

Pictured: Mothers Kate Goodchild, 32, (left) and Cindy Low, 42, (right) were killed when their raft flipped

Ms Goodchild's brother Luke Dorsett (on right) and his partner Roozi Araghi (left) were also killed in the horrific incident

In the past 12 months, Mr Green has left his job and fled to the snowy mountains, still unable to come to terms with the harrowing details of the dark day.

'I dont think there are many people who could be so close to or hands on with such a tragedy and remain unaffected. I certainly was and still am,' he said.

WHAT IS THE THUNDER RIVER RAPIDS RIDE? Thunder River Rapids opened in 1986 and remains one of Dreamworld's oldest rides

Ride located in the Gold Rush section of Gold Coast's biggest theme park and considered one of Dreamworld's most 'family friendly'

Riders board six-person circular rafts which follow initial path through a cave before experiencing the rapids section of the ride

Thunder River Rapids lasts four minutes in total and hits top speed of 45km/h

Riders are usually splashed with water as rafts spin through the rapids and hit walls

Conveyor belt takes rafts back to start of the ride for passengers to hop in and out Source: AAP Advertisement

Mr Green said only now, a year on, does he feel like he is ready to confront some of the images which remained burned into his mind.

'I am still trying to reconcile what happened. Only in the last few months have I let some of the thoughts and memories from that day creep into my consciousness in attempts to try and deal with them,' he said.

'Unfortunately I have no control over the ones that visit me when I sleep.'

Mr Green says he is still thinking of the team who worked alongside him, and the families of those who lost loved ones.

Kimberly Allen, the Gold Coast branch manager of Shine Lawyers, said her firm received dozens of calls following the tragedy from traumatised people who witnessed or were involved in the incident.

'The stories we heard were horrific but they were also stories of real bravery and courage and the psychological impact of witnessing or being involved in the response to the incident will certainly be felt for years to come,' she said.

'For the first people on the scene, like Shane, it was like walking into a living nightmare. You can imagine the impact that will have on him for the rest of his life and how it will change him forever.'

Of the four who died, two were mothers Kate Goodchild and Cindy Low. Both women had a young child on board with them.

In what has been described as 'miraculous', both children managed to extricate themselves from the ride after they were thrown off.

Ebony Goodchild, 12 (left) was thrown from the raft, as was Kieran Low, 10, (right). Both children survived, but lost their mothers

The survival of the two young children from the theme park ride (pictured) was hailed as 'miraculous'

Ms Goodchild's brother, Luke Dorsett and his partner Roozi Araghi were also killed in the horrific incident.

Ms Allen said while police had recommended no charges be laid against the staff working for Ardent Leisure, who own Dreamworld, the company itself could still be held liable.

'At this stage we understand police have recommended no charges be laid against staff but the company that owns the park, Ardent Leisure, could still be prosecuted,' she said.

'Under the current laws this could carry multimillion dollar fines as well as jail terms of up to 6 years.

'It is likely the legal claims will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but no amount of money will ever make up for what was lost that day.'
The president's press secretary accused retiring Sen. Bob Corker of headline-grabbing 'on his way out the door' on Tuesday as the Republican lawmaker's feud with the president tarried on.

'Look, you've got an individual in the president, he's a fighter. We've said it many times before. The people of this country didn't elect somebody to be weak. They elected somebody to be strong, and when he gets hit, he's going to hit back,' White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during her daily news conference.

Huckabee Sanders said Corker is clearly aware of that fact.

'He's, you know, maybe trying to get a headline or two on his way out the door,' she contended.

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The president's press secretary accused retiring Sen. Bob Corker of headline-grabbing 'on his way out the door' on Tuesday as the Republican lawmaker's feud with the president tarried on

President Donald Trump opened up with both barrels Tuesday on the Republican senator who spent the morning calling his foreign policy amateurish and dangerous.

And his target gave as good as he got, revisiting his line that the White House has become an adult day care center.

The president returned fire, tweeting broadsides at Corker as he headed to Capitol Hill to meet with Senate Republicans about a pending tax bill.

'Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts,' Trump said in one of his messages.

'Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse[e] when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!'

'Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!' Trump added later.

Corker won his 2012 Senate election easily with 65 per cent of the vote.

Huckabee Sanders claimed later that he's no longer liked by his constituents and 'probably' made the right decision not to put himself on the ballot again.

That was after Corker came totally uncorked on Trump to CNN, saying that 'much of what he says is untrue. ... I don't know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard.'

President Trump unleashed a new attack on Sen. Bob Corker (left), saying Tuesday that the Tennessee Republican is standing in the way of tax cuts

Corker said that Trump should leave diplomacy 'to the professionals' and stop 'kneecapping' his top diplomat

Trump tweeted Monday that Corker, who has announced his retirement as of next year, 'couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee

By mid-morning Corker was uncorking at Trump on CNN, saying that 'much of what he says is untrue. ... I don't know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard'

Asked if he would support Donald Trump in the future, Corker said: 'Let's just put it this way, I would not do that again. No way. No way.'

'I think the debasement of our nation will be what he'll be remembered most for, and that's regretful,' he said, insisting that Trump is a poor role model for American children.

'We have young people who for the first time are watching a president stating, you know, absolute nontruths nonstop, personalizing things in the way that he does. It's very sad for our nation.'

Corker also hinted at investigations into Trump's foreign policy in the CNN interview.

'We are going to be doing hearings on some of the things that he purposely is breaking down, relationships we have around the world that have been useful to our nation,' Corker said.

Huckabee Sanders would not bite Tuesday when DailyMail.com asked her about the possibility of Corker stepping down as Foreign Relations head or resigning altogether in light of the latest spat.

'I think that's a decision for Leader McConnell in terms of who has those chairmanships. That's not something for the President to determine,' she stated.

Pressed, she admitted that she had not asked the president for his opinion.

'But in terms of how the chairmanships are decided, that would be up to Leader McConnell,' she asserted.

The Tennessee senator was back to talking about 'day care staff' on Tuesday

Trump fired back less than an hour later

Corker has minced no words about his disdain for Trump's approach to foreign policy, and said Tuesday morning on ABC that the president should stop 'kneecapping' his top diplomat.

And he insisted the president should abandon his scattershot approach to the North Korea nuclear crisis and leave it 'to the professionals for a while.'

Trump shoved back  hard.

'Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done,' the president tweeted.

'He doesn't have a clue as the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us. People like liddle' Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!'

In remarks to reporters as the feud reached a fever pitch, House Speaker Paul Ryan said he hoped the Trump-Corker tensions would calm down over lunch.

'I'm glad the president's coming to lunch because I have long believed that it's best to settle these things in person and I hope they can get the chance to do that,' Ryan said.

Corker, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has already announced that he will not seek another term in office, opening the door for the kind of frank statements that are seldom heard from politicians preparing for re-election.

Trump publicly chided Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this month for being optimistic about a rapprochement with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un

By mid-morning, Trump was attacking Corker on substance, calling him an 'incompetent' Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman

Corker's chief of staff Todd Womack insisted this month that his boss wasn't bowing out because of a lack of support from the White House.

'The president called Senator Corker ... and asked him to reconsider his decision not to seek re-election and reaffirmed that he would have endorsed him, as he has said many times,' Womack said on October 8.

'I want to support these efforts that are underway,' Corker said Tuesday, referring to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's outreach designed to quietly bring North Korea's government to the bargaining table.

But 'the president undermines our secretary of State [and] raises tensions in the area by virtue of the tweets that he sends out,' Corker said on ABC's 'Good Morning America' program.

Sen. Corker unleashes on Trump in stone cold interview w/@mkraju, [Trump] has great difficulty with the truth..." https://t.co/VAhVkQqxwP  Ashley Codianni (@AshleyCodianni) October 24, 2017

Corker smacked the president on Oct. 8, tweeting that the White House had 'become an adult day care center'

'And I would just like for him to leave it to the professionals for a while and see if we can do something that's constructive for our country, the region, and the world.'

Corker and Trump have been engaged in an online war of words this month  with the president claiming Corker failed to stop Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, and Corker firing back that Trump's White House is an 'adult day care center.'

Responding to Trump's tweets on Tuesday, Corker wrote on Twitter: 'Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff'

He softened his language on television but left no doubt about his meaning.

'Really, when you look at the fact that we've got this issue in North Korea and the president continues to kneecap his diplomatic representative, the secretary of State, and really move him away from successful diplomatic negotiations with China, which is key to this, youre taking us on a path to combat,' Corker said.

'It appears to be the governing model of this White House to purposely divide,' he added in an interview on CBS.
A group of boys who wore girls' uniforms to their year 12 muck-up day celebrations were forced to go home and change.

Nearly 40 boys arrived at Bentleigh Secondary College in Melbourne on Tuesday wearing dresses, the Herald Sun reported.

They were swiftly sent home, but girls wearing the boys' uniform for the last day of class were allowed to remain, students said.

Nearly 40 boys arrived at Bentleigh Secondary College in Melbourne on Tuesday wearing dresses

One student, who asked to remain anonymous, said: 'In first period they collected all the boys and told them they either had to get changed or go home.'

Bentleigh Secondary College principal Helene Hiotis said the boys were sent home over the length of the dresses, which was deemed inappropriate.

'Not a single student has been disciplined or sent home for wearing dresses to school today,' Ms Hiotis said.

'A number of male students who wore dresses to school today as part of muck-up day activities were simply asked to tone down their outfits following complaints by other students.'

A group of boys who wore girls' uniforms to their year 12 muck-up day celebrations were forced to go home and change

The school is a supporter of Safe Schools which was designed create more inclusive environments for same sex attracted, intersex and gender diverse students, staff and families.

Students said posters had been previously displayed at the school saying they were free to wear whichever uniform they were most comfortable in, The Age reported.

Ms Hiotis said the boys being sent home had nothing to do with the Safe Schools program.
Those who are not familiar with photographer Terry Richardsons work could turn to his coffee table book, Terryworld, for a brief, if brutal, introduction.

The kind of images found within the pages of this glossy art book include a woman naked from the waist down, in sexual pose, hanging by her hands from wall pipes. In another, a model presses her breasts together while thrusting her tongue between them.

Then there is the disturbing picture of 52-year-old Richardson himself being given oral sex by a young woman crammed into a dustbin with the word Slut on her forehead. In another shot, she performs the same lewd act while trussed up in a suitcase.

Scroll down for video

On Friday, Richardson (shown left with supermodel Kate Moss in 2011) addressed allegations directed at him in recent days in a blog published on Huffington Post

In the past, Richardsons scandalous reputation  not to mention his penchant for the spontaneous sex acts that take place in his studio  hasnt stopped him becoming the darling of the fashion and music worlds.

Feted by a string of designers including Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs, he has shot ad campaigns for such womens clothing chains as H&M and Mango and worked with the likes of Beyonce and Miley Cyrus.

Richardsons edgy, urban style is adored by celebrities from Kate Moss, Daisy Lowe and Poppy and Cara Delevingne to the Beckhams and even Barack Obama  all of whom have happily posed for him.

But in the fickle world of fashion, how quickly fortunes have changed for the married father-of-two. Yesterday, it emerged that the celebrity snapper  a former heroin addict who grew up in Los Angeles  has been banned from working with several major magazines, including Vogue, GQ and Vanity Fair, by publisher Conde Nast, which owns the glossies.

A leaked email sent by James Woodhouse, Conde Nast Internationals executive vice president, ordered that any shoots that have been commissioned or any shoots that have been completed but not yet published, should be killed and substituted with other material.

The 52-year-old directed the sexually-charged music video to Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus

The email, which landed in staff inboxes first thing on Monday, appears to have been a response to allegations going back several years that Richardson used his position of influence in the fashion industry to sexually exploit models he worked with.

The son of Sixties fashion photographer Bob Richardson, his father left his mother, former Copacabana dancer Norma Kessler, for the then 17-year-old actress Anjelica Huston when Richardson was just four.

His mother went on to have relationships with Jimi Hendrix and Keith Richards, before being left with permanent brain damage after a car accident when her son was nine.

As a teenager growing up in California, he sang in punk bands and hoped to make a career for himself as a musician, but began taking photographs in the early Nineties, quickly making a name for himself, thanks to the gritty street scenes he shot.

His big breakthrough came when he was hired for a campaign for British designer Katharine Hamnett in the late Nineties.

The controversy surrounding the resulting shots, in which the models pubic hair was visible beneath their skirts, meant that Terry Richardsons name was soon on everyones lips.

He is also the man credited with transforming Miley Cyrus from Disney child star to raunchy pop princess, thanks to the naked Wrecking Ball video he directed in 2013.

Rosie Huntingdon-Whiteley poses for photographer Terry Richardson for the 2010 Pirelli calendar (left). Pop star Beyonce (right) has also been a subject of his work

Although Richardson has always denied sexually exploiting any models, in the wake of the sex scandal surrounding Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, it seems that behaviour which may once have been met with a blind eye in the fashion world is now being re-evaluated.

Indeed, what is extraordinary about Conde Nasts sudden decision to ban Richardson is that Uncle Terry  as he is known among fashionistas  has never made a secret of his sexual peccadilloes.

Richardson took 1970s porn aesthetic and made it fashion chic, proudly announces the foreword to Terryworld, a book that features him naked on the front cover and comes with a reversible panic jacket for those worried about being caught reading it.

The foreword continues: Porn stars, supermodels, transsexuals, hillbillies, friends, pets and celebrities all do for his lens what theyll do for NO OTHER.

And if anyone ever wonders why they did it, just blame it on Terryworld, where taboos are null and void and fashion finds sex a perfect fit.

Indeed, over the past 20 years, multi-millionaire Richardson has become one of the highest-paid photographers in the world, thanks to his eye-catching and often shocking ad campaigns for High Street names such as Levis, Diesel, American Apparel and Mango, as well as racy magazine adverts for the likes of Gucci, Miu Miu and Jimmy Choo.

But while his lewd photographs have long been regarded as beyond the pale by some  one ad campaign for Italian designer Sisley features a model squirting milk from a cows udder into her mouth  Richardson has always maintained that what goes on at his shoots is consensual.

Figures from within the modelling industry, including former i-D editor Caryn Franklin, said Richardson's behaviour has become an 'open secret'. He is pictured on September 8 with his partner Alex Bolotow (right) and Carine Restoin-Roitfeld, former editor and chief of Vogue Paris (left)

My rule is that Id never ask anyone to do anything I wouldnt do myself, he said in an interview in 2004.

At first, Id just want to do a few nude shots, so Id take off my clothes, too. Id even give the camera to the model and get her to shoot me for a while. Its about creating a vibe; getting people relaxed and excited. When that happens, you can do anything.

Some of the models who have worked with Richardson, however, tell a very different story  one that over the past 15 years, appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

One of the first to speak out was Canadian model Liskula Cohen, who walked out of a Vogue shoot in 2001, saying that Richardson made me feel as if I was a prostitute after asking her to strip and perform a sex act on another man while he was also naked.

The men were not models or actors, she said, but friends of Richardson.

Four years later, Romanian model Gabriela Johansson claimed that she was pressured to pose naked under the promise of a potential modelling job and sacked when she refused.

In 2010, New Yorker Jamie Peck wrote about her experiences posing for Richardson at the age of 19, saying that, on her second visit to his studio, he suddenly removed his clothes and asked her to take photos of him naked.

Writing on fashion website The Gloss in 2010, she recalled how he took her to a couch and, in full view of two assistants, asked her to engage in a sex act.

She consented, while the assistants watched and took further photographs. This is where I zoom out on the situation, she wrote. I can remember doing this stuff, but even at the time, it was sort of like watching someone else do it.

The only explanation I can come up with is that he was so darn friendly and happy about it all, and his assistants were so stoked on it as well, that I didnt want to be the killjoy in the room.

Richardson's contract arrangements with Conde Nast had been in discussion for several months - but after an article was posted that questioned why he was still being 'feted by fashionistas' ties were officially cut. He is pictured in 2016 at the Tom Ford Fashion Show in New York

Her payment for the work was supposed to have been a signed print of Richardsons photographs of her, which eventually appeared in the fashion magazine Purple.

But she said: I felt so gross about the whole thing that I never went back.

She later said he was a predator with a camera.

That same year, Danish supermodel Rie Rasmussen caused a public scandal when she confronted Richardson in Paris, accusing him of abusing his position of power in the fashion industry to sexually harass women.

They are too afraid to say no because their agency booked them on the job and they are too young to stand up for themselves, she said afterwards.

I told him: What you do is completely degrading to women. I hope you know you only f*** girls because you have a camera, lots of fashion contacts and get your pictures in Vogue. 

Her experience is mirrored by Anna del Gaizo, who wrote about being photographed by Richardson when she was aged 23. During the shoot, she says he asked her to crouch down, then exposed himself.

British fashion journalist Caryn Franklin, former presenter of The Clothes Show and now a lecturer at the London College of Fashion, added her voice to warnings about Richardson four years ago.

Accusing him of being at the centre of this pornification of the fashion world, she added: Household brands are swallowing this tosh and continue to employ the multi-millionaire because sex  especially sex with very young women  makes money.

Richardson has continued to deny that the explicit images he produced are pornographic. The thing is, I dont personally like porn, he said in 2004, because there is so much sadness and pain in that world. So little joy or pleasure. Thats not my bag. Everyone has fun on my shoots.

Paris Hilton (left), Nicky Hilton (centre) and photographer Terry Richardson (right) are pictured at an event together in 2014

It is an argument that, until this week at least, the fashion industry appears to have been happy to accept.

Model Daisy Lowe, who posed naked for Richardson for the 2010 Pirelli calendar in Brazil, for example, leapt to his defence in 2011. He also snapped her in New York sharing a kiss with pop star Florence Welch.

He just exudes this sexual energy, so he doesnt need to ask girls to take off their clothes, she said in an interview with Oyster magazine. Honestly, they just do it.

In the past, Vogue magazine was among those prepared to defend Richardsons behaviour. A article entitled Back to work, published in March 2010, said that Richardson was attempting to move on from allegations that he exploited young models in his work by getting back to his day job.

Announcing that he was working with model Doutzen Kroes for a Vogue shoot, the editorial piece added: The appointment of Richardson as the photographer for this shoot, so soon after the controversy, is sure to be seen as U.S. Vogues decision as to which side of the fence they are on.

Four years later, in April 2014, Vogue appeared to change its mind, declaring it had no plans to work with Richardson in the future.

While Richardson has never responded specifically to these individual claims, in 2014, in an open letter to the Huffington Post website, he wrote about the need to respond to a cycle of internet gossip and correct the false accusations being levelled against him.

Richardson (shown left with Eniko Mihalik) has been the subject of widespread allegations of sexually abusing models over his lengthy career

He stated that the allegations were vicious and distorted and said he had become subject to an emotionally charged witch hunt.

He wrote that sexual imagery has always been a part of my photography. His 2004 Terryworld book, he said, explored the beauty, rawness and humour that sexuality entails.

He insists that all the women he works with are consenting adults and all have signed releases giving permission for their photographs to be used and that he has never used an offer of work or a threat of rebuke to coerce someone into something that they did not want to do.

Over the course of my career, I have come to accept that some of my more provocative work courts controversy, and as an artist, I value the discourse that arises from this.

I can only hope for this discourse to be informed by fact, so that whether you love my work or hate it, you give it, and me, the benefit of the truth.

Given the email sent to Conde Nast staff this week, it seems the company is more determined than ever not to work with Richardson, although their timing may lead to accusations of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Richardson himself continues to protest his innocence.

It was never just me and a girl, ever, he told New York Magazine at the weekend. It was always assistants, or other people around, or girls brought friends over to hang out.

It was very daytime, no drugs, no alcohol. It was a happening; there was energy, it was fun, it was exciting, making these strong images, and thats what it was. People collaborating and exploring sexuality and taking pictures.

Richardson married his long-term partner, Alexandra Skinny Bolotow, in July this year. It is worth noting that Alex, who met the photographer while working as an intern, is the same woman who was photographed performing oral sex on him with the word slut plastered on her forehead. Now 34, she gave birth to the couples twin sons, Roman and Rex, in March last year.

In the past, Richardson has complained that he is the target of revisionist history  and on one level, at least, he has point.

One minute, he was worshipped as a virtual god by the fashion industry, despite coming out with lines like: Its not who you know, its how you blow. I dont have a hole in my jeans for nothing. Now, he is being treated as a pervert.

I dont have any regrets about the work at all, he said at the weekend. Im OK with myself about everything, and that to me is the most important thing.

A statement released yesterday by Richardsons spokesman said: Terry is disappointed to hear about this email, especially because he has previously addressed these old stories.

He is an artist who has been known for his sexually explicit work, so many of his professional interactions with subjects were sexual and explicit in nature, but all of the subjects participated consensually.'
A woman in her 40s has been killed and another man injured in a vicious dog attack inside a Canberra home overnight.

Neighbours called police to the home in Watson, in the city's north, after hearing the man screaming for help at about 3.40am on Wednesday morning.

As officers performed first aid on the woman who had been mailed they themselves came under attack, before being forced to shoot the dog, reportedly a pitbull, dead.

Despite the efforts of officers the woman, who lived at the house, died of her injuries at the scene, while the man was rushed to hospital in a stable condition.

A woman has been killed and another man bitten in a vicious dog attack at a home in Canberra

Describing the death as 'tragic', a spokesperson for ACT Police said there would be an ongoing investigation into the death.

'On arrival police were directed by a male in the backyard into the premises towards a female that was lying inside,' the spokesman said.

'A dog was also inside the premises. Police entered and attempted to provide first aid to the woman inside the house.

'While she was being worked on the dog attacked police officers, forcing them to fire a number of shots.'
A tiny firm from Montana managed to snag a $300 million contract to help restore Puerto Rico's devastated power grid  and it had just two employees when Hurricane Maria hit.

Whitefish Energy signed a contract five days ago to restore power in Puerto Rico, despite having no history of doing any comparable work.

Now, a Democratic lawmaker is calling for an inquiry, as attention focuses on the firm's tiny hometown of Whitefish, Montana  which happens to be the town where Interior Department secretary Ryan Zinke was raised.

Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the leading Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, is calling for a probe of the contract. While the vast majority of Puerto Rico's 3.5 million people are without power.

In this Sunday, Oct. 15, 2017 photo, Whitefish Energy Holdings workers restore power lines damaged by Hurricane Maria in Barceloneta, Puerto Rico. Whitefish CEO Andy Techmanski said previous work restoring transmission lines damaged by wildfires in the western U.S. has prepared them for the Puerto Rico contract. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

He said Congress 'needs to understand why the Whitefish contract was awarded and whether other, more cost-effective options were available.'

According to the Washington Post, which reported the story, the company is based in Whitefish, Mont., Zinke's hometown.

Its CEO, Andy Techmanski, knows Zinke, although according to Zinke officials it is a town where 'everybody knows everybody.'

The paper wrote that one of Zinke's sons 'worked a summer job' at at a Techmanski construction site. Both men said Zinke had no role in the contract. Zinke is a former congressman from that part of Montana.

'Neither the secretary nor anyone in his office have taken any meetings or action on behalf of this company,' the department said in a statement.

Dan Coats, director of national intelligence, from left, Betsy DeVos, U.S. secretary of education, Eric Hargan, acting U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), and Ryan Zinke, U.S. secretary of interior, listen as U.S. President Donald Trump, not pictured, speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, Oct. 16, 2017

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 20: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke testifies during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, on June 20, 2017 in Washington, DC. The committee heard testimony on U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed FY2018 budget request for the Interior Department

FILE PHOTO: A police officer walks next to damaged electrical installations after the area was hit by Hurricane Maria en Guayama, Puerto Rico September 20, 2017

Zinke says he knows the CEO, Andy Techmanski (above), and that one of his sons worked a job at one of his construction sites

The company had just two Energy Department contracts under its belt. One was for just $172,000.

Under the contract, subcontractors would get $462 per hour for a supervisor, $319 for a lineman, plus accommodation fees of $332 per worker and $80 per day for food.

The island is billions in debt, with about 80 per cent of residents lacking power.

Ricardo Ramos, director of Puerto Rico's power authority, said the government has a $300 million contract with Whitefish and a separate $200 million contract with Oklahoma-based Cobra Acquisitions after evaluating up to six companies for the job.

Whitefish was one of two companies on the government's shortlist, Ramos said. The other company was requiring a $25 million down payment, given the power authority's troubled finances. PREPA filed for bankruptcy in July and has put off badly needed maintenance for years. It just finished dealing with outages from Hurricane Irma in early September.

President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Monday, Oct. 16, 2017, in Washington, as Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, left, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, center, listen. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Zinke rode a horse to work on his first day, but auditors are looking at his government jet travel

Whitefish is providing hotel rooms for it workers and brought its own materials, Ramos said. 'They're doing an excellent job,' he said.

Whitefish CEO Techmanski visited Puerto Rico in late summer while on vacation and established contact with PREPA and discussed potential future work, company spokesman Chris Chiames said. When Maria hit Sept. 20, Whitefish was one of the companies that power authority officials were able to reach by satellite phone.

'We got here quicker than anybody else and we built a plan that PREPA had confidence in,' Chiames said in telephone interview.

Grijalva said lawmakers also need to know why the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and public sector utilities 'failed in Puerto Rico to conduct the disaster-response planning they carried out ahead of other disasters this year' in Texas, Florida and other states.
Cambridge University English academics may be forced to include more ethnic writers in an effort to 'decolonise' the curriculum for students.

English Literature professors are being asked to 'ensure the presence' of Black and Minority Ethnic writers (BME) in their courses.

It came after Lola Olufemi, Cambridge University Student Union's women's officer, penned an open letter titled 'Decolonising the English Faculty'.

Lola Olufemi (pictured with Labour MP Diane Abbott) is women's officer at Oxford University Students' Union and called for the English department to 'decolonise' the curriculum

The letter, signed by around 150 university students, read: 'For too long, teaching English at Cambridge has encouraged a 'traditional' and 'canonical' approach that elevates white male authors at the expense of all others.

'What we can no longer ignore, however, is the fact that the curriculum, taken as a whole, risks perpetuating institutional racism.'

It also hinted at several of changes, including ensuring that all exam papers included 'two or more postcolonial and BME authors'.

Students at the university study a range of 'period papers' ranging from 1350 to the present day - including the works of Shakespeare.

CAMPAIGNER ALSO SLAMMED 'SELFISH' WHITE PEOPLE ON AFRICAN HOLIDAYS The plans follow an open letter from students' union women's officer Lola Olufemi,(pictured) demanding an end to 'institutional racism' in the syllabus Lola Olufemi has previously blasted 'selfish' white people who holiday in Africa. The student said 'middle class' gap year travellers are doing nothing meaningful to help the continent by visiting. In Varsity, the Cambridge University student newspaper, she wrote: 'It shows an astounding level of entitlement to think that you, on your gap year or your three weeks abroad "exploring", are going to do anything meaningful or long lasting to help the communities that you fetishise.' She added: 'What drives middle class white people to travel abroad is an inherent selfishness''. Miss Olufemi has also said Cambridge can learn from Oxford's Rhodes Must Fall campaign, which demanded Cecil Rhodes' statute be removed because of his commitment to imperialism. Advertisement

But campaigners have argued that the English courses focus too much on white men and exclude female authors and those from black and ethnic minority backgrounds.

They have also claimed that it offers a perspective too shaped by colonial ideologies.

Minutes from the Teaching Forum's meeting earlier this month, seen by The Telegraph, showed what actions have been discussed by academics to address the students' concerns.

They included several practical proposals, such as an introductory lecture that would 'offer perspectives on the global contexts and history of English literature'.

Dr Priyamvada Gopal, a teaching fellow at Churchill College and member of the Teaching Forum, said the motion was a step forward.

'They are a good start and I'm glad to see the Faculty responding with attention and interest to a student-driven demand for change,' she wrote in an email.

'I think it is important, however, to view the 'inclusion' of postcolonial and BME texts not as an endpoint but the beginning of a discussion about what 'English literature' is and what exclusions it has always relied on.

'The curriculum first needs to make empire, race, identity more central than it has been  something students HAVE to engage with rather than are 'allowed' to engage with.

'Given British history, empire is central to understanding both texts and contexts. It's a 'white' issue as much as it is a 'BME' issue. That understanding must drive changes.'

But Gill Evans, emeritus professor of medieval theology and intellectual history at Cambridge University, said the approach created some 'major problems'.

She told The Telegraph: 'It goes with the calls to stop teaching predominantly Western or European history as well as literature.

English Literature professors at Cambridge will be required to 'ensure the presence' of Black and Minority Ethnic writers (BME) in their courses. Pictured: King's College

'If you distort the content of history and literature syllabuses to insert a statistically diverse or equal proportion of material from cultures taken globally you surely lose sight of the historical truth that the West explored the world from the sixteenth century and took control - colonially or otherwise - of a very large part of it.

'It is false to pretend that never happened.'

The move follows criticism of both Oxford and Cambridge for their low levels of admittance of students from ethnic minorities.

Oxford colleges were branded 'fiefdoms of entrenched privilege' after figures showed almost a third failed to admit a single black British A-level student in a year.

Meanwhile six Cambridge colleges failed to admit any black British A-level students in 2015. Between 2010 and 2015, only 1 per cent of offers were made to black students at Cambridge, and on average a quarter of colleges failed each year to make such offers.

But Ms Olufemi told the university's newspaper Varsity that she believed the outcome was 'a promising step forward that the letter is being taken seriously by the faculty.'

Ms Olufemi is women's officer at Oxford University Students' Union

'There needs to be a complete shift in the way the department treats western literature in comparison to that of the global south and non-white authors must be centred in the same way Shakespeare, Eliot, Swift and Pope are; their stories, thoughts and accounts should be given serious intellectual and moral weight,' the English graduate from North London added.

It is understood the proposals are in a very early stage and no decisions have yet been made.

The ideas have been put forward by a small group of lecturers within the English faculty, but would need to pass a number of stages in order to be implemented.

This includes being given the approval of the universitys Education Committee and the General Board, which are made up of senior staff.

There is no guarantee that any of the ideas will ultimately be taken up by the university.

University sources said that even if the proposal were to be implemented, there would not be any cases of white authors being dropped and replaced by the new additions.

A spokesman for the University of Cambridge said: 'There has been no decision to alter the way English is taught at the University of Cambridge. While we can confirm a letter was received from a group of students taking the postcolonial paper, academic discussions are at a very early stage to look at how postcolonial literature is taught.

'Changes will not lead to any one author being dropped in favour of others  that is not the way the system works at Cambridge. There is no set curriculum as tutors individually lead the studies of their group of students and recommend their reading lists  those reading lists can include any author.

'The Teaching Forum is a body which has no decision making powers and its decision points are questions to be discussed by the faculty. The Education Committee in the faculty will look at those points in a robust academic debate. Post-colonialism is taught at the moment in a non-compulsory paper  the faculty constantly looks at what papers will be compulsory.'
Australian tourist Prue Elizabeth Harvey (pictured) faces a serious battery charge in Florida after allegedly pushing over a female cyclist during the popular Zombie Bike Ride

An Australian tourist faces a serious battery charge in Florida after allegedly pushing over a female cyclist during the popular Zombie Bike Ride.

Prue Elizabeth Harvey allegedly yelled 'fall b***h' before shoving the 68-year-old female cyclist to the ground in Key West on Sunday.

Harvey, 32, who was in Florida to attend a wedding, was locked up in a Monroe County jail after her arrest on a felony battery charge, which can carry a five-year prison sentence and a fine of US$5,000.

In Florida, battery on a person aged 65 and older is automatically classed as a serious felony charge.

Harvey, 32, (pictured) allegedly yelled 'fall b***h' before shoving the 68-year-old female cyclist to the ground in Key West on Sunday

Thousands of people attended the Zombie Bike Ride in Key West (pictured) on Sunday

Harvey is accused of running through the cyclists, who wear zombie costumes and paint their faces and bodies for the popular annual 6km bike ride.

She allegedly gave riders dirty looks before shoving Linda Malcolm to the ground, causing the woman to scrape her left knee.

Ms Malcolm's daughter is said to have chased Harvey to the rear of a church and police were called.

Police said Harvey told them she had been drinking and could not remember anything past 1pm on Sunday.

Harvey (pictured), who was in Key West to attend a wedding, was locked up in Monroe County jail after her arrest on a felony battery charge, which can carry a five-year prison sentence and a fine of US$5,000

Police said Harvey told them she had been drinking and could not remember anything past 1pm onthe day of the incident

'Harvey had no recollection of the above incident,' a police report said.

'She smelled strongly of an alcoholic beverage. She was at a bar earlier and was unable to recall anything she had done after 1300 hours.'

The alleged battery happened at about 7.20pm.
Yesterday, the world was witness to a seminal event: the confirmation of Chinas President Xi Jinping as all-powerful leader of the worlds most populous country.

On the final day of its Congress, the Communist Party elevated Xi to the same exalted status as the Peoples Republics founding father, Chairman Mao, by writing his name and ideas into its constitution as Xi Jinping Thought.

The move bolsters Xis position yet further, making it all but impossible for rivals to challenge him and his policies.

Xi Jinping has been enshrined in the constitution of the Communist Party of China, making it all but impossible for rivals to challenge his power

The party has voted to write 'Xi Jingping thought' into its manifesto. The only other leader to have been given the honor was the country's modern founder, Mao Zedong

And central to his dogma is Xis ruthless determination to restore China to greatness, building on the work of his first five-year term by further strengthening the nations military and extending Chinas influence on global affairs.

If Mao gave the nation independence, and former president Deng Xiaoping rebuilt the economy, then Xi will make it a force to be reckoned with once more.

We in the complacent West would do well to wake up to such awesome ambition.

Watching events unfold in Beijing yesterday and the widespread fawning over Xi, I was, indeed, reminded of the cult of hero worship surrounding the despotic Great Helmsman himself, Mao Zedong.

Xi is a master of political theatre, and yesterday he took centre stage  literally  standing alone under a glistening golden hammer-and-sickle symbol, senior party officials gathered deferentially to one side.

No one should mistake the symbolism of this.

Xi is a man who knows where his country is going  while his Western rivals seem to have lost their way

Xi was indicating to Chinese and foreigners alike who is Number One at home  and, increasingly, abroad. In the West, we may snigger at this cult of the leader, which sees its apotheosis in the worship of Kim Jong-un in North Korea.

Without his rockets, no one would heed this chubby little dictator, Kim. But Xi would be no laughing matter even if he didnt have the worlds biggest army and a host of nuclear ballistic missiles.

One has only to visit a supermarket or go online to buy a mobile phone or a microwave to see why China matters.

In the 40 years since Maos death in 1976, the Asian giant has gone from North Korean-style irrelevance to rivalling Americas gross domestic product and stocking mail order company Amazons warehouses with its products.

After two centuries of decline, China has rocketed back to the heart of the world economy, where it held sway 2,000 years ago. And for Xi it is only the beginning, something we consumers in our comfortable but declining liberal democracies should worry about even as we benefit from cheap Chinese products.

When Soviet communism collapsed 25 years ago, the West complacently assumed everyone would adopt its way of life eventually. Our mix of democracy and the free market economy seemed a Goldilocks ideal, delivering prosperity and freedom.

The Chinese appeared to be starting out on this path after Maos death. Farmers were freed to produce for profit; cheap labour was galvanised to make goods for export.

But such liberalism had its limits. In 1989, the tanks rolled into Beijings Tiananmen Square and brought to a bloody end student protests against communist rule.

Questioned had hovered other whether Xi would name an heir apparent at the Party Congress. He did not, and instead sat apart from his fellow party members

Xi commands the world's largest army, wields an arsenal of nukes, and is expanding China's territorial control with overseas military bases

We learned then that while Maos successors had ditched his rigid opposition to profit and his socialist economic principles, his belief that power comes from the barrel of a gun still held.

Indeed, the anointing of Xi as the new Mao yesterday shows how far the Communist Party is from abandoning his dictatorial methods.

Xis life story, however, does make his assumption of Maolike status intriguing.

His parents, leading communists, fell from grace in the Sixties during the so-called Cultural Revolution, the decade-long period of political and social chaos in which Mao got rid of his rivals in the Communist Party by turning the masses against them.

As a young man, Xi was sent  to be reformed through labour  to the bone-breaking poverty of a stony rural commune. But rather than rebel against the party which had humiliated him and his family, Xi began working his way up it.

Today, his stint as a toiling peasant is celebrated as proof that this president  married to the acclaimed Chinese soprano Peng Liyuan, with whom he has one daughter  truly is a man of the people.

Xis rise is rooted in steely determination. Like the other leaders who accepted the need to abandon Maos rigid socialism after 1976, Xi was a protege of Deng Xiaoping, who dominated China from 1978 until his death in 1997.

Deng told the Chinese that to get rich was glorious, but would not countenance any dissent. After Tiananmen Square, Deng made light of anger that an estimated 3,000 people had died, with the remark that in this country, a million is not a big number.

Xi was working his way to the top during this turmoil and, significantly, did not dissent from Dengs hard line.

Nor has Xi shied away from purges and crackdowns. But it is not only his brutal repression of Buddhists in Tibet and a refusal to accept it as an independent state, or blatant discrimination against Muslims in the far west of China.

Jingping, known as 'Uncle Xi' in China, has cultivated a reputation as a man of the people thanks to his time working as a peasant after his parents were exiled from the Party

As Xi's programme of strengthening China's position on the world stage moves forward, the West will have to make uncomfortable accommodations with this new supremacy

Xi knows that the cancer of corruption is the biggest internal threat to his regime as the source of much anger. As a result, criminal communist officials have been purged in huge numbers from the top to the bottom of the party.

It has been a popular move, reinforcing the belief of ordinary Chinese that Uncle Xi is on their side against local bosses or judges demanding bribes.

So in place of the Wests vision of the free market running alongside free debate, Xi will continue modernising the economy while retaining his fierce grip on every aspect of life.

But he also wants China to set agendas internationally  in trade, in Africa and the Middle East (where it has invested massively), in the environment and in political thinking  and no longer to play catch up with the West.

Take climate change as an example. While U.S. President Donald Trump opts out of the Paris Accord, China is positioning itself as the worlds leader in solar and wind power, instituting vast programmes to reduce carbon emissions.

Marking out China as a green champion is shrewd. Xi has the Europeans on board while the U.S. is isolated. But his canny deployment of such soft power to win friends and influence us does not mean he neglects military strength

Deng Xiaoping was reluctant to make waves abroad while China was still weak. Now Xis new navy is building bases in the South China Sea and has aircraft carriers capable of projecting Beijings power in the oceans around the world.

China is also finding allies among those condemned for not practising Western-style human rights. The Philippines and Burma are excoriated by the West, but for China they offer resources and a route to the wider world.

Xi isnt shocked by Filipino President Rodrigo Dutertes shoot-to-kill policy on drug-pushers, or Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyis tarnished reputation because of her support for the bloody persecution of Rohingya Muslims.

Why would he be, when Burma offers Xi an oil pipeline from the Indian Ocean, and persuading the Philippines away from U.S. influence would give Chinas ships access to the Pacific?

Meanwhile, across Eurasia, Xi has been the driving force for a new Silk Road linking Chinas factories to Western Europe via Putins Russia, making Moscow the willing junior partner of Beijing.

The upshot is that the West will have to make uncomfortable accommodations with this new supremacy.

Economic cooperation with China should continue to flourish to our mutual benefit  but we wont be determining the international agenda any more. Instead, we are going to have to learn how to react to a new world order.

Xi is a man who knows where his country is going  while his Western rivals seem to have lost their way.

Mark Almond is the director of the Crisis Research Institute, Oxford.
Women from Northern Ireland who seek a free NHS abortion in England will also receive state support to pay for their travel costs, the Government has announced.

Those who meet defined financial hardship criteria will be eligible for the hand-out, Justine Greening said.

Ms Greening, the Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities, announced in the summer that the NHS in England would start to provide abortions free of charge to those women who travel from Northern Ireland.

Justine Greening, Secretary for Education and Minister for Women said the NHS in England would provide abortions free of charge to women who travel from Northern Ireland

A challenge to Northern Ireland's abortion laws is being heard at the Supreme Court. The case is being taken by Gerain Teggart from Amnesty International, Sarah Ewart and Jane Christie

Ulsters strict laws on terminations result in women making the journey across the Irish Sea to have an abortion.

Ms Greening said abortions had been offered free of charge since her June announcement.

This is comparable with the service that women in England receive, said Ms Greening.

She said there would be a central booking service established giving Northern Ireland women a single telephone number to call to make an appointment.

The Conservative government avoided a potential Commons defeat with its abortion announcement.

On Monday, Ms Greening again made clear that the Government was not seeking to change the legal position in Northern Ireland.

My original statement was clear this does not change the position in relation to the provision of abortions in Northern Ireland, which is a matter for the Northern Ireland Executive and the Northern Ireland Assembly, she added.

That remains the case. Our proposals do not include the provision of any services in Northern Ireland.

It came as a challenge in the UKs highest court heard Northern Irelands strict abortion law criminalise exceptionally vulnerable women and girls and subjects them to inhuman and degrading treatment.

A QC told a panel of Supreme Court justices in London yesterday that human rights were being breached, with those affected being forced to go through physical and mental torture.

Nathalie Lieven, who represents the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC), is asking the court to rule that a prohibition on abortions where a pregnancy arises from rape or incest, or involves a serious foetal abnormality, is unlawful.

The hearing is expected to last three days.
A California woman admitted federal charges accusing her of making fake $100 bills and passing about $45,000 of the counterfeit money throughout Montana.

Misty Nicole Marcum, 38, of Bakersfield, California, pleaded guilty to one count of counterfeiting as part of a plea deal during a hearing on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Billings. A second charge is to be dismissed at sentencing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Colin Rubich said Marcum moved to Montana in 2015 and the scheme ran from about May 2015 to June 2016.

Marcum counterfeited $100 bills by washing and reprinting $1 bills, using solvents, bleach and printers, Rubich said. A witness told law enforcement that Marcum would ask the witness to buy her supplies for bleaching legitimate bills and that she was constantly asking for $1 bills, he said.

And undercover informant also reported witnessing Marcum washing several bills and reprinting them into fake $100s, Rubich said.

Individuals identified Marcum as fraudulently passing bills at various Montana businesses, and surveillance video from several businesses confirmed it was Marcum, Rubich said.

The indictment accused Marcum with passing the counterfeit money in Billings, Bozeman, Laurel, Columbus, Big Timber, Livingston, Judith Gap, Belgrade, Butte, Great Falls, Helena, Missoula and Hamilton.

Marcum faces a maximum 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

U.S. District Judge Susan Watters set sentencing for Feb. 28. Marcum remains in custody.
At least one man has been arrested as heavily protected police raided six homes in Sydney's southwest as part an investigation into allegations of money laundering and proceeds of crime.

AFP and NSW police with assistance from the Australian Border Force are executing a number of search warrants in the Bankstown area relating to allegations of money laundering and dealing in the proceeds of crime, an AFP spokeswoman said.

'This activity does not relate to any current or implied threats to the safety of the Australian community and as any investigations are ongoing, further details will be provided at a further time,' she told Daily Mail Australia on Wednesday.

A man appears to have been arrested in Bass Hill after early morning police raids in south west Sydney on Wednesday

Three others were seen being escorted out of the home on Chester Hill Road by police

The group tried to conceal their identities from waiting media by covering themselves in sheets and towels

A neighbour who has lived on the street for 37 years said she'd been suspicious of the occupants of the raided house (pictured) 'from the beginning'

A weatherboard home in Bass Hill, on Chester Hill Road, was raided by the authorities, with riot police seen armed and with heavy protection garments on.

Outside, more police were seen out the front before a bearded man in a white t-shirt and black cut off jeans was led away by officers.

Handcuffed, he was then put into a black van and driven away.

A neighbour who has lived on the street for 37 years said she'd been suspicious of the occupants of the raided house 'from the beginning'.

The woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, told AAP a group of men had lived in the house for about 12 to 18 months.

The neighbour said she was especially concerned by a boat the occupants owned (pictured behind the car)

A home in Chester Hill Road in Bass Hill was visited by a large group of police with a warrant

As some went inside (pictured), many officers, armed and heavily protected, were seen out the front of the property

'I was suspicious of them from the beginning because they were just men on their own and because of the boat ... the boat worried me,' she said.

'I noticed the boat, I didn't know what the boat was for, it never left the property.'

The neighbour said the occupants 'never left the property' and were very quiet.

A total of six properties were raided on Wednesday morning, including a semi-demolished house on South Terrace Street in Bankstown, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Police questioned at least three men during their time on the premises.

More to come.

The Bass Hill neighbour said the occupants 'never left the property' and were very quiet

Involved in the raids were Australian Federal Police, NSW Police and Border Force authorities
The universe shouldn't exist, some of the world's top scientists claim.

Experts say, according to the standard model of physics, the cosmos should have destroyed itself when it formed.

This is because the universe was born with equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, which must have collided and instantly annihilated one another.

But this didn't happen - and scientists are still baffled as to why.

Researchers have spent years looking for any difference between anti-matter and matter that explains why they didn't cancel one another out when the cosmos was created.

The latest possibility being probed by researchers was that matter and anti-matter may have different magnetism.

But new research shows that they are identical, deepening the mystery of why the universe still exists.

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Because the universe was born with equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, it shouldn't exist. Experts are trying to find differences in their properties to explain why they didn't instantly annihilate one another. Pictured is a stellar jet in the Carina Nebula

MATTER AND ANTI-MATTER Scientists have theorised that when the Big Bang first created the universe, equal amounts of matter and anti-matter were produced. Anti-matter is made from particles which are the 'anti-particles' of those from normal matter. If the two kinds of matter ever meet, they destroy each other, leaving only a burst of energy behind. But this means when the universe was created, all matter should have been instantly annihilated, leaving nothing left to create the galaxies, stars and planets we see today. This must mean there is a tiny difference in the properties of matter and anti-matter that stopped the two cancelling one another out at the birth of the cosmos. Scientists are yet to find what this difference is. Advertisement

Anti-matter is the mirror of ordinary matter.

Normal atoms are made up of positively-charged nuclei orbited by negatively-charged electrons.

However, their antimatter counterparts are the other way round. They have negative nuclei and positively-charged electrons, known as positrons.

When matter and antimatter meet they instantly annihilate each other, releasing a burst of detectable energy.

The Big Bang is thought to have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter, and it should have destroyed all matter.

But paradoxically today, the universe is made up mostly of ordinary matter with almost no antimatter to be found.

Over the years, a range of possibilities have been looked to explain the mystery.

These include looking at differences in charge and mass between antimatter and matter.

Now a new super-precise measurement from scientists at Cern has explored whether the magnetism of matter and anti-matter is different.

The test shows that they have identical magnetic properties, leading some scientists to question why the universe is still around.

'All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe should not actually exist,' said Dr Christian Smorra, lead author of the new study.

'An asymmetry must exist here somewhere but we simply do not understand where the difference is. What is the source of the symmetry break?'

The Cern team, based in Geneva, took the most precise measurement ever of the 'magnetic moment' of an anti-proton - a number that measures how the particle reacts to a magnetic force.

Cern scientists looked at the magnetism of matter and anti-matter to see if the two differed. They used an innovative new storage technique to look at anti-protons that involved holding them in specialised 'Penning traps' (pictured)

They found that the magnetic moment of anti-protons is the same as that of a proton, but with the opposite sign.

While previous research has shown that the electrical charge, mass and other properties of matter and anti-matter precisely cancel one another out, this is the first time scientists have shown this is also true of their magnetic moments.

The researchers spent ten years developing a technique to measure this property in both protons and anti-protons.

They first established a way to measure the magnetic moment of protons by trapping them in a magnetic field.

They then triggered 'quantum jumps' in each particle's spin using a separate magnetic field - a groundbreaking technique first achieved in 2014.

But taking this same measurement in anti-protons was made more difficult by the particles' notorious instability.

Anti-matter is notoriously unstable, instantly obliterating the moment it touches normal matter.

This means it is impossible to hold it inside a physical container, so the Cern researchers captured anti-protons in 'Penning traps'.

These containers, which are around the size of a Pringles can, store the particles in specialised magnetic and electrical fields.

Using an innovative new technique that involved swapping the anti-protons between two Penning traps, the team made the world's most effective anti-matter container.

Their storage technique allowed them to measure the magnetic moment of anti-protons more accurately than ever before.

The test shows that protons and anti-protons have identical magnetic properties. Pictured is the Cern antiproton decelerator in Geneva, showing the control equipment, the superconducting magnet that houses the Penning trap, and the antiproton transfer beam tube

The result gave a value for the antiproton magnetic moment that was precisely the same - other than a minus sign - as the proton magnetic moment measured three years ago.

'This result is the culmination of many years of continuous research and development, and the successful completion of one of the most difficult measurements ever performed in a Penning trap instrument,' said Stefan Ulmer, a spokesman for the research group.

Other experts are now looking at different properties to explain why the universe still exists.

These include the possibility that anti-matter has upside-down gravity, meaning it would in-effect fall upwards.
Russia is preparing to carry out test launches of its 100-tonne 'Satan 2' ballistic missile, also known as RS-28 Sarmat.

The next generation intercontinental ballistic missile can 'beat any defences' and wipe out entire countries, according to Russia's military.

The weapon has been in the pipeline since 2009 and is now ready after several setbacks, with initial trials to be carried out before the end of the year, sources claim.

Launches will be held at the Plesetsk testing ground in west Russia and, if successful, the weapon could by in use by 2019 - 2020.

It could deliver warheads of 40 megatons - 2,000 times as powerful as the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

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Russia is preparing to carry out test launches of its 100-tonne 'Satan 2' ballistic missile, also known as RS-28 Sarmat, pictured here at a Moscow Victory Day parade rehearsal

SATAN 2 MISSILE The RS-28 Sarmat missile, dubbed Satan 2 by Nato, has a top speed of 4.3 miles (7km) per second and has been designed to outfox anti-missile shield systems. It is expected to have a range of 6,213 miles (10,000 km), which would allow Moscow to attack London and other European cities as well as reaching cities on America's west and east coasts. Launches will be held at the Plesetsk testing ground in west Russia and if it comes to fruition the weapon could by in use by 2019 - 2020. It could deliver warheads of 40 megatons - 2,000 times as powerful as the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Russia has been working on it since 2009. Advertisement

'The main aim is to check the rocket's systems at the moment of leaving the silo, the switching on of the Sarmat's first stage and the following five seconds [of flight],' a source told Kommersant newspaper.

The RS-28 Sarmat missile, dubbed Satan 2 by Nato, has a top speed of 4.3 miles (7km) per second and has been designed to outfox all anti-missile shield systems, writes The Times.

It is expected to have a range of 6,213 miles (10,000 km), which would allow Moscow to attack London and other European cities as well as reaching cities on America's west and east coasts.

Russia unveiled the first images of its largest ever nuclear missile in October 2016.

According to defence military television channel Zvezda, it could carry a payload able 'wipe out UK, France or Texas'.

First tests were planned for last year but were delayed. There were then further delays in March and April.

The missile will replace the R-36 Voevoda, which Nato dubbed 'Satan' back in the 1970s.

It will be used by Strategic Missile Troops in Krasnoyarsk and Orenburg regions.

Defence minister Sergei Shoygu is said to be monitoring its development daily.

It could eventually be a carrier for Object 4202 - a hypersonic warhead that would detach from the missile.

In 2011, Russia said it was implementing a $650 billion (493 billion) programme to renew its nuclear deterrent and Mr Shoygu said it is 'sticking strictly' to its rearmament programme.

Russia is also developing the Barguzin railroad combat missile complex, it was revealed in July of this year.

Each missile contains 10 nuclear warheads, according to pictures revealed online from the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau in October 2016

If a Sarmat missile were fired at London it would wipe out most of Britain, as well as northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands

A Russian intercontinental ballistic missile RS-20, a previous model (SS-18 Satan according to the NATO code) takes off somewhere at undisclosed location in Russia in June 2001. Russia claims it is now ready to carry out test launches of its 100-tonne RS-28 Sarmat missile

The Barguzin 'ghost trains' can travel 1,500 miles (2,400 km) in a day and will be disguised as ordinary passenger or freight trains, making them virtually impossible to identify.

Both nuclear weapons are being made more sophisticated and potentially devastating as tensions between Russia and the US escalate.

Writing in July of this year, Pravda, the official newspaper of Russia's Communist Party reported that the 'Satan 2' missile and the Barguzin missile complex are 'on the level of absolute readiness...for their implementation, should the relevant decision be made to include the projects in the state armament program'.

The Barguzin nuke train complex is an improvement on a previous design that has been in development since the 1960s.

In October 2016 Russia unveiled chilling pictures of its largest ever nuclear missile, capable of destroying an area the size of France

Launches will be held at the Plesetsk testing ground in west Russia and if it comes to fruition the weapon could deliver warheads of 40 megatons - 2,000 times as powerful as the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945

The train, which is packed with ballistic missiles, can be stopped in their tracks at a moment's notice to deploy the huge rocket launchers.

The missiles are normally launched from the road, but the nuke trains mean they will be able to travel further in much less time.

The 'undetectable' deadly trains will be poised to strike at a moment's notice on the dawn of World War 3.

First tests reportedly happened in November.

Russian defence expert Victor Murakhovsky said the new trains would prove to be a 'sheer nightmare' for foreign spies.

The 'undetectable' deadly trains will be poised to strike at a moment's notice on the dawn of World War 3

During the time of the Soviet Union, Russia also used rail-mobile missile systems, known as 'Molodets', with 12 nuclear trains stationed in the Kostroma, Perm and Krasnoyarsk regions, each carrying three missiles.

They came into service in 1987, just a few years before the collapse of the USSR, and the West dubbed the Soviet weapon 'ghost trains.'

The ghost trains, which carried missiles weighing more than 100 tonnes each, were disposed of between 2003 and 2005.

The missiles on the new trains will weigh less than 47 tonnes, making the replacement nuke trains much more efficient.
A prototype of the world's first microchip - now used to power everything from smartphones to spaceships - is set to sell for 455,000 ($600,000) at auction.

Ahead of the 60th anniversary of its invention, the chip will be sold in Dallas, Texas next month alongside a statement chronicling how its inventors made it.

The semiconductor, which is no bigger than a fingernail, comprises a tangle of copper and gold wires connected to geranium, mounted on glass and stored in plastic casing.

Missouri-born electrical engineer Jack Kilby designed the integrated circuit in 1958, but it was built by LA-born Tom Yeargan, who was lead technician for the project.

The microchip paved the way for the creation of smartphones and computers as we know them today, with similar devices now used to power technology including TVs, cars, microwaves and hearing aids.

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A prototype of the world's first microchip (pictured) - now used to power everything from smartphones to spaceships - is set to sell for 455,000 ($600,000) at auction

WHAT IS AN INTEGRATED CIRCUIT? An integrated circuit (IC), or microchip, is small chip that can function as an amplifier, oscillator, timer, microprocessor, or even computer memory. It is a small wafer, usually made of silicon, that can hold anywhere from hundreds to billions of transistors, resistors, and capacitors. These extremely small electronics can perform calculations and store data using either digital or analogue technology. Digital ICs are the kind you will usually find in computers, networking equipment, and most consumer electronics. Digital ICs use logic gates, which work only with values of ones and zeros. A low signal sent to to a component on a digital IC will result in a value of 0, while a high signal creates a value of 1. By switching between the binary values of 1 and 0, logic gates control the flow of information through a computer chip. Advertisement

Now, almost 60 years after it was made, Mr Yeargan's daughter Leslie Yeargan Riggs, 57, is selling it along with a statement written by her late father.

Bidders will battle to own the 'piece of history' when the relic, along with another early prototype, is auctioned by Heritage in November.

Ms Riggs said her father, who worked at industry giants Texas Instruments for 25 years, accomplished many things, but helping build the chip was his 'crowning achievement'.

She said: 'The integrated circuit is by far the most stunning thing he [Mr Yeargan] worked on.

'It was the beginning of the computer age.'

The prototype is the oldest example of a functioning integrated circuit combining multiple electronic functions on a single elemental slab still in private hands.

Mr Leargan, a technician TI, began working on the circuit with Mr Kilby in the summer of 1958, finishing it that September.

In July, 1958, Mr Kilby had not been allowed to go on holiday because he had only recently joined Texas Instruments.

Ahead of the 60th anniversary of its invention, the chip will be sold in Dallas, Texas next month alongside a statement (pictured) its inventor Tom Yeargan penned chronicling how he made it

The semiconductor - no bigger than a fingernail - comprises a tangle of copper and gold wires connected to geranium, mounted on glass and stored in plastic casing (pictured) with Mr Yeargan's name scrawled across it in pen, as well as co-inventor Jack Kilby's autograph

He used the time to create his ground-breaking design, which tackled the problem of connecting large numbers of electronic components in circuits in a cost-effective way.

The duo were intent on miniaturising the periods room-sized computers and were ultimately successful with their design, now known as the microchip.

In the 1940s, computers took up whole rooms, but microchip made them millions to billions of times more capable, while occupying a fraction of the space.

THE FIRST MICROCHIPS When Jack Kilby demonstrated the first working integrated circuit (IC) in Texas in 1958, he could have had no idea how his invention would change the world. Now, almost 60 years later, microchips are integral to modern-day life in devices as wide-ranging as computers to credit cards, cameras to cookers. In the 1940s, computers took up whole rooms, but microchips made them millions to billions of times more capable, while occupying a fraction of the space. For almost 50 years after the turn of the 20th century, the electronics industry had been dominated by vacuum tube technology, but were fragile, bulky, unreliable, power hungry, and produced considerable heat. Transistors, invented in 1947 by US firm Bell, were minuscule in comparison, more reliable, longer lasting, produced less heat, and consumed less power. But hand-soldering thousands of these components to thousands of bits of wire was expensive, time-consuming and unreliable. In the 1940s, computers took up whole rooms, but microchips made them millions to billions of times more capable, while occupying a fraction of the space. Pictured is an image of the world's first computer ENIAC, invented in 1946 The challenge was to find cost-effective, reliable ways of producing these components and interconnecting them. Mr Kilby's IC kept manufacturing costs low, because the chips were printed with all their components as a unit. Recognising the need for a 'demonstration product' to speed widespread use of the IC, Patrick Haggerty, former TI chairman, challenged Mr Kilby to design a calculator as powerful as the large, electromechanical desktop models of the day, but small enough to fit in a coat pocket. The resulting electronic hand-held calculator, of which Mr Kilby is a co-inventor, successfully commercialised the IC. He headed teams that built both the first military system and the first computer incorporating integrated circuits. The first circuits contained transistors numbering in their tens, but by the 1970s each chip was able to hold tens of thousands of transistors. This had mushroomed to hundreds of thousands of transistors by the 1980s and the birth of personal computers. Today's advanced microchips contain billions. Advertisement

The prototype microchip (pictured) paved the way for the creation of smartphones and computers as we know them today, with similar devices now used to power technology including TVs, cars, microwaves and hearing aids

TOM YEARGAN Tom Yeargan worked at Texas Instruments (TI) as part of the team that began working on the intergrated circuit with Jack Kilby in the summer of 1958. He went on to work for the company for 25 years. Mr Kilby noted in 2000, when he accepted the Nobel Prize, that it was Mr Yeargan, along with Pat Harbreacht, who helped cut and shape the tiny chips that would change the future. Mr Yeargan died in 2001. Advertisement

The advancement made at that time would ultimately result in the silicon 'chip' associated today with virtually every aspect of technology, Heritage said.

According to the auction house, the lot contains 'a Germanium wafer complete with leads and wires on the original glass brick'.

It also comprises a second prototype - a silicon circuit featuring metallic leads attached to a plastic 'petri dish'.

Along with the early chips is a statement from Tom to the patent agency in 1964, which chronicles his role in helping build them.

Ms Riggs said: 'There was another company working on the same thing at about the same time in California, and the two companies had some patent disputes.

According to the auction house, the lot also comprises a second prototype (pictured) - a silicon circuit featuring metallic leads attached to a plastic 'petri dish'

THE LIFE OF JACK KILBY Jack Kilby, the inventor of the microship, was born in 1923 in Missouri Jack Kilby was born in 1923 in Missouri to Hubert and Vina Freitag Kilby. Mr Kilby received his bachelor of science degree from the University of Illinois, and in 1947 received a degree in electrical engineering. He earned his master of science in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1950, while working at Centralab, a division of Globe-Union corporation in Milwaukee. It was in a relatively deserted laboratory at Texas Instrument's brand new Semiconductor Building in Dallas, where Mr Kilby first hit on the idea of the integrated circuit in July 1958, shortly after joining the company. Mr Kilby went on to pioneer military, industrial, and commercial applications of microchip technology. In 1970, he took a leave of absence from TI to work as an independent inventor. He explored, among other subjects, the use of silicon technology for generating electrical power from sunlight. He died of cancer June 20, 2005, at the age of 81, in Dallas, Texas. Advertisement

'My dad had to give a statement to the patent agency about his recollection of the event.'

Leslie and her brother inherited the artefacts from their father when he passed away in 2001.

The year before that, Mr Kilby, who died in 2005, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as credit for the technological breakthrough.

Pictured is the second prototype chip created by Jack Kilby and Tom Yeargan, which will be auctioned alongside the first in Dallas, Texas next month

Along with the early chips is a statement from Tom to the patent agency in 1964, which chronicles his role in helping build them. Pictured is the envelope the patent application was sent in

PREVIOUS AUCTIONS In June 2014, Mr Kilby and Mr Yeargan's chip failed to sell at auction in New York, despite an estimated worth of 1.2 million ($2 million). The highest bid was $850,000 (340,000), which failed to reach the item's undisclosed reserve price. Before bidding began, auctioneer Christie's called the chip 'virtually the birth certificate of the modern computing era.' 'This prototype helped spawn the microchip revolution. From the clock on a microwave oven, through tablets and laptops, to the Large Hadron Collider, microchips pervade the electronic devices we use on a daily basis.' Advertisement

He mentioned Mr Yeargan in his acceptance speech and paid tribute to his role in building the circuit.

Ms Riggs's older brother attended a reception at TI and met Mr Kilby.

She said: 'My brother put a file label on the case and introduced himself to Mr Kilby, and he autographed it for him.'

Ms Riggs decided to sell that autographed chip after years of storing it in a safety deposit box to raise awareness about the role her father played.

Electrical engineer Jack Kilby built the cutting edge integrated circuit in 1958 along with Tom Yeargan, who was lead technician for the project. Pictured is the patent attorney's response to the duo's application

Now, almost 60 years after his prototype chip was made, Tom Yeargan's (pictured) daughter Leslie Yeargan Riggs, 57, is selling it along with a statement written by her late father

MICROCHIP TIMELINE 1957 - Robert Noyce co-founds the the Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation 1958 - Jack Kilby starts working for Texas Instruments 1959 - Both apply for patents for an integrated circuit (IC) design, Mr Kilby's using germanium, Mr Noyce's using silicon 1961 - First commercially available IC comes from Fairchild. All computers are now made using chips instead individual transistors and parts 1962 - Texas Instruments first uses its chips in Air Force computers and the Minuteman Missile 1966 - The two firms cross license their technologies after several years of legal battles, creating a global market now worth about $1 trillion a year 1967 - Mr Kilby uses his IC design to invent the portable calculator 1968 - Mr Noyce co-founds Intel 1971 - Intel invents the first commercially available microprocessor 1975 - Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak creates the Apple I desktop computer using a 6502 8-bit microprocessor Advertisement

She said: 'We wanted to celebrate our father and get recognition for this amazing thing our father worked for.

'None of us would have phones in our hands or computers on our desks without the integrated circuit.

'It's just an amazing piece of history.'

In June 2014, the chip failed to sell at auction in New York, despite an estimated worth of 1.2 million ($2 million).

The highest bid was $850,000 (340,000), which failed to reach the item's undisclosed reserve price.

Before bidding began, auctioneer Christie's called the device 'virtually the birth certificate of the modern computing era.'

Craig Kissick, director of Heritage Auctions' Nature and Science Department, said the chip is likely to sell for between 300,000 ($400,000) and 455,000 ($600,000), which is a conservative estimate.

He said: 'Of the similar prototypes that are out there, they're all in institutions. It's a unique opportunity for someone.'

The chip will be sold by Heritage in Dallas on November 4 as part of the auction house's nature and science auction.

A Triceratops skull, a pair of woolly mammoth tusks and the skeleton of a predator which roamed the earth 100 million years before the dinosaurs - the Dimetrodon - will also be auctioned.

The chip and its patent statement (pictured) will be sold by Heritage in Dallas on November 4 as part of the auction house's nature and science auction
The oldest known marine navigation tool has been excavated from a shipwreck that sank in a violent storm off the coast of Oman in 1503.

Archaeologists say the navigation tool, known as an astrolabe, would have been used by mariners in the Age of Discovery to measure the position of the sun on trans-oceanic voyages.

The item was recovered from a ship called 'Esmeralda', which sank in the Indian Ocean, killing all on board, including its captain who was the uncle of famous Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama.

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Archaeologists say the object, called an astrolabe (pictured), would have been used by mariners in the Age of Discovery to measure the position of the sun on trans-oceanic voyages

ASTROLABES Archaeologists say the astrolabe would have been used by mariners in the Age of Discovery to measure the position of the sun on trans-oceanic voyages. It is 17.5cm in diameter and less than 2mm thick. It is believed to have been made between 1495 and 1500 and is the earliest known example by several decades. The disc has 18 evenly spaced gradations around the edge and each one is separated by five degrees. This would marines to measure the height of the sun so they could orientate themselves. Since the late 50s they've been keeping a worldwide catalogue of every one that's been found. This is the 108th marine astolade discovered in the world Advertisement

The astrolabe, which is 17.5cm in diameter and less than 2mm thick, was used by mariners to measure the altitude of the sun during voyages.

When the researchers found the object, no markings were visible.

But scans by Warwick University showed etches around the edge of the object, each separated by five degrees  proving that it is an astrolabe.

These markings would have allowed mariners to measure the height of the sun above the horizon at noon to determine their location so they could find their way on the high seas.

The artefact is also engraved with the Portuguese coat of arms and the personal emblem of Don Manuel I, the King of Portugal from 1495-1521.

Scientists say it is the earliest known example of an astrolabe by several decades.

'The first reference to a maritime astrolabe was 1480 and the earliest one before ours was from a shipwreck that sank in 1533', David Mearns from Blue Water Recovery, who excavated the shipwreck, told MailOnline.

'It is from a ship from the Age of Discovery - the pre-colonial period before empires were built', said Mr Mearns, who is also author of The Shipwreck Hunter.

'Since the late 50s they've been keeping a worldwide catalogue of every one that's been found. This is the 108th marine astolabe discovered in the world.'

Esmeralda was part of da Gama's second voyage to India and is the oldest ship ever found from Europe's Golden Age of Discovery.

The astrolabe was one of nearly 3,000 objects recovered from the wreck.

Although it was found in 2014, It was not confirmed as a marine astrolabe until last month when the Institute of Nautical Archaeology at Texas A&M confirmed it.

The disc (left) has 18 evenly spaced gradations around the edge and each one is separated by five degrees (shown by the scan right). This would help marines to measure the height of the sun so they could orientate themselves

'It's a great privilege to find something so rare, something so historically important, something that will be studied by the archaeological community and fills in a gap.' Mr Mearns told BBC.

'It was like nothing else we had seen and I immediately knew it was something very important because you could see it had these two emblems on it,' he said.

Mr Mearns said he first recognised the Portuguese coat of arms and then the emblem of the King of Portugal - Don Manuel I.

'We know it had to have been made before 1502, because that's when the ship left Lisbon and Dom Manuel didn't become King until 1495, and this astrolabe wouldn't have carried the emblem of the King unless he was King', he said.

'I believe it's probably fair to say it dates roughly to between 1495 to 1500. Exactly what year we don't know - but it is in that narrow period.'

More than 500 years since the Esmeralda sank during a violent storm in the Indian Ocean, the wreckage (shown) was found. The sinking in 1503 killed all on board, and its captain was the uncle of famous explorer Vasco da Gama

'It rolls back this history by at least 30 years - it adds to evolution, it adds to the history, and hopefully astrolabes from this period can be found.'

A team from British company Blue Water Recoveries and the Oman Ministry of Heritage and Culture first explored a site in the Al Hallaniyah Island, off the coast of Oman, in 2013.

Divers also uncovered an incredibly rare coin in the wreckage - so rare that only one other is known to exist today.

The coin was found among the stone shot, ceramics, a bell and other debris.

This rare silver coin, called an Indio, was discovered among the stone shot, ceramics, a bell and other debris. The coins were forged in 1499 after da Gama's first voyage to India, which helps date the wreckage

Vasco Da Gama was the first person to sail directly from Europe to India, from 1497 to 1499 and this linked Europe to Asia by sea for the first time. Alfredo's Roque painting showing the fleet on its voyage in 1498 is illustrated

The coins were forged in 1499 after da Gama's first voyage to India, which helps date the wreckage.

'That was an amazing discovery,' Mr Mearns said at the time.

'It was like a thing you read about in a Hollywood story.'

The 4th Armada was composed of 20 ships and between 800 and 1800 men.

The Armada was originally envisaged as two squadrons - 15 ships under the admiral to head to India, 5 under the vice-admiral designated to patrol the mouth of the Red Sea.

But not all ships were ready by the launch date, so the armada was re-arranged into three squadrons, the first two squadrons 10 under admiral Vasco da Gama, 5 under his uncle Vicente Sodre, vice-admiral went out at once.

The five remaining ships went out a little while later as a third squadron under Gama's cousin, with instructions to catch up to the main fleet along the way.

The astrolabe was discovered in 2014 and was one of nearly 3,000 objects recovered from the wreck. Pictured is the Ghubbat ar Rahib bay where the wreck is being excavated
It was one of the biggest and most brutal battles in the Bronze Age.

Now archaeologists have shed new light on the mysterious people who fought in the Tollense Valley 3,250 years ago.

A study of the skeletons at the site in north-eastern Germany suggests that more than 2,000 people were involved in the on battle.

And while experts are yet to pinpoint exactly where the fighters were from, a DNA analysis suggests that it was a large, diverse group of non-local warriors.

The reason for the war on Europe's oldest battlefield remains unknown.

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It was one of the biggest and most brutal battles fought in the Bronze Age, and now archaeologists have shed new light on the people who fought in the Tollense Valley 3,250 years ago

WHO WERE THE FIGHTERS? While 140 skeletons have been found, Professor Terberger said that this is likely only a fraction of the men involved. He estimates that more than 2,000 people were involved in the battle. To understand more about the fighters, the researchers conducted a chemical analysis of the skeletons, looking for elements like strontium, which can leave a geographically specific signature in bones. While the results showed that the fighters were a large, diverse group of non-locals, the archaeologists were unable to pinpoint specifically where they were from. The analysis did suggest that many of the fighters came from the south  either southern Germany or Central Europe  a find that was in line with many pieces of evidence found at the site, including Central-European arrowheads and pins. Advertisement

Since the 1980s, several pieces of evidence of a battle have been found in river sediment at the site, including daggers, knives and skulls.

In 1996, an amateur archaeologist found a single upper arm bone sticking out of the steep riverbank with a flint arrowhead embedded in one end of the bone.

A systematic exploration of the site began in 2007, after archaeologists unearthed an enormous battlefield, as well as 140 skeletons and remains of military equipment.

These included wooden clubs, bronze spearheads, and flint and bronze arrowheads.

Now, archaeologists from the Lower Saxony State Office for Cultural Heritage have analysed the remains to learn more about the people who fought in the battle.

Accoridng to Science, in the Bronze Age, Northern Europe was long dismissed as a backwater, overshadowed by more sophisticated civilizations in the Near East and Greece.

They believe the battle was of a scale up until then, completely unknown north of the Alps.

It suggests more organisation and violence in the area than once thought.

Speaking to Live Science, Professor Thomas Terberger, one of the archaeologists working on the excavation, said: 'We are very confident that the human remains are more or less lying in the position where they died.'

While 140 skeletons have been found, Professor Terberger said that this is likely only a fraction of the men involved.

He estimates that more than 2,000 people were involved in the battle.

He said: 'This is beyond the local scale of a conflict,' suggesting that the battle went beyond neighbours.

To understand more about the fighters, the researchers conducted a chemical analysis of the skeletons, looking for elements like strontium, which can leave a geographically specific signature in bones.

While the results showed that the fighters were a large, diverse group of non-locals, the archaeologists were unable to pinpoint specifically where they were from.

An analysis of the skeletons at the site in north-eastern Germany suggests that more than 2,000 people were involved in the battle

Since the 1980s, several pieces of evidence of a battle have been found in river sediment at the site, including daggers, knives and skulls. A systematic exploration of the site then began in 2007, since which archaeologists have unearthed an enormous battlefield, as well as 140 skeletons and remains of military equipment. Pictured are some of the artefacts found

WOODEN WEAPONS FOUND AT TOLLENSE Among the weapons found in Tollense is a wooden club in the shape of a baseball bat and another stick comparable to a mallet. The 'baseball bat' is made of ash wood, which is well known for its strength and elasticity while the mallet is made from sloe. The findings led archaeologists to conclude the site could be the earliest Bronze Age battle site ever found. 'There is no doubt that such hammer-like, wooden weapons could cause heavy lesions,' the researchers said. 'Wooden clubs are sometimes reported from bogs in northern Germany [and] clubs have been found at Wiesmoor and Berumerfehn.' The archaeologists continued that wooden clubs of various forms are also reported being used by Native Americans, for example, for hunting and warfare, but the Tollense Valley represents the first prehistoric site in Central Europe where such weapons have been found in association with human bones. Advertisement

The analysis did suggest that many of the fighters came from the south  either southern Germany or Central Europe  a find that was in line with many pieces of evidence found at the site, including Central-European arrowheads and pins.

The fighters closely resembled the slain soldiers discovered in a nearby mass grave at Wittstock, dating back to 1636.

While this is more recent than the battle at Tollense, Professor Terberger believes it could have some important parallels for the Bronze Age.

In the battle at Wittstock, soldiers were known to come from all over Europe.

If the fighters at Tollense were also multi-ethnic, it might mean 'these were warriors who were trained as warriors', rather than locals, according to Professor Terberger.

One key question that remains to be answered is the motivation behind the battle.

The researchers now hope to look to the wider landscape near the battlefield to look for answers.

The Tollense River was known to be an important route for north-south trade, and the battle took place beside a bridge connecting two sides of the river.

Among the other finds on the site included tin rings and bronze scrolls. The two tin rings shown may have been worn on warriors' fingers. The small bronze scrolls may have served as tassels or decorations for garments

To understand more about the fighters, the researchers conducted a chemical analysis of the skeletons, looking for elements like strontium, which can leave a geographically specific signature in bones

Professor Terberger said: 'It was probably an important crossing in the landscape.'

The time when the battle took place was also right in the middle of a huge cultural shift in Central Europe, as people arrived from the Mediterranean.

Professor Terberger added: 'It's not by accident that our battlefield site is dating to this period of time.'
Ice sheets may melt rapidly as a result of volcanic eruptions thousands of miles away, according to a new study.

Scientists who analysed ice cores and meltwater deposits found that eruptions caused 'immediate and significant' melting of the ice sheet.

While volcanic eruptions have been known to cool the global climate, the findings suggest that they can also speed up the melting of ice sheets.

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Ice sheets may melt rapidly as a result of volcanic eruptions thousands of miles away, warns new research. Pictured are smoke plumes from the Grimsvotn volcano, about 120 miles, (200 kilometers) east of Rejkjavik

VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS AND ICE SHEETS Researchers looked at ice sheets that covered much of northern Europe at the end of the last ice age, around 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. They found that ancient eruptions caused 'immediate and significant' melting of the ice sheet which suggests modern ice sheets could also be vulnerable. Matching up the ice layers with varve layers from the same time periods, the team found that years with explosive volcanic activity corresponded to thicker varve layers, indicating more melting of the northern European ice sheet. Dr Muschitiello and his colleagues studied a period ranging from 13,200 to 12,000 years ago, when the last ice age was transitioning into today's warm climate. They focused specifically on volcanic eruptions in the northern high latitudes - events similar to the 2010 eruptions of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Advertisement

Researchers from Columbia University looked at ice sheets that covered much of northern Europe at the end of the last ice age, around 12,000 to 13,000 years ago.

Dr Francesco Muschitiello, lead author of the study, said: 'Over a time span of 1,000 years, we found that volcanic eruptions generally correspond with enhanced ice sheet melting within a year or so.'

But he said these weren't volcanoes erupting on or near the ice sheet, but located a thousand miles away in some cases.

The eruptions heaved 'huge clouds' of ash into the sky, and when the ash fell on the ice sheet, its darker colour made the ice absorb more solar heat than usual.

Dr Muschitiello said: 'We know that if you have darker ice, you decrease the reflectance and it melts more quickly. It's basic science.

'But no one so far has been able to demonstrate this direct link between volcanism and ice melting when it comes to ancient climates.'

The discovery comes from the cross-sections of deposits, called glacial varves, most of which had been collected in the 1980s and 1990s.

Varves are the layered sediments that form when meltwater below an ice sheet routes large amounts of debris into lakes near the sheet's edge.

Like the rings of a tree, the layers of a glacial varve tell the story of each year's conditions; a thicker layer indicates more melting, since there would have been a higher volume of water to carry the sediment.

The team also compared the varves to cores from the Greenland ice sheet, whose layers contain a record of ancient atmospheric conditions.

Researchers drill into the ground to sample the sedimentary deposits of an ancient glacial lake in Sweden. Volcanic eruptions have been known to cool the global climate, but they can also speed up the melting of ice sheets, according to new research

Testing of the layers for sulphates revealed which years experienced explosive volcanic eruptions, which tend to release large amounts of ash.

Matching up the ice layers with varve layers from the same time periods, the team found that years with explosive volcanic activity corresponded to thicker varve layers, indicating more melting of the northern European ice sheet.

Dr Muschitiello and his colleagues studied a period ranging from 13,200 to 12,000 years ago, when the last ice age was transitioning into today's warm climate.

They focused specifically on volcanic eruptions in the northern high latitudes - events similar to the 2010 eruptions of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

Although that eruption was relatively minor, its large ash cloud shut down air traffic across most of Europe for about a week.

Sediments deposited by ice sheet meltwater provide clues about ancient climate. Dr Muschitiello and his colleagues studied a period ranging from 13,200 to 12,000 years ago, when the last ice age was transitioning into today's warm climate

Co-author Dr James Lea, of Liverpool University, says that it is 'difficult' to say how much melting an eruption could cause.

He said: 'It depends on many factors.'

Running thousands of model simulations, the team found that the amount of melting depends on the individual eruption, which season it occurs in, the snowpack conditions at the time, and the elevation of the ice sheet.

Dr Lea said: 'Change any one of these and you would get different amounts of melt.'

In the worst scenarios, the model predicted that ash deposition would remove between 20 centimetres and almost one metre of ice from the surface of the highest parts of the ice sheet.

Dr Muschitiello cautioned that the model results should be 'taken with a pinch of salt' due to uncertainties about past conditions.

But, because the team simulated a very broad range of potential conditions, he's confident that the ice sheet's real response lies somewhere within their range.

Dr Muschitiello, said the preliminary results suggest that 'present day ice sheets are potentially very vulnerable to volcanic eruptions.'

He added that the study 'can give us hints about the mechanisms at play when you're expecting rapid climate change.'
A stressful day often leads to a night of staring at the ceiling, tossing and turning.

And not just for humans  as the family dog could also be struggling to get a decent night's sleep because of stress.

A study has found pet dogs who have difficult experiences may sleep badly, just like us.

Even a short period of being separated from their owner or the presence of a threatening stranger can throw off their whole sleeping pattern.

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Even a short period of being separated from their owner can throw dogs off their whole sleeping pattern. Pictured is a Labrador that was part of the experiment

WHAT DID THEY DO? The researchers measured the sleep of dogs including a golden retriever, Labrador, sheepdog and Jack Russell over three hours in a laboratory. Prior to falling asleep, the dogs were given a positive or negative experience. The lucky dogs spent six minutes with their owner, playing tug of war or 'fetch' depending on their preference and being petted and spoken to every time they went up to them. Those in the negative group were left alone on a lead attached to the door and ignored by their owner who did not make eye contact. Then a researcher slowly entered the room in a threatening manner, looking steadily into the eyes of the dog but saying nothing. After a difficult experience, dogs had only 40 to 50 minutes of deep non-REM sleep, compared to an hour for those who were sleeping normally. Advertisement

A bad day for a dog means less deep sleep, according to Hungarian researchers, who recorded the brain waves of 16 canines.

Over three hours of nap time, stressed dogs spent up to 20 fewer minutes in non-REM 'deep sleep' than dogs who had just played a game and been made a fuss of by their owner.

The study's lead author, Dr Anna Kis from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, said: 'In humans, stress causes difficulty falling asleep, whereas dogs fall asleep more quickly  we think as a protective measure to remove themselves from the stressful environment.

'However we found dogs get less deep sleep after a negative experience.

'It suggests that, just as humans have a bad night's sleep after a difficult day, dogs may have a similar problem.'

The researchers measured the sleep of dogs including a golden retriever, Labrador, sheepdog and Jack Russell over three hours in a laboratory.

Prior to falling asleep, the dogs were given a positive or negative experience.

The lucky dogs spent six minutes with their owner, playing tug of war or 'fetch' depending on their preference and being petted and spoken to every time they went up to them.

Those in the negative group were left alone on a lead attached to the door and ignored by their owner who did not make eye contact.

Then a researcher slowly entered the room in a threatening manner, looking steadily into the eyes of the dog but saying nothing.

The lucky dogs spent six minutes with their owner, playing tug of war or 'fetch' depending on their preference and being spoken to every time they went up to them. Pictured is one of the dogs sleeping

WHY YOU SHOULD LET YOUR DOG SLEEP Dogs sleep badly when they're stressed, according to new research. In October researchers found that if your dog loves a good nap, then there's a chance that it's also better at learning new skills. Researchers have found that letting dogs sleep helps them to consolidate new memories  just like humans. The findings could shed light on how similar the process of ageing in dog brains is to that in human brains. Researchers from Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest used EEG monitors to analyse dogs' brain activity while they slept. Their analysis revealed that the dogs showed short burst of activity, called sleep spindles, during non-rapid-eye-movement sleep. The frequency of these sleep spindles was also linked to how well a dog retained new information it had learned before its nap. Advertisement

After this bad experience, dogs fell asleep within 10 minutes, which scientists believe to be a strategy for escaping stress. The dogs who had enjoyed themselves took 20 minutes to fall asleep.

Both groups got a roughly similar amount of sleep, but the stressed dogs got significantly less deep sleep and more light, dreaming REM sleep instead.

After a difficult experience, dogs had only 40 to 50 minutes of deep non-REM sleep, compared to an hour for those who were sleeping normally.

Dr Kis said: 'This would not be a problem for dogs if it happened every so often, but over a longer time a lack of good quality sleep could stop them consolidating memories and dealing with their emotions.

'That could make pets more aggressive or less able to work if they have professional responsibilities.'

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, states that the results are important for dogs undergoing stress, which can include being put into a kennel, entering a dog agility competition or seeing their circumstances change.

The researchers measured the sleep of dogs including a golden retriever (pictured), Labrador, sheepdog and Jack Russell over three hours in a laboratory

Sleep changes are worse for dogs who react more to experiences, such as those in the study who barked at the threatening researcher or hid behind their owner.

Gudrun Ravetz, senior vice-president of the British Veterinary Association, said: 'This research may provide evidence that positive and negative experiences have an effect on dogs' sleep patterns.

'While it is a small study and further studies would be needed to understand the issue in more detail, we know that positive interactions with our pets are important for their overall health and welfare, particularly when it comes to training, which should always be positive and reward-based.'
Researchers have discovered the fossilized remains of a small, lizard-like creature that is the missing ancestral link between human beings and the fish we evolved from millions of years ago.

The remains of the creature, dubbed 'tiny,' were found in the Scottish Borders in south eastern Scotland in a piece of rock smaller than a clenched fist, after people saw a small part of its skull sticking out.

'Tiny' was one of the first four-legged creatures to move onto land - making it our ancestor and filling in a 15-million year fossil gap when fish transitioned to becoming land dwellers.

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Researchers have discovered the fossilized remains of a small, lizard-like creature dubbed 'Tiny' that is the missing ancestral link between human beings and the fish we evolved from millions of years ago. Pictured is a rendering of what Tiny might has looked like

The fossil, whose analysis was funded by the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, is just one of many fossils discovered in the Scottish Borders.

About 360-345 million years ago, Scotland was a very different place.

It lay close to the Equator, when many of Earth's continents and landmasses were connected.

Scotland's land was hot, humid and experienced droughts and flooding.

It was here that tetrapods: backboned animals with four limbs, invaded land - a major evolutionary event.

For many years, scientists were not sure how this had happened because there was a 15 million year 'gap' in the fossil record - no four-legged fossils had been found dating from that time, so there was no evidence to show this step had taken place - except for the Tiktaalik rosae fossil, a lobe-finned fish that lived 375 million-year-old fossil and is considered by many researchers to be the best-known transitional species between fish and land-dwelling tetrapods.

That was until the late fossil hunter Stan Wood began excavations in the Borders area of Scotland, where he uncovered a haul of four-limbed creatures that help explain the evolutionary mystery.

Still, the question of why creatures move from water to land remains, but with every new find like Tiny, researchers say they're coming closer to answering that question.

Illustration of tetrapods on land. About 360-345 million years ago, Scotland was a very different place. It lay close to the Equator, when many of Earth's continents and landmasses were connected. Scotland's land was hot, humid and experienced droughts and flooding

HOW FINS BECAME LEGS The Tiktaalik rosae was a lobe-finned fish that lived in the late Devonian period, but had features similar to four-legged animals. A 375 million-year-old fossil Tiktaalik roseae fossil was discovered in 2004 on Ellesemere Island in Nunavut, Canada. It represents the best-known transitional species between fish and land-dwelling tetrapods - until the discovery of the more recent 'Tiny' fossil. A fish with a broad flat head and sharp teeth, Tiktaalik looked like a cross between a fish and a crocodile. The Tiktaalik Roseae fossil shows how animals moved from sea to land. This photo released by Nature shows the preserved remains of what was once described as the 'missing evolutionary link' between fish and tetrapods It had gills, scales and fins, but also had tetrapod-like features such as a mobile neck, robust ribcage and primitive lungs. In particular, its large forefins had shoulders, elbows and partial wrists, which allowed it to support itself on ground. In 2013, researchers re-evaluated the fossil and discovered that the fossil had a well-preserved pelvis and fin. The find challenged the theory that large, mobile hind appendages were developed only after vertebrates transitioned to land. Previous theories, based on the best available data, propose that a shift occurred from "front-wheel drive" locomotion in fish to more of a 'four-wheel drive' in tetrapods. The first 'fish' to walk out of the sea 375 million years ago was able to survive out of water because it had developed a neck, wrist and elbow. The crocodile-like Tiktaalik Roseae had fins and gills but also features found only in land-living animals But experts claim this shift actually began to happen in fish, not in limbed animals. For example, the team discovered the Tiktaalik's pelvic girdle was nearly identical in size to its shoulder girdle. It had a prominent ball and socket hip joint, which connected to a highly mobile femur. Crests on the hip for muscle attachment indicated strength and advanced fin function. And although no femur bone was found, pelvic fin material - including long fin rays - indicate the hind fin was at least as long as its forefin. Advertisement

David Millward, a geologist at NERC's British Geological Survey, said: 'Every specimen tells us something new.

'Tetrapods are our ancestors.

'They are the missing evolutionary link from fish and on to lizards, then ultimately to birds, dinosaurs, mammals and to us as people today.

'If tetrapods had not made that fundamental step we would not be where we are today.'

Millward suggested one theory of why creatures moved to the land:

'There were some very big, carnivorous fish in the lakes and creeks and no large predators on land so developing limbs to live on land would give any creature an advantage.'

Millward says that he is sure there are numerous other specimens worldwide, though the only other major site where tetrapods have been found so far is in Canada - where the Tiktaalik fossil was found.

Unlike in Scotland, researchers in Canada have also discovered well-preserved footprints which are helping to create a better understanding of how these ancient animals moved on land.

'We haven't found good footprints here yet,' Millward says, 'but we're still looking.'
After Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Ricos power grid, leaving millions of people in the dark, the islands governor Ricardo Rosello initiated talks with Elon Musk to help restore electricity using Tesla technology.

Now, the electric car-maker has revealed the first of its solar and storage projects in Puerto Rico is underway, beginning with a childrens hospital in San Juan.

The move is a step toward building solar-powered microgrids throughout the island, which would work independently of the main grid to allow for faster recovery in the wake of future crises.

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The electric car-maker has revealed the first of its solar and storage projects in Puerto Rico is underway, beginning with a childrens hospital in San Juan. It comes just weeks after the islands governor Ricardo Rosello initiated talks with Elon Musk to help restore electricity

On Twitter, Tesla shared images from the first of many microgrids in Puerto Rico.

This first look reveals the company has provided enough solar panels to cover nearly an entire parking lot, along with large energy storage units.

Hospital del Nino is first of many solar+storage projects going live, Tesla tweeted today.

Grateful to support the recovery of Puerto Rico with @ricardorossello.

Musk first revealed his plans to assist in the island's recovery at the beginning of October, tweeting that Tesla would be delaying plans to unveil its electric truck in efforts to boost battery production for Puerto Rico and focus on its Model 3 car.

On Twitter, Tesla shared images from the first of many microgrids in Puerto Rico. This first look reveals the company has provided enough solar panels to cover nearly an entire parking lot, along with large energy storage units

Hospital del Nino is first of many solar+storage projects going live, Tesla tweeted today. Grateful to support the recovery of Puerto Rico with @ricardorossello

In response to questions on Twitter asking if the firm could help, the Tesla boss said: 'The Tesla team has done this for many smaller islands around the world, but there is no scalability limit, so it can be done for Puerto Rico too.'

Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosello joined the conversation, too, tweeting to Musk: 'Let's talk. Do you want to show the world the power and scalability of your #TeslaTechnologies? PR could be that flagship project.'

Musk then responded: 'I would be happy to talk. Hopefully, Tesla can be helpful.'

He also later tweeted 'medical equipment has priority' when asked how the firm can help.

Now, just weeks later, it appears the plan is coming to life.

The move is a step toward building solar-powered microgrids throughout the island, which would work independently of the main grid to allow for faster recovery in the wake of future crises

Tesla CEO Elon Musk thinks his company can come to the rescue of Puerto Rico after the island's fragile electricity grid was completely wiped out by Hurricane Maria last wee

AUSTRALIA TO GET MASSIVE MEGAWATT LITHIUM ION BATTERY Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced the company is halfway done installing the 100 megawatt lithium ion battery, which will be more than three times larger than any existing power storage facility. The battery is being built at a wind farm operated by France's Neoen that is located about 225 km (141 miles) from the South Australian capital of Adelaide and will supply power to the lithium-ion storage cells. Last year's state-wide blackout was blamed by opponents of renewable energy on the state's rush to embrace wind and solar, and fuelled a backlash that has split Australia's conservative federal government and led to renewed calls to support coal-fired power. Advertisement

After the hurricane, Musk also also hit out at installers who were charging premiums to install the firm's battery pack on the island, promising to address the issue.

He also said Tesla was 'Sending experienced installers from continental US to hire & train local team as fast as possible.'

The solar powered grids set to come to Puerto Rico won't be a first for the company; in the past, Tesla has built a large-scale grid to power the entire island of Kauai, along with similar projects on the island of Ta'u, in American Samoa.

Musk on Thursday proposed that Tesla install a solar panel grid that would enable Puerto Rico to move away from fossil fuel-powered electricity

Rossello tweeted to Musk: 'Let's talk. Do you want to show the world the power and scalability of your #TeslaTechnologies? PR could be that flagship project.'

And, just this month, Musk revealed installation of the worlds largest battery in South Australia is half-way complete.

The 100 megawatt (129MWh) lithium ion battery will be more than three times larger than any existing power storage facility when it's finished.

The project grew out of a Twitter bet between Musk and Australian software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes where Musk promised he could build the battery 'in 100 days or its free'.

It comes a year on from South Australia's disastrous blackouts caused by a major storm, which devastated the state.
HILLSBORO, Ore.  Authorities say someone stole more than $300,000 worth of merchandise from two vendors who attended the Portland Regional Gem & Mineral Show.

Hillsboro police Lt. Henry Reimann said Tuesday that Randy and Katie Gneiting of Columbus, Montana, reported the theft Oct. 15. It happened after they left the show at the Washington County Fairgrounds and grabbed a bite to eat at a McDonald's in Hillsboro.

Reimann says the couple sat at a window so they could watch their Ford Expedition. But they missed the thieves who acted quickly. Reimann says it's apparent they knew exactly what they wanted and where to find it.

The thieves removed heavy aluminum cases that contained gems and jewelry.

Surveillance video released Tuesday shows the suspect vehicle to be a gray Dodge Journey.
Researchers have genetically modified pigs that have 24 per cent less body fat than normal pigs.

The researchers used CRIPSR-Cas9, a genetic modification technique, to insert a gene into the pigs that allows them to regulate their temperature by better burning fat.

The genetically modified pigs could save farmers money in heating and feeding costs for piglets, which is a significant problem in the pig farming industry.

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The genetically modified, low-fat pigs. These pigs could save pig farmers money in heating and feeding costs for piglets, which is a significant problem in the pig farming industry

The research, published in the journal PNAS, was conducted by Chinese researchers and one UK researcher.

The research involved introducing a mouse version of a gene called UPC1 into pig embryos.

This gene plays a role in regulating body temperatures, which most mammals have, but not pigs.

Older pigs don't suffer from the cold as much because they've had a chance to store body fat over time, but piglets don't have this advantage.

But the insertion of the UPC1 gene can help with body temperature regulation.

'They could maintain their body temperature much better, which means that they could survive better in the cold weather,' Jian-Guo Zhao, the lead author of the research, told NPR.

The method the researchers used, called CRISPR-Cas9, is a tool for making precise edits in DNA.

The technique involves a DNA cutting enzyme and a small tag which tells the enzyme where to cut.

The researchers then implanted the edited pig embryos into female 13 female pigs, three of which became pregnant and produced 12 male piglets overall.

Pictured are infrared images of 6-month-old pigs taken at zero, two, and four hours after exposure to the cold. The modified pigs are on the right side of the images. The images show that the pigs' thermoregulation was improved after insertion of the new gene

WHAT IS CRISPR-CAS9 CRISPR-Cas9 is a tool for making precise edits in DNA, discovered in bacteria. The acronym stands for 'Clustered Regularly Inter-Spaced Palindromic Repeats'. The technique involves a DNA cutting enzyme and a small tag which tells the enzyme where to cut. By editing this tag, scientists are able to target the enzyme to specific regions of DNA and make precise cuts, wherever they like. The CRISPR/Cas9 technqiue uses tags which identify the location of the mutation, and an enzyme, which acts as tiny scissors, to cut DNA in a precise place, allowing small portions of a gene to be removed It has been used to 'silence' genes - effectively switching them off. When cellular machinery repairs the DNA break, it removes a small snip of DNA. In this way, researchers can precisely turn off specific genes in the genome. The approach has been used previously to edit the HBB gene responsible for a condition called -thalassaemia. Advertisement

Tests on the piglets showed that they were better are regulating their body temperature, and had 24 per cent less body fat.

After 6 months, the animals were killed to allow the researchers to analyze their bodies, which were found to be healthy and normal - one of the male pigs even mated and produced healthy piglets.

Zhao told NPR that he doubt that the modification would affect the taste of the meat.

DailyMail.com has reached out for comment with regards to the taste of the meat and is awaiting a response.

R.Michael Roberts, a researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia who edited the research paper, told NPR that the research demonstrates a way of improving animal welfare while also improving the quality of the meat.
Government chiefs in the Balearic Islands have backtracked on plans to charge holidaymakers twice as much tourist tax outside of the high season.

Visitors to tourist hotspots like Majorca and Ibiza were expected to be asked to pay double to stay on the islands throughout next year.

But the anticipated price hike will be agreed on Friday for high season holidaymakers only, before going before the regions Parliament for final approval, it emerged last night.

U-turn: Government chiefs in the Balearic Islands have backtracked on plans to charge holidaymakers twice as much tourist tax outside of the high season

Regional government sources claimed today the u-turn was 'coherent' with its intention of promoting the Balearics as an off-peak destination with its Better in Winter campaign.

The bizarre decision, tantamount to admitting higher prices drive visitors away, comes less than two months after regional government chiefs boasted they were not worried the increased tax would discourage tourists.

Under the price hikes, the average high-season charge would jump to three euros (2.66) per person for each days stay. Holidaymakers at city and five-star hotels would pay four euros (3.55).

Now, the revision means off-season prices will be frozen at 2016 rates.

Regional governors announced the anticipated tourist tax rise at a press conference at the end of August, boasting they would rake in more than 90million, next year, thanks to the extra charges.

Expensive: Under the price hikes, the average high-season charge would jump to three euros (2.66) per person for each days stay

Balearic Islands: The tax rise was expected to raise 90million in 2018 alone, but was immediately criticised as 'brutal and unjustified'

The tax rise was immediately criticised, with one local newspaper describing it as 'brutal and unjustified'.

Regional tourism minister Biel Barcelo called the rise 'justified' and said the tourist tax, known as the ecotasa in Spanish, had been 'well-received', insisting the money raised helped reverse the impact of millions of holidaymakers on the islands.

But Mallorcadiario.com said in an editorial: 'Doubling the rate for each tourist staying in a regulated establishment will have a dissuasive effect, especially on family tourism.

Destination point: The Old Town in Ibiza is a popular draw for guests on the island

Change of heart: The bizarre decision by government officials is tantamount to admitting higher prices drive visitors away

'Our main rival national tourist destinations, with the exception of Catalunya, dont have a similar rate, and this increase will encourage many tourists to pick the Canary Islands, Andalucia and the Costa Blanca instead.'

It was widely anticipated that tourism tax prices would double between November and April ahead of the regional government u-turn.

Left-wing party Podemos has already signalled its intention to fight for an all-year increase when the government-backed price rise goes before the Balearic Islands Parliament for final approval.
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Japanese trains aren't known for having a party atmosphere - but that all changes at Halloween.

Over the years in Japan train carriages have become one of the trendiest places to celebrate All Saints' Eve, with people riding up and down commuter lines in their spooky costumes, as these surprising pictures show.

Dressed in macabre costumes and often armed with alcohol, these party-goers populate the transport system in elaborate guises that are definitely designed to raise eyebrows.

Spooky commute: People dressed as blood-soaked zombies pictured on board one of Japan's so-called Halloween trains

Images from previous years show the effort people make, with some guests styled as zombies, while other attendees - holding plastic guns to their temples - sport 'blood-splattered' faces.

Meanwhile, others opt for less gory incarnations, with young women dressing as sexy police officers or cult Japanese mascot Funassyi.

Others can be seen embracing futuristic styles, with silver face paints and metallic wigs, which give them an eerie, outer-space aesthetic, while zombie Hello Kitties are also a frequent sight.

On board the trains, revellers cram in with sober commuters as they take horror to the tracks. For many, part of the fun is watching straight-faced business people mingle with their fancy dress peers.

Annual fun: Each year, people gather in gory fancy dress and painful-looking make-up to celebrate 31 October in carriages

Crowd-puller: Once spearheaded by ex-pat Americans living in Asia, it's now a tradition for young Japanese Halloween lovers

Rush hour: Dressed in macabre costumes and often armed with alcohol, party-goers populate the transport system

Originally spearheaded by ex-pat Americans living in Japan - which hasn't always celebrated Halloween - attendees would pretend to be travelling to the route's last stop, then 'forget' to alight.

This caused considerable chaos for commuters, Kotaku.com reported, and, in 2009, protests were held at Tokyo's Shinjuku Station with people demanded an end to the train-based gatherings.

But, in recent years, they've become a mainstream, modern tradition for the younger Japanese generation.

Fright night: Each year, revellers cram in with sober commuters as they take their brand of horror to the tracks

That's an arresting sight: A group of young women dress as very sexy police officers as they wait to board a train

Others can be seen embracing futuristic style with silver face paints and metallic wigs, creating an outer-space aesthetic

These days, adverts even appear on the subway network that encourage people to register and familiarise themselves with codes of conduct for riding the trains in costume, proving that it's now meticulously organised and managed.

And, increasingly, it's becoming family-friendly. A small, rural train running near Mt. Akagi in Gunma Prefecture - a landlocked area on Japan's Honshu Island - decorates its trains with pumpkins and neon skeletons.

While the Randen Line, which runs from Kyoto city to the Arashiyama district, has a zombie-themed train and offers costumed passengers a discounted fare.

Today Halloween is a billion-dollar industry in Japan, enjoyed by an estimated 20million people across the country, and where shops are decked out with pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns while eateries and convenience stories offer pumpkin-flavoured drinks and desserts.
He may be known for his unsuccessful attempts at winning the affections of Sophie Monk on The Bachelorette this year.

But behind-the-scenes, reality TV 'villain' Blake Colman was far more interested in pursuing former Bachelor contestant Jen Hawke, a source has claimed.

According to an insider, Blake 'ruthlessly' pursued the brunette bombshell while he was in the Bachelorette mansion supposedly dating Sophie Monk.

'Blake actually contacted her behind Sophie Monk's back while he was still in the mansion': Reality TV 'villain' Blake Colman pursued former Bachelor contestant Jen Hawke while he was still filming The Bachelorette with Sophie Monk, a source has claimed

'After seeing a photo of Jen, Blake actually contacted her behind Sophie Monk's back while he was still in the mansion, even calling her on one of the producers phones,' the insider exclusively told Daily Mail Australia this week.

'His pursuit of her didn't stop there. When he was unceremoniously booted from the mansion, Blake jumped straight on Instagram and started messaging Jen, asking to see her as much as possible while he was in Sydney,' they said of the Perth-based fridge mechanic.

'They started hanging out and as soon as Blake returned to live with his parents Perth he insisted on them being exclusive.'

'He insisted on them being exclusive': The insider exclusively told Daily Mail Australia that Blake contacted Jen as soon as he was eliminated from the show and that they dated in secret for some time

Having second thoughts: 'Meanwhile Jen was having second thoughts. She is a notorious commitment-phobe, so she spent the next few weeks looking for reasons to break it off,' the source said

'Blake knew he had to keep his relationship with Jen quiet at the time, as news of their romance would completely ruin his season of The Bachelorette.'

'Meanwhile Jen was having second thoughts. She is a notorious commitment-phobe, so she spent the next few weeks looking for reasons to break it off.'

'Tensions began rising; and the distance between them didn't help either. But it was the night of Maxim's 6th Birthday Party in August when things really exploded.'

Bachelorette reject: Blake is known for his unsuccessful attempts at winning the affections of Sophie Monk on The Bachelorette this year

Heated: According to the insider, 'Blake lost it at Jen on the night of a Maxim party for flirting with [former Bachelorette star] Courtney Dober on a live instagram story' (pictured: Courtney Dober)

The insider explained: 'Blake lost it at Jen on the night of a Maxim party for flirting with [former Bachelorette star] Courtney Dober on a live Instagram story.'

'In the video, Courtney and Jen said they were thinking about sleeping with each other. Blake was livid.'

'After a week of arguing they decided to go on a break, but agreed that they may start dating again when Blake returned to Sydney later in the year.'

However, just a few weeks later, Jen met a new guy she liked and decided to completely end things with Blake, the source said.

'Jen let Blake know she had met somebody else and no longer wanted to wait for him. Blake launched another tirade of abuse at Jen, prompting her to completely cut ties with him.'

'Jen let Blake know she had met somebody else and no longer wanted to wait for him': However, just a few weeks later, Jen met a new guy she liked and decided to completely end things with Blake, the source said
It has received a mixed response from fans and critics alike.

But Star Trek: Discovery is to boldly go into a second season after being renewed by CBS.

The show is to return after its 15 episode first season run on the broadcaster's fledgling All Access service, a streaming competitor to Netflix.

Impulse power: Sonequa Martin-Green is to return as insolent Commander Michael Burnham after Star Trek: Discovery was renewed

Ironically the latter service helps fund the show, and indeed paid for the entire production budget, as it has the broadcast rights outside of the United States and Canada.

CBS Interactive president Marc DeBevoise bellowed: 'In just six episodes, Star Trek: Discovery has driven subscriber growth, critical acclaim and huge global fan interest for the first premium version of this great franchise.

An Enterprising idea: The show is only available through CBS All Access

'This series has a remarkable creative team and cast who have demonstrated their ability to carry on the Star Trek legacy.

'We are extremely proud of what theyve accomplished and are thrilled to be bringing fans a second season of this tremendous series.'

The show stars Sonequa Martin-Green as Commander Michael Burnham, a human anthropologist and Star Fleet First Officer who, despite being raised by Spock's father Sarek, has a hot temper and a penchant for disobeying orders.

It is actually a prequel to the original series, and is follows the crew of the USS Discover during the fabled FederationKlingon war.

It has received a lukewarm reception from critics, while among fans it holds just a 58 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

This is despite the fact Trekkies are renowned for being incredible passionate about the long-running franchise.

The show's acting has been praised, however the drastically redesigned Klingons, the unprofessional behaviour of the crew and the shallow characters have all been criticised.

One reason for optimism is The Next Generation, arguably the best of the television shows, was also poorly received initially before hitting its stride.

It went on to run for seven seasons, spawned several off-shoot shows and the crew embarked on four feature film adventures.
They met while living it up in the Love Island villa, spending many hours relaxing in the sunshine, or enjoying a luxurious date.

And Gabby Allen, 25, and Marcel Somerville, 31, were happier than ever as the pair posed at the b.tan UK launch on Monday.

The couple, who moved in together in August after first meeting on the ITV2 show, put on a love-up display at the event in London's STK Hotel.

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Happy: Love Island stars Gabby Allen and Marcel Somerville put on a loved-up display as they attended the b.tan UK launch event on Monday

Not only did the couple pose for adorable snaps together, they even shared a cheeky kiss for the cameras.

Gabby looked stunning in a fitted red minidress which showcased her incredible figure, teaming the frock with simple black strapped heels.

The dress also flaunted her taut physique, showing off her fabulous legs and arms with a cold shoulder styles.

The former fitness instructor kept her blonde bobbed locks straight, accessorising with quirky beaded earrings and a small embroidered chain-strap bag.

Loved-up: The happy couple shared a cheeky kiss for the cameras as they attended the event in London

Red queen: Gabby rocked a fitted red minidress with a cold shoulder style, teaming it with strappy black heels

Incredible: Gabby teamed her dress with an embroidered clutch bag and beaded earrings

Marcel rocked a more casual ensemble, going for an all-black look accessorised with a street-style chain and white trainers with gold detailing.

Gabby seemed ready to showcase her tanning skills as her and Marcel also posed with tanning spray guns ready to work their magic.

The blonde beauty recently revealed the couple are closer than ever since moving in together, and have already discussed the prospect of marriage and children together.

What shade? Gabby and Marcel seemed ready to try out their tanning skills at the event

Happy pair: Gabby recently told MailOnline that her and Marcel had already begun to discuss marriage and babies

In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, Gabby said: 'We have talked about these things, we were debating what type of school our children will go to.

'That is a conversation I didn't think I would be having three months in.

'Obviously we're not talking about having children right now but we've definitely discussed - because I'm a little bit younger then him - have come to an agreement (when we'll start).

Adding: 'He said two but I said I wanted them in four so maybe three years.'

It was also revealed that 'Dr Marcel' came to the rescue on Sunday, when the former Blazin' Squad star tweeted that he saved TOWIE star from being crushed by a trap door after she fell through the stage at the Radio 1 Teen Awards.

Marcel tweeted: 'When you win best tv at the #R1TeenAwards and save #gemmacollins foot and hand from be crushed #herolife,' with fans praising the star for coming to the rescue.
They dated for nine months before calling it quits earlier this year and they follow each other on Twitter.

And now Chris Evans and Jenny Slate have sent fans into a frenzy over a flirty exchange they engaged in over the weekend via the social media platform.

The tweets seem to confirm rumors the former couple are getting back together, especially after recent reports that they had had dinner together in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago during which they seemed affectionate.

Reunited? Chris Evans and Jenny Slate sent fans into a frenzy over the weekend as the former couple exchanged a series of flirty emails on Twitter

The Captain America star, 36, started things off by tweeting on Saturday: 'The theme song to Mash stresses me out. The Pavlovian response is that it's time to go to bed and I probably haven't done my homework.'

It provoked an immediate response from actress and writer Slate, 35.

'Probably haven't"???? Cmon, Christopher. Have you done your homework or haven't you? It's 7pm and you've had the whoooole weekend. Cmon,' she tweeted.

Evans replied by asking if she would write him a note.

'Let's cut class!' he said.

Slate replied: 'This is terrifying and exhilarating. Meet me behind the gym after science. I have shark bites.'

Still close: The Captain America star, 36, and the actress and writer, 35, met while filming Gifted last year but split in February. They're pictured at the movie's premiere in LA in April

Twitter mates: Evans started things off by tweeting on Saturday about the theme to TV series M.A.S.H. It provoked an immediate response from actress and writer Slate

Flirty: Evans then suggested Slate could write him a note and they could 'cut class'

Evans and Slate met on the set of the film Gifted with life imitating art as they became romantically involved off-screen like their on-screen characters.

The movie was shot in Georgia last year but the two split in February citing conflicting schedules. However, they put on a friendly show at the film's premiere in April.

On Friday October 13,the pair were spotted grabbing a bite to eat in central Atlanta, and an onlooker told US Weekly, 'He reached across and touched her arm a couple of times. They seemed like normal people on a date'.

The onlooker claimed the two 'seemed like a couple'.

On set affair: Evans and Slate met making the film Gifted with life imitating art as they became romantically involved off-screen like their on-screen characters

The two split in early February due to conflicting schedules, but remained close.

Evans spoke about his love life to Elle magazine claiming he's never had a bad breakup.

'It's very rare. But I've had no bad breakups in my life. Typically, if I see an ex, I give a big hug, and it's wonderful to catch up,' he explained.

The actor is set to reprise his superhero role in Avengers: Infinity War due for release in 2018.

Superhero star: Evans is set to reprise his role as Captain America in 2018's Avengers: Infinity War




He's gained a reputation for his social media posts that poke fun at his wife and kids.

But Ryan Reynolds, 41, got as good as he gives on Monday when wife Blake Lively, 30, pranked her husband, all but chopping him out of a photo with Ryan Gosling she posted to Instagram for his birthday.

Earlier in the day, the Deadpool star was snapped listening to music as he walked home after an early workout in New York City.

Dad jokes: Ryan Reynold, 41, has gained a reputation for his social media posts that poke fun at his wife and kids

The X-Men Origins: Wolverine actor stayed trendy for Fall in an olive jacket over a white t-shirt, khakis and white converse sneakers.

In his right hand, Reynolds carried his workout clothes, while in his left, he shuffled through music on his iPhone.

The father of two wore glasses and listened to his Apple AirPods as he strolled.

Super stylish: The X-Men Origins: Wolverine actor stayed trendy for Fall in an olive jacket over a white t-shirt, khakis and white converse sneakers

Later in the day, the All I See Is You actress exacted sweet revenge on her prankster husband, by posting a photo to Instagram of the actor for his birthday - with Reynolds all but cut out of the pic.

Instead, the photo focused heavily on the man next to him: fellow Hollywood hunk Ryan Gosling, 36.

The epic troll was payback for an August post by Reynolds, in which he wished a 'Happy Birthday to my amazing wife' next to a picture of himself, with Lively all but cut out of the shot.

You got me: Later in the day, Blake Lively, 30, trolled her prankster husband by posting a photo to Instagram of the actor for his birthday - all but cutting him out in the process

Original prank: In August Reynolds wished a 'Happy Birthday to my amazing wife' next to a picture of himself, with Lively all but cut out of the shot

Earlier on Monday, the Blade: Trinity actor poked fun at daughters James, two, and Ines, 12 months on Twitter.

The Canadian-born star was up early to make light of his children's birthday surprise.

He wrote: 'My kids tried to surprise me for my birthday this morning. I totally heard them coming and snuck out to start a new life somewhere else.'
She became engaged for a second time to husband Oliver Curtis, following his release from prison in June.

And Roxy Jacenko, 37, proudly showed off her $450,000 Nicholas Haywood sparkling ring, during an appearance on Tuesday's Today Extra.

While David Campbell inspected the prized bling, his co-host Sonia Kruger couldn't help but quip: 'It has its own postcode.'

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'It has its own postcode!' Today Extra's Sonia Kruger (far right), 52, joked about the size of Roxy Jacenko's (far left) sparkling $450,000 engagement ring, on Tuesday's program

Appearing on the morning program to discuss the dying of her blonde locks to pink, in aid of breast cancer awareness, talk soon turned to Roxy's engagement ring.

David, 44, drew attention to the size of jewel, sharing on-air: 'There is a rock on the finger here. Can I have a look at that for a sec?'

Noting just how prominent the ring is on her finger, Roxy remarked: 'You don't need your glasses.'

He's impressed: Co-host David Campbell, 44, drew attention to the size of jewel, sharing on-air: 'There is a rock on the finger here. Can I have a look at that for a sec?'

Details: Wanting precise details, Sonia instructed David to 'appraise' while she 'takes some notes'

Wanting precise details, co-host Sonia, 52, instructed David to 'appraise' while she 'takes some notes.'

Making lighthearted fun of his eyesight, David joked: 'I can't see a thing, that's my bad eyes,' before going on to use a magnifying glass to inspect the cut and clarity.

'Clarity is really good, the colour is like diamond. It's huge, I mean it's big enough as it is, but when you put it under this, it's like the moon,' the presenter appraised.

Getting in on the banter, Sonia added: 'It has its own postcode.'

Humorous: Roxy, 37, let out a hearty laugh after Sonia declared the ring had its 'own postcode'

Second time's the charm: Roxy revealed to Instagram back in July, that husband Oliver Curtis, who had spent a year behind bars for conspiracy to commit insider trading, had proposed for a second time

Roxy revealed to Instagram back in July, that husband Oliver, who had spent a year behind bars for conspiracy to commit insider trading, had proposed for a second time.

The disgraced businessman lavishly decorated a suite at Sydney's Four Seasons Hotel, with balloons that read out, 'Marry me? Again.'

Dressed in black leggings and a midriff-baring white singlet, the mother-of-two beamed with joy as she posed in the luxurious hotel room.

Pulling out all the stops: The disgraced businessman lavishly decorated a suite at Sydney's Four Seasons Hotel, with balloons that read out, 'Marry me? Again'

Coming out the other side: The proposal celebration came after a tough year for both Roxy and Oliver

The proposal celebration came after a tough year for both Roxy and Oliver.

Oliver, who grew up in Sydney's exclusive suburb of Mosman, was jailed in June 2016, after he was found guilty of conspiring to commit 45 illicit trades.

Around the same time, Roxy was diagnosed with breast cancer and later underwent surgery.

Health battle: While Oliver was jailed in June 2016, after he was found guilty of conspiring to commit 45 illicit trades, Roxy was diagnosed with breast cancer and later underwent surgery

Roxy revealed earlier this year at a seminar that the challenging times ultimately affected her multi-million dollar PR business.

'My business took a hit last year and that was off the back of all the drama surrounding me with my husband's sentencing and my cancer,' she said.

Roxy and Oliver tied the knot in a lavish ceremony back in 2012.

At the time, it was reported that 120 guests attended the affair at around $1000 per head.
CASPER, Wyo.  Police are investigating the sexual assault of a female student in the Kelly Walsh parking lot on Monday as a random crime.

The student did not know the assailant, Sgt. Mike Ogden said, and police continued to search for him Monday afternoon.

The assault took place at 11:45 a.m., police said. Ogden said he did not believe the student was physically injured during the attack.

The assailant was last seen running north away from the school, which is on the east side of Casper. The assailant is described as a white male, 6 feet tall, 180 pounds with a gray T-shirt and faded jeans. He has unshaven gray facial hair.

So far, the police investigation has not found any other witnesses to the assault and there is no known surveillance images of the area, Ogden said.

Police have extra officers patrolling the area and other schools and Ogden said the additional presence will likely remain Tuesday unless the assailant is located.

In a Facebook post, the Natrona County School District said officials were aware of the situation. The student reported the incident to an adult and district officials immediately called police.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Casper Police Department at 307-235-8278.
She just recently confirmed her exit from long-running soap Home And Away.

And on Tuesday, Pia Miller seemed to have her sights set on spending more time at the beach as she shared a picture of herself in a figure-hugging white swimsuit.

Showcasing her long legs and ample cleavage while languishing in the sand she captioned the image 'Where I'd rather be!'

'Where I'd rather be!' Pia Miller flaunts her long legs and ample cleavage in low cut white swimsuit as she settles into life after Home and Away

The 33-year-old shared the picture of herself soaking up the sunshine with her 660,000 Instagram followers.

The snap showed the Summer Bay star putting on a busty display.

Her ample assets were accentuated by the plunging neckline and string straps of her swimsuit, as she lay on one side on a stripy beach towel.

Home and Away days: Pia Miller recently confirmed her exit from Summer Bay

The beauty captioned the image 'Beach #fomo #whereidratherbe.'

Appearing happy and relaxed, Pia flashed a content smile as her brunette beach waves casually cascaded over her toned frame.

Pia is no stranger to showing off her enviable curves on social media, having shared a plethora of stunning snaps in the past.

Cheers to that! Pia is no stranger to showing off her enviable curves on social media, having shared a plethora of stunning snaps in the past

Her Instagram profile features a slew of envy-inducing bikini shots that prove the busty star has a body to die for.

Pia was recently spotted filming her new show Channel Nine's upcoming police drama, Bite Club, in Sydney's Manly.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Aussie thriller 'stars two detectives who survive a shark attack, then join forces to hunt down a serial killer who is stalking them.'

Other stars of the show include Dominic Monaghan, Deborah Mailman and Todd Lasance.
David Cross took to Twitter on Monday to again apologize to actress Charlyne Yi.

The 53-year-old actor recently was accused via Twitter by Yi, 31, of making racist remarks toward her about a decade ago.

'Charlyne I'm sorry that I hurt you and that this whole played out as it did. I look forward to communicating whenever you see fit,' Cross tweeted.

Public apology: David Cross took to Twitter on Monday to again apologize to actress Charlyne Yi after she accused him of making racist remarks toward her a decade ago

He issued the public apology after Yi took to Twitter on Sunday to disavow anyone using their online spat to target Cross and his wife Amber Tamblyn, 34.

'I dont support anyone who has taken this tango between @davidcrosss & I to use it as an opportunity to threaten or spread hate onto him & @ambertamblyn. It doesnt help matters whatsoever. We have a lot of growing to do, us weird human beings with our all our pain,' Yi tweeted.

She added: 'Were all just afraid, fragile creatures trying to learn how to build bridges to find peace with one another.

'When both David & my walls fall down, hopefully we can have a heart to heart, & laugh & cry. Communication from the heart is the only way. Peace,' for her nearly 31,000 followers.

Reaching out: The 53-year-old actor, shown in January 2016 in New York City, tweeted that he was sorry for hurting Yi and looked forward to communicating with her

Yi during a Twitter spree on October 15 posted about her first encounter with Cross.

'I think about the first time I met David Cross ten years ago & he made fun of my pants (that were tattered because I was poor). Dumbfounded I stared at him speechless and he said to me 'what's a matter? You don't speak English?? Ching-chong-ching-chong',' Yi tweeted.

The Steven Universe voice actress followed that up with a tweet reading: 'Then after he saw I was offended he asked me if I was going to fight with him karate in a southern accent. Then a few years later he was re-introduced to me after my comedy show with his girlfriend at the time & he said 'Hi nice to meet you'.'

First apology: The Arrested Development star also took to Twitter last week to apologize to Yi

Yi minutes later tweeted that she knew Cross wasn't joking at the time.

'I will say this: - I can tell the difference between this man making a joke vs condescending me.

'This happened 10 years ago and I sure as hell hope he's changed (or at the very least, he's scared enough to not be his racist self).'

Yi added that the incident left her near tears.

Husband and wife: Cross is shown in May with his wife Amber Tamblyn

'HOWEVER it is very uncool that a 40+ man was being racist towards me, being a young 20 year old woman who was clearly on the verge of tears from his first racist comment,' she posted.

A Twitter user later asked Cross if he would like to respond to Yi's allegation.

'Very much. I have reached out to her to clear this up. I've reached out to others who were there when we met as well to get verification,' he tweeted.

The Arrested Development star later posted a note 'to any and all' on the matter on Twitter.

Traumatic incident: Yi, shown in July in San Diego, tweeted on October 15 about her first meeting with Cross that left her on the verge of tears

This accusation from Charlyne took me by surprised (sic) and was deeply upsetting. I would never intentionally hurt someone like that,' Cross tweeted to his roughly 116,000 followers.

'I do not remember doing this when I met her. I do remember meeting her though. She was the then girlfriend of a good friend of mine and we were about to start working on a movie together.

'I am NOT accusing Charlene (sic) of lying and I'm truly sorry if I hurt her, it was never my intention to do that,' he added.

Pejorative term: The actress tweeted that Cross used the pejorative term 'ching chong' to mock her

Cross said he doesn't recall their meeting the same way Yi does and claimed he reached out to her in an effort to resolve the discrepancy.

'Anyway, I can't believe I have to write this but I am not a racist nor a bully and loathe them in real life. #Rashomon,' Cross wrote at the end of his note.

Rashomon was a reference to the 1950 Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa that offered contradictory viewpoints of the same story.

Cross has been married since October 2012 to Tamblyn and they welcomed daughter Marlow Alice Cross in February.
NRL star Jarrod Croker has tied the knot with girlfriend Brittney Wicks.

The Canberra Raiders captain, 27, exchanged vows with the brunette beauty in an intimate ceremony at Byron Bay's Forget Me Knot homestead on October 13.

Brittney dazzled in a sleeveless Pallas Couture gown that featured a three-metre long train.

Happily ever after! Canberra Raiders captain Jarrod Croker tied the knot with Brittney Wicks in an intimate Byron Bay ceremony on October 13

Blushing bride: Stunning Brittney (centre) dazzled in a sleeveless Pallas Couture gown that featured a three-metre long train

Meanwhile, Jarrod made for a dapper groom in a custom Alex Goodman suit.

The outdoor ceremony took place among the rolling green hills of the New South Wales hinterland, and was attended by just 150 guests - including footy star Todd Carney, who was one of Jarrod's groomsmen.

Brittney and her bridesmaids were dressed by celebrity stylist Donny Galella, who has styled stars for a number of glitzy events including The Emmys, The Logies and The ARIAs.

In love: Brittney and Jarrod (centre and left) appeared overjoyed on their special day

For the big day, Brittney's hair was parted at the middle and tied into a tight bun. She added a pair of sparkling drop earrings and was made up immaculately for the occasion.

Brittney's six bridesmaids wore matching white dresses.

Whilst strapping Jarrod is imposing on the football field, Brittney revealed to The Canberra Times that he was incredibly emotional at the altar.

Celebrity guest: Football star Todd Carney (right) was one of Jarrod's groomsmen and is pictured at the ceremony

'I turned to face my soon-to-be husband and could just see his emotion in tears - my heart melted,' she told the paper.

'And his vows just blew me away,' she added.

Jarrod wrote his own vows, and in a video filmed before the ceremony, the footy star can be seen saying he wasn't sure how he would feel.

Engagement: Jarrod popped the question last October at Gardens By The Bay in Singapore

'I think Ill be right but Im not too sure. I keep telling myself I will be but I wont know until I get down there,' a nervous Jarrod was filmed saying.

Following the ceremony, Brittney took to Instagram sharing a snap accompanied by the caption: 'I married my best friend! Undoubtedly the best day of our lives.'

The couple became engaged last October at Gardens By The Bay in Singapore.

Say yes to the dress! A week before the ceremony, an ecstatic Brittney took to Instagram sharing a photo that showed her picking up her wedding gown in Sydney

A week before the ceremony, an ecstatic Brittney took to Instagram sharing a photo that showed her picking up her wedding gown in Sydney's Paddington.

The newlyweds are currently honeymooning in Hawaii and are believed to be staying at the lavish Turtle Bay Resort.

Jarrod is Canberra Raiders' highest point-scorer in their history, and has played for the club since 2009.
The Wrong Girl got it very right on the November cover of Elle Magazine.

Jessica Marais, 32, who stars in the popular Australian drama, flaunts her flawless figure and stunning features in a beautifully shot spread for the publication's latest issue.

Inside the magazine, the beauty models several designer ensembles in a series of intimate snaps.

White hot! The Wrong Girl's Jessica Marais, 32, flaunts her flawless figure and a hint of cleavage in a low-cut lace dress in stunning Elle magazine shoot

Reclining by the poolside, Jessica stuns in a low-cut Christian Dior lace dress that flaunts a hint of her cleavage.

In another, the former Packed To The Rafters favourite poses in a sheer Scanlan Theodore top, boldly matched with a pair of pinstripe pants from Christopher Esber.

On the cover, Jessica's flawless complexion is front and center, the focus on her arresting blue eyes and full pout coated in red lipstick.

Jessica stares suggestively down the lens in the shot, as she models a black and white polka dot swimsuit.

Red hot: In another photo from the shoot, the former Packed To The Rafters favourite poses in a sheer red top, boldly matched with a pair of pinstripe pants

Cover girl: On the cover, Jessica's flawless complexion is front and center, the focus on her arresting blue eyes and full pout coated in red lipstick

Meanwhile, in her interview, the multi-talented star discusses being a mother to daughter Scout and touts the merits of vulnerability.

Of her development as an actress, she says: 'Ive grown into myself, but every now and then you question and things change.'

'Sometimes I think I know myself, then I think I dont know myself at all.'

The November issue of ELLE Australia is on sale now
He's been busy juggling looking after his one-year-old daughter with working on his next film, the sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

But Eddie Redmayne and his wife of three years, Hannah Bagshawe, took a night off parenting duties on Monday as they dined at the plush Mayfair restaurant, Scott's.

The pair looked worse for wear as they bundled themselves into a taxi late at night in central London, with the Theory of Everything actor clutching his head at one point in pain or perhaps just tiredness.

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Date night: Eddie Redmayne and his wife of three years, Hannah Bagshawe, took a night off parenting duties on Monday as they dined at the plush Mayfair restaurant, Scott's, in London

Long day? The pair looked worse for wear as they bundled themselves into the taxi late at night in central London, with the Theory of Everything actor clutching his head at one point in pain or perhaps just tiredness

The Westminster-born talent, whose breakthroughs into Hollywood came in the form of My Week With Marilyn in 2010 and Les Miserables in 2011, kept things low-key in an ensemble of grey jeans and a zipped cardigan.

The bleary-eyed actor, 35, layered up against the autumn chill with a sky blue knitted sweater over a casual ivory shirt.

In keeping with his dapper fashion sense, he completed the look with a pair of brown suede shoes.

Chic: The Westminster-born talent, whose breakthroughs into Hollywood came in the form of My Week With Marilyn in 2010 and Les Miserables in 2011, kept things low-key in an ensemble of grey jeans and a zipped cardigan

Home time! The bleary-eyed actor, 35, layered up against the autumn chill with a sky blue knitted sweater over a casual ivory shirt

Perfect match: Publicist Hannah, 34, also opted for grey jeans for the romantic outing, which she paired with a bright long-sleeved top that matched the stripes on Eddie's blazer

Tired: He's been busy juggling looking after his one-year-old daughter with working on his next film, the sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Shooting has begun for the next instalment of Eddie's Fantastic Beasts series, in the Warner Bros. Studios in Leavesden, Hertfordshire, where the original Harry Potter movies were filmed

Good-looking couple: The brunette beauty, who first met Eddie while he was studying at Eton College - completed her look with a chic pair of black boots, wearing her long tresses in loose curls which cascaded over her shoulders

Publicist Hannah, 34, also opted for grey jeans for the romantic outing, which she paired with a bright long-sleeved top that matched the stripes on Eddie's blazer.

The mother-of-one was prepared for the October air with an over-sized turquoise coat with double buttons.

The brunette beauty, who first met Eddie while he was studying at Eton College - completed her look with a chic pair of black boots, wearing her long tresses in loose curls which cascaded over her shoulders.

Neat: The couple usually paint a less dishevelled picture as they look glam every time they step on the red carpet

Cute couple: The mother-of-one was prepared for the October air with an over-sized turquoise coat with double buttons - while in keeping with his dapper fashion sense, Eddie completed the look with a pair of brown suede shoes

Eddie will return for the next instalment of Fantastic Beasts as Newt Scamander alongside War And Peace star Callum Turner, who will play Newt's brother.

Jude Law will join the series as a young Albus Dumbledore and the story will pick up where the first film left off, but this time with 1920s Paris as the setting.

Shooting has begun in the Warner Brothers Studios in Leavesden, Hertfordshire, where the original Harry Potter movies were filmed.
The X Factor are reportedly set to give five contestants the boot in the first two weeks of live shows.

Viewers watched on as Simon Cowell, Nicole Scherzinger, Sharon Osbourne and Louis Walsh picked their final three acts to take through to the live shows last weekend - but a handful will not have a long run on the show.

With a wildcard from each category being revealed on Saturday, it has been stated to The Sun that 'eliminations are going to be coming thick and fast' in a bid to whittle down the talent for the finale in six weeks time.

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Tense: The X Factor are reportedly set to give five contestants the boot in the first two weeks of live shows

Producers are said to be shaking up the X Factor format, with two of the categories performing on Sunday night, and the final two categories taking to the stage the following night.

At least one act will reportedly be sent packing at the end of each night, with a further three being axed the following week.

A source told The Sun: 'This is set to be a very harsh introduction to The X Factor process with so many heading home so quickly.

'Producers are still finalising the plans, even with the first live show just days away.

End of the road: Viewers watched on as Simon Cowell, Nicole Scherzinger, Sharon Osbourne and Louis Walsh picked their final three acts to take through to the live shows last weekend - but a handful will not have a long run on the show

Cut-throat: With a wildcard from each category being revealed on Saturday, it has been revealed to The Sun that 'eliminations are going to be coming thick and fast' in a bid to whittle down the talent for the finale in six weeks time

'But this is shaping up to be one of the most brutal series,' it was concluded.

MailOnline has contacted representatives for The X Factor for further comment.

The X Factor is on track for it's most tense year yet - all thanks to the highly talented contestants.

Simon will be mentoring the groups - Rak-Su, Sean Price and Conor Price and The Cutkelvin.

Dramatic: The last time a large number of acts were sent home in one go was six years ago, when the judging panel at the time, Gary Barlow, Louis Walsh, Kelly Rowland and Tulisa, had to eliminate someone from their own category

Home sweet home: The contestants have now moved into a seven bedroom property, based in North London which has previously been the home of superstars such as Lionel Richie and Rod Stewart, and costs 5,000 per week

Lavish: The contestants will call the mansion home until they are voted out of the competition, or the winner is announced in December

Louis has the boys - Spencer Sutherland, Sam Black and Lloyd Macey.

Nicole will be battling it out with the Overs category - Matt Linnen, Tracy Leanne Jefford and Kevin Davy White.

Sharon will be guiding the girls - Holly Tandy, Grace Davies and Rai-Elle.

Fans were also given the opportunity to vote for one wildcard contestant for each category. The votes closed on Monday 23 September and the results will be revealed on Saturday.

Nicole's Overs: Matt Linnen, Tracy Leanne Jefford and Kevin Davy White

Louis Boys': Spencer Sutherland, Sam Black and Lloyd Macey

The last time a large number of acts were sent home in one go was six years ago, when the judging panel at the time, Gary Barlow, Louis Walsh, Kelly Rowland and Tulisa, had to eliminate someone from their own category.

The contestants have now moved into a seven bedroom property, based in North London which has previously been the home of superstars such as Lionel Richie and Rod Stewart, and costs 5,000 per week.

They will call the mansion home until they are voted out of the competition, or the winner is announced in December.

The first live show of The X Factor kicks off on Saturday October 28 at 8.20pm on ITV.

Simon's Groups: Rak-Su, Sean Price and Conor Price and The Cutkelvin
A series of fantasy novels by J.K. Rowling have come to worldwide recognition with blockbuster films.

And the fandom is set to continue, with the eighth story, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, heading exclusively to Melbourne in 2019, for a stage adaptation.

While casting and dates are yet to be announced, it's a major coup for the Victorian capital city, following on from performances in London's West End and Broadway.

A spellbinding act! Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is heading exclusively to Melbourne for a stage adaptation in 2019

The Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, proudly took to Twitter on Tuesday, to make the announcement.

He wrote: 'I have big news. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is coming exclusively to Melbourne, Victoria in early 2019.'

Presented in two parts and to play at the Princes Theatre, the fantasy story will be produced by Sonia Friedman Productions, Colin Callender and Harry Potter Theatrical Productions.

Plot: The story follows the relationship between Harry Potter, now a Ministry of Magic employee, and his young son Albus Severus Potter, who is about to commence at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Making it official: The Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, proudly took to Twitter on Tuesday, to make the announcement. He wrote: 'I have big news. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is coming exclusively to Melbourne, Victoria in early 2019'

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is set 19 years after the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The story follows the relationship between Harry Potter, now a Ministry of Magic employee, and his young son Albus Severus Potter, who is about to commence at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Albus finds difficulty in coming to terms with the family legacy.

Producers said in an official statement: 'When we embarked on this journey, it was an objective to ensure we could get the production to Australia as soon as logistically possible.

Fame: The film adaptations have helped forged the career of actors Daniel Radcliffe (pictured), 28

Stellar run: Daniel who took on the lead role of Harry Potter, has gone on to star in films such as Swiss Army Man, Imperium and Kill Your Darlings

'You can't ever assume a new play is going to have a further life, but we knew that if Harry Potter and the Cursed Child did have a life beyond London and Broadway, that the next stop would be here.'

The film adaptations have helped forged the careers of actors Daniel Radcliffe, 28, and Emma Watson, 27.

Daniel who took on the lead role of Harry Potter, has gone on to star in films such as Swiss Army Man, Imperium and Kill Your Darlings.

Emma has featured in Beauty and the Beast, The Bling Ring and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, as well as landing beauty endorsement deals.

All details on the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stage production will be released on HarryPotterThePlay.com
He is currently celebrating the release of his latest blockbuster Thor: Ragnarok.

And it seems Chris Hemworth and his wife Elsa Pataky are enjoying some well-deserved downtime from their careers.

Spanish actress Elsa, 41, took to Instagram on Tuesday to share a snap from their tropical vacation.

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'Amazing trip and company!' Elsa Pataky strips down to a bikini as she and shirtless husband Chris Hemsworth pat a pig on tropical holiday

Stripping off to their swimwear, Elsa and Chris were seen patting a wild pig in what appears to be the Bahamas.

Chris, 34, meanwhile, showcased his buff body in a pair of board shorts.

'Amazing trip, amazing company!,' Elsa captioned the snap.

Having fun: In another image, Elsa and Chris are seen swimming in the ocean with their children, while wild pigs splash around in the water and run on the sand

Chilling out: Chris also enjoyed a spot of fishing with his children

In another image, Elsa and Chris are seen swimming in the ocean with their children, while wild pigs splash around in the water and run on the sand.

It is possible that the family are spending time at Pig Beach in the Bahamas, where animals freely swim around in the ocean.

The famous couple share three children together, twin sons, Tristian and Sasha, three, and daughter India Rose, five.

On screen and off screen romance: Chris and Elsa recently filmed a new movie together called 12 Strong, where they play a married couple

Meanwhile, the pair have recently filmed a new movie together called 12 Strong, where they play a married couple.

Chris plays an American special forces captain in Afghanistan in the film, and the real-life couple share some steamy scenes.

'We didn't have to form any chemistry or bond; that came pretty easily and naturally, as you could expect,' Chris told PopSugar about working with his wife.

'She did very well. It was great; she's fantastic.'
Back in September, Sophie Monk confirmed she found love with her 'perfect man' on The Bachelorette.

At the time, Sportsbet considered 'business culture consultant' Luke McLeod the hot ticket at $2.50 - but he's long gone, leaving three lucky lads to fight it out.

Stu Laundy's firm grip on the crown has loosened in light of rumours he's been seen with someone else, opening a potential path for Apollo Jackson and Jarrod Woodgate.

Sophie's choice: With just three Bachelorette contestants left vying for Sophie Monk's heart, Daily Mail Australia has broken down the form guide ahead on Thursday's finale

The millionaire pub baron is still huge favourite on Sportsbet, however, with the site paying a tiny $1.25 for every $1 placed on him.

He's well ahead of clear fan favourite Apollo ($3.50) who has big muscles, a sensitive side, and a licence to quite literally work his magic on stage.

Vineyard manager Jarrod, who upon their first meeting, took Sophie by the hand and led her into a bucket of grapes, is considered no hope by Sportsbet at $10.

Future looking cloudy? Stu Laundy's firm grip on the crown has loosened in light of rumours he's dating someone else, opening a potential path for Apollo Jackson and Jarrod Woodgate

Odds-on! The millionaire pub baron is still huge favourite on Sportsbet, however, with the site paying a tiny $1.25 for every $1 placed on him

Comparing Stu's odds to previous winners paints a pretty telling picture as to how certain Sportsbet are.

In 2016, despite the entirety of Australia seemingly favouring eventual Bachelor Matty J, the company considered him second to Lee Elliott ($1.50 to $2.25).

Similarly, the bookmaker was correct in tipping Sasha Mielczarek to win Sam Frost's heart back in 2015.

Magical! He's well ahead of clear fan favourite Apollo ($3.50) who has big muscles, a sensitive side, and a licence to quite literally work his magic on stage

But that's where things get complicated, with several reports this week indicating a glimmer of hope for horse-lover Apollo.

On Monday, Oscar Gordon, Sophie's best and most trusted friend started following Apollo on Instagram - but the same can't be said for Stu and Jarrod.

Adding weight to the rumours is the fact Apollo is the only Bachelorette suitor that Oscar deemed worthy enough to follow on the social media platform.

No hope? Meanwhile, vineyard manager Jarrod, who, upon their first meeting, took Sophie by the hand and led her into a bucket of grapes, is considered no hope at $10

Clinging on! Things look rough for Jarrod, who's been labelled a 'stage five clinger,' and mocked relentlessly for his jealous antics and penchant to nag Sophie with a pot plant

Throughout the series, Sophie has made no secret of her physical attraction to Apollo, but has questioned whether the 13-year age gap is too steep.

While that story sent the magician's stocks skyward, Stu's took a tumble, after he was romantically linked to socialite Tiffany Tilley, just days ahead of Thursday's finale.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Sydney's Eastern suburbs have been filled with whispers that Stu and Tiffany have been seeing each other.

Stu has since flatly denied the claim telling Daily Mail Australia, 'I have never met Tiffany.'

Too steep? Throughout the series, Sophie has made no secret of her physical attraction to Apollo, but has questioned whether the 13-year age gap is too steep

Things look rough for Jarrod, who's been labelled a 'stage five clinger,' and mocked relentlessly for his jealous antics and penchant to nag Sophie with a pot plant.

He says the shrub symbolises their growing love, but one housemate saw it differently, and fertilized it with his own urine.

Good intentions? While that story sent the magician's stocks skyward, Stu's took a tumble, after he was romantically linked to socialite Tiffany Tilley, just days ahead of Thursday's finale

Given the fact Sportsbet don't rate the Victorian much higher, this could well be a two-horse race - a race that is now much closer than it once seemed.

Should Sophie decide to pit the suitors off in an actual horse race for her love, Apollo would favour himself massively, given his documented love for the majestic animal.

Last kiss? Given the fact Sportsbet don't rate Jarrod much higher than the housemate who soiled his pot plant this could well be a two-horse race that's much closer than it once seemed
His theatre has played host to some of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

And Los Angeles magician Steve Spill has found himself caught up in more than a few sticky situations over the years as a result.

One of the most bizarre occasions was when Meg Ryan decided to treat her son to a magic show at his Magicopolis venue, but attempted to go incognito in the most conspicuous of fashions.

Magician to the stars: Steve Spill has hosted a slew of celebrities at his Los Angeles theatre over the years

He said: 'Meg and then husband Dennis Quaid attended our show with their young son.

'Her visit coincided with the opening of Youve Got Mail and Meg was red hot famous, but not up to being recognized by her throngs of adoring fans at a magic show.

'They were secretly smuggled into the theatre in the dark. When the house lights came up at various moments in the show she quickly hid by laying down behind the seats, then shed pop up again in the dark.

'A cute trick, but it didnt work, and Word quickly got around she was in the house.'

Caught out: Fellow spectators spotted Meg Ryan when she visited with husband Dennis Quaid and son Jack despite her trying to hide under her seat between tricks

No escape: She was spotted when the house lights went up at his Magicopolis theatre

The likes of Jennifer Garner, Chris Rock, Joan Rivers and Neil Patrick Harris are just a few of the celebrities who have attended his show over the years.

Steve, who performs with his wife Bozena, said: 'Because we are in such an amazing location we have had all sorts of stars visiting, often with their families.'

But he admits not all meetings are exciting, saying: 'Most of my celebrity encounters are a mere exchange of the cliche phrase love your work, a quick hello and perhaps a smile and a handshake.'

But a visit from Adam Sandler and his wife Jackie, who ended up being smuggled outside afterwards, showed him just how dedicated fans of megastars can be.

The 62-year-old said: 'When the show ended, simultaneous to the Sandlers' secret back alley departure, another photo opportunity arose out front.

Fan frenzy: After Adam Sandler, here with Steve and his wife Bozena, visited the show a visitor raided a bin to get his disposed lollipop stick

'As the crowd was filing out, a very excited Adam fan ran from the theatre and screamed out loud for everyone to hear, I got it, I got it! I got Adam Sandlers Tootsie Pop! Adam ate this!

'What she held tightly in her hand, high above her head, and waved excitedly, belonged in the garbage.

'It was a tiny dab of chocolate on the end of a little white stick. Who knows, maybe she made a bundle selling the sucker as an authentic memento on eBay?'

And A-list actress Jamie Lee Curtis gave him a surprisingly forthright answer when he asked her where her Spinal Tap star husband Christopher Guest was when she visited his show.

Not what one expects from Lady Haden-Guest: Jamie Lee Curtis joked her Spinal Tap star husband Christopher Guest was waiting at home for her 'with a h***-on'

The Trading Places star, displaying language one would not expect from Lady Haden-Guest, told him: 'Hes waiting at home for me with a big h***-on!'

Steve is from Los Angeles, and his father worked as the manager of the city's famous Magic Castle.

He was bitten by the bug and ended up travelling the world as a touring magician, before settling down permanently at his own theatre in 1998.

His old friends Penn And Teller even served as the guests of honour at the grand opening back in 1998.

No surprise: How I Met Your Mother star and keen magician Neil Patrick Harris is also a fan

But one of his favourite magical memories was when he amazed Stephen King, completely by accident, after being asked to show the It author a trick when he hosted a fan event at his theatre.

Steve, who recently finished his autobiography I Lie For Money, said: 'At the exact moment I had finished the sentence, Of course, happy to honor your request. There was a power outage. Pitch-black dark, music gone, and we heard an echoing collective sigh from the theatre crowd.

'Ten seconds later the power burst back on. Bright lights, background music... I instantly barked "ta da" at the same moment King screamed "wow" and his entourage gave me a brisk sitting ovation.'
Next year, Montanans will have a choice.

Will we stick with a person in the U.S. House who votes to take away the health care of hundreds of thousands of Montanans without having a viable alternative? Are we going to trust a person who supports legislation that undermines our access to public lands and waterways for fishing, hunting and recreation? Is it OK for us to be represented by a person who supports massive tax cuts for corporations and for ultra-wealthy Americans, including himself?

I never intended to run for elected office. My work and my life are dedicated to my wife Meagen, to our four children, and to my clients, whom I serve as a consumer protection attorney. When Im not running the kids to and from school and their various activities, Im working hard to stand up to bullies and corporations who have lied, cheated and stolen from my clients  from the widow whose insurance company tries to trick her rather than pay the benefits it owes, to the teacher who does everything the bank told her only to suddenly find her family facing foreclosure, and the farmer who cant get the big out-of-state energy company to live up to its contract.

In hundreds of cases, I have stood up and fought for the underdog  victims of corporate greed and over-reach. Powerful companies have thought they could get away with bullying tactics and focus only on their own profit motives. I have had the pleasure of putting these companies before Montana juries who know a thing or two about personal accountability and the difference between right and wrong.

When Greg Gianforte body slammed a reporter in response to a question about his position on access to health care, I joined millions of Americans and all Montanans who were deeply offended and shocked with his violence. Equally offensive were his efforts to lie to all of us about what occurred.

In this election, Montana voters get to serve as the jury. That means voters will decide whether they are brave enough to stand up, be counted, and impose accountability on a politician who will never understand that concept on his own.

In contrast to our current representative, I will fight for you and your family every day. You deserve access to high-quality, affordable health care without regard to the interests of insurance companies, drug companies and their well-heeled corporate lobbyists. You deserve a strong public education system that is not undermined by efforts to take your tax dollars and spend them on private schools for the wealthy who can afford to pay their own way. You deserve a tax policy that helps expand and grow our job opportunities, strengthens our economy, and looks to save you money  not save money for those who benefit by so many tax-dodging loopholes already. You deserve a representative who will stand up to dark money special interests, not support it.

The Montana we all know and love is at great risk. We must turn our backs on the bickering and partisanship perpetrated by the national political parties and look forward to a positive future. We all know that Washington is broken, and that neither party has the market cornered on ethical behavior or competence.

If you choose me, I will make you proud. I will listen to you and take strong action on your behalf. It will be an honor to fight for all of you and your families. Just as I am for my clients, I am excited to fight for you, for your family, and for all Montanans.
She revealed her freshly dyed pink locks on Tuesday after changing her hue for Breast Cancer Awareness Week.

And on Tuesday, Roxy Jacenko flaunted her new do' as she returned to her Sweaty Offices in Paddington, Sydney.

The 37-year-old PR queen looked every bit the fashionista, making sure to co-ordinate her hair with her outfit.

Ticked pink! Roxy Jacenko flaunts her freshly-dyed locks after changing her hair for Breast Cancer Awareness Week

Roxy wore her locks out styled in cascading waves, co-ordinating her new hair colour with her patterned sweater dress.

The spin queen paired her eye-catching look with oversized aviator sunglasses and black statement heels.

Pretty in pink! Roxy wore her locks out styled in cascading waves, co-ordinating her new hair colour with her patterned sweater dress

Cancer awareness: Roxy revealed she had dyed her hair pink to coincide with Breast Cancer Awareness Week

Roxy has dyed her hair for Breast Cancer Awareness Week.

The fitness fanatic was diagnosed with the cancer in July last year, undergoing radiation treatment and a partial mastectomy on one breast.

The illness coincided with her husband Oliver Curtis serving a 12 month prison sentence for insider trading.

Beat the illness: The fitness fanatic was diagnosed with the cancer in July last year, undergoing radiation treatment and a partial mastectomy on one breast

Faced it alone: The illness coincided with her husband Oliver Curtis serving a 12 month prison sentence for insider trading

Roxy's new hairstyle comes after she revealed she had undergone a cancer scare in September.

'I had my 12-month check up just three weeks ago, it was a scary time as there was another lump in the same breast,' she told Daily Mail Australia earlier this month.

'It meant another core biopsy and further tests but I got the all clear last week which was a huge relief.'

She also revealed that she has to take the 'cancer blocking' medication Tamoxifen daily for the next ten years on advice from her oncologist.
He is famous for Australian cult-classic The Castle where he famously thwarted a government plan to build an airport expansion on top of his home.

And Michael Caton has channelled the campaigning spirit of his most famous character Darryl Kerrigan by launching an emotional plea in favour of same-sex marriage.

Citing long term friends who have been together for 50 years but can't marry under current Australian law he said: 'John is 95, Alan is 88, and they live in a nursing home not far from where I live now. When I think of marriage equality, I think of what it could mean to them.'

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'I didn't know homosexuality existed!' The Castle's Michael Caton opens up on same-sex marriage and what it means to him

'I'm a child of the 40s and I finished my high school education not knowing that homosexuality existed even,' Caton said in the video for The Equality Campaign.

Explaining that he didn't meet any homosexual people who were out until he moved to Sydney in 1969, he said: 'It was a bit of a confrontation to me.'

'A conflict in myself because the word poofter was obviously bandied around quite often. But then I started to see them as just people and they became good friends of mine.'

Yes voter: Michael Caton channelled the campaigning spirit of his most famous character Darryl Kerrigan by launching an emotional plea in favour of same-sex marriage

It was when Michael starred in a stage production of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in Sydney in 1969 that he became good friends with a gay couple.

'They were together then in 1969 and they're together now,' he said.

'John is 95, Alan is 88, and they live in a nursing home not far from where I live now. When I think of marriage equality, I think of what it could mean to them.'

'When I think of marriage equality, I think of what it could mean to them' Michael spoke of his friends John and Alan who have been together for 50 years but can't legally marry

The actor then went on to explain why he believes in marriage equality, dismissing 'religious discrimination' and 'what we're teaching our kids in schools' as mere 'red herrings.'

'This is about people who want to make a commitment to each other and wouldn't it be wonderful for Alan and John if before they pass on, they could have their commitment recognised by law?

'Is that too much to ask, I think not. I'd urge you respectfully to vote yes for marriage equality.'

The 74-year-old starred in the video ahead of the November 7 closure of the postal vote, the Australian Bureau of Statistics recommends that Australians post their forms back by October 27.
Cate Blanchett resents the way women are judged on the red carpet.

The 48-year-old actress collected the Style Icon Award at the InStyle Awards in Los Angeles on Monday night, and used her acceptance speech to address double standards in Hollywood.

She explained: 'Women like looking sexy, but it doesn't mean we want to f*** you. No one says to [President Donald Trump's former chief strategist] Steve Bannon, "You look like a bag of trash. Do you want me to throw you out?"

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Simply elegant! Cate Blanchett stepped out for the third annual Instyle Awards at The Getty Centre in Los Angeles

Retro chic: Australian actress Cate also encouraged the female attendees to pay no attention to the spiteful remarks posted about them on social media websites

'But the comments that get said about what women wear on the red carpet - I mean...'

Australian actress Cate also encouraged the female attendees to pay no attention to the spiteful remarks posted about them on social media websites.

She said: 'If you scroll through those trolls on the Internet, just don't. I just say, "bring it on, ladies!" Break it wide open. I think you're all extraordinary.'

Stylish:The 48-year-old actress collected the Style Icon Award at the InStyle Awards in Los Angeles on Monday night, and used her acceptance speech to address double standards in Hollywood

Cate's comments come as Hollywood reels from the toppling of shamed producer Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of multiple counts of sexual assault over three decades.

For her appearance at the awards show, held at The Getty Center, Cate cut a fashionable figure in an 80s-inspired dress with a plunging neckline that accentuated her cleavage and her statuesque frame.

The vertically striped black and red frock was cinched at the waist with a black leather belt, which showcased the star's slender frame.

Flawless: Cate highlighted her piercing blue eyes with bold smokey eyeshadow, kohl-rimmed lids and lashings of mascara, which contrasted her subtle pink lips and blush

The blonde beauty's choppy bob was parted to one side and styled in elegant waves.

The Oscar-winning actress highlighted her piercing blue eyes with bold smokey eyeshadow, kohl-rimmed lids and lashings of mascara, which contrasted her subtle pink lips and blush.

Cate completed her striking red carpet look with a pair of black and red heels that matched her dress.

The fashion publication presented awards to a range of actors, musicians, artists and stylists who have made an impact on the red carpet.

Cate was honoured by the fashion publication as a style icon.

Instyle editor Laura Brown told The Hollywood Reporter the Australian actress was nominated: 'because she's always resolutely herself, fearless and experimental. And we don't use the word "icon" lightly.'

'We don't use the word "icon" lightly': InStyle editor Laura Brown said Cate had been nominated for the style icon award because 'she's always resolutely herself, fearless and experimental'

Stepping out: Cate posed for photos with InStyle editor Laura Brown

Taking to the podium: Cate took to stage to accept her Style Icon award

All smiles: She accepted her award from Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi

At the awards, Cate also hailed Giorgio Armani as a 'style icon' as she picked up the fashion honour and credited the 83-year-old fashion designer  who founded the Italian fashion house in 1975  as the ultimate idol and 'profound mentor' for her.

Speaking at the star-studded ceremony, the blonde-haired beauty said: 'You get to inhabit these extraordinarily  beautifully constructed gowns by geniuses.

'I really do have to thank Mr. Armani, whos a style icon in and of himself and whos been such a profound mentor for me.'

And the Hollywood star has also women who have a "physical presence" and are not 'self conscious' as being the 'true icons of style'.

Mane attraction: Cate left her blonde locks styled in a beachy wave

Catching up: Cate and Hollywood star January Jones chatted away to one another during the festivities

Having fun: (L-R) January Jones, honouree Cate, InStyle editor Laura Brown and director Taika Waititi appeared in jovial spirits

She added: 'For me, the true icons of style, and I think theres a bit of a theme emerging here tonight, its that for me its always those women whove been utterly themselves without apologywhose physical presence and their aesthetic is really integrated in a non self-conscious way.

'Women who know how they look, its not all of who they are but just an extension of that, and its about women who feel free to wear what they want when they want and how they want to wear it.'

Cate is currently starring in Thor: Ragnarok as Hela, Asgardian goddess of death. In the current issue of Vogue Australia, her co-star Chris Hemsworth revealed he was nervous to work with the two-time Oscar winning actress.

'Especially the lead-up to meeting her, I was like: "Okay, this is Cate Blanchett"...My nerves were certainly more elevated than usual,' he said.

Cheers: The blonde beauty toasted to her accolade

Chest the glimpse: Cate showcased her signature style in the plunging look
She achieved critical success Stateside in the CW series The Vampire Diaries, where she met her ex-boyfriend Paul Wesley.

And Australian actress Phoebe Tonkin showed her former lover what he's missing, at the InStyle Awards in Los Angeles on Monday.

The 28-year-old highlighted her lean legs in a black and white mini dress.

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Showing him what he's missing! Phoebe Tonkin, 28, flaunted her trim pins in a black and white mini dress, at the InStyle Awards in Los Angeles on Monday, following her split from her The Vampire Diaries co-star Paul Wesley

Elongating her frame with a pair of black strappy heels, the brunette beauty accessorised further with delicate jewels and a metallic Chanel shoulder bag.

Styling her shoulder-length locks in relaxed waves, Phoebe enhanced her striking facial features with a flawless complexion, defined brows, a subtle grey smoky eye and a matte pink lip.

Leggy lady: The actress sported a thigh-skimming black embroidered frock with a white leaf motif, and accessorised with black strappy heels and a metallic Chanel handbag

She's a stunner: Phoebe styled her shoulder-length locks in relaxed waves and added a touch of bling with a series of gold earrings

Chic: The frock's design skimmed over the starlet's petite upper frame

Phoebe happily posed for photos with Australian actress Bella Heathcote, 30.

The former Neighbours star cut a chic figure in a white floor-length frock with purple flower detailing.

Bella's bodice cinched in at her slender waist and also offered a hint of cleavage.

Aussies unite: Phoebe happily posed for photos with Australian actress Bella Heathcote, 30

Blooming beauty: The former Neighbours star cut a chic figure in a white floor-length frock with purple flower detailing

Slender: Bella's bodice cinched in at her slender waist and also offered a hint of cleavage

Styling her locks into a sleek chignon at the nape of the neck, she accessorised with large hoop earrings.

Bella's pretty facial features were defined with a matte base, bold brows, kohl-rimmed eyes and a nude lip.

Phoebe's sighting comes shortly after Us Weekly reported that she and her partner Paul Wesley, 35, had split.

In profile: The Melbourne-born personality enhanced her pretty facial features with a matte base, bold brows, kohl-rimmed eyes and a nude lip

The couple who met on The Vampire Diaries, began dating in 2013 and had been on- and-off for four-and-a-half years.

Eagle-eyed fans were also the first to notice that the pair no longer follow each other on Instagram.

After breaking up previously in March, insiders of the pair told E! News that they were 'still good friends.'

'The relationship just ran its course,' they added.

Reports: Phoebe's sighting comes shortly after Us Weekly reported that she and her partner Paul Wesley, 35, had split. The couple who met on The Vampire Diaries, began dating in 2013 and had been on- and-off for four-and-a-half years
They're the reality stars who are often seen sporting dowdy work wear on The Block.

But come this week, host Scott Cam, as well as select contestants, stripped down to reveal their summer bodies.

While the 54-year-old presenter enjoyed a dip at Sydney's Nielsen Park, Elyse Knowles, Josh Barker, Sticks and Wombat, got into the party spirit poolside.

The Block stripped down! Host Scott Cam, 54, and select contestants of the home renovation series, showed off their summer bodies this week

Scott appeared in high spirits as he enjoyed a dip in the ocean at Sydney's Nielsen Park on Tuesday, with his 19-year-old son Charlie.

The handyman went shirtless, revealing his upper frame in a pair of black striped board shorts.

Scott's sighting marked a change from his usual persona on-screen, often sporting plaid shirts, puffer vests, jeans and boots.

Signature look: The handyman's sighting marked a change from his usual persona on-screen, often sporting plaid shirts, puffer vests, jeans and boots

Meanwhile, contestants Sticks and Wombat took to Instagram on Tuesday, sharing a photo while relaxing by the pool at Josh and Elyse's luxury abode.

Elyse, 24, who was lifted up by boyfriend Josh and Sticks, showed off her sensational figure in an abstract pink bikini, her ample cleavage, taut torso and lean legs on display.

While Wombat opted to cover his frame in a simple white T-shirt and blue Hawaiian-style board shorts, the remaining lads drew attention to their defined pecs and washboard stomachs.

Poolside: Meanwhile, contestants Sticks and Wombat (both far right), took to Instagram on Tuesday, sharing a photo while relaxing by the pool, at Josh and Elyse's luxury abode

Loveable larrikins: Sticks (right), 31, and Wombat (left), 38, have become fan-favourites throughout the series

Sticks and Wombat captioned the photo: 'Keep it north are winners 2017. Winners for being given such an amazing once in a lifetime opportunity & for finding a friendship that's sure to last forever K.I.N.'

Elyse, a popular swimsuit model, is no stranger to baring her physical assets in the skimpiest of ensembles.

Just six days prior, the blonde bombshell who boasts 761,000 Instagram followers, revealed her lithe arms, washboard stomach, pert derriere and toned legs, in a barely-there black two-piece.

Just another day: Meanwhile Elyse Knowles, 24, is no stranger to baring her physical assets. Just six days prior, the blonde bombshell revealed her washboard stomach and pert derriere in a skimpy black two-piece

Bikini babe: The stunner regularly takes to Instagram, documenting her day-to-day adventures, that often requires just a barely-there bikini

Her long locks covered the majority of her face, as she posed side-on to the camera.

Other photos on her Instagram page, sees Elise flaunting her enviable physique while on location.

The Block grand finale episode airs on the Nine Network on Sunday 29 October
He's tipped to win Sophie Monk's heart on this season of The Bachelorette.

But just days before the show's finale is set to air, a photo has emerged of Stu Laundy dining with another beautiful blonde.

The snap shows the 44-year-old millionaire and the woman enjoying lunch at Catalina Rose Bay, one of Sydney's glitziest restaurants.

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Out and about: Sophie Monks rumoured winner Stu Laundy was pictured having lunch with a beautiful blonde after he was linked to socialite Tiffany Tilley

In the picture, which was shared by a fan, the blonde beauty has her head down and shields her face with large sunglasses.

However, the woman wore an eye-catching yellow sundress, and given the pair's prominent position at the famous Sydney eatery, it appears they weren't worried about going incognito.

The blonde wore a distinctive rose gold snake ring on her right hand, and had her nails painted bright red.

Will he win? Stu is the odds-on favourite to win Sophie's heart when The Bachelorette's finale airs on Thursday

Meanwhile, Stu - who is an heir to the $500 million Arthur Laundy fortune - also opted for dark sunglasses, and wore a crisp white button-up shirt that matched the restaurant's tablecloths.

In a statement to Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday, the millionaire publican revealed the mystery woman to be Katie Adamo, who is the wife of his best friend Daniel Adamo.

The photo in question was snapped last month at a birthday celebration where Katie's husband Daniel was also present.

'She's my best friend's wife': Stu told Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday that the photo in question was snapped last month at a birthday celebration where the woman Katie Adamo's husband Daniel was also present

'I was having lunch for my best mate's bday,' he said.

'Katie is the wife of my best friend Daniel Adamo.

He continued: 'Daniel and I have been best friends since we were 10 years old, we served at each other's best men at our respective weddings and we are god parents to each other's children.'

The publication of the photograph comes after Stu was recently linked to ANOTHER Sydney blonde - socialite Tiffany Tilley.

Another blonde! The Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday that there have been whispers Stu has been seeing Sydney socialite Tiffany Tilley (pictured)

In the spotlight: Sydney socialite Tiffany Tilley cut a casual figure on Tuesday, stepping out after The Daily Telegraph alleged she had been 'recently seeing' The Bachelorette's Stu Laundy

According to Tuesday's Daily Telegraph, Sydney's Eastern suburbs have been filled with whispers that Stu and Tiffany have been seeing each other.

The estranged wife of property developer Ben Tilley appeared unconcerned by recent media reports linking her to Stu, when she was spotting running errands on Tuesday.

Tiffany, who split with her husband of 19 years earlier this year, wore exercise gear and clutched a designer wallet under one arm as she hurried along a Sydney street.

Tiffany bears a striking similarity, not only to Stu's mystery blonde lunch companion, but also to Bachelorette Sophie, was named by News Corp as a mystery blonde Stu had been 'recently seeing'.

On the move: Tiffany, who split with her husband of 19 years earlier this year, wore exercise gear and clutched a designer handbag

Speculation: On Tuesday, News Corp named Tiffany as a mystery blonde Stu had been 'recently seeing'

Is he The One? Stu is the odds-on favourite to win on Thursday night's finale and claims he has never even met Tiffany Tilley

The Australian recently reported that the estranged couple have just put their Point Piper townhouse on the market for a cool $25 million.

With speculation about the two reportedly spreading like 'wildfire', the newspaper alleged Ben had called Stu to address the rumours he was seeing his estranged wife.

'Ben and his brother rang Stu to get to the bottom of what was going on. Apparently Stu denied any involvement with Tiffany,' an insider said.

Denied: Stu denied the allegations, telling Daily Mail Australia: 'I've never met Tiffany. It's an outrageous claim'

A pal speaks out: An unnamed friend of Tiffany's also denied they were seeing each other, telling The Daily Telegraph: 'I called Tiffany when I heard about this and she is denying anything has happened'

Despite rumours of a romance between Stu and Tiffany, Stu has denied the romance allegations, telling Daily Mail Australia: 'I've never met Tiffany. It's an outrageous claim.'

An unnamed friend of Tiffany's also denied they were seeing each other, telling The Daily Telegraph: 'I called Tiffany when I heard about this and she is denying anything has happened.'

The Tilley home is next door to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Together? The state of Sophie and Stu's romantic status is currently a mystery

Meanwhile, a source further added. 'It's completely made up. We think it's someone who has decided to stir trouble is making up gossip.'

Stu is still widely tipped to The Bachelorette when the show airs its finale episode on Thursday.

The pub baron is still huge favourite on Sportsbet, with the site paying a tiny $1.25 for every $1 placed on him.

Strong feelings! Stu and Sophie enjoyed a passionate hometown date in an episode aired last week
They have been pulling out all the stops in the battle to win Sophie Monk's heart on The Bachelorette.

But contestants Apollo Jackson, Stu Laundy and Jarrod Woodgate are yet to take on the most difficult challenge of all - winning over Sophie Monk's family during a one-on-one meeting.

In a promo for this season's hotly-awaited grand finale, Sophie's top three gentlemen receive a merciless grilling from Sophie's parents Sandi and Andrew and sister Lucy.

The video, which was posted to the official Bachelorette Facebook page this Tuesday, shows the Monk clan sitting at an outdoor table discussing Sophie's love-life.

'It's important to me that Sophie finds that special person,' her mother reflected with a pensive expression.

A stern-looking Lucy asked: 'So no questions are off limits?'

Meet the parents! In a promo for this season's hotly-awaited grand finale, Sophie's top three gentlemen are seen preparing to receive a merciless grilling from Sophie's parents Sandi and Andrew and her sister Lucy

Game plan: A stern-looking Lucy asked: 'So no questions are off limits?'

Sophie knew that her parents wouldn't go soft on her chosen man during the meeting, telling the cameras with wince: 'He's in trouble!'

The video kicks off with a shot of Sophie clad in a beaded white gown and standing in front of a tropical backdrop.

'I've waited my whole life for this moment. I've fallen head over heels in love. I've found the man of my dreams and I just can't wait to tell him,' Sophie can be heard saying as she cracks a smile.

'He's in trouble!' Sophie knew that her parents wouldn't go soft on her chosen man

'I've waited my whole life for this moment': The video kicks off with a shot of Sophie clad in a beaded white gown and standing in front of a tropical backdrop

Next, fans are given a glimpse at Sophie's final dates with her top three contestants.

As a shot of Sophie embracing Apollo flashes, the Queensland-based magician can be heard saying: 'I'm getting butterflies. I can see a future with Sophie.'

Jarrod is then seen kissing Sophie next to a sporty red car as his voice-over says: 'Sophie is the love of my life.'

Finally, Stu is seen locking lips with the blonde in an aquarium while saying: I truly believe that we're perfect for each other.'

Who will steal Sophie's heart? Next, fans are given a glimpse at Sophie's final dates with her top three contestants
She's strutted her stuff down the catwalk for decades.

And Naomi Campbell looked every inch the supermodel as she arrived at the Karl Lagerfeld dinner hosted by V Magazine in New York City on Monday night.

The 47-year-old stunner was beaming with delight in a black maxi dress for the star-studded event at The Top of the Standard in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan.

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Work it! Naomi Campbell looked every inch the supermodel as she arrived at the Karl Lagerfeld dinner hosted by V Magazine in New York City on Monday night

Naomi's long black dressed skimmed the ground as she entered the ritzy lounge party for her friend in fashion.

Delicate sparkling straps wrapped around the model's shoulders and cascaded down into a black and white striped print with hints of electric green woven throughout the fabric.

The stylish dress was held together with a see-through mesh fabric which connected around her neck in a thick black choker.

Strike a pose: The 47-year-old stunner was beaming with delight in a black maxi dress for the star-studded event at The Top of the Standard in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan

Work it: Naomi's long black dressed skimmed the ground as she entered the ritzy lounge party for her friend in fashion

Walk this way: The stylish dress was held together with a see-through mesh fabric which connected around her neck in a thick black choker

She added a pair of black satin heels to the ensemble, which featured a peep toe to show off her freshly painted toes.

Campbell carried a small black clutch in one hand and sported a row of bright red bracelets on her arm.

Her silky long black hair was parted down the middle and worn straight to her svelte waistline.

The statuesque fashionista wore minimal makeup aside from rosey cheeks and well-lined lips.

Glamorous: Delicate sparkling straps wrapped around the model's shoulders and cascaded down into a black and white striped print with hints of electric green woven throughout the fabric

Fancy footwear: She added a pair of black satin heels to the ensemble, which featured a peep toe to show off her freshly painted toes

The catwalk queen was joined by industry favorites for a night celebrating the head creative director of the fashion house Chanel and Italian brand Fendi.

Naomi - who has covered the pages of British Vogue on numerous occasions in her career - was recently appointed as as a Contributing Editor for the fashion bible.

New editor Edward Enninful has also enlisted Kate Moss, British Vogue alumni Grace Coddington and Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen as contributers.

Enninful, a Ghanian-born magazine fashion director who moved from Africa to London as a child, is the first male editor of British Vogue, and replaced Alexandra Shulman at the helm of the influential fashion bible on August 1.

All in the details: Campbell carried a small black clutch in one hand and sported a row of bright red bracelets on her arm

Mane attraction: Her silky long black hair was parted down the middle and worn straight to her svelte waistline

Chit chat: Naomi chatted to Andre Leon - who was holding a Karl Lagerfeld mask - at the event

It comes as Naomi criticised the previous structure of Vogue, highlighting the lack of diversity in the office.

The supermodel shared an image of the majority of Vogue's British team 50-strong editorial staff, as she wrote: 'This is the staff photo of @BritishVogue under the previous editor #AlexandraShulman.

'Looking forward to an inclusive and diverse staff now that @edward_enninful is the editor. Let's hear your thoughts?'

Mariah Carey donned a black sparkly number a reportedly sang a few of her greatests hits at the star-studded affair.
Model Joan Smalls was in the pink on Monday as she helped honor designer Karl Lagerfeld at a V magazine dinner in New York.

The Puerto Rican beauty, 29, flashed a hint of midriff in her bright ensemble of wraparound blouse tied under her bust and loose-fitting pants at the event held at The Top of the Standard.

She added a pair of white sandals and carried a pink and gold purse.

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Looking trim: Victoria's Secret model Joan Smalls was in the pink on Monday as she helped honor designer Karl Lagerfeld at a V magazine dinner in New York

The dark haired Victoria's Secret model wore her locks tied back into a ponytail with a few strands left loose to frame her face.

She was made up with black mascara, smoky shadow and dark lip color and wore pendant earrings.

Smalls showed her playful side posing for photos reclining on top of the bar with a cardboard cutout of Lagerfeld's face in front of her own.

Stylish: The Puerto Rican beauty, 29, flashed a hint of midriff in her bright ensemble of wraparound blouse tied under her bust and loose-fitting pants at the event held at The Top of the Standard

Fooling around: The Victoria's Secret model showed her playful side posing for photos reclining on top of the bar with a cardboard cutout of Lagerfeld's face in front of her own

Joining Smalls at the dinner were sibling models Bella and Gigi Hadid.

On hand, too, was Keeping Up With The Kardahsians momager Kris Jenner, 61.

German designer Lagerfeld, 84, is the head creative director of the fashion house Chanel as well as the Italian house Fendi and his own eponymous fashion label.
Ewan McGregor's wife of 22 years Eve Mavrakis is facing yet more heartache amid her 'split' from the actor after their family dog was run over.

The production designer, 51 - mother of Ewan's four children - took to Instagram on Monday to reveal that the dog Sid is under the care of vets after being hit by a car.

She wrote: 'Poor little Sid was run over Thursday.

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Ewan McGregor's wife of 22 years Eve Mavrakis is facing more heartache amid her 'split' from the actor after their family dog has been left fighting for its life after being run over (McGregor pictured with Sid above)

'He has been taken great care of @vcaanimalmedicalcenter but is still fighting for his life.'

This comes as Ewan was reportedly spotted kissing his Fargo co-star Mary Elizabeth Winstead in a London restaurant.

Ewan reportedly separated from the French brunette in May - while Mary announced her split from her husband Riley Stearns in the same month.

During her outing, which comes as it was reported the couple have been living apart for some time, Eve wore a large grey sweater with red and white patterns on the sleeves.

She kept things casual with a pair of jeans and a simple black shoulder bag as she was spotted deep in conversation on the phone.

Sadness: Eve took took to Instagram over the weekend to reveal that Sid was under the car of the vets after being hit by a car

Separated: The 46-year-old actor reportedly separated from French production designer Eve in May, months before pictures of the actor kissing Fargo co-star Elisabeth Winstead in a London restaurant emerged (the couple are pictured in April)

On Sunday, Eve kept under the radar in a bucket hat and dark sunglasses as she ventured out for a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains. The mother-of-four donned a white shirt and grey shorts for the hot Southern Californian day.

Ewan and Eve met on the set of court drama Kavanagh QC in 1995, shortly before the Scottish star's portrayal of heroin addict Mark Renton in Danny Boyle's Trainspotting won him international acclaim.

Speaking to the Graham Norton show in 2012, McGregor admitted he had slept with 'many, many women' prior to meeting his wife.

He explained: 'I knew right then that I really wanted to be with her and I knew I wanted to be with her in a different way to all the other many, many, many women I had been with up until that point. And I wasnt wrong. I made the right choice.'

The couple married in 1995 before relocating to Los Angeles, where they raised four daughters, including a child adopted from Mongolia.

McGregor has always denied rumours of romantic attachments outside marriage.

In 2001, he dismissed talk of an affair with Nicole Kidman, his co-star on Moulin Rouge!

And in 2010, there were more unkind rumours of a relationship with French actress Melanie Laurent, his co-star on the film Beginners.

MailOnline has contacted a representative for further comment.

Old times: The couple met on the set of court drama Kavanagh QC in 1995, shortly before the Scottish star's portrayal of hopeless junkie Mark Renton in Danny Boyle's Trainspotting won him international acclaim (pictured in 1998)

McGregor appears to be seen kissing his Fargo co-star Mary Elizabeth in images obtained by The Sun.

The pair, who filmed a racy nude love scene in a bath for their on-screen romance in the most recent series of the show, were reportedly seen getting close during a meeting at The Good Life Eatery in London's St. John's Wood.

The father-of-four closed his eyes as he leaned in to share the intimate moment with Mary, 32, as sources told the publication they were 'relaxed in each other's company'.

Ewan smiled as Mary, who plays his sexy love interest Nikki Swango in the FX Network crime drama, took his face in both of her hands before going in for a kiss, in The Sun's images.

Hitting the red carpet: McGregor and Winstead, who filmed a racy nude love scene in a bath for their on-screen romance in the most recent series of the show, were reportedly seen at The Good Life Eatery in London's St. John's Wood

Co-stars: Married Ewan McGregor was said to be spotted kissing his Fargo co-star Mary Elizabeth Winstead (pictured while filming Fargo in Canada), in images obtained by The Sun

Sources revealed the father of four daughters didn't seem too worried about privacy as they dined together on the busy high street.

Onlookers told The Sun: 'Ewan and Mary Elizabeth were there together and seemed relaxed in each other's company. The cafe was really busy with people coming in and out the whole time...

'They were deep in conversation and were there together for more than an hour. As they left he got on to the back of Ewan's motorbike and they sped off together'.

Married: Ewan wed Eve 22 years ago (pictured at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2003)

Ewan and Mary's sighting comes four months after Mary split from her husband of seven years, Riley Stearns.

Sharing a photo of her kissing her Texan film director ex on the cheek on Instagram in May, the actress wrote in the caption: 'We've decided to move on from our marriage, but we will stay best friends and collaborators for all our days.'

'We are still ride or die, just in a different way now. I love you always, Riley.'

'Sitting here with my best friend who I love with all my heart. We have spent our lives together and it has been full of joy and warmth every day.'

Meanwhile, Riley, who Mary met aged 18 on an ocean cruise, shared the same photo on his Instagram with an equally touching tribute which said: 'I'll always love you, Mary.'

Ewan and Mary's smooch comes four months after Mary, 32, split from her husband of seven years, Riley Stearns (both pictured)

Trainspotting star Ewan plays two brothers, Emmit and Ray Stussey in the latest series of Fargo.

The latter falls in love with Nikki before they plot to take revenge on his wealthy businessman brother.

The first episode of the third series, which aired in April, sees the loved-up duo Nikki and Ray kissing and cuddling while naked in a bath together.
The VA has failed to deliver timely, closest-to-home dental care for Billings area veterans for years. The public just learned the extent of the failure last week with a Gazette news report from Matt Hudson.

The most outrageous part of this failure is that VA supervisors knew of a problem that they failed to correct  for at least 1  years, according to investigative documents. Now the VA is trying to fire the whistleblower whose complaint led to fixing long-running problems. Even worse: The VA dental clinic in Billings hasnt served any patients since January while the dentist, Dr. Kelly Hale, fights his termination and VA leadership in Helena keeps him in an administrative job.

According to documents made public by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, VA Montana had been using an unauthorized form and process to refer veterans to community dentists. This process took days or weeks longer than necessary as VA dentists faxed paper forms to their supervisor in Helena, who rejected some requests, and approved forms were input into the computer system by clerks. In one case, a veteran with a mouth lesion waited 11 weeks for a referral to community care.

The VA has been praised for its national electronic patient record, but VA Montana staff dentists werent given access to enter recommended community referrals into that system until after complaints in December 2015 failed to correct the process, an internal investigation concluded in Feb. 2016 that corrections were needed and in May the Office of Special Counsel substantiated the complaints leading to care delay because the problems still hadnt been fixed.

What did Hale get? In October 2016, two weeks after his Helena superiors learned that he blew the whistle, they requested an investigation into Hales conduct. In January, the Billings VA clinic was closed, so veterans who want to use their hard-earned VA benefits have been told to drive to Helena or Sheridan, Wyoming. Billings community dental referrals have been limited and delayed.

Dr. Robert Bourne, who as chief of dental services ordered Hale to engage in practices that violate VA policies and directives and risk patient health, has stepped down from that supervisory post and works as a VA staff dentist, according to a letter from Acting Special Counsel Adam Miles dated Aug. 1 2017. So the dentist who failed to fix the problem as directed repeatedly was still seeing patients, but the one who complained on patients behalf is targeted for firing.

The Office of Special Counsel is defending Hale from this apparent retaliation. The OSC obtained a stay that will delay his firing at least till Nov. 19.

On Oct. 10 VA Montana spokesman Mike Garcia in Helena said that Billings is scheduled to have a VA dentist seeing patients starting in January. Thats about all VA Montana has said publicly about this deplorable lapse in essential health care for veterans.

So we are left to wonder: Is VA Montana expecting to fire Kelly next month, and replace him in January?

How many dentists will be willing to work for an agency that fires a whistle blower whose complaint directly resulted in improving patient care?

Top leadership at VA Montana changed last year, but the top decision makers, including Director Kathy Berger, have been on board during the OSC investigation, the substantiation of Kellys complaints and the belated correction of dental directives.

Most Montana veterans report that they get good care at the VA and that they like their VA health care providers. But problems of access, delay and mismanagement persist. These failings force veterans to endure pain, to wait for diagnosis and care.

We call on Montanas congressional delegation, especially Sen. Jon Tester, who serves on the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee, to hold the VA accountable for failing Montana veterans. Billings veterans shouldnt have to travel out of town for essential dental care.
They're playing former US Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne in the upcoming biopic.

And Amy Adams looked unrecognisable as she transformed into the politician's wife on the set of Backseat in Whittier, California on Monday.

Meanwhile, Christian Bale donned a smart suit as he portrayed a young Dick to film the couple's wedding scene in the political drama, directed by Adam McKay.

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On set: Amy Adams looked unrecognisable as she transformed into former US Vice President Dick Cheney's wife Lynne on the set of Backseat in Whittier, California on Monday

Drama: Christian Bale donned a smart suit as he portrayed a young Dick to film the couple's wedding scene in the political drama, directed by Adam McKay

Amy cut a casual figure in a baggy white T-shirt and grey sweatpants, set off with khaki sandals.

She covered up her flame-coloured tresses with a short blonde wig and sported barely-there make-up.

While she is best known for being the spouse of the former Vice President, Lynne - nee Vincent - is herself an accomplished author, academic and executive.

Christian, who has put on weight for the role, was clad in a smart wedding tux as he got to work on set.

Political film: The film will chronicle Dick's rise to becoming arguably the most powerful Vice President in history, and will examine the effect his policies had on the world

Transformation: Amy rocked a short blonde wig to portray Lynne (right) - an accomplished author, academic and executive

In character: Christian was clad in a smart wedding tux as he got to work on set as Dick (right)

The film will chronicle Dick's rise to becoming arguably the most powerful Vice President in history, and will examine the effect his policies had on the world.

In later years, the politician became the CEO of Halliburton but was most notably known for being in the center of foreign policy which pursued both Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

It seems unlikely he shall be cast in a favorable light, as the film is written and directed by Democrat and Bernie Sanders supporter Adam McKay.

Plot: It seems unlikely he shall be cast in a favorable light, as the film is written and directed by Democrat and Bernie Sanders supporter Adam McKay

Getting wiggy with it: Amy covered up her red hair with her short wig

All star cast: Notable stars already signed on to the film include Steve Carrell as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsefeld and Bill Pullman as Gerald Ford's second in command, Nelson Rockefeller

Low-key: Amy cut a casual figure in a baggy white T-shirt and grey sweatpants, set off with khaki sandals

Notable stars already signed on to the film include Steve Carrell as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsefeld and Bill Pullman as Gerald Ford's second in command, Nelson Rockefeller.

Sam Rockwell is set to portray the 43rd President, George W. Bush, and Lisa Gay Hamilton will play former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

Tyler Perry meanwhile has been cast as her predecessor, Colin Powell.

Character actor: No stranger to undergoing an image overhaul, Bale previously demonstrated his commitment to transforming for roles when he tanned and beefed up for American Psycho in 2000 and shed 70lbs for The Machinist in 2004

Change: The star was sporting a fuller frame to take on the role. He is pictured (right) in April 2017 before filming

No stranger to undergoing an image overhaul, Bale previously demonstrated his commitment to transforming for roles when he tanned and beefed up for American Psycho in 2000 and shed 70lbs for The Machinist in 2004.

In 2013, Bale told People that gaining weight for American Hustle was not difficult: 'It's easy to start with ... you're just sitting on your butt and you're eating lots of doughnuts and eating bread and everything like that.

'But you do it for two months and your body starts to rebel against you, it's just saying, "No, please," and your back is aching and there's also some problems with that.

'And then you've got to lose the weight at the end of it, you know? I wish it was simple.'

Amy and Christian last graced the silver screen together in the 2013 crime drama American Hustle alongside Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Renner.
The glamorous Australian stunner made international headlines when she was rumoured to be dating actor Leonardo DiCaprio in 2011.

And fashion model Kendal Lee Schuler looked as alluring as ever when she was stripped down to a green bikini in Sydney on Tuesday.

Leo's supermodel ex-girlfriend, 26, was spotted showcasing her enviable post-baby body as she took a dip at Bondi Icebergs with newborn son Ryka.

Hot mama! Leonardo DiCaprio's model ex Kendal Lee Schuler showcases her enviable bikini body as she takes a dip with baby son Ryka at Sydney's Bondi Icebergs on Tuesday

Kendal welcomed first child Ryka Lee Pedrana on Easter Sunday this year, who she shares with partner Jake Pedrana.

The blonde bombshell looked phenomenal as she wore a green two-piece which showed off her flat stomach and assets.

Kendal paired the swimsuit with gold necklaces and stylish dark-lens sunglasses, as she let her hair down for the seaside outing.

The esteemed model showed off her naturally stunning looks as she went make-up free - exhibiting her incredible complexion as she went.

New mum! The blonde bombshell looked phenomenal as she wore a green two-piece which showed off her flat stomach and assets, as she held baby Ryka in her arms

Rumoured fling: Back in late 2011, before finding love with her current partner and baby daddy Jake Pedrana, Kendal was rumoured to be dating Leonardo DiCaprio while he was in Australia filming his blockbuster film, The Great Gatsby

Natural beauty: The esteemed model showed off her naturally stunning looks as she went make-up free - exhibiting her incredible complexion as she went

Kendal held baby Ryka close, putting her son in a nappy designed for swimming.

Cradling her bundle of joy in her arms and later tip-toeing around the pool's edge with the happy child, Kendal appeared in her element.

Back in late 2011, before finding love with her current partner and baby daddy Jake Pedrana, Kendal was rumoured to be dating Leonardo DiCaprio while he was in Australia filming his blockbuster film, The Great Gatsby.

At the time, the Courier Mail reported the pair had been spotted together at a nightclub in Sydney after meeting in Los Angeles months earlier.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, the actor shared a steamy relationship with the then 20-year-old during his time Down Under.

Happy couple: Kendal welcomed first child Ryka Lee Pedrana on Easter Sunday this year, who she shares with partner Jake Pedrana

Kendal and Jake welcomes baby Ryka during a home birth in Sydney, later taking to social media to announce the newborn's arrival with a selfie from The Royal Hospital For Women in Randwick.

'Our little man Ryka Lee Pedrana touched down in spectacular style at 7.03pm Easter Sunday,' she described in the photo's caption.

'The brave little guy couldn't wait for hospital and jumped straight into dad's arms, on the bathroom floor at home,' she continued.

Glowing mother: Kendal and Jake welcomes baby Ryka during a home birth in Sydney, later taking to social media to announce the newborn's arrival with a selfie from The Royal Hospital For Women in Randwick
They reunited for a fun-filled family day out in Malibu on Sunday.

But the Beckhams swapped the idyllic beach-side setting for a more Halloween-themed activity on Monday, as they larked around on a pumpkin patch.

Clearly feeling playful, David referred to wife Victoria as a scarecrow as he shared a snap of their son Cruz posing in an outdoor toilet - while their eldest son Brooklyn, 18, flexed his muscles as he hoisted up one of the giant vegetables.

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Toilet humour: Clearly feeling playful, David Beckham referred to wife Victoria as a scarecrow as he shared a snap of their 12-year-old son Cruz posing in an outdoor toilet

Referring to the lavatory's open door, David drily captioned the tongue-in-cheek snap of Cruz: 'Not so private toilet'.

Meanwhile, Victoria, 43, showed she always retains her sense of sartorial flair whatever the setting as she arrived at the bash in a vertiginous pair of dark stilettos.

Perching on top of a pumpkin in a skintight black top and jeans, she flicked a sultry stare at the camera in the Instagram video.

She captioned the clip: 'Pumpkin patch (In major heels of course!) Kisses x'

Ready to squash the competition: Eldest son Brooklyn, 18, flexed his muscles as he hoisted up one of the giant vegetables

Pumped for it: No doubt choosing props for a Halloween bash, the budding photographer, 18, grinned as he hauled up the hefty vegetable before throwing it back down

Other shots saw seven-year-old Harper clamber into a wheelbarrow as Romeo wheeled her around.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn swapped the dumbbells for a slightly heavier object on Monday, as he managed to hoist up a giant pumpkin while larking around on a pumpkin patch.

No doubt choosing props for a Halloween bash, the budding photographer, 18, grinned as he hauled up the hefty vegetable before throwing it back down.

Dressed casually for the strenuous activity, Brooklyn showed off his muscles in a tight white T-shirt.

Ever the fashionista: Victoria Beckham, 43, arrived for a family day out at a pumpkin patch in a pair of towering heels

He's ready: Having chosen his perfect pumpkins, David shared a snap of the teenager later wheeling them away in a wheelbarrow

Wheel-y fun day out: Other shots saw seven-year-old Harper clamber into a wheelbarrow as Romeo steered her around

Having chosen his perfect pumpkins, David shared a snap of the teenager later wheeling them away in a wheelbarrow.

The Halloween-themed festivities extended into the evening, with Victoria sharing several black and white snaps of their decorated pumpkins with candles flickering inside.

And getting fully into the festive spirit, the Beckhams spent time with their sons on Saturday night as they visited the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride on Saturday night.

David shared photos posing with his Brooklyn, Romeo, and Cruz in front of ghoulish carved pumpkins before enjoying the terrifying sights and sounds at Griffith Park.

'Getting creative': The Halloween-themed festivities extended into the evening

Sweet: Victoria sharing several black and white snaps of their decorated pumpkins with candles flickering inside

Mother Victoria and daughter Harper were nowhere to be seen as the boys perused through the scary park.

Their appearance comes after Victoria shared a charming snap last week of Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz as they enjoyed a family meal together.

Delighted to be in their older brother's company again, Romeo and Cruz wrapped their arms around Brooklyn as they smiled for the adorable snap.

Noticeably absent from the shot was Victoria's youngest, Harper, but she was sure to include her in her caption, which read: 'Harper has all her big brothers back!!

'We are so happy!!!! X love u @brooklynbeckham @romeobeckham @cruzbeckham @davidbeckham X kisses'.

Reunited: Victoria shared a charming snap of sons - Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz as they enjoyed a family meal together last week

It comes after Victoria set tongues wagging on Wednesday when she posted an image of her 12-year-old son Cruz sitting by their pool with a pal while raising a champagne flute.

Some of her 17.4million followers soon swarmed the comment section with outrage over the tween's alleged 'alcohol consumption' yet other soon pointed to Victoria's caption - which clearly illustrated their drink of choice was 'fizzy apple juice'.

Uninformed followers took to the comments, under the illusion Cruz was enjoying an alcoholic drink as they penned: 'Are they 21?... There is Child drinking alchol...

Supporters of Victoria soon hit back at her critics, as users wrote: 'Apple Juice guys ok is Apple Juice... I hope you learn to read captions... Oh Come on people!!! Can u not read??!!!!! As if it would be alcohol lol...
She's best known her role on Neighbours.

And Olympia Valance proved her talents extend beyond acting, while modelling in a new campaign for Perth-based jewellery company Kailis this week.

The 24-year-old posed in a number of snaps taken by famous Australian photographer Margaret Zhang, during which she flaunts a set of dazzling pearls.

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Multi-talented: d Olympia Valance proved her talents extend beyond acting, while modelling in a new campaign for Perth-based jewellery company Kailis this week

Olympia clutched brightly coloured flowers while draped in expensive jewellry as she gazed at the camera.

Attempting to capture the essence and nostalgia of an Australian summer, the beauty was dressed in a number of different silky frocks.

She wore pearl earrings, a necklace encased in diamonds, a dazzling ring, and a gold bracelet around her left forearm.

Candid: Olympia clutched brightly coloured flowers while draped in expensive jewellery as she gazed at the camera

Bling: She wore pearl earrings, a necklace encased in diamonds, a dazzling ring, and a gold bracelet around her left forearm

Olympia candidly stared off into the distance, as she raised her hands and placed them on the top of her head.

Other snaps showed her wearing a floral white collared outfit complete with long sleeves.

Beautiful! Olympia pulled her hair backwards and revealed her heavily contoured make-up

Keeping digital intrigue with the use of two different vintage filters in a sepia and black and white tone, Olympia pulled her hair backwards and revealed her heavily contoured make-up.

Kailis' new campaign aims to make jewellery affordable and luxurious for millennials, with pearls receiving a surge in popularity with the younger generation in recent years.

Stunner! Olympia candidly stared off into the distance during the shoot

A surge in popularity: Kailis' new campaign aims to make jewellery affordable and luxurious for millenials

The Spring season campaign also introduces two modern pearl designs that can be purchased in silver or gold encasing.

Inspired by Greek Goddesses, the two different designs of the pearls are appropriately named Galene, the god of calm seas, and Antheia, the goddess of flowers.

Olympia recently expressed an interest in moving on from Australian television, claiming she will most likely leave Neighbours once her contract ends in the next three years.

Choice: The Spring season campaign also introduces two modern pearl designs that can be purchased in silver or gold encasing
The glamorous WAG is expecting her first child with AFL star husband, Marc Murphy, 30, in the new year.

And on Tuesday, Jessie Murphy (nee Habermann) flaunted her growing baby bump in a floral frock while stepping out in Melbourne.

The 27-year-old blogger was attending the launch of Melbourne's first Baby Spa, which will service babies aged from two days to six months old.

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Booking in early? Glamorous pregnant WAG Jessie Habermann flaunts baby bump in floral frock as she attends launch of Melbourne's first Baby Spa on Tuesday

Appearing interested in the Rowville venue's services for her newborn son, Jessie took to her Instagram stories to display babies floating in spas and getting massages.

She cut a fashionable figure at the event in a short dress that highlighted her changing frame.

Jessie, who is six-months pregnant, showed off her sculptured pins in a pair of nude heels.

Stylish as ever! Jessie, who is six-months pregnant to AFL star husband, Marc Murphy, showed off her sculptured pins in a pair of nude heels

Her makeup was flawlessly applied, with a dewy complexion, nude lipstick and a lashing of mascara.

Jessie's blonde locks were pulled back off her face and into a low ponytail, with a few long strands left out and styled in curls to frame her face.

The Baby Spa claims to increase baby's muscular and skeletal strength, improve their digestive and circulatory systems, lower the risk of jaundice three or four days after birth and create innate swimming reflexes, to name a few.

A treatment for an infant in the spa starts from $85.

Hot mama! She cut a fashionable figure at the event in a short dress that highlighted her changing frame

The blonde beauty gushed about starting a family with her man to The Herald Sun last month: 'I can't wait to see him as a father.'

'He (Marc) is going to be amazing. He has so much patience and I can't wait to see him as a father... It is exciting to be starting our own little family and to move on to that new chapter and journey,' she added.

'We both feel the time is right for us and I am really excited about it; I can't wait to be a dad,' Marc said.

Jessie and Marc married in December 2016 in a socialite wedding whose guests included Bec and Chris Judd.
They're the genetically-blessed couple who are expecting their first child together.

And on Sunday, Braith Anasta, 35, and Rachael Lee, 30, appeared to be enjoying spending family time together as they took their children from previous relationships to the beach.

Rachael and her son Addison, seven, joined Braith and his daughter Aleeia, three, who he shares with ex-wife Jodi Gordon, on an idyllic beach in Honolulu, Hawaii.

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Happy family! Braith Anasta and his pregnant girlfriend Rachael Lee enjoy a Hawaiian holiday with their children from previous relationships

The adorable family looked the perfect picture of happiness as they all climbed on a paddleboard and splashed about in the ocean.

Former NRL star Braith hopped on the back and put his muscles to use as he paddled for his pregnant girlfriend, who held Aleeia while her son swam alongside.

He then appeared to have his hands full as he kept both Addison and Aleeia entertained, while Rachael took a well-earned break on the other end of the paddleboard.

Ideal holiday: Rachael and her son Addison, seven, joined Braith and his daughter Aleeia, three, who he shares with ex-wife Jodi Gordon, on an idyllic beach in Honolulu, Hawaii

Good spirits: The adorable family looked the perfect picture of happiness as they all climbed on a paddleboard and splashed about in the ocean

All aboard! Former NRL star Braith hopped on the back and put his muscles to use as he paddled for his pregnant girlfriend, who held Aleeia as her son swam alongside

Doting father: He then appeared to have his hands full as he kept both Addison and Aleeia entertained, while Rachael took a well-earned break on the other end of the paddleboard

Her burgeoning baby bump was on display as she took to the beach in a revealing black swimsuit.

The stunning personal trainer oozed confidence as she stripped down to just a skimpy bikini that flaunted her impressive pregnancy figure.

Meanwhile, Braith's muscular physique was on display, wearing only a pair of blue two-toned swim shorts.

Expecting mother: Rachael's burgeoning baby bump was on display as she took to the beach in a revealing black swimsuit

Revealing: The stunning personal trainer oozed confidence as she stripped down to just a skimpy bikini that flaunted her impressive pregnancy figure

Muscular display: Meanwhile, Braith's physique was on display, wearing only a pair of blue two-toned swim shorts

The quartet eventually ditched the paddleboard and cuddled up to each other in the picturesque waters.

Braith split from ex-wife Jodi in 2015 and he began dating Rachael last year.

Rachael made her pregnancy announcement in July, calling it the 'best gift in life.'

Adorable: The quartet eventually ditched the paddleboard and cuddled up to each other in the picturesque waters

Change over: Rachael and Braith spread the love as they swap hands with the children
Last week she revealed plans to add to her already extensive brood with the help of a surrogate.

And Katie Price has announced that she is looking into the possibility of getting a black sperm donor to expand her family, so the child will look like her eldest son Harvey, 15.

The 39-year-old former glamour model, who tragically suffered a miscarriage in August, told Closer that she had registered with a sperm bank in the hopes of conceiving baby number six - and reportedly showed them the bank's app on her phone

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Broody: Katie Price has announced that she is looking into the possibility of getting a black sperm donor to expand her family, so the child will look like her eldest son Harvey, 15

Back on?Katie also left her fans 'confused' over her relationship status with Kieran Hayler after she revealed that she has pictures of him all over her bedroom in a candid Instagram video on Tuesday night

She said: 'I might get a black donor. Harvey is black and I have a multicultural family.'

Katie shares Harvey with former footballer Dwight Yorke, who is Trinidadian.

Her next two children Princess and Junior's father Peter Andre is Australian and of Greek-Cypriot descent.

Close bond: She said: 'I might get a black donor. Harvey is black and I have a multicultural family'

The broody star, who announced she was divorcing third husband Kieran Hayler in August, revealed her plans to use a surrogate to carry her next child at the Build London event on Friday.

She said: 'I'm looking for a surrogate at the moment in America because I want another baby but I don't want to carry one at the moment,' she said to the audience.

'Well ... you need a man to carry one, you know,' she added, trying to make light of her current marital woes.

Unbreakable bond: Katie shares Harvey with former footballer Dwight Yorke, who is Trinidadian

Katie also revealed she has considered quitting her glittering showbiz career for a job at the checkouts in Asda.

She told The Sun: 'I want to hear the beep noises and be on the checkout. I crave normality and things like that.

'When people meet me they realise that I am normal but then they know what my job is and it is strange for them to put the two together because we're completely different.

Checkouts: Katie also revealed she has considered quitting her glittering showbiz career for a job at the checkouts in Asda because she 'craves normality'

'This year has been so stressful. I feel like I couldnt run anywhere.'

Katie, who referred to the past two months in which she has suffered a miscarriage, found out Kieran was cheating, saw her mother diagnosed with a terminal illness and a threat made against Harvey, said she was focused on getting fit, feeling good and avoiding depression .

Meanwhile, Katie left her fans 'confused' over her relationship status with Kieran Hayler after she revealed that she has pictures of him all over her bedroom in a candid Instagram video on Tuesday night.

The former glamour model was in the midst of displaying her newly-decorated velour-filled boudoir when she showcased a framed photo of her, Kieran and one of the children on her beside cabinet - alluding that she has forgiven his discretion.

Hope?Katie left her fans 'confused' over her relationship status with Kieran Hayler after she revealed that she has pictures of him all over her bedroom in a candid Instagram video on Tuesday night

In another shot, the Loose Women panellist panned to her dressing table in her mink and gold coloured room - which featured another loved-up snap of them looking longingly into their eyes.

Sharing the slideshow with her 1.6 million followers, she wrote: 'Absolutely love my new bedroom @myhomerocksx thanks so much its perfect'.

However her picture display didn't go unnoticed by her loyal fans, who were quick to point out the loved-up snaps.

MailOnline have contacted Katie Price's rep for comment.

One fan wrote: 'I'm confused are you and Kieran back together?'

Thrilled: Sharing the slideshow with her 1.6 million followers, she wrote: 'Absolutely love my new bedroom @myhomerocksx thanks so much its perfect'

Captured: The former glamour model was in the midst of displaying her newly-decorated velour-filled boudoir when she showcased a framed photo of her, Kieran and one of the children on her beside cabinet

'Love it but dunno why you still got Kieran on or dressing table lol,' another shared. 'Looks amazing, but the photo of Kieran on the side ruins it!!!'.

As another simply questioned: 'Am I the only one who noticed photos of Kieran still?'.

The display comes after she recently revealed she suffered a miscarriage four days before discovering husband Kieran was cheating on her with their nanny, Nikki Brown, 40.

She said: 'I had a miscarriage four days before. On the Monday I had a miscarriage and then four days later I found out and now this one [pointing at her mum]". It's like... Jesus.'

'Confused': However her picture display didn't go unnoticed by her loyal fans, who were quick to point out the loved-up snaps

Mirror, mirror: She decorated her bedside lockers with numerous black and white photos

For show: She also displayed her luxury bed in the slideshow

The news came shortly after the TV personality revealed she was separating from Kieran, a former stripper, after discovering his six month fling with their children's nanny.

Discussing the separation on Loose Women, Katie admitted she had thought their 'marriage and sex life was perfect' - before hinting there was 'more to come out' regarding Kieran and their reason for ending the marriage.

She said: 'It is what it is, and what you've read. Years ago I caught Kieran cheating. I paid for therapy to get him help. As far as I knew our marriage and sex life was perfect, our family unit was perfect.

'I employed a nanny to come in and I've caught him again having an affair with my nanny for a year. Sleeping with her in my house - but there's other things that are going to come out.'

Marriage split: The news comes shortly after the TV personality revealed she was separating from husband Kieran, a former stripper, after discovering his six month fling with their children's nanny (Pictured in 2015)

Referencing his previous infidelities, she then admitted she had not been hugely shocked by the affair, adding: 'Here I am again! I think when someone stabs the knife in the first time and they twist it, I was literally distraught.

'I suppose this time was I expecting it to happen again? Was my guard up? Because I'm acting completely different this time.'

'My kids are older, they know what's going on and for me I love coming to work. He's got to get help. It's not normal behaviour, especially when you're in a happy marriage.'

Honest: Earlier this month, Katie appeared on This Morning where she elaborated further on the situation with her husband

Earlier this month, Katie appeared on This Morning where she elaborated further on the situation with her husband.

She said: 'At the moment he has left the house. There are kids involved. hes got mental issues and more and more has come out. Hes seeing a therapist and going to group therapy sessions.

'Things will happen when theyre ready. Our marriage is on the rocks, I told him youve got to sort yourself out. I'm not dismissing anything about Kieran, Ive got all this to deal with at the moment, I can't concentrate on one thing.'

Talking: She said: 'At the moment he has left the house. There are kids involved. hes got mental issues and more and more has come out. Hes seeing a therapist and going to group therapy sessions'

The star said her kids are kept informed about what is going on and that her home is still 'happy'.

She said: 'The children know everything, I like to live in a happy home. The home is still a happy home.

'The Kieran I know is the family, nice Kieran who is lovely. But he has got this other side. I go "ugh you make me sick" and the kids go "mum!" but I say it jokingly. I'm so laidback, I dont argue, youve just got to deal with it.'
They recently marked two years of dating and have been inseparable ever since romance first blossomed between them.

But Stacey Solomon, 28, and her beau Joe Swash, 35, are now facing the prospect of being forced apart for several weeks, as he prepares to return to Australia to host the new series of I'm A Celebrity's spin-off show Extra Camp.

While his girlfriend had joined him on the presenting team last year, Stacey will not be returning and will instead be at home in the UK - but speaking exclusively to MailOnline, she insists the pair 'won't even notice the time go' during Joe's absence.

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Not fazed: Stacey Solomon, 28, has insisted she and beau Joe Swash, 35, will overcome long distance as he prepares to jet to Australia to work on I'm A Celeb's Extra Camp spin-off

Stacey, who has partnered with The Laughing Cow on their new Snaccident campaign, and former EastEnders star Joe had joined Vicky Pattison and Chris Ramsey to host Extra Camp - the follow up show to I'm A Celebrity - on ITV2 for its 2016 series.

However, ahead of its return, ITV have confirmed that Joe will be the only presenting returning to Extra Camp and will instead be flanked by last year's I'm A Celeb winner Scarlett Moffatt and show runner-up Joel Dommett instead.

Addressing her exit from the show, Stacey said: 'I am sad not to be going back because I loved it, I had the best time ever.'

Proving that there is no bad blood between her and show producers for deciding to keep her boyfriend on the show and not her, Stacey continued: 'Joe has been on [the show] for 10 years, I haven't, it wouldn't be right without him.

Going it alone: Joe is the only returning presenter, as Stacey, Vicky Pattison and Chris Ramsey will not return to I'm A Celebrity: Extra Camp for its new series

'It wouldn't be right without him': Proving there is no bad blood, Stacey insisted she is pleased Joe is returning to the spin-off show and that she had the 'best time ever' on the show

'I did it once and I can understand that they want to keep it current and have the new winners in. I worked hard, did a great job and thoroughly enjoyed myself, got the opportunity to have the experience and now I can watch it in its next stage which is exciting.'

With Joe heading back out to Australia for several weeks as the new series of I'm A Celebrity gets underway, it does mean that he and Stacey will be left facing long-distance when it comes to their relationship.

Not fazed by the prospect, however, and adamant it won't impact on their idyllic romance, the Loose Women star defiantly insisted it will be nothing new to the couple, as when they first began dating they had to go without seeing each other for a prolonged period.

'When we first got together, Joe was in Australia doing the jungle and I went to Miami a couple of days after he got back, so we do know what it's like to have that time apart,' she explained.

Sad: Stacey explained: 'I am sad not to be going back because I loved it... I did it once and I can understand that they want to keep it current and have the new winners in. I worked hard, did a great job and thoroughly enjoyed myself'

Forced apart: With Joe heading back out to Australia for several weeks as the new series of I'm A Celebrity gets underway, it means he and Stacey will be left facing long-distance

'We won't even notice the time go': Adamant it won't impact on their idyllic romance, Stacey defiantly insisted distance is nothing new to the couple, as had to go without seeing each other when they first began dating

'Sometimes life just goes so quickly anyway, I know it will be the same when he's away... we won't even notice the time go.'

Sharing an update on how things are going between herself and her love, a gushing Stacey giggled: 'We do have a lot of fun, Joe is lovely and we are really happy. Our relationship is in a lovely place, we really care about each other.'

The couple are often inundated with questions about marriage and when Joe is set to propose to the former X Factor star, with Stacey claiming during an appearance on Loose Women recently that she would be happy if he popped the question via a text message.

Content: Lighting up at the mention of Joe's name, the Loose Women star gushed about the couple's nearly two-year long romance and revealed they are 'really happy'

Setting the record straight, she admitted her comment had been in jest, but quickly added that she would be happy with however he chooses to ask her to marry him.

'I am in love with Joe, however, he wants to propose is absolutely fine, but I am in no hurry. I want it to be perfect, I want it to be special, I want the kids to be really happy and a big part of it and I think that's what we're both waiting for.'

She and Joe first confirmed their relationship in January 2016 and things have only gone from strength to strength for the pair, with Stacey openly revealing her hopes for the duo to tie the knot and have children together.

She is already mum to two sons Zachary, nine, and Leighton, five, from previous relationships, while Joe is dad to son Harry, 10, whom he shares with his ex-girlfriend Emma Sophocleous.

Refreshing: Stacey has become known for refreshingly hitting back at her body critics on social media and taking a strong stance against bodyshaming by embracing her insecurities

Honest: From posing in just her bikini and highlighting her 'saggy boobies' and 'stretch marks' to pointing out her 'not so smooth' nose, Stacey has won over a slew of fans for her positive outlook towards her so-called 'imperfections'

Meanwhile, Stacey has become known for refreshingly hitting back at her body critics on social media and taking a strong stance against bodyshaming by embracing her insecurities in a series of candid posts.

From posing in just her bikini and highlighting her 'saggy boobies' and 'stretch marks' to pointing out her 'not so smooth' nose, Stacey has won over a slew of fans for her positive outlook towards her so-called 'imperfections'.

However, the blonde beauty does admit that she still gets nervous when sharing those unfiltered posts of herself and her frame.

'I get nervous all the time. Sometimes I'm like, "What if people are like no one cares?! Stop showing us the cr*ppy bits about you!" I do get nervous, but I think if there's one person that reads it and feels less insecure or less in doubt because of it, then I'm happy,' she insisted.

'I get nervous all the time': Although, the beauty admitted she still gets nervous when sharing those unfiltered posts of herself and her frame and worries that 'no one will care'

'I'll get over what the haters say, they'll hate me whatever I put,' she added.

Stacey's crusade against bodyshamers began after she was targeted because of her bust and told she had 'saggy boobs'. Since then, she has made it her mission to boost women's confidence and self-esteem when it comes to their appearance.

The TV personality said: 'I love my body, we all have down days, but I have always been happy with my body, I don't have a problem with it and I shouldn't let anyone make me feel like it's a problem to have a body with lump and bumps.

'The only cure for the cause of insecurity and low self-esteem is to be as positive as you can and send out the message nobody is perfect, so don't try to be.'

And taking that no-nonsense attitude into her new campaign with The Laughing Cow, Stacey is helping to instill healthy snacking among adults and children, joking: 'Anytime I can get involved in something that makes people feel less bad about their eating... I like to do it - that always makes me happy.'

The Laughing Cow has partnered with Stacey Solomon for its Snaccident campaign in a bid to promote mindful snacking #snacksmart
The Australian model and social 'it' girl is known for making bold fashion statements on the red carpet.

And Megan Blake Irwin dared to bare in Sydney on Tuesday, as she confidently stepped out BRALESS in a plunging material-tie crop top.

The 23-year-old flashed a hint of cleavage and her taut stomach in the revealing number, as she enjoyed a lunch date with her boyfriend Nicolo Knows.

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Feeling nippy? Braless Megan Blake Irwin flaunts assets in plunging crop top in Sydney as boyfriend Nicolo Knows uses his thumb to touch model's nipple

Looking for something? Megan's boyfriend Nicolo (pictured) was spotting using his thumb, in what appeasred to be an attempt to locate the model's nipple

As one of Australia's rising stars in the international modelling scene, Megan has returned home to walk the catwalk for David Jones.

The lingerie model cut a relaxed and casual figure in the matching yellow ensemble.

Megan's perky assets were visible within the plunging design, with the thick rippled fabric working to provide a complete coverage.

Summer style! The lingerie model cut a relaxed and casual figure in the matching yellow ensemble

ABS-olute babe! She flashed a hint of cleavage and her taut stomach in the revealing number, as she headed out for a lunch date with her boyfriend Nicolo

The cropped style of her top showcased her washboard abs, with Megan pairing the look with high-waisted flares trousers and a matching denim jacket.

Her boyfriend Nicolo appeared well-aware of Megan's decision to go braless for their outing.

In what appeared to be an attempt to locate the model's nipple, he was seen using his thumb to press on the garment atop her breast.

Loved-up! Megan affectionately held hands and cuddled into Nicolo as she took long strides in her flat brown sandals along the beachside path

Happy days! The pair were in high spirits as they walked Bondi's beachside path, laughing and sharing smiles as they headed towards their lunch date

The pair were in high spirits as they walked Bondi's beachside path, laughing and sharing smiles as they headed towards their lunch date.

Megan's beau cut a casual figure in a white sweater with black jeans ans Nike trainers.

Megan affectionately held hands with Nicolo as she took long strides in her flat brown sandals.

Cool and casual: Megan's beau cut a casual figure in a white sweater with black jeans ans Nike trainers

Stunner! Megan added a touch of glamour to her relaxed look with a pair of circular-lens Ray Ban sunglasses, gold hoop ear rings and dainty necklaces

Nicolo also placed his arm around Megan as they continued to flaunt their romance in public.

Megan added a touch of glamour to her relaxed look with a pair of circular-lens Ray Ban sunglasses, gold hoop ear rings and dainty necklaces.

Her blonde locks were slicked back from her face into a neat bun, while her beau wore his unruly brunette locks out before using a hair-tie to tame it.

Megan also appeared to opt for a minimal makeup application, showcasing her flawless complexion with ease.

Ready for that kiss: The loved-up couple soon put on an amorous display as they were seated at a table at North Bondi Fish

Pucker up! Megan and Nicolo shared a passionate kiss, with Megan moving her chair closer to lean in for the smooch

The loved-up couple soon put on an amorous display as they were seated at a table at North Bondi Fish.

Megan and Nicolo shared a passionate kiss, with Megan moving her chair closer to lean in for the smooch.

They soaked up the sunshine on the balcony, knocking back beers as they continued to chat.

They soaked up the sunshine on the balcony, knocking back beers as they continued to chat

Cheers! Other drinks were seen at the table, as Megan placed her handbag atop the wooden surface

Other drinks were seen at the table, as Megan placed her handbag atop the wooden surface.

Holding her phone, she was later seen by herself taking a call while smoking an unhealthy cigarette.

Nicolo didn't appear to join the stunner while she puffed on the cigarette.

Taking a break: Holding her phone, she was later seen by herself taking a call while smoking an unhealthy cigarette

Nicolo was later fascinated with something on Megan's stomach or shirt, as she placed his tattooed arm alongside her exposed tummy.

The pair both kept their gaze down as they focused on an apparent comparison.

They later both held their hands on their stomachs as they looked intensely at each other.

What's he doing? Nicolo was later fascinated with something on Megan's stomach or shirt, as she placed his tattooed arm alongside her exposed tummy

The pair both kept their gaze down as they focused on an apparent comparison

Feeling full? They later both held their hands on their stomachs as they looked intensely at each other

The model confirmed her romance with the Miami-based hunk in August, revealing last month she had never been more content in life.

'Im in a very happy place and the happiest Ive been in life. Im in a very stable relationship,' Megan told News Corp.

The blonde beauty, who was previously linked to Scott Disick, explained she had purposefully decided to go public with her new romance.

'Its definitely a choice. Because Ive been in relationships that are extremely private,' Megan said.

'But Ive been dating someone for a while now and I dont want to hide away with someone I love.'

'The happiest I've been in life': The model confirmed her romance with the Miami-based hunk in August, revealing last month she had never been more content in life
She's the controversial comedian who is never afraid to voice her opinion.

And Kathy Griffin did just that while weighing in on the Harvey Weinsten assault scandal.

The outspoken 56-year-old criticized Hollywood heavyweights George Clooney and Matt Damon over the pair's claims that they didn't know the extent of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's behaviour.

'I can't imagine those guys didn't know': Kathy Griffin slams George Clooney and Matt Damon after the actors claimed they didn't know the extent of Harvey Weinstein sexual assaults

'Really? No. I don't think so - I can't imagine those guys didn't know,' Kathy said on Tuesday's The Project.

'I knew, and I'm not even in the movie business.'

During an appearance on Good Morning America this week, Hollywood actors George and Matt said they knew Weinstein was a 'bully' and 'womaniser,' but were unaware of the extent of his criminal behavior.

Kathy went on to discuss an encounter she had with 65-year-old Harvey at an event for legendary director Quentin Tarantino.

Unaware: During an appearance on Good Morning America this week, Hollywood actors George Clooney (L) and Matt Damon (R) said they knew Weinstein was a 'bully' and 'womaniser,' but were unaware of the extent of his criminal behavior

'I don't think so': Kathy said - 'I can't imagine those guys didn't know. I knew, and I'm not even in the movie business'

'One time Weinstein was sitting next to me and - I'm not hot enough to sexually assault - just know that's his mindset,' she said.

'I remember him bragging about his wife who worked for House of Balenciaga, and he said: 'Maybe my wife could dress you sometime' for the Emmys or something like that.

She continued: 'I remember wondering if that was one of the ways he would ensnare some young actresses.'

'I'm not hot enough to sexually assault': Kathy recalled an encounter she once had with disgraced mogul Harvey

Not the only one: Kathy pointed out that Weinstein 'is not a single case' and claim that 'every' network and studio boss in the US behaves in a similar way

She pointed out that Weinstein 'is not a single case' and claim that 'every' network and studio boss in the US behaves in a similar way.

'The white middle-aged guys who are truly running every network and studio in the United States all behave this way and everyone covers for them,' she said.
Montanans have had ample opportunity over the past six years to view U.S. House candidate Tom Woods Montana legislative record. Upon further review, we can plainly see Woods is a consistent, forward thinker who has stood up for average Montanans during his past three terms in the state Legislature.

Woods has shown us time and time again during his tenure that he puts people over politics and is willing to take on the powerful special interest groups that dictate policy. These powerful special groups include everything from hospitals to Northwestern Energy in the legal system. If elected to Congress, Tom will continue his courageous fight against these special interest groups.

Woods is well-respected across the aisle and has passed multiple bipartisan bills in the Montana Legislature. These bills include pension reform for teachers, utility rate reform and Medicaid expansion. In passing this legislation, Woods proved once again that his pragmatic approach provided solutions to solving our complicated and interconnected issues. Woods is not only a problem solver, he does what he says, and follows through successfully.

Woods is a determined progressive and a straight shooter who is able to listen, engage and talk with his constituents about the complex issues they face. Ive seen personally Toms tireless efforts to lead, inspire and to give back.

I encourage everyone to check out his record in the Montana Legislature. See for yourself why Woods is the best choice to serve in Montanas only U.S. House seat.

Andy Boyd

Bozeman
She was left devastated when photos of her husband kissing Topshop heiress Chloe Green, 26, on a yacht in Turkey surfaced online this summer.

And despite revealing she blindsided by their fling, 'Hot Felon' Jeremy Meeks' estranged wife Melissa found herself shopping with the enemy as she headed to stores belonging to her love rival's father on Monday.

The mother-of-three, 38, indulged in some retail therapy after her emotional TV interview on This Morning, in which she confessed she still missed her former convict husband despite his infidelity.

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Shopping with the enemy: Despite revealing she blindsided by their fling, 'Hot Felon' Jeremy Meeks' estranged wife Melissa found herself shopping at Topshop, owned by the father of her ex's new partner Chloe Green

Despite the heartbreak she has suffered due to his new romance with Green, Melissa bizarrely found herself visiting his Topshop and Miss Selfridge stores on London's Oxford Street.

Melissa - who has undergone an extensive makeover since the split - perused the goods on display at the flagship stores alongside a female pal.

It came after she broke down in tears during an emotional chat with This Morning hosts Ben Shepherd and Amanda Holden.

She said: 'He was an amazing husband, honestly, when I think about it I still get emotional. It's still very raw. We had a really good life together.'

Love rivals: Despite the heartbreak she has suffered due to his new romance with Green, Melissa bizarrely found herself visiting his Topshop and Miss Selfridge stores on London's Oxford Street

Another blow: Melissa - who has undergone an extensive makeover since the split - perused the goods on display at the flagship stores alongside a female pal

Melissa, who described the affair as 'heartbreaking', confessed that his modelling career drove a wedge between them because he was often overseas travelling.

But while they might have hit a rocky patch in their marriage, she had 'no indication' Jeremy - with whom she shares her youngest child - would stray.

She recalled: 'I had no indication he was looking for another relationship.

'People who are married, you go through your ups and downs, I thought it was a new chapter in our lives, we'd have to get over the hump and it would be fine.'

Emotional: Melissa spoke about the model leaving her for heiress Chloe on Monday's installment of This Morning

Shock: Melissa said she had 'no indication' her husband of eight years would stray with shoe designer Chloe

Moving on: Meeks filed for divorce shortly afterwards and has been putting on a very public display of affection with new girlfriend Chloe ever since, canoodling on a string of exotic holidays

Heartbroken: Melissa's voice broke as she recalled Jeremy confessing his infidelity to her in the aftermath of the shocking pictures of Chloe draped all over him

Tough: Melissa broke down in tears during an emotional chat with This Morning hosts Ben Shepherd and Amanda Holden

Melissa's voice broke as she recalled Jeremy confessing his infidelity to her this June, in the aftermath of the pictures of Chloe draped all over him during a yacht photoshoot.

The nurse said: 'He was just apologetic for how things came out and how hurt I was by it.

'I don't really think there's any denying it based on the photos that were out there...'

Meeks filed for divorce shortly afterwards and has been putting on a very public display of affection with new girlfriend Chloe ever since, canoodling on a string of exotic holidays.

The brunette said: 'He was just apologetic for how things came out and how hurt I was by it'

'There's no hope': Heartbroken Melissa admitted that she felt resigned to the split and didn't try and fight for her husband because she knew his heart belonged to someone else

Heartbroken Melissa admitted that she felt resigned to the split and didn't try and fight for her husband because she knew his heart belonged to someone else.

'I really wasn't too sure where I wanted to go in the relationship', she sighed.

'That's my husband of 8/9 years, I love him deeply, I still do. It's very hard when I think about what happened.

'I wish I still had my husband to go home to... but I don't believe there is any hope.'

PDA-heavy: In August, Jeremy publicly paraded his romance with heiress Chloe as they enjoyed carnival during a sunny Barbados holiday

Viral: The California native shot to fame in 2014 when the Stockton Police Department posted his mugshot on their website, following his arrest for gang activity and a misdemeanour charge of resisting/obstructing justice

Although Melissa and Jeremy split on bad terms, the pair are doing their best to be civil for the sake of their children.

She declared: 'He still sees the kids. They're still very involved with each other. That's still positive for the children.'

During the moving interview, Melissa also recalled how Meeks' meteoric rise to fame affected their marriage.

Meeks shot to fame in 2014 when the Stockton Police Department posted his mugshot on their website, following his arrest for gang activity and a misdemeanour charge of resisting/obstructing justice.

The photo promptly went viral, with internet users dubbing him 'the hottest convict ever'. He served prison time for for grand theft and gun possession.

Staying mum: Melissa has stayed quiet on her heartbreak until now, concentrating on raising her three children (pictured with Bobby and Jeremy junior this month)

Upon his release in March 2016, however, he became a hot property with offers of modeling work.

He is currently signed to White Cross Management, has walked in the Philipp Plein show and starred in the new eye-wear campaign for Carolina Lemke with Israeli model Bar Refaeli.

Explaining how their family dynamic changed when he was locked up, Melissa - who stood by him throughout his jail sentence - said: 'We were leaving day to day lives without him

'We would go to visit him a lot, it was good for the kids that they werent completely pulled apart from him.

Life of luxury: Meeks sent tongues wagging after pictures emerged of him kissing Chloe on a yacht in Turkey in June

'It was the plan - to be a family together. But then his mugshot went viral.'

'All the exposure that he got, this new career path he was on, he started doing a lot of travelling.

'I wasn't able to go with him, that probably put some distance between us.'

Melissa's interview went down well with viewers at home, who branded her a 'lovely and forgiving lady'.

One viewer shared: 'Shocking. The #HotFelon is a jerk. Running off with a better offer from his wife of 8 years once he got famous.'

Another posted: '#hotfelon. What a lovely and forgiving lady, honest with her feelings whilst hurting badly. Hope she gets support.'

Show of support: While some viewers were cynical, most were backing Melissa as she attempts to move on from her husband

Positive vibes: Viewers at home branded her a 'lovely and forgiving lady'

New look: Melissa has undergone an extensive makeover, from new blonde locks to an extremely intimate procedure, in a bid to move on from her broken marriage

Others were more cynical, with one person sharing, ' I get that Melissa Meeks wants to make money from all this shit but she needs some self respect & move on like a grownup #ThisMorning'.

Jeremy and Chloe reportedly met during the Cannes Film Festival in May, where Jeremy was modelling for Phillip Plein.

And in July Jeremy filed for legal separation from mother-of-three Melissa, who he shares her youngest son with.

He was married to the nurse, who stayed with him throughout his stint in prison, for eight years.

Jeremy and Chloe took their controversial romance a step further last month, when he met her mum aboard a luxury yacht in Monaco.

Bouncing back: Melissa took to Instagram to show off her sizzling physique in September as she appeared to be beginning a post break-up body make over last month

At the beginning of the month they were forced to deny engagement rumours, after she flashed a huge rock on her wedding finger in a series of confusing snapchats. but made sure she kept her ring finger hidden.

The duo have since been spotted on a series of sun-soaked holidays together, even appearing together at various public events, cementing their relationship status.

In August, Jeremy publicly paraded his romance with heiress Chloe as they enjoyed carnival during a sunny Barbados holiday.

Meanwhile, Melissa has undergone an extensive makeover, from new blonde locks to an extremely intimate procedure, in a bid to move on from her broken marriage.

Calm and composed: Melissa's interview went down well with viewers at home

At the beginning of October Melissa, a natural brunette, stepped out with newly blonde locks in Los Angeles at the end of an extensive makeover, which included eyebrow and eyelash treatments, a cryotherapy session, and even a 'vaginal tightening' performed by a plastic surgeon.

She also had her eyebrows microbladed during a treatment favored by stars such as Madonna and Bella Thorne, which makes the brows look neater and fuller.

The brave nurse also appeared to be beginning a post break-up body make-over, posing in her underwear as she showed off her already enviable figure.
She was revealed as one of three new Doctor Who companions in a shock announcement on Monday night.

And Mandip Gill is now set to become a household name as she graces our TV screens every Saturday night in the upcoming series of the BBC sci-fi show.

In the wake of the news, throwback snaps of the former Hollyoaks star Mandip and her co-star Jennifer Metcalfe partying up a storm have surfaced.

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New companion: Mandip Gill is now set to become a household name as she graces our TV screens every Saturday night in the upcoming series of Doctor Who

Small screen star: The former Hollyoaks star will star as new character Yasmin, her biggest role to date

The girls were seen letting loose at the famous Ocean Club Champagne Spray Party in the party destination, joined by the likes of Stephanie Davis.

Bikini-clad Jennifer was showing off some dance moves beside Mandip, who opted for a more modest shirt and shorts.

Mandip is best known for playing Phoebe Jackson in Hollyoaks, leaving the soap in 2015 before landing guest roles on the likes of Cuckoo and Doctors.

She is now set to see her star soar after landed her most high-profile role to date, playing new companion Yasmin on the show.

Throwback snaps: The girls were seen letting loose at the famous Ocean Club Champagne Spray Party in the party destination, joined by the likes of Stephanie Davis

Party pals: Bikini-clad Jennifer was showing off some dance moves beside Mandip, who opted for a more modest shirt and shorts

Mandip said: 'I am over the moon to be joining the Doctor Who family. Certain roles seem unattainable and this is one of those, so much so I didn't believe it to be true for the first few weeks!' Doctor Who

Fans were sent into overdrive on Sunday night, as theBBC unveiled three new companions set to join Jodie Whittaker in the TARDIS.

Bradley Walsh was confirmed to be joining the cast as a series regular, along with Hollyoaks stars Tosin Cole and Mandip.

In the first look photo, the Series 11 cast was revealed for the first time, and will make their screen debut in Autumn 2018.

Glamorous: Mandip is best known for playing Phoebe Jackson in Hollyoaks, leaving the soap in 2015 before landing guest roles on the likes of Cuckoo and Doctors

Close bond: She has remained on good friends with Hollyoaks beauty Jennifer. The actresses are seen in May 2015

Bradley, who is most well-known for hosting The Chase, as well as appearing in Law and Order: UK and Coronation Street, will play a new character called Graham, while Mandip will play Yasmin and Tosin will play Ryan.

The new Who cast told The Radio Times of their excitement to be performing in the iconic sci-fi drama, which has been on screens for 54 years.

Bradley said: 'I remember watching William Hartnell as the first Doctor. Black and white made it very scary for a youngster like myself. I was petrified but even though I'd watch most of it from behind the sofa through my fingers, I became a fan.

'Am I thrilled to be part of this whole ground breaking new dawn for the Doctor?? Oh yes!'

TARDIS bound! The BBC announced three new companions set to join Jodie Whittaker in Doctor Who (L-R) Mandip, Bradley Walsh, Jodie and Tosin Cole on Monday night

The (Alien) chase is on! Bradley Walsh, most well known as the host of The Chase will join the cast as new character Graham after being rumoured to be a new companion back in August

Leading man: Tosin Cole, who has also appeared in Hollyoaks will star as Ryan

Mystery role: West End star Sharon D Clarke will appear in a recurring role, but little is known about her character at the moment

West End star Sharon D Clarke is also set to join the cast in a recurring role, though little is known about her character.

Doctor Who will soon be under the writership of a new showrunner, with Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall set to take over from Steven Moffat at the end of this year.

Bradley was previously rumoured to be joining the cast back in August, with fans torn on the prospect of the light-hearted comedian heading into space with Jodie Whittaker.

Throwback: Bradley is no stranger to the Who-niverse, appearing in spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures in 2008

He is no stranger to the Who-niverse, appearing in spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures in 2008.

However, since Sunday's announcement, Whovians have taken to social media with delight at the new cast.

One wrote: 'If Bradley Walsh is the full time companion then Doctor Who is gonna be fantastic this season!'

Another exclaimed: 'Bradley Walsh being in the next series of Doctor Who has made me even more excited'

All change: Jodie was announced as the first ever female doctor in July and will lead the new cast when the series returns in autumn 2018

Exciting: Fans were thrilled that the next doctor will be a woman

Doctor Who will begin its transition to the new team this Christmas, when Peter Capaldi departs from the role after four years, in an epic festive departure feature Mark Gatiss and David Bradley as The First Doctor (originally played by William Hartnell)

Jodie Whittaker was first announced as the first female Doctor in history in July, with fans thrilled at the prospect of a woman manning the TARDIS.

The new series is set to start filming soon, and will be a noticeably shorter season featuring only ten episodes, though each episode will be an hour long.

Fans can say farewell to Peter Capaldi when Doctor Who returns on Christmas Day.
She previously said that her small waist was a a 'gift from God'.

And Kate Wright was keen to show off her hourglass curves as she hit back at bodyshamers in a candid Instagram video on Tuesday.

In a short clip, the 26-year-old bikini-clad reality star slumped in her chair to fold her stomach, before jumping up to reveal her flat toned tummy.

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Amazing from all angles! Kate Wright was keen to show off her hourglass curves as she hit back at bodyshamers in a candid Instagram video on Tuesday

Pointing to her stomach whilst slumped, she explained: 'I was caught like that the other day, it happens to the best of us.'

Springing up out of her chair, she continued: 'But when I stand up I'm back to normal!'

She then walked away from the camera whilst concealing her derriere, as she quipped: 'mind my bad bits!'

Cheeky! In a short clip, the 26-year-old bikini-clad reality star slumped in her chair to fold her stomach, before jumping up to reveal her flat toned tummy and her 'bad' bottom

Kate was flooded with compliments about her figure after she posted the clip, which she captioned: 'I'll remember I have to stand up 24/7 or I'll be body shamed #passmeanothercocktail'.

In the video Kate showed off every inch of her figure in a skimpy pink and orange bikini that flattered her hourglass curves.

The blonde bombshell also went make-up free to show off her flawless complexion, whilst her glossy locks were swept back into a ponytail.

Kate has been holidaying in Dubai with her boyfriend Rio Ferdinand.

Caught: Pointing to her stomach whilst slumped, she explained: 'I was caught like that the other day it happens to the best of us'

Tanned and toned: Springing up out of her chair to show off her enviably taut stomach, Kate continued: 'But when I stand up I'm back to normal!'

Nothing to see here! Kate then giggled as she walked away from the camera whilst concealing her derriere, whilst she quipped: 'mind my bad bits!'

They went public with their romance in August after he shared the first ever snap of the duo on his Instagram account during a Portugal holiday.

Proving that their relationship is going from strength-to-strength, Rio shared a candid snap of Kate walking hand-in-hand with his daughter Tia, six, and sons - Lorenz, 11, and Tate, nine - during a family holiday on Sunday.

Sweetly holding onto Rio's youngest's hand, Kate complemented Tia's vibrant yellow sun dress while his sons sported shorts and colourful tees in the snap captioned: 'Out for dinner #Familytime' alongside a heart emoji.

Blonde bombshell! Kate often shows off her tanned and toned figure in sizzling Instagram snaps and has never been shy of flaunting her phenomenal physique

Despite two years of fame, winning various lucrative contracts and garnering 682,000 Instagram followers, Kate recently confirmed her time in the spotlight is up as she moves towards looking after the kids.

A friend said: 'Kate left TOWIE because she wanted to be away from the limelight. But interest continued to be sky high and she struggled to visit the gym...

'She hopes having no links with brands and no longer being on TV will help give her the quiet life she longs for with her new family.'
While he may only be six-months-old, he has already been travelling the world with his famous parents.

And now Storm Keating was forced to hit back at a cruel troll on social media after the online hater made a comment about her baby boy Cooper on Instagram.

The Australian beauty - who is married to Boyzone crooner Ronan - shared an adorable snap of her tot preparing for take-off to Norway with her on the photo-sharing platform when he was targeted by the troll.

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Hitting back: Storm Keating was forced to hit back at a cruel troll on social media after the online hater made a comment about her baby boy Cooper on Instagram

Taking the shot from overhead, baby Cooper was clad in a pair of cute striped pants and a palm-tree print jump while a little seat belt was placed across his stomach to keep him steady.

Captioning the charming photo, she wrote: 'Buckling up for another flight', alongside a number of hashtags including '#norwaybound' and '#littleworldtraveller'.

While many wished them a safe flight, one Instagram followers commented under the photo: 'Poor b**ger'.

Taken aback by the remark, Storm wrote a lengthy response to the mean-spirited fan, defending her little boy and referring to herself as a 'fantastic mummy' while also adding that they could 'easily' employ help but don't.

Taking off: Taking the shot from overhead, baby Cooper was clad in a pair of cute striped pants and a palm-tree print jump while a little seat belt was placed across his stomach to keep him steady. Captioning the charming photo, she wrote: 'Buckling up for another flight'

Uncalled for: The Australian beauty - who is married to Boyzone crooner Ronan - shared an adorable snap of her tot preparing for take-off to Norway with her on the photo-sharing platform when he was targeted by the troll

She shared: 'We think lucky b***er! We could easily employ nannies or staff to look after our little man while mummy & daddy have to work, but despite it taking more effort and organisation, we choose to take him almost everywhere with us.

'We stick together as a family as much as possible (which is a very privileged position to be in  not all families have that luxury!)

She continued: 'Of course its not the easy option for @rokeating and I, but well do whatever it takes for our little guy  we dont want to miss a thing and we dont want him to miss either of us also.

'Not if we can help it. For Cooper to have two parents who are so hands on despite their crazy lifestyle and work schedules is a blessing and it shows in Cooper

Standing up: Taken aback by the remark, Storm wrote a lengthy response to the mean-spirited fan, defending her little boy and referring to herself as a 'fantastic mummy' while also adding that they could 'easily' employ help but don't

Support: She shared: 'We think lucky b****r! We could easily employ nannies or staff to look after our little man while mummy & daddy have to work, but despite it taking more effort and organisation, we choose to take him almost everywhere with us

The TV producer added: 'He is the happiest little baba who very rarely even cries (!) and who has been sleeping through the night since he was 7 weeks old (12hrs a night since he was 4.5 months old!).'

'He can go anywhere, sleep anywhere and his routine is flexible. He is so loved by so many (not to mention his big brother and sisters who live a plane flight away and would never get to see if he didnt travel) and he is so content I think that says it all really.

She explained: 'Must be doing something right heh? Jumping on a plane is an adventure for him and the life experiences he has when he lands in different cities and countries is invaluable. I feel very proud actually. Im a fantastic mummy and I know that in my bones.

Happy: The TV producer added: 'He is the happiest little baba who very rarely even cries (!) and who has been sleeping through the night since he was 7 weeks old (12hrs a night since he was 4.5 months old!)'

Going for it: She continued: 'Of course its not the easy option for @rokeating and I, but well do whatever it takes for our little guy  we dont want to miss a thing and we dont want him to miss either of us also

'My husband is also an incredible father and my heart bursts every time Coopers face lights up when he sees him. Cooper is one very fortunate and lucky little man. If only all children in the world could be so loved and cared for.'

Storm and Ronan regularly take to Instagram with sweet snaps of their young son.

The young family spent the last few weeks enjoying a relaxing holiday down-under which Storm revealed was Cooper's first long-haul flight.

Although Cooper is the couple's first child, Ronan is also dad to Jack, 18, Missy, 16, and Ali, 11, from his previous marriage to Yvonne Connolly.
She plays quirky rubbish tip-dweller Jardis in The Walking Dead, which returned to screens this week for it's eighth season.

And Scottish actress Polyanna McIntosh ditched the rags and scrubbed up beautifully as she attended the screening for the 100th episode of the zombie drama on Sunday night.

But in a scene from a role she played a decade ago, the actress, 38, sheds all clothing altogether - engaging in a very steamy sex scene with not one but two others.

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Very much alive! The Walking Dead's Pollyanna McIntosh STRIPS NAKED and engages in sizzling THREESOME in science fiction sex comedy from 2007

Saucy: In a scene from a role she played a decade ago, the actress, 38, sheds all clothing altogether - engaging in a very steamy sex scene with not one but two others

Starring in science fiction sex comedy sci-fi sex comedy Sex and Death 101 in 2007, Pollyanna is a far cry from the verbally-stilted, oddball role she plays in The Walking Dead.

With dark curly locks, as opposed to her current edgy bob-cut which is a mixture of chestnut and dark blonde, the actress kneels on a bed, topless, engaging in the threeway romp.

She stars in the scene with actress Natassia Malthe and The Mentalist star Simon Baker.

Polyanna and Natassia played Catholic schoolgirls who believe that Simon's character has been 'divinely delivered' to deflower them.

No zombies here: Starring in science fiction sex comedy sci-fi sex comedy Sex and Death 101 in 2007, Pollyanna is a far cry from the verbally-stilted, oddball role she plays in The Walking Dead

Down and dirty: With dark curly locks, as opposed to her current edgy bob-cut which is a mixture of chestnut and dark blonde, the actress kneels on a bed, topless, engaging in the threeway romp

The movie - which was shot in 2007 but released in April 2008 - also starred Winona Ryder, who didn't feature in the scene.

It was written by Daniel Waters who previously worked on the 1988 film Heathers with Winona - who returns this week in season two of Netflix smash series Stranger Things.

The plot revolves around a character named Roderick Blank [Simon Baker] who, on the day of his bachelor party, is e-mailed a list of all the women he has slept with.

While the list has 101 names on it, his fiancee [played by Julie Bowen of Modern Family] is only number 29.

Steamy: The movie - which was shot in 2007 but released in April 2008 - also starred Winona Ryder, who didn't feature in the scene

Corruption: Polyanna and Natassia played Catholic schoolgirls who believe that Simon's character has been 'divinely delivered' to deflower them

He decides to obsessively cancel his wedding and get round to sleeping with the remaining women on the list

Throughout all this, a female vigilante, nicknamed by the media Death Nell [Winona Ryder], has been taking revenge on men who she feels have taken sexual advantage of women who seeks Roderick out in an act of revenge.

The film was panned by critics, being branded 'an unfortunate comedy' and racking up a paltry 24/100 on Metacritic.

Back to the dead: Pollyanna stars as Jardis on The Walking Dead

Pollyanna burst on to the smash hit series in February playing the leader of the Scavengers.

Despite her character's less than glamorous appearance on the show, she looked worlds away as she dazzled on the red carpet celebrating the The Walking Dead's 100th episode with fans at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.

The Scotswoman - who's character is part of a bizarre group of plague survivors - stunned in her full-length silk gown which highlighted her statuesque physique to perfection on Sunday night.

What a difference! Pollyanna McIntosh, 38, looked worlds away as she dazzled on the red carpet celebrating the The Walking Dead's 100th episode with fans at the Greek Theatre on Sunday

Her mauve-hued slinky gown teased at her cleavage with its plunging neckline and sheer mesh panel slashed to her navel.

The spaghetti strapped look showcased her decolletage and toned arms as she tackled the red carpet in style.

Continuing her glamorous display, Pollyanna's floor-length attire featured a thigh-high front slit which exhibited her lean legs while the slinky silhouette hugged her pert posterior.

She continued her demure appearance with a vibrant yellow wrist bag while as she neatly blow dried her crop into a sleek style.

Worlds away: She's burst on to the smash hit series in February playing Jardis, the leader of the Scavengers who have created a camp in a rubbish dump

Sizzling: Her mauve-hued slinky gown teased at her cleavage with its plunging neckline and sheer mesh panel slashed to her navel

Glam gal: The spaghetti strapped look showcased her decolletage and toned arms as she tackled the red carpet in style

The brunette beauty was a fan favourite instantly and became a series regular within months alongside Andrew Lincoln and Lennie James.

As the drama returns to screens for the eighth season on BT in the UK, Pollyanna told the Daily Record that she was terrified of her day on set but she's loved every minute of being apart of the hit series.

She said: 'Its more of a privilege than a pressure. You always have the first-day jitters walking on to such an amazing set like the heaps where Jadis lives. That was just immense.

Hot metal! Pollyanna McIntosh turned heads in a formfitting silk number which plunged to reveal hearty hunks of cleavage

Fan favourite: The brunette beauty was a fan favourite instantly and became a series regular within months alongside Andrew Lincoln and Lennie James

Making a splash: As the drama returns to screens for the eighth season on BT in the UK, Pollyanna told the Daily Record that she was terrified of her day on set but she's loved every minute of being apart of the hit series

'But at the same time, when you see a structure like that, and a group of people like that, you know that every single member of the cast and the crew are important and youre just one small part of making it happen.

Adding: 'You can let yourself get stressed by the pressure but it is so much more fun just to enjoy it. If Id come in and people had been cold, it might have been different. But it was really lovely and so warm.'

Also making an attending the event was actors Norman Reedus and Jeffrey Dean Morgan - who play adversaries Daryl and Negan - looked close-as-can-be at the exclusive event.

Picture perfect: Pollyanna (L) posed with co-star Alanna Masterson
She takes no nonsense from her male colleagues, refusing to ever back down to Simon Cowell on Britain's Got Talent.

And it was Ben Shepherd's turn to feel the wrath of Amanda Holden after he dared to liken her to an 'ogre'.

Bizarrely, the run-in occurred as the 46-year-old presenter was explaining how she had been manhandled by a ghost behind-the-scenes of Shrek the Musical.

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'Shut it!' Ben Shepherd felt the wrath of Amanda Holden after he dared to liken her to an 'ogre' as she spoke about her supernatural experiences behind the scenes at Shrek the Musical in the West End

The blonde - who played Princess Fiona in the West End show - was explaining her supernatural experience to Ben on Tuesday's This Morning.

She said: 'I've had a massive ghost experience. To turn in an ogre, I had to leg it off stage, and put my mask on and be sprayed green.

Again, Ben interrupted her adding: 'Sorry  put the mask on?'

Not taking any lip, Amanda immediately hit back, shouting: 'Shut it!'

Feisty: Bizarrely, the run-in occurred as the 46-year-old presenter was explaining how she had been manhandled by a ghost behind-the-scenes of Shrek the Musical

Green around the gills: Amanda (pictured above with Nigel Lindsay in 2011) was talking about her time in the musical and how she had to rush off stage to put on green paint for Princess Fiona's transformation into an ogre - prompting Ben to jokingly ask if it was a mask

Ghoulish encounter: She went on explain that the ghost which allegedly haunts Drury Lane got in her way - before snubbing her invite to her dressing room

She went on explain that the ghost which allegedly haunts Drury Lane got in her way - before snubbing her invite to her dressing room.

Amanda added: 'I moved out of the way and it felt like a presence, as chunky as Ben is now...

'Then i sat in my dressing room going, "come in"... I don't think he wanted to see me in my underwear.'

She's joining forces with Ben Shepherd to take over presenting duties from Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on This Morning this week.

And Amanda Holden was getting into the spirit of things on Monday morning, taking to her Instagram account to share a sexy snapshot reminiscent of host Holly's trademark social media pose.

The Britain's Got Talent judge looked sensational in a multi-toned red lace dress as she posed in her dressing room, placing one hand on her hip.

Copycat: Amanda has been getting into the spirit of her This Morning hosting duties, sharing a snapshot reminiscent of Holly Willoughby's trademark social media pose

Amanda's multi-toned dress highlighted her tiny waist and was set off with a chic pair of red heels.

The blonde beauty's hair was styled in a sleek style reminiscent of daytime TV favourite Holly.

The presenter's followers picked up on the resemblance, with one eager fan enthusing, 'Oh f**k oh f**k you look delicious on This Morning. Holly who?'

Others enthused: 'Look beautiful Amanda', 'So pretty' and 'Love this dress'.

Red hot: It comes as little surprise that Amanda's look seemed to be straight out of Holly's wardrobe (pictured, right) since the pair share the same stylist, Angie Smith

Fan reaction: Amanda's followers were quick to point out the similarities

Dressed to impress: The TV personality's fans clamored to know where her dress was from

Looking good: The blonde beauty's hair was styled in a sleek style reminiscent of daytime TV favourite Holly

Amanda captioned her social media post: 'Im all Marks and Sparksd up Looking forward to hosting @thismorning until Thursday with the lovely @benshephardofficial '#hairandmakeup @mrvermaak #styling @angiesmithstyle'.

Holly has been taking to Instagram every day in recent weeks, to share her outfits - and her newly slimline figure - with her followers.

Her social media posts have gone down a storm with fans, who have rushed to copy her immaculate ensembles, put together by stylist Angie Smith.
They have been praised for their 'romantic rapport' by the judges on Strictly Come Dancing due to their sizzling dance moves and compatibility on the dancefloor.

And EastEnders star Davood Ghadami and his dance partner Nadiya Bychkova laughed off the idea that they might befall the show's famous 'curse' - which has seen a number of celebrities split from their partners following the show.

The soap actor, 35 - who is happily married to wife of seven years, Isobel - and show newcomer Nadiya - who has a long-term boyfriend - were quizzed about how their partners coped with seeing them dancing together on the BBC ballroom competition.

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Laughing it off: EastEnders star Davood Ghadami and his dance partner Nadiya Bychkova laughed off the idea that they might befall Strictly Come Dancing's famous 'curse' - which has seen a number of celebrities split from their partners following the show

Davood explained: 'As an actor, I'm in intimate situations all the time. My wife is used to it happening.

'I like to separate being on the show and going home and spending time with my family.

'Whether you are a character or you're a dancer, you're doing a job. You really don't have time to think of anything.'

Ukrainian beauty Nadiya also laughed off the idea, insisting that being in close proximity with each other is all part and parcel of the programme.

Davood explained: 'As an actor, I'm in intimate situations all the time. My wife is used to it happening'

He continued: 'Whether you are a character or you're a dancer, you're doing a job. You really don't have time to think of anything'

Connection: They have been praised for their 'romantic rapport' by the judges on Strictly Come Dancing due to their sizzling dance moves and compatibility on the dancefloor

Putting in an appearance: Nadiya was clad in smart red trousers and a checked top

She said: 'My boyfriend is OK with this, he knows I'm a professional dancer, he knows how it works.'

Nadiya caused a stir when she joined Strictly this autumn due to her stunning looks and past Playboy shoot.

Quizzed about what her boyfriend thought of her racy images by presenter Ben Shepherd, Nadiya appeared a little embarrassed.

She replied: 'I'm very proud of my Playboy shoot, I love every photo I did. It's not complicated for us.'

No curse here! Ukrainian beauty Nadiya also laughed off the idea, insisting that being in close proximity with each other is all part and parcel of the programme

She said: 'My boyfriend is OK with this, he knows I'm a professional dancer, he knows how it works'

Demonstration: After revealing they would be performing the rumba this Saturday, Davood showed Ben some of his moves

Mortified: Amanda Holden joked that she wanted to hide behind the sofa at the sight of Ben Shepherd wriggling his hips

The pair teased during their TV appearance that they would be performing the rumba on Saturday's live show.

Davood was a little nervous about the routine, with Nadiya revealing it's one of the most difficult dances for a man to perform.

The soap star - who was surprisingly in the bottom two earlier this month despite receiving one of the top scores - revealed that he has a major rival for his family's support, Jonnie Peacock.

Davood's young daughters Eva, five, and Grace, two, are such big fans of the Paralympic athlete that they insist on casting votes for him as well as their dad.

He enthused: 'My kids are obsessed with it. My daughters hide behind the sofa when I dance!

Tough: Davood was a little nervous about the routine, with Nadiya revealing it's one of the most difficult dances for a man to perform

Rivalry: The soap star - who was surprisingly in the bottom two earlier this month despite receiving one of the top scores - revealed that he has a major rival for his family's support, Jonnie Peacock

Cute: Davood's young daughters Eva, five, and Grace, two, are such big fans of the Paralympic athlete that they insist on casting votes for him as well as their dad

'It's just nerves, they want it to go well! They're such big fans of Jonnie, they see him as a superhero. I've been making him write messages to them!

'They give him at least one vote for every three votes they give me.'

This comes after Davood said his wife Isobel, need not worry about the Strictly Curse because his sex life is on hold until the show is over.

The star revealed that training leaves his body 'aching' so that all he can do of an evening is crawl into bed - and he's even admitted to being so exhausted that on occasion he's forgotten to eat before dozing off.

Fuelling up: Elsewhere, Gemma Atkinson and her dance partner Aljaz Skorjanec were gearing up for another day of rehearsals

Thumbs up: The soap star and Aljaz have been consistent throughout the competition so far

Davood, who scooped his highest score yet of 29 with the Ukranian beauty in the live show last week, told the Sun: 'I haven't got the time or the energy. At the moment, your head is full of steps, beats and timings. Your body is aching.

'I've been working quite late, getting in early. I sometimes forget to eat that's how bad it is. Even my most basic needs are overlooked.'

He added that while he hasn't exactly imposed a full-on sex ban between himself and Isobel, he's fully expecting to have to put all intimacy on hold until the end of his time on the show, which could be as late as mid-December.

Davood, who plays Kush Kazemi in the Walford-based drama, said: 'It's maybe an IOU... You know in the back of your mind that, worst case scenario, it's to the middle of December and not forever.'

No such thing: Davood says his wife of seven years, Isobel (left), need not worry about the Strictly - as he claims he's so tired after rehearsals with Nadiya that his sex life is on hold until the show is over

Aiming high: Davood and Nadiya scooped their highest score yet of 29 in the live show last week

The candid interview comes after judge Bruno Tonioli came under fire for his remarks about the pair's chemistry.

Professional Brendan Cole accused Bruno of 'lowering the tone' by making racy remarks about the dancing companions.

After the pair - who are both married with children - glided across the floor in a Viennese waltz to Jessie Ware's Say You Love Me, Bruno exclaimed: 'I'm always so hot when I watch you two dance.'

Selfie fun: The soap star, 35, revealed that training with the sizzling dancer (both pictured) leaves his body 'aching' so that all he can do of an evening is crawl into bed - and he's even admitted to being so exhausted that on occasion he's forgotten to eat before dozing off

Close: Davood has shared various selfies during his time on Strictly with the former Playboy model. Both are married with children

Time out: Davood added that while he hasn't exactly imposed a full-on sex ban between himself and Isobel, he's fully expecting to have to put all intimacy on hold until he and Nadiya (pictured) finish the show, which could be as late as mid-December

Loving it: Despite previously being accused of 'lowering the tone' by discussing the pair's sexual chemistry, Bruno Tonioli exclaimed 'I'm always so hot when I watch you two dance'

Magical: Davood and Nadiya - who are both married with children - glided across the dancefloor in a Viennese waltz to Jessie Ware's Say You Love Me last Saturday

He added: 'The power of the romantic rapport you have. You really smoulder, you really connect when you dance.'

His comments were made in reaction to Bruno claiming that Davood and Nadiya looked as though they were 'ready to race to the bedroom' following their steamy Samba dance the week before.

Speaking in his Best magazine column, Brendan wrote: 'I didn't approve of Bruno's comment to Davood and Nadiya the other week.

'If it was said about two single people, like Mollie and AJ, then maybe it would have been OK - but both Davood and Nadiya have partners and children.

'Strictly's also a family show - imagine your kid asking you what "race to the bedroom" means?' he added.

'Romantic': Brendan Cole slammed Bruno for 'lowering the tone' with his remarks about the chemistry between the dance partners
Charlize Theron was seen heading out in her gym wear on Monday, after adding her voice to those commenting on the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

The 42-year-old Mad Max star checked her phone as she left her hotel while visiting Montreal in Canada.

Clad in an all-black workout look, the mother-of-two looked serious and focused during her outing.

Working it out: Charlize Theron checks her phone in her gym gear after speaking out against Harvey Weinstein

It is possible she was looking for updates on the scandal which has rocked Hollywood, with Harvey Weinstein accused of sexually assaulting a number of women over a 30-year period.

South African-born Charlize, who is a naturalised U.S. citizen, wrote that Weinstein's victims shouldn't be blamed for not coming forward sooner.

She said via Instagram: 'Although I didn't have a personal experience like this with Harvey Weinstein, I unfortunately cannot say I'm surprised.

'This culture has always existed, not just in Hollywood but across the world. And many men in positions of power have gotten away with it for far too long.

Update: Perhaps she was looking for updates on the scandal which has rocked Hollywood, and left women demanding change

'We cannot blame the victims here. A lot of these women are young, just starting out in their respective fields, and have absolutely no way to stand up to a man with so much influence much greater than theirs. If they speak up, they are shut down and that could be the end of their career.

'This is all a positive step forward in changing that culture, and these young women need to know that they have a support system should anything like this happen to them. And I want you all to know I support you.'

In the wake of the scandal, Weinstein has been sacked from The Weinstein Company and his wife Georgina Chapman has left him.
She starred alongside Judith McGrath in long-running medical drama All Saints.

And in the wake of the veteran actress' passing earlier this week, Home And Away star Georgie Parker, 52, has paid tribute to her former co-star.

Writing for The Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday, Georgie gushed about her friend and colleague, saying 'she left her mark on and off camera'.

'She left her mark on and off camera': Penning a piece for The Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday, Georgie Parker (left) paid tribute to her late All Saints co-star Judith McGrath (right), who passed away this week

'She was very dry, very honest and you knew very quickly where you stood with her. She had a delightfully direct personality. That was one of the things that made her one of those people you remember,' Georgie wrote.

The star added: 'She had a prickly exterior at times, but she had the biggest heart.'

Georgie also praised Judith's acting skills and her love of her family and described her as being a highly 'memorable' type of person and noted: 'She was someone I had enormous fun with'.

Judith, best known for her roles in All Saints, A Country Practice and Prisoner, was 70 when she died, with the cause of death not yet been made public.

The actress was widely known for her role as Yvonne 'Von' Ryan in the Logie-nominated series All Saints and was the only original cast member to star in all 12 seasons.

In 2009, the Brisbane-native opened up about her longtime role on the show in an interview with TV Tonight.

'I did love the show and I loved playing the character,' she said.

Most memorable role: Judith was widely known for playing Yvonne 'Von' Ryan in the Logie-nominated series All Saints

Heartbroken: Perth newsreader Tom Marlow was devastated by the news

Mourning: One fan tweeted her shock

RIP: Another fan gave condolences to Judith's family

Sad: Fans remembered the acclaimed actress' best work

'But there were times when I thought 'Move on Jude, just get on with it.' But it just seemed to roll over.

She continued: 'It's a funny thing. You're there and you think 'I've had enough now.' I thought the character had reached a certain point unless it got reinvented. And of course, they did. They kept reinventing a bit. 'I suppose we all go through that phase, but some people really act upon it.'

Fans flocked to social media to post heartfelt tributes for the late actress.

Tragic: The cause of death has not been made public

'Sad to hear Judith McGrath passed away. Thoughts and prayers to her family and friends,' one fan wrote.

'Just saw the sad news about the passing of Judith McGrath from All Saints - Loved Von, one of the best characters on the show by far xx,' another tweet read.

'I have no words. Utter disbelief. Judith McGrath was an Australian legend. She has left us far too soon. Heartbroken. #JudithMcGrath.'

Acclaimed actress: Judith was best known for her roles in All Saints, A Country Practice and Prisoner




She is often seen flaunting her age-defying figure in a series of bikini-clad snaps.

And Tuesday proved to be no exception for Elizabeth Hurley, 52, as she slipped into a plunging turquoise bikini while continuing her paradise break in the Maldives.

The actress has been keeping fans updated with her idyllic trip and sizzled as she shared yet another snap of herself sporting her scanty swimwear, that made sure to draw attention to her bust, to her Instagram page.

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Age-defying: Elizabeth Hurley, 52, slipped into a plunging turquoise bikini while continuing her paradise break in the Maldives on Tuesday

Posing with her arms raised above her head, the Bedazzled star smouldered down the lens of the camera as she showcased her youthful looks and jaw-dropping physique.

Along with her cleavage, Elizabeth teased a look at her taut stomach and displayed her flawless complexion by opting for a pared back, yet sun-kissed, make-up look that came complete with a slick of mascara and a nude pink lip.

Her lightened locks fell around her shoulders in a sultry dampened style, with her tresses swept over to one side in tousled beachy waves.

Modelling her own Elizabeth Hurley Beach design, the star added alongside her stunning selfie: 'Rise & Shine.'

Bikini babe: The actress was back to her old figure-flaunting tricks as she highlighted her enviable frame in a daring bikini in a short Instagram video on Monday of her emerging out of the sea

Her latest social media upload is the latest in a string of holiday snaps shared by Elizabeth, as she soaks up the sunshine at the One&Only Reethi Rah resort in the Maldives.

In another post, Elizabeth was back to her old figure-flaunting tricks as she highlighted her enviable frame in a daring bikini in a short Instagram video.

The Royals star sizzled in the red two-piece - another addition to her swimwear brand Elizabeth Hurley Beach.

Red hot: Elizabeth sizzled in the red two-piece which appeared to be the latest addition to her swimwear brand Elizabeth Hurley Beach during her latest idyllic break to one of the luxurious One&Only Resorts

Elizabeth highlighted her ample cleavage in the halterneck bikini top as she slowly walked out of the crystal clear water with confidence.

She continued to display her taut stomach and narrow waist as she slipped on a pair of skimpy swimwear bottoms which hugged her slender hips.

The age-defying Hollywood star worked her wet locks off her face while she shielded her eyes from the envy-inducing rays in her trendy aviator shades.

After successfully walking up the stairs seductively, she finished off the skin-flashing clip by blowing a kiss towards the camera.

Walk this way: She continued to display her taut stomach and narrow waist as she slipped on a pair of skimpy swimwear bottoms which hugged her slender hips

Chest a glimpse: The Bedazzled star highlighted her ample cleavage in the halterneck bikini top as she slowly walked out of the crystal clear water with confidence

Her sultry display comes after Elizabeth insisted she has no desire for son Damian, 15 who she shares with ex Steve Bing, to become a celebrity due to feeling 'trapped by fame'.

The Austin Powers star told The Daily Telegraph that she would not want Damian to garner the attention attached to being a star, despite his role as Prince Hansel von Liechtenstein in her E! series The Royals.

Elizabeth, who soared to fame in the Nineties while dating Hugh Grant, has a famously close bond with her son, making her concerns understandable although his exposure to the limelight so far could make her quest a mean feat.

Sealed with a kiss: After successfully walking up the stairs seductively, she finished off the skin-flashing clip by blowing a kiss towards the camera

She told the publication of the downsides of fame, while highlighting the attention attracted by being instantly recognisable: 'I certainly don't want a child of mine to be famous. It's the worst thing to be trapped in your house and not be able to leave.'

Atop her concerns, Elizabeth is adamant Damian doesn't get embarrassed by his mother even when she sings or dances around him, yet reveals the only time he is left red-faced by his parent is when his teachers want to bond with the fashion icon.

She went on: 'On the whole Damian's not embarrassed. Most people are embarrassed when their parents sing, or dance, or wear dresses. He loves all that, but he doesn't like me being too jokey with his teachers.

Out of the spotlight: The 52-year-old Bedazzled star told The Daily Telegraph that she would not want Damian to garner the attention attached to being a star, despite his role as Prince Hansel von Liechtenstein in her E! series The Royals

Dad: Damian's father is Elizabeth's brief flame Steve Bing (pictured in 2006)

'Maybe it's because we're talking to teachers but it always makes me laugh because there's so little one can do as a controlling parent wanting to help your children. You can't make them sit and learn their biology drawings.'

Elizabeth is best known for her modelling contract with Estee Lauder, her relationship with Hugh and her starring role in Austin Powers.

She has had her fair share of high-profile relationships, spending over a decade on the arm of Hugh.

It was her appearance alongside the British thespian at the 1994 premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral that shot her to fame thanks to her her barely- there safety pinned Versace dress, which earned her millions of admirers and an Estee Lauder contract.

The two split in 2000 however but remain friends, and over the next three years Hurley was rumored to be with a number of men, most notably with Stephen Bing.

In 2002, Hurley gave birth to a son Damian with the billionaire businessman. Her first and only marriage was in 2007 to Indian businessman Arun Nayar, with the two divorcing four years later.
He was absent from the Strictly Come Dancing live show for the first time in 13 years last Saturday.

And whilst Tess Daly revealed that Bruno Tonioli was unable to appear due to a 'a very busy work schedule', the Italian judge, 61, found some time to let loose in Los Angeles on Monday.

Soaking up the nightlife with Lizzie Cundy, the star seemed in excellent spirits on the outing.

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Loving life: Bruno Tonioli was unable to appear on Strictly due to a 'a very busy work schedule', but the Italian judge, 61, found some time to let loose in Los Angeles on Monday

Bruno - who had skipped Strictly due to a clash with the show's US equivalent Dancing With The Stars - let loose after filming as he enjoyed dinner with friends.

Clad in all white, the star wore his shirt unbuttoned and opted for a pair of fitted trousers to finish off his ensemble.

Chatting away and puffing on a cigarette, the star seemed to be making the most of his downtime ahead of next week's Halloween special on Strictly.

Flamboyant: The star seemed in excellent spirits as he partied with pals and threw his arms in the air with wild abandon whilst out with his friends

It takes two: Soaking up the nightlife with Lizzie Cundy, the star seemed in excellent spirits on the outing. With Lizzie grabbing her pal for a hug during the night out

Leggy lady! Lizzie dazzled in a cream mini dress with a lace inset whilst she boosted her frame with a pair of tasseled black heels and an oversized clutch bag

Despite simultaneously working on SCD and DWTS, the star had never previously missed a show, leaving fans devastated at his absence.

A BBC spokesman told Mail Online: 'As was always the plan, Bruno Tonioli is not on the judging panel this weekend due to a very busy work schedule.

'He will be back as normal for our Halloween special and the rest of the series.

Loving it: Bruno - who had skipped Strictly due to a clash with the show's US equivalent Dancing With The Stars - let loose after filming as he enjoyed dinner with friends

Cream of the crop: Clad in all white, the star wore his shirt unbuttoned and opted for a pair of fitted trousers to finish off his ensemble

A source told the website Bruno couldn't move his commitment, saying:'They've known for some time but it's a new situation for them to be in with a judge down.'

The popular judge was not replaced, with head honcho Shirley Ballas, along with Craig Revel-Horwood and Darcey Bussell judging as a trio.

Bruno juggles his judging responsibilities on Strictly with his job as a panellist on the US version of the hit show Dancing With The Stars alongside former head judge Len Goodman, which airs at the same time as the British show.

Holy smokes: Chatting away and puffing on a cigarette, the star seemed to be making the most of his downtime ahead of next week's Halloween special on Strictly

This involves him travelling to Los Angeles every week where he spends three days before flying back to film Strictly on the Saturday.

The resilient star has followed this gruelling schedule for 12 years.

His presence was missed on the weekend, although fellow judge Craig attempted to recreate his presence by mimicking the flamboyant star.

Yet acerbic Craig got his comeuppance and had viewers in hysterics as he fell off his chair while carrying out a hilarious impression.

Off he goes: The star slipped into his car as he headed home after the night on the town

Last puff: Bruno finished off his cigarette before hopping into his car and heading out
Bill Murray is doing what he can to help hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico.

The 67-year-old Ghostbusters actor was spotted accepting cash in Washington DC on Monday with all the money going to Puerto Rican charities. In exchange, the fans received his autograph.

The best friend of George Clooney set the minimum contribution at $20 and turned away one fellow who offered only $3 as seen in a video shared by TMZ.

Bills for Murray: 67-year-old Ghostbusters actor Bill Murray was spotted accepting cash in Washington D.C on Monday, with all the money going to Puerto Rican charities

The veteran actor and often eccentric dresser was decked out in navy overalls with tartan braces over a black and gray t-shirt.

Murray looked comfortable in sneakers and a beanie. Around his neck he wore a pair of Clic magnetic reading glasses.

As the Groundhog Day star signed, autograph seekers jostled for the actor's attention. As one fan grew particularly impatient, Murray asked him: 'Hang onto your trousers will you, fella?'

A style of his own: The veteran actor and often eccentric dresser was decked out in navy overalls with tartan braces over a black and gray t-shirt

Another fan handed over a note, not expecting an autograph and while the Academy Award nominated actor took the cash, he didn't seem pleased, saying: 'Five dollars? That's all you've got?'

Another fan had even less, offering just three singles, and Murray wasn't having it.

'Three dollars?' quipped the funny man. 'Alright, go get a job and come back.'

Comfort at any price: Murray looked comfortable in sneakers and a beanie. Around his neck he wore a pair of Clic magnetic reading glasses

The actor is known for doing unpredictable things as he engaged with his fans.

Earlier this month, Murray was at a Chicago Cubs game when two spectators - Robbie Schloss and his wife Kirsten - asked for the star's help in notifying their parents that they are expecting their first child in April.

Robbie posted a video on his Instagram page which began by showing him and his wife before quickly panning to Murray.

'Hey, I got news for you ... youre going to be grandparents!' Murray says while pointing at the camera.
She is one of the the best known actresses in the world.

And though she is not on set filming a big movie, Angelina Jolie's days are as busy as ever.

The 42-year-old actress was spotted bringing her daughter Vivienne to a Karate class in Los Angeles on Monday.

On-the-go: Angelina Jolie was spotted heading to dinner at Umeda Sushi in Los Angeles on Monday night with a male friend

Just the two of us: Earlier in the day the 42-year-old actress was spotted bringing her daughter Vivienne to a Karate class while carrying her black Bancroft leather satchel from the Transeason 2017 Michael Kors Collection

Then hours later, the stunner emerged in a much dressier outfit as she headed to dinner at Umeda Sushi with Vice Chairman of NBCUniversal Ronald Meyer.

Angelina rocked all-black including a silky top featuring a lacy neckline, trousers, heels and blazer.

Her signature raven-colored tresses were worn down and tucked behind her ears.

She contrasted her porcelain skin with bold eye make-up and a swipe of magenta lip.

Stunning: Angelina rocked all-black including a silky top featuring a lacy neckline, trousers, heels and blazer as the older mystery man walked with his arm around her

It didn't seem like it was a romantic outing but the 73-year-old American entertainment talent executive did have his arm around Angelina as they left the restaurant.

Earlier in the day Angelina looked happy to be with her nine-year-old daughter as she picked her up from a martial arts class.

The Oscar-winner rocked a grey robe coat over a black top, trousers, and shoes combination.

She accessorized with a black Bancroft leather satchel from the Transeason 2017 Michael Kors Collection with matching aviator shades.

Her raven-colored locks were put in a ponytail as she wore minimal make-up.

Supportive: Earlier in the day Angelina looked happy to be with her nine-year-old daughter as she picked her up from a martial arts class

Vivienne looked adorable in a green T-shirt tucked into the white pants from her karate gi along with comfy loafers.

In addition to Vivienne she has five other children including Shiloh, Zahara, Pax , Knox and Maddox Jolie-Pitt.

This comes just days after Jolie disclosed that she was but one of his many intended victims, although she appeared to have escaped unscathed.

She revealed was promoting her film Playing By Heart in 1998 when Weinstein made unwanted advances on the then 23-year-old in a hotel room.

Looking good: The Oscar-winner rocked a grey robe coat over a black top, trousers, and shoes combination

'I had a bad experience with Harvey Weinstein in my youth, and as a result, chose never to work with him again and warn others when they did,' Jolie told the New York Times.

'This behavior towards women in any field, any country is unacceptable.'

Hollywood is still reeling after an investigative piece by The New York Times and The New Yorker earlier this month uncovered numerous allegations of sexual harassment and assault against Weinstein over several decades.

Actresses such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Beckinsale, Ashley Judd, Cara Delevigne, Heather Graham and Mira Sorvino have come forward to give their personal accounts of harassment and abuse of power by Weinstein.
Matthew McConaughey has been acting in films for nearly 30 years.

But the 47-year-old Dallas Buyers Club actor still looks like a matinee idol as he was seen touching down at the Galeao International Airport in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, with wife Camila Alves.

The two were headed to the vow renewal of music manager Guy Oseary and his wife of six years Michelle Alves, who is not believed to be related to Camila. Also at the event were Madonna, Ashton Kutcher, Anthony Kiedis and Flea of The Red Hot Chilli Peppers and David Arquette.

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In transit: Matthew McConaughey spotted on Tuesday as they arrived for a visit to Brazil, walking through Galeao International Airport in Rio De Janeiro

Matthew, 47, left a few buttons of his white shirt undone and bared a bit of his tanned chest as he walked beside his wife.

He hung a pair of spectacles from his highest done-up button. The Academy Award-winning actor modeled charcoal trousers and a sand-colored pair of flip flops.

Meanwhile, Camila matched a lacy blouse with a pair of solid white trousers that were hemmed at about mid-calf.

A necklace dangled down to her midriff, and she accessorized the look further with tortoiseshell cat-eye shades and off-white drop earrings.

The traveling life: Matthew, 47, left a few buttons of his white shirt undone and bared a bit of his tanned chest as he walked beside his wife

Once they got out into town, Matthew - who married Camila in 2012 - was glimpsed up on a balcony while chowing down on an apple.

The couple have got three children - nine-year-old son Levi, seven-year-old daughter Vida and four-year-old son Livingston.

Before heading south to Rio from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Camila posted an Instagram video on Monday teasing her upcoming travel.

'Okay, Chicago, were saying goodbye at the airport, riding the cart,' she said, before turning the camera to the driver, who waved.

Snacking: Once they got out into town, Matthew - who married Camila in 2012 - was glimpsed up on a balcony chowing down on an apple

The lovebirds: The two were headed to the vow renewal of music manager Guy Oseary and his wife of six years Michelle Alves, who is not believed to be related to Camila; here Guy and Michelle are seen with their three kids in 2013 in Malibu

'Getting to the gate, heading international-bound now. Where do you think I'm going next?' the Itambacuri native said with a wink. 'Huh?'

Matthew had talked about his family's trips to Brazil last December on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, explaining they were heading there over Christmas.

He said he was visiting Brazil 'cause my wife's from there, we go over there to see her family. We've done it many times.'

Ready to go: Before heading south to Rio from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Camila posted an Instagram video teasing her upcoming travel

On the go: 'Okay, Chicago, were saying goodbye at the airport, riding the cart,' she said, before turning the camera to the driver, who waved

The movie star explained 'we go over, we get the fastest four-cylinder van we can find and load it up and we have to - we go house to house and throw all the kids, and all of us are in one room, and we work it out.'

He added: 'I think last time, we slept, the five of us, on a couple of twin beds every place we were at. We worked it out.'

He has been to Brazil 'only four or five times,' he admitted. 'Yes, I haven't been that often, but we've covered almost all of Brazil, and we just mainly, for the holidays, have to get back, see her family on her dad's side, her mom's side.'
His estranged wife Melissa was pictured enjoying a date with Love Island star and athlete Theo Campbell in London this week, before going on This Morning to open up about her heartbreak following her husband's affair.

And in the latest move to their very public relationship breakdown, Jeremy Meeks, 33, has now introduced billionaire girlfriend Chloe Green, 26, to his 7-year-old son Jeremy Junior.

The former felon turned model was seen putting on a PDA-filled display with the British Topshop heiress, as his adorable son joined them for lunch at the Ivy in LA.

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Meeting the family: Jeremy Meeks, 33, has now introduced billionaire girlfriend Chloe Green, 26, to his 7-year-old son Jeremy Junior

In a display that will surely add a further blow to estranged wife Melissa's heartbreak, Jeremy was seen puckering up to Chloe outside the plush eatery.

Beaming as they waited for their car to be driven around, they weren't shy about cosying up in front of cameras, with Jeremy embracing his mini-me son.

The move comes just days after Melissa opened up about her heartache on This Morning, after flying over to London to enjoy a date with Theo Campbell.

Getting serious: The former felon turned model was seen putting on a PDA-filled display with the British Topshop heiress, as his adorable son joined them for lunch at the Ivy in LA

Mother-of-three Melissa broke down in tears during an emotional chat with This Morning hosts Ben Shepherd and Amanda Holden on Monday, confessing that she still misses her husband of eight years despite his infidelity.

She said: 'He was an amazing husband, honestly, when I think about it I still get emotional. It's still very raw. We had a really good life together.'

Melissa's voice broke as she recalled Jeremy confessing his infidelity to her this June, in the aftermath of the pictures of Chloe draped all over him during a yacht photoshoot.

Raw: His estranged wife Melissa went on This Morning this week to open up about her heartbreak following her husband's affair

Raw: In a display that will surely add a further blow to estranged wife Melissa's heartbreak, Jeremy was seen puckering up to Chloe outside the plush eatery

The nurse said: 'He was just apologetic for how things came out and how hurt I was by it.

'I don't really think there's any denying it based on the photos that were out there... That's my husband of 8/9 years, I love him deeply, I still do. It's very hard when I think about what happened.

'I wish I still had my husband to go home to... but I don't believe there is any hope,' she added.

Although Melissa and Jeremy split on bad terms, the pair are doing their best to be civil for the sake of their children.

She declared: 'He still sees the kids. They're still very involved with each other. That's still positive for the children.'

Oblivious: Beaming as they waited for their car to be driven around, they weren't shy about puckering up in front of cameras, with Jeremy embracing his mini-me son

Emotional: Mother-of-three Melissa broke down in tears during an emotional chat with This Morning hosts Ben Shepherd and Amanda Holden on Monday, confessing that she still misses her husband of eight years despite his infidelity

Despite her heartbreak she has thrown herself into a fresh start, undergoing an extensive makeover, from new blonde locks to an extremely intimate procedure, in a bid to move on from her broken marriage.

At the beginning of October Melissa, a natural brunette, stepped out with newly blonde locks in Los Angeles at the end of an extensive makeover, which included eyebrow and eyelash treatments, a cryotherapy session, and even a 'vaginal tightening' performed by a plastic surgeon.

She also had her eyebrows microbladed during a treatment favored by stars such as Madonna and Bella Thorne, which makes the brows look neater and fuller.

Former flames: The mother-of-three, who stayed with felon-turned-model Jeremy throughout his stint in prison, put on a brave face as she kicked off the new chapter in her life

His new muse: Melissa, 38, was left heartbroken when photos surfaced of former felon Jeremy, 33, canoodling on a yacht with British billionaire heiress Chloe Green, 26 (pictured above)

Jeremy and Chloe took their controversial romance a step further last month, when he met her mum aboard a luxury yacht in Monaco.

At the beginning of the month they were forced to deny engagement rumours, after she flashed a huge rock on her wedding finger in a series of confusing snapchats. but made sure she kept her ring finger hidden.

The duo have since been spotted on a series of sun-soaked holidays together, even appearing together at various public events, cementing their relationship status.

Despite the shockwaves their romance caused after the couple were spotted canoodling on a yacht in Turkey while Jeremy was still married to mother-of-three Melissa Meeks, the duo's relationship appears to be going from strength to strength.

Jeremy began August by publicly parading his romance with heiress Chloe as they enjoyed carnival during a sunny Barbados holiday, his estranged wife Melissa Meeks appeared to take their continuous insensitivity in her stride as she took to Instagram to show off her sizzling physique soon after.

The brave nurse appeared to be beginning a post break-up body make-over, posing in her underwear as she showed off her already enviable figure.

Moving on: Jeremy's estranged wife Melissa took to Instagram to show off her sizzling physique last month as she appeared to be beginning a post break-up body make over last month

Dressed in a black thong, the nurse proudly displayed her toned derriere and flat stomach, teasing a glimpse of her red lace bra.

'Day 1. Week 1. #letsseehowthisgoes', she captioned the racy snap.

And Melissa garnered an influx of supportive messages from followers, who slammed the actions of Jeremy- who Melissa stayed with during his lengthy prison stint.

And despite staying maintaining a largely dignified silence over her estranged husband's actions, in July Melissa gave a rare insight into her life post-Jeremy Meeks, as she took to Instagram in a lengthy tirade.

The mother-of-three, who shares a seven-year-old son with the 33-year-old felon turned model, let rip just days after he continued to parade his romance with Chloe.

Taking to Instagram, the nurse shared a snapchot which read: 'I fed mouths that talked sh** about me. I wiped tears from the same people that caused mine. Picked up people that tried to knock me down. Did favours for those who couldn't do sh** for me. Been there for the ones that left me. Crazy? Maybe.'

Mingling with the A list: The model mingled with the likes of superstar rapper Nicki Minaj in Cannes in May- when he reportedly met Chloe

Proving she was taking the high road, the brave beauty concluded: 'But I don't lose myself in the hatred of others. I continue to be me because I can't change who I am. Life ain't easy but through the bullsh** I remain solid. Because I know god got big plans for me.'

'Saw this and felt how REAL it was, so I wanted to share it... #haveablessedday #remember #keepitsolid', she captioned the picture.

And as Chloe and Jeremy engaged in another public round of PDA, wife Melissa finally removed reference to Jeremy on her Instagram bio.

Previously describing herself as 'Wife to Jeremy Meeks' along with a ring emoji, the pretty nurse removed reference to him, keeping the remainder of the bio as 'Blessed beyond belief.. Dedicated to everything I do... Me and my Fam'.

Jeremy sent shock waves across the internet when pictures emerged of him kissing Chloe Green on a yacht in Turkey in June.

Famous friends: Jeremy mingled with socialite Paris Hilton as he modelled for Philip Plein

The duo reportedly met during the Cannes Film Festival in May, where Jeremy was modelling for Phillip Plein.

And in July Jeremy filed for legal separation from mother-of-three Melissa, who he shares her youngest son with.

He was married to the nurse, who stayed with him throughout his stint in prison, for eight years.

She later told the Mail of her devastation, admitting that her husband had been seduced by the glamour of his newfound modelling career.

I know it takes two to tango but she knew he was married. To me, thats unforgivable. My whole world has been torn apart by this. What do I tell our children? My heart is broken.

What sort of woman would do something like this to another woman? My marriage wasnt perfect but I thought it could be saved, until this happened.

Of course Im angry at her. What she did is unforgivable. And Im angry at him too. What they did destroyed my entire world.

Life of luxury: Meeks sent tongues wagging after pictures emerged of him kissing British Topshop heiress Chloe Green on a yacht in Turkey in June

Did either of them think about the children and how this will affect them? Theyre the innocent victims in this. And so am I.

Melissa is mother to his biological child Jeremy Jr, seven, and Robert, 11, Melissas son from a previous relationship. She also has a daughter, 16-year-old Ellie, and says both stepchildren consider Meeks a father figure.

Meeks and Chloe, who is heir to her father Sir Philip's billions, were pictured sharing the intimate kiss aboard a 112,000-a-week yacht in Bodrum.

At the time he was still with his wife of eight years, who was seemingly unaware of his new romance until pictures surfaced.

And fans quickly turned on the duo, accusing Chloe of breaking up a marriage.

Chloe was soon forced to delete her Instagram, after followers trolled a gloating post she shared as she snuggled up to married Jeremy.

However she since returned to the social media site, changing her settings to private.

Meeks too has edited his account, deleting all photographs of him and Melissa, which has not gone down with the fans who fell in love with his good looks after his California mugshot went viral in 2014.

Staying mum: Melissa has stayed quiet on her heartbreak, concentrating on raising her three children (pictured with Bobby and Jeremy junior this month)

Meeks, whose looks have earned him a huge fan base, made his first official modelling appearance at New York fashion week this year, and has certainly turned his life around in an impressive way since his release from prison.

However his journey to stardom hasn't been all smooth-sailing, after he was recently barred from entry to the UK after arriving at London's Heathrow airport from New York.

The California native shot to fame in 2014 when the Stockton Police Department posted his mugshot on their website, following his arrest for gang activity and a misdemeanour charge of resisting/obstructing justice.

The photo promptly went viral, with internet users dubbing him 'the hottest convict ever'.
Red Hot Chili Peppers rocker Flea kept it au naturel on Tuesday as he hung out in Rio de Janeiro.

Enjoying a lazy morning in his hotel suite the 55-year-old Australian-American musician certainly appeared relaxed as he walked around in his birthday suit.

The tattooed bassist showed off his his toned physique as he popped out onto his balcony to scope out the view.

Letting it all hang out: Red Hot Chili Peppers rocker Flea checked out the view from his balcony in Rio de Janeiro in his birthday suit on Tuesday

Good morning! The 55-year-old bassist showed off his tattoos as he scoped out the view of the beach from his balcony

The star - real name Michael Balzary - appeared a little bleary eyed and displayed messy just-out-of bed locks.

A host of stars are in Brazil to attend the vow renewal ceremony of Madonna's manager Guy Oseary and his model wife.

Flea was spotting donning some shorts before joining bandmate Anthony Kiedis, 54 for a frolick on Ipanema Beach with other guests including Ashton Kutcher and director-producer Spike Jonze, 48.

The men didn't seem to mind the rain as they jumped into the waves and larked about.

Cheeky! Flea - real name Michael Balzary - is in Brazil for the vow renewal ceremony of Guy Oseary and his wife Michelle

Guy, 45, who produced The Twilight film franchise, had cameras on hand to capture every moment of his special day which will see him renew his vows to wife of six years Michelle.

In the morning, he posted a touching Instagram tribute to Michelle, captioned: 'Today is a special day in my life. My marriage to my Brazilian princess.. A new and exciting chapter begins in just a few hours.. RIO-October 24-2017,'

And he added the hashtags #Luckyguy #LOVE #Family #ONE, saying: 'I found this photo of Michelle from a show she did many years ago.'

Rocking it: Red Hot Chili Peppers band mates Anthony Kiedis (left) and Flea surveyed the scene on the beach before they braved the ocean

Who needs a shower?: The pair appeared to be getting wet enough in the rain before taking a dip in the sea

The couple have three children, Oliver, 11, Mia, eight, and Levi, five.

Other guests expected at the glitzy $250,000 vow renewal include supermodel Helena Christensen, Fifty Shades star Dakota Johnson, Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher and his wife, Sara MacDonald, rap mogul Sean 'P Diddy' Combs, as well as comedian Chris Rock and his glamorous girlfriend Megalyn Echikunwoke.

British DJ Paul Oakenfold is tipped to perform at the reception.

The couple will renew their vows in a magnificent ceremony at the foot of Rio's famous Christ The Redeemer statue, reportedly stumping up $100,000 to rent the location for the day.

Ready to rock: Later on Flea changed into some snazzy trousers and a grey shirt

He's not getting wet! Matthew McConaughey watched the soggy fun from his balcony at the five-star Fasano in Rio, which Guy has rented out entirely for his celebrity guests

Jet-set couple: The actor and his wife Camila Alves were wearing white linen ensembles as they arrived at Rio de Janerio Airport earlier in the day

Girls' day: The ladies seemed happy and relaxed as they prepared for the magnificent ceremony, which will take place at the foot of Rio's famous Christ The Redeemer statue

And they have paid $150,000 to hire the entire five-star Fasano Hotel in Rio as the place to stay and party with their famous friends.

Money is no object for Guy who, aside from his successful music and film projects, set up A-Grade Investments with his pal and LA neighbor Ashton.

It has reportedly turned $30million into $250million after they put money into tech startups including AirBnB and Uber.

Flea is married to model Frankie Rayder who has 11-year-old daughter Sunny with.

He also has a 29-year-old daughter, Clara, with ex-wife Loesha Zeviar.

Fun in the sun: Actor David Arquette, 46, also looked relaxed as he seemed to enjoy a FaceTime session from his balcony at the luxury hotel

Star-studded: Actor and comedian Chris Rock appeared on the balcony of the luxury beachfront hotel, which the couple have paid $150,000 to hire for their famous friends

What a view! Rock was joined on the balcony by his actress wife Megalyn Echikunwoke, 34
She's best-known for her role as vampire Alice Cullen in the Twilight franchise.

But Ashley Greene looked positively heavenly as she ran errands with a female friend in Los Angeles on Monday.

The actress, 30, wore a stylish white blouse from Faithfull the Brand, tying the front of its hem into a knot and offering a glimpse of toned midriff.

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Girl on the go: Ashley Greene looked worlds away from her Twilight vampire alter-ego as she ran errands with a female friend in Los Angeles on Monday

The screen star swept her blonde hair back into a bun, accentuating her features with flattering make-up and a slick of pillar box red lipstick.

Ashley complemented her top with a faded pair of powder blue loose-fitting jeans.

Accessorizing the casual daytime look with a bulging black handbag, she sported a sensible pair of nude flat ballet pumps.

California girl: The actress, 30, wore a stylish Faithfull the Brand blouse, tying the front of its hem into a knot and offering a glimpse of toned midriff

Running errands: The screen star swept her blonde hair back into a bun, accentuating her features with flattering make-up and a slick of pillar box red lipstick

Ashley's upcoming film releases include Max & Me, an animated feature about a real Polish friar who gave up his life to save someone else at Auschwitz.

The actress will also appear amid a cast including Oscar winner Mary Steenburgen and Once Upon A Time star Andrew J. West in a comedy movie called Antiquities.

She is additionally featuring opposite Scott Adkins and Ray Stevenson in a thriller called Accident Man, in which Scott plays a hit man.

Work it: Ashley complemented her top with a faded pair of powder blue loose-fitting jeans

Spot the ring: Ashley is engaged to Paul Khoury, 42, who popped the question last December at Bridal Veil Falls on the North Island of New Zealand

Ashley is engaged to Paul Khoury, 42, who popped the question last December at Bridal Veil Falls on the North Island of New Zealand.

She told People of the proposal: 'He's always extremely romantic. We try and mix it up and make sure that were adventurous - that part hasnt really changed for us.'

But the actress said the happy couple won't be rushing down the aisle anytime soon.

Ashley added: 'Were definitely not rushing the engagement. I think the biggest thing for us is that we dont want any part of this to be negative or stressful. Were going to figure it out as we go.'

She quipped: 'Im sure my mother is already planning.'

Chic: Accessorizing the casual daytime look with a bulging black handbag, she sported a sensible pair of nude flat ballet pumps
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On Saturday, Justin Bieber gave his massive 269.6M social media following a glimpse inside his new Beverly Hills bachelor pad as well as his newly-tattooed torso.

The 23-year-old Grammy winner is currently renting the six-bedroom, five-bathroom mansion located in celeb favorite neighborhood Trousdale Estates for $55K a month - according to TMZ.

The backyard of the 8,600-square-foot property features an infinity pool and stunning views of the hilly, SoCal landscape.

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TV in the bathroom: On Saturday, Justin Bieber gave his massive 269.6M social media following a glimpse inside his new Beverly Hills bachelor pad as well as his newly-tattooed torso

Champagne wishes and caviar dreams! The 23-year-old Grammy winner is currently renting the six-bedroom, five-bathroom mansion located in celeb favorite neighborhood Trousdale Estates for $55K a month - according to TMZ

The Castle Place home also boasts large floor-to-ceiling windows, a private movie theater, a gym, an office, a hot tub, a spa, and a fire pit.

The cocky Canadian crooner showed off his posh new swimming hole as well as his latest ink (over 60 tatts and counting) in an Instagram video posted Saturday.

Bang Bang Tattoo's Keith McCurdy literally spent '26 hours over three consecutive days' branding Bieber right on the veranda of the expensive house.

Serene: The backyard of the 8,600-square-foot property features an infinity pool and stunning views of the hilly, SoCal landscape

Not bad! The Castle Place home also boasts large floor-to-ceiling windows, a private movie theater (pictured), a gym, an office, a hot tub, a spa, and a fire pit

Guided torso tour: The cocky Canadian crooner showed off his posh new swimming hole as well as his latest ink (over 60 tatts and counting) in an Instagram video posted Saturday

'You're tough as nails man!' Bang Bang Tattoo's Keith McCurdy literally spent '26 hours over three consecutive days' branding Bieber right on the veranda of the expensive house

'[It's] the most I've ever tattooed anyone in my 13-year career,' the celebrity tattoo artist wrote on Instagram.

'You're tough as nails man! Thank you for the trust.'

But Justin's fancy new digs is clearly lacking in security as an unwelcome 40-something woman managed to wander over there three times over the past week.

Front view: But Justin's fancy new digs is clearly lacking in security as an unwelcome 40-something woman managed to wander over there three times over the past week

Scary Belieber: According to TMZ, the Friends hitmaker was home when the lady was arrested and booked for trespassing on Monday after his security team detained her outside the property around 7:30pm

Master bedroom: The Hanes X Karla model would likely prefer to host his rumored flame the Mexican-born, Colombian-raised actress Paola Paulin from HBO's Ballers

Hard at work: The skateboard enthusiast will likely enjoy holding business meetings in his office featuring ethnic decor and a zebra-skin rug

What's cooking? The Killing Hasselhoff actor can host friends for formal dinner in the dining area or casual meals right on the large kitchen's marble counter

Working it out: Justin can work on sculpting his six-pack abs and bicep muscles in the private gym

According to TMZ, the Friends hitmaker was home when the lady was arrested and booked for trespassing on Monday after his security team detained her outside the property around 7:30pm.

The Hanes X Karla model would likely prefer to host his rumored flame the Mexican-born, Colombian-raised actress Paola Paulin from HBO's Ballers.

Bieber has maintained a low profile, focusing on his health, after canceling the remaining 14 concerts of his 150-date, $256.3M-grossing Purpose World Tour on July 24 'due to unforeseen circumstances.'
They're putting their best foot forward in a last ditch attempt to win Sophie Monk's heart.

And as things heat up on The Bachelorette so has the temperature, with rumoured winner Stu Laundy hitting the pool while on the Gold Coast earlier this month.

Ahead of Thursday night's finale, Daily Mail Australia takes a look at The Bachelorette finalists beach bodies.

Future Magic Mike? Apollo's physique earnt him an offer to join male stripper revue Thunder From Down Under

Apollo Jackson

Apollo Jackson's ripped physique is hard to miss, with Sophie gawking over his bulging muscles during a photo shoot earlier this season.

The magician's enviable body even earned him work as The Hulk's stunt double in forthcoming superhero flick Thor: Ragnarok, and an offer to join male stripper revue Thunder From Down Under.

Impressive: The magician's enviable body even earned him work as The Hulk's stunt double in forthcoming superhero flick Thor: Ragnarok

Took her breath away: Apollo's ripped physique is hard to miss, with Sophie gawking over his bulging muscles during a photo shoot earlier this season

The 24-year-old previously revealed he lost half his body weight after suffering a heart attack at age 22, previously tipping the scales at 150kg.

'I went through a period where I was crazy stressed, so I ended up overweight,' Apollo told NW Magazine.

'I put on 40 kilos, weighing 150kg, was mega-stressed, not happy and went through a bit of depression. Then I had a heart attack.'

Overcame health battle: The 24-year-old previously revealed he lost half his body weight after suffering a heart attack at age 22, previously tipping the scales at 150kg

Keeps fit: Jarrod stays trim by regularly performing manual labour tasks around his vineyard

Works out: Vineyard manager Jarrod Woodgate, 31, is no stranger to staying fit after spending 12 years serving in the army

Jarrod Woodgate

Vineyard manager Jarrod Woodgate, 31, is no stranger to staying fit after spending 12 years serving in the army.

After leaving the armed services, Jarrod got to work on his family vineyard, regularly performing manual labour around the property.

Like Apollo Jarrod has also battled with his weight, revealing to OK! Magazine he used to weigh 130kg.

Likes the outdoors: Photos shared to Jarrod's social media accounts show him spending time by the beach

Health overhaul: Like Apollo Jarrod (pictured left) has also battled with his weight, revealing to OK! Magazine he used to weigh 130kg

Kicking back: The wealthy businessman and rumoured winner was earlier this month spotted relaxing poolside at the Palazzo Versace

Stu Laundy

Father of four Stu Laundy is no stranger to relaxing by the water in luxurious five star locations.

The pub millionaire owns super yacht Waltzing Matilda and frequently takes the vessel out on Sydney Harbour, where he has entertained the A list likes of Kelly Osborne.

Meanwhile the wealthy businessman and rumoured winner was earlier this month spotted relaxing poolside at the Palazzo Versace.
His life has been rocked by turmoil over recent weeks.

But Ben Affleck, 45, had a solid partner by his side in girlfriend Lindsay Shookus, 37, as the couple were seen leaving a Buddhist rehab clinic in Los Angeles on Tuesday as he continues to battle his demons with alcohol.

The Emmy-winning SNL producer is based in New York City so that she can oversee her show, which is currently in production, but still traveled to the West Coast to be by Ben's side.

Standing by her man: Ben Affleck, 45, had a solid partner by his side in Lindsay Shookus, 37, as the couple were seen leaving a Buddhist rehab clinic in Los Angeles on Tuesday

The Academy Award-winning actor and director and his girlfriend both arrived and left the outpatient center together.

Ben wore plum-colored pants, a black T-shirt and gray sneakers, carrying an E-cigarette in one hand for the visit.

Lindsay wore distressed black jeans, a black sheer top that showed her black bra and white sneakers.

The award-winning producer looked stern as she headed inside the building with her boyfriend, who she went public with in July.

Dedicated: The Emmy-winning SNL producer is based in New York so that she can oversee her show, which is currently in production, but still traveled to the West Coast to be by Ben's side

Casual: Lindsay wore distressed black jeans, a black sheer top that showed her black bra and white sneakers as the couple headed inside

Lindsay isn't the only supportive woman by the Argo actor's side.

Ex-wife Jennifer Garner, 45, was spotted chatting and laughing with Ben on Monday as he dealt with the fallout of his 2003 groping scandal.

The couple were married for almost 10 years and raise daughters Violet, 11, and Seraphina, eight, and son Samuel, five, together.

Stepping out: The Academy Award-winning actor and director and his girlfriend both arrived and left the outpatient center together

Superhero role: Ben can next bee seen reprising his role as Bruce Wayne and his alter ego Batman in Justice League

The actor has been in hot water in recent days after former One Tree Hill star and MTV correspondent Hilarie Burton claimed the actor groped her during a TRL appearance in 2003.

Hilarie made her allegations just hours after Ben took to Twitter to condemn disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein for his alleged sexual assault and harassment scandal.

Former Weinstein protegee Ben said he was 'saddened and angry' over the 'sickening' claims.

Support network: Ex-wife Jennifer Garner, 45, was spotted chatting and laughing with Ben on Monday as he dealt with the fallout of his 2003 groping scandal

Distressed denim: Lindsay stepped out in distressed black skinny jeans

His statement was slammed by a number of people - including Weinstein accuser actress Rose McGowan, who called Ben a liar.

Ben was quick to reply, tweeting: 'I acted inappropriately toward Ms. Burton and I sincerely apologize.'

The same day make-up artist Annamarie Tendler took to Twitter to claim that Ben 'grabbed her a**' at a Golden Globes party in 2014 and demanded an apology.

The actor and director has been focusing on his sobriety after a full-time rehab stint in February, which came before he went public with his alcohol addiction in March.

He wrote on Facebook at the time: 'I have completed treatment for alcohol addiction; something I've dealt with in the past and will continue to confront. I want to live life to the fullest and be the best father I can be.'
US Vice President Mike Pence says the 1983 bombing of a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans marked the opening shots of the "war on terror"

US Vice President Mike Pence described the 1983 bombing of a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut as the opening shots of the "war of terror" Monday, as he issued fresh warnings to Iran and Hezbollah.

Speaking during a ceremony at another building used to house Marines in Washington, Pence berated Tehran and framed the attack that killed 241 Americans as part of a series of outrages that included 9/11.

"Thirty-four years ago today, America was thrust into war with an enemy unlike any we had ever faced," said Pence -- who is the father and brother of US Marines.

"The Beirut barracks bombing was the opening salvo in a war that we have waged ever since -- the global war on terror," he said.

"It's a conflict that has taken American troops across the wider world -- from Lebanon to Libya, from Nigeria to Afghanistan, from Somalia to Iraq, and many other battlefields in between."

Pence's remarks come amid a broad Trump administration effort to ratchet up pressure on Iran.

Since coming to office, Trump has stepped back from a deal curbing Iran's nuclear weapons and vowed to push back against Tehran's influence across the Middle East.

The White House argues the nuclear deal -- forged by president Barack Obama -- resulted in America turning a blind eye to Iran's support of militia groups and terror financing across the region.

"This president will not sit idly by while the ayatollahs in Tehran plot more attacks like the horrific attack that we remember today," Pence said.

Many of Trump's inner circle, from White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to National Security Advisor HR McMaster have tangled with Iranian-backed militia in Iraq during their military service.

According to officials, Pence's appearance came after an invitation transmitted by the National Security Council.

- The main enemy -

But the inclusion of Iran in the "war on terror" is likely to raise questions.

For much of the last two decades, that "war" declared after 9/11 has become synonymous with US efforts to unravel predominantly Sunni terror groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

The 1983 attack was blamed on Shia militia group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran.

"The brutal act that brings us here today was planned and perpetrated by the terrorists of Hezbollah," said Pence, taking aim at the premier Iranian-backed armed group, which remains powerful in Lebanon and Syria.

"Under President Trump's leadership, we've redoubled our commitment to cripple Hezbollah's terrorist network and bring its leaders to justice," Pence said.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration offered $7 million for information that leads to Talal Hamiyah, alleged head of Hezbollah's "External Security Organization."

A further $5 million was offered for leads on Fuad Shukr, "a senior military commander" of Hezbollah in Lebanon, who Pence described as "one of the masterminds behind the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks."

"But as we all know, that terrorist group is merely a proxy for the leading state sponsor of terrorism," Pence said, referring to Iran.

"President Donald Trump has put Iran on notice that we will no longer tolerate their destabilizing activities or their support of terrorism across the region and across the world."

Pence said "Iran's theocratic rulers aided and abetted the Beirut bombers 34 years ago. And even now, Iran praises the attackers and remembers them as martyrs."

"Worse yet, the Iranian regime continues to funnel funds and weapons to its terrorist minions, with the goal of shedding blood and sowing chaos throughout the wider world," the US vice president added.
Myeshia Johnson kisses the casket of her husband Army Sgt. La David Johnson during his funeral at the Memorial Gardens East cemetery in Hollywood, Florida

The pregnant widow of an American soldier killed in an ambush in Niger said Monday that Donald Trump struggled to remember his name during a condolence call, in an account the president immediately disputed.

Trump's call to Myeshia Johnson, whose husband Sergeant La David Johnson was one of four US soldiers killed in the October 4 jihadist attack, has generated a storm of controversy and comes as questions swirl over how the attack happened.

"Yes, the president said that he knew what he signed up for but it hurts anyways," Johnson said on ABC's Good Morning America TV program, in her first public comments on the death of her 25-year-old husband.

"It made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it."

Myeshia Johnson, who is carrying the couple's third child, said she "heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband's name and that hurt me the most."

"The only way he remembered my husband's name because he told me he had my husband's report in front of him and that's when he actually said La David," she said.

The US president fired back on Twitter, insisting: "I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!"

Details of Trump's call were made public last week by a Democratic congresswoman who claimed the president had offended Johnson's widow, drawing accusations from the White House of politicizing the issue.

The escalating row, now heading into its second week, prompted Trump's chief of staff John Kelly, a former general whose son died in Afghanistan, to deliver an emotive defense of the president -- while lashing out at the Florida congresswoman, Frederica Wilson.

Myeshia Johnson told ABC Wilson's account of the call was "100 percent correct," saying she was a lifelong family friend and had listened in over a speakerphone.

- Continued Niger ops -

"Whatever Miss Wilson said was not fabricated," Johnson said. "Why would we fabricate something like that?"

Asked if she had any words for the president, she replied: "No. I don't have nothing to say to him."

The dispute comes amid questions over exactly what happened ahead of the ambush, and the military response afterward.

General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discusses recent military operations in Niger

General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said "we owe the American people an explanation of what their men and women were doing at this particular time."

Myeshia Johnson also wanted answers about how her husband died.

She was initially told that there had been "massive gunfire" and "my husband as of October 4th was missing," she said on ABC.

"A couple of days later is when they told me that he went from missing to killed in action," she said.

"I don't know how he got killed, where he got killed or anything."

The 12 American and 30 Nigerien soldiers on the mission were attacked by about 50 fighters Dunford characterized as locals associated with the Islamic State group.

Questions have been raised over why it took hours before backup support reached the patrol, and why Johnson's body was left behind and only recovered the following day.

Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sergeant La David Johnson, shown here at his funeral, says President Donald Trump struggled to remember her husband's name during a condolence call

Dunford said the October 3-4 mission was originally approved based on an intelligence assessment that they were "unlikely" to come into conflict with any local forces.

Trump himself kicked off the furor early last week by falsely claiming that Barack Obama and other former presidents did not call the families of fallen soldiers.

As the controversy escalated, the president went on to claim he had called "virtually" all fallen servicemembers' families since taking office.

That has reportedly left his administration scrambling, with four families of servicemembers receiving rush-delivered letters from the White House in recent days, according to the Atlantic.
Joshua Wong was sentenced to six months in jail in August

Jailed democracy activists Joshua Wong and Nathan Law were released on bail Tuesday pending an appeal against convictions for their role in the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests.

The sentences handed down by the city's Court of Appeal in August came as fears mount that Beijing is tightening its grip on the semi-autonomous city and that the rule of law is being compromised.

Wong, 21, who became the face of the mass pro-democracy protests while still a teenager, was jailed for six months while Law, 24, was imprisoned for eight months.

They were granted bail at the Court of Final Appeal until November 7, the first appearance in the appeal proceedings.

A third activist, Alex Chow, who was jailed for seven months alongside Law and Wong, was not part of Tuesday's hearing.

On emerging from the courthouse, a sombre Law said there had been "unpleasant times" in prison and that he was looking forward to a meal with his family.

Law said the result of the appeal case would depend on "the implementation of 'one country, two systems'", the semi-autonomous deal that guarantees Hong Kong rights unseen on the mainland.

China stands accused of trampling the arrangement, made when Britain handed back Hong Kong in 1997.

"I hope the result of the case showcases the protection of human rights in our law system," Law told reporters.

Wong was still completing paperwork in the courthouse by early afternoon.

Supporters outside punched the air at news of the pair's release.

Lawmaker Eddie Chu said it was "encouraging news for supporters of democracy".

- 'Message to society' -

The Umbrella trio were found guilty last year on unlawful assembly charges for storming a fenced-off government forecourt known as "Civic Square" as part of a September 2014 protest calling for fully free leadership elections.

Their arrests sparked wider rallies which exploded two days later when police fired tear gas on the crowds, triggering demonstrations that brought parts of Hong Kong to a standstill for more than two months in an unprecedented challenge to Beijing.

Wong and Law initially received community sentences and Chow a three-week suspended sentence at a magistrates' court over the Civic Square protest.

But Hong Kong's justice department then sought to increase those terms, with prosecutors arguing they should receive harsher punishment.

The judgement jailing them in August said the court must "send out a clear message to society" that protesters must abide by the law.

Wong's imprisonment prevented him from running for Hong Kong's partially directly elected parliament, something he said he had wanted to do. He had been waiting to turn 21 to become eligible to stand.

He celebrated that landmark birthday in jail last month.

Law had already succeeded in becoming a legislator but was among six rebel lawmakers disqualified from parliament after inserting protests into their oaths of office.

Wong and Law each offered cash bail of HK$50,000 ($6,400) Tuesday. They were required to surrender their passports, not to leave Hong Kong and report to police once a week as part of the terms.

Wong is yet to be sentenced on a separate charge of contempt for obstructing the clearance of a major encampment during the Umbrella Movement rallies.

He has pleaded guilty to that charge.

Other activists previously sentenced on contempt charges have received sentences of up to three months.
Bhumibol's image has never been more prominent than in the run-up to his cremation -- an elaborate affair expected to draw 250,000 mourners to Bangkok's old quarter

Flipping through a binder of images of Thailand's late king Bhumibol Adulyadej, Somsree pauses and pulls out her favourite: a shot from the 80s of the casually-dressed monarch sitting on a wooden bridge, his back against a truck and chatting with a villager.

Given his lofty role he did not have to travel the country, Somsree Trupsangsree says from the shop in Bangkok's old quarter where she sells portraits of the revered monarch.

"But he went there to work," the 59-year-old says, misty-eyed at the memory of Bhumibol, or Rama IX, whose funeral on Thursday will bring Thailand to a standstill.

"His hands still held a map. He sat next to the people, so down-to-earth," she added.

Like many Thais, Somsree's bond with King Bhumibol, who died a year ago aged 88 after a seven decade reign, is instinctive and intimate.

It is also grounded in a narrative tirelessly reinforced by the palace's propaganda machine.

Pictures of him, like the ones she sells, plaster homes, storefronts and billboards while memories of his good works roll nightly across palace TV broadcasts.

From formal portraits in opulent robes to snaps of a sweat-streaked sovereign trudging through jungles to document his country's needs, the late king is remembered as regal but accessible, rich but unflashy and always dedicated to the Thai people.

Thailand's royal cremation

Bhumibol's image has never been more prominent than in the run-up to his cremation -- an elaborate affair expected to draw 250,000 mourners to Bangkok's old quarter.

Thais are still adjusting to life under an heir who now presides over the crown's immense wealth and prestige but is yet to foster the same bond with his people.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn, 65, is a more remote figure to his subjects and has spent much of his first year in power abroad, although he will be centre stage throughout the funeral.

But unvarnished discussion on either monarch is impossible inside Thailand which jails critics of the institution under one of the world's harshest royal defamation laws.

- Kingdom rebuilt -

Raised in Switzerland, Bhumibol ascended the throne aged 18 in 1946 after his elder brother Ananda Mahidol was shot dead in mysterious circumstances at the Grand Palace in Bangkok.

He was crowned four years later, inheriting a monarchy whose power was in steady decline.

By time of his death, all of that had changed.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej pictured in 1980 on the Thai Cambodian border

Bhumibol left behind one of the world's richest monarchies, with the palace the pivot point of Thailand's power networks including the influential military.

"Thailand needed a king as rallying and unifying symbol and a young king found a people to rebuild a kingdom around," explained Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a politics professor at Chulalongkorn University.

A revival of antiquated palace rituals -- including prostration in his presence -- and spiritual duties gilded the throne, elevating Bhumibol to a semi-divine status.

That deification made scenes of his engagement with ordinary Thais even more remarkable to a nation awed by his work ethic.

Over years spent criss-crossing Thailand, Bhumibol seeded thousands of well-publicised royal projects in a poor, agrarian country that won him the moniker the "Development King".

People walk past an elaborate lotus flower display made in honour of the late Thai king Bhumibol Adulyadej in Bangkok

The trips produced a portfolio of pictures that cast Bhumibol as a compassionate king who shrugged off the riches of his position to put his people first.

Palace PR spread the message.

"There is a lot of hagiography and officially enforced views about Thailand's traditional institutions, but it all would not have worked without King Bhumibol the way that he was," Thitinan wrote in comments to AFP.

"The king was so devoted, dedicated and diligent that people saw it and over time this became their bond."

His long reign saw the flickers of Communist rebellion extinguished with US help and repeated rounds of electoral politics unpicked by violent protest and military coups.

Yet King Bhumibol was perceived as above the fray despite his ties with the military whose repeated power grabs from fragile civilian governments he formally endorsed.

- Big shoes to fill -

Bhumibol's saintly reputation has left his heir with big shoes to fill.

The new king's colourful personal life and finances, including the recent transfer of $500 million worth of shares from a palace trust, are the subject of endless rumour.

Some analysts fear for the stability of the kingdom, with a junta at the helm of a country simmering with political divisions and the new reign in its infancy.

But criticism of the new monarch must stay behind closed doors due to the lese majeste law.

Publicly, Thais have taken the royal succession in their stride, erecting portraits of the new king around the country since he ascended the throne last year.

"This king will become our new father," Prapai Saebae, who at 90 is among the few Thais to have known life under another monarch.

"We have to respect him."
Toshiba is the world's second-largest chip firm after Samsung

Toshiba's president Tuesday apologised "sincerely" over the $18-billion sale of its prized memory chip business, as shareholders demanded answers over the deal seen as pivotal to the survival of one of Japan's best-known firms.

Bowing deeply at the start of what was expected to be a stormy shareholders' meeting, Satoshi Tsunakawa said: "We sincerely apologise for causing problems and worry."

The meeting just outside Tokyo came after the company last month announced the sale to a consortium led by US investor Bain Capital -- which includes US tech giants Apple and Dell as well as South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix -- after months of wrangling.

Shareholders will vote later Tuesday on the deal which is crucial for the cash-strapped company to plug massive losses at its US nuclear division, Westinghouse Electric.

Tsunakawa pledged to finish the sale by the end of March 2018 and stressed: "We will continue to have honest management, and improve our internal governance."

The chip unit brought in around a quarter of Toshiba's total annual revenue and is the crown jewel in a vast range of businesses ranging from home appliances to nuclear reactors.

Toshiba narrowly averted a delisting this year, but it still faces the humiliating prospect of being yanked from Japan's premier stock exchange if the sale does not raise enough money.

- 'Clear answers' -

Toshiba stock is down about 25 percent since the Westinghouse losses came to light in late December at the world's number-two chipmaker behind Samsung.

Toshiba Memory Corp. President Yasuo Naruke is likely to come under fire from shareholders

And some investors had doubts about whether things would change at Toshiba, which was recovering from a 2015 accounting scandal when the huge US losses were made public.

"Executives never give us clear answers at these meetings," complained Ken Futoo, a 57-year-old former Toshiba employee turned real estate agent.

"They just do what big shareholders and the banks tell them to do. I regret that they have to sell the chip division. It's really bad but there was no choice if the banks told them to sell it."

He warned Toshiba could find itself in trouble again, despite the much-needed cash injection.

"What's at issue is the company's governance," Futoo said.

The Japanese industrial giant is trying to recover from the disastrous acquisition of Westinghouse, which racked up billions of dollars in losses before being placed in bankruptcy protection.

Those losses came to light as the group was still reeling from revelations that top Toshiba executives had pressured underlings to cover up weak results for years after the 2008 global financial meltdown.

The twin crises were a major embarrassment for a cornerstone of Japan Inc, which traces its history back as far as 1875 when Toshiba started life as a telegraph factory in what is now Tokyo's Ginza shopping district.

"I came to listen to the president to find out why Toshiba, which used to be a great company, is now in this trouble," said Nobuko Kaneko, a 60-year-old teacher.

"There are many bright people I know, including friends, who worked for the company."
A military vehicle drives past destroyed buildings Marawi

Australia will train Filipino soldiers in urban warfare to combat the spread of Islamic extremism after months of fierce fighting against militants in the southern Philippines, it was announced Tuesday.

Canberra has since September been helping Manila battle local supporters of the Islamic State group in the southern city of Marawi, deploying two AP-3C Orion aircraft for surveillance while helping in information-gathering and analysis.

Defence chiefs in the Philippines on Monday declared victory after a five-month battle that claimed more than 1,100 lives and destroyed large parts of the city.

While the victory ended immediate fears that the Islamic State would establish a Southeast Asian base in Marawi, concerns remain about its longer-term intentions and capabilities for the region.

Australia has experience tackling the group in Iraq and Syria and Defence Minister Marise Payne said it was crucial the Philippines had the expertise to keep extremists at bay now that the key fight had been won.

She said Canberra would immediately send teams composed of 80 troops to provide urban warfare counter-terrorism training at Philippine military bases.

"The practical training the Australian Defence Force will provide will ensure the Philippines defence force is better able to counter the brutal tactics being employed by terrorists," she told reporters on the sidelines of a regional security meeting in Clark, a northern Philippine city.

"Globally we have seen the effect of extremist ideology and terrorist threats on millions of civilians and it is alarming to see this disruption come to our region."

Payne said the spread of Islamic State-inspired terrorism was a direct threat to Australia and its interests, and Canberra was determined it "cannot establish a geographic foothold in the region".

Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana welcomed Australia's "invaluable support", saying the military would use the assistance to replicate the training locally.

"While we need troops now to be trained on urban warfare, we also need to build our capacity to train our troops. Part of our programme that we are going to do in the near future is to build our urban (warfare training) centres," Lorenzana said.

The two sides will also work together to enhance intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in the south.

They will also bolster maritime security engagement and bilateral maritime patrols and co-host a seminar on efforts to recover from conflict.

Hundreds of local and foreign gunmen who had pledged allegiance to IS rampaged through Marawi, the principal Islamic city in the mainly Catholic Philippines, on May 23.

Philippine Defence Minister Delfin Lorenzana and Australia's Defence Minister Marise Payne announced plans for military cooperation

They then took over parts of the city using civilians as human shields.

About 400,000 residents were displaced as near-daily air strikes and intense ground combat left large parts of the city in ruins.
Ethiopian migrant Zekarias Mesfin surprised his audience by arriving in a coffin to the premiere of his film depicting his migration across Sudan and Egypt

Zekarias Mesfin spent months making a movie about his dangerous illegal migration from Ethiopia -- and when he arrived at the film's premiere, he was in a coffin carried by six white-gloved pallbearers.

Not that Zekarias, 33, was dead.

But he chose the dramatic entrance to show how close to death he came 12 years ago when he left his home in Ethiopia to journey across the deserts of Sudan and Egypt to try to get to Israel.

"I was almost dead," Zekarias told AFP, following the Ethiopian premiere of the film last week at the national theatre in the capital Addis Ababa. "At the Israel border, I lost many, many friends, sisters, brothers."

Zekarias could not have predicted where his journey would finally take him: after being caught and jailed for two years for illegally entering Egypt, the United Nations helped him resettle in Canada.

He has since become a Canadian citizen and settled in Edmonton, Alberta with his wife and two children.

Zekarias says he spent years thinking about making a film about his odyssey.

Six white-gloved pallbearers carried the coffin holding Ethiopian migrant Zekarias Mesfin who said he aimed to show how close to death he came on his perilous journey

Finally deciding to take the plunge three years ago, he ploughed his savings of 2.2 million birr ($81,303, 69,067 euros) into making "Ewir Amora Kelabi", an Amharic phrase that can be roughly translated as "the higher spiritual power guiding the lost".

- 'I was there' -

Zekarias plays himself in the film, re-enacting his journey across Africa to show viewers just how hazardous it can be.

Illegal immigration is "very difficult, it's very, very dangerous. I want to teach that," Zekarias said of the film, which was shot in Ethiopia. "I didn't make this documentary film by guessing. I was there."

Ethiopia is Africa's second most populous country and also one of its poorest.

But despite rapid economic growth over the past decade, many Ethiopians seek to try their luck elsewhere, mostly countries in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, even if they don't have any visas and have to brave war zones like Yemen to get there.

Zekarias' movie is called "Ewir Amora Kelabi", an Amharic phrase that can be roughly translated as "the higher spiritual power guiding the lost"

An estimated 334,000 Ethiopians migrated to the Middle East between 2006 and 2014, according to the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, a group of international organisations that monitor migration in East Africa and Yemen.

Tales are rife of the brutality and violence that the migrants face.

In August, the United Nations reported at least 50 migrants from Ethiopia and Somalia were deliberately drowned off Yemen by smugglers who appeared to have spotted a coastguard patrol.

Those who do make it to their destinations and find work provide vital remittances for their families back home, but are also regularly exploited by their employers or physically abused, according to the International Labour Organization.

- A familiar story -

Zekarias' movie -- which he also produced and wrote -- won an award for Best Emerging Filmmaker at the African Film Festival in Dallas in July.

It is a story that would be familiar to many Ethiopian migrants.

Zekarias' movie, in which he played the role of himself and also produced and wrote, won an award for Best Emerging Filmmaker at the African Film Festival in Dallas in July

After being orphaned at a young age, Zekarias roamed Ethiopia working in barber shops until 2005 when he decided to make the trek to Israel, enticed by the better prospects there.

Along the way, he and other migrants were abused and cheated by smugglers and rarely had enough food and water.

He was eventually captured by Egyptian authorities near the Israeli border and thrown into prison.

The film is unflinching in its depictions of the brutality migrants face, but Zekarias said it was up to the viewer to determine whether they want to migrate or not.

"Anyone can decide to go. The decision is up to them," Zekarias said. "But if they see this movie, I don't think they want to go."
Uhuru Kenyatta -- scion of the elite, but also a crowd-pleaser

Uhuru Kenyatta, who is set to win a second and final term in Thursday's election re-run, is the son of Kenya's founding president and a man who epitomises the country's elite.

The 55-year-old US-educated multi-millionaire, whose family owns an array of businesses, properties and land, followed in his father's footsteps when he defeated his rival Raila Odinga to become president in 2013.

Their rematch in August was again won by Kenyatta, with 54 percent of the vote, but the Supreme Court annulled the election due to "irregularities" and ordered a re-run.

Kenyatta accepted the judges' ruling but angrily, calling the judges "crooks" and threatening to "fix" the courts if he wins on Thursday -- which is also his birthday.

Odinga has refused to participate in the re-run claiming it would not be free and fair.

As a result, Kenyatta is opposed by minor candidates who between them polled less than one percent last time around.

For his part, Kenyatta set to campaigning again with bellicose alacrity, touring the country and heaping derision on both the judiciary and his opponent.

"We are ready for an election whether he will be on the ballot or not," Kenyatta said after Odinga withdrew, joking that nowhere in the constitution did it say, "Raila Amollo Odinga must be on the ballot."

- Privilege and wealth -

Kenyatta's first term has been defined by big spending on eye-catching infrastructure and impressive economic growth in a tough climate.

But this has gone hand-in-hand with spiralling debt and widening inequality.

Terrorism has also been a consistent threat, with Kenyatta forced to address the nation in doleful terms after bloody attacks in 2013 and 2015.

The former finance minister and deputy prime minister was born in 1961, shortly after his father Jomo Kenyatta was released from nearly a decade in British jails and before becoming Kenya's first president in 1964.

His first name means "freedom" in Kiswahili.

Educated at a private school in Nairobi and at Amherst College in the United States, Kenyatta is regarded as a leader of the Kikuyu people, the country's single largest ethnic group.

He is married with three children and regularly attends Catholic church.

In 2011 Forbes magazine estimated Kenyatta's wealth at $500 million (423 million euros).

Despite his elite background Kenyatta has a common touch. He easily mixes it up with ordinary Kenyans, eagerly gets down on the dance floor and joshes in the local youth slang and, in his younger years, earned a persistent reputation for partying hard.

A leaked 2009 US diplomatic cable described him as "bright and charming, even charismatic" but warned that "Kenyatta's liabilities are at least as important as his strengths. He drinks too much and is not a hard worker."

- Dynastic politics -

Kenyatta's political career is a case study in pragmatism.

In the 1990s, he joined with the sons of other independence heroes to call for democratic reforms but then became a close ally of autocratic former president Daniel arap Moi who had him nominated as the ruling party's candidate for the presidency in 2002.

Kenyatta lost to fellow Kikuyu politician Mwai Kibaki but then backed Kibaki's successful re-election bid in 2007, against Odinga who at the time was allied with William Ruto, now Kenyatta's deputy and running mate.

The violent fallout from the disputed result led to the deaths of over 1,100 people and, eventually, to a power-sharing government in which Kibaki was president, Odinga prime minister and Kenyatta one of his deputies.

Kenyatta and Ruto were indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for their alleged roles in orchestrating the violence.

But in 2014 the court dropped charges against Kenyatta -- and later Ruto -- citing the disappearance of witnesses and lack of evidence.

Despite, or perhaps because of the ICC indictment, Kenyatta and Ruto won the 2013 election, campaigning on a platform of nationalism, sovereignty and confronting imperialism in the form of the foreign court.

Kenyatta beat Odinga in the first round with a wafer-thin margin of 50.03 percent -- a result Odinga disputed, unsuccessfully, in court.

Despite winning in court this year, Odinga has decided to sit out the re-run leaving Kenyatta effectively unopposed.

The poll will likely be the final act in a multi-generational political rivalry stretching back half a century to when Jomo Kenyatta and Odinga's father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, vied for control of the nation.

Kenyatta must stand down after one more term and, at 72, Odinga is regarded as too old to make another bid for the presidency in five years time. Both men's children are, for now, inexperienced in politics.
Archaeologists and activists in the Gaza Strip have halted the destruction of a Bronze Age site for now but remain concerned for its future

Archaeologists and preservation activists in the Gaza Strip have managed to halt the destruction of a Bronze Age site for now, but the future of what remains may still be in jeopardy.

Palestinian archaeologist Moain Sadeq says the mound at Tell es-Sakan near Gaza City is a "unique" site that could offer an invaluable glimpse into the region's ancient heritage.

It is "maybe the only fortified Canaanite city in southern Palestine" occupied continuously from 3200 to 2000 BC, he says.

Since it was discovered by chance in 1998, the man-made mound has been scarred by bulldozers more than once.

A few weeks ago the earthmoving equipment returned yet again, destroying a large part of archaeological excavations carried out in 1999 and 2000 by Sadeq and his French colleague Pierre de Miroschedji.

The land was to be cleared for homes for public officials in the Palestinian territory ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement.

After a concerted effort by archaeologists, academics and those concerned with Gaza's heritage, the work was eventually halted.

But the activists are unsure how long the reprieve will last in a strip of land that has already seen its archaeological riches devastated by three wars with Israel, Palestinian infighting, overcrowding and indifference.

- Excavation stops -

A recent attempt to build over the ancient mound at Tell es-Sakan was the third time the site has been threatened by bulldozers since 1998

The latest attempt to build over the ancient mound was the third time the site has been threatened by bulldozers since 1998.

The first building works actually helped uncover the site as vigilant archaeologists spotted traces of ancient civilisation being revealed and quickly intervened to stop construction.

After that French and Palestinian experts moved in, but their dig was cut short in 2000 when the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation drove them away.

Since then excavation work has remained frozen in time -- with any attempt to restart it complicated by a new housing project that has cut off the north of the site.

When the bulldozers recently returned, they devastated the excavation Sadeq and his colleagues had left as a work in progress.

"The damage is very, very significant. Ancient dwelling structures and sections of the ramparts have been destroyed. Moveable artifacts have been taken away," he said.

Tell es-Sakan, a 300-metre (984-foot) diameter expanse of sand in an arid landscape, does not catch the eye of the casual observer.

But archaeologists insist the site is of major interest, marking the shift from agricultural to urban society.

Beneath the surface is "a huge, very important site, with (the remains of) fortifications, houses," Sadeq said.

"It is a city -- not a small town, but a royal city, with a high level of organisation, administrative and military structures."

- Egyptian royal seal -

Gaza's citizens raised the alarm when earthmovers rumbled in recently, Jean-Baptiste Humbert, of the French Biblical and Archaeological School in Jerusalem says

The site is located at the mouth of Gaza's main watercourse, on the coastal route between Egypt and the ancient Canaanite region and beyond, to Syria and Mesopotamia.

The oldest finds are remains of Egyptian design of clay dwellings, ceramics, stone tools and fragments of pendants.

Pottery was found that could be linked to Narmer, Egypt's first king, whose seal has been located elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, indicating Gaza's close ties with its giant neighbour 1,000 years before the pyramids were built.

To most Gazans the spot is a weekend leisure destination, where children play in the sand and young men practice motocross.

They are vaguely aware of its historical significance, although no signs point it out.

Nevertheless it was Gaza's citizens who raised the alarm when the earthmovers rumbled in lately, said Jean-Baptiste Humbert, of the French Biblical and Archaeological School in Jerusalem.

Locals posted on social media, drawing the attention of the Gaza archaeology authority, who in turn alerted their contacts outside the isolated strip, blockaded by Israel and Egypt.

Humbert, who helped block earlier construction, visited the site to assess the latest threat.

His report and enlistment of supporters paid off, with the authorities behind the housing programme agreeing to halt it, Jamal Abu Rida, general secretary of the Gaza archaeology authority, told AFP.

The site, he said, is the authority's property.

"Nobody has the right to strip it," he said.

- Clashes of interest -

Disputes between archaeologists and housing planners are common in the densely populated coastal territory of Gaza, where Israeli bombing and artillery fire left tens of thousands homeless in 2014.

Humbert says that archaeologists on a dig are "like butterfly hunters" entranced by the history at their feet while Gaza housing officials have a totally different viewpoint.

"They look at us... saying, from the 2014 war there are thousands of people still to be relocated. What is more important?'"

"For them," he adds, the building plan "was a positive operation."

Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, has been accused of neglecting the strip's past, especially its pre-Islamic heritage.

"We have a housing crisis and high population growth. We are talking about 2.05 million people in Gaza now," said Amal Shmalee, a spokeswoman for the housing authority.

"This necessitates new housing programmes."

She said that nevertheless construction work at Tell es-Sakan had been halted and "we are going to stick" to that decision.

Archaeologist Sadeq, however, was not convinced that the pause in work would be for good.

"I'm not sure it will last forever," he said.
Superintendent Prem Prakash and his team cause impatient queues at the border of Bihar where a hard-hitting alcohol ban has left tens of thousands in jail.

They give every rickshaw, car and bus crossing from neighbouring Jharkand a thorough once-over at the Rajauli checkpoint.

Home to 100 million people, Bihar also has India's harshest prohibition regime: At least 71,000 people have since been imprisoned for alcohol consumption or possession, some for up to five-years - and drawn the national spotlight.

Every rickshaw, every car, every bus crossing into Indian state Bihar from neighbouring Jharkand gets a thorough once-over at the Rajauli checkpoint from Superintentent Prakash's excise department team

Cabinet ministers along with local people making a massive human chain against alcoholism and other addictions at historical Gandhi Maidan, on January 20, 2017 in Patna, India

It has not been a smooth transition.

While around one million litres of liquor have been seized by police since the legislation was brought in last year, local media report that much of it has disappeared, prompting authorities to investigate.

Officials caused consternation when they blamed rats for consuming some of the alcohol.

Last month, six men accused of selling liquor escaped prison after their guards dozed off. Authorities were forced to deny accusations the guards were drunk.

It's claimed a flourishing underground alcohol network has been well formed since the ban

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who brought in the alcohol ban in the state of Bihar, has been praised by conservative Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi

But while some moan about the effectiveness of the ban and the police tactics used to back it, prohibition has become a vote-winner.

Now politicians in Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu have demanded or promised similar schemes.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who brought in the Bihar ban, has been praised by conservative Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

'It will protect our future generations and everyone should back him,' Modi said in January.

Hartosh Singh Bal, political editor with Caravan magazine, described such bans as 'a political quick fix to a complicated problem.'

'Alcoholism is a big issue in many poorer Indian households which is why prohibition appeals to a popular base, especially women,' he told news agency AFP.

Bihar's impoverished economy lost about $800 million in annual taxes and revenues after the alcohol ban, which has seen liquor stores closed down

Authorities have been accused of not doing enough to rehabilitate alcoholics

However the alcohol hunters' limited weaponry and the sheer amount of liquor involved makes enforcement difficult.

Superintendent Prakash's team at the border post about 95 miles (150 kilometres) from the Bihar capital, Patna, has to check hundreds of vehicles every day.

'We have caught people giving different reasons for smuggling alcohol including for family weddings, festivals and illegal sale,' he told AFP.

One official told AFP that gangs make children carry the contraband as they are less likely to be searched.

Those that live close to the border often go across state lines, and even into Nepal, for drinking day trips.

The political reasoning for the ban is simple: 'It's for the poor. You can't imagine how happy this makes them,' Kumar said in a speech last year.

'Serious crime is down. Our villages are more peaceful and women's groups say it has helped reduce domestic abuse as men don't come back drunk,' he added.

Jhagru Mahto, a Patna taxi driver, says the law has changed his life.

At least 71,000 people have since been imprisoned for alcohol consumption or possession

'I used to be an alcoholic but quit fearing arrest and jail after prohibition. My wife is definitely very happy and praises the government,' he told AFP.

Bihar's impoverished economy lost about $800 million in annual taxes and revenues after the ban.

'The revenue loss is nothing compared to all the health and social benefits because of this,' Aditya Kumar Das, Bihar's excise commissioner explained.

'Women, especially in poorer communities, have been empowered because their men now mostly spend earnings on groceries rather than alcohol,' he said.

Yet such claims evoke derision in Musahar Tola, Jehanabad district.

Brothers Mastan and Painter Manjhi used to live in a mud hut - with their wives, six children and mother - on a narrow, stinking lane off the main road that leads to a settlement of Musahars (rat eaters), one of India's most marginalised communities.

One Bihar official told AFP that smuggler gangs make children carry the contraband alcohol as they are less likely to be searched

In May, the Manjhis became the first people to be given a five-year jail term and a 100,000 rupee ($1,558) fine under the law.

'The government has never cared about us poor. It was the first time we heard from them when they arrested our husbands,' Painter's wife Kranti Devi said.

The family said police action over prohibition had made people like them vulnerable and fearful.

'Forget about their bail, we don't even have the money for our next meals. Can the government provide us that, even if it keeps them locked up?,' Devi asked.

Authorities have also been accused of giving inadequate resources to rehabilitating alcoholics.

Media reports have hinted at a flourishing underground drinks network in Bihar, especially Patna, supplying anyone who can pay three or four times market price.

India has had mixed results with alcohol bans. Several states tested the practise after independence from Britain in 1947 but gave up. Only Nagaland and Gujarat enforced total prohibition before Bihar.

Authorities in Kerala, which draws tourists to its tea plantations, lagoons, and sweeping coastline, recently announced a rollback of a controversial alcohol ban announced by the previous state government, citing economic reasons and issues with bootlegging.

In an editorial on the issue The Hindu newspaper said prohibition had not proven to be an 'effective check' against alcohol abuse in India.

It said: 'It has only criminalised the activity, with disastrous consequences for individual health, the economy and administration.'
The trial of a 38-year-old Bismarck man accused of firing a shotgun at a law enforcement officer during a 15-hour standoff in 2015 kicked off on Tuesday.

A 12-member jury heard opening arguments in the trial of Branden Lyle Lyon, where a prosecutor and an attorney argued over whether evidence shows that Lyon intended to kill the officer.

Burleigh County Assistant State's Attorney Julie Lawyer told the jury that law enforcement found shotgun pellets at a garage where a SWAT officer had been stationed during the standoff.

Lyon's attorney, Thomas Glass, said Lyon never meant to fire at the officer, and there's evidence to back up his claim.

The police standoff occurred at a town house, 703 N. 35th St., on Oct. 12, 2015.

Lyon, who was an acquaintance of the homeowner, had taken firearms from a gun case in the home, including a rifle, Lawyer told jurors. The homeowner and her neighbor were sitting in the living room when Lyon entered the room. There was a heated exchange between Lyon and the two of them, and Lyon became angry.

Lyon allegedly pointed a rifle at the neighbor's head and "made comments about taking him out," said Lawyer, adding he also allegedly threatened to kill the homeowner's sons.

They left Lyon at the town house and called 911. A SWAT team was called in, and Lyon allegedly told a negotiator he did not want to go to jail, and "if law enforcement comes to the door, theyre going to get popped," Lawyer said.

Lawyer also stated that Lyon told police he would "take down" officers on the roof if they did not get down. One officer got down from the roof of the neighbor's garage, but the other stayed. Within an hour, a shot rang out and the officer on the roof said there was an explosion next to him. Lawyer said this turned out to be "debris" from a shotgun blast that came from the town house.

There were two more shotgun blasts from the home. Eventually, Lyon was taken into custody without incident.

Glass told the jury that the evidence  including where the shotgun blasts occurred  will dispute the state's assertion that Lyon intentionally aimed to kill the officer. Glass said the shotgun blasts occurred at a window where a blind had been drawn, and law enforcement officers had fired multiple rounds of tear gas canisters.

Nobody could see in. Nobody could see out," Glass said.

Lyon also has been charged with two counts of terrorizing and the unlawful possession of a firearm. His trial is scheduled through Friday.
Odinga chose to boycott Thursday's elections, saying it would not be fair or credible. But the decision may well doom his hopes of becoming Kenya's leader

Raila Odinga, Kenya's veteran opposition leader and one-time prime minister, has chosen to sit out Thursday's presidential election re-run, a move that may well end his dream of winning the nation's top job.

The 72-year-old has been a mainstay of Kenyan politics since the 1980s, but despite four attempts has never won the presidency.

Instead he seems to have inherited the political misfortune of his father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, who led the opposition for three decades but never the country.

For this year's election, held in August, Odinga led a coalition called the National Super Alliance (NASA), overcoming traditional opposition divisions in what he saw as a surefire plan to defeat incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta, 55, and his ruling Jubilee Party.

When Kenyatta won Odinga cried foul and took his complaints to the Supreme Court, where a shock ruling overturning the result handed him a rare political victory.

However Odinga dug his heels in over reforms to the electoral commission, and pulled out of the race with two weeks to go, insisting it would not be free and fair.

"All indications are that the election scheduled for October 26 will be worse than the previous one," Odinga said as he announced his withdrawal.

Odinga called the election commission a "criminal enterprise" and said he would not "participate in an illegality".

Kenyatta vs. Odinga has been a dynastic rivalry between two families that have dominated Kenyan politics in the independence era. A generation ago, Jaramogi Odinga lost out to Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first post-independence leader.

- Lifelong presidential hopes thwarted -

Born into political royalty, a member of Kenya's western Luo tribe, Odinga entered parliament in 1992 during the rule of president Daniel arap Moi. He had spent much of the previous decade in prison or in exile during the struggle for democracy.

He ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1997, 2007 and 2013, claiming to have been cheated of victory in the last two votes, as well as this year's. Many observers agree with Odinga's view that the 2007 election was deeply flawed.

That result triggered widespread politically motivated tribal violence that left more than 1,100 dead.

To stop the killings, international mediators forced a deal that saw the incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, continue as president, while Odinga took the specially created position of prime minister in a power-sharing government.

He held the post until 2013 when he ran for president, losing to Kenyatta by a very narrow margin -- and losing his court challenge of the result.

Odinga once again claimed fraud after August's vote, but this time the Supreme Court ruled in his favour, annulling the presidential election due to "irregularities and illegalities".

A decade on, the violence of 2007 still casts a shadow over Kenya's political landscape and tribal resentment endures.

Odinga's backers among the Luos believe they are being denied political power by a cabal of Kikuyu elites currently led by Kenyatta.

Odinga argues that a fair election would result in his victory, and his supporters believe him.

He says Kenyatta is attempting "to overthrow our new constitutional order" and impose a dictatorship reminiscent of the Moi regime that Odinga struggled against.

- A polarising politician -

While his supporters consider Odinga a much-needed social reformer, for his detractors he is a rabble-rousing populist unafraid to play the tribal card.

He is renowned as a firebrand speaker capable of galvanising a crowd with his oratory. But Odinga also has a reputation for being stubborn and sometimes short-tempered.

For some observers, he has lost some of his crowd-pleasing skills, which some attribute to ill health and advancing years.

With his speech notes in hand he often stumbles and labours over his words -- especially in English. Speaking off-the-cuff in his native Swahili however, he retains the ability to inspire.

Raised an Anglican, he later converted to evangelicalism. In 2009, he was baptised in a Nairobi swimming pool by a self-proclaimed prophet. The Bible crept into Odinga's campaign this year with his repeated promise to lead his followers to Canaan, the mythical "promised land".

He studied engineering in communist former East Germany and named his eldest son Fidel, who died in 2015, after the Cuban revolutionary.

However observers say the "socialist" and "communist" labels he was given were more an attempt to discredit him by the Moi regime than an accurate reflection of his leanings.

After returning to Kenya in 1970 Odinga set up as a businessman before following his father into politics.

Nowadays he describes himself as a social democrat who wants to fight inequality.

Married, Odinga has three surviving children: Rosemary, Raila Junior and Winnie.
Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, wearing bulletproof vests, were brought to Kuala Lumpur International Airport's budget terminal along with the judge in the case, defence lawyers and prosecutors

Two women on trial for murdering the North Korean leader's half-brother visited the Malaysian airport on Tuesday where they allegedly poisoned him, escorted by huge numbers of heavily armed police.

Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, wearing bulletproof vests, were brought to Kuala Lumpur International Airport's budget terminal along with the judge in the case, defence lawyers and prosecutors.

About 200 police, many armed with rifles and wearing masks, fanned out as the entourage arrived at the terminal.

After being escorted round the airport pursued by a huge pack of journalists, the suspects appeared to get tired and were placed in wheelchairs.

Huong and Aisyah, in their 20s, are accused of killing Kim on February 13 by rubbing the nerve agent VX on his face in a Cold War-style hit that stunned the world.

The women, who were arrested a few days after the assassination and face death by hanging if convicted, have pleaded not guilty to murdering the estranged half-brother of Kim Jong-Un.

At the airport, the women were first taken to the check-in area where they allegedly smeared the deadly nerve agent in Kim's face.

He died an agonising death within 20 minutes of the attack with a chemical so deadly it is classified as a weapon of mass destruction.

The suspects were then taken to a cafe called Bibik Heritage, where Aisyah met a man identified in court as "Mr Chang" who allegedly wiped a liquid on her hands before she carried out the attack.

The group headed to the clinic where Kim was taken after the attack and then to a taxi stand, where the women went after the alleged murder.

The women are accused on the charge sheet of committing the murder with four other suspects, who are still at large. Four North Koreans fled Malaysia on the day of the murder.

The assassination sparked a fierce row between Malaysia and North Korea, which is suspected of ordering the hit. Pyongyang denies the allegation.
The Houston Astros manager A.J. Hinch high-fives his players prior to game one of the American League Championship Series against the New York Yankees, at Minute Maid Park in Houston, Texas, on October 13, 2017

Houston Astros manager A.J. Hinch says his team is carrying the hopes of their hurricane-ravaged city as they open their World Series campaign against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Tuesday.

The Texan outfit have been installed as the sentimental favorites for the best-of-seven series just two months after Hurricane Harvey deluged the region with record flooding that left more than 80 dead.

Add in the fact that several members of the Astros cosmopolitan roster were affected by subsequent storms in Puerto Rico and elsewhere, and it is easy to see why the Astros have acquired the look of men on a mission.

"Anytime you're on the national stage you play for your city," Hinch told reporters here Monday.

"I think when something like the hurricane happens, there's an even greater responsibility to represent your city and bring awareness to the things that are needed to rebuild our great city.

"On top of that we have a lot of players that were affected by a couple of hurricanes after that, in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, just the international component of our team."

Carlos Correa (L) and manager A.J. Hinch of the Houston Astros celebrate in the locker room after defeating the New York Yankees to win game seven of the American League Championship Series, at Minute Maid Park in Houston, on October 21, 2017

The series of disasters had weighed heavily on the Astros roster, Hinch added, while at the same time acting as a galvanising force.

The team were forced to play some home games in Florida as Harvey wrought its destruction.

"We played with a heavy heart for a long time because of what has happened to a lot of our families," Hinch said.

"When we got back from Hurricane Harvey from being relocated, that sense of urgency came from wanting to do so something special for our city. There was a lot of positive momentum back towards our team. But we could feel how important the Astros became to the City of Houston and the residents.

"The time has passed but the recovery is going to take a lot longer. What does the World Series do to that city? Obviously it gives some hope. It gives appreciation. It gives a smile or two for people going through some hard times. And for that we're happy to be a part of it."
The Archbishop of Bangui Dieudonne Nzapalainga speaks on Saturday with Imam Kobina Layama (R) and protestant Reverend Nicolas Guerekoyame-Gbangou in a joint Central African Religious Confessions Platform to tackle conflict

Christian and Muslim leaders in Central African Republic (CAR), speaking ahead of a visit by United Nations chief Antonio Guterres, have urged the UN to overhaul its strategy for the strife-torn country.

Guterres is expected on Tuesday, ahead of a requested renewal in November of the UN force in CAR, called MINUSCA, which has been accused by some of passivity.

"If they're just television spectators of the conflict, that won't do," Cardinal Dieudonne Nzapalainga, the Catholic archbishop of Bangui said in a joint interview on Saturday alongside the country's Muslim and Protestant leaders.

"A revision of strategy" has to go hand-in-hand with a mandate for UN troop renewal, said Protestant leader Nicolas Guerekoyamene-Gbangou.

Poor but mineral-rich, CAR has become a byword for conflict and misery.

Thousands have lost their lives and half a million people have been displaced, according to the UN, out of a population of roughly 4.5 million.

In their interview with AFP, the religious leaders pleaded with the world not to see the conflict as a matter of religion, but of gangs who often exploited faith to further their own goals.

In 2013, CAR's then president Francois Bozize, a Christian former army chief, was overthrown by a pro-Muslim Seleka rebel coalition.

Militias known as "anti-balaka" launched a counter-offensive in the name of defending the Christian majority population.

- 'Not religion' -

"The religious stance has been used only for political ends, for looting and for making off with the (mineral) riches beneath the soil," said Oumar Kobine Layama, head of the Islamic Conference in CAR.

"This is not a religious conflict."

In the southeastern town of Bangassou, where anti-balaka forces unleashed a new wave of violence in May, MINUSCA troops "made all the Muslims come to the mosque and abandoned them," Kobine said.

"If the cardinal and the bishop hadn't come to protect them, what would have become of them. Who would have been responsible?"

The imam added: "Christians and Muslims are now together at the displaced persons' site. If this was really a war of religions, would they be in the same place?"

Those who kill in the name of Christianity are beyond the pale, said Guerekoyame-Gbangou.

At Kembe in the southeast, the anti-balaka in October attacked "a place that's a sanctuary in usual times, a mosque," he said.

"They can't say they're Christians and go on to kill. All those with such ideas in their heads are outside their faith."

In 2013, the three leaders set up a "platform of religious confessions" in a show of inter-faith unity and to act as a mediator in the conflict.

The "platform" earned the UN Human Rights Prize in 2015, but at some personal cost to their founders. Kobine has been forced to move house and relatives of Guerekoyame-Gbangou were killed in 2015.

- UN mandate -

Guterres' four-day stay in CAR will be his first visit since taking office on January 1, although he regularly visited the country as former head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

He will go Bangui and Bangassou and also meet victims of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers as part of his effort to address damaging allegations that have hit the blue helmets in several missions.

The secretary general's visit comes at a time when the United Nations faces a precarious financial situation, as the United States pushes for cost-cutting measures in peacekeeping.

The international body has maintained some 12,500 troops and police on the ground in CAR since September 2014 to help protect civilians and support the government of Faustin-Archange Touadera, who was elected last year.

The force's mandate expires on November 15. On October 18, Guterres urged the Security Council to add 900 troops, to enable the force "to shape and influence security situations, rather than react to them."
The Napoleon bust, by Rodin, was discovered in 2014 in New Jersey by a 22-year-old art history student

Napoleon Bonaparte and Auguste Rodin are both household names in their own right. But a bust of the French emperor created by the master sculptor faded into oblivion in an American town, only to be discovered by chance.

The white marble statue was certainly visible in the meeting room of the borough hall of Madison -- a municipality of 16,000 people in New Jersey.

In fact for some 80 years, the bust was positioned on a pedestal, carelessly leaned on during meetings.

But in 2014, a 22-year-old art history student recruited to take inventory of the building's artworks, came across the bust and noticed a signature that read "A. Rodin" in the sculptor's immediately recognizable style.

Intrigued by the discovery, Mallory Mortillaro consulted experts and dug into archives, determined to confirm whether it was indeed a genuine Rodin.

She was eventually pointed in the direction of the Paris-based Comite Auguste Rodin, the leading authority on the father of modern sculpture.

And the mystery was solved: in the group's collection of documents was a photograph showing Rodin posing with the bust, which was believed to have been lost.

In September 2015, Rodin expert Jerome Le Blay, author of the artist's catalogue raisonne, or descriptive inventory, traveled to Madison. He needed only seconds to confirm the authenticity of the piece.

In addition to the hundred-year-old photo, Le Blay confirmed in an interview: "The stone corresponds exactly with that used by Rodin during that era."

- The proof was in the pantograph -

The identification of the statue -- worth between $4 and $12 million -- paradoxically was cause for concern for the Hartley Dodge Foundation, which manages the building.

"There was no paperwork, there was absolutely no record that it had entered the building," Nicolas Platt, the foundation's president, told CBS News.

For security reasons, the directors kept the revelation a secret for two years, before announcing last week it was to be transferred to the prestigious Philadelphia Museum of Art. During this time, the bust's history was uncovered.

The marble was commissioned originally in 1904 by the wife of John Woodruff Simpson, a prominent lawyer in New York -- but after some time, Simpson stopped responding.

"Marbles generally took two or three years to complete in Rodin's time, so it's possible that between the commission and 1907-1908, she became a little discouraged," Le Blay told AFP.

- Lost without a trace -

Thomas Fortune Ryan, a friend of the collector, then bought the piece during a visit to the Paris suburb of Meudon in 1909. Once he died, the bust was lost following a 1933 auction of his estate.

Research revealed that a merchant had bought the statue on behalf of Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge, daughter of prominent financier William Rockefeller.

She constructed the Hartley Dodge Memorial -- Madison's borough hall -- in tribute to her son killed in 1930 in a road accident in France, and decorated the interior with works from her collection.

"Geraldine Rockefeller regularly brought pieces, a bit like you would decorate your country house with pieces from your main house," Le Blay explained. But records were not kept, meaning the bust's whereabouts became unknown over time.

It is thought Rodin took inspiration from Napoleon's death mask to create the bust, as well as working with a lookalike as he did when creating his "Monument to Balzac."

The statue is engraved with the inscription "wrapped in his dream."

In plaster studies kept at the Rodin Museum in Paris, Napoleon's face is "a bit more warrior-like," Le Blay said. "In the final marble, he has a more questioning side, much more evasive."

"He is no longer Bonaparte the young victorious general, but he is not yet the French emperor who went on to conquer Europe, crushing everything in his path. He is between the two," Le Blay added.
The eastern half of Marawi city has been left in ruins

Residents of a southern Philippine city where Islamic State supporters waged a brutal five-month battle began returning home on Tuesday, but gunfire greeted them as soldiers scoured devastated neighbourhoods for remaining militants.

Defence chiefs announced on Monday that the fighting, which claimed more than 1,100 lives and left the eastern half of Marawi in ruins, had ended following a final clash in a mosque in which dozens of gunmen were killed.

The militants had occupied Marawi, the Islamic capital of the mainly Catholic Philippines, on May 23 in what President Rodrigo Duterte and security analysts said was a bid to establish a Southeast Asian base for IS.

The campaign to oust them turned into the Philippines' longest urban war, forcing about 400,000 people to flee their homes as the militants defied near daily bombing raids by hiding in basements, tunnels and mosques.

"We are afraid but we want to check on our houses," Jamaliah Lomontong, a village official aged in her 40s, told AFP as she and some relatives walked into their neighbourhood near where the main fighting occurred.

Philippine soldiers last week patrolled the ruined streets as fighting abated

Lomontong said her house had survived, although it bad been looted.

"Anything easy to take away has gone -- televisions, laptops," she said.

Only a few dozen civilians could be seen on Tuesday morning on the outskirts of the the mostly destroyed eastern half of Marawi, where regular bursts of gunfire and occasional explosions could still be heard.

However the sounds of war did not mean there was renewed fighting, according to Colonel Romeo Brawner, deputy commander of Marawi forces.

He told AFP they were due to soldiers going through buildings looking for militants who may still be hiding, while troops were also detonating bombs that the gunmen had planted.

"It's possible that there were some (militants) left behind. In every war, that is the SOP (standard operating procedure)," Brawner told AFP.

"So the firing is part of the mopping operations, because if there are holes, tunnels (in buildings), then the troops fire first into the hole before they check with their flashlights," he said.

In the western half of the city, which largely escaped the fighting, hundreds of residents had begun returning.

"I feel a mixture of joy and sadness," businessman Gonaranko Mapandi Jnr, 46, told AFP as he stood close to a military checkpoint.

"I'm happy because we are able to return. But I'm very sad at what happened to my city."

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The elaborate $90 million ceremony will draw an estimated quarter million Thais to bid farewell to the 'father' of the nation, who died last year aged 88

Thailand's late King Bhumibol Adulyadej will receive a lavish send-off this week during a spectacular five-day funeral centered around a cremation at a gilded pyre in Bangkok's historic heart on Thursday.

Steeped in centuries of royal tradition and overseen by strict palace protocols, the elaborate $90 million ceremony will draw an estimated quarter million Thais to bid farewell to the "father" of the nation, who died last year aged 88.

Here's a few things to know about the funeral of a king revered as a demi-god who reigned for seven decades.

- The site -

At the heart of the cremation complex is a 50-metre (164-foot) high funeral pyre symbolising Mount Meru, the allegorical centre of the universe in Buddhist, Hindu and Jain cosmology.

At the heart of the cremation complex is a 50-metre (164-foot) high funeral pyre symbolising Mount Meru, the allegorical centre of the universe in Buddhist, Hindu and Jain cosmology

The gold-painted structure is adorned with dozens of intricate sculptures of animals, deities and mythical creatures from Buddhist and Hindu lore.

Pride of place will go to sculptures of the late king's beloved dogs.

Arranged symmetrically around the main tower are eight smaller structures representing the mountains surrounding Meru -- and a possible nod to Bhumibol's title as the ninth monarch of the Chakri dynasty, or Rama IX.

The vast site, nearly a year in the making, is studded with references to the king's welfare projects, including a small rice field and an irrigation wheel.

Bhumibol's body is kept in a separate coffin to the symbolic Royal Urn, which will be carried up a ramp on a golden chariot to the pyre. Both the urn and coffin will be cremated, allowing his soul to pass into the afterlife according to Buddhist belief.

- The ceremony -

While sombre, the funeral is also a celebration as the late king ascends to heaven, with music and traditional dancers a key part of the ceremony.

The funeral formally begins on October 25 with a Thai Buddhist religious ritual. It will be led by Bhumibol's only son King Maha Vajiralongkorn, known as Rama X.

The following day the Royal Urn will be carried from the Grand Palace by bearers in striking traditional garb, flanked by drummers and soldiers.

Tourists are not expected to be clad in black like most Thais have done since the king's death in October 2016, but visitors have been asked to dress and behave 'respectfully'

On its way to the cremation site it will pass tens of thousands of black-clad mourners who are expected to bow and prostrate where possible.

A bank of monks will lead Buddhist prayers throughout the day-long ritual.

As dusk falls, the king and other royals will lead the laying of sandalwood flowers at the urn.

The cremation itself will take place at 10:00 pm (1500 GMT) when Rama X will light the pyre.

Three days of ceremonies to remove royal relics from the ashes will follow. The ashes will be taken to the Grand Palace while the relics will be enshrined in two temples.

- The guest list -

The funeral procession will be headed by the king, Rama X, with his sister Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn leading the rest of the royal family.

It is not clear how much of a role Bhumibol's wife Queen Sirikit will play, as she has been in ill health for years.

Power players from Thailand's junta and the all-important privy counsel will also be prominent in the procession.

The funeral procession will be headed by the king, Rama X, with his sister Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn leading the rest of the royal family

Royals and dignitaries from over 40 countries will attend the cremation, including Britain's Prince Andrew, Japan's Prince Akishino and Princess Akishino, Queen Maxima from the Netherlands, the King and Queen of Bhutan and US Secretary of Defence James Mattis.

Officials estimate that some 250,000 Thais will crush into the surrounding roads, while television sets will relay blanket coverage of the event.

The meticulously-planned funeral comes with a long list of guidelines for attendees in the country where all things royal are tightly controlled.

Photographers are prohibited from taking direct shots of the king, while male journalists have been ordered to shave their beards and moustaches.

- How will tourists be affected? -

Swathes of Bangkok's historic centre will grind to a halt on cremation day, with roads shut around the Grand Palace, but some public transport to the site will be free.

Tourists are not expected to wear black like most Thais have done since the king's death in October 2016, but visitors have been asked to dress and behave "respectfully".

Nightlife will be toned down throughout the funeral period, although alcohol consumption has not been banned outright.

Many banks and businesses -- including the ubiquitous 7/11 stores -- will close for much of the cremation day on Thursday in an unprecedented mark of respect.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will visit Pakistan on Tuesday following a trip to Afghanistan, where the US top diplomat reiterated America's commitment to the country

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson landed in Islamabad Tuesday as Washington turns up the heat on Pakistan for allegedy providing "safe havens" for Taliban militants.

Tillerson's visit, his first to Pakistan since becoming secretary of state, comes months after US President Donald Trump angrily accused the nuclear-armed country of harbouring "agents of chaos" who can attack NATO-led forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.

It follows on the heels of an unannounced stop in Afghanistan, where the US top diplomat reiterated America's commitment to the country and warned Washington has made "very specific requests" of Pakistan seeking to "undermine the support that the Taliban receives".

Washington and Kabul have long accused Islamabad of supporting militant groups including the Taliban, believed to have links to Pakistan's shadowy military establishment who aim to use them as a regional bulwark against arch-nemesis India.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied the charge, insisting it maintains contacts only with the militants as it seeks to bring them to the table for peace talks.

During his brief trip to Bagram air base Monday, Tillerson told reporters Pakistan needs to "take a clear-eyed view of the situation that they are confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organisations that find safe haven inside" the country.

His visit to Islamabad, where he is meeting with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and the powerful military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, marks the first by a member of the administration.

US and Pakistani sources say he will be followed later in the year by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis as Trump seeks to send a tough message to the wayward ally.

The US-Pakistan relationship has waxed and waned dramatically since Trump took office in January.

Pakistan said the President had praised its then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif as "terrific" in an effusive phone call when Trump took office in January.

But Trump's blistering speech in August accusing Pakistan of harbouring militants saw Islamabad angrily hit back at the claims, insisting they discount the thousands of lives lost and billions spent in fighting extremism.

Following the speech, Tillerson cautioned Pakistan that it could lose its status as a privileged military ally if it continued providing support to Afghan militant groups.

As one of 16 "Non-NATO Major Allies", Pakistan benefits from billions of dollars in aid and has access to advanced US military technology banned from other countries.

Earlier this month Pakistani forces acting on American intelligence rescued a US-Canadian family that had been in Taliban captivity for five years, sparking hopes that ties were on the mend.

The rescue was followed by a series of drone strikes on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border targeting long-time foes to both Washington and Islamabad.

The US has vowed to send more than 3,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, on top of the 11,000 already deployed there, to train and advise Afghan security forces as part of a new strategy outlined by the administration.
A flame from a Saudi Aramco oil installion is seen in the desert near the oil-rich area of Khouris, 160 kilometres east of the Saudi capital Riyadh

The head of oil giant Saudi Aramco said Tuesday that a lack of recent investments in the oil sector could lead to a shortage of supplies.

"Not much investments have been going into the energy sector... $1 trillion has been either deferred or cancelled" amid the price slump of recent years, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said at an investment conference in Riyadh.

Of that, $300 billion was due for investment in oil exploration and $700 billion for project development, he said.

"This will have an impact on the future of energy if nothing happens," Nasser said, pointing to additional needs due to "natural depreciation of fields and normal rise in demand."

Nasser also said renewable energy will not threaten the position of oil and natural gas as the main global energy sources.

"We are witnessing a transformation... But it will be decades before renewable energy takes a major share in the energy mix," he said at the Saudi Future Investment Initiative conference.

Global oil prices more than halved in 2014 because of oversupply and weak global economic growth.

The prices have made a partial recovery after producers from OPEC and non-OPEC countries agreed last year to cut production by 1.8 million barrels per day.

The initial six-month deal was further extended by nine months until the end of March.

Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, made the largest cut of around 500,000 bpd. It has said it will increase the reduction to 560,000 bpd in November.

The kingdom has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenues since mid-2014 and as a result posted huge budget deficits.

It has launched a package of economic reforms that include a plan to sell up to five percent of state-owned Aramco.

Speaking at the conference, the managing director of Saudi Arabia's state-owned Public Investment Fund, Yasir al-Rumayyan, reiterated that an Aramco initial public offering is on track for next year.

Nasser said on Monday that the IPO, expected to raise $100 billion if Aramco is valued at $2 trillion, will take place in the second half of 2018.
Bismarck State College theater students and the BSC Drama Club bring Stage Fright: A Haunted Theatre Experience to campus on Friday and Saturday.

With theatrical flair, the scares have been created and designed by students in the BSC Drama Club. A ghoulish guide will offer visitors a terrifying tour backstage, on stage and all around Schafer Halls Sidney J. Lee Auditorium for horrid encounters. And this year, the clowns come out to play.

In its seventh year at BSC, this attraction is appropriate for kids of all ages. Haunting hours are 6 to 11 p.m. with $5 admission at the door. Proceeds go toward the Drama Clubs annual trip to the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.
On emerging from the courthouse, a sombre Law (C) said there had been "unpleasant times" in prison and that he was looking forward to a meal with his family

Jailed Hong Kong democracy activists Joshua Wong and Nathan Law were released on bail Tuesday pending an appeal against sentences handed down for their role in the 2014 Umbrella Movement protests.

A defiant Wong said the activists stood ready to face what he called "suppression by an authoritarian regime" as he stood alongside Law outside the Court of Final Appeal following the decision.

"The government can lock up our bodies but they can't lock up our minds," he told reporters.

"They cannot put aside our determination to fight for democracy."

The pair were jailed in August after the Beijing-backed Hong Kong government pushed for tough sentences. Fears are growing that China is tightening its grip over the semi-autonomous city and that the rule of law is being compromised.

Wong, 21, who became the face of the mass pro-democracy protests while still a teenager, was imprisoned for six months while Law, 24, was sentenced to eight months.

They were granted bail Tuesday until November 7, the first appearance in appeal proceedings against the jail terms.

A third activist, Alex Chow, who was jailed for seven months alongside Law and Wong, was not part of the hearing.

Emerging from the courthouse in a neat white shirt and with his hair growing back after being shaved in prison, Wong said he planned to enjoy a meal with his family Tuesday night.

Law told reporters there had been "unpleasant times" behind bars.

"I hope the result of the case showcases the protection of human rights in our law system," Law said of the activists' appeal.

"The world is watching."

Hong Kong enjoys freedoms unseen on the mainland under a "one country, two systems" deal made when Britain handed the city back to China in 1997.

But Beijing stands accused of breaching the agreement.

Joshua Wong (C) is yet to be sentenced on a separate charge of contempt for obstructing the clearance of a major encampment during the Umbrella Movement rallies

Supporters outside punched the air at news of the pair's release.

Lawmaker Eddie Chu said it was "encouraging news for supporters of democracy".

- 'Message to society' -

The Umbrella trio were found guilty last year on unlawful assembly charges for storming a fenced-off government forecourt known as "Civic Square" as part of a September 2014 protest calling for fully free leadership elections.

Pro-democracy activist Nathan Law had already succeeded in becoming a legislator but was among six rebel lawmakers disqualified from parliament after inserting protests into their oaths of office

Their arrests sparked wider rallies which exploded two days later when police fired tear gas at the crowds. This triggered demonstrations that blocked some major roads for more than two months in an unprecedented challenge to Beijing.

Wong and Law initially received community sentences and Chow a three-week suspended sentence at a magistrates' court over the Civic Square protest.

But Hong Kong's justice department applied to increase those terms, with prosecutors arguing they should receive harsher punishment.

The judgement jailing them in August said the court must "send out a clear message to society" that protesters must abide by the law.

Wong's imprisonment prevented him from running for Hong Kong's partially directly elected legislature.

Law had already succeeded in becoming a legislator but was among six rebel lawmakers disqualified from parliament after inserting protests into their oaths of office.

Wong and Law each offered cash bail of HK$50,000 ($6,400). They were required to surrender their passports and to report to police once a week.

Wong has yet to be sentenced on a separate charge of contempt for obstructing the clearance of a major encampment during the Umbrella Movement rallies.

He has pleaded guilty to that charge.
Uganda's main opposition leader Kizza Besigye was arrested last week following the killing of an opposition supporter during a protest in the western city of Rukungiri

Uganda's opposition on Tuesday expressed outrage at the detention of leader Kizza Besigye, held in custody since a protest last week in which police shot dead one of his supporters.

"We are concerned about the detention without trial of Dr. Besigye and his colleagues," Harold Kaija, deputy secretary general of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), told AFP.

He complained that police had yet to announce "specific charges" against the party leader and two other officials detained with him.

Kaija on Monday visited Nagalama police station outside capital Kampala where the three have been held since their arrest on Thursday.

Senior FDC official Mugisha Muntu, a former army chief, said police are "bent on incarcerating them forever."

"This is a test of democracy," Muntu added.

Besigye was arrested following the killing of an opposition supporter during a protest in the western city of Rukungiri, Besigye's hometown.

The protesters were marching against a ruling party plan to amend the constitution to remove presidential age limits, a move that would allow President Yoweri Museveni to stand for a sixth consecutive term in 2021.

Police on Wednesday had banned protests against the age limit bill.

Police spokesman Asan Kasingye said Besigye has "a case to answer" but did not specify charges.

"We are collecting evidence and he will be appearing in court in relation to the killing and holding of an illegal assembly," Kasingye said but was unable to give a date.
Tech giant Microsoft sued the government in April last year, but said it was ending its case on Monday after achieving what it termed "an unequivocal win for our customers" that protected the constitutional rights of US citizens

Microsoft is dropping a lawsuit against the US government after the Department of Justice issued new rules limiting the use of secrecy orders that prevent firms from telling customers law enforcement has accessed their data.

The tech giant sued the government in April last year, but declared victory Monday and said it was ending its case after the DOJ announced it would revise its rules.

Brad Smith, Microsoft's chief legal officer, said the company had achieved "an unequivocal win for our customers" that protected the constitutional rights of US citizens.

"Until now, the government routinely sought and obtained orders requiring email providers to not tell our customers when the government takes their personal email or records," he wrote in a blog post.

"Sometimes these orders don't include a fixed end date, effectively prohibiting us forever from telling our customers that the government has obtained their data."

Smith acknowledged that secrecy orders were sometimes required for legitimate reasons -- such as protecting individuals at risk from harm or ensuring an investigation was not thwarted.

But, he added, at the time the lawsuit was filed, "the government appeared to be overusing secrecy orders in a routine fashion - even where the specific facts didn't support them".

"When we filed our case we explained that in an 18-month period, 2,576 of the legal demands we received from the U.S. government included an obligation of secrecy, and 68 percent of these appeared to be indefinite demands for secrecy," he said.

But in a memo issued last week, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said any such gag order "should have an appropriate factual basis" and "should extend only as long as necessary to satisfy the government's interest".

While lauding the DOJ's decision, Microsoft repeated its call on US Congress to amend the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act that regulates government access to contemporary electronic communications.

It comes as the US Supreme Court last week announced it would hear a separate privacy case that pits the Trump administration against Microsoft.

The case examines whether US law enforcement should be allowed to access evidence held on servers overseas during an investigation.

It comes after Microsoft refused to hand over emails during a US drug trafficking investigation on the basis the police's warrant did not extend to Ireland, where the messages were stored.
Western nations have warned about the dangers for Kenya as it barrels towards Thursday's elections. The country has a record of politically-motivated bloodshed and turbulence

Kenya stood Tuesday at dangerous crossroads two days ahead of presidential elections, with deep divisions between rival leaders, publicly-voiced doubt over the vote's credibility and a last-ditch legal bid to delay the poll.

The opposition staged further protests, pursuing its vow to keep up the pressure from the street but also fuelling anxiety over potential violence on polling day and beyond.

And in a further twist to the saga, the Supreme Court announced it would meet on the eve of voting to hear a petition to delay the election.

Thursday's drama is rooted in a decision by the same court to overturn the result of the first presidential election, which took place on August 8.

The annulment, based on irregularities in the electronic transmission of votes, was hailed as an opportunity to deepen democracy in a country plagued by disputed elections.

But the re-run has instead been dogged by chaos and acrimony.

Top diplomats and observers have excoriated both opposition leader Raila Odinga and President Uhuru Kenyatta for division instead of searching for a path to a free and fair election.

- Two months of drama -

The August poll unfolded peacefully before turning sour when Odinga called foul in the counting process.

He charged the election had been rigged in favour of Kenyatta, who was officially credited with 54 percent of the vote.

The election had been billed as the 72-year-old Odinga's final shot at the top job after three previous failed attempts, including in 2007 and 2013 when he said victory was stolen from him.

The 2007 election, which observers agreed was deeply flawed, plunged the country into politically-motivated tribal violence that left 1,100 dead.

Politics in Kenya largely plays out along ethnic lines, and Odinga -- a Luo -- and Kenyatta -- a Kikuyu -- have continued a dynastic rivalry which began with their fathers after independence from Britain.

To the shock of many, Odinga won a petition on September 1 to have Kenyatta's victory overturned.

The Supreme Court did not rule that there had been rigging, but pointed to widespread "irregularities" and mismanagement by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).

Kenyatta is set to emerge as victor in Thursday's election -- but will have to face doubt about the credibility of the vote

A furious Kenyatta called the judges "crooks" and vowed to "fix" the judiciary if elected, however energetically turned back to the campaign trail to defend his victory.

Meanwhile Odinga embarked on a mission to obtain fundamental reforms of the IEBC, insisting the new election was on course to be as shoddily run as the last.

- Calls for delay -

Diplomats point to key changes by the IEBC ahead of the new election, but Odinga was not swayed and with two weeks to the vote declared he would not take part.

He has said he would announce his "way forward" on Wednesday.

He has also vowed to keep on with protests, which have turned deadly in his western stronghold of Kisumu, and -- in the immediate aftermath of the August election -- in Nairobi slums.

Clashes between rival supporters have stoked memories of the country's traumatic violence after disputed elections a decade ago

At least 40 people have been killed, mostly shot dead by police, since the first election.

On Tuesday, a small crowd was teargassed in Nairobi while in Kisumu, a crowd marched to the IEBC offices and set tyres alight on the street.

The dramatic election has been hit by several bombshells.

Kenyatta's ruling party pushed through parliament electoral law amendments that the opposition said would make it easier to rig the election.

The president, facing pressure from western diplomats, has yet to sign the law. The Daily Nation lashed the bill as "partisan, ill-conceived, poorly timed and deviously designed to lower the threshold in electoral management".

Then, in a further blow to the ballot's legitimacy, a top election official last week fled the country and quit her job, complaining about intimidation and threats against her staff and saying the poll could not be credible.

Just hours later her boss, IEBC chief Wafula Chebukati, echoed these sentiments, saying internal divisions and political interference from both sides meant he could not guarantee a free, fair and credible vote.

Envoys from 20 countries raised the alarm Monday about the "deteriorating political environment."

US Ambassador Robert Godec said that if the electoral commission felt it was not ready for Thursday's poll, it should ask the courts for a delay.

"We would be fine with that," he said.
Fighters of the Hashed al-Shaabi coalition of Iraqi paramilitary forces have been instrumental in fighting around Mosul

Jihadists from the Islamic State group and fighters from Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary coalition were locked in fierce clashes near Mosul Tuesday, with nearly 30 reported dead, the coalition said.

Mosul, Iraq's second city, was retaken from IS in July after a massive months-long offensive.

"Waad Allah forces are repelling an IS attack southwest of Mosul in the Hatra desert" some 100 kilometres (60 miles) southwest of Mosul, said a spokesman for the Hashed unit.

The Hashed is an umbrella group of paramilitary auxiliaries formed in 2014 to support Iraqi regular forces after IS swept across swathes of northern Iraq.

In a series of online posts, Waad Allah said IS sent "numerous suicide bombers" to attack its forces, and gave a death toll of 24 jihadists and four of its own men.

Iraqi forces have retaken more than 90 percent of the territory IS seized in the country in 2014, with the jihadists now confined to the desert areas in Anbar province bordering Syria.

But despite a series of stinging defeats, IS in Iraq retains the ability to launch attacks in areas declared "liberated" months previously.

After losing Mosul in July, IS has also just lost Raqa, its "capital" in Syria.

The Hashed took over the Hatra area in April this year after IS forces were ousted.

The ancient walled city of Hatra in northern Nineveh province is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
China's Defence Minister Chang Wanquan waves during the security forum hosted by ASEAN

China and Southeast Asian nations may hold a joint naval exercise next year to help build trust, Singapore's defence minister said Tuesday, following years of acrimony over rival claims in the South China Sea.

Chinese Defence Minister Chang Wanquan on Tuesday attended a security forum hosted by the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations and pushed for the maritime drill, according to Singapore's Ng Eng Hen.

"This idea was openly floated and I haven't heard any objections to it," Ng told reporters on the sidelines of the forum in Clark, a northern Philippine city.

"This is an exercise to build friendship and trust."

China claims nearly all of the sea, through which $5 trillion in annual trade passes, even waters approaching the coasts of its neighbours.

Its claims overlap with those of ASEAN members the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as Taiwan.

The dispute has long been seen as a potential military flashpoint in the region.

Tensions have increased in recent years as China has sought to cement its claims with the building of artificial islands in the sea and installing military aircraft and missile systems on them.

The Philippines, under the previous presidency of Benigno Aquino, had rallied ASEAN to take a united stand against Chinese actions in the sea and won a ruling from an international tribunal that China's claims were unlawful.

However tensions eased after Rodrigo Duterte succeeded Aquino in the middle of last year and reversed the Philippines' stance, preferring instead to pursue closer economic and political ties with China.

Ng said China wanted to conduct the joint exercise next year and Singapore would help arrange it

"We will work out the details, the (logistics) and find a suitable area that ASEAN and China navies can exercise together," Ng said.

Singapore is the ASEAN-China coordinator and will next year hold the regional grouping's rotating chairmanship.

US Defense Secretary James Mattis also attended the two-day event, during which North Korea's nuclear ambitions were one of the top agenda items.
Hong Kong bookseller Lee Bo (left) and his associate Gui Minhai both disappeared in 2015

Sweden said Tuesday China had informed it of the release of dissident publisher Gui Minhai, a Chinese-born Swedish citizen who wrote political gossip books about Chinese leaders.

However his daughter quickly cast doubt over the claim and said she had not yet heard from him.

Gui, a 53-year-old Swedish citizen and a Hong Kong publisher who often wrote about leaders from the Chinese Communist Party, disappeared in 2015 while on vacation in Thailand and has been detained at an undisclosed location in China ever since.

"We have received information from the Chinese authorities that he has been released," Swedish foreign ministry spokeswoman Sofia Karlberg told AFP, without specifying when Gui had been freed.

But his daughter Angela Gui refuted the announcement and said she and her family have not heard anything from him or about his whereabouts.

"Neither I nor any member of my family nor any of his friends have been contacted," she said in a statement.

On Twitter, she wrote: "Gui Minhai has disappeared again, likely by the Chinese government."

Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom tweeted that she was "seeking further clarification".

"It's good news that he's been released, if he has," Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told TT news agency.

"I assume (he has been released," Lofven said, adding the Swedish foreign ministry was trying to contact Gui.

In 2016, Gui appeared on Chinese television, weeping as he confessed he had committed a traffic violation.

In another interview the same year, he also confessed to trying to smuggle illegal books into China.

- 'Strange phone call' -

The Chinese foreign ministry told AFP that Gui had served his jail sentence over "a traffic accident" and "was released on October 17".

But Gui's daughter said that when Swedish consular officers arrived at the undisclosed location in China on October 17, Chinese authorities said he "had already been released at midnight" and that they "had no idea where he was".

The Swedish consulate general in Shanghai on Monday received a "strange phone call from someone claiming to be" Gui Minhai, his daughter added.

"He was speaking Swedish and claimed that he intended to apply for a Swedish passport in one or two months, but that before doing so he wanted to spend some time with his mother 'who is ill,'" she said.

"To my knowledge my grandmother is not ill. My father is not in fact with her."

Gui worked for the Mighty Current publishing house, which produced books about political intrigue and love affairs at the highest levels of Chinese politics.
Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana wants a new approach to North Korea

International sanctions on North Korea are not working and serve only to strengthen the regime of Kim Jong-Un, the Philippine defence minister said on Tuesday.

The United States, which has a longstanding defence pact with the Philippines, has led a drive at the UN Security Council to impose tough sanctions against the North for its nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

The threat from Pyongyang's programme was a major topic at a two-day meeting of Southeast Asian defence chiefs and their partners hosted by the Philippines.

"Sanctions (are) not working but still strengthening the hand of Mr Kim Jong-Un," Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told reporters, as he gave his own assessment on the issue after leading the meetings.

"It feeds on his fears of being invaded also and so he rallies his people to fight against invaders, to 'support me'. Instead of weakening him, it is strengthening his hold on his people."

The North has for decades been developing atomic weapons and the missiles to deliver them and says it needs them to counter a US nuclear threat.

After a flurry of missile launches by the North and its sixth nuclear test last month, the UN imposed fresh sanctions that included bans or restrictions on the export of coal, iron ore and seafood by Pyongyang.

US President Donald Trump has also engaged in an escalating war of words with Kim, trading personal insults and threatening to "totally destroy" his country if it threatens the United States.

US Defense Secretary James Mattis and his counterparts from South Korea and Japan vowed to step up diplomatic pressure on Pyongyang, saying its weapons programmes pose "an unprecedented and grave threat" to the region.

Mattis met the ministers on Monday as part of an Asian trip that will see him visiting Seoul for annual defence talks -- ahead of a visit to Asia by Trump.

North Korea was "slowly being isolated" but major powers should rethink their approach, said Lorenzana.

"I think some of the major players in that area -- the US, China and Russia -- will have to come up with another approach to reach out to North Korea," he said.
Iraqi Kurds protest in their regional capital Arbil on October 21, 2017, as tensions soar with Baghdad

Parliament in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region decided Tuesday to hold legislative elections in eight months after they were delayed amid tensions with the central government in Baghdad over disputed territories.

Regional legislative and presidential elections had both been due on November 1 but were postponed after Baghdad seized a swathe of territory from Kurdish forces following a controversial independence vote.

There was no immediate word on a new date for a presidential election.

"The Kurdistan parliament decided... to postpone the parliamentary elections in the autonomous region by eight months," Islamic Union of Kurdistan parliamentarian Bahzad Zebari told AFP.

Farsat Sofi of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of long-time Kurdish leader Massud Barzani said parliament would now choose a new date for legislative and presidential elections.

The elections were originally set for just over a month after a September 25 referendum in the Kurdish areas which resulted in a massive "yes" for independence.

But the referendum, set in motion by Barzani, was strongly opposed by Baghdad.

Last week, Iraqi forces last week swept into the oil-rich northern province of Kirkuk, restoring it and Kurdish-held parts of Nineveh and Diyala provinces to central government control.

The rapid Kurdish retreat triggered recriminations among Kurdish politicians and prompted the regional parliament to suspend both elections.

It also decided "to freeze the activities of the Kurdistan presidency," Zebari said Tuesday.

The body includes Barzani, his vice-president Kosrat Rasul of KDP rival the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and the head of the presidential cabinet, Fuad Hussein.

- Blows to Barzani -

The body's suspension, and the fact that parliament did not extend its mandate again, represent major blows to Barzani.

On Sunday, Iraqi Kurdistan's main opposition party called on him to step down after the loss of Kurdish-controlled territory.

Shoresh Haji of the opposition Goran movement, which holds 24 out of 111 seats in the Iraqi Kurdish parliament, said both Barzani and Rasul should quit.

"The Kurdistan region's president and his deputy no longer have any legitimacy and should resign," he said.

Haji called for the creation of a "national salvation government" to prepare for dialogue with Baghdad and organise new elections.

Goran deputies boycotted Tuesday's session of parliament.

The mandate of Barzani, the first and only elected president of the autonomous Kurdish region, expired in 2013.

It was extended for two years and then continued in the chaos that followed the Islamic State group's sweeping offensive across Iraq in 2014.

Under the autonomous region's laws, it was Barzani who had set general elections for November 1.

However, Tuesday's vote now means that parliament will decide the new electoral calendar, several parliamentarians said.

A month after scoring a major victory in the independence referendum, Barzani now finds himself increasingly isolated both at home and abroad.

The United States, a key ally of both Baghdad and Kurdish forces in the battle against IS, opposed the non-binding referendum on independence, as did nations including Iraq's neighbours Iran and Turkey.

Tensions between Arbil and Baghdad show no sign of easing, with tit-for-tat arrest warrants being issued for politicians and military officials on both sides.

More than a week after the deadly battle for Kirkuk, a security official in Nineveh province bordering Turkey on Tuesday reported new clashes between Kurdish peshmerga fighters and paramilitary units that report to Baghdad.
This file photo taken on April 19, 2015 shows Jac Holmes from the UK in a trench on the outskirts of the north-western Syrian town of Tal Tamr. His family say he has been killed

A British man fighting alongside Kurds against the Islamic State group in Syria has been killed during the push to liberate Raqa, his family said Tuesday.

Sniper Jac Holmes, from Bournemouth in southern England, who was fighting with the Kurdistan People's Protection Units, was clearing mines on Monday when he died, his mother told the Press Association.

"He stood up for what he believed in and he had the courage of his convictions to go out and do something where he thought that the West were not doing enough," Angie Blannin told PA.

"To defeat ISIS he felt that it was not just a Syrian problem, or Middle Eastern problem, it was a world problem," she said of the 24-year-old.

Kurdish officials told her that her son had been clearing mines in the city, despite being a sniper.

"It is all a bit sketchy but I am guessing he stepped on a landmine or one went off close to him, or it was a suicide vest."

Blannin said she had initially tried to talk her son, a former painter and decorator, out of going to fight IS in 2015, but described him as "very headstrong."

He fought alongside Kurdish soldiers and had previously suffered a gunshot wound.

"I am extremely proud of him. All my family are incredibly proud," his mother told PA.

US President Donald Trump said Saturday that the end of the Islamic State "caliphate is in sight" with the fall of Raqa.

The declaration came four days after US-backed Kurdish-led forces recaptured the city, the capital of IS's self-proclaimed caliphate and its last major stronghold in Syria.
After pleading guilty, a Fargo man accused of threatening to kill his former son-in-law has a chance to keep his clean record. Meanwhile, his daughter, Patricia Motl, is set for trial for allegedly sending feces to the same victim.

District Judge Bruce Haskell sentenced James Motl, 54, to a three-year deferred imposition of sentence with supervised probation. James Motl was charged in March with felony terrorizing after he allegedly pointed a pistol at his former son-in-law's chest and threatened to kill him in response to a reported March 20 burglary at Patricia Motl's Bismarck home.

James Motl's criminal record had been clean up to that point, defense attorney Lloyd Suhr told Haskell on Monday. Suhr requested a deferred sentence of two years, leaving supervised probation up to the judge.

"There's no doubt here that what he did was impulsive. It was dangerous. We don't deny that," Suhr said. "I think he deserves a chance to keep a clean record."

James Motl lost his job of 18 years due to the case, Suhr added. He's since found work elsewhere for less pay.

Haskell said James Motl should have called police for the burglary rather than grab his gun.

"This was about as far from the appropriate way to handle this as can be imagined," he said. "The execution of this entire circumstance was inappropriate."

James Motl changed his plea in August. As part of his sentence, he also loses his firearms and must complete an anger management program.

"I think this is the last time you're going to see Mr. Motl," Suhr told Haskell.

James Motl declined to speak in court Monday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Patricia Motl, 28, faces her own criminal charges against her ex-husband. She is scheduled for a misdemeanor jury trial in December on harassment and disorderly conduct charges alleging she sent pig feces to her ex-husband and his girlfriend, as well as harassed him via email.

They divorced in 2015. Suhr said their marriage experienced domestic violence.
A Syrian infant suffering from severe malnutrition is carried by a nurse at a clinic in the rebel-controlled town of Hamouria, in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, on October 21, 2017

Manal boils water on the stove in the besieged Syrian town of Hamouria, hoping to convince her four children that she is cooking, but she has no food.

She puts the pot on the flame as a ruse, waiting for the children to fall asleep in the dilapidated house before they realise there is nothing for dinner.

In the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta region where she lives, over 1,100 children are suffering acute malnutrition, and hundreds more are at risk because of food shortages caused by a government siege.

Aid agencies warn the situation is worsening, despite an international agreement to implement a "de-escalation zone" in the area, which has decreased violence but led to no new access for food, medicine and humanitarian aid.

"They haven't eaten anything but bread for the last three days," Manal told AFP in tears.

"A neighbour gave us the flour."

Eastern Ghouta, which lies outside the capital Damascus, was once a prime agricultural region.

But the rebel stronghold has been under a tight government siege since 2013, causing shortages of food and medicine, and pushing up prices for what remains on the market, produced locally or smuggled in.

The region has been devastated by years of fighting, with government air strikes and shelling bringing down multi-story buildings and rendering whole streets uninhabitable.

Basic services for the region's estimated 400,000 residents are virtually non-existent, with electricity produced only by generators and the water available often dirty and a vector for illness.

- Situation 'getting worse': ICRC -

Manal's husband Abu Azzam is unable to work because of a serious injury he sustained in a shelling attack in their old home elsewhere in Eastern Ghouta several years ago.

The attack killed one of their children, and left another, Azzam, missing a foot and dependent on crutches to get around.

The family are desperately poor and have sold most of their furniture to afford food.

"In 24 hours, we have a single meal, which is not enough for the children," said Abu Azzam in despair.

Ordinarily, the family might hope for assistance from aid groups, but humanitarian access to Eastern Ghouta has been vanishingly rare throughout the conflict that began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

Aid convoys can only enter with government permission, with just two accessing the region since August, carrying assistance for fewer than 100,000 people.

In July, a "de-escalation zone" was implemented in Eastern Ghouta under a deal agreed by government allies Russian and Iran and rebel backer Turkey.

Syrian Abu Azzam who suffers from severe legs injuries following shelling in the rebel held areas around Damascus, is surrounded by his children at their house in the Eastern Ghouta town of Hamouria, on October 23, 2017

The agreement was meant to improve humanitarian access, but Russian forces "did two distributions at a checkpoint and since then stopped," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor.

"Humanitarian needs in Eastern Ghouta are huge, and more needs to be done," said Ingy Sedky, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"The situation is getting worse," she added.

"We know from past experience that such situations, where the population depends on the provision of humanitarian aid for its very basic needs, can deteriorate very quickly, and reach tragic proportions."

- Dreaming of three meals a day -

For some families, tragedy has already arrived.

At least two children are reported to have died from malnutrition or its complications this month, among them 34-day-old Sahar Dofdaa, whose emaciated form, swamped by her diaper, appeared in shocking images beamed around the world over the weekend.

She weighed less than two kilograms (just over four pounds) before she died Sunday at a hospital in Hamouria.

Doctor Yayha Abu Yayha, who works at the hospital where Sahar died, said a key cause of infant malnutrition was that undernourished mothers were unable to feed their babies.

"The basic nutrients that breastfeeding mothers need are not available," he told AFP.

Syrian boy Azzam who suffers from severe legs injuries following shelling in the rebel held areas around Damascus, is seen in his house in the Eastern Ghouta town of Hamouria, on October 23, 2017

"Most of them have anaemia and deficiences of vitamins A and D, as well as zinc and iron."

"Their bodies are weak, and so their children's bodies are weak," he said.

Another factor is poor hygiene caused by dire living conditions, lack of running water, and lack of clean water, he said.

Illnesses like diarrhoea can quickly leave even well-fed children underweight.

The UN's children's fund UNICEF told AFP that 232 children in Eastern Ghouta were suffering from severe acute malnutrition, which requires urgent treatment if the child is to survive.

Another 882 were suffering moderate acute malnutrition, with more than 1,500 other children at risk, a spokeswoman told AFP.

"All I want is to see my children with full bellies," said Abu Azzam.

"I hope the day will come when we'll be able to eat three meals a day."

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The emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, in parliament on October 24, 2017

Kuwait, the main mediator in a near-five month political crisis between Qatar and its Gulf rivals led by Saudi Arabia, warned on Tuesday that the dispute could escalate.

Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, in an address to parliament, also said that Kuwait's goal was to save the Gulf Cooperation Council union from "cracking and collapsing".

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, as well as Egypt, severed all diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar, accusing the gas-rich emirate of supporting Sunni Islamist extremist groups and having too close ties to Shiite Iran.

Kuwait has led mediation efforts since then, but without success.

Members of Kuwait's parliament at the opening ceremony of the new legislative year on October 24, 2017

"Everyone should know that Kuwait's mediation is based on a keen awareness that this crisis risks escalation," Al-Sabah said.

The worsening of the breakdown between Doha and the Saudi-led bloc leaves Gulf states vulnerable to foreign interference, he warned.

"An escalation would be an explicit invitation for regional and international intervention, which would have serious consequences for the security of the Gulf nations and their people," the emir said.

"History and future generations will not forgive anyone who contributes, even one word, to fuelling this dispute."

Qatar warned last week that the crisis is hampering operations against the Islamic State group out of its Al-Udeid air base, home to some 11,000 US soldiers.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has just visited Riyadh and Doha in hopes of easing the spat and unifying Washington's Gulf allies against Iran.

"We cannot force talks among people who are not ready to talk," Tillerson said.
Fighters from the Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary alliance ride an infantry-fighting vehicle in Kirkuk province on October 6, 2017 after clashes with the Islamic State group

Iraqi forces pillaged and torched Kurdish districts in a multi-ethnic town near Kirkuk after recent clashes with Kurdish fighters, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

"Hundreds of properties were looted, set on fire and destroyed in what appears to be a targeted attack on predominantly Kurdish areas" of Tuz Khurmatu after fighting on October 16, the rights group said in a report.

"Residents who are still in the city, as well as others who fled and then attempted to return, described how Iraqi government forces, as well as members of the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU), Turkmen fighters and Turkmen civilians, engaged in rampant arson, looting and demolition of civilian homes," the group said.

Locals also said at least 11 civilians were killed in "indiscriminate attacks" as heavy weaponry was used in densely-populated areas of the city.

"Civilians interviewed by Amnesty International were unable to determine whether the attacks they experienced were attributable to Kurdish or Iraqi government forces," the UK-based group said.

"However, in several of the cases documented by Amnesty International, the indiscriminate fire was launched into crowds of Kurdish residents fleeing the city."

Tuz Khurmatu, a city of 100,000 that has seen outbursts of communal tensions, was under the joint control of Kurdish forces and PMU paramilitary forces, also known as the Hashed al-Shaabi, which report to Baghdad.

But Kurdish forces were ousted from the town as government forces staged a lightning operation that saw them seize back disputed Kirkuk region following a controversial Kurdish vote for independence.

The United Nations estimates that some 35,000 people have fled Tuz Khurmatu, 160 kilometres (100 miles) north of Baghdad, since the fighting erupted on October 16.

"Within hours the lives of countless men, women and children were devastated in Tuz Khurmatu. Thousands have lost their homes, shops and everything they owned," said Lynn Maalouf, Director of Research for the Middle East at Amnesty International.

She urged Iraqi authorities to make good on pledges to clamp down on attacks against civilians and "promptly initiate impartial investigations into these violations".
Supporters of detained Moroccan protest leader Nasser Zefzafi demonstrate in front of a courtroom in Casablanca as his trial began on October 24, 2017

A protest leader who spearheaded demonstrations that rocked northern Morocco earlier this year went on trial Tuesday in a packed courtroom in the city of Casablanca.

Unemployed Nasser Zefzafi, 39, who was arrested in May, faces the death penalty for allegedly "undermining the internal security of the state" after becoming the flag bearer for the protest movement in the impoverished Rif region.

Zefzafi's silhouette could be seen through the opaque glass in the courtroom alongside some 30 other defendants, in his first public appearance since his detention.

His co-accused are facing between five and 20 years behind bars.

A judge quickly suspended the hearing to restore order as some 50 lawyers and dozens of relations of those on trial struggled to squeeze into the small courtroom. A next hearing was later set for October 31.

Supporters of the Al-Hirak al-Shaabi, or "Popular Movement", protesters held a noisy rally outside the court ahead of the trial to demand their release.

Representatives for the accused slammed the tight security surrounding the trial, claiming that the authorities were trying to drum up an atmosphere of fear around the defendants.

"The state wants to show that the accused are dangerous, but that is not the case," lawyer Isaac Charia told AFP.

"They are peaceful people and innocent."

Months of protests roiled northern Morocco earlier this year after anger was sparked by the gruesome death of a fisherman who was crushed to death in a rubbish truck as he tried to retrieve a confiscated catch.

Supporters of detained Moroccan protest leader Nasser Zefzafi demonstrate in front of a courtroom in Casablanca as his trial began on October 24, 2017

The largely peaceful demonstrations snowballed from grievances over poverty into a major challenge to the authorities in the kingdom.

In response, security forces launched a crackdown, slinging the alleged leaders of the mainly young protesters in jail in May and June.

On Tuesday some 20 other defendants arrested over the protests were also due to appear for their fourth hearing.

In addition, the Casablanca court was expected to hear the case of journalist Hamid El Mahdaoui, who is accused of failing to inform the authorities of an attempt to harm "state security" over the protests.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman declares a new reality for the ultra-conservative kingdom

Powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pledged a "moderate, open" Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, breaking with ultra-conservative clerics in favour of an image catering to foreign investors and Saudi youth.

The Saudi strongman, 32, did not mince words in declaring a new reality for the kingdom, hours after announcing the launch of an independent $500 billion megacity -- with "separate regulation" -- along the Red Sea coastline.

"We want to live a normal life. A life in which our religion translates to tolerance, to our traditions of kindness," he told international investors gathered at an economic forum in Riyadh.

"Seventy percent of the Saudi population is under 30, and honestly we will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today and at once," the crown prince said.

"We will end extremism very soon."

Prince Mohammed, known by his initials MBS, said he would see to it his country moved past 1979, a reference to the rise of political Islam in the years following the assassination of King Faisal in 1975.

The early 1970s had ushered major change into the oil-rich kingdom, including the introduction of television and schools for girls.

But that came to a halt as the Al-Sheikh family, which controls religious and social regulation in the kingdom, and the ruling Al-Saud family slowly reinforced the conservative policies Riyadh is known for.

Prince Mohammed's statement Tuesday is the most direct attack by a Saudi official on the Gulf country's influential conservative religious circles, whose stranglehold on Saudi society now appears to face serious challenges.

- 'Return to what was' -

"We are returning to what we were before -- a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions, traditions and people around the globe," he said.

Foreign and Saudi investors attended the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, on October 24, 2017

While the Saudi government continues to draw criticism from international rights groups, the crown prince has pushed ahead with reforms since his sudden appointment on June 21.

Monitors, including Amnesty International, say Saudi Arabia has in parallel stepped up its repression of peaceful rights activists.

Saudi authorities last month arrested more than 20 activists, including two popular Muslim preachers, without disclosing any charges against them.

But the young prince is widely regarded as being the force behind King Salman's decision last month to lift a decades-long ban prohibiting women from driving.

He has vied to modernise certain sectors in the kingdom, hinting that long-banned cinemas would soon be permitted as part of ambitious reforms for a post-oil era that could shake up the austere kingdom's cultural scene.

Prince Mohammed's comments came hours after the opening of the Future Investment Initiative, a three-day economic conference that brings together some 2,500 dignitaries, including 2,000 foreign investors.

Earlier Tuesday, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund -- controlled by MBS -- announced the launch of an independent economic zone along the kingdom's northwestern coastline.

The project, dubbed NEOM, will operate under regulations separate from those that govern the rest of Saudi Arabia.

NEOM covers an uninterrupted coastline of nearly 470 kilometres (290 miles) in northwestern Saudi Arabia and will extend into territories in neighbouring Jordan and Egypt, a statement released by the kingdom's Public Investment Fund said.

Authorities in Jordan and Egypt did not immediately comment on the statement.
US President Donald Trump was attending the Senate Republican caucus lunch for the first time since his inauguration, to rally support for passing a tax overhaul before year's end

Donald Trump made a rare trip to Congress Tuesday to lobby for his tax reforms, but the president's efforts were overshadowed by an explosive new war of words pitting him against a top senator from his Republican Party.

Trump arrived on Capitol Hill to attend the Senate Republican caucus lunch for the first time since his inauguration, to rally support for passing a tax overhaul before year's end.

But attention instead has swerved to a brutal back-and-forth with Senator Bob Corker, who charged in response to a Twitter attack from the president that Trump is an "utterly untruthful" leader who "debases" the nation.

Corker, an influential Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and has emerged as an outspoken critic of the president, excoriated him earlier this month as dangerously impulsive and branded the White House an "adult day care center."

He appeared to further antagonize Trump when he told ABC early Tuesday that he would like the president to stand clear of the debate over tax legislation and "leave it to the professionals" to finalize the plan.

Trump rounded on Corker in a series of tweets, and the war of words was on, playing out on television and social media in real time.

US Senator Bob Corker has publicly aired disagreements with President Donald Trump, a fellow Republican, but the lawmaker has taken them to a new level

"Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts," Trump tweeted.

"Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president," shot back Corker.

"I don't know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and debases our country in the way that he does, but he does," Corker went on to tell reporters at the Senate. "He has proven himself unable to rise to the occasion."

Corker -- who himself is not running for re-election next year -- expressed regret for supporting Trump's presidential bid, and said he would not vote for him again.

- 'Doesn't have a clue' -

The rapidly escalating feud has laid bare the tensions between Trump and some in his party on Capitol Hill, where the president has yet to grab a major legislative victory.

Trump's tax reform push is his latest attempt to do so.

Capitol Police arrested a protester who threw Russian flags as President Donald Trump arrived to meet with Republican Senators at the Capitol

Speaking in the Oval Office mid-day Tuesday, Trump said the United States is one of the highest-taxed countries in the world and a tax cut would, as he put it, restore America's competitive edge.

"If we get this fast, which I really believe we will because we have to as a country, it's going to bring back, I would say, four trillion dollars back into this country," Trump said.

He added: "That money will flow back in, it will be very quick and it will be very easy."

Inside Congress, as the president made his way to the Republican luncheon, a protester yelling "Trump is Treason" hurled small Russian flags into his path, accusing him of conspiring with Moscow to tilt the election his way.

In the past week Trump has been harshly criticized by two high-profile Republicans: former president George W. Bush, who said "bigotry seems emboldened" in the Trump era, and Senator John McCain, a former war hero and 2000 presidential nominee, who issued a searing rebuke to Trump's ideas and politics.

Neither Bush nor McCain mentioned Trump by name, but the target of their criticism was clear.

After Corker's diatribe, Trump pushed back on Twitter, branding him a "lightweight" and an "incompetent" foreign relations chairman who "doesn't have a clue."

"People like liddle' Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!" Trump added.

The stinging verbal blows marked the latest salvo in what is now a full-blown public war of words between the president and one of his party's most important lieutenants in Congress, a measured Republican who has immense sway over foreign policy issues as well as taxes.

The speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, sought to downplay the row, reminding reporters of the importance of staying focused on "a historic chance of actually fixing this tax code."

"So all this stuff you see on a daily basis, Twitter this and that, forget about it," Ryan said.
UN chief Antonio Guterres arrives in the Central African Republic as humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders warned about declining security in the country

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres arrived in the Central African Republic Tuesday to assess the country's fragile security situation as violence between militias threatens to intensify.

Crowds of people braving heavy rain lined the road from Bangui airport to the capital to greet him.

On the first day of his visit, which coincided with United Nations Day, Guterres led a wreath-laying service in honour of peacekeepers killed in action.

"There is nothing more precious than peace. There is nothing more noble than working to maintain peace, even if the work means sacrificing lives," he said.

"As we have unfortunately seen, there are times when troops have been killed while building peace here in Central Africa."

At an official welcoming ceremony later with President Faustin-Archange Touadera, Guterres said the international community needs to provide more support for the country.

"The international community is not involved enough, has not provided enough of its financial resources and its capabilities to help the Central African Republic," he said.

During his four-day stay, the UN chief will also visit the southeastern town of Bangassou, one of the worst-hit regions for violence.

Guterres is also expected to meet victims of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers -- part of an effort to address damaging allegations that have hit the blue helmets in several missions.

In the run-up to Guterres's visit, Christian and Muslim leaders urged the United Nations to overhaul its peacekeeping strategy, which some have criticised as being too passive.

"A revision of strategy" has to go hand-in-hand with a mandate for UN troop renewal, Protestant leader Nicolas Guerekoyamene-Gbangou told AFP during a joint interview on Saturday with the country's Muslim and Catholic leaders.

The UN has a force of some 12,500 troops and police on the ground in CAR to help protect civilians and support the government of Touadera, who was elected last year.

Known as MINUSCA, its mandate -- which expires on November 15 -- is due to be renewed, and Guterres is looking for reinforcements.

- Humanitarian law 'not respected' -

CAR, one of the world's poorest nations, has been struggling to recover from a three-year conflict between nominally Muslim and Christian militias that started after the 2013 overthrow of Francois Bozize.

Guterres shakes hands with Central African Republic Prime Minister Simplice Sarandgi at Mpoko International Airport

Between 2013 and 2016, acting under a UN mandate, France intervened militarily to push out the Muslim Seleka rebels and the United Nations launched its peacekeeping mission in 2014.

But the country remains plagued by violence.

Thousands have lost their lives and half a million people have been displaced, according to the UN, out of a population of roughly 4.5 million.

Since May, renewed clashes in the southeast have pitted armed groups against each other as they compete for control of minerals and areas of influence, while claiming to protect communities.

"The religious stance has been used only for political ends, for looting and for making off with the riches beneath the soil," said Oumar Kobine Layama, head of the Islamic Conference in CAR. "This is not a religious conflict."

The UN chief's stay will be his first visit to the Central African Republic since taking office on January 1, although he regularly visited the country as former head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

In his latest report to the Security Council on CAR, Guterres requested reinforcements of 900 troops, but whether this will have a decisive impact on the ground is unclear.

Aid organisations say they are extremely worried about security.

"Humanitarian law is no longer being respected in CAR," Frederic Manantsoa Lai from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) told AFP, warning that humanitarian groups can no longer access many parts of the country due to armed militias.

"We are reaching our limits in terms of humanitarian aid because of a lack of security," he said.

"Since September 2016, we have seen a dozen intrusions in MSF hospitals -- two women forcibly removed from Bangassou hospital and killed outside... in Zemio, a two-year-old child brutally murdered in hospital. The population is completely surrounded, and we are more and more exposed, we are taking more and more risks."
French President Emmanuel Macron leads Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at the Elysee Palace in Paris on October 24, 2017

French President Emmanuel Macron backed visiting Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in his country's fight against terrorism on Tuesday and brushed off calls to pressure him on human rights.

The 39-year-old French centrist had faced calls from rights groups to raise torture and political repression in Egypt publicly after the first face-to-face meeting between the pair. But Macron said he would not "give lessons" to a sovereign state.

Instead, Macron stressed how Egypt was a vital partner in the fight against Islamist extremism in the Middle East and Europe, as well as key in the search for lasting political solutions in war-wracked Libya and Syria.

"The first battle that we have in common is the fight against terrorism," Macron said during a joint press conference which underlined their common purpose against extremists that have claimed hundreds of victims in both countries.

Macron said he had stated that combating extremism "should be carried out with respect for the rule of law and human rights," but declined to criticise Sisi's record since he seized power in 2013.

As French president Macron said, "I would not accept that another leader gave me lessons about how to govern my country... I believe in the sovereignty of states and I am not here to give lessons without taking account of the context."

The former investment banker, elected in May, has promised a pragmatic, results-oriented foreign policy, but also one that sees France uphold its historic mission of defending human rights.

Egypt is a major buyer of French military equipment with orders worth more than 5.0 billion euros ($5.8 billion) since 2015.

They include an order for 24 fighter jets from the Rafale series for which France had long struggled to find a buyer.

French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said Tuesday that Macron and Sisi would discuss the possibility of further Rafale orders.

"If there can be new contracts, all the better," he told Europe 1 radio.

Macron's backing for Egypt's tough stance on security is in line with that of other Western leaders, who see Sisi as a source of stability.

US President Donald Trump memorably praised the Egyptian for doing a "fantastic job" in April.

Human rights groups, however, accuse Sisi of overseeing a crackdown on the media, NGOs and political opponents.

The most populous country in the Middle East is fighting the Egyptian branch of the Islamic State group in the north of the Sinai peninsula and has faced a series of attacks that has affected its vital tourism industry.

At least 16 Egyptian police officers were killed at the weekend in an ambush by fighters in the country's Western Desert in a rare flare-up outside the Sinai.

Macron and Sisi both stressed the need to step up the fight against terrorism in Egypt's lawless neighbour Libya, where IS jihadists have gained a foothold.

- No torture? -

Asked by a French reporter about allegations that an Italian academic researcher found murdered in Egypt in 2016 died after being tortured by the police, Sisi defended his security services.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi attends a military ceremony at the Hotel des Invalides in Paris on October 24, 2017

"We do not practise torture," he said, adding: "The Egyptian people refuses all violent practises or dictatorship and failures to respect human rights."

He also said that journalists and unnamed groups, which he accused of trying to undermine the country, were wrongly fixated on "political rights" in Egypt and overlooked the rights of victims of terrorism.

Sisi ousted the country's first civilian president, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood, and insists that his priority is to restore law and order and provide jobs to ordinary Egyptians.

- Stubborn but discreet? -

Macron raised the cases of 15 activists or journalists behind bars in Egypt in private and would "wait for some progress", an aide told reporters after the talks, on condition of anonymity.

In the lead up to the visit, Macron's aides had stressed that human rights would be discussed behind closed doors.

Rights groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International had urged the French leader to make economic cooperation and military support conditional on improvements in human rights.

The head of Human Rights Watch in France, Benedicte Jeannerod, urged Macron to end "France's disgraceful policies of indulgence toward al-Sisi's repressive government."
Security forces move in to arrest a man suspected of wanting to leave France to join a jihadist organisation in Syria, in this file picture taken on May 26, 2016

Thousands of foreign jihadists who have fled Islamic State group-held territories in Iraq and Syria could pose major security problems as they return home, a think-tank said Tuesday.

At least 5,600 citizens or residents of 33 countries had returned home as IS faced devastating assaults on territories it held in Iraq and Syria, said the Soufan Center, a non-profit security analysis group.

"Added to the unknown numbers from other countries, this represents a huge challenge for security and law enforcement entities," it said.

IS proclaimed a caliphate in 2014 on territories the size of Italy which it had seized in a sweeping assault across swathes of Iraq and Syria.

It has since lost some 85 percent of the territories it controlled to US and Russian-backed offensives.

But despite its collapse, Soufan warned that IS or something similar would likely survive as long as the "so long as the conditions that promoted its growth remain".

Some of the survivors among 40,000 foreign IS fighters from more than 110 countries would inevitably "remain committed to the form of violent 'jihad' that al-Qaeda and IS have popularised", it said.

"It is clear that anyone who wishes to continue the fight will find a way to do so."

IS has claimed a string of attacks across the Middle East, Europe and beyond since declaring its "caliphate".

The Soufan report cited Radicalisation Awareness Network figures saying around 30 percent of some 5,000 European Union residents thought to have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq had since returned home.

Soufan estimated that Russia was the source of the greatest number of jihadists (3,417), with more than 3,000 each from Saudi Arabia and Jordan, 2,962 from Tunisia and 1,910 from France.

The Soufan report said re-integrating women and children who had joined IS posed particular problems.

It said governments usually either incarcerate returning jihadists, which "only postpones the problem", or place them in reintegration programmes, which it says are "notoriously hard to design and run".

"The questions of identity, and the widespread mistrust of government institutions and mainstream politics that IS has managed to exploit are unlikely to go away," the report said.

"Nor therefore is the phenomenon of foreign fighters and returnees, whether they join the remnants of IS or other new groups that emerge in its image".
South African police often come under fire for failing to bring down crime levels, although officials insist that the numbers have been declining from before the end of apartheid in 1994

South Africa's murder rate rose by 1.8 percent in the last year, with over 19,000 people killed across the country -- 52 a day -- official statistics released Tuesday showed.

The eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, which is hit by political violence, recorded the highest number of murders, followed by Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria.

"Over the past four financial years, murder has reflected an upward trend. We need a combative and decisive policing when we deal with such crimes," said Police Minister Fikile Mbalula.

A total of 19,016 were killed between April 2016 to March 2017, up from 18,673 the previous year.

"We must not see these statistics just as pure numbers," Mbalula told lawmakers in parliament as he delivered the official statistics.

"Behind the numbers are real feelings, real lives, real hurt, real harm, real losses, deaths."

In the Western Cape, which includes the gang-ridden city of Cape Town, gang-related killings accounted for 19.3 percent of all murders in the province.

A total of 39,828 rapes were reported in the past year -- 109 a day -- down from 41,503.

There were also 16,717 reported carjacking incidents, the highest number recorded in the last 10 years.

The opposition Democratic Alliance questioned whether crime was actually worse than the official figures due under-reporting in the country of 56 million people.

South African police often come under fire for failing to bring down crime levels, although officials insist that the numbers have been declining from before the end of apartheid in 1994.
A prominent figure of the Dakota Access protests will ask a judge next week to allow a necessity defense claiming the perceived threat of the pipeline left him no choice to commit his alleged crimes.

Attorney Chase Iron Eyes, also a Standing Rock Sioux tribal member and North Dakota's 2016 Democratic House candidate, is charged with felony inciting a riot and misdemeanor criminal trespass. He has pleaded innocent.

Judge David Nelson will hear his case for a necessity defense at a Nov. 3 hearing. Defense attorney Daniel Sheehan will make the case that the pipeline's impact to Iron Eyes' community forced him to resist the project as he did.

"Given the Dakota Access Pipelines imminent threat to my tribes and my familys only water supply, I ultimately had no choice but to resist on the front lines, Iron Eyes said. "Pipelines spill all too often, and our efforts to stop DAPL's construction were thwarted by President Trumps illegal intervention to cancel the environmental impact statement that the Army Corps of Engineers had decided to prepare."

Necessity defenses have recently been invoked in other pipeline cases, including Michael Foster, who was convicted this month of crimes related to his shutdown of the Keystone pipeline near Walhalla last year.

A judge denied his necessity defense, which claimed the threat of climate change forced him to shut off the tar sands oil pipeline.

Meanwhile, a Minnesota judge allowed the same defense for two other "valve turners," who also targeted pipelines last year.

"Given global warming and the deleterious impacts on the environment from the fossil fuel industry, embodied here by the Dakota Access Pipeline, and given the pipelines threat of imminent harm to the people of Standing Rock and millions of others downstream, we feel Chase was fully justified in undertaking his prayerful vigil on the front lines," Sheehan said.

Iron Eyes faces up to five years in prison, if convicted. He is scheduled for a felony jury trial fon Feb. 8.

HolyElk Lafferty, a Cheyenne River Sioux tribal member arrested with Iron Eyes in February, will also ask for a similar defense later next month, attorney Lanny Sinkin said.

"Our peaceful and prayerful stand did no harm to anyone, especially when measured against the harm these projects pose to our planets well-being, and the chance of future generations to live healthy lives," Iron Eyes said. "I did what I had to do."
Osman Mirgani, editor of Sudanese independent al-Tayar newspaper, has been regularly targeted for his aggressive style of speaking out against the authorities and over corruption scandals his paper has exposed over the years

Sudan on Tuesday freed a newspaper editor, jailed over an article accusing President Omar al-Bashir's family of corruption, after a local journalist union paid off his fine.

A court in Khartoum on Monday ordered Osman Mirgani, editor-in-chief of the independent Al-Tayar newspaper, to either serve a six-month jail sentence or pay a fine of 10,000 Sudanese pounds ($1,400) for publishing the article in 2012 that accused Bashir's family of corruption.

Mirgani refused to pay the fine and was taken to a jail in Omdurman, the twin city of Khartoum on the western banks of the Nile.

But following just one night in prison he was released on Tuesday after the Sudanese Journalists' Union covered the fine.

"We paid the money because we believe that no journalist should be in jail," Salah Sheikh, general secretary of the union, told AFP.

"Now that he has been released, he can file an appeal against the court's ruling."

Mirgani, a US-educated engineer turned journalist who has regularly clashed with the authorities, said he had not been informed by the union before it came up with the cash.

"Today the journalists union paid the money... It's against my principle to pay fines in such cases," Mirgani told AFP at his office after his release.

The court had also given a three-year suspended jail term to the writer of the piece, Mohamed Zine El Abidine.

In the article, El Abidine had accused Bashir's family of being corrupt, Mirgani said.

After the article was published, Sudan's powerful National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) filed cases against both Mirgani and El Abidine.

Mirgani has been regularly targeted for his aggressive style of speaking out against the authorities and over corruption scandals his paper has exposed over the years.

NISS agents often confiscate the entire print runs of editions of Al-Tayar over articles that they deem inappropriate.

Mirgani was once beaten up by armed men who stormed his office in central Khartoum in July 2014.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Sudan 174th out of 180 countries on its 2017 world press freedom index, saying that NISS "hounds journalists and censors the print media".
Israel has been the only country to openly support Kurdish independence, with OM Benjamin Netanyahu last month backing "the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state of its own"

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said Israel had "great sympathy" for Kurdish aspirations and that the world should concern itself with their wellbeing.

Netanyahu was speaking at a memorial ceremony for far-right Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi, assassinated by Palestinians in Jerusalem in 2001.

Zeevi, he said, went on a secret mission Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region in the 1960s and supervised the setting up of an Israeli army field hospital there.

"The visit made a deep impression on him," Netanyahu's office quoted him as saying in Hebrew.

"He came face to face with warm expressions of support for Israel which continue to this day.

"The Kurds demonstrate national maturity and international maturity," said the Israeli leader.

"We have very great sympathy for their desires and the world needs to concern itself with their safety and with their future."

Israel has been the only country to openly support Kurdish independence, with Netanyahu last month backing "the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to attain a state of its own."

He did not specify how and where such a state should come into being.

Parliament in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region decided Tuesday to postpone planned legislative elections for eight months amid tensions with the central government in Baghdad over disputed territories.

The elections were originally set for just over a month after a September 25 referendum in the Kurdish areas which resulted in a massive "yes" for independence.

The non-binding referendum was strongly opposed by Baghdad.

The United States, a key ally of both Baghdad and Kurdish forces in the battle against the Islamic State group, also opposed it as did Iraq's neighbours Iran and Turkey.
A congressional probe is investigating how the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice decided during the height of the 2016 White House race to not pursue charges against Clinton over her alleged misuse of a personal email server

Republican lawmakers on Tuesday added to the already copious investigations swamping the US capital, announcing two new probes targeting Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

But Democrats quickly accused them of creating a "massive diversion" to distract from President Donald Trump's troubles.

One of the new probes is demanding more clarity on how the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice decided during the height of last year's White House race to not pursue charges against Clinton over her alleged misuse of a personal email server.

A second probe targets a 2013 decision by the Obama administration to approve the sale of a Canadian mining company Uranium One to Russian state-owned company Rosatom.

The move gave Rosatom control of 20 percent of US uranium stockpiles, and was decided after Uranium One made several donations to the Clinton Foundation of former president Bill Clinton.

The probes, involving the House Judiciary, Oversight and Intelligence Committees, came as Republicans and President Donald Trump weather increasing pressure from the multiple investigations into how Russia may have aided Trump's presidential campaign last year.

Announcing the Clinton-FBI probe, Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, both Republicans, stressed that Republicans cannot be the only targets of investigations.

"The law is the most equalizing force in this country. No entity or individual is exempt from oversight," Goodlatte and Gowdy said in a statement.

- Uranium deal -

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a prominent Trump defender, has announced a probe of the Obama administration's approval of the sale of a Canadian mining company Uranium One to Russian state-owned company Rosatom

Minutes later Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a prominent Trump defender, announced an examination of the uranium story.

The move came after a news article revealed last week that the FBI had been investigating the Uranium One-Rosatom deal in 2013 as part of an effort by Moscow to gain influence in the US nuclear industry, in part by paying bribes.

Nunes said he wants to find out why Congress was not informed about any FBI investigation into the matter.

Nunes is an avid defender of Trump and was stripped of his lead role in the House Intelligence Committee's Russian interference investigation earlier this year for politicizing it.

He announced the new probe Tuesday after Trump repeatedly tweeted about the case.

"Uranium deal to Russia, with Clinton help and Obama Administration knowledge, is the biggest story that Fake Media doesn't want to follow!" Trump tweeted last Thursday.

Democrats, meanwhile, blasted Republicans for trying to distract attention and resources from the investigations into Russian election interference.

"This new investigation is a massive diversion to distract from the lack of Republican oversight of the Trump administration and the national security threat that Russia poses," said Democratic Representatives Elijah Cummings and John Conyers in a statement.

"Ten months into the Trump administration and House Republicans still have not held a single substantive oversight hearing on clear abuses by the president or his top aides."
A picture taken on October 19, 2017 shows one of two notes written by Albert Einstein, in 1922, on stationary from the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo

A note that Albert Einstein gave to a courier in Tokyo briefly describing his theory on happy living sold at auction in Jerusalem on Tuesday for $1.56 million (1.33 million euros), the auction house said.

The winning bid for the note far exceeded the pre-auction estimate of between $5,000 and $8,000, according to the website of Winner's auction house.

"It was an all-time record for an auction of a document in Israel," Winner's spokesman Meni Chadad told AFP.

The buyer was a European who wished to remain anonymous, he said.

The note, on Imperial Hotel Tokyo stationery, says in German that "a quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest."

Bidding, in person, online and by phone, started at $2,000. A flurry of offers pushed the price rapidly up for about 20 minutes until the final two potential buyers bid against each other by phone.

Auctioneer Gal Wiener of the Winner's auction house in Jerusalem gestures during an auction on October 24, 2017 that saw a note written by Albert Einstein in 1922 fetch $1.56 million

Applause broke out in the room when the sale was announced.

"I am really happy that there are people out there who are still interested in science and history and timeless deliveries in a world which is developing so fast," the seller told AFP on condition of anonymity after the sale.

A second Einstein note written at the same time that simply reads "where there's a will, there's a way" sold for $240,000, Winner's said.

The German-born physicist, most famous for his theory of relativity, was on a lecture tour in Japan when he handwrote the autographed notes, previously unknown to researchers, in 1922.

He had recently been informed that he was to receive the Nobel Prize for physics, and his fame outside of scientific circles was growing.

A Japanese courier arrived at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo to deliver Einstein a message. The courier either refused to accept a tip, in line with local practice, or Einstein had no small change available.

Either way, Einstein didn't want the messenger to leave empty-handed, so he wrote him two notes by hand in German, according to the seller, a relative of the messenger.

"Maybe if you're lucky those notes will become much more valuable than just a regular tip," Einstein told the messenger, according to the seller, a resident of the German city of Hamburg.

- 'Stone in the mosaic' -

Two other letters Einstein wrote in later years were also auctioned on Tuesday, fetching prices of $33,600 and $9,600.

In June, letters written by Einstein about God, Israel and physics sold for nearly $210,000 at a Jerusalem auction.

Roni Grosz, the archivist in charge of the world's largest Einstein collection at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, said the notes shed light on the private thoughts of the great physicist, whose name has become synonymous with genius.

Auctioneer Gal Wiener of the Winner's auction house in Jerusalem gestures during an auction on October 24, 2017 that saw a note written by Albert Einstein in 1922 fetch $1.56 million

"What we're doing here is painting the portrait of Einstein -- the man, the scientist, his effect on the world -- through his writings," Grosz said.

"This is a stone in the mosaic."

Einstein served as a non-resident governor of Jerusalem's Hebrew University. When he died in 1955, he left the institution his archives, making it the owner of the world's most extensive collection of his documents.
Police are investigating a series of murders that took place between October 9 and 19 within a 1.9 mile radius in Seminole Heights, a historic neighborhood in northern Tampa, on Florida's Gulf coast

Police in Tampa, Florida said Tuesday that they are investigating a series of unsolved killings after three unrelated people were shot dead in similar circumstances.

The murders took place between October 9 and 19 within a 1.9 mile radius in Seminole Heights, a historic neighborhood in northern Tampa, on Florida's Gulf coast.

"We believe the three killings are linked," said Tampa police spokesman Stephen Hegarty.

"Each victim was walking alone and no one was around. There is no clear motive -- none of the killings was a robbery," he told AFP.

Benjamin Mitchell, 22, was shot dead on October 9 when he stood waiting at a bus stop.

Four days later Monica Hoffa, 32, was found shot dead in an open plot of land. She was last seen on October 11, when she was heading to a friend's home.

And on Thursday Anthony Naiboa, 20, was shot dead as he walked close to the area where Mitchell was shot.

The three murders took place approximately between 8 pm and 9:30 pm local time.

"We are urging the community to be vigilant, be aware of their surroundings, don't walk alone, and share report any suspicious activity," Hegarty said.

He also urged people to not hide at home.

"These murder happened when no one was out and around. We want people out on their well-lit front porches, walking their dogs, and keeping an eye on their streets," he said.

Police are also asking area locals to share any security video that shows unusual night time activity.

In the meantime, police patrol cars have multiplied in the city.

Hegarty said that police are avoiding the term "serial killer" because "that conjures up certain profiles, such as a white, male, loner, etc" which "might not apply here."

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and Police Chief Brian Dugan tried to calm jittery nerves late Monday when they spoke to some 400 neighbors gathered at a Seminole Heights school.

"There's a very good likelihood that someone in this room knows who's doing it," Dugan told the crowd.

"This pains me to tell you that if you're out there walking alone, that you're either a suspect or a potential victim."

Buckhorn was more agitated in his response.

"We will hunt this son of a bitch down!" he told the crowd.

"We are not going to let evil win this race. Not happening."

Dugan assured nervous parents that police will be out in force on October 31 to protect children trick-or-treating for Halloween.
Morocco's King Mohammed VI (C) , the Crown Prince Moulay Hassan (L of the King ) and the new Prime Minister Saadeddine Othmani (R of the king) pose with ministers in the royal palace of Rabat in April 2017

King Mohammed VI of Morocco on Tuesday sacked three ministers because of "delays in development programmes" in the troubled northern Rif region, the palace said.

The Rif was gripped earlier this year by months of angry demonstrations calling for jobs, development and an end to corruption in the North African kingdom.

Morocco in 2015 launched a $700 million (600 million euro) programme to revive the northern port city of Al-Hoceima, a focal point of the protest movement.

But a report released on Tuesday cited "malfunctions" and unjustified delays, the royal cabinet said.

"There was a big delay in launching projects, and worse, the majority of these projects were not even launched," it said.

The ministers of education, Mohamed Hassad, health, Houcine El Ouardi, and housing, Nabil Benabdellah, were relieved of their duties along with two other senior officials.

The sackings came the same day as the leader of a protest movement that has shaken the Berber-majority Rif appeared in court in his first public appearance since being arrested in May.

Nasser Zefzafi emerged as a key figure in the Al-Hirak al-Shaabi movement that called for jobs, development and an end to corruption.

In court on Tuesday, he raised his fist and declared that "they refuse to give us the floor because they know that what we say will be right".

Charged with "undermining the internal security of the state", Zefzafi could face the death penalty.

Originally sparked by the death of a fisherman crushed in a rubbish truck as he tried to salvage his confiscated catch, the demonstrations snowballed from grievances over local poverty into a major challenge to the authorities.

In response, security forces launched a crackdown, slinging the alleged leaders of the mainly young protesters in jail in May and June.

The Rif has long had a tense relationship with the central authorities in Rabat, and it was at the heart of the Arab Spring-inspired protests in Morocco in February 2011.

King Mohamed VI relinquished some of his near-absolute control through constitutional reforms following the 2011 protests.
Arizona Senator and Trump critic Jeff Flake unleashed a fierce broadside at President Donald Trump as he delivered a resignation speech on the Senate floor

A senator from Donald Trump's Republican Party unleashed a powerful attack on the US leader Tuesday as he announced he would not seek re-election, telling Senate colleagues he "will not be complicit" with a "reckless" presidency.

Jeff Flake, of Arizona, assailed Trump in a bombshell 17-minute speech on the Senate floor, hours after the president made what was meant to be a bridge-building trip to the Capitol to drum up support for his tax reform plans.

Flake, who has served in the Senate since 2013 and has been an outspoken critic of Trump-era politics, displayed visible emotion, his voice repeatedly breaking, as he announced he would not run for office again next year.

"The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency -- the provocation for the most petty reasons... none of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal," said the 54-year-old.

"We must stop pretending that the degradation of politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. They are not normal," Flake warned .

"Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior is excused as telling it like it is when it's actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified."

Flake blasted Trump for his unfettered tweeting, and attacked his Republican colleagues for keeping quiet as the president flouts one custom after another.

"The notion that one should stay silent as the norms and values that keep America strong are undermined and as the alliances and agreements that ensure the stability of the entire world are routinely threatened by the level of thought that goes into 140 characters," he said.

"Politics can make us silent when we should speak and silence can equal complicity," added the senator, who has assailed Trump-style politics in a book entitled "Conscience of a Conservative."

"I have children and grandchildren to answer to.... I will not be complicit or silent.... I am announcing today that my service in the Senate will conclude at the end of my term in early January 2019."

- 'Political price' -

Flake's extraordinary speech came as a Senate colleague, Bob Corker of Tennessee, stepped up a war of words with Trump, calling him an "utterly untruthful" leader who "debases" the nation.

Like Flake, Corker is not seeking re-election next year.

Immediately after Flake's speech, his senior colleague from Arizona, Senator John McCain, praised him for his "honor," "brilliance" and "patriotism."

"I have seen Jeff Flake stand up for what he believes in, knowing full well that there would be a political price to pay," McCain said.

Together with Flake and Corker, McCain is the third vocal Republican critic of Trump in the Senate. He was diagnosed with brain cancer in July.

Trump has previously attacked Flake as "weak" and "ineffective" and has derided Corker's height while labeling him "incompetent."

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded by saying voters in Arizona and Tennessee would likely not have supported Flake or Corker next year were they to have run.

"The voters of these individual senators' states are speaking in pretty loud volumes. I think that they were not likely to be re-elected and I think that that shows that the support is more behind this president than it is those two individuals," she said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping introduced the new members of the elite Politburo Standing Committee

President Xi Jinping was formally handed a second term Wednesday, with no clear successor emerging in a revamped ruling council, cementing his grip on power and setting the stage for him to dominate China for decades to come.

In a highly choreographed event, Xi led the new members of the elite Politburo Standing Committee in front of television cameras at Beijing's massive Great Hall of the People after their selection by 204 party officials in a closed-door vote.

Xi, 64, secured a second five-year term as general secretary of the Communist Party after his political theory was enshrined in its constitution, giving him an inviolable mandate to rule and possibly positioning him to retain power for much longer.

He was also reappointed head of the country's Central Military Commission.

Premier Li Keqiang, 62, retained his seat on the seven-member committee while five other men -- all little known outside China -- replaced comrades who had reached an informal retirement age of 68.

In a speech, as the other members stood expressionless in dark suits, Xi heralded a "new era" for the country under his rule and said the party "must get a new look and more importantly make new accomplishments."

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But the new ruling council looked decidedly old, raising doubts that any could succeed Xi.

"Xi Jinping doesn't want to share power. He doesn't want someone breathing down his neck, preparing the succession," Jean-Pierre Cabestan, China specialist at Hong Kong Baptist University, told AFP.

"He wants to keep pressure on everybody and enjoy power for five or 10 years without having his hands tied."

All the committee's members are at least 60 years of age. Under the current rules, they would be too old to serve the customary two terms as the party's leader at the next congress in 2022.

Xi was elevated to the committee in 2007, when he was 54, and succeeded Hu Jintao as general secretary and president five years later.

- 'Xi Thought' -

The new committee members are Xi confidant Li Zhanshu, 67, vice premier Wang Yang, 62, leading Communist Party theoretician Wang Huning, 62, party organisation department head Zhao Leji, 60, and Shanghai party chief Han Zheng, 63.

Zhao, a Xi ally, was also appointed as head of the anti-corruption agency, which has brought down 1.5 million officials including several of the presidents rivals since 2012.

Despite their promotion to the nation's highest leadership circle, they are likely to have much less influence than their predecessors under a newly empowered Xi.

His reappointment capped a twice-a-decade congress of the Communist Party that gave him a freer hand to accomplish his ambition of turning China into a global superpower with a world-class military by mid-century.

In a highly choreographed event, the new seven-member ruling council was unveiled at Beijing's Great Hall of the People

The constitutional amendment to include "Xi Thought", which the congress passed Tuesday, has put Xi in the rarefied company of the nation's founder Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping, the architect of its economic reforms.

"He will use this boost to push forward his ambitious agenda," said Matthias Stepan of Germany's Mercator Institute for China Studies.

"It will guarantee him a place in the history books."

The accolade firmly establishes Xi as the country's locus of power, potentially upending the collective model of leadership promoted by Deng and embraced by Xi's two predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, who both stepped down after two terms.

- Anti-graft crusade -

In the past two administrations, decisions were the result of horse-trading and consultation among members of the standing committee, the council of party elders which has led China since Deng's death in 1997.

But with his name in the constitution, Xi has become the nation's ultimate authority, likely giving him the last word on all major decisions.

The document's "all-round embracing of Xi's thought reflects the high degree of consensus the Party has built around its leadership core," the state-run China Daily wrote in an editorial Wednesday.

Xi's inclusion in the constitution puts him in the rarefied company of China's founder Mao Zedong

During his speech, Xi called for ever stricter management of the party, suggesting his grip on power will only increase.

Over the last five years, he has waged a ruthless campaign on official corruption, but party discipline is "a journey to which there is no end," he said, calling on members to "rid ourselves of any virus that erodes the party's fabric."

At least one important figure did not make the cut, as Xi's right-hand man Wang Qishan, 69, vacated his standing committee seat.

Analysts had thought the leader of the country's anti-corruption campaign might be kept on in defiance of the party's unofficial guideline that cadres retire at 68.

The BBC, The Economist, the Financial Times, The Guardian and the New York Times were denied invitations to cover the unveiling despite wide access granted to other news outlets, according to the Foreign Correspondents Club of China.

"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that these media organisations have been singled out to send a message," it said in a statement, adding that using access as a tool to punish journalists violated principles of press freedom.
Communities in hurricane-hit Puerto Rico, including this one in Naranjito, have been awaiting billions of dollars worth of aid from the US government

The US Senate on Tuesday approved a $36.5 billion disaster relief package for hurricane-affected communities like Puerto Rico and for areas devastated by wildfires, sending the bill to President Donald Trump for his signature.

The measure outlining "supplemental" disaster spending passed 82 to 17, nearly two weeks after the emergency package cleared the House of Representatives.

The aid includes $18.7 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief fund, $16 billion to boost the national flood insurance program and $576 million for wildfire response efforts, particularly in California where several communities were ravaged by fires this month.

An additional $1.27 billion is set aside for food assistance for Puerto Rico.

An immediate concern will be increasing aid to the US territory, still reeling more than a month after Hurricane Maria battered the island, leaving a reported 51 people dead and cutting power and running water to much of its population.

The aid package comes on top of $15 billion approved last month after hurricanes slammed Texas and Florida. Tens of billions of dollars more is likely to be requested and appropriated.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas said he was already eyeing more aid for his battered state.

"While these resources are critical for Americans recovering from recent hurricanes and wildfires, Texas will need significantly more relief as we recover and rebuild from Hurricane Harvey," said Cornyn, the Senate's number two Republican.

Trump has been criticized for his hurricane response for Puerto Rico.

Earlier this month, he warned that US emergency responders and the military could not stay on the island "forever," drawing rebukes from Democrats angry that the president would threaten to withdraw federal support for a US territory of 3.4 million people.

The latest aid package passed Congress just as an independent Government Accountability Office report warned that climate change could cost tens of billions of dollars more per year by mid-century, and that the government should manage these risks better.

But such steps appear in doubt under Trump, who has dismissed climate change as a "hoax," moved to pull the United States out of a global climate agreement and rolled back environmental regulations.
Major publisher Conde Nast has stopped working with photographer Terry Richardson, who has been accused of sexually exploiting models for years

The repercussions of Harvey Weinstein's downfall spread further beyond Hollywood to the worlds of fashion and finance on Tuesday as employers showed the door to powerful men accused of sexual harassment.

Accusations that the mogul engaged in years of predatory behavior shredded his career and marriage, and lifted the lid on endemic sexual harassment -- particularly by older men preying on younger women -- in Hollywood.

Nearly three weeks after the accusations surfaced, a leading fashion photographer has now been blacklisted by some of the biggest magazines in the world and it has emerged that two male senior executives at a blue-chip finance company were recently dismissed for allegedly harassing associates.

Conde Nast confirmed Tuesday that it was axing Terry Richardson, a 65-year-old New York photographer known for sexually explicit images, acting now -- despite years of claims that he exploited models -- in the wake of Weinstein.

In the male-dominated world of US finance, an industry source confirmed that Fidelity Investments sacked portfolio manager Robert Chow, 56, after 30 years at the firm, and Gavin Baker, 41, who ran a $16 billion tech fund.

CEO Abigail Johnson, widely considered the most powerful woman in US finance, was said to be instrumental in demanding their dismissal in recent weeks.

"We simply will not, and do not, tolerate this type of behavior," Fidelity spokesman Vincent Loporchio told AFP by email.

A spokesman for Baker did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Johnson, valued at $17.5 billion by Forbes, sits atop a fund that manages $6.4 trillion in assets and is a rarity in the US finance sector where nonprofit organization Catalyst says women account for only two percent of CEOs.

- 'Unacceptable' -

The refusal by Conde Nast to publish Richardson's work is the latest indication of shrinking tolerance for powerful men accused of sexual impropriety, with actresses, models and ordinary women increasingly emboldened to speak out.

Staff at London-based Conde Nast International, whose titles include Vogue, Vanity Fair and Glamour, were informed by email that work already commissioned from Richardson should be "killed or substituted."

Conde Nast US said it had "nothing planned" with Richardson.

"Sexual harassment of any kind is unacceptable and should not be tolerated," it told AFP in an email.

Richardson -- like Weinstein -- has insisted that all relationships were consensual. On Tuesday, a representative said he was "disappointed."

The married father of two has shot campaigns for luxury fashion houses, photographed Barack Obama prior to his election as president and directed Miley Cyrus's video for her 2013 "Wrecking Ball" single in which she appeared naked.

Cyrus has since said she regrets the video.

Britain's Sunday Times newspaper had questioned why Richardson was "still feted by fashionistas" despite a "reputation as the Harvey Weinstein of fashion."

Model Cameron Russell's Instagram campaign #MyJobShouldNotIncludeAbuse has garnered accounts of abuse

US model Cameron Russell last week launched an Instagram campaign called #MyJobShouldNotIncludeAbuse that swiftly garnered more than 70 anonymous accounts of abuse, lewd behavior and harassment.

- Sexual advances -

On Tuesday, a former production assistant became the latest of more than 50 women to accuse Weinstein, alleging that he forced himself on her at his New York home in 2006, an incident that was not reported to police and may not be prosecutable.

Mimi Haleyi said Weinstein bombarded her with calls and messages, and turned up at her apartment insisting that she fly with him by private jet to Paris to watch the couture season. Each time, she said she refused.

Upon his return, she said he subjected her to sexual advances, refusing to take no for an answer and forced himself on her orally while she was on her period, apparently in a child's bedroom.

"I would not have wanted anyone to do that to me even if that person had been my romantic partner. I remember Harvey afterwards rolling over onto his back and saying 'don't you feel we're so much closer to each other now?"

"I replied 'no'," Haleyi told reporters.

Haleyi said she had not reported the incident to the police. Her lawyer, Gloria Allred, who represents other Weinstein accusers, said that the incident happened in 2006 and may be difficult to prosecute under statute of limitations laws.

On Monday, US celebrity chef John Besh, the face of New Orleans cuisine who fed world leaders and appeared on TV programs, stepped down from his company after women complained that sexual harassment was rife at his restaurants.

US celebrity chef John Besh, the face of New Orleans cuisine, has stepped down from his company

Besh acknowledged an affair, but denied an abusive culture at his company where women alleged co-workers and supervisors engaged in unwanted touching, made inappropriate comments, and at times tried to coerce women for sex.
BISMARCK -- North Dakota Tax Commissioner Ryan Rauschenberger will plead guilty to driving under the influence of alcohol after being arrested late last month in Mandan, he said Friday.

Rauschenberger, 34, was charged with driving under the influence of intoxicating liquors, a Class B misdemeanor, after he was arrested by a Highway Patrol officer just after 10:30 p.m. Sept. 30. Hell make an initial appearance Oct. 31, according to court records.

Rauschenbergers blood alcohol content was .206 percent, more than twice the legal limit, according to the results of a breath test included in a report he provided. He said there was no one else in the car with him when he was driving on Highway 810, known as the expressway connecting Bismarck and Mandan.

I had actually unfortunately made two poor decisions: One was to drink, and the second, of course, was the fact that I drove, Rauschenberger said.

North Dakota court records dont show Rauschenberger had any previous violations besides a 2015 speeding infraction. A Highway Patrol spokesman declined to comment on an open case, and an official with the Morton County States Attorneys Office didnt return a message.

For a first offense, state law mandates a minimum $500 fine and an addiction evaluation by an appropriate licensed addiction treatment program. Rauschenbergers BAC level would make it an aggravated offense, however, which carries a minimum $750 fine and at least two days imprisonment.

Rauschenberger, a Republican whos up for reelection next year, disclosed the arrest in an emailed statement Friday afternoon. In 2014, he took a temporary unpaid leave of absence to seek professional help for alcohol problems, and he said Friday he had been doing well.

I had not been in any direct treatment, and I feel like I had let that go as far as not going to as many meetings or not going to a regular counselor like I had been for a long time, Rauschenberger said. I essentially took a lot for granted.

Rauschenberger apologized and said hell go back into treatment with a new counselor.

I am grateful to my family and friends who have supported me as I have dealt with the challenges of my addiction, he said in a statement.

Rauschenberger said he hasnt missed work and doesnt plan on taking another leave of absence. Asked whether hes considering resigning, he said hes extremely focused on work.

Im just talking to friends and family about whats the best thing for me personally, Rauschenberger said. Im not making any knee-jerk reactions at this point as far as future professional decisions.

Republican Gov. Doug Burgum was aware of the arrest, his spokesman Mike Nowatzki said. Rauschenberger has taken full accountability and we fully support Ryan as he pursues his path to recovery, Burgum said in a statement.

Rauschenbergers father, Ron, worked as chief of staff under Govs. John Hoeven and Jack Dalrymple before working as Burgums senior adviser. He retired from state government earlier this year.

Ryan Rauschenberger was appointed the states tax commissioner by Dalrymple in January 2014 to finish Cory Fongs term. He was elected to a four-year term with nearly 57 percent of the vote later that year.

Daniel Tick, a spokesman for the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party, said theyre glad nobody was hurt and hope Rauschenberger gets help to address his addiction. But he said its worth a discussion about whether Commissioner Rauschenberger is able do his job for North Dakota, and he questioned why news of the arrest didnt become public until now.
Demonstrators chant at a #NoMuslimBanEver rally in Washington this month

The United States will resume accepting refugees after a 120-day ban, but arrivals from 11 "high-risk" countries, most of them home to Muslim majorities, will still be blocked, officials announced Tuesday.

The temporary ban, which President Donald Trump fought to implement since January and finally proceeded with in late June after a Supreme Court decision, allowed officials to review security procedures and set tougher screening procedures.

Jennifer Higgins, associate director for refugees at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, said applicants will face "enhanced" vetting as a result of the review, including more in-depth checks of their social media presence and connections.

"The security of the American people is our highest priority," she told journalists in a briefing.

Trump issued a new executive order on refugees late Tuesday that replaced the expiring one, which was a part of his controversial travel ban that evoked a series of court challenges on the grounds it targeted Muslims.

The new order will accompany a sharp cutback on refugee admissions under Trump.

President Barack Obama set the refugee cap, for the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2017, at 110,000.

But after becoming president, Trump slashed that to 53,000 even as he fought to put in place a full ban.

For fiscal year 2018, Trump has cut the maximum number to 45,000.

Officials declined to list the 11 countries, but said they are the same as on a 2015 list for tougher screening, requiring a "Security Advisory Opinion."

They are now subject to another 90-day security and intelligence review, but the officials would not say what could happen then.

Refugee agencies pointed to the affected countries as Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Mali, North Korea, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

All but North Korea are mainly Muslim populations, and in the past have been the source of the largest portion of US refugee admissions.

They represent close to half of all the refugees entering the United States. In fiscal 2017, out of 53,716 refugees the US accepted, 22,150 came from Syria, Iraq, Iran and Somalia.

The officials said the government would still review certain special cases from the 11 countries, without describing what would qualify them.

Kathleen Newland, a senior fellow of the Migration Policy Institute, said there is significant backup of refugees already with approval waiting to get into the United States.

But the net effect over the longer term will be that the top United Nations refugee official will not be able to lean on the United States to accept as many people as in the past.

"I expect they just won't be referring as many cases for US resettlement," Newland said.
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AP) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday there is a place for moderate elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan's government as long as they renounce violence and terrorism and commit to stability. He also delivered a blunt warning to neighboring Pakistan, insisting Islamabad must step up action against terrorist groups that have found safe haven within its borders.

Speaking on an unannounced trip to Afghanistan where he met Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah and other senior officials at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, Tillerson said the Taliban must understand that they will never win a military victory and should prepare to negotiate with the government.

"Clearly, we have to continue to fight against the Taliban, against others, in order for them to understand they will never win a military victory," Tillerson told a small group of reporters allowed to accompany him from the Qatari capital of Doha. "And there are, we believe, moderate voices among the Taliban, voices that do not want to continue to fight forever. They don't want their children to fight forever. So we are looking to engage with those voices and have them engage in a reconciliation process leading to a peace process and their full involvement and participation in the government."

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks during a media availability, with Gen. John Nicholson, left, commander of Resolute Support, Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

"There's a place for them in the government if they are ready to come, renouncing terrorism, renouncing violence and being committed to a stable prosperous Afghanistan," Tillerson said.

Tillerson outlined to Ghani and Abdullah the Trump administration's new South Asia policy, which the president rolled out last month and views the region through a lens that includes Afghanistan as well as Pakistan and India, both of which he will visit later this week. The approach is heavy on combatting and beating extremist groups in all three countries.

"We also want to work with regional partners to ensure that there are no threats in the region," he said. "This is very much a regional effort as you saw. It was rolled out in the strategy itself, demanding that others deny safe haven to terrorists anywhere in the region. We are working closely with Pakistan as well."

Tillerson will visit Islamabad on Tuesday and said he would be telling Pakistani officials that their cooperation in fighting extremists and driving them from hideouts on their territory is imperative to a good relationship with the U.S.

"It will be based upon whether they take action that we feel is necessary to move the process forward for both creating opportunity for reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan but also ensuring a stable future Pakistan," he said. "Pakistan needs to, I think, take a clear-eyed view of the situation that they are confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organizations that find safe haven inside of Pakistan. So we want to work closely Pakistan to create a more stable and secure Pakistan as well."

The administration's strategy for South Asia envisions it as part of what Tillerson referred to in a speech last week as Indian-Pacific Ocean platform, anchored by four democracies: India, Australia, Japan and the United States. The U.S. is placing high hopes on India's contributions in South Asia, especially in Afghanistan where Tillerson said New Delhi could have significant influence and presence by creating jobs and "the right environment for the future of Afghanistan."

Tillerson also met at Bagram with senior members of the U.S. military contingent, including Army Gen. John Nicholson, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. He underscored the ongoing U.S. commitment to stabilizing Afghanistan but stressed it is "conditions based," meaning that the government must meet certain benchmarks. He praised Ghani for his efforts to curb corruption and prepare for the country parliamentary elections next year.

"It is imperative in the end that we are denying safe haven to any terrorist organizations or any extremists to any part of this world," Tillerson said.

He arrived in Afghanistan cloaked in secrecy and under heavy security. He had slipped out of Qatar in the pre-dawn hours and flew a gray C-17 military plane to Bagram, jettisoning his public schedule, which had him meeting with staffers at the U.S. Embassy in Doha.

Tillerson, a one-time private pilot, rode in the cockpit wearing a headset and chatting with the crew as the plane took off from the Al-Udeid Air Base outside Doha.

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Lee reported from Doha, Qatar.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks during a media availability, Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks during a media availability, with Gen. John Nicholson, left, commander of Resolute Support, and Special Charge d'Affaires Amb. Hugo Llorens, Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

The boot of Gen. John Nicholson, left, commander of Resolute Support, is seen next to the shoe of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during a media availability, Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
MIAMI (AP) - The pregnant widow of a fallen U.S. soldier on Monday contradicted President Donald Trump's account of his phone call about her husband's death and said what he told her "made me cry even worse."

Myeshia Johnson told ABC's "Good Morning America" in an interview that Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson was practically a member of their family and was among a group of people listening to Trump's call on a speaker phone as they drove to receive Sgt. La David Johnson's body.

"The president said that he knew what he signed up for but it hurts anyway," Johnson said. "And it made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it. He couldn't remember my husband's name. The only way he could remember my husband's name was he told me he had my husband's report in front of him and that's when he actually said La David."

FILE - In this Saturday, Oct. 21, 2017, file photo, Myeshia Johnson kisses the casket of her husband, Sgt. La David Johnson during his burial service at Fred Hunter's Hollywood Memorial Gardens in Hollywood, Fla. Myeshia Johnson told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, that she has nothing to say to the president, adding that his phone call to her made "me cry even worse." (Matias J. Ocner/Miami Herald via AP, File)

"Whatever Ms. Wilson said was not fabricated," Johnson said in her first interview since her husband's death. "What she said was 100 percent correct."

Sgt. Johnson and three comrades died Oct. 4 in Africa when militants tied to the Islamic State attacked them.

She said she also wants to know why she hasn't been allowed to see her husband's body. He was buried on Saturday.

"I need to see him so I will know that that is my husband," she said. "They won't show me a finger, a hand. I know my husband's body from head to toe. And they won't let me see anything. I don't know what's in that box. It could be empty for all I know. But I need to see my husband. I haven't seen him since he came home."

Trump tweeted that Wilson "fabricated" his statement and the fight escalated through the week. Trump in other tweets called her "wacky" and accused her of "SECRETLY" listening to the phone call.

Johnson said everyone in the car was listening to Trump's call. "The phone was on speaker phone. Why would we fabricate something like that?"

Asked if she had anything to say to Trump now, Johnson said, "No, I don't have nothing to say to him."

The war of words between the president and Wilson began Tuesday when the Florida congresswoman recounted Trump's conversation.

Wilson has been a friend of the Johnson family for years and Sgt. Johnson was in her 5000 Role Models program that pairs African-American boys with mentors who prepare them for college, vocational school or the military.

Johnson said she had known her husband since they were about 6 years old.

Johnson said she wants the world to know "how great of a soldier my husband was." She also said he was "a loving and caring father and husband."

She said she learned her husband was missing in action when military members came to her house.

"They told me there was a massive gunfire and that my husband, as of Oct. 4 was missing," she said. "They didn't know his whereabouts or they didn't know where he was or where to find him. A couple of days later is when they told me he went from missing to killed in action."
BRUSSELS (AP) - The European Union's antitrust watchdog said Monday that investigators have conducted inspections at a number of German automakers over cartel concerns.

The European Commission, which polices competition, said that Monday's inspections came amid "concerns that several German car manufacturers may have violated EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices."

German national competition regulators accompanied the EU investigators on the pre-announced inspections.

The EU Commission did not say which automakers were involved, but said the inspections do not imply guilt.

Daimler said separately that investigators were on its premises.

"We can confirm that an announced inspection is taking place at Daimler," spokeswoman Uta Vellberg said, adding that "we are cooperating fully with the authorities."

Volkswagen and its Audi unit also confirmed receiving visits from European inspectors, German news agency dpa reported. They used the term "announced inspections" rather than searches and said they were cooperating fully with authorities.

BMW said Friday that EU Commission staff inspected its company offices in Munich last week in connection with news media allegations that German carmakers colluded on technology including diesel emission controls.
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Tuesday:

1. TRUMP VOWS 'NO CHANGE' TO 401(K) TAX INCENTIVES

The president shoots down a GOP plan to raise federal revenue by taxing retirement fund earnings.

President Donald Trump bestows the nation's highest military honor, the Medal of Honor, to retired Army Capt. Gary M. Rose, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 23, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

2. JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN DISCUSSES DEADLY NIGER AMBUSH

Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford says four U.S. soldiers died in a "difficult firefight" in the Western African nation, but he offers few details.

3. 'THEY CAME INTO TOWN WITH A HIT LIST'

In retreat, Islamic State militants slaughter at least 70 civilians in the Syrian town of Qaryatayn, villagers say.

4. VIETNAM-ERA ARMY MEDIC RECEIVES MEDAL OF HONOR

Capt. Gary Rose (Ret.) is honored for giving critical medical aid to fellow soldiers engaged in a four-day firefight during the Vietnam War in 1970.

5. WHO LAUNCHES PROBE INTO WEINSTEIN CO.

The New York AG announces a civil rights investigation into the film studio following sexual harassment and assault allegations against co-founder Harvey Weinstein.

6. HOW SEA-LEVEL RISE THREATENS NYC

Within the next three decades, floods that used to strike Manhattan once every 500 years could occur every five years, due to climate change, a new study finds.

7. WHY KANSAS MAN'S DOUBLE MURDER CONVICTION IS THROWN OUT

Lamonte McIntyre, 41, is exonerated of the 1994 deaths after accusations arise over a detective's abuse of power.

8. SUITORS LINE UP FOR SECOND AMAZON HQ

Over 200 cities and regions in the U.S., Mexico and Canada enter the race to become the online retailer's second home, which promises 50,000 new jobs.

9. SATIRICAL 'ASK A MEXICAN' COLUMN SAYS ADIOS

The column, which began appearing in alternative weeklies in 2004, drew national attention for fielding submissions about Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans.

10. FRESH TALENT FILLS WORLD SERIES

Houston's youthful infield duo of Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve face L.A.'s tantalizing trio of Cody Bellinger, Corey Seager and Chris Taylor.

This 2015 photo provided by writer Gustavo Arellano shows him standing outside of Alebrije's taco truck in Santa Ana, Calif. Arellano told The Associated Press on Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, the final version of his humorous "Ask a Mexican" column will appear online for Albuquerqueis Weekly Alibi after he resigned as editor of OC Weekly, who owned the rights of the column. (John Gilhooley via AP)
BEIJING (AP) - The model lunar rover didn't much impress the retiree in a cotton Mao jacket visiting an exhibition of Chinese achievements under President Xi Jinping. Nor did the displays charting China's climate change progress or other technological advancements.

Instead, it was an exhibit showing how Xi has locked up thousands of corrupt officials that drew his approval.

"We finally have a leader who is doing something right," said the retiree, a 72-year-old former wastewater worker who would give only his surname, Lu, as he gazed at pictures of handcuffed Communist Party cadres. "He's strong. He's not afraid of anything, or anyone."

In this Oct. 23, 2017 photo, a child takes a photo of a man posing with a picture of Chinese President Xi Jinping at an exhibition highlighting China's achievements under five years of his leadership at the Beijing Exhibition Hall in the capital city where the 19th Party Congress is held. The exhibition coincides with the twice-a-decade national congress, and the two events, one teeming with ordinary citizens, the other under tight security, show how Xi has centralized power and is leading China into a confident, gleaming new era. It's an approach to governing that seems to have strong resonance with China's public. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Lu is among an estimated 780,000 people who have visited the vast exhibition in west Beijing put on by the Communist Party's propaganda department to coincide with the party's twice-a-decade national congress, at which Xi is to receive a second five-year term in office. The two events - one teeming with ordinary citizens, the other taking place behind closed doors under heavy security - show both how Xi has centralized power under his control and how he is leading China into what officials portray as a confident, gleaming new era.

Since Xi assumed the party's leadership in 2012, dissident historians have warned that his accumulation of power could slide dangerously into something resembling the excesses of Mao Zedong's totalitarian reign. Rival Communist Party factions have seethed under Xi's anti-corruption campaigns, which have landed political challengers and potential successors in jail, while stepping up supervision of cadres at all levels. Chinese and international rights activists, meanwhile, have railed against Xi's crackdowns on dissent and universal values - the most suffocating in decades.

But the thronging Beijing exhibition, titled "Five Years of Grinding and Brave Struggle," is a microcosm of how Xi has pulled the levers of nationalism and populism to win over the masses - if not his critics.

Walk past the main atrium explaining the workings of the Communist Party's seven-man leadership body, and it quickly becomes a one-man show.

Xi's face looms from nearly every wall. In a room displaying miniature models of the People's Liberation Army's aircraft carrier and newest ballistic missiles is a photo of Xi peering down the barrel of a laser training rifle. Hanging in an alcove explaining China's agricultural advances is a picture of Xi greeting weathered farmers. In the economics hall, Xi's smiling countenance presides over charts showing the J-shaped GDP growth curve.

The main hall was flanked by wall-to-ceiling television screens, one showing Xi's work to reduce poverty domestically and the other showing his exploits at international summits.

Side halls covered everything from media development and tourism to relations with Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island that China considers its own territory. Photos of Xi shaking hands with Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan's previous, more China-friendly president, were heavily featured, but there were none of the island's current, pro-independence president, Tsai Ing-wen.

In a room dedicated to Chinese diplomacy, a looping video showed Xi strolling with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and listening to President Donald Trump's granddaughter Arabella Kushner speak Mandarin. The latter always got cheers from visitors.

"It does make you proud for the motherland, doesn't it?" said a 20-year-old student at Beijing University of Technology who also gave only his surname, Wang. "His policies are sharper, but you also feel he's close to the people. He's also different because he speaks up on the world stage. As a Chinese, that's a good feeling."

While the government doesn't publish public approval ratings or similar survey data, anecdotal evidence suggests such sentiments appear to be widespread in China. Xi's sway over elite politics also appears increasingly unchallenged: the party voted unanimously on Tuesday to insert Xi's name and dogma into its constitution. Only one other Communist Party leader ever attained this ideological designation while in power: Mao himself.

Thousands of Chinese are voting with their feet, choosing to move to nations where civil liberties are better ensconced and legal guarantees more reliable.

Qiao Mu, a former scholar at Beijing Foreign Studies University who was banned from teaching for his dissident writing, said selling a benevolent strongman image is a classic tactic. In Mao's day, propaganda also tied his personal image to the country's progress.

"The cults of personality and nationalism are invariably linked," Qiao said by phone from the United States, where he now lives. "If you look at Xi's speeches, the leading phrase you hear is 'strong nation,' and another is 'new era.' It's ... empty words and slogans, except one clear message: 'I'm going to handle everything.'"

Aside from Xi, the "Five Years" exhibit had few mentions or photos of other top Communist Party leaders, and only cursory video clips of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao - party leaders from 1989 to 2012.

The less seen of Jiang and Hu the better, said Lu, the former wastewater worker who admired Xi's anti-corruption campaign. China's economy was always bound to develop, so those leaders did not deserve much credit for steering the country's opening and growth, Lu said.

Instead, Jiang and Hu let elite corruption fester until Xi cleaned it up on behalf of the people, said Lu, who worked for decades in the oil fields of Jilin province in northeast China.

Lu also admired Xi's muscular presence on the international stage compared to China's previous timidity. One example, he said, was China's response when U.S. bombs in 1999 hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, killing three Chinese reporters. The U.S. said it was a mistake due to faulty targeting, but the Chinese public responded with outrage.

"How did Jiang Zemin react when a U.S. missile hit us?" Lu said. "He didn't dare to make a noise - not even fart!"

Then Lu walked out of the hall, past a massive red-and-yellow banner, 10 meters (yards) high and 40 meters across, erected directly in front of the exhibition entrance.

Unite around the leadership of Xi Jinping as the core, it said, to "ceaselessly advance the great mission of socialism with Chinese characteristics."

In this Oct. 23, 2017 photo, Chinese couple is silhouetted in front of a picture of Chinese President Xi Jinping with children at an exhibition highlighting China's achievements under five years of his leadership at the Beijing Exhibition Hall in the capital city where the 19th Party Congress is held. The exhibition coincides with the twice-a-decade national congress, and the two events, one teeming with ordinary citizens, the other under tight security, show how Xi has centralized power and is leading China into a confident, gleaming new era. It's an approach to governing that seems to have strong resonance with China's public. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Oct. 23, 2017 photo, a man rests next a video screen showing Chinese President Xi Jinping holding a rifle at an exhibition highlighting China's achievements under five years of his leadership at the Beijing Exhibition Hall in the capital city where the 19th Party Congress is held. The exhibition coincides with the twice-a-decade national congress, and the two events, one teeming with ordinary citizens, the other under tight security, show how Xi has centralized power and is leading China into a confident, gleaming new era. It's an approach to governing that seems to have strong resonance with China's public. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Chinese President Xi Jinping, front row center, applauds with his cadres during the Communist song at the closing ceremony for the 19th Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Hospitality staff members pose for a group photo near the large portrait of Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Gate before the closing ceremony of China's 19th Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. The ruling Communist Party on Tuesday formally lifted Xi Jinping's status to China's most powerful ruler in decades, setting the stage for the authoritarian leader to tighten his grip over the country while pursuing an increasingly muscular foreign policy and military expansion. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, chats with former President Jiang Zemin during the closing ceremony for the 19th Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, chats with his aide next to former President Hu Jintao, left, during the closing ceremony for the 19th Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Oct. 23, 2017 photo, a man looks at pictures of Chinese President Xi Jinping at an exhibition highlighting China's achievements under five years of his leadership at the Beijing Exhibition Hall in the capital city where the 19th Party Congress is held. The exhibition coincides with the twice-a-decade national congress, and the two events, one teeming with ordinary citizens, the other under tight security, show how Xi has centralized power and is leading China into a confident, gleaming new era. It's an approach to governing that seems to have strong resonance with China's public. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Oct. 23, 2017 photo, a Chinese man stands near a Communist flag on display at an exhibition highlighting China's achievements under five years of leadership by Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Beijing Exhibition Hall in the capital city where the 19th Party Congress is held. The exhibition coincides with the twice-a-decade national congress, and the two events, one teeming with ordinary citizens, the other under tight security, show how Xi has centralized power and is leading China into a confident, gleaming new era. It's an approach to governing that seems to have strong resonance with China's public. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) - IndyCar's new sleek cars with universal aero kits got their first laps on a 1 1/2-mile oval when Scott Dixon and James Hinchcliffe tested at Texas Motor Speedway.

Hinchcliffe said he and Dixon were both impressed "out of the box" with the aero kits during testing Monday. The daylong session included the duo driving side-by-side to simulate race conditions.

"It does all the things a race car should do and not a whole lot of what a race car shouldn't do," Hinchcliffe said.

The new cars have noticeable differences to the side and rear areas. Dixon said they should be better in traffic and lead to some great racing.

The aero kit had already been tested on road courses and Indianapolis Motor Speedway's 2 1/2-mile oval.

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More AP auto racing: http://racing.ap.org
SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif. (AP) - A California surfer has won a recycled surfboard contest with an entry covered with 10,000 cigarette butts.

"This is the most polluted item picked up on the beach," creator Taylor Lane told the Orange County Register. "And no one thinks twice that you can do anything with it."

Lane, 24, from Santa Cruz had the top entry amid an assortment of boards made from potato sacks, used packaging and stuff picked up from Dumpster dives. An Australian entry was made from an old bathroom door.

This Oct. 20, 2017, photo a surfboard that Taylor Lane, of Santa Cruz, Calif., made with 10,000 discarded cigarette butts for the annual "Creators & Innovators Upcycle Contest" at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano, Calif. Lane, a California surfer, has won the recycled surfboard contest. (Matt Masin/The Orange County Register via AP)

The entries were for the third annual "Creators & Innovators Upcycle Contest," hosted by the Vissla surfing gear brand and the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation.

A dozen entries were displayed last Friday at the Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano.

"Who would have thought cigarette butts would have been beautiful?" said visitor Karyn Buky of Rancho Santa Margarita, California. "It gives you an awkward feeling, that something so pretty is so icky at the same time. It's amazing."

Lane and his friend, Ben Judkins, spent the summer plucking butts from the sand, beach parking lots and local paths in Santa Cruz. The board also uses Styrofoam from fish markets.

"It's visually disgusting - but awesome in how gross it is," Judkins said. "It just ties together surfing and something we care about - the environment, the ocean and the health of the ocean."

Contestants had three months to make their surfboards.

Last year's winner, Francois Jaubert of France, came in second with a board made with wood from a box that once held carrots. His entry last year was made from scrounged cardboard.

"I did this with garbage. We can have a little bit of thinking, a little bit of creativity," Jaubert said. "And it's way more fun to give a new life to a dead material. This used to hold carrots. Now, it's surfing."

"We should be smart enough to use what society gives us for free," he said.

Vissla founder Paul Naude said the contest was designed to encourage creative thinking about sustainability. "This new culture is asking questions today. What are we doing to the environment?" Naude said.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Philadelphia Eagles tackle Jason Peters injured his right knee when a Washington Redskins defender rolled into him and forced him out on a cart.

Peters is a three-time All-Pro selection and has anchored Philadelphia's line for a decade. Washington lineman Ziggy Hood rolled into Peters, and his right leg immediately twisted in an awkward manner. Peters went down and trainers ran onto the field.

Peters' leg was placed in an air cast and the crowd chanted his name as he was placed in the cart. The Eagles surrounded the cart and slapped hands with Peters before he left the field.

Halapoulivaati Vaitai replaced Peters at left tackle for the Eagles.

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SEPANG, Malaysia (AP) - The Latest on the trial in Malaysia of two women accused of killing North Korean ruler's half brother (all times local):

2 p.m.

The Malaysian trial of two women accused of killing the North Korean leader's half brother has concluded for the day after a visit to the airport where he was attacked.

Indonesian Siti Aisyah, right, and Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong second left, are escorted by police at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. The two women accused of killing Kim Jong Nam, the North Korean leader's half brother, are touring at the Malaysian airport as participants in the murder trial visit the scene of the attack. (AP Photo/Sadiq Asyraf)

The two suspects, the judge and others were escorted inside the Kuala Lumpur airport Tuesday by heavily armed police on a tour meant to give the court a better perspective of events as they unfolded.

About an hour into the tour, Indonesian Siti Aisyah became emotional and the tour was halted temporarily. After the break, both suspects were pushed around in wheelchairs. Aisyah's lawyer Gooi Soon Seng said the women had complained of exhaustion.

Officials said testimony resumes in the courtroom Wednesday with the cross examination of the police investigating officer.

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11:45 a.m.

The trial in the murder of the half brother of North Korea's leader has taken a break after one of the suspects became emotional during a visit to the Malaysian airport where Kim Jong Nam was attacked.

Indonesian Siti Aisyah was seen sobbing quietly about an hour into the tour of the crime scene Tuesday morning. She and the Vietnamese suspect were given water to drink and when the tour resumed, both were being pushed around in wheelchairs.

Prosecutor Mohamad Fairuz Johari said Aisyah had difficulty breathing, probably due to the heavy bulletproof vest she wore.

Some 100 police were on duty, with heavily armed and masked personnel forming a security ring around the group as they walked. The judge, prosecutors, defense attorneys and representatives of the women's home countries were part of the tour.

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10 a.m.

The two women accused of killing the North Korean leader's half brother are touring at the Malaysian airport as participants in the murder trial visit the scene of the attack.

The entourage also at the Kuala Lumpur airport Tuesday includes the prosecutors, defense lawyers and the judge hearing the murder trial. Visits to crime scenes are common in Malaysian trials and are meant to give participants a better perspective of events as they unfolded.

High Court Judge Azmi Ariffin visited the check-in kiosk in the budget terminal where the two women alleged smeared VX nerve agent onto Kim Jong Nam's face on Feb. 13.

Security footage shown previously during the trial showed the women, Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong, rushing to restrooms afterward to wash their hands..

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This story has been corrected to show the visit to the airport does not include a re-enactment of the attack.

Indonesian Siti Aisyah escorted by police at KLIA2 budget terminal in Sepang, Malaysia, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. The two women accused of killing Kim Jong Nam, the North Korean leader's half brother, are touring at the Malaysian airport as participants in the murder trial visit the scene of the attack. (AP Photo/Sadiq Asyraf)

Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, right, is escorted by police at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang, Malaysia, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. The two women accused of killing Kim Jong Nam, the North Korean leader's half brother, toured the Malaysian airport Tuesday as participants in their murder trial visited the scene of the attack. (AP Photo/Sadiq Asyraf)
The Former Governors Mansion is hosting a Halloween Open House from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday.

The mansion, decorated for Halloween, will be open to explore. Enjoy Halloween stories and sing Halloween songs in the parlor. Costumes are encouraged but not required. Treats and beverages will be provided.

This event at the Former Governors Mansion, located at the corner of Fourth Street and Avenue B in Bismarck, is free. All ages welcome.
CLEARLAKE OAKS, Calif. (AP) - A series of shootings Monday in a small lakeside Northern California community killed two people and injured two others, including a police officer, authorities said.

It's unclear what prompted the shootings in Clearlake Oaks or whether the gunman knew any of the victims, Lake County Sheriff Brian Martin said.

Alan Ashmore, 61, of Clearlake Oaks, was arrested about 30 minutes after the first report of gunfire.

This undated driver's license photo provided by the Lake County Sheriff's Office shows Alan Ashmore, 61, of Clearlake Oaks, Calif. Deadly shootings Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, in a small lakeside Northern California community include at least one police officer, authorities said. (Lake County Sheriff's Office via AP)

A California Highway Patrol officer was shot in his body armor while pursuing the gunman and was treated and released from a hospital. The other victim was expected to survive, Martin said.

"We don't know whether the shootings were all targeted, if they were random or if they were a combination," Martin said.

Two men died in separate shootings outside of homes, Martin said. The injured person also was struck at a residence.

More gunfire erupted at two gas stations, including one where the shooter allegedly exchanged fire with someone licensed to carry a concealed weapon. Neither was injured.

Pat Kelly, 52, of Clearlake Oaks said he was at a Chevron station near the post office when he saw a sport utility vehicle screech to a halt and a gunman jumped out and stormed the gas station store.

"Oh, there was eight to 10 or a dozen gunshots in rapid succession," Kelly told the San Francisco Chronicle . "There was another guy parked behind me. He was hiding behind his gas pump, and I was hiding behind my gas pump."

Kelly said he got back into his car, sped away and went to another gas station about a mile away, only to find the shooter was there.

"He was parked right there shooting that gas station up," Kelly said.

After a pursuit and roadblock, the suspect was taken into custody. Investigators believe he started a fire in vegetation as he tried to flee, Martin said.

Authorities investigated a report that Ashmore had opened fire at a winery, but Martin said he wielded a gun without firing.

Martin initially reported that three people were injured including the CHP officer. But he later revised the count.

Clearlake Oaks is a small community on the shore of Clear Lake about 115 miles northeast of San Francisco.
HAGATNA, Guam (AP) - Guam Del. Madeleine Bordallo has proposed five options to save the Chamorro Land Trust program, which has been challenged in court by the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit claims the local government violated the federal Fair Housing Act "for discriminating against non-Chamorros," the Pacific Daily News reported .

The Chamorro Land Trust program aims to hold public land for indigenous Chamorros, who can lease 1-acre tracts for $1 a year for 99 years. The Land Trust Commission also leases land for commercial use to non-Chamorros.

The federal government sued after a Caucasian Tamuning resident earlier this year filed a complaint with federal housing officials, stating he was prohibited from applying for a lease under the Chamorro Land Trust.

Attorney General Elizabeth Barrett-Anderson has said the government of Guam will not compromise on the issue and plans to have the matter settled in court.

Bordallo's letter to Gov. Eddie Calvo and Speaker Benjamin Cruz on Monday provided options to save the program that include mimicking other federal programs in Hawaii and Alaska, or creating a Chamorro tribe.

The first is to model a new federal law on the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, which allows the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to provide long-term leases at nominal cost to Native Hawaiians for homesteading.

The second is to federalize the Chamorro Land Trust Act, which would give it status under federal law.

The third option is remodeling the Chamorro Land Trust after the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which allowed Alaska Native corporations to own and manage land for the exclusive benefit of their shareholders: Alaska's indigenous people, Bordallo wrote in the letter.

The fourth option is to give federal tribal recognition for Guam's Chamorro people - something that already has been proposed by Democrat Sen. Michael San Nicolas in a resolution.

The fifth option is to seek a Fair Housing Act exemption for the Chamorro Land Trust, which would address the violations local government is accused of.

Bordallo said island leaders need to reach a consensus about what to do with the Chamorro Land Trust.

"I will introduce legislation that reflects this consensus, and I have always believed that we have the best chance of success when we present a unified, 'One Guam' position," Bordallo said.
BRUSSELS (AP) - Most European Union nations on Tuesday welcomed a breakthrough on so-called posted workers who are often cheap labor from Eastern Europe working temporarily in richer EU countries.

The practice has been blamed by critics for pulling down labor standards in western European nations and pushing up unemployment among local workers squeezed out by foreigners. Many say it has contributed to a rise in anti-EU and populist feelings in western member states.

In a move to contain the practice often referred to as social dumping, the deal seeks to enshrine equal pay for equal work in the same workplace. The tentative agreement provides for the long-term posting of people for 12 months, with a six-month extension under special circumstances.

"Europe is moving forward. I welcome the ambitious agreement," said French President Emmanuel Macron. "More protection, less fraud." France had been the driving force behind the plan since Macron became president early this year.

His comments were echoed by many western EU member states. Some eastern nations, including the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and some Baltic member states, objected to the new rules since they would affect many of their workers.

"There are entries which we were able to add that improve the proposals made by France but, of course, not everything is satisfactory," said Poland's Prime Minister Beata Szydlo.

The deal ensures that the workers will be paid in line with the host country's laws and practices. Now posted workers from nations like Romania and Poland must earn at least the minimum wage of the host country, but that still often is less than the wages guaranteed by collective agreements between unions and firms.

Critics of the current regulations, which took effect in 1996, years before a large chunk of the former communist bloc joined the EU, say it gives Eastern European service providers an unfair advantage over Western companies because their wage and social security costs are lower.

The majority of posted workers are in construction, but many work as welders, electricians or carers for the elderly.

The deal was approved by a weighed majority of votes among member states following negotiations which went into Monday night. The parliament still has to approve it, but officials said the key breakthrough they needed was the vote of member states.

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Associated Press writers Sam Petrequin in Paris and Monika Scislowska in Warsaw contributed.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Saudi Arabia has opened a major investment conference aimed at shining a spotlight on the country's efforts to diversify its revenue streams and overhaul its economy and society.

At the heart of these reforms are plans to build the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. The kingdom hopes to do this by listing less than 5 percent of state-owned oil firm Aramco and transferring control of those funds to its Public Investment Fund, or PIF as its known. The fund grabbed headlines with a $3.5 billion investment in ride-hailing service Uber last year.

The conference, dubbed the Future Investment Initiative , starts Tuesday and runs for three days. It's being attended by giants in the business world, corporate managers from some of the world's largest firms and top Saudi officials.
The European Union must do more to defend its external borders against migrants, EU chief Donald Tusk said Tuesday.

Speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Mr Tusk said that while Europeans were not by any means superior to others, 'we are simply different.

The Polish president of the European Council then described Europe as a 'cultural community' whose heritage must be preserved.

His rhetoric of cultural preservation echoed in some ways the language of populist politicians winning support across Europe with calls to keep migrants from settling on the continent.

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European Council president Donald Tusk said the EU must do much more to protect the bloc's external borders to preserve the heritage of Europe's 'cultural community'

'We are a cultural community, which doesn't mean that we are better or worse - we are simply different from the outside world,' Tusk said in an address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.

'Our openness and tolerance cannot mean walking away from protecting our heritage,' Tusk added. 'We have the right and obligation to care for what distinguishes us from other cultures - not in order to be against someone, but to be ourselves. Without a feeling of superiority, but with a feeling of justified pride.'

Europe is deeply divided over the issue of migration, with leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel who initially called for relatively welcoming policies now retreating from those positions, and right-wing populists warning that large Muslim communities threaten to erode Europe's Christian profile.

Border protection: Hungarian police officer stands guard at Serbia's border with Hungary near a makeshift camp for migrants in Horgos, Serbia

Clashes: Dozens take part in an anti-immigration demonstration in Bautzen east Germany

Crossing the ocean: African migrants who were rescued from the Mediterranean Sea north of Libyan coast, look from the deck as they approach the port of Pozzallo on Sicily, Italy

The leading proponent of that view has been Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who erected razor wire fences in 2015 at a time when the largest numbers of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa poured into Europe. He has often described Muslim migrants as invaders who threaten Europe's cultural identity.

That view has resonated in many places including Tusk's homeland, Poland, where he was previously prime minister.

Recent elections in Germany and Austria have reflected rising support for anti-migrant parties.

Tusk said the EU must do much more to protect the bloc's external borders.

'Our duty is to protect them,' Tusk said. 'The migration crisis has made us aware, with full force, of the need to rebuild effective control of our external borders while the aggressive behavior of certain third countries, and the destabilization around Europe, has made us aware of the need to defend our territory.'

Europe has reduced the migrant flow significantly since 2015 by making deals with Turkey and militias in Libya, something that human rights activists have criticized. Migrants in Libya in particular have said they faced abuse at detention centers where they are prevented from attempting boat trips to Europe.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. special forces unit ambushed by Islamic militants in Niger didn't call for help until an hour into their first contact with the enemy, the top U.S. general says, conceding many questions linger about the assault that killed four American troops and triggered a political brawl.

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the American people and the fallen soldiers' families deserve answers about the deadly ambush in the West African nation. But Dunford said Monday that he still lacks many details about how the attack unfolded.

At a Pentagon news conference, Dunford asked for patience as the military continues to investigate the incident.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, speaks to reporters about the Niger operation during a briefing at the Pentagon, Monday, Oct. 23, 2017. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Dunford's description of the assault, however, underscored how long the mid-morning attack dragged on, and that it was many hours before the wounded and killed were evacuated. He said that "within minutes" after the unit called for assistance, a U.S. drone was moved into position overhead, providing surveillance and full-motion video. He declined to say if it was armed, but said it did not fire.

Another hour went by before French fighter jets arrived, but the wounded weren't taken out until later in the afternoon when French helicopters arrived along with additional Niger troops. The bodies of three Green Berets who were killed were evacuated that evening, he said.

"I make no judgment as to how long it took them to ask for support," Dunford said. "I don't know that they thought they needed support prior to that time. I don't know how this attack unfolded. I don't know what their initial assessment was of what they were confronted with."

A battle-hardened commander, Dunford recalled situations when, "you're confronted with enemy contact, your initial assessment is you can deal with that contact with the resources that you have."

He added that under the military's rules, U.S. forces only accompany Niger troops on missions in that area when "the chances of enemy contact are unlikely." But he also agreed that it is an inherently dangerous area, and U.S. forces are there as part of a training and advising mission to help local Niger forces learn to deal with the various al-Qaida and IS-linked groups operating in the region.

Dunford acknowledged that nearly three weeks after the attack, many questions remain. They include whether the U.S. had adequate intelligence, equipment and training, whether there was an accurate assessment of the threat in that area, and how the U.S. troops became separated in the fight. Another question is why it take so long to recover the body of a fourth American serviceman, Sgt. La David Johnson, who was missing for two days before his body was found by Niger troops and turned over to the U.S.

Dunford said the 12-member Army special forces unit had accompanied 30 Nigerien forces on a reconnaissance mission to an area near the village of Tongo Tongo, about 85 kilometers north of the capital on Oct. 3. They ended up spending the night there, and when they were returning to their base the next morning, they encountered about 50 enemy fighters traveling by vehicle, carrying small arms and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Dunford said the White House was notified by the operations center when it became clear that at least three U.S. forces had been killed, and more direct notifications were made when officials realized that Johnson was missing. When he received the call about Johnson, Dunford said he made a "20-second" call to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and got immediate approval to bring the "full weight of the U.S. government to bear" in order to locate the missing soldier.

Independent of the events surrounding the attack, Johnson's death and his family's ordeal have triggered a major political row. After Johnson's body was returned to the U.S., President Donald Trump said at one point that he had done more than any of his predecessors to honor the dead and console their families.

Members of Congress are also demanding answers. Last week, Sen. John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, even threatened a subpoena to accelerate the flow of information from the administration. Asked about the congressional complaints, Dunford said that if lawmakers believe they aren't getting enough information, "then I need to double my efforts to provide them with information."

He said the military will try to wrap up its investigation into the incident as quickly as possible. The FBI is also investigating, but that probe likely focuses on counterterrorism, and any information or intelligence related to threats to the U.S.

Dunford defended the broader American mission in Niger, saying U.S. forces have been in the country intermittently for more than two decades. Currently, some 800 U.S. service members are supporting a French-led mission to defeat the Islamic State, al-Qaida and Boko Haram in West Africa.

"We are back to conducting operations as normal," he said. "Our intent is to continue operations there and continue to train, advise, assist our partners."
MADRID (AP) - Catalonia's political leaders intend to bring a legal challenge to prevent the Spanish government from removing them from office and taking over running the region to stop its push for independence, a regional spokesman said Tuesday.

Appeals will be lodged in Spain's Constitutional and Supreme courts against Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's decision to sack Catalonia's government and curtail the regional parliament's powers, regional government spokesman Jordi Turull said.

If the regional government is not successful in Spanish courts, it will pursue the case in international courts, Turull said.

A mannequin stands next to a ''estelada'' or Catalonia independence flag, on a balcony, in Barcelona, Spain, Monday, Oct. 23, 2017. Catalonia's regional parliament will hold a debate this week on Spain's plan to take direct control of the northeastern region - a session many fear could become a cover for a vote on declaring independence. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Spain's Senate is expected to approve Rajoy's plans on Friday, triggering previously untapped constitutional powers to act against Catalan leaders accused of violating the law and court orders by holding a secession referendum and preparing to declare independence.

"We are going to respond in a very solid way," Turull said at the end of the regional government's weekly cabinet meeting. "We will exhaust all internal ways in order to turn to the international justice if needed."

Speculation has increased in recent days that Catalan regional President Carles Puigdemont may call an early regional election to avoid the central government's intervention.

More details about the effect the political crisis is having on Catalonia emerged Tuesday when Caixabank, Spain's third-largest bank, reported it suffered a "moderate" but temporary run on deposits due to the crisis over the region's independence bid.

The ban until recently was based in Catalonia, but transferred its headquarters to the Valencia region on Oct. 6.

Presenting the company's earnings for the first time in the city of Valencia, CEO Gonzalo Gortazar declined to give details on the value of the withdrawn deposits, but said the losses had "been reversed" and the bank continued to grow.

Gortazar said the headquarters relocation was definitive. Local media reports quoted him as saying the bank does not currently plan to move any jobs out of Catalonia.

Caixabank, a second bank, Sabadell, and more than a thousand other companies have moved their official bases out of Catalonia to ensure they could continue operating under European Union laws if Catalonia breaks away from Spain.
CLARK, Philippines (AP) - The Islamic State group sent at least $1.5 million to finance the recently ended siege of the southern Philippine city of Marawi, with the assault leaders using the 2014 IS seizure of the Iraqi city of Mosul as a blueprint, the Philippine military chief said.

The battle defeats of the brutal group in Syria and Iraq, and now the IS-aligned gunmen in Marawi, however, show a major vulnerability of the extremists: Their audacious territorial occupations tend to crumble over time as they're cornered in urban settings by the relentless firepower of U.S.-backed offensives, Gen. Eduardo Ano said in an interview with The Associated Press late Monday.

The counterterrorism victories have given governments confidence that IS - which shocked the world with its rise a few years ago - could be stopped and defeated, said Ano, who oversaw the military campaign that ended the five-month siege in Marawi this week.

FILE - In this Oct. 23, 2017 file photo, Philippine Armed Forces Chief Gen. Eduardo Ano talks to reporters shortly after announcing, together with Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, that Philippine troops have captured a building where pro-Islamic State group militants made their final stand in southern Marawi city and recovered bodies of suspected gunmen inside at the the ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting in Clark, Pampanga province, north of Manila. The Philippine military chief says the Islamic State group sent at least $1.5 million to finance the recently ended siege of the southern Philippine city of Marawi, with the assault leaders using the 2014 IS seizure of the Iraqi city of Mosul as a blueprint. Gen. Eduardo Ano told The Associated Press in an interview late Monday, Oct. 23, that the battle defeats of the IS in Syria and Iraq, and now the IS-aligned gunmen in Marawi, showed a major vulnerability of the extremists. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez, File)

"They underestimated the reaction of the different countries in the world, the alliances," he said.

"With what happened in Mosul, the Philippines and Raqqa, the different countries are now confident that if ever an ISIS siege would erupt ... they now have the recipe or the formula to fight it," Ano said, adding that the Philippine military is ready to share its battle experiences in mosque-studded Marawi.

The siege, which was launched on May 23, left more than 1,100 combatants and civilians dead, including more than 900 militants, and displaced some 400,000 residents, including the entire population of Marawi, a bastion of the Islamic faith in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines. Military airstrikes, artillery and heavy machine-gun fire turned the lakeside city's central business district and outlying communities into a smoldering wasteland of disfigured buildings and bullet-pocked mosques and houses.

It was one of the most devastating urban fights the country has witnessed since World War II, the military chief said.

Like in Mosul, the black-flag waving militants plotted to launch the Marawi siege on the first day of Ramadan, the holy Muslim month of fasting, but they were forced to stage the attack prematurely after Philippine army troops raided the hideout of its leaders. They also took hundreds of hostages as human shields and employed snipers to slow the advance of the military, Ano said.

"Every day, they watched videos of ISIS in Mosul," Ano said of the Marawi siege leaders, including Isnilon Hapilon, a top Asian terror suspect who was killed by Filipino troops last week.

"That was their blueprint, that was their pattern," he said, adding that troops recovered Islamic State group video discs of the Mosul violence in captured militant positions in Marawi.

It took about three weeks for thousands of government forces, which have been battling insurgents in jungle settings, to adopt to the urban fighting, Ano said. Two battalions of marines, for example, got stuck in a beach until a combat engineering battalion was quickly organized to clear mounds of debris that allowed them to move inland.

The massive offensive led to the killings of at least 10 key terror suspects from different extremist groups that have pledged allegiance to the IS, including Hapilon, four siblings belonging to the local Maute clan, and Indonesian and Malaysian militants, he said.

It would have taken five to 10 years for troops to hunt down and find all those militant leaders in the jungles of the south, where Ano said the extremists had mastery of the terrain and support from local clans.

The leaders of the bloody insurrection, who came from different ethnic backgrounds, were linked by their desire to be recognized by IS as its Southeast Asian branch and obtain funding from the Middle East-based group.

When the militants forged an alliance, IS sent $1.5 million in batches to finance the attack, Ano said, citing intelligence information, including some provided by the U.S.

But Ano said the Marawi militants, like their Middle East counterparts, were blindsided by their ambition and miscalculated the response to their plot, which involved the seizure of a military camp in Marawi.

"They thought that they can get the helicopters and armored vehicles and the people of Marawi will protect them, and there will be a flag flying and they can all it their own, an enclave, and probably more foreign fighters will come," Ano said.

Tens of thousands of Marawi residents, however, abandoned the city in panic and troops managed to secure Marawi's military camp and other vital areas. The United States and Australia later deployed surveillance aircraft that provided real-time images of militant positions, even at night - modern warfare technology that, coupled with the tenacity of Filipino troops, became a "game changer" in the massive effort to liberate the city, Ano said.

The military firepower was designed to push the militants to a coastal area where they could be overcome more easily, said the veteran combat general, who called the Marawi offensive the greatest battle of his military career. He retires on Thursday.

"We designed a very good campaign to flush them out and pressure them and canalize them into the chosen engagement areas," he said. "We call it constriction."
CHICAGO (AP) - Federal prosecutors are seeking an eight-year prison sentence for a Chicago police officer who shot into a car full of teenagers in December 2013, wounding two of them.

Officer Marco Proano was convicted in August of two counts of civil rights violations after prosecutors said he fired into the car as it backed up after being stopped for speeding.

Dashcam video shows Proano firing toward a person inside the car. Proano's attorney, Daniel Herbert, said an officer is allowed by law to use deadly force if he believes the target poses a threat.

In this Aug. 28, 2017, photo, suspended Chicago police Officer Marco Proano leaves the federal building in Chicago after he was convicted of two counts of civil rights violations. Federal prosecutors are seeking an eight-year prison sentence for Proano who shot into a car full of teenagers in December 2013, wounding two of them. He is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 20. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune via AP)

In a court filing Monday, prosecutors said Proano could have killed all six teenagers when he fired indiscriminately into the car.

Proano is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 20. Chicago's former agency that investigated Chicago police misconduct, the Independent Police Review Authority, ruled in August that the department should fire Proano. He has been on unpaid suspension since last year.

After Proano was convicted the Chicago Police Department filed termination charges against Proano, which are pending before the Chicago Police Board, Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump and Republican senators (all times EDT):

3:50 p.m.

The White House says Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake's decision not to seek re-election was "probably a good move," arguing that he lacks enough support in his home state to win in 2018.

In this image from video from Senate Television, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., speaks on the Senate floor Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, at the Capitol in Washington. Flake announced he will not run for re-election in 2018. (Senate TV via AP)

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is addressing reporters after Flake delivered a lengthy criticism of President Donald Trump in an extraordinary speech delivered from the Senate floor.

Sanders is also defending Trump in his bitter back-and-forth with Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker. She says the president is a "fighter" and "when he gets hit, he's going to hit back."

Sanders says both Corker, who is not running for re-election, and Flake would have struggled to win another term. She says Trump enjoys more support in Tennessee and Arizona than the GOP senators.

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3:30 p.m.

Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, has announced he won't run for re-election in 2018. In a speech on the Senate floor that appears aimed at President Donald Trump, Flake criticized the "flagrant disregard of truth and decency" that he says is undermining American democracy.

Flake says, "There are times we must risk our careers. Now is such a time."

Flake has criticized the path that the Republican Party has taken under Trump. Flake says the impulse to "threaten and scapegoat" threatens to turn America and the GOP into a "fearful, backward looking people."

Flake was trailing in polls against a conservative challenger.

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2:35 p.m.

The top Republican in the Senate says President Donald Trump was focused on his administration's priorities at a closed-door luncheon with GOP senators.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters shortly after the luncheon on Tuesday that they discussed the budget, taxes, confirmation of judicial nominees and Trump's upcoming announcement on the opioid crisis.

Sen. Lamar Alexander said they also discussed health care. Alexander said, "He wants to get it done and we're going to get it done."

Several Republicans said there was no interaction between Trump and Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker after their angry exchange of insults Tuesday morning.

Trump spent about an hour and a half with Republicans at their weekly luncheon.

McConnell deflected any questions about the Trump-Corker feud.

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2:30 p.m.

President Donald Trump has ended his lunch with Senate Republicans and is headed back to the White House.

The president gave a wave as he exited the closed-door luncheon on Capitol Hill but he passed up a chance to comment

Earlier Tuesday, Trump was busy on Twitter, jabbing at Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee.

But Corker says Trump didn't call him out during the lunch, and they had no interaction.

The lunch latest about an hour and half.

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1:30 p.m.

A yelling protester got several yards from Donald Trump as the president walked through a Capitol corridor on his way to a lunch with Republican senators.

The man was standing with reporters Tuesday outside the Senate chamber on the building's second floor. As Trump walked by accompanied by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others, the man tossed small Russian flags bearing the word "Trump" toward the president.

The man yelled, "Trump is treason. Why are you talking about tax cuts when you should be talking about treason?" He was grabbed by security officers.

He identified himself as Ryan Clayton from Americans Take Action, a group that wants Trump to be impeached.

In July, Clayton stood among reporters in a Senate office building and threw Russian flags at Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

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1:05 p.m.

President Donald Trump has arrived for a lunch with Republican senators.

He walked into the Capitol with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell at his side. His meeting with the GOP comes shortly after an escalating feud with Republican Sen. Bob Corker. The two men exchanged angry tweets and comments, with Corker saying Trump "debases our nation" with constant untruths.

Trump lashed back calling Corker "incompetent."

Corker, asked if he'll be at the GOP lunch since Trump will be there, said, "Of course, it's my lunch. He's coming to our lunch."

Despite tight security, a protester shouted as Trump arrived on the second floor of the Senate, yelling "Trump is treason."

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12:05 p.m.

Republican Sen. Bob Corker says President Donald Trump is debasing the United States by "the attempted bullying that he does, which everybody sees through."

Corker, the Foreign Relations Committee chairman who is locked in a war of words with Trump, said Tuesday the president also is degrading the country by "standing up in front of the American people and stating untruths that everybody knows to be untrue."

Tennessee's Corker says it's unfortunate that young people in the United States and around the world have to witness Trump's behavior.

He says, "You would think he would aspire to be the president of the United States and act like a president of the United States. But that's just not going to be the case apparently."

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10:30 a.m.

House Speaker Paul Ryan is telling the media and the public to "forget about" President Donald Trump's latest Twitter fight and focus instead on cutting taxes.

Ryan is trying to keep attention concentrated on the party's efforts to rewrite the tax code in a bid to boost incomes and U.S. competitiveness.

Asked about Trump's Tuesday broadsides against Tennessee GOP Sen. Bob Corker, Ryan said "put this Twitter dispute aside."

Instead, Ryan said "Let's focus on helping people, improving people's lives, and doing what we said we would do."

Trump is traveling to Capitol Hill Tuesday to lunch with Republican senators, including Corker, who Trump said "couldn't get elected dog catcher."

Corker responded by accusing Trump of "debasing" the U.S. and said he engages in "constant non-truth-telling."

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10:15 a.m.

Sen. Bob Corker, the Foreign Relations chairman, says world leaders are "very aware" that much of what President Donald Trump says "is untrue." He says the president is "debasing our nation."

Speaking to CNN on Tuesday outside a congressional hearing room, Corker said, "The president has great difficulty with the truth on many issues."

The Tennessee Republican senator, who is retiring, says Trump "is obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president."

Trump's presidential tenure will be remembered, Corker says, for "the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth-telling, the name-calling." He says "it's very sad for our nation."

Corker and Trump traded insults over Twitter Tuesday as Trump prepared to come to the Capitol for a luncheon with Republican senators. Trump said Corker "couldn't get elected dog-catcher."

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9 a.m.

The tweets and counter-tweets are flying between Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee and President Donald Trump. After Corker went on NBC's "Today" Tuesday and said Trump's White House should let Congress decide how to pay for his tax cuts, Trump fired back.

Trump tweeted that Corker, who is retiring, "couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee."

Corker took to his own Twitter account to respond, saying "same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff."

Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations chair, has previously dubbed the White House an "adult day care center" and charged that Trump could be setting the nation on a path to World War III. Trump has called Corker "Liddle' Bob Corker."

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8:38 a.m.

President Donald Trump is accusing Sen. Bob Corker of fighting him on tax cuts, hours before he joins Corker and other Senate Republicans at their weekly Capitol luncheon.

Trump tweeted Tuesday that Corker decided to retire after Trump refused to endorse him "and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!"

The Associated Press has reported that Trump had urged Corker to run during a private meeting in September. Corker's chief of staff also said Trump called and asked Corker to reconsider his decision to retire.

Trump also says in the tweet that Corker helped "give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee."

Corker said on NBC's "Today" Tuesday, before Trump tweeted, that Trump shouldn't interfere with the work of lawmakers writing tax-cut legislation.

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7:50 a.m.

Sen. Bob Corker says the White House should "step aside" and let Congress' tax-writing committees figure out how to pay for the $1 trillion tax cut President Donald Trump wants to sign by the end of the year.

The Tennessee Republican tells NBC's "Today" Tuesday that the tough, "spinach part" of the process is looming and suggests that recent White House decisions to take proposals off the table aren't helping. On Monday, Trump ruled out changes to popular 401(k) retirement plans to help pay for the tax cut.

Corker, who has announced plans to retire and has been critical of Trump, says he hopes the White House will let the committees do their work in a "normal process."

Trump heads to the Capitol on Tuesday to join Senate Republican lawmakers at their weekly policy luncheon.

On another topic, Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations chair, says Trump's tweets and heated rhetoric on North Korea have raised tensions and undercut Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's diplomacy. "When you kneecap that effort," Corker says, "you really move our country into a binary choice, which could lead to a world war."

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3:40 a.m.

President Donald Trump is planning lunch with GOP senators on Capitol Hill as congressional Republicans turn their focus to overhauling the tax code.

It's to be Trump's first appearance as president at the Senate Republicans' regular Tuesday policy lunch. It comes as Trump has sparred with GOP senators such as John McCain of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, as well as with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell - though McConnell and Trump had a joint press conference last week to try to smooth things over.

So the lunch has potential for awkward moments. Nonetheless, Republicans and the Trump administration are determined to get tax legislation into law this year, and all sides seem to think they can unite around that goal.

President Donald Trump, escorted by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., arrives on Capitol Hill to have lunch with Senate Republicans and push for his tax reform agenda, in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Small Russian flags bearing the word "Trump" are thrown by a protester toward President Donald Trump, as he walks with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Capitol Hill to have lunch with Senate Republicans and push for his tax reform agenda, in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

President Donald Trump, escorted by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., arrives on Capitol Hill to have lunch with Senate Republicans and push for his tax reform agenda, in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
More than 625 school board members, administrators, business managers and guests from across the state are expected to attend the North Dakota School Boards Association's annual convention on Thursday and Friday.

The two-day event, which is marking its 50th anniversary, will include more than 20 clinic sessions, a school law seminar and training designed to meet the requirements of law mandating training for newly elected school board members. Attendees will have the opportunity to learn about innovative education, medical marijuana, school finance and the opioid crisis. Former Pittsburgh Steeler and Vietnam veteran Rocky Bleier will provide one of the convention keynotes.
"The Rooster Bar" (Doubleday), by John Grisham

John Grisham explores student loan debt and the sharks that profit from it in his latest novel, "The Rooster Bar."

Mark, Todd, Zola and Gordy are students at a mediocre law school that doesn't produce many successful lawyers. Most fail the bar exam, and even more find menial jobs at best. Gordy uncovers a sinister truth about the university when he learns that the students aren't accepted based on grades, but rather to supply money. The school is one of several owned by a New York hedge fund that also owns the banks that finance the student loans. It's a gigantic scheme and the scam is generating millions of dollars.

This cover image released by Doubleday shows "The Rooster Bar," by John Grisham. (Doubleday via AP)

Gordy snaps and commits suicide rather than face the problems associated with what he learned. His three friends decide to fight back, and rather than succumb to the payment schedules and graduate to less-than-stellar positions in various agencies, they change their names and create their own fictitious law firm. Soon they are hanging out at the courthouse and sweet-talking their way into taking on clients who pay cash for their services. They have to stay one step ahead of the authorities so they aren't discovered, and by quitting school, they can work on exposing the scam and try to save people from crushing debt.

Grisham knows how to tell a story, and he also enjoys showcasing the shady side of the law profession. Mark, Todd and Zola are hard to like at times due to the methods they utilize as they try to defeat the system. Their motives are sound, but it sometimes comes with a cost as they end up not really helping the clients after they take the cash and supposedly the court case. Even with that in mind, readers will still make this another blockbuster best-seller from the master of the legal thriller.

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Online:

http://www.jgrisham.com/
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - A commercial airline flight bound for Dallas with more than 80 people on board had to return to an Alabama airport because of smoke in the passenger cabin.

A spokeswoman for Birmingham's airport, Toni Herrera-Bast, say an American Airlines flight operated by a regional carrier departed Tuesday morning but to turn around after the pilot reported smoke.

The plane returned to the airport at 6:40 a.m. after only 11 minutes in the air. Passengers got off the aircraft on the tarmac before being taken inside the terminal.

No injuries are being reported.

The twin-engine Bombardier CRJ-900 was carrying 79 passengers and four crew members.
AKRON, Ohio (AP) - Attorneys for a black man charged in two Ohio fires that killed nine people on his street allege race was a factor in the decision to seek capital punishment.

The Akron Beacon Journal reports prosecutors oppose the request to dismiss death penalty specifications in the case against 58-year-old Stanley Ford.

The defense says a disproportional number of blacks have faced the death penalty in Summit County.

Ford pleaded not guilty to aggravated murder charges in an April 2016 that killed two adults and a May 2017 blaze that killed two adults and five children.

Emails from the prosecutor's office about the case will be reviewed by a county judge to determine whether that information should be shared with the defense attorneys arguing that race affected the handling of the case.

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Information from: Akron Beacon Journal, http://www.ohio.com
PARIS (AP) - French President Emmanuel Macron and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar say they are ready to discuss the contentious issue of taxing internet giants after a meeting in Paris.

Macron is leading the tax charge in Europe, saying it's not fair that internet companies don't pay taxes where they make most of their money.

Countries that serve as tax shelters for companies like Apple, including Ireland, have resisted the proposed measure.

French President Emmanuel Macron, right, shakes hands with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar after a press conference at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Tuesday Oct. 24, 2017. Varadkar meets Macron as both their countries prepare for Britain's exit from the EU, and as Macron fights against Ireland's tax breaks for Internet giants like Apple. (AP Photo/Kamil Zihnioglu, Pool)

Macron acknowledges disagreement on the issue but says in the joint statement with Varadkar that "we have some ongoing discussions ... and very much want to work together."

Varadkar says that "we are also ready to discuss issues on which we don't necessarily agree, such as how best to tax internet firms so that they pay their fair share."

French President Emmanuel Macron, right, listens to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar during a press conference at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Tuesday Oct. 24, 2017. Varadkar meets Macron as both their countries prepare for Britain's exit from the EU, and as Macron fights against Ireland's tax breaks for Internet giants like Apple. (AP Photo/Kamil Zihnioglu, Pool)
NEW YORK (AP) - Lord & Taylor's flagship store in Manhattan, known for its holiday displays along Fifth Avenue, is being sold to the office space sharing company WeWork.

The nearly 100-year-old building will be converted to WeWork headquarters, with less than a quarter of the space remaining for a Lord & Taylor store. Right now, 10 of the building's 11 floors are devoted to retail.

WeWork attracts millennials who are looking to share office space, a consumer segment that Lord & Taylor owner Hudson's Bay and other department stores want to attract. So store executives expect the stores to benefit from WeWork members going in and out of the building, and hopes they'll be shopping.

FILE - In this Nov. 18, 2013, file photo, a woman walks her dog past a vintage Santa Claus holiday window display at Lord & Taylor department store in New York. A real estate startup called WeWork Cos. is announcing a deal to buy Lord & Taylor's storied flagship in Manhattan for $850 million. The transaction, announced Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, is part of an overall plan by Lord & Taylor's parent Hudson's Bay Co. to pare down its debt and reinvigorate the chain. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

"This is a sign of the future," said Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of the retail group at Douglass Elliman Real Estate. She predicted that other department stores will likely lease some of their space to corporate groups that cater to millennials. "They're building their own traffic generators."

Lord & Taylor will keep the whole building with its usual operations through next year's holiday season. And the holiday displays will go on this year and next year, the company said. It didn't say what happens beyond that. Lord & Taylor was the first to create Christmas windows for sheer entertainment, rather than for selling merchandise. It also pioneered the animated window display back in 1938.

While shoppers may have been drawn to Lord & Taylor's windows, Consolo said she wasn't sure how much they were shopping. Many would buy cosmetics on the first floor but didn't often venture to the upper floors, she said. Hudson's Bay Co., which owns Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue and Canada's Hudson's Bay, said in June it was cutting 2,000 jobs in North America as it shaves costs and tries to adjust to changes in how people shop.

The $850 million sale announced Tuesday is part of a plan by Hudson's Bay to pare down debt and reinvigorate sales. Company officials declined to say what the redesigned Lord & Taylor store of about 150,000 square feet will look like.

Richard Baker, chairman of Hudson's Bay, told The Associated Press that WeWork will also lease space in the upper floors in three of the company main stores - Hudson's Bay stores in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada, as well as its Galeria Kaufhof in Frankfurt, Germany.

Department stores have been struggling to follow their customers online, with many closing stores and selling lucrative real estate. Big chains like Macy's had been under pressure from shareholders to get more value out of their real estate holdings. But Consolo agreed with Baker that the Hudson's Bay deal with WeWork is a dramatic change in how retailers are trying to capitalize on their real estate.

"We definitely think there is a future for department stores for people who reinvest in the business," Baker said.

On Friday, Hudson's Bay had said that CEO Jerry Storch would step down at the end of the month.

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Follow Anne D'Innocenzio at http://www.Twitter.com/adinnocenzio
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) - Two military police officers have been arrested in connection with the shooting death of a Spanish tourist who was on a guided tour of one of Brazil's largest slums, an official said Tuesday.

Police said Maria Esperanza Jimenez Ruiz was shot in the neck on Monday when the vehicle she was traveling in failed to stop at a police checkpoint in Rio de Janeiro's Rocinha neighborhood. The 67-year-old was taken to a hospital but died from her injuries.

Officers said they couldn't see inside the car because it had darkly tinted windows, according to Fabio Cardoso, an inspector with the civil police force, which investigates crimes. The driver has said he never saw the checkpoint or a request to stop.

A bullet hole scars the back window of the car in which a Spanish tourist was shot dead by military police, at a police station in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Brazilian military police say officers killed a Spanish tourist when the vehicle she was traveling in came under fire after ignoring a police checkpoint. A military police statement says the incident followed a firefight between police officers and suspected drug traffickers early Monday in Rocinha, one of Brazil's largest slums. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

"I want to be clear that a car not following a police order does not justify shooting," Cardoso told reporters at a news conference Tuesday.

He said that Lt. Davi dos Santos Ribeiro fired the fatal shot and was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter. A judge later released Ribeiro pending trial, saying he had an "immaculate record" and that there was no evidence that he would commit a crime if released. Ribeiro will be barred from performing all but administrative duties.

Cardoso said another officer, who has not been named, shot into the air and was also arrested. It was unclear if he was still in custody late Tuesday. Six firearms have been seized.

Mayor Marcelo Crivella called the death a tragedy but an exception, saying that "the rule is good police officers." Human rights groups, however, say Rio's police force is exceptionally deadly. In May, Amnesty International said killings at the hands of police in Rio had risen nearly 80 percent in the first two months of this year, as compared to last year. In 2015, police were responsible for one in every five murders in Rio, the group says.

Jimenez Ruiz, who is from El Puerto de Santa Maria, was with her brother and sister-in-law and a guide as they left the Rocinha slum after a tour, Cardoso said. After the shots were fired, the car continued for about 30 meters (yards) before stopping at another police checkpoint, at which point the passengers realized Jimenez Ruiz had been hit.

Rocinha has been the scene of intense firefights between police and drug traffickers. The army has even occasionally been called in to support police operations.

Authorities say they are investigating why a tour company would bring tourists to what they have labeled a "conflict area" and will consider pressing criminal charges.

Valeria Aragao, an inspector with the tourism police, has said that the tourists may have thought the heavy police presence in Rocinha meant it was safe, when it actually signals just the opposite.

For years, tourist visits to slums, or favelas, were common. Many of the areas are culturally and architecturally rich, and include top samba schools, musicians and artists. However, amid Brazil's economic crisis in recent years and an uptick in violence, visits to favelas have become much less frequent.

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Associated Press writer Sarah DiLorenzo contributed to this report from Sao Paulo.

A police officer searches a resident at the Rocinha slum, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Brazilian military police say officers killed a Spanish tourist when the vehicle she was traveling in came under fire after ignoring a police checkpoint. A military police statement says the incident followed a firefight between police officers and suspected drug traffickers early Monday in Rocinha, one of Brazil's largest slums. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

A bullet hole scars the back window of the car in which a Spanish tourist was shot dead by military police, at a police station in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Brazilian military police say officers killed a Spanish tourist when the vehicle she was traveling in came under fire after ignoring a police checkpoint. A military police statement says the incident followed a firefight between police officers and suspected drug traffickers early Monday in Rocinha, one of Brazil's largest slums. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
WASHINGTON (AP) - A pair of senators from President Donald Trump's own Republican Party blistered him with criticism Tuesday in a dramatic day of denunciation that laid bare a GOP at war with itself. Jeff Flake of Arizona declared he would not be "complicit" with Trump and announced his surprise retirement, while Bob Corker of Tennessee declared the president "debases our nation" with constant untruths and name-calling.

Corker, too, is retiring at the end of his term, and the White House shed no tears at the prospect of the two GOP senators' departures. A former adviser to Steve Bannon, Trump's ex-strategic adviser, called it all "a monumental victory for the Trump movement," and Trump himself boasted to staff members that he'd played a role in forcing the senators out.

It was a stunning rebuke of a sitting president from prominent members of his own party - and added to a chorus of criticism of Trump that has been growing louder and more public. Flake challenged his fellow senators to follow his lead, but there were few immediate signs they would.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., speaks during a television interview on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Flake announced he would not run for re-election in 2018, condemning in a speech aimed at President Donald Trump the "flagrant disregard of truth and decency" that is undermining American democracy. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

At midafternoon, as fellow lawmakers sat in attentive silence, Flake stood at his Senate desk and delivered an emotional speech in which he dissected what he considered his party's accommodations with Trump and said he could no longer play a role in them.

"We were not made great as a country by indulging in or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorifying in the things that divide us and calling fake things true and true things fake," he said.

Hours earlier, Corker leveled his own searing criticism of Trump in a series of interviews.

"I think the debasement of our nation will be what he'll be remembered most for and that's regretful," Corker said.

A furious Trump didn't let that pass unremarked. On Twitter, he called Corker "incompetent," said he "doesn't have a clue" and claimed the two-term lawmaker "couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee."

An overstatement to be sure, but White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in regard to the impending retirements, "The people both in Tennessee and Arizona supported this president, and I don't think that the numbers are in the favor of either of those two senators in their states and so I think this was probably the right decision."

Away from the cameras, Trump took credit for helping force the two departures, according to a White House official and an outside adviser, who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Until Tuesday, Flake had insisted he had no plans to retire. He was raising money at a good rate and casting his re-election campaign as a test case of conservatism against Trumpism. But he made clear Tuesday he'd concluded that, for now at least, Trumpism had prevailed.

"It is clear at this moment that a traditional conservative who believes in limited government and free markets, who is devoted to free trade, who is pro-immigration, has a narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican Party," he said.

Corker's retirement plans also underscore the question of what the Republican Party will look like in years to come. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has warned that some candidates running with the backing of Trump allies could not win general elections. And even if they make it to the Senate, certain conservatives could make McConnell's job even harder as he tries to maneuver legislation through a narrow majority that now stands at 52-48.

Steven Law, head of a McConnell-allied super PAC that supports GOP incumbents and establishment-aligned candidates, wasted no time issuing a statement declaring that Republican former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who was running against Flake with the encouragement of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, "will not be the Republican nominee for this Senate seat in 2018." Many fellow Republicans had expected Flake to lose the primary and hope they will now be able to recruit a stronger candidate.

There was celebration in the Bannon anti-establishment camp. Said Andy Surabian, former Bannon adviser and now senior adviser to the Great America Alliance "Today's announcement from Sen. Flake that he would not run for re-election is a monumental win for the entire Trump movement and should serve as another warning shot to the failed Republican establishment that backed Flake and others like them that their time is up."

Talking principle rather than politics, Flake said on the Senate floor, "We must be unafraid to stand up and speak out as if our country depends on it, because it does. I plan to spend the remaining 14 months of my Senate term doing just that."

Earlier Corker had said of Trump, "His governing model is to divide and to attempt to bully and to use untruths." He said that he and others in the party had attempted to intervene with Trump over the months, sometimes at the behest of White House officials, but "he's obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president."

"Unfortunately I think world leaders are very aware that much of what he says is untrue," Corker said.

In between the broadsides from Corker and Flake, Trump himself made a rare visit to the Capitol to join GOP senators for their weekly policy lunch. Senators said he did not joust with Corker or anyone else - or spend much time talking about a tax overhaul, the expected topic for the lunch.

Tax overhaul is an urgent task for Republicans who've failed to notch a single significant legislative achievement this year despite controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress. Trump did discuss it, yet it was hardly his focus.

Instead, senators said, he mixed in a review of accomplishments so far on the regulatory front and others. At one point, he essentially polled senators on whom he should nominate as the next Federal Reserve chairman, asking for a show of hands on various candidates. He tweeted later that he had received "Multiple standing ovations!"

McConnell sidestepped reporters' questions about Corker's characterization of Trump.

"We're going to concentrate on what our agenda is, and not any of these other distractions that you all may be interested in," he said.

However, even for Republicans who had no intention of seconding Flake's comments, the import of the day's developments was not lost.

"It's counterproductive when Republicans are battling amongst themselves," said Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

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Associated Press writers Jonathan Lemire, Alan Fram and Richard Lardner contributed.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., walks on Capitol Hill after talking to reporters about President Donald Trump, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

President Donald Trump waves to reporters after a lunch with Republican senator at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Small Russian flags bearing the word "Trump" are thrown by a protester toward President Donald Trump, as he walks with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Capitol Hill to have lunch with Senate Republicans and push for his tax reform agenda, in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., talks to reporters about President Donald Trump, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., departs after speaking with reporters following a meeting with President Donald Trump on his tax reform agenda on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., pauses while riding the Senate subway to the Capitol during a day of jabs on social media with President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. In a remarkable Republican war of words, Corker says Trump is "utterly untruthful" and debases the nation. Then the president fires back that the two-term lawmaker "couldn't get elected dog catcher." (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
LONDON (AP) - British academics accused a lawmaker from the governing Conservative Party on Tuesday of infringing on intellectual freedom by asking universities to provide information on professors who teach about Britain's vote to leave the European Union.

The letter from euroskeptic legislator Chris Heaton-Harris requested the names of professors "who are involved in the teaching of European affairs, with particular reference to Brexit." Heaton-Harris also requested copies of syllabuses and links to online lectures.

University of Worcester Vice Chancellor David Green said he "felt a chill run down my spine" when he read the letter.

It "appears so innocent, but is really so, so dangerous," Green said. "Here is the first step to the thought police, the political censor and Newspeak."

Alistair Jarvis, chief executive of higher education umbrella group Universities U.K., described the request as "an alarming attempt to censor or challenge academic freedom."

Heaton-Harris is a Conservative whip, one of the lawmakers tasked with maintaining party discipline in Parliament, and a strong supporter of Britain's withdrawal from the EU.

Some pro-Brexit politicians have accused pro-EU figures in the media and academia of trying to undermine Britain's successful exit from the bloc.

Prime Minister Theresa May's office stressed that Heaton-Harris did not write the letter at the government's behest.

"Free speech is one of the foundations on which our universities are built," May's office said.

It was not immediately clear why Heaton-Harris was seeking the information or how many universities received the letter. His office referred questions to the Conservative Party, which did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

"To be absolutely clear, I believe in free speech in our universities and in having an open and vigorous debate on Brexit," the lawmaker tweeted.
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - A former State Department official has finished testifying about a meeting with U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez that is central to the government's bribery case against the New Jersey Democrat.

On cross-examination Tuesday, prosecutors showed an email in which William Brownfield wrote that Menendez "threatened" to hold a public hearing if a port security contract in the Dominican Republic wasn't resolved.

Brownfield had testified Monday during questioning by defense attorneys that he didn't feel Menendez threatened him at the May 2012 meeting, even though a staffer who was present characterized it that way.

An indictment charges Menendez took bribes from Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen (MEL'-gehn) in exchange for lobbying for Melgen's business interests, including the port contract.

The trial is in its eighth week.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Russia vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution that would extend the work of inspectors seeking to determine who is responsible for chemical weapons attacks in Syria on Tuesday, accusing the United States of calling the vote "to show up and dishonor Russia."

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia tried unsuccessfully to postpone the vote until next month - after the joint body comprising investigators from the U.N. and the chemical weapons watchdog issues a report on Oct. 26 on blame for the April 4th chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun that killed over 90 people.

Russia's call for a delay needed nine "yes" votes in the 15-member Security Council but got only four - Russia, China, Bolivia and Kazakhstan. It was opposed by eight council members with three abstentions.

The U.S.-backed resolution was then put to a vote and received 11 "yes" votes, two "no" votes from Russia and Bolivia, and two abstentions by China and Kazakhstan.

Nebenzia said Russia, a close ally of Syria, has criticized the Joint Investigative Mechanism, known as the JIM. Last year, JIM inspectors determined that Syrian President Bashar Assad's government was behind at least three attacks involving chlorine gas - which Russia strongly disputed - and the Islamic State extremist group was responsible for at least one involving mustard gas, which Moscow supported.

Nebenzia sharply criticized U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, saying she pressed for Tuesday's vote before the JIM report knowing that Russia would veto and accused her of breaking the unity of the Security Council, which is important to most members.

"But what's important for you is something else," he said, directing his remarks to Haley. "You need to show up Russia and show that Russia is guilty of not extending the JIM. In fact, you're the one who's begging for confrontation."

Nebenzia said that Russia doesn't want the JIM terminated.

"Don't try to create the impression that the JIM will be a dead letter unless we adopt this resolution today," Nebenzia said before the vote. "Maybe you're trying to do this intentionally to prove to the world that Russia wants to close down the JIM at any cost. That is not true. We're ready to return to extending the JIM after the publication of the report and after we discuss it."

When the council discusses an extension, he said, Russia will insist on amending the JIM mandate, which doesn't expire until Nov. 17, to ensure "the professionalism and impartiality that we want to see."

Haley, who is currently in Africa, said in a statement after the vote that "Russia has once again demonstrated it will do whatever it takes to ensure the barbaric Assad regime never faces consequences for its continued use of chemicals as weapons."

"This is the ninth time Russia has protected Assad and his team of murderers by blocking the Security Council from acting," she said. "In doing so, Russia once again sides with the dictators and terrorists who use these weapons."

But at Tuesday's meeting, U.S. Deputy Ambassador Michele Sison raised the possibility of another vote.

She called on all Security Council members "to take up this vital matter once again" and "preserve this council's unity in the face of Syrian chemical weapons attacks" by extending the JIM mandate.

France's U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre, the current council president, also called on all council members to come together to allow the JIM mandate's renewal before it expires in mid-November. "This is our historic responsibility," he said.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said the purpose of seeking the JIM renewal before the report was "to avoid politicization." But he noted Nebenzia's comments on an extension, saying "there is at least a possibility of us coming back together again."

Sison said the U.S. regrets that Russia put "political considerations over the misery of Syrian civilians who have suffered and died from the use of chemical weapons," saying its reasons for the veto "fool no one."

The attack in Khan Sheikhoun sparked outrage around the world as photos and video of the aftermath, including quivering children dying on camera, were widely broadcast.

The United States blamed the Syrian military for the attack and launched a punitive strike days later on the Shayrat air base where it said the attack was launched. Syria has denied using chemical weapons

A fact-finding mission by the chemical weapons watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, reported on June 30 that sarin nerve gas was used in the Khan Sheikhoun attack. But the job of determining responsibility was given to the JIM.

Russia has repeatedly accused the United States and its Western allies of rushing to judgment and blaming the Syrian government for sarin use in Khan Sheikhoun. It has also criticized the June 30 report by the fact-finding mission as "very biased."

Haley told reporters last week that Russia wants to see if the JIM report blames Syria for the Khan Sheikhoun attack before deciding on an extension.

"We can't work like that," Haley told reporters. "We can't go and pick and choose who we want to be at fault, who we don't."

Nebenzia strongly objected to her comments, telling the council Tuesday that "we have never said that."

As for picking and choosing who's at fault, he said, "it's not us, it's you, the United States, who've already chosen who's guilty. On the first day, you've been stating that it's the Syrian government that is guilty and you punished the Syrian government by an airstrike against Shayrat."
A look at control of Congress. What will happen if Republicans win a majority in either chamber  and if they don't.
SINGAPORE (AP) - Venus Williams needed three match points and more than three hours to defeat Jelena Ostapenko 7-5, 6-7 (3), 7-5 at the WTA Finals on Tuesday.

The match, lasting 3 hours, 13 minutes, featured 20 service breaks with neither player finding any confidence on their service games.

Williams dropped her serve nine times, while the French Open champion Ostapenko conceded serve 11 times.

"I don't know if there was any luck for me tonight, I just had to work for every point," the 37-year-old Williams said. "It's not easy to lose the first match, and both of us were in the same situation."

The fifth-seeded Williams is now 1-1 in round-robin play, while the seventh-seeded Ostapenko - who is making her WTA Finals debut - fell to 0-2.

Williams's first match point came on Ostapenko's serve in the 10th game of the second set, but she squandered the opportunity by netting a forehand.

The 20-year-old Ostapenko kept the pressure on to force a tiebreaker and levelled the match. Prior to this match, Williams had only lost two tiebreakers in 12 played this season.

But Williams, the runner-up at the Australian Open and Wimbledon this year, then started taking Ostapenko's second serve from well within the baseline. She broke her Latvian opponent in the 11th game by forcing her into a backhand error.

Williams, the only player in the field to have won the WTA Finals - back in 2008 - sealed victory with a backhand crosscourt winner.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Interior Department says it will propose the largest oil and gas lease sale ever held in the United States - nearly 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

The sale is scheduled for next March and includes all available unleased areas on the Gulf's Outer Continental Shelf. The proposal surpasses a lease sale conducted last year by about a million acres.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the propose lease sale was part of the administration's strategy to achieve what President Donald Trump calls "energy dominance" in the global market.

The plan follows a lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico in August that drew $121 million in high bids from energy companies seeking 90 offshore tracts.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republican chairmen of two House committees announced Tuesday they're opening an investigation into actions the Obama administration Justice Department took during last year's presidential election.

The chairmen said in a statement Tuesday they have several questions, including why then-FBI Director James Comey decided to publicly announce the investigation into Hillary Clinton's handling of classified information but not to publicly announce the investigation into Donald Trump's campaign associates.

Trump fired Comey in May. At first, the White House cited a harsh memo about Comey's performance from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as the justification - though Trump later said he would have fired Comey regardless of what the Justice Department recommended.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, chairman of the Oversight Committee, announced the probe. They described it as necessary to "better understand the reasoning behind how certain conclusions were drawn."

Other questions the Republican lawmakers said they want addressed revolve around the decision not to file criminal charges against Clinton. The lack of charges remains a lingering grievance for Trump, who for months has held it up as an example of a "rigged" criminal justice system that shielded his Democratic opponent from punishment for her use of a private server for government business.

Comey said in July of last year that Clinton's handling of classified information was "extremely careless" but the FBI would not recommend charges against her.

The two chairmen said they want to know more about the FBI's timeline for charging decisions.

"Congress has a constitutional duty to preserve the integrity of our justice system by ensuring transparency and accountability of actions taken," Goodlatte and Gowdy said in a press release.

Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia dismissed the move.

"This is nothing more than a charade and distraction from the ongoing crisis in the White House. What about Russia? What about rampant conflicts of interest? This gives hypocrisy a bad name," he said.
BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (AP) - Police say there is no evidence of a hate crime in a recent burglary at the same Minnesota mosque that suffered a bomb attack just months ago.

Authorities on Tuesday released surveillance video showing two intruders wearing ape or monkey masks during the break-in at the Dar Al Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington.

Investigators are still compiling a complete list of what was taken Friday, but say the suspects definitely made off with a safe and money from collection jars. The burglars broke windows to gain entry.

There have been no arrests in the burglary or in the August bombing. The FBI is offering a $30,000 reward for information that leads to a conviction in the bombing.
BEIRUT (AP) - The U.N. children's agency says Australia has granted it 30 million Australian dollars, or about $23 million, to boost access to education for vulnerable children in Lebanon over the next three years.

Tuesday's UNICEF statement says the announcement was made during Australian Governor-General Peter Cosgrove's visit to a Lebanese public school.

More than 1 million Syrian refugees have fled war in their country to neighboring Lebanon, straining local resources. Tens of thousands of Syrian children now attend Lebanese public schools.

Cosgrove lauded the Lebanese government's efforts in hosting Syrian refugees and said at the school that "what we see here today is the best proof of this support."

Tanya Chapuisat is UNICEF's representative in Lebanon. Chapuisat said it's only through education that societies can end intergenerational cycles of poverty and discrimination.
NEW YORK (AP) - Members of the Russian punk collective Pussy Riot have staged a protest at Trump Tower in New York City to draw attention to the plight of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, who is incarcerated in Russia.

Pussy Riot member Maria Alekhina posted pictures on her social media accounts showing three women in balaclavas unfurling a "Free Sentsov" banner inside Trump Tower, where President Donald Trump lived before moving to the White House.

Alekhina is touring with a play that tells the stories of three artists in prison. One of them is Sentsov, who was convicted of conspiracy to commit terror attacks by a Russian military court in 2015 and sentenced to 20 years.

Alekhina was sentenced to two years for a protest concert inside Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
NEW YORK (AP) - Sears will no longer sell Whirlpool-branded appliances, curtailing a business relationship that dates back more than 100 years.

In a note sent to its stores last week, Sears said that Whirlpool was making demands that would've made it difficult to sell those name-brand appliances at a competitive price.

Sears has been ravaged by new competition for years, from stores like Home Depot and also from Amazon.com and other online retailers. It's been closing stores as competitors take a bigger slice of the territory it dominated for decades. In the U.S., consumers buy most of their small appliances, from Walmart, according to market research firm TraQline. Amazon comes in second, with Sears placing fourth behind Target.

FILE - In this Sunday, March 22, 2015, file photo, a repairman installs a Whirlpool water heater at a home in Los Angeles. Sears will no longer sell Whirlpool appliances, ending a business partnership that dates make more than 100 years. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

The change to the Sears-Whirlpool partnership is effective immediately and Sears is also pulling from its floor products from Whirlpool subsidiaries like Maytag, KitchenAid and Jenn-Air.

Sears said that it would sell off the remainder of its Whirlpool inventory. Its stores will now only sell its Kenmore products and other brands like LG, Samsung, GE, Frigidaire, Electrolux and Bosch.

Whirlpool's CEO Marc Bitzer told investors Tuesday that the company told Sears in May that it would no longer supply branded products because it could not reach terms that were "acceptable to both parties." He said Whirlpool will continue to supply the Kenmore products it makes for Sears.

Bitzer also said the entire Sears business has declined over time and now accounts for only 3 percent of Whirlpool's global business, of which branded products are only a small fraction.

The relationship between the two companies reaches back to 1916, when Whirlpool began making two types of wringer washers for Sears, Roebuck and Co., according to Whirlpool's website. At that time, Sears operated exclusively through mail order. The Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based company, now Sears Holdings Corp., also owns Kmart.

Shares of Whirlpool Corp., based in Benton Harbor, Michigan, tumbled more than 10 percent, or $18.30, to $164.20, in midday trading. The company had cut its profit outlook late Monday, citing rising costs. Sears shares fell 5.8 percent, or 38 cents, to $6.18 in midday trading.
WASHINGTON (AP) - House Republicans on Tuesday revived familiar themes from the 2016 election, launching new probes looking back at the Obama administration and Democrat Hillary Clinton's emails as close associates of President Donald Trump faced tough questions on Capitol Hill.

The announcements of the investigations by three GOP committees were criticized by Democrats as a "massive diversion" from congressional probes into potential coordination between the Kremlin and associates of the Trump campaign - and from two witnesses close to President Donald Trump that appeared privately before the House intelligence panel as part its Russia probe.

Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his former campaign digital and data director, Brad Parscale, were both interviewed by the House panel behind closed doors Tuesday. Cohen's interview started in the morning and lasted around six hours, while Parscale's lasted most of the afternoon.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., center, standing with Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., left, and Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., right, speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Two lawmakers familiar with Cohen's interview said it had been "contentious," especially with Cohen's lawyer who tried to limit some questions. The lawmakers asked not to be identified because the meeting was private.

Cohen, a former executive with the Trump Organization who had been subpoenaed by the House panel earlier this year, was in talks to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, but ended those negotiations as Trump's White House bid caught fire. In a statement to the Senate intelligence committee in August, Cohen said the proposal was "solely a real estate deal and nothing more."

One of the lawmakers said Parscale "categorically denied" he was involved in any collusion with Russia, repeating earlier public statements. Lawmakers have been investigating whether Russian efforts to influence social media in the U.S. were in any way connected to Trump's campaign.

As Cohen spoke to investigators, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., held a news conference outside the room to announce a separate committee investigation into an Obama-era uranium deal.

Nunes earlier this year stepped back from the committee's investigation into Russian election interference after criticism that he was too close to the White House. But he has continued to be involved with some aspects of it, including signing subpoenas.

Nunes' investigation into the uranium deal will be a joint effort with the House Oversight and Government Reform panel. The oversight committee also announced a second new investigation Tuesday along with the House Judiciary Committee into the FBI's handling of the Clinton email investigation and the decision not to prosecute her.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, said the investigations show Republicans' "fundamental lack of seriousness" about Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

"Acting on the urging of the president who has repeatedly denied the intelligence agencies' conclusions regarding Russian involvement in our election, they are designed to distract attention and pursue the president's preferred goal - attacking Clinton and Obama," Schiff said.

Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, the Republican who took over the Russia probe after Nunes stepped back, said the uranium investigation won't be a distraction. "I'm not involved," he said.

Nunes and other Republicans who announced the probe said they want to know more about whether Obama's Department of Justice was investigating the purchase of American uranium mines by a Russian-backed company in 2010. The agreement was reached while Hillary Clinton led the State Department and some investors in the company had relationships with former President Bill Clinton and donated large sums to the Clinton Foundation.

While Democrats have dismissed the issue, which was also brought up during the campaign, as widely debunked, Trump has called it "the real Russia story." The White House praised Nunes' move, with spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders saying the investigation is a "move in the right direction, and something that we've spoken about several times here - that if there was any collusion whatsoever during the campaigns of any point - or any collusion at any point with another country, that they should look at the Clintons."

Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight panels also criticized the new investigations, saying in a joint statement that another round of Clinton email investigations are a "massive diversion to distract from the lack of Republican oversight of the Trump administration and the national security threat that Russia poses."

"Apparently, House Republicans are more concerned about Jim Comey than Vladimir Putin," said Michigan Rep. John Conyers and Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings.

Ousted FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch spoke at length to Congress about that investigation last year, and it's the subject of an ongoing review by the Justice Department's inspector general. The Judiciary and Oversight panels have declined to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 elections, leaving those probes to Senate committees and the House intelligence committee.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller also is investigating Russia's meddling in the Trump election.

Separately, Nunes has also been embroiled in a legal fight with a Washington political research firm behind a dossier of allegations about Trump's connections to Russia. Nunes signed off on subpoenas that sought the banking records of the firm, Fusion GPS.

A lawyer for the firm said in a statement Tuesday the subpoena was "overly broad" and without any legitimate purposes. The matter is now before a federal judge in Washington.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Kevin Freking also contributed to this report.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Michael Cohen, right, President Donald Trump's personal attorney walks with his attorney Stephen M. Ryan, center, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, after an interview with the House Intelligence Committee. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres paid tribute Tuesday to the thousands of U.N. peacekeepers in Central African Republic, the site of one of the U.N.'s most dangerous missions and the most sexual misconduct allegations against peacekeepers and U.N. personnel last year.

The U.N. chief attended a wreath-laying ceremony in the capital of Bangui. A dozen peacekeepers have lost their lives so far this year amid escalating violence in the long-volatile country.

"We need to make sure that the world fully appreciates the heroic contributions of peacekeepers protecting civilians, sometimes in extremely difficult circumstances, like the ones we face in the Central African Republic," Guterres said.

"I am very proud to be your colleague. I am very proud to serve in the same United Nations where you serve," he said. "And I want to tell all of you Blue Helmets here with us that we count on you to make the UN always more effective serving the people."

Violence erupted in late 2013 and untold thousands died during 2014 before the U.N. took over for a regional peacekeeping operation. In recent months, civilians have urged the U.N. to increase the size of the force. Amid a rise in attacks, many communities say they remain vulnerable in largely anarchic outlying regions.

Guterres has recommended that the number of peacekeepers be increased by 900 to a total of about 12,000, though it is unclear which countries would provide the troops. Contingents from Congo and the Republic of Congo have been repatriated amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

The U.N. chief has said that sexual abuse and exploitation is a problem throughout the U.N. He vowed at the General Assembly last month to root out the problem "once and for all." On his trip to Central African Republic, he was accompanied by the U.N.'s first victims' rights advocate, Jane Connors.

Critics have pointed to a variety of factors that have led to such a high number of sexual misconduct cases in Central African Republic, including poor vetting of the troops who were incorporated into the U.N. mission. Extreme poverty and food shortages also have made girls and women in the country particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation, observers say.

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Associated Press writer Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal contributed to this report.

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This version has been corrected to show that Guterres' visit began on Tuesday, not Wednesday.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - BuzzFeed Inc. is suing Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and his office for refusing to release emails containing any of 30 terms that relate to immigration or the election.

The lawsuit comes after a BuzzFeed reporter asked Kobach's office in June for emails sent or received May 1 that include terms such as ICE, immigrant, Trump, voter, fraud and Mexican. The secretary of state's office at first asked for $1,025 for 13 hours of work and an attorney's review, then refused to release any records when the reported challenged the cost, according to the lawsuit filed Friday in Shawnee County District Court.

BuzzFeed is asking that Kobach's office be ordered to provide the documents and pay for attorney fees, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported .

Kendall Taggart, an investigative data reporter for BuzzFeed, sought the information under a Kansas records law. BJ Harden, deputy secretary of state for policy, said fulfilling the request would require a staff administrator to work 13 hours for a total of $325. And a staff attorney would need 20 hours to review the documents, adding $700 to the cost.

Taggart also cited public interest in Kobach's work and lower hourly rates charged by other agencies.

Sue Becker, senior counsel for the Secretary of State, replied that much of Kobach's work, such as with the White House, immigration or presidential advisers, is not Kansas-related business. She said six of the 30 terms - voter, voting, fraud, illegal, alien and noncitizen - are covered by the open records act but then cited exemptions in that law for notes, memoranda or recommendations in which a policy or action is proposed.

BuzzFeed's attorneys argued in the lawsuit that the open records law doesn't include a requirement that the records involve "official business." They also argue that Kobach has made "well-known official statements and positions on these issues as Secretary of State for Kansas," including in testimony before Congress and that the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity identifies Kobach by his state title. BuzzFeed also contends the law requires redactions for policy proposals, rather than a rejection of the entire request.

A spokeswoman for Kobach didn't immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday from The Associated Press.

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Information from: The Topeka (Kan.) Capital-Journal, http://www.cjonline.com
Two political consultants were charged Tuesday in a widening campaign finance probe involving the 2012 re-election of Philadelphia's most powerful congressman, Democrat Bob Brady.

Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia said Kenneth Smukler and Donald Jones helped orchestrate an illegal $90,000 donation to the campaign of a rival candidate meant to induce him to drop out of the race.

Brady, who has served nearly 20 years in the House, denies wrongdoing. He hasn't been charged, though when prosecutors initially brought the case, they said in a court motion that they were worried the congressman might try to influence a witness.

A grand jury indictment said former Philadelphia judge Jimmie Moore agreed to drop out of the 2012 Democratic primary after Brady agreed to help repay his campaign debt.

Since federal law imposes a $2,000 limit on contributions from one political campaign to another, "a $90,000 payment from Moore's opponent's campaign to pay Moore's campaign debts would constitute an unlawful campaign contribution," prosecutors said Tuesday in a news release.

Smukler and Jones helped Moore evade the contribution limit - as well as conceal the fact that Brady's campaign was helping him pay his campaign debt - by routing the campaign money through their consulting companies, generating bogus invoices to create a paper trail, the indictment said.

Smukler, who has long been a fixture in Philadelphia-area Democratic politics, did not immediately return messages from The Associated Press. Jones told the AP he was unaware he'd been indicted. He had no immediate comment.

They both face charges that include conspiracy, lying to the FBI and violations of campaign finance and reporting laws.

Brady's lawyer, James Eisenhower, noted the case against Smukler and Jones involves an "excessive campaign contribution" but does not allege bribery or an illegal quid pro quo.

He said Brady has been cooperating with an ongoing Justice Department probe.

"The congressman committed no crime and did nothing wrong here," Eisenhower said. "He has always acknowledged that he agreed to help Judge Moore release some of his campaign debt. There's nothing wrong with that, it's completely legal and common in politics and the congressman abided by the law."

Moore and his campaign manager have already pleaded guilty in the case.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Three tourists visiting San Francisco two years ago testified Tuesday that they saw a man - now charged with murder - on a popular pier moments after hearing a gunshot that killed a woman and reignited the national debate over illegal immigration.

All three witnesses were called to testify on the second day of the trial of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, a Mexican national who was arrested an hour after 32-year-old Kate Steinle was shot and killed on July 1, 2015, while walking with her father and a family friend.

Authorities say Garcia Zarate had been deported five times and was recently released from jail before the shooting.

FILE - In this July 7, 2015 file photo, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, right, is led into the courtroom by San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, left, and Assistant District Attorney Diana Garciaor, center, for his arraignment at the Hall of Justice in San Francisco. The murder trial started Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, for Garcia Zarate, a Mexican man who set off a national immigration debate after he shot and killed Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier on July 1, 2015. Garcia Zarate has said the shooting was accidental. (Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, Pool, File)

Marie Moreno and Aryn Carpenter, roommates who live in California's Central Valley, were spending that night in a hotel overlooking the pier. They both testified that they heard the gunshot and ran to a window where they saw Garcia Zarate walking quickly from the pier.

They said he stood out because nearly everyone else was either looking around confused or running toward an adult who was down on the pier.

"He had a scowl on his face," Moreno testified.

They said a woman who was walking away appeared to be calling 911.

Garcia Zarate has told police that he shot Steinle, but it was an accident that occurred when he picked up a T-shirt under a bench that was wrapped around the gun and it went off.

Prosecutors have charged him with murder and say he pointed the gun at Steinle and pulled the trigger.

"This case boils down to one baseline question," San Francisco district attorney's spokesman Alex Bastian said outside court. "Whether or not the defendant pulled the trigger."

Earlier in the day, Michelle Lo testified about walking past Garcia Zarate as he sat on a swivel chair on the pier. She took three photos that showed him sitting on the seat and the back of Kate Steinle several yards (meters) away, moments before she was shot. The photos were shown to the jury.

Steinle's death sparked debate over illegal immigration and sanctuary cities such as San Francisco that limit interaction between police and immigration authorities.

Garcia Zarate was homeless when he shot Steinle. He had recently completed a prison sentence for illegal re-entry to the U.S. when he was transferred to the San Francisco County jail to face a 20-year-old marijuana charge.

Prosecutors dropped that charge, and the San Francisco sheriff released Garcia Zarate from jail despite a federal immigration request to detain him for at least two more days for deportation.

The handgun fired in the killing belonged to a U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger who reported that it had been stolen from his parked car a week before Steinle was shot.

Garcia Zarate, 54, is charged with second-degree murder and could face a sentence of 15 years to life in prison if convicted.

The judge in the case has prohibited any mention of the politics of immigration and gun control during the trial that is expected to last several weeks.

Trial continues Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump's long-awaited declaration that the opioid epidemic is a national emergency finally arrives this week, but some advocates are worried that it won't be backed with the money and commitment to make much difference.

Trump is expected to make the formal declaration and deliver a major speech on the topic Thursday, more than two months after he first announced that would be his plan.

There is concern the White House actions will be empty talk without a long-term commitment to paying for more addiction treatment: An emergency declaration would lack punch without money, said Andrew Kessler, who represents substance abuse treatment providers as a lobbyist in Washington.

President Donald Trump waves to reporters after a lunch with Republican senator at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

"If there's no new money to expand our treatment infrastructure, I don't know what the punch is going to be," Kessler said. He acknowledged that declaring a national emergency "would put it in the national spotlight. Create buzz. Create talk." But with news coverage of the opioid crisis already saturating front pages and newscasts, he said, "I don't know how much more buzz we can generate."

Some health advocates also worry that devoting more public health resources to opioids could pull attention and resources from other health problems such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. What's needed, they say, are new funding streams and a willingness to work hand-in-hand with states and local governments.

"An emergency declaration without significant new funds will likely be unsuccessful. The problem is enormous and requires a similar investment in a comprehensive strategy that includes primary prevention," said Becky Salay, director of government relations at Trust for America's Health, a Washington-based public health research and advocacy organization.

The idea of declaring a national emergency was first raised in an interim report prepared by an opioid commission chaired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and convened by the president earlier this year.

"The first and most urgent recommendation of this commission is direct and completely within your control. Declare a national emergency," read the report from the group, which argued the move would empower Trump's Cabinet to address the crisis and force Congress to dedicate more money to fighting overdose deaths.

Trump said back in August he planned to adopt the recommendation, and claimed his team was working on documents to formalize the declaration. But his words spurred immediate push-back from some inside his administration who argued it wasn't the best move.

Emergency declarations are typically reserved for natural disaster like hurricanes, infectious diseases like swine flu and bioterrorist threats like anthrax, and Trump's now-departed Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price argued publicly that the administration could deploy the needed resources without a formal declaration.

As the weeks have passed, Christie appeared to grow impatient, telling an audience in New Jersey earlier this month that it wasn't "good that it hasn't been done yet."

"All I know is, two months is two months and I would have loved to have had the time to have worked on it in that respect," Christie said. "But you know, they're telling me they've got legal issues and hurdles to get over that they haven't gotten over yet. I take them at their word. But if you're asking me, would I have preferred him to sign it August 1st, yeah."

He said the problem was too big to say the delay had made a significant difference, "but I would also say you can't get those two months back."

The Office of National Drug Control Policy defended the administration's handling of the matter, saying Trump's policy advisers, along with relevant government agencies, have been "working tirelessly since the beginning" to respond to the opioid crisis.

With an estimated 142 Americans dying every day from drug overdoses, more than 10,000 people have died in the weeks since the president first committed to the plan.

At a commission meeting last week, no overt reference was made to the president's promise, but members stressed the need to act.

"We ought to be treating this like a FEMA response and getting the necessary medication," said former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who argued that, if the drug crisis were Ebola, "we'd waive all the rules and we'd say get it done and start saving lives, I mean that's what we need."

"That's what we've been saying," Christie responded. The New Jersey governor later compared the response to the AIDs epidemic.

"I still have not seen the passion for this epidemic that I saw in the AIDS epidemic," Christie said.

The commission had suggested two mechanisms for an emergency declaration: the Public Health Service Act or the Stafford Act. The nation has a public health emergency fund, but it is empty, Kessler said.

If the emergency is declared instead under the Stafford Act, funding could be included with disaster relief for hurricanes and wildfires. But that would put the opioids emergency under the jurisdiction of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is under the Department of Homeland Security.

"All that money could go to border security and drug interdiction, rather than toward treatment," Kessler said.

Trump's delays have frustrated observers.

"The failure to follow through is a betrayal of families and I think unconscionable," said Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University professor and the director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National & Global Health Law.

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AP Medical Writer Carla K. Johnson reported from Chicago. Follow Colvin and Johnson on Twitter at https://twitter.com/colvinj and https://twitter.com/CarlaKJohnson.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Trump administration is further delaying Obama-era protections for students defrauded by for-profit colleges, saying it needs more time to write new regulations.

Tuesday's announcement renewed criticism by Democrats and advocacy groups that the administration favors the interests of for-profit universities over students.

The Education Department posted a notice in the Federal Register saying it wants to delay the borrower defense rule until July 1, 2019, while a new rule is being written. The department estimated that postponing the rule will save taxpayers $46 million.

FILE - In this June 6, 2017, file photo, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing on the fiscal year 2018 budget. The Trump administration is further delaying Obama-era protections for students defrauded by for-profit colleges, saying it needs more time to write new regulations. The Oct. 24 announcement renewed criticism from Democrats and advocacy groups that administration favors the interests of for-profit universities over students. The Education Department posted a notice in the Federal Register saying it wants to delay the Borrower Defense rule until July 1, 2019 while a new rule is being written. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

The regulation allows students to have their loans forgiven if their schools deceived them about their education and career prospects. It also transfers some of the financial responsibility for negative outcomes to the universities and prevents schools from making students sign away their right to sue the schools.

The rule was supposed to take effect in July, but Education Secretary Betsy DeVos put it on hold while new rules were being crafted. Eighteen Democratic attorneys general have sued DeVos over the delay.

Department press secretary Liz Hill said Tuesday's action will not affect the processing of ongoing relief claims. But the department already has come under strong criticism for sitting on more than 65,000 loan discharge claims and failing to approve a single one of them since DeVos took office.

Rick Hess, director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the Obama regulation was too broad and fostered irresponsible borrowing on the part of students. He welcomed the delay, saying new rules need to be written very carefully.

"There is absolutely no doubt that thousands and thousands of students have been defrauded, at a minimum," Hess said. "It's also true that if you define these things too broadly, you wind up forgiving loans for students who were not defrauded but who were irresponsible when they made their decisions."

"We can all agree there is an appropriate middle ground, but identifying that middle ground in regulation is tricky," Hess added.

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, who co-led the coalition of attorneys general in the lawsuit against the department, said delaying the regulation will not save taxpayer dollars, but instead will cost the government even more money if the students default on their loans.

"It's another example of the Trump administration favoring these predatory for-profit schools at the expense of students, many of whom are vulnerable, and also at the expense of the federal government," Frosh told The Associated Press.
GENEVA (AP) - An independent U.N. human rights expert says the United Nations has "room for improvement" in protecting whistleblowers.

Special rapporteur on freedom of expression David Kaye also faults the U.N. and other international organizations for not adopting "robust" policies on access to information, saying they can too easily deny requests for information.

Kaye urges international organizations, states and civil society to support freedom of information, "particularly in an era of misinformation and propaganda."

He says that "too much doubt and distrust, for good reason, have infected governments worldwide."

The U.N.'s Human Rights Council created Kaye's post. His comments in a statement Tuesday came as he was to issue a report to the U.N. General Assembly. The statement said he was pleased by "early steps" at the U.N. to improve whistleblower protections.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Members of Congress from both parties on Tuesday called for an investigation into a $300 million contract awarded to a small company based in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's hometown of Whitefish, Montana.

The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority awarded the contract to Whitefish Energy Holdings to help crews restore transmission and distribution lines damaged or destroyed during Hurricane Maria. The two-year-old company had just two full-time employees when the storm hit last month, but says it is contracting with hundreds of workers for the Puerto Rico project.

Maria hit the island on Sept. 20 as a Category 4 storm, killing more than 50 people and knocking out electricity to the whole island. More than a month later, only 30 percent of customers have power.

In this Sunday, Oct. 15, 2017 photo, Whitefish Energy Holdings workers restore power lines damaged by Hurricane Maria in Barceloneta, Puerto Rico. Whitefish CEO Andy Techmanski said previous work restoring transmission lines damaged by wildfires in the western U.S. has prepared them for the Puerto Rico contract. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, senior Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said Congress "needs to understand why the Whitefish contract was awarded and whether other, more cost-effective options were available."

A spokesman for Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop, R-Utah, agreed that congressional review was needed. The resources panel oversees Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory.

"The size and unknown details of this contract raise numerous questions. This is one of many things the committee is taking a close look at as it continues to work with the resident commissioner, governor's office and oversight board to ensure Puerto Rico's recovery is robust, effective and sustained," said Parish Braden, a spokesman for Bishop.

The Interior Department denied that Zinke, a former Montana congressman, played any role in the contract award. Zinke's son had a summer job at a Whitefish construction site.

"Neither the secretary nor anyone in his office have taken any meetings or action on behalf of this company," the department said in a statement.

Zinke knows Whitefish CEO Andy Techmanskis "because they both live in a small town where everyone knows everyone," the statement said.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. said she has asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the contract award to Whitefish Energy, which she called a "brand-new company with two employees."

Ricardo Ramos, director of Puerto Rico's power authority, said the government has a $300 million contract with Whitefish and a separate $200 million contract with Oklahoma-based Cobra Acquisitions after evaluating up to six companies for the job.

Whitefish was one of two companies on the government's shortlist, Ramos said. The other company was requiring a $25 million down payment, given the power authority's troubled finances. PREPA filed for bankruptcy in July and has put off badly needed maintenance for years. It just finished dealing with outages from Hurricane Irma in early September.

Whitefish said it is sending hundreds of workers, mostly subcontractors, to Puerto Rico and is providing hotel rooms and its own materials. "They're doing an excellent job," Ramos said.

Whitefish CEO Techmanski visited Puerto Rico in late summer while on vacation and established contact with PREPA and discussed potential future work, company spokesman Chris Chiames said Tuesday. When Maria hit Sept. 20, Whitefish was one of the companies that power authority officials were able to reach by satellite phone.

"We got here quicker than anybody else and we built a plan that PREPA had confidence in," Chiames said in telephone interview.

Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said power contracts awarded by PREPA will be audited.

Grijalva said lawmakers also need to know why the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and public sector utilities "failed in Puerto Rico to conduct the disaster-response planning they carried out ahead of other disasters this year" in Texas, Florida and other states.

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Associated Press writers Danica Coto in San Juan and Ben Fox in Miami contributed to this story.

In this Sunday, Oct. 15, 2017 photo, Whitefish Energy Holdings workers stand on towers to restore lines damaged by Hurricane Maria in Barceloneta, Puerto Rico. Whitefish CEO Andy Techmanski said Whitefish was making progress on the line that carries about 230,000 volts to San Juan from the Aguirre power plant in the south, which will vastly increase the amount of power reaching the capital. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate passed a $36.5 billion emergency aid measure Tuesday to refill disaster accounts, provide a much-needed cash infusion to Puerto Rico, and bail out the federal flood insurance program.

The 82-17 vote sends the measure to the White House, where President Donald Trump is sure to sign it.

The measure provides $18.7 billion to replenish the Federal Emergency Management Agency's rapidly dwindling accounts, and $16 billion so the flood insurance program can keep paying claims.

President Donald Trump leaves the Capitol after lunch with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Republicans to talk about his tax reform agenda, in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

It brings the total approved by Congress during this fall's hurricane season to more than $50 billion - and that's before requests expected soon to cover damage to water and navigation projects, crops, public buildings and infrastructure, and to help homeowners without flood insurance rebuild.

"We're still waiting for all the data to come in from Texas to determine what the need is," said Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, whose Gulf Coast district was slammed by Hurricane Harvey. "We've already done the supplementals to keep the agencies going, but the long-term stuff - public assistance, FEMA and housing - are the big questions. We still haven't gotten all the numbers in from the state."

The White House said in a statement that the aid would "provide critical relief" from the recent natural disasters and Trump "remains steadfast in his commitment to providing the resources necessary to recover from the hurricanes and wildfires."

The measure fails to address demands from the Florida and Texas delegations for more funding now, but lawmakers representing those states have won assurances from GOP leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., White House budget director Mick Mulvaney and Trump himself that more help is in the works.

"I want to stress that much, much more will be needed in my state," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. "It's not over and done with, and it's not time to just move on."

The current measure would permit FEMA to allocate up to $5 billion to assist Puerto Rico's central government and various municipalities through a cash crisis. Maria has largely shut down the island's economy and choked off tax revenues. The island's electric grid has been mostly destroyed and more than one-fourth of Puerto Rico's residents don't have potable running water.

Some conservatives, however, are becoming uneasy with the steadily growing cost of this year's spate of hurricanes.

"People here will say they have great compassion and want to help the people of Puerto Rico and the people of Texas and the people of Florida," said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. "It is compassion with money that doesn't exist, money that's borrowed."

But Republicans controlling Washington are proving more willing to send aid to Texas and Florida this year than they were with New York and New Jersey after Superstorm Sandy hit those states - which are strongly Democratic - five years ago. And just last year, Republicans held up funding sought by President Barack Obama to combat the threat of the Zika virus and to help Flint, Michigan, repair its lead-tainted water system.

Now the challenge is whether Puerto Rico, which sustained enormous damage after Hurricane Maria's landfall more than a month ago, will get enough aid to rebuild.

Trump tweeted earlier this month that the federal government can't keep sending help to Puerto Rico "forever" and suggested that the U.S. territory was to blame for its financial struggles.

"You've got over 1,000 communities that haven't had any assistance," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J. He said Puerto Rico, which is a U.S. territory whose people are American citizens, can "absolutely" count on Washington to treat the island as an equal to Texas and Florida.

There's also unrest among opponents of the heavily subsidized federal flood insurance program, which many lawmakers say is in need of reform.

The federal flood insurance program, said Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, "encourages thousands of Americans to live in some of the most dangerous real estate in the country."

__

This story corrects Rand Paul's state to Kentucky, not Texas.
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - One Obama administration action may be safe under President Donald Trump - the long-sought renaming of North America's tallest peak to Denali.

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said the Alaska mountain came up during an hourlong meeting he and fellow Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski had with Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in March.

Sullivan said during a weekend speech to the Alaska Federation of Natives that Trump asked if the senators thought the name change from Mount McKinley to Denali should be reversed, the Alaska Public Radio Network reported . Sullivan said both senators emphatically said no. Trump asked why.

In this Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017 North America's tallest peak, Denali, is seen from a turnout in Denali State Park, Alaska. The peak was renamed from Mount McKinley to Denali under President Barack Obama. Alaska U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan recently said he and Sen. Lisa Murkowski told President Donald Trump they support keeping the name Denali. (AP Photo/Becky Bohrer)

"And I said, 'Well, Mr. President, with all due respect to previous presidents, Alaska Native people named that mountain over 10,000 years ago. And by the way, that was the Athabascan people, and my wife's Athabascan, and if you change that name back now she's gonna be really, really mad,'" Sullivan said. "So he was like, 'All right, we won't do that.'"

The state spent decades trying to get the mountain recognized as Denali, an Athabascan word meaning "the high one" that Alaskans widely used.

The late U.S. Rep. Ralph Regula of Ohio - the birthplace of President William McKinley - led a protracted fight to keep the mountain named for the 25th president. Others kept up the battle when he left office.

In 2015, then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell issued an order changing the name to Denali.

As a presidential candidate, Trump tweeted his displeasure with the action, calling it an insult to Ohio and saying he would change it back.

During the March meeting, Trump did not express a desire to change the name back but simply asked if it was something he should do, Murkowski spokeswoman Karina Petersen said in an email Tuesday.

Murkowski considers the matter settled, Petersen said.

State historian Jo Antonson said she does not think the name will be changed again, saying it would be deeply unpopular with Alaskans.

"But anything can be changed," she said.
Prince Harry has returned to a village which was devastated by floods in Storm Desmond to see how the recovery effort progressed.

He first visited St Michaels on Wyre in February last year after the floods in December 2015 damaged 1,700 businesses and homes.

On Monday, he reopened the refurbished village hall and met residents who were forced to move out of their homes following the storm.

After meeting residents in the village hall, Prince Harry unveiled a plaque to re-open the hall. #RoyalVisitLancashire pic.twitter.com/WfslYP4XOU  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) October 23, 2017

Julie Bostock, who lives next to the village hall, wrote to Harry after she was diagnosed with a brain tumour while spending eight months in temporary accommodation waiting for her home to be repaired.

She said: I wrote to him about the work he does with mental health and said what a shame I hadnt been able to meet him last time.

Harry met Mrs Bostock, who has fully recovered after surgery to remove the tumour, with her husband Ralph and son Jack Prince and was shown photos of the damage which was done to the house.

He also spoke to their neighbours Graham and Lynne Mortimore who were unable to return to their home for nine months after the flood.

HRH met local resident Winnie last year... and then again today. #RoyalVisitLancashire pic.twitter.com/NYVdi9hhhx  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) October 23, 2017

The Prince spoke to 99-year-old Winnie Hodson, who first met him when he visited last year.

Her daughter Winnie, 77, said: He remembered her from last time. He was asking how we were and about the floods.

The Prince was greeted outside the village hall by children from St Michaels on Wyre Primary School, which had to be completely refurbished, and presented with a stick of Blackpool rock by one member of the crowd.

Headteacher Diane Carroll, 46, said the children were taught in portable cabins at Myerscough College, and on a nearby farm, for almost six months while work was carried out.

It follows a visit last year when HRH visited families shortly after the floods hit. pic.twitter.com/rAImdK6mWl  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) October 23, 2017

She said: Harry was asking about the school and said he had been speaking to one of the students outside whose home had been flooded as well.

Margaret Thompson, 78, told Harry some of the children were taught on her farm while the school was repaired.

She said: They were marvellous, we missed them so much when they had gone.

She added: Harry was lovely. He wanted to know all about farming and about the children. He was interested in potatoes.

Next in Lancashire Prince Harry met families who live in St Michael's on Wyre, a village affected by flooding in 2015/16. pic.twitter.com/PaVV01HW49  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) October 23, 2017

Harry visited staff at Veterans UK earlier and thanked them for their amazing work as he marked the 25th anniversary of its helpline service, based in Blackpool.

The 24-hour helpline provides welfare support for ex-service personnel and their families, working in partnership with charities and support networks, and receives hundreds of calls daily.

He met widow Jemma Neilson, 29, of Preston, whose husband, Darren, 31, was killed four months ago in a tank explosion during a training exercise at Castlemartin, west Wales.

Mrs Neilson and daughter Millie, eight, moved out of military accommodation following the loss of her husband who had been her childhood sweetheart since the age of 14.

Finally @VeteransUK_MOD Prince Harry unveils a plaque to mark 25 years of the national helpline. #RoyalVisitLancashire pic.twitter.com/Jqa1J50feq  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) October 23, 2017

They are living with her parents but with the ongoing help of Veterans UK she hopes to buy her own home.

She said: The service has been absolutely invaluable. I dont know where I would be without it.

Retired RAF squadron leader Stephen Flaherty, 66, who receives a war disablement pension, said the Prince was a delight.

He said: He has a very detailed knowledge of an awful lot, without a shadow of a doubt. A very caring person.

Prince Harry meets service personnel, veterans and families who have been helped by @VeteransUK_MOD #royalvisitlancashire pic.twitter.com/gJH6RQ1ah1  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) October 23, 2017

Mr Flaherty, from Lytham, gave up flying in 1986 because of medical issues and was eventually put in touch with Veterans UK.

He said: They tell you about allowances that I had never heard of. They are always there.

During a tour of the site in Norcross, Harry listened in to a call to helpline adviser Lyndsay Ethell, 32, as she dealt with a pensions query.

Ms Ethell said: It was a great honour meeting Prince Harry, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I feel extremely privileged to be part of.

This afternoon Prince Harry is visiting "Myplace" at Brockholes Nature Reserve. #RoyalVisitLancashire pic.twitter.com/Stj7oJxIYa  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) October 23, 2017

Harry next visited Brockholes Nature Reserve in Preston where he saw young people taking part in conservation and bush craft activities as part of the Myplace project.

The partnership between Lancashire Wildlife Trust and Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust aims to improve the health and wellbeing of participants through a range of ecotherapy activities.

Based on the site of an old quarry, Brockholes has become a reserve for breeding wading birds, dragonflies and butterflies and has received more than one million visitors since it opened in April 2011.

The prince joined the youngsters, aged between 13 and 24, in the woods as he watched them create a dead hedge from branches to provide shelter for small animals.

An impressed Harry told those taking part: A concrete jungle is not good for anyone.

Prince Harry speaks to members of the group over a camp fire

He watched another group put on blindfolds to use their other senses to identify types of tree before settling down for a campfire chat over toasted marshmallows.

He declined a marshallow himself and revealed it was not something he had done himself in his childhood.

Harry said: You are the lucky ones, getting this experience while your friends are stuck inside watching television or playing computer games.

Among those youngsters he met was Hannah Croft, 18, from Leyland, who said meeting the royal was brilliant and that he was a really cool guy.

Prince Harry chats to young people taking part in conservation and bush craft activities. #RoyalVisitLancashire pic.twitter.com/KomaLL1KcY  The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) October 23, 2017

She said: It was really good to share experiences.

I think that the Heads Together campaign he is involved in with his brother is absolutely amazing and it was really rewarding to meet him today.

Its very good that we have people like that in the Royal Family who are fighting for this cause.

Miss Croft has been involved with Myplace for nearly a year and said the scheme had helped her to aspire to work in healthcare advocacy.

By 2020, Myplace aims to have empowered 1,000 young people to shape and deliver environmental improvements in their communities and to have enhanced 120 greenspaces within urban neighbourhoods.
The UK Government should stop talking up a Brexit no deal and instead get the negotiations back on track, Wales First Minister Carwyn Jones will say.

Mr Jones said walking away from the negotiations would cause chaos and lasting damage to the UKs economy and future security.

His comments come just a day after Prime Minister Theresa May said it was her mission to negotiate a new post-Brexit partnership with the EU.

PM  Cooperation with our European friends will not stop in March 2019. UK will stand alongside EU as a strong and committed partner #EUCO pic.twitter.com/9F1ude9ocq  UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) October 20, 2017

Mrs May made it clear a no deal scenario was still an option as she insisted the Government was preparing for every eventuality.

Mr Jones referred to a series of organisations, such as the BMA, British Retail Consortium and the Freight Transport Association, who have warned in the last month of the risks to Britain of a no deal.

Speaking in the Senedd later on Tuesday, he will say: The UK Government and the gung-ho Brexiteers must wise up and listen to what the experts are saying.

No deal is unthinkable. It would be impossible to mitigate the effects of such a disastrous conclusion to the Brexit negotiations.

Preventing this outcome, not preparing contingency plans, is what we must focus on.

To do otherwise would be like a passenger on the Titanic who, upon seeing an iceberg, chooses to find his lifejacket and pack his things, rather than rushing to the bridge and desperately attempting to alert the captain of the disaster ahead.

The UK Government must concentrate on reaching a credible position on our exit terms so that the December European Council can move negotiations into the second phase and very rapidly thereafter agree a transition phase of at least two years.

Carwyn Jones

A spokesman for the UK Government said: We are committed to securing a deal that works for the entire UK including Wales, and are continuing to engage with the devolved administrations as we seek to secure that deal.

While it is the duty of a responsible government to plan for all scenarios, we are clear that a deep and special partnership with the EU is the most likely outcome.

We are confident of securing a bold and ambitious deal with the EU  this is ultimately in the best interests of both sides.
FARGO  Many basic assumptions about the Fargo-Moorhead flood diversion were scrutinized Monday, Oct. 23, at the first meeting of a task force seeking compromises that would make the $2.2 billion project more acceptable to opponents and to Minnesota regulators.

One member of the 16-person task force questioned the validity of the 100-year flood plain used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in designing the Red River diversion channel and dam, which the regulators have refused to permit.

Others revived discussion of options long dismissed by engineers such as building ring dikes around the metro area and using upstream retention ponds, which Minnesota regulators had earlier said are impractical.

That made it seem like drastic changes to the project were possible, something North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum had warned might risk the loss of the rare congressional authorization the projects received. He, together with Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton, convened the task force and chaired its Monday meeting at the Fargodome.

The groups goal, Burgum said in a news conference after the meeting, is to agree to project changes that would provide protection from a 100-year flood and address concerns by upstream and downstream communities but not result in so much change as to lose authorization.

Dayton said he, too, wouldnt want to scrap the diversion plan, which would be unrealistic. Still, he said, he wanted the task force to be able to freely discuss all changes and work with the corps and congressional delegation to see which changes would be allowed.

The governors assembled the task force after Minnesota regulators sued the Corps and Fargo-Moorhead Diversion Authority and convinced a judge to halt construction during the lawsuit. Burgum and Dayton said theyve agreed that the task force would stop its work if parties involved continue litigation. They also agreed if the Corps and authority file a motion to appeal the judges order to meet the judges deadline  but put it on pause right away  that that wouldnt be construed as litigation.

The task forces work follows the work of a technical team from both sides that tried earlier to compromise, suggesting changes such as moving a portion of the dam in North Dakota north to reduce the floodwater stored on the Minnesota side.

Many points of view

The task force is designed to include diverse opinions.

Among its members are upstream opponents of the project such as Richland County (N.D.) Commissioner Nathan Berseth, downstream representatives such as Hendrum (Minn.) Mayor Curt Johannsen, legal experts such as Fargo attorney Tami Norgard and engineers such as Moorhead City Councilman Joel Paulsen.

In introducing himself, Fargo businessman Ron Bergan, who was part of a group that worked to develop the current diversion plan, reminded the task force of how perilously close Fargo-Moorhead came to catastrophic flooding in 1997 and 2009. Hospitals and nursing homes had to be evacuated, he said.

Former Wilkin County (Minn.) attorney Tim Fox, who advises the Richland-Wilkin Joint Powers Authority that sued to stop the project, said the way Diversion Authority officials went about buying out upstream property owners was unfair. He said he himself had negotiated hundreds of flood buyouts when his county built its flood protection project after the 1997 flood.

Ultimately, what were asking this task force to do, regardless of where theyre coming from, is were asking everybody to come together as a group and look for a new solution, Burgum said. This is not about litigating the past. This is about defining our future.

The past, though, was not far away.

Past decisions revisited

The 100-year flood plain that the Corps used to design the diversion project was questioned by Fox, who said he felt the corps had arbitrarily decided the flood elevation to fit its agenda.

This is the area estimated to have a 1 percent chance of flooding each year and is used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to determine flood insurance requirements. Those in the flood plain would be required to buy insurance and face higher rates because theyre considered at higher risk. The diversion project is designed to keep homes out of the flood plain when FEMA revises its flood plain map.

Fox complained that the Corps flood plain map has a higher elevation than FEMAs current flood plain and refused to believe it when Cass County Engineer Jason Benson, a task force member whose job involves diversion planning, said FEMA used data from 1971 and the Corps used data from after the 2009 flood.

Moorhead City Engineer Bob Zimmerman and Nathan Boerboom, a senior Fargo city engineer, said that is what happened. In its latest map, they said, FEMA used old data to compute the volume of water in a 100-year flood but used new models to determine how high the water would reach. The Corps used new data to compute the volume of water, raising the flood plain elevation 2 to 3 feet higher, they said.

FEMA has said its aware its flood plain map is outdated and will revise that map if the diversion is not built.

DNR Commissioner Tom Landwehr, designated as Daytons surrogate if he cant attend task force meetings, was among several task force members who questioned why Fargo and Moorhead couldnt replace the diversion with ring dikes as in Oxbow, N.D., a community that would be on the wet side of the dam.

According to Benson, Boerboom and Gregg Thielmann, an engineer with the Houston Moore Engineering Group working with the Diversion Authority, the Corps did consider dikes but found them too costly for the benefits provided. Earthen levees, which are the most affordable dikes, are too heavy and would have to be built further away from rivers and drains, requiring many more costly and unpopular buyouts. Theyd have to be quite high especially to the south where a ring dike would induce higher flood elevation. In addition, theyd be complex endeavors because there are so many rivers and drains in the area.

Oxbow is a smaller community and doesnt have all those waterways.

Other task force members asked why distributed storage, meaning retention ponds spread out across upstream farmland, was earlier dismissed as an alternative.

The DNR had earlier concluded such a system might be possible, but it would take too long to win support from the many landowners needed.

According to Benson, such a vast system would be too complex to operate and raises questions of who controls each pond. The diversion dam would also retain water but would be controlled by the Diversion Authority.

New dams and other solutions

Its possible the task force will consider some of the changes discussed by the technical team that the DNR and Diversion Authority had assembled earlier. The DNR scuttled the effort after Landwehr expressed unhappiness with the legal tactics employed by the authoritys attorneys.

Much of that discussion had been kept confidential, but on Monday, Kent Lokkesmoe, a DNR official involved, revealed some details to the task force about the technical teams work on what Minnesota officials called Plan B.

He said the team discussed changes such as having more floodwater go through Fargo-Moorhead; storing some water within the dry side of the diversion; building a downstream dam; and moving the northwest corner of the L-shaped dam further north, presumably toward Horace, N.D.

All of these could reduce the impact on upstream landowners, especially in Minnesota. Dayton had complained Minnesota landowners were more impacted than North Dakota landowners even though more structures in North Dakota would be protected.

Though Diversion Authority officials have said the technical team was close to agreement, Lokkesmoe said he didnt think the team was ready to issue any recommendations at the time it was dissolved.

Asked if any of that would be discussed by the task force, Dayton replied, I think you heard it all with Plan B, which lasted, what, a minute and a half? He echoed Lokkesmoe in saying the team hadnt produced a recommendation.

Dayton and Burgum agreed it had been a good first meeting but that a lot of hard work remained in the weeks ahead as the task force works to meet its 60-day deadline.

We've got a number of very complex issues ahead of us, Dayton said. Failure is not an option. We have to come up with a solution we can all live with and is going to reflect different points of view.

The task force is tentatively scheduled to meet again Wednesday, Nov. 1, in Moorhead.
A Syrian refugee who was brought to the UK from Calais a year ago under the scheme lobbied for by Lord Alf Dubs has thanked the Government for his new start.

Ishmael, who fled Syria in 2015 aged 15, spent more than a year in the Jungle migrant camp across the Channel, along with thousands of others hoping for a new start in the UK.

He estimates he made more than a hundred attempts to get into the country by lorry and boat, before becoming one of 200 vulnerable children to be transferred in October last year when the camp was demolished.

Joely Richardson and Lord Dubs

Almost a year to the day that he arrived in England, the 18-year-old has thanked British authorities for their support and urged them to continue providing a safe haven for others.

He said: My message is just to be thankful for the British Government.

The help they provide us is likewe cannot imagine, its really important for us, so I want them to do this same experience with other people, to look after other people, because they built our lives again so thats really important for me to say thanks for them and to try the same experience again.

The-then 17-year-old was bussed to the UK on October 25 along with hundreds of other children under the so-called Dubs Amendment aimed at helping vulnerable lone child refugees on mainland Europe.

Now he is living with a foster family in north London and doing a foundation year at Birkbeck, University of London, to prepare for undergraduate studies in politics and international relations.

A view of the site where up to 8,000 migrants lived in a camp dubbed "The Jungle' (Joe Giddens/PA)

He is excited about working for a career in politics.

A year on from his life-changing journey, he will be reunited with some of the other teenagers who were taken to safety from the camp, for a public thank you.

Ishmael and other refugees, accompanied by campaigners from Safe Passage and Help Refugees, will present a plaque to Parliament on Tuesday, which will be accepted by Lord Dubs, the schemes architect.

The inscription reads: We thank the British people and Parliament for giving us peace.

We found a beautiful life in the UK, so different to the life we fled. We were suffering, but now we are safe.

Ishmael said: For Syrian people, we lost our country, we lost our safety, we lost everything, and its really important for the UK Government to try to give us a home, a safe life, its really important for these people to try to help bring people here because they have nothing, the Syrian people, to do now, without any country and they need someone to look after them after all that.
The ruling Communist Party has formally elevated Xi Jinpings status to Chinas most powerful ruler in decades, setting the stage for the authoritarian leader to tighten his grip over the country while pursuing an increasingly muscular foreign policy and military expansion.

The move to insert Mrs Xis name and dogma into the partys constitution alongside the partys founders came at the close of a twice-a-decade congress that gathered the countrys ruling elite alongside rank-and-file party members.

It not only places him in the first rank with past leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, but also effectively makes any act of opposing him tantamount to an attack on the party itself.

The Chinese people and nation have a great and bright future ahead, Mr Xi told party delegates as the meeting came to a close after delegates approved the addition of his ideology of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era to the party charter.

Xi Jinping

At this great time, we feel more self-confident and proud. At the same time, we also deeply feel a heavy sense of responsibility, he said.

The concept Mr Xi has touted is seen as marking a break from the stage of economic reform ushered in by Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s and continued under his successors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. The placement of Mr Xis thought among the partys leading guidelines also comes five years into his term  earlier than his predecessors.

In every sense, the Xi Jinping era has begun in earnest, said Zhang Lifan, an independent political commentator in Beijing. Only Maos name was enshrined in the party ideology while he was still alive. Were opening something that hasnt been broached before.

For centuries, Chinese emperors were accorded ritual names which signalled either that they were successors in a dynastic line or the founder of an entirely new dynasty. What Mr Xi accomplished this week was a modern equivalent of the latter, Mr Zhang said.

A Chinese man stands at an exhibition highlighting China's achievements under Mr Xi (Andy Wong/AP)

He wants to join that pantheon of leaders, he said.

Despite being elevated to the status of both a political and theoretical authority in the party, Mr Xi still lacks the broad popular support of the Chinese public that Mao enjoyed, said Zhang Ming, a political analyst in Beijing who recently retired from a prestigious university.

This (elevation) is a result of the partys political system and not of the sincere support of the peoples hearts, Zhang Ming said. If he can achieve that, he would become Mao.

Mr Xi has described his concept as central to setting China on the path to becoming a great modern socialist country by mid-century.

He has set the target dates of 2021  the 100th anniversary of the partys founding  and the Peoples Republics centenary in 2049  for the establishment of a prosperous, modern society.
A Conservative MP has been criticised for sending a sinister letter to universities which requested the names of professors teaching about Brexit.

Chris Heaton-Harris, a Tory whip and Leave campaigner, also asked establishments to supply copies of their syllabuses and links to online lectures covering the topic.

The request was sent to vice chancellors across the country, the Guardian reported.

Here is the rather strange letter Tory MP Chris Heaton-Harris sent to all universities asking what theyre teaching on Brexit pic.twitter.com/1iuQalmPs3  Claire Phipps (@Claire_Phipps) October 24, 2017

Professor David Green, Vice Chancellor at the University of Worcester, said: When I read this extraordinary letter on Parliamentary paper from a serving MP, I felt a chill down my spine. Was this the beginnings of a very British McCarthyism?

A copy of the letter from Mr Heaton-Harris, seen by the Press Association, states: I was wondering if you would be so kind as to supply me with the names of professors at your establishment who are involved in the teaching of European affairs, with particular reference to Brexit.

Furthermore, if I could be provided with a copy of the syllabus and links to the online lectures which relate to this area I would be much obliged.

Chris Heaton-Harris

Prof Green said had not heard of Mr Heaton-Harris, MP for Daventry, before receiving the letter but discovered he had previously described himself as a Eurosceptic.

He said: I realised that his letter just asking for information appears so innocent but is really so, so dangerous.

Here is the first step to the thought police, the political censor and Newspeak, naturally justified as the will of the British people, another phrase to be found on Mr Heaton-Harriss website.

Then I thought that only one response was appropriate, which Churchill spoke so brilliantly for all who love Britain and democracy when he said we shall outlive the power of tyranny and we shall never surrender.

That is my reply to Mr Heaton-Harris MPs sinister letter.

Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner branded Mr Heaton-Harris actions unacceptable and ignorant.
Britain has one of the largest populations of returning fighters and others who travelled to join Islamic State in the world, a new report suggests.

Around 850 UK-linked individuals of national security concern made the journey to engage with the conflict in Syria, with just under half of those believed to have come back.

The figure of approximately 425 returnees is the fourth highest for individual nations in an analysis published by the Soufan Centre and the Global Strategy Network.

OUT NOW: Latest report Beyond the Caliphate - Foreign Fighters & the Threat of Returnees https://t.co/BPl5EA8BPZ #foreignterroristfighters pic.twitter.com/p9ZuHPWxE5  The Soufan Center (@TheSoufanCenter) October 24, 2017

Out of countries for which data was available, only Turkey (900), Tunisia (800) and Saudi Arabia (760) had larger numbers of returning foreign fighters, according to the study.

The number who have come back to the UK compares with around 300 in Germany and 271 in France.

The paper, written by Richard Barrett, a former director of global counter-terrorism at MI6, said: While returning foreign fighters have not as yet added significantly to the threat of terrorism around the world, the number of attacks inspired or directed by the Islamic State continues to rise.

All returnees, whatever their reason for going home, will continue to pose some degree of risk.

Wrecked buildings in Raqqa

Previous research has suggested that overall more than 40,000 individuals travelled to join Islamic State from more than 110 nations both before and after it declared a caliphate in June 2014.

The new assessment calculates that at least 5,600 citizens or residents have gone back to their home countries.

It says: Added to the unknown numbers from other countries, this represents a huge challenge for security and law enforcement entities.

The report notes that most returnees will be unlikely to experience anything in their lives at home that matches the intensity of their experience as a member of IS, whether or not they were fighting on the front line.

Returnee women represent a particular problemmost will have joined IS willingly but will pose a different security challenge once back home  The Soufan Center (@TheSoufanCenter) October 24, 2017

Questions over how returning extremists are managed by the counter-terrorism agencies have intensified as IS comes under fierce military pressure.

At the weekend a Government minister suggested the only way of dealing with most British IS fighters in Syria was to kill them.

Rory Stewart, the international development minister, later emphasised that combatants should be dealt with in accordance with law.
Cristiano Ronaldo had his nearest and dearest on hand in London as he celebrated his latest award.

The Real Madrid man edged out rival Lionel Messi to be named as FIFAs best male player for the second year running at a glitzy ceremony in the capital.

And, to celebrate, the 32-year-old was joined on stage by mum Maria Dolores dos Santos Aveiro and her partner, his girlfriend Georgina Rodriquez, son Cristiano Jr and sisters Katia and Elma.

A post shared by Cristiano Ronaldo (@cristiano) on Oct 24, 2017 at 2:33am PDT

It was Ronaldos fifth FIFA award for the best male player and he has eyes on matching his shirt number.

I want seven. Five is good but seven is my lucky number so seven would be great, he said.

Ronaldo retained the prize after scoring 44 goals in 48 appearances in 2017, 33 for Real Madrid and 11 for Portugal.

Neither Ronaldo nor Messi included each other in their top three nominations, although there was no hint of frostiness when the pair met beforehand at the London Palladium.
Islamic State (IS) will change its form and return to its terrorist roots, a Foreign Office minister has warned, as he hailed the liberation of Raqqa as a tremendous blow to the militant groups ideology.

Alistair Burt said the fall of cities in Syria and Iraq was of immense importance and that British forces would remain engaged as long as there is a need for them to be there.

Mr Burt, responding to an urgent question on the liberation of Raqqa, told the Commons that British military personnel would continue to tackle extremists on simultaneous fronts and needed to be prepared for IS  also known as Daesh  to change its form.

Alistair Burt said the British forces would remain engaged "as long as there is a need for them to be there"

Mr Burt told MPs: No-one should under-estimate, and I think media reports have made clear, the importance of Raqqa to the whole Daesh ideology  the fall of Raqqa and Mosul is a tremendous blow to those who would have inflicted harm upon us all, and the taking of those two cities are of immense importance.

He went on to say: We must be prepared for Daesh to change its form  it will return to its terrorist roots, luring more adherence to its evil ideology.

So we will continue to tackle to extremists on simultaneous fronts including by preventing foreign fighters from returning to their country of origin.

We will continuing degrading Daeshs poisonous narrative, decreasing their ability to generate revenue and denying them a safe haven in the virtual world as well.

Emily Thornberry said the victory against Daesh in Raqqa was a "vital blow against an evil death cult"

On the British military presence in the region, Mr Burt said: We dont know quite what will come next  the military will remain engaged as long as there is a need for them to be there.

As I indicated the strategy to further close off the avenue for Daesh in the Euphrates valley will be supported by United Kingdom personnel until there is not a possibility that military action can recommence and the coalition forces can be put under pressure.

Mr Burt said any fighters returning to the UK could expect to be questioned about their role, while those captured in Iraq and Syria must be treated according to the laws of armed conflict but they can well expect to stand trial there if offences are alleged against them.

Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said the victory against Daesh in Raqqa was a vital blow against an evil death cult which makes a mockery of their pretensions to establish a caliphate in Syria or elsewhere.

Ms Thornberry asked Mr Burt to guarantee that none of the 200 million sent from the Government since 2015 to support the moderate opposition in Syria had ended up in the hands of Al-Nusra or other Jihadi groups.

Delegation from @senatePH led by Senate President Koko Pimentel III meet Chair Julian Lewis MP to discuss oversight role of @CommonsDefence pic.twitter.com/0PYj2BHHSk  BGIPU (@BGIPU) October 24, 2017

Mr Burt said he could not say with absolute certainty not a single pound or element of aid has gone in the wrong direction.

He added: But its the absolute determination of the Government to make sure that, as far as possible, that risk is absolutely minimised.

Tory MP Julian Lewis, chairman of the Defence Select Committee, said: Does the minister accept that the reason why bombing Daesh was so much more controversial in Syria than it was in Iraq is the same as the reason why there were so many more RAF air strikes in Iraq than there have been in Syria, namely that we wanted the ground forces of the government to win in Iraq, but we claimed not to want the ground forces of the government to win in Syria?

Does he accept that the outcome of the welcome squeezing out of Daesh in Syria is that this is down to a combination of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian government forces, whether we like it or not?

And the so-called 70,000 moderates are now well and truly dominated by Islamists and we ought to be careful who we support, as the opposition spokesman said.
The European Union has called time on its quest to force the blocs banks to split their retail operations from riskier trading floors.

The European Commission said its proposal for bank structural reform had been withdrawn because it could not square the conflicting views of member states.

It added that such a law was no longer needed because it had been overtaken by other pieces of financial regulation tackling the systemic complexity of banks.

The EU Commission scraps a draft proposal on banking reform (PA)

The EU was attempting to drive down the risk of too big too fail following the 2008 financial crisis by forcing European lenders to split their retail and investment banking arms.

In a report on Tuesday, the EU said there would be no foreseeable agreement on the draft proposal, which was adopted by the Commission in 2014.

Vanessa Mock, a spokeswoman for the European Commission, said the world had moved on since the proposal was first tabled and banks trading operations were now smaller than before the crisis.

She added: The Commission has decided to withdraw the Bank Structural Reform (BSR) proposal in accordance with better regulation principles.

While in June 2015 the Council adopted a general approach on the proposal, the European Parliament has not managed to date to bridge the difference of views among its members.

The Commission has repeatedly tried to broker a compromise to no avail. There is accordingly no prospect of the proposal being adopted.

Government ring-fencing measures in the UK demand all British banks with more than 25 billion of UK deposits section off their retail operations from their investment banks by 2019.
A British man is back on home soil after being freed by authorities in Dubai for touching another mans hip and drinking alcohol.

Jamie Harron, 27, from Stirling, touched down at Glasgow Airport on an Emirates flight EK025 from Dubai where he was met by his family and friends.

He was sentenced to three months in prison after he was arrested in July and accused of putting his hand on a mans hip to avoid spilling a drink in a crowded bar.

Mr Harron was relieved to be back on home soil after facing the prospect of three years in a UAE jail. He said: It feels very good, Im very happy to be home.

Jamie Harron arrives at Glasgow Airport

Asked what was the first thing he would do when he got home he said: Get in a good bed, its been a total shambles.

Its just total shock I feel. I get to sleep in my own bed because Ive been sleeping on my mates couch for three and half months. I cant believe its been four months in total.

Campaign group Detained in Dubai (DiD), which has been representing Mr Harron, said he was sentenced to three months imprisonment at court on Sunday, but had his passport returned on Monday after authorities dropped the charges.

Radha Stirling, chief executive of DiD, then thanked Sheikh Mohammed for his personal intervention in the case and for exonerating Mr Harron.

She said: This was a courageous and honourable decision on the part of Sheikh Mohammed, and while it highlights the urgent need for judicial reform in the country, it is also a hopeful sign that the United Arab Emirates leadership possesses the will and vision to pursue such reforms in the future.

Jamie Harron with his Father Graham

Mr Harron had been working in Afghanistan and was on a two-day stopover in the United Arab Emirates in the summer.

But after his arrest for public indecency, he lost his job and was told he faced up to three years in jail.

He was sentenced in absentia to 30 days in prison for failing to appear at a court hearing for making a rude gesture and drinking alcohol in the incident.

This resulted in him being locked up for five days at Al Barsha prison, before he was bailed and his passport confiscated.

After authorities intervened, Dubai police contacted Mr Harron on Monday morning, telling him the case against him had been dismissed and he could collect his passport.
LONDON, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Britain's largest floor coverings retailer Carpetright on Tuesday forecast full year profit within the current range of market expectations, though it cautioned the first-half trading outcome would be below that of the prior year.

Carpetright said trading was volatile in its markets during the period.

The firm, whose fortunes are closely tied to the strength of the housing market, said like-for-like sales in its UK division rose 0.8 percent in the 25 weeks to Oct. 21 - a slowdown from growth of 2.0 percent in the first seven weeks of the half.

Like-for-like sales in the Rest of Europe division - made up of the Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland - rose 6.3 percent in local currency terms. (Reporting by James Davey, Editing by Paul Sandle)
By Lin Taylor

CALAIS, France Oct 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - With bags of clothing and a thick blanket, Eritrean migrant Salma carries her entire life in her hands as she stands by a small forest surrounded by warehouses and electrical towers in Calais in northern France.

Emerging from the woods, her home for the past three months, the 17-year-old joined only one other woman and dozens of migrant men in this industrial zone to meet with volunteers and to collect shoes and winter coats distributed by charities.

Despite the dismantling of the "Jungle" camp a year ago, a squalid shanty town that housed nearly 10,000 people, charities and authorities estimate at least 700 migrants have returned to the port city and are sleeping rough in parks or forests.

Women and girls are vastly outnumbered by men in Calais, and with no shelter or tents for protection, they are vulnerable to rape, trafficking and exploitation, aid groups say.

"It is very difficult. Very hard. I live here in Calais," the small-framed Eritrean said in her limited English, pointing towards the trees in the distance, where groups of young migrant men loiter and play with their phones.

For most migrants, Calais is the last stop before an attempt to cross the short sea stretch to Britain, the destination of choice for many who speak English or already have family or friends in the UK.

It has become a symbol of Europe's troubles dealing with the influx of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

The sudden horns of a lorry send several boys running, eager to try their luck at making it to Britain as a stowaway - no small feat for the young and fit, let alone for Salma, who is also five months pregnant.

"She's pregnant and we help her to go to the hospital to see a doctor," said Marine, a midwife treating Salma through French medical charity Gynecologie Sans Frontieres (GSF).

"She doesn't want to stay here," said Marine, declining to give her full name or divulge further details about the teenager, who has quietly slipped back into the forest alone.

"COMPLETELY INVISIBLE"

Obstetrician Richard Matis, and GSF's vice president, said he isn't sure how many female migrants are pregnant as they are constantly on the move and determined to reach the UK before giving birth, no matter the cost.

"Pregnant migrants are at higher risk of delivering premature babies or even suffering miscarriages, as they are not getting regular proper checkups," said Matis.

"Precarious living conditions like living in the woods with poor food and sanitation also increases the risk of infection," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview.

Matis said most women and girls he has treated in the region have been physically or sexually abused.

Lacking basic shelter, it is no surprise women are at risk of rape and abuse, said volunteer Ciara Connell from the Refugee Women's Centre, which provides hygiene and baby products, as well as support for women migrants in Calais and Grand Synthe.

"There's no access to toilets, showers or basic sanitation so if you're on your period, it's horrible," said Connell.

"It's a very male-dominated environment. It isn't a safe place to be," she said. "They are completely invisible here."

EXPLOITATION

Charities and asylum seekers said local police would regularly slash tents and forcibly evict migrants - including women and children - in the dead of night using teargas and dogs to prevent a new "jungle" from forming.

A spokesman for the French government in the Pas-de-Calais region declined to comment on the allegations of police heavy-handedness and the living conditions of migrants.

"When you're in such an open space with no shelter of any kind and no protection measures, it's an open market for these very exploitative individuals to come and do whatever they please," said Annie Gavrilescu from aid group Help Refugees, which distributes clothing and blankets to migrants in the area.

The United Nations children's agency UNICEF has said women and children who rely on human smugglers to move through Europe, often under a "pay as you go system", are prone to exploitation and violence, including prostitution and rape.

Even if signs of trafficking or sexual abuse are spotted, Gavrilescu said there are no services to report these crimes to, and police distrust is rife among migrants.

"We don't want to ask those questions in case we're opening up a wound that we can't help to heal in any way," she said.

"Sometimes it does more damage to ask those questions if we cannot appropriately protect them," Gavrilescu added.

Though safety fears loom large, mothers like Hamin Ibrahim from Kurdistan in northern Iraq said protecting her four children, aged between three and 13, is what concerns her the most.

"We live a very difficult life here. Now it's winter, we can't bear this cold weather," she said, who has been sleeping rough in northern France for four months.

"I just want to take my children to the UK and have a good future. I am very worried about them. I don't care about myself," she said.

(Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls; Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian issues, conflicts, land and property rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, gender equality, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)
FOREST RIVER -- A semi that collapsed a century-old bridge Thursday morning in Walsh County was overweight, according to law enforcement and local leaders.

But despite the rare occurrence, there still are concerns about how the county will maintain and repair aging infrastructure as funding from the state decreases, the countys lead road official said Monday.

Finding funds to pay for infrastructure projects is a huge problem in Walsh County, said Walsh County Highway Superintendent Sharon Lipsh. We need to come up with a plan. We have more than 500 bridges in the county. We simply cannot fix them all.

The bridge about 2 miles northeast of Forest River collapsed under the weight of a six-axle semi driven by Melvin Armbrust of Forest River, according to a news release from the North Dakota Highway Patrol. Armbrust was uninjured.

The semis weight far exceeded the limit of the bridge, said Sgt. Adam Dvorak.

Normally, an empty semi will weight about 30,000 pounds, he said of the truck, noting the semi was full of corn. Hes probably 80,000 pounds at least.

Dealing with a situation in which a bridge collapses under the weight of a vehicle is rare, Dvorak said. Most people heed the weight-limit signs, and even if they do go across, a bridge collapsing is unusual, he added.

The Walsh County bridge was marked, and the Highway Patrol is looking at state law to decide whether charges are warranted, Dvorak said.

It is a unique situation, he said. I cant even think back in my (15-year) career where I have gone to one.

Forest River is about 30 miles northwest of Grand Forks.

The bridge was built in 1911 and was made of wood planks and steel supports. Though it was designated structurally deficient, meaning it had one or more structural defects that needed attention, Lipsh said there was no concern of it failing.

According to Lipsh, the county has more than 500 bridges, 65 of which are structurally deficient and 15 that are functionally obsolete, meaning they are no longer by design functionally adequate for (their) tasks, according to definitions set by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Still, obsolete bridges may still be perfectly safe and structurally sound, according to the DOT.

The bridge was inspected in September 2016 and wasnt due for another inspection until next year, Lipsh said. It wasnt on a list for repairs or replacement, she added.

Like other counties in North Dakota, Walsh County needs millions of dollars of investments and maintenance over the next year, according to North Dakota State University researchers with the Upper Plains Transportation Institute.

According to a draft report, Walsh County needs almost $30 million to pay for maintenance and repairs to its infrastructure for the 2017-18 biennium. But the countys highway department budget this year is about $3.8 million, with about $1.6 million going toward road projects.

North Dakota counties have had to tighten their budgets after a drop in statewide tax revenue. The county could see less funding in the coming years because of state laws that require a reduction in mill levies in the coming years, Lipsh said.

How do you come up with that money? she asked.

Walsh County is working on a strategic plan with the goal of prioritizing road and bridge projects. It has closed 13 bridges and replaced 18 bridges with culverts in the past five years, Lipsh said. It also has opened nine new bridges in that time period, with three new bridges planned for next year, she said.

The collapse is a good reminder to watch for weight-limit signs and for drivers to be cognizant of their vehicles sizes, Dvorak said.

There is a reason for marking (the bridges) the way they do, he said. When something like this happens, usually it is a person from the area, and its just going to cost the people of that area money to repair it.
STOCKHOLM, Oct 24 (Reuters) - China has informed Sweden that it has freed a bookseller detained for publishing books on the personal lives of President Xi Jinping and other Communist Party leaders, the Swedish foreign office said on Tuesday.

Gui Minhai, a Chinese-born Swede, was abducted in Thailand while on holiday in 2015. He was among five Hong Kong booksellers who went missing in 2015 and later appeared in mainland Chinese custody. The four others have returned to Hong Kong. "We have been told by Chinese authorities that Gui Minhai has been released in China," foreign office spokeswoman Sofia Karlberg said, offering no further details.

Earlier this year Gui Minhai won a prize for free speech and press freedom awarded by Swedish media organisation Publicistklubben.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander; editing by Mark Heinrich)
STOCKHOLM/BEIJING, Oct 24 (Reuters) - A Swedish bookseller detained in China after publishing books on the personal lives of President Xi Jinping and other Communist Party leaders has been released, Chinese authorities said on Tuesday.

The whereabouts of Gui Minhai, a Chinese-born Swede, could not be confirmed, however, and he has yet to contact his family.

Gui was abducted in Thailand while on holiday in 2015, one of five Hong Kong booksellers who went missing that year and later appeared in mainland Chinese custody. The four others have returned to Hong Kong.

Chinese authorities say Gui was involved in a traffic accident in 2003, although that is questioned by his family.

"According to what we understand, because Gui Minhai has served his sentence for the crime of causing traffic accident casualties, he was released on Oct. 17," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in an e-mailed statement to Reuters.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry said it had been informed by its Chinese counterpart of Gui's release and that it was working to confirm the information.

However, Gui's family questioned if he really was free. His daughter said he had made no contact with her or any other relatives.

"Today it has been a week since October 17 and I still do not know where my father is," Angela Gui said in a statement. "I am deeply concerned for his wellbeing."

The report of Gui's release coincides with the end of China's 19th Communist Party congress which has further consolidated President Xi Jinping's power.

Lam Wing-kee, one of the other four booksellers, told Reuters he did not know Gui's whereabouts.

Lam said he feared the government of Xi would further erode the "one country, two systems" formula that is supposed to guarantee Hong Kong a large degree of autonomy under Chinese rule.

"He (Xi) will continue to tighten things (for Hong Kong). There will be no loosening," he said.

Earlier this year, Gui won a prize for free speech and press freedom awarded by Swedish media organisation Publicistklubben. (Reporting by Johan Ahlander, additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing and James Pomfret in Hong Kong, editing by Niklas Pollard and Ed Osmond)
LONDON, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Britain's markets watchdog said it has opened an investigation into the hacking of U.S. credit reporting agency Equifax, which affected nearly 700,000 UK citizens.

"The Financial Conduct Authority announces today that it is investigating the circumstances surrounding a cybersecurity incident that led to the loss of UK customer data held by Equifax Ltd on the servers of its U.S. parent," the watchdog said in a statement on Tuesday.

"This statement is made given the public interest in these matters."

The announcement follows a letter from Nicky Morgan, chair of the House of Commons' Treasury Committee to the watchdog, asking if Equifax had violated terms of its licence to operate in the country, and whether the regulator had the power to compel the company to provide compensation to UK consumers.

Equifax said it was already working closely with the FCA and other authorities.

"We welcome this opportunity to learn the lessons from this criminal cyber-attack in order for all businesses to better protect consumers in the future," the company said in a statement.

Equifax has said that 15.2 million records on British citizens were involved in the breach, including sensitive data on what it said were 693,665 individuals, for whom credit protection services were offered.

The UK data accessed by unknown hackers included credit accounts, user credentials, partial credit card details and driver licence numbers. The remaining 14.5 million records contained names and birth dates of UK consumers were "potentially compromised", the company disclosed.

Equifax first revealed in September it had been the target of a massive data breach which hit around 143 million people, mostly in the United States.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Rachel Armstrong and David Evans)
DUBLIN, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Irish student Ibrahim Halawa was greeted by cheering crowds at Dublin Airport on Tuesday as he arrived home following his acquittal last month in a four-year mass trial.

Halawa, who was born and raised in Dublin and is a son of the most senior Muslim cleric in Ireland, was 17 when he was arrested along with hundreds of others in 2013 as part of a crackdown on protests in Egypt.

"It still feels like a dream, it's a moment I've waited for for four years. I'm a free man. I'm hoping I can get my life back, get back to college and get my career," a smiling Halawa, draped in an Irish flag, told reporters upon his arrival home.

Halawa thanked the Irish people, the government and his family for working hard to secure his release. A member of the Irish government, which had lobbied for his return, was among the well-wishers.

Halawa and three of his sisters were charged along with nearly 500 others with crimes including breaking into a mosque, killing 44 people, and illegal possession of firearms in violence that followed the military's overthrow of Egypt's Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, in 2013.

The Halawas said they were on vacation visiting extended family in Egypt and joined a protest against the military's ouster of Mursi while they were there.

The defendants had all faced the death penalty and though none received it, hundreds were given hefty jail sentences. Halawa's sisters were released shortly after their arrests.

"This case has been one of the most complex, sensitive and difficult consular cases to which the Irish Government has ever responded. I and all of my colleagues are very pleased Ibrahim's ordeal is now at an end," Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said in a statement.

Halawa has said he was regularly tortured during his period in detention. The Egyptian authorities have repeatedly denied allegations of abuses from rights groups.

"They all claim that (torture) and we have often denied (it took place)," a senior Egyptian interior ministry source said.

"In the end, there is the prosecution and the court, they are decisive. Anyone who experiences assault in jail must report it to the prosecution or the court...and the prisons are all subjected to inspections." (Reporting by Padraic Halpin in Dublin and Patrick Markey in Cairo; Editing by Jon Boyle)
By Nellie Peyton

DAKAR, Oct 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The first lady of Sierra Leone says she is a "hands-on woman" with a sure-fire strategy to tackle child marriage - she visits elders across the land and urges them to wield influence and prolong the nation's childhood.

"I'm a hands-on woman," Sia Nyama Koroma told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "I go myself, leave my comfort zone, and travel the length and breadth of Sierra Leone with my team."

Koroma has spearheaded efforts to eradicate child marriage in the region - West and Central Africa have among the world's highest rates - and was the first to propose a meeting of African leaders to share best practices.

The landmark gathering is the first of its kind in the region, with political, community and religious leaders from 27 countries meeting in Senegal this week.

Persuading religious and traditional leaders to use their influence in rural areas has been the most successful strategy in Sierra Leone, where child marriage rates have steadily fallen in the last ten years, said Koroma.

"Child marriage is a gross violation of women's rights, and we cannot be complacent," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "Now is the time to act."

The first lady, who previously worked as a nurse and a chemist, said her tactic has been to meet personally with traditional chiefs and community elders - either in villages or at the presidential palace - and have them spread the word.

"They're very powerful. They're like presidents in the rural areas," said Koroma. "They act as change agents."

More than a third of girls in West and Central Africa marry under the age of 18, driven by poverty, insecurity and religious tradition. Though some of the countries prohibit child marriage, experts say the laws are rarely enforced.

Koroma said she went two routes to change minds, educating leaders about religious texts, specifically the fact that child marriage is not condoned in the Quran, and sharing data about the health risks of child-bearing for young girls.

Koroma said she encourages traditional chiefs to sign a memorandum of understanding when she visits their villages. The chiefs then make it known that parents will be fined if they try to marry off a child.

"When the chief says 'don't do this and don't do that', you will not do it," she said. "So that strategy has helped a lot."

The rate of child marriage in Sierra Leone fell from 48 percent of girls married under 18 in 2008 to 39 percent in 2013, according to British charity Save the Children, though the rate is higher in poor and rural areas.

World leaders have pledged to end child marriage by 2030 under United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, but at current rates it will take more than 100 years to end it in West and Central Africa, said the U.N. children's agency (UNICEF). (Reporting By Nellie Peyton; editing by Lyndsay Griffiths. Please credit Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit www.trust.org)
PARIS, Oct 24 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday it was not up to him to "lecture" Egypt on civil liberties, but told its visiting leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi that strengthening human rights was in its interest.

Sisi, denying accusations by human rights groups that he had allowed his forces to use torture, told a Paris news conference: "We do not practice torture and ... we must be wary of all the information published by rights organisations."

With both France and Egypt concerned by the political vacuum in Libya and the threat from jihadist groups in Egypt, the two countries have cultivated even closer economic and military ties during Sisi's rise to power.

But rights organisations have accused France under Macron of turning a blind eye to what they say are increasing violations of freedoms by Sisi's government as the 2018 presidential elections approach.

"I believe in the sovereignty of states, and therefore, just as I don't accept being lectured on how to govern my country, I don't lecture others," Macron said at a joint news conference with Sisi in Paris following talks.

"My deeply held conviction is that it's in President Sisi's interest to accompany the defense and consolidation of human rights by the Egyptian state, in the context that only he can be the judge of," the French president said.

During their 50-minute meeting, Macron brought up the issue of a dozen cases of alleged abuses of freedoms, in particular relating to Egyptian journalists and human rights activists, sources close to Macron said.

Sisi, replying to journalists' questions, said he was responsible for 100 million Egyptians who lived in turbulent times and alongside people who followed "extremist thought" and did not like to co-exist in peace.

"When it comes to human rights, we're not evading an answer but I hope that we understand it in its true context of a country in Egypt's situation. We are not in Europe, with its intellectual, cultural, civilization and human advancement. We're in a different region."

In a report in September, Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced "widespread and systematic" use of torture by Egyptian security forces. The United Nations on Oct. 13 condemned an anti-gay crackdown in Egypt.

It also slammed French "indulgence" towards repression in Egypt.

Rights' groups accuse France of abandoning principles in favour of economic and security interests.

They are particularly critical of the relationship between Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian who in his previous role as defence minister developed a personal relationship with Sisi.

French officials dismiss the criticism and say the new administration is following a policy of not openly criticising countries over human rights so as to be more effective in private and work on a case by case basis.

Reacting to a lack of progress in respecting human rights and on democratic standards, the United States decided in August to freeze the payment of $195 million in military aid to Egypt.

Under the previous government, France concluded several major military agreements with Egypt, including the sale of 24 Rafale combat aircraft, a multi-mission frigate and two Mistral warships in contracts worth some six billion euros.

France will discuss the possible sale of more Rafale aircrafts with Sisi, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said earlier on Tuesday. (Reporting by Marine Pennetier in Paris and; Nadine Awadalla in Cairo; Writing by Michel Rose; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
ISTANBUL, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Turkey's Justice Ministry said on Tuesday said it had cancelled a planned delegation visit to the United States due to the on-going visa crisis, denying local media reports that Washington had rejected to grant the delegation travel visas.

CNN Turk and other local media earlier reported that U.S. authorities had declined to grant visas to members of the delegation.

"Due to the recent visa crisis between the two countries, the visit was cancelled by our Ministry," the Justice Ministry said in a statement, adding that there were no visa applications to be rejected. (Reporting by Ercan Gurses and Dirimcan Barut; Writing by David Dolan, editing by Larry King)
MAPUTO, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Mozambique has fired its head of intelligence and army chief of staff, two weeks after 16 people were killed in attacks in the north of the country, the presidency said on Tuesday.

Lagos Lidimo was dismissed as director general of information and state security service; he will be replaced by Julio Jane, previously the commander of police, Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi said in a statement. Graca Chongo has been dismissed as army chief, with no replacement named.

The presidency did not provide reasons for the dismissals, which were effective immediately.

Earlier this month, police and unidentified gunmen clashed in the Indian Ocean port of Mocimboa da Praia, leaving 16 people dead, two of them police officers.

The motive for the attacks was not clear. Local media have reported that the attack was carried out by Islamists, but the government has not confirmed that. (Reporting by Manuel Mucari; Writing by Tanisha Heiberg; Editing by Larry King)
BEIJING, Oct 25 (Reuters) - China's ruling Communist Party reveals its new leadership line-up on Wednesday when President Xi Jinping introduces his Politburo Standing Committee, culminating a week-long party congress.

A key measure of Xi's rising influence leading the world's second-largest economy will be how many of his allies are installed on the Standing Committee, the apex of power, which is currently made up of seven people, all men, and headed by Xi, who is also party and military chief.

Five members are expected to retire due to an unwritten rule limiting new five-year terms to those under 68.

One of the five, a close Xi ally, the anti-corruption chief Wang Qishan, 69, was left off the new Central Committee, which elects the Standing Committee, but he could get another job a few months down the line, sources have said.

The new line-up will be announced around midday at the first plenum of the congress. The congress itself formally ended on Tuesday, with Xi having his political theory written into the party's constitution, putting him in the same company as the founder of modern China, Mao Zedong.

Who gets on the new Standing Committee remains a closely guarded secret until Xi leads them out before the media in a room inside central Beijing's Great Hall of the People, where all top party events take place.

Names in contention include vice-premier Wang Yang, Xi advisers Li Zhanshu and Wang Huning, Shanghai party chief Han Zheng, Guangdong province party boss Hu Chunhua and Zhao Leji, who runs the powerful organisation department that oversees personnel decisions such as promotions and demotions.

Other contenders include Chen Miner, who heads the party in the southwestern city of Chongqing; Beijing party boss Cai Qi; and Jiangsu province party boss Li Qiang, all of whom are close to Xi. Chen and Cai have enjoyed meteoric rises up the party ranks.

Premier Li Keqiang is the only other member of the current Standing Committee apart from Xi who will remain, unless he is unexpectedly left off, which seems unlikely.

Previous party congresses have anointed successors for the roles of party head and premier, with Xi and Li both vaulting on to the Standing Committee in 2007 before they were then further promoted to their current roles in 2012.

Speculation has swirled in Beijing this week that Xi may break with precedent and not appoint an obvious successor, who would have to be young enough to serve three consecutive terms in the Standing Committee. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Benjamin Kang Lim; Editing by Nick Macfie)
NIAMEY, Oct 24 (Reuters) - A group of four West African presidents said on Tuesday they planned steps to accelerate the creation of a shared currency for the 15-country ECOWAS bloc by 2020, according to a joint statement.

The future currency, whose name is yet to be determined, would replace the dominant CFA Franc introduced by former colonial power France in 1945 and whose treasury still backs it.

"Our region needs this unifying instrument, symbol of our shared destiny, to consolidate our customs union," ECOWAS chairman and Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe said on Twitter.

The statement was from the presidents of Togo, Ghana, Niger and Ivory Coast who form part of a task force on the envisaged currency. A committee is planned to lead the efforts, it said.

But the president of the biggest economy in the region, Nigeria, urged caution, citing difficulties in the euro zone.

"Nigeria will caution against any position that pushes for a fast-track approach to monetary union, while neglecting fundamentals and other pertinent issues," said Muhamadu Buhari.

West African leaders have for decades held meetings on creating their own currency in order to promote regional trade and investment, but little progress has been made.

Popular anger over the CFA franc, which stands for African Financial Cooperation in French and is seen by many in the region as a symbol of unwelcome French paternalism, dates back to at least 1994 when Paris suddenly devalued the currency.

Establishing a new currency would involve dissolving the Dakar-based West African Central Bank BCEAO for the eight countries within the zone that use it and creating another one.

The remaining seven countries in the ECOWAS bloc include English-speaking countries like Gambia and Sierra Leone as well as Portuguese-speaking Guinea Bissau. Each has its own currency. ($1 = 553.0000 CFA francs) (Reporting by Boureima Balima; Additional reporting by Alexis Akwagyiram; Writing by Emma Farge and Peter Cooney)
BELCOURT  The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians Tribal Council voted to remove its chairman for alleged misconduct Monday.

The vote was unanimous, with seven of the councils nine members present for the meeting, according to a copy of the resolution posted on a tribal government Facebook page. Wayne Keplin, the ousted chairman, was not present.

Keplins ouster is effective immediately. Council Vice Chairman Roman Marcellais has been the acting chairman amid the leadership turmoil.

The council heard evidence of six charges of misconduct against Keplin, according to the resolution. In a news release posted later Monday, the tribe said he violated federal codes prohibiting managing construction contracts in which he has a personal interest, among other claims.

The tribe had previously accused him of misusing funds, breaking into tribal headquarters and attempting to form his own government. A tribal judge last week issued a temporary restraining order that the tribe said clarifies his attempted removal of the tribal council through an executive order has no effect.

"Well, if you want to talk about me and my misuse of authority, they need to look at themselves, Keplin said last week.

The tribe has said Keplin tried to walk back his resignation, but he said last week he was still the chairman. Keplin was arrested for assault last week, but he denied assaulting anybody.
Auckland Council's finance and performance committee meeting on Tuesday had approved a correction of $549,000 to the previous $1.6 million needed to move Sri Lankan elephant Nandi to Auckland, New Zealand media reported.

In May 2011, Auckland Council approved $3.2m to transport two gifted elephants from Sri Lanka to New Zealand.

Anjalee joined veteran elephant Burma at Auckland Zoo in 2015.

A hearing about whether the second elephant, Nandi can be moved to New Zealand is underway after campaigners in Sri Lanka petitioned the Sri Lankan Court of Appeal.

At the committee meeting, Auckland Zoo deputy director Kevin Burley said the court case in Sri Lanka was not about Nandi specifically, but rather the gifting of elephants as a whole.

Anjalee had thrived under the zoo's care and he thought Nandi would thrive also, Burley said.

Councillors Cathy Casey, Efeso Collins, Mike Lee, Wayne Walker and John Watson voted against the decision.

"It's a lot of money to transport an exotic, endangered animal from one part of the world to this part of the world. Two elephants are enough," Casey said.

$1.6m could go a long way for community groups and the council's homelessness programme, she said.

Collins said he was voting against the correction because $549,000 could be used to double council's commitment to homelessness.

Regional facilities Auckland board external relations director Paul Brewer said it was delighted at the correction of $549,000. "There was good robust debate," Brewer said.

If the court in Sri Lanka ruled in its favour, getting Nandi to New Zealand would be quickly underway, he said.

A spokeswoman for Auckland Zoo said it was confident it could give Nandi an excellent home and life but her arrival was ultimately up to the Sri Lankan courts.

"If we subsequently hear definitively that she will have to stay at Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, then we will then explore what other options are for our elephant programme," the spokeswoman said.

SAFE campaign director Mandy Carter said Nandi had established her own family at the orphanage and an "artificial group" at Auckland Zoo could cause issues.

Residents commented on community website Neighbourly about Auckland Council spending $1.6m on an elephant.

Remuera resident Zoe Spinks said having another elephant at the zoo would attract more visitors.

"I see this as an investment to bring more interest and funding toward conservation, including our own native species," Spinks said.

Grey Lynn resident Jo Ryan said she wondered what Auckland Council's perspective was on spending money on an elephant rather than safe and affordable housing.

"$1.6m could change the lives of many of those who are homeless," Ryan said. (Stuff NZ)
All sects of Buddhism including the Asgiriya and the Malwathu chapters were objecting to introduce a new constitution to Sri Lanka, Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa said yesterday.

He expressed these views when he visited to pay last homage to Mahanayaka of Ramannaa chapter Ven. Nagoda Amarawansa Thero.

Even when the clergy had announced that there is no need of a new constitution, the government pays no attention on them and continues with the way they wanted and added a journey without the blessing of Mahanayaka theros would have no success, he said.

He further said the Archbishop of Colombo had also cautioned the government when introducing a new constitution. (Sheain Fernandopulle)

Video by Sanjeewa
Digital transformation consultancy Innovation Quotient (IQ) recently announced its partnership with Ydigital Asia  a collaboration that leverages learnings from the worlds fourth largest consumer market, Indonesia, to augment IQs mission to support Sri Lanka through the digital age.

The two companies also announced the launch of Digital Tomorrow, a Digital Centre of Excellence that will leverage learnings from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia via the body of work carried out by Ydigital in these markets.

IQ has spent the last two years building up to an imminent digital shift and believes Sri Lanka will undergo a rapid digital transformation in 2018/2019. Theres no point in flipping the digital switch when its upon us, you need to prepare for it early on, is what IQ founder Ahmed Irfan says, adding that While many tech and innovation companies dont believe Sri Lanka to be a lucrative market, the potential is mostly hidden and its a great test market to implement true digital transformation initiatives, we should not be guilty of not trying!

Armed with fresh talent and this new partnership IQ and Ydigital aim to bridge the gap between strategy, creativity and technology. They recognize the potency of digital transformation and its inevitability, offering expertise to firms that believe in staying ahead of the curve.

The new collaboration with Ydigital will further enhance IQs existing capacity to service complex business needs with creative solutions and futuristic strategy. Ydigital is a hybrid management consulting and digital agency, headquartered in Jakarta with offices in Singapore and Malaysia. Sri Lanka is on the cusp of a digital transformation that has already begun in our part of the region, says Boye Hartmann, Group CEO, YGroup Asia. Its exciting to be positioned at its nerve center with IQ.

Commenting on the new collaboration IQs CEO Irfan Ahmed says, There's nothing like picking up tips and strategies from higher up the learning curve. Working with Ydigital will give us access to a myriad of proven case studies and a diverse pool of talent we can use to accelerate digital transformation in Sri Lanka.

Today IQ services the needs of clients from diverse fields. For example, it worked with Sri Lankan clothing label Reborn (now RBN) to completely revamp the companys business model from yarn to store. IQ also worked with GSMA, the global trade body of mobile network operators that wanted to conduct User Experience (UX) research in Sri Lankas agriculture sector. IQ is the only firm in Sri Lanka that possessed the unique capabilities required for this project with strong UX capabilities and a team skilled at combining this with creative human insight. IQ completed this social innovation successfully after visiting over 50 farming communities in three provinces of the country.

The team is currently poised at the beginning of its journey with the Digital Tomorrow centre, which will function as a Centre of Excellence for local enterprises. This IQ-Ydigital partnership initiative will offer expertise in digital customer journeys, user experience design, value proposition design, performance marketing, analytics, technology strategy and business model design.

For more information visit iq.lk or http://www.ydigital.asia/.
The Indian national Harpot Koar, the wife of Provincial Councilor Randeer Rodrigo, who was arrested by the police in connection with the shootout in Divulapitiya, has been remanded till October 31 by the Wattala Magistrates Court today.

The Wattala police arrested the suspect woman after they recovered over 100 ammunition from the Provincial Councilors house.

One victim, identified as 35-year-old Kushan Thakshila Kure was shot dead in the shooting.

Seven suspects including Provincial Councilor Rodrigo were arrested over the shootout with Special Task Force personnel on Monday at Henegedara in Divulapitiya.

The suspects were arrested by the STF along with two pistols, a hand grenade and a plastic pistol.

The Police searched the Councilors house and recovered the ammunition hidden in his house.

The Colombo Organised Crimes Unit is conducting further investigations.
Rehabilitated LTTE supporters in Kilinochchi reveal how they are still struggling to establish a livelihood

Eight years after the 30-year ethnic conflict, Sri Lanka is now treading a path to reconciliation. While various attempts have been made to establish physical offices to serve justice to those affected, they still seem to be in limbo. Rehabilitation programmes took centre stage when the war concluded, but to what extent they have been successful still remains a question. Upon completion of their rehabilitation courses, ex-LTTE supporters have been released back into society to start a life on their own. But the support extended by the Government is rather questionable once again. Although reconciliation cant be achieved overnight, eight years would have been sufficient enough to change their lives for the better.

While on a recent visit to Kilinochchi, the learned that many of the rehabilitated LTTE supporters in Kilionchchi are still unemployed. With the assistance of Corporal Chandraratne and Sergeant Girihagama, two officers serving the Sri Lanka Air Force, the walked into some of the houses where these rehabilitated people dwell to speak to them.

People still dont like to speak with us

- Sathgunasingham Dayabaran

Sathgunasingham Dayabaran, a father of five, resides in Kilinochchi. He has been a strong supporter of the cause who later surrendered to the Army. We had many workshops and were given extensive training in various aspects. I was in a rehabilitation camp for one year and returned home earlier this year. Now I undertake contracts to do road construction work. I earn a healthy income as well. But still theres a stigma in society and people still dont like to speak to us. I hope their mentality will change as we move on,said Dayabaran.

I was in a rehabilitation camp for one year and returned home earlier this year. Now I undertake contracts to do road construction

It took a long time for us to return to normalcy

-Nadarajah Vijayakumar

After meeting Dayabaran, we then met another ex-cadre, Nadarajah Vijayakumar. He is a father of four and works as a three-wheeler driver. I supported the LTTE in the front defence line for three years and after the war I was at the Boossa rehabilitation camp. There we had various skills development programmes and I learned to do masonry and other work. When the programme concluded we were presented with certificates. But as a mason I cant earn a lot of money to feed my family and thereafter I bought a three-wheeler. Sadly theres a heavy stigma revolving around our lives. But people are slowly getting used to our presence in society. It took a long time for us to return to normalcy. We still face issues when obtaining bank loans because banks have come up with a policy to refrain from issuing loans to ex-LTTE supporters. Therefore we would like to request the Rehabilitation Authority to look into our matters. Now that the war has concluded, all of us should now enjoy and retain the peace and everybody should contribute towards it.

There we had various skills development programmes and I learned to do masonry and other work

Many ex-supporters who are unemployed

-Singalavel Satheeskumar

The LTTE forcibly took me away, recalled Singalavel Satheeskumar. I worked in the medical section because I have done a MBBS course. I learned medicine and worked in Government offices as well. During the war I had to take care of casualties and treat them. There werent many qualified people in the cause and because of that they took me in. I surrendered in 2009 and was sent to the Welikanda Rehabilitation Camp. We were provided with training according to our capabilities and therefore I received training in IT. I was released in 2011 and joined the Civil Security Division and also worked at the National Transport Medicine Authority. The Government provided coconut plants to rehabilitated supporters and also provided them with job opportunities. But today there are many ex-supporters who are unemployed.Those who havent had any education dont have professional qualifications. These people ask for Government jobs and they end up with none since qualifications come first,he said.

I surrendered in 2009 and was sent to the Welikanda Rehabilitation Camp

I still dont have a permanent job

-K. Dayabaran

The Dailymirror also spoke to K. Dayabaran whos a father of three. The Army took me away because they suspected that I was a LTTE supporter. I was then taken to Boossa and spent one year at the rehabilitation camp there. We were provided with some training, but I ended up doing coolie work. I still dont have a permanent job and because of that I dont have a proper income. My younger daughter cant talk and her medicine is quite expensive. I sometimes have to take her to Colombo and that too is a challenge for me. Therefore its difficult to raise a family by earning Rs. 1000-2000 per day. I in fact need at least Rs. 30,000 a month, but that is still a dream. I would like to work somewhere and earn more, but sadly there are limited opportunities, he said.

its difficult to raise a family by earning Rs. 1000-2000 per day

Programmes are needed to relink them with society

- R. Sampanthan

Speaking to the Dailymirror, Opposition Leader R. Sampanthan said that no constructive steps have been taken to provide these persons with employment. I dont think the issue of their future has been addressed. There should be programmes to relink them with society, both for their own benefit and in order to stabilise the society. Therefore, as far as Im concerned, a serious programme has to be implemented,said Sampanthan.

I dont think the issue of their future has been addressed

Many programmes have been implemented thus far

- Ministry of Prison Reforms, Rehabilitation, Resettlement and Hindu Religious Affairs

The Dailymirror also spoke to the Ministry of Prison Reforms, Rehabilitation, Resettlement and Hindu Religious Affairs to inquire about the programmes that have been conducted so far. Speaking to us, Media Secretary Dumidu Bandara confirmed that many projects had been conducted in order to uplift their livelihoods. We have provided over 125 families with a sum of Rs. one lakh to start their businesses and to be used for other expenses. For instance, goats and other machines were provided as encouragement so that they can start their own businesses. In 2016, 11253 houses were provided to people in the North Eastern province. In addition to that we have constructed 41 pre-schools, 29 schools, 23 hospitals/ healthcare centres and provided electricity to over 100 homes and water facilities to over 3000 houses,said Bandara.



Speaking further Bandara said that they have to ensure the transparency during these transactions. While some of these projects are directly conducted by the Ministry, the Divisional Secretariat is involved with others. We also have to make sure that they have been actually affected by the war. They cant say that nothing has been done because the Ministry has implemented a system and is also planning many projects for the well-being of these people, added Bandara.

We have provided over 125 families with a sum of Rs. one lakh to start their businesses and to be used for other expenses



Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is common with those who have served in the battle field. Its a disorder that develops in people who have experienced a shocking, scary or dangerous event.

Symptoms could either be acute or chronic. The stigma that revolves around the war has dimmed the hopes of these people when it comes to linking with society. As mentioned by some of the ex-supporters, they still experience difficulties in communicating with the rest of the people in their town.

Best approach is to join groups and try to link with the society

- Dr. Mahesh Rajasuriya

The Dailymirror also spoke to Consultant Psychiatrist Dr. Mahesh Rajasuriya who said that reintegration depends on the harmony between ex-LTTE cadres and the community. They need to return to their villages and connect with their relations and neighbours. The community should think that they are remnants of the war and its useless to take them seriously. Someone has to study the psyche of the community and why they dont want to accept them back. In this situation, reintegration will be entirely different. Therefore as a society we have to study how the Tamil community in Kilinochchi view this problem. The best approach is to join groups and try to link with the society. If they stay at home theyll never be able to connect with the community and we also have to do research on how they look at us,said Dr. Rajasuriya.
The GMOA today accused the Finance Ministry of attempting to reduce the tax on liquor through the 2018 budget and said this would encourage the liquor use.

It said despite the national policy of the country which is to prevent the easy access to liquor, the Finance Ministry was attempting reduce tax with the intention of promoting the tourism sector. GMOA spokesman Samantha Ananda said the Finance Ministrys move would destroy the values of the country as it would encourage alcoholism.

It is attempting to create butterflies through rainbow economic goals. Having sold the countrys resources, the government now trying to sell its culture, he said.

Dr. Ananda said the move was a violation of World Health Organisation (WHO) standards and it had strongly suggested that higher tax should be imposed. The GMOA demanded a complete ban of alcohol.

Meanwhile, GMOA Secretary Haritha Aluthge said the GMOA was informed of an attempt to open liquor outlets countrywide at SATHOSA outlets. He said if it was done it would influence liquor consumption. Dr. Aluthge said liquor and tobacco were not essential to the tourism industry and tourists could visit the country to view its landscape and nature.

Tourists dont visit the country because of liquor and tobacco. If the Finance ministry is saying liquor and tobacco is a must to survival of the industry we should not let those drunken tourists enter our country with a great culture, he said. (Thilanka Kanakarathna)
The country will get stuck in a federal system if the new Constitution is implemented, Bellanwila Rajamaha Vihara Chief Incumbent the Ven. Prof. Bellanwila Wimalarathana Thera told a news briefing today.

He said the Government could surreptitiously enact the new Constitution which would harm the entire country.

The attempts to reveal the true nature of the situation that would prevail if the new Constitution was passed, are not indications of attempting to go against the Government, the prelate said. It is an attempt to educate the public. Some elements say the Maha Sangha are creating a fear psychosis among the people to fulfil the aspirations of a third party, which is not true.

The prelate said if the new Constitution was implemented the Provincial Councils would have the authority to take their own decisions, including changing the Poya holidays based on the majority population.

A Provincial Council may even change the national policy according to its needs, he said and added that a close examination of the new constitutional proposals clearly revealed that some proposals were helpful for future peaceful co-existence of all citizens, but the rest were directly supportive of separatist objectives.

The proposals include the diluting of the powers of Parliament, taking away the powers vested in the Executive President to monitor the Provincial Councils through the Governors appointed by the President, to establish a constitutional court that will usurp the existing powers of the Supreme Court to make rulings on the constitutionality of legislation pertaining to key areas such as land matters, to recognise the Northern and Eastern Provinces as one unit through the Constitution itself, eliminate the powers vested with the Central Government to intervene in any provincial issues that have national implications by removing the concurrent list and remove the prevailing provisions for the Government or the Parliament to frame national policies on any subject, the Thera said.

He said the alternate proposals contained in the main document hide the real intention with regard to certain key proposals by the use of words that gave different and conflicting meanings in the three versions of Sinhala, Tamil, and English.

The proposals do not use the term federal directly, it is subtly introduced by the use of words that have different meanings in the three languages. Similarly, the foremost status accorded to Buddhism has been diluted by the introduction of alternative amendments to Article 9 of the Constitution, which have surprised and grieved us immensely. The Maha Sangha are of the view that a new Constitution is not the need of the hour. We stress that even any amendment to the Constitution at this point should be restricted only to those pertaining to bring in amendments to the electoral system. We earnestly request President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and the Government to stop all attempts at introducing a new Constitution, the prelate said. "We urge members of the Maha Sangha and all religious leaders of other faiths to come forward without further delay to educate the public and their elected representatives regarding this national crisis situation that is developing, so that all patriotic forces will unite and join hands to reject the proposals for a new constitution that is uncalled for at this juncture. (Chaturanga Pradeep)
Turn the searchlight inwards.

The Buddha

The main enemy is at home!

Karl Liebknecht

Who is the inspirer and driver of the new Constitution project? It certainly wasnt the foreign devil--those wicked ole western imperialists. Theyve backed the project, but it wasnt theirs. It was peddled to them by those sought to entrench their patronage.



In his Sept 2015 speech to the UNHRC while presenting the report of the OISL investigation into Sri Lanka, Zeid al Hussein makes no reference to a new Constitution. In his official statement at the end of his Feb 2016 visit to Sri Lanka, the sole reference to anything of a Constitutional character was not to a new Constitution and was limited to the phrase While there is much support for the very important proposed Constitutional reform



In his March 2016 address to the UNHRC, Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid al Husseins only reference to the Sri Lankas Constitution was There are important lessons in this respect for Sri LankaImportant steps have been taken to reform the Constitution



The sole reference to a new Constitution by Zeid al Hussein is in his June 2016 statement to the UNHRC session: In March, Parliament adopted a resolution establishing a constitutional assembly to develop a new constitution to go to referendum in 2017.



This is repeated in his Oral Update to the Council in July 2016: The process of constitutional reform had achieved significant momentum with the adoption of a resolution by the Parliament establishing a constitutional assembly to develop a new constitution to go to a referendum in 2017.

Both references are observations he reports to the UNHRC on a Sri Lankan Government driven process rather than a recommendation by his Office or the 2015 UN Human Rights Council resolution.



Most crucially and conclusively, the UNHRC Resolution of 2015 with its poison arrows on accountability, which the Sri Lankan government was treacherous enough to co-sponsor, there isno reference whatsoever to a new Constitution! In fact, by contrast to its destabilizing and arrogant adventurism on accountability, it is quite moderate on political and constitutional mattersfar more so than the Interim Report presented by the PM! There is a line in the Preamble (Pp20) of the 2015 UNHRC resolution which reads Welcoming the Government of Sri Lankas commitments to the devolution of political authority,and in the all-important Operative paragraphs, the only one pertaining to the Constitution (Op 6)refers to constitutional measures rather than a newConstitution, and its only specific stipulation refers to an article of the existing Constitution of Sri Lankain accordance with which it encourages the government to take measures. The Operative paragraph reads as follows:

Welcomes the governments commitment to a political settlement by taking the necessary constitutional measures and encourages the Government of Sri Lankas efforts to fulfill its commitments on the devolution of political authority, which is integral to reconciliation and the full enjoyment of human rights by all members of its population; and encourages the Government of Sri Lanka to ensure that all Provincial Councils are able to operate effectively, in accordance with the 13th amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka. This formula is carried over from the adversarial UNHRC resolutions of 2012, 2013 and 2014, and its relatively restrained nature, limited to the 13th amendment, is almost certainly attributable to the input of India which did not permit it to go dangerously further. The five hostile resolutions of 2012-2017 did not go beyond the 13th amendment, and did not recommend a new Constitution.



Interestingly the official US reference to a new Constitution dates back to a joint statement with Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera in Feb 2016 and extends support to something that the Sri Lankan government says it is doing: The United States expressed support for the Governments plans for constitutional and legislative reform including public consultations on a new Constitution

The next reference which is in similar vein, is in a statement issued in August 2017 by the US Embassy in Colombo when a two-person Congressional delegation met Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, Speaker Jayasuriya and TNA leaders Sampanthan and Sumanthiran: They stressed in their official meetings the full support of the United States for the Government of Sri Lankas efforts to expedite a new Constitution None of this constitutes a smoking gun.

Significantly, US Assistant Secretary of State Alice Wells, in remarks on Sri Lanka in a far weightier written statement to the House Foreign Relations Committee in Sept 2017,makes no reference to a new Constitution, still less one that deletes the unitary definition and/or proposes federalism, saying Specific steps include constitutional reform devolving more administrative power from the central government to Sri Lankas regions As the language of the 2015 UNHRC Resolution she refers to shows, the constitutional reform devolving more administrative power from the central government to Sri Lankas regions pertains to the effective operationalizing of the 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution.



So we are looking in the wrong direction--outwards-- when far more conclusive evidence is available elsewhere. Whose idea was the new Constitution from the very beginning? The evidence shows that the mother of the new, non-unitary, covertly federalizingConstitution project is Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. This was what two publications with a largely Tamil readership, the Uthayan and the respected Tamil Times (London) carried in 1994, quoting Wasantharajah, soon to be President Chandrikas appointee as Chairman Rupavahini:



Chandrika replied as follows: Yes, we are prepared for that. Tell them that. We will speak to them once we come to power. The present provincial council system is uselessThe word federal has been abused in the past. Therefore we will avoid that word and implement devolution in a meaningful manner. The country can be divided into five units of devolution, and wide powers can be granted to them. It will be possible to find a solution to the ethnic problem by bringing the North and the Tamil areas of the East under one unit and giving it the necessary powers.  (Tamil Times, London, 15 July 1994, Negotiating Peace in Sri Lanka ed. Dr. Kumar Rupesinghe, International Alert, London 1998, p 235)



The same toxic, corrosive stuff was in her Package of 1995 and 1997 and is in the current Interim Report prepared primarily by Jayampathy Wickremaratne and presented by the PM. Riding on the back of a popular vote of over 60%, President Kumaratunga could not push through her new Constitution in 1995, 1997, 2000 or at any time during her first term, not to speak of her two terms in office. Yet her conspicuously stellar intellect (reinforced by the no less conspicuously stellar intellects of her crew) tell her that what she couldnt do under such favourable circumstances, she can get done now. This is dangerously irrational adventurism. Why should the President and the SLFPrisk a nationwide referendum at which a protest vote could cause a landslide? The Government should prudently go for the low hanging fruit. The language of the UNHRC resolution reads: to ensure that all Provincial Councils are able to operate effectively, in accordance with the 13th amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka. This would address the issue of devolution of political authorityand comply with the only one of the UNHRC 2015 Resolutions recommendations which can be implemented with no harm to the state, low political risk and minimal drama, because it does not exceed what President Rajapaksa promised when in office.



PresidentSirisena should chair an all-parties conclaveon the sidelines of the Constitutional Assembly and construct a broad consensus on constitutional measureswhich ensure that all Provincial Councils operate effectively in accordance with the existing 13A of the present Constitution. No less, no more.
OPPO Mobileis all set to launch its newest Selfie Expert in Sri Lanka once again. OPPOs latest offering will not only be the brands first full-screen model in Sri Lanka, but will also come equipped with an industry first Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology for capturing perfect selfies in Sri Lanka, that further strengthens OPPOs position as the Selfie Expert and Leader. The device has been designed to meet the current demands of its ever-increasing young fans in Sri Lanka.





AI beauty recognition technology: Capturing the Real You





For the first time, the Artificial Intelligence technology has been integrated into selfies (front camera) by a phone brand in Sri Lanka. The Selfie Expert will feature the groundbreaking AI Beauty technology which uses artificial intelligence from a massive global photo database, to beautify a selfie shot.

OPPOs first Full-Screen Device





The device will also feature OPPOs first full-screen FHD+display model, providing a vivid, visual enjoyment without increasing the size of the phone.The high-resolution screen offers a more immersive experience to consumers.

The new Selfie Expert will have an updated operating system to ensurea smoother experience than previous models. The phone is expected to launch in Sri Lanka on early November 2017.
OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- Scott Lemon of Ocean Springs will be honored Nov. 9 as the recipient of the 2017 John R. Blossman Humanitarian Award.

Given annually by the Mississippi Gulf Coast YMCA, the Blossman award recognizes individuals for their selfless dedication to the local community. The late John Blossman was an early benefactor of the YMCA and was involved in numerous charitable and community causes.

Lemon, a native of Ocean Springs and 1982 graduate of Ocean Springs High School, went on to earn a bachelor's degree from Mississippi State University. From there, he began his professional life in textile manufacturing, but quickly felt the pull of family and returned to Ocean Springs to step into the shoes of his father, Brad, and run the family business founded by his grandfather, J.K.

Over the roughly three decades since, Lemon has become involved in community organizations and activities across the coast, including the YMCA, St. Paul's United Methodist Church, Young Life, the Women's Resource Center and the Home of Grace, among others.

Lemon and his wife of 29 years, Barbara, are the parents of three daughters and will soon welcome their second and third grandchildren.

Lemon will receive the award at the annual banquet, hosted in the Magnolia inside Beau Rivage Casino & Resort in Biloxi. The Nov. 9 event begins with a cocktail reception at 5:30 p.m., with dinner and the program set for 6:30 p.m.

Tickets for the event are $100 each and can be obtained through the YMCA by calling 228-875-5050. Sponsorships are also available ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. Call the YMCA or email Joey Conwill at jconwill@mgcymca.org for more information.

Proceeds from the banquet support the YMCA's "Strong Kids" campaign.
Medical experts highlight the imminent danger of using cosmetics that contain Mercury

Mercury Fact File

Mercury is a naturally occurring element that is found in air, water and soil.

Exposure to mercury, even small amounts may cause serious health problems, and is a threat to the development of the child in womb and early in life.

Mercury may have toxic effects on the nervous, digestive and immune systems, and on lungs, kidneys, skin and eyes.

Mercury is considered by World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the top ten chemicals or groups of chemicals of major public health concern.

Mercury exists in various forms; elemental (or metallic) and inorganic.

Various cosmetic products are available in abundance in the market, but proper standards arent being maintained. Its reported that some imported and non-regulated cosmetics are in the market and they contain Mercury, where the quantities used surpass the permitted limit. When scrutinizing these products neither the importer nor distributor is mentioned. Therefore, we have to be extra cautious when using cosmetics.



Consultant Gynaecological Oncologist at the Maharagama National Cancer Institute, Dr. Sarada Kannangara told Daily Mirror that cosmetics, which contain dangerous substances, had captured the local market, during the past two years, due to the lack of pertinent laws that regulate such products.

Dr. Kannangara said that clause 27 of the 1990 Medicine Act had been annulled in 2015 and a new Act was introduced, but it doesnt contain sufficient provisions to regulate the import of cosmetics, leaving room for the import of low quality products.



A wide range of low quality cosmetics is available under various brands. Several deaths have been reported as a result of allergic reactions to these products, Dr. Kannangara affirmed.



He further said that most cosmetics contained mercury above the recommended limit to produce instant results. Dr. Kannangara added that these products often contributed to health hazards such as skin cancer.

A wide range of low quality cosmetics is available under various brands. Several deaths have been reported as a result of allergic reactions to these products, Mercury in cosmetic products cant exceed 1 mole per kg. But, we have noticed that cosmetic manufacturers have exceeded these specifications, hence their users face severe consequences



Mercury in cosmetic products cant exceed 1 mole per kg. But, we have noticed that cosmetic manufacturers have exceeded these specifications, hence their users face severe consequences, he added.

Consultant Gynaecological Oncologist Dr. Sarada Kannangara



The consequences of applying these toxic cosmetics are as follows,

Numbness or pain in certain parts of the skin

Uncontrollable shaking or tremor

Inability to walk well

Blindness and double vision

Memory problems

Seizures and death (with large exposures)

Irritability and shyness

The above mentioned repercussions are the most common symptoms when using products made without adhering to safety regulations. We also get to hear of cosmetic users having being subject to hidden fatal infections and allergies, which are incurable.



The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), warns customers not to use products if the ingredients or the label arent displayed on the products.



As Federal Law requires that ingredients be listed on the label of any cosmetic or non-prescription drug, dont use products that dont have a label. In addition, dont use drugs or cosmetics labelled in languages other than English unless English labelling is also provided. Thats also a sign that the product may be marketed illegally, the official site of the FDA states.



A prominent question raised is how a customer can know whether mercury has been used in a cosmetic product, especially in one that is marketed under the category anti-aging or skin lightening? Check the label. If the words mercurous chloride, calomel, mercuric, mercurio, or mercury are mentioned on the label, it means mercury has been included. A customer is advised to stop using such products immediately.



The products are usually marketed as skin lighteners, ones that promote anti-aging and those that remove age spots, freckles, blemishes and wrinkles. Adolescents often use these products for acne treatment. Just because a product claims to be natural it doesnt necessarily ensure safety as well. And also just because a product claims to be natural it doesnt rule out the possibility of hidden drugs being used.



Furthermore, these products may also be contaminated or may include potentially harmful chemicals or drugs, not listed on the label. For example many products that promise to help people slim contain hidden and dangerous drugs (Issued only under prescriptions) such as sibutramine.



Jason Humbert from FDAs Office of Regulatory Affairs says these products are usually manufactured abroad and sold illegally in the USA, often in shops catering to the Latino, Asian, African, or Middle Eastern communities. They are promoted online on social media sites and sold through mobile apps. Consumers may have purchased them from another country and brought them back to their respective countries.



It is vital to inform your health care professional what supplements you are taking, because supplements may interact in a harmful way with prescribed medications or prevent a prescribed drug from working.



During the past few years, FDA and state health officials have discovered numerous products that contain mercury. There have been cases where people exposed to such products have had mercury poisoning or elevated levels of mercury in their bodies.



Its important to use products that will help your skin and not damage it. People should avoid using skin creams, beauty antiseptic soaps and lotions that contain mercury irrespective of the temporary results they produce.
Sri Lankans were not known to be a cruel, yet instances of outright wickedness are now rearing their ugly heads. We are shocked by the stories of little servant girls being abused and viciously punished for minor infractions by Sri Lankan housewives.



I remember a 10-year -old village child in the house of a teacher ( I think ) who was beaten unmercifully for eating a piece of cheese. The subsequent wounds sustained by her were bad enough to have her teacher-mistress hauled before a judge. [I do not remember if she was given a sentence or just warned.]



Using children as servants is against the law and yet it is being broken with impunity. Children have had a difficult time when they were used as servants because they were commonly placed in middle-class homes where they were the only house help and consequently thoroughly overworked.

My concern today is cruelty in schools where narrow-minded and poorly educated principals (and teachers) have the audacity to throw students out of schools on imaginary violations of ethical behaviour. Principals and teachers seem to be venting their frustrations on children in their school.

When I speak of being poorly educated I do not mean the lacking of a basic degree; but a basic degree is hardly adequate for school principals. Have they been schooled further in the art of handling children? Do they have qualities of patience, kindness and sympathy in addition to disciplinary skills? Are they mature and responsible people without any psychological problems of their own which hamper proper understanding of school children?



Remember the instance where a teacher got her class to physically abuse their own classmate for not cleaning the class room ( or some such silly reason)? I find it interesting that these instances that are reported in the media usually refer to girls schools and rarely to boys schools. Are women unkind and men more generous minded?



Not so; men are just as appallingly behaved when considering number of sexual assaults made by male teachers on students that are regularly reported in the media. But it seems as if female students suffer most.

Any saying similar to the words in the Bible: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone should be dinned into the heads of every person who deals with youngsters



Parents are singularly powerless much of the time; the reason is not hard to find. Their children have been given placement in a Government school with some difficulty. Parents learn to keep their mouths shut if they want their children to go through school without hassle. Principals and teachers ( mostly in outstation schools ) are NEVER brought to book for mean treatment of those in their care. Parents would not dare to risk their childs place. Where else can they go?



I now come to the recent incident of a principal summarily expelling a girl because she threw up in school. The child came from an extremely poor family and I must ask Would the principal have thrown her out so fast had she been the daughter of a mudalali of the area who had the power and the means to fight back?



I listened to the girls mother being interviewed on TV a few night ago. She was understandably distraught. It was bad enough that the principal had declared her daughter pregnant ( when apparently she wasnt ) but that villagers in the area were asking the family to move from their home because of the shame of an unwanted pregnancy in their midst.



The sanctimoniousness of those villagers defies beliefand their cruelty to a family already under stress is truly appalling. They add hypocrisy to all this and one wonders what their religious beliefs have done for them. One feels that any saying similar to the words in the Bible: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone should be dinned into the heads of every person who deals with youngsters.



How SHOULD have that principal behaved if she suspected one of her pupils was pregnant? To start it would have been a good idea if she had a private talk with her to hear her side of the story ( if she had one.) If the child WAS pregnant then she obviously needed help and a great deal of understanding. She might have been raped or even been the victim of incest. Why would the principal jump to a conclusion the pregnancy was the result of a sexual encounter and damn the child for life?

Professionally as well as personally, this is not the first time I have heard of instances of cruelty in schools On a personal note I hear of my Kandy maids grandchild being constantly asked for money for costumes, picnics, educational trips, even dance trips abroad while my Colombo-based daily maids son goes to a school in Kotte which provides everything a child needs  from costumes to trips.



I was under the impression that such requests for money made by schools were supervised by the Dept of Education?



Any underlying vein of cruelty will always hamper Sri Lankans from progressing as they should. Educators can see that the study of religion in school is not doing a whit of good. Leave religion for parents to handle who bring families grow closer together as they teach their sons and daughters the correct values of life. Leaving ethical values to be taught by todays teachers is a waste of time.

Cruelty is part of the struggle of life. We can all be cruel and so are we; often. But at least let us not use authority and power to be vicious in dealing with our youth in schools. Once they get to university, of course, discipline is another matter! Perhaps if students had a sympathetic and understanding in school they may be better prepared to deal with higher studies in a university environment.

Here is a good adage for every principal to follow: Use your authority and power to justify it.
Ehalapola signed the Convention to hand over the country to colonial power

The British violated the Convention by letting down the Chieftains

Dr. Ambedkar who wrote Indian Constitution, is still in power with 101 Amendments

India and the USA changed and adapted themselves to new challenges with Amendments

India has the longest Constitution with 444 Articles and 118 Amendments, whereas Monaco has the shortest with 77 Articles

Fall of Sinhala Rule and the Consequences

2358 years of the Sri Lankan Kings that rule fell on March 2, 1815 due to the coup of the Chieftains headed by Ehalapola who signed the disputed historic and decisive Convention to hand over the country and powers of governance to the colonial power despite the silent protest of the common man. Robert Brownrigg and Ehalapola were the first signitories of the agreement/convention in which the main clause amongst others was to give foremost position to Buddhism and to protect Sasana Buddha, Dhamma, and Sanga.

Before the ink dried on the agreement, the British violated the Convention by letting down the Chieftains who expected to be rulers, and contravention of the contents of the agreement which are still in force under international law akin to the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987!

Some concerns on the Executive presidency and centralized powers now in a compromised situation out of necessity to keep the provinces together tied in a strong string without separating from the Central Government



Architects of Indian and USA Constitutions and applicability

The architect of the Indian Constitution is Dr Ambedkar who pioneered the process which is still in power with only 101 Amendments when George Washington and Benjamin Franklin too forwarded the preparation of the Constitution by James Medison the chief architect who pioneered for the people which is in force with only 33 Amendments.

They took great pains in the drafting of the great living documents amended from time to time according to the needs of the day but never wanted to explore new constitutions which are complicated and lead to unnecessary divisions and bloodshed they have averted permanently with a static and stable constitution mechanism. Changes of Constitution seldom take place in the world unless there are newly born states mainly to avoid unnecessary complications and divisions. Both great nations changed and adapted themselves to new challenges with Amendments which are most practical and sensible. Then what/why is our mighty hurry to change the Constitution to commit suicide? Is it Geneva, NGOs Regime Change forces diaspora or any other evil anti Sri Lankan forces? Therefore we do not want to get into further tragedies and let us live with the known devil!

Constitution-making

Constitution is a set of fundamental principles constituting the supreme law of a state from which all other laws derive. India has the longest Constitution with 444 Articles and 118 Amendments whereas Monaco has the shortest with 77 Articles. The Sri Lankan Constitution of 1978 consists of 179 Articles and 19 Amendments with Article one (1) declaring that it is the free Sovereign Independent Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka which is declared as a Unitary State (Article 2) transformed to be a Federal State by the 13th Amendment by changing the basic structure and outlook of the constitution without constitutional due process.

The Unicameral Soulbury Constriction came to force on February 4, 1948 was abolished and the new Republican Constitution was introduced in 1972 with a peaceful constitutional revolution and a Constitutional Assembly which was replaced by the current 1978 JR Constitution which is a mixture of Executive Presidency and Parliamentary model running smoothly with some concerns on the Executive presidency and centralized powers now in a compromised situation out of necessity to keep the provinces together tied in a strong string without separating from the Central Government with the power of Presidential powers.



Armed struggles of disappointed youth as a result of denial of franchise

The fourth Amendment of 1982 extended the life of the Parliament until August 4, 1989 subject to a referendum, which brought disastrous effects which led to two JVP insurrections and emergence of LTTE due to denial of democratic institutions and periodic elections the citizens were used to.

Two (bloody) JVP insurrections cost the nation the lives of over 60,000 youth and destruction of property and retardation of the economic growth by decades. The LTTE struggle continued for 30 years with deaths from the forces and those who took to arms until MR was able to win the unwinnable war against the most ruthless terror organizations in the world. It is a sorry state that we have not learnt from the history and mistakes made by blocking the democratic process (by JR) of exercising franchise periodically.

The hurriedly passed Ad Hoc 19th Amendment blocked elections for four and half years and the postponement of elections continually nearly three years took the country towards a volcano in brewing with no signs of any elections until the end of the period of the governance.

Changes of Constitution seldom take place in the world unless there are newly born states mainly to avoid unnecessary complications and divisions



Who wants the new Constitution in the making?

The country is not in a good shape and in financial and political crisis, admitted all who blamed the previous regime the SLFP and JO are parties to. There are open and closed differences and infighting in the unholy union of the SLFP and the UNP (which leads to a dictatorial one party system against democracy with weak and racist opposition confined to N/E) traditional enemies for decades joined together for perks,( ex 3.1 billion for vehicles alone to all!) privileges, facilities, power and fear of being run over by charismatic MR who is still popular but continually attacked by the enemies who ousted him from power and blocked to contest by the 19th Amendment especially, enacted aiming at him and to block him and the family clan claiming to block further family rule.

Time has come for the qualified youth to take over the reins of the governance and oppose proposed draconian and dangerous constitutional changes which will lead to bloodshed again proposed by dirty politicians



The joint Geneva resolution is a sell-out of the nation promising a new Constitution and giving away the forces responsible for freeing the nation from terror engulfed for thirty years mainly beneficial to the citizens of the North and East who lived in fear terror groups. Opposition leader is the leader of the TNA demanding a de facto federal state supported by the JVP (one time nationalistic party opposed vigorously to the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987) some minority parties NGOs/INGOs, and brainwashed part of international community backed by the diaspora still active on internal/international issues. The common man is sandwiched with many issues including cost of living, under or unemployment and various threats and Constitution which are least important to them.



Way forward

It is time for the Nation to be united today by shedding all differences as Sri Lankans for a better day for the future generation. The statements by clergy, intellectuals, writers, artistes and working class, against the proposed IRSC are very encouraging (despite the press conferences of INGOs and NGOs depending on dollars) and in the right direction.



Time has come for the professionally qualified young and the citizens to take over the reins of the governance and oppose proposed draconian and dangerous constitutional changes which will lead to bloodshed again proposed by dirty politicians who miserably failed and destroyed our loving and beautiful Granary of the East to be great again.



(The writer could be contacted on sarath7@hotmail.co.uk)
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In the early 1990s, when terrorism was at its peak in the Kashmir Valley, Dineshwar Sharma, a young IPS officer on his first stint, got his initial taste of the violence. Late one night, his Gupkar Road residence was caught in the crossfire. Sharma watched the panicked firing by the security guards for a while and then decided to venture out. Ever the policeman, he wanted to tell his men not to waste ammunition and to fire only when they saw their quarry.

As Sharma now ventures out into the Valley once again as central interlocutor, the question is, does the NDA government have its quarry in sight or is it shooting in the dark?

All indications so far hint at the latter.

In fact, a paper accessed by this author tries to put out the Centre's rationale behind starting a dialogue process three-and-a-half years into the government's tenure. "The current initiative is a manifestation of the government of India's sensitive approach to resolve long standing Kashmir issue [sic]," the paper piously says.

But in the same paper, one of the "stakeholders" in the peace process are described as "nothing but a handful of Pakistani stooges" who have been holding peace loving people to ransom".

While that might well be the case, in its choice of words about what it thinks of the Hurriyat Conference, the BJP isnt helping its own cause.

Union home minister Rajnath Singh with former Intelligence Bureau director Dineshwar Sharma.

To add to it are the theatrics of it all. Union home minister Rajnath Singh making a grand announcement, at a hurriedly called press conference, that the solution to Kashmir is not through "goli" or "gaali".

If the government was really serious, it should have gone about its business quietly and done some groundwork before making the process public, say experts.

And even before the home minister had finished, another Union minister was at hand to draw the Laxman rekha for the so called peace process. Minister for personnel Jitendra Singh told reporters, How can you speak to people who indulge in violence and hawala transactions?

That statement is meant to indicate that it leaves the Hurriyat out as well as the stone-pelters out. "So whom do you talk to," asks former commodore Uday Bhaskar. "The entire exercise is a put on for the western world that the Modi government is willing to find a political solution and talk to all stakeholders, he adds. Sure enough US secretary of state Tillerson arrives in India late Tuesday night.

JNU professor and Kashmir watcher, Happymon Jacob, says the course correction is welcome but "it's a bit too late in the day for it to make any real impact... Also, appointing a former DIB is a bad idea. The government should have selected a senior politician to reach out to the Kashmiris."

The Centre's hawkish approach to Kashmir does have its upside. The Hurriyat leadership stands exposed with the NIA (and an India Today sting operation) exposing the funding and hawala deals, especially of the second-rung leadership.

But the government has also allowed the political process to wither away. The nadir being the two per cent polling that declared Farooq Abdullah the winner in the Srinagar bypoll. Democracy has abdicated the Valley. "Perhaps its time that the Modi government admit that the policies it has followed in the past three and a half years have failed," says Track II expert and Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar.

But Sushant Sarin of the right-wing Vivekananda Foundation says, "Its too early to read the tea leaves. Lets wait for the former DIB to at least make his first visit to the Valley before we allow the naysayers to take over."

Already questions are being asked as to whom Sharma will talk to. The stone-pelters dont listen to the Hurriyat (successive bandh calls post the NIA arrests of the Hurriyat leadership have led to a tepid response each time); the elected PDP government doesnt have much heft either at the Centre or even within the state. The boat men and the opposition are anyway on board.
VANCLEAVE, Mississippi -- A 16-year-old Vancleave boy is in the custody of the Jackson County Youth Court after posting what appears to be a prank photo with a gun and a threat against his school.

According to Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell, Vancleave High School Principal John Mundy notified authorities of a possible cyber threat after Mundy received, anonymously, a photo of the 16-year-old student with a gun.

The photo was originally posted Saturday night on social media site Snapchat and included the text "don't come to school Monday." The principal recognized the student after receiving the photo.

Investigators learned the boy never actually had possession of the gun. Instead, he came across it at a party he attended Saturday night at a home in Vancleave, took a photo with it, and then left the weapon where he found it. Ezell said the gun appeared to be a antique pistol.

The woman who owns the home said she was unaware the boy had taken a photo with the gun and the teenager confirmed he had handled the gun without the owner's permission.
Note: This blog post discusses active research by Talos into a new threat. This information should be considered preliminary and will be updated as research continues.

Update 2017-10-26 16:10 EDT: added additional information regarding the links between Nyetya and BadRabbit

Update 2017-10-26 09:20 EDT: added additional information regarding the EternalRomance exploit

Update 2017-10-25: added additional information regarding encryption and propagation methods

On October 24, 2017, Cisco Talos was alerted to a widescale ransomware campaign affecting organizations across eastern Europe and Russia. As was the case in previous situations, we quickly mobilized to assess the situation and ensure that customers remain protected from this and other threats as they emerge across the threat landscape.

There have been several large scale ransomware campaigns over the last several months. This appears to have some similarities to Nyetya in that it is also based on Petya ransomware. Major portions of the code appear to have been rewritten. The distribution does not appear to have the sophistication of the supply chain attacks we have seen recently.

Distribution

Talos assesses with high confidence that a fake Flash Player update is being delivered via a drive-by-download and compromising systems. The sites that were seen redirecting to BadRabbit were a variety of sites that are based in Russia, Bulgaria, and Turkey.

When users visited one of the compromised websites, they were redirected to 1dnscontrol[.]com, the site which was hosting the malicious file. Before the actual malicious file was downloaded a POST request was observed to a static IP address (185.149.120[.]3). This request was found to be posting to a static path of "/scholasgoogle" and provided the user agent, referring site, cookie, and domain name of the session. After the POST the dropper was downloaded from two different paths from 1dnscontrol[.]com, /index.php and /flash_install.php. Despite two paths being utilized only a single file was downloaded. Based on current information, the malware appears to have been active for approximately six hours before the server 1dnscontrol[.]com was taken down. The initial download was observed around 2017-10-24 08:22 UTC.

The dropper (630325cac09ac3fab908f903e3b00d0dadd5fdaa0875ed8496fcbb97a558d0da) requires a user to facilitate the infection and does not use any exploit to compromise the system directly. This dropper contains the BadRabbit ransomware. Once installed there is an SMB component used for lateral movement and further infection. This appears to use a combination of an included list of weak credentials and a version of mimikatz similar to that which was used in Nyetya. Below is a list of the username/password combinations that we have observed. Note there is overlap with the 1995 cult classic "Hackers".

Observed Password List

Despite initial reports, we currently have no evidence that the EternalBlue exploit is being leveraged. However, we identified the usage of the EternalRomance exploit to propagate in the network. This exploit takes advantage of a vulnerability described in the Microsoft MS17-010 security bulletin. The vulnerability was also exploited during the Nyetya campaign. Our research continues and we will update as we learn more.

Technical Details

The malware contains a dropper which is responsible for extracting and executing the worm payload. This payload contains additional binaries stored in the resources (compressed with zlib):

legitimate binaries associated with DiskCryptor (2 drivers x86/x64 and 1 client);

2 mimikatz-like binaries (x86/x64) similar to the sample seen during Nyetya. A popular open source tool used for recovery of user credentials from computer memory using several different techniques. It drops files into the C:\Windows\ directory. The mimikatz-like binaries are executed using the same technique that was leveraged in the Nyetya campaign. The communication between the payload and the stealer will be performed by a named pipe, for example:

C:\WINDOWS\561D.tmp \\.\pipe\{C1F0BF2D-8C17-4550-AF5A-65A22C61739C}

The malware then uses RunDLL32.exe to execute the malware and continue the malicious operations. The malware then creates a scheduled task with the parameters shown in the screenshot below:

Encryption is performed with 2 techniques:

Full disk encryption with DiskCryptor (an open source disk encryption solution)

Individual file encryption Here is the list of the targeted extensions: .3ds .7z .accdb .ai .asm .asp .aspx .avhd .back .bak .bmp .brw .c .cab .cc .cer .cfg .conf .cpp .crt .cs .ctl .cxx .dbf .der .dib .disk .djvu .doc .docx .dwg .eml .fdb .gz .h .hdd .hpp .hxx .iso .java .jfif .jpe .jpeg .jpg .js .kdbx .key .mail .mdb .msg .nrg .odc .odf .odg .odi .odm .odp .ods .odt .ora .ost .ova .ovf .p12 .p7b .p7c .pdf .pem .pfx .php .pmf .png .ppt .pptx .ps1 .pst .pvi .py .pyc .pyw .qcow .qcow2 .rar .rb .rtf .scm .sln .sql .tar .tib .tif .tiff .vb .vbox .vbs .vcb .vdi .vfd .vhd .vhdx .vmc .vmdk .vmsd .vmtm .vmx .vsdx .vsv .work .xls .xlsx .xml .xvd .zip

In addition to the aforementioned scheduled task, the malware creates a second scheduled task that is responsible for rebooting the system. This second task does not occur instantaneously but is scheduled to occur later.

If the names for these scheduled tasks look familiar they appear to be a reference to Game of Thrones, specifically they match the names of the dragons.

Then the malware propagates itself in the network, the technique to enumerate the network systems is exactly the same than Nyetya. It is performed by Microsoft Windows legitimate features, via:

SVCCTL: the remote service management

SMB2

SMB

NTLMSSP authentication brute force

WMI

And an exploit:

EternalRomance

The malware also creates a file on the infected user's desktop called DECRYPT. Executing this file causes the following ransom note to be displayed to victims.

To demonstrate how quickly these sorts of threats can propagate globally, the below graphic reflects the DNS related activity associated with one of the domains that were being used to distribute the fake Adobe Flash update that was used to drop the malware on victims' systems.

The malware modifies the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the infected system's hard drive to redirect the boot process into the malware authors code for the purposes of displaying a ransom note. The ransom note that is displayed following the system reboot is below, and is very similar to the ransom notes displayed by other ransomware variants, namely Petya, that we have observed in other notable attacks this year.

This is the payment page from the Tor site:

EternalRomance Exploit

Cisco Talos has identified an exploit in the BadRabbit sample. It is very similar to the publicly available Python implementation of the EternalRomance exploit that is also exploited by Nyetya. However, the BadRabbit exploit implementation is different than the one in Nyetya, although it is still largely based on the EternalRomance exploit published in the ShadowBrokers leak.

The following screenshot shows that BadRabbit is building modified security context structures for various operating system versions:

The structures are obfuscated using an NOT operation. For example, here is the original value of WIN7_32_SESSION_INFO in the sample:

"\xD5\xFD\xE3\xFF\xFE\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFD\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFF\xFE"

Once decoded, the value of the buffer is:

2a\x02\x1c\x00\x01\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x02\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x01

After updating the endian byte order and formatting to match a field in the WIN7_32_SESSION_INFO structure, the value is

0x001C022A, 0x00000001, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0x00000001

The extracted value matches the FAKE_SECCTX data in the publicly available EternalRomance exploit mentioned earlier:

The sample then parses an SMB response containing the kernel leak of the Frag pool structure:

Once again, the BadRabbit code matches the leak_frag_size() function in the public exploit.

The sample also checks the NT status code on an NT_Trans request after attempting to modify the data in another Transaction structure:

The same action is performed in the public exploit:

After the NT Trans check, the sample sends multiple NT_TRANSACT_SECONDARY commands using different MultiplexID values.

The equivalent is also performed by the public exploit Python script implementation in the function write_data(). Finally, we can confirm the findings of the static analysis by looking at the traffic generated by a pcap capture.



The sample first gets a FileID of 0x4000 and then the same value is used as a MultiplexID in an NT_Trans request:



Once again, this demonstrates a type confusion attempt similar to the one attempted by the EternalRomance exploit (the Matched Pairs technique). It matches the following Python code:

With all this in mind, we can be fairly confident that BadRabbit includes an EternalRomance implementation used to overwrite a kernels session security context to enable it to launch remote services, while in Nyetya it was used to install the DoublePulsar backdoor. Both actions are possible due to the fact that EternalRomance allows the attacker to read/write arbitrary data into the kernel memory space.

We assess with high confidence:

that BadRabbit is built on the same core codebase as Nyetya.

that the build tool chain for BadRabbit is highly similar to the build tool chain for Nyetya.

The evasion techniques present in the modifications to the DoublePulsar backdoor in Nyetya and EternalRomance in BadRabbit demonstrate similar, advanced, levels of understanding of the exploits involved, the network detections in place at the time of deployment, and general Windows kernel exploitation.

The shared codebase was modified for the BadRabbit build. Instead of leveraging PSEXEC, the remote file placement and remote Windows Service management was directly implemented. A second export was added to the dll that allows the remote execution to restart itself in a new rundll32 process, possibly to avoid having the parent process be clearly started as a service. The SMB implementation that Nyetya contained for leveraging SMB exploits has been replaced with an entirely different SMB implementation as well as a different exploitation technique. The post-reboot drive encryption with Petya has been replaced with drive encryption with the open source DiskCryptor.

Unmodified functionality from Nyetya includes the self-relocation of the malicious dll, process and thread token manipulations, network peer identification, and thread-safe collections for managing credentials and target information. Lightly modified functionality which demonstrates source level modifications are found in the flow of the malicious entrypoint, the interaction with the embedded and modified mimikatz, and in aspects of the system initialization and bitflag based feature control.

While these links are not absolute proof, based on these findings Talos assesses with low confidence that the authors of Nyetya and BadRabbit are the same.

Conclusion

This is yet another example of how effective ransomware can be delivered leveraging secondary propagation methods such as SMB to proliferate. In this example the initial vector wasn't a sophisticated supply chain attack. Instead it was a basic drive-by-download leveraging compromised websites. This is quickly becoming the new normal for the threat landscape. Threats spreading quickly, for a short window, to inflict maximum damage. Ransomware is the threat of choice for both its monetary gain as well as destructive nature. As long as there is money to be made or destruction to be had these threats are going to continue.

This threat also amplifies another key area that needs to be addressed, user education. In this attack the user needs to facilitate the initial infection. If a user doesn't help the process along by installing the flash update it would be benign and not wreak the devastation it has across the region. Once a user facilitates the initial infection the malware leverages existing methods, such as SMB, to propagate around the network without user interaction.

Coverage

Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) is ideally suited to prevent the execution of the malware used by these threat actors.

CWS or WSA web scanning prevents access to malicious websites and detects malware used in these attacks.

Network Security appliances such as NGFW, NGIPS, and Meraki MX can detect malicious activity associated with this threat.

AMP Threat Grid helps identify malicious binaries and build protection into all Cisco Security products.

Umbrella, our secure internet gateway (SIG), blocks users from connecting to malicious domains, IPs, and URLs, whether users are on or off the corporate network.

Email has not been identified as an attack vector at this time. The malware, if transferred across these systems on your networks, will be blocked.

Indicators of Compromise

Hashes (SHA256)

Dropper:

630325cac09ac3fab908f903e3b00d0dadd5fdaa0875ed8496fcbb97a558d0da

Payload:

8ebc97e05c8e1073bda2efb6f4d00ad7e789260afa2c276f0c72740b838a0a93 C:\Windows\dispci.exe (diskcryptor client)

682ADCB55FE4649F7B22505A54A9DBC454B4090FC2BB84AF7DB5B0908F3B7806 C:\Windows\cscc.dat (x32 diskcryptor drv)

0b2f863f4119dc88a22cc97c0a136c88a0127cb026751303b045f7322a8972f6 C:\Windows\cscc.dat (x64 diskcryptor drv)

579FD8A0385482FB4C789561A30B09F25671E86422F40EF5CCA2036B28F99648 C:\Windows\infpub.dat

2f8c54f9fa8e47596a3beff0031f85360e56840c77f71c6a573ace6f46412035 (mimikatz-like x86)

301b905eb98d8d6bb559c04bbda26628a942b2c4107c07a02e8f753bdcfe347c (mimikatz-like x64)

Scheduled Tasks names

viserion_

rhaegal

drogon

Domains

Distribution domain:

1dnscontrol[.]com

Distribution Paths:

/flash_install.php

/index.php

Intermediary Server:

185.149.120[.]3

Referrer Sites:

Argumentiru[.]com

Fontanka[.]ru

Adblibri[.]ro

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Why Did Tesla Fire Hundreds of Employees?

Hundreds of former Tesla employees found themselves jobless this month, but the company was insistent that the cuts were not layoffs. "As with any company, especially one of over 33,000 employees, performance reviews also occasionally result in employee departures," a Tesla spokesperson told the Mercury News. "Tesla is continuing to grow and hire new employees around the world."

But that's not how several current and former employees describe the cuts, claiming those fired had little or no warning, with some being notified by email or phone and told not to come into work the next day. While Tesla may be trying to save face by not using the word "layoff," it could also be dodging certain employment laws.

Duty to WARN

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires any employer with more than 100 employees to provide at 60-days notice before mass layoffs. WARN defines mass layoffs as either affecting more than 500 employees at a single site or at least 50 employees that comprise over 33 percent of the total employees for a single site.

Initial reports put the dismissals, largely from Tesla's motor division, between 400 to 700 employees, though a manager told CNBC the total number fired is more than 700 at this point. The company employs around 10,000 workers at its Fremont factory. Tesla also did not report the terminations to California's Employment Development Department, which the law requires in cases of layoffs of more than 50 employees.

Cuts and Compensation

"Like all companies," a spokesperson asserted, "Tesla conducts an annual performance review during which a manager and employee discuss the results that were achieved, as well as how those results were achieved, during the performance period. This includes both constructive feedback and recognition of top performers with additional compensation and equity awards, as well as promotions in many cases."

Still, firing hundreds of employees all at once signals that either Tesla is masking layoffs, or the company is masking quite a few hiring mistakes.

Related Resources:
As hundreds of people with torches descended the stairs in front of the University of Virginia Rotunda, dozens of people surrounding a statue of Thomas Jefferson in protest watched in fear, unsure of what might happen next.

Moments later, tiki torches, flames and fists were flying in all directions as smoke and pepper spray filled the air immediately around the statue of the university founder and U.S. president.

Only two people have been arrested in connection to the event. For now, its unlikely that Albemarle Countys top prosecutor will be seeking any more charges despite allegations of additional crimes and a recent memo from his Charlottesville counterpart suggesting that some of the torchbearers could be prosecuted for appearing to use the torches to threaten victims before violence was unleashed.

Earlier this month, after white nationalist leader Richard Spencer held another nighttime torch rally in downtown Charlottesville, Dave Chapman, the city commonwealths attorney, said he would not pursue charges against Spencer or his followers for their demonstration on Oct. 7. In a memo to City Manager Maurice Jones, however, he provided examples of how a state statute that makes burning an object to threaten an individual or a group a felony can be applied.

Fenwick seeks special grand jury to explore charges over Aug. 12 rally The city councilor wants an investigation into whether Richard Spencer, David Duke and Jason Kessler can be prosecuted for inflicting financial damages and personal injuries.

The first two examples might be reflected in the events in front of the Rotunda at the university on Aug. 11, when torch-bearing members of the alt-right became involved in a confrontation with counter-demonstrators and presented a threat to them by being armed with menacing devices that were also a symbol of their views, Chapman said in a memo.

Because the Oct. 7 rally did not include any form of direct violence or an audience that had reason to fear an immediate threat, Chapman said, there was not enough evidence to prosecute Spencer or anyone else on those charges.

In an interview the day after he submitted the memo to Jones, Chapman said he wasnt suggesting that Albemarle County Commonwealths Attorney Robert Tracci should pursue charges.

Its hard enough to do my own job, Chapman said. Im not going to tell somebody else how to do their job.

I dont mean by any of what Ive written or said to suggest anything whatsoever with respect to Albemarle County and the people who are responsible for law enforcement there, he added.

What I can say is that I could see from whats been reported and documented  is that there are things that happened on Aug. 11 that begin to get at more squarely the kinds of circumstances that can be prosecuted under Virginia Code Sec. 18.2-423.01, he said. That law makes it a Class 6 felony to burn an object on a highway or other public place in a manner having a direct tendency to place another person in reasonable fear or apprehension of death or bodily injury.

Ian Hoffmann, of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, was arrested by University of Virginia police the night of the event and charged with assault and battery. According to court records, an Albemarle General District Court judge found him not guilty because of a lack of evidence.

Later in August, white nationalist and self-described shock jock Chris Cantwell, a featured Aug. 12 rally speaker who participated in the march on UVa, was charged with illegal use of tear gas and malicious bodily injury by means of a caustic substance or agent. He later turned himself in to Lynchburg police.

Following Cantwells arrest, Traccis office succeeded in appealing to the county court to rescind a bond that had been set at $25,000.

In an email earlier this month, Tracci dismissed the idea that he could pursue charges against anyone for the events of Aug. 11 under the statute Chapman referenced in his memo, but he said that shouldnt dissuade victims from submitting evidence of any crimes that might have been committed.

I dont read his memorandum to clearly support that proposition, Tracci said. Rather, the memorandum contains speculative observation layered in measured distinction couched in additional qualification[, for example,] the following examples may present circumstances ... and it might be possible under the circumstances; and it might be reflected, etc.

Emily Gorcenski, a local anti-racism activist who was among the counter-protesters on Aug. 11, testified to a magistrate that Cantwell was the aggressor that night. Cantwell, who remains incarcerated at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, has said he acted in self-defense.

In an interview, Gorcenski said a group of activists had presented a UVa police investigator with evidence of additional crimes that they said occurred that evening, alleging that the myriad assaults amounted to criminal mob violence.

Videos presented in an online dossier compiled by Gorcenski and other activists appear to show some torchbearers ordering colleagues to surround the students.

They deliberately penned us in. Those people were not only carrying the torches but also used them as weapons, Gorcenski said. Im still trying to encourage the investigator to sign off on a warrant.

In a tweet responding to Gorcenskis claim that the counter-protesters were surrounded and prevented from escaping the scene, Spencer wrote: Fact check: true. Gorcenski said the tweet is an admission to criminal kidnapping.

Tracci said he declined to seek further charges after the UVa investigator contacted him about Gorcenskis allegations.

Explaining his reasoning, Tracci referred to the American Bar Association guidelines for the minimum requirements to file criminal charges, which say that a prosecutor should seek or file criminal charges only if the prosecutor reasonably believes that the charges are supported by probable cause, that admissible evidence will be sufficient to support conviction beyond a reasonable doubt, and that the decision to charge is in the interests of justice.

That explanation did not placate Gorcenski.

We need to do a better job holding our elected officials accountable, Gorcenski said. Its absurd that I can be smashed with a torch on video and nothing happens  where is the justice here?

Somebody has to do something. They cant keep coming into our town with torches. What do you think the natural end of this is going to be?
White nationalist leaders and organizers of the Aug. 12 Unite the Right rally are now facing a series of lawsuits after the fatal event this summer, but Charlottesville City Councilor Bob Fenwick wants to take more legal action against them.

In a news conference Monday afternoon, Fenwick announced his intention to ask Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore to assemble a special grand jury to investigate whether Richard Spencer, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and rally organizer Jason Kessler can be prosecuted for inflicting financial damages and personal injuries on the public.

This is something the citizen can do, Fenwick said. We dont have to ask for anybodys permission to do it.

Fenwick, whose single term on City Council will end this year, demurred when asked what charges he hopes they can be prosecuted on. He said he expects the citys attorneys will figure it out but suggested that the defendants could be forced to pay reparations to the city following recent events.

Fenwick said he felt compelled to act because he and other residents are frustrated by the feeling of a lack of progress in the justice system following the recent white nationalist events. Fenwick alleged those forces are funded by far-right Russian operatives, citing a recent Newsweek article that connected Spencer and Duke to Russian ultranationalist and political theorist Alexander Dugin.

I want to make sure the city of Charlottesville has what it needs to be able to adequately defend the citizens and the city, Fenwick said.

Though he did not mention him by name, Fenwick criticized city Commonwealths Attorney Dave Chapmans recent decision against pressing charges against Spencer following a torch-lit rally on Oct. 7. Earlier this month, Chapman said he was personally disturbed by the incident but that there was not enough evidence that Spencers demonstration posed an immediate or true threat to anyone who saw them in Emancipation Park that evening.

Whenever the people of Charlottesville  at least a certain part of Charlottesville  see a tiki torch, they see it as a burning cross, Fenwick said. To then be told by a city official that a tiki torch is not a burning object and that theres no judicial precedent to put charges forward, to me and many people, it doesnt make sense.

Fenwick, who said he plans to petition the court as a private citizen, said it requires only five signatures for a judge to consider impaneling a special grand jury. He did not say whether there are already other people planning to sign the proposed petition, but he said he is confident that the grand jury will be able to conduct its own independent investigation into the events of Aug. 12.

Im very hopeful that this does what I think it can do, he said.

Though the city has recently consulted various civil liberties attorneys and a team of lawyers who are now representing the city in one lawsuit to prevent militia groups from participating in paramilitary operations in Virginia, the idea of a special grand jury was never advised, Fenwick said.

Fenwick said he came up with the idea after recently serving as a juror. When asked whether he consulted other council members, he said he decided to keep the idea under wraps so that his proposal could not be leaked by a colleague or discovered by would-be defendants or their allies.
WASHINGTON - Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., one of President Donald Trump's most vocal Republican critics on Capitol Hill, said Tuesday that the White House should step aside and let Congress decide the terms for tax reform, prompting Trump to insult him on Twitter.

"I would recommend that based on recent history and just interactions," Corker said on the Today Show, when asked if Trump should "leave well enough alone" on the tax debate. "I think that's the best way for us to have success."

The comment came ahead of Trump's visit to Capitol Hill Tuesday for his first visit as president to Republican senators' weekly policy luncheon.

Trump returned fire an hour later, escalating his recent feud with Corker.

"Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts," the president tweeted.

"Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!"

Trump's tweets mischaracterized the senator's Iran record and the back-and-forth surrounding Corker's decision to retire after 2018. Corker and his top aide have said Trump offered his support for the senator's reelection and that after Corker announced he would retire, Trump called asking him to reconsider and to run again.

"Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president," Corker tweeted Tuesday. He added the hashtag #AlertTheDaycareStaff, repeating his earlier description of Trump's White House as an "adult daycare center."

Many Republicans had hoped that Trump's trip to Capitol Hill would spur progress on tax legislation, the GOP's top legislative priority after the failure of several health-care bills. But the president's and Corker's comments Tuesday highlighted some of the challenges that Republicans face, including tensions between the White House and lawmakers, that stand to get in the way of that effort.

While GOP aides and senators predicted Monday that Trump's visit would center mostly on the ongoing effort to rewrite the nation's tax laws, the broad array of topics on their mind, coupled with the president's penchant for suddenly veering from one subject to another, could open the door to an unpredictable afternoon.

The difficult relationship between Trump and Republican senators adds another layer of uncertainty. Trump has criticized Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sharply for not repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. Republican senators have also thrown some rhetorical elbows at the president.

"I want him to tell us to do our job," said Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., a Trump ally who, like the president, has openly voiced his frustration that a handful of Republican senators sank the repeal-and-replace effort. He anticipated the president would argue that the tax-reform push marked a chance for Republicans to prove they can govern, among other things.

When Trump addresses the luncheon the Republican senators attend each Tuesday afternoon in a room near the Senate chamber, "it's important for him to convey to us the things that he thinks are priorities, and not only with respect to the tax bill, but some of the other things that we are currently working on," said Sen. John Thune, S.D., the third-ranking Republican senator.

One of the other things Republicans are wrestling with is health care. Trump's decision to end federal subsidies to help offset lower-income Americans' coverage costs led a bipartisan coalition of senators to offer a compromise bill that would authorize those funds. In exchange, states would have broader leeway in regulating coverage under the ACA.

Trump, who phoned Democratic and Republican lawmakers this month to push them to make a deal, has sent mixed signals on the plan, seeming to support it before backing away.

White House officials are urging Senate Republicans to move the bill to the right, by including provisions offering retroactive relief from the ACA's insurance mandates for individuals and certain employers, according to people briefed on the talks.

"The White House has the ball right now," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tenn., the Republican senator who took the lead on negotiating the bipartisan package. "They've made some suggestions publicly about what they'd like to see in the bill. I'm for all of those things. The question is whether they can persuade Democratic senators to agree to that."

But Alexander, who said that an analysis of his plan by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could be released as early as Tuesday, wasn't expecting to hear Trump sketch out his latest thinking on the framework during lunch. In his view, that would be a good thing. "I'd like for the president to focus on tax reform," he said.

Others, however, were eager to hear Trump talk health care.

"I'd like to hear him reinforce the movement to get something done" on health care, said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., who supports the deal Alexander reached with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

Looming over the luncheon are the mutual hostilities between Trump and Republican senators. On Twitter and in remarks before television cameras, Trump has slammed McConnell and singled out other senators for attacks.

GOP senators have also landed their own blows.

McConnell, for instance, has said that Trump's limited experience in politics created "excessive expectations" for passing landmark legislation. Sen. Corker has warned that Trump's combative behavior has put the United States "on the path to World War III."

But lately, both sides appear to be determined to move past their differences and project more harmony. Trump and McConnell sat down for lunch at the White House last Monday and came out for a 40-minute joint news conference afterward. They tried to play down past signs of tension as they looked ahead to their next big legislative target: tax reform.

Republicans are trying to forge ahead in their effort to usher in a sweeping rewrite of the nation's tax laws by the end of the year. They took an initial step toward passing a tax bill last week, when the Senate passed a budget resolution allowing them to pursue the tax plan without needing any Democratic votes.

They didn't need any Democratic votes to undo the ACA. That effort still failed because of disagreements among Republican senators. Brewing disputes over tax policy threaten to disrupt if not defeat the tax endeavor in a similar way.

Passing a bill could rest on more unpredictable GOP senators, like Susan Collins of Maine, one of three Republicans who voted against the ACA repeal bill in July.

"I'm hoping to hear more about his plans on tax reform, with more detail in it," she said of Trump.
We are planning to establish a political party with the available forces in our group before the 2020 General Election, Nain Shwe Aung, chair of the MPDF, told the press in Thanbyuzayat.

There is already a diversity of parties among our [Mon] people. The public has also said this  Two Mon parties became three Mon parties. There will now be four parties after our party is established. We are considering whether this will cause disunity among our people. We are negotiating with Mon political leaders. We will reveal what path we will choose when the time is right, he added.

The Mon National Party (MNP), the All Mon Region Democracy Party (AMRDP), and the Womens Party (Mon) are negotiating to unify all the Mon political parties under one banner.

We heard about this issue. Whatever it is, only one Mon political party is needed if one listens to the voice of the Mon public, but everyone has the right to establish a party in this multi-party democratic system. If they wish to establish a new party, they should listen to the voice of the Mon public, said MNPs general secretary Nai Layih Tamarh.

The MPDF has around 130 members and they are cooperating with local authorities in fighting crime, according to Nai Aung Shwe.

The New Mon State Party (NMSP)s former chief of staff Major Gen Nai Aung Naing surrendered arms in 2008 and established the MPDF. After Nai Aung Naing passed way in August 2010, the MPDF further fracture into two groups, one led by Nai Shaung and one lead by former vice chair Nai Shwe Aung.
RICHMOND  Virginia's hopes for a $2 billion paper manufacturing plant in Chesterfield County continue to fade, as the Chinese company behind the project failed to meet a deadline for repaying a $5 million incentive grant by the state.

Tranlin Inc. informed state economic development officials on Tuesday that the company was unable to fully repay the loan, as it had promised in July as part of a plan to reset the massive project to incorporate new technology already operating at new plants in China.

Instead, the company wrote the state a $150,000 check and promised to repay the balance of the grant in six monthly installments, beginning on Dec. 1, and 10 percent annualized interest. It also agreed to give the state a first-position lien on 58 acres it bought in Chesterfield for $3.2 million.

"We are deeply sorry and apologize for the delay in full repayment," Tranlin's acting CEO, Donald Lan, said in a letter to Stephen Moret, president and CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.

In a statement on Tuesday, Moret said, "VEDP was very disappointed to learn that Tranlin would not meet the contractually required October 24 repayment deadline for the $5 million incentive grant, as the company committed in writing to VEDP on July 26 that it would meet the October deadline."

He called the property lien "a sign of good faith to meet the repayment obligation."

"Protecting the bulk of the commonwealths repayment amount, this lien will be executed as soon as possible," said Moret, who was hired in February to run the semi-independent state agency. "The lien will be released only after the company has fully reimbursed the commonwealth, with interest, for the $5 million incentive grant that it has committed to repay."

However, Tranlin has not accounted for the $1.8 million difference between the $5 million grant, made by Gov. Terry McAuliffe early in his term from what was then called Governors Opportunity Development Fund, and the $3.2 million purchase price of the property in James River Industrial Park.

The grant "was part of our companys general operating funds, which are accounted for through general accounting principles," Tranlin spokeswoman Lisa Randall said. "Our companys general operating funds are used for U.S. operations."

Randall said the company is "anticipating revenue generation from sales of our agricultural products, but this timing is not in sync with the initial grant repayment date. Were confident that we can meet our repayment obligation with the updated payment plan discussed with the VEDP."

Lan said the company is committed to remaining in Virginia, with an office in Albemarle County, and "will continue our efforts to further build demand for our products in anticipation of U.S. production."

"In addition, we are making significant progress developing our U.S. markets - especially with our fertilizer products," he said.

Legislators were first briefed on the Tranlin project in late 2013 at the end of Gov. Bob McDonnell's term. The Major Employment and Investment Commission, a bipartisan legislative panel that now reviews financial incentives of more than $10 million, approved about $20 million in performance grants for the project in early 2014, after McAuliffe took office.

The total package promised Tranlin $29.5 million in state financial incentives for the project, which was supposed to bring $2 billion in capital investment and create 2,000 jobs by the end of 2019. The grant, from what is now called the Commonwealth Opportunity Fund, was made up front, although the timing of those grants now is based on the degree of risk in meeting obligations.

Since then, VEDP has come under heavy criticism for lack of oversight on incentives for economic development prospects. The Joint Legislative and Audit Review Commission issued a scathing report in late 2016 on the partnership since its creation 20 years earlier under then-Gov. George Allen.

The General Assembly enacted sweeping reforms to the partnership this year, including restructuring its board of directors, requiring the creation of an incentives division, and requiring its new management under Moret to respond to more than two dozen JLARC recommendations.

The study was prompted in part by revelations in early 2016 that the McAuliffe administration had given a $1.4 million grant to a Chinese company called Lindenburg Industry to build a factory in Appomattox County, only to find out later that the company was a fiction. The state is still trying to recover the grant.

The Tranlin project is different because the company is real and so are its products, which Virginia and Chesterfield officials watched being made during visits to factories in China.

House Majority Leader M. Kirkland Cox, R-Colonial Heights, has been a major supporter of the Tranlin project, which would be in his House district.

Cox, whom Republicans have designated to become Speaker of the House in January, "is disappointed and frustrated that this once promising project now appears to be faltering," spokesman Parker W. Slaybaugh said Tuesday.

"While he appreciates Tranlins commitment to fulfilling its obligation to repay the Commonwealth Opportunity Fund grant, he believes this project is a prime example of why we should prioritize the use of performance-based incentives that require measurable returns on taxpayer investment, Slaybaugh said.

House Appropriations Chairman S. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, who sits on the MEI Commission, called the Tranlin situation "a perfect example of why we put in place the reforms we have."

The Tranlin plant, operating as Vastly, was envisioned as an economic development coup by Virginia and Chesterfield officials, as well as a boon for farmers who would be able to sell agricultural field waste to the company to convert into paper products and fertilizer.

State and local officials visited Tranlin operations in China before sealing the deal at the beginning of McAuliffe's term.

Originally scheduled to be in full operation by the end of 2019, the project stalled as the company changed leadership and decided to substitute a new technology that it had already installed at a new factory in China. The new technology required a redesign of the project in Chesterfield, so Tranlin said in July it would repay the initial grant by Oct. 24 as it reset its plans for the plant.

"We are thankful for your continued support and understanding, and we look forward to continuing our discussions with VEDP and the commonwealth as our business further develops," Lan told Moret on Tuesday.
RICHMOND  Alleging he was falsely depicted as "a stupid liar who was a sex-crazed maniac," former Richmond mayoral candidate Joe Morrissey has filed a lawsuit against Richmond CBS affiliate WTVR-Channel 6 and longtime local columnist Mark Holmberg over a report the television station aired in the run-up to last year's election.

The suit accuses Holmberg and the station of slander and seeks $1.35 million in damage.

The video column at the center of the allegations ran Sept. 2, 2016, and followed polling in the race that indicated Morrissey was the earlier front-runner in a field of eight candidates.

In the WTVR piece, Holmberg recounted Morrissey's history of legal troubles, including the loss of his Virginia law license for misconduct, repeated citations for contempt, a courthouse fistfight for which he was jailed while serving as the city's commonwealth's attorney, and, most recently, the jail term he served in connection to allegations he had sex with a 17-year-old receptionist in his law office - a charge he continues to deny, though police produced scores of explicit text messages they said the two exchanged and he has since married the woman, who was pregnant with his child at the time the case was being adjudicated.

Holmberg noted in the column that the city had recently been buoyed by positive national attention "as a cool place to live." He argued Morrissey's success in the race would weigh the city down.

"Do we really want to elect this clown, this nonstop, one ring circus, this liar?" Holmberg said - one of several statements from the TV piece that Morrissey alleges are untrue and defamatory in the suit.

Instead, Morrissey describes himself as a "learned man" in the filing.

"In truth and in fact, Mr. Morrissey is not a clown who has his own one ring circus," Morrissey's suit alleges. "Such an accusation is malicious, spiteful, the product of ill-will and is an overt attempt to discredit and destroy his reputation for honesty and integrity."

Stephen P. Hayes, WTVR's general manager and president, said in an email Tuesday that "it is WTVR's policy not to respond to pending legal matters." The suit was filed on Sept. 5 in Richmond Circuit Court, but it's not clear whether the station or Holmberg has been served with the complaint.

Holmberg, who also writes occasional columns for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, could not immediately be reached for comment.

This is not the first time Morrissey has sued a local news outlet. In 2009, he sued Style Weekly over an article detailing his business dealings and legal battles, ultimately receiving an undisclosed cash settlement from the publication.

More recently, Morrissey has been engaged in a legal back-and-forth with former Gov. Doug Wilder alleging Wilder's National Slavery Museum owes Morrissey's law firm $130,000 in fees related to a 2013 tax dispute with the city of Fredericksburg. Morrissey withdrew the suit last month but said he plans to refile it.

Meanwhile, Morrissey faces a series of Virginia State Bar complaints set to go before a three-judge panel in November, including one initiated by Wilder alleging incompetent representation. Morrissey also faces a citation alleging he presented a knowingly false defense in response to the allegations he had sex with the underage receptionist in his law office.
The Karen National Union (KNU) said that more than 20,000 local residents have been forced to flee after two consecutive days of airstrikes by the...
John Kelly had me at the ice. He lost me at the women.

Standing at the podium, in a briefing room that has rarely been so hushed, the White House chief of staff described how the bodies of fallen soldiers are packed in ice, not once but twice, to preserve them on their journey home. Soldiers, he could have said but didn't need to, like his son, Second Lt. Robert Kelly, killed in Afghanistan at age 29.

So I was mesmerized and, to be honest, a bit teary-eyed as the retired four-star general spoke of what it is like to be on the early-morning receiving end of the news that would break any parent's heart.

And I was not prepared, or disposed, to be taken aback by some of what came next  in particular, Kelly's disquisition on the loss of the sacred:

"You know when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor. That's obviously not the case anymore as we've seen from recent cases. Life  the dignity of life  is sacred. That's gone. Religion, that seems to be gone as well. Gold Star families, I think that left in the convention over the summer."

Kelly was on a rhetorical detour here. His main point, fair or not, was that Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson had violated the sanctity of a private phone call between commander in chief and a grieving family when she listened in on an exchange and then blasted President Trump for alleged insensitivity.

Still, it is worth exploring this riff in light of Kelly's prominence and the current circumstances.

My first reaction, and I doubt I was alone here, was along the lines of: Seriously? You're going there?

Leave aside the references to "dignity of life." If Kelly was talking about abortion rights, he can talk to the Supreme Court. Leave aside Kelly's lament for religion, which "seems to be gone as well." How's that, except maybe if you're a Muslim refugee? I doubt Kelly had that in mind.

Leave aside, too, the puzzling reference to Gold Star families. Was Kelly criticizing Khizr Khan for speaking at the Democratic National Convention about his dead son and Donald Trump's assault on the Constitution  or was this a sly dig at Trump's attack on the Khans? "Left in the convention" suggests the former, in which case Kelly should know better. A Gold Star family has the right to hold its grief close, as Kelly has, but it also has the right, when the values for which a child had given his life are under assault, to speak out. Both approaches honor the dead.

But about those women. Um, General Kelly, assuming you were referring to the report on Harvey Weinstein  where were you, exactly, during the presidential campaign? The president you serve  and I respect all the reasons for that service  was shown on videotape bragging about using his star power to get away with grabbing women by their private parts  and he didn't phrase that in a way that showed the respect you think women deserve.

Even if you accept the president's claim that this was mere locker-room talk, even if there wasn't a bounty of other similarly disgusting and objectifying remarks, even if you discount the dozen or so women who came forward in 2016 to claim that Trump assaulted them  why raise this subject? This conduct is unacceptable regardless of party affiliation, whether the alleged perpetrator is Weinstein or Trump or, yes, Bill Clinton. Selective outrage is unbecoming.

Yet there is a more disturbing aspect of Kelly's remarks that risks getting lost in the outrage-du-jour news cycle that is the Trump administration. Kelly, I'm sure, intended his comment about women to be respectful, not dismissive.

But, speaking for this woman at least, that is not what women want or need. To be put on a pedestal also risks being kept in a box. In the good old days that Kelly mourns, women were not so much elevated by gender as constrained by it. Imagine how Kelly's remarks sound to the female service member struggling to prove herself in the male-dominated military culture.

If the upside of chivalry is the opened door, the cape spread upon the muddy ground; the downside is the presumption, perhaps subconscious, that feminine is the equivalent of weak. It is the impulse to treat women in the workplace differently from their male counterparts, and the consequent distortion  sometimes overt, more often subtle  of career choices and opportunities.

Forget sacred. I'll take equal.

Ruth Marcus is a columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group. Email her at ruthmarcus@washpost.com.
Infosys Ltd trimmed its revenue forecast for the year despite reporting a surprise rise in quarterly profit.

Bengaluru: Indian software services company Infosys Ltd trimmed its revenue forecast for the year despite reporting a surprise rise in quarterly profit.

It said it expected its full-year revenue to rise 5.5-6.5 per cent in constant currency, compared with its previous guidance of a 6.5-8.5 per cent increase.

Profit after tax rose 3.3 per cent to 37.26 billion rupees ($573 million) in the second quarter, beating the average analysts estimate of 35.23 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data.

The results are the first since Vishal Sikka quit as chief executive in August after a lengthy feud between the board and the company founders that also led to a reorganisation of the board. Nandan Nilekani, a co-founder and a former CEO, was named chairman and the company continues to search for a new CEO.

Bengaluru-based Infosys said its revenue from operations rose 1.5 per cent to Rs 175.67 billion in the second quarter. Revenue from the financial services segment rose marginally to Rs 47.18 billion.

The Infosys board also reaffirmed that an investigation into alleged improprieties related to the acquisition of Israeli automation firm Panaya found no evidence of any wrongdoing.
Infosys will be declaring its earnings for the quarter ended September on October 24. (Photo: PTI)

Mumbai: After the controversial exit of its former chief operating officer (CEO) Vishal Sikka, all eyes will be on Infosys, as it declares its earnings for the quarter ended September.

The results will also be the first since founder and former CEO Nandan Nilekanis return to the helm of the homegrown technology giant, which was rocked by corporate turbulence in the last few months.

Here is what one can expect in Tuesdays announcement:

1. Results: Analysts expect the quarter to have augured well for Infosys. According to a CNBC poll, profit for the quarter is expected to be at Rs 3,496 crore against Rs 3,483 crore in previous quarter.

2. Fresh strategy: With Aadhaar man Nilekanis return to the company, analysts expect some reforms in the strategy of the company. I have come in to focus on the future of the company, I have come in to take the company forward and deal with its challenges, Nilekani had told investors back in August.

3. Guidance and engaging the current stakeholders: Nilekani must address all second-thoughts among stakeholders to ensure their support to move the company ahead. "The Infosys Board has two key issues to manage currently -- one, ensuring stability by way of managing stakeholder sentiment and two, offering visibility by way of sharing concrete guidance," Greyhound Knowledge Group CEO and Chief Analyst Sanchit Vir Gogia had told PTI.

4. Re-instatement of CLIFE: Infosys is not just one of the biggest IT companies in India but also revolutionised worth ethics and corporate values in the Indian context. Infosys original set of values  CLIFE, that is -- client value, leadership by example, integrity & transparency, fairness, and excellence is expected to be restored.

5. Return of the traditional: Under Sikka, the company had been investing in new technologies like automation, AI, cloud, etc, to keep up with the changing industry needs. According to TOI, Nilekani recognises the potential of traditional applications development & maintenance space, which still forms the bulk of the company's business.
Bengaluru: Will Nandan Nilekani, the new non-executive chairman of Infosys, reveal his new strategy Tuesday when he announces the firms Q2 numbers? Nilekani has been working on the companys new direction in the last couple of months since his re-entry.

Digital will be a key factor in Nilekanis new strategy and Infosys has no choice but to continue to invest in this space, says Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of Dallas-based Everest Group.

"To give you some background facts, explains Samuel, the digital portion of the market is growing at 20 per cent while the legacy arbitrage portion of the market shrank by 2.8 per cent last quarter. This presents Infosys with two separate markets, and two distinct strategies. First, they must participate in the digital segment; this was Vishal (Sikka)s strategy and Nandan has no choice but to continue to invest against this. Without digital there is no long-term future. "

"At the same time, there is an opportunity to consolidate the arbitrage market. Vishal steered away from this and Nandan may choose to redirect some resources to ensure that Infosys is a market consolidator. To do this he must ensure that Infosys services are priced at or below market. (This is something Vishal also did.) the Everest Group chief said.

"A more unlikely strategy is that Infosys start to acquire some arbitrage competitors. This latter move will be hard to sell to the board but is likely to be the fastest way to build value, the Everest Group chief told Financial Chronicle.

I am not sure that Nandan has much choice, given the industrys turn towards digital, he said.

Whatever Nandan does, he faces many key choices. The first is of pricing. Under Vishal Sikka, Infosys rejected the premium pricing strategy and became a price challenger. The market has made it clear that it is unwilling to pay Infosys a pricing premium. If Nandan tries to reverse this we anticipate that growth will stop and Infosys may face a shrinking book of business. However, founders of the company seem want to return to the premium strategy. I hope Nandan will see off this pressure and keep the aggressive pricing, said Samuel.

Sikka made a critical error in promising to maintain high margins. Given the immaturity of the new digital model and the structural differences it seems very unlikely that it will be possible for Infosys to keep the same industry leading margins that it enjoys in the arbitrage business in its new digital business as well, he said.

``If Nandan attempts to keep margins high, Infosys will likely fail in their attempt to grow fast in the digital segment. Compounding this problem is the ongoing downward pressure on margins in the arbitrage space. Hence, promises to the investors to keep high margins will likely create insurmountable headwinds. Having said this, I think it will be very hard for Nandan to challenge the investors and lower expectations on margins.

On the acquisition front, if Infosys is going to be successful in either consolidating the arbitrage market or growing in the digital market it must change its posture on acquisitions. The company requires an aggressive inorganic strategy essential for it to outperform in the digital market. In the consolidation of the arbitrage market, a selective acquisition strategy would greatly aid Infosys at becoming a winner in the upcoming industry consolidation. ``Having said all this, I think Nandan faces an uphill battle to both convince the board and Infosys management of the acquisition imperative. Even if he does get the stakeholders behind him, executing these strategies will be hard as Vishal demonstrated when he tried to accelerate the digital acquisitions, he said.

I think Nandan faces a difficult uphill battle to both heal internal stakeholder wounds while dealing with a rapidly changing market place. This journey will be long and hard and will involve overcoming numerous obstacles. The first step is to set a realistic set of objectives, this will be hard to do as investors, management and customers are all in very different places regarding expectations. Expectations on margins must be lowered, expectations on growth must be realistic, expectations on the amount of investment in IP must be increased, the capital for acquisitions must be dramatically increased. Finally, the new leadership must be given time to execute. All of this will be hard and will take every ounce of leadership Nandan has to offer, said Samuel.

By EverestGroup observation, a key problem with Infosys governance in the past has been a naive view of the changing marketplace and the place customers accord to the company. Hence, promises were extracted, and promises were made, which caused Infosys to fail against its promises and lose credibility with its investors. This resulted in some flawed strategies which inevitably led Infosys to the current crisis. It will be interesting to see if

Nandan recognises the market for what it is and align expectations with realistic goals. If he fails at this, the company will face a similar crisis in a year or two.

It is also critical that Nandan must find a way to reduce the influence of founders. No future CEO will be able to stand against the whisper campaign, like the one that was launched against Vishal, said Samuel.
Union minister K J Alphons said that India aims to create 100 million jobs through tourism in the next five years. (File Photo)

New Delhi: India aims to create 100 million jobs through tourism and attract 40 million foreign tourists annually in the next five years, Union minister K J Alphons said on Monday.

The minister also said that at present, 14.4 million international tourists visit India annually. The annual foreign exchange earning (through tourists' spending) is about Rs 1.56 lakh crore.

"We have set an aim of providing 100 million jobs through the tourism sector and (attracting) 40 million foreign tourists annually into India in the next five years. Today, we are providing about 43 million jobs," the Minister of State for Tourism said at a press conference.

After meeting the CEOs of companies investing in the sector and deliberating upon how to maximise its potential, Alphons asserted he would "strongly recommend" to the finance ministry for a reduction in the GST rate for five-star hotel rooms attracting a tariff of Rs 7,500 and above.

"They (industry) feel the taxes are too high. We would certainly bat for the industry and request the finance ministry to bring down the tax rates so that there will be much better acceptance," the minister said.

Besides, Alphons said, the ministry was in advanced stages of a proposal to provide infrastructure status to the tourism industry for projects up to Rs 50 crore and will soon approach the union Cabinet for its approval on the same.

"With the infrastructure status, possibly the lending rates would come down, states would be able to give land on much better terms to the hotel industry," Alphons pointed out.

Elaborating upon the suggestions that emerged from the day-long deliberations, the minister said the tourism industry has sought a single-window clearance mechanism for approvals. "Even though things have been made much easier at the Centre by the Government of India, they (industry) feel that things are still complicated at the state level. You need about 70 permits for a hotel to be opened, this is outrageous. We need to bring down the number of permits which are required to operate a hotel down to the minimum," he said.

Moreover, Alphons said, the tourism industry feels that it is extremely expensive to set up hotels in India because the land cost is extremely high. "We had proposals from the tourism industry which basically talked about providing land at concessional rate or lease so that one does not have to pay the complete amount upfront. We also agree in the ministry that the cost of land must come down dramatically otherwise they will not be able to set up hotels," said the minister.

Observing that there is a shortage of two lakh rooms across the country in the Rs 2,000 (per day tariff hotels) and below segment, Alphons highlighted the need for massive investment by the sector.

Besides, he said, the government and the industry will work together to ensure the availability of skilled professionals for the hospitality sector. "We have a fairly large number of hospitality institutes run by the ministry itself and we along with the private sector will work on a massive skill development programme," he said.

The minister also conveyed the decision to set up four joint working groups to handle various issues. The working groups will comprise of representatives from the government, tourism industry, Invest India and Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion.

"They (working group) will meet very often and sort out issues, make recommendations to the ministry. We will follow up on these issues meticulously," Alphons said.

He said the tourism sector sought establishment of a national tourism board for constant engagement between the tourism ministry and the industry and a regulatory framework for home stay, etc, adding that the ministry will certainly look into both suggestions.

India currently attracts 1 per cent of global tourists and the government expects to double the numbers over the next five years, Tourism Secretary Rashmi Verma said.

Besides, Verma said the ministry is looking at creating better facilities at the airport so that tourists coming to India get clearance faster and don't have to stand in queues. "We are also setting up facilitation centres at some of the key airports like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, etc to facilitate the people who are coming on e-visas," Verma said.

She said the ministry was trying to completely change the mindset and ensure that the country's world heritage sites and the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) protected monuments have world-class infrastructure facilities.

"We have launched a new scheme called Adopt a Heritage, in which we have offered select ASI monuments and the World Heritage sites for adoption by the industry or the public sector for setting up basic amenities like clean toilets, clean drinking water. Seven sites have already been selected by the public sector and the private sector (for adoption). We are very hopeful that we will succeed in creating world-class facilities at our ASI monuments and world heritage sites in partnership with the private and public sector to provide a much better experience to tourists," Verma said.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is due to make a major announcement on Tuesday evening, is likely to do so in relation with recapitalisation of public sector banks. (Photo: PTI)

Mumbai: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is due to make a major announcement on Tuesday evening, is likely to do so in relation with recapitalisation of public sector banks, said media reports.

The Finance Minister may announce the plan for raising the capital of state-owned banks like United Bank of India, UCO Bank, Corporation Bank, Allahabad Bank, Indian Overseas Bank and Dena Bank, among others reeling under the pressure of credit crunch, sources told CNBC TV18.

This announcement comes after a series of meetings between the finance minister and the Prime Minister on the worsening scenario of the public sector banks which are saddled with bad loans.

According to sources, announcements regarding recap bonds may be on the cards. Recap bonds can be sold to banks, which can then be converted into equity after a certain period and may not be considered as fiscal deficit. A similar tactic was used in the 1990s with the issue of oil and the fertilizer bonds.

Earlier in August, the Union Cabinet had decided to set up an Alternative Mechanism to oversee proposals for expeditious consolidation of public sector banks (PSBs) "so as to create large, strong lenders". This decision followed public sector bank, State Bank of India merging its five associate banks, as also the Bharatiya Mahila Bank, with itself.
Business / Companies

by Staff reporter

AUTO TYRES Zimbabwe, previously known as Dunlop Zimbabwe, is set to resume operations at the beginning of next year after acquiring modern tyre-making equipment that will enhance competitive production.The Bulawayo-based giant factory stopped production at the end of last year citing working capital and foreign currency constraints to procure critical raw materials."The directors of the company have been actively sourcing funding and are close to accessing the required working capital. NSSA and local financial institutions have been approached and the plan is to re-open at the beginning of the year 2018," director, Mr Benson Samudzimu, told Business Chronicle yesterday."The company has been registering ex-employees since volumes are expected to double and eventually treble to what the company had been averaging in 2016, resulting in a higher level of direct employment."He said the modern tyre manufacturing equipment was purchased by shareholders (value not disclosed) in July this year. Mr Samudzimu said the new equipment would widen the range of tyres that Auto Tyres will produce and hinted that commissioning of the new line would be done before the start of production. He said the firm was now seeking working capital to resume operations using a lean production model that reduces costs.At its peak, Dunlop Zimbabwe used to employ up to 2 000 workers directly with significant impact downstream along the value chain. Zimbabwe now relies on imported tyres following the demise of local manufacturers, a trend that contributes to the high import bill.Mr Samudzimu said the revival of Dunlop would not only reignite the Belmont Industrial area but create more job opportunities beyond the previous employment levels.He said Government restrictions on importation of second hand tyres coupled with the general shortage of foreign currency in the country has resulted in reduced tyre imports, thereby creating a compelling case for locally produced tyres. On average Zimbabwe consumes tyres worth about $150 million, he said, all of which are presently being imported."Auto Tyres Zimbabwe has the capacity to produce 6 000 tons of tyres per year worth $50 million and this can be increased to its glory days of over 7 000 tons per year."The amount of foreign currency injection required to produce up to 5 400 tons per year is $12 million, which would save the country at least $50 million in hard currency if we produce locally," said Mr Samudzimu."Additional foreign currency can be earned from exports into the region where we used to export before. There is an opportunity to rescuscitate the tyre production industry in Zimbabwe. With enough working capital the tyre factory can be re-opened and retrenched workers can be rehired."Dunlop used to export to countries such as Zambia and South Africa. Zoomway (Pvt) Limited, an indigenous company, acquired 51 percent shareholding in Auto Tyres Zimbabwe in April last year. Previously the company was a subsidiary of Apollo Tyres. Mr Samudzimu said while the firm was open to mutually beneficial partnerships, it also required a cocktail of fiscal support measures to ensure viable tyre production."The Ministries of Industry and Commerce and Finance have done a lot thus far but in addition to that assistance, there is a need for working capital and machinery."Furthermore, foreign currency guaranteed availability is necessary for cost effective tyre production as at the moment most companies are now using unorthodox sources of foreign currency to remain in business," he said.In order for production to remain viable, Mr Samudzimu said the tonnage produced has to be at a certain economic minimum level, which could not be reached without additional working capital and foreign currency to pay for raw materials.He said it was this dilemma that resulted in unsustainable losses forcing the firm to suspend operations. In the long term, Mr Samudzimu said Dunlop would work on easing costs by procuring more energy efficient equipment.He said the company would not be allowed to die given the demand for locally manufactured tyres.
GST Network CEO Prakash Kumar said that the portal is planning to launch an online application process, as well as a separate mobile app for easy provision of refunds to exporters. (File Photo)

Mumbai: To facilitate easy provision of refunds to exporters, GST Network CEO Prakash Kumar on Monday said that the portal is planning to launch an online application process, as well as a separate mobile app for the same.

The GST Council in its last meet in New Delhi announced that exporters will start getting their refunds for August and September in October. The process of providing refunds for the IGST paid by exporters in July has started from October 10.

Exporters can start to claim refunds for IGST paid in August and September this week with the launch of the online application process and the mobile app.

For August and September, while the initial return GSTR- 3B has already been filed, the final return GSTR-1 has not yet been filed.

"A separate online app for claiming Integrated GST (IGST) refunds for August and September would be made available on GSTN portal this week," Kumar told PTI.

GSTNs app will allow exporters to save and upload their sales data which are part of GSTR-1 after filling up export details in Table 6A. The table, bearing the exporters digital signatures, will be then extracted separately and would automatically go to the customs department.

The customs department will then tally the information with the shipping bill data and also the taxes paid in GSTR-3B. The refund amount would be either credited to exporter's bank account through ECS or a cheque would be issued in his or her name.

The GST Council, headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, had in the last meeting recognised the fact that exporters credit was being blocked. He declared that each exporter will get an e-wallet, where a notional amount will be paid to him or her as an advance credit through which they can pay their taxes.

The Council also declared that for the rest of the fiscal, they will carry on their business under an exempted category paying a nominal 0.1 per cent GST.

(With PTI inputs)
The government may increase the MSP of wheat by Rs 100 to Rs 1,725 a quintal for this year. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The government may hike the minimum support price (MSP) of wheat by Rs 100 to Rs 1,725 a quintal for this year, a government source said on Monday.

A decision in this regard is likely to be taken in the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) meeting scheduled for Tuesday.

The MSP is the rate at which government buys the grain from farmers. At present, wheat MSP is Rs 1,625 per quintal.

"The MSP of rabi crops including wheat for the 2018-19 marketing year is on the agenda of the CCEA meeting tomorrow. The proposal is to raise the support price for wheat by Rs 100 per quintal for 2018-19," the source said.

Wheat is the main rabi crop, sowing of which will begin from this month. The crop will be marketed from next year April onwards.

In the cabinet note, the agriculture ministry has proposed MSP of seven rabi crops -- wheat, barley, gram, masur, rapeseed/mustard and safflower -- based on the recommendations of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP).
Mumbai: Varun Dhawan is currently high on the super success of Judwaa 2. The actor who debuted in 2011 with Karan Johars fancy launch-pad Student Of The Year, has given 9 back-to-back hits only strengthens his position as the most star amongst his contemporaries.

In the recent chat with a leading daily, the actor was talking about different kind of challenges that a todays actor has to face today.

Talking about his career and movie choices, Varun stated, "Not just as an actor but as a person too, I always wanted to experience different things. In fact, I was the same as a student as well. For instance - for two years in a row I would get my highest marks in history and perform very badly in math. But surprisingly, I would get my highest marks in math next year. I was never good at math, but there were years when I scored 85-90 marks in it, which was very good at that time! But I would subsequently go back to [doing well in] other subjects. So, I am very random with my selections. I like to explore different things. Also, I dont believe that a person can be good at only one thing."

Asking about trolling culture on social media, Varun promptly said, "I feel this is part and parcel of fame. Journalists must be getting more trolled than me. It happens; what can you do about it? I feel that the more successful you get, the more you will face it."

Varun concluded by saying, "I did not face [trolling] at all in the first three-four years [of my career] even though I probably misbehaved more back then started getting trolled more when I am well behaved. But its not only me; even the biggest stars face it, so who am I?"

Well, the qualities like this is what makes this young star the most desirable.

Varun Dhawan will be seen next in YRF's romantic film Sui-Dhaga alongside Anushka Sharma and in Shoojit Sircar's next.
It'd be the first time that Atul Agnihotri, Salman Khan and Ali Abbas Zafar will be working together on the same film.

Mumbai: Despite the debacle of Tubelight this time, Salman Khans fondness for the festival of Eid, delivering back-to-back hits right from the career-redefining Wanted in 2008, is well-known.

While we are not aware if hed release a film during Eid in 2018, with Race 3, his next film after Tiger Zinda Hai yet to kick off, the superstar is all set to treat his fans on the festival in 2019.

Salman will star in and as Bharat, a film that will reunites him with his brother-in-law, former actor Atul Agnihotri, who had produced his hit Bodyguard, also an Eid release in 2011, according to a report in Mumbai Mirror.

Bharat (is) a character that I thought would resonate with him. It's a huge responsibility making a film with Salman as there are big expectations that come with the job, Atul confirmed the news to the tabloid.

Not just Atul, after working with director Remo DSouza in Race 3, Salman will also be reuniting with Ali Abbas Zafar.

It seems Ali, who had directed Salman in Sultan and is helming his current Tiger Zinda Hai, has become his most favourite director.

On why he himself didn't decide to direct the film himself but chose Ali, Atul said, I feel I contribute better as a producer. Ali is a friend, I love his work and eventually it's all about connecting with the source. If you speak to him, you will realise that Ali is far more passionate about the material.

The film will be an official remake of 2014 South Korean drama Ode To My Father.

Atul said, That film is just the starting point for ours, but since it was an inspiration, we wanted in all fairness to officially own it and acquired the remake rights before going ahead with Bharat.

He added, It starts in 1947 and ends in 2000 and is the journey of a country and also a person, both of whom go by the name of Bharat.

Any possibility of a Bodyguard 2 happening? But I wasn't sure I wanted to encash on Bodyguard 2 when I had an opportunity to make another film with Salman. I was looking for something bigger, something with more conviction. At the end of the day, Bodyguard was a formula film. What was beautiful about it was the twist in the climax. Without that we would only be taking the character forward and rather than do that, I wanted to engage in something far more challenging and cinematic.

With the exception of Tubelight, all of Salmans releases like Wanted, Dabangg, Bodyguard, Ek Tha Tiger, Kick, Bajrangi Bhaijaan and Sultan have been big hits and the occasion holds a special place in not just his or but also his fans hearts.

Atul said, I'm very conscious about Salman's fan base and what they want. And once again, I'm convinced that being a family film Bharat is worthy of coming during the festive time. Anyway, an Eid release is always every producer's preferred choice.

After Akshay Kumar booked Holi for the release of Kesari, heres another festival release date that has been booked in 2019.
Tamil superstar Rajinikanth today lauded the crew of actor Vijays starrer Mersal, saying the film has addressed an important issue. However, in a terse Twitter message, he did not explicitly refer to any specific issue, although the film has courted controversy over Goods and Services Tax, with BJP claiming that there have been incorrect references to the central taxation.

Important topic addressed..... well done!!! congratulations team #mersal Rajinikanth said in a brief tweet. Diwali release Mersal has kicked up a row with the BJP taking exception to references on GST in the movie. BJP leaders, including Raja, a national secretary in the party, state president Tamilisai Soundarajan and Union minister Pon Radhakrishnan, have been demanding that the incorrect references be deleted from the big-budget flick.

However, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, his senior colleague P. Chidambaram, DMK working president M.K. Stalin, veteran star Kamal Haasan and a host of Tamil cinema industry representatives had supported the film crew on the issue.

The BJP had on October 20 objected to what it termed as untruths regarding the GST in just-released Mersal, and wanted dialogues on the central taxation to be deleted.

Actor Vishal had earlier accused Raja of advocating piracy by watching the movie online, a charge rejected by latter.
Thiruvananthapuram: Prolific filmmaker I V Sasi who, along with K G George, Padmarajan and Bharathan, moved Malayalam cinema firmly away from the stuffy studio-made formulaic films of the 70s and 80s, died in Chennai on Tuesday. He was 69. The filmmaker, who was suffering from a spate of illnesses, died on way to hospital from his residence in Saligramam in Chennai. Sasi leaves behind wife and actor Seema and two children Anu and Ani. Sasi experimented with a bewildering variety of genres in his 150-odd films  from revenge sagas and forbidden liaisons to political satires and period dramas  but made them all accessible to the common man. Unlike his celebrated peers, Sasi emerged as the states greatest ever crowd-pleaser. His associations with M T Vasudevan Nair, Padmarajan and T Damodaran produced all-time classics.

The name not only brought in crowds but Sasi also had the rare ability to mesmerize a multitude to do his bidding in front of the camera. Modern filmmakers resort to technology but it still remains a mystery as to how Sasi managed to make a crowd emote for him. It is similar to taming an elephant that had turned violent with a mere glance, said filmmaker M Padmakumar, who had assisted Sasi in 18 films.

Sasi was perhaps one of the few filmmakers in the country who understood the aesthetics of anarchy. He would be keenly aware of the performance of a person in the crowd as he would be about his main actors like Mammootty or Mohanlal, said Ramachandra Babu, his cinematographer for at least 10 films. Some of his political blockbusters like Eenadu, Iniyenkulum, Vartha and Adimakal Udamakal reflect the frightening chaos of a messy revolution and yet holds together as a coherent whole. Eenadu (1982) packs umpteen weighty issues within its two-and-a-half hour duration  college violence, spurious liquor, souring Gulf dreams, political corruption, waning political idealism - and yet emerges creatively unscathed.

He was also a peculiar kind of alchemist who had the crowd cheering for him even when he performed the emotionally and politically tricky act of striking at the roots of orthodoxy. Aroodam (1982) and Avalude Raavukal (1978) mocked at taboos and still won awards and hearts. Sasi won the Nargis Dutt Award for the best feature film on national integration in 1982 for Aarodaam. He shared the national award with the film's producer. Sasi did art direction in 45-odd South Indian films before graduating into independent director with Ulsavam in 1975, in which he cast against the grain; leading villain K P Ummer was his choice of hero. Ulsavam, however, was only his second film.

Earlier, on buddy Kamal Hassan's recommendation, Telugu actress Vijay Nirmala asked him to direct a film. She gave him the film on the condition that their credits will be swapped. She will get credit as director, he the producer. The film was Kaatu Vithachu, a big hit then. A native of Kozhikode, Sasi was a diploma holder from Madras School of Arts. Some of his well-known blockbusters include "Alkoottathil Thaniye", "Kanamarayathu", "Aksharangal", "Vadakaykkoru Hrudayam", "Itha Ivide Vare", "Angadi", "Ee Nadu", "Vartha", "Devasuram" and "Avanazhi". In 2015, Kerala government presented him with the J C Daniel Award, the highest film honour in the state.
Gopichands upcoming film Oxygen is all set to release soon. At the audio function of the film on Monday in Hyderabad, the actor revealed, When I was a kid, I saw A.M. Ratnam garu with my father. Later he became a passionate producer and made some good films. When Jyothi Krishna came to me and narrated this subject, I liked it and told Ratnam garu that I wanted to do this film if he could produce it.

The actor praised director Jyothi Krishna for doing a good job and added, I always wanted to work with music director Yuvan Sankar Raja and it finally happened with this film.

Senior actor Jagapathi Babu is also playing an important role in the film. After Lakshyam, I worked with him on this film and he is an experienced actor, said Gopichand.

Anu Emanuel and Raashi Khanna are the two female leads.
The Telugu film Adirindi, the dubbed version of Tamil superstar Vijays film Mersal, was supposed to be released on the 18th of this month along with the original Tamil film. However, the makers claim that they could not release it as the Telugu version was not censored in time.

Although many believe that the Telugu version is being censored in Hyderabad, generally for any language film, if the producer wants to dub it in another language, they apply for censor clearance at the same place where the original film is done. In the case of Adirindi, the makers applied for the Telugu version to be censored in Chennai at the last minute, thus delaying it.

Mersal

Meanwhile, Sharrath Marar, who is releasing the Telugu version, has put nearly Rs 3 crore on the promotions. He had even made agreements with the theatres, but at the nth hour, everything went wrong. I hope the film releases this Friday. I am confident that it will do well, says Sharrath, who adds that he is in touch with the Tamil film producer Murali with regard to the films Telugu release.
Actor Sundeep Kishan is eagerly looking forward to his bilingual film C/o Surya, which is releasing in both Tamil and Telugu.

I am confident because its a good film and I made an honest attempt, says the actor.

Suseendran is the director and this film is like a sequel to his earlier film Naa Peru Siva. This film is not as intense as the first one and is more entertaining, adds Sundeep Kishan.

Mehreen is the female lead and this is her fourth release, her three previous films have all been successful. The films first look was released by Tamil superstar Suriya.
(From Left to Right) Theresa Villiers, Mary Creagh, Jess Phillips and Baroness Jenkins. The revelations come at the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal where 30 Hollywood actresses have come forward to claim that the movie mogul allegedly sexually assaulted them.

Four female UK politicians have joined a growing number of women who are speaking out about the abuse they have suffered as a part of the me too campaign that has taken social media by storm.

While Baroness Jenkins admitted that men used to hit on her all the time when she first joined the Parliament as a secretary in 1970s, another Tory politician revealed than an MP stroked her neck while she drove her car. Labour MP Mary Creagh went on to reveal that she was sexually abused as a child in the playground and even had her bottom pinched by a priest as a teenager.

Even Labour MP Jess Phillips had her boss try and assault her while Tory MP Theresa Villers had to fend off groping hands at a Tory function in the 90s.

Speaking to Mail Online, Maria Miller, chairwoman of the women and equalities select committee, said that she experienced more abuse as an MP than in her 20-year advertising career.

Speaking to the Evening Standard, Baroness Jenkins, now 61, said, 'Men used to hit on you all the time. They would say, "I had a dream about you last night"... these things affect people differently. She went on to add that she hopes it is not a common thing today.

The Tory peer founded the Tory Women2Win campaign to boost the number of female MPs.

Labour MP for Wakefield Creagh too was attacked as a seven-year-old in her school playground. Speaking to the newspaper, she said that she had

Ms Creagh, the Labour MP for her underwear torn off during a game of kiss chase and was sexually assaulted by about 12 older boys. The MP said she only spoke about the incident for the first time around a week ago when she was speaking with friends about the Weinstein scandal.

Creagh was further assaulted by a parish priest when she was 16. She also recalled a teacher who had given her a lift drove her to his house and turned off the lights before trying to kiss her.

The Wakefield MP said that female MPs used to face sexual harassment and humiliation in the Chamber, with male MPs making crude melon jokes about them.

Villiers told The Daily Mail that she had to fend off groping hands at a Conservative function and Phillips, Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, recalled her boss trying to assault her after a night out before she became an MP.

The 'Me Too' campaign, on its part, has seen millions of women from around the world coming forward to speak out against sexual abuse with testimonies of rape, sexual assault and harassment, at the hands of men.
News / National

by Staff reporter

A Gweru municipal police officer was seriously injured after he was attacked by rowdy vendors who resisted having their wares confiscated as Gweru City Council cracked down on street vendors yesterday.Council had given vendors up to Sunday to clear the streets following a directive that local authorities should rid the streets of vendors.At least five vendors were arrested yesterday after council roped in the police to deal with some vendors who turned violent. A snap survey carried out by The Herald yesterday showed that a sizeable number of illegal vendors continued to operate on the streets while they were involved in running battles with the police. There was a fight between municipal police and vendors at the intersection of Main Street and Leopold Takawira Avenue at about 12 pm as the vendors resisted to have their wares confiscated.Vendors could be seen pelting stones at municipal police. One of the municipal police collapsed after he was hit by a stone in the head and an ambulance was quickly brought to the scene. Some defiant vendors barricaded Leopold Takawira Avenue using litter bins and stones to obstruct patrolling council vehicles. Municipal police and council officials including Chamber Secretary Mr Vakai Chikwekwe, had to scurry for cover as vendors continued to pelt stones at them. Police had to intervene to restore sanity and managed to arrest five suspects. Acting Midlands police spokesperson, Assistant Inspector Ethel Mukwende said she was yet to get a report when she was contacted for comment yesterday."I'm not aware of the incident. I am yet to get a report but will furnish you with the details once we receive a report," she said. Gweru Town Clerk, Ms Elizabeth Gwatipedza confirmed the skirmishes but said she did not have finer details by yesterday evening."We had officials on the ground I am yet to get full details of what transpired on the ground," she said.
The girls condition was stable as the injury she suffered was not serious, doctors said.

COIMBATORE: The district police have launched a search for two persons who fled in motorcycle after slitting the throat of a class six girl of a government school near Avinashi in Tirupur district on Monday.

Police said that the 11-year-old minor girl, daughter of Murugan, a private mill worker residing in Nambiyampalayam near Avinashi, was heading to school this morning when two youth on a bike stalked her.

As they approached an isolated spot, the youth, slowed down their bike, allegedly slit the girls throat and sped away.

The girl raised an alarm, even as shocked passers-by on that stretch turned panic seeing her bleeding.

The girl was rescued by some other motorists passing by and rushed to the government hospital at Avinashi.

Doctors effectively stopped the bleeding. The girls condition was stable as the injury she suffered was not serious, doctors said.

On receiving information from members of the public, Avinashi police have lodged a complaint and started a full-fledged investigations to know the reason for the attack.
Based on the information, police registered a case of rape and under charges of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences(Pocso) Act. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: A 15-year-old girl was impregnated by her 19-year-old alleged boyfr-iend. The issue came to light when the girls mother took her to a hospital to abort the pregnancy.

According to the police, the girl who is studying SSC in a government high school, was brought to Gandhi hospital in Secunderabad, by her mother to abort the foetus.

After learning the girl was a minor, doctors refused their plea and alerted the police officials.

Based on the information, police registered a case of rape and under charges of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences(Pocso) Act.

The suspect identified as Praveen, is a resident of Lothukunta and is working at a private store and had befriended her in the guise of love and impregnated her.

The police arrested the suspect and sent him on remand on Tuesday.
Chennai: Actor Vijay on Wednesday issued a statement condemning the online abuse of a female journalist in Twitter by people claiming to be his fans.

Journalist Dhanya Rajendran, editor of an online news-aggregating site was harassed online and trolled after her remarks about a movie of the actor. The journalist filed a complaint with the city police on Tuesday.

I am a person who respects women. Anyone has the right to criticise any movie. I am of the opinion that women should not be denigrated under any circumstances, the actor said in a statement issued in Tamil.

He also requested to not make comments on social media that denigrate woman.

Everyone should respect women and I request that no comments or statements be issued or posted on social media regarding women that would offend anyone.

The cyber wing of city police had earlier registered an FIR on Dhanyas complaint.
Narendra Patel blamed Varun Patel, another former associate of Hardik Patel, for the entire scenario. (Photo: ANI/File)

Ahmedabad: Days after alleging that he was offered Rs 1 crore to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Narendra Patel on Tuesday filed an application in a Gandhinagar court in Gujarat, seeking probe in the bribery case.

Close aide of Hardik Patel, Narendra, joined the BJP on Sunday.

A few hours after Narendra was inducted into the BJP, he convened a press conference late on Sunday night displaying bundle of cash, summing up to Rs 10 lakh, which he claimed was the first instalment of a crore used to bait him into joining the BJP.

Narendra blamed Varun Patel, another former associate of Hardik Patel, for the entire scenario.

Varun, who joined the BJP on Saturday, has denied the accusations.

The court will hear Narendras request for an investigation on Wednesday.
Sana Iqbal, 29, and her husband Abdul Nadeem were travelling in a car and heading home in Tolichowki in Hyderabad when it rammed the median on the Outer Ring Road (Photo: Facebook)

Hyderabad: Cross-country woman motorcycle rider Sana Iqbal, who undertook a solo expedition to raise awareness about suicide and depression, died in a car crash near in Hyderabad early Tuesday morning, police said.

Her husband was injured in the accident that took place on the city outskirts around 3.30 am, a police official said.

Sana, 29, and her husband Abdul Nadeem were travelling in a car and heading home in Tolichowki in Hyderabad when it rammed the median on the Outer Ring Road, said Narsingi Police Station Inspector G V Ramana Goud.

"Sana's husband Abdul Nadeem was driving the car. Sana, who suffered severe injuries in the mishap, was shifted to a nearby hospital but was declared brought dead. Her husband, who received injuries, is undergoing treatment," Goud said.

(Photo: Facebook)

The Hyderabad-based rider hit the headlines a few years ago when she undertook a solo motorcycle expedition across the country to raise awareness about suicide.

The focus of her campaign was to educate people, particularly students, against committing suicide.

A case under IPC section 304A (causing death by negligence) and other relevant sections was registered, police added.
Appearing as a witness, Jay Shah also told the court that his friends and well-wishers told him that the article dented his reputation. (Photo: PTI)

Ahmedabad: An Ahmedabad court on Tuesday issued summonses to respondents in the criminal defamation case filed by BJP chief Amit Shah's son Jay against news portal 'The Wire' over a derogatory report against Jays firms.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate SK Gadhvi issued summonses to journalist Rohini Singh, five editors and the non-profit company that publishes The Wire. The summonses are returnable by November 13.

The metropolitan court issued summonses after it prima facie found that a case of defamation punishable with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both under section 500 of IPC was made out against all the seven respondents.

The order was issued after considering the depositions of three witnesses, including Jay Amit Shah, as well as documentary evidences produced by his lawyer SV Raju.

Making his submissions on Tuesday, Raju said, "The article was not published in good faith and was aimed at tarnishing the reputation of his client".

Before issuing summonses, the court conducted an inquiry into the complaint under CrPC section 202 to ascertain whether there was sufficient ground for proceeding against the respondents.

In his application, Shah prayed for criminal action against the respondents for "defaming and tarnishing" his reputation by publishing an article, which was "scandalous, frivolous, misleading, derogatory, libellous and consisting of several defamatory statements."

The seven respondents in the case are the author of the article Rohini Singh, founding editors of the news portal Siddarth Varadarajan, Sidharth Bhatia and M K Venu, managing editor Monobina Gupta, public editor Pamela Philipose and the Foundation for Independent Journalism, the non-profit company that publishes 'The Wire'.

The case has been filed under IPC sections 500 (defamation), 109 (abetment), 39 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy).

Two businessmen  Jaimin Shah and Rajiv Shah  who appeared as witnesses, said they had received the article through WhatsApp and informed Jay Shah about it after realising that it "hurt" his reputation.

Appearing as a witness, Jay Shah also told the court that his friends and well-wishers told him that the article dented his reputation.

His lawyer Raju submitted before the court that the purpose of the article was not to give a bonafide account of the company or his client but to defame him keeping the state Assembly elections in mind.

He said there was "something fishy about the article" as it was "published hurriedly to make it an issue for the elections".

In his complaint, Shah said that the accused conspired to get a "fabricated, reworded, and edited version of the defamatory article to be published in place of the original version."

Raju told the court that Shah was given "unreasonable" time to respond to a questionnaire and claimed no further inquiry based on the response was made.

The complainant said a "predetermined conspiracy" was hatched to defame him.

A political storm erupted after the article titled 'Golden touch of Jay Amit Shah' was published. The Congress demanded sacking of Amit Shah as BJP chief and institution of a judicial inquiry into the entire episode, while the BJP called the article defamatory.
The ordinance protects both serving and former judges, magistrates and public servants in Rajasthan from being investigated for on-duty action without prior sanction. In picture: Senior BJP leader Ghanshyam Tiwari. (Photo: ANI)

Jaipur: Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ghanshyam Tiwari on Tuesday asked the Vasundhara Raje-government to withdraw the Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance.

"There is no need for a select committee to reconsider it," Tiwari said, while urging the government to retract the bill.

Amid protests, Rajasthan sends 'gag' ordinance to Assembly select committee

The former state education minister also said that the controversial law should not be passed as it would shield the open loot of the ministers and public servants.

"The law will shield the open loot of the chief minister, ministers, and public servants. The Government will now take a decision on the ordinance and the chairman will be the minister who projected this bill," Tiwari, who was issued a notice for anti-party activities by BJP in May this year, said.

The Rajasthan government, in the current legislative session, passed an ordinance that protects both serving and former judges, magistrates and public servants in the state from being investigated for on-duty action without prior sanction.

The ordinance also sought to bar the media from reporting on accusations against judges and bureaucrats till the sanction to proceed with the probe is obtained.

The ordinance is an amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
'Terrorism anywhere is a threat everywhere,' Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi/Manila: Terrorism and radicalisation through social media pose a "serious" security challenge to all countries and a strong collective action is required to fight the "scourge", Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday.

Speaking at the 4th ASEAN Defence Ministers' meeting in the Philippines, Sitharaman said the global strategic and security situation was constantly evolving and had thrown up fresh and serious challenges.

"The defence and security scenario in our shared region has also witnessed significant changes recently. Our countries now need to simultaneously prepare for traditional (military) and non-traditional threats," she said.

Terming terrorism a "trans-national phenomena" which needed strong collective action, Sitharaman praised the Philippines for resolutely addressing the threat posed by terrorists in the southern part of the country.

"New developments in social media and cyberspace have expanded the threat, as these are exploited by terrorists to develop less visible but lethal ways and means of manipulating minds of the people," she said in a statement.

"I wish to commend the Philippines for reiterating India's zero tolerance for terrorism anywhere and under any circumstances. There are no good terrorists," she said.

Sitharaman said the transnational activism of terrorist groups and the "spectre" of returning foreign fighters as well as the conduct of irresponsible states that provide safe havens, funding and even encouragement to terrorist groups all needed to be addressed jointly and comprehensively.

"Terrorism anywhere is a threat everywhere," she said.

"India has taken resolute measures to fight the scourge of terrorism from across its borders. We fully recognise the role of joint mechanisms with our partners and the role of international and regional forums in fighting this menace.

"The recent, BRICS Summit Declaration condemning all forms of terrorism and identifying a number of terrorist organisations engaged in dastardly acts was a positive step...We should be clear and unequivocal in our condemnation of terrorism," she was quoted as saying in the statement.

Sitharaman said the maritime security was another key concern and India supports freedom of navigation, overflight and commerce throughout the region.

"Nations should resolve maritime disputes peacefully and in accordance with international law. We support a rules based order for oceans and sea that is critical for the continued growth and development of the Indo-Pacific region," she said.

Sitharaman also said that the nuclear and missile tests conducted by North Korea were in violation of its international commitments and have triggered serious concern.

"India has deplored these tests. We remain concerned about the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted India's national security and that of the entire region. It is important that North Korea's proliferation linkages are investigated and those who have supported its nuclear and missile programme are held accountable," she said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghan President Ghani discussed range of bilateral, regional & global issues, express firm resolve to end menace of terrorism. (Photo: MEAIndia | Twitter)

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, on Tuesday, discussed a range of bilateral, regional and global issues and expressed their "firm resolve" to end the menace of terrorism.

The two leaders also discussed ways to further the shared objective of promoting security and stability in Afghanistan.

"Furthering 'neighbourhood first' policy with a strategic partner. Prime Minister Modi receives president Ghani at Hyderabad House," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.

"Prime Minister Modi and president Ghani discussed range of bilateral, regional and global issues, express firm resolve to end menace of terrorism," he added.

PM @narendramodi & President Ghani discussed range of bilateral, regional & global issues, express firm resolve to end menace of terrorism pic.twitter.com/D1XQTvUoGA  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) October 24, 2017

Earlier, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called on Ghani, who is in Delhi on a one-day working visit. Ghani also met his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind.

Ahead of his visit, the ministry had said both sides will have the opportunity to review the entire gamut of multifaceted bilateral strategic partnership, including the New Development Partnership.

They would hold consultations and coordinate on furthering the shared objective of promoting peace, security, stability and prosperity in Afghanistan and efforts to combat the menace of terrorism.
Bengaluru: While the news of the kingpin of the fake stamp paper scam Abdul Karim Telgi's death spread like wildfire on late Monday night, the hospital authorities maintained that Telgi's condition was critical and that he was under observation at the Trauma Care Center at the Victoria Hospital Campus.

"He was admitted to the hospital a few days ago because of high fever and nausea which was not subsiding. He continues to be on life support and under observation. His condition is extremely critical and he has multiple organ failure, hence it would be very difficult to speak about whether his condition would improve or not. However, chances look slim," said Dr Balaji S Pai, Special Officer, Trauma Care Centre who rubbished media reports of his death on Monday night. Top sources said Telgi had been ill for a few days.

He was nauseous and had vomited before he fell unconscious on Sunday after which he was brought to the hospital. Earlier there were reports that he had been afflicted with AIDS.

In 2001 Telgi had been arrested in connection with the multi-crore fake stamp paper racket and sentenced to 30 years in prison. A fine of a whopping Rs 202 crore was also imposed on him. Some cases against him are still pending. He was lodged at the Central Jail at Parapana Agrahara in Bengaluru.
News / National

by Staff reporter

FORMER Mutare town clerk Obert Muzawazi has rapped Local Government minister Saviour Kasukuwere for allegedly tricking him into resigning from the local authority on false promises that he would walk away with a hefty package.Muzawazi, who resigned from the post almost two years ago, following a litany of allegations including corruption and incompetence, told NewsDay at the weekend that the local authority owed him $200 000 in terminal benefits.He said he had taken the matter to court."Mutare City Council has not paid me for almost 14 months. I am owed almost $200 000 and they don't want to pay me. I was at the council for almost nine years and I helped the city to be in the limelight," Muzawazi said."I am not happy with the conduct of Minister Saviour Kasukuwere. He enticed me to resign and promised to give me a package, but I am yet to get anything. He is just not honest."He also took a jibe at his successor Joshua Maligwa, describing him as a "young man" who hates him for no reason."The other thing is that the current Mutare town clerk, Joshua Maligwa, just hates me and I don't know why the young man hates me, perhaps he has some people behind him," he said.Muzawazi expressed optimism that he would one day bounce back as town clerk."As you see, I am fine and doing great, one day I am going to bounce back as Mutare City Council town clerk, but I would need to work with honest people, especially politicians," he said.Maligwa, who took over as town clerk early this year following Muzawazi's departure, has already crossed swords with residents after he recently declared his allegiance to the ruling Zanu-PF party.Contacted for comment yesterday, Kasukuwere refuted Muzawazi's claims, saying: "I am not a fool to make such claims of such big money. His claims are not true and I am not his employer, he should speak to his employer."
Bengaluru: The state government has banned pillion riding on two-wheelers with engine capacity below 100 cc. But the ban is not applicable to the vehicles already registered. State Transport Commissioner B. Dayananda said, The order follows a HC direction, and it does not affect the already existing vehicles. But from now on, two-wheelers below 100 cc with a pillion seat cannot be registered.

Another senior officer from the transport department said, Automobile companies should ensure that such two-wheelers do not come with pillion seats. The HC had passed the order while hearing a plea of an accident victim, who had sought compensation. In 2009 in Mysuru, the victim, Hemanth, and his friend met with a road accident while riding a bike, which was below 100 cc. Hemanth was on the pillion. Both of them, who were minors at that time, were injured when a vehicle crashed into theirs. Hemanth sustained severe injuries and was bed-ridden, while his friend escaped with minor injuries. Hemanth approached the HC seeking compensation. The court found a clause in the Karnataka Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989 under Rule 143 (3) that no pillion seat shall be attached to a motorcycle with less than 100 cc engine.

Transport Minister H.M. Revanna said, The transport department should not register vehicles below 100 cc. If at all it is registered, then pillion seat should be removed. The ban will be implemented strictly.
The Indian Air Force on Tuesday began its drill to touch and go landing with 16 planes performing the exercise on a stretch of the Lucknow-Agra Expressway. (Photo: Twitter | ANI)

Unnao: Fighter and transport aircraftof the Indian Air Force (IAF) on Tuesday performed breathtaking touch-and-go landings on a stretch of the Lucknow-Agra

Expressway in Unnao, showing that highways can be used as landing strips in case of any emergency.

Over a dozen IAF planes, including Mirage-2000 fighters and Sukhoi 30s, besides 35,000 kg C-130J Super Hercules aircraft, took part in the exercise near Bangarmau in the district, about 65 km from Lucknow.

#WATCH The first of 16 Indian Air Force planes lands on Lucknow-Agra expressway near Unnao pic.twitter.com/cx0GYkaonk  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) October 24, 2017

Garud Special Forces commandos secured the landing zone as part of the special drill.

The top-of-the-line Sukhoi 30s and Mirage 2000s took off after touching down on the expressway, while the C-130J transport aircraft landed on it.

The transport aircraft are meant for humanitarian assistance and relief operations during floods or any other natural calamity, PRO, Defence (Central Command), Gargi Malik Sinha had said.

"The aircraft can bring a large amount of relief material. It can also help evacuate people," she said.

The exercise will test the readiness of the Air Force in situations like war, humanitarian assistance or disaster relief, she said.

#WATCH Indian Air Force aircraft on Lucknow-Agra expressway during IAF landing exercise pic.twitter.com/5hF9liTBcH  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) October 24, 2017

The three-hour-long exercise began with IAF's Special Forces Garud commandos getting off the C-130J transport aircraft with their vehicle and taking "positions" on either side of the expressway to secure "their airstrip" for the fighter aircraft.

The exercise simulated an emergency situation when airbases, the first target of bombs and missiles, would not be available for air operations, necessitating use of highways as landing strips.

This is the first time a transport aircraft - a Super Hercules which can carry 200 commandos - landed on the expressway.

Inducted into the Air Force in 2010, each plane costs nearly Rs 900 crore.

Mirage-2000 fighters and Sukhoi-30 MKI - which form the backbone of the IAF's fighter fleet - have landed on the Yamuna Expressway in the past too, but it was for the first time that a transport aircraft landed on it.

A Mirage-2000 had landed on the Yamuna Expressway near Delhi for the first time in 2015. A similar exercise was conducted in May 2016, when a Mirage-2000 fighter plane touched down on the expressway.

Last November, six Sukhoi-30 jets touched down on a 3.3 km stretch of the Lucknow-Agra Expressway.
Gandhi is traversing Gujarat, Modi's home state and where he was Chief Minister for 13 years, to fire up Congress workers who have not seen victory in state elections for two decades. (Photo: PTI | File)

New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi will within weeks be crowned leader of the Congress party, handing him a freer rein to prove if he can mount a credible challenge to the dominance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The great-grandson of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, has struggled to convince voters - and many in his party - that he is leadership material, especially after a drubbing in the 2014 general election.

Modi's depiction of the 47-year-old as an undeserving "prince" has helped sideline Gandhi since then, during which time the Congress has also suffered some of its worst ever state election results.

But this year the economy has stumbled, and Congress politicians hope a round of state elections, beginning in Modi's home state of Gujarat, offer them and their leader a shot at revival ahead of the next national election in 2019.

Gandhi will soon take over as Congress president from his 70-year-old mother, Sonia Gandhi, a symbolic promotion that three Congress leaders said they hoped would free his hand to shift the narrative from a clash of personalities - which Modi has so far resoundingly won - to a debate about policies.

"You will see many changes and every change will be a reaffirmation of what the Congress's core beliefs are," said party MP and senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia, who works closely with Rahul Gandhi.

"The right time has come to strike a chord with the masses against (Narendra) Modi's governance style, and we will not miss it," he said.

Congress insiders acknowledge their leader has sometimes made it easy for Modi's BJP to question his commitment to politics.

"The key problem with Rahul Gandhi has been his lack of consistency," said a senior party figure, who declined to be identified. "He frequently takes a break after few roadshows and it is this inconsistency that has been a huge issue."

But Congress leaders say Gandhi has recently been finding his stride criticising Modi for failing to create jobs, while the party has won a handful of recent by-elections.

Gandhi is traversing Gujarat, Modi's home state and where he was Chief Minister for 13 years, to fire up Congress workers who have not seen victory in state elections for two decades.

The Congress vice president has ditched some party rallies for one-on-one meetings with trade unions, dairy workers and small traders - a traditional powerbase of Modi that has been hit hard by recent economic reforms championed by the prime minister.

Modi has taken notice. Last week he told workers from his party that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty would "destroy Gujarat".

BJP chief Amit Shah, who recently visited the Gandhi family bastion of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, also Rahul Gandhi's parliamentary constituency, said this month that Gandhi needs to swap his "Italian" glasses for "Gujarati" spectacles to see the economic development the BJP has brought to the region, in a jibe at his Italian-born mother's roots.

"BJP would love it to be a war of personalities. Congress has to frame it as a war of two different approaches, even ideologies," said Sandeep Shastri, a political scientist and Congress expert at Jain University.

Rahul Gandhi, who rarely talks to the media, declined a Reuters interview request.

Rahul Gandhi's father, grandmother and great-grandfather were all prime ministers in post-independence India. But critics deride Gandhi as a political lightweight who depends on his family name for power.

Bursts of political energy have been followed by lengthy absences. In 2015 he took nearly two months of leave, prompting Modi's party to accuse him of "holidaying" while parliament was in session.

The Congress now governs states home to less than 10 percent of the country's 1.3 billion population, its powerbase shrivelled under the onslaught of PM Modi's popularity.

Congress insiders acknowledge that the party is unlikely to win the December election in Gujarat, but cutting into the BJP majority in the state would send a powerful signal that the party under Gandhi has a fighting chance against a still-popular Modi.

Rahul Gandhi has set up a new social media team in New Delhi to work on his image, and officials say he has been forging better ties with regional parties, often key powerbrokers in the country's politics.

On a recent tour of Gujarat, Gandhi reached out to the frustrations of the state's powerful business community with the new national tax regime GST, including small traders such as those selling dry fruits. Different tax rates on almonds and cashews, imposed under the new tax launched by Modi's government in July, had left traders confused and damaged sales during the peak festival season.

"We have to show him as the face of the party before the Gujarat elections," said a close Rahul Gandhi aide who declined to be named.

BJP leaders say they are untroubled, and that any small bounce in Gandhi's standing will die down once the economy strengthens. Modi has called the slowdown a blip.

"What does his claim to fame rest on?," said Nalin Kohli, BJP spokesperson, adding, "Two months of campaigning does not make him an active politician."
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, shake hands prior to their luncheon talks, in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: After talks between visiting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani held talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, India  which has been training thousands of Afghan defence and security forces personnel  has agreed to extend further assistance (to Afghanistan) depending upon the needs of the Afghan defence and police forces.

The two leaders also agreed that renunciation of violence and terror; and closure of cross border safe havens and sanctuaries were essential for any meaningful progress and lasting peace (in Afghanstan), a veiled reference once again to Pakistans role in fomenting violence in the strife-torn country. The two leaders also discussed a range of bilateral, regional & global issues, and expressed firm resolve to end the menace of terrorism, while deciding to "further deepen the bilateral strategic dialogue.

President Ghanis visit follows a string of terror attacks by the Pakistan-based Taliban on Afghan security forces in the past two weeks, leading to massive casualties. This was President Ghanis fourth visit to India in the last 3 years and 12th personal interaction between the two leaders.

Deep appreciation was expressed for the bravery with which the Afghan forces were fighting terrorism imposed on Afghanistan, the MEA said, once again a veiled reference to Pakistan-backed terrorism. Detailed discussions were held at the Hyderabad House in the Capital between Modi and President Ghani in one on one format, restricted meeting and a working lunch, the MEA said.

Development assistance by India and connectivity issues were also discussed at the meeting. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj also met Mr. Ghani. The Afghan President also met his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind.

Afghanistan has been asking for military equipment from India. New Delhi has been cautious on this but had earlier given four military helicopters to Kabul. India had recently made it clear to the United States that Indian troops would not be deployed in Afghanistan at any cost.

"The support extended by India in the defence and security fields, including training of thousands of Afghan defence and security personnel was positively assessed. The Indian side agreed to extend further assistance depending upon the needs of the Afghan defence and police forces," the MEA said, in a statement after talks between the two leaders. The MEA further said, "The Indian leadership reiterated its support for a negotiated political reconciliation in Afghanistan that is Afghan led, Afghan owned and Afghan controlled. It was emphasised that renunciation of violence and terror; and closure of cross border safe havens and sanctuaries were essential for any meaningful progress and lasting peace."

"Both sides reiterated their commitment to their strategic partnership and positively assessed the outcomes of the recent high level bilateral exchanges, including the visits of Chief Executive H. E. Dr Abdullah Abdullah and Foreign Minister Rabbani to India last month and that of the National Security Adviser of India to Afghanistan last week," the MEA said.

On the development assistance being undertaken by India in the strife-torn country, the MEA said, "The New Development Partnership that was launched at the meeting of the Strategic Partnership Council on 11 September was assessed as a significant step in building upon the highly successful development cooperation of the past 16 years.
The crashed car of Sana Iqbal who met with an accident in Sun City on Tuesday. (Photo: DC)

Hyderabad: Noted cross-country motorcycle rider, Sana Iqbal, from Hyderabad, who had completed a countrywide solo expedition to create awareness about suicide, was killed in a car crash in Sun City in the early hours of Tuesday.

Her husband Abdul Nadeem, who was driving, has been badly injured and is in hospital.

Police say the car was travelling at high speed when it ran over the road median and crashed into an electric pole on the divider.

Sana, who was sitting on the left, sustained injuries that were severe enough to cause her death. The two were returning home from Masab Tank. Based on a complaint from her sister Seema Iqbal, a case of accidental death and causing injuries was registered.
New Delhi: In an attempt to give a push to economic activity across the country, the Union Cabinet on Tuesday approved a Rs 2.11-lakh crore recapitalisation programme of public sector banks to increase their lending capacity and gave its nod to a major road- building project, Bharatmala Pariyojana, involving an investment of Rs 5.35 lakh crore to build 34,800 km of roads and highways. "Today, at the Union Cabinet meeting, it was decided that the government should take a bold step to address this problem and Rs 2.11 lakh crores is the capital that is intended to be now indicted further in the banks. This will be accompanied by a series of banking reforms," the finance minister said, flanked by all five secretaries in the ministry and the chief economic adviser.

He said more public spending was required, and infrastructure expenditure would get an unprecedented push. "When you give such a big push to infrastructure, it helps in job creation. And job creation is the intention to push private sector investment and MSME funding," he said. In India, banks are the main source of funding for companies but bad loans have shrunk their profits and choked off new lending, specially to smaller firms, and this has hit job creation. Bharatmala Pariyojana is expected to generate 14.2 crore mandays of jobs to build 34,800 km road and highways in the next five years. The government said Bharatmala work had been proposed for completion in five years by 2021-22 through the NHAI, NHIDCL, MoRTH and state PWDs.

It said that for Bharatmala Rs 2.09 lakh crores would be raised as debt from the market, and Rs 1.06 lakh crores of private investments would be mobilised through PPP and Rs 2.19 lakh crores would be provided out of accruals to the Central Road Fund and NHAIs toll collections. "The focus is rightly on infra spending given the need for pump priming by the government as private sector investments would still take some time to pick up. The investments are in sectors that are more labour intensive and hence a large number of jobs would be created, that would go towards stimulating demand. The significant bank recapitalisation announced would help in improving credit availability to some extent, possibly owing to a higher risk taking ability for the banks," said Ranen Banerjee, partner at PwC India.
Hyderabad: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) bench at Chennai has come to the rescue of villagers who have been living with and suffering from the pollution caused by the Patancheru and Bollarum industrial areas.

In its judgment delivered on Tuesday, the NGT directed the Telangana government to constitute a committee comprising the director of medical education, experts from the fields of infectious diseases, and dermatologists, to conduct a study of antimicrobial resistance in the villages within the Manjra river basin upto Nakkavagu in Sangareddy district.

The bench of Justice Dr P. Jyotimani and P.S. Rao (expert member), in its 370-page judgment directed that a Patancheru-Bollarum Environment Relief Fund be constituted with contributions from industries in the industrial hub of the Patancheru industrial area.

The bench also directed the state government to establish a super specialty hospital for treating the occupational hazards of the villagers with 75 per cent of the money contributed by the industries and the remaining by the state, with the state running the hospital.

While rejecting the allegation that these industries are causing antimicrobial resistance through pollution, the bench directed the state government to file a status report once in six months from April 24, 2018 before its Registry at Chennai.

The bench permitted the Pollution Control Board to consider applications for expansion of the industries provided it was for the public good and provided the industry in question deposits one per cent of its annual turnover of the previous year.

The tribunal directed the HMWWSB to continue to provide potable water to all the villages in the area till the lakes are rejuvenated.

The bench observed that its directions are in addition to the mandatory obligations of the industries as CSR under the Indian Companies Act.
Hyderabad: Sana Iqbals family alleged that she was murdered and that the death was being projected as an accident. They claimed that she had earlier lodged a complaint with Humayun Nagar Police, but no action was undertaken. Her mother also said that it was the pathetic attitude of the police that led to her death.

However, Humayun Nagar police said that Sana had lodged a complaint of being harassed in May 2017 and the couple was counseled after that. After the counseling at the police station, they were sent to Bharosa Counselling Centre for the next level of counseling. There were no further directions from them to register a case, as the couple had probably compromised and reconciled their differences, said Humayun Nagar inspector NLN Raju.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Sanas mother Shaheen Khan, an advocate, claimed that she was never happy with the marriage as Sanas troubles appeared to grow every day right from the beginning.

Her mother said that the couple had been together only for a short period and since then, she had been staying with her mother. Nobody took good care of her. Every day was a torture for her. On Saturday, she told me to get her out of the hell, but as I was travelling to Chennai, I told her I would settle the issue after coming back.
Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Tuesday asked the Telangana government as to why it has not approached the Supreme Court against the stay granted by the Delhi-based National Green Tribunal on construction of the Kaleswaram lift irrigation scheme.

A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Rangan-athan and Justice M. Ganga Rao was dealing with the petition of the state government seeking to vacate NGTs stay.

Mr D. Prakash Reddy, advocate general of Telangana, told the court that the tribunal passed the interim order in the absence of the technical member of the bench, which is illegal.

He said the NGT has issued an interim stay hurriedly. The government informed it that they are taking up only drinking water related works which dont need any environmental clearances.
Kochi: The Customs Air Intelligence personnel at the Cochin International Airport Ltd (CIAL) here foiled four back-to-back attempts to smuggle in gold and seized nearly 1.283 kilo grams of the yellow metal worth over Rs 40 lakh. The seizure is the fifth one effected in the last one week. In the first case, a Malappuram native, who flew in from Dubai in the wee hours of Monday, was taken into custody after a detailed inspection found him concealing three gold biscuits in his rectum. A few hours later, another passenger from Dubai was intercepted on suspicion and three gold biscuits hidden in the rectum were recovered.

A third seizure was effected on Monday when a Thrissur native, who landed here from Doha, was found attempting to smuggle in two crude gold chains concealed inside his innerwear. In the fourth case, officials intercepted a Malappuram native, who had landed from Sharjah, and recovered two gold biscuits. On October 16, Customs sleuths had seized 3.18 kg gold worth nearly Rs one crore in three separate incidents. The next day saw the officers recovering gold worth Rs 29 lakh and arresting a Punjab native in this connection.
News / National

by Staff reporter

The Miss World Zimbabwe Trust will be sending a high powered delegation to China ahead of the Miss World finals to be held on November 16.The delegation will be led by the Trust's chairperson Marry Chiwenga while a number of workshops are also scheduled prior to the pageant where Zim queen Chiedza Mhosva will be competing.In an interview, Chiwenga said the trip was meant for the Trust members to learn how international pageants are conducted as well as to support the reigning queen."As the Miss World Zimbabwe Trust we subscribe to the Miss World beauty pageant and in everything that we do as a Trust we are expected to uphold standards of the Miss World pageant."Going to China for the pageant will certainly be an eye opener for us as a Trust, we need the exposure so that we become well versed with what is expected of us when we conduct the Miss World Zimbabwe beauty pageant."And of course we are also going there to support our queen Chiedza whom we are believing has what it takes to bring the crown home."Anything is possible at Miss World, it doesn't mean that one has to be white to deserve the crown. As a Trust we know Chiedza is certainly not a walk over, she is definitely a force to reckon," she said.Chiwenga added that she was also looking forward to host the Miss World pageant."Over the years, we have been applying to host Miss World at Victoria Falls, our applications haven't been approved yet but we know it's just a matter of time, one of these days the privilege will be given to us," she said.
Lucknow/Hyderabad/ New Delhi: Responding to BJPs UP legislator Sangeet Soms comments questioning Taj Mahals place in history, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Monday asked if the government would tell tourists not to visit the monument. Mr Som also termed Mughal emperors Babur, Akbar and Aurangzeb traitors and said their names would be removed from the pages of history.

Lashing out at the BJP leadership, the Hyderabad MP asked whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi will stop hoisting the tricolour at the Red Fort if in the BJPs view it was among the monuments built by traitors. Mr Owaisi asked, Will Modi and Yogi Adityanath tell tourists not to visit the Taj Mahal?
Lucknow: Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati has warned that if the BJP did not change its anti-Dalit and anti-OBC mentality, she and her supporters would give up Hinduism and convert to the Buddhist faith.

She said that Dr B.R. Ambedkar had to urged the saints and seers to change the system in Hinduism which alienated the deprived sections of society. But this did not happen and Dr Ambedkar gave up Hinduism and adopted the Buddhist faith, she said.

Addressing a rally in Azamgarh on Tuesday, Ms Mayawati lashed out at the BJP for pursuing the RSS agenda of caste politics and blamed the party for the suicide of Rohit Vemula in Hyderabad and the Una killings.

It was the BJP party that is responsible for the caste riots in Saharanpur. When I tried to raise the issue in the Rajya Sabha, I was not allowed to speak and that is why I resigned from the upper house, she said.
The appointment of former Intelligence Bureau director Dineshwar Sharma as the Centres fully-empowered interlocutor in Kashmir should not be seen as anything more than a weak attempt yet again of grappling with the fragile and explosive situation in the Valley after the outbreak of street violence in 2016 following the killing of self-proclaimed Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani. Its not likely to lead to any significant breakthrough. On the other hand, it poses a serious challenge to the political legitimacy of the Peoples Democratic Party-BJP coalition government in the state. The Kashmir  unfortunately, there has been no comprehensive Jammu and Kashmir initiative  moves of the BJP-led NDA government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi tell more about the thinking of the BJP than it does about the issues and situation in Kashmir. It needs to be remembered that Kashmir is a core ideological issue for the BJP since the Jan Sangh days and the death of Syama Prasad Mookerji in a Jammu prison in 1953. It is but natural that the BJP takes a calibrated stance when in power and adopts a strident tone when in Opposition.

In 2014, Mr Modi fired a measured salvo during the Lok Sabha campaign when he asked the people of Kashmir to assess for themselves whether Article 370  the clause in the Constitution which guarantees a special status to J&K  has done any good for them. The abolition of Article 370 is part of the core agenda of the BJP. Despite its belligerence, however, the party is quite aware of the constitutional problem and the political implications of doing anything reckless. The Kashmir issue beats the BJP government and its ideologues due to the Pakistan factor. Former finance and external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha, who led a BJP team to the Valley last year to meet the Hurriyat leaders, came back with the insight that the solution to the J&K issue does not lie in Srinagar  that is, solving the Kashmir problem will resolve the problems of India-Pakistan bilateral relations, but a solution to the Kashmir issue lies through Islamabad. Of course, Pakistan too feels that once the Kashmir issue is settled between the two countries, then everything will be well between them. India cannot accept the view openly and unconditionally, and the compulsions are real, and this has nothing to do with which party is in power at the Centre.

The Narendra Modi government has been quite enthusiastic about improving ties with Pakistan. The friendly overtures of Mr Modi, which sent liberal elements in India into bouts of ecstasy, turned out to be real duds. The surgical strikes last September did not have the desired effect either. So the Pakistan pathway to the solution of the Kashmir problem turns out to be elusive. In the last three years, the BJP has gone through many political exercises on Kashmir. The fact that it is part of the coalition led by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of the late Mufti Muhammad Sayeed has been a matter of pride for the party because it had at last made a place for itself in the politics of the state. But according to Kashmir insiders, it is the presence of the BJP in the state government that is the root of the wave of unrest in the Valley. These insiders are not particularly biased against the BJP. They hold that even the Congress shouldnt be part of the power structure in Srinagar. This would create the pragmatic myth that Kashmir is on its own and there is no interference of any kind from the Central government. There is no insidious sedition in this thinking. Politicians in Tamil Nadu also think power in state should remain in the hands of regional Dravidian parties and that pan-Indian parties like the Congress or BJP have no place or role in the affairs of the state.

The problem and solution of the Kashmir issue lies with political parties in the state  the National Conference and the PDP. Of course, there are the Hurriyat factions, which want a share in the political pie, and which was denied to them by the NCs vile games while it was in power. The PDP on the other hand wants to outflank Hurriyat by adopting a more strident position than that of the separatists. The PDP and the NC must deliver to the people on their promises of governance, Instead, they refer to the need to solve the Kashmir through talks with Pakistan to cover their own failures in government. Srinagar-based political parties must abandon their delusions of a Greater Kashmir of the old Dogra kingdom which include Northern Territories (Chitral and Baltistan), parts of Kashmir now under occupation by Pakistan. They should realise that Pakistan would have no patience with the tantrums of the NC, PDP and Hurriyat. Islamabad would want to use them as pawns against India, and nothing more. Once Kashmirs political parties turn their backs on Pakistan, there will be greater clarity on what needs to be done. Greater autonomy for Kashmir shouldnt pose a difficulty except in working out the details.

Former Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral, who was wrongly berated as a dove by mindless right-wingers, had explained to Kashmiri leaders who were demanding that the high court and the state election panel not be answerable to the Supreme Court and Election Commission that it would harm their own interests as well as that of the people as there would be no remedy against the machinations of the dominant party in the state. It is after all India, not Pakistan, that can offer Kashmir the fruits of democracy. Theres no need to be apologetic about this. The Congress and BJP should keep out of Kashmir politics. The PDP, NC and Hurriyat should also cease playing the Pakistan card. As a part of the Union of India, Kashmiris have democracy and freedom to create their destiny.
After a long and bloody year, which saw the near paralysis of governance, politics and social activity in Kashmir, and cast a shadow on the nations security and severely impacted relations with Pakistan, the Narendra Modi government announced the opening of the process of talks on Monday, naming as interlocutor a recently retired Intelligence Bureau director, Dineshwar Sharma. The move is in the constructive direction, but comes after much time has been lost and the animosity of people increased, which neednt have happened as Prime Minister Narendra Modi had begun his tenure in 2014 after creating a reasonably positive atmosphere with his speeches in Kashmir.

Subsequently there was a serious deterioration in the politics over the Kashmir Valley as Hindutva votaries showed extreme irresponsibility through their statements and through policy inaction, raising the political temperature and giving an opening to Pakistan it didnt have for many years earlier. This combination of factors, in particular the absence of imaginative politics, allowed a serious spike in terrorist violence and extremist radicalisation. These events also led to the total delegitimising of the PDP-BJP coalition government in the state. The interlocutors work may be hampered if the political mind of the Centre has not changed. In his Independence Day address this year, Mr Modi did hint at the beginning of a talks process when he said that issues in Kashmir could only be settled by embracing the Kashmiris. But given the backdrop of unmet promises, this was not received with any sense of anticipation.

In the past couple of months, top officials of the Army and the J&K police have also recommended the opening up of the political space through talks. Perhaps this was a goad which decided the governments mind. While making the announcement on the appointment of the interlocutor on Monday, home minister Rajnath Singh did say that the focus will be on the youth, and he did not rule out engagement with any section of society, including the separatist leadership. This signals a good start.

It is important to raise hopes and take meaningful steps to fulfil those hopes. That is the only way to nullify the efforts of the separatists and thwart Pakistans mischievous gameplans. If Kashmir is given respect and autonomy, its people will prosper and India will be a more fulfilled whole. We should be conscious, of course, that we are now about to enter a long-overdue process. The results wont be evident in a hurry. The interlocutors moves will be keenly watched. He should be constructive, frank, and even-handed in his approach.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose visit to India last month was a visible success, has just won an extraordinary sweeping two-thirds victory in parliamentary elections, leaving him in clear control of his countrys executive as well as legislature. This is important as it paves the way for him to move forward on one of his pet ambitions  to initiate a change in his countrys pacifist post-World War II constitution, imposed by the Americans, that severely limits the scope of Japans armed forces. It is Mr Abes dream to transform his countrys self-defence forces into a full-fledged military that can play a proper role in regional security. At a time of severe Asian turbulence, from the Korean peninsula to South Asia and beyond, to the Persian Gulf and the Levant, this has major implications for the proposed upgradation of Indo-Japan naval collaboration, including increased cooperation in naval ship technology. What is so important about Indo-Japan naval collaboration at this time? The answer lies in one word: China. An extra-erratic Beijing makes the existing Tokyo-New Delhi bilateral relationship even more important. Chinas insatiable appetite for avoidable muscle-flexing is not only a matter of grave concern to India, but also to Japan and for that matter to the whole of East, Southeast and South Asia. Its increasingly abrasive naval doctrine and deployment has thrown open a grave challenge to the placid seafaring nations.

From 20th-century coastal defence to 21st century forward deployed offensive operations, China is on a mission beyond the South and East China Sea. It has openly positioned itself to expand its role, at times ignoring the rules of engagement. The challenge and the threats are increasing by the day, spanning across the Indian Ocean region, giving a sense of urgency to the need for enhanced India-Japan cooperation to ensure the freedom of navigation on the high seas. Looking back, one needs to remember that Japan is the only non-white, non-Western nation with a glorious naval history, despite catastrophic defeat in the Second World War due to the use of nuclear weapons. Japans sea journey began 122 years ago when Beijing was humbled by Tokyo in 1895, after the latters promulgation of the Meiji Constitution on February 11, 1889. Then followed the Russian Navys shock defeat in 1905 at the Tsushima Strait at the hands of the Japanese fleet. The Japanese naval juggernaut continued unabated, and at the end of the First World War, Tokyo emerged as Asias greatest naval power, with the worlds third most powerful navy, causing deep concern to the Anglo-Saxons. In the 1921-1922 Washington Naval Conference, the Japanese Navy was cut to size under Western pressure, with Tokyo allowed 60 per cent of the capital ships that the US and Britain had. Nevertheless, Japan had arrived as a seafaring power, and the December 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbour undoubtedly marked the apogee of Nippons Navy.

The postwar constitution imposed by Gen. Douglas MacArthur severely crippled Tokyos fleet, but Japan was to soon prove true to its name  as the land of the rising sun  with its Navy making a spectacular recovery. There are lessons here for the Indian Navy as it seeks to bolster its role in the immediate neighbourhood and wider region. Despite the exceptional progress in the indigenisation of New Delhis fighting ships, time and cost overruns are the bane of Indias indigenisation timetable. No doubt India has a series of first-class home-made vessels from its shipyards  like the 6,808-ton full-load Delhi class and the 7,292-ton Kolkata class destroyers; 6,299-ton Shivalik class, 4,277-ton Godavari class, and 4,521-ton Brahmaputra class frigates and Kora and Khukri class corvettes.

But though Indian engineers and sailors did a magnificent job to produce modern, power-packed combat vessels with a blue-water capability, the 10-year conception-to-commission (November 14, 1987 to November 15, 1997) of destroyer INS Delhi certainly didnt do any good to naval morale. No doubt things improved a bit; yet subsequent ships also took too long to build  INS Mysore (8 years, 4 months) and INS Mumbai (8 years, 1 month). Quite clearly, things need further improvement if India is to stand up to the intolerable bullies of Asia. The problem extends to the submarine wing too. The French Scorpene took over seven years to be commissioned. This is where Japans time-technology management expertise comes in. As is well known, Japan is not only manufacturing superior-technology ships, but is doing so quickly, keeping pace with its arch-rival China.

In fact, both Beijing and Tokyo are making their respective fighting ships at a furious pace to outdo each other.A reality check will suffice. Two 18,289-ton full-load Hyuga class helicopter carriers took two years and 10 months each by Yokohamas Ishikawajima Harima Industries Marine United to commission on March 18, 2009 and March 16, 2011 respectively. Again, the first of the bigger 24,000-ton Izumo class helicopter carriers took three years and two months by the same shipbuilders. The latest 11 Nippon Souryu class 4,100-ton dived submarines too are taking an average of four years per boat by two manufacturers, Mitsubishi and Kawasaki. Finally, all four Akizuki class 5,050-ton destroyers were commissioned by Mitsubishi and Mitsui, taking between two years and eight months to two years and 10 months.

What should be of deeper concern for both India and Japan is that the Chinese are doing things faster and quicker. Eight prominent Chinese shipbuilding companies  the Bohai; Wuhan; Jiangnan; Dalian; Zhoushan; Huangpu; Hudong and Liao Nan Shipyards  are building various types of boats speedily, so much so that the average manufacture time taken for 14 latest-model Yuan class 3,600 ton dived diesel-electric patrol submarines stands at less than two years per boat, thus enhancing the fleet strength and multi-theatre deployment and deploy-ability. No wonder China has extended and expanded much beyond the Arabian Sea  to the mouth of the Red Sea. Both Japan and India need to act fast. Chinese submarines are posing a real-time threat  it has a fleet of 66 boats and at least 10 more are in the pipeline. Indias 14 and Japans 19 fall far below the survival line under the sea. Submarines arent just an effective platform for sea control, their submerged, mobile and undetected movements make them ideal for sea denial too. Given the inferior fleet numbers and constant time and cost overruns, its time India shows some urgency in starting a new collaboration effort with Japan in time-technology management, despite the Indian Navys impressive indigenisation efforts. After all, both nations face a common threat from an erratic, unstable neighbour.
This HoloLens smart glass enables users to engage with digital content and interact with holograms in the world around them. (Photo credit: Cambridge Consultants)

In this constantly emerging world, we use different technologies for specific tasks in our daily life. What transpired is that technology has hollowed out the demand for low-skilled workers, who have been the first ones to be replaced by automation.

Today, technology has changed and has taken healthcare to a different dimension. And, taking the baton further, the medical industry is finding Augmented Reality as the next big thing to revolutionise complex healthcare treatments. Microsofts next-generation AR technology  Hololens, has been used for the first time to perform a bowel cancer surgery.

During the operation, Surgeon Shafi Ahmed, communicated live with colleagues in the operation theatre in London, India and the USA. The Hololens itself really allows us to reshape the way we connect people, we communicate with people, and also to be used in teaching and training, Ahmed said.

The surgeons can even access a patients records and make notes for each other as the operation progresses. They can actually come in and look at the content in full 3D, in real space and discuss with each other. Hololens actually gives the surgeon a life like understanding of a situation which helps to treat the problem easily.

HoloLens is a pair of mixed reality smart glasses developed and manufactured by Microsoft. HoloLens gained popularity for being one of the first gadgets running the Windows Mixed Reality platform which is integrated with the Windows 10 operating system. Shafi is planning to use this technology to train others globally and conduct virtual operations.

This HoloLens smart glass enables users to engage with digital content and interact with holograms in the world around them. Mixed Reality brings people, places, and objects from your physical and digital worlds together. This blended environment is a type of canvas, where users create and enjoy a wide range of experiences. It is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time.

Shafi says the pace of change is remarkable. When you put the Hololens on, it feels a bit strange, but actually, within a few minutes, it becomes quite normal. You feel as though youre just discussing cases with people in the same room. It feels like a normal hospital practice, he said.

The incorporation of AR into medical field will certainly help doctors and other medical practitioners in solving complex issues with greater accuracy and more clarity about the problem. Right now, it is limited to bowel cancer surgery but it wont be a while before all sorts of cancer diagnosis, as well as other kinds of medical ailments, could be treated with AR-based technology.

(With inputs from BBC)

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Kaspersky, which research firm Gartner ranks as one of the worlds top cyber security vendors for consumers, said in a statement that it would submit the source code of its software and future product updates for review by a broad cross-section of computer security experts and government officials.

Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab said on October 23 it will ask independent parties to review the security of its anti-virus software, which the US government has said could jeopardize national security, citing concerns over Kremlin influence and hijacking by Russian spies.

Kaspersky, which research firm Gartner ranks as one of the worlds top cyber security vendors for consumers, said in a statement that it would submit the source code of its software and future product updates for review by a broad cross-section of computer security experts and government officials.

It also vowed to have outside parties review other aspects of its business, including software development. Reviews of its software, which is used on some 400 million computers worldwide, will begin by the first quarter of next year, it said.

Weve nothing to hide, Chairman and CEO Eugene Kaspersky said on Monday. With these actions well be able to overcome mistrust and support our commitment to protecting people in any country on our planet.

Kaspersky did not name the outside reviewers, but said they would have strong software security credentials and be able to conduct technical audits, source code reviews and vulnerability assessments.

US President Donald Trumps administration last month barred government agencies from using Kaspersky Lab anti-virus products.

The worlds top cyber security experts are divided over whether Russian intelligence hijacked Kaspersky software without its knowledge or whether the firm or one of its employees was complicit.

Israeli intelligence officials said they had found Russian government hackers using Kaspersky anti-virus software to steal spy secrets from the US National Security Agency, according to reports this month in major US media.

Kaspersky has repeatedly denied those allegations, saying it has not helped Russia or other governments engage in espionage and that it is simply caught up in a wider geopolitical spat between Moscow and Washington following allegations Russian hackers interfered in last years US elections.

The Kremlin also denies the allegations.

Some researchers have pointed to the companys problems in the United States as an example of the growing Balkanisation of the cyber security industry, which is making it harder to fight cross-border crime.

Restoring Confidence

US cyber security experts and former officials said the move by Kaspersky to open its software up for expert review could help alleviate concerns about future security gaps, but that the company had a lot of work to do to restore confidence.

Former NSA director Michael Hayden called Kasperskys action a dramatic step forward, but not necessarily sufficient.

Rodney Joffe, senior vice president at online identity management firm Neustar and an advisor to the US Federal Communications Commission, said Kaspersky must show it has fixed all existing vulnerabilities, not just guarded against new ones.

A good start would be a release of the source code for the products already out there, that matches the actual installed code base, Joffe told Reuters.

The company said it would open transparency centers in Asia, Europe and the United States where customers, governments and others can access results of the outside reviews and discuss any concerns about the security of Kaspersky products.

It also said it would expand a program where it pays independent security researchers to find security vulnerabilities in its products, boosting the maximum award size to $100,000 from $5,000.

But the companys critics remained skeptical. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who led calls in the US Congress to purge Kaspersky software from government networks, said in a statement that the review was a red herring that doesnt address any of the fundamental underlying concerns with Kaspersky products, including Russian law that allows the Kremlin to monitor data transmissions.

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Richboro: President Donald Trump's eldest daughter has channelled her roles as a working mother, entrepreneur and senior adviser to the president to help sell the administration's tax plan, which she said is overdue to address the needs of the modern American family in an increasingly competitive global market.

Ivanka Trump joined US Treasurer Jovita Carranza and former US Rep. Nan Hayworth of New York for an hour-long, town hall-style meeting at a senior centre outside Philadelphia.

She called tax reform "critical" legislation and touted proposed changes to the tax code as changes that will help everyday Americans.

"There are many elements of this tax plan that I think are squarely targeted at creating jobs and growth in this country and offering relief to our middle-income families," she told the audience.

"This is about the recognition that, as a country, we have to have policies that mirror our values. We have to encourage the next generation to be competitive and compassionate. For me, I think this couples together our core values as a country."

The president has prioritized tax reform as his top agenda item and is urging Congress to pass legislation. He and other Republican leaders have crafted a proposal calling for steep tax cuts for corporations and potentially individuals, a doubling of the standard deduction used by most Americans, a reduction in the number of tax brackets from seven to three or four and a repeal of the inheritance tax on multimillion- dollar estates.

The tax system would be simplified, and most Americans would be able to file their income taxes on a postcard, according to the plan.

Ivanka Trump, as part of the tax reform package, has been focussed on expanding the child tax credit. She drew on her life experience to connect with the audience as a mom who has an understanding of the challenges parents face with the rising cost of child care.

"Every parent has to manage the competing demands of raising a family and their passions," she told the crowd. "I, too, had to manage that, but I am far more fortunate than most. I had help, and I recognized that I wouldn't be able to do even a small fraction of what I was able to do professionally or as a parent ... if I didn't have access to the means to be able to put my children in a secure and safe and protected and nurturing environment."

Increasing the child tax credit, she said, could mean the difference between sending a child to an after-school program or paying for quality day care and could even aid some young couples wrestling with whether they can afford to start a family.

Details on how much the $1,000 child tax credit should increase have not been settled, and Ivanka Trump has not publicly offered a number.
"The only way he remembered my husband's name because he told me he had my husband's report in front of him and that's when he actually said La David," Myeshia Johnson said. (Photo: AP)

Washington: The pregnant widow of an American soldier killed in an ambush in Niger said Monday that Donald Trump struggled to remember his name during a condolence call, in an account the president immediately disputed.

Trump's call to Myeshia Johnson, whose husband Sergeant La David Johnson was one of four US soldiers killed in the October 4 jihadist attack, has generated a storm of controversy and comes as questions swirl over how the attack happened.

"Yes, the president said that he knew what he signed up for but it hurts anyways," Johnson said on ABC's Good Morning America TV program, in her first public comments on the death of her 25-year-old husband.

"It made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it."

Myeshia Johnson, who is carrying the couple's third child, said she "heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband's name and that hurt me the most."

"The only way he remembered my husband's name because he told me he had my husband's report in front of him and that's when he actually said La David," she said.

The US president fired back on Twitter, insisting: "I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!"

Details of Trump's call were made public last week by a Democratic congresswoman who claimed the president had offended Johnson's widow, drawing accusations from the White House of politicizing the issue.

The escalating row, now heading into its second week, prompted Trump's chief of staff John Kelly, a former general whose son died in Afghanistan, to deliver an emotive defense of the president -- while lashing out at the Florida congresswoman, Frederica Wilson.

Myeshia Johnson told ABC Wilson's account of the call was "100 percent correct," saying she was a lifelong family friend and had listened in over a speakerphone.

- Continued Niger ops -

"Whatever Miss Wilson said was not fabricated," Johnson said. "Why would we fabricate something like that?"

Asked if she had any words for the president, she replied: "No. I don't have nothing to say to him."

The dispute comes amid questions over exactly what happened ahead of the ambush, and the military response afterward.

General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said "we owe the American people an explanation of what their men and women were doing at this particular time."

Myeshia Johnson also wanted answers about how her husband died.

She was initially told that there had been "massive gunfire" and "my husband as of October 4th was missing," she said on ABC.

"A couple of days later is when they told me that he went from missing to killed in action," she said.

"I don't know how he got killed, where he got killed or anything."

The 12 American and 30 Nigerien soldiers on the mission were attacked by about 50 fighters Dunford characterized as locals associated with the Islamic State group.

Questions have been raised over why it took hours before backup support reached the patrol, and why Johnson's body was left behind and only recovered the following day.

Dunford said the October 3-4 mission was originally approved based on an intelligence assessment that they were "unlikely" to come into conflict with any local forces.

Trump himself kicked off the furor early last week by falsely claiming that Barack Obama and other former presidents did not call the families of fallen soldiers.

As the controversy escalated, the president went on to claim he had called "virtually" all fallen service members' families since taking office.

That has reportedly left his administration scrambling, with four families of service members receiving rush-delivered letters from the White House in recent days, according to the Atlantic.
I have been speaking out that his vision is politically short-sighted, and economically irresponsible and scientifically wrong, Ban said on the sidelines of a London peace walk. (Photo: AFP)

London: US President Donald Trump is "standing on the wrong side of history" in withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, former UN chief Ban Ki-moon said on Monday.

"I am deeply concerned about what President Trump of (the) United States has declared that the US is withdrawing from this Paris agreement. I have been speaking out that his vision is politically short-sighted, and economically irresponsible and scientifically wrong. So he is standing on the wrong side of history," Ban said on the sidelines of a London peace walk.

The former Secretary-General of the United Nations joined other members of The Elders, a group created by Nelson Mandela, on the procession through the city before a discussion on world peace.

Ban said despite Trump's decision to pull out of the historic Paris agreement, he remained heartened by a US civil society campaign to continue to honour the environmental deal.

"I am encouraged and hopeful that whole worlds will be united in moving ahead with this Paris climate change agreement. This is the political and moral responsibility of our political leaders," he said.

Trump announced in June the start of a three-year process to pull out of the 2015 agreement, signed by 195 countries, on the grounds that it would put the US at an economic disadvantage.

Reflecting on the broader political climate, Ban said he had been "working very closely" with Trump's predecessor Barack Obama, who last week criticised the "politics of division" which characterised the 2016 US presidential race.

Ban also decried the current "lack of commitment" to an international spirit.

"A lack of leaders' global vision that we are living in a very tightly-interconnected small world, and that whatever is happening in this country may affect the neighbouring countries and even all around the world," he said.

He cited the "very tense period" on the divided Korean peninsula -- with Pyongyang staging its sixth nuclear test and launching two intercontinental ballistic missiles -- as one area where world leaders needed to act collectively.

"As one of the Korean citizens, I'm very much committed that the whole international community should stand resolute and unified and strong voices, so that North Korea realises that there is no other way but to return to dialogue to address these issues," he said.
News / National

by Staff reporter

A 21 YEAR-OLD patient admitted at Parirenyatwa hospital in the Annexe department was allegedly beaten by nurses after refusing to be injected.Stelios Christopouros was beaten on the 16th of this month after he refused an injection complaining that he reacts to CBZ.He said:"I was supposed to be given a CBZ injection and I refused telling the nurse that i negatively react to it."I wrestled with the nurses in order for them not to inject me and that is when they floored me and started beating me using a baton."Stelios said that he was beaten by two males and a female before they locked him up in a room at the hospital.He added that there is a security guard who even took his mobile phone from him saying that he shouldn't be with a phone and has not returned it.Stelios sustained injuries all over the body.However the Chief Executive Officer at Parirenyatwa, Thomas Zigora said that he does not believe that Stelios was actually beaten by the nurses as he is claiming.He said investigations are being carried out to find what really happened."I don't believe that this guy was beaten by our nurses."We have reports from everyone who was on duty on the day of the incident and no one seems to endorse that he was beaten by the nurses as he is saying," said Zigora.Zigora also said that Stelios was being forced to be admitted in the mental department by his relatives against his will.He said Stelios was very violent and anything 'can be expected from a violent person.'Zigora said he invited Stelios to his office in a bid to understand the truth and settle the issue and he refused to honour the invitation until today.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan, a staunch US Cold War ally and key player in the US-backed invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has watched warily as Washington has in recent years pivoted towards its arch-foe. (Photo: AFP)

Islamabad: As US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to Pakistan on Tuesday to pressure Islamabad to act over terrorists targeting Afghanistan from its soil, anxious Pakistanis may be equally interested in dissuading Washington's deepening ties with India.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan, a staunch US Cold War ally and key player in the US-backed invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has watched warily as Washington has in recent years pivoted towards its arch-foe.

Islamabad views its much-bigger neighbour as an existential threat and the two nations have fought three wars since their violent separation at the end of colonial rule in 1947.

Tillerson, due to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Pakistan's powerful military chiefs in a one-day visit, is expected to urge Pakistan to do more to root out Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network terrorists operating on its soil.

But he is also expected to hear Pakistani officials warn him that drawing nuclear-armed India deeper into Afghanistan would destabilise the region and do little to end the 16-year war that is now America's longest military conflict.

"Bringing India into the mix is like adding kerosene to fire," said Miftah Ismail, a state minister and close ally of Prime Minister Abbasi.

"It's a complete red line. India has no political role to play in Afghanistan as far as we are concerned."

Many Pakistanis feel betrayed that its traditional ally is now cosying up to India over Afghanistan. But the anger runs both ways.

The United States accuses Pakistan of playing a double game since 2001, offering public backing to Washington while turning a blind eye, or even at times assisting, the Afghan Taliban and other terrorists who carry out deadly attacks against US forces and their allies in Afghanistan.

Last Chance

Pakistan supported the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s as a hedge to Indian influence in Afghanistan, and analysts say its military and security services maintained ties long after the Taliban regime was toppled in 2001.

Pakistan denies providing a safe haven for Afghan Taliban and other terrorists.

Tillerson, during a visit to Afghanistan on Monday, said Washington has made some "very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support the Taliban receives and other terrorist organizations receive".

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis earlier this month said the United States would try "one more time" to work with Pakistan in Afghanistan, before opting for more punitive measures. President Donald Trump has vowed to be tougher on Pakistan than his predecessors.

The United States has threatened further military aid cuts and US officials have mooted targeted sanctions against Pakistani military figures, but in the past two weeks there have been hints of a slight thawing in ties.

US Vice President Mike Pence and Tillerson last week called Abbasi to thank Pakistan after its army rescued a US-Canadian couple who were held hostage by the Taliban-allied Haqqani network for nearly five years, along with their three children born in cap tivity.

Relations were further boosted when Omar Khalid Khorasani, leader of the lethal Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) group who Islamabad had been trying to catch for years, was killed by a US drone strike last week.

Hostile Neighbours

India has increased aid to Afghanistan in recent years and last year promised to ship more arms.

Such moves have aggravating fears in Pakistan that it will find itself wedged between two hostile neighbours.

Islamabad bristles at the idea that India holds the key to ending the Afghanistan conflict, and fears US meddling could unsettle a delicate balance of power in South Asia.

"Promoting a higher involvement of India in Afghanistan will only worsen the historic strategic rivalries playing out in the region," said Sherry Rehman, Pakistan's former ambassador to United States and a senior member of the opposition Pakistan People's Party.

Pakistan points to the 3.5 million Afghan refugees it hosts as proof that it has more than anyone else to lose from chaos in Afghanistan, and has emphasised the need for greater cooperation and intelligence sharing with United States and Afghanistan.

But while Pakistan may not like it, India looks set to continue playing a role in Afghanistan, according to Sushant Sareen, a foreign policy analyst at the Vivekananda International Foundation, a think-tank with ties to the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"The message is very clear that India is an important player when it comes to coordinating policies between Afghanistan and Washington," said Sareen.
Sex workers share common traits: poverty, abusive family members and lack of funds make them vulnerable enough to be trafficked into the camps sex industry. (Representational | Photo: AFP)

Coxs Bazaar: As Rohingya women struggle to access even the very basics such as food and water in Bangladeshs overcrowded camps, a flourishing sex trade offers cash in times of desperation.

Four women entered the clean-swept mud hut, took off their black shawls and sat cross-legged on the floor. When asked if they sold sex, the women stirred uncomfortably and were silent. Later, after cups of tea, the question came up again.

The women caught each others eyes. Slowly one of them walked across the room to shut the door, another blocked the window. Darkness fell in the small, humid hut and voices turned to whispers.

If anyone finds out what we do, they will kill us, murmured 26-year-old Romida. More than 600,000 ethnic Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, have fled attacks by the Myanmar army since late August, fleeing across to border to southern Bangladesh in the worlds fastest growing refugee crisis. In Kutupalong, the biggest camp, the sex industry is thriving. Many of the sex workers are longer term residents of the Bangladeshi camps, but the influx of tens of thousands more vulnerable women and girls is expected to fuel the trade.

At least 500 Rohingya prostitutes live in Kutupalong, said Noor, who works as a fixer, but many have lived for years in the camp which was established in 1992. Recruiters now have their eyes set on the newcomers, she added. UN agencies say they have no figures on the numbers of sex workers in the camps to make public.

Its hard to come by numbers and we dont collect data on how many sex workers are in the camps, Saba Zariv, an expert on gender-based violence at the U.N.s population agency UNFPA told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

-Rumors-

A recent report from UNICEF, the U.N. childrens fund, UNICEF report said that in the chaotic, unorganised camps, children and youths could fall prey to traffickers and people looking to exploit and manipulate them. From tight-knit conservative Muslim communities, the Rohingya often turn a blind eye to prostitution. People pretend that it doesnt exist, said Noor. The girls meet their Bangladeshi clients outside the camps. They dont sleep with other Rohingya. Our communities are tight and rumours could spread easily. Each girl wants to appear pure.

Many of the prostitutes are children who eat no more than one meal a day and dont attend school. They work secretively without even their parents knowing. Rena, 18, who has lived in the camp for the past decade was forced to marry an alcoholic two years ago. He mistreated me and beat me, she said. Her abusive husband ran and left her when she gave birth to her first son. Feeding her child became impossible.

Thats when I decided to become a sex worker. I was only 16, but it was out of desperation. I needed money. Fourteen-year-old Kamru, who also sells sex, arrived years ago in a previous wave of Rohingya refugees. She has never been able to attend school because her family is too poor. The camp is all I remember. I grew up here, but I was always hungry, said the teenager, who like all the women and girls did not want to reveal her full name.

Sex workers share common traits: poverty, abusive family members and lack of funds make them vulnerable enough to be trafficked into the camps sex industry. If aid agencies cant manage to provide people with their basic needs, the risk of trafficking grows  if we cant establish a sustainable mechanism here and aid tires out, we could see trafficking levels rise, said Lisa Akero, gender protection specialist at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

-Slipping into Prostitution-

Romida had been left hungry and malnourished and saw prostitution as the only way she could survive. I told myself Id do anything. I didnt have a choice. Her first client was a Bangladeshi friend who convinced her to have sex with him for 1,000 Taka ($12).

He paid good money, she recalled. The going-rate is 200 ($2.50) and my fixer takes half of it. The business largely operates by phone calls, with pimps informing the girls where to go and who to see. On average, Romida has three male clients a week  and darent risk taking on more for fear of being found out. I sometimes travel as far as Coxs Bazar city, which is a two hour drive. Whenever I leave the camp, I have to make up excuses. I pretend to be visiting relatives or taking a shift at the market.

The Rohingya women meet men of all backgrounds  from university students to local politicians. In a brief phone conversation, Ali, a 23-year-old Bangladeshi student told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that he sleeps with prostitutes occasionally, but when he eventually marries he would expect his wife to be a virgin.

Most clients dont use condoms, the women said. I take birth control injections, but I worry about HIV every day, said Romida. She has never been tested for sexually transmitted diseases.

-Safe Spaces-

Half an hours drive away from the muddy, chaotic camps, surrounded by green rice paddies, local charity Pulse has set up a safe house for refugees that can host up to 30 women. Due to open in the coming days, the dormitory-style apartment is newly refurbished and has a psychologist on site.

The girls who come here might not want to talk about what is happening in their lives as they could be in danger, said the shelters manager Kurshida Aktar, adding that all vulnerable women are welcome: victims of rape, single mothers and sex workers.

Were creating an opportunity for women to rebuild their lives, access basic needs, have an outlet to talk and receive job training, said Aktar. But the four Rohingya women who agreed to speak were largely unaware of such services. We dont ask about it for fear of being found out, said Kamru, the youngest of the girls.

As she walks outside the house, she slips into her black burqa, covering all but her eyes. I have to take it off when Im with my Bangladeshi clients, she said. But in the camp its my way to stay anonymous.
US secretary of state Rex Tillerson (right) with Pakistan PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in Islamabad on Tuesday. (Photo: AFP)

Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Tuesday told US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that Pakistan was committed to the war on terror.

In a meeting with US Secretary of State in Islamabad, Abbasi said Pakistan had produced results that it is fighting the militants in the region.

Pak-US relations have frayed in recent years, with Washington accusing Islamabad of turning a blind eye or helping Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network militants who stage attacks in Afghanistan. Pakistan denies doing so.

President Donald Trump has vowed to get tough with Pakistan unless it changed its behaviour, with US officials threatening further reductions in aid and mooting targeted sanctions against Pakistani officials.

Tillerson, on a tour of Asia and the Middle East, arrived in Pakistan on Tuesday afternoon and met with Abbasi, as well as Pakistans powerful army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

We are committed in the war against terror, Abbasi told Tillerson, as the two men sat facing each other.

We have produced results. And we are looking forward to moving ahead with the US and building a tremendous relationship, added Abbasi, who sat next to General Bajwa.

During a short part of the meeting available to media, Tillerson told the Pakistani delegation that the nuclear-armed nation was an important US ally in the region.

(Pakistan is) important regionally to our joint goals of providing peace and security to the region and providing opportunity for greater economic relationship as well, Tillerson said.

As well as support for the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, another sticking point in the relationship has been growing closeness by the United States to India, Pakistans arch-foe and neighbour.

Tillerson said last week that the Trump administration wanted to dramatically deepen cooperation with New Delhi, partly to offset Chinese influence in Asia. Trump has also called for greater Indian role in Afghanistan.

But this deepening in ties has alarmed Pakistan, which has rejected a greater political role for India for Afghanistan as a red line for Islamabad.

An official statement said the meeting discussed matters of bilateral interest; cooperation in different sectors and regional situation.

Earlier on the arrival of the US Secretary of State, Minister for Foreign Affairs Khawaja Muhammad Asif welcomed him.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Khawaja Muhammad Asif, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, Defence Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Inter-Services Intelligence chief Naveed Mukhtar, secretary to PM Mussadiq Malik, foreign secretary Tehmina Janjua and other officials were present in the meeting.
India's front-line combat jet Su-30 MKI will undergo a makeover to turn into Super Sukhois with more punch and power.



We will start the Su-30 MKI upgrade programme soon to bring in new weapons and avionics to make them more potent, T Suvarna Raju, chairman and managing director of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) told DH.



Asked about the time schedule, Raju said it would start soon, without giving specifics. The enhancement would include installation of new radars with a better capability and improved avionics, said vice chief of the Indian Air Force (IAF) Air Marshal S B Deo. The entire fleet - 272 fighter jets - would be upgraded.



Though neither Raju nor Deo elaborated on the nature of the weapons to be added, there are reports that the fighter jet may acquire more stealth capability besides having new missiles with a higher range. The IAF, HAL and Russian agencies are in the process of finalising the cost of the package, Deo said.



When it comes to technology transfer, the Russians offer everything without any strings attached. The IAF would look forward to continuing its engagement with the Russian aviation industry for the enhancement of Su-30 upgrades so that it could be more potent, Deo said at a seminar to celebrate 70 years of India-Russia diplomatic relations, organised by HAL.



India has contracted 272 Su-30 MKI from Russia for the IAF, out of which 236 have been delivered. The HAL hopes to complete the entire delivery by 2019-20.



But the IAF's Su-30MKI fleet is often plagued by frequent engine failure-in-air and engine-related problems and poor operational serviceability, due to spare supply problems.



Earlier this year, HAL signed two MoUs with Russian companies for better maintenance of the Su-30 MKI fleet.



Fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) Ka-226T helicopters and enhancement of the Su-30 MKI fleet were the three upcoming major aviation projects between India and Russia, said an official of Rosoboronexport  the Russian agency dealing with military exports.



The FGFA is a great project for India from the technology sharing point of view. FGFA is my dream and I am hopeful of seeing the project through. Once the two government sign an agreement, it would take three years for the FGFA to fly in the Indian sky, Raju said.
The body was found about one km from the house of Mathews. "This afternoon, Wesley Mathews was arrested and charged with Injury to a Child (TPC 22.04), a first degree felony punishable by life or from five to 99 years in prison," according to Richardson Police.



"He voluntarily arrived at the Richardson Police Station with his attorney and asked to speak with detectives. He provided an alternate statement of events from those which he had given previously, regarding the disappearance of Sherin," police said.



"Mathews is currently in the Richardson City Jail and his bond has been set at USD 1,000,000. We are still awaiting a positive identification from the Dallas County Medical Examiners office for the child's body found yesterday, believed to be Sherin Mathews," a police spokesman said. Investigators are awaiting confirmation that the body of a child found in a culvert is that of the missing girl.



The father was previously arrested and charged with felony endangerment to a child and was placed on electronic ankle monitoring. He surrendered his passport as a condition of making bond on October 9. He was later released.



Child Protective Services took custody of the Indian- American couple's other biological daughter, age 4, shortly after Mathews was arrested.



Sini Mathews, the girl's mother does not face any charges. She was in the house at the time, but was reportedly asleep and unaware of what her husband was doing, police had said earlier. The older sibling of the missing girl will remain in foster care for at least three more weeks.



A Dallas County judge today postponed custody hearing until November 13 for the sister of Sherin to allow their father to hire an attorney. Sherin's case also caught the attention of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.



"We are deeply concerned about the missing child. Indian Embassy in US is actively involved and they keep me informed," Swaraj tweeted on October 19.



"We are closely monitoring the Sherin Mathews case. We have established contact with the community and authorities," India's Consul General in Houston, Anupam Ray had tweeted.



The foster father of a missing 3- year-old Indian girl in the US was today arrested and charged with first-degree felony injury to a child, a day after the body of a small child was found in a culvert less than a kilometre from the family's home.Wesley Mathews, 37, was arrested after he changed his story about his adoptive daughter Sherin's disappearance, Texas police said. Mathews, who hails from Kerala, provided "an alternate statement of events" about Sherin to detectives after the body of a small child was found, police said, without providing any additional details.He had previously claimed that Sherin went missing after he sent her outside their home at around 3 a.m. on October 7 as punishment for not drinking her milk.Sherin, who has developmental issues and limited verbal communication skills, was last seen outside her family's backyard in Richardson city in Texas on October 7. Mathews reportedly adopted Sherin two years ago from an orphanage in Bihar.He was today charged with first-degree felony injury to a child, a crime punishable by up to life imprisonment. Bond was set at USD 1 million for him, Richardson police Sgt Kevin Perlich said. Yesterday, the Richardson Police announced that they discovered the remains of a small child in a tunnel beneath a road, expressing apprehension that it was "most likely" that of Sherin. They, however, did not confirm the identity.The body was discovered in a culvert beneath a road with the help of search dogs. Police have not released any details about how the child died.
After facing severe criticism from all quarters, the Vasundhara Raje government has referred the controversial Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill, 2017, to a select committee.



While making the announcement, Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria said in the Assembly on Tuesday that the 15 member committee will submit its report within 42 days, before the bill lapses.



Kataria will head the committee and members of the Opposition, too, will be included.



The minister also informed the Assembly that the ordinance was issued after the President's sanction.



The move comes after Vasundhara held a late-night meeting on Monday with ministers and senior bureaucrats in the face of widespread criticism over the controversial order in political, social and legal circles.



She called four of her senior ministers and state BJP chief Ashok Parnami to discuss the situation.



Outside the Assembly, Kataria said the committee will look into the provisions of prosecution sanction in 180 days and clause on restrictions over media.



"Clauses pertaining to restrictions over media and prosecution sanction providing 180-days immunity to the officers, and the request for sanction to be automatically granted if no decision is taken within the stipulated period will be taken care of," Kataria confirmed.



State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Rajendra Rathore admitted that the clause on restrictions imposed on the media is one of the reasons the bill is being reconsidered.

"The bill will be redrafted as per the recommendations of the select committee," Rathore said.



Journalists Detained



On Tuesday, media persons staged a protest march from Pink City Press Club to Rajasthan Assembly against the ordinance.



Some of the protesting journalists were detained by the police outside the Assembly.


Cultural events will be held from 5 pm to 6 pm on the east-facing steps of the building.



Tributes will be paid to three former chief ministers who were instrumental in the Vidhana Soudha becoming the state secretariat. The first chief minister K C Reddy, under whom the foundation stone was laid by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Kengal Hanumanthaiah who completed the construction of major portions of the Soudha and Kadidal Manjappa, who inaugurated the Soudha, will be felicitated.



Late evening, ace music director Hamsalekha's team will perform 'Rasamanjari' programme on the east-facing stairs. Also, a film on public welfare schemes will be screened by the Government of India through 3D mapping on the Soudha building.





The Vidhana Soudha is all set for the Diamond Jubilee celebration which is to be held on Wednesday.The state building is decorated with glowing lights and flowers. The interiors and exteriors of the masonry building are lit up with decorative lamps.The repair work of stadium stairs and toilets is yet to be completed. The state government has released Rs 20 crore for the completion of this work under the Public Works Department.President Ramanath Kovind will inaugurate the ceremony by addressing a joint session of the legislature at 11 am. He will then take a tour of the Assembly hall.Members of both the Houses will pose for pictures with the President in front of the of Gandhi statue situated between the Vidhana Soudha and the Vikasa Soudha.After the lunch at the banquet hall, short films will be screened on the majestic building. A documentary film directed by Girish Kasaravalli and T N Sitaram will be screened at 3 pm along with a 3D video reality show by Master Kishan.
Opinion / Columnist

"ZIMBABWEANS living abroad have filed a fresh Constitutional Court (ConCourt) challenge seeking the striking down of Electoral Act provisions which bar them from taking part in local elections from their foreign bases," reported New Zimbabwe."Today (Friday) we filed an application on behalf of Zimbabweans living and working abroad," said ZLHR's Belinda Chinowawa."The application is based on a contention that the residents' requirements imposed under the Electoral Act are unconstitutional. (Section 23 (3) of the Act, calls for the removal from the voters' roll names of those who spend at least 12 consecutive months outside their constituencies.)"So, the purpose of the application is to ask the Constitutional Court to make a declaration that the residents' requirements are unconstitutional and to facilitate voting from abroad for all Zimbabweans whether or not they are working on behalf of the government or an international organisation as is currently the case."Whilst no one can ever dispute that the people in the diaspora have a right to a meaningful vote and the Zimbabwe government should do everything practical and within reason to facilitate this. The Zimbabwe government is already offering this to Zimbabweans on government business abroad, it will not cost much in time, money and energy to extend the facility to include the rest. What one must question here, however, is the wisdom taking the nation's eyes off the important and urgent matter stopping the ongoing flawed and illegal electoral process to pursue the diaspora vote.The need for the people in the diaspora to exercise their democratic right to vote is important. The need to stop the flawed and illegal elections going ahead next year until the reforms designed to stop the vote rigging are implemented is the single most important and urgent on the national agenda right now. There is nothing of substance to be gained from winning the diaspora vote if at the end of the day Zanu PF still rigs next year's elections. Nothing!It would be better for the nation if ZLHR was challenging ZEC's commitment to ensuring all Zimbabweans in the country who wish to register are afforded the opportunity to do so and ZEC's commitment to releasing a verified voters' roll at least one month before the voting day, for example. ZEC should have started the voter registration exercise in 2015 and not last month, less than a year, to the voting day; even with the best will in the world, there is no way the commission can deliver on its two commitments.ZLHR should be asking ZEC through the Constitutional Court to prove the commission can still register 7 million, release a verified voters' roll, etc. in the time frame left before next year's elections. Failure to do so, then the Court must stop the current flawed and illegal electoral process from proceeding any further and call for the necessary democratic reforms and appointment of a more competent ZEC.The same corrupt and incompetent ZEC failed to produce a verified voters' roll for the July 2013 elections; a fact noted in the AU election observer team's report. It will be criminal and dereliction of one's duty by all concerned if next year's elections were to go ahead without such a key and fundament document as a verified voters' roll!Even if the regime was to give in and allow some people in the diaspora to vote; what good will that be to the nation if Zanu PF rigs the vote at the end of the day!SADC leaders advised Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends NOT to contest the July 2013 elections without implementing the reforms first. As we all know, MDC leaders ignored the advice and contested the elections; which Zanu PF, gratefully, went on to blatantly rig.Since the rigged July 2013 elections, the country has not implemented even one reform; SADC leaders' advice not to contest flawed elections is even more germane today than back in 2013. This time, it is not just MDC leaders who have been warned of the folly of contesting flawed elections, we have all been warned. We will all look very foolish indeed if we secured the diaspora vote but fail to stop Zanu PF rigging the elections!"What a frivolous pursuit. The so-called ZLHR just wants to apply for more USAID funds to eat, nothing more. I won't be surprised to find out that none of them has registered to vote," was Tengenenge's response to the diaspora law suit.Diaspora vote is important but to take the nation's eyes off the important and urgent matter of making sure reforms are implemented before elections in pursuit of diaspora vote would indeed be frivolous!
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani held bilateral talks here on Tuesday, even as the US asked Pakistan to stop supporting Taliban and other terror organisations in Afghanistan.



Modi and Ghani discussed a range of regional and global issues and expressed a firm resolve to end the menace of terrorism, Raveesh Kumar, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, said.



Ghani earlier had a meeting with President Ram Nath Kovind, who strongly condemned the recent terror attacks in Afghanistan, which have resulted in over 200 innocent people being killed.



We can fully empathise with the ongoing quest of the Afghan people to secure peace, Kovind told Ghani, adding, India believes that whatever initiatives are taken for bringing peace in Afghanistan should be Afghan-led and Afghan-controlled.



The Afghan president is on a day-long visit to New Delhi  just a day after US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met him in Kabul to discuss the new US policy on Afghanistan.



Tillerson said the US had made a specific request to Islamabad to take action to undermine the support that the Taliban received in Pakistan.



India also agreed to extend further assistance to Afghanistan to help it expand the capability of its armed forces to fight the terrorists.



External Affairs Minister, Sushma Swaraj, called on the Afghan president soon after his arrival in New Delhi.



Ghani and Modi reviewed the entire gamut of multifaceted bilateral strategic partnership, including the New Development Partnership, which New Delhi and Kabul agreed upon on September 12 last.



The prime minister and the Afghan president also held consultations on furthering the shared objective of promoting peace, security, stability and prosperity in Afghanistan and efforts to combat the menace of terrorism.



The Afghan president is visiting New Delhi ahead of his proposed tour to Islamabad on an invitation from Pakistan Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa. The Modi-Ghani meeting on Tuesday was the first opportunity for the two leaders to exchange views on the new US policy on Afghanistan.
The Managements of Independent CBSE Schools Association is planning to move the court over the order of the government that all schools in the state should teach Kannada as either a first or a second language.



The managements have said they have no problem teaching Kannada as one of the languages. But schools will find it difficult if it is made mandatory as a first or a second language.



M Srinivasan, president of the Association, said it would not be possible to make teaching of Kannada as first or second language mandatory. "We will first write to the government and hold discussions with them. We will approach the court, if we don't get a remedy," he told DH.



Board exams are conducted for classes 9 and 10. It will not be possible to conduct the board exams if Kannada is taught as a first or second language. Srinivasan said the Association would write to the secondary education board in this regard.
Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin's son, who is working with the Jammu & Kashmir government, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday in connection with a 2011 terror funding case.



Syed Shahid Yousuf (42), a postgraduate in agriculture, is accused of collecting funds through international wire transfer from Saudi Arabia-based Hizbul militant Aijaz Ahmed Bhat.



A source said the money was transferred in at least four instalments between 2011 and 2014. The arrest is recorded a day after the government announced a new "sustained dialogue" to bring peace in Kashmir and with Home Minister Rajnath Singh saying that he would not interfere in the agency's investigation into terror funding.



Yousuf - a village agriculture extension assistant in the Department of Agriculture in Budgam district - is "one of the several Indian contacts of Bhat who have been in telephonic contact with him to receive the money transfer codes", the NIA said in a statement.



His arrest came after four rounds of questioning earlier and a summons to appear before the NIA on Tuesday in a case registered in April 2011.



The NIA then alleged that money from Pakistan is being pumped into Kashmir through 'hawala' channels via Delhi for fuelling terrorist and secessionist activities.



The NIA, which took over the case from the Delhi Police, has already arrested four people - Ghulam Mohammed Bhat, a close aide of Hurriyat chief Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mohammad Sidiq Ghanaian, Ghulam Jeelani Liloo and Farooq Ahmed Dagga.



Two other accused, Mohd Maqbool Pandit and Aijaz Ahmed Bhat, are absconding and a Red Corner Notice has been issued against them.



According to the charge sheet, it came to light that Pandit, who is based in Pakistan, was sending huge funds to secessionists via Delhi. The four accused were earlier arrested by the Delhi Police.



It said that between 2008 and January 2011, over Rs 6.5 crore was received from Pakistan through hawala channels and were distributed among separatists and Hizbul militants.



The supplementary charge sheet filed later said Bhat "raised, mobilised, transmitted and monitored the delivery of terror funds" throughout the hawala channel starting from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to Delhi and Kashmir.



In a separate terror funding case, a charge sheet has been filed against Yousuf's father Salahuddin and nine others.
Sathanur police inspector Mallesh K shot a history-sheeter in the leg after the latter attacked the police team with a knife in a bid to escape, at Boregowdannadoddi early Tuesday morning.



The injured police sub-inspector Ananth Ram and the history-sheeter Chandra Kumar alias Chandru have been admitted to hospital. The condition of both of them is said to be stable.



According to police, Chandru was wanted in a murder case registered with the Sathanur police. He is accused of murdering an elderly woman identified as Kempamma on September 26, from whom he had robbed a gold chain weighing 70 to 75 gm, the police said.



A team of police pursuing the case received information that Chandru had come to his house in Boregowdannadoddi. At around 2 am, Mallesh along with Sathanur PSI Bhaskar, PSI Ananth Ram, ASI Kodihalli Kumaraswamy and a few other staff surrounded his house. Chandru, who was present in the house, picked a knife and assaulted Ananth Ram who was injured in his left hand.



Mallesh warned Chandru to drop his knife by firing a round in the air, but Chandru did not heed his words. The inspector then shot Chandru on the leg and shifted both the police officer and the rowdy to the Kanakapura government hospital.



Fifth incident this month



October 11: Southeast division police shot at history-sheeter Karthik, who was on the run after he killed a software engineer in a road rage in Madivala recently.



October 16 - Halasuru police shot at history-sheeter Karthik when he attacked a policeman at a police checkpoint at DAD quarters near Halasuru lake. He is wanted in five criminal cases.



October 18 - History-sheeter Vasu was shot at and caught by the CCB police after he attacked a constable at Mariyappanapalya in Jnanabharathi.



October 21 - History-sheeter Raja Dorai (24) was shot at on his leg by CCB inspector Prakash Rathod, when he went to arrest him with a team, in Soladevanahalli. The history-sheeter attacked the police with a dagger, in a bid to escape.
The Trump administration threatened Monday to take punitive actions against Myanmar unless it pulls back from its violent military campaign against Rohingya Muslims, expressing what it called our gravest concern over a crisis that has killed or displaced hundreds of thousands of people.



The State Department said it has already cut off travel waivers allowing current and former senior military leaders into the country and was considering further actions to impose economic measures against those responsible for atrocities against Myanmars ethnic minority. The department said that all military units involved in operations against the Rohingya were ineligible for U.S. aid.



The government of Burma, including its armed forces, must take immediate action to ensure peace and security; implement commitments to ensure humanitarian access to communities in desperate need; facilitate the safe and voluntary return of those who have fled or been displaced in Rakhine state; and address the root causes of systematic discrimination against the Rohingya, the department said in a statement issued Monday night.



The U.S. warning came as the United Nations said the Rohingya Muslims who have fled deadly persecution in Myanmar to Bangladesh would soon exceed 1 million.



That prediction loomed over an emergency donors conference in Geneva to raise money for aid groups struggling to help Bangladesh, one of the worlds poorest countries, deal with the crisis.



Doctors Without Borders, the medical charity, called the health conditions of the refugee encampments a time bomb.



More than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims have battled terror, exhaustion and hunger to reach safety in Bangladesh since Myanmars army began a campaign of what the United Nations has called ethnic cleansing in late August. The new arrivals joined more than 300,000 Rohingya who had escaped in recent years.



The number of people crossing the Naf River that divides the two countries has slowed to about 1,000 to 3,000 a day, down from a peak of 12,000 to 18,000 a day earlier in the crisis, said William Lacy Swing, director of the International Organization for Migration, a part of the United Nations.



Still, he said, even at that rate the numbers are expected to exceed a million shortly.



More than 300,000 children are among the Rohingya refugees. Mark Lowcock, U.N. humanitarian coordinator, told reporters that many were acutely malnourished.



States had previously committed around $116 million toward the $430 million sought by the United Nations for humanitarian aid over the next six months. Pledges received from governments Monday raised the total to about $340 million, Lowcock said, expressing confidence that additional contributions would flow in coming days.



Even so, humanitarian agencies face enormous challenges delivering relief. Hundreds of thousands of refugees were crammed on a strip of land that lacked roads or infrastructure to support the delivery of aid.



With 210 hospital beds available to support more than 900,000 people living with little access to clean water, sanitation or medical care, the refugees situation is a time bomb ticking toward a full-blown health crisis, Joanne Liu, the international president of Doctors Without Borders, told the meeting.



The U.N. food aid agency said that it had distributed food to 580,000 people since the crisis erupted, but that it had received less than one-third of the $77 million it needs to aid 1 million people over six months.



Queen Rania of Jordan, who visited some of the camps Monday, expressed shock at the conditions. It is unforgivable that this crisis is unfolding, largely ignored by the international community, she said in a statement.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday warned that strict action would be taken against those who take the law into their hands on the occasion of Tipu Sultan Jayanti scheduled on November 10.



The BJP leaders are trying to divide the society. Yeddyurappa had praised Tipu Sultan when he was in the KJP. This shows his double standards, he told reporters on seeking his reaction to the BJP threatening to launch a protest against the governments decision to organise the Jayanti.



Read More: Tipu Jayanti will spell doom for Cong: BJP



He charged the BJP with misleading people on Tipu Sultan. Tipu was born in Devanahalli near Bengaluru. He died while fighting against British forces. The BJP should not try to twist history, he added.



Read also: BJP warns of protests if govt organises Tipu Jayanthi
Senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily on Tuesday projected Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi as the prime ministerial candidate for the 2019 Lok Sabha election.



Theres been an anti-incumbency wave against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the last eight months. The stage will be set for Rahul Gandhi to become prime minister in 2019, Moily told a press conference here. This is the second time this month that Moily projected Rahul as the partys PM candidate.



Rahul himself reportedly told an audience at the University of California, Berkeley last month that he was absolutely ready for the top job.



Moily went on to slam the BJP-led NDA government for its inexperience and misgovernance of the economy, holding demonetisation and GST as examples.

The economy of the world and Karnataka (where Congress is ruling) is looking up, but that of India is going down, Moily charged. The slower pace of GDP growth means India has lost the reputation as the worlds fastest-growing economy to China.



Giving full marks to the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government, Moily said Karnataka had outperformed the national average specifically in the areas of attracting industrial investments and creation of jobs.



Karnataka has retained the top spot in attracting investments, with Gujarat and Maharashtra coming next. Over 14 lakh jobs have been created in Karnataka in the last four years, whereas job creation at the national level is in the negative bracket, Moily said.


The Congress on Tuesday said the Centres intention in appointing an interlocutor for Jammu & Kashmir was suspect as the decision had come at the fag end of its tenure.



The intention of the government is suspect as the decision has come at the fag end of their tenure. This is only for publicity, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad told reporters here.



He accused the government of wasting three-and-a-half-years by pursuing a muscular approach and ignoring the Oppositions demands for a political solution to the issue.



Azad, a former chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir, said the Narendra Modi government followed a policy of hot pursuit and set aside the UPA initiative of Confidence Building Measures.

We were saying Kashmir is a political issue and should be settled politically. No political issue can be sorted out through hot pursuit, said Azad.



The Congress leader said had the government appointed an interlocutor earlier, hundreds of civilians, security personnel and innocent women and children would not have lost their lives to mindless violence.



This government has no Kashmir policy, no GST policy, no demonetisation policy. They only know the policy of divide and rule which was employed by foreign rulers, Azad said.Congress leader Manish Tewari said the appointment of an interlocutor was indicative that realists in the Modi government have prevailed over hawks.



RSS support



The RSS has decided to back the Modi governments appointment of former Intelligence Bureau director Dineshwar Sharma as an interlocutor for sustained dialogue to bring peace to Jammu and Kashmir.



A senior RSS functionary on Tuesday saw it as part of the correct strategy of the government, which helped create a conducive environment for talks.We can see a distinct reduction in the number of incidents of stone-pelting and terror, RSS leader Indresh Kumar said.



He told reporters that our security forces neutralised several terrorists and we are also seeing that people are agitating against their own administration in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.Kumar also said the governments initiative to start dialogue should not be seen as a decision made under compulsion.




Superstar Shah Rukh Khan has offered condolences on the death of his fan, Aruna PK, who was struggling with cancer.



The 51-year-old actor took to Twitter, where he posted a heartfelt message for Aruna's children Akshat and Priyanka Khot and wished the family strength to handle the tough times.



"May Allah give you strength to deal with the loss of your beautiful mother. I know how sad it is to deal with the loss of a parent.



"Know that she is always with you and henceforth do things that give her reasons to smile in heaven," Shah Rukh wrote.



Aruna was an ardent fan of the "Jab Harry Met Sejal" actor and he got to know that she wanted to meet the superstar as her last wish.



Shah Rukh later took to social media to send a video message to Aruna through his fanpage.



"I'm made to understand through your son Akshat and daughter Priyanka that you are fighting with an illness. I want to say this that me, my whole family, all our friends whoever knows about you, we are praying for your wellness," he had said in the snippet.



The actor also promised Aruna that he would meet her soon and will also perform for her.



"You are in a state where meeting you is perhaps not a possibility. I know this for a fact, with the positivity that you carry around that you will get well soon and we will meet very soon," he had said.



Read also Previous story : Cancer patient's wish to meet her 'hero' gets #SRKmeetAruna trending




Gujarat Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel on Tuesday hit out at the Congress, saying the party will go to the extent of inviting terrorists like Hafiz Saeed to the state, if doing so helps it form the government.



If Congress feels they can win the Assembly polls in Gujarat by joining hands with Pakistan-based terrorists like Hafiz Saeed or any such people, they will, without any hesitation, send them an invitation, Patel told reporters here.



Hafiz, chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawaa, is the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror attack and carries a bounty of $10 million offered by the US government on his head since 2014.



Patel charged the Congress with resorting to caste-based politics by invoking its KHAM theory (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi and Muslim) floated by the then chief minister Madhavsinh Solanki in the 1980s.



"BJP practises Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas and Congress continues to indulge in the divide and rule policy, he said.



The deputy chief minister said the state would now bear the GST levied on equipment deployed by farmers for drip irrigation.



The government will pay the 18% GST levied on the farm equipment, he said.



Currently, tribal farmers get 90% and other farmers get 70%-80% as subsidy for drip irrigation equipment in the state. The move is expected to cost the state exchequer about Rs 78 crore.



Hike for ASHA workers



He announced that the government would increase the pay of over 40,000 ASHA workers employed in pre-primary and primary schools by up to 50%.



The ASHA workers have been agitating for almost a year. This will cost the exchequer Rs 58 crore.



Patel agitation leader Hardik Patel, meanwhile, said the slew of announcements by the BJP government shows their desperation.



They have done nothing in the last five years and in the few days before the elections are announced, they are making a number of announcements. We dont know whether and when they will be implemented, he said.
The Opposition on Tuesday said they would mark the first anniversary of demonetisation next month as 'Black Day'.

Demonetisation was an ill-conceived and hasty decision. It was a great betrayal of the people... the Opposition is compelled to observe its first anniversary on November 8 as Black Day, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad said.



He was flanked by Trinamool Congress leader Derek O'Brien and JD(U) rebel Sharad Yadav.

A day after mulling joint protests against demonetisation, Azad announced that each political party would carry out protests marches or demand shutdowns to interpret 'Black Day' in the manner of its choice.



All 18 parties will interpret Black Day in a different way, O'Brien said, underscoring that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was the first leader to oppose demonetisation within hours of the announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8, 2016.

Asked why the Opposition was not undertaking a joint protest, Azad said all regional parties cannot be in New Delhi on November 8.



That is the reason the coordination committee has decided to have protest in every state according to the capacity of various Opposition parties. Our purpose is to show our unity, he said, adding that the Opposition leaders would meet again to plan a joint strategy for the Winter Session of Parliament beginning next month.



Azad said demonetisation was a hasty move and never before was an announcement by the head of the government subjected to 135 amendments.



Terming demonetisation as the scam of the century, the Congress leader said Modi had promised 10 crore new jobs in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections but the note ban decision had rendered 10 crore people unemployed.




Actor Prakash Rai has hit out at the UP government and the Centre over the Taj Mahal issue.



The versatile actor took to Twitter and said, Will this worlds wonder, Taj Mahal, be a past in our future??.



He ironically tweeted, Since you have started digging at the foundation of Taj Mahal, when do you intend to bring it down. We can at least take our children and show it one last time.

#justasking .....Will this worlds wonder #tajmahal be a past in our future ..??? pic.twitter.com/4tTvBHr7UR  Prakash Raj (@prakashraaj) October 23, 2017





Rai's tweet comes in the wake of BJP MLA from UP Sangeet Som calling the monument a "blot" on the history of India and also stating that the world wonder was built by traitors.

Read more: BJP MLA calls Mughal emperors traitors; questions Taj Mahal's 'history'

Taj made by blood and sweat of Bharat Mata's sons: Adityanath
The report of a parliamentary standing committee has "persuasive" value but it is neither binding, nor can it be used to prove disputed facts, some pharma companies told the Supreme Court today.



The submission was made before a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, which is to decide questions including whether the court can rely on or refer to parliamentary committee reports in judicial proceedings.



The issue whether a parliamentary panel report can be relied upon in judicial proceedings had arisen after the petitioners had referred to the 81st Report of Parliamentary Standing Committee, issued on December 22, 2014, allegedly indicting some pharma firms for conducting trials of the controversial Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine.



"The report of a standing committee of Parliament has persuasive value and it is advisory in nature," senior advocate Harish Salve, appearing for some pharma companies, told the bench, which also comprised Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan.



He said the report of a parliamentary panel was not binding on Parliament and the court and hence cannot be relied upon to prove disputed facts.



Senior advocate Anand Grover, appearing for one of the petitioners who is opposing controversial HPV vaccine, said he was not relying on the parliamentary panel report but had rather referred to it.



Earlier, the Centre, in its affidavit, had said the reports of parliamentary panels should not be used as evidence in a court of law.



The case came up for hearing in the apex court in 2012 and centered around aspects relating to action taken by the Drugs Controller General of India and the Indian Council of Medical Research pertaining to the approval of HPV vaccine manufactured by M/s GlaxoSmithKline Asia Pvt Ltd and MSD Pharmaceuticals Pvt Ltd for preventing cervical cancer in women.



The hearing remained inconclusive and would resume tomorrow.



While referring the matter to the five-judge bench on April 5, the top court had said it "might be crossing the boundary of federal structure" if it acted on the basis of a parliamentary committee report in a PIL.



It had said that it was of the "prima facie view" that the Parliamentary Standing Committee report may not be tendered as a document to augment the stance on the factual score that a particular activity was unacceptable or erroneous.



The top court had then framed two questions -- one, whether in a litigation filed before it either under Article 32 or Article 136 of the Constitution, the court can refer to and place reliance upon the report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee.



The second question framed for the constitution bench was "whether such a report can be looked at for the purpose of reference and, if so, can there be restrictions for the purpose of reference, regard being had to the concept of parliamentary privilege and the delicate balance between the constitutional institutions that Articles 105, 121 and 122 of the Constitution conceive".



The court was hearing two PILs filed by activist Kalpna Mehta and Sama-Resource Group for Women and Health.



The issue of untimely death of some people and the grant of compensation to their families had arisen in the hearing in which the attention of the court was drawn to the Report of Parliamentary Standing Committee.



The Centre and state governments have maintained their stand that the vaccine was necessary and steps have been taken to avoid any kind of hazard.
United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. GARY JORDAN, Defendant - Appellant. No. 16-3370 Decided: October 13, 2017

Before BRISCOE, HARTZ, and BACHARACH, Circuit Judges.

ORDER AND JUDGMENT*

This appeal is brought by Mr. Gary Jordan, who was convicted of three charges arising from an armed bank robbery. The district court sentenced Mr. Jordan to prison for 360 months. He appeals, arguing that the sentence is substantively unreasonable because the district court failed to meaningfully consider a methamphetamine addiction. We disagree.

I. We apply the abuse-of-discretion standard.

The length of a sentence must be substantively reasonable. United States v. Walker, 844 F.3d 1253, 1255 (10th Cir. 2017). We review the substantive reasonableness of Mr. Jordan's sentence under the abuse-of-discretion standard. United States v. Friedman, 554 F.3d 1301, 1307 (10th Cir. 2009). Under this standard, we consider a sentence substantively unreasonable only if it is arbitrary, capricious, whimsical, or manifestly unreasonable. United States v. Lente, 759 F.3d 1149, 1158 (10th Cir. 2014).

To exercise this discretion, the district court must

 individualize sentences without creating unwarranted sentencing disparities and

 consider the seriousness of the crimes while recognizing the uniqueness of the individuals committing crimes.

Walker, 844 F.3d at 1255. In individualizing a sentence, the district court occupies an ideal position because of the opportunity to observe and interact with the defendant. Id.

II. The district court applied an upward departure and variance.

Mr. Jordan pleaded guilty to three charges: (1) armed bank robbery, (2) use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence, and (3) possession of a firearm after a felony conviction. See 18 U.S.C.  2113(a), (d), 922(g)(1), 924(a)(2), (c)(1)(A). The crimes stemmed from Mr. Jordan's robbery of a bank while carrying a semiautomatic firearm. Mr. Jordan drove the getaway car, with 2 adults and a 19-month-old child. A high-speed chase ensued, with one of the robbers shooting at police cars in hot pursuit. The chase ended when Mr. Jordan crashed his car, quickly got out, and tried to carjack a nearby motorist. At that point, Mr. Jordan was finally captured.

The district court calculated a total offense level of 31 and assigned a criminal-history category of IV. Based on this offense level and criminal-history category, the guideline range was 151 to 188 months. But the district court departed and varied upward to 360 months. In departing upward, the district court invoked guideline application notes addressing the extent of the danger and the degree of culpability.

For the extent of the danger, one application note authorizes an upward departure when the conduct creates a substantial risk of death or bodily injury to more than one person. U.S.S.G.  3C1.2 cmt. n.6. Invoking this application note, the district court reasoned that Mr. Jordan's conduct had endangered officers, bystanders, and a 19-month-old child.

For the degree of culpability, another application note authorizes an upward departure when the degree of culpability exceeds recklessness. Id. cmt. n.2. Invoking this application note, the district court reasoned that the car chase had involved misconduct that was intentional rather than just reckless.

The court also concluded that an upward variance was appropriate. For the variance, the court discussed two of the factors in 18 U.S.C.  3553(a): (1) the characteristics of the defendant, and (2) the nature and circumstances of the offense. In addressing Mr. Jordan's personal characteristics, the district court noted an abusive childhood and a need for counseling and substance-abuse treatment, which would weigh against an upward variance. But the court also discussed the nature of Mr. Jordan's crime, emphasizing the danger to others. This danger led the district court to decide on a 360-month sentence.

III. The sentence of 360 months fell within the district court's discretion.

Substantive reasonableness involves whether the length of the sentence is reasonable given all the circumstances of the case in light of the factors set forth in 18 U.S.C.  3553(a). Lente, 759 F.3d at 1155.

Mr. Jordan contends that the overall length of his sentence is substantively unreasonable because the district court did not consider Mr. Jordan's methamphetamine addiction. We disagree. The district court did consider the methamphetamine addiction but also considered Mr. Jordan's use of firearms, the presence of a 19-month-old child in the back seat of the car, and the danger to bystanders and officers. See United States v. Stile, 845 F.3d 425, 433 (1st Cir. 2017) (holding that a sentence was substantively reasonable because the district court considered the defendant's drug addiction but also considered his planning of the crime, his threats, and the need for deterrence).

Considering these factors, the district court determined that an upward departure and variance were appropriate. Mr. Jordan disagrees, arguing that the district court gave insufficient weight to the addiction. The threshold issue is how to approach challenges to the weight given a particular sentencing factor.

We have sometimes held that we cannot disturb a sentence based on the district court's weighing of a statutory sentencing factor. See, e.g., United States v. Smart, 518 F.3d 800, 808 (10th Cir. 2008) (stating that we cannot examine the weight that a district court assigns to statutory sentencing factors). But other times, we have considered whether a district court had given a particular factor too much or too little weight.

For example, in United States v. Walker, 844 F.3d 1253 (10th Cir. 2017), we held that a bank robber's sentence was unreasonably short because of the district court's assignment of inadequate weight to statutory factors supporting a longer sentence. 844 F.3d at 1255. So, there are at least some circumstances in which we will reverse based on a district court's assignment of weight to a particular sentencing factor.

But these circumstances are rare. In Walker, for example, we were addressing a sentence of time served (33 days in pretrial confinement for a serial bank robber). See id. at 1255, 1258. Our case is far different.

Here, the sentencing court expressly considered mitigating factors, consisting of not only the methamphetamine addiction but also an abusive childhood and a learning disability. In addition, however, the court considered three other factors supporting a heavy sentence:

1. Mr. Jordan endangered dozens by driving the getaway car over 100 mph, veering into oncoming traffic, forcing cars out of their lanes, driving on the shoulder, and running stoplights while a companion shot at pursuing police cars. All the while, Mr. Jordan knew that a 19-month-old child was in the back seat.

2. Mr. Jordan tried to carjack an automobile even after the chase had ended in a crash.

3. Mr. Jordan had six prior felony convictions in which two involved firearms.

The district court had to balance these aggravating circumstances against the mitigating factors, such as the addiction to methamphetamine. One count could have resulted in a life sentence; two of the counts could have resulted in a 35-year sentence. See 18 U.S.C.  924(a)(2), 924(c)(1)(A), 2113(d). The district court ultimately decided on a sentence totaling 360 months for all of the counts. This balancing of the statutory factors was not arbitrary, capricious, whimsical, or manifestly unreasonable. Thus, we affirm.

Entered for the Court

FOOTNOTES

. The government contends that Mr. Jordan waived his challenge to the upward departure. For the sake of argument, we assume that the government is incorrect.

Robert E. Bacharach Circuit Judge
A mob lynched four men in Bihar's Rohtas district today after they opened fire at a shop owned by the husband of a district board member in an alleged extortion bid, the police said.



The incident happened this morning after eight armed men, riding three motorbikes, reached the shop of Vishal Kumar, the husband of District Board Member Rinky Devi, at Kowath Nagar Panchayat and opened indiscriminate fire, they said.



Kumar and a customer received bullet injuries in the firing. The police said the eight men had allegedly demanded Rs 3 lakh from Rinky Devi nearly one-and-half-months ago and threatened her of dire consequences if she did not pay.



Deputy Inspector General (Shahabad Range) Mohammad Rahman said over 500 people gathered near the shop after hearing the sound of gunshots.



Police said the mob caught four of the attackers and beat them up while the four others managed to escape.



Soon, the police arrived at the spot and took the four to a nearby hospital where doctors declared them dead.

Police have registered murder case against unidentified persons in connection with the lynching, DIG Rahman said.



He said the identity of the four men was yet to be established. Raids are being conducted to nab the other four who fled the spot, he said.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday imposed Rs 2 lakh cost on the Union government for its failure to finalise pollution emission standards for industries using pet coke and furnace oil in the national capital region.



A bench of justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta termed it as a "completely disgusting state of affairs" as the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) had not set standards in spite of an earlier court direction setting June 30 as the deadline.



The court asked Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh to explain what the Environment ministry was doing in the last three-four months.



Singh, representing the ministry, told the court that a draft notification had been issued on Monday and 60 days time was mandatory for receiving objections.



He told the bench there were 34 categories of industries in the national capital region which use pet coke and furnace oil. Pollution standards had been fixed earlier for several categories.



The bench, expressing surprise and unhappiness, imposed cost on the MoEF.



The bench was informed that in spite of the May 2 order of the apex court, the ministry had not issued any notification.
Indias largest body of doctors has written to the Medical Council of India, opposing the involvement of doctors in the hanging process, as mandated by jail manuals.



Indian Medical Association (IMA) holds the view that no doctor should be present during the process of execution. This is a violation of medical ethics and therefore a professional misconduct, K K Agarwal, national president of IMA, and R N Tandon, its secretary general, wrote.



The IMAs letter comes in the wake of a similar resolution adopted by the World Medical Association (WMA)earlier this month.



The global body of medical professionals were approached last year by a section of Bangaldeshi doctors who resented their participation in the capital punishment process.



After multiple rounds of internal discussions, the global body had adopted a resolution which states, It is unethical for physicians to participate in capital punishment, in any way, or during any step of the execution process, including its planning and the instruction and/or training of persons to perform executions.



In their letter to MCI president Jaushree Mehta, the IMA office-bearers cited the WMA resolution to argue against the practice mandated by many prison manuals. Nearly three lakh doctors are members of the IMA.Doctors are required to monitor vital signs during the process of execution and look for signs of life and then pronounce death. This is against the core tenets of medical ethics of do no harm (non-maleficence) and do good (beneficence), Agarwal and Tandon wrote.



Jail doctors also certify whether a convict is fit for hanging. In 2014, on the basis of the medical reports of Sikh militant Devinderpal Singh Bhullar, his sentence to death was converted to a life sentence.

We are not opposed to capital punishment per se, but only against the involvement of doctors. Jail manual cant decide on medical ethics. We are for a debate on this issue, Agarwal told DH.



The debate is not a new one. The WMA in 1981 came out with the Resolution on Physician Participation in Capital Punishment, which was amended in 2008. Closer home, the National Human Rights Commission, too, had opposed the involvement of doctors in the hanging process.



The WMA requests firmly its constituent members to advise all physicians that any participation in capital punishment as stated above is unethical, stated the WMA resolution.One must understand the serious implications of this because if doctors withdraw from their tasks they currently fulfill, there cant be any legal hanging, G S Grewal, former president of Punjab Medical Council said.
Air Force chief B S Dhanoa has stressed on maintaining "very high levels" of vigil to ensure security of air bases, an IAF statement said today.



Addressing the Western Air Command (WAC), Station Commanders' Conference, held on October 23-24 here, the Chief of Air Staff (CAS) emphasised the need to enhance mission capability of all platforms and weapon systems.



"The CAS (Dhanoa) made a special mention on the need to maintain very high levels of vigil to ensure security of our airbases in the backdrop of the existing internal security situation," the Air Force statement said.



The IAF has taken several steps to beef up the security of its bases after the January 2016 terror attack on the Pathankot airbase.



Air Officers Commanding/Station Commanders of all Air Force Stations under Headquarter Western Air Command and all Principal Staff officers at HQ WAC attended the conference.



Dhanoa exhorted the commanders to revise their plans in consonance with lessons learnt during various exercises to bolster the mission capability of WAC.



"He reiterated on the need for development and upkeep of operational infrastructure and continuous orientation of human resource so as to absorb induction of new technologies for a smooth transition of the IAF into a potent aerospace power," the statement added.



The CAS also lauded the "rapid response and untiring efforts" of Western Air Command in providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief in recent times, which included evacuation and transportation of live organs.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed demolition of a parking lot, being built within a km of the iconic Taj Mahal in Agra.



The courts order comes two days before the scheduled visit of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to the historic monument. A bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta directed the Agra authorities to demolish the two-storey parking lot for tourists within four weeks.



The project was mooted by the previous Akhilesh Yadav government. When the matter came up for hearing, the apex court wanted to know the response from the Uttar Pradesh government. But it noted no counsel from the state was present.



On being informed by advocate A D N Rao, representing the Archaeological Survey of India, that no environmental clearance or prior permission from the Central Empowered Committee was obtained for raising the construction, the bench said the parking lot would be demolished.



Subsequently, Additional Advocate General of Uttar Pradesh government, Aishwarya Bhati, mentioned the matter before the bench seeking a recall of the order, but the court asked her to move an appropriate restoration application in this regard.



The court has been monitoring development in the area to protect the Taj Mahal, built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in the memory of his wife Mumtaz in 1631, on a plea by environmentalist M C Mehta.



DH News Service
The Ahmedabad Metropolitan Court on Tuesday issued summons to a reporter and editors of the online news portal The Wire for the publication of an article against Jay Shah, son of BJP national president Amit Shah.



The summons was issued under Sections 500 and 114 of the IPC (punishment for defamation and abettor in defamation), as well as Section 202 of the Criminal Procedure Code.



There is a prima facie case of defamation and our contention before the court was that the article was published with the intent and knowledge to defame and that it was not published in good faith. There was an ulterior motive in publishing the article and the timing was deliberate to make it an issue for the elections, S V Raju, lawyer for Jay Shah, told DH.



He also told the court that the reply by Jay Shah had not been considered while publishing the article.



The Wire had published an article, The Golden Touch of Jay Amit Shah, written by Rohini Singh, which read that the turnover of the BJP presidents sons company had risen 16,000 times within a year of Narendra Modi becoming prime minister in 2014.



The article went on to say that the revenue of Jays company in this period had jumped from Rs 50,000 to over Rs 80 crore.



Jay had approached the Metrpolitan court on October 9 to file a defamation case against seven entities, including Rohini Singh, editors Siddharth Vardarajan and M K Venu and owner of The Wire, the Federation for Independent Journalists, for publishing a defamatory article against him on October 8.



Jay and his lawyers, who were not present at the last hearing on October 11, on Tuesday presented themselves before the court to argue the case. Two witnesses, Jaimin Shah and Rajiv Shah, were also present during the hearing.



After Jay verified his complaint, the two witnesses testified before the court about the article being defamatory in nature.



DH News Service
United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit. Bilma Altagracia HILARIO-HILARIO, Petitioner, v. Jefferson B. SESSIONS III, United States Attorney General, Respondent. 16-2516 Decided: October 13, 2017

PRESENT: JOSE A. CABRANES, RAYMOND J. LOHIER, JR., SUSAN L. CARNEY, Circuit Judges. FOR PETITIONER: Joshua Bardavid, New York, NY. FOR RESPONDENT: Chad A. Readler, Acting Assistant Attorney General; Papu Sandhu, Assistant Director; Victor M. Lawrence, Senior Litigation Counsel, Office of Immigration Litigation, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC.

SUMMARY ORDER

Petitioner Bilma Altagracia Hilario-Hilario, a native and citizen of the Dominican Republic, seeks review of a June 24, 2016, decision of the BIA, affirming a July 30, 2015, decision of an Immigration Judge (IJ) denying Hilario-Hilario's application for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). In re Bilma Altagracia Hilario-Hilario, No. A055 015 119 (B.I.A. June 24, 2016), aff'g No. A055 015 119 (Immig. Ct. N.Y. City July 30, 2015). We assume the parties' familiarity with the underlying facts and procedural history in this case.

Hilario-Hilario was ordered removed based on a conviction for an aggravated felony and controlled substance offense, thereby limiting our jurisdiction to constitutional claims and questions of law. See 8 U.S.C.  1252(a)(2)(C), (D). We review such claims de novo. Pierre v. Holder, 588 F.3d 767, 772 (2d Cir. 2009). Hilario-Hilario's aggravated felony conviction bars asylum, see 8 U.S.C.  1158(b)(2)(A)(ii), (b)(2)(B)(i), and she challenges only the denial of withholding of removal and CAT relief. We find no error in the agency's denial of those forms of relief.

Hilario-Hilario's conviction bars withholding of removal if it is particularly serious. 8 U.S.C.  1231(b)(3)(B)(ii). Although her conviction is not per se particularly serious because she was sentenced to only three years' probation, the agency is authorized to determine whether the conviction is otherwise particularly serious. Id.  1231(b)(3)(B); Nethagani v. Mukasey, 532 F.3d 150, 155 (2d Cir. 2008). We retain jurisdiction to determine whether the agency applied the correct standard. Nethagani, 532 F.3d. at 154-55.

Hilario-Hilario's aggravated felony conviction involved drug trafficking, and thus is presumptively particularly serious for the purposes of withholding of removal. To avoid the bar, Hilario-Hilario had to show extraordinary and compelling circumstances justifying a rare deviation from the presumption. Matter of Y-L-, A-G-, and R-S-R-, 23 I. & N. Dec. 270, 276-77 (B.I.A. 2002), overruled on other grounds by Khouzam v. Ashcroft, 361 F.3d 161, 171 (2d Cir. 2004). As the agency concluded, Hilario-Hilario offered no evidence beyond her own self-serving testimony, to rebut the presumption. She now argues that Matter of Y-L- suggests that the Attorney General was not referring to misdemeanor convictions like hers when it held that drug trafficking offenses are presumptively particularly serious. However, Matter of Y-L- makes no such distinction between felonies and misdemeanors. Rather, the decision makes clear that a trafficking offense is particularly serious unless the applicant can show, at a minimum, that the conviction involved (1) a very small quantity of controlled substance; (2) a very modest amount of money paid for the drugs in the offending transaction; (3) merely peripheral involvement by the alien in the criminal activity, transaction, or conspiracy; (4) the absence of any violence or threat of violence, implicit or otherwise, associated with the offense; (5) the absence of any organized crime or terrorist organization involvement, direct or indirect, in relation to the offending activity; and (6) the absence of any adverse or harmful effect of the activity or transaction on juveniles. Id. at 276-77. Hilario-Hilario has not identified any error in the particularly serious crime determination because she never presented any argument or evidence to the agency to rebut the presumption.

Hilario-Hilario remained eligible for deferral of removal under the CAT despite her conviction. 8 C.F.R.  1208.17(a). But, as noted above, her conviction limits our jurisdiction to constitutional claims or questions of law. 8 U.S.C.  1252(a)(2)(C), (D); Ortiz-Franco v. Holder, 782 F.3d 81, 86 (2d Cir. 2015).

Hilario-Hilario's sole challenge to the denial of CAT deferral is that the agency overlooked evidence that the Dominican government ignores the actions of drug dealers and smugglers who would target her because they will perceive her to have either been involved in the drug trade[ ] or cooperated against it due to her light sentence. While it is true that the agency may commit an error of law if important facts have been totally overlooked and others have been seriously mischaracterized, Mendez v. Holder, 566 F.3d 316, 323 (2d Cir. 2009), a review of the record reveals no such errors. We presume [the agency] has taken into account all of the evidence before [it], unless the record compellingly suggests otherwise. Ahmed v. Lynch, 804 F.3d 237, 240 (2d Cir. 2015) (quoting Xiao Ji Chen v. U.S. Dep't of Justice, 471 F.3d 315, 336 n.17 (2d Cir. 2006)). The record does not suggest that the agency overlooked evidence: the IJ considered Hilario-Hilario's testimony and evidence that there is general violence and crime in the Dominican Republic. In essence, what Hilario-Hilario challenges is the agency's factual determination that this evidence did not show that she would more likely than not be tortured. This is a finding of fact beyond our jurisdiction to review. See Ortiz-Franco, 782 F.3d at 91; Hui Lin Huang v. Holder, 677 F.3d 130, 133-34 (2d Cir. 2012).

For the foregoing reasons, the petition for review is DENIED. As we have completed our review, any stay of removal that the Court previously granted in this petition is VACATED, and any pending motion for a stay of removal in this petition is DISMISSED as moot. Any pending request for oral argument in this petition is DENIED in accordance with Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 34(a)(2), and Second Circuit Local Rule 34.1(b).
Construction of the controversial Ram temple in Ayodhya is likely to begin before December 6, 2018, the 26th anniversary of the razing of Babri Masjid.



Speaking to reporters, Senior Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader and member of the Ram Janambhoomi Trust Ram Bilas Vedanti said the NDA government at the Centre would facilitate the temple construction through a Parliamentary legislation if the courts decision is not favourable.



Vedanti, a former BJP MP, also said many in the Muslim community support the temple construction. The Shia Waqf Board has already supported building the Ram Temple, he added.



Vedanti also said that the BJPs strength in Rajya Sabha will go up after a string of Assembly polls, hinting that the temple legislation will have a smooth passage in the Upper House.



The VHP leaders statement is significant in the wake of recent activities in the temple town. Several truckloads of stones have arrived in Ayodhya, as UP Chief Minister spoke of developing the town during his Diwali celebrations there.
The Supreme Court has said the job of a "forest motivator" working under a scheme in Karnataka is not of a permanent nature, so it cannot be regularised.



A bench of Justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and U U Lalit dismissed a plea made by N K Kalavathi for regularising her job on the grounds that she has put in as many as 32 years in rendering her services as a forest motivator at the zilla panchayat office in Shivamogga district.



"You were not appointed to a regular cadre post. You were simply part of a scheme. The post of forest motivator is not a regular one," the bench told her counsel.



Advocate Praneet Ranjan, representing the petitioner as a legal aid counsel, submitted that Kalavathi was on the verge of retirement after putting in 32 years of continuous service.



The court, however, said the job of a forest motivator may be of a nature where a person is utilised for part-time to ensure the people are persuaded to protect the forest.



Kalavathi's plea stated that she was appointed on May 10, 1985, at the zilla panchayat office, Soraba, by the deputy conservator of forest under a scheme called Karnataka Sustainable Forest Management and Bio Diversity Conservation Project.



She said initially her appointment was for a period two years but she continued on the post for 32 years.



She challenged the Karnataka High Court's order of March 7, 2013, which had refused to interfere with the Karnataka's Appellate Tribunal's decision in 2011. The tribunal had found no illegality in rejection of her application by the forest authorities.
At least five children in two different districts of Bihar drowned on the eve of Chhath puja on Tuesday. To avoid any such accidents, the Nitish government has decided to deploy four boat ambulances in the Ganga.



The river ambulance will be manned by members of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).



Besides, personnel drawn from the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and divers would be deployed at various ghats where devotees will pay obeisance to the sun god on Thursday evening and then again on Friday morning.



The river ambulances have been readied with emergency treatment facilities and will be attached to the Patna Medical College and Hospital in case of any exigencies.



"A team of around 100 doctors, 200 paramedical staff and 20 ambulances will be deployed at different ghats in the state capital for emergency," said Patna District Magistrate (DM) Sanjay Agarwal.



The foolproof measures are being taken in view of the fact that at least 20 people, including nine children, were killed in a stampede after a makeshift wooden bridge near Adalat Ghat in Patna collapsed during Chhath in 2012.
Patidaar Anamat Adolan Samiti (PAAS) member Narendra Patel on Tuesday filed a complaint against six people before Gandhinagar chief judicial magistrate court, on charges of bribing, cheating, betrayal and threatening him.



On Sunday, Narendra had claimed that attempts were made to bribe him with an offer of Rs 1 crore. On Tuesday, he filed a complaint against six people, including BJP state chief Jitu Vaghani, BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya, BJP youth wing leader Rutvij Patel and Varun Patel.



Narendra in his complaint claimed that he was threatened by BJP state chief Jitu Vaghani in the presence of five others in a closed room at the BJP party office.
With the ruling Congress looking to expand its vote base ahead of the 2018 Assembly polls, the partys manifesto is likely to be more broad-based without reflecting Chief Minister Siddaramaiahs Ahinda focus.



Ahinda is a Kannada acronym for minorities, backward classes and dalits.



Social justice pervades many sections of people cutting across caste and community, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Manifesto Committee chairman and MP M Veerappa Moily told DH on Tuesday. Nobody should feel let down. Everyone has to feel a sense of belonging to the Congress party and its ideology, he said.



Siddaramaiah is widely considered an Ahinda leader. Since coming to power, the state government has launched several welfare schemes in line with its Ahinda focus.



The state governments yet-to-be-published caste census report is likely to be discussed at the maiden meeting of the manifesto committee on October 29, Moily said.



Moily, a former Union minister, was convener of the committee that drafted the Congress manifesto for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections in which the UPA came back to power.



As part of the manifesto preparation process for the 2018 Assembly polls, Moily said several subject groups will be formed with focus areas. One group will be tasked with reviewing the governments performance. Sincerity is an important backdrop, the former chief minister said.



The manifesto committee will tour the state and reach out to stakeholders so that discussions are not confined to party workers.



We have to maintain an equal balance. Urban areas, too, have vulnerable sections, he said. Party units in each district will be asked to send in suggestions so that the manifesto will have a flavour of the ground, he said.



At a press conference on Tuesday, Moily gave full marks to the Siddaramaiah-led government.



Its the best government in India right now, he said. He went on to slam the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre for its inexperience and misgovernance of the economy, holding demonetisation and GST as examples.
Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Jagadish Shettar said on Tuesday that they had no problem if Tipu Jayanti celebrations were organised by private people.



We have never opposed if the event is by private parties. But it is not right to organise

the celebration on behalf of the government, he said.



He was speaking to reporters in the city. I was gifted a headgear and a sword at a programme on Tipu Sultan organised by the minority morcha of the BJP. He had killed many Hindus. Onake Obavva of Chitradurga was also killed during Hyder Alis period. He had tortured Christians too, he said.



He said the state government should waive farmers loans on the lines of Uttar Pradesh, where farm loans up to Rs 1 lakh have been waived.
Vidhana Soudha, the iconic seat of power in Karnataka, is all decked up for yet another milestone on Wednesday  a special event to mark its diamond jubilee.



The imposing structure has stood the test of time and seen 21 chief ministers since the unification of Karnataka in 1956. The building, which houses the state secretariat and legislature, is even called the Taj Mahal of the South.



Workers have been scrubbing the walls and floors of the imposing building for the past few days now.



Arches and silver-painted panels have been placed in and around the impressive building with the logo  Vidhana Soudha  60.



Floral decorations have been put up inside the building at regular intervals. Both the houses of the legislature, the offices of the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly and the Chairperson of the Legislative Council have been decorated with flowers.



President Ram Nath Kovind, who arrived in Bengaluru on Tuesday, will address a special joint session of the legislature on Wednesday morning.



Thereafter, he will be taken on a guided tour of the Vidhana Soudha. Post-lunch, three documentary films  Journey of the Legislature by T N Seetharam, The Legislative Assembly Building by Girish Kasaravalli and 3D Virtual Reality Video by Master Kishan  will be screened at the Banquet Hall, which can seat 1,000 people.



The event has had its share of controversies. It was originally planned with a budget of Rs 26.87 crore. But following a public uproar over such lavish spending, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah intervened and reduced the budget to Rs 10 crore. The two-day event was turned into a one-day affair.



The schedule

Starting 5 pm, the Kannada and Culture Department will organise cultural programmes on the flight of stairs in the eastern wing of the Vidhana Soudha. There will be a small break for a programme in memory of the first three chief ministers of Karnataka  K C Reddy, Kengal Hanumanthaiah and Kadidal Manjappa.



At 6.30 pm, the flight of stairs will come alive with a concert by Kannada composer and lyricist Hamsalekha. A 3D mapping show depicting the achievements of the state government will be beamed later in the evening.



Only framed photos

Legislators will have to make do with framed group photographs with President Ram Nath Kovind as souvenirs of the diamond jubilee.



The legislature secretariat had earlier planned something far grander. It intended to present Rs 55,000 worth of gold biscuits to each of the 300 lawmakers. The move was dropped following a public outcry.



A photo session has been organised in front of the Gandhi statue on the lawns of the Vidhana Soudha on Wednesday. Framed photographs of the occasion will be sent to the lawmakers in the coming days. They will also be given TA/DA for attending the special session. A specially carved wooden model of the Vidhana Soudha will be presented to the president.



DH News Service
President Xi Jinping on Wednesday attained the iconic status of modern Chinas founder Chairman Mao Zedong, with his name and ideology enshrined in the Constitution of the ruling CPC, as he secured a second five-year term with sights firmly set on an unprecedented third.



The once-in-five-years Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) approved Xis ideology to be written into its Constitution, which is in addition to the title of core leader conferred on him that analysts say enhances his leadership status.



Till now, only the thoughts of Mao and his successor Deng Xiaoping were enshrined in the Constitution of the world's longest ruling Communist Party, interpreting the complex doctrine of Marxism with Chinese characteristics.



The thoughts of Deng, China's reformist leader, were added posthumously.



CPC historians compare 64-year-old Xi with party founder Mao. The thoughts of two of Xi's predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, were mentioned in the Constitution but not their names. This makes Xi only the third leader to have his thoughts on governance enshrined, which will now be part of school textbooks all over China.



But Xi, who is regarded as the most powerful leader heading the party, presidency and the military in the last five years did not have his way in the Congress as he had to settle for a compromise to let his closest aide, Wang Qishan, 69, to retire in an apparent trade off with other powerful factions in the party to get his name enshrined in the Constitution.



The name of Wang, who headed the massive anti-corruption drive targeting "tigers and flies" in the party in which over a million officials punished, was not found in the 204-strong list of elected members of the Central Committee, the top most policy body of the CPC. The "election" to the Central Committee held in a most secretive functioning of the party, is essential to get into the 25-member Politburo and the seven-member Standing Committee which virtually rules the country.



The names of the Politburo and the Standing Committee will be formally announced tomorrow.



Xi and Premier Li Keqiang, the number one and two in the party hierarchy, have been elected to the Central Committee ensuring their second terms mostly based on the unofficial two-term norm for top leaders followed by the party.



Tomorrow, Xi and Li along with other members of the Standing Committee would make a formal appearance before the media in a nationally televised event.



It is not yet clear whether the Standing Committee will have five members as Xi reportedly preferred, or seven like in the outgoing committee, or nine as under previous president Hu's tenure.



Like in the inaugural session the of week-long Congress on October 18, Hu and Jiang along with a host of retired leaders shared the front row with Xi and Li, in a show of unity.



While speculation was rife that Xi may have to settle for a seven-member Standing Committee with candidates representing the factions of Jiang and Hu in the Standing Committee as a compromise, analysts said Xi's masterstroke enshrining his name in the Constitution firmed up his position as a leader above the leaders, denting the collective leadership system followed by the party till now.



This may ensure his reported plans to continue beyond two terms securing his place similar to Mao. Xi's thoughts were stated to be a new guideline for the party to continue in power in the modern era, specially in the next few decades to ensure the country, currently the world's second largest economy, becomes moderately prosperous.



Unanimously agreed by party delegates, the constitutional amendment juxtaposed 'Xi Jinping's Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era' along with Marxism- Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development.



In response to contemporary developments and by integrating theory with practice, Chinese Communists, with Xi as their chief representative, have given shape to 'Xi Jinping's Thought on Socialism' since the last CPC National Congress, the resolution said.

It has "systematically addressed the major question of our times -- what kind of socialism with Chinese characteristics the new era requires us to uphold and develop and how we should uphold and develop it," it said.



Putting the significance of the constitutional amendment in perspective, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, author and long-term American scholar on China who moved closely with Chinese leaders and scholars, said the inclusion of Xi's thoughts in the Constitution and his "core leadership" conferred on him by the party previously puts him "substantially ahead of others" in the CPC.



"Being the originator of the new concept and the arbiter of what constitutes social Chinese characteristics for a new era and his being core, those two factors put Xi substantially above anybody else or any combination of people," Kuhn, who is based in China, told PTI after the CPC concluded its Congress.



Though Xi may settle for candidates from other groups in the Standing Committee as part of attempts to restore balance, his status puts him far above others, Kuhn said.



He also said "there is no term limit for your name in the Constitution" referring to the iconic status enjoyed by Mao and Deng, which meant that Xi could set his sights beyond a second term.



Since 2002, all top Chinese leaders have followed a convention of retiring after two terms with 68 unofficially agreed as the retirement age. So this many not be applicable to Xi, he said.



"I would say Xi is in position for the rest of his entire life to guide China in the direction that he feels so," Kuhn said.



"Having his name in the Constitution weighed so strongly and being core, it is pretty much your way and I think he is very satisfied with his structure," he said.



He also said while leaders from other groups in the party may have different loyalties, they all worked together in the last three decades and share close relationships which minimises any factional squabbles in running the government.



As for the world, Kuhn said it is no longer a secret how Xi tried to push China in the world and the countries around it have to learn to deal with him and a rising China.



"He is not secretive. You don't have to wonder anymore about what he is going to do because he is telling you that China is moving to the centre of the world and it is a big message," he said
Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) will conduct water adalats on Wednesday and Thursday in North West-3 and North East-3 subdivision from 9.30 am to 11 am to settle the grievances related to water billing, delay in providing water supply and sanitary connections, conversion from domestic to non-domestic connection and other issues.



According to a press release by BWSSB, the disputes of consumers of Hegganahalli, Penya Dasarahalli, Peenya Service station coming under North West-3 subdivision, will be discussed in detail and settled in the office of the assistant executive engineer (North West-3) subdivision, No 6,100 Feet Road, TVS Cross, Peenya 1st Stage.



The details regarding on the adalats can be obtained by the office of EE (North West-2) or office of AEE (North West-3).



The disputes of consumers of RT Nagar, Kaval Byrasandra, Sanjayanagar, BEL Road and service stations coming under (North East-3) subdivision, will be discussed and settled in the office of the assistant executive engineer (North East-3) subdivision, third cross, P&T Colony, RT Nagar. The details regarding the adalat can be obtained by the office of EE (North East) or office of AEE (North East-3).



Customers can call the 24x7 call centre at 22238888 or helpline number 1916 and send messages to Whatsapp number 8762228888.



DH News Service
The High Court of Karnataka on Tuesday asked for an explanation from the state government on why there is a discrimination between supermarkets and individual retail trader for stocking of essential commodities.



Hearing a petition filed by individual retail traders H K Ranganath and three others, Justice S N Satyanarayana asked the government to file a statement of objection.



The petitioners have moved the court seeking the quashing of a notification issued by the state government under the Agricultural Produce Market Committee Act. The notification allows individual retailstraders to stock 100 quintals of food articles (essential commodities) but allows supermarkets to stock 500 quintals of food articles (essential commodities).



The notification has been challenged by the petitioners stating that a supermarket has not been defined under the Act. Hence there should not be any discrimination made between individual retail traders and supermarkets/hypermarkets.



The petitioners have also sought directions to be allowed to store 500 quintals of essential commodities which has been prescribed for supermarket/ hypermarket.



The bench adjourned the hearing until November 21.



DH News Service




United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit. KENIA YAKELIN GALEANO REYES; JAIR ALEJANDRO GALEANO REYES, Petitioners v. JEFFERSON B. SESSIONS, III, U. S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, Respondent No. 15-60409 Decided: October 20, 2017

Before REAVLEY, SOUTHWICK, and HAYNES, Circuit Judges.

Kenia Yakelin Galeano Reyes (Galeano Reyes) and her two year-old son, Jair Alejandro Galeano Reyes, petition the court for review of an order of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) denying their asylum applications. They claimed asylum based on both Galeano Reyes's past physical abuse from her father and threats to Galeano Reyes from her brother's gang after she turned him in for sexually assaulting his daughter, claiming that such persecution was due to membership in a particular social groupHonduran children lacking effective familial protection in Honduras. Because substantial evidence supports the BIA's determination that Galeano Reyes failed to show a nexus between the alleged persecution and her membership in the proposed particular social group, we DENY the petition.

I. Background

Galeano Reyes and her son, both natives and citizens of Honduras, arrived at the Hidalgo, Texas, port of entry and applied for admission to the United States. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) subsequently instituted removal proceedings against Galeano Reyes and her son via notices to appear, charging them with attempting to enter the United States without valid entry documents.

Galeano Reyes filed an I-589 application for asylum, withholding of removal, and relief under the Convention Against Torture (CAT). Her application claimed that she belonged to a particular social group defined as Honduran children lacking effective familial protection in Honduras, and that she was afraid of her father and brother because of a report she had made to the police about her brother sexually abusing his daughter. The application also listed her son as a derivative beneficiary of her asylum application, and a separate I-589 application for asylum, withholding of removal, and CAT relief was filed on his behalf.

The immigration judge (IJ) held a removal hearing where Galeano Reyes testified about her circumstances. She explained that she fled to the United States because in March 2014, shortly after reporting her brother to the police for sexually assaulting his daughter, she started receiving threats from members of her brother's gang, the 18th Street Gang. After a particularly threatening episode, she (together with her niece and other family members) left Honduras for the United States. Her brother was subsequently released from prison because the only witnesses to her brother's crime, Galeano Reyes and her niece, were no longer available to testify.

Galeano Reyes also testified that she was physically abused on a regular basis by her father until she was thirteen and her parents separated. Her parents subsequently reunited after Galeano Reyes reported her brother's sexual assault, but by this time Galeano Reyes was twenty-four years of age and thus no longer a child. She further testified that she is no longer afraid that her father might physically hurt her. However, she believes that her father does not care what happens to her and will let her brother know where she is if she is ever sent back to Honduras.

The IJ denied Galeano Reyes's asylum application and ordered her and her son removed to Honduras. Galeano Reyes subsequently appealed to the BIA. The BIA held that Honduran children lacking effective familial protection in Honduras was not a viable particular social group because being young and without an effective protector [were] not immutable characteristics. As an example of such mutability, the BIA observed that Galeano Reyes, now twenty-six years of age, no longer qualified for the particular social group she advocated. Furthermore, because she did not belong to the proposed particular social group, the BIA also determined that, even if the social group were viable, Galeano Reyes failed to establish that the alleged persecution was on account of her membership in that particular social group. The BIA finally determined that Galeano Reyes failed to establish that Honduran authorities were unwilling or unable to control her alleged persecutors because the evidence showed that the government arrested her brother and then released him only because the witnesses to his crime were not available to testify against him. Accordingly, the BIA concluded that Galeano Reyes failed to meet her burden of proof with respect to her asylum application and dismissed her appeal. Galeano Reyes filed a timely petition for review.

II. Standard of Review

This court reviews the order of the BIA and will consider the underlying decision of the IJ only if it had some impact upon the BIA's decision. Orellana-Monson v. Holder, 685 F.3d 511, 517 (5th Cir. 2012). The court may usually only affirm the BIA on the basis of its stated rationale. Enriquez-Gutierrez v. Holder, 612 F.3d 400, 407 (5th Cir. 2010). The BIA's findings of fact are reviewed under the substantial evidence standard, which requires that the decision of the BIA be based on the evidence presented and that the decision be substantially reasonable. Id. at 51718. Under the substantial evidence standard, reversal is improper unless the court decides not only that the evidence supports a contrary conclusion, but also that the evidence compels it.  Id. at 518 (quoting Chen v. Gonzales, 470 F.3d 1131, 1134 (5th Cir. 2006)). That the evidence could support more than one inference does not prevent an administrative agency's finding from being supported by substantial evidence. Arif v. Mukasey, 509 F.3d 677, 679 (5th Cir. 2007) (per curiam) (quoting Consolo v. Fed. Mar. Comm'n, 383 U.S. 607, 620 (1966)).

III. Discussion

The Attorney General has the discretion to grant asylum to refugees. 8 U.S.C.  1158(b)(1); Jukic v. I.N.S., 40 F.3d 747, 749 (5th Cir. 1994). A refugee is a person who is outside of her country and is unable or unwilling to return because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. 8 U.S.C.  1101(a)(42)(A); Orellana-Monson, 685 F.3d at 518. The alien carries the burden to establish a nexus between the persecution and one of the five statutory grounds for asylum. Tamara-Gomez v. Gonzales, 447 F.3d 343, 349 (5th Cir. 2006).

Galeano Reyes challenges the BIA's determinations that she failed to establish (1) that Honduran children lacking effective familial protection in Honduras is a viable particular social group; (2) a nexus between the alleged persecution and membership in her proposed particular social group; and (3) that Honduras is unable or unwilling to protect her from persecution by the gang members and her brother. Because we conclude that there is substantial evidence to support the BIA's determination that Galeano Reyes failed to establish a nexus between the alleged persecution and her membership in the proposed particular social group, we do not consider the BIA's two additional reasons for denying Galeano Reyes's asylum application.

To establish a nexus between persecution and a particular social group, the asylum applicant must establish that membership in a particular social group  was or will be at least one central reason for persecuting the applicant. 8 U.S.C.  1158(b)(1)(B)(i). Whether an asylum applicant has demonstrated the requisite nexus is a factual question reviewed under the substantial evidence standard. Thuri v. Ashcroft, 380 F.3d 788, 791 (5th Cir. 2004) (per curiam).

The BIA determined that Galeano Reyes failed to establish that membership in a particular social group was a central reason for the alleged persecution. It gave two reasons for this conclusion. First, Galeano Reyes's only proposed social group, Honduran children lacking effective familial protection in Honduras, did not constitute a viable particular social group. Second, even if her proposed social group were a viable particular social group, Galeano Reyes is an adult and thus not a member of a group consisting of Honduran children. We conclude that substantial evidence supports the second reason, so we do not reach the first one.

As an initial matter, Galeano Reyes waived the issue relating to past abuse of her father because it was not briefed on appeal. Chambers v. Mukasey, 520 F.3d 445, 448 n.1 (5th Cir. 2008). Galeano Reyes refers to testimony from the removal hearing about past abuse from her father, but she never argues this as a reason she is entitled to asylum status. Instead, she asks the court to indicate that [her] group membership furnishes a central reason for the past persecutory acts (and the feared future persecutory acts) by [her] brother and his gang-member accomplices. Accordingly, this issue is waived.

As to the issue Galeano Reyes did brief relating to threats from gang members, she contends that the BIA erred in determining that she does not belong to her proposed particular social group. She makes two arguments: (1) she continues to be targeted despite getting older and (2) her vulnerable kinship ties to her brother form a central reason for her persecution. Both arguments miss the mark.

The first argument erroneously assumes that Galeano Reyes was initially in the group when the persecution began but has since aged out of the group. But the evidence shows that she was twenty-four years old when she reported her brother's crime and started receiving threats from gang members. That is to say, Galeano Reyes was no longer a Honduran child when the persecution began and thus was not a member of the proposed particular social group at that time. Her citation to a Seventh Circuit case involving the definition of a young woman is inapposite because under no definition would a twenty-four year old be a child. See Cece v. Holder, 733 F.3d 662, 673 (7th Cir. 2013) (en banc). Accordingly, even assuming the proposed particular social group is viable, there is substantial evidence to support the BIA's conclusion that Galeano Reyes was not persecuted on account of her membership in that group.

Galeano Reyes's second argument, that she was persecuted because of kinship ties to her brother, is an improper attempt to assert a reason for persecution that was not first raised before the BIA. Failure to raise an argument before the BIA constitutes a failure to exhaust administrative remedies and deprives this court of jurisdiction to consider the argument. Rui Yang v. Holder, 664 F.3d 580, 588 (5th Cir. 2011). The only reason Galeano Reyes presented before the BIA for her persecution was membership in a group defined as Honduran children lacking effective familial protection in Honduras. This group does not contemplate persecution based on the presence of kinship ties, but instead contemplates persecution due to the absence of effective protection from whatever kinship ties may exist. Because Galeano Reyes did not raise this issue before the BIA, this court lacks jurisdiction to consider it. See id.

DENIED.

FOOTNOTES

. Jair Alejandro is listed as a derivative beneficiary of his mother's asylum application, and his counsel indicated to the BIA that Jair Alejandro was only a derivative beneficiary. See 8 U.S.C.  1158(b)(3)(A) (A spouse or child  of an alien who is granted asylum under this subsection may  be granted the same status as the alien if accompanying  such alien.). Jair Alejandro does not challenge the BIA's determination that he is only a derivative beneficiary of his mother's asylum application. Accordingly, this opinion discusses only Jair Alejandro's mother when analyzing the merits of petitioners' asylum applications.

. Galeano Reyes also asserts that her son is part of the proposed particular social group, but as discussed supra in note 1, her son is a derivative beneficiary of her asylum application. Thus, Galeano Reyes's eligibility for asylum is dispositivei.e., her son's eligibility depends on her grant of asylum. See 8 U.S.C.  1158(b)(3)(A) (A spouse or child  of an alien who is granted asylum under this subsection may  be granted the same status as the alien if accompanying  such alien.).

. Galeano Reyes cites Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), to argue that the exhaustion doctrine is inapplicable here because all of her arguments are a subset of issues addressed by the BIA. Although an administrative agency was a defendant in Citizens United, the case did not involve a petition for review of an administrative agency's adjudication, and thus has no bearing on the exhaustion doctrine. See 558 U.S. at 321 (explaining that Citizens United sought declaratory and injunctive relief in federal court).

PER CURIAM:*
The Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) has begun the work on adding an additional loop to the Hebbal flyover to ease traffic congestion towards the city. This will be the second loop to be added to the original four-lane, two-way flyover.



The BDA had earlier added a single-lane loop from Hebbal towards the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA). The new loop from Esteem Mall towards the city will be a two-lane road. The work on the loop will be completed in 15 months (January 2019) and is estimated to cost Rs 50 crore.



Piling machinery has reached the building site and the work started on Tuesday, P N Nayak, Engineer Member, BDA, told DH. The BDA is also building an underpass at the junction. The agency has shelved its earlier plan to dismantle the loop that links KR Puram from the Hebbal side, he added.



In May 2016, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Bengaluru Development Minister K J George had laid the foundation stone for upgrading the flyover and constructing the underpass. But the government shelved the project as it wanted to build the controversial steel flyover from Basaveshwara Circle to Hebbal.



Nayak insisted that the delay had not escalated the cost as the contractor, PJB Engineers Private Limited, had agreed to stick to the earlier estimate.



The BDA official, however, conceded that widening the flyover was a temporary solution. The passenger car unit (PCU), which stood at 30,000 in 2016, has gone up to 50,000. It will increase further in the coming days.



According to Nayak, the 83-km-long elevated signal-free corridor being built by the Karnataka State Road Development Corporation Limited (KRDCL) and the BDA will run above the Hebbal flyover and directly connect the national highway. The Hebbal flyover will then be used for local traffic.



Traffic congestion likely



The construction is likely to cause traffic snarls in front of Esteem Mall and towards Hebbal. We have told the traffic police to close the roads as and when required, Nayak said.



Underpass work delayed



Meanwhile, the BDA has delayed the work on building the underpass under the Hebbal flyover following an order of the National Green Tribunal (NGT). The underpass from the Tumakuru side towards KR Puram on the Outer Ring Road was planned to make the junction a signal-free corridor.



The NGT has banned construction within 75 metres of the periphery of all waterbodies in the city. The underpass runs parallel to, and within the specified buffer zone of, Hebbal Lake.



DH News Service
Bike taxi operator Rapido is operating illegally in the city without obtaining permission from Regional Transport Authority (RTA), said an RTA release on Tuesday.



In the special drive, RTA on Tuesday seized around 20 vehicles attached to Rapido.



J Gnanendra Kumar, Joint Commissioner of Transport, Bengaluru (Urban) said, All the citizens are hereby alerted not to use this illegal Rapido bike taxi service.



A special squad has been formed to check the illegal operation of motor vehicles and to enforce provisions of Motor Vehicle Act and Rules in the jurisdiction of Joint Commissioner for Transport, Bengaluru (Urban) division and Bengaluru central

area.



During the drive, 794 vehicles have been checked and action has been taken against 115 motor vehicle owners. RTA has seized 14 vehicles, the release said.



DH News Service
The Karnataka State Primary Teachers Association (KSPTA) has urged the commissioner of the Department of Public Instruction to speed up the process of updating service details of teachers at Human Resource Management System (HRMS) for time-bound promotion.



In a letter to commissioner P C Jaffer, KSPTA president Basavaraj Gurikar pointed out that about 6,000 eligible teachers are awaiting promotion.



Due to lack of staff to manage HRMS, there is a delay of about six months in updating details. More staff should be appointed to manage HRMS so that teachers get time-bound promotion, he stated in the letter.



Block education officers forward a list of teachers who have served for 10, 15, 20 and 25 years in the department. The details are uploaded to the HRMS after the list is approved, he added.



DH News Service
There will be no change in the dates for SSLC, PUC exams and CET this academic year.



Primary and Secondary Education Minister Tanvir Sait told DH that examination would be held as per the schedule. Once Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB), Department of Pre-University Education (DPUE) and Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) finalise the timetable, the department will submit the same to the Election Commission to prevent a clash of dates.



Meanwhile, KEAs executive council meeting held on Monday decided to take sometime for the announcement of CET-2018 dates. CET will be held in April or May 2018 as per schedule. We have decided to finalise CET 2018 dates only after the announcement of the timetable by DPUE and NEET by CBSE, one of the members said.



Students need not worry as there would be a 30-day gap between the last paper of

II PUC examination and the first paper of CET, he added.



The CBSE is planning to conduct NEET on May 10, 2018. However, the date is yet to be announced officially.



DH News Service
Health Minister K R Ramesh Kumar has called upon Health department officials to implement the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) programme successfully so as to make the state a model for the nation.



Addressing a regional-level review meeting of the Health Department here on Tuesday, he said, All the 1.3 crore families in the state should enrol for the UHC programme scheduled to be rolled out in November. All those who possess Aadhaar cards can enrol for the programme which is an amalgamation of all state and Union government health-related schemes and programmes. Initially, people have to register in government hospitals. If the necessary treatment is not available in government hospitals, patients can seek treatment in private hospitals. Karnataka is the first state to implement the programme, he said.



Stating that private hospitals need to be reined in, Ramesh Kumar said that many government schemes have been extended to private hospitals but they have been exploiting both the government and patients. According to an experts committee report, private hospitals claim money from the government under the schemes and also fleece the patients. Hence, an amendment would be effected to the Private Hospitals Act in the next Assembly Session, he said.



However, he clarified that there was nothing against doctors but only against the commercial attitude of the hospitals.



It is the responsibility of the government to spend judiciously as it is peoples money. Many government hospitals are also being upgraded and equipped well.



Referring patients to private hospitals, unless it is inevitable, is not proper. Almost all facilities are available in government hospitals. They will be further strengthened, he said.



DH News Service
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. BOBBY WADE, Jr., Defendant-Appellant. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. BOBBY WADE, Jr., AKA Dwight Minnieweather, AKA Jason Patrick Spears, AKA Sammy Spears, AKA Terrence Spears, Defendant-Appellant. No. 16-10434, No. 16-10436 Decided: October 23, 2017

Before: IKUTA and HURWITZ, Circuit Judges, and GWIN,*** District Judge.

MEMORANDUM*

Bobby Wade was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm and sentenced to 96 months in prison. The district court also sentenced Wade to 24 months in prison for violating the terms of his supervised release, to be served concurrently with the sentence on the firearm charge.

On appeal, Wade contends: (1) that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress evidence collected from his cell phone; (2) that the district court plainly erred when it determined his base offense level; and (3) that the sentence for the supervised release violation should be vacated if the sentence on the firearms conviction is vacated, because it was part of a sentencing package.

1. The search warrant for Wade's cell phone gave officers authority to search nearly every type of data for evidence of firearm ownership. Even assuming that the affidavit submitted in support of the warrant application did not provide a substantial basis for finding probable cause to search everything on Wade's phone, there was a substantial basis for finding probable cause to search text messages, photographs, account information, and contacts. See United States v. Terry, 911 F.2d 272, 27576 (9th Cir. 1990). Because only evidence from these sources was introduced at trial, any arguable warrant overbreadth did not prejudice Wade. United States v. Gomez-Soto, 723 F.2d 649, 654 (9th Cir. 1984).

Moreover, even if probable cause were lacking, the affidavit made a colorable argument for probable cause. United States v. Crews, 502 F.3d 1130, 1136 (9th Cir. 2007). As a result, reliance on the search warrant based on that affidavit was objectively reasonable and the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies. Id.

Finally, any possible error in refusing to suppress Wade's phone data was harmless beyond any reasonable doubt. Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 2324 (1967). There was overwhelming evidence that Wade possessed the firearm in this case, including his own jail calls and DNA evidence found on the gun.

2. The district court plainly erred by finding that Wade's earlier convictions qualified as controlled substance offenses based solely on factual descriptions of his conduct. United States v. Pimentel-Flores, 339 F.3d 959, 968 (9th Cir. 2003). But, the government has asked that we take judicial notice of records establishing that Wade was previously convicted of violating  475.999 of the Oregon Revised Statutes (renumbered as  475.904 in 2005) and  11352(a) of the California Health & Safety Code. Wade does not dispute that the Oregon conviction was for a controlled substance offense.

While  11352(a) is not categorically a controlled substance offense, the statute is divisible. United States v. Martinez-Lopez, 864 F.3d 1034-103843 (9th Cir. 2017) (en banc). The government submits charging documents and a minute order that establish that Wade was convicted of selling and offering to sell cocaine base. See United States v. Torre-Jimenez, 771 F.3d 1163, 116769 (9th Cir. 2014); Cabantac v. Holder, 693 F.3d 825, 82728 (9th Cir. 2012), amended on denial of reh'g, 736 F.3d 787 (9th Cir. 2013). Both of those offenses are controlled substance offenses. United States v. Lee, 704 F.3d 785, 78992 (9th Cir. 2012). As a result, we grant the government's motions (Dkt. 25 in 16-10434, Dkt. 24 in 16-10436), take judicial notice of the documents describing Wade's prior convictions, and affirm the sentences, because vacating the sentence and remanding for resentencing would merely be delaying the inevitable. United States v. Black, 482 F.3d 1035, 1041 (9th Cir. 2007).

3. Wade waived any arguments regarding his supervised release violation sentence by failing to distinctly raise them in his opening brief. United States v. Patterson, 230 F.3d 1168, 1172 n.3 (9th Cir. 2000). In any event, because we affirm Wade's conviction on the felon in possession charge, his supervised release sentence arguments necessarily fail.

AFFIRMED.
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CARRABASSETT VALLEY, Maine (AP)  A company that operates nine ski resorts in the U.S. and Canada will require workers to wear safety helmets when working on the mountains.

The new policy follows the death in March of Alexander Witt, who wasn't wearing a helmet died while working on a steep trail at Sugarloaf USA in Maine. The resort was fined $11,400 by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.





. . .
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LA PINE, Ore. (AP)  Oregon transportation officials have officially ended a $17 million highway overpass project in central Oregon due to severe soil settling.

State transportation director Matt Garrett told the Oregon Transportation Commission Thursday that the agency has failed the public.





. . .
United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit. UNILOC USA, INC., UNILOC LUXEMBOURG S.A., Appellants v. SEGA OF AMERICA, INC., UBISOFT, INC., KOFAX, INC., CAMBIUM LEARNING GROUP, INC., Appellees 2016-2000 Decided: October 23, 2017

Before PROST, Chief Judge, REYNA and HUGHES, Circuit Judges. DANIEL LUKE GEYSER, Stris & Maher LLP, Los Ange-les, CA, argued for appellants. Also represented by DOUGLAS D. GEYSER, Dallas, TX. ERIC ALLAN BURESH, Erise IP, P.A., Overland Park, KS, argued for appellees. Also represented by MICHELLE LYONS MARRIOTT.

Appellants Uniloc USA, Inc., and Uniloc Luxembourg S.A. (collectively, Uniloc) appeal from a final written decision from two consolidated inter partes reviews (IPR) holding that claims 120 of U.S. Patent No. 5,490,216 are unpatentable for being anticipated and obvious. In particular, Uniloc argues that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Board) erred in its priority analysis and that the submitted reference does not disclose certain claim elements. Because we conclude that the Board did not commit any legal or factual errors in its analysis, we affirm.

I

A

The '216 patent, entitled System for Software Regis-tration, is directed to [a] registration system [that] allows digital data or software to run without restriction, only if an appropriate licensing procedure has been followed. '216 patent Abstract. An algorithm on the user's computer combines certain user information to generate a local ID that is unique to the user. Id. at col. 5 ll. 6167. The same process is duplicated at a registration server for the program's licensor using the same user information and algorithm to create a remote ID. Id. at col. 6 ll. 18. These two IDs are compared and if they match, the program enters a use mode where that program can be accessed without restrictions. Id. at figs. 2a2c. If they do not match, the program enters into a demo mode, in which certain features are disabled. Id. at col. 6 ll. 4252.

Claim 1 is illustrative:

1. A registration system for licensing execution of digital data in a use mode, said digital data executable on a platform, said system including

[a] local licensee unique ID generating means and remote licensee unique ID generating means,

[b] said system further including mode switching means operable on said platform which permits use of said digital data in said use mode on said platform only if a licensee unique ID first generated by said local licensee unique ID generating means has matched a licensee unique ID subse-quently generated by said remote licensee unique ID generating means; and

[c] wherein said remote licensee unique ID generating means comprises software executed on a platform which includes the [sic] algorithm uti-lized by said local licensee unique ID generating means to produce said licensee unique ID.

Id. at col. 13 l. 54col. 14 l. 1 (emphases added).

The '216 patent was filed on September 21, 1993, and claims priority to two separate Australian provisional patent applications: PL4842 filed September 21, 1992, and PL5524 filed October 26, 1992. The '216 patent added certain new matter that was not included in the Australian provisionals. It issued on February 6, 1996.

B

In a separate case, Uniloc sued Microsoft Corporation in 2003 for allegedly infringing the '216 patent. Uniloc USA, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 447 F. Supp. 2d 177, 180 (D.R.I. 2006) (Uniloc I), vacated in part, 290 F. App'x 337 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (Uniloc II). During that litigation, the district court construed the generating means term pursuant to 35 U.S.C.  112,  6. Id. at 19091. The district court found that the term's function was to generate a local or remote licensee unique ID/registration key, and that its structure was a summation algorithm or a summer and equivalents thereof. Id. at 190. In deriving the structure, the district court concluded that the only algorithm in the '216 patent for generating a licensee unique ID is found in the sixth embodiment, which states:

The algorithm, in this embodiment, combines by addition the serial number 50 with the software product name 64 and customer information 65 and previous user identification 22 to provide registration number 66.

Uniloc I, 447 F. Supp. 2d at 192 (quoting '216 patent, col. 11 ll. 5356). We remanded that case on other grounds. Uniloc II, 290 F. App'x at 344. On appeal from that remand, we endorsed the district court's construction and noted that the summation structure was derived from the sixth embodiment. Uniloc USA, Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 632 F.3d 1292, 1304 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (Uniloc III). It is undisputed that this portion of the specification was new matter added in the '216 patent and was not con-tained in either of the Australian provisionals.

C

In this case, Appellees Sega of America, Inc., Ubisoft, Inc., Kofax, Inc., and Cambium Learning Group, Inc., (collectively, Appellees) filed an IPR with the Board challenging all claims of the '216 patent. The Board instituted IPR proceedings on all claims and found them unpatentable.

In its final written decision, the Board adopted the district court's construction of the generating means term from Uniloc I and found that the term encompassed the structure of a summation algorithm or a summer and equivalents thereof. J.A. 8, 10. The Board then analyzed whether the Australian provisionals provide written description support for the generating means term by reviewing if they necessarily disclose or reasonably convey a summation algorithm or a summer and equivalents thereof. J.A. 13. The Board concluded that the provisionals do not disclose this structure and that the asserted claims were not entitled to claim priority to those provisionals. J.A. 20. The Board then performed a novel-ty analysis and determined that claims 111 and 1720 were anticipated by U.S. Patent No. 5,509,070 (Schull) entitled Method for encouraging purchase of executable and non-executable software and filed on December 15, 1992.

On appeal, Uniloc challenges the Board's priority and anticipation determinations. In particular, Uniloc argues that the Board erred by applying the wrong legal standard in its priority analysis. According to Uniloc, the provisionals only need to satisfy 35 U.S.C.  112,  1 to meet the written description requirement, but the Board improperly required that the provisionals satisfy  112,  6 as well. Uniloc also argues that Schull does not teach generating means because it fails to disclose a summation algorithm. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.  1295(a)(4)(A).

II

A

Under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C.  120, a patent may claim priority to a provisional application so long as the provisional application satisfies the first paragraph of section 112 of this title. The first paragraph of  112 requires, in relevant part, that [t]he specification  contain a written description of the invention. A disclosure satisfies the written description requirement if it reasonably conveys to those skilled in the art that the inventor had possession of the claimed subject matter as of the filing date. Ariad Pharm., Inc. v. Eli Lilly & Co., 598 F.3d 1336, 1351 (2010) (en banc). And [o]ne shows that one is in possession of the invention by describing the invention, with all its claimed limitations, not that which makes it obvious. Lockwood v. Am. Airlines, Inc., 107 F.3d 1565, 1572 (Fed. Cir. 1997).

The claims here are drafted in means-plus-function format and their scope is governed by  112,  6. Under  6, claimed subject matter may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure but such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure  described in the specification. We have previously explained that such means-plus-function claim limitations comprise not only the language of the claims, but also the structure corresponding to that means that is disclosed in the written description portion of the specification (and equivalents thereof). Atmel Corp. v. Info. Storage Devices, Inc., 198 F.3d 1374, 138182 (Fed. Cir. 1999).

Whether a priority document contains sufficient disclosure under  112,  1 is a question of law that we review de novo. Utter v. Hiraga, 845 F.2d 993, 998 (Fed. Cir. 1988). However, compliance with the written description aspect of that requirement is a question of fact that we review for substantial evidence. Id. In conduct-ing this inquiry, [t]he fact finder must determine if one skilled in the art, reading the original specification, would immediately discern the limitation at issue in the parent. Waldemar Link v. Osteonics Corp., 32 F.3d 556, 558 (Fed. Cir. 1994).

Uniloc here argues that the Board erred in its priority analysis because it did not look for a disclosure that would reasonably convey[ ] to those skilled in the art that the inventor had possession of the claimed subject matter as of the filing date in the Australian provisionals. Ariad, 598 F.3d at 1351. Instead, Uniloc contends that the Board looked myopically at whether specific structure was disclosed in the provisionals, which may answer the question posed by paragraph six of Section 112, but not paragraph one. Appellants' Br. 12. We disagree.

The Board proceeded through the proper analysis for determining priority. When determining priority, the Board must first construe the relevant claim terms. X2Y Attenuators, LLC v. Int'l Trade Comm'n, 757 F.3d 1358, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (Where the claims have not been properly construed, the full scope of the claim is unknown, thereby rendering baseless any determination of written support in an earlier patent.). After construing the claims, the Board determines if the original disclosure describ[ed] the invention, with all its claimed limitations, Lockwood, 107 F.3d at 1572, to show possession of the claimed subject matter as of the filing date, Ariad, 598 F.3d at 1351.

Here, the Board first construed the generating means term as encompassing the function to generate a local or remote licensee unique ID and the structure a summation algorithm or a summer and equivalents thereof. J.A. 10. As noted earlier, the Board adopted this construction from Uniloc I and neither party challenges this construction. In construing the generating means term, the Board also determined that the sixth embodiment of the '216 patent discloses the structure for this term. And it is undisputed that this embodiment was new matter added to the '216 patent and was not included in the Australian provisionals.

Even though the Australian provisionals do not include the sixth embodiment, the Board reviewed the provisionals to determine if they describe the structure in a different part of the disclosure. J.A. 1320. Appellants argued, both to the Board and on appeal here, that the provisionals disclose a summation algorithm by teaching that the registration number algorithm combines information entered by a prospective registered user unique to that user with a serial number generated from information provided by the environment in which the software to be protected is to run. J.A. 199 (emphasis added). Uniloc also argues that figure 2B in the provisionals, shown below, discloses a summation algorithm by stating that the [r]egistration number is generated from user details added to Serial number. J.A. 208.

Tabular or graphical material not displayable at this time.

The Board reviewed these arguments and was unper-suaded. We too are not convinced.

In its final written decision, the Board determined that the provisionals' disclosure of an algorithm that combines information and of a registration number that is generated from user details added to the serial number is insufficient for one skilled in the art to immediately discern, Waldemar Link, 32 F.3d at 558, a summation algorithm. J.A. 1617. This finding is supported by substantial evidence. As the Board explained, the Appellees' expert testified that there are a number of different ways to combine letters and numbers without mathemati-cal addition. J.A. 1819. The expert further testified that to non-mathematically combine or add information, you could put a code for the different digits and scramble them up. You could take portions of each and try to create another registration number. You could use different operations in different ways. J.A. 19. The Board also relied on the expert's testimony that the word add does not necessarily mean sum because it can also describe adding a redundancy or add[ing] a header. Id.

Further, figure 2B and the text that Uniloc points to in the provisionals is also present in the '216 patent. Specifically, the '216 patent recites that:

Preferably, the registration number algorithm combines information entered by a prospective registered user unique to that user with a serial number generated from information provided by the environment in which the software to be protected is to run (e.g., system clock, last modify date, user name).

'216 patent col. 4 ll. 611 (emphasis added). And, figure 2b, copied below, states that the registration no. [is] generated from user details added to serial no.

Tabular or graphical material not displayable at this time.

Despite these disclosures, the district court found, and we confirmed, that only the sixth embodiment of the '216 patent provides the structural support for the generating means term. See Uniloc I, 447 F. Supp. 2d at 192 (noting that the only algorithm specified in the '216 Patent for generating a licensee unique ID is found in the sixth embodiment); Uniloc III, 632 F.3d at 1304 (confirming that the summation structure was derived from the sixth embodiment).

Accordingly, the Board here proceeded through the proper analysis for determining priority by first construing the means-plus-functions claims under  112,  6, and then determining if the original disclosure describ[ed] the invention, with all its claimed limitations, Lockwood, 107 F.3d at 1572, under  112,  1. Because substantial evidence supports the Board's finding that the provisionals do not disclose a summation algorithm, we agree with the Board that the '216 patent may not claim priority to the Australian provisionals.

B

Uniloc next argues that even if Schull does predate the '216 patent, Schull does not anticipate the '216 patent because it fails to disclose a generating means. As noted above, claim 1 of the '216 patent recites a local licensee unique ID generating means and remote licensee unique ID generating means. The Board construed generating means as encompassing the function to generate a local or remote licensee unique ID and the structure a summation algorithm or a summer and equivalents thereof. J.A. 10. Uniloc argues that Schull fails to disclose this structure. We disagree.

Schull discloses a system that allows a user to access advanced features of software only with a valid password. Schull at Abstract. It describes a password-generating algorithm that locally generates a Passwordable ID by concatenating a Program ID, Feature ID, and Target ID. Id. at col. 5 ll. 2033, col. 7 ll. 1027, col. 9 ll. 59. Schull also discloses that the Passwordable ID can include two digits that constitute a checksum for the preceding digits. Id. at col. 7 ll. 2836.

The same password-generating algorithm is performed at a Licensing Processor, and is transmitted to the user's processor and stored. Id. at col. 11 ll. 813, 3540, 5154; col. 6 ll. 611. A password validation check com-pares the generated Passwordable ID to the stored password and if there is a match, the advanced features of the software are unlocked. Id. at col. 5 ll. 4047.

In its final written decision, the Board found that Schull's disclosure of concatenating the three IDs as well as its disclosure of the two-digit checksum each inde-pendently discloses a summation algorithm. J.A. 2631. Substantial evidence supports the Board's finding that at least the checksum discloses a summation algorithm. We accordingly do not reach whether the concatenation also discloses a summation algorithm.

In relevant part, Schull teaches that:

In addition, to ensure error-checking when the Passwordable ID is transmitted to the central computer (80), it is desirable that a Passwordable ID satisfy some kind of coherence constraint such that the misreport of a single digit can be detected. One coherence constraint would be to append two more digits to the ID which would constitute a checksum for the preceding digits. Thus an error would be detected when the checksum and the preceding digits were inconsistent.

Id. at col. 7 ll. 2836. The Board credited Appellees' expert's testimony that [a]s of 1992, using a checksum to detect an error in a number, as described by Schull, was done using what is known as a check digit, and all of the methods for calculating check digits utilize some form of addition. J.A. 30 (internal alterations omitted). The Board also relied on Uniloc's expert's testimony that most checksums use addition and that he had never created a checksum that did not use summation. Id.

Uniloc argues that the disclosed checksum does not perform the function of generat[ing] a local or remote licensee unique ID because the checksum is appended to the ID and therefore is not a part of the ID. Uniloc does not cite any expert testimony or other basis for this argument. See Appellant's Br. 46. Because Uniloc's argument was not supported by any evidence, the Board properly relied on Appellees' expert's testimony and its reading of Schull to find that the checksum appended to the Passwordable ID became a part of that ID. Uniloc also argues that the Board did not give enough weight to its expert's testimony that it is possible to perform a checksum using tables instead of addition. Uniloc is essentially asking us to reweigh the evidence, which we cannot do. Nidec Motor Corp. v. Zhongshan Broad Ocean Motor Co., 868 F.3d 1013, 1017 (Fed. Cir. 2017).

III

In sum, we conclude that the Board applied the proper legal standard in determining the priority date of the '216 patent. We further conclude that the Board's finding that the '216 patent is not entitled to claim priority to the Australian provisionals is supported by substantial evidence. Finally, we conclude that Schull discloses the generating means term and therefore anticipates the '216 patent.

Accordingly, the judgment of the Board is affirmed.

AFFIRMED

FOOTNOTES

. The Board invalidated claims 1216 on other grounds, none of which are challenged here.

. The parties also dispute whether the Australian provisionals provide written description support for the mode switching means term. Because we conclude that the provisionals do not provide written description support for the generating means term, we need not ad-dress this alternate argument.

PROST, Chief Judge.
India's private telecom service providers, including new entrant Reliance Jio Infocomm and state-run Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), have amassed a total of 946.66 million subscribers as of September-end. Amongst the individual companies, Bharti Airtel continues to hold the top position, with 29.80 per cent market share, and addied another 1 million subscribers during September to take its total base to 282.04 million users. Airtel is closely followed by Vodafone India, which stands at 207.44 million, while Idea Cellular stood at 190.15 million subscribers as of September-end, according to data released by Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). Among individual circles, UP (East) remained at the top with total 83.46 million subscribers, while Maharashtra remained at second position with a total of 79.20 million mobile subscribers. Bihar was a close third with total 76.15 million subscribers. Kerala and Haryana led in the growth percentage of new additions with 0.69 per cent and 0.37 per cent, respectively, followed by Gujarat with 0.14 per cent growth in September 2017. Mumbai and Delhi added 273,250 and 136,216 subscribers respectively, with total of 30.17 million and 47.57 million subscribers, respectively. ''The increase of subscribers in Kerala, Haryana and Gujarat shows that there is still room for basic services to grow and expand to the corners of the country. The steady investment in infrastructure in these regions is showing positive result. The industry is reeling under a cumulative debt of over Rs 4.6 lakh crores. The industry further needs an additional investment of over Rs 2.5 lakh crore for infrastructure rollout and expansion, especially in the far flung areas of the country,'' said Rajan Mathews, Director General at COAI. Mobile connectivity and data services have played a pivotal role in bridging the digital divide and moving India towards a truly equitable and democratic nation. The telecom industry, therefore, deserves an urgent and immediate intervention to encourage policy and regulatory stability, and facilitate growth, innovation and investment in the sector.








Ten towns and villages in Donegal are pumping raw sewage into waterways without treatment.

A new report from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows that there are 44 areas around Ireland where waste water is collected and released back into the environment without treatment. Half of these are in counties Donegal and Cork.

In Donegal this is happening in Bundoran, Kilcar, Killybegs, Coolatee, Burtonport, Falcarragh, Ramelton, Rathmullan, Kerrykeel and Moville.

Additionally, the report found there were 59 areas where wastewater discharges are identified as the sole pressure on water bodies at risk of not meeting their environmental objectives.

Eight of these are in Donegal and are found at Ballintra, Bridgend, Burnfoot, Carndonagh, Malin, Convoy, Kilmacrennan, Milford, and Termon.

The EPA says there are 148 areas across Ireland where improvements are needed to address waste water priorities.

The issues require a substantial capital investment on infrastructure, the EPA said.
A vigil is being held in Donegal this weekend to mark the fifth anniversary of the death of Savita Halappanavar.

The Inishowen Abortion Rights Campaign will join with groups across the country this Saturday in holding a vigil to mark the anniversary.

Last week the professor who chaired the HSE inquiry into the death in Galway University Hospital in 2012 said the Eighth Amendment played a major role in her death during pregnancy.

Spokesperson from the Inishowen Abortion Rights Campaign, Cathleen Shiels said: We come together to mark the fifth anniversary of the passing of Savita Halappanavar, and we remember the women who have died since her passing also. We think of the families of those lost women and we hope they are able to find peace.

The Eighth Amendment is indiscriminate; whether you are experiencing complications in a planned and welcomed pregnancy, like Savita; or experiencing a crisis pregnancy - the Eighth Amendment prohibits access to timely and compassionate abortion services. Healthcare professionals in the South of Ireland can only intervene when there is a risk to the life (as distinct to the health) of the woman who is pregnant. Five years after her death, we haven't progressed to a point where someone in the same position as her would be guaranteed a safe abortion. The management of miscarriage is impacted by Eight Amendment as are all of our maternity services. Savita deserved better, we all do. Our thoughts and prayers are with her friends and family.
By Deborah Buckhalter

Jackson County, Florida, officers arrested an 82-year-old Canadian man on charges of stalking, enticing a child, trespassing, and other charges after he drove from Ontario to stalk a local 9-year-old boy.

Arthur F. Williams of Tillsonburg in Oxford County, Ontario, Canada, could have targeted the youngster in an online chat room, Jackson County Sheriff's Office officials said.

JCSO alleges that Williams had been watching and following a 9-year-old boy near his school bus stop and home on the Kynesville Highway over a period of days.On one occasion, authorities say, Williams allegedly parked close to the bus stop and tried to get the child to come to the car. He had also reportedly driven by the childs residence on several occasions and waved at him as he played in the yard.

The childs mother had called investigators to their home on Wednesday, Oct. 18, reporting that a stranger in a burgundy Suzuki automobile had parked behind the house and had been on the property 10 to 15 minutes before another adult from the household went out and confronted him about his presence there.

After that encounter, which the other householder indicated was disturbing in several ways, the man had just left traveling toward Marianna on the Kynesville Highway. The mother was able to provide the tag number. The Florida Highway Patrol was given the tag number and further information regarding the cars description.

While county investigators were still interviewing the family, a trooper by chance encountered the suspect vehicle traveling westbound on an eastbound on-ramp, official say. The trooper had been looking for a wrong-way vehicle based on reports that there was a car moving west from the 136 mile marker in the eastbound lane.

The trooper had, in the search for the wayward vehicle, entered the eastbound on-ramp at the 130 mile marker. He met the burgundy car nose-to-nose as it travelled down the entrance ramp in the wrong direction. He detained Williams and then learned of the search for the vehicle in the incident at the home off Kynesville Highway. The tag numbers and the description of the car hed stopped matched the information the childs mother had given in her report. The mans appearance also matched their description of a balding, red-haired, small-framed man. He was taken into custody and charged by the JCSO with stalking, e nticing/luring a child under 12, trespassing, aggravated stalking, and providing false information to law enforcement.

The boys mother told authorities she feared that the man had been stalking her son. That fear was based on the childs reaction when he walked onto the porch and saw the burgundy car in his yard that day.

She said the expression on her childs face changed significantly when he saw it. He then disclosed that hed seen it before. It had been at his bus stop the Friday before, he told her, and on several occasions over the ensuing weekend. The man started waving at him when he got of the bus, that Friday, he said, motioning and trying to get him to come toward the car. The boy instead had grabbed his backpack tightly and run to the house, located directly across the street from the bus stop. Over that weekend, he told his mother on Oct 18, hed seen the car drive slowly by more than once while he was outside and that the man had waved as he crept by. When his mother asked why he hadnt said anything to her at the time about the encounters, he told her hed been afraid and did not know what to do.

Oct. 18, the day the burgundy car entered the driveway, was the first day this academic year that the child had not ridden the bus to school. The car showed up on their property just after mother and son returned to the house from an errand.

An investigator who subsequently interviewed Williams described that encounter as one in which Williams allegedly employed tactics of deception, attempts to confuse, and intimidation that included veiled threats toward the officer.

Authorities are now investigating to determine if and how Williams obtained the childs address in advance. Authorities say the youngster could have provided it during an online chat or gaming session in the belief that he was communicating with another child.
Yoga East Studio and Master Teacher Beth Daugherty, 500 RYT, launched a six-week pilot program introducing students at Washington Alternative School to the benefits of yoga in achieving healthy mind, body, and spirit.

Working in partnership with Gandhi Global Center For Peace which is based in Chattanooga, the pilot program is an opportunity for Yoga East Studio to take their impact beyond the walls of the yoga studio and into the community.

Ms. Daugherty said, "I look forward to working with the students to help them learn how to use their breath to bring calmness into their lives, especially in stressful situations and to learn the physical benefits of yoga and how it can strengthen their bodies as well as calm their minds."

Yoga East Studio Owner Jennifer Dixon said, "Yoga East celebrated the first day of its six-week pilot program bringing yoga to Hamilton County's teens that need it most at Washington Alternative School. Our goals for this pilot program, among others, is to teach the students self-acceptance; to respect and honor their bodies, and to realize the strength and capabilities they each have. These are lofty goals, but we know that practice can bring about these tremendous changes, and so many more."

Ms. Dixon added, "We are so excited to get to share this opportunity with the next generation and thrilled to watch the transformation. A special thanks goes to Mantra Style for donating their locally designed and crafted mats. The saying goes, 'It takes a village..." Well, this yoga tribe is here to help."

For more information about Yoga East Studio visit www.yoga-east.net.

For more information about Gandhi Global Center For Peace visit www.gandhicenterforpeace.org.
The Houston County District Attorney's Office donated $10,500 to the Ashford Police Department. The funds will be used to purchase a dual trained K-9. The amount donated also covers the handlers training fee.

We are very excited to assist the Ashford Police Department with this worthwhile addition to the department, said Houston County District Attorney Pat Jones

Tthe K-9 will serve as a narcotic detection canine and a tracking dog for the Ashford Police Department, said Investigator Jon Stanley.

"We are very appreciative for the district attorney assisting us with this matter, said Ashford Police Chief Quinton Vann. It has been sometime since the Ashford Police Department has had a canine unit, but I strongly believe this is a huge benefit to not only our department, but for our residents as well. The canine will assist the department is narcotic searches, and if we have one of elderly citizens suffering from dementia go missing. He is also trained to search for missing children.

Ashford Police Officer Beau Liles will be the K-9 officer. Both Liles and the canine will attend a five-week handler training course.

The canine, a two-year-old German Shepherd and Belgian Malinois, will be purchased from Alabama K-9 Law Enforcement Officers Training Center in Alabama. The dog can also be used to assist other law enforcement agencies if requested.
Headland Police Department began a manhunt Sunday evening in the Walden Pond area, leading to the arrest of one suspect. The department is still searching for the second suspect.

Headland Police Cpl. Greg Milhome was doing routine patrol when he spotted a vehicle which matched a recent Facebook post regarding a stolen vehicle. The post stated a vehicle had been stolen from a Dothan resident. Once Milhome turned around to verify the vehicles description, the vehicle began to speed up. Once Milhome activated his lights and siren, the vehicles speed continued to increase, and the vehicle left the roadway and hit a tree. Both suspects jumped from the vehicle and attempted to elude police by jumping in a pond.

A BOLO was issued for two black males, said Headland Police Chief Mark Jones. Our department was assisted by the Henry County Sheriffs Office and the Alabama Game and Fish Department K9s in searching for the two suspects. Around 8 p.m., officers found one suspect near the pond area.

The Headland Police Department has arrested and charged Courtney Byrd, 23, of Headland, with first-degree possession of stolen property and obstructing justice, a Class B felony punishable by not more than 20 years in prison unless statutory enhancements are included.

We continued our search for the second suspect until late Sunday night, Jones said. At this time, we are still searching for the second suspect.

The second suspect is a Dothan resident. The Headland Police Department is still investigating the incident by working the leads received following the incident.

I want to thank all departments that assisted in the search, Jones said. Your departments help is greatly appreciated.
Puppet shows, skits and a few hands-on learning activities gave hundreds of elementary school students their first experience with medical careers and training at Wallace Community College Tuesday.

More than 1,000 second grade students from local elementary schools visited Wallace for the colleges SIM Clinic. The clinic featured activities that taught the elementary school students about health and wellness, as well as careers related to health sciences. The event had a carnival-like atmosphere with colorful decorations and Wallace students dressed in superhero costumes for the event.

Health sciences play a big role at Wallace, with about 40 percent of students enrolled in a health-related education program. Faculty and students from the associate degree nursing, emergency medical services, medical assisting, physical therapist assistant, practical nursing, radiologic technology, and respiratory therapist programs volunteered at the event.

Morgan Brown of Enterprise was one of the Wallace students volunteering at the event Tuesday. Brown, a nursing student, said that she never had an opportunity like the one provided by the SIM Clinic when she was in elementary school.

Brown said she thought the SIM Clinic would help spark interest in health careers among the visiting students, and that the super hero costumes worn by volunteers were helpful in appealing to them.

The kids are all excited, Brown, who dressed as Wonder Woman, said. They all want to touch my costume and hold my hand.

Jan Wynn, an ADN instructor, said the program was also helpful to Wallaces health sciences students. Nurses, respiratory therapists, and other medical professionals often educate others about medical procedures and hygiene. Tuesdays event gave them valuable experience in breaking down complex information and presenting it in an understandable manner.

Part of their jobs will be teaching patients and each other, she said.

Charlotte Hartley, a Montana Magnet School teacher whose students attended the event, was impressed.

This is a wonderful event that shows students the opportunities Wallace has to offer, she said. It will take some of the fear factor away the next time they visit the doctor.

Katy Clair Boothe, a second grader at the event, summed up the event simply: It helps people, she said.
A Hartford man was killed Monday morning in a single-vehicle accident in Geneva County.

According to information provided by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, Andrew Michael Sweeney, Jr., 64, died from injuries sustained in the accident around 7:15 a.m.

The accident occurred on County Road 55 in Geneva County when his 1999 Oldsmobile Intrigue left the road and crashed.

No other information was made available. Alabama State Troopers are investigating the accident.
AN AREA in Louth pumping raw sewage back into the environment could pose a threat to public health, according to a new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report.

Omeath is one of 44 areas in Ireland named in the The Urban Waste Water Treatment in 2016 report for collecting and releasing untreated waste water.

Commonly referred to as raw sewage, waste water can be contaminated with harmful bacteria and viruses.

Omeath and seven other areas in Louth - Dundalk, Blackrock, Castlebellingham, Ardee, Drogheda, Dunleer and Tallanstown  are among 148 urban areas where improvements are required to resolve environmental priorities.

The report notes that Ardee is non-compliant with secondary treatment requirements. A 7.5m waste water treatment plan for Ardee was launched earlier this month.

Blackrock, Castlebellingham, Dundalk, Dunleer and Tallanstown are among 59 areas where waste water discharges are identified as the sole pressure on water bodies at risk of not meeting their environmental objectives.

In addition to posing a threat to public health, untreated waste water can damage aquatic ecosystems and the amenity value of waters.

The report found that there are still long delays in building many of the treatment plants needed to eliminate discharges of untreated waste water.

It stated that these delays mean that 31 areas are likely to continue discharging raw sewage into 2021.
See Rock City, Inc. is giving $30,000 to the Fairyland Elementary Schools current capital campaign. A $150,000 campaign goal is slated for a new state-of-the-art STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) Aquaponics floating greenhouse and center on the schools pond. Fairyland has received $110,000 so far towards their goal.

The Fairyland School Aquaponics Learning Lab is a one-of-a-kind structure to provide students with a facility to innovate and learn about self-sustaining ecosystems. Students will develop the skills necessary to grow, harvest and sell completely organic fruits, vegetables and fish, and to work to give back to its community though the profits raised, said Jeremy Roerdink, principal of Fairyland Elementary. Students will also learn to develop a business plan to not only sell their produce and fish, but also market and brand them with the assistance from our art teacher.

SRC President and COO Susan Harris noted, The Aquaponics center planned for Fairyland is a very cool innovative project in education and conservation. SRC, Inc. prides itself on its commitment to innovation and is excited to grow our existing partnership with the school and champion our students to becoming conservation-minded leaders of the future.

SRC is committed to giving back to the community and as a Tennessee Green Hospitality Certified property, is proud to support conservation, education and innovative projects such as this program, said officials. The company is also a long-standing partner in education for its local elementary school.

Many of our current partners (employees) are graduates of Fairyland School, as well as parents of past, current and future students, said SRC CEO Bill Chapin. Joan and I loved having our children learn and grow in this great environment. The school was built on property donated to Walker County by my great uncle, Garnet Carter, who did so much for Fairyland. SRC continues to follow his example.

Principal Roerdink said, We are looking for five businesses to partner with us to be able to make the project a reality for our students in the Lookout Mountain community. These donations are tax deductible with more info available here: www.crowdrise.com/fairylandschoolsaquaponicslab.
ARTICLE AS PRINTED IN DUNDALK DEMOCRAT, JULY 1922



Dundalk jail was damaged when a gelignite bomb exploded on Thursday morning, and practically every political prisoner dashed through the breach made.

The bomb was placed against the side wall and its explosion created much havoc, smashing every window within a wide radius.

Prominent Republicans were among those escaping. All day on Thursday and yesterday the escaped men were being pursued. It is announced that 50 have been recaptured.

Every road was blocked at the time of the jail attack and National troops were ambushed at Castletown Cross and Barrack Street Bridge. Two Free State soldiers were under treatment for bullet wounds received in these attacks. One of these died yesterday morning.

One hundred and five prisoners were liberated from the county jail at Dundalk at a quarter past seven on Thursday morning under circumstances which made the incident the most thrilling and dramatic of all the strange occurrences which have taken place in Dundalk even within recent times. Briefly the facts were that a hole was breached in the jail wall by a bomb, the prisoners filed out through the aperture and on foot made for the surrounding country. In a chase afterwards some of them were recaptured.

The sensational news came just when talk of the sensational bank raid had died down. People had expended all their pet theories, given all their vivid descriptions of Saturdays happenings, when the awful crash which shook the jail walls and the houses about made them sit up and take notice. The escape from the jail was certainly one which made a big noise. Nothing like the explosion has been heard here before - it dented the stout masonry and made a big gap in the wall, smashed the glass in the windows of the Crescent dwelling houses to smithereens, did the same with the windows of the County Infirmary, and some of those in St. Malachy's Priory, cast huge boulders into the air as if they were pebbles from a shingly beach, reduced the door of the tuberculosis hospital to matchwood and injured a warder on the knee.

It happened at just a quarter past seven. A big contingent of men were noticed to concentrate in the vicinity of the jail. That is not an unusual sight on a road over which hundreds of railwaymen pass every day. But these were not railwaymen. Somebody placed a bomb on the ground along the jail wall just midway between the jail gate on the Ardee Road and the end of the prison. An electric wire was taken from a pole and connected to the bomb, which had been placed in position by planks. Then the bomb went off with an awful noise. Right through the thick wall went the contents of the bomb, casting the stones and cement on one side, and leaving a big hole in the wall.

People who were not engaged in the operations wandered what had happened. People living in the Crescent felt their houses shake as if an earthquake had suddenly come to life in Vincent Avenue. Immediately glass began to crash and window frames to fly, and the very foundations of their houses seemed to shiver. Over in the hospital the patients had a terrifying experience. Windows, front and back, went bang, and the noise was deafening. Fortunately no person was injured by the flying fragments, but the experience was dreadful, the more particular for the poor patients in the hospital.

The prisoners must have been at large from their cells at the time, because almost immediately the explosion had died away they came trooping out through the hole which had been thoughtfully provided for their escape. It is stated that before the bursting of the bomb, hand grenades were thrown into the prison yard. Darting through the breach, the prisoners ran through the streets nearby. In all 105 had escaped.

For a fortnight past Dundalk jail had been reserved for political prisoners. The ordinary civilian offenders against law and order had been removed from Dundalk some time ago and their places filled by these parties, who had been despatched, most of them, by special train, from Dublin. The place had been guarded by National troops - there was, in fact, a Thompson gun, in the front main window - and the tri-colour had been floating over the prison. It was expected that the place would be in charge of a military governor, but he had not arrived up to Thursday morning, and the old staff was on duty.

During Thursday it was rumoured that among those escaping were several very prominent Republican leaders. No confirmation could be obtained of this, but it was learned on good authority that the majority of the prisoners were natives of the County Meath.

Following the extraordinary occurrence there was great military activity in the town. Troops came along on motors, and immediately a guard was placed along the breach. People passing were held up and searched. Then a chase through the country after the escaped prisoners ensued, and in this considerable energy was displayed. Shots were heard at several points round the town, but whether this had anything to do with the chase is not established.

There were some peculiar rumours in the town concerning the affair. One was that the bulk of the men who had been responsible for the exploding of the bomb arrived at the place on a tender and wearing uniform. Another was that there had been a trial explosion of a gelignite bomb the previous day. Certain it is that at about 8 o'clock on Wednesday afternoon a bomb was exploded very close to Dundalk.

Plans had been well laid for the coup, which was proved to be the biggest made by the Irregulers in Dundalk There was continual firing practically through the night. On Thursday morning too, an attempt was made to ambush troops coming from the Military Barracks. This attempt was made at the Barrack Street bridge, from which shots were discharged at National troops passing up town in a motor car. Many civilians were concerned in this attempt. It was also attempted to prevent the troops coming through Quay street. An engine was taken from the running shed and taken down the line a considerable distance, the object being to block the Barrack street gates and so prevent troops coming in that way. The plan did not succeed. In a roundup of the district the military arrested nine youths and men in the timber yard of the GNR in St Alphonsus Road. Some of these were stated to be mere boys who are alleged to have prominent membership of the Fianna.

At Castletown Cross also an attempted ambush of National troops took place.

In this area there was a sustained firing from both sides of the road. There were casualties here. Those among the attackers are not known. To the Louth Infirmary subsequently two National soldiers were taken in for treatment. One was Colonel Commandant Mason, who was injured by a bullet wound in the foot, and whose condition is not serious. The other is Volunteer McCaffrey, a young man who was severely wounded in the thigh, and who expired on Friday morning at 3 o'clock.

During the shooting at Barrack street a woman fainted.

The explosion of the bomb, which was probably filled with gelignite, was heard as far away as Ravensdale on the one side and Castlebellingham on the other.

Photographers anxious to get a "snap" of the hole made in the jail wall were refused permission to do so by the soldiers on guard.

It was learned yesterday that amongst those who had escaped from the barracks and had not been re-arrested was Mr. Ridgway, an organiser for the Transport Union, who had been arrested last Monday week. In connection with the detention of Mr. Ridgway a one-day county strike was threatened for Wednesday last, this decision having been reached at a delegate labour meeting held in Kilsaran on Sunday last. The strike was to have taken place on Wednesday, if by Tuesday mid-day word was not received that the organiser was not released or brought to trial. The strike was postponed on the papers in connection with the case having been sent to military headquarters in Dublin, with a promise of an immediate investigation of the matter.

Many Belfast refugees cleared out of Dundalk early this week.

Inquiries went to show that up to last night about 50 prisoners had been retaken. Some of appear to have got a considerable distance from the jail, for arrests are reported from Drogheda, and other districts of South Louth. The chase continues and probably will for some days to come.

In all twenty arrests have been made within the past two days of people who were alleged to be concerned in the jail release or in the ambushes on the National troops. The most notable is John M'Coy, Mullabawn, who was a brigadier in the barracks here before the National troops took command. Last night some of the prisoners were taken to the jail. They include H. Johnston, a rate collector for the County Council; - Duffy, Parnell Park; - Cunningham, John street.





Dundalk Democrat, July 29th 1922 - About Town



As we know nothing about explosives, we don't know whether it was necessary to make so confoundly loud a noise in blowing a hole in the jail wall big enough for one prisoner at a time to make his escape through. We have seen far more damage done in a quarry with a blasting-charge that didn't frighten the young horses in the next field. This explosion shook the town. It blew in every pane of glass in the Crescent. It did far more damage to the County Infirmary than to the jail. It frightened hundreds of timid women and children to the verge of hysterics. There are other aspects of the affair that are much discussed in town: but we will not refer to these now. Let us go on to tell of one of the "ambushes", so much commended to young lads as an easy way of downing "the enemy". This one took place close to the town. There was a woman living in the house close by who was about to give birth to a baby. The nurse was in the house when the ambushers took up their posts. She told them of the circumstances and begged them to go elsewhere and not risk two innocent lives. They refused. "Acting on orders", we suppose: the usual thing! The baby was born amidst the hellish rattle of gunfire. It lived long enough to be baptised: no longer. The poor mother lies at death's door. That is a true tale. The incident occurred close to Dundalk on Thursday morning. And that is what this "war", about which so much blatherskite is talked and written by fools, means to the civilian population who are the greatest - almost the only - sufferers by it.
DUNDALK Institute of Technology is among six Irish Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) praised in a new OECD/EU report.

The OECD/EU report on Ireland's entrepreneurship education found that a study visit to DkIT revealed several very successful practices that stimulate and reward leadership at all levels.

The Supporting Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Higher Education in Ireland report also notes that the practices create proper support structures and incentives for staff and students.

This report is a testament to the quality of the teaching in our Higher Education Institutions and the findings of the review will inform best practice in entrepreneurial education across Europe, said Minister for Education Mary Mitchell-O'Connor.

It highlights the fact that engagement between institutions, employers, community and regional stakeholders is becoming increasingly important.

Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Limerick Institute of Technology, University of Limerick, University College of Cork and Dublin City University have also been praised in the report.

The report also identifies some areas for improvement including increasing start-up support for students and alumni, and broadening the scope for research initiatives.
A group of top Canadian tour operators and travel agents  all specialists in group tours and responsible for making the travel arrangements for a diverse range of large groups  have been visiting Louth and Ireland recently, according to Tourism Ireland.

They were here as guests of Tourism Ireland and Failte Ireland.



The Canadians attended a Canadian Expo B2B workshop in Cavan  organised by Failte Ireland  where they met with Irish tourism enterprises to negotiate for their 2018 programmes.

They also undertook an action-packed fact-finding visit to Louth.



Their itinerary included a visit to Carlingford Design House and a gin demonstration at Listoke Distillery & Gin School in Drogheda, with Co-Founder Bronagh Conlon. They also enjoyed lunch in PJ OHares in Carlingford.



Dana Welch, Tourism Irelands Manager in Canada, said: Tourism Ireland was delighted to invite these top Canadian tour operators and travel agents to visit Louth and Ireland, to see and experience some of our many great attractions and to encourage them to include Ireland in their programmes for 2018.

2017 looks set to be another good year for Irish tourism from Canada and the United States, with the latest CSO figures showing over 1.6 million visitors to Ireland from North America during the January to September period this year  an increase of +18.6% when compared to the same nine-month period in 2016.



Tourism Ireland is rolling out an extensive programme of promotions in Canada this autumn  which includes co-operative promotions with key airline and tour operator partners, email marketing and social media promotions, as well as online advertising on popular websites. And, Tourism Irelands publicity programme in Canada this year will generate positive coverage for the island of Ireland worth more than 7.5 million.
By connecting their physical and digital stores, businesses can give their customers a more seamless shopping experience; however, this omnichannel approach also facilitates better inventory management. Having real-time visibility of your inventory across all sales channels means less chance of overselling, better forecasting, and less hassle for staff.

Lets backtrack quickly  what is omnichannel? Its where customers can browse, purchase, and interact with a business across multiple sales channels, including in-store and online via mobile device or computer, either simultaneously or interchangeably  depending on what they find convenient. However, a business with a website, a mobile app, and a physical store isnt an omnichannel retailer unless they have fused all those channels together for a seamless customer experience. Giving customers the ability to purchase an item using your mobile site, pick it up in your store, and return it via your website is an example of omnichannel retailing in action. And in omnichannel retailing, the different channels support one another  for example, social media can boost website traffic, which in turn can generate foot traffic for the physical store.

And omnichannel program, where all your sales channels are linked together, also improves your inventory management. This is because it requires you to have all your stock synced up across every channel  so if someone buys from your website, it automatically updates your stock store levels, or vice versa. This makes it far easier to keep track of your inventory and eliminates the risk of double-sells or running out of popular products.

In my view, there are generally two best-practice approaches to bringing your bricks and mortar and online stores together. One option is to run your online and offline stores using a omnichannel retail solution, with all your inventory, sales, and customer data available, in real-time, from a single platform. Or, you can to integrate different solutions so that data flows from one platform to the next.

Option 1: Use one platform for your online and offline stores

This is the simplest and most straightforward way to go omnichannel. Talk to your existing provider (i.e. your point-of-sale (POS) vendor or ecommerce platform, depending on where youre selling), and ask them about their omnichannel capabilities. Make sure you thoroughly explore what the solution can provide for both online and in-store. Many systems are often stronger in one area than another, so it pays to check before making the commitment.

How does Option 1 assist a business with inventory management?

By using one omnichannel retail management system to sell in-store and online you can stay on top of orders and inventory with minimal hassle. If something sells out in your physical store, then that product will also be marked as sold-out online, and vice versa.

Option 2: Integrate different systems

For some small businesses, having one solution isnt the best choice. For example, if you need advanced features or capabilities that a single platform cant offer, then it makes more sense to use different solutions and integrate them together. If youre going to connect different platforms then ensure you choose platforms with tight integrations. To make things easier, go for solutions with existing integrations that are proven to work well together, so you wont have to develop one yourself.

How does Option 2 assist a business with inventory management?

For some retailers the features they are looking for are better met through integrating their POS with their chosen ecommerce solution. So how do they juggle their POS, ecommerce, and possibly also delivery methods? Two words: tight integration which means each provider has built a specific integration with each other, so you can be sure it works well. Or, you can often have a third party provider develop a strong integration for you. Doing this gives you the best of both worlds  omnichannel and smarter inventory management, with features that work best for your business.

Although connecting sales channels will improve inventory management and affords customers convenience in the way they engage the business, mistakes such as overselling can still occur. If this happens its important to contact your customer promptly, apologise for the inconvenience, advise them that the item isnt currently in stock, and find a way to solve the problem for them.

But generally, this will be less likely to happen than if your systems are still kept completely separate, or youre using a traditional till system that doesnt have online capabilities at all. No one wants to spend hours manually checking and tracking stock across multiple stores and online  bringing everything together into a single view will have you large amounts of time, and money. You just need to decide which platforms and integrations are the best way for you to do this.

Once youve chosen your preferred approach and platform, the hard work is behind you. Next, youll need to establish business processes to support your omnichannel efforts and train your staff  and then youre ready to reap the rewards of better stock control.

About the author

Francesca Nicasio is a retail expert and author from Vend. Shes constantly writing about trends, tips, and other things that can help retailers increase sales, serve customers better, and be more awesome overall.
An additional section of 15th Street is being renamed by the city of Cleveland as Billy Graham Avenue.

The world-renowned pastor began his higher education here in 1936 when Bob Jones College was located in Cleveland. He attended classes here for about six months and transferred to another school in Florida.

Bob Jones College moved to Greenville, S.C.

In 2008 the Cleveland City Council renamed a section of 15th Street between North Ocoee Street and Parker Street as Billy Graham Avenue.

In 2012 Grahams oldest daughter Virginia Gigi Graham joined about 200 people here to dedicate the street with a ribbon cutting ceremony.

The second renamed section of 15th Street extends Billy Graham Avenue from Parker Street east to Magnolia Avenue NE.

Mayor Tom Rowland proposed the additional section in honor of Grahams approaching 99th birthday. The Cleveland City Council adopted the additional renaming on Monday.

Rowland said the entire Billy Graham Avenue runs through the Lee Campus. He said the university okayed the name change. Rowland said no address changes are necessary by city residents.

A street sign dedication ceremony for the new section is being planned for Nov. 7, Billy Grahams birthday.
The Continuing Education Department at Chattanooga State will be holding a series of personal interest classes such as self-defense, conversational Spanish, retirement planning as well as floral design for the holidays from making centerpieces to decking the halls. All classes will be held on the main campus.



Tuesday, Oct. 24, 5-9 p.m., $49 - Learn different methods of how to protect oneself in any threatening situation with self-defense tactics.



Thursdays, Oct. 19 to Nov. 30, 6-8 p.m., $129 - Conversational Spanish II -This class will build on phrases for Spanish as well as increasing your ability to travel, dine and socialize in Spanish.



Friday, Oct. 27, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., $19 - Learn strategies to protect your assets through proper estate planning under Tennessee Medicaid requirements. Learn basics for estate planning from an Elder Care attorney at Chambliss Law Firm.



Saturday, Nov. 11, 1-6 p.m., $259 - Create all of your floral decorating for your Christmas home with our whole Deck the Hall package. This package includes a wreath, mantle garland, centerpiece and a 3-foot tree. Stems, decorations and supplies are also included.



Tuesday, Nov. 14, 6-7:30 p.m., $59 - Learn floral design and how to make a holiday centerpiece so that your holiday table can sparkle.



For more information, contact the Office of Continuing Education at 423-697-3100.
The Chattanooga Police Department is partnering with YFD to encourage a fun way for kids and their families to learn more about the Real Time Intelligence Center and the public safety cameras placed around the city through the Great CPD Pumpkin Hunt.

To participate find the pumpkins around the city, take a photo of the pumpkin at each location, post it to social media (Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram) using the hashtag #CPDPumpkinHunt, repeat for all 15 locations, then send an email to emoss@chattanooga.gov to receive a prize pack (must pick up at a YFD center).

A grand prize winner will be selected from completed entries. The winner will get a private tour of the RTIC. The contest will run through Oct. 31.

The locations are indicated in the attached photo.

The Real Time Intelligence Center is an initiative by Mayor Andy Berke and the Chattanooga Police Department to help keep people safe by reducing violent crime in the communities. The community investment in the RTIC means police have the tools, technology, and data to respond quickly to the community's needs and successfully prosecute violent aggressors, said officials. The RTIC has three major components including a crime analysis team, real time reporting for faster, smarter deployment of resources, and public safety cameras. More information is available at bit.ly/RTICoutreach.






The Northside Neighborhood Houses mission is to promote the independence of residents north of the river by providing a hand up through education and assistance.

One of three ways that NNH accomplishes this mission is through education. Their education goals provide programming after school and summer tutoring and enrichment programs for elementary, middle and high school students, basic education help for adults with the goal of obtaining their GED and enrichment programs for seniors and adults.

For the second year in a row, the Judge David Campbell donated books and school supplies to assist in this mission.
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(Photo: NCCK)National Council of Churches of Kenya Program Committee

Peace in Kenya has been on a knife edge in recent weeks with the threat of violence hanging by a thin thread, as the country's church leaders stay on script in their task as peacemakers and rift healers, constantly calling for calm.

The National Council of Churches of Kenya on 4 October had released a detailed document calling "on all Kenyans to continue praying for our nation and commit to nurture peace and strengthening of our institutions".

In their statement the churches pinpoint key directions the country could move in to do this.

http://www.ncck.org/newsite2/index.php/information/news/710-statement-by-the-programmes-committee-on-the-state-of-the-nation

"Let us especially pray that the political formations will drop their hardline positions and engage the electoral process with a mind of achieving what is best for the nation, not just for themselves as individuals.," they said.

The Kenyan church leaders are proposing a national dialogue conference to help find ways of the resolving the current political and social crises facing the East African nation.

Apart from discussing the stand-off over fresh presidential elections, it would also help resolve a longstanding nurses and clinical officers' strike.

The drama accelerated on 18 October when one of Kenya's seven election commissioners Roselyn Akombe quit releasing a statement in New York accusing her colleagues of political bias and saying an upcoming presidential election cannot be credible, the AFP news agency reported.

Kenya's crisis had moved up a notch on 1 September when the Supreme Court nullified the election victory of President Uhuru Kenyatta due to irregularities and illegalities.

Although a new election is scheduled for 26 October, the opposition says it will boycott it because it does not believe the independent electoral commission will allow it to be free and fair.

Both sides are open to scrutiny in their claims to be the peaceful ones, say church leaders.

The country's Roman Catholic bishops had added their voices to earlier pleas from the NCCK urging Kenyans to guard the national peace.

"If the election goes on as scheduled, we call upon Kenyans to turn out and exercise their democratic right peacefully," the bishops said in an Oct. 12 statement signed by Bishop Philip Anyolo, chair of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops' Conference, Catholic News Service reported.

"If for any reason the election is rescheduled, we call on Kenyans to remain calm and peaceful."

In their earlier statement, on 4 October the NCCK said, "We note that since the Supreme Court ruling, the political class has put the country on an edge by their constant grandstanding over issues that would otherwise be resolved through genuine engagement."

The NCCK includes 28 Anglican, Orthodox and Protestant churches in the country and is part of the World Council of Churches. Its statement was signed by Archbishop Mophat Kilioba, chairperson of the NCCK's Programme Committee and its general secretary, Rev. Canon Peter Karanja.

"The result has been violent demonstrations in which one death has already been reported, and there are indications of mobilization of gangs for violence in different parts of the country," said the NCCK after its programmme committee met.

'ECONOMY ON A DOWNWARD CYCLE'

NCCK said, "The economy is on a downward spiral, and the health sector continues to be bedeviled by industrial action by nurses and medical staff. This state of affairs must not be allowed to fester any longer."

They called on the top leadership of Kenyatta's Jubilee Party and the National Super Alliance, the two main political parties, to drop their hardline positions regarding the management of fresh presidential elections to and seek what is best for the people of Kenya.

"Failure to hold the Fresh Presidential Elections within the timelines set by the Constitution in line with the Supreme Court ruling, will take this country into a scenario fraught with danger and uncertainty.

"It will be greatly irresponsible for NASA and Jubilee to push Kenya to that scenario which is tragic for the country whatever benefit any political actors may get from it."

The churches urged the political parties to work to expanding the national executive of government by creating new positions to enable greater inclusivity and create wider ownership of government by Kenyan communities
Considered to be the Ten Best UFO Photos Ever Taken I am sure that we could add more pictures to this list but these are considered ten o...
Crye-Leike Real Estate Services East Brainerd office will have a fall fundraising event in conjunction with Crye-Leikes Annual United Way Campaign. The office will kick off fundraising activities for their fall festival, Trunk or Treat Sunday from 1-4 p.m.

The event is free to the public and will be held in its office parking lot at 1510 Gunbarrel Road.

The festival will include family-friendly activities such as face painting, limbo contest, and corn hole. A local Wendys franchise will be donating chili for attendees to enjoy, as well as hot dogs supplied by one of Crye-Leikes Chattanooga realtors. Success Real Estate School will be supplying water for the event.

Monetary donations will be accepted throughout the afternoon. All of the proceeds will go directly to supporting the United Way of Greater Chattanooga.

We are really looking forward to bringing the community together with our fall festival, said Emily Pray, marketing director of Crye-Leike Chattanooga. Most importantly, we are excited to show support of our local United Way through donations made during the event.

For more information about the event, please contact Ms. Pray at 296-1456, or email Emily.pray@crye-leike.com.




Currently advocates for a just immigration system are lobbying Congress and the Trump administration to preserve Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Haiti as well as other countries. The largest group of TPS holders (195,000) are from El Salvador.
Tennessees future prosperity depends on affording opportunities to succeed to all the states children, including those of immigrant families, according to the 2017 Race for Results: Building a Path to Opportunity for All Children, released Tuesday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

In addition to reporting on child well-being across various demographic groups, the new study focuses on the challenges faced by immigrants and children in immigrant families and the strengths they bring to communities, and recommends policies to stabilize families and assure all children meet developmental goals.

Race for Results includes an updated index score for each state for children by race/ethnicity. The score is based on 12 indicators that measure a childs success in each stage of life, from birth to adulthood, and looks at categories such as early childhood, education and early work experiences, family resources and neighborhood context. The maximum composite score for each group is 1,000. Tennessee demographic group index scores and rankings compared to other states are Black/African American, 346, 31st; Asian and Pacific Islander, 768, 24th; Hispanic or Latino, 391, 39th; and White, 625, 43rd.

We all win when our state makes opportunities available to each and every child, said Linda ONeal, executive director of the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth, the Tennessee KIDS COUNT affiliate.

Nationally, report data show general improvement in the majority of indicators compared to a similar report three years ago. In many of the 12 indicators, children in immigrant families are succeeding at levels similar to children in U.S.-born families; at the same time, children of color and immigrant children face substantial obstacles.

Tennessee data indicate smaller gaps among demographic groups than most states. White children in Tennessee still have significantly better outcomes in areas such as education and family income than children from African-American and Hispanic families. Asian and Pacific Islander children continue to have the highest index rating.

A higher percentage of Tennessee children graduated from high school compared to national averages. Children in immigrant families in Tennessee are significantly more likely to live in two-parent households than are children in U.S.-born families, said the report.

Children in immigrant families in Tennessee across the centuries all have the same dreams. They, and we, want to implement innovative strategies that improve opportunities to thrive and contribute, Ms. ONeal said.

The report recommends keeping families together and in their communities, helping children in immigrant families meet key developmental milestones and increasing economic opportunity for immigrant parents.

Home visiting programs to connect families with community resources and improve health and developmental outcomes of young children, training to ensure educators and providers understand the role of trauma in the lives of those they serve, quality early childhood education, and Family Resource Centers help Tennessee meet these recommendations, said officials.

All children, including children of color and children in immigrant and refugee families, are the economic engine for Tennessees future. We must provide them the resources they need to succeed in school and in life, Ms. ONeal concluded.
Actors Matt Damon and George Clooney break their silence on the Harvey Weinstein scandal as more women continue to come forward, recounting their harrowing experiences with the once prominent movie mogul. While promoting their new movie, "Suburbicon" , Damon has stated that he was never fond of Weinstein but he didn't know that he could be responsible for such horrendous acts.

Damon first worked with Weinstein on his first movie, the critically-accailmed "Good Will Hunting", which shot Damon into stardom. He was signed to a three-picture deal with Miramax quickly after that but immediately knew that Weinstein wasn't someone he wanted to cross paths with again. "You had to spend about five minutes with him to know that he was a bully. He was intimidating," Damon told Michael Strahan of ABC News. "Miramax was the place, really the place, that was making great stuff in the '90's. And it was like, 'Could you survive Harvey?'"

The fallout of Harvey Weinstein continues to make headlines as more A-listers speak about the character of Weinstein and how the industry has maintained to keep this silenced over the years.

Coincidentally enough, actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who dated Damon's best friend and co-star Ben Affleck, has spoken about the harrassment she recieved from Weinstein earlier on her career. Damon stated that he heard of the encounter, but never spoke to Paltrow about it at the time.





Clooney added that the scandal is "part of a larger, systematic problem" and is not just prevelant in Hollywood. "I talked with my wife [Amal] about this. And she said ... she could find, you know, in her line of work, which is human rights law ... there have been plenty of instances where some guy has tried, you know, to make their move," George Clooney stated.

Since the article that was publshed in the New York Times about Weinstein, women all across the country have become more vocal about their encounters with sexual harrassment in the workplace. Most recently, Director James Toback has been accused of harrassing over 30 women.

Harvey Weinstein, who just left his one-week pyschological treatment, is currently under investigation by the LAPD, since more than 40 women have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct and harrasment against him. His wife, Georgina Chapman has since left him, and he has been terminated from his production company.

Clooney is a new father to twins, a boy and a girl; while Damon is a father to four girls. Damon stated that he has taught his daughters about having strong self-esteem. "You're not going to be with them when they have to make a lot of these decisions. That you're going to have to trust that they're gonna make the right decisions ... and be able to protect themselves,"

Click here to watch their interview.

Be sure to check out Enstarz for the latest in celebrity news!
The Chattanooga Fire Department will open all 20 fire stations in Chattanooga from 6-8 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 31 to give trick-or-treaters an up-close look inside a fire station. While there, children can look at the fire engines, talk with the firefighters, and get some candy from the fire department, while supplies last.Here are some helpful Halloween safety tips from the Chattanooga Fire Department.Going Door-to-Door: Never let children under age 12 go trick-or-treating or cross the street without the supervision of an adult. Teach them never to dart out into the street or cross between parked cars. Be Visible: Carry flashlights and decorate costumes, bags and sacks with reflective tape and stickers. Teach children to walk, not run, while trick-or-treating. Remind children to stop at all street corners before crossing.Tell them to cross streets only at intersections and crosswalks. Teach them to look left, right and left again before crossing the street and to continue looking both ways as they cross.Fire Safety: Look for flame-resistant labels on costumes, masks, beards and wigs. Avoid costumes made of flimsy material and outfits with big, baggy sleeves or billowing skirts. These are more likely to come in contact with an exposed flame, such as a candle, than tighter fitting costumes. Keep candles, pumpkins with candles, matches and lighters out of childrens reach.Additional Safety Tips: Apply face paint or cosmetics directly to the face. It is safer than a loose-fitting mask that can obstruct a childs vision. If a mask is worn, be certain it fits securely. Cut the eyeholes large enough for full vision. Make costumes short enough to avoid tripping. Secure hats so they will not slip over childrens eyes. Dress children in shoes that fit. Adult shoes can cause kids to trip and fall. Allow children to carry only flexible knives, swords or other props. Anything they carry could injure them if they fall. Teach children not to cut across yards. Lawn ornaments and clotheslines are hidden hazards in the dark. Tell your children to stay on the sidewalk at all times. If you discover treats that have been tampered with, notify the police department immediately.
Donald Trumps stance towards Iran will ultimately force the European Union to choose between committing a crime and making a mistake. If the White House stops fulfilling its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, as the Iran deal is formally known, the strength of the transatlantic coalition  Americas most important and most reliable partnership  will be questioned.

The US intelligence community and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have repeatedly confirmed that Tehran was complying with the deal. The JCPOA was designed to respond to Iranian violations but not to deal with an isolationist American using its veto power outside of the terms of the deal. The Bush and Obama administrations convinced Russia, China, and the UN Security Council to sanction Tehran with the aim to curb its nuclear program. The nuclear deal traded these punitive measures for tight nuclear restrictions and checks, but the White House and its partners were concerned that the Security Council might fail to re-impose the sanctions if Iran cheated, reducing Tehrans incentive for long-term compliance.

Europes concerns are grounded on its rich commercial relations with Tehran that started before the final agreement was signed in 2015. Business trips to the country started under pre-2015 interim agreement and France opened the first trade office in Tehran only two months after the final deal was struck. Germanys and Frances chemical and machine-tools industries and car-makers have signed agreements to export to Iran while oil and gas companies are flocking in ever-increasing numbers. In what is perhaps the sweetest deals of them all  struck by Airbus  the European giant has agreed to sell billions of euros worth of commercial planes to Iran.

Given this economic background and richness of EU-Iran commercial ties, it is not difficult to see why Europe is concerned about the future of the nuclear deal. In the light of President Trumps recent failure to confirm Irans compliance with the deal, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the White House was not seeking to disrupt European business deals with Iran. The presidents been pretty clear that its not his intent to interfere with business deals that the Europeans may have under way with Iran, Mr. Tillerson said and added that hes said it clearly: Thats fine. You guys do what you want to do. Mr. Tillerson also pointed out that weve been working with the Europeans for six months, adding that they have been brought along with this same thought process. It doesnt mean that they necessarily agree entirely with itNow we will start a more formalized process with them now that the policys been adopted.

EU leaders in the meantime reiterated the EUs full commitment to the 2015 agreement and Brussels has said it would keep European sanctions suspended as long as Tehran sticks by its commitments under the JCPOA. However, many diplomats and heads of state  including British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron  also stressed the importance of keeping pressure on Iran over issues such as ballistic-missile tests and Irans regional activities.

Trumps Iran Threats Risk a US Break With Europe  Op-Ed by Jarrett Blanc  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

(The Op-Ed can be downloaded here)
John Post Ariel Prevost Claire Eustis Michele Kephart Nichole Thomas Ridge Previous Next

The Chattanoogan hotel, a Benchmark Resorts & Hotels property, has hired three new members of its sales team and promoted two sales executives. John Post has been appointed as the hotels new catering sales manager; Ariel Prevost is the new wedding sales manager; and Claire Eustis is a new sales manager. Michele Kephart has been promoted to sales manager for the association market; and Nichole Thomas Ridge, who was the catering sales manager, is now a sales manager.

Mr. Post, a former Marine who most recently served as the special events manager at Hunter Museum of American Art, is responsible for booking and overseeing corporate events, holiday parties, luncheons, dinners, galas and other special celebrations at the hotel. Ms. Prevost, who has spent the past 20 years working in the hospitality industry in N.Y. and Fla., is coordinating and managing weddings and social events at The Chattanoogan. Ms. Eustis, a former corporate sales manager and executive meeting manager at several upscale Atlanta hotels, will be managing the Atlanta and corporate markets.

Ms. Kephart has worked with The Chattanoogan for the past 18 months. She was the director of Bluff View Art District In Chattanooga for more than six years, overseeing the marketing and sales initiatives for Bluff Views restaurants, galleries, catering and meeting facilities. Ms. Thomas Ridge has served at The Chattanoogans catering sales manager for the past six years before being promoted to sales manager.
The European Commission has announced a 106 million EUR financial package for Sudan. 46 million EUR will be dedicated to humanitarian assistance and 60 million EUR to development to directly help the Sudanese people affected by under-nutrition, disease, forced displacement and extreme conditions. Around 4.8 million people in Sudan currently need urgent assistance, 3.6 million are in need of food and livelihoods assistance, and there are around 2.2 million malnourished children below the age of 5.

Here in Sudan the humanitarian situation continues to be critical. Millions have been displaced for many years in Darfur. Our new EU funding is crucial to respond to the needs of the increasing numbers of refugees, notably from South Sudan, and internally displaced people, as well as of the hosting communities, said Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides during his visit to the country. 46 million EUR of the support package will help cover food, shelters, education, water and sanitation while 13 million is part of an emergency assistance package announced earlier this year. 60-million development funds will be channeled through the EU Emergency Trust for Africa.

The new aid comes at a time when United Nations aid agencies are dealing with an acute shortage of funds from international donors to meet relief needs in Sudan. The UN had appealed for $804 million in aid for Sudan for this year, but as of end September only 38 percent of that had been raised. The UN says that insufficient funds have forced many health facilities close in conflict zones of Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan.
The European Union has issued a yellow card to Vietnam for the risk of being branded as a non-cooperating country on fisheries. This move demonstrates the blocs continuous fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing worldwide.

The yellow card highlights that Vietnam is not doing enough to protect its fisheries and fight illegal fishing. It pinpoints shortcomings, such as the lack of an effective sanctioning system to deter IUU fishing activities and a lack of action to deal with illegal fishing activities conducted by Vietnamese vessels in waters of neighboring countries, including Pacific Small Island Developing States. Moreover, the country has a poor system of controlling landings of fish that is processed locally before being exported to global markets, including the EU.

Commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Karmenu Vella, said that the EU couldnt ignore the impact of illegal activities conducted by Vietnamese vessels on marine ecosystems in the Pacific. We invite the Vietnamese authorities to step up their fight so we can reverse this decision quickly. We are offering them our technical support.

Between 11 and 26 million tons of fish, i.e. at least 15% of world catches, are caught illegally every year, which is worth 8-19 billion euro. The EU is the worlds biggest importer and as such it does not want to be complicit and accept problematic products into its market. The IUU system that entered into force in 2010 is a key instrument in the fight against illegal fishing, designed to ensure that only those fishery products that have been certified as legal can access the EUs single market.
hi all my name is Lisa Im 38 married with 5 children and Im currently in the uk. My inlaws live in Canada they have been there since 2009 and we want to move over there as soon as we can.I have an nvq3 in childcare but have found out nvq's are useless in canadaSo I was wondering is there any course I can take in the uk that will be recognised in Canada that I could do whilst I am still here or any course I can do online that gives me Canadian qualifications?I really can't see how we will ever get over to Canada at the minute need some help because I have no idea howthank you Lisa x
Chattanooga States Paralegal Program, and the International Law Section of the Tennessee Bar Association are sponsoring a free seminar Refugees & ImmigrantsOutlook & Hope for 2018 & Beyond to be held on Thursday from 3-4:30 p.m. at Chattanooga State, Mobile ClassroomLibrary.

Chattanooga States Global Scholars Honors Program is also hosting an empowering exhibition Love Without Borders featuring artwork from refugee children living in Greece from 10 a.m.- 6 p.m. on Thursday. Attendees of the seminar will have the opportunity to have direct interactive discussions with the speakers, and will be able to explore the exhibition.

The speakers on the panel include: Kayra Martinez, a volunteer and artist in Greece supporting those displaced by war; Ken Goldsmith, a professor and director of Paralegal Education at Chattanooga State Community College; James McKissic, the director of the city of Chattanooga Office of Multicultural Affairs; Jim Pickett. the senior pastor of New City Fellowship East Lake; and Terry Olsen, an immigration/international law attorney and chair of the International Law Section of the Tennessee Bar Association.

The seminar will provide an overview of the global and U.S. refugee and immigrant rights and advocacy landscape as it concerns Tennessee for 2018 and beyond, and both policy and legal views of the ever-changing global view(s) of refugees and immigrants.

The panel discussion will last from 3-4 p.m. and then will be followed with a FAQ session for attendees.


Hi all,



Does anyone can recommend tailor for me in Dubai? (for men shirts, suit) Thanks so much!
Would like to live abroad while finishing my degree online, and I was thinking Morocco. Cost of living sounds cheap, theres a bit of a scuba diving scene, its warm, scenic and historic. I've got savings so money won't be an issue.



Obviously I'll need a visa. Does anyone have any experience in this area? I know I can't get a student visa by attending a Canadian online university, but I would like to learn French and there is a french language school, Sprachcaffe, that offers year round french courses, about 20 hours a week.



Would anyone know if this would qualify me for a 1 year student visa? It seems a little difficult to glean info from Moroccan govt sources.



Any other thoughts on living in Morocco would also be welcomed.



Thanks in advance!
My Thai partner and I purchased a house in Chonburi back in 2011. It already has an existing swimming pool. It's decent and we're good with it. We just chlorinate and balance the pool, and do the other swimming pool maintenance. Replaced the old pump with a new one from Pool Masters thailand pool shop and it was a great deal. No issues with regards to pool equipments and supplies really as they have always been helpful. Last month, I got quite inspired to remodel it and now I think we're sold to the thought of really pushing thru with the plan. To swimming pool owners here, any suggestions on a great alternative to tiles? Do we need a permit for a swimming pool remodel? Any ideas and personal experiences are much appreciated. Cheers.
John Besh, the New Orleans chef whose dining portfolio included some of that city's most important and popular restaurants, has left the company that bears his name following allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment.

Besh, is the co-owner of Besh Restaurant Group that once ran Luke on the River Walk. The Besh Restaurant Group was the subject of an eight-month investigation by Nola.com/The Times-Picayune published over the weekend that revealed claims by 25 current and former female employees of Besh Group claiming sexual harassment while working for the company or at some of its restaurants. The story described a culture of sexual harassment at the Besh Group, whose restaurants include New Orleans' well known August, Borgne, Domenica, Luke, Johnny Sanchez, Shaya and Willa Jean. In one of two separate complaints to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a former employee claims that Besh "continued to attempt to coerce (her) to submit to his sexual overtures" during a months-long sexual relationship when she worked for him.

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Now Playing: Amid Sexual Harassment claims. Video: Fortune

Things moved quickly after Saturday's lengthy story went live. Later that day Besh released a statement saying he was responsible for his "moral failings": "Two years ago, I deeply hurt those I love by thoughtlessly engaging in a consensual relationship with one member of my team. Since then I have been seeking to rebuild my marriage and come to terms with my reckless actions given the profound love I have for my wife, my boys and my Catholic faith. I also regret any harm this may have caused to my second family at the restaurant group, and sincerely apologize to anyone past and present who has worked for me who found my behavior as unacceptable as I do."

On Sunday New Orleans was still digesting the news of one of their favorite sons, a James Beard Award-winning chef who helped pull the city together following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina; a man whose name was synonymous with Crescent City fine dining, hospitality, and for keeping a culinary spotlight on the city via TV cooking shows, cookbooks, and expanding a beloved city brand.

By Monday Besh was out of his job, stepping down from the company he created. In a letter to employees, Shannon White, a Besh Restaurant Group executive, announced that Besh parted ways with the business to focus on his family. White, the company's new CEO, announced an outside review to independently investigate the claims, too. The letter also announced the formation of a permanent advisory committee, sexual harassment training, and an updated sexual harassment policy and code of conduct.

RELATED: Louisiana-inspired restaurant expands in S.A.

"It is unacceptable if even one of you feels you cannot voice a concern about inappropriate workplace conduct," White wrote. "Let's collectively ensure that we have a zero-tolerance policy toward harassment of any kind. Our goal is to earn your trust and for you to know that we take all concerns seriously."

Besh's ouster answers the question of why he was not present at Sunday's Southern Smoke in Houston, a high-profile culinary fundraiser organized by chef Chris Shepherd of Underbelly. Besh had long been advertised as one of the headliners of the barbecue and wood-fire-cooking event attended by Aaron Franklin of Franklin Barbecue in Austin, David Chang of the Momofuku restaurant group, whole hog pitmaster Rodney Scott and other James Beard Award-winning chefs.

When Nola.com's story broke Saturday Lindsey Brown, the public relations representative for Southern Smoke, sent the Besh Group this email: "If John needs to stay in New Orleans, we completely understand. We will have media at the eventboth local and nationaland I would hate for today's news to overshadow the good that Chris and his team are doing for Houston."

Neither Besh nor any representatives from his team were at Southern Smoke.

So what's the fate of Eunice, the upcoming Houston restaurant from the Besh Group, without Besh at the helm? According to a source close to Besh, the project originally slated for a fall opening at 3737 Buffalo Speedway, remains on track, although its opening date is unclear. Eunice has been described as a Cajun/Creole brasserie under the direction of former Luke chef Drake Leonards.

Even before the story about sexual misconduct allegations hit, the Besh Group was in the news for an unfortunate dispute with one of its celebrity chefs, Alon Shaya. The James Beard Award-winning Shaya, who rose to prominence within Besh's Domenica, was at the helm at Shaya, named best new restaurant in America by James Beard in 2016, when he was fired in September. At the time he was let go, Shaya was in the process of leaving the Besh Group with plans to purchase Shaya. He also applied for a federal trademark on the term "Shaya" and "Alon Shaya," according to Nola.com. On Oct. 20 the Besh Group took Shaya to court in a trademark dispute.
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After a controversial 11 years of leading Alamo Colleges, Chancellor Bruce Leslie announced Monday that he plans to retire next fall.

This job takes so much, Leslie, 71, told a meeting of the community college districts governing board. This career takes so much. No one has an idea, really, how much my wife and children have had to put up with and deal with.

In a letter to trustees, Leslie noted that he has been an educator for 42 years, 34 of them as a community college president or chancellor, adding, Inevitably, this accumulation of years is cause to announce my retirement.

He spent much of the most recent years working to standardize curriculum and counseling across all five Alamo Colleges to improve the ability of students to transfer to four-year universities as quickly as possible. But he angered professors and students in the process.

Faculty repeatedly accused him of disregarding their input and eroding the autonomy of the colleges, four of which are independently accredited. The fifth, Northeast Lakeview College, awaits its accreditation decision in December.

More than 90 percent of faculty at four of the colleges backed a vote of no confidence in Leslie in 2009, and calls for his ouster were repeated two years ago, this time led by a student group, when the district began switching to new degree plans that eliminated the listing of majors from student diplomas and transcripts.

But Leslie also drew praise for that initiative and others that were credited for record numbers of graduations in recent years. About 12,800 students earned degrees or certificates last school year. Voters in the spring approved a $450 million bond for facilities to keep up with the district's growth.

This is not going to go away, Leslie said in a 2015 interview, referring to the changes and the uproar they caused. There are those who clearly want to go back to the way things used to be. But the way it used to be did not serve students well. It served a small cohort of students, but it did not serve every student well.

The board voted Monday to accept his resignation and direct staff to begin the process of choosing a successor by Sept. 30, Leslies target date.

Weve backed him 100 percent, we still do and I just wanted people to know thats exactly where we stand right now, trustee Gene Sprague said.

Trustees had voted in August to give Leslie a raise, along with the chance for an incentive-based bonus, extending his rolling three-year contract through 2020.

Combined, the five Alamo Colleges have a $628 million budget and more than 52,000 students. The district is the third-largest community college district in Texas after ones in the Dallas and Houston areas.

Among a series of Leslie decisions that generated backlash from both students and faculty was the inclusion of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in districtwide curriculum and a proposed requirement, eventually shelved, that students buy electronic textbooks as part of their tuition and fees.

Leslie drew more brickbats when he was photographed on stage at a commencement ceremony for Palo Alto College graduates texting on his cellphone in 2016. I do own it, it was inconsiderate and I apologize for being disrespectful, he wrote in a response published in the San Antonio Express-News editorial pages.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges last year warned three of the Alamo Colleges about a lack of institutional autonomy, saying the district overstepped its bounds in setting some curriculum and governance policies. In response, trustees eliminated from the districts leadership development policy all references to The 7 Habits and author Stephen Covey, and they modified other policies. Trustees and administrators expect full accreditation to be restored in December when the agency meets again.

On Monday, trustee Denver McClendon called Leslie a spear catcher and said he had advised Leslie to blame the board for unpopular changes it had charged him with making.

He eventually started doing that, McClendon said, to laughter.

Leslie was chancellor of the Houston Community College system and of a state system of 12 community and technical colleges in Connecticut. Before that, he was president of Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.

He praised his staff and the Alamo Colleges faculty in his speech Monday and said the current trustees are the best hes worked with, calling them engaged, focused and forward-thinking. He said the family-oriented, caring culture in the district and in San Antonio was an important part of student success.

Im not sure what Im going to do next, but Im not just going to sit on a couch, Leslie said. So many districts need to do what were doing, so I think theres an opportunity.

amalik@express-news.net
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Two years after U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Eagle Pass found five pistol rounds in Gerardo Serranos pickup and seized it  prompting a class-action lawsuit trying to change the agencys asset forfeiture practices  the truck was returned to him last week.

Serrano and his lawyer said they believe the only reason the truck was released is because of the lawsuit he filed last month alleging that CBP regularly seizes vehicles without offering their owners due process. The suit demanded that the agency return his vehicle, pay him damages and provide a prompt post-seizure hearing for future seizures.

This has happened a number of times, said Robert Everett Johnson, an attorney at the Institute for Justice who is representing Serrano. When were challenging the governments forfeiture practices, the government wants to give back the property. The cynical explanation for this, which I think is the right explanation, is its the governments way of making these cases go away. They can give the property back and argue that the case is moot.

While his 2014 Ford F-250 truck was impounded, Serrano was making $672.97 monthly loan payments, spent more than $700 a year on insurance, paid $1,000 to register the vehicle and paid CBP a $3,804.99 bond for a court hearing that never took place, according to the lawsuit.

A CBP spokesman said he couldnt comment on pending litigation and the agency hasnt filed a response to Serranos lawsuit.

The libertarian Institute for Justice took on Serranos case, which critics of asset forfeiture said shed a light on a murky process that tramples property rights, after the Express-News wrote about him in 2016.

CBP carried out 8,590 asset forfeitures in 2015, seizing $51.47 million in property, according to records released in March in response to a September 2016 request under the Freedom of Information Act.

CBP officers seized the truck in September 2015 after stopping Serrano near one of Eagle Passs international bridges. Serrano, whos from Kentucky, said he was driving from Texas into Mexico to visit family and stopped to take pictures of the bridge.

Uniformed officers pulled him out of his truck, handcuffed him and asked for the pass code to his cell phone. When he refused, they searched the truck and found five .380-caliber cartridges and a bullet magazine that Serrano said hed forgotten to remove before going to Mexico. CBP seized the truck, saying it was used to smuggle munitions of war.

Serrano was given several options, including relinquishing the truck, going through an administrative process in which CBP officials would decide whether to keep his truck, or paying the nearly $4,000 bond to force the agency to refer his case to the U.S. Attorneys Office, which would decide whether to file a civil lawsuit to forfeit the truck.

Serrano paid the bond and said he was told repeatedly by CBP that the case had been forwarded to federal prosecutors. Two years went by without federal prosecutors filing a civil lawsuit until last week, when the truck was returned without explanation.

Serrano said the truck had new tires when he picked it up, as well as new batteries, but there was mold in the carpeting, the dash had cracks and theres a leak in the crankshaft.

Serrano said he believes the CBP officials who seized the truck in the first place just wanted to punish him for not giving them the pass code for his phone.

They could have done this a lot sooner and they didnt, so they used their position to try to hurt me, thats all they did, he said.

jbuch@express-news.net | Twitter: @jlbuch
After a bizarre death row confession plot between two prisoners slated for execution, the correctional officers union is calling for more staffing they say could have prevented the scheme that ultimately derailed the states effort last week to put to death a Houston-area serial killer.

This was definitely a security breakdown, said Lance Lowry, who heads the Texas Correctional Employees union based in Huntsville. Youre playing Russian roulette when you dont have enough security.

Texas prisons have more inmates per officer than other large states such as New York and California, he said, adding that death row in particular needs a lot more officers.

But the Texas Department of Criminal Justice begged to differ.

Death row is appropriately staffed and all critical positions are filled, TDCJ spokesman Jason Clark said. Staffing played no role in this confession scheme between death row offenders.

The hand-wringing over staffing questions stems from an alleged plot hatched between condemned inmates Anthony Shore and Larry Swearingen, which came to light Wednesday only hours before Shore was set to die by lethal injection.

A judge late Wednesday stayed Shores execution for 90 days after prosecutors said the four-time killer had admitted to an abandoned plan to confess to Swearingens crime, the 1998 killing in Montgomery County of college student Melissa Trotter.

Swearingen has long professed his innocence, though the Willis man is still slated for execution in November.

Shore, on the other hand, has consistently admitted to the 1992 killing of Maria del Carmen Estrada  for which he was convicted  as well as the gruesome strangulations of 14-year-old Laurie Tremblay, 9-year-old Diana Rebollar and 16-year-old Dana Sanchez.

But sometime in July, he allegedly agreed to take responsibility for Trotters murder as well, even stashing material from the Montgomery County murder  including a hand-drawn map marking the supposed location of more evidence  in his death row cell at the Polunsky Unit near Livingston.

When prosecutors discovered the suspicious items in Shores cell, it threatened to muddy the waters in the already troubled Swearingen case.

Then on Tuesday  about 24 hours before Shores scheduled execution  Shore told investigators hed only considered confessing to get his friend off and not because hed actually committed the crime. The multiple murderer also agreed to answer questions about other cases, and a judge greenlit pushing back his execution till January.

Its still not entirely clear how the two prisoners became friends, or how Shore managed to acquire materials relating to Swearingens case. TDCJ officials declined to offer specifics, citing an ongoing investigation, but were willing to speak in generalities.

Its not difficult for men to talk to each other on death row, even though they spend most of their day alone in a cell, according to Clark.

Its something you really cant prevent, he said.

When prisoners are let out for recreation, they may be able to talk to other death row inmates in neighboring caged recreation areas. And even when theyre in their cells, theyre able to talk by shouting out the door slot, through the vents or sometimes through toilets, Lowry said.

But passing letters, legal materials or other items is not allowed  and a little trickier to pull off.

Instead of old-fashioned cell bars, death row cells have a solid door, but the crack underneath offers a way to push out small notes or kites. To reel in illicit missives from neighbors, prisoners will go fishing with handmade contraptions fashioned from bedsheets, paper and other readily available materials. But sometimes locked-in prisoners get help from inmate workers known as porters.

Porters passing notes is something weve dealt with with all inmates, Clark said. They have a lot of time on their hands so they try to come up with new and inventive ways to beat our security measures.

Clark declined to say whether Shore and Swearingen had been housed near each other leading up to the plot, though Lowry said death row inmates are moved to different cells on a weekly basis for security.

We need a lot more officers on those cell blocks, the union chief said. A lot of people think those inmates are locked in a cell, so they cant do anything, but thats not always the case.

But even more officers probably wouldnt have been enough to stop the supposed friendship between Shore and Swearingen, Lowry admitted, though it may have prevented any potential transfer of case materials.

With the current staffing levels and security levels, they cant stop it, he said. I think people need to take a more ethical look at the amount of work these guys do  and theyre incredibly understaffed.
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An Uber driver from Bexar County was arrested Monday in the alleged sexual assault of a San Antonio woman after she was picked up from a downtown bar.

Juan Ontiveros, 28, who is accused of taking the woman to his home on Feb. 25 and raping her there, told reporters he didnt do anything wrong. She was drunk, he told reporters as deputies brought him into custody on Monday.

Investigators believe there may be other victims.

Were hoping this will create awareness and other possible victims will decide to come forward, said Sandra Pickell, a Bexar County Sheriffs Office spokeswoman.

The arrest comes amid a nationwide dialogue on sexual assault and sexual harassment. Earlier this month, dozens of women came forward after The New York Times and The New Yorker published stories accusing film producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape.

Since then, thousands of women have used the hashtag #MeToo on social media recently to share stories of sexual abuse  including several tweets by women accusing ride-sharing drivers of abuse.

In a statement, Uber said it has several safety mechanisms in place to prevent assaults and it regularly cooperates with law enforcement agencies to provide any information needed.

Whats been reported is horrible and is something that no one should have to go through, said Kayla Whaling with Uber Media Relations. As soon as we were made aware, we immediately removed this drivers access and worked with Bexar County Sheriff's Office to provide information for their investigation.

According to an arrest affidavit filed Monday, Ontiveros was charged with sexual assault after the woman called deputies the day of the alleged sexual assault. She told investigators she woke up in Ontiveros Northwest Bexar County home and noticed her genital area felt different, according to the affidavit.

She told police she was heavily intoxicated that night and could not remember having sex with Ontiveros.

Ontiveros denied the claim when deputies questioned him, according to the affidavit. He reportedly told deputies the woman fell asleep before reaching her destination on the East Side, so he woke her up. He said the woman left the car briefly before getting back in the car again.

The Uber driver said he then drove around the block hoping shed wake up before he took her to his home 30 miles away, the affidavit states. He told deputies his intention was to drop her off at a safe place so he could continue picking up passengers.

Ontiveros also indicated he kept her ride open so her fare would be higher, according to the affidavit.

Both Ontiveros and the victim agreed to a Sexual Assault Nurses Exam. The results, returned in Sept. 25, indicated the woman's DNA was found on Ontiveros, authorities said.

Mondays arrest is not the first time a local driver working for a ride-sharing firm has been accused of sexual assault.

In January, Gabriel Vazquez, 40, a former Uber driver, was arrested after he allegedly followed a woman inside her residence after driving her home. The man started to undress the woman, who told him No several times, but he continued and allegedly sexually assaulted her.

In July, a San Antonio woman sued Lyft, another ride-hailing company, for more than $1 million after one of its drivers allegedly crawled in the back seat and sexually assaulted her.

The Lyft driver has not been arrested in connection with the alleged incident, according to court records.

According to the website whosdrivingyou.com, there have been around 225 sexual assaults involving ride-hailing companies around the world. The website is an initiative of the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association, which is opposed to companies like Lyft and Uber.

eeaton@express-news.net | Twitter: @emilieeaton

fsabawi@mysa.com | Twitter: @FaresInSA
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Judge Nelson Wolff on Monday put economic development and job creation at the front of an ambitious agenda for Bexar Countys future, challenging the private sector to lend a hand in developing the local skilled workforce.

In his annual State of the County address to the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, Wolff laid out an itinerary that includes workforce training and the expansion of air travel and public transit. He said the court would be willing to consider helping Mayor Ron Nirenbergs recently announced airport task force if the commissioners agree with its recommendations, pointing to a state statute that gives both cities and counties authority on airport planning.

Wolff also backed an aggressive approach through incentives to recruiting new businesses and growing existing ones, citing the recent additions of Hulu and the India-based manufacturer Indo-MIM through property tax abatements. But he defended his recent decision with Nirenberg to pull out of the competition for Amazons second headquarters, echoing their joint message that blindly giving away the farm isnt our style.

Some local lawmakers have criticized the decision, saying the city and county gave up too early.

We need to be smart in how we offer tax incentives, Wolff told the crowd of about 500 at a Grand Hyatt luncheon. We have an obligation to taxpayers to be prudent and thoughtful and not gamble with their funds.

During his address, Wolff cited New Jerseys willingness to give Amazon $7 billion in state and local tax incentives as one example of the competition San Antonio would have faced. The company announced Tuesday it received 238 proposals for its headquarters.

We do not want to mortgage our future playing a game like that, Wolff said.

Early in his speech, Wolff called on businesses to double the programs they offer to students, including paid internships, job shadow days and ways for high school students to earn dual credits. He said afterward that with a skilled workforce, San Antonio would not have to seek out big companies running around with their hand out.

Along with workforce development, Wolff on Monday put air travel and public transit at the top of his agenda. In supporting Nirenbergs independent panel to study ways of improving air service, Wolff mentioned the idea of an independent authority to oversee San Antonio International Airport, Stinson Municipal Airport and Kelly Field at Port San Antonio.

He said Port San Antonios 11,500-foot-long runway  about 3,000 feet longer than International Airports longest strip  could change the dynamics of air service, allowing cargo planes and larger international aircraft to land.

Wolff later said the airport authority is just one method he hopes the panel will consider, not necessarily the ideal route.

I really hope that the city comes up with a good way to manage the great assets they've got, Wolff said. And maybe we could participate in that through an authority. But we'll have to see what they come up with and what they're willing to do. There are some great assets at Port San Antonio that are just not being used.

Turning to mass transit, Wolff said the citys fixed-route bus system must evolve into a multimodal public transit system that includes light rail, bikes, car sharing and other areas. Beyond that, Wolff offered few specifics, saying he would be addressing these issues early next year with Nirenberg.

Later in his address, Wolff announced Texas A&M-San Antonio will open up the Daughters of the Republic of Texas collection of 38,000 historical artifacts this week, located at the Bexar County archives building.

He also touched on the state of county roads, calling for future highway funding from the state Legislature, and pointed to the Commissioners Courts joint opioid task force that last week announced a $3.2 million grant toward the use of Naloxone, a drug that counteracts opioid overdoses.

Wolff, who turns 77 on Friday, announced Oct. 10 he will seek a fifth four-year term as county judge, a position he was appointed to in 2001.

jscherer@express-news.net | Twitter: @jaspscherer
The fourth annual College Goal Tennessee 2017  Building Your Future will be on Nov. 4, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the UTC University Center at 615 McCallie Ave.

PEF, UTC and partners are hosting this free college planning and financial aid workshop as part of the nationwide "College Goal" initiative. Free breakfast and lunch will be provided. On-site registration will begin at 8:30 a.m.

Last year, more than 300 people attended the conference which informs families and educators how students can succeed in college and how to apply for financial aid.





Participants will receive free on-site assistance completing the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) - the federal financial aid form that students and parents are required to file for students to be eligible to receive any state or federal assistance. College students and their parents are encouraged to attend as well.Some of the workshop titles will include:Show Me the Money: Financial Aid 101Paying for College: Steps after the FAFSAApplying to QuestBridgeConexion AmericasLow Stakes Placement TestingMusic and The Arts in Postsecondary EducationNavigating The Campus Social SceneLife After High SchoolHow to Find More Money for College NowHow to Overcome Summer MeltPrimary Means to Promote Your Childs Well-BeingGeorgia State Universitys Innovative Approach to Access ResearchRealizing Dreams: Non-cognitive Factors Promoting a Positive Postsecondary Education ExperienceUT-Chattanooga College TourDont Be Basic: Self-Marketing Fundamentals for the Job Search"During this free, half-day conference, students and their supporters will learn from experts and each other how to be successful in college, says PEFs Stacy Lightfoot. Topics will range from financial planning for college and navigating applications to what employers look for in potential hires, and much more. Business leaders, college admissions, and financial aid experts will lead the sessions. This conference will confront real topics that affect the persistence of college students."Participants can register at www.surveymonkey.com/r/CGTN2017. This free workshop is sponsored by PEF, UTC, Chattanooga State Community College, HCDE, YoungandWiser, Inc., edsouth, FAFSA Frenzy, Girls Preparatory School, Naviance by Hobsons, SACAC (Southern Association for College Admission Counseling), TSAC (TN Student Assistance Corporation), and TCASN (TN College Access & Success Network).For more information, contact PEF VP of College & Career Success Stacy Lightfoot at slightfoot@pefchattanooga.org or 423-648-4443.
Governor Rauner announced a total of $200 million in cuts

By Diego Flammini

News Reporter

Farms.com

The Illinois government is slashing its budget for its Department of Agriculture by about $21 million, according to Governor Bruce Rauners new budget.

The cuts to agriculture are part of an approximate $200-million plan to decrease spending in the state.

Illinois is $1.7 billion in debt, according to an Oct. 12 release by the Governors Office of Management and Budget. So legislators need to take action to ensure Illinois can balance its budget.

The Governor remains committed to helping Illinois achieve long-term fiscal stability, reads the Illinois Economic and Fiscal Policy Report. He will continue to seek General Assembly support for structural changes that grow the states economy and bend the cost curve of state government spending.

The budget suggests the cuts will come from the Soil and Water Conservation Districts. Its funding will drop from $5.92 million in 2017 to $5.75 million in 2018.

Farmers appear to be on board with the spending reductions, if they mean greater stability for the state and if other departments share in spending cuts.

Im all for a balanced (state) budget and spending within your means, Kappy Koch, a dairy farmer from Tremont, IL and member of the Illinois Milk Producers Association, told Farms.com today. As long as (spending in other departments) get cut equally, Im for it.

Illinois in bad shape and we need to cut everywhere, not just agriculture.

This industry wont be the only one experiencing cuts in Gov. Rauners budget.

The Department of Transportation could face cuts of $85 million and the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity could be slashed by $41 million.
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Warrenton, VA (20186)

Today

Mostly cloudy. Periods of rain early. Low 34F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy. Periods of rain early. Low 34F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Beginning Nov. 1, parents or guardians may apply for their children to attend one of Hamilton Countys magnet schools listed below.

Online applications will be on www.hcde.org, under the Parents & Students section, with paper applications available at any magnet school in Hamilton County, as well as at the Central Office located on Hickory Valley Road.

The deadline to apply is Jan. 31, 2018. If there are more applicants than places available, a random drawing or lottery will be held to ensure the process is fair and impartial. It is scheduled for Feb. 28, 2018 at 10 a.m. in the Board Room of the Central Office.

Parents can attend or view the process online. The streaming web address will be posted to the Hamilton County Department of Education (HCDE) website the week of Feb. 19. After the drawing, the results (confirmation numbers only) will be posted to our website so that parents can see in what order their childs number was drawn. Official letters will be sent out to parents notifying them of their childs admission status after the lottery.

Applicants to the Center for Creative Arts (CCA) are given confirmation numbers; however, these numbers are not drawn nor are they part of the lottery process. Admission to the CCA is based strictly on the results of the required audition.

Applicants for STEM School Chattanooga are required to submit two documents such as current utility bill, contract or lease on house or apartment, agency or government documentation proving their residency to the Magnet School Services Office before Feb. 9, 2018, in order to establish the area high school that they are zoned to attend.

Additional information can be found on our website concerning applying to Battle Academy or Brown Academy if a parent works downtown, as well as information for parents living in the Hill City area with children entering kindergarten in 20182019 and who are interested in having them attend Normal Park.

Beginning Nov. 1, HCDE will accept applications for the 2018-2019 school for the following schools: Barger Academy (K-5)

Battle Academy (K-5)

Brown Academy (K-5)

Calvin Donaldson Environmental Science Academy (K-5)

Center for Creative Arts (6-12)

East Lake Academy (6-8)

Lakeside Academy (K-5)

Normal Park Museum Magnet (K-8)

STEM School Chattanooga (accepting applications for incoming 9th graders only)

Tyner Academy (accepting applications for incoming 9th graders only)

Tyner Middle Academy (6-8)
The UK Serious Fraud Office has been investigating corruption allegations against Airbus subsidiary GPT on a Saudi contract overseen by the UK Military of Defense. The case has alarming similarities with the BAE-Al Yamamah case from a decade ago.

The decision to drop the SFO investigation into allegations of widespread corruption by BAE on the Al Yamamah government-to-government contract with Saudi Arabia in 2006 caused international outrage. The decision, taken by the SFO following intense pressure from then Prime Minister Tony Blair and other government officials, was ostensibly taken on national security grounds. Blair mentioned British jobs and relations with Saudi Arabia in public statements a little too frequently, however, for that to be fully believable.

The decision, which was upheld by the UKs uppermost court, created a huge national security shaped hole in the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention. Article 5 of the Convention forbids national economic interest and foreign relations to impact upon investigation and prosecution. But no one can argue with a nations right to national security, even if it acts as a figleaf for economic and diplomatic reasons for dropping an investigation.

The scandal was, however, devastating to the UKs reputation, with charges of hypocrisy and double standards sticking hard. The OECD issued a strong rebuke that the decision had not been consistent with the Convention.

Just over a decade on, after the UK has managed to put the BAE-Al Yamamah legacy behind it by introducing the Bribery Act and becoming a serious player in terms of foreign bribery prosecutions, could it risk a re-run?

The SFO began investigating allegations of corruption in relation to Airbus UK Subsidiary GPT Special Project Management in 2012. The allegations relate to another government to government contract in Saudi Arabia known as the SANGCOM (Saudi National Guard Communications) Project overseen by the UKs Military of Defense. In early 2011, a whistleblower bought an email trove to the SFO laying out the attempts of an internal whistleblower to get Airbus to take seriously his concerns that offshore payments made to subcontractors on the 2 billion ($2.6 billion) project were illegal.

By most reckonings, nearly seven years on, the SFO investigation should be drawing to some kind of conclusion and rumours abound that the SFO could be close to charging. But there are a few hurdles in its way.

First, the documents given the SFO by the whistleblower suggest that the Ministry of Defense or MOD had knowledge of the payments and may have signed off on them. In 2013, press reports suggested that Airbus was maintaining that it had done nothing on the project without MOD approval. The SFO is going to need full cooperation from the MOD if it is going to bring a prosecution  a big ask from a ministry that is used to operating in secrecy and that will be desperate to cover its back.

In 2015, the MOD refused to release information under the Freedom of Information Act about its oversight of the SANGCOM project  a decision that was upheld by a tribunal on the grounds that to do so would cause real and significant harm to UK-Saudi relations. But it also means that the SFO is also going to need to adopt a hard-hitting and potentially risky prosecution strategy that doesnt accept that government authorization makes potentially corrupt payments legal.

Second, there is the little matter of Brexit and the UKs desperate desire for non-EU trade deals. The government recently announced that it would be holding six-monthly strategic dialogues with Saudi Arabia to lay the foundation for a post-Brexit trade deal with Saudi Arabia. In September, it signed a new Military and Security Cooperation Agreement with the country. The government wont want any upsets to Saudi relations that an embarrassing trial might bring.

Clearly the government shouldnt have a say in how the SFOs case proceeds given the independence of the prosecuting bodies in the UK. However, any prosecution is going to need the consent of the UK Attorney General (a government minister) because this is a requirement for proceedings that need to be brought, as the GPT case would, under pre-Bribery Act laws. Further, the Attorney General reserves the right to consult ministerial colleagues where national security considerations are at play.

Meanwhile, despite the BAE-Al Yamamah scandal and the pasting the UK got from the OECD over it, the UK has yet to make Article 5 of the Convention legally binding domestically. So even if the UK government decides to invoke British jobs or damaging relations with the Saudis as reasons to drop an investigation or prosecution, there is little that could be done to challenge it at least on a legal level.

Recently Corruption Watch and Transparency International UK wrote to the UK Attorney General, asking him to make a public statement in Parliament that he and his colleagues across government will respect Article 5 in the GPT case and in all future foreign bribery prosecutions. The letter also asked him to make Article 5 legally binding in the UK, and to ensure a full public review into any failings by government, particularly in relation to the MODs oversight of the contract, that allowed any such alleged corruption to occur.

The stakes are high. The UK cannot afford to trash the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention again nor risk sullying its reputation on fighting corruption. It needs allies as it heads into the uncertain economic times that Brexit is creating, and it needs to recognize that its long-term interest is in upholding strong anti-corruption standards in international trade, not undermining them.

____

Susan Hawley is Policy Director of Corruption Watch, which has just released a report, State-sponsored Bribery? Airbus Saudi Saga and the UKs Ministry of Defence, which is here.
Most of them werent

Say witch and most will think of a bad tempered old biddy with malevolent intent. But the bald fact of the matter is that most of those executed for witchcraft in England were just ordinary everyday folk who became the victims of scapegoating, neighbourly disputes or community bullying. Until she fell out with a neighbour who accused her, Ursula Kemp (Strange Magic) was the village healer, successful and respected.

Syd Moore by Amy Freeborn

Burn Witch Burn!

Contrary to images in popular culture most witches were not sentenced to burn to death. That was a crowd-pleaser used in Europe and Scotland. In England, plain old hanging was the most commonly used form of execution.

Hocus Pocus

This concoction of archaic sounding words has long been associated with witches, magicians and magic. Conventionally its uttered over a spell or when bringing about some sort of change. However, there are some scholars who believe the term is derived from words spoken during the Catholic mass hoc est corpus, 'this is the body (of Christ).'

Talking to your cat could get you into trouble

Witchfinders were obsessed with discovering witchs familiars. These were allegedly supernatural entities that would assist the accused in their practice. They often took the form of animals and if you were caught talking to one then you were probably a witch. Although poor and lonely Elizabeth Chandler of Huntingdon was thrown into jail for talking to a log and a stick.

The Swimming Test

A lot of people confuse the swimming test with the ducking stool. Witches were swum, scolds were ducked. Yes, the Seventeenth Century was a truly great time to be a woman. The swimming test usually involved tying the accused witchs right thumb to her left big toe. If she floated, she was guilty for she had been rejected by water thought to be holy. If she sank (and probably drowned) then she would be innocent of witchcraft. What a consolation.

Witches didnt wear pointy hats

Google Seventeenth Century witch trials in England and youll see the women who pop up in the wood cuts and engravings are mostly depicted wearing close-fitting bonnets with the odd wide-brimmed hat thrown in. The only person shown wearing the now traditional black pointy hat was the Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, the most monstrous of the lot. Is it possible that history has conflated him with his victims so that on Halloween along with our green make-up and black cloaks atop our heads were actually wearing his hat?

The Devils Mark  the witchfinders friend.

Fed up with a neighbour? Have a love rival you need to get dispose of? Just accuse her/him of witchcraft and state s/he has the Devils Mark. For the Devils Mark was handy catch-all proof that the accused was a witch. It was allegedly the teat through which the witch could suckle their familiars (see point 4). Unfortunately, because it was demonic it could masquerade as a spot or a birthmark, a blemish or a scar, a fleabite or a mole or, basically any imperfection found on your body. Of course if your body was flawless you had nothing to fear

To move to trial a confession was needed without torture being involved

However, the resourceful witchfinders devised methods of encouraging the accused to confess. These included:

Watching when the accused would be tied to a small stool with her hands behind her back and bound to her feet. This could go on for days and nights without pause or food/water/sleep/toilet breaks. If an animal or insect such as a mouse, bird, beetle, fly, wasp or flea entered the room at any point, this was also evidence that your familiar had come to visit you.

Walking: like watching but youd be strapped to the shoulders of able men and marched up and down till you confessed. Took days but reaped results.

The last person to be prosecuted under the Witchcraft Act was Helen Duncan.

And believe it or not, she went down in 1944!

Witch Hunts are not a thing of the past.

Unfortunately, the witch hunt still exists around the world today in Kenya, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Papua New Guinea and many many more countries. The brilliant Danish charity DINNoedhjaelp does a lot of work with the witch children of Nigeria. Do check them out. http://www.dinnoedhjaelp.dk/en/about-us/

STRANGE SIGHT by Syd Moore is published by Point Blank, an imprint of Oneworld, paperback 8.99
Kendall Jenner has splashed out $8.5 million on Charlie Sheen's former home.

Kendall Jenner

The 21-year-old model has forked out the huge sum for the five-bedroom mansion in Beverly Hills after putting her "jinxed" $6.5 million West Hollywood home on the market following a string of bad events at the house.

Kendall's new abode features a beautiful courtyard fit for a model queen and also has five bathrooms - one each for her famous siblings, Kylie Jenner, Kourtney Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian, Kim Kardashian West, and Rob Kardashian.

According to TMZ, Kendall's plush property is where the former 'Two and a Half Men' actor's car was once stolen from his driveway and driven off a cliff.

In February 2010, the 'Anger Management' star's 2009 Mercedes Benz was taken and crashed into a ravine on Mulholland Drive, southern California.

And just five months later his 2010 Mercedes Benz was stolen and ended up in a ravine after being ditched off the side of Mulholland Drive.

A source close to the star said at the time: "He's just sitting home wondering, 'Why me?'

"Charlie was home minding his own business when his car was stolen."

The 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians' star hasn't had much luck on the driveway of her West Hollywood home either.

She came face-to-face with a stalker outside the six-bedroom house - which she purchased from Hollywood power couple John Krasinski and Emily Blunt in June 2016 - and in March she had $200,000 worth of jewellery stolen.

Kendall's mother Kris Jenner is said to have been against her daughter buying the West Hollywood house because it isn't in a gated community, and the showbiz matriarch recently revealed lots of fans have attempted to access their family's houses.

She said: "It's an eye-opener how many people have tried to access our homes. [Now] we're protected to a crazy level."

Kendall was said to be considering spending $15 million on a place on the west side of Los Angeles.
Cate Blanchett has hailed Giorgio Armani as a "style icon".

Cate Blanchett

The 48-year-old actress was awarded the Style Icon Award at this year's InStyle Awards, which took place at the Getty centre in Los Angeles on Monday night (23.10.17), but the 'Carol' star has credited the 83-year-old fashion designer - who founded the Italian fashion house in 1975 - as the ultimate idol and "profound mentor" for her.

Speaking at the star-studded ceremony, the blonde-haired beauty said: "You get to inhabit these extraordinarily ... beautifully constructed gowns by geniuses. I really do have to thank Mr. Armani, who's a style icon in and of himself and who's been such a profound mentor for me."

And the 'Thor: Ragnarok' star has also women who have a "physical presence" and are not "self conscious" as being the "true icons of style".

She added: "For me, the true icons of style, and I think there's a bit of a theme emerging here tonight, it's that for me it's always those women who've been utterly themselves without apology--whose physical presence and their aesthetic is really integrated in a non self-conscious way.

"Women who know how they look, it's not all of who they are but just an extension of that, and it's about women who feel free to wear what they want when they want and how they want to wear it."

During the evening fellow actress Zendaya picked up the Style Star gong, and, similar to Cate, the brunette beauty also spoke out about how the fashion business has developed.

The 21-year-old said:"What we've created with fashion goes beyond just clothes and hair and makeup. We've created a platform to show different types of beauty."
One of the many historical sites in Turkey is a unique one located deep in the Anatolian heartland.

Nemrut Dag (Mount Nemrut)

The 7,000-foot-tall mountain, Nemrut Dag (Mount Nemrut), houses a historical site unlike any other in the country. Notable for its ancient tomb and temple complex, which includes numerous massive statues of Greek and Persian gods, the stunning site was constructed by King Antiochus I in 62 BC and is today considered to be the most significant monument of the Kingdom of Commagene.

The common dwelling place of the Gods

Antiochus himself called Mount Nemrut the hierothesion, or the common dwelling place of all the gods next to the heavenly thrones. This attempt to gather all the known gods on Mount Nemrut can be seen on the eastern and western terraces of the mound. On the eastern terrace of Mount Nemrut, there is a row of five colossal limestone statues. An identical row of statues can be found on the western terrace. These seated statues face outwards from the tumulus (ancient burial mound) and are flanked by a pair of guardian animal statues. An inscription refers to the summit as a sacred resting place where Antiochus, the God King would be laid to rest and his soul would join those of other deities in the celestial realm.

Over the centuries, the statues have all lost their heads, which fell off to the lower level due to frequent earthquakes in the region, or because of iconoclasm . Experts claim that they once stood 30 feet high and that their creation was clearly influenced by both Greek and Persian art, as the independent kingdom of Commagene was located between the two great civilizations.

The 8th Wonder of the Ancient World

Its definitely worth a visit (and a photographers dream) as it is considered to be the 8th Wonder of the Ancient World and has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1987. In 1988 it was established as a National Park.

The colossal stone heads of Nemrut Dag

Here is a collection of photographs of the colossal stone heads of Nemrut Dag taken by Nichola Chapman.

And if thats not enough for you, just look at that view

To see more of Nicholas work, please visit Nichola Chapman Photography
Environmental art presentation to educators by local artist Holly Berry am Delligatti, District Conservationist for Hamilton and Rhea County, shows educators plants in a rain simulator Cam Delligatti uses a rain simulator to illustrate runoff Cam Delligatti collects silt from the rain simulator The Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute Previous Next

Scientists at The Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute will host a special workshop on Saturday, Nov. 18, to assist high school teachers. River Teachers is a seminar for educators that provides content ideas to create exciting activities for their students that meet Tennessee and Georgia standards. Attendees will be able to develop high school science curriculum using real data that has been collected by Aquarium researchers and conservation partners.

The workshop will cover topics including water quality, science and technology, dam removal, and native species reintroduction. The River Teachers will discover some of the ground-breaking freshwater research thats being conducted across the Southeast. They will also learn how they can collaborate with the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute to become involved with community cleanup programs like Tennessee River Rescue and Georgia Adopt-A-Stream.

The River Teachers Workshop will be Saturday, Nov. 18, from 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Registration is $10 per person and available here.

For more information, contact Hayley Wise, the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institutes watershed educator at hbw@tnaqua.org.
ATLANTA  ELEAD1ONE announced that its inbound call center service delivered a 70 percent appointment set rate for Florida-based Gettel Automotive Group. Of an average 7,200 inbound calls to the groups 22 stores every month, more than 5,000 total appointments are set  significantly higher than the industry average of 30% to 50% appointment set rate  according to the company.

Along with other improvements, the call center has helped drive a 15% same store, year-over-year increase in fixed ops gross for the last eight years. Additionally, ELEAD1ONEs call center agents answer 100 percent of the total inbound calls to Gettels service departments, with an average time to answer of just seven seconds. Recent industry research shows that in the average dealership, 25 percent of inbound service callers never connect with a dealership employee, causing dealers to miss service opportunities.

ELEAD1ONE does a wonderful job of taking care of our customers, said Fred Bartholomew, Fixed Ops Director for the Gettel Automotive Group. Their call center agents are provided with scripts and training, providing a consistent experience to our customers day in and day out, which is important.
Accord and Alliance, the two western buyers' platforms working to improve safety in Bangladesh readymade garments sector, will leave the country when their tenure ends in May 31 next year if remediation of factories is properly completed. The platforms arrived at a consensus after meeting Bangladesh commerce minister Tofail Ahmed in Dhaka recently.The Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety is a consortium of North American brands and buyers, and The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh is a platform of European brands and buyers. The two platforms started working in Bangladesh after the Rana Plaza accident.

Accord and Alliance, the two western buyers' platforms working to improve safety in Bangladesh readymade garments sector, will leave the country when their tenure ends in May 31 next year if remediation of factories is properly completed. The platforms arrived at a consensus after meeting Bangladesh commerce minister Tofail Ahmed in Dhaka recently.#

During the meeting, both sides decided to constitute a remediation coordination cell with representatives from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), global brands and trade unions to oversee workplace safety situation in the readymade garments (RMG) sector.A steering committee will run the cell and the labour and employment minister will keep a watch over both, according to media reports in Bangladesh.Minister Ahmed said there are 67 green buildings in the RMG sector and there will be 280 more buildings for the factories.Alliance officials said they will leave Bangladesh after May 31 next year but Accord officials will stay in the country for six more months for smooth transition. The progress of the remediation of RMG factory buildings will be reviewed in January and again in May. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The Panjab University in Pakistan has signed an agreement to provide new disease-resistant genetically-modified Bt cotton seed varieties developed by its researchers to farmers across the country through seven seed-marketing companies. The agreements will generate additional revenue for the university which will be used for such research.The companies are Aurigo Group, SunCrop Group and Weal AG Corporation in Multan; Bahar Seed Corporation in Sadiqabad; ICI Pakistan Ltd in Lahore; and Neelum Seeds in Jahanian.

The Panjab University in Pakistan has signed an agreement to provide new disease-resistant genetically-modified Bt cotton seed varieties developed by its researchers to farmers across the country through seven seed-marketing companies. The agreements will generate additional revenue for the university which will be used for such research.#

Farmers can save Pk Rs 20,000 per acre and when used over 8 million acres across the country, the transgenic cotton varieties would save Rs 144 billion, Pakistani media reports quoted university vice chancellor Zafar Moeen Nasir as saying.Tayyab Husnain, Idrees Nasir, Ahmed Ali Shahid, Kausar Malik, Bushra Rashid and Abdul Qayyum from the university have significantly contributed to the development of these cotton varieties. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The Indian Government today waived penalty on delayed filing of initial good and services tax returns (GSTR) for August and September, finance minister Arun Jaitley announced on Twitter. The late fee that has been already charged to businesses will be credited back to taxpayer accounts, he said. A similar announcement was made earlier for the month of July.Traders have been demanding penalty waiver for delayed filing of 3B returns. GSTR 3B is a simple return form introduced by the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) for July to December. Preliminary returns GSTR-3B for a month is filed on the 20th day of the next month after paying due taxes.

The Indian Government today waived penalty on delayed filing of initial good and services tax returns (GSTR) for August and September, finance minister Arun Jaitley announced on Twitter. The late fee that has been already charged to businesses will be credited back to taxpayer accounts, he said. A similar announcement was made earlier for the month of July.#

About 55.87 lakh GSTR-3B returns were filed for July out of which 33.98 lakh were filed before the due date. Out of 51.37 lakh returns for August and 42 lakh (the figure may rise) returns for September, 28.46 lakh and 39.4 lakh were respectively filed before the due date. A substantial number of businesses file their returns after the due date expires, according to a news agency report. (DS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India


LONDON (dpa-AFX) - The former head of global foreign exchange cash trading at HSBC Bank plc, a subsidiary of HSBC Holdings plc (HSBA.L, HSBC), was found guilty for his role in a scheme to defraud an HSBC client through a multimillion-dollar scheme commonly referred to as 'front running', the U.S.Department of Justice said.



Mark Johnson, 51, a United Kingdom citizen with residences both in the U.K. and the United States, was found guilty after a four-week jury trial of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and eight counts of wire fraud. Sentencing date has not been scheduled. U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York presided over the trial. Johnson was arrested on a criminal complaint in July 2016 and indicted in August 2016.



'The jury found that former HSBC banker Mark Johnson exploited confidential information provided by a client of the bank to execute trades that were intended to generate millions of dollars in profits for him and the bank at the expense of their client,' said Acting U.S. Attorney Rohde.



According to the evidence presented at trial, in November and December 2011, Johnson cheated an HSBC client out of millions of dollars by misusing information provided to him by a client that hired HSBC to execute a foreign exchange transaction related to a planned sale of one of the client's foreign subsidiaries. HSBC was selected to execute the foreign exchange transaction - which was going to require converting approximately $3.5 billion in sales proceeds into British Pound Sterling - in October 2011. HSBC's agreement with the client required the bank to keep the details of the client's planned transaction confidential. Instead, Johnson misused confidential information he received about the client's transaction to cheat the client out of millions of dollars, the evidence showed.



Shortly before the transaction, which occurred in December 2011, Johnson and other traders acting under his direction purchased Pound Sterling for their own benefit in their HSBC 'proprietary' accounts. Johnson then caused the $3.5 billion foreign exchange transaction to be executed in a manner that was designed to 'ramp,' or drive up, the price of the Pound Sterling, benefiting their proprietary positions and HSBC at the expense of their client.



As part of their scheme, Johnson and his co-conspirators made misrepresentations to the client about the transaction that concealed the self-serving nature of their actions. In total, Johnson and the traders he supervised generated HSBC profits of roughly $7.5 million from the execution of the FX transaction for the victim company.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Biogen Inc. Public Affairs TEL: +1-781-464-3260 Eisai Co., Ltd. Public Relations Department TEL: +81-(0)3-3817-5120

TOKYO, Oct 24, 2017 - (JCN Newswire) - Eisai Co., Ltd. and Biogen Inc. announced today that the companies have expanded their existing agreement to jointly develop and commercialize investigational Alzheimer's disease treatments.Under the terms of the agreement Eisai has exercised its option to co-develop and copromote aducanumab, Biogen's investigational anti-amyloid beta (A beta) antibody for patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD).The expanded agreement leverages each company's respective geographic strengths for commercialization and adjusts the respective share of profits from potential sales of aducanumab. Biogen will receive 55 percent of the potential profits in the United States and 68.5 percent of the potential profits in Europe. Eisai will receive 80 percent of the potential profits in Japan and Asia (excluding China and South Korea). The companies will have a 50:50 co-promotion split of potential profits in the rest of the world. Further, Biogen will book sales in the United States, Europe, and rest of world markets while Eisai will book sales in Japan and Asia (excluding China, South Korea).Biogen will continue to lead the ongoing Phase 3 development of aducanumab and will remain solely responsible for all development costs for aducanumab until April 2018. Eisai will then reimburse Biogen for 15 percent of expenses from April 2018 through December 2018, and 45 percent from January 2019 onwards.Neither party is making any upfront payments associated with the exercise of the aducanumab option. Furthermore, Eisai's and Biogen's respective milestone payments under the original agreement for aducanumab and BAN2401, an anti-A beta protofibril antibody, have been eliminated.The companies will continue to jointly develop elenbecestat(1) (E2609), a beta amyloid cleaving enzyme (BACE) inhibitor, and BAN2401. The financial terms for elenbecestat and BAN2401 remain unchanged, other than the eliminated BAN2401 milestone payments.Additionally, Eisai and Biogen have agreed to co-promote Biogen's multiple sclerosis (MS) treatments, AVONEX (interferon beta-1a), TYSABRI (natalizumab) and TECFIDERA (dimethyl fumarate) in Japan to those accounts that Biogen currently does not call upon.Eisai will also distribute and book sales for AVONEX, TYSABRI, TECFIDERA and PLEGRIDY (peginterferon beta-1a) in India and other Asia-Pacific markets (excluding China)."Through this new agreement, we believe we have improved our ability to maximize the value of aducanumab and expand the potential reach of our industry-leading multiple sclerosis portfolio," said Michel Vounatsos, Chief Executive Officer of Biogen. "The ongoing collaboration between Biogen and Eisai leverages our respective expertise and strengths in our efforts to bring new treatments to patients and families affected by Alzheimer's disease."Eisai CEO Haruo Naito commented, "Genetic epidemiological studies such as the Icelandic genetic research as well as the knowledge recently gained from various clinical studies such as the aducanumab Phase 1b trial have deepened our conviction in the amyloid hypothesis. We hope to establish a new treatment paradigm for fighting dementia by expanding the strategic collaboration between Biogen, a company that leverages its cutting-edge biotechnology to develop innovative therapies for people living with serious neurological and neurodegenerative diseases, and Eisai, a company which possesses a rich pipeline based on holistic approaches. In accordance with this new paradigm, we plan to further co-develop the collaboration products and hope to advance the world's potentially first new treatment for Alzheimer's disease based on the amyloid hypothesis. Through the collaboration and by leveraging each company's respective strengths in each region, we hope to maximize the benefits for patients and their families."(1) The generic name is not yet fixed at this time.About Aducanumab (BIIB037)Aducanumab (BIIB037) is an investigational drug being developed for the treatment of AD. Aducanumab is a human recombinant monoclonal antibody (mAb) derived from a deidentified library of B cells collected from healthy elderly subjects with no signs of cognitive impairment or cognitively impaired elderly subjects with unusually slow cognitive decline using Neurimmune's technology platform called Reverse Translational Medicine (RTM). Biogen licensed aducanumab from Neurimmune under a collaborative development and license agreement.Aducanumab is thought to target aggregated forms of beta amyloid including soluble oligomers and insoluble fibrils which can form into amyloid plaque in the brain of AD patients. Based on pre-clinical and Phase 1b data to date, treatment with aducanumab has been shown to reduce amyloid plaque levels.In August 2016 aducanumab was accepted into the European Medicines Agency's PRIME program. In September 2016 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration accepted aducanumab into its Fast Track program and in April 2017 aducanumab was accepted into the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's (MHLW) SAKIGAKE* Designation System.*SAKIGAKE aims at shortening premarket review period for innovative new medical products that satisfy certain criteria, such as severity of intended indication, by designating such products during the early stages of development, and providing prioritized consultation services and premarket pharmaceutical affairs review. The target review period for the designated products may be reduced to as short as 6 months, half the standard review period of 12 months for typical new pharmaceutical products.Collaboration for multiple sclerosis treatments in Japan and AsiaEisai and Biogen will enter into a sales collaboration to further expand contributions to patients in Japan and Asia (excluding China) through Biogen's MS treatments. In Japan, Eisai will co-promote AVONEX, TYSABRI, and TECIFIDERA, MS treatments for which Biogen holds the rights, to accounts that Biogen currently does not call upon. In Asia (excluding China), Eisai now has sole promotion rights for the above three products as well as PLEGRIDY.About BiogenAt Biogen, our mission is clear: we are pioneers in neuroscience. Biogen discovers, develops and delivers worldwide innovative therapies for people living with serious neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. Founded in 1978 as one of the world's first global biotechnology companies by Charles Weissman and Nobel Prize winners Walter Gilbert and Phillip Sharp, today Biogen has the leading portfolio of medicines to treat multiple sclerosis; has introduced the first and only approved treatment for spinal muscular atrophy; and is focused on advancing neuroscience research programs in Alzheimer's disease and dementia, neuroimmunology, movement disorders, neuromuscular disorders, pain, ophthalmology, neuropsychiatry, and acute neurology. Biogen also manufactures and commercializes biosimilars of advanced biologics.About EisaiEisai Co., Ltd. (TSE:4523; ADR:ESALY) is a research-based human health care (hhc) company that discovers, develops and markets products throughout the world. Eisai focuses its efforts in three therapeutic areas: integrative neuroscience, including neurology and psychiatric medicines; integrative oncology, which encompasses oncotherapy and supportive-care treatments; and vascular/immunological reaction. Through a global network of research facilities, manufacturing sites and marketing subsidiaries, Eisai actively participates in all aspects of the worldwide healthcare system. For more information about Eisai Co., Ltd., please visit www.eisai.com.Source: EisaiContact:Copyright 2017 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
SANTA MONICA, CA / ACCESSWIRE / October 23, 2017 / On Friday, September 29, California Governor Jerry Brown finalized the state's most robust package of housing reform in recent history. The 15 bills signed into law included a new fee on real estate transactions and a $4-billion bond on the 2018 ballot. Lawmakers hope the two measures alone will raise close to $1 billion per year in the near term to construct more affordable housing across the state. Neil Shekhter, founder of NMS Properties, a Los Angeles and Santa Monica based real estate firm, discusses the potential immediate and long-term effects of the new pieces of housing legislation.

"Today California begins a pivot from a housing-last policy to a housing-first policy," Senator Scott Wiener (San Francisco), who wrote one of the key measures, said shortly after the Governor penned his signature. The state has been experiencing an increasing housing issue for several years now - - developers need to build 180,000 homes each year beyond what is already planned in order to keep pace with California's population growth. Funds from the bond, pending its approval by voters in November 2018, and the new real estate fee are estimated to finance an additional 14,000 units, meaning there is still much work to be done. Neil Shekhter explained that this year's package is only the start of what lawmakers plan to accomplish, noting that Assemblyman Richard Bloom (Santa Monica), who authored multiple bills, told reporters, "We will keep working this issue for as long as we need to."

Most of the funds raised by the new legislation would go toward helping pay for the development of new homes for low-income residents, defined as people earning 60 percent or less of the median income in a given community. In Los Angeles, that means a family of four having a combined intake lower than $54,060 per year. Other measures will go toward new construction to benefit the homeless and farmworkers, with a small percentage of funds reserved to help pay for middle class housing. The state senate would also like to make it as easier and more affordable for developers to build. As a result, many burdensome regulations, including some local governments' lengthy approval processes, are being whittled down in the new rules. Shekhter explained that both of the major bills also include marked efforts to subsidize homebuilding -- half of what is raised under the real estate transaction fee in the first year will go to cities and counties to update neighborhood development blueprints and other planning documents, and $1 billion of the bond will be allocated to home loans for veterans.

Neil Shekhter is the CEO of NMS Properties, a privately owned real estate management firm that specializes in multi-family and mixed-use properties in the Greater Los Angeles Area and in Santa Monica. Founded by Shekhter in 1988, NMS currently manages more than 70 properties.

Neil Shekhter - Founder and CEO of NMS Properties: http://www.neilshekhternews.com

Apartments For Rent In Los Angeles And More - NMS Residential: http://www.nmsresidential.com

NMS Properties - Real Estate Management Firm: http://nmspropertiesnews.com

Contact Information:

NeilShekhterNews.com

contact@neilshekhternews.com

http://www.neilshekhternews.com

SOURCE: Neil Shekhter


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Hess Corp. (HES) announced an agreement to sell its oil and gas interests in Norway for total proceeds of $2 billion, and commencement of a process to sell its interests in Denmark. It also announced implementation of a cost reduction program expected to deliver annual cost savings of more than $150 million starting in 2019.



Hess noted that the sale of its interests in Norway combined with the company's previously announced divestitures of its enhanced oil recovery assets in the Permian Basin and interests in Equatorial Guinea have captured about $3.25 billion in cash proceeds year to date. These reshaping moves including the planned sale of interests in Denmark will also extinguish approximately $3.2 billion in future abandonment liabilities.



In addition, with a portion of these cash proceeds, the company expects to reduce Hess Corporation debt, excluding midstream, by $500 million in 2018. Together with the planned $150 million annual cost reduction program, these actions are expected to reduce cash unit production costs by about 30 percent - to less than $10 per BOE - by 2020.



Hess has entered into an agreement to sell its subsidiary Hess Norge, which owns interests in the Valhall and Hod fields in Norway, to Aker BP ASA for total proceeds of $2 billion, effective January 1, 2017. The Valhall and Hod fields produced an average of 26,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day net to Hess over the first six months of 2017. Hess holds a 64.05 percent interest in Valhall and a 62.5 percent interest in Hod. The sale is subject to customary conditions for completion, including approval by the Ministry of Oil and Energy, Ministry of Finance and relevant competition clearance and is expected to be completed by year end 2017.



In addition, Hess will commence a process to sell its interests in Denmark, where it holds a 61.5 percent interest in the South Arne Field. This sales process is expected to be completed in 2018. The South Arne Field produced an average of 11,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day net to Hess in the first six months of 2017.



Starting in 2020, cash unit costs are expected to be reduced by approximately 30 percent from 2017 levels. This reduction results from investment in higher return growth assets, the sale of higher cost assets and a cost reduction program that is expected to deliver annual cost savings of more than $150 million starting in 2019.



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WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Today's Daily Dose brings you news about Alexion's rare-disease drug, Soliris, getting FDA approval for a new indication; HealthStream's stellar Q3, 2017 financial results; stock offerings of Immune Design and uniQure; two China non-equity diluting grants awarded to BeyondSpring; EnteroMedics' name change and discontinuation of Global Blood's idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis program.



Read on...



The FDA has approved Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s (ALXN) rare-disease drug, Soliris, for the treatment of adult patients with refractory generalized myasthenia gravis (gMG) who are anti-acetylcholine receptor (AChR) antibody-positive.



Soliris is already approved by the FDA for the treatment of two rare blood disorders namely, paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) to reduce hemolysis, and for atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome.



In the European Union, the drug is also approved for the treatment of refractory gMG in adults who are anti-AchR antibody-positive. Alexion's new drug application in Japan for Soliris as a treatment for patients with anti-AchR antibody-positive refractory gMG has been accepted for review by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW).



Soliris has received Orphan Drug Designation for the treatment of patients with MG in the U.S. and EU, and for the treatment of patients with refractory gMG in Japan.



Soliris, which costs $480,000 per patient per year, generated net product sales of $1.59 billion across the world in the first half of 2017, up 17% over the year-ago period. For full year 2017, the Company expects net product sales of Soliris to range between $3.07 billion and $3.12 billion.



ALXN closed Monday's trading at $135.20, down 2.75%.



BeyondSpring Inc. (BYSI) has received two China non-equity diluting grants - one in August 2017 from the city government of Dalian, China, and the other on Sept. 30, 2017, from the Dalian Economic Development Park.



The grants will be used to further develop the drug pipeline, the Company said.



The Company's lead drug candidate is Plinabulin, a first in class immuno-oncology agent, in a Phase 3 clinical trial in non-small cell lung cancer and in a Phase 2/3 clinical program in the prevention of chemotherapy-induced neutropenia.



A Phase 3 interim analysis is planned for both indications in the first half of 2018, and the Company also expects to receive earlier-than-expected market authorization for China.



BYSI closed Monday's trading at $32.50, up 12.11%.



BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics Inc. (BCLI) has expanded its patent portfolio to include a new US patent for its NurOwn technology for Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.



The allowed claims cover methods of treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Parkinson's disease using mesenchymal stem cells that secrete neurotrophic factors, including glial derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF).



BCLI closed Monday's trading at $4.39, up 3.54%.



EnteroMedics Inc. (ETRM) has formally changed its name to ReShape Lifesciences Inc. (RSLS).



The new name reflects its expansion and growth into a full-scale provider of medical devices to address the continuum of care for obesity and its associated health conditions, the Company added.



ETRM closed Monday's trading at $2.00, down 2.44%.



Global Blood Therapeutics Inc. (GBT) has decided to pull the plug on its GBT440 program for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis as no clinically meaningful efficacy results were achieved in patients.



The decision is based on results from three proof-of-concept studies including a Phase 1 study in healthy volunteers called Basecamp and two Phase 2a studies in patients with IPF called GBT440-006 and ZEPHYR.



However, the data supports the potential of GBT440 as a disease-modifying treatment for individuals living with sickle cell disease, noted the Company.



A pivotal phase III trial of GBT440 in people with sickle cell disease, dubbed HOPE, is underway. The top-line clinical trial results from this study are expected in the first half of 2019.



GBT closed Monday's trading at $32.15, down 1.23%.



HealthStream Inc. (HSTM) has reported better-than expected financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2017.



Net income for the recent third quarter is $2.5 million or $0.08 per share compared to $1.2 million or $0.04 per share in the third quarter of 2016. Revenues for the third quarter of 2017 were $63.6 million, up 9% from $58.4 million in the third quarter of 2016. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the Company to earn $0.05 per share on revenue of $62.48 million.



HSTM closed Monday's trading at $24.44, up 2.09%.



Shares of Immune Design Corp. (IMDZ) plunged more than 15% in extended trading on Monday, following its plans to sell up to 16 million shares of its common stock in an underwritten public offering.



The Company intends to grant the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 15% of the shares of its common stock offered in the public offering.



IMDZ closed Monday's trading at $5.20, unchanged from the previous day's close. In after-hours, the stock was down 15.48% to $4.39.



Neurocrine Biosciences Inc.'s (NBIX) Valbenazine has been granted Orphan Drug Designation by the FDA for the treatment of pediatric patients with Tourette syndrome.



Valbenazine was approved by the FDA in April of this year for the treatment of tardive dyskinesia, and is marketed under the brand name Ingrezza.



In May of 2017, the Company announced that its initial Phase II Tourette syndrome T-Force GREEN study of INGREZZA did not meet its primary endpoint.



Commenting on the orphan drug designation to Valbenazine for the treatment of pediatric patients with Tourette syndrome, Chief Regulatory Officer at Neurocrine Biosciences said, 'We will continue our clinical development program for Tourette's focused on pediatric patients as the first symptoms of Tourette syndrome typically present early in childhood and represent a significant challenge for these young patients.'



NBIX closed Monday's trading at $58.53, down 0.85%. In after-hours, the stock was up 1.66% to $59.50.



uniQure N.V. (QURE) has commenced an underwritten public offering of 5 million of its ordinary shares. In addition, the Company intends to grant the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 750,000 additional ordinary shares.



To know more about uniQure, please visit our Company Spotlight column.



QURE closed Monday's trading at $18.52, down 3.89%.



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Regulatory News:

IMPLANET (Paris:IMPL) (OTCQX:IMPZY) (Euronext Growth: ALIMP, FR0010458729, PEA-PME eligible), a medical technology company specializing in vertebral and knee-surgery implants, today announces the first presentation of JAZZ clinical US study data in adult spinal deformity surgery at the NASS Annual Meeting on October 26th, 2017.

Technical advances have enabled spinal deformity surgeons to correct severe spinal mal-alignment. However, proximal adjacent segment pathology, such as proximal junctional kyphosis (PJK) and proximal junctional failure (PJF) remain serious issues. About 65% of surgeons use a PJK prevention strategy in over 40% of patients1. The diversity of strategies employed by surgeons to prevent PJK/PJF illustrates i) the desire to address the problem, and ii) the lack of effective options available to surgeons.

Dr. H. Francis Farhadi, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, will present findings from his prospective study at the NASS Annual Meeting, on Thursday October 26th in Orlando. 'Prospective Assessment of Early Clinical and Radiologic Outcomes Following Sublaminar Band Placement for Proximal Junctional Kyphosis Prophylaxis in Adult Spinal Deformity Surgery.' The presentation P114 will take place as part of Poster Grand Rounds, The Learning Place, Exhibition Hall Entrance, Green Theater, Thursday, October 26th at 3:10PM.

Dr. Farhadi commented: "We have seen encouraging results so far at one-year follow-up. Proximal junctional sublaminar banding appears safe and does not increase proximal junctional kyphosis following long-segment adult spinal deformity surgeries. We have not seen any cases of proximal junctional failure to date in over 60 patients enrolled. Longer term follow-up in a larger cohort of patients will be needed before we can make any definite conclusions on prevention of proximal junctional kyphosis."

Ludovic Lastennet, CEO of Implanet, adds: "Implanet is a clinical solutions driven company, developing novel technology JAZZ for the spine surgery community. This is an important first step in addressing with JAZZ an unmet clinical need in complex spine surgery, aUS $200 Million market2. We are actively recruiting patients in multiple prospective studies to both strengthen and document the clinical evidence for the JAZZ platform as the option in the prevention of PJK.

About The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Dr H.F. Farhadi

Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center is one of America's top-ranked academic medical centers, with more than 900 beds. Their mission is to improve people's lives in Ohio and across the world through innovation in research, education and patient care.

Dr H. Francis Farhadi, MD, PhD, FRCSC is Chief of the Degenerative and Deformity Spine Division, Director of the Spinal Surgery Fellowship Program, Department of Neurological Surgery.

About the North American Spine Society (NASS)

The North American Spine Society (NASS) is a medical society for health care professionals who specialize in spine care. Founded in 1985, it is the largest society in America. The organization's goal is the promotion of evidence-based and ethical spine care. NASS does this with policies and actions aimed at promoting education, research and advocacy in health care fields related to the spine. NASS membership consists of about 8,000 health care professionals; such as orthopedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, physiatrists, anesthesiologists, researchers and other related practitioners. NASS publishes two major publications, the Spine Journal and SpineLine. The Spine Journal is the official peer-reviewed journal of the North American Spine Society, and was launched in 2001. SpineLine is a bimonthly clinical and news publication for spine care professionals; it is published both in print and in digital editions.

About IMPLANET

Founded in 2007, IMPLANET is a medical technology company that manufactures high-quality implants for orthopedic surgery. Its flagship product, the JAZZ latest-generation implant, aims to treat spinal pathologies requiring vertebral fusion surgery. Protected by four families of international patents, JAZZ has obtained 510(k) regulatory clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States and the CE mark. IMPLANET employs 48 staff and recorded 2016 sales of 7.8 million. For further information, please visit www.implanet.com.

Based near Bordeaux in France, IMPLANET established a US subsidiary in Boston in 2013.

IMPLANET is listed on Euronext Growth market in Paris.

Disclaimer

This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning Implanet and its activities. Such forward looking statements are based on assumptions that Implanet considers to be reasonable. However, there can be no assurance that the anticipated events contained in such forward-looking statements will occur. Forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties including the risks set forth in the registration document of Implanet registered by the French Financial Markets Authority (Autorite des marches financiers (AMF)) on April 26, 2016 under number R.16-035 and available on the Company's website (www.implanet-invest.com), and to the development of economic situation, financial markets, and the markets in which Implanet operates. The forward-looking statements contained in this release are also subject to risks unknown to Implanet or that Implanet does not consider material at this time. The realization of all or part of these risks could lead to actual results, financial conditions, performances or achievements by Implanet that differ significantly from the results, financial conditions, performances or achievements expressed in such forward-looking statements. This press release and the information it contains do not constitute an offer to sell or to subscribe for, or a solicitation of an order to purchase or subscribe for Implanet shares in any country.

1 Results of the 2014 SRS survey on PJK/PJF give valuable insight into PJK/PJF management (SPINE Volume 40, Number 11, pp 829 840).

2 Health Advance study company data.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171023005900/en/

Contacts:

IMPLANET

Ludovic Lastennet

CEO

Tel.: +33 (0)5 57 99 55 55

investors@implanet.com

or

NewCap

Investor Relations

Julie Coulot

Tel.: +33 (0)1 44 71 20 40

implanet@newcap.eu

or

NewCap

Media Relations

Nicolas Merigeau

Tel.: +33 (0)1 44 71 94 98

implanet@newcap.eu

or

AlphaBronze

US-Investor Relations

Pascal Nigen

Tel.: +1 917 385 21 60

implanet@alphabronze.net
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Many Christian doctors from across the worldcame together, presented and shared various divine healing cases, which had occurred by the power of God, at the 14th WCDN (World Christian Doctors Network) Conference held in St. Petersburg, Russia. This has a great significance in view of Russia's anti-terrorism laws, which restrict Christians from evangelizing outside of their churches. For example, the Yarovaya Law is in effect to restrict the practices of religious minorities, such as evangelism or the importation of foreign religious literature so that the Russian government gives priority to the Russian Orthodox Church. The 14th International Christian Medical Conference was held on the 20th and 21st day of October, hosted by WCDN (World Christian Doctors Network). Approximately400 medical doctors and professionals from 13 countries, including Russia, Korea, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Belarus attended the conference.

"The presentations given at the conference, which were about the root causes of diseases and spiritualand divine healingswere absolutely necessary for Russian doctors," said Dr. Oleg Ostreiko, the chairman of the organizing committee. "The atmosphere of the whole conference was excellent. The case presentations were very inspirational, and especially the performance of the Korean team was of very high quality and spirituality," said Dr. Andre Gasiorowski, the president of "Helping Hands Coalition" and one of the organizers of the2018 WCDN conference in Poland. He also said he would do everything in his power to make the next conference a success.

WCDN (www.wcdn.org) is headquartered in Seoul, Korea and was organized to attest to the spiritual power of divine healing with medical data. Through the ministry of WCDN, a lot of Christian medical doctors around the world actively share their opinions and perform their ministries in enthusiastic collaboration. This International Christian Medical Conference begun in Seoul, Korea in 2004 and since then itisheld indifferent countries every year. The 15th International Christian Medical Conference, hosted by WCDN,will be held in Poland.

Contact:

Jong Min Kim

Office: +82-2-818-7247

Email: littlesuho@daum.net

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LONDON, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The Board of Condor Gold (AIM: CNR) is pleased to announce that the Listing Committee of the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX") has conditionally approved the Company's application to list Condor Gold on the TSX. Condor's flagship La India Project in Nicaragua hosts 9.6 M tonnes at 3.5 g/t gold for 1,083,000 oz gold in the Indicated mineral resource category and 8.5 M tonnes at 4.5 g/t gold for 1,231,000 oz gold in the Inferred mineral resource category. The Indicated mineral resource includes 6.9 M tonnes at 3.0 g/t gold for 675,000 oz gold in the Probable mineral reserve category.

The TSX/TSXV is a robust market with liquidity and access to capital, particularly for the mining sector with the participation of over 200 Canadian institutional mining investors and over 500 international institutional mining investors. The TSX/TSXV is the number one public market for mining companies globally with 1,218 public listings with combined market capitalisation of C$305 billion and coverage by more than 200 mining analysts. In 2016, the TSX/TSXV accounted for 57 per cent of all equity capital raised in the mining sector, making it the top source of investment for mining companies globally.

Final approval for the listing is conditional upon the Company satisfying the conditions and requirements imposed by the TSX. The Company will work to satisfy these conditions as quickly as possible. The listing is also subject to the final receipt and acceptance by the Ontario Securities Commission of the Company's long form non-offering prospectus, which the Company expects to file in the coming weeks. The Company will issue further press releases as appropriate.

Mark Child, Chairman and CEO comments:

"The TSX listing will constitute a milestone for Condor Gold, providing a local trading platform for existing and new Canadian shareholders and investors. The vast majority of mining and exploration companies operating in South America are TSX/TSXV listed and, in my opinion, Canadian investors will find Condor a compelling investment that is undervalued compared to its TSX/TSXV listed peer group;, 100% ownership of a high-grade gold deposit close to permitting, which can be expanded, in a jurisdiction with a pro-mining Government.

Condor has been engaged with the local community for several years via employment and many social programmes, from healthcare, to education to the distribution of drinking water. Over the past 18 months we have been in constructive talks with national government and, with their blessing, we are now entering direct conversation with the local community regarding key aspects of permitting. Condor is entering the final phase of its permitting process to construct a 2,800tpd processing plant with a capacity to produce 100,000 oz gold p.a. from a single open pit and continues its strategy of expanding the gold resources through drilling and proving a major gold district."

"The Company will remain listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange."

About Condor Gold plc:

Condor Gold plc was admitted to AIM on 31st May 2006. The Company is a gold exploration and development company with a focus on Central America.

Condor completed a Pre-Feasibility Study ("PFS") and two Preliminary Economic Assessments ("PEA") on its wholly owned La India Project in Nicaragua in December 2014. The PFS details an open pit gold mineral reserve of 6.9 Mt at 3.0 g/t gold for 675,000 oz gold producing 80,000 oz gold per annum for seven years. The PEA for the open pit only scenario details 100,000 oz gold production per annum for eight years whereas the PEA for a combination of open pit and underground details 140,000 oz gold production per annum for eight years. La India Project in Nicaragua hosts 9.6 M tonnes at 3.5 g/t gold for 1,083,000 oz gold in the Indicated mineral resource category and 8.5 M tonnes at 4.5 g/t gold for 1,231,000 oz gold in the Inferred mineral resource category. The Indicated mineral resource includes 6.9 M tonnes at 3.0 g/t gold for 675,000 oz gold in the Probable mineral reserve category.

The mineral resource and reserve calculations disclosed herein were prepared by independent geologists SRK Consulting (UK) Limited. The mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates disclosed herein have an effective date of 21 December 2014 and 30 September 2014, respectively.

Disclaimer

Neither the contents of the Company's website nor the contents of any website accessible from hyperlinks on the Company's website (or any other website) is incorporated into, or forms part of, this announcement.

Qualified Person

The information in this announcement that relates to the mineral potential, geology, exploration results and database is based on information compiled, and reviewed, by Mr Peter Flindell, Member of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists, Member of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and Member of the Society of Economic Geologists. Mr Flindell is a geologist with over thirty years of experience in the exploration of precious metal mineral resources. Mr Flindell is a non-executive director on the Board of Condor Gold plc who also provides technical leadership to the technical team in Nicaragua and has considerable experience in epithermal mineralization, the type of deposit under consideration, and sufficient experience in the type of activity that he is undertaking to qualify as a 'Competent Person' as defined in the June 2009 Edition of the AIM Note for Mining and Oil & Gas Companies. Mr Flindell consents to the inclusion in the announcement of the matters based on their information in the form and context in which it appears and confirms that this information is accurate and not false or misleading.

For further information please visit http://www.condorgold.com or contact:

Condor Gold plc

Mark Child, Executive Chairman and CEO

+44(0)20-7493-2784



Beaumont Cornish Limited

Roland Cornish and James Biddle

+44(0)20-7628-3396



Numis Securities Limited

John Prior and James Black

+44(0)20-7260-1000



Blytheweigh

Tim Blythe, Camilla Horsfall and Megan Ray

+44(0)20-71383204




LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Carpet and floor coverings retailer Carpetright Plc. (CPR.L) reported that its group sales for the 25 weeks ended 21 October 2017 rose 1.8%, compared to a decrease of 3.8% in the 26 weeks to 29 October 2016.



UK like-for-like sales for for the period rose 0.8 percent and rest of Europe like-for-like sales growth was 6.3 percent in in local currency.



Wilf Walsh, Chief Executive, said, 'While trading conditions in the UK remained volatile over the first half, the 2.1% increase in like-for-like sales in our core flooring category is pleasing given the increased level of competition. Total UK like-for-like sales in the period were impacted in the short term by our decision to accelerate the re-ranging activity in our beds business.'



Looking ahead, the company said that while it expects Group first-half profit to be below that of the prior year, it is pleased with the improvement in sales in the Rest of Europe and beds in the UK over the past few weeks.



The Group will report its interim results for the first half of the current financial year on Tuesday, 12 December 2017.



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Fluor Corporation (NYSE: FLR) announced today that Stork, part of Fluor's Diversified Services segment, was awarded a one-year contract plus two options of one-year each by Chrysaor. The contract will see Stork continue to deliver an integrated portfolio of specialist asset integrity support services to the Armada, Everest and Lomond offshore production platforms located in the Central North Sea. Fluor booked the undisclosed contract value in the third quarter of 2017.

"This award is substantial in terms of our combined service offering as well as the scale and volume of deliverables that will support approximately 120 onshore and offshore jobs," said Erik-Jan Bijvank, regional vice president of Stork's UK, Middle East and Africa region. "We are proud to work with Chrysaor because of Stork's shared commitment to safety, the delivery of excellence and continuous improvement. This integrated contract provides significant opportunities to support Chrysaor with its goal to maximize efficiency across its North Sea asset portfolio."

Under this contract, Stork will deliver an inclusive range of services and capabilities to extend the assets' life cycle. Through proven methodologies, Stork will assess any necessary work, optimize and deliver an inspection process to meet the operational strategy for each asset and then undertake any necessary repairs. This integrated capability reduces failures while extending an asset's life.

About Stork

Stork, a Fluor company, continually improves the performance of its clients' assets through innovative and data-driven asset management and maintenance solutions, from concept and design to decommissioning. We are committed to growing our client's business, sustainably and successfully, by setting new standards of excellence in asset management. Underpinned by our core values of safety, integrity, teamwork, client focus and excellence, we aim to be the industry reference every day, everywhere. For more information, please visit www.stork.com or follow us on Twitter @StorkTS.

About Chrysaor

Chrysaor is a private company established in 2007 and focused on generating superior equity returns by developing and commercializing oil and gas resources. In January, Chrysaor signed a sales and purchase agreement to acquire a package of assets in the UK North Sea from Shell.

On completion of the acquisition, Chrysaor will become one of the largest producers of oil and gas in the UK. The assets being acquired produced 115,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2016.

The company will become a self-sustaining full cycle E&P company, with a portfolio of assets balancing near-term development with production growth, combined with significant gearing to appraisal and exploration success.

About Fluor Corporation

Fluor Corporation (NYSE: FLR) is a global engineering, procurement, fabrication, construction and maintenance company that designs, builds and maintains capital-efficient facilities for its clients on six continents. For more than a century, Fluor has served its clients by delivering innovative and integrated solutions across the globe. With headquarters in Irving, Texas, Fluor ranks 149 on the Fortune 500 list with revenue of $19 billion in 2016 and has more than 60,000 employees worldwide. For more information, please visit www.fluor.com or follow Fluor on social media at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024005149/en/

Contacts:

Fluor Corporation

Global Media Relations

Brian Mershon, 469-398-7621

or

Brett Turner, 864-281-6976

or

Investor Relations

Geoff Telfer, 469-398-7070

or

Jason Landkamer, 469-398-7222

or

EAME Media Relations

Janet Kearns, +44 1252 292039

or

Stork Media Relations

Gijs Vrenken, +31 6 83001264
Government, private sector, and non-profit actors to convene in Accra

The Mastercard Foundation today announced that its fifth annual and largest Symposium on Financial Inclusion (SoFI) will take place in Accra, Ghana, on November 7 9, 2017. The Symposium champions the idea that, to achieve greater financial inclusion, financial service providers in developing countries must do more to meet the needs and expectations of people living in poverty.

Each year since 2013 the Foundation has convened hundreds of industry professionals to focus on barriers to greater financial inclusion around the world. SoFI has been a platform where experts in the field gather to pave the way toward a more financially inclusive world. They exchange knowledge on a broad range of topics, including client centricity, technology, innovation, best practices, partnerships, and many more.

This year's event will reflect on progress made over the past five years, explore challenges that still lie ahead, and plan how to expand and deepen financial inclusion for the world's most underserved people.

"Creating a more financially inclusive world is a daunting task," said Reeta Roy, President and CEO of the Mastercard Foundation. "Over the years, financial inclusion has increased as a priority for the international development community, as well as governments, business owners, and the clients they serve. After five years of gathering the brightest minds in the field to advance access and resources to modern financial products and services, we've made significant progress that will continue to make a difference in the lives of people. This year's Symposium celebrates the progress made over these past five years and defines the work yet to be done."

Attendees will hear from an impressive lineup of keynote speakers, including:

Opening Keynote Address: Juliet Anammah, Chief Executive Officer, Jumia Nigeria

Keynote Address II: Dr. Ernest Addison, Governor, Bank of Ghana

In addition to hearing from more than 30 other speakers at the Symposium, the Foundation will also award its 2017 Clients at the Centre Prize. This is a US$150,000 award that recognizes an organization most focused on client centricity to enable poor people in developing countries access to formal financial products and services. Finalists competing for the grand prize will present their business models to an audience of approximately 400 industry professionals, who will be tasked with voting for the winner.

The Mastercard Foundation first awarded the Clients at the Centre Prize in 2015 to the Swedish mobile microinsurance firm BIMA. Last year, the Prize was presented to the South African international remittance company, Hello Paisa. Each year draws nearly 100 applicants from companies around the globe. The three 2017 finalists are:

Jumo , a large-scale, low-cost financial services marketplace that uses behavioral data from mobile usage to create financial identities for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises;

, a large-scale, low-cost financial services marketplace that uses behavioral data from mobile usage to create financial identities for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises; ftCash , one of India's fastest growing financial technology ventures which aims to empower micro-merchants and small businesses with the power of digital payments and loans; and

, one of India's fastest growing financial technology ventures which aims to empower micro-merchants and small businesses with the power of digital payments and loans; and Destacame, a free online platform that empowers users by giving them control over their data to build their financial capabilities and to access financial products.

To learn more, visit the Mastercard Foundation's Symposium on Financial Inclusion website. Follow the conversation with the Foundation on Twitter @MastercardFdn and via the event hashtag, SOFI2017.

About the Mastercard Foundation

The Mastercard Foundation works with visionary organizations to provide greater access to education, skills training and financial services for people living in poverty, primarily in Africa. As one of the largest private foundations, its work is guided by its mission to advance learning and promote financial inclusion to create an inclusive and equitable world. Based in Toronto, its independence was established by Mastercard when the Foundation was created in 2006. For more information, please visit www.mastercardfdn.org.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024005069/en/

Contacts:

Mastercard Foundation

Roger Morier, +1 416-616-1864

rmorier@mastercardfdn.org


BROOKLYN PARK, Minnesota, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --4C Medical Technologies, Inc. (4C Medical), a developer of minimally invasive technologies for structural heart disease, today announced that its medical device for mitral regurgitation (MR) will be highlighted in the Shark Tank Innovation Competition at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) meeting held October 29-November 2, 2017 in Denver, CO.

4C Medical is developing the first MR treatment that preserves the native mitral valve and left ventricle using a supra-annular, atrial-only fixation technology. The novel design eliminates known issues associated with current transcatheter mitral valve replacement (TMVR) technologies which rely on placement and fixation in the native mitral annulus and left ventricle.

Philippe Genereux, MD, will present "A Novel Trans-catheter Mitral Valve Replacement Technology (4C)" at 8:30 am Tuesday, October 31 in the Colorado Convention Center Four Seasons Ballroom 4. Dr. Genereux is Co-Director of the Structural Heart Program at the Gagnon Cardiovascular Institute of Morristown Medical Center (Morristown, NJ) and a practicing Interventional Cardiologist at Hopital du Sacre-Coeur de Montreal (Montreal, Canada).

"We're excited for Dr. Genereux to present on our technology at TCT, the premier educational meeting for interventional cardiology," said Robert Thatcher, CEO of 4C Medical. "Participating in the Innovation Competition validates the uniqueness of our device, which has potential to provide treatment options for a broad patient population suffering from moderate or severe MR."

About 4C Medical Technologies, Inc.

4C Medical is a medical device company developing minimally invasive technologies for structural heart disease, focusing initially on mitral regurgitation (MR) therapy and subsequently on tricuspid regurgitation therapy. The company's implant is the first MR treatment with supra-annular positioning and atrial-only fixation. It preserves the native mitral valve and left ventricle, eliminating known issues associated with transcatheter mitral valve replacement technologies which rely on placement and fixation in the native mitral annulus and left ventricle.

Media Contacts

Robert Thatcher

Chief Executive Officer

(612) 600-8951

rthatcher@4CMed.com

Jim Flaherty

Chief Financial Officer

(612) 599-0650

jflaherty@4CMed.com

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SINGAPORE, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Mandarin Orchard Singapore, flagship hotel of award-winning Asian hospitality brand Meritus Hotels & Resorts, was named "Best Upscale Hotel- Asia Pacific" at the Travel Weekly Asia Readers' Choice Awards 2017.

Now in its third year, the annual Travel Weekly Asia Readers' Choice Awards recognises outstanding accommodation, transportation, venue, service, and technology providers in their respective categories. Winners are determined from total votes by Travel Weekly Asia readers and industry professionals across Asia Pacific.

Themed "Saluting Brilliance" to toast stars of the travel trade, the Travel Weekly Asia Readers' Choice Awards 2017 saw over 100 industry movers from around the region attend the awards ceremony held on 23 October at Mandarin Orchard Singapore.

Hotels nominated for the "Best Upscale Hotel- Asia Pacific" category were judged based on their ability to offer upscale amenities, full service accommodations, and the highest level of personalised service.

Accepting the award for Mandarin Orchard Singapore was Tan Kim Seng, Chief Operating Officer for Meritus Hotels & Resorts.

"We are honoured and grateful to receive this prestigious accolade," said Mr Tan. "It bears testament to the positioning of Mandarin Orchard Singapore as an icon of world-class Asian hospitality, and the continuing commitment of our team to excel and set new benchmarks in Asia's highly competitive hospitality market."

The 1,077-room Mandarin Orchard Singapore stands tall in the heart of world-renowned shopping district, Orchard Road. Delivering the brand's signature Asian Grace, Warmth and Care since 1971, the hotel remains the accommodation of choice amongst discerning international travellers for its location and service excellence.

Rooms are equipped with advanced in-room technologies such as a complimentary movie platform for unlimited access to a rich selection of Hollywood blockbusters, and the handy smartphone for free local and international calls as well as unlimited access to 4G data.

Guests can look forward to bespoke services at the exclusive Meritus Club Lounge, and vibrant dining options that include Shisen Hanten by Chen Kentaro -- the highest Michelin-rated Chinese restaurant in Singapore, and Chatterbox-- home of the legendary Mandarin Chicken Rice.

For more information on Mandarin Orchard Singapore, visit www.meritushotels.com/orchard.

Logo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20160616/8521603966LOGO

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/589204/Mandarin_Orchard_Singapore_Best_Upscale_Hotel.jpg
AMSTERDAM, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

PLENVU is the first 1-litre PEG bowel preparation

PLENVU shown to be superior to MOVIPREP in providing high-quality cleansing in the colon ascendens[1} - an important area for adenoma detection[2]



Norgine B.V. today announced that the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has granted marketing authorisation for PLENVU (NER1006) for bowel cleansing in adults prior to any procedure requiring a clean bowel. The approval was granted under the European Medicines Agency decentralised procedure, with the UK as reference state.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130829/633895-a )



PLENVUhas also been approved by the Lyfjastofnun, Icelandic Medicines Agency.

PLENVU is a novel, low volume (1-litre) polyethylene glycol (PEG) 3350-based bowel preparation that has been developed by Norgine to provide whole bowel cleansing, shown to be superior in providing high-quality cleansing in the colon ascendens, an important area for adenoma detection.[2]

Dr Alastair Benbow, Chief Development & Medical Officer, Norgine, said, "We look forward to making PLENVU available to physicians and patients, to improve the quality of colonoscopy. PLENVU has the potential to become the gold standard and replace other bowel preparations, and is part of our ongoing commitment to bring innovative products to market in gastroenterology, one of our core areas of expertise."

The approval was based on data from the Phase III clinical trial programme, consisting of three multicentre, randomised, parallel group studies.

Colonoscopy is a vital screening procedure to detect colorectal cancer, the second most common cause of cancer-related mortality in Europe, with 412,000 new diagnoses every year.[3] In the UK there were more than 41,000 new cases of colorectal cancer in 2014, and more than 15,000 deaths, making it the second most common cause of cancer death.[4]

Norgine manufactures PLENVU globally and will commercialise the product through its infrastructure in Europe and Australia and through its commercial partners in the rest of the world.

View the full release on http://www.norgine.com/

References

[1] Bisschops R, et al. P0179. Efficacy and safety of the novel 1L PEG and ascorbate bowel preparation NER1006 versus standard 2L PEG with ascorbate in overnight or morning split-dosing administration: results from the phase 3 study MORA. UEG Journal 2016; 4(5S): A218 - A219.

[2] Lasisi F, et al. Expert Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 2011; 5(6): 745-754.

[3] Zavoral M et al. Colorectal cancer screening in Europe. World J Gastroenterol 2009;15(47):5907-5915

[4] http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics/statistics-by-cancer-type/bowel-cancer (Accessed September 2017)
Panevezys, Lithuania, 2017-10-24 11:48 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AB "Linas" General Meeting of Shareholders didn't take place on October 24, 2017 because there was no quorum.



Repeated General Meeting of Shareholders of AB "Linas" (company code 147689083, address S. Kerbedzio str.23, Panevezys) will be held on November 09, 2017 acc.to the decision and initiative of the Board.



Date of the meeting - November 09, 2017, thursday.



Time of the meeting - 12:00 a.m. Registration of participants from 11:00 a.m. till 11:45 a.m.



Place of the meeting - AB "Linas" premises, S. Kerbedzio str. 23, Panevezys.



Agenda of the meeting:



1. The Audit Committee new editing regulations confirmation.



2. Election of the members of Audit Committee.



The accounting date of Repeated General Meeting of Shareholders is November 02, 2017. In the Repeated General Meeting of Shareholders have the right to participate and vote persons who were company's shareholders at the end of accounting date (November 02, 2017), personally or their authorized persons, or persons with whom voting right transferring contract is signed.



The Company doesn't form the right to participate and to vote in the meeting with the help of electronic communication equipment.



Decision projects on the agenda, documents which will be presented for General meeting of Shareholders will be announced in company's web page http://www.linas.lt. Company's shareholders have the right to acquaint with this information on working days from 9:00 a.m till 16:00 a.m. at company's premises S. Kerbedzio str.23, Panevezys.



Shareholders the shares of whom provide not less than 1/20 of all votes, can offer new decision projects for the questions which are included or will be included into the agenda of the meeting. Offers can be presented in written form or by e-mail. The offers in written form can be taken till November 09, 2017, 10:00 a.m. (on working days) to the company's premises or sent by registered letter to address S. Kerbedzio str.23, LT-35114, Panevezys. Offers by e-mail are sent to address office@linas.lt . During the meeting there will be discussed only offers received in the company till November 09, 2017, 10:00 a.m.



Shareholders have the right to provide questions in relation with agenda of the meeting in advance. Shareholders can provide questions by e-mail office@linas.lt not later than 3 working days till the meeting. The company will present answers by e-mail till the meeting. The company has the right not to give answers to shareholder's questions if they are in relation with company's commercial (production) or confidential information.



All the persons who are participating in General Meeting of Shareholders and have the right o vote have to present the document certifying person identification. Representative of the shareholder for the meeting has to present the original of authorization acc.to law indicated form and content. The company doesn't indicate special form of authorization. The shareholder has the right with the help of electronic communication equipment to authorize other natural or legal person to participate and to vote in the meeting in the name of shareholder. The shareholder has to inform the company about the issued authorization by e-mail office@linas.lt not later than till the last working day 16:00 p.m. to the meeting. In the report the shareholder has to indicate web page from which the shareholder's electronic signature checking program could be sent for free.



It would be able to vote on the Repeated Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders questions completing the general voting bulletin in written in advance. Printed general voting bulletin is available at company's premises, address S. Kerbedzio str.23, Panevezys. If the shareholder requires, then the company is sending general voting bulletin by registered letter or handle with written confirmation not later than 10 days till the meeting. Shareholder or his authorized person has to sign general voting bulletin. If the general voting bulletin is signed by the representative, then the document confirming his right for voting has to be added to the bulletin. Properly completed voting bulletins with the attached documents should be presented to the company personally, through authorized person or by registered letter to the address S. Kerbedzio str.23, LT-35114, Panevezys, not later than the last working day to up to the meeting.



AB "Linas" director Daiva Minkeviciene +370 45 506100

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
The Area Agency on Aging and Disability, a division of Southeast Tennessee Development, has a partnership with the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera for the Lifelong Learning Musical Caravan Project. Through the projectone of 19 funded by the Tennessee Arts Commission through its Creative Aging TN grant programCSO string and wind quintets will conduct a total of 10 performances at senior centers throughout southeast Tennessee.

With more baby boomers retiring and the number of people in their 70s and 80s on the rise, communities face new challenges when it comes to meeting the transportation, housing, nutrition, and health care needs of older adults. This demographic shift is especially evident in many rural communities, where the 65+ age group is projected to exceed 30 percent of the population by 2030. But beyond these basic needs, todays seniors seek opportunities for social engagement, recreation and leisure activities, and a vibrant cultural and arts sceneevents that enrich their lives and encourage them to age in place in their home communities.

The Musical Caravan Project provides an opportunity to engage seniors and promote lifelong learning. Studies show that musical performances in live settings lead to increased cognitive stimulation, social engagement, and community enrichment. Because the project brings CSO musicians directly to local senior centers, those with limited means or who are unable to travel to Chattanooga for a CSO concert will be able to experience a classical music performance in their own community.

CSO musicians have been performing across the greater Chattanooga region for years. Through the Ensembles in Schools program, musical quintets perform at elementary, middle, and high schools in 12 counties. The Out & About program brings performances to regional libraries, museums, community centers, hospitals, and other community locations. In addition to its regular concert series based in Chattanooga, the CSO also features sensory friendly concerts, annual Young Peoples Concerts, and other special events. This Musical Caravan Project represents a new opportunity to directly engage the regions seniors and rural communities.

The Southeast Tennessee Area Agency on Aging and Disability supports the operations of senior centers in 10 counties. These centers provide hot meals, health workshops, and active programming for older adults. The AAAD organizers are excited that the Creative Aging TN grant program will bring CSO musicians to all 10 counties in its service area. Stops along the tour include senior centers in Bledsoe, Bradley, Grundy, Hamilton, Marion, McMinn, Meigs, Polk, Rhea, and Sequatchie Counties. As the performance schedule is finalized, details will be posted on the CSO website at http://chattanoogasymphony.org/.




LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM and SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 -- StaffConnect, provider of the award winning enterprise mobile employee engagement platform, today announced the availability of a new whitepaper entitled, "Mergers and Acquisitions: A Critical Time to Engage and Retain Employees for a Smooth Transition." The new whitepaper provides research from several respected analysts firms and explains why careful attention must be paid to employee engagement during organizational transformation -- particularly during a merger and acquisition (M&A), the ramifications of not doing so, and the positive and measurable results if done well.

It has become an inarguable fact that the world is in the throes of an employee engagement crisis. Prevailing research from virtually every respected research firm and industry analyst agrees on this point. And, during the uncertainly and upheaval of an M&A event, the situation becomes even more magnified. As the new whitepaper details, recent research from experts, such as Aon Hewett, shows that during a typical M&A event, the proportion of actively disengaged employees increases, while the percentage of highly engaged employees decreases -- oftentimes by more than half. The whitepaper goes on to explain the critical importance of employers taking proactive measures in advance of an M&A in order to avoid this, and the associated fallout.

"Mergers and Acquisitions: A Critical Time to Engage and Retain Employees for a Smooth Transition" then offers its readers practical advice on how to de-risk an M&A event and reduce the factors that contribute to workforce disengagement and ultimately employee attrition -- before, during and after. It follows with valuable guidance on what measures can be taken to ensure a smooth and successful M&A experience that benefits the organization and employees alike.

"We have seen a rise in M&A activity over the last 12 months and while this is driven by the potential commercial value of combining companies, it often comes with confusion and anxiety about the future of the organization and each employee's place in that future," said Geraldine Osman, Vice President of Marketing, StaffConnect. "If managed poorly, the impact on employee engagement can jeopardize the long-term M&A success, and the bottom-line can be devastating. But if done well, the results can be a fast and significant increase in employee productivity, improved customer satisfaction, greater profitability, faster M&A time-to-value, and greater shareholder value." She continued, "We are seeing a rise in demand for our platform from forward thinking business leaders that are wanting to proactively take control over their communications and workforce engagement strategy early on in the M&A process and this is leading to far better outcomes for their organizations."

To download your copy of "Mergers and Acquisitions: A Critical Time to Engage Employees for a Smooth Transition" please visit: https://www.staffconnectapp.com/mergers-acquisitions/

Media Resources (logos, screenshots, etc.): https://goo.gl/2CMbNz

Tweet this: .@StaffConnectApp new eBook "Mergers & Acquisitions: A Critical Time to Engage Employees for a Smooth Transition" https://www.staffconnectapp.com/mergers-acquisitions/

About StaffConnect

StaffConnect delivers the award winning mobile employee engagement platform. The StaffConnect solution transforms the employee experience by enabling large enterprises to connect, communicate and engage their entire workforce, especially remote, non-desk employees. The customer-branded mobile app gives employees 'a voice' -- with access to company and user-generated content to increase loyalty and productivity. The cloud-hosted platform empowers employers to target that content, with analytics, to deepen engagement with everyone. From offices in London and San Francisco, StaffConnect's platform and domain expertise are supporting large businesses around the world to inspire their workforces to deliver better performance, improved customer experiences and greater shareholder value. For further information, please visit: www.staffconnectapp.com.

PR Contacts:

Sabrina Sanchez

The Ventana Group for StaffConnect

(925) 785-3014

Email Contact



Nicole Gorman

The Ventana Group for StaffConnect

(508) 397-0131

Email Contact




Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 --



WHO:

Howie Schwartz, co-founder and CEO of Crowded, the rapidly growing online sourcing and engagement platform for tech jobs

WHAT:

Will present "How Chatbots Can Create Life-like Recruiting Conversations" at the Fall MoNage Conference.

WHEN:

Tuesday, October 24 - Thursday, October 26, 2017

Schwartz is scheduled to speak on Thursday, October 26 at 10:35 a.m. EDT.

WHERE:

Boston Public Library

700 Boylston Street

Boston, Mass.

DETAILS:

Chatbots have been a hot topic this year -- and recent research indicates that by 2020 the average person will have more conversations with chatbots than their spouse. Bots are infiltrating everyday life from how people order tacos to how they find their soulmate. This is true of recruiting too, with companies adopting bots to help enhance messaging and communication between team members, especially as it relates to the status of candidates. While collaborative enhancements are helpful, this approach doesn't facilitate candidate progression through the process or promote candidate engagement.

During the Fall 2017 MoNage Conference, Howie Schwartz, co-founder and CEO of Crowded, will share how to take chatbots to the next level of interactivity and effectiveness. Schwartz will explain how artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing can enable more life-like conversations, delivering spontaneous responses to a candidate no matter what they ask or how they ask it. Attendees will also learn how chatbots can streamline the administrative tasks associated with sourcing, evaluating and screening talent and take away best practices for leveraging chatbots to improve hiring decisions.

For event details and registration, visit https://www.monage.io.

About Crowded

Based in New York City, Crowded maximizes the value of candidate data by enabling employers to leverage their existing talent pool buried in their candidate database/ATS. By using machine learning and proprietary AI algorithms, the best candidates are updated, contacted via the Crowded chatbot, matched, and ranked for each open job requisition. Crowded Refresh saves employers thousands of dollars and substantial time and effort per hire, and provides valuable employer branding as dormant candidate relationships are re-ignited.

Crowded was founded by three successful serial entrepreneurs: Howie Schwartz, Mark Roth and Joe Rubin. The company is backed by Tokalon Ventures, Elevate Innovation Partners, ARC Angel Fund, Gambit Ventures, Early-Stage.NYC, and multiple Angel Investors. For more information, visit www.crowded.com.
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / October 24, 2017 / Pentair plc (NYSE: PNR) will be discussing their earnings results in their Q3 Earnings Call to be held on October 24, 2017 at 8:00 AM Eastern Time.

To listen to the event live or access a replay of the call - visit https://www.investornetwork.com/company/1477.

To receive updates for this company you can register by emailing info@investornetwork.com or by clicking get investment info from the company's profile.

About Investor Network

Investor Network (IN) is a financial content community, serving millions of unique investors market information, earnings, commentary and news on the what's trending. Dedicated to both the professional and the average traders, IN offers timely, trusted and relevant financial information for virtually every investor. IN is an Issuer Direct brand, to learn more or for the latest financial news and market information, visit www.investornetwork.com. Follow us on Twitter @investornetwork.

SOURCE: Investor Network
Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. (NYSE:JEC) has been selected by Teck Resources Limited and Aurubis AG to perform the pre-feasibility study (PFS) for a proposed copper cathode production facility in Peru. Under the terms of the contract, Jacobs will provide capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) estimates to Teck and Aurubis for determining project pre-feasibility. Teck and Aurubis' conceptual copper cathode production facility would incorporate their proprietary CESL copper-arsenic process technology providing high copper and precious metal recoveries, controlled arsenic deportment, and reduced environmental impact compared to traditional pyrometallurgical smelter processing facilities in respect to air, dust and water.

"We have extensive experience in delivering full life-cycle solutions to copper processing facility owners and operators and more than 40 years of working alongside Teck," said Jacobs Mining and Minerals and Specialty Chemicals Senior Vice President and General Manager Andrew Berryman. "Our collaboration with Teck and Aurubis will support project and business objectives for the company's proposed copper cathode production facility."

Jacobs currently supports copper processing facility projects in Asia, North America and South America. In addition to the company's experience executing end-to-end solutions for copper processing facilities, Jacobs has been providing studies, engineering, procurement, construction and construction management services to mining and mineral organizations globally for 70 years.

Teck is a diversified resource company headquartered in Vancouver, Canada committed to responsible mining and mineral development with business units focused on steelmaking coal, copper, zinc and energy. Aurubis AG is a leading worldwide provider of non-ferrous metals and the world's largest copper recycler headquartered in Hamburg, Germany.

Jacobs is one of the world's largest and most diverse providers of full-spectrum technical, professional and construction services for industrial, commercial and government organizations globally. The company employs over 54,000 people and operates in more than 25 countries around the world. For more information, visit www.jacobs.com.

Statements made in this release that are not based on historical fact are forward-looking statements. We base these forward-looking statements on management's current estimates and expectations as well as currently available competitive, financial and economic data. Forward-looking statements, however, are inherently uncertain. There are a variety of factors that could cause business results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. For a description of some of the factors which may occur that could cause actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements please refer to our Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2016, and in particular the discussions contained under Items 1 Business, 1A Risk Factors, 3 Legal Proceedings, and 7 Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements made herein.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024005121/en/

Contacts:

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.

Salim Rahimi, 214.583.8428
New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - October 24, 2017) - UGE International Ltd. (TSXV: UGE) ("UGE"), a leader in renewable energy solutions for the commercial and industrial sector, announces it has secured a contract to develop and build a 630 kW DC community solar project for a rapidly growing real estate firm in New York City.

Community solar is a newer model for financing solar installations in which building owners receive lease payments for the use of their rooftop. After UGE installs solar on the rooftop, the energy produced will be sold directly to residential customers in the community. This model allows New York City residents to access clean energy and lower their energy bill, regardless of their ability to install solar panels at their residence. Community solar has the ability to rapidly change the urban adoption of clean energy and accelerate the presence of solar use in cities everywhere. UGE previously announced it was developing New York City's first community solar project in March 2017 and is now proud to announce their second such project.

"Community solar is the latest innovation within solar financing and it is exactly what New York City has been longing for," said Mateo Chaskel, Director of Development for UGE. "By making solar energy accessible to residents throughout New York City, without having to put panels on their roofs directly, we expect to see clean energy spread at an unprecedented rate. UGE is excited to be leading this initiative."

This is the second real estate firm that UGE has announced it is working with in recent months. In this case, the firm has many locations throughout greater New York City ranging in size from 60,000 to 220,000 square feet, with many future opportunities for solar projects. By working with UGE at this Bronx-based location, the firm will increase their lease revenue, in effect adding a new tenant to their otherwise unused roof, while strengthening their commitment to the environment as well.

UGE is the developer and EPC (builder) of the turnkey roof-mounted solar system. The project is expected to be installed by UGE over the next nine months and will produce over 750 MWh of clean energy annually offsetting around 570 tons of carbon dioxide. UGE expects to generate over $1m USD in revenue through completing the project.

About UGE

UGE delivers immediate savings to businesses through the low cost of solar energy. We help commercial and industrial clients become more competitive by providing distributed renewable energy solutions at no upfront cost, generating long term economic and environmental returns. With over 340 MW of global experience, we work daily to power a more sustainable world. Visit us at www.ugei.com.

For more information, contact UGE at:

+1 917 720 5685

press@ugei.com
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 -- Pitchblack Resources Ltd. (NEX: PIT.H) ("Pitchblack" or the "Company") is pleased to report that shareholders overwhelmingly approved all matters considered at the annual and special shareholders' meeting held on October 18, 2017. The Company expresses thanks to shareholders for their significant participation, as the total number of shares voted at the meeting represented 69% of the outstanding Pitchblack common shares.

The shareholders approved the proposed consolidation of common shares on the basis of one new common share for up to every four existing common shares and the proposed name change of the Company to "Troilus Gold". Over 99% of the shares voted approved the proposed consolidation and name change. The consolidation and name change will only be effected upon the successful completion of the Company's acquisition from Sulliden Mining Capital Inc. of an option to buy the Troilus Gold Project. Please see the Company's press releases of June 21, 2017 and September 8, 2017 for more information on the pending transaction.

Among other things, shareholders also voted for the re-election of the Company's director candidates and for the re-appointment of UHY McGovern Hurley as auditors of the Company.

About Pitchblack Resources Ltd.

Pitchblack has uranium and gold assets in the Yukon Territory, Canada. The Company is currently reviewing the potential of these properties.

Cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information

This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements regarding the Company's plans for developing its properties, the ability to close the proposed Troilus acquisition transaction, satisfaction of all conditions precedent, receipt of any required third party and regulatory approvals and other transaction statements. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: transaction risks; general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; future prices of mineral prices; accidents, labour disputes and shortages and other risks of the mining industry. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

Contacts:

G. Scott Moore

President and Chief Executive Officer

E-mail: smoore@forbesmanhattan.com

416-861-5903




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 -- ARHT Media Inc. ("ARHT" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: ART), creators of digital human holograms called HumaGrams are pleased to announce its ongoing partnership with 'Bond King' Jeffrey Gundlach to deliver a live HumaGram to the 2017 AXA Meeting held at the Ritz-Carlton in Amelia Island, Florida.

Live from ARHT's studio in Hollywood, Mr. Gundlach was beamed into the event to discuss the US economy, the Federal Reserve and the state of the financial markets.

Following a successful event at the SALT conference in Las Vegas earlier this year, the AXA meeting marks the second installment of Mr. Gundlach's partnership with ARHT.

"These are the kind of partnerships that we strive for," said Paul Duffy, CEO of ARHT. "When we can successfully collaborate with organizations like DoubleLine, we have achieved our goal of aligning our brand and technology with leading companies and people. We achieved that here."

ARHT's patented Holographic Telepresence technology allows for an individual to appear live as a human hologram, a HumaGram, virtually anywhere in the world. The technology allows for two-way interaction with the audience and to see and speak to HumaGrams as if the subject were actually there.

"It was my pleasure to utilize ARHT's Holographic Telepresence technology once again as it allows me to save a great deal of time spent traveling to my various speaking engagements," said Mr. Gaundlach. "I see great potential and application for this technology in the future."

About ARHT Media

ARHT's patented Augmented Reality Holographic Telepresence technology is the world's first complete end-to-end solution for the creation, transmission, and delivery of lifelike digital human holograms, known as HumaGrams. The company's technology is protected by U.S. Patent No. 9,581,962.

About Jeffrey Gundlach

Mr. Gundlach is CEO of DoubleLine. In 2011 he appeared on the cover of Barron's as "The New Bond King". In 2013, Institutional Investor named him "Money Manager of the Year". In 2012, 2015 and 2016 he was named one of "The Fifty Most Influential" in Bloomberg Markets. In 2017 he was inducted into the FIASI Fixed Income Hall of Fame. Mr. Gundlach is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Dartmouth College, with degrees in Mathematics and Philosophy.

Connect with ARHT Media

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ARHTmedia

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ARHTmediainc

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/arht-media-inc-

For more information, please visit http://www.arhtmedia.com/ or contact the investor relations group at info@arhtmedia.com.

ARHT Media trades under the symbol "ART" on the Toronto Venture Stock Exchange.

This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, the Company's technology; the potential uses for the Company's technology; the future planned events using the Company's technology; the applications and prospects of the Company's new technologies; the future success of the Company; the ability of the Company to monetize the HumaGram technology; the development of the Company's technology; the hiring of a new Director of Operations; the granting of stock options; and how the Company's technology will impact the speaking marketplace. Generally, forward looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: general business, economic and competitive uncertainties; regulatory risks; risks inherent in technology operations; and other risks of the technology industry. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

Contacts:

ARHT Media Public Relations

Kam Gill

+1 416 861 5875

kam@arhtmedia.com



ARHT Media Press Contact

Salman Amin

samin@arhtmedia.com

www.arhtmedia.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 -- Arch Biopartners Inc., ("Arch" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: ARCH)(OTCBB: ACHFF), announced it has closed a non-brokered, unsecured convertible note (the "Note") financing for gross proceeds of CAD $500,000 (the "Offering") on October 23, 2017.

The Note matures on October 31, 2020 and will be convertible, at the option of the holder, into common shares in the capital of the Company ("Common Shares") at a price per Common Share of $0.50, in the thirty-day period prior to maturity of the Note.

The Note bears simple interest of 5% per annum, which is payable in-kind by the Company with Common Shares to be issued at then market prices for the Common Shares and subject to TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV") approval in each instance.

The holder has the option until July 31, 2020 to extend the term of the Note another 2 years to October 31, 2022.

The Note is unsecured and transferable, subject to resale restrictions under applicable securities laws and regulatory requirements.

All securities issued in connection with the Offering are subject to a statutory hold period of four months commencing on the closing of the Offering.

The Company will use the proceeds to fund the first-in-human trial for AB569 which is scheduled to commence in January, 2018. AB569 is the Company's inhalation drug candidate for treating antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections in the lungs of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or cystic fibrosis, as well as many other indications.

The Offering is subject to certain conditions including, but not limited to, the receipt of applicable regulatory approvals, including Final Approval of the TSXV, which previously granted Conditional Approval of the Offering. There were no finder's fees paid in connection with the Offering.

There is no material fact or material change about the Company that has not been generally disclosed.

About Arch Biopartners

Arch Biopartners Inc. is focused on the development of innovative technologies that have the potential to make a significant medical or commercial impact. Arch works closely with the scientific community, universities and research institutions to advance and build the value of select preclinical technologies, develop the most promising intellectual property, and create value for its investors.

Arch has established a diverse portfolio that includes AB569, a potential new treatment for antibiotic resistant bacterial infections; Metablok, a potential treatment for inflammation, sepsis and cancer metastasis; MetaMx, which targets elusive brain tumor initiating cells; and, 'Borg' peptide coatings that increase corrosion resistance and decrease biofilm on various medical grade metals and plastics.

For more information on Arch Biopartners, its technologies and other public documents Arch has filed on SEDAR, please visit www.archbiopartners.com

The Company has 55,299,679 common shares outstanding.

Forward-Looking Statements

All statements, other than statements of historical fact, in this news release are forward looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, statements regarding the future plans and objectives of the Company. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. These and all subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements are based on the estimates and opinions of management on the dates they are made and are expressly qualified in their entirety by this notice. The Company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements should circumstances or management's estimates or opinions change.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Arch Biopartners, Inc.

Richard Muruve

Chief Executive Officer

647-428-7031

info@archbiopartners.com




FinancialForce's latest fall ERP release empowers professional services organizations to dynamically optimize time and talent, and deliver more predictable business performance with next-generation analytics and forecasting



LAS VEGAS, 2017-10-24 14:00 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Technology Services World -- FinancialForce, the number one customer-centric ERP vendor, today announced several new innovations and capabilities for its Professional Services Automation (PSA) solution, including enhanced forecasting, resource optimization, and scheduling tools. The new capabilities help organizations better serve their customers in the new services economy.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cf31d86f-397a-4837-a34b-063cd 2cfc6ed



"Leading organizations are completely reimagining their businesses with FinancialForce's customer-centric ERP," said Lori Ellsworth, GM for FinancialForce PSA. "In our latest release we have delivered new Shift Management and Forecasting capabilities to give our customers greater control and predictability over their projects and the resources assigned to those projects."



FinancialForce Forecasting for Services Companies



The latest release of FinancialForce PSA enables services companies to forecast every part of their business with greater predictability, accuracy, and visibility. New forecasting and predictive capabilities include:



-- Predictability - Real time forecasting combining both Services opportunities and projects under execution offering a single source of truth (available due to the seamless connection between CRM and PSA on the platform) -- Accuracy - Forecast based on how revenue will be delivered by applying "curves" to Opportunities and unscheduled backlog - Flexibility in forecast elements including Actuals, Expenses, scheduled assignments and milestones, resource requests and Backlog - Configurable weighing of forecast elements and forecast category definition -- Visibility - Roll up forecasts to Region, Practice and Group - Leverage both SalesForce reporting and Einstein Analytics - Build different forecast scenarios



This enhanced ability to forecast delivered revenue compliments the depth already offered in terms of resource forecasting, from the Opportunity through Project Delivery and our ASC606/IFRS15 compliant Revenue Recognition capabilities for services.



Caption: Easily aggregate forecast data across multiple factors and inputs-including services pipeline and projects-using Salesforce Einstein dashboard capabilities



FinancialForce Shift Management for Services Companies



FinancialForce PSA also now includes new Shift Management functionality, enabling organizations to rapidly adapt their delivery models with integrated scheduling tools across traditional projects and shifts. New capabilities include:



-- Rapid creation of multiple team assignments using schedule templates -- Advanced team and individual shift planning and scheduling -- Fully integrated shift and project management using one platform -- Real time staff visibility, updates, and reporting



FinancialForce PSA Leads the New Services Economy



Purpose-built for today's services-driven organizations, FinancialForce PSA seamlessly unifies data across the entire customer experience, increasing utilization and billing rates, project profitability, revenue, cash flow, and employee and customer satisfaction.



Multiple independent industry analyst reports recently recognized FinancialForce as a leading solution in the PSA market, as it uniquely joins front and back office systems to support the entire services lifecycle from opportunities and delivery to billing and collections.



-- In IDC's MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled PSA ERP Applications 2017 Vendor Assessment, FinancialForce was rated a Leader. -- According to the latest G2 Crowd PSA Report, FinancialForce PSA was rated as a Leader, based on customer satisfaction and market presence. G2Crowd also recently ranked FinancialForce PSA in the top 3 PSA Software Providers for Enterprise. -- Year on year FinancialForce customer consistently rank in SPI Research's Best of the Best Professional Services Organisations list



About FinancialForce



FinancialForce is the leading cloud ERP for the new services economy. The #1 ERP native to the Salesforce platform, FinancialForce unifies data across the enterprise in real-time, enabling companies to rapidly evolve their business models with customers at the center. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in San Francisco, FinancialForce is backed by Salesforce Ventures, Technology Crossover Ventures, Advent International, and UNIT4. For more information, visit www.financialforce.com.



Media Contact: Julie Walsh Senior Media Relations Manager, FinancialForce jwalsh@financialforce.com +44(0)7580 313 951

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Lee University will host Q Union on Thursday from 7-9 p.m. in the Conn Center in partnership with Q Ideas.

We look forward to hosting Q Union on our campus and being part of this national conversation, said Dr. Mike Hayes, vice president for student development. This event marks 20 years since we began offering leadership development experiences for our students. Q Union is an exciting step forward for us.

The theme of the event is Healing Our Divided Nation. Q Union is a one-night event that connects universities across the nation. Through immersive learning experiences, active leaders are invited to think, process, and reevaluate their own approaches to difficult conversations. According to its website, Q is for those who are hungry to shape the future of culture.

Three speakers will be livestreamed in addition to three live student-led talks. The evening will also feature time for response conversation.

The simulcast speakers for the evening include David Brooks, cultural commentator at The New York Times, who will speak on cultivating virtue. Dr. Kara Powell, the executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute, will speak on confronting technology addiction. Jason Petty, also known by his artist name of Propaganda, will talk on the current complicated cultural environment of the United States.

Savannah Stone, a junior public relations and graphic design major at Lee, will speak on living a distilled life. Antonio Thompson, a senior pastoral ministries major, will talk about the conflict of obedience. Rachel Rutledge, a junior psychology major, will speak on the topic of insincere faith.

I think students on our campus are hungry for events like Q Union, said Ms. Stone. We want to be challenged and to talk about the tension we experience in our culture and in our own lives. Rather than speaking about what divides our nation, I want to dive into how we can actually make the changes we want to see in the world.

Q Union is part of Q, a learning community that encourages Christians to advance the common good in society. Q was founded by Gabe and Rebekah Lyons in 2007. Both Gabe and Rebekah have spoken at Lee Chapel services, with Rebekah most recently speaking during an evening Convocation service.

This event is free, non-ticketed, and open to the public.

For more information about Q Union, visit https://www.qunion.co/lee-university. For more information about Q Ideas, visit http://qideas.org/. For more information about the event, contact the Office of Student Development at 614-8406.
Adaptive Financial Consulting, the global financial technology consultancy, has opened an office in New York City.

Focusing on quality of delivery, Adaptive has a proven track record working with clients to design, build and operate bespoke front-to-back solutions such as electronic trading systems, real-time workflow applications, and digital platforms. A unique blend of technical and business knowledge and experience enables Adaptive to deliver with their clients, rather than to them.

Adaptive's architectural approach combines flexibility and development velocity with high availability and resiliency to deliver using best-in-class technologies which are battle-hardened and ideal for mission-critical solutions. Specializing in real time information distribution, the bespoke solutions provided by Adaptive give clients a competitive advantage by ensuring modern and innovative outcomes which are aligned with the business goals.

A presence in New York presents Adaptive with the opportunity to continue their organic growth strategy and adds to existing offices in London, Montreal, and Barcelona. Tapping into the rich financial services talent available in New York, Adaptive will build an industry-leading team of specialized and experienced consultants, seeded with teams from existing offices, to continue to provide superior software development and operational capabilities for financial services and fintech firms.

"New York is key to our desire to stay close to our clients. Having a significant presence in another of the world's major financial centers will enable us to effectively grow our current relationships, and to develop new ones. Our market analysis points to a genuine demand for our experience and style of engagement, and we expect to continue delivering successfully with our clients."

Fergus Keenan, Director USA, Adaptive Financial Consulting Inc.

About Adaptive: Adaptive is a global financial technology consultancy with clients throughout Europe and America, supported by offices in London, Barcelona, Montreal and New York. Their clients include tier-1 investment banks, brokers, asset management firms, commodity trading houses and fintech providers. They provide expertise in designing, building and operating bespoke software solutions such as electronic trading systems, real-time workflow solutions and digital platforms on internal infrastructure as well as public cloud.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024005854/en/

Contacts:

Adaptive Financial Consulting

Business enquiries

Fergus Keenan

Director USA

fergus@weareadaptive.com

| +1 917 722 1179

or

Media inquiries

Silvia Torres

Communications Officer

silvia@weareadaptive.com

www.weareadaptive.com
CHATSWORTH, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 -- Trimax Corporation, Inc. (OTC PINK: TMXN) (the "Company") and its wholly owned subsidiary Saavy Naturals Inc., are pleased to announce the creation of a new line of quality cost effective body care products geared towards big-box retailers and their consumers.

Saavy Naturals Everyday is the company's answer to repeated demands for a quality, all-natural body care line, that will set the bar for luxurious body care products that can be purchased at a cost conscience price. Saavy Naturals expects Saavy Naturals Everyday and its new soaps, lotions and bath bombs to be easily accessible to consumers under its own brand and marketing label at various big-box retailers over the next several weeks.

The Company is also pleased to announce the appointment of Beverly Hills, CA based Diversified Repackaging a/k/a US Merchants ("USM") as their exclusive representative for the branding, marketing, packaging and distribution to Walmart for the Saavy Naturals Everyday product line.

US Merchants packages and distributes popular consumer products onto palletized displays. Their products are carried by national retailers such as Costco, Sam's Club, B.J.'s Wholesale Clubs, Walmart and Target. The company also manufactures a popular line of plastic consumer storage containers under the Greenmade brand name that are sold at major retailers across the United States. As a vertically integrated company, USM's success was forged in part because the company offers customers a turnkey solution that includes everything from package and graphic design to manufacturing and distribution. This enables them to offer clients a superior level of quality and service. Over the years, the company has built strong relationships with retail buyers and executives, who rely upon USM not only for services, but also for advice about nearly every aspect of retailing, packaging and distribution. Today, USM operates from a corporate office located in Beverly Hills, CA, and five manufacturing, packaging and distribution facilities throughout North America

US Merchants:

http://www.u-s-merchants.com/

http://u-s-merchants.com/where.pdf

Hugo Saavedra, CEO of Trimax Corporation and Saavy Naturals Inc., stated, "We are extremely pleased to announce our new line of all natural, cost-conscience body care products, geared specifically for consumers who like the convenience of shopping at big-box retailers. This new line represents our commitment to make our luxurious body care products available to all consumers nationwide." He also stated, "We are also extremely pleased to be working with Jeff Green and US Merchants. We have recently appointed them as our exclusive representatives for the Saavy Naturals Everyday product line. Their experience spanning over 34 years with virtually every big-box retailer in the US and Canada offers unparalleled experience in branding, marketing, packaging and distribution. Their ongoing relationships with big box retailers, their buyers and executives, will prove to be invaluable in making our new product line accessible to every day consumers."

Hugo and Debra Saavedra, Saavy Naturals Inc.'s, CEO and President, gained instant popularity for their all-natural body care product line after being spotlighted and appearing on ABC's hit show Shark Tank. The Sharks took an instant liking to Hugo and Debra, their love story, their previous success in the body care industry, and the superior quality of their all-natural product. Hugo and Debra have since increased the company's product line exposure with several highlighted television features on The Home Shopping Network and are currently working on additional television marketing opportunities.

Saavy Naturals Inc. on Shark Tank:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/puxk9o2psttkxqi/SAAVY-SHARKTANK-2.mov?dl=0

Saavy Naturals Inc. on HSN:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm9-NHZA6Vs

About Trimax Corporation:

Trimax Corporation, through its wholly owned subsidiary, Saavy Naturals Inc., offers a complete line of Natural Skin Care products, which includes body creams, body scrubs, body wash, shampoos, conditioners, handcrafted soaps, bath bombs, bath salts and candles. Saavy Naturals products are 100% natural, vegan, gluten-free, soy free, cruelty-free, non-GMO, and food-grade. Currently, Saavy Naturals can be found in some of the largest natural retail stores and exclusive boutiques and spas across the nation. Some of the retailers include Whole Foods Market in the Northeast and Southern California regions, Gelson's Market, Vitamin Cottage, Bristol Farms, Erewhon, and Lazy Acres. Additionally, Saavy Naturals products can be purchased through numerous online retailers, including http://www.Amazon.com, and http://www.Saavynaturals.com.

For more information please visit our website:

http://www.saavynaturals.com

Social Media Links:

http://www.facebook.com/saavynaturals

http://www.instagram.com/Saavynaturals

http://www.twitter.com/saavynaturals

Safe Harbor

This release contains statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements appear in a number of places in this release and include all statements that are not statements of historical fact regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of Trimax Corporation Inc., its directors or its officers with respect to, among other things: (i) financing plans; (ii) trends affecting its financial condition or results of operations; (iii) growth strategy and operating strategy. The words "may," "would," "should," "will," "expect," "estimate," "can," "believe," "potential" and similar expressions and variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Trimax Corporation Inc.'s ability to control, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. More information about the potential factors that could affect the business and financial results is and will be included in Trimax Corporation Inc.'s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Public Relations and Shareholder Information:

Joseph M. Vazquez III

Phone: (800) 985-5711

Email: infinityglobalconsulting@gmail.com




Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - October 24, 2017) - Canuc Resources Corporation ("Canuc" or the "Company") (TSXV: CDA) is pleased to announce that the Company has entered into a definitive agreement (the "Agreement") to acquire title to a mining concession which has an area of 151.1443 hectares (the "Concession") from Minerales y Carbones de Mexico S.A. de C.V. ("Carbones").

The Agreement calls for Carbones to transfer title to the Concession for total consideration of US$100,000 (the "Purchase Price"). The Purchase Price will be satisfied by delivery of 150,000 common shares of Canuc and USD$50,000 in cash. Canuc has received conditional approval for the issuance of its shares and the Expedited Acquisition of title to the Concession, subject to receipt of all required TSX-V filings.

The newly acquired mining concession envelops existing land holdings to the northeast. Early exploration has determined that silver-gold mineralization strengthens to the northeast. There is a distinct possibility that silver bearing breccia and stockwork zones will be confirmed along this trend as exploration progresses. The confirmation of silver-gold bearing breccia zones, uncovered on surface, would mark a change in prospects for a significant mineral discovery at San Javier.

Two such silver-gold bearing breccia bodies have already been documented, Cerro Colorado and Carranza. Three more breccia bodies have been discovered this month. All of these breccia bodies are exposed on surface and occur at the intersection of the known NE-SW trending San Javier Mineralized Corridor with recently recognized north-south faults.

"The discovery of mineralized breccia zones on surface would be of considerable importance. Confirmation of silver-gold mineralized breccia zones would quickly shift our focus from the proven high grade veins to these larger bulk tonnage type targets. This would have a major impact on the Company's future." stated Hub Mockler, Executive Chairman.

About Canuc

Canuc is a junior resources company whose principal focus is exploration and development of the San Javier Silver-Gold Project located 146 km east of Hermosillo in Sonora State, Mexico. The company also generates cash flow from natural gas production in Central West Texas, where Canuc has an interest in nine producing gas wells, and has rights for further in field developments.

John Nebocat, BSc (Geological Engineering), P. Eng, Vice President Exploration for Canuc, is the Qualified Person for the Company, as defined by NI 43-101, and has reviewed and approved the contents of this press release.

Disclaimer and Forward-Looking Statements

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements: This news release contains forward-looking statements that include risks and uncertainties. When used in this news release, the words "estimate", "project", "anticipate", "expect", "intend", "believe", "hope", "may" and similar expressions, as well as "will", "shall" and other indications of future tense, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and apply only as of the date on which they were made. The factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in such forward-looking statements include changes in the prevailing price of gold, the prevailing price of natural gas, the Canadian-United States exchange rate, amount of gas produced that could affect revenues and production costs. Other factors such as uncertainties regarding government regulations could also affect the results. Other risks may be set out in the Company's annual financial statements and MD&A.
The 3-Day Summit for Advertisers will Take Place in Beautiful Aspen, Colorado from December 8-10, 2017

LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / October 24, 2017 / Heather Petersen, CEO and Founder of National Merchants Association (NMA), is pleased to announce that NMA will sponsor the upcoming ADSUM conference for the second year in a row.

To learn more about NMA and the services that they offer their clients, please visit https://www.nationalmerchants.com/.

As Petersen noted, National Merchants Association is a merchant services provider and global merchant advocacy group that works on behalf of businesses to eliminate the unnecessary and unreasonable costs associated with accepting credit card and electronic transactions.

NMA is recognized as one of the top e-commerce/card-not-present merchant services providers in the industry, she said, specializing in hard-to-place MIDs and offering unmatched partner agent support that includes customizable agent programs and industry-leading proprietary products.

As a committed advocate for merchants, agents and the payments industry as a whole, NMA participates each year in the Electronic Transaction Association (ETA) Annual Capitol Hill Fly-in where Petersen and top executives address members of the U.S. Congress and federal regulators on payments industry issues.

With a tagline of "We Work For You (R)," National Merchants Association was founded by Petersen on the idea that businesses need a merchant services provider to go above and beyond to meet and exceed their needs.

The core purpose of NMA is "To strengthen integrity in commerce through advocacy," and it is at the heart of everything NMA does, she noted.

Petersen said she and members of the team from NMA are excited to be part of the one-of-a-kind show in Aspen.

"As a payments processing leader and true merchant advocate, we look forward to making a lot of great contacts and finding ways to increase the profitability of their businesses," Petersen noted, adding that everyone from NMA is also anticipating forging new partnerships at ADSUM.

"ADSUM is very important to advertisers because an event like this reaffirms the fact that they indeed hold power and influence within their industries. National Merchants Association is a proud sponsor of ADSUM and looks forward to bringing our message of merchant advocacy from Capitol Hill to Aspen as we network with new contacts and make lasting partnerships."

ADSUM is expected to draw 500 attendees, noted a spokesperson for the event, including advertisers, affiliates, and vendors from around the world. Up 300 participants from just a year ago, the 500 attendees of this year's ADSUM will mean another conference sellout.

One of the main goals of ADSUM is to reveal how attendees can leverage Fortune 500 branding secrets to build a customer-and-loyalty-focused brand; this will include a keynote talk from branding expert Re Perez. In addition, ADSUM will feature eCommerce experts from Amazon who will discuss sustainable business models along with low-risk billing methods.

About National Merchants Association:

National Merchants Association is a global merchant advocacy group and a leader in merchant services dedicated to helping merchants and agent partners grow their businesses by generating sales opportunities and maximizing profits. National Merchants Association works on behalf of businesses to eliminate the unnecessary and unreasonable fees associated with accepting electronic transactions and provides products and services to help them continue to be successful. Visit www.NationalMerchants.com or call 866-509-7199 for more information.

About ADSUM 2017:

ADSUM is the premiere Advertisers Summit. The event will be held in Aspen, CO December 8-10, 2017. Learn more or register today at https://event.adsum.net/.

Contact:





Lindsay Sugarman

information@nationalamerchants.com

866-509-7199

National Merchants Association
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 -- CannaRoyalty Corp. (CSE: CRZ)(CSE: CRZ.CN)(CNSX: CRZ)(OTCQX: CNNRF) ("CannaRoyalty" or the "Company"), an active investor and operator in the legal cannabis industry, is pleased to announce that the grand opening of Alternative Medical Enterprises, LLC's ("AltMed") inaugural MuV by AltMed dispensary (the "Dispensary") in Phoenix, Arizona, exceeded expectations. The Dispensary, the first of several planned for the state, brings the entire award-winning line of MuV cannabis infused products together in a single location and offers order-ahead pickup and delivery. AltMed also continues to offer its popular MuV products wholesale to many other dispensaries across the state.

"The successful grand opening of the first MuV by AltMed dispensary in Arizona is an important milestone for AltMed and for CannaRoyalty shareholders," said Marc Lustig, CEO of CannaRoyalty. "With its proven management team and suite of award-wining cannabis products, AltMed is well-positioned for sustainable growth. We congratulate the AltMed team on their success and look forward to continued progress from the company's efforts in both Arizona and Florida."

AltMed CEO Michael Smullen added, "We had over 1,000 patients visit our Phoenix dispensary during the grand opening week and we generated sales well ahead of our expectations. I want to thank all the AltMed employees who quickly and efficiently dealt with the line-ups and demand. We look forward to continued momentum as we roll-out additional dispensaries across the state over the next 12 months and as we enter the Florida market."

Under CannaRoyalty's previously announced royalty arrangement with AltMed, the Company will continue to receive a 3.5% royalty on the net sales of MuV products until July 2026. The Company also holds an 8.3% ownership stake in AltMed, with licensing rights for MuV products in California, Nevada, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon, and Puerto Rico. CR Advisory also has a relationship with AltMed.

MuV products are expected to be available in Florida via MuV by AltMed dispensaries and through delivery in the first quarter of 2018.

MuV

The MuV brand of cannabis infused products was launched in Arizona in 2016 and has quickly gained international attention and recognition. In its first six months alone, MuV received four best of Arizona medical cannabis awards, including two first prizes for its proprietary extractions that are the basis of all MuV products.

About AltMed

Alternative Medical Enterprises, LLC, headquartered in Sarasota, FL and doing business as AltMed Enterprises, is a fully integrated company that brings pharmaceutical industry precision to the development, production and dispensing of medical cannabinoids.

About CannaRoyalty

CannaRoyalty is an active investor and operator in the legal cannabis sector. Our focus is building and supporting a diversified portfolio of growth-ready assets in high-value segments of the cannabis sector, including research, consumer brands, devices and intellectual property. Our management team combines a hands-on understanding of the cannabis industry with seasoned financial know-how, assembling a platform of holdings via royalty agreements, equity interests, secured convertible debt, licensing agreements and its own branded portfolio.

Forward Looking Statements

Statements in this news release that are forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in CannaRoyalty's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. When used in this news release, words such as "will, could, plan, estimate, expect, intend, may, potential, believe, should," and similar expressions, are forward- looking statements.

Forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements including the Company's expectations with respect to pursuing new opportunities and its future growth and other statements of fact.

Although CannaRoyalty has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements, there can be other factors that cause results, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended, including, but not limited to: dependence on obtaining regulatory approvals; investing in target companies or projects which have limited or no operating history and are engaged in activities currently considered illegal under US Federal Laws; changes in laws; limited operating history; reliance on management; requirements for additional financing; competition; hindering market growth and state adoption due to inconsistent public opinion and perception of the medical-use and adult-use marijuana industry and; regulatory or political change.

There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate or that management's expectations or estimates of future developments, circumstances or results will materialize. As a result of these risks and uncertainties, the results or events predicted in these forward-looking statements may differ materially from actual results or events.

Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release. CannaRoyalty disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such information, except as required by applicable law, and CannaRoyalty does not assume any liability for disclosure relating to any other company mentioned herein.

Contacts:

Marc Lustig, CEO

info@cannaroyalty.com

1-844-556-5070

www.cannaroyalty.com



Jonathan Ross

LodeRock Advisors Inc.

jon.ross@loderockadvisors.com

416-283-0178




BANGALORE, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

1. Highlights of financial results for the quarter and half year ended September 30, 2017

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130122/589162 )

Q2 revenues grew sequentially by 2.9% in USD terms; 2.2% in constant currency terms

Q2 revenues grew 5.4% year-on-year in USD terms

Q2 operating margin at 24.2%, as compared to 24.1% in Q1 18

Q2 net margins improved to 21.2%, as compared to 20.4% in Q1 18

Q2 Basic EPS was $ 0.25, sequential growth of 7.0% and year-on-year growth of 7.3%

H1 year-on-year revenue growth at 5.7% in reported terms; 5.5% in constant currency terms

Liquid assets including cash and cash equivalents and investments were at $6,340 million as on September 30, 2017

Utilization excluding trainees at all-time high of 84.7%

Declared interim dividend of '13 per share, compared to an interim dividend of '11 per share in FY 17

FY 18 revenue guidance at 5.5%-6.5% in constant currency. Operating margin guidance unchanged at 23%-25%

Financial Highlights

Consolidated results under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for the quarter ended September 30, 2017

Revenues were $ 2 , 728 million for the quarter ended September 3 0 , 201 7

QoQ growth of 2.9 % in reported terms; 2.2 % in constant currency terms

YoY growth of 5.4 % in reported terms; 4.6 % in constant currency terms

Operating profit was $ 659 million for the quarter ended September 3 0 , 201 7

QoQ growth of 3.4 %; YoY growth of 2.4 %

Net profit was $578 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2017

QoQ growth of 7.0%; YoY growth of 7.3%

Consolidated results under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) for the half year ended September 30, 2017

Revenues were $5,379 million for the half year ended September 30, 2017

YoY growth of 5.7% in reported terms; 5.5% in constant currency terms

Operating profit was $1,298 million for the half year ended September 30, 2017

YoY growth of 4.1%

Net profit was $ 1,119 million for the half year ended September 30, 2017

YoY growth of 6.6%

"We continue to focus on executing on the theme of software enabled services and on accelerating growth of our new services portfolio." said U B Pravin Rao, Interim CEO and Managing Director. "During the quarter, we responded quickly to the management and Board changes through proactive communication with all stakeholders minimizing any negative impact to the business and allowing us to deliver growth across all our large industry units."

"Our focus on improving operational efficiencies enabled us to deliver stable margins in the quarter and at the same time provide compensation increases and higher variable payouts to our employees." said M. D. Ranganath, CFO. "We have taken several steps during the quarter towards our capital allocation policy covering '13,000 crore share buyback, coupled with interim dividend of '13 per share for enhancing shareholder returns."

2. Outlook for FY 2018

The Company's outlook (consolidated) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2018, under IFRS is as follows:

Revenues are expected to grow 5.5%-6.5% in constant currency*;

Revenues are expected to grow 6.5%-7.5% in USD terms based on the exchange rates as of September 30, 2017 **

*FY 17 constant currency rates - AUD/USD - 0.75; Euro/USD - 1.09; GBP/USD - 1.30

**Currency rates as of September 30, 2017 - AUD/USD - 0.78; Euro/USD - 1.18; GBP/USD - 1.34

3. Update on share buyback

The Board, at its meeting on August 19, 2017, approved a proposal for the Company to buyback its fully paid-up equity shares of face value of '5 each from the eligible equity shareholders of the Company for an amount not exceeding '13,000 crore (approximately $2 billion). The Buyback offer comprises a purchase of upto 113,043,478 Equity Shares aggregating upto 4.92% of the paid-up equity share capital of the Company at a price of '1,150 per Equity share. The buyback is proposed to be made from all eligible equity shareholders (including those who become equity shareholders as on the Record date by cancelling American Depository Shares and withdrawing underlying Equity shares) of the Company as on the Record Date (i.e. November 1, 2017) on a proportionate basis through the "Tender offer" route. The shareholders approved the said proposal of Buyback of Equity Shares through the postal ballot concluded on October 7, 2017. The Company haspublished a Public Announcement on October 10, 2017 for the buyback of its shares through a tender offer and has submitted the Draft Letter of Offer to regulatory authorities for their comments.

4. Strategy Refresh

Over the past eight weeks, members of the management team and the Committee of Directors undertook a comprehensive strategy refresh exercise. With the objective of outlining a sharpened strategic direction, they reviewed allprograms across the organization, accelerated execution plans and prioritized key areas of investments across the services and software portfolios.

Animportant outcome of the exercise is a reassertion that our strategic direction will continue to be driven with a portfolio of market relevant design, consulting and technology services, enabled by software. The successful execution of this strategy positions us as the partner our clients can count on to accelerate their digital transformation journey.

5. CEO search and shareholder consultation

The process of identifying the next CEO and shareholder consultation outreach have been initiated and are progressing well.

6. Review of Investigations

As previously indicated, the Chairman has conducted a review of all the external investigationsinto certain anonymous complaints the Company hadpreviously received. Thereview covered a range of matters described below,includingthe acquisition ofPanaya which was completed by the Company in February 2015 and the severance payments to the former CFO.

After careful consideration led by our Chairman, the Boardreaffirms thepreviousfindingsof external investigationsthat there is no merit to the allegations of wrongdoing.

Mr. Nilekani, Chairman of the Board,said. "Ibelievethat all stakeholders actedout of a strong passion forInfosys, wantingwhatthey believed to bethe best for the Company and to see it succeed. In light of my review of these matters, I am fully persuaded, as is the entire Board, that the conclusions of the independent investigations are correct. This Board and I are committed to the highest standards of professionalism and will dealpromptly and decisively with any governance issues should they ever come up in the future."

In certain respects, as the Board has previously noted, the severance payments to the Company's former CFO could have been better handled, and the Company has identified opportunities for improvements in processes andpractices, which have been implemented. While the disclosures in this regard were timely, based on the feedback received, the Company has since December 2016 adopted a practice of disclosing the severance payment to key managerial personnel ("KMP") at the time of their departure, making the disclosures sooner than required. Additionally, the Company has now globally benchmarked its severance pay and revised its senior management employment contracts.

As previously noted, these external investigations were comprehensive and robust.The investigation conducted by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Control Risks, neither of whom had any prior dealings with Infosys, also included a review of the previous two investigations conducted by Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas ("CAM"). They concluded that CAM's two previous investigations were thorough and their findings and conclusions were reasonable and credible based on the evidence. Gibson Dunn's investigation was led by Charles Stevens and Benjamin Wagner, both Presidentially-appointed former senior prosecutors in the U.S. Department of Justice, each with several decades of experience in investigating and prosecuting fraud and business crimes. The investigation involved interviews of over 50 witnesses globally, a review of company policies, Board minutes, public filings and internal documents, the collection, search and review by Gibson Dunn attorneys of many thousands of internal emails and attachments, the use of forensic accounting experts to analyze technical and financial information, the review of media accounts and public records in multiple countries, the review of the previous investigation reports issued by CAM and supporting documentation, and other investigative measures. No limitations or restrictions were placed on the investigating team from accessing information, and the Company and the relevant directors and employees cooperated fully.

Among other things, the review reaffirmed the conclusion of the independent investigation that there was no merit to the allegations of wrongdoing withrespect to the acquisition ofPanaya. Thereview also confirmed thatthe Company made appropriate and timely disclosures relating to severance payments to the former CFOat the end of the quarter of his resignation, and subsequently in the Company's 20-F and Annual Report.

Unlike the practice followed inthe past, the Company published the summary findings of these investigations, given the attention these mattershad received. A copy of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher's memorandum to the Audit Committee with the summaryfindings of the investigationis attached as an Annexure.

After careful re-consideration,the Company has concluded that publishing additional details of the investigation would inhibit the Company's ability to conduct effective investigations into any matter in the future. Confidentiality is critical to ensuring the candor and cooperation ofwhistleblowers and other participants in any investigative process. The precedent of releasing the full investigation reports could impair the cooperation of participants should the need for an investigation arise in the future.

Mr. Nilekani added, "As the Company moves forward to a more stable environment I am gratefulto all the well-wishers of the Company, including Mr. Narayana Murthy, for their deeply held passion forInfosys. The Board will continue to represent the interest of all the shareholders. I would also like to acknowledge the leadership roleMr. Narayana Murthy has played in building this iconic institution and in corporate governance matters.Going forward, it is our endeavour to build a trusting relationship with Mr. Murthy."

The Board notes that the questions and scrutiny in relationto these matterswerefuelledin part by the strong feelings that various stakeholders have for the Company and its success. Questions were raised by stakeholderswho have a deeply held passion for Infosys. The Board responded with equal passion and good faith.

The Board also firmly believes that it is time to put these issues to rest. It seeks the support of all stakeholders to look towardsthe future, and to collectively focus on strategy, operations, and growth.

7. Business highlights

This quarter we acquired Brilliant Basics, a London-based product design and customer experience (CX) innovator known for its world-class Design Thinking-led approach and experience in executing global programs. This acquisition will enhance our digital capabilities to drive transformation solutions for clients.

We further enhanced our global footprint by opening a new office in the Netherlands. We also made good progress on our commitment to hire 10,000 American workers over the next two years, and announced that we will open our North Carolina Technology and Innovation Hub in Raleigh.

Our investments in new services, especially Cloud Ecosystem, Big Data and Analytics, API and Micro services, Data and Mainframe Modernization, Cyber Security and IoT Engineering Services are showing promising results. Over the past quarter, these offerings have seen increased traction with clients, and currently contribute 9.4% of our revenues in Q2 18.

In addition, the nature of our client engagements continues to evolve, as we explore new models and go-to-market approaches.

CMA CGM Group, a world leader in container shipping, entered into a seven-year partnership with us aimed at simplifying and transforming CMA CGM's IT applications while improving their customer service experience. As part of this agreement, Infosys will open a Development Center in Marseille and will also acquire CMA CGM's Innovation and Delivery Center in Dubai .

Working with ATP, we announced the launch of the new 'PlayerZone' app and website, an extranet portal for ATP players, their support teams, coaches, and others in the ecosystem, which allows users to engage with each other and access information across a wide range of operational aspects related to life on Tour.

We launched a private cloud solution in collaboration with Micro Focus SUSE, a pioneer in open source software, providing software-defined data centre infrastructure and application delivery solutions. This solution will help businesses significantly accelerate their digital transformation journey by being hardware agnostic, enabling faster time to market through rapid adoption, providing faster delivery of services, and greater infrastructure agility and control.

Infosys and Adecco, a Fortune 500 company and a leading Global HR Solution Provider, are redefining the future of staffing through the co-creation of Adia - a Mobile-first, Cloud-based, end-to-end Digital Staffing Platform. Adia makes it possible for employers to find temporary staff for short term assignments and aims to revolutionise the industry by matching the demand and supply of talent across multiple industry segments including hospitality, events, logistics among several others. The platform is already live in six cities in Switzerland .

Our new software business continues to grow and contributed 1.6% to our revenue in Q2 18. We are leveraging offerings across Finacle, NIA, Edge, Panaya and Skava to streamline processes, drive business differentiation and elevate user experience for our clients.

In Q2, the EdgeVerve business delivered strong performance with 54 wins and 34 go-lives from both the Finacle and Edge suite of solutions across various markets.

Infosys NIA, our flagship Artificial Intelligence and Automation platform, continues its positive momentum and features in most large new deals. In addition, the platform has been used in many diverse business solutions including Loan Onboarding, Fraud Management, Demand Sensing, Predictive Costing, Contract Compliance, Procurement Automation and more. We are working with more than 100 clients on close to 200 engagements and see tremendous potential for the platform and business solutions going forward.

The AssistEdge RPA implementation at nbnTM was awarded the Winner in "RPA Excellence award for Customer Experience" at the AI and RPA for Enterprises event organized by IQPC Australia. The award recognizes key business outcomes delivered for nbnTM to support the scale required in year 2017.

Finacle continued to strengthen its position as a partner of choice for digital transformation and to enable new business models for banks. This quarter, Finacle announced three new Fintech partnerships with - Active.AI, to offer conversational banking services through chat and voice based interfaces across digital channels; Niki.ai, which offers a chat-based commerce platform for banking customers; and ToneTag, to offer a joint solution that will leverage sound wave technology to enable proximity payments and interactions. All these partners were on-boarded through the Finacle Connect Program.

Among key go-lives this quarter, Mediterranean Bank, a leading Maltese banks, went live on the Finacle Lending Module. The Bank replaced its existing lending solution with Finacle to provide a unified, consistent platform for its corporate customers. In yet another prominent implementation, DBS Hong Kong went live with the Finacle suite of solutions covering Deposits, Teller, Overdrafts, Clearing, ACH and Structured Products. The implementation program won the 'Core Banking System Initiative of the year - Hong Kong ' in The Asian Banking and Finance awards 2017.

Infosys is very proud to be associated with the prestigious GST project which is the largest tax project of its kind in the world. The system has already demonstrated success across several parameters - till date 37 crore invoices have been uploaded on the system while the system is designed to handle 300 to 320 crore invoices every month. 70 lakh tax payers have successfully migrated to the new system and the country has recorded 25 lakh new registered taxpayers. Central and state level tax regimes have been integrated with all 29 States and 7 Union Territories successfully migrating onto this system. In addition, the system is able to manage 1 Lakh active users and saw peak loads during the last two days of filing, with 50% of the filings done in that timeframe and 70% of the collection achieved with just 25% of server utilization, demonstrating the system's ability to manage scale.

Any large project of this scale, especially a transformative one like this has to deal with changes in both policy and stakeholder usability. Some of these modifications have resulted in rapid changes to the system particularly due to its integration with heterogeneous IT ecosystems including GST Suvidha Providers, Aadhar, Central Board of Excise and Customs and Model 1 states. Given the complex nature of the project and rapid change management, there have been several stakeholder concerns that have also been raised. Some of our finest engineers are supporting the GSTN team as they work towards resolving these and serving all stakeholders.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Infosys has been inducted into the prestigiousDow Jones Sustainability Indices(DJSI) and is now part of the DJSI World and DJSI Emerging Markets Indices

Infosys positioned as a Leader in Everest Group's Life & Pensions (L&P) insurance AO PEAK Matrix TM

Infosys positioned as a Leader in Everest Group's Insurance AO PEAK Matrix TM

Infosys positioned as a Leader in Winner's Circle in the HfS Blueprint: Application Development and Management Services 2017

Infosys positioned as a Leader in Winner's Circle in the HfS Blueprint: Energy Operations 2017

Infosys positioned as a Leader in Winner's Circle in the HfS Blueprint: Application Testing Services 2017

Infosys positioned as a Leader in Winner's Circle in the HfS Blueprint: IT Infrastructure Management and Enterprise Cloud

Infosys was awarded the Microsoft Platform Modernization Award and the World Wide Cloud & System Integrator Intelligent Cloud Alliance Partner at Microsoft Inspire 2017

Finacle positioned as a leader in digital banking offerings in the prestigious Forrester Wave : Digital Banking Engagement Platforms 2017

: Digital Banking Engagement Platforms 2017 Finacle was positioned as a Leader for the 10th time in Gartner's Magic Quadrant - Global Retail Core Banking 2017

About Infosys Ltd.

Infosys is a global leader in technology services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countries to create and execute strategies for their digital transformation. From engineering to application development, knowledge management and business process management, we help our clients find the right problems to solve, and to solve these effectively.Our team of 198,000+ innovators, across the globe, is differentiated by the imagination, knowledge and experience, across industries and technologies that we bring to every project we undertake.

Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise thrive in the digital age.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements mentioned in this release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. These filings are available atwww.sec.gov Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law.

Infosys Limited and subsidiaries

Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets as of

(Dollars in millions except equity share data)

September 30, 2017 March 31, 2017 ASSETS Current assets Cash and cash equivalents 3,575 3,489 Current investments 1,857 1,538 Trade receivables 2,056 1,900 Unbilled revenue 633 562 Prepayments and other current assets 797 749 Derivative financial instruments 1 44 Total current assets 8,919 8,282 Non-current assets Property, plant and equipment 1,814 1,807 Goodwill 580 563 Intangible assets 107 120 Investment in associate - 11 Non-current investments 945 984 Deferred income tax assets 111 83 Income tax assets 956 881 Other non-current assets 119 123 Total non-current assets 4,632 4,572 Total assets 13,551 12,854 LIABILITIES AND EQUITY Current liabilities Trade payables 82 57 Derivative financial instruments 10 - Current income tax liabilities 700 599 Client deposits 2 5 Unearned revenue 306 274 Employee benefit obligations 228 209 Provisions 64 63 Other current liabilities 1,025 954 Total current liabilities 2,417 2,161 Non-current liabilities Deferred income tax liabilities 29 32 Other non-current liabilities 21 24 Total liabilities 2,467 2,217 Equity Share capital- '5 ($0.16) par value 2,400,000,000 (2,400,000,000) equity shares authorized, issued and outstanding 2,286,087,194 (2,285,655,150), net of 10,901,258 (11,289,514) treasury shares as of September 30, 2017 (March 31, 2017), respectively 199 199 Share premium 592 587 Retained earnings 12,571 12,190 Cash flow hedge reserve (1) 6 Other reserves 108 - Other components of equity (2,385) (2,345) Total equity attributable to equity holders of the company 11,084 10,637 Non-controlling interests - - Total equity 11,084 10,637 Total liabilities and equity 13,551 12,854

Infosys Limited and subsidiaries

Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income

(Dollars in millions except share and per equity share data)

Three months Three months Six months Six months ended ended ended ended September September September September 30, 2017 30, 2016 30, 2017 30, 2016 Revenues 2,728 2,587 5,379 5,088 Cost of sales 1,743 1,638 3,435 3,231 Gross profit 985 949 1,944 1,857 Operating expenses: Selling and marketing expenses 132 134 269 271 Administrative expenses 194 171 377 340 Total operating expenses 326 305 646 611 Operating profit 659 644 1,298 1,246 Other income, net 137 114 263 226 Share in associate's profit / (loss) - (1) - (1) Write-down of investment in associate - - (11) - Profit before income taxes 796 757 1,550 1,471 Income tax expense 218 218 431 421 Net profit 578 539 1,119 1,050 Other comprehensive income Items that will not be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss: Re-measurements of the net defined benefit liability/asset 1 (6) 1 (9) Cumulative impact on reversal of unrealized gain on quoted debt securities on adoption of IFRS 9 - - - (5) Equity instruments through other comprehensive income, net - - - - Items that will be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss: Fair value changes on investments, net 2 - 6 - Fair value changes on derivatives designated as cash flow hedge, net 3 - (7) - Foreign currency translation (107) 119 (47) (54) Total other comprehensive income, net of tax (101) 113 (47) (68) Total comprehensive income 477 652 1,072 982 Profit attributable to: Owners of the Company 578 539 1,119 1,050 Non-controlling interests - - - - 578 539 1,119 1,050 Total comprehensive income attributable to: Owners of the Company 477 652 1,072 982 Non-controlling interests - - - - 477 652 1,072 982 Earnings per equity share Basic ($) 0.25 0.24 0.49 0.46 Diluted ($) 0.25 0.24 0.49 0.46 Weighted average equity shares used in computing earnings per equity share 2,285,865,36 2,285,641,71 2,285,762,18 2,285,632,08 Basic 1 0 6 1 2,287,526,18 2,285,949,30 2,287,882,53 2,285,875,98 Diluted 3 3 4 8

NOTE:

1. The unaudited Condensed Consolidated Balance sheets and Condensed Consolidated Statements of Comprehensive Income for the three months and six months ended September 30, 2017 have been taken on record at the Board meeting held on October 24, 2017

2. A Fact Sheet providing the operating metrics of the company can be downloaded from www.infosys.com

3. During the quarter ended June 30, 2017, the Company has written down the entire carrying value of the investment in its associate DWA Nova LLC, an Infosys Innovation Fund Investment. The impact of write down on Q1 18 net profit is$11 million

IFRS-INR Press Release: https://www.infosys.com/investors/reports-filings/quarterly-results/2017-2018/q2/Documents/IFRS-INR-press-release.pdf

Fact Sheet: https://www.infosys.com/investors/reports-filings/quarterly-results/2017-2018/q2/Documents/fact-sheet.pdf





Contact

Investor Relations

Sandeep Mahindroo

+91-80-3980-1018

Sandeep_Mahindroo@infosys.com

Media Relations

Sarah Vanita Gideon

+91-80-4156-3998

Sarah_Gideon@infosys.com

Chiku Somaiya

+1-7136706752

Chiku.Somaiya@infosys.com
ORLANDO, FL -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 -- Fattmerchant, a payment technology provider saving businesses thousands with its subscription-based model, announces its expansion to Atlanta, a city known for its booming financial tech scene. Along with this move, the company is also announcing $5.5M in funding from Fulcrum Equity Partners, based in Atlanta, to continue its expansion plans and further develop its services. Fattmerchant is adding a location in Atlanta to connect with its partners in Georgia, continue to reach new clients and bring its proprietary technology to the flourishing market.

With 70 percent of the $4.4 trillion in payments processed in North America going through Atlanta, this expansion allows Fattmerchant to grow in the heart of payment processing. Fattmerchant provides businesses with innovative omni-channel technology and subscription-based payment processing, including no markups or unnecessary fees. The company is currently processing over $1 billion in transactional volume and has thousands of clients across the nation. Along with its client base, Fattmerchant is planning to double its culture-driven team in Atlanta.

"Expanding to Atlanta will help us grow our disruptive model and support thousands more business owners with better payment processing," said Suneera Madhani, CEO and founder of Fattmerchant. "Community is important to us, and introducing Atlanta to our omni-channel integrated payment technology and one-of-a-kind team is a crucial step in not only strengthening our national presence, but expanding in the nation's most prominent payment community."

"As the demand for streamlined Fintech payment services continues to increase, Fattmerchant has been modernizing omni-channel integrated payments to merchants for the past few years," said Jim Douglass of Fulcrum Equity Partners. "Our goal is to work with innovators that can not only build great technology to change up an important industry, but manage the logistics to do it well. We look forward to seeing Fattmerchant continue to grow on a national level."

Fattmerchant is looking to add more than 50 jobs outside of its Orlando headquarters in 2018, with the majority in its Atlanta hub. For more information about Fattmerchant and the company's services, visit www.fattmerchant.com.

About Fattmerchant

Fattmerchant is a payment technology provider offering direct-cost pricing, robust analytics, and omni-channel integrated payments solutions to businesses. Suneera Madhani and Sal Rehmetullah, CEO and COO of Fattmerchant respectively, founded the company in 2014 after working in the credit card processing industry for years, wanting to sell a technology that customers would be excited about. Fattmerchant offers plans for every business and brings the human touch back to payment processing.

Media Contact

Jessica Garcia

Uproar PR for Fattmerchant

321-236-0102

Email Contact




OSLO, NORWAY -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 -- Airthings, manufacturer of the first smart radon detector for continuous and easy use, today announces the results of a detailed survey targeting homeowners in the United States. The survey results highlight confusion among American homeowners regarding common threats that are present inside the home, and shows that most homeowners are not aware of the severity of indoor gases and which cause the most harm.

Key findings of the survey reveal that 38 percent of respondents believe that house fires are responsible for the most deaths annually, while 33 percent of survey respondents believe that carbon monoxide is responsible for the most deaths. In fact, it is radon that claims the most lives, killing approximately 21,000 Americans each year. Less than 6 percent of respondents chose radon, an invisible gas emitted from the ground that enters home, schools and buildings through a variety of different ways.

The data also suggests that homeowners' fears do not align with the precautions they take to protect themselves inside their homes. For example, while radon lingers in one in every 15 homes in the United States and is the number one cause of lung cancer among non-smokers, less than one percent of survey respondents have installed a radon detector -- this seems to contradict the fact that 92 percent of the respondents are afraid of long-term illness such as cancer. Additionally, less than 16 percent have installed a carbon monoxide detector, although there's an obvious fear of the odorless and colorless gas.

"Our study proves there should be more education around harmful gases lingering inside the home -- especially radon -- since homeowners are not testing for the silent killer," said yvind Birkenes, CEO of Airthings. "Most people are simply unaware of the dangers associated with radon and other odorless gases, and therefore are not monitoring indoor air quality effectively in their homes. Our mission is to generate awareness and bring an easy-to-use radon solution to the masses that can save lives."

The survey results also show that people are willing to spend money on preventative health measures like eating healthy (32 percent), regular doctor check-ups (26 percent) and working out (8 percent). According to the data, 29 percent of those surveyed spend money on all three of the aforementioned measures. This indicates a lack of education on how environmental factors, such as gases in the home, impact long-term health.

To find more information on radon and long-term detection options, visit Airthings website at www.airthings.com/us.

About Airthings

Airthings is a Norway-based company that develops and manufactures both professional and consumer-grade technology that has completely changed the way people monitor and analyze radon levels in indoor air. Founded in 2008, the company's products have made radon detection efforts easy to deploy, accurate and simple to understand - all of which are current challenges with other solutions on the market. Airthings is on a mission to ensure people around the world take control of their air quality through simple, affordable and accurate solutions. For more information, visit www.airthings.com/us.

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3176502



Media Contact:

Lauren Cozza

Uproar PR for Airthings

321.236.0102 x 234

Email Contact




Zoho Sprints Simplifies Iterative, Incremental Product Development

Zoho today announced the launch of Zoho Sprints, its agile project management solution. Available immediately, Zoho Sprints encourages teams to work iteratively and incrementally, over short periods of time, to quickly release potentially shippable products. Zoho Sprints follows the scrum framework and combines backlogs, agile reports, collaboration tools, and customizable scrum boards, making it ideal for software developers and other teams that follow the agile methodology.

"Developing new software is nothing like making trains run on time," said Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho. "It's more like laying train tracks through unknown terrain, which requires one to improvise and make decisions on the fly. Agile project management formalizes that spirit of improvisation, and Zoho Sprints brings that spirit to life for all agile teams."

Inside Zoho Sprints

The "Agile Manifesto" puts individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Unfortunately, the speed and simplicity advocated by the manifesto is nowhere to be found in today's clumsy, complicated apps for managing agile projects. With Zoho Sprints, agile project management finally becomes fast, easy, and clutter-free, enabling teams of all sizes to put all their energy and focus on building the best products possible. Zoho Sprints lets users:

Put a plan together with the Backlog. The Backlog is where Zoho Sprints users create user stories, tasks and bugs, which can be prioritized in to-do lists based on the business value they deliver. Estimation points, priority rating, and user assignments make it easy to break down the nuances of each user story.

Know where each task stands. The Scrum Board in Zoho Sprints lets teams see how far each work item has progressed. Work statuses can be customized so the Scrum Board reflects a team's personalized workflow.

Access analytics that enable change. Zoho Sprints produces real-time Velocity Charts, Burn-Down reports, and Cumulative Flow Diagrams, so the team can identify bottlenecks and estimate its progress. The Sprints Dashboard gives the snapshot of all activity in the project, so the big picture is always in sight.

Work with collaboration tools for both co-located and distributed teams: Zoho Sprints makes it easy to share progress, comment on developments and engage with the team from anywhere. The Meetings module lets teams schedule sprint reviews, retrospectives, and automate daily standup reminders. For social interaction, team members can use Feeds.

Track work hours: All users in Zoho Sprints can log billable and non-billable hours with Timesheet. Project owners and scrum masters can approve users' timesheets with just a click.

Pricing and Availability

Zoho Sprints is available immediately with user-based pricing that does not tie customers to contract slabs. The free plan supports up to five users and five projects. Paid plans start at $20 for 20 users per month and support an unlimited number of projects and features such as Timesheets and Sprint Replanning. Complete pricing details are available at here. Zoho Sprints is also included in Zoho One, the company's all-in-one suite of applications to run an entire business.

Additional Resources

Zoho Sprints website: https://www.zoho.com/sprints

Zoho news coverage: https://www.zoho.com/inthenews.html

Zoho press releases: https://www.zoho.com/press.html

Zoho videos: http://youtube.com/zoho

Zoho blogs: http://blogs.zoho.com

Zoho on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/zoho

Zoho on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/zoho

About Zoho

Zoho is the operating system for business-a single platform with all the applications needed to run a business entirely from the cloud. Businesses can acquire and manage customers using Zoho's marketing, sales and customer support applications like Campaigns, CRM, Desk and Assist; empower employees to create, store and distribute content on the cloud with Zoho's productivity and collaboration applications like Office, Mail, and Docs. Businesses can run their operations on Zoho's finance and HR applications like Books, People, and Recruit.

More than 30 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely on Zoho every day to run their businesses-including Zoho itself. Each business can choose to run the entire Zoho suite or just a single application. Zoho applications are available directly through zoho.com, or through an ecosystem of hundreds of worldwide Zoho partners.

Zoho is a division of Zoho Corp., a privately held and consistently profitable company with more than 5,000 employees. Zoho is headquartered in Pleasanton, California, with international headquarters in Chennai, India, and offices in Austin, Texas; London, U.K.; Yokohama, Japan; and Beijing, China. For more information, please visit https://www.zoho.com/.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024005367/en/

Contacts:

Zoho Corp.

Mason Herring, 512-583-3913

pr@zohocorp.com


BEIJING (dpa-AFX) - Chinese President Xi Jinping has emerged more powerful after the Communist Party's week-long 19th National Congress re-elected him for a second term, and voted to enshrine the leader's name and ideology in its constitution.



The Communist Party Constitution was amended to include 'Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as a new component of the Party's guide for action,' China's official news agency Xin Hua reported.



'Xi Jinping Thought' will now become part of China's curriculum, which the staff at state factories and 90 million Communist Party members also are supposed to study.



The Party Constitution, which is considered as the country's Constitution, had incorporated the ideologies of many party leaders in the past, but Xi Jin Ping is only the second leader in its 95 year history other than party founder Mao Zedong whose philosophy was described as 'thought', which is at the top of the ideological hierarchy.



The Communist Party congress, China's most important political meeting (CPC), also included Xi Jinping's 'military thinking' and the Party's 'absolute' leadership over the armed forces into its Constitution.



The revised Constitution calls to continue the fight against corruption.



Tuesday, the CPC finalized the make-up of powerful political bodies such as the Central Committee and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.



The new Central Committee will elect the higher-level Politburo on Wednesday.



Xi is widely expected to remain as party leader.



More than 2,000 delegates gathered in Beijing's Great Hall of the People endorsed the constitutional amendments and other decisions with overwhelming support.



'The aspirations of the people to live a better life must always be the focus of our efforts,' Xi said at the closing session of the CPC National Congress.



In the five years under Xi, China emerged stronger as a world power, marked by significant economic development, a push for modernization, and better relations with other countries. And the party envisages a new era of even more unity and wealth as well as making China disciplined at home and strong abroad.



China is the second biggest economy in the world after the US, but it has also seen growing authoritarianism, censorship and a crackdown on human rights under Xi.



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New Logan Square Coffee Shop To Be 100% Dedicated To Preventing Suicide

By Emma G. Gallegos in Food on Oct 23, 2017 8:33PM



The coffee shop will be located in the old Dill Pickle Co-op Space on Fullerton, pictured here (Google Maps)



Sip Of Hope rendering

Jonny Boucher, the CEO of the local nonprofit Hope for the Day, is partnering with the people behind Dark Matter for Sip of Hope, a new kind of coffee shop scheduled to open in spring. Boucher tells Chicagoist that it's not unusual for a venue to raise awareness and dedicate a certain percentage of their proceeds to this or that cause for a week or month. But day-in, day-out Sip Of Hope will not only be dedicating 100% of their proceeds to suicide prevention efforts but it will serve as outreach. It will fight the tradition of silence and stigma, and of suicidal people being told to suck it up. The shop's motto will be: it's okay to not be okay.

"If shit hits fan, and life's kicking you in the ass, you can come in," Boucher says. "And you don't have to worry about insurance."

Boucher happens to be friends with Dark Matter Coffee founder Jesse Diaz, and he's a big coffee fan, so the partnership came naturally.

Patrons looking for a cup of coffee or a place to do work will be able to walk into the shop and do their business as they would any other coffee place. But Sip Of Hope will have a prominent resource area for folks who might be struggling. There will be information on the coffee cups, too. The baristas will not only be trained in how to brew a solid cup of coffee, but they will also have the mental health equivalent of CPR training.

"Bartenders, baristas, barbers are the ones that get us through the day," Boucher says. "It's not a counseling session but it's a way to start a conversation."

The new space will have a sidewalk patio, and a 35-foot coffee bar inside. Though he considered other neighborhoodsincluding Uptown where his organization is currently basedhe's excited to be in Logan Square, a diverse and changing neighborhood.

Boucher had been a fan of the Dill Pickle Co-op's role in the community and its space, so he was excited when he was hunting for a location and saw that it was moving on to a bigger space. Boucher says, "The way I see it, one social enterprise was leaving, another is coming in to nurture a neighborhood and nurture a city."

He says his group is already partnering with the library across the street to offer free mental health first aid trainings, which he says is particularly important for first responders, like fire and police officers.

This shop reflects the philosophy behind Boucher's suicide prevention nonprofit, Hope for the Day. Rather than set up another resource center, Boucher's group aims to find struggling folks wherever they are at to deliver the message that you're far from alone if you're wrestling with mental health issuesand then it aims to connect people with the resources they need to address their crisis head on. Too many people are afraid to speak up before it's too late, he says.

Boucher says that while mental health issues are incredibly widespread, resources for them and outreach lag behind. Some groups that exist focus on particularly hard-hit populations, like veterans and the LGBT community, but Boucher wants to raise awareness that mental health issues can hit people from all walks of life. Boucher says nonprofits that are dedicated to delivering this message are often hamstrung by efforts that don't take into account the way life is actually lived.

A lot of Hope for the Day's suicide prevention efforts dovetail with the music community, which was where Boucher worked before he experienced one too many friends and colleagues losing their lives to suicide. He's asked musicians and even Michelin starred chefs to share their stories and break their silence so that people in all communities would know they weren't alone.

Hope for the Day recently partnered with 3 Floyds Brewing and the band Mastodon for a batch of beer with labels that listed resource numbers for people struggling. Partnering with a beer company might not fly at a traditional nonprofit, but because alcohol does play such a role in the lives of so many peopleBoucher has a relative who drank himself to deathBoucher didn't think he could afford not to partner with a beer company.

Sip of Hope is slated to open this spring, hopefully before May, which is mental health awareness month. If you're interested in sponsoring the coffee shop's opening, you can make a donation here. And on Dec. 2, there will be a fundraiser at WeWork Chicago to honor Diaz.

If someone you know exhibits warning signs of suicide: do not leave the person alone, remove any firearms, alcohol, drugs or sharp objects that could be used in a suicide attempt, and call the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255) or take the person to an emergency room or seek help from a medical or mental health professional. Hope for the Day has more resources available here.
Seattle, Washington--(Newsfile Corp. - October 24, 2017) - CFN Media Group ("CannabisFN"), the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to legal cannabis, announces publication of an article discussing Emerald Health Therapeutics (TSXV: EMH) (OTCQX: EMHTF) and its position in Canada's marijuana market. Canada's cannabis industry is projected to exceed $22.6 billion in size over the coming years as the country benefits from strong domestic and export demand. Despite licensed producers rapidly scaling up production, some analysts believe that there will be a shortfall in production given the high demand. Emerald Health has been under the radar with its modest existing production capacity, but the company is executing on plans to dramatically scale up production to market leadership levels.

Projected Industry Shortfall

The Canadian cannabis industry is projected to reach up to $22.6 billion in size over the coming years, according to Deloitte, driven by the legalization of adult-use marijuana next year. In addition to its domestic industry, the country has become a leading exporter of cannabis to medical marijuana markets around the world, since it will become the first G20 country to fully legalize medical and recreational cannabis on a national level next year.

Unfortunately, many analysts predict that demand will outstrip supply given the limited number of licensed producers of cannabis. According to PI Financial Corp. analysts, "With current production, funded capacity expansion, and potential yield improvements, we believe there is still a shortfall in production capacity of 187,885 kilograms." The analyst projects total demand of 610,000 kilograms and supply of just 422,115 kilograms by 2019.

This is good news for many existing licensed producers that have the funding and capabilities to expand their production capacity. A shortfall in production could translate to higher prices and profit margins until new licensed producers have an opportunity to ramp up production. Many licensed producers have responded by ramping up production in the 10s of thousands of kilograms per year to capitalize on the upcoming economics.

Emerald's Ambitious Plans

Emerald Health represents a unique opportunity in the space given its near-term abilities to scale up to 75,000 kilograms per year and long-term capabilities to build out some 5.8 million square feet of cultivation space. This compares to many existing licensed producers that are only targeting expansions of well under 50,000 kilograms per year, according to PI Financial Corp.'s estimates, with a total of just 272,405 in funded expansions.

The company's pilot facility in British Columbia has 3,000 square feet of cultivation capacity plus another 7,000 square feet at a recently licensed nearby facility, and it has tremendous expansion potential on its 32-acre property in Metro Vancouver. According to its investor presentation, the company plans to expand to 150,000 square feet of cultivation capacity at this facility in 2018 with a $10 million capex budget, which would yield about 10,000 kilograms per year in production capacity.

Aside from this facility, the company announced a partnership with Village Farms to utilize its existing 25-acre greenhouse in Delta, British Columbia. The facility is already built and must simply be converted to initially produce approximately 75,000 kilograms per year. This partnership has the option on additional existing greenhouses to expand by a further 3.7 million square feet over time, which would yield an incremental 225,000 kilograms per year in production capacity.

The Bottom Line

Emerald Health Therapeutics (TSXV: EMH) (OTCQX: EMHTF) is off-the-radar of many investors due to its small pilot facility that includes just 3,000 square feet of cultivation capacity. With its Village Farms agreement in place, the company is well positioned to catapult itself onto the scene with a 1.1 million square foot greenhouse capable of producing 75,000 kilograms per year. Its other projects could further expand capacity to a total of around 5.8 million square feet - which would make it a clear leader.

The company recently added to the management team. On October 2, 2017, Emerald Health announced the appointment of Chris Wagner as the new CEO.

Wagner brings additional biopharma expertise to EMH with over 25 years of pharmaceutical sector experience. Among the highlights from his resume are 10 years with Eli Lilly where he rose to Global Team Leader and obtained extensive product development and marketing experience launching products such as Cialis and Prozac. Included in his duties was work on 15 biologic and "small molecule" products. He also helped build Aspreva from a start-up into a billion dollar valuation in five years, consummated with a large-pharma buyout.

Unlike many reverse mergers, the company also has a clean cap structure, no debt, and represents a compelling opportunity for value investors in a space that's often characterized by excessive valuations based on current revenue and profitability.

Please follow the link to read the full article: http://www.cannabisfn.com/emerald-health-looks-address-canadas-cannabis-production-shortfall/

About CFN Media

CFN Media (CannabisFN) is the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to legal cannabis. We help marijuana businesses attract investors, customers (B2B, B2C), capital, and media visibility. Private and public marijuana companies and brands in the US and Canada rely on CFN Media to grow and succeed.

Learn how to become a CFN Media client company, brand or entrepreneur: http://www.cannabisfn.com/become-featured-company/

Download the CFN Media iOS mobile app to access the world of cannabis from the palm of your hand: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cannabisfn/id988009247?ls=1&mt=8

Or visit our homepage and enter your mobile number under the Apple App Store logo to receive a download link text on your iPhone: http://www.cannabisfn.com

Disclaimer:

Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this release contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Emerging Growth LLC, which owns CFN Media and CannabisFN.com, is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority, and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. Emerging Growth LLC may from time to time have a position in the securities mentioned herein and may increase or decrease such positions without notice. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice. Emerging Growth LLC may be compensated for its services in the form of cash-based compensation or equity securities in the companies it writes about, or a combination of the two. For full disclosure please visit: http://www.cannabisfn.com/legal-disclaimer/

CFN Media

Frank Lane

206-369-7050

flane@cannabisfn.com
Silvaner Trocken, a rarely exported white wine from the Franken region in Germany. The Silvaner grape variety is hailed as the queen of white wines.

Signorello Hope's Cuvee Chardonnay 2015 from Napa Valley. Total production of this 2015 wine is less than 6,000 cases annually and often significantly less, rated 98 by Robert Parker.

HKTDC Deputy Executive Director Benjamin Chau (6th from L) joins guests at today's press conference.



HKTDC Communication and Public Affairs Department Agnes Wat Tel: +852 2584 4554 Email: agnes.ky.wat@hktdc.org

HONG KONG, Oct 24, 2017 - (ACN Newswire) - Organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), the Hong Kong International Wine & Spirits Fair will be held from 9-11 November (Thursday to Saturday) at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC). The fair's 10th edition will feature a record 1,070 exhibitors from 37 countries and regions, with more than 70 events organised. On the fair's last day (Saturday, 11 November), the show will open its doors to public visitors with admission tickets. Wine lovers will be able to enrich their knowledge of wine and experience the high-spirited atmosphere of this signature regional wine event.At the press conference, HKTDC Deputy Executive Director Benjamin Chau said: "In the first eight months of this year, Hong Kong's wine imports reached HK$7.56 billion. Most of the wines were imported from France, the United Kingdom and Italy. Imports from the United States and Italy even recorded a 16 per cent and 22 per cent growth respectively. In terms of exports, Hong Kong's wine exports amounted to HK$2.96 billion. The Chinese mainland is Hong Kong's largest export market, followed by Macau and Vietnam."After the Hong Kong Government eliminated all duty-related customs and administrative controls on wine in 2008, wine imports jumped from HK$1.6 billion in 2007 to HK$12 billion in 2016, up more than 700 per cent. Hong Kong has also developed into the region's wine trading and distribution centre, and serves as a gateway for wines entering the Chinese mainland. Since November 2015, the agreement facilitating the import of wine into the mainland through Hong Kong has been expanded to cover all ports in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Apart from wine trading and distribution, wine-related businesses also include auction, retailing, catering, transportation, warehousing and education.New pavilions to present exotic flavoursIn recent years, the global wine industry has set its sights on the mainland and the wider Asian market. According to Euromonitor International, consumer demand for wine in Asia and the mainland remains strong. It forecasts that between 2016 to 2021, wine sales in Asia will grow at 8.5 per cent per annum; while the growth in the mainland during the same period will reach 10 per cent per annum.As a duty-free port with good air connectivity and excellent storage facilities, Hong Kong is globally recognised as the most cost-effective distribution hub. Wine merchants worldwide favour Hong Kong as a launch pad to expand their business to Asia and the mainland.This year's Wine & Spirits Fair will feature more than 30 group pavilions of wine-producing regions, trade organisations and governmental organisations from around the world. There will be new pavilions by the Syndicat General des Vignerons de la Champagne, France (SGV), Southern United States Trade Association, the Russian Export Center, Enterprise Mauritius, Confederacao dos Agricultores de Portugal, Setubal Peninsula Wines, Portugal, and Asociatia Producatorilor si Exportatorilor de Vinuri, Romania.Among the new pavilions, the SGV will feature seven growers from four wine regions. It will also host Champagne tastings at the newly launched Champagne Avenue and introduce visitors to Champagnes by small and medium wine-producers. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food of the Republic of Slovenia returns this year to showcase various wines made from honey, and will set up a "Bee World Pavilion" to promote World Bee Day to raise awareness about the importance of beekeeping in agriculture.First-time exhibitors from Malaysia, Mauritius, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine will join other international exhibitors to showcase exquisite wines, including:- The Silvaner Trocken, a white wine from the Franken region in Germany. The Silvaner grape variety is hailed as the queen of white wines, and wine-makers bottle the fine wine only in Bocksbeutel bottles. The wine is rarely exported;- La Galoche Beaujolais, a light-bodied, elegant biodynamic red wine from France;- The 2014 Girard Cabernet Sauvignon from the United States. This wine was served at the first state dinner that US President Donald Trump hosted for Chinese President Xi Jinping;-"Mori no Kanade," a sparkling sake from Japan. This wine is the result of five years of research and development. This traditional Japanese rice-based alcohol has evolved into the first-ever sparkling sake with secondary fermentation in Suntory's Hakushu Distillery whisky barrel.In addition, a wide assortment of exhibits from around the world will be displayed at the fair. Apart from the Liquor & Beverage Products zone, there will be zones that promote the industry's all-round development, including Wine Education, Wine Investment, as well as Wine Accessories Equipment and Services.The New Asia Wine AcademyAt the 10th anniversary of the Wine & Spirits Fair, the HKTDC has teamed up with the Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) to co-organise the Asia Wine Academy. Based on the SHTM's MSc in International Wine Management programme, two intensive courses, "Contemporary Trends in Wine Consumption" and "Mastering Tasting & Rising Wine Trends," will be conducted by Masters of Wine Jeannie Cho Lee MW and Steve Charters MW. Participants who complete the courses will be awarded a certificate.The HKTDC will organise more than 70 events during the fair, including a dozen tasting sessions showcasing wines from Australia, Germany, Bordeaux (France), Japan and Italy. In addition, the HKTDC will host numerous industry-exchange events, such as thematic seminars, master classes, education talks, a wine industry conference, a cocktail reception and a gala dinner, to provide a comprehensive business and exchange platform for industry visitors.At the Wine Industry Conference on the first day, Debra Meiburg MW, will host a session titled "Trends to Watch in 2018: The Business of Bubbles and Beyond." Speakers will share their insights on the prospects of different wine varieties, with a focus on sparkling wines.The ninth Cathay Pacific Hong Kong International Wine & Spirit Competition Award Ceremony will be held during the cocktail reception on the first evening of the fair. More than 60 awards will be handed out at the ceremony. The winning wines will be exhibited at the Wine Gallery during the fair.A Gala Wine Dinner bearing the theme "Cabaret Festival" will follow the cocktail reception. Guests will enjoy a menu prepared by two Michelin-starred Chef Fabrice Vulin from the French restaurant, The Tasting Room, at the City of Dreams Macau.Public DayThe last day of the Wine & Spirits Fair (11 November) will be open to public visitors aged 18 or above*. Regular tickets will be priced at HK$200 each. Visitors with valid tickets on that day will receive a Lucaris crystal wine glass on a first-come first-serve basis and while stocks last.The Hong Kong Wine Competition will also be held during Public Day to promote wine culture and wine knowledge. Public visitors can join seminars, wine tastings and master classes, whisky and cocktail demonstrations and Champagne tastings to enrich their knowledge of wine. Debra Meiburg MW will host a Master Class that day, while Sarah Heller MW will host a seminar titled "What Makes a Good Wine?". Hong Kong Wine & Spirits Writers Association Chairman Ronny Lau will speak on the topic "How a Hongkonger Made Wines in Italy."This year, the HKTDC will once again organise the Hong Kong Wine Journey citywide promotion and put together more than 90 wine-related activities in November. In addition to enjoying free corkage at select restaurants, Wine & Spirits Fair visitors can join a series of wine tastings, themed tours and wine and food menu-pairing, among others. For details, please refer to the Hong Kong Wine Journey map or the website.* Tickets:From now until 10 November, public visitors can purchase Public Day tickets at a special group-buy price of HK$99 through HOKOBUY, FeedMeGuru, Yahoo, Group Buyer, GOBUYA and HKTVmall; they can also purchase mobile tickets via TnG. They will receive a Lucaris crystal wine glass on a first-come, first-serve basis and while stocks last.Public visitors can also purchase tickets for the Wine & Spirit Fair at the HKTDC booth at the Hong Kong Wine and Dine Festival for HK$200 and enjoy a "Buy 1 Get 1 Free" discount. In addition, they can enrol in the Asia Wine Academy at a group-buy price of HK$690 (original price: HK$990) through the Wine & Spirits Fair website or via online group-purchase platforms, Timable, Feedme Guru or TnG. Participants will receive a complimentary Wine & Spirits Fair ticket and a Lucaris crystal wine glass valued at a total of HK$1,300 on a first-come, first-serve basis and while stocks last.Fair Website: http://www.hktdc.com/hkwinefair/Hong Kong Wine Journey: www.hktdc.com/hkwinejourneyAsia Wine Academy: http://hkwinefair.hktdc.com/dm/2017/asia_wine/1st_edm/index_en.htmlPhoto Download: http://bit.ly/2yEQHijMedia Registration:Media representatives wishing to cover the event may register on-site with their business cards and/or media identification.About HKTDCEstablished in 1966, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) is a statutory body dedicated to creating opportunities for Hong Kong's businesses. With more than 40 offices globally, including 13 on the Chinese mainland, the HKTDC promotes Hong Kong as a platform for doing business with China, Asia and the world. With 50 years of experience, the HKTDC organises international exhibitions, conferences and business missions to provide companies, particularly SMEs, with business opportunities on the mainland and in international markets, while providing information via trade publications, research reports and digital channels including the media room. For more information, please visit: www.hktdc.com/aboutus. Follow us on Google+, Twitter @hktdc, LinkedIn.- Google+: https://plus.google.com/+hktdc- Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/hktdc- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/hong-kong-trade-development-councilSource: HKTDCContact:Copyright 2017 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
POWAY, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 -- Solar Integrated Roofing Corporation (OTC PINK: SIRC) announces they have entered into an agreement with a national big box store to be the provider for all of their residential roofing contracts.

"This is a huge opportunity for us, a real game-changer," said CEO Dave Massey. "This is a major home improvement chain, a Fortune 500 company with 1,840 stores in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It was our track record of customer service that prompted them to close the deal with us and we couldn't be prouder of that. We're going to become their installer for their roofing contracts. We are also negotiating with them to help launch their solar program as well."

Sales of the national home improvement chain topped $15 billion in fiscal 2017.

About Solar Integrated Roofing Corp.

Solar Integrated Roofing Corporation (SIRC) is an integrated solar and roofing installation company specializing in commercial and residential properties with a focus on acquisitions of like companies to build a footprint nationally. For more information, please visit: www.solarintegratedroofingcorp.com

Forward-Looking Statements:

Any statements made in this press release which are not historical facts contain certain forward-looking statements; as such term is defined in the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995, concerning potential developments affecting the business, prospects, financial condition and other aspects of the company to which this release pertains. The actual results of the specific items described in this release, and the company's operations generally, may differ materially from what is projected in such forward-looking statements. Although such statements are based upon the best judgments of management of the company as of the date of this release, significant deviations in magnitude, timing and other factors may result from business risks and uncertainties including, without limitation, the company's dependence on third parties, general market and economic conditions, technical factors, the availability of outside capital, receipt of revenues and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the company. The company disclaims any obligation to update information contained in any forward-looking statement. This press release shall not be deemed a general solicitation.

Contact:

John Randolph

760-916-7444

sircpublic@gmail.com




TAOS, NM -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 -- Season three of The Marijuana Show series will be filmed in Taos culminating in two events open to the public on November 4 and 5th, 2017.

On Saturday, November 4th, producers, Wendy Robbins and Karen Paull will co-host with Taos County Democratic Party, and Lamberts, a pro-cannabis Democratic political fundraiser from 6PM to 8PM. Featured guests include Rep. Bill McCamley, who has been leading efforts to legalize at the state level, plus Gubernatorial candidates Jeff Apodaca, Peter DeBenedittis and more guests TBA will speak about their stance on legalization. This event is at Lamberts of Taos, 123 Bent Street, Taos, New Mexico 87571. A suggested donation of $25 will go to the Taos County Democratic Party.

The following evening, Sunday, November 5th, 5:30 to 8:30 PM, The Marijuana Show, also known as the "Shark Tank for Cannabis" will culminate with their grand finale, a red carpet event at the Taos Center for the Arts located at 133 N. Paseo Del Pueblo Norte, Taos, New Mexico 87571. At the event, 8 finalists pitch investors for investment and mentorship. The audience votes for their favorite pitch and decides who wins the audience favorite award! Who will be the next Marijuana Millionaire? This season features innovative products: A joint-rolling machine that can roll 420 perfect joints in 420 seconds, a robotic security firm, an automated smart-phone controlled grow room, a seed-to-sale software company, nanotechnology CBD age defying skin care system that puts collagen into the skin, and more!

Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the door and are available online: Get Tickets or by calling (575) 758-2052.

Season One and Two offered $18 million in funding to Cannabis Entrepreneurs and was seen on Amazon Prime by millions of viewers. Over 250 million were reached via mainstream press. For additional funding opportunities, the producers are launching a $20 million dollar private equity fund, High Finance Fund with their partners The Hoban Law Group.

CNBC said the show is "Shark Tank for the Cannabis Industry." The New York Times said it's the "show to watch." Wall Street Journal said the show, "...smokes Shark Tank." The series has been featured on ABC, CNN, CNBC, FOX, NPR, Rolling Stone, Fortune, Forbes, Inc, Bloomberg, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Esquire, High Times, Taos News and many other national and regional networks.

"Albuquerque had Breaking Bad and now Taos has Breaking Bud. I'm excited to roll out of bed and go to work. We intend to shoot more shows here. We have amazing talent here and want to give back to the place we've called home for a decade," Robbins said.

"We have partnered with the New Mexico Film Commission and appreciate that we get to hire locals, caterers, lodging, press, and crew, providing a high six-figure budget into our economy. Ultimately we believe that legalizing adult use cannabis in New Mexico will help our economy," states Paull.

The live November 5th event will sell out. Get tickets early from the Taos Center for the Arts! Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the door and are available online at http://bit.ly/mjshowlive or by calling (575) 758-2052. Purchase group tickets of 20 or more can qualify for sponsorship with your logo on the big screen.

Contact Producers@themarijuanashow.com for information on press passes and sponsorship opportunities: Karen Paull - 213-718-1804.

Visit our site: The Marijuana Show

See Season Two trailer: Watch the Trailer

Follow us on Social Media:

FB: @Themjrealityshow

Twitter: mjrealityshow

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3176321

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Karen Paull

213-718-1804

Producers@themarijuanashow.com




EuroFrame Gen 2 Provides European Data Centres with the Latest in Reliable, Cost-Effective Network Equipment Cabinets

Chatsworth Products (CPI) announces the release of its second generation EF-Series EuroFrame Cabinet. The EuroFrame Gen 2 is the latest cost-effective cabinet from CPI and is designed to minimise deployment time and resources by offering a quick and easy-to-install storage solution, whilst still providing the high performance required by today's modern data centres.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024006188/en/

EF-Series EuroFrame Gen 2 Cabinet (Photo: Business Wire)

EuroFrame Gen 2 manages and protects cabling and equipment in a simple and reliable, yet affordable way. Its progressive design allows for scalability and network upgrades, whilst supporting airflow and cable management best practices, as per EN 50600 recommendations.

CPI recognises that the European data centre market is currently undergoing a massive period of change with data centre managers being driven to create greater levels of efficiency, whilst on a restricted budget. By taking the EuroFrame Cabinet to the next level, with the EuroFrame Gen 2, we are confident that we will be able to continue meeting and exceeding European data centres' ever-evolving need for speed of deployment, optimum cable management, greater airflow control and more desirable aesthetics," Luca Rozzoni, CPI Sr. Product Manager for Europe explains.

EuroFrame Gen 2 has been constructed to meet today's data centre requirements for high-density switching and server applications. The cabinet is available in several standard configurations, including 42 rack-mount units (U), 45Uand 47U, 600 mm and 800 mm widths and 829 mm, 1029 mm and 1229 mm depths, as well as options with patented Vertical Exhaust Ducts, offering flexibility to fit most data centre designs.

"The EuroFrame Gen 2 Cabinet provides a cost-effective server and network equipment storage solution for data centres," commented Julian Riley, CPI Regional Sales Director General Manager for Europe. "It offers excellent control of airflow, allowing data centres to reduce energy cost, whilst still providing adequate cable management, as well as distinctive aesthetics."

The EuroFrame Gen 2 Cabinet, along with its matching airflow, cable and power management accessories, provides a reliable and cost-effective solution for today's modern data centre. Find out more by visiting the product page.

About Chatsworth Products

At Chatsworth Products (CPI), it is our mission to address today's critical IT infrastructure needs with products and services that protect your ever-growing investment in information and communication technology. We act as your business partner and are uniquely prepared to respond to your specific requirements with global availability and rapid product customisation that will give you a competitive advantage. At CPI, our passion works for you. With over two decades of engineering innovative IT physical layer solutions for the Fortune 500 and multinational corporations, CPI can respond to your business requirements with unequalled application expertise, customer service and technical support, as well as a global network of industry-leading distributors. Headquartered in the United States, CPI operates from multiple sites worldwide, including offices in Mexico, Canada, China, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. CPI's manufacturing facilities are located in the United States, Asia and Europe.

While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of all information, CPI does not accept liability for any errors or omissions and reserves the right to change information and descriptions of listed services and products.

2017 Chatsworth Products, Inc. All rights reserved. Chatsworth Products, Clik-Nut, CPI, CPI Passive Cooling, CUBE-iT PLUS, eConnect, Evolution, GlobalFrame, MegaFrame, OnTrac, QuadraRack, RMR, Saf-T-Grip, Seismic Frame, SlimFrame, TeraFrame and Velocity are federally registered trademarks of Chatsworth Products, Inc. EuroFrame, Motive, Secure Array and Simply Efficient are trademarks of Chatsworth Products, Inc. All other trademarks belong to their respective companies.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024006188/en/

Contacts:

Constable Communications

Louisa Constable

louisa@constablecommunications.co.uk
GOTEBORG, Sweden, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

SKF intends to consolidate its North American industrial seals manufacturing footprint. As part of the process, SKF intends to close its manufacturing site in Seneca, Kansas. Production will be transferred to other sites in North America, the development and manufacturing facility in Salt Lake City, where investments are being made in increasing technical capabilities and capacity.

The consolidation process supports SKF's long-term ambition of integrating regional manufacturing, engineering and technology efforts, adding more value for customers.

The transfer from Seneca will take place over the next 18 months and will impact approximately 170 staff.

Aktiebolaget SKF

(publ)

CONTACT:

For further information, please contact:

PRESS: Theo Kjellberg, Director, Press Relations

tel: +46-31-337-6576, mobile: +46-725-776576, e-mail: theo.kjellberg@skf.com

INVESTOR RELATIONS: Patrik Stenberg, Head of Investor Relations

Patrik Stenberg, +46-31-337-2104; +46-705-472-104; patrik.stenberg@skf.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

http://news.cision.com/skf/r/skf-consolidates-industrial-seals-manufacturing-footprint-in-north-america,c2374252

The following files are available for download:
Regulatory News:

Coca-Cola European Partners plc (the 'Company') has issued and allotted 143,324 new ordinary shares of 0.01 each (the 'Shares') under three employee share schemes: (1) The Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc. 2010 Incentive Award Plan, (2) the Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc. Legacy Long-Term Incentive Plan and (3) The Coca-Cola European Partners plc Long-Term Incentive Plan 2016.

Accordingly, an application has been made to the Financial Conduct Authority for the Shares to be admitted to listing on the Official List and to Euronext for the Shares to be admitted to Euronext London. Admission of the Shares is expected on 25 October 2017.

The Shares will rank pari passu with the existing shares of the Company.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024006211/en/

Contacts:

COCA-COLA EUROPEAN PARTNERS PLC

Paul van Reesch

Deputy Company Secretary

+44 7890 123911
TOKYO, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

UK consumer demand for Japanese car brands rises 38.2% in five years, with more than 350,000 registrations in first three quarters of 2017. [ 1 ]

Japan remains UK Auto's second biggest Asian export market, as 34.5% more Japanese buyers choose British brands. [ 2 ]

remains UK Auto's second biggest Asian export market, as 34.5% more Japanese buyers choose British brands. UK's Japanese plants account for half of British car production, highlighting significance of mutual automotive trade and investment in relationship's 36th year.

Trade between the Japanese and UK automotive industriesis as strong as ever in the relationship's 36th year, according to figures released today by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). Demand for Japanese car brands in the UK has risen by 38.2% over the past half decade, with year-to-date registrations reaching some 352,824 - almost 100,000 more than in the same period five years ago.[3]

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At the same time, UK production of cars for Japanese buyers has risen 34.5%, making the country Britain's sixth biggest export market, and the second biggest in Asia after China. The growth is thanks to an increasing appetite among Japanese motorists for the UK's growing range of premium, luxury and high performance models. After Germany, the UK is the EU's second biggest manufacturer of these premium, aspirational products, and latest production figures show that in the first half of 2017, 12,656 Japanese motorists chose a British-built car.

The Japan-UK automotive manufacturing relationship has a strong heritage, stretching back to 1981 when Honda set up a joint venture with British Leyland to develop and produce the Honda Ballade, combining Honda engine and transmission with a British Leyland body. By 1989, Honda was making engines at Swindon and five years later, the plant began producing the Civic. Meanwhile, in 1986 Nissan became the first Japanese manufacturer to open a British plant in Sunderland and in 1992, Toyota entered the market with a factory at Burnaston in Derbyshire, where the Avensis and Auris Hybrid models are now built. Japanese component manufacturers have since followed suit, with those based in the UK including five of the world's largest automotive suppliers.[4]

These investors were attracted to the UK by our large automotive market - now the EU's second biggest after Germany - access to the European market and strong support from government. Our Japanese-owned plants became some of the most productive and efficient in Europe - and still are. Today they account for almost half (47.7%) of UK car production and exporting to markets worldwide, with the British-built Toyota Avensis and Honda Civic Type R even sold back to Japanese buyers.

Speaking today at the 45thTokyo Motor Show,Mike Hawes, SMMT Chief Executive,said, "World class engineering and products, government collaboration and huge investment have helped UK Automotive become a global success story. Our relationship with Japan goes back many years and is built on our mutual commitment to trade and investment, with local production of Japanese brands since the 1980s and supply chain following soon after.

"This summer's agreement of an EU-Japan Free Trade Deal is welcome news for both our industries. However, for our relationship to benefit post-Brexit, the UK will need to secure trade agreements with both the EU and Japan, underlining the importance of securing the right deal during Brexit negotiations."

Top 5 British-built Bestsellers in Japan

MINI One MINI Clubman Honda Civic Type R Range Rover Evoque Land Rover Discovery Sport Toyota Avensis Jaguar XE Range Rover Sport Jaguar F-Pace Land Rover Discovery

Notes to editors

Japanese brands registered by UK new car buyers (Honda, Infiniti, Lexus, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, Suzuki, Toyota) currently represent 17.1% of the UK new car market. The UK exported 12,656 cars to Japan January- June 2017 , compared with 9,409 over the same period in 2012. 97,452 more Japanese brands registered by UK consumers in January- September 2017 than same period five years ago. Japanese-owned supply chain companies with operations in the UK include five of the world's top 20: Aisin Seiko Co; Calsonic Kansai, Denso, Sumitomo Electric Industries and Yazaki.

About SMMT and the UK automotive industry

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) is one of the UK's largest and most influential trade associations. It supports the interests of the UK automotive industry at home and abroad, promoting a united position to government, stakeholders and the media.

The automotive industry is a vital part of the UK economy accounting for more than 77.5 billion turnover and 21.5 billion value added. With some 169,000 people employed directly in manufacturing and 814,000 across the wider automotive industry, it accounts for 13.0% of total UK export of goods and invests 2.75 billion each year in automotive R&D. More than 30 manufacturers build in excess of 70 models of vehicle in the UK supported by 2,500 component providers and some of the world's most skilled engineers.
PUNE, India, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

According to a new market research report "Parkinson's Disease Treatment Market by Drug Class (Carbidopa/Levodopa, Dopamine Receptor Agonists, MAO-Inhibitors), Distribution Channel (Hospital, Online, Retail Pharmacies), Patient Care Setting (Hospitals, Clinics) - Global Forecast to 2022", published by MarketsandMarkets', the market is expected to reach USD 5.69 Billion by 2022 from USD 4.24 Billion in 2017, at a CAGR of 6.1%.

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Browse 66 Market Data Tables and 33 Figures spread through 113 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Parkinson's Disease Treatment Market"

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Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report

The market is being driven by the growth in aging population and the associated increase in the prevalence of Parkinson's disease and government funding for research.

By drug class, the carbidopa/levodopa segment is estimated to dominate the market in 2017

On the basis of drug class, the Parkinson's disease therapeutic drugs market is segmented into carbidopa/levodopa, dopamine receptor agonists, MAO inhibitors, COMT inhibitors, anticholinergics, and other drugs. In 2017, the carbidopa/levodopa segment is expected to account for the largest share of the market. Carbidopa/levodopa drugs are more potent than most other drug classes are hence widely used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

Download PDF Brochure: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=47265247

By distribution channel, the hospital pharmacies segment is estimated to hold the largest share of the market in 2017

By distribution channel, the Parkinson's disease therapeutic drugs market has been segmented into hospital pharmacies, retailer pharmacies, and online pharmacies. In 2017, the hospital pharmacies segment is expected to account for the largest share of the market. The large share of this segment can primarily be attributed to the availability of a wide range of drugs in these facilities and the increasing number of patient visits to hospitals.

Hospitals to dominate the Parkinson's Disease Treatment Market during the forecast period

The Parkinson's Disease Treatment Market is classified by patient care settings into hospitals and clinics. In 2017, the hospital segment is expected to command the largest share and is estimated to grow at the fastest rate as compared to clinics segment. This market is mainly driven by robust healthcare services provided in hospitals and the presence of skilled neurologists in the hospitals.

Talk To Our Research Analysts: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalyst.asp?id=47265247

Asia to offer lucrative growth opportunities

By region, the global Parkinson's Disease Treatment Market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia, and the Rest of the World (RoW). While Europe is expected to hold the largest share of the market in 2017, Asia is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Increasing number of players in the region and the rising aging population are some major factors driving the high growth of this regional segment.

Some of the major players operating in the Parkinson's disease treatment market include Teva (Israel), Novartis AG (Switzerland), GSK (UK), AbbVie (US), Merck (US), Boehringer Ingelheim (Germany), Impax Laboratories (US), Lundbeck (Denmark), Sun Pharma (India), Wockhardt (India), UCB (Belgium), Valeant Pharmaceuticals (Canada), and Acadia (US).

Browse Related Reports

Nerve Repair and Regeneration Market by Application (Neurorrhaphy, Nerve Grafting, Stem Cell Therapy, Neurostimulation Surgery), & by Products (Biomaterials, Nerve Conduits, Nerve Protectors, Nerve Wraps, Devices) - Global Forecast to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/nerve-repair-regeneration-market-883.html

Neuromodulation Market by Technology (Deep Brain Stimulation, Spinal Cord Stimulation, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) & by Application (Depression, Parkinson's, Tinnitus, Alzheimer's, Epilepsy, Ischemia, Obesity) - Trends & Global Forecast to 2020

http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/neurostimulation-devices-market-921.html

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Photo: Cubs' Jake Arrieta's Face Is Naked & We Don't Know Him Anymore



Who is this guy with Jake Arrieta's wife? (Brittany Arrieta/Twitter)

We don't have any right to say how a man decides to groom his facial hair and yet, we must say the sight of a hairless Jake Arrieta is quite jarring. The Cubs ace pitcher shaved off his trademark beard to mark the end of the Cubs' season.

It is said that beards are on their way out by a cabal of trendsetting writers in New York, as they are little more than a cheap trick for men who have never hoisted an axe to split wood and who spend most of their time staring at spreadsheets during their day job to telegraph masculinity and primal strength. The Wall Street Journal is not lying when they say that "far from standing out for their scruff, bearded men have become almost boringly normal."

And yet! Arrieta has an arm that could be worth as much as $200 million and he is in his third decade of life, but without a beard, he looks like your average college bro trying to scalp tickets in Wrigleyville. Some men just look better with beards! CBS Chicago calls it "acclaimed" in a headline and who are we to argue?

Jake Arrieta has to stay in Chicago now that we all know he actually just looks like every single white Chicago bro https://t.co/ZmwjQ1Xxpy  Lindsey Adler (@lindseyadler) October 23, 2017

Since Arrieta joined the Cubs, he has grown in a beard ahead of spring training and like clockwork shaved it off during off-season, making him unrecognizable. Which, now that I think about it, might actually be the whole point.

In any case, Mrs. Arrieta seems happy:


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - President Donald Trump Tuesday unleashed a Twitter tirade targeting Senior Republican Senator Bob Corker, escalating the feud between the two hours before their luncheon meeting at the Senate.



Trump heads to Capitol Hill later in the day in an effort to project unity on taxes and health care.



Corker responded in unequivocal terms. In a series of television interviews Tuesday morning, Corker accused Trump of lying, and called him 'an utterly untruthful president' on Twitter.



He debased the US and weakened its global standing, according to the lawmaker from Tennessee.



Trump initiated the war of words by posting a series of tweets Tuesday morning.



'Bob Corker, who helped President Obama give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts...Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record.'



Corker announced last month his decision not to seek another term to the Upper House. And when Trump claimed earlier this month that Corker had begged for his endorsement for reelection, the retiring Republican Senator had called the White House an 'adult day care center.'



'Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus,' Trump continued on Twitter.



He called Corker 'the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee.' 'Look how poorly the U.S. has done. He doesn't have a clue as the entire World was laughing and taking advantage of us. People like liddle' Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward.'



'He is purposely breaking down relationships we have around the world that had been useful to our nation,' Corker said in reply on CNN.



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SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 -- HashiCorp, a leader in cloud infrastructure automation, today announced that it has raised $40 million in Series C funding from its existing investors, bringing the total raised to $74 million. The round was led by GGV Capital and Redpoint, with Mayfield and True Ventures also participating. The company plans to use the new funding to accelerate investment across its go-to-market, engineering, and customer success teams to support its rapidly growing customer base.

"Broad usage of our products by operations, security, and development professionals has meant that HashiCorp products play an increasingly critical role for many large enterprises as they adopt cloud," said Dave McJannet, CEO of HashiCorp. "Our products provide consistent workflows to provision, secure, connect, and run any infrastructure, so we are uniquely positioned to help enterprises address the realities of multi-cloud. Our commercial customer base has grown significantly over the past 18 months and this funding will allow us to invest aggressively across the breadth of our organization and with a particular emphasis on customer support and success."

Mitchell Hashimoto and Armon Dadgar, HashiCorp's founders and co-CTOs, launched the company in 2012. In the past year, HashiCorp has seen growth and success across all of these key areas:

The company had record numbers of new customers in each of the four quarters since the company began selling commercial products, including Adobe, Barclays, Citadel, Comcast, Ellucian, Lotto New Zealand, New Relic, SAP Ariba, Segment, and Spaceflight.

HashiCorp had 22 million downloads of its open source products and released 150 updates across its suite of enterprise and open source products.

The company extended its work with key cloud providers, including Alibaba Cloud, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud.

HashiCorp launched the HashiCorp Partner Program, which expanded to include resellers and system integrators in North America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific.

HashiCorp held its third annual HashiConf user and technology conference with more than 800 attendees and featuring speakers from organizations including Adobe, Barclays, Box, Bridgewater, eBay, Fastly, Google, Joyent, Microsoft, PagerDuty, Under Armour, and others.

The community now has HashiCorp User Groups in 44 cities around the world and nearly 8,000 members.

The company expanded its executive team to include leaders for its support and customer success, finance, and marketing functions.

Investor Quotes

"This past year, HashiCorp has begun to see really amazing results from both the market's shift to multi-cloud architectures and the focus the company has put into its products, its team, and building its community and organization," said Glenn Solomon, managing partner at GGV Capital and a member of HashiCorp's Board of Directors. "We are eager to work closely with the company to dramatically accelerate efforts on all fronts to meet this immense wave of enterprise interest and adoption."

"We think HashiCorp is a key component for making cloud adoption work," said Scott Raney, partner at Redpoint. "The company is devoting its energy to supporting the large, global companies that are making bets on the cloud. This round of investment will enable HashiCorp to continue to build aggressively on its success in both the open source community and with large enterprises."

About HashiCorp

HashiCorp is a cloud infrastructure automation company that enables organizations to adopt consistent workflows to provision, secure, connect, and run any infrastructure for any application. HashiCorp open source tools Vagrant, Packer, Terraform, Vault, Consul, and Nomad are downloaded thousands of times per day and are broadly adopted by the Global 2000. Enterprise versions of these products enhance the open source tools with features that promote collaboration, operations, governance, and multi-data center functionality. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and backed by Mayfield, GGV Capital, Redpoint, and True Ventures. For more information, visit https://www.hashicorp.com or follow HashiCorp on Twitter @HashiCorp.

Media and Analyst Contact:

Amber Rowland

amber@therowlandagency.com

+1-650-814-4560




RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE:RNG), the global leader in Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), today announced its expansion in France with new product, leadership, and event initiatives. RingCentral is building on its continued global expansion with:

RingCentral Office language support in French, local billing in euros, direct peering with tier one local operators across the region, and applications delivery from European data centers

language support in French, local billing in euros, direct peering with tier one local operators across the region, and applications delivery from European data centers Presence at Google Cloud Summit in Paris in October to highlight RingCentral's integration with G Suite for European business customers

The appointment of Guillaume Widmer as head of channels for France and the continued addition of local channel partners in France

RingCentral Office in France

As a leader in the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, Worldwide, RingCentral provides a powerful communications and collaboration cloud solution for multinational companies to support globally distributed offices and mobile employees. Unlike expensive legacy on-premises systems, RingCentral Office is a single solution that can be quickly and rapidly deployed, as well as centrally managed. With worldwide extension-to-extension dialing, voice and video conferencing, team messaging and collaboration, RingCentral empowers midmarket and enterprise customers with a complete solution.

The RingCentral Office offering in France has language support in French, local billing in euros, and is delivered as a service from European data centers. Local customers also benefit from direct peering with tier one local operators across the region. In addition, customers and partners receive 24/7 technical support available in multiple languages.

For multinational businesses extending their footprint in France, RingCentral also offers RingCentral Global Office, which provides a single solution for a company to support regional offices with native experience in up to 37 countries where Global Office is currently available. RingCentral has nearly 800 customers today using RingCentral Global Office to support their mobile and distributed workforces globally. This also compliments RingCentral international virtual numbers, which are available in 80 countries.

RingCentral at Google Cloud Summit in Paris

As part of its continued partnership with Google, RingCentral showcased its deep integration across the G Suite environment at the Google Cloud Summit on October 19th in Paris. RingCentral is a trusted cloud communications and collaboration solution recommended for G Suite by Google Cloud, providing Single Sign-on and seamless integration with Gmail and Google Contacts.

"RingCentral's close integration with enterprise application suites such as Google G Suite, Microsoft Office 365 and Salesforce is a major differentiator for us and our channel partners," said Robinder Koura, RingCentral's head of channel sales for EMEA. "RingCentral offers greater value and enables deeper levels of customization. Our platform is built with seamless API access to easily and quickly customize business process workflows for greater enterprise efficiency."

New country leadership

RingCentral has appointed Guillaume Widmer, an industry executive with over 20 years of experience in communications technologies and former CTO of Netcentrex Inc, a pioneer in the provisioning of voice and video services, as head of channels for France.

"I am proud to join the industry leader, RingCentral, and I'm looking forward to helping drive continued growth across the region," said Mr. Widmer. "RingCentral Office localized in French along with our focused channel engagement program will set us up to address the needs of the growing market opportunity here in France."

For more information, please visit ringcentral.fr/expansion.

About RingCentral

RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE:RNG) is the global leader in Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). More flexible and cost-effective than legacy on-premises systems, RingCentral empowers today's mobile and distributed workforces to communicate, collaborate, and connect from anywhere, any mode, and on any device. RingCentral unifies cloud voice, video, text, and fax with team messaging and collaboration, web conferencing, and cloud contact center. RingCentral's open platform integrates with leading business apps and enables customers to easily customize business workflows. RingCentral is headquartered in Belmont, California, and has offices around the world.

2017 RingCentral, Inc. All rights reserved. RingCentral, RingCentral Office, RingCentral Global Office, and the RingCentral logo are trademarks of RingCentral, Inc.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024005777/en/

Contacts:

RingCentral, Inc.

Mariana Kosturos, 650-562-6545

mariana.kosturos@ringcentral.com

www.ringcentral.com
MUNICH, GERMANY -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 -- Huawei has joined forces with leading academic and industry partners to develop solutions for the next key phase of 5G mobile and wireless communications architecture. Within the 5G-MoNArch (5G Mobile Network Architecture) consortium, Huawei is leading the design of the envisioned flexible and adaptive architecture.

The defining characteristics of 5G are based on support for a diverse set of use cases, services and applications coupled with a wide range of requirements. 5G should not only advance the mobile broadband, but also enable new businesses and vertical industries by means of network slicing, which is essential for the sustainability of the telecommunications ecosystem. To this end, the 5G architecture shall efficiently integrate the network slicing framework. The development of the 5G mobile and wireless communications system is progressing at a rapid pace.

Built by 14 leading industry and academic partners, the 5G-MoNArch consortium has set the goal to materialize 5G use cases by designing a flexible and adaptive architecture and demonstrating associated innovations in representative testbeds. The 5G-MoNArch innovations comprise the cloud-enabled protocol stack, inter-slice control and management, and experiment-driven optimization along with design of secure, resilient as well as resource-elastic network functions.

One of the most influential 5G research actions is the European Union 5G private public partnership (PPP) program. The 5G-MoNArch is phase 2 of the 5G PPP project. The 5G-MoNArch will run through 2017-2019 and the European Union is providing EUR 7.7 million in funding. Joint research on a global scale has fostered the development of 5G by laying the foundation of the 5G system and acting as a catalyst in setting an early consensus before and along with standardization.

Starting from the ignition phase of METIS, Huawei has been strongly committed and engaged in 5G PPP Phase 1 projects Mobile and wireless communications Enablers for Twenty-twenty (2020) Information Society-II(METIS-II), Millimetre-Wave Based Mobile Radio Access Network for Fifth Generation Integrated Communications (mmMAGIC), Flexible Air Interface for Scalable service delivery within wireless Communication Networks of the 5th Generation (Fantastic-5G), 5G Exchange(5G-EX), Dynamically Reconfigurable Optical-Wireless Backhaul/Fronthaul with Cognitive Control Plane for Small Cells and Cloud-RANs(5G-Xhaul).

Currently, Huawei R&D is focused on practical implementations in 5G PPP Phase 2 5G-MoNArch, Fifth Generation Communication Automotive Research and innovation (5GCAR), E2E-aware Optimization and advancement for the Network Edge of 5G New Radio (ONE5G), 5G Programmable Infrastructure Converging disaggregated network and compute Resources (5G-Picture), 5G Development and Validation Platform for global Industry-specific Network Services and Apps (5Gtango). Within 5G-MoNArch, Huawei is leading the design of the flexible and adaptive architecture, which will be demonstrated by 5G-MoNArch testbeds.

"Network slicing is not only a technology enabler, but a means to revolutionize the telecommunications ecosystem and truly realize the vision of 5G to change society," said Dr. Zhou Hong, President of the Huawei European Research Institute. "The flagship 5G-MoNArch project has thus placed network slicing at the core of its flexible and adaptive architecture design. We remain fully committed to 5G PPP and look forward to shaping the wireless future together."

About Huawei

Huawei is a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider. Our aim is to enrich life and improve efficiency through a better connected world, acting as a responsible corporate citizen, innovative enabler for the information society, and collaborative contributor to the industry. Driven by customer-centric innovation and open partnerships, Huawei has established an end-to-end ICT solutions portfolio that gives customers competitive advantages in telecom and enterprise networks, devices and cloud computing. Huawei's 180,000 employees worldwide are committed to creating maximum value for telecom operators, enterprises and consumers. Our innovative ICT solutions, products and services are used in more than 170 countries and regions, serving over one-third of the world's population. Founded in 1987, Huawei is a private company fully owned by its employees. For more information on Huawei, please visit www.huawei.com.

Media Contact

Xu Boxin

xuboxin@huawei.com




DUBAI, UAE, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

An adult patient visiting Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai to be assessed for a Lasik procedure ended up being diagnosed with a squint, of which she was unaware. The patient was successfully treated after an eye realignment surgical procedure. Squint is common amongst children and generally picked up in childhood when it is relatively easy to diagnose and correct. It can cause debilitating double vision and affect the quality of life. However, there is no age limit to correcting the problem.

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/589626/The_Incredible_Dr_Khan.jpg )



(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/589632/Dr_Irfan_Khan.jpg )



Squint (also known as 'strabismus') is a misalignment or crossing of the eyes. When it occurs in adults (known as 'adult strabismus'), it may be a residual problem from childhood, which had never been diagnosed, or could occur as a result of eye disease, stroke or even eye tumours.

Emma Quintin - the Moorfields Dubai patient - is a Dubai resident and UK national, with a family history of eye problems. She had always had 'tired eyes' but no discomfort or impairment - and no diagnosis of squint. This all changed after a road accident at the start of 2017.

"I never really noticed the squint and so was surprised by the diagnosis, although my brother and grandmother had vision problems and I felt that my eyes were always tired," said Emma. "Now, I can see properly and it is an incredible feeling; I work in the visual arts, theatre and TV, making good vision essential for my work. The eye realignment surgery was quick and straightforward. I was in and out of the hospital within the afternoon. Whilst there is always some risk involved, this was explained to me in depth prior to my operation and I went ahead full of confidence. In fact, I was so pleased with the results and with the care I received that I composed a special poem of thanks to my doctor, entitled - 'The Incredible Dr. Khan'."

After a family friend in Dubai recommended that she visit Moorfields, the hospital team - led by Dr. Khan - was able to assess and diagnose the problem.

Dr. Muhammad Irfan Khan, Consultant Ophthalmologist Specialist in Paediatrics, Strabismus and Cataract, at Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai, said: "We are very pleased with Emma's results, recovery and progress. Squint is generally diagnosed in childhood, but of course there is no age limit for squint patients. Surgery is an outpatient procedure that we carry out at the hospital and patients quickly go back to a normal life. We were especially pleased that the hospital was recommended to Emma by an existing patient, as this is always the ultimate test of the quality of our patient service."

Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai has treated more than 150,000 patients - including many complex cases - of nearly 200 nationalities since opening in Dubai Healthcare City, in 2007.

Notes to editors

About Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai

Moorfields Eye Hospital Dubai (MEHD) is the first overseas branch of Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, the oldest and one of the largest centres for ophthalmic treatment, teaching and research in the world. Located at the Al Razi Medical Complex in Dubai Health Care City, the facility provides day care surgery and outpatient diagnostic and treatment services, for a variety of surgical and non-surgical eye conditions. MEHD will also raise standards for research and teaching in the region. MEHD is owned and managed by the NHS Foundation Trust, and maintains close links with London, to ensure that patients in the GCC receive the best eye care treatment in the world.
DUBLIN, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Global Industrial Valve Cover Gasket Market 2017-2021" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.

The global industrial valve cover gasket market to grow at a CAGR of 3.72% during the period 2017-2021.



Global Industrial Valve Cover Gasket Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.



The latest trend gaining momentum in the market is Diesel power plants. In many parts of the world, there are geographical areas where using diesel generators is the only viable option for providing reliable power to the local population. Alaska is an example where this practice is common, and power companies there use diesel generating plants as a major component of their power generation portfolio. Many of these sites are not hooked into a power grid and must control their own frequency and voltage.



According to the report, one of the major drivers for this market is Low cost of diesel as a fuel. Diesel, the fuel used in generators, is low-cost and easily available. Diesel generators are not expensive to operate.



Further, the report states that one of the major factors hindering the growth of this market is Natural gas generators market. The alternative fuel generators offer an added value predominantly in remote areas where the supply of diesel or natural gas is inadequate.



Key vendors

Caterpillar

Cummins

Dana Incorporated

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

Other prominent vendors

Nipparts

Daimler Trucks North America

DEUTZ

ISUZU Motors

John Deere

Key Topics Covered:



Executive Summary Scope Of The Report Research Methodology Introduction Market Landscape Market Segmentation By End-User Regional Landscape Decision Framework Drivers And Challenges Market Trends Vendor Landscape Key Vendor Analysis Appendix



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/p67fmn/global_industrial



Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com



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HANOVER, Maryland, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Allegis Group, the global leader in talent solutions, is making a significant investment in people aggregator, HiringSolved. HiringSolved will continue to operate as a separate, independent business, under Founder Shon Burton.

HiringSolved's mission is to make hiring better, faster and more human by applying intelligent automation to the recruiting process. This approach enables recruiters to spend less time searching and analyzing information and more time communicating with candidates. HiringSolved's software products significantly increase recruiter productivity through capabilities such as automated job-to-candidate matching, predictive diversity search, social network mining and analysis, automated internal mobility analysis and seamless ATS, CRM and HRIS integrations. A wide range of customers, including Dell, GSK and Netflix, are using HiringSolved to qualify, search, match and engage with top talent needed to fulfill their business goals.

"Today, hiring is a very manual process. Recruiters spend their days manually searching for, reading and comparing resumes and social profiles, all while wrestling with slow, antiquated systems. This leaves little time for the most important aspect of recruiting, the human connection," says Burton. "HiringSolved exists to change this. We believe that by applying intelligent technology, we can make life better for both recruiters and job seekers."

"As the global leader in talent solutions, Allegis Group invests in technologies that align with our core purpose of creating opportunity for people - our clients, our candidates and our employees," says Allegis Group Global Development Officer Chris Hartman. "HiringSolved's capabilities are game-changing for our growth strategy and present great upward potential for enhancing how our industry engages the best talent required to get work done."

About HiringSolved

HiringSolved's mission is to dramatically increase recruiter productivity through intelligent automation. It is the only global people aggregator operating across all skill sets, able to work for any language and comprised of talent data from all over the world. The company started in social search and people aggregation and more recently has become a leader in predictive candidate matching, diversity and inclusion analysis and recruiting automation. TalentFeed combines billions of social data points into a global talent database with automated sourcing and candidate matching capabilities. TalentFeed+ enables HiringSolved's technology to operate with customer ATS, CRM and HRIS data. Prophet is a HiringSolved product that allows recruiters to access any candidate's contact information spanning multiple platforms - phone, email and social profiles. And RAI is HiringSolved's Recruiter AI interface. RAI allows recruiters to operate HiringSolved's advanced software suite by simply talking to RAI, which works as an AI-powered recruiting assistant. Visit www.HiringSolved.com to learn more.

About Allegis Group

Allegis Group is the global leader in talent solutions focused on working harder and caring more than any other provider. We'll go further to understand the needs of our people - our clients, our candidates and our employees - and to consistently deliver on our promise of an unsurpassed quality experience. That's the Allegis Group difference, and it's consistent across every Allegis Group company. With more than $11 billion in annual revenues and over 500 locations across the globe, our network provides businesses with a comprehensive suite of talent solutions - without sacrificing the niche expertise required to ensure a successful partnership. Our specialized group of companies includes: Aerotek; TEKsystems; Aston Carter; Allegis Global Solutions; Major, Lindsey & Africa; Allegis Partners; MarketSource; EASi; The Stamford Group; and GettingHired. Visit www.AllegisGroup.com to learn more.

Julie McClure

410-694-5215

jmcclure@allegisgroup.com

allegisgroup.com


NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Max Zanan, an automotive retail expert with nearly 20 years of experience, announced today the upcoming release of his book 'Perfect Dealership: Surviving The Digital Disruption'- a car dealer's guide to surviving the digital age.

The automotive retail industry is under more pressure than ever. Lower margins, stricter regulations, heavy competition, and online disrupters have many managers with their backs against the wall. With the rise of online auto sales, will the average auto dealership even exist in 10 years?

"Perfect Dealership serves as a wake-up call for the automobile industry," says Zanan. "Unless car dealerships change - and change quickly - they risk falling into the same digital gulf that obliterated the corner video store and travel agencies... The old ways are dead. It's time to adapt or fade away."

With Perfect Dealership, Max Zanan has created the industry's first truly comprehensive training manual. If you own or manage an auto dealership, or you're planning a career in the industry, Perfect Dealership is the indispensable guide for automotive management in a modern world.

"Perfect Dealership is the book the auto industry needs. With every chapter, Max outlines a modern and structured view of how to run and grow a profitable, ethical, and future-facing dealership... Perfect Dealership is a handbook for effective automotive management across all levels and departments. Every dealership owner and manager needs a copy." - Peter Zorzy - Director of Operations - Atlantic Auto Group

"...the industry is changing fast and dealerships need to adapt or die. The processes and concepts outlined in Perfect Dealership are not just important, but frankly are a necessity to future growth and success in an industry that's getting more competitive by the day." - Doug Wells - General Manager - Ray Catena Mercedes Benz

For media inquiries, or to request a review copy, please contact Max Zanan at 1-917-903-0312, maxzanan@gmail.com
LAS VEGAS, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

AEVI and Vantiv (NYSE: VNTV) announced today at Money20/20 USA(Booth #601), a major strategic partnership in North America to provide Vantiv's channel partners and merchants with an open application platform across the acquirer's SmartPay Series of hardware devices.

Vantiv and AEVI's innovative offering is the first in the US to provide a payment solution with the security of next-generation smart terminals and the flexibility of a rich, Android-based application marketplace. The venture will allow Vantiv's small and mid-size merchants to benefit from increased functionality and versatility to efficiently run and grow their business, their way.

As the first open marketplace solution that runs on multiple third-party hardware platforms, the SmartPay Series marketplace enables Vantiv's channel partners and merchants to revolutionize payments at the Point of Sale. They will be able to deliver tailored, value-added solutions that enhance the checkout experience, payroll management, loyalty programs and more, across different verticals.

"By offering more choice through an open application platform, we can drive a simpler smart terminal solution to help our partners and merchants win in the market," said Scott DeAngelo, Senior Vice President, Product at Vantiv. "With this solution, we are placing our partners and merchants ahead of the curve - whether it's through core software applications addressing specific POS needs, growing revenue through loyalty and analytics tools, or protecting their bottom line with inventory and labor management tools."

AEVI's Marketplace will be available to channel partners as a plug-and-play solution for merchants, backed by Vantiv's payment expertise and scale.

"We are very excited to partner with Vantiv, the largest merchant acquirer in the US, launching our open ecosystem for the North American market," said Mike Camerling, Director Marketplace at AEVI. "Our mission is to provide acquirers with their own marketplaces making available their unique combination of business apps to deliver unprecedented value to merchants. By enabling third-party devices, we can initiate a new era of payments and business services in the US, based on even more choice and flexibility."

Initial availability of the Vantiv/AEVI SmartPay marketplace solution is expected in select markets during the first quarter of 2018.

Visit Vantiv.com, for more information about Vantiv's in-store payment solutions for small businesses.

For further information about AEVI's global Marketplace solution visit AEVI.com.

Find out more at Money20/20 USA at The Venetian, The Palazzo in Las Vegas as AEVI and Vantiv will be jointly presenting their partnership at 11:50 a.m., on Tuesday, Oct. 24 Track 5, Level 3, The Venetian. More information on the presentation can be found here.

About Vantiv

Vantiv, Inc. (NYSE: VNTV) is a leading merchant acquirer differentiated by an integrated technology platform. Vantiv offers a comprehensive suite of traditional and innovative payment processing and technology solutions to merchants and financial institutions of all sizes, enabling them to address their payment processing needs through a single provider. We build strong relationships with our customers, helping them become more efficient, more secure and more successful. Vantiv is the second largest merchant acquirer and the largest PIN debit acquirer based on number of transactions in the U.S. The company's growth strategy includes expanding further into high-growth channels and verticals, including integrated payments, ecommerce, B2B payments and merchant bank.

For more information, visit www.vantiv.com

About AEVI

AEVI brings acquirers closer to their merchants, and merchants closer to their consumers, with an open Ecosystem that combines apps, payment services and a multi-vendor selection of payment devices. Selecting from a marketplace of high-quality apps and services, Acquirers can quickly create differentiated, innovative SmartPOS solutions under their own brands. Our centralized payments as a service platform eliminates obstacles, and helps Acquirers simplify the complex payment landscape with a single integration and access to a comprehensive suite of cloud-based, back office reporting tools for enhanced control and flexibility. We welcome Acquirers, App Solution Partners and Hardware Vendors to build on our vision of an open, collaborative payments Ecosystem unrestricted by device vendors, currencies, borders or regulations.

For more information, visit: www.aevi.com

AEVI International GmbH is a subsidiary company of Diebold Nixdorf and is headquartered in Germany with operations in the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic.

For media enquiries please contact:

AEVI in Europe

Imogen Saunders, AEVI Media Relations Executive

aevipress@adastrauk.com

Phone: +44-1243-535063



AEVI in North America

Pete Bartolik, AEVI Media Relations Executive

pete@bartolik.com

Phone +1-508-259-2108



Martina Jeronski, AEVI Head of Global Marketing and Communications

martina.jeronski@aevi.com

Phone: +49-176-326-913-48



VANTIV

Adam Kiefaber, Vantiv Leader of Corporate Communications

adam.kiefaber@vantiv.com

Phone: +1-513-900-5097


NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 10/24/17 -- Today, Persado, the leading provider of AI-generated marketing language for top global brands, unveiled the expansion of its marketing language cloud and introduced Persado One, a feature that enables personalized emotional engagement at scale. Presenting at VentureBeat's VB Summit 2017, the company also announced the closing of up to $30 million in financing from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the bank of the world's most innovative companies and their investors.

Representing the most significant advancement to date of Persado's artificial intelligence platform, Persado One facilitates an entirely new way for brands to build relevant and lasting relationships at the individual level with their customers. Persado One utilizes deep learning algorithms to create an emotional profile for individual customers based on previous campaigns, then generates corresponding language to personalize the message. The feature is available through Persado's Enterprise level of service.

Persado is also introducing a professional class of tools initially focused on the email and social media channels. Marketers will be able to: predict response rates; generate higher performing campaigns according to objective, industry, and KPIs; and refine language according to a brand's tone, style, and vocabulary.

"The debut of Persado One and the expansion of Persado's marketing language cloud solutions mark an important milestone for our company as we continue to reach a broader audience of marketers with tools to directly impact their business," said Assaf Baciu, Co-Founder and SVP Product & Engineering, Persado. "These innovations are reflective of Persado's success in generating ROI for the world's leading brands and increasing marketplace demand."

Persado is available via the following product levels:

Persado Enterprise: Persado Enterprise yields highest rates of performance for marketing organizations through customized messages and actionable insights for all channels including email, display advertising, social advertising, landing pages, SMS, push notifications, direct mail, and more, in as many as 23 languages. With enough campaign data, brands can unlock the omnichannel personalization capability of Persado One within the Enterprise offering.





Persado Professional: Persado Pro offers cloud-based tools that empower individual marketers with fast and flexible access to predictive and data-driven message generation capabilities. Pro Email instantly generates high-performance language for email subject lines with integrations to major email marketing platforms. A starter edition of Pro Email leverages nearly a decade of machine learning to scientifically predict the performance of a subject line, compared to the rest of the industry or a brand's own dataset. Pro Social instantly generates paid ad units for Facebook, including headlines, image text overlays, and images that emotionally engage an audience.





The financing from SVB will fuel the expansion of the Persado Marketing Language Cloud and further the rapid growth of the business. Persado's significant momentum has been driven by the continued support of its valued customers, a 360% increase in its user base since 2016, key integration and go-to-market partnerships with leading marketing platforms including Oracle, Salesforce, Cheetah Digital, and Oracle+Bronto, and market expansion in Europe, Australia, Mexico, Japan, and the Republic of Korea.

Said Alex Vratskides, Co-Founder and CEO, Persado, "We are grateful to have the longstanding support of Silicon Valley Bank. As a bank built around supporting innovation, Silicon Valley Bank is the ideal partner in our drive to challenge what's possible in applying an industry-leading AI technology to marketing and beyond."

"We're pleased to work with Persado during this exciting time in the company's growth," said Adam Millsom, Director, Silicon Valley Bank. "Persado is using AI in an innovative way for marketers to find the right content for their audience, and we're enthusiastic about the company's initiatives and the future applications of their technology. Our aim is to provide the best financing, connections, and global services to facilitate Persado's success."

Since its founding in 2012, Persado has empowered brands to provide insight into how consumers respond to their messages in different scenarios (e.g. via email, to renew a prescription online; via Facebook ad, to drive an app install). For more information or to schedule a product demo, please visit www.persado.com.

About Persado

Persado is the Marketing Language Cloud: AI-generated language that resonates the most with any audience, segment, or individual. Imagine having a copywriter and data scientist for each person in your audience; the platform generates the precise language that performs along with analytics detailing what drove response, resulting in better business outcomes and unprecedented insight into consumer engagement. Comprised of the world's largest marketing language database, with over a million organized, tagged, and scored words, phrases, and images, Persado's Marketing Language Cloud enables brands to increase acquisition and retention while building long term consumer relationships. To unlock the power of language and emotion for marketing, visit persado.com.

About Silicon Valley Bank

For more than 30 years, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has helped innovative companies and their investors move bold ideas forward, fast. SVB provides targeted financial services and expertise through its offices in innovation centers around the world. With commercial, international and private banking services, SVB helps address the unique needs of innovators. Learn more at svb.com.

Contact

Silicon Valley Bank

Julia Thompson

Public Relations

Email Contact



Persado

Eva Pullano

LaunchSquad for Persado

Email Contact




Check Out Chicago's Most Creative Costumes From 'Arts In The Dark' Halloween Parade

Some of the most artistic people in Chicago dressed up in their Halloween best and came out in the streets Saturday night. Arts in the Dark brought together some of the company's most important creative forces and, crucially, their fans for a parade on Columbus Drive.

There were all the usual suspects you might see at a Halloween paradewhich is to say a little bit of everything, including zombies performing a very faithful rendition of Thriller:

This group is absolutely killing the Thriller dance for @LUMA8Chicago's Arts in the Dark Halloween Parade. YZ pic.twitter.com/au3whxibXw  MB Real Estate (@MBREChicago) October 21, 2017

But there were also Chicago-themed constumes. The city's Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events encouraged participants to dress up as Anish Kapoor's The Bean, Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain, Alexander Calder's Flamingo, Jean Dubuffet's Standing Beast or The Picasso.

Performers from Lookingglass Theatre reprised their roles from their recent Alice production, and there were performances from The Actor's Gymnasium, and The Art Institute, too. Also spotted were West Town bikers, folklorico dancers, mulleted neon centaurs and lots of musicians and drummers, including a jazz combo of skeletons:
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - USANA Health Sciences, Inc. (USNA) announced, for 2017, the company now expects consolidated net sales approaching $1.030 billion (the top end of the previously issued guidance of $1.015 billion and $1.030 billion); and earnings per share of approximately $3.70 (previous guidance was $3.50 and $3.70). For the third quarter of 2017, earnings per share was $0.97 compared with $1.20 in the prior year period, a decrease of 19.2%. Third quarter EPS was $1.02 excluding incremental expense related to China and the company's previously disclosed internal investigation. Third-quarter net sales were $261.8 million compared with $254.2 million in the prior-year period, or a 3.0% increase year-over-year. The company's total number of active Customers increased by 2.4% year-over-year to 563,000. 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.
SINGAPORE and TORONTO, 2017-10-25 00:00 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OMERS, the pension plan for municipal workers in the province of Ontario, Canada, today announced that it will open an office in Singapore in January 2018.



"OMERS is proud to establish a presence in Singapore, which is recognized internationally as a major financial hub," said Michael Latimer, President and CEO of OMERS. "We appreciate the many distinct advantages Singapore offers, including the deep expertise of its financial services community, ease of doing business, world-class infrastructure, and connectivity to the rest of Asia," he added.



Bringing the OMERS presence to Singapore is part of a multi-year strategy being carried out by OMERS to identify promising investment opportunities in emerging markets. At the end of 2016, the geographic distribution of OMERS holdings saw 40% of its assets in Canada, 37% in the US, 17% in Europe and 6% in other parts of the world.



"Our decision to locate in Singapore is consistent with our overall effort to further diversify OMERS global investment holdings," said Michael Rolland, Chief Investment Officer, OMERS Private Markets, appointed by OMERS to lead the development of the company's presence in Singapore. "Earlier this year, our OMERS Infrastructure team made its first-ever direct investment in South America. Also in 2017, Oxford Properties, OMERS real estate arm, became a co-investor in Berlin's Sony Center, marking its first investment in Germany. In 2016, OMERS Infrastructure made its first major investment in Australia, in the Port of Melbourne. This is in addition to ongoing global mergers and acquisitions completed by various companies in OMERS Private Equity's portfolio."



"Our engagement in Singapore begins with many strong business and government relationships in the region," said Mr. Latimer. "The opening of the Singapore office demonstrates the potential we see in the Asia-Pacific region, both from the perspective of making direct investments and from cultivating new investment partners. It is the logical next step in evolving our international footprint," he said.



The OMERS office in Singapore will be located at One Raffles Quay and staffed by accomplished investment professionals representing the organization's deep expertise in capital markets, infrastructure, private equity and real estate. Its work will complement the success of the existing OMERS Infrastructure office located in Sydney, Australia.



About OMERS:



Founded in 1962, OMERS is one of Canada's largest defined benefit pension plans, with more than $85 billion in net assets, as at December 31, 2016. OMERS invests and administers pensions for more than 470,000 members from municipalities, school boards, emergency services and local agencies across Ontario. OMERS has employees in Toronto and other major cities across North America, the U.K., Europe and Australia - originating and managing a diversified portfolio of investments in public markets, private equity, infrastructure and real estate. For more information, please visit www.omers.com.



Contact: Neil Hrab, Manager, Communications - Investments 416-369-2418 nhrab@omers.com

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
Bux, an Amsterdam, The Netherlands-based fintech startup, raised 10.6m in Series C funding.

The round was led by HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, with participation from Velocity Capital and a number of influential angel investors, including former Booking.com CMO Arthur Kosten and Thierry Schaap, co-founder of online brokerage firm BinckBank.

The company, which also opened the pre-registration of its inaugural crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs, giving over one million BUX users the opportunity to own shares in the business, intends to use the funds to undertake product expansion to be able to create a full suite of apps by 2020, ranging from short term trading, to long-term investing.

Led by Nick Bortot, CEO and founder, Bux provides an international community-based trading app, primarily aimed at those with no experience with trading, which has already been rolled out across eight European countries, with over 200,000 users from the UK alone.

The company has partnered with British-German broker ayondo Markets Ltd, who is licensed by the UKs Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Consequently, users can trade with real money which is subject to the FCA regulations and their funds are covered by the UKs Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

Bux has introduced a number of rules to ensure users dont take irresponsible risks. These mitigations include:

 Diversification: BUXsters cannot invest the entire value of their account in one stock  they have to spread their risk

 Risk management: BUXsters cannot lose more than the amount invested

 Experience: All new BUXsters have to start with funBUX  a virtual currency

 Limited leverage: Does not offer ridiculously high leverages

 Transparency: BUX always clearly discloses transaction costs and they dont make money off the spread as there are no bid and ask prices; everyone trades on one price.

FinSMEs

24/10/2017
How will recapitalisation bonds work?

One big question at this moment is how exactly the recapitalisation bonds will work and what will be its impact on the government debt situation? During the presser Arun Jaitley said the government will have to work out the nature of the recap bonds. Jaitley cited international experience where similar bonds are not part of the fiscal deficit but mentioned that in India the situation could be different. The critical clarification needed now is to see which will is the agency that will issue these bonds. If the government issues these bonds, then it becomes part of the government debt. There is no clarity on this as of now. Besides, there is no clarity on for how many years these bonds will be issued. The details of the recapitalization bonds will be keenly watched. In a chat with CNBC-TV18, former RBI deputy governor, KC Chakrabarty, recap bonds are good instruments but if banks need to bear the cost of the exercise, this may not be a good way to recapitalise the banking sector.
New Delhi: The Department of Telecom (DoT) has cleared the merger of Sistema Shyam Teleservices with Reliance Communications, a deal that will reduce the number of mobile operators in the country to ten.

"Reliance Communications Limited (RCOM) has received the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) approval for the demerger of the wireless business of Sistema Shyam Teleservices Limited (SSTL) into RCom," the Anil-Ambani led telecom firm said in a statement.

According to a source, the deal was cleared by the DoT on 20 October.

Under the deal, all wireless business assets of SSTL will come under RCom. However, brand MTS will continue to operate.

SSTL will gets 10 percent stake in RCom as per the terms of the deal.

"With this, Rcom will acquire approximately 2 million customers and additional annual revenues of around Rs 700 crore. In addition, RCom will acquire 30 MHz of the most valuable and superior 800/850 MHz band spectrum, ideally suited for 4G LTE services, to complement its own unique nationwide footprint," the statement said.

The nod brings some relief for the debt-ridden RCom after its merger deal with another telecom operator Aircel collapsed early this month.

The merger of SSTL will also extend validity of RComs spectrum portfolio in the 800 and 850 MHz band in eight important circles -- Delhi, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala, Kolkata, UP-West and West Bengal -- by a period of 12 years from 2021 to 2033.

RCom has assumed the liability to pay Rs 390 crore per annum for the next eight years to the DoT which is due for specrtrum purchased by SSTL.

The transactions related to the deal are expected to close by the first week of November 2017, RCom said.

Shares of RCom closed at Rs 17.7 a unit, up by 7.6 per cent compared to the previous close on the BSE on Monday.
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Shareholder advisory firm is of the opinion that making the report public is key for Murthy. "SES is of the view that if the report is not made public in full, NRN (Murthy) will lose his credibility and prove that he was firing wrong shots ostensibly to hurt individuals he disliked and which undeniably caused irreparable damage to the baby he gave birth to," an SES report said recently.

The internal audit by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a global consultancy firm, was instituted after Murthy raised the corporate governance issues in the company. Infosys has made only summary of the findings public.

However, it is also to be remembered that making the report public has been one of the key demands of NR Narayana Murthy.

One reason is the non-disparagement agreement signed between the Infosys management and Vishal Sikka. According to an earlier report by The Times of India, the pact does not allow both the management and Sikka to make any negative comments about each other.

Should we expect anything on the contentious forensic report by Gibson Dunn & Crutcher?

Should we expect anything on internal forensic report on Panaya?

According to the BS report, the current interim MD and CEO UB Pravin Rao will fo back to his earlier role as chief operating officer.

Both of them had quit after Sikka assumed the office.

According to the report the probable canadidates are BG Srinivas and Ashok Vemuri, both former Infosys executives.

Nandan Nilekani was brought in to find a new head for the company.

According to a report in the Business Standard, Infosys is likely to announce the new CEO today.

Revenue guidance for the current financial year has been cut to 5,5-6.5 percent from 6.5-8.5 percent earlier.

Analysts feel Infosys is back to its former strategy of under promising and over-delivering.

Dollar revenue stands at $2,728 million, up 2.9 percent sequentially. This is against $2,738 million estiamted.

Operating margin has come in at 24.2 percent margin vs 23.6 percent estimate

Company back to its former strategy - Under promising and over-delivering

During the quarter, we responded quickly to the management and Board changes through proactive communication with all stakeholders minimizing any negative impact to the business and allowing us to deliver growth across all our large industry units.

"We continue to focus on executing on the theme of software enabled services and on accelerating growth of our new services portfolio. said U B Pravin Rao, Interim CEO and Managing Director.

Nandan Nilekani says in a statement, "I am fully persuaded and the entire board that it was a fair and independent investigation and all stakeholders acted in a fair transparent manner but it could have been handled better".

According to him, the fact that tthe company has brought down guidance is probably going to be a big negative for it and for the sector as well.

"We will be focussing on plans for digital and product business," Katri told CNBC-TV18.

According to expert Moshe Katri from New York, the focus will be on what the company does as regards digital adn product businesses.

According to expert Moshe Katri from New York, the focus will be on what the company does as regards digital adn product businesses.

We have taken several steps during the quarter towards our capital allocation policy covering `13,000 crore share buyback, coupled with interim dividend of `13 per share for enhancing shareholder returns.

Our focus on improving operational efficiencies enabled us to deliver stable margins in the quarter and at the same time provide compensation increases and higher variable payouts to our employees. said MD Ranganath, CFO.

Revenues were $5,379 million for the half year ended September 30, 2017 YoY growth of 5.7% in reported terms; 5.5% in constant currency terms

Net profit was $578 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2017 QoQ growth of 7.0%; YoY growth of 7.3%

Operating profit was $659 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2017 QoQ growth of 3.4%; YoY growth of 2.4%

Revenues were $2,728 million for the quarter ended 30 September 2017 on quarter growth of 2.9% in reported terms; 2.2% in constant currency terms YoY growth of 5.4% in reported terms; 4.6% in constant currency terms

I believe that all stakeholders acted out of a strong passion for Infosys, wanting what they believed to be the best for the Company and to see it succeed. In light of my review of these matters, I am fully persuaded, as is the entire Board, that the conclusions of the independent investigations are correct. This Board and I are committed to the highest standards of professionalism and will deal promptly and decisively with any governance issues should they ever come up in the future, Nilekani said.

According to the press release by the company the Board has reaffirmed the previous findings of external investigations that there is no merit to the allegations of wrongdoing.

Revenue from new services grew 14 percent quarter on quarter. Clients continued adoption of software platforms. "Net-net good progress," Rao said.

According to Pravin Rao, revenue per employee stood at $52,700, consecutive seventh quarter of rise. The company's volumes grew 1.7 percent during the quarter.

"End of year there are few account specific softness. However, overall confidence from client remains," Rao said.

Lower number of working days during this quarter and seasonal softness have impacted the earnings.

According to Rao, from a sector perspective, barring retail, Infosys has seen good performace across all others during the second quarter.

"Long term, the dangers of being irrelevant also loom high - the fact is that Vishal Sikka was instrumental in bringing through the much needed change in culture and strategy. With his departure, Infosys has to go the extra mile to communicate and convince their stakeholders of their focus on being relevant in the future."

"The new management has to go out of their way and keep focus on what matters - client outcomes, employee happiness and investor returns," Gogia said.

Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst, founder and CEO, Greyhound Knowledge Group, a strategy and transformation research, advisory and consulting group, says: The next few quarters will be extremely critical for the company and will require delicate handling to say the least.

Next few quarters critical, will need delicate handling, says analyst

During the quarter, we responded quickly to the management and Board changes through proactive communication with all stakeholders minimizing any negative impact to the business and allowing us to deliver growth across all our large industry units.

"We continue to focus on executing on the theme of software enabled services and on accelerating growth of our new services portfolio. said U B Pravin Rao, Interim CEO and Managing Director.

Nandan Nilekani says in a statement, "I am fully persuaded and the entire board that it was a fair and independent investigation and all stakeholders acted in a fair transparent manner but it could have been handled better".

According to him, the fact that tthe company has brought down guidance is probably going to be a big negative for it and for the sector as well.

"We will be focussing on plans for digital and product business," Katri told CNBC-TV18.

According to expert Moshe Katri from New York, the focus will be on what the company does as regards digital adn product businesses.

According to expert Moshe Katri from New York, the focus will be on what the company does as regards digital adn product businesses.

We have taken several steps during the quarter towards our capital allocation policy covering `13,000 crore share buyback, coupled with interim dividend of `13 per share for enhancing shareholder returns.

Our focus on improving operational efficiencies enabled us to deliver stable margins in the quarter and at the same time provide compensation increases and higher variable payouts to our employees. said MD Ranganath, CFO.

Revenues were $5,379 million for the half year ended September 30, 2017 YoY growth of 5.7% in reported terms; 5.5% in constant currency terms

Net profit was $578 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2017 QoQ growth of 7.0%; YoY growth of 7.3%

Operating profit was $659 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2017 QoQ growth of 3.4%; YoY growth of 2.4%

Revenues were $2,728 million for the quarter ended 30 September 2017 on quarter growth of 2.9% in reported terms; 2.2% in constant currency terms YoY growth of 5.4% in reported terms; 4.6% in constant currency terms

I believe that all stakeholders acted out of a strong passion for Infosys, wanting what they believed to be the best for the Company and to see it succeed. In light of my review of these matters, I am fully persuaded, as is the entire Board, that the conclusions of the independent investigations are correct. This Board and I are committed to the highest standards of professionalism and will deal promptly and decisively with any governance issues should they ever come up in the future, Nilekani said.

According to the press release by the company the Board has reaffirmed the previous findings of external investigations that there is no merit to the allegations of wrongdoing.

Revenue from new services grew 14 percent quarter on quarter. Clients continued adoption of software platforms. "Net-net good progress," Rao said.

According to Pravin Rao, revenue per employee stood at $52,700, consecutive seventh quarter of rise. The company's volumes grew 1.7 percent during the quarter.

"End of year there are few account specific softness. However, overall confidence from client remains," Rao said.

Lower number of working days during this quarter and seasonal softness have impacted the earnings.

According to Rao, from a sector perspective, barring retail, Infosys has seen good performace across all others during the second quarter.

"Long term, the dangers of being irrelevant also loom high - the fact is that Vishal Sikka was instrumental in bringing through the much needed change in culture and strategy. With his departure, Infosys has to go the extra mile to communicate and convince their stakeholders of their focus on being relevant in the future."

"The new management has to go out of their way and keep focus on what matters - client outcomes, employee happiness and investor returns," Gogia said.

Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst, founder and CEO, Greyhound Knowledge Group, a strategy and transformation research, advisory and consulting group, says: The next few quarters will be extremely critical for the company and will require delicate handling to say the least.

Next few quarters critical, will need delicate handling, says analyst

All eyes are on Infosys earnings this time round. For one the reason is that this is the first earnings after the return on Nandan Nilekani to the helm.

Analysts expect the outcome of the board meeting to reflect on long-term stability in the business along with short-term confidence building measures like date for share buyback and employees' salary hike.

An average of analysts' poll by CNBC-TV18 has seen profit flat at Rs 3,496 crore against Rs 3,483 crore in the previous quarter. Revenue is seen increasing 3.2 percent sequentially to Rs 17,630 crore and dollar revenue 3.3 percent to $2,738 million.

Constant currency revenue growth is expected to be at 2.2 percent for the quarter against 2.7 percent in Q1. Earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) is seen falling to Rs 4,097 crore during the quarter, compared with Rs 4,111 crore in the previous quarter. Operating margin, meanwhile, is seen declining 50 basis points to 23.6 percent sequentially due to wage hikes.

However, analysts will also closely watching the management commentary. "The Infosys board has two key issues to manage currently -- one, ensuring stability by way of managing stakeholder sentiment and two, offering visibility by way of sharing concrete guidance," Greyhound Knowledge Group CEO and Chief Analyst Sanchit Vir Gogia told PTI.

He further said while multiple short-term tactics like share buyback, employees salary hikes and active client conversations can be expected to ensure stability, it is the concrete guidance that needs most focus and work.

Infosys has been in the news since the beginning of 2017 due to sharp differences between its founder NR Narayana Murthy and the company's board under R Seshasayee as Chairman and Vishal Sikka as CEO over governance issues.

Murthy had also expressed concern over Rs 1,250 crore acquisition of Israel based IT firm Panaya based on anonymous letter, which alleged wrong doing in the deal. An audit done by international law firm Gibson Dunn and Control Risks found no evidence of wrongdoing in the Panaya acquisition.

Sikka resigned from the company on 18 August after a series of allegations levelled by Murthy. Seshasayee and Infosys co-chairman Ravi Venkatesan resigned in the following week.

Nilekani returned to the board of the company after a gap of about seven years as non-executive chairman on 24 August. His appointment seems to have settled the dust of controversies around board, however, stakeholders are now looking for uptake of the company's business under Nilekani's regime.

Infosys Chief Operation Officer UB Pravin Rao was given interim charge of managing director and CEO on 24 August. The announcement of regular CEO is due from the company.

The company had posted 1.3 percent increase in net profit to Rs 3,483 crore for the June quarter, helped by client wins in key markets, and raised its annual US dollar revenue outlook.

Its revenue grew 1.7 percent to Rs 17,078 crore in the first quarter of 2017-18 as against Rs 16,782 crore in the year-ago period.

(With inputs from PTI)
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday asked jailed Unitech Ltd Managing Director Sanjay Chandra to establish his bonafides by depositing at least Rs 1,000 crore out of a total of Rs 1,865 crore to refund hassled home buyers who do not want possession of flats.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra was informed by the amicus curiae (court's friend) that 4,688 home buyers of Unitech wanted their money back and, as per the company's figure, the total refund amount came to Rs 1,865 crore.

When senior advocate Ranjit Kumar, appearing for Chandra, told the bench that the Unitech MD should be allowed to come out of jail to arrange money for refunding the investors and complete their housing projects, the court said he has to show his bonafide by depositing money for refund.

"Rs 130 crore you have deposited so far. Now at least Rs 1,000 crore should be deposited," the bench, also comprising Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, said.

"For people who want refund of money, it is our duty to see that they get their money. For refund, you must show your bonafide. In our view, the canvass is very big. We can permit you (to come out of jail) and we can fix a time limit," the bench said.

The apex court also questioned the real estate firm on why they cannot auction their properties to refund money to the home buyers and complete their housing projects.

"Why cannot you sell your properties and give the money back," the bench asked.

Kumar told the court that if Chandra is allowed to come out of jail for atleast four weeks, he can manage funds for disbursment to home buyers as well as give possession of flats to those investors who want their homes.

"We (Unitech) cannot last until I (Chandra) come out. You can put stringent conditions. We have deposited Rs 130 crore so far," he said, adding, "unless I (Chandra) come out, it will not be possible."

Regarding court's query as to why the company cannot sell its properties to generate funds, Kumar said the auction of properties would not fetch money which they deserve and there were 64 projects of the company.

The bench, however, said that properties can be put on auction to generate Rs 1,865 crore to refund the buyers.

Kumar said he would take instructions on the issue and get back to the court, after which the bench posted the matter for hearing on October 30.

At the outset, advocate Pawan Shree Aggarwal, who has been appointed as amicus curiae to assist in the matter, told the bench that as per figures given by the company, Rs 1,865 crore was the refund amount which the home buyers want out of the total amount of Rs 5,085 crore.

He said that several home buyers have not provided details as to whether they want refund of possession of flats.

He said that out of total 16,300 home buyers, 9,072 buyers have provided the details to him on the portal.

Kumar told the court that there were around 4,320 buyers who wanted possession of flats.

The bench observed that it could fix a time frame for giving possession of flats to the buyers.

At the fag end of hearing, the bench said it would hear the home buyers first as the court wants to protect their interest.

The apex court had earlier directed the amicus curiae to create a website in which the home buyers could upload their details and claim flat or refund from the company.

Chandra is seeking interim bail from the apex court after the Delhi High Court on 11 August had rejected the plea in a criminal case lodged in 2015 by 158 home buyers of Unitech projects' --'Wild Flower Country' and 'Anthea Project'-- situated in Gurugram.

The apex court had on 1 September said that although it is absolutely conscious that it is dealing with an application for bail, but "the consumers who have invested their money in various projects undertaken by the petitioners cannot be allowed to lurch in the dark. Their problem has to be solved".

It had said that settlement of the problem can take place in two ways--the consumers who are inclined to take possession of the flats can opt for the same and those who wanted their money back shall get the amount along with interest.
#MeToo Reaches Illinois Capitol As Open Letter Details Misogyny In Springfield

By Emma G. Gallegos in News on Oct 24, 2017 3:33PM



Springfield (Photo by Jim Bowen via the Chicagoist Featured Photos pool on Flickr)

The allegations of sexual abuse that started with producer Harvey Weinstein have been felt far outside of Hollywood. Women all around the world have been sharing their stories with a #MeToo hashtag, and now women in Illinois politics are signing on to say sexual abuse is rampant in their line of work, too.

"Misogyny is alive and well in this industry," declares an open letter. The letter goes on to describe all the different ways that women are harassed and abused in their industry: everything from lewd comments to groping to insinuations that the only way to get ahead is to sleep your way to the top. The letter says that this is not just bad for the women who work in the state government, but it's bad for the people they represent: "So women choose to leave careers in public service, and all Illinoisans suffer the loss of their brilliance and commitment to creating a better Illinois."

Here are some of the allegations from the open letter:

It looks like The Globe on any given session night in Springfield, where it's clear that a woman must endure the crude jokes and untoward advances of male colleagues and legislators if she wants to garner support for her work. It looks like a male legislatora chamber leaderasking a female staffer out to dinner under the guise of offering mentorship, then proceeding to explain his "open marriage" to her and ask if she's single. It looks like a female staffer leading a complex bill negotiation, and the male legislator whose assent is crucial to her success starts texting her late at night asking what she's doing. (The answer? She was sleeping. Because she was working with dogged pursuit to accomplish her goals.) It looks like a committee chairman, with the power to kill her bill, telling a female staffer "nice ass" as she walks through the hotel hallways fresh from her morning workout, the forced intimacy of staying in the same hotels leaving little room for privacy or refuge. It looks like the candidate who slides his hands across the body of his fundraising consultant during call time. Who calls and texts her in the middle of the night, and refuses to pay her what she is owed because his advances are rebuked. It looks like the popular downstate (married) county chairman, who while walking down Michigan Avenue late one evening after attending a campaign fundraiser with a much younger female campaign staffer, asks if she'd like to come upstairs to his hotel room for a "night cap." It looks like the female colleagues who advise the next generation of women to "flirt back" and to "smile and shrug it off" because "that's what I had to do to get ahead."

An administrator told the Chicago Tribune that 129 women had signed the document.

"A lot of us felt like it was just us  we were being singled out because we were young or we were alone or we were single," Katelynd Duncan, founder of political fundraising organization KJD Strategies told the Tribune. "This demonstrates solidarity that there's not a woman in this industry we know who hasn't had this experience. It's a testament to how long we've been experiencing this in the shadows and behind closed doors and keeping it to ourselves."

Illinois isn't the first state government to make these sorts of allegations. Women in California politics and other states have come forward to share their own #MeToo stories.

Some Illinois lawmakers are already responding. State Rep. Sarah Feigenholtz, who signed the letter, told the Tribune she wants to file a resolution that forces lawmakers to address the culture.

State Senators Litesa Wallace and Daniel Biss said that they are introducing legislation, requiring all legislators, their staff and lobbyists to undergo sexual harassment training, according to Capitol Fax.

"Widespread sexual harassment is one of many reasons women, especially women of color, are underrepresented in Springfield," said Wallace, in a statement. "We have the power to change this culture, and to set up our systems to support womenand with that power comes a responsibility to act. That's why raising awareness isn't enough. We owe it to all the women who have shared their experiences, and to all those who haven't come forward, to build systems set up to prevent sexual harassment."
Mumbai: Designer Neeta Lulla, who earlier designed for Grammy winning record producers The Chainsmokers, is now on board to design for Indo-American DJ and record producer KSHMR.

DJ KSHMR, whose real name is Niles Hollowell-Dhar, started his tour across India starting from 20 October.

"I have always been quite fascinated by Indian sensibilities when it comes to fashion and style, and I'm excited to see what Neeta has in store for me," KSHMR said in a statement.

Promoted by Percept Live, after performing in New Delhi, KSHMR will be performing in Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

"KSHMR is known to love his kurtas so we have tried to experiment with the style, fabric and design and make a Diwali friendly kurta. The exotic vibe of Kashmir and the aesthetic history of paisley is all the inspiration we needed to design for the very talented Indo American DJ KSHMR," Lulla said.

The National Award winning designer says the design on the kurta will be rather subtle with an Indian touch with "astute details in the embroidery".

"Given the history of KSHMR and his love for Kashmir, the versatile paisleys seemed very apt to reflect our Indian heritage and the intricacy of our craftsmanship. KSHMR has been very experimental with his music and we thought of doing the same with his outfit.

"We have also curated one more kurta where we have embroidered the KSHMR logo in ruby red jewels which he can wear when he performs on stage. The materials used are silk and cotton blend giving it a rich feel," Lulla added.

Lulla has also designed for international celebrities like Steven Seagal and Tyra Banks apart from designing for Bollywood stalwarts like Kangana Ranaut, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra, Rajnikanth, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan among others.
Atul Agnihotri has booked Eid 2019 for another Salman Khan biggie. The producer has declared his next big project with Salman named Bharat, which is an official adaptation of a South Korean drama, Ode To My Father.

Tiger Zinda Hai director Ali Abbas Zafar will go on the floors by April 2018, reports The film, produced by Agnihotri and directed bydirector Ali Abbas Zafar will go on the floors by April 2018, reports Pune Mirror . It is also reported that different parts of the film will be shot in Delhi, Punjab, Spain and Abu Dhabi.

Ode To My Father has been a critically acclaimed film, depicting the Korean history from the 1950s till the recent times. The movie also highlights events such as the Hungnam Evacuation, 1950 Korean War and the Vietnam war. Agnihotri said that he watched the film at the Busan International Film Festival and felt it could make for a great Bollywood film, as stated in the same report.

The same report quotes Agnihotri as saying, That film is just the starting point for us but since it was an inspiration, we wanted in all fairness to officially own it and acquired the remake rights before going ahead with Bharat. It starts in 1947 and ends in 2000 and is the journey of a country and also a person, both of whom go by the name of Bharat.

The Bodyguard producer already has a super hit Eid history with Salman. "Bharat is a character that I thought would resonate with him. Its a huge responsibility making a film with Salman as there are big expectations that come with the job," he said, as per the same report. He also hinted at possibilities of a Bodyguard sequel.
More than six months after winning a case against a Melur-based couple who claimed Dhanush is their biological son, the Tamil actor may soon get embroiled in legal trouble again. The couple has filed a police complaint against Dhanush accusing him of submitting fake documents.

The Indian Express reports that Kathiresan and Meenakshi alleged that Dhanush's birth certificate, along with supporting documents, are fake which gave him an upper hand in winning the parentage case after Madras High Court could not establish any tangible links.

Now, the Times of India reports that Kathiresan filed a complaint on 5 October to the city police commissioner to direct the K Pudur police to register a case against Dhanush for allegedly producing fake documents before the Madras High Court.

The same report states that while the police was initially reluctant to file the complaint, owing to their assumption that the elderly couple lacks scope of inquiry, they ended up registering it after the complaint was sent through registered post on 6 October.

The report also states that Kathiresan has claimed that there was no record of Dhanush's birth with the Chennai corporation though the actor produced a document from the same corporation that testified that he was born in the Egmore government hospital on 27 July, 1983.
Los Angeles: Empowerment was the de facto theme at the third annual InStyle Awards on the night of 23 October, where Hollywood and fashion A-listers from Cate Blanchett and Zendaya to Cindy Crawford gathered on an open-air patio at The Getty Center to celebrate one another and those behind the scenes that make the glamour possible.

Attendees were dressed to the nines on the hot October night in Los Angeles. But glitz seemed to be the last thing on anyone's mind as they took the stage to speak to the intimate crowd, which included the likes of Heidi Klum, Kate Bosworth, Brie Larson, Ellen Pompeo, Faith Hill, Taika Waititi and Connie Britton among others.

"What we've created with fashion goes beyond just clothes and hair and makeup. We've created a platform to show different types of beauty," style star honoree Zendaya said.

Mothers, she said, have told her that because she wears her hair in an Afro style, that their daughters like their own hair now. "What the world needs right now is people who are exactly who they are," she said.

Blanchett, who was given the Style Icon award, also used her platform to talk about how the true icons of style are women "who have been utterly themselves without apology."

"It's about women who feel free to wear what they want, when they want and how they want to wear. And we know we all like looking sexy, but it doesn't mean we want to (expletive) you," Blanchett said to loud cheers. "I wouldn't say to Steve Bannon, 'You look like a bag of trash. Do you want me to throw you out?' But the comments that get said about what women wear on the red carpet."

Demi Lovato, recognized for her advocacy work, said that "the more you talk about issues and the things that you've gone through, the more you can help others. That's what's really important: Sharing life experiences with other people on this planet."

Positivity dominated the proceedings of the evening, which saw emotional speeches from makeup artist Hung Vanngo, who talked about his humble beginnings in war-torn Vietnam and a refugee camp, and hair stylist Harry Josh, who advocated for cruelty-free products.

One name that wasn't mentioned on the podium, however, was Harvey Weinstein or the culture of sexual harassment that has dominated talk in the industry for the past three weeks, even among otherwise outspoken advocates like Brie Larson and Lovato.

But there was an undeniable recurring message of defiance and power that permeated every speech.

"I have to say, bring it on ladies," Blanchett said. "Break it wide open."
Chennai: Acclaimed Malayalam film director IV Sasi died here on Tuesday, according to family sources. He was 67.

He was ailing for sometime. He is survived by his wife, the popular yesteryear actress Seema, a son and a daughter.

In a career spanning close to four decades, he directed more than 150 films. He won the the Nargis Dutt Award for the best feature film on National Integration, for his 1983 film Aaroodam.

He is also credited with discovering Malayalam superstar Mohanlal as the filmmaker directed Ineyengillum, one of the first breaks of Mohanlal in the capacity of a co-hero. IV Sasi's collaboration with another Malayalam superstar Mammootty is also a celebrated one as Sasi introduced him as a hero in Thrishna.

Sasi has also directed films in Telugu, Tamil and Hindi though his most popular contribution to Indian cinema has been in the Malayalam film industry. His most renowned Hindi film is Anokha Rishta, starring Rajesh Khanna and Smita Patil.

RIP - I. V Sasi is a path breaker,changed Malayalam commercial Cinema from mid 1970s 2 early 90s with presentation & technical brilliance  Sreedhar Pillai (@sri50) October 24, 2017
Los Angeles: Late popular comedian-actress Joan Rivers' private letters from stars including Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks will be published in her new biography.

Rivers died in 2014 at the age of 81 after suffering a heart attack during a routine medical procedure.

Though Rivers rarely apologised for her acid tongue, fans will see a softer side to her in new book Joan Rivers Confidential, reports pagesix.com.

While she did make potshots at celebrities, as per her observations, but she never shied away from criticising herself, especially her looks. She once said, "I was so ugly that they sent my picture to Ripleys Believe It or Not and he sent it back and said, 'I dont believe it'," as reported by Vanity Fair.

Written by Joan's daughter Melissa Rivers and friend-and-publicist Scott Currie, Joan Rivers Confidential will feature private letters belonging to the Fashion Police star, sent by the likes of Meryl Streep.

Streep and other celebrities including Tom Hanks, David Letterman and Bo Derek have given permission for their private letters to Rivers to be published.

In one of the letters, Streep had written: "Stephen Hawking and I could do a show about black holes, and then, I could disappear into one, a star collapsing in upon itself until it becomes at once invisible and incomparably dense."

According to pagesix.com's report, the book, which is reportedly 336-pages long, is slated to launch on 24 October at Maxwells Chophouse in New York.

(With inputs from IANS)
Kamal Haasan is likely to share the stage with his fellow Tamil superstar Rajinikanth at the grand music launch of the latter's upcoming film, S Shankar's sci-fi entertainer 2.0, in Dubai.

DNA reports that Rajinikanth and Shankar have personally sent an invitation to Haasan asking him to be present at the music launch on 27 October. Haasan has not denied or accepted the invitation yet.

The same report states that Shankar likes to attract global attention at his music launch. For the music release of I, he had invited Hollywood star Arnold Schwarzenegger. For 2.0, he wants Rajinikanth and Haasan on the same platform.

Haasan is currently focusing on completing Shabash Naidu which has been in the making for a long time. After that, he will join Shankar for Indian 2. This film will most likely see the comeback of Senapathy, the lead character from Indian.

While all the details of what is being reported as the 'biggest musical launch ever' are still to be disclosed, it has been confirmed that the music composer A R Rahman will perform live at the 2.0 music launch.

2.0 also stars Amy Jackson, Akshay Kumar and Adil Hussain. It is produced by Lyca Productions and is slated to release this Republic Day on 26 January, 2018.
Nenjil Thunivirunthal, directed by Suseenthiran, starring Sundeep Kishan, Vikranth, Harish Uthaman and Mehreen Pirzada, looks like an intense action thriller.

As the cast and crew launched the Tamil trailer today, the audience was given a glimpse of a tale revolving around two friends and the multiple phases their strong relationship underwent.

The two-minute trailer has Sundeep, leading this story which is packed with action, while trying to narrate an intriguing plot.

While Sundeep and Vikranth play the best buddies, Harish Uthaman portrays the fierce rowdy antagonist who seems to be more than apt as the evil guy who is responsible in creating a rift between them.

Throughout the trailer, the leads emphasise on the importance of friendship and how sometimes love can destroy it all. Nenjil Thunivirunthal also seems to have a bit of romance with Mehreen playing Sundeep's love interest.

D Imman, who has created quite a buzz with his latest composition 'Yachcha Yachcha' for this upcoming flick, lends an air of suspicion and intrigue through his nuanced background score.

Nenjil Thunivirunthal is produced by Antony's Annai Film Factories. It also stars Appukutty, T Siva and Thulasi. The bilingual, titled C/O Surya in Telugu, is slated to release on 10 November.
Academy Award winning director Roman Polanski is part of yet another sexual-assault controversy. The 84-year-old filmmaker has been accused of molesting a 10-year-old girl in California way back in 1975. This is the fifth incident reported against the director of The Pianist.

According to a report by The Guardian, Marianne Barnard claims that Polanski had sexually assaulted her in a beach in California during a photoshoot, where she was also asked to pose naked by him.

"At first I had the understanding I was just going to the beach with my mom. We were there for a little while by ourselves and then he was there. And she explained that this man wanted to take pictures of me in this fur coat. I thought it was to go into a magazine or something."

"At some point I realised my mom had gone. I dont know where she went and I didnt really register her leaving, but she was no longer there. Then he molested me," said Barnard.

Barnard attributes her courage to come out to the recent outrage against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein over a bevy of sexual assault allegations reported by more than 50 women, including A-list actresses like Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie etc.

"I felt terribly conflicted that I have been silent all this time and all these women are bravely coming forward and I thought to myself I cant in good conscience knowing what I know  and having gone through what Ive gone through  not speak out," says Barnard.

However Polanski completely refutes these claims, and E! Online quotes him saying, "I entirely reject the unfounded allegations of Mme. Barnard, of whom I have no knowledge."

Polanski's name as a sexual crime offender first came out in public in the year 1977 when he pleaded guilty to statutory rape of 13-year-old Samantha Geimer. Later, in 2010, Charlotte Lewis, the British actress, revealed that the disgraced filmmaker had molested her in 1983.

In 2017, there were reports of a third and fourth woman coming out to report abuse at the hands of Polanski, during their youth.
Daniel Day-Lewis doesn't step into the shoes of his characters, he lives them. He learnt to speak Czech when he was shooting for The Unbearable Lightness of Being even though the movie was shot entirely in English. He refused to move out of his wheelchair when the shoot for My Left Foot had ended. When he was shooting for the critically acclaimed Lincoln, he would not abandon the American accent he put on for the character and even insisted on being referred to as 'Mr President'.

He has previously spoken about "the gravitational pull of another life that fires ones curiosity", which motivates him to delve so deeply into a character that he soon turns into them.

In his latest film Phantom Thread, he gets into the character of renowned dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock, who was a fashion mogul of his times. From royalty, to movie stars and even socialites, Woodcock created glamourous clothes for the rich and the famous under his brand The House of Woodcock. Day-Lewis portrays Woodcock's passion for making dresses and stitching clothes with his voice alone, with the way he talks about how he sewed things into the canvases of coats.

Women came and went through Woodcocks life, giving this confirmed bachelor both inspiration and companionship.

This movie, set in post-War London of the 1950s, will see how his controlled and planned life comes apart when Alma, a young but strong-willed woman who goes from being a house help to his lover and muse.

Vicky Krieps, the actor who plays Alma, shares an interesting chemistry with Day-Lewis. In the trailer, we see the duo's equation develop; Day-Lewis looks mesmerised by her, and the dressmaking plays a role in their intimacy. Soon, he accuses her of tearing apart his life and business when her involvement in his life begins affecting his decisions.

This is the last film Daniel Day-Lewis will be part of before his self-imposed retirement. His acting career began in 1970, and over the years, he has earned three Oscars in the category of Best Male Actor for My Left Foot (1989), There Will Be Blood (2007) and Lincoln (2012). Phantom Thread marks his second collaboration with director Paul Thomas Anderson after There Will Be Blood.

Phantom Thread is slated to release on 25 December. Watch trailer here:
Publican Executive Chef Fired After Worker Shares 'Inappropriate' Photo

By Emma G. Gallegos in Food on Oct 24, 2017 5:14PM



Cosmo Goss at Publican (Publican/Instagram)

Cosmo Goss, the executive chef of the Publican Restaurants, has been fired after failing to take action when his employee circulated an "inappropriate" and "personal" photo of a female employee, Eater Chicago reports. By choosing to do nothing, parent company One Off Hospitality says that Goss fostered a work environment that is "uncomfortable" for women.

One Off said in a statement that when Goss was shown the photo of a female employee being shared among staff without her consent, he should have fired the employee or at least reported it to the company. The initial incident happened at Publican Anker at the end of 2016, and later the female employee reported it to human resources. They responded by hiring legal counsel, which conducted an investigation. Antonio Molina, the general manager of Publican Anker, was also fired as a result of the investigation.

"[Goss] thought it was a fleeting incident," said One Off spokeswoman in an interview with the Chicago Tribune but the reason this is so concerning is he was executive chef. He didn't report the incident, or fire the person [who took shared the photo]. He discussed it with other employees."

The spokeswoman also told the Tribune, "We want to acknowledge the severity of these actions, and want this person to feel that her story is being heard. Just because you're beloved and a rising star doesn't mean you're not held accountable just like everyone else."

The employee who initially shared the photograph was fired earlier this year for unrelated reasons. Neither they, nor the female employee who was the subject of the photograph were managers, the Tribune reports.

Goss said in a statement to Eater that incidents like these "were not the norm" but admitted that he "was in a position to make a difference, and did not to rise to the occasion."

"In retrospect, I understand that this seemingly fleeting moment was wholly unprofessional and unacceptable," Goss's statement read. "As a leader at One Off Hospitality, I regret not doing enough to address the issue, and I am deeply sorry to the woman portrayed in the photograph and the other individuals whom these consequences have affected."

Goss was executive chef of Publican's five restaurants, a position created for him that may not be filled, Eater says. He has been yanked off the Cheers to the Publican cookbook tour with co-author Paul Kahan. But One Off hasn't cut off all their connections to Goss just yet: they are partners for his new California cuisine venture Pacific Standard Time slated to open later this fall. A spokeswoman said in a statement to Chicagoist that they're formally reevaluating that partnership.

One Off Hospitality is the group behind Violet Hour, Avec, Blackbird and Nico Osteria.

"One Off has an open-door policy, and its our responsibility to address instances of inappropriate workplace conduct thoroughly and with zero tolerance," a spokewoman said, in a statement. "In addition to this, we require that all of our managers participate in mandatory anti-harassment training. In our opinion, respect and safety in the workplace are not up for debate, regardless of the position you hold or where you work."

Many industries are reevaluating the way women are treated in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein allegations. One high-profile case in the restaurant industry is Josh Tesh, a New Orleans celebrity chef, who stepped down after 25 women came forward to say he harassed them.
Abdul Karim Lala Telgi, racketeer, and kingpin of the multi-crore fake stamp paper scam is in critical condition at a Bengaluru hospital. According to reports, Telgi, who is serving a 30-year prison sentence after being convicted in the stamp paper scam, is suffering from meningitis and was admitted to Victoria Hospital three days ago.

Though a Financial Express report said that the kingpin of the multi-crore fake stamp paper racket, died on Monday at 8.30 pm, Dr Asima Bano of Victoria Hospital's Trauma Centre, where the fake stamp racket kingpin is currently admitted, told Firstpost that Telgi was very much alive.

"His condition is critical. We are going to release an official statement at 9.15 am," she said.

On Monday evening, Telgi's lawyer MT Nanaiah had told the media that Telgi's condition was "critical", and he was on ventilator support. "He is alive, but very critical and has been admitted to Victoria hospital. He is in the ICU and on the ventilator. He is suffering from meningitis," Nanaiah had said.

Earlier, Times Now had reported that Telgi had "collapsed" in Bengalurus Parappana Agrahara Central Jail, where he had been serving his jail sentence, after which he was admitted to hospital. "He should have been admitted earlier. There has been a delay," Nanaiah had told PTI.

Abdul Karim Telgi, a convict in counterfeit stamp paper scam is on ventilator support in critical condition at Bengaluru's Victoria Hospital pic.twitter.com/3YoADeF6Dh  ANI (@ANI) October 23, 2017

Telgi was arrested in Ajmer in November 2001, and has been suffering from diabetes and hypertension for over 20 years, besides other ailments, including AIDS.

A special investigation team had busted his racket in 2002 after several phone tappings, the Financial Express report mentioned. "Telgi was sentenced to a 30-year jail term for printing counterfeit stamp papers in India and selling them to various institutions. The amount involved was then estimated to be worth billions of rupees," it added.

He was serving his term at the Parappana Agrahara Central Jail in Bengaluru after being sentenced to 30 years of rigorous imprisonment. A fine of Rs 202 crore was also imposed on him. Telgi had sold fake stamp papers to banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms and others.

Recently, Telgi was in the thick of another controversy when former DIG (Prisons) D Roopa alleged that prison authorities were giving him preferential treatment. Incidentally, according to ANI, Telgi enjoyed VVIP privileges in prison owing to his severe health condition. Telgi has already served 11 years from his 30-year sentence.

With agency inputs
New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday called on Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, ahead of his talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on promoting security and stability in the war-torn nation.

#Neighbourhoodfirst. EAM @SushmaSwaraj calls on visiting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in New Delhi. Bilateral & regional issues discussed. pic.twitter.com/IEKzTo0ChB  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) October 24, 2017

Ghani, who is here on a one-day working visit, will hold talks with Modi on furthering the shared objective of promoting security and stability in Afghanistan, and efforts to combat the menace of terrorism.

They will also discuss regional and global issues of mutual interest.

During his visit, president Ghani will meet with his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind.

The invitation to Ghani was extended by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval during his trip to Kabul on 16 October.
New Delhi: The Delhi government wrote to the Centre on Monday requesting it to sprinkle water from choppers or any other aircraft to settle dust, a major source of air pollution in the city.

The city government said it was ready to bear the expenses that would entail any such exercise using its air ambience fund, a corpus created out of Rs 25 paisa cess on every litre of diesel sold in Delhi.

However, environment minister Imran Hussain's letter to his Union government counterpart Harsh Vardhan on the issue had no information on how such a plan would be executed in a city as large as Delhi.

The air ambience fund, created in 2008, reportedly had around Rs 240 crore till last year, of which about a fraction had been used in subsidising electric vehicles.

Queries to multiple officials of the the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), which maintains the corpus, on the current size of the corpus went unanswered.

"In view of the continuous poor quality air in Delhi, it is requested that your good office may kindly propose to the Ministry of Civil Aviation to carry out an exercise to sprinkle water aerially through helicopter/aircraft to settle particulate matter in Delhi," Hussain wrote.

Last October, the AAP government had announced a plan to put in place three-tier air treatment system, including setting up of wind purification units, mist fountains and virtual chimneys at five major traffic intersections on a trial basis.

Later, when pollution had reached alarming levels after Diwali, the government announced a plan to install outdoor air purifiers at five major traffic intersections, Anand Vihar, ITO, Sarai Kalen Khan, Kashmere Gate and IIT (Delhi) or AIIMS.

But these proposals have not seen much progress in terms of implementation.

Anumita Roychowdhury, who spearheads the Centre for Science and Environment's (CSE) projects against air pollution, said a comprehensive plan to tackle the pollution crisis, which was submitted to the Supreme Court earlier this year, deals with the dust issue and spells out a raft of preventive measures.

"I do not know how aerial sprinkling would be executed and what quantum of water we are talking about. But the comprehensive plan which talks about paving of roads and road shoulders, vacuum cleaning, localised sprinkling of recycled water, setting up of water fountains at major traffic intersections and maintaining pothole-free roads among other measures should be executed," she said.

The Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority has tasked the authorities in Delhi-NCR with preparing a list of roads in a state of disrepair and contributing to dust pollution.

EPCA chairman Bhure Lal said after the identification of the "high-impact" roads, including NH-24, urgent dust-control measures would be taken up as part of the larger action plan to contain pollution levels, which spiralled after Diwali, but has since come down significantly.

The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) recorded an air quality of index (AQI) of 'very poor' with a score of 306 for the city on Monday, as against Sunday's 319.

Hussain held a review meeting with officials of the environment department and the DPCC, where he was informed that air quality this year was "relatively better than 2016".

This trend can be attributed to improved wind conditions post Diwali, the government said in a statement.

An IIT-Kanpur study on Delhi's air pollution, considered the most comprehensive report on the issue till date, had identified road dust as the biggest source of suspended particulate matter in the city.

According to the report, road dust makes up over 50 percent of the total PM10 particles and about 38 percent of PM2.5 particles. PM2.5 and PM10 are the most dominant pollutants in Delhi's air.

These ultra-fine particulates, which can measure up to 30 times tinier than the width of a human hair and reach the bloodstream of a person through the respiratory system, pose serious health risks.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday expressed their "firm resolve" to end the menace of terrorism while emphasising that closure of cross-border safe havens and sanctuaries was essential for lasting peace.

The two leaders also "positively assessed" the support extended by India in the defence and security fields, including training of thousands of Afghan defence and security with New Delhi agreeing to extend further assistance depending upon the needs of the Afghan defence and police forces.

Detailed discussions were held between the prime minister and the president in one on one format, restricted meeting and a working lunch, a statement by the external affairs ministry said.

The Indian leadership reiterated its support for a negotiated political reconciliation in Afghanistan that is Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled, the statement said.

"It was emphasised that renunciation of violence and terror, and closure of cross border safe havens and sanctuaries were essential for any meaningful progress and lasting peace," the MEA statement said, in an obvious reference to Pakistan.

However, the statement did not name Pakistan.

During the wide-ranging talks, deep appreciation was expressed for the bravery with which the Afghan forces were fighting terrorism imposed on Afghanistan.

"The support extended by India in the defence and security fields, including training of thousands of Afghan defence and security personnel was positively assessed. The Indian side agreed to extend further assistance depending upon the needs of the Afghan defence and police forces," it said.

PM @narendramodi & President Ghani discussed range of bilateral, regional & global issues, express firm resolve to end menace of terrorism pic.twitter.com/D1XQTvUoGA  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) October 24, 2017

This was President Ghani's fourth visit to India in the last 3 years and 12th personal interaction between the two leaders, the ministry said.

Ghani's visit also assumes significance as it comes ahead of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's talks with Indian leadership on Wednesday. The US wants India to play a greater role in Afghanistan.

Tillerson had also made an unannounced trip to Kabul on Monday and had met the Afghanistan president.

Reiterating their commitment to their strategic partnership, the two sides positively assessed the outcomes of the recent high level bilateral exchanges, including the visits of Afghan chief executive Abdullah Abdullah and Foreign Minister Rabbani to India last month and that of the National Security Adviser to Afghanistan last week.

The two sides agreed to further deepen the bilateral strategic dialogue and consultations at all levels in order to achieve the shared objectives, it said.

The New Development Partnership that was launched at the meeting of the Strategic Partnership Council on 11 September was assessed as a "significant step" in building upon the highly successful development cooperation of the past 16 years.

The new generation India-assisted projects, including in the fields of health, agriculture, drinking water supply, education, renewable energy, infrastructure development, skill development and capacity building, among others will further contribute to Afghanistan's reconstruction, economic development and effective governance.

The statement said that the two sides agreed that the recent convergence and alignment of views at regional and international arenas have created opportunities for bringing peace, security and stability in Afghanistan.

Issues related to connectivity were discussed in detail with the two countries acknowledging the establishment of the air freight corridor as an important factor in providing Afghan farmers a direct and easy access to the Indian market.

"The efforts for early operationalisation of the Chahbahar Port, including the shipments of wheat in coming weeks to Afghanistan through the Port was considered as a step that would shape new trade and transit opportunities for landlocked Afghanistan," the statement said.

The Indian side reiterated the readiness of its Integrated Check Post at Attari for receiving Afghan trucks carrying goods to and from India.

The two sides agreed to work closely with the regional and international partners; and consult, coordinate and cooperate in various international fora, with the view to further the objective of seeing Afghanistan emerge as a stable, peaceful, united, progressive, prosperous and pluralistic nation.

Earlier in the morning, President Ghani met his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind and received the external affairs minister.
Former NDTV journalist Barkha Dutt has lashed out against her ex-employers, taking to Facebook to launch a scathing criticism of the media house's senior leadership, editorial team and her former colleagues.

Dutt, who had earlier voiced her opinions against NDTV's policy on "axing stories", on Monday, railed against what she called "hypocrisy"  the channel opting to project an anti-establishment crusader image while seeking help from BJP leaders and ministers in private.

Dutt took potshots at NDTV managing editor Sreenivasan Jain for claiming the channel dropped his stories over legal concerns. She said the management had also dropped her articles in the past, but she didn't create any outrage over it.

"While I worked there, I did so within the confines of the newsroom, as I thought going public was indecorous. Yet, the management told me that my not batting for them in public in defence of their decision to drop interviews was a 'betrayal'. So, is the suggestion that I should have done what a former colleague just did  dissent in public, embarrass the organisation, claim the high moral ground, and yet conveniently stay on?" she wrote on Monday, clearly referring to Jain without mentioning him by name.

She further added that while every news organisation kills articles  some more than others  other groups don't act "morally superior and smug and above everybody else" like NDTV did.

"Others don't pretend....they don't claim to be something they are not. They don't stand at press clubs and say 'don't crawl' while seeking appointments with BJP head honchos by night. This has not been denied by NDTV simply because there are enough witnesses to these meetings and phone calls and they can't deny them," she wrote.

Dutt's outburst was a continuation of the problems she has had with the functioning of the media behemoth.

On 18 October, she had pointed out that a few other stories were pulled down by NDTV.

"An interview that Nitin Gokhale did with the outgoing navy chief was taken down. There were other guests who we were instructed not to call on the channel but the management did not want to put this in writing lest the mail leaked. I was disallowed from pursuing a story on what was called the Jayanti Tax controversy. I was given hell for a story I did on Robert Vadra; the only reason that story was not taken down was because it was already published on the website and at the time the management was convinced that it would draw too much attention to take it down later. Then, an innocuous bread and butter interview I did with P Chidambaram was taken off air during the aftermath of the surgical strikes. An internal memo was circulated to justify this and went so far as to say that no politician should be given airtime  a diktat that lasted all of a day," she had written earlier.

The 18 October post by Dutt was in response to Sreenivasan Jain's criticism against the company, where the managing editor had also complained about his stories against Jay Amit Shah were taken down by the channel.

"A week ago, a report by Manas Pratap Singh and me on loans given to Shah's companies was taken down from NDTV's website. NDTV's lawyers said it needed to be removed for 'legal vetting'. It has still not been restored. This is deeply unfortunate since the report is based entirely on facts in the public domain and makes no unsubstantiated or unwarranted assertions. A situation like this presents journalists with hard choices. For now, I am treating this is as a distressing aberration and have decided to continue to do the journalism that I have always done  on NDTV. All of this has been conveyed to NDTV," said Jain's post on Facebook.

This post by Jain seems to have opened up a can of worms within the NDTV media empire. And if other journalists start narrating incidents they have faced on this issue, the slope could get very slippery very fast for NDTV.
Chandigarh: The controversy around the origin of Taj Mahal was created by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to divert attention from key issues, including the alleged increase in the wealth of its chief Amit Shah's son, former JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar alleged in Chandigarh on Monday.

"The controversy over Taj Mahal was created by the BJP leadership to divert attention of the people from Jay Shah's manifold increase in wealth," he told reporters.

A news website had made claims about a sharp increase in the wealth of a company linked with Jay Shah. Jay Shah as well as the BJP have outrightly rubbished the allegations.

On the upcoming Gujarat polls, Kumar said the graph of BJP had dipped. The student leader, however, said that he would not join any party to campaign in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls.

"I will join active politics in near future. But I am not the agent of any political party," he said.

He stressed upon the need for a collective movement to bring change in the society. "Nothing can be done till we achieve equality for all. Politicians are using people for their benefits," he said.

He claimed the situation in the country was such that when a media house or a journalist tries to raise the real issues they are intimidated with Rs 100 crore defamation cases.

Those who dont get intimidated with cases, they are being killed, he alleged, and referred the killing of Bangalore-based journalist Gauri Lankesh in this context.

"When you cant express your views freely, it indicates that the very Constitution of India is in danger," he said.

He raised questions about the Election Commission's decision regarding the scheduling of the Gujarat polls.

He also criticised the Rajasthan government's "draconian law" which bars the media from publishing any particulars against public servant till the government approves their prosecution. This move of the Rajasthan government is aimed to protect the corrupt, he said.

He said that those raising their voice against the wrongdoings in the system were being branded as anti-nationals while those praising the government were declared nationalists.

"There can not be two different standards. Healthy criticism has to be accepted in a positive way," he said.

Talking about demonetisation and GST, Kumar said it was a known fact that big fish eat small fish. "With both the decisions the government has facilitated the big fish to eat the small fish," he said.

The GST is deadly against the small businessman and causing much loss to them, he said.

He said the government was dancing to the tunes of corporate houses while unemployment was a serious problem and corruption rampant.

"Nothing much had happened in connection with the black money and only few industrialists are getting benefits in the present NDA regime," he said.

On suicides by farmers, he said there was a need for economic and political empowerment of peasants.

Justifying reservation, he said there is nothing unconstitutional about it. "In private sector there is no reservation and most of the people are working in this sector," he said.
Srinagar: Police on Monday arrested four people for spreading rumours about braid-chopping and inciting mobs in the city.

"In its action against trouble mongers, police station Soura arrested four miscreants involved in inciting law and order problem. These miscreants are from Soura, Lal Bazar, and Zakura areas," a police spokesman said.

"In the garb of braid-chopping chaos, these trouble-mongers incite the mob and were also involved in creating disturbances in the area," he said.

The official said that more trouble-mongers have been identified, based on the disclosures by those arrested. "The others will be shortly arrested," the spokesman said.

He appealed to the public to not pay heed to rumours spread such miscreants. "Strict action will be taken against rumour-mongers and troublemakers," he said.
New Delhi: More than 32,000 personnel from the central armed forces such as the CRPF and the BSF, and around 55,000 from the state police are expected to be deployed for the upcoming Gujarat assembly elections, an official said on Tuesday.

For the Himachal Pradesh polls on 9 November, around 10,000 personnel from central armed police forces and 14,000 from the state police are expected to be deployed.

As per the requirement of the Election Commission, around 320 companies of central armed police forces are likely to be deployed in Gujarat and 100 companies of security personnel in

Himachal Pradesh, a senior government official privy to the development told PTI.

Several rounds of deliberations between the poll panel and the Union home ministry have taken place, and the total number of security personnel to be deployed in the poll-bound states will be finalised once the schedule for the Gujarat Assembly elections is declared, the official said.

Around 55,000 state police personnel are likely to be deployed in Gujarat and 14,000 state police personnel are expected to be deployed in Himachal Pradesh.

Elections to the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly will be held on 9 November, while the schedule for the 182-member Gujarat Assembly is expected to be announced within the next few days.
Jaipur: Facing flak from various quarters, the Rajasthan government on Tuesday referred a controversial bill, which seeks to protect public servants and judges from prosecution without its prior sanction, to a select committee of the Assembly.

Amid an uproar from the Opposition Congress, the Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill was tabled in the Assembly by Home Minister Gulabchand Kataria on Monday to replace an ordinance promulgated on 7 September.

At the beginning of the Question Hour on Tuesday, parliamentary affairs minister Rajendra Rathore informed the House that Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje had held a meeting of ministers on Monday night to discuss the bill and that the home minister would apprise the House of the development.

The home minister said that prior approval of the President was sought before introducing the ordinance in September.

Independent MLA Manik Chand Surana had on Monday raised the point that no approval of the President was attached with the bill. As the opposition MLAs rushed into the well of the House demanding withdrawal of the bill, Kataria said the government would consider the suggestions put forward by the members.

He then moved a proposal to refer it to the select committee. The proposal was passed by the Assembly. The select committee has been asked to submit its report in the next session.

The Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance, 2017, seeks to protect serving and former judges, magistrates and public servants in the state from being investigated for on-duty action, without its prior sanction. It also bars the media from reporting on such accusations till the sanction to proceed with the probe is given by the government.

The move has been severely criticised by the opposition Congress and National People's Party (NPP) and senior BJP MLA Ghanshyam Tiwari. The Editors Guild of India too opposed the "harmful ordinance" and demanded its withdrawal.

Earlier on Tuesday, BJP MLA Ghanshyam Tiwari protested when he was not allowed to raise a point of order. He objected to Speaker Kailash Meghwal giving permission to the home minister for giving his statement during the Question Hour.

After the proposal for referring of the bill to the select committee was passed, the Speaker called for listed questions but the Congress members raised the issue of farm distress.

Congress deputy whip Govind Singh Dotasara said the government was not serious on the issues of farmers and demanded agriculture loan waiver.

Amid continued protest and disruption during the Question Hour, the Speaker adjourned the House till 1 pm.

In the 200-member Rajasthan Assembly, BJP has 160 MLAs while the Congress has 24 members.
Chef Rick Bayless Starts Culinary Training Program In East Garfield Park

By Anthony Todd in Food on Oct 24, 2017 6:22PM



Chef Rick Bayless in the kitchen at Cruz Blanca

Rick Bayless, possibly Chicago's most prominent chef (and also in the running for Chicago's most philanthropically-minded chef) is heading to Garfield Park. As part of the opening of The Hatchery, a new food business incubator, Bayless will be running a culinary training program for high school and college-age students who want to work in kitchens.

Ask restauranteurs right now what their biggest problem is, and they will all say in unison: lack of labor. Bayless hopes to take this need and turn it into an opportunity.

I believe this program can help surmount two big challenges in the city  lack of cooks to fill our restaurants kitchens and a lack of both solid preparation and career opportunities for the youth of Chicagos toughest neighborhoods, Bayless said in a release issued this morning. "Theres a reason I think this program can make a difference: I can say that some of the most valuable people in our kitchens are ones that weve brought up from the most entry-level jobs, taught basic skills and self-respect, and seen flourish."

Students in the program will learn all the things that culinary students learn, plus they'll have some of Bayless's friends and colleagues (think chefs like Grant Achatz, Stephanie Izard, Paul Fehribach, Chris Pandel, Josh Kulp and Christine Cikowksi and Bill Kim) to guest-teach. Plus, thanks to some of those Bayless connections, they'll get assistance finding internships and eventual jobs after graduation.

The program won't launch until the Hatchery is up and running (scheduled for fall of 2018), but it sounds like it will be an incredible opportunity for students interested in cooking.
Diwali has gone by. As the dust continues to settle, the nation's Delhi media now shepherds our collective consciousness to debate whether crackers working on the principle of combustion cause air pollution or not. However, what is seemingly forgotten in the media is the unprecedented double DMRC fare hike within a year, which is now in effect. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, however, clearly has no intention of letting this issue die. And for good reason. In his weekly Google Hangout on Sunday, he had two disarmingly simple questions about the DMRC fare hike:

"Was the Metro built for profits?"

"If there is a deficit, why is it being funded by fare hikes when the Center and State can split it?"

The BJP-led Union government propagates the idea that people need to pay for good services whilst the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) protests the hike, calling it a false binary created out of poor governance. AAP has faced some criticism to its opposition in the media but most contain more ad hominem and straw men than fact and opinion. Further, none of the debate or discussion is informed by the reports of Fare Fixation Committee (FFC), which form the basis for DMRC fare hikes.

Committees in Indian governance, based on experience and anecdotal evidence, are either the resting place for the best ideas and programmes or the perfect tool to push insidious ideas and practices stemming from poor governance. Which makes an investigation necessary.

The Delhi Metro Railway (Operation and Maintenance) Act, 2002 under Section 33 and Section 34 paved the way for a Fare Fixation Committee to be constituted to recommend fares for the Delhi Metro. The first FFC was constituted on 5 December, 2003. It was chaired by Justice JK Mehra and asked to recommend fares for the Phase I of the Delhi Metro within three months.

Its report stated that revenue optimisation, affordability and long-term sustainability are the three principles guiding fare fixation for the metro. Delving into the financing of metro operations in multiple countries, it emphatically states the value of social benefits and prudence in planning to cover operating costs.

The NCAER (National Council for Applied Economic Research) was tasked with calculating the effect of fare changes on ridership and the financial health of the DMRC. Multiple cases are considered with specific emphasis on zone-wise trip distribution, all of which was built into the final recommended fare chart.

The second FFC chaired by Justice CK Mahajan in 2005 adds the principle of accounting for environmental costs and social benefits into fare fixation. It analyses metro systems based on revenue, cost and operating costs per passenger as the key metrics. The second FFC notes that operating revenues should cover operating costs instead of total project costs, and states that while DPR (Detailed Project Report) estimates were lower than actual costs in the underground phase, it noted that future costs would be cheaper by virtue of it being above ground.

The third FFC chaired by Justice Padmanabhan in 2009 abandons some rigour with a five-week deadline in the lead up to the Commonwealth Games but ensures that a large majority of rides (which had a modal trip distance of 9-15 kilometres) didnt see a fare increase of more than Rs five. The committee also considered it prudent that the fare increase as proposed by DMRC may be recommended by placing a cap on the increase of fare at Rs eight, with a view to encourage long-distance metro travel and ensure price competitiveness with other modes of public transport.

Based on these commuter-friendly precedents and principles, the fourth "double" fare hike of the Delhi Metro is problematic on multiple levels.

First, the BJP-led Government of India or its appointed L-G have not made the report of the Fourth Fare Fixation Committee Report public, which is unprecedented, irregular and a travesty of public accountability. All we get is a press release  rhetoric but not for debate or discussion.

Second, the recommendations of the fourth FFC were submitted in September 2016 and not placed before the DMRC Board till May 2017. Glaring procedural violations and delays lead us to believe that there is something rotten in the state of the Delhi Metro. Third, the latest fare hike violates the precedent (from the third FFC) of not making any slab-hike greater than Rs eight, with many slabs even seeing a greater than 100 percent increase.

Fourth, recommendations of previous FFCs like fare fixation every two years with increases of five percent have been ignored which makes sudden double fare hikes unsustainable for the commuter's pocket. Fifth, the three FFCs and annual reports of the DMRC note that land transfers have been expensive which is not the case in Hong Kong, the only profitable metro. This is an issue that has plagued the Delhi government as it attempts to set up public schools and hospitals, as "land" is a Union subject for Delhi.

Finally, in the absence of the latest report, it is unclear whether the common citizen's necessity is being priced as a luxury service with price discrimination. This fare hike has already affected the monthly budgets of lakhs of households, and has increased the usage of buses and shared taxis for certain distances, which is an undesirable shift in solving the problem of shared mobility.

Kejriwal has opposed an opaque hike, sought meetings to discuss DMRC's financial health and even offered a middle path to fund half the supposed deficit for Delhi Metro's financial health with a request to the Center to do the same. This would ensure that the citizens don't have to pay for the inability of the past and current central government to heed the Delhi Metro's request for the influx of new capital in 2011 and 2021.

The central problem of the DMRC fare hike is not just bad economics but also the lack of public accountability and transparency. Its devil lies in its details. And we, the people, don't have access to it.

The author is an advisor to the Government of NCT of Delhi. He holds a double Masters degree in Engineering and Public Policy from Stanford University and can be reached on Twitter @roshankar.
New Delhi: In what is seen as a U-turn from its earlier stance on school fees hike, the Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government has issued a circular permitting the unaided schools to increase fees up to 15 percent, enabling the schools to pay salary to their teachers and other staff as per requirements of the 7th Central Pay Commission.

The circular is issued at a time when the Delhi High Court had ordered 449 schools in Delhi to pay back the fees they have excessively collected from the students. As of now none of the parents have been paid back as asked by the court.

The circular allowing these schools to increase fees was issued on 17 October allowed the hike albeit after following few procedures prescribed by it.

"The managing committee of the school shall hold a meeting with the group of teachers and parents which would include at least one parent representative from each section of the school and will present the detailed budget of the school, financial statements of the previous year, requirements of funds for implementation of the 7th CPC recommendations availability of cash reserve with the school fund account etc.," the circular says.

Ashok Agarwal, president of the All India Parents Association complains that this regulation as farcical as it is not binding on the schools to accept the views of the parents.

"As per the circular the schools are bound to listen to the parents but are not bound to accept their advice," Agarwal says.

The circular says that presenting the case for fee hike to parents of the students should not be construed as seeking permission from them, which according to many parents makes it farcical.

"The government should have made it compulsory for all the schools to take permission from the education department before increasing fees. But that has not happened," he says.

Agarwal also says that rather than compelling the schools to seek permission from the education department, the circular merely adds some Ifs and Buts which can be easily overcome by the schools in order to increase fees.

The order says that the schools can increase fees only after exploring whether the financial obligations mandated by the 7th Central Pay Commission can be met from any other alternative source of revenue.

"Now this condition can easily be met by any school just by showing that it's all other sources of revenue have exhausted," he says.

The circular covers all three kinds of unaided schools prevalent in Delhi and allows them to increase their fees if they feel it necessary.

"The first two kinds of unaided schools -- the ones that are on private land and the ones which are on government land but not under legal compulsion to seek permission from the education department to increase fees, can anyway increase their fees without any permission under the present law," Agarwal says.

He says that to compel these schools to take permission from the government it was a separate law that was to be enacted, which has not been done.

The third category of schools which cannot increase fees without permission from the government due to legal compulsion could have been compelled by the circular itself to seek permission before they increase fees, but parents complain that the Delhi government shied away from this responsibility too.

"The third category of schools are the ones which are on government land and are required to take permission from the education department to increase fees," he says.

As per a Supreme Court order, this category of schools are bound to seek permission from the education department to increase fees.

Despite this order, the Delhi government lets these schools increase fees even without seeking permission.

The circular says that in order to prevent any further delay in giving benefits of 7th Central Pay Commission to the teachers and other employees and to ensure that the burden of payment of arrears does not accumulate on parents due to delay a fee increase is permitted.

These are schools which don't get funds from the government, they have been given land at discounted rates, with some conditions that require them to take the permission of the Directorate of Education before raising the fee and set aside seats for poor students, among others.

There are 400 such schools in Delhi which are bound by such legal compulsion.

The order to increase the fees of unaided schools is seen in sharp contrast with Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal's earlier stance where he threatened to take over 449 schools which failed to return the excessively collected fees to the guardians.

Significantly the circular allows an increase of fees in retrospective effect from 1 January 2016.

"The schools shall make calculations as per 7th Pay commissions recommendations for arrears of salary to be paid to the employees with effect from 01.01.2016 to 30.11.2017," says the circular.

It also says that the parents have to pay the arrear fees in two or three instalments.

"The arrears of tuition fee, shall be collected from parents/guardians in two or three instalments. The first instalment may be collected by the month of December 2017 and the final instalment latest by 31st of May 2018," the order says.

During the 2015 assembly election, the regulating fees of unaided school were one of the main promises.

SK Bhattacharya who heads a common platform of unaided schools said to Firstpost that many schools in Delhi would not be able to pay their staffs and teachers as per 7th Pay Commission even after 15 percent increase in fees.

"There are more than 1,500 such schools in Delhi. Most of them are budget schools. The prescribed increase in fees will hardly enable 500 of them to increase fees. For salary advised by the 7th Pay Commission is too high for most of these schools in comparison to the revenue earned by them as fees," says Bhattacharya.
Srinagar: The decision of the central government to appoint former IB director Dineshwar Sharma as the interlocutor on Kashmir has not generated much hope, for the top Hurriyat leadership has previously refrained from talking to central government emissaries and has held talks with either prime ministers or home ministers.

Though the latest call for dialogue has come from Home Minister Rajnath Singh, New Delhi's previous record on even implementation of interlocutors recommendations has been shabby. The central government has offered the dialogue at a time when United States secretary of state Rex Tillerson is on a three-day visit to India and when Kashmir is in the grip of protests over incidents of braid cutting.

The Centre even failed to implement the recommendations of the report submitted by three interlocutors on Kashmir  late journalist Dileep Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar and MM Ansari  even as they had sought that the constitutional erosion of the state shall be restored.

Appointed in 2010, they had sought the need for sustained dialogue on Kashmir in the report which was submitted in 2011 to the then home minister, P Chidambaram. It is after a gap of seven years that the Centre has recognised the need for holding dialogue with all stakeholders, including Hurriyat.

However, even before Sharma starts the talks, the road ahead is looking bumpy for him. While Congress leadership has hit out at the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for finally giving up on his hard-line stance, former chief minister and NC president Farooq Abdullah has said that the dialogue process is futile as the reports of previous interlocutors have not been implemented. The leaders in the state unit of BJP have also insisted that the dialogue should be held within the ambit of the Indian Constitution.

The previous dialogue on Kashmir by the interlocutors has only helped create a conducive atmosphere for opening up the apex level talks between New Delhi and the Hurriyat leadership. Former interlocutor and incumbent governor of Jammu and Kashmir, NN Vohra, had helped create a feasible atmosphere, which finally led to the talks between former prime minister AB Vajpayee and the Hurriyat in 2004.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh followed up on the work done during Vajpayee's tenure and restarted talks with the Hurriyat leadership in 2005, a move that was welcomed by Pakistan. Sources said that during the talks, it was agreed that the Kashmir issue needs to be resolved. It was during the tenure of Manmohan that confidence-building measures, including the opening of the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad route for bus and trade, were started.

After the meeting with separatists in September 2005, Manmohan had welcomed the resumption of dialogue between the Government of India and the Hurriyat. "I reaffirmed faith in a peaceful resolution of all issues pertaining to Jammu and Kashmir... violence has no role in a democracy. I reiterate commitment to ensuring a life of peace, self-respect and dignity for the people of Kashmir." Singh had said, adding that the central government will review "all cases of those held in detention and ensure that violations of human dignity would not be tolerated and the government would take all necessary measures to safeguard against human rights violations."

However, now when Rajnath has announced a dialogue on Kashmir, most of the second rung Hurriyat leaders are in prison for facing cases of "financing the unrest in Kashmir", which the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is probing against them.

Hurriyat's top leadership has previously, however, shied away from talking to interlocutors. Former Hurriyat chairman Abdul Gani Bhat said, "... we have not met the interlocutors previously. We have held talks directly with prime ministers." It was only the second rung leadership of the separatists which had met the team of interlocutors appointed in 2010.

However, after the report was submitted by 2010 interlocutors, the Centre didn't follow up the dialogue with the separatists. Former Kashmir interlocutor MM Ansari said, "we had recommended sustained and uninterruptible dialogue on Kashmir". He said that a dialogue could not take place as both the UPA-II and Modi-led governments were not serious on the Kashmir issue.

Between 2011 to 2016, the situation remained largely peaceful. It was only after the series of protests following the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen militant commander Burhan Muzafar Wani in July 2016, that Rajnath visited Kashmir and talked to business and civil society groups.

However, New Delhis fluctuating approach on Kashmir is also reflected in the shying away from implementing the 2010 interlocutors report. In the report, it was sought that the need for revoking of armed forces special powers act (AFSPA) and the public safety act (PSA) should be looked into.

However, after the 2016 agitation, many a youth were booked under PSA, while central government forces have taken recourse to AFSPA to oppose any civil trial of the force personnel involved in human rights violations. Ansari said that the PDP-BJP government has failed in Kashmir.

"The PDP-BJP government has realised that the use of brute force has not worked in Kashmir. Not only have attacks on PDP MLAs taken place, but surgical strikes have also not been able to restore peace along the borders," said the former interlocutor.
Srinagar: New Delhi finally seems to have realised that the solution to the seething anger on the streets of Kashmir has to be political, rather than military. The decision to appoint the former IB chief Dineshwar Sharma as interlocutor may have political ramifications for the right-wing party in the hinterland but, if followed through, the dialogue will produce a huge political capital for the BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

In a move that was urgently required to restore normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir, the Centre appointed Sharma as its special representative for holding "sustained dialogue" process with all stakeholders in the Valley. The announcement was made by Union home minister Rajnath Singh, who hinted on Tuesday that the interlocutor may also hold talks with the Hurriyat.

But in the Valley, where the situation remains tense and the Centre's announcement should have come as a reprieve, it has instead been met with a cold response with the former spy chief's appointment seen as another attempt to douse the flames on the streets, temporarily, instead of resolving the lingering political crises.

Although the announcement has not come with pre-conditions, it remains to be seen if the new interlocutor manages to hold talks with the Hurriyat.

On the streets of Kashmir, people are pinning little hope on the fresh initiative bringing an immediate end to the festering crisis. Muzaffar Ahmad, a private school teacher in Srinagar, said on Tuesday that because of the bitter experiences of the past and the fate met by the reports of previous interlocutors on Kashmir, there is little hope that the new initiative will bring any change on the ground.

"The main problem is that New Delhi has never respected the genuine aspiration of people. Last time they appointed interlocutors, they didn't even acknowledge their report. The home ministry used that report on the website and said these are views of interlocutors not that of the Government of India," Ahmad told Firstpost near Lal Chowk, the city centre of Srinagar.

Karan Singh, a contractor, however, said that there is hope and talking to the real stakeholders (read Hurriyat) is the only way out for New Delhi, instead of dealing with the population using military force.

"There is an urgent need to bring peace, and this can't come until and unless people, who have divergent views, are not taken on board. They need to talk to Hurriyat leadership and young boys, not the government," Singh, 56, a resident of Srinagar, said.

New Delhis history of betrayals in the Valley, starting with Jawaharlal Nehru's broken promise of holding a plebiscite and the looming clouds of suspicion due to the crackdown on separatists and militants alike, are overshadowing the sunshine of hope. The Hurriyat Conference is today a united house with the leading players, including Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, Syed Ali Geelani and Yasin Malik clamouring for talks over the last two months.

Mirwaiz, the chairman of the moderate faction of Hurriyat Conference, said the Hurriyat leadership is still deliberating over the new announcement and it will come with a proper response once all the leaders are allowed to meet. "We don't want to rush. Once we (Hurriyat leaders) meet, we will formulate a proper response," Mirwaiz said on phone.

New Delhi's decision to appoint Sharma, who also initiated peace talks in June with Assamese insurgent groups, comes 41 months after it came to power. The Centre has a history of appointing interlocutors when the Valley is reeling under crises over the last seventeen years.

The first one was appointed on 5 April, 2001, and continued till 2002. It was led by KC Pant, the then deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. The fate of his recommendations is known to everyone. It was followed by the appointment of the present Jammu and Kashmir governor NN Vohra on 19 February, 2003. He continued till 2008. When the unrest erupted in the Valley in 2010, three interlocutors namely Dilip Padgaonkar, Dr MM Ansari and Radha Kumar were appointed to talk to the stakeholders.

The interlocutor trio submitted their report which was thrown into the dustbin by the home ministry as it failed to even acknowledge the recommendations made by them, describing them as "personal views" of the representatives.

The only institution which acted on the few recommendations was the Press Council of India, which said the allegations made by the report on the separatists funding of the local newspaper in Kashmir were unsubstantiated.

Chief of Al-Umar militant outfit Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar said that talks with India can "never resolve the Kashmir issue and it will bear no fruit."

"Talks have fetched nothing. Anyone who thinks dialogue will resolve issues is making a mistake," Zargar said in a statement. "We will continue our struggle in Kashmir until the last Indian soldier remains here."

Residents in south Kashmir's Anantnag district said they want the new interlocutor to hold a dialogue with the militants to bring them home and end the violence, which has continued unabated since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani last year.

"If he is able to talk to the boys who are in jungles, then it would serve some purpose. That should change something. It will only happen if a strong political initiative is taken by New Delhi, instead of wasting time," said Abdul Samad, member of Beoper Mandal of Anantnag.

Tariq Ahmad Chalkoo, a resident of Baramulla town, said he expects a change on the ground in coming days and the violence that has been going on since last year will stop.

"It (appointment of Sharma) has to be taken positively, instead of looking at it through the prism of what has happened in the past. But that optimism is certainly missing," he said.
Houston: The foster father of a 3-year-old Indian girl, who is missing for over two weeks, has told police that his daughter choked on milk and he "believed she had died", according to a media report on Tuesday.

Wesley Mathews, 37, the father of Sherin Mathews, was re-arrested and charged with first-degree felony injury to a child due to a conflicting statement to police.

The arrest came a day after the body of a small child was found in a culvert near their home in suburban Dallas and police fear that it could be that of Sherin.

An arrest warrant obtained by local TV Station WFAA detailed the "conflicting story" that led to the re-arrest of Sherin's father.

The warrant states that Mathews told police that his daughter choked on milk in the early morning hours of 7 October and he "believed she had died."

He said he "physically assisted" Sherin in drinking her milk when she wouldn't listen to him, according to the warrant.

"She was coughing and her breathing slowed," the warrant reads. "Eventually, Wesley Mathews no longer felt a pulse on the child and believed she had died."

He then admitted to police that he removed the body from the home, the warrant reads.

Mathews had previously claimed that Sherin went missing after he sent her outside their home at around 3 am on 7 October as punishment for not drinking her milk.

He was arrested then and charged with felony endangerment to a child and was placed on electronic ankle monitoring. He also surrendered his passport as a condition of making bond on 9 October.

He was re-arrested for felony injury to a child after providing investigators at the Richardson Police Department with the conflicting story.

"When they came in, they provided us with some information that was contrary to what we had previously been told regarding her [Sherin Mathews] disappearance," said Kevin Perlich, Richardson Police Department spokesperson.

His bond has been set at USD 1 million and he was booked into the Richardson City Jail.

"It is possible that he could bond out again," Perlich said.

When asked on Monday about the milk story Mathews originally told police, Perlich wouldn't provide specifics because it was an ongoing investigation. All he could say was that "it was not what he told us originally."

Perlich said police still did not have a positive identification on the child's body that was found Sunday at 11 am in a culvert underground during a search operation in the area of Spring Valley and Bowser Road.

The FBI seized dozens of items from the family's home and their vehicles between 8- 12 October, including a washer and dryer, electronics and DNA swabs.
Suspected militants attacked a police patrol party at Tral in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday, media reports said. No casualties have been reported so far.

#FLASH: Grenade attack on a police patrol party in Pulwama's Tral in Jammu and Kashmir; no loss of life reported so far. Details awaited. pic.twitter.com/KZDOjpQAGC  ANI (@ANI) October 24, 2017

Jammu and Kashmir has recently seen a rise in grenade attacks on security personnel as well as civilians.

Three days earlier, terrorists hurled a grenade at the house of People's Democratic Party (PDP) MLA Mushtaq Ahmad Shah at Tral. Fortuately, no injuries were reported because Shah's family members were not in the house.

Security forces reached Shah's house after the attack and launched a search operation.

Militants also hurled a grenade at the residence of a National Conference (NC) leader Mohammad Ashraf Bhat in Tral injuring a CRPF jawan.

In early October, two policemen were injured after a grenade was lobbed towards a check post in the Juhama area of Baramulla district. A joint check post was set up by police and the army for routine area domination. The policemen received minor injuries in the blast and the area was cordoned off for searches.

In September, three civilians including a college student were killed and 30 others including policemen and paramilitary troopers were injured in a grenade attack in Pulwama district. According to News18, the attack took place when senior Jammu and Kashmir minister Naeem Akhtar reached Tral to inaugurate a project. Akhtar escaped unhurt in the attack.

With inputs from agencies
On Monday, a dozen youth belonging to various Hindu outfits held protests in Agra, claiming that the Taj Mahal was originally a Shiv temple. The youth started reciting the 'Shiv Chalisa' outside the monument, according to media reports.

Agra: Members of Rashtriya Swabhimaan Dal & Hindu Yuva Vahini chanted 'Shiv Chalisa' at Taj Mahal yesterday pic.twitter.com/x8qhrPxjbo  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) October 24, 2017

CISF personnel took the youths  belonging to Rashtra Swabhimaan Dal (RSD) and Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV)  in custody and released them only after they gave a written apology, Hindustan Times reported.

Led by Bharat Goswami, city president of the Hindu Yuva Vahini in Aligarh, the protesters confronted the CISF and told them that if namaz can be offered at the mausoleum, then reciting the 'Shiv Chalisa' was also justified, according to a report by The Times of India.

However, CISF officials told them that they could see the monument but they cannot hold prayers inside the premises. They said rules do not permit prayers inside the monument and they had asked the activists to submit a written apology, which led to an argument, according to the report.

The activists were forcibly removed from the premises.

The protests have come after BJP MLA Sangeet Som said the monument was a blot on Indian culture and was built by traitors.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who is scheduled to visit the monument on 26 October, said that it does not matter who built it and for what reason. "It was built by blood and sweat of Indian labourers," he said.

Adityanath's comments seen as BJP's attempts at damage control. The Uttar Pradesh government found itself in a hard place after the government's tourism booklet failed to feature the UNESCO world heritage site, and a string of party leaders made disparaging comments about the 16th Century monument.
Greater Noida: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday said the newly-appointed interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir, Dineshwar Sharma, would decide whom he engaged with in the state.

Asked if Sharma would hold talks with the Hurriyat Conference, as suggested by some state politicians, Singh said, "It depends upon him whom he talks to or engages with.

Sharma, a former director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), was appointed by the central government as its representative on Monday to initiate a dialogue with all stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir.

The retired 1979-batch officer of the Indian Police Service was the IB director from December 2014, to December 2016.

The minister dodged questions by reporters on what signals the Indian government sought to send to Pakistan with the appointment of the interlocutor.

Singh was speaking on the sidelines of the 56th Raising Day parade of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police in Greater Noida.

Sustained dialogues would be initiated by the government for a solution to the Kashmir issue, Singh had said on Monday.

The home minister had also made it clear that Sharma, who would hold the rank of a cabinet secretary, would have a free hand in deciding whom to engage with.
Srinagar: Talks can be held even with those separatists who have been arrested by the NIA, Jammu and Kashmir's deputy chief minister Nirmal Singh said in Srinagar on Tuesday.

"Actually, we must not link the two things (talks and NIA investigations) because NIA is an autonomous body. It has its mandate and NIA has found certain acts which are not as per the law. So, NIA is taking action," he told reporters.

"As far as dialogue is concerned, if it is felt that those people, even if they are behind the bars, they can be consulted, no problem in that, because it is happening. It happens everywhere," Singh told reporters in Srinagar.

He was responding when asked whether newly-appointed interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma would hold talks with the separatists who have been arrested by the NIA or are under the investigating agency's scanner.

Singh said talks could be held with the separatists and they should come forward with their grievances with an open mind.

"If there are grievances, then they should be placed on table with open mind and there are no preconditions. Talks should be held and what would happen would be decided later," he added.

"As our home minister (Rajnath Singh) has said that all stakeholders can come. In our (PDP-BJP) Agenda of Alliance, on whose basis our government was formed, we have made it clear that the Jammu and Kashmir government will try to create an environment in which talks can happen because talks are the only solution," he said.

The deputy chief minister termed the announcement of talks as a right step in right direction.
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Shanghai Customs has released figures showing a rise in auto imports for nine consecutive months since January this year.

In the first nine months of this year, a total of 302,000 vehicles worth 84.87 billion yuan (12.79 billion U.S. dollars) were imported through Shanghai, up 17 percent year on year.

About 169,000 cars were imported from the Europe Union during the period, up 21.2 percent year on year, accounting for 55.7 percent of the total imports. Cars imported from the United States increased 30.1 percent year on year to 72,000.

The number of imported vehicles with engines between 1.5 liters and 2.0 liters also increased to 165,000 during the period.

Analysts attributed the consecutive growth to the strong auto consumption market and the rapid introduction of new car models by automobile companies.
Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh government is planning to take out an 'ekatm yatra' for the collection of metal pieces to install a 108-feet tall statue of Adi Shankaracharya at Omkareshwar in the state's Khandwa district.

The statue of the great saint is proposed to be set up on the banks of River Narmada in the famous temple town of Omkareshwar, located around 290 kilometres from Bhopal. It houses one of the 12 revered 'jyotirlinga' shrines of Lord Shiva.

"The state government has decided to take out an awareness campaign, named 'ekatm yatra', in December-January to collect the metal pieces for making the statue of Adi Shankaracharya at Omkareshwar," an official of the state public relations department said.

A state-level organising committee of 98 members, including religious leaders, ministers, chairpersons of various boards and corporations, elected representatives, administrative officers, experts and educationists, has been set up to conduct the yatra effectively, he said.

While addressing the 'Namami Devi Narmade-Sewa Yatra' at Amarkantak in the state in February this year, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had announced to install the grand statue of Adi Shankaracharya at Omkareshwar.

"It was in Omkareshwar that the young Shankara met his guru Govinda Bhagavatpada in a cave and attained highest spiritual elevation. He founded the four 'math' (monasteries), which helped in the historical development, revival and spread of Advaita Vedanta," Chouhan had then said.

He had also announced to set up an institute of eminence at Omkareshwar in the memory of Adi Shankaracharya and introduce a course on him in the school syllabus.
Chennai: Two days after the collapse of a portion of a building housing a state-run bus depot killed eight staffers, the Madras High Court on Monday directed authorities to inspect old government buildings in Tamil Nadu and carry out repair.

The first bench, comprising Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice M Sundar, took up the matter when advocate George William made an urgent mention of the incident at Porayar in Nagapattinam district.

The bench ordered issuance of notice to the state transport department and Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC), returnable in four weeks.

The authorities were directed to immediately inspect old structures and carry out necessary repair works.

They were also asked to ensure adequate treatment and compensation to the victims of the incident and their families.

On 20 October, a portion of an over six-decade-old building of the TNSTC in Nagapattinam district had collapsed, killing eight crew members.

The TNSTC employees were sleeping in the building, which was constructed in 1952, when it collapsed around 3.30 am, killing them on the spot, police officials had said.

Three persons were injured and they were rushed to the Karaikal General Hospital.
Almost a week after Maharashtra announced its historic loan waiver scheme, farmers are yet to receive funds.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar, Cooperation Minister Subhash Deshmukh and Agriculture Minister Pandurang Fundkar all BJP menare struggling to implement the scheme.

And worse, instead of 8 lakh farmers who will receive benefits in the first phase, due to problems with data that number is set to be halved.

Sources said that when Shiv Sena's Diwakar Raote and Fundkar, among others, enquired on Tuesday why the money allotted to farmers was not being disbursed, Fadnavis stated that it was a technical issue.

But the delay was far from limited only to technical glitches. Rampant irregularities have been detected in the whole process as documents accessed by Firstpost showed multiple names were allocated against one Aadhaar number while on many occasions the same individual appeared more than once.

The State Levels Bankers Committee (SLBC) then told Fadnavis that the data provided by nationalised banks was full of errors and incomplete, which has delayed the implementation of the scheme, sources added.

Fadnavis ordered an emergency meeting Wednesday with his Cabinet and officials from the SLBC.

Maharashtra received 56.59 lakh applications from farming families for its loan waiver scheme. But a senior Information and Technology Department (IT) official said only 20 lakh accounts were found operation and eligible and that the IT Department was finding it difficult to verify every bank account with the data they procured from the SLBC.

In many cases, the principal and interest did not match the loan amount.

In most cases, the amount of the loan waiver certificate is greater than the loan amount stated.

Some farmers' names are in the defaulters' list, the official added.

"Due to the insufficient data our job is very difficult. The chief minister has called an urgent meeting with officials from nationalised banks, SLBC officials and his Cabinet on Wednesday," an official involved in the loan waiver scheme, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed to Firstpost.

On 18 October, Fadnavis announced that his government released Rs 4,000 crore in the first phase of the Rs 34,022 crore loan waiver scheme.

Fadnavis said more than 8 lakh farmers would be covered in the first phase and the loans of 4.62 lakh farmers worth Rs 3,200 crore would be written off.

Fadnavis said some nationalised and district banks were attempting to submit fake information to try to reap the benefits of the loan waiver scheme.

"We have identified the banks and state intimate the Centre about these banks which diverted funds."

Maharashtra cooperation minister Subhash Deshmukh told Firstpost the money would be deposited in the bank accounts of farmers starting Thursday. He chalked up the delay to the Diwali holidays.

Deshmukh said that under the UPA government's 2008 loan waiver scheme, a number of 'ghost' accounts received funds. "No one knows who benefitted from the Rs 287 crore distributed in Mumbai," he said.

On 18 October, Maharashtra started distributing no loan pending certificates to farmers found eligible for the scheme.

But so far, farmers have only received their certificates.

On 22 June, the BJP-led government announced that 89 lakh farmers would be benefited by this scheme and that the burden on the state would be Rs 34,022 crore. But they received only 77.27 lakh applications. Online registration and loan waiver filtered out more than 12 lakh farmers, saving the taxpayer Rs 10,000 crore.

Fundkar told Firstpost that while the government has not specified a timeline for reimbursement to be disbursed, the government considers 30 November as the deadline.

"The IT Department will find and solve the technical errors. We will sort it out quickly and in the next two days the funds will begin being deposited in farmers' accounts," Fundkar said.

VK Gautam, principal secretary of IT Department remained unavailable for comment.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday arrested Syed Shahid Yusuf, son of Hizbul Mujahideen chief and 'specially designated global terrorist' Syed Salahuddin, and charged him with hawala funding regarding a 2011 terrorism case.

Yusuf, who works as a horticulturist with the Jammu and Kashmir state government, was reportedly being questioned in New Delhi by the NIA, CNN-News18 reported.

#BREAKING  Syed Salahuddins son Syed Shahid Yusuf arrested by NIA for Hawala funding | original input @manojkumargupta pic.twitter.com/hEqhPn6PbK  News18 (@CNNnews18) October 24, 2017

The channel further added that Yusuf received money worth Rs 3.40 lakh in seven installments between 2011 and 2014. The money was allegedly routed through Saudi Arabia by a man identified as Aijaz Ahmed Bhat, a declared absconder who was charge-sheeted with four others in a previous case back in 2011.

The NIA is probing illegal funding, including through hawala channels, for terrorist activities in parts of Kashmir Valley. It has registered multiple cases in this connection.

Yusuf's name was under the scanner in the past as well, but this is the first time he's being arrested formally by an investigating agency, the TV news channel reported. Two SIM cards recovered from Yusuf's person have been sent for forensic testing, and initial tests have confirmed the agency's theories that there were conversations taking place between Yusuf and Bhat, it was revealed.

His father Mohammed Yusuf Shah  better known as Syed Salahuddin  was in June 2017 declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US Department of State.

Yusuf's arrest is the latest attack as part of the NIA's intense crackdown against Kashmir's business and political leaders. In June this year, the NIA carried out searches at 14 places in Kashmir and eight places in Delhi in connection with terror funding received from Pakistan for carrying out subversive activities in the Valley.

Among those raided were close aides and the kin of hardline separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani and others in the Hurriyat Conference.

This apart, MLA Engineer Rashid was also summoned by the investigating agency. Rashid's name had cropped up during the interrogation of businessman Zahoor Watali, who was arrested by NIA for allegedly supplying money to terror groups and separatists in the Valley.

The arrest comes a day after Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday announced the decision to start a dialogue process in Jammu and Kashmir and named former Intelligence Bureau Director Dineshwar Sharma as its representative for the talks with all stakeholders in the state.

With inputs from agencies
New Delhi: Almost a year down the line, is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's dream of making India a cash-less or less-cash country becoming a reality?

Industry stakeholders feel that though the note-ban drive by the government gave the necessary impetus to citizens to start adopting online payment platforms, a lot needs to be done by both the government and the industry to make it a success.

The adoption rate of online platforms was high during the demonetisation period, but it plateaued out as soon as cash became available in the system.

When the the Modi government banned high denomination notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes on 8 November last year, removing an overwhelming amount of cash from the economy, people had to willy-nilly fall back on plastic or online transactions.

"The fact that 86 per cent of the cash available in the system was sucked out overnight gave an immediate boost to online/mobile payment platforms. There was a push-up factor," Vishwas Patel, co-chair, Payments Council of India (PCI) and founder and CEO of CC Avenues, told IANS.

But once cash was back in circulation, those who earlier dealt mostly in cash went back to doing so, he said.

The PCI was formed under the aegis of Internet and Mobile Association of India in 2013 to cater to the needs of the digital payment industry.

He said during November, December 2016 and January 2017, online transactions were at their peak. In October 2016, debit card transactions stood at Rs 21,941 crore and those of credit cards at Rs 29,942 crore. Post-demonetisation, in December 2016, debit card transactions jumped to Rs 58,000 crore and those of credit card were at Rs 31,150 crore.

However, in August 2017, 10 months after the note ban, debit and credit card transaction stood at Rs 36,000 crore each, having come down substantially from the heights they achieved, but not falling back to the pre-demonetisation lows.

Patel said that after the cash flow in the system eased, small kirana shops stopped transacting through online payment channels, primarily because they did not want to take a tax number or a Goods and Services Tax number. "They do not have the wherewithal to pay taxes," he said, adding that the "government needs to incentivise merchants, otherwise small and medium enterprises are going to go back to cash mode."

Patel said security and trust in payment systems was something all stakeholders need to work on together. "As an industry body, we are preparing a National Negative Database of consumers and merchants so that we can reduce fraud and build trust in the eyes of consumers," he added.

The database details would be circulated amongst payment gateway service providers, banks and card companies. "We are also working on a trust certificate that can be displayed by all merchants on their websites," Patel added.

Vineet Singh, Chief Business Officer at Mobikwik, a payment app, said demonetisation had became a force multiplier. "It has pushed India a decade ahead towards the agenda of adopting online payment platforms. Naturally, things cooled down a bit post-demonetisation," Singh told IANS.

Mobikwik had 3-3.5 crore users in the pre-demonetisation days and a year after note ban it has 6.5 crore. The company also witnessed a sharp rise in transactions from one million to three million within a year.

"Online payment companies in the last one year have increased their base significantly. They are experiencing healthy month-on-month growth and the adoption of online payment platforms was across all age groups," Singh said, adding that "now everybody takes online payment seriously, which will provide a secular road towards a cash-less society."

Vivek Belgavi, Leader, Fintech at PricewaterhouseCoopers, too said that, after cash returned to the system, people started transacting more in notes, but there was an uptick in digital transactions.

"Digital transactions have grown. But the key thing is that a lot of stepping stones for future adoption have been laid down -- like the BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) app by the government. Demonetisation was the shock that forced people to move to online channels," he said.

Belgavi said the government should give more importance to low-cost infrastructure like availability of point-of-sales machines. "Industry should offer citizens the whole ecosystem of digital transactions. They should be offered an experience that is better than cash transactions," he added.

Dewang Neralla, MD and CEO, Atom Technologies, told IANS their online payment processing volumes had grown three times since demonetisation.

"By March 2017, our transactions had doubled and with almost 11 months gone by we still see a healthy growth of around 20 percent on a month-on-month basis. Today we process payments of about Rs 6,800 crore per month across more than 100,000 merchants. We expect this figure to grow at least three times in the next three years."

Online transactions are bound to grow over a period of time, but in a country which overwhelmingly ran on cash, it may be difficult to do a quick digitisation.
The decision taken by NDA government to initiate a sustained dialogue process for restoring peace and normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir is a welcome step. The problem in the Valley is largely a political one and in this context the appointment of Dineshwar Sharma, who has no experience in diplomatic and political negotiations in resolving disputes as the governments special representative, especially at a time when US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is visiting India via Pakistan, is an exercise in futility and an eyewash formality.

Through such a hasty appointment, the Narendra Modi government wants to show off as if it is really concerned about solving the long-standing Kashmir dispute. The Centre has also realised that the use of brutal force to suppress Kashmiris' demands for greater autonomy will not work, particularly when the BJP-PDP alliance has not been effectively implemented.

The appointment of an IPS officer shows that the government still thinks about the Jammu and Kashmir dispute through the prism of national security and intelligence. But the fact is that the problem can only be solved politically. And, this is admitted by the Army Chiefs and other security related experts who have worked in Jammu and Kashmir region.

Indian government needs to take various stakeholders into confidence, including the army at the border, and Pakistan, to solve the issue. Unless that happens, the dialogue process which the government intends to restart, would merely be a diversionary effort on the part of the Centre. This is because the alliance between the BJP and PDP is not at all functioning and the promises made have been belied.

The BJP-led NDA government also has a problem of not reaching out to Pakistan and separatists, both of whom are major stakeholders in the peace process. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh and former deputy prime minister LK Advani met leaders from the Hurriyat and also hugged them. But the current dispensation shuns Hurriyat leaders and treats them as Pakistans proxies. In the mean time, most Hurriyat leaders are implicated in hawala scandal. Some are also jailed. But were these Hurriyat leaders not corrupt for Singh and Advani? Did the then NDA and UPA government not know of their credentials or activities?

In his Independence Day address, Modi said that the Kashmir problem can be solved only by embracing Kashmir and not by "gaali or goli" (abuses or bullets). But is the noble vision of the prime minister being translated into action and reality?

Skirmishes on the border have risen and so have encounters between the militants and security forces in the past one year. The PDP-BJP government is unpopular. Many PDP leaders are being attacked. Recently, one senior PDP leader resigned too.

There is a growing discontent among the Kashmiri youths. At least 42 percent of them are unemployed. There has been no improvement in their education and employment situation. The central schemes for youths in Jammu and Kashmir, namely prime minister's scholarships for poor students from the state and Udan Scheme for employment, have hardly been implemented in letter and spirit. There has been no worthwhile effort to address pressing issues like human rights violations in the Valley.

Coming back to Sharma's appointment  does he enough power to talk to different stakeholders in the state? Can he revoke the AFSPA and PSA? Can he address the socio-economic as well as human rights violations in the Valley?

When I was an interlocutor (2010-2014), my team and I met with different political parties to keeping them informed about the developments. We also spoke to the RSS and the other political parties, which were a part of the all-parties delegation that visited Kashmir during the crisis of 2010 .

But one thing has been constant, both UPA, as well the NDA regimes, have not acted upon the recommendations made by the interlocutors. This points to a lack of sincerity on the part of the political dispensation at the Centre to solve the long-standing issue.

If the NDA government is serious about resolving the problem, it needs to follow what former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee once said that the Kashmir imboglio can be resolved within the realm of "kashmiriyat, jamhooriyat and insaniyat."

There has often been consensus-based decisions between the two major parties and it's not like the Congress and the BJP have not come together in the past. Therefore, the Indian establishment can resolve the Kashmir dispute provide this goal is pursued earnestly.

The author is a former interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir and the former Central Information Commissioner.

As told to Aprameya Rao
New Delhi: Dairy giant Amul reached out to the Indian Railways on its official Twitter handle with a business proposition, to use its refrigerated parcel vans to transport Amul butter across India.

"Amul is interested in using refrigerated parcel vans to transport butter across India. Request to please advice," the dairy major had said in a tweet addressed to the railways.

@RailMinIndia, Amul is interested in using refrigerated parcel vans to transport Amul Butter across India. Request to please advise.  Amul.coop (@Amul_Coop) October 23, 2017

The Indian Railways extensively uses Twitter to address passenger woes. But this could perhaps be the first time the national transporter has received a business proposition on the micro-blogging site. And the rail ministry reacted positively on the micro-blogging site, using a popular tagline of the dairy company. "Indian Railways will be 'utterly butterly delighted' to get the taste of India to every Indian," the the Indian Railways responded, using the "utterly butterly" line used successfully by Amul.

IR will be utterly butterly delighted to get the taste of India to every Indian. https://t.co/dwUGzcBhBi  Ministry of Railways (@RailMinIndia) October 23, 2017

The Indian Railways had introduced the refrigerated van service a few years ago with an aim to facilitate the transportation of perishable commodities such as fruits, vegetables, frozen meats/poultry and chocolates, but most of the vans were lying defunct, according to a ministry official.

However, this service exists only on specific routes. "We would certainly like to capture this traffic. Let us see what can be done," an official added.

The senior divisional manager of the Ahmedabad division will meet officials from Amul on Tuesday to discuss this, the official said.

He said that the South Western Railway has some refrigerated vans, they can be repaired and used by the railways to assist Amul.

With inputs from PTI
Jaipur: Noisy scenes were witnessed in the Rajasthan Assembly on Tuesday as the opposition Congress MLAs alleged that the government was not serious on farmers' issues and demanded a complete crop loan waiver.

The proceedings were disrupted and the House was adjourned during the Question Hour over opposition protests on the issue.

At 1 pm when the House reassembled, there were protests and several Congress legislators sat on a 'dharna' (sit-in) in the Well of the House.

There was uproar as the Congress MLAs accused the state government of not being serious on farmers' issues.

Demanding a complete crop loan waiver, nearly a dozen Congress legislators trooped into the Well of the House and shouted slogans for waiving off farmers' loans, for almost an hour, even as the proceedings continued.

Congress deputy whip Govind Singh Dotasara along with other legislators sought to draw attention of the House towards the issue but the Speaker did not pay any heed.

A few minutes later, Leader of Opposition Rameshwar Dudi too joined them and all of them sat on a dharna in the Well of the House.

For almost an hour, one after the other Congress legislators raised issues like farmer suicides, power-cuts, seed and fertiliser issues and loan waiver while notifications were tabled in the house and a debate on The Rajasthan Farmers' Participation in Management of Irrigation Systems (Amendment) Bill, 2017 and The Rajasthan Relief Undertakings (Special Provisions) (Amendment) Bill, 2017 continued.

During the debate on the Irrigation Systems (Amendment) Bill, BJP legislator from Kota, Prahlad Gunjal, accused Congress legislators of misleading the people.

He claimed that instead of participating in the debate, Congress leaders were wasting the time of the House.

State irrigation minister Ram Pratap also hurled a jibe saying that those who did not work even an inch for canal construction have turned well-wishers of farmers.

Amid uproar, both the Bills were passed through a voice vote following which the Speaker adjourned the House for the day.
New Delhi: Initiatives for bringing peace in Afghanistan should be led and controlled by Afghans, President Ram Nath Kovind said while welcoming his counterpart from the neighbouring country Ashraf Ghani in Rashtrapati Bhavan on Tuesday.

He "strongly condemned" recent terror attacks in Afghanistan including in the provinces of Kabul, Kandahar, Ghazni and Paktia that have claimed lives of over 200 people.

Kovind said India has been a victim of state-sponsored, cross-border terrorism for decades and can fully empathise with the ongoing quest of the Afghan people to secure peace.

"India believes that whatever initiatives are taken for bringing peace in Afghanistan should be Afghan-led and Afghan-controlled," a statement from Rashtrapati Bhavan quoting the President said.

Securing sustained peace and security remains the key fundamentals in leading Afghanistan on the pathway of economic recovery and growth, Kovind said.

"Unfortunately, mindless and senseless violence is being imposed on the people of Afghanistan," he said.

Kovind expressed admiration for Ghani for the astute leadership that he has provided to Afghanistan through difficult times and commended him for strengthening bilateral relations between India and Afghanistan.

Recalling Ghani's speech at the Heart of Asia Summit in Amritsar in December 2016 and his visit to the Golden temple, he said for India, Afghanistan is not just a strategic partner, but a nation that evokes endearing affection.

The president added that civilisational links and people-to-people contacts provide a strong foundation to our ever-growing friendship.

The two countries have deepened their strategic partnership in recent times, he said.

The India-Afghanistan Trade and Investment Show here brought the businessmen of two countries together and generated business worth over $200 million, Kovind said.

He expressed happiness at the opening of the air freight corridor between Kandahar and Kabul and Delhi and also noted that the Afghan cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat have been connected directly by air to Delhi.
Maharashtra Governor and Mumbai University Chancellor CH Vidyasagar Rao on Tuesday removed Sanjay Deshmukh as the vice-chancellor of the institution following the fiasco that the university faced over the delayed announcement of examination results due to a flawed digital assessment process.

The removal of Deshmukh puts to rest the impending demands of the vice-chancellor's resignation from different quarters following the uncertainty that thousands of students had to face due to the extremely delayed announcement of results this year.

The Raj Bhavan released a press statement saying "Today, the Governor and Chancellor of University of Mumbai CH Vidyasagar Rao, in exercise of the powers conferred upon him under Section 11(14)(e) of the Maharashtra Public Universities Act, 2016 removed Dr Sanjay Deshmukh from the office of the Vice-Chancellor, University of Mumbai for his gross negligence and failure in implementing the On-Screen Marking system, to declare the results of examinations held in Summer-2017 within the time limit prescribed in the Act and for his failure to comply with the directions issued by the Chancellor from time to time, regarding early declaration of results."

After the long delay in declaring results of over four lakh Mumbai University students, the call for the resignation of Deshmukh had gained momentum slowly. On 26 September, Rao had cracked the whip and sought Deshmukh's resignation, failing which he could face dismissal, The Times of India had reported.

The vice-chancellor had also violated Section 11 (14) and 89 of the Maharashtra Public Universities Act as he did not submit a report to the chancellor, stating his failure to announce results before the deadline. Instead, he applied for leave "for personal reasons" on 9 August. Rao then appointed Shivaji University vice-chancellor Devanand Shinde as acting vice-chancellor of Mumbai University with immediate effect.

Deshmukh had also not taken into consideration the staff crunch in the university. Since 1985, the number of colleges affiliated to the university has gone up to 748. The staff, even the non-teaching staff, is inadequate to handle the increasing workload.

Even though Rao had asked Deshmukh to resign, sources revealed that the dominant opinion among Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Higher Technical Education Minister Vinod Tawde who met in September to decide the vice-chancellor's fate, was that sacking Deshmukh won't be good either for Mumbai University, the vice-chancellor or the mangroves that 52-year-old Deshmukh has been researching on for years now.

"The state government needs Deshmukh's knowledge and expertise in the field," sources at Rajbhavan and the Mantralaya had confirmed.
The Communist Party of China (CPC) on Tuesday unveiled a new leadership, electing the 19th CPC Central Committee to lead the Party for the coming five years.

Delegates attend the closing session of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Oct. 24, 2017. [Photo: Xinhua/Zhang Ling]

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The Communist Party of China (CPC) on Tuesday unveiled a new leadership, electing the 19th CPC Central Committee to lead the Party for the coming five years.

Elected by 2,336 delegates at the closing session of the 19th CPC National Congress, the new CPC Central Committee includes 204 members and 172 alternate members.

"The congress elected a new Central Committee of the Party, realizing organizational succession," Xi Jinping said while addressing the closing session at the Great Hall of the People.

Xi, 64, was elected into the new Central Committee. He was the General Secretary of the 18th CPC Central Committee.

Also elected were Wang Huning, Liu Qibao, Xu Qiliang, Sun Chunlan, Li Keqiang, Wang Yang, Zhang Chunxian, Zhao Leji, Hu Chunhua, Li Zhanshu and Han Zheng.

Li Keqiang, 62, was a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee. The others were all members of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee.

The 19th CPC Central Committee will elect the Political Bureau, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau and the General Secretary at its first plenary session scheduled on Wednesday.

Before the formal election on Tuesday, delegates to the congress carried out preliminary elections for candidates of members and alternate members of the 19th CPC Central Committee and of members of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

According to the Party Constitution, the highest leading body of the CPC is the National Congress and the Central Committee it elects, and all constituent organizations and members of the Party are subordinate to the National Congress and the Central Committee.
On Monday, the Supreme Court said that people do not need to stand up in cinema halls to prove their patriotism, asking the Centre to consider amending the rules that regulate playing of the National Anthem before a movie.

Observing that the society did not need "moral policing", the bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said that in the future, "the government will want people to stop wearing T-shirts and shorts to cinemas saying this would disrespect the National Anthem." The bench said it will not allow the government to "shoot from its shoulder", and asked it to take a call either way on the issue.

The government has until 9 January to respond, which is when the case will be heard next. Here is how the case evolved since the Supreme Court ruling last year:

The idea of playing the national anthem in movie theatres

There are several theories relating the seemingly unrelated subjects of the National anthem  a matter of reverence  and cinema  a media form usually directed at recreation.

According to The Guardian, the practice to play the National Anthem in cinema halls in India was first introduced after the 1962 India-China war.

Those were the times of high national fervour, with India facing a mightier enemy at its borders. But then the National Anthem was played at the end of the movies. The moviegoers, ignorant of the diktat, would file out of the cinema hall soon after the end of the movie, and this was probably why the practice slowly faded and was eventually discontinued, until 2003.

In 2003, as The Huffington Post reported, "Narendra Verma of the Nationalist Congress Party lobbied and got the Maharashtra government to order cinema halls to do it again." There have also been incidents, in the select few states where it is a law, of people heckling others for refusing to stand up during the National Anthem. Since then, there have been several campaigns to bring back the practice of playing the National Anthem in movie theatres.

The original Supreme Court order

On 30 November 2016, the Supreme Court ordered that the National Anthem must be played in public theaters across the country before a movie, without any dramatisation. It also ordered that the national flag be shown on screen when the anthem is being played.

A bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Amitava Roy said that this would instill a feeling of constitutional patriotism and nationalism. "It is the duty of every citizen to abide by the ideals ingrained in the Constitution and as such show respect to the National Anthem and the national flag," the bench said.

The court's order came on a public interest litigation (PIL) by Shayam Narayan Chouksey seeking framing of guidelines on the playing of the National Anthem.

Earlier in October 2016, the Delhi High Court issued a notice to the government on a plea for directions to make playing of the National Anthem mandatory in all cinema halls. The plea mentioned that Maharashtra, Goa and several southern states already had the practice of playing the National Anthem in theatres and also observed that a few decades ago it was mandatory to play it at the end of the screening of a movie.

Subsequent controversy

The Supreme Court ruling invited sharp criticism, with many asking if patriotism can be forced upon citizens. Some critics pointed out the order was likely to embolden right wing groups pushing a strident brand of nationalism aimed at curbing dissent, while others said it raises questions on an individual's fundamental rights.

While former attorney general Soli Sorabjee said courts cannot direct the public to stand up and do anything, senior advocate KTS Tulsi said the judiciary should not go into the areas which do not belong to it.

However, others such as Meenakshi Lekhi, a lawyer and BJP MP from New Delhi constituency, said the order "causes no harm". "National anthem is sung at various places like schools, public functions, events etc. What's the harm in playing it at another venue? It causes no harm and it is natural to stand up when the anthem is played," she said.

Incidents of violence since then

Since the order, several movie goers who either refused to or could not stand up for the national anthem before the movie were forced to face violence from others in the hall, if not an arrest by the police.

On 21 August, three engineering students, originally from Jammu and Kashmir, were booked for allegedly disrespecting the National Anthem by not standing when it was being played in a cinema hall in Hyderabad.

On 2 October, a wheelchair-bound disability rights activist was allegedly heckled and called a Pakistani at a theatre in Guwahati after he couldnt stand when the National Anthem was played.

Government's stand

During Monday's hearing, Attorney General KK Venugopal, appearing for the Centre, said India was a diverse country and the National Anthem needed to be played in the cinema halls to bring in uniformity.

Venugopal, opposing a recall of the 30 November 2016 order, said it should be left open to the government to take a call on its own discretion on whether the anthem should be played in theatres and whether people should stand up for it.

On revisiting the original order

On Monday, the bench, comprising Misra along with Justice AM Khanwilkar and Justice DY Chandrachud observed that it cannot be assumed that if a person does not stand up for the National Anthem, then he is "less patriotic". "Desireability is one thing but making it mandatory is another. Citizens cannot be forced to carry patriotism on their sleeves and courts cannot inculcate patriotism among people through its order," the bench said.

Responding to the government's representative Venugopal, Chandrachud said, "What is stopping you from amending the Flag Code? You can amend it and say where to play National Anthem and where it can't be done. Nowadays, anthem is played during matches, tournaments and even Olympics where half the crowd does not understand its meaning."

The bench added, "You (Centre) take a call. Government should not show any reservation to the amendment as the court would not allow it to shoot from its shoulders". Chandrachud said the practice of playing National Anthem in theatres was earlier discontinued in Mumbai because people used to move out of the halls when it was played.

"If the court is supposed to enforce respect for the National Anthem on citizens, it should also enforce the other fundamental duties in Article 51A," Chandrachud said, adding that cultural and social values are inculcated by parents and teachers and not through court orders.

With inputs from agencies
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered demolition of a parking lot, which is being built within a kilometre of the iconic Taj Mahal in Agra.

The apex court's order came two days before the scheduled visit of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath to the historic monument on 26 October. Adityanath had recently said he would visit Agra to review tourism schemes.

A bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta directed Agra authorities to demolish within four weeks the parking lot for tourists which was being built within one kilometre of the eastern gate of the 17th-century mausoleum.

When the matter came up for hearing on Tuesday, the apex court asked about the presence of the counsel appearing for the Uttar Pradesh government. When it was informed that no advocate was present, the bench said the parking lot would be demolished.

Later in the day, advocate Aishwarya Bhati, standing counsel for the Uttar Pradesh government, mentioned the matter before the bench seeking the recall of the order, but the court asked her to move an appropriate restoration application in this regard.

The apex court, which is dealing with a petition filed by environmentalist MC Mehta, has been monitoring development in the area to protect the Taj Mahal, built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in the memory of his wife Mumtaz in 1631. The historic white marble mausoleum is also a UNESCO world heritage site.

Mehta, in his PIL, has sought protection of the Taj Mahal from the ill-effects of polluting gases and deforestation in and around the area.

The apex court had earlier passed a slew of directions on the issue of protecting the iconic monument.
New Delhi: Tejashwi Yadav, son of RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav, on Tuesday skipped his scheduled appearance before the Enforcement Directorate in connection with its money laundering probe in the railway hotels allotment corruption case, officials said.

The former Bihar deputy chief minister has now been summoned to appear on 31 October, they said.

The agency had registered a case against Lalu Prasad Yadav, his family members and others under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) sometime back.

Tejashwi's mother and former Bihar chief minister Rabri has been asked by the ED to appear before it on 27 October for questioning in the case.

Tejashwi was once grilled by the ED for over nine hours in connection with the case.

Rabri Devi has skipped the ED summonses at least four times.

In July, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had registered an FIR and conducted multiple searches on the properties of Lalu Prasad, who is also a former Bihar chief minister, and others.

The CBI FIR has alleged that Lalu Prasad Yadav during his tenure as the railway minister handed over the maintenance of two Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) hotels to a company in 2004 after receiving a bribe in the form of a prime land in Patna through a 'benami' company owned by Sarla Gupta, wife of Prem Chand Gupta, a former Union minister.

The ED had registered a criminal case against his family members and others under the PMLA, based on the CBI FIR.

The CBI also recently recorded the statements of Tejashwi and Lalu Prasad Yadav in this case.

The ED is investigating the alleged "proceeds of crime" generated by the accused, purportedly through shell companies, according to officials.

Others named in the CBI FIR include Vijay Kochhar, Vinay Kochhar (both directors of Sujata Hotels), Delight Marketing company, now known as Lara Projects, and the then IRCTC managing director PK Goel.

The CBI FIR was registered on 5 July in connection with favours allegedly extended to Sujata Hotels in awarding a contract for the upkeep of the hotels in Ranchi and Puri and receiving premium land as 'quid pro quo'.
Manila: Terrorism and radicalisation through social media pose a "serious" security challenge to all countries and a strong collective action is required to fight the "scourge", Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday.

Speaking at the 4th ASEAN Defence Ministers' meeting in the Philippines, Sitharaman said the global strategic and security situation was constantly evolving and had thrown up fresh and serious challenges.

"The defence and security scenario in our shared region has also witnessed significant changes recently. Our countries now need to simultaneously prepare for traditional (military) and non-traditional threats," she said.

Terming terrorism a "trans-national phenomena" which needed strong collective action, Sitharaman praised the Philippines for resolutely addressing the threat posed by terrorists in the southern part of the country.

"New developments in social media and cyberspace have expanded the threat, as these are exploited by terrorists to develop less visible but lethal ways and means of manipulating minds of the people," she said in a statement.

"I wish to commend the Philippines for reiterating India's zero tolerance for terrorism anywhere and under any circumstances. There are no good terrorists," she said.

Sitharaman said the transnational activism of terrorist groups and the "spectre" of returning foreign fighters, as well as the conduct of irresponsible states that provide safe, havens, funding and even encouragement to terrorist groups all needed to be addressed jointly and comprehensively.

"Terrorism anywhere is a threat everywhere," she said.

"India has taken resolute measures to fight the scourge of terrorism from across its borders. We fully recognise the role of joint mechanisms with our partners and the role of international and regional forums in fighting this menace.

"The recent, BRICS Summit Declaration condemning all forms of terrorism and identifying a number of terrorist organisations engaged in dastardly acts was a positive step... We should be clear and unequivocal in our condemnation of terrorism," she was quoted as saying in the statement.

Sitharaman said the maritime security was another key concern and India supports freedom of navigation, overflight and commerce throughout the region.

"Nations should resolve maritime disputes peacefully and in accordance with international law. We support a rules-based order for oceans and sea that is critical for the continued growth and development of the Indo-Pacific region," she said.

Sitharaman also said that the nuclear and missile tests conducted by North Korea were in violation of its international commitments and have triggered serious concern.

"India has deplored these tests. We remain concerned about the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted India's national security and that of the entire region.

"It is important that North Korea's proliferation linkages are investigated and those who have supported its nuclear and missile programme are held accountable," she said.
A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Gujarat, fresh sparks flew in the poll-bound state as Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Monday targetted the BJP-led Centre and state governments and went after Modi.

He was addressing a rally which marked OBC leader Alpesh Thakore formally joining the Congress as part of its strategy of broadening its political and social base to take on the long-ruling BJP.

On allegations of BJP 'bribing' Patidar and OBC leaders



Amid a rousing welcome and massive crowd, Rahul attacked Modi and the BJP while latching on to the bribery allegations made by Narendra Patel, an activist of the Hardik Patel-led Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS).

Narendra, within hours of joining the BJP, alleged Sunday night at a press conference that he was offered Rs 1 crore by the BJP and was given a token amount of Rs 10 lakh, a charge rubbished by the saffron party.

"This Gujarati voice is not an ordinary voice. This voice of Gujarat cannot be silenced or suppressed. You can offer anything, (Rs) one crore, (Rs) 10 crore, (Rs) 50 crore, (Rs) 1,000 crore, entire budget of India, entire money of the world, (but) this Gujarati voice cannot be purchased," Rahul said.

"Even Hardik, Jignesh Mewani (Dalit leader), cannot remain silent. They too have a voice. And this is no ordinary voice. It cannot be suppressed or bought.

"In the past also, there were attempts to suppress this voice. British tried to suppress Gandhiji, first in South Africa, then in Gujarat and India. But the voice of Gujarat drove out that superpower from the country," he said.

"Sardar Patelji, Rahul were from this land and they used to protect the voice of Gujarat," he said. "But today this (BJP) government wants to suppress Gujarat's voice. They are so scared that they want to buy the voice," Rahul alleged, adding "Modiji, there is no price tag for this voice. Modiji you cannot purchase Gujarat's voice."

In his 30-minute speech, Rahul said, "Every caste is agitating here, I am surprised that everybody is agitating here. They are tired of false promises of the BJP government."

On Modi's economic policies

Rahul also mounted a scathing attack on the Modi government's economic policies. He criticised the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as 'Gabbar Singh Tax' that he said has hit hard the country already nursing the wounds of demonetisation.

"Ye jo inka GST hai, ye aam aadmi pe bojh hai... Ye GST nahi, ye Gabbar Singh Tax hai," Rahul asserted.

Rahul said that Modi imposed demonetisation last year on a personal whim, pushing lakhs of people into distress. And if this was not enough, he introduced the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in a tearing hurry, the Congress vice-president added.

"The GST was brought by the Congress, but there was a ceiling of 18 percent and did not have five slabs like the present. We requested the government to go slow, but they just would not listen," Rahul said.

He called the Modi government anti-poor and said it was working against the interests of the common people.

"The entire Gujarat is today caught in restlessness. There is not a single section of the society here that is not agitating against the government over one issue or the other."

"What happened on 8 November? Modiji came on television and said I don't like Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes. So I have decided to spike them from that midnight. Hahaha," Rahul said, mocking the prime minister. "And by doing that he attacked the whole country by one stroke," he added.

"For the first two or three days days he too did not understand what has happened. And in a concert in Mumbai he announced 'I have done this'.

"But after five-six days he realised he made a mistake. Then again he appeared on television and said if I don't end the menace of black money by 30 December, then hang me."

Rahul asked farmers in the crowd if they buy seeds and fertilisers from their mobile phones and with cheques. The crowd replied with a booming 'No'.

"He destroyed the entire economy. He did not stop there but went ahead with the GST.

"GST was our thinking. We brought it, it was a thought of single tax of 18 percent across the nation with less forms to be filled."

Rahul also attacked Modi's "Make In India" slogan, saying Chinese goods had swept India.

"Should employment go to China or come to India? Most products you use have the label Made in China. Whether it is a shirt, cameras or anything else. When you click selfies or press a button for a picture, a Chinese youth gets employment.

"In Gujarat alone there are 30 lakh unemployed youth. Every day 30,000 people across the country enter the job market. But only 450 people get jobs."

During Rahul's speech, Thakore asked the crowd to be silent and listen to the Congress vice-president's speech. At this, Rahul said, "You want to make the crowd silent Alpeshji? But they cannot remain silent. Modiji has harassed them so much that they cannot remain silent."

The rally was organised by Thakore and his supporters. "There are thousands of youths in Gujarat who cannot remain silent now. They belong to all castes. There are two more youths like you (Thakore) - they are Hardik (Patel) and Jignesh (Mevani, a Dalit leader). Both of them cannot remain silent," the Congress leader said.

Modi, on a visit to Gujarat last week, mounted a stinging attack on the Congress and the Nehru Gandhi family, saying they disliked Gujarat and Gujaratis who were an "eyesore" for them.

On Jay Shah's business dealings

Rahul also did not leave an opportunity slam BJP president Amit Shah on the issue of alleged business deals of the his son Jay Shah. Amit and Jay have denied any wrongdoing.

"Modiji gave long lectures in Gujarat (during his recent visits), but has not spoken a single line regarding the company of Jay Shah," Rahul said. "Modiji Make in India has failed. Only one company has benefited from the Make in India programme. The company was worth of Rs 50,000 and not made any progress till 2014. But

after 2014 it grew to Rs 80 crore," he said.

"Modiji just speak one sentence about it. You had said that you will not indulge in corruption and would not allow others to do it, then what is this?" Rahul asked.

Last Saturday, Thakore met Rahul in New Delhi and later announced that he would soon join the Congress. The Congress has been wooing leaders of various communities like Hardik Patel, Mevani and Thakore. The party is inviting them to join hands with the aim of expanding its base by securing the support of Patels, OBCs and Dalits, and dent the BJP's poll prospects in its stronghold.

Congress is 'Drameybaz party No 1'

The saffron party, meanwhile, mocked the Congress and termed Thakore joining the Congress and bribe allegation against it "a mere drama".

Calling the Congress a "Drameybaz Party No 1" for presenting Thakore's entry as "an achievement", Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the OBC leader had earlier fought panchayat elections on the party's ticket.

He also said the Rs 1 crore bribe allegation against the BJP by Patidar leader Narendra Patel, an aide of Hardik Patel, to join the party was also "a part of the drama".

"There have been many films in the past with title 'No 1' such as 'Jodi No 1', 'Dost No 1', 'Aunty No 1'. Today, I am giving Congress party a new name, 'Drameybaz Party No 1'," Prasad said during a press conference in Delhi.

"And why should not I be calling this? Because the drama Congress is holding over joining of the big leader who was a NSUI member once? He also fought Mehsana panchayat election on Congress' ticket and lost. Even, his father was a district head of Congress. So when was he (Thakore) out of the Congress?"

He took a dig at Rahul for not doing his homework.

"Earlier, I would say Rahul did not do homework. But now I will say even your script writers do not do it. Had it been done today, you could have saved yourself from the drama of the achievement (Thakore's entry)," he said.

Prasad said Congress was frustrated due to being out of the power in the state, which led the party to reduce itself to "such gimmicks" to remain relevant.

The minister also said the Congress had "stooped to a low level" of politics due to desperation to win the Gujarat elections.

Prasad said the Gandhi scion has not learnt lessons from his past experiences.

The Congress has been out of power in Gujarat for the past 22 years.
On Monday, the Rajasthan government tabled a controversial bill that seeks to protect public servants and judges from prosecution and bar the media from reporting on allegations against them without its prior sanction. The move sparked off a legal challenge and protests inside and outside the Assembly.

As state unit of Congress and other Opposition parties protested against the 'draconian' law, chief minister Vasundhara Raje called four of her senior ministers and state BJP chief Ashok Parnami to her house on Monday evening to discuss the order.

Sources told The Times of India that apart from meeting the ministers, Raje also met senior bureaucrats and directed them to rework the ordinance so that apprehensions over the order in public and in media were addressed.

Sources told the newspaper that cabinet ministers Rajendra Rathore, Gulabchand Kataria, Arun Chaturvedi and Yunus Khan attended the meet at Raje's house.

The Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill, 2017 was introduced in the Assembly by Home Minister Gulabchand Kataria to replace an ordinance promulgated on 7 September. It seeks to shield both serving and former judges, magistrates and public servants in the BJP-ruled state from being investigated for on-duty action without the government's sanction. Monday was the first day of the 9th session of the Assembly.

Union ministers defend move

The move was defended by two Union ministers who said that the move was aimed at insulating honest officers and prevent policy paralysis.

Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the bill was aimed at preventing motivated complaints. Minister of State PP Chaudhary said the idea was not to defend the corrupt or wrong-doers, but to ensure that honest judges, magistrates and public servants were not harassed.

"What I have gathered is that the idea is that there should not be any motivated complaint. Officers were feeling harassed in discharging their duties," Prasad told reporters at a press conference at the BJP headquarters.

Opposition reaction

The bill was met with stiff opposition and Rajasthan Congress president Sachin Pilot and several party leaders were detained by the police on Monday soon after they took out a march against the state governments criminal laws amendment bill. After the Rajasthan Assembly session was adjourned for the day, Congress MLAs and leaders assembled at Jyoti Nagar T-point in the city, from where Pilot was to lead a march to the Raj Bhawan to hand over a representation against the Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill, 2017. Soon after the march began, the police detained Pilot and other Congress leaders and took them to the Bajaj Nagar police station.

The original ordinance on Monday became one of the top trends of Twitter with the hashtag "TughlaqiMaharani" trending on the site. It started with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who tweeted reminding Raje that it is 2017 and not 1817. Other political parties did not spare the Raje government either. AAP's in-charge in Rajasthan Kumar Vishwas, an active Twitter user, called Raje a female Kim Jong-un. Rebel BJP leader Ghanshyam Tiwari also opposed the ordinance, saying it was "aimed to strangulate democracy" in the state.

Original ordinance challenged in high court

The ordinance has been challenged in the high court by activist Bhagwat Gour who filed a petition before the Jaipur bench of the Rajasthan High Court challenging the ordinance, calling it "arbitrary and mala fide". The petition contends that the Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance, 2017, was "in contravention of fundamental rights as enshrined under Part-III of the Constitution of India", said Gour's counsel AK Jain.

State president of civil rights group People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Kavita Srivastava, said the amendments and provisos were to "gag the media" and "clipping" the powers of the magistrate to order an investigation, investigate or take cognisance of complaints against public servants including judges and magistrates. "We will go to the high court on Sunday against the government's move. The ordinance should be repealed," she said.

Meanwhile, the Editors Guild of India on Sunday expressed concern over the bill, claiming that the law will be a pernicious instrument to harass the media. The organisation also added that the law will be 'draconian" and potentially also imprison journalists for reporting on matters of public interest.

Possible reasons behind the move

An article in Firstpost speculated that the move could be an attempt to guarantee impunity to public servants in the election year, and could protect them from the inquisitive gaze of the media and the judiciary. Another reason could be to make Raje's own post-election life safer by bringing in provisions that make probes into scandals and scams almost impossible.

Yet another theory propounded by a lawyer claims many high-profile bureaucrats are under the radar of the Rajasthan High Court for illegally gobbling up priceless land. Raje's government is known as a government of the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats, so this might be an attempt by the corrupt babus to pre-empt a probe, a major scandal that may be difficult to suppress without this draconian law.

With inputs from agencies
Three hundred colleges across India, and footfalls of over 40,000  that's the scale of Antaragni, the annual cultural festival of IIT-Kanpur. Now on its 52nd edition, the inter-collegiate festival will take place over 26-29 October on the IIT Kanpur campus. A total prize money of Rs 30 lakhs will be offered to winning students and colleges across the different event/competition categories.

Among the highlights of Antaragni this year is the pro-nite, which popular DJ, KSHMR is headlining. The other musical acts lined up for the festival include fusion rock band Euphoria, music composer duo Vishal-Shekhar and rock band Skyhabor.

Apart from the pro-nites, a slew of other events have been slated for the four-day festival. These are likely to feature programmes that had proven successful in previous editions, including 'Dream On' (a campaign where participants have a chance to be mentored by industry greats in their chosen field), 'India Inspired' (a political forum where youth issues are discussed), 'Ritambhara' (a fashion show) and 'Kavi Sammelan' (a poetry competition). Teams and individual students from colleges across India have also registered for various competitions across the fields of dance, dramatics, fine arts, film and photography, and music. Students are also encouraged to sign up for the many debates and quizzes that are held across campus during the course of Antaragni.

Among the events that are expected to draw a large number of participants are Synchronicity  where rock bands from across the country compete for a chance to win the top prize, Junoon (eastern music) and the DJ War.

Going by previous editions of Antaragni, this one too promises to be a student favourite. Watch a short film on Antaragni 2016 here:
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Monday mocked at Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath over his upcoming visit to the Taj Mahal.

Akhilesh, taking a dig at BJP leaders' recent controversial remarks about the historical monument, said that he is waiting to see how the chief minister gets photographed in front of the monument. Adityanath is scheduled to reach Agra on Wednesday and visit the monument on Thursday.

Akhilesh told reporters that he has visited the monument both as a student as well as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh because he could appreciate architecture, The Times of India reported. He was responding to a query about the recent comments by BJP MLA Sangeet Som and the controversy surrounding the UNESCO world heritage site.

"Ab intezaar kewal itna hai ki Mukhya Mantri jab jayenge aur Taj Mahal ke samne unki photo aayegi to woh kaisi lagegi  iska intezaar hai (I am waiting to see how the chief minister's photograph in front of Taj would look)," Akhilesh said, according to The Financial Express.

The news conference was reportedly organised to felicitate Samajwadi Chatra Sabha leaders who won the student union elections in Allahabad University and various colleges of east Uttar Pradesh.

Adityanath's Taj visit is largely being seen as a damage control move after the media reported that the monument was missing from the state tourism booklet called 'Uttar Pradesh Paryatan-Apaar Sambhavnayen' and the BJP leader called it a blot on Indian culture. The chief minister said that the Taj Mahal is important, specifically in terms of tourism. "it is our priority to provide facilities and safety to tourists there (Agra)."

He further said that he does not agree with Som's remarks because Taj Mahal is a part of India's heritage and was built by India's labourers.

Som, while talking about the removal of the Taj Mahal from the tourism booklet had said, "Many people were disappointed that the Taj Mahal was removed from Uttar Pradesh tourism booklet. What history are we talking about? The creator of Taj Mahal (Shahjahan) imprisoned his father. He wanted to wipe out Hindus. If these people are part of our history, then it is very sad and we will change this history."

Vinay Katiyar, another leader from the party, had also claimed that the Taj was Lord Shiva's temple called 'Tejo Mahal', which was converted into a mausoleum by Shahjahan.

However, incidentally, Adityanath had himself said that the monument has no connection with India's culture in June this year. According to him, the UNESCO world heritage site in Agra isn't Indian enough. The context of his comments was regarding gifts and souvenirs given to foreign dignitaries visiting the nations.

"Foreign dignitaries visiting the country used to be gifted replicas of the Taj Mahal and other minarets which did not reflect Indian culture... This is the first time this has happened that when India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi goes abroad, or any foreign president visits India, he is gifted the Shrimad Bhagavad Gita or the Ramayan," Adityanath had said at the time.
Visakhapatnam: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao said on Monday that the central leadership of the party has focussed on southern states to improve its position during the next general elections.

Addressing a media conference in Visakhapatnam on Monday, he said the central leadership has prepared an action plan for party's growth in the southern states.

Rao said people of the southern states have imposed confidence in the BJP in view of the economic reforms and welfare measures launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The central leadership's idea is to gain more Lok Sabha seats in the next general elections from the southern states.

"I hope BJP will win majority of the Lok Sabha seats from the southern states to improve the party's position during the next general elections in 2019," said the spokersperson.

He said the party has considerable base in Telangana and has a tied up with Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh.

Asked whether BJP have any tie up with the Telangana Rastra Samithi (TRS) in the next general elections, he said the central leadership will take a decision on it.

He said BJP has improved its position in Kerala as the people are vexed with the LDF Government.

He said because of the popularity gained by the BJP in Kerala, the LDF government is now resorting to attacks on RSS workers in the state.

Narasimha Rao said the Congress government in Karnataka which was involved in corrupt practices will be rejected by the people of the state in the next elections.

He said in Tamil Nadu there is a political vacuum and BJP can show its strength in the next general elections.

City BJP president M Nagendra, state executive member P V Narayana Rao and others attended the meeting.
Greater Noida/New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday said it was left to the newly-appointed interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir to decide whom to engage with in the troubled state even as the Congress alleged that the move was "only for publicity".

Former Intelligence Bureau(IB) chief Dineshwar Sharma was on Monday appointed by the Centre as its special representative for a "sustained dialogue" with all stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir, in a fresh move aimed at bringing peace in the border state.

The Jammu and Kashmir government welcomed Sharma's appointment, observing that dialogue was the only way forward to address the Kashmir issue in the larger interest of peace and stability in the state while the state unit of the BJP asked all stakeholders to "give peace a chance".

Union home minister Rajnath Singh when asked by reporters if Sharma would hold talks with the Hurriyat Conference, as suggested by some state politicians, responded by saying, "It depends upon him(Sharma) whom he talks to or engages with.

Singh was speaking on the sidelines of the 56th Raising Day parade of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police in Greater Noida, near Delhi.

The minister ducked questions by reporters on what signals the Indian government sought to send to Pakistan with the appointment of the interlocutor.

Sustained dialogues would be initiated by the government for a solution to the Kashmir issue, Singh had said on Monday.

The home minister had also made it clear that Sharma, who would hold the rank of a cabinet secretary, would have a free hand in deciding whom to engage with.

But the main Opposition party Congress said it doubted the "intent" of the NDA government in resolving the Kashmir issue, and alleged that it appointed an interlocutor towards the end of its rule "only for publicity".

Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said the Congress and other Opposition parties had asked the government to talk to all stakeholders to resolve the "political issue" in the Valley through confidence-building measures rather than "hot pursuit", but it "wasted" three-and-a-half years during which many precious lives were lost.

"We are not opposing the decision of the government. But at the fag end of their tenure, they have done this. This is only for publicity. This government has no Kashmir policy. They have no policy on demonetisation, GST, farmers issues and unemployment. We doubt their intent as they have no policy,"

Azad said at a joint press conference of Opposition leaders in Delhi.

Azad, who was flanked by Derek O'Brien of the TMC and Sharad Yadav of the breakaway JD(U) faction, said that had the government taken steps as suggested by the Congress-led opposition, many precious lives of soldiers and civilians could have been saved as well as the eyesight of many young girls who lost them due to pellet guns.

"For three-and-a-half years, the BJP is talking about 'hot pursuit'. We all Opposition parties both inside and outside of Parliament have been talking about 'confidence building' measures, besides 'hot pursuit'," he said.

Azad said they had maintained that this was a "political issue" and should be resolved politically.

A meeting of the Jammu and Kashmir Cabinet chaired by Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti last evening welcomed the Centre's decision, an official spokesperson said in Srinagar.

The Cabinet observed that dialogue is the only way forward to address the issue in the larger interest of peace and stability in the state.

It noted that the initiative is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech that laid emphasis on embracing the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

BJP state unit's chief spokesperson Sunil Sethi said all stakeholders must come forward to meet the central interlocutor and put their views across.

Violence and the culture of separatism had destroyed the economy and peace of the region, he said, asking stakeholders to avail of the opportunity to usher in peace.

The vast majority of the population in Kashmir was yearning for peace for the sake of the future of their children, Sethi said in a statement released in Jammu.

The Jammu High Court Bar Association gave a guarded reaction, saying only time will tell how successful will be Sharma's endeavour.
Shimla: As many as 275 candidates, including former chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal, on Monday filed their nomination for the 9 November Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls.

With this, the total number of nominations filed for the polls went up to 479.

Monday was the last day for filing nominations.

In all, 119 candidates filed nomination for 15 seats in Kangra, 74 candidates for 10 seats in Mandi, 64 for eight seats in Shimla, 41 for five seats in Hamirpur, 28 for five seats in Chamba, 29 for five seats in Solan.

Twenty seven candidates filed their nomination for five seats in Sirmaur, 47 for five seats in Una, 17 for four seats in Bilaspur, 23 for four seats in Kullu, five each for one seat in Lahaul and Spiti, and Kinnaur constituencies.

Earlier on Monday, Congress leader Deepak Rathore had filed his nomination from Theog seat, but the party later announced that veteran leader and Irrigation and Public Health Minister Vidya Stokes (89) would be the official candidate.

She filed her nomination from Theog in Shimla district.

Stokes had left the seat for Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, but he shifted to Arki and she was asked by the party high command to contest from Theog, HPCC president Sukhvinder Singh Sukkhu said.

Stokes has contested assembly polls ten times since 1974 and lost twice in 1977 and 1993.

Dhumal filed his nomination from Sujanpur; Sukku entered the fray from Nadaun, while Vikramaditya Singh filed his papers from Shimla (Rural) constituency, vacated by his father Virbhadra Singh.

Former minister Anil Sharma, son of former Union communication minister Sukh Ram who recently joined the BJP, also filed his nomination from Mandi (Sadar) and Deputy Speaker Jagat Singh Negi from Kinnaur.

Over two dozen rebel leaders of the Congress and the BJP who were denied tickets also joined the fray as independents.
Months after the controversial hike in reservation for Muslims, the Telangana government has now decided to develop an exclusive industrial estate and IT corridor for the minority community, according to media reports.

The decision was taken on Monday by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao at a meeting with senior officials and Muslim leaders.

It was also decided to construct the Hyderabad International Islamic Cultural Convention Centre on 10 acres of land in Kokapet in Hyderabad. The chief minister directed that work on the project should commence in three weeks.

Deputy chief minister Mahamood Ali, ministers KT Rama Rao and Etela Rajender, AIMIM president and Hyderabad MP in Lok Sabha Asaduddin Owaisi, AIMIM Legislature party leader Akbaruddin Owaisi, state chief secretary SP Singh, government advisor A Khan and other senior officials attended the meeting.

The move is likely to attract much criticism from Rao's political opponents, especially the BJP and RSS, who have earlier slammed the Telangana government for its "minority appeasement policies."

"We are not opposed to any benefits being given to the Muslim community. However, we are opposed to giving quota which will create animosity in the society and it is not good on part of the TRS government to go ahead on this... but knowingly if you still want to do it, it will create lot of mistrust among the people," Telangana RSS was quoted as saying by The Financial Express.

The Telangana government had, in April, passed a bill to increase reservations in jobs and education for backward sections of Muslim community to 12 percent from the earlier four percent.

Even as the Bill was being considered, the five BJP MLAs  G Kishan Reddy, K Laxman, NVSS Prabhakar, Ch Ramachandra Reddy and T Raja Singh  raised an uproar in the state Assembly and were expelled from the House, according to a report in The Wire

Then a Union minister, Vice-President of India Venkaiah Naidu, had also flayed the move stating that reservations for Muslims will lead to the "creation of another Pakistan".

Moreover, this is not the only instance when the TRS government was accused of "minority appeasement".

The state government had earlier set up 204 residential schools for underprivileged children from the Muslim community which will benefit 1.33 lakh students.

Asaduddin Owaisi lauded the residential schools set up by the state government for minorities and said this would bring a revolution in the next 10 years.

Then on Monday too, Rao reiterated that all the development schemes initiated by his government should benefit the minorities. He announced that to aid the self-employment of the minority youth, subsidy to units worth Rs one lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh will be given without having any link with the banks.

The chief minister said that minorities should have 10 percent quota in the state's double bedroom housing scheme. Also, tests for recruitment to government jobs will be conducted in the Urdu language along with English and Telugu.

It was also decided in the meeting to release Rs 40 crore from the Special Development Fund (SDF) (of the state government) to take up several emergency works under the Hyderabad parliamentary constituency, a press release from Telangana government said.

With inputs from agencies
The Centre's bid to reopen the Kashmir dialogue process is neither a backward step, nor a U-turn and certainly not a "failure of muscular approach." It is the logical progression of its three-pronged Kashmir strategy.

The challenge, however, will lie in attaining clarity of objectives, addressing issues and showing political resolve in implementing them. On all these counts, it is too early to call the initiative either a "bold move" or a "failure".

The govt has decided to appoint former Director of IB, Shri Dineshwar Sharma, as the Representative of GOI to initiate dialogue in J&K:HM  HMO India (@HMOIndia) October 23, 2017

As a Representative of GOI Shri Sharma will initiate a sustained interaction &dialogue to understand legitimate aspirations of ppl in J&K:HM  HMO India (@HMOIndia) October 23, 2017

The first thing to understand about Rajnath Singh's decision to appoint Dineshwar Sharma as a representative of the Centre to resume "sustained dialogue" with all stakeholders in Kashmir is that it comes from a position of strength.

Had the government buckled under pressure from separatists, terrorists and their overground workers in the Valley and agreed to hold talks in 2016 or in the first few months of 2017 (when there was an atmosphere of fierce resistance and massive funeral processions of slain terrorists), that charge could have been legitimate.

Kashmir, of late, has settled into a state of resignation as the army and Jammu and Kashmir police stepped up its counter-insurgency operations. Till 22 October, 175 terrorists have so far been neutralised by the security forces, compared to 114 in the same period last year.

Some top militants from Lashkar-e-Taiyaaba and Hizbul Mujaheedin stable including Abu Dujana, Bashir Lashkari, Azad Malik, Sabzar Ahmad Bhat and Abu Ismail (responsible for the 10 July attack on Amarnath pilgrims) have been hunted down.

Other terrorists such as Abu Haris, Abul Ali, Abul Mala, Anis Bhai, Abu Mansoor, Abu Umar, Abu Maviya and Sher Gujri have also been neutralised.

Along with the hot pursuit of terrorists, the army has been able to largely control and restrict the stone-pelter brigade, many of whom were being appointed as mercenaries through cross-border funding.

One of the biggest changes in the nature of the insurgency movement in Kashmir since the turn of the millennium was the way Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) started focussing more on lending financial and logistical support to local operatives in the Valley instead of trying to control it entirely through exportation of mercenaries.

This gave the Kashmir secessionist movement some sort of moral legitimacy. The task before the Centre was to control the funding network, often conducted through hawala channels of cross-LoC trade.

In the last few months, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) carried out unrelenting operations against these operativesmany of whom moved in the shadows and restricted their role to extending monetary support.

Multiple raids were carried out in different locations across the country, evidences of hawala transactions and incriminating documents were seized. Cases were opened, arrests were madeincluding some key Hurriyat leaders and their aidesand some top funders were caught in the dragnet. One of whom was a shadowy trader from Srinagar, a millionaire called Zahoor Ahmad Watali.

Watali was the conduit through which funds were channeled to separatists and ground-level insurgents in Kashmir from Pakistan. His habit of keeping account of the transactions made him a key figure in the case against separatist leaders.

An extremely well-connected man, even in Delhi's political and bureaucratic circles, Watali's arrest in August according to a NIA statement, "follows the searches conducted at multiple locations in Srinagar, Handwara, Kupwara and Baramulla belonging to his relatives and employees. The searches have unearthed highly incriminating material pertaining to receipt of funds by Zahoor Watali from foreign sources and its further distribution to the terrorists and separatists in Kashmir valley for anti-India activities."

In Governance Now (Kashmir's Blood Money Trail), Aasha Khosa tells us of the way Hurriyat leaders were being funded by Pakistan through conduits like Watali. She writes: "The front-rung leader of the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) admitted that he had received a monthly allowance from Pakistan for five years. 'I was getting about Rs 8-10 lakh per month. The money would come from the ISI and was delivered to me in cash by Zahoor.' he said. Watali, he alleged, deducted his 20 percent commission and handed over the rest to him with utmost punctuality.

According to the report, some 30 separatist leaders were in Pakistan payroll through Watali. The NIA investigation and raids broke the back of this terror network. Hurriyat leaders now lie isolated and increasingly disempowered. They have little access to funds to keep the embers burning and are suffering from an erosion of moral legitimacy before Kashmiris who now feel a sense of betrayal.

As Sameer Yasir writes in Firstpost, "The raids carried out by the National Investigation Agency probing the terror funding in Kashmir have created fear psychosis among the workers of both factions of Hurriyat Conference, so much so that there is no one to take charge of the positions left vacant after the arrest of leaders from both factions of Hurriyat Conference."

With two crucial parts of its three-pronged Kashmir strategy under way, the Centre has now decided that the time is ripe for the third step: Restarting the dialogue process. Restoring a semblance of law and order in the Valley was the first requisite and it must be eventually followed by a political process to build on the gains and restore normalcy. This isn't a contradictory approach, but a concomitant one.

The Narendra Modi government appears to be in control of the Valley and in launching the dialogue process according to its own timetablenot Pakistan's or the separatistshas sent a message that it wants Kashmir to return to normalcy, but cannot be taken hostage by violence. This shift in power dynamic is important in dealing with a secessionist movement that still enjoys tacit (if not active) ground support.

The other charge, that appointment of a representative for talks is a failure of "muscular approach", also misses the mark by a mile. If the talks process sees a simultaneous reduction in action against terrorists or withdrawal of cases related to terror funding, such a charge would be valid. There is every indication that the Centre has no such plans.

On Tuesday, the NIA arrested Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddins son Syed Shahid Yousuf in a 2011 terror funding case. According to Hindustan Times, the 42-year-old Yousuf was receiving and collecting funds through international wire money transfer from a Saudi Arabia-based Aizaz Ahmad Bhat (member of a terror group) on Hizbul chief's orders.

On action against terrorists, a government official told Bharti Jain of The Times of India that "there will be no let-up in anti-terrorist operations. The thrust on development projects and implementation of the PM's package will remain. However, we are adding the third prong of 'sustained and structured dialogue' to the Jammu and Kashmir strategy."

The other crucial question regarding the talks process pertains to the phrase "all stakeholders". Who are these stakeholders? According to Rajnath Singh, the former IB chief will have "all the rights to engage whatever parties he wishes to," but the Union home minister qualified his comments by saying that "the government is going to address the legitimate apprehensions of the state populace and try to restore peace in the Valley."

The stress on "legitimate apprehensions" immediately places it within the framework of Constitution, and we find a more straightforward statement from Jitendra Singh. The MoS for PMO told News 18 that talks with Kashmiris will be held within the framework of the Constitution. The Constitution is sacrosanct, he said. "How can you speak to people who indulge in violence and hawala transactions?"

It indicates that while the government is ready to talk to "all parties" who have a "stake in Kashmir," these discussions will be held only within the framework of the Constitution, and on the government's terms. This does not sound like "U-turn", "failure" or "backward step." That said, therein lies the challenge.

If the Centre defines the Hurriyat's space within the constitutional framework, that leaves the secessionists with very little room to manoeuvre. This may dovetail with government's ultimate aim in delegitimising the Hurriyat and making them irrelevant, but it equally puts the onus on the Centre to define who these other stakeholders are who can engage with the State.

Rajnath Singh said, "The sustained Jammu and Kashmir dialogue will include all individuals and groups willing to engage with the interlocutor." This would mean elected representatives of the government, various youth groups, civil society, lawyers and the powerful clerics who wield enormous influence over polity.

It is here that Sharma, who has prior experience of Jammu and Kashmir as a former Intelligence Bureau chief and has handled insurgency movements in Nagaland and Manipur, will face his greatest challenge.

Some of these "stakeholders" include out-of-power former chief ministers such as Farooq Abdullah, whose rhetoric is increasingly inseparable from that of Pakistan.

The Centre must therefore increase the ambit of its talks and include local Kashmiris whose voice have so far gone unheard. Countering the growing Islamist overtone of insurgency is another huge challenge.

What has added to the problems is the State's miserable failure to build capacities, and nowhere it is more apparent than in the way elected representatives have been targeted by terrorists.

Officials, politicians and sarpanches have repeatedly fallen to bullets. Between 16-22 October, terrorists "attacked eight houses of political workers in south Kashmir" and even Peoples Democratic Party leaders (member of BJP's coalition government) weren't spared.

Any comprehensive and sustained dialogue must include the Kashmiri Pandits as major stakeholders. There is also no clarity in this area as well.

It is also not clear whether Sharma's inputs will meet the same fate that other such reports have met over the years.

To sum it up, while the Centre should be applauded for taking the right step at the right time, there are challenges galore.

Both Singh and Sharma have their work cut out.
The Centres decision to appoint a representative for talks in Kashmir is based on an underestimation of the continuing militant threat, and an overestimation of the clout of the few 'separatist' figures who might engage.

The move is not a surprise. It has been in the works before Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a call on 15 August to embrace Kashmiris. Vigorous preparatory work has apparently been taking place behind the scenes.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh and BJP general secretary Ram Madhav stated during separate visits to Srinagar in September that the Centre was ready to engage with all stakeholders. Madhav said the talks would be 'unconditional'.

Not just that, in the last week of September, the army commander in south Kashmir took the uncommon step of publicly backing political engagement. The GOC told PTI on 27 September that The situation has been brought to a level where political initiative can be started.

The RSS-BJP leadership may have figured that, having given their backers the impression that the Centre was giving the army a free hand to crush Kashmiri separatism, they needed such endorsement.

Word on the ground, however, is that, although most of the high-profile militant commanders have been killed over the past few months, more boys are going underground to join militant ranks than are being killed. There is a net increase in their numbers.

More directly unsettling for any proposed talks with political figures is the recent trend of political workers being targeted in their homes. Mainly Peoples Democratic Party workers, but some National Conference workers have also been killed.

Kashmiris have not forgotten that Fazl Haq Qureshi, the founder of the Hurriyat Conference and indeed of the insurgency in the 1960s too, was shot outside his home in 2009, years after he had engaged in talks with the then Union home secretary. Nor do people forget that nothing came of those talks, nor of the excellent recommendations of the 'interlocutors committee' that was set up in 2010.

In fact, if people in Kashmir by and large have absorbed a lesson, it is that the Centre engages in such talks after a mass uprising (as in 2010) and then shelves the process when it feels it can proclaim 'peace' and 'control'.

Carrot and stick

It appears that, at least at one level, the National Investigation Agencys (NIA) probes over the past few months have been to create pressure for such talks, rather than constituting a tangential approach. Some of those about whose unaccounted properties (here and abroad), information has been leaked, apparently by the NIA, welcomed the talks in uncharacteristically meek tones on Monday.

There has been speculation in Kashmir over the past several weeks about the possibility of a couple of Hurriyat leaders perhaps moving into 'mainstream' politics. However, the figures around whom speculation centres would be unlikely to make a radical dent in the political scenario.

Indeed, the sad fact remain that the minds and hearts of many Kashmiri youth have shifted so radically that they have little time or interest in any of the gamut of 'political' leaders of 'separatism'. They think of politicians in general as venal rent-seekers.

Having given up on politics as a fraud, many young Kashmiris have turned to radical pan-Islamism instead. Leading militant Zakir Musa, who claims to represent Islamic State and Al-Qaeda in Kashmir, may not have more than a dozen militant comrades, but the ideas he espouses have seeped into many young minds.

Analysts associated with the government tend to blame this trend on international influences. There is no doubt some truth to that, but perceptions regarding cow vigilantism, the BJPs Hindutva agenda, and the consequent insecurity felt by Muslims in some parts of the country have played no small role.

Such narratives already abounded before the mass uprising that followed the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani. They have grown since then.

The governments new representative has a tough task ahead of him.
Srinagar: Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Tuesday hit out at the Gujarat government for announcing sops just before the polls and said the BJP is showing signs of nervousness.

The National Conference working president also accused the Election Commission for yielding to the ruling party by not announcing the dates for the Gujarat elections.

Is it just me or do these announcements (facilitated by a pliant EC) betray a nervousness that wasnt there a few months ago? https://t.co/HvGK9uOkqV  Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) October 24, 2017

Omar posted on Twitter, sharing a news report which stated the BJP-led Gujarat government announced a 50 percent increase in wages for the accredited social health activists (Asha) in the state.

In another tweet, the former Union minister said such populism betrays the loopholes in the "Gujarat model".
Chennai: AIADMK top leader E Palaniswamy on Monday told the Madras High Court that a plea by rival leader TTV Dhinakaran's loyalist P Vetrivel, seeking declaration of the general body meet held last month as "illegal", is liable to be dismissed.

Submitting his counter affidavit on the appeal before the Division Bench of Justice Rajiv Shakdher and Justice N Sathish Kumar, Palaniswamy said Vetrivel's suit had become infructuous and it was bad in law. The appeal and suit were liable to be dismissed, he said.

Ahead of the general body meet on 12 September, Vetrivel, an MLA who was later disqualified, had filed a civil suit in the high court seeking a stay on the meet and a declaration that the notice calling the general body meet was illegal.

Vetrivel, appellant and plaintiff in the suit, had also sought a permanent injunction restraining Palaniswamy and Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam from, in any manner, using the party name for convening a general body meeting.

On 11 September, the bench had upheld an order of a single judge dismissing Vetrivel's plea to stay the 12 September AIADMK general council and executive committee meeting convened by Palaniswamy and Panneerselvam-led factions.

The court had, however, said that any decision taken at the impugned general body meeting would be subject to the final outcome in the appeal and posted the matter today for hearing while directing all parties, including Palaniswamy, to file their counter affidavits.

It may be recalled that the meet had removed VK Sasikala, and her clan, including TTV Dhinakaran, from the party. Issues, including their removal, the party's 'two leaves' symbol which was frozen by the Election Commission, are pending adjudication before the poll body.

In his counter, Palaniswamy submitted that Vetrivel was guilty of giving false statement on affidavit and therefore liable to be punished for perjury.

"In fact, the suit has now become infructuous in as much as Vetrivel has filed an application to implead him as a party before the Election Commission."

Having filed an impleading plea in the poll body, the plaintiff cannot agitate the same issue before the court as well, he contended, adding that the "appeal and the suit are liable to be dismissed on this very ground".

He submitted that the appellant cannot raise objection in respect of proceedings before the Election Commission in the form of a suit.

The meeting was attended by 1,828 General Council members out of total 2,128 members. The members unanimously passed several resolutions keeping in mind the future of the party, he said.

Also, there was no order of the Election Commission restraining them from holding the meeting, he submitted.

The plaintiff has not even averred as to which group of the AIADMK he belongs to and yet has sought to file the entire suit based on the orders of the Election Commission.

Vetrivel has not disclosed as to how he would be affected by the meeting for which he received the notice and invitation.

The bench directed all other parties in the suit, including senior leader in the Palaniswamy camp, E Madhusudhanan, and Panneerselvam to file their counter affidavits within two weeks and posted the matter for further hearing to 30 November.
Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje has realised that discretion is the better part of politics, especially when elections are on the horizon.

With the entire state rising in opposition, Raje sent the controversial bill that would have gagged the media, curtailed powers of the judiciary and shielded the corrupt to a select committee of the state Assembly. The committee will now look at the proposed bill in the next session of the Assembly.

This is technically a face-saver and practically a political retreat, something Raje is not known for. With elections for the state Assembly due in about 14 months, Raje is unlikely to touch the bill again. It will now rest in peace in the dossiers of the select committee as an apt reminder of the government's misadventure that caused political harm even before it could get off the ground.

Why exactly did Raje withdraw the bill that have would denied investigating agencies the right to probe allegations against public servants without the government's approval? The answer is simple: People perceived the proposed law as a symbol of the government's hubris and desire to propagate graft and suppress democracy and opposed it vehemently. Shaken and stirred by the reaction, Raje decided to beat a hasty retreat.

That the leader of a government with 80 percent seats in the legislature had to eat crow should be both a lesson and warning for Raje. The lessonas many before her have learnt through similar misadventuresis that even a majority doesn't bless a government with the power to wilfully suppress democratic institutions. Even a huge majority does not turn a government into a monarchy.

The warning signs are clear: Almost every section of society was outraged by Raje's proposed gag order. The judiciary, while hearing a petition against bureaucrats on Mondaythe day the bill was presented in the Assemblyverbally lambasted the government's attempt to shield the corrupt.

Rajasthan's lawyers were incensed by the crude attempt to deny judiciary the right to order a probe into charges of corruption. They saw in it a blatant attempt to strip the judiciary of its power to question the misdeeds of governments and government officials.

The state's media, though heavily dependent on government spending, denounced the government unequivocally, resorting to rare ferocity of voice and tone. Its biting coverage and sharp criticism not only pulverised the government but moulded the mood of the electorate against the draconian law.

One of the defining characteristics of Raje's personality is her refusal to back down. Imperial in her ways, pride for her has always been more important than practicality. Raje, in many ways, is a living embodiment of the famous Gabbar Singh dialogue: Jo darr gaya samjho marr gaya.

So, it must have been with difficulty that she swallowed the shreds of the bill her government drafted. That she had no option is indicative of the outrage against the bill and the impact it would have had on her own career and image.
tech2 News Staff

NASA funded research has improved the modelling of the climate on exoplanets. Conventional models used so far were very basic and simulated the atmospheric conditions vertically, from the surface upwards. The new model simulates the atmospheric conditions in all three dimensions, allowing researchers to simulate the circulation in the atmosphere, as well as unique characteristics emerging from the circulation. The research allows astronomers to dedicate scarce resources to the exoplanets with the most promising conditions for harbouring life.

The research has been published in the Astrophysical Journal. Yuka Fujii, lead author of the paper says, "Using a model that more realistically simulates atmospheric conditions, we discovered a new process that controls the habitability of exoplanets and will guide us in identifying candidates for further study."

Low mass stars, that are much cooler and dimmer than the Sun, are the most common type of stars in the galaxy. The number of these stars increases the possibility of finding a habitable world in orbit around one of them, and their smaller size makes it easier for astronomers to detect planets in orbit around them. The presence of water is a pre-requisite for life as we know it on Earth, and the temperature on the surface of the planet should be within a range of temperatures to support life. This means that the planet cannot be too far from or too close to the host star, in a region known as the Goldilocks Zone.

It was previously believed that if a planet was too close to the host star, then the temperatures would be too high to support life. This was especially true for smaller planets closer to the stars, which tend to be tidally locked to the host star because of the influence of the gravity of the star. Tidally locked planets experience one side of perpetual daylight, and another side of neverending night. The new models suggest that the accumulation of water vapour in the atmosphere acts as a shield, absorbing the heat and keeping the temperature on the surface cool enough to support life.

The research would allow astronomers to screen the most promising exoplanet candidates for harbouring life. Real examples of the kind of exoplanets being studied here can be found in the Trappist-1 system, which has seven Earth sized rocky planets tidally locked to an ultracool dwarf star, with all the planets in orbit closer to the star than Mercury is to the Sun.

For the particular study, the researchers used a hypothetical planet with an atmosphere similar to Earth, but with only oceans on the surface. Modifying the distance to the host star allowed the researchers to simulate the amount of water vapour build up in the stratosphere. The researchers plan to vary the gravity, size and atmospheric conditions on the simulated planet, to further understand the effects of water vapour circulation on habitability.
Aditya Madanapalle

Very few instances of malicious cyber activity is traced back to North Korea, although cyber offensive groups believed to be associated with the country have carried out a series of high profile attacks. A hacking group known as Lazarus is believed to be currently targeting financial institutions in the Asia Pacific region, in an effort to steal cash for the impoverished country.

A report by a threat analysis cybersecurity firm, Recorded Future indicates that North Korea is not using local resources to carry out their cyber operations. Instead, analysis of data indicates that North Korea is basing its cyber operations from countries around the world including India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nepal, Kenya, Mozambique, and Indonesia. About a fifth of all the activity recorded during the period of the study originated from India.

Based on the analysis, Recorded Future says North Korea clearly has a physical and virtual presence in India, and supports this claim with evidence of an increasingly close diplomatic and trade relationship between India and North Korea. The analysis suggests that students from North Korea are in at least seven universities across the country, and may even be working with research institutions and government departments. The presence in India is apart from a strong physical presence of the cyber attack group in China. Recorded Future suggests western engagements and partnerships with the listed countries, including India can help circumvent the lack of cooperation from China or Russia.

According to an article by the New York Times, that traces the advent of strong North Korean cyber offensive operations, while the weapons tests invite strict sanctions from world governments, there is hardly any pushback or retaliation for the cyber strikes. Although the cyber capabilities of North Korea were initially dismissed, they are proving to be quite effective. It is not the technological sophistication of the attacks per se, but rather a matter of how cheaply North Korea is able to achieve its cyber objectives. Recorded Future notes that less than one percent of North Korean cyber activity was protected or obfuscated in any way. Another contributing factor to how effective North Korean hacker groups, is the the lack of interconnectivity and cyber infrastructure within the country, which keeps North Korea itself mostly isolated from cyber attacks.

Kaspersky Lab, while tracking the activities of the Lazarus group, uncovered a number of compromised servers being used as their command and control infrastructure. The compromised servers were found to be located in Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand among other countries. The malware infecting the compromised servers is known as Manuscrypt, which compromises servers using Microsoft Internet Information Services vulnerability fixed in June 2017. Kaspersky also tracked the countries with the most number of servers which still have this vulnerability, topping the list are China (with 7,848) and India (1,524).

Lazarus is a threat actor associated with a series of high profile but relatively low tech cybersecurity incidents. In late 2014, the Lazarus group also apparently executed an attack on Sony Pictures, which was then believed to be the worst attack of its kind on a company on US Soil.

Lazarus is also believed to be behind the WanaCry ransomware attack, that took down critical services in a 100 countries, including India. The malware would infect computers and demand a payment for users to gain access to their systems and data. The ransomware was pinging a randomly generated unregistered domain, which a 22 year old security researcher registered, accidentally stopping the spread of the malware in its tracks. Over 300,000 computers were infected before the malware was stopped. According to researchers from Symantec, Lazarus was responsible for the WannaCry attack. Symantec does not associate cyber attacks with countries as a matter of practice, but it did not deny the common belief among cybersecurity firms that Lazarus is a group associated with North Korea.

According to Russian cybersecurity firm Group-IB, North Korean hackers were responsible for the $81 million heist from Bangladesh central bank account with the US Federal Reserve. Kaspersky also compiled evidence that the hacking group had connections to North Korea. A server used to control the infected computers was directly traced to an IP address in North Korea. The Lazarus group, also known as the Dark Seoul Gang is believed to be responsible for the attack, and is in turn controlled by Bureau 121, a division of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, an intelligence agency in North Korea. The attackers attempted to siphon out $951 million but made a mistake in the payment request.
tech2 News Staff

Google has finally launched its 'Pay with Google' feature, which was announced back in May. The new feature is available for Android users and ensures that your online payment and buying experience is fast, secure and hassle-free.

The search and software giant introduced this new feature to ensure that users dont have to waste their time in juggling with payment data every time they need to pay something using their phone. This is not the first time where the company has showcased this method as the company shared a sneek peak of this feature, back in May 2017 when demoing Android Pay.

The best part about this system is that it works across a multitude of websites and Android apps so the users dont have to worry about finding their details after storing them securely. Pay with Google will work across apps like Google Play, Chrome, Android Pay or even YouTube. Pay with Google sends your payment information and shipping address from your account to the merchant who is supplying the product.

The merchant then gets the payment information and processes it just like any other purchase data. Users can pay for trips, shopping or takeout food restaurants with the help of Pay with Google and Google has added a list of establishments that support this new way of making payments in its official blog post.
China will adjust its entry-exit policies to grant easier entry and residence application in some of its local economic zones, said the country's Ministry of Public Security.

The updated policies will apply to free trade zones in south China's Guangdong Province and southeast China's Fujian Province, as well as economic zones in northeast China's Jilin Province, eastern Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian Provinces.

The revised policies will ensure fast-track permanent residence application procedures for foreigners with official recommendations, support for foreign students' start-ups, accelerated visas and residency application channels for overseas Chinese, among other conveniences.

In 2016, the ministry put in place a series of policies for foreigners working in free trade zones in Guangdong and Fujian Provinces. Seven of them were implemented in more economic zones across the country earlier this year.
Reuters

Shares in Indian wireless operators rose sharply on Monday after Reliance Industries Ltds Jio telecom unit increased mobile data tariffs, raising hopes of an easing in the cut-throat competition that has eroded profits in the sector.

Top-ranked Bharti Airtel Ltd rose to a more than eight-year high and Reliance hit a record on the first day of trading since Jios announcement last week of new high-end data tariffs that effectively raise prices by as much as 20 percent.

Jio, backed by Indias richest man Mukesh Ambani, has up-ended the worlds second-biggest mobile services market by users with aggressive marketing and by slashing prices for its 4G data, forcing established players including Bharti Airtel and Vodafones local unit to match the offerings.

As a result, Bharti Airtel posted a 75 percent drop in its April-June profit while Idea Cellular Ltd reported a third consecutive quarterly loss.

Analysts said Jios prices remain low, although they welcomed the hikes as a good initial signal of more pricing discipline. Jios announcement last week was a huge relief for all incumbent players as there is a feeling that the worst of pricing is behind them, said Satish Betadpur, director of research at William ONeil & Co.

Reliance is looking at making sure Jio is profitable. My guess is that from now on, they will focus on quality of network to get more customers, he added.

The energy conglomerate said on 13 October that Jio would turn profitable shortly after the telecom unit posted a loss of 2.71 billion rupees. Reliance shares jumped as much as 3.8 percent on Monday to hit a fresh all-time high, before closing 3.3 percent higher.

Bharti Airtel led gains on the broader NSE index, climbing as much as 5.8 percent to hit its highest level since May 2009. Idea Cellular Ltd surged as much as 8.8 percent to touch its highest since July 25, while Reliance Communications Ltd rose as much as 9.5 percent.

Jios tariff plans included a mix of price hikes or reduced benefits, such as charging 15 percent more for an 84-day plan that offers users up to 1 gigabyte of 4G data per day, and reducing the validity for its 399 rupee pack to 70 days from 84 days.

Disclaimer: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd.
Reuters

Britains markets watchdog said it has opened an investigation into the hacking of U.S. credit reporting agency Equifax, which affected nearly 700,000 UK citizens.

The Financial Conduct Authority announces today that it is investigating the circumstances surrounding a cybersecurity incident that led to the loss of UK customer data held by Equifax Ltd on the servers of its U.S. parent, the watchdog said in a statement on 24 October.

This statement is made given the public interest in these matters. The announcement follows a letter from Nicky Morgan, chair of the House of Commons Treasury Committee to the watchdog, asking if Equifax had violated terms of its license to operate in the country and whether the regulator had the power to compel the company to provide compensation to UK consumers.

Equifax has said that 15.2 million records on British citizens were involved in the breach, including sensitive data on what it said were 693,665 individuals, for whom credit protection services were offered.

The UK data accessed by unknown hackers included credit accounts, user credentials, partial credit card details and driver licence numbers. The remaining 14.5 million records contained names and birth dates of UK consumers were potentially compromised, the company disclosed.

Equifax first revealed in September it had been the target of a massive data breach which hit around 143 million people, mostly in the United States.
New Delhi: In a hard-hitting attack on Pakistan for its support to terrorism, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday said time has come for Islamabad to make a clear choice, suggesting the country may have to pay a price under the United States' new South Asia policy if it does not stop backing terror groups.

Hailing India's role in Afghanistan, he said the new US policy was an important tribute to importance of New Delhi in bringing peace and stability to the region, hit by the spectre of terror.

In an address at Vivekananda International Foundation, Ghani said if Afghanistan was not given transit access to Wagah and Attari for trade with India via Pakistan, then Kabul will also restrict Islamabad's access to central Asia.

Identifying terrorism as a major challenge facing the region, Ghani, in a clear reference to Pakistan, said unfettered support is being provided to the terror groups which are destabilising the entire region.

"Sanctuaries are provided, logistics are provided, training is provided, the ideological base is provided...Pakistan has come to a juncture and it needs to make a choice," he said, asserting, "Our reaction will be determined by its choices."

Talking about the peace process, Ghani suggested that he does not ignore India's role in bringing peace and stability to the war-ravaged country. He said the next round of Kabul process will be held in January next year.

He said the South Asia strategy announced by the Trump Administration was a "game changer" as it recommends a multi-dimensional condition-based approach for the region.

"It (the strategy) singled out India for engagement in this approach," he told the select gathering of a number of foreign envoys, former diplomats, strategic affairs experts and intellectuals.

Asked about defence cooperation with India, he referred to supply of four attack helicopters to Afghan Air Force by India.

"Our collaboration with India is very open. We are delighted with the four helicopters. More Mi 35 helicopters are welcome," he said refusing to elaborate further.

The Afghan president also rejected suspicion in Islamabad that India and Afghanistan have joined hands against Pakistan.

"There is no secret agreement between Afghanistan and India. There are no secret Indian facilities. There is no destabilisation of any neighbours from Afghanistan taking place through implicit or explicit collusion. Let's get out of the word of fiction," he said.

Talking about the fragile peace process in Afghanistan, he said the effort will be to win the war morally.

"We would like to see a pushback from Pakistan vis-a-vis Taliban and not a Pakistan managed peace process with the Taliban. We want peace with Pakistan and that is a fundamental issue for our stability," said the Afghan president.

Seen as a message to Pakistan, he said if the "hand of peace" is rejected, then he was "ready to serve with honour as the commander-in-chief to the last breadth into the last drop of blood."

Ghani said lack of a regional consensus has eluded peace and stability in Afghanistan and rued about "fragmented response" to terrorism.

"Our objective is to pursue the goal of a stable and peaceful Afghanistan within the context of a stable and peaceful region," he said.

Ghani said connectivity was key for integration of the Asian economy and all stakeholders must work unitedly to realise the true potential of trade and commerce of the region.

"We are clear, we want to be what we call an Asian roundabout. This is important for integration of the Asian economy," he said.
Islamabad: As United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to Pakistan on Tuesday to pressure Islamabad to act over militants targeting Afghanistan from its soil, anxious Pakistanis may be equally interested in dissuading Washingtons deepening ties with India.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan, a staunch US Cold War ally and key player in the US-backed invasion of Afghanistan after the 11 September, 2001 attacks on the United States, has watched warily as Washington has in recent years pivoted towards its arch-foe.

Islamabad views its much-bigger neighbour as an existential threat and the two nations have fought three wars since their violent separation at the end of colonial rule in 1947.

Tillerson, due to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Pakistans powerful military chiefs in a one-day visit, is expected to urge Pakistan to do more to root out Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network militants operating on its soil.

But he is also expected to hear Pakistani officials warn him that drawing nuclear-armed India deeper into Afghanistan would destabilise the region and do little to end the 16-year war that is now Americas longest military conflict.

"Bringing India into the mix is like adding kerosene to fire," said Miftah Ismail, a state minister and close ally of Abbasi.

"Its a complete red line. India has no political role to play in Afghanistan as far as we are concerned."

Many Pakistanis feel betrayed that its traditional ally is now cosying up to India over Afghanistan.

But the anger runs both ways.

The United States accuses Pakistan of playing a double game since 2001, offering public backing to Washington while turning a blind eye, or even at times assisting, the Afghan Taliban and other militants who carry out deadly attacks against US forces and their allies in Afghanistan.

Last chance

Pakistan supported the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s as a hedge to Indian influence in Afghanistan, and analysts say its military and security services maintained ties long after the Taliban regime was toppled in 2001.

Pakistan denies providing a safe haven for Afghan Taliban and other militant fighters.

Tillerson, during a visit to Afghanistan on Monday, said Washington has made some "very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support the Taliban receives and other terrorist organisations receive".

US defense secretary Jim Mattis earlier in October said the United States would try "one more time" to work with Pakistan in Afghanistan, before opting for more punitive measures. President Donald Trump has vowed to be tougher on Pakistan than his predecessors.

The United States has threatened further military aid cuts and US officials have mooted targeted sanctions against Pakistani military figures, but in the past two weeks there have been hints of a slight thawing in ties.

US vice-president Mike Pence and Tillerson last week called Abbasi to thank Pakistan after its army rescued a US-Canadian couple who were held hostage by the Taliban-allied Haqqani network for nearly five years, along with their three children born in captivity.

Relations were further boosted when Omar Khalid Khorasani, leader of the lethal Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) group who Islamabad had been trying to catch for years, was killed by a US drone strike last week.

Hostile neighbours

India has increased aid to Afghanistan in recent years and last year promised to ship more arms. Such moves have aggravating fears in Pakistan that it will find itself wedged between two hostile neighbours.

Islamabad bristles at the idea that India holds the key to ending the Afghanistan conflict, and fears US meddling could unsettle a delicate balance of power in South Asia.

"Promoting a higher involvement of India in Afghanistan will only worsen the historic strategic rivalries playing out in the region," said Sherry Rehman, Pakistans former ambassador to United States and a senior member of the opposition Pakistan Peoples Party.

Pakistan points to the 3.5 million Afghan refugees it hosts as proof that it has more than anyone else to lose from chaos in Afghanistan, and has emphasised the need for greater cooperation and intelligence sharing with United States and Afghanistan.

But while Pakistan may not like it, India looks set to continue playing a role in Afghanistan, according to Sushant Sareen, a foreign policy analyst at the Vivekananda International Foundation, a think-tank with ties to the government of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.

"The message is very clear that India is an important player when it comes to coordinating policies between Afghanistan and Washington," said Sareen.
Los Angeles: About 5,000 firefighters were still battling 10 wildfires in California on Monday, and the authorities said they hope to have many of them fully contained in the next few days.

The death toll remained at 42, meanwhile, from the deadliest blazes in the history of the sprawling western US state.

The wildfires ignited on 8 October and as many as 11,000 firefighters  some from as far away as Australia  were involved at one point in battling move than two dozen large blazes.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention (Cal Fire) said on Monday that only 10 active fires remained, "many of which are projected to be fully contained within the next few days."

Cal Fire warned, however, that there was "potential high fire activity" in southern California due to gusty winds and low humidity.

Cal Fire said the wildfires had burned more than 99,150 hectares, forced the evacuation of 100,000 people and destroyed an estimated 8,400 homes and businesses.

The highest death toll was in wine-producing Sonoma County, where 22 people lost their lives.

Entire neighborhoods of Santa Rosa, population 175,000, the county seat of Sonoma, were razed to the ground.

Forest fires are common in the western United States during the summer, but this year's blazes in California are the deadliest series of fires to hit the state.

The Griffith Park fire in Los Angeles County in 1933 killed at least 29 people, and 25 people died in the 1991 Oakland Hills fire.
Fleeing grinding poverty and unemployment, thousands of Afghan Shiites have been recruited by Iran to defend Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, former fighters and rights activists say.

Afghan men and boys as young as 14 are signing up to fight on the promise of money and legal residency in Shiite-dominated Iran, Assad's regional ally, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Since 2013 the Afghans, including undocumented migrants living in Iran, have joined the Tehran-backed Fatemiyoun division fighters in Syria, said HRW and ex-members who spoke to AFP on condition their real names were not used.

"For me it was just about money," said Shams, a former fighter.

The 25-year-old, a member of the Hazara ethnic group, went to Syria twice in 2016 to fight in a conflict that has now been raging for more than six years.

"Whoever I saw was going for money and to have free entry to Iran. I never saw anyone fighting for religious reasons," said Shams, who now lives in the Afghan capital Kabul.

The withdrawal of US-led NATO combat troops at the end of 2014 drained the Afghan economy and left many people out of work, fuelling the flow of migrants into Iran in search of a better life.

HRW estimated last year that Iran hosts around three million Afghans.

In this desperate pool Iranian recruiters targeted Shiites to swell the ranks of Fatemiyoun soldiers, who HRW says fight alongside Syrian government forces.

"I went there (Iran) because I was jobless and it was a way to get money for my family," said Shams.

"My idea was to find a job in Iran. I had no plan to go to fight in Syria but after a month of being jobless I decided to go.

"They were encouraging us saying 'you will be a freedom fighter and if you return to Iran alive you can stay with a 10-year residence permit'. But my main goal was to earn money."

Afghan Shiites are given 1.5 million toman (about $450) to register at a recruitment centre for the Fatemiyoun, Shams said. Once they have signed up they receive three million toman a month, a fortune for many poor Afghans.

Bodies

Shams' first mission was in June 2016 in the Syrian capital of Damascus, where he was assigned to protect a barracks for two months.

He went back to the country in September and was deployed to Aleppo, where he was given his first AK-47 after receiving rudimentary weapons training from Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

On the front line of the battle between Islamic State militants and the Al-Nusra Front jihadist group, Shams said he found himself caught up in an intense and deadly battle.

"In Aleppo we faced an ambush out of 100 fighters we lost almost all of them. There were 15 of us left alive," Shams said.

"The bodies were sent back to Iran and the families in Afghanistan held funeral ceremonies in mosques without a coffin or grave."

Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council, estimates more than 760 Afghans have been killed in Syria since September 2013.

Another man who fought in Syria in 2014 when he was 17, said it was not just Afghans in Fatemiyoun. "There were also Pakistanis, Iraqis  all the Shiites," he told AFP.

"We were mixed up with the Arabs, we didn't understand their language."

HRW says the Iranians refuse to provide accurate figures, but estimates there are nearly 15,000 Afghans fighting for Fatemiyoun.

Treated like slaves

"They are used by the Iranian government, which treats them like slaves," said Ramazan Bashardost, a Hazara member of parliament in Kabul.

"The sorrow, pain and hunger of the people is not a major concern of the Afghan government."

Afghanistan's foreign ministry called on Iran in October to stop sending young Afghans to Syria after the HRW report condemning the recruitment of minors.

But preventing Afghans from volunteering will not be easy.

"Money and the prospect of a guaranteed residency for your family in Iran are major draw cards," said Shuja.

Shams returned to Afghanistan after pleas from his family and he now hopes to buy a shop. He has no intention of going back.

"I would never advise anyone to go there if he has a job here," he said.
Manila: India on Tuesday sought a probe into North Korea's nuclear proliferation linkages and demanded that those responsible for it be held accountable, in a veiled reference to Pakistan.

Nirmala Sitharaman, who is on her first foreign visit since taking over as India's first woman defence minister last month, said in the capital of the Philippines that the nuclear and missile tests conducted by North Korea were in violation of its international commitments and have triggered serious concerns.

North Korea has launched a series of ballistic missiles that potentially can strike the US mainland and recently conducted its largest ever underground nuclear explosion, triggering a fresh round of sanctions on Pyongyang from the international community.

US president Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly last month that if America was "forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."

Addressing the 4th ASEAN Defence Ministers' meeting, Sitharaman said India had criticised North Korea's nuclear and missile tests.

"India has deplored these tests. We remain concerned about the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted India's national security and that of the entire region," she was quoted as saying by an official statement.

"It is important that North Korea's proliferation linkages are investigated and those who have supported its nuclear and missile programme are held accountable," she said, in a veiled reference to Pakistan's links with Pyongyang.

Pakistan had secretly supplied North Korea with nuclear enrichment technology when AQ Khan headed the country's nuclear programme.

According to western media reports, Pakistan supplied vital machinery, drawings and technical advice to North Korea, allowing Pyongyang to enrich uranium as early as 2002.

Earlier, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had also raised India's concerns over North Korea's nuclear proliferation and demanded that those responsible for it be held accountable.

Swaraj's remarks came during her trilateral meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and her Japanese counterpart Taro Kono on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in New York last month.
Islamabad/Washington: Ahead of his maiden visit to Pakistan, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Monday indicated that he will firmly tell Islamabad to stop providing safe havens to terror groups on its soil to improve bilateral ties.

Tillerson's crucial visit to Islamabad on Tuesday, aimed at normalising bilateral ties, comes days after he made a major policy speech on America's growing strategic relations with India and US President Donald Trump's move to offer a bigger say for India in war-torn Afghanistan.

Islamabad needed to "take a clear-eyed view of the situation that they are confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organisations that find safe haven inside" the country, Tillerson told reporters in Kabul where he paid a surprise visit.

"We want to work closely (with) Pakistan to create a more stable and secure Pakistan as well.

"We have made some very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support that the Taliban receives and the other terrorist organisations receive in Pakistan," Tillerson told reporters travelling with him at the Bagaram Air Force base in Afghanistan.

According to transcripts of his media interaction provided by the State Department in Washington, Tillerson said the whole South Asia strategy of the Trump administration is conditions-based approach.

"So, our relationship with Pakistan will also be conditions-based. It will be based upon whether they take action that we feel is necessary to move the process forward of both creating the opportunity for reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan, but also ensuring a stable future Pakistan," he said.

"In our conversations with Pakistani leadership, we're as concerned about the future stability of Pakistan as we are in many respects here in Afghanistan," he said.

On the eve of his maiden visit, Pakistani media reported that policymakers have put together an agenda for talks with Tillerson.

Tillerson is visiting Pakistan on the invitation of Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif.

Earlier this month, Asif, who recently toured the US, said in a television interview that Pakistan has offered the United States a joint operation against terrorists on its soil. However, he later clarified that he never said Pakistan could allow foreign boots on ground.

Pakistani officials have prioritised the issues to be taken up with Tillerson which include the recent strain in Pak-US ties; US President Trump's new Afghan strategy; Pakistan's role in the Afghan peace process; and Pakistan's reservations on India's future role in Afghanistan, The Express Tribune quoted sources as saying.

The sources told the paper that Tillerson's visit is significant as it would clarify Trump's policy and set course for future Islamabad-Washington relations.

Tillerson last week said that the US expects Pakistan to take "decisive action" against terrorists and such a move will improve Islamabad's international standing as well as stability in the region.

"We expect Pakistan to take decisive action against terrorist groups based there that threaten its own people and the broader region," he said while speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a top US think-tank.

"It is the obligation, not choice, of every civilised nation to combat the scourge of terrorism. The United States and India are leading that regional effort together," he said.

By taking decisive actions against terrorists, Tillerson said, Pakistan furthers stability and peace for itself and its neighbours, and improves its own international standing.

Trump administration officials are frustrated by what they see as Pakistan's unwillingness to act against terror groups like the Haqqani network, which reportedly has close ties with the Pakistani military and its intelligence agencies.

Pakistan regularly denies that it hosts terror groups fighting the US and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

In August, President Trump had unveiled his Afghanistan and South Asia policy in which he had hit out at Pakistan for providing safe havens to "agents of chaos" that kill Americans in Afghanistan and warned Islamabad that it has "much to lose" by harbouring terrorists.

Trump's criticism led to further strain in US-Pakistan relations with a peeved Islamabad saying the US president ignored its efforts in the war against terrorism.

Pakistan also asked the US to postpone a planned trip by its special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Alice Wells to Islamabad.

Foriegn Minister Asif also delayed a visit to Washington for which he was invited by Secretary of State Tillerson.

But bilateral relations improved slightly after a meeting between Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Vice-president Mike Pence on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, ahead of his arrival in New Delhi on Tuesday, said America's relationship with India is of strategic importance which is not limited just to South Asia.

Tillerson will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday, according to media reports.

#TopStory U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to arrive in #Delhi later today; he will be meeting PM Modi and EAM Sushma Swaraj tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/s1xbRxrsMJ  ANI (@ANI) October 24, 2017

Tillerson, who paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Monday, said the Trump administration was of the view that India can play a positive role in creating a peaceful and stable Afghanistan.

"They already are providing important economic activity and creating jobs, which is important for the future of Afghanistan. And we want to encourage that as well. We think they can be a very positive influence on creating the right environment for the future in Afghanistan," he said.

"I think, our view of the relationship with India is one that's of strategic importance not just for this specific region, but in the context of that speech it was about a free and open Asia-Pacific region stretching all the way from Japan to India," Tillerson told reporters at the Bagaram Air Force Base on his arrival during his maiden visit to South Asia.

He was responding to a question on his major India policy speech last week in which he sought broader goals for India-US relationship.

In addition to Afghanistan, Trump is scheduled to travel to Pakistan and India during his current trip to South Asia.

He said during his visit to Pakistan he would discuss with the Pakistani officials the role of India in Afghanistan.

"Thats certainly something well be talking about during the visit on Tuesday," he said.

With inputs from PTI
Chinese express delivery companies have taken a new measure to protect the privacy of customers, by using new parcel waybills that show partial information about the sender and the receiver.

A parcel waybill of SF Express only shows partial information. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

On the parcel waybills, names, phone numbers and addresses are shown only partially, with signs such as "(^_^)" or "*" being used to take the place of some of the details. For example, only the last four digits of a phone number are shown.

However, a user of the Twitter-like Sina Weibo said the move had caused some trouble when identifying parcels. "How do I know which one is mine?"

Some couriers said there had been no cases of incorrect deliveries due to the new measure. "After all, only part of the phone number is hidden, and chances are slim that they happen to be the same."

Moreover, couriers were able to see the full information of customers by scanning the waybill number, so it was not a time hassle, either.

Since a real-name rule was enforced in the express delivery sector in late 2015, discussions about privacy protection have been ongoing.

Liu Junhai, a business law professor at Renmin University of China, said full implementation of the real-name system required the sender's information to be traceable and consumers' privacy to be fully protected. The new parcel waybill was "a key technical means to balance the real-name system and personal privacy," he said.

So far, China has not made such waybills compulsory, nor has it published any uniformed standard in this regard.

Shao Zhonglin, the former general-secretary of the China Express Association, said major express delivery companies had volunteered to take the measure to enhance the protection of consumers' privacy.

According to Chinese law, those who leak citizens' personal information could be sentenced to up to seven years in jail.

Zhao Xiaomin, an expert in the express delivery sector, said mass data leaks were not caused by couriers but attributable to loopholes in company security management. Express delivery companies were advised to work with security tech companies to better protect customers' data.
Washington: The United States is taking steps and considering a range of further actions over Myanmar's treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority, including targeted sanctions under its Global Magnitsky law, the State Department said on Monday.

We express our gravest concern with recent events in Myanmars Rakhine state and the violent, traumatic abuses Rohingya and other communities have endured, it said in a statement.

It added: It is imperative that any individuals or entities responsible for atrocities, including non-state actors and vigilantes, be held accountable.

Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar in large numbers since late August when Rohingya insurgent attacks sparked a ferocious military response, with the fleeing people accusing security forces of arson, killings and rape.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday the United States held Myanmars military leadership responsible for its crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Tillerson stopped short of saying whether the United States would take any action against Myanmars military leaders over an offensive that has driven more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims out of the country, mostly to neighbouring Bangladesh.

The State Department made the announcement ahead of US president Donald Trumps maiden visit to the region early next month when he will attend a summit of ASEAN countries, including Myanmar, in Manila.

It marked the strongest US response so far to the months-long Rohingya crisis but came short of applying the most drastic tools at Washingtons disposal such as reimposing broader economic sanctions suspended under the Barrack Obama administration.

Critics have accused the Trump administration of acting too slowly and timidly in response to the Rohingya crisis.

The State Department said on Monday: We are exploring accountability mechanisms available under US law, including Global Magnitsky-targeted sanctions.

Measures already taken include ending travel waivers for current and former members of the military in Myanmar, also known as Burma, and barring units and officers in northern Rakhine state from US assistance, it said.

We have rescinded invitations for senior Burmese security forces to attend US-sponsored events; we are working with international partners to urge that Burma enables unhindered access to relevant areas for the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission, international humanitarian organizations, and media, the statement said.

In addition, Washington is consulting with allies and partners on accountability options at the UN, the UN Human Rights Council, and other appropriate venues, it said.

Aimed at top generals?

Interviews with more than a dozen diplomats and government officials based in Washington, Myanmars capital, Yangon, and Europe have revealed that punitive measures aimed specifically at top generals were among a range of options being discussed in response to the Rohingya crisis.

Such measures could include the possibility of imposing asset freezes and prohibiting American citizens from doing business with them.

Washington has worked hard to establish close ties with Myanmars civilian-led government led by Nobel laureate and former dissident Aung San Suu Kyi in the face of competition from strategic rival China.

Forty-three US lawmakers urged the Trump administration to reimpose US travel bans on Myanmars military leaders and prepare targeted sanctions against those responsible for the crackdown.

The Magnitsky Act, originally passed in 2012, imposed visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials linked to the 2009 death in prison of Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian whistleblower. It has since been expanded to become the Global Magnitsky Act, which could be used against the generals in Myanmar.
Washington: A crucial Senate Committee would vote on Trump administration's ambassadorial nominee to India, Ken Juster, later this week, thus paving the way for a full Senate confirmation soon.

The confirmation process of Ken Juster, an old India hand in the Trump Administration, is likely to be a smooth affair given the bipartisan support the former White House official received during his confirmation hearing early this month.

As per the agenda of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released on Monday, the full committee would take a vote on 16 ambassadorial nominees including that of Juster on Thursday.

Other ambassadorial nominees include that of Niger, Seychelles, Zambia, Angola, Mauritania, Cameroon, Lichtenstein, Monaco, Germany, Andorra, Timor-Leste, Vietnam, Djibouti, Netherlands and Haiti.

A senior administration said Juster is "going to just really be a fine representative" who understands the importance that the president places on the US-India ties.

He "is going to do everything he can to advance that relationship to a new level," the official said.

Most recently, Juster had served as the Deputy Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council.

He would replace Richard Verma, as the US Ambassador to India, if confirmed by the Senate.

The position of US Ambassador to India has been vacant since 20 January.

Juster has previously served as Under Secretary of Commerce from 2001-2005, Counsellor (acting) of the State Department from 1992-1993, and deputy and senior adviser to the Deputy Secretary of State from 1989-1992.

In the private sector, he has been a partner at the investment firm Warburg Pincus LLC, Executive Vice President at Salesforce.com, and senior partner at the law firm Arnold & Porter.

He has also served as Chairman of Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and as Vice Chairman of The Asia Foundation.

Juster holds an AB in Government (Phi Beta Kappa) from Harvard College, an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a JD from the Harvard Law School.
Richardson Police Department in Texas confirmed that more arrests are possible in the still dynamic and active investigation into the disappearance of a three-year-old Indian girl child Sherin Mathews in this affluent Texas suburb. We have a solid case, police confirmed after speaking to the father of the missing child. The mother of the child is "not cooperating" in giving details about the child's disappearance, Officer Kevin Perlich of Richardson Police said.

The body of a child (not yet confirmed as Sherin Mathews) was found in a culvert Sunday not far from Mathews' home in the same city. The father Wesley Mathews voluntarily landed up at the police station and has since been locked up in Richardson City Jail in Texas. His bond has been set at $1 million. Richardson is home to the University of Texas at Dallas.

Sherin Mathews disappeared at an unearthly morning hour on 7 October, 2017 after being punished for not drinking her milk. Temperatures at this time of the morning have been in the range of 50-55F which is roughly 10-15 degrees Celsius. Sherin was adopted from an orphanage in India. Sherin Mathews' adoptive mother, Sini Mathews, is now working to convince local authorities that her biological daughter will be safe at home. The biological daughter was taken into state custody after Sherins disappearance.

Here are the latest updates on the case. All quotes are from Richardson police. Local police are awaiting confirmation from medical examiners that the childs body found in a culvert on 23 October is that of Sherin Mathews. A statement on this is most likely in a few hours on Tuesday Central Time US.

What is the mothers role so far?

Ms Mathews' role so far has been in identifying the body (which was found and believed to be that of Sherin Mathews  not confirmed yet ). She has co-operated in as far as identifying the body. She has not co-operated in as far as giving details of how the child disappeared or any other questions related to the case.

What is Sherin Mathew's father telling the cops?

The father, Wesley Mathews has been charged with Injury to a Child, "a first-degree felony punishable by life or from 5 to 99 years in prison, according to Richardson City police. In this case, injury to a child is a first-degree felony. From some of the details he (Wesley Mathews) provided us, it meets the description of a first-degree felony. The charge really does not matter, the punishment does.

What was Wesley Mathews' first version of events?

Wesley Mathews had told police he ordered Sherin to stand outside the family home at about 3 am on 7 October as punishment for not drinking her milk. He said that after 15 minutes, she was gone. Mathews claimed he went back inside the house, washed clothes and waited until it became light. Police are not saying how much Mathews' new version of events has changed or not from this "original" version but they say the ducks are lining up now and they have a "solid case".

"Active investigation, more arrests possible"

Criminal charges are determined based on what information and evidence are available at the time. Mathews' statements today to Richardson detectives currently support the offence of Injury to a Child. This charge carries the possibility of a life sentence in prison. Keep in mind, this is an active investigation, and there is the possibility of additional arrests or modified charges as more evidence becomes available.

Where exactly was three-year-old's body found?

In a culvert tucked away in a large field in the area between E Spring Valley Road and S Bowser Road in Richardson about half a mile from the Mathews' home on Sunday. "We cannot talk about the condition of the body. That would not be appropriate," police said.

Is the jigsaw coming together? Yes

Police said the fathers (new) version of events is tying up what they have pieced together. As hes giving us the information, its coming together with the rest of the investigation. Hes come to us, its making sense to us,  police said.

"Worst type of case"

Its the worst type of case you get to work on where innocent children are harmed. We want to assure people that theres no predator or something like that out there, Richardson police said.
The Communist Party of China (CPC) opens the 19th National Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 18, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhang Duo)

The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is in full swing after a comprehensive report and action plan for the next five years and beyond was expounded by the Party's General Secretary Xi Jinping at the opening session.

President Xi's speech can be described as the culmination of his vision for China and the leading role it can play as a responsible global power which he has been enunciating particularly during the current year in a sequence of major international events.

From the Davos World Economic Forum in January to the Beijing Belt &Road forum in May and the Xiamen BRICS summit in September, it has been a crescendo of his pronouncements about China's commitment to progress, peace and an ever-growing cooperation at international level.

While many Western democracies are struggling against the rise of disruptive populist movements and deep-seated political antagonism, China's pragmatic, responsible and innovative approach to socialism is sustaining vigorous economic growth, political stability and expanded equality.

"The Chinese nation is a great nation that has been through hardships and adversity but remains indomitable," said Xi as he listed the country's achievements. The Chinese people are a great people. They are industrious and brave and they never pause in pursuit of progress."

But he also warned that more had to be done in order to accomplish "national rejuvenation" and the Chinese dream -- two concepts he has frequently used during his first term as catchwords of his vision.

Titled "Secure a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and strive for the great success of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era," the speech has definitely paved the way for the so-called "Two Centenary Goals," i.e. the two bold goals that will see China evolving into one of the most prosperous and advanced country in the world.

First, the attainment of a "moderately well-off society" by 2020 just ahead of the CPC's 100th anniversary. Second, the development of a fully developed nation by 2050, shortly after the Peoples Republic of Chinas 100th anniversary.

Xi outlined a specific timetable for reaching the second centennial goal. He said the Party will first lead China to "basically accomplish socialist modernization" by 2035, when, among other things, the nation will have narrowed its wealth gap and improved its environment significantly.

The second stage will span from 2035 to 2050, a period during which the Chinese people will basically enjoy "common property." By then, he said, the Chinese nation will stand with a more high-spirited image in the family of nations."

No other Party leader has conceived and committed himself and his Party to a program of such magnitude.

Governing China requires a political system capable of coalescing a large number of government bodies and institutions into one connected whole and in such a vast and populous country this is possible only with a clear line of command which is also a plus for relations with outside partners.

Elenoire Laudieri Di Biase ( Twitter account: @ElaudierLaudier ), sinologist from the university of Ca' Foscari and Melbourne University, Australia, is an expert on international diplomacy and psychoanalysis. Senior analyst on China at the Nato Defense College Foundation.
Mianshan Mountain is the birthplace of national intangible cultural heritage -- the Chinese Qingming/Hanshi Festival. It is located in Jiexiu City of central Shanxi Province, 137 kilometers south of Taiyuan and 125 kilometers north of Linfen. The mountain is noted for its natural and cultural scenes, especially for its cultural relics. Visitors can take a five- to seven-day trip to learn about Cold Food culture, Buddhist culture, Taoist culture, military culture or health preservation culture. Covering an area of 75 square kilometers, the mountain is a national scenic spot with 14 tourist areas and 400 attractions. [China.org.cn]

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French President Emmanuel Macron and Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar say they are ready to discuss the contentious issue of taxing internet giants after a meeting in Paris.

Macron is leading the tax charge in Europe, saying it's not fair that internet companies don't pay taxes where they make most of their money.

Countries that serve as tax shelters for companies like Apple, including Ireland, have resisted the proposed measure.

Macron acknowledges disagreement on the issue but says in the joint statement with Varadkar that "we have some ongoing discussions ... and very much want to work together."

Varadkar says that "we are also ready to discuss issues on which we don't necessarily agree, such as how best to tax internet firms so that they pay their fair share."
The launch of Alphabet Inc's (NASDAQ:GOOGL) second-generation Google Pixel smartphones has been hampered by display screen problems and pricing and shipping issues, prompting the company to open an investigation and issue multiple apologies to customers.

The Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, which start at $649 and debuted in stores on Thursday, are the lynchpin of Google's efforts to take on Apple Inc's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone directly.

Early Pixel 2 users have voiced frustration with mishaps, including a potentially serious problem with the screen.

Google said on Sunday it is investigating whether graphics are burning into the display of the Pixel 2, following a report on the AndroidCentral blog detailing the issue after a week of use. Burn-in, which usually becomes a problem only after several years of activity, can make it difficult to see information on the display.

Google likely would need to halt production if there is problem, said Ryan Reith, a mobile device analyst at research firm IDC.

"We take all reports of issues very seriously, and our engineers investigate quickly," Mario Queiroz, Google's vice president for Pixel product management, said in an emailed statement to Reuters. "We will provide updates as soon as we have conclusive data."

The investigation follows Google's acknowledgement that it may introduce new software to respond to users' concern about a blue tint to the Pixel 2 XL's 6-inch screen. The device incorporates new OLED display technology, which Google described as offering "a more natural and accurate rendition of colors."

Reviewers and users in online support forums have also reported a clicking noise during calls and poor Bluetooth connections between the Pixel 2 and other devices. Google did not immediately comment on the issues.

On Friday, the company vowed to reimburse an undisclosed number of people who were charged $30 extra for the Pixel 2 by a Verizon (NYSE:VZ) Wireless reseller operating at Google pop-up stores in the United States.

The surcharge "was an error," Google said in its apology.

Prior complaints led Google to drop the price of an adapter used to connect headphones to $9 from $20, matching the price of a comparable iPhone adapter.

Google also sent emails over the weekend to buyers advising that delivery of their Pixel 2 may be delayed as much as one month, to late November, according to the AndroidPolice news blog and users' postings on Reddit forums. Customers said Google offered a free smartphone case, which otherwise starts at $40. Google did not immediately comment.

Google made a significant bet on the smartphone business last month, agreeing to acquire an HTC Corp hardware development team for $1.1 billion.

Shares of Google fell 1.9 percent to $985.54 at Monday's close.
NAGDCA President Keith Overly on Monday explained how people under or over the age of 30 should start planning for retirement differently.

Overly said that people under 30 should focus more on learning how to save and budget their money.

You really need to look at getting in early and take advantage of the compounding of interest over a long period of time. They need to get into understanding and budgeting on their own because they are so far away from retirement and focused more on the present, we need to talk to them more in terms of saving rather than retirement, he told FOX Business Liz Claman on Countdown to the Closing Bell.

Overy discussed how those over 30 years of age shouldnt just focus on investing when planning for retirement.

Make sure you are increasing your contributions [to your 401(k)] every year and more people can do that from what they really think. We find as they get closer to retirement, they do get more engaged and that is great. But the biggest thing is continue to save more, you cant just invest your way to retirement but you have to save your way there too, he said.

Overly also weighed in on the GOPs proposal to cap the amount of money Americans are able to contribute to their 401(k) plans.

Republicans in Congress are considering reducing 401(k) contribution limits in order to help pay for President Trumps tax reform plan. However, President Trump pushed back against the proposal tweeting, There will be NO change to your 401(k). This has always been a great and popular middle class tax break that works, and it stays!

Normally, when an employee puts money into their traditional 401(k) it is not taxed, so the money continues to grow, but when they begin to take money out of their retirement, it gets taxed. The GOPs plan would allegedly tax Americans retirement plans upfront and not tax them later on.

When it comes to retirement policy, we feel there is a real advantage to having those people especially if theyre a little bit strapped for saving for retirement to be able to get that advantage at the very beginning. What they (Republicans) are talking about is instead having the taxes on a post-tax basis, where you are paying the taxes now and getting some advantages when you withdraw the money in retirement, Overly said.
A JetBlue plane traveling from Boston to Las Vegas made a safe emergency landing at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on Monday night after it struck some birds shortly after takeoff, the airline confirmed.

JetBlue flight 877 from Boston to Las Vegas diverted to New York-JFK out of an abundance of caution, following a reported bird strike. The flight landed safely just before 7:30 p.m. local time. Customers will be re-accommodated on another aircraft, a JetBlue spokesperson said in a statement to FOX Business.

Its unclear if the plane itself, reported to be an Airbus 320 model, suffered any damage during the incident. The flight departed from Boston Logan International Airport at about 4:15 p.m. ET. Pilots opted to head toward New York for the emergency landing because of poor weather in Boston, the New York Post reported.

No injuries were reported after the incident. Emergency vehicles were standing by to respond after the landing, but were not required, FOX 5 in New York reported.
A lot of the investment thesis for Cleveland-Cliffs (NYSE: CLF) over the past several years rested in management's ability to pull off a daring turnaround plan. Based on the company's most recent results, it looks as though it has executed on its plan rather well. Now, with a new focus, Cleveland-Cliffs is looking to grow the business without falling into the traps the former management team did.

On the company's most recent conference call, management highlighted some of its most recent achievements, what's going on in the global iron ore market that's influencing its decisions, and what it plans to do in the coming years. Here are a few quotes from the most recent call that investors should note.

Complete reconfiguration of debt

Ever since the current management team took the reins a few years ago, there have been two primary goals: Get rid of unprofitable business segments, and lower the debt burden. Cliffs already achieved the first goal, and in the past few quarters, the management team has worked with cash from operations and opportunistic market timing to pay off or refinance debts.

This past quarter, the company made another big financial move. It didn't really lower its overall debt load, but it did achieve some other notable goals that Chief Financial Officer Tim Flannery noted on the call:

One of the things that made Cleveland-Cliffs' debt level so scary a few years ago was that it was shelling out so much in interest payments. Now that its interest burden has been cut in half and the company's net debt to EBITDA is around 2.7, the company is on a stable foundation that should lead to much better results in the coming quarters.

Expansion through acquisition

When it comes to the iron ore business, there aren't a whole lot of great options for expansion. One reason is that building a new mine is expensive, and the iron ore business is already suffering from low prices from an oversupplied steel market.

With this in mind, management did the next best thing: It brought out the equity partner for its Tilden mine. Here's CEO Lourenco Goncalves explaining the rationale for the deal:

With iron ore prices in the dumps and the company's better financial position, this was an opportune time to strike. Cleveland-Cliffs acquired the remaining stake in Tilden for $105 million from United States Steel.

Is the tide turning in China?

For the past couple of decades, China has been the 800-pound gorilla in the room when it comes to the iron ore market. At first, it was the country's seemingly insatiable appetite for steel and a rapid expansion of its steel manufacturing capacity. Then, when China's growth tapered off, all that production capacity became excess supply. For the past several years, all that excess capacity was still running and flooding the global markets with cheap steel, and it wreaked havoc on iron ore miners and domestic steel producers.

It appears, though, that China is starting to chart a new course. Here's Goncalves explaining what he's seeing in the market and what it could mean for Cliffs' results in the near term:

Those steel restrictions have a lot to do with reducing pollution in several major cities across the country. While Goncalves said he doesn't expect China to implement all of the announced cuts -- some cities have targeted 50% capacity cuts -- any sizable cuts should be welcome at this point.

New project getting a lot of good vibes

Last quarter, Cleveland-Cliffs announced its first major expansion project in a long time: an HBI plant in Toledo, Ohio, that will supply electric arc furnaces with the raw products that meet their specifications. The economics of the project certainly make sense, and according to Goncalves, the overall reaction from its customers has been better than expected:

On top of the customer demand to replace pig iron imports with Cliffs' HBI product, Goncalves also noted that potential equity partners have made several inquiries. Management has said that it is more likely than not that it will take on an equity partner, but there haven't been any formal announcements yet, and the company is ready to shoulder the initial capital spending without a partner in place, if need be.

What a Fool believes

Cleveland-Cliffs looks like an almost completely different company from a few years ago. It has a decent balance sheet and some catalysts that could send the stock higher, and that catalyst isn't simply higher iron ore prices. Its Asia-Pacific business continues to be a drag on returns, but management has said it plans to sunset that operation when it stops generating cash.

It seems appropriate that the company has changed its name back to Cleveland-Cliffs, because it was barely recognizable from its former self. Investors should probably take a fresh look at this company as well, because the future looks quite good.

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President Donald Trump is showcasing a major contract landed by Boeing from Singapore Airlines and talking about the 70,000 or so U.S. jobs that he says will flow from that order. It's indeed a big deal for Boeing, but there are some caveats to keep in mind when Trump addresses the subject:

 The order primarily came together while Barack Obama was president, and it's unlikely any president had much to do with it. The announcement of major aircraft orders usually follows lengthy negotiations. The Boeing order was announced less than three weeks after Trump was sworn in.

Boeing says the order will "sustain" more than 70,000 direct and indirect U.S. jobs for the company, its suppliers and others. The company did not say they were new jobs.

Trump witnessed a "certificate of purchase" signing at the White House on Monday by Boeing and Singapore Airlines executives. "In terms of the orders it's about $13.8 billion and most importantly it's about 70,000 jobs," Trump said, patting Boeing's Kevin McAllister on the back. "So those are all jobs in this country."

The president correctly cited the value of the order for 39 airplanes, but it's unlikely to yield that much.

Boeing says the contract is worth "$13.8 billion at current list prices." But airlines routinely receive deep discounts from the list price of planes. Boeing declined to provide financial terms of the order.

The company also notes that the announcement Monday was an order "previously attributed to an unidentified customer," meaning it happened earlier.

Singapore Airlines announced Feb. 9 that it signed a letter of intent to order the 39 planes from a U.S. manufacturer. Boeing booked the order in June but did not identify the buyer until this week. Boeing and competitor Airbus sometimes let airlines announce such orders first.

The order is for 20 777-9s and 19 787-10s, with an option for Singapore Airlines to buy six more of each type.

Boeing arrived at the job estimate by using a Commerce Department formula that every $1 billion in U.S. exports supports 5,200 U.S. jobs, said Boeing spokesman Dan Curran. The Boeing calculation is based on the list price of the planes, while Singapore Airlines probably is paying far less. "It's definitely an imperfect formula," Curran said. He called the 70,000-job figure the best estimate that doesn't involve Boeing disclosing confidential information.

___

Superville reported from Washington.

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https://apnews.com/tag/APFactCheck
A group of Hispanic ranchers has been dealt a blow in their years-long feud with the federal government over grazing rights on land in New Mexico that has been used by their families for centuries.

Attorneys for the ranchers argued that the U.S. Forest Service violated the law when deciding to limit grazing on historic land grants even though the government has recognized that the descendants of Spanish colonists have a unique relationship with the land.

The ranchers claimed the agency failed to consider social and economic effects that would result from limiting grazing in a region where poverty and dependence on the land for subsistence is high.

In a recent ruling, U.S. District James Browning dismissed remaining counts against the government, finding that the National Environmental Policy Act does not require the Forest Service to consider social and economic effects that are a direct result of an agency's action.

The law narrowly centers on effects to the physical environment, the judge ruled.

The ranchers say they are disappointed and that the Forest Service had a responsibility to consider a history in which they claim the property rights of Hispanics have been ignored and an institutional bias has been allowed to persist.

Efforts to get the Obama administration to address discrimination and civil rights violations repeatedly went unanswered, and many of the plaintiffs saw the court case as a way to validate their concerns.

"I see this opinion as a cover up and continued support of further adverse actions by the Forest Service on socially disadvantaged native and Hispanic families," said Carlos Salazar, president of the ranchers' group. "I believe the agency knows they have the courts on their side and their goal is to take ownership of the land and water from the local folks."

Confrontations across the U.S. West have erupted in recent years over allegations that the federal government is overstepping its authority and trampling property and water rights. But the dispute with the New Mexico ranchers is rooted in claims of discrimination that have spanned decades.

In motions filed over the years, the ranchers point to a 1972 policy that emerged following the raid of the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse in 1967 over unresolved land grant issues. The policy noted the relationship Hispanic residents of northern New Mexico had with the land and declared their culture a resource that must be recognized when setting agency objectives and policies.

Government attorney Andrew Smith said during a hearing earlier this year that the Forest Service was concerned given historical problems and that managers opted not to reduce grazing by greater numbers as requested by environmentalists to avoid more injury to local communities.

Grazing permits are reassessed every decade, and the Forest Service will begin another review next year.

The ranchers say it's too early to say what effect the ruling will have on future forest planning, but they have extended invitations to the Trump administration to discuss their long-standing concerns.

"Hopefully we can get them to come and see what's happening to the health of our rural communities," said Dave Sanchez, vice president of the ranchers' group.
The Interior Department said Tuesday it will propose the largest oil and gas lease sale ever held in the United States  nearly 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

The sale, scheduled for next March, includes all available unleased areas on the Gulf's Outer Continental Shelf, a reflection of the Trump administration's strategy to maximize oil and gas drilling on federal lands and waters.

Even so, only a small fraction of the tracts available are expected to receive bids. A similar lease sale in August drew bids on just 90 offshore tracts totaling about a half-million acres  less than 1 percent of the 76 million acres available.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke touted the upcoming sale as part of the administration's bid to achieve what President Donald Trump calls "energy dominance" in the global market.

"In today's low-price energy environment, providing the offshore industry access to the maximum amount of opportunities possible (will) spur local and regional economic dynamism and job creation," Zinke said.

Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said Zinke and congressional Republicans were taking credit for an Obama-era policy to offer oil and gas leases from all available tracts in the Gulf, rather than separating the western and eastern Gulf areas from the more productive central Gulf region off Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

"Republicans spent eight years alleging the Obama administration was killing oil and gas when they knew it wasn't true," Grijalva said. "Now they're taking credit for lease sales made under the Obama leasing plan. Tomorrow they may as well claim credit for capturing Osama Bin Laden."
Florida Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D) is calling the ambush in Niger that left four U.S. soldiers dead "Trump's Benghazi."

Wilson took to Twitter on Sunday saying, "Niger is @realDonaldTrump's Benghazi. He needs to own it.

Mark Geist, who survived the Benghazi terrorist attack in 2012, explained why Wilsons comparison between the two incidents is inaccurate.

I dont see how theres any comparison other than they occurred on the same continent. Thats about the closest you can come, Geist told FOX Business Elizabeth MacDonald.

The coordinated attack against two United States government facilities in Benghazi, Libya by members of an Islamic militant group killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other U.S. nationals.

Geist said theres a major distinction to drawing parallels between what occurred in Niger and the Benghazi controversy.

Youve got an ambassador and Sean Smith, his information officer and the security detail for the State Department who arent truly trained professional warriors, and in Niger we have a 12-man Special Forces detachment A-team, he said.

The 13 Hours co-author said lawmakers shouldnt politicize tragic events involving the brave men and women who strap on their boots to protect the country.

Were willing to make that sacrifice. Thats why you are in this special operations community, and to take that and try to turn into a politics thing just to get ten minutes of air time, I mean from where I come from, we call that all hat and no cattle, he said.
President Donald Trump and Trumka have found common ground on issues such as renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), building the Keystone XL pipeline and infrastructure spending.

However, Trumka has been critical of the president, accusing him of breaking promises to workers. He said Trump's actions on subjects, including worker-safety standards, have eroded the commander-in-chiefs support among union members.

We give [workers] the facts, Trumka said at the opening of the AFL-CIO convention on Sunday. Heres what hes promised. Heres what hes done. And his promises left people in the lurch.

More From FOX Business
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At least 14 civilians were killed and 32 others wounded on Monday in a U.S.-led airstrike in Syria's eastern city of Deir al-Zour, the state TV reported.

The strike targeted the government-controlled Al-Qosoor neighborhood in the city, said the report.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the identity of the warplanes, which carried out the airstrike, is unknown.

The United States has been backing the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in their push to drive out the Islamic State (IS) militants from areas in the northern countryside of Deir al-Zour.

Meanwhile, the government forces continued to advance against IS in the southeastern countryside of Deir al-Zour, after stripping IS of the al-Mayadeen city, one of the IS key strongholds in Deir al-Zour province.
In a startling verbal assault on the president of his own party, Republican Sen. Bob Corker charged Tuesday that Donald Trump "debases our nation" with constant untruths, name calling and bullying, and will leave behind a sad legacy of damaging division.

A furious Trump lashed back over Twitter, calling Corker "incompetent," saying he "doesn't have a clue" and claiming the two-term lawmaker "couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee."

The angry exchange unfolded just hours before Trump was to lunch with GOP senators at the Capitol to try to unite the party around a rewrite of the nation's tax code. The tax overhaul is an urgent task for Republicans who've failed to notch a single significant legislative achievement this year despite controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress. Yet the dramatic escalation of the feud between Corker and Trump seemed certain to divert lawmakers' attention.

When Trump arrived at the Capitol, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accompanied him into the GOP lunch, both men smiling while ignoring shouted questions about Corker's comments.

Suddenly, a protester emerged from the press scrum, loudly screaming "Trump is treason!" and throwing a handful of Russian flags with Trump's name on them in the direction of the president. Trump and McConnell kept walking as security officials removed the protester, who identified himself to reporters as Ryan Clayton of Americans Take Action.

The incident added to the chaos of the day.

Earlier, Corker unloaded on Trump in a series of hallway interviews at the Capitol, first with CNN and then other outlets including The Associated Press.

"When his term is over, the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth-telling, just the name-calling, I think the debasement of our nation will be what he'll be remembered most for and that's regretful," Corker said. "His governing model is to divide and to attempt to bully and to use untruths."

Corker, who is retiring from the Senate and therefore can fear no political repercussions, said that he and others had attempted to intervene with Trump over the months but "he's obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president."

"Unfortunately I think world leaders are very aware that much of what he says is untrue," Corker said. He stopped short of calling Trump a liar and didn't respond when asked if Trump should be removed from office.

Tuesday's war of words intensified a simmering feud between the two men. Corker has been starkly critical of Trump in recent weeks, alleging at one point that the president's careless rhetoric toward foreign powers could lead America toward World War III. That prompted Trump to label his antagonist "Liddle' Bob Corker" and claim, falsely, that Corker had decided to retire after begging for an endorsement Trump wouldn't give.

The latest exchange began when Corker said Tuesday morning on NBC's "Today" that Trump should leave it to Congress to set the course on taxes instead of intervening to shoot down one idea or another, as the president did Monday when he assured voters over Twitter that the tax package would leave their 401(k) plans intact.

That led to an angry Twitter response from Trump, who said, "Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts. ..."

Corker, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, responded on his own Twitter account: "Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff."

The back-and-forth then escalated even further as Corker launched a series of withering criticisms against Trump in interviews at the Capitol prompting more Twitter fire from Trump and still more angry retorts from Corker.

In one tweet, Trump wrote, "People like liddle' Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!"

It was not clear how the conflict would end, if at all. Privately, Senate GOP aides were expressing dismay at a dispute that could only frustrate their already stymied efforts to produce results to take to voters in next year's midterm elections.

Trump spoke approvingly about the GOP tax efforts before leaving the White House to come to Capitol Hill, but ignored shouted questions about Corker.

House Speaker Paul Ryan tried to downplay the conflict, telling reporters, "I don't think it's changed our efforts on tax reform. I know Bob, who supported the budget, and wants to get tax reform. I know the president wants to get tax reform. ... I'm glad the president's coming to lunch, because I have long believed that it's best just to settle these things in person, and I hope that they can get a chance to do that."

Tuesday's lunch already had potential for more than a few awkward moments given Trump's recent disputes with other GOP senators including John McCain of Arizona and McConnell, R-Ky.

Trump has blamed them all for the failure of his agenda, saying it's not his fault. On the other hand, after meeting last week with McConnell, Trump promised to intercede with his former top adviser Steve Bannon, who is now on the outside promising an all-out war on the GOP establishment by urging primary challenges against a number of sitting GOP senators.

Nonetheless, Republicans and the Trump administration are determined to get tax legislation into law this year, and before the latest outburst between Corker and Trump, all sides seemed to think they can unite around that goal.

"If you have people who are running for re-election next year, whether it's a House member or one of the senators who's up this year, I think the best thing you can go back and talk about is that you got results," said GOP Sen. John Thune of South Dakota. "And I think that to the degree the president delivers that message it will be very well received by Republican senators."

The tax plan crafted by Trump and Republican leaders calls for steep tax cuts for corporations and potentially for individuals. It would double the standard deduction used by most Americans, shrink the number of tax brackets from seven to three or four, and repeal inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates. But crucial details of the plan have yet to be worked out, notably what income levels would fit with each tax bracket.

By ERICA WERNER, AP Congressional Correspondent
Soon you will be seeing "impeachment" ads. The far-left billionaire, Tom Steyer has launched a $10 million campaign to remove President Donald Trump from office.

In all 50 states, the ads will say Trump has brought us to the brink of nuclear war, obstructed justice and taken money from foreign governments. Steyer says "if thats not a case for impeaching and removing a dangerous president, then what has our government become?

A better question might be, what has become of the Democratic Party?

Then we have Rep. Fredericka Wilson, D-Fla., who tweeted this: "Niger is Donald Trump's Benghazi"... Now thats a stretch.

It seems the left's contempt, and frankly hatred, for this president has now reached a new level.

Why? Why now?

Maybe its because President Trump is on the verge of a big win on taxes and the economy. He's getting close. Remember that old line: "Its the economy, stupid. Oh yes it is, and the left is very worried that a tax cutting deal would grow the economy. They don't want the president to get credit for that.

In desperation, they go to extremes. He's a racist, a white supremacist, a liar and now, just as tax cuts and growth appear on the near horizon, "impeach him!

You are going to see a crescendo of hate.

As the tax cut looks ever more likely, look for ever-rising hysteria from the left. All the contempt they have piled on the president since the election, has failed to stop the drive for tax cuts. And if the left can't stop him now, they face a huge political defeat, and the president is very close to a very big win.
Republicans on Capitol Hill launched several investigations Tuesday into an Obama-era deal with Russia, during which the U.S. sold uranium, a key component to developing nuclear weapons, to its on-and-off adversary, despite a discovery by the FBI into a Russian bribery plot.

It is unclear whether the FBI or the Department of Justice notified President Barack Obama or then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of the investigation, despite its discovery of the plot, which was designed to grow Vladimir Putins atomic arsenal through kickbacks, extortion and money laundering, according to The HIll.

This is the real Russian scandal, I believe, if the White House knew that any of this was occurring or potentially occurring with these subsidiary companies, and they still went ahead with this deal, Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice Jordan Sekulow told FOX Business David Asman during an interview on After the Bell.

The sale in 2010 allowed for the transfer of the Canadian mining company Uranium One to Russias Rosatom nuclear company, giving the Russians control of part of the uranium supply in the U.S.

Documents and eyewitness accounts indicate that Russia also reportedly routed millions of dollars to Bill Clintons charitable foundation in hopes of currying favor with the former president.

The news broke at a time when Russias actions in the U.S. are highly suspect since it was accused of meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Special Counsel Robert Mueller is now conducting an investigation into any potential links between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Sekulow, whose father Jay Sekulow is a member of Trumps legal team, noted that during the time of the deal, Mueller was serving as the director of the FBI.

I dont think this process, specifically, should have anything to do with Mueller, he said. I think that this has has nothing to do with the 2016 campaign that hes supposed to be investigating. The Department of Justice can do this on their own, leaving out Mueller.
Saudi Arabia is hosting a financial summit this week, aimed at attracting investments as part of a broader effort to diversify its economy by reducing its reliance on oil revenue.

A bevy of high-profile investors and corporate bigwigs traveled to the country for what is being called Davos in the desert. Among them are venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. Saudi Arabia is looking to arouse the interest of foreign investors in its Public Investment Fund (PIF), a centerpiece of its initiative to modernize the kingdoms economy. The comprehensive plan, known as Vision 2030, was laid out in April by the countrys leaders and involves transferring 5% of state-owned Saudi Aramco to the investment fund through an initial public offering, expected to be the largest in history.

The Aramco IPO could attract a $2 trillion valuation. The kingdom is expecting to raise $100 billion to invest in companies around the world. The idea is that revenue generated from these investments can be used to sustain its budget even when oil prices, or supply, are low, Amy Myers Jaffe, David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Center on Foreign Relations, told FOX Business.

The Middle Eastern country, also the United States single greatest regional ally in the fight against terror, has recently shown an increasing interest in U.S. investments. The PIF invested $3.5 billion in ride-sharing company Uber last year, while Saudi investment in U.S. bonds reached a one-year high of $114.4 billion at the end of March, up noticeably from a low in September of $89.4 billion. President Donald Trump visited the kingdom in May, where he announced a $110 billion arms sale to the country.

However, in addition to investing in other countries, the kingdom also hopes to serve as a destination for investors.

The Saudi government  hopes to attract new investments in areas like health care  as well as the 'saudization' of local industries, so that work is no longer primarily done by expatriate workers, Emma Ashford, a Cato Institute research fellow specializing in international security and the politics of energy, told FOX Business.

Privatization is another critical part of the kingdoms broad economic reforms to increase efficiency and decrease the strain on state finances.

The postal service, airports and power sector are among the industries the Saudis have been working to take private.

While Ashford said Vision 2030 is unusually ambitious, the Saudis have essentially been forced into rethinking their economic organization due to the uncertain future of the underground oil market, Jaffe said.

As the worlds top oil producer, Saudi Arabia has been financially pressed thanks to falling oil prices, the global supply glut and a nearly $80 billion budget deficit. While OPEC attempts to stabilize prices, which plummeted in 2014 and have more recently swung between $47 and $56 per barrel, Saudi Arabia has trimmed its positions in foreign assets in order to account for the oil-related financial losses. The kingdom held $737 billion worth of foreign assets in August 2014 and by March the country had trimmed those positions to just $501 billion, making its reinvestment in the United States throughout recent months noteworthy.

For oil-dependent countries, reducing reliance has historically proven difficult and Saudi Arabia will likely face those same problems.

The vision is right, they need to do it, but can they do it? Thats where I remain skeptical, starting with the possibility of raising $100 billion from the [Aramco] IPO, David Ottaway, Middle East fellow at The Wilson Center, told FOX Business.

The IPO isnt the only problematic piece of the puzzle; the effort to privatize state-owned companies could also prove challenging, Ottaway noted.

Its a very state-dominated economy, how youre going to small- and medium-sized enterprises up and running in an economy structured like that, seems to me, very difficult, he said.

So far, Saudi Arabia has been slow to make the necessary economic changes. Its exports have still been primarily driven by oil throughout recent years, according to the International Monetary Fund, making up more than 80% of total export volume. While non-oil exports have grown, they still remain a small overall share of the countrys total exports and generally consist of oil-related products.

The Aramco IPO has also been delayed multiple times and there are ongoing discussions that China may simply buy a direct 5% stake in the company.

For the vision to work, staying the course will be key for the kingdom, Ashford said.

The Saudi government has already backed down in several key areas  Though the Saudi diversification scheme is unusually ambitious, many petro states have tried such diversification during prior crises. They almost always fail to follow through on reforms. When the oil price rises again, the pressure for diversification drops, and governments often fail to stay the course she said.
The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad Bin Salman told the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo on Tuesday that NEOM, the Kingdoms newest $500 billion mega city, provides great opportunities for investors.

We have opportunities today that seem as if its a Saudis market, a demand outside of Saudi Arabia -- $100 billion exceptional capability. A side allocation distinguished between three continents with crossings through the Red Sea, mountains, valleys, beaches, islands, he said.

The Prince appointed Dr. Klaus Kleinfeld  former chairman and CEO of Alcoa (NYSE:AA) and Arconic Inc. (NYSE:ARNC)  as CEO. It will be built in the countrys northwest region on untouched land along the Red Sea coastline near Egypt and Jordan and run entirely on alternative energy. Bin Salman said it would be an innovation hub for the future and give Saudi Arabia the chance to work with other companies, investors and entrepreneurs to transfer to a new generation of life and cities and technologies and health.

The nation, rich with resources, is becoming more progressive, recently announcing that it would allow women to drive and welcome foreign investment. While the Prince tiptoed around political rhetoric, he said the region would like to return to moderate Islam that is open to the world [and] all the religions and added extremist ideas would be destroyed.

We want to live a normal life, a life that translates our moderate religion, our good customs, we coexist and live with the world. We contribute to the development of our country and the world. This is something that there are steps we have taken that are clear. I believe that we will eradicate the rest of extremism very soon, the Prince said.

The kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, which the crown prince chairs, the Saudi government and global technology firms will help build the city.

The Associates Press contributed to this report.
Erinn Hayes, who was let go over the summer from Kevin James sitcom, is thinking about the future these days.

The 41-year-old former star of CBS comedy Kevin Can Wait took to Twitter October 20 where she responded to a joke about auditions made by actor Seth Morris, who previously worked with Hayes on the TV series Childrens Hospital.

Auditions are like a------sThats it, wrote Morris.

Doesnt need anything more, responded Hayes.

And theres a good reason why she had auditions on the mind. Hayes, who played James wife Donna in the first season, tweeted back in June she was let go from the show. A CBS representative told Fox News that Hayes was dumped due to the show going in a different creative direction.

Following the announcement of Hayes departure, the network revealed Leah Remini would be bumped up to a series regular after guest starring as undercover cop Vanessa Cellucci. Remini and James are recognized from their time on The King of Queens where they played an on-screen couple from 1998 until 2007.

Hayes was written out of Kevin Can Wait in a controversial way, with James character offhandedly mentioning that she died.

Earlier this month, the 52-year-old actor told the New York Daily News that the real issue had to do with the shows longevity.

I get that people are like Whoa, why would you do this? But it really felt like a thing like this was needed for this show to drive forward, he said.

But fans shouldnt feel too sorry for Hayes. She has since joined the cast of Amazons The Dangerous Book for Boys. That series is set to debut in 2018.
Comedian Kathy Griffin has cut loose on The Project, calling President Trump a Nazi in the Oval Office  and that was just the first few seconds of her appearance.

Griffin was on the Network Ten show to promote her Australian comedy tour when she launched into a tirade against Mr. Trump, who she said she refers to as the accidental President.

Im scared of that guy, she said.

I was under a two-month Federal investigation for taking a picture of a mask.

Im excommunicated from my own country doing a world tour.

"I am going to call him a moron and Nazi ... Americans are skittish about calling him a Nazi but he is one"  Kathy Griffin

Griffin received backlash earlier this year when photos were released of her holding a fake severed head that appeared to be the presidents.

Mr. Trump claimed the image traumatized his 11-year-old son Barron, but Griffin said the Republican was using her as a shiny object to distract the world from investigations into his campaigns alleged collusion with Russia.

I am going to call him a moron and Nazi ... Americans are skittish about calling him a Nazi but he is one, Griffin told The Project on Tuesday night.

Theres a Nazi in the Oval Office.

Hes a big liar and everybody should get rid of him soon, not violently. Vote him out.

Griffin said Mr. Trump and his sons came after (her) super hard and caused her to receive death threats following the scandal.

They go on television saying, We dont want to hurt Kathy Griffins career, we want to decimate her, she said.

These Trump folks self-identify as deplorable. Theyre psychos. Theyre nuts. Im here to apologies. Im sorry we have put this guy on everybody elses lap.

I dont know whats happening in my own country.

Griffin  whose comedy style is based on ripping into celebrities  soon turned her focus to Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexually assaulting and harassing dozens of women in Hollywood.

I sat next to Harvey Weinstein, Griffin said.

Im not hot enough for him to sexually assault  thats his mind set.

I remember him saying to me, bragging about the wife who worked for a clothing company ... Maybe my wife could dress you some time for the Emmys (and) I remember thinking: I wonder if one of the ways he got young actors.

Griffin said sexual assault was an epidemic in Hollywood and that Weinstein was not one, single case.

My sort of experience is career-ending abuse ... I cant tell you how many ... network and studio heads have to go down, she said.

But the white middle-aged guys and older guys who are running every network and studio in the United States they all behave this way. And everyone covers for them.

Not even Griffins neighbors  celebrity couple Kim Kardashian and Kanye West  were safe.

This is why comedy is wonderful, I live next to Kim and Kanye, I swear to God, she said.

And that is just like a comedy of errors in itself because Im sure Im their worst nightmare. Ive been jokingly calling them dirty whores for decades. And now Im their neighbor.

So we have to make nice. But actually trust me, Im the least of their problems and theyre least of my problems at this point.

This article originally appeared on news.com.au.
Kid Rock is sticking to what he knows.

The musician announced Tuesday he will not be running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan. The rocker, whose real name is Robert Ritchie, told Howard Stern he has decided to stay out of politics.

"F--k no, I'm not running for Senate," Kid Rock told Stern, according to the Detroit Free Press. "Who couldn't figure that out?"

The rocker said mulling over a Senate run was "the worst advice I ever gave myself."

"But it's been the most creative thing Ive ever done," he said. "And Ive gotten to see everyones true colors."

Rumors of Rock's potential Senate run began this summer.

In a statement released on his website in July, the rocker announced a new initiative to create a non-profit organization for the promotion of voter registration, while he continues to explore the idea of challenging incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich, in 2018.

The 46-year-old has also faced several controversies, most recently when he was announced as the opening act for a new sports arena in mostly black Detroit.

The performances injected the musician into the national debate over race and culture because of his embrace of the Confederate flag, an expletive-laced criticism of NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick and unabashed support for President Donald Trump.

He responded to the criticism in a lengthy Facebook post in September saying, "Pay NO attention to the garbage the extreme left is trying to create! (and by the way, f--k the extreme left and the extreme right!)...they are trying to use the old confederate flag BS, etc. to stir the pot."
Donna Mills, who once lured audiences across the country as scheming vixen Abby Cunningham on Knots Landing, is returning to her comedic roots.

The 76-year-old television star is starring in the upcoming film Best Mom as Nana, a determined parent who seems to fail every time there is an opportunity to talk with her daughter. Some fans may see the movie as a far cry from the Dallas spinoff, which aired from 1979 until 1993, but Mills insisted the role was the right fit.

I started out doing comedy, Mills told Fox News. The first thing I did here in Los Angeles when I first came was a show called The Good Life with Larry Hagman. It was a half-hour comedy. It was great. I loved Larry and we had a great time together.

"The show only ran one season, mainly because it was opposite of All in the Family. That was getting all the ratings. But then I was offered every comedy series that came along, and I didnt want to get known as a comedy actress. So I turned everything down and waited for some drama. And I think people forget that I do comedy.

However, just before Mills embarked on comedy, the aspiring actress starred in a 1971 thriller titled Play Misty for Me, which featured a first-time director, actor Clint Eastwood. Burt Reynolds, who previously worked with Mills in the 1970 series Dan August, was so impressed by the guest star that he recommended her to Eastwood, who instantly hired Mills for his directorial debut.

I got along great with Burt, recalled Mills. We had a really good time. But I didnt think I was anything extraordinary to him About a week later I got a call saying [I] got this movie with Clint Eastwood.

"[But] apparently, Burt and Clint ran into each other at a bar one night. Clint told him, I cant find a girl I really like for this movie that Im going to direct. And Burt was like, I just worked with this girl Maybe you would like her Clint hired me from that. I never met him, I never read for him, audition  nothing Im always grateful for Burt.

Mills revealed Eastwood easily impressed her with his determination to show off his directorial skills, despite already being celebrated as a Hollywood icon.

He never directed before, so one would have thought he wouldnt [know] what he was doing, explained Mills. But no, he knew exactly what he wanted He was amazing. Absolutely amazing He finished the movie under budget and under time Over-budget is what you generally hear in Hollywood I think hes a born director, I really do. I think it was bubbling in him all the time when he was doing all the Westerns. He was just taking it all in and learning. Once he started to direct, he just took off.

By the time Knots Landing came along, Mills was viewed by as Miss Goody Two Shoes and was eager to shed her innocent image. Even though Mills was friends with one of the shows producers, she wanted to audition for the role of Abby and prove she was capable of playing a bad girl. The move worked, but the character would quickly impact her life when cameras stopped rolling.

It was funny, I didnt realize it at first, said Mills. When I played Abby, whenever I would meet people, a lot of the times they were kind of standoffish to me. I thought, What did I do? Im friendly, Im usually pretty nice. I [didnt] know why they were standoffish to me. So cold. And I learned  they thought I was like Abby. They thought I was Abby. So they were worried I was going to somehow do something bad to them. Steal their husbands, I dont know. And so, I really had to fight hard to overcome that in real life.

Still, Mills earned lasting success from the popular series. Knots Landing is still recognized as the second longest-running drama in TV history. She credited the shows 14-hour work days for giving the cast flexibility to share their finest performances for viewers.

A normal day was 14 hours, sometimes it would be 16 and on a Friday it would be 18, said Mills. [Quality] was the most important thing to everybody. And that had to be done right That all takes time. The lighting, rehearsal, everything. And we never rushed it.

"We always took as much time as we needed to make it as good as we possibly could We were happy to do it, but it was tough. It was grueling. It was exhausting But it was a large cast, so not everyone worked every day. And thats good or it wouldve killed ya if you worked every day.

And the relationships Mills developed with her Knots Landing family endured. She still stays in touch with the cast and is even considering a secret project with two former cast mates. As for a possible Knots Landing reboot, Mills isnt sure if it will ever happen, but she would happily take on Abby again if asked.

Absolutely, she said. That was a once in a lifetime character I would absolutely do it in a heartbeat. If it were up to me, I would say yes [to a reboot]. I think it would be fascinating to see where those characters are today and what theyve experienced over the years. I think it would be fun to find out.

But Mills isnt sitting back and waiting. She has not slowed down since the shows finale and is eager to do comedy again with "Best Mom."

Ive always had a lot of energy and discipline, having been a dancer, said Mills. But while I was raising my daughter, I didnt work a lot mainly because I would have had to go out of town I wasnt going to leave her at any given amount of time to be somewhere. But once she went off to college, a bunch of stuff just fell on my lap And Im at a point right now where I love working. I really do. I have fallen in love with it again.
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China is committed to providing technical and financial support to Jordan, said China's Deputy Minister of Commerce Qian Keming on Monday.

The minister made the remarks at the 7th session of the Joint Committee for Economic, Commercial and Technical Cooperation between Jordan and China, which focused on key areas for increased cooperation.

Calling Jordan "a key partner" in the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China, Qian reaffirmed China's keenness to boost cooperation with Jordan in various areas.

Jordan's Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Imad Fakhoury said the two sides discussed increased aid to Jordan to implement projects of priority, including upgrading civil defence vehicles and inspection devices at the Customs Department under a 70-million-U.S. dollar grant provided by China.

Fakhoury said the discussions also covered the need to increase Chinese investment in Jordan in the fields of gas, shale oil, renewable energy, and potash and phosphate fertilizers.

The two sides agreed to start technical meetings to draw a draft concerning their cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative.

Meanwhile, several agreements were signed with regard to increasing China-Jordan future cooperation in sectors such as tourism.

They also signed the Programme for Development, Economic and Technical Cooperation for the years 2018-2020.

A development assistance deal was also signed to finance the road project (Salt al Ardah) in Jordan, with a total budget of 31.6 million U.S. dollars, which will be implemented by Jordanian and Chinese companies.

From 1999 to 2016, China had provided Jordan with grants and loans worth a total of 225 million dollars.
Matt Damon is coming out strong against Harvey Weinstein, just one day after admitting he had some prior knowledge of what was going on behind closed doors with the now disgraced Hollywood mogul and the women in his orbit.

Speaking to NBCs The Today Show, the star was joined by his Suburbicon co-star, Julianne Moore. He explained that he feels Weinstein should face justice from the law for the repeated sexual harassment and assault allegations lobbied against him.

The NYPD, LAPD and London police all announced recently that they were investigating crimes having to do with Weinstein.

Moore accompanied Damon in the interview and reminded everyone that the discussion, at this point, is one of criminal behavior.

Hes got to face justice, Damon continued. Hes got to face what hes done.

Damons harsh statements come just a day after revealing to ABC News that he previously knew about his colleague Gwyneth Paltrow from his friend, Ben Affleck, who says he heard it from the actress directly.

So people say, everybody knew, like, yeah I knew, he said on Monday. I knew he was an a--hole, he was proud of that. Thats how he carried himself. I knew he was a womanizer. I wouldnt want to be married to the guy. But the criminal sexual predation is not something that I ever thought was going on. Absolutely not.

This is the second time that Damon has had to walk back absolute statements about his relationship with Weinstein. Previously, he was accused of helping Weinstein kill a New York Times story that was critical of him and revealed his harassment. That story never went to print, and Damon explained to Deadline that he was never made aware that the article he was calling about had anything to do with harassment.
Queen Elizabeth's belongings are many and varied, including a fleet of swans, a bevy of jewels and acres of land around the world.

It seems that the Queen of England is also in possession of something a bit more lowbrow: a McDonald's franchise outside of London.

The Crown Estate owns a McDonald's in Banbury Gateway Shopping Park, about 80 miles outside of London, Business Insider reports.

While the restaurant is not her personal property but rather that of the Crown Estate, all profit goes to the Treasury, according to The Independent.

Visitors to the franchise are unlikely to see the Queen herself there, however, as the monarch reportedly prefers eating cereal and snacks out of Tupperware containers at home.

People always say, Oh, the Queen must eat off gold plates with gold knives and forks. Yes, sometimes, but at Balmoral she'd eat fruit from a plastic yellow Tupperware container, the Queens former chef told Marie Claire.

Princess Diana was known, however, to take a young Prince William and Prince Harry on the occasional McDonald's trip. So maybe we'll see Prince George and Princess Charlotte stop by for a Happy Meal one day.
Italian doctors were left bewildered when a woman was admitted to the hospital for sweating blood from her face and hands, a new case published in a medical journal on Monday revealed.

The woman, 21, would spontaneously bleed with no visible lesions on her skin, according to the case report published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The woman has been suffering from the mysterious disorder for three years and would start bleeding spontaneously in her sleep or while she was physically active.

Its unclear what triggered the bleeding, but the bleeding intensified when she was under stress. The episodes would last between one to five minutes.

The women told doctors she suffered major depression and panic disorder because of the condition and became socially isolated. She has no history of psychosis, the report said.

The doctors floated different theories on what caused the condition, including factitious disorder, when someone would deceive others by appearing sick. However, she continued to spontaneously bleed after she was prescribed paroxetine and clonazepam for her depression and anxiety order.

They ultimately concluded she had hematohidrosis, an uncommon disease that would cause spontaneous discharge of blood sweat through intact skin. Blood can also come out of areas that dont have sweat glands.

Its still unclear what causes the blood sweat. Dr. Michelle Sholzberg, co-director of the Hemophilia Comprehensive Care program at St. Michael's Hospital, told CBC News the case is the most unusual.

"I can say with clarity that I've never seen a case like this  ever," Sholzberg told CBC News. "And I can say that I've seen some of the worst bleeding disorders, and I've never seen them sweat blood."

"I think this person has a very bizarre anatomical defect on a microscopic level that is resulting in this very unusual symptom," the Canadian hematologist said.
Some couples get engaged surrounded by family and friends, but Nick Kelble and Hayley Roll had an unlikely witness for their special moment.

Earlier this month, Kelble and Roll were visiting the Cincinnati Zoo to see their favorite hippo, baby Fiona, when Kelbe decided to pop the question to his girlfriend.

WOMAN'S APOLOGY CAKE TO POLICE OFFICER GOES VIRAL

We went to the zoo for our One Year Anniversary and Fiona was in the window, Roll told The Daily Buzz. Nick, my boyfriend, and I were waiting in line to get our photo taken with Fiona and I gave my cell phone to someone to take the photo and when I turned back around, Nick was on one knee proposing.

From the looks of, Fiona was just as happy to be part of the engagement as the couple was to have her there. We are huge #TeamFiona fans and have been following her since she was born, said Roll.

The newly engaged couple shared the photos on Instagram, writing: We're so happy Fiona could be there on our special day  here's to many more years of going to zoos with you.

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Thanks to Fionas photobombing skills, the couples pictures quickly went viral. But Kelble and Roll arent the only people to have a surprise guest join their important pics.



Another bride-to-be recently asked her brother, Jesse McClaren, to shoot her engagement photos. But when she got them back, she discovered McClaren had put a creepy spin on them by photoshopping Pennywise the Clown, from the film "It," into every shot. McClarens sister embraced the funny prank and ended up using one of the edited pics for her Save the Date announcement.
Editors note: The following is an excerpt from Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans: The Battle That Shaped Americas Destiny, by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger (Sentinel, October 24, 2017).

Andrew Jacksons leadership proved to be exactly what the fledgling United States needed as it battled enemies coming from all sides in the War of 1812, culminating with his role at the decisive Battle of New Orleans. We get a peek at his leadership style here:

His next venture into public service would suit him better: thanks to his strong relationships and sound political instincts, he was elected major general of the Tennessee militia, in February 1802. Maintained by the state, not the federal government, the militia was provisioned by local men who supplied their own weapons and uniforms and served short contracts of a few months duration.

Leading the militia was a good fit for Jacksons style, because it gave him the chance to serve the people he loved with the freedom he needed and the challenge he craved. General Jackson repeatedly won reelection as well as the deep loyalty of his men. They liked what he said. He was often outspoken, and many shared his uncompromising views on defending settlers rights. With rumors of war, he was ready to defend his people and was just the man to rally westerners to the cause of American liberty.

Citizens! he wrote in a broadside. Your government has at last yielded to the impulse of a nation. . . . Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian czar? No -- we are the free-born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world.

Jackson understood the stakes of the war, and he recognized the strategy as only a westerner could. Of critical importance to victory in the West was a port city near the Gulf Coast. As Jackson would soon say to his troops, in the autumn of 1812, Every man of the western country turns his eyes intuitively upon the mouth of the Mississippi. Together, he observed, [we are] committed by nature herself [to] the defense of the lower Mississippi and the city of New Orleans.

Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger are the coauthors of George Washington's Secret Six and Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates. Kilmeade cohosts Fox News Channel's morning show Fox & Friends and hosts the daily national radio show The Brian Kilmeade Show. He lives on Long Island. This is his fifth book. Yaeger has written or cowritten twenty-five books and lives in Florida.
This was not a typical he said, she said.

The he was Donald J. Trump, 45th president of the United States, the commander in chief, and traditionally, the nations unifier and in time of war, chief comforter and consoler.

Thats what President Trump was initially trying to do when he telephoned the she in question, Myeshia Johnson, widow of the fallen Green Beret Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed October 4th in a deadly ambush in Niger.

But his words came out wrong. President Trump apparently didnt know what to say or how to say it. So Mrs. Johnson wound up crying. The president seemed not to remember her husbands name, she later said. She had not been able to get information about how her husband had died or why she was not permitted to see his remains.

Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, who had known the Johnson family since La David was in elementary school, criticized President Trump for his words and tone.

He slammed back on Twitter, calling her wacky and her account completely fabricated. He had proof, he said, still undisclosed. He had done more than any other president to console relatives of the fallen. Previous presidents had not called the families of American soldiers killed in action, he asserted inaccurately.

White House chief of Staff John Kelly, the father of a Marine killed in action, then joined the appalling fray.

In an emotional appearance in the White House press room, he called Rep. Wilson an empty barrel for having listened in on the presidents call and misrepresented her description of having helped get $20 million for an FBI building in Florida.

Gen. Kelly, who has spoken only rarely in public about the loss of his son, did so in his bosss defense. What the president told Mrs. Johnson was the same message that had given him some solace when he was told of his own sons death, he recalled. But a president had not called to deliver it. His son had died doing what he loved, surrounded by men he loved, defending their country, Gen. Kelly told the silent reporters.

The sorry spectacle might have ended there had Mrs. Johnson not spoken to ABC News in defense of Congresswoman Wilson. She supported her friends version of the now infamous phone call, which she said she had asked to be put on a speaker phone when it came in.

Rather than let the matter die, President Trump lashed back on Twitter Monday morning. He had conducted a very respectful conversation with her, he insisted, and had spoken her husbands name from beginning, without hesitation. Contradicting Mrs. Johnson's account.

Twitter exploded with rage, and not just from angry Democrats and liberals. Just apologize, tweeted Charlie Sykes, Mr. Trumps conservative nemesis. Thats what real men do. Thats what someone with a drop of empathy would do.

But of course President Trump has not done that. He did not apologize for having attacked Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Pakistani immigrant parents of a soldier killed in Iraq in 2004, after they opposed his campaign call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S.

Nor did he apologize for having mocked Senator John McCain for having been captured by the North Vietnamese and held for years. Instead, the president who received multiple Vietnam draft deferments boasted in tweets about his own sacrifices  that is, having worked very very hard in real estate.

Donald Trump never apologizes. After all, he won the presidency through such deplorable assaults on far nobler Americans.

Rather than let the controversy die, he chose to inflame it.

If we needed a reminder of his lack of moral compassion or leadership, Donald Trump has provided it, yet again.
An angry mob of Never Trumpers led by Sen. Ben Sasse attacked the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas -- one of the nation's most respected evangelical congregations.

Click here for a free subscription to Todd's newsletter: a must-read for Conservatives!

Dr. Robert Jeffress had invited Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity to share his testimony and promote a new faith-based movie during Sunday morning services at the megachurch.

Hannity, who identifies as a born-again believer, is one of the producers of the new film, "Let There Be Light." I've posted the video at the bottom of this page.

Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, attacked Jeffress in a series of tweets -- which I've posted below. He suggested the pastor was mixing politics with religion.

"By the way, we're talking about Sundays here...(You can be free from politics,)" he tweeted.

With all due respect, Sen. Sasse is not a member of the First Baptist Church in Dallas -- so I'm not quite sure why it's any of his business who the church invites to participate in its worship services.

Michael Wear, a former Obama White House staffer also criticized First Baptist Dallas, tweeting, "Politics as religion. Religion as politics."

Well-known conservative columnist Erick Erickson wrote a scathing article titled, "Is Rev. Robert Jeffress Going to Heaven?"

"Jeffress has been worshiping at the altar of Trump lately. Hes put aside the holy and Godly for a seat not at the Lords table, but at Trumps. And as he gets rewarded mightily with access, one need not take too deep a reading of Psalm 73 to worry for him and which side of salvation he is on," Erickson wrote.

Jeffress appeared on the Todd Starnes Show Monday calling for Sasse to apologize to the congregation of the First Baptist Church.

"A U.S. Senator attacking a pastor for what he's doing in his own church - that is absolutely unprecedented that he would do such a thing," Jeffress said on the radio show.

For the record, Jeffress preached a sermon about the moral and spiritual unraveling of the nation.

"I said the only way to change the direction of America was to change the hearts of Americans through Jesus Christ," Jeffress said on the show. "I presented the Gospel, gave the invitation and dozens and dozens of people came forward to receive Christ as their Savior."

What part of that bothers the Gentleman from Nebraska?

"You've got a Republican senator who is criticizing what a pastor and his local church are doing to share the gospel of Jesus Christ," Jeffress said.

Just let that sink in for a moment, folks.

"Senator Sasse owes our church an apology," Jeffress demanded.

I reached out to the senator's press office multiple times -- but they refused to take my telephone call and they refused to answer email messages.

Sen. Sasse's behavior is repulsive and should be repudiated by the Republican Party. Shame on you, sir. Shame on you.

I know Robert Jeffress and I know Sean Hannity. They are good and decent men who love our nation and love our God -- both are sinners saved by grace.

That's a message that all of mankind needs to hear -- including those who worship at the altar built by Never Trumpers.

Click here for an autographed copy of Todd's new book, "The Deplorables' Guide to Making America Great Again."
Four U.S. Special Forces soldiers were killed in Niger earlier this month, and the media are demanding answers. This is to be expected after America suffers combat losses in a country that is not considered a declared warzone. But rather than searching for the facts of this incident, many questions from the press, and some recent statements from members of Congress, have been blatant attempts to form a narrative of incompetence, conspiracy and cover up within the Trump administration.

Perhaps this mentality was most clearly expressed by Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, D-Florida, who after recently thrusting herself into the national spotlight through the politicization of a Gold Star widow, also decided to openly declare that the ambush in Niger is Trumps Benghazi.

This is irresponsible nonsense.

Yes, four brave Americans died in Benghazi in 2012 -- the same number who were killed outside the village of Tongo Tongo in Niger. Both incidents occurred on the African continent, and involved Islamic extremists. But the relevant similarities end there.

The Obama administrations response to the terrorist attack in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, was an out and out debacle before, during and after the assault. As we know from thorough Congressional hearings, there were calls for additional security from U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens that went ignored for weeks. During the actual attack, two U.S. compounds came under sustained assault, reinforcements were delayed or denied, and it took 13 hours before an evacuation was completed. All of this occurred at the height of President Obamas reelection efforts, and media circled the wagons to protect the Democrats electoral prospects.

For politicians and the media to suggest, without any evidence, that the Niger ambush is the result of White House incompetence or a Pentagon cover up is partisanship masquerading as concern for our armed forces.

The Niger ambush on October 4 was an entirely different situation. Elite U.S. Special Forces were engaged in a reconnaissance meeting in a conflict zone that is home to Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliates, as well as Boko Haram. There are approximately 800 U.S. service members in Niger allied to indigenous forces, and an additional 4,000 French troops in support. The 12-man Special Forces team that went into Tongo Tongo was a seasoned group of American warriors, operating within the mission parameters of regional counterterrorism in a very dangerous part of the globe.

It went bad. Though the specific tactical circumstances are still under investigation, the Pentagon has made clear that a large force of likely Islamic State of the Greater Sahara (ISGS) terrorists engaged U.S. and Nigerien personnel in a complex ambush with vehicle mounted weapons and Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs). Once the after action review is complete, there will be lessons learned from this incident for the U.S. military, but from what we know so far their was nothing unusual about this particular S.F. mission, and the response to the unfolding crisis was rapid.

To that end, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Dunford gave a clarified timeline earlier this week. A U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle was redeployed almost immediately to provide assistance to our embattled Spec Ops troops. French combat air support was called, and Mirage fighter jets responded within 30 minutes. Wounded American commandos were airlifted to safety. And the brothers in arms of Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in action, returned to the battlefield to retrieve his body, as Johnson had been separated from them during the fighting. Nobody was left behind.

The loss of U.S. soldiers anywhere is a tragedy for all Americans, and honor demands the families of the fallen receive the full sympathy and support of the American people. But for politicians and the media to suggest, without any evidence, that the Niger ambush is the result of White House incompetence or a Pentagon cover up is partisanship masquerading as concern for our armed forces. It does our men and women in uniform, and the American people they protect, a disservice when the media uses military casualties as partisan weapons.

The war on radical Islamic terrorism knows no boundaries, and all U.S. military personnel are targets. This is especially true in the declared warzones of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the U.S. maintains large troops deployments, but our men and women in uniform are also under threat from Jihadist terrorism wherever they operate around the world. As our training and support missions to combat terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa expand, so will the risks our military undertake.
The United Nations Human Rights Council and the U.N.s human rights chief are threatening companies in the U.S. and around the world for doing business with Israel. Monday, Maryland become the 23rd state to adopt anti-boycott rules. It is urgent for Congress to pass the bipartisan Israel Anti-Boycott Act, a vital tool to prevent anti-Jewish discrimination and to protect American businesses from blackmail.

On Oct. 16 the CEO of Israels telecom giant Bezeq, Stella Handler, posted a two-page letter that her company had received from the office of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, a Jordanian prince. The letter, dated Sept. 22, lists Bezeqs operations that allegedly are ensnared by a resolution of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The Human Rights Council is the U.N.s top human rights body. The menacing letter neglects to mention the human rights credentials of the 35 Council members that passed the resolution back in 2016  states like Algeria, Bolivia, Burundi, China, Cuba, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

More specifically, the Council resolution calls for the production of a database of businesses that directly or indirectly are connected to Israeli settlements. In effect, the database is a blacklist. High Commissioner Zeid has said he intends to release the database/blacklist by the end of this year.

The letter Zeid sent to Bezeq is not unique. According to leaks to various news agencies, Zeid has sent similar letters to 150 companies around the world. Thirty of such companies are said to be American.

Recipients reportedly include Coca-Cola, Caterpillar, Priceline.com, TripAdvisor, and Airbnb, as well as Israeli businesses such as pharmaceutical leader Teva, the countrys two largest banks (Hapoalim and Leumi), the bus company Egged, the national water company Mekorot, and other major Israeli businesses in addition to Bezeq.

At its core, BDS is a response to the failure of Arab combatants to defeat Israel on the battlefield. Destroying Israel through economic isolation is perceived by Israels enemies as Plan B.

Zeids letter dictates that the company has 60 days to send information or commentsconfirming, clarifying or contesting the U.N.s account of the companys business dealings in any area that the U.N. has decided is Arab territory. The information received, continues the U.N. letter, will enable adequate consideration of whether there are reasonable grounds for inclusion of Bezeq in the database, as per the Council resolution.

In plain English, companies face public censure  driven by the U.N.s vast global network  unless they comply with the demands of Zeid and the Human Rights Council.

Bezeqs CEO vowed her company would not be intimidated, and declared that Bezeq would protect the rights of all our customers without discrimination regardless of their religion, race, gender or where they lived.

How right she was.

The fact is that U.N. Human Rights Council resolutions have the legal status of toilet paper.

But that isnt stopping the high commissioner from huffing, puffing and bluffing. And alarmingly, until now, nearly all the recipients of these letters appear to have been playing by the blackmailers rules. The dont you dare go to the police routine has thrown a cone of silence around the whole affair.

Shareholders, employees, and communities that depend on the well-being of the blackmailed companies  along with the elected representatives responsible for serving these constituents  have been kept in the dark.

Bezeq has brought the U.N. moves out of the shadows. This is the most egregious boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign directed against Israel ever launched by the United Nations. It is not the first, but it is the most audacious.

At its core, BDS is a response to the failure of Arab combatants to defeat Israel on the battlefield. Destroying Israel through economic isolation is perceived by Israels enemies as Plan B.

The two goals of the U.N. blacklist are first, devastating Israels economy, and second, circumventing a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For according to existing legal agreements, ownership of disputed territories is to be determined through negotiations between the parties  not by U.N. bullies.

Asked about the blacklist on Aug. 22, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert, told reporters: We have made clear our opposition regarding the creation of a database of businessesand we have not participated and will not participate in its creation or contribute to its content.

The response is disingenuous. Last December the Obama administration agreed in the General Assembly to the overall U.N. regular budget, knowing full well that the budget included funding for the blacklist. Hence, American taxpayers are currently paying 22 percent of all the costs of creating the blacklist. That sounds like a contribution to those of us who dont speak diplo-babble.

Which brings us to the bottom line.

U.N. High Commissioner Zeid Raad Al Hussein is the last person on Earth who should be telling American companies how to run their businesses.

And on the off-chance that U.N. letterhead makes American CEOs nervous, they need to be reminded that they owe their allegiance to American law and public policy.

It is past midnight for Congress and President Trump to step up and answer this U.N. assault on American businesses and our ally Israel.

Three simple, morally unambiguous steps will do it:

- The expeditious adoption of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act.

- The immediate resignation of the United States from the specious Human Rights Council

- The refusal to send Prince Zeid another penny.
Almost a week after the father of a soldier killed overseas said President Trump failed to deliver on a promise to send $25,000, the check finally arrived.

The personal check was dated October 18  the same day that the White House came out strongly against a Washington Post article claiming Trump failed to deliver. WTVD tweeted out a photo of the signed check Monday.

Chris Baldridge of Zebulon, North Carolina, told the Post that Trump promised him $25,000 of his own money when they spoke in the summer about the loss of his son, Army Sgt. Dillon Baldridge, killed in Afghanistan, but the check never came.

The check has been sent, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters told Fox News last Wednesday. Its disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the President, and using it to advance the medias biased agenda.

The check came with a signed letter from Trump, WTVD added. Part of the letter read: I am glad my legal counsel has been able to finally approve this contribution to you.

The Post article followed a number of controversies the president has encountered with Gold Star families. Trump, however, has boasted that he reaches out personally to all families of the fallen, offering sympathy and solace.

In the call to Baldridge, as The Post reported, Trump offered the money and added that he would order his staff to establish a fundraiser online for the family. The call, Baldridge said, came weeks after his 22-year-old son was killed in what was thought to have been an insider attack by an Afghan police officer.

Two other soldiers were killed in the June 10 incident.

After Baldridge reportedly told Trump that only his ex-wife would benefit from the Pentagons $100,000 death gratuity, the president offered to help on his own.

He said, Im going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000, and I was just floored, Baldridge told The Post. I could not believe he was saying that, and I wish I had it recorded because the man did say this. He said, No other president has ever done something like this, but he said, Im going to do it.

Fox News' Serafin Gomez and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
 Flash

As "the most important bilateral relationship in the world," good U.S.-China ties will benefit the region and the world, said visiting Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Monday.

Lee made the remarks in joint statements with U.S. President Donald Trump, who will kick off his first Asia trip next month since assuming the presidency.

Sound relations between the two big countries will "enable countries in the Asia Pacific, including America and China themselves, to enjoy regional stability, peace, and prosperity," Lee said.

Lee said he also hoped that the United States will be able to "maintain a stable and constructive relationship with China, engaging each other at the highest levels, building trust, establishing institutional mechanisms."

In the statements, Lee also noted the mounting tensions on the Korean Peninsula. "There is no quick and easy solution," he said, adding that "pressure is necessary but so is dialogue."

Lee was on a six-day visit to the United States starting from Saturday.

Earlier in the day, Trump and Lee witnessed the signing of an agreement between Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Boeing for SIA to purchase 39 Boeing aircraft worth 13.8 billion U.S. dollars.

The two leaders also held meetings to discuss further cooperation on economic, trade and defense issues, according to a statement released by the White House.

Trump's trip to Asia is slated for Nov. 3 to 14, during which he will attend a meeting of leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies in Vietnam. He will also join gatherings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Philippines.
An apparent crude attempt to alter photographs of a meeting between Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Monday in Kabul has set the Internet abuzz with questions.

A close inspection by The New York Times found significant discrepancies in the photographs that may be explained by an effort to use image-manipulation software to doctor at least one of the images.

Both the photograph released by the U.S. and the one provided by Afghanistan depict Tillerson and Ghani seated at the front of a windowless room, flanked by their delegations.

However, the image released by Afghanistan does not include either the military-style digital clock or the large fire alarm that appear directly above Tillerson and Ghani in the photograph produced by the U.S. government, The Times reported. And in the Afghan photograph, the room is much more brightly lit.

According to an image expert cited by the Times, there is no question the Afghan photo was altered. The giveaway, the expert told The Times, is that whoever apparently doctored the Afghan image did not entirely remove the power cord that led to the clock and fire alarm in the U.S. photograph.

The question remains: Why would Afghanistans government manipulate a routine photograph of a visiting dignitary?

After Tillersons meeting with Ghani on Monday, the American Embassy and Ghanis office released a statement claiming that the two men had met in Kabul. But the Times noted that the meeting actually occurred at Bagram, the U.S. military base more than thirty miles from Afghanistans capital.

Removing the military-style clock and large fire alarm might have been an attempt by Afghanistans government to conceal the meetings location. By claiming that Tillerson and Ghani were in Kabul and not a fortified military base, the Afghan government can project strength and advance a positive narrative about the country's security.

Neither Ghani nor Tillersons office has provided an explanation for the discrepancy in the images, or why the American Embassy signed off on the statement claiming the meeting was in Kabul.
As federal investigators continue to look into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, prosecutors are also probing an Obama-era sale of a uranium mining company.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions last year directed federal prosecutors to look into the sale of Uranium One to a Russian company  a transaction that President Trump has called the real Russia story.

The Hill reported that Russian officials engaged in a racketeering scheme to further its energy goals in the U.S. And an FBI informant recently told congressional committees that Russia paid millions to a U.S. lobbying firm in an effort to influence then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to make sure the deal was successful.

What was the Uranium One deal?

In 2013, Rosatom, backed by the Russian state, acquired a Canadian uranium mining company, now called Uranium One, which has assets in the U.S. Uranium is a key material for making nuclear weapons.

Through the deal, Russia is able to own about 20 percent of U.S. uranium production capacity. However, Colin Chilcoat, an energy affairs specialist who has written extensively about Russia's energy deals, said that the company only extracts about 11 percent of uranium in the U.S.

The deal also doesnt allow for that uranium to be exported at all, Chilcoat told Fox News. Its not like its leaving the U.S. or somehow finding its way to more insidious players.

The agreement was approved by nine government agencies with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an inter-agency group that reviews how certain foreign investments can impact national security. The State Department under Clinton was one of those agencies, though Clinton told WMUR-TV in 2015 that she was not personally involved in the agreement.

Why is it controversial?

Some investors reportedly donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Former President Bill Clinton also received a $500,000 speaking fee in Russia and reportedly met with Vladimir Putin around the time of the deal, Republicans, who are largely critical of the deal, have said.

The FBI had looked into the agreement and uncovered that some Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in nefarious dealings, which included extortion, bribery and kickbacks, The Hill reported. Evidence of wrongdoing by Vadim Mikerin, the Russian official overseeing Putins nuclear expansion in the U.S. who was eventually sentenced to prison, was discovered by the FBI before the deal was approved, according to The Hill.

Author Peter Schweizer  who wrote about the deal in his 2015 book Clinton Cash  told Fox News that there is no evidence that the people involved with approving the agreement knew that the FBI had an ongoing investigation into it.

But White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox News if anyone colluded for a foreign government in [the 2016] election, it was the Clinton campaign [and] the Democrats.

What did the informant reveal?

Douglas Campbell, the FBI informant, alleged that Moscow paid millions of dollars to a lobbying firm to help Bill Clintons charities in order to influence Hillary Clinton, who was then former President Barack Obamas secretary of state.

Campbell made the claims in a 10-page statement given to the Senate Judiciary Committee, House Intelligence Committee and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Campbell said Russian nuclear officials told me at various times that they expected APCO to apply a portion of the $3 million annual lobbying fee it was receiving from the Russians to provide in-kind support for the Clintons Global Initiative.

"Your real Russia story is uranium."  President Donald Trump

The contract called for four payments of $750,000 over twelve months, Campbell said in the statement. APCO was expected to give assistance free of charge to the Clinton Global Initiative as part of their effort to create a favorable environment to ensure the Obama administration made affirmative decisions on everything from Uranium One to the US-Russia Civilian Nuclear Cooperation agreement.

APCO Worldwide is a global public affairs consulting agency. In a statement to Fox News, APCO said Campbells allegations are false and unfounded.

The key issues at stake in this investigation are all about intent and knowledge: was there an intent to influence official business, and, if so, did the recipient take the money in exchange for taking official action, Jamil Jaffer, a former counsel in the Justice Department and the director of the National Security Law and Policy Program at George Mason Universitys Antonin Scalia Law School, told Fox News.

But Jaffer said the credibility of the so-called informant will also come into play.

Was this a foreign agent or criminal who turned? Was this a private individual the FBI placed inside [the deal]? Was this a government employee? All these factors, plus the level of the informants access to relevant information, will make a big difference here, Jaffer said.

But what does this deal have to do with the Russia investigation?

Multiple congressional committees, as well as the Justice Department, are looking into possible Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election  and ties between Russians and Trumps campaign.

"That's your real Russia story. Not a story where they talk about collusion and there was none. It was a hoax. Your real Russia story is uranium," Trump has said.

Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading the probe into alleged Russian interference in the election, was the head of the FBI when it investigated Rosatom officials extortion and corruption.

And the investigation was led by then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, The Hill reported. Rosenstein is now the deputy attorney general; McCabe, until last month, was the deputy director of the FBI.

Mueller's investigators in the Russia probe report to Rosenstein.

The special prosecutors instructed by the Justice Department to investigate certain issues pertaining to the Uranium One deal will also report to Rosenstein and Sessions, according to a letter obtained by Fox News.

Congressional committees are looking into whether Mueller informed the Obama administration, particularly those tasked with approving the Uranium One deal, prior to CFIUS approval.

In her attempt to discredit reports of the controversy surrounding the Uranium One deal, Clinton said Trump and his allies, are diverting from the investigation.

The closer the investigation about real Russian ties between Trump associates and real Russians  the more they want to just throw mud on the wall, she said. Im their favorite target, me and President Obama.

Fox News' Brooke Singman, John Roberts and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President Trump's criticism of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has become a factor in the soldier's sentencing as a military judge weighs the president's impact on public perception of military justice.

Army Col. Jeffery R. Nance, the judge deciding Bergdahl's punishment for walking off his post, heard defense arguments Monday that Trump recently reaffirmed his scathing criticism and is preventing a fair sentencing hearing.

While campaigning, Trump repeatedly called Bergdahl a "traitor" who deserved harsh punishment such as being shot. Nance previously ruled those comments were "disturbing" but didn't amount to unlawful command influence and noted the statements were made before Trump became commander in chief.

But last week Trump addressed his past comments when asked about them at a news conference. He replied that he couldn't say anything more about the case, "but I think people have heard my comments in the past." That, the defense said, shows he harbors the same views now that he commands the military.

Prosecutors argued Trump's comments didn't reaffirm his campaign-trail criticism and were narrowly focused on answering a reporter.

Nance said he was having a "hard time" with prosecutors' interpretation, noting public confidence in military courts was something he had to consider.

Nance said his interpretation was that Trump was essentially saying: "I shouldn't comment on that, but I think everyone knows what I think on Bowe Bergdahl."

Bergdahl faces a maximum sentence of life in prison after pleading guilty last week to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Nance allowed the attorneys to question him about whether he was swayed by Trump's comments, and responded that he would be fair.

"I don't have any doubt whatsoever that I can be fair and impartial in the sentencing in this matter," Nance said.

Former Army lawyer Eric Carpenter said the judge has to worry not only about whether Trump has directly influenced the case, but also what the public thinks under a military justice concept called apparent unlawful command influence. Nance's remarks Monday should resolve the question of whether Trump directly swayed the court, but the judge could still make concessions to the defense to address these concerns, Carpenter said.

"It gives you a clue that he's concerned about public appearance, and he can grant pretty significant remedies just to preserve the public's faith in the system," said Carpenter, who teaches law at Florida International University.

Carpenter doubts the judge would dismiss the case outright, but said Nance could limit Bergdahl's punishment because of Trump.

The White House issued a statement Friday that any military justice case must be "resolved on its own facts." White House representatives didn't respond to an email seeking comment Monday.

Bergahl's sentencing, set to begin Monday, has been delayed until Wednesday because one of the defense attorneys wasn't available until then, the judge said.

Bergdahl, 31, pleaded guilty last week. Prosecutors made no deal to cap his punishment, so the judge has wide leeway to decide his sentence. Several more days of testimony are expected.

Nance is expected to weigh factors including Bergdahl's willingness to admit guilt, his five years of captivity by Taliban allies, and serious wounds suffered by soldiers and a Navy SEAL who searched for him.

Bergdahl, from Hailey, Idaho, was captured soon after walking off his remote post in 2009. He has said he was caged, kept in darkness and beaten, and tried to escape more than a dozen times before President Obama brought Bergdahl home in 2014 in a swap for five Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
A non-partisan federal watchdog released a report Monday that said climate change is already costing taxpayers billions each year and warns that the amount is likely to increase in the future.

A Government Accountability Office report said the federal government has spent more than $350 billion over the last decade on disaster assistance programs and losses from flood and crop insurance. That tally does not include the massive toll from this years three major hurricanes and wildfires, expected to be among the most costly in the nations history.

The report predicts these costs will only grow in the future, potentially reaching a budget busting $35 billion a year by 2050. The report says the federal government doesnt effectively plan for these recurring costs, classifying the financial exposure from climate-related costs as high risk.

The federal government has not undertaken strategic government-wide planning to manage climate risks by using information on the potential economic effects of climate change to identify significant risks and craft appropriate federal responses, the study said. By using such information, the federal government could take the initial step in establishing government-wide priorities to manage such risks.

President Trump has called climate change a hoax, announcing his intent to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accords and revoke Obama-era initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Trump has also appointed officials such as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, all of whom question the scientific consensus that carbon released into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of global warming.

GAO undertook the study following a request from Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

Collins said that her state is inextricably linked to the environment. We are experiencing a real change in the sea life, which has serious implications for the livelihoods of many people across our state, including those who work in our iconic lobster industry.

The reports authors reviewed 30 government and academic studies examining the national and regional impacts of climate change. They also interviewed 28 experts familiar with the strengths and limitations of the studies, which rely on future projections of climate impacts to estimate likely costs.

The report says the fiscal impacts of climate change are likely to vary widely by region. The Southeast is at increased risk because of coastal property that could be swamped by storm surge and sea level rise. The Northeast is also under threat from storm surge and sea level rise, though not as much as the Southeast.

The Midwest and Great Plains are susceptible to decreased crop yields, the report said. The west is expected to see increased drought, wildfires and deadly heatwaves.

Advance copies were provided to the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency, which provided no official comments for inclusion in the GAO report.

Requests for comment from The Associated Press also received no response on Monday.

Earlier this month Trump nominated Kathleen Hartnett White of Texas to serve as his top environmental adviser at the White House. She has credited the fossil fuel industry with vastly improved living conditions across the world and likened the work of mainstream climate scientists to the dogmatic claims of ideologues and clerics.

White, who works at a conservative think tank that has received funding from fossil-fuel companies, holds academic degrees in East Asian studies and comparative literature.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
Connecticut's capital of Hartford is in the midst of a financial meltdown as the city considers defaulting on its debt as early as next month, a crisis fueled in large part by union promises and other decisions dating back years.

While the capital is hoping a state bailout can help, Moodys Investors Services last week predicted Hartford will likely move to default by November -- and soon could run up deficits reaching $80 million per year without a change in strategy, due to the cost of pensions, benefits and debt service.

Moody's downgraded Hartford's bond rating into "junk" territory in October 2016. The investor service further downgraded the city's rating into that area over the last year, including one downgrade just last month.The city has more than $500 million in outstanding debt.

The cash crunch is years in the making, and the latest example of local and state governments feeling the pinch from past political promises, including salary increases and benefits for government workers.

But Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin claims the city is now seeking "unprecedented" concessions from the unions and slashing personnel and services in a bid to right the ship.

Since taking office last year, Ive made clear that Im not willing to kick the can or raise taxes any higher, because its time for us to fix the underlying problem, not fake it to buy some timeand the Moodys report reinforces why thats so important, Bronin told Fox News.

HIGH-TAX CONNECTICUT FACING NEW BUDGET MESS

Bronin, a Democrat, said the city has a structural problem that is rooted in high fixed costs and a property tax structure that just doesnt work. He cited the city's high poverty rate and various property tax exemptions.

Hartford has been weighing the bankruptcy option since this past summer. Making matters worse, the city recently lost a major corporation that had called the states capital home since 1853Aetna Inc.

The insurance giant crucial to Hartfords economy announced this summer it would move its headquarters to New York City. The state also lost another critical corporation during Democratic Gov. Dannell Malloys second term  General Electric. Both companies cited the state's high taxes.

AETNA TO MOVE HEADQUARTERS TO NEW YORK

The mayors office told Fox News that addressing the problem would require either a new partnership with the state government or a dramatic reduction in fixed costs, including debt and pension liabilities.

No matter whats in the state budget this year, any truly sustainable solution is going to require the participation of all of our stakeholders, including labor and bondholdersand that means were going to have a lot of tough, important work left to do, Bronin told Fox News.

But the state of Connecticut has financial problems of its own. The state was downgraded by S&P Global Ratings, Moodys and Fitch this summer and is considered the third worst-rated state in the nation. As of this summer, Connecticuts deficit reached $5 billion.

According to an analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the state only has about $240 million in its rainy day fund  only five states have a smaller cushion.

"This warning by Moody's is yet another clarion call that we need an adopted budget and we need it now, Malloys Communications Director Meg Green told Fox News, referring to Hartfords fiscal situation. Governor Malloy has presented the General Assembly with multiple budgets that are balanced reasonably and responsibly  and could help mitigate the harm to our cities of continuing without a budget.

According to the Hartford Courant, Bronin has requested $40 million from the state legislature to aid the city.

Nicholas Lehman, a Moodys analyst who authored the report, said that while the money would be welcome in the short term, more needs to be done to bring the city onto firmer fiscal footing.

If they provide funding around $40 million, what the mayor requested, that should provide short term relief, Lehman told the Courant. ... That money alone, though, would not be enough for a long term solution.

And vice president of communications for Moody's public finance group, David Jacobson, told Fox News the "X factor" is in the state's budget.

"If it passes soon and has enough aid to get Hartford through this fiscal year, that could remove the immediate default and bankruptcy threat but wouldnt fix the citys long-term structural issues," Jacobson told Fox News.

After 116 days of negotiations and one bipartisan budget plan that was vetoed by the governor, the General Assembly drafted another bipartisan budget plan late Monday night and is set to bring the latest version of the plan to a vote at the end of this week.

No one wants the city of Hartford to fail, spokesman for the Connecticut House Republicans Pat ONeil told Fox News. The avoidance of bankruptcy is a prime concern for all. Clearly there have been long-term system problems with its finances, and there needs to be greater accountability.

ONeil told Fox News there is a Republican caucus set for Tuesday afternoon to iron out details of a potential aid package proposal for the capital city.

But Green warned that the General Assembly cannot continue to pretend that inaction is inconsequential."
House Republicans on Tuesday launched new probes into several Obama-era controversies, covering both the Justice Departments 2016 handling of the Clinton email case and the administrations 2010 approval for the sale of a mining company that gave the Russians partial control over American uranium reserves.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., announced his committee and the House Oversight Committee will investigate the so-called Uranium One deal.

Were not going to jump to any conclusions, but were going to try and get the facts, Nunes said.

Separately, the House oversight and judiciary committees announced a joint investigation into the Justice Department and FBIs handling of the Clinton email probe.

"Decisions made by the Department of Justice in 2016 have led to a host of outstanding questions that must be answered, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., said in a statement.

TABLES TURNED AS DEMS FACE RUSSIA CONTROVERSIES?

Both controversies have returned to the headlines in recent weeks. The uranium deal, which was covered extensively in 2015, concerns the 2010 approval of the sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to Russias Rosatom nuclear company. The U.S. was involved because the sale gave the Russians control of part of the uranium supply in the U.S.

The Hill reported, however, that the FBI had evidence as early as 2009 that Russian operatives used bribes, kickbacks and other dirty tactics to expand Moscows atomic energy footprint in the U.S., related to a subsidiary of the same Russia firm. Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill quickly started asking questions about how the deal was approved the following year by an inter-agency committee.

Nunes said Tuesday the main question for Hill investigators will be whether there was an FBI probe at the time and if so, why was Congress not informed of this matter.

Its important that we find out why that deal went through, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said.

Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., threatened to use subpoena power to get access to a former FBI informant in the case who apparently has not yet been released from a nondisclosure agreement.

U.S. government officials tell Fox News that senior Justice Department officials are in deliberations over providing the FBI informant to Congress. The officials met Tuesday to work on the parameters under which the informant would be allowed to testify.

While scrutinizing the 2010 approval, Republican lawmakers have also revived questions that first surfaced in 2015 about payments to both Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation from interested parties.

Addressing the matter Monday on C-SPAN, Hillary Clinton said its the same baloney theyve been peddling for years, and theres been no credible evidence by anyone. In fact, its been debunked repeatedly and will continue to be debunked.

The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said these issues are just part of the distraction and diversion from the investigation into Russian meddling and possible coordination with Trump associates in last years election.

The closer the investigation about real Russian ties between Trump associates and real Russians  the more they want to just throw mud on the wall, Clinton said.

As for the separate probe of the handling of the Clinton email case, Goodlatte and Gowdy said the investigation would cover:

The FBIs decision to publicly announce the Clinton email investigation but not announce the probe of Trump campaign associates

The decision to notify Congress that the bureau was revisiting the email probe in the fall of 2016

The decision to appropriate full decision making in respect to charging or not charging Secretary Clinton to the FBI rather than the DOJ

The FBIs timeline in respect to charging decisions

Goodlatte and Gowdy said: "The Committees will review these decisions and others to better understand the reasoning behind how certain conclusions were drawn.

The circumstances surrounding former FBI Director James Comeys public decision not to pursue charges against Clinton have come under renewed scrutiny in recent months, following allegations that Comey drafted an exoneration statement for Clinton months before she and other key witnesses were interviewed.

The FBI last week released emails appearing to prove that Comey began drafting a memo regarding his July 2016 statement as early as May. The contents of the emails were largely unclear as nearly all of it was redacted. The now-public records show the email titled Midyear Exam --- UNCLASSIFIED was sent by Comey on May 2, 2016, to Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, general counsel James Baker and chief of staff and senior counselor James Rybicki.

On May 16, a response email from Rybicki, said, Please send me any comments on this statement so we may roll into a master doc for discussion with the Director at a future date. Thanks, Jim.

The existence of the documents was first brought to light by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., also a member of the committee, after they reviewed transcripts of interviews with top Comey aides who alluded to the emails existence.

The issue has raised questions about Comeys past explanations for his decision to go public in the case.

In a June hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey was asked whether his decision to announce the results of the investigation was influenced by then-Attorney General Loretta Lynchs infamous meeting days earlier on an Arizona tarmac with former President Bill Clinton.

Yes, in an ultimately conclusive way, that was the thing that capped it for me  that I had to do something separately to protect the credibility of the investigation, Comey said.

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing in September 2016, Comey also testified that he made the decision not to recommend criminal charges after the FBI interviewed Clinton.

The potential conflicts revived interests among Clintons critics in revisiting aspects of the case. Last month, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee formally renewed their call for a second special counsel to probe 2016 controversies involving Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration.

Congressional Democrats on Tuesday responded to the new probes by accusing Republicans of trying to distract from their lack  of oversight regarding the Russia threat.

This new investigation is a massive diversion to distract from the lack of Republican oversight of the Trump Administration and the national security threat that Russia poses, Reps. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., and John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., the top Democrats on the oversight and judiciary committees, respectively, said in a statement. The Russian government continues to represent a clear and present threat to the United States and our democratic system, and we are the targets of near-constant cyberattacks by foreign adversaries. Yet House Republicans have taken no concrete steps to secure our next election. Apparently, House Republicans are more concerned about Jim Comey than Vladimir Putin.

For its part, the Justice Department released a statement vowing to fully cooperate with this important Congressional investigation.

Fox News Judson Berger, Chad Pergram, Catherine Herridge and Jake Gibson contributed to this report.
As President Trump headed to Capitol Hill Tuesday to get lawmakers on board with his tax plan, at least one GOP senator was likely to keep his distance.

Trump and Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., have publicly hurled personal insults at one another for several months. Corker has called the White House an adult day care center, and Trump opined that Corker couldnt get elected dog catcher.

Corker still attended Tuesday's lunch with Trump and Senate Republicans to discuss tax reform. But Trump and Corker, who is not running for re-election next year, most likely skipped the hugs and handshakes.

Here is a look at the Trump versus Corker tiff.

Charlottesville fallout

Despite a cozy friendship during the presidential campaign, the relationship between Corker and Trump publicly soured after the presidents response to the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August. Trump initially blamed both sides  the white nationalists and the counter-protesters  for violent clashes.

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, Corker told reporters.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders initially called Corkers remarks ridiculous and an outrageous claim. Trump eventually responded on Twitter.

Strange statement by Bob Corker considering that he is constantly asking me whether or not he should run again in 18, Trump tweeted on Aug. 25. Tennessee not happy!

TRUMPS FEUDS WITH REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS, FROM RAND PAUL TO LINDSEY GRAHAM

At the time, Corker had not yet announced that he wouldnt run for reelection.

Corker eventually told NBC News that he stood by what he said at the time. Corker added that he discussed the comments with Trump for about five minutes in what Corker described as a kind of humorous conversation.

Adult day care center

About a week after Corker said he had a humorous conversation with Trump about his public rebuke in August, Trump lambasted the outgoing senator on Twitter.

Senator Bob Corker begged me to endorse him for re-election in Tennessee. I said NO and he dropped out (said he could not win without my endorsement). He also wanted to be Secretary of State, Trump said. I said NO THANKS. He is also largely responsible for the horrendous Iran Deal!

Hence, I would fully expect Corker to be a negative voice and stand in the way of our great agenda. Didnt have the guts to run! Trump continued. Bob Corker gave us the Iran Deal, & that's about it. We need HealthCare, we need Tax Cuts/Reform, we need people that can get the job done!

Corker responded with his own tweet.

Its a shame the White House has become an adult day care center, Corker said. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.

Corkers nickname is born

Corker went after Trump in a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times, in which he said Trump was treating the presidency like a reality show and warned that the president could be putting the U.S. on the path to World War III.

He concerns me. He would have to concern anyone who cares about our nation, Corker said.

Two days later, Trump dubbed the senator Liddle Bob Corker as he accused the newspaper of recording the interview with Corker without his knowledge.

The Failing [New York Times] set Liddle Bob Corker up by recording his conversation. Was made to sound a fool, and thats what I am dealing with! Trump tweeted.

INSIDE THE TRUMP AND MCCONNELL FEUD, FROM HEALTH CARE TO THE BUDGET

The New York Times released audio of the interview in which Corker says he knows his aides are recording the interview and hoped the reporters were as well.

Corker couldnt get elected dog catcher

The brouhaha escalated Tuesday morning when Corker blasted the president on several morning shows, and Trump took his criticisms of the senator to Twitter.

Corker said on NBC's "Today" show that the Republican-led Congress should set the course on taxes after Trump shot down at least one GOP idea on retirement plans on Monday.

Asked if Trump should leave well enough alone, Corker said, "I think that's the best way for us to have success."

TRUMP RIPS CORKER FOR SUGGESTING WHITE HOUSE STEP ASIDE ON TAX REFORM

Corker also told ABC that when it comes to foreign policy, he wished Trump would leave it to the professionals for a while and see if we can do something thats constructive for our country, the region and the world.

Bob Corker, who helped President [Obama] give us the bad Iran Deal & couldnt get elected dog catch in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts, Trump responded on Twitter. Corker dropped out of the race in Tennessee when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!

Isnt it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldnt get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus! Trump added.

Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done. He doesnt have a clue as the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us, Trump continued. People like liddle Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!

Corker, again, responded with a single tweet.

Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president, he said, using the hashtag #AlertTheDaycareStaff in an apparent throwback to his earlier tweet.

Corker wouldnt support Trump again

After Trumps tweetstorm, Corker told reporters that Trump is utterly untruthful as he avoided blatantly calling the president a liar.

He also told Fox News that theres no question that Trump is debasing the country and said his political model  is to divide.

And when asked by CNN if he would support Trumps presidential campaign again, Corker said, Lets just put it this way, I would not do that again.

Love fest

Trump continued to assail the senator on Twitter Wednesday morning as he contended that both Corker and Sen. Jeff Flake  who announced a day prior that he would also not seek reelection  had zero chance of being elected in their prospective states again.

The reason Flake and Corker dropped out of the Senate race is very simple, they had zero chance of being elected, Trump tweeted. Now act so hurt [and] wounded!

Trump also said his meeting with GOP senators to discuss tax reform was a love fest with standing ovations and great ideas for USA  aside from Flake and Corker.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The congressional investigations into possible collusion between the Trump team and Russia seem to be going nowhere fast.

The Hill committees have been at it for many months now and havent come up with much of anything.

Things have reached the point where the New York Times, in an above-the-fold piece yesterday, is clearly signaling that the investigators are coming up empty-handed.

But while the Times offers numerous reasons why the probes are stalled, there is no mention of another possible explanation: that there isnt much there to find.

Now I dont know exactly what the committees have found. And I dont know what Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors have found. People like Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort appear to have problems, and just yesterday came an NBC report that the special counsel is investigating Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta. (His firm says its fully cooperating.)

But potential charges about improper payments and lobbying arent the same as the core question of whether Trump aides and associates colluded with Moscow to influence the election. The one instance we know about, the meeting with Russian lawyers arranged by Donald Trump Jr., didnt lead to anything. And the White House by all indications is cooperating with Mueller.

Again, I draw no premature conclusions. But administration officials, addressing what the president calls a witch hunt, have privately wondered what the media will do if it turns out theres no there there.

The Times piece says the Hill investigations suffer from some common maladies:

All three committees looking into Russian interference  one in the House, two in the Senate  have run into problems, from insufficient staffing to fights over when the committees should wrap up their investigations. The Senate Judiciary Committees inquiry has barely started, delayed in part by negotiations over the scope of the investigation. Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, while maintaining bipartisan comity, have sought to tamp down expectations about what they might find.

Could the media be tamping down expectations as well?

Nine months into the Trump administration, the Times says, any notion that Capitol Hill would provide a comprehensive, authoritative and bipartisan accounting of the extraordinary efforts of a hostile power to disrupt American democracy appears to be dwindling.

The story has an opening anecdote about Jared Kushner offering to stay beyond his allotted time when questioned by the House Intel committee. Republican congressman Trey Gowdy said he was in a no-win situation: If you leave now, Democrats will say you did not answer all the questions. If you stay, they will keep you here all week.

Congressional investigations are often stymied by partisan politics, as the presidents party plays defense and the opposition party plays attack dog.

But theres also the possibility of hitting a dry hole.

If theres not something there, Mark Warner, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intel panel, said recently, Ill be the first to acknowledge that.
Although specifics werent provided, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un joined his counterpart to the south in promising to rid the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons.

The vow to create a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula through complete denuclearization came during the Koreas historic summit between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in late April, and just before a much-anticipated meeting between Kim and U.S. President Trump.

I feel like Im firing a flare at the starting line in the moment of (the two Koreas) writing a new history in North-South relations, peace and prosperity, Kim told Moon.

Kim is the first known member of his familys dynasty to set foot on South Korean soil since 1953. There, at least in front of cameras, his rhetoric drastically changed since he engaged in a war of words with Trump throughout the first year of the U.S. presidents time in the White House. (Kim called Trump a dotard; Trump called the North Korean leader short and fat.)

Since Kim took over North Korea in 2011, the regime rapidly expanded and tested its missile arsenal with weapons capable of striking the U.S. mainland. His end goal, he once said, was to "establish the equilibrium of real force with the U.S. and make the U.S. rulers dare not talk about military options for the North.

Read on for a brief look at how North Koreas nuclear weapons program has grown throughout the regimes in the past century.

Kim Il Sung, leader from 1948-1994

Kim Il Sung can be credited with founding North Korea and propelling the nations nuclear program forward  but he did not live to see his country conduct its first nuclear test.

It was under the first Kim that North Korea began to build up its nuclear reactors. And it was under his leadership that the nation began the Korean War  surely a catalyst that led the leader to believe his nation needed nuclear weapons, Dr. Sung-Yoon Lee, the Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, told Fox News in an interview.

TRUMPS COMMENTS ON NORTH KOREA, FROM FIRE AND FURY TO BLAMING CHINA

The seeds of nuclear aspirations were sown in the Korean War, Lee said.

The Korean War pitted North Korea and its ally China  two nations that did not have nuclear capabilities at the time  against a nuclear-armed U.S., making it clear to the first Kim that nuclear weapons are very powerful, a powerful deterrent, Lee said.

Kim Jong Il, leader from 1994-2011

When the second leader of the Kim dynasty died in 2011, Kim Jong Il was remembered as the dictator who turned North Korea into a nuclear state, in his New York Times obituary.

And its Kim Jong Il that really gets the credit of taking the country down the nuclear path," Lee said.

In the beginning of his reign  he was North Koreas supreme leader from 1994 to 2011  North Korea denied that it had a nuclear weapons program.

TIMELINE OF NORTH KOREAN MISSILE LAUNCHES IN 2017

However, in 2003, Pyongyang announced that North Korea was withdrawing from the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which barred the nation from making nuclear weapons.

By 2005, North Korea confirmed that it had its own nuclear weapons. It tested its first nuclear device in 2006.

Kim Jong Un, leader from 2011-present

Kim Jong Un is credited with accelerating North Koreas push for nuclear weapons, and under the Obama administration, many of the worlds attitudes toward the East Asian nations nuclear capabilities became less blase than in the past, Lee said.

Kim Jong Un also crossed a major threshold for his country in the summer of 2017  the ability to credibly threaten the U.S. with an intercontinental ballistic missile.

In 2017, North Korea successfully tested its longest-ever flight of a ballistic missile. The intermediate-range weapon traveled 3,700 miles and passed over Japan before it landed in the Pacific. The country also tested its most powerful nuclear test to date this year.

After the missile test, Kim Jong Un said North Korea is nearing equilibrium with the U.S. in terms of its military force.

The increasingly frequent and aggressive tests added to outside fears that North Korea is closer than ever to building a military arsenal that could viably target the mainland of the U.S. or its allies in Asia.

Calling Kim Jong Un Rocket Man, Trump said in 2017 the dictator is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.

The United States has great strength and patience, Trump said. But if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea.

But 2018 brought a dramatic turn of events after he declared in a stark New Years address that a nuclear launch button is always on my table. Kim Jong Un offered to meet with Trump and became the first known member of his familys dynasty to set foot in South Korea since 1953. At the historic summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, both leaders pushed for peace and would work toward a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

However, neither leader provided any specific measures or seemed to forge a potential breakthrough on the issue that has captivated and terrified many, especially since last year.

Before Trump canceled a much-anticipated meeting with Kim Jong Un, North Korea said it demolished what it claimed to be its nuclear test site, setting off several explosions over the course of a few hours in the presence of foreign journalists.

The planned closing of the Punggye-ri site was previously announced, but it's unclear if another facility could be used to continue the country's nuclear weapons program. Yongbyon nuclear complex, located about 64 miles north of Pyongyang, has a new reactor that could produce weapons-grade plutonium. Pyongyang insists is being used to produce electricity for its citizens.

Trump ultimately rejected Kim Jong Un's invitation to a June meeting in Singapore, citing North Korea's "open hostility."

Fox News Edmund DeMarche, Ryan Gaydos and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The National Park Service told the Washington Free Beacon it is no longer providing funding for a controversial project "honoring the legacy" of the Black Panther Party after outrage that the agency would spend taxpayer dollars to memorialize a group that murdered a park ranger in the 1970s.

The Free Beacon revealed last month that the Park Service gave roughly $100,000 to the University of California, Berkeley for a research project on the Marxist extremist group to "memorialize a history that brought meaning to lives far beyond the San Francisco Bay Area."

"Committed to truthfully honoring the legacy of [Black Panther Party] BPP activists and the San Francisco Bay Area communities they served, the project seeks to document the lives of activists and elders and the landscapes that shaped the movement," the National Park Service stated in the grant awarded for the project.

A captain in the Black Panther Party murdered National Park Service ranger Kenneth Patrick while he was on patrol near San Francisco in 1973. Patrick was shot three times by Veronza Leon Curtis Bowers Jr., who is currently serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. Patrick left behind a widow and three children.

The Fraternal Order of Police, the largest organization of sworn law enforcement officers with over 330,000 members, sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week expressing "outrage and shock" that the National Park Service would fund a project honoring the legacy of the Black Panther Party.

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Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Chang Wanquan said on Monday that China is willing to work closely with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)

Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Chang Wanquan attends the 7th ASEAN-China Defense Ministers Informal Meeting held in Pampanga Province, the Philippines, on Oct. 23, 2017.[Photo/mod.gov.cn]

Chang, who is attending the 11th ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting (ADMM) and the 4th ADMM-Plus meeting, said China and ASEAN countries are bonded by a shared future.

"China will stick to the principles of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness in the cooperation with our neighbors, and stand for a concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security in Asia," Chang told his ASEAN counterparts.

Chang said China will actively promote the multi-field and multi-level cooperation with ASEAN countries, including joint sea drills and stronger cooperation in counter-terrorism.

"China is ready to provide a safe environment for the cooperation of Belt And Road Initiative and make contributions to further strengthen ties with ASEAN countries to build a community with shared future," Chang said, adding China is pushing for a hotline on defense cooperation with ASEAN.

The ASEAN defense ministers lauded China's contributions to the regional peace and stability.

They also expressed their willingness to strengthen strategic communication and enhance defense cooperation with China. They hoped to cope with difficulties and challenges so as to safeguard regional development and prosperity together with China.
A protester who managed to infiltrate a group of reporters shouted "treason" at President Trump and threw mini-Russian flags at him as the president arrived for a meeting Tuesday with Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill.

The startling scene played out in full view of the cameras as Trump walked down the Capitol halls with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Trump is treason! a man shouted from an area designated for the press.

He was identified as Americans Take Actions Ryan Clayton. Capitol Police later announced that Clayton was arrested and charged with unlawful conduct.

Fox News has learned that Clayton used an outdated visitors pass to enter the Capitol through a tunnel connecting the Rayburn House Office building.

After clearing the security checkpoint, he made his way outside the Senate chamber, where he blended in with credentialed congressional reporters and stood just feet away from Trump.

This was a failure on multiple levels, said one senior source with knowledge of the security breach. There is egg on peoples faces.

Authorities are now reviewing security camera footage to determine the path Clayton took to surpass security and enter the second floor by the Senate chamber. There could be discipline for the officers who didnt detect the protester, Fox News has learned.

Some heads will roll, added another security source.



Clayton is known for expressing his anti-Trump views by tossing Russia flags. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, he spearheaded the distribution of over 1,000 Russian flags with Trump's name printed across the middle.

Americans Take Action is anti-Trump, with tabs on its website dedicated to his impeachment, Trump Puppets and options to Get Russian Trump Flags.

Clayton spoke with congressional security officials after the incident.

The disruption was reminiscent of a 2008 joint-press conference with then-President George W. Bush and then-Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, where an Iraqi television reporter hurled both of his shoes at Bush.

Bush dodged both shoes, and later joked at the incident, saying that all he could report was that the shoes were a size 10.

Fox News' Brooke Singman, Chad Pergram, Jason Donner and Ben Florance contributed to this report.


After months of batting back accusations of collusion with Moscow in last years presidential campaign, Republicans say Democrats are the ones who now have some explaining to do as fresh developments raise questions about their own Russia connections.

First came reports that the FBI knew about a Russian bribery plot tied to nuclear energy interests in the U.S. well before the Obama administration OKd a mining company sale to a Russian firm, giving it partial control over American uranium reserves.

Then came a report that Robert Muellers Russia investigation is looking at the dealings of Tony Podesta, a powerful Democratic lobbyist and the brother of former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Meanwhile, Fusion GPS, the firm behind the controversial anti-Trump dossier, has gone to court to block Congress from getting its bank records after its representatives pleaded the Fifth in a Capitol Hill appearance last week.

Hillary Clinton on Monday brushed off the revival of the uranium deal controversy as baloney meant to distract from GOP controversies.

But Republicans beg to differ.

Now its the Democrats who have some explaining to do, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement overnight. I hope they will cooperate with the investigation, be forthcoming with the American people and I expect the media to cover these new developments with the same breathless intensity that they have given to this investigation since day one.

NBC News first reported early Monday that Tony Podesta and The Podesta Group are now subjects in the special counsels Russia investigation, following inquiries regarding former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manaforts finances.

REPORT: MUELLER PROBE EXPANDS TO TONY PODESTA'S DEALINGS

According to Mondays NBC News report, Muellers team started looking into a Manafort-involved PR campaign for a pro-Ukraine nonprofit reportedly backed by a pro-Russia party; the Podesta Group reportedly was one of many firms that worked on the campaign. According to the report, Muellers investigators have since launched a criminal inquiry into whether the company violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires people in the U.S. who lobby on behalf of foreign entities to register as foreign agents and disclose their work.

Podesta's firm eventually filed a registration for the work, after the media reported on the business and Congress started asking questions. But in a statement on Monday, a spokesperson for The Podesta Group claimed the company was in compliance -- citing a series of filings dating back years -- and is fully cooperating with the special counsels office.

The Podesta Group fully disclosed its representation of the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECFMU), and complied with FARA by filing under the lobbying disclosure act over five years ago and within weeks of starting our work, the spokesperson said. Any insinuation to the contrary is false. The Podesta Group has fully cooperated with the Special Counsels office and taken every possible step to provide documentation that confirms compliance with the law.

Meanwhile, new details have emerged since last week on the 2010 approval of the sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to Russias Rosatom nuclear company. The U.S. was involved because the sale gave the Russians control of part of the uranium supply in the U.S.

The Hill reported, however, that the FBI had evidence as early as 2009 that Russian operatives used bribes, kickbacks and other dirty tactics to expand Moscows atomic energy footprint in the U.S., related to a subsidiary of the same Russia firm.

Several Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are now asking questions about how the deal was approved the next year by an inter-agency committee. Among them, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.  who has raised concerns about the Uranium One transaction since 2010  wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Oct. 19 that hes extremely disheartened and disturbed by reports indicating the government approved the deal despite the DOJ having evidence of corruption by Russian nuclear energy officials in the United States.

He asked for all documents disclosed by the department to the committee  of which the DOJ was a member  concerning the investigation prior to the approval.

The Hill has since reported that as Hillary Clinton began her role as secretary of state, a Russian spy posing as an accountant became close to a Democratic donor in hopes of gathering intelligence on Clintons State Department. (The spy was later arrested.) Lawmakers have also revived questions that first surfaced in 2015 about payments to both Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation from interested parties.

Addressing the matter Monday on C-SPAN, Hillary Clinton said its the same baloney theyve been peddling for years, and theres been no credible evidence by anyone. In fact, its been debunked repeatedly and will continue to be debunked.

The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said these issues are just part of the distraction and diversion from the investigation into Russian meddling and possible coordination with Trump associates in last years election.

The closer the investigation about real Russian ties between Trump associates and real Russians  the more they want to just throw mud on the wall, Clinton said.

But White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox & Friends on Tuesday that the only collusion is on the other side.

If you want to see collusion with anyone and the Russians, look no further than the Democrats. Look no further than Tony Podesta and the Clinton crew, she said.

On another front, Fusion GPS has gone to court in an attempt to block a House committee subpoena for the companys banking records.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., had issued a subpoena on Oct. 4 for those TD Bank records. But, according to documents reviewed by Fox News, Fusion is seeking a "temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction" to block the release of those records.

Fusion's filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia claimed that complying with the subpoena would "deny Plaintiff and its clients their rights to free speech and expressive association as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution."

House Republican lawyers countered Monday in their own court filing that the company is a for-profit business and not an association engaged in protected activity under the First Amendment. Plaintiffs argument is too clever by half, and an insult to the efforts of true advocacy organizations, they said.

Fusion has refused to tell congressional committees who paid for the dossier or reveal its sources. Two top officials from the political research firm invoked their Fifth Amendment right and refused to answer questions last Wednesday before the same House panel.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday promised an all-out assault on the brutal MS-13 street gang just like we took Al Capone off the streets.

Sessions said the gangs members are suspected in a series of killings in New York City's suburbs and the U.S. will use whatever laws we have to get them off the street.

The new designation directs prosecutors to pursue all legal avenues, including racketeering, gun and tax laws, to target the gang, said Sessions, a Republican former U.S. senator from Alabama.

Sessions designated the gang with Central American ties as a "priority" for the Department of Justice's Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, which has historically focused on drug trafficking and money laundering. MS-13, or La Mara Salvatrucha, is generally known for extortion and violence rather than distributing and selling narcotics.

"They leave misery, devastation and death in their wake. They threaten entire governments. They must be and will be stopped," the attorney general said, while in Philadelphia.

The gang has become a prime target of President Trump's administration amid its broader crackdown on immigration.

Members of the gang are suspected of committing several high-profile killings in New York, Maryland and Virginia. The gang's violence drew the Republican president's attention after two teenage girls was beaten and hacked to death in a suspected gang attack on Long Island.

The girls were among 22 people believed to have been killed by the gang on Long Island since the start of 2016. Most of the people arrested in those killings were in the U.S. illegally, law enforcement officials have said.

After Trump took office, he directed federal law enforcement officials to focus resources on combating transnational gangs, including MS-13. But the new designation will allow officials to target MS-13 with a "renewed vigor and a sharpened focus," said Sessions, who flew to El Salvador in July, in part to learn more about how the gang's activities there affect crime in the U.S.

MS-13 originated in Los Angeles in the 1980s, then entrenched itself in Central America when its leaders were deported.

Making a street gang like MS-13 a priority marks a shift for the drug enforcement task force, said James Trusty, who headed the Department of Justice's organized crime and gang section before he left in January.

Some MS-13 cases have drug connections, but "you'd be hard-pressed to come up with evidence that MS-13 is part of a cartel," he said. "The most common aspect of MS-13 prosecutions has been murder and witness intimidation or retaliation, not drug trafficking."

The Associated Press contributed to this report
President Trump asked Alaskas two Republican senators what they thought about reversing former President Barack Obamas 2015 executive decision changing the name of the tallest mountain in North America from Mount McKinley to Denali  and both asked him not to do it.

Thats according to Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, who revealed the story about Trumps conversation in March with him, fellow Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke about the name change.

"He looked at me and said, 'I heard that the big mountain in Alaska also had  also its name was changed by executive action. Do you want us to reverse that?'" Sullivan recalled Saturday, according to the Alaska Dispatch News.

Sullivan said he and Murkowski "jumped over the desk, we said, 'No! No. Don't want to reverse that.'" He also said he told the president that Denali is the name given to the mountain by the Athabascans more than 10,000 years ago and his wife is Athabascan.

"So he's like, 'all right, we won't do that,'" Sullivan said.

OHIO LAWMAKERS SLAM OBAMA PLANS TO RENAME MT. MCKINLEY 'DENALI'

But that was in March  months before Trump publicly tweeted that Murkowski "really let the Republicans, and our country, down" by voting against the Republican plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare. The president hasnt signaled any plans since.

But during the presidential campaign, the president vowed to reverse Obamas action on Denali.

"President Obama wants to change the name of Mt. McKinley to Denali after more than 100 years," Trump tweeted in December 2015. "Great insult to Ohio. I will change back!"

Ohioans were outraged over Obamas decision because the mountain was named for former President William McKinley, the states former governor, in 1986. He was assassinated in Buffalo, New York, in 1901.

Denali is the Athabascan word for "the high one." The Obama administration said it was renaming Mount McKinley "in recognition of the traditions of Alaska Natives."
President Trump and Sen. Bob Corker reignited their feud on Tuesday, exchanging a series of digs after the retiring Republican lawmaker ramped up his criticism of the administration and its policies.

"Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done," Trump tweeted Tuesday. "He doesn't have a clue as the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us. People like liddle' Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!"

Tuesday's war of words began when Corker, R-Tenn., the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blasted Trump on morning shows on ABC and NBC.

Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldnt get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts, Trump tweeted following those interviews. Corker dropped out of the race in Tennessee when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!

Corker fired back minutes later.

"Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff," Corker tweeted.

The dispute raised tensions just hours before the president was set to visit Capitol Hill for a working lunch with GOP senators. With tax reform on the agenda, Trump fired another warning shot later Tuesday morning:

"Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!"

Corker later told Fox News that Trump's "political model ... is to divide." Asked if he thinks Trump is "debasing" the nation," Corker said, "I don't think there's any question that's the case."

The tweets and comments extend a weeks-long feud between Trump and Corker.

Corker, who announced last month that he would not seek re-election in 2018, earlier suggested that the White House had become an "adult day care center."

I dont make comments I havent thought about, Corker said on ABCs Good Morning America Tuesday, referring back to that tweet.

TRUMP TURNS ON GOP SEN. CORKER OVER 'COMPETENCE' COMMENT

Corker also told Good Morning America Tuesday that he is not satisfied with Trumps presidency or his treatment of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

TRUMP CALLS 'LIDDLE' BOB CORKER A 'FOOL' OVER NYT INTERVIEW

When you look at the fact that weve got this issue in North Korea and the president continues to kneecap his diplomatic representative, the secretary of state, and really move him away from successful diplomatic negotiations with China, which is key to this, youre taking us on a path to combat, Corker said on Good Morning America, adding that he would like Trump to leave it to the professionals for a while.

Corker added: The president undermines our secretary of state [and] raises tensions in the area by virtue of the tweets that he sends out.

On tax reform, Corker also said that much of the discussion should be left to the committees.

And, despite being one of Trump's early supporters, Corker told CNN he would not support Trump for re-election: Lets just say, I would not do that again.

Fox News' Jason Donner contributed to this report.
President Trump met Tuesday with Senate Republicans in hopes of forging the kind of party unity needed to pass tax reform and other legislative goals before next years congressional elections, even as he and key lawmakers clashed on the sidelines.

In the lead-up to Tuesday's meeting, Trump and Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., reignited a simmering feud with a round of barbed insults.

Corker and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. -- another occasional Trump adversary -- both emerged from the meeting Tuesday afternoon without answering questions from reporters.

However, by Tuesday night Trump sounded optimistic. "So nice being with Republican Senators today. Multiple standing ovations! Most are great people who want big Tax Cuts and success for U.S.," he tweeted.

Louisiana GOP Sen. John Kennedy told reporters that Trump and Corker did not speak directly during the meeting, which he described as "very cordial." Kennedy said the meeting ended with standing ovations.

The GOP senator said tax reform, as expected, was the main topic, even as lawmakers discussed infrastructure and health care with the president as well.

However, he said Trump set no deadline for Congress to send a tax bill to his desk.

"We had a very, very good meeting," Kennedy said, urging Trump to travel across the country to sell a tax plan. Asked repeatedly about the Corker feud, Kennedy said there were no conversations about Trump's tweets.

With the tax plan, Trump is still trying for a major legislative win after Republicans failed this summer to pass legislation to dismantle ObamaCare. The Senate passed a related budget plan last week -- but specifics on the tax legislation are still being worked out, including over tax rates and provisions for popular benefits like pretax 401(k) contributions.

But hopes of unity faced another setback Tuesday morning when Corker reignited his feud with Trump.

I would just like him to leave it to the professionals for a while and see if we can do something thats constructive, Corker said on ABCs Good Morning America about overhauling the federal tax code for the first time in roughly three decades.

Trump responded with a series of vitriolic tweets including: Isnt it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldnt get re-elected in the Great State of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts plus!

The president appeared last week to settle his differences with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., emerging from a White House meeting to say his relationship with the Senate Republican leader is better than ever.

However, McCain and other GOP senators still appear at odds with Trump, who essentially needs consensus from the 52-member Senate Republican conference to get a simple 51-vote majority to pass tax reform and most other legislative proposals.

The Senate narrowly passed its blueprint plan last week, 51-49. And McCain cast the deciding no vote in August that nixed the chambers ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill.

McCain on Sunday took a swipe at Trump when he said on C-SPAN that the U.S. military has drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say they had a bone spur."

Trump had five draft deferments, including one granted after he submitted a physician's letter stating he suffered from such spurs in his feet.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Tuesday he expects his chamber to have its final tax bill ready by the Thanksgiving holiday but that the Senate is going to be a little slower, which would mean the final package would likely be ready by years end.

At the end of the day  Bobs going to vote for tax reform because he knows its in the best interest of Americans. So put this Twitter dispute aside, Ryan also said about the Corker-Trump feud.

Among the issues still being debated in the effort to overhaul the tax code is the future of employee retirement plans known as the 401(k)s.

Congress is looking for ways to raise revenue as part of an overhaul plan. And one of the methods reportedly under consideration is to curtail how much pretax money workers can contribute to their 401(k) and similar accounts. Such a move would strike at a way that tens of millions of Americans use to save for retirement.

The suggestion has already run into some resistance, even if it isn't an official policy proposal.

Trump said Monday in a tweet: "There will be NO change to your 401(k). This has always been a great and popular middle class tax break that works, and it stays!"

Another key issue is the new corporate tax rate, which is now at 35 percent and that the administration would like to have at 20 percent.

In addition, congressional Republicans are debating whether the new tax code will have a fourth tax bracket, for the countrys highest wage-earners.

Fox News' Joseph Weber and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
As President Trumps four-month ban on refugees came to a close on Tuesday, he issued an executive order enacting extreme vetting procedures targeting those trying to enter the United States from 11 countries.

"There will be a general resumption of refugee admissions under this exec order, while that review is ongoing refugee admissions from the 11 countries will be considered on a case by case basis and poses no threat to the welfare of the United States," a senior administration official told Fox News.

The tougher vetting includes collecting biographical data as well as employment history from people seeking entry into the United States. Officers will also be trained in how to detect fraud.

In January, Trump signed sweeping orders that significantly tightened the countrys refugee and visa polices  suspending almost all refugee admissions from a handful of mostly Muslim countries for four months and indefinitely barring entry for some Syrian refugees. Since the executive order was signed, the travel ban has been extended to countries in Africa, Asia and South America.

The controversial travel ban has been blocked in the courts amid challenges from states like Hawaii and Maryland. The Supreme Court ruled the 120-day refugee suspension could go into effect in June. It expired Tuesday.

The Department of Homeland Security, the State Department and other U.S. agencies were reviewing the countrys screening process during the temporary ban.

Even with the ban lifted, refugee admissions are expected to clock in significantly lower than in recent years. Last month, Trump capped refugee admissions at 45,000 for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. His predecessor President Barack Obama had put a 110,000 limit in place a year earlier.

The actual number of refugees allowed in this year could be much lower than Trumps 45,000 cap, which sets a maximum but not a minimum number.

Trump has made limiting immigration the centerpiece of his policy agenda. In addition to the travel ban, which initially targeted a handful of Muslim-majority nations, the president rescinded an Obama-era executive action protecting young immigrants from deportation and vowed to build a wall along the southern border with Mexico.

During his presidential campaign, Trump pledged to "stop the massive inflow of refugees" and warned that terrorists were smuggling themselves into naive countries by posing as refugees fleeing war-torn Syria.

"Thousands of refugees are being admitted with no way to screen them and are instantly made eligible for welfare and free health care, even as our own veterans, our great, great veterans, die while they're waiting online for medical care that they desperately need," Trump said last October.

The end of the ban comes amid an alarming refugee crisis in Myanmar, where security forces in August began what human rights groups have called a scorched-earth campaign against villages inhabited by Rohingya Muslims. More than 600,000 Rohingya from northern Rakhine State have fled to Bangladesh.

Fox News' Jake Gibson, John Roberts and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Bright, blue flashes stretch from the tops of powerful thunderstorms toward the edge of space, providing a fascinating celestial show for astronauts on the International Space Station, and now, scientists are learning more about these showstopping displays.

In 2015, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen captured a video of the strange blue flashes dancing above the clouds as the space station passed over the Bay of Bengal.

These features are called blue jets  a type of transient luminous event (TLE) resulting from activity in and below powerful thunderstorms on Earth. One of the photographs captured by Mogensen showed a pulsating blue jet that stretched 25 miles (40 kilometers) above sea level, according to a statement from NASA. [Earth From Space: Amazing Astronaut Photos]

Using these observations, researchers from Denmark's National Space Institute studied the elusive features to learn more about how storms form and develop over time. Their findings showed that 245 pulsating blue discharges were observed during the 160 seconds of video footage, which is equal to roughly 90 blue-jet flashes per minute, the researchers said in a new study describing the findings.

The study also revealed evidence of red sprites, which glow in the upper atmosphere following large lightning flashes on Earth. Red sprites are difficult to detect because they last only a few milliseconds.

In fact, visual evidence of TLEs wasn't available until 1989. Some of the first observations of these events were of red sprites photographed by cameras on board the space shuttle, as well as from images taken during a NASA and University of Alaska airborne campaign.

Recently, however, astronauts aboard the space station have been able to capture various natural light shows on camera, including red sprites over two different storms within 3 minutes of each other  first over the American Midwest and then later near the coast of El Salvador. These red sprites, which were spotted in August 2015, stretched roughly 60 miles (100 km) above Earth, according to the statement.

Observations of strange atmospheric features like red sprites and blue jets help improve researchers' understanding of lightning and thunderstorms, which can lead to better storm models and weather forecasts. Furthermore, researchers also aim to learn more about why storms produce different TLEs in different circumstances.

"TLE studies have been, to an extent, fortunate observation," Tim Lang, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, said in the statement. "We've gotten better at finding them, but it's mostly case-based analysis."

Researchers will soon have the opportunity to capture even better storm observations from space using NASA's Lightning Imaging Sensor, which was installed on the orbiting lab in February 2017, and the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor, which is slated to launch to the space station later this year. These instruments will allow researchers to analyze storms from both below and above, and closely examine thunderstorms' impact on Earth's atmosphere.

Original article on Space.com.
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The German government has approved the controversial sale of three military submarines to Israel following a month-long delay on Monday.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's official spokesperson, Steffen Seibert, told press that Germany would sign an official treaty detailing the confidential level of government subsidies offered in the arms sale by Berlin later on Monday.

According to reports, Germany has agreed to cover up to a third of the total cost of 1.5 billion euros (1.8 billion U.S. dollars) out of a historical sense of responsibility for Israel's security.

The sum would amount to "540 million euros at most" spread across several federal budgets between 2018 and 2027, Seibert was quoted saying.

The sale of three submarines by the Kiel-based defense manufacturer Thyssen Krupp Marine Systems became the subject of media speculation after it was temporarily halted by the German government on suspicion of corruption.

However, "all relevant perspectives," including ongoing investigations by Israeli authorities, have now been considered in the agreement.
A female Neanderthal who lived in what is now Croatia 52,000 years ago is revealing that our "caveman" relatives may have passed on genes that play roles in cholesterol levels, eating disorders, arthritis and other diseases today, the researchers who sequenced her genome say.

And some modern humans are carrying around more Neanderthal DNA than scientists had thought: The study found that the genomes of modern human populations that originated outside Africa hold between 1.8 and 2.6 percent Neanderthal DNA. That's much higher than previous estimates of 1.5 to 2.1 percent.

Neanderthals were the closest extinct relatives of modern humans. Research over the past decade has revealed that Neanderthals interbred with the ancestors of modern humans who migrated out of Africa, contributing variants of genes that play a wide variety of roles in modern human biology, such as in depression, heart attacks, nicotine addiction and obesity.

By extracting DNA from Neanderthal fossils, researchers sequenced the genomes of five Neanderthals. However, until now, just one of these yielded high-quality data  that of a woman found in Denisova Cave, in the Altai Mountains in Siberia. The fossil of the woman, who lived about 122,000 years ago, is known as the Altai Neanderthal. [Denisovan Gallery: Tracing the Genetics of Human Ancestors]

Now, scientists have fully sequenced the genome of another female Neanderthal  this one from Vindija Cave, in Croatia  who lived about 52,000 years ago. Prior work suggested that Neanderthals lived in Vindija Cave until relatively late in their history. Scientists estimate that Neanderthals in Europe went extinct around 40,000 years ago.

Neanderthal genes

In the new study, the researchers analyzed billions of DNA segments from a bone fragment discovered in 1980. It was challenging to find a bone from Vindija Cave that carried enough Neanderthal DNA to yield high-quality data and that had relatively little contamination from modern-human and other DNA, said lead study author Kay Prufer, a paleogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

"Advances in laboratory methods helped us to overcome some of these challenges, in combination with cheaper sequencing technology," Prufer told Live Science.

The new findings suggest that, compared with the Altai Neanderthal, the Vindija Neanderthal was more closely related to the Neanderthals who interbred with the ancestors of modern humans living outside Africa. This closer relation allowed the scientists to identify an additional 10 to 20 percent more Neanderthal DNA in modern humans. [In Photos: Neanderthal Burials Uncovered]

The newly identified Neanderthal gene variants found in modern humans play roles in blood levels of vitamin D and "bad" LDL cholesterol , as well as in eating disorders, body fat levels, rheumatoid arthritis, schizophrenia and responses to antipsychotic drugs, the study found.

"Variants from Neanderthals are not necessarily bad for your health," Prufer said. "We find one variant that is associated with LDL cholesterol, and the variant we got from Neanderthals is associated with lower LDL cholesterol."

Their findings also suggested that modern-human DNA entered the Neanderthal gene pool. The scientists estimated that modern human gene flow into Neanderthal populations occurred between 130,000 and 145,000 years ago, before the Altai and Vindija Neanderthals diverged.

Neanderthal inbreeding

In addition, by comparing the genomes of the Vindija Neanderthal and the Altai Neanderthal, the researchers found that the two were surprisingly similar.

"The two Neanderthals were separated by thousands of kilometers and probably lived tens of thousands of years separated in time as well," Prufer said. "That is why it is so surprising to find them to be so similar."

A small overall Neanderthal population size is the best explanation for this similarity, Prufer said. The fewer Neanderthals there were, the more likely it was that they had ancestors in common, he explained.

Previous research suggested that the Altai Neanderthal's parents were half-siblings, prompting scientists to wonder if Neanderthals often interbred with family members. The new Vindija genome does not have similar incestuous patterns  a finding that suggests the extreme inbreeding seen with the Altai Neanderthal may not have been common among Neanderthals.

Still, Prufer noted that the two sets of chromosomes that the Vindija Neanderthal inherited from both of her parents carried only about 1.6 differences per 10,000 base pairs of DNA. (The double strands of DNA that make up each chromosome are made of sets of molecules known as base pairs.)

"For comparison, modern humans in Africa have around 10 differences in 10,000 [base pairs], and Europeans and Asians around seven differences in 10,000  much more than we see in Neanderthals," Prufer said. "This shows again that Neanderthals lived in small populations."

In the future, the researchers hope to obtain even more high-quality Neanderthal genomes. "More Neanderthal genomes will help us to better understand how they were related in space and time, but also to narrow down which Neanderthals contributed to disease," Prufer said.

The scientists detailed their findings online Oct. 5 in the journal Science.

Original article published on Live Science.
As a hapless snake vanished down the throat of a frog, the last thing it saw was likely a camera's flash, as a photographer captured the image of its head peeping from the amphibian's gullet.

The striking photo was snapped at a moment when the frog was gaping its mouth wide. And unexpectedly peering up from the frog's throat was another head, belonging to a small snake, its jaws also stretching in what was perhaps its last gasp.

Reddit user EstusFiend shared the photo on Oct. 16, titling it "One Last Scream Into the Abysssss." A Google Plus user had posted the photo in November 2016 and claimed ownership, but as the photo appeared unattributed on the internet prior to that claim, it is uncertain who the photographer is, Science Alert reported. [Beastly Feasts: Amazing Photos of Animals and Their Prey]

The poignancy of the doomed snake's final moments were underscored by science writer Jason Bittle, who shared the Reddit post on Twitter accompanied by all-too-relevant lyrics written by the Seattle grunge band Pearl Jam, in their popular 1991 song "Alive."

The swallowed snake likely didn't stay alive for long  though a frog's prey is usually gulped down alive and kicking, once the frog's mouth snaps shut, the end comes quickly, Jonathan Kolby, director of the Honduras Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Center, told Live Science in an email. Even if the prey doesn't go down easily, the frog is usually none the worse for wear, he said.

"It's easy to imagine that swallowing a vigorously struggling animal would hurt the frog," Kolby explained. "But after being swallowed, most prey items likely suffocate and die within a minute or two while being squeezed and held in place by muscles in the frog's digestive tract."

And it's not at all uncommon for a snake to be on a frog's menu, Kolby added.

"Tree frogs often consume a wide variety of prey, including snakes and even rodents, all according to how large a frogs' mouth is," he said.

The frog was identified as an Australian green tree frog (Litoria caerulea) in a tweet posted on Oct. 16 by Jodi Rowley, a curator of Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Biology with the Australian Museum and the University of New South Wales. In another tweet, Rowley suggested that the frog's esophagus appeared smaller than might be expected for an animal with such a wide gape, but it was probably somewhat constricted because the snake was still in the process of being swallowed.

The snake appears to be a baby brownsnake, according to Paul Oliver, a postdoctoral researcher at the Australian National University. That makes this interaction somewhat unusual, as many snakes are diurnal  active during the day  and frogs are nocturnal, Oliver explained.

"It seems unlikely to have occurred naturally (but then give things enough time in nature  all sorts of unlikely things do happen)," Oliver told Live Science in an email.

One possibility? "Human agency may have played role in the snake meeting the frog, but subsequently the frog's instincts to eat anything small took over," said Oliver, who studies the systematics and evolution of frogs and lizards.

In fact, tree frogs are referred to by some as "labradors of the frog world" for their indiscriminate eating habits, as they are known for trying to eat "just about anything they can fit into their mouths," Kathleen Doody, a researcher with the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland in Australia, told Live Science in an email.

Regardless, from the frog's perspective, having your meal trying to writhe its way back up your throat is probably not a pleasant experience. But there are even more extreme examples of a meal turning disastrous for frogs, Kolby told Live Science.

Epomis beetle larvae, which look like tempting grubs to a hungry frog, are actually deadly carnivores that prey on their would-be predators, Kolby said. The larvae lure the frogs closer by waving their antenna, then strike with their powerful mandibles, latching onto the frog and consuming it alive, he said.

Did the snake in the photo somehow manage to wrest itself from the frog's maw and wriggle its way to freedom? We may never know how this particular incident ended. But for one moment in a life and death struggle frozen by a photographer's lens, the prey came out ahead.

Original article on Live Science.
A huge trove of Jewish documents and manuscripts, thought to have been destroyed in the Holocaust, has been discovered in Lithuania.

More than 170,000 pages of rare materials, including a postcard from famed modernist painter Marc Chagall and letters from the writer Sholem Aleichem, were found in the Martynas Mazvydas National Library of Lithuania, earlier this year. The discovery, announced Tuesday by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, is of immense historical importance.

When a find like this comes along, its monumental, David Fishman, professor of Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary and author of the book, The Book Smugglers told Fox News. Its the most important find since the Dead Sea Scrolls.

HOLOCAUST DISCOVERY: RITUAL BATHS UNCOVERED IN SYNAGOGUE COMPLEX DESTROYED BY NAZIS

Fishman explained that discoveries such as this can offer valuable insight into the lives of East European Jews before the Holocaust. Not only were the Jews annihilated, but also the record of their history was destroyed, he said.

Between 90 and 95 percent of Lithuanias Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust.

The stunning find also marks the latest chapter in an incredible story of preservation in the Lithuanian capital of Vilna, or Vilnius.

RADAR TECHNOLOGY HELPS REDISCOVER THE GREAT SYNAGOGUE OF VILNIUS, 70 YEARS AFTER ITS DESTRUCTION

During World War II, a small group of Jews in the Vilnius ghetto risked their lives to save the documents that surfaced this year. Nazi forces occupying Lithuania had ordered the destruction of 70 percent of Jewish documents, with the remaining 30 percent to be sent to Germany for study by anti-Semitic researchers.

A group of Jewish intellectuals known as the Paper Brigade, however, hid the 170,000 pages in six different locations in the Vilnius ghetto. After the war, the trove came into the possession of Antanas Ulpis, a Lithuanian librarian who defied a Soviet order to pulp the documents. Instead, Ulpis and his companions stored the documents in secret in the basement of St. George Church in the Lithuanian capital. They remained there until late 2016, when they were moved to the Martynas Mazvydas National Library of Lithuania. In May of this year, authorities in Lithuania realized the importance of the artifacts that had been removed from the church.

Lithuanian officials contacted the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which has worked to ensure the preservation of other document troves found in Lithuania.

HOLOCAUST ESCAPE TUNNEL FOUND: PRISONERS DUG WITH SPOONS TO ESCAPE NAZIS

The YIVO Institute put 10 items from the latest finds on display in New York Tuesday. These include poems written by Paper Brigade members Abraham Sutzkever and Shmerke Kaczerginski, an 1883 Yiddish poem by Abraham Goldfaden, with Russian censors permit, and an astronomical manuscript by Issachar Ber Carmoly.

The Chagall postcard and Aleichem letters remain in Lithuania with the bulk of the documents, although Jonathan Brent, executive director of the YIVO Institute, told Fox News that there are plans to bring more items over for exhibition in the U.S. and overseas.

Experts, however, still need to work out what exactly is in the vast haul of documents. It will take a long time for scholars to analyze, its such a voluminous trove, Fishman said.

HOLOCAUST HEROINE'S WILL, LOST PHOTOS, UNEARTHED IN SCOTLAND

There are also plans to eventually digitize the documents.

Brent told Fox News that hes intrigued to see what is in the trove. This is a long shot  we may even see some Chagalls, he said. They may be in some of these files.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
Encryption has stopped the FBI from accessing almost 7,000 mobile devices, according to the agency's new director, Christopher Wray.

"To put it mildly, this is a huge, huge problem," he reportedly said in a Sunday speech at a police conference in Philadelphia. "It impacts investigations across the board."

That includes suspected crimes dealing with narcotics, counterterrorism, and child exploitation. Over an 11-month period, the FBI found itself failing to extract data from over half of the mobile devices it obtained, Wray added.

In March, Wray's predecessor, James Comey, said the FBI had failed to unlock about 1,200 devices from a three-month period, despite possessing "classified techniques."

With encryption becoming so prevalentiOS and Android are now encrypted by defaultthe FBI has been urging the tech industry to find a solution. That's sparked debate over whether products should include a government-mandated "backdoor" federal agents can use when investigating a crime.

Critics in Silicon Valley say this is a bad idea. They argue any backdoor will weaken a device's security, putting consumers at risk of other hacks.

But that hasn't stopped the FBI from pressing the matter. Last year, the agency demanded Apple help unlock an iPhone 5c that was used by one of the attackers in the San Bernardino shooting. The FBI later withdrew the request, after it employed a mysterious third party to unlock the phone for a large sum of money. Nevertheless, the agency is still looking for a better solution to the encryption debate.

On Sunday, Wray suggested he wants to try and appease both sides. "I get it, there's a balance that needs to be struck between encryption and the importance of giving us the tools we need to keep the public safe," he reportedly said.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
This is a rush transcript from "Special Report with Bret Baier," October 23, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I would say it is the same baloney they have been peddling for years, and there's been no credible evidence by anyone. In fact, it has been debunked repeatedly and will continue to be debunked.

I'm not surprised, but I think the real story is how nervous they are about these continuing investigations.

REP. RON DESANTIS, R-FLA.: Last Congress in and the oversight committee wanted to investigate the Foundation and all the other payments involving the Clintons, and we were not allowed to do that by the leadership of the House for whatever reason. Now I think that this information is so explosive that there is no way you can justify not getting all the information on this.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: It seems like the investigation into Russia efforts in 2016 may have taken a turn, or at least the tone has changed, this as some new revelations about a Democrat lobbyist, Tony Podesta, who is the brother of John Podesta, who of course was the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, an investigation into what he did or his company did in relation to Ukraine. It has morphed into, we are told, a criminal inquiry into whether the firm violated the foreign agents registration act, and the tie to Paul Manafort, the one-time campaign manager of the Trump campaign.

NBC News had the original story. Mueller now investigating Democrat lobbyist Tony Podesta. The Podesta Group issued a statement saying the firm is cooperating fully with the special counsel's office and has taken every possible step to provide documentation that confirms timely compliance in all of our client engagements. The Podesta Group conducts due diligence and consults with appropriate legal experts to ensure compliance and disclosure regulations at all times. We did so in this case."

So we know that there is more to this investigation. Let's bring in our panel: Byron York, chief political correspondent of The Washington Examiner; Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at The Federalist, and Charles Lane, opinion writer for The Washington Post. OK, Byron, you wrote a column about this. Is there a sense up on Capitol Hill that this is turning a bit?

BYRON YORK, THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER: I think the change in tone we are seeing among these committees that are investigating this, this is not the Mueller investigation but the Congressional investigation, is I think we are hearing more about Russia and less about collusion. If you look at public statements of the people who are running this thing, they are talking more about the active measures Russia took, like the Facebook ads. These are indisputable things that we know about. And from what I've heard, talking to a number of people involved in this, they just don't seem to have the evidence that's pointing them toward collusion.

And then when you get something like the uranium deal, that takes it further from the whole collusion idea, which used to be the heart of the investigation.

BAIER: Right. The president obviously tweeting about this. Officials behind the now dossier plead the fifth. Justice Department and/or FBI should immediately release who paid for it. This dossier and this group Fusion GPS are coming under a lot of scrutiny.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

SEN. RICHARD BURR, R-N.C.: As it relates to the Steele Dossier, unfortunately the committee has hit a wall. The committee cannot really decide the credibility of the dossier without understanding things like who paid for it, who are your sources and sub-sources?

SEN. TOM COTTON, R-ARK.: This outfit here in Washington D.C., Fusion GPS, has gone to the greatest lengths possible to try to conceal who paid them. It makes me think it was probably a Democratic political operative or a Russian intelligence service.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

BAIER: Mollie?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, THE FEDERALIST: This is very different than the narrative we had for a long time. One of the people there just mentioned we don't know how they got their information. But we do know that they did pay some sources for their information in Russia. That's what led Obama's former CIA director Mike Morell to say he didn't trust this dossier.

But originally this was the entire basis of the Trump-collusion narrative, that this dossier suggested that there was something very nefarious going on, and this was used to undermine the incoming administration. It coordinated with all these leaks we were getting about Michael Flynn having a conversation with a Russian or Jeff Sessions having a conversation with a Russian or Jim Comey did this briefing which pretty quickly made it to the media.

And now we have this totally different story which is Fusion GPS was actually getting funded or working on behalf of Russians to undermine sanction efforts against Russian oligarchs and Putin cronies and whatnot while doing this dossier. This is just a dramatically different story than we have been getting and requires a lot more of those great investigative journalism things we've been seeing on the Trump thing. We'd like to see some more on Fusion GPS.

BAIER: It's important to have a caveat that we don't know what we don't know about the special counsel's investigation. And we are reading the tea leaves in some of what's coming out in leaks. Obviously there hasn't been a major leak of some collusion tie. But these investigations continue.

CHARLES LANE, THE WASHINGTON POST: I think just stepping back a minute, the fact that they are following up some sort of lead on a foreign agent registration possible violation by a Democratic firm suggests Robert Mueller is a straight shooter and not a partisan figure as he has been accused of being. I think that piece of the narrative should be adjusted as well.

Just on the surface it doesn't seem like the crime of the century that they are running down on Tony Podesta, a failure to register when it seemed like he was working some kind of subcontractor to Manafort on a still murky episode. But I do think, again, stepping back and looking at the big, big picture that we're getting here, maybe collusion is receding, but there was a lot of Russian activity in America over the last few years. And yes, there was this purchase of the uranium stockpile which remains to be explained. There's the penetration of lobbyists. There is the effort to advertise on Facebook. I think everybody ought to be concerned that that was going on. And that has been true from the beginning.

BAIER: So on the Uranium One deal, the new wrinkle to that is that an informant, Congress wants to talk to this FBI informant tied to this case, and so far the Department of Justice has squelched it, the ability. And now you have Senator Grassley, Byron, talking about really wanting to talk to this guy, what he knew. I want to play just a little bit. Back when this all came out at first, FOX News was part of the news organizations along with The New York Times, and Peter Schweizer with the book "Clinton Cash" who first covered this Uranium One tie with the Clinton Foundation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: So what happened to Giustra's company that benefited from that deal in Kazakhstan? After a merger it became a uranium giant called Uranium One. And then the Russians bought it.

PETER SCHWEIZER, AUTHOR OF 'CLINTON CASH': Uranium One became very active in acquiring uranium assets actually in the United States itself. By 2008, 2009, they were a particularly attractive target for the Russian government.

BAIER: And the Russians acquired that target.

SCHWEIZER: Fernwood Foundation is an entity in Canada controlled by Ian Telfer who ends up being the chairman of Uranium One, which is the Russian owned uranium company. Ian Telfer in 2007 made an individual contribution to the Clinton Foundation.

BAIER: So what this amounts to in the end is a Russian company essentially controlled by Vladimir Putin will now be in charge of a substantial portion of American uranium.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: We had a lot of details, tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, a lot of speaking fees tangentially for former president Clinton. We did an hour long special on it back then. But it has developed since.

YORK: It has. And I think what you're saying that with Charles Grassley and the Justice Department is a continuation between -- there's a fight going on between the Republican-controlled Congress and the Republican- controlled Justice Department about all sorts of Russian information. The House Intelligence Committee controlled by Republicans on August 24th subpoenaed the FBI for information about the dossier. They have yet to see a single document. And so it is not really surprising here to see this conflict.

One thing on the uranium, a lot of it is framed in terms of the Clintons, but Hillary Clinton argued, and she was right, that she is not the sole person who made this decision about the uranium. There is a committee on foreign investment in the United States and all that.

BAIER: Which bring in the Obama administration.

YORK: It's a bigger Obama administration story than just Hillary Clinton.

LANE: I was going to say another thing we are learning today is that once the special counsel gets going, he never stops.

HEMINGWAY: This is something we should've learned a long time ago.

LANE: And the Podesta firm is running afoul of that basic Washington principle.

BAIER: Last word.

HEMINGWAY: Just this is -- we have so much that we need to learn and we have a lot we need to learn about what the FBI's work with this dossier was. Was it used to spy on political opponents? That's a big question that we haven't gotten good answers for.

Content and Programming Copyright 2017 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2017 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.
Suddenly, raking doesnt sound so bothersome.

A website called Cash 4 Leaves is giving New England residents the chance to get rich  from the comfort of their own backyards  by shipping them their fallen fall foliage. Through the rest of the autumn season, Cash 4 Leaves is offering $1 per maple leaf from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island or Connecticut, with the company buying leaves in quantities of 100.

STUDY: TRAVELERS CHOOSE DESTINATIONS BASED ON 'SOCIAL RETURN'

Theres some stipulations, though: Leaves cannot have visible imperfections, mold, bugs, tears or excessive decay, and must be red, orange, yellow, or a blend of all three. Browned leaves are forbidden, and even the smallest parts with brown will be rejected, the site says.

Evidently, summer droughts, winds and an unseasonably warm fall in Massachusetts have contributed to a low inventory for another site called ShipFoliage.com, which creates leaf-centric products and gifts. Cash 4 Leaves will supply the site with the submitted leaves, reports Travel & Leisure.

10 OF AMERICA'S EERIEST HAUNTED ATTRACTIONS

New Englanders with leaves to spare are invited to send five photos of their best leaf to the company, and staffers will then reach out if the leaves are dollar-worthy. If so, theyll prepare an agreement to purchase leaves in quantities of 100. If not, leaves will be returned.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

Apparently, whether theyve fallen to the ground or rest resiliently in high branches, New England fall foliage is in high demand. For example, the New Hampshire Division of Travel and Tourism Development estimates over 9.75 million people will travel across the state to leaf-peep through the fall, giving the Granite States economy a $1.5 billion kick, New Hampshire Public Radio reports.

We always knew that fall foliage was priceless.
When Shawn-Marie Riley arrived at whats believed to be the worlds only plus-size resort, the 375-pound Texan immediately felt right at home.

Being able to feel normal, even for a little while, was beyond a gift, says the 5-foot-8 benefits administrator of her visit to the Resort, on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera. Riley says she loved it so much, she plans to return next year.

The secret retreat, founded two years ago by entrepreneur James King, encourages fuller-figured tourists to let it all hang out while on vacation. They can loll on chaise lounges built to hold 560 pounds; sleep  or enjoy worry-free sex  on king-size, steel-reinforced beds; and stroll the private beach without what King calls fear of judgment.

Whats so great is [the Resorts] recognition that people of size have insecurities and challenges that the general public never considers, Riley tells The Post of her visit in November 2015, soon after it opened. Will they have chairs I can sit on? Will the bed hold my weight? Will I fit in the tub?

Can you imagine how it feels to walk down a beach and hear people refer to you as a beached whale? continues Riley, who lives in Arlington, Texas. I wore a bikini and never felt uncomfortable, and I was noticed for my beauty, not my size. Living as a plus-size person in a judgmental world is stressful.

King says around 60 percent of his clientele are American, and roughly 10 percent of them come from the New York metro area.

The rest travel from as far afield as the UK and Spain.

Activities include swimming and kayaking on a nearby lagoon. Other options are boating or fishing.

King  who was inspired to found the resort because previous hotels he worked at didnt cater to obese people  books only small groups of up to 24 people at a time. The $16,400 rate for a six-day stay includes three buffets a day. Drinks and tips are on the honor system.

King says he used to take individual guests but insists on group bookings to preserve the homely atmosphere.

For the first couple of months, we did single bookings, but the issue was a lot of people just started to relax and feel comfortable and then new people turned up, he says.

King, who is of a normal weight himself, says he hopes to open a second resort on nearby Cat Island for plus-size couples and singles.

Why should 40 percent of our population be subjected to being ignored by the hospitality industry? he asks.

This article originally appeared on the New York Post.
The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) NextGen modernization program is benefiting countless travelers while simultaneously frustrating residents all across the U.S.

The more precise flight paths were implemented back in 2014 to save time and fuel, reduce emissions and increase the number of planes that can operate at a given airport.

According to the Associated Press, the changes have been welcomed by many people. However, those who are still being affected suffer from significantly more noise as a result of flights passing by at lower altitudes more frequently. Phoenix filed a lawsuit against the FAA over the disruptive noise in some of the city's historic neighborhoods during 2015 after receiving thousands of complaints.

Residents in other placesincluding California, New York, North Carolina, Maryland and Washington, D.C.have expressed similar frustrations with the NextGen program. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has even ordered the state's attorney general to prepare a lawsuit against the FAA over the new routes.

Hogan said the new flight paths are making families "miserable in their own homes."

While many residents want to at least be consulted by the FAA in hopes of reaching a solution, a former agency executive is wary that its possible.

"There is an intrinsic issue of concentrating noise in particular places that comes with precision-based navigation that is inescapable," former FAA chief operating officer, David Grizzle told the AP.

The residents who have benefitted from the redrawn flight paths haven't been nearly as vocal as those who are receiving more noise. Therefore, the influx of complaints has the FAA under immense pressure.

Though the agency is meeting with members of the public in some places, it is highly unlikely the NextGen program can exist with its current benefits without creating significant noise for some neighborhoods.

The FAA has said in the past that "reverting to previous air traffic control procedures is not viable" because the procedures are "interdependent." Essentially, one change would lead to several others.

With air travel more popular than ever and the new flight paths boasting numerous benefits, finding resolution won't be easy. Nonetheless, travelers can take solace in the fact government officials are in tune with the issue and working to improve the experience.
An employee at Greater Rochester International Airport is dancing his way to fame after videos of him grooving on the job have gone viral.

Rochester native Kyran Ashford works with Southwest Airlines through JetStream Ground Services, the Democrat & Chronicle reports. He acts as a gate attendant for the airline, scanning boarding passes, as well as a ramp agent where he directs airplanes in and out of gates. But he adds some much needed pizazz to these tasks.

SOUTHWEST AIRLINES PASSENGER DRAGGED OFF PLANE

Ashfords antics were caught on camera by Terry McBride flying out of Rochester, NY, to Nashville, TN. McBride uploaded the video on Facebook with the caption, So this just happened out my window as I was leaving New York headed back home to Nashville. This guy rocks! #TarmacDancer #EmployeeOfTheMonth #TGIF #Southwest

The video was uploaded Friday and has already received more than 3 million views and over 45,000 reactions and 50,000 shares.

Ashford, who keeps a YouTube channel of his various musical and dance performances at the airport, said he was overwhelmed by the support and feedback hes received from the viral video.

"Im mind blown out of this whole thing," he told the Democrat & Chronicle. "I got no sleep last night, just watching all the reviews come in."

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

The New Yorker said he sees his job at the airport as a way to brighten peoples days.

'You dont know why these people are flying out ... they could be going to a funeral," he said.

He tries to give at least one passenger 30 seconds of positive vibes before they get on their plane.

"Everything Ive been doing, thats all a part of who I am," said Ashford. "My mother raised me to be the type of man to walk around with great character, and to never be ashamed of who they are."
A judge last week vacated the decades-old murder conviction of a former neo-Nazi skinhead who has maintained his innocence in the stabbing death of a 41-year-old black man, citing new DNA evidence and witness testimony.

Hillsborough Circuit Judge Lisa Campbell wrote in a 17-page order Friday that the new evidence and testimony would probably produce an acquittal at retrial for Dean McKee, who was convicted of stabbing Isaiah Walker on Dec. 20, 1987, after his older brother, Scott, fingered him as the killer, according to McKees attorneys from the Innocence Project of Florida.

It is clear to any objective observer that Dean McKee was likely framed by his older brother, who took a sweetheart deal to provide false testimony implicating Dean in this murder, attorney Seth Miller said in a statement. After hearing from two experts, key witnesses to whom Scott McKee provided self-incriminating evidence, and reviewing the whole record, we are pleased that the judge agreed.

McKee, now 46, will be released from custody at the Sumter Correctional Institution in Bushnell if prosecutors decline to refile charges, the Tampa Bay Times reports. In a statement to the newspaper Saturday, the Hillsborough State Attorneys Office said it would thoroughly evaluate the case before making a decision.

New DNA testing on biological material from Walkers fingernails excluded Dean McKee as a contributor of the DNA, Miller said. Two of Scott McKees ex-girlfriends also testified that Scott  and not Dean  had actually stabbed Walker, a homeless man, on the stairs of the Tampa Museum of Art, he said.

Click for more from The New York Post.
The adoptive father of a 3-year-old who went missing in Texas earlier this month has been arrested one day after police believe they found the young girls body.

Wesley Mathews, 37, was arrested Monday in Richardson for injury to a child, Fox 4 reported. Mathews was previously charged with child endangerment but was free on bond and had to wear an ankle monitor.

SHERIN MATHEWS ABANDONED IN INDIA BEFORE ALLEY ABANDONMENT THAT MAY HAVE LED TO DEATH

Wesley reportedly voluntarily went into the police station Monday and "provided an alternate statement of events from those which he had given previously, regarding the disappearance of Sherin, police said in a statement, according to Fox 4.

Mathews daughter, Sherin, went missing in the early hours of Oct. 7, after Wesley left her outside in an alleyway -- allegedly frequented by coyotes -- because she didnt drink her milk.

Richardson Police said Sunday morning they found a body they believe to be Sherins in a culvert beneath a road, reportedly near the Mathews home.

Wesley didnt alert authorities that Sherin was missing until five hours later. Sherins mother, Sini, said she was asleep during the ordeal.

Police said that Sini is helping to identify the body and will possibly provide dental records, Fox 4 reported.

BODY OF SHERIN MATHEWS, 3-YEAR-OLD TEXAS GIRL MISSING FOR WEEKS, BELIEVED FOUND, POLICE SAY

The Mathews adopted Sherin in June 2016 after she was abandoned in her native country of India, according to the Dallas News.

Wesley is being held on a $1 million bond at the Richardson City Jail.
A former teacher in Florida was arrested Saturday after being accused of having sexual relations with a student and giving her a sexually transmitted disease (STD).

Alex Palomino, 27, was arrested after the father of a 17-year-old girl reported him to the police.

The girls father said his daughter had sex with the teacher and maintained a relationship with him for six to eight months, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Palomino, who formerly worked as a behavioral technician at Lake Academy in Eustis, allegedly contacted the student through Snapchat, and asked her on a date.

FLORIDA TEACHER, 30, ARRESTED FOR 'MULTIPLE' SEX ROMPS INSIDE HIGH SCHOOL WITH FEMALE STUDENT

The two met at a hotel in Tavares on three occasions to have sex, according to the Sentinel, and saw each other every other month until Palomino began facing financial problems.

The girls mother reportedly told police that the girls pediatrician diagnosed her with an STD.

Palomino was fired from Lake Academy for an unrelated issue before the beginning of the school year, WFTV reported.

Palomino was charged with unlawful sexual activity with a minor and is being held Monday at the Lake County Jail on a $45,000 bail.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this article misidentified the community in which Elaine Simmons resides. She lives in Lake County, Fla.

A Florida woman who had a pro-Donald Trump sign standing on her property for more than a year, was ordered to remove the sign after it was changed to say she stands for The Star-Spangled Banner.

Elaine Simmons, 72, of Lake County, told Fox News that she didnt receive any complaints about the sign  which said Toot for Trump  until about a month ago, when she edited the message to say: Proud to be an American. We stand for the national anthem.

"To me, if you can't stand for the national anthem and represent the flag for which your veterans have given you freedom, then you need to buy a one-way ticket to somewhere," Simmons told Fox 35 Orlando.

Simmons said that after she posted a photo of her sign on Facebook, the county received a complaint and issued her a code violation notice.

"No one complained about it until after I put up that 'we stand for the national anthem,'" said Simmons.

Simmons added she didnt realize that her sign violated county codes.

Days later, Simmons sign was vandalized with vulgar words that Trump used on a 2005 hot mic recording.

Although she cleaned up the sign, Simmons said that at the end of the day, she still received a code violation and is therefore taking the sign down.

Simmons referred to the ordeal as a live and learn moment, but told Fox 35 that the fact she had to remove her sign is really, really sad.
Police in New York City said late Monday that two children who'd claimed a man was stalking them  and delivered a creepy note to their family  eventually admitted that they made it all up.

Police had tweeted out images of a man they said was connected to the case, as they urged anyone with information to step forward. A person of interest turned himself in, but police told Fox 5 he had no connection to the case.

The two children, an 8-year-old girl and her 12-year-old brother, had claimed a man was following them at their Brooklyn home and as they headed to and from school, snapping photos while trying to hide out of sight, according to police.

Later that day, the childrens parents supposedly found a note in their mailbox that read, Watch out. I am watching you!! Your daughter is cute.

By Monday night, police told the news station the kids recanted their stories.
Lawyers suing a neo-Nazi website's publisher asked a federal judge Monday for court-ordered permission to question the man's relatives about his whereabouts.

Private investigators believe The Daily Stormer's publisher, Andrew Anglin, is living in the Worthington, Ohio, area but couldn't find him there last month, according to attorneys for a Muslim-American radio host who sued Anglin in August.

The lawyers want to question Anglin's father and brother under oath and ask if they know where he is living, so he can be served with a copy of the federal lawsuit filed in Columbus, Ohio.

SiriusXM Radio show host Dean Obeidallah's suit says Anglin falsely labeled him as the "mastermind" behind a deadly bombing at a concert in England. Obeidallah, a comedian and Daily Beast columnist, said he received death threats after the article's June 1 publication.

Obeidallah's suit says the site embedded fabricated messages in the post to make them seem like they had been sent from Obeidallah's Twitter account, tricking readers into believing he took responsibility for the May 22 terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.

Obeidallah's lawyers said their private investigators didn't find Anglin at five addresses they visited in the Worthington area, where most of his family lives. Anglin "appears to be concealing his location," possibly with help from his family, the plaintiffs' attorneys wrote.

Anglin has posted on social media about Obeidallah's suit, the radio host's attorneys said.

"He is openly mocking the Court, often referring to this action as an 'lolsuit' (i.e., a 'laugh out loud' suit)," they wrote.

Anglin didn't immediately respond Monday to an email seeking comment.

Anglin's site takes its name from Der Sturmer, a newspaper that published Nazi propaganda. The site includes sections called "Jewish Problem" and "Race War."

Obeidallah sued Anglin two days after domain name registration companies Google and GoDaddy yanked the site's web address, effectively making it unreachable. The companies acted after Anglin published a post mocking the woman killed in a deadly car attack at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August. The site has struggled to stay online over the past two months.

In April, a Montana woman sued Anglin for orchestrating an anti-Semitic trolling campaign against her family. Tanya Gersh's suit claims anonymous internet trolls bombarded Gersh's family with hateful and threatening messages after Anglin published their personal information in a post accusing her and other Jewish residents of Whitefish, Montana, of engaging in an "extortion racket" against the mother of white nationalist Richard Spencer.

Gersh is represented by attorneys from the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. In July, the center's lawyers claimed Anglin was "actively concealing his whereabouts."

Obeidallah is represented by Muslim Advocates, a national legal and educational organization based in Oakland, California. His suit claims Anglin libeled him, invaded his privacy and intentionally inflicted "emotional distress."
An Ohio college student admitted guilt on Monday to stabbing his roommate to death after an argument over fast food.

Kendal Scheid, 23, a student at the University of Akron, pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter of his roommate, 23-year-old Duncan Unternaher.

He was set to go on trial on Monday for murder, but admitted guilt under an agreement with prosecutors for the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, Akron Beacon Journal reported.

Both men were drunk last December and got into an argument about fast food they were eating at their shared apartment, authorities said. Authorities said Scheid grabbed a knife and stabbed his roommate in the chest.

Unternaher was taken to the hospital in critical condition following the incident but later succumbed to the injuries. The victim had a surgery and was placed on lung and heart assistance in an attempt to save his life, WKYC reported.

Scheid's attorney Don Malarcik described the event as an tragic accident and said that both men had been roommates for two years. They were also both members of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.

Kendal and his family feel Duncans loss every day, said the attorney. This was a terrible, tragic accident  and Kendal is deeply remorseful.

He is now facing up to 11 years behind the bars. His sentencing is set in December.

Scheid is free on a $60,000 bond and being surveilled by a GPS tracking device, the Journal reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Five teenage boys were charged with murder Monday after a man was killed when a massive rock was thrown from a Michigan overpass last week.

Kyle Anger, 17, Alexander Miller, 15, Mark Sekelsky, 16, Mikadyn Payne, 16, and Trevor Gray, 15, were arrested and charged with second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder. The teens were charged as adults in Genesee County, FOX2 Detroit reported.

The teens are accused of standing at an Interstate 75 overpass in Vienna Township, about 80 miles north of Detroit, on Oct. 18 and throwing rocks at passing cars. Anger allegedly dropped a six-pound rock from the overpass that smashed through a trucks windshield and killed 32-year-old Kenneth White, who was driving home from work.

The rock hit Whites face and ricocheted onto his chest, causing fractures to his skull and face. The drivers cause of death was ruled as blunt force trauma to his head and chest.

Several drivers also reported having large rocks and concrete chunks hit their vehicles, but they were not injured, prosecutors said. The Genesee County Sheriffs Office said 20 rocks were found, including one that weighed 20 pounds, according to FOX2.

Police also said last week the teens appeared to be playing a prank.

The teenage boys are expected to be arraigned on Tuesday and face life in prison if convicted.

Click here for more from FOX2 Detroit.
Authorities have arrested a 15-year-old teen and her boyfriend after they say the pair killed the girl's father.

The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office says the teen and her boyfriend, 21-year-old Daniel Stroh, shot and killed 59-year-old John Norton at a Tonopah home near 373rd Avenue and Buckeye Road on October 23.

Deputies say the teen called MCSO to report that her former boyfriend shot her father at their home and that she fled the home with her younger sister after the shooting.

When deputies arrived at the scene, they found Norton dead from an apparent gunshot wound.

MCSO says during interviews, the teen and Stroh confessed to the murder, which they say was planned out several days in advance.

Read more from Fox 10 Phoenix.
Authorities say a Chandler, Ariz., woman booked on suspicion of drunken driving and murder in the deaths of two people during an auto crash had her 3-year-old daughter in her car at the time of the collision.

Records released Monday say 26-year-old Lauren Tamburrelli's daughter was in a car seat. The Arizona Department of Public Safety declined to say whether the girl was injured in Saturday's collision on Interstate 10 near Wild Horse Pass Boulevard.

Authorities say Tamburrelli's car struck an SUV, causing the SUV to roll over. The SUV's passenger died after being ejected, while its driver was pronounced dead at the scene.

ARIZONA TEEN, 21-YEAR-OLD BOYFRIEND ACCUSED OF KILLING GIRL'S FATHER

The names of the deceased individuals have not been released.

The driver of a third vehicle that was side-swiped by Tamburrelli was brought to a hospital for medical attention, per officials.

According to DPS, "Tamburelli was described by several witnesses as to have an odor of alcoholic beverages coming from her person. Witnesses also described Tamburelli was attempting to walk away from the incident scene."

Trooper S. Casey stated when Tamburelli was placed under arrest, she became combative.

While in custody, police say Tamburelli attempted to pick the lock on her handcuffs with a hair pin.

This isn't Tamburelli's first run-in with the law. According to court records, back in 2009, she and another young woman made bomb threats against Corona Del Sol High School in Tempe, causing classes to be cancelled for a day.

Read more from Fox 10 Phoenix.
On a November afternoon in 1982, two teenage girls left their high school in a small southeastern Colorado town, heading toward home, and were never seen or heard from again.

Now, 35 years later, new information has prompted authorities to reopen their investigation into the whereabouts of Victoria Sanchez and Yvonne Mestas, who disappeared from Rocky Ford, Colo., some 165 miles southeast of Denver.

The two friends were both 15 when they were last spotted leaving Rocky Ford High School together on foot on Nov. 1, 1982, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

Their disappearance received little press coverage at the time and the case eventually turned cold.

Authorities, however, on Monday announced that "new information" has led them to reopen their probe -- though the CBI declined to elaborate on the nature of the information, citing an active investigation.

"It's a 35-year-old mystery," CBI spokeswoman Susan Medina told Fox News. Medina noted that law enforcement is urging the public to come forward with any information about the women's whereabouts.

The CBI also released age-progressed images on Monday showing what Sanchez and Mestas might look like if alive today.

Both girls are described as having black hair and brown eyes, both approximately 4 feet 9 inches tall. Anyone with tips on their disappearance is asked to contact the CBI Pueblo Regional Office at 719-647-5999.

"Although decades have passed, we are actively working with our partners at the Rocky Ford Police Department on this long-term missing persons case to help determine what happened to Victoria and Yvonne, said CBI Pueblo agent Kevin Koback.
Fears of a serial killer have police in Tampa escorting children to school in one neighborhood near downtown, and a city bus changed its usual route.

Three people were shot and killed in the quiet neighborhood of Seminole Heights. The shootings all took place within a one mile radius, a fact that has led police to believe that there is a link between the killings.

All three victims, who didnt know each other, rode the bus and were alone when they were shot on the street. None of the victims were robbed.

Nearly two weeks after the first shooting, police are left with no motive and no suspect. With so much uncertainty surrounding the killings, some residents are locking themselves inside their homes.

Business owners have reported a downturn in recent days.

Maria Maldonado, who lives near the scene of two of the shootings, refused to let her 7-year-old son play in the yard.

We dont open the door or nothing. A lot of people are scared. Im scared for my son, for the neighborhood, she said.

Majed Forahaa, a local store owner, said he has a concealed carry permit for a handgun that he keeps with him while he's working. When its time to walk to his car at the end of his night, Forahaa says he holds it in his hand.

Police have even had to escort children to class on Monday as parents weigh their fear against sending their children to school.

Even the city bus altered its usual route to avoid making a pattern.

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn said the city has put dozens of officers in the area around the clock. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are also helping, he said.

There arent a lot of facts, or evidence, yet, but its not for lack of Tampa Police Department trying. We literally have put bodies out here by the dozens. Were going to find this guy and were not leaving this neighborhood till we do, Buckhorn said.

Police said 22-year-old Benjamin Mitchell was the first person killed on Oct. 9. Two days later, 32-year-old Monica Hoffa was killed in a vacant lot. Anthony Naiboa, 20, was shot and killed Oct. 19.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Former District Attorney Seth Williams, a career prosecutor who chased down municipal corruption but whose tenure as Philadelphia's first black DA was mired in a corruption scandal, was sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison for accepting a bribe.

The two-term Democrat didn't speak during the hearing and instead had his attorney read a statement in which he apologized and said he had failed the people of Philadelphia.

"Rather than holding myself to a higher standard, I squandered that trust placed in me," the statement said. As his lawyer read it, Williams' face grew flush and he wiped away tears with a tissue.

U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond said the 50-year-old Williams "humiliated" his office and the city by selling it to "parasites."

"Your profound dishonesty has to be deterred," Diamond said before ordering that Williams be imprisoned immediately.

A nearly two-year investigation into Williams' financial affairs resulted in a wide-ranging indictment in which he was charged with accepting cash and gifts, fraudulently using thousands of dollars from his campaign fund for personal expenses, misusing city vehicles and misappropriating money intended to fund his mother's nursing home care.

Two weeks into his June trial, amid damaging testimony about how he accepted perks such as a lavish Caribbean vacation and a Jaguar convertible, Williams pleaded guilty to a single count of accepting a bribe from a businessman who admitted giving him a $3,000 sofa and thousands of dollars in cash payments.

He had been charged with 29 counts of bribery, extortion and fraud. Although 28 counts were dismissed, prosecutors said Williams admitted he committed all the conduct.

Williams first won office in 2009. He named his chief of staff, Kathleen Martin, as acting district attorney after his indictment in March forced him to surrender his law license. Civil rights attorney Larry Krasner won the Democratic nomination to succeed him and, in this overwhelmingly Democratic city, is the heavy favorite in the fall election against Republican Beth Grossman.

Williams was a graduate of Georgetown Law School, spent years as an assistant prosecutor and was also tasked with rooting out corruption as the city's inspector general before he became district attorney.

Williams is just the latest in a long run of Philadelphia politicians to be convicted of corruption. Just in the past 10 years, they have included former U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, a Democrat found guilty in 2016 in a racketeering scheme; the former speaker and four other members of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives; two members of the Pennsylvania Senate; and a Philadelphia city councilman.

The sentencing came just a year after former Attorney General Kathleen Kane, the first woman and first Democrat elected as the state's top prosecutor, was sentenced to 10 to 23 months in prison. She was convicted of two felony counts of perjury and seven misdemeanor charges for unlawfully leaking grand jury materials in a political payback scheme and lying about it under oath.
A Catholic student group at Georgetown University could be stripped of its funding for its belief in traditional marriage.

Love Saxa, a group that advocates for marriage between a man and a woman, is under fire from LGBTQ groups on campus, PRIDE and Queer People of Color, according to The Hoya, Georgetowns student publication. A pro-choice student senator filed a notice on September 25, arguing Love Saxas definition of marriage and relationships violates university standards by fostering hatred or intolerance.

The notice, which would identify Love Saxa as a hate group, could strip Love Saxa of its funding and bar it from using campus facilities. The group receives $250 a year from the Georgetown, which is the countrys oldest Catholic university.

Love Saxa petitioned for a delay because it was not given enough time to defend itself and had not seen the notice, according to the Catholic News Agency. A hearing, originally set for Monday, is now scheduled for Oct. 30.

The controversy began last month, when the president of Love Saxa, Amelia Irvine, published an op-ed titled Confessions of a College Virgin in The Hoya, talking about abstinence before marriage and the groups definition of marriage.

Love Saxas definition of marriage does not include same-sex couples, as we believe that marriage is a conjugal union on every level  emotional, spiritual, physical and mental  directed toward caring for biological children. To us, marriage is much more than commitment of love between two consenting adults.

The student newspaper then targeted Love Saxa in an editorial titled Defund Intolerance.

Love Saxa does not deserve the benefit of university recognition and should be ineligible for any university benefits, The Hoya wrote, claiming the groups mission advocates against equal rights for the LGBTQ community and fosters intolerance.

Love Saxa put out a statement condemning the Hoyas actions as intolerant of the values and beliefs of Georgetown.

Love Saxa exists to promote healthy and loving relationships at Georgetown, said Irvine. Our definition of healthy relationships and sexual integrity is synonymous with those of the Catholic Church, and therefore those of Georgetown University. If the Hoya wishes to call Love Saxa a hate group, we anticipate that it will not be long until other traditional religious groups are labeled hate groups as well.

The university released a statement that did not appear take sides -- just yet.

As a Catholic and Jesuit institution, Georgetown listens deeply and discerningly to the plurality of voices that exist among our students, faculty, and staff and is committed to the care of each member of our community, said a Georgetown University spokesperson. As the students on the Student Activities Commission review the complaint regarding Saxa formally submitted by individual students on Oct. 22, we encourage all students to follow our community commitment to open dialogue and mutual respect.

Irvine is optimistic that the university will uphold the groups right to exist, but issued a warning to her fellow classmates.

If we cannot safely advocate for beliefs synonymous with Catholic social teaching, she said, then no group at Georgetown can be certain of its security.


Persistent heat will keep the wildfire danger at critical levels across Southern California this week despite winds throttling back slowly.

Ten blazes are actively burning across the state, according to Cal Fire. Since Sunday, Oct. 8, wildfires have charred over 245,000 acres and have claimed the lives of 42 people in California.

Gusty Santa Ana winds will pose challenges to fire crews into Wednesday evening as they can create erratic wildfire behavior and cause rapid growth of newly sparked blazes.

A Santa Ana wind event will bring a strong offshore flow into Southern California with winds, especially downwind of mountain passes, exceeding 50 mph at times, according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Jack Boston said.





"Gusts can reach 70 mph in some of the north- and east-facing canyons and passes in Southern California," AccuWeather Meteorologist Jake Sojda said.

Localized damage and sporadic power outages can occur. Staying in driving lanes will be difficult, especially for those in high-profile vehicles.

The air will warm as the wind flows downhill from the mountains toward the coast. Long-standing record highs may be broken as temperatures soar into the 90s and lower 100s F.

Temperatures will lower as the Santa Ana weakens late this week but remain above normal, Boston said.

Highs 20 to 25 degrees Fahrenheit above normal through Wednesday will be replaced with highs 5 to 10 degrees above normal by Friday. The amount of moisture in the air will remain at very low levels, making it easy for a new blaze to ignite.





The slackening winds on Thursday and Friday will lower the risk of wildfires rapidly spreading out of control and breaching containment lines.

However, a wildfire that is intense enough can generate its own gusty winds which can cause the blaze to move in unexpected directions.

While Northern California will be immune from the strongest winds this week, unseasonable warmth will persist in this part of the state as well with daytime temperatures mainly in the 80s.

It may take until the last days of October for cooler, more seasonable conditions to sweep across the state. No dousing rainfall is anticipated heading into early November.
A Michigan man who was investigated as a person of interest in his wife's disappearance was found dead Tuesday of an apparent suicide, authorities said.

Police responded to Christopher Lockhart's home in Portage after he failed to report for a scheduled 10 a.m. meeting with authorities. The Portage Department of Public Safety said in a statement that Lockhart's electronic tether had not indicated any movement for several hours when he was found.

Lockhart's wife, Theresa, has not been seen since May 18. Her car was found at a park-and-ride a couple miles from her home, but there has been no sign of her since. In June, police searched the couple's home for 29 hours, but later said that they had found nothing of significance in the case.

Last month, Christopher Lockhart pleaded guilty to two felonies to one count of tampering with an electronic monitoring device and malicious destruction of property. The charges were not related to his wife's disappearance.

Christopher Lockhart repeatedly denied any involvement in his wife's disappearance. In June, he told a local TV station that the police description of him as a person of interest was "an attempt to embarrass me and put pressure on me."

"I think the police just dont have anything more right now and I guess theyre trying to shake some trees and see what falls out," he told WOOD-TV. Lockhart cited his wife's history of anxiety and depression, as well as the potential non-renewal of her teaching contract as possible explanations for her disappearance.
The second day in the trial of the homeless illegal immigrant from Mexico charged with killing Kate Steinle featured testimony from a witness to the slaying.

Michelle Lo took the stand Tuesday to tell the jury, with the help of an interpreter, what she saw the night of July 1, 2015, when Steinle was fatally shot in San Francisco.

Lo said she was on vacation in San Francisco with her family at the time. She remembered a man dressed in black who "looked like a homeless person" and was spinning around in a chair "grinning and laughing" who made her uncomfortable.

She said she and her family continued along a pier before hearing a "very sharp scream" and seeing a woman on the ground. And she said she saw the same man from earlier walking away.

Lo had taken photos on the pier before the shooting occurred and both Steinle and the defendant, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, appeared in them. One showed Zarate sitting in one of the aformentioned chairs and another showed Steinle walking near him.

During the defense's cross examination, attorney Matt Gonzalez questioned Lo based off her initial police interview at the time of the shooting, during which she said she didn't really notice Zarate.

After Lo repeatedly said she didn't remember certain details, Gonzalez read portions of her interview transcript. She confirmed to the jury that at the time of the interview she said, "I didn't pay too much attention to him" and "looked because [I] was passing by but not intentional."

She also confirmed that Zarate's presence in her photos was coincidental.

Following Lo, the jury heard from two other witnesses, Maria Moreno and Aryn Carpenter, who were staying at a hotel near the pier at the time of the shooting.

The pair said they could hear "screams like you'd hear in a horror film" and saw a large group of people hovering around what appeared to be a body.

They said they were later able to identify Zarate for police because he had been "the only person walking away" and they remembered that he had a "scowl on his face."

San Francisco police Officer Raymond Ortiz also testified Tuesday. He was part of the investigative team that processed the crime scene.

He showed the jury photos of some evidence obtained that day including crime tape around the chair Zarate had reportedly been sitting in, crime scene markers around Steinle's tan sweater and sandals, and medical equipment near large blood stains.

KATE STEINLE CASE THAT LED TO DEBATE OVER US SANCTUARY CITIES, TRUMPS CALL FOR WALL IS UNDER WAY IN COURT

Zarate, 54, admitted shooting Steinle, but says it was an accident.

Steinle's father testified Monday that before she died, she said to him: "Help me, Dad."

The prosecution said those were her last words.

While Garcia's immigration status is what brought the case into the national spotlight, jurors will not hear evidence about that, and it will not be a factor in the trial.

Steinle's slaying became a signature issue for Donald Trump as he was running for president. He invoked the slaying in calling for the construction of a wall on the Mexican border and stepping up deportations and cracking down on illegal immigration.

Fox News' Jennifer Girdon in San Francisco contributed to this report.
The Latest on storms in the western Carolinas (all times local):

2:35 p.m.

Part of a North Carolina state park has been closed after severe weather caused a retaining wall to collapse.

Officials for Chimney Rock State Park said on their webpage Tuesday that the wall at the top of a parking lot in the Chimney Rock section fell during Monday's heavy rainfall. The statement said some debris from the collapse was washed onto a road below.

The park said Chimney Rock will remain closed until further notice.

The park statement said crews are working to clear the roadway. The state Department of Transportation and state contractors are assessing the situation to determine what needs to be done to fix the damage.

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12:30 p.m.

A North Carolina city and county have declared a state of emergency because of damage from severe storms.

The Catawba County Board of Commissioners declared a state of emergency Tuesday after getting widespread damage from Monday's storms. The declaration enables Catawba County Emergency Services to begin coordinated response and recovery efforts in unincorporated areas of the county, in collaboration with emergency response partners.

In addition, the City of Hickory also declared a state of emergency because of what was described as scattered damage in the city.

A statement from the city said current conditions are still dangerous, with fallen power lines, fallen trees and debris in the roadways. Officials are asking residents to avoid the affected areas if possible.

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8:20 a.m.

The National Weather Service is sending two crews to check on possible tornadoes in the western Carolinas.

The weather service in Greer, South Carolina, said Tuesday one team would check for possible tornadoes in Spartanburg and Cherokee counties in South Carolina and Cleveland County, North Carolina.

A second team planned to focus on the rest of western North Carolina.

A line of storms with as many as nine tornadoes raced across the Carolinas on Monday afternoon and evening.

A spokeswoman for North Carolina State Parks said Chimney Rock State Park is closed while crews deal with damage, including a landslide.

Stone Mountain State Park in Roaring Gap, North Carolina, is also closed as crews deal with downed trees.

Duke Energy said about 78,000 customers remain without service Tuesday morning.

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7 a.m.

Crews from the National Weather Service plan to cover western North Carolina and South Carolina, looking to confirm possible tornadoes as a line of storms moved across the area.

As many as nine tornadoes were reported Monday afternoon and evening. The most serious problems seemed to be in Spartanburg County, South Carolina and in Hickory, North Carolina.

Duke Energy reported about 78,000 customers without service Tuesday morning. About 66,000 customers were without service in North Carolina and about 12,000 more customers had no service in northwestern South Carolina.

The National Weather Service reported daily rainfall records Asheville and Charlotte, North Carolina, as well as the Greenville-Spartanburg area in South Carolina. Totals ranged from about 2 inches (5 centimeters) in Charlotte to more than 3.5 inches (9 centimeters) in Asheville.

No deaths have been reported.

___

5:10 a.m.

The Carolinas have some cleaning up to do after severe thunderstorms with flooding and possible tornadoes flipped tractor-trailers and small planes, broke storefront windows and pushed one house off its foundation.

At least 98,000 homes and businesses lost power, forcing some schools to close Tuesday.

The National Weather Service reported many trees and power lines were brought down across western North Carolina. Small planes were flipped over and their hangars crumpled at the Hickory Regional Airport. Drivers navigated flooded streets in Asheville and Boone, and possible tornados left trails of damage.

Duke Energy said that by early Tuesday morning, crews were still working to restore electricity to more than 87,000 customers.

In South Carolina, an apparent tornado crunched buildings, flipped tractor trailers, downed trees and wrecked homes in the Spartanburg area.
The Latest on the end of the Trump administration's refugee ban (all times EDT):

10:45 p.m.

Refugee admissions into the U.S. will resume under new, stricter screening rules, but nationals from 11 countries believed to pose higher risk to U.S. national security face even tougher scrutiny.

U.S. officials are refusing to identify the 11 countries, but say refugee applications from those nations will be judged case-by-case.

President Donald Trump issued his new order on refugee screening Tuesday as the administration's four-month ban on refugee admissions expired.

Refugees already face an extensive backlog and waiting periods that can take years. Additional screening will likely lengthen the wait.

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6:10 p.m.

President Donald Trump is again allowing refugees to be processed for entry into the United States following the expiration of 120-day worldwide ban on such admissions.

But refugees who want to come to the U.S. will be subject to additional screening.

Trump has signed an executive order directing relevant government agencies to resume refugee processing. The administration says more in-depth review is needed for refugees from 11 countries believed to pose a higher risk to national security. That review period will last 90 days.

Administration officials would not identify the 11 countries, but they say refugee cases from those nations will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

The refugee restrictions come in addition to Trump's broader "travel ban" on all immigrants from several countries. Courts have repeatedly blocked that policy.

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1:55 p.m.

The Supreme Court has dismissed a case about President Donald Trump's 120-day worldwide ban on refugees now that the ban has expired.

The Trump administration is planning to unveil new screening procedures soon.

The justices' order on Tuesday wipes away a lower court ruling that found problems with the refugee ban and a temporary pause on visitors from six mostly Muslim countries. A new travel policy that applies to six countries with Muslim majorities already has been blocked by lower courts.

The matter could return to the high court. But for now, the justices have stepped away the controversy without ruling on the legality of the administration's actions.

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8:50 a.m.

President Donald Trump's 120-day worldwide ban on refugees entering the United States is ending as his administration prepares to unveil new screening procedures.

A State Department official says the refugee suspension ended Tuesday, the date set in Trump's executive order. The Homeland Security Department, the State Department and other U.S. agencies have been reviewing the screening process for those seeking to enter the country as refugees, in line with Trump's "extreme vetting" policy for immigrants.

The official says new steps to "further intensify" screening procedures will be announced shortly. The official wasn't authorized to comment by name and requested anonymity.

The refugee restrictions were in addition to Trump's broader "travel ban" on all immigrants from several countries. Courts have repeatedly blocked that policy.
Three people in North Carolina were arrested Saturday after they were caught inside a "mobile meth lab" in a Walmart parking lot.

Robert Harr, 29, Ashley Fisher, 26, and Randy Holmes Jr., 25, were arrested after an officer patrolling noticed them acting suspiciously, according to a Hope Mills Police Department Facebook post.

The officer scanned the license plates of the burgundy-colored Cadillac they were in only to discover that they were registered to a Ford Explorer.

Another officer reportedly went up to the vehicle to determine if it was stolen. It was then they spotted drug paraphernalia in the Cadillacs back seat. A subsequent search of the car found several empty soda bottles with attached hoses and white powdery substance in them.

METH HIDDEN IN STUFFED DOG TOY, BORDER PATROL AGENTS SAY

An investigation of the items by the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) found that the items found in the car were indeed components of a mobile meth-lab, the Hope Mills Police Department said.

Harr, Fisher, and Holmes were jailed at the Cumberland County Detention Center on bonds of $80,000 to $90,000 for several drug-related felonies.

Holmes was also charged with one felony count of maintaining a vehicle for the purpose of manufacturing a controlled substance.
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week promised to deal with the brutal street gang MS-13 in the same way that we took Al Capone off the streets.

Amid a series of gruesome, high-profile murders across the United States, MS-13 has become a major focus of President Trumps Justice Department. But dismantling the gang, whose numbers are estimated to be around 10,000 nationwide, is no easy task: MS-13 has infiltrated communities across the country  and throughout Central America  since its formation in 1980s Southern California.

"MS-13 functions like all immigrant organized crime groups. They start by targeting their own community," Lou Gentile, a former officer at the Organized Crime Unit of the Pennsylvania State Police and founder of investigative firm CSI, told Fox News. MS-13 preys on their own, they exploit their own.

Heres a look at some of the states and regions hardest hit by MS-13 in recent years:

California: MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, was founded more than two decades ago in Southern California by immigrants fleeing El Salvador's civil war. Its founders took lessons from the brutal conflict to the streets of Los Angeles and built a reputation as one of the most ruthless and sophisticated street gangs in the country.

The gang has been responsible for murdering rival gang members and selling drugs. Human trafficking, prostitution and illegal alcohol sales are also among its crimes throughout the Golden State. Back in May, federal and local law enforcement officers carried out a series of predawn raids, arresting 21 alleged MS-13 members and serving warrants at more than 50 locations.

New York/New Jersey: President Trump chose to sound the alarm about the growing threat of MS-13 during a trip to Long Island, and his choice of location was no coincidence. The gang is allegedly responsible for more than 20 murders on Long Island since the start of last year and the New York-New Jersey region is considered one of MS-13s domestic epicenters  with Long Islands Suffolk County purportedly being home to around 400 MS-13 gang members.

Police in Nassau County on Long Island said over the weekend that they have found several spots in a 27-acre park in the hamlet of Roosevelt that may be gravesites for the gang's victims. In neighboring New Jersey, the only member of MS-13 to currently be on the FBIs Ten Most Wanted list, Yovany Gomez, who goes by the nickname Cholo, is wanted for allegedly beating a fellow gang member over the head, stabbing him in the back 17 times and slitting his throat.

Washington, D.C., and Virginia: The nations capital and its suburbs have become home to one of the most notorious cliques of MS-13. Three alleged gang members are currently awaiting trial in the vicious stabbing death of a 15-year-old girl in northern Virginia that was filmed and narrated on a cellphone with the intention of sending the footage to MS-13 leaders in El Salvador.

While the cliques once operated as independent cells, a paper from American University shows there has been more international communication with gang leaders in El Salvador giving orders and demanding financial support from U.S. members.

Texas: While the Lone Star State has for years been the stomping ground of numerous gangs  and even Mexican drug cartels  Texas has recently become a main stopping point for MS-13 members coming to the U.S. from Central America and a waypoint in their humans and weapons trafficking operations plus their drug business. And some of them are staying put in Texas.

According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, there are about 500 members of MS-13 in the state and, while the cliques in Texas appear to operate separately from one another, they are believed to have high levels of communication with Mexican drug cartels. Cartels sometimes reach out to gang members to commit violent crimes on both sides of the border. The relationships between certain gangs and cartels fluctuate based on cartel structures and cell alignments, gang alignment with specific cartels, threats or coercion, and familial ties, a DPS report states. As long as illicit cross-border crimes are profitable, the relationship between cartels and gangs will continue.

The Carolinas: The fast-growing Salvadoran population throughout North and South Carolina has allowed MS-13 to infiltrate and extort the immigrant community there, while leaving the police forces in these smaller, rural communities unsure how to properly deal with the rising gang threat. "They don't know what is coming in," CSIs Gentile said. "Police have to rely on the other departments that have wider resources like sheriff's departments or state attorneys general offices."

In 2015, more than three dozen members of the violent street gang were indicted by a grand jury in North Carolina and face racketeering conspiracy charges, with 22 of the alleged gang members facing additional charges for crimes such as murder, assault and firearms violations

Central America: The Trump administration may be concerned about MS-13 in communities throughout the U.S., but their presence throughout Central America has made the region one of the most dangerous places in the world.

MS-13 functions like all immigrant organized crime groups. They start by targeting their own community.  Lou Gentile, former Pennsylvania law officer

After forming among the Salvadoran diaspora in Southern California in the 1980s, many of the gang members were deported to El Salvador. Over the years the gang has spread to neighboring Honduras and Guatemala. In 2012, violence between MS-13 and rival Barrio 18 hit epidemic levels in El Salvador, with the small country averaging 14 murders per day.

While a shaky gang truce and security crackdown has helped a bit, the gang violence is still rampant and is believed to be responsible for the surge of unaccompanied minors fleeing Central America in recent years and the growth of the gang in the U.S.

History dictates the way gangs recruit, Ed Ryan, the gang prevention coordinator in Virginias Fairfax County, told Fox News. They always prey on kids who are new to an area or are looking for someone who they can relate to.
An Ohio woman is accused of tying a plastic bag over her 2-year-old daughters head and texting a photo of the act to the childs grandmother.

Queridea Young, 24, was arrested Sunday after the toddlers grandmother went to North College Hill police station and showed the disturbing texts to officials, WLWT reported. Young allegedly sent photos of her toddler, on a yellow pillow with a blanket, and a plastic grocery bag around the head.

The photo included a text message reportedly saying, "I already tied a bag over [the child's] head and she was [a]sleep like that for 30 minutes."

Young allegedly sent another message nearly an hour later saying her daughter was going to end up dead or beat up if shes left alone with her, according to WLWT. She was also allegedly upset about her daughter's father spending money on another women.

It's unclear if the child was hospitalized, but she did not sustain any life-threatening injuries.

"I'm not gone be taking care of the girls no more I don't want nothing to do with them and if yal bring them around me they will be dead or beat up, the text allegedly read.

Police arrived at Youngs apartment and found the same blankets and pillows seen in the photos. Young was arrested and is being held on a $25,000 bond. She is expected to appear in court next Wednesday, according to Hamilton County Jail records.
An American Indian activist and former U.S. congressional candidate in North Dakota accused of inciting a riot during protests against the Dakota Access pipeline says he'll seek to present a "necessity defense."

That's justifying a crime by arguing it prevented a greater harm.

Chase Iron Eyes has pleaded not guilty to inciting a riot and criminal trespass. He could face more than five years in prison if convicted at trial in February.

Pipeline protesters who try the necessity defense typically argue they're combatting climate change. Iron Eyes, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, says he hopes to show that civil disobedience was his only option to resist a threat to drinking water from the pipeline.

A judge will hear arguments Nov. 3.
Authorities in Alabama say a 12-year-old girl is accused of dousing her younger brother with hair spritz and setting him on fire.

Investigator James Harvey says Dothan police were dispatched to a hospital Friday and found the 10-year-old boy with serious burns to his back and arms. Multiple news outlets report that detectives determined the girl doused her brother's back with the hair spritz and then used a lighter to ignite the fire.

Authorities say another person was at the home when the attack occurred. Harvey says he couldn't disclose a possible motive.

Authorities say the boy's injuries are serious, but he's expected to recover. Police say the girl was charged with first-degree assault and was released into her parent's custody because of her age. It's unclear if she has a lawyer.

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Information from: The Birmingham News, http://www.al.com/birminghamnews
A man charged with sexual assault in the nations capital less than a month ago was arrested in a Washington suburb over the weekend for attempting to rape and kill a woman inside her home, police said Monday.

The Prince George's County Police Department said Khary Edwards, 23, forced his way into a home in Camp Springs, Md., located just outside Washington, D.C., early Saturday and attempted to rape a woman inside.

"When the first officer arrived, he observed the suspect, who was naked, running from the home," police said.

Edwards was apprehended after a foot chase, and charged with attempted murder, attempted rape, robbery and additional charges. The 23-year-old is being held without bond.

Neighbors told FOX5 the victim has lived in the neighborhood for decades, but is now too scared to return to her home.

Online DC court records show Edwards was charged with first-degree sexual abuse for an incident at a gas station in Southeast D.C on Sept. 25.

In that incident, Edwards allegedly parked his car, grabbed a woman by the neck and said, "You are going to take this ___.

The victim of the September incident told police Edwards had previously helped her by giving her rides to and from work, but on that September night Edwards sexually assaulted her.

The victim tried leaving the car and asking for help, but Edwards ultimately grabbed her by the hair and forced her back in the car, according to the court documents.

Online court records show Edwards was ordered released under a program called the High-Intensity Supervision Program on September 26. Last week, Edwards had a notice of non-compliance" on his record on October 19.

Officials told Fox News that prosecutors requested Edwards be released into the program until his next court hearing, which would have been Oct. 27.

The 23-year-old has a preliminary hearing for the charges in Prince George's County scheduled for Nov. 20, but also has a felony status conference scheduled for Tuesday at D.C. Superior Court.
The FBI released more than 1,500 pages of heavily-redacted documents Tuesday related to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, files shedding light on the relationship between gunman Adam Lanza and his mother prior to the deadly massacre.

The documents, posted on the federal agencys archive page, on the rampage in Newtown, Conn. that left 20 first-graders and six educators dead, include redacted grand jury subpoenas and reports by agents who interviewed people about Lanza.

In one interview, an unidentified person told an FBI agent that Lanzas mother, Nancy, was concerned about him a month before the shooting because he had become a shut in who hadnt gone anywhere in three months.

Nancy Lanza told her son, Adam Lanza, had not left his bedroom in three months, and that despite the fact that Nancy and Adam lived in the same house, Nancy has only been able to communicate with Adam by email, an investigator noted.

In a separate interview, another unidentified person told investigators Nancy Lanza turned down a marriage proposal from a man she was dating because she would have had to move [redacted] and she would not leave Adam, according to the documents.

Adam Lanza shot his mother to death while she slept on Dec. 14, 2012 before going to the school to continue the rampage.

Included in the cache of documents were handwritten notes from the day of the shooting as officials spoke to neighbors of the Lanzas.

Several neighbors also mentioned how Adam was weirded out when Superstorm Sandy struck the Northeast in late October 2012, and that his mother had to stay in her house with Adam for several days without electricity because Adam refused to leave and go to a hotel, and she would not leave him alone.

Another person told agents the FBI had been the home a few years prior because Adam hacked into a government computer system when he was in ninth grade.

The neighbor said Nancy Lanza believed the agents were from the CIA and FBI, and she told them at the time the agents thought Adam could have a job with them someday.

Others interviewed by agents said Lanza was a vegan, after previously being a vegetarian, and had been bullied, but not excessively, for his social awkwardness and his physical gait while in school.

Lanza also had been diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, a form of autism, according to investigators.

A report by the Connecticut child advocate in 2014 concluded that Lanzas autism spectrum disorder and other psychiatric problems did not cause or lead directly to the massacre. The report said at the time Nancy Lanza rejected recommendations from Yale psychologists that her son be medicated and undergo rigorous treatment as a child for anxiety and other conditions. It also said Adam Lanza, his parents and educators contributed to his social isolation by not confronting his problems.

Several residents also told authorities they received death threats after the shooting in phone calls from someone identifying himself as Adam Lanza.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A second U.S. Navy aircraft carrier strike group entered the western Pacific, the Navy's 7th fleet announced Tuesday, amid an increasing war of words between the United States and North Korea.

USS Theodore Roosevelt  the Big Stick  left its San Diego home port earlier this month on a scheduled deployment to the West Pacific and Persian Gulf. It will now join the USS Ronald Reagan strike group off the Korean Peninsula.

The carrier is expected to make its way to the Persian Gulf to relieve the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz.

"Entering 7th Fleet is an exciting opportunity to integrate with other U.S. Navy units in the [area of operations], as well as operate with our partners and allies in the region," said Rear Adm. Steve Koehler in a statement. "We look forward to continued partnerships that lead to mutual security and common views about operating at sea.

It is rare to have two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers stationed in the region.

The last time it happened was back in June when the Carl Vinson and Reagan strike groups were together for a few days in the Peninsula for training purposes  but it marked the first time since the 1990s that two U.S. carriers were near the Korean Peninsula.

"USS Theodore Roosevelt is prepared to carry out the full spectrum of possible missions, from humanitarian relief to combat operations," Capt. Carlos Sardiello, Theodore Roosevelt's commanding officer, said in a statement. "When a carrier leaves on deployment, we have to be ready for anything."

The deployment comes as the U.S., Japan and South Korean maritime forces are conducting a trilateral exercise aimed at improving ballistic missile defenses.

"The exercise will employ tactical data link systems to exchange track data among all the participating ships," the Navy said.

On Monday, Japan's defense minister asserted North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities have grown to an "unprecedented, critical and imminent" level, requiring "different responses" to the threat.

The minister, Itsunori Onodera, said the rising threat compels his country to endorse the U.S. view that "all options" must be considered, which President Trump says includes possible military action. Japan was alarmed by North Korea twice launching ballistic missiles over Japanese territory, in August and in September.

Onodera's comments, made through an interpreter, came at the outset of a so-called trilateral meeting in the Philippines with U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and South Korea's defense minister, Song Young-moo.

"The country has steadfastly improved it nuclear and missiles capability," Onodera said. He added: "The threat posed by North Korea has grown to the unprecedented, critical and imminent level."

"Therefore, we have to take calibrated and different responses to meet that level of threat," he said, without elaborating on what "different" responses Japan favors.

Mattis was somewhat more reserved in his remarks than Onodera, although he did slam Pyongyang for defying U.N. Security Council resolutions against its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

"North Korea's provocations threaten regional and global security," he said.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Sen. John McCain is returning to his alma mater to address the Brigade of Midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy on leadership and service to the nation.

The academy on Tuesday announced the senator's scheduled appearance next week.

McCain, a former Navy pilot and prisoner of war, will speak Monday evening at the academy's Alumni Hall on the school's grounds, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the nation's capital. The academy says the event is not open to the public.

The six-term Arizona Republican continued a long-running clash with President Donald Trump this week in which he alluded to the president in criticizing a Vietnam-era draft system that forced low-income Americans to serve while the wealthy could avoid war with a doctor's note.

McCain had stopped short of labeling Trump a "draft dodger" for getting five draft deferments in that era. But the senator's comments came with Trump already immersed in controversy over how he honors U.S. troop deaths, and underscored the remove between the billionaire president and the military system he now controls as commander in chief.
Serbia's defense minister on Tuesday sharply criticized as offensive the remarks by a U.S. diplomat who said Belgrade needs to choose between Russia and the West if it wants to join the European Union.

Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin, known for his pro-Russian stance, told state news agency Tanjug that the remarks by U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Hoyt Brian Yee represent "the greatest pressure against Serbia yet."

"This is not a statement made by a friend or a person respecting Serbia, our policy and respecting our right to decide independently," Vulin said, adding that Serbia will choose its course regardless of what the big powers want.

Yee said in Belgrade on Monday that countries wanting to join the EU "must very clearly demonstrate this desire."

"You cannot sit on two chairs at the same time, especially if they are that far apart," he said.

"Countries must choose which path to follow; regardless of how difficult it would be, the country has to make its strategic choices which must be part of official policy," Yee said.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic's office said that during a meeting Tuesday the U.S. envoy expressed "perception that Serbia is with one foot on a EU path, and another in a union with Russia."

The president's office said Vucic "carefully listened to the American official and has responded very directly." It said Vucic will "in the next few days" reveal what he said.

Serbia is formally seeking EU membership, but under pressure from its historic Slavic ally Russia, has gradually slid toward the Kremlin. Russia wants to keep countries in the Balkan region out of NATO and other Western bodies.

"It is clear from Russia's actions that it wants to have disjointed Balkans, not strong and united," Yee said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also criticized Yee's comments and warned the U.S. against "trying to enforce its hostile ideological stereotypes on others, undermining the foundation for international stability and cooperation in the Balkans and in Europe as a whole."

The ministry noted in a statement that many EU nations engage in mutually beneficial cooperation with Russia.

"No one should prevent Serbia from taking a similar approach proceeding from its national interests," the ministry said.

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Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.
Sherin Mathews' father  who initially told police he left his adopted 3-year-old daughter in an alleyway as punishment  admitted to police Monday he dumped the toddlers body in a culvert near his Texas home after she choked on her milk while he physically assisted her.

Wesley Mathews, 37, was arrested and charged with injury to a child, one day after cadaver dogs led a search team to the child's body. Richardson police confirmed on Tuesday the remains were identified as Sherin Mathews. Her cause of death is pending.

Wesley Mathews voluntarily went to police on Monday and offered a new account of what happened the night of Oct. 7, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Mathews told police he and the girl were in the houses garage when she refused to drink her milk. She allegedly wouldnt listen. She then began drinking and the father stepped in to physically assist her drinking the liquid. Sherin began choking, coughing and breathing slowly at some point, according to the affidavit.

Mathews told police he couldnt feel a pulse on his daughter and believed she died. He then said he removed the toddlers body from the house.

The father initially told police he ordered her to stand next to a tree behind the fence of their Dallas suburb home about 3 a.m. because she refused to drink her milk. He said she was nowhere to be seen after he went to check up on her 15 minutes later. He was initially arrested and charged with child endangerment, but was released on bond and ordered to wear an ankle monitor.

SHERIN MATHEWS ABANDONED IN INDIA BEFORE ALLEY ABANDONMENT THAT MAY HAVE LED TO DEATH

Sherin's adopted mother, Sini Mathews, was reportedly sleeping at the time. Her attorney told the Dallas News she was distraught about the incident and was cooperating with police.

Wesley Mathews is being held on $1 million bail and faces up to 99 years in prison if convicted. The FBI also seized 47 items, including hair-like fibers, a Costco receipt and a washer and dryer from the home before Mathews' confession.

The couples other daughter, a 4-year-old, was placed in protective custody after Mathews went missing. A court hearing on Monday ruled the girl will remain in foster care at least until a Nov. 13 hearing, or when a judge determines a change in custody.

The couple reportedly adopted Sherin from an orphanage in India about two years ago. Sherin was placed in the orphanage when she was 1 after she was abandoned by her biological family, Times of India reported. Sherin had a developmental disability and didnt have the language skills of a typical 3-year-old child.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A teacher who sparked protests at a New Jersey high school when she told a Spanish-speaking student he should instead "speak American" has made a school-wide apology and has returned to the classroom.

Cliffside Park School District officials say English teacher Laura Amico returned to work Tuesday after delivering an apology to staff and students over the school's public address system.

Dozens of students at the high school in the heavily Hispanic district walked out of school earlier this month after a video clip surfaced in which Amico admonished a student for not speaking English.

The teacher said on the video: "Men and women are fighting. They are not fighting for your right to speak Spanish. They are fighting for your right to speak American."
When a Strongsville man called police Monday night to respond to his house on Blazing Star Drive, he told the dispatcher he believed his wife was dead.

"We've had people breaking in to our (expletive) house and now someone (expletive) killed her," the man said during a call to 911.

Strongsville Police and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations responded to the home. While neither agency has released any information on the investigation, a source told the Fox 8 I-Team that the woman was stabbed inside the home.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office says Melinda Pleskovic, 49, was taken to Southwest General Health Center, where she was pronounced dead.

"It looks like she has stab wounds on her back," the caller told a 911 dispatcher.

"We've had people trying to break into our house all year, stealing (expletive)," he said.

The man said he had just returned home with his "new son-in-law" when he discovered his wife with what appeared to him to be stab wounds. He said his son was already in the home.

Read more from Fox 8 Cleveland.
A truck driver has been charged in federal court with threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump in several phone calls to Secret Service field offices.

Special Agent Matthew Lariviere wrote in a criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday that James Anthony Jackson repeatedly called the Secret Service field office in Chicago on Oct. 12-13 and made more phone calls to the field office in Detroit on Oct. 18 threatening to "blow Trump's brains out."

Lariviere wrote Jackson called from a phone that was registered to James Jackson Profit Group LLC in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Detroit News reports the company is linked to an outreach center in Grand Rapids.

The News reports Jackson was born in 1984 but a hometown wasn't available and the U.S. Attorney's Office refused to discuss the case.

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Information from: The Detroit News, http://detnews.com/
Is your daughters Halloween costume "appropriate"?

Unless youre Polynesian, dressing up your child as Disneys Moana is racist, according to an activist parenting blogger.

Little girls dressing up as Elsa from Frozen should just let it go because her character promotes white beauty, Sachi Feris writes in her blog, Raising Race Conscious Children, in a post that went viral and was picked up by Cosmopolitan.

But that's all child's play compared to the continued policing of costumes on college campuses.

The mere possibility of someone dressing up in what could be viewed as an "offensive" costume is causing several colleges to proactively warn students  using guides, checklists, workshops, threats of probes and investigations. Even offering 24/7 counseling.

Recently, schools cracked down on non-politically correct outfits, from creepy clowns to Caitlyn Jenner, and just about everything in between.

The scariest thing about your costume isnt what you think, according to a Halloween and Cultural Appropriation Tabling event at Goucher College in Maryland.

The University of St. Thomas in Minnesota put up Costume or Culture Appropriation fliers listing unacceptable costumes and clothing as including Native American headdresses, a Mexican sombrero, a geisha outfit or any form of blackface.

Cultural appropriation is defined as the act of taking intellectual and cultural expressions from a culture that is not your own, without showing that you understand or respect the culture, the flier read.

Offensive costumes incorporate a long history of prejudice, hate, discrimination, colonialism and slavery as well as turning an important and/or sacred element into fashion.

And just in case you don't get easily offended by costumes, several universities are ready to help.

The University of California, Santa Barbara recently held a Social Justice Workshop to teach students how to spot Halloween costume abuse and appropriation.

Similarly, Washington State Universitys Social Justice Peer Educators Group held an event entitled Were a Culture, Not a Costume to teach people about harmful Halloween costumes, according to Acculturated.

The University of Massachusetts, Amherst put up Simple Costume Racism Evaluation and Assessment Meter (SCREAM) posters around campus, assigning threat levels based on how much a costume differs from the students own race.

Ohio State Universitys student magazine had a similar flow chart this year that supports costumes that make fun of Donald Trump, but warns white students not to dress as Prince or wear traditional head wear from other cultures.

A Notre Dame Residence hall rector sent out a memo to her students before a Disney-themed dance not to dress up as Moana, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Mulan or The Princess and the Frog.

At the University of Utah, a newsletter put out by the Student Affairs Diversity Council, tells students to avoid Halloween costumes if it is labeled tribal or traditional, or if it includes dreads, locs, afros, cornrows or a headdress.

Northern Arizona Universitys Housing and Residence Life warned against African-inspired costumes, Pocahontas, Asian rice hats and more, according to The College Fix.

At Princeton University, the Center for Equality held a dialogue about the impact of cultural appropriation, Halloween, and why culture is not a costume.

To ensure students don't make the wrong choice, The University of Southern Indiana hosted a workshop for students to make their own culturally appropriate costumes, as reported by The College Fix.

Meanwhile, Minnesota State University Moorhead is set to have a panel discussion called Not Your Festival Wear: Fashion and Cultural Appropriation that asks how appropriation is fueled by womens fashions and white feminism." Vanderbilt University Residential Education, in collaboration with Vanderbilt Feminists, is hosting a chat on cultural appropriation just in time for Halloween.

Texas A&M University held a cultural appropriation diversity workshop earlier this month, and the University of New Hampshire took it a step further, hosting an entire cultural appropriation teach in not only aimed at Halloween, but also Cinco de Mayo and Dia de los Muertos.

At Tufts University, students were warned they could be subject to probes from campus police for costumes that make students feel threatened or unsafe. Administration officials encouraged students to report anyone wearing an inappropriate and offensive costume, according to the College Fix. Examples include geishas, Native Americans, Confederate soldiers or anything involving wearing blackface and/or a sombrero.

The University of Texas issued a 29-point checklist on offensive Halloween costumes that said even seemingly harmless themes can be carried out incorrectly, and the bias response team asked students to report any party with a racist theme.

A Greek official at Pennsylvanias Gettysburg College went so far as to warn fellow Greeks their chapters could be shut down if they wear the wrong costumes.

The University of Florida offered 24/7 counseling last year around Halloween.

Some Halloween costumes reinforce stereotypes of particular races, genders, cultures, or religions, the administration wrote. Regardless of intent, these costumes can perpetuate negative stereotypes, causing harm and offense to groups of people.
A growing number of U.S. college students accused of sex assault are suing the administrations of schools that cling to controversial Obama-era guidelines for handling such accusations, guidelines that critics say denies due process to accused students and which the Trump administration aims to change.

Since 2011, at least 185 lawsuits have been filed by accusers against colleges alleging they were denied due process during Title IX investigations, according to called Title IX For All, a group that tracks the lawsuits. Fifteen lawsuits were filed the two decades prior to 2011, when the rules were imposed, the group says.

Critics of the existing Title IX guidelines, which Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has denounced as unfair and vowed to rewrite, say they stack the deck against students accused of sexual assault, and undermine due process.

Advocates for a change say universities fear being seen as insensitive to sexual assaults on their campuses, and so they prefer to embrace accusers at the expense of the accused, even when the evidence is murky.

Now the accusers are fight back  by hiring lawyers and filing a slew of lawsuits.

Its an unpopular position to say the accused is not getting a fair shake, said Andrew Miltenberg, a New York-based attorney who has handled close to 200 campus disciplinary matters and more than 30 federal litigations arguing due process violations.

Its such a visceral, ugly, emotional topic that its been construed as you can only be on one side, Miltenberg told Fox News.

It doesnt have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. There can be a system where women can come forward and it remain confidential and their claims will be diligently investigated and heard. At the same time, the system can have well-trained people [investigating], a better hearing process with transparency so the accused have a fair opportunity to be heard. You can have both these things.

In a speech in September at George Mason University law school, DeVos cited cases of students, nearly all male, who were expelled or otherwise punished after being accused of actions never proven  all because of the Obama administrations interpretation of the decades-old Title IX, which forbids sexual discrimination in education, resulted in accused students being deprived of due process.

DeVos said her department was overhauling existing Title IX policies on how universities and colleges must handle sex assault accusations with the aim of protecting both those who are assaulted and those who are accused.

Instead of working with schools, DeVos said, the prior administration weaponized the Office for Civil Rights.

Her speech did not detail how the department would change the policies, which were implemented in 2011.

However, she said she will seek feedback from the public and universities on how to develop guidelines -- something Obama's administration did not do before changing those guidelines -- that would both protect students from sexual offenses as well as ensure the accused are not stripped of their Constitutional rights.

Some university officials have said they are ready for a fight against changes they feel will disarm those who report a sexual assault.

Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California and former Homeland Security secretary under President Obama, said to reporters in September, What Im concerned about is that theyre going to swing the pendulum too far in one direction.

Litigation over the issue runs both ways. Last week a national women's rights group and three Massachusetts women filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Education Department's newly proposed guidance on investigating campus sexual assaults.

The Los Angeles-based Equal Means Equal and the three women, who have separately accused their colleges of mishandling complaints of sexual assault, say the new guidance is discriminatory and violates state and federal civil rights laws. They're asking the U.S. district court in Massachusetts to suspend the rules and prevent schools across the country from adopting them.

Kamala Lopez, executive director of Equal Means Equal, said her group is planning to file other lawsuits across the country similar to the Boston complaint.

"We intend to pursue these types of cases in every jurisdiction in this country as part of our declared commitment to secure full equality for all American women and girls," she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Utah robbery suspect evaded authorities after a police chase that ended when his tires blew and he got away.

But a day later, he ended up calling police for help after he somehow got stuck in an abandoned church.

Police had been searching for Shane Paul Owen, 46, a robbery suspect with multiple warrants out for his arrest, and received a tip about his whereabouts, FOX 13 reported.

When authorities in Woods Cross tried to pull Owen over, the 46-year-old sped off and headed south toward Salt Lake City.

The chase continued until officers spiked Owen's tires and he ditched the vehicle.

After hiding in a church overnight in a standoff with cops, Owen ended up calling police for help after he got stuck inside the building's boiler room.

Officials went into the church after making sure he was not armed, and took him into custody. He faces a slew of charges.
A Virginia man who admitted to shooting a bald eagle and then running it over several times with an all-terrain vehicle was sentenced to a month of house arrest Monday.

Allen H. Thacker, 62, was also ordered to complete 100 hours of community service at an area wildlife refuge and to pay $500 in fines along with $1,500 in restitution.

A woman was driving on a road in Smithfield in March when she said she witnessed a man driving an ATV over a bald eagle, according to court documents.

VIRGINIA MIDDLE SCHOOL ENDS ITS FOOTBALL SEASON EARLY AFTER RACIALLY CHARGED VIDEO

The woman told authorities of the incident and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries opened an investigation, The Virginian-Pilot reported.

Thacker pleaded guilty in July to violating the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. He told officers he killed the eagle in March because he had seen the bird killing small game and eating fish on his property.

Thacker said the eagle was a menace and too much emphasis was put on the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, The Virginian-Pilot reported.

UNIVERSITIES ISSUE GUIDES, THREATS AND COUNSELING FOR OFFENSIVE HALLOWEEN COSTUMES

Thacker apologized to the court before being sentenced. He said his family has received a number of death threats following the incident.

I am truly sorry for what I have done. I will not make the same mistake again, Thacker told the court

Half of the fine will go to the woman who reported the crime while the restitution will go to the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund account.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A West Virginia man was arrested Sunday after allegedly beating a woman and dumping her body over a bridge after slicing her throat.

The woman survived the assault.

Stacy Edward Burrell, 59, was accused of assaulting the woman last Wednesday. Court documents show that deputies reported to a hospital in Princeton, where they found a woman cold, shaking, bloody and possibly intoxicated, according to WVNS-TV.

VIRGINIA MAN SENTENCED FOR SHOOTING, RUNNING OVER BALD EAGLE 'MENACE'

The woman reportedly told authorities she was staying with Burrell at his home in Bluefield, where they had spent time drinking liquor and doing drugs together.

Burrell allegedly then assaulted the woman. She told police he threw her head against a washing machine and hit it with a 2-by-4, and punched her in the eyes, WVNS reported.

Tonight you are going to die, are the words Burrell apparently told the woman, as he proceeded to drive her around in a vehicle before stopping at a bridge.

SHERIN MATHEWS' FATHER WATCHED HER CHOKE ON MILK, DUMPED HER BODY, REPORT SAYS

Burrell is then accused of dragging the women from his vehicle, cutting her throat with a box cutter and throwing her body off the side of a bridge.

The woman survived the ordeal, and swam to land and called for help at a nearby gas station.

Burrell told police, who said the man seemed drunk, that he hadnt seen the woman since he dropped her at her mothers house, which he did because she was driving his vehicle and got it stuck on a rock bank.

The man denied assaulting the woman, even though the deputies said he had blood on his shorts when they interviewed him.

SERVICE DOG MAKES DISTURBING DISCOVERY IN FAMILY'S YARD

According to WVNS, police found womens clothing inside a washing machine in Burrells home, in addition to blood on the floor. They also found blood on the bridge.

Burrell was charged with malicious assault and attempted first degree murder, and is being held in the Southern Regional Jail on a $150,000 cash-only bond.
In July, the legislative committee of Dunn County approved a referendum question that is unprecedented in rural America. The question asked Congress and the U.S. president to nationalize health care.

Its chances of success looked good ahead of the Nov. 8 referendum. Results of this referendum could make waves in Wisconsin.
One of President Trumps main goals in office is to combat the notoriously violent MS-13 gang.

The gang, responsible for dozens of gruesome deaths throughout the U.S., was designated a priority last year by the Department of Justices Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. Prosecutors are able to pursue any legal avenue to target MS-13, according to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Read on for a look at the gang and the Trump administrations fight against it.

What is MS-13?

MS-13 was started by Central American immigrants, mainly from El Salvador, in Los Angeles in the 1980s. It has expanded since to include Hondurans, Guatemalans, Mexicans and other Central and South Americans.

MS-13s motto is mata, viola, controla  which means "kill, rape, control," according to Robert Hur, an official with the Justice Department.

They seek to live up to this motto through truly shocking acts of violence designed to instill fear: vicious machete attacks, execution-style gunshots, gang rape and human trafficking.

Gang members perpetuate a number of various criminal acts, according to the FBI, including: murder, rape, home invasions, kidnapping, carjacking and robbery. The FBI said most of the crimes are carried out against members of rival gangs, but often innocent people are hurt as well.

Is it a big threat?

MS-13 recruits are middle- and high-school students, predominantly in immigrant communities, who are said to risk violent retribution if they leave.

Authorities estimate the group has tens of thousands of members across several Central American countries and many U.S. states. MS-13's presence is higher in the western and northeastern parts of the U.S., according to the FBI.

OFFICIALS DETAIL BEST WAYS TO COMBAT MS-13

The gang is believed to be behind at least 25 killings on Long Island in the past two years. Many teenagers on Long Island have been held on gang accusations, swept up in various federal investigations.

What has the Trump administration said about MS-13?

Trump called on Congress to finally close the deadly loopholes that have allowed MS-13 members into the U.S. during his first State of the Union address. He also acknowledged parents of MS-13 victims  some of whom were guests of the White House for the speech  and said the country is praying for you.

Trump has often blamed the Obama administration for the rise of MS-13 across the country. The gang was sanctioned as a transnational criminal organization by the Treasury Department in 2012.

Trump's Justice and Homeland Security Departments have made targeting the gang a top priority. Sessions instructed his department's law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors across the country to prioritize MS-13 members prosecution, as directed by an executive order Trump signed in February 2017.

The classification of MS-13 allows some local police departments to tap into federal money to help with investigations. Suffolk County was granted $500,000 by the federal government.

Trump has used the word "animals" to describe members of MS-13, and says he will continue to use the term when speaking about members of the gang.



In July 2017, Trump visited Brentwood, N.Y., a town that has experienced firsthand the tragedy caused by MS-13, and pledged to push Congress for additional federal immigration agents to crack down on gang members who are in the country illegally. He is back on Long Island in May 2018 to hold a roundtable discussion on gang violence.

What are some of MS-13s more notable killings?

-Two teenage girls from Brentwood, N.Y. were found dead after being brutally beaten and cut in September 2016. Kayla Cuevas, 16, was targeted by gang members and her friend, 15-year-old Nisa Mickens, tried to scare off the attackers, WPIX-TV reported.

-The remains of Oscar Acosta, a 19-year-old high school senior, were found in a wooded area in Brentwood in September 2016. Acosta, who had been missing for months, came to the U.S. from El Salvador and had told his mother he was worried about gangs, she told WNBC-TV.

-The remains of Miguel Garcia-Moran were found in the same area as Acostas in September 2016. He was 15 years old at the time of his death and had been missing since February. Police said he was the victim of a homicidal beating.

-Damaris Reyes Rivas, 15, was killed in January 2017 and found one month later buried under railroad ties. The teenager, from Gaithersburg, Maryland, was stabbed multiple times by MS-13 gang members who filmed the brutal attack. Venus Romero Iraheta, who was 17 at the time of the attack, pleaded guilty in 2018 to the murder. She told Reyes Rivas dont forget my name during the slaying, Iraheta told investigators.

-Police in Nassau County charged Kevin Granados-Coreas, 19, and Carlos Portillo, 22, with second-degree murder in the killing of Julio Cesar Gonzales-Espantzay. Police said MS-13 gang members lured the 19-year-old with the promise of marijuana and sex before they hacked him to death in a park. Gonzales-Espantzay was not a gang member, police said.

-Prosecutors said Christian Villagran Morales was stabbed more than 153 times in a Maryland park. Juan Gutierrez-Vazquez took part in the 2016 killing, holding down the victim while other gang members took turns stabbing him, prosecutors said. Gutierrez-Vazquez pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Vanesa Alvarado, who was accused of luring Morales to the park, was also sentenced to 40 years in jail.

-The bodies of four young men, ranging in ages from 16 to 20, were found in April 2017 in a park in Central Islip, N.Y. Police said all had signs of significant trauma. Justin Llivicura, 16; Michael Lopez Banegas, 20; Jefferson Villalobos, 18; and Jorge Tigre, 18; were reportedly lured to the park by two women associated with MS-13 before they were ambushed by more than a dozen gang members armed with wooden clubs and machetes.

-Angel Soler was 15 years old when he went missing in July 2017. His body was found a few months later in the Roosevelt hamlet of Long Island, police said. Soler was hacked to death with a machete as he was attacked by a group of people, police said. Several MS-13 members have been indicted or charged in connection to his murder.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A math education professor at the University of Illinois says the ability to solve geometry and algebra problems and teaching such subjects perpetuates so-called white privilege.

Rochelle Gutierrez laid out her views on the subject in an article for a newly published anthology for math educators titled, Building Support for Scholarly Practices in Mathematics Methods.

School mathematics curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean Theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans," she says, according to Campus Reform.

She also says that addressing equity in mathematics education will come when teachers can understand and negotiate the politics outside the classroom.

On many levels, mathematics itself operates as whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as white, she writes.

Further, she says mathematics operates with unearned privilege in society, just like whiteness.

Mathematics itself operates as Whiteness.  Rochelle Gutierrez

Gutierrez did not respond to an email from Fox News Tuesday seeking comment.

University of Illinois interim Provost John Wilkin told Fox News that Gutierrez is an established and admired scholar who has been published in many peer-reviewed publications.

As with all of our faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Prof. Gutierrez has the rights of academic freedom necessary to pursue scholarship and research on important subjects and to reach conclusions even if some might disagree with those conclusions, he said.

He added, The issues around equity and access in education are real  with significant implications to our entire educational system. Exploring challenging pedagogical questions is exactly what faculty in a world-class college of education should be doing.

In the book Gutierrez points out that mathematics operates as a proxy for intelligence, but asks, are we really that smart just because we do mathematics?

As researchers, are we more deserving of large grants because we focus on mathematics education and not social studies or English?

'WITNESSING WHITENESS' INFLUENCING LESSONS FOR CHILDREN AT ST. LOUIS SCHOOL

Gutierrez says evaluations of math skills can perpetuate discrimination against minorities, especially if they do worse than their white counterparts, Campus Reform reported.

If one is not viewed as mathematical, there will always be a sense of inferiority that can be summoned because the average person won't necessarily question the role of mathematics in society, she writes.

According to the website, Gutierrez adds that there are so many people who have experienced microaggressions from participating in math classrooms [where people are] judged by whether they can reason abstractly.

NEW YORK PUBLIC COLLEGE OFFERING COURSE CALLED 'ABOLITION OF WHITENESS'

Her solution is a call for teachers to develop political "conocimeinto," or knowledge, to better prepare them in deciding on what learning opportunities work best for their students.

The book, published by Information Age Publishing, is a collaborative effort among more than 40 educators who teach mathematics methods courses for prospective pre-K12 teachers.

Fox News' Caleb Parke contributed to this report.
Ordinary Iranians reportedly took their grievances against the Tehran regime today to the countrys parliament as a result of what they say are the regimes plundering of their savings and its corrupt policies.

According to a report and video from an Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), there were more than 2,000 people protesting outside the countrys parliament, known as the Majlis. The protesters who were accosted by the police shouted slogans against the regime:

Shame, shame on the police force!

Death to the dictator.

Death to the demagogue.

Upon police arresting female protesters, the crowd, it reported, shouted more antagonistic chants against the regime.

You are ISIS, you are ISIS, death to ISIS, let them go.

Shame on Rouhani.

They had a budget deficit, so they took our money, was another chant, according to the NCRI.

Fox News reported last week that President Donald Trumps speech on the Iran nuclear deal emboldened protesters after he said that his administration stood in solidarity with ordinary Iranians.

According to various reports, protests started over a financial scandal where thousands of people trusted their lifesavings with government institutions only to lose it or not be allowed to collect on it. The protests started in 2016 but have become increasingly political this year.

Many of the investments are reportedly run or tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which was recently designated through the Department of Treasury for its terrorist activities by Trump.

I will kill, I will kill the one who killed my brother, the protesters are reported to have shouted as the police moved into arrest them. Protesters, the NCRI report said, had thrown rocks, wood and other objects at the police.

The report also said that as the police surrounded the protesters they broke through police barriers and were joined by many bystanders, all this as a motorized unit was deployed. The protesters responded, it said, by pelting the police with rocks.

The courageous chants in todays demonstrations targeting the heads of the Judiciary and Executive Branch, as well as the suppressive State Security Force and intelligence forces, reflect the Iranian peoples desire for the overthrow of the mullahs religious dictatorship, Maryam Rajavi, the head of the NCRI, said in a statement released today.

In her statement, Rajavi especially called on young Iranians to support their countrymen and women and protest for their rights and expand the protests.

Institutionalized fraud along with institutionalized murder and belligerence constitute the pillars of the mullahs decadent regime. Ali Khamenei and his office hold the strings controlling all the depraved crimes taking place in the country. As long as this regime is in power, there will be no end to the astronomical embezzlement, poverty, unemployment and catastrophic economic conditions, her statement said.

Protesters also criticized the head of Irans judiciary, Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq Amoli Larijani, who was appointed to a 10-year term by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. The protesters called out, according to the NCRI report:

Larijani is a judge. He is the playmate of the thieves, they shouted against the countrys regime.
There were multiple things to blame for the October ambush in Niger that left multiple U.S. service members dead, including insufficient training and preparation as well as the teams deliberate decision to go after a high-level Islamic State group insurgent without proper command approval, the Pentagon has said.

Four U.S. soldiers were killed in October 2017 by Islamic militants who attacked their convoy in Africa with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns. The body of one soldier was not found for two days.

The Pentagons report, released on May 10, took three months to complete, spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement. Defense Secretary James Mattis found institutional and organizational issues, not isolated to this event that must be addressed immediately by the Department of Defense, she said.

However, no amount of investigation or corrective action will ease the agonizing grief that the families of our fallen must feel, White said. The Department hopes that the families will take pride and comfort in knowing  as this investigation makes clear  that their loved ones fought and died bravely in defense of our Nation, its people and the values we hold dear.

From President Donald Trumps calls to the families of the deceased to the White Houses delayed response to the ambush, details about the attack have drawn intense scrutiny and criticism. Read on for a look at what happened in Niger.

Who were the Americans killed?

Sgt. La David Johnson, 25; Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, 35; Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson 39; and Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright, 29, were killed in the attack.

The bodies of some of the Americans killed were recovered by a U.S.-contracted helicopter, a U.S. official previously told Fox News. Sgt. Johnson's body wasn't found until two days after the attack as he and some Nigerien soldiers were separated from the others during the battle, the Pentagon said.

According to the report, the four killed gave their last full measure of devotion to our country and died with honor while actively engaging the enemy. It said none were captured alive by the enemy and all died immediately or quickly from their wounds.

What did the Pentagon say happened?

The Pentagons summary lays out a confusing chain of events that unfolded on Oct. 3-4, ending in a lengthy, brutal firefight as 46 U.S. and Nigerien forces battled for their lives against more than 100 enemy fighters. Amid the chaos, the report identified repeated acts of bravery as the outnumbered and outgunned soldiers risked their lives to protect and rescue each other during the more than hour-long assault.

Military officials found that the U.S. forces didnt have time to train together before they deployed and did not do pre-mission battle drills with their Nigerien partners. And the report found that there was a lack of attention to detail and lax communication about missions that led to a general lack of situational awareness and command oversight at every echelon.

According to the report, the Army Special Forces team left their camp on Oct. 3 to go after an Islamic State leader who was suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of an American aid worker. But the team leader and his immediate supervisor submitted a different mission to the higher command, saying they were going out just to meet tribal leaders. That less-risky mission was approved, and when the team got to the location, the insurgent wasnt there.

Senior commanders, unaware of the teams earlier actions, then ordered the troops to serve as backup for a second teams raid, also targeting the leader. That mission was aborted, however, when weather grounded the second team. The original group was then ordered to another location to collect intelligence on the insurgent, which they did without problems.

It was on their way back to the home base when they stopped for water at the village of Tongo Tongo, about 120 miles north of Nigers capital. There, the group was ambushed by Islamic State-linked militants armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and small firearms.

The Pentagon said it could not conclude that the village willingly (and without duress) aided and supported the militants in the attack.

What else should you know?

The report included multiple recommendations to improve mission planning and approval procedures, re-evaluate equipment and weapons requirements and review training that U.S. commandos conduct with partner forces.

Mattis has directed Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, head of U.S. Africa Command, to take immediate steps to address shortfalls and has given senior leaders four months to complete a review and lay out a plan for additional changes.

Why were troops in Niger?

U.S. forces have been in Niger for more than 20 years and a joint special operations task force was created by the U.S. in 2008.

In 2011, U.S. and French forces set up a counterterrorism force in the country, led by the French, with 4,000 troops and 35,000 Nigerien troops. There were 800 U.S. troops in Niger and 6,000 U.S. troops within 53 countries in Africa, Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last year.

But the presence of American soldiers in Niger reignited a debate about the Authorization for Use of Military Force  a public law enacted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At issue is whether the law gives the president the authority to take action against all terrorist organizations, not just Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

What was the White House's response?

The White House has been widely criticized for its response to the attack  especially in the delay in acknowledging the ambush.

President Trump, too, was criticized for his public feud with a Democratic congresswoman and Sgt. La David Johnsons widow. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., accused Trump of making insensitive remarks to Myeshia Johnson.

Trump has denied Wilsons allegations, but the mother of the deceased soldier has backed up Wilsons claims.

White House chief of staff John Kelly said he was "heartbroken" that Wilson used the conversation she overheard to attack Trump. Kelly, whose Marine son died in Afghanistan, added that the president did the best he could in the situation.

Because of the White Houses response to the attack, its been called the presidents Benghazi by some Democrats, referencing the controversial attack in 2012 that left four American service members dead.

Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
More than two dozen House lawmakers are supporting a bill to halt U.S. military involvement in Saudi Arabias war against the Houthi rebels in war-ravaged Yemen.

The bill, which requires the removal of U.S. forces from the unauthorized hostilities in Yemen within 30 days under the War Powers Act, was introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who told Fox News that 30 legislators -- Republicans and Democrats -- are backing the bill. He said he is optimistic the measure will reach the floor for a vote.

Though we are in negotiations with House leadership over differences on whether this use of military support invokes the War Powers Act, I am hopeful we will see a vote on this in the coming weeks, Khanna said.

He stressed that the bill would not prevent the Pentagon from going after Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS, which for the first time has established a foothold in Yemen.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. is behind a Saudi coalition of Arab nations that went to Yemen to restore the government of President Hadi to power.

Hadi was overthrown by Houthi rebels, a minority Shia group bankrolled and backed by Iran, and aligned with Yemen's ousted former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The rebels have taken control of prominent parts of the country  including the capital Sanaa  and forced Hadi into exile in Saudi Arabia.

In two years, the devastating conflict has destroyed most of the country and claimed the lives of more than 10,000 people. It also has led to an unprecedented cholera outbreak that has infected more than 700,000 people and displaced millions in what was already deemed the poorest country in the Middle East even before the war.

The U.S. support to the Saudis has consisted of providing training, midair refueling for jets to conduct airstrikes and offering targeting assistance to Saudi forces on the ground.

But critics have complained that the airstrikes have killed civilians and have accused the U.S. of being partly responsible.

Even if the bill were to get through Congress, it is unlikely that President Trump will support it.

Trump has applauded the Saudi monarchy for its strong action against Houthi militants, and has consistently denounced Iran for attempting to spread its influence in the region.

Yemen Ambassador to Washington Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak has praised the Trump administration for its support and for sending positive signals, which were not as clear in the past, that it will not accept the continuous meddling of Iran in Yemen by supporting the Houthis.

This was articulated in the presidents strategy on Iran, which Yemen welcomes and fully supports, Mubarak told Fox News. The strategy clearly states how the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps uses Houthis as puppets to disguise Irans role in destabilizing the region by using sophisticated missiles and explosive boats to attach innocent civilians and restrict freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.

Saajar Enjeti, a Pentagon and Foreign Affairs expert at the Daily Caller News Foundation, said Houthi rebels have fired on U.S. ships with likely Iranian-provided weapons.

Kamran Bokhari, a senior analyst at Geopolitical Futures, said the war is actually creating greater room for jihadist groups (both Al Qaeda and ISIS) to operate in Yemen, posing a greater risk to Saudi Arabia and the U.S.

Mubarak accused some in the media, the United Nations and human rights groups of shielding Iran and using misleading facts and figures to falsely paint the Saudi coalition -- including the U.S. -- as the main perpetrators of the bloodshed.

Mubarak also lashed out at a new U.N. report including the Saudi Arabia coalition on a blacklist of child rights violators in the Secretary-Generals Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict.

The report accused the coalition of attacking schools and hospitals and for killing and maiming 683 children in 2016.

The ambassador said the report was misinformed due to the challenges the UN faced in monitoring the situation on the ground and the reliance on non-credible sources, and that the report also failed to mention Houthis and their allies are the cause of this war.

The Houthis have recruited thousands of children into their militia and are responsible for killing and maiming many others by land mines and indiscriminate shelling of civilians, he told Fox News.

The U.N. did include the Houthis in the blacklist report, but pinned them for causing slightly less collateral damage  the killing or maiming of 414 minors. Critics of the Saudi coalition stress that because they are the ones with air power, their ability to harm is far more potent.

Saudi Arabias U.N. Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi also has condemnd the report, saying that the brunt of responsibility for the violence must rest in the hands of the Houthi opposition.

He said the coalitions activities in Yemen were being conducted in accordance with international legitimacy and in accordance with international law.

Mubarak insisted the war was never his governments choice or making.

As a democratically elected government, we had no choice but to defend our country and fight the fire that the Houthis started, he said.

Some also tend to believe that the government and the coalition seek to annihilate the Houthis; this could not be further from the truth," he said.

We were and still are ready to engage in peace talks. The Houthis can  at any time  stop the war and heed the international communitys call to end their aggression. They can be part of the new Yemen, but only as a political party, not a militia.
The American woman held hostage with her family for five years by Taliban-linked extremists has broken her silence since being freed.

Caitlan Coleman, 31, spoke to the Toronto Star Monday, her first interview since she was rescued with her husband and three children on Oct. 11 by Pakistani troops.

Coleman told the Star she was not ready to divulge everything about her captivity, but she opened up about her unborn baby being killed by the extremists.

Coleman said her captors, part of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network, killed the baby because her husband, Joshua Boyle, 34, refused to be recruited by the terrorist group.

They were very angry because Joshua had been asked to join them, to work for them, and he said no, the mother said. They killed her by dosing the food. They put massive doses of estrogen in the food.

Coleman said after the forced abortion of her daughter, who they named Martyr, the kidnappers bragged about their achievement. The Taliban has denied the allegations and said she miscarried naturally.

Coleman and Boyle were abducted in Afghanistan during a backpacking trip on Oct. 2012.

FORMER HOSTAGE CAITLAN COLEMAN RUSHED TO HOSPITAL, HUSBAND SAYS

She told the Star she was aware of people on social media criticizing her and her husband for going to Afghanistan while she was pregnant and then having more kids while she was being held hostage.

It was a decision we made. We did think about it and talk about it and its difficult to explain all the reasons, but, for me, a large part was the fact that it has always been important to me to have a large family, Coleman said. This took our life away from us  this captivity with no end in sight. And so I felt that it was our best choice at that time. We didnt know if we would have that opportunity when we came back. We didnt know how long it would be. It was already unprecedented, so we couldnt say, Oh well only be here a year or six months.

Coleman said after her unborn baby was killed she kept her other pregnancies a secret from the kidnappers. Since being freed, her children, ages 4, 2 and somewhere around 6 months old have all undergone testing from medical officials. Coleman has also been hospitalized but said she was recuperating.

The Star reported Coleman was wearing a hijab and has been since she was freed. She would not say if she had converted to Islam.

CAITLAN COLEMAN, AMERICAN WOMAN RELEASED WITH HER FAMILY IN PAKISTAN: WHO IS SHE?

Coleman used the interview to dispute reports by the Pakistani government that the family was rescued after they crossed the border into Pakistan. Coleman said the family was in Pakistan for more than a year before their rescue.

Right now everybodys shunting blame and making claims, Coleman said. Pakistan says: No they were never in Pakistan, until the end. The U.S. says, no they were always in Pakistan; it was Pakistans responsibility. But neither of those are true.

Coleman said the first six months in captivity were the hardest.

They first took us out of Afghanistan; it was several days drive. They took us to Miran Shah, in Pakistan, where we were kept for more than a year, Coleman said. It was very bad. My husband and I were separated at that time. He wasnt allowed to see Najaeshi (their eldest son) or spend any time with us.

Afterward, they moved to the north of Miran Shah and lived with a man who was nice to their son. After their time there, they moved often. She also said she was raped.

"We had a pen they didnt know about and we were taking little scraps of paper and trying to hand out notes to anyone and everyone that wasnt one of the guards or commanders involved in killing Martyr, she said. But then they took us, separated us, and beat us and that was when the assault on me happened because they wanted us to stop.

Coleman said they were moved to Spin Ghar, southeast of Kabul, for a few months before moving again. Coleman said they often were drugged when traveling and kept in the trunk of the vehicle they were transported in.

During their final months in captivity, they stayed in a place they called House of Musa.

Coleman recalled the day her family was traveling out of captivity and a gun battle broke out.

Our first fear  why we were not poking our heads up and yelling for help  was our fear that it was another gang trying to kidnap us. Possibly just part of the Haqqani network fighting with another part. Theyre all just bandits, Coleman said.

Youre a prisoner for so long, youre so suspicious, I was still thinking we dont know these people, we dont know where theyre taking us.

The mother said after she realized it was Pakistani forces that had come to free her family, she froze.

I think, she said, I was mostly just in shock.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni says the government is willing to open talks with representatives of two wealthy regions after voters there overwhelmingly passed referendums seeking greater autonomy from Rome.

Gentiloni said "it's possible, it's probable" certain services would work better if Lombardy and Veneto acquired greater powers from the central government. Regional leaders are seeking more autonomy over issues such as education, immigration, security and the environment, as well as retaining more tax revenue.

In his first comments since the Sunday vote, Gentiloni said Tuesday in Veneto that the government was "ready for talks" though he noted the specific issues and conditions up for discussion haven't been decided.

Sunday's peaceful votes reflected the same drive for greater self-determination seen in Spain's conflict-ridden Catalonia region.
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The women accused of carrying out a daring February assassination on Kim Jong Uns half-brother in a Malaysian airport returned to the scene of the crime Tuesday, retracing the steps that led them to allegedly smear the banned VX nerve agent onto Kim Jong Nams face, killing him.

Siti Aisyah, 25, and Doan Thi Huong, 28, donned bullet-proof vests and handcuffs as they walked and then wheeled through Kuala Lumpur airport with more than 200 police officers, dozens of journalists and an entourage of court officials surrounding them. The Indonesian and Malaysian women are accused of killing Kim on Feb. 13, though they have insisted they were duped by North Korean agents and believed they were playing a prank for a reality television show. They have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

WHO KILLED KIM JONG UN'S HALF BROTHER? HERE'S WHAT WE KNOW

Police clad in black uniforms, many carrying rifles and wearing masks, formed a security ring around the group while they toured the bustling airport for more than three hours. The women were placed in wheelchairs after they complained of exhaustion. Aisyahs lawyer, Gooi Soon Seng, told reporters the chaotic visit to the airport helped verify the location and surroundings of the murder scene, Reuters reported.

The CCTV footages were taken from various cameras and various places, so from there we couldnt get a complete picture on how [the incident] took place, Gooi said at a news conference.

Prosecutor Wan Shaharuddin Wan Ladin told The Associated Press before the tour began he believed the visit would strengthen the prosecutions case.

"I believe the visit to the crime scene will help strengthen the prosecution's case because it will allow the judge to follow the women's trail and understand why they took that path," he said.

The group visited the terminals restaurant where Aisyah was seen on surveillance video in February meeting with an unidentified man, and the restroom where the women flocked to after spreading the deadly chemical on Kims face. At one point, the women appeared emotional and one broke down in tears.

The airport visit comes on the third week of Aisyah and Huongs trial, who both face the death penalty if convicted of the crime. Huong was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with LOL when she lunged at Kim at the airport. Traces of the poison were discovered on the womens clothes and Huongs fingernails.

But prosecutors believe the women didnt act alone. Four other North Korean men are suspected of recruiting and supplying Aisyah and Huong for the brazen assassination, but they have since vanished.

The involvement of the missing North Korean agents have fueled South Koreas spy agencys claim that the attack was part of a careful plot set up by the North Korean despot to kill a brother he reportedly never met. Kim Jong Nam was not known to be actively seeking influence over his younger brother but had spoken out publicly against his family's dynastic rule. Since he was also the eldest son of the late leader Kim Jong Il, he could have been seen as a potential rival to Kim Jong Un.

KIM JONG UN KILLED UNCLE, HALF-BROTHER OVER 'CHINA COUP PLOT,' REPORT SAYS

A report by Japanese magazine Nikkei Asian Review in August also claimed Kim Jong Un flew into a rage when he discovered his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, was planning a coup with Chinese officials to overthrow him. The half-brother would then step in to lead the Hermit Kingdom in his place. Jang was assassinated in 2013 and branded worse than a dog and despicable human scum.

Kim Jong Un still has other siblings  two sisters and a brother  who are still alive, according to the BBC. Little is known about the siblings. He recently promoted his sister, Kim Yo Jong, to become an alternate member of the politiburo, a top decision-making body. Kim Jong Chul is reportedly an Eric Clapton megafan.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A retired Army officer from Trempealeau County announced plans to challenge U.S. Rep. Ron Kind next year, saying the 11-term Democrat has nothing to show for his more than 20 years in Congress.

Steve Toft, 59, said the nation is facing challenges of epic proportions because of top-heavy agencies and skyrocketing debt.

No one party is fully to blame, Toft said. But Ron Kind and career politicians like him are part of the problem.

Toft said he favors transferring more power to state government and would work to repeal the Affordable Care Act and to enact tax reform while protecting Social Security and Medicare benefits.

A native of Osseo, Toft enlisted in the Army in 1984 and returned to Osseo last year after retiring as a colonel. This is his first run for elected office.

Toft said he supports the president though he doesnt agree with everything that President Trump stands for and wont just line up behind him. He said he is also confident in the leadership of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

Hes been a great American statesman from the state of Wisconsin, he said of Ryan, who has been in office since 1999. Hes been in Congress quite a while himself, but hes a leader.

Toft said Kind, who was first elected in 1996, is a career politician who has not supported Wisconsin farmers.

Campaigns start way too early, last way too long, and cost way too much money, Kind said in a response issued by his campaign. I remain focused the issues that impact Wisconsinites lives every day, including making sure they have access to affordable health care and good paying jobs.

According to federal campaign finance records, Kinds campaign had $2.8 million on hand at the end of September. Toft has yet to file a finance report.

Kind held off a similar challenger in 2014 when he defeated Tony Kurtz, a retired Army officer making his first bid for public office. He was re-elected to an 11th term after running unopposed in 2016.

Toft said he was recruited by party leaders to run against Kind when Kurtz declined to run again. He said he would welcome a primary challenge but expects to be on the ballot for the Third Congressional District in 2018.

If elected, Toft said he would limit himself to four terms.

Im not a politician, he said, and I dont want to become one.
Thick tomes on the laws of England. Half a dozen legal dictionaries. Books on Roman law and maritime law.

Those are some of the books Thomas Jefferson thought aspiring lawyers should be reading or using as reference.

Now, almost 200 years after his death, the University of Virginia has been working to make the hundreds of books on Jeffersons legal reading list available to the public through an online library.

The book list goes back to the creation of the University of Virginia, a project Jefferson took on after he finished serving two terms as Americas third president. A voracious reader himself, Jefferson believed the schools library would be the heart of the new university, which opened in 1825. So he drew up a list of about 7,000 books ranging in topic from agriculture to zoology that he believed the school should have in its collections. At the time, books were pricey, and Jefferson thought part of the duty of the university was to make great works available for study.

Great standard works of established reputation, too voluminous and too expensive for private libraries, should have a place in every public library, for the free resort of individuals, Jefferson wrote of the list of works he drew up.

The books were the starting point for the universitys collection, but they didnt last. Most were destroyed in an 1895 fire that gutted a historic campus building called the Rotunda, the same building that was the endpoint of an August torch-light rally by white nationalists whose demonstration in the city the following day over the removal of a Confederate statue descended into chaos.

It was a law librarian at the university who, 40 years ago, got the idea of re-creating the collection of law books Jefferson recommended. Since then, the university has collected 336 of the 375 legal works listed by Jefferson, a lawyer himself. Its those works that are now being put online.

Two hundred years later were once again creating a different type of library with these books, said Loren Moulds, a librarian at the university who is helping lead the project. Jefferson was dedicated to democratizing information. This is another attempt by us to do something in a library that opens these up and makes them more broadly available.

The books Jefferson selected range in publication date from 1534 to 1825. About three-quarters are in English, though some are in Latin and French. They address topics law students still commonly study today such as wills, contracts and libel, but there are also many books on subjects that arent mandatory today, such as ecclesiastical law. The collection includes a two-volume set on the trial of Aaron Burr for treason and a 13-volume set on the laws of Virginia. One recently acquired book, Sir Henry Spelmans Of the Law-Terms: A Discourse, which was published in 1684, cost $1,750.

If youre a legal historian these are a great resource, said Jim Ambuske, who is also helping lead the project. Ambuske said that even though some texts are esoteric, a lot of these cases are still relevant today.

Earlier this year, the project got a grant to help put the collection online, and now two students are using a special camera setup to capture images of the book pages. They use the setup for between 10 and 16 hours a day and get through three or four books each day.

The only time these cameras arent in use is when were sleeping, said Amber Anglada, one of the students assisting with the project.

The aim is for the work to be finished in October or early November. At the same time, those working on the digitization project also want to put the books in context with essays about the librarys history and, more generally, about law in the fledgling nation. Melissa Gismondi, a doctoral student in history who did that work, said she wanted to explain what Jeffersons vision of law tells scholars about the period of law after the American Revolution.

As for what Jefferson would think of the project, those involved said they hope he would approve.

I think he would be reasonably pleased that were trying to democratize legal knowledge in a way that he envisioned originally, Ambuske said, adding that they hope their work inspires other libraries to pursue similar projects.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)  A Republican lawmaker in Kentucky has filed legislation that would shield drivers from criminal and civil penalties if they unintentionally run over protesters who are blocking the street without a permit.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports state Rep. Wesley Morgan filed the bill on Friday. The bill would make it punishable by up to a year in jail to block traffic on a public road during a protest without a permit. Drivers who unintentionally hit protesters would be immune from criminal or civil penalties.

The bill comes after a counter-protester at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was killed earlier this year when a man drove a car through the crowd. Republican lawmakers in six other states have filed similar bills, arguing they want to protect drivers from costly lawsuits they say are caused by illegal street protests. But most proposals have failed to pass .

"Everything that happened in Charlottesville is what I'm trying to prevent," Morgan told The Associated Press in an interview. "Some idiot drives a car intentionally and kills a protester, ... this bill would do nothing whatsoever about that. I'm 100 percent (in agreement) that person needs to be prosecuted."

Morgan said he filed the bill because his constituents were afraid the nearby city of Lexington would attract protests like those in Charlottesville because of the city's efforts to remove two statutes depicting Confederate generals.

"It's moving the burden of proof from the driver of the car to the protester," Morgan said. "The protester has to prove that they got targeted."

Some of Kentucky's Democratic lawmakers were swift to condemn the bill.

"This is an absolutely immoral bill, and we all know it," state Rep. Kelly Flood told the newspaper. "We owe it to our constituents to act like statesmen. What we are really saying with bills like this is that it's OK for us to be at war with one another, to use violence against each other."

The bill would make it illegal for protesters to wear masks and make it a crime for local elected officials to order police officers not to "exercise official duties during a public protest."

The Kentucky legislature is scheduled to convene on Jan. 2.

___

Information from: Lexington Herald-Leader, http://www.kentucky.com
"There have been eight publicly reported murders by MS-13 in Northern Virginia alone. And there's more than 2,000 MS-13 gang members just in Fairfax County, and this is a growing problem."- Ed Gillespie, R, Virginia gubernatorial candidate, interview on the J.R. Hoeft Show, Oct. 21, 2017

"We know that there are more than 2,000 MS-13 gang members in Fairfax County alone. . . . MS-13 is surging, not just in Northern Virginia but other parts of the Commonwealth too."- Gillespie, in an interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial board, Oct. 18

"I don't have the numbers for Loudoun, I have the numbers for Fairfax where I live. There are more than 2,000 MS-13 gang members in Fairfax County alone."- Gillespie, interview with the Loudoun Times-Mirror, Oct. 14

---

In the tight race for Virginia governor between Gillespie and Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, D, Gillespie has made the threat posed by the MS-13 street gang a major part of his campaign. We had earlier examined one of his commercials on this, which we found to be misleading. (We also knocked one of Northam's ads attacking Gillespie's career as a lobbyist.)

In recent weeks, Gillespie has begun to assert that there are more than 2,000 MS-13 gang members in Fairfax County. We wondered whether there was much evidence to support this figure.

The Facts

MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, is a Central American gang that has been operating in the United States for decades. The transnational gang formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s, among members of the Salvadoran community who had fled violence and civil conflict in El Salvador. U.S. agencies have been dealing with enforcement and prevention of MS-13 activities since as early as 2004. MS-13, which operates in at least 40 states, is violent, but much of it is gang-on-gang violence.

Gang violence in Central America's Northern Triangle region (El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala) has contributed to the surge in recent years of crossings by unaccompanied children and families over the Southwestern border into the United States.

Fairfax County, meanwhile, has an estimated population of more than 1.13 million in 2016, of which 16.4 percent (185,166) are Hispanic. Fairfax County is the third wealthiest county in the United States, with a median household income of nearly $113,000.

In context, 2,000 gang members out of more than 1 million people - especially if it is isolated to small pockets and restricted to gang-on-gang violence - is a relatively small number. But let's see what evidence exists.

The Gillespie campaign did not respond to repeated requests for comment, which is clearly suspicious.

Obviously, there is no census taken of gang members. The population is relatively transient and not easily identified. So any figures must be taken with a grain of salt.

The Justice Department has offered varying estimates for the number of MS-13 gang members in the United States, ranging from 6,000 to 10,000. The Trump administration has suggested MS-13 membership has climbed in recent years, offering a 10,000 estimate in April. But FactCheck.Org found that the Justice Department has been citing a 10,000 member figure since at least 2006, indicating there has been little apparent growth.

A Fairfax County assessment in June, meanwhile, cited a 2015 police intelligence estimate that there are 2,000 gang members in the county, with the police identifying 80 different gangs.

The Fairfax County report cited a 2015 youth survey, which found slightly more than 2 percent of high school students indicating membership in a gang - a figure that had dropped in half since 2008.

Police officials were unable to provide a further breakdown of gang members, including what percentage might be MS-13. But the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told The Washington Post in June that the estimated membership of MS-13 in the D.C. region - including Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia - was between 900 and 1,100.

That's certainly less than 2,000, and it's for more than Fairfax County. The D.C. region has a population of 6 million.

But there's a wrinkle. In 2009, the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force issued a report in which it estimated that there were 3,000 MS-13 gang members in the NoVa region, an area with roughly 2.5 million people. Fairfax County is obviously the largest part of the region - about half the population - and the report said MS-13 was the largest gang in the county.

Jay Lanham, a retired assistant chief of the Prince William County police and executive director of the task force, told WTOP in June that the number of MS-13 members was now "over 5,000 easy." But when we reached Lanham, he backed away from the number.

"They are so transient," Lanham said. "It's really just an estimate." The task force maintains a database funded by the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program, but he acknowledged it's difficult to know if members listed in the database have left the area or are no longer in the gang.

Still, Lanham thought a figure of 2,000 MS-13 gang members for Fairfax was "probably pretty accurate" given the size of the county. Gillespie, of course, often says "more than 2,000."

We should note that Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force has had its funding cut dramatically by Congress, from $3 million in 2012 to $325,000 currently. Lawmakers have cited its estimates - higher than police estimates - as a reason to bolster funding.

"Most of the estimates from the police department are going to be on the low side," Lanham said.

Still, it's strange that DOJ estimates would suggest there has been no gain in MS-13 membership across the United States over 10 years, while the Northern Virginia task force would claim membership in the region would nearly double in eight years.

The Pinocchio Test

Despite Gillespie's certitude, the plain fact is that no one knows how many MS-13 gang members are in Fairfax County.

Gillespie is citing the highest possible estimate, in an effort to make the situation seem as bad as possible, particularly for people in vote-rich Fairfax County.

In fact, under Gillespie's math, Fairfax County by itself accounted for more than one-fifth of all of the MS-13 members in the United States, given the Justice Department figure of 10,000 MS-13 members nationwide.

ICE, meanwhile, indicates the entire D.C. region represents just one-tenth of the MS-13 membership. That would suggest Fairfax County has less than 1/20th of the MS-13 population.

Both Fairfax County police and ICE estimates for the region are much lower than the number Gillespie is touting on the campaign trail - a fact that he should acknowledge. We wavered between two and three Pinocchios, given how Gillespie hypes this figure. But we ultimately settled on two because Lanham offered some backing for Gillespie's statement, despite the much lower estimates by other official sources.

Two Pinocchios
Over the last three weeks, the University of Wisconsin Systems leaders have adopted new policies to curb disruptive protests, largely mirroring a controversial Republican bill. They have given members of the Board of Regents more power in picking campus leaders.

And they have announced a sweeping reorganization of UWs two-year colleges and Extension program, surprising faculty and students who were left out of that planning process.

Two higher education experts see a common theme in the actions: An embrace of top-down decision-making and conservative ideas about higher education by the UW Systems administration and its Board of Regents, which is now almost entirely made up of Republican Gov. Scott Walkers appointees.

The actions have further strained relationships with UWs faculty and students, many of whom were already distrustful of System leaders after actions in recent years that weakened tenure protections and the role of those groups in campus governance.

According to Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations and policy analysis with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and Noel Radomski, managing director at the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education, the alignment between System leaders and conservative lawmakers could threaten the independence that distinguishes UW from other, more politicized state offices.

Theres a pattern here of  ideologically driven decision-making, Radomski said. The culture has changed significantly  its gone 180 degrees. The independence that the UW System Board of Regents used to have, and the quasi-independence that the System administration used to have, is gone.

System President Ray Cross and Regents President John Behling declined interview requests through a UW spokeswoman, who provided a statement from Behling.

The actions the Regents have taken during the last few months reflect national trends in higher education and address issues raised throughout the country and our state, Behling said. Just as was the case with board members appointed by governors (Tommy) Thompson and (Jim) Doyle, our job is to balance the politics of the day with what is best for the University System, our students, and our faculty and staff.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, did not see System leaders actions as sea change embracing Republican ideals.

A more conservative UW would have sought savings by shutting down some of the 13 two-year UW Colleges, Vos said  Cross plan to turn them into branch campuses of four-year universities found a middle ground.

I certainly dont view (the Regents) as some kind of conservative bastion pushing a right-wing agenda, Vos said.

Faculty, students not consulted on plan

Like members of other shared-governance groups  which represent students, faculty and staff, and traditionally have crafted policies along with campus administrators  UW-Madison English professor Anja Wanner said the UW Colleges and Extension reorganization plan took her by surprise. The proposal calls for UW-Madison to absorb several UW Extension programs.

It just rained down on us, said Wanner, who is chairwoman of the University Committee, the executive arm of the Faculty Senate.

Asked in an interview last week on WISN about criticism from shared-governance groups about how the policy was drafted, Cross said UW officials consulted with business leaders and other community leaders.

But, he acknowledged, We did work on this without bringing a lot of input in.

Wanner and Maria Berge, president of the student government at UW-Oshkosh, which would absorb two UW Colleges under Cross merger proposal, said failing to involve their groups weakens policies, because leaders dont take into account the expertise and knowledge of people on campus.

Critics have raised several concerns about the proposal since it was announced, including how campuses would manage faculty tenure given the differences in roles between professors at two-year colleges and those at four-year universities.

Radomski has criticized UWs aggressive timeline for rolling out such complex changes  the Board of Regents is expected to vote on Cross plan next month, and it would go into effect before the next academic year, if approved.

Theres a lot of small, minutiae-type things that System presidents and Regents might not know about, Berge said. It would be very valuable to get all of these different perspectives.

Asked about the criticism, System spokeswoman Stephanie Marquis said, The first step was making a decision to put forth a proposal for restructuring, and our next step is to move into the planning and design phase.

We value the input of our faculty, staff and students and they will have a voice in the process, Marquis said.

Colleges plan follows controversial moves

Nassirian said criticism of the merger proposal had more to do with the process by which it was created, rather than opposition to the idea itself.

And the reaction from faculty and students was amplified, he said, because it came soon after another move to consolidate power under administrators  a new policy requiring that Regents hold five of the 10 seats on committees that search for UW chancellors. Faculty will have two seats while students and staff would each have one; the last would be filled by a community member or alumnus.

The policy included other changes meant to speed up the process for selecting chancellors and allow for leaders to come from outside academia.

It was approved during a board meeting earlier this month at which the Regents also adopted new rules requiring campuses to suspend or possibly expel students who repeatedly take part in disruptive protests.

The Regents policy on speech borrowed heavily from a piece of Republican legislation that passed the Assembly on a party-line vote in June, and came as conservative lawmakers across the country sought to restrict protests that they say threaten the open exchange of ideas on college campuses.

Nassirian said the changes pursued by UWs Regents and administration are similar to those in other states where Republicans have dominated state government, such as Iowa and North Carolina.

He noted a significant reorientation under University of North Carolina system President Margaret Spellings, a former Bush administration education secretary.

You see situations where the policy community in the state takes a much dimmer view, I would say, of some of the traditional practices of higher (education), such as shared governance, Nassirian said.

But Vos said he didnt see a problem with Cross process for creating the UW Colleges proposal, despite the complaints from shared-governance groups.

UW administrators need to be able to take action quicker, according to Vos, and shouldnt have to study something to death in a drawn-out process.

I hope this is a model for how things are going to be in the future, Vos said.
Virginias hopes for a $2 billion paper manufacturing plant in Chesterfield County continue to fade, as the Chinese company behind the project failed to meet a deadline for repaying a $5 million incentive grant by the state.

Tranlin Inc. informed state economic development officials on Tuesday that the company was unable to fully repay the loan, as it had promised in July as part of a plan to reset the massive project to incorporate new technology already operating at new plants in China.

Instead, the company wrote the state a $150,000 check and promised to repay the balance of the grant in six monthly installments, beginning on Dec. 1, and 10 percent annualized interest. It also agreed to give the state a first-position lien on 58 acres it bought in Chesterfield for $3.2 million.

We are deeply sorry and apologize for the delay in full repayment, Tranlins acting CEO, Donald Lan, said in a letter to Stephen Moret, president and CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.

In a statement on Tuesday, Moret said, VEDP was very disappointed to learn that Tranlin would not meet the contractually required October 24 repayment deadline for the $5 million incentive grant, as the company committed in writing to VEDP on July 26 that it would meet the October deadline.

He called the property lien a sign of good faith to meet the repayment obligation.

Protecting the bulk of the commonwealths repayment amount, this lien will be executed as soon as possible, said Moret, who was hired in February to run the semi-independent state agency. The lien will be released only after the company has fully reimbursed the commonwealth, with interest, for the $5 million incentive grant that it has committed to repay.

However, Tranlin has not accounted for the $1.8 million difference between the $5 million grant, made by Gov. Terry McAuliffe early in his term from what was then called Governors Opportunity Development Fund, and the $3.2 million purchase price of the property in James River Industrial Park.

The grant was part of our companys general operating funds, which are accounted for through general accounting principles, Tranlin spokeswoman Lisa Randall said. Our companys general operating funds are used for U.S. operations.

Randall said the company is anticipating revenue generation from sales of our agricultural products, but this timing is not in sync with the initial grant repayment date. Were confident that we can meet our repayment obligation with the updated payment plan discussed with the VEDP.

Lan said the company is committed to remaining in Virginia, with an office in Charlottesville, and will continue our efforts to further build demand for our products in anticipation of U.S. production.

In addition, we are making significant progress developing our U.S. marketsespecially with our fertilizer products, he said.

Legislators were first briefed on the Tranlin project in late 2013 at the end of Gov. Bob McDonnells term. The Major Employment and Investment Commission, a bipartisan legislative panel that now reviews financial incentives of more than $10 million, approved about $20 million in performance grants for the project in early 2014, after McAuliffe took office.

The total package promised Tranlin $29.5 million in state financial incentives for the project, which was supposed to bring $2 billion in capital investment and create 2,000 jobs by the end of 2019. The grant, from what is now called the Commonwealth Opportunity Fund, was made up front, although the timing of those grants now is based on the degree of risk in meeting obligations.

Since then, VEDP has come under heavy criticism for lack of oversight on incentives for economic development prospects. The Joint Legislative and Audit Review Commission issued a scathing report in late 2016 on the partnership since its creation 20 years earlier under then-Gov. George Allen.

The General Assembly enacted sweeping reforms to the partnership this year, including restructuring its board of directors, requiring the creation of an incentives division, and requiring its new management under Moret to respond to more than two dozen JLARC recommendations.

The study was prompted in part by revelations in early 2016 that the McAuliffe administration had given a $1.4 million grant to a Chinese company called Lindenburg Industry to build a factory in Appomattox County, only to find out later that the company was a fiction. The state is still trying to recover the grant.

The Tranlin project is different because the company is real and so are its products, which Virginia and Chesterfield officials watched being made during visits to factories in China.

House Majority Leader M. Kirkland Cox, R-Colonial Heights, has been a major supporter of the Tranlin project, which would be in his House district.

Cox, whom Republicans have designated to become Speaker of the House in January, is disappointed and frustrated that this once promising project now appears to be faltering, spokesman Parker W. Slaybaugh said Tuesday.

While he appreciates Tranlins commitment to fulfilling its obligation to repay the Commonwealth Opportunity Fund grant, he believes this project is a prime example of why we should prioritize the use of performance-based incentives that require measurable returns on taxpayer investment, Slaybaugh said.

House Appropriations Chairman S. Chris Jones, R-Suffolk, who sits on the MEI Commission, called the Tranlin situation a perfect example of why we put in place the reforms we have.

The Tranlin plant, operating as Vastly, was envisioned as an economic development coup by Virginia and Chesterfield officials, as well as a boon for farmers who would be able to sell agricultural field waste to the company to convert into paper products and fertilizer.

State and local officials visited Tranlin operations in China before sealing the deal at the beginning of McAuliffes term.

Originally scheduled to be in full operation by the end of 2019, the project stalled as the company changed leadership and decided to substitute a new technology that it had already installed at a new factory in China. The new technology required a redesign of the project in Chesterfield, so Tranlin said in July it would repay the initial grant by Oct. 24 as it reset its plans for the plant.

We are thankful for your continued support and understanding, and we look forward to continuing our discussions with VEDP and the commonwealth as our business further develops, Lan told Moret on Tuesday.
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The states youth prison, where inmates and staff have both described a chaotic and unsafe environment, would be closed within one year under a proposal floated this week by a Madison lawmaker.

These juveniles have been systematically abused and neglected, and have had their constitutional rights violated time and again. We know that the current model of incarcerating juveniles does not work. It is time to take action, Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, said in a memo seeking support from other lawmakers.

The bill would require the Department of Corrections to permanently close the Lincoln Hills School for Boys and Copper Lake School for Girls in Irma within one year from the date the bill became law.

The facility has been under investigation for nearly three years over allegations of inmate abuse, official misconduct, child neglect, tampering with public documents, intimidation of victims, use of pepper spray to cause bodily harm and intimidation of witnesses, among other potential crimes.

Since then, prison administrators have also been the target of a number of lawsuits brought by current and former inmates alleging their constitutional rights have been violated through excessive stays in isolation and use of pepper spray and shackles  including a class-action lawsuit moving through federal court that so far has prompted U.S. District Judge James Peterson to order DOC to drastically reduce or eliminate its use of solitary confinement, pepper spray and restraints to manage inmate behavior.

Staff in recent weeks have said the prison has become increasingly unsafe since the federal judges order, with prison guards defenseless against emboldened inmates and injuries to staff rising.

But its unclear if the proposal will get support from Republican lawmakers who control both houses of the Legislature.

Rep. Mary Felzkowski, R-Irma, said its time Taylor and other Democrats take responsibility for criticizing prison staff and referring to the inmates as children.

These kids that are at Lincoln Hills, they didnt get there because they are truant, she said. Inmates at the prison are the states most serious juvenile offenders.

Felzkowski and Sen. Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst, have asked Peterson to reverse the order in light of staff injuries since it took effect.

She said in an interview Monday that if DOC were given some leniency in how it manages behavior, the prison could be successful.

I think we need to let the experts do their job, she said.

The union that represents Lincoln Hills employees said the bill doesnt indicate where juvenile offenders would go.

We need a real plan to solve this crisis, said Rick Badger, executive director of AFSCME Wisconsin. This bill doesnt address the root of the problems present at Lincoln Hills and the long-standing dysfunction in the juvenile corrections system.

Taylor said the department has known about the systemic problems surrounding Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake for many years without addressing the root of the issue.

While investigators first raided the prison in late 2015, complaints about an unsafe environment at the facility were raised at DOC and to Gov. Scott Walker as early as 2012.
NOTE: this is an archived page and the content is likely to be out of date.

Fujitsu today announced that it has provided the Japan Automobile Research Institute (JARI) with an x86 cluster that uses a liquid immersion cooling system, as a new computational system to simulate automobile collisions. Operations have commenced in October 2017.

The cluster system consists of Fujitsu Server PRIMERGY CX2550 M2 x86 servers in PRIMERGY CX400 M1 chassis, as well as a PRIMERGY RX2530 M2 as a management server. The system is cooled by applying a Fujitsu-developed liquid immersion cooling system, in which the servers are directly immersed in a non-conductive fluid with high thermal transport capacity.

This system runs software such as Fujitsu Technical Computing Solution LS-DYNA, which performs nonlinear structural dynamic analysis(1), currently in use at JARI, and is being used to develop exceptionally elaborate and realistic models of the human body, enabling the simulation of large-scale collisions at greater levels of energy saving. JARI will provide simulation results and the human body models developed using this system to the automobile industry to promote the manufacture of safer automobiles.

Photo: An x86 cluster using a liquid immersion cooling system in operation at JARI

Background

JARI conducts research into areas such as the safety of passengers and pedestrians when a vehicle collision occurs and the mechanisms of injuries, using both simulations which recreate vehicles and the human body on computers and real world experiments using actual vehicles and human body dummies. The results of this research are widely provided to the automobile industry.

As computer simulations can provide more information than experiments using physical dummies, they are expected to contribute significantly to automobile development and improvement. For this reason, JARI needed a system that could provide more accurate simulations while also reducing power consumption, and so decided to adopt this Fujitsu cluster system using a liquid immersion cooling system.

About the Newly Deployed System

1. System components

This cluster system uses 16 PRIMERGY CX2550 M2 x86 servers in PRIMERGY CX400 M1 chassis, each of which features two Intel Xeon E5-2643 v4 (3.4GHz) processors (a total of 32 CPUs and 192 cores), as its computational servers, with a PRIMERGY RX2530 M2 server as a management server. For cooling, the system is equipped with a liquid immersion cooling system, where the servers are directly immersed in non-conductive fluid.

2. Performance of the liquid immersion cooling system

Compared with conventional air cooling systems, the liquid immersion cooling system reduces burden on JARI in the following ways:

1. Significantly reduced power consumption

By eliminating the need for cooling fans within each server and air conditioning equipment for the server room, while also enabling the water temperature in water cooling equipment to be increased, this system can be expected to reduce power consumption by about 40% compared to conventional systems.

2. Limited facility investment costs

Because liquid immersion cooling systems do not require the air conditioned environment that ordinary air-cooled systems do, both air conditioning equipment and thermal building insulation become unnecessary, making a significant contribution to reducing facilities investment costs.

3. Extremely low noise

Server cooling fans and air conditioning equipment are not needed, making it possible to build a noise-free server room environment.

4. Highly tolerant to various installation environments

Servers are directly immersed in non-conductive fluid, so they are not in contact with the surrounding environment. For this reason, the system can be installed practically anywhere, because it is not necessary to consider air quality issues, namely with regard to humidity, salinity and dust, and the impact of other factors that must be taken into account when installing conventional servers.

Future Plans

Going forward, Fujitsu has plans to offer the liquid immersion cooling system worldwide as a product for cooling IT devices in non-conductive fluid.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has apologized for using the term terrorists to describe three Republican senators who struck a last-second budget deal with Gov. Scott Walker.

In a statement Monday, Vos said the remark bucked his own efforts to make the Legislature more civil.

I now regret using the word terrorist because it goes against the guidelines Ive set for our chamber and myself, Vos said.

But Vos said he remains concerned with the demands of what he called rogue holdouts in the GOP legislative ranks. In a WISN-TV interview that aired Sunday, Vos blasted three hard-line conservative senators  Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, and Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville  for making what Vos called a backroom deal with Walker last month to enable passage of the 2017-19 budget.

I dont want to see the constant, defiant demands of a few derail our progress, Vos said.

Hours before Vos statement was released Monday, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, in a rare rebuke from one top Republican to another, said Vos should apologize for his choice of words.

Nass and Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin, the influential Koch-funded conservative advocacy group, also called on Vos to apologize. Vos choosing to take this to a level so personal is severely inappropriate, Kapenga said.

The latest flap between Republican legislative leaders also could have implications for the remainder of the 2017-18 legislative session. Nass said in a statement that Vos comments likely are a shallow political ploy  to thwart conservative legislation from advancing in the fall floor session.

Nass spokesman Mike Mikalsen said Nass believes Vos sought to portray the three senators as untrustworthy and difficult to work with in order to lay footings to block Senate legislative priorities.

For the remainder of the session, lawmakers are expected to consider proposals from business and conservative groups to change the workers compensation system, loosen mining restrictions and wetland protections and scrap state family and medical leave protections that overlap with federal ones.

They also will grapple with bills targeting so-called sanctuary cities, restricting use of fetal tissue in research and allowing concealed firearms to be carried without permits and in school zones.

Part of the disagreement, Mikalsen said, also stems from a clash between rank-and-file lawmakers and legislative leaders such as Vos who, according to Mikalsen, want top-down control of the budget process.

Its really a fight about how the institution should be run, Mikalsen said.

Walker spokesman Tom Evenson had called Vos comments unacceptable.

In the WISN interview, Vos blasted the senators  who were poised last month to block passage of the 2017-19 state budget until they struck a last-minute deal with Walker last month to ensure its passage  for what he described as taking hostages and circumventing the normal budget process.

Contents of the deal were not released until after the budget passed the Legislature. As part of it, Walker used his line-item veto authority to strip certain provisions out of the budget.

In so doing, the three senators did an end run around the Legislatures budget-writing, 16-member Joint Finance Committee, members of which are appointed by legislative leadership.

Vos said in the interview that the budget might not have passed the Legislature had lawmakers known about the deal when they voted on the budget.

As part of the deal, Walker used his line-item authority to make a repeal of the states prevailing wage requirement set to take effect immediately, instead of a year later. He also limited the days on which school districts may hold referendum votes; removed funding for the states Transportation Projects Commission, a study of highway tolling and a renovation of the state Capitol basement; and stripped out an expansion of power for the state Public Finance Authority.

Senate Democratic Leader Jennifer Shilling of La Crosse, meanwhile, said the flap is a product of President Donald Trump and Walker creating an unhealthy political atmosphere in this state.

Normalizing this kind of hyperbole has been extremely damaging to our political dialogue, she said.
UW-Madison faculty are reviewing a proposal that calls for the Wisconsin School of Business to suspend admissions into its full-time Master of Business Administration program for one year while leaders undertake a long-term review of program offerings, officials said Monday.

The head of the schools MBA programs acknowledged in an email to current students last week that officials are considering a plan that could include discontinuing the full-time program.

That proposal, which the business school outlined in greater detail Monday, would pause admissions, and involve a timely review of how the WSB graduate portfolio should evolve, according to school officials.

During a meeting with the programs current students Monday to discuss the plan, business school Dean Anne P. Massey stressed that a final decision about the future of the full-time MBA program has not been made.

Business school faculty are expected to vote on the proposal in November.

But Massey argued UW-Madison needs to respond to a changing market, citing national trends that indicate students are moving away from the traditional, two-year MBA model as other options  such as online programs and one-year degrees  become more popular.

To be relevant, to be agile, in order to be significant, weve got to always refresh and renew and review, Massey told the students. It would be irresponsible for me or the faculty or the school more broadly to not have these discussions.

The State Journal obtained a recording of Masseys meeting with students in UW-Madisons Grainger Hall after business school officials denied a reporter access to the event, saying it was for students only.

Its not clear when the plan would suspend admissions. A spokeswoman said timing will depend on if and when faculty approve the proposal, and whether they make changes to it. The business school is accepting applications now for next falls MBA class.

About 200 students are currently enrolled in the full-time program, and they will be able to finish their degrees no matter what happens with the proposal, business school officials have said.

The plan also would not affect the schools evening and executive MBA programs.

But several students have said they are concerned that a decision to suspend the program or shut it down permanently could tarnish its reputation and reduce the value of their degrees.

We all left our jobs to come to this school, and now we are seeing that our whole MBA programs reputation is at stake, first-year student Pradeep Raghuwanshi said after leaving Mondays meeting.

Rather than suspend admissions, Raghuwanshi said he would rather see the business school continue its full-time MBA during the long-term review, saying he was concerned that even a temporary move could reduce students interest in the Wisconsin program.

Applications for full-time MBA programs nationally have declined in each of the last four years, according to a survey of institutions by the Graduate Management Admission Council, and several major universities have shuttered their programs.

The trend is less clear at UW-Madison  the number of applications for the full-time program, which enrolls about 100 students per year, averaged 466 from for the fall 2010-14 classes, then spiked to 800 for the 2015 class, and has since declined to 548 for this falls cohort. Massey attributed the jump to a change in how applications were classified.

In response to concerns about the programs reputation, officials countered that the value of a Wisconsin School of Business degree is strong because of the institutions curriculum, faculty and professional connections  not the format of its programs.

And Massey told students that successfully innovating in response to trends in business and higher education adds value to your degree.

I do not want to be a player, I want to be a leader, she said.
A Pinch of Salt: The election is over, I think, so what now?
The League of Women Voters of Corvallis is holding its annual fundraising citrus fruit sale.

This year the group is selling Texas Rio grapefruit and navel oranges to help fund league programs, studies, voter service forums and legislative town halls.

The fruit arrives the first week of December and can be delivered to a home or business. Twenty-pound boxes of ruby red grapefruit (18 to 20 pieces), 20-pound boxes of navel oranges (36-44 pieces) or combo boxes all cost $25. Orders must be placed by Nov. 15.

To place an order, contact Louise Marquering at lwvclouise@aol.com or use the league website www.lwv.corvallis.or.us.
I was five years out of law school when Professor Anita Hill put on a sky-blue suit and walked into our consciousness, and history.

The coverage of her accusation that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission seemed like a circus, complete with flashing cameras, clueless senators and salivating commentators.

Still not jaded by experience and convinced that there was purpose and meaning to these public confessionals, I was appalled by the glittering Hollywood veneer that overlaid the proceedings. Mind you, this was before the O.J. trial, the Clinton impeachment and The Real Fishwives of Wherever.

Today, the Hill hearings seem sober and constrained. Social media has made it impossible to have any conversation about any topic without devolving into the trite, the shallow and the tweeted. Its not at all surprising, then, that sexual harassment has gotten the hashtag treatment.

Last weekend, Alyssa Milano invited women across the country to put the words #metoo on their social-media accounts to show solidarity with victims of abuse in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein accusations. My Facebook feed began to fill up with stories of misconduct ranging from rape, to date rape, to lewd jokes in the workplace, to being whistled at, to being ogled, to childhood abuse. It evoked some confusing emotions in me.

The first one was empathy for women who felt victimized. There was such a flood of responses that you couldnt dismiss the phenomenon out of hand. There were women the age of my mother who recounted tales of sexual violation, and the thought that those incidents were still so fresh decades later was sobering.

But that emotion soon gave way to annoyance, and then anger. Yes, at abusive men. But thats the easy part. I have known abusive men, grown up around them, feared them, avoided them. They are not unicorns. And yet, they are also not as ubiquitous as this social-media onslaught would allow us to believe.

My deepest and most enduring anger is at people who, in a misguided attempt to help women, will use this moment to both trivialize the phenomena of sexual abuse and limit the class of people who can be shown compassion.

This hashtag business is stupid. I know Im not supposed to criticize the #metoo because its a 21st-century way for people who dont even know each other but have suffered similar calamities to bond and connect. Actually, its not. Its more a way for marginal characters in these dramas to jump on the sympathy bandwagon and say, Hey, dont leave me out; it happened here, too!

Here is why I am not moved by this digital campaign to hold men accountable for their evil deeds. First, its too easy to confuse harassment with actual abuse. Being made to feel uncomfortable because some caveman drools in your face is unfortunate, but it has no business being included in a #metoo scenario alongside of a woman whose ex-husband held a gun to her head unless she had sex with him. This campaign has thrown all sorts of unpleasant activity together, so that the college student (me) who had a crush on her professor and then got propositioned by him thinks shes been harassed. Maybe I was, but I have no right putting that alongside of women who were raped.

More insidious is the way that men have been made to feel guilty, and then silenced, if they, too, suffered abuse. When I suggested on my Facebook page that men are in a virtually statistical dead heat when it comes to cases of domestic abuse, I was criticized by those who have a vested interest in keeping this a womans issue.

When I said that boys who are abused by female teachers are treated differently than girls, I was told to be quiet, and that women are never physically capable of overpowering men (a lie). When I mentioned my immigrant clients who had been battered by their U.S. citizen wives, it became an immigration issue.

And when I saw men apologizing on social media if they had offended the women in their lives, I realized this was a Stockholm syndrome situation.

This is moral laziness. There is a problem, and it should be addressed soberly, not manipulated with social memes.

#Methrough.
Independent Bonn International School : All are welcome at IBIS Open Day

Bonn IBIS will be hosting an Open Day mid November. As well as offering prospective parents a chance to get to know the school, the day will also give pupils and their families a chance to bid farewell to longstanding headteacher Irene Bolik.

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Independent Bonn International School (IBIS) will open its doors to prospective pupils and their families on Saturday, 18 November. During its annual Open Day, which will run from 10am to 12.30pm, visitors will have the chance to tour the schools facilities, chat to pupils and staff, enjoy singing and dance performances and observe lessons and activities in the classrooms.

Founded in 1963, IBIS is an English language school operating a programme based largely on the English National Curriculum. The school encompasses Foundation through to Year 8 and is located on a purpose-built site on the Heiderhof in Bad Godesberg. Alongside large contingencies from Great Britain, the United States and other English-speaking countries, some 33 nationalities are represented.

As well as highlighting all the school has to offer, the Open Day will give pupils and families past and present the chance to bid a fond farewell to longstanding headteacher, Irene Bolik, who has been at the school for 36 years. Lovingly referred to by some pupils as The Queen, Mrs Bolik will be retiring to her native Scotland. Her replacement is Phillip Wharton.
Salafism : Projects against radicalisation in Bonn

Tannenbusch Four Bonn projects present their ideas against the further spread of Islamism. The Bonn approach is unique within Germany.

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The radicalisation of young people not only greatly concerns parents and relatives, but also schools, institutions and the citizens of Bonn. The fact that in Europe in particular, Islamic extremism is finding ever more fertile ground in the form of attacks and assaults and the ever-increasing number of threats, is one of the most painful experiences of recent times. As is well known, the State wants to prevent its spread among young people.

This is also the case in Bonn, where four projects and refuge centres gave presentations at the Education and Family Centre Vielinbusch at the invitation of the Integration Centre and the Neighbourhood Management Neu-Tannenbusch. At the start, Coletta Manemann, the integration representative for Bonn, explained that the prevention projects have nothing to do with the police or the state criminal police department, nor with the protection of the constitution or the state. When the first riots with extreme Salafists took place in Bonn in 2012, people had to decide how to handle them. Much is still under development and we have already gathered a lot of experience, said Manemann.

Many Muslims from Tannenbusch, Auerberg and Dransdorf

Mokhtar Bennoune was also, thrown in at the deep end at first, as he says. He has been a contact person since 2014 for the Wegweiser (Guide) programme, which focuses on the social environment of young people at risk and those affected. The volume of enquiries is very high, said Bennoune. It corresponds to about 60 per cent of Muslims from Tannenbusch, Auerberg and Dransdorf.

In his own words, Islamic scholar Kaan Orhon works,more or less as a lone fighter, in Bonn for the counselling centre Hayat, which was originally formed in Berlin as an exit initiative for highly radicalised Neo-Nazis. He is usually contacted when the ideological ideas are already established and the damage has already been done. He also advises and accompanies criminals sentenced for terrorist activities who have been released on probation.

Preventative work is also carried out by the Bad Godesberg project Maan Miteinander set up by the Otto-Benecke-Foundation together with the Muslim Haus der Generationen-Verein. Project leader Bernd Loschnig trains mentors, who can act as a counterpart in their communities. It is unusual because it operates from a mosque community. Maan offers its services in the Mehlem prayer house of the Haus der Generationen association, where clients spend time. This approach is unique in Germany and is also known as the, Bonn Model in Berlin. Because the great difficulty with prevention, says the project leader, is always the question of how to reach the target group.

Suhel El Khatib from 18-Grad-Wende gave a short overview of how Muslim youths are radicalised. Lack of attention, family problems, alcohol, drugs, shisha and laptops  these are the stated ingredients for danger of radicalisation through Salafist extremists. El Khatib train mentors and disseminators from among young refugees, who encourage Muslims to act as part of our society again.
An opportunity for foodies and beer lovers to get lost in a world of food and drink from a hand-selected range of food trucks and breweries from around New Zealand.
Biblica Partners with Celebrated Modern Hymn Writers Keith and Kristyn Getty to Reach One Million-Plus Children 'Sing! An Irish Christmas' concert series sponsorship launches drive to bring God's Word to children at 'crucial time' in their lives



Contact: Ty Mays,

770-256-8710



COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Oct. 24, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- Biblica (www.biblica.com), the International Bible Society, is partnering with acclaimed modern hymn writers Keith and Kristyn Getty (www.gettymusic.com) in a campaign to share the Bible with more children.



Photo: Modern hymn writer Keith Getty (left) with Stephen Cave, Biblica's chief ministry officer, celebrating the partnership aiming to reach a million and one children with the Bible in 2018.



The organization is the key sponsor for the Gettys' forthcoming "Sing! An Irish Christmas" tour (www.gettymusic.com/christmas), which will feature the launch of Biblica's drive to reach a million-and-one children around the world with God's Word during 2018.



Concertgoers will be invited to join Biblica and Getty Music in the initiative, for which Biblica's global partners have pledged a double-the-impact match.



Co-writer of the modern classic, "In Christ Alone," named "the best hymn of all time" in the UK, Keith Getty was awarded the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honors List earlier this year. Through their popular hymn writing he and Kristyn, who have three children, encourage congregational singing intended to draw people back to the Bible.



"We are delighted to join with Keith and Kristyn in their great calling to engage the global church in singing and worshiping through the promises of God's Word," said Stephen Cave, Biblica's chief ministry officer. "We couldn't think of anyone who more closely aligns with our vision of making the Bible understandable and accessible, or who more shares our heart for reaching children with its truths."



The Gettys' links to Biblica include a long-term friendship with fellow Northern Irishman Cave, and personal use of Biblica's best-selling contemporary translation, the NIV (New International Version). In addition to sponsoring the Sing! Christmas tour, Biblica was one of the sponsors of the Gettys' Sing! conference on the arts, worship, and congregational singing in Nashville, Sept.18-20.



"Our desire through our music is to help people encounter God in a deeper and more meaningful way, and as part of that to experience the life-transforming power of the Bible," said Keith Getty. "Having a special place in our hearts for children, too, we are excited to be able to join with Biblica in attempting to reach so many who haven't yet had the opportunity to discover God through the Bible."



At a string of performances throughout the month of December, the "Sing! An Irish Christmas" program of music and cultural dance will include a presentation of the Biblica initiative by Cave. The tour includes stops at several celebrated venues, including Atlanta's Fox Theatre and New York City's famed Carnegie Hallwhere the New York Bible Society, as Biblica was founded in 1809, previously hosted events during its history. There will also be two performances at the famous Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs, Colo., Biblica's home since 1988.



Biblica's million-and-one children goal for 2018 will see the organization partner with ministries around the world to make the Bible available in a wide range of formats, from Scripture portions to audio and digital editions that help children engage with God's Word.



"We know that childhood is a crucial time developmentally--time when values and beliefs that shape the rest of your life are embraced," said Cave. "We want to make sure God's truth as found in the Bible is part of that discovery for many children who currently don't have ready access to it."



The "plus one" campaign goal was intended to remind participants that "each child is a unique individual," said Cave. "We hope that everyone who joins us in this effort will know that they are a part of helping impact and shape a young life. Each one has a call on their life, and when you give the Bible to a child, it has the power to change everything."



About Biblica

Biblica (www.biblica.com) is committed to providing the Bible in accurate, contemporary translations and formats so that more people around the world may have the opportunity to be transformed by Jesus Christ. Copyright-holder of the best-selling New International Version, Biblica is involved in translation and publishing, distribution, and Bible engagement programs with hundreds of partner groups around the world.



About The Gettys

Keith and Kristyn Getty occupy a unique space in the world of music as pre-eminent modern hymn writers and global ambassadors for the genre. Perhaps best-known for "In Christ Alone" (written by Keith with Stuart Townend), the Gettys have helped reinvent the traditional hymn form, creating a catalog of songs teaching Christian doctrine and crossing musical genres. Now in its seventh year, the Gettys' Irish Christmas tour has become a holiday tradition for thousands, playing to sold-out audiences and being featured on public television to over 45 million households. Keith and Kristyn live between Northern Ireland and Nashville with their daughters, Eliza, Charlotte, and Grace.



Keith Getty and Stephen Cave are available for interview: Please contact Ty Mays at (770) 256-8710 or tmays@inchristcommunications.com.



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Protecting the worlds oceans  an important goal of Germanys climate diplomacy

The worlds oceans are vital to our survival. They regulate the global climate and are a source of food and income for billions of people. Only a very small part of the seas enjoys legal protection, however. Our diplomats are working in New York right now to change this state of affairs.
kacylee at 24-10-2017 06:52 AM (5 years ago) (f)

There is a saying that behind every successful man is a woman. Successful Pastors in Nigeria have extremely beautiful and successful wives. They are not just virtuous women, they are great mothers to their children and they are very fashionable.

There is a saying that behind every successful man is a woman. Successful Pastors in Nigeria have extremely beautiful and successful wives. They are not just virtuous women, they are great mothers to their children and they are very fashionable.

They are not just pretty, but are classy, great mothers and virtuous wives who are role models to other women in the society.



Stargist.com presents 10 beautiful wives of popular Nigerian pastors.

1. Ifeyinwa Adefarasin



Ifeyinwa is the pretty wife of Pastor Paul Adefarasin, the General Overseer of the House on the Rock. A former beauty queen during her undergraduate years at the University of Lagos, motherhood has not taken the shine off her.



2. Ibidun Ighodalo



University of Lagos graduate, Ibidun Ighodalo has turned out to be perhaps the most celebrated of the lot. A former beauty queen, extremely beautiful Ibidun is married to an equally charismatic man of God, Pastor Ituah Ighodalo who previously plied his trade with the Redeemed Christian Church of God.



3. Pastor Mrs Faith Oyedepo



Mama as she is fondly is the pretty wife of Bishop David Oyedepo, the General Overseer of Winners Chapel, Canaanland. The mother of 4 dresses moderately and makes it a point of duty to exude class.



4. Pastor Mrs Nike Adeyemi



Soft spoken Nike Adeyemi is the wife of Pastor Sam Adeyemi of the Daystar Christian Centre fame. She is adored by many for her simple and humble disposition. She dresses moderately and classy.



5. Helen Oritsejafor



Helen is just as fashionable as her husband, founder of Word of the Bible Church, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor. Light skinned and pretty, her love for wide brimmed hats is unparalleled and she has them in numerous eye-catching colours to match her expensive outfits.



6. Nkoyo Rapu



Nkoyo Rapu displays an enviable stature and style akin to that of her husband, Pastor Tony Rapu. Her style regimen earns her a place on the list of best dressed public figures.



7. Funke Felix Adejumo



A mother of three, Funke Adejumo is the wife of Bishop Felix Adejumo of the Agape Christian Ministries. She is the owner of the Grace Orphanage and Childrens Hospital which she established with three children in 2003. Always moderately dressed, her beauty radiates.



8. Rosemary Odukoya



Former Miss Rosemary Simangele, a South African was thrust into the limelight a few years ago when she wedded Pastor Taiwo Odukoya of Fountain of Life Ministries a widower to the late Pastor Bimbo Odukoya. They are not just pretty, but are classy, great mothers and virtuous wives who are role models to other women in the society.Stargist.com presents 10 beautiful wives of popular Nigerian pastors.Ifeyinwa is the pretty wife of Pastor Paul Adefarasin, the General Overseer of the House on the Rock. A former beauty queen during her undergraduate years at the University of Lagos, motherhood has not taken the shine off her.University of Lagos graduate, Ibidun Ighodalo has turned out to be perhaps the most celebrated of the lot. A former beauty queen, extremely beautiful Ibidun is married to an equally charismatic man of God, Pastor Ituah Ighodalo who previously plied his trade with the Redeemed Christian Church of God.Mama as she is fondly is the pretty wife of Bishop David Oyedepo, the General Overseer of Winners Chapel, Canaanland. The mother of 4 dresses moderately and makes it a point of duty to exude class.Soft spoken Nike Adeyemi is the wife of Pastor Sam Adeyemi of the Daystar Christian Centre fame. She is adored by many for her simple and humble disposition. She dresses moderately and classy.Helen is just as fashionable as her husband, founder of Word of the Bible Church, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor. Light skinned and pretty, her love for wide brimmed hats is unparalleled and she has them in numerous eye-catching colours to match her expensive outfits.Nkoyo Rapu displays an enviable stature and style akin to that of her husband, Pastor Tony Rapu. Her style regimen earns her a place on the list of best dressed public figures.A mother of three, Funke Adejumo is the wife of Bishop Felix Adejumo of the Agape Christian Ministries. She is the owner of the Grace Orphanage and Childrens Hospital which she established with three children in 2003. Always moderately dressed, her beauty radiates.Former Miss Rosemary Simangele, a South African was thrust into the limelight a few years ago when she wedded Pastor Taiwo Odukoya of Fountain of Life Ministries a widower to the late Pastor Bimbo Odukoya.

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 24-10-2017 06:52 AM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero
kacylee at 24-10-2017 07:39 AM (5 years ago) (f)

A multinational company (

A multinational company ( https://tinyurl.com/ybuafzah ) with head office overseas is currently offering Nigerians the opportunity to make a minimum of $80/day (30,000). This has become necessary to cushion the biting effect of the recession.

Applicants will be given an opportunity to work and collaborate with international brands.



Do not panic because of the compensation, there are several unskilled jobs that pay more than $80 daily in Europe and America.



Applicants must have good writing skills and must be able to communicate effectively in English. If you are familiar with social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others, you are more than welcome to apply.



Remuneration:



$80/day (30,000) this will largely depend on the number of task you are assigned.



Requirements:



An applicant must have access to the internet



Excellent verbal and written skills in English language.



Creative thinker (Be able think out of the box)



Must be familiar with social media



Interested and qualified candidates should go to Applicants will be given an opportunity to work and collaborate with international brands.Do not panic because of the compensation, there are several unskilled jobs that pay more than $80 daily in Europe and America.Applicants must have good writing skills and must be able to communicate effectively in English. If you are familiar with social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others, you are more than welcome to apply.$80/day (30,000) this will largely depend on the number of task you are assigned.An applicant must have access to the internetExcellent verbal and written skills in English language.Creative thinker (Be able think out of the box)Must be familiar with social mediaInterested and qualified candidates should go to https://tinyurl.com/ybuafzah to apply.

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 24-10-2017 07:39 AM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero
Saudi Arabia Soon To Become A 'Free For All' Country, Open To All Religion - Saudi Crown Prince

kacylee at 24-10-2017 08:49 PM (5 years ago) (f)

Saudi Arabias crown prince Mohammad bin Salman has said the country is returning to one that is open to all religions.

Saudi Arabias crown prince Mohammad bin Salman has said the country is returning to one that is open to all religions.

He said this at the beginning of the landmark Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh on Tuesday, The Independent reports, promising to return to a moderate Islam.



He said:



We are returning to what we were before  a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world.

He added that the Islamic country intends to stamp out extremism. He said:



We will not waste 30 years of our lives dealing with extremist ideas, we will destroy them today.



We will end extremism very soon, he added.



Prince bin Salman was appointed heir to the throne back in June by his father King Salman.



He has largely been viewed as one who espouses liberal rights, and was said to be a driving force behind the country granting women the right to drive. He said this at the beginning of the landmark Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh on Tuesday, The Independent reports, promising to return to a moderate Islam.He said:He added that the Islamic country intends to stamp out extremism. He said:he added.Prince bin Salman was appointed heir to the throne back in June by his father King Salman.He has largely been viewed as one who espouses liberal rights, and was said to be a driving force behind the country granting women the right to drive.

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 24-10-2017 08:49 PM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero

Mykie010 at 24-10-2017 09:04 PM (5 years ago)

(m) No be me and una,I no dey go Posted: at 24-10-2017 09:04 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac No be me and una,I no dey go Reply

Mykie010 at 24-10-2017 09:19 PM (5 years ago)

(m) No be me and una,I no dey go Posted: at 24-10-2017 09:19 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac No be me and una,I no dey go Reply

crocatum at 24-10-2017 09:30 PM (5 years ago)

(m) who is she, seated on the beast, with mysterious names on her head, she said to her self, I will never know poverty, here I am adorned with gold, she makes the nations drunk with the wine in her cup. In one hour all her wealth is taken away. Posted: at 24-10-2017 09:30 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac who is she, seated on the beast, with mysterious names on her head, she said to her self, I will never know poverty, here I am adorned with gold, she makes the nations drunk with the wine in her cup. In one hour all her wealth is taken away. Reply

BournIdentity at 24-10-2017 10:43 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Its a very welcome transition.... NobsmallTin at all Posted: at 24-10-2017 10:43 PM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero Its a very welcome transition.... NobsmallTin at all Reply

BournIdentity at 24-10-2017 10:47 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Taaahhh monkey010 wetin u sabi? Abi u think sey the bushes Saudi get na for fancy?? Your extended family ur animal parents never tell u dey live inside Saudi Arabia if uno no Posted: at 24-10-2017 10:47 PM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero Taaahhh monkey010 wetin u sabi? Abi u think sey the bushes Saudi get na for fancy?? Your extended family ur animal parents never tell u dey live inside Saudi Arabia if uno no Reply

osarobo62 at 24-10-2017 11:21 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Quote from: Mykie010 on 24-10-2017 09:04 PM No be me and una,I no dey go

you know say dem go still cut off your head if you carry anything for your yansh go there Posted: at 24-10-2017 11:21 PM (5 years ago) | Hero you know say dem go still cut off your head if you carry anything for your yansh go there Reply

Deprince3 at 25-10-2017 06:06 AM (5 years ago)

(m) THAT DUDE IS HANDSOME I SWEAR JOKE APART, THE DECISION IS OVER DUE NO COUNTRY OPERATE LIKE THAT IN 21 CENTURY ANYWAY IS A WELCOME DEVELOPMENT. WE NEED EACH OTHER TO SURVIVE. Posted: at 25-10-2017 06:06 AM (5 years ago) | Upcoming THAT DUDE IS HANDSOME I SWEAR JOKE APART, THE DECISION IS OVER DUE NO COUNTRY OPERATE LIKE THAT IN 21 CENTURY ANYWAY IS A WELCOME DEVELOPMENT. WE NEED EACH OTHER TO SURVIVE. Reply

Aniagain at 25-10-2017 09:13 AM (5 years ago)

(m) U must be a gay

Am too defended to be a victim Posted: at 25-10-2017 09:13 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac U must be a gay Reply

Otikadinje at 25-10-2017 10:00 AM (5 years ago)

(m) Dem try Oscardeejay Posted: at 25-10-2017 10:00 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac Dem try Reply
Operator Hess is selling its stake to Kosmos Energy



A tax settlement between the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons and the partners of the Ceiba and Okume fields has been reached, the Ministry announces.

Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons: Equatorial Guinea has a stellar record in honoring the sanctity of contracts.

Hess Corp. has an 85 percent interest in the Ceiba and Okume fields and Tullow Oil has a 15 percent stake. Operator Hess is selling its stake to Kosmos Energy.

MALABO, Equatorial Guinea, Oct. 23, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons of Equatorial Guinea (http://MMIE.gob.gq), Hess Corporation (NYSE:HES) (http://www.Hess.com) and its license partners have reached a $220-million settlement on tax issues related to the companies interests in two producing oilfields, Ceiba and Okume.

The deal between the government and the partners is the result of negotiations over recent months between the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons and the management of Hess. The resolution of tax issues clears the way for Hess sale of its 85-percent interest in the assets to Kosmos Energy, and for increased involvement by Tullow Oil (a 15-percent interest holder in Ceiba and Okume) in Equatorial Guineas petroleum sector. This settlement demonstrates Equatorial Guineas commitment to profitable partnerships with international energy companies.

Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons H.E. Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima said: Equatorial Guinea has a stellar record in honoring the sanctity of contracts. It is in the best interest of the petroleum sector, our nation and its people that we reach fair agreements on financial matters quickly and in a positive way with international partners. Hess has been a key leader in the oil and gas industry and instrumental to the countrys growth over the long term. We are pleased the companies worked with us to revolve this situation amicably.

Hess opened its Equatorial Guinea office in 2001 and Tullow entered the country in 2004 through its acquisition of Energy Africa. The Ceiba oilfield has been producing since 2000 and the Okume Complex has been in production since 2006. Hess is the operator of the two blocks and national oil company GEPetrol has a carried interest of 5 percent.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Ministry of Mines, Industry and Energy Equatorial Guinea.

Media contact:

James Chester

news@egronda2016.com

M: +27 (0)60 675 4850
Two Danville faith leaders delivered a message for both their peers in the religious community and local government on Monday, asking them to take action against violent crime in the community.

Change comes from the community members themselves, said Abdul-Hakim Abdulla, chairman of the local chapter of Muslim Men in Action.

Abdulla and Danville minister Thomas Motley held a news conference inside the lobby of Danville Municipal Building. The men bowed their heads in prayer before the event, and then began to speak out against the string of homicides that have claimed the lives of 12 people this year.

We believe that we can make a difference in this community, Motley said.

Last year, Danvilles 16 homicides outpaced every Virginia city and county on a per-capita basis, a Register & Bee investigation has revealed. So far, Danvilles homicide count for 2017 is on par with last years count.

The men asked leaders from all faiths and ethnicities in the city  Jews, Protestants, Catholics and others  to stand with them, and to talk with their congregations about the violence.

Abdulla and Motley also said the problem of violent crime wasnt unique to Danville.

There are similar problems in other communities, but I also know that theyve taken action, Abdulla said. So here we are today: This is a call to action.

During his talk, Abdulla also mentioned Muslim community member and convenience store owner Tahir Mahmud, who was shot and killed on Sept. 12 at his Joy Food Mart store on Riverside Drive. His death marked the 10th homicide in the city this year.

The two leaders specifically called upon Danville City Council members to allocate more funding for after-school programs and equipment in community centers across the city. Motley said he envisioned programs in communities like Camp Grove and Westmoreland Heights.

Abdulla and Motley said they planned schedule a meeting with Danville Mayor John Gilstrap, in addition to speaking at a Danville City Council meeting in the near future.

Danville Mayor John Gilstrap told the Register & Bee he was planning to meet with the two men later this week to talk about their ideas.

We appreciate any help anyone is willing to give us, he said.

In Danville, organizations like the Boys and Girls Club and Danville Parks and Recreation provide after-school programs to area students. Motley said transportation problems and other issues can sometimes prevent students from attending.

According to its website, Danville Parks and Recreation offers a seven-days-a-week after-school program until 6 p.m. at Forest Hills Elementary School for younger students, and for middle school students at the Coates Recreation Center. Transportation is available from all public elementary and middle schools, and scholarships are also available for qualifying students.

The men said they hoped more church leaders and citizens would join them as they continued their efforts.

We no longer have the right to remain silent, Abdulla said.
CALGARY, Oct. 24, 2017 /CNW/ - PRIZE MINING CORPORATION ("Prize" or the "Company") (TSXV: PRZ) (OTCQB: PRZFF) (GR:FRANKFURT: MQSP) is pleased to announce it has commenced a diamond drilling and trenching program on the Daylight Property, located near Nelson in southeastern British Columbia.

Following a successful expanded summer exploration program, a compilation of all historical and newly acquired data has been put together for the first time. The combined data was used by the Terralogic's exploration team to produce 11 highly prospective target areas (refer to the map link below).

https://www.prizemining.com/site/assets/files/1749/daylight_drilling_and_trenching_map.jpg

Feisal Somji, chief executive officer commented: "A focus of the drilling and trenching program will be on the 4 historical mines which returned high grade results up to 37 g/t gold. Recent surface exploration results taken from the same areas confirmed high grade soil samples up to 8 g/t gold as well as rock samples up to 9 g/t gold. This is a very exciting time for the Company as we embark on our fully funded discovery focused drill program."

In conjunction with the new targets, historical areas will also be revisited.

Great Eastern Mine area with historical grades* of 37.53 g/t gold and 52.2 g/t silver (BC Minfile 082FSW172) and Phase I grab rock sample near the Great Eastern Adit returning 6.25g/t Au, 5.74 g/t Ag (see press release dated August 29, 2017) and multiple Au>100ppb soil anomalies.

Starlight Mine area with historical grades* of 28 g/t gold and 140 g/t silver (BC Minfile 082FSW174)

the Daylight Mine area with historical grades* of 27 g/t gold and 15 g/t silver (BC Minfile 082FSW175)

Victoria Mine area with grades* reported of 28.9 g/t silver, 2.56% copper (BC Minfile 082FSW173) and Phase I rock sample returning 5.28g/t Au and 2.85 g/t Ag (see press release dated August 29, 2017)

Targets were generated utilizing the following parameters.

Strength of soil geochemical anomalies for gold, silver-molybdenum, or copper-lead-zinc

Contrast, features and prospectivity of Induced Polarization chargeabilities and resistivities, plus detailed ground Magnetic signatures

Favourable analytical results from rock samples collected in target areas

Targets' proximity to important structures and lithological contacts

Terralogic Exploration Inc. of Cranbrook, BC is overseeing the Daylight exploration programs. Diamond drilling has been contracted to Lucky Drilling Ltd. of Castlegar, BC and excavator trenching will be conducted by Wade Critchlow Enterprises Ltd. of Salmo, BC. A total of approximately 2000 metres for diamond drilling and 1500 metres of trenching will be completed in this Phase II exploration program on the Daylight Property alone.

This Phase II exploration program is anticipated to be completed over the next month with initial assay results can be expected before the end of 2017.

*NOTE: historic mining took place in the early 1900s and cannot be verified. It can be assumed that hand sorting of ore took place and that actual grades may vary. The data is non NI 43-101 compliant.

Jarrod Brown, P.Geo., a Qualified Person under NI 43-101, has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information in this news release.

About Prize Mining Corp.

Prize is a Calgary-based junior mining issuer with offices in Calgary, Alta., and is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange. Prize is engaged in the acquisition, exploration and development of mining properties. Find out more at: www.prizemining.com.

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Reader Advisory

Forward-Looking Statements. This news release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "scheduled", "potential", or other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may", "should" or "could" occur. The forward-looking statements are based on certain key expectations and assumptions made by Prize, including expectations and assumptions concerning the upcoming trenching and drilling program on Prize's Daylight Property and the timeline for receipt of a permit which would allow for an exploration program on Prize's Toughnut Property. Although Prize believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because Prize can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. There is no assurance that the result of these exploration programs will be successful. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. These include, but are not limited to, exploration risks and that required regulatory and third-party approvals and consents are not obtained on terms satisfactory to the parties within the timelines provided. The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable by the Company at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information, which speaks only as of the date hereof. The Company does not undertake any obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking information contained herein to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Prize Mining Corp.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  The University of New Mexico volleyball team, in conjunction with the Carrie Tingley Hospital Foundation, is holding a Lets Get Muddy promotion for the Lobos November 4 match against Nevada.

Fans who come to the match wearing Mudd Volleyball attire  including shirts, hats or anything with the Mudd Volleyball logo  are eligible for a $3 ticket to the match, which starts at noon inside Johnson Center.

During the match, the Foundation will be in attendance to promote their 2018 Mudd Volleyball event. The event promoters will also announce the date of the 2018 event.

Mudd Volleyball is a recreational volleyball tournament that supports the Carrie Tingley Hospital Foundation. The tournament, which is open to experience volleyball players and newcomers to the sport, is unique in that it is played in mud.

The Carrie Tingley Hospital Foundation is a nonprofit that helps children with physical disabilities throughout New Mexico and supports the work of Carrie Tingley Hospital, New Mexicos only hospital for children with disabilities.

Fans can follow @UNMLoboVB on Twitter and Instagram for information and updates on the team!
Precarious Homeownership

States and Cities Step In

BOULDER, Colo.  Here in the heart of one of Colorados most expensive cities, Isabel Sanchez bought a mobile home seven years ago for just $6,000. Her four-bedroom bungalow now sits on a lot she rents for $355 a month.The mobile home park Sanchez and her family live in offers a glimpse of Boulders hippie past. Small houses and trailers, many dating to the 1960s and 70s, sit close together on tree-lined streets. I love the space, I love the location, I love the community here, Sanchez, 55, said recently, relaxing in a blue armchair in her spotless living room.Affordable neighborhoods like these have become hard to find in Boulder and cities across the country where home prices are soaring. In some metro areas, rising prices are prompting park owners to sell their land to developers, affordable housing advocates say. When the mortgage crisis came about it sort of slowed down, and now its heating up again, said Carolyn Carter, deputy director of the National Consumer Law Center.So Boulder and a handful of other localities, desperate to hang on to homes middle- and working-class people can afford, have stepped in to buy parks, fix them up, and transfer ownership to residents or to a nonprofit on condition that rents be kept low.Portland, Oregons housing authority financed a deal last year that saved a mobile home park from being sold to a developer. Pitkin County, Colorado, is buying a park it intends to set aside for people who work in the area. And Boulder bought a park this summer, with the twin goals of improving its infrastructure and maintaining affordable housing.Affordable housing advocates say that the best way to preserve mobile home parks is to turn them into co-operatives owned by residents. But in Boulder, land is so valuable  and parks need so many infrastructure upgrades  that it wouldnt be possible for low-income residents to finance the purchase alone.About 20 million Americans live in manufactured homes  so called because theyre built in a factory, rather than on site  and about two-fifths of those can be found in mobile home parks, mostly in suburbs and exurbs.Mobile homes are an important source of low-income housing. But homeownership can be precarious for people who live in mobile home parks. Because they dont own the land beneath their houses or trailers, they have to move if the park closes down.And many mobile homes arent all that mobile. Sanchez, who works at a nonprofit in Denver, says she could probably move her house if she had to because it was built recently. Her daughters house across the street may be a different story. It has sat there for over 40 years, like most of the homes in the park.Even if a home can be safely moved, its owner may not be able to find an open lot nearby or be able to afford relocation costs, which can run from $5,000 to $10,000, according to Prosperity Now, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that studies and advocates for policies that help low-income people become more financially secure.The closure of a mobile home park can create a crisis for residents and for the city or town they live in as dozens of displaced people scramble to find new housing, says Esther Sullivan, a sociologist at the University of Colorado Denver who has studied mobile home parks in Texas and Florida. In her research, she found that city council members who agree to rezone a park often argue that park residents can move into low-income housing elsewhere. But thats not always the case, she said.The Manufactured Housing Institute, an industry group, said it doesnt appear that parks are closing down more often today than in the past. But in many parts of the country, affordable housing advocates say market conditions make it tempting for park owners to sell to a developer.Kevin Walker of Northcountry Cooperative Foundation, a Minneapolis nonprofit, says two dynamics are at play in the Twin Cities area. Many parks built in the mid-20th century are falling into disrepair and reaching the end of their useful life. Some owners have deferred maintenance for years on the privately owned roads, sewer and water systems that service their parks, he said. And land prices are rising.One way to preserve mobile home parks is to give the people who live in them a chance to buy the park themselves at a fair market rate, says Carter of the National Consumer Law Center. A national nonprofit called ROC USA will, with the permission of the park owner, help residents form a co-operative and finance a purchase. There are currently some 200 resident-owned communities in the U.S., according to ROC USA.At least 19 states have laws on the books that help residents buy a park, Carter says. Some states require park owners to give residents months of advance notice before a park is sold, to notify residents if they request a zoning change for the property, or to allow residents to organize into homeowners associations. Other states will free up money when a park closes to help residents pay their relocation costs or require park owners to chip in.Such laws are more common in the Northeast than in the South and West, which tend to have a strong tradition of protecting landowners property rights, says Doug Ryan, director of affordable homeownership for Prosperity Now.Colorado state Sen. John Kefalas, a Democrat, has been trying to pass a law that would make it easier for residents of the states mobile home parks to purchase their communities. His latest iteration, which was defeated in committee this year, would have created tax credits to reward owners who sold to residents.The manufactured home industry opposed the bill, describing it as intrusive and unnecessary. Kefalas says he plans to try again next year. For now, its technically possible for Colorado mobile home residents to band together to buy the park they live in, he said. Its just never happened.Colorado cities are asking what they can do, at the local level, to preserve their mobile home parks and keep them affordable. Boulders efforts date to the 1980s, when the city created zoning districts for its four mobile home parks. Boulder County did the same for the four parks adjacent to the city. If owners of the parks want to redevelop them they have to go through the public rezoning process.Boulder city leaders support letting residents organize to buy the parks they live in but have concluded that such purchases would require at least some city funding.Pitkin County, Colorado, has preserved four mobile home parks since the 1980s and designated them as housing for local workers, said Patti Clapper, vice chair of the county commission.Pitkins strategy has been to subdivide the parks, sell the lots to the people living there, and impose deed restrictions to keep them affordable. The efforts to preserve mobile home parks are part of the Pitkin County Housing Authoritys employee housing program, Clapper said, which is funded primarily by a tax on real estate transfers in Aspen.But that strategy, while it protects residents from eviction, hasnt always kept prices down. Clapper herself lives in a former mobile home park the city bought and subdivided in 1982. The county hasnt limited how much the properties can appreciate, or limited the income of people eligible to live there. The neighborhood now boasts some expensive  even million-dollar  properties.The Mapleton Mobile Home Park, where Sanchez lives, was bought by the city in the 1990s and then sold to a nonprofit. The city requires rents to be held to a level residents can afford. Rents are higher and rising in other city parks, according to Mary Duvall, CEO of Thistle, the nonprofit that owns the Mapleton Park.Sanchez says shes been encouraging her friends and family to move to Mapleton. Two of her eight children own property in the park, and her niece lives down the road. Everyone jokes that Im beginning the Sanchez compound!
Families wait years to get off the government's waiting list for a rental voucher, sometimes while living in a homeless shelter. When they finally get that housing aid, they often struggle to find landlords willing to rent to them.Most landlords screen out people who have a criminal background, poor credit or a history of evictions, making it difficult for voucher holders to find somewhere to live, even when they can afford rent. In fact, it's common for people to lose their vouchers -- which have expiration dates -- after months of unsuccessful searching for a home.To ease landlords' worries and house more of the homeless, a growing number of cities are offering to reimburse landlords for certain losses -- unpaid back rent or repairs for tenant-caused damages -- that result from accepting applicants who have rental vouchers.Many, many communities are doing this, and its out of necessity, says Elisha Harig-Blaine, who works on affordable housing issues at the National League of Cities. They simply cant get people placed into housing with these subsidies.This month, Boston and the District of Columbia announced their own housing guarantee or risk mitigation programs.In Boston, the city will reimburse landlords for up to $10,000 in unpaid back rent or property damages that go beyond normal wear and tear. In D.C., a nonprofit is raising $500,000 in private funds to cover up to $5,000 in landlord costs per tenant. In both places, program staff will be available to address landlord complaints and provide case management for the tenants.The question is, will that be enough to convince landlords to accept tenants who pay with rental vouchers?In many of the cities that have these programs, affordable housing is hard to find, but renters with clean criminal and financial backgrounds are not.At the end of the day, real estate is a business. These landlords want to do the right thing, but were talking about their livelihood," says Harig-Blaine, who has attended landlord recruitment events in nine communities across the country.Landlords, he says, dont want to deal with missed payments or other trouble that might come with renting to someone who was recently homeless.Nevertheless, local officials in D.C. -- which is getting 800 new residents every month and has some of the country's highest rents -- are optimistic.Rather than [renting] to the millennial who is just moving in from some other part of the country," Neil Albert, president and executive director of the DowntownDC Business Improvement District, the nonprofit raising the money, told. Albertthinks the risk funds will spur landlords to "weigh our needs and give equal consideration" to voucher holders.There is no official number of landlord assistance programs, according to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, but they exist in Denver, Fargo, N.D.; Marin County, Calif.; Orlando, Fla.; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle-King County, Wash, which started one of the first almost a decade ago. Some states, such as Minnesota and Oregon, offer them as well.Before launching its program, Boston researched them in other cities and found that participating landlords rarely had to use the risk funds, according to Boston's Department of Neighborhood Development. Last year, in Seattle and King County, for example, participating landlords filed mitigation claims for only 15 percent of the renters covered by the program. Data on how many landlords participate in each city and how many people are housed through such programs, however, is not readily available.D.C. officials, though, expect demand for the risk funds to be higher in their city."We think it will be a little different here in D.C. We think people will actually use this fund, says Albert, adding that if it results in more units being rented to voucher-holders, then thats a great problem to have.One difference between the Boston and D.C. landlord programs is the funding and management structure. In Boston, the city is putting up the risk funds and managing its landlord relations on a two-year pilot basis. In D.C., a nonprofitbusiness improvement district is raising funds -- mostly from developers -- and a local housing nonprofit is administering the program. That's because landlords and property managers in D.C. pushed for a privately managed fund that could provide reimbursements faster than a government agency, says Albert.More than 5 million Americans receive some kind of rental voucher from the state or federal government, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In general, households must be below the federal poverty line or make less than 30 percent of the area median income to qualify for housing assistance. Because the program is not an entitlement, less than a quarter of all eligible families receive housing assistance, and many households wait years before a voucher becomes available.Landlord assistance programs are trying to address a chicken-and-egg problem, says Laura Zeilinger, D.C.s director of human services. Landlords want renters who have jobs and earn a steady income. But stable housing is usually the first step to helping people get and keep a job. Shes hoping that landlords in D.C. will waive income requirements in their applications.Housing is an important foundation for people to be able to work and to achieve their potential, she says. Its a really difficult thing for people to do while living in a shelter environment.
Injury after injury

Checking a box

The 5-year-old girl was found dead in the bathtub with shallow water framing her cherubic face and open eyes.The state Department of Children and Family Services had conducted two abuse investigations into Verna Tobicoe's Southeast Side home in the months before her death in May 2015. The agency also had hired a nonprofit group to make frequent visits and conduct safety checks on Verna and two siblings.Even as Verna was hospitalized with a broken arm and her older brother repeatedly appeared at hospital emergency rooms or doctors' offices with suspicious lacerations and bruises, a caseworker for the nonprofit organization filed cheerful reports saying the kids were safe.And then 44-pound Verna became part of a growing pattern of similar fatalities: She was one of 15 Illinois children to die of abuse or neglect from 2012 through last year in homes receiving "intact family services" from organizations hired by DCFS, a Tribune investigation found.There was only one such child death under the intact family services program during the previous five years from 2007 through 2011, according to DCFS records released to the Tribune under the Freedom of Information Act.The mission of intact family services, which roughly 2,700 children are receiving statewide, is to offer counseling, resources and oversight to keep families together, instead of putting children through another trauma by removing them from the home and placing them with strangers.The spike in deaths began in 2012 after DCFS completely privatized the program, putting the care of families in the hands of nonprofit groups but doing little to evaluate the quality of their work, give them guidance and resources, or hold them accountable when children were hurt or put at risk, the Tribune found.The girlfriend of Verna's father is now awaiting trial on first-degree murder charges in the girl's death. Authorities found lacerations in Verna's liver and intestines as well as a skull fracture and bruises across her body from repeated blows. Lisamarie Villasana, 29, has pleaded not guilty and told police that Verna hit her head after slipping on spilled Gatorade.The agency was rattled by a similar death in April, when 17-month-old Semaj Crosby was found dead in her Joliet Township home after DCFS had conducted more than 10 abuse investigations into the family and used the intact family services program to send a caseworker for periodic visits.Illinois' new child welfare director, Beverly "B.J." Walker, said she was alarmed by the Tribune's finding on the surge of child fatalities in intact family services cases as well as by a sharply critical report from the DCFS Inspector General on Verna's death.Walker recently asked her staff to provide reports on the abuse or neglect of any child in the intact services program and said she was shocked to discover that at least 10 percent of children were reportedly mistreated while receiving those services. "That's very high. ... I can tell you this, it happens too much," Walker told the Tribune.The Inspector General's report, which has not been made public but was examined by the Tribune, determined that DCFS conducted cursory and ineffective investigations into a series of abuse allegations in the months before Verna's death. DCFS also inexplicably failed to evaluate whether the father's girlfriend, Villasana, needed therapy or assistance -- even though she was serving as the children's primary caretaker. And DCFS did not consider her as a possible perpetrator when children were hurt, although she often was the only adult in the home.Kathy Grzelak, the new chief of Kaleidoscope 4 Kids, the group that served Verna's family, keeps a laminated prayer card from the girl's funeral pinned to her office bulletin board -- a reminder of her organization's painful failures.The wake was crowded with family, Grzelak recalled, and the girl in the tiny open casket was dressed in a glittering blue dress to resemble the fearless princess Elsa from her favorite movie, "Frozen." Grzelak said only faint traces of Verna's bruises could be seen through the mortician's makeup.The story of Verna's short life is told in confidential child welfare case files, the DCFS Inspector General's report, separate police and court records and interviews with several of her relatives.Following two separate investigations into squalor and neglect of her home -- one unfounded and the other confirmed -- Verna's parents split up, and DCFS placed the children with their father, Villasana and their new baby in 2014. In August of that year, DCFS referred the children to Kaleidoscope for intact family services. At the time, Verna was 4 years old, her brother was 6 and her sister was 9.The state agency directed Kaleidoscope to ensure the children got proper medical care; to help their father access Medicaid, food stamps and government cash assistance; to refer him to parenting classes and other programs, and also to help the children's biological mother -- even though she had only minimal contact with the children after they left her home.Kaleidoscope did a lot for the children. The caseworker brought them winter coats, provided a $70 gift card to buy treatments for their head lice, and tapped state funds for $1,350 when their father fell behind on his rent, records show. When Verna's older sister was not allowed to attend school because her immunizations were out of date, Kaleidoscope took her to the doctor.But one crucial omission threatened to doom the arrangement from the start: DCFS failed to include the father's girlfriend, Villasana, in its service plan. She was the children's primary caretaker while the father worked night shifts at a local pharmacy and some days on construction sites, according to the Inspector General's report and interviews with officials and relatives. But Villasana was never put on the Kaleidoscope caseworker's radar, according to those records and interviews."My plan was not even constructed to serve her. There was no information leading up to Lisa being the caretaker," the former Kaleidoscope caseworker, Stephanie Lynell Ivey, told the Tribune in an interview. She subsequently left the agency and now works as a special education classroom assistant.Suspicious injuries to the children began almost immediately, records show. That August, Verna was taken to a hospital with a broken arm -- a "spiral fracture" that often indicates abuse by twisting.DCFS opened an abuse investigation after being notified by the hospital. But even though Villasana was the only caretaker in the home at the time, she was not investigated as a potential perpetrator. Instead, the DCFS investigation focused on the father. And because he was at work when Verna was injured, DCFS termed the abuse allegation "unfounded" and closed the case.State officials also did not tell Kaleidoscope about the hotline call regarding Verna's broken arm. Ivey did subsequently file a note saying Verna was wearing a cast, but she accepted Villasana's explanation that Verna had fallen.Ivey told the Tribune she was operating under the assumption that DCFS had evaluated the home where the children were placed and that it was safe.Then, starting in October 2014, educators, relatives and medical professionals began notifying DCFS of a series of injuries to Verna's brother, along with their suspicions the children were being mistreated.Kindergarten teacher April Palacios called the DCFS hotline that month to report that Verna's brother "came to school today with bruising all over his arm that looked like a hand print," DCFS records show. She emailed photographs of the injuries to DCFS and also reported a separate laceration on the boy's face.Children and adults in the home gave sharply divergent accounts of how the boy was bruised, with some saying he fell while climbing a closet door frame like Spider-Man, and others that he tripped over his sister's princess slipper and hit a dresser drawer, according to DCFS and police records.Palacios felt her concerns were never taken seriously, she told the Tribune. "It was so unfair," she said. "This was preventable."Ivey, of Kaleidoscope, did take the boy to a doctor after Palacios reported the bruise on his arm and a cut on his face to DCFS, but the caseworker did not tell the doctor about Palacios' hotline call, and the doctor was unaware of any suspicions of abuse, records show.Over the next several weeks, the boy's father notified Ivey several times that the boy had new head gashes or bruises after slips and falls around the house. But her checkups typically came days later, after the injuries had faded.As she wrote in one brief report: "Upon seeing the children there were no signs of abuse or neglect. All the children appeared to be happy and healthy."Ivey says today: "There was no sign of any physical abuse. I never observed it or witnessed it."DCFS did open an investigation, but it was cursory -- and again targeted the father and not the main caretaker, Villasana. The DCFS investigators interviewed all three siblings, their father and Villasana in less than an hour at the family home, one case note shows.In finding allegations of abuse against the father to be unfounded, the DCFS supervisor wrote: "Minor denied he was injured by his father. Father reported that he was at work at the time of the injury."Because DCFS and Kaleidoscope never recognized Villasana as the primary caregiver, they never learned that Villasana felt overwhelmed by her new child care responsibilities, according to subsequent DCFS reports and interviews with her relatives.Before Verna and her siblings arrived, Villasana had been caring only for her own newborn. Now she had three additional youngsters who were extraordinarily demanding. Two showed signs of learning and developmental disabilities, records shows, and all had been raised until then in a chaotic home with little adult supervision.Just days before Verna's death, Villasana temporarily left the home because of the stress, according to a police report and relatives. She also had attempted suicide in recent months by taking pills and drinking bleach."It was just too much for one person to take care of those four kids," said Villasana's stepfather, Juan Bautista.DCFS officials completely privatized the intact program in 2012 amid a deep financial crisis as well as persistent government management problems -- families were getting services for three and four years without seeing any real improvement, for example.But as the state agency's role shifted from providing direct services to overseeing and managing nonprofit contractors, DCFS simply failed at its new task, agency director Walker told the Tribune."When we did that privatization, we ... more or less just sent cases over and we didn't have any expectations -- or any good expectations -- about what (the nonprofits) were going to do," said Walker, who took the helm of DCFS in June as its 10th director or acting director since 2011.DCFS does send monitors to the nonprofits' offices four times a year -- but Grzelak, of Kaleidoscope, said they only look at paperwork to make sure files are complete and rarely try to gauge the quality or impact of the agency's work."We can check a box and say, 'We did our three home visits.' But what did we do in that visit? What did we accomplish?" Grzelak said.Kaleidoscope also never learns what the DCFS monitors find in those inspections, Grzelak said. "There is nothing in writing. There is no accountability. When are we going to get a more robust conversation about how we are doing?" she said. "There should be no secretiveness."Walker said she has begun reforming the program by hiring more child protective staff and increasing DCFS's oversight and supervision of the nonprofits. "We are laser-beam focused. We're following up to make sure that our actions are leading to improvements."She also said she is looking for additional financial resources for the intact services program. The rate paid to agencies such as Kaleidoscope has not increased for at least five years, according to providers. Last year, Gzelak said, Kaleidoscope had to supplement the $730,000 it received from DCFS with $98,000 from other sources to cover basic costs related to intact services.Caseworkers, meanwhile, are often poorly trained, underpaid and burdened with overwhelming caseloads."We have young workers who are not adequately trained who are surviving and doing what is in front of them every day," Grzelak said.The job can be "scary, heartbreaking and stressful," Ivey said.Assigned to assist both of Verna's biological parents, Ivey was carrying 17 other cases at the time, nearly double the average of 10 recommended in the DCFS contract, according to Grzelak and Ivey.The DCFS Inspector General determined that Ivey did not seem to understand the family or know how to counsel and assist them. Ivey disputed that."My role was to stabilize the family and make sure they had their basic needs met, and that's what I did. Sometimes I would visit that home twice a week. I even gave them some of my own daughter's hand-me-downs," Ivey told the Tribune. "Intact is a short-term fix, and in that short time all you're praying for as a worker is that nobody dies while this baby is on your watch."DCFS generally expects the nonprofits to close intact services cases within six months, and the agency's contracts start to reduce payments at that point, even though Grzelak and other providers say families often still need help.In the sixth month of Verna's case, in January 2015, Kaleidoscope closed its file. "There are no concerns regarding the safety and well-being of the children," a Kaleidoscope supervisor wrote.Four months later, Verna was found in the bathtub dead.Palacios, the teacher, said she was shattered by the news. "I started crying," Palacios recalled. "What I feared most could happen, happened. I was very angry at DCFS because they had an investigation going on. They had visited the family."Only after Verna's death did DCFS investigators conduct forensic interviews with her siblings -- taking them outside the home to question them separately about mistreatment, instead of interviewing them for a few minutes at home with their parents nearby.In these sessions, the children readily described being whipped, kicked and abused by Villasana and other adults, records show.On the way to one interview, Verna's brother asked a DCFS investigator if Verna was ever coming back, according to confidential DCFS case notes. The investigator told the boy that Verna "is in his heart and all he had to do is think about her and close his eyes and he would see her."Verna's older brother and sister now live with a foster family out of state.
Thousands of Iowans face paying significantly more for their individual health insurance premiums -- or going without coverage -- after a state effort to win federal waivers of some Affordable Care Act provisions to prop up Iowa's collapsing marketplace ended Monday.Iowa Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen and Gov. Kim Reynolds called a Statehouse news conference to announce that Iowa was withdrawing its "stopgap" proposal -- first made in June -- to stabilize the individual market in part by attracting healthy Iowans needed to temper rate increases."We were doing something no state had tried to do," Ommen said. The health law popularly known as Obamacare "has caused our market here in Iowa to collapse, and unfortunately now its inflexibility is preventing us from picking ourselves up and making the adjustments that are needed in order to attract healthy people back in."Ommen said Iowa offered an innovative approach, but Reynolds said Obamacare provisions proved too inflexible to overcome."I'm extremely disappointed," said Reynolds, who added that Trump administration officials gave Iowa a fair hearing."It came down to the law. As it's written, it just does not afford the flexibility that we need to be creative," she said. "The bottom line is we need Congress to do their job. They need to act and they need to act sooner rather than later."In a statement, U.S. Sen, Chuck Grassley joined his fellow Republican in asking for Congress to try again."As written, the law hamstrings the administration's ability to help Iowa," Grassley said. "I hope Congress will act soon to repeal and replace this unworkable and unaffordable law."However, the news also comes about two weeks after the Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump personally called the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services in August to direct that Iowa's application be denied, as one of several actions he has taken to unravel the health insurance law.Iowa's withdrawal comes only a week before this year's enrollment period opens Nov. 1 and despite the state insurance division's warning that without the plan, 22,000 Iowans will drop out of the market.Ommen said the Trump administration informed the state last week it was still "several weeks" away from determining how much federal funding the state might receive, a key part of the proposal.Monday's announcement means that Minnesota-based Medica will be the only statewide insurer in the Affordable Care Act marketplace in Iowa for 2018.Medica said its premium rates would go up an average of 57 percent in 2018, partly because Trump also has ended cost-sharing subsidies to the insurance companies that held rates down.State officials had complained that large of an increase would significantly hurt people who don't buy on the marketplace or don't qualify for federal tax credits."We certainly understand the state's desire to improve the individual market in Iowa, and we are appreciative of being a part of those discussions," said Larry Bussey, Medica's communications director. "While this is not the preferred outcome for the state of Iowa, we want consumers to know that Medica is ready."Bussey said consumers who previously purchased coverage through healthcare.gov will receive information from the government and Medica over the next week explaining options."We strongly encourage consumers to see if they qualify for a premium subsidy" that could "dramatically reduce" costs for those found to be eligible, he said.Reynolds said the lack of the waiver will hit farmers, self-employed Iowans, early retirees and others who rely on individual insurance coverage. She said the state continues to explore short-term options to help Iowans get some type of affordable health-insurance coverage, but most require waivers.Newly installed state Senate Democratic Leader Janet Petersen of Des Moines said Democrats are ready to work with Reynolds to find a workable, bipartisan solution. But, so far, she said, Republicans "have done everything possible to undermine Obamacare."But Republican Party of Iowa spokesman Carlos Cruz said the blame falls to the failure of Obamacare -- and he applauded Reynolds and Ommen for trying.State Sen. David Johnson, an Ocheyedan independent, said the situation calls for presidential leadership but the current approach appears to be to allow Obamacare to fail in hopes the GOP-led Congress will replace it."I don't believe that's a winning strategy -- that failure leads to success," Johnson said.
Gov. Larry Hogan signed an executive order Monday that requires all firms with state contracts to promise they will not boycott Israel.Hogan, surrounded by local and national Jewish leaders, said he wants to send a message that Maryland supports the Jewish state and the economic ties between the two regions.The executive order is meant to thwart the international, Palestinian-led Boycott, ,Divestment and Sanctions movement, which urges companies to refuse to do business in Israel. The effort has gained only modest support in the United States.Pro-Israel groups across the country have been pushing states to enact such anti-BDS measures, though the legality of some have been challenged on free-speech grounds.Hogan said all future state contracts would require companies to certify they will not economically discriminate against Israel, and that if any current state contractors refuse to agree, "they would be terminated.""There is no place in our state for boycotts and threats," Hogan said.The order appears largely symbolic. The administration could not identify any current contractors engaged in a boycott."I don't believe that there are," Hogan said.The order mirrors legislation introduced, but not passed, earlier this year. That bill also would have forbid the state from investing pension funds in any companies that boycott Israel.More than 20 states have passed anti-BDS legislation or executive orders.The BDS movement has gained support among Palestinian advocates, some mainstream Protestant groups and some left-leaning Jewish organizations that object to the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Supporters of Hogan's move says it echoes the state's "Declaration of Cooperation" signed by Gov. William Donald Schaefer in 1988 that promised mutual economic support between Israel and Maryland.The order was enthusiastically embraced by Jewish leaders, who view the BDS movement as an effort to undermine the Jewish state.It comes about a year before Hogan faces re-election in 2018."It is extremely important to the Jewish community to see a governor willing to stand up for Israel," said Howard Libit, executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council. "This is as strong a statement as a governor can make, and we are thrilled."Critics of anti-BDS legislation, including the American Civil Liberties Union, say that boycotts are a protected form of expression. The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit on Oct. 11 contending that a similar law in Kansas unconstitutionally violates the First Amendment.In that case, a teacher who had personally chosen to boycott Israeli products in protest of the treatment of Palestinians was denied a state job training other math teachers.In Texas last week, the city of Dickinson cited that state's anti-BDS law, and refused to give out Hurricane Harvey relief grants to residents who supported a boycott of Israel.During an Annapolis news conference, Hogan dismissed First Amendment concerns, saying any boycott of Israel was discriminatory on its face."They're asking people to discriminate against Israel," Hogan said of the BDS movement. "There's no argument to the contrary that makes any sense."The executive order, which Hogan signed immediately after announcing his plans, is not the first time Maryland has withheld state money from companies engaged in international disputes.In 2012, the General Assembly passed a law that said companies investing $20 million or more in Iran's energy sector would be barred from doing business with Maryland. The state identified 22 firms disqualified from Maryland contracts, but none of those firms was working with the state.Alan S. Ronkin, regional director for the AJC: Global Jewish Advocacy, said people are free to say what they want about Israel. But, he added, "the state is free to do business with companies that reflect its values."State Sen. Bobby Zirkin of Baltimore County and Del. Benjamin F. Kramer of Montgomery County introduced the anti-BDS legislation that failed to pass this year. The men, both Democrats and Jewish, said Monday the were evaluating whether to introduce a bill next year to bar the state from investing pension money in companies participating in the BDS movement.Zirkin said companies that target Israel are also hurting the economic fortunes of Maryland, and the state has a right to protect its interests."Everyone has a right to an opinion, including the state of Maryland."
Kentucky's registered sex offenders have the constitutional right to use Facebook, Twitter and other online social media, a federal judge ruled Friday.Ruling in a lawsuit brought by a Lexington child pornography defendant identified only as "John Doe," U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove struck down Kentucky's sweeping restrictions on internet access for registered sex offenders."This is a very important decision," said Scott White, a Lexington attorney who represented Doe. "The laws effectively deprived anyone on the sex offender registry of access to the most effective forms of communication that we have today. It was a complete suppression of speech."One law prohibited sex offenders from using social networking websites or instant messaging or chat rooms that potentially could be "accessible" to children -- which is to say, much of the internet. The other law required sex offenders to keep their probation or parole officers updated on all of their email addresses and various online identities.Van Tatenhove cited a unanimous decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in June that struck down a similar North Carolina ban on social media for sex offenders, in part because so many civic institutions -- from elected officials to news media -- are now tied into social media.For example, the Herald-Leader's Kentucky.com website would be off-limits to sex offenders under the state's ban because it has a comments section open to the public, Van Tatenhove wrote.Kentucky's law "burdens substantially more speech than necessary to further the commonwealth's legitimate interests in protecting children from sexual abuse solicited via the Internet," Van Tatenhove wrote."Indeed, rather than prohibiting a certain type of conduct that is narrowly tailored to prevent child abuse, the statute prevents Mr. Doe and others similarly situated from accessing what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge," he wrote.In 2015, Doe sued Fayette County prosecutors and the state's Justice and Public Safety Cabinet to challenge the internet access restrictions, arguing that they violated his First Amendment right to free speech and his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process under the law.Doe said he was convicted in 2007 of one count of possessing child pornography. As a result, he must register his home address with authorities as a known sex offender on a list that is publicly available.Two years later, Gov. Steve Beshear signed into law the restrictions on the use of social media. Violating those restrictions could have led to a misdemeanor conviction and jail time.Doe's suit said Kentucky's laws were "so overly broad" that a sex offender looking for employment at LinkedIn.com, following the news on CNN.com or checking out his congressman's Twitter feed could get in trouble, because all of those sites are open to the public and allow for interactions with others.Attorneys for the Justice Cabinet were reviewing the decision Friday, a spokesman said. The Fayette Commonwealth's attorney's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.At a court hearing in December 2015, lawyers for the state of Kentucky and Fayette County told Van Tatenhove that the social media ban was a narrow restriction that should be considered constitutional."It is to prevent sex offenders from meeting adolescents," Matthew Johnson, an attorney for the Justice Cabinet, told the judge. "I believe the commonwealth has decided it, and the commonwealth has decided it based on feedback from the constituents that they represent and their analytical approach to drafting the legislation."However, the judge said Kentucky's social media ban effectively blocked most of the internet."You're really making the playground argument," Van Tatenhove told the lawyers. "If you've got a site that's like the playground, caters to minors, then that's when this is implicated. I don't see that in this statute, though. What I see is 'available to minors,' which seems really broad to me. Almost any site is available to minors.""I go online looking for rare bourbon, and I go on these sites where I have to put in my birth date," he continued. "But anybody can put in a birth date. That site's available to minors."
A Kent man who earlier this year withdrew a lawsuit that helped expose a wider alleged child-sex-abuse scandal that drove Ed Murray out of public office has refiled a legal case against Seattle's former mayor.Delvonn Heckard's new lawsuit not only accuses Murray of repeatedly raping and molesting him as a teenager but also blames the city of Seattle for enabling Murray to use his political office to slander Heckard and other alleged victims for months during the former mayor's public denials."Acting within the scope of employment and utilizing his position of power as bestowed upon him by the citizens of the City of Seattle, Mr. Murray spread false and harmful information about Delvonn, and his attorneys, in an effort to win re-election and extinguish these claims," the lawsuit contends.The suit, filed Monday in King County Superior Court, accuses Murray of making "false assertions" that included calling Heckard a liar motivated by an anti-gay political agenda. It names only Murray and the city as defendants but also contends that Murray's personal spokesman, his lead attorney, his husband and his campaign team "acted in concert to perpetuate this fraud."Heckard's 13-page complaint also blames "many members of Seattle's political elite" -- specifically naming Seattle City Councilmembers Bruce Harrell and Sally Bagshaw -- for empowering Murray's attacks on victims by refusing to seek the mayor's removal from office."The failure to act was a form of negligence that permitted Mr. Murray to continue to use his power to defame the assorted victims," the suit states. "These actions, enabling, and watching future leaders of the community accept Mr. Murray's endorsement, caused added emotional distress and humiliation to Delvonn, and childhood sex abuse victims everywhere."Murray, through his personal spokesman, declined to comment.A spokeswoman for City Attorney Pete Holmes said early Monday his office had not yet received a copy of Heckard's lawsuit and doesn't typically comment on pending litigation against the city. Neither Harrell nor Bagshaw returned messages seeking comment.Murray, 62, a former state legislator in his first term as mayor, resigned on Sept. 12 about two hours after The Seattle Times reported his cousin, Joseph Dyer, had become the fifth man to publicly accuse him of child sexual abuse decades ago.Aside from Heckard and Dyer, Murray's accusers include Jeff Simpson, Murray's live-in foster son in the early 1980s; Lloyd Anderson, who lived in a Portland children's group home where Murray worked as a counselor in the late 1970s; and Maurice Lavon Jones, who claims Murray paid him for sex when Jones was a teenage prostitute in Seattle in the late 1980s.Heckard is the only accuser to sue Murray. His latest legal complaint partly echoes details included in the initial lawsuit, filed in April. Both suits allege Murray began paying small amounts of cash to Heckard for sex in 1986, when Heckard was a homeless 15-year-old drug addict roaming the streets of Capitol Hill. Murray's pay-for-sex relationship with Heckard allegedly continued over the next four years, the suit contends.Heckard, 46, has said he came forward with his accusations this year only after his father's recent death and his own subsequent counseling for decades of addiction problems prompted him to seek "accountability" against Murray. The new lawsuit states Heckard didn't know about Simpson or Anderson until The Times reported on their respective claims in the first news story about Heckard's lawsuit in April.Heckard's allegations, coupled with those of Simpson and Anderson, dropped a bombshell into Seattle's political scene during an election year in which Murray was expected to coast to a second term.Murray adamantly denied the allegations. He claimed they were driven by homophobic opponents targeting him for his progressive record that championed gay rights. Murray and his attorneys initially attacked his accusers' past drug use and criminal histories while vowing he wouldn't drop out of the mayor's race.But after taking polls, Murray in May announced he would end his re-election bid and leave politics after finishing his first mayoral term at year's end.Heckard dropped his lawsuit in mid-June, vowing to refile the case after Murray left office and Heckard completed drug rehab. The voluntary dismissal came on the heels of several adverse legal rulings against Heckard's case, including court-ordered sanctions imposed against his lead attorney, Lincoln Beauregard, for what the judge called "troubling" court filings aimed to generate publicity.Murray seized on the moment, holding a news conference at City Hall where, flanked by city officials and family, the mayor declared "vindication."But in July, after The Times obtained records showing an Oregon Child Protective Services investigation from 1984 had found that Murray had sexually abused Simpson, Murray's political support began to erode. Councilmembers Lorena Gonzalez and Kshama Sawant called for his resignation, as did the city's Human Rights and LGBTQ commissions.Later that month, Heckard, who self-identifies as gay and contends he isn't political, filed a tort claim against the city for $1 million to $3 million in damages, alleging the mayor's public claims that Heckard was part of an anti-gay plot of lies amounted to defamation. The claim also signaled Heckard's intent to add the city to his legal case.Still, Murray remained in office until his cousin, Dyer, came forward in September. He alleged that Murray had sexually abused him as a boy for about a year while Murray lived with Dyer's family in New York in the 1970s.After Murray's resignation, Heckard broke down when telling a reporter he had hated to drop his lawsuit because "the public felt I was lying and that really hurt."With the suit refiled, Heckard expressed relief Monday, saying the matter is now "in God's hands.""For me, and hopefully the other victims, I can move on with my life," he said. "I'm not tripping about money or him going to jail. Whatever happens happens. We'll just let the justice system prevail."Heckard's latest lawsuit cites Murray's June news conference, as well as statements made by Bagshaw and Harrell that supported Murray remaining in office, as actions enabling Murray to slander and revictimize Heckard and others.Without naming her, Heckard's latest complaint -- written by Beauregard -- also criticizes King County Superior Court Judge Veronica Alicea Galvan for what are described as "politically influenced rulings," including the sanctions order against Beauregard.In an unusual twist, Heckard's latest lawsuit also was assigned to Galvan. Beauregard, who has since appealed the sanctions, said Monday he will use an affidavit of prejudice to remove Galvan from the case and get another judge assigned.By refiling the suit, Heckard's case is considered a new complaint that brings with it that onetime procedural tool to remove a judge.Under Washington civil law procedural rules, plaintiffs can drop a complaint once before trial and refile, as long as they haven't rested their case or the defendant has not countersued. Neither had occurred when Heckard dropped his initial suit.
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GIS - 24 October, 2017: Government has approved that Mauritius signs a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Seychelles Prisons Service and another one with the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development of the Republic of Seychelles. Government has approved that Mauritius signs a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Seychelles Prisons Service and another one with the Ministry of Education

The MoU with the Seychelles Prisons Service makes provision for cooperation in the fields of management of operations and staff training. Its objective is to provide a broad framework, and mechanisms for cooperation on matters of mutual interest related to prison services vision, mission, functions and strategic objectives and implement collaborative activities to address any identified issue.

An MoU pertaining to the recruitment of teachers and other specialists in the Education Sector from Mauritius as required by the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development of the Republic of Seychelles, will also be signed.

The objective of the MoU is to create a mutual operating framework for cooperation in the recruitment of Mauritian teachers and other specialists in the Education Sector to work in Seychelles.
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GIS - 24 October, 2017: The Minister of Financial Services and Good Governance, Mr Dharmendar Sesungkur, met the press yesterday in Ebene to give an overview of his recent mission in Washington D.C, where he participated in the Annual Meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The Minister of Financial Services and Good Governance, Mr Dharmendar Sesungkur, met the press yesterday in Ebene to give an overview of his recent mission in Washington D.C, where he participated in the Annual Meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Minister Sesungkur highlighted that the main focus of the meeting was the development of a safe investment climate to consolidate the global financial sector. T he need to increase resilience of the financial sector and generate more financial resources for the socio-economic development of Mauritius were also discussed, he added.

He pointed out that according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a global growth of 3.7% is expected for 2018 as compared to 3.6% for this year. The slow-moving global growth, he emphasised, is not favourable for investment and trade.

The Minister underlined that Government has sought the support and assistance of the World Bank for the preparation of a Master Plan for the financial sector as well as the setting up of an Office of Good Governance in Mauritius to serve as a regional financial hub.

He informed that he had discussions with the financial services company EuroClear so as to foster more investment opportunities and fluid transactions in Mauritius. This will help bring more visibility of Mauritius as a financial hub on the international front, he added.

He also spoke on the emergence of financial technologies and the impending risks of Crypto currency. He underpinned that latest financial developments have to be evaluated appropriately with a view to eradicate fraud and corruption.

During his visit, the Minister had several meetings with delegates from other countries, namely Senegal and Ghana, with whom he discussed the possibilities of strengthening existing bilateral ties and developing new avenues of cooperation.
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(TNS) -- Amazon said Monday in a tweet that it had received 238 proposals from cities and regions looking to be home for the $5 billion second headquarters that the company is planning to build.The Seattle-based company sparked a feeding frenzy after its announcement in September that it was launching a search for a place to put what it has called HQ2. Last Thursday was the deadline for cities and regions to submit proposals to Amazon. The company said it was looking for a North American city with a least one million people, good access to airports and transit options, a business-friendly environment, and the ability to retain top tech talent.In the tweet, Amazon said it would be reviewing proposals.According to The Associated Press, 43 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico sent in proposals to Amazon. Arkansas, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming were the only states to pass on sending in an application.Three Mexican states and six Canadian provinces also put in bids, the AP said.DFW was among the regions that sent in a video with its bid. It showcases the area's diversity and has some stunning aerial photography. And DFW wasn't the only city with the idea to do a video.Enough HQ2 videos from cities are circulating on the Internet that it could almost qualify as a new genre. Nearly all the videos have some combination of views of the city's skyline, emphasis on innovation and education, and scenes of diversity.Here is our take on some of the ones we've seen.With a gritty feel and backed by narration that is like a spoken-word poem, Detroit's video definitely gives a sense of the place. The video touts Detroit as a city making a comeback, and hearkens to its Motor City roots as a center of innovation. It has a powerful ending pitch too, "Design here. Design the world. Build here. You'll build the world. Create here. Create the world. Move here. Move the world."Boston submitted two videos -- one with technical details of a potential site for HQ2 and another that displayed the city's rich history. No one speaks in the Boston video, which has a soundtrack that is vaguely reminiscent of a fife and drum corps. Instead, you hear snippets from historical figures like JFK and Alexander Graham Bell to remind you of the city's long history of innovation.Rather than showing a montage of what makes the city great, Atlanta's video went with a single narrative arc -- following a woman who is supposedly delivering its HQ2 proposal to Seattle. Along the way, she showcases some of what Amazon is looking for including transit options and an airport that offers 11 daily flights to Seattle.Amazon said it will make its decision early next year on where to put its second headquarters. It has said little else about the process, such as whether it will make public a short list of contenders before picking a winner.
The Boulder Valley school board is set to discuss a new student data privacy policy that's required by state law at a Tuesday work session.Boulder Valley school board President Sam Fuqua said the question before the board is whether to go further than what's required by state law."Nobody wants to compromise the privacy of student data," he said. "The trickiest part is what level of access is good for third-party vendors who provide various tools that can be useful in the classroom."Andrew Moore, the district's chief information officer, said the district is already following all the steps outlined in the law, created to prevent companies from collecting data that identifies individual students.For the policy, he's starting with a model policy provided by the Colorado Association of School Boards that meets all of the requirements. The work session is a chance for board members to propose additions, he said.Under the law, certain types of data are very restricted, including student addresses, grades and behavior reports, he said.The rules also require vendors to destroy data shortly after school districts stop working with them, and doesn't allow them to use the individual pieces of data they collect to later create full student profiles.Moore, who helped write the legislation by providing a school district perspective, cautioned that it's possible to go too far."We can restrict technology to the point where there's no benefit to it," he said. "It's really about a balance on how we treat our data and how the data is used."The neighboring St. Vrain Valley School District adopted a data privacy policy in May using the language developed by the Colorado Association of School Boards.The district also created a data privacy webpage that details the district's policies and practices, including a section listing all of the third-party vendors of apps and software that are sharing or storing private data.One of the benefits of a state law, St. Vrain Valley Technology Director Patrick Mount said, is vendors know they have to comply with the new rules."It's not just St. Vrain asking them to do these things," he said. "As vendors are learning it's state law, they're adjusting their practices."
(TNS)  WASHINGTON  Congress gave final passage Tuesday to $36.5 billion in disaster aid for Puerto Rico and several states impacted by a particularly destructive hurricane season.The package includes $576.5 million to address the devastating wildfires in California and the West.It is the second  but not likely final  allotment of emergency funds after a succession of deadly hurricanes battered Texas, Florida and other Southern states. It is the first allotment for Puerto Rico.Approval arrives amid criticism of President Donald Trump's uneven response to the island, which remains largely without electricity, and where food and potable water remain scarce more than a month after Hurricane Maria. Congress had approved $15 billion in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.The vote follows earlier passage in the House. Trump is expected to swiftly sign it into law.Passage was not always guaranteed amid opposition from conservatives. The package includes $18.7 billion to replenish the Federal Emergency Management Agency's main Disaster Relief Fund, $16 billion to shore up the National Flood Insurance Program and $1.2 billion for nutrition assistance and the wildfire funds. Conservatives balked at what they called a "bailout" for the flood insurance program, which faces a continual shortfall and has been targeted for reforms.___(c)2017 Los Angeles TimesVisit Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC._____
(TNS)  A fallen tree branch, a miscalculation behind the wheel, a decision to leave in separate cars, a wrong turn.These were among the simple things that made the difference between life and death for some of the 42 known victims of Californias deadly wildfires.Two weeks after flames erupted across 335 square miles of Northern California, survivors are left to reckon with the magnitude of what has been lost  and the fickle nature of these fires, fueled by fierce and unpredictable winds.Why this house, and not another? Why a 14-year-old boy? How could a 75-year-old woman survive all night in a swimming pool, surrounded by flames and buoyed by her loving husband, only to die in the morning?Deaths were recorded in four counties: Sonoma, Napa, Mendocino and Yuba.By the numbers, the elderly were over-represented on the roster of the dead, with 23 of the 33 identified victims older than age 65. Of those, 10 were 80 or older. Those who study natural disasters know that the most vulnerable residents  the elderly, the disabled, the poor  are disproportionately hurt when disaster strikes.At least six couples died together, unable to escape. Other couples, like George and Lynne Powell of Santa Rosa, became separated as the wall of flames advanced.One lived; one did not.Still others died alone, returning to save animals or, in one case, trying to protect a new truck. The truck reportedly made it through; 57-year-old Michael Dornbach of San Pedro, the trucks owner, did not.As firefighters rapidly gained ground last week, and rain helped tamp down hot spots, family members and friends shared stories about their lost loved ones and the mystery of who made it, and who did not. Their stories are both terrifying and touching as they describe the choices their loved ones made in their final minutes.The Powells, who met 33 years ago, were home together for the last time on Oct. 8 in their rural subdivision north of Santa Rosa. As the flames approached, they crafted their escape plan.Lynne Powell, 72, left the home first, gathering up her beloved border collie, Jemma, and taking off in her car. George, 74, followed a few minutes later, after retrieving his three collies and bundling them into his vehicle.The plan: Meet outside a shopping center off Mark West Springs Road, a few miles from their house.Lynne never made it. George Powell later discovered that flames and heavy smoke blinded her as she drove. Along a road she had driven countless times, she somehow missed a sharp curve and her car plunged down a hillside.She perished trying to get out of her car, probably trying to save her dog, if I know my wife, he said.Powell said he unwittingly drove right past the spot where his wifes car left the road. Her body was identified later by dental records.If I had known, I would have gone down there, he said. I dont care if I would have died  I kind of feel guilty. I wish I had said, You wait, well go down together. But theres no way to predict.Over and over, survivors described how the capriciousness of the fires and the thick smoke made familiar territory suddenly foreign.In rural Yuba County, where driveways are long and many homes are set back from the road, 77-year-old Sandy Picciano died when she inadvertently drove her pickup through a barbed wire fence and into a horse paddock. The vehicle, which came to rest against a tree, was consumed in flames.A mad dash down a driveway in Mendocino County resulted in the death of the fires youngest victim, 14-year-old Kai Shepherd.Jon and Sara Shepherd and their two children, Kressa and Kai, had been living in their dream home at the end of a dirt driveway in Redwood Valley, a small community between Willets and Ukiah. Redwood Valley is not officially a city but rather a census-designated place, a collection of homes and businesses knitted together in a scenic valley.For Kai, an eighth-grader who recently started playing the saxophone, a split-second decision about where to run proved fatal by a matter of feet.As flames closed in, the family members made a run for the car. When the vehicle caught fire, the four became separated. Kai, his mother and 17-year-old sister ran up the driveway toward the house. Jon Shepherd ran down toward the street.A neighbor responding to cries for help found Sara and Kressa, alive but badly burned. Kressas legs were later amputated below her knees. Jon Shepherd also was burned but alive.Kai was found dead in the driveway about 30 feet from his mother and sister.The teen was one of eight to die in this sparsely populated region of Mendocino County.Sheriff Tom Allman knew the victims well. Kais grandfather was a retired AT&T worker who faithfully attended every fundraiser and barbecue, raising money for various causes that included the volunteer fire department, Allman said.He called me the night afterwards, the sheriff said, his voice cracking. He said Kai was a good kid.Even as a lawman, the arbitrary nature of the fires was hard for Allman to comprehend. The sheriff recently drove through the devastation in this county of about 88,000, shaking his head as he periodically came across a home that remained intact amid other peoples rubble.It's just luck  kismet, he said.Of the four hardest-hit counties, Sonoma County suffered the most casualties.By Friday, the death toll in the county was 23, with 27 missing or unaccounted for.As the dead were slowly identified, their backgrounds revealed the rich diversity in a county known largely for its winemaking and tourism.Across the street from a hill leading to multimillion-dollar estates, the Journeys End mobile home park was reduced to a smoldering, twisted pile of trailers. Linda Tunis, 69, was among the dead, a recent transplant from Florida who reportedly called her daughter from her burning home and said, simply, Im going to die, before the line went dead, the Associated Press reported.One Santa Rosa victim, 80-year-old Donna Halbur, had been a nun before leaving the order and marrying her husband, LeRoy. They died in the flames together. Lynne Powell had been a flutist for 17 years with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra.Another Santa Rosa victim, Monte Kirven, 81, was a California original.Described as a generous and funny outdoorsman, Kirven also was an accomplished painter, respected biologist and a defender of the peregrine falcon. Friends say his falcon likely also died in the fire.He was one of those rare colorful people, said Geoff Monk, a close friend for nearly 40 years who studied peregrines with Kirven. He was always entertaining to be around.Kirven had trained his falcons to circle 2,000 feet in the air as he walked through the fields below, flushing ducks into the sky. Then the falcons would dive, taking out their game as they plummeted toward earth. He hunted his own game as well  salmon, elk and deer  and he would always share his bounty with others at his dinner parties, Monk said.That was how Kirven spent his final hours  hosting a dinner party in his home in the hills above Santa Rosa. A group of friends had gotten together to put a new roof on Kirvens home this year and, in typical fashion, he celebrated the event with a party.Around 10 p.m. on Oct. 8, Kirven, 81, finally kicked out his roofer and a neighbor. Hours later, the Tubbs Fire roared through, incinerating his home and many others on Linda Lane.The Sonoma Sheriffs Department would later tell Kirvens family that his remains were found inside the home in the spot where his bed likely stood.If he sat up in bed, his entire house was likely engulfed, said Monk. It was on him so fast, he had no chance.Karen Aycock also died alone in her Santa Rosa home, her remains reportedly found in or near the bathroom. The 56-year-old woman and devoted animal-lover had lived for at least 30 years in the Coffey Park neighborhood, a subdivision devastated by the firestorm.Aycocks former husband, Larry Higgins of San Francisco, said he realized that Karen was undoubtedly gone when he saw a newspaper photograph of a twisted and melted 1967 Ford Mustang parked outside her destroyed home on Dogwood Drive.When I saw that car, I knew immediately she was going to be somewhere close, said Higgins, 62. She wouldnt go anywhere without that car.The blue Mustang had been a gift to Aycock from her father on her 16th birthday, four decades earlier. Higgins said the two had married in 1980, hopped in the Mustang and driven from San Bruno to Sonoma County, living in a tent along the Russian River.They later moved into Aycocks mothers home  the Dogwood Drive house that burned  where Aycock continued to live after her mothers death in 2009, he said. The couple had split years earlier.A cat-lover, Aycock probably took shelter in what she thought to be the safest place  the bathroom  to protect her animals, said Higgins.It bothered him that she had not sought refuge in the old Doughboy above-ground pool in the backyard, which he said a Google search revealed had still been there at the time of the fire.Now I keep thinking, why didnt she get away? he said. To hell with the cats! Save yourself!A swimming pool in Sonoma County played a pivotal role in one of the fires most harrowing accounts.Carmen Berriz, 75, and her husband Armando Berriz, 76, were vacationing with family in Sonoma County when they were forced to seek shelter in a swimming pool, hugging each other for safety as the flames and smoke crept closer. Carmen died in the morning after being held throughout the night by the man shed married 55 years earlier.Of all the stories of grief and heroism to emerge from the wildfires, few have resonated like the tale of Carmen and Armando Berriz.I think a big part of the story that grabbed people was that my mother died in my fathers arms, said their son, Armando J. Berriz. Within the horrific story of hell that they faced is this beautiful love story.The couple, from Apple Valley in San Bernardino County, had rented a vacation home for several days in Santa Rosa, taking their daughter, son-in-law and one of their granddaughters. When the fire erupted, they fled in separate cars, but Carmen and Armando abandoned their vehicle when it got stuck on a fallen tree. They scurried back to the rental house and jumped into the pool.Hours later, Carmen Berriz stopped breathing. Family members said she had suffered from lung problems for some time.As the smoke began clearing, Armando carried his wife over to the steps at the shallow end of the pool and then realized each of them had lost a shoe. He quietly asked if he could take hers so he could walk out to safety.Together they made the pair, said their son, a lawyer in suburban Los Angeles. He asked her permission to take it, she gave it to him.His father eventually reached safety and has been recuperating at a burn center in Southern California. The younger Berriz said his father is expected to fully recover.What is painfully apparent from the list of the dead is that age and mobility were probably the biggest determining factors for survival.Charles and Sara Rippey are believed to be the oldest victims. Charles was 100, Sara was 98, and the couple had recently celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary.The Rippeys, who lived just off Atlas Peak Road northeast of Napa, met 89 years ago and were said by family members to be practically inseparable. When they died, separated by a few feet, Charles was apparently trying to rescue his wheelchair-bound wife but, hobbled himself and forced to use a walker, was overcome by smoke and flames.Their son, Mike Rippey of Napa, said his mother suffered a stroke five years ago. The couple had a caregiver, Maria Sondoval, 23, who tried to help the Rippeys but was barely able to escape before the roof fell in.She was a real hero in the whole thing, Mike Rippey said.Rippey had been in London when the fire broke out but, with the help of his brother, Chuck Rippey of Newcastle, has been able to piece together the sequence of events.He said Sondoval was able to pull Sara Rippey out of bed and into her wheelchair. But because of the wheelchair, the only viable escape route was through a garage, and the power outage made it impossible to open the garage door.There was nowhere to go with that wheelchair, Mike Rippey said. No matter what happened, my mother was doomed.As the caregiver struggled with Sara Rippey, she heard Charles Rippey, who was nicknamed Peach, calling for Sara from a hallway outside the bedroom. When Sondoval called back for him, there was no response. He was found later in the hall next to his walker.He had managed to make it halfway from his room to my mothers room, Mike Rippey said.If he had been able to reach her, the son said, he would have just stayed in the room with her.In the midst of disaster, their love story continued.Theres no way he would have left her, Mike Rippey said.Marjie Lundstrom: 916-321-1055, @MarjieLundstrom2017 The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.)Visit The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.) at www.sacbee.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
(TNS) - To grasp the power and terror of the 2007 firestorms  a 27-day ordeal that began 10 years ago this weekend you had to be there.You had to be in Michelle Grimaldos car, as flames swept across Honey Springs Road in Jamul, blocking her escape route.Everywhere you looked, she said, there was fire.You had to be with Tony Mecham, stunned by the number of severe burn victims  22  being airlifted from Cal Fire's Potrero station.It was like a war zone, said Mecham, now head of the county's Fire Authority. That was the first time Id seen that kind of human suffering on a wildland fire.You had to be with Nelly Bulkin, awakened from a fitful sleep by her husband and told to grab their four children and race from their Rancho Bernardo home.Embers were flying everywhere, she said. I thought for sure our home was going to burn down."A natural disaster of staggering scope, San Diego Countys 2007 firestorms killed 10 people and destroyed 1,738 homes. Flames consumed 368,316 acres, an area larger than the city of Los Angeles.More than 500,000 people were evacuated, exceeding the number of Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Motels across the county overflowed with people who were dislocated; others bunked down at the Del Mar Fairgrounds and what was then Qualcomm Stadium.This was not a fire  it was a chain of wildfires, erupting in virtually every corner of the county. While the 2003 wildfires were more costly in terms of lives lost (17), acres burned (372,000) and homes destroyed (2,454), the 2007 disaster proved that wildfires were no longer a rare tragedy limited to remote patches of the county.This is the new normal we live with," Mecham said. Fires are something that no longer stay in the backcountry.In response, Mecham and other authorities say that the county's firefighting capabilities have been strengthened with new equipment and tactics.We are better prepared than ever," said county Supervisor Dianne Jacob.Yet even as wildfires seem to be more common  witness the recent blazes in Sonoma, Napa and Orange counties  some worry that San Diegans are becoming complacent.A recent county survey showed that only 50 percent of residents evacuate their homes within 15 minutes. In 2007, 74 percent were prepared.It's eerie when I talk to neighbors now," said Jack Beren, a Rancho Bernardo resident who lost two homes in the 2007 fires. It's yesterday's news. But this is not like lightning. It does strike twice in the same place.This disaster was sparked around 9:30 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 21. What was believed to be an unauthorized campfire ignited brush near Potrero, a dusty town north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The Harris fire began in conditions that could not have been worse: high heat, low humidity and sustained Santa Ana winds blowing in excess of 50 mph with gusts of up to 100 mph.The first afternoon into the second day was surreal, said Mecham, who heads both the San Diego County Fire Authority and Cal Fires San Diego unit.I had come from Riverside and I was pulling in. When I got out of my truck, the wind was blowing so hard it bent my car door.The last hot spot wouldn't be extinguished until Nov. 16. The Harris fire would burn just over 90,000 acres, destroy 253 homes and two commercial buildings, kill eight people and injure dozens.Harris was the beginning, but far from the end. A Cal Fire tanker pilot returning from dumping retardant on the Harris fire witnessed an electrical transmission line arcing, igniting brush in the mountains near Santa Ysabel.These arcing lines ignited the Witch Creek fire. About 12 hours later another fire, Guejito, began in the San Pasqual Valley. Backed by strong winds, the two fires united and swept into Rancho Bernardo, taking out hundreds of homes.Firefighters were stretched so thin across the county, many of the homes burned without a fire truck in sight.Two people would die in those twin blazes, which consumed 1,141 homes and 509 outbuildings in Ramona, Poway, Rancho Bernardo, Escondido, Del Dios and Rancho Santa Fe. It was the second most destructive fire in county history, surpassed only by the Cedar fire of 2003.Ramona was ordered evacuated that first night, causing gridlock on State Routes 67 and 78. Power lines that connected water pumps to the town burned. Residents werent officially allowed back to their homes for a week, and even then told not to drink the water.On Oct. 22, with the winds still howling, the Rice Canyon fire began in Fallbrook north of State Route 76 when more power lines sparked. The fire leapt across Interstate 15 and flying embers sparked fires that consumed about 120 mobile homes. In all 206 homes, two commercial buildings and 40 outbuildings were lost.Early on Oct. 23, a house fire lit brush on the La Jolla Indian Reservation. This blaze, the Poomacha fire, raced into an area that hadnt seen fire in recorded history. It would burn the south side of the Palomar Mountain range, eventually consuming about 50,000 acres, 138 homes and 19 outbuildings.Later that morning a fifth major fire began on Camp Pendleton. The Horno/Ammo fire caused part of the base to be evacuated but the fire burned only brush  roughly 21,000 acres.Several other smaller fires also erupted, but were quickly controlled.The cost of fighting the fires, estimated at $41 million, was dwarfed by the property damage: about $1.6 billion.Authorities say they were determined to absorb the lessons from this costly experience.It really got everybody to the table, said Doug Perry, fire marshal for the city of San Diego and deputy chief of the San Diego Fire Department. Something needs to be done  San Diego County and the whole region is very susceptible to those wildfires.Like the 2003 wildfires, the 2007 firestorms exposed weaknesses in how local agencies attacked the blazes.The backcountry had a patchwork of fire departments, many staffed with volunteers. Communications between departments was spotty. Moreover, Jacob said, the county board of supervisors had only provided grudging support to fire prevention efforts in the forests and mountains of East County.The Cedar Fire (of 2003) was the defining moment," said Jacob, who represents East County. That was the first time a fire that started in the backcountry went into the cities."For the first time, there was unanimous support on the board."If 2003 supplied inspiration, the events of 2007 added a sense of urgency. In 2008, the county formed a Fire Authority to oversee 16 stations covering more than 1.5 million acres. The loose network of backcountry fire departments are now under this single command.Fire dispatchers across the county adopted a uniform communication system. "Each dispatch center knows what the other dispatch center is doing, and Perry, the fire official. It's really state of the art, 10 times better than what we had in 03 and 07.A fortune was spent on new equipment  the citys inventory of brush rigs," fire engines adapted to fight wildfires, has been expanded from two to 13. At least three helicopters have been added to the squadron of aerial firefighters  two purchased by the San Diego Fire Department, one by the county.Some fixes were relatively inexpensive, although they could prove essential.The most common question I get is, Where's the fire? said San Diego Fire Chief Brian Fennessy.Thats not a joke. Firestorms can move with alarming speed and move in unpredictable directions. Phoned-in reports of the flames location, while welcome, can be rendered irrelevant in a matter of minutes.Thats why Fennessy and other firefighters were happy to see more than 100 new weather stations installed in the backcountry. Using these tools, firefighters can track the speed, direction and intensity of fires in real time.Other solutions required changes in approach. While the county has dozens of fire departments, Perry said, everyone now works on the same team. Every spring, county fire agencies come together for a joint training exercise. This unity carries over to actual fires in the field.Throughout this whole entire county, the way that we respond now is truly with all boundaries, all city limits dropped, Perry said. All agencies participate.There are several reasons for this, including enlightened self-interest. Most fires start in the east and then spread to the west."It's really smart for the cities to the west to send units to the east, Perry said, and try to stop the fire there.The idea is to act with speed and overwhelming force, deploying a wide range of weapons. Recently approved contracts make as many as 30 Navy and Marine Corps aerial units available to combat local fires, eliminating a barrier that existed in 07. And a policy that prevented San Diego Fire helicopters from flying after sundown has been reversed.Now, the birds can take to the air at the pilot's discretion.If a fire starts in the city of San Diego, Perry said, "I can say with absolute certainty they will get a helicopter up 24 hours a day.Perry also praised an entity that is often slammed in discussions about the 07 fires: San Diego Gas & Electric.In the last decade, SDG&E has made available during fire season a Skycrane Sun Bird" helitanker, an aircraft that can douse a target with up to 2,650 gallons of water."That's the equivalent of five engines," Perry said, noting that the average fire engine carries 500 gallons of water. You have to give them credit."The utility's role in the 07 fires, though, remains controversial. While acknowledging their equipment started some of the fires, SDG&E has never admitted liability. Instead, it maintains that ultimate responsibility lies with an act of God, the fierce Santa Ana winds.More than $2 billion was paid in settlements, of which $1.1 billion was covered by SDG&E's insurance. The utility also accepted a $444 million settlement from Cox Communications after it was determined that a Cox wire came into contact with power lines, igniting the Guejito fire.SDG&E also received some payments from the Davey tree-trimming company and an electrical contractor.After insurance and settlements, SDG&E faced outstanding costs of $379 million. As early as next week, the state's Public Utilities Commission could rule on SDG&E's request to bill consumers for this expense.At the same time, the utility has taken steps to prevent future incidents.SDG&E has made significant investments in fire preparedness and to modernize our infrastructure to keep San Diego County safe, said spokeswoman Colleen Windsor.More than 2,100 wood poles throughout the backcountry have been replaced with fire hardened steel poles. A four-year, $450 million project to replace or underground 100 miles of poles in the Cleveland National Forest began in 2016.During dry, windy weather, the utility disables automatic switching devices in fire sensitive areas. The transmission line that arced and started the Witch Creek fire had been automatically restarted after a problem was indicated earlier that day. Now, before power is restored during fire season, a manual inspection of the line is required.The utility also automatically cuts power to backcountry areas in high winds during critical fire weather.When seeking the states permission to take these steps, SDG&E documented 167 fires that had been started by its equipment in the preceding five and a half years. Of those fires, 13 occurred during strong winds, including Witch Creek/Guejito and Rice Canyon.SDG&E also employs 40 arborists to inspect trees, subcontracts with 80 tree trimming crews to keep lines away from branches, has four mobile command centers available in case of fire, uses an Emergency Operations Center for large-scale crises and issues a daily fire index.The latter comes from data collected by 170 small weather stations atop power poles. Wind speed, humidity and temperature are all recorded.Many of the firefighting agencies get that data on their smartphones on a daily basis, Windsor said.Fire is older than civilization, and humanity has long tried to control this elemental force."The science of firefighting hasn't changed in 50 years, said Mecham, the head of the county Fire Authority. I don't know that it ever will."What needs to change, many insist, is our focus.There's still an over-emphasis on the actual fire fight, said Christopher Dicus, a former firefighter who is a professor of wildlands fire and fuels management at California Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo. "I would contend if we actually had prepared the battlefield, the firefighters would have a much better chance to win."After the 07 wildfires, new building standards mandated fire-resistant exteriors and roofs  farewell, shake shingle!  a 100-foot defensible space" outside the house and ceiling sprinklers inside.While these new requirements added to the cost of construction, some survivors of 07 fires benefited from the timing of that disaster.That same year, the great recession was dragging down the economy. Especially hard hit: the construction industry."People were sitting on their hands, they had nothing do, said Jack Beren, who rebuilt one of the two Rancho Bernardo homes he lost in the Guejito fire. People were beating on fire victims houses, begging them to let them rebuild their homes.His new place has a tile roof, no exposed wood, dual pane windows, mesh screens over vents (to keep embers from flying inside), defensible space in front and a fire break in back. Those are sensible precautions in San Diego, where a Headwaters Institute 2016 study identified more than 42,000 properties in high risk locations.They exist on the Wildlands Urban Interface, WUI, pronounced Woo-ee. The Institute, an Oregon-based nonprofit dedicated to watershed management and education, defines the WUI as the region where homes meet dense stands of native or naturalized vegetation in canyons and other open space areas.Across the western U.S., some rural residents have pioneered a way of surviving in the Woo-ee. Their goal is to create fire adapted communities."This is a recognition that we have to rely on residents as much as other people, that fire departments aren't going to solve the problem alone," said Molly Mowery, who leads the National Fire Protection Associations Fire Adapted Community program. We need the engagement of the residents, too. It's everyones responsibility.That means lobbying developers and planners to include more than one route in and out of every neighborhood, and ensuring that streets are wide enough for emergency vehicles to quickly turn around.But it also means that all residents need to keep flammable materials and plants away from their homes' exteriors; develop an emergency plan; and get to know their neighbors.Do children live next door? Does Grandma? These days, how many of us know that? asked Fennessy. But that's important information when there's a fire.Although she had been surrounded by fire 10 years ago on Jamul's Honey Springs Road, Michelle Grimaldo survived the Harris fire. Despite that terrifying experience, she and husband Gregg Grimaldo rebuilt their home in rural, fire-prone Deerhorn Valley.I love it there, she said. "I can't move.On Sunday, the Grimaldos are hosting a 10th anniversary gathering for Deerhorn Valley residents. The party is scheduled for 2 to 7 p.m. at McKinley Field, 19545 Elena Lane.Should be a good time -- and a hot one. The forecast for the day: high temperatures and Santa Ana winds.Last week, 100 to 150 San Diego-based Cal Fire units were battling blazes in Northern California and Orange County. By last Wednesday, though, San Diego's impending Santa Ana was changing their plans.We're already starting to move resources south, said Cal Fire Capt. Kendal Bortisser.2017 The San Diego Union-TribuneVisit The San Diego Union-Tribune at www.sandiegouniontribune.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
had a segment a couple of weeks back, Hurricane Harvey: A fluke or the future? It is a good program that looks at the Hurricane Harvey event from several different perspectives. The one that resonated with me was the mayor of Houston talking about why more has not been done about flood mitigation, and he pointed the finger at a lack of funding and a lack of urgency. It is the lack of urgency that drives the lack of funding.If 2018 does not produce any Cat 4 hurricanes, that lack of urgency will ramp down even more. However, for Houston and flooding, it does not take a hurricane to cause trouble. They have had repeated flood events in the last few years that have caused devastating damages to homes and other properties.Speaking of the "lack of urgency" from a totally different hazard perspective, the Seattle City Council will soon have the opportunity to act on finding a fix for unreinforced masonry buildings (URM) or punt the issue to the future, like it has been done for decades before. Earthquakes are not as frequent as hurricanes or flood events, so no one is beating on their doors to take action.
(TNS) -- Underground power lines dont sway in the wind. Tree branches blown sideways by a gale cant hit them. They dont sit on wooden poles that can fall down.They would, in other words, seem to be an ideal way to prevent wildfires in a place like California, which has a history of big blazes sparked by overhead power lines tangling with trees. Investigators are now trying to determine whether that combination triggered the wildfires that tore through the Wine Country this month.Unfortunately, underground power lines are also very expensive.And if Pacific Gas and Electric Co., whose overhead lines are facing scrutiny as a possible cause of the North Bay fires, were to bury more of its system, that cost would be borne by the companys customers. It would not come out of PG&Es profits. Placing more lines underground could even raise those profits, since under California regulations, utilities make a guaranteed rate of return on the value of all the equipment they own.We think its so expensive that its really not feasible, said Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network watchdog group.A new underground distribution line across most of PG&Es territory costs about $1.16 million per mile, according to data filed with state regulators during the utilitys most recent general rate case. Thats more than twice the price of a new overhead line, which costs about $448,800 per mile. Most of the difference comes from the expense of digging a trench for the cable.Prices rise within cities, where the work is more complex. A 2015 San Francisco report found that recent costs for moving power lines underground in Oakland had averaged $2.8 million per mile, while similar work in San Jose had cost $4.6 million per mile.And burying high-voltage transmission lines  the kind usually strung from immense steel towers across long distances  can cost as much as $5 million per mile, according to PG&E.The utility operates more than 134,000 miles of overhead power lines of one voltage or another across Northern and Central California. So while placing power lines underground in areas filled with flammable vegetation may sound sensible, it is far from cheap: It would cost well over $100 billion to do across PG&Es entire territory.Do we want to tear up the whole Oakland hills  a high fire hazard area  to do undergrounding? asked Michael Picker, president of the California Public Utilities Commission. Theres never going to be a perfect solution. A lot depends on how much people are willing to spend to approach the next level of safety.San Francisco has particularly painful experience with the costs of burying lines.For 10 years starting in 1996, the city worked with PG&E to place underground 45.8 miles of overhead lines, with the utility estimating a cost of $1 million per mile. Instead, the final price came in at $3.8 million per mile California regulations use a formula for allocating some money each year from utility customers bills to undergrounding projects in cities that want to bury their power lines. San Franciscos 10-year project ran so far over budget that it used up all the money that would be available to the city through 2032, according to a city report. That brought undergrounding within the city to a halt.Price is not the only pitfall.Repair crews have no trouble spotting a knocked-over power pole or downed line. But when an underground line fails, operators first have to figure out where the problem occurred, without being able to see it  though sensors attached to the power lines can help narrow things down. Then they have to dig.You may know its within a certain distance, but you dont know exactly where it is, said Andrew Phillips, director of transmission studies at the Electric Power Research Institute, a think tank serving the utilities industry. And fixing it is very expensive, and that means the outage time is a lot longer.Theres also the issue of cutting trenches through environmentally sensitive areas. And in more urban settings, workers who dont know the location of an underground line may dig into it, a problem that plagues natural gas pipelines as well. The power research institutes office in Charlotte, N.C., recently lost power for an afternoon after someone accidentally hit an underground power cable in the neighborhood, Phillips said.Some guy with a backhoe was working on the traffic light, and he dug into the line  and everyone had to go home, he said.Most undergrounding takes place in towns and cities, for aesthetic reasons.Urban streetscapes already contain a maze of infrastructure below the surface  water and sewer pipes, fiber-optic cable  so undergrounding can often be combined with other jobs to minimize the disruption.PG&E undergrounds about 30 miles of electric lines each year. Other utilities have been more aggressive. San Diego Gas and Electric Co., a far smaller utility, says that 60 percent of its lines are now underground. That even includes small stretches of rural lines running through areas considered particularly prone to wildfires. The city of San Diego also placed a high priority on moving lines underground and set up its own funding system to support the work.At the current pace, moving all of Californias utility lines underground would take 1,000 years, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.PG&E has replaced hundreds of toppled or damaged power poles in the North Bay since the Oct. 8 windstorm and the wildfires that followed. It remains unclear whether PG&Es equipment may have helped start the fires or whether the fires damaged the equipment.Either way, PG&E does not consider undergrounding a panacea.We serve urban areas, and we also serve really rural areas, so wheres the tipping point where undergrounding makes sense? said PG&E spokesman Keith Stephens. We want to provide safe and reliable service thats also affordable. So its a balance of those three things.Movingpower lines underground can help prevent fires at a priceMiles of overhead power lines in PG&E territory: 134,000Cost of underground lines, per mile: $1.16 million to $5 millionMiles of power lines PG&E undergrounds per year: 30






The voter-fraud-checking program championed by the head of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity suffers from data security flaws that could imperil the safety of millions of peoples records, according to experts.Indivisible Chicago, a progressive advocacy group in Illinois, filed a public-records request with Illinois and Florida for information on the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program. Crosscheck was created and run by the Kansas secretary of states office and is often cited by Kris Kobach, Kansas secretary of state, as a way to identify voters casting ballots in more than one state. Indivisible Chicago then posted emails and other documents it received, including messages exchanged between elections officials in Illinois and Florida and Crosscheck.The emails and records revealed numerous security weaknesses. Crosschecks files are hosted on an insecure server, according to its own information. Usernames and passwords were regularly shared by email, making them vulnerable to snooping. And passwords were overly simplistic and only irregularly changed.It blows my mind  this is complete operational security incompetence, said Joe Hall, the chief technologist for the Center for Democracy & Technology, an organization that promotes internet freedom. You should consider all of that stuff in the hands of people who are clever enough to intercept someones email.The Kansas secretary of states office did not respond to emailed questions about Crosschecks security.Crosscheck was conceived in 2005 as a way to, as the name implies, let states compare their voting rolls to prevent people from registering in multiple states. Kansas operates the program at no cost to the states that participate. Crosscheck assures them  about 30 states use the program as of now  that it employs industry standard encryption technology and passwords.Hall disputes that. Its a complete lie, he said.Kobach co-chairs President Donald Trumps voter fraud commission, which has been under heavy scrutiny over whether it will be able to secure the vast voting data it has requested , including names, addresses and dates of birth for virtually every voter in the country. When Kobach requested this data in June, the commission was scorched with criticism and lawsuits in both federal and state courts over privacy concerns. Kobach sent a second letter to states in late July promising data would be kept confidential and secure throughout the duration of the commissions existence.Experts say the documents released by Indivisible Chicago undercut Kobachs claims that he understands how to protect voter data. This raises serious concerns about the security of citizens data not only in Crosscheck, but with the voter fraud commission run by the same people, said Dave Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. They tell the voters, the states and the courts trust us with personal data, but they refuse to answer basic questions about how they plan to secure or use that data.Concern over the commissions ability to keep data secure given the new information about Crosschecks methods is absolutely justified, said Kenneth White, director of the Open Crypto Audit Project, and a security researcher and consultant.Crosschecks data is stored on an FTP server run by the Arkansas Office of the Secretary of State. FTP servers are unencrypted, leaving passwords and downloads readable by electronic spies. It is standard across the industry to instead use SFTP (short for SSH File Transfer Protocol ), which protects data from prying eyes, according to Hall. He compared FTP servers to a postcard and SFTP servers to a letter sealed in an envelope and locked in a vault.Employees of the Arkansas secretary of states office send login credentials to election officials in states participating in Crosscheck and restrict access to either the public IP address or a range of addresses used by election officials in those states. Thats an important step to ensure users can only access the system through one of the approved IP addresses, according to White  but he said well-resourced attackers would be able to get around this protection.And because Crosscheck routinely emailed full credentials, hackers may not even need to work particularly hard to do so. They could simply spoof  essentially, mimic  the email address of a state authority and send an email to Crosschecks administrators adding a different IP address, said Shawn Davis, the director of forensics at Edelson PC, a Chicago-area law firm specializing in cyber security. The firm has begun working with Indivisible Chicago, and Davis will testify before an upcoming joint session of the Illinois House and Senate to discuss Crosschecks vulnerabilities.Hackers do take these steps, said Davis. They are pretty patient  if they want to get the data theyll do these things.Illinois has been a member of Crosscheck since 2011, but emails released by Indivisible Chicago show that no Illinois official inquired about data security issues until this July, when Indivisible Chicago raised questions. In response, Vipin Nischal, an analyst at the Arkansas secretary of states office, confirmed the use of an FTP server but claimed no unauthorized or anonymous access had been found. Bryan Caskey, Kansass director of elections, said officials at the Kansas secretary of states office, which performs the matching work, also have access to the data.Arkansas employees sent emails to Crosscheck members containing the FTP address, the username and the password in the same email, which is considered bad security practice. Operating procedures included in the records request show that this practice was standard  Crosscheck instructed all three things to be sent in a single email every January before the matches were done. Hall called this completely, unbelievably irresponsible.The Illinois State Board of Elections, which fulfilled one of the records requests from Illinois, redacted the FTP address but did not redact usernames and passwords. Passwords were emailed to all states in the same manner, leaving them vulnerable to similar exposure through public-records requests in other states.The passwords are simplistic, and emails from Crosschecks operators show they were rarely changed. Due to the heavy work load on our IT Director, we will not be able to update the passwords for this data pull, an Arkansas employee said in an email to Crosscheck participants in 2011. If there is a specific state that really needs/wants their password changed, please let me know and I will see what I can do for you. Emails from Arkansas employees to the Illinois State Board of Elections in 2016 and 2017 also contained the same credentials.[Secretaries of state] took an oath to the people of their states to protect the state constitution, and part of that is the safekeeping of the citizens information, said White. They are abdicating that responsibility by putting their data in this sort of system.
F1 owner Liberty is considering shaking up the sport's traditional weekend format.

In Austin, the pre-race proceedings were suddenly changed when the pitlane was opened earlier to allow legendary announcer Michael Buffer to introduce the drivers in Indy 500 style.

Not just that, Usain Bolt spiced up the waving of the green flag.

"We want formula one to cross the boundary between sport and show," said Liberty's F1 commercial boss Sean Bratches.

Now, the next innovations are being planned.

Sporting boss Ross Brawn has been quoted by F1 business journalist Christian Sylt as saying Friday practice sessions could be axed in future, making room for more races on the calendar.

"One of the things we are doing is looking at the format of a race weekend to see if we need to change that to make it logistically easier for them (the teams) to do more races," Brawn is quoted by Forbes.

And Germany's Bild newspaper reports that another idea being discussed is a shake-up of the traditional 'two by two' formation on the race grid.

The report said the grid rows in the future could alternate between two and three cars, increasing competition and the risk of a crash.

"We are looking for ways to offer fans more," F1 chief executive Chase Carey said.

(GMM)
They conclude, based on their analysis of their data, that attitude factors such as network externality, price acceptability, government subsidies, vehicle performance, concerns about smog, and demographic characteristics such as gender, age and marital status have significant impacts on respondents willingness to purchase electric vehicles. Their paper appears in the journal Energy Policy .

A team of researchers at Xiamen University in China has examined the factors influencing electric vehicle uptake in major Chinese cities. Boqiang Lin and Wei Wu have put forward an electric vehicle purchasing intention model based on a review of the literature and their survey in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

China has become a behemoth in the global auto marketand it continues to grow. Vehicle ownership in China has surged more than 100 times to almost 200 million owners since 1980, while the population has only increased 40% to about 1.4 billion during the same period. Since 2009, China has overtaken the US in terms of total vehicle production and has become the largest single automotive market in the world; in 2015, 24.6 million vehicles were sold in China, compared to some 17.5 million vehicles sold in the US that year.

Chinas motor vehicle already consume nearly 40% of the oil used in China. If China matches the relative segment consumption rate of the US (70% of oil for vehicles), China may consume more than 1 billion tonnes of oil per year.

To address these issues, the government of China is now strongly pushing for the adoption of electric vehicles. China is now the largest EV consumer and manufacturer in the world.

Chinas consumers have shown a high willingness to adopt EVs. If the present policy is maintained, the demand for EV may still maintain a rapid upward trend and begin to be an available alternative for gasoline vehicles. Therefore, to understand what factors may impact the purchasing intention of EVs is important for the government and industry. First of all, the government can release a more efficient policy to provide subsidies and promote the growth of EV. Secondly, the public may have cognitive bias about EVs, which may affect the purchase intention. A better understanding about these biases may help the industry to plan a more efficient market strategy. Thirdly, according to the publics attention, the manufacturers can centralize the resources in the points which may have stronger influence on the EV demands.

 Few studies focus on what factors impact the purchasing intention of Chinas vehicle consumer. This paper proposes an integrated model to evaluate the acceptance of EV. A survey is designed and conducted to collect empirical data about the factors that may influence the purchasing intention about EVs; quantitative analyses of these factors are also implemented. Lin and Wu (2017)

In their study, the team found that price acceptability and concerns about smog were the most prominent factors affecting the purchase decision.

The researchers drew a number of policy recommendations from their study, including:

Because the concern about smog is so strong, the government could offer different subsidies for different regions, which may allocate more resources for the most polluted cities. Meanwhile, the researchers suggested, the EV manufacturers should also consider these cities as the key area of their main market penetration targets.

If government EV subsidies decrease in the future, the demand for EVs may also decrease. Subsidies may be essential if the government wants to accelerate the penetration rate of EVs.

Although network externality has a positive impact on EV purchasing intent, the current number of EVs is relatively small, and the role of network externality in promoting the adoption of EVs is limited. Demand for EVs may increase with the growth of EV share in vehicle market (positive feedback effect). The government can design appropriate policy, such as EV license plate and EV priority in heavy traffic periods, to increase the exposure of EVs and amplify the impact of network effect.

The public undervalues the performance of EVs, and also lacks knowledge to calculate real usage costs. These results suggest that manufacturers should enhance their sales strategy by providing more test driving vehicles and improve the specialized knowledge of their sales teams. The government could reinforce public awareness through mechanisms such as non-commercial advertising.

Rather than focusing on expanding the charging infrastructure, the government should focus on expanding the grid infrastructure to guarantee the power capacity of the home charging systems.

Women, younger and married people have a higher purchase intent for EVs. This implies that diversified policies could enhance the efficiency of subsidies, and more targeted products could be launched to meet different types of consumer demand. For example, women are more willing to accept electric cars, so the manufactures could give a priority to the vehicle type which is preferred by women in the design process. The government could design targeted subsidies for young and married people, such as offering a prime rate of vehicle loan for the first-time buyer and family cars.

Resources
At the conference, Hyundai Motor Group is displaying the first four engines and two transmissions from its forthcoming line-up of new Smart Stream powertrains. The Smart Stream powertrains deliver improved fuel economy and reduced exhaust emissions. With the advanced combustion techniques of Smart Stream engines, Hyundai Motor Group aims to maximize thermal efficiency by up to 50% in the future.

Hyundai Motor Group outlined its future powertrain development strategy at its International Powertrain Conference in Korea. More than 1,200 engineers and academics are participating in the two-day event, which features presentations exploring the core theme Knock the Limit of Powertrain Technologies: To Enhance Value for Customers.





Beginning with the introduction of 1.6-liter gasoline and diesel Smart Stream engines, the technology will eventually be available for all Hyundai Motor Group vehicles. The improvements will enhance gasoline and diesel engine efficiency, alongside the development of new plug-in hybrid and electric powertrains, plus the companys next-generation Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV).

First introduced at the 2017 Frankfurt International Motor Show, the Smart Stream powertrains will allow Hyundai Motor Group to respond to global changes in environmental regulation and meet customer demand for fun-to-drive cars. The next-generation Smart Stream technology optimizes the existing powertrain structure, with engine components reduced in size and weight to enhance fuel efficiency.

Among the Smart Stream technology presented at the International Powertrain Conference is the first commercial application of Continuously Variable Valve Duration (CVVD) technology, which continuously adjusts the valve duration, and hence optimizes the valve timing of opening and closing independently to maximize performance and fuel economy as well as to reduce emissions.

In the Smart Stream G 1.6 turbo engine, the opening and closing of the cylinder valve is timed to best respond to various driving modes, such as eco-driving or dynamic driving.

Other new technology includes the Smart Stream eight-speed wet Dual-Clutch Transmission (DCT). Unlike conventional automatic transmissions, the dual-clutch system enables optimal shift response, with the eight-speed gearing and high-efficient hydraulic system delivering both faster acceleration performance and excellent fuel economy at the same time.

By 2022, Hyundai Motor Group aims to develop an all-new Smart Stream powertrain line-up comprising 10 gasoline engines, six diesel engines, and six transmissions.

At the International Powertrain Conference, Hyundai Motor Group underlined its belief that the internal combustion engine will maintain a strong presence in the market until 2025, as plug-in hybrid and electric powertrains start to receive wider acceptance. To respond to diversifying market needs, Hyundai Motor Group will produce a greater proportion of electric, fuel cell, and plug-in hybrid powertrainsall alongside its highly efficient new Smart Stream internal combustion engines.

This shift to produce more alternative powertrains is coupled with plans to enhance battery capacity and increase the electric-only range capabilities of its electric models.

Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle. With its new Smart Stream powertrains, Hyundai Motor Group also aims to build on its leadership position in advanced propulsion technology. While maintaining focus on improving the efficiency of its internal combustion engines is important, Hyundai Motor Group will continue to lead the industry in Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV), by investing in the development of its next-generation hydrogen powertrain.

The next FCEV from Hyundai Motor Group will have a driving range of 800 km (497 miles), a maximum power output of 163PS, and the largest hydrogen storage density of any Fuel Cell vehicle on the market. (Earlier post.)
Proton OnSite, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nel ASA, has been awarded a contract for approximately US$1.8 million to participate in the US Department of Energys (DOEs) Advanced Water Splitting Benchmarking Project. This is a critical piece of DOEs HydroGEN Energy Materials Network (EMN) consortium, which was launched to accelerate the discovery and development of materials for low cost hydrogen production, enabling energy storage, resiliency and economic opportunities across sectors.

Proton will work with DOE National Laboratories and lead a team to ensure that all experimental results across the water splitting research community are properly vetted, standards are set for comparison, and roadmaps are developed including research priorities and capability needs. Kathy Ayers, Protons Vice President of Research and Development, has been named overall project lead.

The DOE strategy includes all four major pathways: low temperature anion exchange membrane (AEM) and proton exchange membrane (PEM); high temperature solid oxide electrolysis (SOEC); solar thermochemical (STCH); and photoelectrochemical (PEC).

Proton is directly responsible for the AEM and PEM pathway and will develop a series of Best Practice documents and databases for advanced water splitting research, and roadmaps for further development of each pathway.

Deliverables include performance or thermodynamic benchmarks for new materials, plans for long-term stability assessments, and evaluation of device performance under real-world conditions.
Im just a guy.

Which is to say, even when Im well-meaning I can do and say stupid things when it comes to women.

At least Im reasonably aware.

As the philosopher Clint Eastwood once said: A mans got to know his limitations.

I think I know mine. Most of them, at least.

And Id like to think my transgressions are the result of insensitivity borne of ignorance and blind spots.

Not intentional abuse.

So its difficult to grasp the Harvey Weinstein and Bill OReilly sagas, where powerful men appeared to use that authority over women to allegedly harass and abuse them sexually.

Even worse is the enabling.

Everyone in Hollywood seemed to know about Weinsteins casting-couch approach to aspiring actresses.

Thus far 29 women have come forward, including stars who are household names (Ashley Judd, Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow).

His escapades were so widely known that they were a punch line in jokes.

But until only recently did anybody do anything about it.

Said Stephen Colbert: "Harvey Weinstein is a bad person. This is monstrous behavior that, in a just world, would not have been allowed to go on for decades. It is indefensible."

As for OReilly, he paid some $32 million in one settlement to a former Fox News colleague who threatened to sue him over alleged acts of sexual misconduct.

The New York Times reported Saturday that the money went to Fox News legal analyst Lis Wiehl.

I cant imagine what its like for a woman to be placed in circumstances like these, both physically and psychologically.

Even so, OReilly was sticking to his story.

"This is crap," he says.

But it follows a pattern of other allegations at Fox.

And it wasnt the only settlement. It was at least the sixth. The Times reports that either Mr. OReilly or the company paid the money to settle earlier allegations against him.

If youre keeping score, thats seven settlements  for behavior OReilly claims never happened.

The Times reported it. You decide.

As for enabling bad behavior, the rest of us aren't off the hook.

We've elected a president accused of sexual harassment by multiple women ... who defended himself during a 2016 campaign speech in Greensboro by quipping that his accusers weren't good-looking enough.
JEFFERSON  According to indictments, Ashe County Sheriff Terry Buchanan didnt want county employees turning over his phone records to a television station that filed a public-records request.

In order to keep those records from being disclosed, Buchanan used the sheriffs office to launch criminal investigations on three county employees  Ann Clark, the clerk for the Ashe County Board of Commissioners; Cyrus Hurley, the countys information technology director; and Todd Chapman, the countys IT technician.

On Monday, an Ashe County grand jury indicted Buchanan, 53, on three counts of felony obstruction of justice and three misdemeanor counts of willful failure to discharge duties. District Attorney Tom Horner filed a sealed petition to have Buchanan removed from office. Judge R. Gregory Horne temporarily suspended Buchanan with pay pending a full hearing on Nov. 13 in Ashe Superior Court, according to a news release from Horners office.

The Ashe County Board of Commissioners appointed Buchanan as sheriff in January. WBTV in Charlotte had been investigating Buchanan and the Ashe County Board of Commissioners vote to appoint Buchanan as sheriff. WBTV reporter Nick Ochsner submitted a public records request on April 6 seeking all written communications  included but not limited to emails, text messages, instant messages, letters and memos  sent and received by Terry Buchanan between Dec. 1, 2016 and April 6, 2017.

Horner said in the news release that Clark, Hurley and Chapman were assigned to comply with the public-records request. On June 21, Capt. Mickey Boyles called Horner about potential criminal conduct by Clark, Hurley and Chapman, according to the news release. Several days before the call, the sheriffs office had already interrogated Hurley and Chapman and had attempted to interview Clark, Horner said in the news release.

Clark, Hurley and Chapman had gotten a cellphone number and were attempting to get records for that number, which belonged to Melanie Buchanan, Terry Buchanans wife. Indictments allege that Terry Buchanan used the same phone to conduct public business.

Because the Sheriff was identified by Captain Boyles as either a potential witness/victim, it was immediately apparent that a conflict existed within the Ashe County Sheriffs Office being involved in any way in the investigation, Horner said in the news release.

Horner contacted the N.C. State Bureau of Investigation. According to the news release, Oschsner had also asked for text messages, emails, instant messages and other written communications for Ashe commissioners William Sands, Larry Rhodes, Paula Perry, Gary Roark and Jeff Rose from Dec. 1, 2016 to April 6, 2017.

Assistant Special Agent in Charge Brian Norman and Special Agent Michael Johnston of the SBI interviewed Clark, Hurley and Chapman on July 23. Then on June 27, Horner asked for the Special Prosecutions Unit of the SBI to investigate Buchanan for potential obstruction of justice and misconduct in office, according to Horners news release. Special Agent David Whitley of the SBI led that investigation.

The indictments allege that the investigations into Clark, Hurley and Chapman were designed to delay the county officials efforts to comply with WBTVs public records request. The indictments allege the investigations were unlawful.

Buchanan was released on a $25,000 unsecured bond. He did not immediately return a message Tuesday seeking comment.

Horner said that the SBI investigation is still active and further charges or indictments may be forthcoming in the near future.
Strong thunderstorms moved through the Piedmont Triad and N.C. mountains on Monday leaving several counties with power outages, downed trees and flooding.

Forsyth, Davidson, Guilford, Stokes, Surry, Rockingham, Yadkin, Caswell, Wilkes, Montgomery, Randolph, Richmond Stanly, Alleghany, Ashe, Watauga and Anson counties were under a tornado watch until 9 p.m.

Forsyth and Davidson counties were also under an urban and small stream flood advisory, according to the National Weather Service.

Doppler radar indicated heavy rain in the counties at 6 p.m. and one to two inches of rain was expected to fall in less than 90 minutes.

The NWS said that the excessive runoff would cause flooding of small creeks, urban areas, highways, streets and underpasses, as well as other drainage areas and low lying spots.

Authorities urged motorists not to drive vehicles into areas where the water covers the roadway.

A tornado was spotted on the ground 9 miles southwest of Hickory near Icard on Monday evening, according to the National Weather Service Greenville/Spartanburg.

At 9:30 p.m., the Blue Ridge Electric Membership outage map website reported this number of power outages in these counties: 320 in Ashe, 15 in Watagua, 12 in Wilkes and 2,417 in Alleghany. Duke Powers website reported 374 power outages in Surry County.

Watagua Communications reported that roadways were flooded throughout Watagua County, including at the intersection of Roby Greene and Raven Rock roads in Boone and in the Tweetsie Railroad area in Blowing Rock.

A shelter has been opened for anybody in need in Alliance Bible Fellowship at 1033 N.C. Highway 105 Bypass in Boone.

Today, Surry County Schools and Watagua County Schools in North Carolina and Carroll County Public Schools in Virginia will operate on a two-hour delay; and Wilkes County in North Carolina will be closed for students and teachers.
Several western North Carolina counties were cleaning up after Monday's storms brought water rescues, power outages, mudslides and downed trees.

The city of Hickory and Burke, Caldwell, Wilkes and Catawba counties declared local states of emergency because of the storms. The formal declaration enables jurisdictions to seek state or federal aid if needed.

There as many as nine unconfirmed reports of tornado touchdowns and, by 2 p.m., approximately 54,500 homes and businesses still were without power  down from a peak of more than 92,000 Monday night, according to the governor's office. The greatest numbers of outages were in Catawba, Wilkes, Alexander, Burke and Caldwell counties.

Authorities in Watauga and McDowell counties reported completing water rescues as heavy rains caused flash floods in some areas. Shelters are currently open in Caldwell, Wilkes and Watauga counties.

A retaining wall at the top parking lot in the Chimney Rock section of Chimney Rock State Park in Rutherford County collapsed from heavy rainfall. Chimney Rock at Chimney Rock State Park will be closed until further notice while repairs are completed.

Several stretches of the Blue Ridge Parkway were closed because of the heavy rainfall. A significant washout was discovered along the road shoulder at the Little Pisgah Ridge Tunnel at Milepost 407. Park engineers are assessing the site for any additional undercutting of the road and needed repairs.

Stone Mountain State Park in Roaring Gap, North Carolina, was also closed because of downed trees.

A short section of US 64 in Henderson County was closed due to a small mudslide but has since reopened. Downed power lines and trees closed multiple secondary roads in Alexander, Ashe, Caldwell, Catawba, Cleveland and Wilkes counties. High water submerged low bridges in Watauga County and flooded several secondary roads in Henderson and Polk County. At the Hickory Regional Airport, winds destroyed a hangar and overturned planes and cars.

The state is sending chainsaw crews from the N.C. Forest Service to Alexander, Burke and Caldwell counties to help clear debris.

Schools closed Monday in Alexander County, while Surry, Ashe, Caldwell and Catawba County schools were on a two-hour delay.

Gov. Roy Cooper's office gave the following synopsis of known damages at this time:

 Caldwell County  Dozens of homes damaged, many are in the Grace Chapel area. A shelter is open at South Caldwell High School; nearly 1,700 power outages.

 Alexander County  Approximately 10 to 15 homes damaged; multiple roads blocked, power outages.

 Catawba Co.  severe damage at the Hickory Regional Airport; several roads blocked by downed trees; a few homes damaged; nearly 14,000 power outages.

 Cleveland County  post office roof damaged.

 Ashe County  minor flooding and trees down.

 Burke County  multiple buildings damaged in the Hildebran area; approximately 5,000 power outages throughout county.

 Henderson County  area flooding.

As our county emergency managers survey their communities, well have a better idea of the extent and types of damage these storms caused, state Emergency Manager Mike Sprayberry said in a news release.

Sprayberry said once emergency managers have a clearer picture of the nature of the damages, they will be able to determine what, if any, state or federal aid may be available to help individuals and communities recover from these latest storms.

Flooding led to swiftwater rescues in Boone, while Caldwell County officials confirmed that a mudslide occurred on N.C. 90 at Staircase Road, WBTV reported. Flooding also closed part of Broad Street in Statesville. Interstate 77 was partially flooded from north of Harris Boulevard to Davidson.

Damage in surrounding communities

Daily rainfall records were reported in Asheville and Charlotte in North Carolina, as well as the Greenville-Spartanburg area in South Carolina. Totals ranged from about 2 inches in Charlotte to more than 3.5 inches in Asheville. Streets were under water in Asheville and Boone, and firefighters rescued drivers from flooded roads in Pickens County in western South Carolina.

The worst problems appeared to be in Hickory and Spartanburg, South Carolina.

The weather service office in Greer, S.C., said Tuesday morning that one crew was working to confirm tornado damage in Spartanburg and Cherokee counties in South Carolina and Cleveland County in North Carolina, while a second crew was focusing on the rest of western North Carolina.

"You could hear it howl through downtown," Michael Parsons, whose Michael's Jewelers store in North Wilkesboro was damaged when a nearby roof blew off, told WXII News 12.

JoAnn Perez arrived home shortly after the storms passed to see her home pushed off its concrete slab, but her dogs and cat inside it were unharmed, in Shelby, North Carolina.

No deaths have been reported from the storms. Spartanburg Regional Hospital said it had treated eight people with minor injuries.

In South Carolina, an apparent tornado crunched buildings, flipped tractor trailers, downed trees and wrecked homes in the Spartanburg area. The Highway Patrol reported approximately 20 accidents in Spartanburg County, as well as traffic light malfunctions and trees down in roadways Monday afternoon.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON  Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., one of President Donald Trump's most vocal Republican critics on Capitol Hill, said Tuesday that the White House should step aside and let Congress decide the terms for tax reform, prompting Trump to insult him on Twitter.

"I would recommend that based on recent history and just interactions," Corker said on the Today Show, when asked if Trump should "leave well enough alone" on the tax debate. "I think that's the best way for us to have success."

The comment came ahead of Trump's visit to Capitol Hill Tuesday for his first visit as president to Republican senators' weekly policy luncheon.

Trump returned fire an hour later, escalating his recent feud with Corker via Twitter.

Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

...Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Trump's tweets mischaracterized the senator's Iran record and the back-and-forth surrounding Corker's decision to retire after 2018. Corker and his top aide have said Trump offered his support for the senator's re-election and that after Corker announced he would retire, Trump called asking him to reconsider and to run again.

Corker tweeted Tuesday:

Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff  Senator Bob Corker (@SenBobCorker) October 24, 2017

He added the hashtag #AlertTheDaycareStaff, repeating his earlier description of Trump's White House as an "adult daycare center."

Many Republicans had hoped that Trump's trip to Capitol Hill would spur progress on tax legislation, the GOP's top legislative priority after the failure of several health-care bills. But the president's and Corker's comments Tuesday highlighted some of the challenges that Republicans face, including tensions between the White House and lawmakers, that stand to get in the way of that effort.

While GOP aides and senators predicted Monday that Trump's visit would center mostly on the ongoing effort to rewrite the nation's tax laws, the broad array of topics on their mind, coupled with the president's penchant for suddenly veering from one subject to another, could open the door to an unpredictable afternoon.

The difficult relationship between Trump and Republican senators adds another layer of uncertainty. Trump has criticized Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sharply for not repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. Republican senators have also thrown some rhetorical elbows at the president.

"I want him to tell us to do our job," said Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., a Trump ally who, like the president, has openly voiced his frustration that a handful of Republican senators sank the repeal-and-replace effort. He anticipated the president would argue that the tax-reform push marked a chance for Republicans to prove they can govern, among other things.

When Trump addresses the luncheon the Republican senators attend each Tuesday afternoon in a room near the Senate chamber, "it's important for him to convey to us the things that he thinks are priorities, and not only with respect to the tax bill, but some of the other things that we are currently working on," said Sen. John Thune, S.D., the third-ranking Republican senator.

One of the other things Republicans are wrestling with is health care. Trump's decision to end federal subsidies to help offset lower-income Americans' coverage costs led a bipartisan coalition of senators to offer a compromise bill that would authorize those funds. In exchange, states would have broader leeway in regulating coverage under the ACA.

Trump, who phoned Democratic and Republican lawmakers this month to push them to make a deal, has sent mixed signals on the plan, seeming to support it before backing away.

White House officials are urging Senate Republicans to move the bill to the right, by including provisions offering retroactive relief from the ACA's insurance mandates for individuals and certain employers, according to people briefed on the talks.

"The White House has the ball right now," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tenn., the Republican senator who took the lead on negotiating the bipartisan package. "They've made some suggestions publicly about what they'd like to see in the bill. I'm for all of those things. The question is whether they can persuade Democratic senators to agree to that."

But Alexander, who said that an analysis of his plan by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could be released as early as Tuesday, wasn't expecting to hear Trump sketch out his latest thinking on the framework during lunch. In his view, that would be a good thing. "I'd like for the president to focus on tax reform," he said.

Others, however, were eager to hear Trump talk health care.

"I'd like to hear him reinforce the movement to get something done" on health care, said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., who supports the deal Alexander reached with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

Looming over the luncheon are the mutual hostilities between Trump and Republican senators. On Twitter and in remarks before television cameras, Trump has slammed McConnell and singled out other senators for attacks.

GOP senators have also landed their own blows.

McConnell, for instance, has said that Trump's limited experience in politics created "excessive expectations" for passing landmark legislation. Sen. Corker has warned that Trump's combative behavior has put the United States "on the path to World War III."

But lately, both sides appear to be determined to move past their differences and project more harmony. Trump and McConnell sat down for lunch at the White House last Monday and came out for a 40-minute joint news conference afterward. They tried to play down past signs of tension as they looked ahead to their next big legislative target: tax reform.

Republicans are trying to forge ahead in their effort to usher in a sweeping rewrite of the nation's tax laws by the end of the year. They took an initial step toward passing a tax bill last week, when the Senate passed a budget resolution allowing them to pursue the tax plan without needing any Democratic votes.

They didn't need any Democratic votes to undo the ACA. That effort still failed because of disagreements among Republican senators. Brewing disputes over tax policy threaten to disrupt if not defeat the tax endeavor in a similar way.

Passing a bill could rest on more unpredictable GOP senators, like Susan Collins of Maine, one of three Republicans who voted against the ACA repeal bill in July.

"I'm hoping to hear more about his plans on tax reform, with more detail in it," she said of Trump.
I am greatly concerned that an unstable person has the ability to order the use of nuclear weapons. The president has frequently demonstrated his incompetence, irrationality and emotional volatility.

The world is in grave danger.

The Department of Defense Nuclear Weapon Personnel Reliability Program (PRP) directive requires the selection and retention of only those personnel who are emotionally stable, physically capable, and who have demonstrated reliability and professional competence. Individuals who do not meet or maintain program standards shall not be selected for, or retained in, the PRP or assigned duties associated with nuclear weapons.

This directive applies to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Military Departments, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff, the Unified and Specified Combatant Commands, the Defense Agencies, and the (Department of Defense) Field Activities  among others.

A glaring omission from this important screening process is the man who has the sole authority to command a nuclear strike. Please take action to prevent Donald Trump from launching a horrendous attack. Put a restriction on his power until he is properly and thoroughly vetted in accordance with the PRP directive.

Kim Carlyle

Greensboro
For years, Greensboro has focused on attracting and maintaining young professionals, recognizing that their involvement and participation in the life of our city is critical for our future and for theirs. In this years election, we have the opportunity to elect a young professional, Dave Wils, to our City Council.

He has demonstrated his commitment to public service by profession and community service. As a member of the Human Relations Commission and as an educator, Dave has demonstrated his voice of reason, his understanding of the needs of our residents, his commitment to build a Greensboro better for all, always seeking consensus solutions that build upon the best ideas of all concerned. Greensboro residents are fortunate to have Dave as an at-large candidate, and his election will bring his intelligence and integrity to the work of the council and to the leadership of our city.
At the former site of Strada 18 at 122 Washington Street in South Norwalk, Il Posto opened on Friday, Oct. 20, with a menu focused on traditional northern Italian food.

The restaurant has posted a menu online at www.ilpostoct.com with no prices listed immediately; on a menu posted Monday morning at the restaurant, entrees ranged from a penne alla vodka for $16 to a seared Scottish salmon with garlic scampi sauce for $28.
GREENWICH  First Selectman Peter Tesei will deliver his State of the Town speech before a Greenwich Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Old Greenwich Friday.

While it is not billed as a political event, Teseis remarks will come this year at the height of political season, less than two weeks before Election Day. Democrats have requested equal time.

Tesei, a Republican, is seeking his sixth term in office and is being challenged by Democratic candidate Sandy Litvack. On Monday, Litvack said he had asked the Chamber of Commerce for the chance to speak as well but was denied.

I asked to be invited to give my vision for Greenwich, since Teseis vision is relevant for only two months unless he is re-elected and the attendees should hear my vision as well, Litvack said.

Greenwich Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Marcia OKane confirmed Litvacks request had been denied and said it was because he wanted to make it a debate, which is not the purpose of the event.

This is a tradition to allow the person who holds the office of first selectman to have the opportunity to provide an overview of the year and talk about what is to come for Greenwich, OKane said. It is for the person that holds the office. It is apolitical. It is not a debate.

The speech, which is a tradition that goes back 20 years, has only featured comments from the first selectman in the past. But given the proximity of the luncheon to Election Day, Litvack said it is important and only fair for town business leaders to hear his vision for and assessment of Greenwich as well.

Unfortunately (OKane) decided not to allow that, Litvack said. That is disappointing and troubling. Without regard to what the chamber has done in the past, this is now and we are at a critical juncture for Greenwich and I bring a set of skills that is different from past candidates and peculiarly pertinent for this audience. The decision not to have me speak was, in my view, a mistake.

Litvak, a newcomer to local politics, is a former assistant attorney general in the United States Department of Justice and vice chairman of the Walt Disney Company.

OKane said there was no need to change the two-decade-old format of the event. The event is usually held earlier in October, but was moved later in the month this year primarily due to scheduling logistics at the hotel, she said.

Tesei agreed with OKanes decision, saying his term runs through Nov. 30 and the speech is meant to be a non-partisan event for whomever is first selectman.

I dont see it as an issue, Tesei said. Its too bad that (Litvack) doesnt understand how this has been done for many years. To me, its indicative of his lack of involvement in the town.

Tesei said he will look ahead in his speech to challenges the town is facing.

We will talk about the challenges that are within the town of Greenwich and whats outside and how we will respond to them, he said. We will also look ahead to the future in areas like the development of the 2019 Plan of Conservation and Development and what that means for the town.

OKane said people are allowed to submit written questions for Tesei to answer after hes given his remarks and said members of the public are invited to purchase tickets and attend if they want to try to ask a question.

Tickets are still available for the luncheon and can be purchased for $70 per person and $650 for a table of 10. Advanced tickets are required; walk-ins will not be permitted. Tickets can be bought at www.greenwichchamber.com, by emailing greenwichchamber@greenwichchamber.com or calling 203-869-3500.

Tesei and Litvack debated last week at an event co-sponsored by the Greenwich League of Women Voters and the Round Hill Association. No other debate has been scheduled for the Board of Selectmen but the Litvack campaign announced last week it would hold its own forum on Oct. 30 at 8 p.m. at Town Hall. Members of the public are invited to attend and ask questions, Litvacks campaign said.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
GREENWICH  Although the Greenwich Representative Town Meeting is not ready to loosen the purse strings for New Lebanon School quite yet, a state budget agreement reached in the early hours of Tuesday morning could mean funding for the project is coming soon.

Connecticuts 116-day budget impasse finally ended at 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, when legislative leaders agreed they have a deal that can be voted on as early as Wednesday.

State Sen. L. Scott Frantz, R-36th, said Tuesday night that Greenwich legislators are fighting to keep New Lebanon funding in the two-year, $41 billion budget until it is signed and finalized.

Anything can happen between now and when both chambers vote on the newly proposed budget, but this delegation, especially (state) Representative (Mike) Bocchino, has done everything in its power to keep New Lebanon funding a part of the (budget) implementer package after numerous deletions by the majority party as late as 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, said Frantz. The implementer is voted on as part of the budget with one vote.

Greenwich is expecting $23 million from the state toward the New Lebanon construction.

The Bond Commission has already done its work (to allocate New Lebanon funding); Frantz said. It is now up the House, the Senate and the governor to approve.

New Lebanon Building Committee Chair Stephen Walko, a former state representative, said the budget agreement does seem like good news for getting funding soon, but the committee is sitting tight.

The New Lebanon Building Committee will continue to monitor the state process in the hopes that New Lebanon is part of the state budget and we can put a shovel in the ground, he said Tuesday.

The Greenwich RTM voted Monday night to postpone to November consideration of releasing town money for the project, citing a desire to wait and see if legislators would approve a budget.

New Lebanon PTA co-president and Building Committee member Clare Kilgallen said she went to bed after the late RTM meeting wondering how long it would be until a budget was ready.

Were thrilled that the budget is moving forward and we look forward to moving forward with the project, she said. I am very excited.

If a state budget is not approved prior to the date, the RTM will now hold a special meeting on Nov. 20 with the school project on the agenda. By a vote of 107 to 76 with one abstention the body voted to wait on asking the Board of Estimate and Taxation to release the total funding for the elementary school project.

The RTM had approved the projects overall $37.3 million price tag in its 2016-17 budget but it came with a condition from the BET that the state reimbursement funds had to be official before the town could spend the bulk of the construction money.

RTM members on Monday said they wanted to wait and see before authorizing the project to begin.

There are a lot of people who want this school to go through and I sympathize with you, RTM District 7 member John Dolan said. It is my fervent hope that the state comes through with the money. But there is a vast majority of RTM members who only voted to support this because they expected money to be coming from the state. What were asking for is a month, a near costless month, and you to cooperate with the members who came to this because of pledged support from the state. Time will solve this issue.

Mondays vote came over the objection of many in the audience, including Selectman Drew Marzullo, who spoke in favor of releasing the money. Marzullo said the new school would benefit all of Greenwich and a postponement would result in increased costs and a delay in the work being completed.

Solving this long standing racial imbalance problem will not be easy but with a brand new school, fabulous teachers, a brand new municipal pool in Byram and a vibrant commercial and residential village with some of the most expensive real estate in Byram along with affordable housing for people to raise their families, this new school is good for Greenwich, Marzullo said. No more delays.

Bob McKnight, chairman of RTM District 4, which includes New Lebanon School, also urged the body not to wait.

Send the children of Byram into their new school a year from this December, McKnight said. This project is embarrassingly overdue.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
Shutterstock.com

The U.S. Department of Justice has issued guidelines to limit the routine practice of ordering cloud computing companies to not tell customers that the government has a search warrant for their email and data. The policy change is a legal victory for Microsoft, which went to federal court to broadly challenge the use of secrecy orders the tech giant reasons were meant to be used rarely.

"This is an important step for both privacy and free expression," Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith wrote in a blog post Monday. "It is an unequivocal win for our customers, and were pleased the DOJ has taken these steps to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans."
Photo: Lou Stejskal/CC/flickr Chef Cosmo Goss, on the left, seen at One Off Hospitality Groups Nico Osteria.

One of Chicagos most successful restaurant groups has fired an executive chef for failing to take action after a personal photo of a female employee was circulated among staff without her knowledge. Cosmo Goss was the executive of One Off Hospitality Groups five acclaimed Publican restaurants, and Eater Chicago reports that ownership says he failed to notify HR or fire the offending employee after it was brought to his attention. The general manager of Publican Anker, Antonio Molino, was also terminated. The employee who shared the photo had been fired earlier this year for performance issues.

The incident happened in late 2016 when the photograph was shared with Goss, according to statements from both the chef and One Off. The company says that neither he nor Molina approached the issue seriously, while Goss claims that the photographed woman never approached him. The incident was then reported to human resources earlier this fall, prompting a three-week-long investigation. During that time, Goss was barred from the companys Wicker Park businesses.

Speaking with the Chicago Tribune, a spokesperson describes Goss as thinking it was a fleeting incident, and saying he only discussed it with other employees. Continuing, she tells the Tribune that the old mantra is that its just kitchen culture, that its just the way it is. It is actually counterproductive to perpetuate that. In response, One Off says it will examine its employee training and handbooks and that its our responsibility to address instances of inappropriate workplace conduct thoroughly and with zero tolerance.

Through his statement, Goss says the incident was not normal for the restaurant and that he did not rise to the occasion despite his position of power. Saying he now recognizes that the incident was wholly unprofessional and unacceptable, he further expressed regret over his inaction, and apologized to the woman whose privacy was violated. Its an undignified end at the company for Goss, who spent seven years working for the company and was named executive chef in 2016. He is also attributed as co-author of Cheers to the Publican, but has been removed from the promotional tour. He was on his way out, however, and has been planning his own restaurant with former Nico Osteria chef Erling Wu-Bower that One Off is a partner in. According to the spokesperson, the partnership and Gosss position are both being reviewed.




Haiti - FLASH : Online catalog of exportable Haitian products





The Center for Investment Facilitation (CFI) is currently developing an online catalog of exportable Haitian products, in collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Haiti (CCIH) and the support of the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) and of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).



This catalog of Haitian products exportable online should be launched in early November 2017.t will enable companies that produce a good to export and seek new local and global markets, to be presented on a platform that will promote their products internationally.



Since 19 October, an information and solicitation campaign for exporters has been launched through the media and social networks as well as through direct communication through networks of all professional associations, chambers of commerce and institutions concerned.



All companies with export capacity are invited to complete the form and register on the "Export Haiti" platform by copying this link into your browser : fr.surveymonkey.com/r/exporthaiti



This form collects technical and visual data and other product specifications for publication on the website. These data will appear in French, English and Spanish and can be selected by sector, category, product and exporter (company) and geographical area.



The database thus constituted will bring together the exportable supply of Haitian companies. The launch of the catalog will be followed by an international campaign to publicize this online digital showcase of Haitian export opportunities.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Diaspora : 211th of the death of Dessalines, message of the Consul of Chicago





Sunday, October 22 at the Church of Our Lady of Peace in Chicago, as part of the commemoration of the 211th anniversary of the death of Emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines (October 17) Lesly Conde, Consul General of Haiti, in front of a large number of members of the Haitian community of Chicago gathered in this sad circumstance delivered a message that we invite you to read.



Message from the Consul Lesly Conde :



"Dear brothers and sisters who are members of the Community,

Dear friends of Haiti,

Dear compatriots,

Friends of Haiti,

Fre m ka se m yo,



I'm happy to see you numberousnumerous enough to participate again this year in the house of the Lord, to commemorate an anniversary of the tragic death of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Father of the Haitian nation. As always, it is nice to see you again, and to convey warm greetings from the Consulate General of Haiti in Chicago. On behalf of the Haitian Community of Chicago, I must thank the Haitian Catholic Mission of the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Church of Our Lady of Peace, who are always present at the commemoration of important dates in our history, and ready to to accompany us in all circumstances.



This year, we commemorate the 211th anniversary of a tragic event that forever changed the course of the history of the First Black State of the New World, just two years after its birth. Even if we can not change the story, one can not refrain to think about what we would be today if the vision of Jean-Jacques Dessalines had triumphed. This question has been skilfully trivialized by our history books. It remains certain that, even in the face of the many pressures of his own comrades-in-arms, Dessalines remained welded to the unknown heroes of our independence. It may be said that after having defeated the French troops, the Father of our Nation was, in his turn, defeated by his own compatriots.



However, instead of lamenting the humiliating details of the assassination of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and instead of dwelling on what our nation could have been, we must celebrate the life of this great man, and draw imperishable lessons that are able to guide us, generation after generation. Jean-Jacques Dessalines is a powerful example of bravery, tenacity and clairvoyance. His attachment to the cause of human dignity makes him an admirable giant whose magnanimity transcends our borders. However, there are many who have sought and still seek to minimize its achievements and the importance of our country on a global scale. It is up to each of us to glorify Jean-Jacques Dessalines, to be proud of him, and to be guided by his example. His pragmatism will be particularly beneficial to us right now because our nation desperately needs the wisdom of all his sons.



In closing, I thank you all for coming. Thank the Church and the Catholic Mission for their solidarity and hospitality. Finally, let us ask the Lord to protect the country of Dessalines, and to give our brothers and our sisters all the wisdom they need in these moments of great delicacy.



Thank you for your attention."



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - DR : Towards a Border Resident Card to facilitate bilateral trade ?





Florinda Rojas, Director of the National Institute of Migration (INM) of the Dominican Republic encourages the Directorate General of Migration (DGM) to create a border resident card, which would facilitate the movement of people who depend on binational trade in areas border with Haiti.



"There are many people who depend on border trade," said Rojas recalling "there is also the informal trade, which is the one that generates a larger economic movement [...] particularly at the border crossing of Dajabon, where the movement of traders of both countries is almost permanent.



He recalled that border markets are the economic engine for more than 300,000 people according to the organizations of traders and carriers of the provinces bordering Haiti.



He explained that this card would avoid the need for a passport, a visa and the payment of taxes when leaving or entering any of the territories, adding that his services were already investigating to delimit the border area and the number of people reside within the perimeter established by the authorities, that this card could cover.



He also underlined the effort made by the institute he directs to help the integration of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic saying "It is undeniable that the most vulnerable part of the Haitian population must be supported by the Dominican Government so that it does not join the lines of extreme poverty.



He expressed satisfaction with relations with the new Government of Haiti, which he described as "very good" assuring that "Bilateral dialogue is developing and dialogue is the best way to find common ground to solve them together. In this sense, we have made good progress."



It remains to be seen whether this initiative will receive the support of elected representatives and know what will be the position of the Government of Haiti in the face of such a project... A world often separates a good idea from its commissioning...



SL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





President Moise announces...

Last weekend, President Jovenel Moise announced the opening of the Corail / Baraderes road project and also a Professional School for Corail.



Remobilization of the Armed Forces of Haiti

The former armed forces of Haiti could be officially re-mobilized on November 18, on the occasion of the 214th anniversary of the battle of Vertieres. Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant, who did not want to confirm this date, merely said that the time is coming. Moreover, he argued that the remobilization of the Armed Forces of Haiti (FAD'H) is an act of justice for our ancestors and our heroes of independence and will allow us to repatriate our national sovereignty.



934 arrests

The Departmental Direction West of the PNH presented at the beginning of the weekend, the results of its operations ended, among others, by 934 arrests, seizures of illegal weapons and ammunition.



Gary Bodeau met Judge Morin

"I met this Monday, the magistrate Jean Wilner Morin to help strengthen the justice of my country," confirmed yesterday the Deputy Gary Bodeau, as part of the investigation into the assassination of Alix Mary Junior Gassan in 2012 following the disappearance of Joseph Robert Marcello of the CNMP. The parliamentarian was accompanied by two of his colleagues and one of his lawyers denies any involvement in this case.



The issue of Haitian cinema in the country

The Minister of Culture and Communication, Mr. Limond Toussaint, met Monday, October 23, 2017, in his Cabinet, the actor emeritus, Smoye Noisy, on "the issue of Haitian cinema in the country."



Minister Beliard distributes 127 water pumps

The Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Carmel Andre Beliard, proceeded Friday, October 20, 2017 to the delivery of 127 water pumps to the farmers of Central Plateau, more precisely Hinche and Maissade.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Published on 2017/10/24 | Source

Added episode 4 captures for the Korean drama "The Package" (2017)

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Directed by Jeon Chang-geun, Park Joon-seo-I

Written by Cheon Seong-il

Network : jTBC

With Lee Yeon-hee, Jung Yong-hwa, Choi Wooshik, Ha Si-eun, Ryu Seung-soo, Park Yoo-na,...

12 episodes - Fri, Sat 23:00

Synopsis

Set against the backdrop of Paris, France, a local guide and eight tourists explore and have fun.

Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2017/10/13

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Published on 2017/10/24 | Source

Added episodes 45 and 46 captures for the Korean drama "Bad Thief, Good Thief" (2017)

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Directed by Jang Joon-ho, Oh Kyeong-hoon

Written by Cha I-yeong, Son Yeong-mok

Network : MBC

With Ji Hyun-woo, Seohyun, Kim Ji-hoon-I, Lim Ju-eun, Ahn Kil-kang, Jung Kyung-soon,...

50 episodes - Sat, Sun 22:00

Synopsis

A story of thieves who affect the authorities that manipulate Korea. It serves to bring satisfaction to those who are frustrated at the reality of the world.

Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2017/05/13

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Conviviality Group CFO Humphreys steps down

By Lisa Riley

Conviviality this morning announced its group chief financial officer Andrew Humphreys will step down from the board 30th October.

Humphreys, who has been with Conviviality for the past three years, would leave the company after a period of handover to his successor  Mark Moran, who takes on his new role 30th October.

Conviviality said it was hugely grateful for Humphreys contribution to the business, having played a key role in Convivialitys significant growth, including his pivotal roles in the Matthew Clark and Bibendum PLB acquisitions.

Andrew leaves with our utmost appreciation and thanks for the significant role he has played in the transformation of the company from its roots as the UK's leading off-licence brand and alcohol wholesaler to Franchisees, to the UK's leading independent wholesaler and distributor to the on-trade and off-trade, said chief executive officer, Diana Hunter.

Moran, whos latest role was as chief financial officer for private equity owned Priory Healthcare Group before its acquisition by Acadia Healthcare in 2016, brings more than 20 years of experience at chief financial officer level across a number of different businesses.

Other companies for which Moran has held the position of chief financial officer include Porvair Plc, SSL International and Premier Foods.

Welcoming Moran to his new position, Hunter said: Mark comes with a proven track record of financial stewardship and has been involved with many acquisitions and disposals, business restructurings and major refinancing and we look forward to Mark joining the team.
The Last Permafrost in Hawai'i

From Office of Mauna Kea Management, October 18, 2017

Hawai'i is known not only for its balmy weather and lush beaches, but also for its large variety of climate zones. In the coldest climate, on the tallest summits of Hawai'i, temperatures fall below freezing during winter nights. In 1969 an ingenious scientist, Alfred Woodcock (1905-2005), discovered areas inside cinder cones on Maunakea that are permanently frozen. At one place the ice was about 32 feet thick and 27 yard long, buried beneath about one foot of boulders.

This was the only permanent ice known in all of the Hawaiian Islands, and nearly half a century has passed since. Is it still there? Recently, a group of scientists and their students investigated the state and health of this unique permafrost, in a way that involves minimal disturbance to the environment. Because these ice-rich bodies lie buried beneath the surface, they are not easy to locate. After extensive temperature measurements and targeted geophysical surveys sponsored by the Office of Maunakea Management, the permafrost has been re-documented.

Some of the ice found by Woodcock inside Pu'uwekiu Crater is still there, but most of it has disappeared. Its north-south extent, once 27 yards, is now 12 yards; its thickness, once 32 feet, is now 12 feet. The ice has retreated all around. If the trend between 1973 and 2015 is extrapolated, the remainder may disappear within a few years.

Three people stand inside Pu'uwekiu Crater, marking the bottom and top end of a buried ice body documented in 1974. The shaded areas illustrate the extent then and now.

A much bigger body of ice was identified in a neighboring cinder cone crater, Pu'uhaukea, based on ground penetrating radar surveys and temperature sensors. This ice body is currently at least 50 yards wide and about 32 feet thick. No prior documentation is available to judge how much it has shrunk, but due to its larger volume, it will outlast the permafrost in Pu'uwekiu.

The surprise is not that the ice is melting, but that it was ever there to begin with. It is found only in two well-shaded locations, but many other equally shaded locations on Maunakea have no permafrost. The age of the ice is also unknown. It could date back to the last ice age, many thousands of years ago, or merely a few centuries.

Either way, the old ice of Maunakea will be a victim of climate warming. We are witnessing the disappearance of the last permafrost in Hawaii.

The results of the permafrost survey were recently published in the journal Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ppp.1954/abstract
Grassroot Institute of Hawaii FOIA request raises more questions about rail misrepresentations

President Keli'i Akina says FTA response reinforces need for forensic audit

News Release from Grassroot Institute

Oct. 24, HONOLULU  New revelations from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) have raised questions about whether City and County of Honolulu employees and elected officials misrepresented the federal government's position in order to persuade the Hawaii Legislature to approve a favored tax increase and funding plan for rail.

Obtained by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii via a Freedom of Information Act (FIOA) request, the FTA's clarification directly contradicts testimony given by Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell, and gives additional weight to calls for a forensic audit of Honolulu vastly over-budget and behind schedule rail project.

Speaking before the state Legislature on Aug. 14, Caldwell stated unequivocally that, "Funding must be adequate to fully fund the project all the way to Ala Moana Center." He added, "The FTA will allow nothing less."

Caldwell's claim was based on an August 2016 report by the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART), following a series of meetings between HART and FTA representatives, in which HART asked for an extension on the FTA's deadline for a rail recovery plan.

Following the August meetings, HART representatives reported that the FTA would not accept halting construction at Middle Street, and that anything other than continuing to Ala Moana would jeopardize the funding.

However, HART's next actions undermined the claim that the FTA had fully rejected any plan other than the Ala Moana one. According to the FTA, in October 2016, HART submitted an interim recovery plan that included a Plan B option that would stop short of Ala Moana Center. The revised recovery plan, submitted by HART on Sept. 15, 2017, did not include a "Plan B," so the federal agency did not consider it.

At no point did the FTA reject a Plan B option. The response from the FTA to the Grassroot Institute FOIA request, inquiring whether it had rejected a plan to end the rail at Middle Street or another location, makes it clear that the agency never made a determination one way or the other. According to FTA:

The October 2016 Interim Recovery Plan that HART submitted to FTA for the Honolulu Rail Transit Project proposed two options: Plan A for the completion of the entire 20-mile, 21-station project, as originally set forth in the 2012 Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA), and a financing plan that would cover all of HARTs cost overruns; and Plan B for a shorter project of independent utility and local termini at a downtown station to-be-determined that could be completed within the current financing envelope of approximately $6.8 billion. HART indicated that Plan A was their preferred option. FTA never made a determination as to whether a Plan B, which would have required additional environmental reviews and renegotiating the terms of the Full Funding Grant Agreement, would potentially be feasible or acceptable. HARTs revised recovery plan, submitted on September 15, 2017 no longer included a Plan B.

Keli'i Akina, Ph.D., president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawai, criticized rail advocates for misrepresenting the FTA's position:

The Legislature pushed through an unpopular tax based on faulty information, he said. It's clear that HART and other public officials skewed the truth about rail in order to advance their agenda. This is exactly why the public has lost trust in the project  and in the state leaders who are not pushing for greater honesty and transparency from HART.

Akina concluded: The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii has long advocated that a forensic audit of the rail project be conducted, with the goal of uncovering possible waste, fraud, or abuse. The fact that city officials would play games with the truth in order to get more funding is more evidence that this accounting is long overdue. I urge the governor and Legislature to act immediately and demand a thorough forensic audit of rail.

The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii is an independent, nonprofit research and educational institution devoted to promoting individual liberty, economic freedom and accountable government.

Its president, Dr. Akina, is a recognized scholar, public policy spokesperson and community leader in Hawaii. He is an expert in East-West philosophy and ethics, has taught at universities in China and the United States, and continues as an adjunct instructor at Hawaii Pacific University. In 2016, he was elected trustee-at-large for the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs.
Coast Guard suspends search for missing persons after oil barge explosion off Texas

The US Coast Guard said on October 22 it had suspended its search for two crew members who vanished two days earlier after a barge exploded and began leaking oil off Port Aransas, near Corpus Christi. The pair disappeared after the forward section of the barge caught fire and exploded about three miles off the coast in the early hours of the morning.

Oil barge on fire off Port Aransas - Image USCG

There were eight people on board the barge when it exploded en route to a refinery with 133,000 barrels of crude. The Coast Guard took six crew off the stricken vessel and carried out a comprehensive search for the missing men for two full days, but called off the hunt early on October 22. It said several oil discharge recovery vessels and other Coast Guard vessels still in the vicinity would continue to keep a watch for the missing crew members.

The explosion caused an oil spill. Overhead images showed a black substance leaking from a hole in the bows and the Coast Guard said there was an oil spill 2 miles by a quarter mile wide.

Containment booms have been positioned to protect environmentally sensitive areas, but there are reports that oil has begun washing up on Mustang Island beaches.



The barge and tug are owned by Bouchard Transportation, which declined requests for comment from local media.


(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged mining company Rio Tinto and two former top executives with fraud for inflating the value of coal assets acquired for $3.7 billion and sold a few years later for $50 million.

The SECs complaint, which was filed in federal court in Manhattan, alleges that Rio Tinto, its former CEO Thomas Albanese, and its former CFO Guy Elliott failed to follow accounting standards and company policies to accurately value and record its assets. Instead, as the project began to suffer one setback after another resulting in the rapid decline of the value of the coal assets, they sought to hide or delay disclosure of the nature and extent of the adverse developments from Rio Tintos Board of Directors, Audit Committee, independent auditors, and investors.

As alleged in our complaint, Rio Tintos top executives allegedly breached their disclosure obligations and corporate duties by hiding from their board, auditor, and investors the crucial fact that a multi-billion dollar transaction was a failure, said Stephanie Avakian, Co-Director of the SECs Enforcement Division.

Rio Tinto and its top executives allegedly failed to come clean about an unsuccessful deal that was made under their watch. They tried to save their own careers at the expense of investors by hiding the truth, said Steven Peikin, Co-Director of the SECs Enforcement Division.

Based on the complaints allegations, Rio Tinto plc, Rio Tinto Limited, Albanese, and Elliott are charged with violating the antifraud, reporting, books and records and internal controls provisions of the federal securities laws. The SEC seeks permanent injunctions, return of allegedly ill-gotten gains plus interest, and civil penalties from all the defendants, and seeks to bar Albanese and Elliott from serving as public company officers or directors.

According to the SECs complaint, in 2011, Rio Tinto acquired coal assets in Mozambique shortly after disclosing huge losses associated with its previous large-scale acquisition of Alcan. Both acquisitions took place under Albaneses leadership. The second acquisition was also unsuccessful as it was based on the incorrect assumption that Rio Tinto could inexpensively mine, transport, and sell large quantities of high-quality coal, chiefly using barges for shipping. The SECs complaint alleges that the project suffered setbacks almost immediately, as Rio Tinto, Albanese, and Elliott learned that there was less coal and of lower quality than expected, and that Mozambique had rejected its barge application. The complaint alleges that the drop in quantity and quality of coal, coupled with the lack of infrastructure to transport it, significantly eroded the value of the acquisition.

The complaint alleges that after already impairing Alcan twice, Rio Tinto, Albanese, and Elliott knew that publicly disclosing its second failure and rapidly declining value would call into question their ability to pursue the core of Rio Tintos business model to identify and develop long-term, low-cost, and highly-profitable mining assets. Instead, they concealed the adverse developments, allowing Rio Tinto to release misleading financial statements days before a series of U.S. debt offerings. Rio Tinto raised $5.5 billion from U.S. investors, approximately $3 billion of which was raised after May 2012, when executives at Rio Tinto Coal Mozambique had already told Albanese and Elliott that the subsidiary was likely worth negative $680 million. The complaint alleges Albanese then repeated and reinforced the false positive outlook for the project in public statements.

The alleged fraud continued until January 2013, when an executive in Rio Tintos Technology & Innovation Group discovered that the coal assets were being carried at an inflated value on Rio Tintos financial statements. After an internal review allegedly triggered by the executives report to Rio Tintos Chairman, Rio Tinto announced that Albanese had resigned and the company reduced the value of the coal assets by more than $3 billion, or more than 80 percent. After a second reduction, Rio Tinto sold the Mozambique subsidiary for $50 million, billions of dollars below the acquisition price.
A CAMPAIGN has been launched in Henley to reduce plastic pollution.

Refill is part of a national initiative designed to make refilling water bottles as easy, convenient and cheap as possible by introducing refill points on every street.

It is being introduced in Henley by town councillor Sarah Miller and resident Julia Carey.

The pair will contact hotels, restaurants and other businesses to ask them if they would be willing to offer visitors free tap water to refill their bottles rather than buying new ones.

Businesses that agree will display a window sticker stating Free tap water available here and will be included in the Refill app, which has a map of participating businesses across the country.

The Eden Cafe at the d:two centre in Upper Market Place is already on board.

Mrs Carey, a jewellery designer, said that although water bottles could be recycled, their tops could not be and these were harmful to wildlife or ended up in landfill.

Id really like people to buy a reusable bottle and use that instead of buying a plastic bottle of water every day, she said. By having these stickers in windows it might just remind people and help educate.

Earlier this year, she organised a screening of Bag It: Is Your Life Too Plastic?, an American documentary film about the effect of plastic bags and packaging on the ecosystem and marine wildlife, at the town hall.

Mrs Carey said: Im passionate about the environment and the film made me think that plastic is the thing I really want to focus in on.

Councillor Miller said: Julia approached me and had done all the research. She said, Id really like to get the council on board.

Refill is all about trying to reduce plastic pollution  the UK gets through 800 bottles a minute  and theres a lot of it in Henley.

We should be doing as much as we can to reduce it and were trying to spread the word and the town centre is where well start. Its all about us doing our bit.

Refill began in Bristol and has been taken up in Cornwall, Dorset, Devon and Bath with other places expected to follow. Speaking at a meeting of the town councils town and community committee, Cllr Miller said: What I would like the council to do is just endorse this so that when we go around asking the businesses in Henley we can say, the council is supportive. Theres no cost involved to the council.

Councillor Will Hamilton pointed out that the council didnt refill its own plastic water bottles which it provides for members and the press at meetings.

He said: We should practise what we preach. We use these bottles and dont refill them. I know the chairman of this committee fought very hard to keep bottled water on the table during meetings.

He said the council should use jugs of water.

Committee chairwoman Lorraine Hillier responded: There was an issue with town hall and the lead piping. The water tasted awful and thats why we use bottles.

Councillor Julian Brookes said: These bottles, if you just keep refilling without washing them, you get bacteria and apparently its one of the main sources of sickness in primary school kids. If we do it we need to get some advice from our GPs or the hospital but, of course, I support the initiative.

Councillor Sam Evans said: If were going to support it, lets support it and explore two or three venues for water fountains.

Businesses that the Henley Standard spoke to welcomed the initiative.

Neil Ainsworth, landlord of the Argyll pub in Market Place, said: In principle its a very positive idea and we would be happy to support the campaign.

The problem of plastics and pollution is something that we all need to consider for now and the future.

Andrea Grecu, manager of Loch Fyne, also in Market Place, said: I would personally says yes but would have to check with my general manager.

Vivienne Lee, who runs the Chocolate Cafe in Thames Side, said: We give free tap water to people all the time. Weve been doing it for years.

People use my toilets for free without buying anything and they can have water bottles filled up.

We have cyclists in on Saturday and Sundays and on weekdays as well as walkers. 

The committee agreed to support the initiative and investigate further.

If you would like to know more about Refill or are interested in signing up, email Cllr Miller at cllr.sarah.miller@gmail.com
TWO cars collided in the centre of Henley causing delays for motorists on Saturday.

The incident, involving a silver Citroen Saxo and a grey BMW, happened at about 1pm at the junction of Greys Road, Reading Road, Duke Street and Friday Street.

The Saxo was partially blocking the road after suffering a punctured front left tyre and a buckled wheel.

Police officers were on the scene and members of the public unsuccessfully tried to push the car out of the road although traffic was still able to pass.

James OFiera, 28, of Benares Road, Plumstead, Greenwich, has been charged with driving a motor vehicle dangerously, failing to provide a specimen for analysis and breach of bail conditions.

He appeared at Oxford Magistrates Court yesterday (Monday).

Mr OFiera was remanded in custody and will next appear at the court on Friday.
Mohamed Okda has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for rape and sexual assault

A man found guilty of raping a woman he met after offering to help her when she became lost on a night out in Dublin has been jailed for 10 years.

Mohamed Okda (31), formerly of Coolfin, Rathdowney, Co Laois, had pleaded not guilty to two counts of raping the woman and one count of sexual assault at a flat in Dublin city centre, on February 9, 2014.

Last July, a jury took just under three hours to return unanimous guilty verdicts on all counts after a seven-day trial at the Central Criminal Court.

Egyptian national Okda, who had been staying at a friend's house in the city on the night in question, rejects the jury's verdict. He has 16 previous convictions for minor offences.

Yesterday, Mr Justice Michael Moriarty imposed an 11-year sentence on each of the rape counts, and five years for the sexual assault charge.

He directed the jail terms to run concurrently and suspended the final year, acknowledging that prison is more difficult for foreign nationals and that Okda has claimed he was threatened while in custody.

Broken

In her victim impact statement, the married mother described how she suffers from panic attacks and depression. She told the court the attack has left her a "broken person".

Mr Justice Moriarty noted the woman's continuing "arduous" experience as she tries to piece her life back together, with support from family and friends.

Referring to a psychologist's report, he rejected Okda's claims that the woman had been "happily engaging in conversation" before assuming a distressed posture during court proceedings.

The judge said from his observations the case had been "particularly distressing" for her. He also acknowledged her courage in giving a "poignant" impact report.

In her evidence, the woman said that she lived outside Dublin and was visiting the city with two female friends for a night out.

At the end of the night she was drunk and tired, she said.

She lost her friends and became upset because they weren't responding to texts or phone calls. Okda approached her and offered to help her find her friends, she said.

He suggested she come back to the flat where she could continue to try to contact her friends on her phone. She said once back in the flat he raped her.

She said she feared for her life during the attack and begged Okda not to kill her. After it ended she ran out of the flat and waved down a passing taxi driver, who saw she was in distress and took her to gardai.

Ciaran O'Loughlin, defending, said that his client was living in Laois but had moved to Dublin for work. He went home most weekends, but not the weekend of the offence.

He said his client wanted to better himself and had enrolled in an English course. The prosecution told the court that Okda had only attended at the course for three half-days.

At an earlier sentence hearing, Mr O'Loughlin said that his client's position was that there were two people in the flat where he was staying when he came back with the woman.

Counsel said these men were not interviewed by gardai and that this was of considerable concern to his client. He said his client does not accept the guilty verdict.

Trauma

The judge backdated the sentence to begin when Okda entered custody in July this year.

In her victim impact statement, the woman said she was lucky to have a supportive husband and that they were working to repair their relationship in the wake of what happened.

"My husband has to deal with the trauma of what happened to his wife," she said.

"I often feel like I can't go on. For the sake of my husband and kids I get up every day and do my best to get on with life.

"I didn't walk away unharmed. I was once a happy person who loved to talk to people... not a day goes by without feeling the weight of that night and what was done to me and what can never be undone."

Okda had 16 previous convictions in Ireland dating back to 2006, none of which are for a sexual offence. They mostly involve driving offences, public order offences and theft.
A Kilkenny man has been committed to the Central Mental Hospital (CMH) after being found not guilty by reason of insanity of attempting to murder his pregnant sister so she wouldn't raise her child in Dublin.

A Central Criminal Court judge made the order yesterday morning, two weeks after a jury returned the special verdict following the trial of Daniel O'Connell (33).

Mr Justice Paul Butler had remanded him to the hospital for the required 14 days under the Insanity Act.

James Dwyer, for the State, informed the judge that consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Anthony Kearns had prepared the required report during that time.

"There's evidence before the court, which would warrant such an order being made," he said.

He was referring to an order committing Mr O'Connell to the CMH, where he would receive the inpatient care or treatment needed for the mental disorder from which he suffered.

The judge said that he had thoroughly read the report and noted that there was a bed available in the hospital.

"The evidence is only one way in this matter. In those circumstances, I make the order," he said.

Homicidal

Mr O'Connell, who had been brought to court by staff from the CMH, was then accompanied from court by his family and returned to the hospital by the CMH staff.

The trial heard that Mr O'Connell, who is autistic, had first developed homicidal feelings for his sister when she had settled in Dublin years earlier.

He had developed what the prosecution described as "an unnatural and almost pathological dislike of Dublin and Dublin people" as a child, when teased by a group of youths from the capital during a school trip to Mosney.

He became more upset when he learned of her pregnancy a few months before he attacked her. However, he had hoped that she might die of natural causes when he heard that she had been diagnosed with cancer around the same time.

This didn't happen and Mr O'Connell admitted during interviews with gardai that he had tried to kill Olivia O'Connell (42) by stabbing her a number of times in her Dublin home.

However, Mr O'Connell, of Rosemount, Newpark, Co Kilkenny, had pleaded not guilty to her attempted murder on April 25, 2016, at Scholarstown Park, Knocklyon.

Consultant psychiatrists for both the prosecution and the defence testified that he was entitled to a special verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.

Mr Justice Butler said that it must have been an absolutely horrendous experience for the victim.

However, he summarised the medical conclusions for the jury, saying he did not think that it would have difficulty in reaching a unanimous verdict.

The jury returned with that unanimous verdict following two hours and six minutes of deliberations.
Grzegorzewska had a month-old baby at time of the crash

A new mother who crashed into the rear of a car fled the scene because she felt "vulnerable" after the victim became irate with her.

Angellika Grzegorzewska (22) was driving to the shops to buy baby formula. She was identified after the victim took a picture of her and her car.

Judge Dermot Dempsey adjourned sentencing for one week to allow Grzegorzewska to pay compensation for the damage she caused.

The defendant, of Martello Rise in Balbriggan, admitted before Swords District Court to driving without insurance as well as a number of hit-and-run offences.

The incident took place at Castlemill Link Road in Balbriggan on March 29.

A court sergeant said gardai were called to the scene of a road traffic accident at about 5.30pm.

The sergeant said Grzegorzewska had crashed into the rear driver's side of a brand new 171-registered vehicle.

Trouble

The court heard that the defendant got out and spoke to the victim, who took a picture of her and her car, but she left the scene when she heard gardai had been contacted.

The court heard the defendant has never been in trouble before.

Defence solicitor Morgan Redmond said Grzegorzewska had her first child a month before this incident and she was on her way to the shops to buy food for the baby when the collision occurred.

Mr Redmond said Grzegorzewska left the scene because the victim became irate with her, and she was feeling vulnerable after the birth of her child.

The court heard Grzegorzewska, who is now pregnant with her second child, had also "panicked" because she knew she was uninsured.

Mr Redmond said the damage to the other car was minor.

Judge Dempsey adjourned sentencing for payment of compensation, saying Grzegorzewska caused damage to a brand new vehicle before driving off.
A Dublin Fire Brigade briefing was held recently on how to enjoy the Halloween celebrations safely

More than 700 products associated with Halloween have been seized at Dublin Port and destroyed by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC).

It said the products did not meet EU safety standards and were not safe for Irish consumers.

The majority of the products seized were children's accessory props.

Among them were "ninja weapon" play sets, "weapon fights" sets and "pirates adventure" sets.

As part of an operation supported by Revenue and Customs, two consignments containing Halloween products were seized and analysed.

"The CCPC determined that the products did not meet the required safety standards set out in Irish and European legislation," a statement said.

Standards

"Following this determination, the CCPC ordered the destruction of the products."

Aine Carroll, of the CCPC, explained that the organisation's aim was to ensure goods on the Irish market do not present a safety risk.

"These items did not meet required safety standards, and so we took the necessary steps to ensure that consumers were not put at risk," she said.

Ms Carroll pointed out that products which have been certified safe carry the mark 'CE'.

"Particularly at this time of the year when children are dressing up for Halloween, it is important that parents remember to check costumes and toys for a CE mark as these labels show that the manufacturer has complied with national and international standards," she said.

"Parents should also follow any safety warnings attached to garments such as, 'Warning Keep Away From Fire'."

Consumers who have seen a product they believe is unsafe can contact the commission at ccpc.ie.

"We remind manufacturers, importers and distributors that they have a duty to ensure that the toys they wish to sell, including costumes and props, comply with product safety standards," Ms Carroll said.

"Failure to do so may not only result in financial loss to the trader but, more importantly, their products may cause physical harm, particularly to children."

Ms Carroll also pointed out that the CCPC works closely with Customs in conducting extensive market surveillance to check compliance.
The coffin of Sean Hughes is carried into the chapel at Islington and Camden Cemetery in London. Photo: PA

Celebrities from the world of comedy yesterday turned out to pay their respects at Sean Hughes's funeral.

Famous faces, including Bob Mortimer, Johnny Vegas, David Baddiel and Jack Dee, joined the Irish comic's friends and family members to say their final farewells.

Mourners spilled out of Islington Crematorium in north London as his loved ones gathered for the service.

The funeral took place a week after Hughes died, aged 51, in north London's Whittington Hospital, where he was also born.

Humorous

According to reports, Hughes's death was caused by liver cirrhosis - a condition caused by long-term liver damage.

He died just over a week after he posted his final tweet on October 8, in which he told his followers he was in hospital.

Celebrities from the comedy circuit, including Richard Herring, Stewart Lee, Omid Djalili and Arthur Smith attended his funeral.

Also present was Phill Jupitus, who starred alongside Hughes for many years on Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

The service featured emotional and sometimes humorous eulogies from friends and family members, including Hughes's two brothers, Alan and Martin.

Mourners also heard some of Hughes's own poetry as well as pieces of his favourite music, including numbers from The Smiths and Lily Allen.

Following the service, mourners were invited to sign a book of condolences before the wake at a nearby pub.

In 1990, Hughes was 24 when he became the youngest winner of the main prize at the Perrier Comedy Awards, now known as the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, for his stand-up show A One Night Stand With Sean Hughes.

He also appeared in TV programmes including Coronation Street and The Last Detective, and in Alan Parker's film The Commitments in 1991.

He returned to Edinburgh in 2007 after a seven-year break with his show The Right Side Of Wrong. In 2015, Hughes joined the cast of the Olivier Award-winning production of The Railway Children.

Hughes was also a writer and had penned two collections of prose and poetry, including Sean's Book.

He wrote best-selling novels The Detainees and It's What He Would Have Wanted.
BRISTOL, Va.  Jim Bourey brings some 40 years of management and development experience to a new advisory role with the city.

Bourey was contracted last month to assist with city economic development efforts, including greater cooperation with Washington County, Virginia, and  potentially  other area entities. He is employed as the director of management services for McGill Associates in Newport News, a post hes held since June.

What we want him to do is come in and look at everything were doing  from the client base weve been trying to recruit historically to our process and how were doing it  and work with entities around us like Washington County to get a better, consolidated approach to what were doing, Mayor Kevin Mumpower said Monday.

A New Hampshire native, Bourey most recently served more than six years as city manager of Newport News. Prior to that, he was city manager of Greenville, South Carolina, managed county governments in Florida and Minnesota and also held department head spots in larger cities, including Phoenix and Seattle.

He holds masters degrees in architecture and urban design from Washington University in St. Louis and a bachelors in environmental design from North Carolina State University.

When you look at his background and the expertise hes got and some of the projects hes done, we just want to make sure we utilize that experience and dont overlook anything when were doing our own economic development, Mumpower said.

His contract calls for the city to pay McGill Associates $150 per hour for a maximum of 600 hours work per year, according to City Manager Randy Eads.

Bourey expects to wear many hats.

They hired me to help recruit [businesses], to help identify an economic development strategy and work with regional parties to make this a regional effort; as well to do the underpinnings of economic development. That is not only developing the strategy but helping implement that strategy and infrastructure pieces, Bourey said.

One of Boureys roles will include working with the new GO Virginia economic development initiative, established to help grow and diversify the states economy by offering state financial incentives for capital investment, research and to leverage other resources, technical support and assistance.

In August, the City Council and Washington Countys Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed to cooperate on economic development efforts, especially those pertaining to GO Virginia.

Its one of their [GO Virginia] key tenants to have strategic partnerships so it will be important  if we go after any projects or support funding from that entity  its going to need to have a pretty strong partnership. Hell work between the city and Washington County to make sure we put the project definition and everything makes sense, the mayor said.

Bourey has spoken with officials from other local governments and began presenting some aspects of a development strategy earlier this month during a meeting of the city Industrial Development Authority.

The mayor believes the city has employed a flawed development strategy.

My philosophy is you have to bring in the industrial base first, grow that core business and the other stuff follows. Weve kind of done it backwards, Mumpower said. Hopefully we can get some of these intermediate-sized industrial companies coming here and we can build on it, support what retail we have and grow from there. Its a process. Youve got to have the right strategy, keep focused on it and keep working the problem. I think were doing those things.
BRISTOL, Va.  James Bourey, the citys new economic development consultant, left behind a controversy in Newport News that was scrutinized by three state agencies.

Bourey is director of management services for McGill Associates, a Newport News architectural, engineering and consulting firm, who Bristol, Virginia, leaders recently retained to work with the City Council, Industrial Development Authority and staff to shore up business recruitment efforts.

Until March he served as city manager of Newport News and as a member and former chairman of the Peninsula Airport Commission, which oversees the Newport-News-Williamsburg International Airport. He resigned both positions in March amid upheaval over the commissions use of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to pay off a bank loan to a failed private air carrier.

In his resignation letter from the airport board, Bourey wrote all the commissions actions that I supported were justified but he was leaving to allow for a fresh start. At that same time, the airport commission fired its longtime attorney and placed its then-executive director on administrative leave. Bourey resigned his post as Newport News city manager the following week.

The deal prompted audits by the Virginia Department of Transportation, Office of the State Inspector General and an investigation by the Virginia State Police, which is still ongoing.

The airport commission voted in 2014 to use Commonwealth Airport Entitlement funds  earmarked for airport improvements  as collateral to guarantee the line of credit to private startup People Express Airlines, according to a June 2017 audit by the Virginia Department of Transportations assurance and compliance office.

Towne Bank only completed a $5 million loan to People Express Airlines in June 2014 after the airport commission guaranteed the loan, according to the audit. People Express launched service from Newport News to Boston, Newark and Pittsburgh on June 30, 2014, but service was subsequently suspended in September 2014 when the airlines entire three-plane fleet was unable to fly.

Service was never restored and the carrier was subsequently evicted from the airport, according to the audit.

The airline went out of business and the bank issued a notice of default in January 2015. The commission then used $3.5 million of state airport entitlement funds plus about $1 million in other monies to meet the obligation.

The VDOT audit recommends 13 changes including establishment of internal controls, a review of existing policies and procedures on public disclosure and conflict of interest

A similar audit by Virginias Office of the State Inspector General found internal controls need strengthening in several areas related to oversight of the airport funding programs and recommended 19 specific improvements.

Bourey took issue with some findings in the VDOT audit.

I acted on a recommendation that came from the [former airport commission] executive director with an opinion from the [airport commissions former] attorney that it [loan guarantee] was acceptable, Bourey said. What the law actually said was that certain expenditures were ineligible. That didnt mean you cant use the money in other ways  they were just termed ineligible.

Virginia Department of Aviation guidelines list five types of entitlement fund projects outside normal project expenditures and the list includes aviation promotion projects and air service development projects.

Certain projects have been determined to be outside of normal project expenditures. If the sponsor of an air carrier airport uses state entitlement funds for such a project, the states share of the project cost will be counted against new requests for state discretionary funding. DOAV will maintain an accounting of project activity outside of normal project expenditures, according to the law.

Bourey maintains the airport administration reported all aspects of the transaction to the state and a state official responded those expenditures would count against future discretionary requests.

It is quite clear from this reading of the policy that the use of this funding was not prohibited or unauthorized. It is also clear that this is a very poorly structured policy, Bourey said. Because it was not clear and because the funds were not restricted from being used from that purpose, they [legislature] changed the law.

Bourey said neither he nor the other members of the airport board did anything improper. However the former executive director was fired in May for reasons unrelated to the loan issue, according to the termination letter issued by the airport commission.

I was very upset the [former] executive director had certain [travel] expenditures that were not appropriate. That was not anything the commission knew about, Bourey said.

State police officials havent said specifically what they are investigating about the airport but recently confirmed that probe remains ongoing.

Bristol Virginia Mayor Kevin Mumpower said Monday that Bourey explained the issue during their initial discussions, before he was contracted.

He brought it up to us and explained what transpired over there. We asked more detailed questions and then I looked online and read about it, Mumpower said. It seems the way it unfolded it wasnt anything negative on him personally, it was the entire commission, how the attorneys recommended what they recommended. I didnt see anything illegal or unethical, although he was there when it all happened. Sometimes things happen when youre in the public arena and all you can do is ride the storm out.

Mumpower said city leaders intend to rely on Boureys extensive experience in shaping its future economic development strategy.

Hes in an advisory role so we still have full control, the mayor said.
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Dsiruption is being caused across Greater Anglia's services this evening (24 October) following an assault on a member of staff.

According to Greater Anglia, the assault, which was committed by more than one passenger, occurred at Bishop's Stortford Station some time before 8:30pm.

The train operator previously reported that the 19:15 service from Cambridge North to London Liverpool Street would be terminated at Bishop's Stortford due to "disruptive passengers".

Lines through the station were blocked briefly while the situation was resolved.

Delays and alterations are expected until 10pm.

British Transport Police are aware of the incident but are unable to provide further information at present.

We'll be bringing you the very latest updates, pictures and video on this breaking news story.
HICKORY  Lenoir-Rhyne University will host an information session on Tuesday, Nov. 7, for high school students and parents interested in the RIBN nursing program. The session will take place on campus from 6 to 7:30 p.m. in McCrorie, room 213.

RIBN, which stands for Regionally Increasing Baccalaureate Nurses, is a four-year nursing option that dually admits and enrolls students to both LRU and partner community colleges. Community colleges in partnership with LRU include Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute, Catawba Valley Community College, Gaston College, Mitchell Community College, Western Piedmont Community College, and Wilkes Community College.

RIBN is designed to help meet the demand for more bachelor degree holding nurses in North Carolina. Students in this program earn both an Associate Degree in Nursing and Bachelor of Science in Nursing in four years. The first three years of study are completed at the community college campus along with one course per semester at LRU. Upon successful completion of the first three years, students complete their fourth year at LRU.

Of the three cohorts that have graduated through LRUs RIBN program, 100 percent of these students have passed the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) in their first two attempts.

Registration is encouraged, but not required. To register, contact LRUs RIBN Student Success Advocate, Jordan Thomas, at jordan.thomas@lr.edu or 828-328-7213. For more information, visit lr.edu/RIBN.
A lot of times when we think of heroes, we think of soldiers, police officers, fire fighters, or others who face danger and find the courage to overcome it.

But a conversation last week got me thinking about some local heroes; people who both reflect the goodness of our community and have helped shaped it.

At my Rotary Club meeting last Tuesday, I was talking with Angela Chapman, our club president, and Lindsay Keisler, the Chamber of Commerce president wholl be joining our club this week.

We reflected on the fact that here were two young women in community leadership positions. Thats unremarkable today, but it hasnt been long ago that that would have been unheard of. Many service clubs in the past were for men only, and we men guarded that rule aggressively.

But years ago, that indefensible tradition in Hickory ran aground when word leaked out that Kathy Greathouse had been declined for membership in the Rotary Club. The reason? She was, gasp, a woman.

The story made newspaper headlines in Hickory and Charlotte. Kathy is a respected community leader, the executive director of the United Arts Council, and I cant imagine she has an enemy in the world.

The way she handled what could have been a humiliating situation, with such courage, kindness, and forgiveness, inspired Rotary to change its thinking. Of course, today, whether its Rotary (of which Kathy is now a member), Kiwanis, Jaycees, you name it; all are richer for having women, as well as men, as members.

Just know, if you are a woman in Hickory today, in a position that was traditionally held by a man, Kathy helped pave the way. Kathy Greathouse is a hero.

The name of Charles Snipes is inscribed on a building named in his honor on the campus of Lenoir-Rhyne University, but his name is more deeply engraved on the hearts of the men and women he inspired in his banking career.

Numbers of my business clients have shared stories about how Mr. Snipes didnt just loan money to their businesses, but his faith in them and encouragement helped them overcome their own fears and doubts.

People like L.F. Miller, who founded Catawba Print and Mail, or Mike Nolte of Utility Solutions, get emotional when they describe how Charles helped give them courage when their businesses faced seemingly impossible challenges.

There is no way to count the number of businesses and jobs that have been created in Hickory due to the work and optimism of Mr. Snipes. Charles Snipes is a hero.

Last Wednesday was Reverend Reggie Longcrier Day in the City of Hickory. Nothing can attest more to your accomplishments and respect than to have a city name a day in your honor.

From a troubled past, the Rev. Longcrier went on to found Exodus Ministries that has, as the proclamation honoring him said, saved the lives of thousands. Thats not an exaggeration. He has helped lead our community to embrace men and women who, after leaving prison, would have been cast off from society. Reggie Longcrier is a man of guts and faith. Reggie Longcrier is a hero.

So when you wonder why Hickory is such a good place, an embracing city, a city of kindness and optimism, its because of people like Kathy and Charles and Reggie. Just look around. There are heroes everywhere.

Jeff Cline is the City of Hickory mayor.
HICKORY  Severe weather rampaged through western Hickory and Long View on Monday afternoon, leaving at least 15 houses in the area damaged due to fallen trees, Hickory Fire Department Education Coordinator Terri Byers said.

The worst of the storm occurred at approximately 4:35 p.m. and resulted in emergency management personnel racing within the damaged area to rope off damaged structures and clear blocked roadways of fallen trees.

There were about 40,000 outages in Catawba, Caldwell, Burke and Alexander counties, including just under 30,000 in Catawba County alone, Robin Nicholson, the government and community relations manager for Duke Power, said in a phone interview Monday evening.

Nicholson said the company was dealing with transmission outages in addition to distribution problems.

Theres a lot of broke poles, and right now, were still assessing to see what all the damage is, Nicholson said.

In Long View Mobile Home Park on 22nd Street NW and Main Avenue NW, multiple large trees were broken off, causing one occupied mobile home to be severely damaged.

The first tree fell, said Cathie Mathis, a mobile home park resident, referencing a tree next to her home, and then the next one fell with a bang.

Mathis said the tree that fell on top of the mobile home across from her was the last to fall within the area littered with uprooted trees.

At the intersection of Fourth Avenue SW and 22nd Street SW, a tree fell directly on a house, breaking through the roofing and into the home.

A large tree covered in Halloween decorations on Fourth Avenue NW toppled over, blocking the entire road and spilling over into a neighbors yard.

The property of the uprooted tree at the corner of Fourth Avenue NW and Sixth Street NW appeared unscathed, including spider web decorations covering the home.

It is still unknown if anyone was injured as a result of the severe weather.

The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch that remained in effect until 9 p.m. Monday for Alexander, Burke, Catawba, Caldwell, Lincoln and Iredell counties.

The severe weather band, which stretched past the South Carolina and Virginia borders, was about 85 miles in length and traveled west to east through the Hickory area at about 4:30 p.m.

The Hickory Daily Record will update readers as more information becomes available.
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Palmer fills open board seat

COLUMBUS  A rural St. Edward man has been appointed to fill an open seat on the Cornhusker Public Power District Board of Directors.

Mark Palmer was appointed to the Subdivision 3 seat last month and took the oath of office Monday morning. Palmer replaces Ray Merrell, who passed away in June, on the board, representing portions of Boone and Platte counties.

Palmer is a graduate of the Illinois College of Optometry in Chicago. He took over his fathers optometry practice in 1974 and opened clinics in Fullerton and Neligh in the late 1980s. The practice merged with Eye Physicians P.C. in 2000.

Palmer is a member of the United Methodist Church in Albion. He and his wife, Patricia, have three children and eight-grandchildren.

Soup feed at local church

COLUMBUS -- Everlasting Love Church, 4714 27th St., will host its annual soup feed from 4:307:30 p.m. Thursday.

Soup choices include chili, chicken noodle, cheesy potato and vegetable beef. All soups are homemade and served with a drink and cinnamon roll. Cost is $6 for ages 12 years and older and $4 for children ages 11 years and younger. Takeout is available.

There will also be a drawing for a basket of fall goods.

Book group looking for ideas

COLUMBUS -- The Columbus Public Library Book Discussion Group is looking for input from the community about the books they are enjoying and would like to share with others.

Email suggestions to rmcphil@columbusne.us by Wednesday. Join the group at 7 p.m. Thursday to vote for the reading list for the first half of 2018. After voting, participants will discuss Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. New members are welcome to stay for the discussion even if they have not read the book. This group is free and new members are welcome to join at any point during the year.

Berean hosting trunk-or-treat

COLUMBUS -- Columbus Berean Church and J-Club will host a trunk-or-treat event for the community from 6-7 p.m. Wednesday in the church parking lot, 3027 38th St.

This event is a safe, family-friendly way for parents and children to enjoy a fun evening out before the Halloween holiday. Members of the community may join the Facebook event at facebook.com/ColumbusBerean.

For more information, contact Columbus Berean Church at 402-562-5647.

Square-dancing lesson offered

COLUMBUS -- Harolds Squares Square Dance Club of Columbus will offer a square-dance lesson from 4:30-5:30 p.m. Monday at Cottonwood Place, 3271 29th Ave.

For more information, call Sam or Donna at 402-564-0966.
India-China is the new hyphenation in town for Americans focused on Asia, in place of India-Pakistan, a tired construct that began losing ground and relevance years ago as the United States soured on Pakistan, a non-NATO ally that had become more intimately allied with terrorists, and began nurturing a relationship with India that was independent of its obligations to a failing client state, which, as US President Donald Trump has told some people privately, takes American money and kills American people.

The switch was made official, in a way, last week by Americas top diplomat, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in his first and only country-specific policy speech yet that he delivered about, and ahead of, his India visit. Tillersons speech was a well considered strategic move, given his current precarious position in the administration. Remember MoronGate? He chose to hitch his first and most fulsome foreign policy initiative yet to a country that enjoys the widest spectrum of support in the Trump administration that is bitterly divided over old and new adversaries such as Russia, Iran, North Korea and West Asia. And Tillerson chose the platform for his premium pitch himself, the Centre for Strategic International Studies, a DC think-tank that has had him on its board of trustees for many years. That was familiar territory for an ambitious push. He even lent it a personal touch, recounting in his speech encounters when he was an oil executive with Indian officials.

Noting approvingly Indias rise using a rule-based international order, Tillerson brought up China in the same breath, and proceeded to fault it for being less responsible. China, while rising alongside India, has done so less responsibly, at times undermining the international, rules-based order even as countries like India operate within a framework that protects other nations sovereignty. And that, Chinas provocative actions in the South China Sea directly challenge the international law and norms that the United States and India both stand for. He had a few more uncharitable things to say about China, its One Belt, One Road initiative and the predatory economics it pursues in the guise of helping emerging economies with infrastructure development.

Tillerson sought to reassure China, in language traditionally used by Americans to mollify Pakistanis worried by its growing ties with India. The United States seeks constructive relations with China, he said, but warned that the United States will not shrink from Chinas challenges to the rules-based order and where China subverts the sovereignty of neighbouring countries. Without referring to the recent Chinese misadventure along its border with Bhutan that India foiled, he concluded, In this period of uncertainty and somewhat angst, India needs a reliable partner on the world stage  (and), the United States is that partner.

Pakistan, the other part of the earlier hyphenation, did find a paragraph-length mention in the prepared remarks  it had to, because Tillerson is also visiting Pakistan, possibly with a laundry list of things the United States expects from it. But he made it clear, to India-obsessed Pakistanis in Pakistan and the shrinking tribe of Pakistan-obsessed Indians in India, the days of equal distribution of affections was over, saying Our relationships in the region stand on their own merits. And in the case of Pakistan, it was about decisive action (it needed to take) against terrorist groups based within their own borders.

The India-Pakistan construct had been unravelling in American minds, of policy makers and watchers, for a while now chiefly because of growing US disenchantment with Pakistan and its cynical alliance with terrorists especially after Osama bin Laden was found hiding in Abbotabad, a military town in Pakistan, in 2011. And a parallel rise in commercial and defence ties between India and the US in the aftermath of the 2008 civil nuclear deal. One of the first decisive manifestations of the de-hyphenation was President Barack Obama skipping Pakistan when he went to India in 2012, breaking years of US practice of presidents visiting both countries, even if the Pakistan leg lasted only a few hours. Obama visited India against in 2015, becoming the first American president to visit India twice while still in office. Islamabad got merely a heads-up phone call before the second visit.

The India-China hyphenation was underway at the same time. But quietly. Policy makers and think-tankers were loathe to admit it openly and officially, arguing Americas relationships with the two countries were independent of each other, and, as Ben Rhodes, an Obama aide said in 2015, nobody is aiming for confrontation with China or even to contain China. But there was growing and palpable urgency in background conversations that the United States must work with India to contain China, or as some Americans contended, using phraseology that would alarm Indians, the US must use India to balance China. Some members of George W Bushs administration had in private conversations discussed that one of the benefits of better strategic ties between India and the US, in the context of the nuclear deal, was to be able to work together to counter China, or act as a counterweight to China. In all, it would seem that Indias stock is up with the US.

yashwant.raj@hindustantimes.com
Art may be for arts sake, but it also leads to a lot of money changing hands. Every year, a new painting becomes the rage, and fetches astronomical amounts of money. So, if you have millions to spare, you can become an art collector of the greats, such as Picasso, Gauguin and Matisse. The rarer the work, the more money it fetches.

Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci depicts Christ as the saviour of the world. (Courtesy: Christies Images Limited 2017)

This week, auction house Christies is putting up for sale the iconic painting Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Salvator Mundi, which depicts Jesus Christ as the saviour of the world, is one of fewer than 20 known paintings by Leonardo, and the only one in private hands. It re-emerged in the art market in 2005 and became the first discovery of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci since 1909.

The painting will be offered in Christies Evening Sale of Post-War and Contemporary Art on November 15, 2017 in Rockefeller Plaza and is estimated to cost $100 million.

Heres a list of 10 other works that broke records:

This painting marked a change in de Koonings style and is one of his first abstract landscapes.

1) Interchange, Willem de Kooning



The oil on canvas painting, Interchange, by Dutch-American abstract expressionist painter Willem de Kooning was sold in 2015 by the David Geffen Foundation to American investor Kenneth C Griffin for $300 million. It is the highest price for a painting till date.

The portraits were painted by Rembrandt on the wedding of Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit in 1634.

2) Pendant Portraits of Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit, Rembrandt

The wedding portraits of Oopjen Coppit and Marten Soolmans was formerly owned by the Rothschild family. It is jointly owned by the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands and the Louvre in Paris, who split the cost to buy it for 160 million.

The painting depicts two Tahitian women in colourful and traditional dresses, surrounded by picturesque landscape.

3) When Will You Marry?, Paul Gauguin

This oil painting dating back to 1892 by French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin was sold privately by the family of Swiss businessman Rudolf Staechelin to Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani (belonging to Qatars ruling family) in February 2015 for $300 million, one of the highest prices paid for a work of art. It depicts two Tahitian women in colourful and traditional dresses, surrounded by picturesque landscape.

The Card Players is a series of paintings that depict a game of cards in progress.

4) The Card Players, Paul Cezanne

The Card Players are a series of five oil paintings by French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cezanne, which depicts a game of cards in progress. In 2011, the Royal Family of Qatar bought one of the paintings for $259 million.

This 1948 abstract artwork is an oil on fiberboard and drip painting.

5) Number 17A, Jackson Pollock

The American hedge fund billionaire Kenneth C Griffin spent $200 million on this 1948 abstract artwork, an oil on fibreboard and drip painting. The artwork featured in a 1949 Life magazine article that helped make American artist Jackson Pollock a household name.

The triptych depicts artist Lucian Freud.

6) Three Studies of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon

This 1969 oil-on-canvas triptych by British figurative artist Fracis Bacon depicts fellow British artist Lucian Freud, and was sold in 2013 for $142.4 million. At the time, it was considered the highest price attained at an auction for a work of art.

La Reve is considered one of the most sensual paintings by Picasso where he depicts his lover Marie-Therese Walter sitting on a red armchair with her eyes closed.

7) La Reve (The Dream), Pablo Picasso

La Reve is considered one of the most sensual paintings by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso where he depicts his lover Marie-Therese Walter sitting on a red armchair with her eyes closed. Interestingly, in 2006, Steve Wynn, an American entrepreneur and art collector, agreed to sell the painting to American art collector Steven Cohen for $139 million. The sale was cancelled when Wynn accidentally damaged the work with his elbow.

The painting was stolen by the Nazis during the second World War.

8) Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Gustav Klimt

This controversial painting was sold by Maria Altmann, an Austrian-American Jewish refugee who fought a court battle to be proved as inheritor of this painting, which had been earlier stolen by the Nazis. The painting was bought by American art collector Ronald Lauder for $135 million.

Birth is considered to be one of the most important paintings made by Souza.

9) Birth, Francis Newton Souza

The oil on board painting by Indian artist Souza sold for more than $4 million at a Christies auction in 2015. The painting was earlier sold at a Christies auction in 2008 for $2.5 million, considered a record price for a work of modern Indian art at that time too.

Untitled oil on canvas works by VS Gaitonde that sold for record prices (Rs 29.3 crore and Rs 23.4 crore) at Christies in 2015 and 2013 respectively (Courtesy: Christies Images Limited)

10) Untitled, VS Gaitonde

An untitled oil on canvas artwork made by Indian abstract artist VS Gaitonde in 1995 was bought by an anonymous buyer at a Christies, Mumbai, auction for Rs 29,30,25,000 in 2015. It is considered the most expensive Indian artwork to be sold (The Arts Trust, Artery India).

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Dalit activists in Madhya Pradeshs Khargone town on Tuesday protested an FIR against two students of the community for allegedly hurting religious sentiments through Facebook posts on Hindu gods and goddesses.

Police booked Ritesh Maheshwari and Ojas Nijali, both 21 years old and students of Khargone Government Post-graduate College, on October 20 on the complaint of two other students of the institute.

In his Facebook post, Maheshwari had wondered why people worshipped Laxmi, Kuber and Ganesh on Diwali, when ideally they should be worshipping Ram for his return to Ayodhya.

Nijali had posted why India, the country of Laxmi and Kuber (associated with wealth), was placed 100th on the World Hunger Index.

The Anusuchit Jaati Janjati Sangharsh Morcha, a Dalit organisation, held protests at Khargone, about 338km southwest of state capital Bhopal, arguing that there was nothing objectionable in the posts. The protesters said booking the students was against their right to free speech.

Khargone superintendent of police, D Kalyan Chakraborty, said, One of the complainants, Abhishek Patidar, said that the posts had hurt his religious sentiments. We have lodged an FIR and are investigating.

He said the court would decide if the content of the posts were objectionable. People are unnecessarily trying to give a different colour to the case. No one has been arrested so far, he added.

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The first trailer of TV star Kapil Sharmas second Bollywood film, Firangi was released Tuesday afternoon and he appears quite endearing in the video.

Directed by Rajiv Dhingra, Firangi also stars Ishita Dutta and Monica Gill in pivotal roles. The three-minute long video shows Kapil lying on a cot as he narrates a story to a small kid sitting beside him. The story, of course, is his own -- Kapil plays Monga -- in a film set during the British rule in India. Unlike everyone in his village, Monga believes the British are good people and mean no harm to the villagers. However, a turn of events prove him wrong and Monga turns against the foreign rulers. Will he prove his love for his own people or will he be branded as a traitor forever? Only the film will tell us.

Kapil Sharma, who made his Bollywood debut with Kis Kis Ko Pyaar Karoon (2015), has been shooting for Firangi for more than six months now. He even took a break from his popular reality show, The Kapil Sharma Show, saying he wanted to concentrate on his film.

The last few months have been tough on the comedian with many of his shows cast members leaving him after a mid-air spat with fellow comedian Sunil Grover and his show going off air after speculation that he forced many of Indias top stars to wait. The show finally went off air last month but is expected to return to television screens. Kapil has said it was due to his ill health.

Firangi is slated to hit theatres on November 24.

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Actor Taapsee Pannu has shared screen space with big names such as Akshay Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan in the past. And now, she is set to join forces with veteran actor Rishi Kapoor for the second time in four years, for her next Bollywood project.

Taapsee had earlier worked with Rishi in her debut film Chashme Baddoor (2013), which was directed by David Dhawan. In her second film with the veteran actor, the 30-year-old will be seen as a lawyer who helps a family reclaim their honour.

The actor says she is eagerly looking forward to a longer on-screen association with the 65-year-old actor this time, unlike in Chashme Baddoor, where she got little screen space opposite him.

I am looking forward to sharing screen space with him again, and this time, it will be a longer association on-screen. In Chashme Baddoor, I had very little time sharing screen space with Rishi sir, which left me longing for more of it. I am super-thrilled that I am getting that opportunity. He is a very powerful personality, apart from being a very good actor, and its an experience to just have him around, says Taapsee, who will be directed by Anubhav Sinha in this project.

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When you hear the words quite a selfish bastard or a rascal who only cared for himself, youd imagine the speaker is talking about someone else, right? Not so in Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiquis memoir, An Ordinary Life, out on October 25. Those are his descriptions of himself.

Shocking? Thats because Nawazuddin aka Nawaz has decided to be scrupulously honest in his memoir. Actually, all the girls I have ever been with have had this same complaint from me. I would only come to them for my own needs, he writes in An Ordinary Life.

The book, alongside his journey to stardom, narrates the minutest details of his love affairs  that includes one with his Miss Lovely (2012) co-star Niharika Singh  and those are being lapped up by gossip lovers.

The thought of peoples reaction to his unabashed truth did make Nawaz jittery. I dont know isko bahut sare log kaise judge karenge. Ho sakta hai ek bahut ajeeb si image ban jaye meri Iss cheez ki mujhe thodi si fikr aur darr bhi hai. But its okay. Jo fact hai, maine wohi samne rakhne ki koshish kari. (I dont know how a lot of people will judge this. Its possible that my image changes for the worse Im somewhat concerned and fearful about it But, I have only tried to bring the facts to the fore).

The book cover of actor Nawazuddin Siddiquis memoir, An Ordinary Life

For Bollywood stars and their fans, the revelation of such intimate personal details is explosive  Nawaz has written about a torrid one-night stand with a waitress in New York! But true to how experimental he is as an actor, the writer Nawaz is also ready to break stereotypes, even if that means exposing his true self to the world.

I dont think Im a superstar, but Im a human being first. Har insaan chahta hai, mai kisi ko zarur bataun ki mai kaisa hun. Lekin iss darr se ki log mere baare mein kya sochenge, shayad nahi batata. Yeh insaan ka nature hai Insaan humare Bollywood ki filmon ke hero ki tarahe sarv gun sampann thodi na hota hai. Insaan ke andar kuchh achchhai hai toh kuchh buraiyan bhi toh hoti hai (Every individual wishes to share their own true self with someone. But, the fear of peoples perception discourages them from sharing it. This is human nature Humans arent endowed with just the good qualities, like our Bollywood heroes. Each real person has something good and something bad about them), says the actor, who has done varied films such as Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015), Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016), and this years Mom, and Babumoshai Bandookbaaz.

Nawaz admits that he couldve chosen to conceal some of the facts or names, such as TV actor Achint Kaur influencing her flatmate and Nawazs first girlfriend Sunita to break up with the then struggling Nawaz. He, however, felt it necessary to mention all for these reasons: Kyunki phir fayda nahi tha na book likhne ka. Mujhe maloom hai ki iske baad bahut saare log bura manenge, par nahi to phir mai kyun likh raha hun. Mere paas waqt tha sochne ka ki mai naam dun ya na dun, sach likhun ya nahi, thoda manipulative ho jaun Bahut waqt mila mujhe, but finally I realised ki yaar karna chahiye  agar likhna hai to sach likho, warna mat likho (Otherwise, there was no point in writing a book. I know a lot of people will be upset after reading this, but I felt there was no point in writing without mentioning facts. I got a lot of time to decide, should I give names or not, should I write the truth or not, should be a little manipulative I got a lot of time to think, but finally I realised that its better to do it right  if you must write, then write the truth, or dont write at all).

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Nawazuddin Siddiqui has opened up about his affair with his Miss Lovely co-star Niharika Singh, in his biography An Ordinary Life: A Memoir. The content has created quite a stir among everyone.

In the book, Nawazuddin has spoken of how he and Niharika were in love with each other and also reveals details of their break-up. He has written how, during their affair, Niharika once found out about his girlfriend Suzanne: a lovely, dear Jewish girl from New Jersey, who lived in New York City, whom he wanted to marry once. According to Nawazuddin, Niharika said that he could not have two relationships at the same time, and even wrote Suzanne a mail from his account to end that relationship.

Reacting to what the book says, Niharika has finally decided to tell her side of the story. When we got in touch with her she gave her statement in a message to us, which reads: Nawaz and I had a brief relationship during the making of Miss Lovely that lasted less than a few months. So today when he paints me as a woman in fur enticing him into her bedroom with candles, or desperately calling him and mailing other women on his behalf, I can only laugh. He obviously wants to sell his book and it would appear that he is willing to exploit and disrespect a woman just to do so. He has chosen to fabricate stories and manipulate a fleeting relationship. None of what he has written has been with my knowledge, let alone my consent. It is this very aspect of Nawaz that caused me to end my relationship with him in the first place. I have always maintained that hes a brilliant actor. However, I had hoped these acting skills would remain confined only to the screen. Still, I wish him well.

Here is an excerpt from Nawazuddin Siddiquis book:

Before that came Suzanne: a lovely, dear Jewish girl from New Jersey, who lived in New York City. We met there and hit it off. She came to Mumbai and began to live with me. By then, Shamas and I had moved to Yari Road. Every few months, she kept extending her visa. It was a very sweet relationship. She was so lovely that the idea of marriage had begun to cross my mind, first in fleeting thoughts, and then slowly they turned into a decision. At the very last minute when I was about to propose, as if reading my mind, Suzanne said, In my country it is divorce season right now. It was winter, famous for festivals and infamous for breakups in the West. Her brother had just gotten a divorce. Perhaps that was why she was afraid of marriage.

Lets wait and watch what we want to do. Lets see if we want to live together or not after a year, she said quietly. I was bewildered. Without telling her, I dropped the idea of marriage altogether.

The shooting of Miss Lovely commenced. Suzanne used to accompany me there. Then came the day when her visa expired and she needed to return to New York to sort it out. She was gone for many months. One day, while we were shooting a dance scene, something happened to my co-star Niharika Singh. When the director said, Cut!, she quietly rushed to her vanity van and stayed there.

Nawazuddin Siddiquis memoir, out on Oct 25, talks about his affair with actor Niharika Singh. (Amal KS/HT Photo)

Something seemed to have happened to her. She was suddenly cold, went out of her way to maintain a distance from me and began to keep mum. I was puzzled. What was wrong with her? What had happened?

She used to be friendly, social and talk quite a bit. I thought it was best to ask her what had happened and so I did, not once, not twice, but several times, for several days. She responded that nothing had happened. I silenced my curiosity. I simply urged her to talk, be more social, that it was not healthy to be so quiet. After some days she began to. I invited her over for a home-cooked meal, a mutton dish which was my speciality. She politely agreed and came over. The dish I had made for her turned out to be absolutely terrible. But she was too well mannered to say so. Not only did she eat everything that was on her plate, but she praised it as well.

Now you come to my house, Nawaz. I will cook mutton for you, she said warmly.

For the very first time I went to Niharikas house. I rang the doorbell, slightly nervous. When she opened the door, revealing a glimpse of the house, I was speechless with amazement. A hundred, or so it seemed, little candles flickered beautifully. She wore soft faux fur, looking devastatingly gorgeous, her beauty illuminated even more in the candlelight. And I, being the lusty village bumpkin that I am, scooped her up in my arms and headed straight for the bedroom. We made passionate love. And just like that, out of the blue, I began a relationship with Niharika Singh, a relationship which I did not know then would last for almost one-and-a-half years.

Rebels with/without a cause. A post shared by Niharika Singh (@n1har1kas1ngh) on Apr 28, 2016 at 2:58pm PDT

During the early days I wanted to impress her. I was a struggler but by then I had managed to get a car, a second-hand one, but a car nevertheless. She lived in Malad, I lived in Yari Road. There was this time when she had to come to Yari Road for some work. I told her that I would fetch her in my car. I decked myself up in my best clothes, sprinkled cologne and drove off to her place with a song in my heart in the meantime, emails from Suzanne started coming. Why are you not mailing me, Nawaz? Whats wrong? I did not respond, I did not have the courage to. I trusted my silence would convey what needed to be conveyed. When I was checking my inbox one day, Niharika happened to see one of her emails.

Who is this? she inquired.

You know very well who it is, I said. Its Suzanne.

Wo-ow! Its still going on between you two! Amazing! Niharika thundered in anger. It is wrong. I hope you know that.

No, Niharika, nothing is going on between us. Sometimes her emails come, thats all. Slowly she will realize that Nawaz is not interested and she will stop emailing, I explained softly.

No, Nawaz! You must maintain clarity, she said.

All right! I will email her clearly then, I said.

No, you wont. So I will email her, she said sternly.

From that day, Niharika began to send emails to Suzanne from my email address. She would type, I cannot continue with you . . . and sign off as me. Imagine the shock for Suzanne. She would send heartbreaking replies like: What happened, Nawaz? Please tell me, Nawaz! . . . I am crying, Nawaz! Tell me, please. It was absolutely awful. I simply could not endure it! It was as if she was screaming, crying out aloud helplessly in unbearable pain.

It was apparent that the emails had some sort of a multiple personality disorder. After a few of these email exchanges, Suzanne figured that this was not my voice at all. Who is this writing, Nawaz? I know this is not you. Somebody else is with you, she wrote back.

Imagine her plighthelplessly trying to solve a mystery from another continent and her only clues were those few emails. Somebody else is making you write these emails. Tell me who is this person? she wrote

There was another piece to this puzzle. Like all girls, Niharika obviously expected some of the sweet conversations that lovers have, to take place between us. But I was quite a selfish bastard. I had a plain aim: go to her house, make out and leave. I could not talk lovey-dovey too much. It finally struck her that I was a rascal who cared only for himself. (Actually, all the girls I have ever been with have had this same complaint about me. I would only come to them for my own needs. Otherwise, I might not even take their calls.)

A still from the film Miss Lovely, which was about Indias horror / porn film industry.

When I went to her place next, she was wearing a silk robe. I ran my hand over its coolness around her waist, grabbing her but she pushed me away. No, Nawaz! she said. I wont meet you again. This is enough. I pleaded, I cried, I apologized. I said I wouldnt repeat my mistakes again. I would be more thoughtful, a better lover. But she remained adamant. She had had enough. She had been hurt too many times. So that was that, we broke up cutting off all contact.

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Actress Asin Thottumkal and her businessman husband Rahul Sharma were on Tuesday blessed with a daughter.

The news was announced via a statement. We are ecstatic to announce the arrival of our angelic baby girl earlier today. The last nine months have been most special and exciting for the both of us and we would like to thank all our well wishers and everyone who has been part of our journey for all their love and support, the statement read.

She also shared the news on Instagram and wrote, Ecstatic to announce the arrival of our Angelic Baby Girl earlier today. Thank you for all your love and wishes. She is the best birthday present I could ever ask for!

Ecstatic to announce the arrival of our Angelic Baby Girl earlier today. Thank you for all your love and wishes. She is the best birthday present I could ever ask for!  A post shared by Asin Thottumkal (@simply.asin) on Oct 24, 2017 at 10:15am PDT

Asin, 30, tied the knot with the Micromax founder in a Christian wedding ceremony followed by Hindu rituals in Delhi on January 19, 2016. Both the ceremonies were attended by Bollywood star and the couples close friend Akshay Kumar, who also played the Cupid in their love story.

Asin is best known for movies like Aamir Khans Ghajini and Akshay Kumars Khiladi 786.

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The government approved on Tuesday a state bank recapitalisation plan of Rs 2.11 trillion rupees ($32.43 billion) over the next two years, in a bid to clean banks books and revive investment in a slowing economy.

Of the planned sum, recapitalisation bonds will account for Rs 1.35 trillion, while Rs 760 billion will come from budgetary support and equity issuance, said Rajiv Kumar, financial services secretary.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley said the recapitalisation of state banks would be followed by a series of reforms. He did not give details.

While banks remain the main source of funding for Indias companies, the stubborn bad debt problem has eaten into bank profits and choked off new lending, especially to smaller firms, at a time when an economy that depends on them is stalling.

Twenty one state-run banks account for more than two-thirds of Indias banking assets. But they also account for a bulk of the record Rs 9.5 trillion ($145 billion) of soured loans.

In addition to repairing their balance sheets, the banks also need billions of dollars in new capital to meet global Basel III banking rules, due to fully kick in by March 2019.

Fitch Ratings estimates Indian banks will need $65 billion of additional capital by March 2019 to meet Basel III global banking rules. Moodys expects the top 11 state lenders alone will need nearly $15 billion. The government has just $3 billion left in its budget for bank recapitalisation.
Indian software services company Infosys Ltd trimmed its revenue forecast for the year despite reporting a surprise rise in quarterly profit.

It said it expected its full-year revenue to rise 5.5-6.5% in constant currency, compared with its previous guidance of a 6.5-8.5% increase.

Profit after tax rose 3.3% to 37.26 billion rupees ($573 million) in the second quarter, beating the average analysts estimate of 35.23 billion rupees, according to Thomson Reuters data.

The results are the first since Vishal Sikka quit as chief executive in August after a lengthy feud between the board and the company founders that also led to a reorganisation of the board. Nandan Nilekani, a co-founder and a former CEO, was named chairman and the company continues to search for a new CEO.

Bengaluru-based Infosys said its revenue from operations rose 1.5% to 175.67 billion rupees in the second quarter. Revenue from the financial services segment rose marginally to 47.18 billion rupees.

The Infosys board also reaffirmed that an investigation into alleged improprieties related to the acquisition of Israeli automation firm Panaya found no evidence of any wrongdoing.

($1 = 65.0225 Indian rupees)
One of the many beautiful aspects of working for an organization like the YMCA is the kaleidoscope of opportunities and impact we have. The Y is sort of like Nebraska weather, wait five minutes and something new will be happening.

Last month I got to spend three days volunteering at the Sioux YMCA in Dupree, South Dakota. There are only a few reasons why anyone who is familiar with a traditional Y  swimming, sports, exercise and kids  would recognize this YMCA as a Y. The Sioux Y serves kids and families and they use the name YMCA.

This ministry is at the heart of true Y work. The Sioux Y history dates back to 1862 when the Indian Wars raged across the Great Plains. In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln commuted the death sentences of 120 Dakota warriors for their role in a Minnesota massacre. As those Dakota prisoners languished in a military prison, YMCA volunteers brought them clothing, food and bedding, taught them English and shared Christianity with them. This compassion so impressed the Dakota men that in 1879 they started the Koskada Okadiciye, a Young Mans Association.

In 1885, they were recognized by the national YMCA movement, changing their name to the Sioux Young Mens Christian Association. As of 2017, this is the only YMCA that is located in and serves Native American people on a reservation.

The Cheyenne River Reservation has a population of 10,000 people spread out over 5,400 miles. Thats the size of the state of Connecticut. The struggles are real  70 percent school dropout rate, 90 percent unemployment, truancy and alcohol problems are generational.

Daily YMCA staff and volunteers serve meals, provide healthy games and activities, show compassion, teach life lessons and so much more to the youth in their communities. In the summer, YMCA Camp Marrowbone, on the upper banks of the Missouri River, gives the Dakota youth the chance to play, learn and grow into productive adulthood. Reading and education programs are led by the Y. Parent and family activities are conducted. Everything they do is aimed at improving the quality of life for the residents of this area.

I share all of this for one reason. I want you to realize the Y is so much more. Its more than a gym to exercise. Its more than a place kids learn positive values and character development. Its more than a swimming pool. The Y is life and changes the lives of so many people. The Sioux Y does its work through donations  100 percent of its operating revenue is donated by YMCAs, businesses, families and individuals and grants. They dont have a fancy building or all the new bells and whistles. Yet if that YMCA wasnt there, so many lives would suffer.

What would Columbus look like without the YMCA? How many drownings might have occurred if the Y wasnt there to teach youngsters to swim? How many at-risk kids might have ended up on the streets if it weren't for summer camp or a mentoring program? How many more unnecessary deaths would have occurred because of poor nutrition and the lack of activities geared toward healthy living? Every day I see the impact our Y has on our community. Multiply that out nearly 900 times across this country. The Y is so much more.
Infosys Ltd co-founder and chairman Nandan Nilekani on Tuesday said the company had found no evidence of wrongdoing in the contentious $200 million acquisition of Israeli automation technology firm Panaya Ltd in 2015.

Nilekani reiterated Infosys previous stance on the investigation, effectively handing a clean chit to former CEO Vishal Sikka and the previous board, drawing an immediate riposte from co-founder NR Narayana Murthy. Nilekanis remarks raised further questions on the recent overhaul of the companys board and top management.

Nilekani declined a direct answer when asked whether the companys latest stance on Panaya effectively backed the stand of Sikka, who quit in August, and the previous board, although most experts and analysts tracking Infosys interpreted the latest statement from Infosys as a vindication of sorts for Sikka.

Publishing additional details of the (Panaya) investigation would inhibit the companys ability to conduct effective investigations on any matter in the future, said Nilekani, largely sticking to scripted remarks that were also published in the companys statement on Tuesday.

Let me say that the investigations were regarding the (Panaya) matter and weve said that there is no merit in the allegations of wrongdoing. Thats what weve said...I think if you look at the actions of the last 60 days, you wouldve seen that what needed to be done has been done, added Nilekani.

The companys latest stamp of approval on the Panaya investigation also raises the prospect of further questions from investors, who still have no clarity on the contents of the Panaya investigation. Murthy, who has demanded that the report be made public, said on Tuesday he stood by every question on poor governance raised in my speech to Infosys investors dated August 29, 2017.

Nilekanis declaration has also raised questions on whether Murthys crusade against the previous board and Sikka was a futile exercise at the end.

Nilekani, for his part, declined to comment when asked by Mint on why the recent board overhaul was conducted when there was no evidence of wrongdoing in the Panaya deal or any other major corporate governance lapses.

I dont want to get into that. I really dont want to waste my time on that, said Nilekani, who also declined to comment on whether Infosys had spoken to Murthy on the decision to not release the full report on the probe of the Panaya deal.

Experts and proxy advisory firms also raised questions on why the recent board overhaul was undertaken if there was no wrongdoing.

If there was no wrongdoing, the need for bringing about a change to the board in August is not clear, said Shriram Subramanian, founder and MD of proxy advisory firm InGovern Research.

Over the past three months, Infosys has witnessed unprecedented turmoil, having had to deal with the exit of the CEO, the chairman, and a complete overhaul of the board.

Emails sent to Sikka also went unanswered.

Has Vishal been vindicated? Short answer is yes, said Ray Wang, founder of Constellation Research, a technology research and advisory firm.

Over the past year-and-a-half, Murthy has repeatedly attacked previous chairman R Seshasayee and other board members over issues of poor corporate governance.

Some of the decisions that were questioned by Murthy were Infosys decision to buy Panaya, the boards decision to give a generous severance of Rs 17.38 crore to its former chief financial officer Rajiv Bansal, and another unusual severance payout to its former chief legal officer, David Kennedy.

The fact remains that none of these questions have been answered by the Infosys board with the transparency it deserves. I am disappointed, Murthy said in his statement on Tuesday.
Japanese authorities are conducting safety checks at a Kobe Steel Ltd aluminium plant that supplied components for a domestically built passenger aircraft, the transport minister said on Tuesday.

Kobe Steels revelations of widespread tampering in the specifications of its products have sent a chill through global supply chains for cars, trains, airplanes and other equipment. While no safety issues have been identified, the company is the subject of a US Department of Justice inquiry and has said it is losing customers.

The inspection of Kobe Steels Daian plant west of Tokyo was focusing on the safety of components being used in Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ) passenger aircraft being developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, Transport Minister Keiichi Ishii told reporters.

As a country of design and manufacturing, we have an unmistakable commitment to safety, Ishii said. We want to be absolutely sure of product safety as the MRJ heads towards mass production.

The repeatedly delayed MRJ is central to the Japanese governments plans to revive an aerospace industry dismantled after World War Two. The aircraft has yet to enter service.

Products with fabricated data have been used in the aircraft, a spokeswoman for Mitsubishi Heavy said on Tuesday, adding no safety issues have been found. There is no impact on testing schedules for the MRJ, she said.

Kobe Steel sank deeper into crisis on Friday when said it had lost some customers to competitors because of the widespread cheating.

It is also being inspected over whether it breached statutory industrial standards.

Kobe Steel shares, which have fallen about 36% since the scandal broke, were up 1.6% by the end of morning trade in Tokyo. The Nikkei 222 was up 0.1%.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday announced it has imposed a penalty of Rs 6 crore on Yes Bank and fined IDFC Bank Rs 2 crore for not complying with the directions of the central bank.

While Yes Bank delayed reporting an information security incident involving its ATMs and failed to comply with the RBIs direction on Income Recognition Asset Classification (IRAC norms), IDFC Bank was penalised for breaching regulatory restrictions related to loans and advances, the apex bank said.

RBI has imposed on October 23, 2017, a monetary penalty of Rs 60 million on Yes Bank for non-compliance with the directions issued by RBI on Income Recognition Asset Classification (IRAC) norms and delayed reporting of information security incident involving ATMs of the bank, an RBI release here said.

This action is based on deficiencies in regulatory compliance and is not intended to pronounce upon the validity of any transaction or agreement entered into by the bank with its customers, it said.

According to the RBI, a statutory inspection of the banks financial position revealed violations of various regulations issued by the RBI in the assessment of non-performing assets (NPAs), or bad loans.

A cyber-security incident involving ATMs of the bank was also not reported by the bank within the prescribed timeframe, it said.

In a separate release on IDFC Bank, the RBI said it has imposed a monetary penalty of Rs 20 million on IDFC Bank for contravention of regulatory restrictions pertaining to loans and advances.

Based on the status report, a notice was issued to the bank dated August 07, 2017 advising it to show cause as to why penalty should not be imposed on it for non-compliance with directions issued by RBI, it said.
Indias second largest IT company Infosys on Tuesday said its search for the next chief executive officer is progressing well.

The Bengaluru-based company has set a deadline of March 2018 to fill the top vacancy following the abrupt resignation of former CEO Vishal Sikka in August after a spate of allegations pertaining to governance issues by co-founder N R Narayana Murthy.

Infosys has roped in executive search firm Egon Zehnder to assist in global search for the replacement. UB Pravin Rao was named interim-CEO and Managing Director of the company on August 18.

The process of identifying the next CEO and shareholder consultation outreach have been initiated and are progressing well, Infosys said in a statement announcing second quarter earnings of the current financial year.

The company had previously stated that it will cast a wide net in the CEO search, and the hunt would encompass Infosys alumni along with internal and external candidates.

On August 25, within hours of taking charge as Infosys non-executive chairman, Nandan Nilekani had told investors that the company had an open mind on the global search.

The goal is to find somebody who has the expertise in managing a global corporation, who can accelerate the execution of our strategy and has strong appreciation of the cultural transformation that is required, Nilekani had said.

Nilekani had also emphasised then that the candidate would need to possess strong technology prowess and the ability to build and strengthen relationships with all stakeholders.

There have been reports that officials like interim CEO Pravin Rao, CFO Ranganath D Mavinakere, and BFSI head Mohit Joshi are among the potential contenders for the job.

With Infosys looking at alumni candidates too, other probable contenders could include names like V Balakrishnan (ex-CFO), Mohandas Pai (former CFO and HR Head), Ashok Vemuri (former Americas Head and Board member) and B G Srinivas (former President).
West Bengal would continue to raise its voice against the faulty implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) which had cost the nation in every manner, state finance and industry minister Amit Mitra said on Tuesday.

I am going to Guwahati for the next meeting of the GST Council. I will continue to raise the states voice and fight for the small and medium scale units, Mitra said at an event organised jointly by several chambers of commerce here.

Mitra said the state government, under the leadership of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, had repeatedly asked the Centre not to implement GST in haste.

GST was implemented in the country from July 1, 2017.

You see the consequences now. There had been tweaking in the GST rates every time the council met. This is the result of hasty implementation of GST, Mitra said adding, West Bengal was always in favour of the new tax regime as it would do away with the multiplicity of taxes.

Mitra said that during the last six years of Trinamool Congress rule, the state had performed better on every count.

State education and biotechnology minister Partha Chatterjee said that in the last six years, there had been no militant trade unionism and not a single event of strike,

Unlike during the Left Front (rule), not a single strike has taken place. There had been state-sponsored strike in the state which was common during the previous regime, he said.
A retired employee of Indias premier intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), died of poisoning at a Delhi hospital last week, 23 days after he was allegedly drugged and robbed inside a Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) bus by a youth who appeared to be physically disabled.

Vinay Kumar Bhatnagar, 64, was a secretarial staff at RAW and retired in 2012. His daughter Divya Bhatnagar is a television actor. Bhatnagar lived with his family in Rohini Sector 29.

The events leading to Bhatnagars death began in the morning of September 25, when he left home for Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in New Delhi to get his eyes checked, said his wife Dolly Bhatnagar.

I spoke to him around 11.30 am that day. He said he had boarded DTC bus number 85 at Shivaji Stadium and was heading to a bank in Paschim Vihar, said Dolly.

The search

A few minutes later, when she called again, his phone had been switched off. Minutes later, she received a text message containing a one time password. I suspected someone was trying to misuse his ATM card, Dolly told Hindustan Times on Monday.

Dolly, along with her son Devashish, began looking for Bhatnagar. When their search yielded no results, they went to the Connaught Place police station and filed a missing complaint.

The police traced the location of my husbands mobile phone to Burari. There was no reason for him to go there. So, we decided to search for him on the route taken by bus number 85, said Devashish.

Retracing the jouney

Their decision to travel on that route paid off when they checked at Bhagwan Mahavir Hospital in Pitampura the same night. The hospital staff identified my fathers photo and said he was admitted to the ICU. Doctors said he was poisoned, Devashish said.

Bhatnagar was moved to Maharaja Agrasen Hospital in Punjabi Bagh. It took him three days to regain consciousness.

His family realised that he had been robbed. Apart from his mobile phone, the man took his watch, gold ring, two ATM cards and signed cheques, and left behind his empty wallet, Bhatnagars daughter Divya said.

The family also showed Hindustan Times photos of a burn mark, similar to one caused by a cigarette stub, on the finger from which his gold ring was missing.

Man with crutches

When Bhatnagar regained consciousness on September 28, he recalled the events. After his check-up, he was resting under a tree when a young man with crutches struck a conversation, saying he was a student, Divya said.

The man accompanied my father to the Shivaji Stadium bus terminal and sat next to him in the same bus. He spoke about his studies and offered him biscuits. My father didnt want to be rude and accepted a biscuit. He couldnt recollect what happened after that, Divya said.

An officer at the police control room (PCR) said their team had moved Bhatnagar to the hospital after receiving a call. He was found unconscious in a bus in Pushpanjali, not far from the Outer Delhi DCP office, the officer said requesting anonymity since he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Unknown poisoning

Bhatnagar could not recover enough and died on October 18 morning. The death certificate issued by the hospital said unknown poisoning was one of the causes of his death.

The local police never registered any case in connection with the alleged drugging and robbing or his death. After his death, his family gave in writing that they did not want a postmortem or investigation into his death, Milind Dumbere, DCP (Northwest), said.

But Bhatnagars family denied asking the police not to probe the case. As for lack of an FIR or a probe before Bhatnagars death, Dumbere said the reasons would be investigated if the family of the victim approached him with a formal complaint.
Two women returning home in an auto-rickshaw after dinner at a Juhu hotel late on Saturday night were stalked and molested by three men on a bike, on one of Mumbais thoroughfares, the Juhu-Versova Link Road.

Around 2 am, the two women and the brother of one of them were on their way home on Yari Road in an auto when the three started following the vehicle, near the Geeta Nagar slum pocket. They kept passing lewd comments and demanded that the driver to stop the vehicle. When the driver tried to speed away, they overtook the auto and forced it to stop.

In the middle of the road, the accused tried to pull out one of the women, slapping and molesting her when she resisted. They molested the other woman too and manhandled her brother who intervened. The three also thrashed a passer-by who stopped to help the women. The womans brother and the passerby put up stiff resistance and prevented the trio from kidnapping one of the women.

An onlooker called the police who arrested the three men, identified as Rahul Revale, 25, Adil Khan, 21, and Yogesh Shevale, 24, who were suspected to be drunk.

A magistrate court remanded the three men in police custody for a day. We have made them undergo a medical test. We are also trying to ascertain if they have a criminal record, said a police officer from Versova police station, who did not wish to be named.

Police said they would examine CCTV footage from the vicinity. They have already recorded the statement of the brother and will record both womens statements in the next few days.

One of the women and her brother were visiting their mother for Diwali and had gone to Juhu for dinner. There they met the other woman, a friend, and decided to return home together as they all live on Yari Road.
Is there a problem if we are good-looking? a young Dalit man, who was thrashed by Rajput men of his village for sporting a moustache, asks a reporter. This cheeky throwaway defiance by 24-year-old Maheriya is matched by Parmar, an electrician from the same village in Gujarats Gandhinagar district. He too was beaten by the Rajputs, convinced that men from his lowly cleaning caste had no right to sport a moustache. He is determined that whatever happens, he will continue to keep his moustache. His 17-year-old cousin, also attacked and with 15 stitches on his back, cannot wait for his facial hair to grow. Soon, social media exploded with Dalit men flashing their moustaches. The police report that the attack on the 17-year-old was fabricated, but other similar attacks are under investigation.

During the travels of our Karwane-e-Mohabbat, an initiative seeking justice and livelihoods for survivors of mass violence and lynching, through eight states in September, everywhere we found that Muslims were overwhelmingly the largest community targeted by hate violence. They were resigned to live with the everyday fear of hate attacks, with little expectation of justice or protection by the State. Dalits too were attacked, but there was a difference. Everywhere they were fighting back  angry, unbent.

In April, the Dalits in Shabbirpur, in western Uttar Pradesh, decided to erect a statue of Babasaheb Ambedkar on land owned by the community, within the premises of their Ravidas temple. They commissioned a statue of Ambedkar in his standard posture: holding the Constitution in one hand and pointing his finger with the other. But the Rajputs in the village were furious. It is our government now, they are reported to have said after the BJP government led by Yogi Adityanath took power. How can we accept that Ambedkar should point to the public road on which the upper-castes of the village also walk?

In retaliation, on May 5, the Rajputs from surrounding villages descended on the Dalit enclave in tractors, jeeps and motorcycles, brandishing swords and knives. They set aflame the Dalit basti, thrashed the men and molested many women. Some Rajput men were ultimately arrested, but the police filed grave charges against the Dalit leaders, many of who were sent to jail.

When we visited them, we found the Dalits united in their rage and determination to fight back. The upper-castes imposed an economic boycott, refusing to employ the mostly landless Dalits who worked on their fields and brick-kilns. It was hard now to light their kitchen fires, but this had not crushed their spirit. The Dalits retaliated by turning their backs on their Hindu faith, emptying their homes of idols and pictures of Hindu deities, and collectively converting to Buddhism. The women spoke openly of the sexual violence they had suffered. Even children defiantly wore lockets embossed with Jai Bhim, knowing that this infuriated both their teachers and Rajput classmates.

We also visited Dangawas village in Nagaur, Rajasthan. Here the attack on Dalits in May 2015 was ignited by their fight to reclaim their land, and led to the loss of six lives. Some 40 years earlier, the Dalits had mortgaged their land to a Jat landlord. Despite repaying the loan and interest many times over, and a lengthy battle fought and won across many courts, the Jats refused to return the land. They finally occupied it forcefully, but for barely a month. The Jats crushed them under tractors, mutilated their bodies, and assaulted the women. The police switched off their phones, and later registered criminal charges against the Dalit men. Two years of boycott had impoverished them, threats and intimidation continued, but again their spirit was not crushed.

In Gujarat, in Kashor village in Anand district, Class X-educated Shailesh Manibhai earned his livelihood by skinning cattle. Whenever an animal died in a farmers home, it was left at a designated site in the village. However, heavy rains swamped this site and Shailesh had to move to another site to skin the dead cows. To teach him a lesson, furious Rajput men thrashed him and even his mother who tried to mediate. Resolved to fight back, Shailesh registered police complaints under the SC and ST atrocities Act against his attackers, and announced that he was renouncing his caste profession. Now the villagers would have to lift animal carcasses on their own.

The Dalits have long endured unspeakable violence and cruelty from privileged castes. Today everywhere they are signalling that they will fight back. The BJP can ignore Indias Muslims and still win power. But they can ignore mounting Dalit anger against upper-caste hate violence and injustice only at their own peril.

Harsh Mander is author, Fatal Accidents of Birth: Stories of Suffering, Oppression and Resistance

The views expressed are personal

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DEHRADUN: The stringent Gangster Act was slapped against the six accused involved in the interstate kidney racket case that was busted near Dehradun last month, a senior police officer said Tuesday.

The Gangster Act has special provisions to deal with those involved in anti-social activities  human trafficking for commercial exploitation and organ removal in this case  to control organised crime. It defines a gang as a group of people collectively committing anti-social activities and gangster as a member of the gang abetting or assisting in the activities of the gang.

Dr Amit Kumar Raut, the alleged racket kingpin, was booked as the gang leader under the Gangster Act. Other accused, including his brother Jeevan Kumar Raut (from Mumbai) and son Dr Akshay Kumar Raut (from Gurugram), agent Javed Khan (from Mumbai) and the doctor couple of Dr Sanjay and Sushma Das (from Nepal), were listed as gang members.

The accused are already booked for cheating, wrongful confinement, trafficking and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code and Sections 18/19/20 of the Transplantation of Human Organs Act.

Dehradun superintendent of police (rural) Sarita Dobhal said the accused worked in tandem as a gang and targeted innocent people to transplant their kidneys for illegal commercial exploitation. We wanted to further tighten grip on them (accused) as it becomes difficult for those booked under the Gangster Act to secure bail (as compared to other cases), Dobhal told Hindustan Times.

While the accused will face trial in a special court meant for hearing cases under the Gangster Act, the police will be able to seek their custody for a longer time, the SP added.

The Dehradun police is searching for the absconding accused, including Dr Akshay Raut and the Das couple who used to arrive from Nepal to assist in illegal kidney surgeries. Our teams have conducted raids in different parts of the country and we are also in touch with our local contacts in Nepal, Dobhal said.

The racket that operated from the Gangotri Charitable Hospital at Lal Tappad, around 30 km from Dehradun, was unearthed on September 11.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will arrive at Mussoorie on a two-day visit on Thursday during which he will interact with IAS probationers at the LBS Academy of administration.

The Prime Minister will arrive at the LBS academy of administration on Thursday and will leave for Delhi the next day said a senior official confirming Modis proposed two-day visit. During his stay at the academy he (Modi) will interact with IAS probationers and will also address them, he told HT on Tuesday.

Modi would also have breakfast, lunch and dinner with IAS probationers besides attending the cultural events. This is the first time that a Prime Minister will spend so much time with them (IAS probationers), which is a record of sorts, he said.

On Friday Modi visited Kedarnath a day before the portals of the shrine town were closed.

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COLUMBUS  A suspected burglar was captured after a foot pursuit about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday outside Ramada-Columbus after racing out of a bar area and across the courtyard before crashing through an exterior door during his attempted escape.

Columbus Police officers stationed around the perimeter of the building arrested 32-year-old Johnathan Mally after he forcibly exited the hotels east doors, breaking them from the hinges and support structure.

Mally was arrested for burglary, possession of burglars tools, obstructing a police officer and criminal mischief. He has not been formally charged by the Platte County Attorney's Office.

Platte County Court Judge Frank Skorupa set Mallys bond at $50,000, 10 percent allowed for release, during a brief hearing Tuesday held via video link from the county jail. The judge also scheduled Mally for a Nov. 8 first appearance hearing.

A Columbus Police investigation got underway at 3:18 a.m. with a 911 report by a hotel employee of a possible burglary in progress at the Ramada, 265 33rd Ave., with an unknown suspect wearing a hooded sweatshirt in a closed area of the bar.

The caller, according to Officer Dale Ciborons probable cause arrest statement, reported observing the suspects feet moving beneath a curtain separating the bar from the front desk area.

I entered through the curtain and encountered a suspect dressed completely in black clothing, including gloves and a ski mask, exposing only his eyes, Ciboron wrote in his statement.

The startled suspect was ordered at gunpoint to get on the ground, but refused and ran out a side door, the officer wrote.

Police reported a 3-feet-long pry bar was found leaning against a doorway where the suspect had been, the same area that houses the business safes. Mally was shown on security video footage walking through the pool area carrying the pry bar.

An owner of the Ramada later identified Mally as a former employee who would have known where the hotel's safes are located.
Senior IAS officer Utpal Kumar Singh will soon take charge as the new chief secretary of Uttarakhand, officials said Tuesday.

According to officials, Singh, a 1986-batch IAS officer currently on a deputation with the Centre, will take charge either on Wednesday or on November 1. He will replace R Ramaswamy and will be the 15th chief secretary of the 17-year-old hill state.

Sources in the secretariat said that late on Monday evening, chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat wrote a letter to the Centre urging it to relieve Singh who was posted as additional secretary in the Union ministry of agriculture.

He was immediately relieved and may join as the chief secretary either tomorrow (Wednesday) or November 1, said a senior IAS official who did not wish to be identified.

An Uttarakhand cadre official, Singh belongs to Jharkhand. Sources said he was a favourite in the BC Khanduri-led Bharatiya Janata Party government in the hill state and was principal secretary to the chief minister.

He had also held senior positions in departments like higher education, public works department and power.

The move to replace Ramaswamy, also a 1986-batch IAS officer, comes four days days after Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Kedarnath on October 20.

Principal secretary, personnel, Radha Raturi could not be reached for confirmation despite several attempts.

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More than 60 shops, selling air coolers, electric geysers, water pumps and steel trunks or serving as storehouses for transporters, were gutted in a fire that broke out in Kamla Market in central Delhi, in the early hours of Tuesday.

Twenty-five fire tenders and over 30 firemen took around five hours to douse the flames. The cooling operations, however, continued till late afternoon. No deaths or injuries were reported from the spot. The fire department officials suspect foul play behind the incident.

More than 300 workers and loaders, who were sleeping or working at the market, had a narrow escape since one of the entry-exit points affected by the flames had them trapped. As the blaze was spreading like wildfire, they had to rush out of the market using the main entry gate to save their lives. Situated next to Ajmeri Gate, Kamla Market came up in 1951, and it currently has 271 shops.

Pradeep Bhatia, president of Kamla Market welfare association, said the blaze started around 1am because of a short-circuit in high-voltage wires in an electric pole outside shop number 128. It soon engulfed 60 shops within a radius of 100 metres in 10 minutes. By the time fire tenders doused the flames, property worth several crores of rupees had been reduced into ashes and rubble. Shopkeepers at the market have estimated the damage at over R5 crore.

Fire officials said the blaze started in three separate blocks. They suspect that somebody had deliberately started the fire at each of the three blocks. The presence of inflammable materials such as plastic air-coolers, electric wires, and foams, allowed the flames to spread rapidly.

Some traders blamed the electricity department and the fire department for their huge financial losses. They alleged that the first fire tender arrived almost an hour after they informed the fire control room. We informed the electricity department as well but the power supply was not disconnected for the next two hours, said Neeraj Jindal, owner of shop number 261.

Atul Garg, chief fire officer of Delhi Fire Services (DFS), refuted the allegations and said, The first fire tender stationed at the Civic Centre, located barely 100 metres from the market, reached the spot in less than 10 minutes. Our firemen began their operation in the block where they spotted the flames. They did not know that fire had also taken place in two other blocks. When informed, more fire tenders were sent, Garg said.

Bhatia alleged that despite repeated calls and emails, neither Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal nor politicians from other parties visited them or announced any compensation for the affected shopkeepers.

Mandeep Singh Randhawa, DCP (central), said a case of negligence has been registered and a probe has been initiated to ascertain the cause of the fire.
The Delhi government on Monday declared a public holiday on the occasion of Chhath puja on October 26, a government official said.

Offices will remain closed on October 26 to mark Chhath puja. A notification in this connection will be issued very soon, the official said, adding that the Aam Aadmi Party government was the first to announce a public holiday on Chhath puja when it came to power in 2015.

Meanwhile, ahead of the Chhath puja celebrations beginning Tuesday, the Delhi development minister Gopal Rai visited Shyam ghat at Jagatpur in Wazirabad on Monday to take stock of the preparations. He directed the revenue department to ensure amenities like tents, medical facilities, lighting arrangements, CCTVs, toilets and potable water are available at the ghats for the convenience of the devotees.

This year, Chhath puja is being observed at 565 places while last year it was organised at 268 ghats only. The government had earlier constructed 50 permanent (pucca) ghats for Chhath Puja celebrations, said a statement from the government.

Rai also directed the irrigation and flood control department to install notice boards to inform the devotees about the depth of the water at every ghat.

Chhath puja is celebrated on the sixth day after Diwali and is dedicated to the Sun God. It is one of the most popular festivals in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
A man was killed and his associate critically injured in public view by four unidentified assailants who chased them down the lanes of northeast Delhis Brahmpuri and into a house, firing indiscriminately, late on Sunday evening.

The four suspects remain on the run, but police said on Monday a gang war was one of the angles they were looking into after locals alleged the same.

The victims, property dealers identified by police as 35-year-old Wajid and 29-year-old Faiz, had criminal records and disputes with long-standing rivals, investigators added.

The shooting, which left Wajid dead and Faiz critically injured, happened hours before a similar crime took place in the neighbouring Maujpur where a young man was shot dead. Police said close to 50 rounds were fired by assailants in the two cases put together, and an investigation has been launched to see if the incidents were linked.

Eyewitnesses said that in the Brahmpuri shooting, the duo was waylaid before the attackers opened fire on them around 9.30pm. The two had shut their shop in Brahmpuris Gali No 12 and were returning home on a two-wheeler when they were stopped by the four men on two motorcycles waiting for them.

This was outside Gali No 10. The shooters stopped their two-wheeler and opened fire. Three bullets hit Faiz, and he dropped there. Despite his injury, Wajid abandoned his vehicle and started running as the assailants chased him, said a policeman.

As they were chasing Wajid, the men kept trying to gun him down. Wajid entered Gali No 7 and the attackers followed.

While most residents, scared by the shooting, locked themselves inside their homes, Wajid found a door in a house open and rushed inside. Three of the attackers followed him inside the house, while one waited outside.

Police said three families lived in the house.

Kusum, a housewife in her 50s, who was present inside with her three children and daughter-in-law, said the family found itself in a hostage-like situation.

We were having dinner and were oblivious of what was happening outside. The man who came first was injured and was panicking. He ran to the first-floor and three armed men followed him. We were really scared when they demanded that the man they were chasing be brought out. We locked ourselves in one of the rooms or we would have been killed, said Kusum.

The men, meanwhile, continued their search and followed their target to the first floor. In an attempt to escape, Wajid jumped down from the first floor and into the path of the fourth attacker waiting outside. The fourth attacker shot several rounds at Wajid, killing him.

Kusums son called the police helpline, but the suspects had fled by the time a police team arrived.

Meanwhile, Faiz, who sustained bullet injuries on his foot, thigh and chest, was taken to a hospital by locals. Neighbours said that Wajid was involved in a gang war, a charge that denied by the victims friend Shakeel.

Deputy commissioner of police (north east) AK Singla said that Wajid had previous criminal records including alleged involvement in murder, attempt to murder and robbery, but added that the last registered case against him dates to 2006.

About the claims made by locals of the incident being a gang war, he said these allegations were also being looked into.
The Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) has proposed to shift around 950 buses out of the Anand Vihar inter state bus terminus in Delhi to clear up the foul air.

Anand Vihar is among the five places that have emerged as pollution hotspots in the National Capital Region, where the Air Quality Index hovers in the very poor zone.

The others areas that have come under scanner are Ghaziabad, Noida Sector 125, Faridabad and Bhiwadi in Rajasthan.

Around 1,800 buses that ply in Delhi use the terminus. Another 950 buses coming from UP and other places also use this facility. There is a bus stand across the road, which falls in Uttar Pradesh, that has ample space. The 950 buses could be accommodated in that terminal, said Bhure Lal, chairman of EPCA who visited the two terminals with a team of senior government officials on Tuesday.

The transport commissioner of Uttar Pradesh has been called in the next review meeting and a decision will be taken after that.

Suggestions to increase the length of the foot over bridge so that pedestrians can reach the bus terminus and metro station without crossing the road also surfaced in the weekly review meeting of EPCA.

EPCA has directed the pollution control bodies of both Delhi and the NCR states to come up with an action plan on how to control the pollution level in these five areas.

Find out the main sources of pollution, identify the departments, which have to take actions and prepare a time-bound action plan. But we need to the pollution level of these areas as they are in turn increasing the AQI of the entire NCR, said Sunita Narain, EPCA member.

Garbage burning in the open, uncovered construction sites, unmetalled roads, trucks transporting construction and demolition dust, high vehicular density, stone crushing units and industries are among the many factors that are contributing triggering pollution in these areas.

On Tuesday, the AQI of all the pollution hotspots were above 350 while Ghaziabad with 406 had the foulest air quality in the country.

In the meeting, Rajasthan officials said to have commissioned a study through IIT Kanpur to find ways to combat pollution at Bhiwadi, which has emerged as one of the most polluted spots in NCR this year. EPCA suggested similar studies for other polluted areas.

We are not issuing any directions today. All we need to do is to step up vigilance to keep situations under control, said Narain.
The Delhi government, under the watchful eyes of chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his cabinet of ministers, will oversee the Chhath Puja arrangements in the city this year.

Delhis rural development minister Gopal Rai on Tuesday said that the government had chalked out a plan under which the arrangements made at all the ghats was to be supervised by a team of public representatives and officials from concerned departments.

The MLAs, sub-divisional magistrates and officials in the irrigation and flood control department will be on special duty on October 26 and 27 at all Chhath Puja sites. The chief minister will inspect Puja ghats on October 27, while MLAs, SDMs, assistant engineers and junior engineers of the concerned departments will check the preparedness on Chhath Puja ghats on October 26, Rai told reporters.

Delhi has more than 40 lakh migrant workers from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, known as Purvanchalis, who celebrate Chhath Puja every year. The Purvanchalis are considered as a major vote bank by all the parties and often decide the fate of electoral contests.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), on its part, said as many as 1.5 lakh party workers would work in collaboration with the three municipal corporations to make adequate arrangements for Chhath devotees.

Manoj Tiwari, the BJPs Delhi chief, had participated in a cleanliness drive at a ghat in Sonia Vihar on Sunday afternoon, days after, AAPs Gopal Rai, a prominent Purvanchali leader, reviewed preparations at Kudesia Ghat, Kashmere Gate.

There will be 565 sites where devotees can perform Chhath Puja on Thursday. The number of ghats this year will be almost double compared to last years figure of 268 ghats, Rai said on Tuesday.

The government will spend Rs 20 crore in making arrangements for Chhath puja, which will include doctors, life guards, and disaster management teams being on standby at all the ghats to avoid any untoward incidents, the minister added.

The BJP-ruled North Delhi Municipal Corporation, however, blamed the government for not putting in enough preparations .

The government is politicising the festival by cutting down on funds for the festival. We are looking after the regular cleanliness and other arrangements with the help of councillors, said Preety Agarwal, Mayor, North Delhi Municipal Corporation

The corporation, officials said, has set up mobile toilets, adequate lighting, mobile dispensaries besides carrying out fogging facilities at 60 ghats under its jurisdiction.

The Delhi Congress, too, blamed both AAP and the BJP for politicising the festival.

The party claimed that when it was in power in Delhi it used to start preparations for Chhath three months in advance. The present Delhi government, it claiemd was making last minute preparations.

The AAP government in Delhi and the BJP-ruled MCDs should make proper arrangements for Chhat Puja. The Chhat puja samitis, which owe allegiance to the AAP government are being given sufficient funds while other samitis are being discriminated against, said Sharmistha Mukherjee, Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee spokesperson.
The Union food processing industries ministry has been allowed to use diesel generators to power an international event, though such machines are banned in the Capital as part of a graded response action plan against air pollution.

The Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) exempted the ministry on Tuesday from the ban for a three-day event from November 3 at India Gate, where delegates from over 20 countries are expected to participate.

The committee decided that granting the exemption was imperative as the sprawling India Gate doesnt have the infrastructure for a power connection of 30 megawatt, the required load for the ministrys function, in a decision that calls into question the viability of a blanket ban.

The New Delhi Municipal Council, the power distributor for the area, cannot provide a temporary connection as it doesnt have the required structures and facilities. NDMC chairman Naresh Kumar said a substation would be required to supply that much power.

I cant divert power by stopping power in the VVIP area. Even if I do, there is a need for a full-fledged distribution network. Time is too short. It is a national commitment to the entire world by the government of India, Kumar said at the EPCAs weekly review meeting on Tuesday.

Mobile substations and CNG generators were suggested as alternatives, but turned down because of time constraints. That explains why the event, to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, depends heavily on portable diesel generators.

Responding to Kumars comments, EPCA member Sunita Narain said: Clean air is also a national commitment.

The EPCA turned down the Delhi governments request for a similar exemption during Chhath Puja on October 26 and 27.

For Chhath and baraats (wedding processions) we cannot give permission. They would have to use LED or battery lights, panel chairman Bhure Lal said.

A law firm is asking for exemptions. Someones father at home is ill, he wants (exemption). Medicine shops to bookstores, everyone wants to use generator sets, he added.

The ban on diesel generators was one of the first measures to be implemented as part of the graded response action plan to fight very poor and severe categories of air pollution. There have been nearly 25 requests for exemption since the anti-pollution step began on October 17.

The Union tourism ministry too had sought the EPCAs permission to use diesel generators at an event at India Gate from October 23 to 25. But the programme required less power and the NDMC was able to supply that. Permission was given for back-up generators, though.

But the NDMC threw its hands up for the food processing ministrys bigger event.

We have spoken to NDMC and they said they dont have the infrastructure to cater to that type of power requirement, said Jagdish Prasad Meena, secretary at the ministry.

The Delhi power department was asked at the review meeting to make people aware about temporary connections for functions, rather than using diesel generators. Power distribution officials said there are tatkal or fast-track schemes for such connections.

The ban doesnt apply in cities such as Noida and Gurgaon.

We would monitor the situation. Decisions (to include these cities) would be taken when conditions deteriorate, Sunita Narain said.
Delhi could breathe easier this year as a post-Diwali toxic haze cleared up much faster than it did in 2015 and 2016 because of favourable weather conditions and pre-emptive steps to reduce air pollution, experts said.

The city of more than 20 million people suffered its worst smog in nearly two decades after Diwali last year and it took at least 26 days for the air quality to improve from severe to poor.

This transition from severe to poor had taken five days in 2015 but the relief was short-lived because the air quality turned very poor 24 hours later, and stayed in that zone for nearly 18 days.

This year, the Delhi air improved to poor in three days after Diwali, going from 403 on Friday to 300 on Monday. Experts predict that the conditions might only get better this week.

A key factor that has worked for Delhi is a favourable wind that blew away the filth in the air.

The wind direction changed from southeasterly to northwesterly on Sunday, reducing maximum relative humidity from around 99% to around 90%, bringing down the moisture that sticks to pollutants. The speed picked up pace, too  from around 1kpmh on Friday to around 8kmph on Sunday.

In 2016, the wind speed had dropped to 1kmph a day after Diwali and an anti-cyclonic circulation kept pollutants trapped.

The air quality in October hardly remains in moderate or satisfactory zones. This means, if we have returned to the poor zone we are breathing somewhat clean air, said a Delhi Pollution Control Committee official.

The Capital normally struggles with air pollution from October as it gets shrouded in a haze from burning of paddy stalks in neighbouring states, vehicle exhaust, construction dust, and smoke from millions of fireworks lit during the festival of lights.

What helped the city this year, in addition to the weather, were a court ban on the sale of firecrackers, implementation of a graded response action plan, and a crackdown on burning of crop residue in neighbouring states helped cut pollution, experts said.

The Punjab government has already imposed fines of 15.99 lakh for stubble burning in 2017. Last year, fines of only around 6 lakh were collected in the entire season. The laxity was mainly because of the assembly elections in the state. With barely months to go for the polls, the government didnt want to antagonise farmers, alleged an environment official.

The ban on firecrackers, too, made a huge difference, according to experts.

As the supply of firecrackers was cut off, the bursting was restricted to just one day, and that too for a few hours. It could have been worse had the ban not been enforced, said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director (research and advocacy) at the Centre for Science and Environment.

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A public inquiry by the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Association (JNUTA) has found that vice-chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar allegedly violated statutory provisions and obligations and suggested that President Ram Nath Kovind, who is Visitor to the university, should initiate a probe against him.

Monday was the first day of the five-day public inquiry initiated by JNUTA against the V-C on seven charges.

Some of the charges against the V-C, which will be heard till Friday, are undermining the faculty selection procedure, undermining JNUs sexual harassment policy, and displaying a callous attitude towards missing student Najeeb Ahmad. The final verdict of the public inquiry would be announced on Friday.

The probe panel consists of JNU emeritus professor Prabhat Patnaik, former JNU professor PK Yadav, Delhi University professors Nandita Narain and Apoorvanand and journalist and author Akshaya Mukul.

Three of the five panel members  Patnaik, Narain, and Apoorvanad  said the V-C was guilty of violating statutory norms and going ahead with decisions on academic matters without consulting the teaching community.

Presenting the case against the V-C, Jayati Ghosh, a professor from the Centre of Economic Studies and Planning, accused him of not following university rules and deliberately calling academic council meetings during vacations.

There were three academic council meetings since he joined two years and all during vacations when most of us are engaged with other activities outside campus. Even in these meetings, we are not allowed to speak, especially women members. Agendas are just read and passed without discussions. Any dissent is not accepted, she said.

Ghosh said the V-C tampered with minutes of the meetings and added a clause that gave him powers to nominate members to the selection committee. This was not presented in the AC meeting for discussion, she said.

Narain, former president of the DU teachers association (DUTA), said, It is a case of violating university statutes and provisions. His actions are in violation of the JNU Act, which is contempt of Parliament.

Apoorvanand said, The visitor of the university should constitute an inquiry against the VC on these charges.

The JNUTA presented a defence on behalf of the V-C after there was no response from his office on a request of the teachers body to send one.

The statement was derived from various media statements the V-C had made on different issues.

The V-C has stood for implementation of laws, rules and regulations in all instances, JNUTA vice president Amitabh Singh said while presenting the V-Cs defence.

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked three states to ban two cheap but highly polluting industrial fuels and pulled up the Centre for sitting and doing nothing to clean up the toxic air in the national capital region.

The court directed Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh to notify the ban immediately after it was informed that pollution in NCR shot up after Diwali due to toxic gases emitted by industrial hubs which use furnace oil and petroleum coke, commonly called pet coke.

The court order was the latest in a series of steps taken by the judiciary to curb pollution in the countrys capital, identified as one of the worst affected cities in the world by industrial and vehicular emissions.

Delhi banned the two fuels in 1996, but their use continued in NCR by cement factories, dyeing units, paper mills, brick kilns and ceramics manufacturers.

A bench headed by Justice MB Lokur said if the governments failed to notify the ban, its order will come into effect automatically from November 1.

Officials said the ban could hit several small and medium-scale industries, which employ thousands of workers.

An official of the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board said at least 137 units in Ghaziabad alone will have to switch to non-polluting fuel.

The ban will lead to heavy losses to industries using such fuel. Furnace oil is used in estimated 50-60% industries, said Dinesh Mittal, president of Sahibabad Industrial Area, Site-IV.

In our areas we have the piped gas supply but not covering all areas. As an alternate, we can use CNG but it will cost us nearly 2-3 times more, he added.

The exact number of workers employed by the 137 units was not immediately available, said JK Pandey, the district industries officer.

The court was informed that automobile fuel  petrol and diesel  has 50 parts per million (PPM) of the highly dangerous sulphur.

Comparatively, furnace oil has 15,000- 23,000 ppm sulphur and petcoke 69,000-74,000 ppm sulphur.

They emit sulphur oxide and nitrogen oxide, which form particulate matter, tiny particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs.

The court came down heavily on the Centre for not notifying emission norms for sulphur oxide and nitrogen oxide for 34 industries. The court also fined the government Rs 2 lakh for not doing the job honestly.

The Environment Pollution (Prevention & Control) Authority (EPCA)  a court-appointed panel -- had demanded prohibition on polluting industrial fuels.

You have been sitting on the issue. The ministrys behaviour is very insensitive. It wants more pollution, the bench said when told that the Central Pollution Control Board had submitted a draft on the norms to the Centre in June but it was uploaded on the environment ministry website in October.

The top court ordered the government to complete the exercise by December 31.

Advocate Aparajita, assisting the court in the case, said pollution levels in Bhiwadi, Faridabad and Ghaziabad had spiked after Diwali.

The Centre, however, said it was still consulting the stakeholders.

(With inputs from HTC, Ghaziabad)

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COLUMBUS  Columbus Police Departments two newest officers came here for the same reasons.

The city isnt too small or too big, making the job interesting while also giving them the opportunity to get involved in the community and truly connect with residents.

Being involved in the community is the biggest thing, said Lauren Polak, who started her field training on Sept. 25 and still commutes from Waterloo.

You can really stand out and make a name for yourself, added Eric McCarthy, a Stanton native who joined the force two weeks earlier and already lives here.

Both new recruits also said the size of the department and how its run were positives. They like the idea of knowing every officer and McCarthy was impressed by the low turnover rate.

People come here and they stay here because they like it, he said.

While their reasons for choosing Columbus are similar, Polak and McCarthy took drastically different routes to get here.

Polak changed her career path from caring for babies to carrying a gun when she shifted from being a nanny to pursuing law enforcement.

The 27-year-old graduate of Douglas County West started working as a nanny in high school and studied early childhood education at Northwest Missouri State University and Metropolitan Community College in Omaha.

During that time, though, the thought of becoming a police officer never left her mind.

There are similarities between the jobs.

Youre helping people, said Polak, adding that her goal in Columbus is to be someone the public can trust and a positive influence.

The hardest part of the transition from nanny to police officer was leaving the Omaha family she worked for while helping care for twins from birth until they were 4 1/2.

She enrolled in the criminal justice/law enforcement program at Metropolitan Community College in March and is ready for a new journey as a police officer.

Its something I feel will be a great career, she said.

McCarthy, a graduate of Stanton High School, always knew he wanted to be a law enforcement officer.

His father was a police officer in West Point and Stanton for more than 15 years and his mother worked as a dispatcher for Norfolk Police Department. He also has an uncle whos a detective/sergeant for Norfolk PD.

Ive been around it my whole life, McCarthy said. Its what Ive always wanted to do.

The 22-year-old earned an associate degree in criminal justice from Northeast Community College in Norfolk, where his father currently teaches, and completed an internship at Norfolk PD before moving on to Wayne State College, where he graduated in May with a bachelors degree in criminal justice/public administration.

McCarthy knows the hours can be rough and the job can be dangerous, but hes committed to helping people and making the community safer.

Thats what appeals to me is public safety, he said, noting that his long-term goal is to move up the ranks within a police department.

McCarthy and Polak will head to the Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center in Grand Island together in early January to complete that four-month training course.

Polak also plans to move here soon.

So far Ive been really happy here and I could see myself staying here for a while, she said.
There has been a steady tempo of high-level visits between India and Bangladesh in the past few months of which external affairs minister Sushma Swarajs recent visit is the latest. Her Bangladeshi counterpart was not long ago in India and finance minister Arun Jaitley dropped by Dhaka earlier. And this does not even count the bilateral and multilateral meetings the two countries have held with each other in third countries, including on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in September.

The Centre is known to have decided to make official interactions between New Delhi and Dhaka a part of its bilateral firmament  and hopes to replicate this with other South Asian neighbours over time. A similar pattern of back and forth, for example, is becoming evident with other strategically important neighbours like Nepal and Afghanistan.

There are a number of positives in such frequent-flying diplomacy. Ms Swaraj has spoken of Indias determination to resolve all outstanding issues between India and Bangladesh. As many of these issues are highly sensitive to domestic interest groups in both countries regular contact helps both sides get a sense of the lay of the political land in real time.

Additionally, if India and Bangladesh are to become as close as the Narendra Modi government wants them to be, meetings between ministers and other high-level officials from both governments should come to be seen as normal rather than an aberration.

Summit meetings are all to the good, but if they also indicate a certain distance between two countries, a sign that convergence is taking place only at the head of government level. As the foreign minister noted, India is heading to issue 1.4 million visas to Bangladeshis this year making the delta state the single-largest source of travellers to India. With people-to-people relations doing so well, it makes sense that every level of officialdom should be equally familiar.

Finally, such regular visits inevitably help boost the profile of the Sheikh Hasina government and other groups who believe India is logically Bangladeshs primary strategic and economic partner. As the fallout of the Rohingya refugee crisis showed, the India-Bangladesh relationship is still vulnerable to sudden political storms and squalls.

The kind of connectivity projects and deliberate intertwining that the two countries are carrying out will take decades to complete. The unconscious acceptance of this special relationship among the larger public requires an even longer-term vision. Both of them will require much political hand-holding which regular interactions can only be beneficial.
Actor Esha Deol gave birth to her first child on Sunday, less than a week after posting Diwali selfies on her Instagram, where shes seen relaxing with family and friends. Were amazed at how wonderful and chic the new mama looked, while proving that less really can be more. Her minimalist gold and black ensemble showed off her bump just beautifully and her sleek hair and smoky eye upped the glam.

Esha Deol posted this on her Instagram, with the caption, Diwali nights with loved ones ektaravikapoor with my Jaya aunty, Ahaana and bharattakhtani3. (Instagram/ imeshadeol)

Since news of Eshas pregnancy in May, 2017, weve had our eyes on her sleek baby-bump styling. Showing us just how fun maternity-wear can be, the Yuva actor refused to give up her fashion aesthetic while pregnant.

Esha favours dresses, sunglasses and flats in her off-duty wardrobe, and one of the reasons she looked so great while pregnant (beside the obvious genetic advantages) is that she didnt feel the need to change anything too drastic about her look.

Instagram/ imeshadeol

Eshas maternity style choices were a perfect example of how to get it right for any occasion without covering up entirely. Showing a little flesh, in the same way she would when not pregnant, Esha exposed what she was comfortable with: from shoulders to a slither of nape.

But her main lesson for any expectant mom is to not be afraid of bump-baring ensembles: Dont feel you have to dress like a nun just because youre plus one.

Instagram/ imeshadeol

With retailers and brands making stylish and fun pregnancy clothes, and with more relaxed office dress codes, women who are expecting have a lot of great options. Top that off with the fact that todays celebrities - from sisters-in-laws Kareena Kapoor Khan and Soha Ali Khan to model Lisa Haydon - are bringing it with the maternity outfit inspiration, and youve got an entirely new era of dressing the bump. Their mantra? Flaunt if you want.

If you are searching for your own maternity look for the next few months, or just want to look at beautiful celebrity mamas, heres a round-up of some of the cutest and sexiest celebrity pregnancy outfits we saw in 2017.

If you always wear black, thats fine, help yourself - but if youre usually a rainbow child, dont give up just because youre pregnant. Actor Soha Ali Khan always embraces myriad hues in her public appearances, and because she continued to do so when pregnant she succeeded in looking as pretty as always - just with an added passenger.

Instagram/ sakpataudi

Throughout her pregnancy, Sohas party looks helped draw attention to her toned decolletage and slender arms, in one way or another. What can we learn from the Pataudi beauty? Well, just to use a little illusion where required. Clever tweaks keep the attention where she wants it, and her neat bump just minds its own business.

Instagram/ sakpataudi

Another lesson from Soha? Heels arent forbidden. Many tut-tutters will tell you that heels are completely out of bounds during pregnancy, but if youre used to wearing them every day, its unlikely it will do any harm to wear them for a short time. Taking care, and choosing comfortable shoes, is crucial, but if youre doing something where you want to feel confident and elevated, sometimes only heels will do. Right, Soha?

Instagram/ sakpataudi

Dressing for work is one of the biggest challenges for many pregnant women. Like everything Soha does, her ready-to-attend-meeting outfits were effortless - and there are a few lessons we can learn here, as well. Choose a colour that suits you, throw on a loose coat or jacket, and for goodness sake dont forget shoes/bags/books/ any accessories that make you smile.

Instagram/ sakpataudi

If your usual style revolves around swathing your shape in voluminous tops and dresses, then theres no reason to show off your bump just because everyone in your life is dying to gawp at it. TV actor Nisha Rawal loves to wear loose dresses, and so pregnancy was no time to change her fashion tune.

Instagram/ missnisharawal

Stripes may seem like madness, when most dressing tips aim to elongate your shape, but pregnancy is the one time you will be happy to accept youre getting wider. Choose black and white stripes as Nisha has, and keep everything else easy-breezy.

Instagram/ missnisharawal

Nisha knows how to dress to flatter her shape, and during pregnancy her rules were no different. Her dressed-down black number values comfort over contortion. It is the perfect wardrobe staple and can be transformed with accessories, in Nishas case, metallic flats,nude sling and bare face.

Instagram/ missnisharawal

Sequins and sparkles may feel a little too festive when you already feel the shape of a disco ball, but if youre usually partial to embellishment when evening attire is required, there really is no reason to dull your natural shine. Choose a shimmery dress. Simply raising the waistline by a few inches if youre used to accentuating your waist and keep everything else simple., as model Lisa Haydon has done.

Instagram/ lisahaydon

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Inclusivity is a word that has not often been associated with the fashion world, historically, but transgender models are among those bringing about a long-awaited change with the industrys approach to diversity. Over the weekend, transgender model Andreja Pejic was signed up to the prestigious Ford Models agency, which counts fellow household names David Gandy and Noemie Lenoir on its books.

It is the latest accomplishment in a long list of successes for the pioneering Pejic, a fashion star who started out in the industry as an androgynous model, featuring in the pages of Vogue Paris and walking the runway for Jean Paul Gaultier, before undergoing sex reassignment surgery in 2014. Since then, she has become the first transgender model to land a fashion magazine cover, thanks to her front page shoot for Marie Claire Spain in February 2016, as well as the first transgender model to land a major beauty campaign, having been unveiled as the face of cosmetics brand Make Up For Ever in June 2015.

This September, she walked in Prabal Gurungs Spring/Summer 2018 ready-to-wear show in New York Fashion Week, following a busy summer that saw her grace the covers of Glamour Spain and Harpers Bazaar Serbia.

But Pejic isnt the only transgender model pushing boundaries in the challenging environment of high fashion. Last week, Playboy magazine named French model Ines Rau its first-ever transgender Playmate  a progressive statement from the media brand that will see her feature in the November magazines centrefold.

Playboy rang in the changes by publishing a photo of Rau in a white lingerie set to its Instagram account, with the caption: Meet your November 2017 Playmate, @supa_ines, followed by a quote from Rau that read: Nudity shouldnt be taboo. Nudity means a lot to me, since I went through a transition to get where I want to be. Nudity is a celebration of the human being without all the excess. Its not about sexuality but the beauty of the human body, whether male or female.

Elsewhere, transgender former soldier Chelsea Manning took the fashion industry by storm this fall when she posed for the September issue of US Vogue in a red swimsuit, photographed by the legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz, while Vogue Paris became the first French magazine to feature a transgender model on its cover when it put Brazilian model Valentina Sampaio on the front of its March edition.

And transgender model and trans rights activist Hari Nef kicked off the year with a starring role in the LOreal Paris campaign Your Skin, Your Story back in January. There may still be a lot of work to do before the fashion industry embraces equality and diversity unequivocally, but could 2017 be the seminal moment in which transgender models begin to stake their claim to the spotlight?

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Nearly three months after Haryana government implemented the rules under the Real Estate Regulatory Act (RERA) on July 28, another group of homebuyers of Gurgaon is set to file petition in Punjab and Haryana high court challenging them.

RERA rules are not acceptable to the homebuyers in Gurgaon, as they claim rules have been diluted by the Haryana government to safeguard the interests of developers.

Gaurav Prakash, a homebuyer, said, We will move a petition against the Haryana government in the high court challenging the dilution of the RERA rules. We will organise a meeting of homebuyers in a day or two to discuss if we should move individually or form a registered body to take up the issue. We will file the petition in a week.

Our aim is to ensure that the Haryana government draft RERA rules on the lines of those laid down by the central government. The Centre made it clear as to which developers could come within the ambit of the RERA. However, the Haryana government softened the rules to favour a section of builders. We closely watching movements of affected homebuyers in different states. I believe over 20 cases have been filled in high courts and even groups of builders have challenged the RERA rules in Haryana, he said.

Earlier, on September 5, Gurgaon Citizens Council (GCC), a city-based organisation had filled petition in high Court challenging the Rera rules. The high court will hear the matter on November 23.

What is unacceptable to the home buyers is that Haryana government notified the rules of RERA inserting a provision, whereby developers who have obtained occupation certificates for their projects will be exempt from mandatory registration with the Rera authority.

GCC president RS Rathee said, Central RERA exempts developers, who have received a completion certificates prior to the commencement of the act, from registration . Here, in Haryana the rule was softened further as under the said exemption, anyone who has received part CC (completion certificate) or OC or has merely even applied for part CC or OC will be out of the RERA ambit.

Read I Gurgaon will have its own RERA authority

Meanwhile, a pan India entity, Forum for Peoples Collective Efforts (FPCE), has been formed by to take this battle forward.

Supreme Court has directed Bombay High Court to hear and dispose the RERA case within two months. A group of developers have challenged the act in Bombay high court and we had filed impleadment application in the matter on September 29. Bombay High Court has ordered a day to day hearing from October 30. We are awaiting the decision of the high court, Abhay Upadhyay, president, FPCE, said.

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Dengue outbreaks in Delhi and Maharashtra make national headlines but this season its Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal that are grappling with the mosquito-borne infection that sickens and sometimes kills.

Three states -- Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu  account for more than half of Indias 87,018 confirmed dengue cases and 151 deaths, national data collated till October 15 shows.

Though the Centre lists West Bengal as a distant fourth with 5,389 cases and 13 deaths, a surge in new infections and deaths over the past two weeks has led to protests in Kolkatas streets against chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who is also the state health minister.

Last week, Banerjee blamed garbage, private hospitals and path laboratories for spreading panic, while Kolkata municipal corporations chief vector-control officer Debasish Biswas said dengue deaths were the result of pre-existing conditions.

They got it wrong.

The Aedes aegypti that spreads the viral fever breeds in fresh water and dengue infections aggravate pre-existing conditions, leading to complications and multi-organ failure.

By the end of this week, we may get a very different picture from Kolkata, said Dr KK Aggarwal, president, Indian Medical Association.

Since people get symptoms four-10 days after getting bitten by an infected mosquito, the outbreak is likely to have started during the October festivities.

In well-lit areas, the day-biting Aedes aegypti also bites at night. Yet the governments awareness campaigns and messaging remains outdated, so people dont use protection, said Dr Aggarwal.

Going viral

Dengue is a viral infection that causes severe joint pain, nausea, abdominal cramps, fever lasting several days, and in some cases, bleeding from the gums, nose or ears, and rashes. It has no cure but most people recover with symptomatic treatment for fever and pain.

In severe cases, people develop haemorrhagic fever, which may cause death from shock and multi-organ failure.

Before 1970, only nine countries experienced severe dengue outbreaks but by 2016, it spread across the tropics, putting more than 3.5 billion people are at risk of infection. Around 390 million people in more than 100 countries get infected with dengue each year, estimates the World Health Organisation.

Over the past 50 years, variations in rainfall, temperature and relative humidity, rapid urbanisation, rising population, increased travel and poor vector-control in urban areas have increased the infection 30-fold.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito is a synanthropic species  much like house flies and cockroaches -- that benefit from artificial habitats created where people live, said Dr Veena Valecha, director, Indias National Institute of Malaria Research. Since Aedes aegypti breeds in fresh water collected in hard surfaces, such as containers and pots, it is found in and around homes.

This partly explains why more cases are reported from densely populated urban areas unlike malaria, which causes disease near fields and forests, too, because the anopheles mosquito breeds in freshwater ponds as well, said Dr Valecha.

Early management of symptoms prevents complications. Among states with recorded deaths, Karnataka has more than 13,200 cases and five deaths, which makes the death rate a low 0.037%. Uttar Pradesh has Indias highest death rate of 1.26%, with 1,903 cases and 24 deaths.

Of the four dengue serotypes, DEN-2 and DEN-4 are more virulent and cause severe disease. This year, DEN-3 is causing infection in India, which leads to fewer hospitalisations, said Dr Aggarwal.

Since DEN-3 was also the dominant strain last year, many people developed herd immunity against it and fewer people needed hospitalisation.

After recovery, cross immunity to the other serotypes is partial and temporary, so if a person gets subsequent infections by other serotypes, the risk of developing severe dengue is higher, warned Dr Aggarwal.

Underreporting, underdiagnosis

Dengue hit India the hardest in 2016, when close to 130,000 cases and 245 deaths were reported. For the first time, every state reported cases of the viral fever, National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme data shows.

As in the past, more cases and deaths this year are in the states with better public health infrastructure than the underserved states, raising fears of underdiagnosis and under-reporting.

Bihar, for example, has reported 845 cases and no deaths, and populated Madhya Pradesh has 1,027 cases and five deaths.

International studies have alleged under-reporting happens at an unprecedented scale in India. A Sanofi Pasteur-funded study in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene said India had nearly six million annual clinically-diagnosed dengue cases between 2006 and 2012, which is about 282 times higher than the officially reported data by the health ministry. Sanofi Pasteurs dengue vaccine, Dengvaxia, is awaiting regulatory approval in India.

The discrepancies are possible and often not intentional. Often, people get treated symptomatically and dont get tested. Also, testing is more complicated than, say malaria, which can be tested in the field using a simple rapid test, said Dr Valecha.

Another hurdle is that IgM and IgG rapid card tests for dengue sometimes throw up false negative results. A positive IgG but a low or negative IgM, for example, indicates past dengue infection and can be misread by a less informed physician.

The confirmatory NS1 Elisa-based antigen test is expensive and costs between Rs 2,000 and Rs 3,000 in private clinics. Dengue has no cure and since the treatment is symptomatic, many people say no to tests, adding to underdiagnosis and under-reporting, Dr Valecha said.

Erratic rainfall, temperature and relative humidity patterns are changing epidemiological patterns, and unless real-time tracking is improved, new infection hotspots will keep appearing every year, Dr Aggarwal said.

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A 21-year-old Italian woman has a rare medical condition that causes her sweat blood from her face and palms, according to a medical paper.

The woman, over the last three years, has periodically experienced bleeding, without any cuts or lesions on her skin. Doctors have diagnosed the uncommon condition as hematohidrosis or blood sweating.

Doctors say her bleeding episodes last from one to five minutes, and can occur while she is asleep and during physical activity. The bleeding is more intense when she is under emotional stress.

The Canadian Medical Association Journal reports that there is no obvious trigger for the bleeding.

The CMAJ report says the woman has become socially isolated because of the bleeding and developed depression. After tests revealed her blood count and blood-clotting functions were normal, doctors ruled out factitious disorder  she was not faking it. She also had no history of psychosis.

Tests showed it was indeed blood on her face, and not coloured sweat, that can occur in certain conditions. Some people with the condition even cry bloody tears.

I can say with clarity that Ive never seen a case like this  ever, Dr Michelle Sholzberg, co-director of the Hemophilia Comprehensive Care program at St Michaels Hospital in Canada, told CBC.

Doctors treated her with propranolol, a heart and blood pressure medication, which reduced the bleeding but failed to eliminate it completely, reports The Guardian.

There are several causes proposed to explain the bleeding -- it could either be because of the bloods ability to clot or a psychogenetic disease, where an extreme or exaggerated emotional response provokes a physical illness, reports CBC.

Hematohidrosis is extremely rare, but its not new. Cases date way back to the third century BC, TIME quotes medical historian and hematologist Jacalyn Duffin as saying. The Bible also mentions Jesus sweating blood.

Luke 22:44 states, And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

Christ on the Mount of Olives By Wolfgang Sauber

The womans identity has been kept confidential for the sake of her privacy.
George Clooney and Matt Damon continued to speak out against disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who helped launched both actors to stardom in the late 90s, alleging they didnt know the extent of Weinsteins misconduct.

According to a report in The Hollywood Reporter, the actors who are at the press tour for Clooney-directed film Suburbicon sat down for an interview with a news channel shedding light on what they knew about the mogul alleged history of sexual harassment prior to the media firestorm that erupted earlier this month.

You had to spend about five minutes with him to know that he was a bully, he was intimidating - that was his legend, Damon added. When people say everybody knew, yeah I knew he was an asshole. He was proud of that.

Thats how he carried himself. And I knew he was a womanizer. I wouldnt want to be married to the guy. But thats not my business, the Jason Bourne star continued.

The actor worked with Weinstein on Good Will Hunting, the 1997 film that launched his career. However, The Martian actor insisted he had not been aware of the level of criminal sexual predation and also acknowledges that he did hear about Gwyneth Paltrows experience from Ben Affleck but never had discussed directly with her. I never talked to Gwyneth about it. Ben told me, but I knew that they had come to whatever agreement or understanding that they had come to, she had handled it, Damon said. She was the first lady of Miramax. And he treated her incredibly respectfully.

Paltrow was one of the first Hollywood actresses to come forward and accuse Weinstein of sexual harassment. Clooney on a similar instances noted that he had an inkling of Weinsteins alleged behaviour around women based on conversations he had with the mogul where the producer boasted to him about women with whom he claimed to have had affairs. I didnt necessarily believe him, quite honestly, because to believe would be to believe the worst of some actresses who were friends of mine, the Oceans Eleven star added.

Clooney called it beyond infuriating that such a sexual predator had been out there silencing women like that, adding he now wants to know all of it, and there has to be a comeuppance so that women can feel safe, going forward, under similar circumstances.

The Suburbicon director said his wife Amal Clooney has also been subject to harassment in her line of work too, but said nonetheless it is surprising to some of us that its this big.
The Haryana Vidhan Sabha speaker on Monday expelled 15 Congress MLAs from the assembly for a day on the opening day of the session for creating ruckus over seeking House adjournment to discuss the de-notification of the Dadupur-Nalvi irrigation scheme by the BJP government.

The MLAs, who assembled in the well of the House, were demanding that House be adjourned right away and did not yield despite assurances by speaker Kanwar Pal to have a discussion on the matter on Tuesday. The speaker told them that he had allowed an adjournment motion to be taken up on Tuesday.

They, however, kept arguing with the speaker and swarmed the well of the House. After a bout of noisy arguments, the speaker decided to name the 15 Congress lawmakers and ordered they be driven out from the House. In no time, they were surrounded by the House marshals to escort them out of the assembly.

Those expelled were Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Kiran Choudhry (Tosham), Randeep Surjewala (Kaithal), Karan Dalal (Palwal), Kuldeep Sharma (Ganaur), RS Kadian (Beri), Anand Singh Dangi (Meham), Lalit Nagar (Tigaon), Jai Tirth Dahiya (Rai), Sri Kishan Hooda (Baroda), Geeta Bhukkal (Jhajjar), Jagbir Malik (Gohana), Renuka Bishnoi (Hansi), Shakuntala Khatak (Kalanaur), Udai Bhan (Hodal) and Jaiveer Singh (Kharkhauda).

Shouting anti-government slogans, they trooped out of the House.

Later, addressing a press conference, Randeep Surjewala, Kuldeep Sharma and Karan Singh Dalal claimed the speaker did not accede to their demand of adjourning the House right away under pressure from the BJP government.

Had the speaker followed the rulebook, he would have allowed the adjournment motion today, they said.

Surjewala said the state government could not have ordered de-notification of the Dadupur Nalvi land since the proposed enabling provision in the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition Act is yet to get the Presidents assent. While the applicable provision is yet to receive the Presidents nod, the Manohar Lal Khattar government went ahead with the de-notification decision under section 101 of the Act on the advice of the Advocate General.

Surjewala said Section 101 cannot be invoked in case of Dadupur Nalvi land as it is not unutilised and it (the section) pertained to land acquired under the 2013 land acquisition law and not the old Act.

Cong legislators non-serious: INLD

Once the Congress MLAs were driven out of the House, leader of the opposition Abhay Singh Chautala accused them of being non-serious in discussing issues of public interest. It was important that they should remain present when this issues is discussed as the Congress was at the helm when the Dadupur-Nalvi irrigation scheme took shape, Abhay said.

Another INLD MLA Zakir Hussain said the adjournment motion being referred to by the speaker was actually proposed by the INLD MLAs. The Congress proposed it as an afterthought, he said.

Sidelights

Jailed former MP Ajay Singh Chautala, who is out on parole, on Monday witnessed the House proceedings from the visitors gallery. Ajay is undergoing 10-year sentence in the JBT recruitment case. The last he entered the assembly precincts was in 2012 as Dabwali MLA.

Former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda and deputy leader of INLD legislature group in assembly, Jaswinder Singh Sandhu, were seen shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries when Congress MLAs entered the well of the House to argue with the speaker.

Security personnel manning the entrance of assembly asked a number of visitors, including journalists, to remove any black outfits they were wearing. While senior officials said there were no instructions to do so, it seems the security staff feared troublemakers to flash black clothing as a mark of protest in the House.
The Kerala police arrested 50 school bus drivers on Tuesday for allegedly driving drunk in four districts of central Kerala, exposing the safety of students.

During Kerala Polices Operation Little Star in Ernakulam, Idukki, Kottayam and Alappuzha in the morning, the bus drivers admitted that they took alcohol Monday night and were not aware that its traces would be found in their blood even after six hours. However, others said they took the liquor in the morning.

Kochi range inspector general of police P Vijayan said the drivers licences will be cancelled and they will be booked under the Juvenile Justice Act. He said the raid was carried out after parents complaints.

Vijayan pointed out that school authorities should check antecedents and profiles of bus drivers before making appointments. They (bus drivers) are risking the lives of children. School authorities and parents should be aware of this. He said despite strict checks, guidelines were flouted.

According to a Supreme Court guideline in 2014, the driver must have at least four years of experience and vehicles must take security measures and have speed governors and a proper seating capacity. But most schools have flouted the norm causing bus mishaps in the state, according to another senior police officer.

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A 75-year-old man died of hunger on Monday in Jharkhands Deoghar district after the biometric reader at the PDS shop couldnt read his daughters thumb impression and he was refused ration, his family alleged, a charge denied by the government.

This is the third time in a month that a family in the tribal state has claimed to have lost a member after being refused subsidised supplies they are entitled to under a nation-wide food programme for the poor.

The government said Rooplal Marandi died of natural causes.

Marandi was suffering from old-age ailments and he had fractured his leg a few months back. I visited his house with a doctor on Monday evening. The doctor also confirmed it to be natural death, Mohanpur block development officer Ashok Kumar said.

Marandi lived with his daughter and her family in Bhagwanpur village which is part of the Mohanpur block in Deoghar district. The family said their only earning member, Marandis grandson, died three months ago, leaving them dependent on government ration.

But, we did not get ration for last two months as the Aadhaar-linked biometric system didnt recognise my thumb impression, Marandis daughter Manodi said.

Manodi and her daughter-in-law worked as farmhands but because of heavy rain last week they couldnt get work.

Marandi and the two other elders were surviving on murhi, or puffed rice, while they borrowed food for the children from the neighbours, she said.

BDO Kumar denied the family was refused ration for two months. The family withdrew 15 kg of ration till September but it could not be updated on his ration card. The October ration was pending as family did not come to PDS store, he said.

The BDO gave the family a sack of 50-kg rice and Rs 10,000.

To check pilferage and weed out ghost beneficiaries, the government has linked Aadhaar, the 12-digit biometric identity number, to the public distribution system (PDS).

But the move has triggered a debate, with right activists claiming that the poor were being denied benefits. Several petitions are pending in the Supreme Court against linking Aadhaar to welfare schemes.

PDS dealers in Jharkhand were not allowed to give supplies till a ration card was linked to Aadhaar and the biometric machine accepted the thumb impression, said Sanjay Kundu, the state general secretary of the Fair Price Dealers Association.

Following a directive from the chief secretary, PDS shops had since April stopped giving foodgrains to those whose ration cards were not linked to Aadhaar, Kundu said.

The order was annulled and dealers told to maintain an exception register to provide grains to the beneficiaries whose thumb impressions were not read by biometric machines or ration cards were not linked to Aadhaar, food and public distribution minister Saryu Rai said.

An 11-year-old girl died on September 28 in Jharkhands Simdega district after allegedly going without food for four days. The family alleged their ration card was cancelled as it could not be linked to Aadhaar.

On October 21, 43-year-old Dhanbad rickshaw puller Baidyanath Ravidas died as he didnt have a ration card.

Jharkhand rolled out the National Food Security Act (NFSA) from October 1, 2015 under which around 5.8 million households receive rice and wheat at Re 1 per kg. More than 460,000 white ration cards have been distributed among families not covered under NFSA.

More than one million fake ration cards were scraped and 931,000 new cards issued under NFSA so far, food and public distribution officials said. Aadhaar linkage of the system helped the state government save Rs 350 crore.

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LINCOLN  Czech Republic Ambassador Hynek Kmonicek on Monday celebrated Nebraska's deep and personal ties to Czechoslovakia while promoting increased cultural and economic interaction with the state.

Nebraska, where 83,000 people can claim Czech heritage, is "a wonderful home for Czechs," he said during a news conference with Gov. Pete Ricketts.

"If you hear people on the street speak with a strange accent," Kmonicek said, "they come from Wilber or the Czech Republic."

In Nebraska, he said, he feels "not so far away."

Ricketts said Nebraska is the state with the highest per capita presence of Czech-related residents.

Nebraska also has a long relationship with the Czech military through a partnership with the Nebraska National Guard that was established in 1993, Maj. Gen. Daryl Bohac, the state's adjutant general, said.

"About 60 Czech soldiers were in training with us this summer," Bohac said.

In a light moment before the news conference began, Ambassador Kmonicek corrected Bohac on how he pronounced his own name.

Kmonicek, who was making his first trip to Nebraska, celebrated the close relationship by naming University of Nebraska-Lincoln Professor Dr. Mila Saskova-Pierce as an honorary Czech Republic consul in Nebraska.

Saskova-Pierce, who teaches the Czech language, said she will promote the Czech Republic during cultural and economic events and be available to assist Czech citizens.

The Czech language has been taught in Nebraska for more than 100 years, she said.

"There's still a sizable population in Nebraska that speaks Czech as a choice," Saskova-Pierce said.

Wilber in Saline County is known as the "Czech Capital of the USA" and hosts an annual Czech festival in August.

Ambassador Kmonicek said he already is making plans to return to Nebraska for upcoming events, including a 100th anniversary celebration of Czech independence in 2018.
The CPI(M) on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of trying to move towards an autocratic rule and appealed to all non-BJP chief ministers to together protect the federal structure of the Constitution.

Party general secretary Sitaram Yechury claimed the prime minister was seeking to convert Indias parliamentary system into a presidential form of government, and charged the Centre with undermining the constitutional structure of parliamentary democracy.

Every move that is being conceived of and is being initiated by the government is undermining the constitutional structure of parliamentary democracy, he said, pointing to state election schedules and moves for simultaneous central and state polls.

He accused the government of interfering in a states right to maintain law and order through central agencies.

This is precisely what the current prime minister wishes to do -- convert the parliamentary system into a presidential form. The blatant misuse of constitutional bodies is to systematically undermine the very Constitution of our country, he told reporters here.

These are the signs of the prime minister moving towards a very autocratic rule, he added.

Yechury appealed to the non-BJP chief ministers to come together to protect the countrys federal structure.

Earlier our demand was to strengthen Centre-state relations, but now we have reached a stage where one has to protect what we have, he said.

Referring to the situation in Kerala, Yechury said the move by the RSS to file a case in the state high court asking for the CBIs intervention in investigating murders demonstrates political interests.

We have no problem with anybody investigating. But law and order is a state subject. That is the essence of the federal structure. If the state police is doing its job, then the purpose of a CBI intervention is to undermine the states rights and misuse the CBI for political interests, he said.

These issues would be discussed at the Opposition coordination committee meet to chalk out floor coordination during the next Parliament session, he said.

The four Left parties have also decided to meet tomorrow to finalise the action plan for their protest against demonetisation on November 8, the day the policy was announced last year.

Asked why the Opposition had not organised a joint protest, he said, The Left parties have always believed in marching separately and striking together.
Opposition parties in Jammu and Kashmir sought to know on Tuesday the broader contours of a dialogue and clear definition of stakeholders who would be included in the peace process for the insurgency-battered state.

The questions were raised after the Centre appointed former IB chief Dineshwar Sharma on Monday as its representative for talks with all stakeholders to solve the vexed Kashmir imbroglio. He will decide if he needs to speak to the hardline separatist group, Hurriyat Conference.

The Hurriyat, which calls itself a major stakeholder in the Kashmir dispute, reportedly rejected the peace talks. Its leader Moulvi Abbas Ansari reportedly said there can be no dialogue until Pakistan is made part of the process.

Read more: I will need to talk to everybody, says Kashmir interlocutor Dineshwar Sharma



The political parties were sceptical about the BJPs move.

There had been interlocutors in the past. It would have been apt had the BJP specifically defined stakeholders. Otherwise, it would be a cosmetic exercise, state Congress chief Ghulam Ahmed Mir said.

He wondered why an interlocutor was appointed when the BJP had been rejecting steadfastly any dialogue with separatists.

Read more: Dineshwar Sharma as J&K interlocutor can build on the gains achieved in recent times

Mir said the exercise should be result-oriented. If the government divulges the broader contours and adopts a serious approach it would bear results.

State Congress vice president Sham Lal Sharma also asked the BJP to decode stakeholders.

He also expressed surprise over BJPs move saying, They had been all along saying that terror and talks cannot go simultaneously. Has terrorism ended and has the situation on borders turned normal? There has been an increase in the recruitment of local militants. And, the BJP had in the past endorsed Justice Sagheer committee report. It appears to be a hollow slogan.

Panthers Party chairman and former education minister Harsh Dev Singh called the interlocutors appointment a policy about-turn of the government, which he alleged was all along professing the line that talks and terror cant go together.

The BJP needs to explain the change of heart  In the absence of contours and clarity over stakeholders it is just pure politics and nothing else, Singh said.

Read more: Kashmir needs hugs, neither abuse nor bullets: PM Modi in Independence Day speech

He described the so-called shift in BJP strategy as a political ploy, probably because of assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.

The National Conference, which ruled the state before the PDP-BJP combine wrested power two year ago, adopted a wait-and-watch approach.

The partys working president and former chief minister, Omar Abdullah, tweeted: Centre announces an interlocutor to engage with stakeholders in J&K. Will keep an open mind and wait to see results of the dialogue process.

Centre announces an interlocutor to engage with stake holders in J&K. Will keep an open mind & wait to see results of the dialogue process. https://t.co/OxzD0FwkmJ  Omar Abdullah (@OmarAbdullah) October 23, 2017

But former Sadr-e-Riyasat and senior Congress leader Karan Singh welcomed the appointment.

The Rajya Sabha member said there is no alternative to dialogue for solving the Kashmir crisis.

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United Jihad Council (UJC) chief and Hizbul Mujahideen founder Syed Salahuddin said the Indian government, through its agencies, has framed fake charges against his son.

A fake story has been made to arrest my son, Hizbul Mujahideen spokesman Saleem Hashmi quoted Salahuddin as saying, reported Kashmir News Service (KNS).

The wire service added Hashmi said over phone, Such acts wont weaken our freedom movement and neither will it daunt the resolve of the leaders of freedom movement.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday arrested Salahuddins son in a six-year-old case of terror funding through hawala channels.

The NIA in a statement charged 42-year-old Shahid Yousuf of receiving and collecting funds through international wire money transfer from a Saudi Arabia-based Aizaz Ahmad Bhat, who is accused of being a member of the Pakistan-based militant group.
Multi-crore fake stamp paper mastermind Abdul Karim Telgi is battling for life as his condition is critical due to multiple organ complications.

Telgi, 56, is serving a 30-year sentence since 2007.

He started off as a vendor at Khanapur railway station. Telgi was imprisoned in 1993 in connection with a minor forgery case. Years later, he was convicted for masterminding a multi-crore fake stamp paper case.

In the stamp paper scam between 1993 and 2002, Telgi cultivated officers in the government security press in Nashik to print counterfeit stamp papers, purchased machinery at government auctions and sold the counterfeit stamp papers at heavy discounts.

The scam ran into hundreds of crores of rupees and was unearthed with Telgis arrest in 2001.

Investigations revealed he had links with politicians and senior police officers. There were about 40 cases against Telgi in 11 states.

The investigators found that the alleged scamster had 36 properties across the country and 123 bank accounts in 18 cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Indore.

A shortage of stamp paper engineered with the help of a few officials of the Indian Security Press at Nashik enabled Telgi to expand his illegal business throughout the country, according to a Frontline report.

The operation involved the sale of not only counterfeit stamp paper but also related items such as judicial court fee stamps, non-judicial stamps, revenue stamps, special adhesive stamps, notorial stamps, foreign bills, brokers notes, insurance policies, share transfer certificates and insurance agency stamps, it added.

After illegally printing the stamp papers, Telgi sold them to bulk purchasers, including banks, insurance firms, and stock brokerage firms.

A diabetic with hypertension, jail authorities admitted Telgi to the hospital four days ago after he complained of uneasiness and difficulty in breathing.

With inputs from agencies
The Union tourism ministry on Monday announced key initiatives to boost annual foreign tourist traffic to the country from the present 14.4 million to 40 million in next five years.

These included plans for setting up of a national tourism board, facilitation centres at the key airports for foreign tourists, make the world heritage monuments more attractive places, ease visa norms and invite private sector to adopt monuments to increase facilities there.

We have set an aim of providing 100 million jobs from current 43 million through the tourism sector and 40 million foreign tourists into India in the next five years, Union tourism minister KJ Alphons announced at a press conference.

We are aiming for the foreign tourist inflow to be increased to 40 million from 14.4 international tourists coming to India at present annually, the minister said.

Tourism secretary Rashmi Verma who also addressed reporters, said, We are now looking at creating better facilities at the airport so that they get clearance faster, they dont have to stand in queues. We are also setting up facilitation centres at some of the key airports like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, etc. to facilitate the people who are coming on e-visas.

While announcing other initiatives, the tourism minister said, There was a suggestion that we could set up a national tourism board. We will certainly look into it. We will have to take it to a higher level of decision making on what is possible.

Read more: Tourism ministry policy to standardise homestays by October end

Officials said that the ministry was trying to ensure that Indias world heritage sites and monuments protected by the Archaeological Survey of India actually become tourist draws with world-class infrastructure facilities.

We have launched a new scheme called Adopt-a-Monument, in which we have offered select ASI monuments and the World Heritage sites for adoption by the industry or the public sector for setting up basic amenities like clean toilets, clean drinking water, cleanliness in and around the premises and some other facilities, Verma said.

She said that seven sites have already been selected by the public sector and the private sector for adoption.

In another event on Monday, Union home minister Rajnath Singh said that the government aimed at increasing the tourism sectors contribution to the countrys GDP from 9% to 18% the in next five years.
More than a dozen aircraft of the Indian Air Force touched down and took off as part of a special drill on a 4km stretch of the Agra-Lucknow Expressway on Tuesday.

The exercise saw a C-130 J Super Hercules transport aircraft make a short landing on the highway, around 65 km from Lucknow. Garud Commandos disembarked from the aircraft, on foot as well as on a Gypsy, onto the highway-cum-runway.

It took off again, after which around 15 fighter jets touched down or made low overshoot over the highway. This is the first time a transport aircraft participated in such an exercise in India.

The jets included three Jaguar Deep penetration strike aircraft, two formations of three aircraft each of Mirage 2000s and two formations of three aircraft each of Sukhoi-30.

Here are details of the aircraft involved in the exercise:

C 130J Super Hercules

The aircraft, powered by four Rolls Royce engines, can be used for a variety of missions such as special operations, combat delivery, peacekeeping, low intensity conflict, search and rescue, disaster relief and humanitarian missions.

Personnel display skills next to an Indian Air Force Hercules C-130J aircraft that landed on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway. (PTI Photo)

Built by US aerospace major Lockheed Martin, it can carry out precision low-level flying, airdrops and landing in blackout conditions. It is operated by 15 countries including the air forces of the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Denmark and Italy.

Mirage 2000

The aircraft was inducted into the IAF in the mid-80s and has proven its sound flight safety record. A Mirage 2000 can fly from Gwalior to Delhi in less than 15 minutes.

An Indian Air Force Mirage 2000 fighter jet lands on the Lucknow-Agra Expressway. (PTI Photo)

Su-30 MKI

The IAF has contracted 272 Su-30 MKI fighter planes out of which nearly 240 have been delivered. The remaining 32 fighters are likely to be inducted over the next three years.

The first 50 jets came in ready from Russia, the remaining were and are being built under licence by the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.

Seven Su-30 jets have crashed since 2009, while one is still listed as missing. The IAF inducted its first Su-30 fighter at the Lohegaon air base in Pune in June 1997.

Jaguar

The Jaguars are deep strike fighter planes, capable of carrying nuclear payload.

Indian Air Force Jaguar aircraft fly over the Lucknow-Agra Expressway during an IAF drill. (PTI Photo)

With inputs from agencies
Security forces arrested on Tuesday a Hizbul Mujahideen militant from Tral area of Jammu and Kashmirs Pulwama district, an official said.

Arizoo Bashir was arrested by the police and security fores from Tral, a police spokesman said.

He said that Bashir was a Hizb militant and had been active for quite some time.
The home ministry has asked all states to ensure safety and security of journalists in exercising freedom of speech and expression, in the wake of incidents of attacks on mediapersons.

In an advisory to the states, the home ministry also said all cases of attacks on journalists should be investigated promptly to ensure that criminals get persecuted in a time- bound manner.

Fourth Estate is an important institution of the democracy. It ensures that citizens are able to express their opinions freely without any fear and coercion as provided under the Constitution of India.

It is the duty of the state to ensure safety and security of the journalists who ensure that the Fourth Estate discharges this key duty, the advisory said.

The central governments missive was sent in the wake of the killing two journalists, Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru and Shantanu Bhowmik in Agartala.

The ministry said from time to time, incidents of attacks on journalists and mediapersons were reported and all such cases need to be investigated promptly to ensure that criminals get persecuted in a time-bound manner.

States should also take all preventive and deterrent action as deemed required. States are already empowered to provide security to individuals based on threat perceptions, it said.

The ministry said while police and public order are state subjects under the Constitution, in view of its importance, it is drawing the attention of the state governments and Union Territory administrations from time to time towards the need for a robust criminal justice system with emphasis on prevention and control of crime.

The state administrations are requested to... ensure that a peaceful environment prevails, allowing journalists/media personnel to exercise freedom of speech and expression in their professional pursuit; ensure that the investigations are concluded in a time-bound manner and public trust in criminal justice system is maintained, it said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed on Tuesday Indias pledge to step up reconstruction initiatives in Afghanistan and called for joint efforts to combat terrorism.

He told visiting Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani that India supports a negotiated political reconciliation in his country not dictated by any other nation.

The Indian leadership reiterated its support for a negotiated political reconciliation in Afghanistan that is Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled. It was emphasised that renunciation of violence and terror; and closure of cross-border safe havens and sanctuaries were essential for any meaningful progress and lasting peace, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

India blames Pakistan-based terrorist outfits for the instability in Afghanistan and the region.

This was Ghanis fourth visit to the country in three years and 12th personal interaction with Modi, the latest after the US announced a new Afghan policy that sought a larger role for India and faulted Pakistan for doing little to rein in terrorist outfits.

India refused to send troops to Afghanistan but promised to expand its humanitarian efforts.

Modi and Ghani reviewed Indias new development initiatives in Afghanistan. Ghanis visit concluded hours before US secretary of state Rex Tillerson arrived in New Delhi.

India is one of the biggest regional donors of Afghanistan and has pledged $3.1 billion to the country since the ouster of the Taliban regime in November 2001.

The new projects cover health, agriculture, drinking water, education, renewable energy, infrastructure and skills development, and capacity building.

The two leaders agreed that these will accelerate Afghanistans reconstruction and economic development, and provide effective governance.

The Indian side pledged more assistance, if the need arises, to strengthen Afghan military and police forces. India has trained thousands of Afghan defence and security personnel.

Connectivity was another major topic of discussion. India hopes to send in the coming weeks wheat through Irans Chabahar port, which would shape new trade and transit opportunities for landlocked Afghanistan.

New Delhi also reiterated that it is ready for an integrated check post at Attari on the India-Pakistan border for Afghan trucks carrying goods to and from India.

Ghani also called on President Ram Nath Kovind and met external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj.

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Indias development works in Afghanistan, USs policy for the region and terror safe havens in Pakistan will all come up for discussion when Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday afternoon.

New Delhi has stepped up engagements with Afghanistan in recent times through a series of high-level visits. India has pumped billions of dollars to rebuild the war-torn country, an effort recognised by the US and also seen as a move to counter Pakistans influence in the troubled region.

Terrorism and terrorists safe havens remain the biggest threat to the stability of Afghanistan as well as the region, an Indian official told Hindustan Times.

A concerted effort was needed by all the countries for a stable and prosperous Afghanistan, the official said.

Modi will host the Afghan leader, who arrived in New in the morning for a day-long visit, for lunch, external affairs ministry said in a statement. The 68-year-old Ghani will also meet President Ram Nath Kovind and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj.

The focus on the region will continue as US secretary of state Rex Tillerson will be in Delhi later in the day.

The two visits come weeks after the US announced a new Afghanistan policy in August that sees a greater role for India in Afghanistan and blames Pakistan for providing sanctuary to terrorist outfits destabilising the region.

But the Trump administration warmed up to Islamabad after Pakistani troops rescued an American-Canadian couple acting on US intelligence earlier this month.

The ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan continue to be fragile, with Kabul blaming Islamabad for a series of terror strikes and backing outfits opposing the peace process.

Ghanis visit is in response to an invite by Modi as part of a series of efforts India is undertaking to ensure the peace-process in Afghanistan remains an internal process of that country.

Afghan chief executive Abdullah Abdullah and foreign minister Salahuddin Rabbani were in India in September for the meeting of the bilateral strategic partnership council.

India has refused to send troops to Afghanistan but has reiterated its commitment to train security personnel and chip in with the development effort.

Ghanis visit would allow both sides to review the entire gamut of multifaceted bilateral strategic partnership and hold consultations on promoting peace, security and prosperity in Afghanistan and efforts to combat the menace of terrorism, an external affairs ministry statement had said before the visit.

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LINCOLN  Wheels up.

Sen. Bob Krist embarked last week on his 2018 gubernatorial campaign, piloting a turbo-prop aircraft that took him soaring west on a bright October morning to launch his independent bid.

At stops from Scottsbluff back to Lincoln, the Omaha state senator pointed to high property taxes as the issue concerning most Nebraskans and suggested that it's time to "start to rebalance" the load shared by property, sales and income taxes.

But Krist also cited his legislative record and centered on the nature of his gubernatorial bid, pledging to provide "independent leadership" not beholden to partisanship or political party interests.

And, he said, he would "like to restore separation of powers" in state government, promising to work cooperatively with the Legislature and "stay out of the election of state senators."

Nebraska's nonpartisan Legislature has turned more partisan in the last few years, Krist said, while Gov. Pete Ricketts has provided endorsements and campaign funding for challengers to some incumbent senators who have not fallen in line with his wishes.

Krist has changed his party registration from Republican to nonpartisan and will avoid a GOP primary confrontation with Ricketts next May by forming a new party  which probably will be named Nebraskans United  to offer Nebraska voters an independent choice a year from next month.

The nine-year legislative veteran can gain access to the general election ballot next year through a petition process that requires about 5,000 signatures gathered statewide.

"The Republican Party has tried to kick me out and take my card away two or three times," Krist said, because of its displeasure with his independent nature and performance as a state senator.

Krist made media-centered stops in Scottsbluff, North Platte, Lexington, Holdrege and Lincoln during the initial phase of a two-day campaign tour, touching down at wind-swept airports across the state.

A 21-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force with more than 15,000 hours of military flight time, Krist piloted a Merlin 111B turbo-prop aircraft on Wednesday's tour.

During his first stop, at the Cappuccino and Company coffee shop in Scottsbluff, Krist introduced himself to western Nebraskans, suggesting that "what you see is what you get."

"Do I have all the answers?" he asked. "I do not. But I have a lot of ideas."

At North Platte, he said his initial campaign tour will allow voters to "put a face to the name."

Krist said his nine years in the Legislature give Nebraskans "a voting record to measure," one that includes efforts to protect health and human services and enact prison reforms.

"People and property taxes are my priorities, in that order," he said. "And I am a fiscal conservative."

"I'm not a stranger to bucking the system a little bit," he added. "I've never stayed completely in the box."

Krist said he is "passionate about the nonpartisan Legislature" and that he as governor would be "accessible to senators and talk to them about their ideas" early in the legislative process.

At one stop, Krist suggested that "we are starting to emulate the Kansas model and that is not where we want to go" in terms of state tax and budget policy.

During a live television interview at the NTV studio near Kearney, Krist said his candidacy "offers Nebraskans another choice" next year.

Ricketts is a slam dunk to win the Republican nomination for a second four-year term. Democrats have not yet fielded a candidate.

Krist said he is not close to naming a lieutenant governor running mate.
Indias ambitious bullet train project now has a face to go with it.

A logo in the shape of a cheetah outlining a bullet train and designed by a National Institute of Design Ahmedabad student has been chosen as National High Speed Rail Corporations mark, The Indian Express has reported.

The blue-and-red logo was chosen from about 100 applications entered in a contest. The winning candidate was selected by a three-member committee headed by known architect and painter Satish Gujral.

The contest received an overwhelming response from across the country. The dates for submitting the applications were between April 19 and May 18, an official told IE.

The cheetah represents speed, while the red and blue lines symbolise calm and reliability, the newspaper quoted unnamed sources as saying.

Two more applications -- from School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi and NID Bengaluru --were shortlisted before the committee made its choice, according to The Business Today.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe launched the project to build Indias first bullet train network in September. The Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project that is set to be completed in 2022 and it is slated to cost Rs 1,10,000 crore. Trains on this network will run at peak speeds of 350 km per hour.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe (right) shake hands in front of a Shinkansen train during their inspection of a bullet train manufacturing plant in Kobe, Japan. (AFP File Photo)

The government has said the bullet train technology will revolutionise and transform the railways.

Critics, however, say the funds for the bullet train project could have been better utilised to revamp the ailing Indian Railways, which has witnessed various setbacks in the form of derailments and accidents in the past.

The government has proposed the countrys second high-speed train from Delhi to Amritsar via Chandigarh.
India plans to discuss weaponisation of the Guardian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with US secretary of state Rex Tillerson on October 25, during his visit to New Delhi as part of a five-nation tour of the subcontinent.

The US had formally submitted its pricing and availability proposal for the sale of 22 Guardian UAVs to India before defence secretary James Mattis visit last month. India hopes to use the high-altitude long-endurance drone to protect its 7,000-km-long coastline from potential infiltrators.

Tillerson is slated to arrive in New Delhi on Tuesday evening after flying from Pakistan. He will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and national security advisor Ajit Doval the next day.

Diplomatic sources in New Delhi and Washington told HT that Tillerson will review bilateral ties, besides focusing on terrorism emanating from the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, bilateral synergy in the Indo-Pacific zone and security concerns over North Korea.

While New Delhi remained tight-lipped on the defence acquisition, senior officials said the 22 UAVs  priced at around $3 billion  would be more cost-effective if they were weaponised.

The weaponised version of the Guardian is called the Sea Avenger, and it comes with a top-of-the-line synthetic aperture radar and an electro-optical targeting system for firing Hellfire missiles and laser-guided bombs.

Tillerson and Doval are expected to discuss several global issues, including the North Korean nuclear threat; terrorism in Pakistan; Qatar-Saudi Arabia discord; Indo-Pacific enhanced bilateral naval cooperation; and the future of the Islamic State.

The two sides will firm up their commitment to reconstructing and stabilising Afghanistan, and look at ways to bring the Taliban (minus Pakistan support) to the negotiating table. India will also urge Tillerson to put pressure on Pakistan to act against terror groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

We are looking forward to Tillersons visit, and plan to take our bilateral relationship on the path defined by him in his speech at Washingtons Centre for Strategic and International Studies on October 18, said a senior South Block official.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that he will visit India in January, six months after Narendra Modi visited the Jewish state.

Netanyahu will be only the second Israeli Prime Minister to visit India. His visit next year would be happening almost 15 years after Ariel Sharon visited New Delhi in 2003. In the past year, I have visited all the continent besides Antarctica, Netanyahu said at the opening of the Knessets (Israeli parliament) winter session on Monday.

And in January, I will make a reciprocal visit to my dear good friend, Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, whose population is a significant part of humanity, he added.

Modis visit to Israel in July this year celebrated 25 years of establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The Indian Prime Minister skipped Palestine during his trip leading many analysts to say that New Delhi was changing its rules of engagement in the region.

Modis visit, the first by an Indian Prime Minister, was termed by many as de-hyphenation of New Delhis ties with the Palestinians.

However, government sources in Delhi said they cannot confirm the visit at this stage. Diplomatic sources said the PM expressed the wish to reciprocate the gesture of PM Modi visiting Israel by paying a return visit here in January. But as it its customary, the dates will be announced after consultations with both sides.
Suspected militants attacked eight houses of political workers in south Kashmir in the past one week  from October 16-22  with observers saying the sudden spike indicates the failure of security apparatus in the state.

Though such attacks by insurgents on political workers, perceived to be pro-india, have been occurring sporadically in the Valley for a long time now, the current spate has caught attention because of its frequency.

The recent attacks began with the killing of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) leader and former village sarpanch Mohammad Ramzan Sheikh by a group of suspected militants in Shopian district on the night of October 16.

One of the militants was also killed when his colleague opened fire. The next evening, after the funeral of the slain militant, a mob of 200 set the political workers home ablaze, probably blaming the family for the death of the militant. Since then, from October 19 to 22, there have been multiple instances every day in Tral, Kulgam and Shopian.

Militants have either lobbed grenades at the residences of a politician or a group of masked gunmen have barged into a house and ransacked it while threatening the inhabitants.

Yes, these attacks are taking place and we are doing our best to stop this, director general of state police (DGP) SP Vaid said.

Seven of the victims belonged to ruling PDP, while one was an EX-MLA of National Conference (NC).

Calls to senior PDP leader and minister Naeem Akhter and youth president Waheed Para went unanswered. On the killing of Sheikh, Para had tweeted: Killers are always losers.

A tweet by NC spokesperson Junaid Azim Mattu on Sunday read, Spate of attacks on mainstream political leaders and workers in Kashmir is alarming, threatens the existence of the democratic system in J&K.

Commenting on the incidents, a senior police officer said, Why these attacks are taking place is the job of experts to analyse. But I can say that police will get a breakthrough very soon.

On the other side of the narrative were allegations of vandalism by forces in the houses of active militants in Shopian and Pulwama last week.

Locals in south Kashmir see the attacks by militants as a retaliation to the vandalism at their homes. On Monday, there were protests in Tral against the alleged ransacking of militants homes. Media reports documented such a protest in Tral last week too.

When asked about a link between the allegations and the attacks, DGP Vaid said he has no idea.

Meanwhile, two videos emerged on social media on Sunday, which captured militants threatening political workers.

The militants were heard telling the workers that if the vandalism of their homes and harassment of their families continued, the extremists would make them migrate out of Kashmir. What have our families done? a militants voice asks the political worker , even as he tells him that a gun should be fought with a gun and not by targeting families.

HT could not verify the authenticity of the videos.

The state needs to come up with well-meaning strategies to put an end to this vicious cycle of violence in Kashmir. Addressing the predicament of Kashmiri youth and trying to counsel them might be a good option rather than harassment, surveillance and torture, said Noor Baba, a renowned Srinagar-based political scientist.

List of attacks on political workers in Kashmir in a week

October 22:

Grenade attack on the house of an ex-MLA of the NC in Tral town of Pulwama district.

Militants ransacked the house of a zonal president of the PDP in Kulgam district.

The house of a PDP youth leader was ransacked in Kulgam.

October 21:

Militants barged into and ransacked the house of a PDP zonal president in Dadsara area of Tral.

Militants reportedly ransacked the house of a PDP worker in Wachi area of Shopian.

October 20:

Grenade lobbed at the house of a PDP MLA in Tral.

October 19:

Militants attacked the residence of a PDP MLA in Zainapora area of Shopian.

October 16:

A PDP worker was gunned down by a group of suspected militants in Shopian. One of the militants was also killed when his colleague had opened fire. The next day (October 17), a mob of around 200 set the PDP workers home ablaze, blaming the family for the death of the militant.

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SASARAM: A vigilante mob lynched four criminals who were trying to escape after firing at a businessman in Rohtas district of southwest Bihar on Tuesday.

Rohtas superintendent of police (SP) Manavjeet Singh Dhillon said eight criminals reached Koath Market in Dawath police station area at 7.30am and fired indiscriminately at the garment shop of Vikas Chaudhary, husband of district board member Rinky Kumari. A bullet hit another businessman Niranjan Chaudhary alias Bhulan Chaudhary, Dhillon said.

The locals chased and caught four of the eight criminals when they were trying to escape on three motorcycles, and thrashed them with sticks, rods and stones, the SP said. A police team, which arrived later admitted them to the primary health centre, where they succumbed to injuries, he added. Four other criminals, however, managed to escape, Dhillon added.

The incident took place in Dawath block, 52 km north of district headquarters Sasaram and 128 km southwest of state capital Patna.

The slain criminals, in the age group of 18-25 years, were yet to be identified, Dhillon said.The police had recovered a pistol, four live and four empty cartridges, mobile phones and a motorcycle from the place where they were attacked by the mob, the SP added.

The incident was related to an extortion demand made to Rinky Kumari a month back, he said.

A case for culpable homicide had been registered against unknown persons and police were trying to identify the assailants.
Gabbar Singh Tax vs Dramebaaz Party No.1: Jibes fly as Cong, BJP take each other on in Gujarat

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday over the state of the economy and political bribery allegations as he tried to reach out to opposition leaders in poll-bound Gujarat. At a rally in Gandhinagar, Gandhi repeatedly commended Patel quota protest leader Hardik Patel and Dalit leader Jignesh Mewani, two prominent anti-BJP figures whose support is crucial for the Congress to snatch power in the prime ministers home state. Gandhi also criticised the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and called the shock recall of high-value currency notes last November a personal whim of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Goods and Services Tax (GST) has destroyed small shop owners and businessmenit is a Gabbar Singh Tax, he said. Read the story here.

Tie-up or not? Mystery deepens as Hardik denies meeting Rahul at Ahmedabad hotel

Firebrand Patidar leader Hardik Patel has rejected reports that he met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi at an Ahmedabad hotel on Monday. Local television channels ran CCTV footage that showed Patel entering the hotels premises late on Sunday night, and emerging around 4 pm the next day. Gandhi arrived at the same establishment around 1 pm on Monday. However, there was no visual evidence of the two meeting up, and HT was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the CCTV footage. The Congress had invited three young community representatives  OBC leader Alpesh Thakor, Dalit leader Jignesh Mewani and Patel  for talks with Gandhi. Read the story here.

I will need to talk to everybody, says Dineshwar Sharma, Modi govts Kashmir interlocutor

For a substantive dialogue, I will need to talk to everybody, former Intelligence Bureau director Dineshwar Sharma told Hindustan Times, minutes after home minister Rajnath Singh announced his name as the governments representative to lead a sustained dialogue process for Jammu and Kashmir. The state has been on the boil since the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani in an encounter in July last year. Sharma, who headed the Intelligence Bureau last year when violent protests followed the killing of Wani, was called in for a meeting with national security advisor Ajit Doval and the home minister a few hours before the formal announcement, top sources revealed. Read the story here.

Dont need to stand up for national anthem in movie halls to prove patriotism: Supreme Court

A Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra hinted on Monday that it may modify its 2016 verdict and make it optional for cinema halls to play the National anthem. The top court also asked the Centre to consider amending the national flag code if it wanted to enforce the playing of the national anthem in cinema halls across the country. In November 2016, the court passed an order, saying, All the cinema halls in India shall play the National Anthem before the feature film starts and all present in the hall are obliged to stand up to show respect to the National Anthem. On Monday, Chief Justice Misra said the court may modify its order and may replace the word shall with may. Until then the November order will be in operation. Read the story here.

One year of demonetisation: Opposition parties plan protests across states on November 8

Key opposition party leaders decided on Monday to launch protests across the states on November 8 on the fallout of demonetisation as it completes one year. Some parties have, however, maintained that instead of joint programmes, they may opt for simultaneous events keeping in mind regional sensitivities. In Tamil Nadu, the communists can share a stage with Congress, DMK and other parties, but in Kerala or West Bengal, there can be separate arrangements, said a Leftist leader. Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and I will be speaking to representatives of 18 regional parties on the joint action plan that is being proposed, breakaway Janata Dal (United) leader Sharad Yadav told HT. Read the story here.

Bomb threat at Taj Mahal, turns out to be hoax

Police in Agra went into a tizzy on Monday evening after an unidentified caller said there was a bomb at the Taj Mahal. Police and security agencies searched for the bomb but it turned out to be a hoax. Raja Singh, the in-charge of Tajganj police station, said the phone call was received at the emergency number 100 at Lucknow around 9.40pm. A search operation was launched and the carried and a Bomb Disposal Squad was called in. The lights around Taj Mahal were put on and sniffer dogs were also brought in. Read the story here.

40-foot whale carcass washes up at Mumbai shore; second in 5 months

Five months after a 45-foot-long Brydes whale carcass washed ashore at Juhu beach in two pieces in May, a similar incident was reported on Monday from Navy Nagar, Colaba. A 40-feet carcass of a Brydes whale had washed ashore in two pieces. Though the experts from state mangrove cell are yet to ascertain the cause of the mammals death, they suspect that the animal may have died two weeks ago. The incident first came to light on Saturday morning after local residents reported about a whale carcass in the shallow water near the shore. Read the story here.

US gives Pakistan a list of counter-terror requests

The US has given Pakistan a list of very specific requests for action against the Taliban and other terror groups it allegedly shelters, adding that relations with Islamabad will now be conditions-based. We have made some very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support that the Taliban receives and the other terrorist organisations receive in Pakistan, secretary of state Rex Tillerson told reporters, after arriving unannounced in Afghanistan. And weve said in this whole strategy this is a conditions-based approach, and so our relationship with Pakistan will also be conditions-based, he said. Read the story here.

India to host Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, US secy of state Rex Tillerson

India will host Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday, the same day US secretary of state Rex Tillerson arrives in New Delhi for talks on a range of regional issues. The visits come after the US announced a new policy for Afghanistan in August, envisaging a greater role for India and blaming Pakistan for providing sanctuaries for terrorist outfits destabilising the region. During his visit, President Ghani will hold discussions with Modi, who will also host a lunch in his honour, the external affairs ministry said in a statement. Read the story here.

Canadian PM Trudeau tasks special envoy to press Myanmar on refugees

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed a special envoy to Myanmar on Monday tasked with pressing its leadership to resolve the Rohingya refugee crisis. Trudeau also announced in a statement that Canada would be doubling its contribution this year for humanitarian aid for the refugees to Can $12 million (US$9.5 million). Former senior MP Bob Rae will reinforce the urgent need to resolve the humanitarian and security crisis in Myanmar and to address the situation affecting vulnerable populations, including the Rohingya Muslim community, read the statement, released as an international donor conference opened in Geneva. Read the story here.
A day after senior BJD leader Damodar Rout said his party would not mind an alliance with the Congress to keep the BJP at bay in the 2019 Odisha assembly polls, chief minister Naveen Patnaik said his party would keep its distance from both the national parties.

BJD is equidistant from Congress & BJP. With the blessings of our people we will continue in our fight for the rights of Odisha, tweeted Patnaik, effectively rejecting agriculture minister Routs remarks.

BJD is equidistant from Congress & BJP. With the blessings of our people we will continue in our fight for the rights of #Odisha.  Naveen Patnaik (@Naveen_Odisha) October 24, 2017

Rout had raised eyebrows on Monday by saying that if Congress wants to join the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) to counter the Bharatiya Janata Partys (BJPs) communal agenda, then the ruling regional party is ready to accept them.

Routs remarks about an alliance with the Congress triggered a sharp reaction from BJD MP Baijayant Panda, who said it was difficult to accept the possibility. Those of us who assisted in founding the party to undo the gross damage to Odisha by them in 80s/90s will find this difficult to swallow, Panda tweeted.

Those of us who assisted in founding the party to undo the gross damage to Odisha by them in '80s/'90s will find this difficult to swallow https://t.co/2XV8y84Bmm  Baijayant Jay Panda (@PandaJay) October 23, 2017

After Patnaiks tweet, Rout clarified on Tuesday he had suggested the alliance only in the context of defeating the BJP.

I never said we need the support of the Congress. I meant to say that in the current political scenario, the way BJP is ruling, there is every possibility of a danger being posed to the unity and integrity of India. Hence, a grand alliance like one taking place in Gujarat is welcome.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested the son of Hizbul Mujahideen founder Syed Salahuddin in a six-year-old case of terror funding through hawala channels on Tuesday, a day after the Centre appointed an interlocutor to hold a sustained dialogue with all stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir.

The NIA in a statement charged 42-year-old Shahid Yousuf of receiving and collecting funds through international wire money transfer from a Saudi Arabia-based Aizaz Ahmad Bhat, who is accused of being a member of the Pakistan-based terror group.

The money was being wire transferred to Shahid Yousuf by Bhat, the NIA said in the statement.

Salahuddin said a fake story was made to arrest his son, Hizbul Mujahideen spokesman Saleem Hashmi quoted him as saying, reported Kashmir News Service (KNS): ,

Yousuf has a masters degree in agriculture and works as a village agricultural assistant in the states agriculture department. He was summoned by the agency to Delhi on October 16 and has left for the Capital accompanied by his relative.

Sources said Yousuf, who was given a permanent job in March this year, has already been questioned thrice in Srinagar in connection with the same case.

The case dates back to 2011 when the Delhi Polices special cell registered a case against Hizbul Mujahideen under sections 13, 17, 18, and 20 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.

The federal agency has filed two chargesheets against six people including Ghulam Ahmad Bhat, a close aide of separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani. And out of these six people, four are in judicial custody and facing trial.

Salahuddin has also been declared as a proclaimed offender in the case and a red corner notice was issued against him on January 22, 2014.

Two others - Mohammed Maqbool Pandit and Aijaz Ahmed Bhat - have also been chargesheeted by the NIA but are absconding. A red corner notice has been issued against both of them.

The agency said Yousuf has been one of the several contacts of Bhat, originally a resident of Kashmir, who have been in telephonic contact with him to receive the money transfer codes.

Yousuf is the third son of the militant commander who fought and lost the assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir in 1987 and then left the valley for Pakistan where he founded Hizbul Mujahideen. He has five sons and two daughters, who were all reportedly minors when he left Kashmir.

Indian security agencies suspect that he directs terrorist attacks from Pakistan and is also the chief of United Jihad Council, an amalgamation of terrorist outfits operating in the valley.
The Rashtriya Sikh Sangat has rejected allegations that the RSS is involved in a subversive campaign to merge the Sikh identity with Hinduism.

We do not shy away from accepting our connection with the RSS. They support and nurture us, but also respect our gurus and our faith as a separate religion, GS Gill, national president of the Sangat, told HT on Tuesday. It also criticised the Akal Takht, which has called for the boycott of an event being held by the RSS affiliate to mark the 350th birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh (the tenth Sikh saint), in New Delhi on Wednesday.

RSS leader Mohan Bhagwat will be the main speaker at the event. Leaders of various sects, including Namdhari, Nirankari and Nirmal saints, are expected to attend.

The Sangat works in Punjab, Haryana and parts of Rajasthan to consolidate the RSS ideology. It also shares the Sanghs concerns over forced conversions being carried out by missionaries in far-flung areas of Punjab and Rajasthan.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat will deliver the main address at an event held to celebrate the 350th birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh in New Delhi on Wednesday. (HT File)

However, hardline Sikh groups such as the Dal Khalsa have accused the Sangat of colluding with the RSS in attempts to blur the line between Hindus and Sikhs. They also claim that the RSS is trying to gain control of their religious bodies through the Sangat.

Akal Takht jathedar Giani Gurbachan Singh had referred to an earlier decree that prohibits Sikhs from associating with the RSS to make the boycott call. No one can be allowed to distort Sikh history, and this kind of act cannot be tolerated. Sikhs are a separate qaum (ethnic group), and they have a distinct identity and a unique history. When they dont interfere in the rituals, beliefs and code of ethics of any other religion, how can they tolerate interference from others in their own? he asserted.

The accusation is vehemently denied by the Sangat, which runs as many as 500 ekais (branches similar to RSS shakhas) across country. This is a deliberate attempt to create confusion, and portray the Sangat in a poor light, Gill alleged.

He said the Sangat was aided by the RSS in clearing misconceptions regarding the community in the aftermath of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. It had become impossible for Sikhs to travel outside Punjab. There was distrust, and Sikhs  who have a glorious history  were viewed with suspicion. It was on the Prakash Utsav of Guru Nanak in 1986 that the Sangat was formed, and has since received support from the RSS.

Gill asserted that the Sangat follows all the tenets of Sikhism. I dont want to comment on what the RSS feels about other minorities, but it respects our faith, he added.

The Punjab RSS unit also issued a statement reiterating that it considers Sikhism a separate religion, akin to Buddhism and Jainism.

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Whats common between Virbhadra Singh, Vikramaditya Singh, Rohit Thakur, Vijai Singh Mankotia, Harish Janartha, Vinay Kumar and Ashish Butail? Apart from the fact that all of them have an eye on a Vidhan Sabha seat, the leaders can boast of having passed out from the same school.

The seven leaders are alumni of Shimlas famous Bishop Cotton School. The school, founded in 1859, is one of Asias oldest schools and has produced many such leaders who are now known faces in Indian politics.

Virbhadra Singh, the scion of erstwhile royal state of Rampur Bushar, and the six-time chief minister of Himachal Pradesh passed out of the school in 1951. The 83-year-old leader had initially joined Colonel Brown School and then moved to Bishop Cotton. The leader, popularly known as Raja Sahab, was known to have excellent academic records. Whats more, he is also said to have won many prizes in school debates. Singh also served as the captain of Ibbetson House.

His son, Vikramaditya Singh, who is making his electoral debut this time has also spent a decade in the school.

Virbhadras arch rival Vijai Singh Mankotia too is an alumnus of the school. Mankotia, a retired major and a sword of honour holder from the Indian Military Academy, is contesting from Shahpur assembly constituency this time again. The retired major, who entered the political fray in 1982 will be contesting the ninth election of his political career. He has also served as the vice-chairmen of the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Corporation chairmen but was dropped following his differences with Virbhadra Singh.

Apart from that, former chief minister Ram Lal Thakurs grandson, Rohit Thakur, who is contesting his third election from Jubbal constituency this time. Rohit, who won twice from his grandfathers constituency, says, The spirit of camaraderie that the school infused in me is what keeps me going in the elections. I remember the school mottoOvercome evil with goodwhen the going gets tough.

Another school alumnus, Harish Janartha, known for his sportsmanship is also contesting his second election from Shimla urban this time. Janartha who was denied a Congress ticket is contesting as an independent candidate.

Chief parliamentary secretary Vinay Kumar is contesting his second elections from Renuka, a constituency that his father held for long. Ashish Butail, the son of Vidhan Sabha speaker Brij Bihari Butail, is making his political debut from Palampur.

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Ruhr Metropolitan Region/Brussels. The mayors and district authority heads of the Ruhr Metropolitan Region and the regional director of the Ruhr Regional Association (RVR) have joined the current debate in Brussels on the future of European cohesion policy with a position paper. In the paper the political leaders of the Ruhr area argue for the continuation of cohesion policy, as the main instrument of EU investment policy. The activities supported by the European Community are part of a "grassroots" policy that creates a sustainable link between the EU in Brussels and towns, cities and districts in the regions. The Ruhr area representatives also back equal support for urban and rural areas. This is particularly important for the Ruhr Metropolitan Region as a polycentric region with a marked urban-rural mix. The delegation discussed the future cohesion policy in talks with Commissioner Oettinger in Brussels, and in five dialogues with the DGs at administrative level.

Common objective of the 2017 EU-Ruhr dialogue: the Ruhr as a model European region

Karola Gei-Netthofel, regional director of the Ruhr Regional Association, said: "This is the fourth visit of the mayors and district authority heads to Brussels and we would like to strengthen cooperation with European bodies and underline our objective of becoming, as a city of cities, a model European region for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, in the context of the future cohesion policy".

The Ruhr delegation presented its vision of what successful cooperation between the EU and a region could look like in five specialised discussions with high-ranking representatives from nine European Commission DGs and in a Wednesday evening panel discussion held at the European Committee of the Regions during the fourth EU-Ruhr dialogue on 18 and 19 October. The discussion partners included Gunther Oettinger, EU Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources, Marc Lemaitre, director-general of the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy, Carsten Pillath from the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, Kieran McCarthy for the European Committee of the Regions, and MEPs.

Both the proposed pilot projects from the Ruhr Metropolitan Region and the wide-ranging regional and inter-municipal cooperation were of great interest to the European discussion partners. The Ruhr area scored points in Brussels, inter alia, with its long experience of land rehabilitation, the current "Mark 517" project (the redevelopment of a former car manufacturing plant), its integrated urban development and district projects, initiatives and projects to promote the Digital Ruhr region, skills and integration measures, pilot projects to reduce youth unemployment, the development of the environmental economy, research consortia and the Ruhr University Alliance (UAMR), coordinated business development policies, the various mobility concepts, the Ruhr Green Infrastructure and the integrated climate strategies that are already well known and in demand throughout Europe, for which InnovationCity Ruhr is the flagship. During the dialogue between the Ruhr Metropolitan Region and the EU, direct programmes were brought up by the EU that run outside the framework of the North Rhine-Westphalia operational programmes. The possibility is currently being considered of selecting the Ruhr area as one of ten model regions for successful structural change.

Early participation of municipalities in the reconfiguration of EU support policy

In addition to a clear commitment on the part of the EU to continuing support policy for all European regions, the position paper of the mayors and district authority heads contains three key proposals for improved cooperation: towns, cities and districts should be more closely involved in shaping the guidelines and selecting support instruments. This is where the city leaders believe that the greatest expertise in local-level challenges is to be found. At the same time, administration and applications for funding need to be thoroughly simplified. Thirdly: the Ruhr Metropolitan Region advocates a prompt start for the new funding period on 1 January 2021, so that measures can be seamlessly continued.

The region, its European activities and the position paper on the web:

www.europa.rvr.ruhr

Opinions from the Ruhr area delegation:

Bernd Tischler, mayor of Bottrop : "I am of course particularly pleased that our Innovation City project has attracted a great deal of attention. Our approach is considered a blueprint for many cities across Europe."

Thomas Eiskirch, mayor of Bochum: "Europe is a living and visible reality in the Ruhr area. This is clear from the development of business sites and projects to make residential areas more attractive, as well as, for example, from the QuAZ initiative, which offers language courses and vocational training for immigrants. If people are aware of the impact of the EU at local level, this also increases support for the European idea."

Pascal Ledune, Wirtschaftsforderung Dortmund (Dortmund economic development office): "The EU took up the idea of a Ruhr Digital Model Region with great interest. There are many initiatives in the Ruhr area for linking start-ups with existing businesses."

Michael Makiolla, head of Unna district authority: "It is of great importance for the future of our region that it maintain close contact with the relevant people at European level. This is the only way the Unna district can benefit from EU financial support programmes."

Opinions from the European discussions partners:

Marc Lemaitre, director-general of the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy, European Commission : "The fourth EU-Ruhr dialogue and the position paper of the Ruhr Metropolitan Region come at exactly the right time. For the European Union the practical experience of the Ruhr area is of great importance. It would be good if the Ruhr area were to take part in the forthcoming pan-European initiatives for exchanges of experience on integrated urban and regional development."

Gunther H. Oettinger, Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources, European Commission , welcomed the commitment of the Ruhr area towns, cities and districts to the continuation of European cohesion policy, and provided an update on steps currently being taken to prepare the future medium-term European budget framework. He also recommended that the Ruhr Metropolitan Region put its proposals to the Federal Government in Berlin.

Lambert van Nistelrooij (MEP / EPP): "We need direct initiatives of this kind from the cities and regions as part of the political debate here in Brussels. We need alliances in Europe and the position paper of the Ruhr area is a good basis for this."

Kieran McCarthy, member of the European Committee of the Regions, Ireland: "The European Committee of the Regions needs grassroots experience from the cities and regions. The views of the Ruhr area exactly match our Cohesion Alliance initiative. It is a very good thing that the towns, cities and districts of the Ruhr Metropolitan Region will be joining this Alliance today."

The Ruhr Metropolitan Region is one of the largest conurbations in Europe. It comprises four districts and eleven urban districts with a total population of about 5.1 million. Ruhr Regional Association studies show that in the 2007-2013 period more than EUR 1bn flowed into the region from the three Structural Funds alone (ERDF, ESF and EAFRD), of which over EUR 630m came from the EU.

The delegation represents the towns/cities of Bochum, Bottrop, Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Hagen, Hamm, Herne, Mulheim an der Ruhr, Oberhausen and the districts of Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis, Recklinghausen, Unna and Wesel and the Ruhr Regional Association.

EU cohesion policy

Through the cohesion policy the EU invests around 1/3 of its total budget in Europes regions and cities. The aim is to promote the harmonious development of the entire European Community. In particular, the policy aims to even out development disparities and to achieve economic growth in all Member States.

The instruments used for implementing cohesion policy in North Rhine-Westphalia are the three European Structural and Investment Funds: the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2014-2020), the ESF (European Social Fund in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2014-2020) and the EAFRD (European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development in North Rhine-Westphalia 2014, NRW programme for rural areas). Over the past decades these European support instruments have played a decisive part in promoting structural change in the Ruhr area. Between 2007 and 2013 more than EUR 1bn flowed into the region from these funds alone, of which EUR 630m came from the EU.

The current funding period runs from 2014 to 2020, and preparations for the shaping of the future cohesion policy post-2021 are already in full swing in Brussels. Regional input is therefore very timely.

The participants in the Ruhr Metropolitan Regions visit to Brussels
The Delhi high court reserved on Tuesday its verdict on Congress parliamentarian Shashi Tharoors plea for a restraint order on journalist Arnab Goswami and his television channel from airing any news or debate about his wifes death.

He requested the court to stop misreporting on wife Sunanda Pushkars death, saying his right to be left alone and right to silence must be respected.

Pushkar was found dead in a five-star hotel suite in south Delhi on January 17, 2014.

For their part, the journalist and his channel defended the broadcast and said the news item showed evidence and the police report.

Tharoor filed on May 26 a Rs2-crore civil defamation suit against Goswami and Republic TV in the high court.

The MP for Thiruvananthapuram filed an interim application in the defamation suit for stopping the channel from broadcasting any news about Pushkars death, which is still being investigated.

Senior advocate Salman Khurshid, appearing for Tharoor, said Goswami and his channel should be directed not to mention the expression murder of Sunanda Pushkar as no competent court has said so about her death. He also pleaded that the trial shouldnt be prejudiced.

Goswami and the channels lawyer countered that they havent condemned Tharoor or suggested that he was involved in the death.

Senior advocate Sandeep Sethi said the Congress leader was not called the killer of his wife by the journalist or the channel, as claimed by Tharoor.

After hearing the arguments, the court reserved its order.
Patidar stir leader Hardik Patel on Monday called the Congress a chor (thief) and ruling Bharatiya Janata Party a mahachor (super thief) and said he will support the grand old party in order to defeat the saffron outfit in Gujarat, where the crucial assembly elections are due later this year.

But have patience. Do not support (Congress) just now, Patel said addressing a public rally at Mandal in north Gujarat, where he reached a couple of hours late on Monday night.

He also admitted he was present at a luxury hotel in Ahmedabad at the same time when the Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi checked into the premises but said he did not meet him amid swirling speculations they spoke to each other.

                !!        !!      Hardik Patel (@HardikPatel_) October 24, 2017

Patel, the face of influential Patidar communitys agitation for reservation in government jobs and admission to educational institutes, claimed he gave the meeting with Gandhi a miss owing to his busy schedule that included a roadshow and public rallies in north Gujarat.

Local television channels ran close-circuit television (CCTV) footage, which is available with the Hindustan Times, that showed Patel entering the Ummed Hotel late on Sunday night, and leaving through the back door in a brand new car without a registration plate at around 4pm the next day. Gandhi arrived at the same establishment around 1pm on Monday.

After the Congresss invite, I reached the hotel on Sunday at 3am. I met their (Congress) Gujarat in-charge (Gehlot). As it was too late, I decided to stay back at the hotel  But they (Bharatiya Janata Party) got the CCTV camera clips leaked because everything here (in Gujarat) is their (BJP) property, the 24-year-old said.

I can also explain why I reached so late here. I could not come out (of the hotel) due to medias presence. I had not met Rahul Gandhi but the media would have claimed otherwise. But I did not meet (Pakistans Nawaz) Sharif at midnight like (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi, he added.

The Congress had invited three young community representatives  OBC leader Alpesh Thakor, Dalit leader Jignesh Mewani and Patel  for talks with Gandhi during his visit to poll-bound Gujarat. While Thakor officially joined the Congress at a rally held in Gandhinagar, Mewani gave the event a miss.

The grand old party offered tickets to all the three youth leaders but Patel said he has no intention of contesting the polls. Sources say he is wary of siding with the Congress because it would provide the BJP with an opportunity to counter his influence on the politically significant community.

After the CCTV footage showing Patels presence at the hotel emerged, both the Patidar leader and Gujarat Congress in-charge Ashok Gehlot confirmed they met but said Gandhi was not present during their meeting.

Congress state president Bharatsinh Solanki told reporters that the meeting between Gandhi and Patel and Mewani was postponed and was likely to be held either on November 1, 2 or 3 when he will be back in Gujarat for Navsarjan Yatra.

Gehlot in a series of tweets also took a dig at the BJP government for the leak of CCTV camera clips.

Had a good meeting with Hardik Patel and his colleagues. Glad to met with #HardikPatel, #AlpeshThakore and #JigneshMevani,

1/  Ashok Gehlot (@ashokgehlot51) October 23, 2017

I met Hardik n Jignesh in Ummed Hotel. IB, Police are chckng hotel rooms. @PMOIndia @narendramodi ji Wat is happening in Gandhijis Gujarat? ...The rooms which hv been booked in my name are being checked. We are openly saying, we have met them n will keep meeting them in future too (sic), he said in another tweet.

While senior Patidar leaders and religious organisations have accepted the BJPs initiative to form the Non Reserved Category Educational and Economic Development Board and Commission against their demand of an OBC status, Patel has maintained that the agitation for the status would continue.

Though Patidars are traditional supporters of the BJP, Patels rallies against the Gujarat government have so far received a good response from community members.

With Thakor, an OBC leader who was opposed to the Patidar agitation, joining the Congress, the community that either wants an OBC status or the quota system to be abolished, may go against Patels plan to join hands with the grand old party, if he has any.
A seven-year-old girl died when her uncle allegedly pushed her and two of her sisters, aged four and nine, out of a running train in Uttar Pradesh early on Tuesday.

Police are trying to track the family from Motihari in Bihar and travelling on the Amritsar-Saharsa Express. They were on their way home from Amritsar.

An officer said the girls were thrown out in Sitapur, about 90km from Lucknow, and one of them was found dead along the tracks. She was identified as Muniya.

Her siblings, Algun Khatoon and Shamim, the youngest, were found 50km away. They were admitted to Sitapur district hospital with grave and multiple wounds. Shamim suffered a fractured skull.

Binod Kumar Singh, the railway police inspector general for Lucknow, said eldest sister Algun broke her hand and hip joint but was able to speak a bit.

She apparently told police initially that their father pushed them off the train, but later said an uncle committed the crime.

The motive was not known immediately but it was suspected that the family was trying to get rid of the sisters. In a traditionally male-dominated society, sons are viewed as assets or breadwinners while girls are often seen as a liability.

Motihari police have been approached to track the family and know the truth. An investigation is on, Singh said.

According to a local police officer, the girls were extremely weak and may not have eaten for days. We are investigating whether poverty was a reason for the crime, he said.

The three sisters were found in separate locations.

Officer Rajendra Sharma of Ramkot police station in Sitapur said they were alerted around 3am about a girl lying along railway tracks near Bhavanipur village.

When we reached the spot and found the youngest sister, news came about the eldest sister being found near Goregaon village. Information about the third sister came later in the day, he said.

According to Sharma, it took time to establish that the three girls were sisters.
The Rajasthan government referred a controversial bill shielding public servants from probe to an assembly select committee on Tuesday, hours after chief minister Vasundhara Raje appeared to have a re-think on a piece of legislation that has triggered widespread criticism.

The Rajasthan Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill 2017 bars courts from taking up complaints against ministers, judges and officials  ranging from a peon to the states top bureaucrat  without prior government sanction. It also bars the media from disclosing the identity of the accused without approval. Any violation can attract a jail term of up to two years.

Official sources said the government might rework the most controversial provisions in the bill  a gag on the media and a 180-day window for the administration to sanction prosecution against an accused public servant.

Assembly select committees usually have members from government and opposition. The Rajasthan government had tabled the bill on Monday and announced the select committee in the assembly on Tuesday. Details about the constitution of the committee and any proposed timeframe were awaited.

The decision came after a late-night meeting called by Raje that was attended by senior ministers, BJP state president and top bureaucrats. Sources said the meeting had decided to rethink the bill, which is already facing legal challenges in the Rajasthan high court and protests by the opposition Congress.
A Dalit sarpanch in Kota district has lodged a police complaint alleging threat to his life from liquor mafia for initiating a drive for liquor ban in his gram panchayat.

In his complaint to the police, Nandlal Meghwal, 35, the sarpanch of Dolya Gram Panchayat under Ladpura block of Kota rural, alleged that on Monday night he got a call on his mobile phone from people linked to the liquor mafia. They allegedly threatened to kill him if he continued with the campaign to ban liquor in the gram panchayat.

Following which Nandlal, who is also the district president of the Kota Sarpanch Sangh (Association), lodged a complaint at the Mandana police station. He named Cheetar Lal, from whose mobile phone the call was allegedly made, and Bhagchand for issuing the life threat.

The Dolya Gram Panchayat had taken a decision at the gram sabha held on October 2 for complete liquor ban in the gram panchayat, as liquor ruins families, and later a memorandum was handed over to the district collector in support of the resolution on October 3, Nandlal said.

Later, it came to light that there is no authorised liquor shop in the gram panchayat and the existing shops are running illegally, he said. Now, when process for closing the illicit liquor shops is underway, the rattled liquor mafia is issuing life threat, he added.

Mandana police station circle inspector Nand Singh said Nandlal has given a police complaint of life threat, on which a probe will be done. Also, efforts are being made to trace the accused through the mobile locations, he added.

When I visited the location to check the sale of liquor, no such activity was found, which indicates that the liquor vendors had shifted the stock elsewhere before arrival of the police, the officer said.
Protesting against the Rajasthan government move to amend criminal laws, journalists wearing black armbands held a protest march in Jaipur Tuesday. The protestors were briefly detained by the police.

Meanwhile, leading journalist organisations, including the Press Club of India and the Indian Womens Press Corps, Tuesday slammed the draconian Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill, 2017 tabled by the Rajasthan government, saying it restrains the media from acting as a watchdog and ombudsman of society.

In a letter to Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje, they said the Bill restrains the reporting by the media of any possible allegations made against public officers.

Not only does this clampdown on reporting militate against public interest as the public are impacted by government policies and decisions - good or bad - but the Bill subverts the basic freedom of the press which is enshrined in the spirit of Article 19 (1) (a) of the Indian Constitution, said the organisations that also included the Press Association and the Federation of Press Clubs in India.

In their letter, forwarded to the media, they noted that it is ironic and unfortunate that at a time when there is a great demand and an even greater need for public accountability and transparency, your government appears to be moving in the opposite direction.

They urged Raje to withdraw the Bill

Journalists court arrest during a rally against The Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance, 2017, in Jaipur on Tuesday. (Himanshu Vyas/HT Photo)

Earlier, calling the prposed law kala kanoon (black law), journalists started a march from Pink City Press Club for the Rajasthan Assembly. Senior journalist Om Thanvi, who came from Delhi, Praveen Chand Chabbra and Milap Chand Dandiya took part in the march that also saw participation of organizations such as Shramjivi Patrakar Sangh, Rajasthan Patrakar Sangh, IFWJ, Council of Journalists and Patrakar Trust of India.
Lawyers boycotted court work in several cities of Rajasthan on Tuesday to protest against the controversial ordinance that shields public servants from probe without the governments approval.

The BJP government tabled the Rajasthan Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill 2017 in the assembly on Monday, but was forced to refer it to a select committee after protests.

Members of the district advocates bar association in Jaipur demonstrated outside the collectorate and submitted a memorandum to the collector.

In the memorandum addressed to the district collector, chief minister, governor and president of India, we have demanded the immediate withdrawal of the bill, said Sunil Sharma, president of the association.

Lawyers of Kota boycotted judicial work and formed a human chain to protest against the bill. The lawyers assembled on the district and sessions court campus under the aegis of the Kota Bar Association.

Led by association president Naveen Sharma and general secretary Mahesh Kumar Gautam, they raised slogans against the Rajasthan government and chief minister Vasundhara Raje over the bill.

Demanding withdrawal of the bill, the lawyers later submitted a memorandum to the Kota collector, addressed to the Governor.

It is a draconian law in which amendment to the section 156(3) of CrPC has been done to provide immunity to the public servants to encourage corruption. Also clause B has been added in the section 228 to encroach upon freedom of speech, Sharma said.

Protests also erupted in Alwar. On the court campus, the district bar association first organised a protest march and later handed over a memorandum to the Alwar district magistrate in the name of the President. The protesters also burnt an effigy of Raje.

The bill is against the freedom of expression of the people, Alwar Bar Association secretary Sanjeev Karagwal told HT.
In the evening of September 19 (Mahalaya), the beginning of matri paksha, at a small pandal in front of a Durga temple adjacent to Durganagar rail station in the northern suburbs of Kolkata, one speaker after another walked up to the microphone to lambast the narrative of goddess Durga and the killing of demon king Mahisasur.

The podium was named after slain journalist Gauri Lankesh, described as a martyr of Aryan imperialism.

The speeches ended with the salutations Jai Bhim and Jai Mahisasur. A majority of the gathering of about 100-odd people described themselves as followers of the Ambedkar-Periyar stream of thoughts. By mid-October more than 1,000 such gatherings were held across West Bengal.

Read: New Dalit icons emerging in Uttar Pradesh as BJP tightens its reins

In February 2016, statements similar to their speeches found in a leaflet on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus earned the wrath of the former HRD minister Smriti Irani, resulting in her outburst in Lok Sabha against those who hailed Mahisasur as a hero and scandalised Durga.

Members of the Matua community observed Mahisasur martyrdom day at Gaighata in North 24 Parganas district. (Photo courtesy: Facebook/Saradindu Uddipan)

Her speech had an unintended effect. In Bengal, where Durga puja is the biggest annual festival, it angered those who consider themselves as descendents of Mahisasur.

Such incidents as Rohith Vemulas death, Smriti Iranis Parliament speech and the thrashing of dalits at Una in Gujarat prompted various organisations in Bengal to reclaim the identity and pride of Indias indigenous people, said Saradindu Uddipan, a writer and coordinator of the Mahisasur Smaransabha Samiti, an amalgamation of about four dozen dalit and tribal organisations.

Read: Kerala: Dalit priests break barriers, win hearts to make history

Formed towards the end of 2016, the samitis principle intention is to coordinate between the shudras across Bengal to promote tribal and dalit festivals throughout the year.

A devotee bows down before Mahisasur. (Photo courtesy: Facebook/Saradindu Uddipan)

Mahisasur is the central figure Bengals dalit and adibasi people are uniting around, said Ananta Acharya of Democratic Action Forum of Dalits, Women and Minorities.

In Bengal, apart from members of the Asur community, who number a little more than 4,000, a large number of the followers of Sari and Sarna religions (Scheduled Tribe or ST), numbering at 4.93 lakh and 2.64 lakh respectively, consider Mahisasur as their ancestor, besides sections of people belonging to the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Other Backward Classes (OBC).

Read: The Dalit story in todays India is no longer a side plot of class

Bengal has 21.4 million SC population (23%), second highest in India, after Uttar Pradesh, apart from 4.6 million (5%) ST population. There is no official figure yet on the states Hindu OBC population but it is estimated at about 9%.

Tribals celebrate at Salboni in West Midnapore district of West Bengal in end-September. (Photo courtesy: Facebook/Saradindu Uddipan)

Though a social movement, the campaign is a challenge to the initiatives of the saffron camp, led by the Sangh Parivar, as they principally challenge the Manuvaadi culture of north India.

The inclusive culture of the descendants of Mahisasur and Ravana is challenging the exclusive culture of the Manuvadi Aryans. So, we intend or not, our movement will challenge the ideology and narrative of the saffron camp, said Uddipan.

Read: Mission 2019: On Ambedkar Jayanti, BJP to roll out more Dalit outreach initiatives

Take the case of the Matua community, the namasudra refugees from Bangladesh, one of the largest SC communities in the state, and that of the Kurmi-Mahatos, a major OBC community.

The saffron camp has been trying to capitalise on anti-Muslim sentiments among a section of Matuas because they suffered atrocities in Bangladesh. The Sangh Parivar is also telling the Hindu OBCs including the Mahatos that it is because of the Mamata Banerjee governments policy of including Muslims in OBC quota that the pie is shrinking for Hindu OBCs.

The Mahisasur Smaran Sabha Samiti, however, has a different plan. Urging them to shun Manuvad and embrace the original asura identity, the samiti this year has managed to increase number of asura worship events in Mahato-dominated areas. This was also the first time, members from the Matua community organised a Mahisasur Memorial Day event.

Its a conspiracy hatched by those who want to split the nation into pieces, said Jisnu Basu, general secretary of RSS south Bengal.

This idea is being fed to a section of dalit and tribal activists by a group of anti-nationals based in JNU. Kanhaia Kumar and his ilk published leaflets propagating this theory five times in the oast 10 years. JNU is the headquarters of this vicious propaganda, Basu said.

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Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday dismissed the additional commissioner of Meerut and suspended an additional district magistrate of Gautam Buddh Nagar on charges of corruption, officials said on Tuesday.

Sources said while the suspension of errant officials is nothing new, the dismissal of a provincial civil services officer from service by any government has come after a gap of four years.

Randhir Singh Duhan, a PCS officer of 1991 batch, was dismissed by the government after he was indicted in an inquiry report for allegedly ordering the auction of 467 bighas of enemy property land when he was posted as ADM (land acquisition) in Shamli district in 2012-2013.

According to the report submitted by Saharanpur commissioner Tanvir Zafar Ali, Duhan allowed the auction of the land despite an embargo on the sale of the enemy property.

Duhans dismissal comes barely a month after he exposed the alleged involvement of officials, including two district magistrates and an additional district magistrate, in a land scam in Meerut-Delhi Expressway  the dream project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Duhan told the Hindustan Times the action against him was mischievous and added that pressure was mounted on him to brush the land scam under the carpet.

I have been an army officer and cant even think of corruption. It (the action) was a reward for my honesty. I dared to expose the nexus and refused to budge under pressure, he said.

Additional district magistrate (finance and revenue) in Gautam Buddh Nagar Ghanshyam Singh was suspended for procuring a Rs 7-crore compensation for himself by allegedly manipulating records related to land acquisition for the Meerut-Delhi Expressway project.

The state government ordered an inquiry into the matter and the probe report, submitted by divisional commissioner Prabhat Kumar on October 4, found Singh guilty. The report said Singh purchased a land parcel from farmers at a lower rate in his sons name in 2012 when land was being acquired for the development of the expressway.

His son then gave an application for the payment of enhanced compensation. The ADM is said to have misused his position in getting the compensation rate raised from Rs 617 per square metre to Rs 6,500 per square metre causing a loss of Rs 7 crore to the National Highway Authority of India, the probe report said.

On October 23, Adityanath suspended two police officers in Hamirpur for their alleged involvement in illegal mining.

He also suspended 12 officials, including additional director (administration) Rajendra Singh, for alleged irregularities in the allotment of the performance grant to panchayats recently.

Sources in the government said many more heads were expected to roll with the chief minister adopting a zero-tolerance approach to corruption.
The southwest monsoon withdrew from Maharashtra on Tuesday, said officials from the weather bureau. Mumbai received 3,029.9mm rain in this monsoon, the highest in six years.

The monsoon season officially starts on July 1 and ends on September 30. However, over the past decade, rain has continued to lash Mumbai well into October. The monsoon withdrew from the city on October 14 in 2016, on October 15 in 2015 and October 20 in 2014.

The monsoons northern limit is passing through Karnataka and there are favourable conditions for the onset of the northeast monsoon over the southern peninsula from Thursday, the weather bureau said.

Mumbais rainfall this year has also been 772mm or 25.47% in excess of the annual average of 2,258mm. The city braved two bouts of heavy rainfall on August 29-30 and September 19-20, recording more than 300mm rain within 24 hours on each occasion.

Officials from the weather department said there was hardly any delay as southwest monsoon withdrawal entered Maharashtra on October 16. We observe a delay of hardly a few days as the southwest monsoon takes this much time to pass through the state. While we have announced the withdrawal, the possibility of some rainfall over Marathwada and central Maharashtra is expected later in this week, said KS Hosalikar, deputy director general, western region, India Meteorological Department (IMD).

India recorded a 5.2% deficient monsoon between June and September this year. Of the 36 districts in Maharashtra, 11 recorded deficient rainfall (10 districts from Vidarbha and one from Marathwada), 17 had normal rainfall, seven witnessed excess rain and one (Nashik) saw large excess rain between June and September.

Of the four main subdivisions, Konkan recorded a 10% excess rainfall, central Maharashtra had an 18% excess rain, Marathwada witnessed a 4% deficient rain with Nanded having the least amount of rain in the district, and Vidarbha saw a 23% deficient rainfall.

Overall Mumbai received good rain this monsoon. However, apart from Vidarbha, the monsoon has performed well over the state. While June was good, the damage was done in July. But the recovery started from the second week of August. Even in October, the state has received good rainfall, said Hosalikar.

Total rainfall in Mumbai between June and October

2012  2,057.6 mm

2013  2,518.2 mm

2014  2,322.2 mm

2015  1,854.5 mm

2016  2, 973.2 mm

2017  3,029.9mm

(Source: India Meteorological Department)

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A 29-year-old woman was caught on camera stealing gold jewellery from her friends home in Santacruz (West) after police suggested the complainant to install CCTV in her house. She has been booked for stealing jewellery worth Rs3 lakh, of which the police have recovered those worth Rs2 lakh from her house in Dharavi.

In October first week, Monika Bhavesh Rao, 25, a cook, who lives with her husband, son and mother-in-law, found that gold jewellery was missing from her place. Few days later, she found that another piece of jewellery had gone missing. Monika then suspected her friend Marya who visited her place the same day.

She suspected that her friend, Marya Joseph, also a cook, was behind this. Marya used to visit Monikas home often and that same day she had been to her house.

A police officer said Monika then approached the police and narrated the whole incident to the cops. When she asked them how she can catch her friend red handed, the cops advised her to install CCTV camera around the place where she kept her gold ornaments. Monika followed their advice and installed the camera. She also bought a gold plated chain and kept in the drawer as a setup, added the officer.

On October 15, Marya, who lives with her husband and two-and-a-half-year-old daughter in Dharavi, visited Monikas place and was caught on camera stealing the gold-plated chain. Monika then registered a case against her in Santacruz police station.

The police then conducted a search at Maryas residence and recovered some of Monikas jewellery, said senior inspector Shantanu Pawar of Santacruz police station. The accused has not been arrested because her daughter is young, but we have conducted punchnama, said Pawar.
The minimum fare of conventional black and yellow cabs and autorickshaws might rise  to Rs23 and Rs19 instead of Rs22 and Rs18  if the state government accepts the report of a panel appointed by it to fix the fares for autos and taxis. The free WiFi service at the citys railway stations is being misused, said an audit report prepared by the Western Railway. While a fire was reported on the 10th floor of La Mer residential building near Mount Mary steps in Mumbais upscale suburb of Bandra on Tuesday afternoon, the Nehru Nagar police arrested a 40-year-old man for allegedly attacking a 37-year-old woman with a blade on Monday. The Maharashtra government is struggling with the implementation of its farmer loan waiver scheme as 30 per cent of the data provided by nationalised banks have glaring errors or are incomplete.

Here are todays top five picks:

1. Auto, taxi fares may rise; curb likely on Ola, Uber surge pricing

The minimum fare of conventional black and yellow cabs and autorickshaws might rise  to Rs23 and Rs19 instead of Rs22 and Rs18  if the state government accepts the report of a panel appointed by it to fix the fares for autos and taxis. But it is not all bad news. There will also be a restriction on surge pricing by app-based taxi aggregators like Ola and Uber. The report recommends a 2x surge in fares as opposed to the 4x to 5x surge during peak hours currently.

2. Fire in Sachin Tendulkars in-laws Bandra flat brought under control

A fire was reported on the 10th floor of La Mer residential building near Mount Mary steps in Mumbais upscale suburb of Bandra on Tuesday afternoon. The 10th and 11th floor of the building are owned by Sachin Tendulkars in-laws. Tendulkars father-in-law was on the 11th floor when the fire broke out, owing to a short-circuit. He vacated the building along with his domestic help. No injuries or casualties were reported, said Savita Shinde, assistant police inspector, Bandra police station.

3. Mumbaiites, you might lose access to free WiFi at suburban stations

The free WiFi service at the citys railway stations is being misused, said an audit report prepared by the Western Railway (WR). The report states that people who dont use the train services stand at the entry and exit points of stations to use the facility, blocking the already overcrowded area for commuters. Free WiFi can be made available only at waiting rooms and near booking counters within the station premises.

4. Mumbai man attacks woman with blade after his son is arrested for raping her daughter

The Nehru Nagar police arrested a 40-year-old man for allegedly attacking a 37-year-old woman with a blade on Monday. The police said that the accused, Shivaji Kamble, was frustrated that his son was arrested for raping the victims daughter. The police have arrested the accused and the woman is admitted in the hospital. The police said that the incident took place on Monday evening, after the accused saw the woman near her Kurla residence and attacked her on the face and neck.

5. 30% bank data for Maharashtra farmer loan waivers inaccurate, will delay disbursement

The Maharashtra government is struggling with the implementation of its farmer loan waiver scheme as 30 per cent of the data provided by nationalised banks have glaring errors or are incomplete. The inaccurate data has delayed the waiver of loans as the states information technology (IT) department is finding it difficult to verify bank details with applications received from farmers.
The Maharashtra cabinet cleared a slew of big-ticket infrastructure projects on Tuesday. It approved two Metro corridors and gave its nod to the construction bid of the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA). In another key decision, the state government amended its policy on the adoption of the hybrid annuity model (HAM) for road projects to attract more contractors.

First to get a nod were the detailed project reports (DPRs) of the Thane-Bhiwandi-Kalyan (Metro 5) corridor and Swami Samarth Nagar-Jogeshwari-Kanjurmarg (Metro 6) corridor. With this the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) will begin work on the two Metro lines. The focus of the state is to develop the infrastructure of Mumbai because it is a global city. Today, the cabinet approved the DPRs of two Metro lines, state finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar told reporters after the cabinet meeting.

According to the MMRDAs plan, the Metro 6 corridor, which will go via the Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road (JVLR), will have 13 stations along the route. The 24-km Metro-5 corridor will connect Thane and Kalyan via the power loom town of Bhiwandi, and will have 17 stations. The 14.47-km Metro-6 corridor will be the second Metro line in the city to provide the crucial east-west rail connectivity after the Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar Metro line. The estimated cost of Metro-6 is Rs6,672 crore, while Metro-5 is estimated to cost around Rs8,416 crore. The two elevated corridors will have interchanges with existing, under-construction Metro corridors and also with the suburban railway network in the city.

The cabinet also cleared the GVK-led Mumbai International Airport Limiteds (MIAL) bid to construct the NMIA. The first phase of the Rs16,000-crore project is slated to be completed by December 2019. GVK, which constructed the Mumbai airport, beat GMR Airport in the bidding process. Mungantiwar said, We are determined to complete phase 1 of the project by the end of 2019. Phase 1 includes levelling a hill and diverting a river. With the state cabinets approval in place, the letter of intent will be issued to GVK, said a senior official from state urban development department (UDD).

According to a senior bureaucrat, the government has decided to change its policy on HAM. Earlier, the state was looking to hand over road contracts for a minimum length of 100km. On Tuesday, the cabinet reduced the minimum length to 50km. In a cabinet decision in November 2016, the state government had decided to contribute 40% of the cost. However, they revised the decision and the state will now contribute 60% of the cost. The private player would recover its cost in 10 years through instalments from the government, as against the earlier period of 15 years.

The cabinet also gave its nod for the formation of a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to execute the 701-km Mumbai Nagpur expressway. All funds required for the project will be raised through the SPV, Nagpur Mumbai Super Communication Expressway Ltd.

Read more:

Mumbais second airport finally takes wing, work to start in Navi Mumbai in January 2018
To protect the states mangrove forests, the government is mulling to take help from the residents of 60 coastal villages. Maharashtra has 15,088 hectares of mangroves.

Last month, the government announced a new policy to protect mangroves on public and private land by creating mangrove co-management committees, which will include residents from villages located near the mangrove forests along the 720-km long coastline. These committees will be responsible for protecting the forests and using resources to generate jobs locally.

The committees will prepare a long-term plan for conserving mangroves in their areas and take necessary action to protect and grow them, read the government resolution (GR).

In Raigad, which has the largest stretch of mangrove forests in the state, 25 villages have been shortlisted for the project. Sindhudurg has 12 villages, Ratnagiri 10, Palghar nine and four from Thane. The government has set aside Rs15 crore for the project

Officials from state mangrove cell said by December 15, elections will be held in each village to select [60] members of the executive committee, which are expected to submit their first report by March.

Mangrove conservation cannot be done in isolation. We have to involve the local residents along the coastline for safeguarding them, said N Vasudevan, additional principal chief conservator of forest, state mangrove cell. The idea is to form co-management committees, involving heads of the coastal panchayat and wards. They will protect, replant and demarcate mangrove patches.

The conservation project includes programmes such as crab, oyster and prawn farming, other fishing-related activities and apiculture (beekeeping). Once initiated, locals can become part of these projects as individuals or in groups.

The state will fund 90% of expenses incurred for group activities, while the rest will have to be borne by the committees. The funding will be 75% in case of individual projects, said a senior state government official.

The government has recruited 15 graduates from the department of fisheries and another 10 will be hired by the October-end to train and educate residents of the villages.

Once these graduates are trained, each of them will be in-charge of two to three villages. Through them, we will try to implement these livelihood programmes, said Vasudevan, adding that from November 1, all graduates will be on-field.

The law

The destruction of mangrove forests across the state and construction within 50m of mangrove areas was banned by the Bombay high court in 2005, after a public interest litigation (PIL) was filed by the NGO Bombay Environment Action Group. In 2014, after Vanashakti filed another PIL on the protection of wetlands, the high court banned all reclamation and construction on wetlands.

Environment Protection Act, 1986  Violation of the act leads to imprisonment up to five years, along with a minimum penalty of Rs25,000, depending on the violation.

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Following the unprecedented delay in declaring exam results this year, Sanjay Deshmukh became Mumbai universitys (MU) first vice-chancellor to be sacked from his post. Governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao removed Deshmukh from the position on Tuesday for gross negligence and failing to comply with the directives issued by him to ensure timely declaration MU results.

It was at Deshmukhs insistence that the MU adopted a system to assess exam papers online. But the system had glitches, leading to a massive delay in declaring results. Despite repeated reminders by the governor, who is also the chancellor of all universities in the state, Deshmukh failed to speed up the system. The government had to face embarrassment because it drew flak from the students and parents for the unprecedented delay in results. In this background, he was sent on indefinite leave by the government and it was expected that the VC would have to go.

A Raj Bhavan release said the governor removed Deshmukh for his gross negligence and failure in implementing the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system, to declare the results of examinations held in summer 2017, within the time limit prescribed in the Act and for his failure to comply with the directions issued by the chancellor from time to time, regarding early declaration of results.

This is the first time a V-C has been sacked.

In 1985, the then VC of the varsity, MS Gore, had to resign from the post following an alleged mark-sheet scandal in the MU. Gore was not alone, the then chief minister Shivajirao Patil Nilangekar, too, had to resign over the controversy because his own daughter was involved in the scandal.

Deshmukh was already sent on indefinite leave by the governor in August. On September 24, he was also asked to resign from the position or face dismissal, but Deshmukh remained defiant. Rao recently sought the pinion of the state higher and technical education government on the mess, which further sealed Deshmukhs fate, the sources said. An opinion was sought on explanations received from Deshmukh in response to a show-cause notice issued to him by the governor.

Accusing him of dereliction of duty, the governor, on August 1, had issued a show cause notice to Deshmukh asking him to explain the delay. The incumbent VC tried to explain his side in detail by sending two letters to the Raj Bhavan on August 14 and 21.

The governor had also sought a report from the state intelligence wing of the Maharashtra police following Deshmukhs allegations of sabotage in the online assessment of answer papers, which according to him, resulted in a delay in declaring results. On September 21, HT had stated that a report prepared by senior IPS officer and state intelligence commissioner Sanjay Barve had ruled out any such possibility.

HT, on August 13, had reported how teh state government had opposed the idea of adopting OSM in one go and advised Deshmukh to introduce the system gradually in phases. However, Deshmukh went ahead with the same against the governments advice.

Read more:

MU results mess: Students suffer, council lauds V-C for switch to online assessment

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The Nehru Nagar police arrested a 40-year-old man for allegedly attacking a 37-year-old woman with a blade on Monday.

The police said that the accused, Shivaji Kamble, was frustrated that his son was arrested for raping the victims daughter. The police have arrested the accused and the woman is admitted in the hospital.

The police said that the incident took place on Monday evening, after the accused saw the woman near her Kurla residence and attacked her on the face and neck. The police have registered a case of attempt to murder against the accused and detained him.

An officer said that the accuseds son had been arrested last month for allegedly raping the womans 13-year-old daughter. Since then, his son had been behind bars and was finding it difficult to get bail.
A 32-year-old man on Tuesday killed his 20-year-old girlfriend and committed suicide at Ambernath on Tuesday, said police. The motive is not yet clear.

Metram Chadrabhan Verma, 32, a labourer, lived in Ambernath, while the woman, Anchal Shriram Mahalle, 20, worked at a private firm and stayed in Diva. As Mahalles parents were out of town, she stayed at Vermas home in Kansai at Ambernath for two days.

He strangled Mahalle and hanged himself from the ceiling fan using her dupatta, said Nandkumar Kenjale, officer from Shivaji Nagar police station.

Before ending his life, Verma texted Mahalles parents, She is dead and I am committing suicide. Please take our body from Ambernath.

Mahalles parents then asked their relatives to go to Vermas home. The relatives found the two unconscious. They were taken to a hospital, where they were declared brought dead.

An officer from Thane commissionerate said, The neighbours told us they were living together. We are yet to find out why they took the extreme step. We will talk to the womans parents once they return.

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From eviction of hawkers to construction of foot overbridges (FOBs)  the safety audit that was released on Tuesday suggested a series of steps to prevent an Elphinstone Road-like stampede at stations across the city.

In the wake of the stampede that killed 23 on September 29, union railway minister Piyush Goyal formed 13 teams comprising CR, WR, civic and police officials to look at the issues faced by commuters and recommend changes.

The audit team, in its report submitted last week, suggested that hawkers on the railway land and 150m area surrounding the station be evicted. The authorities need to demarcate the plots they are in charge of so there is clarity on who needs to initiate the crackdown, says the report. Railway officials said the civic body has agreed to cooperate with them to act against illegal hawkers.

BMC, railways to demarcate spaces outside railway stations Who needs to act on illegal hawkers at a spot on the railway station or premises? To provide an easy answer to this question, railway and BMC officials have started to demarcate areas by putting up signboards. The move is to ensure hawkers dont escape amid confusion over jurisdiction. The step is being taken after the presence of hawkers emerged as one of the main reasons that led to the stampede on Elphinstone Road station last month. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has doubled the penalty for illegal hawkers. Civic chief Ajoy Mehta has asked its information technology (IT) department to look into the request of MNS to create a WhatsApp number for citizens to send complaints against hawkers and prepare a plan for it. The number will be modelled on the lines of the pothole-tracking app, where the location too can be fed. The civic body has employed more people at the licence department and allowed ward officers to hire vehicles to seize the goods of hawkers, if the earnings from confiscation are going to be 1.5 times the cost of hiring. So far, only two vehicles were available per ward. Meanwhile, Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam met Mehta on Tuesday, urging the BMC to enact the Protection of livelihood and regulation of Street Vending Act, 2014. Accusing the BMC of harassing hawkers, Nirupam said they too have a right to livelihood.

Other suggestions include construction of skywalks by civic bodies with landing on railway stations, building more FOBs, installation of more CCTV cameras at entry and exit points, setting up government railway police (GRP) help desks at stations, and removing advertisements on FOBs, among others.

The team has also given specific analysis of the situation at stations. For instance, how Sewri station on the harbour line of the CR has no exit points to the east, which leads to a large number of people crossing the tracks. They have also included the suggestions by commuter groups such as staggering office timings, demolishing abandoned structures that block people, among others.

According to the audit, outsourcing personnel to manage crowd can help tackle the situation better during peak hours. The team wants the limit for permissible free luggage -- 50kg for first class and 35kg for second class -- be reduced to 15kg and 10kg, respectively.

The railway officials plan to meet civic and police officials every month to discuss the action being taken on the suggestions made in the audit report.
Twenty years, multiple permissions and hurdles later, construction of the Navi Mumbai international airport  the much-needed second airport for a city like Mumbai -- is all set to start in January 2018.

The state government on Tuesday approved the handing over of the work to GVK. The City and Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco), the nodal agency for the project, aims to complete the first stage of the airport by December 2019. With the state cabinet nod, Cidco will issue a letter of award [official document confirming selection for the contract] to GVK in a week. A concessionare agreement will be signed with the contractor. We have the draft for it ready, said Mohan Ninawe, senior public relations officer, Cidco.

Cidco officials said the constant delays gave them enough time to be ready with the documentation. Within 180 days, the contractor will have to tell Cidco how it plans to get Rs4,500-crore needed for the first stage of the project. GVK will have to give details of the financial institutions and funding sources. They can submit it in 30 days too, said Ninawe.

We are hopeful that the entire process will be completed within the next two months. The bhoomipujan is likely to be performed on January 1, 2018. We are confident the first stage will be completed by December 2019, said Ninawe.

The project, which was conceived in 1997, got an in-principle nod from the Centre in July 2007. Cidco floated global tenders for the work in September 2007 and planned to start construction by July 2008. Environment hurdles, opposition from locals and demand for high compensation delayed the project for years, ensuring the bidding process started only in 2014. The bids were opened in 2016, with GVK emerging as the highest bidder in 2017.

The time taken by GVK will decide the pace of the work, according to Cidco officials. It depends on how early GVK completes the formalities of forming a company with CIDCO, which will be called Navi Mumbai International Airport Limited, on the lines of MIAL, and the financial closure. While bhoomipujan will be conducted early, the construction could begin by May, if the company delays the process.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday arrested former director of Raghukul Diamonds Private Limited in connection with a fake import remittances case.

Sanjay Jain has been remanded in ED custody till Thursday.

This is the third arrest in the case after Saurabh Pandit, director of a Hong Kong-based company and Anil Chokhra, former director of Kanika Gems.

In 2015, the ED had registered a case under money laundering provisions based on an FIR registered by the IndusInd Bank.

The agency investigations revealed that three jewel trading companies  Yogeshwar Diamonds, Charbhuja Diamonds and Kanika Gems  had dubiously conducted foreign remittances.

The ED alleged that the companies had made fraudulent overseas remittances, flouting banking laws. They also made payments towards non-existent imports by submitting fake bills to banks. The accused conspired among them and through IndusInd bank branches remitted Indian currency, the ED alleged.

The investigations revealed that Rs518 crore has been remitted outside but the figure is going to rise, said a senior officer. The accused forged serial number of bills and submitted them to IndusInd Bank after which illegal remittance was conducted to shell companies in Hong Kong and UAE.

A bill of entry is a declaration made by an importer/exporter. In this case, genuine imports were shown through fake bills, while crores were illegally remitted outside the country.

ED said that Jain has indulged in generating huge funds and has managed bank accounts with the intention of laundering funds through dubious companies.

Jain said he left the directorship of Raghukul Diamonds Pvt Ltd. However, he continued to look after the accounts. He said that the company did not deal in diamonds but had been opened to provide billing and RTGS facilities to Hawala operators, the agency told court.

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It would seem the current dispensation and farmers are simply not made for each other. A day before Diwali, the Maharashtra government made an event of distributing loan waiver certificates to farmers, claiming the write-off had benefited 80 lakh ryots. A day later, farmers hit the streets again in various parts of the state to protest the governments attempts at misleading them and threatened to file cases against chief minister Devendra Fadnavis for cheating them about the loan waiver - neither had 80 lakh farmers received the certificates, nor had those who did benefit in the measure the government claimed, they alleged. Now the Kisan Kranti Morcha, famed for flooding the streets with milk in June this year, is threatening to revive its agitation and beard Fadnavis in his den again to ask him if he really does mean business vis-a-vis farmers.

I think he does - at least to the extent of compensating them handsomely for depriving them of their fertile lands for his pet Samruddhi Expressway. That expressway is crucial to the BJPs plans for shifting many markets out of Mumbai and to Nagpur if they wish to see their promise of a separate Vidarbha come through soon. Party leaders are not unconscious of the fact that Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand did not do too well in terms of GDP and the Human Development Index (HDI) after separation from Madhya Pradesh and Bihar respectively. Comparing Seoni, Betul, Balaghat and other contiguous districts of Madhya Pradesh with Vidarbha, which are similar in terms of climate, rainfall, soil and other natural factors, shows that Vidarbha, though somewhat backward by comparison to Western Maharashtra, has benefited enormously by its association with Bombay. Thus there is a concerted effort to turn Nagpur into another Bombay by shifting many significant institutes and industries to this winter capital - and the Samruddhi Expressway is of much importance to that game plan. For Nagpur is landlocked and, while it has a cargo hub under development, it certainly will need speedy access to ports to make it attractive for industries to shift base there.

The Shiv Sena by now should have woken up to this plan but somehow, the BJP has succeeded in getting the party to preside over its own slaughter. A couple of weeks ago, there were reports of a truckload of farm animals in Iceland who were injured when the vehicle carrying them overturned. Veterinarians were rushed to the site and they were moved to an animal hospital, given first aid and other treatment, with the authorities making sure they were all fine and in the pink of health. Then they were loaded back on to a truck again and driven off - to the abattoir, where they had been headed in the first place!

The strange and unusual incident gave me goosebumps - I couldnt help draw parallels with farmers in Nashik, Amravati, Aurangabad and elsewhere who are being lured with promises of a great deal in exchange for their land - once the money runs out, so does their means of livelihood.

Farmers groups have, however, now cottoned on to what is afoot and, once their sowing season is over in the next couple of weeks, are likely to take to the streets once again - and this time they are unlikely to settle for crumbs. Though I do not think Rs24,000 crore in loan waivers so far is a mean amount, the fact remains that the monies have not stretched to all farmers and has only succeeded in sowing a season of discontent among them.

Farmers have woken up to their fate but how about the Shiv Sena? Its minister, Eknath Shinde, continues to preside over the public works department, which will ultimately oversee the building of the Samruddhi Expressway that is likely to lead to the decline of Bombay. Another, Subhash Desai, as minister for industries, seems not to have woken up to the plan to shift large chunks of various industries and markets to Nagpur. His earlier letter of protest to the Centre at the attempt to shift activities of the Bombay Port Trust to Porbander had a measure of the plan but I thought it was more focussed on losing a workforce that is a strong voter base rather than on losing Mumbai altogether.

Like those animals in Iceland, they are being administered some balm for occasional hurts. But ultimately they are being led to preside over their own decimation.

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Students at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) who plan to pursue post-graduation will for the first time have a choice to apply for campus placements after a year. In a move that will help many students, IIT-B will offer the service as part of the Deferral Placement Programme (DPP) introduced by the institute in 2012.

Currently, under DPP, students planning to start their firms or work in the social sector  after opting out of the campus placements  can come back in two years and be part of the hiring process. This year onwards, the deferral placement service will be extended to students opting for higher education too.

For the first time, IIT-B has decided to provide deferral to students who want to apply for higher studies in their core sector, said a spokesperson for the placement cell of IIT-B. Students opt out of placements so that they can focus exclusively on their application process for higher studies. And if they are unable to get admission, they will have the choice of being part of next years placements.

Other than IIT-B, IIT-Madras is the only other institute to offer the service, which it introduced in 2015. This will be the third year that students at IIT-M will be offered the service. Most students have appreciated the move, especially since it gives them time to work on their application process in detail, with the help of mentors at the institute. They know that they have a backup plan if things dont work out, said an official from the placement cell of IIT-M.

Like every year, the first phase of placements at IIT-B will start in the first week of December. The institute has got a confirmation from companies, with more than 440 job profiles, out of which more than 160 profiles are from the engineering sector. As has been the trend in recent years, companies such as Sony, Murata, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Vedanta and General Electric are emerging as the major recruiters, said officials from the placement cell of IIT-B.

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Two constables from the Wadala government railway police (GRP) have been booked for extortion on the complaint of a Central Railway (CR) employee.

According to the complainant, identified as Ajay Bose, he saw the two GRP constables trying to extort money from a commuter when he was travelling by train and got off at Wadala.

Bose began to record a video of the incident for proof. When the constables noticed him recording, they approached him and demanded that he delete the footage.

On refusing, the constables threatened him and snatched his phone away. The constables then threw the phone down and broke it, after which Bose approached the senior Wadala GRP officials. The police have booked the constables, but are verifying the incident and confirming the role of the constables.

Although we have booked the constables under sections 384 (extortion), 201, (destroyed evidence), 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code, we are still verifying the incident, said Machindra Chavan, assistant commissioner of police (CR GRP).
More than 10 days after a 33,205-tonne cargo vessel, Emerald Star, sank 280 km off the Philippines, the Japanese Coast Guard has called off its rescue operation to track a Virar-based Captain Rajesh Nair, who is among 10 missing crew members.

Nairs relatives will request the Japanese government via external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj to resume rescue operations.

The cargo ship with 26 Indians on board was carrying minerals from Hong Kong to Indonesia when it capsized on October 13. After it sent a distress call, 16 of them were rescued.

Meanwhile, families of four missing sailors are to meet Swaraj in New Delhi on Thursday. Nairs family is optimistic that he is safe and could be marooned at one of the islands.

On Sunday, Capt Santosh Kumar S Darokar, deputy director general (shipping) of the ministry of shipping, Amar Singh Thakur, general secretary of Maritime Union of India, and a representative of the Chennai-based shipping firm, met the family. They promise that the government will bear all travel costs to Delhi where they will meet Swaraj. Nairs wife, Reshmi who a traffic inspector with the Western Railway, and his sister Krishna will fly from Mumbai on Wednesday,said Ramesh, a relative.

The Nairs said they were clueless about the status of the rescue operations as neither the Japanese Coast Guard not the shipping firm had revealed information about rescue operations. They are not telling whereabouts of the 16 rescued sailors either, said another relative.

Reshmi and Rajesh have two children  Vedant , 8, and Ishita, 3. Rajeshs late father Ramchandran worked with Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) as an electrical officer, while his mother Ramani is a home maker.

The last call Rajesh made was on October 3 when he called his friend Jaimin Patel through WhatsApp and said he would be coming to Virar in December.
Two four-legged daredevils  a Belgian Shepherd and a Thoroughbred  stole the show at the 56th Raising Day of the Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) force in Greater Noida on Tuesday.

The animals, both wrapped in ITBP flags, marched past the audience to a rising ovation before being felicitated by none other than Union home minister Rajnath Singh. Union minister Mahesh Sharma was also present at the venue.

Machhli, the Belgian Shepherd and Black Beauty, the throughbred, were led up to the stage by their handlers, where they received their awards with poise.

Machhli, a four-year-old female Belgian Shepherd, has helped in sniffing landmines in Naxal-affected areas of Chattisgarh. (Sunil Ghosh/HT Photo)

Officials said Black Beauty had been with ITBP for nine years now. He was four-months-old when he was inducted into the forces basic training academy in Chandigarh. Over the years, Black Beauty has brought many laurels for ITBP and has also become a national champion.

A spokesperson for ITBP said, Black Beauty is a thoroughbred. He is an equestrian national champion and has bagged many medals. Every year we have special animal medals and this year Black Beauty and Machhli were chosen for their exceptional services.

Machhli, a four-year-old female Belgian Shepherd, has helped in sniffing landmines in Naxal-affected areas of Chattisgarh. In 2016, Machhli was specially brought to Chhattisgarh to sniff out a landmine that had escaped detection by the force.

ITBP officials said Belgian Shepherds are generally considered excellent for detection of objects because of their heightened and sharp sense of smell. In fact, the United States is said to have used Belgian Shepherds in its hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

The two animals were ferried to the campus of ITBPs 39th Battalion in Greater Noida, especially for the award ceremony. They will later be shifted back to their respective bases.

Read | Tasty bravery award: Border police animals to get supply of chocolate, bones

On Tuesday, a contingent of canines and horses also took part in a silent parade in front of home minister Rajnath Singh and an audience, comprising of mostly of retired defence personnel and family members of ITBP men, was left spell bound at the venue.

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For a party that is trying so hard to build a base for itself in Tamil Nadu the Bharatiya Janata Party just shot itself in the foot. By upping the ante on the criticism against GST in the Tamil movie Mersal starring Vijay the party ended up embarrassing its national leadership and provided the film the kind of nationwide publicity its producers could not even have dreamt of.

Over the last few years, Vijay had been using political/social dialogues in many of his films. Having been at one time closely linked with the DMK (his father was close to DMK chief M Karunanidhi), Vijay has moved away from both Dravidian majors but has done little more than recite loaded dialogues in his movies as evidence of his political ambitions.

However, it is true that there are factual inaccuracies in some of the statements related to GST in Mersal. The sequence where Vijays character in the movie says that there is no GST for liquor, but a 12% GST for life-saving drugs is factually not quite correct, because, though not under GST, liquor is taxed at a very high rate of over 50% to sometimes even up to 100%. Apart from this there were a few other distortions.

The movie though was cleared by the censor board which saw the dialogues for what they possibly were  a mass hero trying to take on the establishment in a fictional movie by reeling off hyped up lines.

The day after the movie released, Tamil Nadu BJP president Tamizhisai Soundararajan demanded that the producers delete the dialogues related to GST and Digital India. The dialogues may have, in the normal course of events, passed off unnoticed or may have only evoked a passing mention among the viewers. After her statement, everyone, including the political parties, were interested in this issue.

By the evening this was the topic of debates on prime time television in Tamil Nadu and by the next day on national channels too.

The BJP had a right to protest either in court or to the censor board if they felt that the inaccuracies were deliberate or were part of a plan to malign the party. But the fact that the censor board, which comes under the Centre, had cleared the film with these dialogues put the party on a sticky wicket.

Instead of backing off on seeing the rather hostile public reaction the state leaders of the BJP compounded matters by talking about the tax raids on Vijay a few years ago and matters started rapidly going downhill when their all India secretary H Raja called Vijay by his full name Joseph Vijay (a name that he rarely uses in public). He then went on to tweet Vijays electoral voter ID card bearing his full name. This was seen as an attempt to communalise an issue that until then had no religious overtones.

BJPs state unit was left high and dry with none of the party heavyweights in Delhi chipping in to defend them. For the party high command this was one issue they could have done without. Faced with the task of reviving a flagging economy and with key elections coming up the last thing the national leadership needed was such a distraction. No wonder the senior leaders have maintained a resounding silence and it was left to the party spokespersons to put up what seemed a half-hearted defence.

Why the state unit of the BJP decided to pursue this issue despite the backlash is a mystery. They ended up antagonising not just Vijays considerable fan base but also a large section of neutrals in Tamil Nadu who felt that though there were factual errors in the dialogues they were neither an integral part of the film nor were featured or repeated often enough to be seen as a deliberate attempt to malign the party.

Four or five lines in a two hour 47 minute movie could have been allowed to pass, especially as the censor board felt that way. By appearing hypersensitive to criticism and by demanding that the producer delete the scenes (which they have refused to do until now) the BJP scored a completely unnecessary own goal in Tamil Nadu.

Sumanth Raman is a Chennai-based television anchor and political analyst

The views expressed are personal
An 18-year-old resident of Dadumajra Colony, who had been expelled from Government Model Senior Secondary School in the colony for poor attendance last year, returned to the institution on Sunday late night, only to vent his ire and vandalise property. He also brought in an accomplice, but the now the police have arrested the main accused, Krishan, 18, and Chintu, 19. Both of them were in an inebriated state, the police have said.

Principal of GMSSS, Dadumajra Colony, Chitranjan Singh had lodged a complaint with the police accusing Krishan and Chintu of vandalising the school. The accused were identified and arrested on the basis of the CCTVs installed in the school.

With their arrest police have also claimed to solved the case of setting vehicles in fire in the Dadumajra Colony on October 21 night.

Krishan, who had studied till Class 9 in the school, and his accomplice Chintu, had entered the school at about 130 am on the intervening night of October 22-23 and vandalised school property, the principals complaint to the police said. Krishan was expelled as he hardly attended school. He had failed twice, the principal added, saying that he had collected his school-leaving certificate in May.

Locked guard

Police claim that the accused locked the security guard of the school, Sanju, after thrashing him. They then went on a rampage, damaging the property of the school for next 10-15 minutes. The accused broke 200 flower pots and four fans in corridors as well as in classrooms and doors. The guard called the police and they ran away only when the PCR van came on the spot.

A case has been registered under Sections 452 (house trespass), 342 (wrongful confinement), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty), 353 ( assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), 427 (mischief causing damage) and Section 3 of prevention of damage to public property act in police station Maloya.

Accused also faces murder charge

As per police record, Krishan is also named as accused in number of cases including Section 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), dacoity and 377 (sodomy) at the Sector-39 police station. These were registered in 2016.

With their arrest police have also claimed to solved the case of setting vehicles in fire in the Dadumajra Colony on October 21 night. Three two-wheelers and a three-wheeler were gutted in a fire in Dadumajra colony. In this case, Shubham of the Dadumajra Colony, had alleged that two unknown people had set a motorcycle, Activa, Bullet motorcycle and an autorickshaw on fire parked near his residence on October 21.

In that incident, a case under Section 435 (mischief by fire or explosive substance with intent to cause damage) of the Indian Penal Code was registered in police station Maloya, Chandigarh.
As the students at Panjab University (PU) continue protests to make Punjabi language part of the signboards, it is just one of the demand as other issues involve giving Punjabi department research scholars an option to present their thesis in Punjabi, and the language being part of the question papers, among others.

These issues say the students have been unattended for long even though they have been put forward to the authorities on several occasions.

Students of Punjabi department in the university had written a letter to the vice-chancellor Arun Kumar Grover on October 11 to bring back Punjabi on the signboards on the campus. They had held a symbolic protest on October 17 outside the V-Cs office, teaching Punjabi to the participants.

Mahtab Singh, one of the leaders of the language movement at PU, says, Bringing back Punjabi on signboards is only one of the issues. However, there are several other longstanding issues related to the language.

Researchers have to submit thesis in English

One of the major issues faced by the students at other universities in Punjab as well is the research scholars have to submit their thesis in the English language. Most of the students who do not know English well have to get the translation done from their own pocket, which most of the times incurs a heavy cost.

The same is faced by the students here at PU. Singh said, We want the students of Punjabi department to be allowed to submit their dissertation and thesis in Punjabi language. If the department needs it in translation, it should be arranged by the department.

A committee was formed on October 17 by the university administration to form an estimation of funds needed for painting the signboards again, which will be presented before the syndicate and if passed there, it will be implemented.

Sector-42 college prof sends cheque to V-C

Panditrao Dharenavar, assistant professor at PGGCG-42, has sent a cheque of 5,000 to the V-C saying, In case the university has shortage of funds due to the economic crisis, I am sending this money for this (painting Punjabi on signboards) work.

He also mentioned the notification from the home secretary of Chandigarh administration dated September 18, 2013, that says the signboards are to be written in all the three languages.

Chandigarh Punjabi Manch protest on Nov 1

The varsity students are planning to join the protest being organised by Chandigarh Punjabi Manch on November 1, said Mahtab Singh. The protest is being held for the longstanding demands by Punjabi litterateurs and intellectuals.

Sukhdev Singh, president of the Manch and senior professor at PU, said, We demand to save the autonomy of Punjabi language and culture in Punjab. We do not wish to harm other languages but other languages should not be taught at the cost of Punjabi. It is the governments duty to save the its autonomy.

He further said, Around 2,000 litterateurs and teachers will gherao the Raj Bhawan and will get court arrested in protest.

The activists believe that having a dominant presence, Punjabis and the language are denied the rightful place in Chandigarh.

Conference, march in Patiala on Oct 29

The issue of Punjabi language has spread in the state as the voices are now coming forward. On Saturday, activists smudged off Hindi and English from the signboards along Bathinda-Faridkot road, protesting the language being relegated to the third place.

Dharamvira Gandhi, Member of Parliament from Patiala, is also supporting the cause of saving Punjabi language and has written on the issue. He is organising a conference and a march in Patiala on October 29, together with Professor Joga Singh Virk and Panditrao Dharenavar on the issue.

Major demands of PU students

- Punjabi on signboards

- Clerical staff knowing Punjabi

- Punjabi on notices, ads, and environment related boards

- Teachers should be made aware about regional languages

- Thesis of research scholars of Punjabi department to be submitted in Punjabi; if needed the department should arrange for translation

- Implementation of three language rule

- Implementation of three languages for examination
Political parties in Punjab on Monday rejected Canadas New Democratic Party chief Jagmeet Singhs statement that he considers self-determination to be a basic right in the state.

Reacting to Jagmeets recent remark, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) spokesman Daljit Singh Cheema said that Canadian leaders should not meddle in Indias affairs. They should mind their own affairs. We respect the sovereignty of our country. Punjab and our party are an unbreakable part of the Indian democratic and political system, Cheema said.

During his introductory tour of Canada, Jagmeet, a 38-year-old lawyer and the newly elected leader of the NDP, last week said that he considers self-determination to be a basic right in places such as Punjab, Catalonia or Quebec. In equating the recent separatist movements to the demand for a separate Sikh homeland, Jagmeet is echoing the strategy adopted by hardline groups such as Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), which is spearheading the Khalistan 2020 Referendum effort.

A separate state is the brainchild of a few Sikhs abroad. We rejoiced when you were elected NDP president but your views on Khalistan have damaged our aspirations.

Cheema said the SAD never supported the demand for self-determination or Khalistan. When we dont interfere in Canadas internal issues, why should they? he asked the NDP leader.

Punjab Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) president Bhagwant Mann termed Jagmeets self-determination talk a part of his domestic politics in Canada. We congratulate Jagmeet on his achievements in another country, but that does not mean he can say anything he likes or talk about self-determination in Punjab, said Mann, who represents Sangrur in Parliament.

India is a democratic country where everyone from a sarpanch to an MP is elected by the people. Punjab is very much its part. We swear by the Constitution. Punjab is the annadata (provider of grain) to the country. It has seen ups and downs but I am confident that it will regain its glory, he said.

Former National Commission for Minorities chairman and former Rajya Sabha MP Tarlochan Singh said, Sikhs living in Punjab and India have never demanded a separate state, which is the brainchild of a few Sikhs living abroad. We believe in the unity of India and want to solve all our problems through constitutional means.

Sikhs all over the world rejoiced when you were elected NDP president but your views on Khalistan have done great damage to our aspirations. It is better you confine your political views to Canada and dont create any problem for Sikhs in India, he said. You are aware that we hold elections to our assemblies and Parliament regularly and Sikhs have been participating and electing their representatives. We had the privilege to have a Sikh once as President of India and also as the Prime Minister. A Sikh recently retired as the Chief Justice of India, he added.
Jathedar of Sikh temporal seat Takht Patna Sahib, Giani Iqbal Singh, will not attend a convention being organised by the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat in New Delhi on Wednesday, after the highest temporal seat Akal Takht underlined its edict to not engage with the Sikh wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh.

The function is being held to mark the 350th birth anniversary of the tenth Sikh master, Guru Gobind Singh.

Giani Iqbal Singh has purportedly succumbed to the diktat from Giani Gurbachan Singh, jathedar (head priest) of the Akal Takht in Amritsar, who on Monday called upon Sikhs to boycott the function after several organisations protested the RSSs alleged agenda to subsume Sikhism into the Hindu identity.

Giani Gurbachan specifically asked Sikhs to abide by a hukamnama (edict) of July 2004 by the Takht that had asked Sikhs not to support the Sangats march on completion of 400 years of Guru Granth Sahib.

While Giani Iqbal Singh was not available for comment, Sangat national chief Gurcharan Singh Gill told HT over phone: We made all arrangements for Giani-ji (Iqbal Singh), booked a ticket from him! When I checked in the afternoon, I was told hes unwell. We are waiting for him.

Sources said Harvinder Singh Sarna, who heads the Gurdwara Patna Sahib body management, has prevailed upon Giani Iqbal Singh, who heads one of the five Sikh temporal seats, not to attend the function.

Gill, however, insisted that the Sangat functions independent of the RSS and its political body Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It must be underlined, though, that while Gill will deliver the opening address at the function, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat will deliver the concluding address. In between, schoolchildren will sing Gurbani hymns.

We have no political motive behind the function and never have taken part in gurdwara management politics too. When we talk about the Guru, it should be a matter of pride for all Sikhs, Gill said.

However, Sikh historian Pirthipal Singh Kapur explained, The issue is not what Rashtriya Sikh Sangat is doing about Sikhs. It is that they are making Guru Gobind Singh just a national hero, comparing him to Shivaji, which is wrong. Guru Gobind Singh is the creator of Sikhism (with establishment of Khalsa in 1699) which is recognised as the fifth largest religion in the world.

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Three women of a tribal family in Ranchis Bundu were hacked to death in the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday, police said on Tuesday.

A sharp object was used to attack the women on their neck with the intent to behead them, police said.

Their semi-decapitated bodies were recovered from bushes within a radius of around 200 feet from their residence at Nailgada village, about 50 km from state capital Ranchi.

Police sources said prima facie it appeared that one of the women was murdered in the house, while the other two were taken to the bushes in the vicinity of their house, tied to a tree and attacked with a sharp weapon. The weapon used to kill the women was not recovered from the spot, sources said.

Ranchi SP (rural) Raj Kumar Lakra said the police were investigating the case from different perspectives, as it could also be an incident of witch-hunting which is prevalent in rural areas.

For now, it is difficult to comment on the reason behind the murders. It could be a land dispute, property dispute or even witch-hunting, Lakra said.

One of the victims was identified as Bibi Devi, wife of one Chandramohan Munda. The other two have been identified as Lakkhimani Devi and Taramani Devi, who were married to Mundas brothers, police said.

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The highly anticipated audio launch of Shankars magnum opus 2.0, a sequel to his 2010 blockbuster Enthiran, is all set to take place this Friday (October 27) in Dubai. Tipped to be organized on a lavish scale, the makers have already started making arrangements for the event which is being promoted aggressively. Banners of the event have been put up in prominent public places across Dubai to draw the attention of the audience. It has been exclusively learnt that actor-filmmaker Kamal Haasan might attend the event as its chief guest. Apparently, Shankar and the makers of 2.0, Lyca Productions have already approached the Dasavatharam actor and are waiting for his nod.

Its going to be a very special event as it will have a live performance by AR Rahman, the composer of the film. The rumour has it that 2.0 has just one song; however, the films album has five songs and theyll be performed live by Rahman, who will mesmerize audiences with 25-minute performance. HT has also learnt that a VIP table at the event costs a whopping Rs 6 lakh for a family and its already a sold out show, according to reliable sources. The audio launch will be streamed live on Zee network, the official satellite partner of the film. Zee bought the satellite rights of the film across languages for a staggering Rs 110 crore.

The trailer of 2.0, which was finally wrapped up on Sunday, will be unveiled in an event in Hyderabad in November. The film also stars Akshay Kumar, making his south debut, in the role of the antagonist and Amy Jackson, who plays an android robot.

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Officials of the income tax department visited the film production company owned by actor and Tamil Nadu Film Producers Council president Vishal on Monday, a day after he hit out at senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader H Raja for watching a pirated version of Mersal amid a raging controversy over the film starring Vijay.

A team of the I-T departments TDA wing visited the Vishal Film Factorys office to verify the alleged non-deposit of tax deducted at source in the governments account and spent a little over two hours at the venue.

Watching a pirated film is not good for the film business and we have been fighting for curbing online downloading of films amounting to piracy, Vishal, known for his anti-piracy campaigns, said after the search.

Reports said four income tax department officials visited the Vishal Film Factorys office to probe charges that the production house deducted tax at source of payment worth Rs 51 lakh made to various clients but allegedly failed to deposit the amount with the government.

When our team visited his office address after 3pm, Vishal was not present. The inquiry continued for about three hours as the books of accounts were not readily available. Vishal spoke to our officers over the phone and agreed that he would make the payment in two instalments. He has been served summons to appear before the I-T department on Friday, an unnamed official was quoted as saying by the Indian Express.

The company was asked to appear before the department on Friday with its account books.

Vishal, who sought a public apology from Raja on Sunday for watching a pirated version of the film, said this was the first time that any team had come to assess his company at its premises.

Raja said during a recent television debate that he watched Mersal on the internet. He later denied the charges and said he had seen some clips of the movie that were shared on WhatsApp.

The South Indian Film Chamber of Commerce has written to the Prime Ministers Office against Raja for watching the pirated version of the Tamil language film. Hope PMO will treat the complaint on merit and in a steadfast manner, the chamber said in a release.

Vijays Diwali release Mersal has kicked up a row with the BJP taking exception to references on the central governments Goods and Services Tax (GST) policy in the movie. BJP leaders, including Raja, a national secretary of the party, state president Tamilisai Soundarajan and Union minister Pon Radhakrishnan, have demanded that the incorrect references must be deleted from the big-budget flick.

The BJP had on October 20 objected to what it termed as untruths regarding the GST in Mersal and wanted dialogues on the central taxation to be deleted.

Vijays film crossed the Rs 100 crore mark, according to trade analysts, even as the controversy grew bigger with the opposition and film fraternity attacking the saffron party and its alleged efforts to communalise the situation.

Vijays father SA Chandrashekhar told reporters his sons reaction about the what is happening in the country found an expression in Mersal.

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A note that Albert Einstein gave to a courier in Tokyo briefly describing his theory on happy living sold at auction in Jerusalem on Tuesday for $1.56 million, the auction house said.

The winning bid for the note far exceeded the pre-auction estimated price of between $5,000 and $8,000, according to the Winners auction house website.

The buyer was a European who wished to remain anonymous, a spokesman for the auction house said.

I am really happy that there are people out there who are still interested in science and history and timeless deliveries in a world which is developing so fast, the seller told AFP on condition of anonymity after the sale.

The note, on the stationary of the Imperial Hotel Tokyo, says in German that a quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest.

A second Einstein note written at the same time that simply reads where theres a will, theres a way sold for $240,000, according to Winners.
Chinas ruling Communist Party announced a new Central Committee, the largest of its elite ruling bodies, at the closing session of the 19th Communist Party Congress on Tuesday, a course-setting leadership reshuffle held every five years.

The list provides clues to who will, or wont, fill top party positions during President Xi Jinpings second term. The party will announce its new Politburo Standing Committee around midday (0400 GMT) on Wednesday. The Standing Committee, which now includes seven members headed by Xi and is the apex of power in China, is selected by the new Central Committee.

Here are noteworthy names:

- Wang Qishan, 69, the anti-corruption tsar and current Standing Committee member, is not on the new Central Committee, ending months of speculation whether he would remain for another term and break an unofficial retirement rule of not taking a new position after age 68.

China's Politburo Standing Committee member Wang Qishan (centre), the head of the anti-corruption watchdog, leaves after the closing session of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on October 24, 2017. (Reuters)

Wang may still get a leadership role outside the Standing Committee, sources told Reuters before the congress.

- Zhao Leji, 60, head of the partys Organization Department, which oversees personnel decisions, made both the Central Committee and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection Committee lists, suggesting he may take over Wang Qishans role as top graft-buster.

Zhao Leji (centre), a member of the Political Bureau of the 18th Communist Party of China Central Committee, attends the closing of the 19th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on October 24, 2017. (AFP)

- Vice President Li Yuanchao, who is on the cusp of retirement at the age of 67, is expected to retire from the 25-member Politburo after he was not included on the 204-member Central Committee.

- Chinas top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, 67, could keep his state councilor job or be further promoted to parliament or its advisory body after he made it back to the Central Committee.

File photo of US secretary of state Rex Tillerson greeting Chinese state councillor Yang Jiechi at the state department in Washington on February 28, 2017. (Reuters)

If Yang retires, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, 64 this month, and Song Tao, 62, minister of the partys International Liaison Department, are the top contenders for Yangs job. Both Wang and Song are Central Committee members.

- Veteran diplomat Liu Jieyi, 59, Chinas permanent representative to the United Nations, was elected to the Central Committee and is expected to take over as minister of the Taiwan Affairs Office, replacing Zhang Zhijun, who is retiring.

- Transport Minister Li Xiaopeng, 58, the oldest son of former premier Li Peng, became a full member of the Central Committee. He was the lowest vote-getter among alternate members of the Central Committee five years ago.

- Ten women made it onto the committee, 4.9 percent of the total, basically the same proportion as the previous Central Committee. There were also 16 delegates from ethnic minorities, three of whom are women.

- Chinas top banking regulator Guo Shuqing, veteran banker Jiang Chaoliang and securities regulator Liu Shiyu, the three front runners to succeed Zhou Xiaochuan as central bank governor, were all voted onto the Central Committee.
Jihadists from the Islamic State group and fighters from Iraqs Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary coalition were locked in fierce clashes near Mosul on Tuesday, with nearly 30 reported dead, the coalition said.

Mosul, Iraqs second city, was retaken from IS in July after a massive months-long offensive.

Waad Allah forces are repelling an IS attack southwest of Mosul in the Hatra desert, some 100 km southwest of Mosul, said a spokesman for the Hashed unit.

The Hashed is an umbrella group of paramilitary auxiliaries formed in 2014 to support Iraqi regular forces after IS swept across swathes of northern Iraq.

In a series of online posts, Waad Allah said IS sent numerous suicide bombers to attack its forces, and gave a death toll of 24 jihadists and four of its own men.

Iraqi forces have retaken more than 90% of the territory IS seized in the country in 2014, with the jihadists now confined to the desert areas in Anbar province bordering Syria.

But despite a series of stinging defeats, IS in Iraq retains the ability to launch attacks in areas declared liberated months previously.

After losing Mosul in July, IS has also lost Raqa, its capital in Syria.

The Hashed took over the Hatra area in April this year after IS forces were ousted.

The ancient walled city of Hatra in northern Nineveh province is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Hong Kongs highest court freed pro-democracy activists Joshua Wong and Nathan Law on bail Tuesday pending an appeal of their prison sentences after they were convicted of sparking massive protests in 2014.

In another development highlighting concerns about human rights in the city, the Chinese and Swedish governments confirmed the release of Gui Minhai, one of five Hong Kong booksellers believed to have been abducted and spirited to mainland China for selling gossipy titles about elite Chinese politicians to Chinese readers.

Wong and Law were imprisoned after the justice secretary succeeded in getting an earlier, more lenient sentence overturned, raising concerns about political interference in the courts and dealing a setback to the movement for full democracy in the Chinese-controlled city.

The decision to release Wong, Hong Kongs most famous activist, and Law, a disqualified lawmaker, coincidentally came the same day Chinas Communist Party was ending a twice-a-decade congress in Beijing that expanded President Xi Jinpings power.

Though the events were unrelated, they highlighted the widening rift between mainland China and semiautonomous Hong Kong.

Wong, 21, and Law, 24, told reporters outside the Court of Final Appeal that they were granted bail until their appeals are heard on November 7.

They said they were looking forward to having meals with their families after what Law said were some uncomfortable times during their two months in prison.

Even though theyve been bailed, they said that it was unclear if their appeals will be successful and that theyre prepared to go back to prison.

There will be more occasions in the future when our group of young people will go to prison, but we will persist in keeping the faith and working together to fight for democracy, said Wong, who is also awaiting sentencing for a separate contempt case.

The government can lock up our bodies but cannot lock up our minds, said Wong, who was sporting a prison-issued buzz cut. He added that their time in prison was a chance for them to strengthen their determination.

The world is watching the result of the case, and what it means for rule of law and the one country, two systems principle that guarantees Hong Kong wide autonomy and civil liberties unseen in mainland China, Law said.

Broadcaster RTHK reported that Judge Geoffrey Ma required each to post 50,000 Hong Kong dollars ($6,400) for bail, surrender their travel documents and report to police once a week.

Wong and Law were originally given community service sentences that let them avoid prison after convictions for involvement in an unlawful assembly that kicked off the Umbrella Movement protests.

Hong Kongs justice secretary, however, requested that the courts review those punishments. In August, Wong was given six months in prison and Law received eight months. The move sparked fears that authorities were undermining the citys independent judiciary.

Wong gained fame, including a starring role in a Netflix documentary, because he was still a teen when he helped spearhead the 2014 protests against Beijings decision to restrict elections that brought major Hong Kong thoroughfares to a standstill for 79 days.

Law, also a former protest leader, was elected to the legislature last year, becoming the citys youngest-ever lawmaker, but was disqualified from office after a government legal challenge.

Wong had expressed a desire to run for office, but the prison sentence prevents him from doing so for five years.

A third student leader, Alex Chow, didnt request bail in the same case.

Meanwhile, Swedens Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that it was informed by Chinese authorities that Gui, the bookseller, who has Swedish citizenship, had been released from Chinese detention. Guis daughter, however, disputed the news.

Ministry spokesman Patric Nilsson said the information came overnight, but he declined to give further details.

Chinas foreign ministry said in a brief statement that Gui had been released on Oct. 17 after serving out his prison term for which he had been sentenced for the crime of having caused a traffic accident. It gave no information about his whereabouts or other details.

Gui disappeared from his Thai vacation home in late 2015 and resurfaced in January 2016 on Chinas state broadcaster CCTV, where he said he returned to China to turn himself in for an old crime.

His daughter Angela Gui said in a statement that her father was supposed to have been released Oct. 17 after serving a two-year sentence for an alleged traffic offense dating from 2003.

However, she said her fathers whereabouts were still unknown, adding that on Monday she received a strange phone call from someone claiming to be my father saying he intended to apply for a Swedish passport but first wanted to spend time with his ill mother.

To my knowledge, my grandmother is not ill, the daughter said. My father is not in fact with her. It is still very unclear where he is. I am deeply concerned for his wellbeing.
Pakistan on Wednesday described former intelligence chief Dineshwar Sharmas appointment as the Indian governments interlocutor for the Kashmir issue as a move lacking in sincerity and said only a dialogue involving New Delhi, Islamabad and the Kashmiris would be result-oriented.

India said on Tuesday that Sharma, 63, who retired as head of the Intelligence Bureau in December, will speak to all stakeholders to end the nearly three-decade-long, bloody insurgency in Kashmir.

The talks offer stems from Prime Minister Narendra Modis outreach to troubled Kashmir in his Independence Day speech. Modi had said the regions problems could be solved by embracing its people rather than resorting to abuse or bullets.

Responding to Sharmas appointment, the spokesperson of Pakistans Foreign Office said that the measure did not appear to be sincere and realistic.

The spokesperson added that for any dialogue process to be meaningful and result-oriented, it has to include the three main parties  India, Pakistan, and the Kashmiris.

In that context, without the participation of the Hurriyat leadership, no interaction or dialogue would carry any weight or meaning, the spokesperson said in a statement.

Pakistan also said that the Indian governments announcement illustrated a recognition  once again  of the futility of the use of force and of the indispensability of dialogue.

The statement noted that Indias interlocutor had been entrusted with the task of understanding the legitimate aspirations of the Kashmiris though this had been known for 70 years, ie realisation of their right to self-determination.

The spokesperson contended that the need of the hour is an end to Indian state-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir and dialogue for peacefully resolving the issue in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

This was imperative for ensuring durable and sustainable peace and stability in South Asia. Pakistan hoped that the international community would play its rightful role in facilitating such an outcome, the spokesperson said.

India has consistently rejected Pakistans calls for third party mediation in the Kashmir issue, saying it should be resolved bilaterally in line with the Simla Agreement and the Lahore Declaration. India also accuses Pakistan of fomenting unrest and backing terror groups in Kashmir, a charge denied by Islamabad.
Kuwait, the main mediator in a near-five month political crisis between Qatar and its Gulf rivals led by Saudi Arabia, warned on Tuesday that the dispute could escalate.

Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, in an address to parliament, also said that Kuwaits goal was to save the Gulf Cooperation Council union from cracking and collapsing.

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, as well as Egypt, severed all diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar, accusing the gas-rich emirate of supporting Sunni Islamist extremist groups and having too close ties to Shiite Iran.

Kuwait has led mediation efforts since then, but without success.

Everyone should know that Kuwaits mediation is based on a keen awareness that this crisis risks escalation, Al-Sabah said.

The worsening of the breakdown between Doha and the Saudi-led bloc leaves Gulf states vulnerable to foreign interference, he warned.

An escalation would be an explicit invitation for regional and international intervention, which would have serious consequences for the security of the Gulf nations and their people, the emir said.

History and future generations will not forgive anyone who contributes, even one word, to fuelling this dispute.

Qatar warned last week that the crisis is hampering operations against the Islamic State group out of its Al-Udeid air base, home to some 11,000 US soldiers.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has just visited Riyadh and Doha in hopes of easing the spat and unifying Washingtons Gulf allies against Iran.

We cannot force talks among people who are not ready to talk, Tillerson said.
Most polluting vehicles face an extra daily charge for driving into central London under a new scheme that aims to improve air quality in one of Europes most polluted cities.

London mayor Sadiq Khan said with the rollout of the new weekday toxicity charge -- dubbed the T-charge -- London had the worlds toughest emission standard.

The 10 (11.2-euro, $13.2) levy is in addition to a daily 11.50 congestion fee, and follows an order by the European Union for Britain to cut air pollution.

But Transport for London, which runs the scheme, has said any vehicle registered before 2008 may be liable. It estimates 6,500 vehicles per day will be covered, about 6.3% of around 103,000 that enter the congestion zone.

Here is what other cities have done in the past to curb pollution:

Delhi

As the worlds most polluted capital tried to clean up its fetid air, the Delhi government decided to allow odd and even number vehicles to ply on city roads on alternate days from January 1 in 2016.

The odd/even number scheme, similar to the one in Beijing and Singapore, allowed vehicles with number plates ending with an odd number to be driven one day while those ending with an even number the next day.

But apart from the odd-even formula, the Delhi government also decided to improve public transport in the city, shut down a coal-fired power station and start vacuuming the roads to reduce dust. It also wants to start mechanised cleaning of some streets.

Beijing

Ahead of 2008 Olympics, Beijing imposed restrictions on private vehicles by allowing even and odd license plates to drive on alternate days. A Chinese government study placed the vehicle emission reduction at 40% post the policy implementation. Even though Beijing dropped the odd-even rationing policy after Olympics, following the success of it, more complicated road policies were introduced by the government.

Paris

In March 2014, Paris introduced the odd-even rationing on its roads just for a day as an experiment. The experiment has been tried once before in 1997 and dropped similarly after a day. The restrictions were revoked after a day both the times because the officials had reached their pollution control goals and there was no need to continue the experiment.

Bogota

In Bogota, capital of Columbia, the policy was named Pico y Placa (peak and plate). It banned cars during the peak hours for two days per week. In order to make it harder for citizens to break the rule by buying two cars, the government kept on switching the combination of days and numbers every year. According to some reports, the policy failed to control pollution as many drivers chose to drive during off-peak hours thus rendering the government appointed peak hours as useless.

Europes Low Emission Zones

Europe decided to control emission in its capitals by declaring certain part of the cities as LEZs and banning vehicles which failed a particular standard from entering them. European capitals were divided in the decision to create LEZs. Some cities like London, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Stuttgart, Lisbon, Rome, Copenhagen, Prague, Amsterdam, Milan introduced LEZs and allowed only vehicles that follow certain Euro standards inside the zones. While others like Zurich, Graz, Dublin, Luxembourg, Madrid, Brussels and Barcelona have either voted no for LEZs or have not yet taken a decision on the issue.

The Netherlands

Policymakers in the Netherlands plan to ban the sale of all diesel and petrol cars from 2025. Bicycle use is encouraged in most cities.

Freiburg

According to The Guardian, Freiburg in Germany has 500km of bike routes, tramways, and a cheap public transport system. One suburb, Vauban, forbids people to park near their homes and makes car-owners pay 18,000 for a space on the edge of town. In return for living without a car, people are offered cheaper housing, free public transport, and plentiful bicycle spaces, its report says.

With inputs from agencies
Amazon has received 238 proposals from cities, counties and regions from across North America for its second headquarters, the online retail giant said on Monday.

Amazon said it will likely invest more than $5 billion into the project, creating an estimated 50,000 high-paying jobs, and tens of thousands of additional jobs and tens of billions of dollars in spin-off businesses around the area.

In short, it envisages another version of its Seattle headquarters, which comprises 33 buildings and more than 40,000 employees, with an additional 53,000 jobs created as a result of direct investments by the company.

But Amazon is going to be picky: it prefers metropolitan areas with a population of more than 1 million  whether urban or semi-urban  with a rich pool of talent either available locally or have the potential to attract them. It also prefers communities that are business friendly and can be creative with real estate options.

The company in September had set October 10 as the deadline to respond to with a proposal. It is expected to announce its pick in 2018.

Sun Corridor Inc, a southern Arizona company, sent a 21-foot Saguaro cactus to Seattle just a week after the Amazon announced its amazonhq2 RFP in September. We wanted to make sure (Amazon CEO) Jeff Bezos and his team notice us and send a message of we have room for you to grow here for the long term  nothing signifies that better than a Saguaro, Sun Corridors president and CEO Joe Snell told AP. The Saguaro is the largest cactus in the United States, capable of growing up to 60 feet tall.

Amazon sent the cactus to Arizonas desert museum with a little thank you note posted on Twitter Unfortunately we cant accept gifts (even really cool ones) so we donated it to 

The New York Times had a few more of such creative pitches in a report last week. Mayors posted videos of their pitch on social media, hoping to catch the eye of someone screening them.

In Philadelphias elite Wharton Business School, students were tasked to figure out a pitch to Amazon, Time reported.

The mayor of Ottawa in neighbouring Canada is taking his chances as well. Jim Watson flew to Seattle last week to see for himself what his city was up against. Its like The Amazing Race, he told the New York Times. Youve got this cast of characters running toward the Holy Grail.
Anita Bose-Pfaff, the daughter of Subhash Chandra Bose, has said she is looking forward to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi next year for take forward her plans to bring the iconic leaders ashes from a temple in Japan to India and conduct a DNA test.

The plan to do a DNA test on the remains has long been mooted to scientifically prove that Bose died in a plane crash in Taipei on August 18, 1945. His remains after his cremation were reportedly stored at Renkoji temple in Tokyo.

Bose-Pfaff, 74, who was in London to deliver a lecture on 70 years of free India: What might Netaji have hoped for, told Hindustan Times it was time to bring closure on the issue through the DNA test, at least for the section of the Indian public that is amenable to scientific arguments.

Boses death has long been the subject of debate, with some claiming he survived the crash, returned to India and lived anonymously.

But Bose-Pfaff, who has no memory of her father because she was a month old when he last saw her, is convinced of his death.

Two inquiry commissions came to the conclusion that he died in the plane crash. Recent documents released by the Japanese government essentially supported this, other documents did too. This is the only consistent story of his life, she said.

Given the life that my father had had, which was very unusual, all sorts of stories cropped up. If you start with some idiotic story of Gumnami Baba as Netaji, it is stupid. It is an insult to Netaji.

Just imagine this man who sacrificed so much for his country, would come back and live in questionable circumstances in a place in Uttar Pradesh. It just makes no sense at all. For me, this is the only reality (that he died in the crash), some of my relatives have other views. Its a free world, she added.

It would be important for the Indian and Japanese governments and herself to agree on taking the ashes to India and conducting the DNA test: I am not talking about the rest of the family because like any big family there are as many opinions as you have people, and on that issue the family is divided.

According to Bose-Pfaff, neither the Indian nor the Japanese government want to move first or put the other in an awkward position. Well have to see what Mr Modi will say: OK go ahead, or he might also say no. Politicians have a way, if they dont find advantage, they dont do things. It would be helpful if the Indian government, after dilly-dallying all these years, took a clear stand.

She added, I have not seen him (Modi), but he is aware of that, but I have talked to the embassy in Germany that this is what I want to do. So he must be aware of what I want to talk to him about. The only way is to go and see him next year, which is most likely.

Clad in a green sari and red blouse, she referred in her lecture to her father as Netaji, recalling his words, deeds and Indias history, and ended it with Jai Hind. She regretted that it was only in 1979 under a non-Congress government that veterans of her fathers Indian National Army were given the status of freedom fighters.

After independence, India could not have continued to exist in any other form but as a secular state, Bose-Pfaff said. The course of history could have been different if Bose had survived until independence and beyond.

We can be certain that Netaji would not have envisaged that poverty, illiteracy and health would improve at such a slow rate, leave alone not be eradicated by today. And I cannot help being very sad when I try to imagine what the freedom fighters of my fathers generation would think, if they knew what has become of their beloved country in that respect, she said.

A retired professor of economics at the University of Augsburg in Germany, Bose-Pfaff is married to Martin Pfaff, a former member of German parliament. The couple has three children.

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A senior Republican senator called President Donald Trump utterly untruthful on Tuesday in an exchange of insults on Twitter hours before the president was to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to build consensus for tax reform.

Trump has asked his fellow Republicans who control Congress to pass a package of tax cuts including a deep reduction in the corporate income tax by years end, and his meeting with Republican senators on Tuesday afternoon was aimed at shoring up support in his own party.

But hours before the meeting, Trump engaged in a distracting tussle with one of those senators, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker. Alienating any members of his own party could be costly for his legislative initiatives in the Senate because Republicans control the chamber by just a slim 52-48 margin.

Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done. He doesn't have a clue as.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2017

Bob Corker, who ... couldnt get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts, Trump, set to attend Senate Republicans weekly lunch, wrote on Twitter.

Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff, Corker shot back to Trump in his own Twitter post. The senator previously referred to the White House derisively as an adult daycare center.

Corker, who has said he will not seek re-election next year, has openly feuded with the president for weeks, escalated his comments in a CNN interview, saying the president is consistently untruthful, has debased the United States and undermined its relationships around the world.

Corker in August said Trump had not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.

Corker warned Trump in a round of other television interviews against interfering in congressional efforts to finalize legislation to cut taxes and called his visit with Senate Republicans a photo op.

Hopefully, the White House will step aside and let that occur in a normal process, the Tennessee Republican and fiscal hawk told NBCs Today program. Thats the best way for us to have success.

His comments followed Trumps promise on Monday to protect a popular retirement program as Republican lawmakers seek ways to pay for their proposed $6 trillion in tax cuts.

The spat with Corker, as well as the presidents previous squabbles with other Republican lawmakers, further complicates Republican efforts to hammer out a final version of the tax proposal, which was devised without the input of opposition Democrats.

Republicans comfortably control the US House of Representatives, but can afford to lose only two votes within their own party in the Senate to win passage.

Trump has said he thinks he has the votes to pass the plan, although detailed legislation has yet to be unveiled.

Speaking on CBS This Morning, Corker urged Trump and the White House to let the tax-writing committees do their work ... and stay out of taking things off the table and really negotiating against the process before it even begins.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders shot back.

I think we need to let the president take the lead on this front, Sanders told Fox News. This is a president who wants to be aggressive, wants to take big action. And if Senator Corker doesnt want to be part of that ... were not going to let that get in the way of us moving forward.

Republican Senator Roger Wicker also defended Trump before the meeting, which he said could fill in the plans details. I view it as a coming together, Wicker told CNN.
The United States is taking steps and considering a range of further actions over Myanmars treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority, including targeted sanctions under its Global Magnitsky law, the US state department said on Monday.

The US said it was withdrawing military assistance from Myanmar units and officers involved in violence against Rohingya Muslims that has triggered a massive exodus.

We express our gravest concern with recent events in Myanmars Rakhine state and the violent, traumatic abuses Rohingya and other communities have endured, it said in a statement.

It added: It is imperative that any individuals or entities responsible for atrocities, including non-state actors and vigilantes, be held accountable.

Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar in large numbers since late August when Rohingya insurgent attacks sparked a ferocious military response, with the fleeing people accusing security forces of arson, killings and rape.

Secretary of state Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday the United States held Myanmars military leadership responsible for its crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Tillerson stopped short of saying whether the United States would take any action against Myanmars military leaders over an offensive that has driven more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims out of the country, mostly to neighboring Bangladesh.

The state department made the announcement ahead of US President Donald Trumps maiden visit to the region early next month when he will attend a summit of ASEAN countries, including Myanmar, in Manila.

It marked the strongest US response so far to the months-long Rohingya crisis but came short of applying the most drastic tools at Washingtons disposal such as reimposing broader economic sanctions suspended under the Obama administration.

Critics have accused the Trump administration of acting too slowly and timidly in response to the Rohingya crisis.

The state department said on Monday: We are exploring accountability mechanisms available under US law, including Global Magnitsky targeted sanctions.

Measures already taken include ending travel waivers for current and former members of the military in Myanmar, also known as Burma, and barring units and officers in northern Rakhine state from US assistance, it said.

We have rescinded invitations for senior Burmese security forces to attend US-sponsored events; we are working with international partners to urge that Burma enables unhindered access to relevant areas for the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission, international humanitarian organisations, and media, the statement said.

In addition, Washington is consulting with allies and partners on accountability options at the UN, the UN Human Rights Council, and other appropriate venues, it said.

Aimed at top Generals?

Interviews with more than a dozen diplomats and government officials based in Washington, Myanmars capital, Yangon, and Europe have revealed that punitive measures aimed specifically at top generals were among a range of options being discussed in response to the Rohingya crisis.

Such measures could include the possibility of imposing asset freezes and prohibiting American citizens from doing business with them.

Washington has worked hard to establish close ties with Myanmars civilian-led government led by Nobel laureate and former dissident Aung San Suu Kyi in the face of competition from strategic rival China.

Forty-three US lawmakers urged the Trump administration to reimpose US travel bans on Myanmars military leaders and prepare targeted sanctions against those responsible for the crackdown.

The Magnitsky Act, originally passed in 2012, imposed visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials linked to the 2009 death in prison of Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian whistleblower. It has since been expanded to become the Global Magnitsky Act, which could be used against the generals in Myanmar.
Saudi Arabia supports US President Donald Trumps stance on Iran after he decided not to certify that Tehran is complying with a nuclear accord, Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Tuesday.

US President Donald Trump broke ranks with other major powers this month by refusing to formally certify that Tehran is complying with the deal, even though international inspectors say it is.

Jubeir said the nuclear deal had shortcomings, and that he agreed with Trumps assessment that Iran was working to destabilise the region and was funding militant organisations.

Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia, a US ally, has been at loggerheads with Iran, a Shiite Muslim country, for decades, and the countries have fought a long-running proxy war in the Middle East.

(Irans behaviour) is not acceptable, and there will be consequences to the Iranians. This is what President Trump has said, and we are very supportive of that, Jubeir said at a conference in London.

Following Trumps decision, US Congress has until mid-December to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under the pact.

Jubeir said that new sanctions on Iran would be welcome, and that a delay could mean that by the time sanctions had impact, Iran could have already developed a dozen nuclear bombs.

The international community needs to support those (sanctions) in order to send a very strong message to Iran that your behaviour, your nefarious activities, have consequences, Jubeir said.

Iran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes and denies it has aimed to build an atomic bomb.
US secretary of state Rex Tillerson on Tuesday delivered a blunt message to Pakistan to increase its efforts to eradicate terrorists operating from its soil, even as he called on Islamabad to facilitate the peace process in Afghanistan.

Tillerson, the first high-ranking US official to travel to Pakistan after President Donald Trump unveiled his new strategy for South Asia in August, got a frosty welcome after Washington turned up the heat on Islamabad for providing safe havens to militant groups.

During a meeting with the top civil and military leadership, Tillerson reiterated President Trumps message that Pakistan must increase its efforts to eradicate militants and terrorists operating within the country, according to a statement from the US embassy.

Besides Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, the meeting was attended by army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa, Inter-Services Intelligence head Lt Gen Naveed Mukhtar, foreign minister Khawaja Asif and interior minister Ahsan Iqbal.

Outlining the new strategy for South Asia, Tillerson referred to the vital role Pakistan could play in working with the US and others to facilitate a peace process in Afghanistan that can bring stability and security to the region.

Pakistan and the US, he said, have common interests in a stable, peaceful Afghanistan, defeating ISIS in South Asia, and eliminating terrorist groups that threaten both countries.

Abbasi reiterated that Pakistan is a strategic partner in the war on terror and told Tillerson: We have produced results. And we are looking forward to moving ahead with the US and building a tremendous relationship.

Trump has vowed to get tough with Pakistan unless it cracks down on terrorist groups such as the Taliban and the Haqqani Network, with US officials threatening further cuts in aid and targeted sanctions. It was widely expected that Tillerson would follow up on these issues in Islamabad.

During a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Monday, Tillerson said the US has made some very specific requests for action by Pakistan to undermine support for the Taliban and other terror groups.

After travelling to Iraq and Afghanistan, Tillerson arrived in Islamabad, from where he flew to New Delhi.

The top US diplomats four-hour visit got off to a low-key start as he was quietly greeted by a mid-level Pakistani Foreign Office official at the military airport in Rawalpindi  a welcome devoid of the pomp that usually marks high-level visits.

Pakistani officials had said they didnt expect much to come out of Tillersons visit. A Foreign Office official said the visit would set the tone for future engagement between the two sides on bilateral and regional issues.

The Pakistani media reported that Islamabad has its own grievances, ranging from the Trump administrations attempts to undermine its sacrifices in the war against terror to giving India a greater role in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, the US campaign appeared to produce some success when Pakistani security forces assisted with the release of an American-Canadian family that was held captive by the Taliban for five years.

Within days of the rescue, US and Afghan forces launched drone and conventional air strikes in Paktia and Khost provinces of Afghanistan. Umar Khalid Khurasani, chief of the banned Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, was reportedly killed in one of those drone strikes.

Tillerson referred to these developments in his meetings in Islamabad and expressed appreciation for Pakistans sacrifices in the fight against terrorism, the US embassy statement said. He also expressed his gratitude to the Pakistan government and the army for their cooperation in securing the release of the American-Canadian family.
US secretary of state Rex Tillerson on Tuesday delivered a tough message to Pakistan on the importance of driving militants from hideouts on Pakistani soil, saying the country is key to joint goals of providing security to the region.

Tillerson arrived in Islamabad on Tuesday after travelling to Iraq and Afghanistan in conditions of strict secrecy. He met Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, foreign minister Khawaja Asif, army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa and the heads of intelligence services.

It is believed that Tillerson gave a strong message to Pakistans top leadership to cooperate with the US in its policy on terrorism.

He told Abbasi Pakistan is important regionally to our joint goals of providing peace and security to the region and providing opportunity for greater economic relationship.

Abbasi said Pakistan is committed in the war against terror. He added, The US can rest assured that we are strategic partners in the war against terror and that today Pakistan is fighting the largest war in the world against terror.

US secretary of state Rex Tillerson sits across from Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khan Abbasi during their meeting with delegations at the Prime Minister's House in Islamabad on October 24, 2017. (AP)

Tillerson got a frosty welcome in Pakistan after Washington turned up the heat on Islamabad for providing safe havens to Taliban militants.

He was quietly greeted by a mid-level Pakistani Foreign Office official at the military airport in Rawalpindi, according to an AFP photographer  a welcome devoid of the pomp that usually marks high-level visits.

Tillerson was then driven in a convoy of Land Cruisers amid tight security to the US embassy in Islamabads diplomatic enclave, before his meetings with the prime minister and the powerful army chief.

In Afghanistan on Monday, Tillerson told reporters that Pakistans cooperation on counter-terrorism is essential for a good relationship with the US.

Pakistan, he said, needs to take a clear-eyed view of the situation that they are confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organisations that find safe haven inside of Pakistan.

Earlier this month, the US campaign appeared to produce some success when Pakistani security forces assisted with the release of an American-Canadian family that was held captive by the Taliban for five years. However, officials cautioned that action needed to be followed with additional steps.

Tillerson, who will visit India after Pakistan, is in South Asia to outline the Trump administrations new strategy for the region, which is heavy on combating extremist groups.

The secretary of states visit, the first to Pakistan by a senior Trump administration official, comes months after the US president angrily accused Islamabad of harbouring agents of chaos who attack US-led forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Senate chairman Raza Rabbani on Tuesday expressed concern over the statement made by Tillerson in Afghanistan a day earlier.

His (Tillersons) tone and tenor are not acceptable, Rabbani said. His statement came one day before his visit to Pakistan. It seems like a viceroy told Tillerson what to say (on his visit).

Rabbani, a senior leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, also summoned foreign minister Asif to appear before the Senate on Wednesday and inform members about the US demands. He said that the Parliament and Senate have been kept in the dark about the conditions that were laid down by the US.

He also suggested that Tillerson should read the resolutions and recommendations passed by the Parliament so he knows what (Pakistans) reaction is.
British universities rounded on a lawmaker on Tuesday for asking them how they teach Brexit to students, a move many academics felt might be a prelude to censorship.

The furore around the letter, which the government distanced itself from, highlighted tensions in Britains higher education sector where many have concerns over the countrys decision to leave the European Union.

Conservative lawmaker Chris Heaton-Harris, who has a role in organising how the ruling Conservatives vote in parliament, sent the letter to university chiefs, requesting the names of professors at your establishment who are involved in the teaching of European affairs, with particular reference to Brexit.

If I could be provided with a copy of the syllabus and links to the online lectures which relate to this area, I would be much obliged, he added.

David Green, vice chancellor at the University of Worcester, said the letter sent a chill down his spine.

I realised that his letter just asking for information appears so innocent but is really so, so dangerous, he said in a statement.

Green said he thought he had been targeted after he spoke about wanting a better deal for English students.

Alistair Jarvis, chief executive of Universities UK which represents university principals, said: This request suggests an alarming attempt to censor or challenge academic freedom.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May said Heaton-Harris sent the letter in his capacity as a Member of Parliament, not on behalf of the government.

What the Prime Minister has always been very clear on is her respect for the freedom and independence of universities and the role the play in creating open and stimulating debate, he said.

Heaton-Harris later tweeted: To be absolutely clear, I believe in free speech in our universities and in having an open and vigorous debate on Brexit.

Around 90 percent of academics believe that Brexit will have an adverse impact on the higher education sector, according to a survey by trade union the University and College Union (UCU) in January.

The Russell Group of top British universities including Oxford and Cambridge said the content of courses was a matter for individual institutions ansd that every perspective on Brexit would be taught.

Whether academics supported leave or remain at the (2016) referendum has no bearing on their ability to deliver stimulating, challenging courses which include a full range of views and opinions on our relationship with Europe, said Jessica Cole, head of policy at the Russell Group.
The chief of Ukraines cyber police said Ukraine was attacked on Tuesday by malware called BadRabbit, adding that the country was barely affected.

Earlier the airport in the southern city of Odessa said it had tightened security measures after being hit by a cyber attack, while the metro system in the capital Kiev reported a hack on its payment system.

Asked whether the malware BadRabbit was used in the attacks, Cyber Police Chief Serhiy Demedyuk said by text message yes, correct.

Ukraine, which believes Russia is behind regular attacks on its computer systems, is trying to roll out a national strategy to keep state institutions and major companies safe. Moscow denies that it is behind cyber attacks on its neighbour.
The Trump administration is looking forward to completing the deal for transferring unarmed Sea Guardian drones to India, a senior US official has said.

The major decision to sell unarmed Sea Guardian drones was announced during the summit meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump on June 26.

The US looks forward to completing the deal for transferring Sea Guardian unmanned drones, the official said.

The addition of 22 state-of-the-art unarmed drones to India would add to its Navys surveillance capabilities in the strategic Indian Ocean region.

As part of India being designated as major defence partner, the Trump administration is taking additional steps to remove bureaucratic bottlenecks and accelerate the process of sale of high-tech defence equipment to India.

A special focus is on strengthening Indian maritime capabilities.

The defence cooperation is only going to increase, the senior administration official said, adding that this is based on fundamental understanding that interests of the two countries are now aligned.

This was the first major defence deal announced after India was designated as a major defence partner.

Vivek Lall, chief executive of US and international strategic development at General Atomics, said sale of Sea Guardian drones is a significant step in cementing the US- India bilateral defence relationship.

To be sold at an estimated cost of $2 billion, this would help create some 2,000 jobs in the US, he said.

The Sea Guardian is a variant of the tested MQ-9 platform which allows for greater interoperability with US and allied forces, Lall said adding that its use by the Indian Navy will also develop the countrys credible capabilities, which is significant for Indian maritime security and naval power projection.

However, there have been no talks between the two countries on New Delhis request for General Atomics Predator C Avenger armed drones.

It is understood that this was not raised by defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her meeting with her US counterpart Jim Mattis during his visit to India last month.

The two are scheduled to meet again this week in the Philippines.

According to an industry source, this case is being actively considered by the White House as a next step after the Guardian deal.

As military aviation transforms globally to autonomous systems, US and India have a great opportunity to collaborate at the highest levels of technology and innovation, the industry source said.

Last week, US secretary of state Rex Tillerson had said that in keeping with Indias status as a major defence partner and their mutual interest in expanding maritime cooperation, the Trump administration has offered a menu of defence options for Indias consideration, including the Guardian UAV.

We value the role India can play in global security and stability and are prepared to ensure they have even greater capabilities, Tillerson had said ahead of his visit to India.

The proposals the US has put forward, including for Guardian UAVs, aircraft carrier technologies, the Future Vertical Lift programme, and F-18 and F-16 fighter aircraft, are all potential game changers for our commercial and defence cooperation, Tillerson said.
On Wednesday, the Communist Party of China will reveal the composition of its two top decision-making bodies  the politburo and the smaller but most powerful standing committee of the politburo.

The 19th national congress of the Communist Party, which officially concluded on Tuesday, is the key party event where leadership changes for the next five years are announced. Like similar five-yearly congresses before, it was an opportunity for younger leaders to come up the pyramidal party structure, and it also gives an indication of who could be a future party general secretary.

The makeup of the standing committee, for one, could give an indication whether the Communist Party and President Xi Jinping have chosen a successor to take over the reins of the party in 2022.

Both Xi and Premier Li Keqiang were identified soon after the 2007 national congress as potential top leaders.

Will it be the same on Wednesday?

Li Cheng, director of the John L Thornton China Centre at the Washington-based Brookings Institution and a leading expert on elite Chinese politics, thinks there could be a delay in announcing Xis successor.

It is reasonable to delay it a bit. The previous model may not be always right because sometimes you need to have the leaders more tested. No country has a successor identified five years before. Its a Chinese experiment and subject to Chinas will. Xi Jinping could reasonably argue that, Li told Hindustan Times over email.

He (Xi) will be the de facto power in China for years to come but its unclear whether he wont anoint a potential successor at the congress. Chen Miner, the Chongqing Communist Party secretary and a Xi crony, may represent a younger official who gains entry into the standing committee, making him a potential successor, said Victor Shih, associate professor at the school of global policy and strategy at the University of California in San Diego.

On the possible reduction of members of the standing committee from seven to five, Shih said it was possible if Xi wanted to defer succession.

It might happen mainly because this will allow Xi to effortlessly gain a majority in the standing committee. With the retirement of everyone else in the standing committee, besides Xi and Premier Li, Xi only needs to promote two people to the committee to gain majority. He can then deter the issue of a successor potentially, Shih added.

But Li said not anointing a successor could lead to anxieties.

Succession is always important for any country. I think it not only for him (Xi) but for other leaders as well. You need to have a mechanism. Otherwise, people will remain lost. I think there will be some indication or maybe identify more than one. You do not need to create more anxiety, Li said.
Published 35 years after his death, Goyas The Disasters of War has etched the cruel suffering of war into our collective memory.

WHEN FRENCH EMPEROR NAPOLEON BONAPARTES TROOPS invaded Spain in December 1807, Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (17461828) had been First Court Painter to King Carlos IV for more than three decades. Goya was famous not only for his portraits of the Spanish aristocracy but also for his satirical etchings.

During six years of French occupation and guerrilla warfare by Spanish patriots, Goya continued his public career as a court artist, accepting commissions to paint portraits of French generals and other officials connected with the new Bonapartist regime. In private, he created a very different type of work: 85 etchings that depicted the cruelty of war. He titled the series Fatal Consequences of Spains Bloody War With Bonaparte. We know it as The Disasters of War.

The French invaded at a time when the Spanish government was in crisis. Long-simmering tensions between King Carlos and his son Ferdinand had come to a head in 1807. Fearing that his father intended to remove him from the succession, Ferdinand negotiated with Napoleon for help in deposing his father.

A popular uprising in March 1808 forced Carlos to abdicate in favor of his son. The new king arrived in Madrid on March 24, the day after the French commander Joachim Murat had entered the city at the head of the French army. Popular resentment against Carloss corrupt government was so strong that many Spaniards greeted Murat and the French troops as liberators.

In short order, however, the Spanish people realized that France had come to conquer, not to liberate. Held captive in the French city of Bayonne, both Carlos and Ferdinand were forced to give the reins of power to Napoleon, who proclaimed his brother Joseph king of Spain.

On May 2 violent demonstrations erupted in Madrid as a result of rumors that the French planned to forcibly remove the remaining members of the royal family to Bayonne. A Mamluk cavalry unit that Napoleon had brought back from Egypt charged into the protesters, who were armed with little more than cudgels and knives. Once the riot was subdued, Murats men rounded up everyone they could find who was armed and executed them. There were so many of them that the executions lasted through the night and well into the following morning.

The brutal repression of the May 2 protest did not end Spanish resistance. For six years Spanish patriots waged guerrilla warfare against the French occupiers, providing critical support to the British Army in the Peninsular War against France.

Aside from the fact that Goya lived in Madrid during Frances initial invasion and may well have witnessed the May 2 uprising, not much is known about his direct wartime experiences.

We know from his letters that Goya visited his childhood home of Zaragoza after the first siege of the city. Don Jose de Palafox y Melzi, the Spanish general who led the defense against the attackers, summoned Goya to see and examine the ruins of the city so as to paint the heroic deeds of its inhabitants. He arrived in late October and left shortly before the French began their second, more successful assault on the city in December. By May 1809 at the latest, Goya was back in Madrid, where he would spend the rest of the war and witness the famine it wrought on Madrid in 1811 and 1812a famine so devastating that 20,000 of its residents died of starvation.

Goya began etching the plates that make up The Disasters of War in 1810, and he appears to have worked on them through the end of the war. When his supplies ran low, he cut in two the copperplates for two landscapes he had etched before the war and created his scenes of war on the reverse sides.

The series can be divided into three rough parts. The first part deals with scenes of war. The second depicts the sufferings of famine. The thirdcomprising 16 etchingsconsists of biting political satires aimed at those who benefited under the French occupation.

Goya used a wide range of etching techniques. Drawing on figures and compositions from classical antiquity and Renaissance masters, he created images that combine beauty with horror. In what appear to be earlier plates (based on stylistic similarities to the few plates dated 1810), Goya created delicate effects of line and washtechniques that contrast with the gruesome scenes they portray. These plates display complex scenes in which many small figures are crowded into compositions that often subvert the heroic conventions of traditional battle scenes. Other plates, generally considered to date from later in the war, are less finished in style, with larger-scale figures set against simplified backgrounds that bring greater clarity to the horrors they depict.

Both sides in the war were merciless, and Goya is impartial in his depiction of their cruelties. He treats the atrocities that French soldiers suffered at the hands of his countrymen and those that French soldiers inflicted on ordinary Spanish citizens with the same sense of pity and condemnation; there is no difference between combatants and noncombatants. Men are shot, hanged, tortured, and dismembered. Women fight to defend themselves, sometimes with children in their arms. The wounded are pressed into service despite their pain. Children weep for dead mothers. Even the dead receive no respect: Soldiers strip corpses before throwing them into a common grave.

Some plates bear titles such as Yo lo vi (I saw it) and Asi sucedio (This is how it happened) that suggest Goya saw at least some of the events he depicts. But while many of the plates offer the immediacy of an eyewitness account, others, such as Esto es peor (This is worse), combine fantastical atrocities with painstaking realism.

Only one plate, titled Que valor! (What courage!), refers to an identifiable event. It is the only heroic image in the series. In it, a young woman, seen from behind, climbs over the bodies of her fallen countrymen and fires a cannon at an unseen foea clear reference to the actions of Augustine Domenech, who stepped into a defensive breach and fired a cannon during the first siege of Zaragoza.

After the war King Ferdinand VII returned to his throne, and Goya regained his title and salary as first court painter, thanks to friends who testified that he had not supported Joseph Bonapartes brief rule. He kept his head down, creating portraits of the court and a series of etchings depicting the history of bullfighting in Spain. Meanwhile, he prepared his wartime etchings for future publication. In 1819 he gave fellow artist and writer Juan Agustin Cean Bermudez his original etchings and a full set of working proofs, with each sheet numbered and captionedpresumably intending to publish the plates as a series.

But Goyas The Disasters of War remained unpublished until 1863a half century after its creation and a year after Mathew Brady displayed his photographs of the bloody battlefield at Antietam on the door of his New York photography studio. In the years since their publication, Goyas prints have been acclaimed for what photographer Susan Sontag described in Regarding the Pain of Others as a new standard for responsiveness for suffering. After the First World War, German Expressionist artist Otto Dix modeled his own print series Der Krieg on Goyas work. Photojournalists assigned to cover modern wars have pointed to Goyas war etchings as precursors of their reportage from the battlefront.

As immediate as a snapshot and as artificial as many of the earliest examples of war photography, The Disasters of War demands that the viewer share Goyas horror. In Goyas hands, war is anything but glorious and heroes are in short supply. MHQ

PAMELA D. TOLER writes frequently about history and the arts. She is the author of Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War (Little, Brown and Company, 2016) and is currently working on a global history of women warriors.

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This article appears in the Autumn 2017 issue (Vol. 30, No. 1) of MHQThe Quarterly Journal of Military History with the headline: Eyewitness to Horror

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Australians Remains and Spitfire Recovered

When Royal Australian Air Force Flight Lieutenant Henry Lacy Smiths Spitfire Mk.IXb was hit by flak during a strafing mission over Normandy five days after D-Day, he radioed,Im going to put this thing down in a field. He might have lived had he been able to, but instead he went down in a tidal flat off the Orne River near Caen. His flight mates saw the airplane skid across the water briefly, then nose down and slowly turn onto its back. Smith was trapped in the cockpit and drowned.

Sixty-six years later, his remainsand the hulk of his airplane were recovered from the mud flat by a team led by Brigitte and Fabrice Corbin, who run a World War II tourist museum overlooking the D-Day beaches in Ouistreham, in the blockhouse that once served as Wehrmacht headquarters for the Atlantic Wall fortifications (see musee-grand-bunker.com/englishversion.asp).

Initial reports of the recovery placed the crash in the Orne River, but the wreck was in fact dug out of the mud just off the town of Sallonelles, brought to the surface at high tide by large floats, and then tidal currents carried it out to the Orne before full recovery could be attempted.

It is possible that Smith had extended his gear in hopes of reaching a landable fieldan act that sealed his doom when he ditched instead. Norman locals had for years known of the Spitfires existence because the mainwheels of the inverted airplane appeared above the mud at low tide.

Brigitte Corbin told Aviation History that Smiths remains will be buried in France (at Ranville War Cemetery) rather than being sent back to Australia, and that the wreckage of his Spitfire will remain in Normandy.We do not know yet if the plane will be exhibited in our museum, she explained. But the Corbins have one very valuable piece of the airplanethe dataplate with its serial number, LF IXb MJ789and restorers are surely bidding for it already. An authentic Spitfire can be built from scratch around an original dataplate, which has already been the case with several recovered but unrestorable Spits.

-Stephan Wilkinson

Jolly Green Giant

Last December the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, rolled out its newly restored Sikorsky HH-3 Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopter, which had been stored at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona until entering the museums collection in August. The HH-3, no. 67-14709, served 32 months with the 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron at Da Nang Air Base in Vietnam, executing search-and-rescue missions that led to the recovery of 27 American airmen. It now occupies a place of honor in the museums newly expanded Southeast Asia War Gallery.

Fairey Gannet Revival

Most vintage-warplane restorers fancy the big, brawling fighters, the superstars of air combat. A few are drawn to rarer military aircraft that served as supporting actors, planes often without charisma, sometimes surprisingly mundane and occasionally flat ugly. One good example: the Fairey Gannet, a huge, obese but effective 1950s anti-sub twin that never went to war. (Had the Royal Navy not replaced Gannets with helicopters in the mid-60s, many think it might have found its brief niche during the Falklands War.) Yes, it was a twin, though it doesnt look like one, with two separate Bristol Mamba turbines each driving one of a pair of contrarotating propellers through a common gearbox. Either engine and its prop could be shut down in flight for long-duration ASW patrollingor, its later-in-life function, airborne early warningwith no perceptible change in the airplanes handling.

Two Gannets are currently being restored to flying status, one in the U.S. and the other in the UK, and when complete, will be the only ones aloft.

In New Richmond, Wis., aviation enthusiast Shannan Hendricks is refurbishing an unusual dual-control Gannet T.5 trainerone of only eight builtthat last flew on the U.S. airshow circuit in the late 1990s. In 2004 XT-752 started a ferry flight back to the UK but made it only as far as Goose Bay, Labrador, before mechanical problems suggested the need for at least one new engine.

Last October that Gannet finally found a home in Wisconsin, after being stored outdoors in the harsh Goose Bay climate, and was air-freighted to its new owner aboard a Antonov An-124. Its expected to fly on its own sometime in 2012 (you can keep up with its progress at faireygannetxt752.com).

In England a more extensive Gannet renovation is being undertaken by an outfit called Hunter Flying, which restores, maintains and operates the biggest fleet (10 flying, four under restoration) of Hawker Hunters in the world. Their Gannet, XL500, is an AEW version with an unfortunately prominent radome goiter on its belly. Hunter Flying hopes to have its Gannet running by the end of 2012 and requests that if any Aviation History readers have or know of any Gannet tooling, please contact them at hunterflying@ btinternet.com.

-Stephan Wilkinson

Missing B-24 Crew Returns Home

In August 1943, Sergeant Hollis Smith, in Port Moresby, New Guinea, penned a letter to his parents in Cove, Ark., urging them to spend the money he was sending home rather than keep it for his return. I want you to finish paying off that place [the farm], and use all of it that you need, he wrote. Smith would never know if they heeded his advice. On October 27, 1943, he and 11 other crewmen aboard the Consolidated B-24D Shack Rat crashed in the thick tropical rainforest of the Sarawaget Mountains in southeast New Guinea.

Part of the 320th Squadron, 90th Bombardment Group (the Jolly Rogers), Smith and his crewmates took off at 7:30 a.m. from 5-Mile Drome, an airfield outside Port Moresby, to observe and photograph enemy ships in the Bismarck Sea. At 2:30 p.m. V Bomber Command warned Shack Rat of bad weather at Port Moresby, ordering it to land instead at Dobodura. After acknowledging the order, the B-24 was never heard from again. U.S. Army Air Forces recovery teams launched multiple air searches along New Guineas east coast, but couldnt find the crash site. In 1949 the Army Graves Registration declared the 12 airmen unrecoverable.

Thats how things stood until August 2003, when Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) acquired a B-24 data plate and the ID card of Jack Volz, Shack Rats pilot, which a New Guinean had salvaged from wreckage in the mountains northwest of Dobodura. After two failed attempts to reach the crash site, in 2007 a JPAC recovery team spent three months there, then set to work contacting relatives and comparing DNA samples.

As of December 2010, the identified remains of three Shack Rat crewmen have been returned Stateside and buried with full military honors: engineer Hollis Smith in Cove; tail gunner Claude A. Ray in Riverside, Calif.; and photographer Claude Tyler in Arlington, Va. The remains of the airmen who could not be identified will be interred at a memorial in Arlington National Cemetery in May.

Before the fateful flight, Claude Ray wrote his parents that he hoped to return to Kansas for a white Christmas in 1943. With 297 service hours in B-24s, he needed just three more to complete his tour of duty, so he volunteered to serve on Shack Rat when its tail gunner got sick. For the rest of her life, Rays mother would leave the room whenever White Christmas was played on the radio.

Gayla Claborn, Smiths niece, expressed her gratitude for the continuing efforts to repatriate fallen servicemen. Our family was overwhelmed and amazed, she said. It is very encouraging to know that 67 years later the military would put forth the time, energy and resources to bring my uncle home.

-Stephen Mauro

Worlds Fastest Private Planes

When it rains, it poursMiG-29s, in this case. Not one but two of the Russian superfighters have recently flown in private hands in the U.S., making them the fastest, highest- climbing, quickest-accelerating, loudest and coolest private airplanes in the world, and humbling every billionaires Mach .92 Cessna Citation X and even the Mach .925 Gulfstream G650, due on the market next year.

The first private MiG-29 to fly was exU.S. Navy pilot Don Kirlins two-seat version of the Fulcrum air-superiority fighter. This past December, Kirlins MiG-29UB took off for the first time since he bought it in once-Soviet Kyrgystan in 1996, flying from his home base in Quincy, Ill. With a top speed somewhere beyond Mach 2.2 and a ceiling of nearly 60,000 feet, the Fulcrum, once intended to face off with the F-15 Eagle, was one of the USSRs most advanced fightersthough still typically Soviet-crude in many waysand a popular export to dozens of client countries.

It took several years and considerable paperwork for Kirlin to satisfy the FAA and various other government agencies that he could safely operate the MiG, but Kirlin has had ample experience putting N-numbers on foreign fast-movers. His Quincy company, Red Air, owns a considerable fleet of Aero Vodochody L-39 and L-59 Albatros and Super Albatros two-seat jet trainers, a MiG-21, a gaggle of Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet light strike fightersand three more MiG-29s awaiting flight status.

Six weeks later, the vintage-aircraft museum Historic Flight, north of Seattle, Wash., flew its exUkrainian air force MiG-29, also a twoseat UB. Historics struggles to import the airplane were if anything more extreme than Kirlins. The wings and engines were shipped safely from the Ukraine across the Atlantic, but the fuselage, en route separately via the Pacific, was seized in Hong Kong as military contraband in 2006. It took two years of negotiations for the Chinese to finally release the fuselage, after which the entire airplane was rebuilt by the highly regarded Morgan Aircraft Restorations in Arlington, Wash., with help from a team of experienced, ex-military MiG-29 mechanics flown over from Slovakia.

Restoration was complicated by the fact that the Russian air force grounded all of its MiG-29s after two 2008 crashes caused by vertical stabilizer failure due to corrosion, which required Morgan Aircraft to re-engineer the tail-to-fuselage interface. Historic Flight has two more MiG-29s in its hangars that will eventually be restored and offered for sale. (Nows your chance to get in line. Bring lots of money.)

-Stephan Wilkinson

Originally published in the May 2011 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.
Jimmie Angel searched Venezuelas Lost World for a fabled river of gold, but all he found was a waterfallthe worlds tallest, as it turned out.

Pilot and adventurer James Crawford Angel lived a life of contradictions in which reality sometimes blurred with fiction. Angel loved to spin tales almost as much as he loved flying. He actively participated in the creation of the various legends about his colorful life, acknowledges his niece Karen Angel, who has dedicated years to tracing his career.

Born in southwest Missouri in 1899, Jimmie Angel claimed he taught himself to fly at the age of 14, one of the stories about him that cannot be verified. By the early 1920s, he was barnstorming across the country with a flying circus featuring himself and his brothers as pilots, along with wing-walkers and parachute jumpers. Jimmies wife, Virginia, also performed stunts, as did the brothers wives.

Jimmie also worked as a flight instructor, test pilot and movie stunt pilot, but he brushed off suggestions that he fly for an airline. It would be like driving a bus, he explained. Though stories have surfaced that he became an ace during World War I, created an air force for a Chinese warlord in the Gobi Desert and served as an aerial scout for Lawrence of Arabia, Karen Angel has found no evidence to support them.

Jimmie eventually became obsessed with finding a river of gold he believed existed in Venezuelas Gran Sabana wilderness. He often told a story about his encounter with an American prospector named McCracken in a Panamanian bar early in the 1920s. The prospector said hed heard that Jimmie could land on a dime, and offered him $5,000 to fly him to a gold-filled river in the Gran Sabana. The two men outfitted an airplane and headed for the uncharted wilderness, where McCracken had Jimmie land on a tabletop mountain. They found stream beds glittering with golden ore, some of which they loaded onto the plane. By that time night was falling, and they had to take off for the Ciudad Bolivar airport 160 miles away.

The story concludes with the pair returning to Panama, where McCracken paid Angel his fee. But the prospector fell ill and died before they could return to the mountain, leaving the young pilot to try to figure out exactly where theyd found that river of gold.

Jimmies description of his adventure varied through the years, and whether it was based in fact is debatable. Karen Angel categorizes her uncles oft-told tale as unverifiable, noting that it was sometimes a successful means of attracting investors to his search for gold.

In 1933 Jimmie returned to the Gran Sabana in his TravelAir, accompanied by two representatives of a Tulsa oil company. Though they returned without any gold, Jimmie made another discovery while flying solo in the area: a mile-high waterfall plunging from Auyantepui, a towering plateau whose name means the Devils House.

Found myself a waterfall, he recorded in his logbook on November 18. His discovery wouldnt be verified until years later, at which time the fan-shaped torrent was measured at 3,211 feet, with a 2,648-foot main dropmaking it the worlds tallest waterfall, 15 times higher than Niagara Falls. The Venezuelan government would name the falls in Angels honor in 1939.

Meanwhile, Jimmie and some partners bought a rugged, single-engine Metal Aircraft Corporation Flamingo that could carry seven, which he dubbed El Rio Caroni, after the Venezuelan river he used as a navigational lifeline through the Gran Sabana. He also acquired a new wife, Marie Sanders, who sometimes served as his copilot and navigator. In the fall of 1937, she accompanied Jimmie and Gustavo Heny, a wilderness explorer; his servant Michael Delgado; and botanist Felix Cardona Puig on another expedition. They planned to land atop Auyantepui and search for the mother lode.

The group scouted the mountain for several days, roughing out a trail from a base camp to the summit and dropping supplies on the plateau. They finally attempted a landing on the mountaintop on October 9, which went smoothly until the landing gear began to bog down. Pull out, Jimmie! Pull out! Heny shouted, seconds before the aircraft nosed over and lurched to a halt. The party spent two days searching fruitlessly for gold before starting the trek down the mountain. Along the way they left notes for potential rescuers, who flew over the mountain but didnt spot the mired aircraft. Ten grueling days later the team reached the base camp. This madness for gold sure gets people into some awful predicaments, commented Marie Angel.

That mishap meant Jimmie couldnt participate in a subsequent expedition mounted by the American Museum of Natural History, inspired by his earlier explorations. After three months spent documenting the regions flora and fauna, the researchers emerged in March 1938 with a treasure trove of data and specimens, including 507 mammals, 243 fish, 2,039 birds and 150 insects and spiders. Despite Angels absence from that team, they praised his efforts to explore the region. I believe that Jimmie Angel has discovered the eighth wonder of the world, ornithologist E. Thomas Gilliard wrote in the July 1941 Saturday Evening Post. Naming Angel Falls after the pilot, he wrote, made it a monument to the courage and persistence of this explorer-aviator and soldier of fortune.

Jimmie and Marie returned to the Gran Sabana in March 1939, flying a newly purchased single-engine Hamilton Metalplane, and agreed to join an expedition mounted by the Venezuelan Ministry of Development. During five months in the field, Jimmie flew more than 300 hours, mapping, scouting, taking aerial photographs and transporting scientists to remote spots. He does things that practically no one else would have the skill or the nerve to do, and then takes them so casually that it is hard to believe he did them, wrote George Gaylord Simpson, who with his wife, Anne Roe Simpson, represented the American Museum of Natural History on the expedition.

Jimmie and Marie were next asked to work with the Venezuelan-Brazilian Boundary Commission, to help establish emergency landing fields and airlift equipment for the Venezuelan government. But authorities revoked Jimmies license to fly in Venezuela not long afterward, following an ill-starred errand of mercy. Jimmie had volunteered to airlift a pregnant woman from a backcountry campsite to a hospital in Ciudad Bolivar. When he saw that he lacked fuel to complete the flight safely, he landed on a riverfront beach, flagged down a local in a canoe and asked him to bring fuel.Angel and his passenger arrived at the hospital just in time for the birth. In the meantime, however, the air force had launched a search in which a pilot was killed. Jimmie suddenly became persona non grata in a country he loved.

Through the 1940s the Angel family lived in at least eight locations, mostly in Latin America. Jimmie operated two small air transport companies, one of which hauled raw rubber out of Nicaragua and Honduras. But when both sons, Jimmy and Rolan, developed health problems, the Angels returned Stateside, first to Missouri and later to Santa Barbara, Calif., which became his base for further adventures.

Angel logged his last flight in April 1956, when he and a companion took off for British Guiana. Before leaving, the 57-year old pilot told his father, Dad, I will not be back. Landing in Panama in a crosswind on April 17, Jimmie was struck in the back of the head by unsecured cargo. He initially survived the resulting concussion, but died of complications in a military hospital on December 8. The death certificate listed his occupation as explorer. Fulfilling her husbands wish, Marie Angel and her sons flew his ashes back to the Gran Sabana in July 1960 to be scattered over the waterfall that bears his name.

Angels Flamingo remained atop Auyantepui for 33 years before the Venezuelan government declared it a national monument and airlifted it out to restore it. Today it sits forlornly outside the airport terminal at Ciudad Bolivar, abused by the weather and vandals. Supported by Venezuelan pilots, Karen Angel has fought unsuccessfully so far to have the plane released by local authorities so it can be better preserved.

Karen leads tours to Angel Falls, and has hiked the trail down from Auyantepui, now within Canaima National Park. She also continues to research her uncles life as part of the Jimmie Angel Historical Project (see jimmieangel.org). While acknowledging that Jimmie spent much of his time looking for gold, she emphasizes his efforts as a trailblazer in the region, saying, His living and his reputation as a master pilot were earned by flying thousands of hours, often in dangerous conditions, for other people in support of their enterprises and dreams.

Originally published in the May 2011 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.
One of the greatest early aerobatic pilots, Bert Acosta couldnt overcome his inner demons.

Early on the misty morning of June 29, 1927, the Fokker C.2 America sat idling at Roosevelt Field as the crew prepared for their transatlantic attempt.Overloaded with extra gasoline, the trimotor was little more than a flying fuel tank. To achieve maximum speed on takeoff, it had been pulled back onto a 15-foot inclined wooden ramp (estimated as equivalent to 500 extra feet of runway) and held in place by a rope attached to the tailskid. At a signal from the pilot when the engines reached maximum rpm, a mechanic would sever the rope.

Inside the cockpit the tension was palpable. The pilot was concentrating on his final engine checks, while beside him sat the nervous crewman charged with operating the fuel dump valve in an emergency. Outside in the saturating drizzle, the mechanic waited for the signal to cut the rope. It never came.

Suddenly the rope snapped and the Fokker lunged forward. Caught off guard, the pilot had to instantly decide whether to abandon the takeoff or press on in the hope of achieving takeoff speed before the end of the 5,000- foot field. He slammed open the throttles.

Engines bellowing like a primeval beast, the unwieldy trimotor lumbered down the muddy runway toward the critical halfway point, slowly at first but rapidly gaining momentum. Then faster still, until the pilot recognized the first telltale sensations of flight and gently eased back the wheel. A slight lurch and they were airborne. Seconds later, to an exultant whoop from a crewman in the rear, the airplane began a slow climb. Ahead lay Newfoundland, the vast emptiness of the Atlantic and, with luck, Europe.

For the pilot, Bertram Blanchard Acosta, it may well have been the crowning moment of a spectacularly checkered flying career. A flamboyant giant of a man, Acosta was blessed, or maybe cursed, with matinee idol looks and appetites to match. He was a flying legend whose star shone brightly during the formative years of American aviation and then gradually dimmed.

Born in San Diego on New Years Day 1895, the young Acosta soon demonstrated the independence of spirit that would mark his entire life. He rode fast ponies, spent nights in the mountains and was expelled from school for chewing tobacco in class. Yet, inspired by the Wright brothers, he determined to carve a niche for himself in the emergent field of aviation.

In his early teens Acosta reportedly piloted a glider built mainly from scrap, before moving on to construct and fly a patchwork airplane with a two-stroke Elbridge engine. Around this time he became associated with Glenn H. Curtiss, Americas first licensed aircraft manufacturer, who set up a base at North Island, San Diego, in 1910-11. Curtiss took Acosta on as some sort of apprentice or mechanics assistant for the companys work on hydro-airplanes. After he was given formal flying instruction, the youngster showed precocious ability.

Impressed by Acostas aptitude and enthusiasm, Curtiss persuaded him to make up for his deficient education by enrolling at Throop Polytechnic Institute.At the same time,Acosta continued to assist in the development of Curtiss land- and seaplanes, becoming such a competent pilot that he was made an instructor at the flying school Curtiss opened on North Island in February 1911.

In the spring of 1915, Curtiss and John McCurdy (who, in 1909, had become the first man to fly in Canada) formed the Canadian Curtiss Company and established a flying school near Toronto to train pilots for the embattled British Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service. Acosta was among the instructors assigned there. He taught many Canadians headed for the Western Front, spending his off-duty hours charming the local ladies. When the Toronto flying school closed for the winter, Acosta moved on to teach at a new facility in Newport, Va., under Captain Tom Baldwin. Meanwhile he continued his experimental work on new Curtiss planes, in March 1916 demonstrating the new Curtiss R general-purpose biplane to Russian government representatives.

Shortly before the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, Acosta applied for a military commission, hoping to see combat in Europe. Considered too valuable at home, he was appointed a senior civilian instructor to the U.S. Army at Hazelhurst Field in Mineola, on Long Island, where his duties later included flight-testing. On March 27, 1917, he flew on the first American antisubmarine patrol with the Mineola-based Aerial Reserve Squadron in its unsuccessful search for the German sub U-53. The following December saw him reassigned as an instructor at Ellington Field in Houston, Texas, for the winter.

In 1918 Acosta was commissioned a captain in the Army Air Service Reserve and appointed testing and engineering assistant to Colonel E.J. Hall of the Bureau of Aircraft Production in Washington, D.C. Belatedly he also found time to take the test for his official pilots license, which was issued on December 5, 1919. He continued test-flying for Curtiss and other manufacturers, piloting a variety of planes that included the unconventional Curtiss Eagle trimotor, described as a notorious craft for its day.

After helping to survey the nations first prospective airmail routes, Acosta became associated in 1920 with the Junkers Larsen Corporation, headed by former Curtiss employee and entrepreneur John M. Larsen, to promote the German Junkers F13 all-metal four-passenger monoplane in the U.S. as the JL-6. In May 1920, Acosta flew a series of passenger-carrying demonstration flights in a JL-6 at the Pan-American Aeronautical Congress in Atlantic City, N.J., and in June he took a JL-6 to 20,600 feet over New York. He followed up that feat by setting a new American nonstop passenger distance record in a JL-6, flying 1,200 miles in 12 hours, 52 minutes, from Omaha, Neb., to Lancaster, Pa. On July 29, Acosta and Larsen, joined by Eddie Rickenbacker, led three JL-6s from New York to the West Coast with 100 letters aboard, to demonstrate the feasibility of transcontinental airmail routes. Acostas dalliances with women along their route raised a few censorious eyebrows but added to his legend as the Casanova of the air (he had married in 1918, fathered two daughters and divorced in 1920).

The U.S. Post Office subsequently purchased six JL-6s, but hastily abandoned the type after two were lost to midair fires, apparently caused by faulty fuel systems. The other four were sold at a significant loss.

November 27, 1920, found Acosta flying a modified Italian Ansalado A.1 Ballila biplane in the first Pulitzer Trophy Race, starting from Mitchell Field and extending over four 29- mile laps of a triangular course. At an average speed of 135 mph, Acosta came in third behind Captain Corliss Moseley in a Verville Packard VCP-R and Harold Hartney in a Thomas Morse MB-3.

For the Pulitzer race of November 5, 1921, held at Omaha, Acosta was at the controls of a rakish Curtiss CR-1, powered by a 405-hp Curtiss CD-12 engine. The CR-1 had been built for the U.S. Navy, which decided at the last moment not to participate. Starting first, Acosta ripped over the course at minimum altitude, with a pack of snarling racers in hot pursuit. Under the strain, two of the CR-1s flying wires snapped during the first turn, causing the wings to vibrate and buzz alarmingly. A more cautious pilot might have abandoned the race, but Acosta recklessly pressed on with throttle wide open, coming in first at an average speed of 176.75 mph, a closed-course world speed record. The grueling race had taken its toll on him, however; Acosta had to be helped from the cockpit after landing. In second place was the Curtiss-Cox Cactus Kitten triplane flown by Clarence Coombs and owned by Texas oil millionaire S.E.J. Cox. Acosta had tested the Kitten in October and thoroughly disliked its eccentric handling and limited cockpit view.

On November 22, Acosta made eight officially timed passes over Curtiss Fields measured kilometer in the CR-1 at an average speed of 197.8 mph, an American record just short of the world record of 211.91 mph established on September 21 by Frenchman Joseph Sadi-Lecointe in a Nieuport-Delage.

In 1921, at 26, Acosta was riding high on fame and fortune, including his $3,000 Pulitzer purse.With over 7,000 flying hours, he may well have flown more airplane types than any other pilot in the world at that time. As one of Americas preeminent test pilots, he should have been set for a leading role in the countrys expanding aviation industry. Unfortunately for Acosta, his bad boy of the air persona was never far below the surface, waiting to transform the consummate professional into a caricature of the reckless barnstormer.

It resurfaced, for example, when senior U.S. Navy officers gathered at Curtiss Field for the CR-1s official demonstration. No sooner had the airplane left the ground than Acosta went into a loop, followed by a dizzying series of rolls and whipstalls before rocketing up to 7,000 feet. He then entered a near-vertical power dive, hurtling the CR-1 to within a few feet of the ground and rounding off the display by flying the racer inverted just 30 feet over the heads of the stunned officials. Although there could have been no more convincing demonstration of the CR-1s capabilities, he was severely criticized for potentially endangering Long Island communities.

Unrepentant, on April 30, 1922, Acosta treated the crowd at the National Flying Meet at Curtiss Field to a daredevil display in the Cactus Kitten (a plane he had vowed never to fly again) that to some must have seemed almost suicidal. He blasted the crimson triplane over the hangars at rooftop height before returning to make a series of low-level, high-speed passes over 20,000 stunned spectators, clocking 208 mph at one point.

The reckoning came on June 28, when Acosta was testing the new Sperry Messenger at Mitchell Field. Putting the little biplane into a near-vertical dive, he dropped below the airfields hedgerow boundary and started to roll. When the biplane was inverted no more than 50 feet up, the gravity-fed engine misfired and stopped running. Although Acosta completed the roll, the engine failed to restart, and the Messenger gouged a deep furrow in the field. It took some time for rescuers to pry the unconscious pilot free, as the Messengers engine had been shunted back to just above his feet, and the cowl was dented where Acostas head had rammed into it. Although no bones were broken, Acosta spent six weeks in the hospital, drifting in and out of deliriumnursed part of the time by a female admirer.

Some believe the crash was a pivotal turning point in Acostas life and that, having sensed his own mortality but lacking perspective, he was never quite the same again. While he clearly relished the hero worship and adrenalin rush derived from flying, he was sadly lacking in the maturity and pragmatism that enabled many of his contemporaries to transform aviation from a thrilling game into a major industry. In more ways than not, Acosta was on a downhill slope after the crash.

Acosta was at the 1922 Pulitzer Race in Detroit on October 14. Although slated to fly the Navys Bee-Line BR-1 Racer, he didnt actually participate in the event. Earlier he had carried out speed trials in the innovative low-wing monoplane Racer with retractable undercarriage, clocking 218 mph. Two weeks before, at Selfridge Field, when the Racers undercarriage malfunctioned, he had become one of the first pilots to carry out a wheels-up landing.

From this time on, Acostas conduct became increasingly bizarre. Frequently depressed, he was often to be found, as one correspondent unsympathetically recounted, having a wrestling bout with a bottle of Scotch in a speakeasy. Other times he apparently sought relief in the air from his dejection, flying under the Brooklyn, Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges over New Yorks East River and nearly colliding with the Queensboro Bridge. During another flight, when Acostas passenger casually asked him the time, by way of an answer he took him roaring along Madison Avenue until the planes wingtips almost brushed the hands of the huge clock on the Metropolitan Life Tower. He was also said to be able to roll an undercarriage wheel on the topmost domes of Manhattans skyscrapers.

In the spring of 1923, Acosta tested the new Remington-Burnelli airliner at Curtiss Field, and in September of that year he flew a Fokker monoplane from Chicago to New York nonstop, carrying film of a title fight. But these glimmers of normality were erased when, on October 7, The New York Times reported, Aviator Sent to Jail: Judge Gives Bert Acosta Five Days for Driving Auto While Drunk. That incident set the pattern for the next few years. After Acosta was grounded, he and Glenn Curtiss finally parted company. Acosta became a melancholy shadow of his former self, attempting to drown his inner demons in alcohol and finding little consolation in a second marriage.

Then in 1927 came transatlantic fever and the scramble to win the $25,000 Orteig Prize for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Acostas temporary salvation appeared in the unlikely person of the brash millionaire New York scrap dealer Charles Levine. Aside from his ruthless business acumen, Levine was an aviation enthusiast who in 1927 had formed the Columbia Aircraft Corporation (CAC) with aircraft designer Guiseppe Bellanca and purchased the highly innovative Wright-Bellanca WB-2. Levine approached Acosta with an offer to copilot the WB-2 with Clarence Chamberlin on an endurance flight to test the airplanes long distance capability with its fuel capacity expanded to 375 gallons.

The strapping extrovert Acosta and the slender teetotaler Chamberlin were the chalk and cheese of the piloting world. Yet they coexisted peaceably in the Bellancas cramped cockpit between April 12 and 14, cruising back and forth from Roosevelt Field to establish a world endurance record of 51 hours and 11 minutes over a track of 4,100 miles, 500 more than the air distance to Paris. Only when the engine stopped on the last drop of gas did they return to earth in a long glide.

As Chamberlin recorded, however, Bert and I had won a record, but we had not won the right to fly the Bellanca to Paris. The publicity-conscious Levine instead recruited former airmail pilot Lloyd W. Bertaud and made it unflatteringly clear to Chamberlin that hed been eliminated from the running because he was less photogenic than Acosta or Bertaud. Levine, however, had not counted on the intransigence of Guiseppe Bellanca, who threatened to quit the CAC unless Chamberlin was allowed to fly the WB-2.

Disillusioned with Levine, Acosta left the CAC to join Commander Richard Byrd as first pilot of a competitor, the Fokker trimotor America. That opportunity arose after Byrds usual pilot, Floyd Bennett, was badly injured during a test flight of the America with designer Anthony Fokker at the controls.

Norwegian Bernt Balchen, then Fokkers chief test pilot, reflected what many fliers still felt about one of their slightly tarnished idols when he wrote: Bert Acosta is a fabulous figure in aviation, one of the top pilots in America if not the whole world. He was a noted Army flight instructor during the First World War. After 1918 his sensational stunts were the talk of us all in Norway. Acosta is one of the finest aerobatic pilots ever seen. A flier with a marvelous sense of coordination, he is an expert at such stunts as upside down flying at low altitude, picking a handkerchief off the ground with one wing tip.It is the romantic rather than the scientific kind of flying that he stands for.

Doubts about Acostas transatlantic potential surfaced during a test flight he made in the America with Balchen and Anthony Fokker. They were flying through a solid cloud bank with Acosta at the controls when, as Balchen related, I suddenly feel myself getting very heavy in the seat, and see that the turn-indicator needle is all over on one side. I quickly reach for the wheel and Acosta lets his hands drop from the controls in relief. Acosta ruefully admitted, Im strictly a fair weather boy. If theres any thick stuff, I stay on the ground.

Concerned about his companys reputation should the America fail to complete the transatlantic flight, Fokker urged Balchen to accompany Acosta to handle the instrument flying. But the Americas backer, Rodman Wanamaker, insisted on an all-American crew, so Balchen promptly obtained U.S. citizenship. Lieutenant George O. Noville was to serve as radio operator, while Byrd navigated. Meanwhile the flight suffered successive delays, for which some blamed Byrd and others Wanamaker. Whatever the case, by the time the America finally turned its blunt snout toward the Atlantic on June 29, Charles Lindbergh had flown the Spirit of St. Louis to Paris on May 20-21 to claim the Orteig Prize, and Chamberlin had piloted the WB-2 Columbia almost to Berlin, with Levine as his passenger-copilot, on June 4-6.

Before the America finally left Roosevelt Field for Paris, there was that moment of high drama when the rope snapped on the ramp, testing Acostas skills to the limit. Once airborne and heading across the Atlantic, Acosta and Balchen spelled each other untiljust past Newfoundland, while flying in fogBalchen handed over to Acosta to hunt for his sandwiches. During those few moments in Acostas hands, the Fokker entered a potentially fatal spiral dive. Seizing the controls, Balchen found that 1,000 feet had been lost and they were plunging toward the ocean at 140 mph. While Acosta slumped in his seat, Balchen deftly coaxed the big trimotor out of its dive and made a 180-degree turn to bring them back on course. It was the old problem again. A chastened Acosta said, Youd better handle it from now on, as long as were fogged in. Balchen was at the controls for the next seven hours before they emerged into a starlit night and Acosta could take over.

Twenty-five long hours after leaving Newfoundland they reached the coast of France near Brest. Balchen wanted to follow the railway directly to Paris, but Byrd inexplicably ordered Acosta to head for Le Havre to follow the river Seine. Flying through appalling weather, they made two unsuccessful attempts to reach the French capital (some Parisians claimed to have heard them overhead) before the imperturbable Balchen successfully ditched the Fokker off Vierville-sur-Mer. They had been in the air for some 42 hours. After tumultuous acclaim in France, the Americas crew, accompanied by Clarence Chamberlin, returned to New York for a ticker-tape welcome. Acostas standing would never be so high again.

In early 1928, Charles Levine recruited Acosta to pilot him and heiress Mabel Boll on an east-west transatlantic flight from Germany to New York. After Levine had acquired a Junkers W33, however, they were denied permission to take off from a German airfield. Englands Croydon aerodrome, their alternate, was rejected by Acosta as too short for the heavily laden aircraft. Le Bourget was under consideration when financial problems forced Levine to abandon the flight. Given Acostas inability to fly on instruments and Levines lack of flying experience, that decision likely saved their lives.

In 1929 Acosta tried to reinvent himself as an aviation consultant. He even founded the Acosta Aircraft Corporation, to manufacture a multipurpose amphibian, but the enterprise soon collapsed. Ensuing years found him in and out of the courts, charged with drunkenness, nonpayment of alimony and diverse aviation offenses. He was fined $2,000 for buzzing Roosevelt Field, and in late 1929 found himself grounded for five years after a drunken stunting spree with an expired license.

After his license was restored in 1935, Acosta took up instructing again, leading a largely hand-to-mouth existence. Then, in October 1936, he went to Spain to fly for the Republicans against Francos Nationalists. Accounts of his short combat career differ widely. He unquestionably saw action against the German Condor Legion, but sensationalist press reports that hed downed German fighters with his revolver were plainly fictional.

A disillusioned Acosta left Spain on December 20. He returned to the U.S. seemingly revitalized, and there was extravagant talk of record-breaking transcontinental flights. But then he flew under the Connecticut Bridge and was grounded again, this time for good. Surrendering to an alcohol-induced downward spiral, Acosta spent further time in jail and also underwent a period of rehabilitation in a Franciscan monastery. Nothing worked.

A pale shadow of his former self, Bert Acosta finally succumbed to tuberculosis in Spivak, Colo., on September 1, 1954, at age 59. So died the man who had once declared, Give me a kitchen table with a motor on it and Ill fly it. Although overburdened with human frailties, Acosta the aviator had few equals in courage, daring and natural flying ability. He was a pilot of genius who, having contributed so much to the early advances in aviation, was simply unable to adjust to the industrys startling pace of change. Aviations bad boy never quite grew up.

Frequent contributor and RAF veteran Derek OConnor writes from Amersham, Bucks, UK. For further reading, he recommends: Atlantic Fever, by Edward Jablonski; Skyward, by Richard E. Byrd; and Come North With Me, by Bernt Balchen.

Originally published in the May 2011 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ars tend to be extended, messy affairs, won in a series of battles large and small, on the field and in back rooms, by leaders and foot soldiers. This was true of the Civil Warthe first one, that isand its true of what author and historian Bob Zeller has dubbed the second Civil War, the 30-year effort to save Civil War battlefields from development and desecration. As this exhaustively researched and often stirringly written book illustrates, the leaders waging this second war have been relentless.

Protecting the Chancellorsville battlefield in Virginia in the early 2000s is just one of many examples in the book. In 1999, the Association for the Preservation of Civil War Sites (APCWS) and the original Civil War Trust had merged to become the Civil War Preservation Trust and found its footing as a preservation organization (more on this later). In Chancellorsville, Dogwood Development Corp. had proposed a mixed-use development in the heart of the first-day battleground. Trust President Jim Lighthizer tried to negotiate with the developer but met a proverbial brick wall. The Trust initiated a coordinated advocacy battle that operated on several levels, until Dogwood dropped the proposal.

Yet the celebration was short-lived, as other developers were more than ready to step into the space Dogwood had vacated. The Trust then brokered a deal that saved historic battlefield land in exchange for greater development density elsewhere.

Throughout the book, the Civil War Trust (a name to which it returned in 2011) is shown to be a dogged defender and deal-maker in places like Manassas, Gettysburg, Antietam, Franklin, and more. Zeller recounts these stories with verve, introducing heroes both sung and unsung, including the Trusts Chief Policy Officer Jim Campi, Brandy Station advocate Clark B. Bud Hall, passionate Manassas preservationist Annie Snyder, historians Ed Bearss, Gary Gallagher, James McPherson, and Lighthizer himself, who soldiers on despite suffering a personal tragedy that Zeller chronicles with sensitivity. The battles they wage will be familiar but are important to retell, from the proposed Disneys America theme park at Manassas to the repeated casino proposals at Gettysburg. Several battles are painfully lost, but the Trusts record includes saving more than 45,000 acres at 132 battlefields in 23 states.

Sadly, one of the ugliest battles portrayed in the book is the one that arose between APCWS and the Trust, a true civil war among combatants with more in common than not. The two separate groups shared a core mission but different approaches. By the late 90s, both groups had developed some organizational slack. The obvious choice was for the groups to merge, with Lighthizer at the helm. Although it was ostensibly a marriage, in actuality it resembled an acrimonious divorce, culminating in the firing of several APCWS staffers. None of the groups leaders come off particularly well during this episode, including Lighthizer, and its a credit to the author and the Trust (as the books publisher) that their decisions are portrayed warts and all. That said, the narrative bogs down here in more bitter detail and office politics than it probably needed from a distance of nearly 20 years. (Disclosures: The book includes an interview with this magazines editor, Dana Shoaf, a former APCWS education director who was there during the merger. Also, this reviewer once worked with the Trust as a freelancer in a limited fashion years ago.)

The books greatest strength is Zellers use of extensive interviews, oral histories, and meeting minutes so that these battles come to life through their participants voices. Not surprisingly, the Civil War often inspires eloquence, and it is particularly moving to hear once again from the late Brian Pohanka. Attending a vigil in Chancellorsville, Pohanka quoted from Joshua Chamberlain, who said, Willing to die, we will not be forgotten. Then, with his voice rising, Pohanka declared, They will not be forgotten! Given his due in this book, Pohankaalong with his many colleagues in the Civil War preservation communitywont soon be forgotten either.
What do we do with vehicles at the end of their useful life? Most probably, we send them to junkyards or keep them parked at some corner. However this man from Jordan has some unique plans to start a hotel business with his dilapidated VW beetle. Mohammed Al Malaheem (Abu Ali) from Al Jaya village located near the Al Shoubak Crusader castle has turned a battered VW Beetle into cozy accommodation for two which he calls the worlds smallest hotel. He has built this tiny hotel to promote tourism in his village.

For sure, it is really a creative idea to provide accommodation in a car, but if we look back at records, the 2.5-meter wide Ehhausl Hotel in Amberg, Germany is described as the smallest hotel in the world. So if we are talking only of the smallest concrete buildings then, it might not be right to include this repurposed car hotel in the list.

Also Read: Artist Jeff Smith rents Smallest House in the World on Airbnb

Located on a roadside, this repurposed car is furnished with handmade embroidered sheets and pillows decorated with traditional patterns and colorful beads. Ali also created a tiny lobby inside a nearby cave and named it Baldwins Grotto after Baldwin I of Jerusalem, who built the Montreal castle in 1115. This is the place where he can serve traditional Jordanian breakfast and other regional cuisines to visitors. He also runs an open stall to sell antiques, jewelry, gemstones, copper miniatures and historical artifacts.

The numerous photographs of satisfied guests, as well as the overloaded guestbook in the cave lobby, are true examples of the hospitality served by Ali and his family. If you wish to visit this car hotel, then a night in the VW costs around 40 Jordanian Dinars (US$56). You might not get any luxurious facilities here, but you would be probably in a peaceful location with nobody around to disturb you.

Via: CNN
After four years held in pre-trial detention, Ibrahim Halawa returned to Ireland today.

Halawa was found not guilty of the fifteen charges held against him in an Egyptian court on September 18th, however, his release was delayed by one month.

He had been incarcerated for participating in a series of protests against a military coup d'etat on July 3rd 2013, which led to the removal of president Mohammad Morsi. Arrested along with 500 other protesters on August 16th 2013, the subsequent trial was postponed a total of 28 times, before 51 including Halawa were found not guilty.

Halawa arrived in Dublin's Terminal 1 today (24th October) at 11.05am.

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Looking to unwind this November? Well, whether interested in reforming capitalism or deep space odysseys by way of a Canadian trailer park, there is something for everyone on Netflix next month.

ORIGINAL SERIES

She's Gotta Have It: Season 1

Nola Darling struggles to define herself and divide her time among her friends, job and three lovers. A new take on Spike Lee's film, in 10 episodes.

November 23

Episodes: 10

Trailer Park Boys: Out of the Park: USA: Season 1

The boys are back on the loose as Bubbles, Julian and Ricky head south of the Canadian border for some outrageous American adventures.

November 24

Episodes: 8

Marvels The Punisher

A former Marine out to punish the criminals responsible for his family's murder finds himself ensnared in a military conspiracy.

November 17

Episodes: 13

WEEKLY EPISODES

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Dynasty: Season 1

With a new face poised to join the family, the Carringtons and the Colbys feud for control over their fortune -- and their children's lives.

Episodes: 22

Star Trek: Discovery: Season 1

After a century of silence, war erupts between the Federation and Klingon Empire, with a disgraced Starfleet officer at the center of the conflict.

Episodes: 15

NETFLIX FILM

The Killer

Raised by a killer in lawless badlands, Cabeleira becomes a feared assassin in a war between bandits, a greedy landowner and a soldier bent on revenge.

November 10

6 Days

When armed gunmen seize the Iranian Embassy in 1980, a tense six-day standoff ensues while elite British soldiers prepare for a dangerous raid.

November 3

Mudbound

In racially divided post-World War II Mississippi, two men -- one black and one white -- forge a friendship based on their shared war experiences.

November 17

ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY

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Cuba and the Cameraman

This revealing portrait of Cuba follows the lives of Fidel Castro and three Cuban families affected by his policies over the last four decades.

Date: November 24

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton

Through footage from the set of "Man on the Moon" and a present-day interview, Jim Carrey ruminates on life, identity and becoming Andy Kaufman.

November 17

Saving Capitalism

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich shares his thoughts on capitalism and income inequality while speaking with Americans from all walks of life.

November 21
A brand new 10 day event named All Points East will be taking place in Londons Victoria Park from May 26- June 5.

The festival will begin as a three-day music festival, followed by a four days of comedy, cinema, food and much more.

So far, acts that have been confirmed include The XX, The National, The War on Drugs, Future Islands, Popcaan, Lykke Li, Warpaint and The Districts.

Executive Vice President of Live Music at AEG Jim King has said he is confident that this is the most exciting new event in the country.

Tickets for The Nationals headline day on Saturday June 2nd will go on sale at 9am on Friday October 27 and The XXs Saturday May 26 will be available from 9am on Friday November 3.
Chocolates are cheaper for Halloween, but prices likely will rebound by Christmas thanks to rising demand for cocoa beans.

A global surplus sent cocoa prices plunging for most of the past two years, which helped to temper retail chocolate costs. There are signs that the overhang is beginning to ebb as consumers eat away the excess. Grindings, a measure of demand, have been climbing globally. That's caught the attention of hedge funds, who are finally starting to back away from bets that the commodity's slump will continue.

"Low prices are the cure for low prices," said Harish Sundaresh, a portfolio manager and commodities analyst in Boston for the Loomis Sayles Alpha Strategies team, which oversees $5 billion. "A combination of improving grinding demand from chocolatiers ahead of the holiday season, over-crowded short positioning and persistently low prices over the past year has improved the price outlook."

Cocoa futures traded in New York have erased 2017's losses. Prices were down as much as 17 percent in May, but cocoa is up 0.7 percent for the year.

Hedge funds held a net-short position, or the difference between bets on a price increase and wagers on a decline, of 18,446 futures and options in the week ended Oct. 17, according to U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data released Friday. That compares with 21,560 a week earlier and was a sixth straight contraction.

Here's what traders will be keeping an eye on in the market:

- Holiday demand

Luckily for Halloween revelers, who will celebrate on Oct. 31, the rebound hasn't started in full yet. In the four-week period ended Oct. 8, average retail unit prices for chocolate were down 7.3 percent from the prior period, according to data from Chicago-based researcher IRI compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence. The U.S. holiday is a candy bonanza. Americans will dole out $2.7 billion on the treats, as total spending on Halloween climbs 8.3 percent to $9.1 billion, the National Retail Federation estimates. About 75 percent of households hand out sweets to trick-or-treaters, and chocolate comes in as the clear favorite, according to the National Confectioners Association.

- West Africa

Ivory Coast, the world's biggest cocoa grower, has tightened requirements to issue export licenses. The nation is also in conversations with rival and No. 2 producer Ghana on how to boost earnings from the crop after the price slump cut government revenues and incomes for hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers. The World Bank has pledged its support for the nations' plans to develop a coordinated strategy, which could include common policies on the marketing, storage and processing of cocoa. The countries account for more than 60 percent of global supplies. The revised export rules along with the possibility of more clamp-down has "raised uncertainty about the speed of supplies reaching the market," said Albert Scalla, senior vice president for INTL FCStone in Miami.

- Stockpile slump

Cocoa inventories at warehouses monitored by ICE Futures U.S. have fallen for 42 straight days, the longest slide since November 2014. The drop comes partly amid the slowing pace of deliveries from Ecuador, the fourth-largest grower, after U.S. officials rejected some shipments because of traces of a noxious weed in some cargoes. The stockpiles are about 54 percent higher than a year ago, though, helping to provide some cushion to the market. Still, inventories could keep dropping because cash-market prices have gotten so high that it's become less attractive to deliver beans through the exchange, Scalla said. If futures breach resistance above $2,200, the next upside target sits at $2,300, he said.

chocolate
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WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump shot down a possible approach for raising revenue to finance tax cuts in politically must-do legislation for the Republicans, promising Monday the popular 401(k) retirement savings program will be untouched.

Still, the head of the House's tax-writing committee indicated that changes to the 401(k) structure may still be on the table as Republicans push an ambitious timetable to get tax legislation written. Asked about the issue, Ways and Means Committee Chair Rep. Kevin Brady said: "I don't want to get ahead of the committee. That will all be part of the tax reform bill."

And in response to whether Trump's tweet changes in any way what the panel was planning to do, Brady, a Republican from The Woodlands, replied only, "no."

Republicans are scrambling to find new revenue sources to pay for anticipated tax cuts exceeding $1 trillion.

A proposal to eliminate the widely-used federal deduction for state and local taxes has run into heavy opposition from GOP House members from high-tax states, threatening the enactment of tax legislation that Republicans deem essential to retaining their majority in next year's elections.

Trump pledged in a tweet there will be "no change" to tax incentives for the 401(k) retirement programs.

The No. 2 Republican in the Senate, Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, said he's "sympathetic" to Trump's opposition to curbing 401(k)s because "we don't want to discourage people from saving."

But he cautioned against ruling out ideas at this stage of the legislative process.

The plan crafted by Trump and Republican leaders calls for steep tax cuts for corporations and potentially individuals, a doubling of the standard deduction used by most Americans, shrinking the number of tax brackets from seven to three or four, and the repeal of inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates. The child tax credit would be increased and the tax system would be simplified; most Americans would be able to file their income taxes on a postcard, according to the plan.

Crucial details of the plan have yet to be worked out, notably what income levels would fit with each tax bracket.

"This has always been a great and popular middle class tax break that works, and it stays!" the president tweeted. "There will be NO change to your 401(k)."
Back in the 1990s, the Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente conducted a study to determine how many adults had experienced Adverse Childhood Events, or ACEs, and their impact on adult health and wellness.

This extensive study, conducted over two years, asked adult patients about violence, abuse and neglect they experienced as children. Additional questions probed about mental illness or addiction in their families, food or housing insecurity, and parental separation due to divorce or incarceration.

The results were unexpected and surprising.

Almost two-thirds of the study participants reported at least one ACE, and more than one in five reported three or more. It was clear that the more exposure to ACEs as children, the more likely adults would have increased risk for addiction, heart disease, smoking, cancer, stroke and a multitude of other problems.

Participants with six or more ACEs died on average 20 years earlier than participants with no such events.

Your ACE score is not your destiny. The difference between those who thrive and those who dont is in large part due to resilience. Resilience is our ability to recover from difficult life experiences. A resilient person still experiences distress but is able to bounce back and not allow adversity to define them.

Resilience is a skill that can be nurtured and developed in anyone. This research has sparked a new movement to both treat and prevent toxic stress in children.

Fast forward to June 2017, as part of professional development, staff from the West Shore School District watched the 2016 documentary Resilience: The Biology of Stress & the Science of Hope. This film was developed to bring the science behind ACEs to a wider audience.

After seeing this film, district staff began to talk about the effects of divorce, abuse and neglect on students, but more importantly, they also began conversations about the use of cutting-edge science to help the next generation break cycles of adversity and disease.

Seeing the influence the film had on our staff, the West Shore School District, in conjunction with the West Shore Education Association (WSEA), decided to make this documentary available to our school community. We are exploring ways as educators to partner with our communities to increase awareness about the biology of stress, but to also to collaborate on potential local solutions.

All community members are invited to attend a screening of this video and to participate in discussion. You do not need to live in the West Shore School District in order to attend. The video will be shown on the following dates, times, and locations:

6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 28 at Cedar Cliff High School

6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, March 1 at Allen Middle School

6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Monday, March 12 at Crossroads Middle School

Additional information is also available at www.wssd.k12.pa.us/news.cfm?story=3389. For more information on ACEs and this documentary, visit http://kpjrfilms.co/resilience and https://acestoohigh.com.
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After Heights residents struck down a century-old ban on off-premise alcohol sales in part to make way for H-E-B to expand into their neighborhood, the San Antonio-based grocery chain kept its end of the bargain on Tuesday, breaking ground on a two-story project that is expected to boost local redevelopment.

H-E-B in 2015 purchased a former Fiesta Mart at Shepherd and 23rd Street, promising to build a store there but only if it could count on highly profitable beer and wine sales being legal.

The San Antonio-based grocer hired an Austin political consulting firm and spent more than $60,000 on lobbying efforts to repeal the 1904 law, which banned beer and wine sales for off-premise consumption. The boundaries of the dry area are roughly Interstate 10 on the south, Loop 610 on the north, Durham on the west and Oxford on the east. Residents in November passed the repeal with 63 percent of the vote.

"It was an archaic law that held back development in the neighborhood," said Steve Reilley, chairman of the former Houston Heights Beverage Coalition and an attorney who lives in the formerly dry area. "In some ways, the H-E-B is just a grocery store, but we changed history by changing the law here. This is going to be a destination and bring jobs to the Heights."

After some delays, crews will officially start construction next month on a 92,000-square-foot store. It will allow H-E-B to compete with an 80,000-square-foot Kroger at Shepherd and 11th Street, just outside the zone. H-E-B has a small store on T.C. Jester and 18th Street. In 2003, the grocer closed a dry pantry store at Rutland and 11th amid lagging sales.

"Our No. 1-selling category is wine," Scott McClelland, Houston division president for H-E-B, said at Tuesday's groundbreaking. "Without (the repeal), it would have been going to a fight with one hand tied behind your back. It allowed this project to come into reality."

The repeal also paved the way for a second ballot initiative permitting on-premise alcohol sales, which would allow restaurants and bars to sell beer and wine. The measure, dubbed Proposition F, goes before Heights voters Nov. 7.

Bill Baldwin, founder of the "Keep the Heights Dry" movement that spearheaded opposition to the earlier ballot measure, attended the groundbreaking. As company executives made speeches and a small gathering of neighbors cheered on, Baldwin, president of the Houston Heights Association, couldn't help but feel bittersweet.

On one hand, the Heights is getting its long-sought H-E-B. On the other, the erosion of dry laws could spur more national chain restaurants and stores to come into the largely residential neighborhood.

"My opposition was never about H-E-B, who is a great community player," Baldwin said. "When you change the law, you remove a layer of protection that makes the Heights area unique. I think it could alter the fabric of the neighborhood."

The store will bring an "urban feel" to the Heights, McClelland said.

Historically, H-E-B has built its grocery stores on 6-acre properties. But with skyrocketing land costs and a growing scarcity of large sites, the grocer has begun to build on smaller sites with multilevel parking.

Shoppers at the upcoming Heights H-E-B can park on the ground level and take elevators or escalators up to the store. A separate escalator will be reserved for shopping carts.

H-E-B will debut the concept at its store under construction at Bissonnet and Rice, scheduled to open in April. The Heights store, H-E-B's second two-story store, is being built on 4 acres.

The store will feature a simulated wood and concrete exterior, and H-E-B plans to hire local artists to hang a sculpture above the escalator and paint a mural on an exterior wall. Construction will officially start in November with the opening scheduled for fall 2018.

"The Heights is not just a place, but an attitude," McClelland said. "We couldn't just plop our typical H-E-B here."

Mayor pro tem Ellen Cohen, who represents the Heights, said she hopes the new H-E-B will be a catalyst for neighborhood revitalization. The area surrounding the store is currently dotted with used car dealerships and vacant lots.

"When H-E-B opens a new store, it's like a magnet," Cohen said. "It attracts good, upscale companies here."

Residents of Holden Heights, a 282-unit luxury apartment complex catty-corner to the store site, are excited for a wave of new retailers and restaurants along Shepherd, property manager Wallace Reed said. The owner, Francis Property Management, purchased the apartment complex last August in anticipation that H-E-B would build nearby. Krisp Bird and Batter, a chicken restaurant, opened next door.

"It's a huge amenity to our residents," Reed said. "You don't have to drive; you can just walk across the street to H-E-B."

Anthony and Diane Kivela, who have lived in the Heights for eight years, are excited about the prospect of walking to the new H-E-B. The couple, both 60, voted to repeal the dry law in November.

After Tuesday's ceremony, the Kivelas went to their neighborhood early voting site, and voted in favor of repealing the alcohol ban for restaurants and bars.

"It just seems reasonable," Anthony Kivela said. "It's an archaic law that seems like an extra step and encumbrance for mom and pop restaurants that's not necessary."

Baldwin, who isn't fighting the new proposition, disagrees.

"It's hard to be a small businessman in today's international economy," Baldwin said. "When you bring in deeper pockets, it does change the fabric of the neighborhood. I don't want to lose our quirky little shops and independent restaurants."
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Trenton Doyle Hancock's "Bringback" looks like a fluffed-up zebra mummy.

In the epic, ongoing narrative about good and evil that has played out in the prolific Houston artist's work for more than 20 years, a Bringback is a giver of color and toys. So it makes perfect sense that a Bringback would be one of three characters Hancock would translate into Halloween masks and costumes.

Eventually. They're not in stores yet, but he's been working on prototypes since winning the Greenfield Prize from Florida's Hermitage Foundation in 2014, which allowed him to translate his ideas to film for the first time. And for that, he needed costumes and masks.

In Hancock's big "Texas 1997-2017" exhibition mounted by Art League Houston at Rice Gallery, visitors can see a Bringback mask as well as the "Tiled Skin" mask that represents another character, Junior, from the mythology about an ongoing battle between tribes called Mounds and Vegans. Hancock envisioned Junior as a mutated Mound with raw skin and a really dumb look on his face, who is equal parts mischief and mysterious child.

Hancock is collaborating with the 3-D print shop at Virginia Commonwealth University's Fanoon Center for Printmedia Research in Qatar to create Halloween costumes of Bringback, the superhero alter-ego Torpedo Boy and the spirit figure Painter.

He thinks about masks all the time, not just in a Halloween context.

"Fashion is a mask. So is how an artist shows himself through his work  or not," Hancock said. "One thing can mask the other. I'm always thinking of layers, and who gets access to see behind them."
The Montgomery County Commissioners Court unanimously approved a 7-year tax abatement for one of the country's largest freight companies to build a new $18.1 million distribution center in the Conroe Park North Industrial Park.

According to the agreement, the new FedEx facility will span just over 78,000 square feet on a 45-acre site. The new facility will create 96 new full-time jobs and 35 new part-time jobs with an annual payroll of about $6 million. The average salary will be about $65,000.

"When you factor in the land, the total value of the project is $21 million," said Tax Assessor Collector Tammy McRae.

Construction on the facility is expected to be complete by December 2018.

County Judge Craig Doyal, who said it was great news to have FedEx locate in Conroe, asked if the company looked at other sites other than Conroe before selecting Conroe.

Danielle Scheiner with the Greater Conroe Economic Development Council said the company considered three locations in the Houston region but ultimately decided on Conroe.

"They have quite a few customers in the industrial park and they are anticipating more of that growth up here," Scheiner told the court during its regular meeting.

She added the city is currently working on a capital improvement project to replace the roadways in the park with concrete. That, she said, did play a role in FedEx selecting Conroe.

The abatement will begin in 2018 at 100 percent and remain at that percentage through 2021. In 2022, the percentage will drop to 80 percent dropping 20 percent each year through 2025. Tax abatement programs reduce or eliminate the amount of property tax owners pay on new construction, rehabilitation and/or major improvements.

FedEx Corp. is an American multinational courier delivery services company headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. It is the ninth-largest employer in the United States, with approximately 335,000 employees.
While 359th state District Court Judge Kathleen Hamilton believes Bruce Pritchett enjoyed looking at child pornography and planned to kidnap a child, she sentenced the 72-year-old Conroe man to a five years probation Friday.

Pritchett was charged with promotion of child pornography, a second degree felony, but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of third degree possession child pornography June 21. Under the original charge, Pritchett could have faced two to 20 years in prison. Under the plea agreement, he was facing up to 10 years in prison.

PORTER: Sex offender pleads guilty to new child porn charges

"There are two things that bother me, Mr. Pritchett, about this case," Hamilton said during Pritchett's sentencing. "First of all, I don't believe you were doing research for a book. I believe you enjoyed looking at the child porn and that frightens me. And the other thing is you did nothing when faced with men, particularly one having sex with a five-year-old child, you didn't report that person and you don't seem to have a lot of empathy for those child victims."

Hamilton said her decision to give Pritchett probation would be "helpful to you and would protect the community."

It was unclear if Pritchett's recent diagnosis of liver cancer played a role in Hamilton's decision. He is currently under treatment at the Conroe VA Outpatient Clinic.

In addition to the probation, Hamilton ordered Pritchett to wear an ankle monitor, take random lie detector tests and have special software on his computer to monitor his activity. Hamilton did not give Pritchett community service noting it is difficult to find community service that would not place Pritchett around children.

Pritchett was arrested May 11, 2016 following a search of his Conroe home by the Conroe Police Department. According to information from the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force received a cyber tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

While searching Pritchett's home, detectives found child pornography and an "abduction kit" which included sex toys, restraints and fictitious FBI credentials that had Pritchett's photograph on the badge, according to information from the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office. Additionally, Hamilton heard from witnesses who testified Pritchett was communicating with over 200 people online about sexual fantasies involving children. When detectives questioned Pritchett about the abduction kit, he said that he was communicating with another individual and they discussed a plan to abduct someone from a Walmart.

Chief Prosecutor Tyler Dunman, with the DA's Office, said according to the National Juvenile Online Victimization Study, 40 percent of more than 1,700 child pornographers were "dual offenders," meaning they both possessed child pornography and sexually abused children. An additional 15 percent attempted a sex crime against a child.

"These are live victims that have been exploited to make these images," Dunman said noting some children in the photos are identified and recovered. "These images are made around the world which makes it so difficult to identify the child victims."

He added age and ability had little impact on those who are repeat offenders.

Tyler also noted according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 76 of offenders convicted of internet crimes admitted to contact sex crimes, with an average of 31 victims each.

"(Viewing child pornography) doesn't satisfy their sexual desire and they need to physically touch a child," Dunman said, referencing several studies on the matter. "That is what makes these types of offenders so scary when they are left in our community."
Texas researchers have closely watched the state's bat population for years, looking for signs of a disease that has killed millions of North American bats: the white, powder-like substance on their nose and wings, the erratic hibernation patterns, the piles of dead bats at cave openings.

And every year, those researchers breathed a sigh of relief. Their bats were safe.

That changed last year. Swabs from three different kinds of bats in the Lone Star State's panhandle came back positive for white nose syndrome, aptly named for the white fungus that grows on the tiny winged creatures.

The discovery of the disease, which has a nearly 100 percent mortality rate, was "devastating," said Winifred Frick, senior director of conservation science at the Austin-based Bat Conservation International (BCI), at a news conference Tuesday.

But about $600,000 in grants announced Tuesday by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation could help researchers stop the disease's spread in Texas. That amount is part of $1.36 million being handed out in the U.S. and Canada for six projects. The money comes from public and private entities: the foundation, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Shell Oil Co., and Southern Co., an Atlanta-based gas and electric utility business.

With these funds "we're hoping to make a stand," said Paul Phifer, assistant regional director for ecological services at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Northeast region. "They show that the government working with the private sector can really turn research into action ... so I'm really hopeful."

BCI is involved in the two funded projects in Texas. The first, run by Western Michigan University, will examine the use of the drug Chitosan to decrease the rate of infection and limit damage to tissue. The drug, typically used to treat obesity and Crohn's disease, will be tested on bats in Michigan and Texas.

In the second project, Texas Tech University researchers will look into whether manipulating environmental conditions, such as temperature and humidity, in caves reduces the severity of the syndrome.

Texas Tech researchers were not immediately available for comment.

In all six grants, recipients added some of their own funds to the pot of money. Western Michigan put in about $118,000 and Texas Tech contributed $60,000.

Other funded projects will test vaccines, ultraviolet light treatment and anti-fungal disinfectants.

White nose syndrome largely affects bats that hibernate in caves because the fungus thrives in the cold. Scientists believe it is largely transmitted from bat to bat, though there is evidence suggesting that humans inadvertently carry it to clean sites from infected areas, according to BCI.

The disease causes bats to lose their fat reserves long before winter ends. They wake up too frequently during hibernation and starve to death, Frick said.

Its path of destruction began about a decade ago in New York state and has since spread to 30 other states in the U.S. and parts of Canada.

Though Texas is now one of those states, Frick said there still is time to save the state's bats. It typically takes a year or two following the fungus discovery for a bat's tissue to be invaded by the fungus, which leads to its death, she added.

BCI already is working on these two projects, she said, and will be doing field work in December when the bats prepare for hibernation.

"We're trying to see if we can actually prevent bats getting diseased," she said.
AUSTIN - Attorney General Ken Paxton says the man who shelled out the most money to help him combat securities fraud charges is a "family friend," but a review of campaign finance records show his main financier is also a major Republican donor for candidates up and down the ticket.

In a little more than a decade, Preferred Imaging CEO James Webb has given nearly $1 million to Republican candidates, including a $100,000 gift to Paxton to help fund his legal defense fund. The year after he gave his gift, the attorney general's office agreed to a $3.5 million settlement after investigating his company for Medicare fraud.

Now Webb and his gift are at the center of the latest investigation into Paxton's personal dealings, sparking a probe by the Kaufman County district attorney, confirmed an investigator at the agency.

Mike Holley, who is handling the case, said the DA will announce in the coming weeks whether the office will bring charges that Paxton violated the state's bribery and corrupt influence laws by taking money from someone whose company was under investigation.

Webb may indeed be a friend, but the six-figure gift poses a conflict of interest for the attorney general, said Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, a left-leaning watchdog group focusing on money in politics.

"This doesn't pass the smell test," said McDonald, a critic of Paxton's. "As the highest law officer of the state, he should not be involved in stretching the law, he should follow the law and he's not doing it because it's not in his self-interest to do it in this particular case."

Paxton was indicted in 2015 by a Collin County grand jury on two charges of first-degree felony securities fraud and one third-degree charge of failing to register as an investment advisor with the state.

That same year, Webb cut Paxton the six-figure check to fund his legal defense. It was among two dozen such gifts the newly elected attorney general received from wealthy givers he labeled as "family friends" that year, totaling $329,000, according to his personal financial statement filed with the state. In 2016, state and federal agents made a settlement with Webb's company, Preferred Imaging.

The Texas Civil Medicaid Fraud Division and the U.S. Justice Department had been conducting a probe of Webb's company, which provides diagnostic imaging for patients in facilities located in Texas, Illinois and Kentucky. A whistleblower accused the company of violating Medicaid billing rules, according to the Northern District of Texas' U.S. attorney's office.

The $3.5 million settlement reached in July 2016 - a year and a half after Paxton took office and a year after his indictment- resolved allegations the company submitted claims to Medicare, Medicaid, and TRICARE for procedures performed between January 2009 and February 2015 without a supervising physician on-site.

State law bans agency officials like Paxton from accepting a "benefit" from someone under the agency's oversight. However, the ban does not apply to a gift "conferred on account of kinship or a personal, professional, or business relationship independent of the official status of the recipient," according to Chapter 36 of the penal code.

Paxton's legal team has said he has done nothing wrong. A spokesman for the attorney general's office said Paxton had no knowledge of the investigation and the office participated little in the investigation. Paxton has fully cooperated with the investigation and "all the donations given to the Paxton legal defense effort are in full compliance with state law," said Matt Welch, Paxton's legal defense and campaign spokesman.

Webb, of Frisco, is a former law client of Paxton's, according to Welch. Paxton participated at Webb's wedding, he added, but declined to provide further details or pictures.

Webb has been a regular campaign contributor of Paxton's for years. He gave him his first political donation in 2013 when the Republican from McKinney was running for attorney general, according to campaign finance records. He has contributed heavily to other Republican candidates' political campaigns since then.

In total, he has given $896,800 to Republican candidates' political coffers since 2006, according to a review of campaign finance records. Webb ponied up the most - $496,000 - for the 2014 election when voters swept Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Paxton into office.

The wealthy CEO has helped fuel all their campaigns, but gave the most to Paxton. Webb contributed $300,000 when Paxton was running for attorney general although he also give tens of thousands of dollars to Dallas area state representatives and hopefuls that election cycle.

The donations make Webb the attorney general's third biggest campaign donor, behind the Wilks Brothers who have given him $676,000, and Empower Texans, which has donated $404,570, according to Texans for Public Justice.

Paxton is barred from using his campaign account to pay his legal bills because the charges are unrelated to his official duties. Instead, Paxton raised money from wealthy donors he identified as friends and family, including Webb. To date, Paxton has reported raising $547,000 through 2016. Last year, he accepted $10,000 from a dark money group called The Annual Fund Inc., a dark money group which is listed with a Virginia address.

When Paxton asked for money for fuel his legal defense fund, Webb gave him the most. Webb did not give another such gift to Paxton in 2016, according to records, although he contributed another $25,000 to the attorney general's reelection campaign.

A tea party darling from Collin County, Paxton is in the fight of his political career. For more than two years has fought to beat charges that he committed felony securities fraud when convincing friends and colleagues to invest in Servergy, a North Texas tech company, without disclosing he was making a commission.

The charges pack a punch for the state's top law enforcement officer if convicted: up to 99 years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.

Paxton has maintained his innocence and has said he expects to beat the charges, which he contends are part of a political witch hunt from within his own party.

Paxton's attorneys declined to comment for this story. Multiple attempts to reach Webb were unsuccessful.

The investigation is focused on whether Paxton violated the state's bribery and corrupt influence penal code, said Holley, an investigator in the Kaufman County district attorney's office handling the case. However, the investigation could turn up wrongdoing by other actors, he said.

Kaufman County District Attorney Erleigh Norville Wiley is expected to announce this fall whether the investigation has warranted new charges, he said.

An employee in the attorney general office in 2015 anonymously requested the Texas Ethics Commission clarify the state' gift-giving law. In early 2016, the commission fell one vote short from giving its official take, leaving the law open to interpretation.

A majority of the board's members voted in favor of setting a guidelines that would have required a vetting of whether the gift-giver has a business relationship with the state of Texas or has any activities that could fall under the attorney general's purview. However, the vote needed a super majority for approval, leaving the question of whether the attorney general can receive gifts "left officially unanswered," said Chase Untermeyer, an eight-year member of the commission.

"It's hard to imagine something that isn't, in theory, under the aegis of the attorney general," said Untermeyer.

McDonald, who annually tracks who is giving money Texas politicians, has kept a close eye on Paxton's finances. Texans for Public Justice was the group that first complained about Paxton's legal dealing that led to his indictment.

Webb's campaign contributions over the years make him a "pretty large roller" here, he said.

"I would say his contributions are strategic and that's not unlike other high donors in the state of Texas. They give money where it will do them some good for their business interest or their personal interest and I would say James Webb's giving fits that pattern," McDonald said.

Andrea Zelinski covers politics and the courts for the Houston Chronicle. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook. Send her tips at andrea.zelinski@chron.com.
Best-selling author and journalist Dan Wakefield will make two appearances in Carlisle this weekend.

Wakefield will be discussing his new book, The Complete Stories of Kurt Vonnegut, at Whistlestop Bookshop at 4:30 p.m. Friday. He will also sign copies of the book at that time.

Edited with Jerome Klinkowitz, the book includes five previously unpublished Vonnegut short stories. Vonnegut and Wakefield attended Shortridge High School in Indianapolis at different times, but met later and became close friends over the years.

Wakefield will also give a talk titled Remembering Emmett Till at the Cumberland County Historical Societys Todd Hall at 6:30 p.m. Sunday. Wakefield covered the 1955 trial of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam as a 23-year-old reporter for The Nation magazine. The two white men were charged with murdering 14-year-old Emmett Till by wrapping barbed wire around his throat, fastening him to a cotton gin fan and throwing him into the Tallahatchie River.

The discussion is hosted by Cumberland Valley Rising, Greater Carlisle Project, Carlisle Hope Station and the Charles Bruce Foundation.

In addition to editing three collections of Vonnegut writings (letters, speeches and now short stories), Wakefield is an accomplished and well-known writer, journalist and screenwriter. He has written more than two dozen books, including Starting Over and Going All the Way, which were turned into movies. His book New York in the Fifties was turned into a documentary.

Wakefield was the first western journalist to interview Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier, and also interview Robert Kennedy, William F. Buckley, and other prominent figures of the 1950s and 1960s for magazines including The Nation, Atlantic Review, Playboy, Harpers and others. The Atlantic Monthly gave him an entire issue in 1968, Supernation at Peace & War, to write about the Vietnam Wars effect on the United States. It was the first time any major news magazine gave its entire issue to one author.

Q. Lets start with the new collection of Kurt Vonneguts stories. What led you to the new, unpublished stories, and how would you compare them to his better-known works?

A. I knew that there were some unpublished stories of KV and that they would be in the Lily Library at Indiana University, which has the Vonnegut archive. I went through all the stories, which take up about seven boxes, and found five that had never been published. They were sure good, as two of them were published in the last few months for the first time  one in The Atlantic, and one in The Nation magazine. One of my favorites of the five had still not been published when the book came out and I still love it. It is called City and is about a young man and a young woman meeting on a bus in New York. It takes place in the 1950s. All but two (I think) of the stories were published between 1949 and 1963, when he was making a living writing short stories for Colliers and the other big weekly popular mags of the era.

Q. What is it about Vonneguts work that allows it to continue to be relevant decades after it was written?

A. Vonnegut had a unique and personal way of seeing the world. He noticed things other people dont notice. He imagined the future at times, imagined possibilities that charmed and inspired people. He wrote a number of war stories, based on his experience in World War II when he was a prisoner of war during the fire bombing of Dresden, which led to his greatest novel, Slaughterhouse Five. None of his war stories are about combat. They are before or after the fighting. He felt that writing about combat sometimes made people think it was heroic or noble.

Q. Part of your visit to Carlisle includes a talk on Emmett Till. What lessons from that era do you believe the nation is still learning?

A. I think the nation still has to learn the lessons of the Emmett Till case. I think this country still needs to really believe that black people are fully human beings, and that they are as much entitled to citizenship as white people.

Q. The list of people you have interviewed is impressive. Looking back, which interview was the most interesting, and what made it stand out from the rest?

I found Dean Rusk the most interesting person when he was secretary of State during the Vietnam War. I thought he would be very hawkish but he was not. He told me, Most people dont know this but I once dropped parachute supplies to Ho Chi Minh during WWII.

It sort of seemed like he wanted to say, Im really a good guy.

Q. And a light-hearted question to finish. About a year ago, your hometown of Indianapolis named a park after you. Whats it like to visit the park now?

A. It is very pleasant to visit the park. I dont think about it being mine, but being a nice place. It is nice to sit there awhile.
Sen. Bob Corker said a lot of things about President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning. The Tennessee Republican warned that Trump's itchy Twitter finger could set off another world war. He suggested Trump is a liar. He said Trump's legacy will be "debasing" America. He said Trump is not a role model for children. He declined to say whether Trump should be trusted with the nuclear codes. He said Trump's conduct is "very sad for our nation." He said Trump has "proven himself unable to rise to the occasion."

Later on - and perhaps most damningly - he said there were "multiple occasions where [White House] staff has asked me to please intervene; he was getting ready to do something that was really off the tracks."

Early in this onslaught against Trump, Corker assured us that he considers all of his words carefully. "I don't make comments I haven't thought about," he told ABC News. In other words: He truly believes all this stuff, and he's not just flying off the handle.

Which leads to the next question: If you truly believe all of that, wouldn't you also believe that Trump should be removed from office?

Corker's comments sure seem to be trending in that direction - whether he intends it or not. The senator is describing Trump as an imminent threat to American government and American lives. He's suggesting Trump is damaging American society. He says Trump isn't only failing, but that he's "unable to rise to the occasion." He suggests Trump was ready to do crazy things before Corker intervened and put a stop to it. He's basically arguing that Trump is derelict in his duties as president, or unfit for the office.

Depending upon whom you ask, that could be approaching grounds for impeachment - or the less likely option of removal via the 25th Amendment, in which Trump would be declared unfit by his own Cabinet.

Grounds for impeachment are forever the topic of debate, of course, given that the Constitution requires "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" for removal from office. But those high crimes and misdemeanors need not necessarily be criminal in nature; many scholars believe dereliction of duty is also sufficient, and it's really up to Congress. As Princeton University's Keith E. Wittington wrote in The Post in May:

"Even actions that might never be crimes could be impeachable . . . In 1933, Judge Halsted Ritter's impeachment included the charge that he had continued to practice law in a manner 'calculated to bring his office into disrepute,' violating judicial ethics. Associate Justice Samuel Chase was charged with abusive behavior from the bench, and President Andrew Johnson was charged with firing the Secretary of War in a manner inconsistent with a federal statute.

"Many impeachment efforts have been prompted by behavior seen as inconsistent with the responsibility and reputation of the office. Some individuals are impeached to get them out of office, when their actions threaten the political system's functioning, and they can't be stopped any other way.

"Impeachments also serve a broader function. Congress can use it to reinforce or create new political norms. Even when the impeached official is not convicted and removed from office, the impeachment itself sends others the message that those actions were unacceptable and must not be repeated. When a federal official is destabilizing established norms of conduct, Congress may impeach to send a strong signal that such behavior must not become the new normal.

"Even lawful actions, or actions within an officer's authority, can be impeachable offenses. Context is everything. Actions that are ordinary and inoffensive in some circumstances can be extraordinary and threatening in others. Impeachment is not merely for illegal or constitutional actions. It is also a remedy for dereliction of duty and abuse of power."

Some Democrats have argued that previous Trump actions - or inaction - have constituted dereliction of duty, especially when it comes to his reluctance to condemn Russia for its 2016 election interference. Perhaps some of that could be dismissed as overheated partisan rhetoric.

In the case of Corker, though, it's coming from a Republican who was once close to Trump and might be more measured in his comments. Yet he's basically labeling Trump an irredeemable failure who cannot be prevailed upon to perform his job functions. Corker previously said Trump hadn't yet demonstrated the "stability" or "competence" needed to serve; now he's basically saying it's a lost cause.

And whether you think that's a sufficient basis for impeaching and/or removing a president from office, it stands to reason that a politician who believes those things would seek out whatever remedies were available for preventing the things he's warning us about.

It maybe never come to pass - and it likely won't - but Corker's rhetoric here can't help but point in that direction.
A Thayer man who is among those charged in a brutal Texas County murder waived arraignment Tuesday in Texas County Associate Circuit Court.

James T. Grigsby, 25, is charged with abandonment of a corpse north of Cabool and tampering with physical evidence in a felony prosecution. He was earlier indicted by a Texas County grand jury, and his case was transferred to Texas County Circuit Court. He is held without bond and entered a not guilty plea. He is to appear Nov. 7 for a trial setting.

Grigsby is among four persons charged in the death of Joseph M. Steinfeld, 17, who went by Ally and planned to transition to a female, according to family members. The case has drawn national attention.
A Willow Springs man faces numerous charges and is held in the Texas County Jail on $750,000 bond after running Oct. 14 from a Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper.

Ernest M. Lense, 60, of 19560 Ranch Road at Willow Springs, was charged with multiple offenses, including felony possession of a controlled substance, felony manufacturing of a controlled substance, felony resisting or interfering with an arrest, speeding, no proof of insurance and failing to wear a seat belt.

According to a probable cause statement submitted by the trooper to the county prosecutor, the officer at about 6 a.m. observed a white GMC Jimmy traveling northbound at 64 miles per hour in a 50 miles per hour zone on Highway 17 near Industrial Drive in Houston. The trooper pulled the Jimmy over at Highway Z and after talking with the driver  Lense  for a while, noticed signs that he might be under the influence of drugs.

The trooper told Lense to stand in front of his patrol car, and conducted a search of Lenses vehicle. Multiple drugs and drug-related items were found, including an eyeglass container containing a smoking device and a baggie of methamphetamine a baggie containing marijuana.

As the trooper turned to deal with Lense, he observed that the suspect had run from the scene. He was not found that day.

On Oct. 19, the trooper met with a pair of Texas County Sheriffs Department deputies at Ranch Road and Highway 137 after learning where Lense was. After a briefing, the officers went to his residence and saw he and another man working with a pickup.

The trooper ordered Lense not to move, but he ran away. The trooper pursued Lense into a field and down a hill, and caught up with him and ordered him to stop or be tased.

Lense kept running, and the trooper deployed his Taser. Lense fell to the ground and was apprehended and handcuffed by a deputy.

He was taken to jail where TCMH medical personnel removed taser probes from his body.
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The Shippensburg Area School District Board of Education has its new superintendent and he brings with him 23 years of experience.

The board announced Friday on its Facebook page that it would appoint Jerry Wilson as superintendent during Monday nights meeting. The news release on Facebook said the school board unanimously agreed to terms with Wilson, who is scheduled to begin his tenure on Dec. 1.

Greg Hoover, former superintendent at Greencastle-Antrim School District, has been the SASD interim superintendent since July. Chester Mummau had served a year at the SASD helm and left by mutual agreement, according to an SASD statement.

Following Monday nights expected appointment, Wilson will be available for a Community Meet & Greet Wednesday at 5 p.m. at Shippensburg Area Middle School.

After interviewing with the Board of Education and being selected as the candidate to be offered the superintendency, I am eager to join the strong Shippensburg Area School District team, Wilson said in a new release. My wife, Liz, and I are excited to move to Shippensburg soon. We presently live in Ocean Pines, Maryland, where I was superintendent for the Worcester County Public Schools.

Wilson has served as a superintendent for 23 years in five states. The districts have varied from 650 students to 25,500 students.

He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and English from the University of Maryland, College Park. He graduated from Idaho State University with a Master of Education in Curriculum and Supervision and earned his Doctor of Education in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wyoming.

Last week I enjoyed meeting with teachers, support staff and administrators, Wilson said. I am looking forward to being in schools soon, and having the opportunity to meet our dedicated staff. My contract will begin Dec. 1, and in working with the board, I plan to visit schools and the community before that time.
minating employees based in China can be arduous task but it is possible  here, a leading industry lawyer explains how HR can get it right.Terminating China-based employees is difficult, admits Grace Yang, a senior attorney with international law firm Harris Bricken.Technically, Chinas Labor Contract Law permits an employer to terminate an employee, with severance, if theyre incompetent and remains incompetent after training or reassignment  however, Yang says its rarely so simple.Chinese courts tend to be very strict in applying this law and employers that fail to have checked all the boxes before the termination almost always face adverse consequences, she warns.To communicate her message effectively, Yang lays out three hypotheticals for employers.The employer and employee enter into a written employment contract which includes a statement explaining the employers expectations and performance requirements for the employees positionThe employee signs the statement but their performance perpetually fails to meet the employers expectations. They are eventually terminated for poor performance and paid statutory severance: three months salary plus one additional months salary in lieu of advance notice.However, the employee sues on the basis of unlawful termination.Yang, who divides her time between Beijing and Seattle, says employers may be surprised to learn the outcome of a case like this.This termination will almost every time be deemed unlawful because the employer failed to generate good contemporaneous evidence of its employees failure to meet the job requirements, explains Yang.Same situation as above, with the exception that the employer carried out annual performance reviews and documented the results. The reviews show the employee was not meeting expectations, had been informed of their lacklustre performance but had done nothing to improve things over the succeeding six months.The termination notice  blamed again on poor performance  came three years after they were first taken on and they received the same amount of severance.In this scenario, the employer did a better job documenting the employees incompetence but it will still almost certainly lose, says Yang.The employer will lose because it did not follow the law in making the termination decision as it did not provide the employee with any training so she might improve at her job nor did it ever assign her to a different position.For these reasons, the employer will lose for failing to meet its burden of proof regarding the need to provide a failing employee with training or a different position.Again, the same situation with the exception that during the six-month period before termination, the employer and employee worked together to create a corrective plan for improvement.The employer worked with the employee on correcting errors, on monitoring progress and on providing ample training  all of which was documented clearly in writing.Will this employer prevail in a legal proceeding initiated by the employee? asks Yang. Probably yes. Yang says she chose the word probably for two reasons:First, generally speaking, if there is a workers union, the union needs to be consulted before a unilateral termination decision can be made final. Failing to go through this step may subject to the employer to liabilities for unlawful termination, she warns.Second, even assuming there is no workers union, there may still be additional requirements imposed by the local authorities and those will need to be followed as well.Essentially, Yang says the outcome of any China-based termination will ultimately depend on the facts of each individual case.Even in the last hypothetical the multiple hoops with which employers must jump through to satisfy their burden of proof oftentimes makes sense even for employers that have followed all termination steps to come to a mutual termination agreement with their terminated employee to avoid the legal battles altogether, says Yang. The more you do right, the less you will usually need to pay.
stering your digital defences and improving the skills of your IT team are important steps to ensuring the cyber safety of your organisation  but those efforts may all be in vain if HR fails to properly train employees.According to PwC s Global State of Information Security Survey, employees pose one of the biggest cyber risks to Kiwi companies  along with service providers, suppliers and business partners.The unknown hacker was picked as the largest category responsible for cyber-attacks and thats because attribution is difficult and most companies end up not knowing where or who the attackers are, said Adrian van Hest, PwC partner and cyber practice leader. However, it became clear that people known to the company were also among the biggest threats.According to the report, 29.6 per cent of respondents said that current staff were responsible for cyber-attacks in New Zealand.Van Hest  who has over 15 years specialist experience in the risk and IT security sector  says a growing number of Kiwi organisations are waking up to the dangers of a cyber-attack but many still arent sure how to best protect themselves.Weve seen that the amount being invested in cyber security is increasing, but the number and cost of incidents are also increasing, said van Hest. So while theres continued spending, it doesn't mean that the investments are effective or that theyre being spent on the right things.According to van Hest, the ongoing uptake of cloud computing and reliance on mobile devices brings new risks  not because the technologies are unsafe but because they require companies to take a different approach to the way they manage cyber security.The Wellington-based tech expert also suggested that Kiwi employers can learn something from their international counterparts, which are already facing a new kind of security risk.Weve also found that investment in identity management is growing faster overseas because theyre experiencing more cyber incidents through increased cloud usage, said van Hest.Kiwi companies are slightly behind the trend as most of our cyber incidents still seem to occur because of outdated software. However, as more businesses move to the cloud, its only a matter of time before we face the same risks.
The Harvey Weinstein scandal has astoundingly exposed the extent of abuse of powerful positions within Hollywood. Weinstein, one of the most successful producers in the movie business, allegedly used his huge power and influence to force female staff, interns, and actresses to succumb to his sexual will.

As the adage goes: "Ultimate power corrupts the possessor." Far from being limited to the glamourous world of Hollywood, sexual exploitation can rear its ugly head even in the most unexpected of environments, as long as disproportionate power dynamics exist.

While Weinstein held financial, economic, and societal power over his victims, recent accusations have seen two well-known Muslim public figures accused of using their moral authority to perpetrate sexual abuse and harassment. Tariq Ramadan, a Swiss academic, philosopher, and professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford, has been accused of rape. While Pakistani-American preacher Nouman Ali Khan has been allegedly outed as secretly manipulating a number of his female followers, sending them lewd messages and promising marriage in return for engaging in a relationship with him.

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Both of these cases came as a major shock to many who were familiar with the work of these men and the position they held within the Islamic scholarly sphere, bringing the prevalent sexual and moral corruption within the hyper-religious Islamic domain in sharp focus. While outwardly advocating for stringent rules on interaction between men and women, secretly it is alleged these scholars were seemingly breaking their own rules on sexual conduct according to their conservative readings of Islam.

Yet stories like these are more common than we are led to believe. Before working in the counter-extremism field, I worked in the 'dawah' (proselytising) scene for many years and witnessed some peculiar practices by those who were 'da'ees' (proselytisers), the very people you would think would have an aversion to such behaviour.

While I did not personally witness any cases of sexual harassment, I was exposed to a trend amongst prominent members of the dawah scene of using their popularity and position within their circles to groom women into being co-wives. Being involved in dawah brings with it somewhat of a celebrity status; the individual is perceived as a true believer, and is elevated to a piety pedestal, a determination that is simply not a true reflection of reality.

During my time in the dawah scene, I saw a number of cases where prominent members would use their status as a vehicle to acquire co-wives without the knowledge of their first wife. Muslim women would reach out to these preachers in support of their work, out of devotion, or to ask for religious advice.

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In one particular case, a Islamic preacher unbeknownst to his heavily pregnant wife, took a second wife because he wasn't getting "fulfilled at home." The unexpected victim, a Muslim woman who was someone who had been in contact with the preacher for advice on Islam, was groomed with twisted Islamic justifications for co-wives, on how it was a virtuous and rewardable act. Eventually, the Islamic preacher proposed to her, and they became married shortly afterwards. Two months later, he gave her a talaq (Islamic method of divorce) and she was expected to simply move on. For the woman and her religiously conservative family, this was a devastating blow that would likely have major ramifications for the rest of her life. Shortly afterwards, I heard the preacher was on the lookout for another wife. His insidious behaviour continued long after I had disassociated with the dawah circle.

Yet such events hardly tarnish the appeal and popularity of these preachers. In fact, this type of behaviour was completely tolerated and deemed acceptable by Muslim men within these circles, even to the extent that it was trivialised. In the particular case mentioned earlier, the preacher was nicknamed "The Divorcer."

How is such evidently sexually manipulative behaviour accepted within such a socially conservative environment? Thinly veiled by an air of religiosity and pseudo piety, these men get away with it because they hold an outward appearance of moral authority and power.

Even within their religious discourse, there seems to be a disproportionate focus on providing Islamic legitimacy for these practices while maintaining a hyper-religious facade. The entire premise of co-wives in the Quran is within the context of helping the disadvantaged, mainly widows and orphans, by providing them with a home and a new life. Without caring for all the other practices of the Prophet, such as charity, feeding the poor, helping out in the home, these preachers choose to focus on justifying obtaining co-wives for their own selfish benefit.

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What makes the sheer hypocrisy worse is that the very same preachers often condemn 'The West' for its objectification and abuse of women. "Islam came to protect women and honour them," they often call from the pulpit, while they secretly indulge in manipulative grooming tactics to use their victims for religiously-endorsed flings.
A year ago today the demolition of the infamous Calais "Jungle" started under the watchful eyes of international media, Governments on both sides of the English Channel, refugees and volunteers alike. As I stood and watched hundreds of children walking through the burnt ruins of the camp, completely on their own and more vulnerable than ever, the local authorities declared it "mission accomplished".

The land where the camp housing over 10,000 refugees once stood is now razed to the ground, empty and unrecognisable. The French authorities' plan to wipe the "Jungle" from their memory affects the 800 refugees still in Calais, as they are pushed to sleep and hide in the woods, "out of sight, out of mind". Of them, around 100 unaccompanied minors - some as young as nine years old - sleep in the forest. No shelters, or caravans, or even tents. The police use tear gas to wake them, they confiscate and destroy even their sleeping bags and blankets on average three times a week. More often than not, refugees in Calais just sleep in the open on the cold, hard ground.

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Scabies, trenchfoot, chemical burns, chicken pox and tuberculosis plague everyone here. The French Defender of Human Rights recently declared the situation as inhumane; Doctors of the World declared it a health crisis; and The United Nations denounced the sanitation measures. Exploitative networks have an open market of vulnerable people to prey on with promises and hope, while aid workers have no one to speak to when they recognise potential signs of abuse. The only response to this from British authorities has been to fund fences, walls, tear gas and riot police, costing the taxpayers millions.

We are now facing a harsh winter where refugees in Northern France are more exposed than ever before, terrified that we will wake up to the same tragic news we got from Greece and Serbia last winter, when several people died of the cold. While Governments have done their best to sweep this shameful state under the carpet, donations have plummeted and sometimes the warehouse looks so bare our hearts break.

Over the last two years, we have mourned and buried more refugees at the border than I can remember. And yet I remember like it was yesterday, the exact moment when I heard of a number of deaths. Masud. Mohammed. Raheemullah. Samrawit. Mahibullah. After every single one of these children died I kept telling myself "This has to be the last time. Things will change, this cannot happen in vain".

Yet here we are, a year on since 13 year old Mahibullah died - his death was not reported as it was swept up in the attention on the Jungle being demolished. As with all the others, he was trying to reach family in the UK. He tried the only legal route that worked at the time under Dublin III family reunification. And like the others, he waited too long while our Home Office dragged its feet. He gave up, he desperately attempted the crossing by himself, and died. A few days after his death, his uncle received a phone call from the UNHCR to say their reunification case had been accepted.

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One year on, still only 200 children were safely transferred to Britain under the Dubs Amendment, originally meant to transfer up to 3,000. What was meant to be part of a proud British tradition of giving sanctuary is now failing miserably. While we wait on the decision in the Help Refugees judicial review against the UK Government over their handling and closure of the Dubs Amendment, children like Mahibullah are still here, still waiting.

They are here, in front of our house, knocking at our door, asking for shelter and we are not answering. Instead, they have the underside of a lorry, the train tracks, the wet sleeping bag for a bed, the tear gas for a morning alarm, or the trafficker who will take them whether they want to or not. They are right here in front of us and still we are not answering.
In what is undoubtedly one of the most progressive steps in recent history for Northern Ireland women's rights the UK government has today announced details of a scheme that will provide free abortion services in England for women travelling from Northern Ireland. This move should be welcomed as a major breakthrough. But pro-choice campaigners cannot hang up their hats just yet. This announcement does not change the cruel and archaic abortion ban within Northern Ireland.

On Monday the UK Equalities Minister Justine Greening outlined for the first time details of a scheme that will allow women from Northern Ireland to access free abortion services in England. The announcement came days before the 50th anniversary of the introduction of the 1967 Abortion Act. This legalised abortion under certain circumstances in England and Wales and Scotland but was not extended to Northern Ireland.

As a result, over 700 women every year travel to Great Britain from Northern Ireland to terminate their pregnancies (abortion is also effectively illegal in the Republic of Ireland so they have to make an overseas journey). Until now they have had to pay for these services privately, at a cost of up to 2,000, because of a bar on women from Northern Ireland accessing abortion services on the NHS, despite Northern Ireland women paying the same national insurance and tax as their sisters elsewhere in the UK.

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Hundreds of women have been forced to turn to charity or take out loans from unscrupulous money lenders in order to fund a procedure available for free on the NHS to other UK residents.

Now, at least some of these hardships and injustices are to be alleviated. According to Greening's announcement, from the end of the year, women from Northern Ireland will be eligible for:

- Travel and accommodation costs to be covered for women on low income (less than 15,276 or in receipt of income support/income-based JSA, income-related ESA or Pension Guarantee Credit)

- Procedures to be free at the point of delivery, rather than paid for upfront and reimbursed

- A central telephone booking system through which clients will be able to arrange an appointment with a healthcare professional in England

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Women in Northern Ireland have been eagerly awaiting details of the scheme since June when Chancellor Philip Hammond first announced the introduction of the policy. The policy came about as a result of a motion to amend the Queen's Speech put forward by Labour MP Stella Creasy in June. Since then, Creasy has been working tirelessly with pro-choice campaigners and Justine Greening's office to put meat on the bones of the policy.

The London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign, along with our friends and allies in other pro-choice organisations, very much welcomes this announcement. We particularly applaud the confirmation that travel costs will be covered for low-income women and that the service will be free at the point of use. For women who have had to find what may have been simply a prohibitive sum of money quickly, this scheme will make a huge difference.

This is a major step but it is not a solution. As Mara Clarke, director of the Abortion Support Network, which provides financial assistance to women in need of abortions, has said, it is a 'sticking plaster.' And the wound runs deep and wide.

It is a disgrace that any modern European democracy imposes criminal sanctions on women seeking essential healthcare. Exporting the problem to take advantage of a more liberal regime in a nearby country is not a solution. Travel involves stress, time off work, time away from family and friendship networks at what may be a difficult and emotional time. It reinforces stigma and shame. Not all women can travel, for a whole host of reasons, including health reasons, childcare issues, abusive partners and lack of documentation. These women need abortions too.

Most of all, the guarantee of free, safe, legal abortion is a measure of equality, fairness and respect for women's basic healthcare needs and human rights. We are celebrating today but we must not forget that Northern Ireland still falls far short on those markers.

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You can find out about the work of the London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign here
The longer the Brexit process has gone on the more it has become clear that no-one could have known the true consequences of a vote to leave at the time of the referendum.

Even now we still do not know many of the fundamental facts about the costs and risks of leaving the EU. We know it will cost money - but we don't know how much. We know it will damage trade, yet we are in the dark about how badly. And we know it is already driving up prices and even taxes in the UK, but we still don't know how bad this will get.

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To make matters worse Theresa May and her government are deliberately suppressing the results of their own studies into the impact of Brexit on Britain.

Ministers have confirmed they have used taxpayers' money to produce 50 "impact studies" that look, sector-by-sector, at the likely impact of leaving the EU on the economy and society. But they are refusing to publish any of them.

Earlier this month backbench MPs David Lammy and Seema Malhotra published a letter to Brexit Secretary David Davis calling on him to release the reports.

Their letter - co-signed by over 120 of their fellow MPs - stated:

"Without access to the latest and best possible analysis and research, Parliament is unable to properly scrutinise the Government's plan for Brexit and Members of Parliament will be unable to fully contribute to an evidence-led debate on policy."

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Since the letter was handed into David Davis's department on 11 October Best for Britain has been rallying support amongst MPs of all parties for the idea that the impact studies should be published. Our supporters across the country have been actively lobbying their MPs to support publication.

As a result the number of MPs supporting the release of the studies has climbed above 170, including every MP from the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru. The former Conservative Attorney General Dominic Grieve MP has also called for the studies to be released.

The government say that they won't publish the studies because they might weaken ministers' hands in any negotiations. But if Theresa May and her team really believe "no deal is better than a bad deal" that argument must be empty.

Both claims cannot be right: if walking away with no deal is stronger than the worst the negotiations could deliver, why should we fear releasing the studies? And the conclusion must be that no deal is actually going to be a lot worse than no Brexit.

In reality it looks more and more like the government are suppressing the reports and denying all and every freedom of information request about them because they know they expose the reality of the risks and costs of leaving. Ministers want to keep us all in the dark about just how damaging their plans for Brexit could be.

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We cannot let them get away with this. That is why we are today publishing the updated list of MPs who have called for the studies to be released and are calling on the public to increase the pressure on all MPs to get these reports into the public domain.
How Germany, the EU and the economics field itself suffer from myopia--and what we can do about it

The German elections are a wake-up call for Europe's most powerful country--and beyond. Yes, Angela Merkel will again be Chancellor. But Germany will once again have Nazi sympathisers in parliament: The Alternative fur Deutschland became the third largest party in the nation, gaining 14% of the vote. The two large parties Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD), which had formed the government coalition, had historically bad showings, especially among first-time voters.

On the surface, this discontent in Europe's most successful economy seems puzzling. It is doing as well as it has since reunification--at least if you judge by its stable 2% growth rate and the low unemployment rate. The German stock market is at an all-time high and youth unemployment is the lowest of all of Europe.

But what our headline economic indicators simply do not account for are the real and at times existential concerns the population experiences, such as stagnating wages, rising income inequality, the exploding informal sector with precarious work environments, and fear of immigrants. If for a struggling citizen this is as good as it gets, wouldn't you question the system you live in? Our economic models and bigger intellectual projects such as the European Union are no longer responsive to people's growing concerns, and economists and elected officials can appear self-absorbed and concerned with questions that are beside the point.

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It's clear that the big questions don't answer themselves. Those advocating visionary projects such as European integration cannot afford to leave them unanswered, or we invite disaster.

As a young economist who came of age during the global financial crisis, the parallels between blind spots around the EU project--Germany's so-called second economic miracle--and my discipline are eerily familiar. Economists largely missed the looming disaster of the global financial crisis of 2008 which laid bare the intellectual shortcomings of a generation's worth of work in my field. We could accept the big questions as answered and solved: free markets are the best way to coordinate our lives, free trade is beneficial, humans are rational, and governments should only interfere if markets fail. Economists listened primarily to each other and lost sight of the world unfolding around them.

Young, emerging economists have found many things that the prevailing theory cannot account for. In addition, many key questions cannot be posed within the confines of the existing set of models. For example, mainstream macroeconomic models do not account for a financial sector or banks. The assumption is simply that they work and thus there is no need to study them more closely. Orthodox theory also assumes economic actors are rational. Of course, were that true, financial bubbles wouldn't be possible. Too infrequently have economists asked themselves what's missing from these models and failed to see the big picture.

Organisations like the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) formed to address these challenges in the aftermath of the financial crisis. INET is responding to the need to re-frame the conversation in economics and foster research agendas that otherwise would not find support. Student initiatives like INET's Young Scholar's Initiative (YSI), among others, have grown across the world to facilitate research outside of existing institutional settings in a supportive community. We want to bring back economic history and the history of ideas, the philosophy of science, a deep understanding of the financial system, and new theoretical frameworks that draw from other fields, including political science and the humanities.

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Because the discipline has failed to fulfil its social function to provide intellectual guidance, we as the next generation are taking it upon ourselves to step into this void. We are far from answering the challenging questions of our time, but we are certainly getting closer to asking the right questions.
Niall Carson/PA Wire

On Monday, Equalities Minister Justine Greening MP announced that women travelling from Northern Ireland should get access to abortion services 'comparable with... women in England'

When the government first announced the scheme in June after Stella Creasy MP tabled an amendment to the Queen's Speech, we knew that the Equalities Office was committed to removing the cost of the abortion itself. Before then, women in Northern Ireland were forced to have to raise urgent funds of up to 2,000. Through our pregnancy choices counselling service, FPA often spoke with women forced to disclose their decision to access abortion because they had to raise the money.

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But now we also know that, once the scheme is up and running by the end of the year, women in 'financial hardship situations' will no longer have to pay for the flight, ferry, public transport or taxis needed to cross the Irish Sea and access a safe and legal abortion. Women who are in receipt of certain benefits or who have an income of 15,276 or less will also have their accommodation and the cost of a parent, carer or guardian accompanying them if necessary.

The Minister went into detail about how this will work in practice, outlining plans for a central booking system. She explained that 'women from Northern Ireland will have a single telephone number to call and an appointment will be made with the most appropriate provider', based on their needs. This booking service will also arrange travel and accommodation for those women who qualify. While it is still in the process of being set up, abortion care providers are offering an interim travel scheme, with BPAS's Ann Furedi saying that the charity "will also be funding travel and accommodation for those women who meet the government's eligibility criteria until a permanent framework is in place".

This scheme will make a real difference to women forced to travel from Northern Ireland to access basic healthcare. The fact that there will be a centralised system for booking, and financial assistance for travel and accommodation shows the considerable efforts that have been taken to support as many women as possible. As Scotland looks to implement their own scheme for women travelling from Northern Ireland from 6th November, we hope that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will be announcing similar measures.

However the fact remains that, however good the system is, it isn't a fix for Northern Ireland's abortion laws. Mara Clarke, director of the Abortion Support Network (which provides financial assistance to women in need of abortions) puts it best when she says that "this, like the services provided by ASN, is a sticking plaster. But it's a substantial sticking plaster." No matter what the Government Equalities Office provides in England, there will still be women who will be unable to travel. In Northern Ireland women facing an unplanned or crisis pregnancy are left with two options; risk prosecution by buying illegal abortion pills online, or be forced to carry the pregnancy to term against their will.

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That's why, alongside BPAS, ASN and other organisations including, the Royal Colleges of Midwives, Alliance for Choice and Antenatal Results and Choices, FPA is intervening today in a case at the Supreme Court, which will hear that Northern Ireland's restrictive abortion law violates human rights.

The Court will be considering whether the existing criminal law in Northern Ireland in relation to abortion is lawful in three circumstances: where the pregnancy results from rape, or incest, or where it involves a serious foetal anomaly. That abortion isn't available in these cases, as well as the fact that Northern Ireland has the harshest criminal penalties for abortion in Europe, demonstrates just how extreme the law is. It's clear that there needs to be reform.
This time last year the notorious 'jungle' refugee camp in Calais was bull-dozed and its thousands of inhabitants dispersed. For the refugee and migrant children in the squalid camp that should have been the end of an inhumane experience, but for some, it only spelled greater uncertainty. At the time of its demolition, the "jungle" hosted almost ten thousand migrants and refugees, including up to 1,000 unaccompanied children. Hundreds of them had family ties in the UK and were intent on reaching brothers, sisters, uncles and aunts. Others were without family, and were acutely vulnerable, having suffered the horrors and indignities of conflict and people smuggling. The UK Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, then displayed extraordinary political courage and will, by agreeing to bring 750 children from Calais to the UK, to be reunited with families, or offered social protection. They were the lucky ones. A significant number were driven away from the burning camp before having the opportunity to make themselves known. Still others were not offered the same help, and remained in shipping containers with scarce access to food, water and legal assistance.

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Today, hundreds of children remain scattered in and around Calais, desperately trying to survive with no access to shelter or basic services. Many will have been pushed into the hands of traffickers and smugglers just to stay alive. A year on from the destruction of the 'jungle' it is time to get to the heart of this problem, to find lasting solutions to bring children to the safety of loves ones in the UK where it is clearly in their best interest for us to do so. We cannot tolerate a repeat of the same situation, and must therefore find ways to prevent children making these dangerous journeys to Europe in the first place.

A simple change to the UK's Immigration Rules could ensure children with close family in the UK have no reason to turn to people smugglers or risk being trafficked at all. Where a child knows they have a relative in the UK who can provide the love and protection they need, they should be able to make an application for family reunion at a British consulate or outpost in their country of origin.

Right now, children fleeing danger have a right to request family reunion in the UK if they have a parent here already. But when they don't have parents able to safely protect them, children need instead to be looked after by wider family - adult siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents. At the moment, their only hope of achieving this is to try to make it to Europe and apply to have their asylum case transferred to the country that this family member lives in. When the hope of being with another member of family in the UK is the only hope they have, a child shouldn't have to first face unthinkable risks to get to Europe from where they are.

In recent weeks, as the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill makes its way through Parliament, a flagship amendment has been tabled to the Bill which would address this flaw in the UK's law, allowing children to apply for reunification with relatives, not just parents, from their region of origin. It has been backed by politicians across the political spectrum, but we need momentum sustained to increase our chances of making this critical change for children.

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In the meantime the situation for unaccompanied children in France remains bleak but immediate action by both the UK and France can be their lifeline. We should start by asking difficult questions about why the situation has worsened, with countless child refugees and migrants living in forests and woods without shelter or the most basic levels of protection. Children are left with no clear information on the legal processes they need to undertake to reach family members in the UK. Too many receive confusing and conflicting messages from officials, pushing them to give up on legal processes that simply do not seem to work, instead taking things into their own hands. This sees them disappearing, untraceable, and therefore beyond protection, driven underground where they are treated by criminal gangs as perfect prey.

A first step in urgently addressing their plight is ensuring there is enough safe and official accommodation for children stranded around France and giving them access to basic services that they have been without. In the care of authorities children can begin the legal process for reaching families without falling through the cracks of a broken system, but this requires adequate, consistent and clear provision of legal advice that meets children where they are rather than pushing them away. To help them through this process, children need to be provided with guardians and those still unaccompanied need to be identified by ramping up the presence of mobile teams in informal camps. This must happen without delay.
Last week it was National Hate Crime Awareness Week, an event that is increasingly relevant in today's society; the last year has seen an unrecognisable upsurge in open bigotry and subsequent hate crime in the UK evidencing a resurgence of racism on a scale many would not have viewed as possible in 2017. Reports of hate crime have gone up an unprecedented amount in aftermath of the Brexit vote and the recent spate of terrorist attacks in both London and Manchester. The attacks in Manchester and London saw a five fold increase in hate crime, these crimes had a specifically anti-Muslim rhetoric.

The role of the media in the rise of hate crime in the UK is unequivocal. For too long now the right-wing tabloid press in the UK has vilified minorities and vulnerable groups. This vilification is by no means a new phenomenon and has long existed in British Media. Experts have been warning for some time that antagonistic media coverage has been fuelling an increase in anti-Muslim and Islamophobic hate speech and crime.

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In the past years, there have been several circumstances where the British media have subject groups and individuals through the 'other' to an unparalleled torrent of abuse. The recent and continuing refugee crisis, gave rise to an extreme rhetoric of hate. Evidence of this is best capsulated, in The Sun article, that compared African migrants to cockroaches, this article triggered a response from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, made a powerful statement about the incitement of hatred in UK newspapers, calling out in particular the tabloids for their sustained attack on refugees and migrants. Al Hussein stated that "History has shown us time and again the dangers of demonizing foreigners and minorities, and it is extraordinary and deeply shameful to see these types of tactics being used in a variety of countries, simply because racism and xenophobia are so easy to arouse in order to win votes or sell newspapers." This statement succinctly summarises the dangers and how truly detestable such behaviour is particularly give the motives.

Further, the repulsive anti-immigration rhetoric that formed parts of the Leave campaign and the successive Brexit vote, which was supported by the fore mentioned newspapers, that were complicit in the hate speech of the refugee crisis. A post-Brexit climate has created a society in which hate crime has become a regular reality for far too many.

As mentioned earlier the recent increase in terrorist attacks, has sparked a surge in Islamophobic hate crime. After the Manchester arena attacks there was a 500% surge in Islamophobic attacks. A study conducted at the University of Cambridge, found that the 'reporting by the mainstream media about Muslim communities is contributing to an atmosphere of rising hostility towards Muslims in Britain'. These trends exist across all forms of media not just newspapers; the British media is complicit in fuelling and legitimising hate crime. Figures released by the Home Office on Tuesday (17th of October 2017) show that between 2015/16 and 2016/17 the number of race hate crime increased by 27% and over the same period religious hate crime increased by 35%.

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These trends are truly worrying. If such abhorrent and unjustifiable behaviour goes unchallenged we must fear living in a society where people and in particular women are driven into their homes fearful of going outside, in case they are subject to racially and/or religiously charged hate crime and speech, this is already happening. That this is happening in 2017 is incomprehensible. There is no doubt that the there is a major issue regarding the under reporting, many hate crimes go unreported, for numerous reasons often owing to fears of, and mistrust in the police. In order to gain a true picture of the reality and impact of hate crime, we must work closely with the victims of hate crime, something the JAN Trust has been doing since 2008 with its 'Say No To Hate Crime' campaign.
Shippensburg University senior Trent Bauer arrived at the Ellen Show in New York City as seemingly another audience member.

He left with $10,000.

Bauer, who is originally from western Pennsylvania, was honored during the show that aired Monday.

His segment started with an innocuous gag of White Men Can Dance ... with tWitch, in which he was the last featured dancer with DeGeneres DJ on the talk show. The host called him out due to his height  hes 6-foot-10  before surprising him by asking him to sit with her on the stage.

Unbeknownst to Bauer, his friend had sent a letter to DeGeneres about Bauers work on campus in Shippensburg. Bauer said he noticed a lack of resources at SU for the LGBT community and has been working with the university to create a resource center.

Then, through a partnership with Cheerios in its One Million Acts of Good campaign, DeGeneres awarded Bauer with $10,000 to help pay for his education.

In the interview, Bauer said he is in the process of applying for the Peace Corps, but depending on how the resource center does, he may become involved in that instead.
The #MeToo hashtag is still racing along like a runaway train threatening to expose men who need to subjugate women in order to feel any personal self worth. In the media and the blogosphere, feminists have written articles upon articles arguing/discussing/explaining how rape is not about sexual desire. It is simply about power and has nothing to do with a woman's burkha or short skirt.

There are women today who have been and are being raped in conflict zones that need to be included in the #MeToo campaign. Their under-privileged lives marked by ethnic cleansing do not make their experiences less valid.

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Patriarchy dictates that men 'own' the women of their tribe, race or faith. To subjugate the women is to humiliate the enemy. The United Nations Security Council states that "women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instil fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group".

It is what the Serb forces inflicted upon an estimated 50,000 Bosnian Muslim women in the 1990s as part of their ethnic cleansing campaign. The effects which are still being felt today.

It is what the Burmese military has and is inflicting upon the Rohingya women as you read this. Skye Wheeler, emergencies researcher for the Women's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch has been documenting rape survivors' stories in the Rohingya refugee camps. She said: 'The Burmese military has clearly used rape as one of a range of horrific methods of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. Rape and other forms of sexual violence has been widespread and systematic as well as brutal, humiliating and traumatic".

UN doctors have seen high numbers of women with injuries consistent with violent sexual attacks arriving at refugee camps. One said she had seen bite marks and signs that seemed to show a firearm was used to penetrate women.

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Sometimes the human stories disappear within the figures as the general public cannot relate to an atrocity. But sometimes a single story will emerge to captures the hearts of people globally. A couple of years ago at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis, hundreds of children drowned whilst crossing the sea from the Turkish coast to Lesvos Island with their parents. These little lives always failed to make the headlines, occupying some corner of a news website and never the front page. It was the case of Aylan Kurdi, the little boy with the red T-shirt and blue shorts lying face down on a beach that bought the world's sympathy to the plight of innocent people fleeing death. For a while anyway.

In the case of the Rohingya, Rajuma's story is the one that the world has noticed. She is the woman whose baby boy, Sadiq, was snatched from her arms and thrown into a fire, whilst she was gang raped. The baby who screamed for her as he burned to death.

I wonder if Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi has read Rajuma's testimony, or paid attention to the statistics the United Nations has compiled, or the witness accounts that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented about Myanmar's systematic state terror to 'cleanse' the Rohingya from their own land. If so, did she remember her own words from only a few years ago when she discussed how rape is used a tool of war in a video promoted by Nobel Women's Initiative? Her own words: "The worst form of violence is rape... when it is used as a weapon by armed forces."

Once lauded as a human rights champion, does she feel any shame that the systematic rape of poor, under-privileged Rohingya women is being allowed to happen by her military, under her watch?
Earlier this month the Vice-Chancellor of Worchester University, David Green, received a chilling note on House of Commons letterhead from Tory MP Chris Heaton-Harris. Green is asked by the MP for two pieces of information. First, to supply "the names of professors" at his university teaching European affairs "with particular reference to Brexit". Secondly, Green is asked to provide copies of all syllabi and "links to online lectures" on Brexit.

This letter has only come to light because Green has gone public with it making clear he will provide no such information. It is reported that Heaton-Harris has sent the same request to all Vice-Chancellors.

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I can save Heaton-Harris the trouble of sending me a letter. As Dean of Durham Law School, I will refuse any such request. If he wants to learn about European affairs, I cannot recommend any law school more than ours - EU law is one of our core strengths we continue to build on and we're proud of the outstanding teaching, research, impact and engagement we deliver in this broad area. No MP will frighten us off from our globally excellent research environment as a top 40 QS World Ranking law school or tell us what we can or cannot deliver in our legal education with our best ever National Student Survey results achieved this year.

There are several concerns I have about this letter. The first is why this information is being collected. If Heaton-Harris really wanted to know what modules on European matters are being taught in higher education, he could familiarise himself with them by simply going online.

Of course, Heaton-Harris goes further wanting names of individuals that teach these subjects. But why are they to be singled out? Is this an effort to name and shame departments and universities into closing down debates over Europe and Brexit? Is this an MP trying to put pressure on institutions to shy away from looking too closely at an area of government policy on Brexit?

McCarthyism fears have some fuel in his requesting copies of links to actual classroom teaching. For what purpose is this information being sought (and which is normally protected so forbidden from being shared outside registered staff and students on a module)? Colleagues are right to sound the alarm.

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But most of all, Heaton-Harris isn't any Member of Parliament. He is a Government Whip. This is what concerns me especially. MPs in his position are tasked with supporting the government getting its way in Parliament. They try to get others to follow a line, to get in line where possible. Is this what he's trying to do - get us all "in line" - through this sinister-looking letter?

More importantly, what knowledge or support does Heaton-Harris have from the Prime Minister or any Cabinet members for this letter? Is this a rogue action for which he should retract immediately and apologise? Or is an activity that fulfils some aim or purpose from Theresa May or her ministers?

Until these important questions are answered, I don't see this as a mere letter that should never have been sent. I want to know what connection this action has to May and her senior team as there may be more to this story until we learn otherwise.
Facebook Tests Change That Is CATASTROPHIC For Music Marketing

UPDATED: Facebook is testing a major change to is basic algorithm  the one that decides what shows up in a followers news feed  that will completely change music marketing on the social platform; unless, of course, one is willing to pay to be seen.

_______________________________________

Facebook is testing a change that would shift all non-promoted posts coming from pages out of its news feed. The shift would be catastrophic for artists, music marketers and all content creators who rely on the social network to build and engage an audience.

This new system is currently being tested in six countries including Slovakia, Serbia and Sri Lanka; and appears to move all non-promoted page posts into a secondary feed, leaving the traditional main feed filled only with original content from friends and advertisers.

This change has resulted in user engagement with Facebook pages dropping by as much as 60% to 80%, according to Alex Hem of The Guardian, who first reported the tests. If rolled out broadly, it would greatly diminish the value of free marketing on the social network dramatically.

According to Filip Struharik, from Slovakian newspaper Dennik N, Pages are seeing dramatic drops in organic reach. The reach of several Facebook pages fell on Thursday and Friday by two-thirds compared to previous days.

Between Wednesday and Thursday of last week, 60 of the most popular facebook pages in Slovakia saw two-thirds to three-quarters of their Facebook reach evaporate, according to stats from Facebook's own analytics platform.

Remember MySpace?

Artists and music marketers have already felt the pain of much smaller shifts in Facebook's algorithm. But the changes being tested will feel more like the demise of MySpace, where in the just a few months, the web's most powerful music marketing tool at the time became almost irrelevant.

Some marketers have always focused on that the two points of contact that they can actually control  the artist's web site and their email list  as the hub of all online efforts. It appears that's about to be more true than ever.

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Board of Selectmen Chairman Hugh Daley conducts Monday's meeting with Selectwoman Anne O'Connor.

Williamstown Selectmen Delay Recommendation on School Regionalization

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  The Board of Selectmen on Monday finalized the warrant for a long-planned Nov. 14 special town meeting but deferred making a recommendation on what promises to be the meeting's most contested question until the night before.

That is because school officials in the so-called Tri-District are still waiting for a final draft of an amended regional agreement for the Mount Greylock Regional School District to come back with the approval of the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The Mount Greylock, Williamstown Elementary and Lanesborough Elementary school committees' hoped to have DESE's final approval by last Friday of a proposal to expand the regional junior-senior high school district to include its two feeder elementary schools.

On Monday, Tri-District interim Superintendent Kimberley Grady and Williamstown School Committee Chairman Joe Bergeron told the board that because of unforeseen circumstances, DESE was not able to give its final blessing. The issue is the proposal to apportion operating costs at each elementary school to its respective town rather than sharing the cost of preK-6 education between the towns based on student enrollment  as is done now and would continue to be done at Mount Greylock if the amendment passes.

The funding mechanism appeared to be a significant breakthrough in the Tri-District's years-long effort to achieve full regionalization. Allowing each town to pay for operations at its own elementary school was seen as a way to allay fears that decisions in either town could "drive" the budget in the other town's building.

The single Mount Greylock Regional School Committee  with all seven seats up for election in November 2018  would own the budget for all three buildings and recommend a single number to each town's town meeting in the spring. But, in theory, there could be differences at the margin of each elementary school's budget without impacting the assessment to the other school's town.

This summer, Bergeron said preliminary talks with DESE were supportive of the funding mechanism proposed. And he said there were other districts in the commonwealth that used similar funding schemes..

Selectman Andrew Hogeland asked Bergeron about those other districts, implying that the state should be able to follow precedent.

Bergeron explained that it is not so cut and dried.

"[The districts funding this way] were grandfathered in prior to the Education Reform Act," Bergeron said. "Which leads to DESE saying, what are our updated standards for how we want to approach this? We also have a [regional agreement] document that DESE approved in 2013 that did not get approved by the towns in that region.

"They know it makes sense. The question is whether they're willing to say, 'Yes, and we expect many to follow in your footsteps.' That's the question."

Grady said she would not go so far as to say the clause, Section VIIIE in the current draft of the proposal, is under "scrutiny" in Boston.

"It's different, and they know we have to change, and we're the first out there with this change in front of them," Grady said.

Grady, Bergeron and other school committee members have been in frequent conversation with officials at DESE. Grady on Monday indicated confidence that the regional agreement amendment will be able to move forward. She said DESE has a meeting Tuesday on the topic and the Mount Greylock School Committee has a meeting scheduled for Wednesday to discuss any potential changes.

The Lanesborough Board of Selectmen is scheduled to set the warrant for its Nov. 14 special town meeting at its Monday, Oct. 30 meeting. The Williamstown board decided Monday to vote its recommendation on the question at its Nov. 13 meeting.

The Nov. 13 meeting also will see the selectmen vote their recommendations on five zoning bylaw amendments proposed by the Planning Board.

Planning Board Chairman Chris Kapiloff appeared Monday to explain the proposals. But since the Planning Board still has to present them in a public hearing on Nov. 8 and could make amendments, the Selectmen thought it prudent to wait until after any amendments to make its final recommendation.

The special town meeting warrant has nine articles in all.

Besides school regionalization and the five Planning Board bylaw proposals, the town will be asked to decide three other matters : the acquisition of a Simonds Road lot for a new police station, the receipt of donated land on the south side of Main Street (Route 2) that will facilitate the linkage of a bike trail between Williamstown and North Adams and an easement to allow relocation of a Berkshire Gas regulator station.
Mason Stred is recognized with the Junior Spirit of Kindness Award at Saturday's PopCares dinner and auction fundraiser by Bill and Tammy St. Pierre. The line outside Greylock Works to get into the building on Saturday. Bob St. Pierre welcomes the gathering. Moment's House was honored with a Community Service Award. More than 600 people attended the dinner in the newly renovated Weave Shed at Greylock Works. Large screens allowed those in the back to follow the action. There were several auctions of donated goods, including spirited bidding over cookies and pies. There were a number of handcrafted items and furniture made by Michael St. Pierre. Mason picked the ticket for the 50/50 winner (about $1,800) that turned out to be his father. PreviousNext

North County Turns Out in Droves for Annual PopCares Fundraiser



Crista and Patrick Wood speak about journey of their toddler Carrick, who was born with cancer and died before this third birthday. Crista Wood thanked the community and PopCares for their support during difficult times. Update: A statement from the PopCares organization on Nov. 3.: Be prepared to be amazed.... This year's Dinner/Auction raised $43,000

We are blessed to have the support of so many local businesses and volunteers. Thank you all. This money will go to local families battling cancer. Raised Here Stays Here! NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  One only needed to gaze across the crowded room Saturday night to understand the impact PopCares has had on the community during its five short years.

Some 635 tickets were sold for the event, more than double last year's annual chicken dinner and auction . The demand was so great that the popular fundraiser was moved this year from the Bounti-Fare to the newly renovated Greylock Works.

"Without this space, 300 of you would be sitting on someone's lap," joked Bob St. Pierre, one of the founders of the family nonprofit PopCares, named for his father, the late William St. Pierre.

In between dinner, still served by Bounti-Fare's David Nicholas and his staff, who took up residence in the mill's new commercial kitchen, and the chinese, silent and not-so-silent auctions, organizers reminded the cheerful party just why they were there  and spending $260 a pop for platters of whoopie pies.

"We saw firsthand the financial struggles my parents faced as my dad went through treatment," St. Pierre said. "My brother's wife came up with the idea of raising money for families battling cancer to honor Pop. Being St. Pierres, we decided we were going to do it right."

The all-volunteer organization's mission is to raise funds locally and spend funds locally to support individuals and families dealing with cancer.

"Cancer has touched the life of so many of us and PopCares is here to show that one small act of kindness can mean the world to someone who is facing this horrible disease," said Tammy St. Pierre, wife of Bill St. Pierre. "Everyone's journey is different and unique for each individual, which means peoples' needs are different."

St. Pierre knows what she's talking about as she deals with the demands of family even as she continues her own battle against cancer.

"I know firsthand how difficult it is but I also know the kindness that is shown by your friends loved ones and PopCares is amazing," Tammy St. Pierre said. "They truly care about our community and respect the caregivers that they support. It's because of all of you here tonight that we can help those in need while honoring the man who stood as an example for all of us."

The outpouring of support for PopCares has been phenomenal. In just five years , the group has raised more than $300,000, said Bill St. Pierre, and served nearly 600 people. "By the end of this year, we will have sent out over $70,000," he said.

The nonprofit offers to support for cancer patients and caregivers in Adams, Cheshire, Clarksburg, Florida, Hancock, Lanesborough, New Ashford, North Adams, Savoy, Williamstown, and Windsor, as well as the Vermont towns of Pownal, Stamford and Readsboro.

PopCares helps people with gas to get to faraway appointments, gift certificates for meals and lodging, or groceries, rent and utilities to tide them over. Sometimes its just "small acts of kindness" to let those fighting cancer know they haven't been forgotten.

It was the large and small acts that Patrick and Crista Wood remembered as they shared their journey, and that of their son, Carrick, who died in June just short of his third birthday.

On their lowest days, "We would get a card, 'Just thinking of you, PopCares,'" said Crista Wood. "We've been extremely lucky to have our entire community support us."

Carrick was born on July 4, 2014, with acute myeloid leukemia. The plucky little boy lived life to its fullest in the short time he had, Wood said. But his hard-won victory over cancer came cost him his heart, which was damaged by his cancer treatments.

"Cancer is the leading cause of death for children," Wood said. "Despite this, childhood cancer research is vastly and consistently underfunded.

"Two-thirds of childhood cancer survivors will have lifelong chronic health conditios from treatment. In 20 years, only three cancer medications have been specifically developed for children. Carrick's chemotherapy cocktail was more than 30 years old."

Every three minutes a child is diagnosed with cancer, she said, affecting 700 families every day.

The Woods feel that Carrick was sent to them to "inspire others to give people the greatest gift life has to offer ... love and hope," Crista Wood said. "He wasn't the boy who survived cancer, he wasn't the boy with a bad heart, he was just Carrick. He was just our baby."

PopCares recognized others doing good works in the community. The Spirit of Kindness Award was presented to Alice Trumbull of Moment's House, which offers a place of support for cancer patients and survivors and their caregivers.

Robert West of West Oil Co. and Jeffrey Levanos of Jack's Hot Dog Stand were named this year's Community Partners for the their unwavering support of not only PopCares but other community events.

The St. Pierres also also thanked the many family members, volunteers and community sponsors who have made the organization a success.

The Junior Spirit of Kindness Award was given to 7-year-old Mason Stred, whose fundraising project at Clarksburg School, Rainbow Rocks for $1, raised $2,500 for PopCares.

"Here's a rock from me to you that grants wishes and happiness, too," he explained during his prepared remarks to the gathering.

"We decided to donate the money to PopCares, they help so many local families battling with cancer," he said. "The money was raised local so we wanted it to stay local ... I am humbled by the great success of this fundraiser. I couldn't be more proud that we were able to donate the money to PopCares."




iciHaiti - Demography 2017 : 11 million inhabitants in Haiti





According to the United Nations Population Fund in 2017, Haiti's total population is estimated at about 11 million. The average annual rate of population change is 1.3% between 2010-2017.



31% of the population is aged 10 to 24, 33% is 0 to 14, 62% is 15 to 64, and 5% is 65 or older.



At the maternal and neonatal health level, the maternal mortality ratio (deaths per 100,000 live births) in 2015 was 359, births attended by skilled health personnel was 49% (2006-2016); the birth rate of adolescent girls per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19 is 66% (2006-2015).



With regard to family planning in 2017, the contraceptive prevalence rate, for women aged 15 to 49, all methods combined is 41% and 37% for modern methods for the same age group.



31% of family planning needs for women aged 15-49 are not satisfied compared to 57% of satisfied women for the same age group.



51% is the proportion of satisfied demand in modern methods for women aged 15 to 49 years.



The average total fertility rate per Haitian woman in 2017 is 2.9 children.



In terms of life expectancy for men it is 61 years old and for women 66 years old.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















President Donald Trump discussed tax reform and the opioid epidemic, but not his bitter feud with Sen. Bob Corker, during lunch with Republican senators on Tuesday.

The session was hotly anticipated because of the early morning war of words between Trump and the senior Republican on the foreign relations committee.

But as the lunch meeting broke up, senators said the spat didn't arise. Instead, they said the President focused his remarks on selling lawmakers on a tax reform plan he hopes will become his first major legislative achievement after a series of disappointments.

"We're here to try to accomplish things for the American people," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who himself has been subject to Trump's harsh criticism.

"We're all on the same page on the issues I mentioned," he said, naming economic revival as an area of common interest for Senate Republicans and the President.

Facing multiple questions about the divide between members of his GOP caucus and the President, McConnell turned the focus back to tax reform, which he said Republicans had long sought but now, finally, have an opportunity to pass.

"If there's anything that unifies Republicans, it's tax reform," he said. "We've been looking for the opportunity to do this literally for years. We now have a president who will sign it, who believes in what we're trying to do and we're going to concentrate on what our agenda is and not any of these other distractions that you all may be interested in."

Trump was accompanied to the Hill by chief of staff John Kelly, legislative affairs director Marc Short and press secretary Sarah Sanders, according to a White House staffer. Not present were the two men who have been leading the administration's tax reform efforts: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and National Economic Council Chairman Gary Cohn, the staffer said.

"I thought it was very positive, upbeat," said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who insisted there was no discussion during the talks about Trump's disputes with Republican senators.

Tensions rose earlier Tuesday thanks to a war of words between Trump and Corker who, in terming the White House an "adult day care," has implied Trump may be drifting into senility.

The latest spat was prompted by Corker's televised rebuke of Trump's skepticism over a plan to alter 401(k) retirement plans, which came as lawmakers continue to draft tax reform legislation that both sides agree is a necessity. Corker implied Trump was getting ahead of policymakers in his declaration that 401(k) plans would not change under the new law.

Trump responded by firing off volleys on Twitter that labeled Corker a backer of the Iran nuclear deal and an incompetent politician who "couldn't get elected dog catcher."

On the Iran deal charge, Trump's statement was misleading; Corker was an opponent of the 2015 accord negotiated by President Barack Obama's administration. And Trump's claims that he refused to endorse Corker for re-election have been refuted by the senator's staff.

But the remarkable barrage of insults laid bare the tenuous relationship between the President and members of his own party, who will determine his success in passing a massive tax reform passage

CNN's Manu Raju, Ted Barrett and Kaitlan Collins contributed to this report.
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The 32nd Annual Rebel Invitational Marching Band Festival was held over the weekend at Central High School. The festival kicked off with a performance by the Central Marching Rebels, directed by Band Director Brad Glore.

We had a great day of bands and competition, Glore said. The day started with a little bit of rain which delayed the start of the festival by about 15 minutes. We were able to get back on schedule by the end of the first scheduled break in the band schedule.

The Marching Rebels are under the field direction of Raylyn White and Madison Farley. The competition featured 18 marching bands, which was four more than last year, from around the state competed in the preliminary round, with nine bands moving on and performing again in the final round.

The bands were judged by an expert panel in categories of music performance, music effect, visual performance, visual ensemble and percussion and auxiliary. The judges for this year were Kurt Bauche of Farmington, Brian Tate of Columbia, Donna Pavelski of St. Charles, Justin Duvall of Edwardsville, Illinois, Juan Black of St. Louis and Mark Mikulay of Caseyville, Illinois.

Trophies were awarded to each band in the preliminary round of competition as well as awards for Outstanding Music, Outstanding Visual, Outstanding Percussion and Outstanding Auxiliary in each class.

The preliminary Class 1 and 2 Caption Awards all went to one school. Puxico received awards in all four categories, Outstanding Music, Outstanding Visual, Outstanding Percussion and Outstanding Visual.

Puxico also received first place overall in the preliminary competition with a 68.75, second place went to Herculaneum with a 56.25, third place went to Woodland with a 48.48, fourth place was Kelly with a 48.45 and fifth place was Charleston with a score of 43.15.

For the Class 3 preliminary caption awards, Potosi received an awards for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Percussion, Sullivan received awards in Outstanding Visual and Outstanding Auxiliary.

Potosi also received first place in the Class 3 preliminary competition with a 79.23, Sullivan came in second with a 77.78 and Ste. Genevieve took third place with a 62.08 score.

In the Class 4 preliminary caption awards, North County received awards in Outstanding Visual and Outstanding Auxiliary. Cape Central received an award for Outstanding Music and Farmington received one for Outstanding Percussion.

Cape Central came in first place in the Class 4 preliminary competition with a 76.63, Farmington took second with a 74.98, North County came in third with a 73.50, De Soto was in fourth with a 63.58 and Perryville came in fifth place with a score of 62.05.

In the Class 5 and 6 preliminary caption awards, Fort Zumwalt South received three awards for Outstanding Music, Outstanding Percussion and Outstanding Auxiliary. Fort Zumwalt West received an award for Outstanding Visual.

Fort Zumwalt South also came in first place with a score of 82.03 and Fort Zumwalt West came in second place with an 81.15. Eureka took third place with a 77.90 and Poplar Bluff came in fourth with a score of 66.28.

Glore said they were pleased to have Mr. Bob Monks, owner of STL Mustangs, there with them to help with the presentation of their preliminary competition trophies.

The Central Marching Rebels would like to thank Mr. Monks for his extraordinary support of the 32nd Annual Rebel Invitational, said Glore. Bob is not only an expert in building high performance Mustangs, but he is also one of the finest trumpet players that you will ever hear. Thank You Bob Monks for being here and being a supporter of the 32nd Annual Rebel Invitational.

There were nine bands that moved onto the finals: Eureka, Farmington, North County, Potosi, Fort Zumwalt West, Fort Zumwalt South, Cape Central, Puxico and Sullivan.

Again, Fort Zumwalt South received three award in the finals caption awards. They received awards for Outstanding Music, Outstanding Percussion and Outstanding Percussion. Eureka received an award for Outstanding Auxiliary.

In the finals, Fort Zumwalt South was the Dan Stecker Grand Champion Award Winner with an 85.83. Fort Zumwalt West came in second with a 84.85, Eureka came in third with a 79.40, Potosi took fourth place with a 78.60 and Sullivan came in fifth with a 76.10.

North County took sixth place with a 73.85, seventh place went to Cape Central with a 72.55, Farmington came in eighth with a 71.50 and Puxico took ninth place with a score of 66.53.

The finals trophies for the 32nd Annual Rebel Invitational are sponsored by CZ Boyer & Son Funeral Home Incorporated, said Glore. The CZ Boyer and Son Funeral Home has been a longtime supporter of the Central Band Program. The Central Marching Rebels appreciate the support and sponsorship of the events trophies.

The Rebel Invitational is sponsored by the Central Band Boosters and is a major fundraiser for the Central Band Program. The festival was started in the fall of 1986 by Dan Stecker.
Imperial Valley News Center

USS Anchorage Conducts HIMARS Shoot During Dawn Blitz 2017

Pacific Ocean - The High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) was fired from the flight deck of the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS Anchorage (LPD 23) during Dawn Blitz 2017 Yesterday.

The HIMARS is a weapons system made up of the M142, five-ton chassis vehicle and can carry either a launcher pod of six rockets or one MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS).



It enables Marines to engage targets within minutes after firing and features an advanced targeting system that strikes with an extremely high accuracy rate. The system also features a greater range than traditional artillery, allowing smaller units to cover a larger area.



The demonstration on Anchorage consisted of HIMARS engaging a land-based target with a Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System Unitary (GMLRS-U).



"We had two training objectives for today's shoot," said Army Maj. Adam Ropelewski, I Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF), lead planner for sea-based expeditionary fires. "The first training objective was demonstrating this capability and, second, we wanted to have good effects on the target. We achieved both objectives. We destroyed the target at 70 kilometers while at sea."



Developing sea-based fires alternatives such as the HIMARS afloat and proving them to be effective provides an opportunity for our Navy and Marine Corps team to evaluate, refine and improve processes to be ready for the future fight.



"In an environment where we are operating in contested waters, we are finding a way to be able to support the land force with deeper strike capabilities," said Capt. AJ Kowaleuski, an artillery officer with I MEF.



This ability provides flexibility while the Navy and Marine Corps are supporting each other in combined operations.



This portion of Dawn Blitz validated the commander's ability to integrate HIMARS with ships to conduct a sea-based strike.



"What we demonstrated not only was its capability, but we further demonstrated capabilities from the blue-green team and Amphibious Force 3," said Ropelewski. "They performed very well and were able to come together and work hard to make the mission successful."



The shoot was a success from the operator's perspective as well. "We shot a rocket off Anchorage to validate that we, as HIMARS operators, can shoot off an LPD and successfully hit the target," said Lance Cpl. Ryan Irving, a HIMARS operator assigned to 5th Battalion, 11th Marines.



Exercises like Dawn Blitz are another way to strengthen and continue the interdependent relationship between the Navy and Marine Corps.



Irving concluded, "It's nice to have a force integration, where we can work with the Navy and learn from each other in these situations."



Dawn Blitz is a scenario-driven exercise designed to train and integrate Navy and Marine Corps units by providing a robust training environment where forces plan and execute an amphibious assault, engage in live-fire events and establish expeditionary advanced bases in a land and maritime threat environment to improve naval amphibious core competencies.
Northrop Grumman to Provide San Diego Zoo Global Researchers with New Autonomous Technology for Tracking Wildlife

Escondido, California - San Diego Zoo Global researchers will join Northrop Grumman Corporation engineers to announce the continuation of a unique collaboration that addresses critical research questions, to gain a better understanding of the Arctic and current threats to polar bears. Northrop Grumman engineers will showcase custom, innovative technology developed for wildlife research with a flyover demonstration at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

For over a decade, San Diego Zoo Globals researchers have contributed to conservation strategies to preserve and better understand wild populations of polar bears. One of the limiting factors to studying Arctic ecosystems is the extreme environment, with incredibly cold temperatures and large, inaccessible areas to cover. San Diego Zoo Global scientists and Northrop Grumman Corporation engineers are continuing the second year of their collaboration with a new UAS, which will be deployed in November along Canadas Hudson Bay in Churchill, Manitoba and at a remote research facility.
Zambia National Day

Washington, DC - Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson: "On behalf of the Government of the United States of America, congratulations to the people of Zambia as you celebrate the 53rd anniversary of your nations independence.

"Over the last 53 years, we have seen Zambias continued development as a nation that shares many common values and interests with the United States. Zambia continues to be a strong regional leader in fostering peace and security. As a country, you have made remarkable strides in fighting HIV/AIDS. We applaud your history of democracy and democratic transitions and vision for achieving broad economic growth. Your countrys future rests on continued advancement in all of these areas, including constructive dialogue, reconciliation, and respect for due process and civil rights. The United States stands as a ready partner with the Zambian people as you chart your way forward.

"Best wishes to all Zambians on this day of your commemoration."
Vietnam Deputy Defense Minister Makes Historic Carrier Visit

Pacific Ocean - Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) hosted the highest ranking Vietnamese official to ever embark a U.S. aircraft carrier, Thursday.

Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh, deputy minister of National Defense for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and 11 other Vietnamese military officials embarked Carl Vinson while the ship conducted carrier qualifications off the coast of Southern California. The delegation interacted with crew members, ate lunch with strike group leaders and observed flight operations during the visit.



"This is a historic day and we are very honored to have you visit Carl Vinson," said Rear Adm. John Fuller, commander, Carrier Strike Group 1, as he met with Vinh. "We are very pleased to be a part of this maritime cooperation."



The strike group is comprised of an aircraft carrier, air wing, cruiser and several guided-missile destroyers. The strike group's flagship, Carl Vinson, consists of more than 3,000 personnel who operate and maintain the carrier. When deployed overseas, it operates with more than 60 aircraft and 2,000 additional Sailors from the air wing.



"I was very impressed with the professionalism and the working level of the whole Carl Vinson crew," said Vinh.



The strike group, which returned from a 6-month deployment to the Indo-Asia-Pacific region in June, provides a range of capabilities including promoting regional maritime partnerships, providing maritime security and maintaining freedom of navigation.



"I think that maritime cooperation is one of the areas where America and Vietnam can cooperate together," said Vinh.



Carl Vinson is America's third Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. The ship's primary mission is to support the carrier air wing when conducting operations at sea.
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With over a decade of films in its arsenal, Marvel Studios has established itself as one of Hollywoods most formidable cinematic forces. Ever since 2008s Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr, Marvel studios has  step by step  built up a vast universe of interconnected films, all based on characters from the comic book world.

Officially known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or MCU), the franchise has taken audiences all the way from the depths of space to the streets of Wakanda, the fictional African city that Black Panther calls home.

Yet the key to Marvels success has always been the studios ability to experiment with its own style. For Doctor Strange, horror director Scott Derrickson went psychedelic, while Taika Waititi brought his trademark comic stylings to Thor: Ragnarok. The results have made the MCU the highest-grossing franchise of all time, earning over $17.5bn at the global box office.

We may earn commission from some of the links in this article, but we never allow this to influence our content.

Weve ranked the MCU entries from worst to best.

23. Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 barely holds together. Rather than act as a straight sequel to the surprisingly successful Iron Man, Marvel Studios decided to overstuff the film with universe-building references (Black Widow, Nick Fury and SHIELDs Agent Coulson all make appearances) and two-dimensional villains (played by Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke). The result is a film without any direction that serves as a Trojan horse set-up for the Avengers.

22. Thor: The Dark World

When the Thor franchise lost its director Kenneth Branagh between the first and second films, it also had to kiss goodbye to the Shakespearean theatrics that had lent it a sense of goofy charm. Directed by Game of Throness Alan Taylor, The Dark World prioritises its VFX effects above all else. Its a dull affair: Christopher Ecclestons Malekith is (by far) Marvels worst villain, being a pile of prosthetics with zero personality, while Chris Hemsworths Thor completes one of the most unrealistic London Tube journeys in all of cinematic history.

21. The Incredible Hulk

Edward Nortons version of the smashing Hulk often gets forgotten by Marvel fans  and for good reason. Whereas Mark Ruffalos bumbling interpretation of the character has a gravitational charm, Nortons moping monster is void of any charisma. With Liv Tyler phoning in her performance as love interest, Betty Ross, the film falls emotionally flat and serves only as a by-the-numbers origins story.

20. Avengers: Age of Ultron

Just in case wed forgotten that the Disney corporation is an all-consuming titan that owns half of Hollywood, the sequel to 2012s Avengers Assemble decided to sneak in a little corporate synergy: when Iron Man accidentally creates a sentient robot (voiced by James Spader) who decides the earths only salvation is through the destruction of humanity, he announces his grim plans with accompaniment of a little citation of the classic Ive Got No Strings from 1940s Pinocchio. Its a moment that exemplifies how Ultron feels like a cold, calculated operation from Marvel Studios. Its merely tick list of obligations to move us on to the next chapter of the MCU.

19. Thor

Although Kenneth Branaghs introductory outing for Marvels God of Thunder fared perfectly well on release, its suffered massively from the MCUs dramatic sense of progression over the years. Certainly, Tom Hiddlestons Loki is a strong, well-crafted character right out of the gate, and his plot against his adoptive father (Anthony Hopkins) is delightfully heightened. Yet, it arguably took until Thor: Ragnarok for Chris Hemsworths hero to develop much sense of character beyond the initial fish out of water trope.

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18. Doctor Strange

A self-centred wealthy white man ventures to a distant land and realises his superhero potential  sound familiar? Thats because Doctor Strange and Iron Man are basically the same story, except one uses magic and the other explosives. Benedict Cumberbatchs Marveldebut impresses with kaleidoscope visuals but lacks the heart of Robert Downey Jrs hero, leading to a film that wastes the talents of both Tilda Swinton and Mads Mikkelsen.

Watch the Marvel Studios films on Disney+, subscribe here for a free trial.

17. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2

()The first Guardians of the Galaxy was a risky Star Wars-inspired romp through space, following a bunch of a-holes who form an unlikely familiar bond. For the second film, James Gunn decided to turn everything up to 11, cramming half a dozen interweaving storylines, leading to Chris Pratts gaunt Star Lord getting side-lined. The sequel did, however, introduce the now beloved line Im Mary Poppins, yall, shouted by Yondu as he gracefully falls from the sky. A wonderfully comedic moment in a film that misses on another half-dozen punches.

16. Avengers Assemble

Marvels first crossover film was an unparalleled cinematic event  one that arguably changed Hollywood filmmaking forever, now that every major studio seems to be attempting the shared universe approach to franchises. Although the MCU has refined the template since, Avengers Assemble still established the focus on humour, character, and heart that would come to define the success story of Marvel Studios. Its a blockbuster that feels large on all fronts, delivering thrills not only in the Battle of New York finale, but in the creation of a team of characters that feel perfectly balanced and complementary.

15. Captain America: Civil War

(Marvel/Disney)

(Marvel/Disney)Despite Captain America: Civil War (AKA Avengers 2.5) featuring Iron Man, Black Widow, and Ant-Man (as well as introducing Black Panther and Spider-Man), the film remains first and foremost about Captain America. And thats perhaps why the stuffed blockbuster works  were it not for a central focus, Civil War could have fallen into the trappings of other Marvel sequels in being too convoluted. The Russo Brothers also direct one of the best actions scenes in Marvel history so far, the airport scene, which looks as if it leapt straight out of a comic book.

14. Ant-Man and the Wasp

While the first Ant Man was a mirror image of its star Paul Rudd, essentially delivering a studio comedy dressed in spandex, the second found a new trick up its sleeve in the form of Evangeline Lillys Hope van Dyne  a smart, capable female hero who didnt simply exist to serve as a caretaker for the male characters.

13. Spider-Man: Far From Home

What comes after the end? Its the question that was hanging over the Marvel Cinematic Universe ever since the release of Avengers: Endgame was sold to us as the ultimate, cumulative chapter in a series of 22 interconnected films. And yet, while Far From Home is distinctly mid-level Marvel fare, theres a lot to be said for the fact it isnt crushed under the weight of its own ambitions. It feels comfortably like the end of a chapter, the beginning of a new one, an epilogue, and a palate cleanser all at once. It also works perfectly well as a film about Spider-Man.

12. Ant-Man

Ant-Man should not have worked as a film. Just look at the title! Ridiculous to think a movie about a man with ant powers should work  let alone be a blockbuster success and part of the biggest cinematic universe going. Yet, despite production problems (Edgar Wright was initially meant to helm the film), Peyton Reed directs this hilarious heist film with aplomb, taking the Marvel world a little less seriously than others.

11. Avengers: Infinity War

(Marvel Studios)

Marvel redefined cinematic narratives once more in 2018, creating a single culmination to a decades worth of films. While it plays as total nonsense to anyone whos a newcomer to the franchise (if thats possible), it was, for fans, an unmatched emotional release. The Russo brothers faced the monumental task of making each crossover  from the Guardians of the Galaxy to the kingdom of Wakanda  work in a way that feels natural, while also ushering the MCUs biggest villain, Thanos, into centre stage. Epic both in its sense of scale and stakes, Infinity War also stages one of the most memorable finales in blockbuster history.

10. Captain America: The First Avenger

With or without the beard, Steve Rogers aka Captain America has now become the brooding centre of the Avengers, but there was once a time when he was all about the old-fashioned heroics. Director Joe Johnston stayed true to the films 1940s setting in a film that embraces that pulpiness of early comic book history, as Steve punches Nazis and romances military officer Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), although her character is thankfully never relegated to the role of damsel in distress.

Watch the Marvel Studios films on Disney+, subscribe here for a free trial.

9. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Despite centring on a super-powered American nationalist, the Captain America trilogy has the most consistent quality in the MCU. Its crowning moment comes with The Winter Soldier  an adrenaline-fuelled conspiracy thriller that features a spectacular twist and provokes questions regarding modern day surveillance. However, given The Russo Brothers root the rest of the movie in realism, the bombastic CGI-heavy ending is a little ridiculous.

8. Captain Marvel

Brie Larson gives a superpowered performance as Carol Danvers, the actor playing a hero thats both relatable and aspirational, strong but vulnerable. While Captain Marvel may not revolutionise the studios formula, the superheros debut outing provides a platform to show off her Thanos-annihilating powers. Thanks to a smart script, it also offers some of the very best character development in the MCU.

7. Spider-Man: Homecoming

While Spider-Mans miraculous arrival in the MCU came with Captain America: Civil War, it was not until Homecoming that we truly got to know Peter Parker. Tom Hollands incarnation swings past Andrew Garfields version, thanks to the films lower-stakes high school story allowing for intimate moments with the character. Along with including some great comic performances (Jacob Batalon as Ned stands out), Michael Keatons Vulture makes for a terrifying villain, and the twist is superbly done.

6. Iron Man 3

While divisive among Marvel fans, Shane Blacks superhero outing  with the writer/directors sharp, stinging dialogue  brings Tony Starks story arc to an end (or what should have been its end) with humour and heart aplenty. As Robert Downey Jrs genius, billionaire philanthropist deals with PTSD and struggles with his robotic creations, we see an actor giving his all.

Marvel films  ranked worst to best Show all 23 1 /23 Marvel films  ranked worst to best Marvel films  ranked worst to best Iron Man 2 23. Iron Man 2 barely holds together. Rather than act as a straight sequel to the surprisingly successful Iron Man, Marvel Studios decided to overstuff the film with universe-building references (Black Widow, Nick Fury and SHIELDs Agent Coulson all make appearances) and two-dimensional villains (played by Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke). The result is a film without any direction that serves as a Trojan horse set-up for the Avengers. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Thor: The Dark World 22. When the Thor franchise lost its director Kenneth Branagh between the first and second films, it also had to kiss goodbye to the Shakespearean theatrics that had lent it a sense of goofy charm. Directed by Game of Throness Alan Taylor, The Dark World prioritises its VFX effects above all else. Its a dull affair: Christopher Ecclestons Malekith is (by far) Marvels worst villain, being a pile of prosthetics with zero personality, while Chris Hemsworths Thor completes one of the most unrealistic London Tube journeys in all of cinematic history. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best The Incredible Hulk 21. Edward Nortons version of the smashing Hulk often gets forgotten by Marvel fans  and for good reason. Whereas Mark Ruffalos bumbling interpretation of the character has a gravitational charm, Nortons moping monster is void of any charisma. With Liv Tyler phoning in her performance as love interest, Betty Ross, the film falls emotionally flat and serves only as a by-the-numbers origins story. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Avengers: Age of Ultron 20. Just in case wed forgotten that the Disney corporation is an all-consuming titan that owns half of Hollywood, the sequel to 2012s Avengers decided to sneak in a little corporate synergy: when Iron Man accidentally creates a sentient robot (voiced by James Spader) who decides the earths only salvation is through the destruction of humanity, he announces his grim plans with accompaniment of a little citation of the classic Ive Got No Strings from 1940s Pinocchio. Its a moment that exemplifies how Ultron feels like a cold, calculated operation from Marvel Studios. Its merely tick list of obligations to move us on to the next chapter of the MCU. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Thor 19. Although Kenneth Branaghs introductory outing for Marvels God of Thunder fared perfectly well on release, its suffered massively from the MCUs dramatic sense of progression over the years. Certainly, Tom Hiddlestons Loki is a strong, well-crafted character right out of the gate, and his plot against his adoptive father (Anthony Hopkins) is delightfully heightened. Yet, it arguably took until Thor: Ragnarok for Chris Hemsworths hero to develop much sense of character beyond the initial fish out of water trope. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Doctor Strange 18. A self-centred wealthy white man ventures to a distant land and realises his superhero potential  sound familiar? Thats because Doctor Strange and Iron Man are basically the same story, except one uses magic and the other explosives. Benedict Cumberbatchs Marveldebut impresses with kaleidoscope visuals but lacks the heart of Robert Downey Jrs hero, leading to a film that wastes the talents of both Tilda Swinton and Mads Mikkelsen. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 17. The first Guardians of the Galaxy was a risky Star Wars-inspired romp through space, following a bunch of a-holes who form an unlikely familiar bond. For the second film, James Gunn decided to turn everything up to 11, cramming half a dozen interweaving storylines, leading to Chris Pratts gaunt Star Lord getting side-lined. The sequel did, however, introduce the now beloved line Im Mary Poppins, yall, shouted by Yondu as he gracefully falls from the sky. A wonderfully comedic moment in a film that misses on another half-dozen punches. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Avengers Assemble 16. Marvels first crossover film was an unparalleled cinematic event  one that arguably changed Hollywood filmmaking forever, now that every major studio seems to be attempting the shared universe approach to franchises. Although the MCU has refined the template since, Avengers Assemble still established the focus on humour, character, and heart that would come to define the success story of Marvel Studios. Its a blockbuster that feels large on all fronts, delivering thrills not only in the Battle of New York finale, but in the creation of a team of characters that feel perfectly balanced and complementary. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Captain America: Civil War 15. Despite Captain America: Civil War (AKA Avengers 2.5) featuring Iron Man, Black Widow, and Ant-Man (as well as introducing Black Panther and Spider-Man), the film remains first and foremost about Captain America. And thats perhaps why the stuffed blockbuster works  were it not for a central focus, Civil War could have fallen into the trappings of other Marvel sequels in being too convoluted. The Russo Brothers also direct one of the best actions scenes in Marvel history so far, the airport scene, which looks as if it leapt straight out of a comic book. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Ant-Man and the Wasp 14. While the first Ant Man was a mirror image of its star Paul Rudd, essentially delivering a studio comedy dressed in spandex, the second found a new trick up its sleeve in the form of Evangeline Lillys Hope van Dyne  a smart, capable female hero who didnt simply exist to serve as a caretaker for the male characters. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Spider-Man: Far From Home 13. What comes after the end? Its the question that was hanging over the Marvel Cinematic Universe ever since the release of Avengers: Endgame was sold to us as the ultimate, cumulative chapter in a series of 22 interconnected films. And yet, while Far From Home is distinctly mid-level Marvel fare, theres a lot to be said for the fact it isnt crushed under the weight of its own ambitions. It feels comfortably like the end of a chapter, the beginning of a new one, an epilogue, and a palate cleanser all at once. It also works perfectly well as a film about Spider-Man. AP Marvel films  ranked worst to best Ant-Man 12. Ant-Man should not have worked as a film. Just look at the title! Ridiculous to think a movie about a man with ant powers should work  let alone be a blockbuster success and part of the biggest cinematic universe going. Yet, despite production problems (Edgar Wright was initially meant to helm the film), Peyton Reed directs this hilarious heist film with aplomb, taking the Marvel world a little less seriously than others. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Avengers: Infinity War 11. Marvel redefined cinematic narratives once more in 2018, creating a single culmination to a decades worth of films. While it plays as total nonsense to anyone whos a newcomer to the franchise (if thats possible), it was, for fans, an unmatched emotional release. The Russo brothers faced the monumental task of making each crossover  from the Guardians of the Galaxy to the kingdom of Wakanda  work in a way that feels natural, while also ushering the MCUs biggest villain, Thanos, into centre stage. Epic both in its sense of scale and stakes, Infinity War also stages one of the most memorable finales in blockbuster history. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Captain America: The First Avenger 10. With or without the beard, Steve Rogers aka Captain America has now become the brooding centre of the Avengers, but there was once a time when he was all about the old-fashioned heroics. Director Joe Johnston stayed true to the films 1940s setting in a film that embraces that pulpiness of early comic book history, as Steve punches Nazis and romances military officer Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), although her character is thankfully never relegated to the role of damsel in distress. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Captain America: The Winter Soldier 9. Despite centring on a super-powered American nationalist, the Captain America trilogy has the most consistent quality in the MCU. Its crowning moment comes with The Winter Soldier  an adrenaline-fuelled conspiracy thriller that features a spectacular twist and provokes questions regarding modern day surveillance. However, given The Russo Brothers root the rest of the movie in realism, the bombastic CGI-heavy ending is a little ridiculous. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Captain Marvel 8. Brie Larson gives a superpowered performance as Carol Danvers, the actor playing a hero that's both relatable and aspirational, strong but vulnerable. While Captain Marvel may not revolutionise the studios formula, the superhero's debut outing provides a platform to show off her Thanos-annihilating powers. Thanks to a smart script, it also offers some of the very best character development in the MCU. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Spider-Man: Homecoming 7. While Spider-Mans miraculous arrival in the MCU came with Captain America: Civil War, it was not until Homecoming that we truly got to know Peter Parker. Tom Hollands incarnation swings past Andrew Garfields version, thanks to the films lower-stakes high school story allowing for intimate moments with the character. Along with including some great comic performances (Jacob Batalon as Ned stands out), Michael Keatons Vulture makes for a terrifying villain, and the twist is superbly done. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Iron Man 3 6. While divisive among Marvel fans, Shane Blacks superhero outing  with the writer/directors sharp, stinging dialogue  brings Tony Stark's story arc to an end (or what should have been its end) with humour and heart aplenty. As Robert Downey Jrs genius, billionaire philanthropist deals with PTSD and struggles with his robotic creations, we see an actor giving his all. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Avengers: Endgame 5. Its a film thats hard to place within the MCU canon, simply because the majority of its emotional pay-offs only work due to the groundwork laid by over a decade of filmmaking. Avengers: Endgame is less about individual storytelling and so much more about the collective experience of cinema itself. This exists to be consumed in the dark, surrounded by loved ones, as you all cheer, gasp, and cry in unison. The fan service at work may, at times, feel a little outrageous in just how bold it feels, but Endgame earns the right to indulge. This, above all, is a celebration of these movies and their impact on the world. AP Marvel films  ranked worst to best Thor: Ragnarok 4. Completely transforming the Thor franchise in a single, effortless move, director Taika Waititi injected new energy into the MCU. Ragnarok is perfectly balanced both as a standard Marvel movie, with all the right heroics and world-building intact, and as a work belonging exclusively to Waititi, filled with the humour and charm hed previously displayed in What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople. By finding a way to incorporate individual voices into its massive franchise machine, Marvel found the secret to true long-term success. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Iron Man 3. Where it all started. Iron Man subverted expectations by not only reintroducing Robert Downey Jr to the world, but by showing that a relatively unknown B-character could be at the centre of a blockbuster. Other cinematic universes fail because they attempt to introduce too much (a mistake made in Iron Man 2). The first Iron Man, though, had a self-contained story that only hinted at a bigger world  a world that would eventually become a multi-billion-dollar franchise. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Guardians of the Galaxy 2. Blasting the Marvel universe into space for an adventure with a truly ragtag group of heroes, including both a talking racoon and a sentient tree-creature, Guardians of the Galaxy is arguably the biggest risk the franchise ever took. And it paid off in spectacular fashion, with director James Gunn giving the superhero genre a light coat of B-movie glee. It also transformed Parks and Recreation star Chris Pratt into the major box office draw he is today. Marvel/Disney Marvel films  ranked worst to best Black Panther 1. Although Black Panther still dutifully fulfils all the requirements of a Marvel film, providing a bridge to films both past and future plus ending in a cinematic battle filled with CGI trickery, Ryan Cooglers achievement as a director is to use a familiar framework to tell a radical story within mainstream filmmaking. In the strife between Chadwick Bosemans TChalla, the ruler of Wakanda, and Michael B Jordans Killmonger, he provided a nuanced, layered commentary on colonialism and black identity. Its a film that triumphs both within its genre, bringing new perspectives to the superhero story, and outside of it, satisfying purely as a piece of narrative drama. Marvel/Disney

5. Avengers: Endgame

Its a film thats hard to place within the MCU canon, simply because the majority of its emotional pay-offs only work due to the groundwork laid by over a decade of filmmaking. Avengers: Endgame is less about individual storytelling and so much more about the collective experience of cinema itself. This exists to be consumed in the dark, surrounded by loved ones, as you all cheer, gasp, and cry in unison. The fan service at work may, at times, feel a little outrageous in just how bold it feels, but Endgame earns the right to indulge. This, above all, is a celebration of these movies and their impact on the world.

4. Thor: Ragnarok

Completely transforming the Thor franchise in a single, effortless move, director Taika Waititi injected new energy into the MCU. Ragnarok is perfectly balanced both as a standard Marvel movie, with all the right heroics and world-building intact, and as a work belonging exclusively to Waititi, filled with the humour and charm hed previously displayed in What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople. By finding a way to incorporate individual voices into its massive franchise machine, Marvel found the secret to true long-term success.

3. Iron Man

Where it all started. Iron Man subverted expectations by not only reintroducing Robert Downey Jr to the world, but by showing that a relatively unknown B-character could be at the centre of a blockbuster. Other cinematic universes fail because they attempt to introduce too much (a mistake made in Iron Man 2). The first Iron Man, though, had a self-contained story that only hinted at a bigger world  a world that would eventually become a multi-billion-dollar franchise.

2. Guardians of the Galaxy

Blasting the Marvel universe into space for an adventure with a truly ragtag group of heroes, including both a talking racoon and a sentient tree-creature, Guardians of the Galaxy is arguably the biggest risk the franchise ever took. And it paid off in spectacular fashion, with director James Gunn giving the superhero genre a light coat of B-movie glee. It also transformed Parks and Recreation star Chris Pratt into the major box office draw he is today.

1. Black Panther

Although Black Panther still dutifully fulfils all the requirements of a Marvel film, providing a bridge to films both past and future plus ending in a cinematic battle filled with CGI trickery, Ryan Cooglers achievement as a director is to use a familiar framework to tell a radical story within mainstream filmmaking. In the strife between Chadwick Bosemans TChalla, the ruler of Wakanda, and Michael B Jordans Killmonger, he provided a nuanced, layered commentary on colonialism and black identity. Its a film that triumphs both within its genre, bringing new perspectives to the superhero story, and outside of it, satisfying purely as a piece of narrative drama.
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George Clooney has spoken out about the sexual harassment his wife and prominent human rights lawyer Amal has experienced in the legal world.

Clooneys comments come in the wake of Harvey Weinsteins sex abuse scandal which has seen a slew of women come forward with allegations of rape, sexual assault and harassment against the embattled movie mogul.

The actor argued cultures of sexual harassment were both deeply engrained and highly prevalent and transcended the showbiz industry.

"The whole culture of this is going to have to stop. This isn't just showbiz, it's everywhere. It isn't just Fox News, it's in (Washington) DC clearly," Clooney said on Extra TV.

"My wife, who is a human rights lawyer, says she's faced those exact kinds of situations in law. So it's everywhere, it needs to be addressed as a problem for all of us.

Clooney added: "My wife is a very smart, very together, very accomplished human rights lawyer and she said There have been plenty of times in my life and my career, where in the law community, I had to tell someone to knock it off'. So it happens everywhere."

The actor did not provide any actual details of the type of harassment his British-Lebanese wife, who specialises in public international law, international criminal law and human rights, has allegedly been subject to in the workplace.

Amal is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London and her clients include WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in his fight against extradition. She led an international delegation attempting to secure the release of the former president of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, stood before Europe's top human rights court to represent Armenia in their case against Dogu Perincek, the leader of the Turkish Workers Party, and represented convicted Canadian Mohamed Fahmy in Egypt.

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

Clooney, who has received two Academy Awards for his acting, also addressed the Weinstein furore and said he hoped some positive consequences would come out of it.

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There has to be some good that comes out of all this and the good is going to have to be that women feel safe to speak up and that women are believed, he said. And its also going to hopefully be enough that it scares any man who would behave like that from doing it and lets stop having meetings in hotel rooms.

Clooney said Weinstein is going to get his and deserves it and claimed other individuals in the industry had helped the now disgraced producer.

Recommended The incredible life of international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney

He said: "I want to know who took women up to a hotel room and then left them there for Harvey. I want to know who did that."

Weinstein has supposedly been in rehab for "sex addiction". Almost 60 women have come forward so far with allegations of sexual harassment and assault against him.

Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Beckinsale, Lupita Nyongo, and Angelina Jolie have all accused Weinstein of harassment, while Rose McGowan has accused him of rape.

Weinstein, who has since been expelled from the Oscars and sacked from his namesake company, denies all accusations of nonconsensual sex and the mogul has reportedly said from rehab that theres a conspiracy against him.

Any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied by Mr Weinstein. Mr Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances, his spokesperson told The Independent in a statement.
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New Marvel film Thor: Ragnarok has been released in the UK to positive reviews from critics praising New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi from bringing a comic edge to the superhero franchise with bold performances from Chris Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson and, yes, even Tom Hiddleston.

As you'd expect from a new Marvel film, there are a number of post-credits scenes that don't so much move the story on as tease the forthcoming Avenger: Infinity War and put a comedic full stop the zany film that came before it.

*Warning: MAJOR spoilers follow*

27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Show all 27 1 /27 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Black Panther Released: 12 February 12 February Director: Ryan Coogler Cast: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Forest Whitaker, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 The Greatest Showman Released: 1 January 1 January Director: Michael Gracey Cast: Hugh Jackman, Zac Efron, Michelle Williams, Rebecca Ferguson, Zendaya, 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Darkest Hour Released: 12 January 12 January Director: Joe Wright Cast: Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ben Mendelsohn 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri Released: 12 January Director: Martin McDonagh 12 JanuaryMartin McDonagh Cast: Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, Caleb Landry Jones > Twentieth Century Fox 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Coco Released: 19 January 19 January Director: Lee Unkrich ,p>Cast: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael Garcia Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Renee Victor 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Downsizing Released: 19 January 19 January Director: Alexander Payne Cast: Matt Damon, Christopher Waltz, Jong Chau, Kristen Wiig, Jason Sudeikis 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Early Man Released: 26 January 26 January Director: Nick Park Cast: Eddie Redmayne, Tom Hiddleston, Maisie Williams, Timothy Spall 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Fifty Shades Freed Released: 9 February 9 February Director: James Foley Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Kim Basinger 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Maze Runner: The Death Cure Released: 9 February 9 February Director: Wes Ball Cast: Dylan O'Brien, Thomas Brodie Sangster, Kaya Scodelario, Giancarlo Esposito, Aidan Gillen 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 The Shape of Water Released: 16 February 16 February Director: Guillermo del Toro Cast: Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon, Michael Stuhlbarg, Doug Jones 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Annihilation Released: 23 February 23 February Director: Alex Garland Cast: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Lee, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Oscar Isaac 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Dark River Released: 23 February 23 February Director: Clio Barnard Cast: Ruth Wilson, Mark Stanley, Sean Bean 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Red Sparrow Released: 2 March 2 March Director: Francis Lawrence Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Jeremy Irons 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Tomb Raider Released: 16 March 16 March Director: Roar Uthaug Cast: Alicia Vikander, Walton Goggins, Daniel Wu, Dominic West, 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 A Wrinkle in Time Released: 23 March 23 March Director: Ava DuVernay Cast: Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Zach Galifianakis 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Pacific Rim: Uprising Released: 23 March 23 March Director: Steven S. DeKnight Cast: John Boyega, Scott Eastwood, Charlie Day, Burn Gorman 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Roman J Israel, Esq Released: 23 March 23 March Director: Dan Gilroy Cast: Denzel Washington, Colin Farrell, Carmen Ejogo Columbia Pictures 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Isle of Dogs Released: 30 March 30 March Director: Wes Anderson Cast: Bill Murray, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Scarlett Johansson 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Ready Player One Released: 30 March 30 March Director: Steven Spielberg Cast: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Avengers: Infinity War Released: 27 April 27 April Director: The Russo Brothers Cast: Robert Downey, Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Josh Brolin 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Untitled Han Solo Film Released: 25 May 25 May Director: Ron Howard Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Emilia Clarke, Woody Harrelson, Donald Glover 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Released: 8 June 8 June Director: J.A. Bayona Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pine, B.D. Wong, Toby Jones 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Deadpool 2 Released: 1 June Director: David Leitch 1 JuneDavid Leitch Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, T.J. Miller, Zazie Beetz, Josh Brolin 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Ocean's 8 Released: 22 June 22 June Director: Gary Ross Cast: Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Mindy Kaling, Sarah Paulson, Anne Hathaway, Olivia Munn, Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna, Matt Damon 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Ant-Man and the Wasp Released: 29 June 29 June Director: Peyton Reed Cast: Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 Soldado Released: 29 June 29 June Director: Stefano Sollima Cast: Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Jeffrey Donovan, Catherine Keener, Matthew Modine 27 films to look out for in the first half of 2018 The Incredibles 2 Released: 13 July 13 July Director: Brad Bird Cast: Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Samuel L. Jackson

The film ends as Thor, Loki and the remaining population of Asgard leave their now-obliterated planet packed away in a spaceship bound for who knows where. The first post-credits sequence picks up with Thor and Loki looking over the galaxy as the spaceship floats through space pondering where the safest place to go would be.

Everythings going to work out fine, Thor tells his brother as a rather threatening gigantic spaceship parks itself in front of theirs. While the scene ends there leaving its occupants a mystery, it's no stretch to assume this is Thanos (Josh Brolin) who'll be taking chief villain duties in the new Avengers film.

This moment looks to precede the Infinity War scene shown at Comic-Con in which Thor, injured and floating alone in the middle of space - is picked up by the Guardians of the Galaxy crew. It seems Thanos' encounter with the Asgardians is not going to end well.

The very last post-credits scene is more in line with the one featuring Captain America shown at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming. It features Goldblum's character Grandmaster, the ruler of trash planet Sakaar, and takes place after Thor and Loki have escaped the planet: Grandmaster emerges from his fallen ship and addresses his very dissatisfied citizens. The revolution has a been a huge success, Grandmaster exclaims. Its a tie.

Thor: Ragnarok is in cinemas now
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A gory fight to the death between snarling dogs and captured wild boars.

Gathered around a bamboo-walled arena, Indonesians in this remote part of Java island seem eager to watch the bloodcurdling contests, known locally as adu bagong (boar fighting).

Not surprisingly, animal rights activists are up in arms against the regular spectacle, which began in the 1960s when wild pig numbers in this area in West Java soared and they were hunted to protect crops.

Participants say the fights are a way to preserve a tradition of hunting in the area. Theres also a cash prize of up to $2,000 (1,500) for the winning dog.

It used to be very simple, not like now when the dogs are trained, says Nur Hadi, head of Hiparu, a group of hunting dog enthusiasts that takes part in the fights.

From there its been handed down and has even become part of tradition and culture, Hadi says.

He defends the practice against criticism from animal rights groups, who say it should be banned.

It is a criminal act against animals, says Indonesian animal rights activist Marison Guciano.

The government and NGOs should go to the field to stop this event and educate the people that dog fighting is not right.

Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs A dog and wild boar fight during a contest Beawiharta/Reuters Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs A dog handler leans on a dog cage during a fight Beawiharta/Reuters Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs The contest is known locally as adu bagong Beawiharta/Reuters Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs Villagers in Majalaya, West Java watch a fight Beawiharta/Reuters Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs Breeder Agus Baduds daughter carries a dog to be washed at their house Beawiharta/Reuters Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs Villagers watch the spectacle on a bamboo stage Beawiharta/Reuters Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs Dog breeder Agus Badud washes his dog at his house in Majalaya Beawiharta/Reuters Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs Contests are fought for a cash prize of up to 1,500 Reuters Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs Baduds dog sits in his cage after being washed Beawiharta/Reuters Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs Hooves of a wild boar hang for dog training at Baduds house Beawiharta/Reuters Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs Baduds family sit near the cage of their dog as a fight takes place Beawiharta/Reuters Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs A dog handler cleans blood from his dog which bit a boar in a fight Beawiharta/Reuters Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs: in pictures Indonesian villages pit wild boars against dogs Baduds wife and daughter wash dogs at their house Beawiharta/Reuters

The fights take place in a 15-by-30m arena surrounded by a bamboo fence to protect spectators and only end when one of the animals is injured.

Participants say the contests test the agility and hunting abilities of the dogs. If a boar survives a fight, once healed it will be returned to the arena to fight another day. If not, it will be butchered and sold for meat.

Dog breeder Agus Badud says the tradition also gives people a source of income.

I take part in this contest to increase the selling price and economic value of my dogs, and it would be useless for me as a breeder if I did not participate in a contest like this, Badud says in his house where he keeps 40 dogs.

Dog owners pay anywhere from 200,000 rupiah to two million rupiah (11 to 115) to enter the fights, depending on the size of their dog.

Words by Fergus Jensen

Reuters
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It's business time.

Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie are back, touring the UK and Ireland in March 2018 for the first time in more than seven years. The 'Flight of the Conchords sing Flight of Conchords Tour' will feature all the classics, plus some new material.

The tour will feature stops in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Dublin, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and more, kicking off with two nights at London's Eventim Apollo on 19 March.

Tickets will be on sale Friday 27 October 27 at 10am GMT - more information about which you can find on the FOTC website.

Here's everything you need to know about the duo.

Who are they?

Flight of the Conchords are a comedy-folk duo consisting of Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie.

Recommended Flight of the Conchords announce first UK tour in seven years

The two New Zealanders were university flatmates before they created Flight of the Conchords in 1998, first performing as part of a five-man sketch troupe called So You're a Man, which also included Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi, performing across New Zealand and Australia.

After the group broke up, the Flight of the Conchords found individual success at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2002 and 2003, where they were nominated for the Perrier Award; US success was boosted by performances on the Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Where have I seen them before?

Most likely, their HBO television series of the same name. A first season premiered in 2007, swiftly followed by a second season in 2009. Anyone hoping for more, however, may be disappointed: the duo and co-creator James Bobin have previously stated there would not be a third season.

However, their TV transition was importantly preceded by two things: first off, their Grammy-winning album The Distant Future, which premiered many of the songs now so well-known from the show, including "Business Time" and "Not Crying".



Secondly, the duo also created a radio series for BBC Radio 2 in 2005; largely improvised, the series was based on the band's search for commercial success in London, with Rhys Darby as their manager and Jimmy Carr as a devoted fan called Kipper.

All elements, of course, that became integral to the HBO show, which sees the duo now seeking fame in New York City. Darby returned as manager Murray, with Kristen Schaal filling in as their obsessive fan Mel.

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What makes them so great?

McKenzie and Clement are a perfect encapsulation of an ever-burgeoning movement of quirky, lo-fi comedy. They're outsiders of the most loveable sort, a perfect product of New Zealand's unique sense of humour - a dry self-deprecation that plays on that perpetual perception as the harmless underdogs.

Also, Flight of the Conchords are, quite simply, one of the few musical comedy acts that actually manage to produce songs that are catchy and fun even without the jokes, whether they're drawing influence from David Bowie or Serge Gainsbourg.

Those dreams of a season 3 may be dead, but the tour is proof there's still a future for Flight of the Conchords. There's even been discussion of a possible film. Meanwhile, McKenzie and Clement have found plenty of individual success.

McKenzie most notably won an Academy Award for his song "Man or Muppet", penned for 2011's The Muppets; a silent role in The Fellowship of the Ring also, bizarrely, became an internet sensation - he then returned for The Return of the King and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.



Clement has flourished in voice work, with roles in Despicable Me, Rio, Moana, and The LEGO Batman Movie. He also co-directed What We Do in the Shadows alongside Taika Waititi, the vampire mockumentary that's already become something of a cult hit.

When are they touring?

Here's the full list of their UK and Ireland tour dates:



Mar. 19 - London, UK - Eventim Apollo

Mar. 20 - London, UK - Eventim Apollo

Mar. 22 - Birmingham, UK - Birmingham Genting Arena

Mar. 23 - Manchester, UK - Manchester Arena

Mar. 25 - Dublin, UK - 3Arena

Mar. 26 - Glasgow, UK - The SSE Hydro

Mar. 27 - Leeds, UK - Leeds First Direct Arena

Mar. 29 - London, UK - The O2 Arena

Apr. 01 - Liverpool, UK - Echo Arena Liverpool

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The story set to provide the basis for the fourth season of Netflix series Narcos has reportedly been decided.

New episodes are expected to focus on the Juarez Cartel, the head of which had a fleeting appearance in the show's third season after meeting Cali Cartel's Pacho Herrera.

According to the Express, season four will feature Amado Carrillo Fuentes, a Mexican drug lord who seized control of the Cartel after assassinating his boss Rafael Aguilar Guajardo.

These reports would corroborate plans to shift the show's setting to Mexico for the new season with actor Pepe Rapazote suggesting in a recent interview the show is to go back in time to focus on the early days of Mexican cartels.

Earlier this year, location scout Carlos Munoz Porta was found dead with multiple gunshot wounds in a remote area near San Bartolo Actopan, an area said to have some of Mexico's highest murder rates.

It remains unclear whether there was a motive for the murder but the incident led lead star Pedro Pascal to state the show would have to end if the cast and crew's safety couldn't be guaranteed.

TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for Show all 16 1 /16 TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for Jessica Jones Starring: Krysten Ritter, Rachael Taylor, Carrie-Anne Moss, David Tennant Start date: 8 March, Netflix Netflix TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for The OA Starring: Brit Marling, Emory Cohen, Phyllis Smith, Patrick Gibson, Jason Isaacs Start date: 15 March, Netflix TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for Trust Starring:Hilary Swank, Brendan Fraser, Donald Sutherland, Harris Dickinson, Anna Chancellor Start date: 25 March 2018, AMC (Sky Atlantic air date TBA) FX Productions TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for A Series of Unfortunate Events Starring: Neil Patrick Harris, Malina Weissman, Patrick Warburton, Lucy Punch, Tony Hale, Nathan Fillion Start date: 30 March, Netflix TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for Atlanta Robbin Starring: Neil Patrick Harris, Malina Weissman, Patrick Warburton, Lucy Punch, Tony Hale, Nathan Fillion Start date: 30 March, FOX (UK air date TBA) Matthias Clamer/FX TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for Legion Starring: Dan Stevens, Rachel Keller, Aubrey Plaza, Jean Smart, Jemaine Clement Start date: 17 April, FOX 20th Television TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for The Alienist Starring: Daniel Bruhl, Luke Evans, Dakota Fanning, Brian Geraghty Start date: 19 April, Netflix Warner Bros. Television Distribution TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for Westworld Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright, Thandie Newton, Ed Harris, James Marsden Start date: 21 April, HBO TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for Fear the Walking Dead Starring: Kim Dickens, Lennie James, Frank Dillane, Alycia Debnam Carey, Colman Domingo, Maggie Grace Start date: 23 April, AMC on BT TV Richard Foreman, Jr/AMC TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for The Handmaid's Tale Starring: Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes, Samira Riley, Yvonne Strahovski, Ann Dowd Start date: 25 April, Hulu (Channel 4 air date TBA) Hulu TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for Better Call Saul Start date: TBA, Netflix Netflix TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for Call the Midwife series 7 Starring: Vanessa Redgrave, Kate Lamb, Stephen McGann, Leonie Elliott Vanessa Redgrave, Kate Lamb, Stephen McGann, Leonie Elliott Start date: TBA, BBC One TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for House of Cards Start date: TBA, Netflix Netflix TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for 13 Reasons Why Start date: TBA, Netflix TBA, Netflix TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for This Is Us season 2 Start date: TBA, Channel 4 TBA, Channel 4 Ron Batzdorff/NBC TV preview 2018: Everything to look out for Unforgotten series 3 Start date: TBA, ITV1

The first two seasons focused on Pablo Escobar and, while creators originally designed to just focus on the drug kingpin, they decided to name the show Narcos so the series could outlive Esboar's death.
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Facebook's News Feed is going to be split in two, in perhaps the most dramatic change since it was launched.

The company has confirmed that it is trying out the idea of dividing the site, so that it can separate commercial posts and pages from personal news. The move could lead sites to increase advertising  but it has already been suggested that it could kill of much of the news media at the same time.

Normally, Facebook's News Feed wraps up a host of information from different sources, putting posts from huge pages alongside those from people's friends and relatives. But under the test, they will be split apart, meaning that pages will be put into a separate feed that people will have to actively click through to access.

Gadget and tech news: In pictures Show all 25 1 /25 Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gadget and tech news: In pictures Gun-toting humanoid robot sent into space Russia has launched a humanoid robot into space on a rocket bound for the International Space Station (ISS). The robot Fedor will spend 10 days aboard the ISS practising skills such as using tools to fix issues onboard. Russia's deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin has previously shared videos of Fedor handling and shooting guns at a firing range with deadly accuracy. Dmitry Rogozin/Twitter Gadget and tech news: In pictures Google turns 21 Google celebrates its 21st birthday on September 27. The The search engine was founded in September 1998 by two PhD students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, in their dormitories at Californias Stanford University. Page and Brin chose the name google as it recalled the mathematic term 'googol', meaning 10 raised to the power of 100 Google Gadget and tech news: In pictures Hexa drone lifts off Chief engineer of LIFT aircraft Balazs Kerulo demonstrates the company's "Hexa" personal drone craft in Lago Vista, Texas on June 3 2019 Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures Project Scarlett to succeed Xbox One Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, the successor to the Xbox One, at E3 2019. The company said that the new console will be 4 times as powerful as the Xbox One and is slated for a release date of Christmas 2020 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures First new iPod in four years Apple has announced the new iPod Touch, the first new iPod in four years. The device will have the option of adding more storage, up to 256GB Apple Gadget and tech news: In pictures Folding phone may flop Samsung will cancel orders of its Galaxy Fold phone at the end of May if the phone is not then ready for sale. The $2000 folding phone has been found to break easily with review copies being recalled after backlash PA Gadget and tech news: In pictures Charging mat non-starter Apple has cancelled its AirPower wireless charging mat, which was slated as a way to charge numerous apple products at once AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures "Super league" India shoots down satellite India has claimed status as part of a "super league" of nations after shooting down a live satellite in a test of new missile technology EPA Gadget and tech news: In pictures 5G incoming 5G wireless internet is expected to launch in 2019, with the potential to reach speeds of 50mb/s Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Uber halts driverless testing after death Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona. March 19 2018 Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A humanoid robot gestures during a demo at a stall in the Indian Machine Tools Expo, IMTEX/Tooltech 2017 held in Bangalore Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie 'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Engineers test a four-metre-tall humanoid manned robot dubbed Method-2 in a lab of the Hankook Mirae Technology in Gunpo, south of Seoul, South Korea Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway resembling the giant panda is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A test line of a new energy suspension railway, resembling a giant panda, is seen in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A concept car by Trumpchi from GAC Group is shown at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Rex Gadget and tech news: In pictures A Mirai fuel cell vehicle by Toyota is displayed at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A visitor tries a Nissan VR experience at the International Automobile Exhibition in Guangzhou, China Reuters Gadget and tech news: In pictures A man looks at an exhibit entitled 'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Getty Gadget and tech news: In pictures A new Israeli Da-Vinci unmanned aerial vehicle manufactured by Elbit Systems is displayed during the 4th International conference on Home Land Security and Cyber in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv Getty

The only way of getting into that personal feed is to pay for the posts to be pushed into it, according to news organisations who have been subject to the test. At the moment, people are only seeing it in six smaller countries.

The move appears to be aimed at the two problems currently Facebook.

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First, it will encourage people to read  and therefore post  information about people's private lives, rather than information about what's happening in the world. That in turn helps inform its advertising data and lets it deal with the increasing problem of "context collapse", where people don't post about their personal lives.

The second is that it will presumably encourage news companies and others to buy more ads, allowing Facebook to generate more money.

The test is taking place in Bolivia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Serbia, Slovakia and Sri Lanka, and it will likely go on for months, Adam Mosseri, the Facebook executive in charge of the News Feed, said in a blog post.

Mosseri said the company has no plans for a global test of the two separate feeds for its 2 billion users.

Facebook also does not currently plan to force commercial pages "to pay for all their distribution," he said.

Facebook frequently tests changes big and small as it tries to maximize the time people spend scrolling and browsing the network. Sometimes it makes changes permanent, and other times not, but it is usually the first way that new features are spotted.

Depending on how people respond, two news feeds could mean that they see fewer links to news stories. News has proved to be a tricky area for Facebook, as hoaxes and false news stories have sometimes spread easily on the network.

The test has already affected website traffic for smaller media outlets in recent days, Slovakian journalist Filip Struharik wrote over the weekend in a post on Medium.

Additional reporting by agencies
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Efforts to conquer antimicrobial resistance are being jeopardised in India due to the sale of huge volumes of antibiotics that combine two antimicrobial drugs in one pill, our latest analysis reveals. Many of these fixed-dose combination (FDC) formulations, as they are known, have not been approved by Indias drug regulator. Their sale is illegal.

Antibiotic resistance is a global crisis, threatening to reverse the astonishing health benefits achieved with antibiotics. As bacteria adapt to survive, effective treatments, even for common infections, are diminishing.

Unfortunately, new antibiotics in development are not yet offering realistic prospects for treating the infections caused by resistant bacteria. These infections include common kidney and chest infections, as well as life-threatening conditions, such as sepsis and meningitis.

So, wherever we live and in whatever guise we encounter antibiotics  as patients, prescribers, pharmacists, drug sellers, pharmaceutical companies, drug developers, animal owners or veterinarians  we have a shared responsibility to ensure our existing stash of these precious drugs remains as effective as possible against disease-causing bacteria. The World Health Organisation (WHO) is acutely aware of this, using its unique position to lead policy change for rational antibiotic use.

This year, the WHO made a major revision to its list of essential medicines, classifying antibiotics into three categories with recommendations on when each category should be used in common bacterial infections (such as chest or kidney infections, and excluding tuberculosis and viral infections, such as HIV).

The first category, so-called key access group antibiotics, are those that should be widely available, affordable and quality assured. These antibiotics are suitable to treat most common bacterial infections. The second category, watch group antibiotics, are recommended for specific infections. Bacteria tend to develop resistance easily to these drugs, so judicious use is needed.

The final category, reserve group antibiotics, should only be used as a last resort when all alternatives have failed. The WHO specifies that these drugs should be protected and prioritised to preserve their effectiveness.

Lack of regulatory scrutiny

India is known as the pharmacy of the world, due to its large pharmaceutical industry. It has among the highest per capita sales of antibiotics globally, as well as high levels of antimicrobial resistance.

In our study of antibiotic sales in India between 2007 and 2012, we found that total sales were rising annually, and the increase was driven by FDCs. While total antibiotic sales increased by 26 per cent over five years, FDC sales rose by 38 per cent. By 201112, FDCs comprised a third of all antibiotics sold in India (872 million units).

Analysed according to the new WHO categories, we found that sales of FDCs with key access antibiotics had risen by 20 per cent in five years. However, sale of watch group and reserve group antibiotics rose much more steeply  by 73 per cent and 174 per cent, respectively.

We found 118 different antibiotic FDC formulations on the market, but only 43 were approved by Indias drug regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation. The sale of unapproved new medicines is illegal in India, yet 75 formulations had no approval record. So they had no regulatory scrutiny to decide if they were likely, on balance, to be of more public benefit than harm.

Unapproved formulations figured hugely in sales  270 million units of the FDC antibiotics sold in 2011-12 contained unapproved formulations. The Indian government banned some unapproved FDCs, including antibiotic formulations from sale  most recently in 2016. But the bans have been challenged by the industry and it appears the FDCs remain on sale.

Considering the WHO vision of conserving watch and reserve group antibiotics, their increasing sales, not to mention the numbers of unapproved formulations, suggest there is a formidable task ahead in India.

Patricia McGettigan, is a reader in clinical pharmacology and medical education at Queen Mary University of London and Allyson Pollock is a professor of public health at Newcastle University, this article was originally published on The Conversation (www.conversation.com)
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As of 1 October, 771,945 people in Yemen have been infected with cholera and 2,134 have died from the disease since the outbreak began in April. The epidemic, rare on such a scale in contemporary times, re-emerged as a formidable force last year due to Yemens ongoing civil war.

The Saudi Arabia-led war began in March 2015 and has caused a spiralling 7,000 new cholera cases per day. This is an enormous public health crisis  and one that could be solved simply. Treatment only demands providing clean water, oral rehydration salts and gloves.

These wartime conditions allow us to draw parallels with the historical experience of epidemics  after all, it is the massive displacement and conditions of war that have allowed the disease to re-emerge and wreak havoc in Yemen. These conditions have overcome the modern advances in medicine, furthered by global public health organisations, that led to the near eradication of cholera. So how did this come to pass and what can we learn from the historical experience of cholera?

Cholera imagined

We first find mention of a disease that is recognisably cholera in the works of Arab-Islamic scholars, where it is known as heydain. Around 900 CE, the physician Muhammad ibn al-Razi described cholera in the following way:

It begins with nausea and diarrhoea, or one of the two, and when it reaches the stomach it goes on multiplying itself. The pulse fails, and the breathing is attenuated; the face and the nose become thin; the colour of the skin of the face is changed, and the countenance of the dead succeeds

Despite this long history, cholera was, in particular, a 19th century tragedy. The disease, which travels through water, thrived on the worlds multiplying population and increased mobility. During the first cholera pandemic (1817-1823), the disease travelled across the Persian Gulf from Bahrain along the Indian Ocean and to the Red Sea in Aden. Over the course of the century, multiple outbreaks of the disease quickly spread through burgeoning coastal cities, along rivers, and into commercial ports from Delhi to New York City.

A patient drinks a rehydration solution in order to counteract cholera-induced dehydration, 1992

The Arabian peninsula was particularly badly hit given the amount of trade and number of pilgrims travelling through the area, seeing several cholera epidemics during the mid-19th century. The disease wreaked havoc on the pilgrims who gathered in Mecca and Jeddah in 1828, 1831, 1835, 1865, 1881 and 1882. Of those, the Mecca pilgrimage was said to be the most horrific, with an estimated toll of 30,000 deaths over the course of the 19th century.

Medical and public health practitioners, including physicians and midwives, played a major role in reducing transmission in the period. These people and institutions were financed through religious taxes and charity, which provided more resources to directly treat patients.

Public health reforms

But it was the emergence of modern medicine, the improvements in sanitation and the isolation of Vibrio cholerae in 1854 by Filippo Pacini that worked to drastically ameliorate choleras impact in the latter half of the century.

The repeated outbreaks also arguably led to the creation of the kinds of public health institutions that we take for granted today. The International Sanitary Convention (ISC), which held its first conference in 1851 in Paris, was set up with the aim of ending the cholera pandemic. The ISC was a predecessor to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a body that was mostly represented by European leaders and the Ottoman central authority (based in Istanbul).

Although the cholera epidemic was still rampant on the Arabian peninsula during the early 20th century, with outbreaks in Mecca between 1908 and 1912, the disease was then nearly totally absent from the peninsula until it spread in Yemen in 1971  following the aftermath of the last Yemeni civil war.

Yemen witnessed cholera outbreaks in the 19th century due to the free movement of people and a very limited understanding of the disease. But the conditions and ways that the disease spread was nowhere near as quick-paced and detrimental as they are in the current outbreak.

Cholera today

The human cost of cholera in Yemen today, as we have seen, is grave and growing. There are predictions that the disease could infect one million people by 2018. The incidence and prevalence of cholera infection far exceeds the numbers from the 19th century, and the current crisis in Yemen will see a record number of reported cases in the country.

What makes the current epidemic so pernicious is the way that war has exacerbated the disease despite advances in medicine and public health. The doctors and nurses working in the 19th century were not mired by the catastrophic conditions of modern war: massive military occupation, infrastructure meltdown and political decimation.

The Yemeni government ceased providing money for the public health department in March 2016, shortly after war began. International organisations have provided the main support but the amount they can do is limited by their ability to carry out treatment during military sieges. Less than 50 per cent of hospitals in Yemen are operational, with shortages of staff and supplies due to the ongoing conflict. But austerity and war have fractured the public health system. The 30,000 doctors, nurses and other health care workers of Yemen have been working for the last 10 months without pay.

The treatment for cholera is very simple, yet materials  when available  are obstructed from being distributed due to bombing. Authoritarianism and foreign occupation in Yemen have resulted in the destruction of Yemens infrastructure, leaving 14 million people without access to clean water.

History demonstrates that it is through policy that we can help to correct the tragedies that continue to face Yemen. Cholera is preventable but public health reform is nearly impossible under conditions of war. The historical trajectory of cholera shows that interventions lose their effect when the public systems are crippled.

Edna Bonhomme is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. This article was originally published on The Conversation (www.conversation.com)
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A "sex education" website has been criticised for offering children sex tips in a series of highly explicit drawings.

The Belgian site, named Alles over seks (Everything about sex), has been around for nine years and was created by sexual health organisation Sensoa.

Its detailed show and tell articles demonstrate a variety of sexual techniques that are graphically explained.

Various aspects of sex education are covered in minute detail, from advice on birth control and STDs to oral sex techniques - including one named the hummingbird - and sexual positions.

Though it was originally intended for 15-year-olds, Belgian schools are recommending the website to children as young as seven-years-old.

Belgian media reports the website was listed in the Youth Guide", an advisory pamphlet supported by the Flemish government which is distributed in primary schools around the northern part of Belgium.

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It has reportedly caused concerns among some parents who believe some of the details featured on the site are inappropriate for children.

Teachers have also been quick to voice their apprehensions, telling Belgian media the site is too focused on the technical aspects of sex rather than the emotional.

However, Sensoa representative and youth minister Sven Gatz said he did not see any issue with the site.

Writing in a Facebook post, he said: "The reality is that young people are confronted with sex (perhaps sometimes more than we think) or are simply curious.

"It is therefore better to give them the necessary context, guidance and information. It is better to start there sooner rather than later."
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Profits at coffee chain Costa slumped 10 per cent during the first half of the companys financial year, bruised by a dramatic tumble in the value of the pound ramping up the cost of importing coffee beans.

Britains largest coffee chain also cited higher staff costs and business rates as reasons for its profit slipping to 59m.

Costa owner Whitbread still saw first-half underlying pre-tax profits rise by 6.7 per cent, helped by growth in its Premier Inn business. Whitbread opened more Premier Inn hotel rooms and Costa outlets in the period.

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Whitbread chief executive Alison Brittain told the BBC that Costa does not plan to increase its coffee prices as costs rise.

Costas like-for-like sales, although helped by the launch of its breakfast and lunch ranges, saw growth slowing to 0.6 per cent.

Neil Wilson, senior analyst at finance broker ETX Capital, said that Premier Inns steady expansion accounted for most of Whitbreads profits while Costas like-for-like sales were a dampener.

He added, however, that there is a bright spot for Costa as international sales are picking up, which might keep any talk of a breakup quiet for the time being.

Costas international segment saw sales grow by 15.4 per cent and Mr Wilson said that he expects this to accelerate as China presents increasing potential for the brand.

At Premier Inn, revenue per available room rose by 1.8 per cent and total hotel revenue grew by 6.4 per cent.

Over the period, Whitbread opened 2,000 new Premier Inn rooms and 108 more Costa stores.
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Demand for smartphones hit almost 367 million units in the three months to the end of September, marking a record for the third quarter of any year.

According to market research firm GfK, the number of smartphones sold rose 3 per cent in the third quarter over the same three-month period last year.

By region, Latin America recorded the biggest rise in demand for smartphones with almost 28 million sold, representing an 11 per cent increase year-on-year, whilst demand also grew sharply in Central and Eastern Europe where 22.3 million smartphones were sold, up 9 per cent from the same period in 2016.

The rising popularity of smartphones in both regions helped offset declining sales in Western Europe, where sales fell 7 per cent to 30 million.

Both the UK and France experienced an 8 per cent drop in smartphone sales, though the value of sales rose 4 per cent year-on-year, thanks to a rise in the price per unit.

GfK found that consumers in Western European countries are increasingly shifting towards more high-end smartphones. One out of eight smartphones is now sold for over $900 (682).

Demand for smartphones in China rose 20 per cent in the third quarter, with 117 million units sold.

A total of 464 million phones are expected to be sold in China by the end of 2017, said GfK.

Business news: In pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Business news: In pictures Business news: In pictures Flybe collapses Airline Flybe has collapsed. All future flights on the Exeter-based airline have been cancelled  leaving more than 2,300 staff facing an uncertain future, and wrecking the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. The chief executive, Mark Anderson, said: Europes largest independent regional airline has been unable to overcome significant funding challenges to its business. AFP via Getty Business news: In pictures Future product placement will be 'tailored to individual viewers' Marketing executives say that product placement in films and televison shows on streaming services such as Netflix may be tailored to individuals in future. For instance, if data shows that a viewer is a fan of pepsi, a billboard in the background of a shot would host an advert for pepsi, while for a viewer known to have different tastes it could be for Coca-Cola Paramount Business news: In pictures Corbyn wishes Amazon a happy birthday In a card sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the company's 25th birthday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes: "You owe the British people millions in taxes that pay for the public services that we all rely on. Please pay your fair share" Business news: In pictures No deal, no tariffs The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers Getty Business news: In pictures Fingerprint payment NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user's fingerprint NatWest/PA Wire Business news: In pictures Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis Business news: In pictures Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid 3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA Business news: In pictures RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA Business news: In pictures Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty Business news: In pictures Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rues contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. Business news: In pictures Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped 4m off of Flybes revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airlines estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year.

Some of Asias developing countries  such as Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and Malaysia  recorded the biggest rise in revenue from smartphone sales compared to any other region around the world.

The industry has clearly been switching its focus to drive sales value, and top tier global brands, such as Apple, Google, HTC, Huawei, LG, Moto, Nokia, Samsung and Sony, either already have, or will release, new premium models in an effort to upsell customers to their flagship devices, said Arndt Polifke, global director of telecom research at GfK.

He added that customers increasingly value premium features, such as water and dust protection, phone memory, sound and camera quality.
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People who are suffering from problem debt could be granted a six-week grace period to get their finances back on track, under new plans being considered by the Treasury.

Under the proposal, those plagued with excessive household debt would be exempt from further interest, charges and enforcement action for a period of six weeks, which the Treasury is describing as breathing space.

That would give those affected the opportunity to seek financial advice on how to manage and relieve their debt burden, which may include coming up with informal repayment plans or debt write-off options.

For many people in the UK, problem debt seems impossible to escape. Its effects can be far-reaching, impacting all aspects of a persons life and leaving them feeling helpless, said Stephen Barclay, the economic secretary to the Treasury.

That is why we are working to give people who are overwhelmed by debt more time to seek advice, find a workable solution, and help get their lives back on track, he added.

Millions of people across the UK are affected by so-called problem debt, and many are too ashamed to seek help.The Treasury said that it was committed to coming up with a solution to help those affected.

It will meet with key industry representatives from charities, debt advice organisations, lenders and creditors over the next 12 weeks. Members of the wider public are also being called upon to share their views via the Treasurys website, particularly if they have been affected by problem debt.

Consumer groups welcomed Tuesdays move, but also warned that more still had to be done to tackle the issue.

Citizens Advice, a network of charities, said that action is also needed from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to stop people getting into problem debt in the first place.

It pointed to research that it published in August revealing that one in five people struggling with credit card debts had their credit limit raised without them requesting it - showing that lenders were increasing peoples access to debt without the proper affordability checks.

Providing breathing space is one way to help people get back on track, but action must be taken to stop them getting in problem debt in the first place, said Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice.

Mike OConnor, chief executive of the StepChange debt charity, said that he was also in favour of the introduction of breathing space, but that continuous protection between the initial breathing space period and any statutory repayment plan is vital.

Any interruption would destabilise fragile family finances and risk putting people back to square one, he said.

Whilst breathing space for those struggling with problem debt is welcome, we cannot avoid tackling the fundamental issue of a massive gap in UK financial capability, said Jane Goodland, of Old Mutual Wealth.

She said that the measures announced by the Treasury were admirable, but also called them a sticking plaster to the symptoms of a lack of knowledge and capability when it comes to managing our financial lives.

In order to tackle the root cause of financial struggle, more needs to be done to improve financial capability across the board, starting with an effective programme of financial education integrated into the primary school curriculum, Ms Goodland added.
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An independent US government agency has said natural disasters have cost the country $350 billion in the last decade and that it is time for Donald Trumps administration to address climate change before it starts costing the country more.

The nonpartisan auditing agency Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued the report that said the US has spent that amount just in responding to extreme weather events.

This includes relief money for the devastation caused by hurricanes and wildfires, both of which the country has seen in the last few months.

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The report, which took two years to compile, was requested by Washington state Democrat Senator Maria Cantwell and Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins.

Ms Cantwell summed up the report to the New York Times as: basically telling us that this is costing us a lot of money...We need to understand that as stewards of the taxpayer that climate is a fiscal issue, and the fact that its having this big a fiscal impact on our federal budget needs to be dealt with.

Much of the report states that climate change will impact various parts of the country with drought, low crop yields, road damage, increased wildfires, increased energy demands, and coastal infrastructure damage - all deemed by GAO as examples of potential economic effects of climate change.

The agency noted some of the effects and damage costs are difficult to predict for events directly related to climate change but as the New York Times reports that one estimate projects that rising temperatures could cause losses in labor productivity of as much as $150 billion by 2099, while changes in some crop yields could cost as much as $53 billion.

The federal budget is currently around $3.8T.

 We still don't know if Trump believes climate change exists

Both hope the administration will take into account the GAOs recommendation: to take executive action on environmental regulations that will help curb emissions and protect the environment in order to minimise costs for the taxpayer.

Ms Collins told the newspaper that we simply cannot afford the billions of dollars in additional funding thats going to be needed if we do not take into account the consequences of climate change.

The report relied mostly on two national-scale studies but culled information from 28 other studies, 26 expert interviews, compared managing climate risks with leading practices for risk management, and performed economic analysis.

Director of Natural Resources and Environment at GAO J. Alfredo Gomez told The Independent that in typical protocol the agency sent a draft report to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its administrator, Scott Pruitt.

The GAO requested a response within 30 days, however the EPA only provided technical comments there were a clarification on how GAO characterised one of the reference studies used, according to Mr Gomez.

He said the EPA did not provide an explanation as to why it did not otherwise respond to the report.

This is not the first or only ongoing study into the financial costs of not addressing climate change, as Mr Gomez noted.

A list is put together every two years called the High Risk List of specific areas where government-wide action is needed to limit fiscal exposure to climate change, he explained.

10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Show all 10 1 /10 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others. Hira Ali 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Smoke  filled with the carbon that is driving climate change  drifts across a field in Colombia. Sandra Rondon 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050. Probal Rashid 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals, says the photographer. Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow. Rizwan Dharejo 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent. Tom Schifanella 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures. Abrar Hossain 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature. Riddhima Singh Bhati 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a public health emergency. Leung Ka Wa 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions. Mahtuf Ikhsan

The GAO recommends the Trump administration focus on areas like defence-related installations - like military bases in coastal areas - that are particularly vulnerable to climate change, federal flood insurance programmes, as well as disaster aid.

However, the administrations track record has been one of dismantling existing environmental legislation rather than passing and implementing.

In June, Mr Trump announced he was withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change, the deal agreed to by nearly 200 countries to curb global carbon emissions and help poorer countries adapt to a changing planet.

Mr Trump said he felt the accord, signed and put into enforcement by the Obama administration, as putting American workers - particularly in the coal industry - at an economic disadvantage.

Recently, Mr Pruitt said the EPA will be repealing and possibly replacing a cornerstone of the Obama administrations environmental legacy and answer to meeting the goals outlined in the Paris accord: the Clean Power Plan.

According to the Washington DC-based Union of Concerned Scientists, power plants account for almost 40 per cent of the countrys emissions - more than every car, truck, and plane in the US combined.

If it had been left in place, the CPP would have reduced power plants carbon emissions by 2030 to a level 32 per cent lower than they were in 2005.

To counter, more than a thousand CEOs and sub-national government leaders have pledged to continue to fight climate change through business operations and regulations.

However, the overall reduction in carbon emissions of all these actors is still being calculated and may not equal the amount of reductions should the federal government be involved.

The GAO report was released just as the Senate is getting ready to vote on a nearly $40bn disaster relief package for Americans affected by the recent hurricanes and wildfires. It will also include provisions for flood insurance.
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Foreigners are set to be banned from buying houses in New Zealand as part of a phase of new policies outlined by Prime Minister-elect Jacinda Ardern.

The 37-year-old, who was elected as part of a coalition government on 23 September, said the new plan was designed to stop rising house prices and will apply to non-residents.

 Jacinda Ardern becomes the youngest female Prime Minister of New Zealand

We have agreed on banning the purchase of existing homes by foreign buyers," said Ms Ardern, according to AFP.

The new policy was unveiled on Tuesday as coalition negotiations between New Zealand First and Labour continue.

The announcement comes after she campaigned on social issues including housing affordability, and called capitalism a blatant failure".

Ms Ardern also announced plans to cut immigration, focus on regional development and create new jobs, and promised that her new measures would "see a reduction in inequalities".

New Zealand First's Winston Peters, the country's Deputy Prime Minister-elect and campaigner for curbing immigration to the country, proclaimed that New Zealand was "no longer for sale".

"There is going to be a change and a clear signal sent internationally that New Zealand is no longer for sale in the way it has been. Were happy with that," he said.

Jacinda Ardern receives a standing ovation as she arrives at Parliament after agreeing a deal to form a coalition government (Getty Images)

Ms Ardern will become the nations youngest leader in more than 150 years, and the youngest female leader of any developed economy in the world, sparking comparisons with other charismatic premiers  from Frances Emmanuel Macron to Canadas Justin Trudeau.

Mr Peters said his party had opted for change over a version of the status quo, as he announced his party would enter coalition with Ms Arderns Labour.
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Two notes written by Albert Einstein briefly outlining his thoughts on life and happiness are to go on sale 95 years after they were written.

Shortly after being informed he had won the Nobel Prize, Einstein took a trip to Japan to deliver a series of lectures.

The news spread quickly and the German physicist's fame had begun to grow as he arrived in Japan.

When a messenger came to his room at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and Einsten did not have a tip available, he gave him two notes, saying they could become more valuable in the future.

Science news in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Science news in pictures Science news in pictures Pluto has 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found. The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission. "Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study. "But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there." Getty Science news in pictures Over 400 species discovered this year by Natural History Museum The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year PA Science news in pictures Jackdaws can identify 'dangerous' humans Jackdaws can identify dangerous humans from listening to each others warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or contact calls (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average. Getty Science news in pictures Turtle embryos influence sex by shaking The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females. But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the Goldilocks Zone which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal Ye et al/Current Biology Science news in pictures Elephant poaching rates drop in Africa African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017. Reuters Science news in pictures Ancient four-legged whale discovered in Peru Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planets oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago A. Gennari Science news in pictures Animal with transient anus discovered A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a transient anus that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste Steven G Johnson Science news in pictures Giant bee spotted Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands Clay Bolt Science news in pictures New mammal species found inside crocodile Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science news in pictures Fabric that changes according to temperature created Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold Faye Levine, University of Maryland Science news in pictures Baby mice tears could be used in pest control A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males Getty Science news in pictures Final warning to limit "climate catastrophe" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase Getty Science news in pictures Nobel prize for evolution chemists The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies Getty/AFP Science news in pictures Nobel prize for laser physicists The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers Reuters/AP Science news in pictures Discovery of a new species of dinosaur The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn" Viktor Radermacher / SWNS Science news in pictures Birth of a planet Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. ESO/A. Muller et al Science news in pictures New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the interstitium. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty Science news in pictures Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs Jose Iriarte Science news in pictures One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty Science news in pictures Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary

One, written on the official paper of the Imperial Hotel, said: "A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness."

On the other, written on a blank piece of paper, Einstein wrote: "Where there's a will there's a way."

He signed and dated both.

The two notes will go on sale at the Winner's auction house in Jerusalem.
DEAR HARRIETTE: I was talking to a work friend the other day, and the subject turned to a fellow co-worker who is gay. My work friend started in saying she knows we are supposed to be PC and all, but she is a Christian and believes homosexuality is a sin. She knows she should be more open to this guy, but she says it is against her religion to believe that the way he lives is acceptable. This conversation was awkward, to say the least. I understand her feelings, even though I don't agree. But we are not supposed to discriminate against anyone on the job. Her comments went on and on about this guy and his presumed behavior. I didn't like it, but I wasn't sure what to do or say. Can you help? -- Sexuality and Religion, Memphis, Tennessee

DEAR SEXUALITY AND RELIGION: Go to your company handbook and research the guidelines that every employee should follow regarding discrimination. Point to the rules when you next speak to this woman, so you help her to understand she should keep her opinions to herself. Be mindful that she firmly believes she has the right to her thoughts as they mirror her understanding of the Bible.

Also tell her that her comments made you uncomfortable. Explain your views and point out that the beauty of our country is that we can all have strong opinions, but we must learn to express them so that we do not disparage others. You may not be able to change her mind, but you can decide you will not listen to her anymore or endure her criticism.

DEAR HARRIETTE: A guy was hired on my job last month who does exactly what I do. I'm worried because my firm is small, and no other role is filled by two people. To me, this is my death sentence. They must be trying to phase me out if they have hired another person who does the same job. What can I do to keep my job, or should I just start looking for something else now? -- Writing on the Wall, Atlanta

DEAR WRITING ON THE WALL: Take some time to observe this new employee to see how he works and what has been assigned to him. Be objective as you see his role unfold. Also, talk to your boss. Without being defensive, ask your boss what responsibilities will be allocated to the new employee and whether your role will change at all. Don't assume you are being pushed out. Consider that the company may be expanding, or that this man will be given other duties. Get detailed information so you are informed.

If you discover he really is going to be duplicating your work, ask your boss if you are being phased out. It is smart for you to find out so you can make appropriate plans. Do not threaten. Just ask so you can know where you stand in the company.

DEAR HARRIETTE: I am about to get married, and my fiance and I have come to an impasse over something that I don't think is such a big deal. I grew up in a household where everybody had chores, but we also had a housekeeper who came once a week to do heavy cleaning. It was so helpful having Mrs. Lancaster with us. She became part of the family. I want the same thing for my new home. Of course, both of us should do chores, but I believe having extra help will ensure we keep everything organized and clean. My husband thinks this is excessive and a waste of money. He grew up in a household where no extra help was ever there. They couldn't afford it. We can. Plus, I work 80 hours a week usually. I need the help. How can I get my fiance to see that? -- Clean Up, Rochester, New York

DEAR CLEAN UP: This is one of many value-driven conversations you must have with your fiance to determine whether the two of you can compromise when needed to build your life together. While it may sound cliched, it is the little things in a marriage that help to make your bond stronger or erode it entirely.

Since your husband-to-be does not see the need for a housekeeper, a compromise might be to have someone come in once a month in the beginning. Suggest this as an acknowledgment that you know he doesn't see eye to eye with you on this point but that you know you need help in order to keep your home in the manner you believe appropriate.

DEAR HARRIETTE: My son is applying for college, and he is required to write several essays. The ones we have seen thus far are not good at all. It looks like he has been rushing through them. He hasn't gotten particularly good grades on them. I have offered to edit his work to help boost his writing, but he wants to do it by himself. I like that in theory, but I'm shocked he hasn't become a stronger writer yet. With the essays he has shown me thus far, I don't think he is going to get into a good school. How can I support him? -- Need a Boost, Boston

DEAR NEED A BOOST: It is often difficult for parents to serve as tutors for their children. Tempers can flare quickly, and judgments abound. You and your son would do better if you hired a writing tutor to support him. There are many companies that offer this service, specifically for helping students write their essays for high school and college admission. Interview several of these services to find the best fit for you. One small company that has a good reputation is Write for the Future. You can reach them at writeforthefuture.com. A much larger company that people recommend is Kaplan at kaptest.com.

DEAR HARRIETTE: I've been dating a man who is the quintessential nice guy. He calls me a lot. He asks me out on dates every weekend. He has great manners.

On paper, he is everything a girl could want. The problem is, I am bored out of my mind. He is so predictable. I understand this should be great, but I want to have my guy make things exciting, at least a little.

I tried to light the spark by suggesting different kinds of dates, but he is clear about what he wants to do, when the date begins and when it ends. I am spontaneous, at least a bit, and he doesn't seem to have room for that.

I know we aren't a perfectly matched couple, but I do like him. How can I get him to think more collaboratively? It is nice to have company, so I don't want to push him away. -- Rev Him Up, White Plains, New York

DEAR REV HIM UP: Ask yourself if nice is enough. It doesn't sound like it to me. If you want more, be willing to ask for more. Be honest. Tell him you want to mix things up a bit. Ask him to consider being more collaborative. Think about trying to get closer to him rather than pushing him away. Say as much to him.

Now is the time to get to know him better. He may be cautious about what you do on dates because he is watching his budget. Suggest free or affordable activities that are fun, like apple picking or hiking around a lake and bringing a bag lunch.

If he doesn't budge for any new idea, rethink whether he's your guy. You deserve a date who is willing to consider your ideas too.

DEAR HARRIETTE: I've been dating a man who is the quintessential nice guy. He calls me a lot. He asks me out on dates every weekend. He has great manners.

On paper, he is everything a girl could want. The problem is, I am bored out of my mind. He is so predictable. I understand this should be great, but I want to have my guy make things exciting, at least a little.

I tried to light the spark by suggesting different kinds of dates, but he is clear about what he wants to do, when the date begins and when it ends. I am spontaneous, at least a bit, and he doesn't seem to have room for that.

I know we aren't a perfectly matched couple, but I do like him. How can I get him to think more collaboratively? It is nice to have company, so I don't want to push him away. -- Rev Him Up, White Plains, New York

DEAR REV HIM UP: Ask yourself if nice is enough. It doesn't sound like it to me. If you want more, be willing to ask for more. Be honest. Tell him you want to mix things up a bit. Ask him to consider being more collaborative. Think about trying to get closer to him rather than pushing him away. Say as much to him.

Now is the time to get to know him better. He may be cautious about what you do on dates because he is watching his budget. Suggest free or affordable activities that are fun, like apple picking or hiking around a lake and bringing a bag lunch.

If he doesn't budge for any new idea, rethink whether he's your guy. You deserve a date who is willing to consider your ideas too.

DEAR HARRIETTE: I feel like the luckiest man in the world when I look back and I see how good my wife has been to me. When I was younger, I played the field, and she never left me. We got married young, and I sowed my oats even after we got married.

I'm not proud of my indiscretions, but I do want to do something for my wife to celebrate her and our marriage. I had surgery recently, and she has been way better than a nurse to me. How can I show her my appreciation now? -- Filled With Gratitude, Los Angeles

DEAR FILLED WITH GRATITUDE: Start by telling your wife on a regular basis how much you love and appreciate her. Notice the little things she does and comment on them. Think about what she loves to do, and plan a special occasion to give that to her. It could be taking a trip or going to the museum or a play. It could be watching a chick flick or taking a walk. Tap into what makes your wife smile, and offer that to her every day. Paying attention to her needs and desires will show her your appreciation.

DEAR HARRIETTE: I feel so lucky we were able to get my son into a private school that offers all the courses that interest him. This is a blessing, considering my husband and I cannot afford to pay the hefty tuition. We received a scholarship that allows my son to attend.

What has become difficult is many of the kids have a lot more money and things than my son. That is to be expected, but practically speaking, it is hard to manage. I don't want my son to feel "less than," but am unsure what to do to support my son and manage his expectations. -- Looking In, Washington

DEAR LOOKING IN: Your son is getting to see how wealthy people live. Consider that a good thing. The more he learns about the dynamics of the world, the better off he will be. Will he lust for things he doesn't have? Probably. But that's part of our commercial culture, isn't it?

What you must do is remind him of your family values and teach him it's OK he doesn't have all the things that some of his friends do. What he is getting is a top-notch education. This includes access to see what money can and cannot bring you.

Suggest that he observe everything happening in his world. He will discover what types of jobs afford certain luxuries, the value of connections and relationships, the priceless value of honesty and respect, and the downside of excess. Encourage him to choose friends who share his beliefs, regardless of how much money or how many things they have.

Harriette Cole is a lifestylist and founder of DREAMLEAPERS, an initiative to help people access and activate their dreams. You can send questions to askharriette@harriettecole.com or c/o Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106
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Paul Weitz, the Nasa astronaut who commanded the first flight of the space shuttle Challenger, has died at the age of 85.

The retired astronaut, who piloted Skylab in the early 1970s, died at his retirement home in Flagstaff, Arizona on Monday.

No cause of Weitz' death has yet been given.

Weitz, who flew into space twice in the duration of his career, was one of 19 astronauts selected by Nasa in April 1966.

Notable deaths in 2017 Show all 28 1 /28 Notable deaths in 2017 Notable deaths in 2017 Hugh Hefner, the creator of Playboy magazine, died 28 September 2017 aged 91 Central Press/Stringer - Getty Notable deaths in 2017 Liz Dawn as Vera Duckworth in Coronation Street, pictured with co-star Bill Tarmey who played her husband Jack. Dawn died 25 September 2017, aged 77 ITV Notable deaths in 2017 Walter Becker, one of the founders of the band Steely Dan, died September 3 aged 67 Rex Notable deaths in 2017 David Tang, one of Hong Kong's most famous businessman, died of liver cancer aged 63 on 29 August AFP/Getty Images Notable deaths in 2017 Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington died July 20 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2017 Holocaust survivor and stateswoman who fought for abortion rights, Simone Veil, died July 4 Getty Notable deaths in 2017 Michael Bond, author and creator of Paddington Bear, died June 28 PA Notable deaths in 2017 TV's Batman, Adam West, died June 12 AFP/Getty Images Notable deaths in 2017 Peter Sallis, who starred in Last of the Summer Wine and voiced Wallace and Gromit, died on June 5 Rex Notable deaths in 2017 John Noakes, The action hero of Blue Peter, died May 29 Rex Notable deaths in 2017 Former MotoGP world champion, Nicky Hayden, died age 35, on May 26. He was knocked off his bicycle by a car in Italy. Getty Notable deaths in 2017 Sir Roger Moore died on May 23 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2017 Soundgarden singer, Chris Cornell, who helped define grunge music died May 17 Kevin Winter/Getty Images Notable deaths in 2017 Moors Murderer Ian Brady died May 15 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2017 Powers Boothe, star of Deadwood and Sin City, dies, aged 68 on May 15 Todd Williamson/Invision/AP Notable deaths in 2017 Robert Miles, Trance DJ behind hit track 'Children', died from cancer aged 47 on May 12 PA Notable deaths in 2017 Happy Days child star, Erin Moran, died at the age of 56 on April 24 Getty Images Notable deaths in 2017 Ex-player and Tottenham U23 coach Ugo Ehiogu died after he suffered a cardiac arrest at the training ground, aged 44 on April 21 Getty Notable deaths in 2017 British athlete Germaine Mason, silver medalist at the Beijing Olympics, died following a motorcycle crash, aged 34 on April 21 Rex Notable deaths in 2017 Actor Tim Pigott-Smith star of TV, film and theatre died on April 7 Getty Notable deaths in 2017 Rupert Cornwell an award-winning foreign correspondent who embodied the spirit of The Independent died on April 1 Notable deaths in 2017 Morse creator Colin Dexter died on March 21 PA Notable deaths in 2017 Rock and roll legend Chuck Berry died on March 18 Getty Notable deaths in 2017 Sir Howard Hodgkin, one of Britain's greatest abstract painters of the post-war period died on March 9 Rex Notable deaths in 2017 Sir Gerald Kaufman was the oldest of the longest-serving MPs and Father of the House of Commons when he died on February 27 PA Notable deaths in 2017 Joost van der Westhuizen died at the age of 45 on February 6 Getty Notable deaths in 2017 John Hurt died aged 77 on 28 January Getty Notable deaths in 2017 Lord Snowdon, husband to Princess Margaret died on January 13 Getty

He was the pilot of the crew of the Skylab 2 - the first ever manned Skylab mission - which launched on 25 May 1973 and embarked on a 28-day mission.

In 1938, Weitz piloted the first flight of the shuttle Challenger. Almost three years later, Challenger was demolished and seven crew members were killed during a later launch.

Born in Pensylvannia, Weitz gained a degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 1954. He then went on to join the Navy where he served on a destroyer before being selected for flight training and then becoming a Naval Aviator. He served in a number of naval squadrons, including service in Vietnam, before joining the Astronaut Corps.

"Paul Weitz's name will always be synonymous with the space shuttle Challenger. But he also will be remembered for defying the laws of gravity - and age," said Curtis Brown, board chairman of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation and an astronaut and veteran of six space flights.

"Before it became commonplace to come out of retirement, Paul was a pioneer. He proved 51 was just a number."
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Trees that grew more than 300 million years ago had a far more complex structure than their counterparts today, research has shown.

The earliest trees had an astonishingly intricate anatomy for reasons scientists do not understand.

Scientists examined the exceptionally well preserved fossilised trunk of a 374 million-year-old cladoxylopsid tree from Xinjiang, north-west China.

What they found surprised them.

All trees have straw-like woody strands called xylem that conduct water from the roots to the leaves. New layers of xylem in most trees produce the familiar growth rings in trunks and branches.

But the new fossil discovery showed that the earliest trees had their xylem confined to the outer 5cm of the trunk while the middle was completely hollow.

The strands were interconnected like a finely tuned network of water pipes. And rather than the tree laying down a growth ring under its bark each year, each xylem strand generated its own growth ring. In effect the xylem strands behaved like individual mini-trees.

As the strands expanded, connections between them split apart and the diameter of the tree trunk widened.

Dr Chris Berry, one of the scientists from the University of Cardiff, said: "There is no other tree that I know of in the history of the Earth that has ever done anything as complicated as this. The tree simultaneously ripped its skeleton apart and collapsed under its own weight while staying alive and growing upwards and outwards to become the dominant plant of its day.

"By studying these extremely rare fossils, we've gained an unprecedented insight into the anatomy of our earliest trees and the complex growth mechanisms that they employed.

Science news in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Science news in pictures Science news in pictures Pluto has 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found. The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission. "Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study. "But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there." Getty Science news in pictures Over 400 species discovered this year by Natural History Museum The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year PA Science news in pictures Jackdaws can identify 'dangerous' humans Jackdaws can identify dangerous humans from listening to each others warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or contact calls (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average. 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Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planets oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago A. Gennari Science news in pictures Animal with transient anus discovered A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a transient anus that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste Steven G Johnson Science news in pictures Giant bee spotted Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands Clay Bolt Science news in pictures New mammal species found inside crocodile Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science news in pictures Fabric that changes according to temperature created Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold Faye Levine, University of Maryland Science news in pictures Baby mice tears could be used in pest control A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males Getty Science news in pictures Final warning to limit "climate catastrophe" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase Getty Science news in pictures Nobel prize for evolution chemists The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies Getty/AFP Science news in pictures Nobel prize for laser physicists The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers Reuters/AP Science news in pictures Discovery of a new species of dinosaur The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn" Viktor Radermacher / SWNS Science news in pictures Birth of a planet Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. ESO/A. Muller et al Science news in pictures New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the interstitium. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty Science news in pictures Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs Jose Iriarte Science news in pictures One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty Science news in pictures Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary

"This raises a provoking question: why are the very oldest trees the most complicated?"

Dr Berry previously helped uncover a fossil forest in Gilboa, New York, where cladoxylopsids grew more than 385 million years ago.

But no earlier examples of the tree fossils compared with the latest one from China, he said.

"Previous examples of these trees have filled with sand when fossilised, offering only tantalising clues about their anatomy," said Dr Berry. "The fossilised trunk obtained from Xinjiang was huge and perfectly preserved in glassy silica as a result of volcanic sediments, allowing us to observe every single cell of the plant."

The research is reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

PA
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Armed police surrounded a house in South Lanarkshire after a man was spotted brandishing a crossbow.

Firearms officers and a helicopter were sent to the home in Blantyre, near Glasgow, at about 11am.

Police Scotland said a 36-year-old man had been arrested.

Firefighters are currently tackling a blaze at the house in Morris Crescent the force said.

A police spokeswoman said paramedics had checked over a woman who was also in the house, but that no injuries had yet been reported.

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There was no suggestion she was being held against her will, she added.

Local media reported that pupils at nearby schools were kept inside during the incident, but that the schools were not involved.
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Police are failing to tackle modern slavery and human trafficking in the UK, leaving perpetrators free to continue to exploit vulnerable people, a damning government report has found.

Despite a well-documented rise in modern slavery and human trafficking cases, police forces are still failing to recognise the crimes, leading to victims being left unprotected or even arrested, according to Her Majestys Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC).

The police watchdog said the force is guilty of inconsistent and ineffective identification of victims who have been coerced into crimes such as forced labour, sexual exploitation or domestic servitude. Police forces are also not investigating abuses quickly enough, it said.

Campaigners have warned that many victims, including children, will never see justice due to the polices failures. There is also evidence to suggest some forces are too quick to disregard victims as illegal immigrants rather than investigate cases properly and offer protection.

In one case referenced in the report, police found a woman at an address they believed Chinese nationals were using as a brothel and arrested her on suspicion of immigration offences. When officers returned her to the address, she disclosed her fear of the man who ran the business, but she was left outside the premises.

On returning to the station other officers expressed concern that she might be a victim of slavery and human trafficking. The address was then revisited, but by then had been vacated. The woman is now a missing person and at risk of continued exploitation and re-trafficking, according to the report.

In another case, a police force received information saying eight workers were being treated as slaves at an Italian restaurant, receiving insufficient food and no pay. The state of their accommodation was described as being poor, but no modern slavery crimes were recorded by the force.

The reports findings come after The Independent, in partnership with the London Evening Standard, continues a special investigation into the scandal of modern slavery in Britain.

HMIC inspectors found that there was variable commitment among police leaders to tackling modern slavery, with attitudes remaining that human trafficking offences were rare and not an issue in their areas.

Poor and inconsistent coordination and sharing of information and intelligence between the National Crime Agency (NCA) and police forces is also highlighted. Information and intelligence flows between national, regional and local levels were also sometimes poor, inspectors said.

The quality of investigations was also identified as a major issue, highlighting problems with the way they were managed. This included significant delays in initiating investigations, which sometimes took up to seven or eight months.

This has led to investigations being closed prematurely, leaving vulnerable people unprotected or arrested as offenders or illegal immigrants, the report found.

Poor coordination across police forces was also highlighted, which the report warned is leading to delays in investigations and difficulties in maintaining contact with victims relocated through the National Referral Mechanism (NRM)  the UKs framework for identifying victims of trafficking.

Inspectors said a few senior officers in police forces openly expressed a reluctance to turn over the stone and proactively look for modern slavery and human trafficking offences, citing concerns about the potential level of demand.

HM Inspector of Constabulary Wendy Williams, who led the inspection, said the shortcomings could in part be due to lack of resources, but that there were also deficiencies in basic policing practice.

In the UK, today and every day, thousands of men, women and children who are victims of modern slavery and human trafficking are being degraded and dehumanised, she said. The police have a crucial role to play in protecting these people and preventing offenders from exploiting others.

While modern slavery cases can be complex and require significant manpower, many of the shortcomings in investigating these cases reflect deficiencies in basic policing practice.

We found inconsistent, even ineffective, identification of victims and investigations closed prematurely. As a result, victims were being left unprotected, leaving perpetrators free to continue to exploit people as commodities.

Ms Williams said there was some good work taking place, notably in forces such as Greater Manchester Police, West Yorkshire and Cumbria, which she said demonstrates the results that commitment and dedication in dealing with this kind of crime can achieve.

Paul Broadbent, head of the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA), which investigates cases of labour exploitation in the UK, said the main issue surrounding the fight against modern slavery was a lack of awareness.

He said that in the months since the review was carried out there have already been improvements in the way cases are handled, but there was still a way to go in ensuring victims arent left unprotected and trapped in exploitation.

Theres been a real step change from everyone around the fact that modern slavery is taken incredibly seriously. The response now is much better than when they report was written, he told The Independent.

He added that while policing would benefit from more funding to tackle the issue, more could be done to better use resources, saying: Every police force and agency that works in this field would say they need more staff and more resources to do the job, and we would gratefully receive those.

But we also have to make better use of what weve got, and develop faster and work harder in this area.

Children are among the victims being failed by authorities, with figures showing that a third (34 per cent) of potential modern slavery victims referred to the NRM are minors. The NSPCC said its anti-trafficking team receives reports nearly every day of children who have been shuttled across borders and forced into exploitation.

Chloe Setter, head of policy at the anti-child trafficking charity Ecpat UK, said many of the minors she works with will never see justice, urging that a lack of multi-agency response often result in delays in identification and failures to safeguard vulnerable young people.

Despite pockets of best practice, the overall policing response to tackling modern slavery is very concerning, particularly in cases concerning children. Many of the children we work with have never seen justice and never will, she said.

Kate Roberts, head of the Human Trafficking Foundation, urged that police must end the tendency in some forces to refer both suspects and victims without legal status in the UK to immigration authorities rather than investigate modern slavery and human trafficking offences.

The finding that there is a tendency in some forces to refer both suspects and victims without legal status in the UK to immigration authorities rather than to investigate modern slavery and human trafficking offences does much to explain why slavery remains so hidden in some communities, she said.

The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), which represents British police forces, said it fully accepts the HMICs recommendations, urging that it has already made good progress since it was first informed of them earlier in the year.

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The NPCCs lead for modern slavery, Chief Constable Shaun Sawyer, said: We fully accept the recommendations included in this report. In August 2016 we put together a plan to transform our response to modern slavery and human trafficking.

Working closely with the National Crime Agency, the Home Office Modern Slavery Unit and the independent reviewer of the Modern Slavery Act, Caroline Haughey, we have already made good progress in addressing the reports recommendations.

Mr Sawyer added that the police service is now actively seeking out and uncovering modern slavery, with more than 400 investigations currently active across England and Wales  an increase of 218 per cent from November 2016  85 per cent of which are led by the police.
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A British soldier accused of trying to kill his wife by sabotaging her parachute asked his lover to be his naked cleaner while his spouse was undergoing surgery for injuries suffered in the fall, a court heard.

Sergeant Emile Cilliers told Stefanie Goller he would repay her services with hugs and kisses after revealing his former Army officer wife, Victoria Cilliers, was in hospital with a fractured spine and pelvis and broken ribs, his trial was told.

Winchester Crown Court was read WhatsApp messages the lovers exchanged after Mrs Cilliers was hurt in a jump with the Army Parachute Association (APA) at Netheravon, Wiltshire, on Easter Sunday, 5 April 2015.

After telling Ms Goller that his wife was undergoing surgery, Cilliers, of the Royal Army Physical Training Corps, wrote: One day we might have a family of our own.

He then asked her: Will you be my cleaner? I only like nude house cleaners. I pay with hugs and kisses.

She replied: Haha I like naked cooking ;)

Cilliers responded: Ooo cool. Apart from splashback.

Ms Goller continued: I will wear an apron and an apron only.

Cilliers added: I might get distracted and you'll end up being distracted by me and then burn the cooking.

The prosecution claims Cilliers tampered with his wife's parachute on the day before her jump.

Cilliers denies two charges of attempted murder and a third charge of damaging a gas valve at their home a few days before the Easter parachute jump, which is linked to the second attempted murder charge.

Describing his wife's condition after her fall to Ms Goller, he added: She was in tears last night saying all she could think of is she didn't say goodbye to the kids.

She said she thought that was it for her before she passed out from the G-force.

He continued: The doctors were quite straight as they know what she does for a living. Harsh but better the truth than sugar coat it.

She will have difficulty and will probably walk with a limp for the rest of her life.

In a later exchange, Ms Goller told him: I love you in uniform ;), to which he replied: You going onto salute me? and Ms Goller responds I guess sometimes I will have to obey you ;)

Cilliers responds: Will you call me your Mr Grey?

During the messages sent over several months, Cilliers and Ms Goller plan a life together as well as a holiday in Honduras together that summer.

In one message he says: I will sacrifice and give up so much for you and in another, From April onwards I can do random and spontaneous...

The court has heard that Cilliers was also continuing a sexual relationship with his ex-wife Carly Cilliers and half-an-hour after making arrangements to meet her on 29 March 2015, the defendant was exchanging sex messages with Ms Goller.

The court was read messages from Victoria Cilliers describing her joking fears that the defendant had tried to kill her by tampering with the gas fitting at their home.

On 30 March 2015, she wrote: Did you alter the gas lever into the cooker. It's in the cupboard. Smell gas in the cupboard this am and dry blood around the lever!

Cilliers replied: Nope. That's weird! Is the stove working?

Mrs Cilliers said: Don't want to try!

Open back door and will see how it is when I get back.

She added: Concerned re cause. Are sure not imagining it.

Cilliers responded: Hey. You also can't be serious about the comment you made... You have been saying that a lot recently. Why?

Mrs Cilliers replied: Of course not! Just an article I read in a mag recently. Brought it to front of my mind

Cilliers: An article?

Mrs Cilliers: True life reader stories. My husband tried to kill me.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 14 November 2022 Members of the hospitality sector demonstrate outside parliament in London. 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Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. 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Cilliers: Seriously?

Mrs Cilliers: Was only making a joke. It was the blood on the handle. Wasn't being serious. Didn't realise I'd said it a lot.

The trial was adjourned until Tuesday.

PA
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A British man sentenced to three months in prison for touching a man's hip in Dubai has arrived back in the UK.

Jamie Harron described the United Arab Emirates as a "shambles" after touching down at Glasgow Airport on Tuesday evening.

The 27-year-old electrician was arrested on "public indecency" grounds in July but was pardoned by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum after an international outcry.

A public indecency charge was made after Mr Harron is said to have been holding a drink moving through a crowded bar and held a hand in front of him to avoid spilling it on himself or others. He then touched a man on his hip to avoid impact.

He was initially jailed for five days and then released on bail with his passport confiscated.

Although the UAE is a draw for Western tourists. it has strict and oppressive rules on public indecency and homosexuality and has a government which stands accused of serious human rights violations.

The UK Foreign Office urges tourists to "respect local traditions, customs, laws and religions at all times".

After his arrest, Mr Harron lost his job and was told he faced up to three years in jail.

Before his hearing on Sunday, he had already been sentenced in absentia to 30 days in prison for failing to appear in court for making a rude gesture and drinking alcohol during the same July incident.

Campaign group Detained in Dubai (DiD) had said both decisions would be appealed against, but Mr Harron was then called by police in Dubai on Monday morning telling him the cases against him had been dismissed and he could collect his passport.

Mr Harron, from Stirling, Scotland, told reporters he would not be returning to the country anytime soon when he arrived in Glasgow on Tuesday.

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He said he would travel through the country again if was going back to work but would not be doing so "in a hurry" and did not think he would get his job back.

Mr Harron said he did not think he would be released. "I did not see any light at the end of the tunnel to be honest," he told reporters waiting at the airport.

But he added that he had remained positive "all the way through" because he "could not quite believe it was happening".

He said he had spent almost all of the 30,000 he saved while working in Afghanistan during the previous six months trying to get out of Dubai but he had decided he "just wanted to move on".

Additional reporting by PA
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A Grenfell Tower firefighter who was invited to a Downing Street reception by Theresa May turned her down in protest over Government cuts to the service, and because he had to work his second job.

David Badillo, 44, wrote in a Facebook post that he was invited to Downing Street along with 35 of his fire brigade colleagues but unfortunately I had to turn down the invite from the Prime Minister as it is on a Monday and I will be working my second job to pay my rent and put food on the table for my family.

I have to do this due to eight years of pay cuts, he added. Which will continue after being enthusiastically voted in by our government, cheering, days after the Grenfell fire, when the vote was won.

So when youre giving out your meaningless praise for our emergency services remember I hold you in complete contempt.

The emergency services reception hosted at Downing Street was for first responders involved in the recent terror attacks in Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park, and those who responded to the Grenfell Tower fire.

Mr Badillo has been a firefighter for 19 years, mainly stationed in North Kensington, and works as a labourer for 80 a day on his days off to supplement his salary and help pay his mortgage, The Mirror reported.

He told the newspaper that he did not become a firefighter to be a millionaire, but that he loves his job and expects to be able to earn a decent wage.

That is why the PMs invite is so hollow and it beggars belief she has the front to invite us while cutting our pay, he said.
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Thousands of Isis fighters have already returned to their home countries amid confusion over the number of foreign jihadis remaining in the dwindling caliphate, a new report has found.

Research by The Soufan Centre estimated that at least 425 British Isis members have so far returned to the UK  the largest cohort in Europe.

But there are fears many have disappeared from the view of security services, who will not publicly confirm how many returnees have been jailed or are being tracked.

Out of countries for which data was available, only Turkey (900), Tunisia (800) and Saudi Arabia (760) had larger numbers of returning foreign fighters, according to the study.

Of the 850 people known to have travelled to warzones in Syria and Iraq from the UK, around 100 are women and 50 are children.

Richard Barrett, the author of the report, said: As the so-called Islamic State loses territorial control of its caliphate, there is little doubt that the group or something similar will survive the worldwide campaign against it so long as the conditions that promoted its growth remain.

Its appeal will outlast its demise, and while it will be hard to assess the specific threat posed by foreign fighters and returnees, they will present a challenge to many countries for years to come.

Mr Barrett said former fighters attitudes to Isis varied dramatically between those who rejected the group, became disillusioned, or were forced to retreat in battle.

Manchester bomber Salman Abedi is believed to have met Isis fighters in Syria (PA/GMP)

He warned: While it will be hard to assess the specific threat posed by foreign fighters and returnees, they will present a challenge to many countries for years to come.

The analyst, who has worked for British security services and the UNs counter-terrorism branch, said all 5,600 former Isis members who have returned to 33 countries pose some degree of risk.

States have not found a way to address the problem of returnees, Mr Barrett added. Most are imprisoned, or disappear from view. There will be a need for more research and information sharing to develop effective strategies to assess and address the threat.

Recommended Remaining foreign Isis fighters face certain death in Raqqa

Research found that not all Isis fighters may be able or willing to return to their home countries, and may travel instead to the groups emerging bases in Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt and the Philippines.

The findings came after Rory Stewart, an international development minister, said that the only way to deal with most potential returnees was to kill them.

They are absolutely dedicated, as members of the Islamic State, towards the creation of a caliphate, they believe in an extremely hateful doctrine which involves killing themselves, killing others and trying to use violence and brutality to create an eighth century, or seventh century, state, he told the BBC.

So Im afraid we have to be serious about the fact these people are a serious danger to us, and unfortunately the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them.

Max Hill QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, has instead called for a focus on reintegration in cases where authorities have decided individuals who return should not face prosecution.

He said it was right that security services have left space for those who travelled out of a sense of naivety, at a young age and who return in a state of utter disillusionment to be diverted away from the criminal courts.

Youssef Zaghba launched the London Bridge attack after authorities prevented him from travelling to Syria

There has been disquiet about unconfirmed reports that British Isis recruiter Sally Jones and her 12-year-old son, JoJo, had been killed in an air strike near Raqqa.

Brett McGurk, the top US envoy for the anti-Isis coalition bombing its territories in Syria and Iraq, said it was for the best for jihadis to die.

Our mission is to make sure that any foreign fighter who is here, who joined Isis from a foreign country and came into Syria, they will die here in Syria, he added.

Recommended Terror attacks likely to rise in the UK despite Isis defeat in Raqqa

But analysts disagree about the threat posed by returning foreign fighters, arguing that some may not want to attack their home countries and that others experiences could be used for counter-extremism efforts.

Harry Sarfo, a former Royal Mail postman who joined Isis in 2015, is among those claiming he wants to use his story to discourage other recruits after becoming disillusioned with the groups brutal regime in Syria.

In an interview from prison, he told The Independent knowledge was the key to unravelling Isis ideology, adding: I came to the conclusion that this is not the path to paradise, it is the path to hell.

Amarnath Amarasingam, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said his research indicated that jihadis who want to fight abroad and those who want to attack locally are two different kinds of people.

One is more interested in leaving the sinful West and wants to help fight for what they perceive to be a more pure society  the ones who attack locally are mostly motivated by revenge and wanting to pay back the West for attacks in Syria, he explained, warning that there was some overlap.

Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Show all 8 1 /8 Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters celebrate victory in Raqqa atop of military vehicles REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces march past destroyed buildings as they celebrate victory REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces gesture the "V" sign in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces evacuate a civilian from the stadium REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures A civilian prays after she was rescued by fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces from the stadium REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters ride atop of military vehicles as they celebrate victory in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters celebrate victory in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures A fighter of Syrian Democratic Forces celebrates in Raqqa Reuters

Mr Barrett said that Isis supporters who travelled abroad are initially less likely to see themselves as domestic terrorists than those who stayed at home, but that their feelings could change.

If on return they begin again to feel as rootless and lacking in purpose as they did before they left, then they are unlikely to settle back easily into a normal life, and as Isis increases its external campaignreturnees may be particularly vulnerable [to being drawn back into terrorism], he said.

Research shows that returnees involvement in terror attacks has so far been limited, although many of the deadliest perpetrators have had formal contact with Isis.

The Paris and Brussels bombers, Jewish Museum of Belgium gunman and Tunisian attackers had all fought for Isis abroad, but the vast majority of attacks have been carried out by fanatics with no formal training.

Many are known to have viewed the groups propaganda, which has been shifting its focus from calling for supporters to build a state to inciting global terror attacks as militants are pushed back in Iraq and Syria.

Increasingly, atrocities are being launched or plotted by Isis supporters who have been prevented from leaving their home countries, as seen with two of the London Bridge attackers.

The Soufan Centre report said that the group pose a particular problem as they had geared themselves up to join the caliphate only to be frustrated, leaving them with a blood lust for Isis and increased resentment for authorities.

There is no central list of the number of fanatics prevented from joining Isis abroad, but Turkish authorities had recorded the names of 53,781 individuals from 146 countries feared to be attempting to join the fight in Syria and Iraq by June.

Paris attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud had fought in Syria and was dispatched back to Europe (AP)

Interpol has already collected the names of around 19,000 people confirmed to have joined Isis, partly using the groups own registration documents.

Mr Barrett said the huge number of potential threats forced authorities judge the risk posed by each individual and act accordingly  a process that went drastically wrong for the known wolves of the Westminster, Manchester and London Bridge attacks.

The report warned that it can be difficult to obtain the necessary criminal proof to jail returnees, and that imprisonment merely postpones their release into society while risking the further radicalisation of other inmates.

Rehabilitation and reintegration programmes, meanwhile, are notoriously hard to design and run.

Analysts warned that proper mental health and social support provision are vital to handle returning women and children in particular.

The report concluded that even when Isis territorial caliphate in Syria and Iraq is defeated, the groups radicalisation framework and the push and pull factors that initially drew foreigners in such large numbers remain.

To what extent the dispersed veterans of the war in Iraq and Syria will wish to regroup, resurge, recruit and recreate what they have lost, is as yet unknown, it said.

Although there is disagreement over the threat that returning foreign fighters may present to their countries of residence or origin, or to other countries they pass through, it is inevitable that some will remain committed to the form of violent jihad.

A spokesperson for the Home Office confirmed that around half the 850 British citizens who travelled to join Isis had returned, but could give no further details of those remaining or killed.

British authorities have powers including Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (Tpims) to monitor suspects and can ban some from re-entering the UK, but the number of times the measures have been used is unclear.
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A landmark case at Britain's highest court is set to rule on whether Northern Irelands strict abortion law is incompatible with with the European Convention on Human Rights.

At present, it an offence for a woman to terminate her pregnancy if the child is conceived through rape or incest or it has a foetal abnormality.

Lawyers and campaigners have claimed is clearly in breach of the human rights of all women who seek abortion care.

The Supreme Court appeal has been brought by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC).

Unlike other parts of the UK, Britain's 1967 Abortion Act does not extend to Northern Ireland, where it remains illegal except in cases where a woman's life is at risk or there is a permanent or serious danger to her mental or physical health.

Anyone who unlawfully carries out an abortion not under these circumstances could be jailed for life.

The NIHRC is arguing that cases of rape, incest, or serious foetal anomaly is in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Healthcare charities and womens rights organisations, including the Family Planning Association (FPA), the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (Bpas) and Birthrights are intervening in the case to argue that the current legal framework in Northern Ireland amounts to inhumane and degrading treatment of women in need of abortion care.

 Ireland to hold abortion referendum in 2018

In 2015/16, just 16 abortions were performed in Northern Ireland - the lowest number on record. In 2015, 833 women from Northern Ireland travelled to England for abortion care.

A High Court judge in Northern Ireland ruled in 2015 that that the current law was in breach of the ECHR in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities or where women are pregnant as a result of sexual crime.

The Northern Irish Department of Justice and the Attorney General successfully appealed this ruling. Consequently, the NIHRC has taken their case to the Supreme Court.

It will also rule on whether the Northern Ireland Act 1998 entitles the NIHRC to bring the proceedings under the Human Rights Act 1998 to seek a declaration of incompatibility.

The Stormont Executive's senior legal adviser, Attorney General John Larkin QC, along with the Justice Department, argue that the commission does not have legal power to bring the case and says it has failed to identify an unlawful act.

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While the UK Government recently announced that they would fund abortion care in England for women resident in Northern Ireland, for some women travelling for medical care will be stigmatising and traumatic, particularly for those who wish to bring the foetal remains home for burial or genetic testing.

Rosa Curling, a lawyer from the human rights team at Leigh Day who is representing the charities, said the law was clearly in breach of womens human rights.

We hope by intervening we will be able to illustrate the very real human cost of what our clients believe is a degrading and humiliating decision by Northern Irelands politicians to pursue a policy which is borne from prejudice and which results in a law which is clearly in breach of the human rights of all women who seek abortion care, she said.

Ahead of the case, Ann Furedi, chief executive of Bpas, said it "illustrates how women in even the most desperate circumstances  women who are victims of sexual assault, women who have received a tragic diagnosis of a severe foetal anomaly - are denied access to abortion care in Northern Ireland.

Recommended Northern Irish women seeking NHS abortions offered travel grants

The UK Governments commitment to fund abortion care in England was a true landmark moment  but it is not the solution to the injustice of Northern Irelands draconian abortion laws.

Whatever the outcome of the Supreme Court case, we urge NI politicians to listen to the majority of their citizens who support liberalising the law, and work to provide women with the care they need at home.

Rebecca Schiller, chief executive of Birthrights, said she hoped the case would advance the human rights of women in Northern Ireland and ensure they would not have to add the burden of travel to an already devastating situation. Access to termination in these traumatic circumstances should be available to all women in their home country, she added.

The hearing is due to last for three days.
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The European Commission president has attacked "no dealers" who he says want Brexit talks with the UK to fail.

Speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg Jean-Claude Juncker warned that those who sought no deal had "no friends in the Commission".

Though some Conservative Brexiteers on the British side have publicly advocated a 'no deal', Mr Juncker appeared to allude to people in the shadows on the EU side who also wanted talks to collapse.

The president's intervention comes after details of a dinner between Theresa May and Mr Juncker were leaked to the German press  an action the Commission blamed on people who wanted to undermine negotiations.

"The Commission is not negotiating in a hostile mood. We want the deal. Those who dont want the deal, the 'no dealers', they have no friends in the Commission," he told the parliament.

"We want a fair deal with Britain and we will have a fair deal with Britain. A no-deal is not our working assumption."

Speaking in the same discussion, however, a key ally of Angela Merkel said it was right to prepare for a 'no deal' scenario.

Manfred Weber, the leader of the European Parliaments largest political group, the centre-right European Peoples Party, said:

We underlined that there is no sufficient progress, we clarified that there is no cherry picking possible, we are preparing a scenario for leaving without an agreement, I think that is a good step.

The business community on the London side is getting more and more nervous. The Brexiteers have no common plan for the future of their country and especially their relationships towards the European Union.

Brexit: the deciders Show all 8 1 /8 Brexit: the deciders Brexit: the deciders European Union's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier Getty Brexit: the deciders French President Emmanuel Macron Getty Brexit: the deciders German Chancellor Angela Merkel Reuters Brexit: the deciders Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker EPA Brexit: the deciders The European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt Getty Brexit: the deciders Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May Getty Images Brexit: the deciders Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond PA Brexit: the deciders After the first and second appointed Brexit secretaries resigned (David Davis and Dominic Raab respectively), Stephen Barclay is currently heading up the position PA

Gianni Pittella, the leader of the socialists group in the Euroepan Parliament, added: Mr Juncker rightly said we are in favour of an agreement, the deadlock is due to a lack of preparation on behalf of the British government.

On the British side, Labour said last week it was in talks with sympathetic Tory MPs to stop the Prime Minister from bringing in a 'no deal' Brexit.

More eurosceptic Conservatives have however suggested that a 'no deal' might be the best option, echoing the Prime Minister's slogan that "no deal is better than a bad deal".
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The Government is preparing for a no deal with the EU with over 250m having already been pledged this year for exit preparations - including leaving without an agreement - a Brexit minister has said.

Steve Baker said it was "responsible" to spend to prepare for all outcomes.

Speaking in a Commons debate, he said: "To support departments the Treasury has committed over 250m of new money to departments like Defra, the Home Office, HMRC and the Department for Transport in this financial year for exit preparations - including for no deal.

Mr Baker added that Government did not "want or expect a no deal outcome but we will be ready in any event".

Conservative Charlie Elphicke said at least 1bn should be set aside in the Budget to prepare for Brexit regardless of whether a deal is struck.

He said it would be in the "national interest" for the UK to start investing and preparing for all eventualities, dismissing suggestions it would be "wasted" spending.

Chancellor Philip Hammond will announce details of the Budget on 22 November.

Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith poked fun at European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker as he hit back at MPs who questioned if the UK was speaking with one voice over Brexit.

He said: "I remind them Germany hasn't got a government yet. Spain is in total chaos. The Netherlands only just managed to get a government.

"Mr Juncker seems to spend an awful lot of time in bars getting 28 pints of beer and not being able to figure out who is with him.

"And the last element is they all now gave separate messages about what their relationship with the UK would be going forward."

PA
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Theresa Mays plan for a two-year Brexit transition period under the same terms as EU membership could face difficulty getting through the European Parliament, it has emerged.

Manfred Weber, the leader of the Parliaments largest political group, has said his party would oppose any plan that gave Britain the same benefits outside the EU as it had inside.

Though Mr Weber said he was broadly in favour of a transition period in principle, the leader of the European People's Party suggested such an arrangement could not be identical to EU membership.

The statement puts the German politician on a collision course with Ms May, who has said she wants a two-year period under which the UK effectively maintains its current relationship with the EU after it leaves the bloc in 2019.

But Mr Weber told the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday: One thing is clear for us in the EPP: If we are discussing the treaty which will be asked for the contents in this House, then we will be ready for a kind of transitional period.

But I have already got to clarify that we cannot accept that a country outside the EU will have the same conditions and the same status as inside the European Union, so there must be a difference.

Mr Weber is one of the first senior European politicians to openly discuss what a transition period would look like. The European Commission has refused to debate the issue until sufficient progress has been made on separation issues like the divorce bill, Northern Ireland border, and the rights of EU citizens.

Manfred Weber, leader of the EPP (European Parliament)

The European Peoples Party is the biggest group in the European Parliament and it would be unusual for a proposal to pass the parliament without its support. The European Parliament has a veto on the final Brexit deal and must agree any proposal before it is implemented.

The EPP is also the party that put forward Jean-Claude Juncker as its lead candidate to be European Commission president.

Brexit: the deciders Show all 8 1 /8 Brexit: the deciders Brexit: the deciders European Union's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier Getty Brexit: the deciders French President Emmanuel Macron Getty Brexit: the deciders German Chancellor Angela Merkel Reuters Brexit: the deciders Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker EPA Brexit: the deciders The European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt Getty Brexit: the deciders Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May Getty Images Brexit: the deciders Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond PA Brexit: the deciders After the first and second appointed Brexit secretaries resigned (David Davis and Dominic Raab respectively), Stephen Barclay is currently heading up the position PA

Ms May had said in Florence that the implementation period for Brexit would take around two years and that during the implementation period access to one anothers markets should continue on current terms and Britain also should continue to take part in existing security measures.

The PM said that people, businesses and public services should only have to plan for one set of changes in the relationship between the UK and the EU.
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A Conservative MP and government whip has written to all UK universities demanding a list of professors who are teaching students about Brexit, prompting an angry backlash from academics.

Chris Heaton-Harris, a staunch Brexit supporter, was accused of McCarthyism after writing to university vice chancellors asking that they send him information on what their lecturers are telling students about Britains departure from the EU, as well as the names of the lecturers.

In the letter, he requested a list of academics who are involved in the teaching of European affairs, with particular reference to Brexit. The Daventry MP also asked for a version of every universitys syllabus and even demanded copies of online lectures on Brexit.

Recommended Tory MPs warn May against agreeing bigger Brexit divorce bill

He said he sincerely hopes universities will be able to provide the information.

In response, academics accused the Tory MP of attempting to restrict academic freedom.

Professor David Green, vice chancellor of Worcester University, said the letter was so dangerous and a step towards censorship.

When I read this extraordinary letter on parliamentary paper from a serving MP, I felt a chill down my spine. Was this the beginnings of a very British McCarthyism? I had never heard of Mr. Heaton Harris MP, so I looked up his website where I found him proclaiming that: There must be no attempts to remain inside the EU, no attempts to re-join it through the back door and no second referendum.

Raising concerns about Mr Heaton-Harriss response if the MP does not receive the information he wants, Professor Green said: If I dont [give him the names of staff], is he planning to use Parliament to denounce me as an enemy of the people.

I realised that his letter just asking for information appears so innocent but is really so, so dangerous. Here is the first step to the thought police, the political censor and Newspeak, naturally justified as the will of the British people, another phrase to be found on Mr. Heaton Harriss website.

Then I thought that only one response was appropriate, which Churchill spoke so brilliantly for all who love Britain and democracy when he said we shall outlive the power of tyranny and we shall never surrender. That is my reply to Mr. Heaton Harris MPs sinister letter.

Brexit: the deciders Show all 8 1 /8 Brexit: the deciders Brexit: the deciders European Union's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier Getty Brexit: the deciders French President Emmanuel Macron Getty Brexit: the deciders German Chancellor Angela Merkel Reuters Brexit: the deciders Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker EPA Brexit: the deciders The European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt Getty Brexit: the deciders Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May Getty Images Brexit: the deciders Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond PA Brexit: the deciders After the first and second appointed Brexit secretaries resigned (David Davis and Dominic Raab respectively), Stephen Barclay is currently heading up the position PA

Speaking to The Independent, he added: This is an outrageous attack on elementary freedoms and it is very important that it is resisted.

A decent prime minister would sack him immediately as a whip. He should no longer be a member of the Government.

He is abusing his power. He is a government whip and a Member of Parliament. He has responsibilities to democracy that he appears to have forgotten.

Others accused the MP of McCarthyism, a reference to Cold War-era witch-hunts in the US against academics suspected of being communists.

Professor Kevin Featherstone, head of the London School of Economics (LSE) European Institute, told The Guardian: The letter reflects a past of a McCarthyite nature. It smacks of asking Are you or have you ever been in favour of remain? There is clearly an implied threat that universities will somehow be challenged for their bias.

Julie Smith, director of the European Centre at Cambridge University, called Mr Heaton-Harriss letter profoundly worrying.

She said: If it is the case that a politician thinks he should interfere in the content of what universities are teaching and look at syllabi in order to see whether the correct line is being delivered, that is profoundly worrying.

The Prime Ministers spokesman distanced the Government from Mr Heaton-Harriss letter. He said: This was sent in his capacity as an MP, not a government representative.

What the Prime Minister has always been very clear on is her respect for the freedom and independence of universities and the role they play in creating open and stimulating debate.

Free speech is one of the foundations on which our universities are built and, of course, it should be protected.

Mr Heaton-Harris later tweeted: To be absolutely clear, I believe in free speech in our universities and in having an open and vigorous debate on Brexit.

However, it emerged that the MP may have breached EU law with his attempts to find out what universities are teaching about Brexit.

A group of students studying for masters degrees in politics and the political economy of Europe at the London School of Economics (LSE) have written to the MP accusing him of violating the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, which includes statements on academic freedom.

In a letter seen by The Independent, they say: Since the United Kingdom is still a member state of the EU, you are obliged as a working politician to respect and follow the European Union treaties. It is stated in Article 13 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights that the arts and scientific research shall be free of constraint. Academic freedom shall be respected.

Your action by asking academics to provide information of the teaching and researching of Brexit issues is in breach of this article as you are inputting political pressure which undermines our ability as autonomous institutions, academics and students to exercise our right to freedom of education, which is increasing our academic vulnerability and legally breaching not only the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights bit also the Unesco declaration of 1997 [on academic freedom].

They add: We sincerely hope that you will reconsider your action in monitoring university teaching in European affairs, and will leave students and academics to express and exercise their right and freedom to education.

The letter is not the first time a Conservative MP has challenged universities on the issue of Brexit. Last year Bernard Jenkin, a board member of the Vote Leave campaign, filed a complaint to the Electoral Commission after LSE hosted an event at which a speaker said there was no upside for the UK in Brexit.

Mr Jenkin also accused the university of publishing biased research designed to undermine the case for Brexit.

Mr Heaton-Harris and the Conservative Party did not respond to requests for comment.
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Prominent Leave campaigner Iain Duncan Smith has suggested some occupations, such as academics, scientists and financial sector workers should be exempt from time to time from controls on EU migration post-Brexit.

Setting out his vision for the UKs immigration system after Britains departure from the bloc Mr Duncan Smith, the former Work and Pensions Secretary, urges the Government to ensure the new system is as flexible as possible for those areas of high added value but low-value employee.

Examples of those would be academics, scientists and people in financial services, he wrote in an article for Conservative Home. In these categories it should be possible arrange processes by which a very light-touch system operated with much fewer restrictions.

The new system, he argues, should allow the Government from time to time to exempt some occupations from restrictions whilst tightening up on other occupations in order to adapt to changing circumstances in the UK economy.

Mr Duncan Smith added: The Migration Advisory Committees Shortage Occupation List could be used for this purpose. For example, high added value migrants who are low in number, for example scientists and software engineers, might be exempted but a range of lower-skilled work would be restricted by both the cap and the permit system.

His comments come a month after a leaked Home Office document outlining a strict post-Brexit immigration policy included stringent measures for all but the highest-skilled of EU migrants. It is expected that Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, will publish her initial proposals on the UKs future immigration system towards the end of 2017.

Earlier this year a survey of EU nationals at FTSE 250 companies showed that 56 per cent said they were highly likely to quite likely to leave the UK before the conclusion of the Brexit negotiations, exacerbating fears of a severe brain drain.

Brexit: the deciders Show all 8 1 /8 Brexit: the deciders Brexit: the deciders European Union's chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier Getty Brexit: the deciders French President Emmanuel Macron Getty Brexit: the deciders German Chancellor Angela Merkel Reuters Brexit: the deciders Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker EPA Brexit: the deciders The European Parliament's chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt Getty Brexit: the deciders Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May Getty Images Brexit: the deciders Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond PA Brexit: the deciders After the first and second appointed Brexit secretaries resigned (David Davis and Dominic Raab respectively), Stephen Barclay is currently heading up the position PA

In his article Mr Duncan Smith added there is also the issue of benefit access to be considered for migrants after Brexit, claiming: Although not all the figures are in the public domain, the last available figures finally published by the Government show that EU citizens in the UK received over 4bn in benefits.

Whether you believe this is a pull factor or not, it makes sense to bring this cost under control. To do so, people allowed in to work should have to have a record of contributions over a period of time before being able to claim support from the state, he added.
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Labour has launched an investigation into MP Jared OMara, who came under fire for allegedly calling a constituent an ugly b**** and for posting offensive comments on online message boards.

Mr OMara, who toppled former deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg in the election, resigned from the Commons Women and Equalities Committee on Monday after the emergence of misogynistic and homophobic comments he made more than a decade ago.

The Sheffield Hallam MP is now facing an internal party investigation after new reports claim he called a constituent an ugly b**** in a nightclub just months before he was elected  a claim he categorically denies  while new allegations have surfaced on the Guido Fawkes blog that he used racial slurs in online forums.

A Labour Party spokesperson said: The party is investigating Jared OMara MP in relation to comments and behaviour which have been reported from earlier this year.

It comes days after former Shadow Business Secretary Clive Lewis also had to apologise for telling a male actor to get on your knees, b**** in an event at the Labour party conference.

Women and equalities minister Justine Greening has written to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, urging him to remove the whip from Mr OMara and to condemn behaviour that leaves a deep and persistent stain on Labours record.

She said in her letter: Violent, sexist and homophobic language must have no place in our society, and parliamentarians of all parties have a duty to stamp out this sort of behaviour wherever we encounter it, and condemn it in the strongest possible terms.

Will you be investigating the latest allegations made against Jared OMara MP?

How is it that individuals who have made such remarks can be selected as Labour candidates? Will you be removing the whip from him while the investigation is carried out?

Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable also waded into the row, branding the allegations of racist comments as completely unacceptable. He said: If he did make these remarks, Labour needs to withdraw the whip from him immediately.

People must have confidence that MPs will stand up against prejudice. As MPs, we cannot let ourselves fall short of those standards, particularly in our dealings with the public.

Sheffield Hallam constituent Sophie Evans told BBC Twos Daily Politics that several comments Mr OMara made to her in March arent broadcastable, but claimed they included transphobic slurs as well as the claim she was an ugly b****.

A spokesman for Mr OMara said: He categorically denies the latest allegations.

Both Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and Shadow women and equalities minister Dawn Butler said there would be an investigation, while Ms Butler described his alleged comments as completely offensive.

Mr McDonnell told the Press Association: He has apologised for what we knew yesterday. He issued a profuse apology. Any language like that, we know is unacceptable and Im hoping he will apologise for that.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 15 November 2022 Lesley Sutcliffe shelters from the rain next to a life-sized replica of the innermost coffin of King Tutankhamun by artist Amanda Stoner as it goes on display inside a traditional red telephone box which has been converted into a museum, in Barnsley, South Yorkshire PA UK news in pictures 14 November 2022 Members of the hospitality sector demonstrate outside parliament in London. The head of the Confederation of British Industry is urging the UK government to relax immigration rules to help British companies with severe staff shortages, ahead of the chancellors autumn statement EPA UK news in pictures 13 November 2022 England celebrate winning the mens T20 World Cup in Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia AAP Image/Reuters UK news in pictures 12 November 2022 The City of London Pride Group take part in the parade during the Lord Mayor's Show PA UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group 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Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA

Asked if there should be an investigation, Mr McDonnell said: That would be the normal process.

Mr OMara said he had made a full and unreserved apology to Labour MPs about the online remarks, and felt deeply ashamed of his past comments.

Overwhelmingly, people accepted my apology, accepted my sincerity and remorse; they accepted I have been through a journey of education, he said in an interview.

Ive stood down from the Women and Equalities Select Committee too  I think its the right thing to do. I dont think I can continue on that committee when I feel so deeply ashamed of the man I was 15 years ago.
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New laws will give the Home Office the power to snoop on the personal data of millions of people for immigration control, campaigners are warning.

A little-noticed clause smuggled into data protection legislation creates an exemption to privacy rights for immigration investigations.

The civil rights group Liberty has condemned the threat of two-tier, racially discriminatory rules  demanding that Parliament overturn the move.

Without a fightback, millions of migrants could have their personal information corrected or erased without knowing who is processing their data, which data is being processed and why, it warned.

And the exemption is so broad that it could affect volunteers running night shelters or food banks, or British citizens trying to access health services or education.

Liberty suggested it had been inserted to allow the Home Office to more closely monitor EU nationals granted residency rights after Brexit.

Martha Spurrier, the groups director, said: Even from a Government with a track record of fostering division and sanctioning discrimination, this is a particularly brazen expression of how low they will go to bring border control into our everyday lives, no matter the cost.

The Government cant be allowed to sneak this nakedly racist provision onto our law books. We urge the Lords to take it out of the bill.

And Satbir Singh, the chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: Why should migrants be denied the right to have their information processed lawfully, fairly and transparently?

Bank accounts can be frozen, people can be denied healthcare or a place to live based on errors that will never be corrected.

A previous attempt to link data privacy to immigration control was defeated in the 1983 after a similar outcry, the groups pointed out.

The clause, in the Data Protection Bill, appears to be the latest attempt to step up what Theresa May, as Home Secretary, promised would be a hostile environment for migrants.

The NHS is required to release information about people suspected of breaking immigration rules, allowing thousands of people to be trace every year.

And there was uproar when it was revealed that schools are recording every pupils country of birth, turning school administrators into border guards, it was claimed.

The Department for Education passed on details of 1,500 children a month for immigration enforcement, before the Home Office was forced to end the arrangement.

It was also revealed that Ms May in 2015 wanted to use data from immigration checks to penalise children living in the country illegally in school admissions decisions, but was blocked.

Arrangements also exist between the Home Office and the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue & Customs, Liberty said, but are shrouded in secrecy.

The Government has boasted that the bill will make data protection laws fit for the digital age and empower people to take control of their data.

But paragraph 4 schedule 2 removes privacy rights for the maintenance of effective immigration control or the investigation or detection of activities that would interfere with effective immigration control.

A Government spokesman said making data rules fit for the digital age involved ensuring we support our criminal justice agencies and national security organisations.

The provisions in the Data Protection Bill will ensure, that while peoples rights relating to data are protected, day-to-day operations relating to immigration controls are not obstructed and individual rights are balanced against the wider interests of society, he added.
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Theresa May has found herself at loggerheads with the UKs terror watchdog after he warned the Government that it should not criminalise thought in its efforts to stamp out terrorism.

Max Hill QC said measures backed by the Prime Minister should not go ahead despite further action having been promised in the Tory manifesto.

Ms May held firm on Tuesday, saying that her administration stood by moves to tackle the scourge of extremism.

It comes after Mr Hill last week suggested some returning British Islamic State fighters should be reintegrated into society rather than prosecuted.

In quotes released to the London Evening Standard ahead of a speech to the human rights campaign group Justice on Tuesday, Mr Hill said: We do not, and should not, criminalise thought without action or preparation for action.

Whilst we can all agree that there should be nowhere for real terrorists to hide, we should also agree that legislating in the name of terrorism when the targeted activity is not actually terrorism would be quite wrong.

Among new measures promised by Ms May to tackle extremism are banning orders and extremism disruption orders, backed by potential jail sentences.

Mr Hill instead urged ministers to speak to a wider range of Muslims, including those with whom they did not agree, and criticised calls for them to do more to fight extremism without spelling out what that should involve.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 15 November 2022 Lesley Sutcliffe shelters from the rain next to a life-sized replica of the innermost coffin of King Tutankhamun by artist Amanda Stoner as it goes on display inside a traditional red telephone box which has been converted into a museum, in Barnsley, South Yorkshire PA UK news in pictures 14 November 2022 Members of the hospitality sector demonstrate outside parliament in London. The head of the Confederation of British Industry is urging the UK government to relax immigration rules to help British companies with severe staff shortages, ahead of the chancellors autumn statement EPA UK news in pictures 13 November 2022 England celebrate winning the mens T20 World Cup in Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia AAP Image/Reuters UK news in pictures 12 November 2022 The City of London Pride Group take part in the parade during the Lord Mayor's Show PA UK news in pictures 11 November 2022 City workers attend a Remembrance Day ceremony at Lloyd's of London, in the City of London, to mark Armistice Day, the anniversary of the end of the First World War PA UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA

He went on: Thought with steps towards action can be terrorism. Thought without action or preparation for action may be extremism, but it is not terrorism.

At least, this is where I hold the dividing line. Whether others agree is a matter of debate. You will recall the proposals for banning orders, extremism disruption orders and closure orders.

If any or all of them make a reappearance, that will be evidence, for me, of the creation of criminal sanctions, formal consequences which fall on the wrong side of the divide.

As Home Secretary, Ms May included the idea for the new measures in a counter-extremism strategy in late 2015.

This said laws would be introduced to ban extremist organisations that promote hatred and draw people into extremism and restrict the harmful activities of the most dangerous extremist individuals.

The PM also vowed to use the law to restrict access to premises which are repeatedly used to support extremism and promised in this years Conservative manifesto to consider introducing the measures.

In June she reiterated her desire for tighter curbs, saying there has been too much tolerance of extremism in our country.

Her spokesman said on Tuesday: Our views are that we want to send a message that we will not tolerate terrorism and we have taken significant action to tackle it and tackle the scourge of extremism.
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The UK cannot protect itself from a surprise attack from Russia or China, a former defence chief has warned.

General Sir Richard Barrons, the former head of the Joint Forces Command, said the UK has not properly adapted to changes in warfare since the end of the Cold War and the country needed to have a profoundly important debate about its military needs.

Sir Richard told the BBC Radio 4s Today programme said the UK needed to make a serious investment in its military capabilities and tackle new threats such as cyberattacks.

He said: Nobody in Government is having the profoundly important debate that we need to have about how the world is changing and how the UK is at greater risk and what we need to do in the future.

Its very straightforward  the risk today and more so in the future is that countries like Russia and China already have capability that could hold the UK homeland at military risk at very short notice. We can't really deal with that.

He warned that Britain was also running the risk that they would not be able to help its citizens or allies abroad that need military assistance.

This was the case after Hurricane Irma destroyed British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean, he said.

The Government funding of the Armed Forces has come under fire in recent years as experts warn cuts to the Budget have led to a severe shortage in the number of troops.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 10 November 2022 A grey heron lands on the river Dodder in Dublin on a sunny autumn morning PA UK news in pictures 9 November 2022 Australia and Spain play during the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup group A match at the Copper Box Arena, London PA UK news in pictures 8 November 2022 A migrant attempting to communicate with journalists is pinned against a fence by members of staff, before being taken out of view, at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility, located at the former Defence Fire Training and Development Centre in Thanet, Kent PA UK news in pictures 7 November 2022 Handout photo issued by Just Stop Oil of a protester who has climbed a gantry on the M25 between junctions six and seven in Surrey, leading to the closure of the motorway PA UK news in pictures 6 November 2022 A grey seal with its pup, at the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in north Lincolnshire, where they come every year in late October, November and December to give birth to their pups near the sand dunes, the wildlife spectacle attracts visitors from across the UK PA UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 Florence Kasumba, Letitia Wright, Tenoch Huerta and Lupita Nyongo attend the European Premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever in London Getty UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on 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In September a review by former Armed Forces minister Mark Francois said the British military was being hollowed out by low recruitment levels and all three branches are running to stand still as they replace those who leave.

He said that in the year to April 2017 12,950 recruits joined the regular armed forces but 14,970 personnel left.

Meanwhile in July, the Armed Forces Service Personnel Statistics found that the number of fully trained regular Army soldiers fell from the previous trained strength target of 82,000 to 78,010.

In addition the number of people leaving the Army Reserve, formerly known as the Territorial Army, increased by 20 per cent between June 2016 and June 2017.

Part of the reason for this decline has been blamed on the Governments flawed austerity drive.

Recommended Ministers accused of using UK military as leverage on Brexit

In 2012, then-Defence Secretary Philip Hammond unveiled a plan to cut the number of regular soldiers from the regular army by 20,000 and move the UKs military towards a model where the majority of troops are reserves and it does not have to pay for a large standing army.

But the Government insists it is still spending the two per cent of GDP on defence as required of it as a Nato member.

Currently it is one of only five Nato members, alongside the US, Estonia, Greece and Estonia and Poland, that is meeting the target.

A spokesman for Downing Street said: We are spending 2 per cent (of GDP) on defence every year, we are committed to doing so. And we are committed to providing the armed forces with the resources that they need to protect this country's interests.
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A number of female British politicians have revealed their experiences of sexual assault and harassment in an attempt to encourage other women to speak out.

Labour MPs Jess Phillips and Mary Creagh, Conservative MP Theresa Villiers and Tory Baroness Anne Jenkin spoke out in the hope of encouraging other victims to open up about their experiences.

It comes after the Harvey Weinstein scandal prompted widespread debate about the prevalence of sexual assault. Mr Weinstein, a major Hollywood producer, has been accused of numerous assaults against multiple women over many years.

Ms Phillips, the MP for Birmingham Yardley, recalled how she was assaulted by her boss while working in a bar in her twenties.

She told the Evening Standard: I was working in a bar and I remember going to a party and we went back to someones house and my boss was there. I had fallen asleep on the sofa and when I woke up he was undoing my belt and trying to get into my trousers. I was absolutely paralysed with fear. He was loads older than me  maybe 25 years older.

Someone else came in the room and dragged him off me. Then I went back to work the next day ... its hard to comprehend that these things are happening until after the event.

For most women you can look back and say I wish I had told the police, but knowing what I know in working in sexual violence services I doubt they would have been able to do something.

She also told how a man had groped her in a bar in France when she was 19 or 20.

Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Show all 42 1 /42 Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Harvey Weinstein Harry Weinsteins reputation as one of Hollywoods leading executives was long cemented in stone. The acclaimed movie mogul, who produced Oscar-winning films Shakespeare in Love, The English Patient, and The Artist, clocked up box office successes and accolades aplenty. But this has quickly changed since a chorus of women have come forward to accuse the Hollywood producer of sexual harassment and assault. Since the New York Times bombshell report disclosed sexual harassment and rape allegations against the film mogul dating back decades, Weinstein has been fired from his namesake company, expelled from the Oscars and has had his wife leave him. Weinstein has apologised for having caused a lot of pain but has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Annabella Sciorra The Sopranos actor alleged Weinstein raped her after shooting The Night We Never Met, a 1993 movie that Weinstein produced. Similar to the stories told by other women, Weinstein drove the actor home, only to reportedly burst into Sciorra's apartment and start unbuttoning his shirt. He shoved me onto the bed, and he got on top of me, Sciorra said. I kicked and I yelled. Weinstein then allegedly locked her arms and forced sexual intercourse on her. After the incident, Sciorra found it increasingly hard to get work, many filmmakers saying 'We heard you were difficult', something the actor claims was because of the 'Weinstein-machine'. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Natassia Malthe The model and actress, who has appeared in around 50 films, said she met Weinstein at a BAFTA after party in 2008 while she was working as a spokeswoman for LG. She told a press conference in New York that she felt pressured into telling Weinstein she was staying at the Sanderson Hotel after being put on the spot. Malthe, now 43, said after her shift on February 10 she went back to her room and went to sleep, but was awoken by "repeated pounding" on her door, from someone yelling: "Open the door Natassia Malthe, it's Harvey Weinstein." Feeling humiliated, she said she opened the door. She alleged Weinstein began implying sex would get her a role in an upcoming film while semi-undressed and then he began to masturbate. "I was sitting on the bed talking to Harvey when he pushed me back and forced himself onto me. It was not consensual. He did not use a condom," she said. AP Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Sean Young The actor, best known for her role in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, said that Weinstein exposed himself to her in the early 1990s, when she was starring in the Miramax-produced Love Crimes - a production company that Weinstein headed at the time. "I personally experienced him pulling his you-know-what out of his pants to shock me," she said. "My basic response was, 'You know, Harvey, I really dont think you should be pulling that thing out, its not very pretty.'" Young never worked with Weinstein again after the incident. Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Mimi Haleyi Mimi Haleyi said she was assaulted by Weinstein in what appeared to be a child's bedroom in his New York City apartment in 2006 when she was in her 20s. She said she was aspiring to work in television and film production when she was first introduced to him at the London premiere of The Aviator around two years earlier and he helped her get experience on the set of a TV show being produced by The Weinstein Company. But, she added, he repeatedly hassled her and even tried to force himself through her front door in an effort to get her to join him on a trip to Paris. At one point he allegedly forcibly performed oral sex on an aspiring production assistant while she was on her period. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lupita Nyong'o In an op-ed for The New York Times, the Oscar-winning actor said she was invited to Weinsteins family home in Connecticut on the premise of watching a film shortly after they met in 2011. But she said shortly after it started he "insisted" in front of his children that she follow him and she was led to his bedroom. The Kenyan-Mexican actress, now 34, said she felt pressured into giving him a massage after he offered her one. "Before long he said he wanted to take off his pants," she wrote."I told him not to do that and informed him that it would make me extremely uncomfortable. He got up anyway to do so and I headed for the door, saying that I was not at all comfortable with that." Over the years that followed, he continued to get in touch, Nyong'o said, and when she declined another proposition she felt her career was threatened. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lena Headey Writing on social media, the Game of Thrones actor claims she first met Weinstein at the Venice Film Festival in 2005 where, after taking her for a walk by the water, he made some suggestive comment and gesture. Headey claims she bumped into Weinstein years later where he kept asking her questions about her love life. She alleges that, when Weinstein invited her to his hotel room to show her a script, the "energy shifted. The actor notes how, after saying she was not interesting in anything but the work, Weinstein was furious, apparently marching her back to a lift, "grabbing and holding tightly to the back of [her] arm." She claims that, after paying for her car, he whispered in her ear: "Don't tell anyone about this, not your manager, not your agent. Headey finished the post, writing: I got in the car and I cried. Getty Images Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lucia Evans The actor told The New Yorker that after a meeting to discuss casting her in various projects, Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him. I said, over and over, I dont want to do this, stop, dont. She added: Hes a big guy. He overpowered me. I just sort of gave up. Thats the most horrible part of it, and thats why hes been able to do this for so long to so many women: people give up, and then they feel like its their fault. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Laura Madden Madden, a production assistant who worked at Miramax for a decade, told the Times that Weinstein allegedly prodded her for massages at hotels, a common theme among the sources the Timess reporters spoke with. On one occasion, she claims she locked herself in his hotel bathroom, sobbing Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Ashley Judd Judd recounted for the Times how Weinstein allegedly harassed her while she was filming Kiss the Girls in 1996, inviting her to his hotel room and asking her for a massage, then inviting her to watch him shower. Judd first went public with the allegations in a 2015 interview with Variety during which she discussed the experience without naming the producer involved. She described Weinsteins alleged behaviour as coercive bargaining; I said no, a lot of ways, a lot of times, and he always came back at me with some new ask, she told the Times AFP/Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Rose McGowan McGowan reportedly reached a previously undisclosed $100,000 settlement with Weinstein in 1997, over an incident that occurred in a hotel room Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Mimi Haleyi Mimi Haleyi said she was assaulted by Weinstein in what appeared to be a child's bedroom in his New York City apartment in 2006 when she was in her 20s. She said she was aspiring to work in television and film production when she was first introduced to him at the London premiere of The Aviator around two years earlier and he helped her get experience on the set of a TV show being produced by The Weinstein Company. But, she added, he repeatedly hassled her and even tried to force himself through her front door in an effort to get her to join him on a trip to Paris. At one point he allegedly forcibly performed oral sex on an aspiring production assistant while she was on her period. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Emily Nestor Nestor had been temping at the Weinstein Company for only one day in 2014 when Weinstein allegedly offered to boost her career in return for sexual favours, according to the Times. She declined and reportedly complained of his behaviour to colleagues, who later passed the information on to senior executives. An internal Weinstein Company document cited by the Times describes Nestors encounter with Weinstein as follows: She said he was very persistent and focused though she kept saying no for over an hour Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Ambra Battilana In March 2015, Battilana, an aspiring model and actress, was reportedly summoned to Weinsteins office on a Friday night to discuss her career. According to a police report cited by the Times, Battilana claimed she was assaulted by Weinstein, who grabbed her breasts after asking if they were real and put his hands up her skirt. Weinstein later claimed that Battilana had set him up, according to colleagues of his who were interviewed by the Times. The Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, later declined to press charges, and according to the Times, made a payment to Battilana. On 5 October, the International Business Times reported that after Vance dropped the charges, he received $10,000 from Weinsteins lawyer Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lauren OConnor Lauren OConnor, an employee of the Weinstein Company, penned a memo to executives alleging a toxic environment for women at the company. The memo cited numerous incidents of Weinstein harassing or coercing women who worked for him. She expressed fear that Weinstein was using her and other female employees to facilitate liaisons with vulnerable women who hope he will get them work. That same year, Weinstein allegedly reached a settlement with OConnor Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Kate Beckinsale The actor, who starred in the Weinstein Company films Serendipity and The Aviator, alleges that she was invited to Weinsteins hotel room at the age of just 17. When she approached the door, the producer reportedly greeted her dressed in just a dressing gown. I was incredibly naive and young and it did not cross my mind that this older, unattractive man would expect me to have any sexual interest in him, she wrote on Instagram. After declining alcohol and announcing that I had school in the morning I left, uneasy but unscathed. Theo Wargo/Getty Images Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Gwyneth Paltrow The actor alleges that after he cast her in the title role of the film Emma when she was 22, he took her to his hotel room, placed his hands on her and suggested massages. I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified, Paltrow told the New York Times. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Asia Argento Italian actress Asia Argento has alleged that in 1997 Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her as she repeatedly told him to stop. When I see him, it makes me feel little and stupid and weak, Argento told The New Yorker. After the rape, he won. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Cara Delevigne The British model and actress penning an Instagram post claiming that Weinstein had ordered her to kiss another woman in his hotel room, and tried to kiss her on the lips. AFP/Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Ashley Judd Ashley Judd said she rebuffed Harvey Weinsteins unwanted sexual advances by offering to consent only after she had won an Oscar. When she was initially invited to a meeting with Weinstein, Judd said, she was surprised to learn the producer was in his hotel room - a tactic that recurs in other womens accounts. Echoing the accounts of other women, Judd said Weinstein suggested she give him a massage and then invited her to watch him shower. After a volley of nos she said she would only after she wins an Oscar, fleeing after making the comments. Reuters/Mike Segar Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Judith Godreche French actress Judith Godreche said when she was 24 Weinstein invited her to his hotel room and asked to give her a massage. The next thing I know, hes pressing against me and pulling off my sweater, she told the New York Times. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Mira Sorvino The Oscar-winning actor said she found herself in a hotel room with Weinstein in 1995 where he started massaging my shoulders, which made me very uncomfortable, and then tried to get more physical, sort of chasing me around. According to an interview in The New Yorker Weinstein subsequently arrived at her apartment late at night and she had to call a friend to come over to pose as her boyfriend in order to get Weinstein out of the house. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Katherine Kendall The actress said Weinstein undressed and chased her around a living room when she was just 23. She subsequently felt that telling others meant Ill never work again and no one is going to care or believe me, she told the New York Times. WireImage Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Tomi-Anne Roberts As an aspiring actress and working in a restaurant in New York, Tomi-Ann Roberts encountered Weinstein who encouraged her to audition for one of his films back in 1984. She subsequently went to meet him and found him naked in the bath and invited her to get naked and get into the bath with him, she told the New York Times. She said she left feeling manipulated. Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Myleen Klass It has also been alleged that the disgraced film producer propositioned Myleene Klass with a sex contract at Cannes Film Festival in 2010. One of the singer and television personalitys friends reportedly told The Sun, Klass had told Weinstein to f*** off. Getty Images Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Sophie Dix Sophie Dix, best known for her role as Captain Sadie Williams in Soldier Soldier, described her encounter with Weinstein when she was 23 as the single most damaging thing thats happened in my life. She told The Guardian Weinstein had pushed her to her bed and was tugging at her clothes. She rushed to the bathroom to escape, but when she came out she found him standing there masturbating. I quickly closed the door again and locked it, she said. Then when I heard room service come to the door I just ran. Rex Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lea Seydoux The actor and director claims she had to fight off Weinstein after he brought her to his hotel room during what she remembers to be 2012. He suddenly jumped on me and tried to kiss me. I had to defend myself. Hes big and fat, so I had to be forceful to resist him. I left his room, thoroughly disgusted, she wrote in The Guardian. AFP/Getty Images Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Claire Forlani British actress Claire Forlani wrote on Twitter that she had evaded Weinsteins advances on five occasions at the age of 25. At meetings with the Hollywood a-lister, she says massage was suggested, and that Weinstein had boasted of all the women hed had sex with. Mark Douet Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Florence Darel French actress Florence Darel claimed Weinstein relentlessly pursued her in the mid 1990's and propositioned her while Eve Chilton, his wife at the time, was in the hotel room next door. I was astonished, she told People magazine. When you have someone so physically disgusting in front of you, continuing and continuing as though this was all perfectly normal What happened to me may not be illegal but it was inappropriate. Very inappropriate. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lysette Anthony Lysette Anthony, who starred as Marnie Nightingale in Hollyoaks, has claimed Weinstein raped her in the late 1980's after turning up to her London home in the late 1980s. She described the disgraced film producers alleged attack as pathetic and revolting and said it left her feeling disgusted and embarrassed. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Dawn Dunning Dunning said she met Weinstein in 2003 when she was 24-years-old and the disgraced film producer suggested she have a threesome with him and someone else. She told the New York Times Weinstein got angry when she refused. Youll never make it in this business, she said he told her as she left. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Rosanna Arquette Rosanna Arquette was already well known for her role in Desperately Seeking Susan, when she said she met Weinstein at his hotel to pick up a script in the early nineties. Weinstein was dressed only in a dressing gown, and tried to put her hand on his erect penis. Speaking to the New York Times, Arquette said as she left she told him: I will never be that girl. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Emma de Caunes Caunes, a French actor, claimed Weinstein took her to his hotel room in 2010 supposedly to retrieve a book he was making into a film, but once there he went into the bathroom. De Caunes said he then emerged naked, with an erection and told her to lie on the bed. She fled the room. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Zoe Brock Model Zoe claimed that she had to lock herself in a bathroom at Weinsteins hotel in 1997, after the mogul had sent all of the assistants out of the room, and then appeared naked. I was alone with Weinstein, she told ITVs This Morning programme. He very quickly left the room and came back naked. He chased me naked. Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Jessica Barth Actress Jessica Barth described an encounter with Weinstein in 2011 in an interview with The New Yorker in which she said Weinstein veered between offering her roles in films and demanding a naked massage. She alleges the producer said to her: So, what would happen if, say, were having some champagne and I take my clothes off and you give me a massage? When she tried to leave, he then promised to give her the number of a female executive at the company. He gave me her number, and I walked out and I started bawling, Barth said. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Romola Garai The actress told The Guardian she felt violated after she went to a meeting with Weinstein at the age of 18 and he met her in his hotel room wearing nothing but a dressing gown. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Heather Graham Graham claimed that during a casting opportunity in the early 2000's Weinstein had told her he had an open relationship with his wife. He could sleep with whomever he wanted when he was out of town. I walked out of the meeting feeling uneasy, Graham told Variety. There was no explicit mention that to star in one of those films I had to sleep with him, but the subtext was there. Graham was never hired to work in a Weinstein film. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Jessica Hynes Spaced and W1A star Jessica Hynes tweeted about an encounter with Weinstein earlier this week, but subsequently deleted the tweet. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lucia Evans The actor told The New Yorker that after a meeting to discuss casting her in various projects, Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him. I said, over and over, I dont want to do this, stop, dont. She added: Hes a big guy. He overpowered me. I just sort of gave up. Thats the most horrible part of it, and thats why hes been able to do this for so long to so many women: people give up, and then they feel like its their fault. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Louisette Geiss The former actress said she met Weinstein to pitch a film script she was working on. During the meeting, Weinstein allegedly went out and reappeared naked and got into a jacuzzi where he masturbated in front of her and said he would make the script into a film if she stayed and watched. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Liza Campbell Liza Campbell, a British writer and artist, alleged that Olympically ugly Weinstein asked her to join him in the bath and began getting undressed at a hotel. In a piece for The Times, Campbell claimed she was forced to sprint to the door to escape. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Louise Godbold Writing in a blog post, Louise Godbold, a non-profit director in Los Angeles, said her encounter with Weinstein took the form of an office tour that became an occasion to trap me in an empty meeting room. She said then Weinstein was begging for a massage, his hands on my shoulders as I attempted to beat a retreat.

She said: A young group of lads were talking to us and flirting with us. We all had boyfriends and we said we werent interested in them and then one of them grabbed me and put me up against a wall and felt my vagina.

I spat in his face and I slapped him. I was older then and Im a relatively vocal human being anyway and I was thrown out of the bar. When we left that group just laughed at us. That was proper sexual assault.

Ms Creagh said she was attacked in her primary school playground when she was just seven. She said: I had my underwear torn off during a game of kiss chase and was sexually assaulted by about 12 boys. They were older than me, about ten or 11 years old.

She was also groped by her local priest and had a teacher try to kiss her after giving her a lift home.

Ms Creagh said: Women of my generation and older have suffered an extraordinary amount of abuse from an astonishing array of institutions, churches and schools, and for boys.

 Harvey Weinstein allegations: What we know so far

Ms Villiers, the former Northern Ireland Secretary, said she had been the victim of attempted assault during a Conservative Party event.

She said: I recall one instance in the late Nineties when I was a candidate for the European elections and attended a Conservative function.

As I was leaving at the end of the evening after having made my speech, I had to fend off some groping hands from one of the event organisers.

Baroness Jenkin said that, when she first worked in Parliament as a young secretary, an MP had attempted to stroke her neck while she was driving.

I was swerving all over the road, she said. Men used to hit on you all the time.

Other female MPs, including Maria Miller, the former Culture Secretary, and Dawn Butler, the Shadow Equalities Minister, have previously spoken out about abuse they have suffered.
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It was Kabul and it wasnt Kabul. There was a clock and there wasnt a clock.

Soon after a two-hour secret visit to Afghanistan by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Monday was publicly disclosed, the US Embassy and the office of President Ashraf Ghani made statements about their productive meeting in Kabul.

The problem is that the meeting was not in Kabul, but in a windowless room in Bagram, the heavily fortified US military base a 90-minute drive away. The misinformation, apparently meant to obscure the true venue, was betrayed by discrepancies in similar photographs released by the Americans and the Afghans.

Both show Tillerson and Ghani sitting at the head of the room, two giant television screens behind them. On the coffee table between them is a thermos, two cups, and bottled water. Their delegations sit across from each other.

But the version released by Ghanis office erased the large digital clock showing Zulu time  the military term for Coordinated Universal Time  and a red fire alarm behind Tillerson and Ghani, in what would be a giveaway that it was a US military facility.

US officials tweeted this image of Rex Tillerson meeting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani (State Department)

Image released by Afghan authorities of the same meeting has the clock and red fire alarm - telltale signs of a US facility - erased (Office of the President of Afghanistan)

Ghanis office did not immediately respond to queries about why its version of the photo was different. Tillerson and his staff, who travelled to Iraq after leaving Afghanistan, did not immediately respond early Tuesday to questions about the discrepancy.

There is no question that the photo has been manipulated, said Hany Farid, an expert in photo forensics and a professor of computer science at Dartmouth College.

Farid said the method was most likely done through Photoshop, editing software that can delete objects and refill the space. But this particular alteration was easily detectable.

The cable on the wall to power the clock and the fire alarm was not completely obscured in the altered version, instead appearing to fade into the wall.

Security concerns for the visit of someone as high profile as Tillerson are justified because of the Talibans resurgence. Last month more than 50 rockets landed at and around Kabul airport during Defense Secretary James Mattis visit.

But many Afghans may see the altered photo of Tillersons visit as evidence of a government effort to twist facts to package a positive narrative, both to its international partners as well as its citizens.

While the photo manipulation may be new, the Afghan government has changed facts before.

On at least one occasion, when the Taliban have overrun the centre of a district, the government has relocated the local administration compound to another area so it can say no, the district has not fallen.

(C) New York Times
PITTSBURGH -- Al Gore may be the luckiest man alive. And he may be working on the best obituary of his generation.

Why he's so lucky: Sure, he was defeated for the presidency in a contested, overtime election decided by the Supreme Court, even though he won the popular vote. But he avoided having to deal with Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and others in the international basket of deplorables; he wasn't blamed for a historic economic downturn; and he didn't have to rebuild New Orleans after a destructive hurricane.

Why that Gore obit will shimmer: He handled his defeat in the 2000 election with courage and grace and so won't be listed in a parade of presidents that includes John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Warren Harding, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter -- all testimony that winning the White House doesn't ensure historical approbation. The Gore obit will note that he had a distinguished House and Senate career, was an influential vice president and lost the White House -- but may have saved the planet. It's better than any sentence in the obituary of Franklin Pierce, who failed in the presidency, was denied renomination by his own party, may have hastened the Civil War -- and still got a college named after him.

Gore feels regret and remorse rather than relief about his election defeat, much the way Winston Churchill felt when he was unceremoniously defeated in July 1945 after steering Great Britain through the Blitz, D-Day and World War II victory in Europe. His wife suggested it was a blessing in disguise. Churchill's response, expressed through tears: "Well, at the moment it is very well-disguised."

"I am under no illusion that there is any position with as much potential of bringing about positive change than being president of the United States," Gore said in a conversation in an anteroom of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, where he was the featured speaker at the Climate Reality Leadership Corps training -- an event where the plastic coverings on the press passes were certified to be 100 percent biodegradable. "But since that was not in the cards, I'm lucky to have found a way to work for positive change. It's a privilege to have work that justifies pouring every ounce of energy you have into it."

Plus, he is not exactly operating in obscure exile. He has the Nobel Peace Prize that Nixon and Bill Clinton yearned for, the Academy Award Tom Cruise and Michelle Pfeiffer still do not possess. Gore arguably has the best second career since Ronald Reagan.

Not that he has completely foresworn the political world. The other day he decamped to New Jersey to support Philip D. Murphy, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, saluting him and his wife as people "who care about clean water and clean air, and cleaning up the climate."

But now that he is in a different ecosphere -- "still managing to try to make the world better," in the words of David Morehouse, a onetime senior counselor to Gore and now president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Penguins -- Gore himself seems different.

His cause is urgent, but in personal style he is not much in a hurry. He speaks more softly, and more slowly, than he did as an eager House lawmaker examining the chemical crisis at the Love Canal in Niagara Falls, and is more at ease than he was in his 1988 and 2000 presidential campaigns. Even the anger he expressed in a brief 2007 book, in which he excoriated Bush ("This administration simply does not seem to agree that the challenge of preserving democratic freedom cannot be met by surrendering core American values") seems to have dissipated, though he allowed that that sentence might easily be applied to Donald J. Trump and his team.

Perhaps that is age (he's now 69), or perspective, or a combination of the two mixed with recognition that the politics he knew is an art form that is antiquarian.

"The Congress I went into is no longer," he said in that afternoon conversation. "It's not just that the personnel has changed. The system and culture have changed. The influence of big money is much, much greater, and so much more toxic, and our democracy has been hacked, not just by the Russians but also by lobbyists and big contributors."

Lobbyists and big contributors were not exactly unknown when Gore entered the House in 1977, getting elected in his home Tennessee district without ever having a fundraiser, though Gore spent $127 million in his 2000 campaign. But this is different. "Now," he said, "members of Congress spend much more attention to contributors than to citizens."

Gore is no stranger to election heartbreak. In 1970 -- the year his 2000 rival, George W. Bush, witnessed his father lose a bitter Texas Senate race to Lloyd Bentsen -- Gore watched his own father, a lion of the Senate, lose his re-election bid to Bill Brock. The elder Gore was one of only a few lawmakers from the Old Confederacy to refuse to sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto pledging resistance to racial integration.

The day after the election, the two Al Gores sat in a canoe on the Caney Fork River. The father was near despair, the son was deep in despair. It was, the younger Gore recalled in a conversation in 2000, the first time their roles were reversed, and in their shared anguish the father asked the son:

"What would you do if you had had 32 years of service to the people, given to the highest of your ability, always doing what you thought was right, and had then been unceremoniously turned out of office. What would you do?"

The son answered: "I'd take the 32 years, Dad."

Today the younger Gore owns the farm that once was in the possession of his father and his mother, Pauline LaFon Gore, who had pushed her husband to oppose the Southern Manifesto and, later, the Vietnam War, where her son served. Gore still paddles that river, which runs through the family farm. The son has taken the 24 years he had in office in Washington, and added to them, and to his future obituary.

David M. Shribman is executive editor of the Post-Gazette (dshribman@post-gazette.com, 412 263-1890). Follow him on Twitter at ShribmanPG.
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The family of a US soldier killed in Afghanistan has received a $25,000 (18,900) cheque from Donald Trump dated the same day as a report revealing the President had not sent the money.

The cheque is printed with the date 18 October and arrived four months after it was first promised.

Mr Trump vowed to give the payment to the grieving father of Dillon Baldridge, a 22-year-old man killed in June, during a call where he extended his condolences.

Yet the money never arrived, the father of the 22-year-old told The Washington Post on Wednesday.

The timing of the cheque has raised questions, since the White House initially refused to comment on the matter

Later on the same day as the report, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said: "The cheque has been sent".

She criticised the press for reporting on the issue. "It's disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognised as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the President, and using it to advance the media's biased agenda," she said.

A letter accompanying the cheque said: "I am glad my legal counsel has been able to finally approve this contribution to you. Enclosed is a cheque for $25,000  I hope this will make things a bit easier, but nothing will ever replace your son, Dillon.

"He was an American hero."

The family have responded to the letter expressing their gratitude and saying they intended to use the money to set up a non-profit organisation in the 22-year-old's name.

"Our goal is to help as many fellow Americans as possible for the rest of our lives," they said in the letter, reported by ABC News.

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Mr Trump's interactions with the families of US soldiers killed in action have received increased scrutiny in recent days.

The President has denied a claim that he told the wife of a soldier killed in Niger this month her husband knew what he signed up for.
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Surgeons in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico are reportedly using mobile phone lights to see during operations as Donald Trump rates his relief efforts there a "10".

Hurricane Maria tore through the Caribbean island more than a month ago, ripping up houses and knocking down power lines amid carnage that left at least 49 dead, officials said.

Most of the 3.4 million residents are still without electricity, while many complain that aid including food is not getting through.

Recommended Bringing aid to Puerto Rico

Critics of the relief operation say the death toll is creeping up in the US protectorate because generators in hospitals are running out, leaving patients at risk.

Mr Trump, however, has praised himself over the relief work in the island.

Speaking after a meeting with Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello in Washington over the disaster relief operation, he told reporters: I would give myself a 10.

"I think we've done a really great job and we've had tremendous cooperation from the governor and we are getting there and people are really seeing the effort that's been put into Puerto Rico."

But former governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla hit back on Twitter and posted a photo showing surgeons allegedly in the island operating with the aid of lights from mobile phones.

Mr Padilla wrote in the tweet: This is what POTUS [Trump] calls a 10! Surgery performed with cellphones as flashlights in Puerto Rico today.

His post was circulated on Twitter and sparked comments from users angry at what they believe is a failed disaster relief operation in the area.

Eric Holthaus wrote: 84% of Puerto Rico is w/o power. 28% w/o running water. Yesterday, a surgery was conducted by cellphone light. An affront to humanity.

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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Sharon Dennis added: Love to see Trump do without power for 24 hours.

But others hit out at the former governor and laid the blame for electricity crisis on his doorstep.

Erick J Morales wrote: Don't be fooled by Garcia Padilla's bait. His admin neglected the PR power grid too. The problem is incompetence and corruption.

It has not been verified that the photo of the surgeons working with the aid of portable lights was taken on the storm-ravaged island.

The row came as a floating hospital berthed off Puerto Rico has been hit with complaints after locals reportedly said they didnt know how to reach the vessel.

USNS Comfort was deployed as clinics on the island have become overwhelmed with patients since Hurricane Maria made landfall on September 20.

But a recent report claimed that just 33 of its 250 beds were in use nearly two weeks after the vessel moored off the Caribbean island.
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Ivanka Trump has come under fire for saying she her US president father Donald believe American workers are the best in the world  despite the fact they both have goods for their businesses manufactured overseas.

In an impassioned speech, Ms Trump hailed American employees as more innovative, more motivated, more capable than any other group of people.

She also called for tax reform in the US, saying that the cumbersome system needed a shake-up to bring about a level playing field for both individuals and corporations.

The special adviser to her father Donald told Fox News: I believe with my heart and soul, and my father does, and this administration does, that no one can best the American worker.

There is no group of people more innovative, more motivated, more capable."

But she said the tax system needed reform to be clearer to individuals, saying: "Theres gotta be a level playing field, and theres not a level playing field.

The reality is, simplification of our tax code democratizes it.

You know, if you have a tax code that the average person cant understand. Whos that going to benefit? It benefits the person with the army of accountants, army of lawyers, who can help them find the loophole in the nuance.

However, her comments triggered an avalanche of criticism on social media, where her praise for US workers was branded "hypocrisy".

Users posted images showing a Made in China label on a line of her fashion company's shoes, and on a brand of signature ties sold by one of her father Donalds companies.

The Independent reported earlier this year that the vast majority of Ms Trump's best-selling fashion line sold in New York department store Macy's was made in China and Vietnam.

Sandra Raram wrote: Then explain why does China make all your merchandise? Why? If you love the American workers why!

Another said: Someone should explain to her where her stuff and her dads stuff is actually made.

Allison Galveston wrote: good one! Hypocrisy at its best!, while Debra Simpson posted: So why is your crap made in other countries?

Mr Trump clinched the US presidential election in a shock victory on the back of his slogan to Make America Great Again, vowing to pull back the millions of mostly manufacturing jobs that had been lost to cheaper labour markets overseas such as Mexico and China.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

In one interview before he ran for The White House he hit out at the Barack Obama administration, complaining it was letting China overtake the US as the great economic leader in the world.

In August, President Trump claimed to have added a million jobs to the US economy  a figure disputed by The Washington Post, which pointed out that the rate of job creation in the first few months of his presidency was very similar to that of the Obama administration, and that in any case his failure to introduce much new legislation means he is unlikely to have had such an effect on the economy.
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Melania Trump has been forced to deny that her husbands behaviour contradicted the message of her new anti-bullying campaign.

On a visit to a school in Michigan, the First Lady was challenged on the issue by reporters.

Her husband Donald has previously been accused of bullying his opponents.

Most recently he mocked Republican Senator Bob Corkers height and feuded with Democrat Frederica Wilson over his alleged remarks to the family of a deceased soldier.

Asked about the contradiction, the First Ladys communications director, Stephanie Grisham, stepped in and said there was not.

Ms Trump is independent and acts independently from her husband. She does what she feels is right, she said.

She knows that she has a real opportunity through her role as first lady to have a positive impact on the lives of children. Her only focus is to effect change within our next generation.

"She wants to talk to kids about the importance of being inclusive and the negative effects of social isolation. This kind of activity also fosters integrity and leadership in young kids."

Secretary of education Betsy DeVos also joined Mrs Trump at the school.

Since taking up the role of First Lady, Mrs Trump has regularly used her platform to speak out against the issue of childhood bullying.

 Melania Trump: "It's our generation's imperative to take responsibility for what our children learn"

In a speech to the United Nations in September, she said: We must turn our focus right now to the message and content children are exposed to on a daily basis through social media - the bullying, the experience online and in person.

As adults we are not merely responsible, we are accountable.

"I hope you will join me in recommitting ourselves to teaching the next generation to lead and honour the golden rule, do unto others as you would have do unto you."
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Pussy Riot stormed Trump Tower in New York to voice their opposition to the actions of US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladamir Putin.

The Russian feminist punk rock group staged the protest in the 58-storey skyscraper, which is the headquarter of The Trump Organisation, to draw attention to the incarceration of political prisoners.

Wearing their trademark makeshift balaclavas made out of woollen hats, the group unfurled a banner calling for a Ukranian film director imprisoned in Russia to be released. The protest reportedly saw the lavish tower shut down for half an hour.

"The police closed the tower for half an hour after our action, Pussy Riot's Maria Alekhina, who was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in 2012 for being convicted of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for a performance in Moscows Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, said on Facebook.

The group, who are based in Moscow, argued the plight of political prisoners was more important than the sexist bulls*** that Westerners have centred their energies on.

We came to occupy Trump Tower to call attention to political prisoners. We believe that political prisoners and their protection are more important than the sexist bullshit that people have been focused on, Pussy Riot said in a Facebook post.

Defending political prisoners is an issue that transcends borders. We are acting in solidarity against leaders like Putin, who has exercised authoritarian force and Trump, who is displaying authoritarian tendencies - because we all need to be fighting together on behalf of dissidents everywhere.

We, Pussy Riot, invite you to join our fabulous and bold path: ask questions of your politicians who shake hands with Putin in international forums, support advocacy, go out into the streets. And put on your own political, public actions too, they continued.

The group said they wanted the world to take notice of Ukranian film director Oleg Sentsov and anarchist Olexandr Kolchenko - both of whom are currently in Russian prison.

While Sentsov got 20 years in prison, Kolchenko got ten years. Because they, like you, did not sit by - they were fighting for their freedom in Crimea, which was annexed by Putin, they said.

Mr Senstov was sentenced to two decades in prison over terrorism charges but his lawyers and supporters claimed the charges were inflated to suppress him for being openly critical of Russias military actions in Crimea.

We decided to do an action right now, while we are in New York, with activists here because we believe there are no borders to our solidarity, they said.

This is by no means the first time Pussy Riot have voiced their opposition to President Trump. Last Autumn they released a single called Straight Outta Vagina which took aim at the US president.

And the owner of vaginas is not some narcissistic stupid orange ape whod claim that he could easily grab women by their pussies. The owner of vagina is a woman. Who wears her vag as a badge of honour. Pussy is the new dick, ladies, they said.

This is a reference to the now infamous Access Hollywood 2005 tape which was leaked last year. In the tape, President Trump could be heard bragging about groping and making unwanted advances on women and saying he was such a star that he could grab women by the pussy.
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This summer, a delegation of Republican climate activists visited Tangier Island, a speck of grassland in Virginias Chesapeake Bay, to try to convince its 450 residents to take climate change seriously.

At a dinner attended by island residents on 2 August, the activists from RepublicEn headed by former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis laid out the stakes: The sea level is rising, and some scientists estimate that within decades the island, already suffering severe erosion, will need to be abandoned.

The people of Tangier Island were used to this kind of message. Former Vice President Al Gore, a prominent Democratic climate activist, had given the same speech to islanders three days earlier. They were also used to rejecting it.

Recommended EPA cancels appearances by three top climate scientists at conference

Well talk to everybody, said James Eskridge, mayor of the mainly Republican island community. But theyre not going to change many minds here. Residents, he said, do not believe in climate change: they want a new sea wall to prevent erosion, not a lecture about saving the world with solar panels.

Tangier Islands steadfast rejection of climate change reflects the rigidity of American opinions about global warming, often defined along political party lines.

Reuters/Ipsos polling shows more than a third of Americans, mainly Republicans, reject the scientific consensus that climate change is driven by human activity. Less than a third of Americans believe global warming poses an imminent threat to the United States. These views barely budged after a series of devastating hurricanes this summer.

That rift in opinion has proven to be a headwind for US lawmakers seeking broad solutions to stem climate change, like imposing a cost on carbon emissions or encouraging cleaner renewable energy technologies to replace fossil fuels.

And while conservatives have long been sceptical about climate change, doubters have a powerful new ally: US President Donald Trump. He has called climate change a hoax and has started withdrawing the United States from a global pact to combat it, citing what he calls the huge economic cost.

Eskridge told Reuters Trump called him in June after seeing a report about severe erosion problems on the island, telling him not to worry about sea level rise.

I believe man plays a part in it but not to the extent that others have been talking about - thats what me and Donald Trump were talking about, Eskridge said.

An Army Corps of Engineers study in 2015 showed Tangier has lost two thirds of its mass since 1850 because of erosion, a process scientists say is being exacerbated by climate change. Journalists and politicians now view the island as a symbol of the climate crisis.

Tangier residents are happy with the attention but believe their problem is simpler. A sea wall built on one side of the island in the late 1980s has prevented the land behind it from eroding, they say, so another sea wall is the answer.

Were not looking to have our light bills cheaper, were looking to stay here, said Deborah Pruitt, 57, who works at the islands museum, where printouts of news reports about the island are displayed on a wall.

10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Show all 10 1 /10 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others. Hira Ali 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Smoke  filled with the carbon that is driving climate change  drifts across a field in Colombia. Sandra Rondon 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050. Probal Rashid 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals, says the photographer. Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow. Rizwan Dharejo 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent. Tom Schifanella 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures. Abrar Hossain 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature. Riddhima Singh Bhati 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a public health emergency. Leung Ka Wa 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions. Mahtuf Ikhsan

Conservative climate activists like Rob Sisson of ConservAmerica and Mitch Hescox of the Evangelical Environmental Network said the rejection of climate change by Tangier residents is not surprising: their groups often have trouble convincing fellow Republicans global warming is a real issue. Often, they say, people object to the idea that humans could possibly change the climate even if they wanted to.

Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, one of a handful of Republicans to publicly declare a belief in climate change, said she has a strategy for getting fellow Republicans to think of solutions: Ive found that the best way... is to not dwell on the causes, she said in an email.

Reuters
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The FBI has just released 1,500 pages of documents that shed more light on the tragic 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

Twenty children and six adults were gunned down that day by the shooter Adam Lanza, who then killed himself.

In the wake of the shooting, the FBI assisted local and state police with the exhaustive investigation and the documents released are comprised of field notes of witness statements from Lanzas neighbors, his life in the weeks and months leading up to the shooting, and more information from his school and medical records.

The trove also contains information gathered from grand jury subpoenas of internet companies Lanza frequently viewed.

There are also accounts of his relationship with his mother Nancy, whom Lanza shot four times and killed just before going to the elementary school.

According to agents field notes Lanza led an isolated existence in the months prior to the shooting, only listening to Japanese techno music and playing video games.

He and his mother only communicated via email because he did not leave his room for three months.

 Megyn Kelly sparks outcry for giving Alex Jones platform to repeat Sandy Hook conspiracy theories

Ms Lanza, according to witness accounts, was worried and planned to move to Seattle the following spring in the hopes it would improve her sons life.

She had once worked at the school, which Lanza also attended, and one document detailed that "Lanza apparently felt his mother loved the students more than she loved him.

He also did not leave his house when superstorm Sandy had hit the east coast in October 2012, though the power had been cut for several days.

One set of notes indicated Lanza had no real friends.

Heroic Sandy Hook staff saved many lives as the killer struck Show all 9 1 /9 Heroic Sandy Hook staff saved many lives as the killer struck Heroic Sandy Hook staff saved many lives as the killer struck 04-heroicstaff1.jpg Heroic Sandy Hook staff saved many lives as the killer struck 04-heroicstaff2.jpg Heroic Sandy Hook staff saved many lives as the killer struck 04-heroicstaff3-AP.jpg AP Heroic Sandy Hook staff saved many lives as the killer struck 04-heroicstaff4.jpg Heroic Sandy Hook staff saved many lives as the killer struck 04-heroicstaff5.jpg Heroic Sandy Hook staff saved many lives as the killer struck 04-heroicstaff6.jpg Heroic Sandy Hook staff saved many lives as the killer struck 04-heroicstaff7.jpg Heroic Sandy Hook staff saved many lives as the killer struck 04-heroicstaff8.jpg Heroic Sandy Hook staff saved many lives as the killer struck 04-heroicstaff9.jpg

A witness also told agents that the gunman had been bullied in school, but not excessively, due to his social awkwardness and physical appearance.

Lanza was considered underweight for his height and age at the time of his death.

An online friend, whom he met on a website dedicated to the 1999 Columbine High School mass shooting, called him the weirdest person online in one witness interview conducted.

She also noted that Lanza used screen names that were styled to honour mass shooters like German Tim Kretschmer and Canadian Kimveer Gill.

The FBIs summary of the interview is chilling: "He was singularly focused and obsessed with mass murders  Lanza devoted almost all his internet activity to researching and discussing mass murders and spree killings.

Lanza also had a prior run-in with the bureau.

When he was in ninth grade, he had hacked through two levels of security into a government computer. The redacted documents did not indicate which agency.

Reportedly agents who visited the Lanza home spoke to Lanza's mother and told her that if her son was that smart, he could have a job with them someday.
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The father of a missing three-year-old girl has been charged after changing his story about her disappearance.

Wesley Mathews, 37, was arrested having voluntarily submitted to a new round of questioning over Sherin Mathews' disappearance nearly three weeks ago.

It came after investigators found the body of a child in a culvert about half a mile from their home on Sunday.

They await confirmation of identity, but police have said the body is "most likely" Sherin's, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Sgt Kevin Perlich, of Richardson Police Department in Texas, said that on Monday Mr Mathews had given different answers than previously.

He has been charged with first-degree felony injury to a child, which carries a maximum of life in prison, and is being held on $1m (757,000) bond.

Initially the adoptive father had told police he ordered the girl to stand outside the family home at about 3am on 7 October as punishment for not drinking her milk.

When he went to find her about 15 minutes later, she was gone, he had told investigators. When she failed to come back he went back inside, washed some clothes and waited until it became light, he said.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

He was first charged with child endangerment.

But Sgt Perlich told the Morning News after the renewed questioning: "He provided an alternate series of events from what he had previously given us."
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Actor Steven Seagal has been caught on tape calling female reporters c***suckers and a bunch of f***ing dirty whores in leaked tapes.

The 65-year-old, who is facing several sexual harassment allegations, can be heard ranting to a male interviewer about female journalists in audio clips obtained by the Daily Mail.

Well, I found that interestingly enough, the few times that I had a hard time, it was usually with women, the actor said in the clip captured while Seagal was promoting his 1988 film Above the Law.

When somebody is on tour, a promotional tour, hes there to talk about his film, not about who hes f***ed or who he would like to f*** or who his wife was with ten years ago.

They should go into pornography or something else instead of journalism if they want to hear that s***. Theyre a bunch of a**holes, he continued.

The actor goes on to recall a time a female reporter wrote false and discriminating stories about him after she pretended like she was in love.

If I ever see her again, Ill tell her to her face, I think she belongs in a zoo, he said. Bunch of f***ing dirty whores!

You sit down with this sweet little nice girl and she seems to adore you and all this and that, and you're a perfect gentleman, and you know, unbelievable.

The way you combat is by let's not ever do an interview again to show these c***suckers, he said.

In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, a number of women have come forward with allegations of sexual harassment against Mr Seagal.

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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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

TV reporter Lisa Guerrero told the Hollywood Reporter the actor allegedly invited her to his home for a private audition in 1996.

Suspicious of the invite, Ms Guerrero said she brought a female casting director with her.

She said Mr Seagal answered the door in a silk robe and although he never exposed himself to her or touched her, she said the actor told her she could have a bigger role if she returned for a private rehearsal.

Actress Rae Dawn Chong made similar claims in a blog The Wrap.
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An American photographer accused of sexual assault has allegedly been barred from working with a host of fashion magazines.

Staff at Conde Nast International, the publisher behind Vogue, GQ, Glamour and Vanity Fair, were told on Monday to stop working with Terry Richardson, according to The Telegraph.

An email circulated among the media group reportedly said work already commissioned from the 52-year-old should be killed or substituted with other material.

Richardson has been dogged for years by allegations of misconduct during photo shoots known for their erotic content. In 2014 he said explicit acts were part of exploring sexuality following complaints from models.

The email, allegedly sent by Conde Nasts executive vice president James Woolhouse, was circulated the day after an article in a Sunday newspaper asked why Richardson was still being feted by fashionistas.

According to The Telegraph, Mr Woolhouse wrote: I am writing to you on an important matter. Conde Nast would like to no longer work with the photographer Terry Richardson.

 SNL finally addresses Harvey Weinstein story

Any shoots that have been commission[ed] or any shoots that have been completed but not yet published, should be killed and substituted with other material.

Please could you confirm that this policy will be actioned in your market effective immediately. Thank you for your support in this matter.

Although allegations have resurfaced against Richardson in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, no fresh claims have been made.

A stylist accused the New York photographer of sexual assault in 2014, saying she had been invited to a shoot at his home and told to reveal her breasts.

Suddenly, I felt a d*** pressing into the side of my face, she wrote in an email to Jezebel. He pressed it to my lips. He clearly wanted a blow job and wanted it documented on camera.

Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Show all 42 1 /42 Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Harvey Weinstein Harry Weinsteins reputation as one of Hollywoods leading executives was long cemented in stone. The acclaimed movie mogul, who produced Oscar-winning films Shakespeare in Love, The English Patient, and The Artist, clocked up box office successes and accolades aplenty. But this has quickly changed since a chorus of women have come forward to accuse the Hollywood producer of sexual harassment and assault. Since the New York Times bombshell report disclosed sexual harassment and rape allegations against the film mogul dating back decades, Weinstein has been fired from his namesake company, expelled from the Oscars and has had his wife leave him. Weinstein has apologised for having caused a lot of pain but has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Annabella Sciorra The Sopranos actor alleged Weinstein raped her after shooting The Night We Never Met, a 1993 movie that Weinstein produced. Similar to the stories told by other women, Weinstein drove the actor home, only to reportedly burst into Sciorra's apartment and start unbuttoning his shirt. He shoved me onto the bed, and he got on top of me, Sciorra said. I kicked and I yelled. Weinstein then allegedly locked her arms and forced sexual intercourse on her. After the incident, Sciorra found it increasingly hard to get work, many filmmakers saying 'We heard you were difficult', something the actor claims was because of the 'Weinstein-machine'. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Natassia Malthe The model and actress, who has appeared in around 50 films, said she met Weinstein at a BAFTA after party in 2008 while she was working as a spokeswoman for LG. She told a press conference in New York that she felt pressured into telling Weinstein she was staying at the Sanderson Hotel after being put on the spot. Malthe, now 43, said after her shift on February 10 she went back to her room and went to sleep, but was awoken by "repeated pounding" on her door, from someone yelling: "Open the door Natassia Malthe, it's Harvey Weinstein." Feeling humiliated, she said she opened the door. She alleged Weinstein began implying sex would get her a role in an upcoming film while semi-undressed and then he began to masturbate. "I was sitting on the bed talking to Harvey when he pushed me back and forced himself onto me. It was not consensual. He did not use a condom," she said. AP Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Sean Young The actor, best known for her role in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, said that Weinstein exposed himself to her in the early 1990s, when she was starring in the Miramax-produced Love Crimes - a production company that Weinstein headed at the time. "I personally experienced him pulling his you-know-what out of his pants to shock me," she said. "My basic response was, 'You know, Harvey, I really dont think you should be pulling that thing out, its not very pretty.'" Young never worked with Weinstein again after the incident. Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Mimi Haleyi Mimi Haleyi said she was assaulted by Weinstein in what appeared to be a child's bedroom in his New York City apartment in 2006 when she was in her 20s. She said she was aspiring to work in television and film production when she was first introduced to him at the London premiere of The Aviator around two years earlier and he helped her get experience on the set of a TV show being produced by The Weinstein Company. But, she added, he repeatedly hassled her and even tried to force himself through her front door in an effort to get her to join him on a trip to Paris. At one point he allegedly forcibly performed oral sex on an aspiring production assistant while she was on her period. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lupita Nyong'o In an op-ed for The New York Times, the Oscar-winning actor said she was invited to Weinsteins family home in Connecticut on the premise of watching a film shortly after they met in 2011. But she said shortly after it started he "insisted" in front of his children that she follow him and she was led to his bedroom. The Kenyan-Mexican actress, now 34, said she felt pressured into giving him a massage after he offered her one. "Before long he said he wanted to take off his pants," she wrote."I told him not to do that and informed him that it would make me extremely uncomfortable. He got up anyway to do so and I headed for the door, saying that I was not at all comfortable with that." Over the years that followed, he continued to get in touch, Nyong'o said, and when she declined another proposition she felt her career was threatened. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lena Headey Writing on social media, the Game of Thrones actor claims she first met Weinstein at the Venice Film Festival in 2005 where, after taking her for a walk by the water, he made some suggestive comment and gesture. Headey claims she bumped into Weinstein years later where he kept asking her questions about her love life. She alleges that, when Weinstein invited her to his hotel room to show her a script, the "energy shifted. The actor notes how, after saying she was not interesting in anything but the work, Weinstein was furious, apparently marching her back to a lift, "grabbing and holding tightly to the back of [her] arm." She claims that, after paying for her car, he whispered in her ear: "Don't tell anyone about this, not your manager, not your agent. Headey finished the post, writing: I got in the car and I cried. Getty Images Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lucia Evans The actor told The New Yorker that after a meeting to discuss casting her in various projects, Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him. I said, over and over, I dont want to do this, stop, dont. She added: Hes a big guy. He overpowered me. I just sort of gave up. Thats the most horrible part of it, and thats why hes been able to do this for so long to so many women: people give up, and then they feel like its their fault. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Laura Madden Madden, a production assistant who worked at Miramax for a decade, told the Times that Weinstein allegedly prodded her for massages at hotels, a common theme among the sources the Timess reporters spoke with. On one occasion, she claims she locked herself in his hotel bathroom, sobbing Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Ashley Judd Judd recounted for the Times how Weinstein allegedly harassed her while she was filming Kiss the Girls in 1996, inviting her to his hotel room and asking her for a massage, then inviting her to watch him shower. Judd first went public with the allegations in a 2015 interview with Variety during which she discussed the experience without naming the producer involved. She described Weinsteins alleged behaviour as coercive bargaining; I said no, a lot of ways, a lot of times, and he always came back at me with some new ask, she told the Times AFP/Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Rose McGowan McGowan reportedly reached a previously undisclosed $100,000 settlement with Weinstein in 1997, over an incident that occurred in a hotel room Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Mimi Haleyi Mimi Haleyi said she was assaulted by Weinstein in what appeared to be a child's bedroom in his New York City apartment in 2006 when she was in her 20s. She said she was aspiring to work in television and film production when she was first introduced to him at the London premiere of The Aviator around two years earlier and he helped her get experience on the set of a TV show being produced by The Weinstein Company. But, she added, he repeatedly hassled her and even tried to force himself through her front door in an effort to get her to join him on a trip to Paris. At one point he allegedly forcibly performed oral sex on an aspiring production assistant while she was on her period. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Emily Nestor Nestor had been temping at the Weinstein Company for only one day in 2014 when Weinstein allegedly offered to boost her career in return for sexual favours, according to the Times. She declined and reportedly complained of his behaviour to colleagues, who later passed the information on to senior executives. An internal Weinstein Company document cited by the Times describes Nestors encounter with Weinstein as follows: She said he was very persistent and focused though she kept saying no for over an hour Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Ambra Battilana In March 2015, Battilana, an aspiring model and actress, was reportedly summoned to Weinsteins office on a Friday night to discuss her career. According to a police report cited by the Times, Battilana claimed she was assaulted by Weinstein, who grabbed her breasts after asking if they were real and put his hands up her skirt. Weinstein later claimed that Battilana had set him up, according to colleagues of his who were interviewed by the Times. The Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, later declined to press charges, and according to the Times, made a payment to Battilana. On 5 October, the International Business Times reported that after Vance dropped the charges, he received $10,000 from Weinsteins lawyer Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lauren OConnor Lauren OConnor, an employee of the Weinstein Company, penned a memo to executives alleging a toxic environment for women at the company. The memo cited numerous incidents of Weinstein harassing or coercing women who worked for him. She expressed fear that Weinstein was using her and other female employees to facilitate liaisons with vulnerable women who hope he will get them work. That same year, Weinstein allegedly reached a settlement with OConnor Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Kate Beckinsale The actor, who starred in the Weinstein Company films Serendipity and The Aviator, alleges that she was invited to Weinsteins hotel room at the age of just 17. When she approached the door, the producer reportedly greeted her dressed in just a dressing gown. I was incredibly naive and young and it did not cross my mind that this older, unattractive man would expect me to have any sexual interest in him, she wrote on Instagram. After declining alcohol and announcing that I had school in the morning I left, uneasy but unscathed. Theo Wargo/Getty Images Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Gwyneth Paltrow The actor alleges that after he cast her in the title role of the film Emma when she was 22, he took her to his hotel room, placed his hands on her and suggested massages. I was a kid, I was signed up, I was petrified, Paltrow told the New York Times. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Asia Argento Italian actress Asia Argento has alleged that in 1997 Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her as she repeatedly told him to stop. When I see him, it makes me feel little and stupid and weak, Argento told The New Yorker. After the rape, he won. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Cara Delevigne The British model and actress penning an Instagram post claiming that Weinstein had ordered her to kiss another woman in his hotel room, and tried to kiss her on the lips. AFP/Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Ashley Judd Ashley Judd said she rebuffed Harvey Weinsteins unwanted sexual advances by offering to consent only after she had won an Oscar. When she was initially invited to a meeting with Weinstein, Judd said, she was surprised to learn the producer was in his hotel room - a tactic that recurs in other womens accounts. Echoing the accounts of other women, Judd said Weinstein suggested she give him a massage and then invited her to watch him shower. After a volley of nos she said she would only after she wins an Oscar, fleeing after making the comments. Reuters/Mike Segar Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Judith Godreche French actress Judith Godreche said when she was 24 Weinstein invited her to his hotel room and asked to give her a massage. The next thing I know, hes pressing against me and pulling off my sweater, she told the New York Times. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Mira Sorvino The Oscar-winning actor said she found herself in a hotel room with Weinstein in 1995 where he started massaging my shoulders, which made me very uncomfortable, and then tried to get more physical, sort of chasing me around. According to an interview in The New Yorker Weinstein subsequently arrived at her apartment late at night and she had to call a friend to come over to pose as her boyfriend in order to get Weinstein out of the house. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Katherine Kendall The actress said Weinstein undressed and chased her around a living room when she was just 23. She subsequently felt that telling others meant Ill never work again and no one is going to care or believe me, she told the New York Times. WireImage Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Tomi-Anne Roberts As an aspiring actress and working in a restaurant in New York, Tomi-Ann Roberts encountered Weinstein who encouraged her to audition for one of his films back in 1984. She subsequently went to meet him and found him naked in the bath and invited her to get naked and get into the bath with him, she told the New York Times. She said she left feeling manipulated. Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Myleen Klass It has also been alleged that the disgraced film producer propositioned Myleene Klass with a sex contract at Cannes Film Festival in 2010. One of the singer and television personalitys friends reportedly told The Sun, Klass had told Weinstein to f*** off. Getty Images Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Sophie Dix Sophie Dix, best known for her role as Captain Sadie Williams in Soldier Soldier, described her encounter with Weinstein when she was 23 as the single most damaging thing thats happened in my life. She told The Guardian Weinstein had pushed her to her bed and was tugging at her clothes. She rushed to the bathroom to escape, but when she came out she found him standing there masturbating. I quickly closed the door again and locked it, she said. Then when I heard room service come to the door I just ran. Rex Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lea Seydoux The actor and director claims she had to fight off Weinstein after he brought her to his hotel room during what she remembers to be 2012. He suddenly jumped on me and tried to kiss me. I had to defend myself. Hes big and fat, so I had to be forceful to resist him. I left his room, thoroughly disgusted, she wrote in The Guardian. AFP/Getty Images Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Claire Forlani British actress Claire Forlani wrote on Twitter that she had evaded Weinsteins advances on five occasions at the age of 25. At meetings with the Hollywood a-lister, she says massage was suggested, and that Weinstein had boasted of all the women hed had sex with. Mark Douet Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Florence Darel French actress Florence Darel claimed Weinstein relentlessly pursued her in the mid 1990's and propositioned her while Eve Chilton, his wife at the time, was in the hotel room next door. I was astonished, she told People magazine. When you have someone so physically disgusting in front of you, continuing and continuing as though this was all perfectly normal What happened to me may not be illegal but it was inappropriate. Very inappropriate. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lysette Anthony Lysette Anthony, who starred as Marnie Nightingale in Hollyoaks, has claimed Weinstein raped her in the late 1980's after turning up to her London home in the late 1980s. She described the disgraced film producers alleged attack as pathetic and revolting and said it left her feeling disgusted and embarrassed. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Dawn Dunning Dunning said she met Weinstein in 2003 when she was 24-years-old and the disgraced film producer suggested she have a threesome with him and someone else. She told the New York Times Weinstein got angry when she refused. Youll never make it in this business, she said he told her as she left. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Rosanna Arquette Rosanna Arquette was already well known for her role in Desperately Seeking Susan, when she said she met Weinstein at his hotel to pick up a script in the early nineties. Weinstein was dressed only in a dressing gown, and tried to put her hand on his erect penis. Speaking to the New York Times, Arquette said as she left she told him: I will never be that girl. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Emma de Caunes Caunes, a French actor, claimed Weinstein took her to his hotel room in 2010 supposedly to retrieve a book he was making into a film, but once there he went into the bathroom. De Caunes said he then emerged naked, with an erection and told her to lie on the bed. She fled the room. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Zoe Brock Model Zoe claimed that she had to lock herself in a bathroom at Weinsteins hotel in 1997, after the mogul had sent all of the assistants out of the room, and then appeared naked. I was alone with Weinstein, she told ITVs This Morning programme. He very quickly left the room and came back naked. He chased me naked. Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Jessica Barth Actress Jessica Barth described an encounter with Weinstein in 2011 in an interview with The New Yorker in which she said Weinstein veered between offering her roles in films and demanding a naked massage. She alleges the producer said to her: So, what would happen if, say, were having some champagne and I take my clothes off and you give me a massage? When she tried to leave, he then promised to give her the number of a female executive at the company. He gave me her number, and I walked out and I started bawling, Barth said. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Romola Garai The actress told The Guardian she felt violated after she went to a meeting with Weinstein at the age of 18 and he met her in his hotel room wearing nothing but a dressing gown. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Heather Graham Graham claimed that during a casting opportunity in the early 2000's Weinstein had told her he had an open relationship with his wife. He could sleep with whomever he wanted when he was out of town. I walked out of the meeting feeling uneasy, Graham told Variety. There was no explicit mention that to star in one of those films I had to sleep with him, but the subtext was there. Graham was never hired to work in a Weinstein film. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Jessica Hynes Spaced and W1A star Jessica Hynes tweeted about an encounter with Weinstein earlier this week, but subsequently deleted the tweet. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Lucia Evans The actor told The New Yorker that after a meeting to discuss casting her in various projects, Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him. I said, over and over, I dont want to do this, stop, dont. She added: Hes a big guy. He overpowered me. I just sort of gave up. Thats the most horrible part of it, and thats why hes been able to do this for so long to so many women: people give up, and then they feel like its their fault. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Louisette Geiss The former actress said she met Weinstein to pitch a film script she was working on. During the meeting, Weinstein allegedly went out and reappeared naked and got into a jacuzzi where he masturbated in front of her and said he would make the script into a film if she stayed and watched. Getty Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Liza Campbell Liza Campbell, a British writer and artist, alleged that Olympically ugly Weinstein asked her to join him in the bath and began getting undressed at a hotel. In a piece for The Times, Campbell claimed she was forced to sprint to the door to escape. Rex Features Harvey Weinstein: his accusers Louise Godbold Writing in a blog post, Louise Godbold, a non-profit director in Los Angeles, said her encounter with Weinstein took the form of an office tour that became an occasion to trap me in an empty meeting room. She said then Weinstein was begging for a massage, his hands on my shoulders as I attempted to beat a retreat.

In the same year, a model alleged Richardson has directed her to fellate him during a photo shoot when she was 19.

No criminal charges have ever been filed against Richardson.

He has openly talked about photo shoots getting wild and published pictures of sex acts, sometimes involving himself.

A collection of his work, called Kibosh, features pictures of Richardsons penis, as well as him receiving oral sex or ejaculating on a womans face.

Richardson and Conde Nast have both been contacted for comment.
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An undocumented teenager in federal custody has cleared a major hurdle in her fight to get an abortion, a right that the Trump administration has attempted to deny.

The US District Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, ruled that the US government is required to allow the 17-year-old to leave the facility shes being kept at after crossing the US-Mexico border last month order to get an abortion. The 17-year-old is approximately 15 weeks pregnant, and is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Every step of the way, the Trump administration has shown their true colours in this case. Its clear that their anti-woman, anti-abortion agenda is unchecked by basic decency or even the bounds of law, Brigitte Amiri, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement. No one should have to go to court to get a safe, legal abortion.

The young girl will now be able to get the abortion, unless the Trump administration decides to attempt to appeal the latest decision to the Supreme Court, which would have the final say if it chooses to hear the case.

The appeals court decision follows nearly a week after the ACLU first filed on behalf of the young woman, who is an unaccompanied minor currently being held in Texas at a federally funded shelter. After seeking out and being assigned a legal guardian  guardian approval is required for minors to get abortions in Texas  the government continued to refuse to transport, or allow anyone else to transport, her to an abortion facility.

They are holding her hostage to ensure that she does not have an abortion, but rather continues the pregnancy, and has a baby, against her will, the ACLU complaint reads.

People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Show all 16 1 /16 People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Theopolis Waters/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Washington, DC, U.S., February 16, 2017. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants, marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants AUSTIN, TX - FEBRUARY 16: Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Theopolis Waters/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants, marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants High school student Kathia Suarez holds up a sign as she protests with others outside the Grayson County courthouse in downtown Sherman, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. LM Otero/AP People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants High school senior Vicky Sosa holds a sign outside the Grayson County courthouse in downtown Sherman, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. In an action called "A Day Without Immigrants," immigrants across the country are expected to stay home from school, work and close businesses to show how critical they are to the U.S. economy and way of life. LM Otero/AP

The Justice Department argued that it was not required to pay for and transport Ms Doe for an abortion, and said that the US government has a significant and legitimate interest in refusing to be complicit in the abortion.

Ms Does right to an abortion was first upheld last week when US District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered it so, but that decision was immediately appealed by the Justice Department, sending it to a three-judge panel with the DC court of appeals. Those judges ruled two-to-one to put a hold on the abortion, and instead sought for a sponsor who could take custody of Jane Doe, and she would be free to get an abortion at that point.

The ACLU then filed an emergency motion asking all of the DC court to consider the case, leading to Tuesdays ruling. A majority of the full court then voted to reinstate the Chutkan order from last week.

That majority in the court did not issue an opinion, but most pointed to the dissenting opinion from the three-judge panel decision they were considering.

It is unclear why undocumented status should change everything. Surely the mere act of entry into the United States without documentation does not mean that an immigrants body is no longer her or his own. Nor can the sanction for unlawful entry be forcing a child to have a baby, Judge Patricia Millett wrote in that dissent. The bedrock protections of the Fifth Amendments Due Process Clause cannot be that shallow.
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Republican Senator Bob Corker has suggested Donald Trump is unfit for office and refused to say he trusts him with the nuclear codes, in an extraordinary series of denunciations of the President.

"I don't know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and debases our country," Mr Corker told CNN during an interview in the Capitol, marking an escalation in the rhetorical fight between the two. "He is obviously not going to rise to the occasion as President of the United States."

During the startling barbs, the Republican, who endorsed Mr Trump for president in 2016, said that he wouldn't make that same decision twice.

"No way," Mr Corker said when asked about supporting the President again. He said that Mr Trump isn't even a good role model for the nation's children: "No, absolutely not."

Wrapping up the interview, Mr Corker refused to say that he trusts Mr Trump with the nuclear codes, a grave responsibility held only by the President.

"I don't want to carry this much further, but I expressed concerns a few weeks ago about his leadership... and nothing has changed," Mr Corker said. "I don't want to make it a daily thing."

Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Show all 30 1 /30 Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Threatening to shut down Twitter after being fact-checked After the president tweeted that voting by post would be "substantially fraudulent", Twitter attached a warning label to his tweet and referred readers to a site which explained how the claim was "unsubstantiated". Trump then said Twitter was "stifling free speech" and that he may have to shut it down, something which he would not have the power to do AFP/Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Flippantly dismissing a serious allegation of sexual assault When author E Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her, the president responded: Number one, shes not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?" AFP/Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Insulting the Mayor of London as he landed in London Just before touching down at Stansted Airport for his state visit, Trump took time out to @ the London mayor Sadiq Khan on twitter. He said that Khan has done a "terrible job"as mayor and that he is a "stone cold loser" Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Taking plenty of "Executive Time" The president's official schedule sets aside the hours from 8 to 11am daily for "Executive Time". Further intermittent periods of "Executive Time" are scheduled throughout any given day, ranging from 15 minutes to 3 hours. His duties in these hours have not been officially disclosed, though Axios reports that he spends them watching TV, reading the newspapers and tweeting Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Shutdown the government for over a month in an effort to secure funding for his wall With Mexico declining to pay for the wall, the president has faced difficulty in raising the required $5bn at home. Due to his demand that the money for the wall be included in the budget, and Congress's refusal, the government partially shut down on 22 December 2018. It remained shut for over a month, the longest period in history Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Joking about the Nazi occupation of France to President Macron In this tweet from 13 November 2018, the president mocks Emmanuel Macron's suggestion of a "true, European army" by invoking the conflict between France and Germany in the world wars Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Railing against the Mueller investigation The president has repeatedly claimed that the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, is a "rigged witch hunt" Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Contradicting a US intelligence report on Russian meddling in the presence of Vladimir Putin In the press conference that followed his landmark meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Trump stated that he saw no reason why Russia would have meddled in the 2016 US election. This contradicted a 2017 report by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence that found evidence of Russian interference in favour of Trump Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Contradicting his contradiction of a US intelligence report on Russian meddling Following furious backlash in the US, the president claimed that he meant to say that he saw no reason why it would not have been Russia who meddled in the 2016 US election. As to why he would have intended to use such bizarre phrasing, he did not comment Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Colouring in the US flag wrong The president coloured in the US flag wrongly during a visit to a children's hospital in Columbus, Ohio. He added a blue stripe where in tradition, and statute, there have been only white and red stripes AFP/Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Firing a Secretary of State over Twitter The president announced on Twitter that he was appointing Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, much to the surprise of then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Quoting a catchphrase from a reality TV show when discussing police brutality While addressing the issue of black athletes not standing for the national anthem in protest of police brutality, the president made reference to his catchphrase from reality TV show "The Apprentice": you're fired! Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Calling African nations "S***hole Countries" Ever one for diplomacy, the president reportedly referred to African nations as "s***hole countries". Asked to confirm this when meeting with Nigeria's President Buhari, Trump stated that there are "some countries that are in very bad shape". Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Defending Russian President Vladimir Putin Trump appeared to equate US foreign actions to those of Russian president Vladimir Putin, saying: There are a lot of killers. You think our countrys so innocent? Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Asking for people to 'pray' for Arnold Schwarzenegger At the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump couldnt help but to ask for prayers for the ratings on Arnold Schwarzeneggers show to be good. Schwarzenegger took over as host of The Apprentice  which buoyed Trumps celebrity status years ago Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Hanging up on Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull Early in his presidency, Trump reportedly hung up the phone on Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull after the foreign leader angered him over refugee plans. Mr Trump later said that it was the worst call he had had so far Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... The 'Muslim ban' Perhaps one of his most controversial policies while acting as president, Trumps travel ban targeting predominantly Muslim countries has bought him a lot of criticism. The bans were immediately protested, and judges initially blocked their implementation. The Supreme Court later sided with the administrations argument that the ban was developed out of concern for US security Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Praising crowd size while touring Hurricane Harvey damage After Hurricane Harvey ravaged southeastern Texas, Trump paid the area a visit. While his response to the disaster in Houston was generally applauded, the president picked up some flack when he gave a speech outside Houston (he reportedly did not visit disaster zones), and praised the size of the crowds there AP Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... 'Little Rocket Man' During his first-ever speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump tried out a new nickname for North Korea leader Kim Jong-un: Rocket Man. He later tweaked it to be little Rocket Man as the two feuded, and threatened each other with nuclear war. During that speech, he also threatened to totally annihilate North Korea Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Attacking Sadiq Khan following London Bridge terror attack After the attack on the London Bridge, Trump lashed out at London Mayor Sadiq Khan, criticising Khan for saying there was no reason to be alarmed after the attack. Trump was taking the comments out of context, as Khan was simply saying that the police had everything under control Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Claiming presenter Mika Brezinkski was 'bleeding from the face' Never one not to mock his enemies, Trump mocked MSNBCs Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, saying that she and co-host Joe Scarborough had approached him before his inauguration asking to join him. He noted that she was bleeding badly from a face-lift at the time, and that he said no MSNBC Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Claiming the blame for Charlottesville was on 'both sides' Trump refused to condemn far-right extremists involved in violence at 'the march for the right' protests in Charlottesville, even after the murder of counter protester Heather Heyer AP Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Retweeting cartoon of CNN being hit by a 'Trump train' Trump retweeted a cartoon showing a Trump-branded train running over a person whose body and head were replaced by a CNN avatar. He later deleted the retweet Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Tweeting about 'slamming' CNN Trump caught some flack when he tweeted a video showing him wrestling down an individual whose head had been replaced by a CNN avatar. Trump has singled CNN out in particular with his chants of fake news Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Firing head of the FBI, James Comey Trumps firing of former FBI Director James Comey landed him with a federal investigation into Russias meddling in the 2016 election that has caused many a headache for the White House. The White House initially said that the decision was made after consultation from the Justice Department. Then Mr Trump himself said that he had decided to fire him in part because he wanted the Russia investigation Mr Comey was conducting to stop Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Not realising being president would be 'hard' Just three months into his presidency, Trump admitted that being president is harder than he thought it would be. Though Trump insisted on the 2016 campaign trail that doing the job would be easy for him, he admitted in an interview that living in the White House is harder than running a business empire Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Accusing Obama of wiretapping him Trump accused former president Barack Obama of wire tapping him on twitter. The Justice Department later clarified: Obama had not, in fact, done so Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Claiming there had been 3 million 'illegal votes' Trump was never very happy about losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million ballots. So, he and White House voter-fraud commissioner Kris Kobach have claimed that anywhere between three and five million people voted illegally during the 2016 election. Conveniently, he says that all of those illegal votes went to Clinton. (There is no evidence to support that level of widespread voter fraud.) Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Leaving Jews out of the Holocaust memorial statement Just days after taking office, Trumps White House issued a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but didnt mention jews or even the word jewish in the written statement Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Anger over Inauguration crowd size Trumps inauguration crowd was visibly, and noticeably, smaller than that of his predecessor, Barack Obama. But, he really wanted to have had the largest crowd on record. So, he praised it as the biggest crowd ever. Relatedly, Trump also claimed that it stopped raining in Washington at the moment he was inaugurated. It didnt, the day was very dreary Reuters

The comments came amid a flurry of attacks on Mr Corker by Mr Trump, who has charged that the Republican is only opposing him because he didn't support him for reelection. Mr Corker announced earlier this year that he will retire at the end of his current term, saying that he prefers the citizen legislator model to serving in the US Senate.

"Bob Corker, who helped President Obama give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts," Mr Trump wrote on Twitter. "Corker dropped out of the race in Tennessee when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!"

Mr Corker is the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, a prominent position he used to vocally oppose the Iran nuclear agreement negotiated by the Obama administration. While the Republican voted against approving the deal, and had pushed for legislation that would give Congress greater oversight on such deals, Mr Trump has attempted to paint the senator as a strong supporter of the nuclear agreement that released sanctions on Iran in exchange for Iran's cooperation with international nuclear oversight.

"Senator Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the US has done," Mr Trump tweeted following Mr Corker's remarks. "He doesn't have a clue as the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us. People like liddle' Bob Corker have set the US way back. Now we move forward!"

Mr Trump is scheduled to head to the Capitol later Tuesday for a lunch with Republicans, where he is expected to push for party unity.

That charge for unity comes after a series of embarrassing failures to repeal and replace Obamacare, a promise that Republicans have been making for seven years. With those legislative defeats behind them, Mr Trump and republicans in Congress are looking toward passing tax reforms.

The current tax deal being paraded in front of Republicans in Congress would cut taxes primarily for the wealthy in America, offsetting that funding loss with massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Those programs, which would lose nearly $1.5 trillion in funding over the next decade, would primarily effect low-income Americans and senior citizens. Those cuts could have dramatic effects, too: Medicaid provides a lifeline for over 70 million Americans, including children, the disabled, and senior citizens. That program, for instance, covers 60 per cent of those in nursing homes in America, meaning that some seniors could see their benefits slashed under the tax plan.
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Donald Trump has yet again taken to Twitter, this time to slam Senator Bob Corker, a fellow Republican, the same day he plans to ask for party unity on tax reform.

The President tweeted that Mr Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, helped President Barack Obama with the bad Iran deal.

He also said the Senator couldnt get elected dog catcher in his home state of Tennessee.

Mr Corker announced earlier this year that he will be retiring from politics before the next election in 2018 and Mr Trump tweeted that he made the decision based on the Presidents decision not to endorse him.

The President said the Senator, once an early ally of the real estate magnate, is now only negative on anything Trump.

The Twitter exchange is just the latest round of publicly exchanged barbs between the Oval Office and Mr Corker.

In another appearance early this morning on NBC's "Today" show, Mr Corker advised the President to leave well enough alone on the ongoing tax reform debate.

I think thats the best way for us to have success, said the Republican Senator.

He also went on CNN to say that he felt Mr Trump was "unable to rise to the occasion" as a leader and said that he will not support him in another bid for the Oval Office.

Mr Corker said he does not "know why [Mr Trump] lowers himself to such a low, low standard and debases our country in the way that he does, but he does."

Mincing no words the Tennesseean commented: "I think the debasing of our nation ... will be what he'll be remembered most for."

He had also previously said the White House was akin to an adult day care centre, implying Mr Trump is a child.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

"I dont make comments I havent thought about," he told ABC's "Good Morning America" in doubling down on the "day care" statement.

Specifically on foreign policy, the Mr Corker has criticised the Presidents use of Twitter to inflame tensions with North Korea, referring to leader Kim Jong-un as Rocket Man repeatedly and posting in a way that could be determined as fatalistic towards the use of military action against the isolated nation developing its nuclear weapons programme.

"The president undermines our Secretary of State, raises tensions in the area by virtue of the tweets that he sends out, and I would just like him to leave it to the professionals for a while and see if we can do something that's constructive for our country, the region and the world," Mr Corker told ABC News.

Mr Trump responded in kind by referring to Mr Corker as Liddle and said the Senator begged him for an endorsement for the next election.

Mr Corker has not tweeted using his official account since 24 September.

The President has tweeted his displeasure with many other politicians as well - most notably Hillary Clinton, whom he has referred to as "Crooked Hillary" on numerous occasions. Other targets of his ire include Republican Senator John McCain, Mr Obama, the NFL, Gold Star families who have lost military loved ones in action, and Democrats.

Mr Trump is going up to Capitol Hill this afternoon to ask for party unity on the administration's tax reform proposal.
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Democrats have denounced as a massive diversion from the Trump administrations alleged links to Russia, a decision by Republicans to launch investigations into the FBIs handling of a probe into Hillary Clinton.

The Republican chairmen of two House committees said they would jointly investigate the Department of Justices handling of a 2016 inquiry into Ms Clintons use of a private email server.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, said they had many questions about the way Ms Clinton dealt with classified information.

Former FBI director James Comey led the investigation into Ms Clinton use of a private email server (Getty Images)

Our justice system is represented by a blind-folded woman holding a set of scales. Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognise wealth, power, or social status, the congressmen said in a statement.

The impartiality of our justice system is the bedrock of our republic and our fellow citizens must have confidence in its objectivity, independence, and evenhandedness. No entity or individual is exempt from oversight.

In addition, Republican congressman Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he was to look into the details of a 2010 uranium deal with Russia, carried out while Barack Obama was president.

The FBI carried out an investigation into Ms Clintons private use of an email server while she was serving as Secretary of State.

 James Comey: Trump administration 'defamed' me and FBI with 'lies'

While the bureau was very critical of her behaviour, then FBI Director James Comey announced in the summer of 2016 he did not believe there were grounds for criminal prosecution.

The move angered many Republicans and critics of Ms Clinton, who believed that Mr Comeys decision was politically motivated. In October of that year, with the presidential election looming, Mr Comey told Congress he was reopening the matter because of new emails found on the computer of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Ms Clinton senior aide, Huma Abedin. On November 6, two days before voting, he said the search of Mr Weiners computer had found no new evidence.

Ms Clinton said she believed Mr Comey eve of election intervention had been a key factor in her surprise defeat to Donald Trump.

Sources point to FBI office in New York City for Hillary Clinton leaks Show all 8 1 /8 Sources point to FBI office in New York City for Hillary Clinton leaks Sources point to FBI office in New York City for Hillary Clinton leaks NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 4: A view of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a field office on the 23rd floor, November 4, 2016 in New York City. FBI Director James Comey informed Congress last Friday that his agency was taking steps to review newly discovered emails relating to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary ClintonAs private email server. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Getty Sources point to FBI office in New York City for Hillary Clinton leaks NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 4: A view of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a field office on the 23rd floor, November 4, 2016 in New York City. FBI Director James Comey informed Congress last Friday that his agency was taking steps to review newly discovered emails relating to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary ClintonOs private email server. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Getty Sources point to FBI office in New York City for Hillary Clinton leaks NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 4: A view of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a field office on the 23rd floor, November 4, 2016 in New York City. FBI Director James Comey informed Congress last Friday that his agency was taking steps to review newly discovered emails relating to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary ClintonOs private email server. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Getty Sources point to FBI office in New York City for Hillary Clinton leaks NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 4: A view of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a field office on the 23rd floor, November 4, 2016 in New York City. FBI Director James Comey informed Congress last Friday that his agency was taking steps to review newly discovered emails relating to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary ClintonOs private email server. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Getty Sources point to FBI office in New York City for Hillary Clinton leaks NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 4: A view of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a field office on the 23rd floor, November 4, 2016 in New York City. FBI Director James Comey informed Congress last Friday that his agency was taking steps to review newly discovered emails relating to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary ClintonOs private email server. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Getty Sources point to FBI office in New York City for Hillary Clinton leaks NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 4: A view of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a field office on the 23rd floor, November 4, 2016 in New York City. FBI Director James Comey informed Congress last Friday that his agency was taking steps to review newly discovered emails relating to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary ClintonAs private email server. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Getty Sources point to FBI office in New York City for Hillary Clinton leaks NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 4: A view of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a field office on the 23rd floor, November 4, 2016 in New York City. FBI Director James Comey informed Congress last Friday that his agency was taking steps to review newly discovered emails relating to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary ClintonAs private email server. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Getty Sources point to FBI office in New York City for Hillary Clinton leaks NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 4: A view of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, where the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has a field office on the 23rd floor, November 4, 2016 in New York City. FBI Director James Comey informed Congress last Friday that his agency was taking steps to review newly discovered emails relating to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary ClintonAs private email server. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Getty

If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president, she told a womens conference in May.

It wasnt a perfect campaign, but I was on the way to winning until a combination of Comeys letter and Russian WikiLeaks. The reason why I believe we lost were the intervening events in the last 10 days.

A number of commentators suggested the flurry of Republican action was an effort to distract from the ongoing federal investigation, headed by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russias alleged efforts to interfere in the presidential election.

Democrats reacted by casting the moves in such terms.

This new investigation is a massive diversion to distract from the lack of Republican oversight of the Trump administration and the national security threat that Russia poses, Democratic congressmen Elijah Cummings and John Conyers said in a statement.

Apparently, House Republicans are more concerned about Jim Comey than Vladimir Putin.
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In an extraordinary day of Republican infighting, Republican Senator Jeff Flake announced that he will not seek re-election as a protest against President Donald Trump's behaviour.

Mr Flake - himself a frequent target of the President's personal jibes  delivered a strong rebuke to his own party for letting Mr Trump get away with reckless, outrageous and undignified behaviour.

The announcement came after Mr Trump spent much of the day trading insults with senior Republican Senator Bob Corker, mostly via Twitter. Mr Corker has previously said that he too will not run again in 2018.

In a passionate speech on the Senate floor, Mr Flake announced: I rise today to say: Enough. We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that the anomalous never becomes normal.

We must never regard as 'normal' the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals, he added. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country - the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve.

Recommended Trump hits back again at Republican Senator Bob Corker as feud deepens

With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and several other party colleagues in attendance, the Arizona senator said he has children and grandchildren to answer to, and so I will not be complicit or silent over the actions of Mr Trump.

We must stop pretending that the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. They are not normal, Mr Flake declared. When the next generation asks us, why didnt you do something? Why didnt you speak up? What are we going to say?

Earlier, Mr Corker lambasted the President's tendency to disregard facts, saying Mr Trump has great difficulty with the truth.

Mr Trump responded to Mr Corker's comments on Twitter, writing: Sen Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the US has done.

During a news conference, Mr McConnell refused to weigh in on the spat and shrugged off questions about their ongoing quarrel by saying Republicans are unified behind passing tax reform.

But Mr Flake's decision to retire rather than seek re-election puts him on what appears to be a growing list of senators who have nothing to lose by opposing Mr Trump. This will make it harder for the President to wield any influence to get his legislative priorities passed in the 100-member Senate, where Republicans have a narrow 52-seat majority.

After Mr Flake finished his speech, which garnered a standing ovation from some of his colleagues, Mr McConnell and fellow Arizona Senator John McCain lauded the Mr Flake as a very fine man and a man of integrity, honour and decency, respectively. Mr McCain, who himself has increasingly voiced his misgivings about several of Mr Trump's policies and objectives, also hugged Mr Flake.

Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Show all 30 1 /30 Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Threatening to shut down Twitter after being fact-checked After the president tweeted that voting by post would be "substantially fraudulent", Twitter attached a warning label to his tweet and referred readers to a site which explained how the claim was "unsubstantiated". Trump then said Twitter was "stifling free speech" and that he may have to shut it down, something which he would not have the power to do AFP/Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Flippantly dismissing a serious allegation of sexual assault When author E Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her, the president responded: Number one, shes not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?" AFP/Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Insulting the Mayor of London as he landed in London Just before touching down at Stansted Airport for his state visit, Trump took time out to @ the London mayor Sadiq Khan on twitter. He said that Khan has done a "terrible job"as mayor and that he is a "stone cold loser" Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Taking plenty of "Executive Time" The president's official schedule sets aside the hours from 8 to 11am daily for "Executive Time". Further intermittent periods of "Executive Time" are scheduled throughout any given day, ranging from 15 minutes to 3 hours. His duties in these hours have not been officially disclosed, though Axios reports that he spends them watching TV, reading the newspapers and tweeting Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Shutdown the government for over a month in an effort to secure funding for his wall With Mexico declining to pay for the wall, the president has faced difficulty in raising the required $5bn at home. Due to his demand that the money for the wall be included in the budget, and Congress's refusal, the government partially shut down on 22 December 2018. It remained shut for over a month, the longest period in history Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Joking about the Nazi occupation of France to President Macron In this tweet from 13 November 2018, the president mocks Emmanuel Macron's suggestion of a "true, European army" by invoking the conflict between France and Germany in the world wars Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Railing against the Mueller investigation The president has repeatedly claimed that the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, is a "rigged witch hunt" Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Contradicting a US intelligence report on Russian meddling in the presence of Vladimir Putin In the press conference that followed his landmark meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Trump stated that he saw no reason why Russia would have meddled in the 2016 US election. This contradicted a 2017 report by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence that found evidence of Russian interference in favour of Trump Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Contradicting his contradiction of a US intelligence report on Russian meddling Following furious backlash in the US, the president claimed that he meant to say that he saw no reason why it would not have been Russia who meddled in the 2016 US election. As to why he would have intended to use such bizarre phrasing, he did not comment Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Colouring in the US flag wrong The president coloured in the US flag wrongly during a visit to a children's hospital in Columbus, Ohio. He added a blue stripe where in tradition, and statute, there have been only white and red stripes AFP/Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Firing a Secretary of State over Twitter The president announced on Twitter that he was appointing Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, much to the surprise of then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Quoting a catchphrase from a reality TV show when discussing police brutality While addressing the issue of black athletes not standing for the national anthem in protest of police brutality, the president made reference to his catchphrase from reality TV show "The Apprentice": you're fired! Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Calling African nations "S***hole Countries" Ever one for diplomacy, the president reportedly referred to African nations as "s***hole countries". Asked to confirm this when meeting with Nigeria's President Buhari, Trump stated that there are "some countries that are in very bad shape". Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Defending Russian President Vladimir Putin Trump appeared to equate US foreign actions to those of Russian president Vladimir Putin, saying: There are a lot of killers. You think our countrys so innocent? Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Asking for people to 'pray' for Arnold Schwarzenegger At the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump couldnt help but to ask for prayers for the ratings on Arnold Schwarzeneggers show to be good. Schwarzenegger took over as host of The Apprentice  which buoyed Trumps celebrity status years ago Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Hanging up on Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull Early in his presidency, Trump reportedly hung up the phone on Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull after the foreign leader angered him over refugee plans. Mr Trump later said that it was the worst call he had had so far Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... The 'Muslim ban' Perhaps one of his most controversial policies while acting as president, Trumps travel ban targeting predominantly Muslim countries has bought him a lot of criticism. The bans were immediately protested, and judges initially blocked their implementation. The Supreme Court later sided with the administrations argument that the ban was developed out of concern for US security Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Praising crowd size while touring Hurricane Harvey damage After Hurricane Harvey ravaged southeastern Texas, Trump paid the area a visit. While his response to the disaster in Houston was generally applauded, the president picked up some flack when he gave a speech outside Houston (he reportedly did not visit disaster zones), and praised the size of the crowds there AP Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... 'Little Rocket Man' During his first-ever speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Trump tried out a new nickname for North Korea leader Kim Jong-un: Rocket Man. He later tweaked it to be little Rocket Man as the two feuded, and threatened each other with nuclear war. During that speech, he also threatened to totally annihilate North Korea Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Attacking Sadiq Khan following London Bridge terror attack After the attack on the London Bridge, Trump lashed out at London Mayor Sadiq Khan, criticising Khan for saying there was no reason to be alarmed after the attack. Trump was taking the comments out of context, as Khan was simply saying that the police had everything under control Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Claiming presenter Mika Brezinkski was 'bleeding from the face' Never one not to mock his enemies, Trump mocked MSNBCs Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, saying that she and co-host Joe Scarborough had approached him before his inauguration asking to join him. He noted that she was bleeding badly from a face-lift at the time, and that he said no MSNBC Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Claiming the blame for Charlottesville was on 'both sides' Trump refused to condemn far-right extremists involved in violence at 'the march for the right' protests in Charlottesville, even after the murder of counter protester Heather Heyer AP Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Retweeting cartoon of CNN being hit by a 'Trump train' Trump retweeted a cartoon showing a Trump-branded train running over a person whose body and head were replaced by a CNN avatar. He later deleted the retweet Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Tweeting about 'slamming' CNN Trump caught some flack when he tweeted a video showing him wrestling down an individual whose head had been replaced by a CNN avatar. Trump has singled CNN out in particular with his chants of fake news Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Firing head of the FBI, James Comey Trumps firing of former FBI Director James Comey landed him with a federal investigation into Russias meddling in the 2016 election that has caused many a headache for the White House. The White House initially said that the decision was made after consultation from the Justice Department. Then Mr Trump himself said that he had decided to fire him in part because he wanted the Russia investigation Mr Comey was conducting to stop Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Not realising being president would be 'hard' Just three months into his presidency, Trump admitted that being president is harder than he thought it would be. Though Trump insisted on the 2016 campaign trail that doing the job would be easy for him, he admitted in an interview that living in the White House is harder than running a business empire Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Accusing Obama of wiretapping him Trump accused former president Barack Obama of wire tapping him on twitter. The Justice Department later clarified: Obama had not, in fact, done so Reuters Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Claiming there had been 3 million 'illegal votes' Trump was never very happy about losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million ballots. So, he and White House voter-fraud commissioner Kris Kobach have claimed that anywhere between three and five million people voted illegally during the 2016 election. Conveniently, he says that all of those illegal votes went to Clinton. (There is no evidence to support that level of widespread voter fraud.) Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Leaving Jews out of the Holocaust memorial statement Just days after taking office, Trumps White House issued a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but didnt mention jews or even the word jewish in the written statement Getty Donald Trump's least presidential moments so far... Anger over Inauguration crowd size Trumps inauguration crowd was visibly, and noticeably, smaller than that of his predecessor, Barack Obama. But, he really wanted to have had the largest crowd on record. So, he praised it as the biggest crowd ever. Relatedly, Trump also claimed that it stopped raining in Washington at the moment he was inaugurated. It didnt, the day was very dreary Reuters

Mr McCain, diagnosed with brain cancer earlier this year, just this past week questioned half-baked, spurious nationalism in Americas current foreign policy.

Mr Flake first made his plans to retire known to the Arizona Republic, telling the newspaper: There may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party.

The junior senator has long been critical of Mr Trump and has frequently clashed with the President on issues such as immigration and international trade.

Mr Flake is among the Senate's Republican advocates for comprehensive immigration reform, and he is a faithful defender of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the President has threatened to withdraw from unless Canada and Mexico agree to significant alterations of the accord. Mr Flake also denounced Mr Trump throughout the presidential campaign.

The Arizona legislator noted in his book released earlier this year how Mr Trump at a summer 2016 meeting predicted that their differences would cost Mr Flake his seat in the Senate.

You've been very critical of me, Mr Trump told Mr Flake, according to the senator.

Mr Flake was already going to have a tough fight to re-win his seat in next year's election. Polls showed him to be unpopular in Arizona.

During a White House briefing, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that she hadnt spoken to Mr Trump about the senator's decision.

But I think that, based on previous statements and certainly based on the lack of support that he has from the people of Arizona, its probably a good move, she said.
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Twitter has pledged to publish more information about political spots and other advertisements, a policy change that reflects deepening concerns about how paid content affected the 2016 election.

With congressional investigators exploring how Russia projected its influence through social media during the last election, Twitter and other prominent companies are under intensifying pressure to explain how they monitor advertisements that appear before millions of users.

Sen Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee chastised Twitter in biting terms for a presentation on Russian interference he called inadequate on almost every level. Legislators have introduced a bill that would compel Twitter and others to disclose information about political ad buys, and executives have been summoned to testify in Congress next week.

Days before it plans to dispatch a representative to Capitol Hill, Twitter announced that it would be launching a hub for advertising information that describes all ads running on the platform.

More stringent disclosure rules will now apply to political ads that directly refer to a candidate or political party, Twitter said. Those tweets will now carry distinct visual features that announce theyre paid political content, and Twitter will publish information about who paid - and how much - for political campaigns.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

It was less clear what Twitter intended to do with issue-based ads that do not specifically identify a candidate. Campaign finance rules allow much more leeway in the murkily defined area of such advertisements, which can carry a political message without expressly supporting or opposing office-seekers. Groups can spend unlimited sums on such ads.

There is currently no clear industry definition for issue-based ads but we will work with our peer companies, other industry leaders, policy makers, and ad partners to clearly define them quickly and integrate them into the new approach mentioned above, Twitter said in a blog post detailing the new rules.

 Facebook previews new feature that show political party responses to news articles

Some of the social media advertisements that have alarmed Congress did not mention specific candidates. Among the thousands of Facebook ads that flowed from Russian-linked fake accounts were messages that sought to stir social strife by fanning debate over divisive issues.

In embracing broader disclosure guidelines, Twitter moved to define what it releases on its own terms rather than await new rules from Congress. The companys blog post referenced the new bill disclosing more online ad disclosure but did not take a position, saying We look forward to engaging with Members of Congress and other key stakeholders on these issues as the legislative process continues.

But if Twitter was hoping to forestall a legislative push, it didn't convince one of the new bill's authors. Sen Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said in a statement that Twitter's changes were no substitute for updating our laws.

If Twitter is an advocate for this type of transparency and accountability, Ms Klobuchar said, I look forward to its support of my bipartisan legislation.
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A woman reportedly burned down her ex-boyfriends house in a row over a teddy bear, then chased him with a knife before stabbing a police officer who tried to protect him.

Brittany Bonin, 26, flew into a rage when demanding Michael Demalia return a stuffed animal she had given his 18-month-old daughter Natalie, his sister Jacqueline said.

After an exchange of words at the door of the house in Edgewater, Florida, she pushed her way past, charged down the hall and set fire to the childs crib.

Ms Bonin reportedly then ransacked the house  including smashing a 90-gallon fishtank which flooded the property  before chasing Mr Demalia with a knife.

He fled across the road to a neighbour  off-duty deputy Captain Cliff Williams  who stood between the pair, but Ms Bonin allegedly stabbed him as he tried to defend Mr Demalia.

His sister Jacqueline said the row started when Ms Bonin turned up at his front door and demanded that he return the teddy she had given to his daughter.

She told the WFTV 9 abc news TV channel: He had it in his hand and gave it to her, and thats when she pushed her way through the door and attacked him.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Ms Demalia said Ms Bonin then charged down the hall and into the room where Mr Demalias daughter Natalie slept, saying: She set a fire in the crib.

Images showed the cot blackened from flames among the damage Ms Bonin allegedly caused at the house. The child was not at home.

Sheriff Mike Chitwood said that Ms Bonin stabbed Captain Williams when he tried to shield Mr Demalia when Ms Bonin tried to attack him with a knife.

Sheriff Chitwood, in a report on WFTV 9 abc, said: It just goes to show you are never truly off duty. He took a knife wound that was meant for someone else because his instinct was to step in as a protector.

Captain Williams suffered injuries that were not life-threatening, officials said.

Standing amid the debris at Mr Demalia's house, his sister Jacqueline pointed to a stuffed animal and said: She set this house on fire over this teddy bear.

She added: Were going to get him a new home, a fresh start and as fast as we possibly can.

Ms Bonin faces charges of assault, battery and arson, police said. She was held in custody on remand and is due to appear before court.
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Russia is preparing to test-launch its new generation of nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which it has claimed will be able to penetrate the US defensive shield.

Delayed several times, the tests of the RS-28s launch and first few seconds of flight are to be carried out at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, in Russias north-west, before the end of the year.

The trials had been postponed because launch silos and the projectiles themselves were not ready, according to the state-controlled Sputnik website, which cited the Kommersant newspaper.

The RS-28 Sarmat, a 100-plus-ton ICBM that government-controlled media has claimed could destroy an area the size of Texas, is designed to evade missile defences with multiple hypersonic warheads, known as MIRVs.

Talking up its capabilities, state-linked Russian sites have claimed an 11,000km range, a payload of up to 15 warheads and the ability to speed past every missile defence system in existence.

RIA Novosti said individual warheads could have yields up to 750kt and that RS-28 launch silos would be built to withstand seven nuclear strikes.

Outside sources cast doubt on some of these specifications. RIA said the new missile will have a throw weight  the mass of all components minus fuel and the launch rocket  of five tons.

But Michael Kofman, a research scientist from the Centre for Naval Analyses, told The National Interest earlier this year: If RIA is right, and it probably is not right, how do you fit a payload of 10 warheads and tons of decoys into five tons?

There are large questions outstanding about conflicting claims about throw-weight, warheads and penetration aids.

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

Russia expects the RS-28 to enter service by the beginning of the next decade as part of its ongoing nuclear modernisation.

Reports of the planned tests emerged after US President Donald Trump called for total rehabilitation of Americas nuclear forces.

He had denied reports he was seeking a 10-fold increase in the US arsenal, saying instead he wanted modernisation.

In 2010 the US and Russia signed the New START treaty, which mandated a significant reduction in deployed strategic nuclear weapons.

The US military said it carried out a successful test of its ground-based missile interception system, called THAAD, earlier this year amid growing tension with North Korea. It also test-launched an unarmed Cold War-era Minuteman III ICBM from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Pyongyang has claimed it now possesses ballistic missiles capable of targeting the US mainland.
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Lawyers acting for the daughter of a Ukrainian oligarch who killed five people and injured six in a car crash are reportedly working with the victims families on a possible compensation package, which could see the driver avoid jail.

Alyona Zaitseva, 20, left five people dead when she allegedly jumped a red light while driving at 60mph before crashing into a Volkswagen and pedestrians at a crossroads, flipping her own car over.

The crash, in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, happened on Wednesday last week.

Ms Zaitseva, the daughter of energy producer Ukrenergochormet's CEO Vasily Zaitsev, could face up to 10 years in jail, the MailOnline reports, and has been detained for two months until her trial.

Local media report that Ms Zaitsevas driving history shows a string of minor offences.

Lawyers acting for Ms Zaitseva are reportedly working with the victims families, a legal expert told Vesti Ukraine TV.

Ivan Liberman told the TV channel the purpose of this move could be to help Ms Zaitseva avoid jail by arranging compensation for the victims.

Unfortunately, money can shut many mouths here, he said.

Both injured people and relatives of the deceased can go to a notary office and sign statements that they received compensation and dont have any claims against the driver, he added.

He added that he has seen a previous case where $1.5m (1.1m) was paid out in compensation.

The damaged car at the scene of the road accident in Kharkiv (EPA)

Ms Zaitseva said of the crash: I am sorry that this situation happened and people suffered, The Daily Mirror reported.

It is only this that truly concerns me now.

I am hoping that the families will allow my parents to help them.

Local news site dozor.kharkov.ua received a statement from Ms Zaitsevas family, which read: We are on our knees asking forgiveness for our daughter from the relatives of those who died and were injured in this terrible accident.

All that we can do for the families of the dead, we will do. We have raised funds and are ready to provide all possible financial assistance. This is a terrible grief and there are no words to express the feelings of losing loved ones.

People lay flowers and light candles at the scene of the accident (EPA)

The statement added: We hope that the court will deal with this terrible accident, since there were two participants and two cars. We will take any fair decision of the court. This is a terrible grief for those people affected and for us.

Reports suggest that the status of the Volkswagen driver who was hit in the crash may change in the investigation from that of a witness to a suspect.

Regional police chief Oleg Bekh said: I do not exclude it that as soon as we get hold of all the data his status in this criminal investigation will be changed, The Mirror reported.

The funerals of the four women and one man who were killed in the incident are being held by relatives.
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Austrias conservatives and far-right will hold coalition negotiations with the aim of forming a new joint government, the two sides confirmed on Monday.

Sebastian Kurz, leader of the OVP, which won the most votes in last weeks elections, announced on Monday he would invite the FPO into government ahead of his other possible coalition partner, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPO).

Mr Kurz, Austrias youngest would-be Chancellor, announced on Monday that he had decided to invite Heinz-Christian Strache and the FPO today to take part in coalition talks.

Recommended Austria elects youngest leader in lurch to the right

He added that the two parties had shown a will to bring about change in Austria together.

Mr Strache, who leads the party which was founded in the 1950s by former Nazi officers, confirmed he would enter talks with the OVP  but said any government would have to implement his partys policies.

Being part of the government is not an end in itself, and only makes sense if we can implement our correct and important policies, he said. Therefore no one should think that we will make it easy for the OVP.

Mr Kurz has said his government will be pro-EU and not take on the eurosceptic policies of the FPO  meaning the two parties will have to find other common ground to cooperate on.

This raises the prospect that the government might adopt some of the FPOs anti-Muslim proposals, block refugees from travelling to Europe and crack down on people seeking asylum.

Mr Kurz has already moved his party hard to the right on immigration, leaving little space between the two groups.

The FPO wants laws to stop Islamic symbols being displayed in public  going beyond existing bans on veils, which Austria has already implemented. It says these rules could be modelled on existing laws banning Nazi symbols that were introduced after World War II.

The party says that Islam has no place in Austria.

If the talks fail, the FPO could do a deal with the Social Democrats, which ahead of this election dropped a longstanding policy of not doing deals with the far-right.

The last time the FPO entered government, in 2000, other EU states briefly imposed diplomatic sanctions on Austria with the aim of forcing the extremists from government.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The sanctions were short-lived, however, after warnings that they could be counter-productive and stoke up nationalist sentiment in the country.

Mr Kurzs conservative OVP won 31.5 per cent of the vote, while the centre-left SPO came second with 26.9 per cent. The FPO came third with 26 per cent.

Before the election, the OVP and SPO were in a grand coalition  but that government collapsed amid acrimony earlier in the year.
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Catalonia has said it is confident police, firefighters and teachers will defy attempts by Madrid to enforce direct rule on the region.

The Spanish government has invoked special constitutional powers to fire the regional government and force elections to counter a push for independence, with a vote in the national Senate to implement direct rule due on Friday.

"It's not that we will refuse [orders]. It is not a personal decision. It is a seven million-person decision," Catalonia's foreign affairs chief Raul Romeva told BBC radio.

Mr Romeva was asked whether he believed all institutions, including the police, would follow orders from Catalan institutions rather than obey the Spanish government.

"I have no doubt that all civil servants in Catalonia will keep following the instructions provided by the elected and legitimate institutions that we have right now in place [in Catalonia]," he replied.

 Catalan leader: Democratically deciding our future is not a crime

Civil disobedience has also been supported by the far-left Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) party, a key supporter of Catalonia's pro-independence minority government in the regional parliament, which has called Madrid's actions the aggression against all Catalans since the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.

"An aggression which will be met with massive civil disobedience," the CUP said in a statement.

Several hundred Catalan municipalities said they were against direct rule from Madrid and asked the Catalan parliament to vote on a motion rejecting it.

Separatists have said they are planning a human shield around the regional government's headquarters in Barcelona to block any attempts by Madrid to take control of the region, Bloomberg reports.

Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Show all 17 1 /17 Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters A man faces off Spanish Civil Guards outside a polling station in Sant Julia de Ramis Reuters Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Riot police form a security cordon around the Ramon Llull school in Barcelona EPA Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Riot police evict a young woman during clashes between people gathered outside the Ramon Llull school in Barcelona EPA Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Spanish Civil Guard officers break through a door at a polling station in Sant Julia de Ramis Reuters Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Spanish National Police clash with pro-referendum supporters in Barcelona on Sunday AP Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Crowds raise their arms up as police move in on members of the public gathered outside to prevent them from voting in the referendum at a polling station where the President Carles Puigdemunt will vote later today Getty Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters People confront Spanish Civil Guard officers outside a polling station Reuters Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Three man hold each other as they try to block a Spanish police van from approaching a polling station AP Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters A woman shows a ballot to a Spanish Civil Guard officer outside a polling station Reuters Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters A man wearing a shirt with an Estelada (Catalan separatist flag) and holding carnations faces off with a Spanish Civil Guard officer Reuters Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Police try to control the area as people attempt to cast their ballot at a polling station in Barcelona Getty Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters A man is grabbed by officers as police move in on the crowds Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Two women argue with a Spanish National policeman during clashes between Catalan pro-independence people and police forces at the Sant Julia de Ramis sports centre in Girona EPA Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Sant Julia De Ramis in Spain Getty Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Confrontation outside a polling station in Barcelona, where police have tried to stop people voting AFP/Getty Images Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters A Spanish National Police officer aims a rubber-bullet rifle at pro-referendum supporters in Barcelona AP Catalonia independence referendum: Riot police clash with voters Riot police clashed with voters as polls opened in Barcelona Sky News

Some teachers and firemen also said they would not recognise Spain's authority.

"We will not recognise as valid interlocutors those people who are not representatives of popular legitimacy," the teachers' union USTEC said in a statement.

"We will be where we should be in this moment: with the Catalan institutions and with democracy as it fights for its survival."

Pro-independence students also called for a strike in Catalan universities on Thursday to urge authorities to push ahead with a declaration of independence and defend the region's institutions.

People pass in front of graffiti reading "Freedom for Catalonia" in Barcelona (AP)

Spain has said it would fire top Catalan officials if they did not comply with orders but it has remained vague on how it plans to implement direct rule if lower ranking civil servants decide not to follow instructions.

Around 4,000 national police who had been shipped in for the referendum have remained in Catalonia. This comes on top of 5,000 state police already based in the region.

They usually act as a back-up to Catalonia's own 17,000-strong police force, the Mossos d'Esquadra, though they have also been seen reinforcing security at some official buildings in Catalonia's capital Barcelona.

Carles Puigdemont joined thousands at a march to protest against Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoys speech (AP)

Catalan president Carles Puigdemont has called the Catalan parliament to meet this week to agree on a response to Madrid, something many observers said could pave the way for a formal declaration of independence.

Additional reporting by agencies
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A manhunt is underway in Germany after a two-year-old girl was found murdered in her family home.

Police said the girl, who has not been named, had suffered a neck injury, with local media reporting her throat had been slit.

The father of the child was not found in the home and is strongly suspected of the crime, a spokesperson added.

The 33-year-old suspect is on the run and an urgent manhunt is underway.

The girls body was discovered when police visited the family home in the Neugraben district of Hamburg after the girls 32-year-old mother pressed charges over threats and intimidation.

Police returned to her home with her with the intention of giving the husband a restraining order on Monday evening.

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. 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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. 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Officers entered the home alone and found the lifeless body of the two-year-old daughterwith a neck injury, a spokesperson said.

The mother suffered from shock and received medical treatment alongside her son.

Police said the family were Pakistani but gave no further information as the investigation continues.


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The Russian foreign ministry has called on the Ukrainian and Polish governments to stop the vandalism of Soviet era war memorials and cemeteries.

Speaking to the Federal Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministrys Consulate Department Alexei Utkin said they were paying special attention to protecting Russian and Soviet military gravesites abroad.

He said they had made progress coming to agreements with several different countries such as China and Bulgaria on protecting the sites but were calling on Kiev to clearly indicate the inadmissibility of the recent spate of vandalism, state news agency Tass reported.

At the time the Soviet war graves were constructed after the Second World War, many were then within the territory of the USSR, such as those in Ukraine, or part of its sphere of influence, like Poland as well as in the countries where the soldiers died such as Germany.

After the collapse of the USSR, 15 states across Europe and Asia declared independence and many others behind the Iron Curtain deposed their communist governments.

In recent years Moscow has tried to regain influence over its neighbours and many in the country do not recognise the view of the international community that its annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a foreign invasion as they regard Ukraine as part of a greater Russia.

It has repeatedly denied any involvement with the rebels in the Donetsk region of Ukraine who declared independence after protests in Kiev saw the overthrow of Ukraines Kremlin-backed former President Viktor Yanukovych but is believed to be arming them and providing some military support.

But this assertiveness has angered the governments of many eastern European states such as Poland who have turned to Nato for support as Russia caries out war games on their borders.

US army tanks arrived in Poland for the first time by sea last month as part of what the US military calls its continuing "heel-to-toe" rota of its forces across eastern Europe to provide support to its Nato allies.

The Ukraine frontline  in pictures Show all 6 1 /6 The Ukraine frontline  in pictures The Ukraine frontline  in pictures A Ukrainian serviceman rests on the frontline in Shyrokyne, Ukraine. The sea side resort on the Azov seashore has been reduced to rubble after two and half years of artillery fire between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces Pierre Crom/Getty The Ukraine frontline  in pictures A Ukrainian serviceman walks in Shyrokyne Pierre Crom/Getty Images The Ukraine frontline  in pictures Camouflage netting and a Ukrainian flag in Shyrokyne Pierre Crom/Getty Images The Ukraine frontline  in pictures A warning board warns local fishers of the dangers of sea mines on the Azov sea Pierre Crom/Getty Images The Ukraine frontline  in pictures A Ukrainian serviceman patrols Pierre Crom/Getty Images The Ukraine frontline  in pictures A dog walking in an abandoned former movie theater Pierre Crom/Getty Images

Although this movement was not a sign of increased militarisation of the border or signs that it was about to launch an attack, it coincided with the beginning of Russia's "Zapad" war games over the border in Belarus.

On Monday, Warsaw announced it would commit to increasing its defence spending to at least 2.5 per cent of GDP, far higher than the two per cent required of Nato members, as a sign that it was becoming more concerned about its military strength.

In his address to the Federal Council's Committee on Foreign Relations, Mr Utkin singled out the Polish government as a cause for concern over the future of the war graves, noting the Polish parliament has recently passed a law banning communist propaganda in the country.

"The Foreign Ministry has worked out a set of systemic measures approved by the Russian president to counteract Polands hostile policy in order to prevent further damage to our monuments and cemeteries on this countrys soil", he said.
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A British man who travelled to Syria to fight against Isis has been killed by an explosion in the terrorist groups former capital of Raqqa.

Jac Holmes, a 24-year-old former IT worker and decorator from Bournemouth, had no military experience before he joined the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) in January 2015.

Friends told The Independent he died while clearing an area of mines to make it safe for returning civilians, in a cruel twist after surviving years of frontline battles retaking key strongholds from Isis across Syria.

Recommended British man who fought against Isis dies clearing landmines

Mr Holmess mother, Angie Blannin, described him as a hero adding: He loved what he was doing there, he loved being a soldier. He had the courage of his convictions.

He was just a boy when he left the UK, a little bit lost. He told me he didnt know what he wanted to do with his life.

But by going out there, he found something that he was good at and that he loved.

Ms Blannin told the BBC the family believed her son would be home for Christmas after surviving the worst of the fighting that drove Isis out of Raqqa.

Jac Holmes (far left), a 24-year-old YPG volunteer from Bournemouth, was part of an anti-Isis sniper team in Raqqa (Instagram)

But the terrorist group left the city, like its other lost strongholds, littered with mines, booby-traps and explosives rigged to kill opposition fighters and civilians returning to their homes.

Kurdish officials told Ms Blannin her son had been clearing mines, she said, adding: It is all a bit sketchy but I am guessing he stepped on a landmine or one went off close to him, or it was a suicide vest.

Ms Blannin said that when her son first said he wanted to go and fight Isis she was completely shocked and thought she may be able to change his mind, but grew to support his resolve.

And he had a sense of doing something for the greater good, she added. He was a boy when he went, but my God, he definitely died a man and I am extremely proud of him. All my family are incredibly proud.

During three tours with the YPG up until his death, his mother said he had fought in every major battle, being surrounded by Isis fighters but escaping with a gunshot wound to his arm and three cracked ribs.

The Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) confirmed his death with a statement saying: British YPG fighter Jac Holmes has lost his life in the fight against Isil [Isis] in Syria.

Mr Holmes, who used the war name Sores Amanos, had been part of the YPGs 223 sniper team, appearing in videos and images chronicling their operations on social media.

He had posted photos from Raqqa on social media earlier on Monday, with photos from the citys main stadium showing hundreds of civilians and members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (YPG) present.

Mr Holmes was seen inspecting tunnels, Isis jail cells, shooting ranges and a gym.

Kimmie Taylor, a British volunteer with the Kurdish Womens Protection Units (YPG), said she felt broken by his death.

Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Show all 8 1 /8 Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters celebrate victory in Raqqa atop of military vehicles REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces march past destroyed buildings as they celebrate victory REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces gesture the "V" sign in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces evacuate a civilian from the stadium REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures A civilian prays after she was rescued by fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces from the stadium REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters ride atop of military vehicles as they celebrate victory in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters celebrate victory in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures A fighter of Syrian Democratic Forces celebrates in Raqqa Reuters

You were the best of us, she wrote in a Facebook tribute. Everybody who knew you is numb at your loss and is sharing the agony of your family. A chunk of my heart was taken yesterday.

Ms Taylor said Mr Holmes died while deactivating an IED, adding: Here in Rojava you became the man you were meant to be; a hardcore warrior, a hero, an example to all of what friendship and solidarity means. I will never forget your charm, your jokes, your smile, our time together.

The friends, along with former finance worker Macer Gifford, are among the British volunteers who travelled to Syria to fight against Isis alongside Kurdish groups.

Michael Enright, an actor who had a role in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest, was recently filmed playing an Ariana Grande song in Raqqa as a tribute to the Manchester attack victims.

Mr Holmess death brings the number of recruits from the UK killed to six, following Mehmet Aksoy, Luke Rutter, Ryan Lock, Dean Evans and Erik Konstandinos Scurfield.

Mark Campbell, co-chair of the Kurdistan Solidarity Campaign, said he was in shock.

It is a cruel and agonising twist of history that Jac should fall clearing IEDs for civilians days after the full liberation of Raqqa, but he fulfilled his dream of defeating Isis in Raqqa and he is now immortalised into history, he told The Independent.

Mr Campbell described the volunteer as just a boy when he arrived in Syria but said he learned fluent Kurdish and showed extraordinary courage in battle.

The Home Office has warned that anyone travelling to fight in Iraq and Syria  for whatever side  can be prosecuted upon their return.

The Foreign Office has also advised against all travel to Syria, where all British consular services are suspended, making government aid impossible.

Additional reporting by PA
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Belfast and its Causeway Coast may have caused a stir by being voted the best region in the world to visit in 2018 by Lonely Planet today; but thats not the only surprise in the rankings.

Detroit, Canberra and Lanzarote are also surprise big hitters in the four lists, which cover top 10 countries, cities, regions and best value destinations.

The cities list is particularly surprising. Seville tops the rankings, followed by Detroit  whose controversial gentrification has seen hipsters migrate in huge numbers over the past few years  and then Canberra, the much-maligned capital of Australia, usually dismissed as boring.

Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities Show all 10 1 /10 Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities 1: Seville, Spain 12019 Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities 2: Detroit, USA Vito Palmisano Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities 3: Canberra, Australia Jason Tong Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities 4: Hamburg, Germany Falco Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities 5: Kaohsiung, Taiwan Getty Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities 6: Antwerp, Belgium Getty Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities 7: Matera, Italy Turkish414 Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities 8: San Juan, Puerto Rico Sam Valadi Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities 9: Guanajuato, Mexico Bud Ellison Lonely Planet: Best in Travel 2018 Top 10 Cities 10: Oslo, Norway Corinna

The list continues with Hamburg, and Kaohsiung in Taiwan. Matera  a formerly destitute town of cave dwellings, or sassi, now popular with the Instagram crowd in Italys Basilicata region  is at number seven, and San Juan, the hurricane-hit capital of Puerto Rico at eight (Lonely Planet's partners CNN Travel have written about how they felt it important to keep on the list despite the damage). Oslo  again, often dismissed as dull and expensive is at number 10.

Less of a shock is Tallinn, ranked the best value destination, followed by Lanzarote, Arizona and La Paz in Bolivia. The UK in its entirety comes in at number seven  helped by the plummeting pound.

As for the countries, Portugal - which has seen an astonishing explosion in popularity in 2017 - is only at number three, after Chile and South Korea. Djibouti - which has no direct flights from the UK, and was described by Bloomberg as "a forgotten sandlot of a country" - is a surprise entry at number four. Djibouti might also be off the list for ethical travellers - one person who recently visited told The Independent: Given the abject poverty, chronic health provision and job shortages under which half the country's population subsists while the authorities reap billions in rent from Western bases, ethical tourists should browse for their luxury Red Sea scuba diving holiday with their eyes open.

The full lists are:

Top 10 countries

Chile

South Korea

Portugal

Djibouti

New Zealand

Malta

Georgia

Mauritius

China

South Africa

Top 10 cities

Seville

Detroit

Canberra

Hamburg

Kaohsiung

Antwerp

Matera

San Juan

Guanajuato

Oslo

Top 10 best value

Tallinn

Lanzarote

Arizona

La Paz

Poland

Essaouira

UK

Baja California

Jacksonville

Hunan

Top 10 regions

Belfast and the Causeway Coast

Alaska

Julian Alps

Languedoc-Roussillon

Kii Peninsula

Aeolian Islands

Southern USA

Lahaul & Spiti

Bahia

Los Haitises National Park
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Holiday resorts are all about capturing a certain market. There are adults-only resorts, health retreats, spa hotels and theres also a Caribbean resort catering specifically to overweight people.

The Resort  which opened two years ago on Eleuthera in the Bahamas  has been built specifically with obesity in mind. Although at first glance it looks like any other beach resort, this is  or so the owner says  the only one around thats been especially built for guests weighing over 30 stone.

Everything on the resort has been customised: doorways are wide, chairs are made from particularly sturdy wood, beds have been reinforced with two-inch steel bars, and metre-wide loungers can withstand up to 40 stone.

The buffet  open for breakfast, lunch and dinner  caters to those with fuller appetites. Owner James King calls it a sanctuary.

Its a place where you can come and have a good holiday without any judgement whatsoever, he says.

King told The Independent that he got the idea for the resort about 14 years ago. "I was MD of a hotel in Grenada and saw a guest go through a beach chair," he said. "As per hotel policy, she was charged $150 for destruction of property."

But theres a more serious side to The Resort, too. The activity programme includes group therapy, and activities have been chosen to force the guests to re-evaluate their bodies.

It's right on the water, guaranteeing privacy (The Resort)

Privacy is guaranteed. The private beach is five miles long, and the resort is only open to private groups of up to 24 people.

The Resort features in ITVs The 18-30 Stone Holiday, airing tonight, in which eight overweight members of the public were flown to the Bahamas.

Husband and wife Adam and Ami Flahery were part of the group. Ami, who weighs 24st, and says embarrassment about her weight ruined her honeymoon in Egypt, told The Sun: I could jump in the pool and not worry about how big a splash I made. Or I could lie on a sun lounger which was made from strong Brazilian wood, so I didnt have to worry about breaking it.

In the past Ive broken plastic loungers and although Ive always laughed it off at the time, I was left mortified and wanted the world to swallow me up.

But when you know a hotel has been specially made for plus-sized people, you dont have to worry about breaking any furniture or not fitting into anything because you can relax and just go for it.

Interested? Youll need a heavy wallet, too. The flat rate is $16,400 for six days, although that includes all meals and airport transfers. The price includes up to 24 people.
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Lucky old NHS. The Daily Express is demanding that the Government slashes the UKs foreign aid budget and uses the money instead to fund the national health service instead.

The Daily Mail has been banging a similar drum for several years now, calling for the abolition of the UKs commitment (implemented by David Cameron) to spend at least 0.7 per cent of our national income each year on foreign aid.

Whats odd is that Brexiteers told us the NHSs coffers would already be swelled in future by all the billions of pounds we would no longer be sending to Brussels after we left the European Union. Perhaps these vectors of pro-Brexit propaganda are as doubtful of that dividend materialising as the rest of us.

Right-wing media attacks on the UKs foreign aid spending are actually rather similar to their traditional EU coverage. Just as they used to hyperventilate about straight bananas to convince us of the bureaucratic insanity of Brussels, they highlight individual examples of questionable projects in order to try to trash the UKs entire 13bn aid programme.

But the defences can be weak too. The argument (often put by clergymen) that spending money on aid is simply the right thing to do for a wealthy country like Britain is unsatisfactory. Aid spending for aid spendings sake isnt a compelling argument.

The case for the foreign aid budget must be that it is effective in reducing poverty, disease and wasted potential, and it addresses a specific problem that would otherwise be very unlikely to be addressed.

 Farage: Foreign aid is 'madness'

This raises the question of how we can know whether UK taxpayers money is being spent effectively. Rigorous checks and evaluations are obviously a major part of the answer. But experiment is another.

Traditionally, developing-world governments used food subsidies to address poverty. But in 1997 the Mexican government  under the guidance of an economist called Santiago Levy  launched a Progresa scheme, in which cash payments were granted to a trial group of mothers in poor families on the condition that they send their children to school and present themselves for regular health checks.

The trial showed excellent results, with a reduction in the number of children below the poverty line and an increase in secondary school enrolment rates. The scheme was implemented nationally and its success prompted Brazil, Peru, Honduras, Jamaica and Malawi to adopt similar programmes.

Think creatively is also part of effective aid spending. A study showed that placing cameras in classrooms in rural India had a significant impact on teacher absenteeism. The free distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets in Kenya was shown to be effective in reducing the incidence of malaria.

Not all experiments will work, of course  otherwise they wouldnt be experiments. Field trials where poor families in developing countries have been given small loans to set up businesses (known as microfinance) have shown disappointingly little impact in terms of consumption, education, health or female empowerment.

The important point is that aid spending failures are to be expected. Solving entrenched problems of poverty is a complicated business. What works in one developing countrys context may not work in anothers. The key is learning from failures. This demands rigorous analysis by independent experts and the swift cancellation of programmes that are not delivering.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 15 November 2022 Lesley Sutcliffe shelters from the rain next to a life-sized replica of the innermost coffin of King Tutankhamun by artist Amanda Stoner as it goes on display inside a traditional red telephone box which has been converted into a museum, in Barnsley, South Yorkshire PA UK news in pictures 14 November 2022 Members of the hospitality sector demonstrate outside parliament in London. The head of the Confederation of British Industry is urging the UK government to relax immigration rules to help British companies with severe staff shortages, ahead of the chancellors autumn statement EPA UK news in pictures 13 November 2022 England celebrate winning the mens T20 World Cup in Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia AAP Image/Reuters 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 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centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. 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The Department for International Development (DfID) has beefed up its project evaluation procedure. It has also tightened up the monitoring of its contractors: an area where there was indeed evidence of waste.

The problem with tabloid coverage of aid spending is that it uses failed projects as ammunition in its propaganda war against the very principle of aid spending. This discourages openness over failures, and inhibits the learning process required among officials and ministers.

Imagine if the Mail or the Express had covered the Mexican Progresa cash transfer trial proposal back in 1997. Think of the headlines.

In fact, we dont need to imagine. Earlier this year, the Mail seized on DfID support for a Pakistani state cash-transfer programme to poor families, using the front page headline: Queue here for UKs 1bn foreign aid cashpoint. Would Mexican ministers have dared to sanction Progresa trials in the face of such coverage?

The Express today cites as an example of waste the fact that DfID is funding the World Health Organisation with 15m to organise stop-smoking programmes in developing countries. But smoking is the largest global cause of preventable death, and is on the rise in the developing world as peoples incomes grow.

Research shows anti-smoking messaging is effective, so investing to discourage people in poor countries from taking up cigarettes promises an exceptionally high rate of return on UK taxpayers money in terms of health outcomes.

But such reasoning is probably to miss the point. The real objection of these newspapers isnt badly-designed aid programmes or even waste; its the fact that money is being spent on foreigners at all.
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As a strict Muslim country, I am always surprised to hear how visitors to the UAE find access to alcohol and are able to sunbathe on beaches and in hotels wearing swimming costumes without the condemnation of the authorities.

Islam expressly forbids alcohol and mind-altering substances and the wearing of immodest dress in public along with public displays of affection. When visitors are upheld for breaking these laws, there is usually an outcry. As visitors, though, it surely it is up to us to respect the beliefs and laws of the land. I know of same-sex couples who have holidayed quite safely in the UAE  they just haven't shared a room.

However, it is not right to accuse a visitor of something which is fabricated, which could have such dire consequences. Sheikh Mohammed is to be lauded for intervening in the case of Jamie Harron, who was accused of touching a mans hip while steadying himself carrying alcoholic drinks in a bar. But if the UAE was really serious about upholding its traditional Islamic lifestyle, there would be no alcohol available at all.

I would concur with Grace Dent  if you want a holiday with the freedoms that our western lifestyles allow, you would be best avoiding the UAE and other Muslim countries which have wonderful weather and have used their wealth to build what many would consider paradise. I wonder what the locals think when they see such inequality, though?

Linda Johnson

East Riding of Yorkshire

Which type of Brexit are we hurtling towards now?

Is Theresa May more naive and delusional than we thought? She stated categorically in the Commons: no transition unless a final deal is struck at same time.

The transitional request came originally from the UK side. The discretion to accept lies with the EU as final arbiter. To threaten to walk away unless a final trade deal is struck at same time is delusional. The trade deal is also at the discretion of the EU as final arbiter.

As services are not covered by WTO  a point agreed by Theresa May  and the clock is ticking, we are no doubt heading for a no-deal-walk-away-mayhem.

Interesting to focus on Boris Johnstons words urging the EU to get on with it and adding other barbs. As the leaving nation, the onus is on the UK Government to develop substantive outlines for exit and now trade and present at the next meeting in Brussels. Bland words from Theresa May and snide one-liners from the Foreign Secretary in public do not make progress. No doubt they are aiming to blame the EU for not according to the UK entitlement?

When you are politically bankrupt, you cannot use your overdraft as a threat.

No 10 has run out of credit and credibility; the EU will no doubt call time and rescind all favours.

John Edgar

Stewarton

Curiously, I am becoming more confident of a soft Brexit, based on the following scenario.

Voters across all 28 current EU member states have misgivings about EU membership. The depth of such feelings varies from country to country, but the nationalists are not going to go away any time soon. The elected leaders of all the EU countries pay close attention to their voters as an adverse election result can see them out of a job (or fatally wounded). Those leaders therefore need to demonstrate that their voices are being heard within the EU and that reforms are in hand to make it more attractive. Why have such reforms not been launched already? Is it because the European Commission in Brussels wields too much power and opposes the changes?

Brexit is the golden opportunity to deliver this reform as taking away the UK's contribution to the EU budget means the commission will become unaffordable and must be changed  unless the remaining 27 states increase their contributions, which will be politically unacceptable to them domestically. By offering the UK decent terms, this will result in a smooth exit, which will minimise damage to domestic economies across Europe. Again, good for votes. A friendly UK could then, as part of the reform programme, help to tidy up the loose ends, such as Switzerland and Norway, and facilitate the formation of a formal group of "associate" EU members.

After the referendum last year, one of your contributors wrote that we would go from being just about inside the EU to just about outside. Captures it nicely, I think.

Bernard Cudd

Morpeth

Theresa May is like a rabbit stuck in the headlights: she has lost the capacity to think. A transition will only be needed if there is a hard Brexit, but what every business needs now is a stable marketplace. Threatening a hard Brexit in 18 months is stupid. How can a business act to adjust to major changes in its marketplace when it does not know what they are or whether they will happen?

What the economy needs is certainty that nothing changes without three years' notice and that there will then be a transition period, the length of which depends upon the severity of the changes.

Jon Hawksley

London EC1R

It must be a great comfort to all those "just about managing" to get by on low and frozen wages that those extreme Brexiteers like John Redwood are looking after their interests and can assure them that crashing out of the EU with no deal won't interfere with their wine-buying.

Geoff Forward

Stirling

The buyers never seem to pay

Donald Trump is going to build a border wall and get the Mexicans to pay for it.

Theresa May is not going to erect border posts, thus forcing the European Union to construct them, with the Irish taxpayer, as usual, paying the price.

Liam Power

Co Louth, Ireland

Subtlety or error?

As someone who was once deeply involved in matters of professional and research ethics, I always enjoy Will Gore's sober, well thought out and beautifully written pieces. It's for that reason that I'm not sure whether this sentence in his piece in Tuesday's Daily Edition is subtly phrased or just the usual homophonic confusion:

"One might have thought the EU could also be interested in reports of violence by Spanish neo-Nazis opposed to Catalan independence, as well as claims those extreme nationalists have been given free reign by police."

Bruce Napier

Derbyshire

A headline idea

What can trump President tramps effort to tromp on the memory of the widow of a soldier?

Dennis Fitzgerald

Melbourne, Australia
CONCORDThe Cabarrus County Democratic Party will celebrate the grand opening of its new headquarters in Concord on Friday, Oct. 27, at 7 p.m.

The new 1,200-square-foot location is located at 1 Buffalo Ave. NW in the historic Odell-Locke-Randolph Cotton Mill complex, which is now known as Locke Mill Plaza.

Presiding over the ribbon cutting ceremony will be North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, who is the first woman to be elected to this position in the state. Refreshments will be served at a reception immediately following the event, which local Democratic Party members are invited to attend.

The opening will mark the return of a permanent Democratic Party headquarters in Cabarrus County after more than a decade without such a facility, CCPD chair Dawn Larma said. Were thrilled to have Elaine Marshall here to help us commemorate this important occasion.

The new space will serve as a brick-and-mortar base camp for regular meetings, candidate recruitment, phone banking, party organization and CCDPs enhanced Get Out The Vote efforts. Caucus chapters, affiliated with the Cabarrus County Democratic Party, will have access to the space for their functions.

The explosive growth were seeing in the party has enabled us to open our headquarters, Larma said. Which helps us move toward our goal of turning Cabarrus blue.
By Ruth Cheriyan, MitKat Advisory Services

Indias digital infrastructure, user base, and accessibility are rapidly improving. However, proper cyber security measures have yet to keep up with Indias digital push  leaving many companies vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

According to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, India witnessed over 27,000 cyber security threats in the first half of 2017. These threats include ransomware attacks, website intrusions or defacement, phishing attacks, and data breaches.

Foreign businesses entering the Indian market should be aware of the increasingly commonplace nature of cyber-attacks in the country, and craft proactive measures to anticipate and respond to these threats.

RELATED: Audit and Financial Review Advisory

Governments cyber vulnerabilities affect private sector in IRNN hack

A recent report by Seqrite Intelligence Labs, the enterprise security solutions brand of Quick Heal Technologies, disclosed an advertisement they discovered on the Darknet (a small portion of the internet hidden from search engines). The advertisement announced secret access to the servers and databases of over 6,000 Indian organizations  including internet service providers (ISPs) as well as public and private sector organizations. The hacker offered this information for 15 bitcoin (equivalent to approximately USD$73,000). The hacker subsequently offered to execute further cyber-attacks against the listed companies for an undisclosed price.

Seqrite Cyber Intelligence Labs, along with its partner seQtree InfoServices, called it one of the biggest breaches affecting Indian organizations. Seqrite and seQtree reported that the Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers (IRINN), which comes under the National Internet Exchange of India, was the organization that hackers had compromised.

After discovering the advertisement, Seqrite and seQtree teams started gathering background research on the hacker but were unable to identify the perpetrator. The research team then contacted the hacker for further details, posing as an interested buyer. The hacker shared a sample of their stolen data, which included an email address of a prominent Indian technology firm and information linked back to the Indian government.

According to Seqrite Intelligence Labs, this hacker may have the capacity to create serious service outages in India. The entities affected by the data breach include the Bombay Stock Exchange, the Reserve Bank of India, the Indian Space Research Organization, Wipro, Mastercard, Visa, Hathaway, IDBI Bank, and Ernst & Young.

According to researchers, the seller claims to have the ability to tamper the IP allocation pool, which could result in a serious outage or distributed denial of service (DDoS) condition.

RELATED: Shutting Down Indias Shell Companies  Government Continues Anti-Corruption Drive

Recent cyber threats in India

In May 2017, the WannaCry ransomware attack disrupted operations at hospitals, telecommunication firms, and several other sectors worldwide. The ransomware required only one computer in the entire network to be affected. Once the malware was installed it quickly spread to the entire network  locking out all users. The perpetrators behind WannaCry demanded ransom money in the form of bitcoin to unlock their system.

India was the third worst affected country by the WannaCry ransomware attacks. Major urban centers to be targeted included Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Mumbai. ATMs in India are particularly vulnerable to cyber-attacks as they often rely on retrograde versions of Microsoft, which are easy for hackers to infiltrate.

According to the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), almost 11,000 networks in India were victims of probe-scanning between March 2016 and May 2017. Probing and scanning are usually the initial steps used by a hacker to monitor a system before the malware or ransomware is installed on the network.

On June 28, 2017, the Petya global cyber-attack disrupted cyber services in Russia, Ukraine, India, and Australia. Indias largest port, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), near Mumbai, had to be temporarily shut down as a result of the attack; the virus affected computers running Microsoft software for the second time after the WannaCry attack.

While all countries are vulnerable to cyber-threats, hackers are taking notice of Indias growing prosperity and weak cyber security infrastructure, making the country an easy target for cyber-attacks.

Is India equipped to tackle cyber breaches?

After the recent Wannacry and Petya attacks, Ravi Shankar Prasad, the Information Technology Minister of India, claimed that cyber-attacks against India were at a minimum. However, cyber security experts believe that the data breach targeting over 6,000 companies confirms the credibility of cyber security risks in the country.

The recent attacks have shown that aggressive hackers from across the globe are capable of shutting down critical government and corporate infrastructure. Worse, hackers can use government websites  which often lack critical cyber-security infrastructure  to access private business information.

India was ranked the fifth most vulnerable country for cyber breaches in 2016 by Symantecs Internet Cyber Security Threat Report of 2017. Cyber-attack cases in India are usually under-reported because people tend to rely on software to protect them from a breach, rather than cyber security agencies. Moreover, unlike the U.S., India has no legal requirement to report the incident, nor is there a legal obligation to let victims know that their data has been compromised.

RELATED: Pre-Investment, Market Entry Strategy Advisory

How foreign businesses can protect themselves in India

The Indian government remains reluctant to acknowledge both its own vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks and the countrys appeal to hackers. Foreign companies doing business in India must safeguard their data with robust and well-maintained cyber security infrastructure. Otherwise, the promise of Digital India can be eclipsed by hackers, ransomware, and data breaches.

Foreign companies entering the Indian market should consider cyber security an increasingly important requisite for success. When approaching cyber security, businesses should consider the following:

Risk analysis: In order to build a strong defense, an organization needs to identify its weak points and usual entry spots for hackers. An in-depth understanding of the risks involved help in the implementation of strong hardware, office, and internet security policies by the organization.

Regular software and hardware updates: The organization needs to invest in a reputed software solution that offers frequent anti-virus updates. Moreover, all employees have to be trained to install updates on real time basis. The main servers should always have the latest versions of firewall and anti-virus systems. This will significantly reduce the feasibility of any cyber-attack.

Cloud-storage: Decentralizing data storage substantially reduces its vulnerability. Leading cloud storage providers ensure advanced cyber security measures, thereby ensuring that all crucial information has multiple layers of protection.

Data encryption: Encryption safeguards for company information on hard drives prevent unauthorized access.

IT support: Organizations can consider building an in-house IT support department or outsourcing it to established service providers. This will enable the enterprise to design a robust defense system that both protects the business and ensures its continuity.

About Us

India and Singapore-based MitKat Advisory is a global provider of integrated risk mitigation advisory and security consultancy services. Our areas of relative expertise include threat intelligence, security engineering, design, audits and implementation, information/cyber security, BCP-DR, crisis management, business intelligence, due diligence and integrity risk management. Our clients include some of the worlds most respected corporations. For details, kindly visit www.mitkatadvisory.com. Dezan Shira & Associates provide business intelligence, due diligence, legal, tax and advisory services throughout India and the Asian region. We maintain offices in Delhi and Mumbai and throughout China, South-East Asia, India, and Russia. For assistance with India investment issues or into Asia overall, please contact us at india@dezshira.com or visit us at www.dezshira.com.
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Forget the 'Slippery Slope'  Israel Already is an Apartheid State



Since the election of Donald Trump, colonization has surged with an invigorated enthusiasm



By Neil Macdonald October 24, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - The time has come to call the duck a duck. It's time to agree with a long list of Israeli political leaders, academics and public figures on both the political left and right, including three former prime ministers , a winner of the Israel prize, two former heads of the Israeli internal security service Shin Bet, and one of the country's principal newspapers, all of whom have warned that the Jewish state is becoming, or already is, an apartheid state. I would choose the latter characterization. It's interesting that within the Israeli discourse, the assertion seems to have become routine, while it remains radioactive in the West, where energetic pro-Israel activists scrutinize the media, the academy and the polity, ready to declare anti-Semitism or incitement at any use of the word. Look at the outrage and venom poured upon former President Jimmy Carter, under whose brokerage the peace accord between Israel and Egypt was signed, when he titled a 2006 book Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. Suddenly, Carter was transformed from a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and statesman to a dotty old man under the sway of terrorists, at least in the eyes of Israel's supporters, including a significant fraction of his own cohort, Evangelical American Christians. A duck is a duck But reality is reality, and a duck is a duck. As the late Yossi Sarid, longtime leader of Israel's Meretz party and former education minister once put it: "What acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck  it is apartheid." This past June, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak re-stated a position he's held for years: "If we keep controlling the whole area from the Mediterranean to the river Jordan where some 13 million people are living  eight million Israelis, five million Palestinians ... if only one entity reigned over this whole area, named Israel, it would become inevitably  that's the key word, inevitably  either non-Jewish or non-democratic." The country is, he repeated, "on a slippery slope" that ends in apartheid. The dividing line between prominent Israelis who use the term in the here and now, rather than as a warning of what's coming, seems to be the continued existence of the "peace process," with its promise of a Palestinian state, and self-governance. And when I was posted in Jerusalem for CBC News, back in the late '90s, that actually did seem like a possibility, if an unlikely one. Since then, the peace process  always half-hearted  has utterly collapsed. Expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank continued, and since the election of Donald Trump, colonization has surged with an invigorated enthusiasm. Their existence is in fact currently being celebrated in a series of appearances by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "We are here to stay, forever," he declared two months ago in the settlement of Barkan, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Israel's occupation of the West Bank. "There will be no more uprooting of settlements in the land of Israel." (The "Land of Israel," as opposed to the State of Israel, is a term used by the Israeli right to describe all the territory between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and sometimes even further). Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett, respectively Israel's justice and education ministers, have said the Palestinians must understand they will never have a state. Defence Minister Avigdor Liberman, a settler, has said there is "no hope" of a mutually agreed upon Palestinian state, but has warned Naftali Bennett against promoting outright annexation: No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter "What Bennett and his Jewish Home party are proposing is a classical bi-national state," Liberman said two years ago. "They need to decide if they're talking about a bi-national state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean  or whether they're talking about an apartheid state." Palestinian underclass Liberman's logic seems to be that as long as the Palestinians are simply occupied and governed by a different set of laws, with far fewer rights than Israelis (as opposed to denying them a state but giving them a vote in some expanded version of Israel, which the Israeli right considers national suicide), then it is not really apartheid. But annexation at this point would merely amount to staging a home already sold. In the past decade, Ze'ev Jabotinsky's "Iron Wall" doctrine has given rise to an actual wall, sometimes an iron one, running roughly along the 1967 borders of the West Bank and Gaza. The main roads from Jerusalem north to Ramallah and Nablus and south to Bethlehem and Hebron are now blocked by gigantic, fortified military barriers. The roughly three quarters of a million Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have complete freedom of movement and their own set of roads , effectively forbidden to the disenfranchised Palestinian underclass. Trump's stance on Israel Settlers suspected of crimes are entitled to full rights in Israeli courts; Palestinians endure military tribunals, indefinite imprisonment without charge ("administrative detention") and collective punishment. Settlers are entitled to carry arms and use them in self-defence; Palestinians are not. Settlers have property rights. Palestinians have property claims. Et cetera. Netanyahu frames it all as a matter of national survival, warning that any land conceded will immediately be occupied by fundamentalist terrorists determined to destroy the State of Israel, with its nuclear weapons, tanks, fighter jets, layered missile defence systems and 600,000-plus active and reserve troops. His definition of terrorism is a nuanced one; at an event a few years ago commemorating the 60th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel by Irgun fighters , considered a terrorist act by the British government to this day, Netanyahu characterized the perpetrators as legitimate military fighters, and warned the outraged British government to watch its language. But then, an elastic worldview is apparently necessary to maintain the status quo; when Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party signed a formal reconciliation recently with the "terrorists" of Hamas, who rule Gaza, both Israel and the United States objected, saying such a union endangers, yes, the peace process. The fact that today's terrorists tend to become tomorrow's statesmen (the Irgun bombers later joined the nascent government of Israel, and former Irgun chief Menachem Begin became prime minister) is apparently irrelevant in this context. At any rate, Ehud Barak's slippery slope is now in the rearview mirror. Yossi Sarid's duck has arrived. Let's accept that, drop the pretense, and move on. This article was originally published by CBC -
Dont Call the Cops If Youre Autistic, Deaf, Mentally Ill, Disabled or Old

By John W. Whitehead

Anyone who cares for someone with a developmental disability, as well as for disabled people themselves [lives] every day in fear that their behavior will be misconstrued as suspicious, intoxicated or hostile by law enforcement.Steve Silberman, The New York Times

October 24, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - Life in the American police state is an endless series of donts delivered at the end of a loaded gun: dont talk back to police officers, dont even think about defending yourself against a SWAT team raid (of which there are 80,000 every year), dont run when a cop is nearby lest you be mistaken for a fleeing criminal, dont carry a cane lest it be mistaken for a gun, dont expect privacy in public, dont let your kids walk to the playground alone, dont engage in nonviolent protest near where a government official might pass, dont try to grow vegetables in your front yard, dont play music for tips in a metro station, dont feed whales, and on and on.

Heres another dont to the add the growing list of things that could get you or a loved one tasered, shot or killed, especially if you are autistic, hearing impaired, mentally ill, elderly, suffer from dementia, disabled or have any other condition that might hinder your ability to understand, communicate or immediately comply with an order: dont call the cops.

Sometimes its dangerous enough calling the cops when youre not contending with a disability.

For instance, Justine Damond called 911 to report a disturbance and ended up dead after police dispatched to investigate instead shot the 40-year-old yoga instructor. Likewise, Carl Williams called 911 to report a robbery and ended up being shot by police , who mistook him for a robber in his own home.

Unfortunately, the risks just skyrocket when a disability is involved.

Nancy Schrock called 911 for help after her husband, Tom, who suffered with mental health issues, started stalking around the backyard, upending chairs and screaming about demons . Several times before, police had transported Tom to the hospital, where he was medicated and sent home after 72 hours. This time, Tom was tasered twice. He collapsed, lost consciousness and died.

The Schrocks are not alone in this experience.

Indeed, disabled individuals make up a third to half of all people killed by law enforcement officers.

Thats according to a study by the Ruderman Family Foundation, which reports that  disabled individuals make up the majority of those killed in use-of-force cases that attract widespread attention. This is true both for cases deemed illegal or against policy and for those in which officers are ultimately fully exonerated Many more disabled civilians experience non-lethal violence and abuse at the hands of law enforcement officers.

Trained to shoot first and ask questions later, police pose a risk to anyone with special needs whose disabilities may not be immediately apparent or require more finesse than the typical freeze-or-Ill-shoot tactics employed by Americas police forces.

For example, in South Carolina, police tasered an 86-year-old grandfather reportedly in the early stages of dementia, while he was jogging backwards away from them . Now this happened after Albert Chatfield led police on a car chase, running red lights and turning randomly. However, at the point that police chose to shock the old man with electric charges, he was out of the car, on his feet, and outnumbered by police officers much younger than him.

In Georgia, campus police shot and killed a 21-year-old student who was suffering a mental health crisis. Scout Schultz was shot through the heart by campus police when he approached four of them late one night while holding a pocketknife, shouting Shoot me! Although police may have feared for their lives, the blade was still in its closed position.

In Oklahoma, police shot and killed a 35-year-old deaf man seen holding a two-foot metal pipe on his front porch (he used the pipe to fend off stray dogs while walking). Despite the fact that witnesses warned police that Magdiel Sanchez couldnt hearand thus complywith their shouted orders to drop the pipe and get on the ground, police shot the man when he was about 15 feet away from them.

In Maryland, police (moonlighting as security guards) used extreme force to eject a 26-year-old man with Downs Syndrome and a low IQ from a movie theater after the man insisted on sitting through a second screening of a film. Autopsy results indicate that Ethan Saylor died of complications arising from asphyxiation, likely caused by a chokehold.

In Florida, police armed with assault rifles fired three shots at a 27-year-old nonverbal, autistic man who was sitting on the ground, playing with a toy truck. Police missed the autistic man and instead shot his behavioral therapist, Charles Kinsey, who had been trying to get him back to his group home. The therapist, bleeding from a gunshot wound , was then handcuffed and left lying face down on the ground for 20 minutes.

In Texas, police handcuffed, tasered and then used a baton to subdue a 7-year-old student who has severe ADHD and a mood disorder . With school counselors otherwise occupied, school officials called police and the childs mother to assist after Yosio Lopez started banging his head on a wall. The police arrived first.

In New Mexico, police tasered, then opened fire on a 38-year-old homeless man who suffered from schizophrenia , all in an attempt to get James Boyd to leave a makeshift campsite. Boyds death provoked a wave of protests over heavy-handed law enforcement tactics.

In Ohio, police forcefully subdued a 37-year-old bipolar woman wearing only a nightgown in near-freezing temperatures who was neither armed, violent, intoxicated, nor suspected of criminal activity. After being slammed onto the sidewalk, handcuffed and left unconscious on the street, Tanisha Anderson died as a result of being restrained in a prone position.

And in North Carolina, a state trooper shot and killed a 29-year-old deaf motorist after he failed to pull over during a traffic stop. Daniel K. Harris was shot after exiting his car, allegedly because the trooper feared he might be reaching for a weapon .

These cases, and the hundredsif not thousandsmore that go undocumented every year speak to a crisis in policing when it comes to law enforcements failure to adequately assess, de-escalate and manage encounters with special needs or disabled individuals.

While the research is relatively scant, what has been happening is telling.

Over the course of six months, police shot and killed someone who was in mental crisis every 36 hours .

Among 124 police killings analyzed by The Washington Post in which mental illness appeared to be a factor , They were overwhelmingly men, more than half of them white. Nine in 10 were armed with some kind of weapon, and most died close to home.

But there were also important distinctions, reports the Post.

 This group was more likely to wield a weapon less lethal than a firearm. Six had toy guns; 3 in 10 carried a blade, such as a knife or a machete  weapons that rarely prove deadly to police officers. According to data maintained by the FBI and other organizations, only three officers have been killed with an edged weapon in the past decade. Nearly a dozen of the mentally distraught people killed were military veterans, many of them suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their service, according to police or family members. Another was a former California Highway Patrol officer who had been forced into retirement after enduring a severe beating during a traffic stop that left him suffering from depression and PTSD. And in 45 cases, police were called to help someone get medical treatment, or after the person had tried and failed to get treatment on his own. 

The U.S. Supreme Court, as might be expected, has thus far continued to immunize police against charges of wrongdoing when it comes to use of force against those with a mental illness.

In a 2015 ruling, the Court declared that police could not be sued for forcing their way into a mentally ill womans room at a group home and shooting her five times when she advanced on them them with a knife . The justices did not address whether police must take special precautions when arresting mentally ill individuals. (The Americans with Disabilities Act requires reasonable accommodations for people with mental illnesses, which in this case might have been less confrontational tactics.)

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Where does this leave us?

For starters, we need better police training across the board, but especially when it comes to de-escalation tactics and crisis intervention.

A study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that CIT (Crisis Intervention Team)- trained officers made fewer arrests, used less force, and connected more people with mental-health services than their non-trained peers.

As The Washington Post points out:

Although new recruits typically spend nearly 60 hours learning to handle a gun, according to a recent survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, they receive only eight hours of training to de-escalate tense situations and eight hours learning strategies for handling the mentally ill. Otherwise, police are taught to employ tactics that tend to be counterproductive in such encounters , experts said. For example, most officers are trained to seize control when dealing with an armed suspect, often through stern, shouted commands. But yelling and pointing guns is like pouring gasoline on a fire when you do that with the mentally ill, said Ron Honberg, policy director with the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Second, police need to learn how to slow confrontations down , instead of ramping up the tension (and the noise).

After Ethan Saylors death in Maryland, police recruits are now required to take a four-hour course in which they learn de-escalation tactics for dealing with disabled individuals: speak calmly, give space, be patient .

One officer in charge of the Los Angeles Police Departments mental response teams suggests that instead of rushing to take someone into custody, police should try to slow things down and persuade the person to come with them .

Third, with all the questionable funds flowing to police departments these days, why not use some of those funds to establish what one disability-rights activist describes as  a 911-type number dedicated to handling mental-health emergencies , with community crisis-response teams at the ready rather than police officers.

In the end, while we need to make encounters with police officers safer for people with disabilities, what we really need is to make encounters with police safer for citizens across the board, no matter how theyre packaged.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People , the problem is not that police officers are inherently badin fact, there are many good, caring officers in law enforcementbut when cops are trained to be military warriors instead of peace officers, were all viewed as potential threats.
Our Ever-Deadlier Police State

By Chris Hedges

October 24, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - None of the reforms, increased training, diversity programs, community outreach and gimmicks such as body cameras have blunted Americas deadly police assault, especially against poor people of color. Police forces in the United Stateswhich, according to The Washington Post, have fatally shot 782 people this yearare unaccountable, militarized monstrosities that spread fear and terror in poor communities. By comparison, police in England and Wales killed 62 people in the 27 years between the start of 1990 and the end of 2016.

Police officers have become rogue predators in impoverished communities. Under U.S. forfeiture laws , police indiscriminately seize money, real estate, automobiles and other assets. In many cities, traffic, parking and other fines are little more than legalized extortion that funds local government and turns jails into debtor prisons.

Because of a failed court system, millions of young men and women are railroaded into prison, many for nonviolent offenses. SWAT teams with military weapons burst into homes often under warrants for nonviolent offenses, sometimes shooting those inside. Trigger-happy cops pump multiple rounds into the backs of unarmed men and women and are rarely charged with murder. And for poor Americans, basic constitutional rights, including due process, were effectively abolished decades ago.

Jonathan Simons  Governing Through Crime  and Michelle Alexanders  The New Jim Crow  point out that what is defined and targeted as criminal activity by the police and the courts is largely determined by racial inequality and class, and most importantly by the potential of targeted groups to cause social and political unrest. Criminal policy, as sociologist Alex S. Vitale writes in his new book,  The End of Policing , is structured around the use of punishment to manage the dangerous classes, masquerading as a system of justice.

The criminal justice system, at the same time, refuses to hold Wall Street banks, corporations and oligarchs accountable for crimes that have caused incalculable damage to the global economy and the ecosystem. None of the bankers who committed massive acts of fraud and were responsible for the financial collapse in 2008 have gone to prison even though their crimes resulted in widespread unemployment, millions of evictions and foreclosures, homelessness, bankruptcies and the looting of the U.S. Treasury to bail out financial speculators at taxpayer expense. We live in a two-tiered legal system, one in which poor people are harassed, arrested and jailed for absurd infractions, such as selling loose cigaretteswhich led to Eric Garner being choked to death by a New York City policeman in 2014while crimes of appalling magnitude that wiped out 40 percent of the worlds wealth are dealt with through tepid administrative controls, symbolic fines and civil enforcement.

The grotesque distortions of the judicial system and the aggressive war on the poor by the police will get worse under President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. There has been a rollback of President Barack Obamas 2015 restrictions on the 1033 Program , a 1989 congressional action that allows the transfer of military weaponry, including grenade launchers, armored personnel carriers and .50-caliber machine guns, from the federal government to local police forces. Since 1997, the Department of Defense has turned over a staggering $5.1 billion in military hardware to police departments.

The Trump administration also is resurrecting private prisons in the federal prison system, accelerating the so-called war on drugs, stacking the courts with right-wing law and order judges and preaching the divisive politics of punishment and retribution. Police unions enthusiastically embrace these actions, seeing in them a return to the Wild West mentality that characterized the brutality of police departments in the 1960s and 1970s, when radicals, especially black radicals, were murdered with impunity at the hands of law enforcement. The Praetorian Guard of the elites, as in all totalitarian systems, will soon be beyond the reach of the law. As Vitale writes in his book, Our entire criminal justice system has become a gigantic revenge factory.

The argumentsincluding the racist one about  superpredators used to justify the expansion of police power have no credibility, as the gun violence in south Chicago, abject failure of the war on drugs and vast expansion of the prison system over the last 40 years illustrate. The problem is not ultimately in policing techniques and procedures; it is in the increasing reliance on the police as a form of social control to buttress a system of corporate capitalism that has turned the working poor into modern-day serfs and abandoned whole segments of the society. Government no longer makes any attempt to ameliorate racial and economic inequality. Instead, it criminalizes poverty. It has turned the poor into one more cash crop for the rich.

By conceptualizing the problem of policing as one of inadequate training and professionalization, reformers fail to directly address how the very nature of policing and the legal system served to maintain and exacerbate racial inequality, Vitale writes. By calling for colorblind law and order they strengthen a system that puts people of color at a structural disadvantage. At the root, they fail to appreciate that the basic nature of the police, since its earliest origins, is to be a tool for managing inequality and maintaining the status quo. Police reforms that fail to directly address this reality are doomed to reproduce it. Well-trained police following proper procedures are still going to be arresting people for mostly low-level offenses, and the burden of that will continue to fall primarily on communities of color because that is how the system is designed to operatenot because of the biases or misunderstandings of officers.

In a recent interview, Vitale told me, Weve been waging a war on drugs for 40 years by putting people in prison for ever longer sentences. Yet drugs are cheaper, easier to get, and at a higher quality than theyve ever been. Any high school student in America can get any kind of drugs they want. Yet we persist in this idea that the way to respond to the problem of drugs, and many other social problems, is through arrest, courts, punishments, prisons. This is what Trump is playing to. This idea that the only appropriate role for the state is one of coercion and threatswhether its in the foreign policy sphere or in the domestic sphere.

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Police forces, as Vitale writes in his book, were not formed to ensure public safety or prevent crime. They were created by the property classes to maintain economic and political dominance and exert control over slaves, the poor, dissidents and labor unions that challenged the wealthys hold on power and ability to amass personal fortunes. Many of Americas policing techniques, including widespread surveillance, were pioneered and perfected in colonies of the U.S. and then brought back to police departments in the homeland. Blacks in the South had to be controlled, and labor unions and radical socialists in the industrial Northeast and Midwest had to be broken.

The fundamental role of the police has never changed. Paul Butler in his book  Chokehold: Policing Black Men  and James Forman Jr. in his book  Locking Up Our Own : Crime and Punishment in Black America echo Vitales point that the war on drugs has never been about public health or public safety. Its been about providing a cover for aggressive and invasive policing that targets almost exclusively people of color.

People often point to the London Metropolitan Police, who were formed in the 1820s by Sir Robert Peel , Vitale said. They are held up as this liberal ideal of a dispassionate, politically neutral police with the support of the citizenry. But this really misreads the history. Peel is sent to manage the British occupation of Ireland. Hes confronted with a dilemma. Historically, peasant uprisings, rural outrages were dealt with by either the local militia or the British military. In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, in the need for soldiers in other parts of the British Empire, he is having more and more difficulty managing these disorders. In addition, when he does call out the militia, they often open fire on the crowd and kill lots of people, creating martyrs and inflaming further unrest. He said, I need a force that can manage these outrages without inflaming passions further. He developed the Peace Preservation Force, which was the first attempt to create a hybrid military-civilian force that can try to win over the population by embedding itself in the local communities, taking on some crime control functions, but its primary purpose was always to manage the occupation. He then exports that model to London as the industrial working classes are flooding the city, dealing with poverty, cycles of boom and bust in the economy, and that becomes their primary mission.

The creation of the very first state police force in the United States was the Pennsylvania State Police in 1905, Vitale said. For the same reasons. It was modeled similarly on U.S. occupation forces in the Philippines. There was a back and forth with personnel and ideas. What happened was local police were unable to manage the coal strikes and iron strikes.  They needed a force that was more adherent to the interest of capital.  Interestingly, for these small-town police forces in a coal mining town there was sometimes sympathy. They wouldnt open fire on the strikers. So, the state police force was created to be that strong arm for the law. Again, the direct connection between colonialism and the domestic management of workers.  Its a two-way exchange. As were developing ideas throughout our own colonial undertakings, bringing those ideas home, and then refining them and shipping them back to our partners around the world who are often despotic regimes with close economic relationships to the United States. Theres a very sad history here of the U.S. exporting basically models of policing that morphs into death squads and horrible human rights abuses.

The almost exclusive alliance on militarized police to deal with profound inequality and social problems is turning poor neighborhoods in cities such as Chicago into miniature failed states, ones where destitute young men and women join a gang for security and income and engage in battles with other gangs and the police. The broken windows policy shifts the burden for poverty onto the poor. It criminalizes minor infractions, arguing that disorder produces crime and upending decades of research about the causes of crime.

As poverty deepens and housing prices rise, government support for affordable housing has evaporated, leaving in its wake a combination of homeless shelters and aggressive broken-windows-oriented policing, Vitale writes. As mental health facilities close, police become the first responders to calls for assistance with mental health crises. As youth are left without adequate schools, jobs, or recreational facilities, they form gangs for mutual protection or participate in the black markets of stolen goods, drugs, and sex to survive and are ruthlessly criminalized. Modern policing is largely a war on the poor that does little to make people safer or communities stronger, and even when it does, this is accomplished through the most coercive forms of state power that destroy the lives of millions.

The accelerated assault on the poor and the growing omnipotence of the police signal our transformation into an authoritarian state in which the rich and the powerful are not subject to the rule of law. The Trump administration will promote none of the conditions that could ameliorate this crisisaffordable housing; well-paying jobs; safe and nurturing schools that do not charge tuition; better mental health facilities; efficient public transportation; the rebuilding of the nations infrastructure; demilitarized police forces in which most officers do not carry weapons; universal, government-funded health care; an end to the predatory loans and unethical practices of big banks; and reparations to African-Americans and an end to racial segregation. Trump and most of those he has appointed to positions of power disdain the poor as a dead weight on society. They blame stricken populations for their own misery. They seek to subjugate the poor, especially those of color, through police violence, ever harsher forms of punishment and an expansion of the prison system.

We need an effective system of crime prevention and control in our communities, but that is not what the current system is, Alexander writes in The New Jim Crow. The system is better designed to create crime, and a perpetual class of people labeled criminal.  Saying mass incarceration is an abysmal failure makes sense, though only if one assumes that the criminal justice system is designed to prevent and control crime. But if mass incarceration is understood as a system of social controlspecifically, racial controlthen the system is a fantastic success.

How to Prevent Police From Stripping Citizens Rights
Senators Stunned to Discover We Have 1,000 Troops in Niger



The death of four soldiers has opened eyes to that mission. Its also raised a question: How can our presence there be justified by a law passed in 2001?



By Betsy Woodruff October 24, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - The death of four U.S. Special Operations Forces troops in Niger has generated a raucous conversation about how presidents should comfort bereft Gold Star families . But, quietly, its fueling a more difficult debate than whether a phone call or a letter suffices in the aftermath of tragedy; mainly, why were U.S. troops in the country in the first place , and does Congress need to exert more authority when it comes such deployments? Many lawmakers assiduously duck these questions. But on the Sunday shows, several were forced to address them in the aftermath of four soldiers dying under still-mysterious circumstances near the small town of Tongo Tongo. In the process, two powerful Senators tacitly admitted that they hadnt even known the extent of U.S. involvement in Niger in the first place. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the chambers most hawkish members, told host Chuck Todd on Meet the Press that he didnt know until recently that a thousand U.S. troops are stationed in Niger. Graham is on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee , tasked with overseeing the Pentagon. And he made the admission when Todd pressed him on whether Congress needs to vote on an Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) for that mission. The military determines who the threats are, they come up with the engagement policy and if we dont like what the military does, we can defund the operation, Graham said. But I didnt know there was a thousand troops in Niger. Graham added that as long as American military activity involves countering radical Islamist fundamentalism and the spread of it, Congress doesnt need to give the Pentagon any special permission since, in his view, the AUMFs that passed in 2001 was sufficient. That AUMF, which sailed through Congress after the attacks on 9/11 has been used as legal justification for numerous campaigns beyond counteracting the Taliban in Afghanistan; most prominently in Syria to target ISIS and, now, as far-flung as Niger. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the chambers most powerful Democrat, admitted later on the same show that he was just as ignorant as Graham about the number of U.S. troops in Niger. When Todd asked him if he knew previously about the thousand troops there, he said he didnt. And what it means, Chuck [Todd], for the war authorization, is I agree with Senator [Rand] Paul (R-KY) that we ought to look at this carefully, Schumer continued. We are in a brave new world, you know, there are no set battle plans. Paul, who occupies the other end of the foreign policy spectrum from Graham, has long argued that Congress needs to have a vote on whether or not to reauthorize American military involvement around the globe related to the War on Terror. It should be a simple vote, he said in September . It is like pulling teeth. But the Kentucky Republican remains in the minority. Though a bipartisan group of Senators have introduced an updated AUMF for counter-terror operations, congressional leaders have declined to act on it. The Obama administration had called for an updated AUMF as well. And, recently, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) called for a sober national conversation about Congress constitutional role in authorizing the use of military force. But the Trump administration has not asked for new war powers , arguing that the current ones are sufficient. On Oct. 30, Defense Sec. Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the issue. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), one of the authors of the bipartisan AUMF, has specifically invoked the four deaths in Niger in arguing for a vote. The many questions surrounding the death of American service members in Niger show the urgent need to have a public discussion about the current extent of our military operations around the world, Kaine said. For sixteen years, Congress has remained largely silent on this issue, allowing administrations to go to war anywhere, anytime. If members of Congress have to vote on such a matter, many expect to face political blowback. And the consequences arent hypothetical; theres wide agreement that Hillary Clintons 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq War played a key role in her defeat in the 2008 Democrat presidential primary. This article was originally published by Daily Beast -
Getting the Left to Embrace US Exceptionalism



Exclusive: Neocons have deftly used the Lefts hatred of President Trump and the demonizing of Russia to lure liberals and progressives into an interventionist mindset to defend American exceptionalism, observes James W. Carden.



By James W. Carden October 24, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - Last year, Donald J. Trump triumphed over 15 Republican primary opponents and a Democratic candidate with an impressive resume largely on the strength of a simple four-word message: Make America Great Again. Trumps slogan worked even though President Obama offered the rejoinder, America is already great, and Hillary Clinton made the counterpoint that America is great because America is good. Since Trumps victory nearly a year ago, the major American media has often reprised the Obama-Clinton messaging that America is already great as though Trump, the most unabashedly jingoistic president since perhaps Ronald Reagan, needs reminding. Yet in Trumps Washington, where the bipartisan foreign policy consensus is wrongly perceived to be under attack, the Establishment has been circling the wagons in order to fend off what is viewed as Trumps frontal assault on the core tenets of American exceptionalism. Soon after the election, political and media elites, particularly those within Democratic Party circles, began to express their dismay at Trumps seeming disregard for what, to their way of thinking, America represents to the rest of the world. Two months into the Trump presidency, a former Obama State Department official whose specialty is described by the most amorphous and flexible of constructions, human rights, took to the pages of The Atlantic magazine to inform readers that since the November election the global club of autocrats has been crowing about Trump because he, like they, takes a dim a view of democracy, human rights, and transparency. Autocrats, declared Tom Malinkowski, now a Democratic candidate for Congress in New Jersey, were said to be delighted by Trumps election because, theyve heard him echo their propaganda that America is too crooked and corrupt to preach moral standards to others. This, wrote Malinkowski, makes me sad. Likewise, Obamas National Security Adviser Susan Rice also has expressed alarm that the administration has been busy jettisoning American values and abdicating United States leadership of the world. Rice believes that The network of alliances that distinguishes America from other powers and has kept our nation safe and strong for decades is now in jeopardy. We will see the cost when next we need the world to rally to our side. Fears for American Hegemony A number of liberal journalists have been quick to join the fretting. At The Intercept, a foreign affairs analyst worried that Trump is letting American global hegemony slip away. Through a network of nearly 800 military bases located in 70 countries around the globe, in addition to an array of trade deals and alliances, wrote Murtaza Hussain, the U.S. has cemented its influence for decades across both Europe and Asia. American leaders helped impose a set of rules and norms that promoted free trade, democratic governance  in theory, if not always in practice  and a prohibition on changing borders militarily, using a mixture of force and suasion to sustain the systems that keep its hegemony intact. Over at Slate, Yascha Mounk, opined that , with regard to Russia, Trump likes Putin because he admires his strong (read: autocratic) leadership. And he sees him as an ally because he shares Putins disdain for the liberal order, preferring a world in which strong powers do what they like in their spheres of influence without having to worry about obeying  much less enforcing  international norms or human rights. Similarly, when The New Republics Jeet Heer recently delved into the realm of U.S.-Russia relations, he warned readers that The problem is not just the nature of Putins autocratic government, which uses social conservatism and nationalism to hold together a nation frayed by massive economic inequality.  The problem is that Russias foreign policy threatens to export many of the Putin regimes worst features, particularly xenophobia and homophobia. For Heer the proper response to Putins foreign policy is obvious: Fighting Trumpism in America is not enough. Leftists have to be ready to battle it in all its forms, at home and abroad. In other words, its time now to undertake yet another global crusade against Russia. By this point it should be clear that what these worthies are doing is conflating a vision of a liberal, tolerant America with American hegemony; their concerns always come back to their quite unfounded worry that Trump is in the process of repudiating the unipolar fantasy that they themselves buy into and seek to perpetuate. Innocents Abroad? Among many other problems, the hubristic nature of American Exceptionalist ideology feeds delusions of innocence, which serve to prevent a critical rethinking of Americas recent, mainly catastrophic adventures abroad. We can see how this tendency manifests itself in the mainstream media. In July, The New York Times published a piece that whitewashed the motives behind the decision by George W. Bushs White House to invade Iraq. When the United States invaded Iraq 14 years ago to topple Saddam Hussein, wrote reporter Tim Arango, it saw Iraq as a potential cornerstone of a democratic and Western-facing Middle East. This is now par for the course. The media critic Adam Johnson has rightly pointed out that nominally down-the-middle reporters are allowed to mind-read U.S. policy makers motives so long as they conclude that those motives were noble and in good faith. Never are reporters allowed to ascribe sinister motives to U.S. officialsthis is only permissible when covering Americas enemies. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter Similarly, the illegal American intervention in the Syrian war was portrayed as self-defense when U.S. forces shot down a Syrian fighter jet over Raqqa in June. The Syrian regime and others in the regime need to understand, said White House spokesman Sean Spicer (who has now since mercifully resigned), that we will retain the right of self-defense, of coalition forces aligned against ISIS. Time was, during the early years of the First Cold War, that public intellectuals often looked askance at Americas belief in its innate virtue. Within a decade of the allied victory in the Second World War, during which time American power and prestige was at its zenith, prominent Anglo-American thinkers, including Graham Greene, George Kennan and Reinhold Niebuhr were already casting a gimlet eye on the pretenses of the American Century. Where are the contrarian voices such as these calling for restraint and reflection now that we are in the throes of a Second Cold War? They are almost utterly absent from mainstream American political discourse. A Bipartisan Pretense Part of the reason Trump won, of course, is that he plays and feeds into the very same pretenses that the both the Establishment and the public does  though in cruder form. There is only a difference in degree, not in kind, between Make America Great Again and America Is Already Great since both are premised on the same line of reasoning: America, due to its providential founding, cannot be and is not a normal country: it is exceptional, a shining city on a hill. The idea that Trump himself hasnt embraced and internalized the core tenets of American exceptionalism is laughable  and even some neoconservatives, like Bloombergs Eli Lake, have begun to notice. Lake, observing Trumps September speech to the United Nations General Assembly, cracked , For a moment, I closed my eyes and thought I was listening to a Weekly Standard editorial meeting. Yet theres an insoluble problem that remains for the adherents of the myth of American exceptionalism: the presumption that the rest of the world buys into the myth which largely rests upon a willful misunderstanding of the past, and blinds us to available alternatives, such as realism. Some on the Left see little cause for concern. America, by their lights, should intervene all over the world on a values crusade. Leftist journals like Dissent and Jacobin have endeavored to excuse the Trotskyite impulse to political violence. In this way neoconservatism, the American variant of Trotskyism, is not dead yet, it remains a zombie ideology that haunts the country. Forget anti-imperialism, some Leftists say, its Trumpian nationalism that is the real problem. And there are indeed elements of Trumpian nationalism that are troubling. But is the answer a crusade to impose, in the felicitous phrasing of neocon propagandist Max Boot, the rule of law, property rights and other guarantees, at gunpoint if need be? In the end, the ideology of American Exceptionalism feeds delusions of American Innocence and prepares the ground for military intervention the world over. Is that really the right way to oppose Donald Trump? James W. Carden served as an adviser on Russia policy at the US State Department. Currently a contributing writer at The Nation magazine, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Quartz, The American Conservative and The National Interest. This article was originally published by Consortium News -
Phoenix 2.0 - CIA's Vietnam Terror Unleashed Upon Afghanistan By Moon Of Alabama October 24, 2017 " Information Clearing House " - Last week the new head of the CIA Mike Pompeo publicly threatened to make the CIA a "much more vicious agency". His first step towards that is to unleash CIA sponsored killer gangs onto the people of Afghanistan: The C.I.A. is expanding its covert operations in Afghanistan, sending small teams of highly experienced officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces to hunt and kill Taliban militants across the country ...

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The C.I.A.s expanded role will augment missions carried out by military units, meaning more of the United States combat role in Afghanistan will be hidden from public view. This is not going to be a counter-insurgency campaign, even when some will assert that. A counter-insurgency campaign requires political, security, economic, and informational components. It can only be successful in support of a legitimate authority. The current Afghan government has little legitimacy. It was bribed together by the U.S. embassy after wide and open election fraud threatened to devolve into total chaos. In August CIA director Pompeo met the Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and likely discussed the new plan. But the now announced campaign has neither a political nor an economic component. A campaign solely centered on "security" will end up as a random torture and killing expedition without the necessary context and with no positive results. The campaign will be a boon for the Taliban. While it will likely kill a some Taliban aligned insurgents here and there, it will also alienate many more Afghan people. Most of the Taliban fighters are locals. Killing them creates new local recruits for the insurgency. It will also give it better population cover for future operations. A similar campaign during the Vietnam war was known as Operation Phoenix . Then some 50,000 South-Vietnamese, all of course 'suspected communists', were killed by the CIA's roving gangs: [Phoenix] was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, counter-terrorism, interrogation, and assassination) the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong). The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong". The major two components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill or capture suspected NLF members, as well as civilians who were thought to have information on NLF activities. Many of these people were then taken to interrogation centers where many were allegedly tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area. The information extracted at the centers was then given to military commanders, who would use it to task the PRU with further capture and assassination missions. The Phoenix program was embedded into a larger civil political and economic development program known as CORDS . The accepted historical judgement is that Phoenix failed to achieve its purpose despite its wider conceptualization. The passive support for the Viet Cong increased due to the campaign. In recent years there have been revisionists efforts by the Pentagon's RAND Corporation to change that view. No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media Get Our Free Daily Newsletter The now announced campaign looks similar to Phoenix but lacks any political component. It is not designed to pacify insurgents but to eliminate any and all resistance: The new effort will be led by small units known as counterterrorism pursuit teams. They are managed by C.I.A. paramilitary officers from the agencys Special Activities Division and operatives from the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistans intelligence arm, and include elite American troops from the Joint Special Operations Command. The majority of the forces, however, are Afghan militia members. There are only a few dozen officers in the CIA Special Activities Division that can support such a campaign. The lede to the article suggests that 'contractors' will have a significant role. In August the former head of the mercenary outlet Blackwater, Eric Prince, lobbied the Trump administration for a contractor led war in Afghanistan. We can safely assume that Prince and some Blackwater offspring will be involved in the new CIA campaign. The major intelligence groundwork though will have to be done by the NDS. The Afghan National Directorate of Security was build by the CIA from elements of the former Northern Alliance, the opponents of the original Taliban. In the late 1990s the Northern Alliance under Ahmed Shah Massoud was financed by the CIA . Shah Massoud's intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, a dual citizen, received CIA training. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan Saleh headed the new intelligence service, the NDS. Then President Hamid Karzai fired Saleh in 2010 when he resisted Karzai's efforts to reconcile with the Taliban. In March 2017 the current President Ashraf Ghani appointed Saleh as State Minister for Security Reforms. Saleh resigned(?) in June after Ghani reached a peace agreement with the anti-government warlord and former Taliban ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Saleh is an ethnic Tajik and an unforgiving hardliner. He is wary of Pashtun who are the most populous ethnic group in Afghanistan and the base population for the Taliban. Saleh recently founded his own political party. He obviously has further ambitions. He always had excellent relations with the CIA and especially its hardline counter-terrorism center. I find it highly likely that he was involved in the planning of this new campaign. In the ethnically mixed north of Afghanistan the involvement of NDS led local militia will probably cause large scale ethnic cleansing. In the Pashtun south and east it will lack all local support as such militia have terrorized the country for quite some time: For years, the primary job of the C.I.A.s paramilitary officers in the country has been training the Afghan militias. The C.I.A. has also used members of these indigenous militias to develop informant networks and collect intelligence.

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The American commandos  part of the Pentagons Omega program, which lends Special Operations forces to the C.I.A.  allow the Afghan militias to work together with conventional troops by calling in airstrikes and medical evacuations.

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The units have long had a wide run of the battlefield and have been accused of indiscriminately killing Afghan civilians in raids and with airstrikes. It is utterly predictable how this campaign will end up. The CIA itself has few, if any, independent sources in the country. It will depend on the NDS, stuffed with Saleh's Tajik kinsmen, as well as on ethnic and tribal militia. Each of these will have their own agenda. A 'security' campaign as the planned one depends on reliable intelligence. Who, in this or that hamlet, is a member of the Taliban? For lack of trusted local sources the militia, under CIA or contractor command, will resort to extremely brutal torture. They will squeeze 'informants' and 'suspects' until these come up with names of a new rounds of 'suspects'. Rinse-repeat - in the end all of the 'suspects' will be killed. The new plan was intentionally 'leaked' to the New York Times by "two senior American officials". It is set into a positive light: [T]he mission is a tacit acknowledgment that to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table  a key component of Mr. Trumps strategy for the country  the United States will need to aggressively fight the insurgents. That claim is of course utter nonsense. The U.S. already has for years "aggressively fought the insurgents". The Taliban were always willing to negotiate. Their main condition for a peace agreement is that U.S. forces end their occupation and leave the country. The U.S. is simply not willing to do so. Killing more 'suspect' Taliban sympathizers will not change the Taliban's demand nor will it make serious negations more likely. Five years from now, when the utter brutality and uselessness of the campaign will come into full light, the NYT will be shocked, SHOCKED, that such a campaign could ever have happened. This article was originally published by Moon Of Alabama -
A South Sudanese student has accidentally gone viral.

Anok Yai was enjoying Howard Universitys homecoming over the weekend, when a photographer noticed her and snapped some pics. Before she knew it, strangers were begging the modeling gods to give her a contract.

Yai is a 19-year-old sophomore studying biochemistry at Plymouth State University. A friend of mine and I decided to travel to Washington, D.C., to attend Howard Universitys Homecoming, Yai, who grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire, tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

They attended Yardfest, Howards homecoming concert, featuring performers like Rick Ross and Doug E. Fresh. After Yardfest ended, I began walking toward the dorms, when a photographer that goes by the name Steve theSUNK Hall randomly started taking photos of me, she recalls.

While he was taking down my information, he said, Today was a good day, and a couple of these photos have the potential to go viral. I didnt really think much of it, so I just smiled and went on about my day.

 Little did she know that her photo would indeed go viral. TheSunk shared her photo with his 13k Instagram followers yesterday. The rest is history.

She moved from 150 followers to 8k in a day, with the whole of the internet begging that she be given a modelling contract.
Some robbers who had gathered that Air Peace regularly leaves large sums of money in its vault from Friday to Sunday, have broke into the office and carted away the vault over the past weekend.

Robbers broke into the office of Air Peace in Akure, Ondo State and robbed the airline of millions of naira over the weekend, according to SaharaReporters

Air Peace employees discovered that the office had been robbed when they resumed work on Monday.

It was learnt that the robbers had gathered that Air Peace regularly leaves large sums of money in its vault from Friday to Sunday.

Acting on this information, the robbers broke into the office and carted away the vault over the weekend while the business was closed.

A source who confirmed the incident, said the robbers broke into the office through a crack in a wall.

The hoodlums burgled into the office of the airline through a small cracked wall and stole valuables including the vault. I learned that they couldnt immediately break the vault in the short process and hence the reason for taking it away.

In fact, some booking tickets and other things were carted during the operation, which only lasted few minutes.

The police have arrested all the staff of the airline and they are currently being interrogated at the Oba Ile police station. Even some management staff of the airline have arrived from Lagos over the case because it was so shocking, he said.

A source at the Oba Ile Police Station in the Akure North Local Government Area of the state also confirmed the robbery case in Akure.

The source said an investigation into the robbery is ongoing, adding that the security guards attached to the airport are also being interrogated.

We have arrested all the people (staff) that are working in the main office of the airline, including the security guards. As I am talking to you, some of the staff are being interrogated in our station here in Oba Ile, he said.

Femi Joseph, the spokesperson for the Ondo State Police Command, said he has yet to confirm the details of the case, noting that the case has not been reported to his office as at the time one of our correspondents made contact.

All efforts to reach the management of the Air Peace airline proved abortive as all the mobile lines provided were not connecting.
DJ Khaled and his fiancee Nicole Tuck did everything beyond imaginations to celebrate the very first birthday of their adorable baby boy Asahd, in a lavish ceremony.

The renowned DJ dropped a six-figure sum to rent out the Miami nightclub LIV at Fontainebleau for the party. He also had the entire place decorated in epic, jungle-themed decor, inspired by The Lion King.

The lavish party was co-hosted by Sean Diddy Combs, and the birthday boy was dressed to match his dad, rocking a pair of powder blue slacks and an electric blue patterned short-sleeved button-down shirt.

According to TMZ, DJ Khaled gifted his son who recently turned one a $100k (N36,114,720.48) Franck Muller model wristwatch in rose gold with Asahds name and birth date engraved on the back. The piece is laced with more than 600 diamonds which weigh in at 11.65 carats and it sells for $100k and above.

It was also learned that the sick diamond-studded watch is an adult size.

Source: TMZ
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 24 2017 Chairman, Heirs Holdings and Founder, The Tony Elumelu Foundation, Tony O. Elumelu, CON joined global private sector leaders at the Future Investment Initiative Conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia yesterday to discuss ways to achieve economic diversification in dynamic economies. The conference was organised by the Public Investment Fund.

Speaking on the distinguished panel of speakers including Mary Erdoes, CEO, JPMorgan Asset Management, USA; Oh Joon Kwon, Chairman, POSCO, South Korea; Frederic Oudea, CEO, Societe Generale, France; Harvey Schwartz, President & Co-COO, Goldman Sachs, USA; and Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Chairman & CEO, DP World, UAE, Elumelu cited entrepreneurship and gender equality as two critical areas that need urgent attention to drive the inclusive growth and economic diversification in emerging continents like Africa.

Of achieving gender equality, Elumelu pointed out the importance of supporting women-run businesses to achieve inclusive growth stating that these businesses empower a critical population of the economy. Female businesses create more benefits for the society, he said.

An advocate of a new model for entrepreneurship in Africa, through his philosophy, Africapitalism, Elumelu spoke on the role Africapitalism plays in powering Africa out of poverty. Africapitalism is the intersection between prosperity and social wealth  doing good while making profit. It is a realisation that the private sector has a role to play in the social and economic diversification. We need to prioritise the young ones and prioritise SMEs if we are to achieve the much spoke about economic diversification, he said.

Also speaking on the topic, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem identified entrepreneurship as a key driver of todays economy. When we encourage entrepreneurship we encourage ideas, he said.

Elumelu has demonstrated the potential of his Africapitalism model through his Foundations flagship ProgrammeThe Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programmewhere he endowed 10,000 African entrepreneurs with $100million over a 10-year period with the goal of achieving 10million jobs within the period. Already, the Programme has celebrated its 3rd cohort of Fellows bringing the total number of beneficiaries to 3,000 since its inception in 2015, creating an impact will significantly transform the African continent.

Entrepreneurship is a bottom-up approach to economic diversification. It is about trying to encourage our youths to be more enterprising, ultimately realising that they will drive the diversification process, Elumelu said.
A divorcee, Hajara Usman, on Monday sued her former husband before an Upper Area Court in Karu, Abuja for disrupting her wedding ceremony.

Usman, residing in Asokoro, Abuja told the court that she got married to one Adamu Abdullahi in 2011 but that they got divorced through Islamic way in 2016.

She said that while the marriage lasted, Abdullahi tortured her at the slightest provocation.

According to her, My parents actually forced me to marry him. I never loved him and when I got into the marriage, I discovered that Abdullahi was ill-tempered.

He usually beats me up whenever he is angry and his parents and mine warned him severally to stop it but he did not heed their advice.

Usman said that Abdullahi divorced her in November 2016, compelling her to leave his house immediately after pronouncing `divorce three times in line with Islamic injunction.

I have long observed my compulsory Idah (waiting) period but my ex-husband has refused to allow me to marry other suitors coming for me, she said.

She told the court that having finished observing the waiting period, two men had at different times indicated interest to marry her.

Usman said that the moment her former husband got wind of her wedding plans and the ceremony that followed, he came to the venue and disrupted the ceremony.

In April this year, the man who first indicated interest to marry me came to perform the wedding rites, my ex-husband sent a group of boys to disrupt the ceremony.

On another occasion, when he heard I was about to re-marry, he way-laid me and beat me up so much that I had to plead with him.

On the day he beat me, he said he was beating me so that no man would desire me since I decided to move on and re-marry almost immediately, she said.

She pleaded with the court to compel her former husband to explain why he would not want her to re-marry because his actions had discouraged her suitors.

Source: Naijaloaded
Femi Kuti discussed what we observe to be his fear about the future of The Music Industry In Nigeria. While Speaking in a recent interview,The Legendary Afrobeat icon said there will be chaos in the music industry if everybody is just joining music for the fame and fortune.

In his Words;

We must insist to teach our children music properly unless there would be pandemonium in the industry, Everybody is just about the fame everybody is just joining music for the fame

Everybody is just all about the fame. Fame is the least and fortune and wealth. Music is very godly its so important that if its not done properly.

I fear that we are going to have a very sad future in the industry. Thats why I keep insisting young boys and girls should learn a musical instrument.

source: 36ng
The Special Adviser to the President on Prosecution, Okoi Obono-Obla has reacted to the public outrage on the reinstatement of wanted former pension boss, Abdulrasheed Maina.

While speaking on a Channels TV programme, Sunday Politics, Okoi Obono-Obla, the Special Assistant on Prosecution to President Muhammadu Buhari, said that no court had found former chairman of Presidential Task Team on Pension Reforms, Abdulrasheed Maina, guilty of corruption as insinuated.

He disclosed further the the fact that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) declared Maina wanted did not mean he was guilty, saying that people were just speculating, adding that I do not know if any court of competent jurisdiction has found Maina guilty of corruption.

The Presidential aide said President Muhammadu Buhari has no concern with the employment, discipline and promotion of civil servants.

He said one cannot be adjudged as guilty even if the EFCC pronounced him wanted, adding that only the court of law can declared anyone guilty.

He said, If the EFCC declares me wanted, that does not not mean I have been adjudged guilty.

It is only a court of competent jurisdiction that can adjudge anyone guilty. Are you sure that there is a charge against this man? If there is a charge against him, has it been brought to the notice of the ministry where he works? Has it been brought to the attention of the Federal Civil Service Commission?

It is not enough to say this man has been accused of committing an offence. I want you to convince me that he has been found guilty by a court of law.
The life of a man was ended by his neighbour over generator fume, the incident was narrated by the son of the deceased, Adeola Okanlawan, on Tuesday.

He told an Igbosere High Court in Lagos how his father was killed with a machete after complaining of smoke coming from a neighbours electricity generator.

In his court testimony as the first prosecution witness, Adeola said that their neighbour, one Ibrahim Tijani, killed his father with a cutlass in a disagreement over generator smoke.

He said that his late father had called the defendant to complain about the smoke that was coming out of his generator set into his room.

According to Adeola, his father asked the defendant to change the position of the generator set to stop the smoke from entering his room, but the defendant refused to do so.

Disagreement between my father and our neighbour over smoke coming out from the neighbours generator set, caused the death of my father.

My father had to push the generator away from its former position but did not throw it away.

The defendant fought with my father which led to his death.

When the defendant was cutting my father with a cutlass, I pleaded with him not to kill my father, but he refused to listen to me,Adeola said in court.

Tijani was first arraigned on Jan. 21, 2016, on one count of murder preferred against him by Lagos State.

The defendant, who resided in an uncompleted building with the deceased, at Okun in Ajah area of Lagos, had pleaded not guilty to the charge.

The Prosecutor, Mr Adeniji Kazeem, the Attorney General of Lagos State, had told the court that Tijani, 31, unlawfully killed one Bashorun Okanlawan, 57, with a machete at 2:30 a.m on Feb. 8, 2015.

He said that the offence contravened Section 221 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2011.

Another prosecution witness, Sgt. David Abu, the Investigating Police officer, told the court that at about 2:13 a.m on the day of the incident, the defendant came to the police station to report a case of assault.

Abu said that 10 minutes after the defendant made the report; the lifeless body of the deceased was brought to the station on a tricycle.

It was discovered that the deceased complained to the defendant to adjust his generator set because of the smoke entering his room.

When the defendant did not comply, the deceased complained to one Afa (a chief) who owned a block industry near them.

It was on their way from the Afas place that the defendant picked a cutlass, went after the deceased and cut his left hand, leg and waist.

When the deceased was no longer moving, the defendant took a bottle and stabbed himself on the left arm, ran to the police station to make a report of an assault,Abu said.

Another witness, Insp. John Babalola, who said the case was transferred to him at the State Criminal Investigation Department, SCID, Panti, Yaba, also confirmed the incident.

He identified the cutlass recovered from the scene of the crime which was tendered and admitted in evidence as an exhibit.

However, the defendants counsel, Onome Akpeneye, asked for an adjournment to enable him to cross-examine the witnesses.

Justice Adedayo Akintoye, adjourned the case until Nov.1, for the continuation of trial.

Source: ( NAN )
Indications of profound interest have emerged that about sixteen firms are scrambling to acquire 9mobile, Nigerias fourth largest network operator.

ThisDay reports that the 16 firms have submitted Expressions of Interest (EoIs) to Barclays to bid for 9mobile

It is understood that companies that have expressed interest in 9mobile include Africas biggest telecoms operator, MTN; Indias Bharti Airtel, operating as Airtel in Nigeria; and ntel, which in 2015 acquired the assets of the defunct NITEL and MTel through the federal governments privatisation programme.

Also in the race are Bua Group, the privately held conglomerate promoted by Alhaji Abdulsamad Rabiu; Morning Side Capital Partners, promoted by the former Managing Director of Diamond Bank Plc, Mr. Alex Otti; and Africell, a subsidiary of the Lebanon-based Lintel Group of Companies, with cellular communications operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), The Gambia, Sierra Leone and Uganda.

Other firms that submitted EoIs are Obot Etiebet & Co, belonging to a former petroleum minister, Mr. Don Etiebet; Blackstone Private Equity; Tel-ology Holdings Limited, a special purpose vehicle led by a former chief executive of MTN Nigeria, Mr. Adian Wood, and Ericsson; De-elim Services Limited; Veittel, a firm owned by the investment arm of the Vietnamese military which has telecoms assets in Africa; AB-Bro Limited, a Nigerian venture company; Hamilton and George International Limited; and two other firms.

The news outlet quoted industry sources as saying that the 16 companies had complied with the deadline for the submission of EoIs at Barclays office in Ikoyi, Lagos, and are preparing to access the data room to conduct their due diligence on 9mobile, preparatory for the bid submission stage.

In July, Etisalat Group had announced on the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange that it had pulled out of 9mobile, formerly known as Etisalat Nigeria.

The telco had defaulted on a loan repayment scheme of $1.2 billion due a consortium of 13 local banks, citing economic downturn and the resulting naira devaluation as the reason for their inability to repay.

Source  NGTrends
The National President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Ayuba Wabba, has commended President Muhammadu Buhari for ordering Mainas immediate disengagement from Service.

President Buhari for acting promptly, Wabba said, The manner of Mr. Mainas re-engagement and posting as Director to the Ministry of Interior is an affront to law and procedure, insult to Nigerians and a mockery of Mr. Presidents fight against corruption; indeed, it is the height of arrogance and impunity.

The labour union also demanded a full investigation into the matter.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
The President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Ayuba Wabba, on Tuesday in Abuja appealed to Nigerians to rally round Kogi workers by donating relief materials to them.

Mr. Wabba, who was answering questions from journalists on the Kogi worker who committed suicide on Friday, said this was necessary in order to avert another act of suicide.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Edward Soje had taken his life after going 11 months without his monthly salaries.

With the suicide mission embarked upon by the state worker, it shows that Kogi state workers are already internally displaced.

This unfortunate suicide mission by the Kogi worker is an issue that should worry all Nigerians, as non-payment of salaries is becoming a reality among workers in the state, Mr. Wabba said.

He disclosed that the NLC would soon have an audience with the governor of Kogi State in view of the fact that the plight of workers in the state was becoming worrisome.

The NLC president however pointed out that non-payment of salaries had assumed a dangerous dimension in the country by leading to workers committing suicide, and should be tackled headlong.

He said the labour union would also take its case to the National Assembly.

We will be demanding that the legislative body should urge governors of affected states to pay salaries when due.

Mr. Wabba however said it was unfortunate that the Kogi governor had two weeks ago during a courtesy call on President Muhammadu Buhari claimed that he was only owing two months salaries.

He added that it was more embarrassing that the same governor had, through the states Head of Service, later owned up that his government owed Mr. Soje only eight months salary.

This is an issue the NLC will not take lightly. We are resolute and we will mobilise our people to protest the non-payment of salaries in Kogi.

We have learnt however that the governor is in the habit of using thugs to harass people, but we shall be there, because we know he is not ready for dialogue, the NLC president said.

NAN reports that the late Mr. Soje, who was a Director in the Kogi State Civil Service, had committed suicide by hanging himself on a tree in Lokoja, the state capital.

He was a Grade Level 16 officer in the State Teaching Service Commission at the time he took his own life.

Source: (NAN)
According to online reports, a student of National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Nike was stabbed on the face by her hostel mate simply identified as Tolani, during an argument last night at Apete, Ibadan.

She has been hospitalized! Full details soon Graphic photos below;
Republican lawmakers on Tuesday added to the already copious investigations swamping the US capital, announcing two new probes targeting Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

But Democrats quickly accused them of creating a massive diversion to distract from President Donald Trumps troubles.

One of the new probes is demanding more clarity on how the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice decided during the height of last years White House race to not pursue charges against Clinton over her alleged misuse of a personal email server.

A second probe targets a 2013 decision by the Obama administration to approve the sale of a Canadian mining company Uranium One to Russian state-owned company Rosatom.

The move gave Rosatom control of 20 percent of US uranium stockpiles and was decided after Uranium One made several donations to the Clinton Foundation of former president Bill Clinton.

The probes, involving the House Judiciary, Oversight and Intelligence Committees, came as Republicans and President Donald Trump weather increasing pressure from the multiple investigations into how Russia may have aided Trumps presidential campaign last year.

Announcing the Clinton-FBI probe, Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, both Republicans, stressed that Republicans cannot be the only targets of investigations.

The law is the most equalizing force in this country. No entity or individual is exempt from oversight, Goodlatte and Gowdy said in a statement.

Source: ( AFP )
The immediate past Minister of Finance, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has been indicted by members of the Nigerian Senate who alleged that her memo caused trillions of Naira revenue loss.

The Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Alleged Misuse, Under-Remittance and Other Fraudulent Activities has said revenue agencies short-changed the Federal Government to the tune of N1.7tn as unremitted revenue generated between 2012 and 2016.

The panel blamed it on a memo by a former Minister of Finance, Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who allegedly issued the memo to the agencies to remit 25 per cent of revenue they generated to the Federal Government and spend 75 per cent on their expenditures.

This was contained in an interim report by the committee chaired by Senator Olamilekan Adeola, which was laid before the Senate last week Thursday, a copy of which was sighted by our correspondent on Monday.

The panel said the amount to be remitted to the Federal Government during the period by 93 agencies it investigated was N21.5tn.

It alleged that 25 of the 93 agencies covered defrauded the government of a total of N1,695,585,887,406.

The committee said the agencies chose to comply with a directive by Okonjo-Iweala via a memo dated November 11, 2011, with Reference Number BO/RVE/12235/259/VII/201 by the former minister to remit 25 per cent only from the revenue generated and use the remaining 75 per cent, which is a clear violation of Section 120 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) and the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 as well as the establishment acts of some of these institutions.

According to the panel, in the report, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation ran at a deficit of N3.1tn, while the Nigeria Customs Service, which generated N335.855bn, failed to remit N83.963bn during the period under review.

The committee alleged that the nations cash cow generated N15.541tn, while its entire expenditure during the period was N18.657tn, exceeding the corporations revenue profile by N3.115tn.

The report also indicted the Federal Inland Revenue Service, which generated N455.5bn but allegedly failed to remit N33.83bn.

Also, the Nigerian Ports Authority reportedly remitted N86.636bn to the Consolidated Revenue Fund when it generated N789.104bn.

Others indicted by the panel are the Central Bank of Nigeria, remitting N13.716bn out of N3.098tn; NIMASA, N184.489bn out of N301.160bn; Nigerian Television Authority, N5.567bn out of N56.817bn.

The report read in part, Most of the revenue generating agencies deny the Auditor General of the Federation access to their financial books and records, which is in conflict with Section 125, Subsection (3) a (i and ii); and Subsection (4) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).

Consequently, the committee recommends as follows: that the Senate should amend the laws where necessary to make it mandatory for all revenue generating agencies to accommodate resident auditors to be posted by the Auditor General of the Federation that will have access to all financial records and books, and to ensure compliance with Section 120(i) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).

The Fiscal Responsibility Act should be amended in a way to compel all agencies and institutions of government on compliance with financial regulations regarding income generation, accounting and remittances.

The Senate should also amend the laws where necessary to make it mandatory for all revenue generating agencies to accommodate resident treasury officers to be posted by the Accountant General of the Federation that will have access to all financial records and books.
Former President Goodluck Jonathan has been ordered by the Federal High Court, to appear before it to testify as a witness in defence of a former National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh.

A court official confided in our correspondent that Metuhs legal team filed the draft subpoena before Justice Okon Abang shortly after the Mondays proceedings.

The court official said the judge signed the subpoena after retiring to his chambers at the end of Mondays proceedings.

The source, however, indicated that Jonathans court appearance on Wednesday would be dependent on whether or not he would be served with the subpoena signed by the judge between Monday and today (Tuesday).

It was learnt that the Abuja home of the ex-President was indicated on the subpoena as his service address.

The source said, I can authoritatively tell you that Metuhs legal team filed the subpoena before the judge on Monday and the judge signed the subpoena promptly after the proceedings on Monday.

The judge indicated in the subpoena that the former President should appear in court on Wednesday.

But whether or not the former President would appear in court on Wednesday would be dependent on if the court bailiff will be able to serve him at his home in Abuja between Monday and the end of Tuesday.

Metuh, through his lead counsel, Dr. Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), told the court on Monday that he would seek to subpoena the ex-President as a witness.

Most of Metuhs defence witnesses, including Mr. Ben Nwosu, who ended his testimony earlier on Monday, had insisted that the N400m paid to the ex-spokesperson for the PDP from the Office of the National Security Adviser in November 2014, (the money being part of the case against Metuh), was directly authorised by Jonathan.

Metuhs lawyer, Dr. Onyechi Ikpeazu (SAN), told Justice Abang that he had written formally to Jonathan notifying him of his intention to have him testify in court but that the former President did not reply to his letter.

Ikpeazu said this while responding to questions raised by Justice Abang after Nwosu ended his testimony on Monday.

The SAN said he intended to apply for subpoena to be issued on Jonathan after the detained former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, earlier summoned to testify as Metuhs witness would have ended his testimony.

He said, We have another witness on subpoena, and at the end of the evidence of this another witness, we will take a decision on whether or not the first defendant (Metuh) will testify.

The other witness we want to subpoena is Goodluck Jonathan, former President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Responding to further questions from the judge, Ikpeazu said, We wrote him a letter but he did not respond and our plan will be to apply for the subpoena after the first application (for subpoena to be issued on Dasuki).

Although Ikpeazu said Dasuki was scheduled to be the next to testify for the defence, the ex-NSA was absent from court on Monday.

Justice Abang said on Monday that Dasuki was scheduled to appear in court on October 25 (Wednesday).

The judge had earlier refused to grant Metuhs request to sign the subpoena to be served on Dasuki.

But the Court of Appeal in Abuja on September 29 overruled the judge and ordered him to sign the subpoena.

Justice Abang noted on Monday that he had since October 3 complied with the Court of Appeals order by signing the subpoena which was said to have been subsequently served on Dasuki in DSS custody.

But Dasukis lawyer, Mr. Ahmed Raji (SAN), was however in court to oppose the request to compel the ex-NSA to testify as Metuhs defence witness.

Raji told Justice Abang that he had on behalf Dasuki filed a motion on October 20, seeking an order setting aside the subpoena served on the ex-NSA to testify in Metuhs defence.

While introducing the application on Monday, Raji said Dasuki had asked as an alternative prayer in the application, an order of stay of execution of the subpoena served on the detainee pending his (Dasukis) release from the custody of the DSS.

The DSS has detained Dasuki since December 2015 after the ex-NSA was granted bail in respect of two separate sets of charges instituted against him before the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory.

Justice Abang fixed Tuesday for the hearing of the application.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
Two members of the Imo Community Watch, which was established by the state Governor, Rochas Okorocha, have been arrested by operatives of the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad, Akokwa Annex, for alleged stealing and gunrunning.

The suspects  Chukwuma Madueke, 36; and 40-year-old Chieleka Obejiri hail from Obiohia in the Ideato South Local Government Area of the state.

According to reports, the suspects were arrested by a team of FSARS operatives led by their commander, Banjoko Idahosa, while allegedly stealing from the store of Eastern Palm University, Akokwo.

A police source said the suspects, who were posted on security duties to the university, made away with the schools building materials valued at N917,000.

He said, Chukwuma Madueke and Chieleta Obejiri, who are members of the Imo Community Watch, were arrested on September 14 for stealing the universitys property, having broken into a store in the night.

It was not a one-day operation. They consistently did it until luck ran out on them. A worker at the university, Emeka Obejiri, caught them one night and reported to us.

We mobilised our men and lay in ambush for them in the school; they were caught in the act.

The source said a search was conducted on the houses of the suspects, adding that one pump-action rifle and one single-barrelled gun with live cartridges, were recovered from them.

It was futher revealed that the suspects bought the guns and cartridges from a 60-year-old man, Christian Duru, from Mgbe, in the Orlu LGA and one Christopher Omieri, 65.

He said the suspects had been leveraging on their positions to commit crimes, adding that it was because of these crimes that CP Chris Ezike, approved the formation of SARS annex in Akokwa.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
Senator Abaribe who stood surety to the missing IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu has responded to the Federal Governments claim that the UK returnee is in his custody.

Embattled senator representing Abia South Senatorial District, Enyinnaya Abaribe, has denied the claim by the Federal Government that the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, is in his custody.

The Federal Government had earlier replied to Abaribes application seeking to withdraw as one of the sureties for Kanu, describing the application as belated.

The government in its counter-affidavit and written address filed before the Federal High Court in Abuja to oppose Abaribes request, told the senator that Kanu was in his custody and he had to produce him for the continuation of his trial.

But Abaribe in a response to a question on whether Kanu was actually in his custody, the senator in a text message said, I dont know where he is.

The Federal Government, however, stated in its counter-affidavit that Abaribe was aware that Kanu has long violated the bail conditions handed down by this honourable court on April 24, 2017 before September 11 when he claimed to have lost contact with the defendant.

The counter-affidavit read in part, That it was at this point at violating the conditions at the bail that the senator surety ought to surrender the 1st defendant and or bring up this application; That this application is belated and ill-timed;

The applicant failed to apply to the court timeously, stating on oath that the defendant bound by recognizance to appear before this court had violated the bail condition given by this court.

The prosecuting counsel, Mr. Shuaibu Labaran, argued in the written address that Abaribe failed woefully by allegedly aiding and abetting Kanu to flout his bail conditions.

Denying that Kanu was not in the custody of the Nigerian Army, the Federal Government stated in its counter-affidavit that the defendant was in Abaribes custody.

Abaribe however denied Kanus whereabouts.

I dont know where he is. But that is a question that will be resolved by the suit we have instituted, he stated.

Kanu was absent from court when his case came up on October 17, 2017, but his co-defendants with whom he was being prosecuted on charges of treasonable felony were produced in court by prison officials.

Meanwhile, the Federal High Court in Abuja on Monday fixed November 14 for the hearing of the application filed by IPOB to challenge its proscription.

The suit was scheduled for hearing before Justice Abdu Kafarati, who is the Acting Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, on Wednesday, but it was learnt that the judge was absent from court as he was said to be attending a seminar elsewhere.

Court registrars were said to have fixed November 14 for hearing under the instruction of the judge.

IPOBs lawyer, Mr. Ifeanyi Ejiofor, said on Monday that the Federal Government had yet to respond to the application. IPOB had on September 22 asked the court to set aside the orders proscribing it and designating it as a terrorist group.
Operatives of the Nigerian Army in the ongoing Operation Crocodile Smile II in the South-South and South-West regions have arrested a bishop, Uwah Mfon, and 18 others for armed robbery, kidnapping and cult activities in different areas of Akwa Ibom State.

According to reports,some of the suspects were identified as Saviour Friday, Nsika Udoh, Akan Monday, Abak Obong and Oyobong Frank  were arrested by troops of 2 Brigade and had been handed over to the police.

According to the spokesman of the Deputy Director, Army Public Relations, and 6 Division spokesman, Colonel Aminu Iliyasu, said Mfon and the other suspects were arrested for allegedly terrorising Abak Obong, Oruk Atai and Ikot Obong areas in the Etim Ekpo Local Government Area of the state.

Iliyasu said the bishop was believed to be an alleged financier of wanted criminals terrorising the areas.

He said, The increased presence of troops both on land and on waterways helped to prevent any criminal activity.

The troops arrested Mfon on October 14. He is believed to be the financier of wanted criminals and he was arrested at Ikot Ibekwe community in the Ukanafun LGA. The suspect is volunteering information about gangs of kidnappers and cult members linked to him.

The spokesman said more than 120,000 litres of stolen fuel was recovered from oil thieves in Rivers State.

It was that troops of 29 Battalion intercepted two trucks in the Uzuaku area, laden with 55,000 and 30,000 litres of fuel.

A patrol team also discovered a re-activated illegal refinery in the Doroko area on October 17; and the site was destroyed by the troops. The troops also destroyed 53 jerrycans of 25 litres and 20 drums of 250 litres in the Akinima and Okrika areas respectively, Iliyasu added

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )
Policemen in Enugu state have arrested a man who reportedly stabbed a female companion to death with a knife during a fight.

The police in Enugu State have arrested a man who allegedly stabbed his female companion to death on Sunday, following a disagreement he had with the woman.

The Police Public Relations Officer, SP Ebere Amaraizu, in a statement on Monday, said that the incident happened at about 3:30 a.m. at Onuato Street, Enugu.

Amaraizu said that the victim accompanied the suspect to his apartment where they had a disagreement which resulted in a scuffle that led to her death.

He said that the suspect, who picked up the woman at Rangers Avenue on Oct. 22, had agreed with her that he would pay her N4,000 after passing the night with him.

The PPRO quoted the suspect as disclosing that he had drunk to his fill and that on arrival, because it was already getting late, he demanded that they had sexual intercourse immediately.

His request did not influence anything as the deceased allegedly requested to finish what she was inhaling in order to be in the mood for the business of the day.

The accused maintained that after several hours of pressuring her and without any answer, he slept off and woke up before 3 a.m., Amarizu stated.

The police spokesman said that the accused immediately ordered the female companion said to be a prostitute to leave the apartment since the aim of bringing her appeared to have been defeated.

He said, The accused said that the deceased resisted the order and allegedly warned him to beware as she would not succumb to any persons threat whatsoever.

She later headed for a kitchen knife that was seen in the kitchen spot of the suspects room after allegedly biting him.

The accused further revealed that a fight suddenly broke out between them and as the deceased tried to stab him to death with the kitchen knife, he overpowered her.

Amarizu quoted the suspect as saying that the kitchen knife went straight to the stomach of the deceased and he finally stabbed her on the neck region and she died.

The police spokesman said that the accused later wrapped her body and hurriedly arranged to travel to Lagos.

According to him, the suspect was nabbed, following a tip-off from members of a local vigilante.

He said that the body was recovered from the apartment and deposited at the mortuary of the Eastern Nigeria Medical Centre, Enugu, as investigations into the incident had commenced.
TECNO, a premier mobile phone brand under TRANSSION HOLDINGS, has launched its newest addition, the Phantom 8 in Middle East and Africa region. The regional launch took place in Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Dubai in the presence of 200 guests.

Addressing the media at the event, Arif Chowdhury, Vice President of Transsion Group  the parent company of TECNO Mobile, spoke about the brands fortunes, advancement of smartphone technology and the brands expansion strategy into new markets. We are very excited about the launch of the Phantom 8 today. It has not been an easy ride to success but as they say in the end, success is all that matters and I can say 2017 has been a very remarkable year for us as a company. We have received admirable awards and recognitions like the Smartphone Brand of the Year Award at Titans of Tech Awards in Lagos this year, and recognitions in key markets, expanded our product lines, ventured into new markets and raised the bar on smartphone innovation.

The newly launched Android operated Phantom 8 features a revolutionary camera, attractive design and high-speed experience. Debuting an impressive 20MP bright front Camera and 12MP + 13MP dual cameras at the rear with 10x super zoom, single shot HDR, 4 in 1 skin brightening technology, real-time refocus and filter, ultra-quality super pixel lens with great noise control, the device is powered by a 6GB high speed RAM, 64ROM, 2.6GHz MediaTek Helio P25 processor and a 3500mAh battery with 50% extra ultra-fast charge capacity, all of which ensures that the device is faster and consumes less energy. The device is wrapped in a diamond design uni-body with drip screen, 2.5D glass and has a 5.7 Full HD screen mounted on its surface. With a glass fingerprint scanner that guarantees 50% more responsiveness planted at the rear of the device, handling and securing the Phantom 8 is such a delight.

The Phantom 8 will be available in Shadow Gold, Galaxy Blue, Royal Purple, Jack Black and Diamond Blue colors and fully supports VR Videos.

The Phantom 8 will ship to several markets across the world.

The new Phantom 8 is compatible with Micro SIM or Nano SIM Card and supports up to 2TB (Terra Bytes) TF (Trans Flash) Card, and it holds 4 modules, 20 bands and covers more than 200 countries and zones.

In Nigeria, customers can start to pre-order the Phantom 8 exclusively from SLOT shops across Nigeria from October 23  26, 2017. Smartphone retailers SLOT Systems, will have the exclusive rights to sales of the Phantom 8 for a period starting from October 27  31, 2017. Other retail outlets across Nigeria will start selling from November 1, 2017.

More Photos from the launch:

For more information about TECNO Mobile, please visit: http://www.tecno-mobile.com/home/#/

About Tecno Mobile

TECNO Mobile, born in 2006, is a premium mobile phone brand of Transsion Holdings. As the first dual-SIM handset supplier in Africa, TECNO is dedicated to transforming state-of-art technologies into localized products under the guideline of Think Globally, Act Locally. By now, TECNO has spread its presence in around 50 countries across the globe. Its product portfolio comprises of smartphones, tablets and feature phones.

Adhering to the brand essence of Experience More, TECNO is committed to enriching customers recreational life by providing customized quality products. In 2014 and 2015, TECNO maintained top 20 Most Admired Brands in Africa as per African Business, the most influential business magazine in the continent. In 2014, TECNO was awarded the International Quality Crown Award in the Gold Category in London.

As a fast-growing international brand, TECNO has achieved an accumulative sales volume of 120 million units. It is now one of the top three mobile phone brands in Africa and a major player worldwide.

TECNO is fully supported by Transsions strength in manufacturing, R&D and after sales services. With 5 manufacturing units around the world, the company is capable of producing 300,000+ handsets per day. Transsion R&D centres are located in Shanghai, Beijing, Lagos (Nigeria) and Nairobi (Kenya) with more than 800 experienced professionals, which are paired with an outstanding design team in France. Transsions after sales service brand has 1000+ service touch points globally powered by 4 repair factories to provide unequalled support to TECNO consumers.

For more information please visit www.tecno-mobile.com

About Transsion

Transsion Holdings, best known in emerging markets for its leading mobile brands including TECNO, itel, Infinix and Spice, is a diversified international group specializing in mobility solutions and present in 50+ countries globally. Its brand portfolio also comprises Carlcare for after-sales services, Oraimo for mobile accessories as well as Syinix for home appliance. Transsion has sold more than 200 million Dual-SIM mobile handsets globally and as per IDC, in 2016, the market share of mobile brands under Transsion reached 38% in Africa. In 2016, Transsion officially entered India with its brand itel and has achieved the second Most Preferred Brand in India (as per CMR report 2017 Q1). In the same year, Transsions three mobile phone brands have been selected in 2016 Top 100 Most Admired Brands for African Consumers with TECNO ranked 14th, itel ranked 25th as well as Infinix ranked 37th.

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According to reports just coming in two female suicide bombers detonated an Improvised Explosive Device (IEDs) killing 16 people and injuring 18 others.

The Improvised Explosive Device (IEDs) was strapped to their bodies at Muna Gwarage and Dusman village, outskirt of Maiduguri, Borno State capital where they detonated the explosives.

According to the Borno State Commissioner of Police, Demian Chukwu; In all, 16 persons were killed, while 18 others were injured in the three explosions. At about 8pm, a male suicide bomber detonated IED strapped on him at Muna Garage. He killed himself and 13 people. Five persons were injured.

He alo said that; In another development, at Muna Dalti, two female suicide bombers detonated IED, killing each other and injuring 13 people. The injured people have been moved to UMTH for treatment. The bodies of the dead people had been evacuated, while EOD police teams were deployed to the scenes, to restore orders.

-Punch
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Rental rates for self-storage units in Texas have been relatively flat for four consecutive years, after an 18 percent spike between 2012 and 2014, according to data released this week by SpareFoot, an online marketplace for self-storage consumers. The average monthly rental rate across the state this year is $83.67, a 1 percent decline from $84.50 last year. By comparison, rates increased about 6 percent annually between 2010 and 2013.

Within local markets, Austin has commanded the highest self-storage rental rates since 2012. Its 2017 average of $102.14 is well ahead of Dallas, which placed second at $91.11. Austin rates grew 3 percent year over year, increasing from $99.03 to 102.14, though the 2017 figure is down from a peak price of $104.95 in 2014.

Houston and San Antonio rates grew about 2 percent year over year, while Dallas prices fell 3 percent and Fort Worth plummeted 7 percent from $90.92 to $84.64. Fort Worth fell from third to fifth in average unit price among the five major markets.

The most popular unit size across the state was a tie between a 5-by-10 and 10-by-10, according to the source.

SpareFoot also recently released rental-rate data for Arizona and California.

SpareFoot.com helps consumers find and reserve self-storage units, with comparison shopping tools that show real-time availability and exclusive deals. With a network of more than 12,000 storage facilities ranging from mom-and-pop operations to real estate investment trusts, the company reaches prospective storage renters though partnerships with brands including SelfStorage.com and Penske Truck Rental.
Phoenix-based U-Haul International Inc., which operates nearly 1,000 self-storage locations across North America, has opened a new facility in Urbana, Ill., that it converted from the former Southgate Shopping Center. The property at 2010 S. Philo Road officially opened in July 2016, offering truck and trailer rentals, U-Box portable-storage containers, and moving and packing supplies. The renovated structure now offers 55,711 square feet of storage space in more than 600 units.

The company hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Oct. 17, noon to 2 p.m., that included property tours, refreshments and prizes.

"This building was becoming an eyesore, and we are excited to reveal the hard work we put into revitalizing it," said Aaron Freeman, president of the U-Haul Co. of Illinois. "We are introducing our top-of-the-line self-storage facility and our new U-Haul Track Share 24/7 self-service options. Our neighbors in Urbana have longed for an easy, online experience and we are happy to provide that."

U-Haul has other conversion projects under development in several states. Like the Urbana facility, the projects are driven by the companys corporate sustainability initiatives, which support infill development to help local communities lower their carbon footprint, according to a press release. U-Hauls adaptive reuse of existing structures eliminates the amount of energy and resources required for new-construction materials and helps local cities diminish their unwanted inventory of unused buildings, company officials said.

"Our sustainability mission speaks volumes," Freeman said. "This is the air that our children and grandchildren will be breathing, so it's important to protect it. I'm so proud of what we were able to do with this conversion. Seeing the building transformed from an outdated, dilapidated state to a modern facility is inspiring. We can't wait to serve Urbana for years to come."

Established in 1945, U-Haul owns more than 28 million square feet of storage space.
A late-night phone call has propelled GEICO to a policy milestone.



The company recently hit 16 million policies in force. The magic number was reached when Tucson sales agent Jeremiah Lizarraga sold a policy to a California customer at 1:01 a.m. EST on Monday. Its the second milestone the insurer has reached this year; in January, GEICO sold its 15 millionth policy.



Celebrate excellence in insurance. Join us at the Insurance Business Awards in Chicago.



Lizarraga said that he had no idea when he sold the policy that it represented a company milestone.



One day I returned from lunch and my supervisor was waiting at my desk with the good news, he said. We started to high-five each other and everyone was very excited. It took a moment for me to fully grasp what was happening. Im absolutely stoked that I am a part of something as special as this.



We are extremely excited that the 16 millionth policy was sold by one of our sales agents here in Tucson, said Martha Furnas, GEICO regional vice president. Reaching this significant milestone in record-breaking time is a remarkable achievement and serves as a reflection of the hard work and tireless effort of our GEICO associates nationwide.



This is actually the second time the Tucson office has been involved in a company milestone; the office also sold GEICOs 11 millionth policy in 2012.



Weve had the privilege of hosting a pretty big milestone celebration a few years ago, Furnas said. We are definitely planning something special for 16 million to show associates our thanks and appreciation.






Report sheds light on why insurance in the state is only deceptively affordable
Recreational cannabis is now legal in eight states across the US. The pot industry is expanding rapidly and so are its risks and insurance coverage needs.At a core level, covering the marijuana industry is no different to any other production or manufacturing industry, according to Jaime Lewis, founder and CEO of Mayflower Medicinals and acting board chair of the National Cannabis Industry Association.Standard insurance is required for managing a marijuana business. You need general liability, workers compensation, D&O, E&O, equipment insurance and so on, Lewis told Insurance Business. The one tricky piece of coverage is the product liability. Not many carriers are willing to provide product liability for cannabis because its still illegal under federal law in the US.This legality issue could also impact claims. For example, if you suffer a significant property loss as a result of a fire at your cultivation plant, its unclear how that claim will be dealt with because cannabis is still banned at a federal level.Despite these legal challenges, cannabis is still a rapidly emerging market in North America. Its legal in 29 states across the US and in Washington D.C for medicinal purposes and its likely that the number of states granting recreational use will increase.Insurers and brokers can tune into that fact and realize theres some money to be made in the cannabis industry if you want to cover crop loss and offer product liability, according to Lewis.The cannabis industry really doesnt seem to be that risky these days, Lewis added. It is highly regulated at a state level. Workplace safety is paramount and you wont have employees getting high at work.One thing brokers need to think about in this market is making sure they set the right insurance coverage from the top down. There are lots of management companies that oversee this business that need proper D&O coverage.
You can count on wholesale brokerage Worldwide Facilities continuing to grow this coming year  that is the word from newly named company COO Cameron Kelly.Last year was a banner year for the company, Kelly told Insurance Business.The firm added about 65 new staff and written premiums rose from $533 million to $645 million from 2015 to 2016, with expectations to finish 2017 north of $800 [million].We recapitalized the company in 2015 and that allowed us to take a very aggressive approach to growth. 2016 was a banner year for us, he said.But, Worldwide isnt done growing. Expect more in the next 12 months in terms of both acquisitions and recruitment, Kelly added.Were still looking heavily on the acquisition side, he explained. Were constantly evaluating new opportunities. Its not the best market for buyers, its highly competitive  but we have a lot of irons in the fire at this point and its just a matter of finding the right companies with the right fit. But certainly thats what were looking at right now.What I would expect more of [in the coming year] is more acquisitions and more recruitment to occur. Were just picking which ones we really want to fight hard for.He said Worldwide is also focusing on program and MGA business  and will keep diversifying to be in the best place we can be.In the acquisition market, as competitive as it is right now, its important for buyers to be opportunistic, Kelly said. And as opportunistic buyers, he said he could see Worldwide possibly, maybe in workers comp, while also developing more programs certainly in the professional lines area.This month, Kelly moved over from his previous C-suite role as CFO into the COO seat. John Galaviz was hired to assume the CFO position.Kelly said the move was a logical one for him and the company, as he was heavily involved in operations already: It was the next natural step. Instead of [branch managers] using me as a resource, now they report to me. It was seamless.
Karen Clark & Company (KCC) has released the first version of its Severe Convective Storm (SCS) Reference Model, which would allow insurers to better project the risk certain weather events carry.The model is based on advanced scientific modeling techniques, a release said. The data has also been validated with high resolution insurer claims data.Traditional catastrophe models typically underestimate the SCS loss potential for insurers. This can be troubling, as SCS losses have been trending upward and dominating US insured catastrophe average annual losses - annual SCS losses have consistently exceeded $10 billion for the past several years. In 2011 alone, insured losses exceeded $30 billion, and two isolated weather events caused $7 billion in losses each.KCCs SCS Reference Model is a multi-peril model, wherein the hazards of hail are simulated separately from tornadoes and straight-line winds. The model shows that hail trumps the SCS risk, accounting for almost 70% of annual losses on average.The model includes more than 100 historical SCS events  on top of a stochastic catalog of over 33,000 events used  for pricing and reinsurance decision making. These historical events allow insurers to benchmark the model against their actual losses to verify the precision of the model.There has been significant industry demand for a more credible and accurate SCS model, said KCC president and CEO Karen Clark. While this peril does not pose a solvency threat to most insurers, claims from severe thunderstorms eat away at earnings each year, and our clients want to make sure their rates reflect the most up-to-date science and their actual loss experience. Were pleased to release this new model that can accurately reproduce SCS losses.When we reviewed the first set of results from the KCC model, we were very impressed, commented American Strategic Insurance director of business analysis Morgan Savage. We were never confident in the loss estimates from the other models because the numbers are so different from our actual loss experience. Were very pleased with the KCC SCS model and are already using it for our growth strategies in SCS prone areas.
The inland marine insurance sector has been one of the property and casualty industrys most profitable and consistent lines of business over the last 10 years, according to new data from rating agency A.M. Best.Inland marines dependability is due mainly to greater diversification when compared to other property lines, according to an A.M. Best report titled Inland Marine: Unique Risks and a Knack for Profits. That diversification mitigates the overall effects of any one event.According to the report, the inland marine sectors combined ratio has a strong positive correlation with other major property lines  but it hasnt experienced the same peaks and valleys as lines like commercial multi-peril, fire and homeowners/farmowners. Inland marine is also the only one of these lines not to report an underwriting loss since 2006.Except for the catastrophe-impacted years, combined ratios have remained under 90.0 during this time period, A.M. Best said in a news release. A.M. Best expects results in 2017 to deteriorate compared with 2016 owing to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and decreasing rates, but believes inland marine insurers will still post underwriting profits.Inland marine accounted for about 2.1% of total P&C net premiums in 2016  about US$11.4 billion, A.M. Best reported.
First, you were talking about the economic status of negroes. I am going to assume that your are putting the fault for that on White people. No doubt you also believe we're not doing enough for them. Basically, giving negroes a piggy back ride through would fix that. Would it not?



As for the negroid African countries, today most of them believe that their bad luck is caused by witches casting hexes on them. Many of them still practice cannibalism! No doubt White people didn't encourage those things. As for stripping those countries of their natural resources, you're delusional. Africa is over three times larger than the continental U.S. It would be very difficult to "strip." And as far as the U.S. goes, we already have enough natural resources to keep us from needing to go to Africa for more.



Next, White people in Europe weren't cave men. Also, negroes didn't build the pyramids. So I will discount the rest of what you said in that regard. As for orientals, for having a few more grams of brain than Whites, they sure are stupid. They built the great wall. But at a cost that no White ruler would ever have burdened their people with. Orientals also eat many vile things that are too numerous to go into. Most still believe in their traditional medicine. The vast majority of which is only voodoo horseshit that has never gone through a double blind scientific study. And anybody who would choose rhino horn over over viagra definitely isn't playing with a full deck. As for white people still existing in 2000 years, they will if I have anything to say about it.
by Chris DaviesThe inaugural Insurance Business America Awards are fast approaching! We caught up with a selection of finalists and asked them to tell their stories.This time it is Matt Banazsynski , CEO of Independent Insurance Agents of Wisconsin (IIAW), who is a contender for Young Gun of the Year.Matt Banazsynski: During and after college, I worked in the United States Congress and Wisconsin State Legislature. I held a variety of positions during my tenure within both institutions, but primarily focused on insurance and healthcare public policy. I later joined the Independent Insurance Agents of Wisconsin as vice president and at the age of 26 took over as CEO of the organization. I have been with the IIAW for past seven years where I have focused on creating products and services responsive to the needs of independent insurance agents while working intimately and strategically with our carrier partners to better the IA channel.I have also served in various capacities for many different organizations including InVEST , University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Center for Risk Management, Insurance Agents and Brokers of America Strategic Planning Committee, and the State of Wisconsins Council on Financial Literacy. I am currently serving on the board of directors for the following organizations: Trusted Choice , University of Wisconsin- Madison Center for Professional and Executive Development, and Wisconsins Insurance Commissioners Property and Casualty Advisory Council. I also actively support Make-A-Wish Wisconsin, March for Babies and other local charities.MB: I have had the opportunity to represent the insurance industry in Wisconsin and meet privately with the Vice President of the United States to discuss healthcare reform and ways to improve it, but I would say the highs and the lows of my journey have centred around the people I get to work and interact with.The highs: all the incredible people I get to work with on daily basis. From CEOs to customer service representatives, I take pride in helping the industry succeed and joy in seeing employees and peers I have worked with go on to achieve great milestones in their life or career whether its within or outside of our organization.The lows: some of the challenges that come with running a business. Any time you lead an organization or a group of people, you have the unique opportunity to play a supporting role in their personal and professional development and journey. With it comes many highs and lows.For me, I am constantly chasing success, its meaning is always evolving. I am reminded of a quote, success is a journey, not a destination.MB: It means a lot to be selected as a finalist by our industrys leading publication for such a prestigious award . It will mean everything to actually receive the award. This recognition not only validates my hard work, but that of my team and the people who helped me get to where I am and where I am going. There are many people in my life that have played a supporting part in my success. Being recognized as a finalist is also fuel. Fuel to keep working and driving harder to achieve the Young Gun award or my next goal in life!MB: In my opinion it is the best industry there is. Its also the most misconstrued industry. There is truly a place for everyone in the insurance industry/community. Im lucky, I get up every day and love what I do and the people I work with. Its a tight community and I am fortunate to be a part of it.MB: My wife and I are looking forward to attending the event. Regardless of if I win, I look forward to celebrating with her, the rest of the finalists and my peers from the industry. There is plenty to celebrate! In the words of John C. Reilly in the (insurance) movie Cedar Rapids, Who wants to get wasted? Choo Choo!Im a geek at heart!
Officials suspect a hoverboard may be to blame for a fire that damaged six townhomes in Pennsylvania.

Firefighters found one home engulfed in flames when they arrived on the scene on Royal Drive in Manchester, Penn., Monday morning. The flames quickly spread.

Four homes were destroyed and more than a dozen people were displaced.

There are no reports of injuries.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Pennsylvania
A company that operates nine ski resorts in the U.S. and Canada will require workers to wear safety helmets when working on the mountains.

The new policy follows the death in March of Alexander Witt, who wasnt wearing a helmet and died while working on a steep trail at Sugarloaf USA in Maine. The resort was fined $11,400 by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

A spokeswoman for Boyne Resorts told New Hampshire Public Radio that the new policy now applies to all its resorts, which also include Maines Sunday River and Loon Mountain in New Hampshire. The company also owns resorts in Michigan, Montana, Utah, Washington and British Columbia.

The National Ski Areas Association says the industry in general is moving toward such policies.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Maine
The Canadian government is really worried about cyber attacks that have targeted critical infrastructure and has helped companies improve their defenses without disclosing hacks to the public, a senior intelligence official said on Monday.

The comment by Scott Jones, an assistant deputy minister at Canadas Communications Security Establishment intelligence agency, follows a warning on Friday from the United States that sophisticated hackers are targeting U.S. infrastructure, including nuclear, energy, aviation, water and manufacturing industries.

Targeted attacks on Canadian infrastructure is something we are really worried about, Jones said in an interview at the Reuters Cyber Security Summit in Toronto.

Do we think somethings going to happen tomorrow? No, Jones said. Is it technically possible? Yes, and thats what were worried about.

Jones said Canada had seen a level of hacking activity that was comparable to what had been reported in the United States.

Jones said the government rarely goes public when it uncovers hacking activity because that would let attackers know they had been caught. Instead, it quietly reaches out to targeted firms.

We try to do it very quietly to help the company become more resilient, he said. Wed like to try to give the defenders as much advantage as we can.

Ray Boisvert, a former senior official with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service spy agency, also told the Reuters Cyber Security Summit that defenses against such attacks need to be improved.

Boisvert, who this year began advising the Ontario provincial government on security issues, said that infrastructure firms are not doing enough to thwart cyber attacks.

Weve yet to suffer a massive critical infrastructure attack and weve yet to suffer a massive loss of capability, he said, explaining why many firms have not invested in boosting cyberdefenses.

He warned that some 60 nations currently have the ability to conduct offensive cyber warfare operations, including ones that could harm the grid and other infrastructure.

Five years ago, only about five nations had that capability, he added.

CSEs Jones said the potential for cyber attacks to harm critical infrastructure has diminished over the past two years because private companies now take the threat much more seriously.

For more cyber stories, please go to https://www.reuters.com/cyberrisk

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp and Jim Finkle in Toronto, additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa; editing by Grant McCool and Susan Thomas)

Related:

Topics USA Cyber Canada
Britains markets watchdog said it has opened an investigation into the hacking of U.S. credit reporting agency Equifax, which affected nearly 700,000 UK citizens.

The Financial Conduct Authority announces today that it is investigating the circumstances surrounding a cyber security incident that led to the loss of UK customer data held by Equifax Ltd on the servers of its U.S. parent, the watchdog said in a statement on Tuesday.

This statement is made given the public interest in these matters.

The announcement follows a letter from Nicky Morgan, chair of the House of Commons Treasury Committee to the watchdog, asking if Equifax had violated terms of its licence to operate in the country, and whether the regulator had the power to compel the company to provide compensation to UK consumers.

Equifax said it was already working closely with the FCA and other authorities.

We welcome this opportunity to learn the lessons from this criminal cyber attack in order for all businesses to better protect consumers in the future, the company said in a statement.

Equifax has said that 15.2 million records on British citizens were involved in the breach, including sensitive data on what it said were 693,665 individuals, for whom credit protection services were offered.

The UK data accessed by unknown hackers included credit accounts, user credentials, partial credit card details and driver licence numbers. The remaining 14.5 million records contained names and birth dates of UK consumers were potentially compromised, the company disclosed.

Equifax first revealed in September it had been the target of a massive data breach which hit around 143 million people, mostly in the United States.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; editing by Rachel Armstrong and David Evans)

Topics USA Cyber
Citigroups Asia head of insurance investment banking Donald Lacey is leaving the bank to become the chief operating officer of Ping An Insurance Group Co of Chinas Global Voyager Fund, sources familiar with the situation said.

Lacey, who joined Citi roughly 10 years ago, will start in his new job in a few months, one of the sources told Reuters.

Citi and Ping An declined to comment. The sources did not want to be identified as they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Ping An said in May it was launching its first overseas fund to primarily invest in financial and healthcare technology worldwide. The initial size of the fund is $1 billion and it is led by Jonathan Larsen, an 18-year stalwart of Citigroup who joined Ping An as its chief innovation officer.

(Reporting by Anshuman Daga in Singapore and Kane Wu in Hong Kong; additional reporting by Julie Zhu; editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Topics InsurTech
Aon Benfield, the reinsurance intermediary and capital adviser of Aon plc, has appointed Leonora Siccardi as EMEA & UK Head of Client Services.

Based in London and reporting to Maggie Westdale, CFO of Aon Benfield, Richard Posgate, co-CEO of EMEA for Aon Benfield, and Nick Frankland, UK CEO of Aon Benfield, Siccardi will oversee the strategic direction of the firms EMEA and UK claims and client services functions to ensure clients receive an outstanding service, both on a day-to-day basis and also post catastrophic events.

The new role represents an expansion of her current responsibilities as UK Head of Client Services at Aon Benfield.

Having joined Aon in 2006, Siccardi has held several positions within the group including claims manager for the Southern European Group Division, and team leader for the Financial & Professional Services Claims Coordinator Team for Aon Risk Solutions. In 2012, she moved to Aon Benfield to become head of Facultative EMEA Claims, and from 2014 served as head of Claims Advocacy for Aon Risk Solutions, with responsibility for the development and delivery of a claims strategy for Aons Global Broking Centre in London.

Other career highlights include working for Munich Re in Italy, and Willis in London.

Siccardi graduated in Law from the University of Genoa, and has a masters degree in Risk Management from the Bocconi Business School in Milan.

Maggie Westdale, CFO of Aon Benfield said: Leonora will oversee the strategic direction of our EMEA & UK claims and client services functions to ensure we are effectively responding to our clients needs and strengthening our competitive advantage, while driving consistent best practices across our regional hubs.

Source: Aon Benfield

Topics Claims Aon London
Managing general agency and surplus lines broker J.M. Wilson has added Jen Dugan as sales and agency relations specialist for its Indiana and Ohio offices.

Dugan will be the primary resource and liaison for independent insurance agents by offering product knowledge and quality service, as well as building relationships with agency partners.

Dugan has more than 14 years of experience in the insurance industry where she held various roles with a specialty in claims.

Source: J.M. Wilson
Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter says William Stephens, the owner of Tornado King, a storm shelter manufacturing and installation company, pleaded no contest to six counts of embezzlement and one count of a pattern of criminal offenses.

As part of the plea, Stephens will pay $101,403.23 in restitution to victims and serve a five-year deferred sentence.

Hunter commended the work of the agents in the AGs Consumer Protection Unit who investigated Stephens and the attorneys who brought restitution to victims.

An investigation by the Attorney Generals Office began after receiving multiple complaints by Tornado King customers, claiming Stephens was paid full or partial payments for storm shelters that were never installed.

According to investigators, when work wasnt completed, and victims tried to contact the company, Stephens would give excuses and eventually became unresponsive.

Source: Oklahoma Attorney Generals Office

Related:

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Windstorm Oklahoma
Authorities in Tennessee say a Norfolk Southern train derailed in Knoxville, sending rail cars carrying shipping containers off the tracks, with some of them plowing into buildings. No one was injured.

The News-Sentinel in Knoxville reported police tweeted that 50 cars derailed, and at least two buildings were damaged. Firefighters at the scene were looking for potential hazards.

A spokeswoman for Norfolk Southern told the newspaper 10 cars derailed at around 10:15 p.m. EDT Saturday, noting that it appears shipping containers on the train fell off as the rail cars left the tracks.

A police dispatcher said cargo from the derailed train was also off the tracks, but she had no information on the type of cargo.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Tennessee
The U.S. visa of Bill Browder, a prominent critic of the Kremlin, was revoked after Moscow exploited a loophole to place him on the Interpol wanted list, the financier revealed Saturday.The move against the U.S.-born British citizen was labeled farcical, and prompted immediate calls for the U.S. to overturn the decision.This is outrageous, Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, tweeted Sunday, urging President Donald Trump to not join Putins campaign against the human rights champion.Michael McFaul @McFaulThis is outrageous. @realDonaldTrump , @StateDept et al, fix this now. Now. Do not join Putin's campaign against @Billbrowder. https://twitter.com/Billbrowder/status/922199750547509248 3:41 PM - Oct 22, 2017391 391 Replies 7,713 7,713 Retweets 12,056 12,056 likesTwitter Ads info and privacyBrowder has led the push for countries to adopt Magnitsky Act-type laws that empower governments to freeze assets of Russian figures linked to human rights violations.Last week, Canada became the fourth country after the U.S., Britain, and Estonia to pass a Magnitsky Act, leading Vladimir Putin to accuse Browder of illegal activity.Browder, who testified at a congressional hearing in July on Russian election interference, said he was made aware that Russia had successfully placed him on Interpols list after he received an email from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Saturday informing him his global entry status had been revoked.Four previous attempts by Russia to place Browder on the list failed; on each occasion Interpol said the move was politically motivated.The fifth time, Moscow used a loophole in the process that allows states to unilaterally place individuals on the database through a diffusion notice, effectively bypassing Interpol scrutiny, Browder told EU Observer on Sunday.This is a loophole thats clearly being abused and needs to be closed, he said. Its clear that countries like Russia are serial abusers of Interpol and shouldnt be treated the same as legitimate states.Last year, the Council of Europe criticized Russias efforts to arrest Browder through Interpol as abuses of the system.Once the largest foreign-portfolio investor in Russia, Browder began his campaign against the Kremlin after his accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered a $230 million scam by Russian tax officials.He was jailed and died in prison in 2009 after being denied medical care.The latest charges against Browder from Russian prosecutors allege he colluded with British intelligence to kill Magnitsky by convincing prison doctors to deny him treatment.Browder responded to the allegations in a tweet, saying they couldnt get more absurd.Browder said Sunday that Russian efforts wouldnt slow his campaign, and he is now focusing on lobbying European countries to adopt Magnitsky Act laws.
An unlicensed contractor from Fort Myers, Fla., has been arrested after he was found to be conducting subpar roof repairs and operating without insurance in the wake of Hurricane Irma.

Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis said Oscar M. Palma was arrested this month by the Department of Financial Services Disaster Fraud Action Strike Team.

Palma was reported to authorities after allegedly making subpar roof repairs to an area apartment complex following Hurricane Irma. A statement from DFS said an investigation was then launched where fraud detectives found Palma was advertising himself as a licensed and insured contractor, but held no workers compensation coverage and was not licensed as a contractor.

When contractors fail to secure workers compensation coverage, a myriad of risks are presented, and we are sending a message that taking short cuts will not be tolerated, Patronis said. If any of Palmas workers were to get injured, the property owners, who are already going through high-stress and costly times dealing with Hurricane Irma damages, or the employee themselves are forced to pay out-of-pocket for medical expenses. Our efforts are focused on ensuring our residents, consumers and employees dont fall victim to Irma twice, and these types of uninsured activities could cause just that.

The Departments Bureau of Workers Compensation Compliance received a tip Oct. 12, 2017, alleging unlicensed, uninsured and careless roof work was being performed by Palmas company. Investigators visited one of Palmas current work sites and issued a stop work order upon confirming Palma failed to secure workers compensation insurance and Palmas confession to having no professional license.

He was arrested Oct. 13, 2017, and transported to Lee County Jail.

This case will be prosecuted by the Lee County Office of the State Attorney, 20th Judicial Circuit. If convicted, Palma could face up to five years in prison.

DFSs anti-fraud strike team consists of three teams working in areas heavily impacted by Hurricane Irma including South Florida, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties; Southwest Florida, including Lee and Collier counties; and Central Florida, including Polk and Orange counties. To report suspected fraud, call the Departments toll-free Fraud Tip Hotline at 1-800-378-0445.

Source: Florida Department of Financial Services

Topics Florida Workers' Compensation Fraud Hurricane Contractors
Gov. C.L. Butch Otter and First Lady Lori Otter are working to bring awareness to stop sexual assault and harassment and are encouraging Idahoans to also step up in their efforts.

The governors tweeted statement highlighted the popular me too social media campaign, which has allowed men and women to share personal stories of sexual harassment or assault on Twitter and Facebook.

Please join Miss Lori and me in working to bring awareness to the (hash)MeToo movement to stop sexual assault and harassment, Otter tweeted.

The remarks, however, come at a time when the state faces multiple pending and ongoing sexual harassment lawsuits across state agencies and executive offices.

These accusations include a former Idaho Department of Fish and Game employee alleging that a male supervisor threatened to strangle her with an extension cord, as well as a separate former employee at the Idaho State Controllers Office who maintains she was sexually and racially harassed by a supervisor.

And the state recently settled a lawsuit with a woman who said she was coerced into sex with a detective investigating her in a federal drug case.

Otters office defended the governors actions in response to an inquiry by The Associated Press on what specifically the governor plans to do when it comes to stopping harassment and assault.

Otter was asked to lend support to increase public awareness by a local chapter of the National Organization for Women, said Otters spokesman Jon Hanian.

Suffice it to say the governor is very concerned any time issues of discrimination or harassment arise in our state, be it at a state agency or anywhere else, said Hanian in an email.

Hanian added that the Republican governor nearly a year ago directed the states Division of Human Resources to increase public employee training, specifically with a focus on sexual harassment, discrimination and employee retaliation.

This includes increasing the amount of supervisor academy training, resources on how employees can have tricky conversations and workshops, said Susan Buxton, who oversees the division.

Buxton recently gave harassment and retaliation training to state controllers employees on Oct. 3, nearly two weeks after an employee filed a tort claim alleging a supervisor made sexual and racial remarks in front of employees with no consequences from Controller Brandon Woolf.

The controllers office has disputed the claims they condoned the harassment.

If you are a bystander and you see something, you need to speak up, Buxton said. Be the solution.

Hanian said the governor could not comment on the pending and ongoing litigation involving the sexual harassment legal challenges.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Training Development
Founders Professional has named Raffi Kodikian to the role of lawyers professional liability practice leader, marking the brokerages first West Coast hire.

Kodikian will focus on the placement of lawyers professional liability risks for all size law firms and work out of the newly opened San Francisco, Calif. office.

Kodikian was previously a professional liability broker for Cooper & McCloskey Inc. for more than 13 years.

Founders Professional is a national wholesale insurance brokerage focused on the placement of management liability and professional liability insurance risks.
Top News - Investor Idea

Breaking EV Stock News: Mullen's (NASDAQ: MULN) 'Strikingly Different' EV Crossover Tour Heads to Texas After Completing a Successful Sold Out Stop in Las Vegas

BREA, Calif. - November 15, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces today that it has successfully completed the third stop of the Mullen FIVE Strikingly Different EV Crossover Tour in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Top AI News - Investor Idea

Breaking AI Stock News: FatBrain (OTCQB: LZGI) Acquires UK-based Forecasting Innovator Predictive Black To Help SMEs Optimize Cash Management

NEW YORK, NY - November 15, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) FatBrain AI (LZG International, Inc.) (OTCQB: LZGI), the leader in powerful and easy-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for star enterprises of tomorrow (some call SMEs), has acquired Predictive Black Ltd, a UK-based innovator of real-time cash management, financial insights and business wellness for SMEs.

Top Fashion News - Investor Idea

New Fashion Designer Launches this Holiday Season in Kelowna and Online; Sweet Dees Creations  Fun, Flirty and Affordable

Kelowna B.C. - November 14, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) A local fashion designer is launching a new women's line at Kelowna markets and online this Holiday Season that will make heads turn with her whimsical and colourful choices

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This would be far funnier if it were eerily prescient ...

A Missive from 2036: I was Disgusting to Criticize Trump

President Trump has already Made America Great Again. In fact, he keeps Making America Even Better and Better.



It is fair to say that no other president has done more than President Trump, now 90: Over 50 Legislation approvals, massive regulation cuts, energy freedom, pipelines, border security, 2nd Amendment, Strong Military, ISIS, historic VA improvement, Supreme Court Justice, Record Stock Market, lowest unemployment in 17 years! He is getting what will be the biggest tax cut in U.S. history. He will give great and popular tax breaks to the middle class but not make any changes to 401(k) plans. It all stays! It will be historic and once-in-a-generation. He will also get HealthCare and it will be great. The budget that just passed is a very big deal.



Jobless claims were the best last month. The stock market continues to set all-time highs. Unlike his predecessors, Trump has written personally, on parchment and with quill pen, to every relative of every U.S. soldier ever killed, going back to the French and Indian War. Raqqa is liberated. The National Football League is requiring all 32 teams to participate in color-guard drills. And Democrats continue to be wacky and crooked. Click to expand...

Did I mention that Trump, in addition to being the best president ever, is very handsome? Click to expand...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2036  Some of my old-timer colleagues still talk about the good old days when we used to work in what they called a free press. I dont know what theyre on about.Sure, we were free. But were we happy? I think not.Its hard to remember back then, the first year of Donald Trumps presidency, when we in the fake news media were the enemies of the American people. Im embarrassed to say it, but I was one of those who criticized President Trump. It was a tremendous disservice to the American people. I was one of the most dishonest people on Earth. I really did not like America, and 46 percent of people knew my colleagues and I fabricated stories about the president. It was frankly disgusting the way I was able to write whatever I wanted to write, and people needed to look into it.People did look into it, and I was admittedly concerned when Congress passed  and all 11 justices appointed by Trump to the Supreme Court upheld  the following:The Trump Equal Time and Fairness Doctrine of 2018, making it a felony to criticize, or joke about, President Trump unless simultaneously providing a harsher criticism and/or funnier joke about a Democrat.The Adult Day Care Act of 2018, also known as the Corker Act, making it illegal to raise questions about the presidents state of mind.The Huckabee Sanders Act of 2018, making it a crime to commit the highly inappropriate action of questioning a military officer.The Stephen Miller Act of 2018, which said that all actions of the president on matters of national security are not to be questioned.The Jeff Sessions Act of 2018, making it illegal to quote any source without the express written consent of the Justice Department and Major League Baseball.The Open Up Our Libel Laws Act of 2018, which allows Trump to win lots of money when people write negative and horrible articles about him.The Fake News Reform Act of 2018, which revoked the licenses of all broadcasters, put Jeff Bezos under house arrest at the Federal Trade Commission and placed the failing New York Times and the Amazon Washington Post under the control of Minister of Information Sebastian Gorka.That was 18 years ago, and Trumps first term in the White House has now extended to nearly two decades. (Under the new rules, only House Speaker Steve Bannon and Senate Majority Leader Roy Moore can call an election, and they say they have no immediate plans to do so.)While I at first chafed at the new restrictions  no sources, no criticism  I quickly came to realize how much easier and low-stress the new journalism would be. Each morning I get a call from Gorka with my assignment. I write it up, and then its up to the Russian bots to spread the word on social media.Heres the first draft of tomorrows column I just sent to Gorka:Okay, so its a bit dull. And it pretty much comes out the same every day. But it only took me about five minutes because I didnt have to waste time with research or interviewing or fact checking. In fact, it took almost no thought at all.And its safer. Remember Trumps response when asked about Vladi*mir Putins killing of critical journalists? Our country does plenty of killing, too, he said.By Dana Milbank
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Update 12 noon:

Northern Ireland's strict abortion law subjects women and girls to "inhuman and degrading" treatment, the UK's highest court has heard.

A panel of Supreme Court justices in London were also told that the current law - which makes it an offence for a woman to abort with a fatal foetal abnormality or where the pregnancy arises through rape or incest - discriminates against them on the grounds of sex.

The submissions were made on Tuesday by Nathalie Lieven QC at the beginning of a three-day appeal brought by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC).

Ms Lieven argued on behalf of the commission that the prohibitions also amounted to an "unjustified" breach of their personal right to autonomy.

She also read evidence from three women relating to their experiences of being unable to have an abortion in Northern Ireland, despite fatal foetal abnormalities.

Ms Lieven described their "trauma and humiliation" and said they were forced to go through "physical and mental torture".

The proceedings before a panel of seven justices, headed by Supreme Court president Lady Hale, follow earlier legal rulings in Northern Ireland on the controversial issue.

Unlike other parts of the UK, the 1967 Abortion Act does not extend to Northern Ireland.

Abortion is illegal except where a woman's life is at risk or there is a permanent or serious danger to her mental or physical health.

Anyone who unlawfully carries out an abortion could be jailed for life.

The commission argues that the current law's effect on women is incompatible with rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The High Court in Belfast made a declaration in December 2015 that the criminal law was incompatible with Article 8 of the ECHR, the right to respect for private and family life, because of the absence of exceptions to the general prohibition on abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities and pregnancies resulting from sexual offences.

But that decision was overturned in June this year by three of Northern Ireland's most senior judges.

The appeal judges said the law in Northern Ireland should be left to the Stormont Assembly and not judges, saying that the complex moral and religious questions behind the issue should be determined by a legislature rather than a court.

The Northern Ireland Assembly voted in February last year against legalising abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality and rape or incest.

A fatal foetal abnormality means doctors believe an unborn child has a terminal condition and will die in the womb or shortly after birth.

The justices are being asked to rule on two issues - whether the current legislation is incompatible with Article 8 and other articles which provide protection from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and from discrimination, including on the ground of sex; and whether the Northern Ireland Act 1998 entitles the NIHRC to bring the proceedings under the Human Rights Act 1998 to seek a declaration of incompatibility.

The Stormont Executive's senior legal adviser, Attorney General John Larkin QC, with the Justice Department, argue that the commission does not have legal power to bring the case and says it has failed to identify an unlawful act.

In written argument before the court, Ms Lieven said both the Attorney General and the Department for Justice "are at pains to suggest there is no jurisdiction" for the Supreme Court to consider the challenge, because of the commission's "lack of standing and a failure to identify an unlawful act".

She argued: "Neither suggestion is correct."

Referring to this year's ruling in the case by appeal judges, the QC said they had placed "considerable weight on the suggestion that it was inappropriate for the courts to intervene in an issue as sensitive as the law on termination of pregnancy, preferring instead to leave the matter to the legislative process".

She added: "But this is a process which has demonstrably failed to protect women's and girls' human rights."

Earlier:

The UK's top judges will decide whether Northern Irish law is breaching women's rights by not allowing an abortion in cases of rape and abnormalities.

The Supreme Court is to begin hearing the case later, as around 700 women a year travel to mainland Britain for the procedure.

Lucy Kelly, from pro-life group Precious Life, opposes the legal challenge - as she believes everyone has the right to live.

She said: "There have been babies born that have not been predicted to survive and they have but whether that baby lives for one day or 30 days doesn't matter, everybody has the right to life."
The unofficial European Employee Representative Council made the proposal to pilots after cockpit crews at Ryanairs biggest base rejected the existing offer, according to a document sent to pilots on Sunday. The group has asked for feedback from air crew and pledged to organise strikes if a deal cant be reached.

In a push for broader changes to working conditions, 60% of pilots at Stansted on Friday voted against a raise that would have boosted compensation to about 20% more than rivals Norwegian Air Shuttle and Jet2. The rogue pilot group is demanding an increase in basic pay to 150,000 (168,000) for captains in the company, compared with 64,000 currently.

The standoff between pilots and Ryanair management has simmered since the airline had to cancel more than 20,000 flights affecting about 700,000 customers due to botched planning that left it lacking enough crew to maintain its schedule. The council, created after the cancellations last month, is seeking to establish a collective bargaining group across the carriers 86 bases.

Pilots look to be taking an unreasonable stand, according to Goodbody aviation analyst Mark Simpson.

This is a wishlist that will be firmly rejected by the company and sounds as if they have taken on a lead from the US union representatives that have been advising Ryanairs pilots, he said. Ryanair shares fell nearly 2% yesterday.

While no pilot may wish to take industrial action, sometimes it is the only way to bring an intransigent employer to a satisfactory agreement, the council said in a letter accompanying the document. We have to consider this possibility to ensure we have an equal voice at the negotiating table.

The demands, which would be retroactive to September 1, include having Ryanair cover costs for uniforms, training, healthcare, on-board drinks and snacks, and ground transport and accommodation while working from an alternative base. The plan also calls for permanent contracts for pilots currently working as contractors and would grant shares in the company tied to seniority.

Ryanair shrugged off the setback in Stansted, saying it will hire new pilots at the higher rates rejected at the base. Managements existing offer for an increase of up to 22,000, including bonuses, has been accepted at more than 10 bases.

-Bloomberg
Actually here in the states YES THEY BLAME WOMEN FOR BEING RAPED. The ENTIRE system effectively rapes them all over again.



The Majority of men, and sadly far too women, have little trouble slut shaming a rape victim. It's in the questions they ask.



What were you wearing ?

Was your skirt too short ?

Was your top too low ?

What kind of shoes were you wearing ?

Did you have something to drink ? If so how much ?

How many lovers have you had ?

Have you ever experimented sexually ? If so what did you do ?

Did you lead him on ?

Could you have unintentionally signaled interest in him ?

What time was it ?

Where were you ?

Where had you been earlier ?

At what point did you tell him no ?

Did you actually tell him no ?

Could he have thought you meant yes, even though you were saying no ?



ALL of western society has a built in negative bias against women's sexuality. Way back in the dark ages a couple priests (in my opinion a couple of women hating homosexuals) wrote a book in which they claimed men were NOT to be held accountable for their sexual indiscretions. Hubby stopped off at the whore house or the widow woman's down the road for a little nookie on the side, NOT his fault !! Boy next door rapes your daughter ? NOT his fault !! Any man, anywhere, having sex with a woman is NOT to be held accountable for his actions. Wives were to NEVER refuse their husbands. Her body was literally HIS property.



Their theory was, since woman can't control their periods, they can't control their sexuality. SO, as a result, there is all this UNCONTROLLED sexuality just floating around in the air, and ANY man is subject to being over powered by it and having little control in his actions. A man's ONLY fault, was NOT being Godly enough !!!! His ONLY defense against the urges created by all this sexuality floating around, was lots of prayer and becoming closer to God !!!



This mind set is deeply embedded in the western psyche. Freud codified it in his theory of the Madonna Whore complex, but he largely ignores the religious roots of it all.



When asked who are the two most famous women in the bible ? 99% will say the two Marys, one the virgin mother of Jesus, the other a whore. This is how many men, and more than a few women, see women based on their sexuality.



Good girls get the husband, the diamond ring, the house in the burbs, the 2.5 kids, the dog and the mini van and most of all, respectability. Bad girls get, well, to be bad girls. Used and abused for fun and games and then ignored and forgotten.



This IS the reality of western society.
Bank chiefs were hauled into Government Buildings and quizzed about the delay in paying back and compensating the estimated 13,000 customers identified as being ripped-off.

The Government later issued a statement warning that the behaviour of the banks in relation to removing people from tracker mortgages was completely unacceptable.

After Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe met the CEOs and chairmen of KBC, Bank of Ireland, and Permanent TSB, the statement said the banks have been dragging their feet in solving the problem, at real human cost.

Mr Donohoe also met Central Bank governor Philip Lane yesterday and noted the regulators investigation into the tracker mortgage scandal had been the largest and most complex prudential investigation ever undertaken in Ireland, involving around 2m mortgage accounts going back many years across 15 lenders.

Mr Donohoe said it was very disappointing that despite the significant management and board changes that have taken place since the onset of the financial crisis, there still seems to be a cultural issue with some of the banks.

The statement says that people affected should have had their tracker mortgages restored and been fully compensated as soon as possible. It says banks would make statements later this week, once further meetings with Ulster Bank and AIB, among others, are finished.

Permanent TSB said it expected to repay and compensate customers by Christmas.

A Cabinet meeting last night saw ministers voice concern about the inaction of lenders to own up and repay customers.

Financial advisor Padraic Kissane, who is helping customers, was reluctant to believe bankers would commit to change, admit their wrongs, and fully compensate customers.

He believes as many as 30,000 customers have been ripped off.

Speaking to RTE, Mr Kissane said banks had refused to fix the problems for years and he questioned how suddenly it would all be resolved in a few weeks.

Im waiting to see, youre asking leopards to change spots, said Mr Kissane, adding that there was a lot of resistance and condescension among banks.

Banks would try every option in order to stop customers going back to low-cost tracker loans, he claimed.

Mr Kissane warned that the financial scandal was damaging the country. He said the reputation of Ireland was being destroyed with Brexit on the way.

Meanwhile, Fianna Fail will push for the laws to be changed, for the banks to face fresh penalties, and for class action cases to be legislated for as part of a Dail motion tomorrow.

The party wants a thorough investigation as to how the tracker scandal occurred and a probe into whether there was any co-ordination, formal or informal, across the industry.

Any offences should be reported to Revenue and gardai, among others, it says, and extra powers should be given to the Central Bank.

The Government should also vote against the reappointment of directors to the banks in which the State is a shareholder, and introduce legislation to stop repossession proceedings on tracker-related mortgages until all affected customers are redressed, the party will say during the Dail debate tomorrow night.
Several councillors said officials need to conduct an urgent damage assessment of surviving trees, and then review the citys policy on what it allows to be planted and where, and how those trees are managed.

The calls came during a special meeting of Cork City Council last night during which the full impact of Ophelias hurricane-force winds was laid bare. A report to councillors showed:

At least 500 trees were knocked  the figure is expected to rise to close to 600;

114 calls about fallen trees and parks issues were logged during the storm  a further 235 calls have come in since;

Over 300 reports of damage to council homes;

Four families had to avail of homeless services;

The city fire brigade attended 48 incidents, including structural failings, lose hoardings, debris and wind damage during the storm;

The council is still liaising with building owners after receiving 38 separate reports of structural damage.

It will take four to six weeks for all knocked trees to be cleared and the cost of the storm clean-up is expected to run into millions.

The citys head of finance, John Hallihan, said a formal application for funding will be made in due course.

Earlier, acting chief executive Ruth Buckley briefed councillors on the councils response before, during, and after Storm Ophelia. She said emergency management planning began on the Friday before Mondays storm, and that a meeting of its crisis management team, involving gardai and the HSE, was convened at 2.30pm on Sunday. A crisis management office was set up at 7am on Monday . The office was stood down at 7pm as the focus switched to assessment and recovery.

People went above and beyond the call of duty, said councillor Fergal Dennehy. People knew what they were doing, and how they were going to do it. There was no loss of life and no serious injury.

Lord Mayor Tony Fitzgerald agreed to his suggestion that a civic reception be held for the staff who manned the crisis management office.

Fiann Fail councillor Ken OFlynn said the city needs to re-examine its tree policy.

We need to look at what we are allowing be planted by ourselves and by builders and developer, he said. We have trees in the city that are totally unsuitable for city living. We have gigantic oaks next to houses.

Fine Gael councillor John Buttimer said while trees are important for the environment, the city must, in the wake of Ophelia, debate their place in the public realm.

Sinn Fein councillor Mick Nugent and Solidarity councillor Fiona Ryan said the Travelling community, at Spring Lane and Carrigrohane Road halting sites in particular, had been hit disproportionately.

Fianna Fail councillor Tim Brosnan said those who were charged with the defence of Cork dealt with the situation in a cool, consistent and calm manner.

Fianna Fail councillor Terry Shannon praised local media and radio stations for regular updates, and for providing comfort for people who stayed home.

Fine Gael councillor Joe Kavanagh said the councils communications plan was implemented with military precision.

Its why we came out of this so well, he said. There is nothing we can do about falling trees or power cuts. But we can prevent injuries.
Airport managing director Niall McCarthy predicts further gains in 2018, even though Brexit and a weak sterling will have an impact on the number of British visitors.

At a meeting in the airport with county councillors and their officials yesterday, Mr McCarthy said flights to Madrid were a great success and he expects flights from Zurich to carry an additional 8,000 passengers next year.

Meanwhile, Volotea will increase its flights to Verona in northern Italy to twice weekly next summer. It will operate flights on Saturdays and Wednesdays, from May 26 to August 29.

Mr McCarthy said 1.2m is being spent on marketing the Cork region in Britain, Europe, and the US.

He said it is vitally important that the Norwegian Airlines transatlantic link to Rhode Island, near Boston, is intensively marketed to ensure its success. A radio station from the US is to broadcast live from Cork over two days early next month.

Mr McCarthy said Cork Airport got bad press during the recession and admitted some people were almost ashamed to say they worked here. However, he said that corner has been turned and the future looks much brighter.

In answer to a question about the possibility of direct long-haul flights to the Far East and Australia, Mr McCarthy said that was not on the immediate agenda.

He said if the Rhode Island venture proved a success, he hoped Cork Airport could move on to getting further routes into America and Canada.

While there will be no US pre-clearance immigration services in Cork, it was pointed out the service was definitely not a disadvantage.

Some councillors said they had spent up to two hours queuing for pre- clearance at Dublin Airport, whereas the Rhode Island airport is smaller, and efficient, and visitors from Ireland can clear baggage and immigration in around 45 minutes.

In Europe, the airport is targeting new connections to Berlin and a number of Scandinavian destinations.

The reopening of flights to Nice are also on the shopping list and the airport boss said his team is very keen to get a new route to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.

It is unlikely, however, that the Cork-Brussels route will be reactivated as Mr McCarthy said it was a loss-maker for airlines.

He said many passengers who previously used that route had now switched to flying into Amsterdam and taking an hour-long train ride to the Belgian capital.

He suggested the county council could assist the airport, with either expertise or money, to enhance Corks profile with additional international marketing.
The carjacking occurred after the couple arranged to meet an individual who was selling his car  a 142-reg Mercedes C class  at a graveyard in Dunshaughlin village last Sunday evening.

A Garda spokesman said the victim had advertised his car for sale and arranged to meet with a prospective buyer at the graveyard, which is opposite St Seachnalls National School.

At about 6.20pm he pulled up beside the graveyard in a white Mercedes C220 with a 142-D registration facing in the Dublin direction, said the spokesman.

He said a red Toyota Auris with a 05-D registration pulled in behind him and a man approached towards the passenger seat of the Mercedes.

This man assaulted the owner of the car and drove the Mercedes off in the Dublin direction, said the spokesman.

He said the alleged culprit was described as being 5ft 11in height, with short black hair and sallow skin.

The victim stood in front of the red Toyota and attempted to prevent the female driver from leaving the scene, he said.

The Garda spokesman said she was described as being in her 30s, of heavy build with long brown hair.

The woman drove away and the victim was knocked to the ground, he said. The victim received minor injuries.

The spokesman said the woman drove off in the same direction as the Mercedes.

It is believed that the woman had two children in the car at the time, he said.

One of these children is believed to be about seven years of age.

Gardai said earlier that evening, between 4.30pm and 6.15pm, number plates bearing 05-D were taken from a car parked at the Old Forge housing estate, a short distance away.

Gardai appealed to anyone who was near the graveyard around the time of the incident, or who was on the Dublin Road, and saw the vehicles, to contact Dunshaughlin Garda Station on 01 8258600.

They also asked people who saw a red Toyota Auris with a couple, and who may have had two young children with them, at the Old Forge estate to contact them.
An audit was carried by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the water supply to Minane Bridge this summer.

The environmental regulator was alerted by Irish Water to levels of manganese above recommended limits.

Manganese is a natural element, commonly found in groundwater.

It is not regarded as particularly toxic, but it can cause staining problems and, in high concentrations, can cause a bad taste.

A warning notice, Do Not Consume, was placed on the supply in Minane Bridge on July 20, on the advice of the HSE. It followed complaints from a householder about an unusual odour from the water a week earlier.

Tests carried out by Cork County Council showed samples had a concentration of manganese over 36 times the recommended limit, of 50 micrograms per litre.

An inspection by council officials, of landholdings in the area, found no evidence of any activity that could explain the elevated levels of manganese.

Five further samples, taken on different days in July, also revealed high levels of the metal. The highest had a concentration over 162 times the recommended level.

Irish Water said manganese levels dropped significantly in late July, from up to 7,500 to 730 micrograms per litre, which it attributed to the recharging of groundwater, following a period of rain.

The EPA said monitoring of the Minane Bridge supply was ongoing, in an effort to establish the reason behind the elevated manganese levels.

It pointed out that there were no exceedances of recommended limits for any other elements in the water supply.

Irish Water said that the warning notices were removed after the supply subsequently complied with all current drinking water standards.

A spokesperson said that, in the longer term, the company was exploring options to put in place a permanent technical solution to prevent any recurrence of an issue with manganese in the supply.
A year ago, Judge Gerard OBrien imposed a two-year sentence, with 18 months suspended, on Harry Clifton for his part in the supply of a synthetic drug. Alex Ryan, aged 18, of Liscahane, Millstreet, Co Cork, died on January 23, 2016, after taking the drug.

At the sentencing last year, Det Garda Daniel McEnery said the investigation commenced following the admission of several people to hospital after they had taken a drug at a party in Greenmount. Most of the people at the party were students. Mr Ryan died in hospital after nasally ingesting the drug at the party.
Edmund Quirke took a bullet through the head when anti-Treaty IRA in his house and his neighbours were engaged in a battle with National Army forces in February 1923.

His IRA service and his death have emerged as he is one of more than 1,600 people whose applications  or those of their families  for pensions, disability or wound allowances, or other payments, are made public for the first time today.

The son of farmer James Quirke was at home in Ashgrove near Bansha when a number of senior IRA figures came under attack there by National Army troops. His death certificate said the cause was a bullet wound to the head accidentally received.

In the same attack, south Tipperary Flying Column leader Dinny Lacey was also killed, along with fellow anti-Treaty fighters Michael Ryan, William McGrath, and Patrick McDonough.

The evidence of ex-IRA officers was considered by the Military Service Registration Board before certifying Edmund Quirkes membership of the IRA in June 1934. He was acknowledged as a member from 1922 up to the date of his death.

The Tipperary TD Dan Breen, one of the most famous figures of the War of Independence, had said the boy was a despatch rider and intelligence officer in the South Tipperary Brigade.

His service as a message carrier was also vouched for by Michael Fitzpatrick, a former quartermaster of the IRAs 2nd Southern Division.

Quirkes certificate of IRA service makes him the youngest confirmed member who the Military Service Pensions Collection team at Cathal Brugha Barracks has come across in over 6,500 files processed since 2008.

Michael Fitzpatrick also made inquiries into the circumstance of the boys death, but was unable to conclude from which side the bullet that killed young Edmund Quirke was fired.

There was quite a lot of cross-firing between Byrnes and Quirkes houses, and from parties of Free State troops from other points, he wrote almost 11 years after the incident.

James Quirke did not receive a payment under the Army Pensions Acts because he was not dependant on his 10-year-old son.
He did not get a proper burial for over a year. But to add to his mother Bridgets woes, any hopes of recompense under laws sanctioning payments to family of dead anti-Treaty IRA members were dashed  simply because he was illegitimate.

The decision  revealed in her file in the latest release of Military Service Pensions Collection records  is a demonstration of the morals at the time according to archivist Michael Keane.

Thomas was killed in March 1923 after being sent by one of his IRA officers to remove rifles and ammunition from the arms dump. When he went to lift open the door of the dump in the woods at Ballcylement near Tallow, a trip mine that had been planted by the National Army exploded.

Maurice Ronan, a 40-year-old who had served with the British Army in World War I, heard an IRA man had been killed but was lying outside unburied. After going out to look for the body, he was the first person on the scene, probably three or four days after the explosion.

He found Thomas Greehys body had been blown a considerable distance away by the mine left by the National Army. They had been searching the area for days beforehand for an IRA arms dump, and left the mine after finding and removing the weapons.

From the position of the body, Ronan believed the young IRA volunteer was in a stooping position when the mine exploded. It left a hole in the ground around 4ft feet deep and twice that in width.

Ronan thought the teenager had died instantly, finding his head and right arm partly blown away by the explosion.

I tied the body up in his trench coat and put it on my back and brought it to Kilwatermoy graveyard, and buried it without any coffin, he wrote in a letter to the pension board a decade letter, in support of Bridget Greehys claim for a special allowance in respect of her sons death.

Having already carried the remains of Thomas Greehy over a mile on his back to bury him, Ronan came back the next day to put the body in a coffin provided by a local carpenter.

After his blind mother applied from her home in Lismore for an allowance or one-off gratuity payment, the Military Service Registrations Board certified Thomas active service in the IRA in November 1937.

Since the age of around 13, he was active in the republican boy scouts, Na Fianna Eireann. He joined the IRA just after the July 1921 truce in the War of Independence, and was described as a well-conducted and careful Volunteer by a commanding officer.

Although there was no registration of his death because of the circumstances of the Civil War, some of his background is known.

Thomas Greehy was born to 28-year-old Bridget Greehy in the workhouse in Lismore in 1903 or 1904. They were still living there when the census was taken in 1911.

According to one of his commanding officers in the IRA, Thomas was illegitimate and was Bridgets only son, on whom she would have been dependent if he had lived.

In a letter supporting her claim, Bridget Greehy stated: I was a widow when my only boy Thomas Greehy was taken from me and now I am left depending on a few shillings relief.

On August 10, 1924, Thomas Greehy was afforded a proper burial when his remains were disinterred and re-buried at Lismore Cemetery in a ceremony that also honoured a number of other IRA members killed in the Civil War.

With his prior service in the eastern part of the IRAs Cork No 2 Brigade, Greehy was also honoured seven weeks later at a ceremony organised by Fermoys Republican Commemoration Committee at Kilcrumper Cemetery.

But despite the republican honours and the support of various TDs, his mothers claim for a gratuity was unsuccessful.

The applicant in this case, Bridget Greehy, is claiming in respect of the death of her illegitimate child and is consequently ineligible for the grant of an award under the [Army Pension] Act, wrote a civil servant in a note on her file.
While Central Bank governor Philip Lane said those affected will be repaid and compensated by Christmas time, the Government is not convinced and is to increase pressure on the banks to resolve the scandal.

At a Cabinet meeting last night, Mr Donohoe made it clear that the previously deferential attitude towards the banks is at an end. He will make a major announcement tomorrow, several ministers confirmed.

Mr Donohoe told ministers that, in addition to the 13,000 cases that are known, there are 7,000 further cases where agreement has not been reached between the Central Bank and the banks.

Ministers have told the Irish Examiner that one of the options under consideration is subjecting senior bankers to fitness and probity evaluations and possibly using that to force some from their posts.

Just one of the three banks, Permanent TSB, offered an apology to affected customers following a meeting with Mr Donohoe at the Department of Finance yesterday. Neither Bank of Ireland nor KBC made any conciliatory comments following meetings with the minister.

Permanent TSB was also the only one of the banks to commit to deliver redress to its affected customers.

I cant comment around the operational plans of my competitors. Certainly, the desire of Permanent TSB is to do that, yes, said chief executive Jeremy Masding.

It has also emerged that the Government will accept a Fianna Fail bill on the tracker mortgage issue this week.

The bill calls for a thorough investigation as to how the tracker scandal occurred and a probe into whether there was any co-ordination, formal or informal, across the industry.

Any offences must be reported to Revenue and gardai, among others, it says, and extra powers should be given to the Central Bank.

The Government should also vote against the reappointment of directors to the banks and introduce legislation to stop repossession proceedings on tracker-related mortgages until all affected customers are redressed, states the bill.

A spokeswoman for Mr Donohoe told the Irish Examiner the Governments view is that the general thrust and objective of the Fianna Fail motion can be accepted.

During his meetings with the banks, Mr Donohoe accused them of dragging their feet over their failure to resolve the scandal, which has come at a real human cost.

Mr Donohoe warned that the behaviour of the banks in relation to removing people from tracker mortgages was completely unacceptable.

In a Government statement, he said it was very disappointing that, despite the significant management and board changes that have taken place since the financial crisis, there still seems to be a cultural issue with some of the banks.

Mr Lane said there is no upper limit to the amount of compensation banks will have to pay customers they wrongly removed from tracker mortgage rates.

He said banks have paid out 163m in redress and compensation thus far.

We think the vast majority of those cases will be paid out before Christmas, he said. However, we continue to press the banks to expand their coverage to make sure that all those affected are included in their schemes.

Financial adviser Padraic Kissane, who is helping customers, was reluctant to believe that bankers would commit to change, admit their wrongs, and fully compensate customers. He believes as many as 30,000 customers have been ripped off.

Speaking to RTE, Mr Kissane said banks had refused to fix the problems for years and he questioned how suddenly it would all be resolved in a few weeks.

Im waiting to see, youre asking leopards to change spots, he said, adding that there was a lot of resistance and condescension among banks.
Proposed legislation to be put before the Dail today, by Fine Gaels Josepha Madigan, will seek to push responsibility for such posts away from the individual poster and onto the social media companies hosting the comments.

The bill comes just months after the Jobstown trial, in which six people were cleared of charges in relation to the alleged false imprisonment of former tanaiste Joan Burton. The issue of social media commentary on the trial made headlines while, in advance of that trial, Judge Melanie Greally said the existing contempt of court laws were hopelessly inadequate to curb such commentary.

The proposed legislation aims to modernise and clarify the existing contempt legislation, by placing it on a statutory footing.

Calls for changes to the contempt legislation have been made by the Law Reform Commission as far back as 1994, and as recently as last July by former Chief Justice Susan Denham.

Speaking in advance of the legislation going before the Dail, Ms Madigan, who is a solicitor, said the bill would provide for suppression and take-down orders for comments that may prejudice a trial, but said that it would also seek to strike a balance.

Again, it is something that was proposed by the Law Reform Commission in New Zealand, she told RTEs Sean ORourke.

Its important to strike a balance between the right to free speech and the integrity of our justice system. It is a difficult balance. I think online people are entitled to have their opinion, but, if it is specifically designed to try and prejudice a criminal trial, then I think there is a question to be asked... there are, obviously, defences in relation to this bill, in terms of normal comment and comments that arent prejudicial, and thats ok, so there has to be a balance.

Eoin ODell, associate professor of law at Trinity College, said he supported the bill in principle, but said the timing could be better.

The situation is that, after the Chief Justice made the comments, she put a group together to examine precisely this issue and came back with recommendations for reform, he said.

The Law Reform Commission did look at this issue in 1994, but theyre looking at this issue again. So, in other words, there are already two full-scale reviews ongoing and it would be much better to wait until those reviews had completed, or to feed into those reviews, rather than trying to pre-empt them.
The biennial Defense Security Equipment International Exhibition (DSEI) held in London in September 2017 provided insight into British defense programs. The event attracted strong international participation, both visitors and exhibitors from 42 countries, many of which addressed UK and European defense and security requirements.

The exhibition considered the second largest of its kind in the west, covered aviation, maritime and land warfare, as well as defense electronics, training simulation, security and cyber. DSEI reflected the growing concern of the Russian threat among countries within NATO. At the backdrop of DSEI was ZAPAD-2017, the large-scale military exercise held along the Russian Army with Belarus, along with its border with Europe. Another concern reflected here was the terror threat, both to military and the homeland. Several exhibitors displayed here innovative solutions that address evolving threats, including land, marine and airborne IEDs and mines.

Main Highlights:
Truth really is stranger than fiction which is why a musical has been created about the legendary womaniser and gambler, Sir Henry Browne Hayes (1762-1832), who scandalised Cork with his abduction of a wealthy young woman, and ended up being deported.

Cork composers, Alan Kiely and Kevin Connolly, who created a show entitled Murder at Shandy Hall last year, starring Patrick Bergin, have put the colourful story of the

outrageous Regency libertine to music. Cathal McCabe, former head of music at RTE, directs it, having applied classical arrangements to the score.

Derry-born McCabe wasnt aware of Sir Henry until he started to research him. Motivating the cast on the first day of rehearsals, he advised them to keep in mind the question: Is Sir Henry the wickedest man in Ireland?

There seems to have been no limit to what he would do, says McCabe. Hes one of those characters that crop up every so often who by their actions are awful. But people still liked Sir Henry. He was adored by Cork people. I suppose he had charisma and there was the matter of him being titled. Also, I think abduction wasnt considered quite as serious then as it is now.

Sir Henry was married to a wealthy woman and the couple had three children. He also had a further three children by three other women. His father supported the illegitimate children.

When Sir Henry was financially embarrassed, he took the advice of a local barber friend, Charlie Coughlan. The target of the scam was Mary Pike who had been bequeathed a

fortune by her banker father, Samuel Pike. Sir Henry came up with a ruse, writing to Pike to say her mother was dying. So Pike left her uncle, Penrose Coopers home near Tivoli, and set off to see her mother. Sir Henry and some accomplices stopped her and brought her to his home in Vernon Mount in Douglas.

Because Pike had been abducted, the general populace and the gentry in Cork would assume that her virginity was taken and therefore she wouldnt be able to marry anyone else. But before Sir Henry could come up with a marriage ceremony, his father discovered what was going on and saved the girls virtue.

Sir Henry became a fugitive  with benefits. Apparently at the time, the year before the 1798 rebellion, a fugitive could not be arrested on a Sunday because it was the day for going to Mass. So Sir Henry was able to walk around town on Sundays. But he was otherwise miserable with funds running low and he was also missing his children.

The authorities put a reward of 500 guineas on Sir Henrys head and Pikes protector, Penrose Cooper, matched that amount. Sir Henry persuaded the barber to betray him so that the dodgy duo could enjoy the proceeds, shared between them.

Sir Henry was arraigned in court. He was condemned to death by hanging. But being a member of the Freemasons in Cork, a petition was sent to the laws of the land. Eventually, he was reprieved from being hanged and was transported to Australia. The show ends at this point. The last scene is Botany Bay in New South Wales.

Henrys life in Australia was just as colourful as his time in Cork, and contains more than enough material for a sequel. After he served his six months as a convict, he thrived for a while, even building a large house, Vaucluse, which has since given its name to a well-to-do suburb of Sydney. Apparently, the house was surrounded by Irish turf to keep the snakes at bay.

He also clashed with William Bligh, of Bounty fame, before returning to Ireland and was eventually buried at Christ Church, now part of Triskel Arts Centre in Cork.

Asked if Sir Henry had any redeeming qualities, McCabe hesitates before saying:  I suppose he was entertaining. But you feel the depravity of the man when he gets back to Vernon Mount with Mary Pike.

The show is based on fact; you couldnt make it up.
In the Austrian elections on October 15, the 31-year-old head of the conservative Austrian Peoples Party took his formerly languishing party to victory and secured the chancellorship for himself.

Sebastian Kurz is on course to be the youngest leader in the developed world. His first big decision will be whether or not to form a coalition with the far-right Freedom Party, which came in a virtual tie for second place with the centre-left Social Democrats.

Kurz said in post-election interviews that his government would be pro-European and intolerant of any anti-Semitism, with which the Freedom Party has been strongly associated  though now softened by its present leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, who has shifted from general xenophobia to a focus on opposing Muslim migration.

Kurz wants stronger borders and drastic reductions in immigration. He agrees with Strache that several hundred people have made their way from Austria to fight and murder for the Islamic State (there is) no place for radical thought and political Islam.

Kurzs win is remarkable for his youth and his refurbishment of a fading party, but its in tune with the rest of a rising anti-EU mood in Middle Europe.

That mood was strengthened by last weekends elections in the Czech Republic.

Populist billionaire candidate Andrej Babis and his party claimed victory. Babis, 63, is the countrys second- richest man and campaigned on an anti-establishment and Eurosceptic platform.

At a conference in Prague last month in which I participated, Babis said that Europe is failing on security and that, if the 17 countries using the euro (the Czechs do not) integrate further, we will be out. We do not need further integration.

Babis knows his fellow citizens: Only small minorities are enthusiastic Europeans, or wish their country to join the common currency zone.

A swing against the EU was not what the end of communism in the region was supposed to ordain. The Czech Republic, like the other former Communist states, sloughed off the Soviet yoke in the late 1980s with an affirmation of freedom.

In Czechoslovakia (as it then was), the stubborn dissident writer Vaclav Havel invoked the power of the powerless  and in 1989, a few years after being released from powerless detention in prison, won power as president of his country.

Havel saw the central European states as returning to their natural European home, after decades of icy post-war imprisonment in the Soviet bloc. But that home has become one of disputes and mutual disappointment, not of amity.

Freedom from communism has, indeed, meant the creation of electoral democracy, of varying degrees of strength and transparency. But its also meant corruption in politics and business  bribery was pervasive in the Communist era, but relatively small scale compared to today  periods of high unemployment, a growing suspicion of the EU as an alien force (though a careful retention of its subsidies), and a strong dislike of immigration, which has meant closed borders and a refusal to participate in the EUs migrant resettlement program.

In the Czech Republic, a new ferociously anti-immigrant and anti-Islam party, headed by Tomio Okamura, a citizen of half-Czech and half-Korean-Japanese ancestry has leapt to fourth place in the opinion polls.

Central Europe is now deeply and popularly conservative. Austria, geographically part of it even if it escaped the Soviet embrace, is now more politically in tune with its neighbourhood than it has ever been.

Indeed, Kurz spoke in a Financial Times interview of his wish, if and when chancellor, to be a bridge between the post-communist states and the EU  while sharing many of the formers concerns.

Building that bridge is going to be a tough job. The countries in which Havel placed so much importance as an enthusiastic addition to Europe  Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia  no longer find much common ground, except in agreeing to keep out immigrants.

Babis says the group, known as the Visegrad Four, is no longer useful. All of its member states have become more closed and hostile to the EU, but in different ways.

Poland differs most strongly in one sense: In a generally pro-Moscow grouping, it is unremittingly hostile to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the ruling Law and Justice Party, blames for the death of his brother Lech, with other members of the Polish elite, in a plane crash in Russia.

Under Kaczynskis guidance, the Polish government has sought ever-greater control over the justice system and the media, all the while attacking liberal institutions and framing the EU as an external and unwelcome influence which must be defied.

Hungary, with the authoritarian Viktor Orban at the head of a rightist government, combines strong antagonism to the EU, a close relationship with Vladimir Putins Russia, and a paranoia which has given rise to aclamorous campaign with anti-Semitic undertones centred on the figure of the liberal, Jewish Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, who funded many of the institutions and rising politicians in post-Soviet Hungary  including Orban himself. Soros largest contribution, the creation of the highly regarded Central European University, is now under threat of closure.

The veteran Hungarian-Austrian journalist Paul Lendvai, author of a new, fiercely critical biography of Orban, told me that the Hungarian prime minister is deeply cynical and very skillful.

He has imposed his power everywhere. The left is split and demoralised; the only opposition he fears is from Jobbik  a far-right anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-Romany party that is now, like the Austrian Freedom Party, softening its image to seek a possible future place in a coalition.

The Middle Europeans have, in part, done what the democratic world urged them to do: They have developed an independent politics. But increasingly, their dominant political sentiment is antithetical to, even contemptuous of, the liberal, pro-integrationist ideals of the EU.

These ideals, which Havel would have recognised, are now best expressed by French President Emmanuel Macron. But, as German chancellor Angela Merkel, once the EUs undisputed leading actor, begins what is billed as a long negotiation to form a governing coalition after her failure to win an outright majority in Germanys recent election, she can no longer offer the Frenchman the support on which he counted.

The EU is now caught between Brexit Britain  with which negotiations are not going well  and an increasingly disenchanted group of Middle Europeans. The relief with which the defeat of the far-right in France and the Netherlands was greeted earlier this year was premature.

A determination to close borders, to oppose more powers for Brussels, and reluctance to accept its authority grows and spreads  and renders the European dream of unity, for the moment, impossible.

John Lloyd co-founded the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at

the University of Oxford, where he is senior research fellow. Lloyd has written several books, including What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics and Journalism in an Age of Terror.
After nine months of Donald Trumps presidency, the leaders of the Republican Party appear finally to be waking up to the harsh reality that the US is standing at the edge of an abyss.

They have a choice: they can continue to collaborate with Trump, thereby sustaining his destructive leadership and courting disaster, or they can renounce him, finally putting their countrys democracy ahead of loyalty to their party/tribe.

Recent statements by a Republican Tennessee senator, Bob Corker, suggest that the tide is turning against Trump. Corker sniped that the White House has become an adult day care centre, before warning that Trumps Twitter threats may put the US on the path to World War III.

Similarly, Senator John McCain warned of the threat posed by a half-baked, spurious nationalism.

But true political honour demands more than veiled condemnations (McCain did not mention Trump by name in his speech), or simply quitting, as Corker and Senior Republican Congressman, Pat Tiberi, of Ohio, are doing. Rather, it calls for crossing the political aisle, as Winston Churchill (no doubt a hero to all of them) did, when he switched from the Liberal to the Conservative Party. As Churchill demonstrated, there is no shame in shifting political allegiances. There is, however, shame in loyalty to a disgraced or deplorable party or cause.

And any Republicans today who think they can delay breaking definitively with Trump, without irreversibly damaging their own reputations, should recall the fate of others  in the Soviet Union in 1917, in Germany in 1932, and in Russia and Turkey today  who thought they could tame a monster.

Consider Nikolai Bukharin, a favourite of Vladimir Lenin and the editor of Pravda. For more than a decade after the Bolshevik Revolution, Bukharin tried to reconcile his academic understanding of the dictatorship of proletariat with its real-world implementation. This wasnt so difficult while Lenin was in charge: despite the bloodshed the new regime engendered, mass murder wasnt its main purpose or source of energy.

That changed with the arrival in power of Joseph Stalin, for whom terror was both a means and an end. Nonetheless, Bukharin aligned with Stalin to purge Leon Trotsky and other Bolsheviks who sought to adhere more closely to Lenins dictates (and his testament against Stalin). Bukharin reasoned that Stalins methods were enabling the Soviet Unions rapid development into an industrial power, and the future of communism was far more important than the loss of a few thousand lives, or even a few million.

Bukharin would soon regret that reasoning. Once Trotsky was out of the way, Stalin turned on all the other senior Bolsheviks, calling them enemies of the people  a phrase that Trumps populist supporters, like United Kingdoms hardline Brexiteers, have revived to denounce anyone who dares challenge their blood and soil code. Bukharin was executed in 1938.

Franz von Papen also bet that he could tame a dictatorial demagogue. To advance his own political ends, Papen persuaded German president, Paul von Hindenburg, to appoint Adolf Hitler as chancellor in 1933.

A seasoned and autocratically inclined politician, Papen thought that, once Hitler was in power, he could control the Nazi leader, whom Papen regarded as a provincial blowhard.

Instead, on the Night of the Long Knives, the Nazis hunted and executed Papens trusted associates, Herbert von Bose and Erich Klausener, and seized control of the government. Papens fate was kinder than Bukharins, though: Hitler shipped him off to serve as ambassador to Austria and then to Turkey. After World War II, Papen was acquitted at the Nuremberg trials.

Boris Berezovsky, Boris Yeltsins trusted oligarch-henchman, with his own murky reputation, similarly underestimated a would-be autocrat. It was Berezovsky who brought Vladimir Putin to Yeltsins attention, anticipating that the diminutive ex-KGB officer was the ideal candidate to protect the Yeltsin familys riches  and Berezovskys own wealth  once Yeltsin retired. Yet, soon after Putin was in power, Berezovsky lost his business empire and was forced to emigrate to England, where he died under suspicious circumstances.

Finally, in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his predecessor, Abdullah Gul, worked together to create the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has dominated Turkish politics since 2002.

But, as Erdogan has concentrated power in his own hands, he has silenced Gul. Likewise, former prime minister and AKP leader, Ahmet Davutoglu, long-supported Erdogan, until deepening disagreements  at times rooted in Erdogans contempt for the very position of prime minister  forced Davutoglu to step down last year.

Of course, Americas democracy is stronger than Turkeys or Russias. But with his shameless lies and relentless attacks on those who disagree with him  and his suggestion that it might be appropriate to challenge a major US news networks broadcast licence  Trump has shown that he is not interested in adhering to democratic norms.

A weakened democracy is an exceedingly high price for the US to pay  and for what? At first, Republicans wanted to use Trump to help them pass legislation such as a repeal of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and tax reform.

But, after 10 months of controlling the presidency and both houses of Congress, Republicans have accomplished almost nothing legislatively. They simply want power for powers sake  and that means beating, not co-operating with, the Democrats.

But that may be changing. Congressional Republicans have joined with Democrats to enact Trump-proof sanctions against Russia, and there have been moves toward co-operation on maintaining the subsidies on which Obamacare depends (after Trump cut them by executive order).

These are steps in the right direction. But, with Trumps behaviour becoming increasingly capricious and dangerous, it is not nearly enough. Republicans who care about ending up on the right side of history cannot stay on Trumps side any longer.

Nina L Khrushcheva is professor of international affairs, and associate dean for academic affairs, at The New School and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2017.
The Benton Community Foundation presented members of Boy Scout Troop 170 with the Holcomb Youth Hero Award on Monday in recognition of their effort and ingenuity in the rescue of an injured troop leader during a backpacking trip in August.

The eight Scouts, ages 12 through 15, fashioned a stretcher and crutches out of camping supplies after the troop leader fractured a bone in his leg while hiking in the Goat Rocks Wilderness in southwestern Washington.

It took two days and a great amount of teamwork, but the Scouts, along with the help of a second troop leader, took the injured man to safety and to a hospital for treatment.

The nonprofit presented each of the Scouts with the award during a ceremony at the Boys and Girls Club of Corvallis attended by more than 50 family and community members. It is the first time in nearly a decade that the charitable organization has issued the award.

The hero emerges when somebody puts aside his or her own well-being and takes action, said Gerry Kosanovic, chairman of the Benton Community Foundations Board of Directors. Recipients of the award are heroes in their own right, and theyve been recognized and honored for their heroism and altruism.

Today were going to honor such heroes in our community  Boy Scouts in our community who embrace the Scout Honor Code that says, in part, I will do my best to help other people at all times, Kosanovic said.

The award was created in 1997 by Billie and the late Bob Holcomb to be given to young people who have demonstrated exceptional acts of courage, bravery and altruism. Billie attended Mondays ceremony with her children, Larry Holcomb and Linda Holcomb-Bryant.

They wanted to honor the youth of our community, and those youth in the community who accomplish significant character deeds but whose work often goes unnoticed, Kosanovic said.

Larry, an Eagle Scout himself, said talking to the boys brought back memories. Linda said it was important to honor kids who choose to take action rather than wait for someone else to take care of a problem.

Each of the Scouts  Aaron Bailey, Blake Byer, Cade Byer, Lane Byer, Jack David, Zach Leskovec, Jack OMalley and Jack Stevenson  was presented with a medallion etched with the likeness of Billie and Bob Holcomb.

The foundation also gave Boy Scout Troop 170 a $15,000 donation.

Stevenson, a sophomore at Crescent Valley High School, thanked the Holcomb family for their generosity.

It will help spark the Scouting spirit in the generations to come, he said.

Stevenson said his troop has not yet decided what theyll do with the money. He said they may use it to expand their wood yard in northeast Corvallis. They take in donated wood from residents, research forests and logging firms, cut it for firewood and sell it.

The troop also may put the funds toward recruiting efforts for new Scouts.

Stevenson said it was nice for the troop to be recognized for its efforts.

I think it sends a really good message to the rest of the world about Scouting and our ideals, he said.

The Scouts troop leader, Hector Rodriguez, said he wants to use the money to help the community in some way.

Rodriguez said the award reaffirms that the Scouts are willing to put aside their own interests to help others.

The values that were teaching are manifesting themselves in a tangible way, he said.
Terry Lewison, 67, of Sweet Home, died, Thursday at Samarian Evergreen Hospice House. Viewing will be from 5 to 7:00 p.m. on Friday, October 27, at Huston-Jost Funeral Home. Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, October 28, at Huston-Jost Funeral Home.

Kent Douglas Matheson died September 18, 2017. A celebration of life will be held from 2 to 5 p.m. on November 18, 2017 at Normandy Park Community Club in Normandy Park, Washington.

Elizabeth L. White, 69, died on Friday, October 20, in Junction City. A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, October 25 at McHenry Funeral Home, 206 NW 5th st. Corvallis. A light lunch reception will follow. For more information please visit www.mchenryfuneralhome.com.
A Philomath man was accused of several sex crimes against a young girl in Linn County Circuit Court on Monday afternoon.

Jeffrey Allen Merrill, 45, was charged with two counts of first-degree rape, two counts of first-degree sodomy, and one count of first-degree sex abuse.

These are Jessicas Law charges, said Prosecutor Ani Yardumian, during the brief court appearance.

Jessicas Law charges are accusations of sex crimes against a minor under the age of 12. Conviction of a Jessicas Law crime could bring a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison.

Yardumian asked for $50,000 bail, and security was set in that amount by Judge Suzanne Upton. Paul Kuebrich was appointed Merrills attorney, and the next hearing in the case was scheduled for Nov. 13.

The charging document states that the crimes took place between Sept. 1 and Dec. 31.

The Albany Police Department arrested Merrill in the 800 block of Belmont Avenue Southwest on Friday. A Democrat-Herald call to a police supervisor on Monday, seeking more information about the case, was not immediately returned.

Merrill has no significant criminal history in Oregon, according to the states online courts database.
British American Tobacco is expanding the reach of its heat-not-burn cigarette brand  glo  into a fifth major market in Russia.

BAT, the 100 percent owner of Reynolds American Inc. since July, said glo contains 90 percent to 95 percent fewer toxicants compared with conventional cigarettes. BAT said a single charge of its glo stick lasts up to 30 sessions.

The other markets where glo is available are Canada, Japan, South Korea and Switzerland.

Heat-not-burn cigarettes, the science of which was pioneered in part by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., are considered as a potential reduced-risk product because the burning of tobacco leaves releases carcinogens.

However, a study published in May in JAMA Internal Medicine found that secondhand smoke from heat-not-burn cigarettes released some of the same cancer-causing chemicals as do traditional cigarettes.

Nicandro Durante, BATs chief executive, told the Winston-Salem Journal in July that glo will be submitted for Food and Drug Administration regulatory review.

A BAT investor presentation on Oct. 25 indicated plans for a substantial equivalence filing in 2018 and a modified-risk tobacco product application in 2020.

A substantial-equivalence filing is for products that either have the same characteristics as those marketed on/before Feb. 15, 2007, or have different characteristics but do not raise different questions of public health. A modified-risk tobacco product applications seeks authorization to market products as reduced harm or reduced risk compared with traditional cigarettes.

The heat-not-burn technology is in use by Philip Morris International with the Marlboro HeatStick, which is sold primarily in Italy, Japan and Switzerland but is available in 19 other countries. The manufacturer has expressed optimism for debuting the heat sticks in the U.S. in 2018.

Bonnie Herzog, an analyst with Wells Fargo Securities, has said interest in heat-not-burn cigarettes among U.S. tobacco retailers has increased since July 27, when FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb called for a sweeping regulatory road map on tobacco and nicotine products. Proposals include easing some regulations for product innovations and extending the application deadline for FDA regulatory review for new products from late 2018 to as far out as August 2022.

Gottlieb also supports efforts to shift traditional cigarettes to very low nicotine levels.

The global markets for reduced risk products are going to become increasingly competitive, said Scott Ballin, past chairman of Coalition of Science OR Health. Clearly, these companies know that in the next 10 to 20 years they will lose their cigarette markets, and they need to aggressively start to market and sell reduced-risk products in as many markets as they can.

However, Ballin said their efforts will become increasingly difficult as more countries move to ban products like electronic cigarettes.

David Sweanor, an adjunct law professor at the University of Ottawa and the author of several e-cigarette studies, said heat-not-burn cigarettes are have grown in popularity in Japan to the point they rival e-cigs as the top alternative to traditional cigarettes.

The heat-not-burn products have led to Japan currently having the most rapid decline in cigarette smoking that we have ever seen in a developed market, Sweanor said. Russia is a huge market that has shown receptivity to low-risk products, so BAT is being astute rather than becoming the next Kodak ... Tobacco companies have no choice, they either ride this wave or get crushed by it.
WASHINGTON  A common defense of President Trump points to the positive things he has done from a Republican perspective  his appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch and other conservative judges, his pursuit of the Islamic State, his honoring of institutional religious freedom. This argument is not frivolous. What frustrates is the steadfast refusal among most Republicans and conservatives to recognize the costs on the other side of the scale.

Chief among them is Trump's assault on truth, which takes a now-familiar form. First, assert and maintain a favorable lie. Second, attack and discredit sources of opposition. Third, declare victory based on power or applause. So, Trump claimed that Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson's account of his conversation with a Gold Star widow was "totally fabricated." (Not true.) Wilson, after all, is "wacky." (Not relevant.) And Trump won the interchange because Wilson is "killing the Democrat Party." (We'll see.)

The pattern is invariable. Barack Obama is a Kenyan; the Mexican government deliberately dumps criminals across the border; "thousands and thousands" of people in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 attacks; Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's father consorted with Lee Harvey Oswald; vaccination schedules can be tied to autism; Obama was "wiretapping" Trump Tower during the presidential campaign; Obama asked British intelligence to spy on Trump; at least 3 million immigrants voted illegally in the 2016 election. Any source that disputes Trump is personally defamed or dismissed as "fake news." And how is truth ultimately adjudicated? "The country believes me," Trump said earlier this year. "Hey, I went to Kentucky two nights ago. We had 25,000 people." Confronted by a reporter about his routine deceptions, Trump answered, "I can't be doing so badly, because I'm president and you're not."

Thirty years ago, University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" began with the words: "There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: Almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative." Bloom found this deeply problematic, because the ability to determine truth from falsehood, right from wrong, is essential to personal flourishing and civic health. I wonder what Bloom would make of a political philosophy in which truth is determined by 25,000 screaming partisans and reality is a function of fabulism. Conservatives were supposed to be the protectors of objective truth from various forms of postmodernism. Now they generally defend our thoroughly post-truth president. Evidently we are all relativists now.

Not quite all. Some of us still think this attack on truth is a dangerous form of political corruption. The problem is not just the constant lies. It is the dismissal of reason and objectivity as inherently elitist and partisan. It is the invitation to supporters to live entirely within Trump's dark, divisive, dystopian version of reality. It is the attempt to destroy or subvert any source of informed judgment other than Trump himself. This is the construction of a pernicious form of tyranny: a tyranny over the mind.

Not that the attempt is fully conscious. Some of this preference for deception may be the result of pathological compulsions. Some of it is surely the intuitive use of trolling to draw attention away from scandals and failures. Some of it may be a strategy to discredit contending sources of truth in Trump's upcoming public battle with special counsel Robert Mueller.

But here is the cost. When there is no objective source of truth  no commonly agreed upon set of facts and rules of argument  political persuasion becomes impossible. There is no reasoned method to choose between one view and another. The only way to settle political disputes is power  determined by screaming mobs or because "I'm president and you're not." Politics becomes an endless battle of true believers, conditioned to distrust and dismiss every bit of evidence that does not confirm their pre-existing views. The alternative to reasoned discourse is the will to power.

This is the frightening direction of Trumpism. It is the corruption that good men such as chief of staff John Kelly are enabling. And it is a source of enduring shame for many conservatives. "Sycophancy toward those who hold power," said Bloom, "is a fact in every regime, and especially in a democracy, where, unlike tyranny, there is an accepted principle of legitimacy that breaks the inner will to resist. ... Flattery of the people and incapacity to resist public opinion are the democratic vices, particularly among writers, artists, journalists and anyone else who is dependent on an audience."

Exactly how the conservative movement was broken.
For hundreds of thousands of children in North Carolina, achieving success in school can be a struggle.

A report released today from the private philanthropy Annie E. Casey Foundation states there are 18 million children nationally under the age of 18 who are the children of immigrants or are immigrants themselves. Of those, 414,000 live in North Carolina. Only 36 percent of these children live above the poverty line of $49,200 a year for a family of four, compared to 54 percent of children born in the U.S.

The average income for immigrant families with children is 20 percent less than U.S.-born families.

Data is from 2013-2015, according to the report, which is published every three years.

We continue to see significant disparities, said Rob Thompson, senior policy and communications advisor for N.C. Child. The organization partners with the Kids Count Data Center division of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Its really undermining the future in the state.

Barriers presented to children today will have a domino effect for problems later in life, Thompson said. Limiting access to health care and education can compound a childs chance to succeed.

Theres a lot we can do to help. ... The earned income tax credit at the state level is one thing. We allowed it to sunset a few years ago, Thompson said. We can also extend Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Families with health insurance are more likely to stay on the job.

He said that will help families stay in one place, helping children.

Kids learn better when theyre in healthy, stable houses and not moving all the time. We need to look beyond the classroom, Thompson said.

He pointed to the N.C. Legislature, which considered reducing SNAP benefits last session  which would also cut free and reduced lunch for about 50,000 students.

You cant expect them to go to school hungry and be able to focus on the task at hand and read, Thompson said.

Sometimes, though, it is cultural differences that must be sorted out to help students get comfortable in a school, said David Sisk, director of the English Learners Program for Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools.

If a student isnt eating in a cafeteria because hes afraid there might be pork in the food  something hes forbidden to eat  or isnt performing well in class because hes not used to having a female teacher, these are things staff have to sort out to help a child become successful, Sisk said.

In 2015-16, there were 648 immigrant students in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools. The following year there were 704 students, Sisk said.

The district has ESL  English as a Second Language  teachers in all but eight of its more than six dozen schools, with plans for an instructor to be at the remaining schools by next year, he said. Every high school has in ESL teacher, and Paisley IB Magnet School is the only middle school without one, he said. Cash, Sherwood Forest and Whitaker elementary schools and a few alternative schools also dont have the position.

The school district also uses a type of schooling that helps students learn a language and the educational concept simultaneously, Sisk said.

Still, 8 percent of fourth-graders in the U.S. who are English-language learners are proficient readers, compared with 38 percent of children born in the U.S. Math numbers are similar: 5 percent of eighth-graders who are children of immigrant families are proficient in eighth-grade math, compared with 34 percent of children born in the U.S.

Sisk said the district doesnt track that data officially, but said the systems numbers are similar. He said if you dont speak the language and go into a room trying to learn math, there will be an instant gap in learning.

Students may have other difficulties weighing on their minds, as well. The study states fear of family separation due to deportation or other factors is detrimental to a childs mental and physical health.

Sisk said the school district doesnt track who is in the country legally or who may be trying to get paperwork renewed. However, he said the school system tries to help children with their worries.

Immigration-related issues can add a level of pressure: Getting visas and other matters. We have counselors on staff to help, he said. Tensions were increased last year, due to the increase in immigration enforcement, which has made some students more fearful.

Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools also helps families assimilate into the community by hosting family nights, cultural fairs and interpreters available for parent meetings, Sisk said.
The Triad has plenty of company  as in 237 competitors  in its bid to land Amazons second North American headquarters.

Only six states did not have a city or region submit a bid for the coveted $5 billion and 50,000-employee project. And the competition was international: Bids came in from seven Canadian provinces and three Mexican states.

All of which means Amazon could place HQ2 anywhere from the Arctic Circle to southern Mexico.

The online giant is expected to make a decision in 2018. Amazon did not list the individual communities on its website, though most could be determined through local media reports or state commerce news releases.

The Triad was among four N.C. areas, joining Charlotte, Hickory and the Triangle, in sending packages to Seattle filled with incentive proposals and recruiting ideas.

Site-selection experts and economists project the odds of the Triad winning HQ2 as very slim.

Thats based primarily on the e-retail giants criteria for the new site, which, among other things, call for a metropolitan area of at least 1 million residents, a stable business climate for growth, an international airport within 45 minutes of its campus and a highly educated local workforce from which to draw employees.

We want to find a city that is excited to work with us and where our customers, employees and the community can all benefit, Amazon said.

The Seattle Times also mentioned the Triad  in this instance cited as Greensboro  in the long shot category, lumped in with communities such as El Paso, Texas.

The Triad package included a video, summary proposal and several pamphlets. A separate interactive presentation was sent by e-mail.

The #TriadisPrime Amazon pitch represents perhaps the largest collaborative recruitment effort by the regions four economic-development groups: Piedmont Triad Partnership, Winston-Salem Business Inc., High Point Economic Development Corp. and Greensboro Chamber of Commerce.

The groups said they proposed six undisclosed sites that include both downtown settings, as well as potential campus locations for HQ2, according to Loren Hill, president of the High Point group.

Amazon has indicated HQ2 initially would require 500,000 square feet of office space, but that is expected to expand to 8 million square feet divided among three buildings.

A Bloomberg News analysis lists the favorites as Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Toronto and Washington.

Amazon has said the average wage of the 50,000 employees at the second headquarters would approach $100,000 a year.

By comparison, Amazon estimates its investments in Seattle from 2010 through 2016 added $38 billion to the citys economy. More than 40,000 of its 380,000 employees are based in Seattle.

Amazon hasnt said how much emphasis it will put on incentives, but it is likely to request something similar to the $3 billion the Wisconsin legislature offered electronics giant Foxconn Technology Group for a $10 billion flat-screen production plant employing up to 13,000 people.

At that level, Taiwan-based Foxconn would receive the largest state incentive package for a foreign company in U.S. history.

Amazon expects incentive packages that include land, site preparation, tax credits and exemptions, relocation grants, workforce grants, utility incentives and grants, permitting, and fee reductions.
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We know Hollywood moguls are infamous for taking advantage of aspiring young actresses. The movie producers casting couch has been a tradition since Tinsel Town began.

But Harvey Weinstein must be setting some kind of record.

Since The New York Times broke the stories about his alleged serial misconduct earlier this month, more than 40 actresses, studio workers and models have come forward to accuse the powerful producer of everything from sexual harassment to rape. Now the L.A. Times is reporting that the LAPD is investigating charges by an Italian model-actress that Weinstein raped her in 2013  within the statute of limitations.

Shes the sixth woman to accuse Weinstein of rape or forcible sex acts. Over the years, eight others reportedly received civil settlements from Weinsteins movie company.

What a charming guy.

I feel for all these women who are coming out and telling the world what sex acts Weinstein allegedly did to them or in front of them when their dreams and careers were at his mercy. It takes courage for those women to admit that they too were humiliated, abused and taken advantage of by an A-list Hollywood slime ball.

But everyone knows Weinstein isnt the only powerful producer or director in Hollywood who regularly expected sex in exchange for making someone a movie star. There are other Weinsteins, and lots of people in the film community know exactly who they are.

Actresses and actors warn their friends to watch out for Producer X or Director Y, but they never make their names public. They should.

Instead of merely tweeting Me too, the women who say they have been sexually harassed and assaulted in Hollywood (and everywhere else) need to start naming names.

This could be a chance for women in Hollywood to put a stop to the casting couch culture Weinstein took full advantage of for three decades.

Times have changed. Women are listened to now when they report sexual misconduct by their bosses or colleagues. Theyre protected by harassment laws and supported by the media. Theyre no longer shamed publicly for revealing that they have been victims of sexual predators in the workplace.

In the end, Hollywood is all about money. You can even be an open conservative Republican in Hollywood  as long as Hollywood is making money off you.

Its the same with top actresses  the A-listers. They make a lot of money for Hollywood, so they have power to change things.

A-list actresses need to join together and start naming the names of the other Weinsteins. That way they can protect the B-listers and the future young stars  girls and boys  from becoming new victims of an immoral and rotten culture that has been tolerated in Hollywood for way too long.
Maybe you had the exact same reaction we did when reading about the latest wacky developments at President Trump's advisory commission on election integrity.

Here was our reaction: You mean the commission is still a thing? Didn't it close down a couple of months ago?

No such luck.

But the time has long since passed  if indeed such a time ever existed  when this commission had anything useful to offer. It's time to close up shop here.

The commission was created in the wake of Trump's unsubstantiated claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the popular vote during the 2016 election. Trump's opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, received 2.8 million more votes nationwide than Trump.

It's not clear why this rankles Trump so, especially considering that he won the election in the Electoral College, which is how we actually elect U.S. presidents. (And let's remember something here: It's not as if Clinton didn't know about this Electoral College thing.)

But we digress. In any event, Trump's insistence, without the benefit of evidence, that widespread voter fraud took place in November prompted the formation of his commission on electoral integrity, which immediately distinguished itself by requesting a wide range of information about registered voters in every state, including partial Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses and voting history. After several state officials pointed out that laws in their states prohibited such a broad release of information, the request was scaled back.

Now this: Over the weekend, two members of the panel wrote letters to the commission staff complaining about a lack of information regarding the panel's agenda and activities.

Let's underline this point: This isn't about pesky members of the media complaining about a lack of information regarding the commission's activities. (As it turns out, media requests for such information generally have been ignored.) No, this involves actual members of the commission complaining that they're in the dark about what the group is up to.

One of the commissioners wrote this in his letter: "I am in a position where I feel compelled to inquire after the work of the commission upon which I am sworn to serve, and am yet completely uninformed as to its activities."

Another commissioner told an Associated Press reporter: "I am in the dark on what will happen from this point on, to tell you the truth."

Well, maybe the meeting packets haven't gotten to those commissioners yet through the U.S. mail.

Or maybe  and this strikes us as the more likely explanation  this train wreck finally is rolling off the rails.

Let's be blunt: The main purpose of the commission is to create a smoke screen to make it easier for states (and, possibly, the federal government) to curtail voting rights. A state like Oregon, which has worked hard to expand the franchise, isn't going to be particularly interested in embracing specious justifications for legislation that makes it harder for citizens to vote.

It's really a lost opportunity: If this group really were serious about electoral integrity, there's work that it could be doing. The commission could be working to develop ways to modernize voting machines and to safeguard election systems against hackers. It could be exploring whether to encourage states to explore vote-by-mail systems like the one Oregon uses  which are notoriously hard to hack and leave behind a paper trail.

But we've seen nothing to date to suggest that this commission is interested in tackling any of that work. In fact, it's not clear if the panel even will get around to making any recommendations; one of its leaders, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, has said it's "highly possible" that the commission will make no recommendations when it finishes its work.

We should jump to that ending right now: Disband the commission. Make no recommendations. Mission accomplished. (mm)
Jay Byars is back to serve in his fourth term on Dorchester County Council. Fresh off his decisive win  by a 37 percent margin  over Petition challenger Brian Riesen in the Nov. 8 race for the District 7 seat, the Spartanburg native remains steadfast in his commitment to improve parks and  Read moreJay Byars targeting parks, roads and more in new term
JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn, Professor Emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and Jonathan Moore, adjunct faculty at City University of New York School of Law, discuss recent efforts to silence environmental groups through litigation

In an audacious attempt to silence Greenpeaces constitutionally protected criticism of what the environmental protection group calls Resolute Forest Destroyer, the logging company, Resolute Forest Products, sued Greenpeace under RICO  the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. In the suit, filed on May 31, 2016, Resolute sought CAD $100 million in economic damages and an injunction against wrongful activity and disgorgement. With punitive damages, liability could total $300 million.

On October 16, U.S. District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar dismissed the complaint against Greenpeace and Stand, another environmental protection organization, without prejudice.

The courts decision sends a clear message to corporations that attacks on core democratic values like freedom of speech and legitimate advocacy on issues of public interest will not be tolerated, Greenpeace wrote in a press release.

Besides federal RICO violations, Resolute had alleged state claims against the two groups and their employees and officers for racketeering, defamation, conspiracy, and tortious interference with prospective and contractual business relations. Originally filed in the Southern District of Georgia, the case was transferred to the Northern District of California.

Resolute alleged that Greenpeace targeted the company with media campaigns aimed at cutting Resolutes profits through false or misleading statements about the companys impact on the environment and on indigenous communities. According to Resolute, Greenpeace spread false information in order to fraudulently induce donations to pay its leaders and continue raising more funds. Resolute alleged that Greenpeace published whopping lie[s] . . . misrepresenting Resolutes harvesting as a major climate change risk.

Resolute Tries to Bolster RICO Claims With Greenpeace Enterprise

In an attempt to bolster its RICO and racketeering claims, Resolute alleged that Greenpeace agreed to coordinate a disinformation campaign and carried it out as a racketeering scheme and a criminal enterprise. But, Judge Tigar concluded, Resolute failed to identify specific acts of racketeering by specific defendants in its complaint and instead referred to the Defendants collectively as the Greenpeace Enterprise.

Judge Tigar also noted that Resolutes RICO claims are subject to a higher pleading standard because they are based in fraud. See Edwards v. Marin Park, Inc.. Under Rule 9(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, plaintiffs alleging fraud claims must state with particularly the circumstances constituting fraud or mistake, which means they need to state the time, place, and specific content of the false representations as well as the identities of the parties to the misrepresentations.

Resolute fails to meet these heightened pleading requirements, the judge concluded.

Moreover, he wrote, Resolute has also failed to show proximate cause as to its RICO claims because it didnt explain how it was victimized by the fundraising scheme and there are many reasons a customer might sever its relationship with Resolute.

Resolutes State Claims

The court had little difficulty concluding that the issue of whether Resolutes use of sustainable forestry practices is a public controversy generating large scale demonstrations and signed petitions, and that the alleged defamation is related to this public controversy.

Since Resolute is a limited public figure, the court stated, it was required by law to allege actual malice as an element of its defamation and related state law claims. Thus, Resolute needed to show that the statement was made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth, and that the statement was materially false.

To demonstrate reckless disregard of the truth, Resolute had to show that the speakers subjectively entertained serious doubts as to the truth of their statements. [G]eneral allegations that a defendant should have known or should have investigated the truth of the statements do not adequately plead actual malice, the court said, quoting Wynn v. Chanos.

Judge Tigar concluded that Resolutes complaint failed to meet its burden of pleading actual malice with the requisite specificity. Greenpeace corrected maps and statements it had made about whether Resolute had breached the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. But the judge drew the plausible inference that Greenpeace made a mistake, not that it acted with malice.

Since Resolute did not provide any specific allegations to support a finding that [the Defendants] harbored serious subjective doubts as to the validity of [their] assertions, the court found it appeared to be a claim that Greenpeace held honestly.

Thus, the judge determined, Resolute fails to state a claim for actual malice, and dismissed the state defamation claim and related state tort claims.

Lawsuit Implicates Environmental Groups First Amendment Rights

The court also quoted Films of Distinction Inc. v. Allegro Film Prods, which held that [u]nder California law, First Amendment limitations are applicable to all claims, of whatever label, whose gravamen is the alleged injurious falsehood of a statement.

Judge Tigar found that many of Defendants publications and statements appear to be shielded by the First Amendment as statements that are not provable as false, or statements that cannot reasonably be interpreted as stating actual facts,' citing Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co.

The court also dismissed Resolutes defamation and related tort claims based on those statements on the separate and independent ground that the Defendants speech constituted the expression of opinion, or different viewpoints that [are] a vital part of our democracy . . .  Partington v. Bugliosi.

Moreover, many of Greenpeaces publications at issue rely on scientific research or fact, the judge concluded. He added that Resolutions two expert declarations make more manifest, not less, the degree to which the challenged statements are protected by the First Amendment since they concern matters of public importance and are subject to professional debate. The academy, and not the courthouse, is the appropriate place to resolve scientific disagreements of this kind.

The issues at stake in this lawsuit impact environmental organizations rights to exercise their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and expression.

Anti-SLAPP Also Protects First Amendment Rights

Defendants moved to strike Resolutes complaint under Georgias, or, in the alternative, Californias Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (anti-SLAPP) statute. They contended that Resolutes lawsuit was an effort to muzzle protected speech  here, statements about the companys poor environmental record and was brought with the obvious intent to silence their speech about matters of public importance.

The judge determined that California law applies to the substantive claims under state law and Californias anti-SLAPP statute applies to Defendants motions to strike. But the judge didnt consider Defendants anti-SLAPP motions to strike the federal claims.

California law allows for pre-trial dismissal of SLAPPs that masquerade as ordinary lawsuits but are intended to deter ordinary people from exercising their political or legal rights or to punish them for doing so.' Batzel v. Smith.

Judge Tigar cited the Ninth Circuits two-step evaluation requiring (1) that defendant makes a prima facie showing that plaintiffs lawsuit arises from defendants exercise of free speech about a public issue; and 2) that plaintiff establishes a reasonable probability of success on the merits.

Regarding the first prong, Defendants must show that Resolutes claims are based on a statement made in a public forum in connection with an issue of public interest, or based on conduct that furthered the exercise of the constitutional right of petition or the constitutional right of free speech in connection with a public issue or an issue of public interest. California courts broadly construe public interest to include governmental matters as well as private conduct that impacts a broad segment of society.

Judge Tigar found the first prong was satisfied, concluding that Defendants were involved in protected activity because environmental harm is a matter of public interest for the purposes of anti-SLAPP.

As for the second prong, the court determined that Resolute had not met its burden of showing a probability of success on its state claims as a matter of law because it had not alleged facts that could show actual malice.

The judge therefore granted Defendants motions to strike Plaintiffs state claims without prejudice. Defendants are entitled to mandatory attorneys fees for each state claim under anti-SLAPP.

Plaintiffs have 21 days from October 16 to file an amended complaint.

Free Speech Rights of Environmentalists Vindicated

Greenpeace USA General Counsel Tom Wetterer said, [w]e are pleased the court unequivocally threw out this attempt to abuse our legal system and silence legitimate criticism on matters of public concern . . . The logging companys allegations were a clear attempt to silence the voices that advocate for the environment.

Wetterer added, These cases dont seek justice. They intend to silence free speech through expensive, time-consuming litigation. This pattern of harassment by corporate bullies led by Trumps go-to attorneys must be stopped in its tracks, referring to Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, Resolutes lawyers. Managing partner Marc Kasowitz is Donald Trumps longtime personal attorney.

Other Pending Lawsuits By Corporations Against Environmental Groups

This is Resolutes second lawsuit against Greenpeace. In 2013, the company filed a CAD $7 million defamation case against Greenpeace Canada and two staff members. In striking out parts of Resolutes defamation pleadings in that case, a panel of appellate judges with the Ontario Superior Court ruled that Resolute had attempted to greatly expand the scope of the litigation and transform the trial into an inquiry into Greenpeace.

On August 22, 2017, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), which built the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAP), filed a RICO lawsuit seeking $300 million (trebled to $900 million) against Greenpeace, Banktrack and Earth First! in North Dakota. ETP is also represented by the Kasowitz firm. After he was inaugurated, Trump made it a priority to green-light the DAP. The goal of this suit is to silence opposition by misrepresenting what happened on the ground in Standing Rock  making outrageous and racist claims that big green organizations like Greenpeace orchestrated the Indigenous-led movement at Standing Rock, Greenpeace said in a statement. This lawsuit is about silencing opposition in Donald Trumps America. . . . This suit could have far-reaching consequences for journalists, advocacy organizations, and anyone who values free speech. . . . These suits are part of a pattern of legal bullying, as desperate corporations and political hacks try to silence activists, journalists, and anyone speaking out against injustice.

The purpose of these lawsuits is to bankrupt leading environmental organizations which have been a thorn in the side of large logging and oil pipeline corporations. They will be stopped only by vigorous litigation combined with massive public protest.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. Jonathan Moore is a New York attorney who specializes in civil rights and constitutional law. He is also an adjunct faculty member of the City University of New York School of Law.

Suggested citation:Marjorie Cohn & Jonathan Moore, http://jurist.org/forum/2017/10/Cohn-Moore-RICO-Greenpeace.php, JURIST  Forum, October 23, 2017, http://jurist.org/forum/2017/10/Cohn-Moore-RICO-Greenpeace.php

This article was prepared for publication by Dave Rodkey, Managing Editor for JURIST. Please direct any questions or comments to him at commentary@jurist.org
Microsoft [corporate website] announced plans to drop its lawsuit against the US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] on Monday after the DOJ issued new guidelines in an effort to curb its practice of using secrecy orders to silence companies from alerting its customers when their personal information is accessed by the federal government.

Microsofts President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith stated [announcement] that the DOJ move is an important step for both privacy and free expression and the company is pleased that the DOJ has taken these steps to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans.

Microsoft filed the suit [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington [official website] in Seattle in April 2016 alleging that  2705(b) of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) [DOJ backgrounder] violates the First and Fourth [GPO backgrounder, PDFs] amendments to the US Constitution for being overly broad and not containing any limit on the length of time a court secrecy order can be active.

The Fourth Amendment violation was premised on the ground that  2705(b) provides a mechanism for the government to search and seize customers private information without notice to the customer, based upon a constitutionally insufficient showing. The First Amendment violation was grounded on the fact that the secrecy orders under  2705(b) have impaired Microsofts right to be transparent with its customers. The complaint further alleged that:

Section 2705(b) sweeps too broadly. The statute sets no limits on the duration of secrecy orders, and it permits prior restraints any time a court has reason to believe adverse consequences would occur if the government were not allowed to operate in secret.  It also permits those restraints based on the application of purely subjective criteria, such as a finding that notice would jeopardiz[e] an investigation in unspecified ways or unduly delay a trial.  [and] does not require the government to establish that the continuing restraint on speech is narrowly tailored to promote a compelling interest.

Smith further highlighted that 2,576 legal demands were received from the federal government in an 18-month period leading up to the filing of the complaint, of which 68 percent appeared to be indefinite demands for secrecy. Smith added: In short, we were prevented from ever telling a large number of customers that the government had sought to access their data.

Smith expressed Microsofts gratitude to the nearly 90 technology companies, media enterprises and organizations, academics, business groups and companies, civil liberties groups and former law-enforcement officials who signed friend-of-the-court briefs in this case. Smith additionally thanked the ACLU, and others in the business and legal communities for their support for reforms and new legislative solutions.

While applauding the DOJ for taking the necessary steps to curb its alleged unconstitutional practices and making the announcement of Microsofts decision to dismiss the lawsuit, Smith also expressed hope that Congress will make this positive step forward more permanent by updating outdated laws to better protect our digital rights while still enabling law enforcement to do its job.
A US district court judge in San Jose, California, on Sunday ordered [text] a retrial to determine how much Samsung owes Apple for infringing three iPhone 3Gs patents: black rectangular front face of a phone with rounded corners, the rectangular front face of a phone with rounded corners and a raised rim, and the grid of 16 colorful icons on a black screen.

Ten months ago, the US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [JURIST report] that the previous judgment against Samsung was unfair and sent the case back to the district court to adjust the damages in accordance with the courts definition of article of manufacture, under section 289 of the Patent Act [PDF]. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the majority, holding that the term article of manufacture is broad enough to embrace both a product sold to a consumer and a component of that product.

US District Judge Lucy Koh concluded that:

the jury instructions given at trial did not accurately reflect the law and that the instructions prejudiced Samsung by precluding the jury from considering whether the relevant article of manufacture for the purpose of [section] 289 was something other than the entire phone.

Apple and Samsung have until October 25 to propose a new trial date.

This is the most recent installment of the ongoing patent dispute [JURIST op-ed] between the two tech giants. Silicon Valley is playing close attention to the outcome of the dispute. Large tech companies such as Google believe that an Apple victory would encourage [Reuters report] owners of design patents to sue for large, unfair damages for products containing hundreds of features that are costly to develop.
The UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) [official website] on Monday denounced [press release] the arrest of 30 opposition party members as part of a crackdown by President Joseph Kabilas [BBC profile] government.

The men who were arrested belonged to opposition group, Union pour la democratie et le progres social (UDPS). It has been reported that the meeting of the group was surrounded by police and military forces, leading to the subsequent arrests.

Maman Sidikou, the head of MONUSCO, responded to the arrests stating, I urge the Congolese authorities to immediately and unconditionally release those arbitrarily arrested yesterday in Lubumbashi. Sidikou further wish[ed] to remind the Congolese authorities of their obligations to respect the fundamental freedoms and civil and political rights of all persons, in accordance with the Constitution and the international obligations of the DRC.
In regards to Kenneth England's remarks (Mailbag, Oct. 19):

President Trump could not be considered a moron and be where he's been or where he is now.

How many presidents have had to handle the grief of three major hurricanes, while shuffling at least two rogue nations who want to blow us up and a few more that could also do it?

Deal with the tragedy in the massacre in Las Vegas and all those victims?

Find the time to console grieving widows and parents, and the many grieving wild fire victims in California?

Oversee all the problems contained in all the above and still be insulted?

Marilyn Schlim

Sweet Home (Oct. 19)
As the crisis in Rakhine grabs headlines, little attention is being paid to blocked aid deliveries, displacement and indiscriminate attacks on civilians in Myanmar's Kachin and northern Shan states.

As displacement continues in northern Rakhine State, there is an urgent need for renewed international attention to consider and address broader, systemic conflict issues elsewhere in Myanmar.

Blocked humanitarian assistance, mass displacement and indiscriminate attacks affecting civilians are nothing new  theyve been happening for decades and escalating in the past year.

Although Rakhine has been dominating the news, Kachin and northern Shan states are also in crisis, despite extensive responses by civil society. If the international sense of humanitarian imperative is genuine, it must focus on the entire country and give greater primacy to the role of national civil society.

In late 2016, sustained offensives were launched against key Kachin Independence Army positions, particularly a strategic post on Gidon Mountain. The offensives directly contributed to the displacement of more than 6,000 people who had already been displaced. Some IDP camps were hit by mortar fire. This was a breach of rule seven of whats known as customary international humanitarian law  rules that exist independent of treaties  about distinguishing between civilian objects, or areas settled by civilians, and military objectives.

The delivery of humanitarian aid is increasingly being blocked, particularly to areas controlled by the KIA. Humanitarian actors are unable to fulfil their mandates to provide assistance. This is a clear breach of IHL rule 55, which states that parties to conflict must facilitate rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access to civilians in need.

In early 2017, displaced Kachin were also prevented from entering China to seek safety  a breach of international law relating to non-refoulement. Yes, there were some statements from international actors and behind the scenes work, but no sustained engagement at the level needed to change the situation, which continues to deteriorate.

Kachin IDPS sit inside a temporary shelter near Laiza. Around 100,000 people in Kachin and northern Shan states remain displaced by conflict between the Tatmadaw and ethnic armed groups. (Steve Tickner | Frontier)

In June, clearance operations were launched in Tanai, in north western Kachin State. The operation was preceded by a drop of leaflets warning that anyone remaining in the area would be presumed to be an enemy combatant and therefore a potential target.

Forget any other context: this is perhaps one of the clearest admissions and evidence of breaking the first IHL rule, about the distinction between civilians and combatants. Thousands of Kachin were displaced and received scant support from the government, which did however provide many migrant workers from lower Myanmar a cash handout and transport to leave the affected area. A distinction was made, but unfortunately it was ethnic rather than between civilians and combatants. There was a murmur from the international community. Change needs more than a murmur.

As recently as August, there were unprovoked offensives near Kasung village, close to the Kachin capital, Myitkyina, temporarily displacing about 2,000 people. Armed clashes continue at Tanai and at the jade mining centre of Hpakant.

The fighting is escalating and international humanitarian and human rights laws continue to be broken. This has been happening for years, yet the British government has only now decided to cease military cooperation with Myanmar. Only now are targeted sanctions of individuals being considered.

The scale of displacement  and breaches of IHL  in Kachin are considerably less than in Rakhine, yet the response from the international community towards the situation in the northern state remains inadequate.

Kachin is a forgotten war. The conflict there is unlikely to create an international refugee crisis and the Kachin are among the countrys 135 officially recognised ethnic groups so their citizenship is relatively secure. But the underlying concerns are the same  human rights abuses, impunity and blockages of aid.

With the spotlight on Myanmar and the international community pushing for action, its an opportune time to harness this momentum and apply it to the whole country, particularly Kachin and northern Shan states.

The scale of crises is important, yet the moral reasoning is no different. It is clear that systemic issues must be addressed throughout the country and this requires increased effort. Unrestricted humanitarian and media access are critical foundations, but they are denied. An immediate cessation of hostilities is urgent, yet they escalate. The list could go on.

Located north of Laiza, Woi Chyai IDP camp was shelled by the army on December 18, 2016. (Steve Tickner | Frontier)

As I wrote in Frontier in March, we must recognise that international institutions ways of working are failing in Kachin. I can only hope that recent events in Rakhine can be a catalyst for reinvigorated efforts to comprehensively address urgent needs in Kachin and broader Myanmar.

The international fact-finding mission on Myanmar appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council in March in response to the Rakhine crisis  and to which the government said it would not issue visas  was also tasked with investigating claims of abuses and human rights violations in Kachin and northern Shan. This offers a glimmer of hope for those affected by conflict in Kachin and northern Shan, assuming the mission is issued with visas.

Recognising our own weaknesses, we should also look towards others strengths. This is where the dynamic and committed civil society in Kachin offers many lessons for international actors. Leading in humanitarian assistance delivery and advocating for change, they influence Myanmar power holders in a way that international actors cannot. As we are tied in knots over Rakhine, we should draw on the experiences of civil society in Kachin. Where the international communitys influence appears largely limited to other international actors, we must redouble our efforts to strategically support and reinforce national civil society efforts.

This recalibration is not just necessary for change, it is the inevitable and sustainable pathway for creating peace and justice for all people in Myanmar.

This article was first published by Frontier.
The UN Security Council will vote Thursday on extending for another year the mandate of a panel tasked with investigating chemical attacks in Syria and identifying those responsible, diplomats said.

Following negotiations with Russia, the United States presented a draft resolution that renews the mandate of the joint United Nations-Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) probe until November 2017.

During its year-long investigation, the panel established that Syrian government forces carried out three chlorine gas attacks on villages in 2014 and 2015.

It was the first time that an international probe pointed the finger of blame at President Bashar al-Assad's forces, after years of denial from Damascus.

Despite the findings, Russia has dismissed the conclusions as unconvincing and said no sanctions should be imposed on Syria.

The panel, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), also found that the Islamic State group in Syria used mustard gas as a weapon in August 2015.

The draft resolution obtained by AFP tasks the JIM with identifying the "perpetrators, organizers, sponsors" of attacks including among groups associated with IS or with Al-Qaeda.

It states that all "individuals, entities, groups or governments responsible for any use of chemical weapons must be held accountable."

Despite calls by Russia to extend the probe to Iraq, the draft resolution would limit the work of the JIM investigators to Syria.

Diplomats said the vote would take place at around 0000 GMT.

- No sanctions -

Calls from France and Britain for UN sanctions against Syria for its use of chemical weapons have yet to translate into action.

Paris and London have described the use of toxic gas in attacks against civilians as a war crime and pushed for sanctions to be imposed on those who carried out the attacks.

The panel's latest report said government helicopters flying from two regime-controlled air bases dropped chlorine barrel bombs on the villages of Qmenas, Talmenes and Sarmin, in rebel-held Idlib province.

The panel identified the 253rd and 255th squadrons of the 63rd helicopter brigade, which flew from the Hama and Humaymim air bases, and the 628 squadron based in Humaymim as the perpetrators.

Syria signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in 2013 and agreed to give up its chemical stockpile under pressure from close ally Russia.

At a meeting in The Hague last week, the OPCW's executive body condemned Syria for its use of chemical weapons, the first-ever condemnation of a state-party to the CWC.

The mandate of the JIM was briefly extended last month and was due to expire on Friday.
Students and staff from De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) are visiting Vilnius to demonstrate to prospective students why DMU is so popular with students across the EU.

Despite an overall fall in applications to British universities and the political uncertainty around Brexit, DMU has seen an increase of 40% in EU students starting this year.

In the last year, DMU was ranked as the UKs best university for getting graduates into highly-skilled employment or further study and was awarded gold in the Teaching Excellence Framework, the UK governments first official ranking of universities. Many Lithuanian students have identified these successes as a key reason for choosing to study at DMU.

DMU is also one of the UKs most vibrant and multi-cultural universities and welcomes students and staff from more than 130 countries, another factor which has appealed to international students.

DMU has a strong connection to Lithuania and this visit is the second time in the last 18 months that the university has travelled to Vilnius.

The first visit came in August 2016 as part of DMUs #LoveInternational campaign, created in response to the EU referendum result, and provided an opportunity for senior staff and Polish students from the university to dispel many of the myths which had arisen about post-Brexit access and rights to work and study in the UK.

Current Lithuanian students will join senior staff  including the Deputy Vice-Chancellor Andy Collop  in an event and reception open to Lithuanian media, where DMUs work will be presented and discussed. The students will talk about the benefits of studying abroad and their experience of international education.

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The visit follows the launch of a new campaign by DMU, which aims to Keep Universities for the Many, and international students are an important part of it.

Amidst talk of a review of how higher education is funded, DMU Vice-Chancellor Professor Dominic Shellard has called for a Royal Commission to take the issue of higher education funding out of the political sphere to ensure the best possible model for students from the UK and abroad.

Professor Shellard said: DMU has always been a vibrant community from diverse backgrounds and cultures, and we wanted to reaffirm that our international students and staff are a vital part of what makes us special  perhaps now more than ever. We also believe they will remain essential in the future, no matter how the Brexit process unfolds.

Following our last visit to Lithuania, it has been hugely reassuring for us to know that you took us at our word. In our September 2017 cohort, we bucked a national decline in numbers to enjoy a 40 per cent increase in EU students.

That is astonishing and we couldnt be more delighted to be back here, to celebrate old friendships that are stronger than ever while building new ones that transcend politics and borders.
Especially in times of populism and growing right-wing movements, artists hold a mirror up to societies and sense tendencies long before these become conscious.

Stine Marie Jacobsen is an artist and also a human dynamo. She pours her immense resources of energy and imagination into a staggering range of projects, from best-selling German phrasebooks for expat artists and other newcomers to collaborative workshops exploring the relationship between violence in movies and in our lives. In the work Direct Approach she asks people to describe the most violent scenes they have seen in films and then to re-enact them, playing either protagonist or victim.

More recently she has developed a project which addresses the law, allowing school students, immigrants, refugees and ordinary citizens to rewrite verdicts and decide sentences in past cases and also (with the help of lawyers) to draft their own laws for public display and debate. The project is called Law Shifters and she spared some time from her bewilderingly busy schedule to tell Katoikos about it.

Richard Willmsen: What inspired Law Shifters?

Stine Marie Jacobsen: In 2013 I was invited by Air Antwerpen to come to Belgium as part of an artist residency and work on the growing right-wing tendency in politics. I started having conversations about this with a broad range of citizens and would during the interview ask them to compare their observations to a film they had seen. My trade mark!

The citizens spoke to me about a sanction law that enables municipalities to hire citizens to subjectively give other citizens fines, the so-called GAS (Dutch: gemeentelijke administratieve sanctie), for whatever they deem as a public nuisance. GAS was supposed to unburden the police from petty crime, so they could focus on tougher cases. GAS was written in 1999 by a lawyer called Luc Van den Bossche, who was inspired by the British ASBO (Anti-Social Behavorial Order). The citizens are only trained 8-15 hours, and the result was abuse and overuse.

Municipalities as well as police stations started getting back reports saying frozen ice, man honking too loud at his wife, boy mimics siren (no kidding, I tried to interview him but he wanted to be anonymous), teenager eats sandwich and crumbs on church steps, etc. GAS had been also used to target especially protestors and immigrants, Peace Judge Jan Nolf told me in an interview.

It literally sounded to me like the surrealists had come back to Belgium, but alas it was the cruel reality of laws going too far. This made me interested in the condition of law and from here Law Shifters started.

How does this project work?

The Law Shifters sessions depend on stakeholders. If they are students, I and a lawyer warm them up by inviting them to re-judge a real court case and to discuss their verdict with the original verdict. We use court cases as historical or current documents as a way of looking into how we behave towards each other and how that might have been changing.

For example, what was considered an unacceptable racist remark in 1980s might no longer seem too bad to a young person now, among others because they can read adult citizens writing let them drown about refugees.

If the participants already are carriers of need or knowledge, we go straight to discussion and law writing. The second part is that a lawyer translates these laws into official law language. These laws are then either carved into walls, floors or displayed on street posters.

Which responses to the project have been most surprising and rewarding?

One Syrian teenager surprised me when he asked: But is it okay to write ones own law?! It will not hurt my asylum application, will it?

As for rewarding (not that I suffer from a saviour complex), it was when a refugee in France said: Thank you for listening to my needs and for treating me like a human, or when a street worker from my collaborator Gangway heard a German pedestrian react to one of our street posters as follows: Wait, is this a real law? Since when does the German Government display its laws in public?

Are you aware of the work of Augusto Boal, specifically his Forum Theatre and the Theatre of the Oppressed?

Of course, I know both Boals work and the writings of his forefather, Paulo Freire. Law Shifters does empower participants in a similar fashion.

However, it seems to me that I can detect in Augusto Boals texts and methods a tendency to search for and use the idea of absolute evil. In Direct Approach, on the contrary, I do utilise the terms victim, perpetrator and bystander to trigger chaos, but in general I try to use such morally charged terms very sparingly.

I dont think we can ever offer answers as if we had a standard morality. So we need designs that are more correlative, associative and organic. But maybe I misunderstand Boal and Freire and need to read more of their work.

To what extent is your artistic model transferable; could it, for example, be turned into a school textbook? Would it work as well in such a framework?

Yes, it could work well as a textbook. As a matter of fact, we made one in 2016 in German about Immigration Laws. You can access it here, and please feel free to share it! I also plan to make a publication with Flat Time House in London during our Law Shifters collaboration in AprilMay 2018, so if you know of any funds we can apply for, let me know!

If in the meantime there are educators or indeed anyone who wants to put the framework to use in their own practices, are they welcome to get in touch?

Yes, they are most welcome to get in touch with me. Actually, I would be delighted, because one of the most difficult things about artistic methods or projects is to make them happen without the artist being present.

Finally, do you consider yourself a politically or socially engaged artist? Should artists seek to make the world a better place?

Probably a little bit of both, because my focus in creating scenarios of sociabilities and igniting participants (ethical) self-reflections, could become a political arena if the participants wanted to. My work lies in creating ignition and reflection, but I want the participants themselves to take further action. My intention is not to service needs, but to find and name them.

I think art in itself makes the world a better place by sensitizing, provoking or expanding humanity, but I wouldnt say that artists should be obliged to improve the world.

Instead, it is crucial how art is engaged with (and respected as a very different profession) on a bigger societal scale. The difference to other professions, for example, is that artists do art because they have an inner urge and need to express something that they cant do elsewhere or elsehow. A society should protect the forms or objects that originate in this deep urge.

After its experience with entartete Kunst during the Nazi rule and the WWII, Germany, for example, realized the importance of art as raising humanity to a higher level and opening Kunstvereins all over the country. Especially in times of populism and the growing right-wing, it is important that art does not become normalized or restricted. After all, it always mirrors the health condition of a society.

So now is the time for artists to go out into and engage with societies that, in turn, should embrace the artists abilities to sense tendencies before they become conscious.
Ten combines rumbled through the hundreds of acres Joe Penny had farmed, filling his grieving family with hope and gratitude.

Penny died in a motorcycle accident in August, so neighbors, friends and relatives banded together last week to harvest more than 600 acres of his soybeans near Decatur, Nebraska.

It was so moving, said Jenny Penny, his daughter. It really brought home how much Dad meant to people that they would take their time from their family (farm) operation and come harvest dads crop.

She said it would have taken her family more than a week to harvest those acres on its own. It took the group less than a day.

More than three dozen people turned out to help. Along with the combines, equipment included five auger-wagons and 20 semitrailer trucks.

A local grain elevator company provided free food for all of the helpers.

Penny said her father farmed a total of about 2,000 acres, including those harvested last week. Volunteers will assist with the rest, she said.

She said her family is grateful for the support.

Her father was 65 and died when the motorcycle he was driving struck a deer in South Dakota.

He grew up on a farm on the 600-plus acre parcel that was harvested Friday, and was the third generation in his family to work the land, his daughter said.

His daughter said shell never forget when he and other family members worked 24 hours straight using bulldozers to build up berms to protect the land from Missouri River flooding in 2011.

Her father, she said, was a tough and boisterous man but also had a soft, caring side.

After learning that a neighbors wife had cancer, he wrote the family a two-page letter saying how sorry he was and how hed do anything to help. He also offered to help pay for any expenses they had.

Quentin Connealy, among the farmers who assisted last week, said Penny understood the importance of helping others.

He would have been there for us, he said.
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FILE - In this May 27, 2010, file photo, Kim Cattrall poses for the photographers as she arrives for the British premiere of the film "Sex and the City 2" in London. Cattrall says the demanding production schedule of the franchise during its run as an HBO series played a part in her decision not to have children. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File)
A Walmart store in Hialeah Gardens, Fla., is shown on Thursday, June 1, 2017. Retailers are racing to adopt new technologies, like the self-scanner Walmart has rolled out in 22 Canadian stores, to stay competitive in a challenging industry. But experts say the trend toward automation threatens more jobs in a sector that is already slashing head counts. Walmart expanded technology that allows shoppers to choose to carry a scanner that tallies up their purchases to 20 stores in B.C., Alberta and Ontario on Monday. Shoppers at those stores only need to stop by a self-checkout kiosk or visit a cashier to pay their bill. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Alan Diaz
Quebec Justice Minister Stephanie Vallee provides further details about how the government's controversial Bill 62 will be implemented at the legislature in Quebec City Tuesday, October 24, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot
Yet another North Atlantic right whale carcass, shown in this undated handout image, has been discovered near on Nashawena Island, south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. It is the sixteenth confirmed death of the endangered species this year. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-International Fund for Animal Welfare-USCG-Captain Dave Peros **MANDATORY CREDIT **
ELKO  What happens when technology joins forces with one of Shakespeares romantic comedies?

It sounds like a strange combination, but thanks to digital mapping, projectors and drones, audiences will see a multimedia performance of Much Ado About Nothing Oct. 24-28 in the Great Basin College Theater.

Presented by GBC theater students and actors from the community, the tale of Beatrice, Benedick, Hero, Claudio and Don John is acted live on stage and with filmed segments of off-stage scenes and portions of the GBC campus.

Were integrating the two mediums in a real simple way, said Director John Patrick Rice.

Using video mapping software, technician and actor Andrew Dolberg divided and mapped the set surfaces. Images integrated with sound are then projected onto the set.

Its being used in the theater in many places, Rice said, adding he first saw the technology used in Ashland, Oregon, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

For this performance, the technology will be used sparingly, Rice said.

Its a fun thing for us to experiment with, and the actors have the opportunity to act in front of a camera, Rice said. Theres a difference between the two.

The cast shot scenes on weekends and at night on the GBC campus and Barrick Gold Corp.s drone was used to film aerial views of the campus.

The play also will be livestreamed to centers in the GBC service area, allowing students and others to watch the production as its performed.

The setting and costumes for the play were heavily inspired by Kenneth Branaghs version of the play, Rice said, referring to the 1993 film starring Branagh, Emma Thompson, Denzel Washington and Michael Keaton.

It has the feel of Tuscany, Rice said.

The cast is made up of a combination of GBC students and seasoned community performers.

Amber Adeline Brown, who has performed Shakespeare at the New York Renaissance Fair and at a university in New Jersey, agreed the play is easier for actors, adding that audiences would be able to follow the story easily.

Its in prose and easier to understand for audiences who may not be used to listening to Shakespeare, Brown said.

Ryan Christensen started in theater last year and said his last Shakespeare play was As You Like It last summer.

Playing Borachio, a sleazy character, Christensen said he felt more comfortable taking on another Shakespeare role.

Its kind of fun to play because Im not like that, Christensen said, adding he watched the movie to help with his interpretation of the role.

Andy Mierins said his wife, Gail, who works in many local productions, encouraged him to audition. He plays Antonio, Heros uncle.

His character allows him to be giddy and flirtatious and then switch to angry and indignant.

I dont have a lot of lines but more stage time, Mieriens said. I always wanted to do a Shakespeare, and this is one of my favorites.

Much Ado About Nothing runs Oct. 24-28 with performances starting at 7:30 p.m. and a Saturday matinee at 2 p.m. at the GBC Theater.

Tickets are $10 for general admission and $5 for students and seniors. Advanced tickets may be purchased at the Controllers Office in Berg Hall.
President Donald Trump, right, salutes retired Army Capt. Gary M. Rose, left, before bestowing him with the nation's highest military honor, the Medal of Honor, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 23, 2017. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong walks out from the Court of Final Appeal Hong Kong, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Hong Kong's highest court has freed pro-democracy activists Joshua Wong and Nathan Law on bail pending an appeal of their prison sentences after they were convicted of sparking massive protests in 2014. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
Hospitality staff members pose for a group photo near the large portrait of Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Gate before the closing ceremony of China's 19th Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. The ruling Communist Party on Tuesday formally lifted Xi Jinping's status to China's most powerful ruler in decades, setting the stage for the authoritarian leader to tighten his grip over the country while pursuing an increasingly muscular foreign policy and military expansion. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
FILE - In this Tuesday, June 20, 2017, file photo, Mark Wahlberg attends the U.S. premiere of "Transformers: The Last Knight" at the Civic Opera House on in Chicago. Wahlberg told the Chicago Tribune on Oct. 20, 2017, that he hopes God will forgive him for his turn as a porn star in the 1997 film AuBoogie Nights.Au (Photo by Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP, File)
FILE - In this July 24, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump speaks about healthcare in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington. The top lawyers for 19 states will urge a federal judge Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, to force Trump's administration to pay health care subsidies he abruptly cut off earlier this month. State attorneys general, led by California Democrat Xavier Becerra, argue the monthly payments are required under former President Barack Obama's health care law, and cutting them off will harm consumers. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
Oct. 20 Tera A. Madison, 38, of Spring Creek was arrested as a felon at 743 Devon Drive on two counts of possession of a controlled substance, use or possession of drug paraphernalia, five counts of possession to sell a controlled substance, two counts of trafficking a controlled substance, conspiracy against the controlled substance act, and child abuse or neglect. Bail $395,640



Corey D. Martinez, 28, of Burnaby, British Columbia, was arrested at U.S. 93 at mile marker 132 for overtaking the left side and for driving under the influence above the legal limit. Bail $1,445



James M. Melton, 38, of Carlin was arrested at the Elko County Jail for disturbing the peace. No bail listed



Andrew D. Pham, 35, of Salt Lake City, Utah, was arrested as a felon at the Rainbow Casino for possessing a gun by a prohibited person, carry and concealing a knife without a permit, four counts of an intent to utter a fictional bill/note/check, four counts of forgery, two count of obtaining money/property/labor on a false pretense, and possession of a controlled substance. Bail $1,125,000



Narron Polyngam, 34, of West Jordan, Utah, was arrested as a felon at the Rainbow Casino for two counts of forgery and two counts of intent to utter a fictional bill/note/check. Bail $20,000



Francisco R. Sandoval, 28, of West Wendover was arrested at Horizon Avenue for driving over the posted speed limit, driving with a suspended drivers license, driving under the influence above the legal limit, and failure to wear a seat belt or shoulder harness. Bail $2,265



Joaquin Sandoval Jr., 22, was arrested at Clarkson and Dale for failure to give an appropriate signal when required, driving on a sidewalk, driving without a drivers license, and driving under the influence above the legal limit. Bail $1,565



Joyce M. Strickland, 31, of Elko was arrested under a warrant for an animal at large. Bail $115



Eli Thomas, 21, of Elko was arrested as a felon at the Red Lion Casino for three counts of failure to appear after bail for a misdemeanor crime, two counts of possession of a controlled substance, six counts of possession of drug paraphernalia, and possession of a c/s by a documented prisoner. Bail $18,885



Oct. 21

Melinda M. Bear, 46, of Owhyee was under citizens arrest at Wal-Mart for disturbing the peace and battery. Bail $1,490



Juan J. Espita, 28, of Elko was arrested at 1326 Cherrywood Drive for domestic battery. Bail $3,140



Jennifer L. Hernandez-Garcia, 48, of Salt Lake City, Utah, was arrested as a felon at the Rainbow Casino for assault, disturbing the peace, and unlawful acts of a prisoner with human excretion or fluid. Bail $5,770



Octavio A. Juarez, 22, of Elko was under citizens arrest at 524 Front St. for petit larceny. Bail $1,140



Monica J. Martinez, 28, of Salt Lake City, Utah, was arrested as a felon at the Rainbow Casino for second-degree domestic battery, disturbing the peace, and battery on a protected person. Bail $7,855



Jacob E. Pangborn, 28, of Elko was arrested on a warrant at 12th and Idaho streets for three counts of failure to appear after bail on a misdemeanor crime. Bail $1,000



Greta J. Stock, 56, of Spring Creek was arrested at Palace Parkway and White Oak Drive for driving under the influence above the legal limit. Bail $1,140



Kyle R. Strickland, 32, of Elko was arrested at 365 Bartie St. for first-degree domestic battery. Bail $3,140



Oct. 22

Jess P. Dailey-Reynolds, 19, of Spring Creek was arrested at 568 Spring Valley Court for petit larceny. Bail $1,140



Judith L. Donaldson, 73, of Carlin was arrested at Bush and B streets in Carlin for a tail lamp violation, driving without a drivers license, and resisting a public officer. Bail $1,450



Derek A. Eckroth, 31, of Sun Valley was arrested as a felon at Wal-Mart for first-degree burglary, obtaining money/property/labor on a false pretense, receiving money/property/labor by unlawful use of a credit or debit card, four counts of usage of a debit card/credit card/ identification without consent, and conspiracy to commit a non-felony crime. Bail $82,500



Kurt E. Graville, 26, of Elko was arrested at Cowboys for battery. Bail $1,140



Clark Paice, 55, of Battle Mountain was arrested at Bush and B streets in Carlin for resisting a public officer. Bail $1,140



Amy T. Pompa, 47, of South Jordan, Utah, was arrested as a felon at Red Garter for two counts of failure to appear after bail for a felony crime. Bail $12,000



Mekyel K. Tybo, 23, of Battle Mountain was arrested at Feather Way and Indian View Heights for failure to appear after bail for a misdemeanor crime. Bail $1,140



The charges above do not imply guilt. Under the law, everyone is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
Before prospective jurors ever reached the jury box for a homicide trial on Monday morning, they had been asked several times whether they were Kenosha County residents.

But after the jury was chosen Monday afternoon, one of the selected jurors raised his hand and told the court he actually did not live in Kenosha County.

The man told the court that, while he has a Wisconsin drivers license, he actually lives in Schaumburg, Ill.

With the jurors admission, defense attorneys requested a new jury panel. The judge found that, with the juror not eligible, it was a null jury.

The result means the trial of Latonio Simpson  accused of shooting and killing Willie Owens in Owens front yard on Oct. 24, 2016  has been pushed back to Feb. 26.

Simpsons trial was to begin Tuesday.

Why the man had not spoken up sooner when asked whether he lived in Kenosha County is unclear.

Who knows what was going through his mind. They are pretty direct questions, said Clerk of Courts Rebecca Matoska-Mentink.

I dont ever remember there being a mistrial because of this issue, she said.

Asked many times

The prospective jurors  about 100 people who arrived at the courthouse Monday morning for jury duty  had answered the residency question affirmatively in two different ways on a written questionnaire and then again during juror orientation.

When smaller groups of those prospective jurors were called up to Judge Mary K. Wagners courtroom for jury selection and voir dire, they got the question again.

Simpson, 17, of Chicago, is charged with first-degree homicide for the shooting death of Kenosha resident Owens.

Owens had people at his home to celebrate his 33rd birthday and was in his front yard in the 1900 block of 62nd Street when a group that included Simpson arrived looking for someone who had an earlier dispute with one of Simpsons friends. When Owens intervened, he was shot.

Five people were charged for Owens death. Simpson is one of two people who allegedly fired the shots that killed him. The second man accused of firing shots at Owens, James Butler, 22, killed himself before being taken into custody.

His co-defendants hearings have also been rescheduled as a result of Mondays turn of events, moved to early March.
Officials say all four University of Idaho students who were found dead inside a home near campus on Sunday are considered victims in the case, but police have yet to release the cause of death or other details. Mayor Art Bettge said that the deaths were believed to have occurred hours before the bodies were discovered, prompting police to determine there wasn't an active threat to the community. Police found the students dead in a home near the Moscow, Idaho campus. No one had been taken into custody by Monday evening. The university canceled school on Monday and increased campus security, but some students opted to leave for Thanksgiving break early because of safety concerns.
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ELKO  A vote to approve a marijuana dispensary and casino in the Elko Indian Colony was postponed until Wednesday after presentations and some heated discussions during an Oct. 22 meeting of the Elko Band Council of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone.

David Decker, chairman of the Elko Band Council, announced that the vote is slated for a meeting on Oct. 25 at the Elko Colony Health & Wellness Center  formerly the Indian Colony Gymnasium.

About 100 people attended the nearly three-hour long meeting Sunday night. Participants heard presentations from Cannabis Consulting Group LLC owners Josh and Terra White, and Californian Jon Goldstein, who represents company seeking to bring in a marijuana facility and casino to the tribe.

Goldstein explained that because of confidentiality agreements with ourselves and some of our partners, he did not want the names divulged publicly until there is a formal agreement with the nation.

Josh White, of Elko, explained he has talked with Mayor Chris Johnson and Assemblyman John Ellison about his proposed business. Yerington, Ely and Moapa Valley already have medical marijuana dispensaries, and on Jan. 1, tribes can opt to sell recreational marijuana.

It would be smart of the tribe to participate, Josh White said. Theres a possibility that if they dont that they will be swallowed up and out of the marijuana deal.

It is the tribes decision, Terra White said.

Some audience members questioned Goldstein and White on the legality of bringing the ventures to the tribal land. One woman asked Goldstein if he had a letter from the federal government if he had permission to bring a marijuana business on the reservation.

Others in the audience said the band council was only one part of the Western Te-Moak Tribe and that the whole tribal council needed to be included in the discussions.

The tribe is comprised of Battle Mountain Band Council, South Fork Band Reservation, the Wells Band Colony and the Elko Band Council.

Decker said the Elko Band is federally recognized, but the overseeing government is Te-Moak.

Felix Ike, former Te-Moak Tribal Council chairman, spoke to the audience and first thanked Decker for organizing the meeting. He went on to express his concerns about the casino venture.

Almost 50 percent of all gross or net profits go to the LLC and 5 percent to all of the consultants, and theyre not really transparent in regards to who their consultants or partners are, Ike said. [T]hey want to utilize Nevada state law on the reservation, that means were going to be giving up our sovereignty.

After the meeting, Decker said the experience was very positive.

Im glad the negative people had a chance to say their piece because they needed to hear the facts behind everything, Decker said, even though it was difficult to answer some of their disgruntled questions ... . They would have been problems for us if we didnt follow that avenue with the transparency with the state.

Josh White said he hoped the Elko Band, along with the Elko County Commissioners, and Elko City council saw the economic boost thats coming.

I think they [will] see we are going to capitalize to the tunes of millions, Josh White said.

Because of the economic impact on the area, Josh White said he would rather be recognized for helping the economy rather than the marijuana sales.

I want to be known for job creation and industry creation a lot more than for marijuana, Josh White said. Im really good with the hope of helping people.

I think Wednesday will be a happy day for my company.
A Kilkenny man who was stabbed with a knife says the individual accused of attacking him rained down blows on my head.

Gerard Dowling (40) of The Sycamores, Freshford Road, Kilkenny pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity of the attempted murder of 60-year-old Simon Bourke at Market Cross Shopping Centre in Kilkenny City.

Mr Dowling is on trial at the Central Criminal Court for the incident in Kilkenny City on July 13, 2016.

He also pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to assaulting Mr Bourke causing him harm and to producing a knife during the same incident.

The court heard this week that the prosecution psychiatrist would say that Mr Dowling suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.

The accused told Gardai that on the morning of the assault he went to the Department of Psychiatry (DOP) at St Lukes Hospital because he was feeling paranoid and hearing voices. However when he went to the DOP he said he didnt see anyone.

They seemed busy, he added.

CCTV footage shows Mr Dowling entering St Lukes at 10.08am that morning and leaving at 10.22am. The accused explained to Gardai that after leaving St Lukes he attacked a man using a knife he had bought some weeks earlier. He said he didnt know the man.

Mr Bourke told the jury that he and his partner, Margaret OBrien, were walking towards Market Cross Shopping Centre, when they noticed a man following them and staring at him. As they entered the shopping centre he turned to the man and asked him if he was alright.

Speaking in court, Mr Bourke said: He took the knife straight out and launched straight into it. He lashed a blow in to my shoulder and thereafter he rained down blows on my head.

He said he was struck with great force and it felt like a hammer or a rock was hitting him.

Ms OBrien said: I knew if he stabbed him one more time he would be dead. The trial continues.
Kilkennys City Hall is to become a hub of innovation and enterprise next weekend, November 3-5, as creative minds and entrepreneurs arrive for a special Travel Tech Startup Weekend.

It follows on from the success of the Tech Thursday Kilkenny iniative, also capitalising on the citys strong travel/tourism pedigree.

The weekend will be a 54-hour event, where attendees pitch ideas, form teams and hopefully start companies. The aim is to provide a space for budding entrepreneurs, co-founders, and mentors. Tickets are now available.

Weve about 15 national and international companies who are coming down to mentor, says organiser John Cleere, the man behind Tech Thursday Kilkenny.

And we have loads of people from around Kilkenny to help out in terms of managing, getting it all up and running for the weekend. Everyone is doing it for free  this is really important.

Participants will be given one minute to make a pitch (optional). These will be whittled down to the top ideas, and then teams will form around the ideas to come up with developed companies or projects. Finally, the weekend culminates with demonstrations in front of an audience of judges and potential investors.

Its high-octane  intensive. Forget about sleep, says John.

Therell be loads of coffee and a lot of fun. Its going to start the Friday evening.

This is open to everyone  its completely agnostic. You dont have to have any tech background. If you have an interest in tourism or travel, thats great.

Techstars Startup Weekend has held more than 4,000 events in 150 countries around the world, and its hoping now to make a big impact in Kilkenny. The event has support from Bank of Ireland Innovation, Red Lemonade Creative, VHI, Taxback, the Local Enterprise Office, and Kilkenny County Council.

Organisers say it will be the longest-ever sitting in City Hall, and a great chance to be introduced to the world of startups and entrepreneurship, while getting to meet fellow professionals, and learn new skills. Attendees will focus on opportunities for the tourism and travel industry, while hearing from specialist speakers and receiving mentoring.

Its a real building a culture thing, says John.

Youll have people who have built a very strong network. Youll have a lot of people are coming from outside of Kilkenny as well, so a lot of people will see Kilkenny.

Its really about the connections  people making connections with a lot of big companies out there.

The Startup Weekend runs Friday to Sunday, November 3  5.

Youll get your breakfast, your lunch, your dinner, says John.

We wont be closing the Tholsel until very late.

Tickets for the event are available at swkilkenny.eventbrite.ie or click here.
The decision by Kilkenny County Council to purchase the iconic Brog Maker pub on the Castlecomer Road has been described as 'utterly bizarre' by local councillor Malcolm Noonan.

Members were notified of the purchase the well-known pub and guesthouse on Monday. A spokesman for the council today confirmed the purchase of the site is for the provision of social housing, to meet the needs of approved applicants on the housing list.

"While I would welcome all efforts to address the housing crisis, I am at odds with this decision and how it was communicated to members, despite the fact that speculation around the sale was rife throughout Kilkenny last week," he said.

The Green Party councillor said that while 100% of the purchase price is recoupable from Government under the Rebuilding Ireland programme, he was disappointed that the council did not opt to buy properties in the city centre. He says such properties could have been put back into productive use and give capacity to local shops and business, as well as reducing car dependency.

"Over the past three years, I have pointed out many houses in the city centre that could be purchased for a modest outlay, restored as heritage buildings and occupied by families who would only have to walk or cycle to work, school and shops," said Cllr Noonan.

"I am not sure what the purchase of the Brog Maker will do and I await proposals from our housing section," he said.

"Certainly, we have a consistent challenge with meeting the needs of single parents and single men, but is this the right approach? Also what will happen the pub license that came with the sale? How much will it cost to retrofit and insulate the building?

"These questions remain unanswered and it is most disingenuous that the elected members only found out at our council meeting that we had purchased the premises."
In a few months, youll likely be inundated with posts, articles and videos about how you can make 2018 the best year yet. But why wait until after Jan. 1 to get your money in order for the new year?

Get the Most Out of Your FSA

Make sure you book all your medical appointments before the end of the year, before your deductible resets in January (as many, but not all, do). This will also give you a chance to spend any Flexible Spending Account (FSA) money you haven't used yet.

 Pamela Capalad, Founder & Financial Planner at Brunch & Budget (opens in new tab)

Subscribe to Kiplingers Personal Finance Be a smarter, better informed investor. Save up to 74% Sign up for Kiplingers Free E-Newsletters Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplingers expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more - straight to your e-mail. Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplingers expert advice - straight to your e-mail. Sign up

Review Your Monthly Expenses (and Make Adjustments Now)

Thinking about next years goals (opens in new tab) is always an exciting process. But before you get so caught up in the future, know that the end of the year is a crucial time to assess if you're paying way too much on your monthly expenses.

Reviewing your insurance policies (life, auto, homeowner's), household bills and other expenses can often reveal areas where you can save big in the coming year.

 Jeff Rose, CFP of Alliance Wealth Management, LLC (opens in new tab)

Look into Tax-Loss Harvesting

Reduce your taxes on investment gains. While you shouldnt undercut your investment plan (opens in new tab) or goals to reduce taxes, tax-loss harvesting is when you offset the taxable capital gains that youve had throughout the year on your investments by selling investments that have lost value.

The realized capital losses help to reduce the taxes owed on the gains. This has to be done by Dec. 31.

 Mary Beth Storjohann, CEO & Founder of Workable Wealth (opens in new tab)

Build a Better Budget

It doesn't matter if youre a thousandaire or a millionaire: Everyone needs a budget (opens in new tab). If youre not sure where your money is going, the solution is the b-word. Budget! Commit the last few months of the year on figuring out the best budget or cash-flow program for you and your family so you can start 2018 on the right financial track. The best budgeting tool I've found is YNAB.com (opens in new tab).

 Rianka R. Dorsainvil, CFP, Founder and President of Your Greatest Contribution, LLC (opens in new tab)

These experts raise important points and critical money moves to make that can help you grow wealth  and stay wealthy.

But we don't just earn, save and invest our money. Most of us want to help others, and that leads us to mindfully give some of our wealth to causes that matter to us, too.

The end of the year is a great time to consider making charitable contributions to reduce your tax obligation and give back to society. Charitable giving is also a great educational tool and a fun way to get the whole family involved.

Heres how: Ask your children to research organizations on a site like Charity Navigator (opens in new tab) and propose a charity to donate to this year.

Not only are you helping to develop good money habits in your kids (opens in new tab) from an early age, but you're including them in important conversations that can bring your family closer together.

To see the original version of this article, click HERE (opens in new tab).
(Kitco News) - Australia is very close to introducing regulations for the cryptocurrency market, with the countrys Parliament scheduled to vote on a new anti-money laundering bill this week.

The news comes as bitcoin hit a new all-time high over the weekend, breaching the $6,100 level on Saturday. The cryptocurrencys surge is unprecedented, as just a year ago it was trading at $630.

But, many analysts believe that bitcoin is doomed to fail, largely due to threats posed by possible government regulations.

In a recent report, Goldman Sachs said that bitcoin is not to be trusted because its future is unknown due to significant regulatory risks.

For example, China introduced a ban on initial coin offerings (ICOs) and shut down some cryptocurrency exchanges last month. And in October, Russian President Vladimir Putin also spoke in support of regulating cryptocurrencies.

Now Australia is looking close to introducing its own new laws, which, if passed, will grant additional authority to the national financial intelligence regulator AUSTRAC to oversee digital currency exchanges.

According to the proposed bill, it will be illegal for any unregistered person to offer digital currency exchange-related services.

Businesses that trade digital currencies for money, and vice versa, will be required to enroll and register with AUSTRAC, Justice Minister Michael Keenan said in August when describing the new laws.

All registered persons will also be required to report threshold transactions and suspicious matters to AUSTRAC, and keep appropriate records.

Australia has expressed concern over digital currencies in the past.

Virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, are increasingly being used by serious and organized crime groups, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) said in a report released in August.

Some experts argue that bitcoin will collapse simply because it is unregulated. In a latest wave of comments about the cryptocurrency, Saudi billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal told CNBC that bitcoin will implode one day.

It just doesn't make sense. This thing is not regulated, it's not under control, it's not under the supervision, Alwaleed said on Monday.

Others believe that regulation might actually help bitcoin survive. CEO of a major Chinese bitcoin exchange, BTCC, said in July that cryptocurrencies will need to face regulations in order to survive.

I think regulation is much needed for this new asset class because otherwise, it'll run amok from society, Bobby Lee told CNBC.
CHICAGO, Oct 23 (Reuters) - The Chicago Board of Education will decide on Wednesday whether to issue up to $1.1 billion of bonds in the wake of a new Illinois school funding formula that provides more money to the cash-strapped district, a school spokesman said on Monday.

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) would refund about $630 million of existing bonds for savings and sell $355 million or more of new bonds next month to fund capital projects.

"The historic state education funding agreement put CPS on stronger financial footing and created an opportunity to significantly reduce borrowing costs so that more district resources can reach classrooms," Chicago Public Schools spokesman Michael Passman said in a statement.

Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner signed into law in August a new method for distributing $6.7 billion in state aid to 852 school districts. Under the law, CPS received a $450 million funding boost from increased aid and pension contributions from the state and a local property tax increase.

Escalating pension payments have led to drained reserves, junk credit ratings, and debt dependency for CPS, the nation's third-largest public school system.

The school board will also take up a revision of the $5.75 billion fiscal 2018 budget it approved in August in order to incorporate the increased state funding. (Reporting by Karen Pierog; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
* Tangshan orders steeper output cuts in smog fight

* Production at CISA member mills down in early October

By Manolo Serapio Jr

MANILA, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Shanghai steel futures rose for a third straight session on Tuesday after China's top steelmaking city of Tangshan ordered steeper production curbs at industrial plants to limit pollution.

Tangshan already required its steel mills, cement and other plants to cut output from Oct. 12, a month earlier than schedule. The production cuts will last until March 2018. But the city told more industrial plants to make temporary, steeper cuts in production over the next three days, when smog is expected to worsen, the China Securities Journal reported on Monday. The most-active rebar contract for January delivery on the Shanghai Futures Exchange was up 1.4 percent at 3,746 yuan ($565) a tonne by 0209 GMT.

The price of rebar, a construction steel product, has climbed nearly 5 percent since Oct. 12 when Tangshan first implemented the output restrictions.

China's crude steel output fell to a seven-month low in September and analysts have estimated that production may drop by up to 40 million tonnes over the winter period due to the government-imposed cuts. Production at member mills of the China Iron and Steel Association (CISA) stood at 1.84 million tonnes in early October, down 1.9 percent from the previous 10 days, Morgan Stanley analysts said, citing CISA data.

The utilisation rate at steel mills' blast furnaces across China also dipped from the prior week to 81.8 percent as of Oct. 20, they said.

"In our view, the drop in (blast furnace) utilisation rate, both in Tangshan and nationwide, was likely the result of environmentally-related production cuts...," they said in a note.

Iron ore on the Dalian Commodity Exchange was up 0.2 percent at 460 yuan per tonne.

Iron ore for delivery to China's Qingdao port slipped 0.7 percent to $62 a tonne on Monday, according to Metal Bulletin.

($1 = 6.6336 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Manolo Serapio Jr.; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
A world without cash seems wonderful at first glance since it is convenient and fast. You dont need to withdraw dollars or euros ahead of time. You dont have to worry about money being lost or stolen. Paying for things with your phone is a breeze.

Many countries around the world are steadily shifting away from cash. Canada, the United Kingdom and Sweden have already largely embraced a cashless society. The U.S. is also steadily making the move, with people holding smaller amounts of cash.

However, the recent string of natural disasters and security breaches at major financial entities exposes a huge flaw in this trend: When the power goes out, telephone lines shut down or account information is stolen, it is impossible to use ATMs, credit or debit cards or mobile payments  no matter how rich you are.

In other words, giving up cash increases the chance of the kind of economic catastrophe that results when people can no longer easily trade for the goods they need and want. The solution to this national security issue is simple: bring back the currently maligned large denomination bills like the $500, which was discontinued in 1969.

Countries going cashless

Recently, some prominent economists have suggested countries should move to a cashless society, with actions like eliminating the $100 bill.

Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard professor who was also chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that going cashless reduces crime by ensuring tax cheats, drug lords, gangs and terrorists cannot easily fund their activities.

If only small bills are allowed, then people making illegal payments need briefcases stacked with huge numbers of small denomination bills like $5 and $10s. This is much more difficult than discreetly using a small envelope filled with a few very high value notes.

Some countries have eliminated high value notes to reduce corruption. India in 2016 eliminated the 500-rupee (about $7.69) and 1,000-rupee notes for this reason before bringing in new denominations.

Larry Summers, an economist who was also president of Harvard and a Treasury secretary, also argued for eliminating both the $100 bill and 500 note (about $592) from circulation. A few months after his recommendation, the European Central Bank decided to stop issuing the large bills by the end of 2018 in an attempt to reduce corruption and terrorism. The Wall Street Journal reports, however, that there is no move yet to kill off Ben Franklin and his $100 note.

Risks of a cashless society

While eliminating high value notes does make illegal transactions harder, it also introduces new risks. A cashless society that solely uses credit cards, debit cards and electronic transfers is dependent on a complex network to replace physical money. This network requires three things to work all the time.

First, there always has to be electricity to power the computers and network storage. Second, communication between all parts of the network needs to be available. Finally, the network has to be secure, so only authorized money transactions occur.

All three of these fundamental requirements for a cashless society have broken down recently in dramatic fashion.

Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico in September. Many weeks later, less than 20 percent of the electricity has been restored, and no one really knows when the rest of the island will regain power. Because the electricity has been cut off to almost all cities and towns, the entire island has reverted to a economy based on cash, which is in very short supply. Credit and debit cards cant be used because there is no way to process transactions and no power to run credit card terminals and readers.

Wildfires are currently ravaging Northern California. One of the problems caused by the fires is that the flames have destroyed numerous cell towers. When the phone network goes down, it is impossible both to reach loved ones and for credit and debit card readers to connect to the network. Without a connection, those without cash cant buy fuel to flee, pay hotels for temporary shelter or purchase food.

Finally, weve recently learned how unsecure the network that processes transactions and protects our financial data has become. As most people do not possess piles of coins or bills anymore, our money consists of entries in bank and brokerage databases. If those entries change or disappear, peoples wealth vanishes, too.

The Pentagon is trying to ensure that cyberattacks cannot disrupt the financial system. Nevertheless, the capabilities of rogue actors, like North Korea, are increasing. It has even been implicated in stealing millions from a Taiwanese bank.

The recent breach of Equifaxs database and hacks at numerous other financial institutions show security is a major problem.

These events show just how precarious the three pillars of a cashless society are and how quickly they can falter.

A solution

When it works, a cashless society is wonderful. I enjoy not having to carry or worry about cash when I travel. The networks, when they work, are amazing. I have checked my bank balance on the edge of a desert in Botswana using an ATM and paid my taxes from a cell phone in Tokyo.

However, a cashless society means a countrys economy is vulnerable to anything that causes a long-term disruption in power, communications or security. And those threats are rising. The number of natural disasters striking the U.S. is increasing, and wars are no longer being fought using just conventional weapons. Today the computers that control a country are playing a much bigger role.

Shifting to a cashless economy makes a country more vulnerable to both disasters and wars. National defense is not only about boots, guns and bullets. It is about keeping the economy running at all times. Cash can ensure the economy wont collapse in an emergency, since people with cash are still able to buy and sell.

The solution is simple. Governments need to bring back higher value notes like $500 bills. There clearly are negatives to bringing back large bills, which make it easier for crime and corruption to flourish. I believe, however, that the positives outweigh the negatives, particularly the usefulness of cash during disasters.

Whether governments bring back larger bills or not, store some cash at home in case of emergency. When disaster is about to strike and it is time to flee, having cash in your wallet or purse can make the difference. Cash gives you purchasing power when everything else fails.
Steve Holland, Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will urge President Xi Jinping to make good on his commitments to pressure North Korea when he visits China next month, a senior White House official said on Monday, stepping up a strategy to have Beijing help rein in Pyongyang.

Isolating North Korea further over its nuclear and ballistic missile tests is a key goal for Trump on what will be his longest foreign trip to date.

Trump will call on Xi to fully implement U.N. Security Council resolutions against Pyongyang and take other steps to pressure North Korea.

China, North Koreas sole major ally, accounts for more than 90 percent of trade with the isolated country.

China has said it will strictly enforce U.N. Security Council sanctions banning imports of coal, textiles and seafood, while cutting off oil shipments to the North.

But a senior White House official who briefed reporters ahead of Trumps trip said China needs to do more to comply with two U.N. Security Council resolutions that were approved unanimously, including with Chinas support.

We would like to see China follow through on those commitments. We would like to see China do things bilaterally as well that might even go beyond things that are mandated by those U.N. Security Council resolutions, the official said.

Though China has been angered by North Koreas repeated nuclear and missile tests and demanded they stop, Beijing also sees the United States and South Korea sharing responsibility for rising tensions because of military drills they carry out in the region.

Chinas special envoy for the North Korea nuclear issue, Kong Xuanyou, met his U.S. counterpart, Joseph Yun, in Beijing on Monday, Chinas Foreign Ministry said, where they had a deep exchange of views on the Korean peninsula issue. The ministry did not elaborate.

Trump, who has threatened to totally destroy North Korea, has frequently asked China to help rein in North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

But this strategy has so far failed to stop Pyongyang conducting nuclear bomb tests at an underground facility and firing ballistic missile tests into the Pacific Ocean over Japan.

CRITICAL THREAT

The threat from North Korea has grown to a critical and imminent level and the United States, Japan and South Korea must address the matter, Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera told his U.S. and South Korean counterparts in talks on Monday.

Onoderas remarks underscored the deep concern in Tokyo about North Korean weapons tests as Pyongyang seeks to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States.

The White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump is looking for a peaceful resolution of the North Korea standoff.

Asked by reporters whether an offer by former President Jimmy Carter to serve as a U.S. envoy to North Korea would be accepted, the official said: Theres nothing planned.

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Monday he outlined for Trump his countrys efforts to pressure North Korea over its nuclear program but also advised the U.S. leader to use talks to help resolve the conflict.

There is no quick and easy solution. Pressure is necessary but so is dialogue. The U.S. will need to work with others, including China, South Korea and Japan and Russia to resolve the issue, he said.

With Xi consolidating power in the wake of a Communist Party Congress in Beijing, Trump believes the Chinese president will have a greater authority to take steps against North Korea, senior administration officials said last week.

Trumps Nov. 3-14 trip will include visits to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Trump will also be tough on trade during talks with Xi as he seeks to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China, the White House official said.

We have huge barriers that Americans companies have to surmount to gain access to the Chinese market. The president is intent on rectifying that situation, the official said.

Despite Trumps fierce criticism of Chinas trade practices during the presidential campaign, he has mostly held off on any major trade action while his administration works with Beijing on North Korea.

China has insisted it is doing all it can, and some Chinese diplomats say the Trump administration has overestimated how much influence Beijing has over its defiant neighbor.

Even as China has shown signs of tightening enforcement of sanctions on North Korea, it has stopped short of agreeing to U.S. demands for a fuel embargo and has urged the United States to negotiate with Pyongyang.

Additional reporting by Makini Brice, and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Alistair Bell and Paul Tait
SYDNEY, Oct 24 (Reuters) - A U.S. law firm has filed a class action suit against mining giant Rio Tinto , which is facing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fraud charges stemming from an ill-fated investment in Mozambique coal mining.

Seattle-based Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP said in a statement released in Australia on Tuesday it filed the suit on behalf of purchasers of Rio Tinto American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) between Oct. 23, 2012 and Feb. 15, 2013 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Hagens Berman did not specify the purchasers, nor disclose financial details of the suit. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rio Tinto declined to comment on the filing, the first publicly announced class action suit involving the coal asset.

The SEC last week charged Rio Tinto and two of its former top executives with fraud, saying they inflated the value of Mozambique coal assets in Mozambique acquired for $3.7 billion and concealed critical information while tapping the market for billions of dollars. Rio Tinto and the two former executives have denied the charges.

(Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
* Losses of global tree cover jump in 2016 - GFW network

* Wildfires in Brazil, Indonesia drive up losses

* Some other data show forest losses slow in recent years

(Adds Brazil environmental agency Ibama comment)

By Alister Doyle

OSLO, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Forest fires in Brazil and Indonesia contributed to a record loss in global tree cover in 2016, equivalent to the size of New Zealand, that could accelerate deforestation blamed for climate change, an independent forest monitoring network said on Monday.

Man-made global warming increased the risks of wildfires by adding to extreme heat and droughts in some regions, according to Global Forest Watch (GFW). This year, California and Portugal have been among places suffering deadly blazes. The combination of forest fires with land use change and climate change could speed destruction in areas like the Amazon and contribute to emissions of carbon dioxide, one of the gases that contribute to global warming, the report said.

Worldwide, global tree cover losses rose 51 percent in 2016 from the previous year to 297,000 square kilometers (114,672 square miles), according to data from the University of Maryland compiled by Global Forest Watch (GFW).

That was a record high for GFW records stretching back to 2000, and contrasted with some other satellite measurements that indicated a slowdown in the pace of forest clearances to make way for farms, cities and roads.

"We saw quite a dramatic spike in 2016," said Mikaela Weisse, research analyst at the U.S. think-tank World Resources Institute which oversees GFW. "That seems to be related to forest fires in countries including Brazil, Indonesia and Portugal."

GFW measures loss of tree cover and does not estimate net changes in forests to take account of re-growth and new plantings.

By contrast, the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, using different methods, says the net global rate of deforestation has slowed by more than 50 percent in the last 25 years.

GFW said Brazil's Amazon region lost 37,000 square kilometers of tree cover in calendar 2016, almost three times more than in 2015.

That contrasts with official Brazilian data showing that deforestation in the Amazon fell 16 percent in August 2016 to July 2017 compared with the same period a year earlier. Brazil said it was the first decline in three years. Brazil's environmental agency Ibama said 2016 was the ninth-worst year for forest fires since monitoring began in 1998.

"The dry climate and low humidity made man-made fires gain larger dimension," Ibama said in an email.

Weisse said GFW data often detected smaller-scale losses in tree cover, including in layers beneath the forest canopy, while the Brazilian data was better at recording clearances of large blocks of forest.

GFW said Indonesia lost almost 1 million hectares of tree cover in 2016, probably the delayed result of a severe fire season in 2015.

(Additional reporting by Fergus Jensen in Jakarta and Jake Spring in Brasilia; Editing by John Stonestreet and Andrew Hay)
JOHANNESBURG, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The chief executive of ArcelorMittal's South African unit will step down in January next year, the company said on Tuesday. Arcelor Mittal South Africa , the largest steelmaker in Africa's most industrialised economy, has approved Chief Executive Wim de Klerk's request to retire after less than two years at the helm, the company said in a statement.

(Reporting by TJ Strydom; Editing by Tiisetso Motsoeneng)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
MADRID, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The political crisis in Catalonia cannot by solved simply by calling regional elections, the Spanish Justice Minister said during a radio interview on Tuesday.

"Everything is not fixed just by calling an election," Rafael Catala said.

Catala said if the regional leader of Catalonia Carles Puigdemont appeared before the Spanish upper house of parliament, the Senate, it would be a positive step in finding a solution to the conflict between the restive region and Madrid.

(Reporting by Paul Day; Editing by Jesus Aguado)
(Kitco News) - Bitcoin has cooled off after nearing in on a record high of more than $6,000 this week, but many investors are hopeful that if China lifts its ban on the cryptocurrency, it could add fuel to its run-up.

Talk in the bitcoin community is that the ban is temporary, and was purely a move to appease government officials during the Communist Party Convention, which wraps this week.

But Gordon Chang, author of Nuclear Showdown, is not so certain liberalization is in the currencys future.

There has been optimism that after the Communist Partys 19th National Congress there is going to be liberalization in many areas of the economy -- that is possible. But cryptocurrencies are something of a special case, Chang said on Monday.

In September, China banned mainland residents from trading in cryptocurrencies on exchanges.

The Chinese have been concerned that citizens could use bitcoin to expatriate money, in effect taking the capital controls and making a mockery of them, Chang noted.

Bitcoin has gained over 500 percent this year, more than any other tradable asset class and at one point last Friday, hit a market cap of $100 billion.

The author said that Chinas central bank, the Peoples Bank of China (PBOC), has plans to develop its own sovereign digital currency, a quasi-replacement for bitcoin and other digital currencies.

This is going to be fascinating to watch because the PBOC is going to want to have control, but the very reason these currencies are so popular is because they give control to people and take it away from the government, Chang explained.

The ban has not stopped Chinese investors from finding ways around it however; traders are now using peer-to-peer messaging apps like WeChat to buy and sell.

Thats why Chang feels that bitcoin will eventually beat out the system.

There has been a run-up in bitcoin because there is a sense that bitcoin will win and the Chinese central bank is going to lose. If you look well down the road, that will be the result, he said.

We will see an attempt to control bitcoin and attempts to have a digital sovereign currency, but as in most things, the markets win.
By Sandrine Bradley

LONDON, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Oman Telecommunication Co (Omantel) has mandated Citibank and Credit Suisse to arrange a bridge loan to back its potential acquisition of a 12% stake in Kuwaiti telecoms group Zain, bankers said on Tuesday.

Omantel signed a non-binding letter of intent with Kuwait-based Al-Khair an investment vehicle of Kuwait's Al-Kharafi merchant family to purchase its 12% holding in Kuwaiti Telecoms company Zain on October 8. The stake is worth US$946m based on Zain's current market capitalisation.

Omantel said it would fund the acquisition through a bridge loan on October 16, which bankers say could be around US$1bn. Al-Kahir is still evaluating Omantel's offer.

This follows Omantel's purchase of a 9.8% stake in Zain in August for US$846m.

The new deal would give Omantel a stake of roughly 22% in Zain, making it the second largest shareholder, behind the Kuwait Investment Authority sovereign wealth fund, which has more than 24%.

Credit Suisse and Citibank declined to comment. Omantel was not immediately available for comment.

In June sovereign wealth fund Oman Investment acquired a 51%stake in Omantel backed by a US$600m loan.

Intesa Sanpaolo unit Banca IMI (London), Citigroup, Kuwait Finance House and National Bank of Abu Dhabi were the mandated lead arrangers and bookrunners on the loan, which attracted 21 other lenders - mostly Taiwanese banks - in general syndication. The deal matures in April 2020 and pays an interest margin of 230bp over Libor.

Omantel, which is listed on the Muscat Stock Exchange, provides fixed and mobile telecom services in the country.

(Editing by Tessa Walsh)
DUBAI, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Major stock markets in the Gulf look set to recover from Monday's losses on positive global trend, while Saudi Arabia may react to news from a major investment conference in Riyadh.

Asian shares held within striking distance of recent decade highs on Tuesday and Japan's Nikkei extended its 16-day winning streak to a 21-year peak, while China's blue-chip CSI300 index jumped to the highest in more than two years. Brent crude added 3 cents to $57.40, while U.S. crude oil rose 5 cents to $51.95 a barrel. Meanwhile, Saudi shares could react to news from a major investment conference in the kingdom, where four thousand people registered to attend and the scheduled speakers control assets worth $22 trillion, officials said.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 32-year-old architect of reforms designed to end Saudi Arabia's reliance on oil exports, will make a rare public address to hundreds of bankers, businessmen and government officials from around the world at the three-day conference starting on Tuesday.

On Monday, the Saudi index fell 1.3 percent to 6,886 as banking and insurance stocks lost ground, with shares of NCB falling 4.8 percent after its third-quarter net profit came in around 5 percent below analysts' estimates.

In Dubai, the main index may recover after real estate developer Emaar lost 2.1 percent on Monday and GFH Financial slipped 3.5 percent, in heavy trade.

In Qatar, the stock market may stay weak as there is little chance of a swift breakthrough to resolve a blockade imposed on the Gulf state by Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has been mediating in the crisis, left the region on Monday with no sign of progress.

On Monday, petrochemicals, metals and fertiliser producer Industries Qatar posted a 1.6 percent drop in third-quarter net profit, according to Reuters calculations, in line with forecasts. (Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath)
* Comes amid reports of Cathay pilots mulling moves

* Longreach said was advised to cancel

* Cathay says has no knowledge of development

HONG KONG, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Recruiter Longreach Aviation has been forced to cancel a Hong Kong roadshow that scores of Cathay Pacific pilots had planned to attend, and is seeking legal advice how to get around its "roadblocks", according to two emails seen by Reuters.

The move comes amid media reports, citing recuitment agencies, that about 200 pilots of Hong Kong's dominant airline are weighing up job options with mainland Chinese carriers as it embarks on a major cost-cutting drive that has hit benefits.

"At the 11th hour, roadblocks were put in our way and although we have been advised that we are compliant with HK law, we have also been advised it is better to cancel, rather than proceed, until the issues have been resolved," Longreach China told a Cathay pilot in one of the emails.

"We have received legal advice today and unfortunately we are unable to proceed with the events as planned," Longreach China said in another email. "We have had no option other than to cancel."

It was not clear what issues the legal advice was related to, or in what way the roadshow may have been illegal.

The emails to Cathay Pacific pilots could not immediately be verified and Longreach China did not respond to a request for comment. Cathay said it had "no knowledge of such development".

Cathay has cut 600 jobs as part of a review aimed at cutting HK$4 billion ($512 million) in costs over three years, its biggest headcount reduction in almost two decades, as it seeks to return to profitability in an industry battered by falling ticket prices. "It's not only mainland carriers," said a senior Cathay captain who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the topic.

"Pilots within Cathay are looking right across the spectrum. I know junior pilots have had job offers with Qantas and Air New Zealand and will be returning to those countries in the coming months."

In recent years, Cathay has seen its market share on international routes eroded by aggressively expanding mainland Chinese and Gulf airlines. This has hurt its competitiveness, coupled with poor fuel hedges and its lack of a budget arm.

In comparison, to ease an acute shortage of pilots, mainland Chinese carriers have been offering lucrative salaries.

China's flying schools produce just over 1,000 new pilots each year, far fewer than the 110,000 pilots U.S. planemaker Boeing predicts the country will need by 2035.

For example, a position advertised on Longreach's website for a Boeing-737 captain at Air Changan offers a yearly income of up to $294,000. A comparison for Cathay was not available.

(Reporting by Anne Marie Roantree; Additional reporting by Brenda Goh in SHANGHAI; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
(Kitco News) - Gold and silver prices are modestly lower in early U.S. trading Tuesday. A quieter world geopolitical scene is making for little trader/investor risk aversion in the marketplace at present, and thats bearish for the safe-haven gold and silver markets. December Comex gold was last down $2.80 an ounce at $1,278.10. December Comex silver was last down $0.055 at $17.02 an ounce.

World stock markets that have been in bull runs for quite some time are also keeping money flows away from hard assets like the gold and silver markets. However, when the air starts to come out of the stock market bullish balloon (and it will at some point) money flows out of paper assets and into hard assets will significantly benefit the precious metals market bulls.

In overnight news, the Euro zone Markit purchasing managers survey (PMI) came in at 55.9 in October versus 56.7 in September. A reading above 50.0 signals growth in the sector. The October decline from September was more than expected and this report falls into the camp of the European Central Bank doves, who want to see the ECB hold off on tightening its monetary policy.

The U.S. dollar is slightly lower in early U.S. trading Tuesday. The other key outside market finds Nymex crude oil futures prices firmer and trading above $52.00 a barrel. Crude oil bulls have the slight overall near-term technical advantage.

This week the European Central Bank holds its regular monetary policy meeting on Thursday. Many expect the ECB to announce more details on the winding down of its bond-buying program.

U.S. economic data due for release Tuesday includes the weekly Goldman Sachs and Johnson Redbook retail sales reports, the U.S. flash services PMI, the U.S. flash manufacturing PMI, and the Richmond Fed business activity survey.

Technically, December gold futures bulls and bears are on a level overall near-term technical playing field but the bears have some momentum. Bulls next upside technical objective is pushing and closing prices above chart resistance at $1,300.00. Bears' next near-term downside price breakout objective is closing prices below solid technical support at the October low of $1,262.80. First support is seen at Mondays low of 1,273.60 and then at $1,262.80. First resistance is seen at todays high of 1,285.30 and then at $1,292.90. Wyckoffs Market Rating: 5.0

December silver bulls have slight the overall near-term technical advantage. The next upside price breakout objective is closing futures prices above solid technical resistance at $17.50 an ounce. The next downside price breakout objective for the bears is closing prices below solid support at the October low of $16.345. First resistance is seen at todays high of $17.17 and then at $17.315. Next support is seen at Mondays low of $17.87 and then at $16.765. Wyckoff's Market Rating: 5.5.
Ucoms mobile customers will benefit from the best internet roaming rate of 8 AMD/MB when travelling to Georgia, Egypt or the UAE

Ameriabank Launches Google Pay and Google Wallet Support for Card Users in Armenia

Karen Vardanyan donated 112 million drams for the medical equipment for National Center for Infectious Diseases.

UCOM HAS INTRODUCED FUTURE NETWORK WI-FI 6E ROUTERS

Statement by the Spokesperson on the conflict resolution and reconciliation efforts

Foreign Minister of Armenia to participate in the Fifth Paris Peace Forum

Armenia: EU and Armenia Hold annual Dialogue on Human Rights

Todays Shushi, Occupied and Cleared of Armenians, is a Real Example of Turkish-Azerbaijani Policy of Ethnic Cleansing of Artsakh

Ookla, the the global leader in internet testing and analysis has awarded Ucom

Sweden will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union

Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector

STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARTSAKH

SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS

Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders

PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces

There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan

Google Ad

Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia

Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair

Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan

I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS

There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur

EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol  Armenia and Azerbaijan  to do so without delay

An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully

The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces
MOSCOW, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Russian Agriculture Bank, or Rosselkholzbank, may issue perpetual bonds to boost its capital next year, the bank's deputy chief executive Kirill Levin told Reuters.

"We will decide on the need, the programmes registered are for the future," he said. Levin added that there is no urgent need for the capital boost now.

On Monday, Russian central bank said it has registered a total of 10 planned perpetual bond issues by the state-owned Rosselkhozbank totally worth $450 million and separately 300 million euros ($353 million). ($1 = 0.8504 euros)

(Reporting by Oksana Kobzeva; writing by Katya Golubkova, editing by David Evans)
HANOI, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchange rates in the official and unofficial markets, indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi and interbank offered rates at 0421 GMT.

October 24 USD/VND mid-point 22,469 USD/VND interbank 22,721/22,722 USD/VND unofficial 22,760/22,780 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 36.35/36.57

Interbank offered rates Overnight 0.4-1.0

1 week 0.7-1.1

1 month 1.4-1.9

3 months 3.2-3.6

NOTES: As of Jan. 4, 2016, the State Bank of Vietnam has begun setting the mid-point rate on daily basis, allowing dollar/dong transactions to move in a band of +/- 3 percent around the mid point. The dong's exchange rate against other currencies is not restricted by a band. Interbank offered rates are the latest indicative bid/ask prices, quoted from market sources.

One tael is equivalent to 37.5 grams or 1.21 troy ounces. SJC gold prices are quoted by state-owned Saigon Jewelry Co.

For more interbank rate fixings released at 0400 GMT, click on .

For Vietnam market overview click on: Vietnam's bonds market auctions: Bonds auction results: (Compiled by Hanoi Newsroom; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
The following Spanish stocks may be affected by newspaper reports and other factors on Tuesday. Reuters has not verified the newspaper reports, and cannot vouch for their accuracy:

CAIXABANK Spain's Caixabank posted on Tuesday a 53.4 percent rise in nine-month net profit to 1.49 billion euros ($1.75 billion), ahead of analysts' forecasts and thanks to the incorporation of Portugal's BPI .

LIBERBANK Liberbank said on Tuesday it had booked a 9-month net loss 270 million euros versus profit 100 million euros year ago. FAES FARMA Faes Farma said 9-month revenue was 200.3 million euros versus 171.4 million euros year ago. For today's European market outlook double click on .

For real-time moves on the Spanish blue-chip index IBEX please double click on For IBEX constituent stocks highlight .IBEX in the command box and press the F3 button on your keyboard

For latest news on Spanish stock moves double click For Spanish language market report double click on For latest Eurostocks report please double click on
ZURICH, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The Swiss blue-chip SMI was seen opening 0.1 percent easier at 9,237 points on Tuesday, according to premarket indications by bank Julius Baer .

Here are some of the main factors that may affect Swiss stocks.

NOVARTIS Third-quarter core net income rose 4 percent at constant currencies, beating analyst expectations, as the Swiss drugmaker said it made "significant progress" in preparing its Alcon eyecare unit for a possible spinoff by the first half of 2019. Shares indicated 0.4 percent higher

For more news see LOGITECH Chief Executive Bracken Darrell said he felt confident about the company's third quarter - traditionally its biggest of the year - after the maker of peripherals for gaming consoles and PCs beat forecasts in its latest quarter. Q2 non-GAAP earnings per share $0.40, sees FY 2018 sales up 10 to 12 percent SYNGENTA Agricultural chemicals maker Nufarm Ltd said it would buy a range of European crop protection product lines for $490 million to strengthen its position in Europe where it generates its highest crop protection margins. Nufarm said it would buy the product portfolio, which includes more than 50 crop protection formulations, from Adama Agricultural Solutions Ltd ADAM.N and Syngenta. COMPANY STATEMENTS * Schindler 9-month orders rise 5.3 pct, EBIT up 10.1 pct * Idorsia LTD US GAAP operating loss in Q3 2017: CHF 68 million / ytd 2017: CHF 79 million * Huber+Suhner AG says 9-month order intake up 10 percent to 623.6 million Swiss francs * Datacolor AG increased FY net sales by 5% to $72.8 million; FY EBIT increased to $6.4 million

* AMS reported Q3 group revenue rose 79 percent to 262.6 million euros ($308.87 million). * Gurit reported net sales of 268.8 million francs for the first nine months of 2017. * Cassiopea SPA says david Hale resigns from board of directors * Ypsomed Holding AG WILL SUPPLY Bigfoot Biomedical with a modified, patented version of Orbit infusion set ECONOMY (Reporting by Zurich newsroom)

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BUDAPEST, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The Hungarian Government Debt Management Agency (AKK) sold 25 billion forints ($95.27 million) worth of three-month Treasury bills on Tuesday, as planned, it said. Series: D180131 Issue status: Auction data: AUCTION DATE 24/10/2017 17/10/2017 TOTAL BIDS (bln HUF) 29.40 38.33 ALLOTTED (bln HUF) 25.00 20.00 AVERAGE YIELD (pct) -0.01 -0.05

($1 = 262.4200 forints)

(Reporting by Sandor Peto)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
ISTANBUL, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The Turkish Treasury sold a net 614.8 million lira ($165 million) in a tap of its two-year benchmark bond at an average compound yield of 12.48 percent on Tuesday, central bank data showed. It also sold a net 2,977.8 million lira ($800 million) in a tap of its 10-year benchmark bond at an average compound yield of 11.66 percent and sold a net 778.4 million lira in a tap of a seven-year floating rate note at a price of 99.668 lira. ($1 = 3.7219 liras)

(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
LONDON, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Britain's economy is approaching full capacity, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Tuesday ahead of his Nov. 22 budget announcement when asked about using public money to finance homebuilding.

"Increasing activity in the construction sector is a very good way of creating jobs but ... at 4.3 percent, our economy is approaching full employment, the output gap is extremely small," Hammond said in response to a question in parliament about increasing borrowing to fund more housing.

(Reporting by David Milliken, writing by William James, editing by Andy Bruce)
(Adds detail on refinery, background on IPO)

By Saeed Azhar

RIYADH, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala Investment Co said it expects to list its unit Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA), one of the world's biggest aluminium producers, next year.

Reuters reported in March that EGA had chosen banks to advise on the listing, but this is the first time its owner has confirmed the planned IPO.

"We hope to take this company public in 2018," Mubadala CEO Khaldoon al-Mubarak told investors at a conference in Riyadh on Tuesday. Mubadala has not said where EGA will list.

Owned by Mubadala and Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), aluminium producer EGA was created in 2013 when state-owned companies Dubai Aluminium (Dubal) and Abu Dhabi's Emirates Aluminium (Emal) merged.

Its enterprise value was put at $15 billion at the time of the merger and Al-Mubarak said it contributed about $5 billion to the United Arab Emirates' annual gross domestic product, which totalled $349 bln last year, according to the World Bank. EGA increased its net profit by 10 percent in 2016 to 2.1 billion dirhams ($570 million) despite a fall in revenue.

Al-Mubarak said EGA survived the sharp drop in commodity prices in 2015 by keeping costs down.

He said the company is investing $1.2 billion in a bauxite mine in Republic of Guinea, which could supply an alumina refinery in the UAE.

Al-Mubarak said Mubadala is also very keen to invest in technology, citing its recent move to set up a venture capital arm that will oversee a fund set up with Japan's SoftBank.

(Reporting by Saeed Azhar; Editing by Susan Fenton)
(Adds details, quotes)

RIYADH, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Emaar Properties expects to pay a special dividend to shareholders by December or January from the proceeds of a partial listing of its real estate business, the property developer's chairman said on Tuesday.

Dubai's largest listed property developer had said on Sunday it expects to list 20 percent of Emaar Development . It has received shareholder approval to list up to 30 percent. "We suggested 20 percent looking at what kind of value we're getting out of the whole IPO (initial public offering)," Emaar Chairman Mohamed Alabbar said at a Riyadh press conference.

"The 20 percent looks reasonable and then we're estimating that we'll be able to do that and take the 20 percent and distribute a good chunk of it to our shareholders I hope by December or January."

Alabbar also said he "would love" to work on real estate projects with the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia's top sovereign wealth fund, though he said no such discussions were underway.

The sovereign wealth fund bought a 50 percent stake in Alabbar's Adeptio investment vehicle in November, and has backed Noon, the Middle East e-commerce site launched by the Dubai billionaire.

Alabbar said he would be interested in being involved in a transnational business and industrial zone across Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, announced earlier on Tuesday by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (Reporting by Katie Paul and Hadeel Al Sayegh, writing by Alexander Cornwell, editing by David Evans and Jane Merriman)
* Q2 net profit rises 20 pct to 41.51 bln rupees, meets estimates

* Gross bad loan ratio at 1.26 pct at end-Sept vs 1.24 pct in June

(Adds further earnings details, context, shares)

Oct 24 (Reuters) - HDFC Bank Ltd , India's second-biggest lender by assets, on Tuesday reported a record quarterly profit, buoyed by an increase in interest and fee incomes.

The Mumbai-based bank, which was recently added to the central bank's list of lenders it considers "too big to fail", raked in a net profit of 41.51 billion rupees ($634 million) in the three months to Sept. 30, up 20 percent from a year ago.

That was mostly in line with an average estimate of 41.61 billion rupees from 24 analysts, Thomson Reuters data shows.

Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans stood at 1.26 percent at end-September, versus 1.24 percent in the previous quarter and 1.02 percent a year ago. ( )

With its focus on retail clients and relatively smaller exposure to segments such as infrastructure financing, HDFC Bank has the lowest bad-loan ratio among top Indian lenders. That has made it an investor favourite in a sector that has been marred by a record $146 billion of soured loans. HDFC Bank's net interest income rose 22 percent in the quarter on a 22.3 percent rise in loans.

Non-interest revenue rose 24.3 percent, while core net interest margin steadied at 4.3 percent.

The bank has a market capitalisation of more than $87 billion, making it the most valuable in the sector and second among all Indian companies.

Shares of the bank were little changed after the results in a Mumbai market that was up 0.3 percent.

It has rallied about 55 percent this year, outperforming the sector index that has risen 33 percent and the main market index that has added 24 percent. ($1 = 64.9625 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Samantha Kareen Nair in Bengaluru and Devidutta Tripathy in Mumbai; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
Ucoms mobile customers will benefit from the best internet roaming rate of 8 AMD/MB when travelling to Georgia, Egypt or the UAE

Ameriabank Launches Google Pay and Google Wallet Support for Card Users in Armenia

Karen Vardanyan donated 112 million drams for the medical equipment for National Center for Infectious Diseases.

UCOM HAS INTRODUCED FUTURE NETWORK WI-FI 6E ROUTERS

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Statement by the Spokesperson on the conflict resolution and reconciliation efforts

Foreign Minister of Armenia to participate in the Fifth Paris Peace Forum

Armenia: EU and Armenia Hold annual Dialogue on Human Rights

Todays Shushi, Occupied and Cleared of Armenians, is a Real Example of Turkish-Azerbaijani Policy of Ethnic Cleansing of Artsakh

Ookla, the the global leader in internet testing and analysis has awarded Ucom

Sweden will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union

Ameriabank: At the Vanguard of Armenia's Banking Sector

STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARTSAKH

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Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders

PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces

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Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia

Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair

Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan

I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General

I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox

UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS

There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur

EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol  Armenia and Azerbaijan  to do so without delay

An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan".

UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022

Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully

The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces
(Adds quotes, SEC letter, share volume)

By Chijioke Ohuocha

LAGOS, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Nigeria's Oando has obtained a court order to halt the suspension of trading in its shares and a forensic audit planned by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), court documents seen by Reuters showed on Tuesday.

Shares in Oando Plc were frozen at 5.99 naira on Monday until further notice, the stock exchange said after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ordered a forensic audit into the company.

The SEC suspended trading in the stock for 48 hours last week, saying it was investigating complaints about insider trading and discrepancies in its ownership structure. "The actions taken by the SEC, the suspension of the shares of the company and the initiation of a forensic audit, are prejudicial to the company," an Oando spokesman told Reuters.

The SEC declined to comment on the court order, saying that it was yet to receive the notice.

BY 1236 GMT, only 42,923 shares at the firm's fixed share price of 5.99 had traded. The company recorded no trades on Monday. A regulatory source said the freeze aimed to avoid volatile trading pending the outcome of the audit.

In a SEC letter dated Oct. 17 to Oando and seen by Reuters, the regulator accused Oando of corporate governance abuses and financial mismanagement, basing its allegations on two petitions received from Dahiru Barau Mangal and Ansbury Incorporated.

It added that it would engage accountancy firm Deloitte to lead the audit together with lawyers and stockbrokers, at a cost of 160 million naira, which would be borne by Oando.

A company source has said the petitions centred around the ownership of some Oando shares bought through an investment vehicle at the time the company bought the Nigerian unit of U.S. firm ConocoPhillips for $1.65 billion in 2014.

Oando has said it was aware the regulator had received petitions and said the allegations were "unsubstantiated, misleading and defamatory".

However, it had not received any notification from the regulator querying its compliance until the recent letter, adding that it has been cooperating with the SEC since the start of its investigation in May.

In July, Oando shares fell close to a one-month low after the regulator said it was investigating the firm's shareholding structure following the ConocoPhillips unit acquisition. Trading in Oando's shares have also been suspended in Johannesburg , where it has a secondary listing.

Oando has gained 27 percent this year after a sharp fall last year. It last traded at 5.99 naira.

(Editing by Alexis Akwagyiram and David Evans)
(Adds details, shares)

MILAN, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) reported a 17 percent jump in third-quarter adjusted operating profit on Tuesday, helped by a strong performance in its key North American market and improving operations in Europe and Latin America.

The world's seventh-largest carmaker still makes the lion's share of its profits in North America so improving, or at least maintaining, its margins there is a key focus.

The carmaker reported an 8 percent adjusted operating profit margin in the region, up from 7.6 percent a year ago, despite a drop in sales and shipments.

"FCA's profitability in North America remained strong in the quarter despite a weakening market there," a Milan-based analyst said.

FCA's profitability compares with an 8.3 percent North America margin reached in the quarter by bigger U.S. rival GM , showing CEO Sergio Marchionne making progress towards his goal of closing the margin gap with GM and the company's other U.S. rival, Ford , by 2018.

The company's confirmation of its full-year outlook also pushed shares higher, a trader added.

The stock was up 2.8 percent by 1129 GMT, outperforming a 1 percent rise in the European auto index .

FCA has been retooling some U.S. factories to boost output of sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) and trucks while ending production of some unprofitable sedans to strengthen profitability as the U.S. car market comes off its peak.

The company said a drop in North America shipments due to lower fleet sales and discontinued models was partially offset by higher deliveries of RAM trucks and two models from the Alfa Romeo stable: the Stelvio sport utility vehicle and Giulia sedan.

FCA said adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) for the period rose to 1.76 billion euros, while revenues were down 2 percent to 26.4 billion euros, both roughly in line with consensus forecasts in a Thomson Reuters poll of analysts.

Net industrial debt rose to 4.4 billion euros by the end of September from 4.2 billion three months earlier due to currency effects, but was still lower than expected by the market.

Profitability also improved in Europe, helped by sales of the Stelvio SUV and the new Jeep Compass, and Latin America, while margins at Maserati remained strong at 13.8 percent due to strong demand for its first SUV, the Levante.

In a later conference call, investors are looking for hints on the new strategy to 2022 which the company promised to unveil early next year.

Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne said earlier this year that FCA would streamline its portfolio and that components businesses, including Magneti Marelli, would be separated from the group, possibly via a spin-off. While FCA confirmed its targets this year, doubts remain about its exposure to a weakening U.S. market, recall costs and potential fines over emissions after it was targeted by European and U.S. authorities over alleged breaches. ($1 = 0.8504 euros)

(Reporting by Agnieszka Flak, additional reporting by Stefano Rebaudo and Stephen Jewkes; Editing by Adrian Croft)
* 1st publicly announced class action vs Rio on Mozambique deal

* Follows SEC fraud charges vs Rio, executives

(Adds lead plaintiff details, background)

By James Regan

SYDNEY, Oct 24 (Reuters) - A U.S. law firm has filed a class action suit against mining giant Rio Tinto , which is facing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fraud charges stemming from an ill-fated investment in Mozambique coal mining.

Seattle-based Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP said in a statement released in Australia on Tuesday it filed the suit on behalf of purchasers of Rio Tinto American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) between Oct. 23, 2012 and Feb. 15, 2013 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The law firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rio Tinto declined to comment on the filing, the first publicly announced class action suit involving the coal asset.

The SEC last week charged Rio Tinto and two of its former top executives with fraud, saying they inflated the value of Mozambique coal assets and concealed critical information while tapping the market for billions of dollars. The assets were acquired for $3.7 billion in 2011 from an Australian company, Riversdale Mining, but sold a few years later for $50 million.

Rio Tinto and the two executives, Tom Albanese, chief executive at the time, and former chief financial officer Guy Elliott, have denied the charges.

The filing names as lead plaintiff Anton Colbert of Cook County, Illinois. The document states Colbert acquired Rio Tinto ADRs between Feb. 28, 2011 and Sept. 16, 2013 worth $41,319.84, according to Reuters' calculations based on the filing.

In a class action, a lead plaintiff represents other participants, which the filing lodged by Hagens Berman states believes could number "hundreds or thousands of members in the proposed class".

In its charges, the SEC said that soon after the Mozambique asset deal was completed, Rio Tinto learned that the acquisition would yield less coal, and of a lower quality, than expected. The global miner could only transport and sell a fraction of the coal it had originally assumed, the SEC said.

By making misleading public statements, Rio Tinto, Albanese and Elliott were able to raise $5.5 billion from U.S. investors, the SEC said.

They continued to solicit the investments even after executives of the Mozambique subsidiary told Albanese and Elliott that the unit was likely worth negative $680 million, according to the SEC.

(Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
* Building division suffers further NZ$160mln earnings hit

* Fletcher appoints former UGL head Ross Taylor as CEO

* Major issues linked to two NZ projects

* Shares fall 5.7 percent after trading halt ends

(Adds chairman and analyst quotes)

By Jonathan Barrett and Ana Nicolaci da Costa

Oct 25 (Reuters) - Fletcher Building Ltd said on Wednesday its 2018 financial year earnings would be hit by a NZ$160 million ($110.38 million) loss before interest and tax at its building business as project cost overruns and labour shortages continue to weigh on New Zealand's biggest construction company.

Fletcher also said on Wednesday it had appointed Ross Taylor, who formerly headed engineering and construction company UGL, as its new chief executive, effective Nov. 22. Former chief executive Mark Adamson stepped down in July. Fletcher chairman Ralph Norris said the company had taken remedial action and improved its practices around bidding, contracting and managing future projects.

"However, these measures will only go so far in altering the trajectory of our legacy projects that commenced some time ago," Norris said in a statement.

The company's stock is one of the worst performers on the New Zealand main index so far this year, losing about one-quarter of its value. The share price fell 5.7 percent in early trading on Wednesday after a trading halt ended.

The inability to manage costs at major projects in the New Zealand cities of Auckland and Christchurch has plagued Fletcher recently, leading it to lower two earnings forecasts earlier this year. The NZ$160 million hit is the first guidance issued for 2017-18.

The builder said that when the struggling Buildings and Interiors projects were stripped out of forecasts, it expected full-year core earnings for the group to be in the range of NZ$680 million to NZ$720 million.

Fletcher said lower earnings from its South Pacific operations will be felt particularly in the first half of 2017-18.

"We have seen a significant drop in the share price, a significant drop in their market cap," said James Smalley, client advisor at New Zealand investment advisory firm Hamilton Hindin Greene. "I guess investors only have so much patience, they will be looking for expectations that this is as bad as it gets. I think they just need to stem the bleeding from a couple of their long-term legacy contracts."

In August, the company reported an 80 percent plunge in fiscal 2017 earnings to NZ$94 million, hurt by a NZ$292 million loss in its building unit. While the company is tapped into New Zealand's strong economy, parts of the business have been hit by cost blowouts and poor project decisions in a country where labour shortages and supply constraints have undermined profits. ($1 = 1.4495 New Zealand dollars)

(Reporting by Jonathan Barrett and Ana Nicolaci Da Costa in Wellington; Additional reporting by Christina Martin and Devika Syamnath in Bengaluru; Editing by Larry King and James Dalgleish)
Actor Shin Se-kyung /Courtesy of Namoo Actors



Shin Se-kyung to return in TV drama Black Knight' in Dec.

By Kim Jae-heun

Actress Shin Se-kyung will return to the small screen in the hotly anticipated TV series "Black Knight" on KBS2 in December, starring alongside Kim Rae-won and Seo Ji-hye.

In her previous appearances, Shin has often taken the role of a Cinderella girl, who strives hard to make her way in life. Her new character Jung Hae-ra in "Black Knight" is not much different. Jung is a travel agency employee who struggles financially, but tries to make the best of her circumstances.

Shin said a character's wealthy background cannot be the standard for her to pick a role.

"Just looking at people around me, I don't separate friends by how bright or dark they are, or how wealthy or poor they are. It's the same when I am choosing my role," said Shin during an interview with The Korea Times at cafe in Jongno, Seoul, last week. Shin participated in the fashion show for Korean traditional clothing as a hanbok ambassador to celebrate Hanbok Day.

"However, the drama series needs conflict and resolution and often when a woman is in a difficult situation, it is easier to make a story out of it."

Shin says all the characters she depicted on TV and the big screen are all precious to her and how wealthy they are does not matter to her.

"Black Knight" will premiere on Dec. 6.

Q. What made you decide to appear in "Black Knight"?

A. There was no specific reason. I was reading the synopsis and script for the TV drama and decided to take the role. My character in the new TV series is unique, somewhat different from my previous roles and I am happy to work with actor Kim Rae-won and director Han Sang-woo.

Actually, this is not the first time I am working with Kim. I met him when I was fourteen years old while working on the film "My Little Bride" in 2004, and we shot three scenes together. However, we haven't talked about it. It's been a week since we began shooting the drama. Kim is a very caring and considerate person. He always tries to create a comfortable atmosphere on set.

Q. You took many Cinderella roles in your previous work. Do you wish to try a character that is totally different from what you have depicted?

A. There are many roles that I want to play. But I learned that I should not choose characters thoughtlessly according to my preference. It entails a big responsibility and when I star in a piece, I am being part of it. I have to consider my responsibility and think twice about my ability.

Q. You began your acting career as a child actress. Is there a difference between acting as a child and as an adult?

A. It doesn't work that way. My acting does not change because I am a child or a grown-up. There is a different point to show at different ages and growing up is like a process of learning. It's not only about acting as a kid or woman.

Q. What do you do in your break time in between working?

A. I eat. During the break, I listen to music or sing. Sometimes I meet my friends and have chat or work. I don't do anything special. I do normal things others enjoy like watching a movie.

Q. What does it mean to live as an actress in Korea for you?

A. I don't put meaning into living as an actress in this country. I just like what I do now. Obviously, there are difficulties and hardships while living as an actress, but every job does. Meanwhile, I also get a lot of love and respect as an actress. That is a fact and I am happy right now.

Q. You have been chosen as one of the top 40 most powerful celebrities in Korea. What do you think is your most appealing trait?

A. I didn't know that. I don't know my appealing points either. I receive questions on my image often, but only because I want to appeal a certain point of my personality, it doesn't always work. So it is hard to say I am receiving love for a particular charm.

Q. You have appeared in many works, be it big or small screen. Which one was your favorite character and work?

A. Honestly, all the characters that I depicted are like my children and I cannot pick one. But certainly my recent role as Yoon So-ah in "The Bride of Habaek" stays clear in my memory, probably because it was my latest character.

Playing Yoon was like breaking the rules of playing a typical woman in a romance comedy or melodrama genre. "The Bride of Habaek" was really a fantasy story and Yoon would turn into a water dragon in the scenes. But what the real fantasy about this TV drama is that the leading characters Ha-baek and Yoon fall in love unconditionally.
Asia Productivity Organization Secretary General Santhi Kanoktanaporn speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at Le Meridien Seoul, Monday. / Courtesy of Korea Productivity Center



APO chief stresses introduction of new index

By Park Jae-hyuk

An industry veteran from Thailand has dismissed growing concerns over Korea's low labor productivity.

Santhi Kanoktanaporn, secretary general of the Asia Productivity Organization (APO), pointed to problems with the previous method for measuring a country's productivity, during an interview with The Korea Times in Seoul this week.

Introducing the new concept of "sustainable productivity index," he said the index will precisely reflect the reality of each country under a new economic model.

"Countries adopted technologies to help their workers in the past, but they now use technology for their machines," he said. "The previous index therefore tended to underestimate labor productivities of technologically developed countries."

According to the secretary general, Singapore and the United States also faced similar problems.

A recent OECD report showed Korea lagging behind other member countries in labor productivity.

Only seven countries, including Greece, Poland, Chile and Mexico, showed lower labor productivity than Korea.

Against this backdrop, some experts criticized the incumbent administration for its labor-friendly policies, such as the hike in the minimum wage and reduction of working hours.

They said such policies will worsen the situation.

In response to the concerns, Kanoktanaporn said it is more important for people to work smarter rather than harder.

"If workers have the necessary technical skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, they must yield higher productivity than those who just work hard without necessary skills," he said.

The secretary general visited Korea to attend the APO meeting held in Seoul this week.

Heads of each country's productivity organizations gathered here to discuss the plans for the next two years.

APO invited officials from Amazon, Microsoft and NVIDIA as well to hold a conference on the future of productivity in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Santhi also stressed the importance of technology, saying it is essential for the survival of Asian countries.

"Asian countries could regard advanced technologies as optional five years ago," he said. "However, they cannot survive without the technologies now."

The secretary general acknowledged Korea as a center of excellence for its smart factories, so he asked for the Korea Productivity Center share the country's knowhow with other countries.

He also praised Korea for establishing the Ministry of SMEs and Startups.

He said government support is imperative to enhance the productivity of small businesses, which has hindered the overall growth of the country's productivity.

"Most countries' SMEs have similar problems in terms of lack of good quality, high productivity and innovation," Kanoktanaporn said. "The government support will accelerate their success, allowing them to innovate themselves."

Citing the government's strategic plans to deal with the nation's aging populations by 2030, the secretary general also recognized Korea for taking proper measures on the issue.

He said APO and productivity organizations in each member country will keep advising policymakers in their countries, so their governments can be as foresighted as Korea.

Based on his 40-year experience in driving productivity enhancement initiatives and strategic international development programs, Kanoktanaporn took office as the APO's 11th secretary general last year.

He focuses on the use of technology to improve productivity of Asian countries.

The APO, which was established in 1961 as a regional intergovernmental organization, is devoted to enhancing productivity in Asian countries.

It is based in Tokyo and has a membership of 20 countries.
Plans of other nuclear reactors scrapped



By Yoon Ja-young



Construction work on the Shin-Kori No. 5 and 6 nuclear reactors will resume from midnight, following a recommendation by a public debate commission.



But construction plans for six other nuclear reactors will be dropped, while the ratio of renewable energy in power generation will be increased to 20 percent by 2030.



The Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy announced the energy transition roadmap at a Cabinet meeting presided over by President Moon Jae-in Tuesday.



"The government will respect the recommendation of the commission," the energy ministry said. "The construction of the Shin-Kori 5 and 6 reactors will resume and the follow-up measures will be prepared soon."



Following President Moon Jae-in's campaign pledge to phase out nuclear power, construction of the two reactors near the southeastern port city of Ulsan was halted in July.



With President Moon pledging to follow public opinion regarding the reactors' fate, a state commission of 471 civilian jury members was set up. After a series of debates, the commission recommended last Friday that construction should resume.



The government noted the huge gap between those who supported resumption and those who opposed it - 59.5 percent backed resumption while 40.5 percent opposed it. The gap expanded as discussions proceeded.



Though Moon is retreating from his earlier pledge to scrap the two reactors, the public debate commission gave him momentum for energy transition, with 53.2 percent of the jury agreeing the ratio of nuclear energy should be reduced, while only 9.7 percent said it should be expanded.



Based on this, the government said it will cancel nuclear reactor construction plans except for Shin-Kori 5 and 6. Aged reactors will also be shut down without extending their lifespan. According to the energy transition roadmap, the number of nuclear reactors in the country will decrease from 24 to 14 by 2038.



The energy ministry estimated that decommissioning the Kori-1 reactor, the oldest reactor in Ulsan that was shut down in June, will cost 719.4 billion won. It will take over 15 years to dismantle the reactor, which was closed after 40 years of operation.



The government plans to fund the cost of the nuclear phase-out. It also plans to set up an institute on nuclear decommissioning, as the reactor dismantling industry is expected to grow around the world. While the government will continue supporting Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power to export nuclear reactors, the state-run company will also focus on nuclear safety and dismantling as new growth engines.



While decreasing nuclear energy, the government plans to increase the ratio of renewable energy to 20 percent of power generation in 2030 from 7 percent.



Safety standards will also be strengthened on nuclear reactors. All nuclear reactors will have to submit an accident management plan by June 2019; and earthquake resistance capacity will be enhanced for all reactors by June 2018. The government plans to expand safety-related investment in reactors that have been operating for more than 25 years.




By Park Hyong-ki



The government's measures on household debt are expected to slow down the increase rate of mortgages and other types of loans.



But analysts and even the finance ministry acknowledged the measures will not be enough to ease the debt burden on the economy.



The government said the debt issue is "complex," as it also involves and affects other economic activities such as private consumption, investment and apartment transactions.



It may come out with another set of measures on cooling the debt rise on a par with its real estate measures in the near future.



Just like in August when it unveiled the real estate measures, the debt measures aim at curbing multiple borrowings.



The Aug. 2 measures take a shot at regulating multiple homeowners and real estate speculators in areas including Gangnam, Seoul's most affluent district located at southern areas of the capital.



The government has indicated it could unveil a secondary housing measure if apartment prices did not cool down.



President Moon Jae-in has pledged to bring down the aggregate amount of the debt, which has reached 1,400 trillion held by some 11 million households.



His policy included decreasing the debt level in proportion to households' disposal income toward the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) average.



It stands at about 180 percent as of last year, which is higher than that of the United States and Japan.



To lower it to below 170 percent, the President's advisers suggested decreasing the aggregate debt amount through tighter restrictions using metrics such as debt-service and debt-income ratios.













Analysts are, for now, are positive over the measures.



"The measures to control the aggregate debt would help ease the burden on the economy," said Kim Doo-un, an economist at Hana Financial Investment.



However, it would not work unless the measures are implemented effectively with others including a sound housing policy.



Analysts point out that policies for the two  debt and housing  are like "threads and needles." One cannot work without the other.



This time, the government has seemingly focused its attention on helping a soft landing of low-income earners with heavy debt.



As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) saw the country's household debt situation as "manageable," the government reiterated the economy can sufficiently manage the debt.



Of the 1,400 trillion won debt, 320,000 households with 92 trillion won debt are facing difficulties in paying back the money they owe to banks and mutual savings banks.



This is because they have a negative cash flow, meaning their monthly paychecks are not enough to meet their debt obligations.



The government estimated another 100 trillion won worth of debt held by low-income households are in default.



This brings to around 200 trillion won in household debt facing the risk of going default.



However, about 70 percent of the 1,400 trillion won debt is held by households with a positive cash flow.



"There is no systemic risk at the moment. However, it needs to be dealt with through comprehensive measures," a government official said.
By Nam Hyun-woo



The Korea Exchange (KRX) named Korea Securities Finance Corp. (KSFC) CEO Jung Ji-won as the sole candidate for its new chairman, the country's bourse operator announced Tuesday.



The KRX's chairman nomination committee interviewed two candidates and selected Jung as the sole candidate who faces an approval vote at a shareholders' meeting scheduled for Oct. 31.



If Jung wins the approval, he will start his three-year term Nov. 1, replacing Jeong Chan-woo who said in August he would step down as soon as a successor takes office.



Since Jeong's announcement, the KRX had been publicly searching for its next chief. However, the process had been protracted as several candidates quit over accusations they were parachute appointees.



Jung also faces opposition from KRX union members, who claim the recruiting process was protracted in order to have Jung as chief.



Lee Dong-ki, KRX union head, said the Financial Services Commission (FSC) is exerting its effort to appoint former ranking bureaucrats to the post.



Jung is a bureaucrat who served at the Ministry of Strategy and Finance and the FSC. He has been heading the KSFC since 2015.




By Jung Min-ho





Michelin Guide Seoul

The Michelin Guide, the world's best-known restaurant "bible," published its Seoul edition for the first time last year, creating a buzz among foodies and eateries owners.

But its credibility came into question during a National Assembly audit last week. Rep. Song Ki-seok of the People's Party accused Michelin of evaluating restaurants without even visiting them.

As evidence, the lawmaker pointed out that an Italian restaurant, which was included in the edition, permanently closed in August 2016, three months before its publication.

Also, unlike what the guide says, another restaurant does not have a terrace, he noted.

In an email to The Korea Times, a Michelin Guide Seoul official denied the accusations.

"It is true that the restaurant, Chef's Note, closed before its publication. But its owner didn't mention anything about the plan when we tried to confirm all the information," the official said. "By the time we found out, it was too late to change it."

Also, owners often renovate their restaurants. This, the official said, may explain why the terrace is no longer at the other restaurant.

Other than the two obvious errors, some people, including those in the food industry, question its credibility more broadly.

A famous chef who runs a restaurant in Seoul said she has doubts about its fairness in terms of evaluation.

When the Seoul edition came out, she said many chefs were surprised to see some names in the guide.

"I really don't understand the standards they use to evaluate restaurants," she said. "Some of my customers also told me they were disappointed in Michelin-starred restaurants. As a customer, whether some restaurants have stars wouldn't matter to me when I choose one to visit."

Another owner said she even received a suspicious offer from a person, who tried selling her consultation services to help her restaurant win Michelin stars.

She signed a contract with the consultant introduced by the man but canceled it later for financial reasons.

When asked, Michelin denied any connection with the man.

Michelin is also accused of accepting payment from the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) in exchange for publishing its edition in the country.

A ranking KTO official said it started making efforts for the publication of a Michelin Red Guide for Seoul in 2011 but refused to reveal details about money.

According to Song, however, the contract between the two requires the KTO to pay 2 billion won ($1.8 million) to Michelin until 2020.

Last year, 24 restaurants in Seoul received Michelin stars. Nineteen received one star, three received two stars and two won the highest honor  three stars.
Choe Son-hui, Head of the North America Department of North Korea's Foreign Ministry, attends the 2017 Moscow Nonproliferation Conference at the Centre for Energy and Security Studies. / Tass-Yonhap



A North Korean diplomat who recently joined a conference in Moscow called for the United States to drop its hostile policy and make the "right choice" of recognizing it as a nuclear-armed state, saying that it would lead to a "way out" from the current stalemate, a foreign ministry source here said Tuesday.

Choe Son-hui, director-general of the North American department of North Korea's foreign ministry, made the remarks during a closed-door session of the two-day conference held last week in Moscow, the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

"The North will never give up its nuclear weapons as long as the U.S.' hostile policy, including military activities, sanctions and pressure, continue," he quoted Choe as saying.

"If the U.S. makes the right choice, such as abandoning its hostile policy and moving to coexist with a nuclear DPRK, there will be a way out," she said, according to the official.

DPRK is the abbreviation of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Choe reiterated that the North made the "strategic decision" to possess nuclear weapons to deter the military threat from the U.S., saying that it is the only way to maintain its security and peace both on the Korean Peninsula and the Northeast Asian region, he added.












By Choi Ha-young

Around 50,000 clothing items made in North Korea have been sold in South Korea violating of the government's sanctions against Pyongyang, Rep. Kim Hyun-kwon of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea claimed Tuesday.

Labels on the clothes showed they were made in China, but they were actually produced in North Korea. South Korean smugglers are involved in the circulation of the products, the lawmaker said citing data from the Korea Coast Guard (KCG).

Since 2010, the South Korean government has banned North Korean products from entering the South by imposing the sanctions called May 24 measures. The KCG had been in charge of finding people smuggling North Korean goods primarily sold here disguised as being from China.

The nuclear-armed regime has long operated textile factories in China to earn foreign currency in the face of international sanctions. The former conservative President Park Geun-hye had vowed to close Pyongyang's purse strings but apparently no state institution was committed to a crackdown.

In 2014, only one smuggler was caught. Before then, the KCG detected seven cases involving 23 offenders in 2013; and 12 cases involving 20 offenders in 2012. The smugglers dealt with various North Korean products such as clothes, clams, crabs, fish, coal and handicrafts all under Chinese trademarks.

The nation's spy agency, National Intelligence Service, took issue with loopholes in 2015 and the KCG established security offices in three cities  Incheon, Sokcho and Donghae. Due to the shortage of manpower, however, the offices were not able to crack down on the smugglers.

The KCG's security department is still understaffed, Kim noted. "Considering the scale of the smuggled goods, it seems like organized crime," Kim said. "The KCG should rapidly build a system to detect smugglers and forgers."
By Jung Min-ho

Nineteen people have been caught this year trying to bring guns onto planes in Korea, a sharp increase from just one from last year.

According to Rep. Park Wan-su of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, Monday, 25 such cases occurred at airports across the country between January 2014 and this September.

The number changed little from two in 2014 to three in 2015 and one in 2016, but it has soared at an alarming rate over the past nine months.

During that period, 25 guns, 1,368 bullets, 395 knives and 1,374 other weapons such as stun guns have been seized.

"All the nation's airports and related institutions should beef up their security in response to an increasing number of such attempts," Park said.

According to Rep. Park Chan-woo of the same party, 34 people were caught at Incheon International Airport trying to smuggle guns into the country between January 2012 and this August.

During that period, 2,819 illegal weapons, including 1,483 bullets and 426 knives, were seized. The lawmaker said 45.8 percent of them came from the United States.

"The risk of terrorism is increasing in Korea due to lax security inspections in other nations," he said. "We should inform them of their inspection failures and urge them to improve their systems."
By John Redmond





Participants enjoy last year's Great Korean Beer Festival. / Courtesy of Media Para.

The Great Korean Beer Festival 2017, Korea's first and largest craft beer festival, will be held at Yongsan Electronics Shopping Mall Oct. 27 to 29.

The festival will host 18 craft beer breweries and eight global food companies from across the peninsula.

Yongsan Electro IPA, specially brewed to celebrate the festival, will be launched and can be sampled on site.

In particular, the festival is organized with the Yongsan Electronics Market Association to revitalize the shopping area and develop local tourist attractions.

The event also offers other unique programs such as live music performances, the chance to see new IT gadgets up close, a 100 won auction of electronic products and discounts.

This year's festival will offer craft beers from all over the country including Seoul, Busan, Jeju Island and Gangwon Province.

Guests can also sample international beers from the U.S. and Czech Republic and learn about beer from brew masters.

A wide range of international foods available will include premium sausage plates of Jinju ham, jamon and paella of Spain Club, New York's representative Halal Foods by Jilhal Bros, California Pizza Kitchen, Mad Fisherman and food trucks selected by the Best Food Truck Cooperative that can be found at designated areas.

In addition to craft beer and global food, there will be a lot to enjoy at the festival in cooperation with Electro Land and Najin and Sunin plazas.

The IT Experience Zone will allow visitors to participate in a 100 won auction and purchase electronic products at discounts, as well as the chance to use IT devices including drones, which will be held throughout the event.

Both locals and expats are invited to participate in the Halloween Costume Contest and show off their costumes while given the chance to win 1.5 million won worth of goods.

The festival runs from 1 p.m. to 11 p.m., with the Halloween costume contest being held from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Entrance is free.

Visit .facebook.com/greatkoreanbeerfestival for more details.
Actors perform at last year's Rocky Horror Shadowcast. / Courtesy of Robert Evans



By John Redmond

The Seoul Players present the 7th Annual Rocky Horror Shadowcast at Club Freebird near Hongik University in western Seoul, Friday and Saturday.

Billed as one of Seoul's top must-see Halloween traditions, the Horror Shadowcast is an event where a movie is screened, while at the same time performers act out and dance to the movie on a stage.

In Rocky Horror tradition, audience participation is very much encouraged, as is dressing up.

Another activity, known as riffing, is where audience members call back to actors on stage.

"During a normal show, an audience will sit quietly and watch the show. Not so with Rocky. Callbacks are highly encouraged from the audience throughout the show," the organizer said.

"Our Rocky Horror Shadowcast does differ from other productions. Due to the policy of the venue, we are not allowed to bring items such as toilet paper, rice or toast into the club, and for safety's sake there will be no throwing of items at the cast members.

"But we really would love to hear your callbacks throughout the show. There will also be cast and crew members seeded throughout the audience providing our own colorful commentary, so be on the lookout."

The performance is directed by Makrenna Sterdan and choreographed by Sydney Langford.

This show has always sold out in the past, so guests are encouraged to come early to guarantee admission.

Proceeds go to Seoul Players' upcoming productions, including its 7th annual 10 Minute Play Festival.

There will also be special appearances by the dancers of Starlight Productions, previewing their upcoming Star Wars-themed show, "The Rule of Two."

Formed here in 2001, Seoul Players is a not-for-profit, volunteer-based English-language theater group.

Performances are 10 p.m. on Friday and 9 p.m. and midnight on Saturday.

Tickets cost 10,000 won at the door.

Club Freebird is located about five minutes from Sangsu Station.

There will be a costume contest following the show on Friday and the second show on Saturday.

Visit facebook.com/SeoulPlayers for more details and directions to the venue.
Korea National University of Arts (K-Arts) President Kim Bong-ryol speaks during a press conference marking the school's 25th anniversary at Dalgaebi, a restaurant in central Seoul, Tuesday. / Courtesy of K-Arts



The president of Korea National University of Arts (K-Arts) vowed to achieve global prestige, marking the school's 25th anniversary, Tuesday.

"I will pour in all efforts for K-Arts to stand as a globally prestigious art school, by cultivating talented artists who will lead arts in the future, by providing the necessary systematic, material and human resources," President Kim Bong-ryol said in a press conference at Dalgaebi, a restaurant in central Seoul.

K-Arts ranked 46th in the performing arts category in the 2016 QS World University Rankings.

Kim pledged to expand student and faculty exchange programs with major art schools abroad. Currently it has programs with 118 schools based in 38 countries.

The president added the school will expand its China-bound project, which sends graduates to culture and arts organizations and institutions in China.

K-Arts has cultivated 295 artists in Asia through its Art Major Asian Scholarship (AMA) and Art Major Faculty Exploring K-Arts (AMFEK) program.

The school's alumni have achieved first place in international competitions 973 times as of September.

K-Arts has produced names such as ballerina Park Sae-eun, who became the first South Korean woman to join the Paris Opera Ballet in 2011, and violinist Lim Ji-young, winner of the first prize in the 2015 Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels.

K-Arts plans to establish to more colleges in addition to the existing six _ one each in integrated and popular art. The school is also undergoing procedures to expand its campus.
By Jun Ji-hye



South Korea, the United States and Japan began a joint exercise in waters off the Korean Peninsula and Japan, Tuesday, to enhance their capabilities in detecting and tracking North Korean ballistic missiles.



The Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the trilateral exercise, which will run through Wednesday, mobilized four Aegis-equipped destroyers from the three countries.



"The drill is aimed at better preparing for North Korea's evolving nuclear and missile threats in accordance with the agreement made during the 48th Security Consultative Meeting between South Korea and the U.S. in October 2016," the JCS said.



During the meeting, defense chiefs from Seoul and Washington agreed to conduct such a drill regularly.



The exercise is to enhance sailors' ability to detect and track missiles in the event of a ballistic missile launch from the North. A stage of shooting down the missile is not included in the drill, the JCS noted, adding that no actual anti-missile missiles will be launched during the exercise.



The ships mobilized are the Aegis destroyer DDG-992 Yulgok Yii from South Korea, the Stethem and Decatur from the United States, and the Kirishima from Japan.



The Kim Jong-un regime launched intermediate-range ballistic missiles over Japan that landed in the Pacific waters in August and September. Pyongyang has also continued to threaten to fire more powerful and longer-range missiles, which would include an intercontinental ballistic missile believed to have a range of more than 10,000 kilometers.



Amid the growing military threat, the defense chiefs of the three countries reaffirmed Monday that three-way ballistic missile detection and anti-submarine warfare drills will continue.



South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera reached an agreement on this on the sidelines of an ASEAN security forum in the Philippines.



Song said trilateral security cooperation has played a critical role in deterring threats from the North and maintaining peace and stability in the Northeast Asia region.



Mattis stressed, "America's commitment to the defense of the Republic of Korea... two of our most respected allies, remains ironclad and we recognize that we are stronger together."



The Japanese defense chief noted that Tokyo strongly supports Washington's statement that "all options are on the table" in exerting maximum pressure on Pyongyang.



According to a joint press statement, the top defense officials of the three countries also agreed to cooperate in supporting diplomatic and economic efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue peacefully.




By Chyung Eun-ju





These photos Rep. Yoo Eun-hye released at the National Assembly on Oct. 23 show leg bruising on one of the victimized students from the professor's assaults. / Courtesy of Rep. Yoo Eun-hye

A Pusan National University Hospital professor assaulted 11 medical residents over two years, leaving victims with serious injuries, according to a National Assembly lawmaker on Monday.

The professor attacked the residents with surgical instruments, hit their shins 20 times, assaulted them on the streets and habitually punched their heads in 2014 and 2015.

Rep. Yoo Eun-hye from the Democratic Party of Korea released the information, but the aggressor's name was withheld.

The victims' bodies were covered with bruises that were shown in photos Rep. Yoo released. Some had ruptured eardrums.

The victims reported the professor's violence in August and requested his dismissal. But the school only suspended the professor for three months.

"The hospital only asked the professor not to approach the students, while other professors tried to cover up the incident by meeting the victims and pressuring or appeasing them," Rep. Yoo said.
By Kim Rahn

Park Soo-hyun

Some presidential secretaries and ministers are rumored to be going to quit their posts in a couple of months to run in the local elections next June.

It has been customary for top government officials to run in elections to become mayors, governors or lawmakers because they have high public recognition and thus more chance of winning. But there is also criticism that their resignation for personal career development could cause a vacuum in state affairs until their successors are appointed.

President Moon Jae-in's spokesman Park Soo-hyun has almost confirmed his bid for governor of South Chungcheong Province, as current Governor An Hee-jung is unlikely to run for a third term. Park was An's spokesman before working at Cheong Wa Dae, and his close ties with An are expected to help him gain support from local residents.

Besides Park, presidential secretary for local autonomy Na So-yeol, who was a head of Seocheon County in the province, may also run for the governor post.





Im Jong-seok

Presidential chief of staff Im Jong-seok has been mentioned as a possible candidate for Seoul mayor.

But to run for the election, he has to face other candidates in the party's primary, including current Mayor Park Won-soon and party Chairwoman Choo Mi-ae. Im was vice mayor for political affairs under Park Won-soon, and Choo was Im's senior at Hanyang University, so some predict Im won't want to compete against them and instead would run for the governorship of South Jeolla Province where his hometown of Jangheung is located.

Another presidential aide under speculation for the local elections is chief press secretary Yoon Young-chan for the Seongnam mayor post, with current Mayor Lee Jae-myung being likely to run for the Gyeonggi Province governor post.

Yoon was vice president of Naver, a portal site company based in Seongnam, where he lives.

It is also said that senior presidential secretary for civil affairs Cho Kuk or Oceans and Fisheries Minister Kim Young-choon may throw their hats into the ring for the Busan mayor job. Although they have said they would not do so, many expect the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) will need either of them to win the region.

Interior Minister Kim Boo-kyum may also head to Daegu for a mayoral post. His hometown is Sangju, a North Gyeongsang provincial city near Daegu, and the incumbent lawmaker's constituency is a district in Daegu. If he runs, it will be his second attempt following a failed one in 2014.





Yoon Young-chan

To run for the June election, the presidential aides and ministers may have to quit their current posts at the end of the year to prepare for campaigning.

Such a mass resignation of top policymakers may cause criticism because it has been less than a year since the Moon administration was launched and they were appointed. They could be criticized for taking advantage of their positions, which are important in state management, to develop their personal careers.

It will also take weeks to months for the President to find and appoint their successors, resulting in a possible vacuum in carrying out policies.
By Jun Ji-hye



Ground-penetrating radar and other high-tech equipment will be used to locate a site where bodies are believed to have been buried in secret in 1980 during the military junta's bloody crackdown on a pro-democracy movement in Gwangju.



According to the May 18 Memorial Foundation, which is leading a government-approved fact-finding team, Tuesday, the work will begin Oct. 30 at an old prison in the southwestern city.



After its two-day field inspection last week, the team concluded that a farm within the compound of the prison was used as a secret burial site for victims of the crackdown.



The foundation said at a news conference Monday that heavy equipment will be mobilized to remove asphalt and soil land, and high-tech equipment such as ground-penetrating radar will be used to carry out the excavation more precisely.



It may take 15 to 20 days to locate the exact burial site, the foundation said.



The prison was used as a base for paratroopers during the May 1980 Gwangju Uprising, in which citizens rose up against the military rule of then-Army General Chun Doo-hwan.



According to military documents at the time, 28 protesters captured during the uprising died at the prison. Among them, 11 of their bodies have been found so far.



The foundation has gathered testimonies from former prison officers and prisoners of the time before concluding that the farm was used as a secret burial site. A rough map created by a paratrooper also indicated at least 17 bodies were secretly buried in the farm area, the foundation added.



"The prosecution will begin an investigation once the remains are unearthed," said Kim Yang-rae, the executive director of the foundation. "We will make every effort to reflect opinions of the bereaved families of the missing persons in the excavation work."



The work to find the remains of the victims are in line with President Moon Jae-in's ongoing efforts to unearth the details behind the incident.



The Seoul Central District Court sentenced Chun to death in 1996 for the bloody crackdown that resulted in hundreds of deaths, but the Supreme Court reduced the sentence to life imprisonment in 1997. Then-President Kim Young-sam pardoned him in December the same year under his "grand national unity" campaign.



Chun and his aides still deny responsibility for the bloody suppression of the democratic movement.




By Kim Hyo-jin



U.S. President Donald Trump is unlikely to visit the heavily fortified demilitarized zone (DMZ) that divides North and South Korea during his official visit to Seoul, Nov. 7 and 8, a White House official said Monday.



Trump, however, will visit Camp Humphreys, a military base south of Seoul, and speak to U.S. and South Korean troops, at the invitation of President Moon Jae-in, the official said.



It is a rare move for a U.S. president to skip a DMZ tour considering it has been customary for previous American leaders to demonstrate resolve against North Korea by visiting it.



Time constraints were an issue, according to the official, although he did not completely rule out the possibility of a visit.



But he played down speculations it was out of concerns about Trump's personal security.



"The message is that we are guests during a state visit of President Moon Jae-in. He invited us to make the visit to Camp Humphreys," the official said, when asked if skipping the DMZ could compromise Trump's message to the regime. "I don't think this sends a message in a negative way."



News reports earlier said there was opposition from the South Korean government and U.S. State Department on a possible trip to the border as it could further provoke Pyongyang amid heightened tension between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.



Cheong Wa Dae denied the reports, saying, "It is not a matter for us to agree or oppose as President Trump's schedule is decided by the U.S."



Trump is expected to have a summit with Moon, Nov. 7, and give a speech at the National Assembly and pay tribute to fallen troops at the National Cemetery in Seoul the next day.



The White House official put Trump's visit to South Korea as "unique" and "very special" with an address to the National Assembly.



Trump is expected to underline the enduring alliance and friendship with South Korea and call on the international community to maximize pressure on North Korea, he added.



A source from the National Assembly said there will be no prior consultation on the content of Trump's speech.



In a 12-day swing to five Asian nations  Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines  and a stop in Hawaii, Trump hopes to rally support for increasing pressure and sanctions on the North. This will be his longest foreign trip to date since his inauguration.



Trump is expected to seek ways to deter North Korea's additional missile provocations during his stops in South Korea and Japan. In China, the official indicated he would urge Beijing to impose unilateral sanctions on the North as well as those from the United Nations Security Council.




The crisis in Catalonia has gone from simmer to steady boil. Spain's government threatens to take emergency steps to end a bid by secessionists in the country's wealthiest province to break away. The Catalan leader behind the separatist drive isn't backing down and warns that regional lawmakers are poised to formally endorse secession. Without a cool-down, a European Union nation of 46 million people could be on a path toward civil conflict. How did the home to sunny Barcelona and the beaches of Costa Brava get into this mess?



Breaking away from Spanish rule has been on the minds of Catalans for 300 years. Catalans have their own language and culture, and many don't see themselves as Spanish. Today, the region enjoys a degree of autonomy. But Catalans complain that, as Spain's richest region, they pay to Madrid more in taxes than they get back. On Oct. 1, Catalans overwhelmingly voted in favor of secession.



Was it really overwhelming? Turnout was just 42 percent. Spain's Supreme Court had previously declared the vote unconstitutional and therefore illegal. As a result, large numbers of Catalan people who oppose independence opted not to vote; they viewed the referendum as a sham. A week after the vote, hundreds of thousands of defiant Catalans filled the streets of Barcelona, demonstrating against independence.



Instead of talking, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont have been exchanging threats in a perilous game of brinkmanship. What's at stake? The heart of the Catalan region is Barcelona, the vibrant Mediterranean tourist oasis that's vital to Spain's economic health and national brand. The region also is home to several of Spain's pharmaceutical, chemical and metalworking industries. Take away Catalonia, and Spain loses 20 percent of its economy.



The Catalans must understand that secession will lead to chaos and, potentially, violence. Rajoy has Spain's constitution on his side, and if the Catalans don't back down, he'll have to enforce the law. However, there remains room for talk. Madrid can still offer Catalans greater autonomy. It's a compromise that avoids conflict, and one that Catalans would be wise to accept.







This editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune and was distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.




By William Roger Jones





Before Facebook and Flickr in 2004, Twitter 2006, Tumblr 2007, Instagram 2010, Whisper 2015, etc., there was the blog  the platform that made it possible for non-techies to publish on the internet. Blogs have generated a tumultuous outpouring of "would-be writers." If you grew up in the 1990s, chances are you probably considered one at some point  an Open Diary in 1998, a LiveJournal or Blogger account in 1999, or later WordPress in 2003.

The blog will turn 24 years old in 2018. Justin Hall, while a student at Swarthmore College, started a web-based diary. Around the same time Dave Weiner began his Scripting News, so it has been debated as to which "protoblogger" earns the title of the founding father. Anyway, after a slow start, blog usage gained popularity and spread into the millions during 1999 and the years following with the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog tools.

I've yet to start a blog. However, I have a friend who has started one  well, actually, it is more of a photoblog, but she is still working on it. It reminds me how in secondary school days we used to pass around a spiral-bound notebook listing our "favorite" things, such as foods, songs, movies, colors, teachers and subjects. In this way, our friends and others could find out what we were all about.

For all who have longed to publish themselves and reach readers/viewers 24/7 anywhere instantly, the blog or photoblog can give you a presence online wherein you are the chief executive copy editor and director of audience services, without a deadline. You may not have a face for TV or a voice for radio, but everyone has a mind for blogging.

You may make it public, but if you don't want comment spam, you can restrict your audience to a small coterie such as family and friends who will not abandon you. Your blog may be like a ship's log (a blog before it had the name), recording the daily progress of your journey through life (lifelog), something like an autobiography or your own private Wikipedia.

My friend's pixels have introduced me to her family and friends. Her pixels have taken me to her home and workplace. Her pixels have taken me to Sweden and England and China, where I have not traveled before. The friendship allows me to experience the same things she is experiencing and share the moment. My friend has interested me in the electronic log. So, now, I shall enter the blogosphere as a scrivener and photo-essayist/journalist.

It is not a sisyphean task to run a blog/photoblog. There are so many content management systems, image hosting services and app software available to guide you. With a freestyle malleable format, fragments of your life pieced together over time will reveal yourself and what has meaning and importance to you in a particular place at a particular time. Your individual voice and vision deserves to be discovered. Remember there is only one you. Become less reflexive, join us, and become more reflective.

William Roger Jones (wrjones@vsu.edu) has taught conversational English for 15 years and presently works for Virginia State University.
By Yoon Sung-won



One of the telltale signs reminding foreign visitors they are in China is that they do not have access to global online platforms such as Google and Facebook.



While expressions such as "I can't use Google anymore" and "I can't post on Instagram" mean they are simply away from these online services, they also complain of China's exclusion of itself from the international information and communications technology industry.



It is hardly news that those in China who do business or need to communicate internationally gain access to global online services via virtual personal networks (VPNs). The widespread use of VPNs, which has been going on for years, is proof that the Chinese government is providing a technical bypass.



There may be many reasons why China is condoning this, even though it still locks itself against global online services. It is strongly believed that China does not cut these bypasses to global online services because it sees the competitiveness in them, with the intention of adopting them to domestic services. In other words, China is pursuing a practical interest.



Interestingly, some Korean politicians and government officials argue that Korea needs policies similar to China's.



Rep. Byun Jae-il of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea recently said Korea must show some nerve like China and stand up to global internet companies such as Google and Facebook. Byun is a member of the National Assembly Science, Technology, Broadcasting and Telecommunications Committee.



The lawmaker stressed that Korea has local internet services such as Naver and LINE if the government blocked Google and Facebook, and so it must not be swayed by such global companies.



Science and ICT Minister You Young-min made a similar remark during his National Assembly hearing as a nominee. Asked how to deal with the rising influence and presence of the global internet giants, he said, "Korea must benchmark China."



You's words are unclear. But his comments caused some controversy.



For what reason did a Korean government official and an assemblyman talk about following China's policies?

It is not known. If they are suggesting threatening global IT giants with a ban on their local services, it is a very emotional approach to the matter.



Another idea possibly behind the remarks is that Korean internet businesses are suffering from discrimination over global service providers. The term suggests that the Korean government is imposing unnecessarily strict rules on domestic internet businesses while global service providers are often overlooked.



There might be some truth in the claim. But it still cannot make imitating China the right strategy, especially for an open economy like Korea.



What if we really follow the communist country and terminate the services of Google and Facebook? We would instantly lose our brand value as a "hotbed of cutting-edge technologies" and face economic retaliation.



That would be good news for U.S. President Donald Trump, who is trying to press Korea to make more concessions by renegotiating the free trade agreement between the two countries.



What Korea needs is to lift unnecessary regulations for all players in the market  while not making one side feel neglected  through a more balanced government policy.



We need to move forward instead of going backward.




By Bernard Rowan





As if the Kim Jong-un era didn't seem bad enough, now we have the era of Donald Trump as American president. These two chief executives have treated the public to an exchange of insults, taunts, and threats that leave many struggling to understand the prospect of war on the peninsula. Some see the American president as poised to attack the North. Many worry about the North's response to any pre-emptive strike.

Recently, Trump tweeted that North Korea "understands only one thing." His chief diplomat said diplomacy would continue until "the first bomb drops." Trump hosted a dinner with many top military brass and spoke of "the quiet before the storm." Kim has made all kinds of usual and unusual counterclaims and promises. Oh, and the North has continued to conduct missile and bomb tests. The United States, South Korea and their allies have continued their exercises. China has conducted many maneuvers. The Russians poise and pose too, including Putin's puppy.

The United States isn't planning to attack North Korea. There are high stakes in any pre-emptive strike, even one meant to reduce the entirety of North Korea to a fallout zone. No one should think South Korea's existence, Seoul and the entire country, is a tactical chip in some equation of "getting tough." The entire point of the allied forces' posture is to deter a North Korean attack on South Korea, not to prompt one.

There's scarce proof that we have the ability to wipe out the North's conventional forces. All I've heard of late is a call to station Aegis missile systems on destroyers off the coast of North Korea  to stop missiles targeting Guam.

It's a sober fact that military relations on the peninsula remain in conventional deterrence. Nothing about the nuclear posturing of the North or the reality of nuclear forces changes this equation. It just adds to the potential calculus of lost lives, lost investments, and guilt and shame following any attack. The key players don't want peace enough, and they haven't the means to stop the North without unacceptable costs and death.

So what's up with Trump and Kim Jong-un? I've written a lot about the North Korean leader up until now, so this column focuses on Trump. The answer is that Trump is what American culture used to call "a dodger."

Aaron Copeland recorded a famous 19th century folk song, "The Dodger", sung by William Warfield. "Yes, the candidate's a dodger, yes, a well-known dodger, yes, the candidate's a dodger, and I'm a dodger too." It adds, "He'll meet you and treat you, and ask you for your vote. But look out boys, he's a dodgin' for your note . . ."

The dodger lies (artfully) to get what he wants. Trump wants to keep pressure on the North and China. He's threatened the North with annihilation. He's threatened to penalize countries doing business with the North. He wants China to do more to hem in the North. His actions have had some impact, with China agreeing to close or end businesses in the North.

Trump uses rhetoric to pressure allies and cause Kim to lose face. In doing so, he masks a strategic goal to keep the current world order. His gambit is to gain more Chinese and allied investments and relieve fiscal burdens on the U.S.A.

Trump probably thinks he's winning this game; look for him to tell more whoppers. It's a dangerous game because the North's power depends on the kinds of dodging Trump's rhetorical world masquerades. It's also dangerous because if someone calls his bluff, his dodge will look weak. Let's see if Trump follows through on his threats in application to Russia. That 20th century bad boy just gave Big Brother a support for Internet crimes with the TransTeleCom link.

Trump's not a good dodger, and his actions will decrease American power on the side of credibility in the short-term. More critical long-term capability losses will occur if his policies aren't reversed.

Trump shortchanged his grandchildren and millions of others by jettisoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership and associated global investments. He's not much of a trade negotiator, infrastructure builder, or anything more than a posturing global apprentice.

Warily take heart, friends of Korea. Trump's a dodger, not a fighter. He won't attack I say.

Bernard Rowan (browan10@yahoo.com) is associate provost for contract administration and professor of political science at Chicago State University. He is a past fellow of the Korea Foundation and former visiting professor at Hanyang University.
Seen is Korean red ginseng extract, iPass. / Courtesy of Korea Ginseng Corp.

Red ginseng has long been regarded here as one of the essential gifts for students, who take the annual state-administered college entrance exam around the middle of November.

In Korea, most test-takers have difficulty focusing on their studies in August, 100 days before the exam, although it is the most important time for them.

Red ginseng can help those who are tired because of long periods of preparation for the test.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety recognized red ginseng for its efficacy in overcoming fatigue, strengthening immunity and enhancing memory.

One of the most popular red ginseng products is iPass H.

Since CheongKwanJang, the country's top-tier red ginseng brand, introduced the product in 2001 for teenagers, iPass has maintained its popularity among test-takers.

The product is made with Korea Ginseng Corp.'s (KGC) six-year-old red ginseng extract.

KGC said CheongKwanJang's red ginseng products undergo seven inspections on 290 elements throughout the manufacturing process.

The company said the safety inspection allows consumers to trust in its red ginseng products.

In addition to test-takers, many foreign tourists also acknowledge CheongKwanJang's red ginseng products as a health tonic representing Korea. They think they have to buy the products during their visit to Korea.

According to KGC, CheongKwanJang's products are available in 60 countries worldwide, including China, Taiwan and the United States. This is because of the growing demand for made-in-Korea products, following the popularity of Korean culture in other countries, the company said.



(Advertorial)
University Art Gallery (UAG) at UC San Diego is still open and going strong. It has exhibition funds for the 2017-2018 academic year, but after that, its fate is uncertain. The Visual Arts Department took steep budget cuts this year, and administration is pushing to turn the gallery into a classroom.

For more than 50 years, UAG was the only place you could see important contemporary work. Over the years, many show openings were packed with La Jolla art-lovers. Coming to see the current show, Provoking Change: A Visual Arts Alumni Exhibition, and signing the guest book is a good way to acknowledge UAGs longstanding value and contributions to our community and culture. Provoking Change will be on display through Dec. 7.

Visual Arts MFA alumnus David Avalos returned to show his work, inviting in his entire extended family to the opening night reception, Oct. 12. Avalos spent most of his time retaking photographs of his nieces and nephews, which he first shot 25 years ago for his mis*ce*ge*Nation Project

Exhibit curator Tatiana Sizonenko tirelessly explained the works on display to all who were curious. This show celebrates some 16 artists who came to study at UCSD from the early 1970s through the 1990s, she said. They all shared a desire to foster change by challenging the avant-garde canon of the 60s. They made art that introduced multicultural voices, pointed out womens under-representation in the arts, and revealed the pressing histories of immigration, class and racism.

The show includes a colorful couch and wall hanging titled Turkish Delight, by Kim MacConnel, and a large blue wall shroud Big Blue Chador, by Robert Kushner  both pioneers of the Pattern and Decoration Movement. Also in the show are two paintings characterized by layered brushstrokes and drippy paint, from Hung Liu; a huge canvas of cows in a field, depicting the environmental impact of the agro business by Jean Lowe; and two paintings of family members by Heidi Hardin.

There are also two photo-text installations by Fred Lonidier and Allan Sekula, plus a pile of canvas-covered foam automobile tires by Brian Dick, who at one time turned his car and his room at home into art projects for public viewing. Dick, like a lot of artists in the show, was just following Allen Kaprow, founder of art happenings, with the dictum to turn art into life and life into art.

In the back viewing room, theres a video loop running titled Waiting at the Soda Fountain, by Susan Mogul. Its a feminist parody of being discovered in Hollywood.

Eli Eshel, a senior in the computer science department who works for the art department, served as the reception attendant. I really like this show because of the diversity of creative media platforms  there is video, wall hangings, textual material, paintings, photographs and sculpture, he said. Other guests nodded in agreement.

Two events related to the exhibition are planned in the gallery: Artist Susan Mogul will present Pomp and Circumstance, Art & Life, 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7 and Becky Cohen will screen her film, She is Fierce: The Art of Joyce Cutler-Shaw, 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 14. Cutler-Shaw was the first Artist-in-Residence at UCSD School of Medicine.

IF YOU GO: UAG is on the west end of Mandeville Center on UCSD campus and is open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday. Free Admission. (858) 822-7755. uag.ucsd.edu
Minister of Foreign Affairs Tilak Marapana attended the Seventeenth Council of Ministers Meeting (COM) of the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) in Durban, South Africa, on 18 October 2017.

The Meeting marked the commencement of the two year period of South Africas leadership of IORA as its Chair for the period 2017- 2019. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also assumed its position as the Vice Chair which will enable it to become the next Chair of IORA in 2019. The Meeting was attended by Ministers and representatives from the 21 IORA member states and seven Dialogue Partners; China, Egypt, Japan, France, Germany, the UK and the USA.

The Ministers taking guidance from the Jakarta Concord issued by the Heads of State/ Government in March 2017 in Indonesia at the 20th Anniversary Leaders Summit focused on implementing the Action Plan endorsed by the leaders. The meeting also focused on increasing the engagement with the Dialogue Partners for a meaningful cooperation in advancing the objectives of the IORA.

Addressing the Meeting, Foreign Minister Marapana highlighted the vitality of the Indian Ocean for the progress of the region and the need to strengthen cooperation among the IORA member countries. He pointed out the importance of freedom of navigation as a historic norm that needs to be upheld by all littoral states, if the opportunities provided by the Indian Ocean are to be harnessed for the mutual benefit of all. Elaborating further, Minister Marapana stressed on the requirement for developing an Indian Ocean Order that would provide a set of rules and conditions for the peaceful engagement and interactions between IORA member countries, based on the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. He added that it will be an arrangement for mutual convenience to strengthen the IORA unity, togetherness and cooperation, in order to ensure the freedom of navigation and unimpeded lawful maritime commerce and over-flight in the Indian Ocean.

The Minister also proposed to the meeting of the Ministers to establish an Indian Ocean Development Fund by IORA, to craft the necessary financial armory for the future of the Indian Ocean rim nations.

Minister Marapana conveyed Sri Lankas support to the proposed Working Group on Maritime Safety and Security, one of the six priority areas of IORA. The Meeting approved Sri Lanka as the lead coordinating country for Maritime Safety and Security Working Group with a task to ensure progress is made under this important priority area of IORA.

The Minister also presented Sri Lankas proposal to be the Chair of IORA, for the period 2021  2023 and thereby to become the Vice-Chair from 2019-2021. The Council welcomed the proposals which will be submitted to the member countries for consideration.

As an outcome document the Meeting of Council of Ministers, the IORA Ministers adopted the Durban Communique which provided further impetus to the ongoing projects and work plans in IORA. The Ministerial Meeting was preceded by Senior Officials Meeting and other meetings related to investment and trade and the academic group.

Courtesy : www.mfa.gov.lk

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Colombo

21 October 2017
PRESS RELEASE

Jimmy Carter Defends Trump; Offers To Mediate with North Korea

Oct. 23, 2017 (EIRNS)In an interview in the New York Times Sunday Review section yesterday, former President Jimmy Carter defended the embattled Donald Trump to a rather perplexed Maureen Dowd. Speaking as one who knows, Carter surprised her, saying,

"I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other President certainly that Ive known about. I think they feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation."

Specifically, on the Russia-gate charges, Carter said, "I dont think theres any evidence that what the Russians did changed enough votes, or any votes."

Carters main point throughout the interview, was that he was ready to make a mission to North Korea, should Trump want him to. Having talked to Trump National Security Advisor McMaster already, Carter said, "I told him I was available if they need me." When Dowd tried to imply that it was Trump who had escalated the crisis, he cut her short, saying, "Im afraid, too, of a situationI dont know what theyll do. Because they want to save their regime." Elaborating, Carter continued,

"We greatly overestimate Chinas influence on North Korea. Particularly to Kim Jong-un. Hes never, so far as I know, been to China. And they have no relationship. Kim Jong-il [Kim Jong-uns grandfather, whom Carter met with as President] did go to China and was very close to them."

What probably got Dowd the most, however, was that, "Carter was harder on Obama during the interview than he was on Trump." Further,
PRESS RELEASE

China, Russia Warn Europe and U.S.: Your Anti-Nation-State Policies Are Coming Back To Haunt You

Oct. 23, 2017 (EIRNS)As expected, the long-festering separatist drive of the Basque region of Spain has now been piled onto the Catalonia crisis. Inigo Urkullu, president of the Basque Autonomous Community, writing in the London Guardian today, called upon the European Union to move in to oversee negotiations on a new Spanish "plurinational" nation, in the name of "self-determination" and "democracy." Like the Catalan separatists, Urkullu swore allegiance to the supranational project of the dying EU paradigm.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had warned in his speech to the Valdai Forum last week, that "the situation in Spain clearly shows how fragile stability can be even in a prosperous and established state," pointing to the deliberate decision after the collapse of the Soviet Union to let "the genie of European internal division" out of the bottle as a driving force in todays crisis.

"In the case of Catalonia, we saw the European Union and a number of other states unanimously condemn the supporters of independence.... [M]ore thought should have gone into this earlier. What, no one was aware of these centuries-old disagreements in Europe? They knew, did they not? However, at one time they basically welcomed the disintegration of a number of states in Europe, without hiding their joy on this matter,"

citing Kosovo, in particular. Putin warned that such double standards "pose serious danger to the stable development of Europe and other continents, and to the advancement of integration processes across the world."

Similarly, in an editorial statement today, Chinas Global Times, which reflects official policy, pointed to the role of the Wests "democracy" double-standards in creating the Catalan separatist crisis, and calls on Europe to "wake up:"
PRESS RELEASE

Infrastructure in Puerto RicoChoice Is Clear

Oct. 23, 2017 (EIRNS)When Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello met on Oct. 18 in Washington with President Donald Trump, the President made a number of clear commitments on Puerto Ricos power infrastructure. He told the Governor,

"I know you were talking about rebuilding your electric plant long before the hurricane; youve been wanting to do that for a long time. So maybe this is a reason that we can do it. And well help you and well all do it together."

Trump said further,

I dont want to just fix polesyou cant just fix the poles. We have to build a brand-new plant. Or we have to do, essentially, a renovation thats so large, its going to be like a brand-new plantone or the other. Were looking at both right now."

Trump said that he had asked Congress to make a "plan and payment plan... Because you are talking about some substantial numbers."

This stands in contrast to the very restricted mandate of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which was reiterated last week by Jose Sanchez of the Army Corps of Engineers, in an interview with E&E News. He said, "Our mission assignment from FEMA, under this emergency response, is to repair the grid." Sanchez said, "It is not to rebuild the grid, it is not to augment the grid or to strengthen the grid."

The Army Corps has received $577 million for this, no more. FEMA awarded a $240 million contract to Fluor Corp. of Irving, Texas, for grid repairs. The Army Corps has placed an initial $115 million order for supplies and materials that includes more than 50,000 concrete, galvanized steel, and wood utility poles, and 6,500 miles of transmission and distribution line cable.

As of Oct. 20, there were 148 large generators installed, with another 280 on hand on the island, and another 130 coming in, for a total goal of 400 to 500 installed, according to Army Corps Commander Lt. Gen. Todd To Semonite, at his briefing at the Pentagon.

What this adds up toeven when complete, which is many weeks offremains in the realm of emergency response and "stabilization," not building modern power infrastructure for Puerto Rico.
PRESS RELEASE

Trump: FBI Should Immediately State Who Paid for the Discredited Dossier

Oct. 23, 2017 (EIRNS)On Oct. 21, President Donald Trump tweeted that "Officials behind the now discredited Dossier plead the Fifth. Justice Department and/or FBI should immediately release who paid for it." The message refers to the two partners of Washington dirt-firm Fusion GPS, Fritch and Catan, who complied (under protest) to appear in person before the House Intelligence Committee, but then pleaded the Fifth Amendment, to not answer anything about their clients, financing, and other details concerning their projectthe anti-Trump 2016 dossier, which Fusion commissioned from "ex"-British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. A third Fusion GPS partner, Glenn Simpson, is supposed to testify to the House Committee in November, but when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee some weeks ago, he, too refused to provide any dossier information.

Meanwhile, Fusion GPS is fighting to prevent its bank, TD Bank of Washington, D.C., from supplying financial records of Fusion, which have been subpoenaed by the House Committee. Fusion GPS filed an injunction on Oct. 20 against the House subpoena. The judge handling the case, has given Fusion GPS until this Wednesday to produce documents and arguments for why TD Bank should not comply. The Judge gave the House Committee until today to reply to Fusions injunction motion.

At the same time, Senate Judiciary is demanding to know whether Fusion GPS gave the dossier to British Intelligence, as well as who paid for it. This is crucial to the United Kingdom's MI6 secret intelligence agency providing the "credibility" to the dossier, which otherwise had only Glenn Simpson as a source, whose record was not credible.
Lockheed Martins interest in a San Diego start-up shows how big aerospace companies are pushing the drone revolution out to sea.

Lockheed Martin Ventures last month invested an undisclosed amount in San Diego-based Ocean Aero  a 25-employee start-up that is developing the Submaran, a solar- and wind-powered ocean drone capable of operating above and below the surface.

The ability to be environmentally powered allows us to maneuver at great persistence because its renewable, said Eric Patten, chief executive of Ocean Aero and a former Navy officer. And then to be able to transition that vehicle from the surface to a sub-surface vehicle that has significant capability under water, that is truly unique.

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Lockheed Martin Venture typically invests $1 million to $5 million in young companies.

Ocean Aero represents the next generation of environmentally powered autonomous systems, said Chris Moran, executive director of Lockheed Martin Ventures, in a statement. Our investment will allow us to better respond to customers maritime needs with technology solutions for a diverse set of missions.

Lockheed isnt alone in betting on ocean drones. Last year, Boeing bought a Bay Area start-up, Liquid Robotics, which is developing unmanned submarine technology. General Dynamics and L3 Technologies also have acquired ocean unmanned systems firms over the last 18 months.

The U.S. military has plans to invest as much as $3 billion into undersea systems over the coming years, according to a report last year by the Washington Post.

Blue tech for the maritime defense sector feels like where clean tech was a decade ago, said Greg Murphy, executive director of the Maritime Alliance, a San Diego trade group for the blue tech industry. There is momentum. The Navy is increasingly using autonomous systems, and the large defense contractors are starting to buy up smaller blue tech companies that are developing systems.

Boeing and Lockheed recently were named finalists in the U.S. Navys Orca Extra-Large Unmanned Underwater vehicle project, which aims to develop big submersible drones capable of handling long-distance missions with significant payloads.

Ocean Aero is not part of Lockheeds work on the Orca project. But the companies are working together more generally on underwater drone technology, said Patten.

Last year, Lockheed partnered with Ocean Aero for a technology demonstration at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, R.I. A version of Ocean Aeros Submaran patrolled the surface above a Lockheed undersea drone  the Marlin  providing communications gateway from the shore to the submerged vessel. The link between the shore and the Submaran used radio frequency technology; the link between the Submaran and the Marlin used acoustic communications.

That communications gateway mission is critical for a ton of folks, said Patten. Defense is great use case, but commercial use cases are just the same. If you are operating a wind farm off the coast and you have things underneath the surface and you want to communicate with that equipment, there are only a couple of ways to do it.

Ocean Aero, which is also backed by Teledyne Technologies, makes three different drones. Its S10 Submaran is a 14-foot-long craft with an 8-foot solar/wind wing. It can dive about 30 feet and glide underwater, and its rechargeable lithium batteries allow it to spend months at sea. It targets the research and commercial markets.

A sister vessel is the same size but can dive 660 feet and maneuver under the surface.

Ocean Aeros big boat, called the Silent Aero, is 40 feet long, can dive 660 feet and carry a payload of 2,000 pounds.

About two years ago, Ocean Aero received a Department of Defense Rapid Innovation Fund grant to develop a hybrid unmanned underwater/surface vehicle that can travel long distances on the surface and then submerge to avoid surface traffic and conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations.

In terms of robotics in the oceans, you can do things faster, cheaper and more efficiently, said Murphy. You can have robots out at sea collecting data, searching for things that shouldnt be in the water and would present problems for the United States, or trying to find data where you want to have a covert operations.

Freeman writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

mike.freeman@sduniontribune.com
Lord & Taylors flagship store in Manhattan, known for its holiday displays along Fifth Avenue, is being sold to the office-space-sharing company WeWork.

The nearly 100-year-old building will be converted to WeWork headquarters, with room remaining for a Lord & Taylor store. WeWork attracts millennials who are looking to share office space, a consumer segment that Hudsons Bay and other department stores want to attract. So executives expect the stores to benefit from WeWork members going in and out of the building, and hopes theyll be shopping.

Lord & Taylor will keep the whole building with its usual operations through next years holiday season. The $850-million sale, announced Tuesday, is part of a plan by Hudsons Bay Co., which owns Lord & Taylor, to pare down debt and reinvigorate sales.

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Richard Baker, chairman of Hudsons Bay, told the Associated Press that WeWork will also lease space in the upper floors in three of the company main stores  Hudsons Bay stores in Toronto and Vancouver, as well as its Galeria Kaufhof in Frankfurt, Germany.

Department stores have been struggling to follow their customers online, with many closing stores and selling lucrative real estate. Big chains including Macys had been under pressure from shareholders to get more value out of their real estate holdings. The Hudsons Bay deal with WeWork is a change in how retailers are trying to capitalize on their real estate.

We definitely think there is a future for department stores for people who reinvest in the business, Baker said.

On Friday, Hudsons Bay had said that Chief Executive Jerry Storch would step down at the end of the month. Toronto-based Hudsons Bay owns stores under its own brand as well as Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks Off 5th.
To raise funding for maintenance and repairs, the National Park Service said Tuesday it is considering raising vehicle entrance fees by up to 180% at the nations most popular parks during the peak visiting season.

Under the plan to raise funding to fix roads, bridges, campgrounds and bathrooms, the federal agency is proposing a $70 fee for each private, noncommercial vehicle  up from the current fares of $25 to $30, depending on the park. The fee for a motorcycle would more than double to $50 from the current $15 to $25. Visitors on foot or bicycle would pay $30, up from the $10 to $15.

The annual pass for all federal lands would remain $80.

The increase at 17 of the nations most popular parks would generate an extra $70 million a year over the $200 million now collected annually from entrance fees, the parks agency estimated. The 17 parks would include Yosemite, Joshua Tree, Yellowstone, Zion, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

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The infrastructure of our national parks is aging and in need of renovation and restoration, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement.

The National Park Service will accept public comment on the proposal until Nov. 23 at the parks public comment website. Under the proposal, fees for commercial vehicles entering the parks would also rise. The increases could go into effect as soon as next spring.

On social media, the proposal received a mixed response, with opponents saying the increase would keep low-income Americans out of the most popular parks. Supporters of the idea said the fee increases are needed to maintain parks that are overrun by crowds.

This is going to the impact lower income families way harder, Ian Coggins wrote on the National Park Services Facebook page. Accommodations at Yosemite are already prohibitively expensive, and this will pretty much limit those making day trips who dont have a lot of cash to spare.

Jim Bray of Orange disagreed, posting on the website: The amount of litter has increased over the years as people show less concern and respect for the parks. So charge extra so they can hire more people to clean and maintain the parks.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter.
Twitter Inc. has been lambasted by lawmakers for not doing enough to stop bots and anonymous ads from spreading propaganda and misinformation on its platform.

On Tuesday, the San Francisco social media company took a major step to address at least one of those problems.

Twitter will launch what its calling an Advertising Transparency Center that will disclose for the first time a list of all ads running on Twitter to all users, details on how long each ad has been running for, other campaigns associated with any given ad, and which ads are being targeted at you.

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The disclosures go even further for political advertising, requiring the disclosure of who is paying for an ad, who its targeted toward, and historical data about electioneering ad spending by the advertiser.

The move comes as pressure is growing from Washington to police social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook.

Unlike traditional media, platforms such as Twitter are not required to disclose backers of political ads. That became a thorny subject after investigators found Russian operatives bought ads on Facebook and Twitter to further divide the U.S. electorate during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Senate Democrats Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mark Warner of Virginia unveiled legislation last week called the Honest Ads Act, which would make political ads on social media subject to the same rules as on traditional media.

A good first step, particularly public disclosure of ads info. Online political ads need more transparency & disclosure, Warner said in a tweet.

The new move by Twitter still doesnt address what some consider a bigger problem: the spread of bots.

Last month, Twitter told lawmakers that it found at least 200 Russian-linked bot accounts used to inflame tensions and support Donald Trump for president. Experts, however, believe the number to be much higher. One study estimated that 20% of election-related tweets originated from bot accounts.

Its crucial that we separate paid promotions from user-generated content here, David Carroll, a new media professor at New York Citys New School said of the difference between Twitters bot problem and ad transparency.

Its easy to see how theyre getting conflated in this debate around the Kremlin information operations, but we must untangle them, especially when we consider regulatory action, he added.

Facebook has also pledged to issue new transparency rules for its political ads in the coming months.

david.pierson@latimes.com

Follow me @dhpierson on Twitter
Gem of the Ocean may not rank at the top of August Wilsons plays, but anyone doubting the soul-shaking power of this drama should brave Orange County traffic to see this wrenching new revival at South Coast Repertory.

Many will remember the 2003 Mark Taper Forum production that moved the following year to Broadway (where I first saw it), earning Phylicia Rashad a Tony nomination for her seismic performance as Aunt Ester, the former slave who is making the most of her freedom as a gatherer of strays and cleanser of souls. L. Scott Caldwell is just as memorable in the role, which she makes completely her own in Kent Gashs folksier staging.

As with nearly all the works in the playwrights 10-play cycle, Gem of the Ocean is set in Pittsburghs Hill District. The year is 1904. The play was written after the indisputable masterpieces Fences and Joe Turners Come and Gone, but it occupies the first slot in Wilsons decade-by-decade exploration of 20th century African American life.

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Slavery is still a living memory for the characters. Solly Two Kings (the astounding Cleavant Derricks), Esters devoted suitor, carries with him a piece of the chain that used to be around his ankle. A former Underground Railroad conductor, he is looked down upon by some for peddling fertilizer he obtains by picking up after dogs, but he carries himself with the ferocious dignity of a freedom fighter.

The play is about the unfulfilled promise of emancipation and the struggle, both internal and external, to press forward in the cause of social justice. Citizen Barlow (Preston Butler III), an anxious young man from Alabama, arrives at Esters doorstep after being told that this is where people come when they need their souls washed. Burdened by criminal guilt, he continues to wait outside even after Eli (Matt Orduna), the sentinel of Esters peaceful house, tells him to call again in a few days time.

Gem is closest in situation to Joe Turners Come and Gone, another drama about a broken wanderer in need of mending before he can be placed on the path of an awakened life. The community of characters drawn to Esters place of refuge includes Black Mary (Shinelle Azoroh), who tends to the cooking and the housekeeping, and Rutherford Selig (Hal Landon Jr.), a white traveling peddler who soaks in the hospitality.

Caesar (Arnell Powell), Black Marys fiery brother, is a local constable who takes great pride in brutally enforcing the law. His name tells you all you need to know about his relationship to power. When he darkens Esters door, the household stiffens. He claims to stand against crime and chaos, but his method of justice is its own form of violence.

Uproar at the local mill has Caesar on the lookout for trouble. A man unjustly accused of stealing a bucket of nails drowned himself in the river rather than spend time in jail, and the workers are threatening to strike in protest. Citizen, whom Ester has taken in as a boarder, listens anxiously to the news. Suspicious of strangers, Caesar grills the newcomer on his means of employment, but doesnt yet know that Citizen, whose name his mother bestowed to commemorate freedom, had a role in the turmoil at the mill.

Wilson is what Id call a wisdom writer. His plays are so rich in human experience and so profound in the connections they draw between the private and the public, the past and the present and the psychological and the spiritual that they cant help speaking to us as a moral guide.

Ritual is central to Wilsons playwriting: His dramas record the routines and manners of a culture typically shown in secondary relationship to white society. In Gem, a theatrical ceremony resembling a sacrament is performed to cleanse Citizens soul. Ester, who has an intuitive grasp of what those around her need to evolve, gathers her troops to take this lost young man, who reminds her of her dead son, on a mystical sea voyage to the City of the Bones, where their ancestors lie.

On an envisioned ship called the Gem of the Ocean, Citizen relives the trauma of the Middle Passage. Ester is establishing his place in history and giving him the opportunity to discover something at the center of his life beyond the crime that weighs so heavily on his conscience. She helps him expiate his guilt by contextualizing it in the story of his people.

In a voice that resounds like a prophets, Caldwells Ester leads Citizen back in time to the bottom of the sea and from there to the root of his spiritual being. Her power is boosted by the presence of Derricks Solly, whose voice echoes down the corridors of history with the sound of divine reckoning. (Derricks, who also serves as the productions music director, speaks in a kind of rousing religious song.) The priestly ministrations of these two unforgettable performers compel every audience member to undergo Citizens journey.

Gashs staging, which incorporates distractingly contemporizing projections between scenes, has a few weaknesses. Azoroh can seem disengaged in the early going, but she comes alive as Black Marys anger rises. And there were moments when I doubted whether Butler possessed the gravity needed to bring Citizen fully to life, though he ultimately succeeds through the strength of Wilsons writing and the intensity of the other actors.

Although the exposition can seem lumpy at times, the play here convinces as both realism and allegory. Powells Caesar is a believably formidable foil, and the character relationships, a reflection of the connections among cast members, deepen over time.

Wilsons words call us to a higher accounting of what is true and just. What is your life worth, Mr. Citizen? Ester thunderously asks. That what you got to find out. You got to find a way to live in truth.

Gem of the Ocean exhorts us to meet the responsibility of truth that citizenship demands  a message that has only grown in urgency since Wilson wrote this grandly ambitious, devastatingly moving play.

         

Gem of the Ocean

Where: South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays; ends Nov. 11

Tickets: $31-$83

Info: (714) 708-5555 or www.scr.org

Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes

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Lupita Nyongo relates her story of inappropriate Harvey Weinstein encounters

Lupita Nyongo with her Oscar after winning Best Actress for 12 Years a Slave at the 86th Annual Academy Awards. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

With stories about women allegedly harassed by Harvey Weinstein surfacing all around her, Oscar winner Lupita Nyongo decided she couldnt keep her own story squashed down any longer.

She thought the things that had happened were unique to her, not a larger pattern of what she on Thursday called sinister behavior. She blamed herself for much of it.

I had shelved my experience with Harvey far in the recesses of my mind, joining in the conspiracy of silence that has allowed this predator to prowl for so many years, Nyongo wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times.

The 12 Years a Slave actress was still at Yale School of Drama when she and Weinstein crossed paths at a 2011 awards ceremony in Berlin, where he was introduced to the then-aspiring actress as the most powerful producer in Hollywood. Dinner companions told her he was a good man to know in the biz, but someone to be careful around because he could be a bully, she wrote.

The interactions that followed between her and the producer went back and forth between seemingly appropriate and uncomfortably inappropriate, Nyongo said.

The invitation to screen a movie with Weinstein and his children at his Connecticut home turned into a restaurant lunch where he tried to bully her into drinking alcohol, she wrote, followed by him cutting short her viewing of the movie after 15 minutes and taking her to his bedroom where he offered to give her a massage. She said she flipped the situation around.

I began to massage his back to buy myself time to figure out how to extricate myself from this undesirable situation, the actress said. Then he wanted to take off his pants, she wrote.

He couldnt make it to see a production she was in, but invited her to bring anyone she wanted to see a staged reading of Finding Neverland, one of his. Dinner followed, with her friends relegated to a non-Harvey table.

The talk was shop the whole time and Harvey held court with ease. He was charming and funny once more, and I felt confused about the discomfort I had previously experienced, Nyongo said.

Lupita Nyongo accepts the supporting actress Academy Award for her work in 12 Years a Slave on March 2, 2014. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

A couple of months later, he invited her to a screening of W.E. followed by a trip to the Tribeca Grill, which she said she assumed would be another group meal. It was not. His assistants, she said, had seemed uncomfortable as they set up the logistics with her.

Before the starters arrived, he announced: Lets cut to the chase. I have a private room upstairs where we can have the rest of our meal. I was stunned, Nyongo wrote. I told him I preferred to eat in the restaurant. He told me not to be so naive. If I wanted to be an actress, then I had to be willing to do this sort of thing. He said he had dated Famous Actress X and Y and look where that had gotten them.

She declined, and his tone changed, she said. As he escorted her out, sans meal, she checked in with him to make sure they were still good after shed said no.

His response, according to the actress: I dont know about your career, but youll be fine, he said. It felt like both a threat and a reassurance at the same time; of what, I couldnt be sure.

They didnt cross paths again until the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, which she was attending in support of 12 Years a Slave.

At an after-party, he found me and evicted whoever was sitting next to me to sit beside me, she wrote. He said he couldnt believe how fast I had gotten to where I was, and that he had treated me so badly in the past. He was ashamed of his actions and he promised to respect me moving forward. I said thank you and left it at that. But I made a quiet promise to myself to never ever work with Harvey Weinstein.

Our business is complicated because intimacy is part and parcel of our profession; as actors we are paid to do very intimate things in public. Thats why someone can have the audacity to invite you to their home or hotel and you show up.  Lupita Nyongo

The following year, after her Oscar win, he tried to get her in one of his films, showering her with talk of a star-vehicle film in the offing for her later if shed first take a role in a Weinstein Co. movie shed already turned down. She held firm.

When she first met the now-disgraced producer, she wrote, she was entering into a community that Harvey Weinstein had been in, and even shaped, long before I got there. He was one of the first people I met in the industry, and he told me, This is the way it is. And wherever I looked, everyone seemed to be bracing themselves and dealing with him, unchallenged.

Since then, she said, she hasnt encountered treatment like that from anyone else. Still, she talked about the often-blurry lines in the workplace known as Hollywood.

Our business is complicated because intimacy is part and parcel of our profession; as actors we are paid to do very intimate things in public, wrote Nyongo, who is now 34. Thats why someone can have the audacity to invite you to their home or hotel and you show up. Precisely because of this we must stay vigilant and ensure that the professional intimacy is not abused.
The Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda operates in such a delicately restrained register that his films are often mischaracterized as being more or less the same  visually modest, emotionally perceptive family dramas in which the specters of death, loss and abandonment are never distant.

While that description certainly applies to several of the pictures he has directed over his 26-year career, including Still Walking (2009), Our Little Sister (2015) and this years superb After the Storm, one of Kore-edas hallmarks as a filmmaker is his ability to locate startling dramatic nuance and tonal variation within a seemingly narrow range. Without raising his voice, he has demonstrated, in film after quietly remarkable film, that he has a great deal to say.

You get some sense of that scope in this weeks partial Kore-eda retrospective presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Yanai Initiative, in association with the Japan Foundation, Los Angeles; the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; and the USC School of Cinematic Arts. (The series kicked off last week with Death of a Japanese Salesman, a 2011 documentary directed by Mami Sunada and produced by Kore-eda.)

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The first of the five Kore-eda-directed films in the program is the devastating Nobody Knows (2004), which will screen Wednesday night. (The filmmaker will be in attendance at every screening except the Sunday night showing of Air Doll.) Loosely inspired by a grim 1988 case in which four young Japanese children were found living by themselves in the apartment where they had been abandoned by their mother, Nobody Knows has the wrenching yet strangely captivating quality of a neorealist horror film. It captures the cruelty of an experience no kid should have to endure without entirely leaving childhood wonderment behind.

The films ripped-from-the-headlines story and patient, observational style are a testament to Kore-edas roots in realism, starting with the television documentaries he directed in the 90s. One of these, However   (1991), an investigation into Japans welfare system told through the prism of two suicide cases, had a clear impact on his 1995 narrative debut, Maborosi, a hauntingly beautiful portrait of a woman named Yumiko (Makiko Esumi) who is grappling with the impact of her husbands untimely and inexplicable death.

Seen again today, Maborosi further confounds the conventional wisdom of what a Kore-eda picture looks like. Its a ghost story of sorts, in which reality blurs gently into dream, and gorgeous seaside landscapes play like snapshots of a troubled consciousness. In its sense of crucial things left unstated, of the past forever bearing down on a deceptively serene present, the movie has some of the poetic distance exemplified by the Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, one of Kore-edas acknowledged filmmaking idols.

Ghosts of a more emphatic sort walk the hallways and offices of a 20th century way station for the dead in After Life (1998). A story about how the newly deceased are tasked with choosing the one memory that they will be allowed to carry with them for all eternity, this is Kore-eda at his most elaborately high-concept. It remains, for many, the filmmakers greatest achievement, a picture in which the bureaucratic drabness of the setting heightens rather than diminishes the otherworldly profundity of its conceit.

That paradox extends to the scenes of the dead sharing their memories, which are all the more poignant and persuasive for being shot in direct-to-camera interview style. The mix of the grounded and the would-be sublime doesnt come off nearly as effectively in 2009s Air Doll, a wistful, intermittently beguiling fantasy that contemplates loneliness and existential malaise from the perspective of a plastic inflatable sex toy come to life (played by the terrific South Korean actress Doona Bae).

Much more fondly remembered from that year is Still Walking, which follows a bittersweet family reunion to mark the 15th anniversary of a sons death. Featuring excellent performances by Kirin Kiki and Hiroshi Abe as a mother and son (a character dynamic they would later reprise in After the Storm), it shows the filmmakers mastery at embedding his drama in the rhythms and rituals of everyday life.

Kore-eda has often been compared to the great Yasujiro Ozu, a compliment that he has tended to wave aside in interviews, noting that he feels a greater affinity for the lesser-known Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse. There are elements of both masters work in Still Walking, but the movie is, if anything, even more deeply shaped by Kore-edas own experience: He wrote the script shortly after his mothers death, and steeped it in richly atmospheric details drawn from his own childhood.

In the end, as with all Kore-edas finest films, this intimate triumph doesnt feel personal to its maker alone. It opens a window onto a world that may seem foreign in its particulars, but proves entirely recognizable in every way that matters.

------------

Hirokazu Kore-eda: Cinema From the Outside In

Tickets and info

Nobody Knows: Oct. 25, 7 p.m., Ray Stark Family Theatre at USC (Kore-eda in attendance; free admission)

After Life: Oct. 26, 9:30 p.m., Downtown Independent Theater (Kore-eda in attendance; $12)

Still Walking: Oct. 27, 7:30 p.m., Billy Wilder Theater (Kore-eda in attendance; $9)

Maborosi: Oct. 28, 7:30 p.m., Billy Wilder Theater (Kore-eda in attendance; $9)

Air Doll: Oct. 29, 7 p.m., Billy Wilder Theater ($9)

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour 

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justin.chang@latimes.com

@JustinCChang
The triple digit heat may not feel like fall, but its officially Halloween season. Which means Dia de los Muertos, also known as the Day of the Dead, is coming. The Mexican holiday, meant to remember friends and family who have died, begins Oct. 31 (Halloween), and ends November 2. Here are some places around town with specials. Wherever you go, please celebrate responsibly.

Hollywood Forever Day of the Dead celebration

The Hollywood cemetery is holding its 18th annual Day of the Dead celebration Saturday. Each year, the cemetery is filled with elaborate altars to loved ones lost, people dressed up in elaborate costume, and plenty of food. This year, some of the participating vendors include the Tamale Shoppe, from mother-and-daughter team Patricia Mendoza Lugo and Irene Martinez; downtown L.A.s Pez Cantina; aguas frescas specialist Agua Lucha; and ice cream makers Icy Rush Co. The event is from noon to midnight, and tickets are available online at hollywoodforever.ticketfly.com. 6000 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles.

Mole at Guelaguetza

The Lopez family, owners of the Oaxacan restaurant Guelaguetza in Koreatown, will set up an altar at the restaurant to honor loved ones who have died. You can view the altar and order some of the restaurants lauded mole (there are six kinds), and a couple very good micheladas. 3014 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 427-0608, www.ilovemole.com.

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Cocktails at Fig in Santa Monica

Fig, the restaurant at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, is serving spicy cocktails and Mexican-inspired dishes for the holiday. The Inferno, a drink that includes red pepper-infused tequila; a butternut squash pizza with chorizo, queso Oaxaca and caramelized onion; a tres leches cake and more specials will be available from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2. The specials can be ordered from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. 101 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 319-3111, www.figsantamonica.com.

Tequila party in Downtown L.A.

Tequila brand Cazadores is throwing a Dia de los Muertos party Nov. 1 at Exchange L.A. in Downtown L.A. The party will feature Day of the Dead-themed Cazadores tequila cocktails by bartender Manny Hinojosa. There will also be a mariachi band and body and face painting stations. The event will take place from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. To RSVP, visit cazacalaverala.splashthat.com. 618 S. Spring St., Los Angeles.

Jenn.Harris@latimes.com

@Jenn_Harris_

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For more than two years, I have puzzled over the tragic death of Kathryn Steinle at the hands of an illegal immigrant named Jose Ines Garcia Zarate.

You may not remember Garcia Zarates name, but you surely remember Steinle, a joyful and well-traveled 32-year-old California native who became the unwitting face of the border security hysteria that drove so much of the last Republican presidential campaign.

On a soft summer evening in 2015, Garcia Zarate found a stolen gun on San Franciscos Pier 14. It went off. Steinle, who was strolling nearby, died.

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Garcia Zarate, 45, who is also known as Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, among other crimes. His immigration status and history  deported five times to Mexico, imprisoned by the feds for nearly four years for crossing back into the U.S., various drug convictions  made him the perfect foil for a country debating immigration law.

That allowed folks like Donald Trump to portray him as a depraved killer whose crimes were enabled by San Franciscos sanctuary city policy, and whose misdeeds underscored the need for a massive border wall.

But I have always been stuck on the gun. Of course, the man who pulled the trigger that cut short the promising life of an innocent young woman must be held to account. But I wonder if we are overlooking another person whose actions set the horrible chain of events in motion: the owner of the gun.

::

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, right, is led into the courtroom by San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi in July 2015 for arraignment. (Michael Macor / AP)

Garcia Zarates murder trial began Monday morning in a stuffy Hall of Justice courtroom. The judge apologized for the broken air conditioning.

This is the gun that this man fired at Kate Steinle, prosecutor Diana Garcia said as the defendant looked on, listening to a translation through headphones. She is dead because this man  pointed this gun in her direction and pulled the trigger.

I flinched for her mother, Elizabeth Sullivan, and her older brother, Brad, who were sitting in the first row of spectators.

On July 1, 2015, while strolling along the Embarcadero with her father, Garcia said, Steinle was hit by a bullet that pierced her back and ripped through her abdominal aorta. She clutched her father and both fell to the ground.

Help me, Daddy, she said. Those would be her last words.

Steinle, who had a job selling medical devices, was pronounced dead two hours later at San Francisco General Hospital.

Prosecutor Garcia told jurors that Garcia Zarate was sitting in a swiveling metal chair on Pier 14 when he fired the gun, a semiautomatic pistol.

Investigators have said that the bullet first hit the pavement 12 feet from Garcia Zarate, then ricocheted 78 feet into Steinle. No one saw the gun go off, the prosecutor said, but many people heard it.

There is grainy video, she said, that shows the moment Garcia Zarate tossed the gun into the water and walked away. When he was arrested a mile or so from Pier 14, he had gunshot residue on his hand.

Then-candidate Trump seized upon the case, calling Garcia Zarate an animal, the embodiment of the bad hombres against whom hed railed.

This senseless and totally preventable act of violence committed by an illegal immigrant is yet another example of why we must secure our border immediately, Trump said in a statement two days after Steinle died. This is an absolutely disgraceful situation, and I am the only one that can fix it.

Later, in a news release announcing a proposed Kates Law, which would stiffen penalties for immigrants crossing into the U.S. illegally, House Speaker Paul Ryan wrongly claimed that Garcia Zarate had stolen the gun used in Steinles death. As prosecutor Garcia told jurors Monday, that case has never been solved, and there is no evidence linking Garcia Zarate to the theft.

::

No one knows how Garcia Zarate got the gun.

He told police that he had found it on the pier, wrapped in a T-shirt.

His public defender, Matt Gonzalez, plans to tell jurors it went off when he began to unwrap it. Gonzalez, a former San Francisco supervisor and Ralph Naders 2008 Green Party vice-presidential running mate, will also argue the gun, a .40 caliber Sig Sauer P226, is known for its hair trigger.

I do not hold with those who claim that San Franciscos refusal to cooperate with immigration authorities is to blame for Steinles death.

As KQED reported Sunday, federal authorities could have deported Garcia Zarate after he finished his prison term in 2015, but instead turned him over to San Francisco authorities to face a 20-year-old marijuana charge that was subsequently tossed. Surely the feds were aware of San Franciscos highly publicized refusal to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Despite the political noise around this case, the jury will be asked to decide only one crucial issue: Did Garcia Zarate pull the trigger on purpose?

I find myself returning again and again to the role that Bureau of Land Management ranger John Woychowski played in this case. His irresponsibility led to a terrible chain of events.

Steinles parents have filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit, alleging that former San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, ICE and the BLM had a hand in their daughters death.

A federal judge threw out the case against Mirkarimi and ICE but allowed the lawsuit against the BLM to proceed.

According to the prosecutor, Woychowski was on his way from Southern California to a new assignment in Montana when he stopped for dinner in San Francisco. While he was away from the car, it was broken into and burgled.

A BLM review absolved Woychowski of violating its policies, according to KQED. Five months after Steinle died, he was promoted to a supervisory position.

In one of the most touristy areas of a city where drivers are constantly warned not to leave valuables in their vehicles, a federal law enforcement official left a loaded service weapon in a backpack stuffed under the front seat of his car.

This invitation to disaster was answered with an unspeakable tragedy. I would not suggest Woychowski be charged in Steinles death. But I cannot shed the feeling that he shares some moral culpability.

To read the article in Spanish, click here

robin.abcarian@latimes.com

Twitter: @AbcarianLAT

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For nearly three months, the families clung to hope as hundreds of rescuers, aided by dogs, horses and helicopters, scoured Joshua Tree National Park for two missing friends.

They must be OK, one family thought. Theyre probably just in hiding somewhere.

That hope was crushed by last weeks grim discovery: two bodies, locked in an embrace, under a tree in a steep canyon off a rugged, maze-like trail in the sprawling park about 130 miles east of Los Angeles. They had draped clothing over their lower limbs as a shield from the blazing desert sun. Each had a single gunshot wound. The weapon was found beside them.

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San Bernardino County sheriffs homicide detectives believe Joseph Orbeso, 22, shot his friend, Rachel Nguyen, 20, before turning the gun on himself. Authorities said they found no evidence that he had planned to harm her.

Nguyens aunt, Mong Ha Le, accepted that interpretation.

This is an accident, she told The Times. He tried to save her the only way he could.

Le said Orbeso was a security guard and likely brought a gun for protection.

Investigators, according to Nguyens family, have offered clues to suggest the killing was an act of compassion after a desperate attempt to survive.

They believe that Nguyen slipped and fell, hitting her head, that Orbeso carefully attended to her as they waited for help, that the two ran out of water and were rationing their food, that he tried to keep her warm and comfortable by wrapping her in his clothes.

That eventually they lost all hope and ended their lives.

Nguyen, an avid traveler studying business at Cal State Fullerton, had planned the hiking trip in the days leading up to her 20th birthday. She had a crush on a guy and suggested he join her in Joshua Tree to celebrate. He turned out to be busy, Le said, but told her to go with Orbeso instead.

Before their hike, she and Orbeso checked in to a bed-and-breakfast in the Morongo Basin. They were supposed to check out at 11 a.m. July 28. But they never returned.

The owner, who found the belongings they had left behind, reported them missing that day, and told investigators that they had mentioned hiking in the park. Later that day, authorities found their car, unoccupied, near the Maze Loop trailhead.

About 4 p.m. July 27, they later learned Orbesos cellphone had pinged off a tower inside the park, which is spread across more than 1,200 square miles of the Mojave and Colorado deserts.

A rigorous, large-scale search effort was launched. Volunteers put in 2,100 hours. Ten people were injured during the operation.

On Aug. 6, after weighing the risk to searchers against the likelihood of finding the couple alive, authorities scaled back the search to smaller teams on weekends.

Nguyens aunt said the family does not blame Orbeso. Right now, they are focused on combing through photos and making posters for a memorial Friday, and fielding calls from friends and well-wishers expressing sympathy.

Le described her niece, a resident of Westminster, as a quiet sort who traveled widely, documenting visits to Vietnam, the beaches of Mexico, Canada, Thailand, Hong Kong and Hawaii.

In the family, Nguyen answered to Diem My, or beautiful child. She was always very sweet yet really a tomboy, Le said. As a child, I gave her a doll and she told me she didnt play with dolls. She much preferred video games so we got her a Wii.

Her only fault is she may have been too active, Le said.

anh.do@latimes.com | Twitter: @newsterrier

alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com | Twitter: @AleneTchek

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Californias judiciary recommended Tuesday that money bail for criminal defendants be replaced with risk assessment and supervision.

A group of 11 judges and one court executive appointed to study the issue last year by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said the current system of requiring suspects to post bail to obtain their freedom prior to trial compromises public safety.

Release should depend on an individuals likelihood to commit new crimes, not on his or her financial resources, the groups report said.

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If adopted, the reforms envisioned in these recommendations will make major and dramatic changes to Californias criminal justice system, the report said.

Pretrial assessment would gather information about each defendants potential risk to the public and give judges more tools to supervise released defendants, including drug testing, home confinement and text reminders about future court dates, the report said.

Cantil-Sakauye, who previously called for bail reform, said she endorsed the recommendations. They are likely to serve as a framework for a new law expected to be passed and signed next year.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Brian J. Back, a co-chair of the group, said requiring defendants to post money bail unfairly punishes the poor.

Thousands of Californians who pose no risk to the public are held in jail before trial, while others charged with serious or violent offenses may pose a high risk and can buy their freedom simply by bailing out, Back said.

The report said judges should have the final say on whether to release a defendant and the authority to require dangerous suspects to remain in jail prior to trial.

About two-thirds of Californias jail population  or nearly 48,000 people  have not yet been sentenced, according to the Board of State and Community Corrections annual Jail Profile Survey.

That number includes both people who are eligible for release but have not posted bail and those who are ineligible for release.

Californias 58 counties use different bail schedules, and bail amounts can differ widely from county to county.

Bail for defendants accused of residential burglary ranges from $30,000 in Fresno County to $100,000 in San Francisco.

Cantil-Sakauye will present the report to the Judicial Council, the policymaking body for the court system, next month.

Sen. Bob Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) and Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) who have authored legislation to end money bail, praised Tuesdays report.

Their bill, which reflects the views of judicial leaders, was passed by the Senate in May and will be considered by the Assembly in January.

Bonta noted Tuesdays report endorsed the overwhelming belief that wealth-based justice is not justice at all.

For too long, Bonta said, California has linked liberty with personal wealth.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

Twitter: @mauradolan

UPDATES:

1:15 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction from legislators.

This article was originally published at noon.
A man agreed to plead guilty to hacking into 550 Apple iCloud and Gmail accounts, including those of celebrities in Los Angeles, officials said Monday.

Emilio Herrera, of Chicago, fooled hundreds of men and women, including 40 celebrities, into sending him username and password information by using phishing emails that looked as if they came from Apple, Yahoo and Hotmail, according to the U.S. attorneys office.

He then used the information to log into and sift through their email accounts. Through the scheme, prosecutors said, he got his hands on iCloud backups with sensitive photographs, videos and other private information. He accessed his neighbors Gmail account 495 times, they said.

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Authorities did not identify the celebrities whose accounts Herrera compromised.

Herrera agreed to plead guilty to one count of unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information. He ran his phishing scam between April 2013 and August 2014, according to his plea deal.

He faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison, but prosecutors agreed in the deal to recommend a sentence of 18 months.

Authorities began investigating Herrera after nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and dozens of other celebrities were hacked from their Apple devices. Investigators have not found any evidence linking Herrera to the leaks or showing that he shared the photos or videos he obtained, officials said.

Herrera is the third person to be prosecuted as part of the investigation. Edward Majerczyk of Chicago was sentenced to nine months in federal prison for a phishing scheme that gave him access to more than 300 iCloud and Gmail accounts. Ryan Collins of Lancaster, Pa. was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison in a similar scheme.

alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com

Twitter: @AleneTchek
Los Angeles police detectives are looking for the suspect who opened fire on a car in Reseda over the weekend, killing a woman who was inside.

Christina Andrade, a 24-year-old from Chatsworth, was killed in the shooting, coroners officials said Tuesday.

The shooting happened at about 11 a.m. Saturday, police said in a statement. Andrade was in the passenger seat of the car, which was at the intersection of Sherman Way and Calvin Street, when someone walked up to the vehicle and began firing.

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Andrade died several hours later at a hospital.

Police asked anyone with information about the shooting to call detectives at (818) 374-9550.

kate.mather@latimes.com

@katemather
The most destructive wildfire in California history has left Santa Rosa at a fateful crossroads.

The city lost 3,000 homes  fully 5% of its housing stock  in the fire. Thousands remain displaced, and many are not sure where they will end up or whether they can continue to afford living in wine country, where housing is expensive and in chronically short supply.

Nobody has been through this before, Mayor Chris Coursey said Monday. We had a housing problem three weeks ago; now we have housing problem minus 3,000 more houses.

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Many residents said they intended to rebuild as soon as possible. But officials are just beginning to work out how that will happen  and many wonder where they will live in the meantime.

The first reaction of anyone in a situation like this is, I am going to stay...and stand my ground,  Coursey said. As that gets harder for some people, I hope that they will still show that resolve. Its hard  I still have a house  for me to tell people what to do. But I really want people to stay in this community.

Some conflicts are already emerging. Some residents are concerned about the cleanup process in neighborhoods burned by the fires. They worry the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will remove workable home foundations, increasing the costs of rebuilding.

Cleaning the debris alone could last into early 2018.

Santa Rosa, with a population of 175,000, is the largest city in the region. Officials have estimated the losses to property at $1 billion just within the city limits as the Tubbs fire swept through business districts, mobile home parks, upscale neighborhoods like Fountaingrove as well as suburban tracts like Coffey Park.

For some, the next move is clear.

Rebuild. Rebuild. That is the only word you will hear around here, said Maggie London, 64, who lost her home with dozens of pieces of art in Rincon Valley.

There is a sense of community we are all going to rebuild, added Dee Dee Bridges, 70, whose 3,300-square-foot home was destroyed in Fountaingrove. We arent going anywhere I want to rebuild fast. I havent got time to wait.

For others, the future is likely to be more complex.

Oscar Wei, a senior economist at the California Assn. of Realtors, said the housing supply around Santa Rosa was already tight even before the fires. Sonoma Countys roughly $600,000 median home price, while high  almost triple the national average  is still lower than San Francisco, where the median price exceeds a million dollars, he said.

Because of that difference, in the last few years, a lot of people who could not afford to live in San Francisco or Santa Clara, they move farther north, out to counties like Sonoma, he said.

Wei said the fires not only cut into the citys the housing supply, but are also likely to drive up rental prices because rental properties were destroyed, too.

Still, he predicted that once new construction starts and the city enters the rebuilding phase, Santa Rosa will remain a desirable place to live.

In California, every area near the mountains, we could have fire, he said. I honestly dont think that, as far as Santa Rosa and wine country are concerned, in the long term it will affect sales that much. People will go back.

Two weeks after flames tore through the region, people remained at emergency shelters in Sonoma County.

Sitting on a bed in the shelter at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, Imelda Flores had nothing to do but contemplate the unknown. In many ways, shes lucky. Her Santa Rosa home still stands. But her 12-year-old son is sick, and his desperately needed caretaker is now in limbo after losing her house.

I dont know if Ill be able to find another nurse now, Flores said. I dont have anyone who can understand his situation.

Her son, James Lopez, was born with a bad lung and a weak immune system. He needs a machine to pump food into his stomach, and if thats done incorrectly, he could get an infection. A nurse has to stay by his side, even at school.

I may need to go to school to personally feed him, Flores said. I may become his nurse.

The mother and son have been staying at the Grace Pavilion at the fairgrounds all this time because lingering smoke from the massive fires could endanger James fragile health. A simple cold can quickly turn to pneumonia, she said, and he will still wear a face mask at least for a few more days.

The first few nights at the shelter were the worst.

People were waking up screaming. Some were crying, and some people would storm in here, desperately looking for relatives, she said. It was just difficult and sad.

The good news, authorities said, was that firefighters anticipate full containment of the fires in hard-hit Sonoma County this week.

The Tubbs fire, the most destructive wildfire in California history, was 94% contained Monday afternoon after charring 36,807 acres, including swaths of Santa Rosa, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The 56,556-acre Nuns fire was 90% contained, and the 17,357-acre Pocket fire was 89% contained.

At a special Red Cross shelter set up at the fairgrounds for pet owners, Forrest Smith, a 53-year-old bus driver for the city of Santa Rosa, lay on a cot while his small black-and-white dog, Jazz, licked his cheek.

He had been living in a hotel, trying to find a new place to live when the wildfire swept through the storage unit where he kept all his belongings. Everything he has left is in his truck.

On the day of the fire, Smith said he and other bus drivers helped evacuate people from retirement homes. He alone helped six people evacuate. Since then, he hasnt been working much. Hes volunteered at the shelter, cleaning cots, throwing out trash and doing anything he can to keep his mind off the lingering questions.

How am I going to find a place for me and my dog? he asked.

Outside, sitting on a folded chair, 61-year-old Steve Champ, who has been homeless for more than 10 years, only felt sadness. He lost his bicycle and the orange tent where he slept. He had a few photos of his family in a zip-lock bag. The fire destroyed it.

Champ said he doesnt know where to even begin when it comes to starting over. He had found a new sleeping place at Coffey Park  but the community was left in ruins. He supposes hell seek help at homeless shelters and religious organizations.

Ill let God guide me, he said.

Vives and Winton reported from Santa Rosa, Branson-Potts from Los Angeles.

ruben.vives@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

hailey.branson@latimes.com

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The Department of Justice today filed a statement in support of a lawsuit brought by a Pierce College student against the school and the Los Angeles Community College District, alleging policies that restrict student free speech rights to tiny zones are unconstitutional and infringe on 1st Amendment rights.

The DOJs statement of interest, filed in Los Angeles federal court, argues that plaintiff Kevin Shaw has adequately shown his 1st Amendment rights to have been violated. The DOJ alleges that the colleges speech policies amounted to an unconstitutional prior restraint that chilled free expression.

An LACCD representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Shaw, 27, contends the community college in Woodland Hills violated his civil rights when he was barred from passing out copies of the U.S. Constitution because he wasnt in the schools free speech zone  an outdoor area roughly the size of three parking spaces  and because he hadnt applied in advance to use it. In filing the statement of interest, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions stated that university officials and faculty must defend free expression boldly and unequivocally.

Last month, I promised a recommitment to free speech on campus and to ensuring 1st Amendment rights, Sessions said. The Justice Department continues to do its part in defending free speech, protecting students free expression, and enforcing federal law.

On some college campuses, students and outsiders are allowed to protest and distribute fliers only in so-called free speech zones. Pierce College is one of nine campuses in the LACCD, which is the largest community college district in the United States, serving more than 150,000 students.

According to the complaint, Shaw attempted last November to distribute Spanish-language copies of the U.S. Constitution and recruit new members for the Young Americans for Liberty chapter at the school. The group describes itself as a libertarian-conservative youth organization.

Shaw says he was approached by a Pierce administrator who told him that he could not distribute literature outside the campus free speech zone, a tiny part of the 426-acre campus. If he refused to comply, Shaw was told he would be asked to leave campus, according to his court papers.
Paul Weitz, a retired NASA astronaut who commanded the first flight of the space shuttle Challenger and also piloted the Skylab in the early 1970s, has died. He was 85.

Weitz died at his retirement home in Flagstaff on Monday, said Laura Cutchens of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. No cause of death was given.

A NASA biography says Weitz was among the class of 19 astronauts who were chosen in April 1966. He served as command module pilot on the first crew of the orbiting space laboratory known as Skylab during a 28-day mission in 1973.

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Weitz also piloted the first launch of the shuttle Challenger in April 1983. The five-day mission took off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The Challenger was destroyed and seven crew members were killed during its 10th launch, on Jan. 28, 1986.

In all, he logged 793 hours in space and retired as deputy director of the Johnson Space Center in May 1994.

Weitz was born in Erie, Pa., on July 25, 1932, and graduated from Penn State with a degree in aeronautical engineering in 1954, according to NASA. He then joined the Navy, serving on a destroyer before being chosen for flight training and earning his wings as a naval aviator in September 1956. He served in various naval squadrons, with service in Vietnam, before joining the Astronaut Corps.

According to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, Weitz returned to the Navy after his Skylab mission and retired as a captain in July 1976 after serving 22 years. He then came out of retirement to rejoin NASA.

Paul Weitzs name will always be synonymous with the space shuttle Challenger. But he also will be remembered for defying the laws of gravity -- and age, said Curtis Brown, board chairman of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation and an astronaut and veteran of six spaceflights. Before it became commonplace to come out of retirement, Paul was a pioneer. He proved 51 was just a number.

The foundation is supported by astronauts from the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, space shuttle and space station programs and annually provides scholarships for 45 students.

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A judge has dismissed disorderly conduct charges against leftist protesters who burned an American flag outside the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last year, ruling Tuesday that they were arrested for practicing 1st Amendment-protected free speech.

The misdemeanor case against 12 of the protesters had lingered in Cleveland Municipal Court for more than a year before Judge Charles L. Patton granted the protesters motion to dismiss the case on free-speech grounds. Patton cited a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decision that flag-burning was protected by the 1st Amendment.

The government may not prohibit the verbal or nonverbal expression of an idea merely because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable, even where our flag is involved, Patton wrote in his ruling.

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In a telephone interview, Patton said: The guy was doing what he did, and the Supreme Court said he could do it. When Patton reviewed video of the incident, It looked like they were doing a peaceful protest.

The July 20, 2016, arrests were one of the most turbulent moments outside the convention where Donald Trump accepted the GOP nomination for the presidency.

Other protests during the convention were generally smaller and less intense than anticipated. But a planned flag-burning demonstration by Gregory Lee Joey Johnson of the Revolutionary Communist Party  the man whose flag-burning outside the 1984 RNC in Dallas led to the Supreme Court ruling  drew a crowd of journalists and angry counterprotesters in Cleveland.

Other leftist protesters formed a protective circle around Johnson and chanted America was never great. As he set fire to the flag, a uniformed police official appeared to spray an extinguisher at the flame, setting off a tussle between the protesters and the police that ended with the group getting arrested.

Sixteen people were initially arrested, with two of them charged with felonies on suspicion of assaulting police during the scrum, but all charges have since been dropped. Johnsons charges had already been dropped before Tuesdays ruling.

We are thrilled that the court saw these arrests for what they were: quashing dissent, Noche Diaz, one of the defendants whose charges were dropped, said in a statement. We are proud of what we did at the RNC and that we stood up to the suppression of speech.

More than 40 attorneys volunteered to defend protesters pro bono, including members of the National Lawyers Guild and the Cleveland branch of the NAACP.

This should be read as a clear message to the city  and particularly to the police  that they must respect the 1st Amendment rights of protesters, whatever their message, one of the attorneys, Jacqueline Greene, said in a statement.

matt.pearce@latimes.com

Matt Pearce is a national reporter for The Times. Follow him on Twitter at @mattdpearce.

More national headlines
House Republicans are opening investigations of the Obama administrations 2010 decision to approve the sale of American uranium mines to a Russian-backed company, lawmakers said Tuesday.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said at a news conference that his panel and the House Oversight Committee would jointly probe the deal, which President Trump has called the real Russia story.

Nunes and other Trump supporters have raised the 7-year-old uranium deal while four congressional committees and Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III are looking into Russian interference the 2016 election and whether Moscow had any direct links to the Trump campaign.

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Nunes said the House probe would focus initially on whether the the FBI or Justice Department had investigated alleged attempts by Russian officials to gain influence over the American energy industry.

This is just the beginning of the probe, Nunes told reporters. Were not going to jump to any conclusions at this time.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, criticized the new investigations as partisan in nature.

They are designed to distract attention and pursue the Presidents preferred goal  attacking Clinton and Obama, he said. This may be good politics, but it is a disservice to the far more important cause of investigating Russian interference in our democracy and protecting our elections in 2018 and beyond from outside influence.

The House probe of the uranium deal parallels a Senate Judiciary Committee probe into whether the FBI had evidence that Russian nuclear officials were involved in fraudulent dealings in 2009 before the uranium deal was approved.

In April, Nunes stepped away from leading the House Intelligence Committee probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election after the House Ethics Committee said it was investigating whether he had improperly disclosed classified information.

But he and his staff have used his chairmanship to push parallel investigations aimed at Trumps opponents and critics, including Fusion GPS, the political research firm behind an unverified dossier of allegations about Trumps ties to Russia.

Trump and his supporters frequently cite the 2010 purchase of Uranium One by Rosatom, a Russian-run company, as a counter to questions about Russian support for Trumps presidential bid.

The sale was approved while Hillary Clinton led the State Department and some investors in the U.S. company had relationships with former President Clinton and had donated to the Clinton Foundation.

The State Department was one of nine U.S. departments or agencies that approved the sale, however.

Clintons presidential campaign and former State Department officials said she was not involved in the approval process by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a government panel charged with examining foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies.

Republicans have tried to link Clinton to the deal, citing Canadian financier Frank Giustra, a top Clinton Foundation donor.

He sold his company, UrAsia, to Uranium One, which was chaired by Ian Telfer, also a Clinton Foundation donor. Giustra has said he sold his stake in the deal in 2007, while Clinton was competing with Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.

david.cloud@latimes.com

Twitter: @davidcloudLAT
Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. Its Tuesday, Oct. 24, and heres whats happening across California:

TOP STORIES

The World Series is back in Los Angeles

The World Series begins tonight at 5 p.m. The Dodgers are back for the first time in 29 years, and with Clayton Kershaw taking the mound, the city is overcome by Dodgers fever. The team won a Los Angeles-record 104 games this season and has a been pretty dominant force throughout the playoffs. Heres Times columnist Bill Plaschke on what it means for the Boys in Blue to be back in the fall classic. Los Angeles Times

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The hero: Yasiel Puig, tongue wagging like a superstar, has starred in a one-man reality show during the Dodgers postseason. Los Angeles Times

Plus: How the Dodgers berth in the World Series enhances Orel Hershisers legacy. Los Angeles Times

Click! A behind-the-scenes look at Dodger Stadium brought to you by Times photographer Wally Skalij. Los Angeles Times

Emotional scars left by the fires

In the days since fires ravaged towns in wine country, people have pulled together. Strangers at coffee shops share their trauma, talking of homes destroyed and loved ones lost. Almost everyone seems to know a neighbor who knocked on a door or lifted someone into a car, and saved a life. Los Angeles Times

Plus: The wine country wildfires destroyed at least 8,400 homes and other buildings, authorities said Monday, a significant increase in the already staggering property loss. Los Angeles Times

Just a coincidence? This California lobbyist lost his home in the fires. All he wanted was for the governor to sign his bill  and he did. Los Angeles Times

A helping hand: A Burning Man camp, Camp Epic, is loaning seven shipping containers to families left homeless by Californias deadliest and most destructive series of wildfires in state history. Reno Gazette-Journal

More about Toback

After The Times published an investigation in which 38 women accused filmmaker James Toback of sexual harassment, more than 200 additional women contacted The Times and, in emails and phone calls, recalled encounters with Toback similar to those detailed in the story. Toback has denied the allegations and declined to comment on the additional accusations. Los Angeles Times

Plus: Harvey Weinstein. Bill OReilly. Roger Ailes. Bill Cosby. The Catholic church. All were able to skirt years and sometimes decades of allegations of sexual harassment or assault through the use of settlements or contracts that included nondisclosure agreements: legal provisions that swear employees or alleged victims to secrecy. Los Angeles Times

And: New York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman has launched a civil rights investigation into Weinstein Co. after dozens of sexual harassment allegations against the studios co-founder, Harvey Weinstein. Los Angeles Times

L.A. STORIES

Weighing in: L.A.'s first lady Amy Elaine Wakeland, writing in the Los Angeles Times, says that sexual abuse is everywhere in L.A., and its behind our most challenging social problems. Los Angeles Times

Call for change: Paul Haggis, who wrote and directed Crash, says the Weinstein scandal is another sign of Hollywoods need for radical change. The Guardian

Whats with this weather? A sweltering heat wave will blanket Southern California through the middle of the week, elevating the risk of wildfires and potentially breaking heat records, forecasters said. Los Angeles Times

Fire: A 50-acre brush fire broke out south of Beaumont on Monday amid a red-flag warning in the region, officials said. Los Angeles Times

IMMIGRATION AND THE BORDER

For your radar: More than two years after Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old white woman was killed on San Franciscos waterfront, a Mexican national who fired the gun that killed her goes on trial for murder. The case became an anti-immigrant cause celebre, pushed relentlessly by Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign. Los Angeles Times

Around the border: The FBI says it has investigated three to four cases in the last six months of Americans traveling to Tijuana with intent to have sex with minors. At least two of the recent cases stem from a Tijuana man accused of setting up sexual encounters between U.S. citizens and young children. San Diego Union-Tribune

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

What went down: California Republicans walked into their weekend convention facing a persistent question: What direction should they take to stop the ongoing decline of their power in the state? Three chaotic days later, there was little resolution. Los Angeles Times

A look inside the campaign coffers: Kevin de Leon has millions in state political accounts that he cant use for his U.S. Senate campaign. So whats he going to do with all that cash? Los Angeles Times

Resignation: The campaign manager for Orange County congressional challenger Phil Janowicz resigned last week after allegations he had sexually harassed women while working as a top official with the Democratic Party of Orange County. Los Angeles Times

Private Idaho: The whiteopia of North Idaho has become one of the most desirable places in the West for conservatives to relocate. So why is the local Republican Party tearing itself apart  and whos responsible? Buzzfeed

CRIME AND COURTS

Sad tale: The family of a woman found dead in Joshua Tree National Park reportedly said investigators believe her friend may have killed her in a sympathetic murder-suicide after she suffered a head injury. Los Angeles Times

Sentenced for lying: A former Los Angeles County sheriffs deputy was sentenced Monday to nine months of home detention and 640 hours of community service for lying to federal investigators about the violent arrest of a jail visitor six years ago. Los Angeles Times

Behind bars: Oprah Winfrey went inside Pelican Bay State Prison to report on a reform movement to reduce the use of solitary confinement across America. CBS News

THE ENVIRONMENT

What an achievement: A pair of climbers broke the speed record for ascending the Nose of Yosemites El Capitan. San Francisco Chronicle

CALIFORNIA CULTURE

Big day! Here are the 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles, as decided by Pulitzer-winning Times food critic Jonathan Gold. Note: You have to be a subscriber to get the list. Los Angeles Times

AFI at 50: The fabled history of one of L.A.'s leading film organizations. Los Angeles Times

A history lesson: Read here about the dramatic bull-and-bear fights of 19th century California. Atlas Obscura

Grocery wars: Can you thank Aldi for grocery prices being 3% cheaper in Southern California? Orange County Register

Where are the undocumented on screen? Reporters and documentarians are sharing the tales of children and young adults brought to this country at a young age, but in the five years since President Barack Obama issued the executive order that established Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or the DACA program, no major studio has produced or released a film about an undocumented character. New York Times

CALIFORNIA ALMANAC

Los Angeles area: Sunny, 101, Tuesday. Sunny, 98, Wednesday. San Diego: Sunny, 95, Tuesday. Sunny, 92, Wednesday. San Francisco area: Sunny, 85, Tuesday. Sunny, 78, Wednesday. Sacramento: Sunny, 87, Tuesday and Wednesday. More weather is here.

AND FINALLY

Todays California memory comes from Pepper Salter:

I grew up near Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles, which was central to our life. My dad, Max, became president of the temple because he passed this test: A mirror was placed under his nose, which showed he was breathing. In our neighborhood we were able to celebrate Jewish holidays out on the street, which felt wonderful. But, for a kid, the meanings of the various holidays were confusing. It was only when I grew up and Rabbi Steven Reuben clarified the common thread that I understood my people: They tried to kill us. They failed. Lets eat.

If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. Send us an email to let us know what you love or fondly remember about our state. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)

Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Benjamin Oreskes and Shelby Grad. Also follow them on Twitter @boreskes and @shelbygrad.
My old boss, William F. Buckley, once said in private, I wish to hell I could attack them without pleasing people I cant stand to please.

By them he meant the members of the conspiracy-mongering anti-Communist, anti-United Nations, anti-civil rights John Birch Society (named after a Christian missionary who was killed in 1945 by Communist forces, making Birch the first American casualty in the Cold War). The people Bill couldnt stand, of course, were liberals.



For the record: Due to an editing error, this column first suggested that William F. Buckley told the author, Jonah Goldberg, that he wished he could the Birchers without pleasing liberals. Actually, Goldberg wasnt even alive at the time.

And yet Buckley did eventually go after the Birchers, at first trying as best he could to denounce their leader, Joseph Welch, without alienating the rank and file. Eventually, this needle became impossible to thread, specifically when Welch began insisting that President Eisenhower was a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.

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Buckley and Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, along with conservative intellectuals such as William Baroody of the American Enterprise Institute (where I am a fellow) and Russell Kirk, convened a meeting at the Breakers Hotel in Florida to address the problem. Buckley would lead the effort of anathematizing Welch, beginning with a six-page editorial excoriating him. Goldwater would follow up with a letter to the magazine calling for Welchs resignation.

This approach was risky. Many Bircher members were not crackpots. Some were prominent businessmen who had supported both Buckleys National Review (where I work) and the movement behind the Goldwater candidacy.

In A Man and His Presidents: The Political Odyssey of William F. Buckley Jr., Alvin Felzenberg recounts one occasion when a major supporter of NR leaned on Buckley to stop criticizing Welch and form a common front against the left. When he reminded Buckley of the financial support hed given the magazine, Buckley responded that the National Review was not for sale.

Buckley denounced the Birchers in part because they were undermining the very cause they claimed to be fighting for. By making anti-Communism seem paranoid and extremist, rather than prudent and necessary, the Birchers were making it easy for liberals to demonize and dismiss conservatism wholesale.

The Cold War is over, thank goodness. But similar patterns have been emerging on the right. In many ways, were witnessing a perfect example of history repeating itself as farce.

Whereas during the Cold War, the claim was made that the East Coast Republican establishment was insufficiently committed to the fight against Communism, the new hotness is that the GOP establishment is insufficiently committed to fightingthe GOP establishment. Extremism in Steve Bannons hashtag war against the elite is no vice, and moderation in pursuit of getting things done is now no virtue.

Republican Roy Moore is the new Welch. (Or, at least, one of several new Welches.) He threatens to provide conservatisms critics with precisely the caricature they crave.

Roy Moore threatens to provide conservatisms critics with precisely the caricature they crave.

He is a twice-disgraced former judge who believes 9/11 was divine retribution for our sins and an anti-Muslim bigot who cant quite bring himself to rule out the death penalty for homosexuals. But he won the Alabama Senate primary anyway, largely on the grounds that he was the most anti-establishment candidate. To Alabama primary voters, his extremism is apparently proof that he wont sell out.

If Moore is the new Welch, Buckley and Goldwaters heirs have rejected the mantle of opposition, at least in this case. Last week, Sens. Mike Lee and Rand Paul endorsed Moore citing his devotion to the Constitution and (in Lees words) his reputation for integrity.

As for conservatives outside the Senate, reactions have varied. Some have been outspoken in denouncing Moore. Others, like Fox News Sean Hannity, have gone all in.

Part of the problem is structural. Despite all of the paranoid screeds one hears daily, the establishment, however defined, is weaker than at any time in memory. The balkanized and democratized media landscape of the internet makes the kind of intellectual gatekeeping Buckley once mastered nearly impossible, particularly at a time when gatekeeping of any kind is viewed as rigging the system.

Buckleys reluctance to please people he couldnt stand has gone from an understandable sentiment to an ideological commandment for many on the right. Rather than learn from our successes, conservatives seem determined to make a virtue of our mistakes.

jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook
After a frustrating year trying to conceive a child, my daughter Maya and her husband Noah decided to document their journey to parenthood on film.

Isnt that a bit risky emotionally? I asked.

Why? she snapped. Were gonna have a baby.

Adoption?

IVF. I want to carry. Weve looked into it. Its expensive, and theres only about a 29% success rate the first time around, but youve always told me that nothings impossible if you set your mind to it, right?

And your mind is pretty set, I said. Can I make a contribution?

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Dont want your money, she said. Well find a way.

And they did. It took most of their savings, some credit card debt, some auctioned artwork and a social media fundraiser, but they managed to cover the cost of in vitro fertilization as well as filming, editing and post-production over a period of three years.

They described their ordeal as a visit to Infertility Island.

It was an eye-opening visit for the whole family. We had no idea how many women struggle to conceive and how many enter that lonely and desperate island. Its an island where those who cannot make a baby naturally must self-inject drugs, monitor their inner systems daily, submit to ultrasound scans and regulate their hormones. On the island, fear, jealousy and loathing are pervasive. The fear is that nothing will work. The jealousy is projected on to everyone who has or is about to have a child. The loathing is directed against oneself for repeatedly failing in the not-so-simple yet common act of conception.

It is not a pleasant island to visit, and for millions of women, its an island they can only leave by abandoning the dream of a family.

Maya and Noah held nothing back. They filmed their most intimate moments, their conversations with their infertility doctor, their interviews with other couples struggling to have their own children. (There are more than 7 million women unable to have a child in the U.S. and probably triple that in countries around the world. According to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, there were 61,740 babies born in the U.S. from IVF procedures and 350,000 worldwide in 2012.)

When a shaman from Mexico passed through L.A., Maya went to see her. She was hung upside down, her feet tied together. The shaman smacked the bottoms of her feet with a stick and mouth-sprayed her body with an herbal concoction.

When Mayas multiple intrauterine inseminations and her first round of IVF failed, the doctor said her odds of success were low. Apparently Mayas ovarian reserve was too low. He recommended using an egg donor.

We had no idea how many women struggle to conceive and how many enter that lonely and desperate island.

When Maya asked her sister if she would donate her eggs, it was a trying time for our family, as we weighed the pros and cons of such a contribution. My wife feared that putting our other daughter through the trauma of hormone treatments might affect her chances of conceiving naturally in the future. And I wondered if such a child might cause friction between our daughters when the question arose as to who was the mother and who was the aunt. But Mayas reasoning was simple: If she was going to use someone elses eggs, why not her own sisters?

All of these choices and decisions brought our family closer as it simultaneously made our lives more difficult. We didnt know that our daughters personality would change, how she would separate herself from all her friends who were off having babies, how strained her marriage would be at times. Perhaps what kept Maya and Noah together, and what kept them from giving up, was the very documentary they were committed to making. A documentary they might never have finished if they didnt have an ending.

Then one day a doctor told Maya about a clinic in Seattle that had frozen embryos available. When she discovered a half-Japanese/half Caucasian embryo, she felt fate had finally turned her way, as that combination matched her own.

It had. The embryo transfer worked. Of course, it wasnt easy from there. The birth was agonizing and Maya refused any medication. The placenta came out in pieces, causing more trauma after the birth. But the miracle happened. Her child, our grandchild, was born.

They had an ending for their documentary. And a new beginning for the rest of their lives.

Lawrence Grobel is a freelance writer and author of 27 books. Maya and Noahs documentary, One More Shot, will be available on iTunes and Amazon on Nov. 4 and on Netflix beginning Jan. 15.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook
To the editor: Thanks to Bill McKibben for reminding us that our natural open spaces are more important than ever for maintaining a habitable planet. (Just say no to Arctic Refuge drilling, Opinion, Oct. 23)

His reference to the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus in the House is especially apt. Thanks to our four local Republican representatives who have joined the caucus  Darrell Issa (Vista), Steve Knight (Palmdale), Mimi Walters (Irvine) and Ed Royce (Fullerton). If they resist the administrations efforts to turn the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge over to the development of fossil fuels, it will be a very significant step in demonstrating that there are Republicans who recognize the need to deal with climate change.

I am reminded of Henry David Thoreaus quote that we are rich in proportion to what we can afford to leave alone. Let us be rich and make a sincere effort to preserve our natural heritage by leaving the refuge and other unspoiled places alone.

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Ann Rushton, Sherman Oaks

..

To the editor: As a lifelong Alaskan, I oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR. Why?

Because Alaskan villages, no longer protected by sea ice, are eroding into the ocean. Because the Gwichin people rely on the caribou, which birth in ANWR. Because the 60-degrees-below-zero winters of my youth are gone. Because polar bears are drowning as the ice melts. Because Alaskan roads are sinking as permafrost melts. Because my children are 19 and 21.

ANWR is one of the last great wilderness places on Earth, and oil is of the past and renewable energy is the future. This is why I am opposed to drilling in ANWR.

Diane Preston, Fairbanks, Alaska

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Orange County at center of fundraising in Californias most contested races By Sarah D. Wire More than half of the money raised for the most contested House races in California is going to candidates in Orange County, another indication of its starring role in the Democratic effort to win back control of the House next year. Of the 80 or so challengers in California, 27 are running in Orange County. A Los Angeles Times analysis of this years campaign finance filings found it is also where the cash is going to: About $15 million of the nearly $28.5 million raised this year for 13 key races went to candidates in just four Orange County districts: Read More Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown plans climate trip to Vatican, Belgium, Norway and Germany By Chris Megerian (Eric Risberg / Associated Press) Gov. Jerry Brown has mapped out a busy European travel schedule that includes attending the next United Nations conference on climate change in Bonn, Germany. While the White House declares war on climate science and retreats from the Paris Agreement, California is doing the opposite and taking action, Brown said in a statement. We are joining with our partners from every part of the world to do what needs to be done to prevent irreversible climate change. Roughly two dozen public events are planned over 10 days, starting with a speech at a Vatican symposium on Saturday. Brown wont be the only California politician at the conference. Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego) is speaking later that day, and state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) is scheduled to appear Friday. After the Vatican, the governor is bouncing between Germany and Belgium, plus a stop in Norway to meet with scientists. Hes holding press conferences with the president of the European Parliament and the minister-president of Baden-Wurttemberg, a German state that has collaborated with California on an international climate pact. Once the Bonn conference begins, much of Browns focus will be on how states, provinces and other local governments can tackle climate change absent stronger action from national leaders. He was named a special advisor to the U.N. conference for states and regions earlier this year. Brown is scheduled to appear with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Nov. 11 and speak at numerous other events, a packed itinerary much like the one he kept at the Paris climate conference two years ago. His last event is expected to take place Nov. 14. Facebook

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California business tax incentive program should end, legislative analyst says By Liam Dillon California no longer should give specific tax incentives to businesses and instead should provide broad-based tax relief, the states nonpartisan Legislative Analysts Office said in a new report. The analysts office examined California Competes, a program that began four years ago to give tax credits to businesses looking to move to the state or remain here, and found it puts existing companies that dont receive the awards at a disadvantage without clear benefits to the overall economy. Picking winners and losers inevitably leads to problems. In the case of California Competes, we are struck by how awarding benefits to a select group of businesses harms their competitors in California, the report said. We also think the resources consumed by the program are not as focused as they should be on winning economic development competitions with other states to attract major employers that sell to customers around the country and the world. California Competes has allowed the awarding of nearly $800 million in tax credits. The legislative analyst found that more than a third of the credits awarded through California Competes resulted in no change to the overall economy and put the states existing businesses at a competitive disadvantage. The analyst couldnt assess the value of the remainder of the credits because its impossible to know how businesses would have reacted had they not received them. California Competes is scheduled to end next year. The analysts office recommends replacing it by lowering business taxes overall or, should lawmakers want to keep it, tailor the program more narrowly to focus on attracting and retaining high-value companies. Facebook

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Electric companies found at fault in North Bay fires wont be able to pass costs onto residents under proposed bill By Liam Dillon Jason Miller, 45, plants an American flag on the charred remains of his house in Coffey Park. He had lived in the Santa Rosa neighborhood for 23 years. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times) If electric utilities are found at fault in the recent wildfires in the North Bay, a group of state lawmakers want to ensure they dont pass along their costs to residents. Victims of devastating fires and other customers should not be forced to pay for the mistakes made by utilities, state Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo) said in a release. Hill is one of four Bay Area legislators who said they plan to introduce a bill when lawmakers return to the Capitol in January to block any effort by utilities found at fault to recoup any costs from ratepayers. Investigators have not identified the cause of the wildfires that ripped across Northern California this month that left more than 40 people dead and thousands of homes destroyed. But the lawmakers said their legislation is motivated by San Diego Gas & Electrics efforts to recover costs from wildfires in that region a decade ago. Co-authoring the bill with Hill is Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg), Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-San Rafael). Facebook

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Proposed initiative would end early release for some crimes, allow more DNA collection By Patrick McGreevy (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times) A coalition including police officers and prosecutors on Monday proposed a California state initiative that would end early release of rapists and child traffickers and expand the number of crimes for which authorities could collect DNA samples from those convicted. The ballot measure is sponsored by the California Public Safety Partnership, and would reverse some elements of Proposition 47, which was approved by voters in 2014 and reduced some crimes deemed nonviolent from a felony to a misdemeanor. The proposed initiative would add 15 crimes to the list of violent crimes for which early release is not an option, including child abuse, rape of an unconscious person, trafficking a child for sex, domestic violence and assault with a deadly weapon. These reforms make sure that truly violent criminals stay in jail and dont get out early, said Sacramento County Dist. Atty. Anne Marie Schubert, a leader of the coalition. The initiative would also allow DNA collection for certain crimes, including drug offenses, that were reduced to misdemeanors under Proposition 47. Assemblyman Jim Cooper (D-Elk Grove) said there have been 2,000 fewer hits matching DNA to cold cases annually in recent years. He cited one case from 1989 involving the murder of two young girls in Sacramento that was solved last year by DNA taken from a man in a drug case before those were excluded from DNA collection. If that case happens today, right now, it does not get solved, said Cooper, a former sheriffs captain. Changes in law also made theft of goods valued at less than $950 a misdemeanor, so some criminals are committing serial thefts and keeping each one to $949 or less, Cooper said. The initiative would make serial theft a felony. The measure also mandates a parole revocation hearing for anyone who violates the terms of their parole three times. A Whittier police officer was recently murdered by a parolee who had violated parole five times, said Los Angeles Police Protective League President Craig Lally, who supports the initiative. A representative of the group behind Proposition 47 said it was not reasonable to blame the ballot measure for an uptick in some crimes in some parts of the state. Fluctuations in crime have much more to do with economic and social policies and practices, said Tom Hoffman, a spokesman for the group Californians for Safety and Justice. Its so much more complicated than one piece of legislation as an issue. The proponents of the initiative need to collect signatures from 365,880 voters by the end of April to qualify the initiative for the November 2018 election. Facebook

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When men with power go too far: After years of whispers, women speak out about harassment in Californias Capitol By Chris Megerian Tina McKinnor, left, Sadalia King, Amy Thoma Tan, Jodi Hicks and Sabrina Lockhart have come forward to talk about their experiences with sexual harassment at the Capitol. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times) It started with a dinner invitation from a former assemblyman more than twice her age. He had offered his services as a mentor, but his hand reaching for her knee under the table revealed other intentions. Then came the late-night phone calls and unexpected appearances at events she had to attend for her job in the Capitol. Fresh out of college, Amy Brown did what she thought women were supposed to do in these situations  she reported him. The former assemblyman accused her of slander, an experience that left her so humiliated that she left Sacramento for a new job in San Jose. I immediately got the hell out of town, Brown said. I felt like the people  the person  I was relying on for advancement in my career was preying on me. Stories like these have taken many forms through the years. Sometimes its a professional meeting that turned inappropriately sexual, or its a groping hand on a backside. In one case, a woman said a lawmaker masturbated in front of her in a bar bathroom. No matter the details, each story involves a man with power  the kind of power bestowed by voters, an influential lobbying client or a supply of campaign cash. And instead of wielding that power to shape politics or public policy, the man used it to proposition women or to touch them inappropriately. Read More Facebook

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Big jump in the number of House challengers isnt great news for California Republicans By Christine Mai-Duc So far this year, 80 challengers have reported raising money across California for the 2018 midterm elections, more than triple the number who had done so at this point in the 2016 election. Collectively, theyve raised more than $14.9 million, and 70% of that has gone to the four Republican-held districts in Orange County that Democrats consider key to their chances. There havent been this many congressional challengers in Californias House races this early in the game since at least 2003, and that could be bad news for Republican incumbents. Read More Facebook

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Californias Senate culture doesnt encourage women to file complaints. Heres how that could change By Melanie Mason Senate leader Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), shown in September, acknowledged that the Senate could improve its procedures for reporting misconduct. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) In 2014, reeling from scandals that led to the suspension of three Democratic senators, Californias state Senate changed its policies to make it easier for employees, members and the public to sound the alarm about misconduct. A Times analysis of those rule changes shows a lack of follow-through to make reporting complaints more accessible. And the lawmaker who worked on changes in the Senates operations after that scandal says more could have been done. Then-Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) suggested at the time that the move would lead to positive cultural change and strengthen the integrity of this great institution. But as the Capitol now soul-searches over allegations of widespread sexual harassment, the current legislative leaders acknowledge the culture still does not encourage women to file complaints. The Senates effort to reform itself three years ago  and how it fell short  is instructive as both legislative houses embark on a new round of self-improvement. Read More Facebook

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Have you experienced sexual harassment in government or politics? Tell us your story If you work in government or politics and have experienced sexual harassment, wed like to hear from you. Please tell us your story using the form below. We will not share your personal contact information. Facebook

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California Assembly Speaker applauds Capitol staffers bravery in going public with complaint against assemblyman By Melanie Mason Gyore spoke publicly for the first time about a 2009 complaint she filed against Bocanegra. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times) Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) said Friday that the experience of a staffer who filed a complaint eight years ago against now-Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra illustrates why the Capitol culture must change. Elise Flynn Gyore told The Times about her experience filing a complaint against Bocanegra, who was then a legislative staffer, after she said he groped her and followed her in a manner she found threatening at a 2009 after-work event in a Sacramento bar. The Friday morning story in The Times was the first time she had spoken publicly of the incident and the complaint, which resulted in Bocanegra being disciplined. I appreciate Ms. Gyores bravery in bringing this incident forward. We have to change the culture in the Capitol and in society and her experience shows why, Rendon said in a statement Friday afternoon. How incidents of harassment were handled in the past can inform our current efforts to improve the system and to build a future where these injustices are prevented before they happen and no employee has to fear harassment or abuse. Bocanegra, who was first elected in 2012, is part of Rendons leadership team, serving in the position of majority whip. A top lieutenant to Rendon, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego), also chimed in with support for Gyore on Friday. I dont know Elise Gyore. But, I believe her & Im grateful for her bravery. This is unacceptable.  Lorena (@LorenaSGonzalez) October 27, 2017 Former Speaker John A. Perez (D-Los Angeles), who led the Assembly from 2010 to 2014, said he was unaware of the complaints existence until The Times report. He said he had never heard of any complaints  formal or informal  against Bocanegra, nor had he witnessed any inappropriate behavior from the Pacoima Democrat. Also on Friday, the organizers of We Said Enough, a recently launched campaign against harassment, thanked Gyore for sharing her story. This is an act of true courage  and we support every woman who chooses to do so. Sadly, this story is just one example of how the existing system fails victims and survivors. We are resolute in our call for action, the group said in a statement. The groups organizers added that they are calling for an overhaul to the complaint process  such as confidential reporting, an independent oversight body and whistleblower protections  to better guard against harassment. Read More Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown says California Republicans have slavish adherence to their partys tax plan By John Myers (Rich Pedroncelli/AP) Gov. Jerry Brown took aim at the sweeping tax overhaul plan in Congress and Californias Republican delegation on Thursday, saying their support of the plan is wrong economically and morally. Brown, who joined New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on a conference call with reporters, aimed most of his fire at the provision to cancel deducting local and state taxes paid from federal taxes. Both governors said it could have a profound impact on their states bottom lines. Brown criticized Californias 14 Republican House members for their Thursday budget vote, which allows for a $1.5-trillion deficit to help finance tax cuts. I know there is a lot of slavish adherence to the Republican leadership, Brown said. Its bad for California. Theyre doing a disservice. California and New York taxpayers have long been able to deduct the cost of paying local and state taxes from their federal tax liability. Both governors said Thursday they believed the effort by President Trump and Republicans to be at least somewhat motivated by their states voting for Democrat Hillary Clinton over Trump last November. Its using a handful of states to finance the tax cuts for their states, Cuomo said. Brown, who sent personal letters to all California GOP members of the House urging them not to go along, said the proposal was particularly unfair in light of how it would not apply equally to corporations. Its a gross manipulation of our tax code, he said. Its a Hail Mary pass by the Republicans. Facebook

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Heres why Republicans could help send Dianne Feinstein back to Washington  even if they cant stand her By Mark Z. Barabak Its the voters like Republican Larry Ward  conservatives who feel voiceless and adrift, bobbing like red specks in a blue sea  who could help usher the 84-year-old Dianne Feinstein back to Washington with a new lease on her Senate seat. Like most voters here in El Dorado County, Ward supported President Trump. He cant understand why Democrats and the media pile on and keep him from cutting taxes and fulfilling a campaign pledge to repeal Obamacare. He certainly doesnt think Feinsteins been too kind to Trump  the argument made by her newly announced challenger, Kevin de Leon. The state senator from Los Angeles and others on the left were spitting fire a few weeks back when Feinstein allowed as how she hoped, given time and a radical transformation, Trump might end up being a good president. Read More Facebook

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Car runs into immigration protesters outside Rep. Ed Royces district office By Sarah D. Wire  A vehicle drove into a group of protesters outside of GOP Rep. Ed Royces office in Brea on Thursday afternoon, but no injuries have been reported to police so far. (Tony Mendoza / Unite Here) A vehicle drove into a group of protesters outside GOP Rep. Ed Royces office in Brea on Thursday afternoon, but no injuries have been reported to police so far. The alleged driver, 56-year-old Daniel Wenzek of Brea, was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. He was booked and released pending further investigation, according to Lt. Kelly Carpenter of the Brea Police Department. Organizers say several hundred people were protesting outside Royces office, many of them arriving on buses after a morning news conference with elected officials and labor leaders in Los Angeles MacArthur Park. They were trying to deliver letters to Royce (R-Fullerton) about what losing temporary protected immigration status would mean to them, said Andrew Cohen, a communications specialist with the organization Unite Here. Read More Facebook

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California Secretary of State Alex Padilla backs Gavin Newsom for governor over former colleague Antonio Villaraigosa By Seema Mehta California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, left, and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) Secretary of State Alex Padilla, the highest-ranking Latino in a statewide elected position in California, endorsed Gavin Newsom for governor on Thursday. Padilla said he had known Newsom for more than a decade and admired his track record as mayor of San Francisco and now lieutenant governor. Its always important to [have] leaders that are committed and get it done, and thats what Ive seen in Gavin Newsom over and over and over again, Padilla said, speaking to dozens of Newsom supporters at a union hall in downtown Los Angeles. The endorsement was seen as a slap at former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is one of Newsoms top rivals in the governors race. Padilla was president of the Los Angeles City Council during the two years Villaraigosa was a member of the body, and for the first six months of Villaraigosas tenure as mayor. But the two men have never been viewed as close allies. They come from different power bases for Latino politicians in Los Angeles  Villaraigosa from the Eastside and Padilla from the San Fernando Valley. They also have not supported each others political pursuits. In 2001, Padilla backed James Hahn over Villaraigosa in the mayoral race. In 2006, Villaraigosa backed Cindy Montanez in a state Senate race over Padilla. Padilla said he has a relationship with all of the top Democrats running for governor. This is a tough one because I do know Antonio Villaraigosa and I know John Chiang and I know Gavin Newsom, but I think that because of whats happening in the political environment at this time, this isnt one where we can sit back, Yeah. OK. Cool, lets see who wins and well work with whoever, Padilla said. If there is a candidate I believe is best for the future of California, Im compelled to weigh in and thats what Im doing today. Luis Vizcaino, a Vilaraigosa spokesman, said the announcement was to be expected and noted that Padilla had a leadership role in Newsoms short-lived 2009 gubernatorial campaign. The only surprise here is we thought Alex had endorsed Gavin months ago considering he was Gavins Campaign Chair the first time he ran for governor, Vizcaino said in an email. Villaraigosa and Chiang, the state treasurer, have also received key endorsements from Latino politicians. Villaraigosa has the backing of the Latino Caucus in the state Legislature, former Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina and Lucille Roybal-Allard. Chiang has won the support of Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar. Updated at 2:07 p.m.: This post was updated to add a comment from Villaraigosas campaign. Facebook

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Californias Rep. Paul Cook picked to lead Foreign Affairs subcommittee By Sarah D. Wire Rep. Paul Cook (R-Yucca Valley) has been named chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) made the announcement in a news release Thursday morning following the former subcommittee chairman Rep. Jeff Duncans (R-S.C.) departure from the committee this week. As a former Marine Corps colonel, Rep. Cook is deeply committed to defending U.S. interests worldwide. I look forward to working with him to continue holding the [Raul] Castro and [Nicolas] Maduro regimes [of Cuba and Venezuela, respectively] accountable for their brutal repression, while increasing U.S. commercial opportunities throughout the hemisphere, Royce said in a statement. California holds several leadership positions on the Foreign Affairs Committee. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) is the chairman of the Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats subcommittee. Rep. Brad Sherman of Sherman Oaks is the highest ranking Democrat on the Asia and the Pacific subcommittee and Rep. Karen Bass of Los Angeles is the highest ranking Democrat on the Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations subcommittee. Facebook

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GOP tightens restrictions on Rep. Dana Rohrabachers subcommittee because of scrutiny over his Russia connections By Sarah D. Wire Rep. Dana Rohrabacher speaks to Russian lawmakers at a meeting in the Russian parliaments lower house in Moscow in 2013. (Misha Japaridze / Associated Press) The congressional subcommittee led by California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) is being heavily monitored by GOP leaders because of allegations the Orange County congressman has been overly influenced by his connections to Russia. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) will be more involved in guiding the direction of the subcommittee that is in part responsible for examining U.S. policy in Russia, said a senior congressional aide who asked not to be identified in order to discuss internal committee matters. Rohrabacher has long said that the United States needs a better relationship with Russia, puzzling colleagues who have speculated privately about why hes willing to work with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Connections between Rohrabacher and Russian officials have been newly highlighted as Congress investigates Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Read More Facebook

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Californias GOP members vote in favor of Republican budget, paving way for tax overhaul By Sarah D. Wire All 14 California House Republicans on Thursday voted in favor of the GOPs budget, which paves the way for overhauling the U.S. tax system. The budget, which allows for a $1.5-trillion deficit increase that sets the stage for President Trumps tax cuts, passed 216 to 212, with 20 Republicans joining Democrats in opposing it. At the root of their objection is the potential repeal of the federal deduction for state and local taxes, which would hit especially hard in wealthier states like New York and California. Gov. Jerry Brown had implored the GOP members not to support the budget, saying there hasnt been enough time to fully understand what it will mean to the estimated 1 in 3 Californians who claim the deduction. Democrats are targeting nine of the states 14 Republican-held districts, and have said theyll make the elimination of the tax deduction an issue in the campaign. Rep. Steve Knight of Palmdale said he voted for the budget because hes been assured that a fix will be made to the tax plan that will address or offset the potential tax increase caused by the elimination of the tax deduction. The tax plan is scheduled to be unveiled next week. Still worried about it, still working on it, Knight said after the vote. I am confident [it will be fixed], but Ive also said that is my No. 1 priority, so if we cant get it fixed then were going to have problems. Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown urges California GOP House members to vote no on budget bill: First lets get the facts By Sarah D. Wire Gov. Jerry Brown implores each GOP member of California delegation to vote no on budget today over end of state and local tax deduction. pic.twitter.com/bkCihAtvFG  Sarah D. Wire (@sarahdwire) October 26, 2017 Gov. Jerry Brown implored Californias GOP House members to oppose their partys budget bill over a provision that will end a deduction for state and local taxes used by one in three Californians. In letters to each Republican member of the California congressional delegation, Brown asked the members to at least ask for more time to learn the specifics of the plan. First lets get the facts. Then, debate the issue. And then we can decide whats the right thing to do, Brown says in his letter. The potential repeal of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction  the federal income tax deduction for state and local taxes paid  would hit especially hard in wealthier areas. The vote is scheduled to take place Thursday morning. Facebook

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Six female California lawmakers back Dianne Feinstein in Senate race By Sarah D. Wire Assemblywomen Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, right, and Susan Talamantes-Eggman in May. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Six California Assembly committee chairwomen endorsed Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Wednesday over their state Capitol colleague, Senate leader Kevin de Leon. In a statement released by Feinsteins campaign, Assemblymembers Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens), Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks), Blanca E. Rubio (D-Baldwin Park), Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters) and Anna Caballero (D-Salinas) said the state needs Feinstein in these uncertain and difficult times. We are proud to endorse Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has been an inspiration for all of us. The first woman to serve on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Feinstein is now the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. In that position, she is defending California against the Republicans and the Trump administration on critical issues like immigration, womens rights, federal judicial appointments, LGBT rights, civil rights, and gun control, they said. De Leon is the highest-profile Democrat to announce plans to challenge Feinstein in her bid for a fifth full term. Facebook

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Kevin de Leon vows to back Medicare for all, signaling key issue in 2018 Senate campaign By Sarah D. Wire State Senate leader Kevin de Leons opening salvo in the U.S. Senate race against Sen. Dianne Feinstein takes on one of the main frustrations progressives have voiced with her, a refusal to support single-payer health care. I believe that every family, it doesnt make a difference who you are or where you come from, deserves to have quality healthcare. It is a universal right, De Leon says in a video released by his campaign Wednesday. Its not the exclusive privilege of the elite and the wealthy. The concept of single-payer healthcare has grown in popularity among Democrats since the 2016 election, with some members of the so-called Sanders wing of the party urging Democrats to use support for it as a litmus test in 2018. Such a program is unlikely to become law while Republicans control both chambers of Congress. Feinstein has said she doesnt support expanding Medicare to the entire population at this stage and has cited the cost of doing so as a reason. If he were elected, De Leon would join Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and 15 other Democratic Senators as co-sponsors of the bill proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Facebook

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Sen. Kamala Harris wont back federal spending bill without DACA fix By Sarah D. Wire Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that she wont back a bill that allows the federal government to spend money unless Congress has a legislative fix to address the legal status of hundreds of thousands of people brought to the country illegally as children. I will not vote for an end-of-year spending bill until we are clear about what we are going to do to protect and take care of our DACA young people in this country, Harris said. Each day in the life of these young people is a very long time, and weve got to stop playing politics with their lives. President Trump announced in September that he was giving Congress until March before the program would shutter and recipients would begin losing work permits and protection from deportation. An estimated 200,000 of the nearly 800,000 recipients of the Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals program live in California, giving the Golden State an outsized stake in resolving their legal status. Harris spoke at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday with other members of the California delegation to urge quick action on the issue. It is absolutely urgent that we pass the legislation, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said. We are determined that the Dream Act will be the law of the land before the year is out. Democrats and Republicans are negotiating the details of a fix, and when something could pass. Pelosi has hinted that if Republicans dont have the votes within their party to pass the end-of-year spending bill, which Congress has to pass to keep the government open, Democrats will offer their votes  for a price. Facebook

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Rep. Dana Rohrabacher gets a second Republican challenger By Christine Mai-Duc A second Republican is jumping in to challenge GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa, and hes pitching himself as an alternative for conservatives who are fed up with Rohrabachers controversial antics. Paul Martin, 52, is a freelance writer and self-proclaimed Reagan Republican who lives in Costa Mesa. Rohrabacher is himself a former speechwriter for Reagan. Martin grew up in Anaheim with an Italian immigrant mother and a Mexican American father, and says hes opposed to many of the policies coming out of the Trump administration. Ive had enormous struggle with the rhetoric thats coming out of Washington, D.C., and even more so with the rhetoric that comes out of Dana Rohrabachers mouth, Martin said in an interview. Its just not in the spirit that I grew up with. Following President Trumps travel ban announcement, Martin started the Christian-Muslim Alliance, a campaign aimed at fostering dialogue between people of different faiths. He describes himself as a raging centrist on a personal blog, where hes criticized Trumps response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Va., and Rohrabacher for taking money from the National Rifle Assn. Still, Martin says hes a true conservative who wants to focus on issues of human dignity and bring better-paying jobs to the district. Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott send a message with their World Series bet By John Myers (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) As governors of states hit hard by natural disasters, the leaders of California and Texas hope to send a message with their wager on the outcome of the World Series. The winner will receive food or drink from either Californias wine country or Houstons best barbecue joints. The bet, made Tuesday before the start of the first World Series game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros, came with a request from both Gov. Jerry Brown and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for tourists to come back to those regions as soon as possible. While we dont expect to have to send any vino to Texas, we hope travelers from all over the world  yes, even the Lone Star State  will continue to visit California, said Brown in a written statement. If the Dodgers win, Abbott will send Brown Texas-style barbecue and a six-pack of Houston-brewed beer. Should the Astros prevail, Brown has promised wine from the Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino regions. Texas and California are recovering from some of the worst natural disasters our states have ever encountered, Abbott said in a joint statement from the two governors. As we work to overcome these challenges, our two states are united by Americas pastime as we cheer on our home teams in the World Series. Go Astros! Facebook

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California Assembly to hold public hearings to address sexual harassment By Melanie Mason Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, right. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)) The California Assembly will hold public hearings next month to address sexual harassment in the Capitol, Democratic lawmakers announced Tuesday, as allegations of pervasive mistreatment continue to ripple through Sacramento. The announcement comes one day after the California Senate announced it has hired lawyers and human resources consultants to investigate allegations of widespread sexual harassment and evaluate Senate procedures. In a joint statement, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount), Assemblyman Ken Cooley (D-Rancho Cordova) and Assemblywoman Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) said that sexual harassment of any kind is intolerable. The lawmakers say a three-pronged approach is necessary to confront the issue: changing a climate that has been permissive to sexual harassment, offering victims have a safe place to discuss complaints and ensuring that sexual harassment is dealt with expeditiously and that the seriousness of consequences match the violations committed, they said in a statement. Vowing a comprehensive effort to address these issues, lawmakers said there will be public hearings in November to discuss how the Legislature can tackle the issue. The panel, tasked to discuss harassment, discrimination and retaliation prevention and response, is chaired by Friedman and was formed in June, though it has not yet met. The panel is a subcommittee of the powerful Rules committee, chaired by Cooley, which functions as the chambers de facto human resources department. As we move forward, we must remember that the bottom line is harassers need to stop their abusive actions, the statement said. The rest of us need to call out harassment and abuse by its name and stigmatize this behavior each and every single time we see it. Adama Iwu, who helped organize the public letter published last week decrying an atmosphere of sexual harassment in the Capitol, said she and some of the women who signed the letter were concerned if any victim would be asked to testify with no legal guarantee against retaliation. Furthermore, we are concerned about the divergent paths of the Assembly and Senate, Iwu said in a statement. It is imperative that we work with outside experts, as part of a public independent review with whistleblower protections, to address the pervasive culture of sexual harassment in the Capitol community. Meanwhile, the trade association representing lobbyists, the Institute of Governmental Advocates, said in a statement Tuesday that it unequivocally supports [the women who signed the letter] and any other person in our Capitol community who has suffered harassment. Dates for the hearings, which are expected in late November, have not been set. Facebook

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Recall effort against Sen. Josh Newman still on track after too few voters request to remove their names from petitions By Patrick McGreevy State Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton), left, listens to debate in June on a measure to change the rules governing recall elections. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) Of the more than 70,600 voters who signed petitions to hold a recall vote on state Sen. Josh Newman of Fullerton, only 849 asked that their signatures be withdrawn by the deadline, clearing a major hurdle for an election on whether to oust the Democratic lawmaker, officials said Tuesday. Opponents of the recall needed to get more than 7,000 voters to withdraw their signatures to deprive supporters of the 63,593 signatures needed to put the measure on the ballot, under a new system approved recently by the Democratic-controlled Legislature that slows down the process. Sen. Josh Newman has spent months lying to his constituents by claiming people were duped into signing the recall petition against him, and with todays tally, he has been unmasked again as a pathological liar who is unfit to hold office, said Carl DeMaio, a Republican activist heading the recall drive. We eagerly look forward to voters having a chance to vote him out for his lies and his decision to increase the gas tax. Newman won a close contest last November in a district formerly represented by a Republican. He was targeted for recall by Republican activists for voting in April for a $52-billion transportation plan that raises gas taxes and imposes a new annual vehicle fee. A successful recall would deprive Democrats of a supermajority in the Senate. Once Secretary of State Alex Padilla certifies that there are sufficient valid signatures based on the data collected Tuesday, the new process calls for him to notify the state Department of Finance, which will be given 30 business days to prepare a cost estimate for the recall election. Once the estimate is prepared, the Joint Legislative Budget Committee will have 30 calendar days to review and comment on the estimate, said Sam Mahood, a spokesman for Padilla. On the following business day, the secretary of State will certify to the governor that the recall has qualified for the ballot. That could happen as late as Jan. 11 if the reviews take all the time allotted. Gov. Jerry Brown must then call an election to be held 60 to 80 days later, or within 180 days if there is a regularly scheduled election within Senate District 29 during that period. There will be a June 2018 primary election for the Assembly districts that make up the Senate District, so Brown could consolidate the Senate recall vote with that state primary. However, the new, longer process could end up being abandoned if supporters of the recall are successful in a lawsuit alleging the new rules are improper. At the same time, opponents of the recall have filed a lawsuit to block the recall, alleging petition circulators misled voters by saying their signatures would help repeal the gas tax. The underhanded methods used to qualify this recall likely represent one of the worst cases of voter fraud in California history, said Derek Humphrey, a consultant for the Newman campaign. Now, millions of tax dollars will be wasted to redo an election the Sacramento special interests lost barely a year ago. Its a shameful waste of money that voters will soundly reject and vote to keep Josh Newman fighting for them in the state Senate. Facebook

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Rep. Devin Nunes announces investigation into Obama-era uranium deal By David S. Cloud House Republicans are opening investigations of the Obama administrations 2010 decision to approve the sale of American uranium mines to a Russian-backed company, and California Rep. Devin Nunes is at the forefront. Nunes (R-Tulare), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said at a news conference that his panel and the House Oversight Committee would jointly probe the deal, which President Trump has called the real Russia story. Nunes and other Trump supporters have raised the 7-year-old uranium deal while four congressional committees and Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III are looking into Russia interference the 2016 election and whether Moscow had any direct links to the Trump campaign. Read More Facebook

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Former deputy director of California tax agency says he was fired for whistleblowing By Patrick McGreevy The state Capitol (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) A former deputy director of the state Board of Equalization said Tuesday he was improperly fired this month after cooperating with a state Department of Justice investigation into allegations that agency officials improperly used public resources. Mark DeSio was fired Oct. 12 as the director for external affairs of the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, which recently was split off from the board in an agency shakeup. He has filed a whistleblower complaint and appeal to the state Personnel Board seeking reinstatement to his position. He alleges the agency before its split up was rife with nepotism and that there is improper hiring and use of employees from one fund to instead help elected board members in field offices. For more than a year, DeSio gave information about the BOE to the Department of Justice and several state agencies and auditors, right up until the time of his firing, said a press release from his attorney, Mary-Alice Coleman. Despite being pressured, DeSio refused to engage in certain activities. DeSios job was threatened multiple times during the course of his employment. In April, Gov. Jerry Brown called for a Justice Department probe of allegations that employees of the state Board of Equalization misused state resources assigning high-paid tax auditors to tasks such as directing traffic for community events promoting elected board members. Brown also set in motion steps that broke up the agency in June, putting the five-member board in one office, and tax collection and appeal system in two other offices. At the time, Brown cited serious problems of mismanagement identified in a Department of Finance audit of the agency, which is responsible for collecting $60 billion in tax revenue annually. DeSio said he has also provided information on alleged improprieties to the state Fair Political Practices Commission, which investigates political wrongdoing. Days before he was notified of his termination, DeSio said he told Department of Justice investigators that the board had misused 30 information officer positions as personal staff for board members. He also said supervisors overruled him when he refused to hire 10 new call center employees from funds not set aside for that purpose. He said 10 people were hired even after Brown had revoked the agencys hiring power. DeSios complaint alleges that in August 2016, board member Jerome Horton pressured DeSio to promote a particular employee who was funded by DeSios office, but actually worked in Hortons office. When DeSio refused, saying the employee was not the top-scoring candidate, the complaint says Horton became angry and his chief of staff threatened DeSio. Board Executive Director David Gau, the complaint alleges, contacted Desio and told him to either do what Horton wanted or be fired. After meeting with Department of Finance auditors, DeSio said he was contacted by Horton in November 2016. Horton demanded to know what DOF had asked and what documentation Desio had provided in response. DeSio said he refused to disclose what he gave the auditor. Horton threatened DeSio, saying, I only need one more vote to take you out, the complaint alleges. Horton disputed the allegations. If he has filed a complaint, the facts will show that I had an excellent professional relationship with Mr. DeSio and the allegations are not true, I had nothing to do with his termination, Horton said in a statement. Gau did not immediately respond to requests for comment. DeSio also alleged multiple cases of nepotism in the agency. In one example, he alleges agency officials improperly orchestrated the hiring of the man whose wife worked for a top manager at the agency. Updated at 3 pm to include comment from Board member Jerome Horton. Facebook

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Want the Sierra Clubs endorsement? Here are its standards By Chris Megerian The Sierra Club is setting some ground rules for California gubernatorial candidates that may want its endorsement. No. 1 on the list is independence from the oil industry, which has been a fault line in the Capitol during debates over climate change policies. This year, given how important Californias role has become to the nation for leadership on the environment, it made sense to lay out in advance what some of the overall characteristics that the endorsement committee will be looking for in candidates, said Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California. Other requirements include independence from the tobacco and e-cigarette industry and a commitment to public health, environmental equity and transparency. Facebook

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California Senate hires investigators to look into sexual harassment allegations By Melanie Mason California Senate leader Kevin de Leon will hire two outside firms to look into allegations of a widespread culture of sexual harassment in the state Capitol. De Leon announced Monday he has hired the law office of Amy Oppenheimer to conduct an external investigation into harassment and assault allegations, and the consulting firm CPS HR Consulting to review Senate policies on harassment, discrimination and retaliation. De Leon also sent letters to lobbyists in the Capitol community detailing how existing rules protect non-employees. Theres always more employers can do to protect their employees, De Leon said in a statement. Everyone deserves a workplace free of fear, harassment and sexual misbehavior and I applaud the courage of women working in and around the Capitol who are coming forward and making their voices heard. The women behind an open letter sent last week calling out a pervasive culture of mistreatment in the political industry said that De Leons actions were insufficient. More than 140 women, including legislators, Capitol staff, political consultants and lobbyists, signed the letter. To find the truth and rebuild trust, we need a truly independent investigation, not a secretly hand-picked self-investigation, said Adama Iwu, a government affairs director for Visa who spearheaded the campaign. We need full transparency. How was this firm selected? Who will they report their findings to? What exactly are they investigating? Is the Assembly involved? Meanwhile, the women who have signed the letter, who have coalesced into a group called We Said Enough, announced they were formalizing their advocacy efforts on Monday by launching a nonprofit organization. The group plans to hold forums to outline a plan of action for improving how harassment and abuse complaints are reported, investigated and addressed. Facebook

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Kevin de Leon has millions in state campaign accounts that cant be rolled over to his Senate race By Patrick McGreevy State Senate leader Kevin De Leon has millions of dollars socked away in state campaign accounts, but federal law prohibits him from rolling over the money into his federal campaign for the U.S. Senate. So what options does the Los Angeles legislator have as he puts together a campaign to unseat Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a fellow Democrat, in next years election? Read More Facebook

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Gov. Jerry Brown heads to Washington to talk about the threat of nuclear war Facebook

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California Politics Podcast: What happens next in Sacramentos discussion of sexual harassment is important By John Myers Theres a big, challenging question beyond the initial shock of sexual harassment stories told by women working in California politics: What happens next? On this weeks California Politics Podcast, we discuss the allegations that have emerged from an open letter first reported by The Times on Tuesday. And a key part of the next chapter is how legislative leaders and the states major political parties respond to the concerns raised in the letter signed by more than 140 women. We also take a closer look at the new effort by wealthy activist Tom Steyer to demand impeachment proceedings against President Trump, and whether the San Francisco Democrat is thinking seriously about jumping into the U.S. Senate race. And with Gov. Jerry Browns action on hundreds of bills complete, we offer up a few notable decisions in those final signings and vetoes. Im joined by Times staff writer Melanie Mason and Marisa Lagos of KQED. Facebook

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Sen. Tom Cotton chides Californians: Your sanctuary cities werent enough, you had to have a sanctuary state instead By Phil Willon Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton addresses the California Republican Party at its fall convention in Anaheim. (Phil Willon / Los Angeles Times) Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton told California Republicans they should expect better days ahead, in part, because of liberal overreach by California Democrats on taxes, immigration and other issues affecting the daily lives of working-class Americans. Cotton invoked the memory of former president and California governor Ronald Reagan as a guiding light, and ridiculed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) as a harbinger of doom. All it takes is a little new thinking applied with old principles. The principles of Ronald Reagan, Cotton told a packed ballroom at the California Republican Partys fall convention in Anaheim on Saturday. Cottons keynote address hewed toward traditional conservative themes and was peppered with light moments and witty jabs about the Democrats grip on California politics. When Jerry Brown has to veto your legislation because its too liberal, you might have to take a look in the mirror, Cotton told the crowd. It was a big departure from the speech the night before by GOP firebrand Steve Bannon, President Trumps former political strategist. Bannon unleased attacks on former President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He told Republicans they needed to rise up in California or else the progressive left and lords of the Silicon Valley would try to secede from the union in 10 to 15 years. Cotton, who at 40 is the youngest member of the U.S. Senate, is widely believed to be eyeing a run for higher office. During the 2016 Republican National Convention, he was the most active politician on the breakfast circuit, visiting the South Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire and California delegations. California, of course, is home to more than 5 million Republican voters and has been a wellspring of political cash for GOP presidential candidates. Cottons message of hope has been a running theme throughout the three-day GOP gathering as the state party tries once again to turn things around in left-leaning California. The partys share of the state electorate has fallen to 26% and no Republican has been elected to statewide office since 2006. Cotton, however, told the party faithful to remain upbeat. Californias Republican members of Congress play a pivotal role in Washington, and there are ample opportunities to rekindle the partys presence in Sacramento and throughout the state. Cotton zeroed in on the new gas tax and vehicle fee hike in the state, which would raise $5.2 billion annually for transportation and mass transit improvements, saying it would hurt ordinary Californians. If you live in West L.A. or San Francisco and you have the money to afford a Tesla, maybe youll be OK, Cotton said. What about the farmer in the Central Valley who has a pickup truck and needs to fill it up three times a week? He also took shots at the so-called sanctuary state law signed this month by Gov. Jerry Brown, which will limit law enforcement agencies from questioning and detaining people for immigration violations. Your sanctuary cities werent enough, you had to have a sanctuary state instead, Cotton said. So all your citizens will face greater danger no matter where they live. Before he took the stage, the state GOP played a short video introduction of the Arkansas senator, focused on his experiences serving as an Army officer in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Washington, Cotton was a harsh critic of President Obama and is considered a hawk on national defense. During a hearing in June, Cotton also openly mocked the idea of the Trump administration colluding with Russia. Facebook

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House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy criticizes Gov. Brown, lauds Trump at California GOP convention By Seema Mehta McCarthy is lauding Trump for his "character and vision and understanding," compares him to Reagan. #cagop17 pic.twitter.com/AlyvgOvQWF  Seema (@LATSeema) October 21, 2017 House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) on Saturday blasted Gov. Jerry Brown over Democrats positioning the state as the liberal resistance to President Trump and for legislative efforts to circumvent the presidents policies. Brown, he warned, could be viewed similarly to southern governors who sought to pick and choose which federal laws to uphold during the civil rights era. He focused on Browns recent signing of a bill to make California a so-called sanctuary state, which will limit law enforcement agencies from questioning and detaining people for immigration violations. I dont think history will be very kind to Gov. Brown, McCarthy told a few hundred delegates and guests at a luncheon at the California Republican Party convention in Anaheim. California is a critical part of Democrats efforts to retake the House of Representatives, with a focus on seven Republican-held districts that Hillary Clinton won in the 2016 presidential election. Only one of the Republican representatives of those targeted districts had appeared at the convention as of Saturday afternoon, Rep. Mimi Walters of Irvine. McCarthy said Vice President Mike Pence raised $5 million for the efforts to protect the seats during a recent three-day fundraising trip through California, but he did not otherwise go into detail about the congressional battle expected in 2018. He instead lashed out at Republican members of the state Legislature who voted for Democratic policies. My advice to those Assembly members in Sacramento: You will not win a majority by thinking youll be Democrat-light. You will win the majority by showing the differences in the party, McCarthy said. You will not win the majority by voting against your own principles on a Democratic policy, and let Democratic targets vote no. You will not win the majority if youre concerned about being able to stand behind a podium with a Democratic governor instead of giving the freedom to Californians across this entire state. McCarthy did not name the members he was speaking about, but it was clear he was referring to Assemblyman Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley) and other Republicans who voted for an extension of the states cap-and-trade program this year. Mayes stepped down as Assembly Republican leader under pressure from others in his party who were upset over his vote for the climate change program, which requires companies to purchase permits to release greenhouse gases. McCarthy spoke a day after former Trump White House advisor Stephen K. Bannon addressed the group. Bannon has declared war on the GOP establishment, of which McCarthy is a member. McCarthy did not push back at Bannons remarks, which included criticism of former President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Rather, McCarthy lauded Trumps vision, compared him to former President Reagan and pointed to economic gains and regulatory reform since Trump took office. What a difference nine months and one election makes, McCarthy said. What a difference: A man who ran for president on issues and keeps his word and actually enacts the things he promised to do. Trump has tried to enact many of his campaign promises but has been unsuccessful on several priorities, including a travel ban on citizens from Muslim-majority countries and a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Tax reform is the latest priority on the Republicans agenda, and McCarthy promised that Congress would push a package by Thanksgiving that includes lowering rates for small businesses and corporations, and simplifying the tax code from seven income tax brackets to three. He also spoke out in support of one of the more controversial parts of the proposal: eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes. I dont think its fair for somebody else to subsidize poor management in California, McCarthy said. Look at the entire [tax reform] bill when it comes out, you will pay less. But no longer can Sacramento say, Im going to raise the rates just because Ill have the federal government subsidize it. They will have to be held accountable for when they want to raise taxes. Facebook

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Gold Star father Khizr Khan, who clashed with Trump during the election, goes after him again in California By Phil Willon Khizr Khan at the National Union of Healthcare Workers conference in Anaheim on Saturday. (Phil Willon / Los Angeles Times) Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim U.S. Army captain killed in Iraq who feuded with Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, on Saturday criticized the Trump White House for its clash with a widow of a fallen soldier this week. Khan, speaking to reporters after addressing a National Union of Healthcare Workers conference in Anaheim, said the families of all military members killed in combat deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, especially in the days and weeks immediately following the death of their loved one. It was disappointing to see the behavior of [the White House], Khan said, before criticizing Trump administration officials for standing in front of the cameras and providing a defense for the indefensible behavior. Khans comments came just days after the uproar over Trumps call to the widow of Army Sgt. La David T. Johnson of Florida, one of four U.S. soldiers who died in an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger. Rep. Frederica S. Wilson of Florida was with Johnsons wife, Myeshia Johnson, in a car when the widow took Trumps call on speakerphone. Wilson publicly described Trumps comments as insensitive, saying he suggested that the sergeant knew what he was getting into when he joined the Army. White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, whose son was killed in combat, defended the presidents comments, saying that he advised Trump on what to say and that the president was trying to praise Johnsons unselfish military service as well as offer words of comfort to his widow. Khan avoided attacking Trump directly or expanding on his remarks, saying he will address the controversy in more detail after Johnsons memorial services. The clash between Khan and Trump ignited after Khans speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. There, Khan ripped into Trump, then the Republican nominee for president. Hillary Clinton was right when she called my son the best of America. If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have been in America, Khan said at the convention. Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims. He disrespects other minorities  women, judges, even his own party leadership. He vows to build walls and ban us from this country. Trump responded by questioning whether Khans wife, who stood by her husbands side during the couples high-profile appearance, was silent because of her Muslim faith. The controversy ignited by Trumps jabs at a Gold Star family dragged on for days, and he drew rebukes from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). During his speech to the healthcare union Saturday, Khan lamented the loss of civility in national political discourse and pointed squarely at the president. He said the current White House has sown division by attacking immigrants and belittling political rivals. Facebook

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California Teachers Assn. votes to endorse Gavin Newsom for governor By Seema Mehta Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks with participants of a march in Pan Pacific Park in Los Angeles commemorating the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian genocide in April. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) The politically influential California Teachers Assn. on Saturday endorsed Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom for governor, praising his support for public schools and his promise to hold charter schools more accountable. Gavin has long supported increased funding for education and is committed to making investing in students a top priority as governor, CTA President Eric Heins said in a written statement Saturday. He supports a public education system that attracts, not attacks, teachers, universal preschool and affordable college for all. The move is not entirely surprising given the antagonism between one of Newsoms top Democratic rivals, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and teachers unions in California. Villaraigosa launched his career as a union organizer, including for United Teachers Los Angeles, and labor played a critical role in getting him elected to office. But after he tried to gain control of Los Angeles schools, he questioned policies fiercely guarded by teachers unions, such as seniority protections that resulted in regular layoff notices to younger teachers who tend to staff the most challenging schools. He grew to support using student test scores to evaluate teachers and other overhauls opposed by union leaders. Villaraigosa, who eventually gained control of more than a dozen struggling city schools through a nonprofit, ultimately blasted the citys teachers union where he once worked as the largest obstacle to creating quality schools. The teachers association also passed over Democrat Delaine Eastin, a long-shot candidate who jumped into the 2018 governors race last year. Eastin, who served as Californias state superintendent of public instruction, has vowed to put education at the forefront of her campaign. The key question going forward is how much CTA plans to invest in the governors race and how it plans to spend it. In 2014, the union spent $12 million to defeat Marshall Tuck, a huge sum in an obscure race to be state superintendent of public instruction. A Democrat and former charter school leader, Tuck was hired by Villaraigosa to run the nonprofit that oversaw his schools. Tuck, who narrowly lost his race in 2014 against an incumbent, is running for state superintendent again in 2018. CTA on Saturday also endorsed his opponent, Assemblyman Tony Thurmond (D-Richmond). Facebook

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Bannons mention of Sen. John McCain, George W. Bush draws boos at California GOP convention By Seema Mehta  Former Trump White House advisor Stephen K. Bannon ripped into former President George W. Bush and Arizona Sen. John McCain Friday night at the California Republican Party Convention in Anaheim, saying there has not been a more destructive presiden Mere mentions of former President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) drew loud boos and catcalls as former Trump advisor Stephen K. Bannon derided the GOP leaders in his address to California Republicans on Friday night at their fall convention in Anaheim. Bannon, who runs the far-right website Breitbart News, blasted Bush for his harsh assessment of Trump and his policies, which the former president delivered at a policy seminar in New York on Thursday. Bush suggested that Trump has promoted bigotry and falsehoods, violating this countrys values. President Bush to me embarrassed himself. Speech writers wrote a highfalutin speech, Bannon said. Its clear he didnt understand anything he was talking about.  Just like it was when he was president of the United States. Bannon, who was ousted from the White House in August but said he considers himself Trumps wingman, didnt stop there. He ripped into Bush, saying he allowed China to grow as a world power under the premise that global engagement might shepherd the county toward democracy. Theres not been a more destructive presidency than George Bushs, Bannon said. Bannon also had no love for McCain, who has openly clashed with Trump and helped torpedo Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The crowd at #CAGOP17 just booed George W. Bush and John McCain. "Hang him!" one man yelled about McCain.  Seema (@LATSeema) October 21, 2017 He praised McCains military service, but said as a politician, Hes just another senator from Arizona. The boos from the crowd of Republican donors and activists show how much the state party has changed as its influence has waned and its numbers have dwindled in California. The brand of conservatism belonging to Bush and McCain resonated with Californias GOP voters during their presidential campaigns. Both men forged deep ties with the states Republican elected leaders and donors, raising tens of millions of dollars here for their political campaigns. In California, Bush received 1.1 million more votes in the November 2004 presidential election than Trump did last November. McCain received almost 600,000 more votes in the November 2008 presidential election than Trump received in the state in 2016. Read More Facebook

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College journalists say covering Bannon at GOP convention prepares them for Yiannopoulos on campus By Anh Do Student journos Amy Wells + Brandon Pho of #CalSrateFullerton say peers are interested in party politics, esp info collected by young ppl. pic.twitter.com/b2MikBGnQD  ANH DO (@newsterrier) October 21, 2017 Student journalists Amy Wells and Brandon Pho from Cal State Fullerton teamed up outside Anaheims Marriott Hotel as night descended, assigned to cover Stephen K. Bannons speech and protesters targeting him. We dont underestimate how movements can pull in more youth, especially if they hear other youth pushing it on social media, said Pho, a sophomore majoring in journalism. Were always on the lookout for more policy to dig into because we have a lot of undocumented students on our campus and theyre way aware of national issues, added Wells, a senior pursuing a journalism degree. Pho and Wells said reporting on the small crowd of protesters will prepare them for much larger turnouts when provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos visits their campus at the end of this month. While Bannon is more provocative, he doesnt have the reach of someone like Milo who knows how to engage an online audience, said Pho, 19. We learn from watching how different public figures do outreach. Wells, 22, described the nights gathering as having the feel of a college campus protest. And of course, that feels familiar, with people here maybe figuring out what to do next. Small steps. Facebook

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Indivisible members rally ahead of Stephen K. Bannons speech to California Republicans By Anh Do Michelle Fowle, founder of The Resistance - Northridge, Indivisible, along w 100 supporters, launch protest vs. #SteveBannon in #Anaheim. pic.twitter.com/1yEdrUm9Si  ANH DO (@newsterrier) October 21, 2017 Growing up as a Republican in Southern California, Michelle Fowle said she automatically registered to join the party because her parents were also members. I didnt know the right civics, recalled the Northridge activist, 50. I didnt really know women died for the right to vote. I just voted for whoever I saw on signs, or whose names I remembered. Now Fowle is the founder of The Resistance - Northridge, Indivisible, which united supporters outside the California GOP convention in Anaheim on Friday to protest an appearance by Stephen K. Bannon. She joined a crowd of about 50 people across the street from the Anaheim Marriott on Friday night as they denounced President Trumps former advisor. They were separated from conventiongoers by metal barriers and a cordon of private security guards while police officers observed from nearby. Information and exposure and understanding show us that he is dangerous. Hes a very, very good manipulator, Fowle said of Bannon. His goal is to try and get rid of established Republicans and bring in more extreme people. Bannon is using whatever base Trump has left to recruit. Carolyn Criss, a retired film industry researcher, drove from Sherman Oaks to protest. Bannon is a clear danger to our democracy, she said. Criss said Trumps election awoke her dormant activist tendencies, and she now regularly attends protests against the president. She said she thought Bannons visit was an effort to amplify his voice while also helping the GOP raise money. I really hope the GOP just wants to make some money off him and doesnt believe what he says, she said. Facebook

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California lawmaker plans to introduce legislation to protect workers who exercise right to free speech By Mina Corpuz San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid, left, take a knee during the national anthem in a 2016 game against the Rams. (Daniel Gluskoter / Associated Press Images for Panini) A California lawmaker plans to introduce legislation that would help protect workers from employer retribution for exercising their right to free speech. Sen. Henry Stern (D-Canoga Park) said Friday that the state should be a sanctuary for free speech, including the kind that some might find offensive. He said he will introduce a measure when the Legislature is back in session in January. It doesnt matter if youre Ben Shapiro speaking at UC Berkeley, a brave female employee standing up to misogyny in her workplace through the #MeToo movement, or a Dallas Cowboy playing in California this Sunday, he said in a statement. The Constitution does not limit speech based on value judgments so long as it doesnt harm others. Stern said the presidents attempt to urge NFL owners to fire players who kneel during the National Anthem is a troubling attack on the 1st Amendment. The Constitution trumps Trump, he said. Americans of all political stripes ought to stand up and defend it. The legislation would also help public institutions fund security for events that could include offensive speech. Public institutions and law enforcement shouldnt have to bear the cost of ensuring constitutional protections for such events, Stern said. Stern, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is part of the ongoing work to define hate speech and find a way to address it while upholding the Constitution. Facebook

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Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom fights NRA over gun control law in federal court By Patrick McGreevy Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. (Tim Berger / Times Community News) Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked the courts to lift an order that blocks Californias ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines, which was approved in November by voters when they passed Proposition 63. In June, a federal judge in San Diego ruled in favor of a request by the National Rifle Assn. to temporarily delay the magazine ban until the court could make a final decision on the law. U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez wrote then: If this injunction does not issue, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of otherwise law-abiding citizens will have an untenable choice: become an outlaw or dispossess ones self of lawfully acquired property. In a friend-of-the-court filing, Newsom and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence argued the ban on large-capacity magazines is needed to help prevent the occurrence of high-fatality gun massacres, and to reduce the bloodshed when these tragedies occur. Newsom, a candidate for governor, sponsored Proposition 63 with the law center. Its a tragic reality that as time passes, we are presented with more and more evidence on the devastating power of large-capacity magazines, which are consistently the accessory of choice in mass shootings for mass murderers, Newsom said Friday in a statement, predicting the federal courts would uphold the ban. Facebook

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State GOP leader says the new gas tax and high poverty rate make Democrats vulnerable in California By Phil Willon California Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte, center, addresses GOP delegates at the state partys convention in Anaheim on Friday. (Phil Willon / Los Angeles Times) California Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte kicked off the state GOPs fall convention with a speech to delegates that outlined why he thinks Democrats will be vulnerable in the upcoming 2018 elections. Brulte zeroed in on the new gas tax and policy declaring California a sanctuary state  both approved by Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democratic-controlled Legislature and both, he said, unpopular with California voters. He said Democrats have tried to deflect voter attention from these issues, as well as Californias high poverty rate and an uptick in crime, by continually attacking President Trump. Here in California, the reason they want to talk about Donald Trump is because they dont want to talk about the record they created, Brulte said. They broke it. They own it. If Donald Trump were not president, we would still have 22% of Californians living below the poverty line. Thats not Donald Trumps fault. Thats the Democrats who control California. The state GOPs three-day convention at the Anaheim Marriott will kick off in earnest Friday night when Trumps former political strategist, Steve Bannon, takes the stage for a keynote address to delegates. Facebook

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Far-right blogger Chuck C. Johnson gave bitcoin donation to Dana Rohrabacher By Christine Mai-Duc Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) speaks to Russian lawmakers at a meeting in Moscow in May 2013. (Misha Japaridze / Associated Press) Right-wing blogger and provocateur Chuck C. Johnson gave Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) a $5,400 campaign contribution weeks after he said he helped arrange a meeting between the Orange County congressman and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The donation, the maximum amount allowed by law, came in the form of bitcoin, a virtual currency. Johnson, who previously was banned from Twitter after soliciting donations toward taking out a prominent black activist, is listed on campaign finance forms as a self-employed investor who lives in Rosemead. Rohrabacher campaign spokesman Jason Pitkin confirmed the donor was the same person who helped arrange the Assange meeting. Johnson also recently sat in on a meeting between Rohrabacher and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul in the Capitol. Pitkin said they discussed Assanges legal situation and cannabis policy, among other things. Rohrabacher previously said Assange had emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in hacking the 2016 elections but claimed his plans to bring the information directly to President Trump have been thwarted by White House staffers. Pitkin said Johnson approached the Rohrabacher campaign shortly after his trip to London and said he wanted to donate. He said, Do you take bitcoin? and I said, I think we can,  Pitkin recalled. The campaign then set up a bitcoin wallet to receive the funds, Pitkin said. Rohrabacher is not the only California House candidate this cycle who has accepted contributions in bitcoin. Democrat Brian Forde, who is challenging GOP Rep. Mimi Walters of Irvine, reported raising more than $59,000 in bitcoin donations between July 1 and Sept. 30. Facebook

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Government needs more women, Nancy Pelosi says By Colleen Shalby Nancy Pelosi has 30 years worth of insight for women starting out in politics. Shes run into plenty of naysayers over the years, but said she hasnt let other peoples doubt stop her. Her advice for those at the beginning of their career is simple. Know your purpose, she said in an interview Wednesday night before a Summit event hosted by the Los Angeles Times and the Berggruen Institute. The House minority leader said she hopes more women will run for office, calling their participation a necessity for government and the future. Whether its education, the environment, equal rights, womens health  whatever it is. Master your subject. Have a plan on how you will implement your ideas and you will attract support. Facebook

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This Los Angeles representative spent $105,500 on Hamilton tickets By Sarah D. Wire Rep. Tony Cardenas asks a question of Lin-Manuel Miranda during a town hall at Panorama High School in Panorama City. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) Hamilton fever has caught at least two Los Angeles area members of Congress whove used campaign funds to purchase tickets to the hit musicals run at the Hollywood Pantages. Rep. Tony Cardenas campaign and his political action committee Victory by Investing, Building and Empowering PAC spent $105,500 in April buying tickets to the show, which is playing in L.A. until Dec. 30. Two fundraisers using the approximately 400 tickets have raised more than $300,000, a spokesman for the congressmans campaign said. For both Cardenas campaign and the PAC, the tickets were the single most costly expense of the year. Basically they saw this as an opportunity to have a nice fundraising opportunity and go to a show that celebrates American democracy, campaign spokesman Josh Pulliam said. The Los Angeles Democrat is friends with the father of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning creator of Hamilton. When the show opened in Los Angeles in mid-August, Miranda spoke to nearly 1,000 students in Cardenas largely Latino San Fernando Valley district . He raffled off some tickets to the show as an online fundraiser in September. Miranda has a history of supporting Democrats, and Hamilton has been used as a fundraiser before. In July 2016, Hillary Clintons presidential campaign hosted a special showing of the musical for donors, with a starting ticket price of $2,700. Cardenas held two fundraisers tied to the show. Miranda did not attend either event, Pulliam said. Pulliam said a few dozen tickets went to people in the community as gifts. He also raffled off some tickets to the show as an online fundraiser in September. Cardenas isnt in a particularly tough race for 2018. A Democrat and a Green Party member have filed to run in his district, but neither have raised or spent enough to require them to file campaign finance reports. Cardenas most recent report, which covers what he raised and spent in the last three months, shows he raised $232,389 and had $481,049 in the bank as of Sept. 30. Its fairly common for lawmakers or candidates to use sports events or concerts as major fundraising opportunities, especially when big names such as Taylor Swift or Bruce Springsteen play concerts in Washington. Rep. Maxine Waters campaign spent just under $11,000 on tickets to Hamilton in August. Reached by phone, the Los Angeles Democrat seemed surprised reporters were asking about the tickets. She said her campaign made $110,000 at a fundraiser using the tickets. Everybody does it, whether its a concert or a baseball game, she said. Several conservative groups have targeted Waters, an outspoken critic of President Trump, for the 2018 election. She won in 2016 with 76% of the vote over Republican Omar Navarro, who is challenging her again. In a statement released by her campaign, Waters stressed that fundraising at an event means the campaign doesnt have to rent space or buy food. These fundraising activities are similar and sometimes less expensive than the amount of money a candidate would spend to host a fundraising dinner within a private room at a restaurant or hotel  once you factor in associated catering costs, she said. The price for the Hamilton tickets was similar to what one would have to pay at these venues. There was nothing improper or unusual about the expenditure. Facebook

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California Republicans increase security at state convention ahead of Steve Bannon speech By Seema Mehta (Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press) The California Republican Party is ramping up security at its weekend convention in anticipation of protests at the Friday night keynote speech by Steve Bannon, a former advisor to President Trump and the executive chairman of Breitbart News. Part of providing a good experience for our convention goers is assuring your safety, state party Executive Director Cynthia Bryant wrote in an email to attendees on Thursday describing the security measures. Attendees will pass through metal detectors and their property is subject to be searched before they are allowed to enter the ballroom at the Anaheim Marriott, where the speech and dinner are taking place. Weapons, noisemakers and signs are prohibited. We did not make the decision for the additional security lightly and we know that it does impact your convention going experience, Bryant wrote. I sincerely regret that. Its a level of security rarely seen at political party gatherings in California. Convention attendees were also screened when Donald Trump, then a candidate seeking the GOP presidential nomination, appeared at the spring 2015 convention in Burlingame. That decision was made in consultation with the Secret Service, which had already begun protecting Trump. That convention attracted large-scale protests that at times turned into tense stand-offs between activists and police officers. Bannons speech is also expected to draw protests. Bannon, a conservative media leader, promoted Breitbart as a platform of the alt-right and needled establishment Republicans when Trump selected him to be the chief executive of his 2016 presidential campaign. His views as a nationalist, economic populist and nativist indelibly shaped Trumps message to voters. Once Trump was sworn in as president, Bannon was named White House chief strategist. He was a divisive figure in the administration, disparaging his colleagues to the media before he left the White House in August. He has since declared war on the GOP establishment, including supporting challengers to incumbents and other candidates backed by Trump. Facebook

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L.A. County Supervisors unanimously back Sen. Feinstein for reelection By Sarah D. Wire L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times) The five members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have all endorsed Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the senators campaign announced Thursday. The announcement comes as factions of California Democrats begin weighing in on the Senate race between Feinstein and state Senate leader Kevin de Leon next year. Its a snub for De Leon, a native Angeleno who has represented part of the city for more than a decade in the Assembly and state Senate. Sen. Feinstein has been our strong partner on the critical issues confronting L.A. County  homelessness, healthcare, and transportation. Her support for our county hospitals, including her commitment to our new Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, has been essential to our countys healthcare system, Board Chairman and 2nd District Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said in a statement. Ridley-Thomas said the board members support Feinstein -- including the lone Republican on the board, 5th District Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who said in a statement that California needs Feinstein in the Senate. Ive worked with Sen. Feinstein for many years. Shes extremely knowledgeable and always prepared on the tough issues we confront. Shes a problem solver we can count on now and in the future, Barger said. Feinstein already has the backing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which traditionally backs incumbents. Soon after he announced a challenge, De Leon was endorsed by Democracy for America, the progressive political action committee formed by former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in 2004. Facebook

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Northern California wildfires mean thousands of families will flood the regions already strained housing market By Liam Dillon Tom and Shelly Lanning, from left, talk with Lannings mother, Jeannie Anderson, on Oct.17, 2017. The Lannings have been staying with Anderson since they lost their home in wildfires. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) Even before devastating wildfires struck Northern California last week, the regions housing market was in crisis. Home values and rents already were at or near record highs, and decades of slow construction has left few homes available for the thousands of displaced residents. The number of new families flooding the market is giving rise to fears of widespread displacement and even higher costs. The scope and magnitude of the rehousing is unfathomable, said Larry Florin, chief executive of the nonprofit Burbank Housing, one of Santa Rosas largest low-income housing providers. If you take 3,000 units being demolished in a market that was already dramatically constrained, its hard to imagine whats going to happen, where people are going to go. Read More Facebook

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California lawmaker wants to ban secret settlements in sexual harassment cases after Weinstein scandal By Melanie Mason State Sen. Connie Leyva (D-Chino), shown speaking at a 2016 news conference for ending the statute of limitations for rape, wants to ban confidentiality provisions from sexual harassment settlements. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) A California state senator says she intends to introduce a bill next year to ban confidentiality provisions in monetary settlements stemming from sexual harassment, assault and discrimination cases. Secret settlements in sexual assault and related cases can jeopardize the public  including other potential victims  and allow perpetrators to escape justice just because they have the money to pay the cost of the settlements, Sen. Connie Leyva (D-Chino) said in a statement Thursday. This bill will ensure that sexual predators can be held accountable for their actions and ideally prevent them from victimizing others. The measure comes after revelations of decades-long alleged sexual misconduct by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Some of those incidents were obscured from public view thanks to monetary settlements whose terms required confidentiality. The issue has a renewed resonance in Sacramento after scores of women working in state politics renounced a pervasive culture of harassment and abuse in the Capitol in a public letter this week. Leyva told the Times she intends for her proposed settlement ban to include both private employers and public ones, such as the Legislature. 9:41 a.m.: This post was updated to specify Leyvas proposal would apply to private and public employers. This post was originally published at 8:54 a.m. Facebook

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Nancy Pelosi: Its your problem if you dont recognize that women are ready to do any job By Colleen Shalby Nancy Pelosi knows what it feels like to have to prove herself in politics simply because shes a woman. She says she experiences the pressure every day. But its your problem if you dont recognize that women are ready to do any job, the House minority leader said in an interview before a Summit event hosted by the Los Angeles Times and the Berggruen Institute on Wednesday night. When she decided to run for a leadership position in Congress, Pelosi said a man questioned her move. As if a woman had to be told she could run, she recalled. We just laughed and said poor babies. In the midst of a growing sexual misconduct scandal centered on Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein, many women are sharing their stories of sexual harassment and assault. No industry has been spared  women at Californias Capitol signed an open letter Tuesday outlining pervasive harassment in Sacramento. Pelosi said she wasnt prepared to share a so-called me too moment, but she thanked the women who have. The sheer numbers speak eloquently to the fact that we should get to zero tolerance, she said. Facebook

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Watch: The View from California political panel with John Myers Sacramento Bureau Chief John Myers hosted a panel discussion about the view from California as part of our L.A. Times and Berggruen Institute Summit series. Joining him were state Sen. Robert Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys), Republican strategist Luis Alvarado, UCLA political scientist Lynn Vavreck and Alma Hernandez, executive director of SEIU California. We also had a conversation with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Watch that here. Facebook

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Watch: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi talks to the L.A. Times House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) spoke Wednesday about her view of national news, working with the Trump White House and the future of the Democratic Party. The event was co-hosted by The L.A. Times and the Berggruen Institute. Following that conversation, Sacramento Bureau Chief John Myers hosted a panel discussion about the view from California. Joining him were state Sen. Robert Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys), Republican strategist Luis Alvarado, UCLA political scientist Lynn Vavreck and Alma Hernandez, executive director of SEIU California. Watch that here. Facebook

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Kevin de Leon: My whole life, Ive been told to wait my turn and know my place You know, my whole life, Ive been told to wait my turn and know my place. Well, its Californias turn to lead. And Californias place to be a shining example for the world and a stark contrast to the failures of Washington.  State Senate leader Kevin de Leon, kicking off his U.S. Senate campaign Read More Facebook

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Pelosi, in Los Angeles visit, calls on Congress to pass Dream Act By Makeda Easter Rep. Nancy Pelosi meets with young immigrants protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in downtown Los Angeles. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday called on the GOP-controlled Congress to pass the Dream Act by years end. Pelosi appeared at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights with community leaders and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival recipients in Los Angeles. The San Francisco Democrat said she has confidence Republicans and Democrats will be able to work together to pass the Dream Act. President Trump said we had shared values when we spoke to him, Pelosi said. I trust that he will honor that commitment because the American people want him to do so. The Democratic leader had conversations with Trump about continuing DACA after his heartless decision to end the program. Pelosi said that President Reagan was great on immigration and noted his immigration agenda protected a larger percentage of people than President Obama did with his executive order regarding DACA. She added the last three Republican presidents strongly acknowledged the value of immigration to America. A majority of the estimated 800,000 immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children live in California. These newcomers make America more American, Pelosi said. She noted there have been a handful of Republicans who support forcing a Dream Act vote via a procedural move. Still, her party is in the minority. You can have all the conversation in the world that you want, but youve got to have the votes, she said, encouraging moderate Republicans to support the Dream Act. She was joined by Democratic Reps. Jimmy Gomez of Los Angeles, Judy Chu of Monterey Park and Lucille Roybal-Allard of Downey, the first Mexican American woman elected to Congress and original co-author of the Dream Act. Roybal-Allard said the so-called Dreamers have lived in this country, they have grown up here, they have pledged allegiance to our flag. To do anything else but to protect them by passing the Dream 
In the first major legal battle over abortion under President Trump, the federal appeals court in Washington on Tuesday set aside an antiabortion rule adopted by the administration and cleared the way for a 17-year-old immigrant to end her pregnancy.

By a 6-3 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit revived an earlier order that the government must promptly and without delay allow the teenager, referred to in court as Jane Doe, to obtain the abortion she has sought for five weeks. Doe has been held in a detention center for unaccompanied minors in south Texas since crossing the border in September.

Trump administration officials have adopted a policy of not allowing pregnant minors who are in federal custody to get abortions. They did not dispute that the Constitution gave Doe a right to choose an abortion, but said they would not facilitate the procedure by allowing her to travel to an abortion clinic.

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Although the ruling directly affects only the one pregnant teenager who brought the case, it strongly indicates that the appeals court, which has jurisdiction over federal agencies nationwide, would strike down efforts by administration officials to block abortions in similar cases. The ACLU, which represented Doe, says that in the last year, administration officials repeatedly have tried to prevent pregnant minors in detention from having abortions.

Administration officials did not immediately comment on the ruling or what they would do next.

The appellate judges split entirely along ideological and political lines. The six judges in the majority were all Democratic appointees, including Chief Judge Merrick Garland, President Obamas unsuccessful nominee to the Supreme Court. The three dissenters were Republican appointees, including Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, a leading contender for the next Supreme Court nomination under Trump.

Kavanaugh slammed the majority for what he called a radical extension of the law that creates a new right for unlawful immigrant minors to obtain immediate abortion on demand.

What new law? Judge Patricia Millett shot back. The Roe vs. Wade ruling created a constitutional right to abortion, Millett, an Obama appointee, wrote in an opinion explaining the majoritys ruling. That right applies whether or not a person is in the U.S. legally, she wrote.

Administration officials bulldozed over Does rights by claiming an unaccompanied child has the burden of extracting herself from custody if she wanted to exercise the right, she wrote. The government has insisted that it may categorically blockade exercise of her constitutional right unless this child (like some kind of legal Houdini) figures her own way out of detention.

The abortion procedure is to be paid for with private funds, not tax money, Millett noted, and even the cost of taking Doe to the clinic would not be paid by taxpayer funds

The government does not have to facilitate anything for Doe to have the abortion, she wrote, it just has to not interfere or make things harder.

The case began in early September when the young immigrant crossed the border illegally and said she was fleeing violence and abuse in Central America. An examination later determined she was pregnant.

Because she was an unaccompanied minor, she came under the control of a little-known agency in the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Under the Trump administration, that agency is headed by E. Scott Lloyd, a former attorney for the Knights of Columbus and a fierce opponent of abortion.

Lloyd decreed that federally funded shelters which house young migrants may not take any action that facilitates an abortion without his direct approval.

Jane Doe was 11 weeks pregnant when she requested an abortion. With the help of a court-appointed guardian, she won the approval of a Texas judge who decided she was sufficiently mature to make the decision on her own  a requirement in the states law for minors who do not have a parents permission for an abortion.

Lloyd refused her request. For every minor in HHS custody, the agency retains responsibility to ensure that the minors interests are considered in the decision-making about her case, administration lawyers argued in a brief to the U.S. appeals court on Monday.

In Ms. Does case, the Director declined to permit Ms. Doe to leave her shelter for purposes of obtaining the abortion.

The ACLU alleged Lloyd was wielding an unconstitutional veto power over the minors access to abortion. It also said that given how long the proceedings already had taken, Does time for obtaining a legal abortion was running out.

A federal district judge on Oct. 18 ordered Lloyds agency to permit the young women to be transported for medical counseling and an abortion. Trumps lawyers quickly appealed, and in a 2-1 decision on Friday, a panel of the federal appeals court set aside the judges order and gave the government 11 more days to secure a sponsor to help her with her decision.

Two Republican judges were in the majority on that panel, and Millett dissented. She accused Lloyd of an astonishing power grab [that] flies in the teeth of decades of Supreme Court precedent preserving and protecting the fundamental right of women to make an informed choice whether to continue a pregnancy at this early stage.

The ACLU then asked the full appeals court to take up the case, leading to Tuesdays 6-3 decision.

Major questions before the Supreme Court this fall david.savage@latimes.com

Twitter: DavidGSavage

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UPDATES:

2:55 p.m.: This article was updated with quotes from the concurring and dissenting opinions.

The article was first published at 12:05 p.m.
The Trump administrations reluctance to confront climate change threatens to create a massive burden on taxpayers, as a lack of planning by federal agencies leaves the government ill-equipped to deal with the fallout from rising temperatures, according to independent congressional investigators.

The report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office presents a bleak picture in which the economic costs of climate change spiral ever further upward in the coming decades. While the report finds that coordination among federal agencies in confronting climate change has long been inadequate, it now comes at a time when the White House is making an unprecedented retreat on environmental protection.



For the record: An earlier version of this story misidentified the Government Accountability Office.

President Trumps scrapping of an Obama-era requirement that federal agencies work together to prepare for warming, the report concludes, has left the agencies with no concrete plan of action or indication there will be one.

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Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) had requested the GAO examination of climate change preparedness. Collins is among the renegade Republicans vocal in their disappointment of the administrations climate policy. She voted against the confirmation of Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt and reprimanded the administration for bailing on the Paris agreement to combat climate change.

The report requested by the senators warns that the failure of federal agencies to work in unison in mitigating the effects of global warming carries a big price tag.

The federal government does not have government-wide strategic planning efforts in place to help set clear priorities for managing significant climate risks before they become federal fiscal exposures, the report said, adding that given the potential magnitude of climate change and the lead time needed to adapt, preparing for these impacts now may reduce the need for far more costly steps in the decades to come.

The extreme weather events of the last decade that scientists say were exacerbated by climate change added more than $350billion in costs to taxpayers, according to the report  a huge drain on the budget as money was diverted to cover more disaster relief, crop and flood insurance, firefighting costs and infrastructure and public lands repairs. Those demands threaten to increase by $12billion to $35billion each year by the middle of the century, the GAO said.

The Trump administration was invited to present its own view in the report, but opted not to do so. The administration has generally addressed questions about global warming by casting doubt on established climate science.

As devastating hurricanes were bearing down on Texas and Florida over the summer, Pruitt dismissed discussion of the role climate change was playing in such storms as opportunistic and inappropriate.

The GAO investigators seem to take a very different view. The report cites federal research concluding extreme events such as floods, droughts and wildfires will become more frequent and intense because of climate change. The less the federal government does to prepare for it, the harder the hit to taxpayers, it warns.

Investigators urged robust engagement by the Trump White House in confronting the problem, calling on its budget office, its Council of Environmental Quality and its Office of Science and Technology Policy to use information on the potential economic effects of climate change to help identify significant climate risks facing the federal government and craft appropriate federal responses.

Such responses could include establishing a strategy to identify, prioritize and guide federal investments against future disasters, the report said.

The effects of climate change cut across many sectors of the economy, the report says, pointing as an example to the conclusion of scientists and economists that warming-induced ocean acidification could cut the shellfish harvest in the Pacific Northwest by as much as half in the next 80 years. The annual burning of forestland in the Rocky Mountains could grow by 1.9 million acres over that same time period, according to an exhaustive national climate study conducted by the Rhodium Group, a multinational research firm, that is cited frequently in the congressional report.

The investigators break down how federal agencies will be strained to confront climate changes effects in different regions of the nation absent better planning, as crop yields drop, coastal infrastructure is damaged and more intense wildfires break out. It urged lawmakers, the White House and agency officials to immediately start identifying areas of high fiscal exposure.

evan.halper@latimes.com

Follow me: @evanhalper

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Sen. Jeff Flakes decision not to run for reelection opens up a wild race to replace him in a 2018 Arizona contest, yet his departure also comes as bad news to Republican and Democratic challengers already running.

Republican Kelli Ward had counted on taking on a wounded Flake, who has slumped in popularity as he has publicly criticized President Trump in a state that voted for the president in 2016. Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, on the other hand, had counted on facing either Flake or the controversial Ward in a general election, giving Democrats their best opportunity in years to pull the seat into their hands.

Now, Arizona politicians expect a renewed push among Republicans to expand their roster of challengers to Ward, which gives her a tough race in the primary and also may give Sinema a far more complicated path in a general election. In short, the open seat may simultaneously cause problems for both the right wing of the Republican Party and for Democrats.

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Several Republican members of Congress, as well as a favorite of Trumps, Arizona state Treasurer Jeff DeWit, were believed to be looking at the race in the hours after Flakes surprise announcement in Washington.

This is a free-for-all, said Arizona-based Republican pollster Mike Noble. Everyones phones are blowing up. A lot of people are going to be looking at this very closely.

Flake formally announced his decision on the Senate floor in the midst of remarks devastatingly critical of Trump. He became the second senator this year to announce he planned to retire; the first was fellow establishment Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, who also lambasted Trump on Tuesday.

If Flakes announcement was a surprise, his straits as he sought his second term were not.

The senator earned Trumps enmity when he criticized the then-presidential candidate during the 2016 campaign, and the feud between the two exploded anew this year with the publication of Flakes book, Conscience of a Conservative.

The book lanced the Republican Party and Flakes colleagues for, in his words, their abdication of responsibility to stand up against the president as he coarsened politics and divided the nation. He returned to that theme in his extensive remarks on Tuesday.

Although he couched his resignation in terms of high principle, polling in the race so far has illustrated how little room Republican primary electorates provide for a candidate who openly crosses Trump. In a survey by HighGround consultancy in August, Flake trailed Ward in a primary matchup, with 29% to her 43%. He also ran well behind Sinema in a hypothetical general election, with 33% to her 41%.

In Washington, Flake was lauded by fellow Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain as a senator who would stand up for what he believes  knowing full well that there would be a political price to pay.

In Arizona, the verdict was harsher, as several Republicans indicated that Flake had come to see that continuing in the race would only risk a Republican hold on the seat.

Theres no question hes gotten very deep into the numbers and there was simply no path for victory, said Arizona-based Republican consultant Constantin Querard.

The Arizona race illustrated some of the same angry divisions between factions of the Republican Party that played out last month in a special primary election for a Senate seat in Alabama. That race was won by Roy Moore, a candidate backed by former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon; Moore defeated appointed Sen. Luther Strange, who was supported by most of the Republican establishment. Trump also backed Strange, although he sometimes seemed uncertain of his choice.

In Arizona, Trump had yet to officially support a candidate, but strategists in the state say he wasnt shy about asking allies to consider the race. In a raucous appearance in Phoenix in August, he derided Flake without mentioning his name.

Nobody wants me to talk about him. Nobody knows who the hell he is, Trump said. The next day, on Twitter, he declared that he was not a fan of Jeff Flake, weak on crime & border!

Bannon, meanwhile, appeared in Arizona earlier this month on behalf of Ward. He vowed that establishment Republicans would reap the whirlwind.

On Tuesday, Ward called Arizona voters the big winner in Jeff Flakes decision to not seek re-election. The states voters deserve a strong conservative in the U.S. Senate who supports President Trump and the America First agenda. Our campaign proudly offers an optimistic path forward for Arizona and America.

Still, Ward, a former state senator, has been seen even by some Trump supporters as a weak general election candidate. She was soundly defeated by McCain in 2016, and recently, in the midst of widespread expressions of sympathy for his brain-cancer diagnosis, said he should resign.

Without the unpopular Flake to campaign against, she may have a more difficult case to make to voters.

It has removed the villain from the race, Querard said.

Complications unique to Arizona may affect the decisions of others considering a run. Republican members of Congress said to be interested in upward movement  a list including Reps. David Schweikert of the Phoenix area, Paul Gosar of western Arizona and Martha McSally of the Tucson area  would have to take on Ward and by extension Bannons forces while forfeiting their current jobs.

For more on politics from Cathleen Decker cathleen.decker@latimes.com

Twitter: @cathleendecker

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Roy Moore was twice ousted from the Alabama Supreme Court for flouting the U.S. Constitution. Now hes on a path to become the states next U.S. senator.

Scott Wagner accosted a videographer recording him as he campaigned for Pennsylvania governor. Hes since won the endorsement of Stephen K. Bannon, the presidents political alter ego, and is a strong contender to win the GOP nomination.

Kid Rock, the country-rapper-rock star whose resume includes a sex tape, Waffle House brawl and enough raunchy lyrics to fill a pornographic novel, was treated as a serious prospect for Senate in Michigan until he removed himself from consideration Tuesday in characteristically colorful fashion.

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No, Im not running for Senate, he said in an expletive-laden announcement on Howard Sterns SiriusXM radio show. Are you  kidding me?

Clearly, the old rules of political campaigning no longer apply in this age of President Trump.

A checkered background or behavior once considered highly problematic  if not instantly disqualifying  is no longer an obstacle for those seeking public office. For some political job-seekers, it matters not at all.

There arent many kill shots left in a post-Trump world, said Jared Leopold. The strategist for the Democratic Governors Assn. started in politics as an opposition researcher, rooting for the damning detail  infidelity, unpaid taxes, a violent outburst  that could dispatch a candidate to oblivion.

In this new  world, basically its anything goes as long as youre brash and unapologetic, said Joe DiSano, a Michigan Democratic strategist. Theres no shame anymore.

Politics tends to mirror culture, so over time campaign standards have shifted in ways that reflect larger societal changes.

Divorce was once a serious handicap; presidential candidates Adlai Stevenson and Nelson Rockefeller both suffered politically because of their broken marriages. Then attitudes changed and divorce lost its stigma. By the time the twice-wed Ronald Reagan won the White House in 1980, his marital history was a non-issue.

In 1992, Bill Clinton felt compelled to alibi his youthful encounter with marijuana. He tried it, he famously stated, but didnt inhale. By 2008, Barack Obamas admission of casual drug use, smoking marijuana and even trying a little blow, or cocaine, scarcely mattered to voters with their own histories of dabbling in drugs.

Trump is a product of reality TV and its over-the-top sensibility; he was first introduced to millions of voters as host of The Apprentice, playing Hollywoods version of a business mogul.

But hes also changing the political culture from within. By shattering norms  boasting of forcing himself on women, feuding with the families of killed soldiers, trolling his foes on Twitter  he has done more than any figure in recent memory to redefine the bounds of political propriety, at least for his base of core supporters within the Republican Party.

Basically its anything goes as long as youre brash and unapologetic. Theres no shame anymore.  Joe DiSano, a Democratic campaign strategist.

Trump has made outrageousness successful, said Ed Sarpolus, a longtime political pollster in Michigan. You dont have to fit the traditional norms to run and win.

With attention turning to the 2018 midterm election, an improbable crop of Republican candidates have begun testing the bounds of convention.

Former Rep. Michael Grimm is running to reclaim his congressional seat on Staten Island after completing seven months in prison for tax fraud. Erik Prince, the founder of the controversial Blackwater security firm, which has a history of legal problems, is contemplating a Senate bid in Wyoming  challenging the GOP incumbent John Barrasso  even though he has not lived in the state in years.

Fueling their efforts are the same contempt for the political status quo and anger at establishment figures that helped place Trump in the White House. I think people are still in the mood of, I dont care if its the garbageman. Ill vote for him if I think hell make a difference and bring about change, said Fred Davis, a Republican strategist.

Moores ouster from the Alabama bench, for ignoring federal laws pertaining to same-sex marriage and the separation of church and state, might once have been a career-killer. But if anything, his willful defiance enhanced the renegade image that pushed him past the establishment favorite, appointed Sen. Luther Strange, in last months GOP primary.

With the backing of Bannon, Trumps former campaign strategist and White House advisor, Moore is strongly favored to win the seat in a December runoff against Democratic attorney Doug Jones.

In Pennsylvania, state Sen. Wagner was caught on tape confronting a cameraman, or tracker, from the liberal group American Bridge, who was recording Wagners appearance in hopes of capturing a misstep. Both sides routinely conduct such public surveillance. Wagner seized the camera, confiscated the memory card and, according to the cameraman, bloodied his finger.

The assault might once have become a major issue in the governors race  Democrats said it showed a man unhinged  raising doubts about Wagners stability and temperament. So far, however, the episode has caused barely a ripple.

In Michigan, the prospective Senate candidacy of native son Robert Ritchie, better known by his stage name Kid Rock, perhaps best exemplifies the new political normal.

Ever since his name was floated at the state GOP convention in February, Kid Rock was treated as a serious contender against three-term incumbent Democrat Debbie Stabenow, although there were reasons all along to question whether he was serious about running.

His campaign website  touting, among other works, his song Pimp of the Nation  linked to a merchandising page hosted by his record company and lead to another site promoting Rocks upcoming performance schedule, which was notably devoid of political appearances.

Still, given his X-rated lyrics and well-documented debauchery, it is noteworthy how some not only viewed Rock as a viable candidate but seemed heartened by the possibility of him running.

Al Decker and his wife, Michelle, both 53, hold factory jobs outside Grand Rapids. They voted for Trump, seeing it as a way to extend a middle finger at Washington, and would gladly have supported Rock for Senate as a way to underscore their continued disgust with the same political same-old.

Rocks picaresque past  the boozing and brawling and sex-drenched headlines  is not the least off-putting, Michelle Decker said as she recently stood outside the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum.

Unlike some politicians, she said, He is who he says he is.

mark.barabak@latimes.com

@markzbarabak

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UPDATES:

10:25 a.m.: This article has been updated with Kid Rock saying he was not considering a Senate run.

This story was originally published at 3 a.m.
Trump promotes sons Justice with Judge Jeanine interview President Trump promoted via Twitter an interview with his son Eric Trump just before it aired Saturday night on Fox News Justice with Judge Jeanine. Eric Trump on @JudgeJeanine on @FoxNews now!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2018 Eric Trump called into the show to defend his father from criticism prompted by the first government shutdown in more than four years, as well as a series of Womens March events that saw protesters in dozens of cities take to the streets to oppose the presidents policies. .@EricTrump joined me over the phone from Mar-a-Lago ! pic.twitter.com/Hro3TzUW52  Jeanine Pirro (@JudgeJeanine) January 21, 2018 Speaking to host Jeannine Piro  who is reportedly an old friend of the presidents  Eric Trump offered effusive praise for his father, ticking off glowing statistics to illustrate the strength of the U.S. economy and gains against Islamic State fighters overseas. My fathers working like no ones ever worked before to bring back this country and to fulfill his promise to make America great again, said the executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He also repeated a sentiment recently expressed on Twitter by his father: That Democratic lawmakers forced a government shutdown on the anniversary of the presidents inauguration in a bid to distract from his achievements. You look at this whole government shutdown, and the only reason they want to shut down government is to distract and to stop his momentum, Eric Trump said. I mean, my father has had incredible momentum. Hes gotten more done in one year than arguably any president in history. Facebook

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Trump tweets: a perfect day for all Women to March President Trump hailed the nationwide Womens March gatherings Saturday. On Twitter, the president called it a perfect day for all Women to March, seeming to imply that those taking part were celebrating his administrations accomplishments: Beautiful weather all over our great country, a perfect day for all Women to March. Get out there now to celebrate the historic milestones and unprecedented economic success and wealth creation that has taken place over the last 12 months. Lowest female unemployment in 18 years!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Participants in the marches across the United States were actually seeking to deliver a powerful rebuke to Trumps policies and mount a crucial mobilization for this years midterm elections. But Trump continued to tout his administrations unprecedented success in tweets sent later in the day: Unprecedented success for our Country, in so many ways, since the Election. Record Stock Market, Strong on Military, Crime, Borders, & ISIS, Judicial Strength & Numbers, Lowest Unemployment for Women & ALL, Massive Tax Cuts, end of Individual Mandate - and so much more. Big 2018!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 The Trump Administration has terminated more UNNECESSARY Regulation, in just twelve months, than any other Administration has terminated during their full term in office, no matter what the length. The good news is, THERE IS MUCH MORE TO COME!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 21, 2018 In addition to the roll call of major American cities where womens marches took place  including New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta  protesters also raised their voices in suburbs and small towns, reflecting the aim of coalescing a broad-based movement on the anniversary of Trumps inauguration to oppose the presidents stance on immigration, healthcare, racial divides and an array of other issues. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Laura King. Facebook

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Trump calls shutdown a present from Democrats By Associated Press President Trump is blaming Democrats for the government shutdown  tweeting that they wanted to give him a nice present to mark the one-year anniversary of his inauguration: This is the One Year Anniversary of my Presidency and the Democrats wanted to give me a nice present. #DemocratShutdown  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 That comes after Senate Democrats late Friday killed a GOP-written House-passed measure that would have kept agencies functioning for four weeks. Democrats were seeking a stopgap bill of just a few days in hopes that would build pressure on Republicans, and they were opposing a three-week alternative offered by GOP leaders. Democrats have insisted they would back legislation reopening the government once theres a bipartisan agreement to preserve protections against deporting about 700,000 immigrants  known as Dreamers  who arrived in the United States illegally as children. Trump on Saturday accused Democrats of holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration: Democrats are holding our Military hostage over their desire to have unchecked illegal immigration. Cant let that happen!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Democrats are laying fault for the shutdown on Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House and have struggled with building internal consensus. In a series of tweets hours after the shutdown began, the president tried to make the case for Americans to elect more Republicans to Congress in November in order to power through this mess: Democrats are far more concerned with Illegal Immigrants than they are with our great Military or Safety at our dangerous Southern Border. They could have easily made a deal but decided to play Shutdown politics instead. #WeNeedMoreRepublicansIn18 in order to power through mess!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 He noted that there are 51 Republicans in the 100-member Senate, and it often takes 60 votes to advance legislation: For those asking, the Republicans only have 51 votes in the Senate, and they need 60. That is why we need to win more Republicans in 2018 Election! We can then be even tougher on Crime (and Border), and even better to our Military & Veterans!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 #AMERICA FIRST!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 The stopgap spending measure won 50 votes in the Senate, including five from Democrats. Although the House and Senate were in session Saturday, it was unclear whether lawmakers would take any votes of consequence. Trump had been set to leave Friday afternoon for a fundraiser at his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., where he intended to mark the inauguration anniversary. But he remained in Washington and ended up scrapping his plans to attend the Saturday fundraiser. Read More Facebook

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Trump tweet casts doubt on likelihood of averting shutdown President Trump appeared to cast doubt on the likelihood of reaching a deal to avert a government shutdown Friday night in a tweet. Trump also sought to blame Democrats for what would be the first shutdown since 2013. His message came just hours before the midnight deadline by which lawmakers must pass a measure to fund government agencies, or some operations will cease. Not looking good for our great Military or Safety & Security on the very dangerous Southern Border. Dems want a Shutdown in order to help diminish the great success of the Tax Cuts, and what they are doing for our booming economy.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2018 Despite last-minute negotiations Friday between Trump and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, Congress remained deadlocked over a spending bill and the federal government was headed toward a shutdown at midnight. Senate Democrats  joined by some GOP deficit hawks and immigration allies  were set to filibuster a stopgap funding bill approved by the House on Thursday. A Senate vote was planned for 10 p.m. Eastern, and even White House officials predicted it would fail. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Lisa Mascaro. Facebook

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Trump signs surveillance law after confusing tweets By Associated Press President Trump on Friday signed a bill into law to renew a foreign intelligence surveillance program, announcing his action in the latest in a series of confusing tweets about the spy program: Just signed 702 Bill to reauthorize foreign intelligence collection. This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election. I will always do the right thing for our country and put the safety of the American people first!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 19, 2018 Trumps tweet on Jan. 11 created chaos in the House just before it voted to reauthorize what is known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He linked the intelligence program to a dossier that alleges his presidential campaign had ties to Russia. That caused people to wonder if he didnt support the program that allows U.S. spy agencies to collect intelligence on foreign targets abroad. Trump and other Republicans have alleged that Obama administration officials improperly shared the identities of Trump presidential transition team members mentioned in intelligence reports. Democrats say there is no evidence that happened. Shortly before the House vote, and after conferring with House Speaker Paul Ryan, Trump did an apparent about-face. This vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land, he tweeted. We need it! Get smart! In his tweet announcing that he had just signed the bill, Trump wrote: This is NOT the same FISA law that was so wrongly abused during the election. I will always do the right thing for our country and put the safety of the American people first! There are no obvious links between the dossier Trump spoke of, which includes salacious but unsubstantiated allegations against him, and the reauthorization of the spying program, or between the program and Trumps oft-repeated claims that the Obama administration conducted surveillance on Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. Facebook

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In tweet, Trump suggests that Pennsylvania trip is a political one The White House press office was once again forced to walk back a tweet from President Trump on Thursday morning after he described a trip to Pennsylvania later in the day as a political one  a statement that would force the Republican Party, not taxpayers, to pay for the journey. The White House had said Trump was going to an industrial equipment company outside of Pittsburgh to highlight the good economy and new tax cuts, making it an official, policy-oriented event. It was widely assumed that the trip had a political cast  the area is holding a special election to fill a congressional seat vacated by a Republican who resigned. Trump, by his tweet, seemed to confirm that politics was the whole purpose: Will be going to Pennsylvania today in order to give my total support to RICK SACCONE, running for Congress in a Special Election (March 13). Rick is a great guy. We need more Republicans to continue our already successful agenda!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 Trump later shared via Twitter a pair of video clips of his speech at H&K Equipment, in which he touted the tax cuts he signed into law just before Christmas and tried to turn the conversation back to his accomplishments after weeks dominated by distractions, including questions about his mental health and comments about immigration that some considered racist: Departing Pittsburgh now, where it was my great honor to stand with our incredible workers, and to show the world that AMERICA is back - and we are coming back bigger and better and stronger than ever before! pic.twitter.com/kWPgylqFzj  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 AMERICA will once again be a NATION that thinks big, dreams bigger, and always reaches for the stars. YOU are the ones who will shape Americas destiny. YOU are the ones who will restore our prosperity. And YOU are the ones who are MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! #MAGA pic.twitter.com/f2abNK47II  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018 The Republican National Committee, rather than the White House, is supposed to pay for political travel so that taxpayers are not financing party activities; for trips that combine policy and politics, parties have split the cost under past presidents. Neither the RNC nor the White House responded to emails sent Thursday asking who would pay. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement later Thursday suggesting that taxpayers would foot the bill. She insisted that Trump would be conducting government business while in Pennsylvania. Read More This post contains reporting from the Associated Press and Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook

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Trump tweets praise of Bob Dole after awarding him Congressional Gold Medal By Associated Press Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole knew the art of the deal before President Trump published the 1987 book of the same name. The two shared a stage under the Capitol dome Wednesday as Dole, 94, accepted Congress highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, for his World War II service and decades of work in the House and Senate. Trump later praised Dole in a tweet, attaching to his message a video composed of clips from the ceremony: Today, we witnessed an incredible moment in history  the presentation of Congress highest civilian honor to our friend, and true AMERICAN HERO, Bob Dole. #CongressionalGoldMedal pic.twitter.com/qNQqDLRmCk  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2018 At the ceremony, the president saluted Dole as a patriot and gave tribute to Doles struggle as a veteran who worked his way back from a grievous shoulder wound he suffered in Italy. He knows about grit, said Trump. But it was Doles penchant for working across the aisle that earned him his latest award, according to the legislation. Bob Dole was known for his ability to work across the aisle and embrace practical bipartisanship, reads the legislation Trump signed in September. Some of the awards 300 recipients include George Washington and Mother Teresa, according to the Congressional Research Service. Read More Facebook

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Trump touts report that seeks to link terrorism cases with immigration By Joseph Tanfani The Trump administration on Tuesday released a report attempting to link terrorism with migration, arguing that it was evidence of the need to dramatically reshape the nations immigration system. New report from DOJ & DHS shows that nearly 3 in 4 individuals convicted of terrorism-related charges are foreign-born. We have submitted to Congress a list of resources and reforms....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 ....we need to keep America safe, including moving away from a random chain migration and lottery system, to one that is merit-based. https://t.co/7PtoSFK1n2  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The report, ordered by President Trump in an executive order last year, said that 75% of the 549 people convicted of terrorism charges since 9/11 were born outside the U.S. Administration officials called that a sign that the U.S. needs to scrap its policy of family preferences for visas, which they call chain migration, and a diversity visa lottery program. But the report did not specify how many  if any  of the convicted terrorists entered the country through those means. It also did not detail how many of the convictions were related to attacks or plans in the U.S. versus overseas and how many involved people who went to fight overseas for the Islamic State or another terrorist group. Those details were not available, officials said. The report, due last year, is being released in a highly charged moment in the immigration debate, as Trump and some Republicans in Congress seek tough new border and immigration measures in return for a deal protecting the 690,000 people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Trump also fired off a pair of tweets on the topic earlier Tuesday: We must have Security at our VERY DANGEROUS SOUTHERN BORDER, and we must have a great WALL to help protect us, and to help stop the massive inflow of drugs pouring into our country!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The Democrats want to shut down the Government over Amnesty for all and Border Security. The biggest loser will be our rapidly rebuilding Military, at a time we need it more than ever. We need a merit based system of immigration, and we need it now! No more dangerous Lottery.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The focus of our immigration system should be assimilation, a senior administration official said on Tuesday, speaking on condition that his name not be used. He said the nation should give priority to potential immigrants who speak English, who have an education and those who are committed to supporting our values  not family members of people already here. The official said the timing of the report was coincidental. Read More Facebook

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Trump tweets welcome to president of Kazakhstan By Associated Press President Trump said Tuesday that he and the president of Kazakhstan are united in a shared determination to prevent North Korea from threatening the world with nuclear devastation. Trump and President Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed North Korea along with other issues during meetings at the White House. Today, it was my honor to welcome President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan to the @WhiteHouse! pic.twitter.com/TerYFZViax  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 Trump said Kazakhstan, once part of the Soviet Union, is a valued partner in our efforts to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons. Together we are determined to prevent the North Korean regime from threatening the world with nuclear devastation, he said, as both presidents addressed journalists between meetings. Nazarbayev noted that his country once had one of the worlds largest nuclear arsenals but voluntarily gave it up after the Soviet Union collapsed. He said his country is in talks with Iran, which was the focus of a global deal that lifted some economic sanctions in exchange for Irans curbing its nuclear program. Trump has sharply criticized the Iran nuclear deal and threatened last week to pull out soon unless other countries fix what he says are terrible flaws. Read More Facebook

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Trump falsely claims his approval rating among black Americans has doubled By Alex Wigglesworth President Trump lashed out at the news media Tuesday morning in a tweet denouncing the special counsel investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion among members of his campaign team. Do you notice the Fake News Mainstream Media never likes covering the great and record setting economic news, but rather talks about anything negative or that can be turned into the negative. The Russian Collusion Hoax is dead, except as it pertains to the Dems. Public gets it!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 It wasnt immediately clear exactly what prompted the presidents tweet, but it appeared as though he was watching Fox & Friends. A short time later, Trump tweeted a headline from a report that aired during that mornings episode: 90% of Trump 2017 news coverage was negative -and much of it contrived!@foxandfriends  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 The segment focused on the latest survey results from conservative watchdog Media Research Center, which purportedly analyzed the evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS and NBC from Jan. 20 to Dec. 31 and found that 90% of the statements made about Trump were negative. Study: 90% of Trump media coverage in 2017 was negative pic.twitter.com/vbrwup4Drg  FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 16, 2018 But believe it or not, through all this negative coverage, they did a survey of 600,000 people about how black America views this president, co-host Brian Kilmeade said. His numbers have actually doubled in approval. Trump highlighted the statement in another tweet: Unemployment for Black Americans is the lowest ever recorded. Trump approval ratings with Black Americans has doubled. Thank you, and it will get even (much) better! @FoxNews  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2018 But its not true. The claim appears to have originated from a misreading of data from the online polling firm SurveyMonkey, according to factcheck.org. The firm polled 600,000 Americans in 2017 and found that Trumps approval rating among blacks actually dropped from 23% early in his presidency to about 17%, as of the week ending Jan. 3. Some conservative outlets, including Breitbart, produced an average from those and other SurveyMonkey figures and compared them to the scores Trump received from black voters in the 2016 exit polls. That methodology is not sound. And since the statistics measure different things, the comparison is misleading. Facebook

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Trump goes after senator who surfaced his immigration remark By Associated Press President Trump turned his Twitter torment Monday on the Democrat in the room where immigration talks with lawmakers took a famously coarse turn, saying Sen. Richard J. Durbin misrepresented what he had said about African nations and Haiti and, in the process, undermined the trust needed to make a deal. Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting, Trump tweeted, using a nickname to needle the Illinois senator. Deals cant get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military. Senator Dicky Durbin totally misrepresented what was said at the DACA meeting. Deals cant get made when there is no trust! Durbin blew DACA and is hurting our Military.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 Trump was referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects young people who came to the United States illegally as children. Members of Congress from both parties are trying to strike a deal that Trump would support to extend that protection. Trump also cast doubt on the likelihood of reaching an agreement in tweets sent earlier Monday: Statement by me last night in Florida: Honestly, I dont think the Democrats want to make a deal. They talk about DACA, but they dont want to help..We are ready, willing and able to make a deal but they dont want to. They dont want security at the border, they dont want.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 ...to stop drugs, they want to take money away from our military which we cannot do. My standard is very simple, AMERICA FIRST & MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 15, 2018 On a day of remembrance for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Trump spent time at his golf course with no public events, bypassing the acts of service that his predecessors staged in honor of the civil rights leader. Instead, Trump dedicated his weekly address to Kings memory, saying Kings dream and Americas are the same: A world where people are judged by who they are, not how they look or where they come from. That message was a distinct counterpoint to words attributed to Trump by Durbin and others at a meeting last week, when the question of where immigrants come from seemed at the forefront of Trumps concerns. Some participants and others familiar with the conversation said Trump challenged immigration from shithole countries of Africa and disparaged Haiti as well. Without explicitly denying using that word, Trump lashed out at the Democratic senator, who said Trump uttered it on several occasions. Read More Facebook

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Trump thanks pundit for laudatory Fox & Friends spot By Alex Wigglesworth President Trump thanked Fox News personality Stuart Varney after Varney praised Trump during an appearance on Fox & Friends. In a pair of tweets early Sunday, Trump quoted from Varneys commentary, in which he argued that Trump deserves more credit for the booming economy. The pundit, who also hosts a show on Fox Business Network, cited moves by some corporations to raise workers minimum wage or pay out one-time bonuses in response to the GOP tax cuts. President Trump is not getting the credit he deserves for the economy. Tax Cut bonuses to more than 2,000,000 workers. Most explosive Stock Market rally that weve seen in modern times. 18,000 to 26,000 from Election, and grounded in profitability and growth. All Trump, not 0...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018 ...big unnecessary regulation cuts made it all possible (among many other things). President Trump reversed the policies of President Obama, and reversed our economic decline. Thank you Stuart Varney. @foxandfriends  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2018 Varney was reacting to a quote from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who on Thursday called the bonuses handed down to workers pathetic in comparison to the gains corporations are expected to see from the tax cuts. In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers to kind of put the schmooze on is so pathetic, Pelosi told reporters. Its pathetic. Varney shot back Sunday that the bonuses, along with explosive stock market growth, are enriching all Americans. This is a huge shot in the arm, its the result of this tax cut deal and I think President Trump should get the credit for it, he said. .@Varneyco Sets the economic record straight after Nancy Pelosi calls U.S. mass bonuses crumbs pic.twitter.com/BvjIHGm3HE  FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) January 14, 2018 The sweeping tax plan passed last month lowers the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and cuts personal income taxes. Analysts say the benefits will largely flow to corporations and the wealthy, as theyre more likely to be in positions to share in corporate profits. For instance, Wells Fargo & Co., which responded to news of the tax overhaul by announcing it will raise workers pay to at least $15 an hour, also reported that it expects to pay an effective tax rate of 19% this year, down from about 31% in previous years. That should amount to tax savings of more than $3 billion annually. On average, middle-class Americans are expected to see a very small tax cut in the near term and a tax increase after 2025, when all of the tax cuts for individuals expire. The tax cuts for corporations, however, are permanent.  This post contains reporting from Times staff writer James Rufus Koren. Facebook

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Trump touts MLK proclamation in tweet, but ceremony is overshadowed by reports of racist remarks By Associated Press President Trump signed a proclamation Friday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, noting the contributions of a great American hero. Today, it was my great honor to proclaim January 15, 2018, as Martin Luther King Jr., Federal Holiday. I encourage all Americans to observe this day with appropriate civic, community, and service activities in honor of Dr. King's life and legacy. pic.twitter.com/samlJsz1Nt  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018 Overshadowing the event was mounting backlash from Trumps comments during a private meeting with lawmakers the day before. A short time after the meeting, which was called to discuss a possible immigration deal, reports emerged that Trump had asked participants why the United States should accept immigrants from shithole countries in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, the Senates second-ranking Democrat, appeared to confirm those reports on Friday. Trump did not respond Friday to several questions about the incident, including whether he actually used vulgar language to describe African nations, or if he is racist. The president said at the White House that love was central to the slain civil rights leader. Trump said the nation celebrates King for standing up for the self-evident truth Americans hold so dear, that no matter what the color of our skin or place of our birth, we are all created equal by God.  This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook

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Trump criticizes Democrats in tweet calling for stricter immigration rules President Trump hit out at Democrats on Thursday night in a tweet calling for stricter immigration rules. Trump wrote that members of the party seem intent on having people and drugs pour into our country from the border with Mexico: The Democrats seem intent on having people and drugs pour into our country from the Southern Border, risking thousands of lives in the process. It is my duty to protect the lives and safety of all Americans. We must build a Great Wall, think Merit and end Lottery & Chain. USA!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018 It wasnt immediately clear exactly what prompted the tweet. Earlier Thursday, Trump rejected a bipartisan compromise to resolve the standoff over so-called Dreamers, young immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children but have temporary permits to work, attend school or serve in the military. The president drew widespread condemnation after reports emerged that he had asked participants in an Oval Office meeting about the proposal why the United States should accept immigrants from shithole countries in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. Read More Facebook

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Trump touts bill aimed at improving border screening for fentanyl By Associated Press President Trump signed legislation Wednesday aimed at giving Customs and Border Protection agents additional screening devices and other tools to stop the flow of illicit drugs. Speaking at a surprise bill-signing ceremony while flanked by members of Congress from both parties in the Oval Office, Trump described the bill as a significant step forward in the fight against powerful opioids such as fentanyl, which he called our new big scourge. He echoed that language Thursday in a tweet: Yesterday, I signed the #INTERDICTAct (H.R. 2142) with bipartisan members of Congress to help end the flow of drugs into our country. Together, we are committed to doing everything we can to combat the deadly scourge of drug addiction and overdose in the United States! pic.twitter.com/ELZvFol5Lo  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018 The legislation will pay for new portable and fixed chemical screening devices to detect and intercept fentanyl at ports of entry and in the mail, along with other laboratory equipment and personnel, including scientists. Trump has made fighting the opioid epidemic a centerpiece of his administration, though critics say he hasnt dedicated nearly enough money or resources to make a difference. Trump suggested during his remarks on Wednesday that hed like to take a more aggressive approach to the drug crisis  but the countrys not ready for what he has in mind. So were going to sign this. And its a step. And it feels like a very giant step, but unfortunately, its not going to be a giant step, because no matter what you do, this is something that keeps pouring in, he said. And were going to find the answer. There is an answer. I think I actually know the answer, but Im not sure the countrys ready for it yet, he added. Does anybody know what I mean? I think so. Facebook

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Trump applauds news that Toyota-Mazda plant is slated for Alabama By Associated Press Japanese automakers Toyota and Mazda on Wednesday announced plans to build a mammoth, $1.6-billion joint-venture plant in Alabama that will eventually employ about 4,000 people. President Trump lauded the news in a tweet: Cutting taxes and simplifying regulations makes America the place to invest! Great news as Toyota and Mazda announce they are bringing 4,000 JOBS and investing $1.6 BILLION in Alabama, helping to further grow our economy! pic.twitter.com/Kcg8IVH6iA  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Good news: Toyota and Mazda announce giant new Huntsville, Alabama, plant which will produce over 300,000 cars and SUVs a year and employ 4000 people. Companies are coming back to the U.S. in a very big way. Congratulations Alabama!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2018 Several states had competed for the project, which will be able to turn out 300,000 vehicles per year and produce the Toyota Corolla compact car for North America and a new small SUV from Mazda. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and company executives held a news conference to announce that the facility is coming to the Huntsville area not far from the Tennessee line. Production is expected to begin by 2021. The decision to pick Alabama is another example of foreign-based automakers building U.S. factories in the South. To entice manufacturers, Southern states have used a combination of lucrative incentive packages, low-cost labor and a pro-business labor environment, because the United Auto Workers union is stronger in Northern states. Read More Facebook

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Trump highlights call for border wall in tweets on visit with Norways prime minister By Associated Press President Trump praised Norways prime minister in a tweet on Wednesday after Erna Solberg became the first foreign leader to visit with the president in 2018. Today, it was my great honor to welcome Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway to the @WhiteHouse - a great friend and ally of the United States! Joint press conference: https://t.co/qWR1BhfQZI pic.twitter.com/PJvwznjRCO  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Trump also shared via Twitter a video clip of a joint news conference he held with Solberg on Wednesday afternoon. In the clip, Trump responds to a question from a reporter by saying there can be no bipartisan immigration deal absent funding for his long-promised wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been seeking a solution for hundreds of thousands of so-called Dreamers, young people who were brought to the United States as children and are living here illegally. The United States needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval. The safety and security of our country is #1! pic.twitter.com/4CFzQXb5aS  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 We need the wall for security, we need the wall for safety, we need the wall for stopping the drugs from pouring in, Trump said Wednesday.  Any solution has to include the wall because without the wall, it all doesnt work. On Tuesday, Trump drew widespread attention when he said during a meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers that he would be agreeable to signing a stand-alone bill to protect the Dreamers, before moving on to a more comprehensive immigration bill. That contradicted the Republican consensus that Dreamers fate needed to be part of a broader immigration bill that would include some version of Trumps promised border wall and other immigration reforms. Trump backed away from a stand-alone Dreamer bill in subsequent tweets and public comments. Read More This post contains reporting from Los Angeles Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook

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Trump praises Cabinet in tweet touting meeting By Associated Press President Trump promoted a meeting of his Cabinet on Wednesday, sharing via Twitter a link to a video of the session posted on the White House YouTube account. In his tweet, Trump thanked his Cabinet for working tirelessly on behalf of our country and wrote that the last year has been one of monumental achievement. I want to thank my @Cabinet for working tirelessly on behalf of our country. 2017 was a year of monumental achievement and we look forward to the year ahead. Together, we are delivering results and MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! https://t.co/ptXa1hAPwW pic.twitter.com/yv6RALkQf3  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 The former reality television star continued to dispense accolades at the meeting Wednesday, greeting reporters in the Cabinet Room by saying: Welcome back to the studio. Then he proceeded to relive a Cabinet Room session from the prior day, when he had allowed reporters and TV cameras to stick around for much of his meeting with a bipartisan group of legislators on the thorny issue of immigration. It was a tremendous meeting. Actually, it was reported as incredibly good. And my performance  you know, some of them called it a performance  I consider it work, Trump said. Trump went on to say he had received letters from news anchors calling it one of the greatest meetings theyve ever witnessed. He added that the media will ultimately support Trump in the end, because theyre going to say, if Trump doesnt win in three years, theyre all out of business. Asked for examples of letters received from news anchors, the White House said it had received private communications. It also offered a series of positive on-air comments and tweets from journalists about the unusual access to the meeting. During his remarks, Trump swung from praising his own meeting coverage to telling journalists that they were dependent on his presidency for ratings to threatening a strong look at libel laws. Still, Trump thanked the journalists in front of him, joking: Youve gotten very familiar with this room. I appreciate your nice comments yesterday. Facebook

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Trump blasts DACA ruling in tweet calling courts broken and unfair By Lisa Mascaro President Trump denounced the federal courts Wednesday as broken and unfair after a district judge in San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction keeping protections in place for so-called Dreamers. Trump tweeted: It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 On Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco temporarily blocked the Trump administrations decision to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, which has protected from deportation some 700,000 people who came to the country illegally as children. Alsup granted a request by the state of California, the University of California and other plaintiffs to stop Trump from ending DACA on March 5. The administrations decision to end DACA, which was announced in September, was based on a flawed legal analysis, Alsup wrote in his decision. Dreamers would be irreparably harmed if their DACA protections, which allow them to live and work legally in the U.S., were stripped away before the courts had a chance to fully consider their claims, he ruled. The action is the mirror image of a ruling in 2015 by a federal judge in Texas who ruled in favor of that state when it sought to block President Obama from expanding DACA to include the parents of Dreamers. Trump administration officials praised that judicial ruling. By contrast, they sharply criticized Alsups decision. Read More Facebook

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Trump thanks lawmakers for productive immigration meeting, says deal must include border wall President Trump thanked a bipartisan group of lawmakers for participating in a meeting on immigration legislation on Tuesday. Much of the discussion involved so-called Dreamers, an estimated 700,000 young people who were brought to the country illegally as children and are now facing deportation. In a tweet, Trump wrote that there was strong agreement to negotiate a bill to protect Dreamers, as well as put into place some of the reforms favored by Republicans. Thanks to all of the Republican and Democratic lawmakers for todays very productive meeting on immigration reform. There was strong agreement to negotiate a bill that deals with border security, chain migration, lottery and DACA. https://t.co/SdqAQ3aL3z pic.twitter.com/8DYHZHspAy  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 The most notable exchange of the meeting came when Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the San Francisco Democrat, asked Trump whether he would be agreeable to signing a stand-alone bill to protect the Dreamers, before moving on to a more comprehensive immigration bill. Yeah, I would like to do it, Trump responded. The statement drew widespread attention because it contradicted the Republican consensus that Dreamers fate needed to be part of a broader immigration bill that would include some version of Trumps promised border wall and other immigration reforms. Trump later backed away from a stand-alone Dreamer bill, tweeting that a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico must be part of any deal: As I made very clear today, our country needs the security of the Wall on the Southern Border, which must be part of any DACA approval.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 Pressure has been mounting for Congress to broker an immigration deal by Jan. 19 as part of a must-pass budget package to fund the government. This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Noah Bierman. Facebook

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Trump thanks officers and veterans in tweets President Trump doled out a slew of accolades Tuesday via Twitter. He thanked the nations law enforcement officers, including in his message a hashtag denoting a day of appreciation organized by a national support group for law enforcement families. On behalf of the American people, THANK YOU to our incredible law enforcement officers. As President of the United States - I will fight for you, and I will never, ever let you down. Now, more than ever, we must support the men and women in blue! #LawEnforcementAppreciationDay pic.twitter.com/Qb4uxB4JRm  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 Trump later expressed gratitude for federal immigration agents, in particular: .@ICEgov HSI agents and ERO officers, on behalf of an entire Nation, THANK YOU for what you are doing 24/7/365 to keep fellow Americans SAFE. Everyone is so grateful!#LawEnforcementAppreciationDay

President @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/HXCpTlruVo  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018 The president thanked veterans as he cited his administrations efforts to curb the number of veteran suicides by improving mental health treatment for the high-risk group: Today, it was my great honor to sign a new Executive Order to ensure Veterans have the resources they need as they transition back to civilian life. We must ensure that our HEROES are given the care and support they so richly deserve! https://t.co/0MdP9DDIAS pic.twitter.com/LP2a8KCBAp  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 Trumps tweet included photos of the president signing an executive order Tuesday directing the secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs to develop a plan to provide seamless access to mental health and suicide prevention resources for 12 months for members leaving the armed forces. Also on Tuesday, Trump touted a law he signed the day before designating the birthplace of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. a national historic park: It was my great honor to sign H.R. 267, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park Act, which redesignates the Martin Luther King, Junior, National Historic Site in the State of Georgia as the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park. https://t.co/Qe0b6HBFTY pic.twitter.com/QTgaqTawPT  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2018 And he thanked House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) for sharing a video compilation comprised of clips of politicians and commentators praising the GOPs tax cut bill: Thank you @GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy! Couldnt agree w/you more. TOGETHER, we are #MAGA https://t.co/QaxtqpyXTR  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 10, 2018  This post contains reporting from the Associated Press and Times staff writer Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook

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Trump hails tax bill in tweets recapping speech to farmers By Associated Press Connecting with rural Americans, President Trump on Monday hailed his tax overhaul as a victory for family farmers. Farm country is Gods country, Trump told the annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Trump became the first president in a quarter-century to address the federations convention. His Southern swing also included a stop in Atlanta for the national college football championship game. Cant wait to be back in the amazing state of Tennessee to address the 99th American @FarmBureau Federations Annual Convention in Nashville! #AFBF18



On my way now - join me LIVE at 4:00pmE: https://t.co/QaljAqekdD. pic.twitter.com/Wm7Io0hYT8  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Joined by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and a group of Tennessee lawmakers, Trump said most of the benefits of the tax legislation are going to working families, small businesses, and who  the family farmer. The package Trump signed into law last month provides generous tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans, and more modest reductions for middle- and low-income individuals and families. In every decision we make, we are honoring Americas PROUD FARMING LEGACY. Years of crushing taxes, crippling regs, & corrupt politics left our communities hurting, our economy stagnant, & millions of hardworking Americans COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN. But they are not forgotten ANYMORE! pic.twitter.com/MdYS7xnukQ  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 The president vastly inflated the value of the package in his speech, citing a total of $5.5 trillion in tax cuts, with most of those benefits going to working families, small businesses and who? The family farmer. The estimated value of the tax cuts is actually $1.5 trillion for families and businesses because of cuts in deductions and the use of other steps to generate offsetting tax revenue. We have been working every day to DELIVER for Americas Farmers just as they work every day to deliver FOR US. #AFBF18 pic.twitter.com/QDH7fvFkZ7  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 From Nashville, Trump traveled to Atlanta to watch Alabamas Crimson Tide and Georgias Bulldogs face off Monday night in the College Football Playoff National Championship. We are fighting for our farmers, for our country, and for our GREAT AMERICAN FLAG. We want our flag respected - and we want our NATIONAL ANTHEM respected also! pic.twitter.com/16eOLXg6Fi  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Before departing for the game, Trump referenced his ongoing defense of the American flag and the national anthem, saying there was enough space for people to express their views. We love our flag and we love our anthem, and we want to keep it that way, he said. Facebook

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Trump tweet hails drop in unemployment rate for African Americans By Associated Press President Trump touted a drop in the unemployment rate for African Americans on Monday in a tweet. African American unemployment is the lowest ever recorded in our country. The Hispanic unemployment rate dropped a full point in the last year and is close to the lowest in recorded history. Dems did nothing for you but get your vote! #NeverForget @foxandfriends  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 The rate fell to 6.8% in December, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1972. The reasons range from a greater number of black Americans with college degrees to a growing need for employers in a tight job market to widen the pool of people they hire from. Trump also hailed the development via Twitter on Saturday. His latest tweet on the topic came about an hour after it was discussed during an episode of Fox & Friends, according to Mediaite. Facebook

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Trump talks up the economy and dresses down the media in Sunday tweets With President Trump cheering from the sidelines, the White House on Sunday pressed its defense of the presidents fitness to govern, as fired former aide Stephen K. Bannon reversed course and apologized for his role in a new books explosive portrait of Trump. The presidents critics, meanwhile, said Trumps stream of taunts and insults in response to the book  Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, released last week  served only to underscore the authors unsettling portrayal of Trumps year-old presidency, depicting a leader whose own aides consider him childish, ignorant and dangerously erratic. Trump provided more ammunition Sunday morning, as he continued to attack the book via Twitter while preparing to depart Camp David for the White House: Leaving Camp David for the White House. Great meetings with the Cabinet and Military on many very important subjects including Border Security & the desperately needed Wall, the ever increasing Drug and Opioid Problem, Infrastructure, Military, Budget, Trade and DACA.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Ive had to put up with the Fake News from the first day I announced that I would be running for President. Now I have to put up with a Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author. Ronald Reagan had the same problem and handled it well. So will I!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 The most vehement defense of Trump on Sunday came from senior advisor Stephen Miller, a onetime Bannon acolyte who distanced himself from his former mentor. In a combative appearance Sunday on CNNs State of the Union, Miller called the book grotesque and writer Michael Wolff the garbage author of a garbage book. Trump is known to closely monitor aides televised performances in putting forth his case, and he gleefully weighed in within moments of Millers televised clash with host Jake Tapper. CNN has long been a particular target of Trumps ire. Jake Tapper of Fake News CNN just got destroyed in his interview with Stephen Miller of the Trump Administration. Watch the hatred and unfairness of this CNN flunky!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Trumps reaction, however, seemed to bolster Tappers on-air depiction of Miller as using his appearance on the show to play to the president rather than addressing questions put to him. I get it  theres one viewer that you care about, the host said exasperatedly after Miller turned the discussion repeatedly to negative news coverage of the president while deflecting specific queries. Later on Twitter, Trump took up two themes that have been prevalent on his social media feeds recently. The president again went after the news media, tweeting that the recipients of his self-proclaimed most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year, which he promised earlier in the week to announce on Monday, would actually be revealed the following Wednesday: The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday. The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 Trump later lauded a New York Post opinion piece that compared him favorably with his predecessor, President Obama, as well as Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In quoting the op-ed, Trump initally misspelled consequential as consensual, but he deleted those tweets and re-sent the messages. His is turning out to be an enormously consequential presidency. So much so that, despite my own frustration over his missteps, there has never been a day when I wished Hillary Clinton were president. Not one. Indeed, as Trumps accomplishments accumulate, the mere thought of...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 ...Clinton in the WH, doubling down on Barack Obamas failed policies, washes away any doubts that America made the right choice. This was truly a change election  and the changes Trump is bringing are far-reaching & necessary. Thank you Michael Goodwin! https://t.co/4fHNcx2Ydg  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 8, 2018 Trump also continued talking up the economy, which has been enjoying a period of strong gains. The Stock Market has been creating tremendous benefits for our country in the form of not only Record Setting Stock Prices, but present and future Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Seven TRILLION dollars of value created since our big election win!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018 In addition to Miller, other senior administration officials made the rounds of Sunday news talk shows to decry the claims made in Wolffs book. CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Wolffs characterization of Trump as averse to digesting classified briefing material was ludicrous, and the ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, insisted that that those around Trump love their country and respect their president. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Laura King. Facebook

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Responding to book that mocks his intelligence, Trump tweets hes like, really smart By Tracy Wilkinson President Trump declared himself a very stable genius on Twitter on Saturday and later in a televised news conference called the author of a book that questioned his mental fitness a fraud. His comments came on a bone-cold day at Camp David during a weekend retreat with top administration officials and Republican congressional leaders strategizing on the years legislative agenda, including matters such as infrastructure, immigration, welfare reform and national security. Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 ....Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star.....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 ....to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 Still, Trumps explosive rebuttal to author Michael Wolffs claims not only opened the day, but it also ensured the presidents capability to fill the highest office in the land was a topic that would not go away. In his early-morning tweets, Trump said two of his greatest assets have been mental stability, and being, like, really smart. He noted that his former Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, played these cards [about competence] very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). Read More Facebook

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In morning tweets, Trump touts job numbers and takes digs at news media By Associated Press President Trump used Twitter on Saturday morning to tout a drop in the unemployment rate for African Americans. He also used the tweets as an opportunity to take digs at media outlets whose past coverage he has found to be critical. The African American unemployment rate fell to 6.8%, the lowest rate in 45 years. I am so happy about this News! And, in the Washington Post (of all places), headline states, Trumps first year jobs numbers were very, very good.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 The unemployment rate for African Americans fell to 6.8% in December, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1972. The reasons range from a greater number of black Americans with college degrees to a growing need for employers in a tight job market to widen the pool of people they hire from. Still, the rate for black workers remains well above those for whites and some other groups, something experts attribute in large part to decades of discrimination and disadvantages. Robust job creation has lowered unemployment for all Americans. U.S. employers added nearly 2.1 million jobs in 2017  the seventh straight year that hiring has topped 2 million. In his tweet, Trump praised a report that noted the numbers, touting the fact that it appeared in the Washington Post (of all places). Minutes later, Trump renewed his attack on an ABC News reporter who was suspended last month after filing an erroneous report on Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security advisor. Brian Ross, the reporter who made a fraudulent live newscast about me that drove the Stock Market down 350 points (billions of dollars), was suspended for a month but is now back at ABC NEWS in a lower capacity. He is no longer allowed to report on Trump. Should have been fired!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 The reporter, Brian Ross, was reportedly reassigned within ABC News upon returning from his unpaid suspension. But on Saturday, Trump wrote that he should have been fired. Trumps tweets came hours before he was set to host congressional Republicans and administration officials at Camp David. The meeting scheduled to begin at midmorning Saturday was expected to touch on the budget, infrastructure, immigration, welfare reform and the shape of the midterm election this fall. Facebook

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Trump commends Sen. Rand Paul after he proposes eliminating all U.S. aid to Pakistan President Trump commended Sen. Rand Paul after the Kentucky Republican announced plans to introduce legislation that would eliminate all U.S. aid to Pakistan. Trump tweeted Friday night: Good idea Rand! https://t.co/55sqUDiC0s  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 On Thursday, the Trump administration announced it was suspending security assistance to Islamabad until the country moves aggressively against local militants who have attacked U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan. Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration at the apparent inability of Pakistani authorities to rein in militants who cross out of the countrys rugged tribal areas to attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson. Facebook

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Trump continues to lash out at Sloppy Steve Bannon in tweets on tell-all book By Associated Press President Trump is praising a major Republican donor family for distancing themselves from his former advisor Steve Bannon. Trump tweeted Friday: The Mercer Family recently dumped the leaker known as Sloppy Steve Bannon. Smart!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Trump has continued to lash out at Bannon over an explosive new book that quoted his former aide as questioning Trumps competence and describing a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower among Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign aides and a Russian lawyer as treasonous and unpatriotic. On Thursday, billionaire GOP donor Rebekah Mercer issued a statement distancing her family from Bannon. Mercer is a co-owner of Breitbart, the populist website Bannon helps run. I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected, Mercer said. My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements. The book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, quickly shot atop Amazons best-seller list, and the publisher moved up its release date by four days, to Friday. Trump took up the topic again on Twitter on Friday night, denouncing both Bannon and the books author, Michael Wolff, in starkly personal terms: Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad! https://t.co/mEeUhk5ZV9  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018 Trumps message linked to a meme depicting a parody book cover titled, Liar and Phony, that featured a photo of Wolff and disparaging quotes about the author. In a tweet sent earlier Friday morning, Trump suggested the book was intended to serve as a distraction from the FBIs investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, which Trump wrote is proving to be a total hoax. Well, now that collusion with Russia is proving to be a total hoax and the only collusion is with Hillary Clinton and the FBI/Russia, the Fake News Media (Mainstream) and this phony new book are hitting out at every new front imaginable. They should try winning an election. Sad!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 That came amid reports that Trump directed his White House counsel to tell Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions to not recuse himself from the Justice Departments Russia investigation. Trumps effort to keep Sessions, a vocal and loyal supporter of his election bid, in charge of an investigation into his campaign offers special counsel Robert Mueller yet another avenue to explore as his prosecutors work to untangle potential evidence of obstruction. Read More Facebook

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Trump praises the economy ahead of meetings at Camp David By Associated Press President Trump is praising the strength of the U.S. economy ahead of meetings at Camp David with congressional Republicans. Trump tweeted early Friday: Dow goes from 18,589 on November 9, 2016, to 25,075 today, for a new all-time Record. Jumped 1000 points in last 5 weeks, Record fastest 1000 point move in history. This is all about the Make America Great Again agenda! Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Six trillion dollars in value created!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 The president also told reporters on the South Lawn that the tax cuts are really kicking in after Congress passed a package of tax cuts at the end of 2017. And the president praised the December jobs report, which found U.S. employers added 148,000 jobs in December and the unemployment rate stayed at 4.1%, the lowest level since 2000. The modest but steady pace of hiring is a reassuring sign for investors who have been buoyed by the just-passed Republican tax plan and have been sending stock market indexes roaring to uncharted heights. The president is meeting with Republican congressional leaders and members of his Cabinet on Friday and Saturday to discuss the 2018 agenda. Read More Facebook

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Trump tweets as Dow crashes through 25,000 By Associated Press President Trump dispatched a congratulatory tweet as the Dow Jones industrial average rose above the 25,000-point mark Thursday, just five weeks after its first close above 24,000. Dow just crashes through 25,000. Congrats! Big cuts in unnecessary regulations continuing.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 After the Dow closed above 25,000, Trump shared a graphic depicting the stock indexs record-setting rise. MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! pic.twitter.com/iONbr1DkVk  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Later in the day, the president was back on Twitter, complaining that news outlets had barely covered the stock market milestone. He suggested that the strength of the economy would be the biggest story on earth, had it unfolded during the presidency of his predecessor. The Fake News Media barely mentions the fact that the Stock Market just hit another New Record and that business in the U.S. is booming...but the people know! Can you imagine if O was president and had these numbers - would be biggest story on earth! Dow now over 25,000.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 The Dow broke past 1,000-point barriers in 2017 on its way to a 25% gain for the year, as an eight-year rally since the Great Recession continued to confound skeptics. Strong global economic growth and good prospects for higher company earnings have analysts predicting more gains, although the market may not stay as calm as it has been recently. The Dow has made a rapid trip since it reached 24,000 points Nov. 30, partly on enthusiasm over passage of the Republican-backed tax package, which could boost company profits this year with across-the-board cuts to corporate taxes. Read More Facebook

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Trump reacts to Fire and Fury book in tweet lashing out at author and Sloppy Steve President Trump lashed out at the author of a soon-to-be-released book about the chaotic first year of his presidency Thursday night. In a tweet, Trump called Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, a phony book and claimed that hed never spoken to its author, Michael Wolff. Look at this guys past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve! Trump wrote. He appeared to be referring to former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, whose stunning criticisms of Trump and his circle figure prominently in the title. I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that dont exist. Look at this guys past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018 Trumps tweet came hours after he had his lawyer demand that Henry Holt & Co. and Wolff stop publication the book. Instead, the publisher expedited the books release to Friday, four days before it was slated to hit bookstore shelves, in response to unprecedented demand. Published excerpts on Wednesday and Thursday whetted that appetite and roiled Washington. Bannons comments, including that it was treasonous and unpatriotic for Trumps son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign manager Paul Manafort to have met in 2016 with Russians said to have dirt on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, prompted Trump on Wednesday to rebuke his former advisor, saying Bannon had lost his mind. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writers Brian Bennett and Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook

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Trump thanks senators who attended meeting on immigration President Trump tweeted thanks to Republican senators who attended a meeting about possible immigration legislation on Thursday. In his message, Trump also listed his top priorities when it comes to any type of overhaul of the nations immigration system. Thank you to the great Republican Senators who showed up to our mtg on immigration reform. We must BUILD THE WALL, stop illegal immigration, end chain migration & cancel the visa lottery. The current system is unsafe & unfair to the great people of our country - time for change!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Trumps tweet echoed his remarks at the beginning of Thursdays meeting, when he insisted again that constructing a border wall and overhauling two legal immigration programs must be part of any deal with Democrats to protect the so-called Dreamers from deportation. Two-year deportation protections and work permits given under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program begin to expire March 6 under an executive order. Trump announced in September that he was ending the Obama-era program, but told Congress to draft a law to continue protections for people brought to the country illegally as children  a group that has widespread public support. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writer Brian Bennett. Facebook

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Trump resumes Twitter war against kneeling NFL players President Trump has resumed his Twitter war against NFL players who kneel during the national anthem to protest social injustice and racial inequality. In a tweet early Thursday, Trump replied to a supporter who shared a meme that appears to depict family members lying on the grave of a fallen soldier with the caption: This is why we stand. Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel! Trump wrote. So beautiful....Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel! https://t.co/tJLM1tvbvb  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 The president has denounced players who kneel during the anthem in previous tweets. Hes also called for the firing of players who do so. His latest message came amid news that the NFL finished the regular season with TV ratings that fell nearly 10% below the previous season. Analysts attribute the drop to controversies facing the league, as well as changing viewing habits and a possible saturation point in the number of games available. Read More This post contains reporting from Times staff writers Stephen Battaglio and Alex Wigglesworth. Facebook

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Trump credits himself with facilitating talks between North and South Korea By Associated Press President Trump says his tough stance on nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula is helping push North Korea and South Korea to talk. Trump tweeted early Thursday: With all of the failed experts weighing in, does anybody really believe that talks and dialogue would be going on between North and South Korea right now if I wasnt firm, strong and willing to commit our total might against the North. Fools, but talks are a good thing!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 That assertion is in conflict with some of the presidents own statements. Last year, he ridiculed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for talking about negotiations with the North. This week, Trump seemed open to the possibility of an inter-Korean dialogue after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a rare overture toward South Korea in a New Years Day address. But Trumps ambassador to the United Nations insisted that talks wont be meaningful unless the North is getting rid of its nuclear weapons. The overture about talks came after Trump and Kim traded more bellicose claims about their nuclear weapons. In his New Years Day address, Kim repeated fiery nuclear threats against the United States. Kim said he has a nuclear button on his office desk and warned that the whole territory of the U.S. is within the range of our nuclear strike. Trump mocked that assertion Tuesday evening in a tweet. Facebook

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After disbanding his vote fraud panel, Trump still says voting system is rigged By Brian Bennett One day after disbanding his troubled voter fraud commission without any findings of fraud, President Trump continued to call the U.S. voting system rigged and said states should require that Americans have voter-identification cards. In two tweets on Thursday morning, Trump blamed the commissions failure on the lack of cooperation from mostly Democrat States that refused to hand over voter rolls because they know that many people are voting illegally. However, voting supervisors in Republican-led states refused as well, objecting on privacy and other grounds. Many mostly Democrat States refused to hand over data from the 2016 Election to the Commission On Voter Fraud. They fought hard that the Commission not see their records or methods because they know that many people are voting illegally. System is rigged, must go to Voter I.D.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 As Americans, you need identification, sometimes in a very strong and accurate form, for almost everything you do.....except when it comes to the most important thing, VOTING for the people that run your country. Push hard for Voter Identification!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Despite Trumps assertions, analysts have not found evidence of widespread voter fraud. Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May after alleging, without proof, that millions of illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Trump was elected after winning a majority in the electoral college, but the nationwide count showed Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes. The commission sought personal data on voters across the country and faced mounting lawsuits in recent months over privacy concerns. Read More Facebook

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Trump touts another good day for stocks, credits tax cut By Associated Press President Trump touted another good day for the stock market Wednesday in a tweet. Stock Market had another good day but, now that the Tax Cut Bill has passed, we have tremendous upward potential. Dow just short of 25,000, a number that few thought would be possible this soon into my administration. Also, unemployment went down to 4.1%. Only getting better!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Big gains for technology and healthcare stocks helped U.S. indexes set records again Wednesday. Some analysts attributed the surge to investor enthusiasm for Trumps $1.5-trillion tax cut. All told, Wall Street analysts estimate the tax package should boost earnings for companies in the Standard & Poors 500 index by roughly 8% this year. Thats much more generous than the average tax cut of 1.6% that middle-class families will receive, according to the Tax Policy Center. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 The public has been less enthusiastic about the tax law. A Monmouth University poll last month found that nearly half of Americans disapproved of it, with only 26% in support. Still, as Trump also noted on Twitter, some workers have seen a benefit: So far, dozens of companies have announced bonuses and higher minimum wages as a result of the tax cut. AT&T, Comcast, Bank of America, and American Airlines have all pledged to pay $1,000 bonuses to their employees. Some 40 U.S. companies have responded to President Trumps tax cut and reform victory in Congress last year by handing out bonuses up to $2,000, increases in 401k matches and spending on charity, a much higher number than previously known. https://t.co/bmWrwWzxMR  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 Investors also appear less concerned than many politicians about how the additional profits will be used. The Trump administration says it expects companies will plow much of the extra profit back into their businesses, purchasing more software, machinery, and other equipment. Those investments will make workers more productive and provide a key boost to the economys long-run growth. They should also boost wages and salaries for employees. Opponents of the tax law respond that companies are more likely to pass the windfall on to shareholders in the form of higher dividend payments and share buybacks, which raise the price of those shares still in investors hands. Previous cuts in corporate tax rates, in the United States and overseas, havent always led to higher wages. For Wall Street, its all good, at least in the short run. Most analysts take the view that either way, companies and the economy will benefit. Facebook

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Trump reacts to death of Mormon Church president By Associated Press President Trump mourned the death of Mormon Church leader Thomas S. Monson on Wednesday evening. Trump tweeted a link to a statement in which he said that Monson demonstrated wisdom, inspired leadership, and great compassion and delivered a message of optimism, forgiveness, and faith. Melania and I are deeply saddened by the death of Thomas S. Monson, a beloved President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...https://t.co/ETD3fWtfU3  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2018 A church bishop at the age of 22, Monson became the youngest church apostle ever in 1963 at the age of 36. He served as a counselor for three church presidents before assuming the role of the top leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in February 2008. After a life of church service, Monson died Tuesday at his home in Salt Lake City, according to church spokesman Eric Hawkins. He was 90. Read More Facebook

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Trump tweets that Iranian protesters will see great U.S. support at the appropriate time By Associated Press President Trump continued to express support for Irans anti-government protesters on Wednesday. In a tweet, Trump commended the protesters and pledged that the United States will support them at the appropriate time. Such respect for the people of Iran as they try to take back their corrupt government. You will see great support from the United States at the appropriate time!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Trumps tweet Wednesday morning came as Iranian Ambassador Gholamali Khoshroo sent a letter to United Nations officials complaining that Washington was intervening in a grotesque way in Irans internal affairs. The President and Vice-President of the United States, in their numerous absurd tweets, incited Iranians to engage in disruptive acts, the ambassador wrote to the U.N. Security Council president and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. The U.S. didnt immediately respond to the letter, which maintains that Washington has crossed every limit in flouting rules and principles of international law governing the civilized conduct of international relations. At least 21 people have been killed and hundreds arrested in Iran during a week of anti-government protests and unrest over economic woes and official corruption. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people took part in counter-demonstrations Wednesday backing the clerically overseen government, which has said enemies of Iran are fomenting the protests. Trump has unleashed a series of tweets in recent days backing the protesters, saying Iran is failing at every level and declaring that it is time for change in the Islamic Republic. Facebook

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Trump congratulates Sen. Orrin Hatch upon news of his retirement By Associated Press President Trump congratulated Sen. Orrin Hatch for an absolutely incredible career upon news of Hatchs impending retirement. In a tweet Tuesday afternoon, Trump called Hatch a tremendous supporter and wrote that he will be greatly missed in the Senate. Congratulations to Senator Orrin Hatch on an absolutely incredible career. He has been a tremendous supporter, and I will never forget the (beyond kind) statements he has made about me as President. He is my friend and he will be greatly missed in the U.S. Senate! pic.twitter.com/0VjzLEeHTl  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Hatchs decision to retire from the Senate after four decades lets the Utah Republican walk away at the height of his power after helping to push through an overhaul of the tax code and persuading Trump to downsize two national monuments. Retirement also preserves the 83-year-olds legacy by allowing him to avoid a bruising reelection battle that would have broken his promise not to seek an eighth term. Read More Facebook

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Trump tweet exaggerates progress in improving veterans care By Associated Press President Trump played up tremendous progress in improving care for veterans in his first year on Tuesday in a tweet. His message linked to an Instagram video describing eight accomplishments that show Trump is fighting for our veterans. But it overstates the impact of these steps. We will not rest until all of Americas GREAT VETERANS can receive the care they so richly deserve. Tremendous progress has been made in a short period of time. Keep up the great work @SecShulkin @DeptVetAffairs! https://t.co/ir25vW15hx pic.twitter.com/OtuzIgxMn6  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Of the eight achievements cited, two are ceremonial proclamations recognizing National Veterans and Military Families Month and National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. Two are pieces of legislation that extended the troubled Veterans Choice program on a temporary basis. This became necessary because the Trump administration repeatedly miscalculated the amount of taxpayer dollars available to pay for care from private doctors outside the Veterans Affairs system when veterans had to endure long waits for treatment at VA medical centers. The departments poor budget planning caught lawmakers off guard. A fifth claim involves telehealth, a step letting doctors practice medicine across state lines using digital technology. Announced in August, it has yet to take full effect because a proposed VA regulation hasnt been completed. The VA wants authority to practice across state lines to come from legislation, not a regulation. On Wednesday, the Senate approved a telehealth measure that now goes to the House. A sixth claim refers to legislation that streamlines the appeals process for disability compensation claims within the VA. This step has had limited effect so far because it applies to new disability claims, not the 470,000 pending claims. The last two initiatives make it easier for the VA to discipline employees. The department has pointed to more than 1,300 employees who have been fired under Trumps watch. Because their infractions are not detailed in public documents, the effect on veterans care is not fully known. Facebook

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Trump unleashes his first tweetstorm of 2018 By Noah Bierman President Trump clearly didnt resolve to change his Twitter habits this year. With nine disparate tweets over three hours on Tuesday morning, the first working day of 2018, Trump continued to exploit social media to be the most aggressive commentator in chief in American history. For any other president, his posts would have made for a monumental day of (mis-)statements. Yet for Trump, the series  attacks on political foes and media, provocations of foreign leaders and self-praise for events he had nothing to do with  was all but unremarkable. His Twitter barrage  sent between 7:09 a.m. and 10:16 a.m.  reflected a familiar gamut after nearly a year in office: Attacks on political foes: Nearly 14 months after his election, Trump called for the jailing of Huma Abedin, Crooked Hillary Clintons top aid (his misspelling, another occasional feature of Trump tweets). Crooked Hillary Clintons top aid, Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 In the same tweet, he disparaged the Deep State Justice Dept, headed of course by his appointees, calling on it to act against James B. Comey, the FBI director he fired for investigating the Russia thing. Diplomatic provocations: Trump again called North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Rocket man, ridiculed the volatile nuclear-armed foe for recent military defections and openly speculated about potential talks between North and South Korea. Sanctions and other pressures are beginning to have a big impact on North Korea. Soldiers are dangerously fleeing to South Korea. Rocket man now wants to talk to South Korea for first time. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not - we will see!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Perhaps that is good news, perhaps not  we will see! Trump wrote. Later Tuesday, Trump tweeted: North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times. Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Also later Tuesday, Trump tweeted an attack on Pakistan, his second in as many days, and added a new one against Palestinians: It's not only Pakistan that we pay billions of dollars to for nothing, but also many other countries, and others. As an example, we pay the Palestinians HUNDRED OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They dont even want to negotiate a long overdue...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 ...peace treaty with Israel. We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Undermining media: Trump offered Congratulations! to A.G. Sulzberger, who took over as publisher of the New York Times this week. The Failing New York Times has a new publisher, A.G. Sulzberger. Congratulations! Here is a last chance for the Times to fulfill the vision of its Founder, Adolph Ochs, to give the news impartially, without fear or FAVOR, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved. Get...  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 ....impartial journalists of a much higher standard, lose all of your phony and non-existent sources, and treat the President of the United States FAIRLY, so that the next time I (and the people) win, you wont have to write an apology to your readers for a job poorly done! GL  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 But the two-part post was really yet another slam against a perceived media foe: Trump said the paper had a last chance to fulfill its journalistic mission, and accused it of relying on phony sources and substandard reporters  just days after he granted another exclusive interview to the paper. As a bonus, the tweet contained a recycled falsehood, that the paper apologized after the election for reporting on him unfairly. It didnt. Trump later said on Twitter that he would soon announce the most dishonest & corrupt media awards of the year. Stay tuned! I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 oclock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 The president also tweeted a quote from Fox Business Networks Lou Dobbs Tonight, which aired a segment praising Trumps first-year accomplishments. Dobbs reportedly joined Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday for a gala to celebrate New Years Eve. President Trump has something now he didnt have a year ago, that is a set of accomplishments that nobody can deny. The accomplishments are there, look at his record, he has had a very significant first year. @LouDobbs Show,David Asman & Ed Rollins  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2018 Taking credit: Trump congratulated himself for policing the border with Mexico, an area where his policies and anti-immigration rhetoric are believed to have had some effect on reducing illegal crossings. Thank you to Brandon Judd of the National Border Patrol Council for your kind words on how well we are doing at the Border. We will be bringing in more & more of your great folks and will build the desperately needed WALL! @foxandfriends  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 He took credit for employee bonuses by companies after he signed Republican tax cuts into law last month. Companies are giving big bonuses to their workers because of the Tax Cut Bill. Really great!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 But the jaw-dropper was Trump congratulating himself for planes not crashing. Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 It was the safest year on record worldwide, but the American streak without commercial jet passenger deaths goes back to 2009. Trump, who has promoted deregulation as one of his top accomplishments, has not signed off on any new airline safety regulations. The White House pointed to new security screening of passengers, to electronic devices to prevent terrorist attacks and to Trumps support for privatizing air traffic control  a proposal that has gotten nowhere in Congress. Falsehoods: Trump said President Obama, in brokering the 2015 nuclear arms limitation deal with Iran, foolishly gave money to the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. He didnt. The people of Iran are finally acting against the brutal and corrupt Iranian regime. All of the money that President Obama so foolishly gave them went into terrorism and into their pockets. The people have little food, big inflation and no human rights. The U.S. is watching!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 The nuclear deal, which included major U.S. allies as signators, released Irans own funds that had long been frozen. Trumps art of the deal: When Trump sees a big deal looming, he often blasts the other side  to gain leverage, as hes written. This week he resumes a showdown with Democratic lawmakers over funding the government and immigration protections for so-called Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children. Democrats are doing nothing for DACA - just interested in politics. DACA activists and Hispanics will go hard against Dems, will start falling in love with Republicans and their President! We are about RESULTS.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018 Trump, who in September ordered a gradual end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, sought to shift blame for the resulting controversy, saying Democrats are doing nothing for DACA and are just interested in politics. Trump has insisted that any help for Dreamers be paired with funding for a border wall and a crackdown on legal immigration. Democrats, and some Republicans, are opposed. Read More Facebook

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In tweet, Trump suggests U.S. will withdraw financial assistance to Pakistan By Shashank Bengali Pakistan lashed out Monday after President Trump accused its leaders of lies & deceit and suggested the United States would withdraw financial assistance to the nuclear-armed nation it once saw as a key ally against terrorism. It was the presidents latest broadside against Pakistan after a speech in August in which he demanded its leaders crack down on the safe havens enjoyed by Taliban militants fighting U.S.-backed forces in neighboring Afghanistan. The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2018 U.S. Ambassador David Hale was summoned to the Foreign Ministry to discuss the presidents statement, U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Snelsire said. Pakistan lodged a strongly worded protest and asked for clarification about Trumps comments, according to two foreign office officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Pakistans prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, called a Cabinet meeting for Tuesday and a meeting of the National Security Committee on Wednesday to discuss Trumps New Years Day tweet. Read More Facebook

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Trump continues to tweet in support of Iranian protesters By Laura King President Trump expressed renewed support Sunday for protesters in Iran, declaring that people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. In a tweet from his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, the president said the nationwide economic protests that began on Thursday  and have taken on wider political overtones as they have grown in size  were a signal that Iranians will not take it any longer. Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Trump has tweeted about the protests for three days straight as Iranians took to the streets despite a heavy police presence, tear gas and scores of arrests. The defiance gained urgency after two people were reported shot to death in the city of Dorud, about 200 miles southwest of Tehran. As the conflict escalated, Iranian authorities on Sunday slapped a temporary ban on Instagram and the messaging app Telegram, which were widely used to fan protest fervor. Iran, the Number One State of Sponsored Terror with numerous violations of Human Rights occurring on an hourly basis, has now closed down the Internet so that peaceful demonstrators cannot communicate. Not good!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Irans leaders already are casting Trumps increasingly effusive expressions of support for the demonstrators as opportunistic meddling and are painting the demonstrators as foreign pawns, adopting a strategy that some analysts say could jeopardize the legitimacy of the nascent antigovernment protests. Read More Facebook

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Trump tweets condolences after Colorado deputies are shot in ambush, one fatally By Associated Press A man fired more than 100 rounds at sheriffs deputies in Colorado early Sunday, killing one and injuring four others, before being fatally shot himself in what authorities called an ambush. Two civilians were also injured. President Trump expressed sorrow, writing on Twitter: My deepest condolences to the victims of the terrible shooting in Douglas County @DCSheriff, and their families. We love our police and law enforcement - God Bless them all! #LESM  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017 Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said deputies came under fire almost
Republicans, in a shift after Las Vegas massacre, are open to considering a gun limit -- on bump stocks

The Las Vegas massacre has forced a breach in congressional Republicans solid opposition to gun restrictions, prompting many, from party leaders on down, to say they will consider banning bump stocks that turn assault rifles into virtual machine guns.

The National Rifle Assn., to which most Republicans are loyal and which had been silent since the gunmans attack Sunday night, on Thursday in a statement said it could back such limits -- as a federal regulation, not law.

The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations. its statement on Thursday said.

The NRAs blessing will probably increase the number of Republicans willing to back restrictions, but if those limits come in the form of regulations from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), rather than in a law, Democrats are certain to object.

Just Wednesday, when California Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to ban bump stocks by law, only fellow Democrats joined with her.

By Thursday, however, top GOP leaders in the House and Senate, including Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, signaled their interest in working on legislation that that could limit access to the devices.

Clearly thats something we need to look into, Ryan told MSNBC host Hugh Hewitt in an interview scheduled to air this weekend.

Senators on Thursday morning privately discussed ways they could tackle the issue as they met for routine business.

I will tell you that the unique aspect of the bump stock and how you would literally transform a semiautomatic weapon into an automatic weapon is something that I think bears looking into, Cornyn told Texas reporters on a conference call.

He has asked Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley of Iowa to convene a hearing and look into it.

Even Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus of conservative hard-liners, told reporters earlier in the week hed be willing to consider banning bump stocks, if the Senate passes a bill and sends it to the House.

The shift is notable for Republicans who, under great pressure from the NRA and other gun rights groups, have resisted past efforts at gun control, even after some of the most devastating mass shootings in the United States.

Coming after the Las Vegas shooting, which left 58 dead and hundreds wounded in what authorities said is the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, the movement may indicate the potential limits of the gun lobbys reach into politics and policy.

Polls show Americans overwhelmingly want measures that could curb gun violence and pressure has mounted as cultural figures, including late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel, have delivered heart-wrenching criticisms of congressional inaction.

Democrats, who have at times splintered on firearms issues as conservative-state lawmakers joined Republicans to defeat gun-safety bills, welcomed the changed outlook.

They have called on President Trump to cut across partisan lines and push Congress toward legislation to reduce gun violence that polls show most Americans would support.

Will the president stand up? said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York. The president has a choice.

Many Democrats, however, will not want to limit action to bump stocks.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco said bump stock legislation was one approach, but no substitute for a background check bill that she said would have bipartisan support in the House if Ryan would allow a vote.

It really is all up to the speaker, she said. Is he going to bring the bill to the floor?

At the same time, lawmakers were skeptical that initial interest in limited bipartisan legislation would translate into enough actual votes to write the restriction into law.

We need to move Republicans from being open to the idea to being willing to actually work on it, said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a Democrat who has become a leader on firearms safety measures since the 2012 killings of 20 first-graders and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

One key Republican, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who co-sponsored a bipartisan background check bill that was defeated a few years ago, was noncommittal Thursday. He said he was just learning about bump stocks and needed more information.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told reporters it was too soon, as the investigation in Las Vegas was just underway, to consider legislation.

Lawmakers, though, appeared concerned that the device offers a way to get around the existing ban on automatic weapons, which have been outlawed for years except for military use.

In the House, several military veterans, led by Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, sent a letter to federal officials asking them to reconsider how they regulate the devices. During the Obama administration, the ATF authorized use of the stocks.

This is definitely an area were going to look [at], Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield said on Fox News.

A number of lawmakers, including Ryan, an avid hunter, said they were unfamiliar with bump stocks before the Las Vegas shooting. The alleged gunman appears to have used the device for rapid shooting.

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In the two weeks after a gun show is held in Nevada, injuries and deaths involving firearms jump by 69%  in neighboring areas of California.

However, when gun shows occur in California, the state does not experience an increase in firearm-related trauma over the next fortnight.

The findings, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, show that state gun laws have a measurable effect on public safety, especially when it comes to gun shows, the study authors wrote.

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More than 4,000 gun shows are held in the United States each year, and experts estimate that theyre responsible for 4% to 9% of the nations firearms sales. When these sales are made by federally licensed gun dealers, would-be buyers are subject to a background check. But in some states, unlicensed sellers at gun shows dont have to follow the same rules.

California, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, requires background checks even at gun shows. Nevada does not.

Ellicott Matthay, a public health researcher at UC Berkeley, and her colleagues recognized this as an ideal scenario for testing the effects of state laws regarding gun show sales.

The researchers scoured gun show listings in a magazine called the Big Show Journal. Altogether, they tallied 275 such shows in Nevada and 640 shows in California between Jan. 1, 2005, and Dec. 31, 2013. Then they identified regions in California that were within a one-hour drive of a California gun show or a two-hour drive of a Nevada gun show.

(For the record, most Californians could have driven to a gun show in 60 minutes or less at least once every few weeks.)

Next, the researchers used state health data to compare the number of gun injuries  both fatal and non-fatal  for each of the study regions in the two weeks before and two weeks after the nearby show. When the show was in California, the after period began 10 days after the shows opening day, because buyers were subject to the states 10-day waiting period.

Altogether, 15,000 Californians were injured or killed by firearms in the two weeks before California gun shows, as were 14,893 in the two weeks after those gun shows. In the before-and-after comparison, the rate of firearm injuries and deaths remained essentially flat, at about 1.3 per 100,000 people, the researchers found.

The firearms toll was much lower in regions near Nevada gun shows. Only 44 Californians were injured or killed in the two weeks leading up to those shows, but that figure jumped to 74 in the two weeks afterward. The rate of gun injuries and deaths rose from 0.67 to 1.14 per 100,000 people. After the researchers made some statistical adjustments, that represented a 69% increase in gun-related morbidity and mortality, the study said.

The researchers also found that firearm-related casualties suffered by Californians increased much more  70% more  when gun shows were held in Nevada than when they were in California.

Most of that increase could be traced to cases in which the shooter meant to harm another person (as opposed to accidents or instances of self-harm). Injuries and deaths from these intentional shootings rose 2.2 times more after Nevada gun shows than they did after California gun shows.

The results offer a compelling case for laws regulating gun sales, according to an editorial that accompanied the study.

Laws regulating access to guns matter and do make a difference, wrote Drs. Ali Rowhani-Rahbar and Frederick Rivara, both pediatricians and epidemiologists at the University of Washington in Seattle.

But state laws can only go so far, they added. Without federal legislation, tough regulations in California can be easily breached by a car trip to Nevada. It does not reduce the importance of the laws but does reduce their impact.

karen.kaplan@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter @LATkarenkaplan and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

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Scientists have discovered 374-million-year-old tree fossils from the dawn of Earths forests  and found that these strange plants literally had to rip themselves apart as they grew.

The fossils, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shed light on the nature of ancient forests and the evolution of the Earths climate.

The Xinicaulis lignescens fossils, discovered in Xinjiang, China, are part of a group of species known as Cladoxylopsida  plants that have no known descendants but are thought to be related to the ancestors of todays ferns and horsetails. They could grow about 10 to 12 meters tall and one meter wide at the base; their branches popped out of the top of the trunk, giving it a shape similar to todays palms. These branches sprouted further, tinier appendages that were not yet true leaves.

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Cladoxylopsida emerged in some of Earths earliest forests, during the Mid- to early Late Devonian period, around 393 million to 372 million years ago. There were bugs, and millipedes that may have munched on dead plant matter, but by and large these trees faced no major predators  vertebrate animals only just started getting a toehold on land in the late Devonian. These trees filled ancient forests by the millions.

Together with the other plants making up these early forest ecosystems, Cladoxylopsida helped transform Earth  shaping rivers, pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, perhaps increasing the planets humidity by gradually releasing water, and reducing the planets reflectivity, too.

Its just a fundamental change in the whole way that the Earths system works once you put large plants in forests onto a planet, said study coauthor Christopher Berry, a paleobotanist at Cardiff University.

Understanding these long-gone trees could help scientists understand the evolution of Earths climate and biology during this pivotal time. But until now, the recovered fossils have usually been fallen, squashed trees, or natural sandstone casts of decomposing stumps. Neither gives much structural information.

They tell you about shapes, they dont tell you very much about growth and the anatomy, Berry said.

Still, what little they could determine from these strange fossils, particularly from the stumps, had already caught their attention.

If you cut open a typical tree today, youll find that the xylem (the woody tissue that carries water up through the tree) grows outward from the center, forming concentric rings. But in the ancient specimens, the xylem grew in individual strands that clustered only in the outer five centimeters or so of the trunks, and were joined together by a complicated network of tinier strands. The center of the tree was hollow; all this activity took place in the thick woody ring around that empty space.

The structure was somewhat akin to the Eiffel Tower, Berry said: big, strong strands running down the outside corners, connected by a network of shorter bars  all surrounding a hollow middle.

We couldnt imagine how these things could possibly grow, Berry said.

The two new fossil finds, an 8-centimeter specimen and a much larger 70-centimeter-wide trunk, shed some light on that mystery. Thanks to volcanic sediments, tiny grains of silica were able to penetrate deep into the trees tissues, preserving their structure on a cellular level  and allowing scientists to study it in unprecedented detail.

The researchers found that those individual xylem strands were actually growing like miniature trees, developing tiny ring after ring. Whats more, as the tree grew, the xylem fibers would actually tear themselves apart.

In order to expand this trunk, all those interconnections have to slowly rip apart in order to accommodate the growth of the plant  and that was what we saw in the specimen, Berry said. As they were being pulled apart to make the tree bigger, they were also repairing themselves at the same time.

As it grew, the strange trees trunk would bulge and ultimately collapse outward  forming a wider base in the process.

This thing seems to be behaving in an organized way even though its so outrageous, Berry said.

Its unclear why these trees died out; its possible they were out-competed by new forms of trees that actually had leaves, and were shaded out of the forest canopy. Perhaps a frosty period near the end of the Devonian killed them off. Its also possible that the plants, which pulled down so much carbon dioxide from the air, might have taken out too much and starved themselves.

The next step, Berry said, is to probe how much carbon dioxide these plants really could have taken out of the air. Thats important because carbon dioxide isnt just fuel for plants  its a greenhouse gas that traps heat.

If we can work out how much carbon it absorbed over a certain amount of time, Berry said, then well learn a little bit more about how capable it was of actually changing the atmosphere of the planet.

amina.khan@latimes.com

Follow @aminawrite on Twitter for more science news and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

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Justin Thai and his wife, Debbie, regularly drive from their Tustin home to Laguna Beach for the Greek food at Adonis Restaurant.

Theyve needed to search across South Coast Highway at Main Beach Park for a spot to eat their takeout, but as of last weekend, they have a new, albeit temporary, place to sit and enjoy their food  the 200 block of Park Avenue.

On Saturday the city, in partnership with Transition Laguna Beach, the Laguna Beach Beautification Council and the Laguna Beach Chamber of Commerce, opened the area to the public as a pedestrian gathering space called Park Plaza.

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The 5,200-square-foot plaza offers tables and chairs, including clusters of low, pod-style seats, along with shrubs such as rosemary and lantana and box trees including magnolia and jacaranda. Overhead, strings of lights are attached to the ficus trees that line each side of the street.

Representatives of Transition Laguna Beach, the Beautification Council and the Chamber of Commerce proposed the plaza as a way to create a convivial community center where locals and visitors can relax, interact and eat.

Were all for it, Justin Thai said late Sunday afternoon. There are zero areas to congregate. Now families can come out here, have lunch and go back to the beach.

At another table, one woman sat reading a book while La Mirada resident George Garcia and girlfriend Andrea Flores ate ice cream while sitting on one of the curved benches.

Its nice to have the sunset, Garcia said.

The City Council approved the plaza last month, and the Planning Commission on Oct. 4 granted the organizers a temporary use permit.

Adonis Restaurant management gave its support, after initial trepidation. The restaurant is on Park Avenue.

At first I was scared about the homeless because they might [urinate] beside the door  and I was going to lose drive-through customers who call ahead to place an order for pickup, Adonis manager Mozart Gadar said. But it will balance. I will lose the drive-through [customers] but at the same time will get customers who walk through.

Gadar said another benefit of the plaza is that the alignment of that section of Park Avenue provides a wider view of Main Beach than Forest Avenue.

Why do people come here? Gadar said. To see the water.

Some residents at the Sept. 12 City Council meeting said closing the 200 block of Park Avenue would cause circulation problems by taking away a shortcut to get to Top of the World and other neighborhoods.

The area will be open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily through Dec. 1, with the option to extend the plaza through Jan. 2, according to a city staff report.

The chamber wanted there to be two phases so that the project could be completed Dec. 1 if there is some kind of negative impact on local businesses, Assistant City Manager Christa Johnson wrote in an email.

A staff report prepared for the Planning Commissions Oct. 4 meeting indicated Jan. 7 as the last day, but Johnson said time to remove the furniture, plants and lights was taken into account.

The three organizations selected the furniture and plants; the city will reimburse them, according to Johnson.The city will empty containers for trash and recyclables. Gadar volunteered to pick up trash and clean tables.

Eight metered parking spaces are not in use because of the plaza.

In coming days, the city will add a security camera, enabling police to monitor the plaza area, Johnson said.

bryce.alderton@latimes.com

Twitter: @AldertonBryce

UPDATES:

2:40 p.m.: This article was updated with information about city reimbursement for furniture and plants in the plaza.

This article was originally published at 7:10 a.m.
It was a cool, sunny morning nearly 40 years ago as hundreds of onlookers lined the entrance to Newport Harbor to witness the heralded arrival of the world famous Great White Steamer.

The 302-foot SS Catalina, which had carried an estimated 25 million tourists between Los Angeles and Catalina Island since its maiden voyage in 1924 and retirement in 1975, held no passengers that day, April 25, 1978.

Towed by two tugboats from Wilmington, its home port, the 2,390-ton steamship was heading to the Balboa Bay Club, now the Balboa Bay Resort, to serve as the centerpiece for the fifth annual Newport Boat Show which was to open the following day at the Lido Village Marina.

Once tied to the Bay Club dock, the Catalina was scheduled to host a lunch, cocktail party and dinner for boat show exhibitors and their potential customers. Later that evening, it was to be moved to the show venue for public tours.

This was the first time that the 2,300-passenger ship had come to Newport, and it was the second-largest vessel ever to enter Newport Harbor. The largest was the SS Muskogee, which was two feet longer.

A U.S. Navy patrol frigate, the Muskogee, had sailed into the harbor in 1944 to serve as a recruiting tool during World War II.

As for the Catalinas slow voyage up-channel that spring day in 1978, something that we certainly hadnt planned for occurred when the ship passed Bayshores and was preparing to dock at the Bay Club, according to Duncan McIntosh Jr., the shows promoter who had chartered the Catalina for the show.

It got stuck in the mud in mid-channel about noon as it came abreast of the club, said McIntosh, who continues to produce the yearly boat show and also owns several maritime publications and Editor & Publisher Magazine.

What went wrong to cause the grounding? Well, a lot went wrong, he said. The Catalinas trip from Wilmington was delayed for some reason I cant remember and, thus, the old ship arrived too late to take advantage of the high tide. So it got stuck in the mud.

And to add insult to injury, as the tugboats strained to push and pull the ship out of the muck, the wire cable attached to the Catalinas bow and the stern of the tow tugboat snapped and knocked off part of the tugs mast, McIntosh said.

So there we sat mired in the middle of the channel, he said. The Catalina never did make it to the Bay Club.

It wasnt long before a helicopter-borne camera crew from Los Angeles television stations flew to Newport Beach to report the grounding, said McIntosh, who, as a youth, had spent years with his family living on Catalina Island, where he dived for coins tossed overboard by SS Catalina passengers when the steamship was tying up to its berth in Avalon Harbor.

Newspaper and news-service reporters also rushed to the scene, and the Daily Pilot published a page-one, four-column photo of the stranded ship under a headline that read, Catalina Stuck After Grand Entrance.

Doomsayers stationed themselves at the bar of the Balboa Bay Club and waited for their predictions to come true. But the high tide finally rose about 8 p.m. and the Catalina floated off the sand and arrived at Lido Marina Village about 9 p.m.

To rescue the steamer, a third tugboat helped the other two tugs slide the Catalina out of the mud and push and pull it to the boat show headquarters at Lido Marina Village, where it remained as the prime attraction until the show closed, McIntosh said.

When the Catalina was finally freed from the mud, the Pilot wrote, They said it couldnt be done, and they were wrong. The boat that almost didnt make it to the boat show finally arrived.

As for the fate of the SS Catalina, which was built for $1 million by chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, who also owned most of Catalina Island, its days as the Great White Steamship had ended in 1975 when, because of old age, obsolescence, escalating labor disputes and the advent of smaller and faster ships, it made its 9,807th and final 26-mile L.A.-Catalina Island crossing and was pulled forever from commercial service.

Following lengthy ownership disputes, the steamer began a nomadic life, shuffling between Wilmington, San Pedro, Santa Monica Bay, Long Beach and San Diego until its owner had it towed to Ensenada in 1985 where he hoped to have it converted into a floating nightclub, restaurant, hotel or casino.

But none of these plans materialized, and the rusting and unkempt ship, which had been abandoned to the elements and beset by vandals and thieves who made off with most of its original artifacts, broke loose from its moorings in Ensenada Harbor just before Christmas Day 1997.

Unoccupied by guards or qualified seamen, the SS Catalina hit a sandbar on the harbors southeast shore, water poured into its propeller shafts and lower decks, it began to list and soon half-sank into the mud, with its upper decks, pilot house and smokestack exposed.

Despite efforts by volunteer groups to raise and restore the ship, the necessary funds were not forthcoming. The Mexican government in 2009 ordered the 85-year-old steamship dismantled and scrapped to make way for a new marina and container terminal.

The only remaining traces of the SS Catalina, which had carried three U.S. presidents, countless movie stars, scout troops and families between the mainland and Catalina Island and had transported 850,000 U.S. Army troops between San Francisco Bay-area ports for three years during WWII, consist of a small model of the ship displayed at San Pedros Maritime Museum, photographs of the vessel on display at the Catalina Island Museum and a few assorted artifacts that David Engholm, one of the heroic volunteers who tried to save the ship, maintains at his home in Coos Bay, Ore.

DAVID C. HENLEY is a Newport Beach resident and a contributor to Times Community News.
The Glendale Police Department is hoping the public can help identify a trio of suspects connected to a residential burglary Friday that sent two La Crescenta schools into lockdown.

Police first received a call about a possible residential burglary in the 4900 block of Pennsylvania Avenue at around 9:25 a.m. Tahnee Lightfoot, a spokeswoman for the department, said a witness informed police that two black men wearing hoodies had broken into a home in the neighborhood.

A nearby getaway driver then helped the men flee the area, according to Lightfoot.

She said the driver was described as a heavyset black woman in a red Cadillac that had traffic-collision damage and no license plate.

With the aid of an airship, police searched for the suspects, but were unsuccessful in finding them.

The police activity led nearby Valley View and Monte Vista elementary schools to go into brief lockdowns.

Lightfoot said nearby residents should check their home-surveillance systems on the day of and before the burglary in an effort to obtain footage that captured the suspects.

Anyone with information can call Glendale police at (818) 548-4911.

andy.nguyen@latimes.com

Twitter: @Andy_Truc
Cruise lines announced dates of their return to some Caribbean ports hardest hit by hurricanes Irma and Maria earlier this fall.

Royal Caribbean International plans to return to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands on Nov. 10 for the first time since early September, according to a news release. St. Thomas port is currently closed.

The line also expects to make regular calls in St. Maarten, whose port is closed, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, by Dec. 1. Mega-ships Oasis of the Seas, Allure of the Seas and Harmony of the Seas will be calling on these ports.

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Carnival Cruise Line also announced dates it plans to return to ports such as Grand Turk, San Juan, St. Thomas and others.

Here are the details:

Carnival Cruise Line

Visits to Grand Turk (currently closed) will return Nov. 1 with Carnival Ecstasy.

San Juan visits will resume Nov. 30 with Carnival Conquest. The company also announced it will return to weekly sailings from the Puerto Rican city starting Feb. 18.

St. Thomas visits will return Jan. 9 starting with Carnival Glory.

St. Maarten visits will resume Jan. 15 with Carnival Sunshine.

The company also announced that it will return to weekly sailings from San Juan starting Feb. 18.

Royal Caribbean International

St. Thomas visits will return with Adventure of the Seas on Nov. 10. The cruise line says its working with the government to help restore one of the islands most popular areas, Magens Bay.

Royal Caribbean already sailed to San Juan on Oct. 7.

Holland America

The cruise line has changed about 18 itineraries through Dec. 31. For example, Saturdays weeklong Eastern Caribbean sailing has substituted other ports for stops at Grand Turk, San Juan and St. Thomas.

It plans to return to St. Thomas on Nov. 25 with the Nieuw Amsterdam.

If you are scheduled to travel between now and the end of the year, check the websites Caribbean update to see whether your ships itinerary has changed.

For updates on status of ports, check in with the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Assn.

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travel@latimes.com

Twitter: @latimestravel
Lonely Planet selected Chile as the top world destination you should visit next year. The travel guide company also named Detroit as the second must-see city in the world after Seville, Spain.

San Juan, Puerto Rico, landed at No. 8. While Puerto Ricos capital was hit hard by the hurricane last month, San Juans resiliency will have it back on its feet for travelers in 2018, Lonely Planet Central America and Caribbean destination editor Bailey Freeman said in a statement.

The cities and countries selected stray from the usual European and Asian capitals. The Best in Travel 2018 lists of countries, cities, regions and best-value destinations were announced Tuesday.

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The other top countries to visit next year are:

2. South Korea

3. Portugal

4. Djibouti

5. New Zealand

6. Malta

7. Georgia

8. Mauritius

9. China

10. South Africa

The top cities to see in 2018 are:

1. Seville, Spain

2. Detroit

3. Canberra, Australia

4. Hamburg, Germany

5. Kaohsiung, Taiwan

6. Antwerp, Belgium

7. Matera, Italy

8. San Juan, Puerto Rico

9. Guanajuato, Mexico

10. Oslo, Norway

The list of destinations that travelers should look to if theyre on a budget includes Arizona (No. 3) and Jacksonville, Fla. (No. 9). Tallinn, Estonia, took the top spot as a vacation destination with the best value.

Lonely Planets picks are based on recommendations from travelers that are culled by an in-house panel of experts who look for topicality, novelty and wow-factor among places to go.

Best in Travel 2018 will appear as a guide that also includes information about destination races, vegetarian and vegan travel and cruises. It also will be the cover story for the Nov. 7 issue of Lonely Planet magazine.

Info: Best in Travel 2018

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travel@latimes.com

@latimestravel
Pedal through remote County Donegal on a new six-night bicycle tour offered by Wilderness Ireland.

Highlights include the sea cliffs at Slieve League, among the highest in the area; beautiful Glenveagh National Park and its castle, and Lough Swilly, famous for wildlife watching.

Cyclists also will visit Malin Head, Irelands most northern point and the backdrop for the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VIII The Last Jedi.

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The excursion begins and ends at the train station in Sligo; participants will cycle 20 to 40 miles a day.

Dates: May 12-18, May 26-June 1, June 16-22, Aug. 18-24, Sept. 1-7

Price: About $2,125 per person. Includes six nights accommodations, most meals per the itinerary, ride support, luggage transfers and entrance fees. International airfare not included.

Info: Wilderness Ireland, (844) 235-6240

travel@latimes.com

@latimestravel

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Before this month, it would have been hard to imagine a better moment in the almost century-long struggle for Iraqi Kurds to get their own state.

Over the last three years, they had become a vital U.S. ally in the fight against Islamic State. The semiautonomous enclave they had carved out of Iraq appeared to be the rare success in a region where Washingtons policies are not often held in high regard. As a bonus, they had the upper hand in areas still in dispute with Baghdad, including Kirkuk, the multiethnic city Kurds see as their Jerusalem and which they had captured while battling Islamic State in 2014.

So when Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani pushed ahead with an independence referendum in September, he expected a reluctant but amicable sendoff from Baghdad with the Wests blessing. What he got has been a desperate fight to preserve gains won over decades of bloodshed.

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Iraqi Kurds take part in a demonstration outside the U.S. Consulate in Irbil, the capital of semiautonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, on Oct. 20, 2017. (Safin Hamed / AFP/Getty Images )

Over the last week, the Kurds have watched their one-time allies in Iraqs armed forces take back at least 8,900 square miles of land  an area roughly the size of New Jersey. The seized territory has long been in dispute between Baghdad and the leadership of the Kurdish region.

A particularly galling defeat was in Kirkuk, where the peshmerga, the Kurds fighting force, were forced to retreat after members of the Talabani family, who head the Kurds main opposition party, forged a deal with Baghdad, with the backing of Iran. Barzani was enraged and accused them of treachery.

The losses so far are staggering: airports, power plants, vital infrastructure and oil reserves making up almost 50% of Kurds oil revenues.

Its nothing less than a nakba [catastrophe] for the Kurds who wanted statehood, said Lukman Faily, former Iraqi ambassador to Washington, in a phone interview.

The events have also dealt a powerful blow to Kurdish unity, with the two main Kurdish parties  Barzanis Kurdish Democratic Party and the opposition Patriotic Union of Kurdistan  trading recriminations over who is to blame for the setbacks that have put the very viability of the semiautonomous Kurdish region in question.

Party-affiliated media channels eagerly pounce on claims of Kurdish residents being harassed at the hands of the Popular Mobilization Forces, Iranian-backed paramilitary groups the Kurds say have engaged in sectarian attacks. Politicians and activists on social media brand their opponents as traitors to the Kurdish cause.

The acrimony between the two parties, said Kamal Chomani, a nonresident fellow at the regional think tank the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, has brought the Kurdish regional government to the brink of collapse and delayed the regions elections, which were scheduled for next month.

Its a stark contrast to the buoyant days following the Sept. 25 independence referendum, when more than 92% percent of voters favored seceding from Iraq.

People feel they have been duped, said Barham Salih, the former prime minister of the Kurdish regions government.

Syrian Kurds hold a portrait of Iraqi Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani as they demonstrate in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli on Oct. 23, 2017, against Iraqi forces operating in the multiethnic city of Kirkuk. (Delil Souleiman / AFP/Getty Images )

Kurds have historically been united in pursuit of independence. The ruling class has squandered this unifying cause through incompetence, corruption and nepotism, he said.

Many blame Barzanis intransigence in the face of virtually unanimous international and regional opposition to the referendum, especially from neighbors such as Iran and Turkey with their own restive Kurdish minorities.

Critics accuse him of pushing ahead with the vote to burnish his legacy, extend his grip on power (despite having already exceeded the term limits of his presidency by two years) and move attention away from the economic woes of the Kurdish regional government.

Others, like Emma Sky, a senior fellow at Yales Jackson Institute for Global Affairs who served as the governorate coordinator of Kirkuk in 2003, say Barzanis error was one of overreaching.

There was nothing new in this referendum compared to past ones, she said. If Barzani had settled for a Kurdistan without Kirkuk and negotiated a joint administration of that city with Baghdad, he could have done it.

But the chutzpah of including Kirkuk, that was just too much of a provocation.

Shakhawan Abdullah, a Kurdish member of parliament with Barzanis party, countered that Baghdad would have rejected the referendum no matter what.

For Sky, the Kirkuk deal was part of the longtime rivalry between Barzani and his opponents in the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

Theyve done this to each other time and time again, she said. She recalled that in 1996, Barzani invited then Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein to clear out the Patriotic Union in Irbil.

Patriotic Union officials, however, insist the recent move to clear out of Kirkuk was designed to curb bloodshed.

Anywhere from 65,000 to 70,000 people had already begun to flee Kirkuk, and we had lost dozens of peshmerga. We wanted to ... avoid a humanitarian catastrophe, said Ranj Talabani, a Kurdish security official and Patriotic Union member, in a phone interview. He added that Irans role had been greatly overstated.

Barzani, meanwhile, has gone out of sight amid calls from some quarters that he step down. The Patriotic Union is still reckoning with the fault line within its own ranks.

Socially, politically, and now even administratively, the Kurdish region is about to be divided into two entities, something which will further divide Kurdish culture, said Chomani, the think tank fellow. The referendum, he said, may wind up killing the dream of independence.

The winner amid the chaos has been Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi. His strong-arm approach, which many credit with preventing the breakup of the country into sect-based cantons, has been met with approval by many Iraqis and is likely to serve him well in Aprils national elections.

His maneuver, said Faily, had brought the relationship between the Kurdish regional government and Baghdad back to the drawing board.

But the Kurds have more immediate concerns.

We were barely able to pay teachers and civil servants a half wage with the oil proceeds we had. If the government has lost all this revenue, how will it pay the salaries? said Talabani, the Patriotic Union official.

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Sour notes as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu confronts the pickles in parliament

Bulos is a special correspondent.

Twitter: @nabihbulos
It was not the best of days for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Monday was the day the Knesset, Israels parliament, started its winter session. As is traditional, there were speeches by the prime minister, who is the head of government; the president, who is the head of state; and the head of the opposition.

But the sparks that flew, and the furious, jeering members of opposition parties who were ejected from the session, were anything but traditional.

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Netanyahu launched the proceedings with a speech in which he mocked his opponents, including the news media and the judiciary, as pickles  which, in Hebrew slang, can mean a sourpuss, or sour grapes. He also taunted the police, who are investigating him as a suspect in several criminal cases.

Attacking both the media and his political opponents, Netanyahu complained: When one side expresses their opinion, its freedom of speech, and when the other side does, its considered incitement. Thats the way it goes. I have no respect for the hypocrisy.

He said that protesters who gather weekly outside the home of Atty. Gen. Avichai Mandelblit, pressing him to indict the prime minister, are willing to risk Israels democracy so long as he is forced from office. They want to threaten the rule of law, he said.

The prime minister touted Israel as a nation with thriving economy and technology sectors, safe for its citizens, and thanked President Trump for support.

Israelis know its good to live here, he said, describing a homeland absent even a a drop of cynicism, a wonderful country. His opponents, he said, say there is a feeling of bitterness in the air; Netanyahu is walking around with a bitter look on his face.

But hes not the one whos bitter, Netanyahu insisted  its his critics who are.

When bitter ones talk, you hear conversations like, isnt the situation here horrible and terrible? Isnt everything falling apart? By the way, did you order tickets to London or Berlin?

Theyre bitter, and off they fly! Netanyahu jibed.

Reaction to the speech was immediate and visceral, with two opposition members of parliament escorted out for jeering the prime minister. Former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni expressed her disapproval by walking out in mid-speech.

President Reuven Rivlin, who holds a largely ceremonial post, has a reputation for speaking uncomfortable truths. On Monday, he used his speech to raise a red flag about Netanyahu without actually calling him out by name  in much the same way that Sen. John McCain and former President George W. Bush recently criticized Trump without naming him.

Alluding to a warning he issued three decades ago, when cautioning a former Supreme Court chief justice against the danger of the judicial branch encroaching on the legislative branch, he said that today the danger appears to be reversed. Without naming Netanyahu, he excoriated the leadership of the country, and populist tactics that are based on the idea that majority rule is the only rule.

He warned that the country was headed toward an abyss.

In the three years of his presidency, Rivlin has positioned himself as the guardian of Israels minorities, the rule of law, and its relationship with Jewish communities abroad. Netanyahu, meanwhile, has proposed increasingly controversial measures, including a bill demanding citizens declare loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state, and has reneged on an agreement with representatives of the Jewish diaspora regarding management of the Western Wall, Judaisms holiest site.

The wall has been administered under the rules of Orthodox Judaism, which requires the separation of men and women and places limits on how women can pray. Reform and Conservative Jews, who make up the majority of Jews in the United States, want the government to upgrade a smaller prayer area at the southern end of the wall to allow for mixed worship in which women can lead services and read from the Torah.

Implicitly taking Netanyahu to task, a fiery Rivlin challenged a worldview in which the media is political, the democratic institutions  everything from the professional [civil service] to the state comptroller  political. The Supreme Court is political, the security forces are political. And is even the IDF, our Israel Defense Forces, political? The entire land and its institutions are filled with politics?

Statesmanship has disappeared from the country and the floodgates will open, he thundered.

Its a speech he wrote from the depths of his heart, Rivlins spokesperson, Naomi Toledano-Kandel, said in an interview with The Times. He believes statesmanship is the highest value, that the state comes before everything, and that if we harm the institutions of state and constantly blame these institutions for every ill, well end up without the basic fundamental building blocks of our Jewish and democratic state.

Rivlin, whose four-decade career in Netanyahus right-wing party has been characterized by an intense focus on domestic matters, feels a sense of urgency regarding relations between Israel and Jews in the rest of the world, Toledano-Kandel said. Rivlin will provide the keynote address next month at the annual plenary meeting of the Jewish Federations of America in Los Angeles.

In an indication of the growing rift between the Israeli government and American Jewry, Netanyahu, who with a single exception has addressed the group in every year of his prime ministership, will not attend this years meeting.

Toledano-Kandel said the crisis with world Jewry has opened the floodgates of pleas to the presidents office. Since the Western Wall agreement was suspended and with the spike of anti-Semitic incidents around the world, you name it, everyone is asking him to take a stand.

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Tarnopolsky is a special correspondent.
A tractor-trailer jackknifed about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday on Interstate 78 West in Lower Saucon Township but neither the driver nor his passenger was hurt, police report.

Driver Gustavo Acostaarias, 27, of New York City, hit the brakes near mile marker 69.5 after "an unknown vehicle allegedly cut in front" of the 1999 Volvo truck in a center lane, Pennsylvania State Police said.

The truck went off the highway and struck a concrete barrier, with the vehicle initially blocking some lanes, police said. Acostaarias was able to get the truck fully onto the shoulder, freeing up traffic, police said.

There were residual traffic delays for more than an hour, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation said.

Acostaarias and passenger Yoelquis Dume-Gonzalez, 37, of Clifton, New Jersey, were wearing seat belts, police said.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
By Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com

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Hotel Bethlehem's planned $35 million expansion would make it the largest conference and events space in the region. Mayor Bob Donchez said in October 2017 he is backing the project for inclusion in Bethlehem's City Revitalization and Improvement Zone. (Lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

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Bethlehem is receiving $145,816 from the state to spur development in its City Revitalization and Improvement Zone, or CRIZ.

The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue announced the revenue on Tuesday, based on a portion of state and local taxes collected with the zone. It's among $3.9 million in 2016 taxes that are being repaid to Bethlehem, Lancaster and Tamaqua, the state's first three municipalities awarded the CRIZ designation.

Bethlehem, with nearly 75,000 residents, is bigger than Lancaster, at just under 60,000, and about 10 times bigger than Tamaqua, with its population of 7,107, according to U.S. Census figures from 2010.

Its CRIZ take, however, trails the nearly $3.59 million in taxes returned to Lancaster and even the $173,343 paid to Tamaqua.

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So what is in play here?

First, a little on how the CRIZ works. Each participating community designates a zone of up to 130 acres where it wants to stimulate economic growth, revive urban areas and create jobs.

Each business within the zone gets an established baseline of taxes paid, and anything generated beyond that in qualifying state and local taxes is returned to the community for debt service, property acquisition, new construction and other costs related to development projects in the zone.

The zone is good for 30 years. Bethlehem's got its start in January 2015, meaning there's about 27 years left, said Alicia Miller Karner, city director of community and economic development.

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In 2017, the program is just getting started.

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Demolition of ancillary buildings is underway in this Oct. 14, 2017, photo of Martin Tower, where asbestos remediation was also being done, according to the Bethlehem Department of Community and Economic Development. The West Bethlehem property comprises about one-third of Bethlehem's City Revitalization and Improvement Zone. (Kurt Bresswein | Lehighvalleylive.com)

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Lancaster generated its share of CRIZ revenue with 646 businesses; Tamaqua, with 177; and Bethlehem, with just 46.

The lion's share of Bethlehem's $145,816 is attributable to $86,552 from two businesses, in addition to $53,761 from 25 construction contractors working within the CRIZ and $5,503 in incremental tax growth by 11 businesses with an established baseline.

"My predecessors intentionally crafted this CRIZ around vacant or severely underutilized parcels," Miller Karner said. "So we very much saw and continue to see this incentive as one to be used to spur redevelopment in areas or on properties that desperately need it."

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Social Still owner Adam Flatt gives a tour Nov. 21, 2014, of the new South Side Bethlehem distillery set to open the following month. (Lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

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The state report doesn't identify the two new businesses, but Miller Karner said, "One is a bit of a no-brainer: Social Still." The distillery opened in December 2014 inside an old bank at 530 E. Third St. on South Side.

Much of the rest of the CRIZ is varying stages of development.

For example, there is the Greenway Commons mixed-use project featuring first-floor retail and apartments upstairs set to open in May 2018 just west of Social Still, at East Third and Fillmore streets.

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Sands BethWorks Retail LLC comprises multiple parcels across East Third Street at the old Bethlehem Works of the former Bethlehem Steel Corp. Talks surrounding a possible sale of Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem back-burnered much of the sites' further redevelopment this year, Miller Karner noted.

Another, Martin Tower at Eighth and Eaton avenues, totals about one-third of Bethlehem's CRIZ acreage, she said.

"They're removing all the asbestos associated with it," Miller Karner said. "They're focused on that and they've got to get that taken care of before they can redevelop the property."

In all, the city is happy with the $86,552 from the new operating businesses, she said, and looking forward to more coming online from redeveloping "some of the more challenging properties in the city."

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Plans call for demolishing the mold- and water-riddled Masonic Temple and building a 3,781-square-foot glass-walled office space onto the historic Wilbur Mansion off Route 378 in Bethlehem. To the rear, developers plan to build The WILBUR, a four-story, 64-unit apartment buildings fronting on Cherokee Street with underground parking and a green design. (Courtesy rendering | For lehighvalleylive.com)

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The city authority overseeing the CRIZ in Bethlehem approved last month adding to the zone Wilbur Mansion off Route 378 and the former Dempsey's American Kitchen at Schoenersville and Catasauqua roads.

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Mayor Bob Donchez announced earlier this month he wants a $35 million planned expansion of Historic Hotel Bethlehem added to the zone, as well.

It takes time and we want to make sure were doing this well, Miller Karner said. Its one of those incentive programs in which the developers are very much in the drivers seat on the pace of the development of these projects.

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Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Philadelphia's former top prosecutor has been sentenced to five years in prison for accepting a bribe.

Seth Williams was sentenced Tuesday by a federal judge who said he sold his office to "parasites." The judge ordered Williams imprisoned immediately.

The former district attorney didn't speak much during the hearing. His lawyer read a statement in which he apologized and said he "squandered" the trust placed in him.

He pleaded guilty in June to one count of accepting a bribe from a businessman. The plea came two weeks into a trial that involved damaging testimony about money and gifts showered on him.

The two-term Democrat was the city's first black DA. Williams, who made $175,000 in the top job, previously said he ran into financial trouble after a divorce and while paying private school tuition for his daughters.

He also spent years as an assistant prosecutor and was tasked with rooting out corruption as the city's inspector general.

The indictment described gifts that included trips he took with his then-girlfriend to a Dominican Republic resort, where they stayed in a presidential suite; a custom $3,400 sofa; and a used Jaguar convertible, with insurance coverage to match.

In exchange, authorities said, Williams offered to help a friend's friend seek a reduced jail sentence in a criminal case. They also said he took $7,000 for helping a business owner friend meet with an airport police official in an attempt to avoid enhanced screening when returning to the U.S. from foreign trips.
NEW BRUNSWICK -- Recruiting fliers posted by a white supremacist group were hung across Rutgers University's New Brunswick and Piscataway campuses Monday, university officials said.

The fliers promoting Identity Evropa, a white nationalist group that has been recruiting on college campuses across the country this fall, were posted on walls and in campus buildings.

Some of the posters said "Our Generation. Our Future. Our Last Chance." over a photo of group members and the Identity Evropa's website.

Identity Evropa's Twitter account included photos of fliers posted in front of prominent Rutgers buildings, including Voorhees Chapel on the Douglass campus in New Brunswick and the Rutgers Business School building on the Livingston campus in Piscataway.

The posters were eventually removed from all campus buildings and vehicles because the group is not a recognized university organization and the fliers violated Rutgers' posting rules, campus officials said.

The Daily Targum, the campus newspaper, also reported a handwritten "Black Lives Don't Matter" sign was found on a campus bus Monday, though it is unclear if it was related to the Identity Evropa recruiting posters.

Rutgers officials released a statement condemning the white nationalist messages.

"Rutgers University-New Brunswick condemns all acts and statements of bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy, which have no place in our society or on our campus. The flyers -- and the handwritten sign found on a campus bus -- do not represent the principles and values of the university, which include diversity, inclusivity and respect for people of all backgrounds," the Rutgers statement said.

In June, the state Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness listed Indentity Evropa as part of the "New Generation of White Supremacy" in a report on the ways similar groups are rebranding themselves to appeal to new audiences.

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Identity Evropa as a white nationalist group whose members "peddle the delusion of white genocide." The group, which does not admit Jews as members, was part of the high-profile protests against the removal of Confederate statues in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this year.

Identity Evropa's founder, former Marine Nathan Damigo, has close ties to outspoken white nationalist Richard Spencer, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.

The group has stepped up recruitment efforts this year, calling its campaign to hang posters and sign up new members on college campuses #ProjectSeige. The group also put up posters at Stockton University in Galloway in September.

The purpose of the campaign is to get white students to question what they are being taught in college, the group said.

"As students then begin to realize that the direction their lectures take them is based upon false assumptions by their instructors, they will begin rejecting the false narratives and begin looking to us for answers," Identity Evropa said on its website.

Since March, there have been white supremacist flier incidents on 241 college campuses across the country, according to Southern Poverty Law Center's tracker. The majority of those incidents were traced to Identity Evropa.

Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer. Find her at KellyHeyboerReporter on Facebook.
A timely vote appears to have saved Phillipsburg $31,000 on its purchase of a $715,000 firetruck.

There was concern among some officials and town employees that the town would lose the discount after last week's cancellation of the council meeting at which the payment was to be approved. However, that and the town's other bills were taken care of at a special meeting Monday, within the discount's extended deadline.

"It all worked out for the fire company," Council President Todd Tersigni said Tuesday.

Town clerk Victoria Kleiner said the $31,211 discount was in exchange for the town paying $600,000 up front -- a cost for which she said the town has been saving for three years. The amount will be bonded as the truck is assembled and delivered, she said.

At Monday's meeting, Tersigni read an email from Wisconsin-based firetruck-maker Pierce Manufacturing in which the company said that in light of the meeting cancellation, it would preserve the discount as long as the check was received by month's end.

The purchase, along with other bill payments, was approved and the clerk said the check was on her desk Tuesday morning.

Fire chief Rich Hay said the new truck should be ready to hit the road in 12 to 14 months.

Tersigni said he cancelled last week's regularly scheduled meeting because his mother was having health problems. He would not say why he didn't just turn over control of the meeting to the council vice president.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Authorities are searching for the vandals who broke into a Warren County church and desecrated religious items within, setting fire to a number of Bibles and hymnals.

The break-in happened between last Thursday and Sunday at the Free United Methodist Church in Liberty Township, New Jersey State Police reported in a Facebook post seeking more information about the crime.

State Police Seeking the Public's Help with Church Vandalism Investigation Between the dates of Thursday October, 19th... Posted by New Jersey State Police on Tuesday, October 24, 2017

In addition to the burned books, the front entrance was broken and piano and organ were damaged, state police said.

A post on the church's own Facebook page said the damage was discovered Sunday morning, but expressed thanks that no one was hurt.

"We pray for those responsible," the church's post said. "Give us strength to forgive them. 'For they know not what they do.'"

Anyone with information on the crime is asked to call the state police barracks in Washington Township at 908-689-3101. Callers can remain anonymous.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Community activist, Tom Duffy, a volunteer with Portlaoise Action to Homelessness (PATH) who organised the gathering of over 1,000 sleeping bags after this year's Electric Picnic for the homeless is the Leinster Express/Midlands Park Hotel/ Gerry Browne Jewellers Person of the Month for September.

Mr Duffy, originally from Ardoyne in Belfast, has lived in Portlaoise for over 20 years.

He volunteers with PATH regularly and is also involved another voluntary organisation called Feed Our Homeless Inner City Dublin, which was founded by Tony Walsh.

Tom spearheaded the idea of collecting the sleeping bags.

This started when I put a post on my Facebook page with the idea of collecting sleeping bags after the Electric Picnic and asking people in the community to wash them and bring them back to me for our homeless friends who have to sleep on the streets of Dublin.

Tom collected over 1,000 sleeping bags, ground mats and tents which were recycled for re-use. This number of sleeping bags is enough for PATH to bring to people every week until March, 2018.

Helping him were several PATH volunteers who were given access to the campsites. Many people also provided transport to get the bags back to his home in Portlaoise.

He was also helped by the Carter girls who run Supershots Paintball in Stradbally who allowed their facility to be used as a drop off point.

Hundreds of the sleeping bags went to PATH and many more were given to voluntary organisations that feed and clothe homeless people. Many went to Wexford, Cork, Kildare and several other places where people are sleeping rough.

Tom said he was overwhelmed by the way that people from all over Laois got behind the effort.

He hopes that this year's effort will be the pilot for an annual event for PATH.

Next year we could be much more prepared and be ready with 30 volunteers and make a massive sweep inside one good day.

Operating from Portlaoise, the PATH group is the only mobile group in the country.

It uses two custom made carts which volunteers and committee members push around the streets of Dublin every Saturday night seeking out homeless people to look after them, and covering up to 10 kilometres on foot.

The locally made carts are purpose built containing several compartments for essentials including sandwiches, tea, coffee, treats, toiletries, sleeping bags, hats, scarves, gloves and the famous Portlaoise Stew as it is widely known by PATH's homeless clients.

Old Portlaoise convent is being considered for council housing tenants.
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A van was broken into and tools were stolen from the van in Portlaoise.

The incident took place at Clonroosk Abbey, Maryborough, Portlaoise overnight between Monday, October 23 and Tuesday, October 24.

Gardai are investigating the incident and looking for witnesses.

In a separate incident, tools were taken from a building site of the unfinished primary care centre at Charleville, Tullamore on Sunday night into Monday, October 23.

Break ins and burglaries have continued to occur throughout the county this week with gardai investigating a large number of incidents.

Burglars saw their opportunity in Mountmellick ahead of Hurricane Ophelia in the early hours of Monday morning, October 16.

The Coffee Pot cafe at Davitt Shopping Centre & Medical Complex in Mountmellick was broken into and the a small sum of cash left in the till overnight was stolen.

The incident took place around 5:15am, before the storm had hit Ireland.

Manager of The Coffee Pot, Eoghan O'Riordan said that between having no money in the till and Hurricane Ophelia, the cafe had to remain closed after the incident.

"It is never easy for a small business to get broken into, but we are back in business today," he said.

Supervalu in Mountmellick, beside The Coffee Pot, was locally reported to be like Christmas Eve with shelves clearing fast as people prepared for the storm.

On the same day, A 19-year-old woman was assaulted and her handbag was stolen.

The incident took place at 5:30pm at Centre Point, Mountrath.

The woman experienced minor injuries and was reported to be very frightened after the incident. A 27-year-old male was charged.

Gardai are investigating a burglary and a break-in which took place in Laois on Tuesday, October 17.

A juvenile was arrested and some property was recovered after a burglary at Ballymorris Manor in Portarlington.

The incident took place around 4pm.

In a separate incident a house was broken into in Ballyroan between 5-9pm.

Nothing has been reported as taken yet.

Gardai are investigating a robbery from a popular shop in Rathdowney.

Gardai say a male entered The Card Stand, The Square Rathdowney at 6.20pm Sunday, October 23 and robbed cash from till.

The shop attendant was pushed a number of times.

Gardai investigating matter are appealing for any witnesses that were in vicinity of the Card Stand, Rathdowney between 6pm and 6.30pm.

Gardai are also investigating a number of burglaries over the weekend.

On Friday night houses were broken into at Summerhill Portlaoise, Chantiere Gate, Portlaoise and Newtown, Stradbally.

A house was also burgled at Roselawn, Portlaoise on Saturday. All incidents took place sometime between 7pm and midnight.

Jewellery was stolen in a number of them.

Anti-social behaviour at vacant Portarlington house.

Man questioned in Portlaoise over pipe bomb.
An agreed position on the future of Portlaoise hospital has not been reached with Dublin and Midlands hospital management, according to the Minister for Health Simon Harris.

The Department of Health issued the reply on behalf of the Minister to the Leinster Express following the leaking of a plan to downgrade Portlaoise hospital and remove its A&E.

The proposal is contained in a leaked five year Strategic Plan for hospitals in Dublin, Kildare, Laois and Offaly which are overseen by the HSE'S Dublin Midlands Hospital Group. Managers in the group are due to meet this week to sign off on the plan.

The strategy is linked to another document on the future of Portlaoise hospital completed by the DMHG and submitted to the Minister in late 2016. This was a revised version of an earlier proposals completed in the Autumn of 2015 when the current Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was health minister.

Minister Harris claimed no decisions have been reached.

"The Dublin Midlands Hospital Group has been working for some time on a draft plan for a new model of clinical service delivery at Portlaoise Hospital which takes account of the need to develop services at Portlaoise in the context of developing the model of service provision for the entire Hospital Group.

"The draft plan has been submitted to my Department and it is being reviewed in detail. Once there is an agreed position on the draft plan, there will be further engagement with all interested parties to ensure that the needs of patients, staff, the local and wider community are addressed," he said.

PUBLIC MEETING TO PROTEST PORTLAOISE DOWNGRADE

Laois councillors and TDs met Minister Harris behind closed doors in Portlaoise earlier this year. At the time he told politicians including his Ministerial colleague Charlie Flanagan that downgrade was not a done deal.

They also met Taoiseach Varadkar in Dublin during his time as Minister. He also visited Portlaoise twice in the wake of the crisis that engulfed the maternity services. Interview with Leo Varadkar

The Minster for Health has the final say on what happens to Portlaoise.
A senior Minster has claimed that the Government has 'no intention' of closing the A&E at Portlaoise hospital.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney was answering questions from Laois TD, Brian Stanley in the Dail in the wake of revelations that the HSE's hospital management team for Dublin and the Midlands wants to downgrade Portlaoise.

The Sinn Fein TD said Fine Gael had committed to the the 'priority' aim in the programme for Government to increase access to safe and timely care as close to the patients as possible.

"I will bring to his attention, that the emergency department in Portlaoise, which had almost 40,000 presentations last year is due to be closed according to this report (from the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group)," he said.

Dep Stanley said it is due to be discussed on Wednesday by its author, Dr Susan O'Reilly, with senior hospital managers in Dublin, Kildare, Laois and Offaly.

Under the plan there will be a mini downgrade in Naas General with all trauma patients diverted to Tallaght or elsewhere.

"I am pleading with you that the report goes into the shredder," he said.

The minister ruled out change.

"All I can say is the Government has absolutely no intention of the emergency department in Portlaoise to be closed," he said.

The Strategic Plan for hospitals in Dublin, Kildare, Offaly and Laois was leaked to Deputy Stanley. It includes plans for a 24/7 medical assessment unit and a 12 hour local injuries unit. These would replace 24/7 emergency care which would be focused in Tallaght and Tullamore hospitals.

The DMHG claim that there will be investment in both hospitals to cope with the extra demand from patients diverted from Portlaoise.

The Strategic Plan is linked to a completed plan on Portlaoise Hospital which was sent to the Minister for Health Simon Harris in late 2016. He told the Leinster Express that nothing is agreed in relation to Portlaoise.
Nearly 40,000 of the almost 200,000 people who presented to the Emergency Department (ED / A&Es) in Dublin and the midlands last year were seen in Portlaoise hospital.

And, there was an almost 70% increase in the number of patients patients who had to be accomodated on trollies in the Midlands Regional Hospital, Portlaoise last year. Portlaoise has the third busiest A&E in the region ahead of Tullamore and Naas.

The official HSE figures are among the staggering statistics in the leaked Strategic Plan that sets out the intention to cut 24/7 emergency cover from the Laois hospital.

The downgrade of the Midlands Regional Hospital, Portlaoise is a key plank of the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group five year strategy to reconfigure hospitals in Dublin and the Midlands.

PORTLAOISE A&E CUT FINALLY REVEALED

The other hospitals are: Tullamore, Tallaght, Naas, Tallaght and St James's in Dublin.

Emergency medicine consultant at one of these sister hospitals, Dr Jim Gray blamed the state agencies for the trolley crisis.

"This is a national scandal that has been allowed to continue for more than a decade or more," he told RTE's Prime Time.

The Tallaght consultant said the trolley problem was a year round crisis and the flu crisis would cause a surge upon a surge.

Dr Colm Henry of the HSE said the solution would be for hospital groups and community health services to be more integrated. He said it is not sustainable to have people with chronic illnesses on trollies.

"The solution is outside hospitals," he told Prime Time

EMERGENCY PUBLIC MEETING ON PORTLAOISE

Key figures in the report from 2016 are:

18,684 patients had to be accomodated on trollies

4,244 people on trollies in Portlaoise

198,849 presentations to emergency departments

FULL TABLE FROM REPORT BELOW
Laois councillors are demanding an immediate meeting with Minister for Health Simon Harris, over the leaked HSE proposal to downgrade Midlands Regional Hospital Portlaoise.

The Fine Gael and Fianna Fail councillors are also vowing not to stand by their parties if Portlaoise hospital services are cut.

Yesterday news of the leaked report was announced at the October council meeting by Cllr Caroline Dwane Stanley, the wife of Sinn Fein TD Brian Stanley to whom the report was revealed.

She outlined that the chief of the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group, Dr Susan O'Reilly, has called managers of hospitals to a meeting tomorrow Wednesday October 25, to "sign off" on a strategic plan.

It includes closing Portlaoise's 24 hour A&E unit, instead investing in a local injuries unit and a GP Medical Assessment Unit in Portlaoise. Naas hospital's A&E would also be downgraded. Read more.

"It is absolutely crazy if this goes ahead. There were 39,222 emergencies going through Portlaoise A&e in the last 12 months. I am calling for Minister Harris to come out and state that he is rejecting Dr O'Reilly's recommendation for Portlaoise. I have never seen a situation as dire and serious. I believe we need an emergency meeting with Minister Flanagan as soon as possible, with our two TDs and Minister Harris, to stop this in its tracks," Cllr Dwane Stanley said.

Fine Gael Cllr Willie Aird is on the Dublin Midlands Health Forum with Cllr Paddy Bracken and Cllr John King.

"Every meeting we ask about the report. We didn't even get an opportunity to look at it. This is terrible local publicity for the hospital, the people up there work terribly hard. I cannot on my life see Minister Harris sign off when his colleague is at the table," he said.

Cllr Noel Tuohy said they needed to get Portlaoise Hospital Action Committee "off the floor".

"There's no way we can lose services with a Minister sitting at the table. I call on Minister Flanagan to say he will not support any diminuation of services," the Labour councillor said.

Fine Gael Cllr Mary Sweeney was concerned about the fact it was leaked.

"It's dangerous and speculative. I would be absolutely devastated if anything was reduced. The Minister needs to come up and answer us, as our most senior politician," she said.

Cllr Jerry Lodge said the health department thought they were fools.

"Like mushrooms, keep us in the dark and feed us waffle. I'll be writing to Deputy Fleming asking for Fianna Fail to withdraw support of the government over this. Lets see where political parties stand, it's a make or break issue for Portlaoise," he said.

His Fianna Fail colleague Cllr Catherine Fitzgerald said she would support any action.

"There is no room in any A&E, where are people to go, it's crazy," she said.

Sinn Fein Cllr Aidan Mullins said the solution was public pressure.

"It's in their remit to stop this. It's action and if that includes mass protests so be it," he said.

"The final decision is with Minister Harris. There is no way I'd support a Fianna Fail that stands over the closure of a hospital," said Cllr Paschal McEvoy.

Cllr Tom Mulhall said that none of the six Laois Fine Gael councillors would support the party if the services were cut.

"Everyone in Laois wants full services, we won't accept anything else," he said.

Portlaoise Hospital Action group arranges public meeting
History was made last Saturday morning, when Newbridge and Argentre-Du-Plessis cemented their friendship by signing an official twinning agreement.

The French arrived in Newbridge to sign their part of the protocol and make official the twinning that has been running for more than five years.

Representatives from both sides put ink to paper at Newbridge Town Hall.

SEE ALSO: St Patrick's Day parades round-up from towns across Kildare

The unofficial twinning with Argentre first began five years ago when two rugby fans, Noel Heavey and Loic Mehaignerie, struck up a friendship at a Leinster match, which in turn led to a visit by Newbridge RFC to Argentres annual festival held at the end of August.

Some took up the offer to stay with local families who in turn have since hosted visitors from Brittany.

In the last couple of years there have now been regular visits back and forth with musicians from Newbridge performing in Argentre and the visitors taking part in the Newbridge St Patricks Day parade.

Speaking about last weekends event, Mr Heavey said; it was a really postive experience for all concerned.

It was an example of two local authorities and two different groups in two different countries coming together in a positive way that brings joy to so many people.

A programme of events was planned for the weekend, including a visit to St Brigids Cathedral in Kildare town, Solas Bride on Tully Road and a Halloween party at Newbridge Rugby Club.

Located 30 minutes from Rennes, Argentre is close the medieval town of Vitre and is a great location from which to visit places such as St Malo, Dinard and Dinan.
Blessington brothers, Sean and Conor Price, are over another X Factor hurdle, as they sailed through Judges Houses on Sunday night (October 22), to land a spot at live shows.

Sean (15) and Conor, who celebrated his 18th birthday on Thursday (October 19) travelled to the south of France to perform for mentor Simon Cowell, and guest judge Cheryl Tweedy.

They chose to sing Pinks What About Us, which was a huge hit with both Simon and Cheryl.

After their performance, which is trending number one on YouTube in Ireland, Simon said: That was so good. Thats the best I think youve sang, pointing at Conor.

The connection you have between the two of you, it was brilliant, said Simon.

When it came to decision time, Simon, who could only take three acts through, said the lads have great taste, enormous likeability, and great voices.

The friendship and the relationship is amazing. What you have is this really charming naivety, and you dont know how good you are. Which means, you probably dont realise that Im about to say, youre made it through to the live finals.

WATCH HERE:

An ecstatic Sean and Conor jumped into each others arms when Simon revealed their fate.

Amazing. How could I say no to them?, he said with a grin across his face.

After the show, the lads took to social media to say: THANKS so much to everyone for the support and messages. LIVE SHOWS HERE WE COME! unbelievable feeling!

The duo have been busy since Sunday's show, appearing on ITVs this morning yesterday (Monday, October 23).

WATCH THEM HERE:

The lads, who are third and sixth year students in Naas CBS, will go on to battle it out at live shows, kicking off this Saturday night.

The talented Blessington duo have their sights set on the top spot and all of Ireland will be backing them!

WATCH THEIR JUDGES HOUSES' PERFORMANCE HERE:
We are hell bent on eliminating ourselves from the planet, a Kildare county councillor has said.

Cllr Morgan McCabe was speaking on Monday at the Councils monthly meeting, on a motion on soil erosion.

The Council is to write to the Minister for Communications, Climate and Environment asking that the Government pushes for a European soils directive which would safeguard Irish soils.

Cllr Sorcha ONeill said that the Irish food supply was an issue here.

Due to overuse of chemicals and overproduction, the quality of Irish soil has lowered and nearly half the nutrients, needed by humans, have now lost from what is grown.

We need to take steps to protect the soil, she said.

The European Union hopes the new directive will help solve the problem.

Cllr Fiona McLoughlin Healy said it was a scary vision of the future.

Cllr Brendan Young agreed saying a UN report has estimated that there is only 60 years left of functioning arable land to feed the work population.

He said that if nothing was done on a world basis there will be huge migrations of people.

It is not something we can ignore.

Cllr McCabe, a Newbridge based non party councillor, said Ireland must reverse soil erosion.

We are hell bent on eliminating ourselves from the planet, Director of Services, Joe Boland, said he agreed with the sentiments expressed and that there were many directives to which the Council had to pay heed.
The Osberstown wastewater treatment plant near Naas is just one of many Irish Water plants where improvements are need to resolve environmental priorities, according to an Environment Protection Agency report issued this week.

The EPA Urban Waste Water Treatment report for 2016, said that 135 of 185 large urban areas complied with legally binding standards in 2016.

But Osberstown was one of 50, including Dublin and Cork, which failed the standards. These 50 areas account for almost two thirds of the national waste water load collected in all large urban areas.

The European Unions Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive sets standards for the collection, treatment and discharge of urban waste water from large urban areas.

The EPA said the underlying cause of many failures is a lack of infrastructure. Other failures were due to inadequate operation and management practices, and insufficient treatment plant capacity.

It said that Osberstown was one of thirteen plants which had non compliant wastewater collection standards.

In addition, it was one of 45 plans which was non compliant with secondary treatment requirements and it was one of 21 plants which was non compliant with more stringent treatment required.

The listing of Osberstown was qualified by a note which said: The effluent discharged from the treatment plant met the relevant effluent quality standards. However, the collection systems failed to meet the Directives requirements. This means that some of the wastewater is not conveyed to the treatment plant. As all wastewater is not treated, the area is deemed to fail the Directives secondary treatment requirements, and where applicable, the more stringent treatment requirements.

The EPA said that meeting the standards in the Directive is a key step in protecting our environment from the adverse effects of wastewater discharges. The European Commission is taking Ireland to the Court of Justice of the European Union because of the ongoing failure to ensure that wastewater is adequately collected and treated. It said the collection and treatment of wastewater at 50 large urban areas did not meet European Union standards. Infrastructure and operational improvements are needed to bring Ireland into compliance with the Directive.

Former Leixlip Town Councillor, John Colgan said the situation at the Osberstown works, now under Irish Water, but until recently, Kildare County Councils responsibility, was serious. Outflow waste water from Osberstown is discharged into the Liffey river, and downstream of Leixlip. Fingal County Council takes its inflow water into the drinking water plant at Cooldrinagh, Leixlip. This provides about one quarter of County Dublin's supply and much of north Kildare's. Even with modern sewage processing, no processing removes antibiotics from the outlet water, and we know we are all developing an immunity from the benefits of antibiotics. Nor does it remove oestrogen, which is passed into the wastewater from females urine. This product reduces the fertility of males. These two problems are, I understand, one of the growing worries of countries in continental Europe.

Irish Water said the EPA report clearly shows the size and scale of the challenge faced by it in meeting the demands of decades of underinvestment in wastewater infrastructure.

The company said the EPA report identifies major progress by Irish Water in the period since 2014, as 65 new or upgraded plants have been delivered. When Irish Water took over responsibility for water and wastewater in 2014, the national utility prioritised the health of our customers by focusing on improving drinking water, where boil water notices affected over 20,000 people, with many more at risk. The company said that in 2014 it took over a portfolio of projects from the local authorities that were all at different stages of development.

In many cases the projects needed to be re-scoped, or the necessary planning and environmental statutory processes were not yet in place and in some cases Irish Water said the report identifies compliance issues due to collection systems in Cork, Thurles and Roscrea among thirteen agglomerations listed by the EPA. As the national picture is clarified by further surveys, the company expects that this will define major further investment requirements into the future.
The Department of Education has identified a site a new permanent community school in Celbridge.

Kildare North TD, Bernard Durkan said: The site for the proposed new Educate Together Community School in Celbridge has been identified and negotiations are in place to complete the acquisition at Donaghcumper, Celbridge."

Deputy Durkan said the proposed school will be run under the joint patronage of Kildare Wicklow Education and Training Board and Educate Together.

Kildare North Labour representative, Emmet Stagg, welcomed confirmation that a site has been identified for the permanent Celbridge Community School and that agreement in principle has been reached in relation to the potential acquisition of the site at Donaghcumper.

The site is not on the land between the Lucan road and the town centre but on the Newcastle side of the Lucan road, it is believed.

Mr. Stagg stated that the next stage is the completion of the conveyancing process and Department of Education officials are liaising with the seller to progress the acquisition of the site.

He said the exact location of the site at Donaghcumper has not been disclosed but that presumably it is the land zoned Community and Educational to the rear of Donaghcumper graveyard and east of Shinkeen Road.

Mr Stagg said that hopefully, depending on the size of the site, it might be possible to locate the New St. Patricks national school there also.

The Community School is currently located in temporary accommodation at Moortown on the Maynooth Road.

The new school, when built, will cater for 750 students and will comprise 36 classrooms, a PE Hall, General Purpose Hall and two Special Needs Classrooms. A previous attempt to locate the permanent school at The Commons, Hazelhatch Road, Celbridge was refused planning permission by Kildare County Council and An Bord Pleanala because the site was in a flood zone.

Mr Stagg congratulated the Principal, Gerard O'Leary, and everybody else involved with the school.
A delighted John and Paula Quinn of Ashwood Veterinary Centre were thrilled to be awarded 'Vet Practice of the Year' at a Ceremony in Galway last month.

The It's your Field Animal Health All Star Awards is an All Ireland competition set up to highlight and honour businesses in the animal health sector across sixteen different categories.

Nominations were received from customers, colleagues and suppliers across Ireland based on service, dedication, skills and professionalism.

John and Paula are delighted to be honoured and recognised by their peers in the 10+ employees category and are eager to emphasise the team effort that has delivered this award.

The practice purchased in 2001 as a two vet large animal practice has steadily evolved. From the very outset and since the opening of their new clinic in 2005 the Quinn's goal was to develop the small animal side of the practice through investment in a modern purpose built facility with hospital accreditation and now operated by a skilled team of six vets.

Dedication and a vision for exceptional animal care has seen the client base grow steadily in both the large and small animal aspects.

As the companion animal sector widens and the livestock industry changes, Ashwood Veterinary Centre continues to move with the times.
PLANNERS have given the green light to controversial plans to build social housing in a private Limerick city estate  despite almost 100 objections from locals.

Silvergrove Developments sought planning permission to build 16 new homes in a mix of two and three bedroom units at the last green space in Drominbeg, Rhebogue.

The plans have proven extremely unpopular with scores of groups and individuls objecting to the local authority, including the Drominbeg Residents Association, the Rhebogue Meadows Residents Association and the Drominbeg Management Committee.

Local councillor Kieran OHanlon says he is extremely disappointed the proposals have been given conditional planning permision, while resident Gearoid Murphy says they will appeal the decision to An Bord Pleanala.

There is widespread opposition to the social housing, with residents fearing an increase in anti-social behaviour, the fact Rhebogue already has a quota of these, and a potential drop in home values.

I have strongly opposed the idea of putting blocks of social housing right in the middle of private housing estates. Id guess there is more than 10% of social housing in Rhebogue already. There are Travellers halting sites near, and there are plans by council to put more social housing on the Old Dublin Road, Cllr OHanlon said.

Mr Murphy asked: Will we have to start building facilities after things go wrong, which seems to be the policy? Its the wrong way around. Were putting the cart before the horse. There is nothing in Rhebogue, but houses upon houses upon houses.

Several residents have argued that rather than provide inclusivity, placing almost 20 homes in a corner of the estate would actually promote exclusion.

Elsewhere, council planners have given permission to John McInerney to build 61 new homes at Knockhill, at the Ennis Road.
MEMBERS of the public and the emergency services have been involved in a dramatic rescue from the river in Limerick this Tuesday.

The man, understood to be in his late 40s, entered the water in the area near Barringtons Hospital on the Abbey River at Charlottes Quay in the city.

The call to the Munster Regional Fire Control came through at 11.40am and the FireSwift rescue boat was launched in response.

On arrival, the emergency services found that three members of the Curragower Boat Club and a member of An Post had taken the man from the water and placed him on the breakwater pontoon where the Abbey meets the Shannon river.

The mans injuries are understood to be not life threatening and he was taken to University Hospital Limerick by HSE Paramedics.

Gardai were also involved and the incident was witnessed by members of the public.

One said: "Lots of people tried to help, people were throwing in life buoys but they did not reach the man. Everyone kept roaring and screaming and a guy in a boat at the back of the Hunt museum responded. He got out and just stopped the man from being swept away down the Shannon. He would never have been saved only for him and he deserves recognition for saving his life."

Another tweeted:
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General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Nguyen Phu Trong and Lao Deputy Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone (Source: VNA)



He also spoke highly of outcomes of the talks between Deputy PM Sonexay Siphandone and his Vietnamese counterpart Truong Hoa Binh.

The Party leader urged the two Governments to instruct ministries, agencies, localities and businesses to proactively work together to effectively realise Vietnam-Laos joint statements, high-level agreements reached by leaders of the CPV and the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party (LPRP) as well as the two countries, cooperation agreements between the two Governments, along with joint programmes and plans.

The two sides should focus on the exchange of information, experience and measures to materialise resolutions adopted at national congresses of each Party, he said.

The General Secretary called for joint efforts to prepare for the 40th meeting of the Vietnam-Laos Inter-Governmental Committee, and organise activities marking the Vietnam-Laos Solidarity and Friendship Year 2017.

Vietnam strongly and comprehensively supports the reform cause in Laos and believes that under the leadership of the LPRP, the management of the Government and the supervision of the National Assembly, Lao people will reap more achievements in the reform process, he said.

Host and guest noted with delight the development of the special solidarity between Vietnam and Laos in all fields.

Sonexay Siphandone expressed his sympathy for human and property losses suffered by Vietnamese people during the recent floods, noting his belief that under the leadership of the CPV, Vietnamese people will overcome all difficulties and challenges to gain greater attainments in the reform process.

The Lao Government will closely coordinate with its Vietnamese counterpart to instruct ministries, agencies and localities to effectively implement agreements signed by high-ranking leaders of the two Parties and countries, as well as agreements reached at the 39th meeting of the Inter-Governmental Committee, while preparing for the 40th meeting of the committee, he affirmed./.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and his Australian guest. (Photo: VNA)



He spoke highly of the Vietnam-Australia comprehensive strategic partnership, which saw positive contributions of Ambassador Craig Chittick.

PM Phuc said he expects the meeting with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on the sidelines of the APEC 2017 Economic Leaders Week in Da Nang and hoped that the talks would help elevate the relations between the two countries to a new height.

Both sides need to speed up trade and economic cooperation as the bilateral trade revenue is currently standing at USD5 billion, which is below their potential, he underlined.

Lauding Vietnam for successfully organising the APEC 2017 Finance Ministers Meeting, Chittick said that the Australian Prime Minister will attend the APEC high level week in Da Nang and meet with Prime Minister Phuc to discuss measures to enhance the bilateral relations.

Australia is all set for fostering bilateral cooperation in economy and promoting a free and open environment, he said, adding that Australias 15 most successful enterprises will attend APEC CEO Summit in Da Nang.

He also pledged to work to speed up trade and investment cooperation between the two countries./.
New executive board of the association (Photo: VNA)

Speaking at the Congress, Vietnamese Ambassador to Hungary Nguyen Thanh Tuan affirmed that this congress marked the end of a period of establishment and operation with remarkable results, and opened a new chapter to strengthen the organization and comprehensive development of the association. The ambassador also wished the congress success. Participants reviewed the operation of the association in the period of 2008 -2017 and direction for the next term.

Founded on April 23rd, 2008 as a civil society organization, the association now has 18 branches and clubs.

A non-profit operation with voluntary spirit and principle of members, the association has a legal status recognized by the Budapest Civil Court in late 2013, and covers almost all activities of Overseas Vietnamese living, working and studying in Hungary.

During the first term, the Association cooperated with its branches to organize all major activities of the community in all fields of foreign affairs, internal affairs, culture, education, sports, charity, exchange and preservation of Vietnamese tradition and culture for the second generation.

With the organization of the Association, on May 18th, 2014, nearly 1,500 Vietnamese people in Hungary took to the streets to protest China placing HD-981 oil rig in Vietnams exclusive economic zone and continental shelf.

Its activities over the past years have been evaluated by Vietnamese communities in Europe as of high organization, significant effect and good influence on the mind, emotions and thoughts of overseas Vietnamese people.

During the congress, Vu Quy Duong, a successful and prestigious businessman in the community, was re-elected as the Head of the Association and a new executive board of 33 members was also elected./.
A sense of normalcy and routine settled back over Napa on Monday as the citys 18,000 students returned to class for the first time since a firestorm swept through their county two weeks ago.

But normal was relative.

Across the district, counselors were stationed at every school, ready to help students process the grief and trauma related to the homes and lives lost to fire.

At Napa High School, a sign was posted at the entry to every classroom: The love in the air is thicker than the smoke! We missed you! So glad youre back.

At the high school, students spent first period talking about the fires, and across the district, teachers planned to let students discuss the life-altering blazes, said Elizabeth Emmett, spokeswoman for the Napa Valley Unified School District.

Every class is going to let kids take time to process and talk, she said.

In one world literature class, the teacher unraveled a ball of blue yarn, stringing it from student to student as each one spoke until they were all part of one big web, said senior Colton Maher, 17. Then they each snipped off a section of the yarn and made bracelets they proceeded to wear around campus.

It feels strange having spring break in the fall, Colton said. Were all ready to come back. But our routine got thrown off.

He noted that the upside of two weeks off was extra time to finish a project on The Stranger, by Albert Camus.

His classmate Malia Blackmon, 17, however, said that like a typical teenager, she still put off doing the Camus project until Sunday. But she wasnt feeling very typical Monday.

Im super jittery and antsy and Im usually super mellow, but I cant sit still, she said. Its like living in a movie. These two weeks felt apocalyptic. When you dont have a clear blue day, it changes your mood a little.

District officials sought to find a balance between acknowledging the fire and offering students the security of a class schedule and pepperoni pizza in the cafeteria. One teacher greeted every student with a hug, even as hall monitors chastised dawdlers for being late to class.

A lot of students are excited and happy, but there are some who were affected who are keeping it in, said student body president Ulises Cid, 17. These two weeks have added a lot of stress.

For seniors like Ulises, the evacuations and school closures were also complicating an already stressful college application process. State and local administrators were working to reschedule college entrance exams and extend deadlines at universities offering an early admission process.

And teachers were having to backtrack, reviewing content to remind students what they were working on before the fires.

Napa High student Martin Velazquez, 16, said his chemistry class had been working on atomic theory, but now two weeks later it was all a little fuzzy, like whether there are protons or electrons in the nucleus, and a lot of other stuff.

His classmate Gage Kite added that hed forgotten a lot of verbs hed been conjugating in Spanish class. Hed also lost track of the plot of The Crucible, and so he wasnt feeling good about the 40-question quiz his teacher gave in the morning.

I like school, but I could have used another week off, Gage said. You can always use another week off.

That was the kind of typical teenage sentiment that was music to adult ears.

The school had five counselors, a psychologist and other mental health workers on hand asking staff to refer any students who they felt might need some support. School security officer Chris Jenkins, who patrolled the campus on a bicycle, said for the most part it was a typical day at school.

When youre 17, youre able to bounce back from things, maybe more than adults are, he said. Thats what theyre doing. The fire made this community a lot tighter than it was before.

While students in Napa County readjusted to the routine of reading, writing and arithmetic, many of their counterparts in neighboring Sonoma County were expected to miss at least another week of school, including those in Santa Rosa public schools.

Aside from smoke issues, no schools in Napa County were damaged by the Atlas Fire, although the blaze destroyed about 500 homes, businesses and wineries across the county. As of Monday, the fire had burned 51,624 acres and was 95 percent contained, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said.

As students headed to schools, businesses were also hoping to get back to normal this week, and open signs across downtown beckoned customers. At the John Anthony vineyard tasting room on First Street, however, there wasnt a single visitor to sample Cabernet at three tastes for $25.

Were open, said tasting room hostess Sylvie Tannhauser. If you want to support us, come on down and drink wine.

Steve Rubenstein and Jill Tucker are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com, jtucker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF, @jilltucker
Vietnamese Embassy in the Russia Federation donated to support domestic flood victims. (Photo: VNA)

Speaking at the launching ceremony, Vietnamese Ambassador to the Russian Federation Nguyen Thanh Son called on people to promote the traditional spirit of mutual help of the Vietnamese people, contributing to support the domestic people facing difficulties due to recent floods to quickly stabilize their lives.

In response to the call of the ambassador, all officials and staff of the embassy and Vietnamese representative agencies in the Russian Federation were ready to contribute at least one day's salary, representatives of Vietnamese organizations, businesses and individuals in the Russian Federation also made donations to support the domestic people.

At the end of the fund drive, the embassy will send a delegation of representatives from the embassy in the Russian Federation, associations and some overseas Vietnamese people directly to Vietnam to present the support to people in provinces heavily damaged by the recent floods.

Previously, in the floods in 2016, the mission delegation of the Vietnamese Embassy and overseas Vietnamese community in the Russian Federation presented 10 motor boats, each worth VND40 million, and 100 life jackets to the people in Ha Tinh and Quang Binh provinces./.
"Wonderstruck," like all of Todd Haynes's movies, feels like a meticulously constructed treasure. The parallel stories follow two deaf runaways 50 years apart who sneak off to New York City. One story, in black and white, is a silent film, while the other channels the bright colors and funky music of its 1970s setting. At one point, both children end up at the Natural History Museum, where they each place a tiny hopeful hand on the same ancient meteorite.

This is more than mere coincidence; it feels like magic. And yet, the movie - in all its painstaking fabrication - doesn't entirely cast a spell.

The adaptation of the young adult novel by Brian Selznick, who also wrote the screenplay, dives into big themes. Ben (Oakes Fegley), in 1977, and Rose (Millicent Simmonds), in 1927, feel lonely and misunderstood, and both are mourning recent personal losses. But they're sure salvation is in Manhattan, where someone is waiting who might finally appreciate them.

Minnesota native Ben, who just lost his mother in a car wreck, is searching for the father he never knew. After finding a bookmark with a personal message among his mom's belongings, he's convinced the piece of paper is a treasure map that will lead to his dad. Rose, whose strict father (James Urbaniak) makes her life a nightmare, sets out from New Jersey in search of her favorite silent movie star, Lillian Mayhew (Julianne Moore).

We even see Rose watching Lillian's latest movie - a flawless silent movie replica, featuring the actress battling a storm while trying to protect her newborn baby. Rose, like the rest of the audience, becomes overcome with emotion. It's unclear, though, how long she'll be able to appreciate her favorite pastime: Signs outside the theater promise that talkies are imminent, and Rose can't read lips.

Simmonds, who's deaf in real life, hasn't acted in a feature before, though she emotes like a pro, evoking deep feeling without a word of dialogue. She embodies the title of the film, as she looks wide-eyed at the urban spectacles around her, letting us see the world through a child's eyes.

Haynes clearly cares about details, especially when it comes to conjuring up different eras, as he did in "Carol" and "Far From Heaven." He spends plenty of time following his characters as they wander around streets, bus depots and museum halls. We get to soak up the atmosphere, although this languorous approach can sometimes give the movie a plodding feel. Other times, the pace gets too speedy, particularly at the start, when the film jumps between Ben and Rose so frequently, it's hard to become emotionally invested in either one. For all the story's cosmic echoes across the ages, the pacing just feels off.

Still, the approach is inventive. There aren't many greater risks than making a silent film in 2017, much less half of one. Though the story lacks some momentum, the mystery of Ben's parentage propels the drama toward a gorgeous finale that includes thrilling stop-motion animation, not to mention a sense of balance as the two narratives finally meet. It takes some patience, but eventually "Wonderstruck" delivers real awe.

---

Two and one-half stars. Rated PG. Contains images of children in peril and smoking. 117 minutes.

Ratings Guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars OK, one star poor, no stars waste of time.
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Waco officials told mySA.com that actor Robert Redford robbed a local bank last weekend. Well, sort of.

Redford helicoptered into town Saturday to film scenes for his new movie, "The Old Man and the Gun," in which he plays an older bank robber who has escaped from prison more than 12 times, according to the flick's IMDb page.

The veteran bank robber is looking to "spice things up with another heist" before retiring, according to the page.

Redford's bank of choice?

The American Bank, or "round bank," in Bellmead, just north of Waco.

RELATED: Miniseries on infamous cult standoff with federal agents riles Waco city officials

"This was the biggest star I think Waco has seen," said Carla Pendergraft, director of marketing for the Waco Convention Center.

She said presidents have visited Waco and Anthony Bourdain once filmed an episode of his show "No Reservations" there, but no one as legendary as Redford.

He spent the day filming at the bank and on Elm Avenue in town, Pendergraft said. She said Redford didn't look like himself -- he was outfitted in a wig and shaggy mustache. Although Pendergraft was not allowed to take photos of Redford acting, she said it was a sight to see.

"It was so exciting for me," she said.

Redford also filmed in Fort Worth for two days.

Kelsey Bradshaw is a digital reporter for mySA.com. Read more of her stories here.| kbradshaw@express-news.net | Twitter: @kbrad5
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A San Antonio TV news legend is returning to KENS-TV.

Just what former anchor Chris Marrou, who turns 70 next month, will be doing on the local CBS affiliate is anyones guess  that is, until he spills the beans on television Friday night.

Marrous revelation will be part of an in-studio interview conducted by his longtime colleague and friend Deborah Knapp.

The Q&A, which also will include fun TV recollections as well as news of a documentary hes working on, will air during the stations 10 p.m. news  a nice coup sure to draw curious viewers the second day of November sweeps.

RELATED: KSAT-TV names new anchors

Now Playing: This San Antonio TV news legend is returning to KENS-TV. Video: San Antonio Express-News

The Texas native, as many here know, retired from television news in 2009 after a highly successful San Antonio career that spanned more than 35 years.

Earlier this year, Marrou, who was born in Nixon but grew up in San Antonio and graduated from Lee High School before attending Princeton University, did return to anchoring again  online.

He started lending his face, voice and journalism skills to a nonprofit digital-journalism outlet called The Texas Monitor.

However, his news comeback will soon spread to local broadcast television, according to an email from KENS director of marketing Don Smith Jr. On Monday, Smith hinted that the former anchors big announcement will make many Marrou/KENS fans very happy!

RELATED: ABC plans sitcom based on San Antonio native's life

Mysterious local billboards featuring Marrou, as well as a video teaser, also seem to be priming viewers for a local comeback.

Though tight-lipped to an extent, Knapp did reveal late Monday that Marrou wouldnt be returning as a KENS anchor.

(KENS chief anchorman) Jeff Brady doesnt have to worry, she wrote in a text. Chris will be returning in a new role.

Dont get your hopes up that his extremely popular Eyewitness Newsreel  a Marrou creation  will be making a comeback, either. In that 10 p.m. news capper, which retired in 2009 along with Marrou, the anchor narrated a faux newsreel of humorous news segments juxtaposed with out-of-context soundbites by local and national notables.

RELATED: San Antonio anchor leaving KSAT for coffee

What is clear, however, is why KENS would consider bringing back its former news superstar in some capacity.

In recent years, the station has never managed to recapture the kind of ratings glory it enjoyed when Marrou was at the helm  particularly during his pinnacle in the 1980s.

KENS seems to be stuck at No. 2  at 6 and 10 p.m. anyway  behind S.A. leader KSAT-TV, which has held the top ranking for local news for close to a decade.

jjakle@express-news.net
Kid Rock has announced his Greatest Show on Earth Tour for next year, which will stop at the Toyota Center on Feb. 3.

Rock will be touring behind his latest album "Sweet Southern Sugar," the first record he's made in Nashville after slowly shifting from a combative young Detroit rapper to a middle-aged rebel(ish) rocker.
Ferrari

Sebastian Vettel

"My start was good today. I think also in Japan the start had been that good, but we just didn't have power, so it's good we had it done here. It was good to get the rhythm, but after a couple of laps I was really struggling with the tyres that were getting too hot. I am a bit disappointed, because we couldn't win and I had wanted to. We are on the right track, but all the things that happened to us came out not because of bad luck or because of somebody else; I think it was all on our side and we need to admit that. Then there were races in which we were stronger and we just didn't race, which is even worse. There are positive aspects, but this was not the result we were looking for and thus, of course, it was not the best day."

Kimi Raikkonen

"My car worked very well through the whole race. I was very pleased, it was so good and nice to drive. I felt we had a lot of speed and the tyres lasted very well until the end. I'm sure that if we had started from the qualifying position we deserved, our pace would have been enough to get us a much better result. We kept gaining ground whenever I could push, which was a very good feeling. In the last part of the race I could have gone a lot faster, but I also had to manage fuel, so I slowed down my pace and this was a limiting factor. The final result could have been better, but we have two cars on the podium, so we cannot be too disappointed. For the next race we'll try to be even stronger. Regarding the incident involving Verstappen, I can't comment, because I haven't seen what happened from where I was."

Maurizio Arrivabene, Team Principal

"Today's race was closely fought from the start to the final lap. Sebastian made a great start to go into the lead and Kimi kept the race alive, with both men pulling off several passing moves. The team, both here at the track and back in Maranello, did a good job in coming back from the difficulties encountered in free practice on Friday. The most important thing is that we never gave up and getting both cars to the podium, even if it was not the ideal result, was achieved by fighting right to the end. We did that thanks to a car that, yet again proved to be competitive. Just as we did today, we will continue to fight to the very last corner of the final race."
Border Patrol agents in Laredo arrested an illegal immigrant over the weekend who admitted to being a member of the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, gang.

Federal authorities identified him as Bernardino Palacios, 34, a citizen of Mexico.
1 GOP probe: House Republicans are opening investigations of the Obama administrations 2010 decision to approve the sale of American uranium mines to a Russian-backed company, lawmakers said Tuesday. Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said at a news conference that his panel and the House Oversight Committee would jointly probe the deal, which President Trump has called the real Russia story. Nunes and other Trump supporters have raised the 7-year-old uranium deal while four congressional committees and Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III are looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether Moscow had any direct links to the Trump campaign. Trump and his supporters frequently cite the 2010 purchase of Uranium One by Rosatom, a Russian-run company, as a counter to questions about Russian support for Trumps presidential bid.

2 Police shooting lawsuit: Court records show the estate of a man who was fatally shot in 2014 by an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper has settled a lawsuit out of federal court for $175,000. The Tulsa World reports Joshua Stand was shot by trooper Jerrod Martin after authorities received a call about a man walking in street with a weapon. The civil rights lawsuit filed in 2016 alleged that Martin used objectively unreasonable and excessive deadly force. It also alleged Stand had a closed pocketknife and posed no immediate threat of serious harm to anyone.
Victor Esquivel clutched a photo of his niece and nephew to take with him into a meeting with U.S. Rep. John Culberson, on Tuesday, Oct. 17, to request his support for a clean Dream Act.

United We Dream organizers and faith leaders from District 7 gathered to speak with Rep. Culberson at his office as part of a nationwide effort to address members of Congress in their hometowns about a clean Dream Act.

The initiative comes on the heels of President Trump's decision to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) earlier this year, which is a program that provided authorization for work and safety from deportation for those who arrived in the U.S. at a young age.

Rachel Hassell, a District 7 constituent and United We Dream member, expressed her deep frustrations with the restrictions the group was met with upon arriving at Culberson's office.

"They only allowed nine people to go up and we just got kicked out of the lobby," Hassell said.

Esquivel, a DACA recipient, was among one of the nine people who was permitted to sit before Culberson and share his story.

Esquivel has called Texas home for the last 20 years and has no recollection of his home country of Mexico. He came to the U.S. when he was 4 years old.

"My main fight is to stay close to my nephew and niece," Esquivel said. "I love them like they are my own kids, I don't see myself not being in their life."

The first time Esquivel learned that he was undocumented was when he tried to go on a school trip to Spain when he was younger only to be told by his mom, "If you go, you won't be able to come back."

"She had to go through the process of telling me what my status was," Esquivel said.

Since the announcement to overturn DACA was made early September, Esquivel said he has been living in fear and began suffering from panic attacks.

"I literally didn't want to drive home because I was scared of getting into a car accident and endanger anyone else," Esquivel said.

However, Esquivel wasn't the only DACA recipient to show up to Culberson's office hanging on to a sliver of hope that something would move in their favor.

Michelle Avendano, a University of Houston alumna, studied psychology and hopes to work as a graduate researcher learning about memory and thinking while chasing grants to fund her research endeavors.

Avendano said living in uncertainty has brought on a world of struggle as she works to maintain her productivity while at the University of Texas Medical Center as an assistant researcher and trying to ease the fear that's erupted in her home with her undocumented parents.

"You're in a golden cage, because the United States is a wonderful place but you feel a little caged in," Avendano said.

Avendano said that if she were to lose DACA and nothing else was to come in its place to protect her and her family, she would need to apply to graduate school out of the country or move back to her native country of Mexico.

Avandano came to the U.S. when she was 8 years old. She was among the group that was asked to leave the lobby area and wait outside while the others met with Culberson.

Jonathan Page, senior minister at First Congregation Church and also president of Faith Leader's Coalition, which is a group of predominantly progressive faith leaders, was in the meeting room with Culberson.

"This is a moral issue and our faith calls on us to care for those who are living on the margins, who live in fear," Page said.

Page added that he could not come up with an argument from Christian scriptures against the Dream Act and that he does not believe one exists.

"Culberson is an expert politician he knows what he's doing, he's doing exactly what I would have urged him to do if I were in his position," Page said.

Page explained that Culberson made no commitments in supporting the Dream Act but that he expressed concern, compassion and showed that he was listening, but made no concrete promises toward anything.

"I think that's because of the pressure from his caucus that has very strong anti-immigrant views," Page said. "To be blunt, there are people in his caucus that have very racist views."

Culberson could not be reached for comment.
There will be no presidents, U.S. representatives or senators, no statewide officials elected on Nov. 7.

But for voters in west Harris County and across Fort Bend County, this election may have more impact than any of those state or national races. The main thing about this election is bond money.

Early voting for this election began on Monday.

For area voters, there will be more than $2.23 billion in bond issues on the ballots. Unfortunately, this election does not have the big draw of a national election so all these bond issues will most likely be decided by about 10 percent - or less - of registered voters.

For information on voter registration and locations in Harris County, go to www.harrisvotes.com; in Fort Bend County, go to www.fortbendcountytx.gov.

While there are elections scheduled for the city of Bellaire, Missouri City and Weston Lakes, this election is about the bond issues.

Spring Branch ISD

The biggest of the bond issues in these areas is over in Spring Branch Independent School District, where those eligible to vote are being asked to pass an $898.4 million bond issue.

This is the first school bond in Spring Branch ISD since 2007. The problem with not having a bond issue for 10 years means this will be a big one. In fact, it is the sixth-largest in state history, according to the Texas Bond Review Board.

Much of this bond issue is earmarked to pay for upgrades to existing schools, many of which are more than 50 years old.

Katy ISD

With a $609.2 million bond, the district is looking to keep up with growth.

About $450 million is slated for construction of six new campuses. The buildings will help address the needs of one of the state's fastest-growing districts, with enrollment increasing about 3 percent to 4 percent annually. The district's "moderate growth scenario" shows enrollment rising from about 78,000 this year to 98,000 by 2026.

Among the items in the bond are plans for a new high school near the southwest edge of the district to alleviate overcrowding at Seven Lakes, with 3,400 students, and Tompkins, with 2,950 students. Those two schools are beyond their optimal operating capacities of 2,700.

Lamar CISD

A bond worth $445.4 million will help the fast-growing district address its growing needs.

Voters approved a $240 million bond in 2014. This time around, voters are being asked to greenlight money for six campuses - three elementary, one junior high, one high, one alternative learning center - and about $63 million in interior and technology upgrades.

Lamar Consolidated Independent School District predicts an enrollment from about 32,000 this year to nearly 50,000 in 2026.

Stafford MSD

The 3,600-student district is asking for $62 million to fund a new middle school, new administration building and renovations to five campuses if its largest-ever bond passes.

Fort Bend County

The Fort Bend County proposal asks voters whether they support the issuance of nearly $219 million in bonds to go toward 63 mobility projects countywide.

The bond will help the county keep pace with the influx of new residents. Projects to be funded include a slew of roadwork, from road design to intersection improvements to sidewalk construction. The bulk of the bond is targeted at building roads.
SAN FRANCISCO - Amid federal investigations into Russian meddling in the U.S. election, Twitter is making all of its ads public, along with who published them and how much was spent, the company said Tuesday.

The move, which follows a similar decision by Facebook, is aimed at adding greater transparency to the largely opaque world of online political advertising. It also may offer some cover for Silicon Valley companies that have come under scrutiny over the role they unwittingly played in allowing a massive Russian disinformation campaign to spread on their platforms.

The social media companies are facing the possibility of new regulation over political advertising, including the introduction of a bill last week that would require social media companies to keep public records on election ads and follow the same disclosure rules that are in place for television, radio, and print advertising. Companies would have to make "reasonable efforts" to ensure that election ads are not purchased directly or indirectly by a foreign entity, something already prohibited by law.

"I'm glad Twitter is taking steps to cast light on how exactly advertisers are trying to use their platform to influence elections," said Congressman Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., who introduced the bill last week, in an emailed statement. "This proves that increased transparency on online platforms is possible. We need clear rules of the road for all online advertisements which is why I'll keep pushing to enact our bipartisan bill and protect our democracy."

In a tweet on Tuesday, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., called Twitter's decision "a good first step."

But Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., a cosponsor of the legislation introduced last week, called the Honest Ads Act, said Twitter's "announcement is no substitute for updating our laws."

"If Twitter is an advocate for this type of transparency and accountability, I look forward to its support of my bipartisan legislation," said Klobuchar.

Some analysts noted that Twitter's move may be less significant than Facebook's because Twitter's advertising business is much smaller and because Twitter's ads were largely public to begin with.

Some advocates and critics of Twitter's role in the election say that Russian-backed Twitter accounts -- rather than individual ads -- were a much bigger problem. Such accounts -- which generated or spread content that was aimed at influencing the election and dividing American society -- were unwittingly shared or retweeted by celebrities and political figures with millions of followers, such as pop star Nicki Minaj and Trump advisor Michael Flynn.

Those analysts said that the reach of tweets from Russian-back accounts would have been far greater than the reach of ads. Twitter has declined to share data on the reach of those tweets.

Facebook has also limited its disclosures and transparency efforts to advertising, and has declined to share the reach of content that was posted by Russian operatives who tried to disguise themselves online as legitimate Facebook users and groups supporting the causes of Texas secessionists or Black Lives Matter.

Twitter's revenues last quarter were $574 million, compared to more than $9 billion for Facebook. Facebook has 210 million U.S. Users logging in monthly, while Twitter has fewer than 70 million. But Twitter's reach is amplified by the many public figures and news organizations that use the service.

Twitter said Tuesday that it would create an "advertising transparency center" that would display all ads that followed the Federal Election Commission's definition of an "electioneering ad," which refer specifically to a candidate or to a party associated with a candidate. Twitter said it would not disclose so-called issue-based ads, which do not mention a candidate, because there was no industry standard for what constituted an issue ad.

The company plans to publish the names of groups that bought the ads and the amounts spent on them. The disclosure policy will apply both to ads put out by an advertisers' Twitter account, and also so-called "dark ads" - or ads that Twitter's software directs at specific groups of users but are not shared on an advertisers' main account.

Twitter will also share limited targeting criteria used by advertisers, including the age, gender, and location of the users that the ads were directed at. The company does not plan to share the political leanings of Twitter users who were targeted.
Three boys playing around a treehouse got into some sort of disagreement Saturday in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, apparently leading one of them to fire a crossbow toward the other two.

The arrow, fired by a 13-year-old, entered the left side of 10-year-old Austin Almanza in the area of his lower torso, Lincoln County Sheriff Charlie Dougherty said at a news conference Monday. It exited on the other side.

The arrow kept traveling and stuck in the arm of Austin's brother, Ayden, 8, who was standing just to the side Austin.

Austin was pronounced dead on the scene, Dougherty said. Ayden was treated at a hospital and released.

J Pat Carter/Getty Images

Oklahoma News4 reported some of the text of the 911 call.

"Dispatch: 911. 'Can I help you?'

"Caller: 'One of the neighbors . . . I guess an arrow went through one of the kids and stuck in the other one.'"

And later:

"Dispatch: 'I need everybody there to calm down. I need you guys to try and get the people that are injured to sit down and be still.'

"Caller: 'I've got him calmed down. The other one is over in the bushes.'

"Dispatch: 'We have everybody headed your way.'

"Caller: 'Okay. Please hurry.'"

The name of the 13-year-old was not released because he is a juvenile. No charges have been filed so far, though the boy is in custody. No information was available about the type or brand of the crossbow, which come in many forms with different degrees of power and range.

While the projectile fired was described as an arrow, some types of crossbows fire bolts.

Dougherty said the crossbow shooting was not an accident.

"Ten-year-old Austin's not dead because of an accident," he said. "He's dead because of an action that took place. . . . We are investigating it as a homicide."

Dougherty said the boys were friends who often played together in the treehouse near a vacant lot in the neighborhood.

While he said he was unaware of any particular bad blood between the boys, Dougherty said investigators believe that some sort of "disagreement" led up to the incident. Right now, he said, deputies are getting "conflicting" stories from the boys and are still piecing together how the tragedy unfolded.

The two victims attend White Rock Elementary School in the town of McLoud. The superintendent, Bob Gragg, told NewsOK that they were "very well-mannered, very polite young men."

"We're certainly heartbroken and saddened on behalf of the school community and certainly the family," he told the station. "We're just a small school, a small community and it hits hard just like it would in any family."

---

https://youtu.be/aRvnzOmWbec
WASHINGTON - After nine months of the Trump administration, many of America's closest allies have concluded that a hoped-for "learning curve" they thought would make President Donald Trump a reliable partner is not going to happen.

"The idea that he would inform himself, and things would change, that is no longer operative," said a top diplomat here.

Instead, they see an administration in which lines of authority and decision-making are unclear, where tweets become policy and hard-won international accords on trade and climate are discarded. The result has been a special kind of challenge for those whose jobs are to advocate for their countries and explain the president and his unconventional ways at home.

Senior diplomats and officials from nearly a dozen countries in Europe, Latin America and Asia expressed a remarkable coincidence of views in interviews over the past several weeks. Asked to describe their thoughts about and relations with the president and his team as the end of Trump's first year approaches, many described a whirlwind journey beginning with tentative optimism, followed by alarm and finally reaching acceptance that the situation is unlikely to improve.

"We have to adjust to this," said a second diplomat from a different continent.

Their concerns echo those expressed increasingly in public by Republican lawmakers such as Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, Tenn., who has spoken of administration "chaos" and described the White House under Trump as an "adult day care center" where the president's behavior must be managed.

Frustrations and fears, building for months, have grown especially intense in the past few weeks following Trump's bellicose taunting of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his apparent decision to decertify Iranian compliance with the international nuclear deal.

Although foreign diplomats are restrained by the nature of their jobs from speaking out about the policies and politics of their host governments, it is not unusual for them to trade tips and gossip in the early days of a new administration when information is in short supply and it is unclear which top officials have the most sway with the leader of the free world.

But their perplexing dealings with the Trump administration have become an obsession of late for ambassadors.

"It's always an undercurrent when we get together," a third senior diplomat said. "We're always asking each other, 'Who do you deal with inside the administration?' 'How do you handle difficult situations?' "

"When somebody actually sees Trump, people immediately flock around: 'What did you see?' 'What did he say?' 'Was Ivanka there?' . . . 'What kind of look was on Kelly's face?' " he said, referring to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. It is, he said, a kind of Kremlinology.

Some diplomats choose to focus on the positive. Estonian Ambassador Lauri Lepik, whose country's fears of a resurgent Russia on its eastern border are practically existential, praised Vice President Mike Pence's summer stop in his country. It helped reassure NATO allies after Trump, on an earlier trip to Brussels, failed to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to alliance mutual defense.

"That was a highly appreciated visit," Lepik said. "The administration was engaged, and we were in constant contact."

Others, some of whom had difficulty with the Obama administration, have found a new closeness with the United States. Saudi Arabia, after enduring President Barack Obama's human rights criticism and policy objections, is now a favored Trump nation.

Newly arrived Hungarian Ambassador Laszlo Szabo, whose government hews to the nationalistic right, said bilateral trade "is improving nicely and constantly." His prime minister, Viktor Orban, was the first European leader during last year's U.S. campaign to say a Trump presidency would be better for Europe - a view widely derided by his European partners.

Afghanistan's Ambassador Hamdullah Mohib, whose government was alarmed by the Obama administration's unfulfilled plans to withdraw the vast majority of U.S. troops from the country, said he and his government had regular high-level access to senior Trump administration officials this summer as the debate over the war heated up. "I was at the White House on a daily basis," he said.

The access did not always bring clarity, especially when it came to figuring out how competing fiefdoms operated inside the West Wing. In August, Afghanistan paid $120,000 for a three-month contract with the Sonoran Policy Group, a lobbying firm with close ties to the White House, to gain "a better understanding of how the inside of the Trump administration works," Mohib said.

The majority of those interviewed were far more critical and said they would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity.

Several spoke of the difficulty of determining where power lies within the administration and how decisions are made. "We are still not sure how the equilibrium in this administration is playing out in terms of who is responsible for what," a senior European said. "Is it the White House? The State Department? Is Defense calling the shots? . . . I'm being clinically analytical, not chiding. This is the situation. We are guessing, sometimes."

Things have gotten "a bit better" since Kelly's arrival over the summer, a Latin American said. "At least with process, if not policy. It's clear [Kelly] has influence. But Jared? McMaster? We don't know if they're in or out," he said, referring to Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump's national security adviser.

Some try to posture in a way they think will appeal to Trump and those around him. South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a progressive pragmatist who visited Trump in the White House in June, "tried to sync with him, but it didn't work," said Joon Hyung Kim, a professor of international studies at Handong University.

"Moon is really a detail person, and he tried to explain things in detail" regarding defense and economic issues," Kim said. "I don't think Trump really liked that."

"We want to trust Mattis and others," he said, referring to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, generally considered a moderate buffer for Trump, "but we're not really sure if they're 100 percent bulletproof."

Many of those interviewed said they are often told by administration officials to ignore Trump's tweets or undiplomatic remarks. They recognize it is a risky game.

"In the business sector, you can be very forceful in negotiations," said a diplomat whose government has been on the receiving end of Trump's tweets. "You call each other names all day, then you sit down and have a martini. In foreign policy, there are consequences to the name-calling. Damage is done."

Some foreign diplomats have tried to work around the White House by forging closer relationships with the battered and shrinking Democratic and Republican foreign policy establishment in Congress. Another strategy, particularly on issues related to climate change and trade, has been to work directly with governors, avoiding Washington entirely, several foreign diplomats said.

Others said their leaders, in meetings with Trump, have had to decide whether to take on what one called the president's "one-sentence, very blunt affirmations." Asked to give an example, this official recalled a discussion of the Iran nuclear deal in which Trump asserted, as he has before, that "Iran is allowed to build a bomb" as soon as the agreement expires.

European signatories to the Iran nuclear deal have given up on trying to change his mind, or on arguing that the accord's sunset provision does not give Tehran a pass to restart its nuclear program. Instead, they have directed their attention to persuading Congress not to legislate new sanctions on Iran.

A diplomat whose country has close and cordial relations and no obvious problems with the administration said his government is nonetheless exploring more extensive trade and diplomatic ties with Asia.

"At the beginning," he said, Trump was "a fascination." As the months have passed, he said, "all this perplexing noise from Washington, it becomes background noise. And the United States is a bit less important than before."
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A 31-year-old Galveston man has died from flesh-eating bacteria he likely contracted in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, the second such fatality from the catastrophic event.

Josue Zurita succumbed to necrotizing fascitis, an infection that spreads quickly through soft tissue, at John Sealy Hospital in Galveston on Oct. 16, his family said. Galveston County health officials Monday confirmed the death without mentioning Zurita's name.

"He had incredibly bad luck, contracting a very rare infection through a deep cut," said Dr. Philip Keiser, local health authority for Galveston County. "That doesn't make it any less heartbreaking for his family and friends."

Keiser said he attributes the death to Harvey, though he emphasized it is impossible to know if the infection was contracted in floodwaters. A carpenter, Zurita suffered a skin puncture from a nail while repairing homes damaged by Harvey flooding.

Keiser said the necrotizing fascitis was caused by the bacteria Klebsiella, one of a number of bacteria - vibrio vulnificus, E. coli, streptococcus and certain types of drug-resistant staphylococcus are others - that kill nerves and blood vessels while spreading throughout the body. It is found most everywhere, from water and mud to hospitals, but is not as common a cause of the disease as strep. Vibrio is the most common cause in salt water.

Keiser said he is hopeful the death will be the last Harvey-related case of flesh-eating bacteria, which public health officials had feared could be a significant threat from the flooding. There were more than 20 cases reported in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Earlier this month, the Harris County medical examiners office ruled that Nancy Reed, a 77-year-old Kingwood woman died from the infection after falling in floodwaters and cutting her arm. She died at Memorial Hermann Hospital in the Texas Medical Center on Sept. 15.

A third case involved a former firefighter and medic, J.R. Atkins, who reportedly suffered an insect bite and contracted the disease while helping flooded Missouri City neighbors. He survived.

Zurita was diagnosed with necrotizing fascitis soon after his admittance to the hospital Oct. 10, said Keiser, who also is a doctor of infectious disease at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He said the infection spread particularly quick because the cut was deep.

A funeral was held for Zurita on Sunday. He is being buried in his hometown of Oaxaca, Mexico.
Iowa is abandoning its quest to shed major elements of the Affordable Care Act, after federal health officials failed to approve the plan in time for the insurance-buying season that begins in just over a week.

The state's withdrawal comes two months after President Donald Trump telephoned a top federal health official with instructions to reject Iowa's proposal.

In announcing the withdrawal of what the state has called a crucial "stopgap" plan to prevent its marketplace from collapsing, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, R, on Monday did not mention the president's intervention, instead thanking Trump for trying to repeal the ACA and blaming the law itself for what she called its inflexibility.

The decision adds to turmoil surrounding the sign-up for 2018 coverage in the state that had gone further than any other in trying to jettison ACA rules and create an alternative for residents to buy insurance on their own. Iowa officials already had readied state computers for the switch, and the one company left in the insurance marketplace has been planning to raise its premiums by a whopping average of 57 percent.

The demise of Iowa's proposal comes as the president and his health-care aides have undertaken recent moves to damage the marketplaces created under the 2010 law for Americans who cannot get affordable health benefits through a job. The administration has slashed funds for advertising and enrollment help for the sign-up period that starts Nov. 1. It will be impossible for consumers who already have ACA health plans to switch if they do not shop around during a shortened enrollment period. Longer term, the president wants to make it easier for individuals and small businesses to buy health plans that skirt ACA protections and has ended the law's reimbursements to insurers for subsidiesto lower-income customers.

For several months, Iowa's insurance commissioner, Doug Ommen, has been saying that he and his staff were working closely with federal health officials, who he said had told him by late August that the proposal met federal requirements.

At a news conference Monday with the governor, Ommen reiterated his prediction that, without the state's alternative method in place, up to 22,000 Iowa's will lose coverage for the coming year because only one insurance company has agreed to sell ACA coverage, and its prices are high. "The healthiest are the first to go," Ommen said.

Monday's announcement in Des Moines ended a bold attempt that Iowa began in June to use a facet of the health care law that, starting this year, allows states to request federal permission for what are known as "1332 waivers" to achieve the law's insurance goals through different means.

While a few states, including Alaska and Minnesota, have received such permission to try to buffer insurers from high-cost customers, Iowa is not the only state that has withdrawn a proposal. Last month, Oklahoma withdrew a proposal, which was not as far-reaching as Iowa's. The state's health secretary accused the administration of failing to make a decision "after months of development, negotiation, and near-daily communication over the past six weeks."

In contrast, Iowa's officials assumed a more amicable tone, and the state and federal health officials dispatched a joint statement. Reynolds said that Trump had encouraged Seema Verma, administrator of the Health and Human Service Department's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to work with Iowa officials. Verma was the member of the administration with whom the president spoke in August after reading a Wall Street Journal article about the state's plan, said an individual briefed on the exchange who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose a private conversation.

Under the Iowa Stopgap Measure, the state wanted to stop relying on the ACA's federal insurance exchange and, unlike anywhere else in the country, provide residents federal help in paying for coverage outside the marketplace. The plan would have eliminated the law's subsidies for insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs, instead creating a different type of tax credit. It also would have replaced tiers of coverage with a single level of insurance for customers buying health plans on their own. And it would have created financial buffers for insurers to help them cover customers with particularly high medical expenses.

On the August day that the state filed a final version of its plan, Ommen said that, based on conversations with CMS officials, "I am very optimistic that we will have a high level of cooperation . . . [with] the federal authorities."

At Monday's news conference, Ommen said, "It now appears that Obamacare's waiver rules are as inflexible as the law itself."

He said that, last week, a Treasury official informed the state that "they were several weeks away" from calculating how much federal money Iowa could receive under its plan. That statement was inconsistent with a letter dated Thursday from CMS's deputy administrator saying that the state's waiver request did not meet a federal requirement that any 1332 waiver may not add to the federal deficit.

Reynolds on Monday implored Congress to change the law. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, immediately issued a statement saying that Iowa's decision "is further evidence that the Affordable Care Act is too restrictive to allow states to help people who need to buy insurance." Alexander is a main sponsor of a bipartisan bill that would restore cost-sharing reduction payments in exchange for giving states more freedom to pursue alternatives to the ACA marketplaces.

For now, one insurer, Medica, will be selling individual health plans statewide in Iowa. A company spokesman, Larry Bussey, said in an email that "this is not the preferred outcome for the state of Iowa" and urged Iowans to try to qualify for ACA subsidies.
DTEK will soon supply the first 150,000 tonnes of G grade (gas) coal from the United States to replenish the stocks in the warehouses of its thermal power plants (TPP) while preparing for the heating season, the company's press service has said.

According to its data, the first bulk carrier with 75,000 tonnes of coal from the United States for Ladyzhyn and Zaporizhia TPPs is expected to arrive in Ukraine this week. This supply will allow reducing gas coal deficit in Ukraine, which arose as a result of increased electricity supply to the TPPs operating on gas coal due to the blockade and the loss of anthracite mines in the territory temporarily uncontrolled by Ukrainian authorities.

The growth in demand for gas coal in Ukraine is also caused by the transfer of anthracite blocks at Ukrainian TPPs to work on gas. From September Zmiyevska TPP started using gas coal, while from November two blocks at Prydniprovska TPP will operate on gas coal as well.

DTEK notes the current level of gas coal production in the country cannot cover the increased needs of TPPs in fuel, even despite the growth in production at DTEK's mines by 10.5% over the nine months, to about 16.9 million tonnes.

In September DTEK TPPs produced almost 90% of electricity from Ukrainian gas, while in September last year the share of electricity production at the company's TPPs from gas was 68%.
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's prime minister pledged his country's cooperation in fighting Islamist militants during talks here Tuesday with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who has insisted Pakistan do more to curb support for terrorist groups or face U.S. reprisals.

"The U.S. can rest assured that we are strategic partners in the war against terror and that today, Pakistan is fighting the largest war in the world against terror," Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told Tillerson just before their closed-door talks began. Pakistan's army and intelligence chiefs also attended the meeting.

Moments earlier, Tillerson alluded to U.S. concerns that Pakistan is providing safe haven to terrorist groups - a charge Pakistan has repeatedly denied. At the same time, he described Pakistan as having an "important role" in the Trump administration's strategy and referenced "our joint goals of providing peace and security to the region and providing opportunity for greater economic relationship."

On Monday, during a brief and unannounced visit to Afghanistan, Tillerson struck a much harsher tone, saying he intended to make clear in his talks Tuesday that Pakistan's relationship with the United States will suffer - including possible aid cuts - if it does not take specific actions to curb support for militant groups, including the Haqqani network, a Taliban affiliate.

Tillerson's arrival in Pakistan was low-key and heavily secured; he landed at a military air base in nearby Rawalpindi city at midafternoon with little official protocol or fanfare, and his only visits were to the U.S. Embassy and the prime minister's office in Islamabad. Traffic was blocked across the capital during the official convoy's movements.

Pakistan's Senate chairman, Raza Rabbani, said Tuesday that Tillerson's threatening message the day before "seems like that of a viceroy's before they visit a country."

Abbasi, though, appeared eager to assure Tillerson he had heard the message, telling him when they met Tuesday that Pakistan's government is committed to the war against terrorism. "We have produced results," he said. "And we are looking forward to moving ahead with the U.S. and building a tremendous relationship."

Despite the largely cordial tone of their opening remarks, followed by several hours of private talks in the prime minister's office before Tillerson flew to India for a longer stay, the enormous gap between American and Pakistani concerns and priorities has been evident in comments made by numerous Pakistani officials and opinion makers in the past week.

The Trump administration has focused strictly on the demand for more Pakistani cooperation in curbing terrorism and in ending the 16-year conflict in next-door Afghanistan. Many Afghans view Pakistan - which once backed the Taliban regime in Kabul - as a source of violent Islamist militancy and a permanent threat to their country's stability.

Pakistanis, on the other hand, are far more worried about the threat from India, its larger rival and neighbor to the west, which is led by a Hindu nationalist government. The two countries have fought four limited wars. Both claim the Himalayan border region of Kashmir, and Pakistan has repeatedly accused Indian troops of abusing protesters in the Indian-controlled portion.

Pakistani officials said they intended to raise the issue of India forcefully Tuesday, especially President Donald Trump's overture to New Delhi to become more deeply involved in developing Afghanistan. That gesture has been viewed here as a direct U.S. rebuke to Pakistan and an invitation to India to jointly dominate the conflicted region.

"Our job will be to show Tillerson that he is mistaken in thinking that the U.S. can ever defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan by relying only on India," the editors of the News International newspaper wrote Tuesday. "Pakistan is still needed to negotiate a political end to the war," they wrote, but adding that Washington is "looking for scapegoats" to blame for its failures in Afghanistan.

Pakistani Defense Minister Khurram Dastgir, who participated in the talks with Tillerson, told a TV news show Tuesday night that "we told him the threat of India is very real" and that Pakistan wants "mutual respect and cooperation," not economic aid, from Washington.

Dastgir said a single meeting was held with Tillerson, including senior civilian and military officials, "to give a united message" to Washington. Pakistan's military establishment cooperates with U.S. intelligence agencies on terrorism issues but has bristled at suggestions from civilian leaders that it would allow U.S. troops to operate in Pakistan.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is due to visit Pakistan soon and is expected to reinforce Tillerson's demands; he has told Congress several times that Pakistan is still sheltering the Haqqani network despite its denials. There has been no specific description of likely sanctions on Pakistan if administration officials decide they are not satisfied.

Ever since Trump accused Pakistan in August of harboring "agents of chaos," officials here have made numerous efforts to restore American goodwill. Last week, Pakistan's military unexpectedly announced that its troops had rescued an American woman, her Canadian husband and their three children after five years in Taliban captivity, based on a U.S. intelligence tip. Trump hailed the release as a "positive moment" in the strained relationship.

But observers in both countries doubt such efforts will do much to resolve the larger tension between the former Cold War allies, which now fear different enemies and seek contradictory solutions to regional conflict. Any smaller signs of cooperation, wrote columnist Huma Yusuf in the Dawn newspaper this week, are only "the piecemeal politics of placation."

"Washington has now effectively read Pakistan the riot act," said Michael Kugelman, a Pakistan expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. If the Trump administration decides to take drastic measures, the relationship could "plunge into deep crisis," he said. For the moment there is a "modest thaw," as indicated by Tillerson's visit, Kugelman said, but he added that U.S.-Pakistan relations will soon be "put to the test in a big way."

- - -

Morello reported from Qatar. Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Vassar College, founded at the outset of the Civil War to educate women, remade itself in 1969 when it admitted men for the first time. Then, the liberal arts school in Poughkeepsie, New York, reinvented itself again in 2007.

That's when the college adopted "need-blind" admissions, offering seats to qualified applicants without considering whether, or how much, they could pay. The policy required the college to make a substantial investment in financial aid, and it produced a revolution in the school's demographics.

In 2007, 12 percent of freshmen entering Vassar had enough need to qualify for federal Pell Grants. Within two years, the share had climbed to 20 percent, and federal data showed it has stayed above that threshold ever since. In 2015, the Pell share for Vassar was 23 percent.

Vassar is one of 39 nationally ranked schools with Pell shares of at least 20 percent in their freshmen classes in 2015, out of about 150 The Washington Post examined. Eighteen of those schools are, like Vassar, private.

Catharine Hill, president of Vassar from 2006 to 2016, said the school's record shows it is possible to broaden the demographic base of a selective college - drawing more students from low- and moderate-income families - without compromising standards. "In most cases, if you wanted to do more, you could do more," Hill said. "All we had to do was go looking for kids. Our academic credentials actually went up."

The Post's analysis includes schools that U.S. News & World Report ranked this year among its top 100 national universities or top 50 liberal arts colleges (excluding federal service academies at West Point, Annapolis and Colorado Springs because they do not charge tuition).

The lowest Pell share on the list belonged to Washington and Lee University - 6 percent. Will Dudley, who this year became president of the private Virginia liberal arts school, said the share rose to 11 percent this fall and he wants to lift it further. Dudley said he raised the issue of socioeconomic diversity at Washington and Lee when he was interviewing for the job. Previously, he was provost at Williams College, which had a far higher Pell share in 2015 - 22 percent. "If they didn't want to make progress, they wouldn't have hired me," Dudley said.

Six other schools posted single digits for Pell share in 2015: Colby College (7 percent), Scripps College (8 percent) and the College of William & Mary, Tulane and Southern Methodist universities and Oberlin College (all with 9 percent).

Colby College said its Pell share has since doubled, to 14 percent. "We want to ensure that the most talented students from every background have access to this extraordinary education," said Matt Proto, vice president for admissions and financial aid at the Maine college.

Binti Harvey, a Scripps spokeswoman, said the California college had a 10 percent Pell share this fall and considers economic diversity a top priority for recruiting. "At Scripps, we admit fewer Pell students because we meet the full need of a student rather than leaving a substantial portion for the student and their families to cover with loans - a common practice at many institutions," Harvey said.

William & Mary said its Pell share this fall is 12 percent and that the college is "absolutely committed" to improving socioeconomic diversity. "We have made some progress in recent years, but this is an area in which we understand must do better," said college spokesman Brian Whitson. He said the public college in Virginia aims to raise money to boost financial aid, giving it a better shot in competition for out-of-state students from low-income families.

Within the Ivy League, Pell freshman shares in 2015 broke down like this, from largest to smallest:

--Columbia, Princeton and Yale universities: 17 percent

--Harvard University: 16 percent

--Dartmouth College and Cornell University: 15 percent.

--University of Pennsylvania: 14 percent

--Brown University: 13 percent

Princeton's rate rose to 22 percent this fall, a jump reported this week in a Washington Post article. Harvard said its rate is now 17 percent.

"We feel pretty good about the increase in socioeconomic diversity," said Sally Donahue, director of financial aid for Harvard and a senior admissions officer. "Could we do better? Sure. We try every year to cast a wider, deeper net." Harvard takes steps to analyze the socioeconomic background of its applicants before making decisions, Donahue said, part of what is known as a "holistic" review. "An inability to pay is not at all an impediment," Donahue said.

Yale officials pointed out that the Pell statistics don't include a large bloc of students from outside the United States with significant need. "Yale is one of only a handful of American universities able to offer a need-blind admissions policy for international students, and, as a result, we are one of the few American universities with an international student population that is truly socioeconomically diverse," said Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid.

Brown spokesman Brian Clark said the university - with a freshman Pell share of 14 percent this fall - wants to raise that rate and is moving to boost financial aid. "In our recruiting efforts, we actively seek students from a wide range of backgrounds, including first-generation and low-income students," he said.

Cornell's Pell share dipped slightly in 2016, to 15 percent of freshmen. "Focusing on the percent is not particularly instructive for an institution the size of Cornell," the school said. "With more than 14,000 undergraduates, Cornell is more than twice as large as most of our peer institutions in the Ivy League." Cornell said it "continues to focus broadly on affordability for low- and middle-income families."

Dartmouth said its Pell share remained at 15 percent this fall, not counting international and undocumented students who also have significant financial need. The college said it is also developing a "low-income predictive index" to help admission officers analyze applications in their quest to build a diverse freshman class.

U-Penn.'s dean of admissions, Eric Furda, said the university, with more than 10,000 undergraduates, also produces every year a high number of graduates who were Pell grant recipients. But he acknowledged that the school wants to have a higher freshman Pell share than its rate of 13 percent in 2016 and 14 percent in 2015, and is exploring how to do that.

"If this is going to be the measure," Furda said, "then just what we've been doing for 10 years is not going to necessarily be enough."

Here are more reactions to the data:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Its Pell share is 20 percent, up 5 points since 2015. "We have been active in increasing the number of low-income students on campus, and have invested a lot of resources in this effort," said Stuart Schmill, dean of admissions and student financial services. MIT stands apart from many other selective schools, he said, in how it treats applicants who are children of alumni. "It also helps us that we do not give any advantage to legacy applicants in our admissions process," he said. That is a key distinction because so-called legacies do not usually come from low-income homes.

California Institute of Technology: Its Pell share fell from 16 percent in 2014 to 11 percent in 2015, then crept up to 13 percent last year. "Since we make financial aid decisions subsequent to and independent of admissions decisions, the fraction of Pell-eligible students varies from year to year and that is what the statistics reflect," Caltech said.

Stanford University: Its Pell share is 15 percent, up 2 points since 2015. "Pell is an important factor in providing access and opportunity," a spokesman said. But he said Stanford also wants to ensure that financial aid is available to a broad range of students in need, from lower- to middle-income families.

University of Notre Dame: Its Pell share now averages 11 percent. "We do want more Pell students," said Don Bishop, associate vice president for undergraduate enrollment. "However, we also want to enhance their overall development and experience and not just the number of students in a headcount." He said the school's "highest priority" in its current fund-raising campaign is to raise $1 billion for scholarships.

Georgetown University: Its Pell share this fall is 13 percent. Charles Deacon, the longtime dean of admissions, said the school wants to raise the figure to 20 percent, but that will probably take several years and a major boost in financial aid and support services to ensure that students graduate.Deacon said top schools often compete with each other to land star students from low-income families. "We're dealing with a pretty talented group," he said. "They're in relatively short supply, and as you can see, they're in high demand."

University of Virginia: Its Pell share has held steady at 12 or 13 percent for the last few years. Greg Roberts, dean of admission, acknowleged U-Va. has room to improve. But he said that as a public flagship, its enrollment to some degree reflects the relative wealth of Virginia compared to other states. "I strongly believe that schools are interested in diversity in many forms," he said.

University of Maryland: Its Pell share was 14 percent in 2015, and more recent data were unavailable. Barbara Gill, U-Md.'s associate vice president for enrollment management, said Maryland is a fairly wealthy state. Historically, the public flagship has not offered the same level of need-based financial aid as some of its competitors. "Our big competitive disadvantage," Gill said. But she said the university is intensifying its fund-raising to address that issue.

Duke University: Its Pell share this fall is 15 percent, up three points in two years. "The simple answer is, of course, it's not enough," said Steve Nowicki, dean of undergraduate education. He said Duke has taken a number of steps to lure students from low-income families, and it wants to do more. But he said the university also wants to ensure it has enough aid for middle- and upper-middle-income families. It's a "disservice," he said, "to only focus on the lowest end of the spectrum."

University of Chicago: Its Pell share this fall is 13 percent, up 1 point from the two previous years. The university said it "is one of a small number" of schools that provide financial aid awards without requiring students to take out loans. "We intend to continue increasing support for students of diverse backgrounds and high ability," it said.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta is certain to win re-election if a vote rerun goes ahead this week after his main rival, Raila Odinga, withdrew from the race, but his victory could prove to be a hollow one.

"It would be a Pyrrhic victory for Kenyatta, especially if opposition strongholds boycott as they have promised," said Nanjala Nyabola, a Nairobi-based independent political analyst. "It may have serious implications for his ability to govern."

The Supreme Court, which annulled the Aug. 8 vote, on Wednesday will hear a petition that seeks the cancellation of the rerun. On Monday, Western envoys proposed a delay, which electoral commission Chairman Wafula Chebukati has indicated he also favors after saying he can't guarantee the election will be credible but is meeting opposition to reforms from other commissioners. Kenyatta, 55, is demanding that the ballot go ahead.

An open-ended opposition rejection of Kenyatta's right to hold office would exacerbate a political standoff that's already unnerved investors, scared off tourists and dragged down the nation's stocks and international bonds. As many as 67 people have died in protests since the last vote results were announced, according to rights groups such as Amnesty International, and the opposition has vowed to stage protests until its demands for electoral reform are met.

World figures from Pope Francis to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres have joined calls for restraint.

There's a risk that Kenya could be plunged into chaos should the Independent Electoral & Boundaries Commission forge ahead with the vote, said Ndung'u Wainaina, executive director at the International Center for Policy and Conflict.

"The IEBC can invoke constitutional provisions and call off the election," Wainaina said by phone from Nairobi. If it does go ahead, "they should be prepared to live with the consequences," he said.

Two months of ethnic violence that followed a disputed 2007 vote showed just how violent Kenyan politics can turn -- more than 1,100 people were killed and about 350,000 were forced to flee their homes. The unrest hammered the economy, with the growth rate plummeting to 1.7 percent in 2008, from 7.1 percent a year earlier. Kenya is the East African hub for companies including General Electric and Toyota.

Investor unease is evident in the financial markets. The Nairobi Securities Exchange All Share Index has fallen the most in Africa since the election outcome was declared void on Sept. 1, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The government's international bonds due in 2024 have also dropped since then, with yields climbing 29 basis points to 6.31 percent.

Odinga, 72, pulled out of the contest after the nation's electoral commission rejected his demands to fire staff who oversaw the previous botched vote that handed victory to Kenyatta.

"A leading candidate who garnered more than six million votes has withdrawn from the race," Chebukati said in a statement last week. "While it is his right, we must think beyond him and think of the six million Kenyans who will feel disenfranchised by this action. Do we just go on as if withdrawal means nothing?"

Odinga described the election as a "sham exercise that is being forced upon the nation" and called on the electoral commission to do the honorable thing and call it off. William Ruto, Kenyatta's deputy, accused the opposition of "running away from a humiliating defeat," while acknowledging that its withdrawal may erode the election's legitimacy.

There's no quick fix to the political standoff, said Robert Besseling, executive director of political risk advisory firm EXX Africa Ltd.

"This is no longer an election which is in the hands of the Kenyan voters," he said in an interview in Cape Town, South Africa. "This is an election which is in the hands of the judiciary and of the key power brokers in Kenya. This is not just a political, electoral process any more. Everything is open to legal or constitutional challenge. Essentially there is a vacuum in place in Kenya at the moment."
WASHINGTON - Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., accused President Donald Trump of "debasing" the country with his "untruths," "name-calling" and "attempted bullying," escalating his criticism of the president and heightening their feud just as Trump arrived on Capitol Hill to meet with GOP senators about tax legislation.

"For young people to be watching, not only here in our country, but around the world, someone of this mentality as president of the United States is something that is I think debasing to our country," said Corker, who spent the morning lambasting Trump in media interviews.

"You would think he would aspire to be the president of the United States and act like a president of the United States. But that's just not going to be the case, apparently," Corker said.

Trump returned fire, insulting "liddle" Corker on Twitter ahead of his visit to the Senate to address Republicans at their weekly policy luncheon. The gathering was billed as a chance for Trump to discuss the GOP's effort to cut taxes, but his back-and-forth with Corker and his penchant for veering from one subject to another could lead to an unpredictable afternoon.

Trump, who did not address reporters after the lunch meeting, arrived on the second floor of the Capitol with McConnell just before 1 p.m. As the two strode side by side down a long hallway, a protester who had made his way into the press area shouted "Trump is treason!" and threw Russian flags in Trump's direction.

The president's feud with Corker lays bare the rising tensions between Trump and congressional Republicans and increases the uncertainty surrounding the GOP's effort to advance tax cuts, its last-ditch attempt at a major policy accomplishment this year.

Trump has sharply criticized Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for failing to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Republican senators have also thrown some rhetorical elbows at the president, with McConnell saying that Trump's limited experience in politics gave him "excessive expectations" about how quickly landmark legislation can pass.

Earlier Tuesday, Corker stood by his previous description of the White House as an "adult day-care center" and his comment that Trump's volatility could set the United States on a "path to World War III." He also urged Trump to stop interfering in the debate over tax legislation.

Asked whether he regrets supporting Trump, Corker told CNN he would not do it again.

"The president has great difficulty with the truth on many issues," he said. "He's proven himself unable to rise to the occasion."

Hours earlier, Trump had attacked Corker on Twitter for helping former president Barack Obama "give us the bad Iran Deal." Trump also said Corker changed his plans to run for reelection in 2018 after he declined to endorse him.

In reality, Corker organized opposition to the Iran deal and voted against it. The senator and his top aide have said Trump offered his support for Corker's reelection, and that after Corker announced that he would retire after next year, Trump called asking him to reconsider and to run again.

"Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president," Corker tweeted Tuesday. He added the hashtag #AlertTheDaycareStaff, repeating an earlier description of Trump's White House.

Republican lawmakers had high expectations for Trump's visit to Capitol Hill.

Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said he was "glad" Trump was coming and argued the White House's dispute with Corker will not hinder Republicans' rewrite of the tax code.

"Put this Twitter dispute aside . . . All this stuff you see on a daily basis, Twitter this and Twitter that, forget about it," Ryan told reporters at a news conference Tuesday.

Trump has promised changes to the tax code will not affect tax-deferred retirement plans, the mortgage interest deduction or the deduction for charitable contributions. Republicans like Corker say these promises raise expectations prematurely while making it more difficult for lawmakers to make up the revenue that will be lost to tax cuts.

When Trump addresses the GOP luncheon, "it's important for him to convey to us the things that he thinks are priorities, and not only with respect to the tax bill, but some of the other things that we are currently working on," said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the third-ranking Republican senator.

"I want him to tell us to do our job," said Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., a Trump ally who, like the president, has openly voiced his frustration that a handful of Republican senators sank the repeal-and-replace effort. He expected the president would argue that the tax- reform push is "bigger than tax," in that it marked a chance for Republicans to prove they can govern, among other things.

Republicans continue to wrestle with health-care reform, particularly since Trump decided to end federal subsidies to offset lower-income Americans' coverage costs. In response, a bipartisan coalition of senators offered a compromise bill authorizing those funds in exchange for giving states broader leeway in regulating coverage under the ACA.

Trump, who phoned Democratic and Republican lawmakers this month to push them to make a deal, has sent mixed signals on the plan, seeming to support it before backing away.

White House officials are now urging Senate Republicans to move the bill to the right by including provisions offering retroactive relief from the ACA's insurance mandates for individuals and certain employers, according to people briefed on the talks.

"The White House has the ball right now," said Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the Republican who took the lead on negotiating the bipartisan package. "They've made some suggestions publicly about what they'd like to see in the bill. I'm for all of those things. The question is whether they can persuade Democratic senators to agree to that."

But Alexander, who said the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could release an analysis of the plan as early as Tuesday, wasn't expecting to hear Trump sketch out his latest thinking on the framework during lunch. "I'd like for the president to focus on tax reform," he said.

Others were more eager for Trump to discuss health care.

"I'd like to hear him reinforce the movement to get something done," said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., who supports the deal Alexander reached with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
The man accused of opening fire on his co-workers in Maryland last week, killing three and wounding two, will first be tried in his home state of Delaware, where police say he shot a sixth person and was arrested after a day-long manhunt.

At a news conference Monday, officials announced the decision to first prosecute Radee Labeeb Prince, 37, in Delaware, where he faces charges including attempted murder and weapons charges. If convicted, they said, he could face a sentence of life without parole.

Officials stressed that Delaware does not have parole in criminal cases, while Maryland does. If Prince is convicted in Delaware, officials said in the statement, any sentence "will have more certainty."

"Prince will ultimately face trials in both states," according to a joint statement from the Delaware Department of Justice and the State's Attorney's Office in Harford County, Maryland, where Prince is accused of shooting workers at a countertop company.

Officials in Harford, a rural area about 40 miles northeast of Baltimore, also used the news conference to push for a return of the death penalty, an unlikely prospect in the heavily Democratic state.

Harford County State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly said it's "frustrating" that Maryland does not have what he called a "proportional penalty" for someone facing multiple murder counts.

Maryland repealed the death penalty in 2013.

Prince is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder in Maryland. If convicted, he would face the possibility of multiple life sentences.

"The punishment should fit the crime, and I think Maryland took the step in the wrong direction getting rid of the death penalty," Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey R. Gahler said at the news conference.

This most recent shooting rampage, which comes about a year and a half after two Harford County sheriff's deputies were fatally shot, is the reason state Sen. Robert G. Cassilly, R-Harford, said he would introduce "targeted" capital punishment legislation in the 2018 session of the General Assembly. The senator is the brother of the top prosecutor in Harford County.

Gahler said Monday that authorities still have not determined a clear motive for the Wednesday shootings, other than concluding Prince had a "perceived feeling that he was not well liked."

The sheriff has said surveillance video showed Prince, shortly before 9 a.m. that Wednesday, with about 10 of the 29 people who were working with him at Advanced Granite Solutions, in a business park in Edgewood. Prince called the employees to gather around him and, as they got closer, he pulled out his handgun and fired, Gahler described.

Authorities identified the slain employees as Bayarsaikhan Tudev, 53, with a last known address in Virginia; Jose Hidalgo Romero, 34, with a last known address in Aberdeen, Maryland.; and Enis Mrvoljak, 48, of Dundalk, Maryland.

Authorities said Prince then drove to a used-car dealership in Wilmington, Delaware, where he shot a man in the head and body. The victim, who family identified as Jason Baul, 35, owns Baul's Auto Sales, where the shooting occurred, and had known Prince since childhood.

"Our family has been friends with their family since I can remember, since we were walking," Robert Baul, 37, of Atlanta, a brother of Jason Baul's, said Thursday, speaking of Prince. "We grew up together."

The two had a contentious history, including a January 2016 report from Baul that Prince had assaulted him in a robbery attempt at the home of an acquaintance, according to a court affidavit filed by a police officer.

Prince was charged with assault and other crimes, but the case was thrown out, according to court records.

The Wednesday shootings sparked a manhunt that continued into the night, with photos of Prince appearing on websites and TV stations. Tipsters eventually called authorities to report seeing the suspect and his vehicle, a 2008 GMC Acadia, in a Newark neighborhood about 20 miles southwest of Wilmington, Delaware. Federal agents arrested him there after a foot chase, during which Prince tossed away a .380-caliber handgun, authorities said.

In the joint statement, the Delaware and Maryland officials said they would "work to provide justice for all impacted by these horrific acts."

Prince pleaded not guilty Thursday in Wilmington to four charges related to the shooting in that city, including the attempted murder count. His bail was set at $2.1 million, and a preliminary hearing was set for Oct. 31.
One Republican senator wants President Donald Trump to light a fire under his colleagues. Another wants clarity on his policy priorities. A third is interested in hearing about tax reform and health care while a fourth would prefer that Trump sticks to just taxes.

When Trump arrives on Capitol Hill for his first visit as president to the Republican senators' weekly policy luncheon Tuesday, he will come face to face with dozens of GOP senators eager to hear him address an assortment of matters.

While GOP aides and senators predicted Monday that Trump's visit would center mostly on the ongoing effort to rewrite the nation's tax laws, the broad array of topics on their mind, coupled with the president's penchant for suddenly veering from one subject to another, could open the door to an unpredictable afternoon.

The difficult relationship between Trump and Republican senators adds another layer of uncertainty. Trump has criticized Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sharply for not repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. Republican senators have also thrown some rhetorical elbows at the president.

"I want him to tell us to do our job," said Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., a Trump ally who, like the president, has openly voiced his frustration that a handful of Republican senators sank the repeal-and-replace effort. He anticipated the president would argue that the tax- reform push is "bigger than tax," in that it marked a chance for Republicans to prove they can govern, among other things.

When Trump addresses the luncheon the Republican senators attend each Tuesday afternoon in a room near the Senate chamber, "it's important for him to convey to us the things that he thinks are priorities, and not only with respect to the tax bill, but some of the other things that we are currently working on," said Sen. John Thune, S.D., the third-ranking Republican senator.

One of the other things Republicans are wrestling with is health care. Trump's decision to end federal subsidies to help offset lower-income Americans' coverage costs led a bipartisan coalition of senators to offer a compromise bill that would authorize those funds. In exchange, states would have broader leeway in regulating coverage under the ACA.

Trump, who phoned Democratic and Republican lawmakers this month to push them to make a deal, has sent mixed signals on the plan, seeming to support it before backing away.

White House officials are urging Senate Republicans to move the bill to the right, by including provisions offering retroactive relief from the ACA's insurance mandates for individuals and certain employers, according to people briefed on the talks.

"The White House has the ball right now," said Sen. Lamar Alexander, Tenn., the Republican senator who took the lead on negotiating the bipartisan package. "They've made some suggestions publicly about what they'd like to see in the bill. I'm for all of those things. The question is whether they can persuade Democratic senators to agree to that."

But Alexander, who said that an analysis of his plan by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could be released as early as Tuesday, wasn't expecting to hear Trump sketch out his latest thinking on the framework during lunch. In his view, that would be a good thing. "I'd like for the president to focus on tax reform," he said.

Others, however, were eager to hear Trump talk health care.

"I'd like to hear him reinforce the movement to get something done" on health care, said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., who supports the deal Alexander reached with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

Looming over the luncheon are the mutual hostilities between Trump and Republican senators. On Twitter and in remarks before television cameras, Trump has slammed McConnell and singled out other senators for attacks.

GOP senators have also landed their own blows.

McConnell, for instance, has said that Trump's limited experience in politics created "excessive expectations" for passing landmark legislation. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., has warned that Trump's combative behavior has put the United States "on the path to World War III."

But lately, both sides appear to be determined to move past their differences and project more harmony. Trump and McConnell sat down for lunch at the White House last Monday and came out for a 40-minute joint news conference afterward. They tried to play down past signs of tension as they looked ahead to their next big legislative target: tax reform.

Republicans are trying to forge ahead in their effort to usher in a sweeping rewrite of the nation's tax laws by the end of the year. They took an initial step toward passing a tax bill last week, when the Senate passed a budget resolution allowing them to pursue the tax plan without needing any Democratic votes.

They didn't need any Democratic votes to undo the ACA. That effort still failed because of disagreements among Republican senators. Brewing disputes over tax policy threaten to disrupt if not defeat the tax endeavor in a similar way.

Passing a bill could rest on more unpredictable GOP senators, like Susan Collins of Maine, one of three Republicans who voted against the ACA repeal bill in July.

"I'm hoping to hear more about his plans on tax reform, with more detail in it," she said of Trump.
The U.K. has shifted its approach to the transition agreement it wants to put in place for after Brexit, falling into line with the European Union's long-held stance.

Businesses have been demanding an urgent deal with the EU that would allow trade to continue as usual for two years after Brexit day in March 2019. Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond had championed their calls, saying the longer it took to secure such an accord, the less it was worth. He backed away from those comments on Tuesday, a day after Prime Minister Theresa May surprised lawmakers by saying that transition would only be part of the final Brexit deal, which isn't expected for another year.

The comments by the premier and her finance minister are a result of detailed conversations with their European counterparts in recent days, according to a person familiar with the situation. May attended a European summit in Brussels at the end of last week and had a series of phone calls with EU leaders in the run-up.

The EU has long held that a transition accord can only be agreed on as part of the final deal, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been skeptical about such an agreement unless the end destination is clear. Despite that, Hammond had been channeling businesses' demands for a quick deal on the transition -- describing it as a "wasting asset" -- and the Bank of England's head of supervision said one should be in place by Christmas.

Businesses say they will start executing contingency plans and moving staff early next year if they aren't sure what their terms of trade will look like after March 2019. But so far, May's Cabinet has not reached agreement on what trade deal it wants, according to two government officials.

"The next risk is therefore already on the horizon. The EU might well begin stage two of the talks by asking the U.K. for its exact preferences regarding the future relationship," said Carsten Nickel, an analyst at Teneo Intelligence. "As things stand now, it is likely that the U.K's response will, once more, consist primarily of noisy evasiveness."

Hammond and May's spokesman, James Slack, both said on Tuesday they would continue to seek an "implementation" deal as quickly as possible in order to give certainty to business. But pushed by lawmakers during a question-and-answer session in Parliament as to whether he stood by his comments that a deal was worth less the later it was secured, Hammond hesitated and said the government was aware of business needs and was confident it would be able to deliver reassurance.

At the Brussels summit, the other 27 EU leaders agreed to start internal preparations so that they can be ready to move Brexit talks on to trade and transition in December. That will only happen if the U.K. makes a more generous offer on the divorce settlement. May and Hammond both cited the EU decision as a cause for optimism.

The U.K. government now needs to quickly formulate a position on the kind of trade deal it wants after Brexit. More than a year after the referendum, May's Cabinet has not yet reached agreement, according to two government officials. Publicly at least, debates in the divided Cabinet have been focused on whether any transition is even a good idea, and latterly on preparations in case there is no deal at all.

Ministers still hope they can deliver a signal in early 2018 on the principles of transition and the future relationship, which would provide sufficient assurances to business, according to the person familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified because of the confidential nature of the discussions.

The chief EU negotiator, Michel Barnier, told the Guardian newspaper that any U.K. agreement with its biggest trading partner will put it in a much weaker position than at present and will be closer to the deal Canada struck with the EU. May has said she wants a "deep and special" relationship and one that goes further than the Canada-EU arrangement, without spelling out the details.
Ukraine's National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) has decided to issue an order to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko due to the violation of the requirements of the legislation on ethical conduct, prevention and settlement of conflicts of interest and other violations of the law, NACP reported on its Facebook page on Tuesday.

The order was issued with respect to Mykhailo Nakonechny, director general of the Kyiv municipal association for green building and exploitation of green plantations of the city (Kyivzelenbud).

"Based on the results of violations detected by the NACP's department of control over compliance with the legislation on the conflict of interests and other restrictions on the prevention of corruption, it was established that Kyivzelenbud's director general, being an official of a legal entity of public law, violated the requirements of Part 1, Article 36 of the law of Ukraine on the prevention of corruption. In particular, he did not transfer the enterprises and corporate rights belonging to him  Kyiv Candle Factory Ltd - to the management of another person," the report says.

The agency said that appointed to the post on August 31, 2016, the official was supposed to do this within 30 days after his appointment, but did not do so, thus committing a corruption-related offense.

In order to eliminate the detected violations, the NAPC demanded that an official investigation be conducted with respect to Nakonechny and that the question of bringing him to justice be considered.

The NACP's order is mandatory for execution. For failure to comply with this requirement, the head of a body, enterprise, institution, or organization is liable under Article 188-46 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. The head of the body, enterprise, institution, organization must report to the NACP on the fulfillment of the order within ten working days from the day of its receipt.
The mayor of Conroe denounced "forced annexation" during a recent City Council debate over plans to add homes and businesses to the city. Some residents on the outskirts of Pearland made the same point in resisting an annexation proposal.

The talking points in the two fast-growing suburbs are similar, but the discussion in Pearland is more urgent due to an accident of geography.

Because Pearland lies partly in Harris and Fort Bend Counties, which each had more than 500,000 residents based on the 2010 census, the city must comply with a new state law requiring municipalities to get voter approval before annexing populated areas. Conroe lies wholly in Montgomery County -- the 2010 population was 456,000 -- so it gets a pass until the 2020 census.

The sponsors of the new law, known as Senate Bill 6, argued that it's wrong to drag people across municipal boundary lines against their will. But why is this injustice worthy of the state's attention in Pearland, population 120,000, and not in Conroe, which has 82,000 residents?

Any population threshold for a legal requirement is arbitrary, of course, and the 500,000 level was the product of negotiation. But more is at stake here than the potentially irrational outcomes of legislative sausage-making.

For decades, Texas cities have expanded by gradually absorbing areas within a designated zone surrounding them known as extraterritorial jurisdiction, or ETJ. As the population in these outlying areas increases, city officials make plans to build roads, fire stations and libraries -- balancing, among other factors, the potential for increased tax revenue against the burden of taking on the debt incurred by the special districts that serve unincorporated areas.

"Texas cities have been the engines for extraordinary growth, and a big piece of that has been the ability to have these ETJs and the ability to plan out the systems of city life and have annexation as an option," said Pearland City Manager Clay Pearson. "That's all been turned upside down" by SB6.

The system certainly hasn't worked perfectly, and organized resistance to annexation dates back at least to Houston's struggle with Clear Lake City in the 1970s. Growth can be a messy business.

As I've discussed in previous columns, Houston threw a kink into the works when it reversed a longstanding policy and essentially stopped annexing populated areas, partly in response to opposition to its acquisition of Kingwood in the 1990s. Now an estimated 1.9 million people live in unincorporated areas in Harris County alone -- unable to incorporate without Houston's permission, which the city is reluctant to give.

Conroe No. 1

But smaller, fast-growing cities such as Pearland, Conroe and Sugar Land have continued to acquire areas on their periphery. Suburbs of Houston, Dallas and Austin consistently land spots among the nation's top 10 fastest-growing cities; Conroe, in fact, enjoyed a burst of attention when it grabbed the No. 1 ranking this year.

Pearland's annexation of five parcels south and west of the city, including the Pearland Regional Airport, would be completed before the new law takes effect Dec. 1 if the council approves. That's probably a good thing from the city's perspective: Comments by residents at a recent council meeting, as reported by the Chronicle's Jaimy Jones, indicate annexation would be a tough sell in a referendum.

"I believe this is nothing but a land grab," said Michele Falzon, who owns property in two of the five targeted parcels.

Not a simple issue

Independent-minded Texans might well be sympathetic to the idea that cities shouldn't annex residents against their will, but the issue isn't that simple. Texas cities don't have walls around them; people just outside of a municipal boundary take advantage of a city's services and amenities every day without paying city taxes.

In addition, counties struggle to provide services to growing numbers of residents who don't live in a city. Municipal utility districts and their various special-district cousins fill the gap to some extent, but vital functions like law enforcement fall to county governments designed to serve rural areas.

Some of the Pearland-area residents resisting annexation get their water from wells and make campfires and raise animals on their property. It's disingenuous, at best, for leaders of a state that worships growth to promise residents of major metropolitan areas that they can maintain their cherished rural lifestyles.
VTB (Ukraine) is increasing its charter capital by UAH 2.595 billion or 7.6%, to UAH 36.808 billion via an additional issue of shares.

According to an official report of the bank in mass media, its shareholders at a general meeting on October 23 decided to increase the bank's charter capital.

The bank will place shares with a face value of UAH 0.10 only among current shareholders in two stages in the period from December 20, 2017 through January 16, 2018.

As reported, the supervisory board of VTB Bank has approved the additional capitalization of the Ukrainian subsidiary for UAH 2.6 billion (about $98 million).

Capitalization is carried out at the expense of money that was issued to VTB (Ukraine) several years ago as interbank loans. Therefore VTB does not provide its bank in Ukraine with new additional funds.

VTB (Ukraine) CFO Andriy Hryschenko told Interfax-Ukraine that the amount of interbank loans issued earlier is around $175 million, including some $98 million that will be converted into capital as part of the scheduled additional capitalization of the bank.

VTB Group in May last year announced its intention to sell Ukrainian banks in case of interesting offers. However, as early as June the VTB management reported they had suspended active search for buyers. Talks about the withdrawal of the group from the Ukrainian market resumed in March 2017 after Kyiv had imposed sanctions against Ukrainian banks with Russian state capital. The restrictions imposed for one year prohibit them from carrying out any financial transactions in favor of the parent structures.

VTB Bank (formerly Bank Mriya) was founded in 1992. Its main shareholder is Bank VTB (Russia, 99.9959%).

VTB Bank ranked 16th among 88 Ukrainian banks on July 1, 2017 in terms of total assets (UAH 14.019 billion), according to the National Bank of Ukraine.
National joint-stock company Naftogaz Ukrainy hopes that the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce will make a decision regarding supplies of gas by Russia's Gazprom to uncontrolled areas of Donbas in the lawsuit concerning the gas supply contract, Naftogaz Head Andriy Kobolev told reporters in Kyiv on Tuesday.

"The issue of gas supplies to Donetsk and Luhansk is subject to the gas supply contract, and it is heard by the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce. We took a position that without this decision it is impossible to solve the entire lawsuit. I cannot give more details," he said.

As reported, according to a report of Gazprom, in 2016 the company supplied 2.4 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas to the occupied areas of Donbas, and in Q1 2017 the company increased supplies to 1.11 bcm. Gazprom has been supplying gas to these areas since February 2015 via the Prokhorovka and Platovo gas metering stations on the border with Russia.

Naftogaz said several times that the company will pay only for ordered and accepted gas, while gas supplies to the occupied areas declared by Gazprom were not ordered. Naftogaz does not accept gas under the contract with Gazprom at the Prokhorovka and Platovo gas metering stations.
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After a controversial 11 years leading the Alamo Colleges, Chancellor Bruce Leslie announced Monday that he plans to retire next fall.

This job takes so much, Leslie, 71, told a meeting of the community college districts governing board. This career takes so much. No one has an idea, really, how much my wife and children have had to put up with and deal with.

In a letter to trustees, Leslie noted he had been an educator for 42 years, 34 of them as a community college president or chancellor, adding, Inevitably, this accumulation of years is cause to announce my retirement.

He spent much of the most recent years working to standardize curriculum and counseling across all five Alamo Colleges to improve the ability of students to transfer to four-year universities as quickly as possible. But he angered professors and students in the process.

RELATED: Alamo Colleges chancellor pay now has bonus incentives

Faculty repeatedly accused him of disregarding their input and eroding the autonomy of the colleges, four of which are independently accredited. The fifth, Northeast Lakeview College, awaits its own accreditation decision in December.

More than 90 percent of faculty at four of the colleges backed a vote of no confidence in Leslie in 2009, and calls for his ouster were repeated two years ago, this time led by a student group, when the district began switching to new degree plans that eliminated the listing of majors from student diplomas and transcripts.

But Leslie also drew praise for that initiative and others that were credited for record numbers of graduations in recent years. About 12,800 students earned degrees or certificates last school year. Voters in the spring approved a $450 million bond for facilities to keep up with the district's growth.

This is not going to go away, Leslie said of the changes and the uproar they caused in a 2015 interview. There are those who clearly want to go back to the way things used to be. But the way it used to be did not serve students well. It served a small cohort of students, but it did not serve every student well.

RELATED: Longtime Alamo Colleges trustee Jim Rindfuss has died

The board voted Monday to accept his resignation and direct staff to begin the process of choosing a successor by Sept. 30, Leslies target date.

Weve backed him 100 percent, we still do and I just wanted people to know thats exactly where we stand right now, trustee Gene Sprague said.

Trustees had voted in August to give Leslie a raise, along with the chance for an incentive-based bonus, extending his rolling three-year contract through 2020.

Combined, the five Alamo Colleges have a $628 million budget and more than 52,000 students, the third largest community college district in Texas after ones in the Dallas and Houston areas.

Among a series of Leslie decisions that generated backlash from both students and faculty was the inclusion of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in district-wide curriculum and a proposed requirement, eventually shelved, that students buy electronic textbooks as part of their tuition and fees.

Leslie drew more brickbats when he was photographed on stage at a commencement ceremony for Palo Alto College graduates texting on his cell phone in 2016. I do own it, it was inconsiderate, and I apologize for being disrespectful, he wrote in a response published in the San Antonio Express-News editorial pages.

RELATED: Donors: Chancellor Bruce Leslie texting on stage during graduation cost Alamo Colleges $4,000

The accreditation agency last year warned three of the Alamo Colleges about a lack of institutional autonomy, saying the district overstepped its bounds in setting some curriculum and governance policies. In response, trustees eliminated from the districts leadership development policy all references to The 7 Habits and author Stephen Covey, and modified other policies as well. Trustees and administrators expect full accreditation to be restored in December when the agency meets again.

On Monday, trustee Denver McClendon called Leslie a spear catcher and said he had advised Leslie to blame the board for unpopular changes it had charged him with making.

He eventually started doing that, McClendon said, to laughter.

Leslie was chancellor of the Houston Community College system and of a state system of 12 community and technical colleges in Connecticut. Before that, he was president of Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York.

He praised his staff and the Alamo Colleges faculty in his speech Monday and said the current trustees are the best hes worked with, calling them engaged, focused and forward-thinking. He said the family-oriented, caring culture in the district and in San Antonio was an important part of student success.

Im not sure what Im going to do next, but Im not just going to sit on a couch, Leslie said. So many districts need to do what were doing, so I think theres an opportunity.

amalik@express-news.net
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Inadequate food and housing is an immediate threat to children in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, according to a group of Houston-area nonprofit leaders who are seeking to ensure youngsters are the priority of recovery efforts.

On Monday, members of the newly formed Hurricane Harvey Children's Recovery Collaborative announced strategies to protect the area's youngest residents following the late-August storm and over the coming years of community restoration efforts.

Bob Sanborn, president and CEO of Children at Risk, said 117,000 children in Harris County and more than 2 million among the dozens of storm-impacted counties were "significantly impacted" by flooding.

"A lot of vulnerable children are still in need of help," he said.

During a news conference in the lobby of the Houston Food Bank, Sanborn announced that the collaborative is focusing on food insecurity, housing challenges, child care issues and mental health among other areas.

Jenifer Wagley, deputy director of Avenue CDC, called on FEMA to extend housing vouchers for displaced families until at least the end of the year.

"There is no safety net for families. So, if the vouchers run out, there's nowhere for people to go," the housing nonprofit leader said. "Families should not have to go month-to-month and not know if they're going to get to stay in the hotel that they're in and not know where they're going."

Brian Greene, president and CEO of the Houston Food Bank, said food insecurity is driven by choices between housing costs and nourishment.

"The challenge that we as a community now face is that for tens of thousands of households, they now are going to have a longtime extra burden," he said.

For many, that means paying rent or a mortgage and utilities on a flood-damaged home while pouring additional resources into temporary housing.

"Historically, we know that the way that these households cut to meet expenses is on nutrition and quantity," Greene said. "That's the flexible expense that they have."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency sent an additional 24 million pounds of disaster relief supplies to the food bank that is almost exhausted, Greene said, but another 25 million pounds of FEMA aid has been approved that will get the food bank through the next six months.

Houston City Council District B member Jerry Davis said adverse childhood experiences can have long-term consequences far into adulthood. He advised city residents who need help to seek information about food, child care and other recovery resources at community centers.

The collaborative, which includes more than 60 organizations, continues to work on its plan. Sanborn noted that the immediate and future needs of children are "not going to be solved quickly."

Those who need help or guidance should call 211. Avenue CDC is offering housing counseling at 713-864-9099.

Matt Johns from Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston added that the storm is an "invisible disaster" for undocumented children and families who do not qualify for much of the aid.
The father of a 3-year-old Texas girl who went missing Oct. 7 told police he was trying to get his daughter to drink milk when she died, according to new details revealed in an arrest warrant.

These new details were part of an arrest warrant issued by the Richardson Police Department, who interviewed Wesley Mathews Monday regarding the disappearance of his adopted daughter Sherin.
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One of two co-defendants in a 2016 capital murder case has been sentenced to 60 years in prison in the 2016 death of a man at an illegal South Side eight-liner game room.

Ramon Salazar Jr. initially had been charged with capital murder and attempted armed robbery in the death of Jimmy Nunez on Jan. 28, 2016. Authorities at the time believed Nunez was killed during a robbery of a mobile home that had been converted into an eight-liner gaming parlor in the 2700 block of Oak Island Drive on the South Side.

It is unclear what led up to the shooting. There were several people inside, and none were injured. Witnesses told authorities at the time that two masked men entered the home. When Bexar County deputies arrived around 11 p.m., they found Nunez, 36, dead with a gunshot wound to the head.

Three months before the slaying, Bexar County sheriff's deputies conducted a raid in the same block of Oak Island. Deputies seized 30 eight-liners, more than $100,000 worth of methamphetamine and $15,000 in stolen property.

Authorities released surveillance video of the shooting in the weeks after the incident. Salazar and his co-defendant, Gilberto Ivarra, were arrested about two months after the incident.

On Monday, Salazar entered a plea of "true" to a lesser offense of murder before state District Judge Lori Valenzuela, who sentenced him to 60 years in prison.

Because there was an affirmative finding of assault with a deadly weapon, Salazar will have to serve at least 30 years before he is eligible for parole.

A pre-sentence investigation hearing has been set for Dec. 7 for Ivarra, who also entered into a plea agreement for the lesser offense of murder that could cap his sentence at 35 years, according to court records.

The cases are being heard in the 437th state District Court.
WASHINGTON - The nation's top general outlined the investigation Monday into the ambush that killed four U.S. servicemen in the African country of Niger on Oct. 4, and provided new details on the attack.

Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged that aspects of the attack are still unclear on the deadliest combat incident since President Donald Trump took office.

"We owe the families as much information as we can find out about what happened, and we owe the American people an explanation of what their men and women were doing at this particular time," Dunford said.

Sketching out the timeline of the attack, Dunford said a dozen U.S. soldiers and 30 Nigerien troops embarked Oct. 3 on a "reconnaissance mission" to the village of Tongo Tongo, near the border with Mali.

"The assessment by our leaders on the ground at that time was that contact with the enemy was unlikely," he said.

The next morning, the soldiers were returning to their base when they were hit with machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades. One hour after taking fire, the Americans radioed a request for air support.

A reconnaissance drone appeared "within minutes," Dunford said. An hour later, French Mirage fighter jets and helicopter gunships arrived on the scene since the Pentagon does not have attack warplanes in the region. However, French aircraft are not allowed to fire or drop ordnance in Niger.

During the firefight, two U.S. soldiers were wounded and evacuated by the French. Three U.S. soldiers were killed and were evacuated by a military contractor aircraft that night.

One other soldier, Sgt. La David Johnson, was still missing. His body wasn't found until two days later.

Dunford said five Nigerien troops were also killed.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman backs the unification of conditions for allocation of land parcels.

"I would like to emphasize the conditions for doing business and permits. I would not name cities, but we have examples when in one city it takes 93 days to receive a land parcel and in another city  295 days. This is in the same country," he said at a meeting of the Regional Development Council in Kyiv on Tuesday.

The prime minister said that some cities help investors and others hinder their operations.

"I am deeply convinced that we should unify these requirements all over the country," Groysman said.

He said that he hopes that parliament would pass a new bill on privatization by the end of the year and some other economic bills.
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WASHINGTON  The Senate cleared a $36.5 billion aid package Tuesday for U.S. states and territories hit by a series of hurricanes and natural disasters, including Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and California.

The 82-17 vote could send as much as $15 billion to Texans impacted by Hurricane Harvey, which hit the Gulf Coast two months ago. The disaster relief comes on top of another $15 billion emergency package for Harvey victims that passed in September.

The storm relief comes more than a week after the House passed a similar measure, but still falls short of the money Gov. Greg Abbott and many Texas lawmakers sought for continued recovery efforts from Hurricane Harvey.

The White House has assured state officials that another round of Texas-specific disaster relief is forthcoming in November.

"The president remains steadfast in his commitment to providing the resources necessary to recover from the hurricanes and wildfires," the White House said in a statement after the Senate vote.

The new storm aid package had to overcome objections from fiscal hawks who sought to derail the funding unless it was taken from existing government accounts, without adding to the deficit. A preliminary budget "point of order" raised by Kentucky Republican Rand Paul failed 80-19.

Some of the opposition also came from senators critical of the bankrupt National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which some see as a bailout for property owners who frequently build and rebuild in flood-prone areas.

The White House urged Congress to "adopt reforms," but did not specify how.

Responding to increasingly urgent calls for federal aid to recover from Harvey, which submerged much of Houston, Abbott and the Texas congressional delegation have pressed for $18.7 billion in recovery aid specifically for areas hit by the August hurricane.

While Trump has yet to commit to a specific amount, Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, has placed a hold on Trump nominee Russell Vought to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Cornyn's hold on Vought is one of two placed by senators trying to secure hurricane relief for their states. The other was placed last week by Florida U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, in an effort to secure money for his state's citrus industry, which was heavily damaged by Hurricane Irma.

Cornyn said he does not oppose Vought's nomination, but placed the hold as leverage on Trump Budget Director Mick Mulvaney to ensure "OMB will satisfy Texas's needs."

"We don't expect to be treated any better than anybody else. But we're not going to be treated any worse," Cornyn said in a Senate speech Tuesday. "I realize that the folks impacted by Irma and Maria are reeling as well. We want to make sure that we are locking arms with all of our colleagues who represent areas hit by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, and also those hit by the wildfires out west."

Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz praised the Senate action, though he said it fell short of what the Texas delegation hoped. "This level of funding does not come close to what will ultimately be required for our state to fully recover, and I am disappointed that the discussions we had in the Senate and with the administration to include an additional $18.7 billion in this bill," the Republican said in a statement.

The package cleared Tuesday includes $18.7 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) disaster relief fund  including nearly $5 billion for a disaster relief loan account. Another $16 billion is for the National Flood Insurance Program, and $576.5 million is to help with wildfire recovery efforts. The bill also provided $1.27 billion for disaster food assistance for Puerto Rico.

Texas lawmakers said that although current aid package provides money for all the areas hit by natural disasters, including the California wildfires, at least $15 billion could be claimed by Texans, who were the first to be hit and file claims through FEMA and the flood insurance program.

Abbott and other Texas officials estimate that the overall price tag from Harvey will top $100 billion.

Dissatisfaction with the latest congressional action is not confined to Texas, Florida or Puerto Rico, whose leaders have sparred with Trump over the island's slow recovery. Conservative Republicans in the House and Senate have railed against the $16 billion in the aid package that is earmarked for the flood insurance program, which is nearly $30 billion in debt.

Conservative groups like Heritage Action have termed the spending as a "bailout" that subsidizes continued building in flood-prone areas. In the House, 69 Republicans voted against the aid package, including six from Texas. Among them was Jeb Hensarling, who has led efforts to overhaul the financially-crippled program.

"At some point, God is telling you to move," Hensarling said in September.
State-owned Oschadbank (Kyiv) seeks to boost the share of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in its loan portfolio sixfold by 2020, to 30%, Oschadbank Board Chairman Andriy Pyshny has said.

"The development strategy of Oschadbank, which has been in the active phase of modernization in the past three years carried out jointly with our European partners, in particular the EBRD [the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development] and Frankfurt Business School, envisages that by 2020 Ukrainian business should occupy 80% of the loan portfolio. This is large corporate business, with which Oschadbank traditionally works, and this is SME, which share of the bank's loan portfolio is 5% and must reach 30% in 2020," he said at a meeting of the Regional Development Council on Tuesday in Kyiv.

The banker said that boosting SME share of the loan portfolio to 30% is an ambitious task, as Oschadbank did not work with SME before 2014.

He said that at present, there are 2 million businessmen in Ukraine that could be classified as SME. Today, 25 banks announced that their strategic direction is financing of SME, although the loan portfolio for SME is only UAH 45 billion.

"This is no more than 5% of the total loan portfolio of the banking system, and this UAH 45 billion were financed only by 10 banks," he said.

Oschadbank was founded in 1991. Its only owner is the state.

Oschadbank ranked second among 88 banks operating in the country on July 1, 2017 in terms of total assets (UAH 220.723 billion), according to the National Bank of Ukraine.
A recent article in the San Antonio Express News declares, college graduation remains an elusive goal.

The Alamo Colleges District is dedicated to making that goal a reality for more residents. We are working hard to ensure everyone in the region has access to a quality, affordable education with the support necessary for a clear path from the classroom to a high demand job or degree.

The Alamo Colleges District is proud to proclaim its students earned the highest number of degrees and certificates of any two-year college system in Texas and is one of the nations top community college degree producers.

In 2017, our students earned more than 12,750 degrees at Northeast Lakeview College, Northwest Vista College, Palo Alto College, San Antonio College and St. Philips College.

The biggest hurdle to education is often cost, so we keep tuition low, giving students a route to a financially attainable education. Our tuition has not been raised in five of the past six years. Tuition and fees are $10 lower per semester hour than the average at community colleges, and three times lower than the average at universities in Texas.

We also have the lowest cost per student of any community college in Texas. Thats real value, considering Texas has the third lowest tuition rate in the nation.

A total of 47 percent of our students received federal grants and many cover the entire cost of tuition through financial aid. But, the real challenge to increasing degrees awarded is that 89 percent of our students are part-time, because of family and job responsibilities.

It is impossible for some to earn a two-year degree in two years. In fact, our students should be lauded for their persistence, often taking eight or more years to graduate.

While affordability and accessibility are goals, our primary focus is student success. We have implemented programs to guide our students as they pursue their degrees, a journey made shorter through our advising and clear career paths.

Thats a fact we keep in mind as we work to make graduation an achievable goal.

Our students begin with

AlamoADVISE, our academic and career advising initiative that provides a personalized pathway to success. This new model has proven its benefits, and with other strategies, increased degrees and certificated earned by 244 percent in 10 years.

Thats faster than any other district in Texas.

We have also launched

AlamoINSTITUTES to clearly define the academic pathways for students from the beginning of their college careers. The AlamoINSTITUTES help students define their future, save time and money by taking only courses they need, and ensure they are job-ready or prepared to transfer and graduate from a university.

Bexar County and the region have a long way to go toward fully educating our community and building a highly-skilled workforce to bolster economic development.

Alamo Colleges District has actively taken on this challenge. We stand committed to being the best in the nation in student success and performance excellence, and empowering our diverse communities for success.

Dr. Yvonne Katz chairs the Alamo Colleges District Board of Trustees.
Proposition 1 on the November ballot will make a property tax cut possible for partially disabled veterans.

We recommend a yes vote.

Such a cut is already available to disabled veterans whose homes were donated in full. This amendment affects disabled veterans who have had houses donated to them for less than market value.The would allow it to partially disabled veterans  or their surviving spouses  equal to the percentage that the veteran is disabled.

The proposition does not create the tax cut but gives the Legislature the authority to enact such a cut.

It needs this authority because the Texas Constitution requires that houses be taxed according to their value.

The reason to allow this cut is simply because we owe so much to veterans who have service-related disabilities. Though these may or may not be related to combat service, such a debt is owed to all such veterans who develop a service-related disability nonetheless.

The argument against the cut is that the states tax code should not carve out groups for exemptions.

While we agree that the tax code could be improved if the Legislature took a look at all tax exemptions, until that day arrives  and were not holding our breaths  this particular group is due the states consideration.

Texas voters approved an amendment in 2013 for disabled veterans whose homes had been donated in full. This amendment simply fixes things for veterans who put money toward the cost of their homes.

Vote yes on Proposition 1.
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The election is more than a year off, but the leading Democratic candidates for governor are already staking out differences on how to reform health care and are cautiously approaching an issue that has long been untouchable in California politics  Proposition 13.

State Treasurer John Chiang, former state schools chief Delaine Eastin, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa sought to introduce themselves Tuesday to voters who are barely tuned in to the race to succeed Gov. Jerry Brown. For 75 minutes, the four fielded questions on health care, education, housing, immigration and climate change at a Chronicle-sponsored forum at the City Club in San Francisco.

The sharpest differences were on health care. Newsom and Eastin favor a single-payer plan similar to one that cleared the state Senate this year before being shelved in the Assembly. Chiang and Villaraigosa said they support the concept of universal health care but were skeptical the state could afford a single-payer, Medicare-for-all-style system.

Of all the arguments against single-payer, the most specious is cost, said Newsom, referring to a 2016 UCLA study that said 71 percent of health care expenditures in California were already paid for with public funds. The study found that for many Californians, a public-run system is already the reality.

But Newsom would not say specifically that he backed SB562, the single-payer plan that stalled in the Legislature. Eastin said she supported it. In May, an analysis by the state Senate Appropriations Committee estimated that SB562 would come with a $400 billion-a-year price tag. Half of that could be funded by enacting a new 15 percent payroll tax, the analysis said, and half could be covered by existing federal, state and local spending on health care.

A second analysis, commissioned by the bills sponsor, the California Nurses Association, found that single-payer would cost $330 billion a year.

Villaraigosa said he supported a universal coverage plan two decades ago while serving in the Legislature, but couldnt get any support because the funding plan was shaky.

You cant sign something like that without a plan, Villaraigosa said. Im not running to be all things to all people. I know that pie in the sky doesnt put food on the table.

Chiang said he supports single-payer but that the plan the Legislature considered was very underdeveloped when it came to funding. Lets be smart about it, he said.

Eastin said critics made the same arguments more than 50 years ago when Congress debated creating Medicare.

Oh, its so expensive, Eastin said, mimicking arguments against the program then. And now, everybody loves it.

Now Playing: Californians will get an early look at where the four leading candidates for governor stand on the state's big issues. The session will be moderated by Chronicle Editorial Page Editor John Diaz.

On Prop. 13, Villaraigosa and Eastin said reforms are needed in the 1978 measure that capped property-tax increases for homes and businesses. Under the law, properties can be reassessed only when they change ownership. Because many commercial properties change hands infrequently, they are often assessed at decades-old rates.

Eastin, who served eight years as the states superintendent of public instruction, called for more regularly assessing commercial and industrial real-estate property values to raise more money for schools. Disneyland is paying what they paid in 1975, she said. Its time to review Prop. 13.

Villaraigosa said he didnt vote for Prop. 13 in 1978 and wasnt a big fan of it now. Weve got to fix Prop. 13, period, he said. Prop. 13 is broken.

After the debate, Villaraigosa said he wants to make sure all aspects of the landmark tax law are reviewed, not just commercial rates. Everything ought to be on the table, he said.

Neither Chiang nor Newsom mentioned Prop. 13 when asked about how the states tax system should be reformed.

The candidates also expressed differences on Californias high-speed-rail project, a favorite of Browns and a consistent target of Republicans.

All four agreed that money generated by Californias cap-and-trade program on polluters should help pay for the trains, but Eastin cautioned against diving headlong into the project until we have Cadillac (public) schools. Right now, its only going to be for the richest people in California to ride on.

Pressed on how long it could take before Californians see Cadillac schools, Eastin said that if the right moves were made, I think we could move the needle dramatically in five years.

Chiang again sounded a note of fiscal caution, saying high-speed rail needs another viable funding source to be successful. Chiang said he spoke to an unnamed potential American investor in the rail system Tuesday.

You have to have a funding stream and new investors, he said.

Although there are still more than seven months until the June primary, the candidates are already starting to take subtle shots at each other. Villaraigosa, in particular, targeted his fellow ex-mayor, Newsom.

Los Angeles is much poorer than San Francisco, where Newsom was mayor from 2004 to 2011, Villaraigosa said after the debate. Across the board, I think the challenges that I faced are more akin to the challenges the governor would face in a state thats way more diverse, in a state thats got way more poverty.

Newsom has a huge fundraising lead on the field and is also ahead in early polling. A Berkeley IGS Poll in September showed him with 26 percent of likely voters, compared with 10 percent for the runner-up Democrat, Villaraigosa. Republican businessman John Cox was second overall, with 11 percent.

The Chronicle is planning an event for GOP gubernatorial candidates similar to the Democratic debate. Tuesdays forum was live-streamed on The Chronicles Facebook page and will be archived there.

Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicles senior political writer. Email: jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @joegarofoli
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The volume of local budgets differs more and more among each other, Ukrainian Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk said at a meeting of the Regional Development Council in Kyiv on Tuesday.

He said that growth of revenue to the general fund of local budgets in January-September 2017 totaled UAH 135 billion or 80% more than in 2016.

"Growth of revenue was seen in the budgets of all regions of Ukraine," he said.

He said that the Finance Ministry records different growth of local budgets and the low pace of growth of their revenue.

"City mayors several times asked me to make the minimum property tax. I think that this should be shared liability," the minister said.

However, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko did not support the opinion of the finance minister and said that "shared liability is irresponsibility."
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Alexei Navalny has appealed a judgment by Moscow's Lyublinsky court that ruled in favor of Sotsgosproekt in a libel lawsuit it had filed against the opposition politician and his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK).

"The court has registered an appeal against the court ruling of September 19, which satisfied Sotsgosproekt's legal claims in full," a court spokesperson told Interfax on Monday

The date for hearing the complaint has yet to be set.

It was reported that Sotsgosproekt sued FBK over its investigation that claimed, in particular, that the businessman Alisher Usmanov had donated a mansion with an over four-hectare plot of land in the Odintsovo district, Moscow region, to Sotsgosproekt, whose supervisory board was chaired by Ilya Yeliseyev, a fellow student of the Russian prime minister. Sotsgosproekt asked the court to order the removal of eight fragments of the investigation and its video version, posted online on Navalny's and FBK's websites.

According to Sotsgosproekt, the given fragments contained false allegations damaging its business reputation: that the transfer of the organization's assets was Usmanov's bribe for Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev; that the foundation was part of a criminal scheme; and that the foundation was not really a charity.

Under the court ruling, Navalny and FBK had ten days from its effective date to challenge the legal claims and also to remove the given fragments from the investigation and relevant film on their online platforms.

Navalny's lawyer Ivan Zhdanov told Interfax earlier that the respondents had disagreed with the judgment and were going to appeal.

"There is no way to remove the fragments without removing the film itself, which is impossible. We will continue circulating it," Zhdanov said.

On May 31, the Lyublinsky court ruled entirely in favor of the plaintiff in a similar lawsuit filed by Usmanov against Navalny and FBK. Some of his claims related to the FBK investigation, and the court ordered it to remove the defaming information and to publish a retraction within ten days of the judgment taking effect. The court decided that Navalny and FBK must post retractions on their websites within three months.

Later the Moscow city court altered the ruling by ordering the respondents to remove only fragments of the investigative documentaries, and not all the videos.
Ukraine and Poland have agreed to continue the work of the intergovernmental commission on the protection and return of cultural property that was lost and illegally removed during the Second World War, Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Culture Minister Piotr Glinski has said.

"We should restore the work of the intergovernmental commission on the protection and return of cultural property, which functioned until 2015... After long, controversial negotiations, the Ukrainian side presented its arguments, but agreed that the commission will continue its work. We want it to start its activities as soon as possible," he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Monday, October 23.

Glinski also noted that the Polish side was ready to carry out the search work and put up plaques in memorial sites in case of the impossibility of exhumation with subsequent burial in the territory of one of the states.

"Our proposal was to expand the scope of the work of the commission and separate complex issues from the current ones in order to achieve progress in the search work, exhumation," Glinski added.
The great Gold Rush Music Festival returns to the township of Waihi, with the first nuggets of gold dropping for the highly anticipated return of the 2023 festival.
The European Union will continue to support the reforms that are being conducted in Odesa region.

Speaking at a briefing after a meeting with Odesa Regional Governor Maksym Stepanov on Tuesday, EU Ambassador to Ukraine Hugues Mingarelli said one of the goals of his visit to the region is to once again express support for the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, as well as the reforms that were launched in the country four years ago.

He said together with the Odesa regional governor they discussed joint programs in such areas as fighting corruption, decentralization, development of small and medium-sized businesses, support of local communities, and expressed their willingness desire to strengthen their cooperation in all these areas.

The diplomat stressed the importance of Ukraine and Odesa region in particular for the EU.

Mingarelli said that during his Tuesday trip he visited Odesa port, met with representatives of local authorities and businessmen, as well as students.

On Wednesday, the ambassador plans to meet with representatives of the public and merged communities.
Kyiv District Administrative Court has opened a case pursuant to a complaint lodged by nonaligned Ukrainian MP Boryslav Rozenblat involving the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) chief Artem Sytnyk and Petro Poroshenko Bloc MP Serhiy Leschenko.

According to the court's website, Rozenblat wants the court to recognize as illegal actions of NABU chief Sytnyk, who made public and disseminated information about U.S. citizen Paul Manafort, the chairman of U.S. President Donald Trump's election campaign. Manafort's name and alleged signature appeared in the so-called black books [payment ledger] of the disgraced former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions in a pretrial investigation, leading to "interference in the 2016 U.S. election campaign and damaging Ukraine's interests."

Rozenblat is also asking the court to rule that the actions of MP Leschenko (leaking information about Manafort) interfered in Ukraine's foreign policy.

As earlier reported, on June 27, 2017 head of the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) Nazar Kholodnytsky said there were no Manafort signatures in the Party of Regions unofficial payment ledger. SAPO and NABU were unable to provide any evidence Manafort received remuneration from the Party of Regions.

In addition, according to an article appearing in the Washington Post on June 28, Manafort reportedly confirmed receiving $17 million from the Party of Regions. Evidence of the payments, according to the article, is contained in documents which Manafort filed with the U.S. Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Sytnyk said in August 2017 that NABU possesses no information about interference in the U.S. presidential election, emphasizing that the agency had not investigated the matter.

In March 2016 Leschenko said he possessed original documents showing bank transfers by Yanukovych to Manafort via an offshore company with an account in Kyrgyzstan. Leschenko at the time asked U.S. and Ukrainian authorities to investigate the matter.
Though reform of the US healthcare system is now considered common sense, the Democrats cannot and will not deliver. Only a mass independent political forcewith single payer placed at the top of its agendais capable of winning this fight.

A political struggle is in its essence a struggle of interests and forces, not of arguments.  Leon Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed

Firing the opening shot in his new offensive in the battle for single-payer healthcare, Bernie Sanders presented his open-and-shut case in a New York Times Op-Ed piece:

Do we, as a nation, join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee comprehensive healthcare to every person as a human right? Or do we maintain a system that is enormously expensive, wasteful and bureaucratic, and is designed to maximize profits for big insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, Wall Street and medical equipment suppliers?

Although every sector of the capitalist economy without exception can be described as enormously expensive, wasteful and bureaucratic, and designed to maximize profits for big [companies and] Wall Street, the US healthcare crisis is unrivalled in its glaring absurdity as an expression of capitalisms historical impasse. With annual revenues of $3.3 trillion, the healthcare industry accounts for nearly a fifth of US GDP.

Seven years after Obamacare was supposed to have solved the problem, some 30 million people are still without insurance and face financial ruin if their health takes a turn for the worseover 60% of bankruptcies are caused by medical expenses. Over 5.6 million needed medical care in 2016 but had to forego it because they couldnt afford it. Half of the $2 billion raised by the crowdsource site GoFundMe last year went towards efforts to cover peoples healthcare expenses. One study estimated that 45,000 deaths each year, or 123 per day, are the direct result of lack of coverage.

The single-payer movements fierce and energetic base of committed activists is driven in no small part by the horrific reality that people are losing their lives every daynot because of the limits of medical science or techniquebut because it would reduce or eliminate the profits of health insurance companies to save their lives.

Battle lines being drawn

It therefore comes as no surprise that the life-or-death battle for universal healthcare is working its way to the forefront of the class struggle in the US, as a majority of Americans are warming up to the once radical-seeming idea of liquidating the private health insurance market in favor of centralizing and streamlining the function of guaranteeing health care coverage under the control of the state.

DSA demonstrators / Photo: Mark Dixon, Flickr

A June poll by Pew Research found that 60% of Americansand 67% of those under 30feel the federal government should be responsible for ensuring universal health care coverage. A more precisely worded poll by Kaiser Health Tracking conducted in the same month found that 53%including even 24% of Republicans!favor a national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan.

Meanwhile, the grassroots forces on the ground pushing for single-payer have gathered steam, growing to hundreds of organizations with membership in the millions, joined most recently by the Democratic Socialists of Americas robust network of activists spanning all corners of the country. Following a decision to prioritize the battle for single payer at its Chicago convention this summer, DSAs commitment to deploy its energetic door-knocking, phone-banking, and canvassing foot soldiers opens the potential to step up this fight even further.

Perhaps more importantly, it also means that socialists, union members, and activists across the country are actively discussing, strategizing, and debating the route to single-payer victorythe tasks before us, and the obstacles that stand in the way.

As revolutionary socialists we are fighting for healthcare for all, not health insurance for all. Most Americans are not yet clear on the significant difference between these two proposals, and most single-payer campaigns are not explicit about it either.

So let us be clear: We fight for a single-payer system in which the insurance industry is abolished, the health care provision sector is nationalized, and the state pays for and provides universal health care, not a single-payer system in which the state merely pays fori.e., subsidizesprivate health providers.

What will it take?

Socialists have a critical role to play in providing the movement for single-payer with the unwavering backbone that only the outlook of class-struggle can provide. Never mind the fact-sheets and talking points: it is the most basic capitalist class interestsnot a deficiency of persuasive datathat has stood in the way of implementing what millions now consider a no-brainer reform.

To begin with, we are faced with the task of prying a highly profitable, multi-trillion-dollar market from the grip of the capitalist class. In the rest of the industrialized worldwhich Sanders invites the US to joinit was not through the gracious civility of the capitalists that reform was granted, nor through the initiative of liberal capitalist parties. It was a hard-won concession forced on the capitalists with the threat of revolution, achieved through massive mobilization and old-fashioned class struggle, led by labour and the socialist and communist parties of the working class.

But unlike the major bankrupt industries that were nationalized in postwar Britain at the time the National Health Service was set up, US health insurance is a booming industry which just last year increased its income by 46%, netting $13.1 billion in pure profit. Not only is the health insurance industry parasitically enmeshed throughout the broader healthcare sector, its tentacles are also intertwined with the nerves and tissues of the Democratic Party, which received over $15 million in donations from the insurance industry last year.

Faced with such a serious battle, the leading voices of the single-payer movement could do no greater disservice than to lull their troops into a false anticipation of an easy legislative victory. Removing this parasite will require, not so much a delicate surgery, but a battle to the death against a monstrous hydra and the entrenched political forces it controls.

Single-payer is by no means beyond reachon the contrarythis demand clearly has the potential to become a galvanizing force for the labor movement. But the political path to victory is not through the Democratic Party, which serves at the pleasure of the markets, but in the creation of a mass socialist party of the working class, which, not coincidentally, is another common denominator in the rest of the so-called industrialized world.

A litmus test?

Even if the entire Democratic Party were to come on board, its no secret that Bernies Medicare For All bill has no chance of passing this Congress, controlled as it is by a Republican majority. Sanders has acknowledged as much, saying that the point of the bill is to force a conversation. This fact should figure into our strategic considerations. Spotting a golden opportunity to win progressive points without threatening their generous friends in the insurance industry, over half of House Democrats and 16 in the Senate have been more than happy to join Bernies conversationseveral of them with an eye on the 2020 presidential primaries.

Bernie Sanders / Photo: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons

Some have argued that this indicates a growing momentum of the progressive wing of the party and that, if supporting single-payer is upheld as a litmus test for progressive candidates, the Democrats really can be pushed to the left. However, to fall into this trap would be more than a disastrous waste of time, energy, and momentumit would effectively derail and disorient the movement, as was shown this summer in California.

Originally drafted and championed by the California Nurses Association, the Healthy California Act was a legislative bill for a statewide single-payer system that had previously made it through the state legislature twice, only to be vetoed by Republican Governor Schwarzenegger. When the Democrats captured Californias House, Senate, and governorship, single-payer activists were confident that they had it in the bag.

A massive campaign involving 350 community and labor organizations and millions of volunteers mobilized support for the initiative across a state in which 70% of the population supports single-payer. Three weeks after it passed the state Senate, the bill was killed by the leader of the State Assembly, Democrat Anthony Rendon, arguing that the funding provisions were not clear.

Leaving aside the fact that Rendon himself received $150,000 from insurance and pharmaceutical companies, the episode is a clear example of the partys priorities. When they had full control of the US Congress in 2009, it was Democratsnot Republicansthat blocked every attempt by Sanders, who should know better by now, to push Obamacare to the left by introducing language to expand Medicare or to allow the government to negotiate drug prices. We must learn the lessons of history or be forever condemned to defeat!

Who will pay?

The near-miss in California also foreshadows the maneuvers that Democrats will inevitably execute against any single-payer legislation that comes within range of success: present the funding issue as proof of a poorly thought out initiative, or resort to dubious inflated figures to argue its infeasibility. In doing so, they are merely regurgitating the talking points of the insurance lobby: it is unaffordable, it will cost trillions, savings on health costs will be cancelled out by increased taxation, etc.

These obstacles can only be swept aside by socialist arguments and a class-based program. If the capitalist politicians argue that something as basic as universal healthcare is not feasible within the limits of the system in the richest country on earth, well be there to take those arguments to their revolutionary conclusionby pointing out that capitalism is the root of the problem. Since the Democrats are in bed with the health insurance hydra, our task is to put all our strength towards the creation of a genuine mass political vehicle for our classone that will allow us, by degrees, to wrest all capital from the capitalists, starting with the health insurance companies.

Does this mean postponing the fight for universal health care until weve built a new party? Not at all! It means arming ourselves to conduct this fight all the more consistently and implacably without political concessions or compromises, while soberly preparing for the challenges that lie ahead.

Neither the founding of a mass socialist party nor the abolition of the insurance sector and the nationalization of healthcare providers will be walks in the park. But socialists specialize in preparing the future and altering the course of history, not bemoaning the immensity of the task, or settling for what we are told is practical. Besides, along with favoring single-payer, a record 61% of Americans now say they want a third major party, and socialists are in a perfect position to tie these strings together!

Given the discontent in society, a mass independent political force would spread like wildfire throughout the country once it emerges and establishes its viability. The demand for single-payer could be placed at the top of the agendacomplete with crystal-clear funding provisions.

The combined assets of the life and health insurance industries amount to nearly one-third of US GDP at a staggering $6.8 trillion.

By seizing the assets of these parasitic profiteers, without compensation, as well as nationalizing and integrating all the insurance, medical equipment, and pharmaceutical companies, along with the hospital networks and clinics, into a single democratically administered health provider, not only would the cost of care be dramatically reduced, it would also be drastically simplified. A socialized national healthcare system would dispense with the monstrous bureaucracy and waste that doesnt cover everyone and still costs 83% more per capita than the Canadian universal system, and double the cost of the British NHS.

In his appeal, Sanders elaborated further:

We remain the only major country on earth that allows chief executives and stockholders in the healthcare industry to get incredibly rich, while tens of millions of people suffer because they cant get the health care they need. This is not what the United States should be about.

But as any socialist will point out, this is precisely what US and every other capitalism is about. Thats the problem. It is precisely the irresistible logic of taking the fight for universal health care to the end that makes this seemingly common sense reform such a threat to the capitalists.

If it is acknowledged that it makes no sense for a small minority to profit off the health and sickness of millions when the resources exist to provide treatment and care to all, what other conclusions will people begin to draw about this society? Why have a small minority of chief executives and stockholders enrich themselves at the expense of our access to education? Why allow real estate magnates to speculate on the housing market while 11 million workers are forced to spend half of their income or more to cover rent? Why should food production be organized according to the profit motive while there are people starving and undernourished?

The idea that we need a democratic plan for the entire economy could become very popular very quicklybecause its an idea whose time has come. If socialists can bring a revolutionary socialist program into the multi-millioned ranks of single-payer activism, a genuine victory on this front and many others will be within reach, not only for US workers but for the workers of the entire world.
Some nine battalions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have already been trained in line with NATO and are performing tasks in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) zone in Donbas, Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Viktor Muzhenko has said.

"Nine battalions have already been trained under these standards. They have already carried out respective actions in the zone of the anti-terrorist operation, and one more battalion started training in accordance with NATO standards almost a week ago, with the help of U.S. servicemen," he said in an interview with the Ukrainian service of the Voice of America during his working visit to the United States.

He noted that the task of switching to NATO standards by the end of 2020, which was declared by the Ukrainian leadership and determined in the Strategic Defense Bulletin of Ukraine, was "a truly ambitious task."

"The process has begun. It is continuing, and we are moving to standards and working out responses, taking into account, among other things, Ukrainian combat experience," Muzhenko said.

As reported, First Deputy Defense Minister of Ukraine Ivan Rusnak said on October 18 that eight Armed Forces battalions had already been trained in line with NATO standards. Rusnak also noted that the Ukrainian side of the joint Ukrainian-Polish-Lithuanian brigade (UkrPolLitBrig) did not belong to the mentioned number of Armed Forces units trained in line with NATO standards.
The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine suspects employees of Marfin Bank (Odesa) of withdrawing about UAH 300 million from the bank, according to a ruling of the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv, which was posted in the single state register of judgments.

It was established during the pre-trial investigation that four bank employees, through fictitious firms owned by two individuals, withdrew about UAH 300 million from Marfin Bank in 2016-2017. To withdraw the funds, they used a fraudulent scheme to provide loans without collateral to affiliated enterprises for a fictitious procedure on additional capitalization of the bank.

In this regard, investigators filed a petition asking the court to provide information about telephone conversations and text messages of a defendant in the case for February-April 2017, which the court granted and ordered Odesa-based communications operator Intertelecom to provide the necessary information.

A controlling stake in Marfin Bank, owned by Cyprus Popular Bank Public Co Ltd, the final beneficiary of which is the Republic of Cyprus represented by the finance minister, was sold on June 14, 2017. Saggarko Limited became the new owner, and Ukrainian citizens Mykhailo Partikevych and Ihor Zgurov became the final beneficiaries of Marfin Bank as a result of the transaction.

Zgurov serves as adviser to the executive director for economic affairs at PJSC Odesagaz.

Marfin Bank (formerly known as Mortorgbank, Maritime Transport Bank) was founded in 1993. The bank's authorized capital is UAH 435 million.

Marfin Bank ranked 30th among 99 banks operating in Ukraine as of July 1, 2017 in terms of total assets (UAH 3.313 billion), according to the National Bank.
U.S. National Guard in Ohio, New York want to train with Ukrainian Armed Forces  Muzhenko

Ukraine's General Staff Chief of the Armed Forces Viktor Muzhenko during a working visit to the U.S. has met in the Pentagon with the chief of the U.S. National Guard General Joseph L. Lengyel to discuss cooperation.

"Lengyel told me that in addition to our old friends from California, National Guard units from other U.S. states want to expand cooperation with Ukraine's armed forces. This goes for National Guard units in Ohio and New York," Muzhenko said on his Facebook page on Tuesday.

"America's experience shows that a reserve forces and units of territorial defense forces are effective only under one military command," Muzhenko said.
The Associated Chambers of Commerce group is recruiting small, local businesses to participate in Small Business Saturday. Held on the Saturday after Thanksgiving each year, Small Business Saturday promotes supporting the small, local businesses that help create jobs, boost the economy, and invigorate neighborhoods across the Flathead Valley and Northwest Montana.

The last day for small businesses to sign up with their local chamber of commerce is Wednesday, November 1. This year is the third year the Associated Chambers group has partnered together on the event and theyre encouraging every small business to sign up with the chamber of commerce in their respective cities.

In 2016, there were over 150 small businesses who signed up with the Bigfork, Columbia Falls, Kalispell, Lakeside Somers, and Whitefish chambers of commerce, and many business owners claim Small Business Saturday was their best business day last year.

Participation in Small Business Saturday is free and many of the chambers will be providing free marketing materials such as Shop Small branded bags, posters, window decorations, and a variety of print and digital marketing efforts to qualifying businesses that sign up.

Bigfork: (406) 837-5888; [email protected]

Columbia Falls: (406) 892-2071; [email protected]

Kalispell: (406) 758-2803; [email protected]

Lakeside Somers: (406) 844-3715; [email protected]

Whitefish: (406) 862-3501; [email protected]

The Associated Chambers group consists of the Bigfork Chamber of Commerce, the Columbia Falls Chamber of Commerce, Flathead National Forest, Glacier National Park, the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce, Convention and Visitor Bureau, the Lakeside Somers Chamber of Commerce, Montana West Economic Development, the Whitefish Chamber of Commerce, and the Whitefish Convention and Visitor Bureau.
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Our range includes a flat range from 10-100 yards as well as a 20 target walking course for more realistic simulation of hunting scenarios.
When the Downtown Master Plan was written in 2008, Mountain Line was five years away from offering zero fare service and Macys was still open in downtown Missoula.

Amid that pre-building boom atmosphere, the plan set a number of lofty goals in a push to transform the district into a vibrant hub. It sought retail hot spots and public transportation. It called for new hotel rooms and housing.

By Martin Kidston
People participating in a rally outside the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv are plottinga a violent coup and are being funded from abroad, Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said.

"The right to peaceful protest does not mean preparation for a violent coup undertaken by a small group of around 150-200 people who proclaimed themselves as the only righteous persons and are demanding that the state do only what they want. And they are being financed from abroad. I will prove that in due course," Lutsenko said at a regional development council meeting in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Automatic sawed-off weapons are being purchased and arms caches are being set up as part of preparations to commit a coup, he said.

"I say with all responsibility that they will not succeed," the prosecutor general said.

Ordinary citizens are not involved in such preparations, he said.

"Those taking part in this violent coup are 'guest actors' without any citizenship such as apatride Mikheil Saakashvili, who, while heading the [Odesa] state regional administration, got his subordinates to issue permanent residence permits to 20 citizens of Georgia as valuable figures of culture. Now these figures are sowing what they see as good, wise and eternal all over Ukraine," Lutsenko said.

These people with sawed-off guns are guarding Saakashvili, plotting a coup and using cars owned by a charitable foundation to which Odesa customs clients have paid contributions, he said.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said he expects the Cabinet of Ministers to adopt programs on implementing the provisions of the law on rural medicine.

"I ask the heads of regional state administrations, in cooperation with the Regional Development Ministry, to quickly determine the scheme and plans for locating rural outpatient clinics, taking into account the burden on doctors and accessibility for patients... I expect the government to adopt as soon as possible the programs that take into account all the nuances of rural medicine development on the basis of a new law," he said at a meeting of the Regional Development Council in Kyiv on Tuesday.

As reported, on October 19, the Verkhovna Rada passed at first reading a bill improving the accessibility and quality of healthcare services in rural areas submitted by the Ukrainian president.

Amendments in Ukraine's state budget for 2017 provide for UAH 4 billion for activities aimed at developing medicine in rural areas.
McDowell's neighbors to the east see substantial damage from the storm. Click here to read about destruction at the Hickory Regional Airport.

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9:05 p.m. -- McDowell Rescue assisted by Nebo Fire Department, McDowell EMS, and McDowell Emergency Management performed a successful water rescue this evening along Gilbert Byrd Road near the McDowell/Burke County line. Emergency personnel responded to 93 storm-related incidents (so far) today in McDowell County.

***

8:53 p.m. -- Duke Energy reports 1,755 customers without power, according to McDowell Emergency Management.

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7:36 p.m. -- The flash flood warning has been extended to 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.

***

A tornado watch for McDowell was lifted Monday afternoon but a flash flood warning continued into the evening. Heavy rains and win have resulted in multiple downed trees and power lines throughout the area.

At 2:45 p.m., Duke Energy reported 539 customers in McDowell without power with no estimated time of repair. That number had grown to 849 by 3:30 p.m.

The NWS Storm Prediction Center has issued a tornado watch for portions of extreme east central Georgia, western North Carolina and much of central and western South Carolina coastal waters effective this Monday afternoon and evening from 2 p.m. until 9 p.m., but the watch was lifted for McDowell shortly before 5:30 p.m.

Primary threats include a few tornadoes possible and scattered damaging wind gusts to 70 mph possible.

Thunderstorms will intensify gradually this afternoon along and ahead of a cold front moving from Georgia into western South Carolina and North Carolina. The storm environment will be favorable for both supercells in the broken band of storms, and ahead of the band, as well as mesovortices embedded in the line.

These circulations will be capable of producing a few tornadoes and damaging gusts through this evening.

The tornado watch area is approximately along and 60 statute miles east and west of a line from 50 miles northwest of Greensboro to 50 miles south southwest of Orangeburg SC. For a complete depiction of the watch see the associated watch outline update.

A tornado watch means conditions are favorable for tornadoes and severe thunderstorms in and close to the watch area. Persons in these areas should be on the lookout for threatening weather conditions and listen for later statements and possible warnings.

In addition to the tornado watch, there are several downed power lines and trees reported throughout multiple areas of McDowell, including Glenwood Drive, Davis Town Church Road, Old U.S. 221 South, Bethlehem Road, Pine Cove Road and Montevista Avenue.

Southwestern McDowell is also currently under a flood warning, with McDowell County Emergency Management reporting minor flooding ongoing near Old Fort and Catawba Falls Campground. Use extreme caution. Do not attempt to cross water-covered roadways, bridges, or low-level crossings.

McDowell 911 has been receiving numerous calls of motor vehicle collisions throughout the area, including one at Kwick Mart on East Court Street between a tractor trailer and a passenger vehicle and another at the U.S. 221 bypass with no injuries.
The number of conversion centers in Ukraine is again growing, Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko has said at a meeting of the Regional Development Council in Kyiv.

"The number of converting centers in the country is growing again. The cash-out rate decreased to 5.5%," he said.

The prosecutor general spoke in favor of setting up the Financial Investigations Service, while noting that some of the violations in the sphere of economy remained unnoticed by the National Bank and the State Fiscal Service.

"Without the creation of the Financial Investigations Service we cannot strictly control the situation," the prosecutor general said.
Reporter: What does reaching the 50-year milestone mean to McDowell Tech, the faculty, staff and students?

Gossett: Im pleasantly surprised with the pride that our faculty and staff have about celebrating 50 years. In any industry, you lose track of why it is you are here doing what you are doing, and being able to step back and celebrate 50 years has really brought that into focus for the faculty and staff of why we do what we do. Our faculty and staff have been here a long time. We have a long tenure with our faculty and staff which is a good thing. They are enjoying seeing their students do great things and giving people hope for a better future. We have seen where we come from and where we are going. The pride in being here for 50 years is a wonderful thing to see.

We celebrated at our professional development day and had a big ol cake. The city and county had proclamations at our graduation, and we are very thankful for that. We are going to have our Fall Fling in October bringing the 60s back. We put up a 50th logo and sign, and we are going to be using that all year long. We have a Chamber after Hours event in November at Universal, and we are doing a lot on social media with Throwback Thursday on our Facebook page.

Reporter: So you have been president now for a year. How has that year been for you?

Gossett: It has been wonderful. I love McDowell County and what I like about the place, and what I think is really important, is that it doesnt seem like an awful lot of people trying to gain all of the attention and all of the credit. There are plenty of wonderful things going on, enough credit to go around and we are all working together to make it a better place. Universal is a great example of that. When I give tours and talk about it, the magic is not in the building, but how the county saw the potential and bought the building. Then, the city donated some property so we could do a greenway. Weve got (others) joining in on our mission so we can renovate a small portion of that building. We all came together to make it happen. None of us could do it on our own. Thats the best part about being in McDowell County.

Reporter: How important are the community relationships to McDowell Tech?

Gossett: Invaluable. We meet monthly with the Manufacturers Pipeline Committee. The HR directors and plant managers work on how we can improve the workforce, and get people from a state of unemployment to employment. McDowell Tech was there at the table, and we came up with a six-week employability skills program like making eye contact, having a firm handshake, going to work every day and how we can help you become a better employee. We wouldnt have had that program if our business partners werent telling us what they needed. Without communication, we are not being as effective as we can be.

Reporter: How important is it to have an education post high school?

Gossett: We are in real interesting times. The history and culture of McDowell County has been hard-working folk; good people who want to do good work for their boss. But manufacturing has changed and the mechanisms of manufacturing have changed, so you have to be savvy with mathematics. You have to be able to work in groups and teams, and be able to communicate effectively. Manufacturers want employees ready to work with a certain skill set. Im not hearing them talk about Bring me bodies, Ill teach them what they need to know. They need to have a skill set based around mathematics for these high-tech machines. If you want to have a certain lifestyle, you are going to have to work for it. There are wonderful opportunities right here. Great jobs and great careers to be had right here.

Reporter: What is in the works for the future of MTCC?

Gossett: In the spring of 2016 voters of N.C. approved the NC Connect Bond. We will get $4.5 million from that which is wonderful. We have already used some of it for our Vicky Hogan Simulation Lab. All of our nursing programs will have access to it. Eventually we will have the tail end of an ambulance. Right now, we have to use decommissioned ambulances. We wont have to do that anymore because we can simulate that now. We have simulation robots that will talk to you. It will be as realistic as possible. And students will be able to do things that they cant do in the hospital. Their level of experience will go up with these mannequins.

The biggest chunk of the grant will go toward our cosmetology program. We have some space issues with cosmetology that we need to correct. We are meeting to begin planning our building and we hope to expect a barbering school soon. To my knowledge there is nothing between Knoxille and Charlotte for people who want to be barbers. If we can have that here within commuting distance for a lot of people, it will be huge.

Reporter: Talk about the importance of mentors. Do you believe they are important, and did you have one?

I have had so many people along my career who have helped me along the way. As I look back, I see all the vice presidents and presidents that I worked for. And, all along my career Ive tried to help somebody get better. Giving back to people is the most important thing and helping people get to a better spot.

Reporter: What kind of legacy do you want to leave at MTCC?

I dont think about leaving a legacy because I watched my dad work for the University of Tennessee and retired as the VP of Agriculture. In our family that was a big deal. Hes been retired about 20 years, and some of those people still remember him, but his cohorts have moved on. He was great in his time. There are going to be smart people in right behind me, and they are going to do wonderful things. I know that I worked for a good president. Bryan Wilson was a good president. He loves this school and still does. He prepared me well, and I hope that whoever takes my spot, I hope I prepare them well, and if I they come from the outside I hope I leave them with a really good school. Thats my legacy. You want to leave it better than what you found it, and I found it in a pretty good spot.

Reporter: What do you think the next 50 years will look like for MTCC?

Gossett: Dallas Herring invented the community college system in North Carolina. There was a vision once upon a time to have a community college in all 100 counties. We are close with 58 colleges. Not every state has that. The pride of our system is that every citizen is within a 30 minute commute to a community college campus. That says a lot about what those people envisioned. Who knows what it look like in the next 50 years, but I hope we are still here serving the needs of the community. I expect we will be.
For 60 years, Don Balke has captured through his artwork vivid and highly detailed images of nature and wildlife. His paintings have found their way into collections all over the United States and beyond.

Now, McDowells most famous artist is celebrating six decades of creating paintings that are treasured by art and nature lovers all over the world. Hes had exhibitions at one-man shows across the nation and received numerous awards from artistic and wildlife organizations alike.

His work is even part of the art collections in the Vatican and China. And here at home, Balkes paintings can be seen just about everywhere in McDowell County. His wildlife gallery at 1374 Vein Mountain Road attracts visitors from all over.

McDowell County has been very good to me, he said to The McDowell News.

Balke grew up on a farm in northern Wisconsin. He credits his upbringing in the wild backcountry with giving him a love of nature and wildlife. The Balke family totally depended on the land. They raised crops for food and to sell, got milk from their cows, used horsepower for farming, made maple syrup and logged trees with a crosscut saw. He enjoyed and values the time he spent on the farm with the family, according to a news release from his gallery.

Balke enjoyed drawing at a young age. He won his first art award in grade school in a state-sponsored contest. Naturally, his subject was a black bear roaming in the woods. In the Army, he continued to draw constantly. After his military service, he married Bobbie and they moved to Chicago where he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Art.

Sixty years ago, Don Balke and his wife Bobbie were a young couple as he studied at the academy. He also had a part-time job while Bobbie worked at a downtown law firm. The sale of his early efforts encouraged him to keep pursuing his dream of becoming an artist.

His still-life paintings were selling and he knew that he had a future as a professional artist. After graduation from art school, Balke was hired by a Chicago illustrating studio. He would go on to win many awards for his work as an art director and illustrator.

Balke kept working nights and weekends to perfect his painting skills.

In the early years, Balke painted pictures of various subjects from race cars to clowns to river steamboats. As he honed his talents, his work would grow to have a specific focus: wildlife and nature scenes.

When he felt that he was ready, Balke quit his job so he and his wife could start their own business of producing wildlife scenes. They risked everything to produce the first six prints. By that time, they had children to raise, he said in a previous interview.

With her encouragement, Bobbie helped out by doing the framing work in the basement while Balke worked at night on free-lance jobs and paintings. She also helped out with his research and photo references. Together, they have built up an impressive library of information about the numerous animals and flowers that Balke has depicted.

Since then, Balke has become one of the most respected wildlife artists in the United States. Collectors prize his highly detailed paintings of black bears, eagles, owls, ducks, deer, bison, raccoons, rabbits and cougars. Hes also produced paintings of African animals like elephants, giraffes, gorillas, gazelles and lions.

His landscapes often depict the stunning mountain scenery of western North Carolina. A particularly popular painting of his, titled Flying Free, shows a bald eagle soaring high over Mount Mitchell. Another work, Autumn Splendor, features Shortoff Mountain and Table Rock in the background with Lake James in the foreground.

The Balke family moved to McDowell in 1979 where his art became an instant favorite among local residents.

During the 1980s, Balke researched and painted most of the birds and animals in the United States, as well as their natural environments. These included the Animals of the 50 States series, which was sanctioned by the National Audubon Society, and the Wildlife of the 50 States series, offered through the National Wildlife Federation. He also worked on the Birds and Flowers of Canada series, the Songbirds of the 50 States series and the Trees of the 50 States series. All of these projects involved an enormous amount of research.

Everything weve done over the years is 100 percent approved by the Audubon Society, he said in a previous interview.

For one of those series, he had to produce 50 paintings within a years time while working on other projects too.

In 1985, he opened his retail gallery in the Vein Mountain community of southern McDowell. There, you can look at hundreds of framed prints, which also for sale.

It is a beautiful showplace with hundreds of pieces of framed arts (originals, gilcees and lithographs) that can be seen and enjoyed, reads the news release.

Many of his works have been done with watercolors but hes also used oil paint. Many of the oil paintings show places that he and his family have visited: Yosemite National Park in California, Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks, the top of Grandfather Mountain and the Virgin Islands.

To celebrate his 60th anniversary as a professional artist, Balkes gallery has a special on all currently framed prints. They are 40 to 70 percent off, depending on the item. All gift items are 50 to 80 percent off. This sale applies for Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays only from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. from now through Nov. 19.

Balke said he hopes the fans of his work will come visit his gallery for this special anniversary.

Don captures the timeless language of nature in his paintings, and is well rewarded in knowing that others are enjoying his work with him, reads the news release.

For more information, visit www.balkegallery.com.
Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has said the State Migration Service has denied a refugee status to former president of Georgia, ex-head of Odesa Regional Administration, Leader of New Forces Movement party Mikheil Saakashvili.

"I have news. Earlier I used to say that Saakashvili has a status that makes it impossible for him to be deported or extradited. Now the State Migration Service has denied him the status of a refugee, which he requested, and Mr. Saakashvili, as always, failed to challenge this decision in court," Lutsenko told journalists in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Thus, "there are no special circumstances" that could prevent Saakashvili from being deported or extradited, the prosecutor general said. "And the State Migration Service knows this for sure," Lutsenko added.
Lutsenko says schemes used by Yanukovych to pilfer state funds are defunct

Schemes for pilfering state funds under disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych (2010-2014) no longer exist, chief of Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) Yuriy Lutsenko has said.

"The main schemes used under Yanukovych have been liquidated by the current authorities," Lutsenko said at a meeting of regional development in Kyiv on Tuesday.

The PGO chief said Yanukovych and his cronies stole about $40 billion.

"That means that every four years the mafia stole one annual [state] budget," Lutsenko said.

"Let's see if these schemes still exist? Doubling the price of gas, used by Kurchenko, Azarov and other high ranking officials? No, thanks to the president, government and parliament this can no longer be done. Budget financing of the coal industry, which was created by the Donetsk mafia? No longer exists. Uncontrollable government coal purchases and 50% kickbacks are no longer possible. The Prozorro system has been implemented," Lutsenko said.

"Yes, these systems require refinement. I know of many problems, but the systemic accumulation of money via the vertical [system of power] no longer exists. It has been taken apart. It is time now to rip out the roots of these old schemes," Lutsenko said.
Ukraine and the U.S. intend to conduct a reconnaissance flight over Russia with the aim of monitoring military activity.

"This year Ukraine was able to conduct a joint reconnaissance flight with Canada, the U.S. and Sweden over Russian territory. One more flight with the U.S. is planned this year," chief of the verification directorate of the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces Andriy Gudz said during a briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday .

According to Gudz, pursuant to the Treaty on Open Skies, Russia has enough time to conceal its forces and military equipment.
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The National Reform Council will consider a draft law on business deregulation in Ukraine on Friday, October 27, President Petro Poroshenko has said.

"At a National Reform Council meeting, tentatively on Friday, we will consider a large-scale project on deregulation, which will be another step towards improving the investment climate in our state and our positions for investors in the Doing Business rating. So the pace is quite good, and the request for each of you is not to slow this pace," he said at a meeting of the Regional Development Council in Kyiv on Tuesday.

As reported, bill No. 6489, which will help reduce administrative pressure on small and medium-sized businesses, was registered in the Verkhovna Rada.

"Bill No. 6489 is designed to solve the problem of numerous inspections on entrepreneurs by controlling bodies and is aimed at deregulation of small and medium-sized businesses," Oleksiy Poroshenko, an MP from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction, said in May this year, while presenting the bill.

Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said in September that law enforcers would refrain from forcible operations at enterprises. According to him, by the end of the year the Ukrainian parliament will host a day of deregulation, when people's deputies will consider "the necessary laws that address the pressing issues of entrepreneurs."
Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko has said the Prosecutor General's Office has information about financing of protests in Kyiv and promises to produce evidence and appropriate suspicions.

"We also have other information on financing the protests. I will present this evidence in due time and present the relevant suspicions to the relevant figures," the prosecutor general told reporters in Kyiv on Tuesday.

Later, answering the question about whether he had data that oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky could be involved in financing the protests near the Verkhovna Rada, Lutsenko said: "With whom is the financing connected? The investigation already has information, and in due time I, with the permission of the investigator, will give evidence of financial support for these rallies."

At the same time, the prosecutor general said that Georgian citizens had brought money to finance the protests in Ukraine on private planes: "We also know that these funds were brought to Ukraine on private planes by Georgian citizens who had previously visited Western Europe."

"At the moment, I can only say one thing: Saakashvili really relies on a narrow circle of extremists of Georgian and Ukrainian origin. And he tried to legalize Georgians in Ukraine, being the head of Odesa State Administration," Lutsenko said.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Terens Quick participated in the two-day symposium on the Brexit, which was hosted in Nafplio by the British Embassy.

In his speech, he mentioned the following:

No one can say that we are pleased that the United Kingdom is leaving the European Union. We are focusing on what Prime Minister May said: that Britain is leaving the European Union, not Europe. We respect the British peoples decision. And Britains decision to exit the European Union is irreversible. The negotiations, particularly on economic issues, may have their difficulties, but it has been decided that they will move forward as quickly as possible.

Of course, one has to wonder how we got this result in the British referendum. There are many important questions. Why did the young people vote no and older ones yes to the departure from the EU? Does this mean that younger people have expectations from the great European family? That they want to build a different future for themselves within the EU, and that we are depriving them of this? Was the no result a product of anger at many things? For example, that they saw Great Britain being unable to hold its own with other European powers like Germany and France?

I too am a European citizen. And as a citizen, beyond my institutional office, I ask myself: Did the British perhaps see what many other peoples are seeing: that an attempt is being made for us to have, for example, not the Germany of Europe at the table, but the Europe of Germany? Because there is no doubt that, in recent years, Germany has played its own special role in European developments. Moreover, Schaubles stifling influence in the Eurogroup area is well known. We Greeks have felt this first hand.

Is it their anger at seeing a Europe that has diverged from the values of its Founding Declaration? A Europe that is no longer a Europe of the nation states, of humanity, solidarity, equality? A Europe whose economy was once guided by its politicians, through their policies, while politicians and their policies are now driven by the economy, by economic factors and the bankers?

It is precisely what the Greek government and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras highlight at every opportunity: it is the Europe that cannot be a multi-speed Europe, but needs to be a Europe of multiple choices. The Europe of equal opportunity, with pillars of humanity and solidarity.

Look, for example, at what is happening with the migration issue: we are on Europes border, adjacent to restless neighbours that are pressing us on issues like the visa, and, in spite of our economic problems, we are building bridges of humanity, while some of our European neighbours are building walls and laying razor wire.

We also need to become a properly structured Europe, from an economic standpoint. The main thing the majority of European countries share is the monetary/customs Union. The common currency. But meanwhile we lack substantial common foreign and defence policy.

Does the example of Cyprus ring any bells? Europe tolerating one of its members to be under occupation? Im not saying this for all the member states. I mean some member states. Some have a stance anywhere from tepid to indifferent on the presence of 42,000 Turkish troops and the anachronistic system of guarantees. Issues that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of my homeland, Nikos Kotzias, repeatedly raises, frankly and uncompromisingly, as key conditions for achieving a solution. The best-read politician on the Cyprus problem. Where is a united Europe on the Cyprus issue?

I imagine that the Brexit and its repercussions will be managed by the British in the best possible manner. But for all of us, the other 27, it should be the point of departure for reflection on the profile the European Union needs to have and that has to do with the things I mentioned earlier.

Regardless of whether the UK is in the EU, Greeces traditional relations with Britain will not be disrupted. In fact, I am certain that they will remain stable and grow even stronger, benefiting all of our common actions and interests in the economic, cultural, diplomatic and other sectors.

Whats more, some 100,000 Greeks live in Britain, and close to 50,000 Britons reside permanently in Greece. I will not forget to mention the over 2 million Britons who spend their holidays in Greece. In our bilateral talks, as well as those that take place in Brussels, we are taking care to safeguard the interests and residency status of the Greeks who live, work and study in Britain.

Nor will I forget to mention figures such as Lord Byron, who hastened to Greeces side in its struggle against the Turks. And I will also point out that, based on the Lisbon Treaty, a new, major debate has begun on the return of the Parthenon Sculptures. Relevant initiatives are being taken by organized groups of citizens with distinguished legal experts, not only in Greece, but wherever there is an organized Greek diaspora community, as in the U.S., Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the large European countries.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Terens Quick, will represent Greece at todays OSCE Mediterranean Conference, in Palermo.

The subject of the conference is Movements of Migrants and Refugees in the Mediterranean: Challenges and Opportunities, and it is being attended by the OSCEs Participating States and Mediterranean Partners.
Diplomatic Cabinet of the

Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs



The Greek government has proposed Migration Policy Minister Ioannis Mouzalas for the post of Commissioner of Human Rights at the Council of Europe. Mr. Mouzalas has long championed human rights. From a very early age, long before entering politics, he fought on the front line for the protection of rights, not just in Greece, but in many countries in Asia and Africa. From his position as Minister, he played a leading role in managing Europes major refugee crisis effectively and with unswerving dedication to respect for international law and the protection of refugees and vulnerable population groups.



The Greek government sees this candidacy as highly symbolic at a time when our continent is facing an existential dilemma: will it continue to be the homeland of struggles for freedom, or will it succumb to the emerging wave of isolationism, xenophobia and chauvinism? Having manifested its dedication to the protection of the democratic rights of peoples and minorities, Greece sees the reaffirmation of the liberal and democratic nature of European policies as the fundamental challenge of this time, and it is convinced that Mr. Mouzalas will play an important role in this direction.
Saakashvili says he joins protesters near Rada, urges opposition leaders to join him

Ex-president of Georgia, leader of the New Forces Movement party Mikheil Saakashvili has said that he intends to move to the tent camp erected in front of the Verkhovna Rada.

"I decided to move to the protesters in front of the Rada," Saakashvili said at a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday.

He also called on the opposition leaders, in particular the mayor of Lviv, the leader of the Samopomich party, Andriy Sadovy, and the leader of the Civil Position party, Anatoliy Hrytsenko, to join him.

"I want to call on the opposition leaders - Sadovy, Anatoliy Hrytsenko and all the others - to come to us, come to me," the politician said.
Saakashvili says he has no documents forbidding him to stay in Ukraine

Former Georgian President and leader of the Movement of New Forces Mikheil Saakashvili has said that he did not receive any documents that would challenge his right to stay in Ukraine.

"Prosecutor General [Yuriy] Lutsenko... said that the Migration Service denied me the right to stay in the country and that I can be deported! The irony of the situation is not only that the Migration Service did not refuse me, but also that it has not yet responded to my request and has not provided any documents that would challenge my right to stay in Ukraine!" Saakashvili wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday.

"A few weeks ago, my lawyers filed a lawsuit against the inactivity of the Migration Service and complete ignoring of my requests! This Thursday, on October 26, Lviv District Administrative Court will hold a hearing on this case," the politician added.

He said that according to Article 16 and Part 4, Article 17 of the law of Ukraine on the legal status of foreigners and stateless persons, his status in Ukraine is "completely legal."

"I am a person who has a permanent place of residence on Ukrainian territory. I use all the rights of a citizen, and I cannot be deported from Ukrainian territory," Saakashvili wrote.

Earlier, Lutsenko said that the State Migration Service had denied a refugee status to Saakashvili.

"Now the State Migration Service has denied him the status of a refugee, which he requested, and Mr. Saakashvili, as always, failed to challenge this decision in court," Lutsenko told journalists in Kyiv on October 24.

Thus, "there are no special circumstances" that could prevent Saakashvili from being deported or extradited, the PGO chief said.
Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has stated the unacceptability of "party courts" and disorder, adding that the court will choose a measure of restraint not related to detention with respect to OUN volunteer battalion commander Mykola Kokhanivsky.

"The situation in the Sviatoshynsky court was not easy, and this is another important point from which the signal should come - the law is one for all... No one has the right to make a decision instead of the court, especially his [Kokhanivsky's] party. The precedents of party courts should not be allowed," he told reporters in Kyiv on Tuesday, when asked to comment on the situation in the Sviatoshynsky District Court of Kyiv, which is to select a measure of restraint for Kokhanivsky.

He recalled a conflict between an anti-terrorist operation (ATO) soldier and the OUN battalion commander and the development of the situation.

"Mr. Kokhanivsky was handed a notice of suspicion, but he refused to sign it. After that it was handed again," Lutsenko said, adding that from the moment of the first and second notices of suspicion no more than 72 hours should pass before Kokhanivsky could leave the courtroom.

"Seventy-two hours will come tonight. That is, yesterday he could not de jure be freed... Kokhanivsky should be in the hands of justice, in a detention center, at least until today," he added.

At the same time, Lutsenko said: "This does not mean that I know what the court decision will be like. I even think that the court will leave him outside the detention center and select another measure of restraint  bail, round-the-clock arrest or even night arrest. This will be decided by the court."

As reported, on October 23, Sviatoshynsky District Court started to select a preventive measure for Kokhanivsky, who on October 21 during a personal conflict near the Akademmistechko metro station opened fire from a pistol, causing injuries to his opponent.

In court, the activists who defend Kokhanivsky used the existing furniture to block the entrance to the courtroom when the police arrived. Activists broke the furniture used it to try to push back the law-enforcers. Then the police were forced to use tear gas. After that, Kokhanivsky's supporters began to break windows. As a result, they stayed in the courtroom overnight.

On Tuesday morning, law enforcers drove activists and Kokhanivsky supporters out of the courtroom of Sviatoshynsky District Court, having dismantled the barricade. The whole operation took several minutes. Some 30 people were detained and taken to Shevchenkivsky district police department of Kyiv, among them were two journalists.

The court will consider the issue of choosing a preventive measure for Kokhanivsky in another room.

Kokhanivsky's associates and other activists are still present outside the court building.
The Russian Federation aims to destroy the reputation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe within the Council of Europe, member of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction, head of the Ukrainian delegation to PACE Volodymyr Ariev has said, commenting on the visit of Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjorn Jagland to Moscow on October 20.

"First, the president of PACE discredits the Assembly by visiting the dictator Assad, then a massive corruption scandal, the results of the investigation will be known in December and will be a backfire to many. Now Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Jagland, is dragging Russia into PACE, thus, interfering in the affairs of such independent body, like the Assembly, realizing that the unconditional return of the Russian Federation will lead to discrediting the PACE," Ariev wrote on Facebook.

"Consequently, I am not alone who sees the goal - to destroy the reputation of the Assembly within the Council of Europe and, as a consequence, to reduce its influence in the organization, including by institutional changes. And in this case Russia is only an instrument in the hands of certain functionaries of the Council of Europe. An instrument that considers itself an independent player," the MP said.

Jagland in Moscow met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian delegation to PACE. The main issues at the meeting were the return of the Russian delegation to the PACE.
UPPER THUMB  Five FFA teams from the Thumb area are on their way to Indianapolis for an FFA competition.

Teams from the North Huron, Ubly and Laker FFA chapters will be competing in national contests.

Members from North Huron will be competing against representatives from other states in the contests of floral design and agricultural communications.

Members from Ubly will be competing in the agronomy and dairy cattle evaluation contests and members from Laker will be competing in the poultry evaluation contest.

Each team was selected as a state champion last spring to have the opportunity to compete for Michigan against other states in Indianapolis. The teams will travel on a charter bus with the other local chapters from Harbor Beach and Cass City.
SANILAC COUNTY  The Sanilac County Sheriff's Office lost a valuable member of its team recently.

The sheriff's office reported retired K-9 Deputy Adam passed away on Saturday.

Adam was a German Shepherd, born on June 22, 2005, and imported from Poland. Adam was sworn in as an official member of the sheriffs office and was partnered with now Detective/Sgt. Nathan Smith.

The two attended and graduated from the Mid-Michigan Kennels Basic/Advanced Police K-9 Academy certifying in narcotics, tracking and protection.

Adam served the sheriffs office from 2006 until he was medically retired in 2014.

After retirement Adam went on to live a peaceful life with Smith and his family until his passing.

"We are grateful for Adams dedicated service to Sanilac County and he will be sadly missed," said Biniecki.
TIR-Trans Ukraine 2017 exhibitions will open new opportunities to the market of commercial transport and logistics of Ukraine.

Innovative logistics practices, transportation and forwarding services, automation of warehouse processes of cargo handling on all mode transport, as well as the whole variety of commercial vehicles, spare parts and equipment will be presented in the framework of international exhibitions TIR-Trans Ukraine 2017.

The largest specialized exhibitions in Ukraine will be held from 25 to 27 October in the territory of the International Exhibition Center (15, Brovarsky Ave., Kyiv). The main players of the domestic and international market of commercial transport, logistics, infrastructure and storage will show the guests of the exhibitions full range of the best solutions and opportunities for business development of the transport and logistics industry.

Traditionally more than 50 largest companies from 8 countries take part in the international exhibitions TIR-Trans Ukraine. Organizers expect more than 4,000 professionals, representatives of business and public sector from all regions of Ukraine and other countries. Among main participants are: Ukrainian Railways, Kryukov Railway Car Building Works, Suckces Sp z.o.o., AvtoMaz-Ukraine, Goodyear Dunlop Tires Ukraine, Hyundai Motor Ukraine and many others.

The professional business environment of the exhibitions allows each participant and guest of the event to establish new and strengthen existing partnerships, gain valuable industry information and experience, and explore the business activity of partners and competitors.

Specialists of the industry will be able to see firsthand the novelties of cargo, commercial and special equipment, familiarize themselves with transport and storage equipment, discuss the current problems of the transport industry and gain the necessary knowledge in the framework of business programme of exhibitions.

This year the basis of the business programme will be:

International seminar "Trade facilitation and optimization of solutions for international supply chains". Event will bring together experts and specialists working on aspects of trade and logistics facilitation, exporters, importers, forwarders, representatives of international economic institutions. Domestic and foreign professional communities, government institutions and government bodies are invited to participate.

Organisers: "Port community" Association, Association of customs brokers of Ukraine, Association "Ukrainian National Committee of the International Chamber of Commerce" (ICC Ukraine), Association of transport-forwarding and logistic organizations "UKRVNESHTRANS".

Discussion conference Logistics Practices. Prospects for the development of the market of transport and logistics services. The conference will be attended by representatives of leading logistics companies and well-known experts of the transport and logistics services market.

Organiser: "Ukrainian Logistics Alliance" Association

Discussion meeting for transport companies and service stations with leading specialists of manufacturing companies: Aktas, Fersa, Federal-Mogul, Hengst, Knorr-Bremse, MANN + HUMMEL, NRF, Sampa, Schaeffler, SwdRheinol, Tenneco, Tribo, Valeo, ZF and etc. Organiser: Irbis-Auto (TIR exhibition), etc.

We invite industry experts to visit the main transport and logistic event for exporters, importers, brokers, owners of fleets, warehouses, cargo owners, retailers, freight forwarders of logistic companies to take advantage of new opportunities and prospects for business development.

Organiser of the international exhibitions TIR-Trans Ukraine 2017  is the leading exhibition operator of Ukraine Premier Expo (ITE GroupPlc/Great Britain).

For free of charge visiting of the exhibitions please register promo-code 93FV by link: http://www.tir-motorshow.com.ua/ru/registration#personal

Detail information:

http://www.transukraine.com.ua/index.php

http://www.tir-motorshow.com.ua/ru/about_exhibition

Contacts of the organisers:

Project director  Yuriy Ershov,

Tel: +380 44 4968645/ . 254.

E-mail: Y.Ershov@pe.com.ua

Media accreditation: + 38 (093) 973 86 16 Alexander Kazmirishin

E-mail: A.Kazmirishin@pe.com.ua
MIDDLETOWN  Connecticut officials are expected to continue the maximum-security confinement of a psychiatric hospital patient who killed a 9-year-old girl after walking away from a state treatment facility.

The state Psychiatric Security Review Board has scheduled a hearing on David Peterson for Nov. 3. The board must review his mental health and confinement every two years. An agenda for the meeting indicates there are no requests to change his confinement conditions.

Peterson wandered off the grounds of a low-security section of Connecticut Valley Hospital in July 1989 and stabbed Jessica Short of Wallingford to death at a city street fair.

Peterson, 37, who was on an eight-hour pass after being ordered to CVH on a 15-year sentence in May 1968, stabbed 9-year-old Jessica Short repeatedly in the head and chest with a large hunting knife, according to news reports at the time.

The stabbing took place on Main Street during one of the citys annual summer sidewalk sales that routinely drew thousands to the downtown area. Peterson grabbed Short after she walked out of the F. W. Woolworth store at 428-432 Main St., (now Irreplaceable Artifacts) and attacked her with the knife before a passerby and two officers pulled him off her, press reports said.

The Facebook page In Loving Memory of Jessica Short posts links to periodic articles on the case.

Peterson had been found guilty by reason of insanity an assault and burglary charges, Martha Lewis, executive director of the state Psychiatric Security Review Board, said in a July 29, 1989, Associated Press story.

Peterson was acquitted of murder and escape March 30, 1990, in the case. According to the New York Times story, Peterson, a chronic paranoid schizophrenic with a history of mental illness and violence since his youth, chose his victim randomly.

When he was sentenced in 1990, the New York Times, reported, Peterson had spent 15 years in mental institutions and was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1971 and 1988 in other stabbing attacks and was committed to state hospitals for those crimes.

Mr. Peterson told the police that he had killed Miss Short to take revenge on his doctors because they wouldnt change his medication, the Times reported.

He was committed to state care for a 70-year term that expires in 2060. Hes currently being treated at the maximum-security Whiting Forensic Division of Connecticut Valley Hospital.

Middletown Press staff reports contributed to this story.
HARTFORD  The Connecticut Department of Public Health, along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, is recognizing National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week.

This years theme, Lead-Free Kids for a Healthy Future, highlights the importance of testing your child, developing an awareness of lead paint hazards in your home and learning how to prevent lead poisonings serious health effects, Krista Veneziano, supervisor of the DPH Lead, Radon and Healthy Homes Program, said in a press release.

NLPPW is dedicated to actions that address health effects of lead exposure and increase awareness of childhood lead poisoning prevention. Despite the continued presence of lead in the environment, lead poisoning is entirely preventable, according to the statement.

According to the CDC, nearly half a million children living in the United States have elevated blood lead levels that may cause significant damage to their health. Major sources of lead exposure to children include lead-based paint and lead-contaminated dust in deteriorating buildings. Children can also be exposed to lead from additional sources, including take-home exposures from a workplace and lead in soil.

Lead paint use was banned in the United States in 1978. While the prevalence and incidence rates of lead poisoned children in Connecticut have been decreasing over the past 15 years, due to mandatory childhood screening and primary prevention efforts, Connecticuts housing stock is among the oldest in the country, the release continued. Many houses still contain lead paint hazards that have the potential to poison children.

The DPH offers simple things parents can do to help protect their family from lead exposure:

 Get tested. Even if young children seem healthy, ask the doctor to test them for lead. Mandatory screening is the law in Connecticut.

 Learn about drinking water. Water pipes in some older homes may contain lead solder, where lead may leach out into the water.

 Understand the facts. DPH can provide helpful information about preventing childhood lead poisoning.

For information, visit ct.gov/preventlead or for Spanish educational materials, visit ct.gov/plomo. Contact the DPH Lead, Radon and Healthy Homes Program at 860-509-7299.
MIDDLETOWN  Middlesex Community College Honors Program students took part in a field trip last week to Yale University in New Haven to learn about the Ivy League school.

Throughout the two-year, flexible program, MxCC honors students hone the leadership, academic and professional skills necessary for transfer, and such field trips provide an added benefit, according to the college.

Associate Professor of English Eva Jones, coordinator of the program, and an admissions tour guide from Yale led the 19 MxCC students on a private tour of the main campus, which included residence halls, the Yale Art Gallery, the Beinecke Library and main library.

Honors students take their studies and leadership experiences beyond the confines of MxCCs campus community, Jones said in a prepared statement. This helps them make a greater impact no matter where they go after graduation and/or transfer from MxCC. Nearly every trip we plan bears some academic and cultural component.

Most students in the program plan on transferring, so the tours are intended to help them when deciding on which colleges to apply to for admission, Jones said.

While some of our honors students are interested in making application to Yale, Yale Universitys rich history and abundant resources may come in handy to all of our students at some point in their future, she added.

Im impressed by the sense of community and the way campus buildings and residence halls are situated, Natasha Ramos, a criminal justice MxCC student from Meriden said in the release. The residence halls face inward and encourage students from different majors to interact with each other, she said. Also, you can see that the students are just like us, making me wonder, maybe I have chance to go there one day.

Business administration major Jeremy Boughton of Middlefield was inspired by the history of the school, he said in the release. This was my first time visiting Yale. The architecture is beautiful. The experience gave me a feeling of what it might be like to live on a campus, as well as the motivation to keep my grades up, he said.

The Yale field trip was made possible by the recent establishment of the Dr. Anna Wasescha Honors Program Fund, named in recognition of the former MxCC president who returned to her home state of Minnesota last May.

To learn about the program, visit http://mxcc.edu/ learning-options /honors-program.
Farm-state interests just conquered Big Oil in a fight over biofuels, proving that in Donald Trump's Washington, King Corn still reigns.

The clash erupted over the future of the Renewable Fuel Standard, a 12-year-old law that compels the use of fuels such as corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel. Although the president had repeatedly promised Midwest voters he would "protect" ethanol and support the program, his Environmental Protection Agency was considering steps to dilute the mandate.

Farm-state governors and senators revolted -- setting off a behind-the-scenes struggle between two special-interest heavyweights. Lobbyists for oil refiners warned of higher gasoline prices if the administration backed down. Iowa leaders countered that Trump could face political retribution in 2020 during the state's first-in-the-nation caucuses. Republican senators threatened to delay confirmation of his nominees.

"I wasn't afraid to put the squeeze on," Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, said in an interview. "This was really important. We've got 88,500 family farms here in Iowa, and they rely on this."

After three weeks of frenzied lobbying by both sides, the president ordered his EPA administrator to back off -- handing an unalloyed victory to the farm belt. EPA chief Scott Pruitt's formal capitulation came days later in the form of a letter that detailed concessions to biofuel producers and underscored corn's continued clout in the nation's capital.

The issue is politically perilous for any president, but especially Trump, who visited ethanol factories while campaigning in Iowa and promised the state's voters he would stand by the home-grown biofuel if they elected him to the White House.

But biofuel industry leaders grew worried after Trump began staffing his administration with allies of the oil industry, which views the biofuel requirements as costly and burdensome. Chief among them: Pruitt, a former attorney general from Oklahoma who criticized the RFS before he became EPA administrator and is expected to run for political office from the state, where ethanol-free gasoline flows at many filling stations and the oil industry dominates.

Then came a formal EPA request for public comment on possibly reducing biodiesel quotas. The Sept. 26 "notice of data availability" that set those potential changes in motion posed some 20 questions about ways to lower quotas. None related to increasing the mandate. It explicitly invoked oil industry arguments about the danger of relying on imported biodiesel.

A day later, Bloomberg reported the EPA was weighing a plan to allow exported biofuel to count toward domestic quotas -- a move that would drive down compliance costs for refiners but disadvantage many ethanol makers.

The threat was obvious. "It galvanized our industry," said Brooke Coleman, executive director of the Advanced Biofuels Business Council.

The oil industry, by contrast, remained fractured over the best prescription for what they argue are rising costs of complying with the law. Oil industry lobbyists urged Trump administration officials not to give in to an "extortion" attempt by senators, nor back down from changes they described as modest fixes needed to keep gasoline prices from spiking.

But they were outmatched. In the Midwest, the news of a possible reduction in biofuels quotas arrived as cash-strapped farmers were already growing concerned about Trump's trade policy. Taking the teeth out of a program that helps to put a floor under corn and soybean prices would only add to their current woes, they worried. Some 38 percent of the corn crop is destined for ethanol plants, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The response was immediate. Ethanol supporters who had battled biodiesel backers on other policy matters linked arm in arm.

"With that one-two punch, there was not a segment of the industry that was not facing a severe threat to its future," said Monte Shaw, head of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. "The only alternative was to try to get this on the president's radar screen and hope that he in fact was going to stick by his promises -- and he did."

The biofuel industry was able to count on a host of Midwest politicians to advance their cause, from statehouses to the U.S. Capitol. Thirty-eight senators sent a letter to Pruitt backing the RFS on Oct. 5, and four governors sent their own missive to Trump on Oct. 16.

Among the industry's fiercest advocates: Chuck Grassley, the Republican senior senator from Iowa, who immediately decried a "bait and switch" by the Trump administration. He took to Twitter and the Senate floor to voice his displeasure. Grassley's complaints prompted a call from Trump, who told Pruitt to meet with senator. "That woke everybody up," Grassley said.

"My point in talking to the president was to make the point that he had some people in his administration that weren't helping him keep his campaign promises," Grassley said in an interview. "He needed to know he was being undercut."

Trump subsequently directed his EPA administrator to resolve the senator's concerns, according to people familiar with the discussions. The message: Keep Grassley happy.

Grassley had unique leverage. He heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, which plays a gatekeeper role vetting judicial nominations and has the power to probe numerous issues, including Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.

"It is clear that the political novice -- the president -- knows how powerful the head of the Judiciary Committee is," said Jeff Stein, a political analyst who hosts an afternoon talk radio program on KXEL in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "To have Iowa's leading senators make very public stands sent a message to the White House that this was different."

Grassley and Pruitt met for lunch on Monday, Oct. 16, followed by a closed-door meeting with four other senators a day later. According to multiple accounts, Grassley did most of the talking in that session -- occasionally with a raised voice.

Pruitt and his staff members may have thought the RFS program "could be modified a little bit without doing any harm," Grassley said in an interview. "Our job was to point out great harm could be done, and we made our point."

An EPA spokesman declined to comment on this story. A top EPA official said last week that the agency's goal was to make the program work better -- and to encourage domestic biofuel use, not undermine the initiative.

Even beyond politics, biofuel backers had additional leverage. Ernst, the other Iowa senator, is one of 11 Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which was considering the nomination of lawyer Bill Wehrum to lead the EPA office that administers the biofuel program. With 10 panel Democrats expected to vote no, her position would be decisive.

Although Pruitt told senators he would support the RFS, Ernst insisted she needed Pruitt's assurances in writing before she could support Wehrum.

Back in Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds pressed the issue in a phone call with the president, following it up with a Wednesday news conference with ethanol producers.

"They are feeling the pressure, and that's why we need to keep it up, we can't let down," Reynolds said then.

The following evening, Pruitt sent a letter to Ernst and other senators promising the EPA would not cut biodiesel quotas and would drop consideration of the ethanol exports idea. Ernst said she would back Wehrum for the EPA job, and the Senate committee rescheduled its vote on his nomination for Wednesday.

But not everyone was pleased.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board termed the episode a "special-interest shakedown." Chet Thompson, head of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, said it was "astonishing" to see Pruitt making concessions "to appease a few senators at the expense of American families and workers."

Valero Energy Corp., an independent refiner seeking some of the changes, blasted the senators' opposition as "bullying" rooted in "a desire to maintain the status quo" and "protect windfall profits associated with unregulated trading" of biofuel compliance credits.

Coleman, with the biofuels council, says this wasn't a case of the administration bowing to special interests, but rather it was an example of Trump keeping his promise to the mid-American voters who got him elected.

"We're not the swamp; we're the anti-swamp," Coleman said. "He bucked special interests to return to and in favor of rural America."

---

Bloomberg's Mario Parker and Jennifer Jacobs contributed.
An Indigenous airman, who had to cut his braids when first joining the Air Force two years ago, is now one of the first in...
The Air Force doesn't currently plan to put B-52 Stratofortress bombers on a 24-hour nuclear mission alert, a general said on Monday.

"There's not any discussions or plans to bring bombers on a 24-hour nuclear alert right now," Air Force spokesman Brig. Gen. Ed Thomas told reporters at the Pentagon during a briefing.

But it doesn't mean they couldn't.

When asked if the new and upgraded facilities could be used for such a mission, Thomas replied, "Absolutely they could be."

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"Because frankly they are for the NC3 [nuclear command, control and communications] crews -- they will be used as alert facilities," he said.

The general's comments followed a report from DefenseOne that the Air Force is preparing to put the bombers back on 24-hour alert status in part by upgrading facilities for hundreds of airmen to support the potential mission.

Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein, the service's top uniformed leader, told a reporter during a recent trip to Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, that preparations are underway should the Air Force get the call to reinstate the 24-hour alert status.

"This is yet one more step in ensuring that we're prepared," Goldfein said in the interview. "I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we're prepared going forward," he said.

Goldfein's comments come at a time of rising tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, which continues to test ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads despite repeated condemnation from the international community.

During the briefing at the Pentagon on Monday, Thomas added, "We're routinely upgrading our facilities. Whether it's Barksdale or Offutt [Air Force Base, Nebraska] or other locations. [Civil engineers] are always able to take the limited tax dollars we have and be able to keep [facilities] in a high-state of readiness."

Until 1991, pilots sat on "strip alert," he said, in facilities near bombers should they need to take off at a moment's notice and conduct a nuclear strike anywhere in the world. That infrastructure is currently being renovated.

The general didn't say whether similar renovations are occurring at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota or other installations where nuclear bombers also operate.

When asked if the Air Force is thus unprepared for the mission should they get the call, Thomas replied, "Options is our business. Those discussions aren't happening -- could they? Or would we be ready for them? Absolutely.

"We prepare for every contingency," he said, adding that STRATCOM would "own" such a decision.

"All decisions would come from U.S. Strategic Command" on how to best use B-52 Stratofortress or B-2 Spirit bombers "if we were to do it," Thomas said.

The B-52 or B-2 would be the only bomber platforms in the Air Force's inventory to execute a nuclear attack from an aircraft. The B-1B Lancer is no longer a nuclear-capable bomber.

He added, "Could we do the mission? We could stand that up very quickly."

Separately, AFGSC stood-up a new organization in April to oversee the Air Force's NC3 systems in an activation ceremony at Barksdale.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.

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The Air Force is still working through how it plans to use the Trump administration's executive order to voluntarily recall up to 1,000 pilots back to active-duty, the head of the service's pilot shortage crisis task force said Monday.

Through Executive Order 13223, signed by President Donald Trump on Friday, the Air Force can now be "focused on getting more authorities in terms of time and numbers," said Brig. Gen. Mike Koscheski, the Air Force Aircrew Crisis Task Force director.

The Air Force doesn't plan to force anyone back on active duty involuntarily any capacity -- even as it finds itself 1,500 pilots short, with the deficit growing, Koscheski said.

"We are an all volunteer force -- that is our focus," Koscheski stressed during a briefing with reporters. Through the order, the Air Force gains "more access to more retirees" through an extended amount of time, he said.

Koscheski said the EO is an addendum of the Voluntary Retired Return to Active Duty, or VRRAD program, instituted by the service in July to welcome back retired pilots into active-duty staff positions.

VRRAD was limited to 25 slots; Now, the service can open the program up to more people over the next three years, and not just for staff positions, but also for instructor positions.

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The authorities were "previously there," Koscheski said, but limited. "Now the numbers are greater." Additionally, "we now have options for a longer assignment cycle," Koscheski said.

He added, "This is going to be a case-by-case basis," Koscheski said. "Every assignment will be a handmade, wooden shoe because it will depend."

The service's latest effort is to help stabilize the growing deficit. Koscheski said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will institute the final cap number -- likely 1,000, as the Pentagon said on Friday -- but it's unlikely the Air Force will ever reach that potential.

Still Planning Expanded VRRAD

Should the Air Force choose to put an older pilot back in the cockpit, the Air Force will weigh "how long has it been since you last flew that F-16" for example," Koscheski said.

The Air Force currently finds itself 1,500 pilots short, to include 1,300 fighter pilots, the general said.

Through the VRRAD program's first iteration, the Air Force has only had three retirees sign up, he said. About "10 to 15 pilots were interested in the original program" applications, geared toward pilots who held a job in the 11X career field.

Applications were slated to close Dec. 2018. The returning retirees under VRRAD will not be eligible for aviation bonuses. They will deploy only if they volunteer.

Those three that are thus far coming in will be placed in staff positions only, Koscheski said.

Upping Training

An Air Force official told Military.com on Friday that the measure may not be as advantageous as it may seem.

"To recall pilots to active duty, we have a zero sum game ... the training pipeline is finite," the official said.

When asked whether or not the training pipeline could expand for additional pilots, Koscheski said the service is looking into it.

"We are looking to expand the training pipeline -- but again we need a stable budget," he said.

Koscheski said recruitment has not been an issue -- it's the retention and resources to keep pilots trained up, ready, learning and flying that has always been the concern.

"Our long term fix to the pilot crisis is to grow our way out of this and it's going to take a while to get in place what we need to start producing more pilots," he said.

Another initiative the service has repeatedly been trying: bonuses.

The Air Force this summer announced it is increasing its flight incentive pay and aviation bonus programs -- with bonuses of up to $455,000 over 13 years for some fighter pilots.

The latest EO and bulk of initiatives come at a time when the Air Force is losing its pilots to the commercial aviation industry.

Koscheski said leaders are having a tough time catching up with what the airlines can offer monetarily and a more stable lifestyle.

For the military, this is "a crisis because it affect our warfighting because our numbers are low -- when you look at our readiness, obviously our pilot experience and our manning is directly related to our readiness and our combat lethality," Koscheski said.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.
Have you ever been drawn to nature? Have you had an urge to sit by the sea, hike in the woods or just stand barefoot in the...
Minhaj University students show solidarity with Rohingya Muslims

MQI Secretary General Khurram Nawaz Gandapur has said that the Burmese governments treatment of the Rohingya Muslims is both condemnable as well as accountable. He asked the UN, human rights organizations and the Islamic world to raise voice against the genocide of the minority Muslim community. He said that the UN and the Islamic world is duty bound to speak up against the worst human rights violations and take effective steps to stop extermination of the Rohingyas in Burma.

Khurram Nawaz Gandapur made these remarks while addressing a protest demonstration organized by the students of Minhaj University to express solidarity with the persecuted community. The hundreds of male and female students were holding banners and placards along with their teachers and professors. They were raising slogans to condemn the sheer brutality perpetrated on the hapless Muslims by the Burmese government.

The MQI Secretary General termed the genocide of the Muslims as the humiliation of humanity and a slap in the face of the civilized world. He said that human rights organizations and UN Human Rights Council are aware of the brutalities and massacre on the Muslims of Burma and are also spreading awareness about it. He said that silence of the powerful countries on instances of the worst human rights violations is akin to supporting the oppressors in their nefarious designs.

Khurram Nawaz Gandapur said that oppression and racially biased attitude of the Burmese government is against the accept norms of civilized conduct and the charter of the UN. The protestors demanded establishment of a fund to financially helping the Burmese Muslims and impressed upon the world conscience to wake up before it is too late. They said that the way people including women and children are being massacred demands that time to think is long gone and it is time strict action was taken to stop extermination of a community.
FLINT, MI - City Council has opted to extend Flint's current short-term contract with the Detroit-based Great Lakes Water Authority for two years -- allowing time to independently analyze all water options available to Flint while satisfying a federal judge's order to act.

After nearly six hours of raucous debate, discussion, laughter, tears and moments of prayer at a meeting on Monday, Oct. 23, eight of the nine council members came together to vote on a resolution to extend Flint's contract with Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) until Oct. 31, 2019.

First Ward Councilman Eric Mays - who is often at odds with the other council members - abstained from the vote due to "lack of discussion and action," he said.

The two-year resolution was proposed by Sixth Ward Councilman Herbert Winfrey, one of the three council members on the ad hoc committee involved in closed-door mediation with attorneys in the lawsuit between the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and Flint.

Flint, state get 24 hours to respond to request for water source decision delay

"This will allow us to have an independent analysis of our water source," Winfrey said. "This is what we've been asking for ... reliability and affordability. We need to be able to determine if (a 30-year contract with GLWA) is that Rolls-Royce of a deal we've been told about. I don't see that in the contract."

Flint is currently in a short-term contract with GLWA, set to expire at the end of this month.

The council also voted 8-0 - with an abstention from Mays - to table talks on the proposed 30-year contract with GLWA for another 30 days.

The 30-year contract is backed by Mayor Karen Weaver and Gov. Rick Snyder, but some council members are skeptical of the recommendation and say they want an independent consultant to review all long-term water options available to the city before a vote.

Council members say they have been left out of negotiations surrounding the deal and have not been provided with all the information needed to vote on the long-term contract.

In June, the MDEQ sued Flint in federal court to force the city's hand in making a water source decision. Council intervened in the lawsuit with its own attorneys.

Calling out a "failure of leadership" by the council to act on selecting a long-term water source for Flint, Detroit U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson issued an order last week mandating the body to select a long-term source for the city this week. The council has since filed a motion for the judge to reconsider his order, and MDEQ has until the end of the business day on Tuesday, Oct. 24 to submit its response.

Judge blisters council, orders Flint to pick future water source by Oct. 23

As the council discussed Winfrey's motion, Interim City Attorney Angela Wheeler cautioned against the two-year contract, noting that it could increase Flint's water rates and "jeopardize the stability of the city."

She said the city has already tried and failed to extend any more short-term contracts with GLWA.

But Fourth Ward City Councilwoman Kate Fields questioned the ethics behind the attorney's advice, as Wheeler represents the city's administration in the federal lawsuit and is at odds with the council.

"I believe it was highly unethical and possibly illegal for giving council her opinion on this," Fields said. "She's got to pick which hat to wear."

Wheeler called the comments "completely disrespectful and completely inappropriate" and said she served on behalf of all of Flint.

Whether the two-year contract is considered "long-term" is up to the judge, said Ninth Ward Councilman and mayoral candidate Scott Kincaid, but he said he believed the council's eleventh-hour resolution fit Lawson's requirements.

"When I read the judge's ruling, he's looking for a long-term, sustainable water source," Kincaid said. "But that leaves out 'affordable.' (Detroit) controls the cost and our residents pay the price. We've got the highest water bills in the country."

He added that, with the 30-year GLWA contract, Flint residents "easily have over a 50 percent increase" over the next 10 years.

Several of the council members, including Fifth Ward Councilman Wantwaz Davis, suggested that the state was imposing arbitrary deadlines to strong-arm the council into the 30-year contract.

"Who made the consequences - the people who want us to buy the water from them," Davis said. "Why is there this deadline? There's always time to negotiate."

The city of Flint filed a response to the council's motion to reconsider late in the day on Monday, Oct. 23, saying that attorneys for the council have not communicated with the city since Friday about potential negotiations. The MDEQ has until the close of business on Tuesday, Oct. 24 to file its response.
FLINT, MI -- Health Alliance Plan is working to keep Flint-area residents well with the Fit for Fall Health Fair on Saturday, Oct. 28. The fair will be held at the Flint Farmers' Market from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and will offer residents free flu shots, health insurance advice, health screenings and prizes.

"We're happy to partner with the Genesee County Health Department this year," said Tom Spring, director of wellness and community programs, Health Alliance Plan. "Their scope of programming and community outreach is outstanding. It's critical that people in this area get the proper information to make the best decisions for their health care and wellness."

Representatives of the Genesee County Health Department will be on site to give flu shots and check children's immunization records. HAP Chef Kristi Zebrowski will demonstrate how to prepare nutritious recipes that the whole family will love. Free samples of each dish will be available.

HAP representatives will discuss health insurance basics and how insurance benefits can be maximized to meet personal health goals. Representatives of the Hamilton Community Health Network will help people get signed up onsite for Medicaid or Medicare insurance.

Other participating organizations include the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Flint, the Office of the Attorney General, Genesee Intermediate School District, National Kidney Foundation of Michigan, Hurley Medical Center, the CRIM Fitness Foundation, the American Heart Association, North Flint Baptist Church, Total Life Prosperity, Fresh Start Community Development Corporation and the World Wide Toxicology.



Visit hap.org/events for more information.
CORUNNA, MI - A pair of Grand Rapids men have been found guilty of felony murder in the shooting deaths of two Flint residents outside a Shiawassee County Walmart store.

Otis Smith Jr. and Anthony Holloway were found guilty Monday, Oct. 23 in Shiawassee County Circuit Court on the murder charges stemming from the Jan. 27 deaths of Joseph Michael Carson, 31, and Anthony Lee Hammond, 39 in the parking lot of the store off M-21 in Caledonia Township.

Carson and Hammond had set up a deal through Craigslist to sell medical marijuana overages when they were allegedly shot and killed by Holloway and Smith.

No plea offers were made by the Shiawassee County Prosecutor's Office for Holloway and Smith Jr.

Erin Marie Mongar, who was dating Smith at the time, was believed to be driving the getaway vehicle following the double murder.

She pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder, punishable by up to life in prison. Mongar, a Grand Rapids resident, told the court she would testify against Holloway and Smith as part of the plea deal.
FLINT, MI -- The state wants a federal court judge to require the city to immediately enter into a 30-year contract with the Great Lakes Water Authority and to disregard objections raised by the City Council.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality urged U.S. District Judge David Lawson to allow Mayor Karen Weaver to enter into the GLWA agreement -- with or without the council's blessing -- in a court filing Tuesday, Oct. 24.

"As detailed above, the council has failed to present an alternative to the agreement that would resolve the dire predicament the city is in," the DEQ court filing says. "Their primary interest continues to be to delay their decision as long as possible."

The DEQ sued the city in June, asking Lawson to require Flint to accept a 30-year contract with GLWA that's supported by Mayor Karen Weaver or an alternative that meets the requirements of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrative order.

State officials said the city's failure to act in picking a long-term water source constituted a threat to the public's health and would eventually bankrupt the city's water fund.

The council filed an emergency motion Sunday, Oct. 22, asking Lawson to give it 75 days to work with a consultant to study its water source options or to dismiss the DEQ lawsuit altogether.

Council voted Monday, Oct. 23, to extend a short-term agreement to continue purchasing water from GLWA for two years and to table talks on the proposed 30-year contract with GLWA for another 30 days.

But the DEQ said in its filing that "there is no indication the council has sought GLWA would accept (that extension) deal."

In a separate filing Tuesday, city attorneys representing Weaver sided with the state, arguing that "forcing the council into a utility contract is within the power of the court."

City attorneys argued that council "wants the best of both worlds" by accepting GLWA water at a reduced rate and state funds allowing Flint to update its treatment plant

In addition to the GLWA contract, council members have said their options include treating raw water from the Karengnondi Water Authority at the city's treatment plant or purchasing treated water from Genesee County.

"This is not possible," the city's brief states. "GLWA will not allow council to string it along while it attempts to secure another water source."

Flint city attorneys also argued that the council has been slow in hiring its independent water analyst, Gary Cline, and that the hiring process is still not final.

Council voted earlier this month to hire Cline for $150,000. He is a chief development director at a North Dakota-based environmental consulting firm, but the contract was met with opposition from the city's legal and financial departments over the funding.

Weaver has said she's prepared to sign a 30-year contract with GLWA, a deal that the state, the city and the water authority were involved in negotiating.

Flint Journal staff writer Oona Goodin-Smith contributed to this report.
UPDATE:

Clio students, staff raise $1,500 for family of victim of deadly rock-throwing

UPDATE:

Close-knit Clio grappling with aftershock of I-75 rock-throwing death

UPDATE:

Clio school district offers condolences to family of man killed in rock-throwing

FLINT, MI - The five teenagers accused of throwing more than a dozen rocks from a highway overpass - including one that pierced a van's windshield and killed a 32-year-old Mt. Morris man - were arraigned in court on Tuesday, Oct. 24, on second-degree murder and other charges.

The teens were arraigned before Genesee District Judge William H. Crawford II on Tuesday, Oct. 24 on charges of second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit second-degree murder, malicious destruction of property and other felony and misdemeanor charges in connection with the death of Kenneth A. White.

Families for both White and the suspects were in the courtroom as Crawford read off the charges for each suspect.

Those charged include 17-year-old Kyle Anger, 16-year-olds Mark Sekelsky and Mikadyn Payne, along with 15-year-olds Alexzander Miller and Trevor Gray, all of Clio.

Crawford denied bail for all five citing "the seriousness of the nature of these charges and the danger to the public."

In total, the teens each face eight felonies and two misdemeanors in connection with White's death.

Anger is being held in the Genesee County Jail, while the other teens are being held in the Genesee Valley Regional Center for juveniles.

All face the possibility of up to life in prison.

More than a dozen rocks were allegedly thrown from over the Dodge Road overpass along southbound Interstate 75 and struck multiple vehicles, including the van White was traveling in. The rock that struck that vehicle punctured the windshield and led to his death, authorities say.

White's family declined to comment on the incident Tuesday, Oct. 24.

The teens are due back in court on Nov. 2.

Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell previously said tires and an engine piston also were thrown from the Farrand Road overpass onto I-75, roughly three miles north from where White was killed. Several other vehicles sustained damage, including flat tires, from items thrown onto the interstate.

The rocks, one weighing 20 pounds, were gathered from a dead-end street in Vienna Township and put in the flatbed of a pickup truck, Pickell said.

"It's just a sad situation that hopefully will be determined by the facts of the case," said Fred Meiers, the attorney for Gray.

After throwing the items, the suspects went to eat at a local fast-food restaurant investigators said on Monday while announcing the charges.

In coming to the decision on second-degree murder charges, Leyton said on Monday that Michigan law doesn't call for first-degree murder charges in this case.

"While some may be saying, 'Well, we want first-degree murder.' I don't believe there was pre-mediation (to cause a death) here," Leyton said.

Pickell previously said this case goes beyond teens joking around.

"It's not a prank. It's second-degree murder. I don't think anybody is laughing," said Pickell. "I think if there's any warning both David and I could give, it's telling young people you make a bad decision you could be spending the rest of your life in prison. This is not a prank."
Xi Jinping presides over the fourth meeting of the presidium of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 23, 2017. (Xinhua/Lan Hongguang)

Top leaders of the Communist Party of China (CPC) will meet the press Wednesday morning.

Members of the Standing Committee of the 19th CPC Central Committee Political Bureau, who will be elected at the first plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, are scheduled to meet Chinese and foreign journalists at the Great Hall of the People at about 11:45 a.m. Wednesday.

The meeting will be broadcast live on Chinese television and radio as well as online.
[October 24, 2017] Florida County Delivers Uninterrupted Emergency-Response Services in Category 5 Storm With Help From Rocket Software

During the recent devastation caused by Hurricane Irma, the Safety and Emergency Services, Division of Radio and Technology in Pinellas County, Florida provided uninterrupted life-saving services to the most populous region of the state's Gulf Coast thanks to its Rocket MultiValue Application Platform. Despite the torrential rain and 90-mile-per-hour winds, the county maintained 100% uptime for emergency response systems to more than a million residents of St. Petersburg, Clearwater and surrounding communities. The county runs a number of systems based on the Rocket MultiValue Application Platform, including a dispatching system for more than 70 fire stations and 400 fire trucks. In addition, the county has deployed Storm Impressions, an application built on Rocket technology that allows first responders to report the state of the weather in their jurisdictions. This tool enabled emergency responders to know precisely which areas had been impacted the most and quickly deliver aid to where it was urgently needed. "During Hurricane Irma, all our Rocket UniData and Rocket Web DE applications performed flawlessly," said Jacqueline Weinreich, Director of Radio & Technology. "The Rocket olution never faltered and in fact was instrumental in helping the county provide support and relief efforts to our citizens during this crisis."



To meet the expected spike in demand, the county doubled its emergency call-center staff from 20 to 40 before Irma made landfall. As projected, the number of calls soared to nearly 6,000 on the day of the hurricane - nearly triple the usual volume - and the number remained high for several more days. The Rocket MultiValue Application Platform provided 500 millisecond response time which enabled emergency personnel (who monitor up to 10 screens simultaneously) to rapidly identify and address the needs of the residents. The Rocket solution allowed responders to quickly enter initial damage assessments, seamlessly support priority dispatch protocols, as well as identify geocode structural issues within jurisdictional boundaries. The host-based nature of the Rocket application allowed for last minute modifications to be made by the county's staff programmers, enabling them to make necessary changes to their dispatch protocols. Without having to deploy changes to each individual client, these changes are immediately available to every user. "We are gratified that the Rocket MultiValue Application Platform enabled Pinellas County to save lives and protect its citizens from the after-effects of the punishing winds and rains Hurricane Irma delivered to that region of Florida," said P. Gary Gregory, SVP of Technology Solutions at Rocket Software. "Our thoughts go out to all of our customers and partners affected by Irma, Harvey and Maria. Certainly, crisis and emergency management is a great example of how technology can provide the automation and response times required to move people and resources to where they are most needed with a high level of efficiency."

About Rocket Software Rocket Software (www.rocketsoftware.com) is a technology company that helps organizations in the IBM (News - Alert) ecosystem build solutions that meet today's needs while extending the value of their technology investments for the future. Thousands of companies depend on Rocket to solve their most challenging business problems by helping them run their critical infrastructure, business processes, and data, as well as extend those assets to take advantage of cloud, mobile, analytics, and other future innovations. Founded in 1990, Rocket is based in Waltham, Massachusetts with locations in Europe, Asia, and Australia. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024005966/en/

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[October 24, 2017] Money20/20 to launch in China

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ascential plc (LSE: ASCL.L), the global business-to-business information company, announces today that its Chief Executive Duncan Painter has personally signed a long-term partnership agreement with the city of Hangzhou and the district of Xiaoshan to run a new edition of its highly successful Money20/20 event series. The agreement was signed with Xie Shuang Cheng, Vice Mayor of Hangzhou and Gu Chun Xiao, Deputy Warden of Xiaoshan. The new event called Money20/20 China will be held in November 2018 at the Hangzhou International Expo Center, the venue where the 2016 G20 Summit was hosted. Money20/20 brings together visionaries and innovators from across the entire spectrum of payments, fintech and financial services to connect and create the future of money. Already operating US, European and pan-Asian editions, Money20/20 offers participants unparalleled networking opportunities and a high-profile agenda, all of which underpins Money20/20's mission to create a simpler, fairer, faster financial world for business and society. Tracey Davies, President, Money20/20, cited "China's unique market and domestic appetite to both invnt and embrace new fintech products" as the reason to launch this new edition of the leading payments and fintech event, adding that "The rise of fintech in China is something that no one in this industry can ignore."



The host city of Hangzhou, in China's Zhejiang Province, has been chosen based on its long-term commitment to the future of finance. It is also home to such financial innovators as Alibaba and LianLian Group to name a few. Cashless, environmentally designed and home to a new wave of China's internet entrepreneurs, Hangzhou will provide the perfect, long-term home for Money20/20 China. Mr. Xie commented, "Our partnership with Ascential and Money20/20 will enable better information and resource sharing. The platform of Money20/20 China will support us with our strategic vision for Hangzhou's financial development as we further facilitate cooperation across industries, integrate our resources, expand our international network, and accelerate innovation in the region."

Commenting on the launch in China, Davies said, "Thanks to the formidable speed, skill and scale of China's inventiveness in fintech, China is often the country innovators look to for inspiration. It represents the largest fintech investment market in the world and at Money20/20 China, companies from China and international markets will have an unprecedented opportunity to learn about what makes China's fintech industry so forward-looking and progressive." The launch of Money20/20 in China is being widely supported by prestigious partners including ACI Worldwide, Ant Financial, Baidu Finance, China Everbright Bank, DHGate.com, IDG Capital Partners, LianLian Pay, Phoenix Finance, Tencent WeChat Pay, Union Mobile Financial, as well as other key players from the industry. Support also comes from trade associations that include the Payments and Clearing Association of China, Zhejiang Association of Internet Finance and the Zhejiang Association of Banks. About Money20/20: Founded in 2011, Money20/20 creates destination events where the most innovative people in payments, fintech and the broader financial services industry connect. Famed for their high-impact networking, the Las Vegas (October) and Amsterdam (June) editions are widely considered unmissable by the industry they serve. The new Asian edition will debut in Singapore in March 2018. Money20/20 is the space where the industry's smartest visionaries and innovators come together to create the future of money. Money20/20 is an Ascential event. www.money2020.com www.ascential.com Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20171023/1972278-2

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American electric car maker Tesla has been in troubled waters recently due to backlashes faced by their Model 3 electric car. But the pioneer in electric car technology is not an easy bait, and will fight its competitors, among which are:

In a blow to the government's 'Make in India' initiative, Elon Musk's Tesla has decided to built its new car manufacturing plant in Shanghai, China, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

Tesla has signed an arrangement with Shanghai's government to build its first overseas vehicle manufacturing plant.

According to the report, it is Tesla and not the local manufacturer who will own the factory.

China had recently started considering relaxing some of its stringent norms regarding local partners, in a bid to attract electric vehicle manufacturers.

However, China is likely to not allow Tesla to avoid the 25 percent import tariff.

Earlier, Indian union transport minister Nitin Gadkari had visited Tesla and proposed a joint venture between the carmaker and an Indian automobile company. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, had visited Teslas Fremont plant in 2015.



In discussions with the government of India requesting temporary relief on import penalties/restrictions until a local factory is built

 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 14, 2017

In June, Elon Musk had confirmed in a tweet that Tesla was in discussion with the Indian government. The car company had requested temporary relief on import penalties and restrictions until the local factory is built.

Musk had also said: "Maybe I am misinformed, but I was told that 30 percent of parts must be locally sourced and the supply doesn't yet exist in India to support that."



.@elonmusk With respect to news reports on launch plans of Tesla in India being delayed, please note some key clarifications#MakeInIndia pic.twitter.com/9RFICGM9Kk  Make in India (@makeinindia) May 23, 2017



India's commerce and industry ministry had promptly responded to Musk. The ministry had clarified that the India's foreign direct investment (FDI) policy does not mandate any minimum local sourcing of components by automobile manufacturers.

Good point :) Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 2, 2017

In June, Anand Mahindra, head of Mahindra and Mahindra had invited Musk to be part of India's growing electric-vehicles market.

Musk had replied, "Good point".
Bull's Eye, CNBC-TV18's popular game show, where market experts come together to dish out trading strategies for you to make your week more exciting and compete with each other to see whose portfolio is the strongest.

Remember these are midcap ideas not just for the day, but stocks that look attractive in the medium-term as well.

This week, Rakesh Bansal, Vishvesh Chauhan and Ruchit Jain battle it out for top honours.

Below their top stock picks and analysis:

Rakesh Bansal of RK Global

Buy Shiva Cement with a stoploss at Rs 24.90 and target of Rs 40

Buy Ganesha Benzoplast with a stoploss at Rs 95.40 and target of Rs 120

Buy Jindal Stainless with a stoploss at Rs 109.90 and target of Rs 124

Buy Motherson Sumi Systems with a stoploss at Rs 349 and target of Rs 372

Vishvesh Chauhan of Monarch Networth Capital

Buy Andhra Sugar with a stoploss at Rs 540 and target of Rs 599

Buy Gujarat Alkali with a stoploss at Rs 650 and target of Rs 750

Buy Delta Corp with a stoploss at Rs 230 and target of Rs 270

Buy Coromandel International with a stoploss at Rs 488 and target of Rs 540

Ruchit Jain of Angel Broking

Buy Federal Bank with a stoploss at Rs 120 and target of Rs 134

Buy Tourism Finance with a stoploss at Rs 142 and target of Rs 165

Buy PTC India Financial Services with a stoploss at Rs 39.70 and target of Rs 47

Buy GSFC with a stoploss at Rs 136 and target of Rs 155
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With Infosys ruling out wrongdoing in the Panaya deal, and refusing to make the investigation report public, there came an outpouring of support for the software majors beleaguered ex-chief executive Vishal Sikka, and questions for founder NR Narayana Murthy.

Several Twitter users, including shareholders, took to the social media platform to question founder Murthy who kicked up a storm last year by questioning corporate governance at the company. The Panaya deal and the high remuneration of former chief financial officer Rajiv Bansal was at the heart of the issues he raised.

On Tuesday, releasing its second quarter results, Infosys gave a clean chit to the Panaya deal, and conceded that Bansals severance could have been handled better.

In February, the Indian and US markets regulators received anonymous whistleblower complaints alleging irregularities in the acquisition of software firm Panaya. The company conducted an internal investigation and said in June that it found no evidence of wrongdoing.

This was in addition to questions that were raised earlier about the high severance pay given to former CFO Bansal.

By August, founder Murthy asked Infosys board to make the report into the whistle-blower complaints public.

Also read: A broad timeline of the turmoil at Infosys leading to Vishal Sikka stepping down

On Tuesday, the focus clearly shifted from the second quarter results to the companys statement on the Panaya deal and Bansals severance.

These users had some strong words for the Infosys founder:



Complete loss of credibility for the so called socialist-capitalist Narayana Murthy who took after @vsikka - such a sad day!! https://t.co/XCyvPOdCAa

 N Shekar (@n_shekar) October 24, 2017



so all that drama was to target Vishal Sikka @vsikka. Mr. Murthy has lost his respect.  Pardeep kaushik (@CApardeep) October 24, 2017





Vishal Sikka must sue Narayan Murthy now for defamation. Panaya and ex CFO severance package is now found above board.

 Vasu (@vasudevan_k) October 24, 2017

Another user had some advice for Sikka:

Infosys also said on Tuesday that it will not make the investigation report into the Panaya probe public.



If no wrong-doing then publish it .. anyways it is not your personal health report. Also are you saying @Infosys_nmurthy was lying about Hush money? or unnecessarily targeted @vsikka ?  Rudra (@WildSeaRock) October 24, 2017





Will NRN ask for Nandan Nilekani's expulsion?Or will he state why he hounded Sikka out?What is the difference then between Nandan & Sikka?

 Abhishek Basumallick (@a_basumallick) October 24, 2017

A shareholder had this to say:



@NandanNilekani @Infosys Plz get Sikka back as CEO, why am I (shareholder) made to suffer when you have found no corporate governance issues  Ameya (@ATweetinghole) October 24, 2017





Will u apologize to @vsikka? Corp gov is at its peril in infy.NM is the real culprit.He has to beg pardon to Sikka/Investors.

 Rose Mondy (@Rosmondy) October 24, 2017

One user questioned if Murthy would apologise to Sikka and shareholders:

Questions were also addressed to Nandan Nilekani:



@NandanNilekani too says he/board too, like their predecessors, will not make the investigation report public. Murthy has lot to answer. https://t.co/CsgnN8AFCP  Tofik Shaikh (@Tofik_Shaikh_) October 24, 2017

During the call with analysts as well as during the media interaction, Nilekani laid out the focus areas for the company going forward, but avoided most questions regarding Sikka and Murthy.

In response to questions about there being no significant shift in strategy from what Sikka had laid out, Nilekani said that while they may look superficially the same, the difference lies in execution.
Asian Paints' second quarter profit grew by 20 percent year-on-year to Rs 593.66 crore, including discontinued operations.

Profit for the quarter ended September 2016 stood at Rs 494.8 crore.

"Net profit after non-controlling interest (from continuing operations) increased by 8 percent to Rs 508.42 crore compared with Rs 470.83 crore in previous corresponding quarter," the company said.

In June 2017, its subsidiary Berger International, Singapore sold its entire stake in Lewis Berger (Overseas Holdings), UK to ANSA Coatings International, St Lucia. The transaction was concluded in July 2017 and resultant profit of Rs 67.47 crore included in results from discontinued operations for the quarter.

Consolidated revenue during the quarter grew by 2.3 percent to Rs Rs 4,274.2 crore but revenue (excluding excise duty) jumped 13.7 percent compared with Rs 3,757.66 crore in same quarter last fiscal.

Consequent to introduction of goods & services tax w.e.f July 1, 2017, central excise, value added tax etc have been subsumed in GST.

"The decorative business in India registered high single digit volume growth in Q2FY18. Hence, there was a recovery from Q1 which was affected by impact of destocking due to GST," KBS Anand, MD & CEO said.

Consolidated EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) increased 13.6 percent year-on-year to Rs 801 crore but margin contracted by 20 basis points to 18.8 percent in quarter ended September 2017.

The company said standalone profit during the quarter rose by 8.8 percent year-on-year to Rs 473.45 crore and revenue from operations increased 14.6 percent to Rs 3,602.2 crore.

At 15:05 hours IST, the stock price was quoting at Rs 1,223.85, up Rs 51.45, or 4.39 percent on the BSE.
We are in the last phase of the September quarter earnings season, and the results announced by the BSE 500 companies so far have shown signs of a sharp recovery, as compared to the June quarter, when the economic activity in the country was compromised due to lockdown in various regions. From the BSE 500 list, 216 companies have announced their September quarter results so far. We excluded banking and financial companies. Along with the index stocks we also analyse each sector quarterly earnings. (Data Source: ACE Equity)

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Indian Metals and Ferro Alloys (IMFA) Ltd today said its profit after tax (PAT) dived 82 per cent to Rs 7.37 crore in the second quarter ended September.

The company had clocked Rs 42.31 crore PAT in the year- ago quarter, it said in a BSE filing.

During the July-September period, total expenses of the company grew to Rs 415.73 crore from Rs 335.80 crore in the corresponding period of 2016-17 fiscal.

However, total income of the company rose 5.60 per cent to Rs 422.18 crore as against Rs 399.76 in similar period of the preceding financial year.

Odisha-based Indian Metals and Ferro Alloys (IMFA) mostly exports ferrochrome to the Far-East -- China, Japan and Taiwan. In India, the company supplies the alloy to Jindal Stainless, Shah Alloys and other producers.

Ferrochrome is an alloy comprised of iron and chromium used primarily in the manufacturing of stainless steel. The average chrome content in stainless steel is approximately 18 per cent.

Shares of the company were trading down 11.84 per cent at Rs 639.80 apiece on BSE in the afternoon trade today.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will make a major announcement on Tuesday evening, possibly in connection with the recapitalisation plans for public sector banks, sources have told CNBC-TV18.

At a press conference scheduled for 4pm, the minister is likely to decide the plan for increasing capital to the weak balance sheets of banks including United Bank of India, UCO bank, Corporation bank, Allahabad Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, and Dena Bank, among other capital starved banks as the industry suffers from a decade-low credit growth at around 6 percent.

According to sources, the minister may announce recap bonds (not G-Secs) which would be sold to banks that can then be converted into equity after a certain period. Such bonds may not be accounted as fiscal deficit, similar to what was used in the 1990s issued as oil and the fertilizer bonds.

Finance ministry secretaries are likely to be present at the announcement. This comes after several meetings between the ministry and the Prime Minister over the past few months on supporting banks while they are burdened with worsening of the bad loan mess.

The estimated capital shortfall by financial year 2019 is placed at about Rs 1.9 lakh crore for all banks, excluding State Bank of India, the country's largest lender.

As per the Indradhanush plan two years ago, government would inject Rs 70,000 crore into public sector banks for a period of four years, of which Rs 20,000 crore is left for the two years ending March 2018 and March 2019.
The Union Minister for Finance, Corporate Affairs and Defence, Shri Arun Jaitley addressing at the ceremony to launch the Goods & Service Tax (GST), in Central Hall of Parliament, in New Delhi on June 30, 2017.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Tuesday announced an unprecedented Rs 2.11 lakh crore recapitalisation programme for public sector banks intended to address the impact of growing bad loans on banks books.

Of the total, Rs 1.35 lakh crore is expected to come in the form of recapitalisation bonds  easily the biggest recapitalisation programme announced to date  while the rest will come as budgetary support from the government and government through stake sale.

When asked about whether or not the recapitalisation bonds will exert any pressure on fiscal deficit this time around, Jaitley remained non-committal and said that it would be a function of the nature of these bonds, something that the government will deliberate over.

The finance minister did say that globally, these bonds were typically treated to be under the line, i.e. not a part of the fiscal deficit, but added that in India, it was the other way around.

The government of India has, once before, tried issuing such bonds to address high bad loan levels in state-owned banks back in the 1990s. The stressed balance sheets were on account of unrestricted priority sector lending over the previous decade that had eaten into banks capital and profits.

This forced the government to come up with a way of shoring up banks equity capital without a exerting any additional pressure on its cash-strapped self. The answer  use banks own money, the money that they had for lending, to meet their equity capital requirements.

Towards that end, the government issued several tranches of special securities called recapitalisation bonds to nationalised banks, who subscribed to them by paying the government. The government then used the money raised through these bond issues to infuse fresh equity into each of the banks.

Initially non-marketable, these bonds were later converted into perpetual bonds, also known as additional tier-I bonds. Although the government was essentially just delaying its own repayment obligation, it did not have to bear any additional fiscal deficit burden given the returns it made in the market on bank shares.

In an interview with BloombergQuint a few months ago, former Reserve Bank of India deputy governor HR Khan said that he believed these bonds could really do the trick  recapitalise banks to the necessary levels without hurting the governments fiscal position.

After Tuesdays announcement, numerous market participants welcomed the governments move to issue recapitalisation bonds but iterated that one would have to wait and see the nature of these bonds before determining how they were going to impact the governments fiscal deficit.

This milestone announcement on recapitalising banks in one-go is a bold and courageous move and was indeed the need of the hour. It will generate balance in overall demand and supply by bringing more investments in sectors like infrastructure. These funds will also help in efficiently managing risk and credit capital related requirements of the banks, said State Bank of India Chairman Rajnish Kumar after the finance ministry announcement.
A labourer piles up pineapples for sale at a wholesale fruit market in the eastern Indian hill town of Darjeeling July 13, 2009. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri (INDIA AGRICULTURE SOCIETY) - GM1E57D1OJ901

In a bid to boost the exports potential of perishable agricultural commodities from the country, especially from the North Eastern Region (NER), a batch of pineapples has just been sent from Tripura to Dubai.

The consignment of pineapples of the Kew variety, sourced from the North-Eastern state of Tripura, was carried by private airline carrier SpiceJet, which had offered a reasonable freight rate to carry the 1.2-tonne package of fruits from Guwahati to Delhi, from where it was transported to Dubai.

The exporter was Kreamery Craft based in Kolkata.

D K Singh, Chairman of the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), who had partnered with SpiceJet for the exercise, had mentioned that the response from the consumers in Dubai has been encouraging, as per a report in Financial Express.

The pineapples have been sourced from Kumar Ghat in Tripura, which happens to be the largest producer in the state. Tripura overall produces 40,000 metric t0nnes of pineapples.

Apparently, there is a huge off-balance due to which fruits and vegetables produced in the Northeast region find it difficult to compete with the produce from the rest of the country. This private carrier export model was suggested for transporting food produce from the Northeast to rest of India.

India had exported Rs 1.08 lakh crore worth of agricultural and processed food in this FY 17 so far with basmati rice, buffalo meat, fruits and vegetables being some of the key commodities exported.

The scurrying up of the government to launch a practical financial scheme to North-East region is taking place as the region happens to have one of the richest varieties of fruits, spices, vegetables, ornamental plants and also medicinal and aromatic plants.

Out of this, three key fruits and vegetables have been identified as key potential export items- ginger and turmeric from Meghalaya, pineapples from Nagaland, Manipurs black rice and passion fruit and cardamoms from Arunachal and Sikkim.

Apeda will organise a promotional programme in Bangladesh and Myanmar in association with the embassy of India in Dhaka and Yangon for products from the region. The event in Bangladesh will be held in December in Dhaka and Sylhet and in Myanmar in November.

The regions shared borders with Nepal, Bangladesh, China and Myanmar offers it a unique geographical advantage with respect to exports.
Shivraj Singh Chouhan (2nd R), chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, greets his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters during Chouhan's swearing-in ceremony in the central Indian city of Bhopal December14, 2013. Five months before India's next elections are due, there is already an air of victory around Narendra Modi as he strides from one jam-packed rally to the next. And yet, a regional leader from his Hindu nationalist fold is quietly emerging as an alternative to lead the country. This month, Chouhan notched up a thumping election victory in Madhya Pradesh, a sprawling central state with a population larger than that of France, becoming its chief minister for a third time. Picture taken December 14, 2013. REUTERS/Raj Patidar (INDIA - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS PROFILE) - RTX16O82

The Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in a series of meetings with US industry representatives and leaders of the corporate world has invited them to invest in his state which now offers a new investor-friendly industrial policy.

Chouhan briefed the leaders of the corporate world and industry representatives about the new industrial policy, which he said has a clear incentive structure and is not connected with tax.

This is first of its kind policy in the country and no other state offers such a policy in post GST era, Chouhan said in his meeting with Nisha Desai Biswal, the new president of US India Business Council (USIBC).

USIBC, which is planning to take a delegation of investors to India for the Global Entrepreneur Summit in Hyderabad next month also accepted an invitation from the chief minister to visit Madhya Pradesh.

Chouhan briefed the USIBC members on the investment opportunities available in the state in several areas, especially the food processing sector.

BJP general secretary Ram Madhav was also present.

In a separate meeting, John Newman, senior vice president of Progress Rail, a Caterpillar company, spoke about expanding their operations in Madhya Pradesh for export of its diesel and electric engines being manufactured by using the skilled manpower of the state and supplier base that will be created by the locomotive factory.

Newman sought support from the chief minister on their existing diesel electric locomotives manufacturing facilities, where the progress has been slow.

Chouhan promised to speak with Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and expedite the process.

The meeting with Selina Jackson, Vice President, Global Government Relations and Public Policy at Procter and Gamble, revolved around their existing plant in Madhya Pradesh and the tax rebate matter in the aftermath of the GST regime.

Chouhan reiterated his commitment to support industry post GST and promised to resolve their pending issues within a short period of time.

They also spoke about expanding their logistics operations in the state.

Chouhan also briefed them about the new industrial policy and how it benefits the new investors in the state and invited them to make fresh investments in Madhya Pradesh.

Andrew M Whitman, Senior Vice President, Government Affairs at the Varian Medical Systems, in his meeting proposed to develop cancer treatment centres across the state in Public-private partnership mode.

The company, which is into cancer treatments, have done extensive studies in Madhya Pradesh on the need for cancer treatment in the state.

Noting that he has keen interest in such facilities, the chief minister said they are welcome to come and make a detailed presentation to the health department.
Yogi Adityanath, newly appointed Chief Minister of Indias most populous state of Uttar Pradesh arrives to attend a meeting with government officials at Lok Bhavan in Lucknow, India March 20, 2017. REUTERS/Pawan Kumar - RTX31THW

Executives from American companies have met Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and state officials to explore possible partnership and investment opportunities in the state, reports Mint.

As part of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, USISPF Managing Director Nivedita Mehra has asked Uttar Pradesh to appoint an "empowered senior official to facilitate and fast-track US investments."

The US Trade and Development Agency met state officials where they declared their intention to go forward with a reverse trade mission on Smart Cities. The US is keen to invite UP officials to American cities like Boston and Pittsburgh.

North India's US Embassy Head Ariel Pollock stated, The US mission to India is committed to Uttar Pradesh, as is evident in our support of the Smart Cities programme in Allahabad.

UP's Health Minister Sidharth Nath Singh has welcomed the proposal and appreciated the fact that UP was chosen by the US to invest.

With the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) 2017 coming up, UP is pushing infrastructure projects.

The Centre has cleared UP's proposal to build their second airport in Jewar and the plans of expanding the Varanasi airport are in the works.

The GES 2017 is a series of events exhibiting influential entrepreneurs and investors.
The government today announced a Rs 2.11 lakh crore recapitalisation plan public sector banks spread over two years in its bid to shore up their finances, boost private investment and revive the economy.

At a press conference held by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Banking Secretary Rajiv Kumar said the government will infuse Rs 1.35 lakh crore through recapitalisation bonds and Rs 76,000 crore through budgetary support and market raising.

The move comes following a 2015 announcement in which the government had sanctioned a Rs 70,000-crore capital infusion under the Indradhanush banking reform scheme, 80 percent of which has already been paid out, and which was dismissed by analysts as being too little.

The Banking Secretary said that banks need to support private investments. The non-performing assets went up from 37 percent in March 2014 to 82 percent by June 2017, he added.

The government expects banks to be globally competitive and faster MSME growth and employment generation.

Former Deputy Governor of RBI Usha Thorat said that the government announcement is a logical step which the market has been awaiting for besides being a decisive move. It will be income generating, she added. On the fiscal front, she said that it increases the debt-to-GDP ratio. She further said that recap bonds are a direct infusion of capital into banks. Banks won't get cash as such from the government. She also added that interest on bonds will be a drain on the government Budget and will impact fiscal deficit.

Ashima Goyal, Member at PMEAC is of the view that PSU bank recapitalization via recap bonds is a positive step. Bonds will be absorbed by the market without serious repercussions as the economy improves.

Moody's Investors Service told CNBC-TV18 that the headline number announced by the government for recapitalising PSU banks is a very significant step for the industry.

State Bank of India Chairman Rajnish Kumar welcomed the announcement and said that it will go a long way in bringing private investments back to the sector.

Former RBI Deputy Governor KC Chakrabarty has that the recapitalization plan announced by the government is nothing but the government lending money to PSU banks, not capitalising them.
China vows to work closely with ASEAN to build community with shared future

Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Chang Wanquan said on Monday that China is willing to work closely with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries to forge a community with shared future and build a safer Asia.

Chang, who is attending the 11th ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting (ADMM) and the 4th ADMM-Plus meeting, said China and ASEAN countries are bonded by a shared future.

Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Chang Wanquan attends the 7th ASEAN-China Defense Ministers Informal Meeting held in Pampanga Province, the Philippines, on Oct. 23, 2017.[Photo: mod.gov.cn]

"China will stick to the principles of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness in the cooperation with our neighbors, and stand for a concept of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security in Asia," Chang told his ASEAN counterparts.

Chang said China will actively promote the multi-field and multi-level cooperation with ASEAN countries, including joint sea drills and stronger cooperation in counter-terrorism.

"China is ready to provide a safe environment for the cooperation of Belt And Road Initiative and make contributions to further strengthen ties with ASEAN countries to build a community with shared future," Chang said, adding China is pushing for a hotline on defense cooperation with ASEAN.

Attendees pose for group photos during the 7th ASEAN-China Defense Ministers Informal Meeting held in Pampanga Province, the Philippines, on Oct. 23, 2017.[Photo: mod.gov.cn]

The ASEAN defense ministers lauded China's contributions to the regional peace and stability.

They also expressed their willingness to strengthen strategic communication and enhance defense cooperation with China. They hoped to cope with difficulties and challenges so as to safeguard regional development and prosperity together with China.
The logo of Hyundai Motor Co. is seen on a wheel of a car at a Hyundai dealership in Seoul January 22, 2015. South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co on Thursday reported a fourth straight quarterly profit decline, pulled down by a plunge in the Russian rouble and increased buying incentives in the United States. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji (SOUTH KOREA - Tags: TRANSPORT BUSINESS LOGO) - RTR4MEH9

Hyundai Motor India today said it has received order for 10,501 units of its recently launched all-new Verna from the Middle East.

The all new Verna, which was introduced in the country in August this year, will be sold as Next Gen Accent in the Middle East markets, including Saudi Arabia and Oman.

"This is the single largest order for the Next Gen Verna that the company has received since inception and a big jump compared to the earlier generations of Verna and Accent," Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) said in a statement.

The units will be shipped out in December, it added.

The company said it had invited 33 distributors from the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE and other Asian countries like Vietnam, Philippines, Sri Lanka, to its Chennai-based plant on September 21, 2017.

The visitors were given a detailed plant tour, a presentation on the product, its quality parameters and the plant capabilities, which finally culminated with exclusive drive experience of Next Gen Verna, HMIL said.

HMIL MD and CEO Y K Koo said the company is proud to receive such a large single export order within one month of showcasing the product to the distributors from overseas markets.

"It is in perfect harmony with Hyundai's commitment of 'Make in India, for the world' and also is in line with the Indian government's 'Make in India' vision, he added.

HMIL said the model would also be exported to South Africa and various other Gulf and Asian countries from the beginning of next year.

In the domestic market, the company has till now received over 18,600 bookings and more than 1.43 lakh enquiries in just two months since its launch.

In the last month, Verna led the mid-size sedan segment with sales of 6,053 units.

The fifth generation Verna is based on a newly developed K2 platform and has been developed with an investment of Rs 1,040 crore.

The company has so far sold 3.17 lakh units of the sedan in the country since the introduction of the model in 2006. Globally, around 88 lakh units have been sold.
Infosys

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Nandan Nilekani, the Co-founder and Non-executive Chairman of Infosyss Board said that he and the Board were fully persuaded that the results of independent investigations into allegations of wrongdoing at the company were correct.

I believe that all stakeholders acted out of a strong passion for Infosys, wanting what they believed to be the best for the company and to see it succeed. In light of my review of these matters, I am fully persuaded, as is the entire Board, that the conclusions of the independent investigations are correct. This Board and I are committed to the highest standards of professionalism and will deal promptly and decisively with any governance issues should they ever come up in the future, said Nilekani in a statement on the second quarter results of the company.

Nilekani took over as the Board Chairman in August after the exit of the first non-co-founder CEO Vishal Sikka, and has since said that he will focus on the CEO search, board reconstitution, and business stabilisation.

The countrys second largest software exporter has been in the eye of a storm over allegations made by anonymous whistleblowers. Some of these allegations included issues of improprieties in connection with the companys acquisitions of Panaya, and Skava Systems Private in 2015, and alleged irregularities in the high severance package of former CFO Rajiv Bansal.

Among other things, the review reaffirmed the conclusion of the independent investigation that there was no merit to the allegations of wrongdoing with respect to the acquisition of Panaya, the company said in a statement.

Founder NR Narayana Murthy has on several occasions demanded that the investigations into the Panaya deal be made public.

After careful re-consideration, the company has concluded that publishing additional details of the investigation would inhibit the company's ability to conduct effective investigations into any matter in the future. Confidentiality is critical to ensuring the candor and cooperation of whistleblowers and other participants in any investigative process, Infosys said.

Murthy had earlier taken issue with a company statement about an independent investigation which absolved the management of allegations regarding benefiting directly from the acquisition of Israeli software firm Panaya.

Nilekani added, As the company moves forward to a more stable environment I am grateful to all the well-wishers of the company, including Mr. Narayana Murthy, for their deeply held passion for Infosys... I would also like to acknowledge the leadership role Mr. Narayana Murthy has played in building this iconic institution and in corporate governance matters. Going forward, it is our endeavour to build a trusting relationship with Mr. Murthy.

Murthy had also raised questions about the high severance package of former Chief Financial Officer Rajiv Bansal.

In the statement, Infosys clarified on these issues. In certain respects, as the Board has previously noted, the severance payments to the companys former CFO could have been better handled, and the company has identified opportunities for improvements in processes and practices, which have been implemented, it said.

The statement further added that since December 2016, Infosys has adopted a practice of disclosing the severance payment to key managerial personnel at the time of their departure.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal attends the traditional Saudi dance known as 'Arda', which was performed during Janadriya culture festival at Der'iya in Riyadh February 18, 2014. REUTERS/Fayez Nureldine/Pool/File Photo - RTX2STWN

Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal pointed out scepticism about cryptocurrencies in an interview with CNBC by saying that it will implode one day.

Adding on, the billionaire who is considered the Gulfs Warren Buffett said: It just doesn't make sense. This thing is not regulated, it's not under control, it's not under the supervision" of any central bank, Alwaleed said in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Alwaheed went on to say that Bitcoin was an Enron in the making.

The billionaire investor was referring to the massive accounting fraud that took Enron, a US energy trading and energies giant, into bankruptcy in late 2001.

Prince Alwaleed runs Kingdom Holding, a Riyadh-based massive conglomerate whose investments include Citigroup, Apple and Twitter.

The comments from the Saudi Arabian Prince come as digital currency Bitcoin has surged about 500 percent this year, hitting an all-time record high of USD 6,100 on October 21.

As per Coindesk, Bitcoin traded more than 4 percent lower around USD 5718 on Monday.

Bitcoin has shaken off an August split into Bitcoin and Bitcoin cash, and a Chinese crackdown in September on digital coins.

Ritholtz Wealth management CEO and CNBC contributor Josh Brown said that one should be expecting regular blow-ups because its all speculative. He added that it does not mean it is going to outlive each and every blow up along the way.

Brown also added that the Saudi Arabian princes suspicion of the Bitcoin was due to his ties to the Saudi Arabian rulers.

Although Bitcoin trading is carried out in Saudi Arabia, according to exchange websites, but the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority warned in July that Bitcoin trading might have negative consequences on individuals investments.

Bitcoins massive price gains have been temporarily boosted by Japanese investors interest.

Trading in Japanese Yen accounted for about 62 percent of total Bitcoin trading volume Monday.

Not only Alwaleed, many major investors across the globe have expressed their scepticism about trading Bitcoin.

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon who last month called bitcoin a fraud that will eventually blow up.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has also called the digital currency an index of money laundering for its ability to facilitate illegal commerce on the internet.

Despite all the criticism, JP Morgan and other financial institutions are investing in blockchain - a technology that enables Bitcoin value transfer instantly without a third party intermediary.

Venture capitalist and Union Square Ventures co-founder Fred Wilson had also pointed out that there was a cryptocurrency crash coming and he thought investors need to diversify in order to prepare.

He wrote in his blog: I am certain the big crash will happen. I dont know when it will happen and I think it may be some time before it does."

Well-known investors of the Wall Street Elite have been known to call Bitcoin a fraud and a joke. This has included the Warren Buffett, who used the words joke and Mirage when asked to comment on the popularity of the digital currency.

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon had previously given a statement that he will fire any trader who touched the stuff (cryptocurrency) in a second.

Others notable millionaires who have minted money from the digital currency including investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, venture capitalist Barry Silbert and entrepreneur Charlie Shrem.

Back in August, head of Bitcoin Foundation, Llew Classen has urged people to invest no more than they can afford in the cryptocurrency, while speaking at the TEDGlobal conference in Tanzania.

However, there are many, such as billionaire Tim Draper, who a few years back, had bid for and won 30,000 Bitcoins in an auction, whose value is now estimated to be over USD 170 million.
BANGALORE, INDIA - SEPTEMBER 1, 2016: Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, photographed at Better Place office in Bangalore. (Photo by Hemant Mishra/Mint via Getty Images)

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Infosyss non-executive Board chairman and co-founder Nandan Nilekani on Tuesday outlined the broad strategy for the company going forward and provided an update on some issues that were taken up when he returned to the company in August this year.

Taking the dais, Nilekani  also known as the architect of Indias biometric identity programme, Aadhaar  took questions on strategy, but divulged little about the internal on goings at the country's second largest software exporter.

The companys search for a new chief executive, post Vishal Sikkas exit in August, is making decent progress, Nilekani said in a media interaction post the second-quarter results.

He also spoke about the shareholder meetings, the first round of which has been concluded. This process will continue into this quarter, and a report will be presented with the third quarter results in January, he said.

Referring to the turbulence the company faced during the September quarter, Nilekani praised the managements efforts to carry out the business effectively.

It's (Infosys) refreshed strategy now puts its focus on consultancy and business transformation ahead of its focus on software, recognising that software is only an enabler to implement its transformational solutions for more profitable growth. Marketplace focus is reiterated by continued large global wins including GST - the largest tax project around the globe, said Sanjoy Sen, Doctoral Research Scholar, Aston Business School, UK.

Also Read: Infosys likely to open lower on Wednesday; top ten takeaway from Q2 results

Speaking of the macro issues facing the IT industry, including customer-led innovation that is disrupting established industries across the world, Nilekani said the strategy of software plus services is very valid.

The software plus services model was one envisaged by Sikka for Infosys, which involved the use of technologies such as artificial intelligence and using greater automation in delivering services to clients.

To questions on the similarity between the two approaches, Nilekani said execution was the big differentiator.

On a question about the power centre of Infosys shifting back to Bengaluru from Palo Alto post Sikkas exit, Nilekani said, Palo Alto continues to be a very vital parta listening post of latest developments in Silicon Valley the challenge is how to take these new technologies to our customers. We have the right team and leadership to take advantage of these new technologies.

He did not rule out more acquisitions that could help achieve the companys vision to use more automation.

However, the Board finding no wrongdoing in the Panaya acquisition, which was at the heart of the issues founder NR Narayana Murthy raised with ex-CEO Sikka, did come under question from analysts.

The next few quarters will be extremely critical for the company and will require delicate handling to say the least. The new management has to go out of their way and keep focus on what matters - client outcomes, employee happiness and investor returns," Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and founder at Greyhound Group said.

"Long term, the dangers of being irrelevant also loom high - the fact is that Vishal was instrumental in bringing through the much needed change in culture and strategy. With his departure, Infosys has to go the extra mile to communicate and convince their stakeholders of their focus on being relevant in the future,Garg added.

Analysts also flagged the companys lowering of its full year growth forecast as a concern.

Infosys now expects to grow 5.5-6.5 percent this fiscal year, down from its earlier forecast of 6.5-8.5 percent. The IT industry is expected to grow 7-8 percent this year.
New India Assurance sets IPO price band at Rs 770-800/share, reports Reuters

North Korea threat is 'critical, imminent,' Japan tells US, South Korea, reports Reuters

Saudi Prince Alwaleed says bitcoin is 'Enron in the making', reports Reuters

Rs 6 lakh crore market capitalisation

22:33 That's the end of the Liveblog! Thank you tuning in, and have a good night !

22:25 The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), the nodal agency for development of the metro network in the megapolis, had proposed the construction of a 24km Thane-Bhiwandi-Kalyan metro-5 corridor and 14.5 km Swami Samarth Nagar-Jogeshwari-Kanjurmarg-Vikhroli metro-6.

The stations linking the metro 5 line will be Kalyan APMC, Kalyan Station, Sahajanand Chowk, Durgadi Fort, Kon Gaon, Gove Gaon MIDC, Rajnouli Village, Temghar, Gopal Nagar, Bhiwandi, Dhamankar Naka, Anjur Phata, Purna, Kalher, Kasheli, Balkumbh Naka and Kapurbawdi.

22:12 As much as Rs 92,150 crore-Rs 14,042 crore in Central-GST levy, Rs 21,172 crore from State-GST and Rs 48,948 crore on account of inter-state and exports levy called Integrated-GST, was collected for the month of September, according to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

21:10 The Centre's decision to revive the economy by infusing Rs 2.11 lakh crore worth of capital into Public Sector Banks (PSBs) has been unanimously hailed by the IMF and India Inc.

21:04 BJP's national spokesperson Sambit Patra's appointment as an independent director on the board of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) Ltd was today challenged in the Delhi High Court by an NGO.

The NGO, in its plea, also sought cancellation of the appointment of Shashi Shanker as ONGC Chairman and Managing Director.

The public interest litigation (PIL) filed by NGO Energy Watchdog could not be taken up for hearing as the bench headed by Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal did not assemble today.

20:46 An Ahmedabad court today issued summonses to respondents in the criminal defamation case filed by BJP chief Amit Shah's son against news portal 'The Wire' over a report that claimed the turnover of his firm grew exponentially after the party came to power in 2014.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate S K Gadhvi issued summonses to journalist Rohini Singh, five editors and the non-profit company that publishes The Wire. The summonses are returnable by November 13.

20:34 Microsoft is dropping a lawsuit against the US government after the Department of Justice issued new rules limiting the use of secrecy orders that prevent firms from telling customers law enforcement has accessed their data.

The tech giant sued the government in April last year, but declared victory yesterday and said it was ending its case after the DOJ announced it would revise its rules.

20:27 An Ahmedabad court today issued summonses to respondents in the criminal defamation case filed by BJP chief Amit Shah's son against news portal 'The Wire' over a report that claimed the turnover of his firm grew exponentially after the party came to power in 2014.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate S K Gadhvi issued summonses to journalist Rohini Singh, five editors and the non-profit company that publishes The Wire. The summonses are returnable by November 13.

20:18 The Supreme Court today ordered demolition of a parking lot, which is being built within a kilometre of the iconic Taj Mahal in Agra.

The apex court's order came two days before the scheduled visit of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to the historic monument on October 26. Adityanath had recently said he would visit Agra to review tourism schemes.

20:17 Software firm HCL Technologies' second-quarter profit is expected to fall 2.5 percent sequentially to Rs 2,143 crore.

Revenue is seen rising 3.5 percent quarter-on-quarter to Rs 12,572 crore and dollar revenue may grow 3.6 percent to USD 1,951 million for the quarter ended September 2017, according to an average of estimates of analysts polled by CNBC-TV18.

20:15 Kotak Mahindra Bank's second quarter standalone profit is seen rising 23.5 percent year-on-year to Rs 1,004.4 crore.

The Net interest income for the quarter is likely to increase 17.8 percent to Rs 2,350.6 crore compared with Rs 1,995.4 crore in same quarter last fiscal, according to average of estimates of analysts polled by CNBC-TV18.

20:00 US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson today arrived in Pakistan on a whirlwind visit to normalise bilateral ties strained after President Donald Trump accused the country of providing safe havens to terrorist groups.

Tillerson's crucial visit to Islamabad comes days after he made a major policy speech on America's growing strategic relations with India and Trump's move to offer a bigger say to India in war-torn Afghanistan.

19:16 President Xi Jinping today attained iconic status enjoyed by modern China's founder Chairman Mao Zedong, with his name and ideology enshrined in the Constitution of the ruling CPC, as he secured a second five- year term with sights firmly set on an unprecedented third.

Till now, only the thoughts of Mao and his successor Deng Xiaoping were enshrined in the Constitution of the world's longest-ruling Communist Party, interpreting the complex doctrine of Marxism with Chinese characteristics.

19:09 The Income Tax (I-T) department conducted a search at a film production company owned by Tamil actor Vishal on Monday. The search was conducted a day after Vishal had criticised BJP leader H Raja for allegedly watching Tamil movie Mersal illegally on his phone.

According to The Indian Express, the search was conducted by four officials to look into the allegation that Vishals production house had deducted tax at source of payment worth Rs 51 lakh made to various clients but failed to deposit the same with the department.

17:50 The Madras High Court adjourned to October 27 a petition seeking a direction to the Election Commission and the ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu to conduct elections for the party's general secretary post, reports PTI. Justice K Ravichandrabaabu adjourned the petition filed by Nalaperumal, an AIADMK member from Pollachi, after the advocate who appeared for him sought more time to engage a senior counsel for submitting their arguments.

The petition contended that the September 12 meeting of AIADMK general council, convened by Chief Minister K Palaniswami and Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam led groups, had abolished the party general secretary post without following the rules and regulations of the party. He wanted the EC to direct Panneerselvam, who is the party coordinator, to hold election for the post of general secretary and also other office-bearers.

Neyveli

The government will sell up to 5% stake at a floor price of Rs 94 apiece in mining PSU Neyveli Lignite (NLC) through a two-day offer for sale beginning Wednesday, a finance ministry official told PTI. The government is selling 3% in NLC, with a green-shoe option to sell another 2% in the OFS, the official said. The issue will open for institutional buyers on Wednesday. For retail investors the issue will open on October 25, who will get a further discount of 3.5%. The 5% stake sale would fetch about Rs 800 crore to the exchequer.

17:36 In nutshell, the Cabinet has announced Rs 2.11 lakh crore capitalisation of state-run banks which is to be spread over a two-year timeframe. Of this, Rs 1.35 lakh crore will come through recapitalisation bonds and Rs 76,000 crore via budgetary support and market raising.

17:34 Explaining the rationale for the huge capitalisation of PSBs, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the Cabinet felt the government should take bold step to address the issue of inadequate lending. He promised to announce a series of banking reforms in the next few months.

17:32 Blaming the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government for the NPA mess in the banking system, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that between 2008 and 2013 public sector banks engaged in indiscriminate lending. He added that NPAs were kept under the carpet for long.

Banking Secretary Rajiv Kumar said the Cabinet has announced Rs 2.11 lakh crore capitalisation of state run banks which is to be spread over a two-year timeframe. He said Rs 1.35 lakh crore will come through recapitalisation bonds and Rs 76,000 crore via budgetary support and market raising. He added that the recapitalisation bonds will be front-loaded.

17:22 Banking Secretary Rajiv Kumar reiterated the Modi governments refrain that banks need to support private investment. We have to catalyse banks to create private investment. To buttress the point further, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley quipped that public sector banks are flush with funds after demonetisation.

17:18 Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa said that over the next five years, 83,677 km of roads is to be built. Rs 6.92 lakh crore is to be spent in the next five years on road building. The Bharatmala programme includes 34,800 km of road-building. He added that 5,000 km of feeder roads are to be built from economic corridors.

17:14 Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa said infrastructure has been a large part of the Centres spend in the last three years. The capex target of Rs 3.09 lakh crore is 31% higher than last year. Of which, the government has already spent 46% of target by September.

Speaking on capital expenditure by central public sector enterprises, he said that of the Rs 3.85 lakh crore targeted for the year, Rs 1.37 lakh core of that has already been spent. CPSEs spent Rs 1.75 lakh core in capital expenses versus full year target of Rs 3 lakh crore.

17:08 Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa takes over from Economic Affairs Secretary SC Garg in defending the governments policies. He said the Centre has consistently tried to promote policies that improve the common man's life.

17:05 On divestment, SC Garg, Secretary, Economic Affairs, said the current fiscal will see the largest ever disinvestment programme by the Centre. The government has already achieved Rs 30,000 crore of divestment.

17:00 Hitting out at the Opposition parties which has criticised the governments policies, SC Garg, Secretary, Economic Affairs, said the recent core sector data, commercial vehicle sales, Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) all show strong growth. The government has undertaken bold and transformational reforms, which has been globally appreciated. He goes on to list the governments Goods & Services Tax (GST) as the most important reform besides Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and demonetisation.

16:44 SC Garg, Secretary, Economic Affairs, said the countrys forex reserves have crossed $400bn, of which, $100bn has come in the last one year. He stated that the government has built reserves in excess of a year's requirement. On the fiscal deficit target for the current fiscal, he said the government will take a final call in December.

16:41 Despite a blip in the current account deficit in Q1 FY18, SC Garg, Secretary, Economic Affairs, sees an improvement going forward.

16:39 SC Garg, Secretary, Economic Affairs, reiterated that the government will meet its FY19 fiscal deficit target of 3%.

16:35 SC Garg, Secretary, Economic Affairs, said inflation numbers has been consistently falling since the Modi government assumed power in 2014. Inflation is under 5% since the past year. It won't cross 4% this fiscal.

16:30 Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said he has had detailed meeting with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the state of the economy.



Infosys board under new chairman Nandan Nilekani gives clean chit to Panaya acquisition, says there is no wrongdoing.

 Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) October 24, 2017

Asian Paints reported a 7.54% increase in consolidated net profit to Rs 526.19 crore for the second quarter ended September 30. The company had posted a net profit of Rs 489.26 crore for the same period of previous fiscal. Revenue from operations of the company stood at Rs 4,274.18 crore for the second quarter compared to Rs 4,178.61 crore in the same period last fiscal.

16:13 The BSE Sensex extended gains by 100 points and the NSE Nifty scaled the 10,200-level amid optimism ahead of quarterly earnings from heavyweights. The 30-share Sensex after shuttling between 32,670.37 and 32,502.08, settled 100.62 points, or 0.31% higher, at 32,607.34. The gauge had gained 116.76 points on Monday. The NSE Nifty too climbed 22.85 points, or 0.22%, to close above the 10,200-mark at 10,207.70. Intra-day, it moved between 10,237.75 and 10,182.40. The sentiment got support better-than-expected earnings results by select companies and continuous buying by domestic financial institutions.

Arun

Jaitley

recapitalisation

CNBC-TV18

Finance Ministeris expected to make a major announcement shortly. This is possibly in connection with theplans for public sector banks, sources told. For more details, click here

16:05 Infosys

726cr

FY18

Infosys has reported a Q2 FY18 net profit of Rs 3,726 crore and dollar revenue growth was up 2.9% QoQ at Rs 2,728 crore. The country's second largest IT services provider reduced its full year constant currency revenue guidance to 5.5-6.5% from 6.5-8.5% earlier. Infosys has declared an interim dividend of Rs 13 per equity share. For more details, click here

16:01 Reliance Nippon Life Insurance, a subsidiary of Reliance Capital, said it has registered 3% rise in new business to Rs 169 crore for the quarter ended September. Assets under Management rose by 11% to Rs 17,983 crore at the end of second quarter. Individual weighted received premium rose by 4% to Rs 165 crore during the quarter. Embedded value of the company rose to Rs 3,147 crore as against Rs 3,047 crore in the same quarter a year ago.

15:58 Liquor firm Radico Khaitan reported a 27.11% rise in standalone net profit to Rs 28.6 crore for the second quarter ended September 30. The company had posted a net profit of Rs 22.5 crore for the same period of previous fiscal. Total income of the company grew by 23.23% to Rs 1,496 crore for the second quarter compared to Rs 1,213.93 crore for the corresponding period last fiscal.

The Gujarat Assembly election dates are likely to be announced on Wednesday, reports CNN-News18. A final decision in this regard will be taken on Tuesday night. The Election Commission said it is looking at the circumstances and it could take them another two or three days to announce the schedule. The dates could come out either by Wednesday or latest by Friday, it said. The EC had come under serious criticism, especially from the Opposition, for not announcing the Gujarat voting dates when it had declared the schedule for the Himachal Pradesh assembly elections.

15:45 Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) reported an over two-fold jump in consolidated net profit at Rs 590.80 crore for the second quarter ended September 30, 2016. The company had registered a consolidated net profit of Rs 238.40 crore in the July-September quarter a year ago. ZEEL's total income on consolidated basis was up 2.67% to Rs 1,785.18 crore during the quarter under review as against Rs 1,738.67 crore of the corresponding quarter last fiscal. The company has reported other income of Rs 203.13 crore during the quarter as against Rs 43.23 crore.

15:44 CanFin Homes, the housing finance arm of public lender Canara Bank, reported a 36.3% rise of in net profit to Rs 75 crore for the second quarter ended September 30, 2017-18. Its net profit during the July-September quarter of 2016-17 stood at Rs 55 crore. The firm's total income from operations rose to Rs 383.85 crore from Rs 332.31 crore in the year-ago period. CanFin Homes is mainly engaged in providing loans for the purchase and construction of residential houses.

15:42 Glenmark Pharmaceuticals has launched Apremilast, the first advanced oral systemic treatment for Psoriasis in India. Apremilast, which is a phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4) inhibitor indicated for the treatment of moderate to severe Psoriasis, will revolutionise the treatment of Psoriasis. Around 33 million people are estimated to be affected from the disease in the country. The Mumbai-based company has launched Apremilast under the brand name Aprezo. It has received approval from DCGI for Apremilast after conducting clinical trials on the molecule as per the regulatory requirements.

15:36 Drug firm Panacea Biotec has received final approval from the US health regulator to launch generic Prasugrel tablets, used for preventing blood clots in people with acute coronary syndrome, in the American market. The company is also entitled for 180 days of shared market exclusivity for the Prasugrel HCL tablets. "The company's first-to-file abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) of Prasugrel 5 mg and 10 mg tablets has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA)," it said.

The tablets are generic version of Eli Lilly's Effient tablets. The product has been launched in the market by Apotex Corp, which is the exclusive sales and distribution partner for this product in the US. The annual sale of Prasugrel prior to entry of generics in the market was around $600 million in the US market. The tablets are indicated for reduction of thrombotic cardiovascular events in people with acute coronary syndrome.



The total revenue of GST paid under different heads (upto 23rd October, 2017) for the month of September 2017 is Rs. 92,150/- crore.  Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) October 24, 2017



The total CGST revenue is Rs. 14,042 crore, SGST revenue is Rs. 21,172 crore, IGST revenue is Rs. 48,948 crore. Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) October 24, 2017



IGST revenue is Rs. 48,948 crore consists of Rs. 23,951 crore of IGST from imports in September 2017  Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) October 24, 2017



15:28 Pakistani troops opened unprovoked fire on the Naugam sector along the Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir, prompting a strong retaliation by the Indian Army, reports PTI. It is for the fourth consecutive day that Pakistan has violated the truce agreement along the LoC in the Kashmir Valley. "Pakistan started unprovoked firing in Naugam sector along the LoC at 9.30 am today," an Army official said. He said Indian troops retaliated strongly to the Pakistani action and intermittent exchange of fire was going on till reports last came in.

15:26 The Delhi government came under fire from the National Green Tribunal which rapped it over the rampant use and easy availability of plastic in the national capital, despite prohibition, reports PTI. A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar said that despite the ban being imposed, plastic was available free of cost in every part of Delhi. It directed the AAP government to strictly implement its ban order in the city and sought a detailed status report on the issue.

15:14 Rahul

Gabbar

Stepping up his attack against the government over GST, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi took the Gabbar Singh analogy further by referencing the Bollywood villain's dialogue to say it was a tax that coveted people's earnings, reports PTI. Gandhi, who had on Monday described the Goods & Services Tax as "Gabbar Singh Tax" during a rally in Gujarat, today recalled a much quoted dialogue from "Sholay" to sharpen his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"Congress GST = Genuine Simple Tax. Modi ji's GST = Gabbar Singh Tax = yeh kamaai mujhe de de (give me the income)," Gandhi said on Twitter. "Their GST is not GST. GST means Gabbar Singh Tax. This is causing a loss to the country. Small shopkeepers are finished. Lakhs of youths have been unemployed. But they are still not ready to listen," he stated.

15:10 SBI's

NPA

The ongoing rounds of non-performing loan resolutions initiated by the Reserve Bank of India hold the key to the State Bank of India's credit profile, said Moody's Investors Service, reports PTI. "The resultant haircut on SBI's assets will likely show a substantial impact. Our scenario analysis concludes that SBI can absorb haircuts of up to 50-55%, while maintaining a common equity Tier I ratio of above 9.5% at the end of March 2019," it said in a report.

Such a common equity Tier I ratio would give the bank some buffer above the minimum regulatory requirement of 8.6% by March 2019, it said. The scenario analysis assumes about 35-40% of the bank's non-performing assets (NPAs) are resolved under the various resolution processes in the next two financial years, it said.

Bharatmala

The government has approved Rs 7 lakh crore worth of highway projects including the ambitious Bharatmala, reports PTI. The development comes barely few months after Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said that the government will soon launch the Bharatmala project to build over 20,000 km of highways in the first phase. The Cabinet today gave the go ahead to highway projects worth about Rs 7 lakh crore for development of over 80,000 km of highways including Bharatmala project in the next five years, an official said.

Bharatmala is a mega plan of the government and the second-largest highways project after NHDP that saw development of about 50,000 km, and aims at improving connectivity in border and other areas. The official said the highway projects approved today also include economic corridor developments aimed at faster movement of cargo. The corridors included Mumbai-Cochin-Kanyakumari, Bengaluru-Mangaluru, Hyderabad-Panaji and Sambalpur-Ranchi, to name a few.

14:37 New India Assurance sets IPO price band at Rs 770-800/share

Indias state-run New India Assurance Co has set a price band of Rs 770 to Rs 800 a share for its initial public offering (IPO) opening on November 1, sources told Reuters. At the upper end of the price range, the IPO would raise Rs 96 billion. The sale will close on November 3.

Bajaj

1500cr

Maha

Pune-based Bajaj Auto is contemplating a hike across its product range in January to offset some of the input cost pressures suffered in the second and third quarter, reports Moneycontrols Swaraj Baggonkar. Kevin DSa, Chief Financial Officer, Bajaj Auto, sees input cost pressures materialising in Q3 and Q4 because steel prices have gone up a bit and aluminium prices has seen a substantial surge. The industry is in a position to absorb the price hike now, but at an appropriate time we will have to take a call on a price increase, he stated.

The company is also hoping for a tax refund from the Maharashtra government. The total amount of our money lying with the government is Rs 1,500 crore. Rs 1,000 crore is on account of value added tax from the state of Maharashtra, he stated.

14:10 Central Vigilance Commissioner KV Chowdary laid emphasis on adherence to standard operating procedures (SOPs) by banks to check frauds, reports PTI. He said in the last two years or so the banks had been in the news for the wrong reasons, adding that while some large frauds are very well-planned ones, the small ones were not that well-planned. "Some say automation is the best way to prevent a fraud. I think automation is the solution provided it is automated in the right sense. So bring a preventive mechanism. You need to be a thief. You need to know where the system can be manipulated," Chowdary said.

14:02 Bajaj

capex

300cr

Bajaj Auto, Indias fourth largest two-wheeler maker, is confident of closing the financial year with a market share of 24% on the back of a launch of new model and a few upgrades, reports Moneycontrols Swaraj Baggonkar. Kevin DSa, Chief Financial Officer, Bajaj Auto said, The Avenger will come with an upgrade in the last quarter of this year. We are looking to launch a vehicle in the mid-commuter segment with a new brand name where we have the V12.

13:56 Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is likely to make a major announcement on recapitalisation plans for public sector banks at 4 pm today, reports CNBC-TV18. The minister is likely to approve increasing capital of weak balance sheets banks including United Bank of India, UCO bank, Corporation bank, Allahabad Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, and Dena Bank, among others as the industry suffers from a decade-low credit growth of around 6%. Sources told the channel that the minister may announce recap bonds (not G-Secs) which would be sold to banks which can be converted into equity after a certain period. Such bonds may not be accounted as fiscal deficit, similar to what was used in the 1990s issued as oil and the fertiliser bonds.

13:45 New India Assurance (NIA), the largest general insurance company in India, will hit the capital markets on November 1 to raise an estimated Rs 10,000 crore through IPO, merchant banking sources told PTI. The company's initial share sale will close on November 3, they added. The IPO comprises sale of 9.6 crore shares by the government, besides fresh issue of 2.4 crore shares. Thus a total of 12 crore shares of the non-life insurer would be sold through the share sale offer, constituting around 14.56% of the company's post issue share capital.

13:29 Kitchen appliances firm TTK Prestige has reported an 11.23% increase in consolidated net profit at Rs 43.28 crore for the second quarter ended September 30. The company had posted a net profit of Rs 38.91 crore in July-September period of the previous fiscal. Its total income went up by 8.87% at Rs 547.37 crore during the quarter under review against Rs 502.73 crore last year.

13:27 Private player HDFC Bank reported a 20.1% jump in net profit to Rs 4,151 crore for the second quarter ended September 30, 2017-18. It had earned Rs 3,455.3 crore profit in the July-September quarter of the last financial year. The bank's total income for the quarter under review was Rs 23,276 crore, up from Rs 19,970.9 crore in the year-ago period. Its gross non-performing assets (GNPAs) rose to 1.26% of gross advances from 1.02% a year ago. The net NPAs also increased to 0.4% from 0.3%. As a result, provisions and contingencies for the quarter almost doubled to Rs 1,476 crore consisting of specific loan loss provisions Rs 749 crore.

13:05 Mukesh

Ambani-led

Reliance Industries reached a new milestone today, as the companys market capitalisation topped a staggering Rs 6 lakh crore, even as the shares hit all-time high levels. RIL shares hit a fresh all-time high of Rs 947.7 on NSE which helped the company to achieve this new feat of crossing the Rs 6 lakh crore market-capitalisation for the first time ever. The company is Indias most valued company far ahead of TCS which has a market capitalisation of Rs 4.95 lakh crore. This year alone, it has added more than Rs 2 lakh crore to its market capitalisation.

PSB recap plan has been under discussion; no confirmation on decision yet, learns @Latha_Venkatesh. Continuous coverage on @CNBCTV18Live pic.twitter.com/bNZrfeScYR CNBC-TV18 News (@CNBCTV18News) October 24, 2017



Congress GST= Genuine Simple Tax Modi ji's GST= Gabbar Singh Tax =''    "  Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) October 24, 2017



To facilitate taxpayers, late fee on filing of GSTR-3B for Aug&Sept has been waived. Late fee paid will be credited back to taxpayer ledger. Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) October 24, 2017

From Dineshwar Sharma, lets move on to the latest from the Valley. NIA has arrested Shahid Yusuf, the son of Syed Salahuddin in connection with terror funding through hawala channel, reports CNN-News18. Yusuf works in J&Ks horticulture department.

Jaiprakash Associates rose nearly 4% in trade after the real estate major on Monday submitted its proposal to raise Rs 2,500 crore by hiving off Yamuna Expressway. The Supreme Court is expected to hear the embattled firms plea seeking nod for the Expressway deal on October 25.

Dineshwar

Modi

The Centre on Monday appointed former Intelligence Bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma to carry out peace talks with all stakeholders in Kashmir. Home Minister Rajnath Singh gave him full liberty to decide his course of action and talk to whoever he wants to.

This is not the first time Sharma would carry out peace talks in the tumultuous region. He was earlier made the interlocutor for peace talks with Assams insurgent groups, including the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) in June this year.

Find out more about The man Modi government has chosen to carry out peace talks in J&K.

11:47 S Chand and Company share price rallies close to 7% after a leading mutual fund house picked up nearly a percent stake in the company. HDFC Mutual Fund through HDFC India Prudence Fund has bought 2,96,300 equity shares (representing 0.85% of total paid-up equity) at Rs 455 per share through block deals on the National Stock Exchange on Monday. The block deal was worth Rs 13.48 crore. As of September 2017, HDFC Trustee Company through HDFC Prudence Fund holds 3.29% stake in the education content company.

The world's leading carbon black major, Phillips Carbon Black (PCBL) is aggressively working to ramp up speciality and value-added carbon in the next three years. "We are aiming at taking up speciality and value-added carbon production to at least 40% of our total production in the next three years. In value term it will be more than 50% of our turnover," PCBL sources told PTI.

Currently, speciality and value added carbon are about 20% of the total production of the company, they said. Speciality carbon is used in a host of non-rubber industry. PCBL is also working on value-added carbon for high end rubber applications in several sectors including automotive, they said. The current production capacity of PCBL is about 4.8 lakh tonne per annum of carbon black.

11:34 DII

The holdings of domestic mutual funds and insurance companies in Indias largest listed companies rose to their highest level in at least 25 quarters as household savings shifted from gold and real estate to financial assets, reports Mint. At the end of September, domestic institutions held a 10.8% stake in the BSE 500 index, which accounts for at least 90% of Indias market capitalisation. Only 424 of these 500 firms, whose data goes back to 25 quarters, were considered for this analysis. That was an increase from 10.52% at the end of June and 9.6% a year ago.

Bharatmala

The Union Cabinet has approved the Road Ministrys Bharatmala Phase 1 proposal, reports CNBC-TV18, quoting sources. An umbrella programme for roads, Bharatmala includes the government flagship National Highways Development Project (NHDP). The ambitious highways development project subsumes all road projects in the first phase will see the construction of 20,000 km of highways. Bharatmala is a mega plan of the government and the second-largest highways project after the NHDP. Being implemented in various phases, NHDP was initiated by former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and includes Golden Quadrilateral connecting four metropolises besides North-South Corridor connecting Srinagar to Kanyakumari and East-West Corridor joining Porbandar to Silchar.

10:53 In a massive show of strength and to prepare for war-like situations, the Indian Air Force conducted a touch and go landing exercise on a stretch of the Lucknow-Agra Expressway, reports CNN-News18. The exercise commenced with a short landing by the C-130J transport aircraft, which dropped IAF's Special Forces Garud commandos and their vehicle. As many as 20 aircraft are taking part in the exercise including French Dassault Mirage-2000, Jaguar, Sukhoi-30 MKI, AN-32 transport and Super Hercules C-130J.

#OnThisDay in 1921, India's most celebrated cartoonist #RKLaxman, the creator of the iconic 'Common Man' born in Mysore, Karnataka pic.twitter.com/JLBsOGfQar



 Doordarshan News (@DDNewsLive) October 24, 2017



10:10 The benchmark BSE Sensex gained over 156 points in early trade as investors widened their positions ahead of quarterly earnings from some bluechip companies amid positive Asian cues. Moreover, continuous buying by domestic financial institutions also supported trading sentiment. The 30-share index gathered 156.24 points, or 0.48%, to 32,662.96 with all the sectoral indices led by oil & gas, realty, PSU and metal trading higher. The gauge had rallied 116.76 points in the previous session.

The NSE index Nifty too climbed 34.25 points, or 0.33%, to trade above the 10,200-mark at 10,219.10. Brokers said fresh spell of buying by investors ahead of quarterly earnings from Infosys and a few other bluechip companies later in the day and a firming trend at other Asian bourses buoyed trading sentiment here. Major gainers were ONGC, NTPC, Tata Steel, Hindustan Unilever, Axis Bank, Asian Paint, ICICI Bank, Coal India, SBI, Maruti Suzuki, Wipro and Power Grid, rising up to 2.42%.

Values are inculcated in various ways but not by mandates of courts, the Supreme Court said on Monday, hinting at recalling its 2016 order which made it compulsory for movie halls to play the national anthem and for people to stand to show respect to it as part of their "sacred obligation", reports CNN-New18. The court further observed that it is not required of an individual to wear patriotism on their sleeve all the time, and that not playing the national anthem in cinema halls won't make people anti-national.

Eleven months after its November 30, 2016 order, a three-judge bench has wondered why the court had to pass such an order when the central government was competent to regulate the playing of the national anthem. Questioning its own order, the three-judge bench, also comprising Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud, observed that the court was inclined to do away with the mandatory direction, leaving the discretion with the cinema halls to decide.

09:30 China made an exception to its local manufacturing norms, a sufficient-enough incentive to spur Elon Musks Tesla to decide on building its first automobile factory outside of the US in Shanghai. The Wall Street Journal reported that the electric carmaker had reached an agreement to set up its own manufacturing facility in Shanghai. The deal with Shanghais government will allow the Silicon Valley-based automaker to build a wholly owned factory in the citys free-trade zone, the newspaper reported.

09:16 Abdul Karim Telgi, a convict in counterfeit stamp paper scam, is on ventilator and is suffering from meningitis, reports PTI. "He is alive, but very critical and has been admitted to Victoria hospital. He is in the ICU and on ventilator. He is suffering from menigitis," Telgi's lawyer MT Nanaiah said in Bengaluru. Telgi was admitted four days back, he added. "He should have been admitted a little bit earlier. There has been a delay," he said.

Telgi was arrested in Ajmer in November 2001 and has been suffering from diabetes and hypertension for over 20 years, besides other ailments, including AIDS. He was serving his term in Parappana Agrahara Central Jail in Bengaluru after being sentenced to 30 years of rigorous imprisonment in multi-crore fake stamp paper racket.

2nd

China's ruling Communist Party has endorsed a second five-year term for President Xi Jinping and appointed a new set of leaders backed by him, reports PTI. 64-year-old Xi's second term was endorsed by the party at the end of its week-long once-in-a-five-year Congress. Xi along with Premier Li Keqiang, 62, ranked number one and two in the Communist Party of China's hierarchy, would continue based on two five year tenure convention for top leaders. Five new members will be elected to the seven member Standing Committee of the party which rules the country. Xi and Li took over power in 2012 and set to continue till 2022.

08:58 South Korea, the United States and Japan started a two-day missile tracking drill on Tuesday, South Koreas military said, in preparation for any missile or nuclear threats from North Korea, reports Reuters. The exercises will be held in waters off the coasts of South Korea and Japan, the South Korean military said in a statement. The drills have been taking place every few months following an agreement made during a Security Consultative Meeting between South Korea and the United States last year.

08:26 HDFC

HDFC Bank, the country's second largest private sector lender, is expected to report a 20% growth year-on-year in profit at Rs 4,143.5 crore for the quarter ended September 2017. Profit in same quarter last fiscal was Rs 3,455.3 crore. Net interest income during the quarter is seen rising 20.9% to Rs 9,664.1 crore as compared with Rs 7,993.6 crore in corresponding quarter last fiscal, according to average of estimates of analysts polled by CNBC-TV18.

08:22 Infosys

FY18

Infosys, the country's second largest software services provider, will announce its July-September quarter earnings on Tuesday after market hours. The IT bellwether is likely to see its revenue rise 3.2% sequentially to Rs 17,630 crore and dollar revenue grow 3.3% to $2,738 million, reports CNBC-TV18. Profit for the quarter is expected to be flat at Rs 3,496 crore as against Rs 3,483 crore in previous quarter.

08:14 Infosys

Infosys is likely to name its next chief executive officer on Tuesday, reports Business Standard. Finding a CEO was among the key tasks taken up by co-founder and Chairman Nandan Nilekani when he took charge in August. Among the probable candidates for the post are BG Srinivas and Ashok Vemuri, two former executives who had quit before co-founder NR Narayana Murthy hired Vishal Sikka in 2014. Sources said there was a strong case for Srinivas, group Managing Director, PCCW Group of Hong Kong, who left Infosys as President, Global Markets, in 2014. UB Pravin Rao, interim MD and CEO, may be moved to his earlier role as Chief Operating Officer.

Japanese manufacturing activity expanded in October at a slower pace than the previous month as output and new orders growth eased in a sign final demand is moderating, a preliminary gauge of activity showed on Tuesday. The Markit/Nikkei Japan Manufacturing flash Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) fell to a seasonally adjusted 52.5 in October from a final reading of 52.9 in September, reports Reuters.

07:51 From JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon, to the IMF's Christine Lagarde, bitcoin has become a major talking point for the finance world's established voices. Now Royal Bank of Canada CEO, David McKay, is joining in calls to question the utility and legitimacy of bitcoin. "The purpose it [bitcoin] seems to serve today is really to help move money in a hidden way and facilitate, potentially facilitate, criminal activity of moving money in an undetected way," McKay told CNBC. "I think some people will call it a fraud. I don't think it's fraudulent  But it doesn't solve a main need in society right now."

Alwaleed

Saudi billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said bitcoin will "implode" one day. "It just doesn't make sense. This thing is not regulated, it's not under control, it's not under the supervision" of any central bank, Alwaleed said in an interview to CNBC. "I just don't believe in this bitcoin thing. I think it's just going to implode one day. I think this is Enron in the making," he said. The billionaire investor was referring to the massive accounting fraud that took Enron, a US energy-trading and utilities giant, into bankruptcy in late 2001.

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal: Bitcoin will 'implode' one day from CNBC.

07:41 Oil prices inched up on Tuesday, supported by declining exports from southern Iraq. In the precious metal space, gold edged up on Tuesday, recovering from a more than two-week low hit in the previous session, on the back of a slightly weaker dollar.

07:38 Markets in Europe posted modest gains as investors shifted focus to corporate earnings. The three major indices ended the day in the green. European STOXX 600 shares rose 0.16%, although Madrid's bourse IBEX shed 0.6% as Spain's crisis entered another week. Madrid has urged Catalans to accept its decision to dismiss their leadership and take control of the region, as the nation's biggest political crisis in decades enters a decisive week.

US President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday he is very, very close to making his decision on who should chair the Federal Reserve, reports Reuters. Trump has interviewed five candidates for the position, including the current Fed Chair Janet Yellen, whose term expires in February. Trump has said he is considering Fed Governor Jerome Powell and Stanford University economist John Taylor for the job. He has also interviewed his chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, and former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh.

An Air Force representative on Monday denied a report that B-52 bombers rigged with nuclear weapons are being prepared for 24-hour alert, reports CNBC. The report quoted a senior Air Force official as saying the preparations were already underway. If the bombers were to be put on 24-hour alert, it would be the first time since the Cold War.

In the report by security news website Defense One, Gen David Goldfein, the Air Force's chief of staff, said US military leaders are reacting to new threat levels. "The world is a dangerous place and we've got folks that are talking openly about use of nuclear weapons," he said, according to the report. Goldfein said that while no official order had been given to put nuclear bombers on alert, preparations were underway.

US reportedly putting nuclear bombers back on high alert from CNBC.

The threat from North Korea has grown to a critical and imminent level and the United States, Japan and South Korea must address the matter, Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera told his US and South Korean counterparts in talks on Monday, reports Reuters. (The) threat posed by North Korea has grown to the unprecedented, critical and imminent level. Therefore, we have to take calibrated and different responses to meet with that level of threat, he said.

07:15 US stocks closed lower on Monday after starting the day at record highs, weighed down by the tech and industrial sectors, while US Treasury prices inched higher in thin volume. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 54.67 points, or 0.23%, to end at 23,273.96, the S&P 500 lost 10.23 points, or 0.40%, to 2,564.98 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 42.23 points, or 0.64%, to 6,586.83.

Asian shares held within striking distance of recent decade highs on Tuesday even as Wall Street fell from record levels, while currencies kept to narrow ranges ahead of key economic events, reports Reuters. Investors are closely watching China and the 19th Communist Party Congress, which winds up on Tuesday and at which President Xi Jinping is expected to release the composition of the Standing Committee - the apex of power in the country. Australian shares also edged higher and back toward a 5-1/2 month peak touched on Monday, while Japan's Nikkei fell 0.2% from a 21-year high. The SGX Nifty is currently trading 15 points lower at 10,185.
live bse live

nse live Volume Todays L/H More 

The S&P BSE Sensex and Nifty50, which closed within kissing distance of their respective record highs, should be able to create history when markets open for trading on Wednesday after the government announced huge recapitalisation plan for public sector banks.

The S&P BSE Smallcap and the Midcap index hit a fresh record high on Tuesday but benchmark indices closed just shy of a record feat.

The Nifty50 closed 44 points away from its respective record high of 10,251.85 while Sensex ended 92 points shy of its respective record high of 32,699.86.

Infosys, which declared earnings today, might have been a let-down but analysts expect action in the banking space which should boost the benchmark indices to record highs, suggest experts.

The government announced a Rs 2.11 lakh crore recapitalisation over two years in its bid to shore up finances of public sector banks, boost private investment and revive the economy.

At a press conference held by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Banking Secretary Rajiv Kumar said the government will infuse Rs 1.35 lakh crore through recapitalisation bonds and Rs 76,000 crore through budgetary support and market raising.

"The markets will most likely to react extremely positively post the headline PSU recapitalisation number. It acts as a sentiment booster for the markets which appeared to be fatigued, Jimeet Modi, CEO at Samco Securities told Moneycontrol. There could be fresh highs."

Modi added that it will important to note how the recapitalisation effect trickles down to boost credit disbursements by PSU banks, whose shares only recently recovered from multi-year lows.

Reiterating the strength of fundamentals of Indian economy, the FM today said that GDP growth has bottomed out and should now head higher. The recapitalisation of PSU banks will play a crucial role in boosting the growth rate of Asias third-largest economy even as Jaitley said it could do so while not disturbing the fiscal deficit target.

Commenting on the fiscal deficit, Economic affairs secretary SC Garg said that fiscal deficit is under control and that the government is unlikely to overshoot its target of 3.2 percent fiscal deficit at the end of the current fiscal year.

Between 2014-15 and 2017-18, banks have made provisions of over Rs 3 lakh crore, more than 10 times the amount made in the preceding 10 years.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that it is essential to increase public spending on infrastructure, and that expenditure on infrastructure is taking place at an unprecedented level at the moment.

It is a very big step taken by the government. The market was factoring in a stimulus of Rs 1 lakh crore but this is more than double. PSU banks are not doing the collection work and are not lending but with recapitalisation, they will start participating [in economic activity], AK Prabhakar, Head of Research, IDBI Capital told Moneycontrol News.

The government will try and place it in such a way that it will not hurt the fiscal deficit. Hence, some provision will be made in the budget. But, there will be some slippages. Equity markets will take the development positively and our target for Nifty is at 11000 by Dec 2017, he said.

India's public sector banks have been saddled with a massive problem of bad debt, with overall gross non-performing assets rising from 37 percent in March 2014 to 82 percent by June 2017.

The move comes following a 2015 announcement in which the government had sanctioned a Rs 70,000-crore capital infusion under the Indradhanush banking reform scheme.

"Govt's Rs 14 lakh crore capex plan over the next 5 years in key infrastructure sectors like roads, power, railways, digital and housing will have a significant multiplier impact on aggregate demand and employment," Ajay Bodke, CEO & Chief Portfolio Manager PMS, at Prabhudas Lilladher told Moneycontrol.

"The proposed injection of Rs 2.11 lakh cr as recap bonds in capital-starved PSBs will act as a force multiplier for their growth needs. It will help in accelerating their tepid credit growth which was constrained due to lack of adequate capital and arrest loss of market share to well-capitalised private sector banks & NBFCs," he said.

He further added that the markets would certainly give a thumbs up to this bold initiative and this would kick-start a virtuous cycle, leading to rise in PSB share prices. This, in turn, would make it easier for them to raise equity capital from the market.
live bse live

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Solar equipment maker Indosolar today said Union Bank of India has approved its proposal for one time settlement of debt.

"Union Bank of India has approved our proposal for One Time Settlement 'OTS'," Indosolar Ltd said in a BSE filing today.

According to the statement, the proposal has two components -- serviceable debt and non-serviceable debt. Serviceable debt shall be paid within six years and last installment will be due on or before March 31, 2024.

Non-serviceable debt shall be converted into optionally convertible cumulative redeemable preference shares 'OCCRPS' and shall be redeemed within four years starting from the date April 1, 2024, it added.
On a train ride to Poland, brothers Michael and Pierre van Melle came up with the vision of a peppermint flavored caramel candy to go by the name of ___. This was the beginning of a Fresh New World.

A creation by a National Institute of Design (NID) student has been chosen as the logo for India's bullet train project.

The student created a cheetah outline on a locomotive engine for the National High Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL), a joint venture between the Centre and state government for implementing high speed rail projects.

(Source: NHSRCL)

The logo, already visible on the NHSRCL's official website, was chosen in a contest, according to The Indian Express. The contest was judged by a three-member screening committee, led by famous artist Satish Gujral, sources said were quoted as saying. The other two panelists were a NITI Aayog member and a National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) official.

Three entries were shortlisted after an initial screening. The top entry was selected from NID, Ahmedabad, the second from the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi, and the third from the NID in Bengaluru, the source added.

The participants were required to send in their applications between April 19 and May 18. Sources told the paper that the cheetah was chosen as it represents speed. The logo has blue and red lines, which according to the sources "symbolise calm and reliability."

India's first bullet train, which will run between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, is set to be operational from August 15, 2022. Covering the cities in less than three hours, the foundation stone for the project was laid by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month.
U.S. President Donald Trump's possible trip to the Demilitarized Zone separating the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and South Korea during his upcoming Asia tour next month is "still being worked out," said a White House senior official on Monday.

Trump is "most likely to visit" Camp Humphreys, a military base about 60 km south of Seoul, capital of South Korea, said the official on condition of anonymity.

The time limit may not permit Trump to do both, the official added.

Trump's travel to Asia is slated for Nov. 3 to 14. It will be his first trip to the region since becoming president, during which he will attend a meeting of leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies in Vietnam. He will also join gatherings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Philippines.
Dineshwar Sharma was reportedly under treatment at a hospital in Chennai.

The central government on Monday appointed former Intelligence Bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma to carry out peace talks with all stakeholders in Kashmir. Home Minister Rajnath Singh gave him full liberty to decide his course of action and talk to whoever he wants to.

This is not the first time he would be carrying out peace talks in the tumultuous region. Sharma was earlier made the interlocutor for peace talks with Assams insurgent groups, including the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) in June this year.

Sharma, who hails from Bihar is a Kerala cadre IPS officer from 1979 batch. He first qualified for Indian Forest Service and later for the IPS.

In his over two decades with the IB, he volunteered to serve in Jammu and Kashmir in the 1990s and later headed the joint task force on intelligence formed after the 1999 Kargil incursion by Pakistan. Before being appointed as chief, he handled the counter-surveillance division of the IB. He retired from IB in December last year.

Sharma served as the chief of IB during a sensitive phase when strong links between ISIS recruiters and Kerala first came to light and when Kashmir was on the boil since the encounter of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in September last year. It was during his tenure that the Indian government reached a settlement with North East-based insurgent group NSCN (IM).

Sharma, who is known to keep a low profile, is considered an expert on issues related to terrorism and internal security. He is also known for his unique policy of reforming potential ISIS recruits, instead of arresting them.

Sharma will be the fourth interlocutor appointed by the Centre since 2002. Before him, former Union minister K C Pant, the present governor of the state N N Vohra and a three-member panel comprising former bureaucrat M M Ansari, academician Radha Kumar and late journalist Dileep Padgaonkar have served as interlocutors on different occasions.

(With inputs from PTI)
Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday announced former Intelligence Bureau (IB) Chief Dineshwar Sharma's appointment as India's representative to hold a 'sustained dialogue' with the people of Kashmir.

The dialogue, the minister said, is aimed at understanding legitimate aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

The move comes after months of intense counter-insurgency operations by security forces.

The home minister said that Sharma has been given "full right to decide his course of action and talk to whoever he wants to."

Sharma's position would be equivalent to that of a Cabinet Secretary, Singh added.

Media reports suggest that the newly-appointed government representative may visit Kashmir in 8-10 days.

The Home Minister refused to fix a time frame for the dialogue and said the representative could take as much time as he wanted to talk to all concerned sections in Jammu & Kashmir.

Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said, "Welcome the initiative of Union Government, appointing an interlocutor for leading a sustained dialogue with stakeholders in Jammu & Kashmir."



From "No talks" to "Talks with all stakeholders" is a major victory for those who had strongly argued for a political solution in J&K.

 P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) October 23, 2017

Former Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said that Sharma's appointment as an interlocutor for Kashmir is an admission by the government that its "muscular approach" has failed.



With appointment of interlocutor, I hope government has finally admitted 'muscular approach' has failed in J&K.  P. Chidambaram (@PChidambaram_IN) October 23, 2017

About Dineshwar Sharma

The Bihar-born officer has served at a wide variety of commands and staff positions in various police, paramilitary and intelligence agencies.

Sharma served as the IB chief from December 31, 2014 to 2016. He was the assistant director there from 1992 to 1994.

A 1979-batch (retired) IPS officer, Sharma has worked with National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval. Sharma has been the mediator for peace talks with insurgent groups in Assam, including the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA).

Previous interlocution panels

In 2010, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had taken a similar approach. The government had appointed a three-member interlocution panel. The panel was headed by Dilip Padgaonkar, former editor of The Times of India and included academician and author Radha Kumar, MM Ansari, a former Election Commissioner of India and Dilip Padgaonkar,

The panel was delegated to gauge and summarize the views and ideas of Kashmiri people. The report submitted by the panel was taken down from the Home Ministry's website within 24 hours.
Narendra Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani today discussed a range of bilateral, regional and global issues and expressed their "firm resolve" to end the menace of terrorism.

The two leaders also discussed ways to further the shared objective of promoting security and stability in Afghanistan.

"Furthering 'neighbourhood first' policy with a strategic partner. Prime Minister Modi receives president Ghani at Hyderabad House," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.

"Prime Minister Modi and president Ghani discussed range of bilateral, regional and global issues, express firm resolve to end menace of terrorism," he added.

Earlier, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called on Ghani, who is here on a one-day working visit.

Ghani also met his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind.

Ahead of his visit, the ministry had said both sides will have the opportunity to review the entire gamut of multifaceted bilateral strategic partnership, including the New Development Partnership. They would hold consultations and coordinate on furthering the shared objective of promoting peace, security, stability and prosperity in Afghanistan and efforts to combat the menace of terrorism.
Commuters board suburban trains during the evening rush hour at Churchgate railway station in Mumbai February 25, 2015. India will increase investment in its overloaded railway network to 8.5 trillion rupees ($137 billion) over the next five years, the government said on Thursday, promising to modernise existing tracks and introduce faster trains.Picture taken February 25, 2015. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade (INDIA - Tags: TRANSPORT BUSINESS POLITICS TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) - RTR4R7V0

Indian Railways is mulling an ambitious plan to build elevated rail corridors above the existing rail tracks in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru with an intention to improve safety and decongest networks, according to a report by The Times of India.

The plan is being mooted along in partnership with state governments and central agencies.

According to the report, preliminary estimates peg the Mumbai project at Rs 25,000 crore. Railways is also expecting to complete the project in the next three to five years.

In Mumbai, the elevated rail track will be built above the existing Mumbai suburban railway tracks.

"For Mumbai, DFCC (Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation) has already given a preliminary report, now we will put formal teams in place. For Bengaluru, I have told the railways... they are looking into this," Railway Minister Piyush Goyal told the newspaper.

A study for Delhi has been commissioned as well, the railway minister added.

Goyal also said that the Railways is open to partnering with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) for the Delhi project.

The elevated tracks will be equipped with elevators and escalators to help differently-abled passengers and will to curb trespassing, making the suburban system travel safe.

The plan includes construction of shopping malls and commercial spaces. Goyal said that he has already discussed raising of the Floor Space Index (FSI) with Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, for the project.

The Western Railway has already planned an elevated corridor in Mumbai between Oval Maidan and Virar. The proposed rapid transit corridor will run along the same alignment as the Western Line of the Mumbai Suburban Railway.

Besides, the government's plan includes reviving Delhi's 35-km ring railway by constructing elevated tracks and redeveloping stations.

Railways looking to unlock residential properties

The Indian Railways is also looking to unlock some of its prime residential properties for redevelopment across the country. The move could bring an additional revenue of Rs 20,000-25,000 crore for the railways, according to a report by The Economic Times.

The Railways currently owns large chunks of prime residential land in all major cities. Some of the places include Delhi's Connaught Place, Nizamuddin and Chanakyapuri. Similar land parcels are present in the heart of Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Pune.

The total railway land is over 40,000 hectares, of which almost 950 hectares have been encroached upon. It is planning to grant a 99-year lease to developers for these land parcels.

All 17 Zonal Offices have been asked to compile details of residential land which can be redeveloped.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today called on Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, ahead of his talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on promoting security and stability in the war-torn nation.

"#Neighbourhoodfirst. EAM @SushmaSwaraj calls on visiting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in New Delhi. Bilateral & regional issues discussed," MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in a tweet.

Ghani, who is here on a one-day working visit, will hold talks with Modi on furthering the shared objective of promoting security and stability in Afghanistan, and efforts to combat the menace of terrorism.

They will also discuss regional and global issues of mutual interest.

During his visit, President Ghani will meet with his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind.

The invitation to Ghani was extended by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval during his trip to Kabul on October 16.
The Trump administration is looking forward to completing the deal for transferring unarmed Sea Guardian drones to India, a senior US official has said.

The major decision to sell unarmed Sea Guardian drones was announced during the summit meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump on June 26.

The US "looks forward to completing the deal for transferring Sea Guardian unmanned drones," the official said.

The addition of 22 state-of-the-art unarmed drones to India would add to its Navy's surveillance capabilities in the strategic Indian Ocean region.

As part of India being designated as major defence partner, the Trump administration is taking additional steps to remove bureaucratic bottlenecks and accelerate the process of sale of high-tech defence equipment to India.

A special focus is on strengthening Indian maritime capabilities.

The defence cooperation is only going to increase, the senior administration official said, adding that this is based on fundamental understanding that interests of the two countries are now aligned.

This was the first major defence deal announced after India was designated as a major defence partner.

Vivek Lall, chief executive of US and international strategic development at General Atomics, said sale of Sea Guardian drones is a significant step in cementing the US- India bilateral defence relationship.

To be sold at an estimated cost of USD 2 billion, this would help create some 2,000 jobs in the US, he said.

The Sea Guardian is a variant of the tested MQ-9 platform which allows for greater interoperability with US and allied forces, Lall said adding that its use by the Indian Navy will also develop the country's credible capabilities, which is significant for Indian maritime security and naval power projection.

However there have been no talks between the two countries on New Delhi's request for General Atomics Predator C Avenger armed drones.

It is understood that this was not raised by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her meeting with her US counterpart Jim Mattis during his visit to India last month.

The two are scheduled to meet again this week in the Philippines.

According to an industry source, this "case is being actively considered" by the White House as a next step after the Guardian deal.

"As military aviation transforms globally to autonomous systems, US and India have a great opportunity to collaborate at the highest levels of technology and innovation," the industry source said.

Last week, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had said that in keeping with India's status as a major defence partner and their mutual interest in expanding maritime cooperation, the Trump administration has offered a menu of defence options for India's consideration, including the Guardian UAV.

"We value the role India can play in global security and stability and are prepared to ensure they have even greater capabilities," Tillerson had said ahead of his visit to India.

"The proposals the US has put forward, including for Guardian UAVs, aircraft carrier technologies, the Future Vertical Lift programme, and F-18 and F-16 fighter aircraft, are all potential game changers for our commercial and defence cooperation," Tillerson said.
Yogi Adityanath, Chief Minister of India's most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, addresses the audience after inaugurating power projects in Allahabad

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said that there was immense potential for tourism in the Bundelkhand region.

According to an official statement issued by the state government here, the chief minister was speaking at a public meeting in Chitrakoot.

He also promised that Chitrakoot would be linked to a highway and observed that the district was extremely important from cultural and security point of view, and a work plan should be made for its planned development.

"To attract tourists, Kalinjar Fort (in Banda district) and Rani Lakshmibai's Fort in Jhansi will be developed. The state government will extend its full support and also seek support from the Centre," he said.

Adityanath also laid the foundation stone of the Ramayan Gallery and Tourism Facilitation Centre, Parikrama Marg covered shed and laser show at Ramghat.

"The state government is making every effort to usher in happiness in the lives of the people of Bundelkhand," he said.

Adityanath distributed certificates to beneficiaries of various schemes and also undertook a surprise inspection of the district hospital.

Later, chairing a review meeting of law and order and developmental works, he said, "Action should be taken under the provisions of Gunda Act and Gangster Act against those indulging in smuggling of animals, land mafia, mining mafia, dreaded criminals and those involved in illegal trading of tendu leaves."

He also issued directives to effectively curb crimes committed against women.
Former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah

The Karnataka government's plan to celebrate the birth anniversary of erstwhile Mysore ruler Tipu Sultan on November 10 is once again mired in controversy.

The Congress-led state government has extended an invitation to all Members of Parliament (MPs) belonging to the state and Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) for the 'Tipu Sultan Jayanti' event.

Several BJP legislators have already rejected the state government's invitation. Union Minister Anantkumar Hegde has said that the Karnataka government should not invite him to the shameful event.

BJP MLA Ashwanth Narayan said, "Tipu as a ruler, has killed thousands of people and done forcible conversion....It is a party stand. Government is trying to instigate and bring communal tension".

The issue has been mired in controversy since 2015, when the Congress had come under fire from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for starting the Tipu Jayanti celebrations. The tussle between the two political rivals had led to violent clashes resulting in death of two people.

Now, the BJP has accused Congress of using the Tipu Jayanti celebration for political gains before the Assembly election slated in May 2018.

Karnataka's Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy said, Any MLA or MP will be invited to an event happening in his or her constituency. It is a protocol, and has been done earlier and will be continued in future too To attend Tipu Jayanti or not is up to Hegde."

The controversy

The Tipu Sultan Jayanti celebrations, first introduced in 2015, have triggered violent protests in the state. The celebration was to commemorate the 18th century Mysore ruler's 266th birth anniversary for the first time.

Of late, Tipu Sultan has become a polarising figure in the state. According to the BJP, Tipu Sultan was responsible for killing of Hindus and Christians. BJP also claims that Tipu was anti-Hindu and anti-Kannada.

The Congress maintains that the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore was a freedom fighter who was battling the British rule.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said, "It is being made into a political issue. There were four wars against British and Tipu fought them all.

In 2016, the event was comparatively peaceful as a result of elaborate security arrangements in place.
Berkeley: Congress Vice President, Rahul Gandhi delivering a speech at Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley, California on Monday. PTI Photo(PTI9_12_2017_000038B)

The Election Commission is yet to announce the voting schedule for the Gujarat Assembly polls, but Rahul Gandhi is very much in election mode. After tracking Rahul Gandhi's long day of campaigning in the state, CNN-News18's Bhupendra Chaubey was surprised to discover that his co-passenger was none other than the Congress Vice-President, who is set to take the reins of the party in a few weeks. While no selfies were allowed, here's what he observed during the course of the flight:

# Rahul Gandhi loves his mobile phone. A joke had him chuckling along with his photographer for nearly two minutes.

# As the flight was taking off, the Gandhi scion whipped out a copy of Swami Vivekananda's Vedanta: Voice of Freedom and didn't put it down throughout, apart from when he paused to talk about the idea of freedom.



#EXCLUSIVE Gujarat Traders bats for Rahul Gandhi says he will win Gujarat election. Take a look. pic.twitter.com/MUJKBA58cQ

 News18 (@CNNnews18) October 23, 2017

# Gandhi then asked Mahendra Bhai, a small trader, if his business had suffered due to GST. When he answered in the affirmative, Gandhi promised to help.

For the full story, click here
The government has started working towards boosting the minimum-mandated internet speed in the country to 2 mbps and more from the existing 512 kbps, reports the Economic Times.

India tops a list of 23 major internet-using countries as the nation where most people denied having a life without the world wide web. The government's move is in line with its digital India vision that includes initiatives such as smart cities, digital India programmes, digital payments, and 5G services.

According to the report, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan affirmed the government was aware of slow internet speed experienced by internet users in many parts of the country.

"We are very slow. While we have done a lot on (providing internet) access, we have not been able to actually deliver the quality of service that is required," Sundararajan told the paper.

While India is preparing to roll out 5G services and applications focusing on internet-of-things (IoT)  the interconnection via the Internet of computing devices embedded in everyday objects to exchange data  internet speeds in 3G and 4G services are nowhere close to the numbers promised.

Also Read: Is 5G already here? Qualcomm tests internet speeds of 1 Gbps

Earlier, Telecom regulator TRAI had pointed out the weaker internet speed in its 'Consultation Paper on Data Speed Under Wireless Broadband Plans' released in June this year.

"... it was noticed that the advertised speed differed substantially from the actual... Data speeds quoted by mobile network operators often appear to be at variance with those experienced by users. For instance, crowd-sourced data from Trai's mySpeed portal shows that quite a few 3G subscribers throughout the country receive a download speed of less than 1 Mbps. Moreover, these 'below 1 Mbps' speed can go as low as 10 Kbp for some 3G subscribers," said the report.

On the minimum-internet speed limit of 2 mbps, Sundararajan said, "2 mbps is the basic minimum. We should definitely mandate this. If at all, it should be higher than that. It cannot be lower than that."

TRAI has also been pushing for the increase in the minimum-internet speed as several telecom companies are rolling out faster 4G services.

Even though the use of 4G gained pace after the launch of services by Reliance Industries-owned Jio in September last year, other telecom companies have been averse to the idea of having higher internet speed for various reasons, said the report.

"Their main concerns in this regard were limited availability of spectrum per operator in 2G/3G bands; low coverage zones such as basements, high rise buildings, tunnels; and variations due to external factors such as subscriber's device quality and type, number of subscribers browsing the data services, peak/off-peak time, transmission bandwidth, website behaviour etc.," Trai said.
Local residents look at a train of a new "SkyRail" monorail system, which belongs to BYD Company, at the Jiatianxia Square, in Guilin city, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, 20 August 2017. [Photo: IC]

Electric vehicle maker BYD Co Ltd is planning to start trial runs of its SkyRail monorail mass transit solution in Egypt soon, making it the second overseas destination for the Chinese company after the Philippines.

Demand for mass transit systems has been increasing in both the countrieskey markets in China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. BYD officials told China Daily that the company was confident of further cooperation with these countries in the future.

The transportation authority of Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with BYD for the project on Oct 21. The MoU envisages a monorail project spanning 128 kilometers and plans to conduct feasibility studies. It also marks the first time that SkyRail is being showcased in the African continent.

Alexandria is a well-known historic and cultural city, but plagued by frequent traffic jams. In 2013, local authorities began exploring options to relieve transportation pressure.

"BYD's SkyRail is a clean, affordable and safe way for people to commute. It also utilizes limited road space in towns and cities while minimizing disruption to local communities," said AD Huang, general manager of BYD Middle East and Africa Auto Sales Division.

Thirteen years ago, the carmaker started manufacture and sales of passenger vehicles in Egypt. Nearly one-thirds of the taxis in Cairo are made by BYD.

Khaled Eleiwa, chairman of the Alexandria Passenger Transportation Authority, said he expects the SkyRail to start operations in the seaport city as soon as possible.

Unlike subways, BYD's Sky-Rail requires only a fifth of the cost and one third of the construction time, according to the company.

One is currently operating in Yinchuan, capital of the Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

Monorail is now among BYD's four key business sectors which also include cars, mobile phone components and batteries. According to Securities Times, BYD has received intent orders from 10 cities so far.

Wang Liusheng, chief analyst for the automobile industry at CSM Securities, said he expects BYD's monorail operations to realize profits and generate income this year.

But he admitted that the profits would be minuscule for now and it would be difficult to gauge whether the same would grow as per market expectations in the future.

BYD's shares declined by 3.69 percent and 2.39 percent in the Hong Kong and Shenzhen stock exchanges on Monday.
A Bitcoin (virtual currency) coin is seen in an illustration picture taken at La Maison du Bitcoin in Paris, France, June 23, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Illustration - RTS18BQW

The cryptocurrency world has been abound with news recently and not all of it has been good.

With many government and banks across the world are still seeing bitcoin as a threat and pushing for regulations, a major portion of Wall Street is bent on calling bitcoin prices a bubble. Yet aficionados are also not scarce with a whole crypto network supported by developers and technologists.

Notably, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has called Bitcoin a remarkable cryptographic achievement. He said that the currency gets massive value from its non-duplicable quality in the digital space.

But governments are keen on stepping up regulations on Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and bitcoin usages. The Chinese government has recently made a move to do the same along with shutting down cryptocurrency exchanges.

In the beginning of this month, as bitcoin fell amid worries about government regulation, Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff said the price of bitcoin would "collapse" under continued regulatory pressure. Nevertheless, Bitcoin surged to a record high of over USD 6,000 on Friday.

However, Rogoff did say that the blockchain technology behind cryptocurrency would flourish despite bitcoin.

Not Bitcoin, but blockchain would survive

While skeptic bankers promote the argument that the price of bitcoin is a bubble and that it would pop anytime soon, most of them are keen on adopting the new blockchain technology behind cryptocurrency.

Recently, CEO of the United States' largest bank JP Morgan Chase -- Jamie Dimon -- rubbished the credibility of bitcoin, called it a fraud, while his bank invested in a blockchain technology-based system for global transactions as it was proved safer than the traditional method.

Dimon is a believer in the bubble theory; CNBC quoted him as saying If you're stupid enough to buy [bitcoin], you'll pay the price for it one day.

Also, reports have emerged about British banks not letting companies dealing in bitcoin open accounts with them. Banks in general have been averse to bitcoin as it challenged the centralized regulation of money as has been done for the longest time by financial institutions.

But many institutions want to adapt the new technology as market demand rises. Financial company Goldman Sach's CEO had tweeted about bitcoin saying: "Not endorsing/rejecting. Know that folks also were skeptical when paper money displaced gold."

Afterwards, Goldman president David Solomon said the firm was looking at bitcoin as clients were taking interest in it.

TD Bank, Mizuho Financial Group and National Australia Bank are also collaborating with IBM to develop a payment system using blockchain for instant international transactions. But they are not keen on letting cryptocurrency flourish either.

The bubble theory

Jordan Belfort, better known as the wolf of wall street, reiterated the Wall Street skepticism. He told the Financial Times that "It's [bitcoin] the biggest scam ever, such a huge, gigantic scam that's going to blow up in so many people's faces.

Ray Dalio, founder of the worlds largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, claimed that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin qualified as a market bubble according to his firms criteria.

According to him, a rise in price of such currencies is deemed a market bubble as they do not have a reliable store of value due to their extreme volatility and people buy them with the main intention of selling them later at a higher price. Bitcoin is a highly speculative market, he told CNBC.

He said that lack of transactions and high market speculation are stopping bitcoin from thriving as a currency.

Dalio also voiced concerns about the privacy aspects of bitcoin, saying it was difficult to accept bitcoin as a currency as people wont know what youre doing."

Adding to Bridgewaters argument was financial service major UBS, which also described bitcoin price rise as a speculative bubble. UBS' argument was based on the lack of a government-sanctioned legal tender value that is typically attached to fiat currencies like the US dollar.

The Swiss major also said that cryptocurrency will not become mainstream as governments would not accept taxes in cryptocurrency and hence an important part of transactions in the economy would exclude them.

Bitcoin is decentralized and transactions stay anonymous, despite being registered on a public ledger online. This makes it hard for governments to trace and tax such transactions.

However, UBS also justified its bubble stance by saying the highly priced bitcoins had an absence of any fundamental economic backing, while bringing in the old debate on whether bitcoin had any intrinsic value.

Bitcoin expert Andreas M Antonopoulos had earlier told Moneycontrol that the value of bitcoin comes from other people on the internet, who are with you and attach value to it. He went on to say that those people believed in bitcoins value because this technology cannot be arbitrarily changed, because the number of coins issued cannot be arbitrarily increased, because it is useful for trans-national transactions.

Even Wall Street has some supporters of the cryptocurrency. Morgan Stanleys Chief Executive James Gorman argued that cryptocurrencies are more than just a fad. He also underlined the significance of the security provided through crypto transactions and the alternative it holds to central banking systems, according to a Bloomberg article
US President Donald Trump will urge President Xi Jinping to make good on his commitments to pressure North Korea when he visits China next month, a senior White House official said on Monday, stepping up a strategy to have Beijing help rein in Pyongyang.

Isolating North Korea further over its nuclear and ballistic missile tests is a key goal for Trump on what will be his longest foreign trip to date.

Trump will call on Xi to fully implement U.N. Security Council resolutions against Pyongyang and take other steps to pressure North Korea.

China, North Koreas sole major ally, accounts for more than 90 percent of trade with the isolated country.

China has said it will strictly enforce U.N. Security Council sanctions banning imports of coal, textiles and seafood, while cutting off oil shipments to the North.

But a senior White House official who briefed reporters ahead of Trump's trip said China needs to do more to comply with two U.N. Security Council resolutions that were approved unanimously, including with China's support.

"We would like to see China follow through on those commitments. We would like to see China do things bilaterally as well that might even go beyond things that are mandated by those U.N. Security Council resolutions," the official said.

Though China has been angered by North Koreas repeated nuclear and missile tests and demanded they stop, Beijing also sees the United States and South Korea sharing responsibility for rising tensions because of military drills they carry out in the region.

China's special envoy for the North Korea nuclear issue, Kong Xuanyou, met his U.S. counterpart, Joseph Yun, in Beijing on Monday, China's Foreign Ministry said, where they had a "deep exchange of views on the Korean peninsula issue". The ministry did not elaborate.

Trump, who has threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea, has frequently asked China to help rein in North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

But this strategy has so far failed to stop Pyongyang conducting nuclear bomb tests at an underground facility and firing ballistic missile tests into the Pacific Ocean over Japan.

'CRITICAL' THREAT

The threat from North Korea has grown to a "critical and imminent level" and the United States, Japan and South Korea must address the matter, Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera told his U.S. and South Korean counterparts in talks on Monday.

Onodera's remarks underscored the deep concern in Tokyo about North Korean weapons tests as Pyongyang seeks to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States.

The White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump is looking for a peaceful resolution of the North Korea standoff.

Asked by reporters whether an offer by former President Jimmy Carter to serve as a U.S. envoy to North Korea would be accepted, the official said: "There's nothing planned."

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Monday he outlined for Trump his country's efforts to pressure North Korea over its nuclear programme but also advised the U.S. leader to use talks to help resolve the conflict.

"There is no quick and easy solution. Pressure is necessary but so is dialogue. The U.S. will need to work with others, including China, South Korea and Japan and Russia to resolve the issue," he said.

With Xi consolidating power in the wake of a Communist Party Congress in Beijing, Trump believes the Chinese president will have a greater authority to take steps against North Korea, senior administration officials said last week.

Trump's Nov. 3-14 trip will include visits to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Trump will also be tough on trade during talks with Xi as he seeks to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China, the White House official said.

"We have huge barriers that Americans companies have to surmount to gain access to the Chinese market. The president is intent on rectifying that situation," the official said.

Despite Trumps fierce criticism of Chinas trade practices during the presidential campaign, he has mostly held off on any major trade action while his administration works with Beijing on North Korea.

China has insisted it is doing all it can, and some Chinese diplomats say the Trump administration has overestimated how much influence Beijing has over its defiant neighbour.

Even as China has shown signs of tightening enforcement of sanctions on North Korea, it has stopped short of agreeing to U.S. demands for a fuel embargo and has urged the United States to negotiate with Pyongyang.
16:17 US forces are carrying out a nuclear war drill dubbed Global Thunder as tensions look set to snap with North Korea, Daily Star reported.

US Strategic Command (StratCom) has described the secretive drill as preparing their forces for wherever they are needed. Details released by the Pentagon have been sparse, but it understood to involve missiles and bombers. Global Thunders mission statement is to ready the USs nuclear command centre

for war.

15:55 South Koreas Unification Minister has insisted South Korea and the US are open to holding early negotiations with North Korea if Pyongyang displays a willingness to abandon its nuclear program, North Korea Inside reported.

During a parliamentary inspection of the Unification Ministry on Tuesday, Cho Myoung-gyon said Seoul and Washington are aiming for the complete denuclearization of the North, but are willing to negotiate with Pyongyang in advance, as long as the allies can affirm the regime's will to denuclearize.

15:48 South Korea's Unification Minister has confirmed North Korean spies have tried to threaten or cajole some North Korean defectors living in South Korea, North Korea Inside reported.

Cho Myoung-gyon made the disclosure during the parliamentary inspection on Tuesday, when asked by Representative Park Byeong-seug of the ruling Democratic Party to confirm Pyongyang's suspected behavior.

The minister also agreed with Parks criticism about a loophole in Seoul's protection of the defectors after the lawmaker pointed out that the North's ability to track the whereabouts or contact information of the defectors could put them at serious risk of harm.

15:37 China has quietly undertaken more construction and reclamation in the South China Sea, recent satellite images show, and is likely to more powerfully reassert its claims over the waterway soon, regional diplomats and military officers say. Read the whole story by Reuters here.

15:29 Trump administration officials, eager to choke off North Koreas global networks, have in recent days urged Persian Gulf countries to clamp down harder on the nuclear-armed states ties to the region, Wall Street Journal reported.

In three days of high-level talks in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, US Treasury officials pushed regional leaders to tighten financial oversight and reduce the number of North Korean labourers working in the region, many of whom are employed in the construction industry.

15:24 The DPRK (North Korea) has developed intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the territory of European countries, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Tokyo.

14:53 Diplomatic experts from Japan, the United States and South Korea are calling on US President Donald Trump to seek ways to get Pyongyang to return to the negotiating table, possibly in the so-called six-party talks framework that includes the three nations plus North Korea, China and Russia, the Japan Times reported.

Dont demonize North Korea. We can still have effective communication with them, said Moon Chung-in, a special adviser on foreign affairs and national security to South Korean President Moon Jae-in. We also have to be more realistic. In my personal opinion, if you put denuclearization at the entrance of dialogue and negotiations with them, theyll never come to the table. We might think about putting denuclearization at the exit.

14:35 The United States shouldnt obstruct efforts by China and its neighbors to agree on a code of conduct in the disputed South China Sea, Chinas ambassador said yesterday as President Donald Trump prepared for his first official visit to Asia.

Ambassador Cui Tiankai said the US has no territorial claim in those waters and should let countries in the region manage their disputes in a friendly and effective way.

14:16 North Korea has demonstrated significantly improved capability in developing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) through its tests in July, according to defense analysts.

The analysts said such tests could be a sign that the Kim Jong-un regime may perfect an ICBM topped with a nuclear warhead soon and become capable of striking targets on the US mainland.

But they noted that the North had yet to demonstrate a reliable re-entry vehicle robust enough to resist the heat and pressure of penetrating the atmosphere, and that this technology seemed a major hurdle for the North in its quest to develop an operational ICBM. Read more on The Korea Times.

14:07 A tunnel under construction at North Korea's nuclear test site collapsed and as many as 200 workers could have been killed, Yonhap reported today.

About 100 people were trapped inside when the unfinished tunnel at the North's Punggye-ri nuclear test site collapsed, and an additional 100 people could have been killed while trying to rescue those trapped as a second collapse occurred, Yonhap said quoting a report by Japan's TV Asahi.

The report didn't provide further details, such as when the accident happened.

For full report, click here.

13:54 President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed to work together on steps to counter North Koreas nuclear and missile development, ahead of the US leaders visit to Asia, the Japanese government said late on Monday.

In a 20-minute phone call, Trump and Abe discussed the schedule of the presidents coming visit, which includes a November 5-7 stop in Japan, and agreed to remain in close contact over North Korea, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasutoshi Nishimura told reporters.

13:43 Hong Kong banks need more support from the government to reduce their exposure to sanctioned North Korean entities via the Chinese firms they do business with.

That was the view of a United Nations sanctions expert in 2016, and, concern is once again highlighted in a recent UN report that sheds light on the financial hubs conduit role when Pyongyang seeks to bypass the many sanctions imposed on it.

13:20 National Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun said he will deliver a message of peace when he meets United States President Donald Trump on November 8.

Dialogue and diplomacy should be the only option to resolve the crisis caused by North Koreas nuclear program, although sanctions are accompanied, Chung said in an interview with The Korea Times. I will deliver to President Trump the Korean peoples wishes for peace.

13:18 The South Korean militarys deployment of a three-axis defense system against North Korean nuclear and missile attacks will not be completed by 2022, lawmaker Kim Hack-yong said today, NK News reported.

The three-axis system includes the Kill Chain pre-emptive strike program, Korea Air and Missile Defense (KAMD), and the Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation (KMPR) systems.

13:03 South Korea President Moon Jae-in today renewed his call for North Korea to participate in the PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games, saying it will mark great progress toward peace on the peninsula.

"The doors to PyeongChang, the road to peace, are also open to North Korea," Moon said in his speech to the general assembly of the National Unification Advisory Council (NUAC).

12:58 Pursuing both sanctions and dialogue is the most practical way to effectively counter North Korea's nuclear and missile threats, the ruling party leader said Monday, The Korea Times reported.

Ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) Chairwoman Rep. Choo Mi-ae showed strong support for President Moon Jae-in's pledge to engage with the belligerent country while maintaining sanctions.



#GenDunford met with #ROK and #Japan counterparts to focus on trilateral cooperation



12:30 North Korean ballistic missile scientists carried out a static test of a new type of solid-fuel engine a couple of weeks ago, a US government source with knowledge of North Koreas ballistic missile programs told The Diplomat.

According to the source, the test took place at North Koreas solid-fuel engine testing site in Hamhung, on the countrys east coast. Read the full story here.

12:22 Acting Prime Minister Julie Bishop has signalled Australia is open to reviving plans for a sensitive four-way diplomatic and security co-operation with the United States, India and Japan - an arrangement that has historically angered China, which sees it as a containment strategy, The Sydney Morning Herald reported today.

It is understood that Bishop recently discussed with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono the prospect of setting up formal four-way meetings among the major democracies - known as the "quadrilateral dialogue" - and how to encourage India's involvement.

12:09 South Korea's top nuclear envoy expressed hope today of having extensive discussions with his Chinese counterpart on ways to peacefully resolve the North Korea nuclear stalemate, The Korea Herald reported.

Lee Do-hoon, the special representative for peace and security affairs on the Korean Peninsula, left for Beijing to meet China's Kong Xuanyou later in the day.

12:06 Clothing manufacturer Nine Mode President Ok Sung-seok said he and other factory owners at the joint industrial park in Gaeseong, North Korea, are determined to resume business there if it reopens, Korea Times reported.

Ok, also a co-vice president of the Corporate Association of Gaeseong Industrial Complex (GIC), said they are aware of the business risks associated with North Korea. Operations at the GIC were suspended indefinitely in February 2016 after Pyongyang conducted a nuclear weapon test.

12:01 The first two of a dozen F-35A Lightning II stealth fighters arrived on Okinawa this week for a six-month deployment thats part of Pacific Commands theater security program, Stars and Stripes reported.

The jets  Americas newest and most advanced stealth fighters  landed at Kadena Air Base on Monday afternoon, an Okinawa Defense Bureau spokesman said. They will be joined by 10 others from Utahs 34th Fighter Squadron to help demonstrate the continuing US commitment to stability and security in the region, the US Air Force said.

11:49 Top US national security officials yesterday warned congressional Republicans and Democrats demanding a new war authorization that existing laws governing combat operations against terrorist groups are legally sufficient and that repealing them prematurely could signal the United States is backing away from the fight, Associated Press reported.

During testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis urged Congress to tread carefully. If lawmakers are compelled to replace the post-September 11, 2001, laws, the two secretaries cautioned them against imposing restrictions and conditions on American military forces that allow their enemies "to seize the initiative."

11:46 NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg urged all United Nation members today to fully and transparently implement sanctions against North Korea, which he said has emerged as a global threat able to fire ballistic missiles as far as Europe and North America, Reuters reported.

North Koreas ballistic and nuclear tests are an affront to the United Nations Security Council, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in a joint announcement in Tokyo, where he met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

11:43 South Korea is open to talks with North Korea even before Pyongyang gives up its nuclear weapons if the North shows its commitment to denuclearization, South Korea's unification minister said today.

Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon also said in a parliamentary audit that North Korea is not currently showing any intent to have dialogue with the US, though both sides seem to be exploring the possibility of talks, The Korea Herald reported.
The chronicle of a life split between urban Manhattan and rural Montana.
Jarrett Coleman goes from school board to statehouse with win in 16th Senate District race
October 24, 2017 Phoenix 2.0 - CIA To Unleash Vietnam Era Terror Campaign On Afghanistan Last week the new head of the CIA Mike Pompeo publicly threatened to make the CIA a "much more vicious agency". His first step towards that is to unleash CIA sponsored killer gangs onto the people of Afghanistan: The C.I.A. is expanding its covert operations in Afghanistan, sending small teams of highly experienced officers and contractors alongside Afghan forces to hunt and kill Taliban militants across the country ...

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The C.I.A.s expanded role will augment missions carried out by military units, meaning more of the United States combat role in Afghanistan will be hidden from public view. This will be mass murder campaign. People will be pulled from their houses at night and vanish - 'eliminated'. That has been happening in Afghanistan for years, but on a relatively small scale. So far the targets were 'al-Qaeda', a small terrorist group, not the local insurgency. The new campaign will target the Taliban, a mass insurgency against the U.S. occupation. Thus is will be a mass campaign and cause mass casualties. It is not going to be a counter-insurgency campaign, even though some will assert it is. A counter-insurgency campaign combines political, security, economic, and informational components. It can only be successful in support of a legitimate authority. The current Afghan government has little legitimacy. It was cobbled and bribed together by the U.S. embassy after wide and open election fraud threatened to devolve into total chaos. In August CIA director Pompeo met the Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and likely discussed the new plan. But the now announced campaign has neither a political nor an economic component. Solely centered on "security" it will end up as a random torture and killing expedition without the necessary context and with no positive results for the occupation. The campaign will be a boon for the Taliban. While it will likely kill Taliban aligned insurgents here and there, it will also alienate many more Afghan people. Some 75% of the Taliban fighters are locals fighting near their homes. Killing them creates new local recruits for the insurgency. It will also give the Taliban a more sympathetic population which it can use to cover its future operations. A similar campaign during the Vietnam war was known as Operation Phoenix. Then some 50,000-100,000 South-Vietnamese, all 'suspected communists', were killed by the CIA's roving gangs. The polished Wikipedia version: [Phoenix] was designed to identify and "neutralize" (via infiltration, capture, counter-terrorism, interrogation, and assassination) the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong). The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong". The major two components of the program were Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) and regional interrogation centers. PRUs would kill or capture suspected NLF members, as well as civilians who were thought to have information on NLF activities. Many of these people were then taken to interrogation centers where many were allegedly tortured in an attempt to gain intelligence on VC activities in the area. The information extracted at the centers was then given to military commanders, who would use it to task the PRU with further capture and assassination missions. The Phoenix program was embedded into a larger civil political and economic development program known as Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support. The civil part of CORDS partially failed over bribery and incompetence. It was too expensive and not sustainable. The accepted historical judgement is that the 'security' part, Phoenix, failed to achieve its purpose despite its wide conceptualization. Its utter brutality alienated the people. The passive support for the Viet Cong increased due to the campaign. In recent years there have been revisionists efforts by the Pentagon's RAND Corporation to change that view. They claim that the campaign went well and was successful. But those who took part in Phoenix (Video: Part 1, part 2) paint a very different picture. The brutality of Phoenix, which enraged the public, was one of the reason that forced the U.S. government to end the war. The now announced campaign looks similar to Phoenix but lacks any political component. It is not designed to pacify insurgents but to 'eliminate' any and all resistance: The new effort will be led by small units known as counterterrorism pursuit teams. They are managed by C.I.A. paramilitary officers from the agencys Special Activities Division and operatives from the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistans intelligence arm, and include elite American troops from the Joint Special Operations Command. The majority of the forces, however, are Afghan militia members. There are only a few dozen officers in the CIA Special Activities Division that can support such a campaign. The lede to the article suggests that 'contractors' will have a significant role. In August the former head of the mercenary outlet Blackwater, Eric Prince, lobbied the Trump administration for a contractor led war in Afghanistan. We can safely assume that Prince and some Blackwater offspring will be involved in the new CIA campaign. The major intelligence groundwork though will have to be done by the NDS. The Afghan National Directorate of Security was build by the CIA from elements of the former Northern Alliance, the opponents of the original Taliban. In the late 1990s the Northern Alliance under Ahmed Shah Massoud was financed by the CIA. Shah Massoud's intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, a dual citizen, received CIA training. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan Saleh headed the new intelligence service, the NDS. Then President Hamid Karzai fired Saleh in 2010 when he resisted Karzai's efforts to reconcile with the Taliban. In March 2017 the current President Ashraf Ghani appointed Saleh as State Minister for Security Reforms. Saleh resigned(?) in June after Ghani reached a peace agreement with the anti-government warlord and former Taliban ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Saleh is an ethnic Tajik and an unforgiving hardliner. He is wary of Pashtun who are the most populous ethnic group in Afghanistan and the base population for the Taliban. Saleh recently founded his own political party. He obviously has further ambitions. He always had excellent relations with the CIA and especially its hardline counter-terrorism center. I find it highly likely that he was involved in the planning of this new campaign. In the ethnically mixed north of Afghanistan the involvement of NDS led local militia will probably cause large scale ethnic cleansing. In the Pashtun south and east it will lack all local support as such NDS militia have terrorized the country for quite some time: For years, the primary job of the C.I.A.s paramilitary officers in the country has been training the Afghan militias. The C.I.A. has also used members of these indigenous militias to develop informant networks and collect intelligence.

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The American commandos  part of the Pentagons Omega program, which lends Special Operations forces to the C.I.A.  allow the Afghan militias to work together with conventional troops by calling in airstrikes and medical evacuations.

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The units have long had a wide run of the battlefield and have been accused of indiscriminately killing Afghan civilians in raids and with airstrikes. It is utterly predictable how the intensified campaign will end up. The CIA itself has few, if any, independent sources in the country. It will depend on the NDS, stuffed with Saleh's Tajik kinsmen, as well as on ethnic and tribal militia. Each of these will have their own agenda. A 'security' campaign as the planned one depends on reliable intelligence. Who, in this or that hamlet, is a member of the Taliban? For lack of trusted local sources the militia, under CIA or contractor command, will resort to extremely brutal torture. They will squeeze 'informants' and 'suspects' with the most brutal torture until these come up with names of a new rounds of 'suspects'. Rinse-repeat - in the end all of the 'suspects' will have been killed. The new plan was intentionally 'leaked' to the New York Times by "two senior American officials". It is set into a positive light: [T]he mission is a tacit acknowledgment that to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table  a key component of Mr. Trumps strategy for the country  the United States will need to aggressively fight the insurgents. That claim is of course utter nonsense. The U.S. already has for 16+ years "aggressively fought the insurgents". The insurgency grew during that time. The Taliban were always willing to negotiate. Their main condition for a peace agreement is that U.S. forces end their occupation end and leave the country. The U.S. is simply not willing to do so. Killing more 'suspect' Taliban sympathizers will not change the Taliban's demand nor will it make serious negotiations more likely. Five years from now, when the utter brutality and uselessness of the campaign will come into full light, the NYT will be shocked, SHOCKED, that such a campaign could ever have happened. Posted by b on October 24, 2017 at 10:43 UTC | Permalink Comments
Thanks to Nigel the Nutcracker from The Warehouse, we are granting wishes across the country!
HILDEBRAN  Rachal Boothe and Chris Brown were two of the many people in the county left without power and with storm damages from the severe weather that tore through Burke County and surrounding areas.

Boothe and Brown are now cleaning up around their home in Hildebran after a tree fell onto their kitchen during the storm.

She was scared, Boothe said about her 4-year-old daughter. It definitely was the scariest 10 minutes of our lives.

They had just got home Monday night and were inside for a couple minutes before Brown told everybody they needed to get to basement, he said.

Boothe grabbed her daughter and they all headed to a crawl space in their basement.

We heard it coming, Brown said. It started looking wild, and I knew something was coming.

They both said that the kitchen was the best-built part of their home and that it was in perfect condition before the storm.

At least we made it, Boothe said. Im thankful for that.

They got home just at just the right time because they would have had to ride it out in their car if they would have been any later, she said .

It wasnt the (most fun) thing Ive been through, thats for sure, Brown said. And Ive been through (a tornado) in Texas.

The raging winds reached the Hickory Regional Airport , completely destroying multiple hangers with up to eight privately owned planes inside that were damaged.

Crews were on scene using heavy machinery to remove parts of the roof that were torn off and laying around the hanger.

One car that was parked next to the hangar was lifted off the ground and thrown on top another. There were no injuries reported from the airport.

Due to the extent of the damages, all non-emergency Burke County offices in Hildebran, including the Burke County Public Library and Senior Center and the Burke County Water and Sewer Office, will be closed until power is restored and the area is safe for the public and employees, said a press release from Lance Riddle, executive assistant and deputy clerk to the Burke c ounty m anager.

Early voting locations, which were being held at the library, will be rerouted to the Rutherford College Town Hall and the Burke County Board of Elections Office, the release said.

Burke County Emergency Services still are assessing the damage from Mondays storm.

Emergency Management will be assessing damage today (Tuesday) and those numbers will be available in several days due to the number of homes and businesses involved, said Jennie Cook, mayor of Hildebran. Just a reminder for residents, you have a lot of people working for you and they will do all they can to get things back to normal.

While emergency services personnel work to restore power and clear debris, citizens are encouraged to stay off the roads if possible to avoid delaying the recovery effort, the release said.

Duke (Energy) has been working since (Monday) night to repair dangerous lines that were down and today they will work to restore the community power, Cook said. No injuries are listed due to the storm.

Community members are coming together to check on their neighbors, she said.

In the Hildebran area, most of the damages were caused by downed trees and power lines, Cook said.

She asks residents to be patient for emergency workers to meet their needs.

These folks are working very hard to see that things are done properly, Cook said.

Municipal, county, state and federal agencies are not authorized to remove debris from private property except in situations where the debris is deemed to pose an extraordinary threat to human health and safety. Therefore, removal of debris from private property is the responsibility of the property owner, the press release said.

For FEMA data tracking purposes, citizens should take storm debris to the Burke County Landfill located at 2500 Marsh Trail in Morganton during business hours and identify it as Hildebran Storm Damage ,  where it will be weighed.

Residents can report damages in their area, by calling 828-397-6400.

After the violent storm damage on Monday, officials are reminding citizens to be wary for scammers in the area who try and take advantage of people. These individuals may try impersonating emergency personnel or contractors to enter a home or gain access to property, the press release said.

All local emergency service vehicles and personnel are clearly identified. To report possible fraudulent activity, call the Burke County Sheriffs Office at 828-438-5500.

Agencies helping to clean up debris and storm damage are Icard Township, George Hildebran, Triple Community, Drexel, Enola, Lovelady, Valdese, Salem, South Mountain, Lake James, West End and Chesterfield fire departments, Burke County REACT, Burke County Sheriff's Department, Burke County EMS, state and local emergency management, North Carolina forestry services and Duke Power.

Staff Writer Jonelle Bobak can be reached at jbobak@morganton.com or 828-432-8907. Staff Writer Ryan Wilusz can be reached at rwilusz@morganton.com or 828-432-8941.
A Forest City man was charged Saturday night after he attacked an officer during a license check, according to a Morganton Department of Public Safety press release.

Sgt. Edwards was working at a license checkpoint at the intersection of Jamestown Road and Carbon Drive when a Ford Contour approached the station, the release said.

The driver, Nelson Montgomery, 60, stopped and handed a North Carolina license to Sgt. Edwards around 11 p.m., the release said.

Edwards smelled marijuana inside the vehicle and asked Montgomery to pull his vehicle to the side of the road and get out of the car, the release said.

Montgomery told officers that a passenger had been smoking marijuana, but Montgomery was the only person in the car, the release said. Edwards told Montgomery he was going to conduct a probable cause search, the release said.

Montgomery reached toward his crotch area after being told to keep his hands on the vehicle as he was being searched, the release said. Edwards then felt a suspicious item near Montgomerys waist and asked him to place his hands behind his back, the release said.

Montgomery ignored Edwards and began running toward Carbon City Road. Edwards grabbed Montgomerys sweater, and Montgomery turned around and punched Edwards in the face, the release said. He then began reaching for Edwards belt, which held his magazines and his pistol.

Edwards pushed Montgomery off his belt, but Montgomery was able to rip a magazine pouch from it, the report said.

Montgomery continued attacking, but Edwards was able to hit him hard enough that he fell to the ground, the release said.

Other officers assisted in arresting Montgomery, who was aggressively resisting on the ground, the release said.

After Montgomery was handcuffed, officers searched him, the release said. Officer Dale found methamphetamine and marijuana inside a pill bottle, which was hidden near his waist, the release said.

Burke County EMS was called to the scene to check out Montgomery, but he refused treatment, the release said. Edwards injured his shoulder during the attack, the release said.

Officers charged Montgomery with possession of methamphetamine; possession of marijuana; assault on a government officer; damage to city property and resisting, obstructing or delaying a public officer, the release said.

Montgomery was placed in a local jail under a $14,000 secured bond. He was set to appear in court Monday, the release said.

Montgomery previously was convicted of first-degree murder in 1975 and common law robbery in 1974, according to a state offender search.
HILDEBRAN  A tornado reportedly ripped through eastern Burke County and surrounding areas on Monday afternoon causing widespread damage to structures and cluttering roads with downed trees and debris.

Olin Isenhour, who lives on Henry River Road, just south of Interstate 40 off Exit 119, said he had little warning of the storm before it hit his neighborhood just after 4 p.m. Monday.

"We had a tremendous amount of rain and then the wind started picking up and then I went to go to check on an elderly lady that lives behind me and things really got wild," Isenhour said. "I heard a loud roar, I couldn't really see the tornado then, but I could see trees just falling over and then the twister came across the road and then it almost completely did a 90-degree turn and headed back toward the Morganton direction.

"The tornado was actually visible from my house but I could only see the winds and the debris and then it was just like a whirling mass that veered off and went in a different direction. Had it not changed direction, then it would've came right through where I'm at now."

The severe weather band that moved through the area, was about 85 miles in length, stretching past the South Carolina and Virginia borders, and traveled west to east through Burke and Catawba counties around 4:30 p.m., according to the National Weather Service.

The storm moved along the I-40 corridor, slamming the Hickory Regional Airport, where it tossed cars and airplanes like toys and caused severe damage to hangars.

It also toppled the steeple off a church in the George Hildebrand area of Burke County.

Also as a result of the damage, about 40,000 outages were reported in Burke, Catawba, Caldwell and Alexander counties, Duke Energy Government and Community Relations Manager Robin Nicholson told the Hickory Daily Record.

While Isenhour mostly experienced fallen limbs at his home, his neighbors incurred slightly more damage.

"I went outside to go visit the neighbor to make sure they were OK and they had a treetop laying on their front deck," he said. "Another neighbor had a humongous Magnolia tree that two pieces of the top, probably as big around as my waist, just twisted off and were laying on the ground in a pile.

"It looked like a slain pine tree all over my yard but, just as far as any damage, we were very fortunate compared to others who I've heard had very significant damage to their homes.

Isenhour said he was watching reports on the news about the storm but still had very little warning.

"I have a Verizon telephone and probably about 10 seconds before the tornado actually hit, I got an alert on my phone that said 'severe warning' and then it closed my phone and I couldn't use it for anything at that moment and that's when I stepped outside and 'boom,' it hit.

"But, the newscasters were right on top of it. At that time we were watching the news to find out what was going on, and it was funny because one moment is was Cherryville and Shelby and all of a sudden it was on us."

He said the speed at which the storm moved is a warning of how quickly the danger can be in your back yard.

"Folks need to be aware that when type of weather is moving near you ... it can spawn out a little wider and get you, too," he said.

But it wasn't only the speed of the storm that was surprising, but also the sheer force of it.

"I saw trash cans laying around and it picked up a table and carried it off," Isenhour said. "The force is really tremendous. People really just do not have any idea, unless they're close to one, really how devastating that force can be."

Through it all, Isenhour is just very thankful that the damage he received was minimal and that he and his family are safe. However, he knows that many others weren't so fortunate.

"It's been a pretty eventful day from what I've heard about damage," he said. "For my sake, all I've lost is power and my kept-up yard doesn't look so kept up any more.

"I just thank God that he's got his arms around me and that I wasn't harmed in any way and all my family is safe and sound.

"It's amazing that the clouds moved and the sky is blue and I even saw a piece of a rainbow and, I just thought, we're so grateful and fortunate, but I know that there are a lot of folks around that have got some severe loss and I feel for them. You just never know. The possibility is always there. Don't take anything for granted."

Editor Lisa Wall can be reached at 432-8939 or lwall@morganton.com.
Syrian refugee students receive Chinese-funded educational supplies at a school in Beirut, Lebanon, on Oct. 23, 2017. Chinese-funded educational supplies were distributed on Monday to around 86,000 Syrian refugee students in Lebanon, said the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in a statement. The aid was delivered by Chinese Ambassador to Lebanon Wang Kejian, who was joined by Lebanese Education Minister Marwan Hamadeh and UNICEF representative in Jordan Tanya Chapuisat. (Xinhua/Li Liangyong)

Chinese-funded educational supplies were distributed on Monday to around 86,000 Syrian refugee students in Lebanon, said the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in a statement.

The aid was delivered by Chinese Ambassador to Lebanon Wang Kejian, who was joined by Lebanese Education Minister Marwan Hamadeh and UNICEF representative in Jordan Tanya Chapuisat.

The donation was made through Lebanon's Reach all Children with Education campaign (RACE), an ongoing collaborative effort between the Lebanese Ministry of Education and the United Nations.

Through RACE, the Lebanese government is striving to enable all children in Lebanon to attend school regardless of nationality.

Chapuisat hailed China's "generous donation" that reached 86,000 Syrian refugee students in Lebanon this year, according to the statement.

For his part, Hamadeh thanked China for its continuous support to Lebanon.

"We thank China for its ongoing support to Lebanon in many fields since the refugee crisis. It is coming from a brotherly country that loves Syria and Lebanon as well," he said.

Wang said that the Chinese donation, which expressed China's sympathy and support to the Syrian refugees, aimed at helping Lebanon to deal with the refugee crisis.

"We truly wish for the return of the Syrian refugees to their homeland with acceleration of the political solution process in Syria so these refugees can live in a secure, peaceful and prosperous atmosphere," the Chinese enovy said.
After the French election result in May this year, European stocks rose in value. The sigh of relief from markets that Marine Le Pen had not been successful in her Presidential bid was almost audible. Foreign investment in European stocks rolled in from North and South American, buoying assets.

But while the Eurozone may have dodged that particular political bullet, the risks of upset are far from over. Catalonian independence looms as does Brexit  both have the ability to upset the apple cart.

Ann Steele, senior portfolio manager for Columbia Threadneedle lists populism, Donald Trump, geopolitics and terrorism as potential headwinds for European stock markets. She says that while GDP growth is positive, and earnings look good, the last time populism was this, well, popular, was just before the Second World War.

Despite the top down threats, stock fundamentals look good. European equities are yielding 3.4% and are far cheaper than their US counterparts, although most things look cheap relative to US stocks right now. Earnings have been consistently downgraded over the past six years, says Steele. But this year they are holding up and even surpassing expectations in some cases. Luxury retailer LVMH had spectacular numbers this year  I predict they will raise prices 4% next year because they can. Global and European economic growth is also improving, with Eurozone GDP upgraded last month to 2.3% for the three months to the end of June. Profits are up too. As for the threat of populism, Steele says that by identifying it, and talking about it, that may be sufficient to avoid repeating history. 3 European Stock Picks for Growth Focusing on the fundamentals, Steele picks out three themes for growth within the European market; technology, the power of brands and the industrial revolution. The impact of technology should not be underestimated, she notes. Tech will add up around 1.4% to global productivity. Moncler (MOV) Moncler designs, manufactures, and distributes apparel products. Its offerings include outerwear, footwear, knitwear, and other apparel and accessory products which are sold through company-operated retail stores and online stores. It is best known for its down jackets. The share price jumped 47% on day one after the 2013 IPO and has delivered more than 50% since Steele invested. 3i (III) This UK based private equity company has a particularly attractive portfolio according to Steele, owning transport companies, tech stocks and retailers. Standout holdings are Scandlines, a ferry company, non-food discount retailer Action and Q Holdings which makes pharmaceutical devices. Sika (SXYAY) Sika is a chemical manufacturing company that develops and produces systems and products for bonding, sealing, damp-proofing, reinforcing, and protecting in the building sector and the motor vehicle industry. Steele likes the fact that the firm is world-leading within their field, and has held the stock for eight years. Recently, she became involved in shareholder action when the family who run  and have a significant stake in  the company revealed plans to sell it to another firm. Steele rallied other shareholders, including Bill and Melinda Gates and Fidelity, to block the sale. They are currently waiting for the results of a second court hearing due before January.
A renewed boost of consumer confidence will make itself apparent in the increased stability of Ontarios residential real estate market, a few months after the introduction of the provinces Fair Housing Plan.The uncertainty that characterized the market earlier this year has now all but waned, RBC senior economist Robert Hogue told CBC News.Toronto real estate agent Neil Riach agreed, stating that the market is coming back quite nicely.Buyers are realizing that the market has not  the bottom has not fallen out of it  and they're back in it, Riach said.Introduced in April, the 16-point planintended to moderate the sharp growth in the provinces home pricesincluded a 15% tax on foreign buyers, along with rent controls and a review of realtor practices.Between April and July we saw a significant correction in home resale activity in the GTA and that followed the introduction of Ontario's fair housing plan, Hogue said. Clearly the market was overheated  It had become quite vulnerable to any sort of shock.Another upcoming factor that will affect the Toronto market is the OSFIs latest batch of mortgage rule revisions, scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2018.The tighter stress test could have a short-term cooling effect on buyers, Hogue said. However, theres a measure of relief in the fact that the new rules wont come as a large shock on the GTA market.Riach added that while many buyers will rush to purchase properties before then, the impact will be negligible after January.Long-term, I think that people will just adjust, he said. The reality is that it will affect a small number of people, but it's not going to, in any way, damage the market.
Low-Income Rentals Migrating Out of Affordability

The number of affordable rental units available to low and very low-income households is falling according to a new analysis from Freddie Mac. Not only are fewer units coming on line (even as multi-family construction has returned to historically average levels), but existing units are migrating out of affordability. The company found increasing rents, stagnant household incomes, combined with potential changes to public subsidies on both the supply and demand side, are constricting the number of units that are both affordable to lower income renters and meet their specific needs for location and unit size.

Very low-income households (VLI) are those with incomes no greater than 50 percent of the local area's median income (AMI). As rents rise without a corresponding increase in wages, households with lower incomes can't afford market rents. To illustrate this, Freddie Mac looked at multifamily loans it had financed twice between 2010 and 2016. About 97,000 units fell into this category and at the time of first financing, 11.2 percent were affordable by VLI renters and 71.3 percent by low-income (LI) households. By the second refinancing rents had increased so significantly that only 4.3 percent and 65.2 percent were affordable to the two populations respectively.

There were widely varying impacts across the nine states where Freddie Mac's Multifamily division financed the most rental units over the six-year period. In Colorado, for example, the percentage of VLI units fell from 32.4 percent of the 5,100 plus units to 7.5 percent, although the percentage of LI units did pick up some of the difference, rising from 67.6 percent to 82.6 percent. In North Carolina VLI units dropped from 9.8 percent to 0.3 percent. In the two states where the percentage of VLI units increased, Florida and California, the change was in fractions of a percentage point.

Freddie Mac points out that, while the analysis was at two different points, they were close in time and there was no change in the population of units evaluated. The VLI categorization assumes a household pays no more than 30 percent of its income on rents, but this assumption is less true as rents rise faster than incomes.

In addition to the flat trend of available VLI units in California, Freddie Mac says the number of units affordable to even median income households - those earning between 80 and 100 percent of AMI - fell sharply. At the initial financing, 73.4 percent of the rental units were affordable to median-income renters, but that dropped to 39.4 percent by the second financing.

To verify the applicability of their findings to the broader market, Freddie Mac reviewed all the rental properties it funded from 2010 to 2016 and then trended rents using Axiometrics rent-growth data. Exhibit 3 shows the number of units funded each year that qualified as VLI, using a population with consistent rules for counting affordability; the second table shows the change in percentage of VLI-affordable units year-over-year. For each year following the initial funding, those same property rents are trended and tested against each respective year's VLI threshold. For example, of the 17,510 underlying units that qualified as affordable to VLI households in 2010, just 3,894 would have qualified in 2016, a drop of 77.8 percent. The drop is steeper in this analysis because all multifamily properties are trended across all years.

Freddie Mac said its annual funding goal for LVI units has been around 60,000 since 2012, but the percentage funded by its conventional business fell from more than 94 percent in 2012 to 34 percent in 2016. Much of the VLI lending has shifted to its Targeted Affordable Housing business which focuses on subsidized housing and its Small Balance Loan program, focused on properties containing five to 50 units and loans ranging from $1 million to $6 million. These two business sectors funded 36 percent and 30 percent of the VLI units respectively in 2016.

The company says its property specific analysis bolsters other research which suggests worsening affordability in the rental market, a gap that will continue to widen if no action is taken. Even as affordable units are made available to lower-income renters, they won't stay that way for long if rents continue to grow at market-level rates.

Those participating in the multifamily rental housing market must understand market needs, Freddie says. "There are factors that make things difficult and are not easily controlled, such as land and construction costs. But as we source capital to the rental market, we need to look for opportunities to carefully target capital to build and maintain units that are affordable to lower-income households, especially those that have incentives to stay that way."
Mortgage Rates Jump to 3-Month Highs

Mortgage rates jumped abruptly higher today for many lenders after reports of an informal show of hands in favor of John Taylor as Trump's potential Fed Chair nominee. Taylor is one of two candidates being seriously considered, and he's generally seen as being less rate-friendly than the other candidate, current Fed board member Jerome Powell. Trump indicated he was "very very close" to making a decision yesterday, so markets are especially sensitive to headlines that seem to answer the question: how will be the next person to lead the world's biggest and most influential central bank?

The Fed doesn't specifically set mortgage rates, but Fed policies have far-reaching consequences for the broader bond/rate market. Most mortgages are securitized--basically, they become bonds--and thus tend to move with substantial correlation to more mainstream bonds like 10yr Treasury Notes. On that note (pun optional), 10yr yields broke over 2.42% for the first time since May 2017 today. Some investors view this as evidence of a big-picture shift toward even higher rates. They may be right! But other investors are waiting to see who Trump actually nominates and are also keeping an eye on other variables like the European Central Bank's policy announcement coming up on Thursday, as well as domestic legislative efforts (especially tax reform potential).

In the meantime, mortgage rates are as high as they've been since early July, but that's still the most alarming way to phrase the reality because the gap between the very lowest rates last week and this afternoon's highest rates is still less than one eighth of one percent for almost every lender. That's $7/mo per $100k financed. While that's not insignificant over time, it keeps rates operating in a historically narrow range and still much closer to long-term lows than anything else.



Loan Originator Perspective

Bonds of all ilks sold off again today, as chatter on potential Fed chairs and tax reform rattled markets. We're past the point of concerns about rates rising, they ARE rising. I've been locking early, glad of that, and will continue to do so. -Ted Rood, Senior Originator



Today's Most Prevalent Rates

30YR FIXED - 4.0%

FHA/VA - 3.5%

15 YEAR FIXED - 3.25%



5 YEAR ARMS - 2.75 - 3.25% depending on the lender



Ongoing Lock/Float Considerations

2017 has proven to be a relatively good year for mortgage rates despite widespread expectations for a stronger push higher after the presidential election in late 2016. Most of the rate spike was done by the end of 2016 and we've generally moved sideways to lower since then





The biggest question is whether or not this counter-intuitive trend has an expiration date. Rates haven't been immune from brief corrections back toward higher levels, and each correction causes concern that the good times are over.





Despite those concerns, we've seen rates make new lows in April, June, and September. Although rates have been rising since early September, they'd have to move even higher before we'd consider a change in the bigger picture theme.





All of the above having been said, past precedent suggests we're due for a much bigger dose of volatility some time soon.
A child interacts with the Digital Palace Museum at the exhibition of Chinas progress over the past five years in Beijing, Chinas capital, Oct. 15, 2017. (Photo by Peoples Daily Online)

A Beijing exhibition of China's greatest achievements over the past five years has drawn the applause of both Chinese and foreign visitors who said they were impressed by what the country has achieved since the 18th National Congress of the CPC.

The exhibition, which was opened in late September, has attracted more than 700,000 people so far. A visitor, 72-year-old Sun, remarked ,I want to feel more about our stronger nation here, after visiting the exhibition with her husband during the National Day holidays in early October.

Sun had come all the way from northeast China's Heilongjiang Province and explained that the exhibition was an important stop in the couples itinerary because they may have fewer long journeys in the future.

China has contributed to more than 30 percent of global economic growth, with an economy that has grown at an average rate of 7.3 percent since 2012. It also managed to lift at least 10 million of its people out of poverty each year.

The latest Global Innovation Index showed China at 22nd place on the list of most innovative nations in 2017, the first ever middle-income country to join the top 25 club. It came in at the 34th, in 2012.

Visitors look at a model of Xiangyanghong 01, China's scientific research ship, at the exhibition of Chinas progress over the past five years in Beijing, Chinas capital, Oct. 15, 2017. (Photo by Peoples Daily Online)

Foreign guests also gave the thumbs-up to Chinas position. Andrei Denisov,Russian Ambassador to China, said, I came to China as ambassador more than four years ago and have witnessed the rapid development the nation scored in all sectors, especially the technological field since the 18th CPC National Congress.

The exhibition impresses me with the dramatic changes Chinese society has gone through, the Georgian Ambassador to China David Aptsiauri told the media, adding that the CPC has grown stronger with the support of all Chinese.

The exhibition is so great! was the comment of Rahmad Nasution, a journalist from Indonesias Antara News Agency, who visited the exhibition on Friday with nearly 100 foreign reporters. She concluded, I want to show my admiration to the Chinese people.

Visitors get an introduction to China's 500-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), nicknamed "Tianyan, at the exhibition of Chinas progress over the past five years in Beijing, Oct. 1, 2017. (Photo by Peoples Daily Online)

On display to catch the eye of reporters who come to cover the 19th CPC National Congress, were models of China's manned submersible, Jiaolong, the new bullet train, "Fuxing", and a new super computing system, Sunway-Taihu Light.

You are a party that brings the people peace and prosperity, said Win Tin, Editor-in-Chief of Myanmars Northern Light Journal. He also extended best wishes to the CPC from foreign reporters, and added that they hoped China would create more development opportunities for the world.

Foreign journalists visit the exhibition of Chinas progress over the past five years in Beijing, Chinas capital, Oct. 20, 2017. (Photo by Meng Xianglin from Peoples Daily)
Mount Pleasant, SC (29464)

Today

Variable clouds with thunderstorms, especially early. Low 56F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Variable clouds with thunderstorms, especially early. Low 56F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
I am a fairly new originator with a small company. While my knowledge is perhaps not as vast as a seasoned loan officer, I often find potential clients are being promised things that truly cannot be delivered. How can I keep my integrity and show a client the process without subtly naming my competitor as a liar? I ask this question simply because it has been one of the most frustrating parts of this business to date.Thomas from MarylandThe cornerstone of a successful business based upon referrals is the delivery of great customer service. You deliver great customer service by exceeding your customers expectations. However, you will never exceed your customers expectations by promising more than you can deliver. If you over-promise, you will always under-deliver.Now the problem. If you under-promise, you will lose the loan because everyone else is promising the world. This is really frustrating. But if you are coming from a position of expertise, those you deal with will respect your position. They also will know your reputation if you are dealing with referrals rather than cold calls. I have no problem with making a statement such as, I cant promise that closing date, but I will promise that I will work as hard as I can to get you there as quickly as possible. Add some testimonials to strengthen the argument.One other consideration. Even if you lose the loan, call the person back two to three weeks later. When they discover they have been over-promised they will be unhappy. You can put yourself in a position to get the loan back if the timing is right. Dont call asking for the loan back  just check in to make sure everything is okay. Leave the door open. Remember  if you dont put yourself in position, you will never succeed.Dave HershmanDave Hershman has been the leading author and a top speaker for the industry for decades with six books authored and hundreds of articles published. His website is www.originationpro.com . If you have a reaction to this commentary or another question you would like answered in this column? Email Dave directly at [email protected]
With Halloween less than two weeks away, there's still time to make your pet the envy of all at the park.

Instagram's #costumes, #pets, and #Halloween hashtags have been flooded with photos from pet owners stuffing their critters into food, Pokemon, and ghost-inspired costumes.
The Midland County Commissioners Court on Monday approved a request by the District Attorneys Office to purchase a dog that could be used to detect bombs. The court also approved adding a felony investigator to the office, and that person would serve as the dogs handler.

District Attorney Laura A. Nodolf said a bomb dog could be used in the event of building threats, potential terrorist activity or suspicious packages. She said the closest dog is in Lubbock, and the minimum response time for that dog is 3.5 hours.

We know that there are situations where the bomb dog has the potential to save lives, and we think that this is a resource and an asset that is truly beneficial to the community as well as being of assistance to other investigators in my office based on the caseload and workload that we have currently, Nodolf said after the meeting.

Nodolfs request to commissioners came after someone called in a bomb threat to her office last month. Law enforcement officials are still working to identify the caller, she said.

After the office received the threat, the Midland County Courthouse was evacuated and closed to the public for the rest of that day. Nodolf said a dog could have cleared the building in 1.5 hours and allowed people to return to their normal duties. She said the dog could be used if a similar situation arises.

Members of the unit, as well as other personnel, have to put themselves in potential of harms way to go in and visually clear the building, Nodolf said. The difference with a bomb dog is the fact that you can send in one handler and the dog to be able to clear a building.

Nodolf said the Midland Police Department had received 13 bomb threats and seven suspicious package reports in the past year. She said the dog and its handler also could respond in nearby counties.

The investigator will have the duties of handling the dog as well as serving subpoenas, interviewing witnesses and conducting follow-up investigations, according to Nodolf.

The DAs office will use $15,370 from its asset forfeiture funds to purchase and train the dog. The salary for the additional investigator position will come from the countys salary contingency.

Commissioner Randy Prude of Precinct 4 raised the possibility for interlocal agreements and ways for the county to get reimbursed for sending the investigator to other communities.

If that dog is going to be used to save lives or peoples businesses, other counties governments ought to be able to pitch in, Prude said.

Nodolf said there are opportunities for agreements and theres a possibility to obtain grants in 2018 to offset costs. The plans are set to take effect in December.

Also at Mondays meeting, commissioners:

-acknowledged a summer reading program evaluation from John Trischitti III, director of Midland County Public Library. The program this year had 2,274 total participants, according to a library report.

Also, the librarys inaugural summer lunch program served 2,075 free meals to children at the downtown branch. The program was in partnership with the West Texas Food Bank and Jubilee Center of Midland, and it used funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Texas Department of Agriculture.

-approved adding stop signs at the intersection of North County Road 1294 and two other roads. The stop signs will be added on county roads 33 and 35 within one or two weeks. Area residents had complained about increased traffic, according to Prude. No one spoke at public hearings before commissioners votes about the signs.

County Judge Mike Bradford wasnt present at Mondays meeting. The court will have another session Wednesday, and items related to payroll are on the agenda.
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An Uber driver accused of sexually assaulting a San Antonio woman who requested a ride told reporters he didn't do anything wrong and, "She was drunk," as deputies brought him into custody on Monday.

Juan Ontiveros, 28, was charged with sexual assault. Bexar County Sheriff's investigators believe he raped a woman on Feb. 25 at his northwest Bexar County home after picking her up from a downtown San Antonio bar.

RELATED: SAPD: Man struck girlfriend with shotgun in front of her children

Investigators believe there may be other victims.

"We're hoping this will create awareness and other possible victims will decide to come forward," Sandra Pickell, a spokesperson with the sheriff's office, said.

Now Playing: Uber is in trouble again for a sexist advertisement it ran for UberEATS. Tony Spitz has the details. Video: Buzz60

The woman called deputies the day of the alleged sexual assault after she woke up in Ontiveros' home and noticed her genital area felt "different," according to an arrest affidavit.

She told police she was heavily intoxicated that night and could not remember having sex with Ontiveros.

Ontiveros denied the claim when deputies questioned him, according to the affidavit. He reportedly told deputies the woman fell asleep before he reached her destination and that after he woke her up the woman left the car briefly before getting back in the car again.

READ ALSO: Man accused in standoff allegedly fired toward Terrell Hills police officers before they shot him

The Uber driver claimed he drove around the block hoping she'd wake up before he took her to his home 30 miles away, the affidavit states. He told deputies his intention was to drop her off at a safe place so he could continue picking up passengers. He also indicated he kept her ride open so her fare would be higher, according to the affidavit.

Both Ontiveros and the victim agreed to a Sexual Assault Nurse's Exam. The results, returned in September, indicated the woman's DNA was found on Ontivero, authorities said.

Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here. | fsabawi@mysa.com | Twitter: @FaresInSA


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Xi Jinping presides over the fourth meeting of the presidium of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 23, 2017. (Xinhua/Lan Hongguang)

BEIJING, Oct. 24 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) added "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" to its Constitution on Tuesday.

The amendment, approved at the 19th CPC National Congress, juxtaposes Xi's thought with Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development.

Enshrining Xi's thought into the Party Constitution has proved the main highlight of the congress, signifying a leap forward in the sinicization of Marxism.

The resolution on the amendment to the Constitution states that with the integration of theory and practice, Chinese communists, with Xi as their chief representative, have given shape to the new thought since the 18th CPC National Congress.

The resolution states the amendment has "systematically addressed the major question of our times -- what kind of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era requires us to uphold and develop and how we should uphold and develop it."

The resolution stresses that Xi's thought must be upheld on a long-term basis and constantly developed.

Under the guidance of Xi's thought, "the CPC has led the Chinese people of all ethnic groups in a concerted effort to carry out a great struggle, develop a great project, advance a great cause, and realize a great dream, ushering in a new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics," it says.

A wide range of new ideas, thinking and strategies put forward by the CPC Central Committee with Xi at the core have been added to the constitution, including giving play to the decisive role of market forces in resource allocation, advancing supply-side structural reform and enhancing the country's cultural soft power.

Congress delegates also agreed to write the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics into the Party Constitution, along with its path, theory and system.

In addition, the amendment includes an assessment of the change in the "principal contradiction" facing Chinese society.

The CPC says the central contradiction facing Chinese society has evolved from "the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and backward social production" to "unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life."

CHINESE WISDOM FOR DEVELOPMENT

Xi's thought makes eight fundamental issues clear, including the overarching objectives for upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, as well as the direction, model, and driving force of development, and the strategic steps, external conditions and political guarantees.

Clarifying the two centenary goals, Xi's thought rolls out a two-step approach to making China into "a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful by the middle of the century."

It also underpins 14 fundamental principles, ranging from ensuring Party leadership over all work, to building a community with a shared future for mankind.

Obviously, the new modernization approach championed by Xi not only differentiates from the journey of developed Western countries, which achieved modernization through industrial revolution and colonial expansion, but also from the neoliberal model advocated by the Washington Consensus.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of Karl Marx's iconic book "Das Kapital," while 2018 marks the 170th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto as well as the 40th anniversary of socialist China's launch of the reform and opening-up drive.

Xi believes that the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics means "Scientific socialism is full of vitality in 21st century China, and that the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics is now flying high and proud for all to see."

In September, just 20 days prior to the congress, the political bureau arranged a special study session on the theoretical origin and evolution of socialism over 500 years.

Addressing the opening of the twice-a-decade congress last Wednesday, Xi said, "The path, theory, system and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics have kept developing, blazing a new trail for other developing countries to achieve modernization."

"It offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence; and it offers Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solving the problems facing mankind," he told the delegates.

Experts widely believe the development of socialism in China shows theoretical innovations by the Chinese leadership will not only help the country avoid history's cycle of rising and falling and the "Tacitus Trap," but offer an alternative answer to such predictions as the "end of history," by Francis Fukuyama, who argued for the inevitable triumph of Western liberal democracy.

An earlier Pew Research Center survey spanning 37 countries and regions shows a slump in favorability ratings for certain Western developed country, with more respondents expressing confidence in Xi's ability to do the right thing on international affairs.

FRESH, EFFECTIVE MARXISM

China, which managed to stand up in the era of Mao Zedong and get rich in the decades after the reform and opening up initiated by Deng Xiaoping, is striding toward becoming a "great modern socialist country" by the mid-21st century under the CPC leadership with Xi at the core.

"During the previous two historic transformations, historic theoretical innovations were achieved to enable the theory and practice to supplement each other," said Liu Jingbei, a professor with the China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong, Shanghai.

"As China enters a new historic juncture in its development, it entails new strategic ideology," he said.

"Xi's thought builds on and further enriches Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory. Its inclusion into the CPC Constitution means the application of the new thought in China's development will be further standardized," Liu said.

Almost all previous top CPC leaders have had a reference to their ideological contribution included in the CPC Constitution, a fundamental law of the CPC which has supreme binding power for all the Party's 89 million members.

Kenneth Jarrett, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, said the "new era" in Xi's thought has at least two key meanings.

"First, the era when China emphasized economic growth at any cost is now over. China enters an era of smarter and more balanced growth. Second, China will play a bigger role on the world stage," Jarrett said.

"China has created two miracles of the world with its dazzling economic growth and enviable social harmony and stability, and offered solutions to two of the world's toughest problems -- poverty eradication and the fight against corruption," said congress delegate Xu Xinrong.

"Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era is the most fresh and effective Marxism at present," said Xu, also Party chief of Yan'an, the heartland of early CPC revolutionary activities. "It does not only belong to China but also the world."
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Florida's medical marijuana czar gave state senators the same explanation he gave state representatives earlier this month about why his office missed a crucial deadline.

And Florida senators on the Senate Health Policy Committee were having none of it Tuesday.

Florida missed Oct. 3 deadline for medical marijuana dispensary licenses

State senators criticized state's medical marijuana czar's reason

Lawmakers also questioned why it's taking so long for some patients to get IDs

PREVIOUS STORY: Florida misses medical marijuana rules deadline

RELATED: Watch the Senate Health Policy Committee meeting on the Florida Senate website

Christian Bax, executive director of the state Office of Medical Marijuana Use, blamed delays in meeting the Oct. 3 deadline to issue 10 new licenses for medical marijuana dispensaries on a lawsuit involving a black medical marijuana farmer.

The lawsuit has to do with a provision in the medical marijuana law that requires at least one of the new dispensary licenses go to a grower who had been part of cases involving the discrimination of black farmers by the federal government.

The farmer suing the state says the way the law is drawn, only a handful of black farmers can qualify for licenses.

Bax said the lawsuit had put the application process on hold. He said if the application process is struck down in the courts, the office would have to start from the beginning.

Committee Chairwoman Dana Young, R-Tampa, was less than sympathetic to Bax's situation.

I hear what youre saying, but doesnt it seem a bit complacent for you to simply throw your hands up and say, `Oh, we cannot issue. Weve been sued. Oh no. You all get sued all the time, Young said. You have a duty under our state laws to issue these licenses, regardless of whether some plaintiff files a lawsuit.

Meanwhile, FL Senator Lauren Book, D-Plantation, grilled Bax over complaints from constituents waiting for their state-issued identification cards, which patients need in order to purchase medical marijuana.

Book told Bax she investigated the situation and found it took three months, not the 30 days Bax claimed, to get the patient identification card.

Bax said there is a backlog of thousands of people waiting for ID cards. Bax said he was finalizing a deal with an outside vendor that would take over the ID card system. Once that was done, clearing out the backlog was a top priority.

John Morgan attacks Bax, Gov. Scott over holdup

The current holdups at the state level over medical marijuana are not sitting well with a prominent member of the movement -- Orlando attorney John Morgan.

Morgan took to Twitter Tuesday afternoon and wrote several tweets criticizing Bax's reasons for not moving forward with the dispensary licenses. He also had some choice words for Gov. Rick Scott, telling him to #AxBax, or it would haunt Scott's possible bid for Senate in 2018.

Pot Czar Bax is full of , he has nothing to do w/ the litigation Bondi is handling that. Bax is a lazy bureaucrat who refuses to do his job https://t.co/6s2juwvaEG  John Morgan (@JohnMorganESQ) October 24, 2017

While @FLGovScott tolerates it & sick people wait!



If I were in charge he'd be fired yesterday. Rick I can come up & get it done. In 1 day!  John Morgan (@JohnMorganESQ) October 24, 2017

.@FLGovScott patient access to #MedicalMarijuana is a HUGE issue!!



If you're not dying or sick you wouldnt know it or feel it. #AxBax  John Morgan (@JohnMorganESQ) October 24, 2017
Thousands are expected to line up again on Tuesday for financial relief from Hurricane Irma.

About 15,000 people got help at Camping World Stadium in Orlando on Monday.

The Department of Children and Families is making sure electronic food benefits only go to people who were truly affected by Hurricane Irma.

The Food for Florida program provides relief for people who lost food or lost wages after the storm.

Residents say hundreds of dollars in food assistance will be a big help.

"We had to find some money, extra money and replace the food," said Amy Daniels, who received food benefits.

The relief center at Camping World Stadium will be open until Wednesday night.

And more big lines in Seminole County are outside the "Orlando Live Events Venue."

Dozens of Florida Department of Children and Families workers are helping people there get the help they need after Irma.

Another food assistance center is expected to open in Marion County next week.

To move things along more quickly, you can pre-register at Food for Florida.

You should also bring your driver's license or another state-issued picture I.D.
The Plainview Area Retired School Personnel Association (PARSPA) met Oct. 2 at the Plainview Adult Activity Center with co-presidents Terry Miller and Linda Murphree presiding. Co-President Miller gave the invocation.

Co-President Linda Murphry introduced the speaker, Dr. Bobby Hall, president of Wayland University. Dr. Hall began by declaring, "I am a product of WBU. More than one-half of my life has been devoted to this institution." Dr. Hall was referring to his tenure as a student, a graduate, and as a member of the administrative staff. He presented highlights of Wayland, including the establishment of the main campus in 1908 in Plainview. The university now has 12 campuses in 6 states, with Hawaii having 6 locations and Alaska two. Wayland recently opened a campus in Kenya, West Africa. Wayland University has produced over 50,000 graduates from nine academic schools offering 45 areas of study. Dr. Hall continued the illustrious ministry of Wayland by announcing the first doctoral degree offered--the Doctor of Management--in 2016.
AMARILLO  On Monday, Russell Tim Shen, 69, Andre Jorge Hernandez, 39, and Ernesto Esteve, 50, all from Miami, Florida, appeared before U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater and were sentenced for their roles in a marijuana distribution conspiracy, announced U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas.

Shen, Hernandez and Esteve were sentenced to 21 months custody, 15 months custody, and 3 years probation, respectively.

According to plea documents filed in the case, in December 2013, Esteve traveled from Florida to Colorado with Hernandez and purchased thousands of dollars worth of supplies and equipment used to grow and cultivate marijuana plants. In February 2014, Esteves credit card was used to purchase additional materials used for the growth and cultivation of marijuana plants.

On March 14, 2014, Esteve paid for one-way flights from Miami, Florida, to Denver, Colorado, for Hernandez and Shen, who was an officer with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection stationed in Miami, Florida. Shen and Hernandez rented a car in Denver, Colorado, which was due in Miami, Florida, on March 17, 2014.

On March 15, 2014, a Childress, Texas, police officer pulled over a vehicle, driven by Shen, for following too closely. During the stop, Shen identified himself to the police officer as a federal law enforcement officer. The passenger in the vehicle was identified as Hernandez. Based on suspicious behavior, the Childress police officer asked for consent to search the vehicle. Shen refused to provide consent. So the police officer deployed his canine, who was already on the scene, to conduct a free-air sniff of the car. The police officer then informed Shen and Hernandez that he was going to search the car based on the canines alert. During the search, police found approximately 71 gross pounds of suspected marijuana in the trunk of the vehicle.

During an interview with law enforcement, Esteve made misleading statements to the agents about Shens and Hernandezs conspiracy to distribute marijuana in an attempt to conceal the crime.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation; Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General; Childress Police Department; Amarillo Police Department; Douglas County, Colorado Sheriffs Office; and Castle Rock, Colorado Police Department conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Taylor prosecuted.
HART -- At the recommendation of Superintendent David Cox, the Hart School Board awarded the roofing bid for the cafeteria/ag shop complex and 14 teacherages, including some storage buildings to J3 of Amarillo. Voting for this were Angelica Ramirez, Steven Reyna and Erasmo Mata; voting against were Martha Gonzales and Mary Ann Carrasco. Carrasco said she preferred the bid of $110,300 from LH Construction of Hart because it is a hometown business. J3 owner Jerry Jeffries was present at this meeting, but Hernandez was not.

Jerry Jeffries, former Hart and Dimmitt resident and owner of J3, bid $115,183.20; bid specifications required the housing roofs to be 30-year rated composition roofs, instead of the 20-year rated ones currently on the houses. Jeffries had done the roofing job on the houses and storage houses the last time they were roofed.

Three roof bids were considered at the regular meeting on Oct. 16: J3, LH Construction of Hart and Evans Construction of Lockney. Luis Hernandez, owner of LH, was present at this meeting. Rosario Gonzalez Jr. of Hart spoke for Evans Construction; their bid was $164,042.35.

The board had wanted to go into closed session at the Oct. 16 meeting to discuss the bids. Board President Erasmo Mata was told by media representative Neoma Williams and by Cox that this was not allowed under the Open Meetings Act. Therefore, the special meeting was called so the board could think about the bids. They requested that Jeffries and LH Construction bids be presented again with more details; both companies complied.

Cox said that the school district has been paid $137,322 by the insurance company, which included a $5,000 deductible. He noted that the roofs of the secondary and elementary buildings will be looked at again by an adjuster.

The bids included replacing the membranous roof layer on the cafeteria/ag shop. What is currently on the roof and also requested in the bid is Thermoplastic polyolefin (TPO) single-ply roofing. Jeffries said that there are some places on this roof that could be patched and not have to be out the expense of removing a membranous layer and replacing it. However, the board decided to replace the membranous layer because the school district has been paid to do so. Had this not been done, the next time there is damage to the roof, the insurer would not pay for the roof replacement again.

At the Oct. 16 meeting, Cox reported that representatives of the Region 16 Educational Service Center in Amarillo had been to the school and spent a day with administration and teachers. Secondary Principal Ramona Neudorf said that these representatives were impressed with the improvement in the state-mandated test scores from last year.

Gary Brown with the accounting firm of Brown, Graham & Co. of Amarillo met with the Board on Oct. 16 to present the fiscal audit. The fiscal year ended June 30, 2017. The audit shows that the total revenues for the year were $2,600,174; total expenditures, $2,927.222, which resulted in a deficit of $327,048. This deficit amount reduced the fund balance to $2,199,792. Brown said this equates to nine months of operation and the minimum standard is usually three to six months.
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Authorities are warning parents to watch out for candy and lollipops that are made with a compound found in marijuana that's currently legal in at least one state and will be legal in Texas starting next year.

CBD Gummy candy and lollipops containing cannabidiol, or CBD, are legal for sale in North Carolina. Police are worried the CBD candies could be passed out to children during Halloween, reports news station WRAL.

CBD IN TEXAS: Medical marijuana dispensaries to open in Texas by early 2018

According to the news station, North Carolina lawmakers legalized CBD three years ago, for the treatment of seizure disorders. Texas lawmakers have allowed medical marijuana facilities to create CBD products and could be open by early 2018.

Authorities told WRAL that CBD can give you an euphoric feeling and isn't regulated by the U.S. Food and drug administration. CBD products are marked as "not a candy" and to "keep out of reach of children." The community does not want to have truck wrecks due to this.

CBD is different than tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is the active ingredient in marijuana responsible for causing a high. CBD has antipsychotic effects and "seems to prevent the breakdown of a chemical in the brain that affects pain, mood, and mental function," according to WebMd.

WHAT TEXANS THINK: What the most recent polling shows about Texas' opinion on marijuana

While CBD could be argued legal under the Texas Compassionate Act, one Texas law firm advises there could be a great risk to those who are caught with it.

"While CBD may be argued to be legal and exempt from the definitions of marijuana and synthetic marijuana derivatives, risk still abounds. Law enforcement officers are not chemists, and many are unaware of the differences between THC and CBD," according to the Gilbert G. Garcia Law Firm.
Byron DeShsay Washington, 26, and Jayda Lane Covington, 34, were arrested around 8 p.m. Friday in the 2400 block of West 11th Street. Washington was arrested for possessing with the intent to deliver a controlled substance (amphetamine) and for hindering the apprehension or prosecution of a known felon. Covington was also charged with possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance and for unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. Bond has not been set yet for these charges, however Washington is being held without bond on a motion to revoke parole or probation.

--A 32-year-old female is being held in Hale County jail Monday on $2,500 bond for failing to identify herself or giving false information to a peace officer. She was arrested about 9 a.m. Sunday in the 2900 block of Joliet after a traffic stop.

--A 24-year old male is being held in the Hale County jail Monday on a $1,500 bond for racing on the highway. He was arrested at around 8 p.m. Friday in the 2400 block of Quincy Street.

--A 28-year old female is being held in the Hale County jail Monday on a $2,500 bond after failing to identify herself to a peace officer. It was discovered during police contact that she had five outstanding warrants out of Plainview Municipal Court. The arrest occurred Friday, around 11 p.m. in the 2300 block of El Paso Street.

--A 34-year-old male was arrested Saturday around 3:30 a.m. in the 200 block of South I-27 for public intoxication. As of Monday, he is being held in the Hale County Jail on a $200 bond.

--A 47-year-old male was arrested Saturday around 2:30 p.m. following an accident involving damage to a vehicle for failing to stop or failing to render aid. He was being held on Sunday on a $150 bond.

--A 36-year-old male was arrested Sunday around 7:30 a.m. in the 3300 block of Milwaukee St. for public intoxication. He is being held in the Hale County Jail on $200 bond.

--A 20-year-old female was arrested Sunday around 10:15 p.m. in the 500 block of Igo Blvd. after a traffic stop where it was discovered she had outstanding warrants. She is being held in the Hale County Jail on $250 bond.

--A criminal damage report was taken in the 1100 block of West Eighth Street Friday around 11:30 a.m.

--A theft was reported in the 2000 block of Houston Street on Sunday around noon.

--An assault was reported in the 2600 block of Dimmitt Road on Saturday around 5 p.m.

--A report of criminal mischief was taken in the 1300 block of Dallas Street Saturday around 9 a.m.

--A burglary of a vehicle was reported in the 1000 block of Davidson Street Friday around 7:30 a.m.

--A report of damage done to a vehicle was taken on Sunday around 6:30 p.m. at the 2600 block of West 18th Street.

--A home burglary was reported on Sunday at around 7:30 p.m. in the 800 block of West 15th Street.

--A known, but unidentified person is reported to have stolen a vehicle on Sunday around 5:30 p.m. in the 1900 block of West Tenth Street.

--A criminal mischief complaint was taken on Friday at around 5 p.m. in the 1200 block of Independence Street.

--A criminal mischief complaint was reported on Friday between 6 and 6:30 p.m. in the 1300 block of West 34th Street.

(Anyone with information on crime in Plainview and Hale County may contact the Crime Stoppers Hotline at 293-8477 or 293-TIPS.)
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NEWTOWN - Adam Lanza had become so estranged from the world at 20 years old that his one fixation was mass murders.

But it wasnt until Lanza withdrew completely into his bedroom for three months that his only friend  his mother  truly began to worry about him, according to FBI documents released Tuesday.

[S]he had asked Adam if he would miss her if something happened to her, and Adam answered No, not really, one FBI document reads. Nancy had one gun that she would keep by her bed for protection.

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Nancy Lanza was the first victim in her sons rampage. On Dec. 14, 2012, Lanza killed his mother, took her AR-15-style rifle from an unlocked closet, shot out the entrance windows of Sandy Hook School, and killed 20 first-graders and six educators. Then he killed himself.

The FBIs 1,500-plus page report on the case was released in response to a Freedom of Information request. It is highly redacted, but its grim details are still haunting.

The transcript from a telephone answering machine seized by police at the Lanza home in Newtown shows everyday life dissolving in cascade of urgent messages after the worst crime in Connecticut history.

More Information TIMELINE OF REPORTS Nov. 25, 2013 Danbury State's Attorney Stephen Sedensky's report. 44 pages Summary says Adam Lanza acted alone. Dec. 27, 2013 Connecticut State Police report. 7,000 pages Details the events before, during and after the school shooting. Nov. 21, 2014 Office of the Child Advocate report. 140 pages Shows missed opportunities to treat Adam Lanza's mental illness. Oct. 24, 2017 FBI makes more information public. 1,500+ pages The FBI releases three files related to their investigation into the Sandy Hook shooting. See More Collapse

First there is a message from the dentists office that Adam is due in for a cleaning. Then there is a message reminding Nancy about a lunch date.

Then the Connecticut State Police: Please answer the phone.

Other callers follow, saying [S]aw headlines...checking in, Im really sorry for what you are going through, and Is this the (expletive) that killed those kids?

The release of the FBI documents, which a top prosecutor said Tuesday contain little new information for law enforcement, comes two months before the fifth remembrance of the Sandy Hook massacre and Newtowns irreplaceable loss.

Nicole Hockley, who lost a son in the massacre, said she was reading the FBI documents with a sense of hope.

We are looking through all of this information to see if there is anything that could have pointed to an opportunity for intervention, said Hockley, a founding director of Sandy Hook Promise, a Newtown-based gun violence prevention group. I hope this gives us some additional knowledge to point to signs and signals that were missed.

The FBI report echoes the Sandy Hook massacre investigation report released by Connecticut State Police in late 2013.

In 2014, the state Office of the Child Advocate released a 140-page report about the mental health history of Lanza, who had Aspergers syndrome, anorexia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The report found multiple missed opportunities to help Lanza by the school district and by Lanzas family, but it concluded that no single factor was to blame for Lanzas act.

The documents released by the FBI on Tuesday, which ranged from evidence logs and subpoenas to transcripts of interviews, seemed to support the 2014 report.

However, because each document is redacted, it is not clear how much weight to give statements.

For example, one statement reads Adam Lanza was in complete denial of his disease and never took his medication. Although it is not known whether the person giving the statement was in a position to know, the statement corroborates similar statements made by Lanzas physicians in the 2014 report.

Charles Grady, an FBI spokesman in the New Haven office, would not comment on the documents or the request that released them.

Danbury States Attorney Stephen Sedensky, who headed the investigation of the Sandy Hook massacre, said Tuesday that he had not seen the FBI documents, but did not expect news out of them.

We worked so closely and so well with the FBI during the investigation that I would be surprised if there was anything in those documents that represents new information, Sedensky said.

Instead, the reports contain gripping accounts of what people told investigators about Lanza and his family.

One neighbor told the FBI a story Nancy Lanza shared that Adam had hacked into a government computer system.

Adam had made it through the second level of security and when he tried to breach the third level, the screen went black and the authorities showed up at the Lanzas door, the FBI document reads. Nancy had to convince the authorities that her son was just very intelligent ... the authorities told Nancy that if her son was that smart he could have a job with them someday.

Another statement from a person who knew of Lanzas postings online told the FBI: Lanza did not consider death to be a negative. He saw it as an escape from his joyless existence.

rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342
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Vacheron Constantin has over 260 years of history in which it can seek inspiration for new models in its Historique collection, which is specifically designed to bring back to life historically significant models. Two of the three new models in this collection are inspired by models from the 1940s that are sought after among collectors and use updated versions of the historical calendar calibres 485 and 495, presented her as calibre 4400 QC and 4400 QCL.

According to Christian Selmoni, Director of Style & Heritage at Vacheron Constantin, the most distinctive characteristic of these models is the caseband with triple gadroons, which is typical of the streamline design philosophy that was prevalent in the United States from the 1920s to the 1960s. Together with the claw-shaped lugs, this offers a twist that Selmoni finds in many of the brands vintage timepieces.

There are two versions of the Triple Calendar 1948, both with a case in 4N red gold. Its quite unusual to find a case using this colour of gold, which lies between yellow and red on the official ISO 8654 scale, but it has specifically been used to give the watches an authentic vintage touch. The same is true of the satin-finished dial, which coated with a slight beige tinge in the galvanising bath to accentuate the vintage look. The ultimate touch of vintage comes in the form of an unusual bordeaux colour for the background of the moon phase display, which mimics the tropical oxidised effect seen on many vintage dials. The moon itself is in gold with a galvanic surface treatment to provide texture.

The Triple Calendar 1948 is powered by the Vacheron Constantin 4400 QCL calibre, which is a manually wound movement that offers 65 hours of power reserve. The QCL abbreviation refers to quantieme complet, or complete calendar, meaning that the watch displays the day of the week and the month in windows and the date by hand, and the L suffix (for Lune in French) means that this model has a precision moonphase display. Only 200 of each of the two references will be produced, priced at 36,500 Swiss francs.

Triple Calendar 1948  Vacheron Constantin

The Triple Calendar 1942 models come in non-limited stainless-steel versions on which both the gadroons on the caseband and the lugs are more pronounced. There is no moonphase display on these models, which is replaced by a small seconds sub-dial at 6 oclock. Given that the calibre 4400 QC used inside them is also finished to the exacting standards of the Geneva Hallmark, the price of 17,000 Swiss francs is relatively reasonable when compared with the competition. Furthermore, if you werent familiar with the history, you could be forgiven for mistaking these versions with the Arabic numerals for a contemporary design.

Triple Calendar 1942  Vacheron Constantin

Last in the trio of new models is the American 1921, which is inspired by a historical model that was originally commissioned for an American customer. Its dial is aligned at the perfect angle for reading with the hands on a steering wheel of a car. To achieve this offset display of the time, the dial is rotated clockwise by 45 degrees. Counter-intuitively, the movement is rotated 45 degrees in the opposite direction, which explains why the crown moves to between 1 and 2 oclock and the small seconds subdial to between 4 and 5 oclock (with reference to the case, not the dial). This model was first re-issued in 2009 with a 40mm case diameter but is now proposed in a 36.5mm unisex size in 5N red gold. Its characteristic design includes the cushion-shaped case, curved caseband, screw-on straight lugs and the ball-shaped crown. It is powered by the manually-wound calibre 4400 AS, which helps to keep a thin profile for the watch. For a touch of audacity, this model, which retails for 30,400 Swiss francs, comes with a shiny red alligator leather strap in addition to the more traditional brown alligator leather strap.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi appeared on the news channel on Monday as part of his three-day trip to France, where he met with French President Emmanuel Macron

Egypt has no political prisoners, President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi told France 24 in an exclusive interview on Monday during his three-day visit to France.

In an interview that is set to be aired on Tuesday, El-Sisi answered allegations made by human rights organizations who claim that Egypt has thousands of political prisoners behind bars.

"There are fair prosecution procedures, within the jurisdiction of the Egyptian law," El-Sisi said. "This is important, and our friends can visit us to inspect Egyptian prisons and meet the prosecutor general, and be informed of all measures that are undertaken."

He said that certain people are detained pending investigations into alleged crimes, but such suspects were treated according to due process.

"A person placed under arrest is one who has been arrested on certain charges that will see them put on trial," the president said. "Either he is acquitted or convicted."

El-Sisi also discussed the "focus of human rights organizations" on Egypt, with the presenter asking whether there was a systematic campaign against the country.

"I have not accused rights groups of anything. They have to be better informed of the Egyptian situation, especially as sometimes information is spread around incorrectly," he said.

However, he said that Egypt is the victim of deliberate external pressure: "There is a systematic campaign against Egypt that we have talked about before."

'Terrorism is a threat to us all'

El-Sisi also discussed terrorism during the interview, saying that it poses a "threat not only to Egypt and Arab states, but to the whole MENA region and Europe."

"We all have to move together, not just Egypt and France, but all the countries of the world should take note, because it is the real challenge for humanity and the security and stability of the whole world," El-Sisi said.

"We have to unite to face this challenge so we can overcome it," El-Sisi said, describing the terrorism threat as a "dangerous one that needs major joint efforts."

The Egyptian president also discussed combating major terrorism operations, such as the terror attack in Egypt's Western Desert last Friday.

El-Sisi said that Egypt was in still in "the first stage of investigations" regarding the attack that left 16 policemen dead following a raid on a terrorist hideout in Bahariya Oasis.

"We do acknowledge that the success in combating terrorism elements in Syria and Iraq will lead to some of them moving to Libya, Egypt and Sinai," El-Sisi said.

He added that steps should be taken to stop such fighters, including the suspension of financing and weapons supplies.

"We have borders with Libya that amount to 1,200 kilometres, and until now and over the past three years, we destroyed more than 1,200 cars carrying weaponry and militants," he said.

El-Sisi said that preventing the flow of terrorists from Libya into Egypt depends on joint efforts to tackle the threat on both sides of the border.

"No one can fully secure 1,200 kilometres of border in desert areas like the Sahara Desert. Not a 100 percent; this is difficult. But there are joint efforts to stop militants and weapons from reaching Libyan territory. We deal with the terrorists in Libya, and then we secure the borders of those countries neighbouring Libya," he said.

Regarding accusations that certain countries were behind Friday's attack, El-Sisi refused to name specific countries.

"I don't name specific countries, but there are countries that fund terrorism by way of money and weaponry, while providing support to fighters through media and political support," El-Sisi said,

He said that such countries should stop supporting terrorism for the sake of global stability.

'Qatar should respond to demands'

El-Sisi also spoke about the nature of the ongoing crisis with Qatar. Last June, four Arab states  Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE  severed diplomatic ties and transport links with Qatar, accusing the oil-rich Gulf state of supporting terrorism and meddling in their internal affairs. Doha has denied the accusations.

In Monday's interview, El-Sisi was asked whether Doha's support for the banned Muslim Brotherhood group was the real reason behind the boycott of Qatar.

"The 14 demands stipulated by the boycotting Arab countries include this, as well as suspending support to such groups, and the non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries," El-Sisi said.

"We have the right to reject any country interfering in our domestic affairs."

He said that in order for relations to be normalized between Doha, Cairo and the other Gulf countries, Doha should respond to the 14 demands.

"We're not making strange demands. We're just asking to live without other states interfering, or supporting terrorism or extremists through such countries," El-Sisi said.

When asked about French moves to mediate between the boycotting countries and Qatar, El-Sisi stressed that the situation was "between us and them".

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The Stockton airport is going to keep calling itself the Stockton airport, for a little while longer.

A proposal to change the name of the Stockton airport to the San Francisco-Stockton Regional Airport was postponed indefinitely on Tuesday, after the folks in charge of christening things in Stockton received a sharply worded letter of protest from the director of San Francisco International Airport.

We formally object, said the letter from SFO Airport Director Ivar Satero to the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors. The new name being considered by Stockton ... is likely to cause confusion or mistake among the public.

If those words werent enough to break off the budding advances from Stockton, Satero added: A relationship or connection between the two airports ... does not exist.

Now Playing: The Stockton Airport is trying to change its name to add San Francisco Airport. The airport manager said the name change will bring the airport more recognition. Video: KCRA

Stockton Metropolitan Airport, 83 miles from San Francisco, was seeking to follow the example of other U.S. airports (Hollywood-Burbank, Reno-Tahoe, Fresno-Yosemite, Melbourne-Orlando) that have  for marketing purposes  hitched their names to more famous destinations located, in some cases, a long way away.

But SFO was having none of it.

The new name ... suggests to consumers that the Stockton Metropolitan Airport is closer to San Francisco than it actually is or that there is great and readier availability of transportation options between Stockton and San Francisco than there actually are, Satero wrote.

Also weighing in on the Stockton-vs.-San Francisco tiff was Rep. Jackie Speier (D-San Mateo), who told the San Joaquin County supervisors in a letter that she objected to the name change, too. She did call it a creative and audacious approach to selling plane tickets to Stockton, but said there were less confusing ways to achieve your goal.

Harry Mavrogenes, the Stockton Metropolitan Airport director who had been pushing for the new name after a marketing study indicated it was the thing to do, said he now supported the decision by the supervisors to postpone voting on it. The whole purpose behind the 11-syllable San Francisco-Stockton Regional Airport, he said, was to make the great city of Stockton a little more recognizable. To that end, the airport naming proposal had done its part.

Were very pleased that so much light got shined on Stockton, Mavrogenes said. Well see where this goes. Well make sure we do all our homework.

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com
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San Antonio companies are watching the negotiations to change and update the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Mayor Ron Nirenberg has estimated that 63,000 San Antonio jobs can be credited to the 1994 trade pact. Another 135,000 jobs are indirectly tied to NAFTA, Nirenberg has said.

Companies large and small in San Antonio that do business in different ways with Mexico could be affected by the talks, expected to extend into 2018.

RELATED: S.A. mayor talks about what could happen to S.A. jobs if NAFTA is terminated

The result could be new tariffs and taxes on products, new dispute resolution rules and different regulations and standards.

The talks could reach a stalemate. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to pull the United States out of NAFTA, which could spark a trade war between the United States, Mexico and Canada, with sanctions and high tariffs. Congress could reject the terms of a newly re-negotiated NAFTA.

Changes to NAFTA could affect supply chains between San Antonio companies and Mexico firms which have developed since, and before, NAFTA took effect in 1994.

Shown in the slide show are photos of selected San Antonio companies that do business with Mexico.

dhendricks@express-news.net
The University of Texas at San Antonio received a $5 million National Science Foundation grant to create a new research and education cloud computing center, the university announced.

UTSA, which first pointed to cybersecurity in 2001 as an area of strategic importance, is using the funds to create the Center for Security and Privacy Enhanced Cloud Computing, which will be concentrated around the intersection of cybersecurity and cloud computing, according to a news release. The colleges of science, engineering, education and business are participating in the multidisciplinary center, which UTSA hopes, will act as a pipeline to create well-trained professionals in the industry and strengthen San Antonio as a cybersecurity hub, according to the press release.

Creating a place where UTSA can expand its cybersecurity focus and apply its vast expertise to cloud computing will enable the university to make meaningful contributions with a practical impact, said UTSA President Taylor Eighmy in the announcement. The center will also give UTSA students an unparalleled learning opportunity to conduct research alongside the universitys nationally recognized experts in cyber, cloud, computing and analytics.

The center also is hoping to increase minority participation in tech, and to help educate high school students, according to the release. The center and Northside Independent School District are going to partner and offer certificate programs to teachers and students in the school district, according to the release.

Research estimates that the world will have 1.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by the year 2020, said Ravi Sandhu in the release, who is leading the project. In addition to leading research at the intersection of cloud computing and cybersecurity, C-SPECC will play a critical role in attracting more youth to the profession. If we want to fill 1.5 million jobs, we need to begin recruiting smart kids and giving them the opportunity to experience a security career first hand.

Sandhu, a professor of computer science, is also the founding executive director of the UTSA Institute for Cyber Security. The Institute opened in 2008 the universitys first cloud computing research laboratory, according to the release.

UTSAs College of Education and Human Development will offer the certificate programs through the center, according to the release, which will allow teachers to expand their understanding of cybersecurity and cloud computing, and how to teach it to high school students, according to the release. UTSA will offer each semester a new course for teachers to keep up with changes in cybersecurity and cloud computing.

High school students from the district will also be recruited to study at the center, according to the announcement.

The outreach program will give the teens an opportunity to try on security-related careers, engaging them as they consider areas of study to pursue in college and embark on college preparedness paths, according to the release.

UTSA will work with participating schools  the Business Careers High School, Earl Warren High School, William Howard Taft High School and John Marshall Harlan High School  to offer internships and foster mentorships, according to the announcement.

And students may end up interning for Rackspace, according to the announcement.

Rackspace, a San Antonio-based managed cloud provider, will recruit students from C-SPECC for internships and part-time employment and participate in coding hackathons to promote interest in the field, the announcement says.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology and NSS Labs, an Austin-based security testing and analysis company, will also partner with the new center, according to the announcement.

sehlinger@express-news.net | Twitter: @samehlinger
When I first arrived in Azerbaijan in November 1994, assigned by the U.S. oil company Amoco Corporation to a joint venture consortium, signs of economic crisis were everywhere. Grocery store shelves were bare. Infrastructure was in decay after years of neglect under Soviet rule.

Now, more than 20 years later, Azerbaijan and its capital Baku are hubs of economic activity, providing the West with a reliable trade and energy ally in an uncertain region. The country's oil and gas industry has largely driven its transformation and growth.

In the mid-1990s, after restoring domestic order and forging a ceasefire with Armenia, then-Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev made oil a national priority. Amoco and nine other companies joined with Azerbaijan's state energy company, SOCAR, in a billion-dollar bet to develop oil in the Caspian Sea. At the time, this deal was referred to as the "contract of the century," bringing economic potential to Azerbaijan and the region.

Last month, the consortium partners of the original agreement expanded and renewed their collaboration for another 25 years. The original deal helped Azerbaijan prosper. Today's deal will offer Europe long-term energy security.

Western Europe is dependent on Russian oil and gas. Russian state-owned Gazprom supplies more than one-third of the energy needs of the UK, Spain, Germany and many other EU nations. But Russia is an unpredictable partner. President Vladimir Putin has demonstrated that he will weaponize Gazprom if it suits his political needs, or satisfies his personal grudges.

Once in 2006, and again during the bitterly cold winter in January 2009, Gazprom turned off its energy pipeline, freezing gas exports to Europe for several days over a pricing dispute with Ukraine. The 2009 cutoff halted 60 percent of Europe's gas supply and darkened homes, hospitals and businesses. In 2014, after Russia illegally seized Crimea, Moscow used Gazprom to further manipulate Ukraine and cut off energy supplies to that nation for a time.

The punitive nature of Russia's regime and its manipulation of access to its oil and gas puts Europe and the safety of its citizens at risk. It is critical that Europe diversify its energy resources and engage multiple sources and modes of delivery. The latest deal, signed in September and anchored by Azerbaijan, assures both.

In addition to SOCAR, the consortium now includes BP (which bought Amoco in 1998) from the U.K., ExxonMobil and Chevron from the U.S.; Inpex and Itochu from Japan; Statoil from Norway, TPAO from Turkey and ONGC Videsh from India.

The consortium operates in the Caspian Sea's Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) field, about 75 miles off the coast of Azerbaijan, the largest source of the country's oil production. Azerbaijan's bountiful Caspian fields were untapped during the Soviet occupation because the USSR lacked the required capital and deep-water technology.

Since the contract of the century was signed, the ACG field has produced about three billion barrels of oil along with associated natural gas.

When the first deal was signed, former President Aliyev set the ambitious goal of initial oil production within three years. There was much to be done. Infrastructure needed to be fixed, an existing Soviet-era offshore platform had to be rebuilt and outfitted with modern production facilities, a pipeline had to be laid to shore and a terminal to receive the oil had to be built. In addition, a pipeline to the Black Sea port of Supsa, Georgia, had to be constructed and an existing pipeline to Russia needed refurbishing.

All of us connected with the project logged endless work weeks to overcome the many obstacles. It was indeed a billion-dollar experiment because we would have to spend that much to prove that Western companies could operate in this post-Soviet country.

President Aliyev made it clear that our project was a top priority for his country. Senior representatives of the Azerbaijani government and SOCAR removed barriers and helped us in every regard. Azerbaijan negotiated crucial transmission agreements with then-Georgian President Eduard Shevernadze and then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

The success of the first billion-dollar oil project paved the way for additional tens of billions of dollars in investments by Western oil companies. With the guidance of current Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, many additional projects followed the initial contract, including the full-field development of the ACG complex, the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan main export pipeline to the Mediterranean Sea, development of the giant Shah Deniz natural gas field and the construction of the Northern Gas Corridor to transport natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe.

President Ilham Aliyev also led the renegotiation of the latest deal. Under it, the consortium partners will pay Azerbaijan $3.6 billion and SOCAR's stake will increase. It's a good deal for Azerbaijan and a great deal for Europe.

The contract of the past century helped Azerbaijan achieve wealth and prosperity that was barely imaginable when I arrived in 1994.

The contract of this century will help Europeans sleep a little easier on cold winter nights, knowing they are not completely dependent on a unilateral, arbitrary Kremlin for their energy needs.



Art McHaffie is a former senior Amoco executive and now an honorary consul for Azerbaijan.
H-E-B will hold a ceremonial groundbreaking Tuesday on a new store in the Heights, a project that influenced a change in the neighborhood's longstanding dry laws.

City leaders and H-E-B executives will speak at the event, which will be held at 2300 N. Shepherd Dr., a former Fiesta grocery store.
The delegation, led by parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Aal, will remain in DC for one week to discuss political and economic issues

An Egyptian parliamentary delegation will visit the United States next week to discuss issues of mutual interest to the two nations, Tarek Radwan, head of parliament's foreign affairs committee, revealed on Tuesday.

Radwan told reporters that the delegation will be led by parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Aal.

"The delegation is expected to leave Cairo next Friday for a one-week visit to the United States," said Radwan.

He said the trip will include meetings with US House of Representatives Speaker Paul Rayan and several members of congress.

Ryan met with Egypt President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and Abdel-Aal during a visit to Cairo in April 2016.

Radwan said, "The full details of the Egyptian parliamentary visit to the United States will be made public on Thursday."

Informed sources told Al-Ahram that the delegation is expected to include Mohamed El-Sewedi, head of the pro-government "Support Egypt" parliamentary bloc, head of the foreign affairs committee Tarek Radwan, and Karim Salem, an independent MP.

The sources said the visit is expected to cover important issues of concern to Egyptian and American politicians and lawmakers, such Egypt's new NGOs law, cooperation in the fight against terrorism, and whether the US should designate the Muslim Brotherhood group as a terrorist organisation.

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Scott McClelland knew he had to open an H-E-B in the Heights when his daughter joined the chorus of residents clamoring for the popular grocery chain.

"My daughter, who lives in the Heights, told me, 'If you really love me, you'll build an H-E-B in the Heights,'" H-E-B's president said. "Boy, that puts a lot of pressure on you."

The San Antonio-based grocer broke ground Tuesday on a new store in the Heights, a project that is poised to bring about more high-end retail development to a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

Construction on the new 92,000-square-foot store will officially start in November with the opening scheduled for fall 2018. The store will rise on 4 acres at 2300 N. Shepherd Dr., the site of a former Fiesta grocery store.

LISTEN: 'H-E-B guy' Scott McClelland talks Heights dry laws and new stores

The Heights H-E-B will be the second two-story project the company is building in Houston. Shoppers can park on the ground level or upper level, and take elevators or escalators up to the store on the second floor. A separate escalator will be reserved for shopping carts.

The store, cladded in simulated wood and concrete, will have an urban feel, McClelland said. H-E-B plans to hire local artists to hang a sculpture above the escalator and paint a mural on an exterior wall.

"The Heights is not just a place, but an attitude," McClelland said. "We couldn't just plop our typical H-E-B here."

H-E-B's latest project spurred a change in the neighborhood's longstanding dry laws. Last fall, Heights residents who live within the boundaries of the dry area voted to repeal the ban on the legal sale of beer and wine for off-premise consumption. H-E-B hired an Austin political consulting firm and recruited neighbors to help with the effort.

H-E-B could not economically build a new store in the Heights without beer and wine sales, McClelland said.

"Our No. 1 selling category is wine," McClelland said. "(Repealing the alcohol ban) allows this project to come into reality."

Ellen Cohen, Houston's mayor pro tem who represents the Heights, said she hopes the new H-E-B will be a catalyst for neighborhood revitalization. The area surrounding the store is currently dotted with used car dealerships and vacant lots.
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The San Francisco murder case that ignited a national debate over immigration policy went to trial Monday with attorneys sparring not over politics but the cases central legal question  whether the killer of Kate Steinle on Pier 14 intended to fire in her direction or accidentally shot a gun he said he found under a bench.

A city prosecutor said in her opening statement that Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, 45, brought the stolen pistol to the waterfront location, pointed it toward Steinle and pulled the trigger on July 1, 2015.

The public defender representing the Mexican citizen said he found the gun in a T-shirt on the pier moments before the shooting, and that after he unwrapped the bundle the gun discharged a bullet that ricocheted off the concrete and struck Steinle in the back.

By the afternoon, the trials first witness introduced the Steinle familys heartbreak into the courtroom. The victims father spoke of the confusion he felt as his daughter spoke her final words: Help me, Dad.

Now Playing: A Mexican national who touched off a debate on illegal immigration when he fatally shot a woman on a San Francisco pier fired the gun on purpose, a prosecutor said Monday in her opening statement at his trial. Video: Fox5Atlanta

The trial in front of Superior Court Judge Samuel Feng opened to broad interest fueled by the political firestorm that followed it. Garcia Zarate, who was homeless and had a record of drug crimes, was wanted for deportation by federal agents when his San Francisco jailers set him free 2 months before the shooting under the citys sanctuary laws.

But the job of the jury sitting at the Hall of Justice is to put aside those politics. It is Garcia Zarates intentions on the day he killed Steinle that could mean the difference between a conviction for second-degree murder or manslaughter, or an acquittal.

The prosecutor, Diana Garcia, said the defendant was guilty of murder because he either aimed a loaded gun at Steinle directly or at a crowd of people  an act that implies malice, or an intent to kill.

Shes dead because this man, known to the police as Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez, pointed this gun in her direction and pulled the trigger, Garcia said.

The gun had been stolen from a U.S. Bureau of Land Management rangers car four days before the shooting, when the off-duty ranger drove into the city and parked along the Embarcadero. No one has been arrested in the burglary.

Garcia said Garcia Zarate had been wearing many layers of clothing that could have hid the gun when he sat down at the pier.

He knew he had a gun, she said. He meant to conceal it from people. He meant to shoot it at people. He meant to shoot it at people, and he shot Kate Steinle.

In his opening statement, attorney Matt Gonzalez of the city Public Defenders Office said the shooting was an accident, citing the bullets ricochet as evidence.

Gonzalez played jurors surveillance video from about an hour before the shooting that showed a group of people gathered around the bench where Garcia Zarate later sat. Gonzalez said it was possible that someone in the group had left the gun under the seat, and that Garcia Zarate had the misfortune of finding it.

The gun, a .40-caliber Sig Sauer, was known to have a hair trigger, and there have been cases of the gun discharging when the trigger was caught on a button or piece of clothing, Gonzalez asserted.

The gun was pointed at the ground when it discharged the bullet, he said. Only a freakish ricochet altered the path of this bullet.

Anticipating this argument, Garcia in her opening statement introduced the concept of a skip shot, in which a bullet hits a target after skipping off a surface. She said a ballistics expert will testify Garcia Zarate had the gun pointed at Steinle and the people around her, but that the shot bounced because of his seated position.

Garcia Zarates actions after the shooting reflected his state of mind, the prosecutor said. While others on the pier rushed to aid Steinle, she said, the defendant tossed the gun into San Francisco Bay and fled in the opposite direction. He was soon arrested.

Gonzalez said his client has a second-grade education. He played snippets of Garcia Zarates interviews with police, in which he repeatedly told frustrated officers, I dont, no remember.

When he tossed the gun into the bay and left the scene, Gonzalez said, his client was scared by the noise the gun made and just wanted it to stop shooting.

If it was a purposeful shooting, he would have fired more than a single time, Gonzalez said.

The victims father, James Steinle, took the stand to describe the events leading to the shooting, saying he and a family friend had met his daughter in the city, where she lived, before going to lunch.

On Pier 14, the father and daughter strolled with their arms around each other. James Steinle, who became emotional at times, said he recalled a loud bang before he noticed his daughter had been wounded.

District Attorney George Gascon and Public Defender Jeff Adachi attended the opening statements, sitting on opposite sides of the aisle from each other, Gascon with members of the Steinle family and Adachi with the Mexican consul general in San Francisco and two women said to be relatives of Garcia Zarate.

Before the shooting, Garcia Zarate had been on track for a sixth deportation after serving 46 months in prison for felony re-entry into the country. But his course changed when he was transferred from federal custody to San Francisco jail in March 2015 on an old warrant alleging he fled marijuana charges in 1995.

When city prosecutors discharged the case, the Sheriffs Department released Garcia Zarate despite a federal request to hold him for deportation. Then-Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi cited the citys sanctuary policies, which limit local cooperation with immigration enforcement and seek to encourage undocumented people to feel comfortable having a relationship with city agencies.

Anger over Garcia Zarates release contributed to Mirkarimis 2016 re-election defeat. But San Francisco remains committed to its sanctuary status, and Gov. Jerry Brown this month signed a bill to create a statewide sanctuary policy.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors amended the citys sanctuary policies after the shooting. But if a person with Garcia Zarates record were in San Francisco jail today, and eligible for release, he would still be freed rather than turned over to immigration agents.

President Trump argued during his campaign that the case showed the need for his proposed wall along the Mexican border.

The Trump administration has since invoked Garcia Zarate and the slaying in its effort, unsuccessful so far, to strip federal funds from cities and states that refuse to take part in immigration enforcement. The House of Representatives, meanwhile, passed Kates Law, which would increase prison sentences for immigrants who, like the shooter, re-enter the U.S. after deportation.

Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @VivianHo
Ex-U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan has raised far more money than opponent Cary Moon in the contest for Seattle Mayor, with the political arm of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce boosting her with an amply funded "independent" expenditure campaign.

But money raising appeals in political campaigns rely on fear of an opponent as a primary motivation to draw small donors. As funny as it seems, the Durkan campaign has delivered an email blast warning about Moon's money.

RELATED: Connelly: Durkan has big lead in poll ... of landline-only voters

Entitled "The Numbers Don't Lie," Team Jenny urges donors to pony up with the words: "We need your help to ensure we can keep our TV ads up on the air and remain competitive with our opponent's ability to self-fund her campaign."

An earlier mailing was headlined with the news that Moon had put $111,000 of her own money into her campaign. She has since put in another $35,000. The money comes from sale of a Moon family business, Pro-Tech Respirators, to a French firm in the mid-1990's.

The amount Moon has donated is less than Amazon.com and Vulcan have put into the Citizens Alliance for a Sound Economy (CASE), the Chamber's political arm, which has fielded and funded the independent group People for Jenny Durkan.

Durkan has directly raised more than $800,000 to a little less than $300,000 for Moon.

RELATED: Connelly: A Moon endorses Jenny Durkan for mayor

The CASE political warchest rival's the candidate's, and is far greater than what a similar committee raised in 2013 to support Ed Murray against incumbent Mayor Mike McGinn.

Why, then, make a big deal about Moon's money? Because that is how campaigns raise money. Make the appeal sound urgent and even desperate, and throw in a devil figure.

The 2012 email appeals for soon-to-be Gov. Jay Inslee sounded as if the sheriff was at the door of campaign headquarters with an eviction notice. Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., were not seriously challenged in 2016, but warned that any sign of weakness would bring down barrels full of right wing money.

In turn, the generosity of people pitching in $5 or $10 provides campaigns with a layer of insulation. If the average donation to Durkan comes to more than $250, the campaign can fire back that more than 3,400 people have given to the campaign.

RELATED: Jenny Durkan website ditches Murray endorsement

And, no matter how edgy Moon sounds, hammering that Seattle is becoming an "office park" and a city of "haves and have-nots," Team Jenny can remind everyone that Moon is herself a rich woman.

"When you take a look at how much of her own money our opponent has 'dumped' into this race and how much campaign has raised vs. how much our campaign has raised in grassroots support, the results are shocking," said Team Jenny.

It's an effective way to cast the Durkan campaign in a favorable light, and keep voters from becoming shocked at the money it is raising and the clout of the Chamber's political arm.
The Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund, run jointly by the city of Houston and Harris County, has raised approximately $79 million, said District G Houston City Councilman Greg Travis in an Oct. 21 email.

The first $7.55 million of these funds was recently disbursed to 28 nonprofit organizations.

Among the nonprofits receiving funds is Katy Christian Ministries. KCM, 5510 First St., Katy, received $110,000 for basic needs, temporary housing, emergency financial assistance and case management.

Also on the list is Memorial Assistance Ministries, 1625 Blalock Road, at $350,000 for basic needs, emergency financial assistance and case management; West Houston Assistance Ministries, 10501 Meadowglen Lane, at $66,000 for basic needs and emergency financial assistance; and, Jewish Family Service-Houston, 4131 S Braeswood Blvd., at $343,750 for rapid re-housing financial assistance, resource distribution aid and case management.

District G residents are invited to call or visit any of these organizations if they desire the kinds of services/funding being offered, said Travis. For this first-round of grant funding, there is no central application process and no specific criteria for qualification.

People interested in receiving aid must contact each organization directly.

The HHRF's advisory board is working with the Greater Houston Community Foundation to develop specific criteria and an application process for future rounds of grant funding. This will be established through an open request-for-proposals process which is currently underway.

Visit https://houstonrecovers.org/local-relief-fund-announces-first-grants-services-flood-victims for information.
School districts are permitted to have representatives on the executive board of the Harris County Appraisal District and Katy ISD trustee George Scott says he's the right man for that job.

"I sued HCAD in 2015 and won. I sued them in 2016 and won and I'm suing them again in 2017," Scott said at the October 16 Katy ISD work study meeting.

"It would be helpful and send a very good message by this school board to put someone on there who has a private sector background and is not just a government background," Scott said.

The board member would represent all the school districts whose property values are appraised by HCAD. However, the Houston Independent School District is allowed to choose its own representative.

Pete Pape, the Assistant Superintendent for Business Services at Deer Park ISD is currently representing the interests of the suburban school districts.

"I will have to campaign among the smaller school districts of Harris County to win the seat on the HCAD board. it is my plan to campaign very aggressively," Scott said in a statement.

He said there are significant concerns with the way HCAD's appraisal review board process. Scott said the deck seems to be stacked against homeowners and small businesses.

Earlier this month, Katy ISD trustees voted unanimously to authorize the reappraisal of taxes on property with the district's boundaries in the wake of the Hurricane Harvey floods that destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses. Under the law, property owners must continue to pay the taxes on the full value of the property, even if it has been severely damaged. Only a taxing entity, such as Katy ISD, can request the reappraisal of property after the county has already completed the process.

Being named to HCAD's board of directors would send a "strong message," Scott said, that while school districts need their tax base, they also should respect the frustrated property owners who have to deal with a government agency in need of reform.

As for his current suit against the Harris County Appraisal District, Scott said he would "obviously recuse myself if I were to win a position on that board."
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The father of a fallen U.S. soldier has received the $25,000 that President Donald Trump promised him three months ago, perhaps ending one of the controversies since Trump falsely claimed last week to have spoken with nearly every military family who has lost a loved since he became commander in chief.

Trump made out the check to Chris Baldridge, whose 22-year-old son Dillon, an Army sergeant, was killed in Afghanistan in June. It was issued from the president's personal account, according to a photo of the check posted online by a reporter with ABC-11 TV in North Carolina.

The check is dated Oct. 18. The Washington Post approached the White House about Trump's $25,000 pledge earlier that day.

As The Post reported last week, Trump called Baldridge in July, a few weeks after his son's death, and offered his condolences. Baldridge expressed frustration that his ex-wife was to receive a $100,000 death gratuity from the Pentagon and he was to receive nothing. Trump then offered to cut him a $25,000 check.

"He said, 'I'm going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000,' and I was just floored," Baldridge told The Post. "I could not believe he was saying that, and I wish I had it recorded because the man did say this. He said, 'No other president has ever done something like this,' but he said, 'I'm going to do it.' "

Baldridge acknowledged then that it was "far-fetched" of him to think the money would indeed materialize. The Post asked The White House about it that morning, and White House officials said hours later that the check had been sent.

"It's disgusting that the media is taking something that should be recognized as a generous and sincere gesture, made privately by the President, and using it to advance the media's biased agenda," spokesperson Lindsay Walters said at the time.

VIDEO: Gold Star mother talks about grief and how to help families through it

CNN reported that evening that the check was sent only after The Washington Post inquired about the president's offer, and the image of the check published Monday appears to confirm that. It was sent along with a letter from Trump in which he appeared to blame legal proceedings for the delay.

"I am glad my legal counsel has been able to finally approve this contribution to you," said the letter, also published by ABC-11. "Enclosed is a check for $25,000 - I hope this will make things a bit easier, but nothing will replace your son, Dillon. He was an American hero."

Walters suggested in a statement Monday night that it was a coincidence that the check happened to be sent the day The Post asked about the promise that the president made.

"There is a substantial process that can involve multiple agencies anytime the president interacts with the public, especially when transmitting personal funds," she said. "The check was in the pipeline since the president's initial call with the father. The president personally followed up several times to ensure that the check was being sent."

Baldridge did not respond to requests for comment on Monday night.

It took 18 months for President Barack Obama to fulfill a similar promise made to the family of Kayla Mueller, who was killed in 2015 while she was held captive by the Islamic State in Syria. Obama's undisclosed sum, for a charity set up in Mueller's name, arrived only after a report by ABC News called attention to what the president later described as an oversight.

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The Washington Post's Philip Rucker and Lindsey Bever contributed to this report.
The suspects had been trained in firearms and explosives and were planning to conduct simultaneous attacks across Egypt

Egypt's Ministry of Interior has announced the arrest on Tuesday of 12 members of rhe Hasm terrorist group in Fayoum governorate, 100 kilometres southwest of Cairo.

The group members were planning to conduct a number of attacks within Egypt, the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

The suspects confessed to joining a group called "Hasm Vanguards" and received training on the use of firearms and preparing IED's, said the ministry.

Police made the arrests based on intelligence provided by Homeland Security, seizing weapons and ammunition during a raid, according to the statement.

The Hasm group has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly attacks against Egyptian security personnel in recent months, mostly targeting police checkpoints.

Egyptian security forces have arrested and killed dozens of suspected Hasm members in the past few months.

Authorities say Hasm is linked to the banned Muslim Brotherhood group.

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The Environmental Protection Agency has instructed two of its scientists and one contractor not to speak as planned at a scientific conference Monday in Providence, Rhode Island, sparking criticism from some academics and congressional Democrats.

EPA officials confirmed Sunday that its researchers would not present at the State of Narragansett Bay and Its Watershed program but did not offer an explanation for the decision.

"EPA scientists are attending, they simply are not presenting, it is not an EPA conference," EPA spokesman John Konkus said in an email.

The New York Times first reported the cancellations.

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The conference marks the culmination of a three-year report on the status of Narragansett Bay, New England's largest estuary, and the challenges it faces. Climate change features as a significant factor in the 500-page report, which evaluates 24 aspects of the bay and its larger watershed. The organizers intend to present a 28-page summary report of their findings in a news conference Monday.

"Narragansett Bay is one of Rhode Island's most important economic assets, and the EPA won't let its scientists talk with local leaders to plan for its future. Whatever you think about climate change, this kind of collaboration should be a no-brainer," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said in a statement. "Muzzling our leading scientists benefits no one." Whitehouse is scheduled to speak at the event.

For roughly six years, the EPA has provided about $600,000 annually for each of more than two dozen national estuaries, including the Narragansett Bay Estuary Program, the conference's host.

The program's director, Tom Borden, said the head of the EPA's National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory Atlantic Ecology Division in Narragansett informed him Friday that the keynote speaker, division research ecologist Autumn Oczkowski, and another colleague in the lab, Rose Martin, would not be able to make presentations at the event.

"I was not given a clear reason why," Borden said in an interview, adding that his team had worked closely with several of the agency's scientists on protecting and restoring the bay. "It's a terrific partnership to have EPA working with us."

An EPA contractor who had contributed to two chapters of the report, Emily Shumchenia, also was told not to speak at the event. She and Martin were slated to take part in a panel titled "The Present and Future Biological Implications of Climate Change."

Borden said the organizers invited Oczkowski and Martin because they were "independent scientists" who could offer valuable perspectives.

At least one senior regional EPA official is expected to attend the conference along with the researchers.

The estuary report, which was subject to extensive peer review and public comment, charts how Narragansett Bay is becoming cleaner but also faces challenges such as nutrient runoff and climate change.

The issue of the EPA's approach to climate-change science has become even more fraught since Donald Trump became president, as Administrator Scott Pruitt has questioned whether human activity ranks as a main driver of the warming the globe has experienced in recent decades. Political appointees have removed pages from the agency's website that address the issue and have canceled some grants supporting climate-change initiatives.

Robinson Fulweiler, a Boston University ecosystems ecologist who has studied the effects of climate change on marine life, called the situation an "abuse of power" by the Trump administration.

"The silencing of government scientists is a scary step toward silencing anyone who disagrees," she said in an email. "The choice by our government leaders to ignore the abundant and overwhelming data regarding climate change does not stop it from being true or prevent the negative consequences that are already occurring and those that are on the horizon."
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., will campaign for Virginia GOP gubernatorial contender Ed Gillespie in Northern Virginia next week, the Gillespie campaign announced on Tuesday.

Rubio will headline a Monday get-out-the-vote rally with Gillespie in Sterling, a Washington exurban town in swing Loudoun County. The event is free and open to the public.

It will come days after New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican and the nation's first elected Latina governor, is scheduled Thursday to appear with Gillespie at business roundtables and a luncheon in Northern Virginia.

"Senator Rubio and Governor Martinez are strong, conservative leaders and I am thrilled to welcome each of them back to the Commonwealth in the closing weeks of this critically important election," Gillespie said through a spokesman."

Their appearances on the campaign trail come as Gillespie tries to lock-up support from Republicans, moderates and independents in vote-rich Northern Virginia, where Democrats have sought to drive up margins of victory in order to win statewide. Gillespie faces Democrat Ralph Northam on Nov. 7.

Two of the Republican Party's highest-profile Latinos are also coming to Gillespie's aid at a time he is fending off criticism from Latino and immigrant groups, who blast his ads about MS-13 gang violence as fear-mongering and racist.

On Tuesday, Latino groups announced they would air Spanish language radio ads in Virginia urging voters to support the Democratic ticket.

"It is important for the Latino community to understand the major differences between the candidates," said Julio Lainez, state director for America's Voice Virginia. "The hateful campaign being run by Gillespie and the Virginia Republican Party aims to divide Virginians."

Rubio carried Northern Virginia counties in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, though he narrowly lost the state to Donald Trump. He has continued to be critical of the president - a divide that Democrats played up.

"Gotta sting that Ed would rather campaign with Lil Marco than you, @realDonaldTrump," tweeted Northam press secretary Ofirah Yheskel, referring to Trump's nickname for his former rival during the primary.

Trump tweeted an endorsement of Gillespie, but has not indicated any plans to hit the campaign trail for him and Gillespie has been demurred when asked if he wants the president to stump for him in a state where his approval ratings are below 40 percent.

Vice President Mike Pence, a longtime friend of Gillespie's, joined the candidate for a rally in southwest Virginia, an area that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in November.

Northam, meanwhile, had former president Barack Obama and former vice president Joe Biden campaign with him in the last week.

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nevada, the nation's first Latina senator, met with a small group of Latino students at George Mason University on Monday to plug Northam's candidacy.
Dean College

FRANKLIN, Massachusetts  The School of the Arts at Dean Colleges production of Legally Blonde Nov. 15 to 19 will feature Nick Maturo of Middletown, who will have a principal role in the show.

Legally Blonde will take place at the Campus Center Main Stage at 99 Main St. at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $22; seniors, $12 and children, $7. For tickets, visit dean.edu/boxoffice.

Salisbury University

SALISBURY, Maryland  Hillary Ramsdell, daughter of Carl and Carla Ramsdell of Westbrook, was recently accepted into Phi Eta Sigma, the national freshman honor society at Salisbury University. Ramsdell is a sophomore majoring in communication arts and 2015 graduate of Westbrook High School.

Longwood University

FARMVILLE, Virginia  Mechelle Helen Gardner from Haddam, who is among the spring graduates at Longwood University, was s awarded an undergraduate degree in anthropology recently.

University of Wyoming

LARAMIE, Wyoming  Jennifer Husman of Middletown was among University of Wyoming students who earned degrees at the completion of the summer term. Husman received a doctor of nursing practice.

Valley Regional High School

DEEP RIVER  Isabelle M. McDonald, a student at Valley Regional High School, has been named a Commended Student in the 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program. About 34,000 Commended Students throughout the nation are being recognized for their exceptional academic promise.

Although she will not continue in the 2018 competition for National Merit Scholarship awards, McDonald placed among the top five percent of more than 1.5 million students who entered the 2018 competition by taking the 2016 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

Also, Kevin M. Baldwin has been named a semifinalist in the 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program, which honors individual students who show exceptional academic ability and potential for success in rigorous college studies. He will have the opportunity to continue in the competition for a National Merit Scholarship next spring.

He is one of 16,000 semifinalists in the 63rd annual National Merit Scholarship Program. These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,400 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $32 million that will be offered next spring.

Basic military training

SAN ANTONIO, Texas  U.S. Air Force Airman William L. Sullivan graduated from basic military training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland recently. Sullivan is the son of Karen Perruccio and brother of Tyler Sullivan of Middletown and a 2013 graduate of Middletown High School.

The airman completed an intensive, eight-week program that included training in military discipline and studies, Air Force core values, physical fitness, and basic warfare principles and skills. Those who complete basic training also earn four credits toward an associate in applied science degree through the Community College of the Air Force.
The next special election for a House seat has been set, with Gov. Tom Wolf, D-Penn., scheduling the race to replace former representative Tim Murphy R-Pa., for March 13.

Like 2016's four special House elections, which were held to replace Republicans who joined the Trump administration, the race in Pennsylvania's 18th District will take place on Trump-friendly turf. The president won 58.1 percent of the vote in the district, a stretch of rural areas around Pittsburgh that had been drawn by Republicans in 2011 to favor Murphy, who resigned after advising a woman with whom he had an extramarital affair to get an abortion.

Still, the opportunity to compete in an open seat has attracted something Murphy didn't have to face in 2016: Democratic candidates. Before Murphy announced his resignation, three Democrats were already running for the 2018 nomination. Two more have jumped in since then, with Democrats especially intrigued by Conor Lamb, an assistant U.S. attorney and Marine veteran.

"It tilts Republican but can be competitive with the right candidate," said Mike Mikus, a Pennsylvania Democratic strategist who helped former congressman Mark Critz win a 2010 special election to replace the late John Murtha in the neighboring 12th district.

In Pennsylvania, candidates for special elections are nominated by party leaders, not in primaries. Lamb is seeking the same nomination as Gina Cerilli, a commissioner in conservative Westmoreland County; Mike Crossey, a former teachers union president; Navy veteran Pam Iovino; and physician Bob Solomon. Four Republicans have piled into the race for their nomination, all of them state legislators, one of whom - Rep. Rick Saccone - bailed on a long-shot challenge to Sen. Robert Casey, D-Penn., to run.

National Democrats have said little about the race in the 18th District, which on paper has few of the features that characterize swing seats. Its electorate is more than 90 percent white and wealthier than the neighboring 12th District - the one once held by Critz - thanks to some of its suburbs and the area around Pittsburgh's airport.

But the southwest Pennsylvania district looks like many that Democrats held before 2010, with a voter registration advantage for the party of nearly 70,000 but an electorate that typically votes Republican for president. In 2010 and 2012 - when he narrowly lost reelection but ran ahead of Barack Obama - Critz ran a jobs-focused campaign, attacking free trade deals and blurring the lines on social issues and guns.

The parties will pick nominees later this year.
BEIRUT - Russia used its veto power on the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday to block an extension of efforts by international inspectors to determine who was behind chemical weapons attacks that have killed scores of Syrian civilians.

Moscow's veto decision was condemned by the United States, Britain and others as an attempt to shield the perpetrators from answering for the most controversial human rights abuses of Syria's six-year-old war.

Western intelligence officials have blamed the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the attacks.

It was the ninth time that Russia had used its veto to hinder international action on Syria. Moscow is a key ally of the Syrian government, supporting it militarily, politically and financially.

A U.N. investigative body is due to release a report Thursday attributing blame for an April 4 chemical attack on the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun. More than 80 people were killed and hundreds were injured in the daybreak assault, in which the Syrian government is alleged to have used the banned nerve agent sarin.

Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, had tried unsuccessfully to have Tuesday's Security Council vote postponed until the contents of the report had been released.

President Trump ordered retaliatory missile strikes days after the Khan Sheikhoun assault, targeting the Syrian government air base from which the warplanes that carried out the chemical attack were thought to have departed.

A separate U.N. inquiryalso has accused Syria of responsibility for the Khan Sheikhoun assault, saying it was one of more than 20 government attacks involving chemical weapons since March 2013, most of them targeting families with no role in the conflict. This investigation, formally known as the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria, is tasked with probing alleged war crimes and has no mandate to prosecute any party.

The mandate of the ongoing U.N.-backed inquiry into chemical weapons attacks in Syria, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism, expires Nov. 17. It also has several other attacks to investigate.

The U.S.-drafted resolution put to a Security Council vote on Tuesday would have extended the JIM's mandate, raising the prospect of accountability for a chapter of human rights abuses that has drawn unparalleled international condemnation.

Amnesty International described the Russian veto as the equivalent of "a green light for war crimes."

"By preventing the mandate extension of the gas attacks probe they helped set up, Russia has dealt a huge blow for justice in Syria and shown once again their callous disregard for all those who have been killed and injured in these attacks," said Sherine Tadros, head of Amnesty International's U.N. office in New York.

It was unclear Tuesday whether the United States and allies on the Security Council would try for a second vote to continue the JIM's work.

"It is not everyday that this council considers an issue that is so horrific, so shocking to the conscience as the use of chemical weapons against civilians," said Michelle J. Sison, the deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations, addressing the chamber. "We want to know the truth about these attacks regardless of where it takes us."
Only one sitting U.S. president has attended an Olympics that was held outside of the country, with President George W. Bush taking in the Opening Ceremonies and a few other events at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. But South Korea Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon on Tuesday expressed hope that President Donald Trump will become the second.

On Tuesday during a meeting in Olympia, Greece, Lee asked U.S. Olympic Committee Chairman Larry Probst for his help in getting Trump and First Lady Melania Trump to visit South Korea for the PyeongChang Winter Olympics next year. According to the Yonhap news agency, Probst replied that he couldn't make any promises but would do what he could to make that happen.
A congressional watchdog has a warning for the Trump administration: start paying attention to the price tag of climate change.

The new report, which was requested two years ago by Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is slated to be released today by the Government Accountability Office.

Citing two large-scale studies of the cost of climate change in the United States, the new report concludes that the economic effects of climate change will be widespread - both geographically and across sectors of the economy.

One estimate cited in the report said that the economic effects of climate change in the six sectors of the economy could reach 0.7 to 2.4 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product annually by the end of this century. Deaths from higher temperatures could cost the United States up to $506 billion per year by the 2099. Lost labor productivity could cost $150 billion annually by century's end.

The report was issued at the end of September and doesn't tally the collective economic damages of the devastating California wildfires, or the damage wrought by Hurricanes Maria in Puerto Rico, as well as Harvey and Irma in Texas and Florida, respectively. But it does say that the administration needs to take concrete steps to guard against the costs of significant extreme weather events in the future.

"The main takeaway in this report is that based on studies that we reviewed and experts that we spoke with, climate change could result in significant economic effects in the U.S., and that it could affect some regions of the country more than others," said J. Alfredo Gomez, director of natural resources and environment at the GAO and one of the report's authors.

Those economic effects include infrastructure damage from sea-level rise along the coasts, lower shellfish harvests in the Northwest, higher energy demand and more wildfires in the Southwest and more heat-related deaths in the Southeast.

Though calculating the economic cost of climate change is an "evolving science," according to Robert Kopp, a Rutgers University professor of climate science, "it would make sense for climate change to be taken into account in decision-making."

Kopp did not help prepare the GAO report, but he did co-write the 2014 American Climate Prospectus from the Rhodium Group, one of the two assessments the agency relied upon to make its recommendation. The other assessment was the Environmental Protection Agency's ongoing Climate Change Impacts and Risks Analysis.

The GAO's report, Kopp said, "is a fair assessment of the literature."

The report arrives just as Congress and the White House have begun negotiations for an annual budget - one that is designed to slash taxes and could shrink government revenue. Congress is currently debating a $36.5 billion relief package for Puerto Rico and other natural disasters that the House passed last night and is being considered in the Senate.

"My colleagues no longer have to take it from me - the Government Accountability Office tells us climate change will cost taxpayers more than a half a trillion dollars this decade, and trillions more in the future unless we mitigate the impacts." Cantwell said in a statement. "We cannot ignore the impact of climate change on our public health, our environment, and our economy," Collins added in her own.

But so far, the executive branch and Congress, both controlled by Republicans, have shown few signs they are willing to heed such warnings.

President Donald Trump has signed executive orders rolling back the previous administration's efforts to address the financial risks posed by climate change, including one asking recipients of federal funds to strongly consider placing new buildings beyond the reach of rising waters.

The GAO does not single out any particular executive branch action. Instead, the agency makes a broad recommendation to the Council on Environmental Quality, the Office of Management and Budget and other White House offices that they "should use information on the potential economic effects of climate change to help identify significant climate risks facing the federal government and craft appropriate federal responses."

The scope of the GAO's assessment was not limited to the current administration, and the executive branch under Obama was not spared. "The federal government has not undertaken strategic government-wide planning to manage climate risks by using information on the potential economic effects of climate change to identify significant risks and craft appropriate federal responses," the report concluded.

In 2013, the GAO said the federal government should prioritize limiting its fiscal exposure to climate change. But its most recent report acknowledges the inherent uncertainty of calculating such costs. The estimates are made by feeding data into both economic and climate models, compounding the potential uncertainty.

Still, by limiting the scope of the report to climate-change effects in the United States, the GAO was conservative. It did not consider, for example, the cost that conflict fueled by climate change abroad may impose on the United States.

Researchers making the calculations say they have made significant headway in recent years.

"We've gone from a world in the 1990's when people we're picking numbers out of the air to one in which we're carefully and systematically going through data sets and extracting signal from noise to understand how climate change is impacting the economy," said Solomon Hsiang, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley who advised GAO.
France will discuss a possible deal to sell more Rafale fighter jets to Egypt during President's Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi current visit to Paris, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told French radio station Europe 1 on Tuesday.

France has signed a number of military deals with Egypt, including the sale of 24 Rafale fighter jets, multi-tasking frigates and two Mistral warships in contracts worth of 6 billion.

On Tuesday, Europe 1 asked Le Maire to comment on reports of a possible new deal for Rafale jets.

"If new contracts can be made, it will be much better," he said.

"A for the terms of payment, President Emmanuel Macaron is set to discuss this during his meeting with President El-Sisi on Tuesday. However, it is standard that the French Ministry of Finance seeks guarantees that Egypt will be able to pay for the deal," Le Maire said.

Dassault Aviation, the manufacturer of the Rafale fighter jet declined to comment to Reuters.

Last July, Egypt received two Dassault-built Rafale fighter jets from France, the fourth batch from a deal signed in 2015.

The deal involves the sale of 24 Rafale jets, of which Egypt has received 11.

The first three jets were delivered in July 2015, the second batch arrived in January 2016, while the third was delivered in April.

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Egypt's State Information Service (SIS) demanded in a follow-up statement on Tuesday that Reuters and the BBC network publish the names of the victims of the Wahat terrorist incident, which occurred in Egypt's Western Desert on Friday, in a renewed challenge to those agencies' claims about the incident's death toll.

The demands come after a week of SIS criticism of both organisations' coverage of the shootout, especially pertaining to the number of deaths they reported.

According to a statement issued on Saturday by Egypt's interior ministry, the terrorism incident resulted in the deaths of 16 policemen and the injury of 13 others.

Both the BBC and Reuters reported that terrorists' victims exceeded 50, which contradicts official reports.

In Tuesday's follow-up to its previous statement, the SIS' affirmed it "is seeking a full commitment to accurate media coverage."

SIS Chairman Diaa Rashwan also sent a letter to each of the organisations bureau chiefs in Cairo.

The letters reiterated the SIS' demands put forth in the statements and called upon the media organizations to retract their published reports and to issue an apology, or to prove their claims, which the SIS insists are "inaccurate."

In the letter, the SIS assured the bureau chiefs that Egyptian laws require that media outlets be able to confirm the accuracy of their claims.

The SIS concluded the letter by affirming its commitment to ensuring the highest levels of press freedom and the availability of timely information to all Egyptian and foreign media outlets operating in the country.

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Sonia Nazario, a journalist whose story Enriques Journey won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for feature writing, will speak Wednesday night at a reception hosted by Catch the Next, a nonprofit organization that partners with Palo Alto College and other community colleges in Texas.

Nazario and others, including Laurie Ann Guerrero, a former poet laureate for San Antonio and Texas, will speak as part of the organizations Fall Institute event. Catch the Next works to close the achievement gap in Texas by increasing the educational attainment of Latinos and other underserved populations.
The numbers are staggering. This year alone, 316,120 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and 40,610 will die from the disease. By comparison, the number of annual traffic-related fatalities in the U.S. stands at 37,461.

The chance of developing breast cancer during your life is an unfortunate reality for all women. One in 8 women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. Women have no control over these numbers; however, they do have significant control over whether they are going to die from this horrible disease.

At some point in the diseases progression, every breast cancer is curable. Although every breast cancer is treatable at the time of diagnosis, not all breast cancers are curable at the time of discovery because many breast cancers are discovered too late to be completely cured.

Nobody wants to learn the dreaded news that they have breast cancer. The time of discovery is critical in determining the odds of survival. Every breast cancer has a threshold at which point it changes from being curable into being untreatable. In other words, every breast cancer can be cured if found early enough. Early detection, therefore, is the key to survival.

Cure rates and odds are determined by two main factors: grade and stage of the breast cancer at the time of diagnosis. Grade is how aggressive the breast cancer cells look under the microscope and how fast the cells are dividing (growing). The lower the grade, the slower the growth and the longer it takes for the cancer to cross over the threshold from curable to deadly. Stage is how large the cancer has become and how far it has traveled in the body at the time of diagnosis. The smaller and the more localized the cancer is, the easier it is to cure. Low grade and stage mean a better chance for cure; high grade and stage mean decreased odds of survival.

The grade (aggressiveness) of a breast cancer cannot be controlled by screening. Cancers that form in younger women (40 to 50) tend to be higher in grade, which makes them deadlier. Screening mammography allows to identify breast cancer before the disease progresses to a more serious stage (size and extent). This is great news.

Cancers as small as a pin head can be detected by mammography. These early cancers typically are the kind that are confined in the ducts and glands where all breast cancers first form. These early cancers are called ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS. If detected at this stage, the cancer is almost 100 percent curable by lumpectomy and radiation of the breast.

If not detected at this early stage, the DCIS cells can invade the surrounding breast tissue -- called stroma -- and the cancer then becomes invasive ductal carcinoma, or IDC. At this stage, the body tries to corral the invading cancer cells with reactive scar tissue that the woman eventually feels as a new breast lump. As it continues to grow and invade the stroma, it can be picked up by lymphatic ducts and transported to the regional lymph nodes in the arm pit.

Fifty percent of women who feel a lump in the breast will have at least microscopic spread to regional lymph nodes. At this point, the cancer stage increases and the chances of a cure decrease. Although still potentially curable at this stage, chemotherapy must be used to kill the invading cancer cells. Once the cancer cells spread through the lymph nodes and travel to other parts of the body -- such as bone, liver and lung -- the cancer is in metastatic stage 4 (the highest) and crosses the threshold from curable to only treatable. It is these women who ultimately will succumb to the disease.

In my opinion that is tragic result, because it doesnt have to be this way.

Mammography saves lives because it discovers breast cancers at an early stage and allows for early treatment leading to a cure. Improved cancer therapy has led to more cures at later stages but has not eliminated the need for early detection.

We have a screening test that saves countless lives, and we have a test that can lead to breast cancer cure in most women if used properly and regularly. But there is controversy concerning the age a woman should start taking advantage of this life-saving screening process.

Unfortunately, there is no consensus on when a woman should start screening mammography, how often she should get mammograms and when she should stop getting annual mammograms because of advanced age.

The U.S. Preventive Service Task Force that sets recommendations for Medicare recipients calls for screening mammography to begin at age 50 and proceed every other year until age 75. The American Cancer Society recommends that women 40 to 44 can start mammograms if they wish to do so, women 45 to 54 should get mammograms every year, and women 55 and older can get mammograms every two years. The American College of Radiology/Society of Breast Imaging recommends annual mammograms from 40 until 74 or older for those women with other health problems.

So, should you start at age 40, 45 or 50? Should you get a mammogram once a year or once every other year? I have been a radiologist and mammographer for more than 30 years, and I would like to give my perspective.

Most people would say a family history of breast cancer is the biggest risk factor for a woman to develop the disease. Although family history is an important factor, only 25 percent of all breast cancers arise in women with a strong family history. This means that 75 percent of all breast cancers occur in women without a family history of the disease. This statistic shocked me when I first read it.

The No. 1 risk factor for developing breast cancer is age. Peak incidence is between the age of 65 and 70. Most women begin dying of other causes, such as heart disease and smoking-related illnesses, after age 70, which brings down the number of breast cancer-related deaths.

So, if getting older is the biggest risk factor in developing breast cancer, why does controversy surround the recommendation of starting mammograms at age 40? This is because while the incidence of breast cancer in average-risk women  those between 40 and 50 -- is relatively low, it is not zero.

Breast cancer incidence increases substantially around age 40. The incidence of breast cancer in women between 40 and 44 is double that of women 35 to 39; the incidence doubles again between 45 and 49. The cancers that develop between 40 and 49 account for almost 20 percent of all breast cancers and for about 40 percent of all years of life saved by mammography because women in their 40s live longer after they are cured. Annual mammograms reduce by 40 percent the average mortality in women between 40 and 49.

The other factor that influences the effectiveness of mammography in detecting breast cancer in women between the ages of 40 and 49 is breast density. The younger a woman is, the more likely she will have dense breasts that reflects remaining glands, ducts and fibrosis in the breasts. Dense breasts have a negative effect on the ability of mammography to detect cancer. Dense breast tissue allows cancer to hide, which is why we have started to recommend breast screening ultrasound in women with dense breasts. Screening ultrasound enables us to detect many cancers that mammography misses. This has greatly improved our ability to detect invasive breast cancers in younger women with dense breasts. 3D mammograms have also enhanced our ability to detect breast cancer in women with dense breasts. 3D mammograms also enhance our ability to detect breast cancer in average density and fatty breasts and is fast becoming the standard of care for screening mammography.

A recent study published in the medical journal Cancer showed that more than 70 percent of women who died from breast cancer in their 40s at major Harvard teaching hospitals were among the 20 percent of women who were not being screened. Because medical science cannot determine which cancers will advance to kill a woman and which will not, all women 40 and older should be screened annually.

With the recommendation of annual screening between 40 and 84, average mortality reduction is 39.6 percent; with the recommendation of screening annually between 45 and 54 and then every other year until 79, average mortality reduction is 30.8 percent; and with the recommendation of screening every other year between 50 and 74, average mortality reduction is 23.2 percent.

These are the facts. Now its your turn to act on them. My advice: Go get your mammogram.

Dr. Jess Dalehite is a diagnostic radiologist at The Breast Center.
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On Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz endorsed Alabama Judge Roy Moore, a controversial candidate for U.S. Senate best known for his support of the Ten Commandments and opposition to gay marriage.

Cruz announced his support of Moore the same day that Talking Points Memo resurfaced a 2016 podcast interview in which Moore said the Supreme Court's 2015 same-sex marriage ruling was "even worse" than an 1857 court decision that upheld slavery.

"Yes, sir. I was simply pointing out that in 1857 the United States Supreme Court did rule that black people were property. And of course that contradicted the Constitution and it took a civil war to overturn it," Moore told the "Here I Stand" podcast last November.

HEAD TO HEAD: Ted Cruz takes on Bernie Sanders in debate over tax cuts

"But this ruling in Obergefell is even worse in a sense because it forces not only people to recognize marriage other than the institution ordained of God and recognized by nearly every state in the union, it says that you now must do away with the definition of marriage and make it between two persons of the same gender," he continued.

In previous comments, Moore said "homosexual conduct" should be illegal and compared it to bestiality.

Now Playing: On Tuesday, Roy Moore won the Senate GOP runoff election in Alabama  claiming victory over Donald Trumps prefered candidate, Senate Luther Strange. The former justice chief of Alabama has made headlines on more than one occasion for his statements on hot-button issues, one of which led to his removal from the Alabama Supreme Court bench. In 2005, Moore had this to say about homosexuality: Homosexual conduct should be illegal. It is immoral, it is defined by the law as detestable. Video: Mic

"This December, the People of Alabama have a clear choice," wrote Ted Cruz in his endorsement of Moore. "They can choose a liberal Democrat, who will stand with Chuck Schumer to raise taxes, weaken our military, open our border, and undermine our constitutional rights. Or, they can choose to elect Judge Roy Moore, a conservative who will proudly defend Alabama values."

FUNNY EXCHANGE: Ted Cruz tweets image of Zodiac Killer letters

Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice, is tied in the Senate race against Democratic candidate Doug Jones, according to a Fox News poll last week.

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Alabama voters go to the polls on Dec. 12.

See where Houston ranks among Texas most and least LGBTQ-friendly cities above.
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The number of mystery donkeys and goats roaming San Antonio is growing.

Monday at 11 a.m., Animal Care Services officer Robert Lopez responded to the latest call on the Southwest Side for a white goat with a brown face, walking down the 6000 block of Timber Rock.

When Lopez arrived at the location, several people pointed to the animal, wearing a blue collar, standing in front of a hedge of bushes.

A resident said the goat had been roaming the neighborhood since Sunday afternoon. Lopez retrieved a rope, walked over, tied a length of rope around the goats torso and front legs and led him away.

Lopez and ACS staff named the runaway, Billy the Kid.

In the last month, ACS officers have picked up two other goats and two donkeys they have found roaming the city streets. ACS spokeswoman Lisa Norwood said no one has called to claim any of the animals now residing at their livestock pens.

Obviously, this animal was an owned animal, Norwood said. It makes it that more harder to understand, this was someones animal that had a family. Hopefully theyll give us a call because hes here but wants to be home.

Two weeks ago a pair of donkeys were seen roaming near a far Northeast Side auto shop where a pair of uninvited donkeys had followed an employee to his place of business.

The donkeys were roaming along Interstate 35, near Fisher Road, when they found their way to Alignment Tire Express, having trailed a worker there who was then able to contain them while awaiting police.

RELATED: Social media finds stray pig spotted at S.A. construction site a 'forever home'

A San Antonio police officer called ACS to pick up the two male donkeys, one white and the other gray.

Two ACS officers arrived at the scene and after about three hours was able to usher the strays into a livestock trailer without incident.

ACS spokeswoman Lisa Norwood said the donkeys were socialized animals and used to being around people.

"In a sense that makes it sadder because that points to them having been owned, yet here they were walking down street," Norwood said.

The concern, she said, was that the pair were probably scared away from home and could have potentially been injured or hit by cars. This also presents a public safety issue, she explained.

Safely away from traffic, ACS staff have named the pair Bob and Barney. And the donkeys aren't the only borders at the ACS livestock pens.

The two are now rooming with a pair of goats, who have been at the shelter about a month.

Norwood said the goats were found roaming the 4900 block of Pecan Grove Blvd. The goats were named Boy and Girl.

Norwood said pictures of all four animals have been sent out to rescue and foster channels. She said investigators didn't find any permits for goats in the area where Boy and Girl were found, nor did an activity search for donkeys near the tire shop turn up any leads.
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AUSTIN  Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bushs ambitious plan to re-imagine the Alamo is coming under fresh scrutiny after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick directed the Senate Finance Committee to delve into state expenditures on the project.

I want to ensure the funds allocated for the Alamo are spent to emphasize the historical impact of that legendary battle on the development of Texas as a nation and as a state, Patrick said Monday.

Bushs management of the project has stirred some protests, most recently over a proposal to move the Cenotaph, a giant marble and granite memorial to those killed while defending the Alamo from Mexican troops.

RELATED: Crowd protests Cenotaph's removal from Alamo Plaza

The Cenotaph was added about a century after the 1836 battle. It would be moved from its spot near the Alamo under a proposal that would create more open space at the site, although a final decision hasnt been made on the proposal.

The Alamo, known as the cradle of Texas liberty, is in a busy area of downtown San Antonio. The battle that occurred there can be difficult to visualize because of development and numerous tourist attractions surrounding the historic buildings.

While the need to repair the Alamo itself isnt in question, plans for the area around it have raised concerns among some who worry that theres an effort to sanitize the battle. Tea party activists have questioned the projects cost.

Some Bush critics are working to recruit a strong opponent against him in the March 6 Republican primary.

RELATED: Remembering the Alamo when it was in Iraq

Bush and others have pushed back hard on the accusations, including a rumor that they want to change the Alamos name, saying the latter idea simply never would happen.

Monday, Bush praised state leaders for their support of the Alamo work.

I want to thank Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, legislative leadership and the members of the Texas Senate and House of Representatives for working to restore reverence and dignity to the 1836 Alamo Battlefield and preserving both the Alamo Church and Long Barracks through historic appropriations, he said. This was a testament to their dedication to protecting Texas history and encouraging future generations of Texans to remember the sacrifice of the Alamo Defenders who gave their lives for our independence. We are committed to using these funds, provided through their leadership, to restore the 1836 Battlefield and preserve the Alamo through transparent and responsible stewardship.

Its estimated the Alamo master plan would cost about $450 million, with more than $200 million expected to be raised privately by the nonprofit Alamo Foundation.

RELATED: Weapons, personal items of Alamo defenders unveiled at one-day-only exhibit

The state has allocated $100 million toward the Alamo master plan so far, plus $6.5 million for crucial restoration and day-to-day operations. The city of San Antonio has committed $38 million.

Patrick directed the Senate Finance Committee to monitor the expenditure of state funds appropriated to the General Land Office for the preservation, maintenance and operation of the Alamo historical site. His charge to the panel said it should ensure the funds are spent to emphasize the architectural design and the historical impact the battle had on the development of Texas as a nation and as a state.

The Alamo assignment was one of numerous directives that Patrick and House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, made to lawmakers in their respective chambers Monday, asking them to study and develop recommendations on key issues in advance of the 2019 regular legislative session.

Straus didnt include the Alamo on his list of assignments for lawmakers.

pfikac@express-news.net | Twitter: @pfikac
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Bexar County Commissioner Paul Elizondo kicked off his bid for an unprecedented 10th term representing Precinct 2 on Tuesday in front of the south steps of the county courthouse.

Elizondo, who has held a seat on Commissioners Court since the 1980s, laid out a list of projects he wants to see through, including the San Pedro Creek Improvements Project and expansions to the University Health System.

Serving our community is my lifes work. I want to do as much as I can to improve my beloved Bexar County for as long as I can, Elizondo said, putting emphasis on long.

Joining the crowd of more than 200 supporters were state representatives, City Council members and elected county officials that included Elizondos four colleagues on the court.

Im a little disgusted by people who try to make an issue about his age, state Sen. Jose Menendez said. His age has nothing to do with it. Its his experience that brings a lot to the table.

Now 82, Elizondo declined to say whether this would be his final term if he wins re-election.

The commissioner put health care at the center of his short speech, listing accomplishments like the expansion of UHS trauma center and renovation of the Robert B. Green campus. He said he wants to stick around for the $390 million Women & Childrens Inpatient Tower, to be built at the South Texas Medical Center campus.

Elizondo said he would also focus on creating a multimodal public transit system for the county, an issue that has drawn increased attention in recent months.

Elizondos kickoff followed County Judge Nelson Wolffs own announcement on Oct. 10. Wolff has worked with Elizondo on the court since 2001, when Wolff was appointed judge, and the two Democrats see eye-to-eye on most issues.

Commissioner Elizondo is absolutely critical for what were doing on the court, Wolff told the crowd of supporters.

Though Elizondos opponents have seized on his age as a weakness, the longtime commissioner framed it as a positive.

Commissioners Court is not for beginners, Elizondo said after the speech. Balance of power is extremely tenuous and hard to maneuver.  A lot of times, people get their experience somewhere else and then come here.

At least one of Elizondos opponents, Mario Bravo  a Democrat seeking elective office for the first time  is skeptical the longtime commissioner will finish his term. Queta Rodriguez, the countys veterans service officer, is also running to unseat Elizondo.

Some view Elizondos longtime friend Leticia Van de Putte, a former state senator and San Antonio mayoral contender, as a potential successor. When asked if he had plans to try to hand off his seat, Elizondo said if hes re-elected hed serve the full four years of the term.

I dont have anybody set to be my replacement or anything like that, he said.

A former Marine and retired band leader, Elizondo had already signaled plans to run at a private event in May 2016. The San Antonio Express-News reported he raised $200,000 at the event, adding to more than $200,000 on hand.

Christian Anderson, Elizondos campaign manager, declined to say how much Elizondo had raised to date.

After a failed bid for the county judge seat in 1984, Elizondo has represented his West Side precinct for the last 29 years. He served in the Texas House from 1979 to 1982, and was first elected to Commissioners Court in 1983.

He won re-election in 2014 with 73 percent of the vote.

Elizondo is seen as the courts budgetary guru, with control over the countys $1.76 billion budget.

To modify the famous saying a bit, he speaks softly but he carries a very big budget, Menendez said.

jscherer@express-news.net
The city of Live Oak is putting its money where its mouth is, upping the ante when it comes to supporting local business.

The Live Oak Economic Development placed $75,000 in its Visual Improvements Program budget, which is made available to businesses around town that want to remodel or decorate their business fronts.

Now in its seventh year, VIP has increased the amount of money individual businesses can apply for. Jordan Matney, Live Oak assistant city manager, told City Council members recently about the increase to $5,000 per business request.

Previous EDC expenditures for VIP were limited to $2,000 per application, as the EDC had budgeted $30,000 for the program. But the new $75,000 allocation more than doubled the amount put aside for business redress.

Right now, we offer up to $5,000 to any business in Live Oak for a project that is approved by the EDC, Matney said. It has to improve the exterior of the building. We do signage. We do painting. We do landscaping, just all different types of things.

A business owner with a $2,500 or $3,000 beautification project can apply for that exact amount to entirely cover the work. And, a business with a $40,000 or $50,000 project can apply for $5,000 that will go toward the completion of its project.

Weve helped out with a $100,000 project, when we gave them just $2,000, Matney said. But thats $2,000 less that business owner has to come up with on their own.

When Live Oak launched the VIP program, Matney said they had problems convincing business owners that the money came with no strings attached.

When the city shows up at your door and tells you they want to give you money for free, people dont believe you, she said. It took several years for us to really build the program.

One of the best advertising sources has been word of mouth.

Once one business in a shopping center or area uses the program, they tell their neighbor about the program, who then tells their neighbor. And pretty soon were helping an entire strip center, she said.

Projects are reviewed on a competitive basis. The Live Oak EDC hopes to spend all $75,000 budgeted dollars on as many as 15 projects. Applicants must be ready to begin actual construction within 90 days of approval of the award notice, and must plan to complete all improvements within one year of the award date.

The city approved 15 projects last year, up to the $2,000 limit. They hope to match that participation with the increase to $5,000.

Matney said city officials spread word of the program whenever they visit businesses, attend ribbon-cuttings or participate in city functions. She said the citys code enforcement officers also are involved.

They may see a code violation that needs attention that (the VIP program) can help with, she said. Code enforcement is usually the bearer of bad news. But this is their opportunity to kind of be the hero in some instances, so  not only can it make a building look better, but it can also remedy a code violation.

Live Oak businesses interested in applying can call the EDC at 210-653-9140, ext. 219, or contact the development services department at ext. 244.

jflinn@express-news.net
A 26-year-old Army soldier attending a leadership course at Joint Base San Antonio Fort Sam Houston is facing federal charges for allegedly attempting to have sex with a 14-year-old girl.

The girl Rodlando Cruz Guzman thought he was communicating with online was actually an Air Force Special Investigations Academy special agent, according to a an affidavit filed in federal court.

Posing undercover as a 14-year-old girl named Bri, the agent posted a message on an online application called Whisper that read, "I wish there was one person to show me not all military guys are the same," according to federal court documents.

RELATED: SAPD: Mother finds video of man raping her 7-year-old daughter in 'deleted photos' tablet folder

Guzman allegedly responded under the screen name "melody_Jack." During the exchange, Guzman learned the girl was 14, but continued talking to her, according to the affidavit.

Guzman then provided the agent with his screen name on Kik, another messaging app, to continue their conversation, authorities said.

On that app, Guzman allegedly brought up sexual topics, and told Bri he wanted to teach her about sex.

Guzman began sending images of himself to the agent, documents show. The photos included one of his half-erect penis, one with his shirt off, and one in military uniform, according to the affidavit.

On October 13, Guzman allegedly told the agent he wanted to meet up to "do our dirty stuff." Guzman showed up to what he believed was the girl's home the next day, where he was detained by the agents, the affidavit states.

Guzman admitted to the agents that he intended to have sex with the 14-year-old girl. He had even bought a new package of condoms for the occasion, the affidavit says.

Guzman has been at the base since Oct. 3 to take courses, according to Jose Rodriguez, the public affairs officer for the U.S. Army Medical Department Center and School. Guzman has since been discharged from the course, Rodriguez said.

Guzman was charged with attempted enticement of a minor and attempted transfer of obscene material to a minor.

Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here. | fsabawi@mysa.com | Twitter: @FaresInSA
Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi discussed a variety of issues with French President Emmanuel Macron during a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Tuesday, in particular regional and international efforts to combat terrorism.

In a press conference held after the meeting, the Egyptian president also stated that he and Macron discussed the latest developments concerning the Middle East peace process after the recent Palestinian political reconciliation, which Egypt hosted in Cairo.

The pair further discussed the situations in Libya and the wider Arab region.

"We have discussed the situation in Syria and Iraq, as well the Sahel and Sahara region in Africa. We also exchanged views about how to deal with the illegal immigration in addition to discussing the relation between Egypt and the European Union," President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said.

El-Sisi also announced that he and his French counterpart attended the signing of 16 memoranda of understanding in the fields of renewable and traditional energy, infrastructure, social security, and transportation.

The Egyptian President said that he and Macron agreed to declare 2019 as the year of Egyptian-French culture and tourism, and that he personally invited Macron to visit Egypt.

Responding to questions

During the ensuing press conference, an Egyptian journalist asked President Macron if there was an agreement or partnership between France and Egypt in the fight against terrorism.

The French president stated that there was a strategic partnership between Egypt and France in fighting terrorism and that France was fully supporting Egypt in its war against extremist violence.

"We hope to work in a balanced way to end terrorism, as well as conflicts, especially in Syria and Libya," he said, stressing on the necessity of working together to face jihadist movements.

Macron also said that France would cooperate with Egypt on a diplomatic level concerning the ongoing civil war in Syria.

"Egypt and France have an important role in that matter. If there is no political solution in Syria, a lot of terrorist movements will appear and this will have a negative impact on the region as well on Egypt," Macron said.

Pressed by a French journalist about the human rights situation in Egypt, the French president said that his government fully understands the difficult situation in Egypt and that there are ongoing concerns about stability.

Macron also added that he and his government believed that they should not interfere in other countries affairs. "I believe in sovereignty. We are in no position to tell Egypt what to do," he told the journalist.

Nonetheless he revealed that he had addressed certain specific human rights cases with President El-Sisi in their discussion, but refused to reveal which.

From his side, Sisi stated that the Egyptian government respects human rights and that there are over 40 thousand NGOs currently operating in Egypt.

The Egyptian president also added that we should not neglect the human rights of the families of the martyrs who died in the war of terrorism, suggesting that terrorism is a great threat to human rights.

"We do not run from questions about human rights, but we are not Europe," he said.

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is currently in a visit to Paris that started on Monday.

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In one week, Border Patrol agents stopped four convicted sexual predators, some of whom abused children, as they tried to re-enter the U.S. illegally.

The stops spanned a period of five days and were made by agents from the Weslaco, Falfurrias and Fort Brown stations. The men attempting to re-enter the country illegally were from Mexico and Honduras.
Now Playing: Firefighters discovered the body of an elderly man while responding to a burning home on the East Side, Oct. 24. Video: San Antonio Express-News

Firefighters on Tuesday discovered the body of an elderly man while responding to a burning home on the East Side.

The fire was first reported around 5:05 a.m. at a home in the 600 block of Hammond Avenue, across the street from San Antonio ISD's Highland Park Elementary School. When firefighters arrived, the back of the home was burning.
Police are investigating an apparent road rage shooting that took place in front of the IDEA Judson campus on the Northeast Side.

Officers said the suspect, for whom the have no description, stopped his car in the middle of the 13400 block of Judson Road Monday morning and opened fire on the back of the victim's vehicle.
Iraq's Kurdistan region accused Iraqi forces of launching an attack on Tuesday in the direction of the Turkish border where a section of the Kurdish oil export pipeline is located.

An Iraqi military spokesman denied clashes happened in the region of Rabi'a, located south of the Fish-Khabur border area held by Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

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While President Donald Trump has been condemning "fake news," his very own FCC is pursuing policies that will lead to the greatest concentration of television media power in history.

In April, under the leadership of a new chairman chosen by the president, Ajit Pai, the Federal Communications Commission reinstated an antiquated rule that not only paves the way for the $3.9 billion merger of television groups Sinclair and Tribune but will allow other television networks to own stations reaching more than 70 percent of U.S. households.

Just weeks after that decision, Pai's FCC proposed another rule change that is set to be put to a vote Tuesday: Eliminating the requirement that TV stations maintain local studios in the markets where they are licensed. If this requirement is dropped, local news production could be moved to places such as New York and Washington as the big networks buy up local stations.

Pai's decisions fly in the face of the FCC's core mission to ensure that broadcasters using the public airwaves adhere to the principles of locality, diversity and competition. A bipartisan consensus has long supported these three principles.

This consensus backed a law signed by President George W. Bush in 2004 that stated that no broadcast television network can own stations reaching more than 39 percent of U.S. households. But a merged Sinclair would reach 72 percent. So how did the FCC and Sinclair circumvent Congress?

On April 20, without any public hearings, the FCC redefined UHF stations as reaching only 50 percent of homes in a given market, a definition known as the "UHF discount" that was employed back when those fuzzy UHF signals were difficult to watch and considered inferior to other channels.

However, after stations transitioned to digital broadcasting in 2010, nearly all commercial television stations moved to UHF channels, the preferred spectrum. Today almost all of these channels fully penetrate their markets.

Why Pai decided to use outdated market penetration rates that are not reality-based is not completely clear. But it is apparent that Sinclair immediately benefits, since the FCC effectively has doubled the national ownership cap from 39 percent to more than 75 percent.

Many Democrats have decried this FCC decision benefiting Sinclair, a conservative broadcaster with ties to Breitbart News. And while some conservatives are cheering the deal, the implications of FCC actions are troubling for most.

The nonsensical decision to reinstitute the UHF discount will also open the door for NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox to buy local TV stations reaching more than 70 percent of U.S. homes.

Anyone who understands how these big media companies operate can see the danger. By owning local stations, the New York-based media networks could dictate local news coverage. With the planned elimination of the local studio rule, they will have a green light to do so.

Let's remember these "ownership caps" came into place in 1985 under President Ronald Reagan's FCC, with a 25 percent limitation. Reagan grasped that if major networks owned most local stations, Republicans wouldn't get a fair shake.

Over time, the cap percentage was increased, but the concept has maintained broad support. Conservatives liked local news diversity. Liberals did not want a handful of conglomerates amassing too much power.

Democrats have already raised suspicions about the commission's decision to implement the UHF discount just three weeks before the Sinclair-Tribune merger was announced. Could those companies have known somehow that such a change was going to occur to make their merger legal?

Pai has argued the ownership cap is not meaningful in a world of pervasive social-media outlets such as Facebook and YouTube. But he ignores the findings of a recent Pew Research Center study concluding that local TV news broadcasts are still the primary way Americans get their news. To date, there is no internet company providing serious competition to local television news.

I believe a key reason Trump won the election, and the reason the GOP dominates the House and Senate, is the way that broadcast ownership caps have engendered diversity at the local level.

The FCC's recent actions can only lead to a massive consolidation of stations and homogenization of news. The cure for "fake news" isn't consolidation, it is more diverse and competitive news. Ultimately, a free press is predicated on a diverse press.

Trump campaigned against this very "concentration of power." Pai should recognize the harm his policies will do.

Before approving the Sinclair merger, the FCC has a duty to engage in a comprehensive and open media-ownership proceeding - one that seeks public comment and input from Congress. Anything less raises questions about impartiality and jeopardizes the integrity of the commission.

Eliminating ownership rules that have served us well for more than 30 years is a momentous change. The American people must play a role in that decision.

- - -

Ruddy is chief executive of Newsmax Media.
Islamic State (IS) militants and fighters from Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary coalition were locked in fierce clashes near Mosul Tuesday, with nearly 30 reported dead, the coalition said.

Mosul, Iraq's second city, was retaken from IS in July after a massive months-long offensive.

"Waad Allah forces are repelling an IS attack southwest of Mosul in the Hatra desert" some 100 kilometres (60 miles) southwest of Mosul, said a spokesman for the Hashed unit.

The Hashed is an umbrella group of paramilitary auxiliaries formed in 2014 to support Iraqi regular forces after IS swept across swathes of northern Iraq.

In a series of online posts, Waad Allah said IS sent "numerous suicide bombers" to attack its forces, and gave a death toll of 24 Islamist militants and four of its own men.

Iraqi forces have retaken more than 90 percent of the territory IS seized in the country in 2014, with the Islamist militants now confined to the desert areas in Anbar province bordering Syria.

But despite a series of stinging defeats, IS in Iraq retains the ability to launch attacks in areas declared "liberated" months previously.

After losing Mosul in July, IS has also just lost Raqa, its "capital" in Syria.

The Hashed took over the Hatra area in April this year after IS forces were ousted.

The ancient walled city of Hatra in northern Nineveh province is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

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Zimbabwes main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Monday it was time for the older generation to step back and allow new hands to lead, raising prospects of leadership change in the party.

Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader who has been at the helm of the MDC since its formation in 1999, disclosed in June 2016 that he had cancer. Last year, he spent weeks in a South African hospital receiving treatment.

Pictures of a frail Tsvangirai meeting President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who succeeded Robert Mugabe in November after he was eased from office by a de facto military coup, have increased calls that he consider giving way to a new opposition leader.

I am looking at the imminent prospects of us as the older generation leaving the levers of leadership to allow the younger generation to take forward this huge task that we started together so many years ago with our full blessing and support, Tsvangirai said in a statement.

We must recognize the imperative that new hands, with the full blessing of the people, must take this struggle and this country forward.

Tsvangirai, 65, has been the opposition torch bearer since 2000 and his bitter rivalry with 93-year-old Mugabe, who ruled for 37 years, was often punctuated by violence against opposition supporters.

Last year in August, Tsvangirai reunited with former allies to a forge a coalition to challenge the ruling ZANU-PF party in presidential and parliamentary elections due later this year.

Tsvangirai has three deputies in the MDC, including the youthful 39-year-old Nelson Chamisa, who is often touted as a future successor to Tsvangirai.

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In addition to traditional fare, more c-stores are evolving their business models to incorporate more upscale and healthier food offers.

CHICAGO  Long known as late-night outposts of roller hot dogs and greasy pizza, convenience stores now also want to sell you healthier food, preferably lots of it, writes the Chicago Tribune, adding that this shift was on full display during last weeks NACS Show.

What began as a few bananas by the cash register is now a full-blown movement aimed at selling healthier fare to consumers and millennials, in particular, writes the news source, citing practical reasons for the industrys shift. As noted in a NACS Magazine feature, Breaking Out of the Cokes, Smokes and Gas Mentality, the c-store industry is ripe for change, suggests Gray Taylor, executive director of Conexxus. Otherwise, whats the differentiator? Most convenience stores sell the same stuff with the only difference coming from location. We must do something that makes us totally unique."

Jeff Lenard, vice president of strategic industry initiatives at NACS, told the Tribune that the industry is in a state of constant evolution. If you think todays model is going to work, youre done.

At last weeks NACS Show, the Tribune noted that companies like Terrafina, which produces nuts, dried fruit and trail mixes, began selling its products to convenience stores in small plastic tubs that fit into cup holders and discovered a relative goldmine. C-stores are looking for alternatives to tobacco and soda and gas, Paul Miller, Terrafinas vice president of sales, said. C-stores are definitely more of a growth opportunity than grocery stores.

During the NACS Show expo last week, first-time exhibitors like Soylent, a meal replacement beverage, were touting the health benefits of protein. Protein is the new energy, Lenard said, noting other products like up-scale beef jerky from companies like Tyson, Conagra, Kraft and Perky Jerky.

The Tribune noted that some convenience stores are taking the foodie movement beyond packaged foods, citing Chicagoland retailer The Pride Stores, which recently hired a corporate chef and incorporated restaurant concepts like Urban Counter and Taco Urbano into some of its stores.

Pride Stores owner Mario Spina told the news source that times have changed from when his father ran the business. Last year, we went three months where we lost money on fuel. You cant rely on that. We have to have other avenues where we can make decent revenue and decent profit margins, he said.

While the industry is constantly evolving, retailers who will continue to thrive are those who are embracing the change.

The simple answer is to give people exactly what they want, when they want it, writes the Tribune. And while the healthier fare will get more shelf space, the more indulgent items will continue to have their place for American consumers on the go.
Iraqi pro-government paramilitaries launched an offensive against Kurdish troops on Tuesday near the Turkish frontier, pushing towards a strategic border crossing and oil export pipeline hub that Baghdad says must come under its control.

The Iraqi government has transformed the balance of power in the north of the country since launching a campaign last week to seize back territory from the Kurds, who govern an autonomous region of three northern provinces and had also seized a swathe of other territory in northern Iraq.

The Kurds held a referendum on independence last month that Baghdad called illegal. Baghdad responded by seizing back the city of Kirkuk, the oil-producing areas around it, and other territory that the Kurds had captured from Islamic State (IS) militants.

Prime Minister Haidar Abadi has ordered his army to recapture all disputed territory, and has also demanded central control of Iraq's border crossings with Turkey, all of which are inside the Kurdish autonomous region itself.

A Kurdish official said Kurdish security forces known as Peshmerga had successfully beaten back an advance by Iranian-backed pro-government paramilitaries in the region of Rabi'a, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the Fish-Khabur border area.

Fish-Khabur is strategically vital because oil from both Kurdish and government-held parts of northern Iraq cross at a pipeline there into Turkey, the main route out of the area for international export, crucial for any Kurdish independence bid.

The fighting so far has taken place outside the Kurdish autonomous region, but Fish-Khabur is located within it, so any assault on the border crossing would mark a major escalation, bringing government troops into undisputed Kurdish territory.

An Iraqi military spokesman denied there had been any clashes in the area. But an Iraqi security source in Baghdad and a rights activist in northwest Iraq said the confrontation had started at dawn and was still going on by midday.

"Peshmerga repelled the attack and pushed Popular Mobilisation back in to Rabi'a," tweeted KRG President Masoud Barzani's media advisor, Hemin Hawrami. A military spokesman in Baghdad said in response: "There are no clashes."

The fighting between the central government and the Kurds is particularly tricky for the United States which is close allies of both sides, arming and training both the Kurds and the central government's army to fight against IS.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Baghdad this week, but Abadi rebuffed his call for Iraq to reject the role of Iran-backed Shia paramilitaries that fight alongside government troops and have taken a hard line on the Kurds.

On Monday, an official of the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) security council said Iraqi government forces and Iranian-backed Popular Mobilisation paramilitaries were deploying tanks and artillery in Rabi'a, northwest of Mosul.

An Iraqi government security advisor said on Monday Baghdad aimed to bring the three-way border crossing with Turkey and Syria at Fish-Khabur under its control, but he declined to say if a military move was being prepared.

The Syrian side of the border there is under the control of U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces.

The Fish-Khabur crossing has been under effective Kurdish control since 1991, when the United States and western powers imposed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect the Kurds from Saddam Hussein's army.

The Iraqi government's advance over the past week has been achieved with comparatively little violence, with Kurds mostly withdrawing without a fight.

Nevertheless, Amnesty International reported that at least 11 civilians were killed and tens of thousands displaced from Kurdish areas of Tuz Khurmato, a town south of Kirkuk.

It said images, videos, photos and dozens of testimonies indicated that hundreds of properties had been looted in a rampage targeting Kurdish parts of the ethnically mixed town.



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People in the Bay Area are coming together in support of the family of a Missouri water tender driver who was killed as he helped defend homes of people he had never met from one of California's most destructive wildfires.

Garrett Paiz, 38, was killed when his truck overturned on Oct. 16 on a winding Napa County road. He had been delivering water to crews battling the Nuns Fire, but crashed before dawn as he headed from vineyards into the mountains.

"My feeling is that he lost his life protecting our homes and businesses and the least we can do is help out his family," said Galen Drace, 35, of St. Helena.

Although Drace's neighborhood was not affected by the fires, he spent time volunteering at the Marin Civic Center Shelter that drew hundreds of evacuees. Upon hearing of Paiz's death, Drace wrote a Facebook post, encouraging the Napa community to rally around his family.

When he went to start a fundraiser on Paiz's behalf, Drace found a GoFundMe campaign that had been initiated by Heather Ascherin Morway.

The Red Bluffs woman expressed condolences on behalf of Tehama Transport, a freight shipping and trucking company where Paiz worked as a driver.

The GoFundMe account has a goal of $20,000. As of Tuesday, 131 people have donated over $10,000.

The money will "go directly to his family to aid them as they grieve and memorialize his life," Morway wrote on the fundraiser's website, promising that Paiz "will never be forgotten."

Drace has helped get the word out  despite not being connected to Morway or Tehama Transport. He commended the public's generous response to the effort.

"I think many share my opinion that it is our responsibility to help. He came from out of state and died protecting people he had never met. We owe him and his family a debt," said Drace, whose friends have lost their homes, jobs and wineries.

However, Drace, who works at a St. Helena winery, stressed that Sonoma and Napa valleys continue to be in dire need of help  even broad swaths of both areas that have been unaffected by the blazes.

As things stand, businesses are reeling from a staggering number of cancellations in the wake of dozens of wildfires that burned more than 220,000 acres, chased thousands from their homes, and claimed at least 42 lives.

"If we don't see more visitors in these valleys, we are going to have a lot of people go out of business," Drace said. "I do think these fires have brought our communities closer; the outpouring of support has been amazing. We just need people from outside of the area to stop cancelling their trips."
If it follows the advice of consultants, Denton City Council could move up its goal of 100 percent renewable energy in the city to the year 2020.

The board meets Tuesday morning.

Two years ago, Denton said it would reach a goal of receiving 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, such as solar and wind power, by 2035. That won't mean an influx of solar panels and wind turbines dotting Denton's landscape  the city's municipal electric company purchases the power, which is generated outside Denton County.

The benefits, say supporters, are many.

"From the environmental side and the financial side," said Deborah Armintor, a member of Denton's Public Utilities Board, which heard from consultants Monday.

Austin-based Enterprise Risk Consulting was hired to help develop the renewable energy plan. Part of a controversial approval of that plan in 2015 was the construction of a natural gas-fueled power plant. It would produce energy which would be used during times when solar and wind aren't viable.

Enterprise Risk consultants conceded Monday that the plant would generate more power than what Denton would need.

"What I did have a problem is with the way renewable was sold to us by the previous administration," Armintor said. "This is a bittersweet feeling.

Denton is one of 72 Texas localities with its own municipal electric company. City leaders promise residents an open process regarding benefits and cost to ratepayers.

"I think one of the opportunities we have is this process is have a very good public dialogue about these issues and these subjects," said Bryan Langley, Denton's assistant city manager. "And make sure all of our community understands what we mean when we say we want to use more renewables."

City leaders believe that in the long run going to renewable energy and building the new power plant is the most cost-effective solution.
Egypt's Investment and International Cooperation Minister Sahar Nasr is set to present opportunities for investment in Egypt to global business figures at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, according to a statement from the ministry.

Nasr will also meet with heads of Arab investment funds and Saudi officials on the sidelines of the upcoming conference.



The minister's two-day visit comes as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced on Tuesday a $500 billion plan to create an international business and industrial zone, known as NEOM, which is set to extend across its borders into Jordan and Egypt, according to Reuters.



The conference, headed by bin Salman, will be attended by over than 2,500 business figures, with with assets totaling $22 trillion, from 60 countries around the world, an official statement by the ministry said.



Attendees at the conference will include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, IMF chief Christine Lagarde, as well as a number of heads of international banks and companies, including Siemens, Emaar, Amazon, MasterCard, and Aramco.



The initiative will provide a platform for discussing global investment trends and for discussing the influence social, environmental, and governance issues upon profit potential.



The event also serves to create a collaborative network of influential investors from across the world.



Saudi Arabia was one of several Gulf countries that provided the Egyptian government with billions of dollars in aid shortly after the election of President Abdel-Fatah El-Sisi in 2014.



The kingdom has also contributed investments and deposits to aid Egypt's ailing economy, and in March resumed oil shipments by Aramco after they were suspended last year.

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What to Know An emerging theory among U.S. military investigators is that the Army Special Forces soldiers ambushed in Niger were set up by terrorists

A non-partisan federal watchdog says climate change is costing taxpayers billions of dollars each year, with those costs expected to rise

Celebrity chef John Besh stepped down from the restaurant group that bears his name amid sexual harassment allegations

Get the top headlines of the day in your morning briefing from NBC 4 New York, Monday through Friday. Sign up for our newsletter here.

Niger Attack Was Likely a Set-Up by Terrorists, Say Officials

An emerging theory among U.S. military investigators is that the Army Special Forces soldiers ambushed in Niger were set up by terrorists, who were tipped off in advance about a meeting in a village sympathetic to local ISIS affiliates, three U.S. officials who have been briefed on the matter told NBC News. The group of American Green Berets and support soldiers had requested a meeting with elders of a village that was seen as supportive of the Islamic State, and they attended the meeting at around 11 a.m. local time Oct. 4, after a long night of patrolling, the officials said. Such meetings are a routine part of the Green Beret mission, but it wasn't clear whether this meeting was part of the unit's plan. Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not address that theory when he briefed reporters on the incident. He said the troops had been on a reconnaissance mission. Three weeks after a deadly attack that has become a political flashpoint, the U.S. military is grappling to get a handle on the basic facts of what led to the deaths of four service members  and the growing chorus of questions about the U.S. mission in Niger and other parts of Africa.

Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen to Appear Before House Intel Panel

President Trump's personal lawyer is scheduled to speak Tuesday with investigators for the House probe into Russia's involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, NBC News reported. Sources familiar with the House Intelligence Committee's probe say Michael Cohen will talk with them in private. The sources requested anonymity to discuss private workings of the House probe. A source with first-hand knowledge told NBC News that Cohen will also appear before to Senate Intelligence Committee on. Cohen is a former executive with the Trump Organization. He was in talks to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, but ended those negotiations as Trump's White House bid grew stronger. It was later revealed that Cohen had written an email to Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, seeking help in getting the Moscow tower built. But Peskov said he never responded to the email.

Trump Lunches With GOP Senators as Focus Turns to Taxes

President Trump is planning lunch with GOP senators after sparring with several of them, as congressional Republicans turn to overhauling the tax code. It will be Trump's first appearance as president at Senate Republicans' regular policy lunch at the Capitol. The gathering has the potential for awkward moments, because it follows spats between Trump and GOP senators such as John McCain of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, as well as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. McConnell and Trump had a joint news conference last week to announce they had smoothed things over and underscore their common focus on taxes. But Trump's comments at that event spawned the controversy over his treatment of fallen U.S. troops, underscoring how the president's lack of discipline repeatedly takes the White House off-message, a continuing frustration for members of Congress. Nonetheless, Republicans and the Trump administration are determined to get tax legislation into law this year, and all sides seem to think they can unite around that goal.

Climate Change Already Costing U.S. Billions in Losses, Report Says

A non-partisan federal watchdog says climate change is already costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars each year, with those costs expected to rise as devastating storms, floods, wildfires and droughts become more frequent in the coming decades. A Government Accountability Office report released said the federal government has spent more than $350 billion over the last decade on disaster assistance programs and losses from flood and crop insurance. That tally does not include the massive toll from this year's three major hurricanes and wildfires, expected to be among the most costly in the nation's history. The report predicts these costs will only grow in the future, potentially reaching a budget busting $35 billion a year by 2050. The report says the federal government doesn't effectively plan for these recurring costs, classifying the financial exposure from climate-related costs as "high risk." GAO undertook the study following a request from Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

Star Chef Steps Down Amid Sexual Harassment Allegations

New Orleans celebrity chef John Besh stepped down from the restaurant group that bears his name after a newspaper reported that 25 women who are current or former employees of the business said they were victims of sexual harassment by male co-workers and bosses. New Orleans media outlets said Besh's departure from the business he co-owns was announced to employees. The allegations were published by NOLA.comThe Times Picayune after an eight-month investigation. Women interviewed said male bosses in the Besh Restaurant Group touched or verbally harassed them and, in a few cases, tried to leverage positions of authority for sex. Besh acknowledged a sexual relationship with an employee, saying in a written statement to NOLA.comThe Times-Picayune that it was consensual, despite the woman's assertions in a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that she felt pressured. The developments came as sexual harassment allegations have been dogging other famous men, including Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, former Fox News executive Roger Ailes and comedian Bill Cosby.
The days of fruitlessly swiping and swiping (and swiping again) a MetroCard at a bad turnstile reader are officially numbered in New York City.

That's because the MTA announced on Monday that it will begin making widespread replacements of the now ubiquitous card readers with a modern, contactless payment system that straphangers can use to get into the mass transit system late next year.

MTA Chairman Joe Lhota said the new payment method will be available at every turnstile throughout the city by 2020, with as many as 500 contactless readers installed at subways and 600 in buses by next year.

Officials told The New York Times, which first reported the imminent change, that straphangers would be able to use smartphones, certain debit and credit cards or other devices embedded with near-field communication chips to get onto their train.

The millennial generation, those who are more prone to new technology, will be our greatest users in the early stages, Mr. Lhota told The New York Times. Its the next step in bringing us into the 21st century, which we need to do. Its going to be transformative.

And straphangers who want a look at the future of mobile ticketing may be able to get an early glimpse. Curbed reported earlier this month that mobile ticketing readers have been installed at the Bowling Green and Wall Street stops as part of a pilot program available only to MTA employees.

Matthew Hudson of Transport for London told an NYU transit summit in September that using bank cards or smartphones is the fastest way to get through a turnstile.

If you do get it right, its amazing what other good things also come your way, Hudson said.

Metro-North and LIRR already use electronic smartphone tickets, and the change should allow commuters to more easily transfer between the subway and rails.

The MTA estimates that while it will implement the new fare payment system soon and start using it next year, it wont eliminate MetroCards for another five years in 2023 (It took eight years to phase out the old token system.)

NYU professor Mitchell Moss, who advises MTAs leadership as it undergoes Chairman Joseph Lhota's newly unveiled NYC Subway Action Plan, said earlier this year implementing a contactless system will be worth the wait.

Anytime youre making a decision for a system that has six million riders a day, you want to take time, you want to do it right, Moss said.
What to Know Nicholas Pratico was reported missing by his family on Sept. 20; his friends took to social media in a desperate plea to help find him

Pratico had last been seen that September afternoon on campus at his Mercer County Community College

His body was found across the street by Hamilton Police and New Jersey State Police Monday morning

The 18-year-old New Jersey college student reported missing more than a month ago has been found dead across the street from his own campus, authorities said.

Details on the circumstances surrounding the discovery of Nicholas Pratico's body were not immediately released.

Hamilton Police said they, along with New Jersey State Police, found Practico's body across from Mercer County Community College campus on Old Trenton Road around 10 a.m. Monday. They did not say if there was any kind of obvious trauma to the body; an autopsy will be conducted to determine how Pratico died.

Pratico was reported missing by his family on Sept. 20. The Notre Dame High School graduate had last been seen at his West Windsor campus that afternoon.

His friends took to social media in a desperate effort to find him. One friend's plea for help via Facebook was shared more than 20,000 times.

In the post, the friend said Pratico might have gone to New York City to audition at the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.

In a statement Monday, Hamilton Police asked that his family's privacy be respected as they grieve.

"The Hamilton Police Division extends its deepest condolences to the Pratico family and would like to thank all the contributing state, local, county agencies and civilian volunteers for their assistance in this tragic incident," the statement said.
What to Know Vicious winds tore down power lines and restaurant awnings early Tuesday morning, and gusts of up to 50 mph were expected through the day

2 inches of rain or more fell on much of the region, bringing the potential for flash flooding and other problems

The worst weather was during the afternoon, and Storm Team 4 urged special caution for the evening commute

A cold front stiff-armed its way across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, bringing punishing rains and howling winds on what turned out to be a miserable Tuesday for much of the tri-state.



Gusts of up to 50 mph were recorded in parts of the region; by early morning, JFK Airport had recorded gusts of 40 mph. In Leonia, New Jersey, the raging gusts tore down power lines at Fort Lee Road and Glenwood Avenue, forcing at least one school to call a delayed opening. And in Red Hook, a DNAinfo reporter tweeted an image of the Brooklyn Crab's large awnings twisted off in a heap.



Power lines came down across a number of towns in New Jersey. In Middletown, yellow caution tape blocked off a cul-de-sac as firefighters huddled near damaged wires. It didn't appear to be raining much, but video from the scene showed police tape flapping madly amid the gusts. In Ramsey, a power outage at Smith School forced officials to call a half-day schedule.



A high wind advisory is in effect through 2 a.m. Wednesday, and drivers on the George Washington Bridge were advised to take it slow. Forecasters say Halloween decorations should be brought inside or they'll likely be whisked away. The bad weather was causing delays at area airports throughout the day.

Heavy rain inundated much of the region at varying points Tuesday, leading to the threat of localized or flash flooding. The worst weather hit in the afternoon, making for a messy evening commute. (Get up-to-the-minute weather alerts here.)

The rain tapered off late in the night. Some showers may linger early Wednesday. Parts of Suffolk County, including Northeastern, Northwestern, Southeastern, Southwestern parts, are under a flash flood watch until 10 a.m. Wednesday.

However, a drier, more pleasant afternoon is anticipated for the tri-state with temperatures cooling into the mid 60s after an unseasonably warm stretch. Temperatures on Thursday will drop to their lowest point for the week, with Storm Team 4 forecasting a high of 62 degrees.

An abundance of sunshine will return Friday, which could make way for an enjoyable weekend with a chance for some stray showers again on Sunday.

Halloween next week is expected to see more seasonable conditions.
What to Know In a speech to police chiefs from around the world, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a targeted effort to combat the MS-13 gang.

MS-13 is known for violent tactics that have left people dead and communities in shambles.

Sessions says that tax laws could be key in taking down the violent MS-13 gang.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that he has designated MS-13, the violent street gang, as a top priority for a Justice Department task force that focuses on organized crime.

"Now they will go after MS-13 with a renewed vigor and sharpened focus," Sessions said at gathering of police chiefs in Philadelphia. "I am announcing that I have authorized them to use every lawful tool to investigate MS-13."

The Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces involve federal prosecutors from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as other agencies.

The designation directs officials to pursue all possible charges during prosecutions, including racketeering, gun and tax law violations.



"Just like we took Al Capone off the streets with our tax laws, we will use whatever laws we have to get MS-13 off our streets," Sessions said at the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Center City Philadelphia.

MS-13 has become a prime target of President Donald Trumps administration amid its broader crackdown on immigration.



The international criminal enterprise has tens of thousands of members in several Central American countries and many U.S. states. The gang originated in immigrant communities in Los Angeles in the 1980s then entrenched itself in Central America when its leaders were deported.

MS-13 is known for hacking and stabbing victims with machetes, drug dealing, prostitution and other rackets. Its recruits are middle- and high-school students predominantly in immigrant communities and those who try to leave risk violent retribution, law enforcement officials have said.

MS-13 members have been accused in a spate of bloodshed that included the massacre of four young men in a Long Island, New York, park and the killing of a suspected gang rival inside a deli. The violence has drawn attention from members of Congress and Trump, who has boasted about efforts to arrest and deport MS-13 members across the United States.

"MS-13 threatens the lives and well-being of each and every family and each and every neighborhood that they infest," Sessions said. "They leave misery, devastation and death in their wake. They threaten entire governments."

Law enforcement officials believe some of the recent violence has been directed by members of the gang imprisoned in El Salvador.



In July, Sessions went to El Salvador for a series of meetings with law enforcement officials in an attempt to step up international cooperation against the violent gang.

Both Trump and Sessions have blamed Obama-era border policies for allowing the gang's ranks to flourish in the U.S., though the Obama administration took unprecedented steps to target the gang's finances. Federal prosecutors have gone after MS-13 before but say they've recently seen a resurgence.



Sessions also addressed the gathering of law enforcement leaders on Saturday, focusing on "forging new relationships" between local and federal authorities.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Republican Sen. John McCain left no doubt Monday that he was thinking of President Donald Trump as he criticized the draft system during Vietnam for forcing low-income Americans to serve while the wealthy could avoid war with a doctor's note.

McCain, a former Navy pilot and prisoner of war, stopped short of labeling Trump a "draft dodger" for getting five draft deferments. But the senator's comments came with Trump already immersed in controversy over how he honors U.S. troop deaths, and underscored the remove between the billionaire president and the military system he now controls as commander in chief.

McCain's criticism also continued a long-running clash between the two men on the eve of a visit by Trump to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to court Senate GOP votes for his tax plan, a meeting that could contain more than a few awkward moments.

"I don't consider him so much a draft dodger as I feel that the system was so wrong that certain Americans could evade their responsibilities to serve the country," McCain said on ABC's "The View." He was being pressed about comments in a C-SPAN interview aired Sunday where he lamented that the military "drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say they had a bone spur."

One of Trump's deferments came as a result of a physician's letter stating he suffered from bone spurs in his feet. Trump's presidential campaign described the issue as a temporary problem.

McCain, meanwhile, spent 5 years as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967. Yet during last year's presidential campaign Trump said McCain was not a war hero because "I like people who weren't captured."

The senator made clear during Monday's interview that he had been referring to Trump in making his C-SPAN comments. When one of the hosts remarked that people thought he was talking about Trump because the president had sought a medical deferment, McCain interjected, "More than once, yes."

McCain was asked to describe his relationship with the president. "Almost none" he simply said.

The six-term Arizona lawmaker, battling brain cancer at age 81, made his appearance on "The View" in honor of his daughter Meghan McCain's birthday. She recently joined the daytime talk show as one of its panel of co-hosts. The White House declined to comment on McCain's remarks.

The tacit criticism reflected the ongoing tension between Trump and McCain, which began during last year's campaign and has flared on and off. Trump responded furiously when McCain's "no" vote sunk Senate efforts to repeal and replace "Obamacare" earlier this year.

And last week, in a speech in Philadelphia, McCain questioned "half-baked, spurious nationalism" in America's foreign policy. Trump lashed out, insisting he would fight back and "it won't be pretty."

That prompted McCain to retort: "I have faced tougher adversaries."

The senator burst into sustained laughter on Monday when one of the hosts mentioned Trump's threats and asked McCain, "Are you scared?"

After he stopped laughing, McCain said, "I mentioned that I had faced greater challenges."

"Let's stop insulting each other. Let's start respecting each other," McCain recommended.

The back-and-forth between the president and McCain stands as the latest skirmish between the two Republican Party heavyweights and another example of Trump tangling with GOP senators who could make or break his agenda in Congress.

Trump in recent weeks has feuded with Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, although the president joined with the Kentucky senator at the White House last week to publicly declare they were on the same page. Both Corker and McCain could be critical to the success or failure of the president's push to overhaul the tax system.

During Trump's presidency, McCain has questioned the president's immigration policies and warned him against cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The senator also criticized Trump in August for saying that both white nationalists and counter protesters were responsible for violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia.

McCain insisted in a tweet at the time that "there's no moral equivalency between racists & Americans standing up to defy hate and bigotry" and the president should say so.

The senator underwent surgery in mid-July to remove a 2-inch (51-millimeter) blood clot in his brain after being diagnosed with an aggressive tumor called a glioblastoma. It's the same type of tumor that killed Sen. Edward M. Kennedy at age 77 in 2009 and Beau Biden, son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, at 46 in 2015.
Multiple records were shattered Tuesday and San Diego County residents kept an eye on the skies as a fire weather warning continued into the second day.

The National Weather Service issued a fire weather warning until 6 p.m. Wednesday meaning any fires that develop will likely spread rapidly especially through Tuesday.

In Vista, temperatures up to 107 degrees were recorded Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service. That tops 96 degrees recorded in 1965. The average this time of year for Vista is 76 degrees.

Poway also saw temperatures in the 107-108 range, according to the NWS.

With record-breaking temperatures and near-zero humidity, the conditions were ripe for a fast-spreading fire and local fire agencies have staffed up in advance.

The U.S. Forest Service increased the threat index for Santa Ana-driven wildfires. On Monday, the agency said any fires that erupted "may grow rapidly." On Tuesday, the Forest Service said that "upon ignition, fires will grow rapidly and will be difficult to control."

Fire crews in the county were also prepared, in case of any wildfires.

"When the weather gets hot and dry, we have to be prepared," said John Buchanan with the North County Fire Protection District.

US Forest Service

Excessive heat warnings were in effect for inland communities like Escondido, El Cajon, San Marcos, La Mesa, Santee, and Poway. Vista, Carlsbad, Encinitas, Chula Vista, National City, and San Diego were also under an excessive heat warning, according to the NWS.

In Campo, winds were blowing at 45 mph, forcing truck drivers to pull over for safety reasons. Signs posted along Interstate 8 also warned motorists of High Wind Danger.

Eighty-five schools will be on a minimum day schedule Tuesday and Wednesday due to expected excessive heat, the San Diego Unified School District officials said.

The San Diego International Airport recorded 97 degrees, breaking a record set in 1965.

In Chula Vista, temperatures reached 99 degrees Tuesday, the NWS said, topping the record 91 degrees reached in 1990. The average this time of year for this community is 75 degrees.

Escondido tied a record set in 1909 when temperatures reached 104 degrees.

Ramona saw 100-degree heat, breaking a record set in 2007 and Alpine broke a 1968-record when it reached 99 degrees.

In El Cajon, temperatures were recorded at 104 degrees. The record on this day was 98 degrees set in 2007.

El Cajon topped 104 Monday, breaking the record of 100 degrees held since 2003. Ramona reached a record of 101 degrees Monday. Records held for more than 50 years were shattered by the 100-degree high in Vista and the 99-degree high in Alpine.



Download the free NBC 7 mobile app to stay updated on the weather.

Whitney Southwick's AM Forecast for October 24, 2017
Washington, D.C., and the suburbs in Maryland were once home to dozens of nightclubs that launched the careers of rock n roll and country superstars like Patsy Cline, Roy Clark, Jimmy Dean, Link Wray, Frankie Avalon, Bill Haley and the Comets and Bo Diddley. One of the biggest names to come out of that vibrant club circuit, which ran ran from New York Avenue in the heart of the city out Bladensburg Road to Cottage City in Prince Georges County, was Charlie Daniels.

Today hes known as the red neck fiddlin man from Tennessee, but the 81-year-old Daniels got his start at clubs like the Dixie Pig in Bladensburg and the Rocket Room in downtown Washington. Backstage before his performance at the Great Frederick Fair last month, Daniels reminisced about his early days before the beard, cowboy hat or fiddle.

They were pleasant days to me, he said. They were learning days. It was my entre into a big market.

I didnt know anything about big towns, he said. I came from a small town in North Carolina. Wilmington only had about 30,000 people at the time.

Daniels said in such a small town, it was hard for him to make a living as a full-time musician.

There was nothing really to play there except two or three beer joints. There was no way to advance, Daniels said. You know, there was no way to get any further doing what I was doing, so I came up to the DC/Baltimore area and started playing clubs.

As local music historian Mark Opsasnick detailed in his book, Capitol Rock, Daniels first gigs when he arrived in Maryland were at Roses Musical Bar in North Beach on the Chesapeake Bay in the summer of 1958. Daniels was 22 years old. In December 1958, Charlie Daniels and the Rockets made their D.C. debut at the Famous, described by Opsasnick as a hillbilly nightclub at 1215 New York Ave. NW.

Daniels would spend his early twenties living in D.C. playing many of the nightclubs in the area.

I played everywhere, Daniels said. I played at Stricts. I played at the Famous that was on New York Avenue, the Rocket Room. We were a four-piece rockabilly band. We were kind of a novelty, an anomaly almost, because rock music was just getting started and not everybody knew how to play it.

Daniels would add local musicians from the D.C. area to his band, including horn players like Paul King and Robbie Robison. He said the local musicians he found in D.C. brought a jazz influence to his music.

As Daniels popularity grew, so did his band. By 1960, newspaper ads billed him as Big Man Daniels and his 6 Jaguars.

Daniels laughed when hearing about that ad today.

Oh, mercy, he said. Thats a true ad. I was big and we had 6 jaguars.

During his time in D.C., Daniels released a few songs on Epic Records including Robot Romp and Rover Had a Party and an instrumental that Daniels said got so much airplay on local radio stations, he changed the name of his band.

We changed the name of the band to the Jaguars because that was the name of the first record we ever made, Daniels said.

He spent most of his time during those years playing as the house band at the Dixie Pig on Bladensburg Road in the Cottage City area of Prince Georges County. Daniels said he played the Dixie Pig almost every night for more than a year.

It was a great time, he said. The Dixie Pig was a great club. It had its own culture. Clubs used to do that. They had their regulars and a culture grew up around it and the people who were the regular ones, gave it personality.

Daniels said he crossed paths with great musicians in those early days.

Roy Buchannan, I knew Roy well, and Link Wary, he said, recalling two of the great guitarists he would jam with.

Another musician Daniels crossed paths with was Sam Paladino, a keyboard player who still lives in LaPlata, Maryland, and performs regularly with bands in the area. Paladino was 14 years old at the time and played in a band called the Off Keys.

He was a rock n roller when I knew him, Paladino said of his old friend Daniels. He had slick back hair, was clean shaven, wore a tuxedo, wore glasses, you know, and played guitar. Charlie would get all worked up and the sweat would make his glasses slide down. Every once in a while, that thumb would come up like that and push his glasses back up his nose. I never forgot that.

Paladino and the Off Keys played many of the same local clubs Daniels played.

Some of them were rough, like the Dixie Pig, there were fights every night at that place, Paladino said. You know, Stricts was not so much.

Paladino later played in Roy Clarks Band. He said after Daniels left town, Paladino and Daniels sax player tried to start their own band.

Paul King, I went to Boston with him and starved to death, Paladino remembered with a smile.

Paladino also recalled a night his band was filling in for Daniels at the Ocean Plaza Ballroom in Carolina Beach -- Daniels had double booked himself and had to play at the Dixie Pig -- but the Carolina Beach police shut the show down after finding out how young the band was.

The last night we were supposed to be there, the cops came in and started asking for ID and all this stuff, you know, and they were taking names, Paladino said. They threw us out. I dont think any of us were over 18. He still has the posters from those shows.

Daniels wrote about his early days living and playing in the D.C. area in his new autobiography, Never Look at the Empty Seats.

When youre a young musician, if youre serious about making it, and I was, youll play just about anywhere for just about anything theyll give ya, and for anybody thats there, so youre going to have a lot of empty seats, Daniels said.

In addition to the autobiography, Daniels is releasing a companion album, which will include the original recording of Jaguar.

Those who have known Daniels since those early days say hes a loyal friend. Backstage at the show in Frederick, after signing autographs for a line of fans, Daniels sat and recalled the early days with a group of old friends, including the family of his old band mate Robbie Robison who passed away this year. James Robison and his mother, Barbara, sat in the wings of the stage as Daniels performed. Midway through the show Daniels sent his band off stage, sat on a stool alone with his guitar and played the gospel standard, How Great Thou Art.

This one is for my good friend Robbie Robison who we recently lost, Daniels told the audience as James and his mother wiped away their tears.
The investments mark a step forward in the development of major fields discovered in recent years

Investments worth $27.3 billion will be put towards three Egyptian natural gas fields -- Zohr, North Alexandria, and Nooros -- in 2018, Oil Minister Tarek El Molla said in press statements, according to Al-Ahram Arabic news website on Tuesday.

83 new exploration agreements worth $15.5 billion will be signed next year, and 230 wells worth $2 billion will be drilled, El Molla said.

The Zohr gas field will be producing 500 million cubic feet per day by the end of 2017, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said last month, according to Reuters.

Likewise the North Alexandria concession will begin producing 500-700 million cubic feet of gas per day by the end of next year, the oil minister said last month.

Egypts natural gas output is expected to increase to 6.2 billion cubic feet per day by the end of the current fiscal year, from 5.2 billion cubic feet per day last July, he was quoted as saying on Reuters.

Elsewhere, the minister announced that the Egypt Petroleum Show (EGYPS), which is aimed at attracting further development investment, will be held 12-14 February 2018.

The Zohr field is the largest natural gas field in the Mediterranean. Its discovery in 2015 nearly doubled Egypt's reserves.

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What to Know One man was killed and three others were injured in two shootings Monday night in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Police investigating the shootings said they don't believe that they are related.

In the wake of the violent incidents, police said they will be imposing a strict curfew on all public property at sundown.

Police in Lawrence, Massachusetts say they are enforcing a strict curfew at city-owned buildings and areas after one man was killed and three others were injured in two unrelated shootings on Monday night.

Lawrence police said local officers along with Methuen police responded to Holy Family Hospital in Methuen after staff there notified them that three men had come into the emergency room with gunshot wounds. Officers learned that the shooting had happened at Howard Park on the Methuen/Lawrence town lines.

Two of the injured men, who are 35-year-old Lowell residents, were later taken to Boston-area hospitals with serious injuries. Their current condition is unknown.

The third injured man, an 18-year-old Lawrence resident, was shot in the foot and was treated at Holy Family Hospital.

Their names have not been released.

According to state police, authorities in Lawrence were responding to the first incident when they were notified of the second incident on South Union Street.

Police said 26-year-old Jose Arias-Lara, of Lawrence, was driving when he was shot in the chest before crashing into several utility poles. He was taken to Lawrence General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Authorities are investigating the circumstances of both shootings and believe all of the victims were targeted.

Police said that while they don't believe the shootings are related, anyone with information is asked to anonymously contact police at 978-794-5900.

In the wake of the violent incidents, police said they will be imposing a strict curfew on all public property at sundown.

The curfew is a reaffirmation of a city ordinance. Police said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon that the violent incidents sparked this enforcement.

Those who are found in violation of the ordinance could be subject to arrest.

Residents are urged to call police if they see any activity after dark in any city park.
A delegation from the London Stock Exchange Group concluded on Tuesday its two-day visit to Egypt, the aim of which was to support the country's economy and help Egyptian businesses and government access London markets, according to a statement by the UK government on its official website.

The delegation was headed by the Head of International Business Development Tom Attenborough, Head of Primary Markets for Middle East, Africa & India Gokul Mani, and Manager of International Government Relations Adam Scheuer.



The three met with a number of top government officials of finance and investment including Investment Minister Sahar Nasr and the Head of Egyptian Stock Exchange Mohamed Farid.



"Now LSE Group are here to help more companies access the investment capital needed to build the new Egypt, and to build the capacity of the Egyptian Stock Exchange to help Egypts companies grow and create an economy that brings jobs, stability, and a brighter future for all Egyptians," British Ambassador John Casson said on Monday.



Thirteen Egyptian companies are listed on Londons global markets, according to Tom Attenborough. In 2017 alone, he said, seven billion dollars was raised by the Egyptian government in a landmark debt issuance in London.



"London offers issuers access to deep liquid pools of international investor capital, making the city a natural funding partner to Egypt as it continues on its transformative economic reform program," said Attenborough.

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El-Sisi and Macron will attend the signing of 17 joint cooperation agreements between the two countries in different fields, including in investment and the economy.

Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi arrived in Paris on Monday for an official visit where he will meet with French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and attend a reception at the Elysee Palace on Tuesday.

El-Sisi and Macron will attend the signing of 17 joint cooperation agreements between the two countries in different fields, including in investment and the economy.

The Egyptian president will start his visit to France, his third since he assumed office in 2014, with a meeting with a French CEO, according to the Egyptian presidency.

El-Sisi will also give an interview to Paris-based France 24 and will attend a dinner in his honour organised by French Minister of Defence Florence Parly.

Egypt has made several purchases of French military hardware in recent years, the most recent of which was a Gowind 2500 corvette naval vessel, which arrived in Alexandria earlier this month. The vessel is one of four such models purchased by Egypt in a deal signed in 2014.

El-Sisi will also meet with French PM Edouard Philippe and foreign minister Jean Yves Le Drian.

The Egyptian president will discuss with top French officials a number of regional and international issues, including the international efforts to fight terrorism, the developments in Libya and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Concerning the human rights situation in Egypt, presidency spokesman Alaa Youssef said that Egypt is open to discussing all issues including claims made by some regarding the human rights situation in Egypt.

Youssef added that the international community, including French officials, understands Egypts views on the issue of human rights.

El-Sisi is accompanied on his trip by foreign minister Sameh Shoukry, finance minister Amr El-Garhy, minister of planning and administrative reform Hala Saeed, minister of industry and commerce Tarek Qabil, minister of transportation Hisham Arafat, and the head of Egypt's General Intelligence Service Khaled Fawzy.

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US investigating reports that Russian missiles crossed into Poland

A senior U.S. intelligence official says Russian missiles crossed into NATO member Poland, killing two people, the Associated Press reported.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

A few snow showers scattered about the area this evening, otherwise a good deal of clouds. Low 29F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 40%..

Tonight

A few snow showers scattered about the area this evening, otherwise a good deal of clouds. Low 29F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow 40%.
Hyundai Motor India Ltd. (HMIL) has announced the receiving of record initial export order of 10,501 units for the Next Gen Verna from the Middle East market. The NextGen Verna will be known as the NextGen Accent for the Middle East markets. This is the single largest order for the Next Gen Verna that company has received since inception and a big jump compared to the earlier generations of Verna and Accent.

HMIL had invited 33 distributors from the Middle East (including Saudi Arabia, Oman, and UAE) and other Asian countries (like Vietnam, Philippines, Sri Lanka etc.), to the Chennai-based production facility on September 21, 2017. They were given a detailed plant tour, a presentation on the product, its quality parameters and the plant capabilities, which finally culminated with exclusive drive experience of NextGen Verna.

The NextGen Verna will also be exported to South Africa, other Gulf and Asian countries from the beginning of the year 2018 and will be a shining star in the Hyundai product portfolio across the globe.

Commenting on this record achievement Mr. Y K Koo, MD & CEO- Hyundai Motor India Limited said The Next Gen Verna has received an overwhelming response from domestic and export markets. We are very happy and proud to receive such a large single export order within one month of showcasing the product to the distributors from overseas markets. It is in perfect harmony with Hyundais commitment of Make in India, for the world and also is in line with the Indian Governments Make in India Vision.

The NextGen Verna has received great response from the domestic markets and the media, resulting in more than 18,600 bookings and more than 1,43,000 enquiries in just 2 months since its launch in India on August 22nd 2017. These additional new orders will be shipped in December 2017, along with the delivery of 20,000 units by end-December 2017 in the domestic market at a special introductory price, as committed during the product launch.

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For long now, brands like Harley-Davidson and KTM have evoked the feeling of riding brotherhood among the riders across the globe. Yet, India remained largely untouched of this brotherhood, given the fact that the domestic market is obsessed with commuter motorcycles. In came Royal Enfield, a brand that has successfully managed to replicate Harleys success in the East, especially in the last one decade. The once British brand, now owned by Indias Eicher Motors has manufactured ionic bikes like Classic 350, Standard, Electra and Thunderbird.

Such is the brand affinity of the Royal Enfield that from the highest roads in the north to the beautiful coastal roads of the south, you can see a multitude of riders on one of these bulky yet comfortable bikes. To honour such die-hard fans, Royal Enfield has worked hard to innovate new products over the past few years. Their newest product can very well be the 750 Interceptor, companys first bike to take rival premium brands like Harley-Davidson and Triumph Motorcycles. Heres everything we know about the new RE 750cc so far!

Design

Royal Enfield has always been a quintessential cruiser manufacturer, a forte that made it such a cult brand in India. But the company has now diversified its product range to a Cafe Racer called the Continental GT, and an adventure-tourer called the Himalayan. Sadly, the new 750cc motorcycle will not be a different body-type, but a larger capacity bike based on the Continental GT itself. As per various spy videos and images, the company will name the 750cc bike as Interceptor and it will have a parallel twin motor with dual exhaust setup. Rest, the design will be Cafe GT inspired.

Engine

What makes the newest Royal Enfield product anticipation worthy is the fact that it will be the first Indian product to house a higher capacity engine  a 750cc motor. Royal Enfield has always been the pioneer of larger capacity engines in India, and they will take forward the legacy with the new 750cc mill. Understandably, Royal Enfield will combine two 350cc engines used in the Classic 350, which is the companys new Unit Construction Engine (UCE) setup. The parallel engine arrangement will produce 50 hp of power and 60 Nm of torque, again the highest by any Indian manufacturer.

Such heavy engine and power will need a revamped and rigid chassis. It is also assumed that a 270-degree crankshaft will be used, while there will be a disc brake on both the wheels, and an ABS on the front. The rear wheel will come shod with 160 section tyre, while the front will have a 120 section tyre. It also gets a longitudinally placed radiator to dissipate the heat. Carberry, an independent company has already launched its 1000cc-engine equipped Royal Enfield.

Launch

The new Royal Enfield 750 Interceptor will be showcased at this years EICMA which takes place in Milan, Italy every year in November. There is a chance that the 750cc Enfield may only be launched for the European markets first, followed by the domestic market. But theres no definite timeline for the India launch as of now. Hopefully Royal Enfield will launch the new product in India as early as Q2 2018.

Competition

When it goes on sale next year, the new Royal Enfield 750 Interceptor will compete against the likes of the Harley Davidson Street 750 and Triumph Bonneville. Apart from these, Royal Enfield will also eye a market share of bikes like the Ducati Monster 797, Kawasaki Ninja 650 and Honda CBR650F. However, the 750cc can create a dent in the 500cc market too, as customers who are willing to buy a 500cc motorcycle can end up paying more to opt for a 750 cc bike. This can be problematic for the brands own 500cc motorcycles like the Classic 500 and the Continental GT.

Price

Last is the most crucial aspect that will decide the success or failure of the new 750 Interceptor. The expected price tag of Royal Enfield 750cc motorcycle is somewhere close to Rs 3.3-3.7 lakhs. However, if the company manages to price it below Rs 3 lakh, it will be a massive win for the company. While the new product will be the most expensive Royal Enfield ever, it will undercut the cheapest 750cc bike in India by almost Rs 1.5 Lakhs, making it the most affordable high-capacity bike in India.

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It's 2017 and seeing Gabbar Singh, one of Bollywood's greatest villains of all time, all over social media feed would make one wonder if Ramesh Sippy is actually planning a sequel of 1975's cult-classic Sholay. No, that isn't the case, unfortunately.

Gabbar is back again because of Rahul Gandhi. Addressing a rally in Ahmedabad, Gandhi hit out the Bhartiya Janata Party over bribe allegations levelled by Patidar leader Narendra Patel, Rahul said that the youth of Gujarat was not on sale, no matter how much money the government wished to spend.

"The government is trying to suppress the voice of Gujarat, and when they failed they tried to buy the voice of Gujarat," he said. On Goods and Services Tax (GST), which has led to massive protests by the trader community in Gujarat, Rahul called the BJP's definition of GST a "Gabbar Singh tax".

Congress GST= Genuine Simple Tax Modi ji's GST= Gabbar Singh Tax =''    " Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) October 24, 2017

After Gandhi's definition of GST, Twitter became innovative and came forward to lend in more full forms of the tax. While some called it "Gayi Salary Tax", others called it "Ghoom Saariduniya Tax."

Rahul Gandhi warns Kalia, the #GabbarSinghTax inspector. Ramesh Sippy did explain it 42 yrs ago. Watch it till the end. Thanks! #GST  pic.twitter.com/dbFFFwapjw Gaurav Pandhi (@GauravPandhi) October 23, 2017

Now, Congress' IT cell has gone full meta on Gandhi's Gabbar-GST reference and made some memes on the "villain" tax.

Naturally, BJP and the party supporters have come forward and criticised Rahul Gandhi and his remarks.

This is such a statement on Rahul Gandhis IQ.. pic.twitter.com/InoW5y5Wai Amit Malviya (@malviyamit) October 24, 2017

If @officeofrg thinks GST is so bad then why doesnt he ask Congress CM @siddaramaiah to NOT implement it in Karnataka? Stop fooling Gujarat. Amit Malviya (@malviyamit) October 24, 2017

Buddhu:GST is horrible. Then why Cong MPs & Opp voted in Sansad for GST Bill to make it unanimous? Even my GSTN amdmt they opposed. Fraud!! Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) October 24, 2017

Can someone logically explain to me why some people are against GST and Aadhar? And why some people are willing to sell their kidney to get a Social Security card. Vivek Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) October 24, 2017

Meanwhile in Gujarat, Farmers who adopt the Drip irrigation system, will no more have to pay GST. Yet another example of good governance! Priti Gandhi (@MrsGandhi) October 24, 2017

The Union Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley on Tuesday announced a relief to the taxpayers as he said that the late fee on the filing of the GST returns for the month of August and September would be waived off.

To facilitate taxpayers, late fee on filing of GSTR-3B for Aug&Sept has been waived. Late fee paid will be credited back to taxpayer ledger. Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) October 24, 2017

Earlier, Tamil actor Vishal had accused BJP leader H Raja of advocating piracy by watching Vijay-starrer Mersal online, a charge rejected by latter.

The spat between the two had escalated a controversy over the movie Mersal which kicked up a row with the BJP taking exception to references on GST in some scenes.

Actor Vijay's fans have been reportedly circulating the contentious scenes through mobile phones. "I don't have the patience to watch a two-and-a-half hour movie. This entire episode shows that whoever opposes the BJP are supporting Vijay, and this is expected," Raja had said.

Hitting back, Vishal said: "Dear Mr H Raja, as a leader and prominent personality, you are advocating piracy and blatantly agreeing to it." The actor also said he wondered "how a political leader like you could watch a pirated version of a film (online)" and added that it "sets a bad example".

BJP leaders, including Raja, a national secretary of the party, state president Tamilisai Soundarajan and Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan, have been demanding that the "incorrect" references be deleted from the big-budget flick.
Greater Noida: The government is considering building 50 more ITBP posts along the India-China border and using technology to ensure a round-the-year temperature of 20 degrees Celsius in all its high-altitude bases, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Tuesday.

Addressing jawans and officers of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) during its 56th Raising Day celebrations in Greater Noida, Singh announced a slew of measures to bolster its capabilities.

These include construction of 25 border roads in Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh; special lightweight winter clothing for troops deployed above 9,000 feet and an enhanced fleet of snow scooters to patrol the high-altitude areas of the 3,488-km-long Sino-Indian frontier.

"We are committed to enhancing your operational and infrastructure capabilities. Recently, we got a proposal to build 50 new border posts for the force and we are working on it," the home minister said.

There are 176 border posts along the India-China border at present. He said the government is considering using technology to ensure a temperature of at least 20 degrees Celsius is maintained in all high-altitude ITBP posts that bear the brunt of snow blizzards and sub-zero climate.

A senior officer said the move is aimed at ensuring that forward border posts are not abandoned during extreme snow and cold.

"We have created a model border post in Ladakh where a temperature of 20 degrees Celsius can be maintained. We will create more such BoPs in Sikkim and the eastern sector of this border," he said.

Singh said he was not satisfied with housing and infrastructure facilities available with the 1962-raised force and he was "seriously" working to improve these areas. The minister said 35 old border posts of the force in very high-altitude areas are being upgraded as "composite" units.

"We are working to enhance road, mobile and satellite connectivity in the border areas for the ITBP," he said. The minister asked ITBP troops to ensure and build good relations with border dwellers as they are "strategic assets" of the country and important stakeholders in keeping the borders safe.

Keeping in mind the frequent face offs between the Indian and Chinese troops, ITBP personnel are now learning Chinese during their basic training, he said.

Lauding the force, Singh asked ITBP officers to take responsibility of at least one family of personnel killed in the line of duty.

The ministry is also working tohelp jawans who have suffered 50 per cent disability during operations through the Bharat Ke Veer benevolent fund, he said.

ITBP Director General (DG) R K Pachnanda said the force has been nominated as the "nodal agency" for obtaining and channelising satellite communication for all border-guarding forces in the country.

He said the home ministry has also approved the ITBP's proposal to hire helicopters for high-altitude border posts. The paramilitary was also enhancing its intelligence setup, he added.
Houston: The father of the three-year-old Indian girl who went missing in Texas was arrested on Sunday, a day after the investigators recovered the body of a small child in a culvert, less than a mile from the family's home.

According to a PTI report, Sherin Mathews, who has developmental issues and limited verbal communication skills, was last seen outside her family's backyard in Richardson city in Texas on October 7 after her Indian-American father Wesley Mathews scolded her and sent her alone outside late at night as punishment for not finishing her milk.

Wesley was arrested on Sunday evening and faces charges of injury to a child, Police Sgt. Kevin Perlich said.

On Monday, Wesley and his attorney voluntarily arrived at the Richardson police station and shared a different account of the girl's disappearance than his original statement, Perlich said.

"He provided an alternate series of events from what he had previously given us," Perlich said according to a PTI report.

Perlich further added that investigators don't have reason to believe the body found Sunday is not that of Sherin Mathews, but they're still waiting for the medical examiner's office to confirm it and to determine a cause of death.

Meanwhile, Child Protective Services (CPS) had removed the couples four-year-old biological child from their custody and the little girl was placed in foster care just days after Sherin disappeared.

Wesley and Sini Mathews approached a judge, along with officials from Texas Child Protective Services regarding the custody of the other child.

Wesley Mathews, 37, told police that he put Sherin in an alley near their house in the 900 block of Sunningdale where coyotes previously had been spotted, to punish her after she wouldn't drink her milk, around 3 am, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.

Mathews told police that he went to check on Sherin about 15 minutes later. When he didn't find her, he went inside to wait for daylight to continue searching, or for her to return on her own, according to the account he gave to police. As he waited, he did laundry, Perlich said.

The girl's mother was reportedly asleep at home when Wesley Mathews told the girl to go stand outside, but was unaware of what he was doing, police have said.

Wesley and Sini Mathews reportedly adopted Sherin about two years ago from an orphanage in India. She was said to have been malnourished and physically underdeveloped at the time and does not have the language skills of a typical 3-year-old.

The two-week search for Sherin involved drones, cadaver dogs, an Amber Alert and teams from multiple agencies that swept fields and other areas around the girl's home.

They also solicited help from neighbors and nearby businesses that may have had footage of the family's maroon Acura SUV between the hours that Sherin was said to have been left outside and when her disappearance was reported to police.

(With PTI inputs)
Chennai: In an emotional reunion, German globetrotting couple Janin Scharrenberg and Steffen Kagerah were reunited with their pet dog Luke, a black Labrador-mix which went missing in July at the Marina beach.

A nearly three-minute video on the reunion posted on Facebook by animal welfare activist, Shravan Krishnan shows the deep bond and love between the couple and their pet dog.

"After three months, they are finally reunited.

Unbelievable. Found it hard to control my tears. Luke is finally home. Vijaya Narayanan aunty you're an angel !!!! Janin Scharrenberg," Shravan said in his Facebook post.

The efforts of Vijaya Narayanan, an animal lover and entrepreneur, culminated in finding the missing dog.

The video shows Janin Scharrenberg entering Vijaya Narayanan's house last night, calling out 'Luke'. The 20-month old dog, which went missing on July 8, comes running from another room, quickly recognises her and Steffen.

The dog walks around the couple repeatedly, wagging its tail and makes noise apparently expressing joy.

Relieved at finding their pet, the couple are seen patting, gently stroking and hugging the dog.

Shravan said the German couple will leave the city shortly.

In a video shared with PTI by Shravan, Janin and Steffen thanked everyone.

"I just want to say thank you to everyone," Janin said in the video in which she was seen alongwith her husband and their pet dog adding "we are so happy."

Recalling how they found Luke as a puppy, their journey to India and how they lost their pet, Janin thanked animal lovers and the public for aiding their efforts to trace the dog.

Vijaya Narayanan said she got in touch with the couple when she came to know that their dog went missing.

"I offered to help them and began advertising in newspapers, distributed flyers, pasted posters visited veterenarians, and pet shops," she said.

She and her team "got lucky," after three months of concentrated efforts.

On October 21, Vijaya received a call from a person who said the dog was seen with some boys at the Marina Beach.

She said the informer acceeding to her request brought the dog. "We checked his micro chip number and it matched (with the number given by Janin), we felt jubilant," she said.

Janin and Steffen have been travelling across the world since April 2016.

They found Luke in Greece and adopted it.

On July eight, when Steffen had gone somewhere in the city, Janin was waiting in a vehicle on the Marina. An autorickshaw driver reportedly removed Luke's leash and took it away.

The couple later filed a police complaint, and after frantic searches stretching for several days, they left for Sri Lanka and from there to Nepal and stayed there to be able to return to Chennai in case the dog was found.

Animal lovers, the couple and police circulated posts on social media, distributed notices, and pasted posters seeking information on the lost dog.
New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency on Tuesday arrested Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin's son Shahid Yousuf in New Delhi. He was arrested in connection with the NIA's probe into terror funding in Jammu and Kashmir.

Before his arrest, 42-year-old Yousuf was summoned by the NIA to appear before it for questioning.

According to a CNN-News18 report, Yousuf is an employee of the Jammu and Kashmir government, who works at the Horticulture department. On Tuesday, he was arrested for receiving Rs 3.4 lakh through hawala route.

According to officials, the money was received in seven installments between 2011 and 2014. Yousuf received the amount from one Aijaz Bhat, who has fled to Saudi Arabia.

The agency alleged that Shahid is "one of several Indian contacts of Bhat" who have been in telephonic contact with him to receive the money transfer codes.

The NIA is probing illegal funding, including through hawala channels, for terrorist activities in parts of Kashmir Valley. It has registered multiple cases in this connection.

The case, registered by the NIA in April 2011, relates to transfer of money from Pakistan to Jammu and Kashmir through Hawala channels via Delhi which was suspected to be used in funding terrorism and secessionist activities.

The NIA has so far filed two charge sheets against six people which included GM Bhat, a close aide of pro-Pakistan separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mohammed Siddiq Ganai, Ghulam Jeelani Liloo and Farooq Ahmed Dagga. All the four were in judicial custody.

Besides them, two others -- Mohammed Maqbool Pandit and Aijaz Ahmed Bhat -- have also been chargesheeted by the NIA but both of them were absconding. An Interpol Red Corner notice has been issued against both.

Yousuf's father Mohammed Yusuf Shah  better known as Syed Salahuddin  was in June this year declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US State Department.

The US decision, which was welcomed by India, marks a serious blow to Pakistan where Salahuddin has been taking refuge for the last 28 years, allegedly with the help of Pakistani authorities.

He is also the head of United Jihad Council, a conglomerate of several terror outfits like LeT and JeM which operate out of Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

(With PTI inputs)
Dialogue, they say, is always better than a deadlock. Though in the case of Kashmir, the institution of dialogue stands discredited for variety of reasons.

Indeed, the appointment of former Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief Dineshwar Sharma as New Delhis political representative, holding the rank of Cabinet Secretary, for dialogue with stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir is likely to be packaged as good news by the BJP.

But it is not.

On ground zero, there is more scepticism than hope. And there are valid reasons behind this cynicism.

Let us face a simple fact: Successive governments in New Delhi have failed the people of Kashmir on many previous occasions. It is New Delhi which is primarily responsible for harming the reputation of the institution called dialogue.

With its history of broken promises and time buying tactics, New Delhi has also shattered confidence of the Kashmiris in any dialogue process and thus killed hope.

After the bloody summer of 2010 that left over 120 civilians dead in the Valley, most of them teenage boys, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA-II) government in New Delhi appointed the late Dilip Padgaonkar, MM Ansari and Professor Radha Kumar as three interlocutors for Kashmir in October.

The file containing their report and recommendations is regaled to the dusty shelves of the North Block along with the ones prepared by KC Pant and present Governor of Jammu and Kashmir NN Vohra in the past. What happened to the recommendations made by the Working Groups constituted by former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh?

One may also like to ask what happened to the Autonomy Resolution unanimously passed by J&K Legislative Assembly in 2000. All these experiences are indicative of the practice of New Delhi to bury the Kashmir issue under the carpet in the garb of fresh dialogue.

The problem with the latest initiative is that the BJP government has once again chosen ambiguity over clarity. New Delhi has failed to identify the stakeholders and the mandate given to Sharma is also not clear.

Another serious problem with the initiative is that the BJP wants to hoodwink the country by selling a flawed idea that its muscular policy has worked wonders in Kashmir Valley.

True that the J&K Police, Indian Army and paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) have killed over 150 armed militants, including eight top commanders of Lashkar and Hizb, from January to September this year. However, another bitter fact is that this year has been the bloodiest for J&K Police in the last five years as the department lost 28 of its personnel in various attacks carried out by militants in several parts of Kashmir. Since the eruption of the armed conflict in 1989, J&K Police have lost 1,622 personnel.

The BJP government is falsely claiming success by shrinking the space of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) and breaking the bone of armed militancy, but the fact is that pro-India politicians by their own admission are finding themselves at the precipice of complete irrelevance on Kashmirs turf.

A near-complete boycott of the last bye-elections in Srinagar-Budgam parliamentary constituency in April this year is a case in point. There was 7.14 % voting on 9 April in Srinagar and only 2% on the day of re-polling in Budgam.

You are witnessing political radicalisation in Kashmir because of New Delhis arrogance, a pro-India politician told me at that time, adding that New Delhis treatment of Kashmiris has made people lose confidence in mainstream politics. The PDP-BJP government, while tooting the horn of success of muscular policy, has failed to conduct bye-polls in south Kashmirs Anantnag parliamentary constituency since last year.

Besides, many PDP workers and former Sarpanches continue to be killed and their houses ransacked by militants in Tral, Pulwama, Shopian, Kulgam and Anantnag areas in south Kashmir.

J&Ks beleaguered Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti has welcomed Rajnath Singhs initiative. But doing so is her political compulsion rather than any genuine belief that the new idea will reap any dividends. Given the bitter experiences of the past, the Hurriyat is adopting a wait and watch policy for now.

The fact is no peace is possible in Kashmir if Pakistan is not involved in the dialogue process.

Moreover, let us not miss the larger international context.

Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State, is visiting both India and Pakistan. He also paid a surprise visit to war-torn Afghanistan, a country from where America wants a dignified exit which is impossible without Pakistans help. America needs Pakistan in Afghanistan. Is there a Tillerson effect?

New Delhi must show flexibility and learn some lessons from the Northern Ireland example. It should allow third party mediation in Kashmir for a peaceful Kashmir and prosperous South Asia. If the Good Friday Agreement can work in Northern Ireland why cant a similar initiative work in Kashmir?

Only an unambiguous and sincere initiative on Kashmir will succeed. All attempts of selling old wine in new bottle will are destined to fail!

(Author is a journalist and political analyst from Srinagar. Views are personal)
New Delhi: After facing criticism from various quarters, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has finally decided to send the controversial gag ordinance to the select committee of the Assembly.

Raje met ministers at her residence in Jaipur on late Monday evening to decide the further course of action on the controversial ordinance that seeks to shield serving and former judges, magistrates and public servants from being investigated for on-duty actions without prior sanction.

On Monday, a petition was filed in the Rajasthan High Court against the order. The plea asked the HC to declare the 'The Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance, 2017 as violative of the Constitution. It says this new law would not only throttle the freedom of press but also subvert the wisdom of judiciary.

The petitioner has submitted that the ordinance affects the Right to Life of an individual. The ordinance takes away the fundamental rights of the petitioner of fair investigation as well as equality. Fair investigation is the part of fundamental right to life, reads the petition.

There have been several protests against the ordinance. Two MLAs from the ruling BJP government protested against the new ordinance on Monday by terming it a black law and a legislation that seeks to grant immunity to the corrupt.
New Delhi: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held a series of meetings with India's top brass, including External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday. In addition, to cooperation against terror emanating from the Af-Pak region, defense ties between the two nations were on the cards. While India is looking to modernize its air force, it is also eyeing US-made Sea Guardian drones for its navy to monitor activities along the coastline, particularly in the Indian Ocean region.

According to a report, the Donald Trump administration wants to complete the deal for transferring Sea Guardian unmanned drones to India. The proposals the US has put forward, including for Guardian UAVs, aircraft carrier technologies, the Future Vertical Lift programme, and F-18 and F-16 fighter aircraft, are all potential game changers for our commercial and defence cooperation, Tillerson had said last week, calling India a major defence partner.

The decision to sell the unarmed drones to India was taken in June, after a meeting between PM Modi and US President Trump. Now, the US is all set to cut through the red tape and deliver 22 of these drones to India, which will cost $2-3 billion.

The Sea Guardian, the naval variant of the MQ-9 Reaper Drone, has a range of over 1,800 kms and can attain an operational altitude of 50,000 feet. It can operate for 14 hours at a stretch and can attain a maximum speed of 300 kmph. The variant that India is expected to buy cannot carry weapons and can only be used for surveillance purposes. This has triggered a debate over whether the Indian Navy really needs an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is unarmed.

Defence expert C Uday Bhaskar feels that the debate is misguided and unarmed drones serve their own purpose. Armed and unarmed drones have their specific purposes and it would be unfair to say that either one is useless. Surveillance is important from a strategic point of view and drones are a cheap and effective way of monitoring activities on the sea. We can have a debate on whether these drones are costing too much, but to say they are useless is an unfair argument to make, he said.

With a coastline of over 7,500 kms, India needs eyes on the sea. On the western coast, in the Arabian Sea, drones will serve a dual purpose. On the one hand, they can be used to monitor sea-based infiltration to avoid a redux of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks of 2008. On the other hand, they can be used to keep an eye on piracy in the Arabian Sea.

However, Indo-US interests will truly align in the Indian Ocean region. No one nation can monitor the Indian Ocean by itself. It will be in American interest to have a nation of 2-3 nations, including India, with whom they can share intel. A drone can be an effective tool in monitoring the movement of Chinese aircraft carriers, for instance, in the Indian Ocean. Both US and India would want to keep Chinese activities under check in the Indian Ocean.
New Delhi: Endorsing the central governments three-year stand on the Kashmir issue as a treatment that helped create a conducive environment for talks, RSS leader Indresh Kumar on Tuesday supported the appointment of Dineshwar Sharma as an interlocutor.

We can see a distinct reduction in the number of incidents of stone-pelting and terror. Our security forces neutralized several terrorists and people are agitating against their own administration in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, the RSS leader told News18.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday announced that former Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director Dineshwar Sharma will initiate and carry forward a dialogue between the Centre and the concerned organizations in Jammu and Kashmir.

Treatment to Kashmir and dialogue are all part of a strategy and by that I am referring to the treatment that cured Kashmir. It is a combined strategy of the government," Indresh added.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, in his annual Vijayadashmi speech last month, had also addressed the Kashmir situation.

While lauding the security forces and the government for having dealt with insurgency, Bhagwat also suggested a follow up action including Constitutional changes that provide special status to Kashmir.

RSS chiefs Vijayadashmi speech had kicked up a row and was seen in many ways, as a policy direction for the BJP-led government.

So far, in repeated crackdowns, more than 60 militants have been gunned down by the security forces in south Kashmir in the past hundred days. This is the highest number of militant deaths in the past decade.

Indresh Kumar, in his interview to News18, insisted that the governments initiative to start dialogue should not be seen as a decision made under compulsion.
Washington: The Trump administration is looking forward to completing the deal for transferring unarmed Sea Guardian drones to India, a senior US official has said.

The major decision to sell unarmed Sea Guardian drones was announced during the summit meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump on June 26.

The US "looks forward to completing the deal for transferring Sea Guardian unmanned drones," the official said.

The addition of 22 state-of-the-art unarmed drones to India would add to its Navy's surveillance capabilities in the strategic Indian Ocean region.

As part of India being designated as major defence partner, the Trump administration is taking additional steps to remove bureaucratic bottlenecks and accelerate the process of sale of high-tech defence equipment to India.

A special focus is on strengthening Indian maritime capabilities.

The defence cooperation is only going to increase, the senior administration official said, adding that this is based on fundamental understanding that interests of the two countries are now aligned.

This was the first major defence deal announced after India was designated as a major defence partner.

Vivek Lall, chief executive of US and international strategic development at General Atomics, said sale of Sea Guardian drones is a significant step in cementing the US- India bilateral defence relationship.

To be sold at an estimated cost of USD 2 billion, this would help create some 2,000 jobs in the US, he said.

The Sea Guardian is a variant of the tested MQ-9 platform which allows for greater interoperability with US and allied forces, Lall said adding that its use by the Indian Navy will also develop the country's credible capabilities, which is significant for Indian maritime security and naval power projection.

However, there have been no talks between the two countries on New Delhi's request for General Atomics Predator C Avenger armed drones.

It is understood that this was not raised by Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her meeting with her US counterpart Jim Mattis during his visit to India last month.

The two are scheduled to meet again this week in the Philippines.

According to an industry source, this "case is being actively considered" by the White House as a next step after the Guardian deal.

"As military aviation transforms globally to autonomous systems, US and India have a great opportunity to collaborate at the highest levels of technology and innovation," the industry source said.

Last week, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had said that in keeping with India's status as a major defence partner and their mutual interest in expanding maritime cooperation, the Trump administration has offered a menu of defence options for India's consideration, including the Guardian UAV.

"We value the role India can play in global security and stability and are prepared to ensure they have even greater capabilities," Tillerson had said ahead of his visit to India.

"The proposals the US has put forward, including for Guardian UAVs, aircraft carrier technologies, the Future Vertical Lift programme, and F-18 and F-16 fighter aircraft, are all potential game changers for our commercial and defence cooperation," Tillerson said.
New Delhi: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will land in India on Tuesday night for his first visit since he assumed office in the Trump administration. Regional security and upping trade, defence cooperation will be on the top of his agenda during his three-day visit, starting October 24.

Most of his meetings have been slotted on Wednesday. He is set to hold talks with his counterpart, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday morning. The meeting is likely to focus on counter-terrorism cooperation between India, the US and regional security.

The US is likely to once again call upon India to play a greater role in Afghanistan. In his address at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC on 18th October, Tillerson had said, As we implement President Trumps new South Asia strategy, we will turn to our partners to ensure greater stability in Afghanistan and nearby regions. India is a partner for peace in Afghanistan, and we welcome their assistance efforts.

India has however clarified that it will not play a combat role in Afghanistan but continue with infrastructure building efforts and other forms of assistance.

While heading to New Delhi, Tillerson will make a pit-stop in Islamabad on Tuesday afternoon where he will once again stress that combating terrorism is an obligation not a choice for Pakistan. Last week at CSIS he had clearly spelt out that the US expected Pakistan to take decisive action against terrorist groups based within their own borders. He had underlined how this action against terrorism will further stability and peace for itself and its neighbours while improving its own international standing.

US President Donald Trump had recently praised Pakistan for its help in freeing an American-Canadian couple and their children from the Haqqani networks captivity. He said it marked a positive moment in their relationship. Meanwhile, media reports in the US suggested that Pakistan was allowed to take credit even as it was given an ultimatum to deliver on the matter. In this context, Tillerson is expected to send out a message that Pakistans military and intelligence service cannot continue to provide cover to terrorists.
ABC/Randy HolmesKirk Hammett: guitar icon, horror aficionado...coffee enthusiast? The Metallica guitarist's company KHDK Electronics has teamed up with Dark Matter Coffee to deliver a new signature coffee blend called Ghoul Screamer.

The blend features beans sourced from El Salvador, and includes notes of apricot, praline and mulling spices. You can order your own batch of Ghoul Screamer now via DarkMatterCoffee.com.

Ghoul Screamer is also the name of a guitar pedal sold by KHDK Electronics.

Hammett and Metallica are currently touring Europe in support of their new album, Hardwired...to Self-Destruct.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Melbourne: Veteran actor Anupam Kher, who was recently appointed as the new chairman of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), says he is ready to work with the students and hear them before taking any steps.

Kher says though it is too early for him to list his "to do things", he hopes to inspire the students by sharing his experience as an actor.

"I don't want to carry the burden of being Anupam Kher. I will ask the students and work with them and may be come up with something," Kher told PTI.

"I think it's important to give them a vast knowledge of world cinema and inspire them. Sometimes you can inspire them by telling your own stories."

The actor says his stories are not just about his triumphs but also about his defeats and failures.

"I am the sum total of my successes and failures. All those years of my days spent on streets of Mumbai are also a part of my knowledge sharing with students."

Kher is all set to visit Australia in December this year to attend an 'In conversation' event series and award night launched by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA).

Kher says while Indian cinema and talent are being recognised globally, Indian audience is also becoming more knowledgeable.

"Because of satellite channels, multiplexes, Indian audience has become more educated and just won't accept anything that is shown to them.

"So many actors, technicians and cameramen are emerging and if you are hardworking and an optimist in today's time you will find work."

Kher is currently working on his new book "Lessons Life Taught Me Unknowingly", to be released next April.

He will next star in Hotel Mumbai, an American Australian film directed by Anthony Maras. The movie is based on the 2009 documentary Surviving Mumbai, about the Mumbai attacks in 2008 at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.
Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who has impressed the audience and critics alike with his performances, is all set to unveil his autobiography, An Ordinary Life: A Memoir. The book which chronicles the life and times of Siddiqui is expected to hit the stands on October 25. It's probably the first time that the actor has opened up about his personal life in such lengths and details. The actor, who has often made headlines for his work, is now making headlines for his scandalous confessions.

While in one excerpt, he opens up about his affair with Miss Lovely co-actor Niharika Singh, in another, he recalls his first-ever romantic relationship.

'I was a rascal who cared only for himself'

Niharika was an intelligent girl. Being an actor herself meant that she knew and understood my struggle for work... She would call me in frequent spurts throughout the day demanding to know of my whereabouts... [Then] The regularity of the questions felt like being nagged non-stop... There was another piece to this puzzle. Like all girls, Niharika obviously expected some of the sweet conversations that lovers have, to take place between us. But I was quite a selfish b*****d. I had a plain aim: go to her house, make out and leave. I could not talk lovey-dovey too much. It finally struck her that I was a rascal who cared only for himself. (Actually, all the girls I have ever been with have had this same complaint about me. I would only come to them for my own needs. Otherwise, I might not even take their calls.) When I went to her place next, she was wearing a silk robe. I ran my hand over its coolness around her waist, grabbing her but she pushed me away. 'No, Nawaz!' she said. 'I won't meet you again. This is enough.' I pleaded, I cried, I apologized. But she remained adamant. She had had enough. So that was that, we broke up cutting off all contact. Two months later, another girl came into my life in a most mysterious way. I did not know then that years later, I would marry her."

'(My first relation] was like rain after a spell of drought'

I was performing in a play in Mumbai which was when I finally had my first romantic relationship. Incidentally, she too happened to be an NSD graduate, though we had never met there. It was very sweet, like rain is after a very long spell of drought. Sunita had fallen madly in love with me. Every day, she would come over, hang out at my house in Mira Road and scrawl our names in tiny font all over the wall... Then she went off on a holiday to her hometown in the hills to see her folks. When she returned, Sunita would not take any of my calls. And when she did at last, I was flabbergasted. After such a deep, passionate love, she simply said, 'Nawaz, you focus on your career. And I will focus on my career.' She cut off all contact after that and I plunged into another deep, deep depression. I took a bucket of fresh white paint and began to replace her artwork on my walls with the blank canvas that they were before...

Living in Mira Road meant that the local train was our lifeline. We were at the station almost all the time. Soon after her call, one day I was at the station and stood there staring at the tracks. A train was coming, screaming its arrival with a lusty horn. It would be simple and instant. Should I jump onto the tracks and end it all? End this struggle, end this life? I had nothing. No love, no work, no money. But some being woke up in me and gave me a metaphorical slap. 'You know this is not your department,' the voice in my head said. 'Then why? Why did you go that way? Why!' it screamed at me.

The train sped away, screaming pompously, cutting through the air... I decided that I would never again be emotional in any relationship... Never again did I allow myself to be vulnerable like that again, not even with my wife... Yet it was important to analyse what had happened... [Sunita must have been advised] she should probably date someone successful, not a struggling, desperate actor who was out of work. Today, Sunita tells everybody that she was once together with me in a very serious relationship. Incredible, isn't it?

In yet another part, Siddiqui shares details about his love affair with Anjali and how the two continued to fight with each other on trivial issues. He also mentions that even though he loved her, he still thought she's too risky to get married.

Anjali and I continued to live together. We were madly in love but it was a tumultuous relationship, the course of which changed randomly, driven by fury. Her love was deep, her temper short. We quarreled every few days or she would get upset. And ever so often she would pack her bag and storm out in a fit of anger, to stay with a friend at Lokhandwala. Sometimes I would follow her, plead for forgiveness and cajole her to return home. This became a sort of a ritual, like a cassette tape annoyingly put on repeat. Although I loved her very much, I thought she might be too risky to get married to. So I decided to not get married at all. The saga of love and running around in circles continued for something like a year and a half. Then came a time when she did not return for a very, very long time. I forget the exact length of time. I was rather fed up of running around like this repeatedly Even though my heart pined for her, I did not go to get her. The prolonged period turned into a silent break-up. I think nowadays they call it 'ghosting'. The loneliness was getting to me now.

Ammi picked a lovely girl called Sheeba who hailed from Haldwani, which is near Nainital. I got married a few months before the shoot of Patang. Ahead of Haldwani, lie Bijnor, Najibabad, etc.; most of Sheeba's family had settled in Haldwani and around it. Anjali had disappeared for almost a year; there had been no word from her at all.

I got married and went to shoot Patang in Ahmedabad, tagging Sheeba along. We lived together for nearly two months. The crew of Patang knows her well. Then she went home and I went on to shoot my next film. Sheeba was a wonderful girl with a heart of gold but her brother was very intrusive. He interfered in our marriage constantly.

Before I had set off for the court, Ammi too had advised me on similar lines. 'If you feel there is even a teeny bit, even a drop of love left between the two of you, suleh kar lena (go for a compromise). Tell the judge then that you have made a compromise and you two want to live together.' Her voice rang in my ears, her advice swirled in my head in a loop. I tried to make eye contact with the woman who was still my wife, but might not be within a matter of minutes. Her eyes were often lowered or gazing elsewhere. Perhaps it was a mismatch of moments. I tried again and again and again, my desperate, apologetic eyes seeking hers, but I just could not get her to look at me. (I got plenty of eye contact from her brother though.)

Our hearing began. the judge called Sheeba and asked her, 'What do you want?' She replied, as if with a sense of urgency, 'I want a divorce. These guys have tortured us.' My heart sank on the spot. My lawyer, to whom I had communicated ammi's wishes as my own which indeed they were, whispered in my ears what I already knew, 'They have asked for divorce. There is nothing we can do now. I'm sorry, Nawaz.'

Anjali and I began to meet again and soon after, we got back together. She would arrive very upbeat, with a confidence that my house was her own. She treated the tiny spacewhich then was still the one-room flat in Maladas if it was her own. It was lovely. Her presence soothed me. But something was different. This time, she demanded marriage right away. She insisted upon it continuously. I was afraid: what if she repeated her ways of leaving in bouts of anger? she persisted, trying to assure me that she would not. In Budhana, we, especially the elders, believe that any spoilt childa spoilt youngster actually is bound to mend his or her ways once she or he gets married.

During the ceremony, the mullah told Anjali that she would need a muslim name for the nikah, while her Hindu name would be in brackets. 'Zainab,' Anjali said instantly. 'You can keep my name Zainab.' I was completely shocked and looked at her wide-eyed in silent bewilderment. How did she come up with a random name like that on the spot? Your name is your identity. How could you change it just like that?

Approximately three years after our wedding, Anjali decided to rename herself."
Chennai: Tamil actor Vishal, who was raided by Income Tax officials after his slanging match with the state BJP over the film Mersal, is in no mood to back down saying he is ready to face the consequences for criticising the government.

"If I have to face the consequence for speaking up against someone in the government, bring it on, the actor-producer told CNN-News18s Zakka Jacob in an interview on Tuesday, a day after I-T sleuths visited the office of his Vishal Film Factory.

The actor also sharpened his attack on Tamil Nadu BJP leader H Raja for objecting to some portions of the Vijay-starrer Mersal after he reportedly claimed to have watched a pirated version online.

What are we waiting for?, he asked about the delay in taking action against Raja, adding governments which were strict in taking action against other crimes went slow when it came to piracy.

As a leader what example are you trying to set. Its a crime, irrespective of whatever position you hold, he said adding, If you curb piracy we pay more taxes and the government can spend more for the people.

Vishal who got into a war of words with Raja after the BJP leader hit out at Vijay for purported anti-GST comments in Mersal, said he will continue to campaign for reducing tax on film tickets from 28%.

I-T sleuths knocked at the doors of his film company a day after his spat with Raja, but Vishal preferred to call it a visit and said he was not sure whether it was out of political vendetta.
Ahmedabad: Patidar leader Hardik Patel is said to have communicated a set of demands, including an assurance of reservation for the Patel community in government jobs and educational institutions, to the Congress party as a condition for his support of the Grand Old Party.

Hardik has also sought tickets for Patidar candidates in areas dominated by the Patel community, PTI quoted sources in Congress as saying. The 24-year-old leader, who led the quota stir in Gujarat, met senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot in Ahmedabad on Monday.

In his meeting with Gujarat Congress in-charge, Hardik demanded better representation for politically influential Patels, who had until now backed the BJP, sources said,

"Had a good meeting with Hardik Patel and his colleagues," Gehlot tweeted Monday night. Patel, who is not eligible to contest elections, also told mediapersons that he had gone to a hotel to meet Gehlot. A number TV channels showed CCTV footage of Hardik entering and exiting a 5-star hotel where Rahul had also briefly checked in.

Thereafter, Ghelot wrote on Twitter that the rooms booked in his name were being checked. "We are openly saying, we have met them n will keep meeting them in future too," he said.

Gehlot, in another tweet, questioned why IB and police took CCTV footage from the hotel.

Hardik, then, alleged in a tweet: "BJP is expert in snooping. They used to snoop on Sanjay Joshi (BJP leader) and now they are snooping on me." Congress' endeavor to get the Patidar leader onboard is seen as an attempt to bolster their prospects in a community, which has had, in Hardik's words, "minimal" representation.

Alpesh Thakor, a prominent OBC leader and 'Gujarat Kshatriya Thakor Sena convenor', had joined the Congress on Monday in the presence of party vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

The BJP has been calling Patel an "agent" of the Congress who was trying to "mislead" people of his community.

Congress spokesman Manish Doshi said Hardik Patel was told that, if voted to power, a survey would be conducted to provide reservation to the community without touching the 49 per cent quotas for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes.

He said Patel was also assured that action would be taken against police officials who committed "atrocities" against Patidars during their quota stir in August 2015. Doshi said an assurance was also made to him that the kin of those who were killed during the agitation will be adequately compensated.

Ten people had been killed in police action when the quota stir turned violent.
With Congress releasing second and final list of nine candidates for the upcoming Himachal Pradesh Assembly polls, dust has almost settled over who will get to contest on the party ticket. The Bharatiya Janata party has already released its list of 68 candidates.

The BJP, despite losing the last Assembly polls, brought in just 12 new faces and has retained those who contested on the party ticket in 2012 Assembly polls. Similarly, despite anti-incumbency fears, the Congresss list mostly comprises sitting MLAs.

However, many of the contesting candidates won their seats by a wafer-thin margin, resulting in photo-finish results.

From the Kasauli (SC) seat, the BJP has retained its candidate Rajeev Sahzal, who won the seat in 2012 by a thin margin of just 24 votes against Congress Vinod Sultanpuri. Former MP KD Sultanpuri's son Vinod has been repeated as a Congress candidate from the constituency.

Bhattiyat was another constituency that witnessed a photo-finish contest. Here BJPs Vikram Singh Jaryal defeated Congress Kuldeep Singh Pathania by a margin of mere 111 votes. Jaryal is preparing again to take on Pathania from the seat.

For Chintpurni Assembly seat, which is earmarked for SC candidate, Balbir Singh is the BJP candidate. Singh Won the seat in 2007 but lost to Congress Kuldip Kumar in the last Assembly polls by a slender margin of 438 votes. Kumar is up to defend the seat as the Congress nominee.

BJP turned Independent Pawan Kajal won the Kangra seat in the last assembly polls. A habitual turncoat, this time round he is contesting on the Congress ticket. His victory margin over Congress Choudhary Surender Kumar was a mere 563 votes. Kajal is pitted against BJPs Sanjay Chaudharay who with 23.19% votes was relegated to the third position behind Kajal and Congress Surender Kumar Choudhary.

From capital Shimla BJPs Suresh Bhardwaj edged Harish of Congress by thin margin of 628 votes in 2012. BJP has renominated Bhardwaj against Harbhajan Singh Bhajji, Congress state general secretary and MLA from the seat between 2003-07.

Balbir Singh Verma won the Shimlas Chopal seat as an independent candidate with a slender margin of 747 votes. Verma, a former Congressman merged his Chopal Vikas Manch with the BJP in March this year. He is BJPs official nominee and is pitted again against Congress Dr. Subhash Chand Manglate.

In 2012, Sirmaur districts Sri Renukaji seat saw pitched contest between Vinay Kumar of the Congress and BJPs Hirdaya Ram. Kumar won the seat by 655 votes. BJP has changed the candidate and filed Balbir Chauhan from the seat. Runner-up Hirdaya Ram has decided to contest as an independent candidate, making the contest triangular.

Paonta Sahib, another seat in Sirmaur district elected Independent Kirnesh Jung over BJPs Sukh Ram by a flimsy margin of 790 votes. Jung is Congresss official candidate against 2012 runner-up Sukh Ram this time around.
Chennai: Just hours after BJP leader H Raja threatened to vandalise a state of the father of Dravidian politics, Periyar, two men have razed Periyar's statue outside a municipal corporation office in Tamil Nadu's Vellore.

Raja had posted the message on social networking site Facebook after alleged BJP supporters used a earth-mover to bring down a statue of communist revolutionary Lenin in Tripura, two days after the party won the assembly elections in the state. Who is Lenin? What is the relevance he holds in India? What is the link between communism and India? Lenins statues were destroyed in Tripura, tomorrow, in Tamil Nadu, casteist Periyars statues will be destroyed, he wrote.

While Rajas post was heavily criticised online, it's not the first time that he has made headlines for his polarising statements.

The senior BJP had earlier "outed" the full Christian name of actor Vijay - C Vijay Joseph - to "explain" why his latest film Mersal contains dialogues against the national tax GST. "Vijay is a practicing Christian. He should have said build hospitals before churches, instead he says build hospitals before temples. It is like provoking Hindus," he tweeted, along with a copy of Vijay's voter id card.

If he thought this would leave Tamil Nadu mersal (zapped), it didn't. Most of the people from the state who responded on social media merely shook with mirth as it was no breaking news to them.

Raja had also mocked Kamal Haasan on Twitter for the actor's decision to enter politics, saying: "The person who should rule this state needs to be brave and fearless. Kamal Haasan is a spineless coward who has, in the past, said that he will run out of the country." Haasan took it as a joke and referred to him as a "bone specialist".

Another of his polarising statement came in connection with an incident in Ambur district where seven police officers were beaten up during a riot, allegedly incited by a Manithaneya Makkal Katchi (MMK) MLA. Raja alleged that no action was taken because police were siding with the Muslim community.

On another occasion, he reportedly threatened that MDMK leader will never reach home safe if he continued to criticise Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But the most confounding of all his verbal attacks was on Periyar EV Ramasamy - reverentially called Thanthai Periyar - the social activist who started the self-respect movement in 1925. He said at an RSS event he would have beaten Periyar with slippers and later added that the man who led some of the famous fights against untouchability was "anti-Dalit". An FIR was filed against him.

Raja, a native of Thanjavur, was a lawyer and a practising chartered accountant before he entered politics. Schooled in RSS ideologies since childhoood, he joined the BJP in the 1980's and went on to assume several roles - district convenor in 1991, followed by state secretary, state general secretary and then three years ago, national secretary.

In a state dominated by Dravidian parties, he has not had any notable electoral success. He became an MLA from Karaikudi in 2001, when the BJP piggybacked on an alliance with the DMK. He lost every election since then, including in the last Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

Raja's friends in the BJP vouch for his political sobriety. "He is very simple, down to earth person. When he was an MLA, he took care of the constituency very well. He is an intellect especially in economic matters and religion. He is not corrupt and there have been no charges against him" says BJP spokesperson Narayanan Tirupathi who has been his friend for more than 30 years.

Whether there were any political calculations behind the former chartered accountant verbal attacks on the state's icons is not clear, but analysts are unanimous it is not giving the BJP any gains in Tamil Nadu. "The BJP is losing ground in Tamil Nadu because of the utterances of its ranking leaders, including H Raja. They are picking on the wrong issues or non issues, and are not seen as raising people's issues," says RK Radhakrishnan, Associate Editor, Frontline.

Political analyst Gnani Sankaran says, "H Raja is an immature politician. His statements won't have an impact on electoral politics."

Many believe he is also making it difficult for the state BJP leadership by trying to pull in a different direction. At a time when the BJP is looking for inroads in southern states, Raja's social media activism may fetch the party more clicks than votes.
New Delhi: Did Patidar leader Hardik Patel meet Rahul Gandhi at an Ahmedabad Hotel? There is CCTV footage of Patel entering and leaving the hotel where Rahul had checked in during his day-long trip to Gujarat. Accusing the government of snooping the opposition leaders, Congress election in-charge Ashok Gehlot said Hardik had a meeting with him and not Gandhi.

On the face of it, Hardik doing business with Congress leaders shouldnt be a big deal. After all, in politics, enemys enemy is your friend. Patel is much more than that. Patidar leader spearheading the quota stir was put behind bars by the state government. He is now a sworn enemy of the BJP. But having already burnt its fingers once, Congress is treading with caution this time as it dabbles in Patidar politics.

In 2012, veteran Patel leader and former CM Keshubhai Patel rebelled to form his own party. If a division in Patidar votes could win Congress its first victory in Gujarat in two decades, it would have happened in the last assembly polls.

The Congress game-plan failed the last time around for two reasons. Firstly, Patels since Madhav Singh Solankis pulverizing victory in 1984 are well entrenched in the BJP. In fact, the community has been the backbone of BJPs revival in Gujarat. So any attrition in the ranks and file is limited and temporary.

Secondly, since Patidars are socially and economically well off, they like any other intermediary agrarian community are politically vocal. Their voice thus is disproportionate to their numerical or voting strength.

Though the last caste census in India was conducted in 1931, roughly extrapolated, Other Backward Castes, which is an amorphous group of close to 150 communities in Gujarat, would constitute more than 40% of the electorate. That is more than thrice the Patidar population in the state.

That explains why Congress is overtly wooing this silent yet numerically dominant community in the western state and is making no bones about it. Alpesh Thakor was readily accepted by the party and Rahul Gandhi travelled to attend an OBC rally organized by Thakor in Ahmedabad.

Having publically aligned with OBC caste groups, it is but obvious now that both Congress and Hardik would not want to be seen courting each other to take on the BJP.

Patels were up in arms against the state government demanding reservations. This could have been done in two ways  either increase the quantum of quota or include Patels in the OBC list. The first option was legally untenable since it would have violated 50% ceiling set by the Supreme Court. The second one would tantamount to Patels competing for a quota pie which has been exclusively reserved for the OBCs.

In fact, the rise of Alpesh Thakor as an OBC leader was seen as a challenge to any effective dilution in the reservation benefits for the community.

The social incompatibility of the two communities vying for the same quota pie makes it politically imprudent for the Congress to take along both OBCs and Patels. Moreover, coming out in open support of the Congress may dent Hardiks appeal within the community to damage the BJP.

This explains why Congress in Gujarat has welcomed Thakor with open arms.

With Hardik, the association would have to be covert.

In other words, Congress wants Thakor to fetch votes. It is relying in on Hardik to engineer attrition in BJPs core vote base.
A U.S. judge has ordered a new trial to determine how much Samsung Electronics Co should pay Apple Inc for copying the look of the iPhone. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California issued her order late on Sunday, 10 months after the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a $399 million award against Samsung, whose devices include the Galaxy. The three Apple patents covered design elements of the iPhone such as its black rectangular front face, rounded corners, and a colourful grid of icons for programs and apps.

Koh's order is a setback for Apple, which called a retrial unnecessary and said the award should be confirmed. The Cupertino, California-based company did not immediately respond on Monday to requests for comment. Silicon Valley has closely followed the 6-1/2-year-old case. Companies such as Facebook Inc and Alphabet's Google have said an Apple win would encourage owners of design patents to sue for huge, unfair awards on products containing hundreds of features that are costly to develop. The $399 million represented profit from Samsung's sales of infringing smartphones, though the South Korean company has said it deserved reimbursement if it prevailed in the litigation.

It was part of a $548 million payment that Samsung made to Apple in December 2015. The legal dispute concerned whether the "article of manufacture" for which Samsung owed damages included its entire smartphones or only parts that infringed Apple patents. Without deciding that question, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the Supreme Court last Dec. 6 that "the term 'article of manufacture' is broad enough to embrace both a product sold to a consumer and a component of that product." In Sunday's order, Koh said the jury instructions at the original 2012 trial inaccurately stated the law on that issue.

She said Samsung may have been prejudiced if jurors were prevented from considering whether any infringement covered "something other than the entire phone." Apple contended that the jury instructions were "not erroneous," and said it had proved that Samsung applied its patented designs to its "entire phones." Jurors initially awarded $1.05 billion to Apple, which was later reduced. Samsung, in a statement, welcomed a new trial, calling it "a historic opportunity to determine how the U.S. Supreme Court's guidance on design patent damages will be implemented."

The case is Apple v Samsung Electronics Co et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 11-01846.

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Islamabad: As US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to Pakistan on Tuesday to pressure Islamabad to act over militants targeting Afghanistan from its soil, anxious Pakistanis may be equally interested in dissuading Washington's deepening ties with India.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan, a staunch US Cold War ally and key player in the US-backed invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has watched warily as Washington has in recent years pivoted towards its arch-foe.

Tillerson, due to meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Pakistan's powerful military chiefs in a one-day visit, is expected to urge Pakistan to do more to root out Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network militants operating on its soil.

But he is also expected to hear Pakistani officials warn him that drawing nuclear-armed India deeper into Afghanistan would destabilise the region and do little to end the 16-year war that is now America's longest military conflict.

"Bringing India into the mix is like adding kerosene to fire," said Miftah Ismail, a state minister and close ally of Prime Minister Abbasi.

"It's a complete red line. India has no political role to play in Afghanistan as far as we are concerned."

Many Pakistanis feel betrayed that its traditional ally is now cosying up to India over Afghanistan.

But the anger runs both ways.

The United States accuses Pakistan of playing a double game since 2001, offering public backing to Washington while turning a blind eye, or even at times assisting, the Afghan Taliban and other militants who carry out deadly attacks against U.S. forces and their allies in Afghanistan.

LAST CHANCE

Pakistan supported the Afghan Taliban in the 1990s as a hedge to Indian influence in Afghanistan, and analysts say its military and security services maintained ties long after the Taliban regime was toppled in 2001.

Pakistan denies providing a safe haven for Afghan Taliban and other militant fighters.

Tillerson, during a visit to Afghanistan on Monday, said Washington has made some "very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support the Taliban receives and other terrorist organizations receive".

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis earlier this month said the United States would try "one more time" to work with Pakistan in Afghanistan, before opting for more punitive measures. President Donald Trump has vowed to be tougher on Pakistan than his predecessors.

The United States has threatened further military aid cuts and U.S. officials have mooted targeted sanctions against Pakistani military figures, but in the past two weeks there have been hints of a slight thawing in ties.

US Vice President Mike Pence and Tillerson last week called Abbasi to thank Pakistan after its army rescued a U.S.-Canadian couple who were held hostage by the Taliban-allied Haqqani network for nearly five years, along with their three children born in captivity.

Relations were further boosted when Omar Khalid Khorasani, leader of the lethal Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) group who Islamabad had been trying to catch for years, was killed by a US drone strike last week.

HOSTILE NEIGHBOURS

India has increased aid to Afghanistan in recent years and last year promised to ship more arms. Such moves have aggravating fears in Pakistan that it will find itself wedged between two hostile neighbours.

Islamabad bristles at the idea that India holds the key to ending the Afghanistan conflict, and fears U.S. meddling could unsettle a delicate balance of power in South Asia.

"Promoting a higher involvement of India in Afghanistan will only worsen the historic strategic rivalries playing out in the region," said Sherry Rehman, Pakistan's former ambassador to United States and a senior member of the opposition Pakistan People's Party.

Pakistan points to the 3.5 million Afghan refugees it hosts as proof that it has more than anyone else to lose from chaos in Afghanistan, and has emphasised the need for greater cooperation and intelligence sharing with United States and Afghanistan.

But while Pakistan may not like it, India looks set to continue playing a role in Afghanistan, according to Sushant Sareen, a foreign policy analyst at the Vivekananda International Foundation, a think-tank with ties to the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"The message is very clear that India is an important player when it comes to coordinating policies between Afghanistan and Washington," said Sareen.
Beijing: Chinas ruling Communist Party on Tuesday endorsed a second five-year term for President Xi Jinping and appointed a new set of leaders backed by him.

Sixty-four-year-old Xis second term was endorsed by the party at the end of its week-long once-in-a-five-year Congress. The conference attended by over 2,350 delegates ended at the Great Hall of the People, the seat of power of Chinas Communist leadership.

Xi along with Premier Li Keqiang, 62, ranked number one and two in the Communist Party of Chinas hierarchy, would continue based on two five year tenure convention for top leaders. Five new members will be elected to the seven member Standing Committee of the party which rules the country. Xi and Li took over power in 2012 and set to continue till 2022.

The new Standing Committee would be unveiled for China and the world on Wednesday when they would formally appear in front of the media during a live telecast.

Reports in the Hong Kong media said that Xi may not have his way at the Congress as his closest aide Wang Qishan, who led the massive anti-corruption campaign in which Xis opponents were allegedly crushed, is likely to step down from the powerful Standing Committee belying speculation that he would be retained by overriding the 68-year retirement rule.

Also the Congress may keep the number of the Standing Committee members to seven, contrary to reported preference of Xi to reduce its number to five.

The new seven-member committee may retain balance of power among various factions within the party though Xi may still remain powerful with the induction of some of his close associates into the Standing Committee, the reports said.

Xi, regarded as the most powerful Chinese leader in recent times heading the party, presidency and the military too is expected to retire by 2022 after his second term. But speculation is rife that he would break that retirement age convention and may continue for a third term considering his powerful stature in the party, equalling that of the party founder Mao Zedong and his successor Deng Xiaoping.

Xi also is set to have his own ideological thought enshrined in the CPC Constitution, elevating him to the same political league as Mao and Deng.

Former Chinese leaders Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin also had their own ideologies incorporated in the Constitution. But unlike Mao and Deng their names were not included. As China enters a new era, the CPC must write a new chapter of 21st century Marxism with a broader vision to achieve the goals set at the milestone Congress, Chen Shuguang, a professor with the Party School of the CPC Central

Committee told state-run Xinhua news agency.

Liu attributed the CPCs success in maintaining vitality and creativity to the ability to advance with the times, saying it is the magic code for the CPC to lead China toward becoming a great modern country.

The 19th Congress of the CPC which ended on Tuesday will make great contribution to the world thanks to the concepts mentioned in a key report to the congress, Xinhua quoted analysts as saying.

Hu Angang, director of the Center for China Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said a community with a shared future for mankind means a community of shared interests and development.
Utah: A Utah mom in her final days of pregnancy gave her baby an eviction notice and made it official with a judge's signature. Incredibly, the baby obeyed.

Kaylee Bays was pregnant with her third child, a girl, and thought she was going into labor last week, but it stopped.

She went back to work to her job as a judicial assistant at the Fourth District Court in Provo, and jokingly asked Judge Lynn Davis to serve an eviction notice on her baby.

He did. And It worked. Less than 12 hours later, baby Gretsel was born, the Daily Herald reported.

Bays said Davis told her it was his first baby eviction notice in his 31 years as a judge.

"He told me, 'If it really works, I want it framed.' It did, and I'm going to frame it for him," Bays said.

Bays said the eviction notice gave her baby three days to "vacate the premises."

The notice was addressed to Gretsel at Mommy Belly Lane, in Womb, Utah.

"She came 12 hours later. So far, she's a good listener," she joked. "She didn't want to be in contempt of court."
Harare: Robert Mugabe would have rejected the role of World Health Organization goodwill envoy had he been formally asked, his spokesman said on Tuesday, days after state media cheered the Zimbabwean president's appointment.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus named Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador on Wednesday at a conference in Uruguay that both men were attending.

But the appointment was rescinded on Sunday following a backlash from Western donors, rights groups and opposition parties.

Last Friday, the state-owned Herald celebrated the largely ceremonial appointment as a "New feather in President's cap", adding that Mugabe, 93, had accepted the role.

His spokesman told the same newspaper on Tuesday that Zimbabwe's sole leader since independence from Britain in 1980 had only heard about the appointment via the media.

"Had anything been put to the president ... (he) would have found such a request to be an awkward one," Charamba was quoted as saying, citing Zimbabwe's role as a tobacco producer.

"The WHO cannot take back what it never gave in the first place, and as far as he is concerned, all this hullabaloo over a non-appointment is in fact a non-event."

Charamba did not respond to calls seeking further comment.

Mugabe's critics were outraged by Tedros' announcement, saying he was rewarding a man whose government had presided over the collapse of Zimbabwe's health system.

In Geneva, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a U.N. briefing that there were "no fixed guidelines" for appointing a WHO goodwill ambassador, but that the director-general or his deputies had the power to select them.

On Tedros' decision to rescind Mugabe's appointment, he said: "I think in terms of transparency we were pretty good. A, it was tweeted and B it appeared on the website with the statements immediately."

Charamba said the fact that Zimbabwe was a producer and exporter of tobacco, mostly to China, would have meant Mugabe campaigning against a crop that underpins the economy.

Tobacco is Zimbabwe's single largest foreign currency earner, bringing in an average $800 million annually in the last four years, according to official data.

"To be seen to be playing goodwill ambassador in respect of an agency which has a well-defined stance on tobacco growing and tobacco selling, that would have been a contradiction," Charamba said.

"In other words, he was not going to oblige the invitation had it come his way anyway."

A Western diplomat in Geneva told Reuters: "It was a mistake, apparently there were no preparations or consultations.

"It seems the idea was cooked up in a small group in Uruguay. He acted quickly to rescind it, some would have waited.

"But it will be interesting to see what the damage is," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Islamabad: Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Tuesday reconfirmed Pakistan's commitment to the "war on terror" during a meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, saying his country had "produced results" fighting the region's Islamist militants.

Relations between uneasy allies United States and Pakistan have frayed in recent years, with Washington accusing Islamabad of turning a blind eye or helping Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network militants who stage attacks in Afghanistan. Pakistan denies doing so.

President Donald Trump has vowed to get tough with Pakistan unless it changed its behaviour, with US officials threatening further reductions in aid and mooting targeted sanctions against Pakistani officials.

Tillerson, on a tour of Asia and the Middle East, arrived in Pakistan on Tuesday afternoon and met with Abbasi, as well as Pakistan's powerful army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

"We are committed in the war against terror,"," Abbasi told Tillerson, as the two men sat facing each other on a long table.

"We have produced results. And we are looking forward to moving ahead with the US and building a tremendous relationship," added Abbasi, who sat next to Bajwa.

During a short part of the meeting available to media, Tillerson told the Pakistani delegation that the nuclear-armed nation was an important US ally in the region.

"(Pakistan is) important regionally to our joint goals of providing peace and security to the region and providing opportunity for greater economic relationship as well," Tillerson said.

As well as support for the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network, another sticking point in the relationship has been growing closeness by the United States to India, Pakistan's arch-foe and neighbour.

Tillerson said last week that the Trump administration wanted to "dramatically deepen" cooperation with New Delhi, partly to offset Chinese influence in Asia. Trump has also called for greater Indian role in Afghanistan.

But this deepening in ties has alarmed Pakistan, which has rejected a greater political role for India for Afghanistan as a "red line" for Islamabad.
Madrid: Catalonia's leader cannot solve its political crisis with Madrid just by calling regional elections, Spain's justice minister said on Tuesday, dampening hopes of a quick fix for a dispute that has rattled investors and fractured the country.

The Spanish government says it will impose direct rule on Catalonia from Friday to counter an illegal independence push, invoking never-before-used powers to fire the government of the northeastern region that is critical to the country's economy.

The Catalan parliament will meet on Thursday to agree on a response to Madrid, something many analysts said could pave the way for a formal declaration of independence.

Secessionists in Catalonia say that an independence referendum held on Oct. 1 - which drew only a 43 percent turnout and was mostly shunned by Catalans who wish to remain in Spain - has accorded them a mandate to claim statehood.

Catalonia said on Monday it was confident all officials including police would defy attempts by Madrid to enforce direct rule, raising fears among Spain's European allies of separatist contagion affecting other parts of the continent.

Spanish political leaders, influential business lobbies and most Catalonia newspapers have urged Carles Puigdemont to call a regional election before he is stripped out of his authority.

They say direct rule from Madrid, which was the norm during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, would be a humiliation for Catalonia and pose a serious risk of social and economic unrest.

Puigdemont has remained silent on the matter of elections. Some of his senior advisers have said holding a vote is a possibility while others have ruled it out. His pro-secession allies are also divided.

The Spanish government said a snap election would be a first step but Puigdemont would also have to withdraw an ambiguous declaration of independence he made earlier this month.

"When the government proposes an option so extreme as Article 155 (powers to cancel Catalonia's autonomous status), it's because we believe that there has been a serious failure by Puigdemont to meet his obligations," Justice Minister Rafael Catala said during a radio interview.

"Everything is not fixed just by calling an election."

Catala said that if Puigdemont appeared before the Spanish Senate, which plans to authorise direct rule on Friday, it would be a positive step in finding a solution to the conflict.

The Madrid government has refused to meet with the Catalan leader until he drops the call for independence, however, and Catala said any appearance by Puigdemont had to be within a legal and constitutional framework.

"If his appearance is within the constitution and the law we'll be delighted...But if it's just to ratify his position on Catalonia's independence, sadly we will not be able to do anything else than continuing with the measures already set by the government," said Catala.
Washington: The United States is taking steps and considering a range of further actions over Myanmar's treatment of its Rohingya Muslim minority, including targeted sanctions under its Global Magnitsky law, the State Department said on Monday.

"We express our gravest concern with recent events in Myanmar's Rakhine state and the violent, traumatic abuses Rohingya and other communities have endured," it said in a statement.

It added: "It is imperative that any individuals or entities responsible for atrocities, including non-state actors and vigilantes, be held accountable."

Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar in large numbers since late August when Rohingya insurgent attacks sparked a ferocious military response, with the fleeing people accusing security forces of arson, killings and rape.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday the United States held Myanmar's military leadership responsible for its crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Tillerson stopped short of saying whether the United States would take any action against Myanmar's military leaders over an offensive that has driven more than 600,000 Rohingya Muslims out of the country, mostly to neighboring Bangladesh.

The State Department made the announcement ahead of US President Donald Trumps maiden visit to the region early next month when he will attend a summit of ASEAN countries, including Myanmar, in Manila.

It marked the strongest US response so far to the months-long Rohingya crisis but came short of applying the most drastic tools at Washingtons disposal such as reimposing broader economic sanctions suspended under the Obama administration.

Critics have accused the Trump administration of acting too slowly and timidly in response to the Rohingya crisis.

The State Department said on Monday: "We are exploring accountability mechanisms available under US law, including Global Magnitsky targeted sanctions."

Measures already taken include ending travel waivers for current and former members of the military in Myanmar, also known as Burma, and barring units and officers in northern Rakhine state from US assistance, it said.

"We have rescinded invitations for senior Burmese security forces to attend US-sponsored events; we are working with international partners to urge that Burma enables unhindered access to relevant areas for the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission, international humanitarian organizations, and media," the statement said.

In addition, Washington is "consulting with allies and partners on accountability options at the UN, the UN Human Rights Council, and other appropriate venues," it said.

AIMED AT TOP GENERALS?

Interviews with more than a dozen diplomats and government officials based in Washington, Myanmar's capital, Yangon, and Europe have revealed that punitive measures aimed specifically at top generals were among a range of options being discussed in response to the Rohingya crisis.

Such measures could include the possibility of imposing asset freezes and prohibiting American citizens from doing business with them.

Washington has worked hard to establish close ties with Myanmar's civilian-led government led by Nobel laureate and former dissident Aung San Suu Kyi in the face of competition from strategic rival China.

Forty-three US lawmakers urged the Trump administration to reimpose US travel bans on Myanmar's military leaders and prepare targeted sanctions against those responsible for the crackdown.

The Magnitsky Act, originally passed in 2012, imposed visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials linked to the 2009 death in prison of Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian whistleblower. It has since been expanded to become the Global Magnitsky Act, which could be used against the generals in Myanmar.
BEDFORD  The Bedford County Board of Supervisors wants the state to designate a roughly 16-mile stretch of U.S. 221  from the town of Bedford to Lynchburg  as the Lacey E. Putney Memorial Highway.

The initiative was among several legislative priorities approved by supervisors Monday in advance of the 2018 General Assembly session, which begins in January.

Former Del. Lacey Putney, a Bedford County native and Virginias longest-serving legislator who died Aug. 26 at the age of 89, represented the area for 52 years in the House of Delegates.

Supervisor John Sharp, who represents District 4, which includes Forest, had proposed designating a portion of U.S. 221 as a memorial highway for Putney at the Sept. 25 supervisors meeting.

I call him Mr. Bedford, Sharp said after Mondays meeting. He represented the county for beyond half a century; I think its the least we can do to honor how he served our county.

County Administrator Carl Boggess said Putney supported funding for Thomas Jeffersons Poplar Forest and the National D-Day Memorial, which are both in Bedford County, among many other initiatives.

The boards resolution requests the Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia Senate pass a joint resolution to designate a portion of U.S. 221 from the town of Bedford east to the countys boundary with Lynchburg in Putneys honor.

The resolution states the Virginia Department of Transportation would place and maintain the markers to indicate the proposed memorial highway. If approved, the supervisors want to dedicate the memorial highway on Putneys birthday on June 27, 2018.

Mondays vote follows a suggestion during the Sept. 14 meeting of the Bedford County School Board that the road near the new Liberty Middle School be named after Putney.

In advance of the General Assembly session, county officials and staff will reach out to area representatives Sen. Steven Newman, R-Bedford County; Del. Scott Garrett, R-Lynchburg; Del. Kathy Byron, R-Bedford County; and Del. Terry Austin, R-Botetourt, Boggess said.

Boggess also said the county works with the Virginia Association of Counties to assist with legislative priorities.

Other legislative priorities for the county OKd by supervisors Monday include requesting increased funding to improve internet access in the county.

The internet service is terrible here in a lot of pockets of the county, said Supervisor Bill Thomasson, who represents District 1, which includes Hardy and parts of Smith Mountain Lake.

Earlier Monday, the countys broadband authority, which is comprised of supervisors, signed off on having county staff members work on a grant application to the Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission as a co-applicant with Comcast for the commissions Last Mile Broadband Program.

This project will bring high- speed internet to the southern portion of Bedford County and could involve many miles of reconstruction, the agenda packet states.

Broadband Authority board member Kevin Mele said after the authority meeting if the grant is awarded, Comcast could pay at least half of the cost of the project and the commission could fund the rest. The total cost is still to be determined, Mele said.

Designating internet access as a General Assembly funding priority follows a vote by the broadband authority in July to hire The Atlantic Group of Companies as a consultant for $53,000. County staff and the consultant will meet with the Broadband Authority in February or March to work on a strategic plan for the next year.

The county also wants the Commonwealth Transportation Board to receive $150 million annually to award revenue-sharing projects statewide, which are projects paid by the localities and the Commonwealth Transportation Board.

Boggess said the revenue-sharing program had $100 million to award to road projects this year, but the county would like the state legislature to increase that to $150 million.

Most recently, the transportation board approved a revenue-sharing project this summer in Bedford County totaling about $1.8 million that would extend the cul-de-sac at Corporate Park Drive, located off of Perrowville Road near Jefferson Forest High School, about 0.3 mile to U.S. 221 near Elkton Farm Road on Virginia 666.
In my political life I try to be honest and objective and I try to speak in the national interest rather than parochial interest. For that reason, I have found that groups with specific, rather than national interests often attack me. It was the same during the Rhodesian era. I joined the national struggle in 1975 while I was at the University of Zimbabwe and I felt that no whites were speaking on behalf of black rights, Cross said.
Government must stop disenfranchising millions of Zimbabweans in the forthcoming key 2018 vote by refusing to allow the Diaspora vote, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) has said.



The rights lawyers said they were worried that the government continues to procrastinate in implementing recommendations of the African Union organs such as the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR), which in 2013 delivered a landmark ruling directing governments to allow citizens in the Diaspora to vote in national elections.



The rights lawyers said there was a ploy to bar Zimbabweans not resident in the country from voting in the 2018 presidential, parliamentary and municipal polls.



The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) head Rita Makarau has ruled out the possibility of expatriates voting from outside the country, saying the law does not provide for that.

She cited a Constitutional Court (Con-Court) ruling dismissing Tavengwa Bukaibenyus bid to compel the electoral management body to provide mechanisms for those in the Diaspora to cast their ballot.



There is an issue that has come up time and again and we need to put an end to that. Will diasporeans be able to register to vote? Yes, they can register to vote.



They can come back here, present themselves before a voter registration officer, with their proof of residence and an address within Zimbabwe. Come voting day, voting has been allocated to a polling station. Will we establish polling stations outside Zimbabwe? No! Makarau said, adding the law as it currently stands does not give us powers to do so.

The Con-Court, although it was using the old Constitution said no. We are being guided by that ruling unless it is changed.



I just wanted that to be clear. We are not going to set up a polling station outside Zimbabwe not because we do not want to, but because the law said we cannot and the Con-Court, which is the highest court in the land, has come up in support of that position. So if you are to fight that battle do not bring it to Zec, please take it back to court.



Opposition parties claim Zecs move is clearly designed to deny the opposition millions of votes from mostly illegal immigrants eking out a living in SA and other foreign countries who are decidedly anti-President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF, they said.



ZLHR also called for the speeding up of electoral reforms to ensure that the right to vote for all citizens is upheld through the creation of a conducive electoral environment that guarantees the respect and enjoyment of universal suffrage and fundamental freedoms. Daily News
Newly-appointed Foreign Affairs minister Walter Mzembi could be ruing his attempts to ingratiate himself with President Robert Mugabe after masterminding his short-lived appointment as the first ever World Health Organisation (WHO) African ambassador for Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) in Uruguays capital city of Montevideo last week.



The Daily News can reveal that Mzembi, who has the gift of the garb, actually wanted Mugabe to occupy a much higher position of WHO global ambassador for NCDs, a position previously held by former New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg.





Foreign Affairs minister Walter Mzembi had said This is a major health diplomacy coup for Zimbabwe and should be celebrated given the adverse impact of NCDs on the well-being of Zimbabweans particularly cancers, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and mental health diseases,.

President Mugabe has in the past acquitted himself in health diplomacy, and most recently his advocacy for resource mobilisation for Ebola stricken countries, Liberia, Guniea, and Sierra Leone at the United Nations in 2015, is still very fresh and widely acknowledged by the beneficiary countries.

He said it was on the back of this legacy that it was only appropriate to lobby for a distinguished role for him in the fight for NCDs, which clearly need a champion in Africa.





But Mugabe's spokesman, George Charamba said yesterday his boss was never appointed ambassador by WHO.
THE Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has dismissed the recent increase in drug prices by up to 70 percent as unjustified because the central bank was allocating $4 million to pharmacies weekly to import drugs.



According to the Association of Healthcare Funders of Zimbabwe (AHFoZ), some pharmacies increased drug prices by up to 70 percent early this month, while others have been demanding payment in United States dollars only.

In an interview yesterday, RBZ Governor Dr John Mangudya said the price hikes were tantamount to abusing patients.



This countrys economy is not a huge economy, this is not justified at all; its abuse of consumers and bad business practice. We need people to behave because there is no way prices of drugs can rise by up to 70 percent. How much did they buy the foreign currency for on the parallel market to justify their prices? People get money from the banks and they abuse the system and use the parallel market to peg their prices, he said.



Dr Mangudya said the central bank allocates $4 million every week to pharmacies for the purchase of drugs and medicine, as this was one of the sectors on its foreign currency priority list. He said the amount translated to 40 percent of the forex required by pharmacies, with the other 60 percent coming from banks. In a statement last week, AHFoZ said it had engaged the Retail Pharmacies Association (RPA) to resolve the problem.





The AHFoZ wishes to advise medical aid members that most pharmacies have increased the price of drugs by between 30 percent and 70 percent over the past three weeks, said AHFoZ. Some pharmacies are charging huge shortfalls, while some are insisting on cash payments in United States dollars and rejecting medical aid cards and other payment methods such as by debit card Ecocash or bond notes. AHFoZ said it was working to ensure that pharmacies reverted to previous prices. AHFoZ advised medical societies to approach individual pharmacies to negotiate contracts for their members to alleviate the plight of patients. Following recent price hikes, Government advised members of the public to remain calm as it puts in place measures to curtail the threat of shortages. Herald
Opposition parties have accused President Robert Mugabe of causing more harm than good for his willy-nilly use of Statutory Instruments (SIs) which they claim has rendered Parliament ineffective.



A Statutory Instrument is a form of legislation which allows the provisions of an Act of Parliament to be subsequently brought into force or altered without Parliament having to pass a new Act.



Since 2016, Mugabes government passed over 130 SIs. MDC spokesperson Obert Gutu said for many years now, Zimbabwe has been run like a de facto banana republic.



The role of Parliament under the Zanu PF dictatorship has been trivialised and trashed. In reality, Parliament has for long been treated as the weakest and least funded of the three arms of the State such as the executive, the judiciary and the legislature.



This is the main reason why the majority of Zanu PF Cabinet ministers hardly attend Parliament to answer questions from backbenchers. As and when the Zanu PF regime feels like, they simply pass legislation through enacting Statutory Instruments, effectively by-passing Parliament. This is typical of fascist regimes where Parliament is usually treated as a window-dressing institution that, in reality, is very weak and contemptuously treated by the executive arm of the State, Gutu said.



Welshman Ncube-led MDC spokesperson Kurauone Chihwayi said that Zanu PF and Mugabe are using dirty tricks to bypass the Parliament through use of SIs.



The use of Statutory Instruments looks like a well-designed strategy to evade the legislature. This is a dirty way of parking the responsibilities of Parliament.



The legislature has been robbed of its constitutional mandate by the executive which has resorted to Statutory Instruments to protect its interests, Chihwayi said.



Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesperson Jacob Mafume said in Zimbabwe the laws are fluid, adding that within a short space of time a single piece of legislation can change several times.



We kept arguing that the ban on imports was premature considering the fact that local industry has no capacity to supply the local market. We urged the government to take an approach of capacitating, incentivising local industry as well as protecting it against unfair competition.



As usual no one paid attention. As expected prices shot up, prices of basic commodities doubled, trebled or quadrupled in matters of months this albeit aided by a couple of other policy blunders which has not spared the citizen a crisis free day, he added.



Some of the SIs that have been passed include SI 64 which banned importation of basic goods, the Presidential Powers Temporary Measures) (Amendment of Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Act and Issue of Bond Notes) Regulations, 2016, Food and Food Standards (Food Fortification) Regulations, 2016, Public Order and Security (Temporary Prohibition of Public Demonstrations in the Central Business District of the Harare Central Police District) Order, 2016 and Control of Goods (Open General Import Licence) (No. 2) (Amendment) Notice, 2016 (No. 8), among a list of other SIs. Daily News
Smoking Pot May Not Be

as Safe as You Think
On Friday evening a person walking in a sparsely populated area of Galveston Beach in southeast Texas spotted the body of a young boy in the surf and called the police. Three days later, authorities have still not be able to identify the boy. Local police can say that the boy is white and appears to be between the ages of 3 and 5, the Dallas Morning News reports. At a news conference Friday Galveston Police Capt. Joshua Schirard called the case "unusual." "Its very difficult as a police officer, as a police agency and as a community to have the death of a small child, lying in the sand and to not have any answers to give anyone, he said.

Local police searched the missing-child databases of surrounding counties and federal agencies, including the Coast Guard and US Customs, but found nothing. In a press release, Galveston police say they had brought in "one of the most experienced and best forensic artists in the nation" to help them make a positive ID, the New York Daily News reports. Police describe the boy as approximately three feet tall with black hair and brown eyes. They are currently treating the case as a homicide. (Read more Galveston stories.)
A Canadian man's nut allergy apparently proved fatal after he performed air quality tests at a building where walnut shells were being used to blast paint off the walls. On Oct. 2, Justin Mathews, 33, spent roughly 20 minutes inside an Edmonton fire station where a walnut-based sandblasting product was in use before complaining that he couldn't breathe, report the CBC and National Post. Mathewswho had always been very cautious about his allergy, according to his familythen went into anaphylactic shock and collapsed, his mom says. He was taken off life support five days after arriving at University of Alberta Hospital, where doctors determined he'd suffered damage to 80% of his brain, reports the National Post.

Advanced Remediation Solutions, which performed the sandblasting, says nut oils are removed during processing of walnut-based products that have been used in sandblasting for a decade without causing allergic reactions. But to ensure others aren't injured or killed, Mathews' sister, Shari Reklow, says walnut-based products need to be regulated "in commercial and industrial applications" just as in food. In addition to warnings on product labels, she wants posted warnings about the products at job sites. "How is it OK that my brother walked into a job site where they were blasting it all over?" Reklow says. "If he'd seen a sign or a warning, he wouldn't have even gone in there," Mathews' dad adds, per Allergic Living. (Read more allergy stories.)
Police in Michigan say prosecutors are "throwing the book" at five teenagers accused of throwing a rock from a highway overpass, killing a construction worker who was on his way home to his fiancee and their 5-year-old son. Kyle Anger, 17; Mark Sekelsky, 16; Mikadyn Payne, 16; Alexzander Miller, 15; and Trevor Gray, 15; were charged as adults with second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and other offenses Monday, the Detroit News reports. Police say the teens threw at least 20 rocks from an I-75 overpass near Flint last Wednesday, damaging four other cars and killing 32-year-old Kenneth White when a 6-pound rock went through the windshield of the van he was riding in. Police say that after throwing the rocks, the teens had dinner at McDonald's.

Anger is being held in the county jail and the four younger teens are in a regional detention center. Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton says the charge is second-degree murder instead of first because he doesn't believe it was a deliberate attempt to take a life. "It was a willful and wanton act that resulted in somebodys death," he says. "It's not a prank. It's second-degree murder," says Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell, per ABC 12. He says the teens, all Clio High School students, were arrested after a lot of "good old-fashioned police work." "At the end of the day, nobody wins," the sheriff says. "The young boys are charged as criminals, a young boy lost his father, and all the families are left grieving." A GoFundMe page to help White's family has raised more than $47,000. (Read more Michigan stories.)
American troops and the Nigerien soldiers they were patrolling with fought ISIS-allied militants for two hours before help arrived, the Pentagon says. Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a new timeline Monday of the deadly ambush, the Wall Street Journal reports. "This is a very complex situation that they found themselves in, and a pretty tough firefight," Dunford said. Four American troops and five Nigerien soldiers were killed Oct. 4 when they were ambushed by around 50 militants armed with machine guns and rockets. Dunford told reporters that it was an hour before American troops called for help from nearby French forces, and another hour after that before French Mirage jet fighters arrived at the scene near the border with Mali.

For reasons that Dunford says are unclear, the French jets didn't initially attack the militants, though French helicopters and Nigerien reinforcements joined the fight later in the day. The slain Americans were part of a group of 12 US troops and 30 Nigeriens on a routine patrol to the remote village of Tongo Tongo, the Washington Post reports. They were ambushed after leaving the village, having spent the night there. Dunford said the investigation will look into whether their objective changed at some point, whether they had adequate communications, and why the body of Sgt. La David Johnson wasn't recovered for two days. The military is also believed to be investigating whether villagers delayed troops' departure to give militants time to set up the ambush. (Johnson's widow says she hasn't been allowed to see his body.)
Authorities in Australia say they're "gobsmacked" by the sheer stupidity of a group of men seen swimming to a crocodile trap in Queenslandand getting inside with the bait. The men were spotted getting into the mouth of the trap at the Port Douglas marina, close to where a crocodile is suspected of killing an elderly dementia patient earlier this month, reports the Guardian. "This is incredibly stupid and dangerous behavior," says Julia Leu, a local mayor. "I'm wondering if these fellows are vying for the idiots of the year award or the idiots of the century award."

"Srsly? The meat we put in these traps is bait. For crocodiles. Don't swim in them! It's stupid, and illegal," tweeted Queensland Environment Minister Steven Miles. "I've seen some pretty ridiculous things in my time as environment minister, particularly when it comes to crocodiles, but this one takes the cake," he told reporters. He warned that the traps are dangerous even without the crocodiles they're designed to attract. The Queensland government recently introduced a $15,000 fine for interfering with the traps after a similar incident, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports. (This guy was mauled by a crocodile after jumping in a river to prove a point.)
Four-time Iditarod champion Dallas Seavey denied Monday that he administered banned drugs to his dogs in this year's race and has withdrawn from the 2018 race in protest of the allegation. "I have never given any banned substance to my dogs," Seavey said in a video posted to his Facebook page. He didn't immediately return calls to the AP after the Iditarod Trail Committee identified him Monday as the musher who had four dogs test positive for a banned opioid pain reliever after finishing the race last March in Nome. Seavey said he fully expected the ITC to ban him from the race for speaking out. There's a so-called gag rule preventing mushers from making statements critical of the race or sponsors. "I have done absolutely nothing wrong," the 30-year-old Seavey said, adding he wouldn't be "thrown under the bus" by the race's governing board.

The ITC met in an emergency meeting and decided to release the musher's identity "because of the level of unhealthy speculation involved," after initially refusing on a lawyer's advice. Organizers relented after scores of professional mushers demanded that race officials identify the musher. A statement from the Iditarod Official Finishers Club was signed by 83 current and former competitors who called for the musher to be named within 72 hours; Seavey did not sign. An Iditarod rep said it's not clear if Seavey will be banned because of his comments; he won't face discipline involving the dogs' failed drug tests. After Seavey was named, club president Wade Marrs said he believes the musher has too much integrity and brains to administer drugs before an expected test. "I don't really know what to think at the moment," Marrs said. "It's a very touchy situation."

(Read more Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race stories.)
A tiny for-profit company out of Montana has landed a $300 million contract to help get the power back on in Puerto Rico, reports the Spokesman-Review. How tiny? Whitefish Energy had just two full-time employees on the day Hurricane Maria slammed into the island. However, the company suggests that figure is misleading because its business model is based on being able to ramp up quickly with the hiring of hundreds of subcontractors. Still, the contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority seems "unusual," in the words of the Washington Post. It's not only the biggest one awarded there in the wake of Hurricane Maria, it also seems to go against disaster protocol. That is, PREPA could have activated "mutual aid" agreements with other public utilities, which would have been obligated to help. Florida's, for instance, reached out publicly to offer assistance but never heard back.

"I'm scratching my head wondering how it all adds up," a former Energy Department official tells the Post. PREPA's chief has said Whitefish was the first "available to arrive and they were the ones that first accepted terms and conditions for PREPA. Whitefish CEO Andy Techmanski, meanwhile, tells CNN that "we called each other." Whitefish is based in Whitefish, Mont., the hometown of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, but both Techmanski and Zinke say the fact that they know each other played no role. The Daily Beast, meanwhile, reports the company is financed by a private equity firm called HBC Investments, founded by Joe Colonnetta. And Colonnetta is a big supporter of President Trump: Last year, he gave $20,000 to the Trump Victory PAC, $2,700 to Trump's primary election campaign, $2,700 to his general election campaign, and $30,700 to the Republican National Committee. (Read more Puerto Rico stories.)
Mark Wahlberg says he hopes God will forgive him for his turn as a porn star in PT Anderson's 1997 film Boogie Nights. Wahlberg told the Chicago Tribune ahead of an event with Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich on Friday that he hopes "God is a movie fan and also forgiving," because he says he's made "some poor choices" in the past. Wahlberg listed Boogie Nights when asked if he's prayed for forgiveness for any of his movies. Boogie Nights follows the career of Wahlberg's character, Dirk Diggler, through the porn industry in the 1970s and 1980s, the AP notes.

Wahlberg has talked frequently about his Catholic faith and hosted an event honoring Pope Francis during his US visit in 2015. Wahlberg jokingly asked the pope's forgiveness for the movie Ted at that event. At the Friday night gathering of 1,000 or so attendees, Wahlberg also talked about his own troubled pasthe'd been been involved with gangs as a teen and was even jailed for a racist assault on a Vietnamese immigrantand said he continues to "work hard on myself." He also notes he carves out time for early morning prayer by retiring at 7:30pm each night. "This is way past my bedtime!" he joked to the crowd.

(Read more Mark Wahlberg stories.)
Rex Tillerson's visit to Afghanistan Monday was cloaked in mystery in more ways than one. Following the secretary of state's surprise meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghaniwhich was only reported after the factthe US Embassy released a photo of the two men seated together in a room with large TV screens, a clock, and a fire alarm visible behind them, giving the location as the capital of Kabul. Ghani's office likewise said the pair had met in Kabul. But in the photo it released, the clock and fire alarm had vanished from the wall. As the New York Times reports, the red fire alarm and military-style clock indicated the meeting took place not in Kabul but at the US military base in Bagram, more than 30 miles away.

The apparent alteration of the photowhich a photo expert says still showed a cable that would've powered the clock and fire alarmmight have been an attempt to conceal the meeting's location, or to "project strength and advance a positive narrative about the country's security," notes Fox News. Either way, the US didn't mimic the move, though it did issue a total news blackout to conceal Tillerson's trip from Qatar to Afghanistan until after his safe return. Following the visit, Tillerson called on "moderate voices among the Taliban, voices that do not want to continue to fight forever," to "engage in a reconciliation process" that could end in their involvement in government, if they abandon terrorism, reports the Washington Post. (Read more Afghanistan stories.)
Cat got your tongueor maybe a bear? No one would have pointed the finger at one particular Asiatic black bear (also known as a moon bear) holed up in a Myanmar monastery: He had too much of his own tongue to handle, let alone anyone else's. The Guardian reports on the plight of Nyan htoo, who recently underwent emergency surgery to remove 7 pounds of tissue from a tongue so large he couldn't keep it in his mouth. Instead, Nyan htoo dragged it on the floor, and the BBC reports the weight of the tongue fatigued him so much that he often had to rest his head against the side of his cage. "I've worked with bears for over 10 years and I've never seen anything like it," says Heather Bacon, a University of Edinburgh veterinarian who was part of the team that operated on Nyan htoo, whose name means "bright." She adds his malady was "pretty astonishing."

Nyan htoowho'd ended up at the monastery with his brother after they were abducted by Burmese traffickers, then rescued by monksalso couldn't close his mouth. Bacon and others heard about his condition, which they speculate was either a genetic issue or a form of elephantiasis, swelling brought about by a mosquito-carried parasite that causes infection. The Telegraph notes that vets had taken excess tissue from Nyan htoo's tongue last year, but before long the swelling came back in full force. The surgery this time around took about four hours. Per Stuff.co.nz, Nyan htoo is now playing with his brother again, though he'll have a learning curve in adapting to day-to-day tasks without his giant tongue. "We have been able to make a tangible improvement in the quality of Nyan htoo's life," Bacon says. (This bear made 200 sheep leap to their deaths.)
A 13-year-old boy is in custody on suspicion of murder in Oklahoma, where authorities say he shot a playmate with a crossbow after a "disagreement." Police in Lincoln County responded to a 911 call around 6pm Saturday and found 10-year-old Austin Almanza dead. He'd been shot with a broadhead arrow that traveled through his abdomen before hitting his 8-year-old brother, Ayden, in the arm, police say, per the Oklahoman and KFOR. Ayden was out of a local hospital Sunday, per KOCO, while a 13-year-old boy remains in custody as an investigation continues.

Sheriff Charlie Dougherty says the 13-year-old was playing with Austin and Ayden in a treehouse on a vacant lot, as he'd done several times before, when the boys had their alleged disagreement, per KOCO and BuzzFeed News. The teenager then picked up the crossbow and fired an arrow fitted with a broadhead blade, Dougherty says. "Austin is not dead because of an accident. He's dead because of an action that took place," the sheriff adds. The identity of the 13-year-old hasn't been released, as he's a minor. Dougherty says charges against him are expected next week. (This man killed his mom and two brothers with a crossbow weeks before his planned wedding.)
President Trump heads to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a meeting with GOP senators, but his feud with one of them in particular heated up in advance. In appearances on morning talk shows, Bob Corker said the president should leave senators alone to work on a tax plan. I would recommend that, based on recent history and just interactions, Corker said on Today, per the Washington Post. I think thats the best way for us to have success. Trump quickly responded on Twitter. "Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts," Trump wrote. "Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse [sic] when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump," he added. "Look at his record!"

After which, Corker returned fire on Twitter, criticizing the "same untruths from an utterly untruthful president" and, notably, using a hashtag of "AlertTheDaycareStaff." (The Post agrees that Trump is stretching the truth on both Iran and the endorsement issues.) Politico notes that the attacks and counter-attacks come just hours before what is supposed to be a "unity" meeting at which Trump and Republicans will talk about changes to the tax system and health care. Corker, meanwhile, doubled down on his Trump insults in a CNN interview. "I don't know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard, and debases our country in a way that he does, but he does." In fact, he added that Trump's legacy as president will be the "debasing of our nation." CNN analyst Chris Cillizza rounds up and provides commentary on more of Corker's slams. (Read more taxes stories.)
A Texas father is facing life in prison after police say he changed his story regarding his missing 3-year-old daughter, admitting she died while he "physically assisted" her in drinking milk, the Washington Post reports. Wesley Mathews was arrested Monday night after "voluntarily" providing a new statement to the Richardson Police Department. The arrest warrant was posted online Tuesday. Per the Houston Chronicle, the warrant states Mathews was trying to get his adopted daughter Sherin, who has developmental issues, to drink milk in their garage at 3am Oct. 7, but she was refusing. That's when he "assisted" her, according to the warrant. "She was coughing and her breathing slowed," the warrant states. "Eventually, Wesley Mathews no longer felt a pulse on the child and believed she had died."

Mathews told police he took Sherin's body out of the house and then waited five hours before calling 911 to report her missing, the warrant states. Police believe they "most likely" found Sherin's body in a culvert near her home on Sunday. Police say Mathews originally claimed back on Oct. 7 that he'd told Sherin to stand outside alone as punishment for refusing to drink her milk. He said he thought a coyote may have snatched her. Police say Mathews said he did laundry while waiting for her to come home before finally reporting her missing. He was charged with neglect and released on bond. He's now been charged with injury to a child, a felony punishable by up to life in prison. NBC DFW reports Mathews' 4-year-old biological daughter has been placed in protective custody and will remain there until at least a hearing scheduled for next month. (Read more child death stories.)
"He was singularly focused and obsessed with mass murders," the FBI writes about Adam Lanza in a newly unsealed interview. The New York Daily News reports the FBI released more than 1,500 pages of documents on the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting Tuesday. Most of the heavily redacted files consist of grand jury subpoenas and interviews with neighbors and others regarding the shooter, Adam Lanza, who killed 26 people, including 20 first-graders, according to the Hartford Courant. Lanza, 20, killed himself during the 2012 shooting. Here are some of the details revealed in the unsealed documents:

A neighbor said FBI agents came to the Lanza home years before the shooting after Lanza hacked into a government computer system. The neighbor says Lanza's mother, Nancy, was told Lanza could have a future with the FBI.

Another source told agents that Lanza had become seriously withdrawn before the shooting. He hadn't left his bedroom in three months and only communicated with his mother through email.

A number of people said Storm Sandy deeply upset Lanza when it knocked power out for days. Despite lacking electricity, Lanza refused to leave his room and go to a hotel.

Sources told the FBI Lanza "had no real friends," was "bullied, but not excessively," and was "the weirdest person online." An agent reported Lanza spoke of school shooters "with respect and understanding" and "devoted almost all his internet activity to researching and discussing mass murders and spree killings."

One man told agents Lanza hated his teacher mother, who he killed prior to attacking Sandy Hook Elementary, because he thought she loved her students more than him.

A family friend said Nancy Lanza planned to move her and Adam to Seattle in 2013, thinking it would be good for Adam.

CBS News reports some neighbors told agents they'd gotten death threats after the shooting from a caller identifying himself as Adam Lanza.

(Read more Sandy Hook stories.)
Hillary Clinton may have lost the presidential election, but she hasn't lost the interest of Republicans. USA Today reports GOP lawmakers on Tuesday announced two new investigations involving Clinton. The House Intelligence and House Oversight committees will be investigating the Obama administration's approval of the purchase by a Russian state-owned energy company of a Canadian company whose mines control 20% of the US' uranium supply. Republicans say they want to know if the State Department under Clinton approved the deal because of donations made to the Clinton Foundation. "We're not going to jump to any conclusions at this time," House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes says. "Our job is to get the facts ... and we're going to do just that."

President Trump has been calling for an investigation into the uranium deal for months, NBC News reports. Uranium deal to Russia, with Clinton help and Obama Administration knowledge, is the biggest story that Fake Media doesn't want to follow!" he tweeted last week. On Monday, Clinton called GOP concerns about the deal "baloney." Nine government agencies and a number of federal and state regulators approved the uranium deal. A second investigation by the House Oversight and House Judiciary committees will look into why the FBI isn't charging Clinton for her use of a personal email server. Democrats are criticizing both investigations as attempts to distract from the ongoing investigation into Russia's election meddling and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, according to ABC News. (Read more Hillary Clinton stories.)
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New Delhi:

The Ministry of Finance on Tuesday released data on Goods and Services Tax collection for the month of September 2017. The government has collected Rs 92,150 Cr from 42.91 lakh business up to October 23, 2017.

"The total CGST revenue is Rs. 14,042 crore, SGST revenue is Rs 21,172 crore, IGST revenue Rs 48,948 crore," said Ministry of Finance.

"IGST revenue is Rs 48,948 crore which consists of Rs 23,951 crore of IGST from imports in September 2017," said Ministry of Finance.

Collection under compensation cess stood at Rs 7,988 crore, of which Rs 722 crore is Compensation Cess from imports in September.

Till Monday, 42.91 lakh business entities had filed initial GSTR-3B returns for September.

As per the data available, GST collections for the maiden month of July were over Rs 95,000 crore, while for August the figure was over Rs 91,000 crore.

September was the third month of GST roll out.

GST which amalgamates over a dozen taxes, including excise duty and service Tax, was rolled out from July 1.

With PTI inputs

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New Delhi :

The Governor of Maharashtra and Chancellor of University of Mumbai Vidyasagar Rao removed Vice Chancellor Dr. Sanjay Deshmukh from office on Tuesday, said a statement released by the office of the Public Relations Officer (PRO).

Chancellor Rao exercised the powers vested onto him under Section 11(14) (e) of the Maharashtra Public Universities Act, 2016 to remove the VC said the statement.

The VC was removed on grounds of gross negligence and failure in implementing the On-Screen Marking system, to declare the results of examinations held in Summer-2017 within the time limit prescribed in the act and for his failure to comply with the directions issued by the Chancellor from time to time, regarding early declaration of results.
New Delhi:

After grabbing eyeballs with their recent television commercial, celebrity couple Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma are under spotlight yet another time. If several media reports turn out to be true, Indian skipper Virat Kohli is all set to tie the knot with B-town diva Anushka Sharma in December.

According to reports, Virat has already confirmed his unavailability for the limited-overs series against Sri Lanka in December and some 'personal reasons' are existing behind the same.

Virat and Anushka, the adorable lovebirds have been dating each other for a couple of years after the 'PK' star broke up with ex boyfriend Ranveer Singh back in 2013.

Though the news of Viruskha's break up had created a lot of buzz in 2015 on social networking sites, Kohli came out in open support of Anushka and rubbished the flying murmurs regarding the same.

Also Read: Did Virat Kohli reveal Anushka's nickname?

However, the much-talked about couple is yet to announce the final dates of their grand wedding to the world.

In their latest ad titled 'Naye Rishte Naye Vaade', the two have been seen trying to guess the wedding vows of a couple who are tying the knot and the next thing you will hear is the most unusual and the cutest promises one could make to their partner.

The commercial becomes more real and touchy after Virat takes the last vow and tells Anushka that he will always take care of her, to which she smiles and says the same back.

This latest endearing ad featuring Virushka will surely melt your heart.

On the workfront, while Indian captain Virat Kohli has recently become the 2nd batsman in history to slam hundred in the 200th ODI, Anushka will be next seen in her upcoming horror drama 'Pari'.

Also Read: Virat Kohlis appeal for noise-free Diwali backfires, trolled heavily

Also starring Parambrata Chatterjee in the lead, the Prosit Roy directorial is expected to hit the screens on February 9, 2018.

Let's have a look at some of the heart-stopping pictures of this lovely couple.

Much needed break with my a A post shared by Virat Kohli (@virat.kohli) on Jul 12, 2017 at 8:56am PDT

Everyday is a valentine day if you want it to be. You make everyday seem like one for me aa. @anushkasharma A post shared by Virat Kohli (@virat.kohli) on Feb 14, 2017 at 11:33pm PST

The best couple ever YYYYYsa . . . #viratkohli #anushka #couple #love A post shared by Virat Anushka Kohli (@virat_anushka_club) on Mar 11, 2017 at 7:13am PST

Here comes another one YYYY Aww..... Just love them #follow if you love them too.. YYYYY A post shared by virushka (@virat_and_anushka) on Feb 21, 2017 at 6:57pm PST

Love u both Happy to see them together YYY A post shared by virushka (@virat_and_anushka) on Sep 5, 2016 at 4:39am PDT

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Mumbai:

Bollywood superstar Salman Khan will treat his fan on the occasion of EId in 2019 as he has booked the release of his next film, "Bharat" on that day.

The 51-year-old star will play the title role in the movie, which will be directed by Ali Abbas Zafar. With "Bharat", the actor is continuing with the trend of releasing his films on Eid.

The movie is an official adaptation of 2014 South Korean film, "Ode to My Father", which narrates modern Korean history from the 1950s to the modern day through the life of an ordinary man and events such as the Hungnam Evacuation during the 1950 Korean War.

The film will also depict the government's decision to dispatch nurses and miners to West Germany in the '60s and the Vietnam War.

"Bharat" will be backed by Atul Agnihotri, who attended the South Korean film's screening at Berlin Film Festival, where it was identified as potential content for the Indian masses.

Agnihotri says their adaptation will be inspired by the original movie but the story will be based closer to home.

"It's the journey of a country and also a person, both of whom go by the name of Bharat.

"That film is just the starting point for ours but since it was an inspiration, we wanted in all fairness to officially own it and acquired the remake rights before going ahead with Bharat," he said in a release.

The producer also said Salman was the right choice to play the role of the protagonist, given his long association with his brother-in-law as an actor, producer and director.

The actor-producer duo's film will hit the celluloid on the festive period once again post the blockbuster 2011 "Bodyguard".

"It's a character that I thought would resonate with him.

It's a huge responsibility making a film with Salman as there are big expectations that come with the job.

"I'm very conscious about Salman's fan base and what they want. And once again, I'm convinced that being a family film it's worthy of coming during the festive time. And anyway, an Eid release is always every producer's preferred choice." Agnihotri added director Zafar is excited and "passionate" to a part of the project.

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New Delhi:

Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday arrived in New Delhi on a one-day working visit. He met President Ram Nath Kovind, PM Narendra Modi, and EAM Sushma Swaraj.



During his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Hyderabad House, President Ghani discussed a range of bilateral, regional, and global issues.



The two leaders expressed their firm resolve to end the menace of terrorism. They also discussed ways to further the shared objective of promoting security and stability in Afghanistan.



"Furthering 'neighbourhood first' policy with a strategic partner. Prime Minister Modi receives president Ghani at Hyderabad House," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.



"Prime Minister Modi and president Ghani discussed range of bilateral, regional and global issues, express firm resolve to end menace of terrorism," he added.



Ahead of his visit, the External Affairs Ministry had said both sides will have the opportunity to review the entire gamut of multifaceted bilateral strategic partnership, including the New Development Partnership.



Ghani said India has reiterated support for negotiated political reconciliation in Afghanistan that is Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled.



India gave us USD 1 billion package of assistance for Brussels Conf. 2016. In effect, every Indian contributed $1. Thank you every Indian, said Afghan president.

Also read: 120 dead as Taliban launches fresh attack at Maiwand base in Afghanistan

Also read: Nikki Haley says India can help US in rebuilding Afghanistan, keeping eye on Pakistan

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New Delhi:

The controversy surrounding the majestic Taj Mahal in Agra doesn't seem to die down as half a dozen activists of Hindu Yuva Vahini on Monday converged in front of the monument and chanted 'Shiva Chalisa'.A

The CISF officials who are there to guard the monument briefly held the activists and asked them for a written apology for breaking rules, reports Times of India.A

The acitvists were handed over to local police and were released after they submitted a written apology, reports said.

Agra: The Members of Rashtriya Swabhimaan Dal & Hindu Yuva Vahini were detained for questioning and released later pic.twitter.com/wgGrK7aAiY a ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) October 24, 2017

This comes days ahead Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is scheduled to visit the magnificent monument on October 26.

Earlier on Wednesday, BJP parliamentarian Vinay Katiyar paddling the controversy said that Mughal-built monument was originally a Hindu temple.

Katiyar said, aTaj Mahal is originally a Hindu temple and should be renamed Tejo Mahal.a

On October 17, a day after BJP's riot-accused legislator Sangeet Som said that the Taj Mahal doesnat represent Indian culture, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath responding to the controversial comment said, aTaj Mahal was built by blood and sweats of Indians.a

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New Delhi:

The security forces on Tuesday arrested Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Arizoo Bashir from Tral area in Jammu and Kashmir.

Earlier in the day, Syed Shahid Yousuf, son of Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency in connection with a 2011 terror funding case for allegedly receiving money from his father.

The NIA has so far filed two charge sheets against six people which included G M Bhat, a close aide of pro-Pakistan separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mohammed Siddiq Ganai, Ghulam Jeelani Liloo and Farooq Ahmed Dagga. All the four wherein judicial custody.

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New Delhi:

The Pakistani troops on Tuesday violated ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmiras Nowgam sector of Handwara area. The Indian Army has also retaliated strongly.A

On Monday, intermittent exchange of fire had taken place between Indian army personnel and Pakistani troops in the Uri sector along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, forcing the authorities to shutdown schools in the affected areas. An army official had informed there were no fresh casualties on the Indian side in the exchange of fire.

#FLASH: Ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Nowgam sector of Handwara area in Kupwara in Jammu and Kashmir. More details awaited. pic.twitter.com/Cvlzp4F6Ug a ANI (@ANI) October 24, 2017

Pakistani troops had violated ceasefire by resorting to unprovoked firing on Indian posts and villages near the LoC in the Kamalkote area on Saturday, resulting in the death of an Army porter and injuries to two women.

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New Delhi:

In a veiled attack on the Shiv Sena, Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on Monday said aa generous opponent is better than a selfish friend.a

While addressing a felicitation programme in an honour of NCP president Sharad Pawar in Amravati, Fadnavis did not cite Shiv Senaas name as the latter has been criticising the ruling party BJP for its policies despite being in coalition in the state.

"There are few leaders in Indian politics who go beyond the realm of politics and forge a friendship. Sharad Pawar is one of them. A dialogue is necessary between political parties. We may have political differences with him but if an issue concerns the welfare of the state, Pawar himself calls and suggests remedial measures," Fadnavis said.

Matlabi dost se achha dildaar virodhak hota hai: Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis in Amravati pic.twitter.com/z7SuBBMzwy a ANI (@ANI) October 24, 2017

"This is the magnanimity which is needed. It is much better to have a magnanimous friend than a selfish friend. Sharad Pawar is one such opponent," Fadnavis said, adding that his comments should not be misconstrued. (With PTI Inputs)

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New Delhi:

Syed Shahid Yousuf, son of globally wanted terrorist Syed Salahuddin, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency on Tuesday in connection with a 2011 terror funding case for allegedly receiving money from his father.

An NIA spokesman said that 42-year-old Shahid, at present working in the Jammu and Kashmir government's agricultural department, was summoned to the headquarters on Tuesday after which he was placed under arrest.

The NIA alleged that Shahid used to receive funds through international wire money transfer from Aijaz Ahmed Bhat, an absconding accused, at present based in Saudi Arabia.

The agency alleged that Shahid is "one of several Indian contacts of Bhat" who have been in telephonic contact with him to receive the money transfer codes.

Photo of Syed Salahuddin's son Syed Shahid Yusuf, who was questioned by NIA in Delhi over 2011 terror funding case & has been arrested. pic.twitter.com/u6V0BNVN9x a ANI (@ANI) October 24, 2017

The case, registered by the NIA in April 2011, relates to transfer of money from Pakistan to Jammu and Kashmir through hawala channels via Delhi which was suspected to be used in funding terrorism and secessionist activities.

Syed Salahuddin's son Syed Shahid Yusuf questioned by NIA in Delhi over 2011 terror funding case, has been arrested. a ANI (@ANI) October 24, 2017

The NIA has so far filed two charge sheets against six people which included G M Bhat, a close aide of pro-Pakistanseparatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mohammed Siddiq Ganai, Ghulam Jeelani Liloo and Farooq Ahmed Dagga. All the four wherein judicial custody.

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New Delhi:

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in New Delhi on Tuesday night from Pakistan and will hold talks with the Indian leadership on Wednesday to discuss further strengthening of Indo-US strategic partnership in key areas, and collaboration on security in the Indo-Pacific region.

Tillerson, who is the second high-ranking official of the Trump Administration to visit India in the last two months, will call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hold talks with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

US Defence Secretary James Mattis visited India last month.

Ahead of Tillersons three-day visit, the external affairs ministry had said that there will be detailed discussions on further strengthening of Indo-US partnership.

Strengthening cooperation in strategic areas of defence, counter terrorism, security, energy and trade are expected to figure during the meeting between Swaraj and Tillerson.

Tillerson will meet with senior Indian leaders to discuss further strengthening of our strategic partnership and collaboration on security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert had said in Washington last week.

The US Secretary of State, who paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Monday, said the Trump administration was of the view that India can play a positive role in creating a peaceful and stable Afghanistan.

He also asserted that Americas relationship with India is of strategic importance which is not limited to South Asia.

In a major India-policy speech, Tillerson said last week that the US is Indias reliable partner at the world stage in this period of uncertainty and angst.

He also referred to the rise of China, saying its behaviour and action were posing a challenge to the rules-based international order.

China, while rising alongside India, has done so less responsibly, at times undermining the international, rules-based ordereven as countries like India operate within a framework that protects other nations sovereignty, he had told a Washington audience ahead of his maiden visit in New Delhi.

Chinas provocative actions in the South China Sea directly challenge the international law and norms that the US and India both stand for, he had said.

The two sides will discuss key bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interest.

Tillersons visit also comes at a time when the Trump Administration is considering Indias request for armed drones for its air force.

Earlier this year, the IAF had requested the US government for General Atomics Predator C Avenger aircraft. It is understood that the IAF would need 80 to 100 units making it approximately a whopping USD 8 billion deal.

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New Delhi:

BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi on Tuesday attacked Bihar deputy Chief Minsiter Tejsavi Yadav for his alleged land-for-hotels corruption. Modi alleged that Tejashwi, son of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, has amassed 26 properties at the age of 26 without declaring his sources of income.

Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Prasad Yadav has said that he has been implicated by CBI and other agencies. But he should tell people how he became the owner of 26 properties at the young age of 26 years? Tejashwi should tell people about his sources of income and how he acquired these properties, Modi told reporters on the sidelines of his weekly Janata Darbar.

He claimed that out of the 26 properties, 13 plots in Patna and Gopalganj were registered in the name of Tejashwi when he was a minor and between 2004-09, when his father was the railway minister.

Tejashwi acquired the rest 13 properties through shell companies when he was around 24 years, he claimed, quipping, He had full grown beard and moustache (by then).

Tejashwi had said a few days ago that the allegations against him by the BJP referred to the time when he was just 14 years and did not even have moustache.

Modi also said that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar should sack his deputy, Tejeshwi Yadav, who is mired in corruption charges, to protect his image and his government.

Tejashwi had not disowned the properties which were allegedly gifted to him when he was a minor, Modi said, adding, Chief minister Nitish Kumar has set a benchmark in the fight against corruption. I am quite hopeful that he will not compromise on the issue. He will neither try to protect Tejashwi Yadav and will certainly act against him.

Live | Monsoon session of Parliament, Day 3: Opposition targets govt over farmers' suicide, cow vigilantism

Modi, the leader of opposition in the legislative council, demanded that Tejashwi should resign or the chief minister sack him.

The CBI has lodged an FIR against Tejashwi for criminal conspiracy, cheating and criminal misconduct besides lodging a case under Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, he said, while referring to JD(U)s decision to ask him to explain the allegations point-wise in public.

In reply to a query whether he thought Kumar was waiting for a charge sheet to be filed against Tejashwi, Modi said that he did not say so, adding, Rather there are ample evidence against Tejashwi.

Perception is important in politics and so the chief minister should act against Tejashwi Yadav to protect his image and his government, he said.

On Tejashwi not resigning despite JD(U) asking him to come clean on corruption charges, the BJP leader said it was certainly disrespect and contempt of the authority and prerogative of a chief minister.

(With PTI inputs)

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Dubai:

What if a piece of satellite or space junk suddenly falls on your head? Itas indeed a nightmare, but can come true. The Progress module made by Russia broke up into smaller pieces followed by a disintegration in October 2016. They created a spectacle at night in the UAE after burning up like fireworks.A



And now, Chinaas defunct Tiangong-1 space lab is crashing out of the orbit, according to space-tracking site Satview. The 8.5-tonne Tiangong-1 ("Heavenly Palace") with a Norad ID No 87820 was launched in 2011. As of 8:32 am on Tuesday, it was hovering at an altitude of about 300km above the North Pacific.



Chinese astronauts used Tiangong-1 space lab measuring 12 meters in length and 3.3 metres in diameter for a series of spacecraft docking tests and visits.



The space lab broke down in March 2016. Chinese officials told the UN in May 2017 that the satellite was likely to re-enter the atmosphere of the Earth between October 2017 and April 2018.



However, as of October 24, the satellite was still orbiting at a high altitude (300km, which varies depending on which part of the globe it floats over).A According to the tracking site SatFlare, Tiangong-1 wasn't expected to come down immediately.



No threat

Popular astrophysicist Dr Jonathan McDowell, who works at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, confirmed in a tweet that the Tiangong-1 doesnat pose any threat to us.



Dr McDowell says there's nothing to fear about Tiangong-1 which is about to fall. "It's big, but our planet is bigger," he twitted on October 20.



China will monitor Tiangong-1as descent and will post its orbital status on the China Manned Space Agency website. Chinaas space agency said it will issue an "early warning in a timely manner" by informing the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs and the world body's secretary general once it obtains a final forecast for the time and region of re-entry.

4 more satellites about to fall on Earth

According to satview.com, four more satellites are hovering and are about to burn up and fall on Earth between October 26 and November 13, 2017.



On March 30, 2017, a piece of fabric shield a the ISS DEB also known as 1998-067BA or NORAD 31928, was lost in space from the International Space Station.



The fabric shield needed for ISS was accidently lost by NASA astronauts during a spacewalk. This fabric shield is expected to re-enter Earthas atmosphere at about 5.20am UTC (9:30 am in Dubai) on October 26.A



"Firely" is expected to fall on November 1, at 11.05 UTC (3.05pm in Dubai); Flock 2E'-4 is expected on November 13, at 22h47 (2.47am in Dubai, on November 14); and CZ-4B DEB on November 14 at 16h27 (8.27pm in Dubai).



Whatas the risk?



According to McDowell, the risk of any damage or injury to Earthas inhabitant is avery lowa because most of it will burn up before it touches down on Earth.



"Very low", says Dr McDowell, since most of it will burn up in the atmosphere as it falls. He confirmed that Tiangong-1 has started dropping more quickly as it reaches denser parts of the Earth's atmosphere.



He said that pieces of up to 100 kilograms of the Tiangong-1 could come crashing down on the surface of the Earth.



In terms of size, Tiangong-1 is similar to other objects that fell to Earth in 2012 and 2015. But it is just a fraction of the size of NASAas Skylab space station weighing 77-tonee, which went down in July 1979 and fell on southeast of Perth, in western Australia.A

Also it was the 2014 dataset and not the 2017 one, not that they look super different a Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) October 20, 2017

Space Junk



There are numerous disabled satellites hovering around in space. According to experts, there are tens of thousands of pieces of space junk more than 10cm in size moving up t0 30,000 kph.



More than 500,000 pieces larger than a marble and several million smaller ones are present in space. These space junk are moving so fast that they could burn a hole in satellites or could even end up breaking the window of the International Space Station.



Conditions for observing a burn-up

According to experts, several conditions must be met in order to observe a satellite burn-up. To observe it directly, the sunshine must reach its structure and reflect into the people observing on Earth.



According to SatView, for observing a burn-up, following factors must be present a all at the same time.



1. It should be observed during the night time only, when the sky is dark.



2. The height of the Sun (or the "solar disk") should be between 10 and 25 degrees below the line of the horizon.

3. The sun rays should reach the satellite directly.



4. The satellite should be at least 25 degrees above the horizon.



Quick facts

Nasa's Skylab space: 77 tonnes (went down in 1979).A



Russia's Mir space station: 130 tonnes (went down in 2001).



China's Tiangong-1: 8.5 tonnes (Chinese space agency to inform UN about final re-entry)

Preparing for my talk on space junk https://t.co/39eM619eeE made this plot which some of you will find interesting pic.twitter.com/Pk9zwv4QOf a Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) October 19, 2017

The Soyuz-2-1a third stage rocket from the Progress MS-07 launch reentered over Dubai at 1528 UTC Oct 16; the reentry was widely observed a Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) October 17, 2017

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paraklisi

The Mother of God Joy of All Who Sorrow is a Theotokos image without a single compositional pattern which is encountered in many versions.Mother of God "Joy of All who Sorrow"(Feast Day - October 24)Many icons of the Mother of God Joy of All Who Sorrow are miraculous. The icons of the Joy of All Who Sorrow appeared not later than the 1680's. Russian chronicles say that in 1683 the royal artist I.A. Bezmin painted an icon Joy of All Who Sorrow, but say nothing of the icon composition. A similar icon was also housed in the Saint Alexis Monastery in Arzamas and, according to a 1686 inventory, featured the Mother of God with two angels.The icon became widespread after an icon of Joy of All Who Sorrow from the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior on Ordynka Street in Moscow miraculously healed in 1688 a sister of the Patriarch Joachim, the widow Euphemia Petrovna Papina, from a wound in her side and illness. The doctors failed in their treatments, so she prayed with tears to the Most Holy Theotokos. Then, she heard a voice: "Euphemia, go to the Church of the Transfiguration of my Son; there you will find the icon, 'Joy of All Who Sorrow.' Have the priest serve a moleben and sanctification of the waters before this icon and you will be healed." Euphemia did so, and was immediately made well. This occurred on October 24, 1688.The Icon of Princess Natalia broughtfrom Moscow to St. PetersburgThis icon probably dated to 1685, when the Church of the Transfiguration of Ordynka was built. The original icon is believed to be lost, and no one knows exactly what it looked like. However, an 1862 lithograph reproduced the icon of Joy of All Who Sorrow that the Princess Natalia Alexeevna, sister of Peter the Great, took with her when the court was moving from Moscow to St. Petersburg in 1711. According to some accounts, this is the very icon that miraculously healed Euphemia Papina, while other sources maintain that this is an exact copy of the miraculous icon. The Savior is shown blessing with the right hand and holding beads in his left. The Mother of God is also portrayed holding beads with her right hand. Her hand is turned left and inclined slightly downwards. The Mother of God stands on the Moon, with her head surmounted by the crown. Above the Mother of God is the Lord Sabaoth with the half-figures of saints on the margins. It is probably based on the Roman Catholic image of Our Lady of the Rosary.Another icon, painted by Alexis Kvashnin in 1710, is also a precise replica of the icon from the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior on Ordynka street (now kept in the Andrei Rublev Museum collections). This icon, just as the icon taken by the Princess Natalia Alexeevna, features a full-length image of the Mother of God with the Child Christ on her left hand against the background of the shining glory in the crown. Her head is also turned left and slightly downwards. On this particular icon, however, the Theotokos is portrayed without beads, Her right hand is shown in a blessing gesture pointed to the Child Christ. The Mother of God is shown standing on the clouds. In the upper part of the icon is an image of the Synthronos (the New Testament Trinity), in the bottom field is a cartouche with the kondak inscribed thereupon. However, what distinguishes the Kvashnin replica from the lithography is three groups of sufferers standing to either side of the Mother of God, above whom are four full-figures of saints: Sergius of Radonezh, Theodor Sykeon, Gregory the Decapolite and Barlaam of Khutyn. Above the saints were the images of two saints with ripidises, two more angels are comforting the sufferers.The Icon of Alexis KvashninN.I. Komashko suggests that the original miraculous icon had the same composition as the one taken by Princess Natalia Alexeevna to St. Petersburg. Alexis Kvashnin is believed to have copied another icon that had been painted for the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior on Ordynka Street soon after the miraculous healing of Euphemia Papina. The original composition was changed by adding more sufferers and removing beads as a Roman Catholic attribute. The images of sufferers in Russian art have been known since the 17th century from the icons of the Theotokos of the Life-Giving Spring which became widespread under Patriarch Nikon.Under Soviet power, the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior on Ordynka Street was closed and turned into a storage facility of the State Tretyakov Gallery. According to some reports, the icon that was stored there disappeared without a trace. The icon that is now stored in Ordynka, according to one version, is the contribution of Patriarch Alexy I who gave it to the church when services were resumed in it in 1948. This is an exact copy from the original icon, created, apparently, in the second half of the 18th century. According to another version, this is the icon that was there before the closing of the church.Therefore on this day, October 24th, was established the commemoration of this miraculous icon, which, in contrast to other icons of the Theotokos, is depicted in a special manner. The Most Holy Mother of God is shown in full height with a crown on her head and with the Pre-eternal Infant sitting on Her left arm. At the top of the icon, above the Theotokos head, the Lord is seen giving His blessing, angels and saints are on the sides, and at the bottom we see sorrowing and suffering people, to whom the Mother of God kindly stretches out Her hand.HYMN OF PRAISE:To the Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos "Joy of All Who Sorrow"By St. Nikolai VelimirovichO Most Holy Mother of God, "Joy of All Who Sorrow",Grant thy mercy to us sinners.Thy Son now sits on the throne of the Eternal Kingdom,And all our troubles thou seest; thou knowest them as they occur.Thou hast always prayed to Christ God for the faithful,And hast relieved much pain and misery of the sorrowful.O Holy Virgin, never cease, to the end of time,To pray for the salvation of our race.God hast made thee even more glorious than the Seraphim:O hasten to us, O Joy of all who sorrow!Apolytikion in the Fourth ToneLet us, sinful and humbled, now earnestly run to the Mother of God, and let us fall down in repentance, crying from the depths of our soul: O Lady, help, have compassion on us. Make haste, for we perish from the multitude of our sins. Turn not thy servants empty away, for we have thee as our only hope.Another Apolytikion in the Second ToneThou art the joy of all that sorrow, and the protectoress of the oppressed, feeder of the hungry, consolation of travelers, haven for the tempest-tossed, visitation of the sick, protection and aid of the infirm, staff of old age, O all-pure Mother of the Most High God. Hasten, we pray, to save thy servants.Kontakion in Plagal of the Second ToneWe have no other help, we have no other hope, apart from thee, O Lady, help us. We hope in thee and in thee we glory. Let us not be confounded for we are thy servants.
Visiting Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike on Monday announced a plan to make the Japanese capital free of carbon dioxide emissions during the opening and closing days of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.

Tokyo will offset CO2 emissions from the capital during the four days with donated credits acquired through the cap-and-trade program for big companies that the metropolitan government launched in fiscal 2010, she said.

In 2020, the Olympics will be held between July 24 and Aug. 9, and the Paralympics between Aug. 25 and Sept. 6. The CO2 emissions from Tokyo during the four days are seen totaling 720,000 tons.

At a press conference, Koike said Tokyo will show the world its efforts toward a sustainable city through the project.
The Japanese government picked on Tuesday five recipients of the Order of Culture for fiscal 2017, including photoelectrochemist Akira Fujishima, 75, and molecular biologist Kenichi Matsubara, 83.

Fujishima, president of Tokyo University of Science, discovered titanium dioxide photocatalysis 50 years ago, a chemical reaction that degrades organic pollutants in water and is now widely used for coating external wall materials and air purification systems.

Matsubara, professor emeritus at Osaka University, made significant contributions to the development of hepatitis B vaccine and human genome sequencing.

The other three are oil painter Hiroshi Okutani, 83, gagaku (Japanese court music) performer and composer Sukeyasu Shiba, 82, and Chinese history expert Yoshinobu Shiba, 87.

The government also tapped 15 people as Persons of Cultural Merits. Among them are fashion designer Junko Koshino, 78, kabuki actor Nakamura Kichiemon, 73, ballet dancer Miyako Yoshida, 51, and weightlifter Yoshinobu Miyake, 77.
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NEW MILFORD  A mayoral debate Thursday evening pitting incumbent Mayor David Gronbach against Republican challenger Pete Bass will cap whats proved to be a messy election season.

The debate, sponsored by the Greater New Milford Chamber of Commerce, will be held at 7 p.m. at the Sarah Noble Intermediate School. Both candidates enter the debate with hundreds of dollars of campaign contributions spent and a deluge of social media posts behind them.

Gronbach, seeking his second term, unseated longtime Republican Mayor Pat Murphy in 2015. Bass is a 15-year Town Council member who is making his first run for mayor.

Although officials from both parties pledged a civil campaign back in July, invective on social media and contentious Town Council meetings permeated the campaign.

A recent Hearst Connecticut Media review of candidate backgrounds also showed Bass has thousands of dollars in unpaid debts and liens against his home, which raised questions from some residents about his ability to manage a $100 million town and school budget.

Both candidates have also paid their car taxes late  Bass habitually and Gronbach on occasion.

Bass attributed his late payments to the nature of his work as a mortgage loan officer and the Great Recession. The unpaid debts, he said, are due to health scares, including a heart attack in 2016 and a recent thyroid cancer diagnosis.

More Information Debate details The mayoral debate will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26, at the Sarah Noble Intermediate School, 25 Sunny Valley Road. It is sponsored by the Greater New Milford Chamber of Commerce See More Collapse

Over the past few months, there have also been conflict-of-interest accusations levied at Town Council members seeking re-election from both parties.

One Democratic councilman, Scott Chamberlain, was even ousted from the ticket and resigned from all town postings last month after uproar over several screenshots of his profile from a private website catering to furries were posted in a community Facebook group.

On his profile, Chamberlain said that he tolerates rape, which prompted Gronbach and others to call for his resignation.

Gronbach said Tuesday he didnt think the campaign has been contentious but that clear lines differentiating the two candidates have emerged.

Much of the mud slinging can be attributed to inappropriate use of social media by backers of both sides, he added.

Youve got to hear from the candidates in their own words, he said. There is a definite choice between different paths for New Milfords future. Mine is to continue what Ive done for the past two years.

Gronbach pointed to quality of life improvements, such as the creation of the John Pettibone Community Center, as accomplishments under his watch.

Bass on Tuesday echoed Gronbachs assertion that the campaigns nastiness comes from the sidelines  not those seeking office.

There are people within the community that want to make this a contentious campaign, he said.

But issues-oriented politicking is what he has stuck with and will stick to come debate night, Bass said. His focus, if elected, would be to foster a more inclusive town government and prioritize the maintenance of town roads and buildings, he added.

The debate will be moderated by Ken Taylor, who has moderated town debates in the past.

Election Day is Nov. 7. Polls open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

blytton@hearstmediact.com; 203-731-3411; @bglytton
For 56 years, Haagen-Dazs had a consistent message: high-quality, old-fashioned ice cream for sale. But that's changed: Thanks largely to millennials, the company recently refreshed its brand with a revised logo, more vibrant packaging, new flavors and a global advertising campaign.

Related: 9 Cool Ways You Can Use Data-Driven Marketing to Gain Customers

This younger generation of consumers is continuing to cause a massive shift in the market across all industries and sectors. That's why this ice cream company wanted to cast off its stuffy, traditional image and connect with millennials over craftsmanship and storytelling.

There's a lesson to be learned here: To stay competitive, any entrepreneur or business leader has to consider the many challenges of a constantly evolving business landscape, including his or her company's demographics and consumer trends.

If you wait to consider how your audiences have changed and will continue to change, you'll risk far more than will your competitors already investing in brand analysis and audience outreach.

Expanding your tent

Business leaders may be aware of the changing marketplace, but that doesn't mean they're eager to change. For many companies, a major brand overhaul often meets with internal resistance; and to be fair, such an overhaul is not always the right answer. For some companies, it's better to maintain a consistent brand message amidst rapid change. It's the discovery that's important, the self-assessment, the long view.

Because we live in an experience-based economy, whether you're designing your customer experience intentionally or not doesn't matter: You're still delivering one. Messaging plays a major role in reinforcing or diluting that experience. Here are four steps you can take to help your business appeal to new demographics.

1. Develop robust personas.

Every landing page, blog post or article you put out there should align with a distinct persona to effectively connect with a desired target audience. A CEO, a parent and a college student all require different messaging to inspire a response.

A seemingly obvious but often overlooked way to gain a better understanding of your current or potential customers' needs is to ask them directly. Surveys can be effective, but personal, one-on-one interviews are better, even if you can only conduct a handful. Offer a small incentive to gather eager participants, and ask questions designed to reveal what motivates them and why they chose your product or service.

At Pharos, we need to shift our messaging to highlight the parts of our business that are relevant to each specific persona we target. We use three aspects of our value proposition to position ourselves in a way that aligns with what our audience cares about most. Print management solutions lower expenses (business owners love that), improve security (CIOs and IT directors love that) and boost sustainability (which should resonate with everyone). All three messages mutually reinforce one other and are consistent across experiences.

For example, we worked with one university's leadership who wanted to reduce and manage back-office printing costs. To help get employees on board with secure print workflows, its leaders promoted the sustainability aspect of print management's value proposition and subsequently were able to save $3,000 a month while significantly reducing the university's carbon footprint.

2. Ask what your CRM data is trying to tell you.

If your data collection process includes a wide range of questions to qualify leads, you should be able to find customer information such as company type and size, contact job titles and the types of content most often consumed.

Your sales team should then be able to help translate those numbers into concrete characteristics and create a more complete understanding of your customers. As you find common trends, you can combine those tendencies into a general view of each customer type, and use it to fill out your personas. This will help diversify your buyer personas and, consequently, your brand's ability to connect with an expanding range of consumers.

Related: After Realizing Customers Didn't Share Her Vision, an Entrepreneur Makes a Big Change -- And Sales Grew More Than $3 Million

Evaluating your data can also help you recognize surprising audiences that like your brand. When the small business software company Hatchbuck was launched, its founders tried to reach as many segments as possible, from salespeople to business owners, to pitch its platform.

To zero in on its ideal customer, Hatchbuck gathered survey responses, crunched the numbers and conducted customer interviews, seeking to define its buyers' behaviors and beliefs. The company was surprised to learn that, even though it had been attracting larger companies looking for an affordable software with lots of features, smaller companies were its biggest supporters. Hatchbuck decided to focus its efforts on these small business owners -- its ideal customer. Discoveries like this can be enlightening and critical to success.

3. Showcase how your brand delivers what people want.

Proving your product's relevance to a different demographic doesn't mean abandoning the things that make it valuable to current buyers. It means adjusting your messaging to highlight the benefits that are more aligned with the new audience.

For example, Vera Bradley bags and luggage have been a popular choice for baby boomer women since the 1980s. When the brand decided to expand its target audience and appeal to younger women, it tapped into social media to gain insights into the demographic and observed a trend of complaints among millennials about the shortcomings of smartphone battery life and the annoyance of awkward battery cases.

So Vera Bradley created a bag with a built-in smartphone charger. This helped to improve its offerings and reach a new audience without introducing change that might alienate its faithful, long-time customers.

4. Leverage the granularity of marketing automation.

Many businesses see demographics as an aggregate average, but this perspective can destroy any chance of recognizing the need to change. You don't target youth through the same channels used to reach company decision-makers.

Approaching demographics using too broad of a viewpoint ignores the micro-targeting capability afforded by many marketing-automation systems today. Granular, personalized messaging is becoming the norm, not the exception.

To reach younger demographics with precision, take advantage of automation tools such as HubSpot, Marketo or Hatchbuck, proven technologies that can drastically improve the reach of your digital marketing ads and provide you with valuable analytics on your consumers.

These automation technologies have a long track record of producing a positive return on your investment. They can also help to improve various aspects of your digital marketing strategy. According to research by Regalix, 64 percent of marketers surveyed said they saw benefits within six months by using automation software.

Related: Content as a Service Is the Next Evolution for Marketing

The millennials in today's workforce will be the decision-makers of tomorrow -- and I mean tomorrow, not five years from now. Organizations that fail to recognize this shift, or delay the process of discovering how best to change along with new demographic opportunities, can end up fueling internal resistance to such change and, ultimately, lose their opportunity to stay relevant.

Don't be one of them.

Related:

4 Ways to Reach a New Target Audience Without Abandoning Your Old One

Beauty Entrepreneur Bobbi Brown Shares Her Secrets to Building a Brand With a Cult-Like Following

8 Steps to Spice Up Your Brand's Voice (Infographic)



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


Now in its seventh year, Operation Raise a Flag is officially launching its 2017 campaign, encouraging people across the nation to send a heartfelt personal note of thanks and supportive gift to our Veterans by donating online, by mail or over the phone. Each donation will be represented by one of 30,000 Canadian flags that will planted on the grounds of the Sunnybrook Veterans Centre. Each flag stands to express our gratitude, support and respect for the Veterans who fought to make Canada the glorious country it is today.

"Sunnybrook has a long and rich tradition of caring for Canada's war Veterans. We are proud of our legacy of caring for Canada's heroes and we are continuously striving to provide them with the best care and enhanced quality of life", says Dr. Jocelyn Charles, medical director of the Veterans Centre.

Proceeds from the campaign will directly benefit veterans at Sunnybrook's Veterans Centre, home to 475 heroes, making it the largest Veteran care facility in Canada. Donations will help Veterans in the Centre's care benefit from community outings, continued learning opportunities, innovative equipment and quality family time. Donations also provide an opportunity for Veterans to fulfill their deepest wishes, such as a special outing with family, tickets to the theatre or attending major sporting events.

"Seeing the sea of red and white is a spectacular sight, very emotional and a real indication of the community's gratitude," says Don Stewart, Second World War veteran and President of the Resident's Council at Sunnybrook's Veterans Centre. "The courage and sacrifices of Canada's war veterans must never be forgotten."

Flags are available online at www.raiseaflag.ca with a $25 donation by calling the Sunnybrook Foundation at 1-866-696-2008.

About Sunnybrook Veterans Centre

Working in close partnership with Veterans Affairs Canada, the Sunnybrook Veterans Centre is the largest Veterans care facility in Canada and a recognized leader in the care of Veterans who are no longer able to live at home independently. No other facility provides such a high level of specialized, compassionate, resident-centered care through a dedicated inter-professional team.

SOURCE Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

For further information: Sally Fur, Communications & Stakeholder Relations, 416-408-5057 or cell 416-786-6402, [email protected]

Related Links

www.sunnybrook.ca/foundation


Flight to Freedom: The Canadian Refugee Experience

Conference in Ottawa, October 21-23, 2017

Join Canada's top refugee thought leaders

OTTAWA, Oct. 19, 2017 /CNW/ - What is Canada's role today, given the global rise of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee movements?

Experts, policy makers, academics, refugee advocates, and award-winning authors will gather for a three-day conference in Ottawa, October 21-23, 2017. The public are invited to attend and explore Canada's history of protecting refugees in challenging times, and our Country's potential role at home and abroad.

Recognizing Canada's 150th celebrations and the 60th anniversary of the arrival and settlement of 38,000 Hungarian refugees during 1957, this conference investigates how government and civil society can work together. What is Canada's response to the current global refugee situation?

WHAT: Flight to Freedom: The Canadian Refugee Experience Since 1957

WHEN & WHERE:

Sat., Oct. 21 (2:00 PM - 6:30 PM, Saint Paul University, Amphitheatre)

Sun., Oct. 22 (8:15 AM - 7:00 PM, Saint Paul University)

Mon., Oct. 23 (9:00 AM - 1:00 PM, Saint Paul University); (2:00 PM - 8:00 PM, The Canadian Museum of History)

REGISTRATION AT DOOR: Open to the public; $75 for 3-day admission; $30 for single day pass and students.

Flight to Freedom Conference Program Highlights

Keynote address by The Honourable Bob Rae on October 23 rd at 9:30 AM .

on at . Readings and talks by Canadian authors: Moyez G. Vassanji , multiple award-winning writer; Tasneem Jamal , a Ugandan Asian child refugee to Canada , journalist and editor.

, multiple award-winning writer; , a Ugandan Asian child refugee to , journalist and editor. First person accounts by former or new refugees: Judy Trinh , a CBC Ottawa journalist and child refugee from Vietnam ; Peter Duschinsky , a retired immigration and foreign service officer who arrived in 1957 as teenager from Hungary ; Rabea Alriffai, a recent Syrian refugee and now a graduate student in education at the University of Ottawa .

, a CBC Ottawa journalist and child refugee from ; , a retired immigration and foreign service officer who arrived in 1957 as teenager from ; Rabea Alriffai, a recent Syrian refugee and now a graduate student in education at the . Heart-warming stories: Amina Jalabi , a photographer and Syrian immigrant to Canada will speak of her project to help recent Syrian refugees see their new country through the lens of a camera.

, a photographer and Syrian immigrant to will speak of her project to help recent Syrian refugees see their new country through the lens of a camera. Panel discussion with top thought leaders of our time on "Protecting Refugees in Challenging Times: Canada's role at home and abroad" . Welcome by Mark O'Neill , President and CEO of The Canadian Museum of History; Introduction by Peter Showler , former Chairperson of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada , and other experts including Janet Dench , Canadian Council for Refugees.

. Welcome by , President and CEO of The Canadian Museum of History; Introduction by , former Chairperson of the Immigration and Refugee Board of , and other experts including , Canadian Council for Refugees. "Refugee Experience and Inclusion" art competition for children organized by St. Joe's Women's Centre. Artwork by refugee children and others will be displayed during the conference in Saint Paul University. Winners will be announced by Mathieu Fleury , Councillor for Rideau Vanier Ward in

The Canadian Museum of History on October 23 rd at 5:00 PM .

organized by St. Joe's Women's Centre. Artwork by refugee children and others will be displayed during the conference in University. Winners will be announced by , Councillor for Rideau Vanier Ward in The Canadian Museum of History on at . Screening of a recent documentary on the Vietnamese "Boat People" and their journey to Canada in A Moonless Night. Boat People: 40 Years Later. Screening to be followed by a Q&A with Executive Producer Thi Be Nguyen and Director/Producer Marie Helene Panisset.

Read the full conference program here: Hungarian Presence Anniversary or www.hungarianpresence.ca

More About Flight to Freedom

Flight to Freedom has been organized by a partnership committee brought together and sponsored by the Canada-Hungary Educational Foundation. Other partners include the Canadian Immigration Historical Society, the University of Ottawa, Saint Paul University, The Canadian Museum of History, The Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, St. Joseph's Parish in Ottawa, and other interested institutions and individuals.



What is the significance of 1957? The arrival of Hungarian refugees in 1957 was the first time such a large group of refugees arrived here from one county. That experience, identified by the Canadian government in 2010 as an event of national historic significance, helped shape the development of subsequent refugee policies and programs. When large numbers of Ugandan Asians and Vietnamese refugees arrived in the 1970s, and more recently Syrians, Canada had the example of 1957 as a benchmark. Flight to Freedom will explore the impact of refugees from these and other groups on Canadian society and culture.

SOURCE CANADA-HUNGARY EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

For further information: To schedule an interview or to obtain media passes, please contact: Heidi Vincent, [email protected], 613-293-3564; Judy Young, President, The Canada-Hungary Educational Foundation, [email protected]
VANCOUVER, Oct. 23, 2017 /CNW/ - West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. reports third quarter 2017 results:

Highlights

Completed acquisition of six sawmills and a finger-joint mill in Florida and Georgia .

and . Adjusted EBITDA of $269 million for the quarter.

for the quarter. Quarter ending net debt to capital ratio of 16%.

Results Compared to Previous Periods















($ millions except earnings per share ("EPS"))

Q3-17 Q2-17 YTD-17 Q3-16 YTD-16 Sales

1,247 1,322 3,758 1,155 3,343 Adjusted EBITDA1

269 305 819 213 481 Operating earnings

177 217 577 156 355 Earnings

120 146 389 107 247 Basic EPS ($)

1.53 1.86 4.97 1.35 3.06 Adjusted Earnings1

150 174 458 115 229 Adjusted basic EPS ($)1

1.93 2.23 5.87 1.45 2.84

1. In this News Release, reference is made to Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted earnings and Adjusted basic EPS (collectively "these measures"). We believe that, in addition to earnings, these measures are useful performance indicators. None of these measures is a generally accepted earnings measure under International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS") and none has a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS. Investors are cautioned that these measures should not be considered as an alternative to earnings, EPS or cash flow, as determined in accordance with IFRS. As there is no standardized method of calculating any of these measures, our method of calculating each of them may differ from the methods used by other entities and, accordingly, our use of any of these measures may not be directly comparable to similarly titled measures used by other entities. Refer to the tables in the section titled "Non-IFRS Measures" in our third quarter 2017 Management's Discussion & Analysis for details of these adjustments.

Gilman acquisition

On August 31, 2017 we completed the acquisition of the Gilman Companies for net cash consideration of $525 million (US$418 million). The Gilman Companies are comprised of six sawmills and a finger-joint mill in Florida and Georgia as well as an administrative office in St. Marys, Georgia. Ted Seraphim, our President and CEO said, "We are delighted to welcome the Gilman leadership and employees to the West Fraser family. This acquisition is a major step in our growth strategy as we expand our lumber business in the United States."

Forest fires in British Columbia and hurricanes in the U.S. South

A number of wildfires throughout the interior region of British Columbia resulted in a provincial state of emergency being declared from July 7 to September 15, 2017. Our operations in 100 Mile House, Williams Lake and Chasm were briefly suspended due to the wildfires, reducing our production by 55 MMfbm of lumber and 15 Msf of plywood.

The 2017 hurricane season was more severe than normal causing significant damage to areas in South East Texas and Florida. We were fortunate that our facilities were undamaged and that disruptions to our operations were minimal.

Operational results

Our lumber segment generated operating earnings of $126 million (Q2-17 - $171 million) and Adjusted EBITDA of $195 million (Q2-17 - $240 million). This quarter's results were negatively impacted by lower product pricing and lower SPF production as a result of the British Columbia forest fires. Countervailing and antidumping duties, which commenced in the previous quarter, resulted in an expense of $31 million for the current quarter.

Our panels segment generated operating earnings in the quarter of $45 million (Q2-17 - $23 million) and Adjusted EBITDA of $48 million (Q2-17 - $26 million). Improved plywood pricing was the primary driver of improved results.

Our pulp & paper segment generated operating earnings of $21 million (Q2-17 - $32 million) and Adjusted EBITDA of $30 million (Q2-17 - $42 million). The major factors contributing to the decrease in operating earnings were lower Canadian dollar pulp prices and increased maintenance costs from our Hinton pulp mill major maintenance shutdown.

Softwood lumber dispute

The U.S. Department of Commerce's preliminary review resulted in a West Fraser specific countervailing duty rate of 24.12% effective April 28, 2017 and an antidumping duty rate of 6.76% effective June 30, 2017, resulting in an expense of $31 million for the current quarter and $65 million for the first nine months of 2017. The requirement that we pay countervailing duties was suspended on August 24, 2017 until final determination is determined by the U.S. International Trade Commission.

Management's Discussion & Analysis ("MD&A")

The Company's MD&A is available on the Company's website: www.westfraser.com and on the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval at www.sedar.com under the Company's profile.

The Company

West Fraser is a diversified wood products company producing lumber, LVL, MDF, plywood, pulp, newsprint, wood chips and energy with facilities in western Canada and the southern United States.

ForwardLooking Statements

This Report contains historical information, descriptions of current circumstances and statements about potential future developments. The latter, which are forwardlooking statements, are presented to provide reasonable guidance to the reader but their accuracy depends on a number of assumptions and is subject to various risks and uncertainties. Actual outcomes and results will depend on a number of factors that could affect the ability of the Company to execute its business plans, including those matters described in the 2016 annual Management's Discussion & Analysis under "Risks and Uncertainties", and may differ materially from those anticipated or projected. Accordingly, readers should exercise caution in relying upon forwardlooking statements and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise them to reflect subsequent events or circumstances, except as required by applicable securities laws.

Conference Call

Investors are invited to listen to the quarterly conference call on Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time (11:30 a.m. Eastern Time) by dialing 1-888-390-0546 (tollfree North America). The call may also be accessed through West Fraser's website at www.westfraser.com.

West Fraser shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol: "WFT".

West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd.



Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets



(in millions of Canadian dollars, except where indicated - unaudited)









September 30 December 31

2017 2016 Assets



Current assets



Cash and short-term investments $ 132 $ 50 Receivables 371 297 Inventories (note 4) 586 581 Prepaid expenses 19 10

1,108 938 Property, plant and equipment 1,869 1,685 Timber licences 538 551 Goodwill and other intangibles 707 371 Other assets 25 20 Deferred income tax assets 11 35

$ 4,258 $ 3,600





Liabilities



Current liabilities



Cheques issued in excess of funds on deposit $ - $ 15 Payables and accrued liabilities 455 379 Income taxes payable 63 21 Reforestation and decommissioning obligations 44 44

562 459 Long-term debt (note 5) 632 413 Other liabilities (note 6) 286 272 Deferred income tax liabilities 224 215

1,704 1,359





Shareholders' Equity



Share capital 547 549 Accumulated other comprehensive earnings 105 150 Retained earnings 1,902 1,542

2,554 2,241

$ 4,258 $ 3,600

Number of Common shares and Class B Common shares outstanding at October 23, 2017 was 77,924,929.

West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Changes in Shareholders' Equity (in millions of Canadian dollars, except where indicated - unaudited)











July 1 to September 30 January 1 to September 30

2017 2016 2017 2016









Share capital







Balance - beginning of period $ 549 $ 560 $ 549 $ 579 Common share repurchases (2) (9) (2) (28) Balance - end of period $ 547 $ 551 $ 547 $ 551









Accumulated other comprehensive earnings







Balance - beginning of period $ 129 $ 129 $ 150 $ 164 Translation gain (loss) on foreign operations (24) 8 (45) (27) Balance - end of period $ 105 $ 137 $ 105 $ 137









Retained earnings







Balance - beginning of period $ 1,767 $ 1,332 $ 1,542 $ 1,404 Actuarial gain (loss) on post-retirement benefits 39 26 6 (79) Common share repurchases (15) (47) (15) (142) Earnings for the period 120 107 389 247 Dividends (9) (5) (20) (17) Balance - end of period $ 1,902 $ 1,413 $ 1,902 $ 1,413









Shareholders' Equity $ 2,554 $ 2,101 $ 2,554 $ 2,101

West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Earnings and Comprehensive Earnings (in millions of Canadian dollars, except where indicated - unaudited)











July 1 to September 30 January 1 to September 30

2017 2016 2017 2016









Sales $ 1,247 $ 1,155 $ 3,758 $ 3,343









Costs and expenses







Cost of products sold 775 739 2,313 2,263 Freight and other distribution costs 153 158 484 473 Export duties 31 - 65 - Amortization 51 50 151 147 Selling, general and administration 50 45 142 126 Equity-based compensation 10 7 26 (21)

1,070 999 3,181 2,988 Operating earnings 177 156 577 355 Finance expense (8) (7) (23) (22) Other (note 9) (2) 1 (3) (8) Earnings before tax 167 150 551 325 Tax provision (note 10) (47) (43) (162) (78) Earnings $ 120 $ 107 $ 389 $ 247









Earnings per share (dollars) (note 11)







Basic $ 1.53 $ 1.35 $ 4.97 $ 3.06 Diluted $ 1.53 $ 1.35 $ 4.97 $ 2.73









Comprehensive earnings







Earnings $ 120 $ 107 $ 389 $ 247 Other comprehensive earnings







Translation gain (loss) on foreign operations (24) 8 (45) (27) Actuarial gain (loss) on post-retirement benefits 39 26 6 (79) Comprehensive earnings $ 135 $ 141 $ 350 $ 141

West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (in millions of Canadian dollars, except where indicated - unaudited)











July 1 to September 30 January 1 to September 30

2017 2016 2017 2016 Cash provided by operations







Earnings $ 120 $ 107 $ 389 $ 247 Adjustments









Amortization 51 50 151 147

Finance expense 8 7 23 22

Foreign exchange loss (gain) on long-term financing (5) 2 (10) (8)

Loss on power agreements, net of settlement costs - - - 11

Post-retirement expense 19 18 57 53

Contributions to post-retirement benefit plans (17) (18) (48) (46)

Tax provision 47 43 162 78

Income taxes received (paid) (7) 6 (59) 1

Other (30) (22) (60) (51) Changes in non-cash working capital









Receivables 31 (6) (49) (36)

Inventories 22 5 17 89

Prepaid expenses 12 16 (6) 1

Payables and accrued liabilities 32 41 35 (1)

283 249 602 507









Cash provided by (used for) financing







Proceeds from long-term debt 250 - 250 - Repayment of operating loans - (99) - (133) Finance expense paid (1) (3) (12) (14) Dividends (9) (5) (20) (17) Common share repurchases (17) (58) (17) (170) Other (2) 3 (2) 3

221 (162) 199 (331)









Cash used for investing







Acquisition (note 3) (525) - (525) - Additions to capital assets (90) (76) (224) (182) Government assistance 1 1 2 8 Other 1 1 4 1

(613) (74) (743) (173)









Change in cash (109) 13 58 3 Foreign exchange effect on cash 10 12 39 29 Cash - beginning of period 231 (9) 35 (16) Cash - end of period $ 132 $ 16 $ 132 $ 16









Cash consists of







Cash and short-term investments



$ 132 $ 52 Cheques issued in excess of funds on deposit



- (36)





$ 132 $ 16

West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd.

Notes to Condensed Consolidated Interim Financial Statements

(figures are in millions of dollars, except where indicated - unaudited)

1. Nature of operations

West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. ("West Fraser", "we", "us" or "our") is a diversified wood products company producing lumber, LVL, MDF, plywood, pulp, newsprint, wood chips and energy with facilities in western Canada and the southern United States. Our executive office is located at 858 Beatty Street, Suite 501, Vancouver, British Columbia. West Fraser was formed by articles of amalgamation under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) and is registered in British Columbia, Canada. Our Common shares are listed for trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol WFT.

2. Basis of presentation and statement of compliance

These condensed consolidated interim financial statements have been prepared in accordance with International Accounting Standard 34, Interim Financial Reporting as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board and use the same accounting policies and methods of their application as the December 31, 2016 annual financial statements. These condensed consolidated interim financial statements should be read in conjunction with our 2016 annual consolidated financial statements.

3. Gilman acquisition

On August 31, 2017 we completed the acquisition of six SYP sawmills and a finger-joint mill in Florida and Georgia as well as an administrative office in Georgia (the "Gilman Acquisition"). The consideration paid, net of cash acquired was $525 million (US$418 million) and the transaction was an acquisition of shares. The acquisition was financed with cash on hand, borrowings on our revolving credit facility and a $250 million (US$200 million) term loan. The purchase agreement contains indemnification provisions that are typical for a share purchase transaction.

The acquisition has been accounted for as an acquisition of a business and we have allocated the purchase price based on our preliminary estimated fair value of the assets acquired and the liabilities assumed as follows:





















Preliminary

September 30, 2017 Net assets acquired





$ 606 Less cash acquired







(81) Net non-cash assets acquired







525 Allocation:









Current assets







63 Current liabilities







(16) Property, plant and equipment







121 Other assets







6 Goodwill







337 Employee future benefits







(13) Deferred income taxes, net







27







$ 525

The deferred income tax asset estimate of $27 million includes an asset of $51 million related to estimated net operating losses acquired, partially offset by a liability of $24 million related to temporary differences on other assets and liabilities.

Factors contributing to goodwill include the Gilman workforce, assets that are geographically complementary to our existing facilities and offer close access to large markets, the good timber basket and multiple outlets for residuals. This transaction strengthens our core lumber business and gives us increased scale and geographic diversification. This was a rare opportunity to acquire a U.S. lumber producer of a meaningful scale with high quality facilities and a culture similar to our own. The goodwill of $337 million is not deductible for tax purposes.

The following table shows the results of the Gilman Acquisition since the acquisition date and the estimated pro-forma West Fraser consolidated results as if we owned the Gilman Acquisition since January 1, 2017:

























Gilman

September 1 to 30,

2017 West Fraser Pro-forma

January 1 to September

30, 2017 Sales





$ 31 $ 4,012 Earnings (loss)





$ (1) $ 444

Balances that required significant fair value adjustments for purchase price accounting included inventory, property, plant and equipment, goodwill and deferred income taxes. After accounting for the increased value assigned to the acquired inventory and costs associated with the rapid integration of systems, the acquired operations did not make a material contribution to operating earnings in the one month post acquisition.

Acquisition costs of $1 million have been expensed in selling, general and administration.

4. Inventories

Inventories at September 30, 2017 were written down by $4 million (June 30, 2017 - $6 million; December 31, 2016 - $5 million; September 30, 2016 - $10 million) to reflect net realizable value being lower than cost.

5. Long-term debt and operating loans

Long-term debt













September 30, 2017 December 31, 2016 US$300 million senior notes due October 2024; interest at 4.35%

$ 374 $ 403 US$200 million term loan due August 2022; floating interest rate



250

- US$8 million note payable due October 2020; interest at 2%



9

10 Notes payable



4

4





637

417 Deferred financing costs



(5)

(4)



$ 632 $ 413

On August 28, 2017 we were advanced a $250 million (US$200 million) 5 year non-revolving term loan due on August 25, 2022. This loan was used to fund the Gilman Acquisition. Interest is payable at floating rates based on Base Rate Advances or LIBOR Advances at our option. The loan is repayable at any time, in whole or in part, at our option and without penalty but cannot be redrawn after payment.

The fair value of the long-term debt is $624 million (December 31, 2016 - $391 million) based on rates available to us at the balance sheet date for long-term debt with similar terms and remaining maturities.

Operating loans

In August 2017, we extended our $500 million committed revolving credit facility to August 25, 2022. Our operating loans consist of a $500 million committed revolving credit facility, a $31 million (US$25 million) demand line of credit dedicated to our U.S. operations and an $8 million demand line of credit dedicated to our jointly-owned newsprint operation. In addition, we have demand lines of credit totalling $59 million dedicated to letters of credit, of which US$7 million is committed to our U.S. operations.

At September 30, 2017 there were no amounts outstanding under our revolving credit facility. As a result, the associated deferred financing costs of $3 million were reported in other assets. Letters of credit in the amount of $47 million were also supported by our facilities, leaving $551 million of credit available for further use. At December 31, 2016, our revolving credit facility was undrawn, deferred financing costs were $2 million and our outstanding letters of credit were $48 million.

Interest on these facilities is payable at floating rates based on Prime, Base Rate Advances, Bankers' Acceptances or LIBOR Advances at our option.

All debt is unsecured except the $8 million joint operation demand line of credit, which is secured by that joint operation's current assets.

6. Other liabilities

























September 30, 2017 December 31, 2016 Post-retirement (note 7)





$ 180 $ 162 Reforestation







61

69 Decommissioning







25

25 Other







20

16







$ 286 $ 272

7. Post-retirement benefits

We maintain defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans covering a majority of our employees. The defined benefit plans generally do not require employee contributions and provide a guaranteed level of pension payable for life based either on length of service or on earnings and length of service, and in most cases do not increase after commencement of retirement. We also provide group life insurance, medical and extended health benefits to certain employee groups.

The status of the defined benefit pension plans and other retirement benefit plans, in aggregate, is as follows:













September 30, 2017 December 31, 2016 Projected benefit obligations

$ (1,746) $ (1,648) Fair value of plan assets



1,589

1,507 Impact of minimum funding requirement



(15)

(13)



$ (172) $ (154) Represented by









Post-retirement assets

$ 8 $ 8 Post-retirement liabilities (note 6)



(180)

(162)



$ (172) $ (154)

The significant actuarial assumptions used to determine our balance sheet date post-retirement assets and liabilities are as follows:











September 30, 2017 June 30, 2017 December 31, 2016 Discount rate 3.75% 3.50% 3.75% Future compensation rate increase 3.50% 3.50% 3.50%

The actuarial gain (loss) on post-retirement benefits, included in other comprehensive earnings, is as follows:





















July 1 to September 30 January 1 to September 30









2017

2016

2017

2016 Actuarial gain (loss)





$ 53 $ 35 $ 8 $ (108) Tax recovery (provision)







(14)

(9)

(2)

29







$ 39 $ 26 $ 6 $ (79)

8. Share Capital

On September 12, 2017 our Board of Directors authorized the renewal of our normal course issuer bid ("NCIB") program to repurchase for cancellation up to 3,794,375 Common shares or approximately 5% of our issued and outstanding Common shares. The NCIB will expire on September 18, 2018. Our previous NCIB expired on September 18, 2017.

During the three months ended September 30, 2017 we purchased a total of 245,645 of Common shares under both of our NCIB programs. The purchase price averaged $68.45 per share and totalled $17 million for the period ended September 30, 2017.

9. Other









July 1 to September 30 January 1 to September 30



2017

2016

2017

2016 Foreign exchange gain (loss) on working capital $ (7) $ 2 $ (12) $ (8) Foreign exchange gain (loss) on intercompany financing1

(10)

4

(19)

(14) Foreign exchange gain (loss) on long-term debt

15

(6)

29

22 Gain on disposal of WestPine equipment

-

-

-

5 Loss on power agreements

-

-

-

(19) Other

-

1

(1)

6

$ (2) $ 1 $ (3) $ (8)

1. Relates to US$600 million (Q2-17 US$200 million) of financing provided to our U.S. operations. An additional US$400 million of financing was provided to our U.S. operations at the end of August 2017 to fund the Gilman Acquisition. IAS 21 requires that the exchange gain or loss be recognized through earnings as the financing is not considered part of our permanent investment in our U.S. subsidiaries. The balance sheet amounts and related financing expense are eliminated in these consolidated financial statements.

10. Tax provision

The tax provision differs from the amount that would have resulted from applying the British Columbia statutory income tax rate to earnings before tax as follows:









July 1 to September 30 January 1 to September 30



2017

2016

2017

2016 Income tax expense at statutory rate of 26% $ (43) $ (40) $ (143) $ (85) Non-taxable amounts

(2)

(1)

(7)

9 Rate differentials between jurisdictions and

















on specified activities

(2)

(3)

(13)

(7) Unrecognized capital losses

-

-

1

1 Other

-

1

-

4 Tax provision $ (47) $ (43) $ (162) $ (78)

11. Earnings per share

Basic earnings per share is calculated based on earnings available to Common shareholders, as set out below, using the weighted average number of Common shares and Class B Common shares outstanding.

Diluted earnings per share is calculated based on earnings available to Common shareholders adjusted to remove the actual share option expense (recovery) charged to earnings and after deducting a notional charge for share option expense assuming the use of the equity-settled method, as set out below. The diluted weighted average number of shares is calculated using the treasury stock method. When earnings available to Common shareholders for diluted earnings per share are greater than earnings available to Common shareholders for basic earnings per share, the calculation is anti-dilutive and diluted earnings per share are deemed to be the same as basic earnings per share.









July 1 to September 30 January 1 to September 30



2017

2016

2017

2016 Earnings















Basic $ 120 $ 107 $ 389 $ 247 Share option expense (recovery)

17

4

43

(21) Equity-settled share option adjustment

-

-

(3)

(3) Diluted $ 137 $ 111 $ 429 $ 223

















Weighted average number of shares (thousands)















Basic

78,128

79,310

78,153

80,819 Share options

869

799

860

863 Diluted

78,997

80,109

79,013

81,682

















Earnings per share (dollars)















Basic $ 1.53 $ 1.35 $ 4.97 $ 3.06 Diluted $ 1.53 $ 1.35 $ 4.97 $ 2.73

12. Segmented information









Pulp & Corporate





Lumber Panels paper & other Total July 1, 2017 to September 30, 2017

























Sales













To external customers

$ 860 $ 166 $ 221 $ - $ 1,247

To other segments

29 2 - -





$ 889 $ 168 $ 221 $ -















Operating earnings before amortization

$ 164 $ 48 $ 30 $ (14) $ 228 Amortization

(38) (3) (9) (1) (51) Operating earnings

126 45 21 (15) 177 Finance expense

(5) (1) (2) - (8) Other

(3) - (3) 4 (2) Earnings before tax

$ 118 $ 44 $ 16 $ (11) $ 167













July 1, 2016 to September 30, 2016

























Sales













To external customers

$ 788 $ 137 $ 230 $ - $ 1,155

To other segments

26 2 - -





$ 814 $ 139 $ 230 $ -















Operating earnings before amortization

$ 151 $ 33 $ 31 $ (9) $ 206 Amortization

(37) (3) (9) (1) (50) Operating earnings

114 30 22 (10) 156 Finance expense

(4) (1) (2) - (7) Other

1 - 1 (1) 1 Earnings before tax

$ 111 $ 29 $ 21 $ (11) $ 150



































Pulp & Corporate





Lumber Panels paper & other Total January 1, 2017 to September 30, 2017

























Sales













To external customers

$ 2,584 $ 439 $ 735 $ - $ 3,758

To other segments

87 6 - -





$ 2,671 $ 445 $ 735 $ -















Operating earnings before amortization

$ 561 $ 89 $ 112 $ (34) $ 728 Amortization

(112) (9) (28) (2) (151) Operating earnings

449 80 84 (36) 577 Finance expense

(14) (3) (6) - (23) Other

(3) - (5) 5 (3) Earnings before tax

$ 432 $ 77 $ 73 $ (31) $ 551













January 1, 2016 to September 30, 2016

























Sales













To external customers

$ 2,288 $ 399 $ 656 $ - $ 3,343

To other segments

79 6 -







$ 2,367 $ 405 $ 656 $ -















Operating earnings before amortization

$ 364 $ 69 $ 49 $ 20 $ 502 Amortization

(109) (9) (27) (2) (147) Operating earnings

255 60 22 18 355 Finance expense

(13) (3) (6) - (22) Other

(2) 3 (21) 12 (8) Earnings before tax

$ 240 $ 60 $ (5) $ 30 $ 325

The geographic distribution of external sales is as follows1:





















July 1 to September 30 January 1 to September 30









2017

2016

2017

2016 Canada





$ 312 $ 261 $ 860 $ 759 United States







701

666

2,126

1,942 China







148

118

464

351 Other Asia







73

94

270

242 Other







13

16

38

49







$ 1,247 $ 1,155 $ 3,758 $ 3,343

1. Sales distribution is based on the location of product delivery.

13. Softwood lumber dispute

On November 25, 2016 a coalition of U.S. lumber producers petitioned the U.S. Department of Commerce ("USDOC") and the U.S. International Trade Commission ("USITC") to investigate alleged subsidies to Canadian softwood lumber producers and levy countervailing and antidumping duties against Canadian imports. We were chosen by the USDOC as a "mandatory respondent" to both the countervailing and antidumping investigations and as a result have received unique company specific rates.

On April 24, 2017, the USDOC issued its preliminary determination in the countervailing duty investigation and imposed a company specific preliminary rate of 24.12% to be posted by cash deposits on the exports from Canada of softwood lumber to the U.S. on or after April 28, 2017. On June 26, 2017, the USDOC issued its preliminary determination in the antidumping duty investigation and imposed a company specific preliminary rate of 6.76% to be posted by cash deposits on the exports from Canada of softwood lumber to the U.S. on or after June 30, 2017. We have expensed $65 million for the period April 28, 2017 to September 30, 2017 representing duties at the preliminary rates determined by the USDOC.

The USDOC is expected to announce final rates by November 13, 2017. The USITC is expected to make a ruling on "injury" not later than January 4, 2018. The requirement that we pay countervailing duties was suspended on August 24, 2017 until final determination is published by the USITC. Any adjustments resulting from a change in the final countervailing and antidumping duty rates will be made prospectively.

Together with other Canadian forest product companies, the federal government and Canadian provincial governments ("Canadian Interests") we categorically deny the U.S. allegations and disagree with the preliminary countervailing and antidumping determinations. Canadian Interests continue to defend the Canadian industry in this U.S. trade dispute. Depending on the outcome of the final phase of the investigation, Canadian Interests may appeal the decision of the USDOC and USITC to the appropriate courts, North America Free Trade Agreement panels and/or the World Trade Organization. Notwithstanding the preliminary rates established in the investigations, the final liability for the assessment of countervailing and antidumping duties will not be determined until each annual administrative review process is complete.

SOURCE West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd.

For further information: Chris Virostek, Vice President, Finance and Chief Financial Officer; Rodger Hutchinson, Vice President, Corporate Controller and Investor Relations, (604) 895-2700, www.westfraser.com

Related Links

www.westfraser.com


GREIG, N.Y -- A New York State Police dog was fatally shot Monday during a search of a home in Lewis County, the state police announced Tuesday.

The dog, K9 Will, was hit by a bullet fired by his partner, Trooper Shaun Smith, police said. The bullet ricocheted and hit the dog in the stomach, police said.

At approximately 11 p.m. Monday, state police were assisting the Lewis County Sheriff's Office with a search warrant at a residence on Woodcreek Road in the Town of Greig, police said.

K9 Will was attacked by a pit bull dog that ran from the residence, police said.

Smith fired once, striking the leg of the pit bull, police said.



From the preliminary investigation, it appears the bullet ricocheted off the gravel stone driveway and hit K9 Will in the stomach, police said.



The dog was transported to Countryside Veterinary Clinic in Lowville but he died there, police said.

The pit bull survived and was being treated by a veterinarian, said Jack Keller, a spokesman for the State Police. Asked if the owners of the pit bull face charges, he said the incident is under investigation.

K9 Will was a 3-year-old Belgian-Malinois who graduated from the State Police basic K9 school in April of 2017, police said



K9 Will was named after Trooper William G. Doyle, who was shot and killed by escapees from a mental institution on December14, 1967, police said.






For the sprawling effort to restore Puerto Rico's crippled electrical grid, the territory's state-owned utility has turned to a two-year-old company from Montana that had just two full-time employees on the day Hurricane Maria made landfall.

The company, Whitefish Energy, said last week that it had signed a $300 million contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to repair and reconstruct large portions of the island's electrical infrastructure. The contract is the biggest yet issued in the troubled relief effort.

Whitefish said Monday that it has 280 workers in the territory, using linemen from across the country, most of them as subcontractors, and that the number grows on average from 10 to 20 people a day. It said it was close to completing infrastructure work that will energize some of the key industrial facilities that are critical to restarting the local economy.

The power authority, also known as PREPA, opted to hire Whitefish rather than activate the "mutual aid" arrangements it has with other utilities. For many years, such agreements have helped U.S. utilities - including those in Florida and Texas recently - to recover quickly after natural disasters.

The unusual decision to instead hire a tiny for-profit company is drawing scrutiny from Congress and comes amid concerns about bankrupt Puerto Rico's spending as it seeks to provide relief to its 3.4 million residents, the great majority of whom remain without power a month after the storm.

"The fact that there are so many utilities with experience in this and a huge track record of helping each other out, it is at least odd why [the utility] would go to Whitefish," said Susan Tierney, a former senior official at the Energy Department and state regulatory agencies. "I'm scratching my head wondering how it all adds up."

PREPA's executive director, Ricardo Ramos, and a spokesman did not respond to emails asking why the utility didn't activate the mutual-aid network. On a tour of the idled Palo Seco power plant, Ramos told reporters that Whitefish was the first company "available to arrive, and they were the ones that first accepted terms and conditions for PREPA."

Ramos said that the utility is "completely content" with the work Whitefish is doing. "The doubts that have been raised about Whitefish, from my point of view, are completely unfounded," he added, saying that concerns about Whitefish were probably spread by jealous competitors.

Whitefish officials have said that the company's expertise in mountainous areas makes it well suited for the work and that it jumped at the chance when other firms were hesitating over concerns about payment. The company acknowledges it had only two full-time employees when Maria struck but says its business model calls for ramping up rapidly by hiring workers on short-term contracts.

Spokesman Chris Chiames dismissed criticism about the company's qualifications. "We are taking personal risks and business risks working in perilous physical and financial conditions," Chiames said. "So the carping by others is unfounded, and we stand by our work and our commitment to the people of Puerto Rico."

Whitefish Energy is based in Whitefish, Montona, the home town of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Its chief executive, Andy Techmanski, and Zinke acknowledge knowing one another - but only, Zinke's office said in an email, because Whitefish is a small town where "everybody knows everybody." One of Zinke's sons "joined a friend who worked a summer job" at one of Techmanski's construction sites, the email said. Whitefish said he worked as a "flagger."

Zinke's office said he had no role in Whitefish securing the contract for work in Puerto Rico. Techmanski also said Zinke was not involved.

Techmanski said in an interview that the contract emerged from discussions between his company and the utility rather than from a formal bidding process. He said he had been in contact with the utility two weeks before Maria "discussing the 'what if' scenarios" of hurricane recovery. In the days after the hurricane, he said, "it started to make sense that there was a need here for our services and others."

On Thursday, Techmanski told CNN simply: "We called each other."

The scale of the disaster in Puerto Rico is far larger than anything Whitefish has handled. The company has won two contracts from the Energy Department, including $172,000 to replace a metal pole structure and splice in 3 miles of new conductor and overhead ground wire in Arizona.

Shortly before Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, Whitefish landed its largest federal contract, a $1.3 million deal to replace and upgrade parts of a 4.8-mile transmission line in Arizona. The company - which was listed in procurement documents as having annual revenue of $1 million - was given 11 months to complete the work, records show.

Puerto Rico has 2,400 miles of transmission lines across the island, and 30,000 miles of distribution lines with 300 substations. Jeff Hawk, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' power restoration task force, estimated that 80 percent of the grid has been damaged. A month after the storm, about 80 percent of customers remain without power.

With the entire Puerto Rican commonwealth in bankruptcy, and the utility itself in default on $9 billion in debt, spending for the recovery is drawing scrutiny from the Trump administration and Congress. Gov. Ricardo Rossello and Jose Carrion, chairman of the federal oversight board created to resolve the island's long-running financial crisis, were summoned to Washington last week for a meeting with the Office of Management and Budget.

The House Committee on Natural Resources is examining Whitefish's role in Puerto Rico, said Parish Braden, a spokesman for the committee. The hiring of the little-known company has been noted by the trade publications Utility Dive and E&E News.

"The size and unknown details of this contract raises numerous questions," Braden said. "This is one of many things the committee is taking a close look at as it continues to work with the resident commissioner, governor's office, and oversight board to ensure Puerto Rico's recovery is robust, effective and sustained."

Rossello said Wednesday that the island would spend $490 million on the initial phase of repairing the commonwealth's grid, adding that "a large portion of that would probably go to Whitefish" and another contractor. The utility gave Whitefish a $3.7 million initial payment for "mobilization of personnel and equipment," the contract says. Whitefish could be paid as much as $300 million for up to two years of work.

Under the contract, the hourly rate was set at $330 for a site supervisor, and at $227.88 for a "journeyman lineman." The cost for subcontractors, which make up the bulk of Whitefish's workforce, is $462 per hour for a supervisor and $319.04 for a lineman. Whitefish also charges nightly accommodation fees of $332 per worker and almost $80 per day for food.

Only eight contracts larger than $20 million have been approved for Puerto Rico by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, with half of those for shipments of food and bottled water. Whitefish's contract surpasses the $240 million contract the Army Corps awarded to engineering giant Fluor to "augment ongoing efforts" to repair the power grid.

The commonwealth, strapped for funds before Hurricane Maria hit, is expected to run out of cash as early as the end of the month, according to people familiar with the island's finances. And even if the Senate and the president approve the House's $4.9 billion aid package for Puerto Rico, the island might need more money in as little as three months.

PREPA did not reach its agreement with Whitefish until Sept. 26, six days after the storm swept through. By comparison, the Florida utility FPL requested mutual aid before Hurricane Irma hit. The result was an army of nearly 20,000 restoration workers, including FPL employees, from 30 states and Canada at work on the first day.

On Oct. 1, FPL had teams assembled to assess damage in Puerto Rico. It posted notices in Spanish and English on its Facebook page: "FPL is ready to help Puerto Rico." Florida Gov. Rick Scott mentioned the offer in a news release.

The Florida utility says it never received a reply. The Puerto Rican utility has not replied to offers of assistance from mutual-aid partners, according to the American Public Power Association, which coordinates such operations.

Techmanski called the damage in Puerto Rico "among the worst that I have ever seen" in more than 20 years of work rebuilding power lines after storms. According to his LinkedIn page, Techmanski has held leadership roles in utility service companies based in Vancouver, Texas and California.

"It will take months, if not years, to repair the entire grid to full operational status," he said.

NBC Montana quoted Techmanski in a report Oct. 1 as saying he had asked Zinke for help in getting personnel and equipment to the territory. Chiames, the Whitefish spokesman, confirmed that "Once the company got the go-ahead from PREPA on September 26 to begin work, company executives did reach out to contacts in case they could help expedite getting qualified linesmen to the island."

Zinke's office said: "The Secretary always politely listens when citizens and the small business community approach him with concerns and ideas. Neither the Secretary nor anyone in his office have taken any meetings or action on behalf of this company."

Whitefish's Twitter feed features videos of workers dangling from helicopters and describes its progress but also suggests the work has been challenging.

In one post, a team was reported to have set up six concrete poles, but had "all day issues with material." A crane showed up "broke and we had to fix it." Equipment in a warehouse had rusted. Narrow roads were cited as a safety concern, as were "very large termite nests."

Techmanski said that Whitefish was focusing on fixing key transmission lines and was using helicopters and cranes to reach them. "Once we complete those, the effort's going to move on to other transmission and distribution systems," he said. "So we're just ramping up and providing as many people as we possibly can."

Kent McNellie, an investment professional at HBC, the Texas investment firm that is now the largest financier of Whitefish, said the company's experience reconstructing a one-mile power line destroyed in a wildfire in Washington state was more relevant to Puerto Rico's needs than is the experience of many companies on the mainland. The span in Washington included an elevation change of about 5,000 feet, and the terrain required crews and equipment to be delivered by helicopter.

"Most guys go up in a 30-foot bucket truck, and they can do that from Texas to New York, but you don't need an army of bucket trucks," McNellie said. "Andy realized you had a transmission problem and that requires 90-foot buckets, 100-foot ladders and helicopters - that's not the typical crew you can get through mutual aid."

Even before the storm swept through Puerto Rico, years of neglect and mismanagement had degraded the territory's electrical grid so badly it was "literally falling apart," according to a consultant's report prepared for the Puerto Rico Energy Commission.

Nonetheless, Rossello said recently that 95 percent of the power would be restored by Christmas.

Techmanski is doubtful.

"I don't know where he got that and what information he was using," he said. "Without doing a full assessment countrywide, I couldn't fathom how many months, if it's going to be two months, three months, five months. . . . We've been focused in the small areas that we've been working."

---

Hernandez reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
NEW HAVEN >> Acting on a prosecutors request, a judge has dismissed murder charges against Malik Burruss, who had been accused of shooting Lonnie Starr to death in January near a Dunkin Donuts parking lot.

Senior Assistant States Attorney Gene Calistro Jr. said Wednesday he had sought the dismissal because there were fundamental doubts about the states key witness, who had identified a photo of Burruss and told police he was the shooter.

Although 15 jurors had been chosen for the trial, Calistro said it became clear Theres no way the state could have proven this case beyond a reasonable doubt. Theres no way the jury could have found him guilty.

Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Clifford agreed to dismiss the charges of murder, felony murder, and carrying a pistol without a permit. A person is accused of felony murder when a murder allegedly occurs during the course of another crime, such as a robbery.

But a co-defendant, Greg McLaurin, 18, of 47 Level St., remains charged in the shooting. He still faces counts of felony murder, first-degree robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery.

Calistro said although McLaurin was not the alleged shooter, hes involved in the alleged robbery, so he faces a felony murder charge. We believe the case has gotten stronger against him.

Calistro said he could not elaborate on how the case against McLaurin has strengthened.

Calistro noted Burruss, 18, of 41 Lodge St., recently was sentenced in an unrelated case. He received a four-year prison sentence, suspended after he serves 31 months, for second-degree assault and second-degree attempted robbery.

Burruss attorney, Christopher Duby, filed a motion Oct. 15 seeking to suppress the witness photo identification. That motion was granted by Superior Court Judge Jon C. Blue.

In his motion, Duby outlined the states account of what happened at about 6:25 p.m. Jan. 23.

Police said Starr had been called by the key witness to meet her in front of her house on Level Street so she could buy the drug Ecstasy from him.

According to the witness, during the transaction two masked males walked up to Starrs car: one with a silver pistol and the other with a shotgun. When they demanded money and Starr tried to drive away, the witness stated, the male with the handgun fired once into the car.

Starr was shot in the chest. His passenger, who said he did not get a good look at the two perpetrators, managed to steer the car to the Dunkin Donuts parking lot on Blake Street. Starr was pronounced dead at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He was 29.

Duby noted the female witness is the only one who implicated Burruss as the shooter.

Duby also noted police interviewed the witness that night and throughout that interview, she denied she was able to identify the shooter.

According to Duby, one of the detectives left the interview room and returned with two photos. When he put them in front of the witness, Duby said, she identified the shooter as the photo before her on the right.

But Duby said detectives did not have her sign the photo immediately nor did they ask her to indicate on the photo what she claimed Burruss did.

According to the police affidavit, the witness believed she knew the male armed with the silver revolver by his physical description and his voice.

Burruss was arrested the next day.

Duby said the photo identification is the only fact tethering the defendant to this crime. There are no admissions by the defendant, no other witnesses and no scientific or forensic evidence implicating the defendant. She is it.

Calistro said the witness recanted some of the photo I.D. He quoted her saying, I think thats him, complaining she has bad eyesight and that she had smoked a bowl of weed before the police interview.

It was not a sufficient identification, Calistro said.

Calistro also noted the two men were wearing masks.

The affidavit stated the witness, in a second police interview, picked out McLaurins photo in an eight-person array, as being the man with the shotgun. She told police she believed the man with the shotgun lived at 47 Level St., which was McLaurins home address.

The document added, The physical descriptions (the witness) provided matches Burruss and McLaurin.

McLaurins attorney, Walter Bansley III, could not be reached for comment.

McLaurin is being held in lieu of $2 million bail.

Call Randall Beach at 203-789-5766. Do you have questions, feedback or ideas about our news coverage? Connect directly with New Haven Register editors at AskTheRegister.com.
Contributed / Contributed

BRIDGEPORT  Connecticuts Beardsley Zoo will say goodbye soon to its two Canada Lynx kittens, Ruby and Penny, as they will move in the next several weeks to their permanent home at the Buffalo Zoo. Born on April 26, the six-month-old kittens are part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Species Survival Plan program, which is designed to help ensure the survival of selected species, most of which are threatened or endangered in the wild.

The zoo announced the birth of the kittens on Endangered Species Day to emphasize the critical role of todays accredited zoos in conservation programs. Connecticuts Beardsley Zoos Deputy Director, Don Goff, is leads a committee of AZA-accredited zoo members whose goal is to save declining species through carefully researched breeding recommendations.
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HAMDEN  To get a haircut while living in the dorms at Quinnipiac University, Joseph Gallagher would take an Uber to the closest barber. But this semester, he didnt travel too far to get a new cut with Burbanks Mobile Barber Shop parked right behind his dorm.

This is the best haircut Ive had in two years, Gallagher said after seeing his new cut.

An entrepreneurship major at Quinnipiac, Cameron Burbank owns the mobile shop and operates it with professional barber Joey Barrco. Burbanks vision evolved from a need he saw in students like Gallagher who couldnt get a professional haircut on campus.

Theres a larger market for mobile and on-demand these days but there isnt a supplier for a mobile barber shop, he said.

Burbank eventually pitched his idea to Dale Jasinski, associate professor of entrepreneurship and strategy at Quinnipiac. He suggested Burbank put together a proposal for his mobile barber shop and present it at the Connecticut State Business Plan Competition  and Burbank ended up winning the contest.

When Burbank told the idea to his hometown barber and shared it with other barbers, many said they had had the idea but hadnt executed it, Burbank said.

For a number of reasons, we havent seen many mobile barber shops out there, Burbank said. But there certainly is a market for it.

He purchased a 2006 NuWa Hitchhiker II LS and, over the summer, worked 10-12 hours a day to convert the 40-foot expanding trailer into a fully equipped barber shop with four barber stations, a bathroom, reception desk, waiting area, couch, powerful generator and hot and cold running water. He hauls it with his GMC pickup truck.

I had to learn everything about a barber shop and how it works because its not even close to anything my family has ever done, Burbank said. So he chose an experienced partner.

Barraco was one of 40 applicants for the job and has been in the barber business for 20 years. He owned his own barber shop in Milford before he had to close it due to an injury.

He has been doing this a long time and understands what its like to be a business owner and aspects other applicants couldnt wrap their heads around, Burbank said.

I know it so well and hes a business major so I feel like us together make a good team, Barraco said. We could really make some magic happen.

Burbanks doesnt advertise, so their customers come from students sharing the business by word of mouth, he said.

Every day, Burbank said, they get more and more people coming in saying their friend got a cut and that they want one, too. Since they opened at the beginning of October, the business has been growing like wildfire.

Burbank is working on getting licenses for the other health departments in Connecticut so he can take the mobile shop to more local colleges. Eventually he hopes to lease these units to other barbers.

The mobile shop offers $17 haircuts Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. As the business grows, Burbank said he aims to operate five days a week and incorporate the capability for appointments.

mdignan@hearstmediact.com
NEW HAVEN  In the end, they clapped.

Usually a tough crowd, the members of the East Rock Community Management Team showed their appreciation for a proposed conversion of the former Lehman Bros. engraving company to condominiums by putting their hands together.

Architect Wayne Garrick described a proposed planned unit development for the 191 Foster St. property where there will be a variety of styles from the Bauhaus look on the main building, which held the printing presses, to Greek Revival for the townhouses.

For a century, expensive engravings, fine stationery and wedding invitations were made at the factory that closed its doors in 2008 after being forced into bankruptcy.

The acre of land had many suitors over the years, but the plans never came together until now, when Ocean Management, run by Shmuel Aizenberg, bought it for some $700,000 in the spring. It is bound by Foster, Canner, Nicoll and Willow streets and will support a total of 30 condominiums.

It is in fairly decent condition, even though it has been neglected, Garrick said of the factory building, which will be re-used. The plan is to demolish the warehouse and quonset hut.

The owner was represented at the meeting by Mendel Paris of Paris Realty Group, who partners with Ocean Managment, which owns 800 rentals in New Haven, the most recent being conversion of the closed YMCA on State Street, which had been used by railroad workers, into apartments.

Paris said part of the development will be 18 units with two bedrooms geared more toward a roommate situation.

There will be also be six units with side-by-side bedrooms, which he said would be ideal for a young couple with a child. The last piece includes six proposed two-story townhouses built on top of garages.

Paris said they had planned to offer only two-bedrooms units, but after getting feedback from neighbors and Alder Anna Festa, D-10, they will now offer three to five units with three bedrooms.

We hope to start construction in the summer. We are in the process of cleaning the property up environmentally, Paris said.

It will be really nice to have that cleaned up, Rob Rock, a neighbor, told him.

He said there was a misconception that the cleanup would add an extraordinary cost to the project, but he estimated it will be $200,000, which makes the project doable.

We did a lot of legwork before we bought the property, he said.

The project is expected to take $300 per square foot to build. Paris said their research shows there is a market for condos in New Haven, something city development officials had hoped would happen here.

The feedback so far has been positive, Paris said. Residents came up to him afterward and said they cant wait to see the current eyesore converted to a positive use.
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MIDDLETOWN  Twelfth-grade carpentry, HVAC, architectural, plumbing and electrical students from Middletown and Meriden gathered around a tiny lavender saltbox on the grass at the rear of Vinal Technical High School on Tuesday for the opening of the states ninth E-House.

The seniors, joined by school, state and local officials, showed off the results of their handiwork over the last few years at whats known as the nations first green construction learning laboratories for high school students.

The initiative provides a clean energy and energy efficiency curriculum and training for Connecticuts Technical High Schools students and faculty. E-Houses incorporate solar photovoltaic and solar thermal systems, premium insulation, home automation, and advanced air handling equipment.

As part of the project, plumbing students mounted solar panels that were connected to a water heater, senior Michael Thurston said.

We put (ethylene glycol) in the solar panels and then (the sun) heats it up and transfers it to the water heater. It transfers the heat from the glycol thats in the water heater to the water and then it circulates through the system, he said.

It doesnt look that steep, but when youre on the roof, its a little nerve-wracking, said Thurston, gesturing toward the solar panels on the rear of the E-house.

During roof work, students donned safety harnesses as a safety measure, his classmate said.

My challenge was helping them get the panels on the roof because Im so small, Destiny Lopez said. It was tough when it was getting toward summertime because of the bees. It was scary sometimes when I was up there. I helped getting into small spaces with my hands because it was difficult for the guys to do it, Lopez said.

The states first E-House opened in September 2011 at E.C. Goodwin Technical High School in New Britain. These projects include the efforts of architectural drafting students, who created the blueprints, and other students from Platt, Vinal, Cheney and Goodwin tech schools.

Following Tuesdays ribbon cutting, attendees were invited inside the tiny house, in a 400-square-foot space on the ground floor, to learn about the various energy efficient systems installed inside.

Vinal electrical student Anthony Amendola explained the different types of insulation used in the home: spray foam, batt and dense-pack and blown cellulose. The latter is made from 85-percent recycled paper, he said, and treated with fire and insect retardants.

Amendola, who was the E-House project foreman at the beginning of tenth grade, marveled at how much the students had learned. Its a big accomplishment. You can definitely tell the difference from sophomore year  barely knowing anything  to senior year, where we put up solar panels, wired the generator, and other tasks, he said.

One of the electrical students showed off the heat-recovery ventilator, dehumidifier, air conditioning and thermostats, explaining the HVAC systems ability to heat or cool only half the house if needed. The design also incorporates ultraviolet air filters to kill bacteria and eliminate odors in the air, he said, popping out the easy-to-clean electronic air filter.

Outside the little homes front porch, flanked with pumpkins and other autumn decor, an electric car sat silent, hooked up to a charging system that powers up plug-in electric cars and hybrid electric vehicles.

The students, dignitaries and other guests watched a video presentation documenting the projects progress from its beginnings four years ago.

When the short film concluded, state Department of Labor Commissioner Scott Jackson, former mayor of Hamden, told an anecdote about one of his high school teachers whose style made a major impact on his life.

Jackson said his 10th-grade chemistry teacher, who came to America on a steamship from Italy as a teen and managed to teach himself English, told students on the first day of schoolto memorize the periodic table of elements.

If you dont memorize it, it you cant dream about it, and if you cant dream about it, then you cant add another row to that table, his teacher told the class.

That lesson, Jackson said, is an important one for technical school students, especially those looking to begin their career in the green jobs industry.

Its not just learning by rote, its not just getting a design of something and taking this design and making it real, he said. Its about looking at whats not in that design and saying, We can do this better, Jackson said.

The E-House project is one that has immediate real-life benefits, said Jeffrey Wihbey, interim superintendent for the Connecticut Technical High School System.

Its solar thermal hot water system is already supplying hot water to Vinal. Not only is a learning lab, but its also having returns, saving taxpayers money already, providing free energy to the school and the grid, Wihbey told those gathered.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently completed a survey of the countrys clean energy economy and determined Connecticuts green industry now sustains 34,000 jobs, said Diane Duva, director of the Office of Energy Demand at the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

Partnering with the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, courtesy of a federal Department of Energy grant, the DEEP asked employers in Connecticut what skills they are looking for in their workforce.

More than half of them said theyre having a hard time finding people to fill the spots, because they need people coming into their jobs with technical skills, with the sorts of skills that you are developing and practicing on your E-House, Duva told the students.

Its a lab and its a learning experience, so what we try to do is get as many people, as many schools, as many career areas, involved in it as possible, said Ray Mencio, education consultant, construction trades, in the career and technical education department at Vinal.

Setbacks that arise during the building of each of these E-Houses are tackled by thinking of them as educational opportunities, he said.

Everybody has them, but we learn more from our mistakes so everybody designs their own building and then, as the design goes up, any issues they have, they have to research it and then correct it, Mencio said.

Now, students at the Bristol Technical Education Center are putting finishing touches on an E-House that is wholly independent from fossil fuels. Its expected to be finished within a month, Mencio said.

Every building is unique, each incorporates state-of-the-art technology, he said. The next one to be built at Prince Tech will be a mixed-use, two-story structure with commercial space on the ground floor and residential on the first, he said.

The creativity, the design, the will, the desire, the craftsmanship that this system develops is second to none, Jackson said of the states technical schools.

He told the students not to think of their future employment opportunities as jobs, but rather careers in a growing field thats the future of Connecticut.

If youre building something that goes underwater, if youre building something that goes into space, or if youre building something from the ground up in construction, nobody does it better than Connecticut and youre a part of that legacy, Jackson said.

The E-House initiative is funded by the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund and the Connecticut Green Bank, with the goal of an E-House at each of the states 17 technical high schools. Eversource and UI administer the program by managing and developing the curriculum. They are hands-on partners that see the construction through to its completion.

For information, see eesmarts.com.

Managing Editor Cassandra Day can be reached at cassandra.day@hearst

mediact.com.
Fourteen African nationals were arrested on Saturday evening, October 21, as raids targeting a specific racial group continued across Bangkok, Thailand.

Sweeps for people of African origin were conducted in 32 areas including the Bang Na, Udomsuk and Lat Phrao areas.

They resulted in the arrests of nine people, two from Nigeria and seven from Somalia, accused of being in the kingdom illegally. Another four Nigerians were charged with overstaying their visas.

The raid was headed by the same police commander who last week arrested 52 people in a raid targeting black people. The authorities have acknowledged they are identifying potential suspects by race.

Surachet Hakpan, head of the 191 emergency response unit, said the operations were being carried out at the governments behest.

He said they were aimed at cracking down on criminals involved in currency counterfeiting, online romance scams and credit card skimming.

Fingerprints and DNA were collected from the suspects, and they were barred from reentering the country.

Room owners at The IRIS Rama 9-Srinakarin condominium, where many of the suspects were staying, will be charged with sheltering foreigners without notifying the authorities.

After the Oct. 16 raids, Surachet said it was part of the tightened security measures ahead of the royal cremation ceremon
People are joining music for the wrong reasons - @femiakuti A post shared by HipTv (@officialhiptv) on Oct 22, 2017 at 4:59am PDT

Legendary Afrobeat icon, Femi Anikulapo-Kuti, says he fears for the future of music industry in Nigeria.When asked about the future of music industry in an interview with HipTv, Femi Kuti predicted that there will be chaos in the industry if musicians keep going after fame and wealth.According to him, music industry may experience a downturn because everybody is joining music for the wrong reasons.We must insist to teach our children music properly unless there would be pandemonium in the industryEverybody is just about the fame everybody is just joining music for the fameEverybody is just all about the fame.Fame is the least and fortune and wealth.Music is very godly its so important that if its not done properly.I fear that we are going to have a very sad future in the industry.Thats why I keep insisting young boys and girls should learn a musical instrument.
A National Assembly member, Sen. Abdullahi Adamu (APC-Nasarawa), says the All Progressives Congress (APC) is making good what the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) made bad during its 16-year rule.Adamu, who made this known in an interview, in Abuja, on Tuesday, said that the rot accumulated between 1999 and 2015 that PDP held sway in governance was much.What it took them 16 years to damage, we cannot take just one year of some magical works to get everything corrected, he said.According to him, the PDP fails to realise deliberately that the APC cannot just perform magic within this short period, because they have nothing on their agenda but mere propaganda.They have not been doing enough work and spending enough time to plan what is called opposition in the real sense of democracy. They feel calling people names, abusing people and propaganda is opposition, this is wrong.They will not get the desired result out of that.For instance, the propaganda that Monkey Pox was induced by vaccines from the military, what can be more absurd than that and they have kept quiet because it is an agenda.This negativity is from the PDP stable; this is a smear campaign, I pity their strategy, Adamu said.On the recent comment by the PDP Senate Caucus that it would dislodge the ruling party, the lawmaker said that they were only giving the impression that they were still relevant in the political arena.He, however, said that the political space was big enough for associations wanting to be recognised like the PDP, to impact on the Nigerian polity.PDP is no longer what it used to be. PDP is a party that had 16 years and then toward the end, they got so strong and got a bit power drunk.Unfortunately, through intoxication they lost everything that there was in political fortunes, they had to go back to the table to start all over, he said.Adamu, who is a former governor of Nasarawa, lauded Gov. Umaru Al-Makura, for his efforts at developing the state, saying given the circumstances, he has given the best he can.I support the government of Nasarawa. I believe no administration is perfect; no administration provides everything that the populace requires; I believe that he is doing well enough, he said.
Ayodele Fayose, Ekiti State governor has said President Mohammodu Buhari only acted on the reinstatement of wanted former Chairman of th...

Ayodele Fayose, Ekiti State governor has said President Mohammodu Buhari only acted on the reinstatement of wanted former Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abdulrashid Maina because of the global embarrassment caused him by the outcry of Nigerians.Maina headed the now defunct pension reform team during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, but fled the country in 2015 after being indicted for alleged diversion of N2 billion public fund.The governor in a statement by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, said the president directive on the immediate disengagement of Maina was an afterthought.He also demanded the immediate trial of Maina as well as the sack of all those involved in his reinstatement, which he described as fraudulent and shameful.The governor earlier on his verified and official twitter handle likened Buharis anti-corruption fight to a situation where Satan is calling Judas Iscariot a sinner.He said, In the words of APC Senator, Shehu Sani, when it comes to fighting corruption in the National Assembly and the Judiciary and in the larger Nigerian sectors, the President uses insecticide, but when it comes to fighting corruption within the Presidency, they use deodorants.Also, President Buhari has refused to act on the report of the committee that investigated the $43 million discovered in an apartment at Osbourne Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos, despite that Nigerians have been asking him to act on it.When the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Ibe Kachikwu raised allegation of award of $25 billion contracts without following due process against the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC); Dr. Maikanti Baru, the Presidency was the one that defended him (Baru).Even the Acting Chairman of EFCC, Ibrahim Magu was indicted of corruption by the Department of State Service (DSS) and all that was done by President Buhari was to ask the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), to investigate the DSS report. Up till today, nothing has been heard about it and Magu, despite his rejection by the Senate, Magu is still acting as the EFCC chairman.It was also under this government of Buhari that Ahmed Gambo Saleh; the Supreme Court Registrar was indicted and put on trial for alleged over N2 billion fraud. The case against Gambo Saleh was withdrawn almost immediately, and he has been appointed the Secretary of the National Judicial Council (NJC). Not only that, he was made the Secretary of the Corruption and Financial Crime Cases Trial Monitoring Committee, headed by Retired Justice Isa Ayo Salami.Like I have said several times, as far as President Buhari is concerned, corruption involving his men is family affair, and one wont be surprised if Maina is rewarded with bigger office very soon, just like others before him.
One of the oldest in her class, Naomi Adamu was 24 when she and more than 200 mainly Christian students were taken off into Boko Haram...

One of the oldest in her class, Naomi Adamu was 24 when she and more than 200 mainly Christian students were taken off into Boko Haram's Sambisa forest hideout in north-eastern Nigeria in 2014, sparking global outrage.While in captivity, the girls were given exercise books for the Koranic classes they were made to attend.But some of the girls used these to keep secret diaries. When the militants found out, they were forced to burn the books.Ms Adamu managed to hide hers. She and her close friend, Sarah Samuel, now 20, and three other girls used the books to chronicle some of their experiences.The diary entries, written in passable English and poor Hausa, are undated and appear to be from their early months in captivity.Here are 10 of the many disclosures. Some spelling and punctuation have been altered for clarity:The militants who attacked the Chibok school on 14 April 2014 had come with the intention of stealing an "engine block", the diary notes. It is not clear what piece of machinery they wanted - there had been some construction work at the school a few weeks earlier, so it may have been the machine used for moulding cement blocks, which can also be used for constructing crude weapons, or they may have been after an engine block from a vehicle.But when it could not be found, they argued over what to do with the students they had gathered in groups. After considering a number of gory options, they decided to take the girls with them.o.'"Some girls were loaded into the militants' vehicle at the school while the majority were made to walk at gunpoint for miles, until several trucks arrived to ferry them away.On their way to Boko Haram's forest hideout, when some students began escaping by jumping off the trucks, one of the kidnapped girls alerted their abductors - perhaps out of fear of being left alone, or a propensity to obey whoever is in authority, or the desire to have company in misery."Then one girl in the car said, 'Driver, some girls are jumping to escape.' Then the driver opened the door of the car then searched for them with the torch but didn't find anyone. So they said to them that they should stay [in] one place, that if they jump down again, if they saw her or any they will shoot her."The militants played a number of cruel tricks on the kidnapped girls, including pretending that their parents had been captured by Boko Haram. On one occasion, they separated the Christian girls from those who were Muslim and threatened to burn those who would not convert to Islam with petrol."Then they came to us and said, 'Those who are Muslim, it is time for prayer.' After they had prayed, [they said], 'Those who are Muslim, let them be on one side and those who are Christian let them too be on one side.'"Then we saw jerrycan in the car so we thought it was petrol. Then they said, 'Who and how many of you will turn to Muslim.' So many of us, because of fear, some of us stand up and went inside... So [they said], 'The rest that remain you want to die, is that why you don't want to be Muslim? We are going to burn you...' Then they give us that jerrycan which we thought it was petrol. It is not petrol, it is water."Some of the Chibok girls have stated in previous interviews that they were not sexually abused or forced into marriage - although they were sometimes whipped to persuade them to marry. Some girls were also taken as official concubines.The girls hid the diaries by burying them in the ground or stuffing them in their underwearThe diaries show that the militants were livid about insinuations in the media that they were raping the girls. The group's leader, Abubakar Shekau, ranted about this a number of times, first in a recorded message that was played to the girls."Then in the night, they gathered us and preached to us and put [on] a cassette. They said that cassette is from their master Mr Abubakar Shekau.... So he said that just because of they kidnapped us to come and teach us the way of God, then your parents and the government and your principal are crying to us and saying that we are raping you and are doing bad, bad things to you We brought you to teach you the way of Allah."The militants pleaded with the girls to not lead them into temptation, encouraging them to always keep their bodies covered in a hijab.A still from a 2014 Boko Haram video of the Chibok girlsImage copyrightAFP/ BOKO HARAM"He opened the Koran and started reading it, then he read one place that said anybody which they kidnap on the fight of jihad, it is your own, whatever you like, you will do with that person... But we that they give us hijab is that they don't want to see our body, which will make them to sin and do what is very bad."The marriage proposals from militants were frequent and forceful."One girl wanted to go inside the room and pick something, then Malam Ahmed [one of the militants] went and met her and asked her about marriage. Then she said, 'No.' He asked her, 'And so what is your own decision about this marriage?'"Then she said that no, they kidnapped her from GGSS [Government Girls Secondary School] Chibok and brought her to Sambisa and now they are talking to her about marriage. How will she get married - after all her mother and her father and her aunties and the rest of her colleagues, they don't even know Then she asked him, if she says no - that she will not get married, she will only stay and follow her God alone, is it not good? Then he said, 'No, it is bad.'"Some were pressured to change their mind."We saw the people come in two Hilux [vans]. Then they came asking for those who want to get married. They asked us and said anybody who accepts Muslim religion must get married if truly she holds the religion with two hands. They gave us 30 minutes to give them their answer but we kept quiet. Then we stayed for an hour but nobody answered them."Naomi Adamu told me that those who refused to get married were treated as slaves: "Every day, they beat us. They tell us to marry and if you refuse, they will beat you. We will wash cloth, fetch water, do everything for their wives. We were slaves."Despite the global Bring Back Our Girls campaign, which saw the involvement of celebrities like former US First Lady Michelle Obama, some people in surrounding communities wanted no part in bringing back the girls, and returned some of the girls when they managed to escape.A Bring Back Our Girls campaigner in Abuja, Nigeria in 2014Image copyrightAFP"There is another day that some girls ran. They tried to escape but they couldn't. So those people arrested them. The way they arrested them was they entered into a shop and asked them to help them and give them water and biscuit. So, the people asked them, 'Who are you and where did you come from?' The girls said, 'We are those that the BH kidnapped from GGSS [Government Girls Secondary School], Chibok.' So, one of the people said, 'Are these not Shekau's children?'"So they gave them good food to eat and a place to sleep and the next day, they returned them to our place... As they brought them to Sambisa at night, they whipped them and said that they are going to cut off their necks."The girls were told that they would be allowed to go home to their families if they all, with no exception, agreed to convert to Islam. Those who agreed to convert then blamed the girls who refused for their continued captivity."They said that those that do not accept Muslim religion are [like] sheep and cows and goat... they will kill them... Then Malam Abba [one of the militants] said those that who did not accept Muslim religion, they should be on one side, let them not enter into those who have become Muslim. So he told us to stay aside - that they are going to arrange another place for them. Another person said no, that let us stay together. As they left, one week later, the rest of us said that we that did not become Muslim, we are those who are stopping ourselves from going home."Boko Haram released several videos about the Chibok girls. This is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of one of them.We have blurred the girls' faces as some former Boko Haram captives and "wives" have been stigmatised after their release"Then there is a day before this, they came and [filmed] about 10 girls under the Tamarind tree. They called them one by one and asked them about their name and the name of their parents and then they [film us] and said, 'Did we hurt you in any way.' We said, 'No.' They told us to tell our parents and the government what they are doing to us. The government and our parents are saying that they are raping us and disturbing us."So they called out one of us and asked her, 'Since we kidnapped you and brought you to this place, have we ever slept with or raped you?' She answered, 'No.' He asked her again... 'I will like you to let you show to your parents and the government what we have offered you and how we are taking good care of you.'"The videos were sometimes filmed straight after the militants listened to the news."They stayed a little while and listened to the BBC [Hausa service]. As they finished listening to the radio, they called us one by one. They told some to stand and some to kneel and some to sit so they [filmed] us and told us to read. Then we read from [Islamic text]."Naomi Adamu and three other diarists - Rhoda Peter, Saratu Ayuba and Margaret Yama - were released in May.In September, the government sent them to study at the American University of Nigeria in the north-eastern town of Yola.Ms Adamu, the second of seven children, said she kept the diaries with only her family in mind, and seems baffled by my interest."I wrote it because of remembrance," she said."For my brothers to see it, my sisters to see it, my parents to see it."Naomi Adamu's mother Kolo cannot read but is eager to know more about the diaries' contentsBut her friend Sarah Samuel, who wrote many of the entries, is yet to return, which is a source of sadness for her."I feel pained. I feel so pained. Up till now, I'm still thinking about her."About two years into their captivity, at a time when a military crackdown led to Boko Haram's supplies being cut off, she succumbed to pressure and married, a decision that entitled her to leave the camp with her Boko Haram husband, hopefully for a better life elsewhere with access to food. None of those who got married have been released so far.Her father, Samuel Yaga, told me that he was not surprised to learn that his oldest child wrote while in captivity."She was always reading. Sometimes, she fell asleep with a book in her lap," he said.On the last page of one notebook, she had listed the names of her five siblings, ending with: "My father's name is Samuel and my mother's name is Rebecca."It was almost as if she did not want to forget.(Culled ffrom BBC)
Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, has appealed to the Federal Government to hand over federal roads in the country to state governments for effective management so as to ensure long term viability.He made the appeal when he received the Senate Committee on Works led by its Chairman, Senator Kabiru Gaya, at the Government House in Sokoto late Monday night.There is the need for the federal government to handover the roads to states because state governments are closer to the people and we have more efficient methods of supervision. If this is done, it will go a long way in ensuring that the vast majority of major roads and highways in the country are well maintained, he said.Tambuwal said Sokoto state government would continue to work with all stakeholders to ensure that the infrastructural development of Nigeria is given utmost attention.He equally solicited the support of the National Assembly to facilitate the reimbursement of the money the state government spent on the repairs of some federal roads in its domain.In his remarks, Senator Gaya said they were in the state for the conduct of their oversight functions.Senator Gaya also said his committee would facilitate the reimbursement of the funds used by the state government in construction of federal roads.He particularly thanked the Governor for his commitment to the Sokoto-Jega-Yauri -Kontagora road which is currently under construction.
Fulani herdsmen who on Monday kidnapped Octogenarian Chief James Omafuaire, his wife and customer at his Ikpeshi Quarry site in Akoko Edo Council Area of Edo State are demanding N25 million for his release.Omafuaire, elder brother of Vanguard Newspaper Senior Photojournalist, Akpokona Omafuaire was kidnapped along with his wife, Mrs. Victoria Omafuaire and a customer while in the site but released the wife after.The kidnappers called Charles Omafuaire, his son later Monday night demanding N25 million ransom to release the Octogenarian.Christy Omafuaire Atie, who confirm the ransom demand to Vanguard said that the kidnap has caused panic in the family.She appeal to the police authority to swing into action to rescue her father while appealing to the herdsmen to lower the demand.Omafuaire was supervising his workers at his quarry site in Ikpeshi near Auchi when the Fulani herdsmen with guns kidnapped him, his wife and a customer.Chief Omafuaire, an Olomu Chief hails from Akperhe-Olomu in Ughelli-South Area of Delta State, he is a retired Supritendent of Police and former Divisional Police Officer, Igarra.He is over 80 years old.
Detained former National Security Adviser, NSA, Col. Sambo Dasuki, retd, on Tuesday, gave reasons why he would not testify in the ongoing trial of erstwhile National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh.Dasuki maintained that it would not be proper for him to appear as Metuhs witness before the Federal High Court in Abuja since he was already labelled as an accomplice in the charge.Addressing the court through his lawyer, Mr. Ahmed Raji, SAN, the former NSA said he would not mount the witness box to implicate himself, saying he had yet to receive a copy of the subpoena the court issued to compel his attendance in the matter.He told the court that his state of mind is currently in turmoil because of the protracted unlawful detention by the Department of State Service.Dasuki stated his position on a day trial Justice Okon Abang confirmed that the court had equally summoned former President Goodluck Jonathan to appear on Wednesday to give evidence in the case.Justice Abang said his decision to summon Jonathan was in the overall interest of justice and fair-hearing.Metuh who is answering to a seven-count charge the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, preferred against him and his firm, Destra Investment Limited, had described both Jonathan and Dasuki as his very important and crucial witnesses.EFCC is prosecuting the defendants over allegation that they received N400million from the Office of the National Security Adviser, ONSA, before the 2015 presidential election, without executing any contract.It said the fund which was released to Metuh and his firm by Dasuki, on the order of former President Jonathan, was part of about $2.1billion earmarked for the purchase of arms to fight insurgency in the North East.The former PDP spokesman was equally accused of engaging in money laundering. EFCC alleged that he was involved in an illicit transaction that involved the exchange of $2m.Metuhs lawyer, Dr. Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, told the court that his client decided to apply for subpoena ad testificandum to be issued against Jonathan after the ex-President snubbed letters his chambers wrote to him with respect to the case.Meanwhile, at the resumed sitting on the matter yesterday, Justice Abang said he summoned Jonathan in line with a ruling of the Court of Appeal in Abuja that faulted his earlier refusal to grant Metuhs request for subpoena to be issued against Dasuki. He said: Indeed, at the close of business yesterday being October 23, 2017, precisely at about 3.59pm, the registrar forwarded to the court in chamber a subpoena to compel former President Goodluck Jonathan to appear in court to testify a the instance of the first defendant (Metuh).Therefore in line with section 241(1) of Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 and having regard to the subsisting judgment of the Court of Appeal in the appeal CA/A/159C/2017, between Olisa Metuh and Federal Republic of Nigeria dated September 29, 2017 to the effect that it will be tantamount to violating the right of the first defendant to fair hearing not to sign the subpoena.I have no option other than to sign a subpoena to compel former President Goodluck Jonathan to appear in court on September 25, 2017 (Wednesday)to give evidence at the instance of the first defendant. A registrar of the court, however, confirmed to the Judge yesterday that the courts bailiff could not serve the subpoena on Jonathan. Metuh had in his application, requested that the summon be served on Jonathan in his Abuja home.However, despite inability of the courts bailiff to reach the former President, Justice Abang maintained yesterday that the two subpoenaed witnesses (Jonathan and Dasuki) must be in court today. Justice Abang said he would firstly rule on Dasukis motion to set aside the subpoena against him, before resuming hearing on the case. The former NSA had in his motion dated September 20 and predicated on section 255, 492(3) of the ACJA, 2015, sections 183 & 198(2) of the Evidence Act, 2011, and section 36(6) of 1999 Constitution, challenged the subpoena against him. He prayed the court for, An order to set aside the issuance and service of the subpoena ad testificandum issued by this honourable court, for the purpose of compelling Col. Mohammed Sambo Dasuku, Rtd, to give evidence in this case. As well as, An order to suspend execution or further execution of the subpoena ad testificandum issued by this honourable court, for the purpose of compelling Col. Mohammed Sambo Dasuku, Rtd, to give evidence in this case, pending his release from the custody of the DSS.Dasuki told the court that he has been in the unlawful custody of the DSS contrary to orders that admitted him to bail on September 1, 2015, in charge No FHC/ABJ/CR/ 319/2015, on December 18, 2015, in charge No. FCT/CR/42/2015 and December 21, 2015, in charge No FCT/CR/43/2015. He said the propriety of his ability to stand trial in the mentioned charges, in the face of his continued unlawful detention, is currently the subject matter of two appeals pending at the Supreme Court.Dasuki said that having not exhausted his right of appeal, It will be overreaching on the Applicant and pre-emptive of the Suprem Court, if the Applicant is compelled to give evidence in this case, bearing in mind that the subject matter thereof is intricately knitted to the current charges filed against him.He said he has not been afforded the opportunity to go home or to access relevant files, records and documents required to refresh his memory of any decisions/actions he took or authorised while in office.He said his constitutional right to fair hearing/trial would be adversely prejudiced if he is compelled to testify or give evidence in Metuhs trial, while still in custody, in disregard of the appeals already set down for hearing at the Supreme Court on January 25. 2018.The ex-NSA further contended that the subpoena was served on the Director General of the DSS instead of on him personally. Besides, in a 28-paragraphed affidavit that was deposed to by one David Ogundipe, Dasuki said his protracted and arbitrary detention has negatively impacted on his state of mind.Such that makes him unfit to stand any trial now or give evidence relating to his actions or omissions in office. I know that the issuance of a subpoena at this stage is inchoate and premature. It will be tidier and neater, if this honourable court grants the instant application, by either setting aside the subpoena ad testificandum, or suspend its execution.It is in the interest of justice that this application is granted, he added. Neverthless, both EFCC and Metuh, yesterday, urged the court to dismiss Dasukis motion.While praying the court to uphold the subpoena, Metuhs lawyer decried that the DSS ignored two letters his client wrote for the detained ex-NSA to be released to appear before the high court to testify on his behalf. On his part, EFCC lawyer, Mr. Sylvanus Tahir, argued that the summon was binding on Dasuki since the subpoena was issued in compliance to a subsisting order of the appellate court.He argued that vacating the subpoena on Dasuki would amount to Justice Abang overruling the Court of Appeal.Likewise, counsel to Metuhs company, Mr. Tochukwu Onwugbufor, SAN, urged the court to insist on the presence of both Jonathan and Dasuki as witnesses in the matter.
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday said Nigeria was open to business and more investment.Osinbajo who chairs the nations Economic Management Team said this at a bilateral meeting he held with his Indonesian counterpart, Vice President Jusuf Kalla, on the sidelines of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Beneficial Ownership Transparency Conference in Jakarta, Indonesia.According to a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, the Vice-President also said Nigeria and Indonesia would work together to increase the level of economic cooperation between both countries.We are looking forward to more Indonesian investments especially in the manufacturing sector in Nigeria, trying to exploit our local raw materials, Osinbajo was quoted as saying.The Vice-President also informed Kalla that the Muhammadu Buhari administration has implemented reforms that have made the Nigerian business environment a more favourable environment.In his own remarks, the Indonesian Vice President said his country was also ready for more economic cooperation with African countries, especially Nigeria.Kalla conveyed his greetings to President Muhammadu Buhari and asked after his health, to which Osinbajo responded that the President was doing very well.The Nigerian Vice President then expressed appreciation to the Indonesian government and extended greetings to President Joko Widodo.
Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose has described President Buharis directive for the immediate disengagement of former Chairman of the P...





Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose has described President Buharis directive for the immediate disengagement of former Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abdullahi Maina, as an afterthought, saying; The President only acted to save his face from the global embarrassment caused him by the outcry of Nigerians on the news of Mainas reinstatement.

Governor Fayose demanded for the immediate arrest and trial of Maina as well as sack of all those who perpetrated his reinstatement, which he described as fraudulent and shameful.





In a statement signed by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose, who likened Buhari's anti-corruption fight to a situation where Satan is calling Judas Iscariot a sinner, reminded Nigerians that he said before now that the kind of corruption that will be witnessed in President Buharis government will be unprecedented and that he had been vindicated.





The governor described the government of President Buhari as corruption personified, noting that; If Maina, who was declared wanted for corrupt practices by the International Police Organisation, (INTERPOL) after he was dismissed from office by the Civil Service Commission in 2013 for allegedly committing N2.1 Billion pension fraud while in office, could be secretly reinstated and even promoted without writing the required civil service promotion examination, no one should be in doubt any longer that Buhari is not fighting any corruption.





Governor Fayose, who described President Buhari and his men as defenders and protectors of corruption, said; Even the former Chairman of EFCC, Ibrahim Lamorde, who was accused of corruption by the Senate, removed from office unceremoniously and declared wanted is now the Commissioner of Police in charge of the Special Fraud Unit (SFU), Ikoyi, Lagos.





He said; When the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Ibe Kachikwu raised allegation of award of $25 billion contracts without following due process against the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC); Dr. Maikanti Baru, the Presidency was the one that defended him (Baru).





Also, President Buhari has refused to act on the report of the committee that investigated the $43 million discovered in an apartment at Osbourne Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos, despite that Nigerians have been asking him to act on it.





Even the Acting Chairman of EFCC, Ibrahim Magu was indicted of corruption by the Department of State Service (DSS) and all that was done by President Buhari was to ask the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), to investigate the DSS report. Up till today, nothing has been heard about it and Magu, despite his rejection by the Senate, Magu is still acting as the EFCC chairman.





It was also under this government of Buhari that Ahmed Gambo Saleh; the Supreme Court Registrar was indicted and put on trial for alleged over N2 billion fraud. The case against Gambo Saleh was withdrawn almost immediately, and he has been appointed the Secretary of the National Judicial Council (NJC). Not only that, he was made the Secretary of the Corruption and Financial Crime Cases Trial Monitoring Committee, headed by Retired Justice Isa Ayo Salami .





In the words of APC Senator, Shehu Sani, when it comes to fighting corruption in the National Assembly and the Judiciary and in the larger Nigerian sectors, the President uses insecticide, but when it comes to fighting corruption within the Presidency, they use deodorants.





Like I have said several times, as far as President Buhari is concerned, corruption involving his men is family affair, and one wont be surprised if Maina is rewarded with bigger office very soon, just like others before him.




MAHWAH -- Fearing an influx of Orthodox Jews from New York State, the Township of Mahwah introduced two hateful and discriminatory ordinances that illegally targeted that community, the state Attorney General's office alleged in a stunning complaint filed against the town on Tuesday.

The harsh public rebuke of both the actions of Mahwah's elected officials and the anti-Semitic sentiment of some residents likened the conduct of the town to the actions of "1950s-era white flight suburbanites who sought to keep African-Americans from moving into their neighborhoods."

The nine-count complaint, filed in Bergen County Superior Court, seeks a return of more than $3.4 million in state Green Acres grants received by Mahwah and an injunction blocking the two ordinances.

"This is an extensive complaint ... but the bottom line is very simple -- the township council in Mahwah heard the angry, fear-driven voices of bigotry and acted to appease those voices," Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino said in a statement.

The first ordinance, which went into effect at the end of July, limited the use of Mahwah's recreational facilities to New Jersey residents.

The second, which was introduced but not passed, was the expansion of an existing ordinance that banned signs on utility poles, amended to include any "device or other matter." It effectively would have banned the formation of an Orthodox Jewish religious boundary known as an eruv, which is designated by white piping called "lechis" on utility poles, the state alleged.

"I repeatedly warned the council of these consequences for months," Mahwah Mayor Bill Laforet said Tuesday.

The religious boundary, which in this case extended from Rockland County, allows Orthodox Jews to do everyday things such as carry house keys or push baby strollers outside of the home on the Jewish Sabbath.

Despite approval from the utility company, the township ordered that the lechis be removed. A group called the Bergen Rockland Eruv Association and residents from Rockland County filed a federal lawsuit in August to allow the lechis to stay.

A ban on an eruv, or threats to have it removed, is "tantamount" to housing discrimination because it could prevent Orthodox Jewish families from living in Mahwah, according to the complaint (which can be read at the end of this story).

Many residents have come out in support of the township's decision, creating Facebook groups and online petitions.

But the complaint takes Mahwah's residents to task for their alleged behavior.

The council, the state says, was "influenced largely" by the "vocal anti-Orthodox Jewish sentiment" from some residents on social media and in public meetings.

"I was wondering if there are any thoughts and procedures in place to keep the Hasidic Jewish people from moving into Mahwah?" one resident asked at a June 29 council meeting. "They have chased us out of two towns we lived in and now they are buying up houses in Suffern."

"I don't know if you noticed, but the Hasidics have been making themselves very comfortable in our town parks," said another.

A third suggested people bring their dogs to town parks in an effort to "scare them away."

Residents also called Mahwah police to report that people who appeared to be Orthodox Jews were using parks, though the callers did not allege that the people were doing anything wrong, the complaint says.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) commended Porrino on Tuesday and said the ordinances violated "the letter and spirit of the US and New Jersey constitutions as well as state anti-discrimination laws."

"An eruv is a constitutionally permissible religious accommodation that allows one segment of a community to go about their lives while adhering to their core religious beliefs," said Joshua Cohen, ADL New Jersey regional director. "Attorney General Porrino's action sends the strong message that the religious freedom of all faiths in Mahwah should be protected against intolerance or exclusion."

The state alleges in its complaint that council President Robert Hermansen received an email from a Mahwah resident not of Orthodox Jewish faith who was concerned that her mother, a New York resident, wouldn't be able to take her grandchildren to the park in Mahwah.

Hermansen allegedly responded that the resident's mother shouldn't worry and that the park ordinance was not intended to "address her situation," according to the attorney general's news release. Hermansen went as far as to suggest a neighborhood watch, writing in a social media post that "the goal is to have everybody working together to make sure that our poles stay clean in Mahwah," according to the complaint.

Hermansen took a swing at Porrino in an interview on Tuesday.

"I find it absolutely appalling that the attorney general is making an inference about my email without even calling me to find out what I meant," he said. "To me, this is nothing more than a witch hunt."

Hermansen, a former Republican county freeholder, said that he felt the complaint against Mahwah was politically motivated and designed to help Democrat Phil Murphy's chances of being elected governor.

"I believe this has everything to do with trying to get Phil Murphy and [Laforet's] council candidates elected," he said. "Am I shocked that the mayor of Mahwah is backing Phil Murphy after having received a $2,600 check from him? Not really."

Hermansen's comments come hours after Laforet, an independent, lashed out at Hermansen in a statement.

"It has been a lonely and painful struggle for me and my family these past several months, having to deal with a reckless and oblivious council president, Rob Hermansen," Laforet said. "He personally led his council mates to this action by the state's highest law enforcement official, and is most accountable. ... His race-baiting bantering has now bitten him back. His disgraceful behavior is now worsened by the severe potential financial penalties facing the township's taxpayer.

"But, I am sorrowed by the loss of reputation for Mahwah which is as diverse, tolerant and welcoming a community that you can find in NJ."

Hermansen, however, says it was Laforet who, in the spring, pushed the council to pass the resolutions - even sending emails on the topic.

"The fact that he is now out trying to blame the council for his missteps is absolutely ridiculous," the council president said. "We did not do these on our own and we did not do these without advice from our attorney.

"I would like to remind everyone how ordinances get done. The township attorney writes the ordinance based off what they deem is good law. We pass the ordinance on the advice of our legal counsel."

The complaint alleges that the parks ordinance and the amended sign ordinance are "abuses of municipal power" and violate the First, Fourth and 14th Amendments of the Constitution.

"To think that there are local governments here in New Jersey, in 2017, making laws on the basis of some archaic, fear-driven and discriminatory mindset, is deeply disappointing and shocking to many, but it is exactly what we are alleging in this case," Porrino said. "Of course, in this case we allege the target of the small-minded bias is not African-Americans, but Orthodox Jews. Nonetheless, the hateful message is the same."

The state seeks more than $3.4 million it claims Mahwah received and used in state Department of Environmental Protection Green Acres grants to purchase and maintain its parks.

The land acquired in the state program cannot be restricted based on religion or residency, the attorney general's office said.

"What's been happening in Mahwah with respect to the township's parks ordinance is not in accordance with the original intent of the Green Acres Program," DEP Commissioner Bob Martin said. "As such, it is unacceptable, and it cannot be allowed to stand."

Lechis exist in more than 20 towns in New Jersey, including East Brunswick, Englewood and Fair Lawn. But other towns, such as Upper Saddle River, are also fighting the issue.

"Our message to those public officials in Mahwah who are leading or following this misguided charge is meant to be loud and clear: We intend to hold you accountable," Porrino said in the statement. "Our message to local officials in other towns who may be plotting to engage in similar attempts to illegally exclude, is the same: We will hold you accountable as well."

Mahwah has introduced other rules or laws to protect against the Orthodox Jewish "invasion," including a "no knock" ordinance proposed on Sept. 14, 2017 that was created in response to rumors of door-to-door home purchase solicitations by "members of the Jewish faith," the complaint alleges.

The park ordinance was roundly criticized by local law enforcement, including by Mahwah Police Chief James Batelli, who publicly questioned how he and his force would be able to enforce the rule without violating constitutional rights.

Bergen County Prosecutor Gurbir Grewal backed Batelli and responded in a letter to the chief that he thought the park rule "raises numerous constitutional concerns" and told him to not enforce the ordinance.

The lawsuit maintains that enforcing the ordinance would "subject affected persons to an unreasonable search."

Batelli went as far as to email council members over the summer to let them know that regardless of what some others might have thought about his decision, he determined that damage to the eruv would be investigated as a bias crime.

The correspondence was revealed in a response to an NJ Advance Media records request that included hundreds of pages of emails, many of them redacted due to "attorney-client privilege."

"I fully understand that there are differing opinions on this issue and I have received comments from people both agreeing and disagreeing with me, but as a law enforcement official this is not a decision I make based upon public opinion or sentiment," Batelli wrote in an email in August to council members, the town lawyer and Mayor William Laforet.

Hermansen, the council president, also objected to the eruv vandalism being treated as a hate crime, the complaint alleges.

Vandalism to the lechis occurred three times over the summer. In September, Batelli released a photograph of two people police had identified as suspects in the hopes that someone would come forward with more information.

In an interview on Tuesday, Batelli said that he thought the complaint "spoke for itself."

"Throughout our country, officials have to answer for their actions through these types of civil complaints," Batelli said. "Several months ago, I expressed my concerns about the ordinance that the council had submitted for enactment. From here, we'll have to see the response from the township."

In an interview on Monday, before before the attorney general's complaint was made public, Batelli said his department was "very close" to identifying both parties believed to be involved in the vandalism.

NJ Advance Media reporter S.P. Sullivan contributed to this report. He may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter.

Sara Jerde may be reached at sjerde@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SaraJerde.

Have information about this story or something else we should be covering? Tell us: nj.com/tips
CLIFFSIDE PARK -- A high school teacher who created a firestorm when she told students to "speak American" is back at work in the classroom after apologizing, district officials said Tuesday.

English teacher Laura Amico, who sparked student protests when her videoed comments went viral, returned to work at Cliffside Park High School on Tuesday morning, according to Superintendent Michael Romagnino.

Romagnino said the teacher delivered an apology to staff and students over the public address system before returning to teach.

The superintendent and other district officials declined to answer further questions, calling the incident a personnel matter.

"Men and women are fighting. They are not fighting for your right to speak Spanish," the teacher, identified by students as Amico, says in the Oct. 12 video. "They are fighting for your right to speak American."

The comments were posted to social media and viewed by students at the school. Dozens of students held protests outside Cliffside Park High School, many of them skipping class to appear in televised interviews.

On the morning of Oct. 16, a fire alarm was pulled and as the school was evacuated. As the teenagers came outside, a dozen or more held up flags from different countries.

Several students who skipped class to protest later served time in detention, Romagnino confirmed.

Romagnino said district policy calls for detention whenever a student cuts class.

Amico could not be reached for comment.

Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
MAHWAH - The state attorney general dropped a bombshell complaint against Mahwah on Tuesday, ripping into the township and its leaders for an alleged pattern of discrimination against an Orthodox Jewish community.

Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino did not pull punches in announcing the complaint, accusing the town council of appeasing "the angry, fear-driven voices of bigotry."

At the heart of the complaint were two township ordinances, one approved and the other introduced. The first, approved unanimously by the council, limited the use of Mahwah's recreational facilities to New Jersey residents.

The second, which was introduced but not passed, was the expansion of an existing ordinance that banned signs on utility poles. The proposed law would effectively have banned the formation of an Orthodox Jewish religious boundary known as an eruv, which is designated by white piping called "lechis" on utility poles, the state alleged.

The complaint documents a litany of comments made by Mahwah residents -- in public, on social media platforms and in response to a petition started by residents called "Protect the Quality of Our Community in Mahwah."

None of the comments were attributed to specific people.

Some who supported the petition wrote their comments on the petition website:

"This group of people is known for entering a community and taking it over for their own advantage. They are known for taking a lovely community and turning it into a run down, dirty, unwanted place to live."

"Our town is such a great place and if these things move in they will ruin it."

"I do not want these things coming into my town and ruining it."

"They are trying to move into Mahwah once they do our schools will suffer, our taxes will go up. And Mahwah will reach new levels of welfare recipients."

"They are clearly trying to annex land like they've been doing in Occupied Palestine."

"I don't want these rude, nasty, dirty people who think they can do what they want in our nice town."

"I don't want my town to be gross and infested with these nasty people."

"They destroy what they have and run things to the ground. Give them one piece of property and before you know it there are thousands of non-tax payers in our great town."

"This is a soft invasion. Next, we will see homes called 'places of worship or schools' for this religious[sic] organization as a way for the members of this religious organization to avoid paying property taxes. I do not want to pick up the tab!"

"They will ruin the town like they have done elsewhere!"

"We need to protect our quality of life. There is absolutely no benefit in allowing the Orthodox Jewish contingent into Mahwah."

"Keep these people out!"

"They are unsanitary."

The petition demanded the eruvs be "removed in order to prevent further illegal incursions into our community."

On June 29, the township enacted Ordinance 1806, which Porrino states in the lawsuit was a violation of the U.S. Constitution and maliciously "targeted at preventing use of the township's public parks by Orthodox Jews."

During the public portion of the meeting, similar disparaging comments were made, according to Porrino:

"They should stay where they are and leave our town alone. One last thought, they use our parks and playgrounds on Sunday and their children are unruly and rough with playground equipment."

"I also don't approve of the usage of our parks. We just spent all that money to Winters Park playground and when I go there with my kids it has been taken over by dozens and dozens of them! My kids just stare and don't want to get out and use playground."

"What is the best way to voice my concern about non-Mahwah residents using our fields and playgrounds? I saw this type of thing destroy Suffern."

"A group of 25 Hasidic girls and a leader got off the train in Mahwah and went to Winters Pond gazebo and also to the playground up on the hill."

"I don't know if you noticed, but the Hasidics have been making themselves very comfortable in our town parks."

Township residents also took to social media to support their cause, the complaint alleges, making comments that included the following:

"If I see one of those, I'm tearing it down. I propose others do the same. They are out to destroy our country just as they continue to take over Rockland. They don't care in the SLIGHTEST about anyone but themselves."

"What's happening in town is going to become a big issue. I see the writing on the wall. This will affect our home values and the neighborhood you and I both live in. Something needs to be done."

"These folks thrive on corruption, trying to make the heads of law enforcement turn to the left as they progress their agent to the right. They have a history of doitlg WHATEVER they want to do in order to achieve their agenda."

"They put these pipes outside my home and I took an axe and broke them right off."

Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
CHERRY HILL -- A brother and sister have admitted to their roles in paying cash kickbacks in a conspiracy that involved U.S. Navy parts.

John Schallenhammer, 57, of Atco, New Jersey, and his sister, Theresa Schallenhammer, 53, of Cherry Hill, pleaded guilty in federal court in Newark to conspiracy to violate the federal anti-kickback act, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced Tuesday. Both have been released on $50,000 bail pending sentencing in February.

The charges stem from a three-year scheme in which Schallenhammer paid kickbacks to a King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, based man named Christopher Sanchirico, who served as the assistant purchasing manager for a Philadelphia company identified by authorities as "Subcontractor 1." The entity manufactures shock-hardened circuit breakers and switchgears for U.S. Navy ships, submarines and aircraft carriers, and has performed work for both the Navy and Defense Logistics Agency, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The conspiracy began in 2013 when John Schallenhammer, the president of a Cherry Hill machine shop identified as "Subcontractor 2," sought Sanchirico's assistance in securing a manufacturing contract between the two companies.

In exchange for the deal, John Schallenhammer agreed to give Sanchirico 5 to 10 percent of the revenue generated by the sale of circuit breaker and switchgear components from Subcontractor 1 to Subcontractor 2, authorities said.

John Schallenhammer's sister and secretary, Theresa Schallenhammer, kept records of the payments, and sometimes made withdrawals from the bank to fund the kickbacks when her brother was unable to do so, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

From 2013 to 2016, the Schallenhammers paid Sanchirico some $150,000 in cash kickbacks, authorities said.

John and Theresa Schallenhammer each face a maximum up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Sanchirico pleaded guilty to a related charge for his role in the scheme earlier this month, and is awaiting sentencing.

Amanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amahoover. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Update: Following criticism of its all-male panel, SJ Magazine has canceled the event.

"As a woman-owned business, women's empowerment has always been part of our mission," the magazine said in a statement on Monday night. "We believe it is helpful when everyone is part of the conversation about women's empowerment and feminism. It was never our intention to offend anyone. We have canceled the Nov. 6 panel."

Before the magazine canceled the panel, Assemblyman Lou Greenwald said he would no longer be participating.

"I was asked to participate on a panel for an issue I care deeply about. As a son watching my mother break the glass ceiling in politics and as a father of 2 daughters, I have a passion for the pursuit of equality," he tweeted. "In light of a full understanding of the composition of this panel, I will be withdrawing from participating and offering my seat instead to someone who can bring a more diverse and inclusive point of view to this critical issue."

******

SJ Magazine, a publication dedicated to South Jersey, is being criticized for an upcoming event billed as a "women's empowerment" panel.

The problem: The entire panel consists of men.

The Maple Shade-based magazine is hosting the event, called "Women in Business: A man's point of view," on Nov. 6. Scheduled panelists are Sal Paolantonio, a correspondent for ESPN; Ali Houshmand, president of Rowan University; Richard P. Miller, president and CEO of the Virtua healthcare system, which runs several hospitals in South Jersey; and Lou Greenwald, D-Camden, majority leader of the state Assembly.

After the magazine tweeted out information for the upcoming panel on Monday, withering criticism and mockery ensued. Some expressed disbelief that the organizers of the event did not see a problem with the idea.

"This is real," tweeted Yashar Ali, a freelance reporter for the Huffington Post and New York Magazine, sharing the magazine's advertisement for the panel. His post was retweeted 1,700 times.

Tweets posted from SJ Magazine's account defended the event.

"This is one of 4 panels (the others are all women)," the magazine tweeted. "Men have a responsibility to step up & support women & we want to start the discussion."

The all-male panel is third in a series of panels organized by the magazine under the theme of women's empowerment. Marianne Aleardi is the editor-in-chief and publisher of the magazine.

This is one of 4 panels (the others are all women). Men have a responsibility to step up & support women & we want to start the discussion. -- SJ Magazine (@Justsaysj) October 23, 2017

Another all-female panel titled "Success Stories: Taking charge without wearing a suit and tie," follows on Dec. 4 with Jennifer Caudle, a family physician in Sewell and TV health expert; Terry Ricca, senior vice president and chief experience officer at Cooper University Health Care; Mary Ann Boccolini, president and CEO of Samaritan Healthcare & Hospice in Marlton; and Helaina Semmler, section chief of general radiology at South Jersey Radiology Associates.

"No mansplaining allowed," the magazine said in another tweet. This only played into criticism of the event.

To mansplain, of course, is to condescendingly explain something, usually to a woman. (The term was added to the Oxford online dictionary in 2014.)

"That's EXACTLY what this will be!" tweeted @nofreealliances. "You're not allowing t/men to even hear a woman's counter-perspective."

Karen Kessler, a prominent crisis manager based in Warren, also panned the panel.

"Because the man's point of view is so rarely voiced?" she tweeted, using hashtags including #dobetter.

That's EXACTLY what this will be! You're not allowing t/men to even hear a woman's counter-perspective. -- Ms (@nofreealliances) October 23, 2017

"Hell, they could be the most woke dudes of their generation and this would still be wrong," tweeted @0youngbs.

SJ Magazine's website has pages dedicated to women and "girl power." Celebrities who are New Jersey natives, like Kevin Spacey, Kelly Ripa, Jon Bon Jovi, Dule Hill and Ray Liotta, have covered the magazine, along with famous faces that have ties to the Philadelphia area.

Here's some more Twitter reaction to the panel (from women and men):

Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
The Russian spy who had been living undercover in New Jersey before her ring was broken up by the FBI in 2010 had been trying to gain access to Bill and Hillary Clinton, a report on previously sealed federal documents says.

Lydia Guryev, who went by the alias Cynthia Murphy while living with her husband and children in Montclair, took an accounting job with a high-profile Democratic Party donor in an effort to gain access to the Clintons and gather information about the State Department, according to the report by The Hill. At the time, Hillary was serving as secretary of state.

The Hill reports neither the unearthed FBI documents nor sources close to the investigation indicated any illegal activity by the Americans being targeted. But, they did indicate Guryev had transmitted messages back to Russia indicating that she had gained access to a major Democrat.

A retired FBI executive told The Hill the agency was concerned that Guryev was getting too close to posing a security threat for Clinton, prompting the agency to arrest Guryev and the entire ten-member Russian spy cell it had been investigating.

The arrests in 2010 sent shock waves through the suburban New Jersey community where the Guryev lived, appearing to be a normal American family.

The house, which remained empty after the Murphy were arrested and deported, was renovated this summer in an effort to put it back on the market.

A Clinton spokesman reportedly called the focus on the new spy information a partisan attempt to distract people from the Russian controversies of the Donald Trump administration.

Jessica Mazzola may be reached at jmazzola@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessMazzola. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Sammie Brown, 37, was booked into Orleans Justice Center Tuesday (Oct. 24) after police said he stabbed a woman in the 2100 block of Josephine Street. ((Orleans Justice Center jail))
A license plate reader attached to a NOPD vehicle's hood is pointed out by Superintendent Michael Harrison and Homeland Security director Aaron Miller on Tuesday, October 24, 2017. (Beau Evans, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Lawrence Jones, 25, was sentenced to 50 years in prison Tuesday (Oct. 24) after pleading guilty to raping a neighbor's minor daughter over a three-year period and producing child pornography from the encounters.(Courtesy of Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office)
A batch of chicken and sausage jambalaya prepared for a fundraiser in Columbia, La., is suspected to have killed one person and sickened dozens, according to state health department officials. (Ann Maloney, NOLA.com | The Time)
Pushing back on Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian ties to President Donald Trump's presidential campaign, U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham of Mangham and 18 Republican colleagues in the House are calling for congressional hearings into the special counsel's potential conflicts of interest and political bias. (Photo from Rep. Ralph Abraham website)
The interior of John Besh's Restaurant August in New Orleans on Nov. 16, 2016.(CHRIS GRANGER)
The State of Iowa has withdrawn its request for temporary changes intended to reduce costs and keep more Iowans under individual health insurance, with Gov. Kim Reynolds saying the Affordable Care Act proved too inflexible to allow such changes.

That means 72,000 Iowans for sure will have only one choice for individual and family health plans when open enrollment begins Nov. 1: Medica of Minnetonka, Minnesota. Medicas rates are increasing by 58 percent for its existing customers, with others potentially seeing higher rate increases  with preimums doubling for those insured by Aetna, for example.

However, insurance officials said people who need that insurance should be sure to check their options at healthcare.gov before making any decisions.

People may be surprised, said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow for the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health insurance research group. They really should take a look before they drop their coverage and see what the 2018 plans are and what they would cost.

Insurance premiums in the state marketplaces are based largely on income, but Iowas proposal would have made age a factor as well. Officials argued that would make the policies more attractive for younger, healthier residents, although some older residents may have been hit with even higher costs.

Iowa Commissioner Doug Ommen said he fears 20,000 Iowans will forego health insurance next year because of high costs, now that the Iowa stopgap measure wont happen. The measure would have allowed Blue Cross affiliate Wellmark to offer competing health plans in 2018, possibly lowering monthly premiums.

Ommen said federal officials last week said the law required Iowa to submit projections that werent available. With open enrollment looming, he and Reynolds said during a press conference Monday that the state had to drop its request so that people who need the coverage can get ready to sign up.

Medica said in a statement that it is prepared to be the only individual insurance carrier in Iowa. Consumers who bought individual plans through healthcare.gov will receive information soon from Medica and the federal government on their options for 2018.

We strongly encourage consumers to see if they qualify for a premium subsidy, Medica said, because more people will be eligible for subsidies than this year.

Wellmark said in a statement that the stopgap measure was the most innovative attempt to address the challenges with the individual Affordable Care Act market in the country and would have made individual insurance more affordable and the states insurance market more stable.

Wellmark said it would continue to work with state and federal officials toward a long-term solution.

In a statement on the plans withdrawl, Sen. Chuck Grassley said the death spiral of the Affordable Care Act is visible.

Premiums are skyrocketing, provider options are disappearing and people are leaving the market because what is available isnt affordable, Grassley said. The reason Iowa had to apply for a waiver was because of Obamacares flaws, which collapsed the individual market. Obamacare promised to allow states to waive certain portions of the ACA in order to provide affordable insurance options. This turns out to be another broken promise of Obamacare.

At the press conference, Reynolds and Ommen criticized what they said was the ACAs inflexible, lengthy process for reviewing state waiver requests, saying the law requires time-consuming approvals from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Treasury Department and other agencies and required filings and information that werent available in time.

Bureaucracy at its finest, Reynolds said at one point, although she also praised the agencies for trying to work with Iowa officials on the request.

The governor called on Congress to replace and repeal the ACA, also known as Obamacare, and to restore what she said was a robust, low-premium individual health insurance market in Iowa before the passage of the ACA. Reynolds said she will visit Washington today and meet with Vice President Mike Pence and others to further discuss solutions.

In a statement, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa said, The reality in Iowa is that continuing the status quo simply isnt an option because Obamacare is unsustainable.

Ommen, the insurance commissioner, said not having the stopgap measure means that the healthiest people who do not receive subsidies are most likely to drop their individual plans, leaving the ACA to cover those who are in poorer health and receive subsidies.

That will continue to cause the individual health market to collapse in the state, Ommen said. Ommen said he expects between 18,000 and 22,000 people to drop insurance under the planned rate increases in Iowa.

We believe Iowas stopgap measure was better than Obamacare, he said. It lowered premiums keeping healthy individuals in the market.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that in late August, President Donald Trump had called Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and told her to reject the Iowa waiver as part of an effort to undermine the health insurance law.

But Gov. Reynolds praised Verma and her staff for trying to work with Iowa officials even though the law is too inflexible to allow innovative changes such as those sought by Iowa.

Chuck Olson, chief executive of OCi Insurance and Financial Services, an Omaha company that works with insurance agents, said industry groups had doubted Iowas proposal could be approved in time for 2018 even if the Trump administration had supported it. Iowa submitted the plan in mid-June.

Executive orders can do a lot of things, Olson said.  But its a huge process to ask for this waiver. Trying to push it through in a few months just didnt seem possible, the way the laws written. Everybody has to sign off on it, and youre never going to get that done in the time they had hoped.

Olson said insurance agents in Iowa will start advising clients how to keep some sort of insurance coverage even if they cant afford the cost of a plan that meets ACA standards and, for a family of four, could cost $30,000 a year for premiums alone. For example, short-term, cheaper plans can be extended up to a year under a recent Trump executive order.

Pollitz, the Kaiser insurance expert from Washington, D.C., said approval of the Iowa plan had seemed doubtful partly because the changes it sought were pretty drastic compared with other state waiver requests.

Although the Trump administration had encouraged states early this year to apply for waivers, so far only Alaskas waiver request has succeeded, and that was much simpler compared with Iowas complex and multi-dimensional request, she said. There were a lot of moving parts.

The stopgap measure would have used some federal funds to set up a reinsurance program for large health claims, would have changed subsidy calculation and would limit some options to reduce costs. Consumers would have been able buy subsidized health plans directly from insurance companies instead of through the ACA exchange.

 David Pitt of The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Two Kansas men are currently being held at the Pottawattamie County Jail, one of whom faces a charge of attempted murder of a police officer.

John Detimore, 19, of Topeka, and Brandon King, 25, of Scranton, face numerous charges stemming from a high speed chase with Pottawattamie County Sheriffs Office deputies on Oct. 12 where shots were fired, according to court records. Their preliminary hearings were Monday.

According to a law enforcement report, a deputy received information about a stolen car in the area at about 3:45 a.m. near Underwood. He spotted it on Interstate 80 going westbound. The deputy attempted to pull the car over but it sped off, reaching 110 mph and driving recklessly, authorities said.

The deputy was able to bump his cruiser into the suspects car, which spun around, stopping the pursuit. The car crashed through a barbed wire fence and entered a bean field before Detimore and King ran off on foot, according to the report. The deputy caught up to King and apprehended him while Detimore ran. King told authorities that he was the driver, who Detimore was and that Detimore had fired shots at the deputy during the chase, the report states.

At this point I was unaware of any shots being fired my way, the deputy said in the report. During the chase on a gravel road a large amount of dust and large rocks made the suspects car hard to see.

King told investigators Detimore sometimes pointed a gun at him while driving and told him not to stop for law enforcement.

A Cass County Sheriffs Office deputy with a K-9 was called to the scene and Detimore was eventually found. Detimore told officers that King was the one who shot at the deputy.

Detimore is charged with attempted murder, four counts of theft, being a felon in possession of a firearm and carrying weapons. He also has warrants out of Kansas. He is being held on a $100,000 bond.

King is charged with interfering with official acts, eluding, carrying weapons, being a felon in possession of a firearm and two counts of theft. He is being held on a $50,000 bond.

Court records show the public defenders office has been assigned to represent the men but a specific attorney was not listed Monday afternoon.
BURLINGTON  Retired nurse Jenna Sansone said it was a normal night in the quiet eastern Iowa neighborhood where she lives on a hill above the Mississippi River. Then she heard the bang-bang-bang of gunshots and called 911.

Responding officers made a gruesome discovery: the body of a teenager dumped in the alley behind Sansones Burlington home, a plastic garbage bag wrapped around the victims head. Sansone could smell the bleach that had been poured on the bullet-riddled body, an apparent attempt to destroy DNA evidence.

The March 2016 death of 16-year-old Kedarie Johnson stunned the city of 25,000. It also raised fears that the popular Burlington High School student was the victim of a hate crime because the teenager was gender-fluid  identifying both as male and female, according to relatives, and alternately using his birth name and the female persona Kandicee.

One of two cousins charged with first-degree murder in Johnsons death is expected to stand trial today in the case, which Attorney General Jeff Sessions highlighted with his unusual decision this month to send a federal hate crimes prosecutor to assist state and local authorities.

A decision on federal hate crimes charges is pending, but the prosecutor assigned by Sessions indicated in court documents that Johnsons gender identity played a role, with the cousins attacking the teenager after discovering during a sexual encounter that Johnson was gender nonconforming.

The trial of 23-year-old Jorge Sanders-Galvez, an aspiring rapper who went by the nickname Lumni, is expected to last two weeks and could clear up a lot of questions about what happened and why it happened, said Sansone, who plans to attend at the request of Johnsons mother. The prosecutor assigned by Sessions, Christopher Perras, wasted no time in helping provide the public some long-sought answers. In a court document filed Wednesday, Perras detailed the prosecutions theory of the killing for the first time.

Perras wrote that evidence will show that Sanders-Galvez began flirting with Johnson after seeing the teenager leave a Hy-Vee store. Sanders-Galvez persuaded Johnson to get in his car, then brought Johnson to a home to have sex with him and his cousin, 25-year-old Jaron Purham, Perras wrote.

Sanders-Galvez became enraged during the encounter after discovering Johnson was biologically male and over the next hour suffocated Kedarie by stuffing a rag down his throat and wrapping a plastic bag around his head, threw him in their car, drove to another part of town, dumped him in an alley and shot him several times until he bled to death, Perras wrote. An autopsy found Johnson died from gunshots.

Sanders-Galvez has pleaded not guilty and told investigators last year that he had never met Johnson. He faces life in prison if convicted. His attorney declined comment.

The federal governments intervention has been welcomed by LGBTQ-rights advocates who have criticized Sessions and President Donald Trump for broadly eroding their legal protections.

A federal grand jury has been convened to consider whether the men should face hate crime charges, but no decision has been announced.

Its unclear whether Johnson and Sanders-Galvez had previously met, but they were friends on Facebook.

The allegations are horrific and highlight how Iowa law, unlike federal law, doesnt allow prosecutors to bring hate crime charges based on gender identity, said Daniel Hoffman-Zinnel, executive director of One Iowa, an LBGTQ advocacy group.

These things are horrible and very unfortunate but they force us as community members to have these difficult conversations and hopefully we can work to prevent them from happening, Hoffman-Zinnel said.

Purham, who is expected to stand trial later, is serving time in Missouri after he was convicted on charges related to his flight from officers tying to arrest him last year. Officers said they recovered a .357 revolver in Purhams vehicle after he drove into a police car outside St. Louis, and testing showed that it was the gun used to shoot Johnson.

A federal grand jury has been convened to consider whether the men should face hate crime charges, but no decision has been announced.

Its unclear whether Johnson and Sanders-Galvez had previously met, but investigators said the two were friends on Facebook.

Investigators said that before the slaying, Johnson had stopped at a female friends home, telling her he was scared of someone named Lumni and worried he was being followed by a red car. Johnson asked to borrow several bras, which he put in his backpack before leaving alone and on foot, according to court documents.

Investigators said Johnson is seen on surveillance video outside the Hy-Vee store wearing braids, pajama bottoms and a black jacket as a red impala linked to Purham and Sanders-Galvez follows closely behind.

According to investigators, they later found Johnsons backpack at a Burlington home where Purham and Sanders-Galvez were staying with Purhams pregnant girlfriend in the weeks before the killing. Both men fled to St. Louis area within 48 hours after Johnsons slaying, they said.
WASHINGTON  As Republicans seek to build support for slashing corporate tax rates, a key part of their argument is that the move would have a direct impact on workers paychecks.

The Council of Economic Advisers conservatively estimates workers could see their wages increase by more than $4,000 due to lowering the corporate rate to 20 percent, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said during a recent floor speech on taxes.

Expect that $4,000 raise claim to get a lot of debate in the months ahead as Congress moves forward on taxes.

Economists differ on the size of the impact that workers could expect. The Senate recently approved a budget that paves the way for a tax package, with the House expected to take that blueprint up as soon as this week.

Passing the budget opened a process that would allow the GOP to pass a Senate tax bill with 51 votes and no Democratic support.

Democrats already have attacked Republican proposals as overly tilted in favor of the wealthy, citing provisions such as eliminating the estate tax that would offer the most benefit to rich Americans.

Republicans, on the other hand, insist that they are looking to help the middle class. With so many details yet to be determined, its impossible to calculate how the overall package would affect a specific household.

Its also not clear how tax cuts would be funded or affect the federal deficit.

Grassley, a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, which is responsible for writing tax bills, said more details on tax plans could come next month, with action coming by the end of the year.

In the meantime, he suggested that journalists shouldnt pay any attention to the GOP tax framework because of the lack of specifics.

Its just a few pages of outline, Grassley said. And you are not going to know how it affects progressivity, how its going to affect middle class, how its going to affect this or that until we actually write the language of the bill.

The corporate tax side is somewhat more straightforward, however. Thats why the Council of Economic Advisers says it felt confident in making that $4,000 prediction. Its a claim thats been picked up by Capitol Hill Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, in pushing for the tax package.

Kevin Hassett, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, has argued that workers bear the brunt of corporate tax rates because those taxes drive business activity overseas. He suggests thats what has produced a disconnect between corporate bottom lines and wages  paychecks havent kept pace with corporate profits.

Lowering the rates would persuade companies to bring money back from overseas and invest it in ways that would translate to higher wages  at least $4,000 more per household, he says.

If this bill becomes law and everything else remains constant, then this is the increment to personal income you should expect to see, Hassett told reporters.

Other economic experts at the Tax Policy Center have questioned his conclusions, however. They say that the idea that corporate tax cuts would benefit workers is reasonable  but that the size of the predicted benefit doesnt make sense. Among the critics is Larry Summers, who worked in the administrations of both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. He wrote that there is no peer-reviewed support for the $4,000 raise claim.

The claim is absurd on its face, Summers wrote. There is a legitimate debate among economists about how much the cut will benefit capital and how much it will benefit labor.

Hassett stood by his conclusions and said Summers own approach to the question is flawed. He also said other countries have seen wages rise after lowering corporate tax rates.

I think that the patterns in the data that we see around the world are patterns that we could be quite confident would apply to our own experience, Hassett said.

Grassley made a nod to the differing analyses on how much benefit workers would see but reiterated the idea that workers would benefit from lower corporate tax rates.

While the exact burden borne by workers may be debated, the economic research is clear: A corporate rate reduction means a significant wage increase for workers, Grassley said.
Politicians from Iowa  the nations No. 1 producer of ethanol  and Nebraska  the nations No. 2 producer of the fuel supplement  on Friday hailed as a triumph Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitts embrace of policies favorable to domestic production of ethanol and other renewable fuels.

In his Iowa caucus speeches vowing, among other things, to make our nation great again, then-candidate Donald Trump courted farmers and their votes by praising the importance of ethanol in reducing the nations dependence on foreign oil and promising that he would boost the home-grown fuel.

Trump repeatedly vowed to protect ethanol. But he loaded his Cabinet  not surprisingly  with allies of the oil industry, which views the Renewable Fuel Standard that mandates biofuel use as costly and burdensome.

Despite Trumps campaign vows, under the leadership of Pruitt, the EPA has pursued a series of changes that would help the oil industry at the expense of farmers.

Renewable fuel advocates had been understandably nervous about a slew of potential policy changes at the EPA. The most recent headline-making dispute revolved around the possibility of the EPA lowering proposed volume levels under the Renewable Fuel Standard, particularly for biodiesel.

Iowas senior Republican senator, Chuck Grassley, commented last month, This seems like a bait-and-switch. Big Oil and oil refineries are prevailing, despite assurances to the contrary.

It is my hope that your EPA has not forgotten about the pledges that were made to my constituents and to farmers across the country, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told the president in a letter sent late last month.

To underscore her commitment, Ernst, a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, blocked a key EPA nominee over concerns about the agencys approach to renewable fuels.

Late last week, Pruitt sent a letter that included a laundry list of commitments to support renewable fuels. Pruitt committed in the letter that those volumes will be finalized by the end of next month at or above the levels proposed earlier this year. The letter was, we think, a clear demonstration of the political muscle flexed by Ernst and other Midwestern grain states.

Offering further concessions referring to efforts by oil and gas interests to shift the burden of meeting RFS requirements from refiners and importers to blenders, Pruitts letter stated such a shift would not be appropriate. He also addressed a proposal to allow exported fuel to count toward domestic requirements: EPA has not taken any formal action to propose this idea, nor will EPA pursue regulations.

I reiterate my commitment to you and your constituents to act consistent with the text and spirit of the RFS, Pruitt wrote.

While she may be Iowas junior senator, Ernsts hard-ball approach won much-needed concessions for Iowa and Iowas farmers.
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The United States said the issue was quickly resolved and the general was booked on another flight.

Indonesian Armed Forces Commander General Gatot Nurmantyo was preparing to board a flight to the United States with his wife on Saturday when the airline informed him that U.S. Customs and Border Protection had denied him entry.

Indonesia's military chief has decided not to travel to the United States, though the initial issue preventing him from traveling was resolved.

Department of Homeland Security press secretary Dave Lapan said Monday, "The passenger was rebooked on another flight and cleared to board. He chose not to travel."

U.S. Deputy Ambassador to Indonesia Erin McKee apologized for the situation Monday and said after meeting with Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi the matter had been resolved.

"General Gatot is able to travel. There are no restrictions," McKee said. "The embassy is working very hard to understand what transpired around this incident, and we hope that it will not happen again."

Marsudi said U.S. Ambassador Joseph Donovan also conveyed "regret and apology" when the two spoke, but that simply having travel restrictions against the general removed is not enough. "We still need more clarification why the incident happened," Marsudi said.

Nurmantyo had been invited to a conference on extremist organizations by U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Joseph Dunford.

Relations between the United States and Indonesia are generally friendly. Indonesia's Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said Jakarta's response to the incident would depend on Washington's explanation.
The Lincoln County commissioners approved several purchases by the county department of roads on Monday.

Six bids were presented to the board for new motor graders, four from Murphy Tractor & Equipment Co. and two from Nebraska Machinery Co. The commissioners approved purchase of two 2012 John Deere 770G models from Murphy for $137,000 and $128,500 after the trade-in value of the departments current machines  two 1988 John Deere 770B models at $11,000 and $19,000  was deducted.

Bids were also submitted for the purchase of three new pickup trucks. Janssen Auto Group and Jerry Remus Chevrolet offered two bids each for two regular cab and one crew cab, all 2018 models. Janssen submitted bids for 2500 RAM trucks, and Remus submitted bids for 3/4-ton Chevrolets.

No trade-ins would be made on these purchases. When Commissioner Joe Hewgley asked about this, Highway Superintendent Carla ODell said, Our pickup fleet is short. Several have been taken out of the force, some (used for parts). The purchase of three new vehicles without trading in our current ones will help build the fleet back up.

The commissioners approved purchasing the trucks from Janssen. With the cost of the crew cab at $29,959 and the two regular cabs at $54,378, the total will be $84,337.

The county had budgeted for all the roads department purchases.

A date was set to receive more bids for roads department equipment. The board will discuss and consider bids Nov. 13 for one tractor, one mower and one belly dump trailer.

In other business, the board approved hiring Jeffrey P. Higgins as director of the building and grounds department.

Commissioner Bill Henry recommended hiring Higgins. Henry said nine applications were submitted. The top four people were interviewed, and the top two of those were interviewed a second time.

Higgins currently works for the city of North Platte, and Henry commented on his good work record and experience managing people.

Hes a pleasure to work with, Henry said.

Higgins wont be able to begin work until Nov. 27 after a scheduled surgery.

The commissioners also authorized Henry, the board chairman, to sign a management representation letter for the 2016-17 Lincoln County audit, as well as a letter of engagement with McChesney Martin Sagehorn PC for the 2016-17 audit Lincoln County Financial Statement Evaluation.
The Mid-Plains Community College Board of Governors will meet Wednesday in McCook.

The board is expected to recognize members of the 2018 Mid-Plains Education Association and Mid-Plains Vocational Educators Association negotiating teams. It will also vote on whether to approve the expenses of its members and the membership dues for the Nebraska Community College Association.

The board will also discuss the purchase of mobile labs, which will be paid for in part by Perkins Grant dollars, and it will consider taking action to obtain a USDA Rural Business Development Grant.

The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. at McCook Community College, 1205 E. Third St. in McCook.
Nursing students at North Platte Community College will host a bake sale Tuesday on both of NPCCs campuses.

The event will be a fundraiser for members of the colleges chapter of the Nebraska State Student Nurses Association.

Proceeds will help the students travel to the National Student Nurses Association 66th Annual Convention in Nashville in April.

The sale is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the fireplace area of the McDonald-Belton Building and the stairwell of the Health and Science Center on NPCCs South Campus. Items will also be sold in the student lounge of the W.W. Wood Building on NPCCs North Campus.

Muffins, cookies, breakfast burritos, soup and sandwiches will be among the many baked goods available for purchase.
After announcing his bid for Nebraska state treasurer last week, an Omaha man made the one-way, 450-mile drive to Scottsbluff.

At 27, Taylor Royal is a certified public accountant. He graduated with a bachelors degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and returned home to Nebraska after receiving his masters at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

During a stop Monday in North Platte, Royal said his field makes him a better candidate for the role of treasurer than someone such as a career politician.

This is my background and training, he said.

Royal is running against Sen. John Murante of Gretna for treasurer. In the spring, he ran for Omaha mayor and came in third  Jean Stothert ultimately won re-election.

I think we need a business mindset, Royal said, referencing Nebraskas $9.3 billion two-year budget, as well as the states budget crisis. Last year, the Omaha World-Herald reported that tax revenues were expected to decline by more than $9 million.

As Royal traveled the state, he heard repeatedly about high property taxes, he said.

The overall tax structure in Nebraska needs to change, he said. We need to find ways we can find revenues in our state, without burdening our taxpayer.

Royal hopes to improve incentives for the Nebraska 529 college savings plans. Royal also hopes to work with youth by going into schools and teaching about savings accounts and other financial tools, predatory credit cards and loans, and the stock market, he said.
It also asks for management's criteria for hiring, promoting, casting, rejecting or terminating applicants or employees, the person said. The source added that the New York subpoena is part of an investigation into whether executives at the company violated state civil rights or New York City human rights laws.

The subpoena, which has not been made public, requests information regarding how each complaint related to sexual harassment or other discrimination was handled by the Weinstein Company, the person familiar with the probe said.

The New York attorney general has opened an investigation into sexual harassment and possible violations of civil rights laws at the Weinstein Company, the movie studio co-founded by Harvey Weinstein, and sent the company a subpoena Monday, a source familiar with the investigation said.

Harvey Weinstein was fired from the company earlier this month in the wake of media reports that he sexually harassed or assaulted women in incidents dating back to the 1980s.

Weinstein has denied having nonconsensual sex with anyone. Reuters has been unable to independently confirm any of the allegations. Representatives for the Weinstein Company did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In response to a request for comment on the investigation, the attorney general's office emailed a statement from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that said, "No New Yorker should be forced to walk into a workplace ruled by sexual intimidation, harassment, or fear.

"If sexual harassment or discrimination is pervasive at a company, we want to know."

The New York Times reported earlier this month that Weinstein, 65, had reached eight previously undisclosed settlements with women who accused him of sexual harassment and unwanted physical contact. The New Yorker magazine reported that 13 women had claimed that Weinstein sexually harassed or assaulted them.

The New York City Police Department has said it is investigating an allegation of sexual assault by Weinstein in 2004. The Los Angeles Police Department also said earlier this month that it is investigating a 2013 sexual assault allegation against movie producer Harvey Weinstein.
A biotech company in Gary lined up funding from a Philadelphia-based life sciences investment fund to develop a new breast cancer testing technology.

IVDiagnostics, which operates on the Ivy Tech Gary Campus, is seeking Phase 1 U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for Velox, a new testing method which tags and monitors circulating tumor cells in the body. The company describes its test as "revolutionary," saying it can capture individual cancer cells that are within 2-30 microns while current imaging systems can only detect solid tumors of 1mm or more in size.

"The Velox diagnostic cancer test tags and monitors circulating tumor cells in a cancer patients body allowing doctors and oncologists to provide more accurate and frequent monitoring of a patients progress during and after treatment," IVDiagnostics said in a news release.

Prevail InfoWorks and its subsidiary Prevail Partners will help IVDiagnostics with its clinical studies and invest and undisclosed sum in the testing.

Everyone at Prevail Partners is excited to invest in the growth of IVDiagnostics as they develop the fastest and lowest cost CTC assay for the accurate in-vitro monitoring of pathogenic cell growth in patients undergoing cancer treatment or other blood-borne diseases," Prevail Partners President Mary Schaheen said. "Furthermore, we have great confidence in our partnership and its ability to accelerate IVDiagnostics to a significant value inflection point through the completion of its planned pilot and pivotal trials.

Northwest Indiana-based IVDiagnostics develops, tests and markets new diagnostic tools for rare circulating tumor cells and blood-borne diseases, including Velox, which it said is ideal for patients with advanced stage cancers. The company won the 2011-2012 Chanute Prize for Team Innovation and an eDay award from the Northwest Indiana Small Business Development Center for its cancer research.

The company is pursuing FDA approval  a lengthy process that requires extensively testing  for its latest innovation so it can bring it to the market.

"This partnership with the leading FDA approved analytics driven process and data management company is precisely what we need to succeed with the FDA approval of our initial breast cancer assay," IVDiagnostics President and CEO Frank Szczepanski said.
HAMMOND  An alleged Latin Dragons gang member pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Tuesday to allegations he fatally shot a Hammond man Sept. 30.

A federal grand jury has indicted Manuel "Smiley" Diaz, 26, of Hammond, on a charge of murder in aid of racketeering, alleging he killed Charles Berrios Sr., 50, "for the purpose of gaining entrance to and maintaining or increasing position in the (Latin Dragon Nation gang)."

The grand jury alleged Diaz intentionally killed Berrios and acted with reckless disregard for human life, court records show.

Diaz is accused of firing a single shot from his revolver Sept. 30 at a moving vehicle and killing the driver, Berrios, after a brief confrontation at a gas station between Diaz and another individual.

Berrios was reportedly not the initial intended target. According to court records, he was shot by Diaz while intervening and trying to place distance between Diaz's vehicle and the individual Diaz was targeting in another vehicle.

According to the allegations, Diaz engaged in a brief confrontation with a driver of an SUV at Luke's gas station at Indianapolis Boulevard and Carroll Street in Hammond, during which Diazs passenger flashed gang signs at the SUV's occupants.

The driver of the SUV displayed a semiautomatic weapon, records show.

After they left the lot, Diaz pursued the SUV, but a third car, driven by Berrios and traveling with the SUV, refused to allow Diazs vehicle to pass, records show.

Berrios stayed at a stop sign at Howard Avenue to place space between Diaz's vehicle and the SUV, records show.

When he finally proceeded through the intersection, a witness with Berrios said he looked back to see Diaz point a chrome revolver at their vehicle, records show.

While police said it's unclear if the driver of the SUV is a "full-fledged gang member," the individual displayed a firearm in a threatening manner leading up to the homicide, court records show.

"As a member of the Latin Dragons, once challenged or threatened in such a fashion, it would have been incumbent on Diaz to take action ... This murder, therefore, was committed ... for the purpose of maintaining or increasing in position in the Latin Dragons," investigators allege.
CROWN POINT  A criminal court judge sentenced a 27-year-old man to 12 years in prison Tuesday for his role in the death of his fiance's 16-month-old daughter.

Jose Otero Jr. told Judge Salvador Vasquez at his sentencing hearing in Lake Criminal Court he felt horrible about the death of Alaynia Alston.

I learned from my mistakes, he said. I wish I could have done things a better way.

Otero and Simmone Alston were charged last October with neglect of a dependent, a level 1 felony, among other charges, in the girl's death.

The girl was transported to the hospital March 10, 2015, after she was found unresponsive in the couple's apartment in the 3600 block of Parrish Avenue in East Chicago, according to The Times archives.

Otero told police in an interview he put the child in a bathtub with hot running water about a week before her death, which caused the girl to suffer extensive burns.

A coroner determined the girl's death was due to infection and malnutrition.

Otero pleaded guilty Aug. 16 to neglect of a dependent, a level 3 felony, with an agreed maximum sentence of 12 years prison.

Defense attorney Alexander Woloshansky said Otero had a high school diploma and an extensive work history dating back to when he was 15 years old.

Woloshansky argued Otero's crime was caused by a lack of parenting skills. He said Otero and Alston attempted to treat the child on their own with antibiotics, rather than bring the girl to a medical facility where she would have received proper treatment.

Deputy Prosecutor Nadia Chivers argued Otero refused to bring the child to a medical facility because he had an active warrant for his arrest at the time of her death related to a prior felony case.

In our criminal justice system, feeling remorse is not enough  that can't excuse an action, Chivers said.

The judge said everyone makes mistakes, but Otero's actions were neglectful and tragic. He agreed with the state that Otero likely did not bring the girl to a hospital because of his active warrant.

A child died as a result of your selfishness, Vasquez said.

He said 12 years in prison was an appropriate sentence.

Simmone Alston pleaded guilty to the same offense as Otero at a court hearing Aug. 15. She is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 14.
CROWN POINT  A jury of nine women and five men heard opening statements Monday evening in the murder trial for Thomas J. Snow.

Snow, 38, is accused of bludgeoning and strangling to death his parents, Clifford and Joyce Snow, in 2013 at the couple's home in the 14500 block of West 197th Avenue in West Creek Township.

Lake County Deputy Prosecutor Mark Watson told jurors the state intended to prove that Snow murdered his parents at the home about a month before their bodies were discovered by police on Oct. 18, 2013.

The couple's heavily decomposed bodies were found by police dispatched to the residence for a welfare check called in by their daughter, Julie Niemeyer, according to Watson.

Though Snow lived with his parents, he was nowhere to be found on the day the bodies were discovered, Watson said.

But neighbors told police Snow had recently visited them and claimed his parents were on vacation in Europe, Watson said. A friend of the father told police Snow claimed Clifford Snow died in his sleep, and Joyce Snow was grieving with family in Missouri.

Snow was arrested Oct. 19, 2013, in Minnesota after allegedly attempting to flee police in his father's vehicle, according to Watson. His parents' bank card was also found in the vehicle, according to the deputy prosecutor.

Defense attorney John Maksimovich said in his opening statement the state's case was built on a vast amount of circumstantial evidence, but there was no evidence connecting Thomas Snow to his parents' murder.

He cast aspersions on a friend of Thomas Snow, who allegedly cashed several checks from Clifford Snow's bank account after the parents' death.

The trial, being heard by 12 jurors and two alternates, is expected to continue for two weeks.
MICHIGAN CITY  A 16-year-old boy who escaped overnight from the Juvenile Services Center in LaPorte and allegedly stole guns and ammo from a Michigan City home has been captured, police said.

Michigan City police were dispatched about 11:50 a.m. to the 1800 block of Elston Street in an attempt to locate the teen, according to a department news release.

Upon arrival, it was learned that a residence in the area was burglarized and that the suspect had stolen "several weapons and ammunition."

"Precautionary steps were taken by contacting the Michigan City Area Schools Administrative staff while also deploying officers and detectives to schools previously attended by the juvenile," Michigan City Asst. Chief Royce Williams said in the release.

Michigan City Police Chief Mark Swistek said police have protocol in place to communicate with area schools in situations like this.

"We wanted them to be fully aware of the situation," Swistek said.

The teen's name is being withheld because of his juvenile status. Swistek said he could not release additional information about the teen.

Members of the Michigan City Police Department, Trail Creek Police Department and LaPorte County Sheriffs Office searched the city for the juvenile.

At about 2:45 p.m., the teen was located in the 2000 Block of Buffalo Street and was taken into custody by Detective Cpl. Jeff Piotrowski and Detective Nick Krause, who are both members of the Fugitive Apprehension Street Team.

As a result of the arrest, all weapons and ammunition were recovered.

"The quick apprehension and recovery of the stolen weapons is a credit to the exceptional response and efforts by members of the Uniform Patrol Division, Investigative Division, FAST Team, and the LaPorte County HIDTA Drug Task Force," Williams said in the news release.
GARY  He was an amazing 4-year-old full of spirit, personality and charm.

He looked up to his father, had been looking forward to the birth of his baby sister and wanted to be a police officer.

But his life tragically ended after a fire at his grandmother's Gary home in December, and his parents made the decision to donate his organs.

D'Anthony Fryerson's gift saved the lives of two other children, including a 4-year-old California girl who might have died if D'Anthony's parents had not decided to take him off life support sooner than they had planned, said Carritta Fryerson, D'Anthony's mother.

"I want people to understand that even when you're going through something as tragic as we went through, you can always do for others," Carritta Fryerson said during a ceremony Monday at Gary City Hall.

Kevin Cmunt, president and CEO of Gift of Hope, said D'Anthony impacted the world in a special way. Gift of Hope arranged the organ donations.

Kendra Johnson, D'Anthony's grandmother, said her grandson was a remarkable child who never wanted to see anyone unhappy.

She recalled the fire and how she desperately tried to save him as her home filled with smoke, overwhelming heat and flames.

As she tried again go back for D'Anthony, a neighbor pulled her out of the home. It was too hot, and she had to wait for firefighters, the neighbor told her.

When the Fire Department arrived, "they did everything they could to save him," said Johnson, of Gary.

As part of the ceremony, Fire Department employees Danny Hesslau, Jerry Jordan and Larry Tillman were honored for their efforts. Because of them, D'Anthony made it to a hospital and could be placed on life support, the boy's family said.

Fire Chief Paul Bradley recalled that when he arrived at the scene, some of the firefighters there were heartbroken and felt they could have done more. Bradley said he told them they did their best.

"We know we tried. We try to move on to the next call. That's what we're trained to do," he said. "But we never forget the families."

Carritta Fryerson recalled the last time she saw her son, who came with his siblings to visit her at Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus in Gary because she'd been hospitalized due to complications of her pregnancy.

"He was always so full of spirit and so much personality," she said. "He was such an old soul to be 4 years old. Loved the Temptations."

Carritta Fryerson checked herself out of the Gary hospital to be with D'Anthony at an Illinois hospital, but was admitted to her son's hospital after suffering another pregnancy complication and gave birth to her only daughter.

At one point, D'Anthony's doctor came to her and said the boy would be declared brain dead, she said.

As Carritta Fryerson and her husband, DeShannon, who have since moved their family to Missouri, looked on D'Anthony for one of the last times, they decided to donate his organs.

Gift of Hope told the couple a girl in California could die that weekend if they waited to remove their son from life support on a planned date, she said.

"We would never want anyone to go through that pain," Carritta Fryerson said.

She said her husband looked at her and said, "Let's do this. Let's save this little girl."
HIGHLAND  Groundbreaking for the Cardinal Campus is expected this year, and a bond issue to help fund it is slated for early 2018, the redevelopment commission/Town Council said Monday.

The upscale office park will rise at the corner of Main Street and Prairie Avenue and is the brainchild of Dr. Claude Gendreau, a veterinary surgeon from Buffalo Grove, Illinois.

The 9-acre complex eventually will include seven two-story office buildings and a three-story boutique hotel similar to a popular one that Gendreau owns in Homewood.

Gendreau has said he wants to erect several buildings at a time.

"He wants to be done in less than two years," Highland Clerk-Treasurer Michael Griffin said.

The project was given final approval by the town earlier this year.

Griffin said Tuesday the commission expects to use economic development bonds that would help with the infrastructure.

"These arent sold in a big sale, but rather are negotiated and placed privately with a private buyer," Griffin said. "In this case the private buyer will likely be the developer."

Thus, Gendreau probably is the one who will buy the bond issue but, as a private entity, he needs the governmental structure of the town to officially receive the funds.

The total amount is not yet known, but the financing will be done in stages, with the sale of $3 million to $5 million to help with the first phase, Griffin said.

Griffin said that a "not to exceed" number will be established as the overall value of the bonds, but that these funds will be released incrementally for each phase of the project.

"This is to protect the town and to make sure that we tie the sizing to each phase and its needs," Griffin said. "After all, it is the improvements themselves that create 'increment,' which is the money that is used to repay the bonds.

"That's a fairly significant return on investment," he noted.

In related action, the commission unanimously approved two resolutions that create an agreement for financial advice and bond sale support from the London Witte Group LLP.

The second resolution paves the way to issue the bonds.

Resident Larry Kondrat questioned the size  and need  or the bond issue.

Commission President/Town Councilman Bernie Zemen, D-1st, replied with a reminder that the town of Schererville paid about $20 million to help one of the commercial developments in the Main Street/Indianapolis Boulevard area.

In other business, the board voted unanimously to give an extra $1,906.92 to The Hydrant Dog Grooming service to reimburse unexpected costs to improve the facade of its new location at 8630 Kennedy Ave.

The commission had previously granted a reimbursement of $22,330.02.

Redevelopment Director Kathy DeGuilio-Fox also announced that the annual Festival of the Trail was cancelled because of inclimate weather.
Gov. Eric Holcomb has directed American flags in Lake County to be flown at half-staff Wednesday in honor of U.S. Marine Corporal Christian (Chris) Smith, who died while on active duty.

The flags are to be flown at half-staff from sunrise to sunset in honor of Smith's funeral.

Businesses and residents in the Lake County area also are asked to lower their flags to half-staff Wednesday.
LOWELL  Residents will be under a boil water advisory until further notice after a significant water line break Tuesday morning completely drained one of the town's two water towers.

The water main break occurred at about 3 a.m. but the location was not uncovered until about 7 a.m., Town Manager Jeffrey Sheridan said in a news release.

The private 6-inch line's rupture was "so large that it caused water pressure throughout the town to drop and completely drain one of the towns two water towers," Sheridan said in the release.

Initial attempts to contact the line's owner were unsuccessful, Sheridan said, but town staff were able to reduce the flow by closing valves near the leak.

Town crews working with a contractor for the lines owner were able to complete the repairs at about 1:40 pm., the news release stated.

The boil water advisory is a requirement by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

The water will be tested two days consecutively to confirm no contamination occurred during this leak and once confirmed the advisory will be lifted, Lowell officials said in the release.

The Tri-Creek School Corp. dismissed students early Tuesday because of the water main break, officials said.

Check back at nwi.com for updates to this story.
A UN committee has added some 32 items to a list of goods and technologies whose sale or transfer to North Korea is prohibited.

The committee, which monitors sanctions against Pyongyang, sent the report to the UN Security Council on Monday.

The banned items include containers for transporting radioactive materials, continuous cooling systems, flash X-ray machines, seismic detection equipment, and particle accelerators.
PORTAGE  Amera Abu-Hakmeh appeared to be the All-American girl.

An honor roll student at Chesterton High School, the 17-year-old Portage teen was also a member of the CHS Trojan Guard and a National Honor Society member. Last year she won the Don Quijote Scholarship Fund, allowing for international travel.

Abu-Hakmeh was killed Tuesday morning and her younger sister was seriously injured in a two-car crash on U.S. 20 here just after 7 a.m.

The driver of the other vehicle, Gayle Brown, 85, of Greencastle, Indiana, was allegedly driving at a high rate of speed and crossed the center line striking the car carrying the two girls, according to officials. Brown was driving a Buick Regal westbound in the inside lane of traffic before the crash. Abu-Hakmeh was driving a 2002 Mitsubishi Eclipse eastbound in the inside lane of travel.

Both Abu-Hakmeh and Brown died at the scene.

Abu-Hakmeh's 12-year-old sister was transported to Comers Children's Hospital in Chicago where she was in critical, but stable condition, said Portage Police Chief Troy Williams.

"The impact caused catastrophic damage to both vehicles," said Williams.

Porter County Coroner Chuck Harris said Brown was traveling "at a high rate of speed."

The crash happened on U.S. 20 about 500 feet east of Clem Road, in an area of U.S. 20 which curves and rises over a railroad track. The area of U.S. 20 between the rise and Dombey Road further to the west has been the scene of several crashes over the years.

BAND, HONOR ROLL AND SCHOLARSHIPS

Abu-Hakmeh was a senior at Chesterton High School and her sister is a seventh grader at Chesterton Middle School.

"We have counseling available for all of our students and for staff members that have been touched by her," said Duneland Schools spokesperson Bridget Martinson, adding all CHS students were informed of the girl's death Tuesday morning by school personnel.

"The Duneland School Corporation was saddened to learn this morning that a Chesterton High School senior was killed this morning in a traffic crash and a Chesterton Middle School student was critically injured," Martinson said in a written statement.

The Chesterton High School senior was an active member of the schools band program. The schools band director met separately with members of the band this morning to share the news and has remained available along with counselors to support the students during this difficult time, Martinson said.

"Our schools, just like all schools across the United States, are a gathering place and mirror the patchwork of our communities. This is a difficult time for both our students and staff. We grieve the loss of this wonderful student and offer our prayers and support for the family in this difficult time," said Duneland Schools Superintendent Ginger Bolinger.

According to The Times archives, Abu-Hakmeh was an honor roll student, National Honor Society member and a member of the CHS Trojan Guard. She was also a recipient of the Don Quijote Scholarship Fund.

"The Portage Police Department Crash Investigation Team is conducting a thorough investigation," Williams said. "Notifications to the families have been made. No words can lessen the pain felt by each family, but our thoughts, prayers and condolences go out to them during this time of tragedy."

Harris said his office is also continuing the investigation.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Donald Trump is sounding an off-key note on his economic performance and perhaps overstating how much the public wants his tax package.

A look at some of his statements about the economy over the weekend and a rash of misstatements on a variety of topics over the past week:

TRUMP on economic growth: "In the last quarter we (hit) 3.2 (percent). As you know the previous administration didn't hit it for the year for 8 years. In eight years didn't hit it at all."  Fox Business interview, broadcast Sunday.

THE FACTS: It's not true that President Barack Obama "didn't hit it at all." The economy expanded at 3 percent annual rate or better for eight quarters during Obama's right years in office. It's true the economy never grew by more than 3 percent for a full calendar year under Obama. That hasn't happened since 2005. It is unlikely to happen this year, either.

Trump also misstated his own record. The economy expanded 3.1 percent in the April-June quarter, rather than the 3.2 percent cited by Trump.

TRUMP: "So there's a great spirit for it, people want to see it, and I call it tax cuts. It is tax reform also ... And I think that there's tremendous appetite."  Fox Business interview.

THE FACTS: There may not be as much hunger for the tax package as he argues. Recent polls suggest it's a relatively low priority for the U.S. public.

According to a Gallup poll in September that asked respondents to name the nation's most important problem, just 2 percent cited taxes. The top problems were "dissatisfaction with government," mentioned by 18 percent, and "race relations/racism," named by 12 percent, followed by immigration at 11 percent.

An April survey by the Pew Research Center found that 54 percent Americans say they pay about the right amount in taxes, while 40 percent say they pay more than their fair share.

The president's plan calls for cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. But an April Gallup poll found that two-thirds of Americans think corporations pay too little in taxes.

TRUMP: "If Congress comes together to enact this commonsense plan, the Council of Economic Advisers estimates that it will raise the annual income of a typical, hardworking American household by an average of around $4,000."  from an opinion piece under Trump's byline in USA Today, Sunday.

THE FACTS: That is what his White House Council of Economic Advisers predicts, but the conclusion is strongly disputed by many economists. It is based on the idea that overall incomes would rise $504 billion as a result of his proposed tax cuts. To put that in perspective, that's $200 billion more than the total revenue generated by the corporate income tax.

The prediction also assumes that most of the benefit from the cut would flow to employees, as businesses use the proceeds to invest in equipment that makes workers more productive. Those more-productive workers could then win higher pay.

Yet an analysis by Treasury Department economists in 2012 found that roughly three-quarters of the benefit of corporate tax cuts would go to investors in the form of dividend payments or share buybacks.

TRUMP on consoling families who have lost loved ones in military service: "I think I've called every family of someone who's died."  interview with Fox News radio, Tuesday.

THE FACTS: He hasn't. The Associated Press contacted relatives of more than 20 of the 43 people who died in military service since Trump took office in January. Relatives of at least 10 of the fallen said they did not get a call. Some also didn't get a letter.

TRUMP, on how past presidents dealt with family members who lost loved ones in military service: "Most of them didn't make calls." Obama might have done so on occasion but "other presidents did not call."  news conference Oct. 1.

THE FACTS: The recent record is clear: Obama and President George W. Bush made painstaking efforts to contact bereaved military families, and they had many more to deal with than Trump so far in his presidency.

Bush, even at the height of two wars, "wrote all the families of the fallen," said Freddy Ford, spokesman for the ex-president. Ford said Bush also called or met "hundreds, if not thousands" of family members of the war dead.

Obama, too, paid plenty of attention to families of the fallen, visiting Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on some occasions when the remains of the dead were brought back to the U.S., inviting Gold Star families to the White House, and meeting, calling or writing to others.

Veterans groups said neither president shortchanged bereaved military families in offering condolences personally.

TRUMP tweet Friday: "Just out report: 'United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror.' Not good, we must keep America safe!"

Just out report: "United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror." Not good, we must keep America safe!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2017

THE FACTS: Trump misstates the statistics and the reason crime has gone up.

The 13 percent increase cited by Trump refers to crime in England and Wales, not the entire U.K., which also includes Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The biggest jump in crime reports came from car thefts and shoplifting. Homicides slightly dropped, even with deadly attacks by extremists in London and Manchester.

TRUMP on Hurricane Maria's effect on Puerto Rico: "They got hit dead center  if you look at those maps  by a Category 5. Nobody's ever heard of a 5 hitting land. Usually by that time it's dissipated. It hit right through  and kept to a 5  it hit right through the middle of the island, right through the middle of Puerto Rico."  comments Thursday after a White House meeting with Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello.

THE FACTS: No, it made landfall as a strong Category 4 hurricane, not 5. Though devastating, Maria also did not rake across the island as a Category 5. It weakened, and left the island some seven hours later as barely a Category 3.

TRUMP: "We keep being given credit. You know, it's very nice that the gentleman who worked for Bill Clinton, when he was president, gave us an A-plus. And that included Puerto Rico. Gave us an A-plus. And I thought that was really very nice. And I think  I really believe he's correct. We have done a really great job."  comments after Rossello meeting.

THE FACTS: No, Trump did not get an A-plus for his Puerto Rico response from the Clinton-era administration emergency chief cited by Trump, James Lee Witt. But it's understandable that he thought so. Published reports suggested Witt had given the Trump administration top grades for its actions in all three monster storms  Harvey, Irma and Maria.

But Witt told AP he did not assign a grade to the Maria response because it's too soon. It could end up being an A, F or grade in between, he said.

TRUMP: "The Fake News is going crazy with wacky Congresswoman Wilson(D), who was SECRETLY on a very personal call, and gave a total lie on content!"  tweet Thursday

The Fake News is going crazy with wacky Congresswoman Wilson(D), who was SECRETLY on a very personal call, and gave a total lie on content!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 20, 2017

CHIEF OF STAFF JOHN KELLY: "It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation. Absolutely stuns me. And I thought at least that was sacred."  briefing Thursday.

THE FACTS: The suggestion that Florida Rep. Frederica Wilson eavesdropped for nefarious purposes on Trump's call to a war widow is problematic, at best.

She's indeed been scathing about Trump's behavior on the phone with Myeshia Johnson, wife of Sgt. La David Johnson, killed early this month in an ambush in Niger. Three other U.S. soldiers also died.

What Trump said  and how he said it  is in dispute. But Wilson is a friend of the family and was with the widow and the aunt and uncle who raised the soldier as a boy when the call arrived. The family members and Wilson were in a car and the call was placed on speakerphone. Meantime, Kelly and several others at the White House listened from their end to what Trump said was a "very personal call."

KELLY, on a 2015 building dedication ceremony at which he said Wilson stood and talked about herself: "And a congresswoman stood up, and in a long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise, stood up there in all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building, and how she took care of her constituents because she got the money, and she just called up President Obama, and on that phone call, he gave the money, the $20 million, to build the building, and she sat down. And we were stunned, stunned that she'd done it."  briefing Thursday.

THE FACTS: That's not what happened. In video of the ceremony, the Democratic congresswoman never takes credit for getting the government to pay for the building. The project was approved before she came to Congress. She spent up to three minutes of her nine-minute remarks talking about her drive to have the building named after two slain FBI agents, and about the Republican lawmakers and others who rallied to that cause and made it happen quickly.

Kelly, who lost his Marine son Robert in Afghanistan in 2010, was furious about Wilson's criticisms of Trump's phone call.



Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Jessica Gresko and Seth Borenstein in Washington, Danica Kirka in London and Tom Murphy in Indianapolis contributed to this report.
INDIANAPOLIS  A new documentary that traces the history of Indiana's federal court system is now available to the public free online.

The hour-long film, called "And Justice for All: Indiana's Federal Courts," was financed through contributions to mark the 200th anniversary of Indiana's federal courts.

A free 74-page teacher's guide that explores the significance of Indiana's federal courts helps students grasp the role of the federal judiciary by recounting three significant cases heard in the state.

Those include a three-month-long conspiracy trial held in Indianapolis in 1912 that resulted in convictions of members of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers for a 1910 California bombing that killed 21 people at the Los Angeles Times' offices.

Both the film and teacher's guide are available online .
Voters are looking for authentic leadership that shoots straight and tells the truth, U.S. Rep. Luke Messer, R-Ind., told me during a visit to The Times last week.

He was talking about himself, of course, and his campaign for U.S. Senate, in an attempt to unseat Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly.

But if thats what voters are looking for, theyre not finding all of what theyre seeking in the White House.

I asked Messer how President Donald Trumps frequent prevarication  it has been proven time after time that he has lied to the American people  affects Messers working relationship with the president.

Messer said he supports the Trump agenda, but not necessarily Trumps way of communicating with the public.

Later in the interview, Messer said Trump has a New York personality while Messer has more of a Hoosier style.

Messer faces competition in the primary, including U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita, a Munster native.

Rokita and Messer are both strong supporters of Trump.

What remains to be seen in the 2018 election is what the Trump factor turns out to be.

Donnelly has a reputation for being a moderate in the Senate, and he has worked with Sen. Todd Young, a Hoosier Republican, on several issues since Young was elected last year. Republicans hoping to unseat Donnelly will tell their voters that Donnelly is aligned with liberals the majority of the time.

There are many Hoosier voters who have taken offense at a number of Trumps actions while president, but I cant help wondering how much his dishonesty has harmed the Republican brand.

For hard-core Republicans, it might not matter much, at least in the primary. Even fact-checkers like PolitiFact and Snopes have been denounced by Republicans who prefer to get their news from the right-leaning Fox News. And we all know, of course, that Trump and his strongest supporters have vilified the media whose job it is to serve as a government watchdog on the publics behalf.

But beyond the primary, when the real race begins, Trumps repeated untruths could prove corrosive to the Republican brand.

To be clear, Im not saying strong Trump supporters like Messer and Rokita are, like the president, in the habit of lying to the American people. They seem to be, as Messer hopes to be, straight shooters.

But when relationships fail, it is often the drip-drip-drip of negative behaviors rather than a single catastrophic event that causes differences to be irreconcilable.

Trumps approval rating is already the lowest of any modern president.

As a reminder, what Messer hopes voters are looking for in the Senate is authentic leadership that shoots straight and tells the truth.

At what point does the Oval Office occupants dishonesty affect others using the Republican brand?
President Donald Trump and congressional Republican leaders, a group known as the Big Six, recently released their latest tax plan. The president claims his plan will cut taxes for the everyday, hardworking Americans, but many taxpayers will actually pay more.

Incredibly, the plan costs $2.4 trillion over 10 years but leaves 47 million households ultimately paying higher taxes so the wealthiest taxpayers can get huge tax cuts. In fact, a few groups of Americans may be hit especially hard. Based on the details provided so far, many seniors and blind Americans already can tell this plan will mean higher taxes for them in particular, since the plan eliminates a longstanding deduction they can currently and exclusively claim.

Under this plan, Americans who are at least 65 years old or blind will get a tax increase if they are unmarried and make between $13,000 and $27,000, including taxable Social Security income. Married seniors or blind Americans could see tax hikes if they make between $28,000 and $51,000. Since the tax plan leaves out details on children, these calculations apply only for taxpayers without children or other dependents.

Some authors of the tax plan claim their proposal is too incomplete to be properly analyzed. But even setting aside all the missing pieces, the plan provides the details needed to know it will harm these seniors and blind taxpayers.

These households would be taxed more because of three changes that hurt taxpayers. First, the plan eliminates personal exemptions, which allow taxpayers to take a $4,050 tax deduction for themselves, their spouse and each dependent. Second, it eliminates the additional standard deduction, a decades-old tax measure that allows seniors and blind taxpayers to write off $1,550 if they are unmarried, or $1,250 for each married filer. And finally, the plan actually raises the bottom tax rate from 10 percent to 12 percent.

At the same time, the plan increases the basic standard deduction that is available to each tax filer. But this is not enough to counteract the other tax increases for many elderly and blind taxpayers.

For example, a married senior couple earning $42,000 in adjusted gross income would owe nearly $300 more in taxes under the tax plan, even after accounting for the higher standard deduction. And a single senior or blind filer making $21,000 would owe an additional $175 under the proposed tax plan.

Proponents of the plan claim raising the bottom rate from 10 percent to 12 percent does not actually raise taxes on lower-income filers because of the higher standard deduction. But these examples show this is simply not true.

Higher-income seniors or blind individuals could also face tax hikes under the plan due to other changes. Most itemized deductions, except those for mortgage interest and charitable donations, are on the chopping block. This means filers who itemize their taxes would lose the ability to deduct state and local taxes, high medical expenses and uninsured losses from theft or natural disasters.

These Americans wont be hurt at just tax time. The enormous tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations in this plan will threaten programs like Medicare and Medicaid that are particularly important to the elderly, blind and Americans with other disabilities.

Lawmakers face stark choices with the tax plan proposed by Trump and Republican leaders. Should they really raise taxes on seniors and blind taxpayers with limited incomes? And do millionaires, billionaires and wealthy corporations really need tax cuts?
Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon is on a four-day visit to Greece and Bulgaria to attend the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony.

Lee said he expects the torch-lighting ceremony for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics would be a success, despite the rainy forecast in Olympia, Greece on Tuesday. The torch is lit from the suns rays, which are concentrated in a parabolic mirror at the Temple of Hera.

Lee will also meet with the presidents of Greece and Bulgaria, and attend the opening of the Bulgarian office of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Hellen Nansubuga, the wife to Kalungu district chairman, Richard Kyabaggu has gruesomely murdered by unknown assailants.

Nansubuga, a teacher at Tawhid primary school in Lwabenge sub-county was beheaded by the attackers who broke into her home at about 2am today morning.

Kyabaggu (with NRM flag) was last month elected Kalungu district chairman

Kyabaggu was not at home at the time, according to his son Emma Walugembe, who ran in disarray, only to find his mother murdered in cold blood moments later.



Latif Zaake, the Southern region police commander says police have detained Walugembe to help in investigations. He says Walugembe attempted to run away prompting police to intervene.



The body of the deceased has been taken to Kalungu health centre IV for postmortem.
The U.S. Air Force is preparing to put nuclear-capable B-52 bombers on 24-hour alert for the first time since the Cold War in response to North Korea's "rapidly advancing nuclear arsenal", U.S. news site Defense One reported Sunday.

The concrete pads at the runway of Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana "could once again find several B-52s parked on them, laden with nuclear weapons and set to take off at a moment's notice," it said.

"This is yet one more step in ensuring that we're prepared," Air Force chief of staff Gen. David Goldfein told Defense One. "I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure were prepared going forward."

"Goldfein and other senior defense officials stressed that the alert order had not been given, but that preparations were under way in anticipation that it might come," the website added.


Arua Municipality member of parliament, Ibrahim Abiriga has been fined Shs 40,000 by City Hall court.



Abiriga was charged and found guilty of committing a public nuisance. Prosecution alleged that on September 27, 2017, along Kyaggwe road in Kampala, Abiriga, a member of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party, eased himself on the fence of ministry of Finance.

Abiriga (in yellow) paying the Shs 40,000 court fine

A picture of him urinating went viral a day later causing a public uproar on the conduct. Abiriga later admitted in a televised interview that he had failed to control himself because he was "badly off after taking a lot of Coke Zero soda."



According to the KCC maintenance of law and order ordinance 2006, a person commits a nuisance by easing himself or herself in any street or place where he or she may be seen by the public.



The ordinance prescribes a penalty of a fine not exceeding two currency points (Shs 40,000) or imprisonment not exceeding two months or both for any person who contravenes any of its provisions.
Staff working with the various United Nations agencies in Uganda, have marked the UN Day and the 72nd anniversary of the international body by cleaning markets and holding a health camp in Kalerwe today.

Established on October 24, 1945, the inter-governmental today marked 72 years of existence.

Held under the theme "Health and Sanitation," today's celebrations were aimed at promoting Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) six that envisages clean water and sanitation.

Also, to conform with SDG three that seeks to promote good health and well being for everyone, a health camp was held at the market.

UN staff collecting garbage in Kalerwe

Country representatives of various UN agencies like International Organisation for Migration (IOM), UNAids, World Health Organisation (WHO), were joined by staff members and local leaders to clean up the area. Armed with spades, rakes and brooms, they loaded the decomposing garbage onto trucks as the market vendors cheered them on.

In his remarks, Alain Sibenaler, the country representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), observed that the sustainable development agenda targets everyone and there's need for collective participation.

Sibenaler said that if promoted, the development agenda would be able to eliminate discrimination, poverty, and preventable diseases, among others.

The UNFPA country representative explained that there was a co-relation between lack of access to reproductive health services to the rapid population growth. Because of rapid population growth, he said, government is forced to direct limited resources to the expanding basic resources.

"Universal access to quality reproductive health services will not only check on population growth. It will make it easier to provide quality health and sanitation services", said Sabinaler, who was speaking on behalf of UN in Uganda.

Adding; "It will free up government resources that can be used to boost economic growth, thereby increasing capacity to advance all the 17 SDGS."

Frank Mugisha, the chairperson of Semuguwa new farmers market, commended UN in Uganda for acting as an example through promoting sanitation and reproductive health. He explained that leaders from the 17 markets would continue sensitising the vendors on the benefits of working in a clean environment.

Kalerwe, a surburb on the outskirts of Kampala is well-known for it's over 17 markets that deal majorly in food produce. Apart from poor planning, the markets face a challenge of poor waste management and it's for this reason that UN decided to commemorate it's day by collecting the organic waste.

abumay1988@gmail.com
Edson Nasasira died of a gunshot wound/injury, the postmortem report from Karoli Lwanga Hospital - Nyakibale has confirmed.



Nasasira, 22 also commonly known as Kakuru was shot dead on Wednesday, October 18 in Rukungiri municipality during a confrontation with the police.

He becomes the first victim of the states clampdown on nationwide resistance to the ruling NRM-pushed amendment to the constitution to lift presidential age limits. Initially police had intimidated that Nasasira was killed by a stone thrown by fellow protestors.



But according to the postmortem report dated October 24 and signed by three doctors; by Dr Julius Luyimbaazi (General Surgeon/Medical Superintendent), Dr Ronald Mbiine (General Surgeon) and Dr Stephen Gingo (Obstetrician/Gynaecologist), Nasasira died of injuries sustained from a bullet wound.

Nasasira was buried last Friday

According to the report, on examination of Nasasiras body, a circular bullet entry wound on the left nasal bone about 0.5cm in diameter was identified. The exit wound about 3cm in the right occipital (back of head) region was also discovered.

Further, according to the report, the defects of the gunshot was lacerated brain tissue and bleeding in the brain.



Following Nasasira's death on October 18, police, the next day arrested opposition doyen Kizza Besigye in Kabala and a string of charges including, murder and attempted murder of police officers were brought against him for his alleged role in the clashes in Rukungiri in which Nasasira was killed.

Also arrested alongside Besigye were Ingrid Turinawe, FDC chief mobiliser and Patrick Amuriat Oboi, a candidate in the opposition Forum for Democratic Changes ongoing race for party president. The trio is still held at Naggalama police station with police spokesperson Asan Kasingye saying they will be released once the investigations are done.

Six other suspected gunshot victims are still in Nyakibale hospital. They include Junior Aijuka, 18, a resident of Rwakabengo, who was reportedly shot in the stomach; Farouk Bangirana, reportedly shot in the right leg and genitals; Julius Turyomunsi, a resident of Nyakagyeme shot in the back while Christopher Muhwezi was shot in the stomach.

Others are Davidson Aryasingura who was hit with a teargas canister in the face as well as Naris Muhumuza who was shot in the leg.

What had began as a usual confrontation between the police and Besigye quickly took a violent turn as police tried to stop a planned rally in Rukungiri stadium.

It soon deteriorated and turned into an ugly stand-off lasting several hours. On one hand, the police was firing at will, volleys of live ammunition and teargas canisters were directed at the stone-throwing crowd.

But the mostly youthful FDC supporters, donning the red ribbons that have come to symbolise national resistance to amendment of Article 102(b), kept coming back even forcing the police to flee.

Nasasira was the fifth born in a family of seven and was laid to rest in Rukungiri last Friday. Government contributed Shs 10 million to Nasasira's family.

The money was delivered by Lt Gen Henry Tumukunde, the minister for security who represented government. President Museveni and police boss Kale Kayihura have since expressed "regret" over Nasasira's death.

Tumukunde said local police officers should be forgiven when such excesses are committed against the people because they act on orders from their superiors.

Its like driving a car, the driver steers in a certain direction but the car goes off track because of the condition of the roadLet us forgive the local police because they act on orders from above, Tumukunde said.
The ruling National Resistance Movement party top-most decision making organ, Central Executive Committee (CEC) has unanimously endorsed the age limit amendment bill.

According to a press release by the acting secretary general of the party, Richard Todwong, CEC adopted three resolutions including; to fully support the Constitution (Amendment) Bill (No.2) 2017 tabled recently by Igara West MP Raphael Magyezi.

The members also agreed to popularise their decision to support the bill to all structures and membership of the party and to the entire country, guiding and mobilising them to support the amendment.

The bill seeks among other to lift the presidential age limit currently capped between 35 and 75 years.

CEC has also called on Ugandans to respect and be tolerant to those with the divergent views. The amendment has received hostility from a big section of Ugandans.

President Museveni is expected to be the most immediate beneficiary of the age limit amendment

According to credible sources, the CEC members where not allowed to freely debate the contentious matter and in the end, Museveni who is also NRM chairman asked the CEC members to support the bill and also to popularize it.

Museveni reportedly dodged the first part of the meeting, leaving his deputy Alhajj Moses Kigongo to chair in an apparent move to soften their hard stance before Museveni came in.

At least four members namely, Matayo Kyaligonza (Western), Godfrey Nyakaana (Kampala), Gaddafi Nasur (Youth League), Simon Aleper (Karamoja) were opposed to the amendment.

Other sources quoted six of 29 CEC members who were openly opposed though the names could not readily be established.

According to sources, some members asked Museveni why he chose to work with the parliamentary caucus and sidelined party structures.

In response, Museveni said that it was inevitable to for him to work with the caucus since the bill was initiated by a private member.

It was at this moment that Museveni asked the CEC members to support the bill.
North Korea still owes Sweden 2.73 billion kronor or about US$330 million for 1,000 Volvos and other equipment it imported from the Scandinavian country in 1974, reports said Monday.

Sweden established diplomatic relations with the North in 1973. The following year, it placed an order for 1,000 Volvo 144 sedans, Asea ship equipment, and Atlas Copco mining excavators.

The Swedish companies sent the shipments as ordered, but Pyongyang never paid the 600 million kronor bill.

Under an export credit insurance contract, the unpaid export bills were purchased by the Swedish Export Credit Agency, and receivables have now snowballed to 2.73 billion kronor with accumulated interest.

The North also owes 26 million euros to the Finnish government and 6 million euros to Finnish companies for paper-making machines it bought in the 1970s. And it owes Rolex 205.1 million Swiss francs for watches it bought in the past.


Actor Kim Soo-hyun started his mandatory military service on Monday.

"Kim entered a boot camp in Paju, Gyeonggi Province to fulfill his 21-month military duty," his management agency said in a press release on Monday.

He was given a quiet send-off as he wanted to avoid public attention. Nevertheless, a small group of passionate fans from both Korea and abroad stood outside the camp clutching banners to bid farewell to the star.

He left a short note sending his love and gratitude to fans.


The State of Iowa has withdrawn its request for temporary changes intended to reduce costs and keep more Iowans under individual health insurance, with Gov. Kim Reynolds saying the Affordable Care Act proved too inflexible to allow such changes.

That means 72,000 Iowans for sure will have only one choice for individual and family health plans when open enrollment begins Nov. 1: Medica of Minnetonka, Minnesota.

Insurance officials said people who need that insurance should be sure to check their options at HealthCare.gov.

People may be surprised, said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow for the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health insurance research group. They really should take a look before they drop their coverage and see what the 2018 plans are and what they would cost.

Health plans through employers and government plans like Medicare and Medicaid are not affected by Mondays withdrawal of the Iowa proposal.

Iowa Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen said he fears that 20,000 Iowans will forgo health insurance next year because of high costs, now that the Iowa stopgap measure wont happen.

The measure would have allowed Blue Cross affiliate Wellmark to offer competing health plans in 2018, possibly lowering monthly premiums and other costs.

Ommen said federal officials last week said the law required Iowa to submit projections that werent available. With open enrollment looming, he and Reynolds said during a press conference Monday in Des Monies, the state had to drop its request so that people who need the coverage can get ready to sign up.

Medica said in a statement that it is prepared to be the only individual insurance carrier in Iowa. Consumers who bought individual plans through HealthCare.gov will receive information soon from Medica and the federal government on their options for 2018.

We strongly encourage consumers to see if they qualify for a premium subsidy, Medica said, because more people will be eligible for subsidies than this year.

Wellmark said in a statement that the stopgap measure was the most innovative attempt to address the challenges with the individual Affordable Care Act market in the country and would have made individual insurance more affordable and the states insurance market more stable.

Wellmark said it would continue to work with state and federal officials toward a long-term solution.

At the press conference, Reynolds and Ommen criticized what they said was the ACAs inflexible, lengthy process for reviewing state waiver requests, saying the law requires time-consuming approvals from the Department of Health and Human Services, the Treasury Department and other agencies. They said the required filings and information werent available in time.

Bureaucracy at its finest, Reynolds said at one point, although she also praised the agencies for trying to work with Iowa officials on the request.

The governor called on Congress to replace and repeal the ACA, also known as Obamacare, and to restore what she said was a robust, low-premium individual health insurance market in Iowa before the passage of the ACA.

In a statement, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa said, The reality in Iowa is that continuing the status quo simply isnt an option because Obamacare is unsustainable.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement that the ACA had promised to allow states to waive certain portions of the ACA in order to provide affordable insurance options. This turns out to be another broken promise of Obamacare. As written, the law hamstrings the administrations ability to help Iowa.

Ommen, the insurance commissioner, said not having the stopgap measure means that the healthiest people who do not receive subsidies are most likely to drop their individual plans, leaving the ACA to cover those who are in poorer health and receive subsidies.

That will continue to cause the individual health market to collapse in the state, Ommen said.

Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that in late August President Donald Trump had called Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and told her to reject the Iowa waiver as part of an effort to undermine the health insurance law.

But Reynolds praised Verma and her staff for trying to work with Iowa officials even though the law is too inflexible to allow innovative changes such as those sought by Iowa.

Chuck Olson, chief executive of OCi Insurance and Financial Services, an Omaha company that works with insurance agents, said industry groups had doubted Iowas proposal could be approved in time for 2018 even if the Trump administration had supported it. Iowa submitted the plan in mid-June.

Executive orders can do a lot of things, Olson said.  But its a huge process to ask for this waiver. Trying to push it through in a few months just didnt seem possible, the way the laws written.

Olson said insurance agents in Iowa will start advising clients how to keep some sort of insurance coverage even if they cant afford the cost of a plan that meets ACA standards and, for a family of four, could cost $30,000 a year for premiums alone. For example, short-term, cheaper plans can be extended up to a year under a recent Trump executive order.

Pollitz, the Kaiser insurance expert, said approval of the Iowa plan had seemed doubtful partly because the changes it sought were pretty drastic compared with other state waiver requests.

Although the Trump administration had encouraged states early this year to apply for waivers, so far only Alaskas waiver request has succeeded, and that was much simpler than Iowas complex and multi-dimensional request, she said.

The stopgap measure would have used some federal funds to set up a reinsurance program for large health claims, would have changed subsidy calculation and would limit some options to reduce costs. Consumers would have been able buy subsidized health plans directly from insurance companies instead of through the ACA exchange.
Kohlls Pharmacy & Homecare is contesting federal conspiracy charges filed against it that allege it was involved in a scheme to manipulate horse races in Louisiana.

The Omaha company is accused of obtaining a synthetic version of a drug, falsely identifying and relabeling it and selling it to Dr. Kyle James Hebert, a veterinarian, from 2010 to 2012.

In court documents, Omaha attorney Dave Domina, who is representing Kohlls, wrote that prosecutors allegations of false invoices and labels will be hotly disputed at trial.

Authorities say Hebert, who also faces charges in the case filed in Louisiana, told horse trainers that the medication would make the horses focus and run faster, according to court documents.

Officials contend that Hebert told trainers the drug would not be detected in blood tests and directed them to administer a shot an hour before race time, which is against racing regulations.

Domina said in court documents that Kohlls has a compounding pharmacy service, Essential Pharmacy Compounding, that creates personalized medicine for patients. The company fills prescriptions to veterinarians for many types of animals in all 50 states.

Domina said Kohlls officials did not know the substance it sold to Hebert was intended to be used, or would be used, for race horses, or at a racetrack, or on race day.

In an email, Domina wrote, Kohlls denies knowing anything about what (Hebert) did with the preparations it supplied, and denies that its role was wrongful in any way.

Federal prosecutors allege that Kohlls got a synthetic version of a drug called dermorphin from a supplier in California and offered it for sale. Then, officials allege, Kohlls falsely relabeled the product ... with labeling that made it appear that the product was a compounded drug created by Kohlls for Hebert.

Invoices listed the drug both as d-peptide  a fictitious name, officials said  and dermorphin.

Within about a year and a half, officials said, Hebert paid Kohlls $25,140 for roughly 815 milligrams of dermorphin.

Jury selection in the case in U.S. District Court in Lake Charles, La., is set to begin Monday.
Seth Hansen wont be around to spin yarns. Or be that reliable friend in a pinch.

Worse, he wont get to see his daughter blossom into a young woman.

And in the end, said his sister Eve Shanklin, thats what matters most. Less so the type of plea made by the man who killed him.

Dirk Blume, a former real estate agent, has pleaded no contest to manslaughter and using a weapon to commit a felony rather than going to trial on a second-degree murder charge.

Shanklin and Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said the plea deal was acceptable.

Blume will be sentenced Dec. 11. He could face up to 70 years in prison, Kleine said, and his office will argue for a significant term. Under a second-degree murder conviction, Blume could have faced life in prison.

Shanklin said nothing short of bringing her brother back would make her happy.

Shanklin said she wishes Blume would have pleaded guilty instead of no contest, but she believes the prosecutors and judge will do their best during sentencing.

Her brother, she said, was a good person, very much loved by a lot of people who are affected by his being gone. Hansens survivors include a daughter, Cassady, who was 16 at the time of his death.

Hansens death and its aftermath have been a very surreal thing, Shanklin said. I have a strong faith in God and that this will make sense at some point.

Blumes attorney, who was not available for comment Monday evening, offered the plea deal and prosecutors accepted, Kleine said. The sides made no agreement on sentencing, he said.

Blume, who spent the evening of Jan. 6 drinking, had gotten angry with Hansen early the following morning when Hansen refused to sell him chewing tobacco. Hansen was closing the convenience store when Blume stopped by, prosecutors say.

Hansens death was a mystery at first because it hadnt been immediately clear what had happened at the Speedee Mart near 138th Street and West Maple Road.

After examining surveillance video, police realized that a white pickup truck had run over Hansen.

According to surveillance video, Hansen had walked out the front door of the store to take out the trash. A white Ford F-150 FX4 pickup truck arrived, and the driver and Hansen began to talk. The truck then pulled away, slowly idling while Hansen walked near the passenger side of the truck. Finally, Hansen walked in front of the truck.

The video froze for about a minute while no motion was detected and then began recording as the truck accelerated toward Hansen, who disappeared underneath it.

While Blume didnt contact police, he did confide in two friends about what had happened.

Within 48 hours after running over Hansen with his pickup, Blume spilled details of the confrontation to a drinking buddy and a longtime church friend, Omaha police say.

First, Blume told the drinking buddy thats me that did that after watching a TV news report on Hansens death at a bar, police say.

Then, according to police, he gave the church friend a detailed account of trying to buy chewing tobacco at a closed convenience store and how the confrontation spiraled into Hansens death.

When Blume didnt turn himself in to police, the church friend did.

Hansen was well-liked among his friends as someone who would do anything to help people out.

He was the best friend anyone would want,  Heidi Judson said shortly after his death, the type of guy who would drop anything if you needed help, and he would not expect anything in return.

Another friend, Jeremy Friedman, said following Hansens death that Hansen had been focused on bettering things for his daughter, Cassady.

He didnt always have the best job, but he did whatever he could to pay child support for Cassady,  Friedman said. He would do anything for that girl.

Judson said Hansen enjoyed visiting with regular customers at the gas station and making connections with people. He was a great storyteller, she said, whose enthusiasm was almost mesmerizing, with his bright blue eyes growing wide, piercing and with so much character.

* * * * *

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Dirk Blume was originally charged with first-degree murder.
After more than a decade, Bellevue City Councilman Pat Shannon is being forced to pay a fine stemming from campaign violations.

Court documents show the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission is going after assets in Shannons name in Oklahoma.

Since 2006, the commission has been trying to collect a $16,000 fine that Shannon owes for violating campaign finance laws in 2004.

The commission and Shannon were due in Sarpy County District Court on Monday afternoon for a hearing on Shannons finances, part of a renewed push by the commission to collect the fine. But the hearing was canceled because the parties have been speaking and it appears there is a resolution in sight, said Frank Daley, executive director of the Accountability and Disclosure Commission.

Daley declined to give more details and said he didnt want to discuss a possible settlement before it was finalized. With interest, the fine now exceeds $16,000.

Larry Forman, Shannons attorney, said the commission found money in an Oklahoma estate that was to be paid to Shannon. Court filings in Oklahoma show the commission filed Oct. 11 to take the money from the estate.

I maintain my innocence, but the fine is paid and off the table, Shannon said Monday in an emailed statement.

Forman said the fine is not yet paid, but he expects it to be soon.

After several attempts over the years, the commission renewed its efforts to collect the money from Shannon after the businessmans election to the City Council in November.

It attempted to take it from Shannons City Council pay, but his paycheck was too small to be garnished under state law.

Recently, the commission sought the courts help in forcing Shannon to respond to questions about his financial situation, saying that the responses Shannon gave were evasive, incomplete, and inaccurate.

The fine from the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission stemmed from an anonymous flyer distributed during Shannons 2004 bid for a seat in the Nebraska Legislature.

The flyer, which was signed Nebraskans for Decency, alleged domestic abuse by his opponent, who was going through a divorce.

Shannon has long denied his involvement with the flyer and said he has proof that he didnt owe the fine and wasnt involved with creating the flyer. He has declined to give specifics or provide such proof.

In 2006, after testimony from witnesses and hearings, the commission fined Shannon for eight campaign disclosure violations, including failing to report expenditures and contributions relating to the mailing as well as failing to disclose his campaign committee as its source.

The fine could have kept Shannon, who has larger political ambitions, from moving forward.

Shannon has said he will run next year to be Bellevues mayor. But a recent state law precludes anyone with outstanding disclosure commission fines from filing for or being appointed to political office. Paying the fine will allow Shannons candidacy to proceed.

First, Shannon has to hold onto his current job.

There are petitions circulating to recall Shannon from his seat on the City Council.

The petition circulators have to collect 6,597 signatures from registered Bellevue voters by Nov. 14 to trigger a recall election.
Voters in Elmwood, Nebraska, will have the opportunity to elect three new members to the Village Board, replacing three who resigned last week in protest of what one said was a toxic culture on the board.

Secretary of State John Gale called Monday for the special election. Interested candidates, who must be registered voters in Elmwood, have until Nov. 9 to file for office with the Cass County Election Office. The election will take place Dec. 12.

The three who resigned are Brody Baer, Jack Hovick and Mike Kress.

In a resignation letter dated Wednesday, Hovick cited a toxic climate and culture on the five-member board. He said shortcuts in procedures by the board have failed to protect taxpayers. He cited a park renovation project and others. Hovick also alleged violations of the Nebraska Open Meetings Act.

In an interview, Kress agreed with Hovicks characterization of the boards workings and said he resigned to bring attention to the situation.

When you ask a question, you get shot down, he said. I dont know why we (board members) are there. Its sad.

Board Chairwoman Pat Wray did not immediately return calls seeking comment. The other remaining board member is Julie Anderson.

State law gives the secretary of state authority to call for a special election if half or more of the seats are vacated on a city council or village board.

The election will involve two separate races. One will include the selection of two board members whose terms will expire in December 2018. The second is for a third member whose seat will expire in December 2020.

If no one files for office in either of those races, the election will be determined by write-in votes. Candidates receiving the greatest number of votes in both races will be elected to the board. The election will be held either at the polls or by mail.

Elmwood, a community of 634, is about 35 miles south of southwest Omaha.
Cheong Wa Dae plans to send a special envoy to the International Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Power in the United Arab Emirates to pitch Korea's knowhow in building nuclear power plants.

Korea is currently building a nuclear power plant in the UAE and hopes to win orders from the U.K., Saudi Arabia and the Czech Republic. A Cheong Wa Dae official on Monday said, "We decided to send science and technology adviser Moon Mi-ok as a special envoy to the UAE."

The conference from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1 will be attended by energy ministers from some 80 countries. They will tour the Barakah nuclear power plant being built in the UAE by Korean builders who won the order back in 2009.

Moon is to guide the tour and use the opportunity to explain Korea's technology. The government originally planned to send a director from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy but was accused of not making more of an effort. But at home the government is moving quickly to wean Korea off its dependence on nuclear energy.

A nuclear-free roadmap to be approved in a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday apparently includes a ban on constructing new nuclear power plants and extending the lifespan of existing reactors.

The government also plans to shut down Korea's second-oldest nuclear reactor in Wolseong, North Gyeongsang Province, which is currently operating beyond its life cycle. Its lifespan has been extended by 10 years until 2022.


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News Analysis: CPC's governance wisdom leading China to bigger role in global development

From:Xinhua | 2017-10-22 21:06

Xi Jinping delivers a report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on behalf of the 18th Central Committee of the CPC at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 18, 2017. The CPC opened the 19th National Congress at the Great Hall of the People Wednesday morning. (Xinhua/Li Tao)

BEIJING, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- China, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), has in recent years served as a stabilizing factor and source of wisdom in a world troubled with uncertainties and challenges.

Reading the signals from the ongoing 19th CPC National Congress, analysts worldwide said they are confident that the CPC will lead China to make more contributions to world peace and development.

SUPPORTING GLOBAL GOVERNANCE SYSTEM

David Shambaugh, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a leading U.S. think tank, said that China "has a particularly important leadership role to play in global governance."

He mentioned various areas in which the world has seen China significantly increase its contributions, including climate change, global health, international peacekeeping, global economic governance, energy security and reshaping multilateral institutions.

China was one of the first to sign the Paris Agreement, and has reaffirmed its commitment to fighting global warming after the United States announced its decision in June to withdraw from the accord.

As Chinese President Xi Jinping said Wednesday in his report at the opening session of the 19th CPC National Congress, China has taken a driver's seat in international cooperation on climate change and become an "important participant, contributor, and torchbearer" in the global endeavor for ecological civilization.

The country more than met its carbon emission reduction goals last year, and pledged a package of 3.1 billion U.S. dollars to the South-South Cooperation Fund on Climate Change for developing countries.

Avery Goldstein, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said he thinks that "China, sticking with this path, makes it more likely that eventually even the United States will come back to the consensus on climate change."

China is also a staunch supporter of the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions and a provider of international humanitarian relief. It is the top contributor of UN peacekeepers and the second-largest contributor to peacekeeping funds.

Khairy Tourk, a professor with the Stuart School of Business of the Illinois Institute of Technology, said that even though its per capita income is not as high as those of advanced nations, China is already providing the world with public goods, such as sending peacekeepers, fighting piracy, and sending medical missions to really poor countries to take care of the people who cannot afford to have good medical treatment.

On economy, China is an indispensable force to counter global economic sluggishness. Over the past five years, China has contributed more than 30 percent of global economic growth.

These remarkable achievements did not come easily, as the country has made tremendous efforts to deepen all-round reforms and adjust its economic structure to address tough challenges and maintain sustainable growth.

Meanwhile, China is committed to promoting an open economy and free trade. Gerishon Ikiara, an international economics lecturer at the University of Nairobi, said that China's active participation in global economic cooperation and support for open and free global trade have benefited itself and all other countries.

The scholar said he expects China to continue to play a leading role in shaping the global system of trade integration, which will help spur global growth.

OFFERING SOLUTIONS WITH CHINESE WISDOM

China's "more proactive" action in setting the agenda for global growth and governance is exemplified by the Belt and Road Initiative, a "very powerful idea," said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, chairman of the Kuhn Foundation, a U.S. nongovernmental organization promoting U.S.-China ties.

The initiative, proposed by Xi in 2013, aims to promote trade, financial integration, infrastructure inter-connectivity and people-to-people exchanges along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes linking Asia with Europe and Africa.

By linking countries and regions that account for more than 60 percent of the world's population and 30 percent of the global gross domestic product, the initiative is a "perfect example" of China sharing its wisdom and solutions for global growth and governance, Kuhn said.

What's more, in Shambaugh's opinion, the initiative "has great potential for many countries and global development."

"Most of the countries along the Belt and Road have significant development need -- electricity and power, transport infrastructure, IT connectivity, etc. -- which China can contribute greatly to fulfilling," he said.

Nigel Haworth, president of the New Zealand Labor Party, said the initiative shows that China has started looking constructively at new ways of complementing existing systems of economic integration, such as the World Trade Organization and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

In addition, the Belt and Road Initiative also helps safeguard regional peace, said former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, noting that it creates an opportunity for countries with different state systems to work together to protect the region from terrorism.

"One should be counting all the benefits of stability, with less wars, less tension, less crises and less terrorism. It is very important to have a global picture," he said.
Interview: CPC creates role model for developing countries -- Moroccan party leader

From:Xinhua | 2017-10-22 21:36

RABAT, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) has created exemplary experience for developing countries to lead their people heading in a right direction, said Habib Belkouch, leader of Morocco's second largest political party.

Belkouch said his party, the Authenticity and Modernity Party, is closely watching the 19th CPC National Congress, a week-long meeting which opened Wednesday in Beijing and marks China's most important political event in five years.

The landmark conference will elect a new CPC Central Committee and CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, amend the CPC Constitution, and draw a blueprint for China's development in the next five years and beyond.

Commenting on the achievements China has made in the past few decades, Belkouch recalled his trip to the Asian country and said he is "amazingly surprised."

"Seeing how a population of about 1.4 billion is governed, how the country is able to achieve all this development in 30 years ... we could only hail the role played by the Communist Party of China and the Chinese president who leads this experience," he said.

Noting that his party is concerned about building on the country's history while embracing modernity and openness, Belkouch said he is impressed by China's "capacity to link millennia-old heritage to strong modernity."

As regards Morocco-China cooperation, Belkouch stressed that the development of bilateral relations is a keen interest at the highest level in Morocco.

The number of Chinese visitors to Morocco is growing year-on-year, and the north African kingdom has become a key economic platform for Africa-China cooperation, he noted.

Particularly, he emphasized that the Belt and Road Initiative is an important platform for Morocco, which looks forward to strengthening cooperation with the world's second largest economy in the areas of investment and infrastructure.

The Belt and Road Initiative, put forward in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping, is aimed at promoting trade, financial integration, infrastructure connectivity and people-to-people exchanges along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes linking Asia with Europe and Africa.

The Authenticity and Modernity Party, said Belkouch, hopes to see Morocco-China relations grow stronger, especially in the economic area, so that Morocco can benefit from the Chinese experience.
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Searchers continue to look for a missing Portland hiker whose backpack rain cover was found about 5 miles from his car, deputies said.

Nathan Mitchell

Nathan Mitchell's father reported early Sunday that Mitchell hadn't returned from a hike, according to the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office. It wasn't initially known where Mitchell intended to hike, but his car was later found in the day use lot at the Wildwood Recreation area near Welches, and deputies started to organize a search.

A variety of agencies and organizations are involved with the search in the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness, the sheriff's office said in a news release. Searchers are combing an area that's about 40 square miles and features cliffs, steep slopes and water crossings, deputies said.

Searchers found a rain cover from Mitchell's backpack about 5 miles from his car and pinpointed places where he took photos that he sent to friends, according to the sheriff's office.

Thirty-eight ground searchers, including canine teams, covered an average of 15 miles a piece Monday, deputies said. Authorities in an Oregon Army National Guard helicopter searched for about eight hours, as well.

A team of searchers continued to look for Mitchell at 11 p.m. Monday, deputies said, and the search was set to resume early Tuesday.

Authorities also requested a "statewide callout," which "will help coordinate additional resources from all over the state," deputies said.

Mitchell was last seen in a black Columbia rain coat, "dark blue/gray plaid Pendleton wool shirt" and brown Columbia boots, deputies said. He was carrying a black backpack. He's 5-foot-8 and 130 lbs.

Deputies urge anyone who has information about the case to call the sheriff's office's tip line, 503-723-4949, or submit information online. Tipsters should reference sheriff's office case No. 17-27934.

-- Jim Ryan

jryan@oregonian.com

503-221-8005; @Jimryan015
Yong Kang Street, a noodle and dumpling restaurant inspired by the Taiwanese eating district of the same name, appears to be among the first tenants coming to the redesigned food court at Pioneer Place Mall, according to plans reviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive.com.

The new restaurant was first spotted by software developer, video game publisher and McDonald's mural sleuth Cabel Sasser. Messages left for Yong Kang Street and Pioneer Place management Friday and Monday were not immediately returned.

The original Yong Kang Street opened in 2014 near the guest elevators at the Paris Las Vegas hotel and casino, serving 20 different types of dim sum, Taiwanese noodles and soups and mochi ice cream. Initially expected to be counter-service, the restaurant actually debuted with a hybrid model that included roving dim sum carts. The chain, which has expanded with locations in and around New York City, was designed by seasoned food court developers HIG Management.

Decades ago, restaurants such as Fong Chong and House of Louie made Portland's Chinatown a low-key dim sum destination. These days, the best options, including Pure Spice, Wong's King, Ocean City and HK Cafe, are all clustered on or near Southeast 82nd Avenue. in the Jade District. More recently, Duck House brought good dumplings back to the west side with its Portland State University-area restaurant, while Departure offers a more modern take on dim sum from a rooftop location practically overlooking Pioneer Place Mall.

The downtown Portland mall's food court has been the subject of remodel discussions since at least 2011, closed earlier this year to become "The Vault," a "food collective" featuring "handpicked," "curated" and "local" vendors in the vein of Portland's modern food halls. Those plans appear to have evolved. A sign posted to a temporary wall surrounding the construction zone reveals that the revamped "food district" now goes by "Roots," and is shooting for a fall, 2017 opening.

When it opens, Yong Kang Street won't be the metro area's only new dim sum option. As my colleague Samantha Bakall reported, the new 99 Ranch grocery store in Beaverton has a "self-serve dim sum counter."

Pioneer Place Mall, 700 S.W. Fifth Ave., pioneerplace.com

-- Michael Russell
Chris Minnich, head of the national association of state school superintendents, is stepping down to take a new job as chief executive of Portland-based testing agency Northwest Evaluation Association in January.

He will replace Matt Chapman, who has headed the testing outfit for more than a decade, officials announced Monday.

Minnich served as Oregon Department of Education's director of test design and implementation from 2003 to 2005, as Oregon transitioned to widescale online testing from its previous era of paper-and-pencil exams. Earlier this month, Minnich praised Oregon's then-state school chief, Salam Noor, on the day that Gov. Kate Brown forced him to resign for what her aides said was Noor's failure to implement her "education vision."

Northwest Evaluation Association is not well-known in Portland, even though it develops and administers tests for 10 million students a year. For decades, it has specialized in tests designed to measure students' academic growth over time. Its best known suite of tests, known as MAP for their original name "measures of academic progress," are used in more than half of U.S. states.

The Council of Chief State School Officers, the Washington, D.C.-based group that Minnich has headed for five years, is launching a national search for his successor, it announced Monday.

Various state school chiefs plus education leaders from the left and the right praised Minnich's leadership Monday, as news broke of his planned departure.

Michael Petrilli, president of the right-leaning Fordham Institute, said in a statement, "The last several years have been a tumultuous time for education reform, but Chris has steered a steady ship, working to move key decisions back to the states, where they belong, while keeping his eye on improving outcomes for kids. He will be missed on the national education policy scene."

-- Betsy Hammond
Earlier this month, federal wildlife officials confirmed what wolf advocates had long suspected. OR-33, a 4-year-old wolf found dead northwest of Klamath Falls in April, was shot and illegally killed.

OR-33 was the eighth wolf to die since 2015 either by poaching or under suspicious circumstances, according to a group of conservation organizations.

In November 2015, Oregon removed the gray wolf from the state's endangered species list. But the canids remain on the federal endangered species list in areas west of U.S. 395, U.S. 95 and Oregon 78.

The U.S> Fish and Wildlife posted a $5,000 reward for information that would help track down OR-33's killer. On Tuesday, Defenders of Wildlife, Siskiyou Wildlands Center, Center for Biological Diversity, Oregon Wild and the Humane Society of the United States said they would contribute an additional $10,500 to the reward.

"Poaching is a huge and growing problem in Oregon," Quinn Read, Northwest representative for Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement. "We need everyone's help to catch this killer. The US Fish & Wildlife Service and conservation groups alike are working together to bring justice for OR-33, and send a message that this vile act won't be tolerated in our state."

OR-33 was a member of the state's Imnaha Pack in Wallowa County, but he left the county for other parts of the state around the same time Oregon removed the canids from the endangered species list.

He was wearing a tracking collar, but it stopped working in August 2016.

According to Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife investigations, OR-33 was connected to at least four attacks on livestock in 2016. Those incidents occurred in Klamath and Jackson county.

Oregon in 2017 killed four members of the Harl Butte pack in Wallowa County for killing livestock and subsequently approved killing four more members of the pack. Those animals have not yet been killed and the state's permit for killing those animals is valid through Oct. 31.



-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen
Not every police agency provides a log of its responses, and few do it with the finesse of the Forest Grove Police Department. Every week, we post the goings on as provided by this community 25 miles west of Portland, not because it's earth-shatteringly important, but because it provides a glimpse into the world of modern small-town policing.

During the past week, Forest Grove officers were engaged in more than 446 activities, both reported and self-initiated.

October 13

* Police received a report of a person screaming the words "pickles" and "sprinkles" nonsensically late in the evening. Officers were unable to locate anyone causing a disturbance.

* A caller reported that a woman was walking around an apartment complex yelling about killing the police. Officers contacted the woman who agreed to quiet down and move along.

* A post office employee called police after a woman wandered into the location stating she did not know who or where she was or what she was doing. Officers found the woman extremely intoxicated but there were no signs of criminal activity. She was warned about walking around town under the influence; her husband picked her up.

October 14

* Police were called after a game of tag between second graders escalated to a point of name-calling, sending one boy home in tears, prompting the boy's older sisters to confront one of the children. Officers determined that no crime had been committed.

* A woman called police concerned that Forest Grove police were training children to harm her. They are not.

* A caller reported a suspicious person in their garage. Police located a man with multiple injuries who was disoriented and extremely intoxicated. He was evaluated by medical services and released to a responsible party.

October 15

* Police responded to a senior living center where a man was trapped in his apartment after he had fallen and nearly severed his foot. Officers kicked down the door and rendered aid until medical services arrived.

* Officers checked on a man seen in distress wandering in a neighborhood. Police learned he was mentally impaired, had become lost and had begun to panic. The man's parents called police shortly after to report him missing. The parents and son were reunited.

* Beaverton Police asked FGPD to contact the family of an intoxicated juvenile they were holding. After contacting his family, officers learned the juvenile had lied about his identity and age and that he was out on felony probation. Beaverton police took it from there.

October 16

* A man called police after his wife took several of his belongings to the end of the road to be freely given away. The woman told officers she was upset with her husband and was not interested in any reconciliation resources. The two agreed to stay away from each other for the night.

* Marijuana plants were reported stolen from a residence.

* Police received multiple separate reports of batteries stolen from vehicles along Sunset Drive.

October 17

* A woman reported that she had been injured by an unnamed person. When officers said they would dispatch medical, the woman refused stating that she did not want EMS or any ordinary officer to respond, but rather, she needed a "knight in shining armor" who would listen and care for her.

* Police received a tip that a woman was waiting for a bus to Hillsboro in order to go and kill her boyfriend. Officers contacted the woman who confirmed that she was going to confront the now-ex boyfriend, but had no intention of killing him. She was, however, arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm when officers located a handgun on her person.

October 18

* A pizza delivery man reported a couple, who seemed agitated, screaming back and forth. Officers contacted the couple, who were fine but were just speaking loudly in German.

* Police received multiple calls regarding vehicles that were being repaired by a company that is now out of business.

* A night shift officer, while on patrol, spotted a man drive past him who had several arrest warrants. Officers were able to stop the subject and added driving with a suspended license to the list, when they took him to jail.

October 19

* An officer on break at Starbucks located a small child clutching a book looking for someone to read to her. The officer read the story and learned all about the intricacies of attending preschool. The officer promised he would pack a new book in his patrol bag for any future encounters.

* Police broke up a fight between two men at a local bar after a few games of pool got heated and turned physical.

* A woman sent a large sum of money to a man overseas who had professed his love and was now requesting thousands of dollars for various expenses. Officers believe this is part of a "sweetheart swindle," a type of scam in which fraudsters use fake identities and romance to woo victims into sending money. The FGPD recommends never sending money to someone you don't know personally.
A Bend house cleaner who says she was bitten by a cat in a home she was cleaning has filed a $257,000 lawsuit against the cat's owners, saying they knew the cat was aggressive but provided no warning.

Jenifer Holland in her lawsuit said she had arrived at the home and unlocked the door when the cat ran out. As Holland kneeled to coax the feline in, it lunged and bit her finger, according to the suit.

Two surgeries and $107,000 in medical bills later, Holland filed her lawsuit earlier this month in Deschutes County Circuit Court. The suit states she had to be hospitalized at St. Charles Medical Center and suffered a severe systemic infection from the Oct. 14, 2015, bite.

Such lawsuits -- filed by people seeking compensation for animal bites -- are common. But almost always, they involve dogs.

In 2015, a case of a woman injured by a cat bite made national news: She claimed to be wounded while socializing with a cat at a Denver cat cafe. That woman sought nearly $6,000, which included $305 in medical bills, but she later dropped her suit.

In the Bend case, Holland is suing Sarah Reynolds-Jackson and Joshua Chambers, saying they hired her to clean their house top to bottom. Property records list the modest, 1960s ranch-style home as 1,100 square feet.

Holland hadn't cleaned it before, and Reynolds-Jackson met her earlier for a walk-through to describe the cleaning she wanted, the suit states. Reynolds-Jackson, however, didn't warn Holland about the cat, the suit states.

The suit states that after the cat bit Holland, Reynolds-Jackson and Chambers admitted their cat "doesn't like people" and is "aggressive."

Neither Reynolds-Jackson nor Chambers could be reached for comment for this story.

Holland's Salem attorney, Michael G. Smith, declined to elaborate on details of the case.

Holland couldnt work for an unspecified time afterward, according to the lawsuit. She seeks $25,000 in lost wages.

She also seeks $125,000 for severe physical, mental, and emotional pain, anguish, and suffering.

-- Aimee Green
Noelle Crombie | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Inmates at Columbia River Correctional Institution say theyre eating off dirty trays and using grimy utensils since the minimum-security prison in Portland replaced its dishwashing machine with washing dishes by hand.

The prison is one of five statewide that relies on what corrections officials call a three-sink method for dish washing. The system involves dunking dirty trays, cups and utensils in soapy water, then clear hot water and then sanitizing solution.

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The Oregon Department of Corrections said Columbia River, which houses about 570 men, switched from machine washing to hand washing in 2015 because it requires less water and the machine was unreliable and expensive to maintain. State officials said a new machine can cost $100,000 or more.

The new approach has drawn the ire of inmates who say it isnt producing clean trays and utensils. They complain of eating on dinnerware slick with greasy residue. Dishes are cleaned by inmate work crews.

In the past six months, seven Columbia River inmates have lodged complaints about the issue, according to the Corrections Department.

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The cups come out greasy, the trays come out greasy and the spoons come out greasy, said Michael Page, 47, who is serving a sentence for drug and firearms offenses. Its disgusting.

Page, a vegetarian, told The Oregonian/OregonLive last week that he was served beans and discovered cereal from breakfast stuck to the edge of the bowl. He brings his own spoon and reuses a soda bottle for water to avoid using prison-issued dinnerware.

Its just nasty, he said.

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Jaylen Williamson, 22, who is serving time at Columbia River for a weapons conviction, said he was previously imprisoned at the Oregon State Correctional Institution, where he had no complaints about the sanitation of the trays and cups.

At Columbia River, however, the low-tech approach doesnt turn out clean dishes, he said.

When we fill our cups with water, you can see grease floating in the cup, he said.

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The Corrections Department on Monday said its prisons are visited annually by a licensed health inspector. Columbia River was last inspected in 2016 and identified no significant issues, said Betty Bernt, a department spokeswoman. Bernt added that the agency follows rules to ensure cleanliness and investigates allegations about violations.

She said prison staff keep water in the first sink hotter than recommended temperature to ensure sanitation and they use nearly double the bleach solution in the last sink as recommended by the annual health inspector.

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Glenda Hyde, a food preservation and food safety expert with the Oregon State University Extension Service, said shes surprised to hear such a large institution washes dishes by hand given the efficiency of modern dishwashing machines.

Hand washing dishes can produce clean plates and utensils if done properly, she said. If dishes emerge coated in oil, she said the culprit could be dirty water or a lack of dish soap.

There is an art to it, she said. You have to show discipline. You have to care. If you dont do it right, somebody can get sick.

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Eating off dirty dinnerware is bound to upset any diner no matter their circumstances, she said.

You can tell already that the morale is dismal, she said, referring to multiple inmate complaints about dirty dishes.

Inmates handling the dishes before theyre put away may have dirty hands or the towels theyre using may not be changed regularly -- both of which could lead to greasy trays.

Added Hyde: There are a lot of places it could go wrong.

-- Noelle Crombie

ncrombie@oregonian.com

503-276-7184; @noellecrombie
He, however, asserted the state govt should also respect its limits that it's not their job to run universities.
Beavertons World War I monument, The Survivor, is getting preservation help after it was recently named the only Michigan statue selected for a matching $2,000 grant from the World War I Centennial Commission.

We were one of the top 50 and the only one from Michigan, said Vietnam Navy veteran and Beaverton City Council member Ed Rachwitz, who spearheaded the endeavor. In addition to the grant, the 1925 statue at the entrance to Ross Lake Park is now officially designated a WW I Centennial Memorial and will receive a bronze medal to affix to the statue.

I think this is pretty impressive for a small town, Rachwitz said of the selection.

Rachwitz, who is thrilled with the grant, said, its a unique statue with a special design.

The cement statue was designed and hand carved by a German sculptor and artist, Helmuth Von Zengen. Von Zengen reportedly dated Alva McKimmy and the monument was a tribute to her family members.

Jasper and Caroline McKimmy of Beaverton had three sons  Walter, Raymond and Earl  fight in World War I. Earl died of diphtheria in 1918 while serving, Walter was injured in a 1922 accident and died in 1924, and Raymond died in 1967.

City officials applied for the matching grant to help with the $5,850 cost to preserve the memorial. Rachwitz, was joined by Gladwin County residents Scott Govitz, Bruce Guy and Bob Frei to help draft the application. Govitz helped with the drafting while history buffs Guy and Frei provided the background. Rachwitz said the submission included a wealth of history about the statue.

Weve had a good response from the community and surrounding communities, Rachwitz said of donations and support.

Guy, Govitz, Rachwitz and Govitz, along with Rich Roehrs and Mike Perry, have organized a committee to raise money to accomplish the restoration.

The statue was the first of its kind in Michigan and was presented in Beaverton on June 14, 1925. An estimated 3,000 people reportedly attended its unveiling in front of Brown Machine. It was moved to Ross Lake in 1986.

World War I raged in Europe from 1914 to 1918. About 135,000 Michigan residents fought in the war and about 5,000 were killed.

To make a donation to restore the World War I statue or learn more about it, contact Rachwitz at appleed@hotmail.com and put "WW I memorial" in the subject line.
As residents visit the Midland County Clerk's offices, either at the Midland County Services Building or the Midland County Courthouse, a new face will greet them, Chief Deputy Clerk John Keefer.

Keefer will be taking over for Laney Golden, who, after 24 years, announced her retirement, effective later this week.

With an election rapidly approaching, on Nov. 7, Midland County Clerk Ann Manary needed to fill Golden's spot quickly. She thinks she found the perfect person in Keefer. The Grand Haven resident comes with vast experience in elections. Before coming to Midland, he held the position of technical services/testing manager for ElectionSource, the vendor that supplies the county's new election tabulators.

"John has a very good background with the equipment and the company we use," Manary said. "It's a huge benefit for Midland County to have someone with that much knowledge."

Keefer said he is looking forward to working under Manary.

"During my career with ElectionSource I served 600 to 700 clerks statewide," he said. "I kept a short list of those that, if I decided to leave ElectionSource, I would be happy to work for. That list only included two and Ann's name was at the top."

Keefer is not a stranger to the Midland area. For 15 years, he lived in Flushing and worked for his father-in-law at his graphics company.

"We did a lot of work (in Midland) for Circle K on their fire trucks and Midland Police Department autos," Keefer said. "I grew up in Oklahoma and the community here is what I am used to. "

Keefer moved to ElectionSource in 2011 as technical services/testing manager. He was responsible for the installation, operation, repair, and maintenance of Dominion's Democracy Suite products, the manufacturer of Midland County's new voting tabulators. Keefer, who holds a bachelor's degree in visual communication, also aided Michigan municipalities in preparing for elections.

Keefer comes from a family with a history of military service, and he served in the U.S. Army infantry.

"I signed up during Desert Shield. Desert Storm and Desert Shield had ended before I was deployed. I actually spent my time at Fort Hood and never left U.S. soil. I was a little sad," he said.

His lineage includes a relative, Rudy Hernandez, who was awarded a U.S. Medal of Honor for bravery in the Korean War.

Following the election, Keefer will continue the transition into learning the other duties of a chief deputy county clerk.
Elections in Midland County are undergoing a transition. Not only will voters see new voting equipment in the upcoming Nov. 7 election, but they will also have a new chief deputy county clerk, John Keefer, handling their elections.

Keefer comes to Midland from Grand Haven where he held the position of technical services/testing manager for ElectionSource, the company that supplies the county's new election tabulators.

"The biggest reason we had to change (equipment) was based on the software. The old machine software was based on Windows XP, which Microsoft is no longer supporting. Those machines are no longer deemed secure without that support," Keefer said.

So, how secure are the new paper-based tabulators?

"All the programming computers, and even ours, are isolated from the internet, from the outside world and that is by design," Keefer said. "There are three tabulators available for purchase in the state of Michigan. I believe that ours are the most secure."

Keefer pointed to the Michigan election process that places power in the hands of cities and townships, not the county or any one individual or entity.

"In order to do any type of tomfoolery one would have to have a lot of hands in that pie. To keep that many people quiet is just not going to happen," Keefer said.

The state also has a good central registry, which it is constantly reviewing and improving.

The equipment itself contains a couple of security measures that Keefer stated are essential.

"We are a paper-based state. No matter what, regardless of what is stated, said or believed, you can always go back and review that paper ballot," he said. "Paper-based is something I don't think we'll ever move away from."

Other states have gone paperless with a touch screen with varying results.

"In my career with ElectionSource, we actually took care of seven pieces of equipment in five states. A lot of those people that used (touch screen) are moving back to paper. It makes it easier to prove what happened," Keefer said.

The tabulators also do not have communication devices attached.

"It does have a cellular modem, but that cellular modem stays in a drawer in another room or in a drawer on the tabulator," Keefer said. "After an election we roll the physical tape and then connect it to a phone here (the Midland County Services Building)."

On election nights, the public should receive quicker results due to the new tabulators. Previously, township clerks were required to actually bring their results to the Midland County Services Building.

Following the 2000 Florida voting controversy, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) to aid states with the purchase of new voting equipment.

"Michigan was one of the few states that didn't go right out and blow all of its HAVA funds in the first round. We were actually very responsible in that we kept $30 million of that HAVA funding. There were some more appropriations to get us up to the point so that the state could fund all of the core level technologies needed to run an election," Keefer said.

The new American-made tabulators include a five-year maintenance agreement. The county has also acquired voter-assisted terminals for handicapped individuals.

Keefer has already put his past experience at ElectionSource to good use by testing the new tabulators.

"I did a dry run with all of the programming cards and test ballots. Before every election, test ballots are run that are cut from the same stock, so you head off a lot of the errors there. Everything checked out," Keefer said.

But, the real test for Keefer comes on Nov. 7 when he faces a miniscule ballot of public school funding elections in Meridian Public Schools, Merrill Community School District, and Hemlock Public School District.

"We'll have 13 machines running," he said.

To view a sample ballot for your precinct, visit: http://bit.ly/2ekHxP4
To the editor:

There are a thousand ways to promote peace today, whether it be in the smallest act of compassion or bigger acts of generosity. St. John's Episcopal Church has chosen to take a giant step for peace by recently contributing half the cost of one civilian peace staff's salary hired by the international NGO, the Nonviolent Peaceforce.

NP works through those staff to promote and implement unarmed civilian protection (UCP) as a tool for reducing violence and protecting civilians in situations of violent conflict. That means they do not use weapons. They use brains, strategies, peer pressure, compromise. Other methods include rumor control, protective accompaniment and protective presence. Lives are saved, violence is avoided by NP's civilian peace staff. For more information, www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org

Thank you St. John's Episcopal Church for your commitment to promoting peace in this world and for your involvement with the Nonviolent Peaceforce.

ELAINE WARAKOMSKI

Midland Chapter

Nonviolent Peaceforce
To the editor:

Thank you Midland area readers for your generous book donations and many purchases at the AAUW Fall Used Book Sale. Proceeds from the sale fund scholarships for local women and helps fund post-graduate scholarships through our association. In addition, the branch sends a local college woman to Washington for the national leadership conference for college women; donates to the Exchange Club for local youth projects; and funds special educational projects in our community.

Special thanks to Kroger, Family Fare, Sanford food Center, Midland Mall and Midland Public Elementary Schools for allowing us to place donations barrels to collect used books. Many thanks to Target and Midland Mall for supporting our project in many different ways. A heartfelt thanks to the Midland Exchange Club for moving the heavy boxes of sorted books from the collecting and sorting room to the sales area in the center of the mall. Thank you to our Branch members, spouses and friends for the many hours spent collecting, processing and selling thousands of books.

The next sale is April 27, 28, 29, 2018. Book collection will start the beginning of April 2018. The generous support of the Midland area community helped make the American Association of University Women Used Book Sale an outstanding success.

TRUDY DUTOT

Used Book Sale Coordinator

AAUW Midland Branch
To the editor:

Apparently U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar is just a shill for whomever in the Republican party you judge as having the power to help him keep his job. When asked for his position on important issues, he just gives evasive answers or talking points from his handlers.

First he voted for that disaster of a health bill that would have taken health care away from 22 million people and increased by five times or more the premiums for older individuals and those with preexisting conditions.

Then he voted against requiring President Donald Trump to make his tax returns public. John is not in favor of government transparency.

More recently he expressed support for reciprocity in gun laws that would allow anyone coming from a state with non-restrictive gun laws into a state with restrictive gun laws to not have to abide by the laws of the restrictive state he entered.

If I drive to another state and an auto accident occurs, the auto insurance laws of the state in which the accident occurs take precedence. That should be the way state guns laws are enforced.

In addition, a bill was introduced, allowing almost anyone to obtain a silencer for a weapon so that the sound of the weapon firing would not be audible, supposedly to save the hearing of hunters. How many more people would have died in Las Vegas if the shooter had used silencers? Fortunately that bill was put on indefinite hold by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan after the shootings. But I imagine Moolenaar would have voted for it, regardless of Las Vegas, because the NRA is in his pocket.

The majority in this country want expanded background checks on all gun purchases to identify those with criminal or mental health records that should be excluded from gun ownership. The safety of me and my family is best provided for by those in law enforcement who have the training to deal with all stressful and threatening situations, not by some vigilante who has no training and will likely cause collateral damage.

Moolenaar says he is for protecting the Great Lakes and Michigan's natural resources, but where does he stand on making sure that the underwater pipeline at Mackinac is safe when reports are that there are unsafe sections? Who punishes Enbridge for its pipe spill in Western Michigan? Who is trying to control agricultural runoff of fertilizers and animal waste that pollute the groundwater and eventually the Great Lakes? Who is fixing the Flint water situation? Who is trying to prevent the Nestle Co. from taking huge amounts of spring water in Michigan, interfering with the wells and groundwater supply nearby, water which Nestle is buying dirt cheap, bottling, and selling at huge profits to the people of Flint who are still without clean, safe drinking water thanks to Gov. Rick Snyder's and Bill Schuette's mismanagement?

Who is trying to fix these things? Not John Moolenaar.

The federal and state EPA need to be expanded to handle these increasing disasters. But Moolenaar only speaks of "EPA overreach."

What have Republicans become? Only a few Republican senators had the decency to vote against the shabby Affordable Care Act repeal and replacement attempts that were worse than the House bill that Moolenaar voted for.

Just watch. Any tax plan that Trump and the Republican House brings up, no matter that it is only a tax reduction for the very wealthy, no matter that it makes huge increases in the national debt, John will be right there voting for it, because the bottom line is that John does not care about the welfare of you and I as long as he pleases Trump, Betsy DeVos, Ryan, and all the other Republican power brokers. So far Moolenaar has been all in for Trump.

Trump acts like he is above the law, and Trump has become the great divider of our nation. John Moolenaar, do you support Donald Trump? Tell the Midland Daily News so that we all know where you stand.

What programs specifically do you support that would help all the people of the 4th District, the people of Michigan, and the people of this country? Identify them and defend them in the Midland Daily News.

The Republican I respect is John McCain, a real hero of this country, who speaks his mind and considers the welfare of all Americans and will not be pressured or bullied to change his convictions.

John Moolenaar, you are not John McCain, you are a coward who has sold out to the highest bidder.

RON PARMELE

Midland
NORMAL  The number of McLean County families needing assistance with groceries from time to time remains consistent, which is why Home Sweet Home Ministries and Midwest Food Bank have set the same goals for their annual Thanksgiving food drive as they did in 2016.

The agencies are asking the community to donate 2,000 turkeys and 2,000 meal bags of side dishes during the next 3  half weeks to provide Thanksgiving meals for 10,000 people in need. The goals were announced Tuesday during the 2017 Give Thanks campaign kickoff at Midwest Food Bank, 2301 Warehouse Road, Normal.

"We see the need in the community being pretty consistent year in and year out," said Home Sweet Home Chief Operating Officer Matt Burgess.

"The biggest increase is in people working two jobs who still can't make ends meet," added Midwest Food Bank Director of Operations Mike Hoffman. "The kids need new sneakers, but you still need to buy groceries. Those are the people visiting the food pantries today."

"We're trying to fill a gap," Burgess said.

"But we can't do it without the support and involvement of everyone in the community," said Home Sweet Home CEO Mary Ann Pullin. "Home Sweet Home and Midwest Food Bank take a lead role in this (Give Thanks campaign) but it's a community-wide event."

People who wish to help can buy $15 turkey cards and $10 prepackaged meal bags at Hy-Vee and Schnucks locations in Bloomington-Normal.

Donations of turkeys and meal bags of side dishes also are being accepted at Midwest Food Bank and Home Sweet Home, 303 E. Oakland Ave., Bloomington. In addition, Home Sweet Home's Mission Mart is selling Thanksgiving meal cards; checks can be written to Midwest Food Bank with "Give Thanks" written on the memo line; and donations are being accepted at www.hshministries.org/donate and at www.midwestfoodbank.org, click on "Donate" and "Bloomington."

Food will be distributed to families in need from noon to 4 p.m. Nov. 18 and 2 to 6 p.m. Nov. 20 at the food bank's new Normal location. The larger location will allow cars to line up in the parking lot and drive into the food bank warehouse, where food will be distributed, Hoffman said.

Individuals are asked to bring a photo ID, but don't need to pre-register.

Pullin and Burgess noted that Home Sweet Home was founded on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 25, 1917.

"We are thankful for 100 years of support from the community," Burgess said.

Hoffman said "We need to look at what we have and be thankful and realize that it doesn't take a lot to help someone else. For $25, you can help to feed a family on Thanksgiving."
BLOOMINGTON  The emotional harm suffered by a young child who was sexually assaulted by her baby sitter may last for years, a therapist testified Monday at the sentencing hearing for the girl's assailant.

Courtney Rockwell, 27, of Gibson City, who pleaded guilty in August in McLean County to predatory criminal sexual assault of a minor child in late 2016, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Therapist Jennifer Bauer with the Youth Services Bureau said the girl told her "I have scary dreams" and showed signs of fear and anxiety during counseling sessions.

The post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms exhibited by the child could last for years, said Bauer.

"It's a long road, and it's difficult," Bauer told Judge Robert Freitag.

A victim impact statement written by the child's grandmother and read by Assistant State's Attorney Jacob Harlow outlined the daily struggles of caring for a child who "can no longer sleep peacefully at night," struggles to make friends at school, and has spells of anxiety and anger.

After the hearing, Harlow said the counselor's testimony "was eye opening for how PTSD from sex abuse can manifest itself in such a young child."

Harlow asked for 15 years for the defendant, who was eligible for up to 60 years in prison.

"Even during her waking hours she can't get this defendant out of her head," Harlow told the judge.

Public defender Jeff Brown acknowledged the extremely serious nature of the offense but asked the judge also to consider ongoing mental health and substance abuse issues experienced by Rockwell.

"When Courtney is on cocaine, he's probably not the person you want in society," said Brown, adding that his client plans to work on becoming a better person while he is incarcerated.

The violation of a position of trust while caring for the most vulnerable and the need to deter others from such conduct were cited by Freitag as the most aggravating factors in his sentencing decision.

Rockwell must serve 85 percent of the sentence. He was given credit for 151 days served in jail.
BLOOMINGTON  Mayor Tari Renner has been chastised for a second time in less than three years by his peers on the City Council, this time informally, for actions that "bring disgrace to our governing body."

A letter  signed by Aldermen Jamie Mathy, Ward 1; David Sage, Ward 2; Mboka Mwilambwe, Ward 3; Joni Painter, Ward 5; Alderman Karen Schmidt, Ward 6; and Diana Hauman, Ward 8  was presented to Renner during aldermanic comments at the end of Monday's meeting. Attached was a list of what they saw as the official and unofficial roles and responsibilities of both the mayor and aldermen.

"This letter serves as a statement of our collective disappointment in some of your actions," the aldermen wrote. "As elected officials, we are called upon to represent the citizens with respect and civility. Whether you did so as an individual or as the mayor, your recent interactions do not demonstrate respect or integrity."

The letter later said, "Your treatment of individuals with whom you disagree violates the shared values of the City Council."

In a related matter, the council voted unanimously to approve new procedures for paying or reimbursing elected officials' expenses. The ordinance prohibits elected officials from using city credit cards, also called procurement cards or p-cards, which had been at the heart of some of the controversy involving Renner.

It would have been nice to have gotten it in advance, Renner said after the meeting about receiving the letter. It would have been nice not to have been blindsided. But Im sure there are things in there that we can agree on and there are things that we dont agree on.

I dont have time to beat dead horses, added Renner. I have to move forward. We have streets and sewers, economic development, Eastland Mall. Weve got real things to worry about; not the fact that I would have sent an email to somebody who has been suing us for five years and calling him crazy.

Meeks told The Pantagraph late Monday he has never sued the city.

Ward 7 Alderman Scott Black did not sign the letter. We have real problems in the city of Bloomington, and a letter isnt going to change the past, he said.

The mayor had been the only elected official carrying a p-card, and he drew criticism last week after it came to light that he used his p-card to pay for a meal with Black while Renner was on a leave of absence as mayor. The mayor's office also remains under a state police investigation launched after the use of a p-card by a city employee this summer to pay for a $1,836 plane ticket for Renner's partner as part of a sister-city delegation to Japan.

While Renner's partner reimbursed the city shortly after the ticket was bought, critics questioned whether the charge was appropriate. One of Renner's frequent critics, resident Bruce Meeks, emailed city officials and McLean County State's Attorney Jason Chambers on July 31 to ask for a state police investigation.

In reply, Renner called Meeks "crazy" and "pathetic" in an Aug. 13 email. On Aug. 15, Renner also posted on WGLT's Facebook page a picture of a squirrel with the word nuts in response to comments critical of the Japan trip.

In the letter, the aldermen said Renner's lack of an apology or acknowledgement of his actions was unprofessional and hindered public dialogue.

All nine aldermen were given the opportunity to sign the letter, which was not read aloud but was shared with the media. Saying that they believed the letter speaks for itself, the six aldermen agreed before the meeting not to discuss it further.

In February 2015, the council unanimously approved a resolution rebuking the mayor after a late-night online rant in which Renner blasted a blogger who also frequently challenges him.

Monday was Renner's third council meeting since returning Oct. 1 from a five-week leave of absence from his elected duties that he requested Aug. 28 because of unspecified medical-related reasons.

Renner presided at the Oct. 9 council meeting, and aldermen said in their letter they expected him to acknowledge his errant behavior, apologize and express a "re-commitment to civil interactions with residents, employees and council."

"You chose instead to berate others for acrimonious behavior instead of calling for a renewed commitment to setting a standard of mutual respect that enhances all that is good in Bloomington, a standard that you could set by example but have chosen not to follow."
BLOOMINGTON  The Bloomington City Council has tabled a vote on an east-side intersection upgrade.

The council was considering approving spending $900,000 for its share of the project with McLean County to expand the intersection of Towanda Barnes and Ireland Grove roads.

At their meeting Monday night, Aldermen Karen Schmidt of Ward 6 and Scott Black of Ward 7 said they received a lot of negative feedback from constituents about the proposed project. Schmidt suggested delaying the vote to refer the matter to the city's recently-created transportation commission.

Black said the project does not fit into the city's comprehensive plan that places a priority on redeveloping and filling in vacant areas within the city's core area rather than suburban sprawl.

"I've heard just a lot of feedback from people who are not thrilled about us spending money on this," said Black. "People will list off a number of projects that from their perspective are of a higher priority than to alleviate traffic concerns during peak hours."

The vote to table the matter was unanimous; Ward 4 Alderman Amelia Buragas recused herself from the vote.

Aldermen Diana Hauman and Kim Bray, whose east-side wards of 8 and 9, respectively, are in or near the project site, have heard from constituents who want the intersection upgrade to proceed.

"I know the (comprehensive) plan said infill, but the council before us approved the Grove (Subdivision) based on a previous comp plan," said Hauman. "These are residents of Bloomington too ... so I am going to take care of them."

Bray said the intersection project represents residents' priority on infrastructure spending.

"We need to take a holistic approach, in my view, about a level of service in infrastructure that starts with public safety and good traffic flow and servicing areas where we have schools and keeping people safe," said Bray.

In other action, the council:

 Voted unanimously to approve new procedures for paying or reimbursing elected officials' expenses. The ordinance prohibits elected officials from using city credit cards, also called procurement cards or p-cards.

Mayor Tari Renner had been the only elected official carrying a p-card, and he drew criticism last week after it came to light that he used his p-card to pay for a meal with Black while Renner was on a leave of absence from his mayoral duties from Aug. 28 to Oct. 1. Renner wrote a $30 check to reimburse the city for the charge.

"It was actually (Bloomington Finance Director) Patti-Lynn Silva who said, "Why don't you, for appearance's sake and so there's not a bad story ... go ahead and reimburse the city?" Renner said prior to the council's vote.

Renner reiterated that he did not think it was an issue because he was "never not mayor" and took phone calls about city matters while he was on the leave of absence that he requested for unspecified medical-related reasons.
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SPRINGFIELD (AP)  The Illinois Capitol has been evacuated following a small furnace fire shortly before lawmakers were expected to gather for a veto session.

Springfield Fire Chief Robert "Barry" Helmerichs says the first floor fire was put out Tuesday with an extinguisher and the building was evacuated as a precaution. He says people are slowly being let back into the building. The room where the fire started will be ventilated.
As a Bloomington taxpayer I see no problem with the reported use of a city of Bloomington p-card to purchase side-by-side seats for Mayor Renner and his friend for the trip to Japan to attend the Sister Cities conference, especially since the price for the friends seat was reimbursed to the city. As far as Im concerned it made the entire purchase procedure a lot more efficient in dealing with the airline.

Now the specter raises its ugly head over the use of the p-card to pay for a $28 business related meal between Mayor Renner and Alderman Scott Black. Neither of the referenced transactions have been deemed to be in violation of established city policies or regulations.

In my view there is never a time when an elected official is off-duty, as opposed to an appointed hourly or salaried employee. It seems to me that there are certain rock throwers amongst us who dont seem to have enough to do so they are out hunting for stuff to complain about that they dont seem to know much about. Me thinks they make much ado about nothing.

On the other hand, it may now be appropriate to refine and clarify city policies on use of p-cards and what does and/or does not qualify as a valid city business-related expense. While this distraction must now be dealt with, the mayor and City Council have much bigger fish to fry.

Randall E. Carney, Bloomington
100 years ago

Oct. 24, 1917: F. W. Woolworth & Co., a five-and-dime store chain, has leased the first floor and basement of the Durley Building at Jefferson and Main streets. The building is owned by Mrs. J. T. Lillard, who had it built after the 1900 fire destroyed the original structure.

75 years ago

Oct. 24, 1942: Bloomingtons Community Chest (now United Way) campaign totaled $77,127. That was $10,000 over the goal. This officially ends the campaign. A victory dinner was held at the YMCA, with 250 people in attendance.

50 years ago

Oct. 24, 1967: United Nations Day included ceremonies at City Hall and at the grave of former U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. Included in this years observation were several citizens of Bloomingtons sister city of Asahikawa, Japan, including its mayor and his wife.

25 years ago

Oct. 24, 1992: Todays obituaries include Red Barber, one time sportscaster with the New York Yankees and later a commercial endorser on TV. Also leaving us was Cleavon Little, who played the sheriff in the irreverent western, "Blazing Saddles." He was a cancer victim.
At the debut of Apple's massive new Chicago store, CEO Tim Cook and head of retail Angela Ahrendts sat down with BuzzFeed News to talk about the future of Apple retail, and the upcoming launch of the iPhone X, or what the company describes as "the future of the smartphone." They're also a brief segment where the architectural company behind the new Chicago store takes a moment to point out some of the materials used in the make up of the new Store.









About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or negative behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus.
Patently Apple posted a report yesterday titled "A new Consumer Intelligence Research Partners Report analyzes the First 7 Days of iPhone Sales in Vain." The CIRP report actually tried to analyze sales of the new iPhone 8 based on only 7 days worth of data. Yet Apple's 2017 iPhone business model has no precedent, as their high-end model won't go on sale until November third. Apple fans have generally gone for the highend models, so the data trend for this year can't be judged by previous years. Pretty simple to follow unless your Forbes and want a negative headline to gain clicks. According to the Forbes writer, Apple's iPhone 8 gamble is a failure.

As noted in yesterday's report, the new iPhone business model won't be able to be judged until the end of Q1 2018 or a full two quarter of data is out so we can see how Apple's total iPhone sales measured up to the first two quarters of any given year.

Apple fans that aren't choosing the iPhone 8 are either waiting for the iPhone X in November or are deciding to go with an iPhone 6S or iPhone 7 to save a little money. So it's simply the mix that is changing because of more choices.

While the negativity about the iPhone 8 abounds, new data out today from Taiwan would beg to differ with the Forbes crowd. According to the supply chain report, "the new Apple smartphones still recorded the best sales in Taiwan in September, making Apple the top smartphone brand with a 26.1% share in the local market in terms of sales volume, according to data compiled by local retail channels.

More specifically, the top-10 best-selling models in September were: iPhone 8 Plus 64GB, iPhone 8 Plus 256GB, Galaxy Note 8, iPhone 8 64GB, Oppo R11, Galaxy J7 Prime, Galaxy J7 Pro, ZenFone Live, iPhone 7 Plus 128GB and Oppo A77.

Samsung Electronics ranked second with a 21.1% share in sales volume, followed by Asustek Computer with 12.6%, Oppo 8.2%, Sony Mobile Communications 7.5% and HTC 7.2%.

Apple also was first place in terms of sales value in September, accounting for 52.7%, a sharp increase from 36.4% of a month earlier.

Samsung captured second in terms of sales value with a 21.7% share, up from 18.2% in the previous month. Sony Mobile followed with a 6.1% share, Oppo 5.5%, Asustek 5.2% and HTC 4%.





About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or negative behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus.
The Dalai Lama gave a talk today in India with students from the University of California on a number of topics including the relationship between secular and religious powers. He began by clarifying that secular denotes not antagonism toward religion but toward certain religious institutions. In some cases, he says, institutions become rotten, as in the French Revolution.

Real religion means love, he said, and nobody is against love.

But, when elites begin to benefit from institutions, and when people really suffer due to exploitation, then people should develop courage in order to topple that institution. They also need courage against religious institution.

What do you think? He asks the students; then referring to Haryana, where riots recently broke out after a spiritual guru was sentenced to 10 years in jail for rape. They use the name Dharma [for] exploitation. They themselves do not properly practice this dharma. Including some Tibetan Lama. Here he is referring to Sogyal Lakhar (a.k.a. Sogyal Rinpoche) and Rigpa.

Rigpa. The leader. I know him, there was an open letter full of criticism about that person. So therefore, quite often the religious institution is quite often, you see, spoiled, not caring [about] the real message of religion, but rather use the name of religion. Religion is used [as an] instrument for exploitation. So the French Revolution and Russian Bolshevik Revolution, some tendency against religion because of that. So when I say secular some of my friends have some little reservation. But in this country [India], secular means respect all religion. Also one unique thing is according [to the] Indian concept of secularism: secular respects non-believer.

It seems that he is explicitly connecting Sogyal to the jailed Indian guru rapist, and also clearly suggesting the use of secular power to literally topple the rotten religious institution (Rigpa).

The Central Tibetan Administration wrote of the discussion with the students as follows:

The interaction follows suit after His Holiness, not so long ago, visit to San Diego. During his visit, His Holiness addressed a gathering of about 25,000 people at the RIMAC field of UC San Diego on 16 June, 2017. In his public address, he spoke about diverse topics particularly dwelling on the importance of peace and compassion. He noted that modern education is falling short on its responsibility to teach compassion and urged educational institutions like UC San Diego to teach emotional intelligence as they would science or literature. His Holiness also delivered the key-note address at the commencement ceremony of UC San Diego. The address was entitled, The Value of Education, Ethics and Compassion for the Well-Being of Self and Others.

While some have downplayed the moral authority of the Dalai Lama in Tibetan Buddhism  saying he is not like the Pope of Catholicism  the fact is that while he doesnt have de juris power over non-Geluks (or even over Geluks, the Ganden Tripa is the nominal head of that school of Buddhism), he does have de facto moral authority around the world for Tibetan Buddhists and those interested in Buddhism.

In any case, a continued strong condemnation by the Dalai Lama signals a move away from what Mary Finnigan wrote about years ago as the taboo against criticising lamas. This shift began in August when the Dalai Lama called Sogyal disgraced and urged students to publicize any and all ethical misconduct by teachers. Similar advice has since come from Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Dr. Miles Neale, Ven. Thubten Chodron, and others (see posts here and here at the Buddhism controversy blog).

Support independent coverage of Buddhism by joining a community of fellow learners/practitioners at Patreon.

Like American Buddhist Perspectives on facebook.
U.K. Foreign Minister Sees 'No Doubt' Iran Nuclear Deal Will Survive Despite Trump Move

10/24/17

Source: RFE/RL

British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson says there is "absolutely no doubt" the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers will survive despite the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump not to recertify the deal.

In uncertain times such as these, diplomacy is more important than ever. Read my #CHLondon speech on global security https://t.co/y2kl1SNxoS pic.twitter.com/RukXB7jUQr  Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) October 23, 2017

Johnson, in a London speech on foreign affairs on October 23, said after meeting with the "most influential figures" in the U.S. Congress -- "none of them fans of the Iranian regime" -- he was reassured Trump's action would not kill the landmark accord.



"I have absolutely no doubt that with determination and courage the [deal] can be preserved," Johnson said.



Under terms of the landmark accord, Tehran agreed to curtail its nuclear activities in exchange for relief from international sanctions.



Many U.S. and other officials see it as a way to slow Iran's potential path toward creating a nuclear weapon. Tehran says its nuclear program has purely peaceful aims.



Trump on October 13 stopped short of renouncing the accord but he refused to certify Iran's compliance, accusing Tehran of violating the "spirit" of the agreement, in part for its continued testing of ballistic missiles and its support for extremists in the Middle East.



Trump said he would ask lawmakers to strengthen a U.S. law to put additional pressure on Tehran, leaving the Republican-controlled Congress has 60 days to consider any amendments to agreement.



In his October 23 speech, the British foreign minister said the deal had been vital because Iran had been "only months away" from producing a nuclear weapon.



He did not criticize the U.S. president directly, saying Trump had "not junked" the accord and in fact had "continued to waive nuclear-related sanctions against Iran."



Johnson acknowledged Tehran's "disruptive behavior" in the region, but added "that does not mean for one minute that we should write Iran off."



"On the contrary, we should continue to work to demonstrate to the [Iranian] population that they will be better off under this deal."



In reaction to Trump's move, U.S. allies Britain, France, and Germany reinforced their stance in favor of maintaining the hard-won deal, which they said was "in our shared national security interest."



European Union foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini called the nuclear deal a "robust agreement" that is working and cannot be terminated by any one leader.



Russia and China are also signatories to the accord.



With reporting by AP, Reuters, BuzzFeed, and The Independent

Copyright (c) 2017 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org
Ghanas financial market has low local participation compared to its peers in some African countries, the maiden Africa Financial Markets Index launched in Washington D.C has revealed.



The finding was after a research by independent think tank OMFIF and Barclays Africa Group.



What is Africa Financial Markets Index?



The index tracked performances of financial markets in 17 African countries on six main pillars; Market depth, Access to foreign exchange, Market transparency and regulation, Capacity of local investors, Macroeconomic opportunity and Enforceability of international financial agreements.



The markets surveyed are; Botswana, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.



The Index tracked progress over a period, by supplying a toolkit for countries wishing to build financial infrastructure. South Africa topped the 2017 list, despite its recent poor Macroeconomic performance to the two institutions that put the report together.



According to Barclays, South Africa came on top based on the strength of its financial markets as well as its relative openness and transparency for transactions.



Mauritius and Botswana followed because of its strength in tax and regulation and access to foreign exchange. Kenya and Ghana provide signs of progress.



Ivory Coast, with a low overall score, is home to a growing regional bourse, pointing to future improvement. Ethiopia showed the highest GDP growth prospects of the 17 countries  even though it comes bottom of the list in terms of financial market prowess.



The index is a comparison of a countrys financial market against the selected sample, a country can reach the maximum score of 100, in such scenario the country must achieve the maximum score of 100 in all the six pillars.



The index showed that Ghana performed poorly when it came to the capacity of local investors or level of interest or holding that they in securities, stocks, and bonds on the capital markets.



On this pillar, Ghana scored 12 out of 100, the lowest mark recorded in all the six pillars the country was reviewed.



It was also ranked 15 out of the 17 countries that were reviewed in the Index that most local investors have not got the right level of savings or call it disposable incomes to hold most of these assets on the local market.



Implications



This meant that most assets on Ghanas markets were held by foreigners opening the countrys financial markets to some shocks. In essence, capital flight any time any of investors decide to repatriate all their investments at a go could bring serious pressure on the cedi. It could also lead to some depreciation of the local currency.



Ghanas performance in other areas



Despite the challenging result on local investor participation, the country made some strong gains in regulation, transparency, and tax, as it was ranked 8 out of the 17 markets assessed.



Ghana was also ranked 7 out of 15 countries that were reviewed on this pillar of legality and enforceability of standard financial markets master agreement, beating other top countries like Namibia Nigeria, Egypt, and Morocco.



In all the country was praised for having a strong potential for growth and possible market leader in the region. South Africa came up top as the best market in the region for having a highly developed market.



Response from government and Barclays



Speaking at the launch of the Index in Washington D.C, Finance Minister Ken Ofori- Atta said government would look at how to use some of the pension funds to stimulate local participation in the capital markets.



He added that government is committed to developing the capital market and encourage local investor interest.



Speaking in an interview with Joybusiness, Managing Director of Barclays Africa, George Asante said they want the report to be seen as the reference point for the financial markets in Africa.



On Ghana, he said the country had made a lot of progress in terms of market development and openness, however, there are still some areas that need to be worked on to position Ghana as the best market in the region.



Barclays Africa Chief Executive, Maria Ramos said, the Index provides countries with valuable insights and tools to improve the state of their financial markets.



She believes this they can do "by broadening and deepening their understanding of the requirements of local and international investors, Africas leaders can develop robust markets  a prime condition for sustainable, inclusive growth."

Source: Joy Business









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
A newly appointed World Health Organization (WHO) Representative for the fight against polio in Africa, Dr. Jacob Simon Barnor has told the Ghana AIDS Commission to stop sabotaging COA FS and rather support it to gain international recognition as a potential cure for HIV and AIDS.



He was speaking to KofiTV at a farewell party organized for him by Noguchi Memorial Centre for Medical Research as he leaves the centre to take up the new role with WHO as Lead for Polio control in Africa.



Dr. Barnor was the same Scientist who conducted the first in vitro (test tube) test on COA FS at Noguchi and found that COA FS was actually efficacious against HIV in a test tube.



He then went public and endorsed COA FS as a potential cure for HIV and indeed other viral diseases, adding that with proper in vivo (clinical) test, COA FS could be the global drug of choice for the fight against HIV and AIDS.



Following his findings and subsequent public endorsement of COA FS, the Ghana AIDS Commission and its collaborators have rather been up in arms against the drug, claiming it is not even an immune booster, contrary to what the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) said about the drug.



The FDA confirmed, in its approval letter for COA FS, that the drug is an immune support drug, and yet Ghana AIDS Commission, without conducting any test, made claims to the contrary, but FDA debunked their claims immediately and re-confirmed that COA FS is an immune booster.



The drug also went through toxicology (safety) test at the Centre for Scientific Research into Plant Medicine at Mampong, and further in vitro and clinical tests at the University of Kwazulu Natal in South Africa, and was proven safe for human consumption and efficacious against HIV in humans respectively.



The WHO Scientist confirmed his findings again, saying that COA FS does not only destroy the virus in the blood stream, but also smokes the hidden viruses from the body tissues into the blood stream and destroys them.



"The only way to fight HIV and other viruses effectively is to find a drug that is able to smoke them out of the tissues into the blood stream and flush them out, and that is exactly what COA FS does," he said.



Despite all these findings by respected professionals in high profile research institutions, Ghana AIDS Commission and its collaborators are out there running the drug down in favor of antiretroviral drugs from abroad.



Dr. Barnor is therefore urging the Commission and its collaborators in the fight against HIV to "quit the pull-him-down posture against COA FS and rather put your weight behind it and push it as a potential cure for HIV globally."



He said the only way for international health organizations like the WHO to show interest in a drug is for the country of origin of the drug to show commitment to backing it, and in this case, the Ghana AIDS Commission and the Ghana Health Service have a key role to play.



"Let's quit this mentality that a private local scientist will make money from the drug so we won't back it - we are rather harming ourselves because the drugs we administer to HIV patients today were backed by the governments and institutions of their home countries," he said.



He also noted that today loads of herbal medicine from China are flooding the Ghanaian market all because the Chinese government and institutions backed those drugs so it is important for Ghana government and its agencies to do same.



Dr. Barnor said the efficacy of COA FS against HIV and other virus that cause cancers, diabetes, hepatitis and other diseases is not doubt at all because it has a high level tritapents, which is hardly found in any drug.



"I personally decided to try COA FS on my diabetes and today my blood sugar level has normalized as if I never had diabetes - the drug is working and it is important for us to actively back it as a country," he said.



He is confident that COA FS has the potential to be a major export from Ghana and can compete with even gold, cocoa and oil if only government, through the GHS and GAC led the clinical test and international push.



"GHS must commission the clinical test and GAC must encourage the HIV patients they work with to participate in the clinical tests so we can get the evidence needed to push the drug as a cure for HIV and indeed many other viral diseases," he said.



Meanwhile, Adom News gathered that following an article about the AIDS Commission and GHS's negative posturing on the drug, the Commission has invited the drug manufacturer, Dr. Samuel Ato Duncan to meet and discuss a way forward.



Noguchi is also said to have showed interest in carrying out clinical test on the drug.



Moreover, copies of documents on the research findings on the drug have also been submitted to the office of the President, hopefully to trigger the necessary state backing from the very top.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
President Akufo-Addo has expressed grave concern about the growing spate of internet fraud  known in local parlance as Sakawa and other cyber crimes in the country.



Currently, he said, Ghana is experiencing its fair share of cybercrime and cyber security challenges that are home-grown and that cyber crime has become one of the commonest and most pervasive crimes in the country today.



Just last week, three Ghanaians were arrested for internet romance fraud, ripping off their victims to the tune of about 5 million.



Concern



Ghana now counts among prevalent crimes in the country, website defacements, hacking into banking systems and critical databases, ransom-ware attacks, e-mail fraud, identity theft, SIM box fraud, cyber fraud  normally called sakawa or 419  and increasingly, the use of identity theft to impersonate government and public officials, and subject them to abuse on social media. Children are also facing increasing risks on the internet,  including risks associated with improper contacts, conduct and contents on the internet he said at the opening of the National Cyber Security Week in Accra yesterday.



President Akufo-Addo admitted the fact that the task that we face, therefore, is urgent, indicating that the fast pace at which technology is developing means that often the law enforcement officials are struggling to keep pace with the law-breakers.



To this end, he insisted, it is critical, therefore, that those in-charge of protecting our ICT security are well equipped with the knowledge and the expertise to do so.



Interventions



Going forward, he stressed, the tools and competencies with which we fight crime must necessarily, therefore, change.



We need to train and have a well-equipped corps of cybercrime fighters, but we should go further than that. I dare say it is time to take another look at the qualifications that we require in a policeman for example.



The president has, therefore, emphasised the urgent need for the Cybercrime Unit of the Police Service to be beefed up to deal with these new threats, saying, Ghana is transitioning from a traditional economy into an IT-enabled economy.



In the meantime, the Ministry of Communications is said to be working on a number of e-government initiatives, including e-justice, e-immigration, e-passports, e-procurement and tertiary education connectivity initiatives, among others, to transform Ghanas public-sector services.



Whilst he admitted the fact that The national identification system, the digital addressing system, e-payments, digital financial services and the various e-government initiatives in which we are now taking so much pride, can be brought to a halt or undermined by cybercrime, President Akufo-Addo assured, My government is, therefore, resolved to address these challenges in order to safeguard our digital journey.



Strategy



He revealed that we are undertaking specific policy and practical intervention initiatives, including capacity building, international cooperation, judicial enforcement of cybercrime legislations and implementation of technical standards and safeguards.



That, he said, was part of reasons why in July this year, he asked the minister for communications to oversee the implementation of Ghanas National Cyber Security Policy & Strategy (NCSPS).



This, according to him, had led to the adoption of a multi-stakeholder approach, as a foundation for the effective implementation of the various cyber security activities and programmes.



To improve Ghanas cyber security emergency response readiness, President Akufo-Addo indicated, Government, through the Ministry of Communications, is currently working on the establishment of a dedicated Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), to protect critical national information infrastructure, and sectorial CERTs for the various sectors of the economy based on international standards and benchmarks.



We intend to establish a National Cyber Security Centre, as has been done in some other countries, to liaise with relevant state agencies and the private sector to oversee cyber security operations at the national level. This is one of our major priorities in the next few months, as we step up our efforts to secure our digital journey.

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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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 Ghana chapter of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has congratulated its elite member, the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mrs Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong, for the role she played in ensuring that Ghana won the maritime boundary dispute with Cote dIvoire.



ICC Ghana congratulates the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, partner at Lithur-Brew & Co and a member of the ICC Commission on Arbitration and ADR, Mrs Marietta Brew Appiah-Opong, for her role in resolving the GhanaCote d'Ivoire maritime boundary dispute, ICC stated in its October 2017 newsletter.



Commendation



The ICC Ghana also commended both Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire on their commitment to abide by the ruling by the Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS).



Mrs Appiah-Opong was the Attorney-General and the head of Ghana's legal team when Ghana took the decision to take its maritime boundary dispute with Cote d'Ivoire to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and the favourable outcome has saved the country billions of dollars in investment, the newsletter noted.



ICC Ghana also commended President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the Attorney-General, Ms Gloria Akuffo, for continuing from where Mrs Appiah-Opong's team left off, following the change in government.



Background



The Special Chamber on Saturday, September 23, 2017 ruled in favour of Ghana as far as the maritime boundary dispute between the two countries was concerned. The chamber ruled unanimously that Ghana did not violate the rights of Cote d'Ivoire in exploring oil at the maritime boundary.



After 10 failed negotiation attempts, Ghana, in September 2014, announced it had instituted arbitration proceedings at ITLOS to ensure the resolution of its maritime boundary dispute with Cote dIvoire.



In accordance with Article 3 (a) of Annex VII, Ghana appointed Judge Thomas Mensah, former President of ITLOS, as a member of the Tribunal.



The first round of preliminary hearing began in March 2015 where Cote dIvoire prayed the tribunal to stop all activities at the disputed area but Ghana led evidence to prove why activities at the disputed area could not be halted.



The tribunal, on April 25, 2015, refused to stop oil companies operating at the disputed area but it, however, stopped the drilling of new wells until the final determination of the case.

Source: Daily Graphic









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Chief Executive Of the Ghana Cocoa Board, Joseph Boahen Aidoo has outlined measures to enhance the sustainability of cocoa production in the country.



He believed sustainability of the growth of the cocoa industry will lead to productivity both locally and internationally.



Delivering a keynote address at the Partnership Meeting of the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) this week, Hon. Boahen Aidoo stated that the "long-term sustainability of the cocoa value chain is a shared global responsibility. There is a growing international cooperation and understanding to the effect that, the cocoa industry needs to maintain productivity and profitability at levels that are socially acceptable, economically viable and environmentally friendly. Thus, the attainment of a sustainable cocoa economy has become a predominant objective of all stakeholders. Meanwhile, perspectives on what it means, the best path to its attainment, and the level of commitment to achieving it differs among stakeholders. This, perhaps, is one of the grand challenges in cocoa sustainability".



He noted that cocoa production and sustainability has different meanings to consumers and stakeholders in the sector.



According to him, consumers see cocoa sustainability as mainly bordering on ethical issues and environmental protection while for manufacturers and grinders, all efforts are targeted at continuous and profitable sourcing and with producers, it's all about a decent price that enables farmers to live a life of dignity.



The Chief Executive of the CocoBod recounted some challenges confronting the cocoa industry, beginning with consumers to stakeholders.



To him, environmental factors such as illegal mining (popularly called galamsey) have contributed largely to the decline in cocoa production. This is not only the case for cocoa farmers as he further added that the annual income of cocoa is not enough to cater for families into cocoa production.



"Reflecting on the theme of this session, on board the flight to Washington, I remembered my interactions with cocoa farmers in the early part of this year. One farmer comes in mind  Opanin Kwasi Oti, at Sefwi Boako, in the cocoa heartland of Ghana. Kwasi Oti is like any typical Ghanaian cocoa farmer  55 years old, with 5 hectares of farm, 5 children and harvesting a total of 30 bags of cocoa annually. At his current state, none of his children above the age of 17 is interested in their fathers occupation. Kwesi Oti is facing an increasing unpredictable climate, rising labour cost, low international prices resulting in low producer price and part of his farm has been affected by the cocoa swollen shoot virus disease (CSSVD).



The annual income of cocoa is not enough to cater for the Oti family. Meanwhile there is a vibrant land market patronized by the illegal artisanal miners (popularly called galamsey operators) at Sefwi Boako which is known for its sedimentary gold ore deposits. An obvious despondent-looking Kwasi Oti was found at the crossroad of selling his landed property to ever cash-ready galamsey operators or holding onto his 5 ha cocoa farmland and continue to wallow in poverty. The horrible ravage that galamsey has caused Ghanas forests, environment and water resources in the past ten or so years is a narrative that must not be entertained".



"...do we have the required knowledge, resources and partnerships that can transfer cost-effective technologies and innovations necessary for raising productivity of smallholders? Do we have the collective capacity to help Kwesi Oti to adapt and mitigate adverse effects of climate change? Together, do the partners gathered here have the collective ability to raise demand for cocoa? Can our initiatives and projects lead to living incomes from cocoa for likes of the Oti family?" he further questioned.



Despite the challenges, Hon. Boahen Aidoo was optimistic when right measures can be put in place to remedy the situation and make cocoa a lucrative business venture.



He outlined some pragmatic steps as follows:



Hand Pollination



"Results from the pilot programme across the country have been satisfactory and generated a lot of enthusiasm amongst the cocoa farmers. We are going to scale up the programme this 2017/18 crop year. In addition, we have expanded cocoa extension coverage. We have opened discussions with our partners to expand the use of ICT in cocoa extension".



Irrigation



To him, irrigation is key to the sustainability of cocoa production, in that "climate change mitigation is a priority in the productivity enhancement agenda. There are two cocoa flowering seasons in Ghana. One coincides with the rainy season, the other occurs during the dry (Harmattan) period. Because of lack of soil moisture during the Harmattan, most of the flowers drop. This accounts for what is called the light crop and the smaller sizes of the beans. To optimize farm yield and improve upon bean sizes, we have started piloting small scale irrigation. This will also be scaled up next year".



Agro-Forestry Practices



The next thing that he said with respect to the cocoa productivity is for the stakeholders to take advantage of agroforestry practices of cocoa cultivation and organic cocoa farming.



"Because of the profound negative effect of the use of herbicides and weedicides on soil microbiology and biodiversity we have made it a policy to return to weeding, but of course not manual weeding. COCOBOD in partnership with the private sector will soon introduce motorized slashes for weeding and motorized pruners for the pruning of cocoa trees and removal of mistletoes" he stated.



The other factor is incentivizing in the farm rehabilitation programme of the cocoa fraternity.



"The programme involves cutting the unproductive diseased and overaged cocoa trees for replanting. The programme achieved little results in the past despite the supply of free seedlings to farmers because the intervention overlooked two critical issues, namely, the loss of household income and security of land tenure. Note, this is not a local problem. Cote dIvoire faces same. The two countries have jointly put in a request for funding from the African Development Bank. The sooner the funding the better for Ghana, else I am afraid we may lose a sizeable amount of our cocoa farmland to galamsey. The foregoing clearly demonstrates that COCOBOD has packaged interventions that basically aim at enhancing efficiency and productivity of the Ghanaian farmer. This is being done not only to discourage farmers from selling their farmlands but it is also meant to make cocoa farming a lucrative venture and attractive to the youth".



Prices



He also noted that there has been a drop in cocoa prices and so it should be a concern to all stakeholders since it directly impacts the sustainability of cocoa.



Therefore, the price trend for cocoa needs to be reversed to resolve the situation, he opined.



"Prices are the best fertilizer for improving livelihoods. Cocoa prices send signals to farmers as to the amount of time and labour to invest in cocoa production. Thus, low prices constitute a major threat to the sustainability of the industry. Ladies and Gentlemen, the recent price drop is viewed generally as an issue of over-production. Producers are therefore expected to manage their side of the Demand-Supply balance by reducing the quantity of cocoa presented on the world market. It must however be noted that cocoa production is not easily amenable to control in the short-to- medium term, as the case may be with oil and other industrial production processes.



"...we need to collectively work towards increasing demand to establish the desired equilibrium in the market. One key activity in this regard is the promotion of cocoa consumption. Foremost, we have to stimulate consumption in the conventional markets of North America and Europe, generate same in the untested markets of Africa, and step up promotion in the emerging markets of Asia. Just imagine 5% of Chinese and Indians taking 10 grams of cocoa products daily. The direct impact on the entire value chain will be revolutionary. Hence our shared agenda on cocoa sustainability must focus and pursue such cause".



New Markets



The development of new markets for cocoa, he added, should be high on the agenda so far as its sustainability is concerned.



"This cannot be achieved if we continue to promote consumption in the conventional way  that is in the form of sweetened chocolates only. We may continue to target children and younger consumers with sweets, but adult populations require different products. Concerns about sugar, milk, calories etc. are stagnating demand, especially in traditional chocolate markets" he said.



Cocoa Health Benefits



Hon. Boahen Aidoo also called on the stakeholders to project the health benefits of cocoa in order to attract a larger market and consumers.



He advised the gathering to place emphasis on the health benefits cocoa provides its consumers, saying "it is common knowledge that dark chocolates with high concentration of cocoa solids contain more health-boosting flavonoids  those potent antioxidants which protect cells against damage from free-radicals. Flavonoids are said to help protect the body against diseases associated with oxidative stress such as cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer, build bone mass, enhance cognitive performance and are aphrodisiac. These are all concerns that people who are forty years and above often grapple with. I am talking about the very health problems that cocoa addresses, and the very people who have the purchasing power to buy cocoa. So what are we waiting for? The Health benefits of cocoa must therefore be told".



Hon. Boahen Aidoo therefore charged all stakeholders to use their positions and resources to address the concerns regarding cocoa production and sustainability in order to ensure a booming industry for the product.



He also added the objective of his outfit, the Ghana Cocoa Board, is to drive a resilient and robust cocoa sector that "increases economic opportunities for our farmers, without compromising the integrity of our existing forests".

Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The founding President of think tank, IMANI Africa, has charged VOKACOM, developers of the AsaaseGPS, which was later transformed into Ghana Post GPS to be used for Ghanas digital addressing system.



Some Information Technology (IT) experts who have reviewed the application available on various mobile operating systems have given poor ratings of the app.



Mr Cudjoe emphasised in a Facebook post on his wall on Saturday, October 21 that the developers must rectify what industry watchers have described as amateurish and an embarrassment to technology and innovation.



Mr Cudjoe, who suggested that the application is not novel as suggested, he pointed out that: "Copying is not so hard. Copying to perfection is adding value. The Ghana Post app did the opposite.



He was of the view that the country shouldn't hurry our President to be launching products that have not been properly verified adding, I hope the owners of the app make amends and apologise to the President".

Source: classfmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Former rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Professor Stephen Adei, has said the Mahama administration failed to commit adequate financial resources to mental health issues in the country.



According to him, the past administration spent huge sums of money on campaign activities ahead of the 2016 elections while neglecting mental health.



Speaking at the launch of Friends of Mental Health in Accra on Monday, October 23 Prof Addai expressed worry over the countrys inability to effectively assist persons with mental disorders.



He said: We have forgotten that the brain is part of the body and every part of the body sometimes gets sick, and yet, when you get sick in the brain we dont consider you as sick, it is either you are a witch or bewitched.



Whenever I see a mentally sick person walking on the streets, sometimes totally naked, I dont know whom we are indicting, but it is me and you, from the President to the young person.



He added: I couldnt believe that in 2016, not a pesewa of government budget was dedicated to mental health. That was a year that literally millions were spent legitimately or bribing people to vote and not a pesewa in helping mentally sick people.



I believe that there are many things that have to be done, we need roads, we need schools, we need factories and all of them, but nothing will define our humanity as Ghanaians than what we do.







Source: classfmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Ghana could have six additional regions instead of the originally proposed four by end of 2018. This follows the increasing number of petitions received so far by the Ministry of Regional Reorganisation and Development that are proposing the carving out of additional regions from the existing ten regions.



Speaking to Joy News, the Minister of Regional Reorganisation and Development, Dan Botwe, said every petition to the Commission of Inquiry will get the necessary attention as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution.



There is a petition from Western Region, there is one petition to create another region in the Volta Region then there are two petitions from Brong Ahafo Regions and there are two from Northern Region. So if they succeed in all these, then we are talking about six additional regions.

President Nana Akufo-Addo took a step closer to fulfilling the demand for the creation of four new regions by constituting a nine-member Commission of Inquiry to look into the proposals for the regions.



The Commission is headed by a retired Justice of the Supreme Court, S.A. Brobbey.

If the work of the Commission is successful, the Electoral Commission (EC) will be required to organise a referendum to give meaning to the demand for the creation of the regions.

The proposals for additional regions to be created from the existing ones are aimed at facilitating development and fast-tracking the decentralisation of the governance process.

B/A chiefs sensitise citizens about proposed new regions

In a bid to achieve the quest for the creation of a new region from the Brong Ahafo Region, the Ahafo Council of Chiefs has taken up the challenge to sensitise citizens about the need for the proposed Ahafo Region.



If successful the Brong Ahafo Region will be split into the Ahafo Region and the Bono Region.

Source: myjoyonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Audio Attachment: Listen Hackman Owusu-Agyeman

Board Chairman at Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod), Hon. Hackman Owusu Agyeman says GHc 1.8Bn cannot be traced from the accounts of the state-controlled institution.



Responding to issues raised by the Minority at their press conference in the Western Region, he eplained that the erstwhile administration which expended the funds before leaving office, failed to properly account for what the money was used for specifically, adding that they had to borrow additional 3million Ghana Cedis from commercial bank before Cocobod could settle its indebtedness to farmers this season.



The Minority in Parliament, on Monday accused the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration, led by President Nana Akufo-Addo, of neglecting cocoa farmers in Ghana.



Member of Parliament for Bodi in the Western Region, Hon. Sampson Ahi in an interview with Okayfm explained that from the cancellation of some road projects, challenges with cocoa mass spraying exercise, and replacement of free fertilizers with subsidized ones, it is evident government is short-changing cocoa farmers.



On 21st June 2017, the Minority in Parliament held a similar press conference and drew the attention of the NPP Government to the fact that, the Ghanaian Cocoa farmer had indirectly paid for the fertilizers procured for the 2016/17 season, and therefore selling same to them amounts to broad day light robbery.



"It is also sad to note that no provision was made for cocoa roads in the COCOBOD budget for 2017/18. This means that the cocoa roads which are deteriorating faster than anticipated due to the neglect of the NPP government, is going to get worse, making users (mostly farmers) wretchedly despondent and low-spirited to continue to labour for our dear nation, meanwhile they have also cancelled all cocoa road contracts which were started by our administration," he said.



He also challenged government to come clean on how much has been accrued so far from the cocoa stabilization fund.



".....in Ghana, cocoa farmers are paid in kind and in cash, and by replacing the free fertilizer with a subsidized system, the NPP would inflict untold hardships on the cocoa farmer, he added.



But in a quick riposte on OkayFMs "Ade Akye Abia" Morning Show, Hackman Owusu Agyeman described the Minority's press conference as the effusions of a confused person. He wondered the moral right of the NDC to even address Ghanaians on matters relating to cocoa farmers.



"They are just doing their usual politics and propaganda with cocoa issues...The kind of rot they left at cocobod is unimaginable....it stinks. Some 34 contracts which were paid for by the NDC government does not exist in the books of the Cocobod....



We will soon publish every information we have about the rot that was perpetrated by the NDC government at cocoa board", he added



Currently, he said, investigations are being carried out by EOCO and the CID, and when they are done, "we will make the findings public".

Source: Isaac kwame Owusu/Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Good Tuesday Morning, Fellow Seekers.

After weeks of inaction, the state House could take up a proposed severance tax on natural gas drillers as soon as Wednesday.

And environmentalists are raising red flags about a proposed alteration that they say would hamstring the state's ability to move forward on air quality permits and outsource the state's ability to review permit applications.

Last week, the House Finance Committee sent a proposed tax, sponsored by Rep. Gene DiGirolamo, R-Bucks, to the full chamber for its consideration.

DiGirolamo's bill imposes a sliding scale tax that gas drillers take out of the ground in shale country. It also retains the existing impact fee on drillers.

As is customary when any big vote looms, lawmakers began gussying up DiGirolamo's bills with amendments.

On Monday, the Environmental Defense Fund flagged a particular amendment, sponsored by House GOP Policy Committee Chairman Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre, for particular scrutiny.

You kind of have to dig down into the legislative-ese of Benninghoff's amendment to understand what it does.

The key part comes on the fourth page of Benninghoff's proposal, which basically offshores permit reviews usually conducted by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Because we knows some among you are big fans of this kind of gobbedlygook, here's the germane language:



So the fear here - at least among environmentalists -- is that this language (and let's assume for a moment that Benninghoff wants to turn permit reviews over to the Choir Invisible and not ... ohhhh ... say ... Big Oil and Big Gas) is that it would kneecap DEP's oversight at minimum, and/or result in the foxes watching the proverbial henhouse at maximum.

In an email, Andrew Williams, the Environmental Defense Fund's director of legislative and regulatory affairs, said Benninghoff's language, if approved, would "trade away clean air and clean water in exchange for a deal on a natural gas severance tax."

More astute readers will recall that the tax was a cornerstone of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's 2014 campaign platform. They will also recall that a tax proposal was included in a $570 million revenue bill approved by the Senate in those faraway days of last July.

That bill has languished in the House ever since and other, ill-starred revenue plans have come and gone.

But with a genuine possibility that Pennsylvania's fourth-month-old budget stalemate might be drunkenly stumbling toward a resolution in the next couple of weeks, the severance tax gained some new life.

Thus, it's still a possibility that it could end up as part of the deal on a final revenue package paying for the $32 billion spending plan that took effect on July 1.

Even so, Williams dismissed the amendatory language as "bad politics any way you slice it.

"Access to clean air and clean water are fundamental human rights, not political bargaining chips. Pennsylvania's elected officials are supposed to represent the interests of Pennsylvania voters, yet these last-minute amendments to the severance tax bill that's part of the state budget do just the opposite by taking power away from the state and handing it over to oil and gas companies," he said.

If this all sounds a tad familiar, that's because environmentalists have been sounding warning bells for months about similar language that found its way into piece of budget-enabling legislation known as the fiscal code.

"Most offensive is a provision that would create a politically-appointed advisory committee that would replace the qualified professionals at the Department of Environmental Protection in deciding on air quality permits for the ... gas industry," Joseph O. Minott, of the Clean Air Council, wrote in a Sept. 26 PennLive op-Ed. "This could potentially eviscerate the critically important methane emissions reduction strategy that Gov. Tom Wolf proposed over a year ago but has yet to implement."

Here's the full text of Benninghoff's proposal:

Benninghoff Amendment by jmicek on Scribd

The rest of the day's news starts now.

Penn State and Ohio State have been sued for not allowing white supremacist Richard Spencer to speak on their respective campuses, The Centre Daily Times reports (via The Tribune-Review).

Gov. Tom Wolf has set the special election date for ex-U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy's 18th Congressional District seat, The Post-Gazette reports.

Philly is just one of the more than 200 competitors for Amazon HQ2, The Inquirer reports, running down the list.

An IRS agent who helped take down ex-Philly DA Seth Williams has been charged with an alleged sex crime, PhillyMag reports.

Dept. of Dubious Achievements: Monday marked the first time since 2013 that the Eagles and 'Sixers won on the same day, BillyPenn reports.

Pittsburgh is very, very unhappy with celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain (via The Incline).

Here's your #Harrisburg Instagram of the Day:

Philly has reached a $12.5m deal to buy body cameras for city cops, WHYY-FM reports.

WITF-FM's Katie Meyer goes deep on the House and Senate's differences on gambling expansion.

PennLive's Charlie Thompson takes a look at the 'optimism' around the Capitol that the budget debate might finally be nearing its end.

Yet, reminding us that there is no shortage of profoundly dumb ideas in that building, language before the state Senate would bar taxpayer funding for gender-reassignment surgery for kids covered by the CHIP program.

Conservative activist Matt Brouillette has asked a state court for an emergency injunction to keep Gov. Tom Wolf from borrowing against state liquor store proceeds to balance the books, PennLive's Jan Murphy reports.

A possible sale of Allentown State Hospital is in the works, The Morning Call reports.

There's one fewer candidate in the Democratic primary for the 7th Congressional District, PoliticsPA reports.

What Goes On.

The House and Senate both come in at 1 p.m. today for what's expected to be a busy day of budget-y stuff.

WolfWatch

There's no public schedule for Pa's chief executive on this rainy Tuesday.

What Goes On (Nakedly Political Edition).

8 a.m.: Breakfast for Rep. Gerald Mullery

8 a.m.: Breakfast for Rep. Stephen Kinsey

8 a.m.: Breakfast for Sen. John Rafferty

8 a.m.: Breakfast for Sen. John Sabatina

8 a.m.: Breakfast for Rep. Madeleine Dean

8 a.m.: Breakfast for Rep. David M. Maloney

8:30 a.m.: Breakfast for Sen. Christine Tartaglione

4:30 p.m.: Reception for Rep. Tim Hennessey

5:30 p.m.: Senate Republican Campaign Committee reception

Ride the circuit, and give at the max, and you'll part with a truly offensive $12,250 today.

You Say It's Your Birthday Dept.

Best wishes go out this morning to longtime Friend O'the Blog, and Pitt comms guy Kevin Zwick, who celebrates today. Congrats and ejoy the day, sir.

Heavy Rotation.

Here's a quick mix to power you through the day.

And now you're up to date.
Fifteen years ago today the so called D.C. snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, were arrested after the shooting deaths of 10 people in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

Muhammad, 41, and Malvo, 17, also called the Beltway snipers, were accused of a series of crimes in 2002 in seven states.

For three weeks in October of 2002, people in Montgomery County, Md., lived in fear after multiple people were shot and killed while going about the business of their daily lives - a 55-year-old man in the parking lot of a grocery store, a man mowing grass, a taxi driver getting gas, a housekeeper reading a book outside a shopping center, a woman vacuuming her vehicle at a gas station.

After those killings, several people were shot in Virginia and Maryland - a woman in the parking lot of a mall and a teenager arriving for school both survived. An engineer and businessman were shot while getting gas. Both died as did a woman in the shot in the parking lot of Home Depot.

On Oct. 24, 2002, police found Muhammad and Malvo sleeping in a car at a rest stop off of Interstate 70, near Myersville, Md.

Muhammad was found guilty and sentenced to death in September 2003. He was executed on Nov. 10, 2009.

Malvo had been convicted and sentenced to life without parole. However, his sentence was overturned on appeal earlier this year as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that mandatory life sentences for juveniles are unconstitutional.

He has not yet been resentenced.
After he was taken prisoner in Korea in 1951 and declared deceased, a tombstone for Army Pfc. Walter Hackenberg has sat above an empty grave in his family's cemetery plot outside Middleburg in Snyder County.

"We assumed all this time he was no longer living, but just to think of where he could be - it was a missing part of our family," said his sister, Stella Knepp of Middleburg.

For years the Army had labelled the unidentified remains that turned out to be Hackenberg's as "X-14266," and were buried in 1954 in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu as Korean War Unknown.

Now, through DNA analysis, Hackenberg's remains are returning home to Middleburg for burial, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has announced.

"We're very fortunate to have his remains back," Knepp said. "He was a good brother - I'm proud to be his sister. I just didn't know him a long time."

Walter, who would have been 89 this year, was talked about at family birthday gatherings, at holidays.

In 2000, Knepp said the minister at her church told her he'd check into the status of her missing brother, and found some had been buried in Hawaii.

Soon after, Knepp and one of her sisters were asked to submit DNA.

"Then we went another 17 years - two of our sisters passed away in that time. So we're happy to bring him home, very happy. We'd rather have brought him home alive, but I guess God had different plans. We'll still just be thankful what has happened," Knepp said.

Here is Pfc. Walter Hackenberg's story:

Hackenberg, 22, was a member of Company F, 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 25th infantry Division, along a defensive line west of Chorw'on, South Korea, when his unit was attacked by the Chinese People's Volunteer Force and Korean People's Army, said the Army.

American troops were able to hold the lines, and when the attacks subsided, a patrol went to determine possible enemy river-crossing points. Enemy forces engaged the patrol with mortars and small arms fire, forcing the patrol to withdraw. Hackenberg could not be accounted for at the end of the battle, and he was declared missing in action April 25, 1951.

After the war, several returning American prisoners of war reported that Hackenberg had been captured by the CPVF and died in the summer of 1951 while being held in a prisoner of war camp. Based on this information, the U.S. Army declared him deceased as of Sept. 9, 1951.

In 1954, United Nations and communist forces exchanged the remains of war dead in what came to be called "Operation Glory." All remains recovered were turned over to the Army's Central Identification Unit for analysis.

On Sept. 7, 1954, a set of remains reportedly recovered from a prisoner of war cemetery at Camp 1 and 3, Changsong, North Korea, were sent to the Central Identification Unit in Kokura, Japan, for attempted identification. The set of remains was designated "X-14266" and was transferred to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu and interred as a Korean War Unknown.

After historical and scientific analysis, it was determined that X-14266 could likely be identified. After receiving approval, these remains were disinterred June 13, 2016, and sent to the DPAA laboratory for analysis.

Scientists used dental, anthropological and chest radiograph comparison analysis, which matched his records, as well as circumstantial evidence.

Returning home

Stella Knepp has good memories of her brother Walter, who went to war in 1951 when she was 12.

"What can one guy do with eight sisters? We did a lot of fun things together. It's too bad he couldn't be around longer."

Hackenberg was drafted, said Stella Knepp.

He wasn't in Korea long, but it was very hard on their mother, Knepp said. It wasn't long after he disappeared that their mother became ill and died.

His return, Knepp said, "is absolutely a blessing."

There are still 7,718 Americans' remains unaccounted for from the Korean War, and Knepp said it's important for other families to know that the military continues working on identifying remains.

"After all this time I think it's important for others who have had the same thing happen," she said.

He will be buried Nov. 2 beside their mother in the cemetery at Zion United Methodist Church outside Middleburg.

There will be visitation at the church starting at 1 p.m. Nov. 2, with a service at 1:30 p.m. and burial afterward.

Walter is survived by five of his eight sisters: Stella Knepp, Helen Herman, Peggy Walter, Darlene Sycz and Linda Walter, all of whom live in central Pennsylvania. His father preceded him in death in 1975, as did three half-brothers and one half-sister.

Hackenberg's name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at an American Battle Monuments Commission site along with the others missing in the Korean War. A rosette will now be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.

For more information on the defense department's mission to account for Americans who went missing in action, visit the DPAA web site or its Facebook page, or call 703-699-1420.
A Philadelphia native unhappy with Donald Trump's presidency brought his custom-made, giant inflatable rat created in the image of the 45th commander-in-chief to Pennsylvania Monday morning.

Pumping hot air into the 15-foot tall Trump Rat in Philadelphia's City Center, John Post Lee, 58, displayed the balloon as he had in his current hometown of New York and also in Washington, D.C. The 58-year-old New York City art gallery owner inflated the caricature balloon in front of a statue of Frank Rizzo in the 97th birthday anniversary of the controversial Philadelphia figure.



The Trump Rat remained near the statue for about an hour until police ordered Lee to deflate the balloon and move from Thomas Paine Plaza to the public sidewalk, according to a Philly.com report. Lee said he picked a rat to represent Trump because he believes the president to be untrustworthy, mean-spirited and a liar, like a rat.

Organizers from the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition helped bring Lee and the Trump Rat to Philadelphia to protest Rizzo's statue as well as Trump and his administration, according to the report. Some approved of the demonstration while others felt it was disgusting. Though the Trump Rat was stuffed back into its container Monday evening, Lee told Philly.com he would like to bring the plastic creature back to the City of Brother Love.

'Trump Rat' deflated after NY art gallery owner told by cops it can't be at Thomas Paine Plaza w/o permit. Organizers to put on sidewalk pic.twitter.com/QRm5bXOGVG  Julie Shaw (@julieshawphilly) October 23, 2017

Michael Henkel, 59, S. Philly, says the 'Trump Rat' caricature is 'disgusting,' 'embarrassing.' He says Trump has done a 'tremendous job' pic.twitter.com/8xtCEWs3C3  Julie Shaw (@julieshawphilly) October 23, 2017
A York man who gunned down two brothers on camera will have to live with the consecutive life prison sentences he received for the murders.

A state Superior Court panel this week denied Durell Cotton Jr.'s appeal of his convictions for the June 2015 ambush slayings of 20-year-old Angel Berrios and 19-year-old Abdiel Vazquez-Soto.

Senior Judge Eugene B. Strassburger III didn't waste words or paper in a six-page opinion upholding Cotton's first- and third-degree murder convictions by a York County jury.

Police said Cotton, now 22, killed the brothers because a friend, Raymond Bruno-Carrasquillo, had a problem with them, Strassburger noted.

The brothers died from gunshot wounds to the chest after Cotton fired at their car from an SUV driven by Bruno-Carrasquillo, investigators said. Another man in their car was wounded, but survived to testify that Cotton was the gunman.

Bruno-Carrasquillo also testified for the prosecution and identified Cotton as the shooter, Strassburger noted. Also, the shooting was filmed by a surveillance system on a nearby home.

All of that evidence gave the jury sound grounds to convict Cotton, Strassburger found.

Cotton also in prison for participating in another fatal drive-by shooting in the city, the gang-related October 2013 murder of Jordan Breeland. Cotton, who was a juvenile at the time of that killing, is serving a 65-year to life sentence for Breeland's slaying.
FILE - In this June 30, 1982, file photo, the new space shuttle Challenger sits behind the four astronauts that will fly it during turnover ceremonies at Rockwell International's final assembly site in Palmdale, Calif. From left: Dr. Story Musgrave, pilot Karol J. Bobko, mission specialist Donald H. Peterso, and commander Paul J. Weitz. Weitz, a retired NASA astronaut who commanded the first flight of the space shuttle Challenger and flew on Skylab in the early 1970s, has died at 85. Weitz died at his retirement home in Flagstaff, Ariz., on Monday, Oct. 23, 2017, said Laura Cutchens of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. (AP Photo/Doug Pizac, File)
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., is questioned by reporters about a derisive exchange of name-calling with President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. In a remarkable Republican war of words, Corker says Trump is "utterly untruthful" and debases the nation. Then the president fires back that the two-term lawmaker "couldn't get elected dog catcher." (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
In this Oct. 19, 2017 photo, the vacant Iranian embassy is seen in Washington. Washington residents and politicians are up in arms about an only-in-DC phenomenon: a string of former embassies and diplomatic buildings whose governments have essentially abandoned them. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump returns a salute after bestowing the nation's highest military honor, the Medal of Honor, to retired Army Capt. Gary M. Rose, left, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 23, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
In general, men are twice as likely to cheat on a spouse than women are. That frequency increases over the lifespan, peaking among the elderly. Among men 18 to 29 who have ever been married, about 1 in 10 is
This June 5, 2017, photo shows a marijuana leaf in the vegetative room at Alaska Cannabis Cultivators in Fairbanks, Alaska. Read more

MJ Freeway, the company awarded a $10.4 million contract to track all of Pennsylvania's medical-marijuana commerce, suffered major disruptions over the weekend, causing some businesses in cannabis-legal states to suspend work for hours.

The state Department of Health contracted with MJ Freeway in April for software that will track all cannabis produced in the state from seed to sale. The software will also be used as the state's registry for patients, caregivers, and practitioners who will participate in the program, which is expected to begin in early 2018.

The outages required retailers and dispensers to record all sales by hand. In an email received late Monday, a spokeswoman for Denver-based MJ Freeway said service had been restored.

"On Saturday afternoon and Monday afternoon, we observed performance issues with our legacy Tracker software product," wrote Jeanette Ward. "All client sites were taken offline for a period of time on Saturday evening and Monday afternoon to resolve the issues as quickly as possible. On both days, service was restored within a few hours, and client sites are currently live."

The affected software is not the same product that MJ Freeway sold to Pennsylvania, Ward said Tuesday.

The disruption  it was unclear if it was the result of a crash or a deliberate attack  was the latest of several setbacks for MJ Freeway, which has provided tracking software for several states and a point-of-sale system for about 1,000 marijuana retailers nationwide.

Last week, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board announced that MJ Freeway would fail to meet an Oct. 31 deadline to take over the state's marijuana tracking software.

In September, Nevada abruptly canceled its agreement with MJ Freeway two years into a five-year contract.

The same month, an anonymous hacker circulated an offer to sell confidential information hacked from the Washington state and Nevada programs.

That followed a June incident in which the the company's source code was stolen and posted on Reddit (the code was later removed).

In January, MJ Freeway was the target of a "malicious" hack that caused cannabusinesses to lose data.

Pennsylvania's contract with MJ Freeway was greeted with controversy when announced April 20. The company's software ranked lower on technical merits than its Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based rival, BioTrackTHC, which earned a perfect score. MJ Freeway, however, undercut the competition on price, according to a state scoring document.
Publicist Kory Aversa, whose Aversa PR and Events is in South Philadelphia, at the Singing Fountain Park on East Passyunk Avenue. Read more

For three years, Suzanne Curran's two-person staffing company, SC Staffing & Consulting, had been supplying an upstate Pennsylvania college with extra help: staff for the bursar's office when tuition payments were due, clerks for the admissions office at application time, overnight librarians during exam week.

So when the contract came up for bid this year, she figured her experience, plus a lot of good reviews  all documented  would make renewal a slam-dunk.

It was more like a slam.

Her Philadelphia company didn't get the contract, losing $200,000 worth of business. The problem, as Curran later learned, was the "verbiage" in her response to the college's request for proposals: "My writing wasn't as good as someone else's, even though we were in there doing the staffing and getting awesome ratings."

If only she had had a mentor, she lamented in a recent interview  someone to guide her through the process. "A lot of times, we don't know what we don't know," said Curran, who also supplies temporary help for registration and events at the Convention Center.

As it turns out, Curran isn't the only owner of a growing business looking for help, connections, and advice. Others among the 2017 Philadelphia 100 list of fast-growing privately held companies had the same idea.

The Entrepreneurs' Forum of Greater Philadelphia and the Wharton Small Business Development Center surveyed the leaders of these growing businesses, asking them about the positive and negative aspects of doing business in this region. When asked how the region could help, several sought more connections in the business community and also more of the right kind of connections.

Publicist Kory Aversa said that he could go to a business-networking meeting every week, but that at this stage of his business, they aren't what he needs. They are either too elementary, are aimed at start-ups, or are too specific. What he would like, he said, "are networking opportunities or even mentoring programs for entrepreneurs three to seven years into their business."

"I notice many programs for starting your business, and also advanced programs on specific issues like funding capital, but not many programs for the entrepreneur who transitioned from a one-person show to a 'business empire,' " said Aversa, who started his own public-relations and event business, Aversa PR & Events, in South Philadelphia in 2012.

"Hiring and firing contractors and staff scares the heck out of you. What if you make a mistake? It's someone's life," he said, giving an example of a situation where he'd like the advice of someone slightly more seasoned. "The first person I brought on, I was petrified. How do I delegate? How do I teach them? How do you do all of that and still do all the stuff you are supposed to do?"

Gene Schriver, chief executive of the Wyncote translation company Globo Inc., said there simply aren't enough chances for people to meet and mingle, particularly venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs with ideas.

When he lived in Silicon Valley, he said, life was a constant round of meet-ups  another day, another round of brie, another evening of connecting investors to entrepreneurs over white wine and craft beers. "Although in San Francisco, there was probably more sushi than brie," Schriver said.

If the inventors and investors would get together more often, he said, the investors would be able to better assess the potential for ideas and might be inspired to put more money into local tech companies.

The entrepreneurs would also be inspired to create more. Just by rubbing together, they might create more of a fire for innovation, attracting more talent and money to the region, Schriver said.

Here are some of the other findings from the survey:

Two-thirds of the respondents said they saw taxes and regulations as the greatest detriment to doing business in the region. As to the overall cost of doing business, the rankings were primarily neutral, skewing slightly negative.

Businesses gave high rankings to the access to universities and technology and to the quality of the region's workforce, with only a handful having a negative view. "I would love to see the students coming out of universities have better business skills. Many lack the simplest things, like communication and follow-up," said Brandon Rost, chief executive of beMarketing, a digital marketing company in Blue Bell.

The region also got high marks for its transportation system and the quality of public and private education available at the kindergarten through high school levels.

Even though in their comments executives asked for more connections and more technical advice, in the survey section they said the ability to get that advice was a positive aspect of doing business in the region.

Asked about their greatest strengths as CEOs, the majority said they excelled at "vision," with a knack for "sales and marketing" coming in second. Only a handful gave themselves high marks for "product innovation," hiring and managing," and "financial strategies."

Their challenges? Hiring and managing topped the list as the toughest part of the job.

Join The Wharton Small Business Development Center at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Entrepreneurs' Forum of Greater Philadelphia, and Philadelphia Media Network, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com, for the annual Philadelphia 100 Awards and dinner, recognizing the region's 100 fastest-growing privately held companies.

Winners* will be profiled in a special editorial section of the Philadelphia Inquirer, to be distributed at the event and inserted in the Sunday Inquirer on Sunday, October 29.

When: Thursday, October 26, 5:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

Where: Crystal Tea Room, 100 E. Penn Square, Philadelphia, PA 19107

Underground parking with entrance on Juniper Street
Shondell Revell poses for a photo in his office on the tenth floor of the Philadelphia Municipal Building located in Center City. Read more

In June, I wrote about the need to hold Philadelphia's well-meaning but rarely scrutinized anti-violence programs accountable.

Since then, 100 people have been killed in the city. Philadelphia has lost 249 people to homicide so far this year; at least 999 have been shot, according to the latest figures from the Police Department.

[Explore our data on Philadelphia shooting victims]

Those victims include a 3-year-old who is fighting for his life after his 6-year-old brother fired a bullet into his head Saturday with a gun he found in the house, and a 15-year-old who was driven to the hospital by his mother Monday night after he was shot in a hand and knee. Between Friday and Monday, police reported 24 shooting victims in the city.

Something isn't right out there  and that includes some of the city's anti-violence programs, which have pocketed about $48 million in city, federal, and state funding to do the kind of preventative outreach that doesn't seem to be preventing much.

But how is that money being used?

The answer is: we don't know. How many people have these programs actually reached? How many high-risk teens did they connect with, and in what way? Did they provide students with mediation, mentoring, job opportunities? Have they done what they promised  what they're collecting fat checks for?

We should be absolutely clear where our money is going, because $13 million comes straight from the city.

If that sounds like a condemnation of the people leading the current evaluation at the newly formed Office of Violence Prevention, or of this administration, it's not.

I'm frustrated and disgusted at accountability that is years and administrations overdue.

After I first wrote about anti-violence programs' needing to prove their worth, a few ghosts from Philly's CYA past rattled their chains to say that lots of research has been done over the years to determine which programs work.

Maybe it has, maybe it hasn't. But Shondell Revell, the executive director of the violence prevention office, insists this kind of deep-dive accounting has never been done.

This I know for sure:

Violence consumes too many of our neighborhoods, so you'll have to excuse me if I'm in no mood to give anyone credit for some dusty research or report that hasn't translated in making our streets feel any safer.

Or if I'm more than a little impatient for this evaluation to be completed.

No sooner had I written that 999 people had been shot in the city so far in 2017 than Scott Charles, Temple University Hospital's trauma outreach coordinator, tweeted, "Sadly, I can report that we're over 1,000 shootings now."

By the time you read this, that number will be higher.

In the name of transparency, I pushed for a list of anti-violence programs getting funding, though the office is continuing to collect more data, and numbers are bound to change before it wraps up the evaluation next summer. The city initially identified $60 million in federal, state, and city funding spent across 10 departments yearly on direct, community-based prevention programs focused on gun violence. The amount is lower now, as the office digs deeper into the programs.

One of the office's next steps is to reach out to residents for their input. Run, don't walk, to those meetings, people. And if you can't get there, call Revell's office and tell him what you think is working and isn't.

Much of the funding goes to larger city agencies  the Department of Human Services, the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, Office of Criminal Justice  which I suppose makes sense, since they have the infrastructure to run multiple programs. But they also have the ability to make themselves look good on paper.

There are smaller programs and less-connected people who are doing solid grassroots work with little or no support. A good place to start is with the families of murder victims.

While I was writing this column, I received an all too familiar email from the Police Department. It contained a short, chilling message: "30 YEAR MALE VICTIM WAS SHOT MULTIPLE TIMES TO THE HEAD AND TORSOPRONOUNCED ON SCENENO ARRESTNO WEAPON RECOVERED."

We don't have any more time, or money, to waste.
Myeshia Johnson cries over the casket of her husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, who was killed in an ambush in Niger, upon his bodys arrival in Miami. Read more

Myeshia Johnson has a lot of questions  damn good questions, actually  about why her husband, U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson, a member of an elite Special Forces unit, and three of his American comrades were killed during a murky military mission in the central African nation of Niger this month.

"I don't know how he got killed, where he got killed, or anything," Johnson, who is six months pregnant with her late husband's child, said in a recent interview with ABC News. "I don't know that part. They never told me, and that's what I've been trying to find out since Day One, since Oct. 4."

What's appalling is that the powerful people who should be able to answer these simple questions seem completely clueless  and not just about what happened in the Nigerien town of Tongo Tongo on that fateful day. Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee and the most influential member of Congress on defense issues, said the Trump administration had given him few details about what happened in Niger, while other key senators  including Democrats Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Republican Lindsey Graham  made the more shocking admission that, in Graham's words, they "had no idea" that there are more than 800 U.S. troops in Niger. Late Monday afternoon, the nation's top uniformed officer, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held a muddled news conference that raised more questions about the deadly events of Oct. 4 than were answered and also failed to offer a rousing defense of this broader mission halfway around the world.

There's one question no one has adequately answered  the most important one of all.

Why are we in Niger?

More broadly, what is the explanation and the strategy behind the ever-expanding U.S. military presence in Africa, where an umbrella of American troops now spreads from parts of Somalia, a largely lawless nation that has famously caused America heartbreak, to Djibouti (where we have a large permanent base), Cameroon, and elsewhere, with a growing air force of drones that can spy on various African militias or villages or rain down weapons if need be  none of this debated by a largely in the dark American public, and none of this directly authorized by Congress, which is supposed to share in the power to wage war?

It's a serious, life-or-death question that calls for thoughtful answers from serious people  exactly what we've been lacking in the downward spiral of American discourse spinning out of control since the unfortunate events of 11/8/16. Instead, the nation has been insulted with the ugliest episode yet of the TV reality show emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, with President Trump and an appalling assist from his overrated-from-Day-One chief of staff, John Kelly, telling untruths and waging an unseemly public relations war against a gold star mother and her allies. Trump's predictable crudeness has made the Niger ambush the main story on cable TV news for nearly a week  but for all the wrong reasons. It's more a case of the narcissist Trump being Trump than clever diversionary tactics  and yet it does still manage to divert the real conversation we need to be having about American militarism in Africa.

That conversation should start with this: Under what authority are some 6,000 U.S. troops (a level of strength that America didn't hit in Vietnam until midway through the JFK administration) and our fleet of flying death robots now serving in Africa? The pat answer you'd get from the Pentagon and previously from the Obama administration (which carried out a good bit of our military expansion in Africa with little or no fanfare) and now the Trump administration would be the near-unanimous 2001 congressional authorization for use of military force that launched what used to be called "the war on terror" and is now increasingly called our "forever wars."

That resolution, of course, really addressed only the original al Qaeda group that was led by the wealthy Saudi Osama bin Laden, and that was well-organized and well-funded and that showed not only on 9/11 but in lesser operations like the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that it was a threat to Americans at home and abroad.

That was 16 years ago this autumn. Now, bin Laden is dead, with his original group barely existent, and it's been replaced by various coalitions of bad actors and wannabe warlords who seem a lot less capable of striking U.S. citizens  until we send them into their remote villages on our military missions. Though the 9/11 attacks certainly gave weight to the argument that some terror threats are serious enough to confront on foreign soil, the biggest danger in the 2010s seems to be U.S.-bred "lone wolves" who say they hate America because of the way we're engaged in this "forever war" with elements of Islam. Our never-ending conflict has screamed out for both honesty from our presidents  George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Trump  and an open, democratic debate, but we got neither.

Obama did publicly announce in 2013 that he was sending 100 U.S. troops to Niger. "This deployment will provide support for intelligence collection and will also facilitate intelligence sharing with French forces conducting operations in Mali, and with other partners in the region," he wrote in a vague letter to then-House Speaker John Boehner. Since then, no one seems to know when or why that troop deployment has increased a whopping eightfold.

In failing to address a militaristic U.S. policy that sees every problem around the globe as a nail to be pounded with an $800 Pentagon hammer, Obama passed the torch to the reckless Trump, who has given the generals carte blanche to expand both the front line and the deadliness of our tactics; the number of innocent civilians killed by the American military has skyrocketed since January, and an expanded role for the Pentagon  from sending more troops into the sinkhole that is Afghanistan to putting America's nuclear bombers on 24-hour alert for the first time since the end of the Cold War  has become a dominant theme of Trump's America.

And yet with all these operations all over the globe for so many years  longer than a typical high school sophomore has been alive  do we feel any safer? Has resentment over America's drone strikes from Africa to Pakistan and so many civilian deaths created more U.S.-hating terrorists than we intended to kill? And how can we afford this  Congress recently showered the Pentagon with a whopping $700 billion, more than even Trump had asked for  when our trains and our train tracks are constantly breaking down, ridiculous college costs are bankrupting our youth, and health care for the working class is treated like a luxury?

If and when the despicable widow-bashing ever stops and after the Pentagon gets its story straight about what happened in Tongo Tongo, Trump  or maybe Defense Secretary James Mattis, who comes off as a lot more trustworthy and honest  should go on national TV with a sweeping address that, while not compromising military tactics, should answer these three seemingly simple questions. Why are we in Niger? Why are we in Africa? Against which nations is the U.S. military  more than 16 years after the 9/11 attacks  still waging war against terrorism, and what are the strategy and perceived end dates of these conflicts?

Then that strategy needs to be written down in a new authorization for use of military force that needs to be sent to Congress and properly debated  not for a few hours but for several weeks, with committee hearings and expert testimony  and then voted up or down. Or, better yet, amended to an antiterrorism policy that actually makes sense, with more attention to diplomacy and fighting the causes of violence and anti-Americanism. That's the way the Founding Fathers envisioned it going down when it came to the United States fighting wars.

Though I've tried to ignore most of the back-and-forth, I was struck by Trump's apparent comment in his now infamous phone call with Myeshia Johnson, in which he apparently said her late husband "knew what he signed up for." Many said that was insensitive, but we're missing the broader point: La David Johnson didn't exactly know what he signed up for in Niger. None of us does. That needs to change right away.
The gatekeepers here wanted to shed, once and for all, the reputation of a tradition-steeped university that caters mainly to the preppy and the privileged. So they recruited from far more high schools, tapped the endowment for more financial aid and took more steps to welcome newcomers from poor and working-class homes.

They even began checking family finances before deciding whom to admit. The point was not to exclude those in need but, possibly, to boost their chances.

The result: In little more than a dozen years, Princeton University tripled the share of freshmen who qualify for federal Pell Grants to 22 percent this fall. The grants, targeting students from low-to-moderate-income families with significant financial need, are a key indicator of economic diversity. The Ivy League school's transformation reflects mounting pressure on top colleges, public and private, to provide more opportunity to communities where poverty is common and college degrees scarce.

"If we're going to be excellent, we're going to need to bring in talent from all backgrounds," Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber said. About a decade ago, he said, university leaders realized that "we can do a hell of a lot better." But he acknowledged there are limits to what Princeton can do.

"There are a lot of inequities in American society," Eisgruber said. "I don't think we're going to cure them all."

For the burgeoning population of students here from modest backgrounds, it still can be hard to fit in. Fedjounie Philippe, 19, a sophomore from Irvington, New Jersey, who goes by the nickname June, said she thinks about it "every second of every day" as a Haitian American immigrant whose mother did not go to college and whose father was murdered by a street gang.

"There are constant reminders that I have to forge a place for myself within a world that has been constructed for someone else," Philippe said.

One jarring example came as she worked a weekend late shift at the welcome desk of the Frist Campus Center. Philippe said she was stunned at closing time, 3 a.m., to see french fries, water cups and other garbage dumped by crowds who came to eat after getting drunk at eating-club parties on nearby Prospect Avenue. Those students, she said, seem to cruise through life with the easy knowledge that "someone here  the work staff  will clean up their mess."

But Philippe said she is determined to bring change to campus. She won a seat on the student senate last year with the campaign slogan "Shoot for the moon, vote for June!"

The quest for diversity has a long history at this school founded in Colonial America. Hurdles for Jewish and black students were torn down in the 1950s and '60s. Princeton started admitting women as undergraduates in 1969, going coed 23 years after its bicentennial.

In 2015 and 2016, as the Black Lives Matter movement swept campuses nationwide, the university confronted a sudden uproar over its racial climate when students protested how it honors the legacy of Woodrow Wilson.

The 28th U.S. president, also a pivotal Princeton president in the early 20th century, was a strong supporter of racial segregation. Some here wanted to strip his name from campus landmarks. Ultimately, Princeton decided to keep his name on a residential college and the School of Public and International Affairs but take other steps to encourage diversity and inclusion. This fall, a "portraiture nominations committee" is seeking ideas for new art to hang on walls dominated by images of long-dead white men.

Princeton has long faced another sort of image problem  the perception, fair or not, that it is not only elite but elitist. A school for the rich and well-heeled, with centuries of tradition and a surplus of collegiate Gothic ambiance. Nor is Princeton alone in that regard. Income diversity remains elusive in the upper echelons of colleges.

Among 150 top schools  those that U.S. News & World Report lists among the top 100 national universities and top 50 liberal-arts colleges  federal data shows that the median share of first-year students in 2015 who were Pell-eligible was 16 percent.

That was the percentage for Harvard and Brandeis universities in Massachusetts, as well as the University of Colorado at Boulder and Carleton College in Minnesota.

Washington and Lee University, a private college in Virginia, had the lowest share (6 percent), and the public University of California at Irvine the highest (41 percent).

Washington and Lee President Will Dudley said the university's share grew to 11 percent this fall, and he wants it to rise further. "We're moving in the right direction," he said. "I don't want to be a school that is near the bottom of the pack."

Nationwide, the share of first-time, full-time undergraduates who received the grants in 2015-2016 was 44 percent.

Pell Grants, worth up to $5,920 apiece this year, are the foundation of need-based financial aid. They are awarded through a formula that assesses family size, assets, income and other factors. Most go to students whose families make less than $50,000 a year, a range that spans deep poverty to moderate income.

The grants are an imperfect measure of diversity. Researchers say the Pell-eligible share of freshmen at some top schools rose at least a few percentage points in recent years because Congress expanded the maximum grant and because incomes fell in the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009.

In other words, a college might have changed nothing about its recruiting in that time and still looked a bit better. But it is clear the Pell share has become an influential metric in the Ivy League and beyond.

Within the past year, Princeton and dozens of other top schools have formed a group called the American Talent Initiative. Backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the initiative seeks to enroll 50,000 more high-achieving students with significant financial need at 270 selective colleges by 2025. That would be an increase of 12 percent.

Obstacles to that are formidable.

State flagships, long viewed as engines of social mobility, are walking a fiscal high wire as they seek to raise private money, keep in-state tuition affordable for the middle class and learn to live with much leaner state appropriations than in past eras. Many are recruiting more out-of-state students  who pay higher tuition  to help balance budgets. The Pell share of freshmen in 2015 at the University of Maryland was 14 percent. At the University of Virginia, it was 12 percent.

Greg Roberts, U-Va.'s dean of admission, called the statistic "misleading" because it does not take into account variations in wealth and income among states. U-Va., he said, is committed to "diversity in many forms."

Private colleges face their own constraints. They set aside seats for athletes and children of alumni, known as "legacies." They chase students with high SAT or ACT scores, despite evidence that performance on admission tests is linked to family income. They rely heavily on tuition revenue, making it essential to enroll a large number of students who pay in full.

"The private elite colleges send often-unintentional signals that they prefer students who can pay the freight over those who cannot," said Harold Levy, executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which gives scholarships to talented students with financial need. Among those signals, he said, are daunting application fees, hard-to-find provisions for fee waivers and confusing descriptions of financial aid. "There is no reason that all colleges can't make greater efforts" to admit top students with major financial need  including Princeton, he said.

With a $22 billion endowment, Princeton can afford what most colleges can't: It meets full financial need without asking students to take out loans. Sixty percent of its 5,200 undergraduates receive grants from the university that reduce the sticker price of about $63,000 for tuition, fees, room and board.

The university launched the all-grant, no-loan financial-aid policy in 2001  a potentially powerful lure for families worried about student debt. But officials realized a few years later it was not enough. The Pell-eligible share of freshmen in 2004 was 7 percent. That was barely more than half the alumni-legacy share of 13 percent.

To reach low-income communities, the university had to rethink recruiting and admissions. It teamed with nonprofit groups that specialize in connecting schools with disadvantaged students. It pushed to find new sources of potential students. The number of schools represented in the 2017 applicant pool reached 10,288  up one-third over eight years.

Janet Rapelye, dean of admission, said officers also were trained to hunt for talent in "much less polished" application files  those with essays that are not quite perfect, test scores obtained without help from private tutoring, or hastily written teacher recommendations.

By 2013, the Pell-eligible share had doubled to nearly 15 percent. For the next year's class, Rapelye took another step: She asked Princeton's financial aid office to advise which promising applicants were likely to qualify for Pell. She noted that data in their files before making final decisions.

"It doesn't mean that we automatically admit these students," Rapelye said. But Pell eligibility became another factor among many in the "holistic" review of an application at one of the world's most selective schools. Princeton's admission rate is 6 percent.

That was a significant shift for a university that depicts its admissions process as "need-blind." Eisgruber sought to clarify: "What we really want to say is, we're never going to hold your financial need against you."

The result is a demographic revolution, with unprecedented numbers of students from modest circumstances becoming Princetonians. Sometimes, they find it challenging to navigate the campus culture.

Many fret about whether to join one of Princeton's famed eating clubs, with names such as the Ivy Club, the Cottage Club and the Tiger Inn. Some are selective and charge fees that give low-income students pause, although financial aid covers part of the bills. Josh Gardner, 18, a sophomore, said he notices wealthier students gravitate to certain clubs. Anxieties over the social scene, he said, add to already intense academic pressures.

"This is a big adjustment, coming here," Gardner said.

The university has gone to great lengths to make first-generation and low-income students feel at home. Many come to campus for seven weeks in the summer before freshman year to get a head start on academic work and social life. Some receive $500 "move-in" grants to help with initial expenses. There are also mentoring programs and even subsidized excursions.

Gardner marveled that he spent spring break on a low-cost trip to Disney World and Daytona Beach, Florida. Raised by his grandparents in a Philadelphia suburb, Gardner said he had never been south of Cape May in New Jersey. Then he got aid for a summer study abroad trip to China, trekking from Beijing to the Gobi Desert. "I never thought I'd get to experience that," he said.
Next month, Philly will get a sneak peak at a locally shot horror film dubbed American Exorcist that features a cameo by everyone's favorite former local weatherman: John Bolaris.

Written and directed by South Fellini cofounders Tony Trov and Johnny Zito, the movie follows Georgette Dubois (actress Falon Joslyn), a paranormal investigator hired to debunk a series of supernatural events on the 11th floor of a fictional Philly skyscraper called the American Building. Once she arrives, Dubois finds herself subjected to "genuinely ghoulish horrors" while trapped high above the city.

A followup to Trov and Zito's 2013 horror flick Alpha Girls, American Exorcist is more of a "psychedelic Italian horror" film than traditional scary movie, as Trov describes it. The film is also "stocked full of practical camera effects," Trov says, so expect plenty of blood and general weirdness.

Filmed in 2015 after a successful $15,000 Kickstarter campaign, American Exorcist only recently got a distribution deal via Gravitas Ventures. The film isn't scheduled for release until next year, but Philly will get a screening Nov. 5 at the Trocadero  the first public screening of it anywhere. Tickets for the 18-plus screenings are currently available for $10 online and at the South Fellini storefront in East Passyunk.

In the flick, Bolaris plays Ian Cunningham, a character Trov describes as "a Bill O'Reilly type who questions science and believes in dark magic." In 2015, Bolaris told the Philadelphia Daily News that Cunningham is a "condescending, obnoxious, high-and-mighty newsman" who interviews Dubois about her investigation.

"Working with John was great," Trov says. "Someone should give him his own talk show."

The ex-weatherman, however, isn't the only celeb providing some star power. Bill Moseley, known for his role as the terrifying Otis B. Driftwood in Rob Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, appears as a mysterious character known as Mr. Snowfeather. As Moseley told horror mag Fangoria in 2015, Snowfeather is "the maintenance man in the building where our heroine goes to do some ghostbusting."

Trov and Zito filmed American Exorcist entirely in Philadelphia, but primarily used the former Family Court building at 34 S. 11th St. in Center City to serve as the set of interior of the American Building. The old Inquirer Building on North Broad, meanwhile, provides exteriors.

Philadelphians can also look forward to shots inside City Hall, as well as footage taken inside what Trov calls "an actual haunted rowhome in South Philly." Nearly the entire production, though, is chronicled on the American Exorcist Instagram page.

"This is our first event for it instead of a film festival, and truly the first eyes on the project," Trov says. "Which is scary and exciting for us, since pretty much less than a dozen people have seen the completed project."
BEIJING  China's Communist Party formally elevated President Xi Jinping to the same status as party legends Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping on Tuesday, writing his name into its constitution and setting the nation's leader up for an extended stay in power.

The move will make Xi the most powerful Chinese leader in decades, with ambitions to tighten party control over society and make his country a superpower on the world stage.

The unanimous vote to enshrine "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in a New Era" in the constitution came on the final day of the week-long 19th Party Congress, a gathering of the party elite held once every five years in the imposing and cavernous Great Hall of the People on the western side of Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

There is no Little Red Book of pithy quotations as there was under Mao, but instead a mightier, drier tome of his speeches on "The Governance of China." Nevertheless, Xi's ideas will now become compulsory learning for Chinese students from primary schools through universities.

On Wednesday, more evidence of Xi's power will emerge when he introduces the other members of the Communist Party's top leadership, the Politburo Standing Committee, to the media. Experts say it is unlikely that a clear successor will emerge or be anointed, leaving Xi's preeminent position free of an obvious challenge.

The Party Congress effectively marks the start of Xi's second five-year-term as party general secretary. But the chances are now higher that this will not be his last  or at least that he will remain the most powerful person in China beyond 2022.

"The amendment of the party constitution effectively confirms Xi Jinping's aspiration to be the Mao Zedong of the 21st century  that means a top leader with no constraints on tenure or retirement age," said Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a political expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The inclusion of Xi's name in the party's document makes him only the third Chinese leader to be so honored, with his ideology joining Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory as a "guide to action."

China's Communist Party imposed a system of collective leadership after the death of Mao. It was a party scarred by the madness, cruelty and famine that one man had imposed through disastrous policies, notably the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

As a result, Xi's two predecessors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, ruled through consensus  as the "first among equals" at the top of the ladder  and were limited to two terms in power.

Now the party is moving back in the other direction.

Xi's power is not unlimited, and many of his key policy measures reflect ideas adopted by the party before he took power. Yet the past week has seen an explosion of sycophancy toward China's leader, after his mammoth 3 1/2-hour speech kicked off proceedings last Wednesday. This is a personal style of rule, much like Vladimir Putin's in Russia.

Throughout the week, senior officials lined up, one after the other, to laud what they described as Xi's profound, courageous, thrilling, insightful masterpiece of a speech, that shone "the light of Marxist Truth" and moved some of them from the bottom of their hearts.

"In retrospect, it was an overwhelming assertion of authority to a degree unseen since Mao," said Francois Godement, director of the China-Asia program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Xi would still have to overcome significant obstacles if he wants to remain in power beyond the next party congress in 2022  including a convention that officials retire if they are 68 or older, said Yanmei Xie, a China policy expert at Gavekal Dragonomics in Beijing. By that time, Xi will be 69.

There had been speculation that Xi would break from previous practice by asking Wang Qishan, his right-hand man and powerful head of the anti-corruption authority, to stay on for another five years. Yet the 69-year-old Wang's name does not appear on a new list of Central Committee members, implying that the retirement convention remains in place, at least for now.

He would also have to amend the constitution if he wanted a third term as president  or appoint a loyal follower to the top job while retaining power behind the scenes, as Putin did in Russia in 2008.

Nevertheless, the fact that Xi's name figures in the constitution puts him on a par with the party's "immortals," Mao and Deng, who had no term limits and did not retire, said Xie.

And the drumbeat of propaganda about loyalty to his leadership  combined with the constant threat of an unforgiving anti-corruption campaign that has taken down several powerful rivals  makes it more difficult for anyone who dares challenge him.

"The introduction of Xi Thought makes the question of succession while Xi is alive a moot issue," said Bill Bishop, publisher of the Sinocism newsletter. "So long as Xi has not met Marx, he is the man with an eponymous theory in the party constitution, so no one will have more authority than him"  no matter what title Xi holds, Bishop said.

Xi Jinping Thought embodies several important principles, experts said: primarily that the party is in control of every aspect of life in China, from the economy to the Internet, from politics to culture and religion. The party must be more disciplined, and more responsive to people's needs, but its leadership must not be questioned.

Xi highlighted what he called the "principal contradiction" in modern China, between unbalanced and unequal development and "people's needs for a better life."

No more blind pursuit of economic growth at all costs, he implied, but a focus also on the issues that concern people the most, including the need to curb pollution and provide better education and health care.

Meanwhile, the market will continue to play an important role in the economy, but the role of the party, and key state-owned enterprises, will remain supreme.

But the other big message is that China is on a path to become a true global superpower  very much on its own terms.

"Under his reign, there is no more hope of convergence," said Godement. He referred to the idea that China would become more open, more ruled by law and more democratic as it became wealthier, that its interests and political system would ultimately converge with those of the West.

The idea of political reform in a Western sense is now firmly out the window: Indeed, Chinese state media no longer hides its contempt for the political and economic systems of the West.

China, Xi said last week, is "blazing a new trail" for other developing countries to follow.

Xi's message promotes a nationalist, assertive China, with a much stronger military, a country that he says will not threaten the world but will resolutely defend its interests.

"By the middle of this century or before, China aims to close the gap economically and militarily with the United States and become the ultimate arbiter in the Asia-Pacific region," Lam said.

If Mao's era was one of revolution and nation-building and Deng's was one of reform and opening that set China on the path to becoming a global economic power, Xi's era perhaps is one of control and nationalism, of realizing what he calls "the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation."

Deng's influence on the course of Chinese history was massive, but his power was wielded less explicitly, often from a position behind the scenes. As a result, his "theory on socialism with Chinese characteristics" was not formally incorporated into the party constitution until after his death.

Former leader Jiang's ideological contribution is recognized in the document as the "Theory of Three Represents," as is Hu's "Scientific Outlook on Development," but neither man is mentioned by name.
For the sprawling effort to restore Puerto Rico's crippled electrical grid, the territory's state-owned utility has turned to a two-year-old company from Montana that had just two full-time employees on the day Hurricane Maria made landfall.

The company, Whitefish Energy, said last week that it had signed a $300 million contract with the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority to repair and reconstruct large portions of the island's electrical infrastructure. The contract is the biggest yet issued in the troubled relief effort.

Whitefish said Monday that it has 280 workers in the territory, using linemen from across the country, most of them as subcontractors, and that the number grows on average from 10 to 20 people a day. It said it was close to completing infrastructure work that will energize some of the key industrial facilities that are critical to restarting the local economy.

The power authority, also known as PREPA, opted to hire Whitefish rather than activate the "mutual aid" arrangements it has with other utilities. For many years, such agreements have helped U.S. utilities  including those in Florida and Texas recently  to recover quickly after natural disasters.

The unusual decision to instead hire a tiny for-profit company is drawing scrutiny from Congress and comes amid concerns about bankrupt Puerto Rico's spending as it seeks to provide relief to its 3.4 million residents, the great majority of whom remain without power a month after the storm.

"The fact that there are so many utilities with experience in this and a huge track record of helping each other out, it is at least odd why [the utility] would go to Whitefish," said Susan Tierney, a former senior official at the Energy Department and state regulatory agencies. "I'm scratching my head wondering how it all adds up."

PREPA's executive director, Ricardo Ramos, and a spokesman did not respond to emails asking why the utility didn't activate the mutual-aid network. On a tour of the idled Palo Seco power plant, Ramos told reporters that Whitefish was the first company "available to arrive, and they were the ones that first accepted terms and conditions for PREPA."

Ramos said that the utility is "completely content" with the work Whitefish is doing. "The doubts that have been raised about Whitefish, from my point of view, are completely unfounded," he added, saying that concerns about Whitefish were probably spread by jealous competitors.

Whitefish officials have said that the company's expertise in mountainous areas makes it well suited for the work and that it jumped at the chance when other firms were hesitating over concerns about payment. The company acknowledges it had only two full-time employees when Maria struck but says its business model calls for ramping up rapidly by hiring workers on short-term contracts.

Spokesman Chris Chiames dismissed criticism about the company's qualifications. "We are taking personal risks and business risks working in perilous physical and financial conditions," Chiames said. "So the carping by others is unfounded, and we stand by our work and our commitment to the people of Puerto Rico."

Whitefish Energy is based in Whitefish, Montona, the home town of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. Its chief executive, Andy Techmanski, and Zinke acknowledge knowing one another  but only, Zinke's office said in an email, because Whitefish is a small town where "everybody knows everybody." One of Zinke's sons "joined a friend who worked a summer job" at one of Techmanski's construction sites, the email said. Whitefish said he worked as a "flagger."

Zinke's office said he had no role in Whitefish securing the contract for work in Puerto Rico. Techmanski also said Zinke was not involved.

Techmanski said in an interview that the contract emerged from discussions between his company and the utility rather than from a formal bidding process. He said he had been in contact with the utility two weeks before Maria "discussing the 'what if' scenarios" of hurricane recovery. In the days after the hurricane, he said, "it started to make sense that there was a need here for our services and others."

On Thursday, Techmanski told CNN simply: "We called each other."

The scale of the disaster in Puerto Rico is far larger than anything Whitefish has handled. The company has won two contracts from the Energy Department, including $172,000 to replace a metal pole structure and splice in 3 miles of new conductor and overhead ground wire in Arizona.

Shortly before Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, Whitefish landed its largest federal contract, a $1.3 million deal to replace and upgrade parts of a 4.8-mile transmission line in Arizona. The company  which was listed in procurement documents as having annual revenue of $1 million  was given 11 months to complete the work, records show.

Puerto Rico has 2,400 miles of transmission lines across the island, and 30,000 miles of distribution lines with 300 substations. Jeff Hawk, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' power restoration task force, estimated that 80 percent of the grid has been damaged. A month after the storm, about 80 percent of customers remain without power.

With the entire Puerto Rican commonwealth in bankruptcy, and the utility itself in default on $9 billion in debt, spending for the recovery is drawing scrutiny from the Trump administration and Congress. Gov. Ricardo Rossello and Jose Carrion, chairman of the federal oversight board created to resolve the island's long-running financial crisis, were summoned to Washington last week for a meeting with the Office of Management and Budget.

The House Committee on Natural Resources is examining Whitefish's role in Puerto Rico, said Parish Braden, a spokesman for the committee. The hiring of the little-known company has been noted by the trade publications Utility Dive and E&E News.

"The size and unknown details of this contract raises numerous questions," Braden said. "This is one of many things the committee is taking a close look at as it continues to work with the resident commissioner, governor's office, and oversight board to ensure Puerto Rico's recovery is robust, effective and sustained."

Rossello said Wednesday that the island would spend $490 million on the initial phase of repairing the commonwealth's grid, adding that "a large portion of that would probably go to Whitefish" and another contractor. The utility gave Whitefish a $3.7 million initial payment for "mobilization of personnel and equipment," the contract says. Whitefish could be paid as much as $300 million for up to two years of work.

Under the contract, the hourly rate was set at $330 for a site supervisor, and at $227.88 for a "journeyman lineman." The cost for subcontractors, which make up the bulk of Whitefish's workforce, is $462 per hour for a supervisor and $319.04 for a lineman. Whitefish also charges nightly accommodation fees of $332 per worker and almost $80 per day for food.

Only eight contracts larger than $20 million have been approved for Puerto Rico by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, with half of those for shipments of food and bottled water. Whitefish's contract surpasses the $240 million contract the Army Corps awarded to engineering giant Fluor to "augment ongoing efforts" to repair the power grid.

The commonwealth, strapped for funds before Hurricane Maria hit, is expected to run out of cash as early as the end of the month, according to people familiar with the island's finances. And even if the Senate and the president approve the House's $4.9 billion aid package for Puerto Rico, the island might need more money in as little as three months.

PREPA did not reach its agreement with Whitefish until Sept. 26, six days after the storm swept through. By comparison, the Florida utility FPL requested mutual aid before Hurricane Irma hit. The result was an army of nearly 20,000 restoration workers, including FPL employees, from 30 states and Canada at work on the first day.

On Oct. 1, FPL had teams assembled to assess damage in Puerto Rico. It posted notices in Spanish and English on its Facebook page: "FPL is ready to help Puerto Rico." Florida Gov. Rick Scott mentioned the offer in a news release.

The Florida utility says it never received a reply. The Puerto Rican utility has not replied to offers of assistance from mutual-aid partners, according to the American Public Power Association, which coordinates such operations.

Techmanski called the damage in Puerto Rico "among the worst that I have ever seen" in more than 20 years of work rebuilding power lines after storms. According to his LinkedIn page, Techmanski has held leadership roles in utility service companies based in Vancouver, Texas and California.

"It will take months, if not years, to repair the entire grid to full operational status," he said.

NBC Montana quoted Techmanski in a report Oct. 1 as saying he had asked Zinke for help in getting personnel and equipment to the territory. Chiames, the Whitefish spokesman, confirmed that "Once the company got the go-ahead from PREPA on September 26 to begin work, company executives did reach out to contacts in case they could help expedite getting qualified linesmen to the island."

Zinke's office said: "The Secretary always politely listens when citizens and the small business community approach him with concerns and ideas. Neither the Secretary nor anyone in his office have taken any meetings or action on behalf of this company."

Whitefish's Twitter feed features videos of workers dangling from helicopters and describes its progress but also suggests the work has been challenging.

In one post, a team was reported to have set up six concrete poles, but had "all day issues with material." A crane showed up "broke and we had to fix it." Equipment in a warehouse had rusted. Narrow roads were cited as a safety concern, as were "very large termite nests."

Techmanski said that Whitefish was focusing on fixing key transmission lines and was using helicopters and cranes to reach them. "Once we complete those, the effort's going to move on to other transmission and distribution systems," he said. "So we're just ramping up and providing as many people as we possibly can."

Kent McNellie, an investment professional at HBC, the Texas investment firm that is now the largest financier of Whitefish, said the company's experience reconstructing a one-mile power line destroyed in a wildfire in Washington state was more relevant to Puerto Rico's needs than is the experience of many companies on the mainland. The span in Washington included an elevation change of about 5,000 feet, and the terrain required crews and equipment to be delivered by helicopter.

"Most guys go up in a 30-foot bucket truck, and they can do that from Texas to New York, but you don't need an army of bucket trucks," McNellie said. "Andy realized you had a transmission problem and that requires 90-foot buckets, 100-foot ladders and helicopters  that's not the typical crew you can get through mutual aid."

Even before the storm swept through Puerto Rico, years of neglect and mismanagement had degraded the territory's electrical grid so badly it was "literally falling apart," according to a consultant's report prepared for the Puerto Rico Energy Commission.

Nonetheless, Rossello said recently that 95 percent of the power would be restored by Christmas.

Techmanski is doubtful.

"I don't know where he got that and what information he was using," he said. "Without doing a full assessment countrywide, I couldn't fathom how many months, if it's going to be two months, three months, five months. . . . We've been focused in the small areas that we've been working."
These are the winning designs for U.S. Mints breast cancer awareness commemorative coins Read more

The U.S. Mint on Monday unveiled the designs for a pink-ribbon product unlike any seen before: a $5 gold coin made with a pink-hued alloy.

When the breast cancer awareness collectible currency set goes on sale next year, buyers also will be able to purchase a $1 silver coin and a half-dollar metal-clad coin.

The obverse, or "heads" side, features two women, one wearing a scarf and raising a fist, the other with her hands folded on her chest "and a relieved expression on her face," according to the Mint's news release. Above the women, as well as on the reverse, a butterfly floats as "a symbol of hope."

Commemorative coin programs are created by acts of Congress to honor a person, place, or event. The breast cancer coins also will raise money for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, a nonprofit based in New York City. A $35 surcharge on each $5 coin is earmarked for the foundation, which was created by Evelyn Lauder, who was a breast cancer survivor, daughter-in-law of cosmetics magnate Estee Lauder, and inventor of the Pink Ribbon campaign.

"More than just a beautiful reminder of the fight, the coin will directly contribute to research  the kind that has decreased mortality rates by 38 percent over the last 25 years," foundation president Myra Biblowit and U.S. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D., N.Y.), a co-sponsor of the breast cancer coin law, wrote Monday on MarieClaire.com.

Last year, the Mint, with a facility on Independence Mall, announced a competition to design the coins. The winner was Emily Damstra, a freelance illustrator whose art appears at museums and zoos and in many publications, the Mint said.

Although Breast Cancer Awareness Month promotions and races have raised billions of dollars for research and charitable programs, some women's health activists are critical of what they see as a lack of financial transparency and the less-than-healthy products that profit from tie-ins.

One longtime critic, Breast Cancer Action, a California-based education and advocacy organization, this year launched a "Knot Our Pink Ribbon" campaign, urging people to "join us in calling out Estee Lauder for their role in launching the breast cancer industry."

The Mint's collectible coins are part of that industry, Breast Cancer Action executive director Karuna Jaggar said Monday.

"Breast cancer remains an urgent public health crisis and social justice issue. It's hard to see how a pink coin contributes to the systemic change needed to address the breast cancer epidemic," Jaggar said in a email. "After 25 years of pink ribbons, we have too little to show for the billions of dollars spent on pink ribbon products, promotions, and publicity stunts."
SJ Magazine, a Maple Shade-based publication owned by women, has canceled an upcoming event on "women's empowerment" following an online backlash over the panel's all-male makeup.

"As a women-owned business, women's empowerment has always been part of our mission statement," the magazine said in canceling the event. "We believe it is helpful when everyone is part of the conversation on women's empowerment and feminism."

The panel, titled "Women in Business: A Man's Point of View," was scheduled to take place Nov 6. and feature ESPN's Sal Paolantonio, Rowan University president Ali A. Houshmand, Virtua president and CEO Richard Miller, and Assembly Majority Leader Louis D. Greenwald (D., Camden).

"I'm still trying to wrap my head around how anyone could possibly think this up," wrote Politico New Jersey bureau chief Ryan Hutchins. Greenwald announced he was pulling out of the event before the magazine canceled it.

"I was asked to participate on a panel for an issue I care deeply about. As a son watching my mother break the glass ceiling in politics and as a father of 2 daughters, I have a passion for the pursuit of equality," Greenwald tweeted Monday night. "In light of a full understanding of the composition of this panel, I will be withdrawing from participating and offering my seat instead to someone who can bring a more diverse and inclusive point of view to this critical issue."

The criticism of the event, which was first promoted on Twitter by SJ Magazine on Monday, was swift and intense, especially after the magazine insisted "no mansplaining allowed" in a subsequent tweet.

"Because the man's point of view is so rarely voiced?" tweeted Karen Kessler, a prominent crisis manager based in Warren, N.J.

The criticism was widespread, with the actress Alyssa Milano and comedian Aparna Nancherla among those throwing shade at the magazine's decision to have four men discuss female empowerment.

SJ Magazine publisher and editor-in-chief Marianne Aleardi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last November, the magazine invited four men to talk about sexism, promoting equality at workplaces, and what happens when women cry at work, among other topics. The magazine acknowledged the event was a gamble.

"We tried something different this year  gathering a panel of men to talk to an audience of women about women in business," the magazine said. "It was a risk. We had no idea what would happen. But in the end, the night was extraordinary. Four successful men were open, honest and direct as they discussed their experiences with women in the workforce."

The four men were 6abc anchor Rick Williams, Atlantic City Electric president Vincent Maione, Cooper University Health Care senior executive vice president Anthony Mazzarelli, and TD Bank South Jersey market president Rob Curley.

"I think women have been conditioned to accept inappropriate or off-color comments," Maione said when asked about witnessing sexism. "They don't want to be that person who calls someone out, so they'll react how they think they're supposed to react. That signifies acceptance by all the males in that group, and then they just continue to do it. In that situation, whether you're male or female, if you're uncomfortable about what's going on, don't act like you're comfortable, because you will just continue to create the same environment."

The upcoming panel was scheduled to be SJ Magazine's third in a four-part series on women's empowerment. An event scheduled for Dec. 4 titled "Success Stories: Taking Charge Without Wearing a Suit and Tie" features an all-female panel with TV health expert Jennifer Caudle, Cooper University Health Care senior vice president Terry Ricca, Samaritan Healthcare & Hospice president and CEO Mary Ann Boccolini, and Helaina Semmler, section chief of general radiology at South Jersey Radiology Associates.
Two top political strategists for U.S. Rep. Robert Brady (D., Pa.) on Tuesday became the latest targets in a widening federal probe of $90,000 the congressman paid a 2012 primary challenger to drop out of the race.

Federal prosecutors accused Ken Smukler, 57, and Donald "D.A." Jones, 62, of making illegal campaign contributions on behalf of their boss and conspiring to hide the money in the campaign finance reports of his rival, former Municipal Court Judge Jimmie Moore.

Tuesday's indictment moved the focus of the months-old investigation away from Moore's own failure to accurately report the source of money to one that implicated members of Brady's camp in a larger alleged conspiracy and cover-up.

Prosecutors offered no indication of whether they intend to charge Brady, one of the city's most powerful Democrats, with a crime.

"The congressman is not charged," said Brady's lawyer, James Eisenhower. "He's done nothing wrong. He has acknowledged that he agreed to help Moore relieve his campaign debts  and there's nothing wrong with that."

Smukler and Davis vowed Tuesday to fight the charges against them. In doing so, they bucked a trend started by Moore and his former campaign manager and ex-fiancee, Carolyn Cavaness, both of whom agreed earlier this year to plead guilty and cooperate with investigators before they were charged in the case.

"The government's effort to demonize . Mr. Smukler sadly reflects a lack of understanding of [his] integrity and his character," his lawyer, Brian McMonagle, said in a statement. "Mr. Smukler has never and would never engage in criminal conduct."

Jones' lawyer, Robert Trimble, also rejected the government's claims about his client. "Mr. Jones has, from the initial contact from FBI agents and the government, maintained his innocence through all this," Trimble said Tuesday. "He has done nothing illegal."

The 18-page indictment charged the two men with five criminal counts each  conspiracy, making an illegal campaign donation, and three counts of false campaign-finance reports. Jones faces a sixth count of making false statements to the FBI during the investigation.

Their roles as potential targets of the probe had been telegraphed when the case emerged into public view this summer. Earlier this year, federal agents searched Smukler's Villanova home, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Since then, defense lawyers have scrambled to convince the Justice Department that there is no evidence of crime. Brady's team is hoping to forestall an indictment and the high-profile and politically damaging court battle that surely would follow.

Jones, of Willingboro, is known in Philadelphia political circles as a low-key technocrat, experienced in get-out-the-vote efforts. He has worked for candidates including former City Controller Jonathan Saidel and Sheriff Jewell Williams in recent years.

Smukler, a more gregarious operative and specialist in communications strategies, gained some prominence in 1987, serving as press secretary to Mayor W. Wilson Goode Sr.'s 1987 re-election campaign. His clients since then have ranged from U.S. Rep. Marjorie Margolies to ex-Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane.

But Smukler is best known for his work with Brady  both in the congressman's campaigns and in his three-decade leadership of the city's Democratic Party.

According to his indictment, Smukler orchestrated how Brady's $90,000 payment to Moore would be hidden.

Moore told a federal judge at a court hearing this month that he and the congressman had hatched a plan to conceal the source and reasons for the payment on Moore's campaign filings.

The money was meant to cover debts Moore incurred during his short-lived race  including more than $80,000 the former judge had personally loaned his own campaign, Moore said.

Because federal campaign contribution limits at the time capped the amount that one candidate could give another campaign at $2,000 for a primary election, Smukler and Jones funneled the money from Brady's campaign coffers to Moore's by routing it through their companies, according to Tuesday's indictment.

Prosecutors say Smukler instructed Cavaness to set up another consulting firm solely to receive the funds from Brady's war chest. When FBI agents grilled Jones about his payments to Cavaness in May  five years after the payments  Jones lied, the indictment says.

Although some of the money went toward paying off Moore's debts, he and Cavaness spent most of it on themselves, the indictment says. None of it showed up on Moore's campaign finance filings, although the outgoing payments to Smukler and Jones were reported on Brady's filings.

Brady and Smukler have maintained that the money they paid Cavaness and Moore was meant to obtain exclusive rights to polling data the judge had commissioned before dropping out of the race.

Federal Election Commission guidelines classify money paid for polling data from a defunct campaign as a campaign-to-campaign contribution subject to donation limits.

Contacted early Tuesday before the indictment had been publicly filed, Brady, en route to Washington, stood up for Smukler.

"I hope not," he said of the prospect of charges. "He didn't do nothing wrong. I don't know what this is all about."
Chance, the Philadelphia Fire Department's arson dog, is retiring after more than six years on the job.

Officially known as an accelerant-detecting canine, Chance, a black lab, responded to about 900 fires during his career and searched for substances including kerosene, diesel fuel, gasoline, charcoal lighter fluid, and lamp oil at two-thirds of them, the department said.

"He has a great nose," said his handler, Lt. George Werez. "He's a great asset  he really is."

"Lt. Werez and Chance have proven to be an excellent team," said Deputy Chief Harry Bannan. "They've been requested not only by the ATF for duties outside of Philadelphia, but by many other local police and fire departments."

Chance, who will soon turn 9, will continue to live with Werez as well as his replacement, a dog with which the lieutenant will soon begin six weeks of training in Virginia.
A lawsuit filed Monday attempts to block Gov. Wolfs plan to borrow $1.25 billion against future PLCB profits to help fill a $2 billion budget gap. Read more

Gov. Wolf's plan to borrow $1.25 billion against future profits of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board to help fill a gaping $2 billion budget gap for fiscal 2017-18 faces a court challenge.

A petition for a temporary preliminary injunction was filed Monday in Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania by Matthew J. Brouillette, president and chief executive of the Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs; Rep. Jim Christiana (R., Beaver), and Harrisburg-area small businessman Ben Lewis.

The petition said Wolf's borrowing, including loans from the state treasury, violated the Pennsylvania Constitution.

"Our constitution requires that the commonwealth's budget be balanced, meaning that expenditures cannot exceed revenues, and that money only be borrowed in the name of the people of Pennsylvania with the explicit consent of their General Assembly," the petition said.

The Wolf administration, which had no comment, has said the PLCB has the authority to borrow the $1.25 billion because of the board's ability to enter into contracts.
To hear Ken Smukler tell it, his three-decade career in politics started with a conversation overheard in a bar.

Smukler was bored with his job as a municipal lawyer in Philadelphia in 1987 when he heard Larry Ceisler, who went on to run his own public relations firm, talking at Carolina's, at the time a popular pub near Rittenhouse Square. Ceisler was talking about landing a job with then-Mayor W. Wilson Goode Sr.'s reelection campaign.

Smukler told the Daily News in 2012 that it was "like a lightbulb went off." He would leave behind the law books to take a job as press secretary for Goode's successful bid for a second term.

He managed Marjorie Margolies' successful bid for the U.S. House in 1992 and her failed bid to retake that seat in 2014. He has also worked for former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane.

But he is best known for his role as chief political aide to U.S. Rep. Robert Brady, the veteran political warrior who has been chairman of the Democratic City Committee since 1986.

Smukler, 57, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a law degree from Dickinson, lives in Villanova with his wife and three teen daughters. Over three decades, he has built a career as a freelance political entrepreneur, mixing street savvy and a sophisticated grasp of electoral data with media flair.

He's extroverted, almost garrulous, with a love for the game that has at times landed him amid controversies. "He's always got some new great idea," a colleague said. "And it was always more the thrill of the chase than anything else."

Marc Stier, 62, who directs a nonprofit that studies Pennsylvania budget issues, hired Smukler as a consultant when he unsuccessfully ran in 2007 for city councilman at large.

Stier said Smukler has worked for other "progressive Democrats" and "does it cheap." He added: "I'm very sorry to see him in legal trouble."

When Kane was trapped by her own mistakes, cornered by prosecutors and increasingly politically isolated, she turned to Smukler for advice. Through advocacy and selective leaks, Smukler helped turn the narrative around for a time  selling Kane as the victim of a male, porn-obsessed establishment. In the end, Kane was convicted of perjury and forced to resign.

The 2014 Margolies campaign drew negative headlines after one of her opponents filed a complaint alleging she had illegally mixed primary and general election funds. During that race, the Inquirer reported that most of her campaign money was going to political consultants, including Smukler.

As federal election officials investigated the complaint, Margolies' campaign argued that it had paid Smukler early as an advance to secure his work in the general election campaign  but with the understanding that Smukler would refund the payments if she lost the primary. Smukler did end up refunding just under $229,000. Later, authorities dismissed the complaint.

Smukler has also earned money through his relationship with the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office, exploiting the legal requirement that the office buy advertisements about properties available in foreclosures. In 2011, Smukler founded Liberty City Press, a website and newspaper, as a vehicle for these lucrative ads. Its most recent issue included four pages of stories and eight pages of sheriff's notices.

The print publication is packaged as a insert with others such as the Philadelphia Gay News, the Philadelphia Sunday Sun, Al Dia, and the Metro Chinese Weekly. Officials say they want to inform a more diverse audience about coming sheriff's sales.

Smukler also formed a casino trade group nearly a decade ago that came under legislative scrutiny for whether it was actively lobbying for the industry without registering as a lobbyist. The group, the Pennsylvania Casino Association, represented SugarHouse in Philadelphia, Mount Airy Casino in the Poconos, and Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh.

Smukler's ventures have been eclectic. Recently, he was part of at least one group that vied unsuccessfully for a coveted medical-marijuana growing license this year for a facility in Erie.

On the political front, one firm Smukler founded, VoterLink Data Services, set up "hotlines" during the 2004, 2008, and 2012 presidential elections, working with media outlets like NBC and CNN to give voters information on where to cast their ballots and how to report Election Day problems.

He also provided advice on election hotlines during the 2016 presidential election for The Tom Joyner Morning Show, which pitches itself as the "nation's No. 1 urban morning show" on radio. For that show, Smukler also produced "The Smuk Report," in which he provided a snarky take on politics.

More recently, Smukler has been promoting a new company, called VoteCastr, to publicize projections of the outcome of presidential and Senate races in key states before the polls close. This challenges the convention under which news organizations have refrained from projecting outcomes so early, so as not to discourage voters.

Critics said the business would undermine democracy, but Smukler said it would strike a blow against the "media cartel."
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) admonished President Trump on Tuesday to stop interfering in the debate over tax legislation and said his volatility could lead the United States into war, prompting a slew of Twitter insults from the president and renewing a long-simmering feud just hours before he is scheduled to visit Capitol Hill.

"I would just like him to leave it to the professionals for a while and see if we can do something that's constructive," Corker said on ABC's Good Morning America, referring to the debate over restructuring the tax code. "If you start taking things off the table before you get started, you make it very difficult."

Trump, whose relationship with the senator has rapidly deteriorated in recent weeks, returned fire by insulting Corker on Twitter.

The feud lays bare tensions between Trump and congressional Republicans that are already complicating GOP efforts to advance tax cuts, the party's last-ditch attempt at a major policy accomplishment this year.

Trump has promised changes to the tax code will not affect tax-deferred retirement plans, the mortgage interest deduction or the deduction for charitable contributions. Republicans like Corker, one of Trump's most vocal GOP critics, say these promises raise expectations prematurely while making it more difficult for lawmakers to make up the revenue lost to tax cuts.

The strained relations between the president and Republican senators, which go far beyond Trump's fight with Corker, add uncertainty to the GOP's effort to cut taxes and enact other policy priorities.

Trump has sharply criticized Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for failing to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Republican senators have also thrown some rhetorical elbows at the president.

Corker's pointed comments came just ahead of Trump's planned visit to the Senate to address Republicans at their weekly policy luncheon.

In a round of interviews, he stood by his previous description of the White House as an "adult day-care center" and his comment that Trump's volatility could set the United States on a "path to World War III."

"I don't make comments I haven't thought about," the senator said on Good Morning America.

"The president continues to kneecap his diplomatic representative, the secretary of state, and really move him away from successful diplomatic negotiations [related to North Korea] . . . You're taking us on a path to combat," said Corker, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Asked whether he regrets supporting Trump, Corker told CNN he would not do it again.

"The president has great difficulty with the truth on many issues," he said. "He's proven himself unable to rise to the occasion."

On Twitter, Trump attacked Corker for helping former President Barack Obama "give us the bad Iran Deal," and said Corker changed his plans to run for reelection in 2018 after Trump declined to endorse him.

In reality, Corker organized opposition to the Iran deal and voted against it. The senator and his top aide have said Trump offered his support for Corker's reelection, and that after Corker announced he would retire after next year, Trump called asking him to reconsider and to run again.

"Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president," Corker tweeted Tuesday. He added the hashtag #AlertTheDaycareStaff, repeating an earlier description of Trump's White House.

While GOP aides and senators predicted Monday that Trump's visit would center mostly on the effort to rewrite the nation's tax laws, the broad array of topics on their mind, coupled with the president's penchant for suddenly veering from one subject to another, could open the door to an unpredictable afternoon.

"I want him to tell us to do our job," said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), a Trump ally who, like the president, has openly voiced his frustration that a handful of Republican senators sank the repeal-and-replace effort. He expected the president would argue that the tax- reform push is "bigger than tax," in that it marked a chance for Republicans to prove they can govern, among other things.

When Trump addresses the luncheon the Republican senators attend each Tuesday afternoon in a room near the Senate chamber, "it's important for him to convey to us the things that he thinks are priorities, and not only with respect to the tax bill, but some of the other things that we are currently working on," said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the third-ranking Republican senator.

One of the other issues Republicans are wrestling with is health-care reform. Trump's decision to end federal subsidies to help offset lower-income Americans' coverage costs led a bipartisan coalition of senators to offer a compromise bill that would authorize those funds. In exchange, states would have broader leeway in regulating coverage under the ACA.

Trump, who phoned Democratic and Republican lawmakers this month to push them to make a deal, has sent mixed signals on the plan, seeming to support it before backing away.

White House officials are urging Senate Republicans to move the bill to the right, by including provisions offering retroactive relief from the ACA's insurance mandates for individuals and certain employers, according to people briefed on the talks.

"The White House has the ball right now," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), the Republican who took the lead on negotiating the bipartisan package. "They've made some suggestions publicly about what they'd like to see in the bill. I'm for all of those things. The question is whether they can persuade Democratic senators to agree to that."

But Alexander, who said that an analysis of his plan by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could be released as early as Tuesday, wasn't expecting to hear Trump sketch out his latest thinking on the framework during lunch. In his view, that would be a good thing. "I'd like for the president to focus on tax reform," he said.

Others, however, were eager to hear Trump talk health care.

"I'd like to hear him reinforce the movement to get something done" on health care, said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who supports the deal Alexander reached with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

Looming over the luncheon are the mutual hostilities between Trump and Republican senators. On Twitter and in remarks before television cameras, Trump has slammed McConnell and attacked other senators.

GOP senators have also landed their own blows. McConnell, for instance, has said that Trump's limited experience in politics created "excessive expectations" for passing landmark legislation.

Until Tuesday morning, both sides had appeared determined to move past their differences and project more harmony. Trump and McConnell sat down for lunch at the White House last Monday and came out for a 40-minute joint news conference afterward.
Good afternoon, friends. President Trump is declaring a national emergency over the opioid crisis, everyone's glued to the president's latest Twitter feud and Paul Ryan is just trying to pass a bill. So, we're basically back in August 2017.

This newsletter covers President Trump and how his policies affect greater Philadelphia. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox, for free, every week. You can send suggestions/complaints/questions my way by email or on Twitter, and if you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend!

 Aubrey Whelan

Today, lets talk about national emergencies.

Whats at stake

President Trump is expected to deliver a major address on Thursday where he'll formally declare the opioid crisis a national emergency. Sharp-eyed readers of this newsletter will recall we wrote an almost identical sentence in August  after which Trump said he wouldn't declare a national emergency, then reversed himself a day later and said he would, then shelved the issue for two months.

In fairness, declaring a national emergency for an epidemic as complicated as the opioid crisis is, well, complicated: the federal government's emergency funding systems are usually applied to natural disasters and infectious diseases, ABC News reported this week, not chronic crises like addiction. (Also, Trump no longer has a candidate for drug czar.)

But in the meantime, in places like Philadelphia, on track for 1,200 overdose deaths this year, the conversation about how to save lives in an unprecedented crisis is light-years beyond the feds. And advocates are concerned about how this administration, in particular, will approach the epidemic.

"I don't know what direction the funding is going to go in  will it be warped by the beliefs from the war on drugs? It could go toward building more prisons," Jen Bowles, who has a doctorate in public health from Drexel and worked with women addicted to drugs in Philly for years, told me at a roundtable on the crisis Monday night. And Trump's sluggish response hasn't made her more optimistic: "I don't think it's on the forefront of his mind. Tens of thousands are dying  when will those folks mean something?"

The local angle

This is, unquestionably, an emergency, with overdose deaths across the country now topping the death toll at the height of the AIDS crisis. But with a president in office who campaigned on law-and-order rhetoric, advocates like Bowles are worried that officials like AG Jeff Sessions, who speaks about the heroin crisis almost exclusively in terms of gang violence and drug cartels, might use the emergency declaration to return to war on drugs-style tactics, pursuing low-level drug offenders and instituting harsh sentencing policies.

Advocates in Philly have a different idea, one that's rapidly gaining traction among city pols: safe injection sites. They're a controversial measure that didn't make it into the otherwise widely praised set of public health recommendations that Gov. Chris Christie's opioid task force put out earlier this year. (Christie, by the by, spent Monday denying reports that he'd said Trump was finished if he didn't do something about the heroin crisis.)

Safe injection sites, where people addicted to heroin can use drugs and access medical treatment and social services, are used in Canada and several other countries, and decades of evidence suggest they save lives, stop people from using in public, and help get more people into treatment. In Philly, Larry Krasner, the Democratic DA candidate, and two city council members have signed onto opening one here. The mayor's office is still weighing the decision. That said, there's no telling what, say, Jeff Sessions might do if Philly opened one.

At the roundtable on safe injection sites last night, though, Temple law professor Scott Burris made the case for just opening one, feds be damned. In the 1990s, he said, needle exchanges faced similar legal and political challenges, with detractors claiming they were facilitating drug use. "That didn't stop the city," Burris said  the Kensington needle exchange Prevention Point has been operating for 25 years, and is doing some of the most crucial work on the front lines of the crisis now.

Whats ahead

Philly is allowed to make its own decisions on what public health treatments work here, as long as they don't run afoul of existing law. The feds could argue that such sites aid and abet criminal activity. But, Burris argued, safe injection sites are treatment  and people have already purchased drugs by the time they arrive at there: "The crime's already over." The city, he says, should dare the federal government to shut down a safe-injection site.

"Jeff Sessions and the justice department is a little more scary," Burris said. But if the feds say they're committed to stopping the heroin epidemic, advocates in Philly think the city should call their bluff. "We have to have the courage to tell Sessions to bring it on," Burris said. "If he wants to shut down a lifesaving public health initiative  bring it on."

What theyre saying

"Can we do this on the cheap, or are we going to be serious about saving lives?" former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, a member of Christie's opioid commission, characterizing the debate within the commission about how to combat the heroin crisis.

"He was stumbling on my husband's name  that's what hurt me most. He's out there fighting for our country, why can't you remember his name?"  Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, on her conversation with President Trump after her husband's death.

"I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!"  President Trump, after Myeshia Johnson's interview aired Monday morning, marking a week since he touched off a controversy over calling Gold Star families in the first place.

In other news

Ivanka Trump went to Bucks County Monday to talk about her dad's tax plan (but not too many of the details), and your correspondent was there.

Steve Bannon's war on the GOP establishment might make its way to the Pennsylvania Congressional races, with a Senate hopeful trying to curry favor with the Breitbartian machine. He likely won't be the last.

Jeff Sessions spoke at a law enforcement conference in Philly and vowed to eradicate the MS-13 gang, which is not really a thing in Philly but has become a major priority for Session's DOJ.

What Im reading

GQ goes long on Chris Christie and the opioids commission.

A week after Pennsylvania Rep. Tom Marino had to withdraw his name from consideration for drug czar after an explosive report on his cozy relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, the New Yorker publishes a fascinating look at the Sackler family, whose Purdue Pharma developed Oxycontin and, many argue, sparked an epidemic.

Here is the saga of an inflatable rat shaped like President Trump that came to Philly and survived only a few hours on the mean streets Monday.

A non-political palate cleanser

Philly's fire department employs an ARSON DOG named CHANCE who has investigated 900 FIRES and this very good boy is retiring.
Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser to President Trump, speaking at the California Republican Convention in Anaheim last week. Read more

WASHINGTON  As Steve Bannon opens up his war on the Republican establishment, an unlikely Pennsylvanian appears ready to enlist.

Jeff Bartos, a Montgomery County businessman running an uphill Senate campaign, staked a claim to the antiestablishment mantle last week by writing that he "will not pledge" to support the GOP's Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, a figure of growing antipathy among Republican voters and particularly Trump supporters.

He posted the declaration on Breitbart, the right-wing news site where Bannon is executive chairman. Bartos had previously met twice with Bannon, the former chief strategist to President Trump, to discuss his campaign to win the GOP nomination to take on Democratic Sen. Bob Casey next year.

Bartos' move was surprising on several levels  not least because he donated $1,000 to McConnell's 2014 reelection campaign and because he has had close ties to the GOP elite. Bartos previously served on the board of a political committee run by Bob Asher, a prototypical Republican insider and fund-raiser who serves as Pennsylvania's national GOP committeeman, and has donated to many traditional Republicans, including Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey.

But with much of Pennsylvania's GOP establishment expected to line up behind U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta in the Senate primary next year, Bartos seems to be taking a page from Alabama's Roy Moore.

Moore upset party insiders and won a Republican primary last month in large part by casting McConnell as a villain who hasn't effectively helped the president. His campaign captured the fervor of Trump supporters  even though Trump supported his opponent  and drew backing from Bannon, who has declared war on McConnell and GOP incumbents in an escalating battle for the direction of the Republican Party.

"Obviously I would want Steve's support, but I want the support of a lot more people as well," Bartos said in an interview, confirming his meetings with Bannon, including one over the summer.

He described himself as "a political outsider running as a first-time candidate" and said, "I want support from anyone in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and I want support nationally from anyone who elects outsiders."

Bartos, of Lower Merion, personally knows at least one close Bannon adviser: Alexandra Preate, a Pennsylvania native who works as a Bannon public relations strategist. Her twin sister, Elizabeth Preate Havey, is the Republican chairwoman in Bartos' hometown. (Their father is former Pennsylvania Attorney General Ernie Preate.)

"Jeff is still gambling that he can get the rank and file to oppose" Barletta, said one Republican who is familiar with the political jockeying but who requested anonymity to describe the maneuvering. "He is playing up to Bannon and the Bannon people."

Barletta, however, has been one of Trump's most vocal allies. The president singled out Barletta and his Senate campaign at a rally this month near Harrisburg. It's unclear if Bannon has any interest in backing Bartos. A spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

And Bartos' opposition to McConnell wasn't exactly ironclad.

"Until the dysfunctional Senate leadership shows that they can deliver for the people who support the president's agenda, I will not pledge to vote for Mitch McConnell for Republican Leader," he wrote on Breitbart.

He did not, however, promise to vote against McConnell (despite a Breitbart headline suggesting otherwise), and his wording left room to eventually back the Senate leader.

Bartos said he might support McConnell if Congress advanced "meaningful" health-care reform, a tax overhaul, and a rules change that would help confirm Trump nominees by eliminating "blue slips" that effectively give home-state senators veto power over a president's choices.

But he said he has heard widespread disappointment with the Senate leader as he has traveled Pennsylvania.

"People were really excited about the president's reform agenda," Bartos said. "They're frustrated it's not being implemented quickly enough."

He disputed the idea that his links to the party's elite dent his outsider claims, noting that he is a businessman in his first-ever run for public office  a contrast he has used to attack both Casey and Barletta, who is now in his fourth term in Congress after serving as mayor of Hazleton.

"People genuinely gravitate to a candidate who's signed the front of a paycheck," Bartos said.

He wouldn't rule out one rumor that has gained steam in Republican circles: that he might shift races and run for lieutenant governor instead.

"I'm running hard for the United States Senate," Bartos said, but when pressed added, "You never rule out anything."

Even if he did change races, Bartos' stand against McConnell could ingratiate him with the Trump base, said Josh Novotney, a Republican consultant based in Philadelphia.

"If you don't have a voting record, you can define who you are pretty easily," he said.

Barletta's campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Bartos, or on whether he would support McConnell, whose approval rating has plunged, even among Republicans.

Normally, it would be political suicide to attack one of your own party's top officials. But these days, even insiders want outsider cred.
Prostheses are life-changing but sweat buildup in silicone liners can force some users to set them aside to cool down before sores develop. A Widener University researcher will study the effectiveness of a heat-absorbing liner marketed by the Ohio Willow Wood Company. CREDIT: Photo courtesy of WillowWood. Read more

A simple prosthesis allows hundreds of thousands of people with lower limb amputations to get around more easily. And a normal bodily function  sweat  can render the prosthetic limb useless.

The problem has been around for years, accompanying an advance in prosthetic materials technology: the use of silicone liners to create a tight, comfortable seal with a wearer's leg. But the seal is so good that sweat, the result of exercise and higher temperatures, has no place to go.

"So if people are out mowing the grass in the summer they will basically come in and take the prosthesis off and pour water out," said Jon Akins, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Widener University. Letting the sweat linger can cause painful sores and blisters, he said, rendering the prosthesis "essentially useless."

Akins will soon be enrolling participants in a clinical trial of a liner infused with what is known as a phase-change material. It absorbs heat in the process of changing from solid to liquid and releases it while changing back to solid later. The silicone liner works normally in both phases, Akins said, and controlling "the micro-climate within a prosthesis socket entails better skin and tissue health."

The study  funded by a $140,000 Department of Defense grant  is part of a $500,000 award to the University of Pittsburgh, which will lead the trial. The vast majority of lower limb amputations are the result of accidents such as motorcycle crashes and falls, and the study will enroll participants regardless of military service. Each site plans to enroll 25 participants in tests of silicone liners with and without the new material. All participants will use each kind of liner for six months and then switch, but they won't know which is which.

The Alpha SmartTemp Liner is already marketed by the Ohio Willow Wood Co., which Akins said had no role in funding the study. He said that Willow Wood had already shown that the liner can reduce temperatures but had not studied the benefits to users.

Participants at Widener and Pittsburgh will be given sensors to measure physical activity and will come in every six weeks to be tested on mobility and fill out questionnaires about the use of the prosthesis with the liner. Enrollment will begin in either January or July to ensure coverage of all seasons, since outdoor temperatures play a role in heat and perspiration. The study will also help determine the extent of the problem.

Akins studies human movement biomechanics and has been interested in helping amputees since childhood, when he watched his grandfather struggle with the results of diabetes. "He was never able to use his prosthesis due to limb healing problems," Akins said.
Republicans have had control of the Delaware County Courthouse in Media since voters opted for a charter form of government in the mid-1970s. Read more

The eye-catching video opens with "Deep in the backrooms" The lens takes us inside a building, through two sets of wood-paneled doors and into a room of six smug, middle-aged guys. As the deal is closed, cigars, whiskey, and backslapping abound.

A History Channel documentary on New York's legendary Boss Tweed? A dramatization of the Mafia's 1957 Apalachin conference in Upstate New York? Not quite. As we head into the fall election, it's a Delaware County Democratic Party television ad portraying business as usual on the all-Republican County Council.

Cinematography aside, the 31-second piece further represents that we live in an era when, in politics as in war, truth is the first casualty.

County council Democratic candidates Brian Zidek and Kevin Madden have built their campaign around the charge that incumbent Republican Dave White is "self-dealing" and has "used his political influence to line his own pockets." Their mailings show White standing on a stack of $100 bills with the accompanying caption stating, "Councilman Dave White has taken over $10 million in government contracts here in Delaware County  then voted to raise taxes."

Wow. A $49,875-a-year county salary parlayed into $10 million! Shall we just dispense with the niceties and appoint a special prosecutor?

Well, no. Perhaps a defamation case would be more in order.

The background is that White owns DWD, a heating/ventilation/air conditioning firm that in the past did business with Delaware County but that has not since he took office in 2012. He has done and continues to do contracting and subcontracting work with school districts and municipalities in Delaware County. The Democrats say that work amounts to $10 million.

"We haven't asserted that what he's doing is criminal or illegal, said Zidek, a lawyer and president of a New Jersey medical insurance company. "We haven't used the word crooked, but I do think what's going on is wrong."

So White is not a crook, even though they say he's taken $10 million, is self-dealing, and lining his pockets. Said Zidek, "The goal [of the fliers and television ad] isn't to hurt anybody. I think it's entirely fair. The point is, it's difficult to know what's going on in county government."

The Democrats' bag of tricks runs even deeper. Madden and Zidek insist that property taxes in Delaware County are 50 percent higher than in Montgomery County because the property tax rate in Delaware County is about 46 percent higher than it is in Montgomery. What they conveniently omit in this assertion is the other half of the property tax equation  the real estate tax base to which the rate is applied. Taxable real estate in Montgomery County amounts to $60 billion. In Delaware County, it's $31 billion. That means Delaware County would need a rate twice the size of Montgomery County's to raise the same amount in taxes.

This is basically middle school math, but Madden and Zidek don't get it, despite their ample financial backgrounds. Madden is a former partner in a private-equity firm. Zidek was educated in part at the London School of Economics and is a former bankruptcy attorney.

The numbers game continues in a Sept. 26 Delaware County Daily Times story in which the Zidek-Madden campaign is quoted as saying that White "has been busy collecting a seven-figure, taxpayer-funded payday." Zidek said the figure came from dividing the $10 million figure by the six years White has spent on the council. That would give you the seven figures  $1,666,667 a year. Wow again.

The message that the Zidek-Madden campaign seeks to put out is that Delaware County government is secretive and self-serving. It points to the difficulty one must go through to get public information from the county. Local Democrats have been spreading that gospel for decades, but they haven't won a single seat on the county council since voters opted for a charter form of government in the mid-1970s.

That raises this obvious question: Is Delaware County government a one-party state because it lacks transparency or because the opposition party has failed to mobilize the electorate with winning campaigns? We'll have to wait until the night of Nov. 7 to know the latest answer to that. For now, though, it's fair to say that county Democrats do the public no favors by putting out information that misleads and defames under the guise of informing.

Bob Martin is a retired Inquirer writer and editor. Inkwire86@verizon.net
As a student at St. Luke's Elementary School in Glenside, Montgomery County, in the 1950s, I learned a great deal from the nuns. I learned my 3 R's  reading, writing, and arithmetic  and also a few things about life, including this bit of wisdom: empty barrels make the most noise.

The words have come up repeatedly in the public dispute between White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson (D., Fla.), who is fast becoming the darling of the "mainstream media" for her slash-and-burn attacks on President Trump and what she describes as his "puppet" Kelly.

That our news media are fanning the flames of this controversy when the facts are so clear and obvious is sad indeed. Trump made four telephone calls last week to the next of kin of four soldiers who gave their lives while serving their country. His intent was to convey his personal condolences to those families and the gratitude of a grateful nation. To have the president's words distorted into a message of callousness and disregard is a disgrace (a word that Sister Claire Bernadette might have used). Wilson should be ashamed. Instead, in her own mind, she is "a rock star."

To believe that is one thing, but to say it out loud in a television interview is the very definition of an "empty barrel." Kelly was being marvelously restrained in using that phrase  short for shameless self-promoter  to describe such an unfair, inaccurate, and inappropriate act by the congresswoman.

Kelly's description of the difficult task of conveying condolences to the family of a fallen hero was meaningful, and it meant so much more because he himself is among the ranks of the grieving. His son Robert was killed in 2010 in a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan.

Given those circumstances, it was a bitter pill indeed to hear the congresswoman's distortion of the meaning and intent of the president's call. Her ongoing display is worthy of condemnation by all sensible Americans, as is the media's willing complicity in publicizing this rubbish.

Rather than try to summarize Kelly's moving and effective statement, I will offer the perspective of the mother of two U.S. Marines. One of her sons served with Robert Kelly and the other served under John Kelly in Iraq. She wrote in an email to a friend:

"As far as I am concerned, the only proper reaction to John Kelly's remarks is one of respect, appreciation, and admiration. He seldom speaks of Robert's death. It is not in his nature to call attention to that. But I can understand his disgust and sadness over Congresswoman Wilson's interpretation of the president's call to the widow of the fallen soldier.

"Those of us who have lived with the possibility of receiving that dreaded early-morning knock on the door from a chaplain and casualty officer understand perfectly the message that was conveyed. 

"Our sons did not have to serve. They volunteered, and they knew well that they were signing up to be in harm's way. And they are to be honored for that willingness to sacrifice themselves for a greater good.

"Only a depraved mind, clouded by political hatred, would interpret the message any other way."

The president and Kelly were trying to do the right thing, and the congresswoman was and continues to be doing the wrong thing  score cheap political points. The voters in her district should be ashamed to have her as their representative. How dare she call out Kelly, who has served his nation so admirably and has sacrificed so much  and not having the facts quite right regarding Wilson's exact words from years ago doesn't change the basics.

Our nation is rapidly approaching a tipping point. As Kelly said, nothing much is sacred anymore. He said:

"You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor. That's obviously not the case anymore as we see from recent cases. Life  the dignity of life  is sacred. That's gone. Religion, that seems to be gone as well

"But I just thought  the selfless devotion that brings a man or woman to die on the battlefield  I just thought that that might be sacred."

Sadly, that does not appear to be the case.

Christopher M. Lehman served as a special assistant for national security affairs to President Ronald Reagan in 1983 when 220 Marines and 21 other U.S. service personnel were killed in a terrorist attack in Beirut, Lebanon, and witnessed first-hand the president offering heartfelt condolences to the families of fallen Marines. CLehman@CommonwealthConsulting.com
To the Project On Government Oversight, an attack on governmental transparency anywhere in the countryeven at the state and local levelis a matter of serious concern. Thats why we applaud a recent pro-transparency ruling by a California court in a case involving a county contract to purchase buses.

In 2013, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (L.A. Metro) awarded a $500 million contract to Canadian bus manufacturer New Flyer to purchase hundreds of compressed natural gas public transit buses. L.A. Metros decision was based in part on New Flyers promise to create hundreds of good-paying jobs both in L.A. County and elsewhere in the United States. To check if New Flyer kept its promise, Jobs to Move America (JMA)a coalition of community, civil rights, and labor groupsfiled a request under Californias public records law for information about New Flyer employee wages and benefits. New Flyer sought an injunction to prevent L.A. Metro from releasing this information, claiming it is confidential, proprietary, and/or trade secret information.

Two weeks ago, the Los Angeles County Superior Court denied the injunction and came out strongly in favor of transparency. The court ruled that New Flyers showing of potential competitive harm from the disclosure of specific, line-item employee wage and benefit data was not particularly strong. Additionally, the court found the public had a substantial interest in knowing this information, and that applying the trade secret privilege in this case would work injustice.

POGO and several other national public interest groups filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in support of JMA. We intervened because of the larger issues at stake. The role of private companies in performing government functions has grown dramatically. Companies like New Flyer are aggressively pursuing reverse-FOIA lawsuitslegal actions against government agencies to block public records requestswith the aim of expanding the definition of trade secret so that more and more information about their contracts will be kept from the public.

At the same time, government entities are abdicating their responsibilities under public records laws. In this case, L.A. Metro in its contract with New Flyer agreed to remain neutral in information disclosure litigation and to [retain] the information until otherwise ordered to disclose such information by a court. Such arrangements are an unfair burden on the public, requiring groups like JMA to resort to expensive and time-consuming litigation in order to compel the release of information the public has the right to see.

POGO supports the proactive disclosure of government information and improvements to the Freedom of Information Act in order to bolster the publics trust in the federal government. However, public confidence in state and local governments is just as important, which is why we will continue following the New Flyer case.
(Pictured left to right) 5.11's Vice President of Global Marketing, Willem Driessen; 5.11's President, Francisco Morales; National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund President and CEO, Craig Floyd; and National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund Chief Operating Officer, Dave Brant. (Photo: 5.11 Tactical)

The 5.11 Always Be Ready brand campaign centers around providing individuals with the best quality products so they can be ready to help those in need, protect and serve, and crush goals. 5.11 brand supporter, inaugural Crossfit Games winner, and Newark, CA, Lieutenant and SWAT team member Jolie Gentry Macias is familiar with the importance of readiness and is helping 5.11 support national law enforcement in an even greater way.

Today during the annual conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) in Philadelphia, 5.11 presented the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund with a check for $20,000 from proceeds of the sale of 5.11 Defender-Flex Pants and Jeans. The Memorial Fund tells the story of American law enforcement, honors fallen officers, and works to make it safer for those who serve.

"I have always greatly admired the way the Memorial Fund pays tribute to the fallen and works to tell their stories," said Gentry Macias. "On a daily basis, law enforcement officers put their lives on the line to protect and serve their communities  it's reassuring to know that National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial is there to honor these brave men and women in the event a casualty takes place on duty." Gentry Macias adds, "5.11 has been a great partner over the years, and I am honored to be a part of their contribution to the Memorial Fund."

"We are excited to work with Jolie and the Memorial Fund," said 5.11's Vice President of Global Marketing, Willem Driessen. "5.11 creates purpose-built tactical apparel and gear for law enforcement agencies around the country. We provide them with the best gear so they can succeed in their mission." Driessen continues, "We are thrilled to be making this donation from the sale of our Defender-Flex Pants and Jeans to the Memorial Fund so they can continue serving law enforcement officers nationwide."

"I would like to extend my sincere thanks to 5.11 for their generosity and steadfast support over the years," said Memorial Fund President and CEO Craig Floyd. "We are very fortunate to have partners like 5.11 who step up to support and honor the men and women who valiantly serve the citizens in their communities each day."

For more information on the charitable contributions, Defender-Flex Pants and Jeans, and the Always Be Ready campaign, visit http://www.511tactical.com/AlwaysBeReady.
Erik Rodriguez-Reyes reportedly bit and severed a deputy's finger. (Photo: Washington County Sheriff's Office) A domestic violence suspect bit two deputies during a fight early Monday, leaving one of the deputies with a severed finger, according to the Washington County (OR) Sheriff's Office.

Deputies were called to an Aloha-area apartment complex on a report that Erik Rodriguez-Reyes was assaulting his pregnant girlfriend, the agency said in a news release. Rodriguez-Reyes and his father were later arrested. The girlfriend suffered minor injuries, reports the Oregonian.

Several people were "uncooperative" when deputies showed up, and "started a physical confrontation" with the responders, according to the sheriff's office. Rodriguez-Reyes bit two deputies during a fight, severing the tip of one of the deputies' index fingers, the agency said.

The injured deputy, who wasn't publicly identified, was taken to a hospital for treatment.

"He lost the tip of an index finger, has been released from the hospital, and is at home resting," the sheriff's office tweeted later Monday morning
According to a study of Washington D.C. police officers, having police officers wear body cameras seems to have no discernible impact on citizen complaints or officers' use of force, at least in the nation's capital, reports SCPR.

The study was performed as Washington, D.C., rolled out its huge camera program. The city has one of the largest forces in the country, with some 2,600 officers now wearing cameras on their collars or shirts.

"We found essentially that we could not detect any statistically significant effect of the body-worn cameras," says Anita Ravishankar, a researcher with the Metropolitan Police Department and a group in the city government called the Lab @ DC.

The findings come as the Los Angeles Police Department continues to equip its own officers with body cameras and faces questions about public access to the video footage. The city's civilian police commission, which oversees the LAPD, is currently conducting a review of the departments policy on when to release such videos to the public and is due to present its findings in the coming days or weeks, according to the L.A. Times.

"I think we're surprised by the result. I think a lot of people were suggesting that the body-worn cameras would change behavior," says Chief of Police Peter Newsham. "There was no indication that the cameras changed behavior at all."

Perhaps, he says, that is because his officers "were doing the right thing in the first place."
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Republican Sen. Bob Corker turned up the heat on Donald Trump on Monday, calling the presidents upcoming tax reform meeting with GOP senators a political stunt.

In his harsh remarks, Corker said that the lunchtime meeting scheduled for Tuesday is nothing but a photo op.

.@SenBobCorker told me Trumps visit to Senate Republicans tomorrow on tax reform is nothing more than a photo opp.  Leigh Ann Caldwell (@LACaldwellDC) October 23, 2017

The key Republican senators comments should be concerning to Trump, who will need Corkers support if he wants to push tax reform legislation through the Senate. Without Corker, the White House can only afford to lose one more Republican vote.

After an entire year of legislative losses, Trump and GOP leadership are desperate for some type of political win. As one Twitter user put it on Monday, the president and his Republican colleagues would throw a victory party for passing a kidney stone at this point.

But as Corker noted today, the upcoming meeting between Trump and his Republican colleagues in the Senate couldnt possibly be anything more than a photo opportunity.

This is a president, after all, who knows  and doesnt care to learn  details about any policy issue that faces him, from health care to tax reform, regardless of how high the stakes are. The idea that Trump will show up to Tuesdays meeting well-versed on the complexities of tax reform legislation is ludicrous.

In fact, this president has repeatedly shown that he hasnt read the very legislation he claims to support.

Instead, Trump sees politics and governing as extensions of his show business career. He wants ratings and attention  nothing else. The more drama and conflict, the better  even if its a back-and-forth with a grieving, pregnant war widow.

Without the depth of knowledge or even a casual understanding of how the federal government operates, all Trump has left are political stunts and photo ops. And Sen. Corker, who seems eager to leave the town that has become consumed by Trumps reckless incompetence, seems to care very little about holding back.
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While its still unclear why so many U.S. troops are in Niger and what led to the recent attack in the region, Rachel Maddow laid out a list of damning Trump administration failures that could have contributed to the deadly ambush in West Africa.

According to Maddow, the reasons for American soldiers being stationed in Niger could stretch back several presidents, but a series of concerning steps taken (or not taken) by the Trump administration could have made the recent attack on U.S. troops more likely.

Video:

Rachel Maddow Outlines Damning List Of Trump Failures That Led To Niger Attack #Maddow pic.twitter.com/N7hqgtd1QC  Sean Colarossi (@SeanColarossi) October 24, 2017

Maddow laid out the facts:

So theres a lot that has nothing to do with the Trump administration, that is hard to get your head around, around this deployment and this attack and this grievous, grievous loss. But then you add on top of that the particularities of this administration  which hasnt bothered to appoint a director at the National Security Council with responsibility for Africa, which hasnt bothered to appoint an Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, which just inexplicably last month angered and infuriated the neighboring nation of Chad by adding them to the presidents travel ban despite Chad being our most experienced, battle-hardened military ally in the region.  Of course, at the apex of responsibility here, we still have a commander-in-chief who will not discuss this incident, even today, will not talk about it.

As Maddow said on Monday, its unclear what exactly led to the deadly ambush in Niger, but we can say with increased certainty that the presidents own actions since taking office only increased the possibility of such an attack  whether its failing to fill key positions in charge of overseeing the region or implementing reckless policies just to please his uninformed base of supporters.

It certainly doesnt help the administrations cause that, weeks later, they still refuse to shed light on what went wrong and what led to the tragic death of four Green Berets  and, of course, how we can prevent future attacks from happening.

Instead, the only time the president chooses to talk about this is when he is smearing the grieving widow of one of the four soldiers lost in Niger, Sgt. La David Johnson.
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The ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) spoke the truth when said that Republicans would be losing their minds if Hillary Clinton did what Trumps family is up to with private email.

The truth hurts:

.@RepCummings: If this were #HillaryClinton  Republicans would be going crazy. They are aiders and abettors to what #POTUS #Trump is doing.  House OversightDems (@OversightDems) October 23, 2017

Whether it is the Russia scandal, Trump family conflicts of interest, Trump using the presidency for his own personal gain, or Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trumps use of private email to conduct government business, the Republican Party has aided and abetted, this presidents criminal activity.

Thats why these scandals arent just presidential scandals. They also represent the systemic failure of one of the two major political parties in the United States.

Rep. Cummings was right. Republicans would be losing their minds if the shoe was on the other foot. Hillary Clinton would already be impeached if she did 1/1000th of what Trump has done as president. The fact that Republicans are actively helping this president cover up his crimes suggests that it will take more than the removal of Trump from office to clean up the corruption within the Republican Party.
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In the latest Trump-caused international embarrassment for the United States of America, the U.S. and Syria are officially the only two remaining countries opposed to the Paris climate accord.

This comes after the Guardian reported Monday that Nicaragua has officially signed onto the agreement, leaving just two holdouts.

While Trump announced that he was pulling the United States out of the deal over the summer, Nicaraguas move on Monday to put its support behind the deal adds a new level of shame to the presidents decision.

Instead of America being aligned with nearly 200 nations across the globe that have committed themselves to fighting climate change, the United States now stands only with Syria, a country run by a brutal thug who uses chemical weapons against his own people.

Of course, none of that  combating the threat of climate change or avoiding the pathetic optics of aligning the U.S. with Syria  is relevant to Donald Trump.

Instead, what is important to this petty president is undoing the legacy of Barack Obama. Its been the core tenet of Trumps failing presidency since day one, when Trump forced his press secretary to lie about the crowd size at his inauguration compared to the attendance seen by his predecessor.

Trumps obsession with tearing down Obama was evident most recently when Trump lied about his predecessors treatment of Gold Star families when he was asked about the recent attack in Niger, which resulted in four dead U.S. soldiers.

There is no low to which this president wont stoop in order to take a shot at Obama.

When it comes to the sweeping Paris climate accord, pulling out of the agreement orchestrated by the 44th president is worth it to Trump if it can hurt his predecessors legacy even a little bit.

In short, Donald Trump would rather make common cause with Bashar al-Assad than Barack Obama.
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Sen. Mazie Hirono spoke from the halls of the Senate to MSNBC where she called the President Of The United States a sexual predator.

Video:

Sen. Hirono was asked if progress had been made. She answered in part, It is pervasive, and obviously we havent eradicated this kind of unwanted sexual attention and innuendo. Practically, every woman that I know has experienced this to some degree, and as I said, its not cute. Its not fun, and when you have the President who admits to being a sexual predator, it just goes to show how we objectify women in our culture. We must start somewhere, and thats why I think its important for us to take this moment and step forward to stand in solidarity and enable more women to just come out and talk about it, and you know, I hope that this results in the guys, because you know, its usually the guys hassling us to think twice before they say stupid things to us.

One of the most shameful, but revealing episodes of the presidential campaign, was when Donald Trump admitted that he was a sexual predator, and the male-dominated mainstream press shrugged it off and went back to talking about Hillary Clintons emails. Donald Trump isnt the beginning or end of the problem. Until male culture changes and men start standing up when they see and hear a woman being harassed, until all of the Bill OReillys and Harvey Weinsteins are held accountable, until our society changes and starts treating predatory sexual behavior as a crime and not locker room talk, our country will be diminished by this issue.

Trump is a sexual predator, and not a day should go by without every American being reminded of this fact.

Sen. Hirono continues to do her country a great service by talking about things that the male-dominated media dont want to hear.
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House Republicans are trying to cover-up Trumps Russia crimes by launching a new investigation of a uranium deal that happened while Clinton was Secretary of State.

Nunes claimed to be investigating Hillary Clintons involvement in a US-Russia uranium deal that happened during the Obama investigation:

Rep. Nunes said, We are launching an inquiry into Russias involvement in the uranium deal that was done several years ago. This is just the beginning of this probe. Were not going to jump to any conclusions at this time, but one of the things we are concerned about is was there an FBI investigation? Was there a DOJ investigation, and if so why was Congress not informed of this matter?

Nunes also claimed that the White House had nothing to do with this investigation. It is a coincidence that Trump tweeted five days ago:

Uranium deal to Russia, with Clinton help and Obama Administration knowledge, is the biggest story that Fake Media doesn't want to follow!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2017

The conspiracy goes that Hillary Clinton took bribes in the form of donations to the Clinton Global Initiative in exchange for approving the deal.

The real purpose of this investigation is to muddy the waters on the investigation into Trumps potential Russia crimes. Since Republicans cant make the Russia scandal go away, they are going to try to cover-up the Presidents crimes by inventing a new scandal. It is a desperate bit of counterprogramming that is intended to confuse the American people.

A crime against democracy occurred during the 2016 election, and the Republican Party is using the House majority to try to stop the American people from learning the truth about Trump and Russia.
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A protester standing among the reporters facing Trump greeted the President by screaming Trump is treason as he entered the Senate Republican lunch.

Video:

Full video: Chaos erupts as President Trump enters the Senate GOP lunch and a protester posing as a reporter begins yelling about treason. pic.twitter.com/GiYMwt9g5l  Emma Loop (@LoopEmma) October 24, 2017

The protester shouted, Trump is treason. Trump is treason. Why are you talking about tax cuts when you should be talking about treason?

There is nowhere for Trump to hide. He cant even go to the Senate Republican lunch without the American people finding a way to make their contempt for him and his activities known. Never has a president so despised so early into his first term.

The protester is not alone. There are millions of people who believe that Trump committed a crime against his county. Trump is better off hiding behind his Twitter account because when he shows his face in the real world, he gets a dose of how the American people really feel about him.
Fate of forint, euro on the line in short but eventful week

Although Monday was a national holiday in Hungary, there remains a lot of key events for four days. The monthly policy meeting by the National Bank of Hungary (MNB) on Tuesday afternoon is one of these, but we should also be watching the European Central Bank (ECB) closely as its policy meeting on Thursday could be decisive not only for the euro but also for Hungarys forint. The series of third-quarter GDP data releases will also continue, and by the end of the week well know how the U.S. economy fared in July-September.

Due to a national holiday onthe week practically starts only today in Hungary, but in respect of macroeconomic releases we have not missed anything even on the global front.Onmorning, the Central Statistical Office (KSH) will release revised retail sales data for August. We should also keep an eye on the latest manufacturing and services purchasing manager index (PMI) figures elsewhere in Europe. After a rather busy morning, all eyes will be on Hungarys central bank (MNB) that willThe MNB eased monetary conditions further by unconventional means in September (it lowered the overnight deposit rate by 10 basis points to -0.15% and reduced the cap on its 3-month deposit facility to HUF 75 bn for the end of December). After the decisions the forint eased to around 313 to the euro then, but the influence of the monetary easing evaporated over the last few weeks, and EURHUF is back at 308, although analysts believe the very purpose of the measures was to weaken the forint. Consequently, some on the market believe the MNB will ease monetary conditions further today, although the majority think that the Monetary Council would not want to act before the ECBs policy meeting on Thursday.

Whatever step the central bank will decide to take, it will have an interesting impact on the forint. A non-event could cause disappointment to some investors that might interpret the MNBs hesitation as a sign of insufficient commitment to easing. And that could trigger significant forint firming.

Related article

Hungary central bank might cause another surprise 20/10/2017 4:38pm

Onmorning, the stats office is set to release birth and death statistics, and in the morning Germanys IFO index and British GDP data should also be watched. In the second half of the week, there will be one key release overseas.On, all eyes will be on the ECB. The banks policy meeting in the afternoon dwarfs every other data release, hence Hungarys latest unemployment figures could also get limited attention. The ECB decision and a subsequent press release by ECB President Mario Draghi are to follow as scheduled.The most likely scenario is that the asset purchase programme will be retained, but with a smaller monthly target, and QE will be phased out entirely next year. Therefore the meeting will be important not only for the euro and the European Union, but also for the future of the forint and MNB policy. If the ECB decides to rapidly call off QE, the Hungarian central bank could also refrain from further monetary easing. Otherwise, it could deploy further unconventional easing tools in the coming months.After such an eventful three days, we should think investors will be able take a break on. Well, think again! There is a key GDP release in the U.S. pipeline for the afternoon which will reveal whether the American economy came to a halt in Q3 or not. Analysts believe that partly due to the devastating hurricanes GDP growth decelerated to 2.6% yr/yr in Q3 from 3.1% in the second quarter. These data are generally revised at least twice so changes are prone to be made later on.
Charleston, SC (29403)

Today

Scattered showers and thunderstorms, especially during the evening. Low 56F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Scattered showers and thunderstorms, especially during the evening. Low 56F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
SEATTLE  Amazon says it received 238 proposals from North American cities, states and provinces interested in serving as the online retailer's second home.

The tally, released on Monday, includes cities in 43 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Outside the U.S., cities from seven Canadian provinces applied, as did cities in three Mexican states.

Amazon provided the tally in an update to the company's website but didn't identify the bidders by name.

The disclosure comes after Amazon's Thursday deadline for cities to submit bids on the company's second headquarters campus, or HQ2. The company said last month that it would build out a second headquarters, equal to its Seattle campus, in some North American city, spending $5 billion over the course of more than a decade.

That promised economic benefit, bringing up to 50,000 jobs, drew submissions from hundreds of cities, including many that didn't meet the criteria Amazon had laid out, including a metropolitan area of more than 1 million people and ready access to mass transit and a major airport.

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Amazon's bidders include most of North America's largest cities, from Los Angeles to Chicago and Toronto, and some seen as longshots, such as Greensboro, N.C., and El Paso, Texas.

Amazon has said it will select a second headquarters site by next year.
An upcoming event in Winona will highlight the story of an endangered bird's return to Great River Bluffs State Park.

The Winona Bird Club will hold a presentation on the return of the Henslow's sparrow at the Senior Friendship Center at 7 p.m. Nov. 1.

Dr. Ray Faber, a Saint Mary's University of Minnesota biology professor who led the effort to restore the Henslow's sparrow population at the park, will discuss his research on the bird and what steps to take moving forward.

On Friday, Faber spoke with the Post Bulletin about his past work and potential future restoration efforts.

Could you tell me some about the Henslow's sparrow and what situation it was in? I saw that it's endangered.

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It's on the endangered species list for the state of Minnesota. Nationwide, it's experienced really dramatic declines, although there's been a little bit of recovery in  recent years. It has (seen) at least two-thirds decline in (the) nationwide population.

Why is it so prone to decline?

We think that most of this is associated with habitat loss. The bird has  rather unique requirements. It really depends on a deep litter layer in grassland, and it looks like, from some of my research, that mullein is an important factor for it. I don't know if you're familiar with that plant. It produces a tall stock you see at the side of the roads. They use that for singing perch, and that seems to be really important to them. In many places, the mullein is just not doing well. Pastures that the bird used to use have largely disappeared, been turned into cropland.

Why did they originally disappear from the Great River Bluffs State Park?

The Great River Bluffs was originally a farm, and it was purchased, I think, by the Department of Natural Resources. In some places, in the fields, they planted trees, mostly ash trees, which are now dying. But there were fields of brome grass (that) had been used for farming, and those supported Henslow's sparrows when the park was established.

Henslow's sparrows persisted there for many years, but starting in about 1990 or 1991, the birds disappeared from the park. I was brought in in 1994 to see if there were any left, and if not, to come up with the recommendations of what to do.

How did you go about restoring them, bringing them back to the Great River Bluffs State Park?

We basically focused on maintaining the habitat, and that meant maintaining brome grass, which is non-native. That's kind of a problem for us. We do late-summer burning to try to stimulate the grass to grow. Also we ended up fertilizing part of the fields in the park because they were a little (low) on nutrients. So restoring the nutrients, late-summer burning and also at some points I put out mullein stocks to try to serve as singing perches. And that succeeded in establishing a fairly large population there.

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I saw that that population got up to as many as 28 singing males, but  numbers have declined in recent years?

These fields are small, so that 28 is a pretty high number. Since 2007, the population has not been nearly as high. The mullein stocks were removed, and there were some other factors going on that tended to decrease the population.

What can be done to help an endangered species, like the Henslow's sparrow, that is losing its habitat?

It takes commitment and money. If this bird is dependent on pasture habitat, how is that going to be supplied? But much of that land is in private ownership, and farmers have to be assured of a profit from the land that they're operating. Right now, the cropland is by far the most profitable. So there has to be some kind of financial commitment, along with a commitment to find out what needs to be done. In this case, the DNR was very helpful in supporting my work to find out what could be done.
ST. PAUL  The Minnesota Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court ruling that denied a search warrant to a group that accused an area meatpacking plant of animal cruelty.

The information included in the application for the warrant to investigate Quality Pork Processors Inc. in Austin was "stale," the appeals court ruled Monday.

The case began in May 2015, when members of the group Compassion Over Killing conducted an undercover investigation at QPP.

Over five months' time, COK members "observed and recorded video of inhumane handling and abuse of pigs," the court document says.

On Oct. 27, 2015, the group alerted Mower County officials about its animal-cruelty concerns. In response to the video, two employees were disciplined, QPP officials said.

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The county, in turn, relied on findings made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture : An investigation by Food Safety and Inspection Services collected evidence that indicated QPP's plant was not in compliance with federal regulations.

USDA officials said if the FSIS inspectors had directly seen the actions that the undercover COK workers recorded, "immediate regulatory action would have been taken against QPP."

Neither the USDA nor the county took further action.

In December 2016  more than a year later  COK filed an application for a warrant and investigation of animal cruelty against QPP.

A Mower County District Court judge quashed the original application because of procedural errors; COK filed an amended application in January that corrected the errors, but had the same information.

The allegations made in the application were based "entirely on the practices observed and recorded ... more than 14 months earlier," the district court judge said, and quashed the second application.

The judge then denied COK's request to file a motion to reconsider because she concluded the evidence was stale.

COK appealed to the state court, arguing that "passage of time by itself does not make evidence stale," and claiming "QPP's violations are part of its ongoing processes, practices and methods," the paperwork says.

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The appeals court justices disagreed, writing that "COK's argument that staleness does not apply to past activity is absurd."

In filing the applications, then requesting a motion to reconsider, COK "did not offer any new or additional evidence (of animal cruelty) and did not suggest that it intended to do so," the ruling says.
A Rochester man's antics landed a police officer in a decontamination bay at a local hospital Saturday night, authorities said Monday.

The officer responded about 11:25 p.m. to the 1400 block of 50th Street Northwest after a caller reported an intoxicated driver was now parked there in a cul de sac.

As the officer approached, he spotted a man with a bloody face  later identified as Emilio Olivarez, 22  trying to fight a large group of people.

When Olivarez saw the squad car, "he ran directly at the officer, jumped onto the car, slid across the hood and started swinging," said Capt. John Sherwin.

Olivarez struck the driver's side mirror when he slid, Sherwin said; during the subsequent struggle, he kicked the mirror completely off the squad car.

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The two tussled for a couple of minutes, the report says, before Olivarez was taken into custody. Once handcuffed, he allegedly spit on the officer, who also had Olivarez's blood on him.

Both went to a local hospital  the officer to be cleaned up, and Olivarez for treatment of minor injuries he sustained in the group fight.

While at the emergency room, Olivarez assaulted a member of the medical staff, Sherwin said.

Olivarez was charged Monday in Olmsted County District Court with one count of fourth-degree assault on a peace officer, a felony; one count of obstructing the legal process, a gross misdemeanor; one count of fourth-degree criminal damage to property, two counts of fifth-degree assault and one count of disorderly conduct, all misdemeanors.

He was released on his own recognizance and is due back in court Nov. 7.
Students, ranging from kindergarten to high school, file into what was once an apartment, but is now a converted study space for an after-school program three days a week.

Here, students work together on homework, have access to computers and study materials, and play with their friends. And it's convenient because most live in the Creekside Apartment complex in which the space is housed.

The program is run by Somali Kulan Community, in partnership with Rochester Public Schools through a federal grant. It's one of more than 50 after-school programs throughout Rochester  including Boys & Girls Club of Rochester and those hosted at Rochester Public Schools  providing kids with opportunities to learn after the traditional school day has ended.

"We try to have them in a structured program without video games for two or three hours," said Abdi Roble, who runs the program. "Parents don't have to worry if they're still at work."

Roble works to help the younger students with their homework and keeps on them so that they know to prepare for quizzes and tests. With the older students, he talks about applying for college

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He talks about applying for college with the many of the older students.

"We've been there before, we share what we've learned and how to navigate the system," Roble said.

This week, many of the city's after-school programs will be celebrating with "Lights On Afterschool," a national rally that aims to raise awareness of the program and draw community support for them. They provide homework help, mentoring, tutoring, healthy snacks and meals, opportunities to play sports, college and career readiness and much more.

"It's another chance for our kids to work with their peers and supportive adults in a positive environment," said Amy Eich, director of community education with RPS.

Somali Kulan Community is in its first year at the location, after it was one of three programs that was awarded a three-year, $2 million grant through RPS in conjunction with the Boys & Girls Club of Rochester.

The funding allows RPS to provide more after school programming that will geographically "cover the district," Eich said. "It opens the doors for all of our kids to participate."

This type of programming is crucial in helping students succeed later in life, according to Afterschool Alliance.

"These programs give kids a chance to discover their talents and passions," said Jodi Grant, Afterschool Alliance director in a news release. "They keep kids safe, inspire them to learn and give parents peace of mind while they are at work."

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A 15-year-old northwest Rochester office complex sold for $2.1 million earlier this month.

The 8,400-square-foot building at 4041 28th St. NW was purchased by MacSyd LLC,of Kasson, on Oct. 3. Built in 2002, the complex currently houses Rochester's Merrill Lynch Wealth Managementoffice.

MacSyd bought the building from Golden Eagles LLC,of Rochester. John Kinsellais the manager of Golden Eagles, according to state records.

Golden Eagles purchased the complex in 2010 for $1.35 million. Olmsted County estimated its total market value at $1.15 million for 2016-17.

Biz buzz

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It looks as if it's going to be a hot fall in the Med City this year with a lot of projects and deals revving up before the holidays.

 A Rochester car dealer is mapping out an expansion to give one brand its own space.

 A locally owned, area grocery store is expected to change hands soon with a Wisconsin buyer who is set to step in.

 A growing Rochester business is looking to build a new facility near its current one, with the plan to make a short move to get a larger complex.
The latest court ruling in the ongoing dispute between the Rochester City Lines bus company and the City of Rochester found that the city didn't do anything wrong.

The 3rd Judicial District Court issued a ruling on Monday that found the city's process in awarding the bus service contract to Cincinnati, Ohio-based First Transit in 2012 was appropriate.

"RCL, as the plaintiff, had the burden of proof and it has failed to meet this burden. Further, there has been no evidence presented showing a secret arrangement or conspiracy between First Transit and the City," according to the ruling. "The court holds that the City did not award the contract in an arbitrary, capricious, or unreasonable manner."

For the city, this ruling was a positive note in the long-running legal case.

"The City of Rochester is pleased with the district court's decision following the trial in Rochester City Lines Co. v. City of Rochester," said attorney Monte Mills of the Greene Espel firm in Minneapolis. "The City believes that the outcome of the trial in its favor was appropriate and justified in light of the evidence."

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This ruling comes following a trial that was ordered by the Minnesota Supreme Court in 2015. It's the latest milestone in a more than five-year legal battle between RCL, which ran the local bus service from 1966 to 2012, and the City of Rochester over the "fairness" of how a bus service provider is chosen.

City Lines originally came into conflict with the city over the Request for Proposal process that resulted in First Transit winning the service contract in 2012.

RCL's attorney Steven Diaz of Washington, D.C., says he is carefully reviewing the 37-page ruling and he expects his clients will appeal the decision.

"We are confident that the record supports RCL's position," he said.

Another related case has fared better for RCL. It filed a suit questioning the validity of the follow-up contract the city signed with First Transit in 2016.

The Minnesota Appeals Court ruled that Rochester's "best-value" competitive bid process is "unreasonable, arbitrary, or capricious" and "creates an appearance of bias," which means any contract awarded using the process is "invalid." That specifically referred to the four year contract issued in 2016.

The city has since appealed to the Minnesota Supreme Court to review the case. That review is still pending.
Scrapping MNsure, scaling back regulations and boosting competition  those are just some of the ideas Republican gubernatorial candidates have for improving Minnesota's health care system.

More than 100 people turned out Monday night to hear the four GOP hopefuls detail their views on health care at a forum in the Heintz Center at Rochester Community and Technical College. Fielding questions were state Rep. Matt Dean, former Minnesota Republican Party Chairman Keith Downey, Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson and state Sen. David Osmek. The event was sponsored by the Minnesota Medical Association and Zumbro Valley Medical Society.

The candidates agreed that Obamacare has been bad for Minnesota's health care system and changes are needed. Dean noted he sponsored a bill to get rid of MNsure  the state-run health insurance exchange.

"The system that we have is government imposed. It's soviet controlled, it's top down, it's too big, it's too bossy, it's too nosy and it's gotten between you and your doctor," Dean said.

All four candidates agreed that less government involvement in health care is essential. That is in sharp contrast to last week's Rochester forum with five DFL gubernatorial candidates. Rochester Rep. Tina Liebling, State Auditor Rebecca Otto and Minneapolis Rep. Paul Thissen voiced support for moving to a single-payer system. St. Paul Rep. Erin Murphy and 1st District Rep. Tim Walz said they favor giving Minnesotans the option of buying into MinnesotaCare.

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Osmek said a single-payer system would be "a disaster." He said government cannot fix the health care system.

"The best way to go about it is having the private sector come to the rescue and not government because government tends to screw it up when they take part," Osmek said.

During the forum, the candidates were asked how they would improve the system while helping make sure people can get access to the care they need. Watching the candidates answer were about 30 people from the "Save Our Hospital" group, which is fighting Mayo Clinic Health System's decision to move most inpatient services from its Albert Lea hospital to its Austin location. They held signs that read "We stand for rural health care" and wore "Save Our Hospital" buttons.

Downey unveiled what he is calling his "Healthy Minnesota Plan" at the event. The proposal calls for getting rid of MNsure. It also changes how low-income Minnesotans get health insurance. Under the plan, Minnesotans enrolled in state-run programs would be given vouchers to purchase private health insurance.

"My proposal says that instead of going to a bigger, more intrusive government system, we should actually go to something that empowers consumers," Downey said.

Johnson said that if he is elected governor, he would support trying to increase competition among providers. One way to do that would be moving away from the state's "certificate of need" process for opening new hospitals.

"If you want to open a new hospital, you have to go through a year-long legislative process that doesn't serve the people. It might serve institutions, but it doesn't serve people."

He also favors allowing mid-level practitioners  such as nurse practitioners and dental therapists  the ability to provide more health care in underserved areas of the state.

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Dean told the crowd that Minnesota had the best health care system in the state and still does. He said he'd pursue waivers from the federal government so that Minnesota can develop its own health care system.

Osmek said he would focus on getting rid of burdensome mandates in the health care system. He said it is also important to start moving toward a system where health insurance is portable instead of being tied to an individual's employer.
David Burge, the incomparable Iowahawk, put out one of those tweets a few months ago that cuts right to the heart of the matter. I dont have the exact Tweet handy, but it ran something like, Why is it that racist graffiti always seems to turn up in Brooklyn rather than Alabama? He might have added college campuses, where the supposed sighting of a poop swastika in a bathroom has very nearly ruined the University of Missouri.

I know of a few genuine incidents of racist graffiti by alt-right nutjobs, but most of these incidents of racist graffiti turn out to be hoaxes, provocations by leftistsand usually minorities. (One recent partial exception may have occurred at Berkeley, where a poster announcing an upcoming pro-Israel speech from Alan Dershowitz was defaced with a swastika, but I suspect this was done by the kind of leftist who perversely equates Israel with Nazism, so the basic theorem still holds.)

Today the Washington Post reports on another such recent case out of Michigan:

A black man is charged in racist graffiti incidents that shook Mich. campus, drew national attention By Fred Barbash Last fall and in the spring, the otherwise quiet campus of Eastern Michigan University was hit by three ugly incidents of vandalism targeting blacks that rocked the community. The first came in September, when KKK was sprayed in red, white and blue paint on the wall of a dormitory, along with a threatening racial slur telling blacks to leave the school in Ypsilanti, about 11 miles southeast of Ann Arbor. Then, on Halloween, the same ominous hate message using the n-word and ordering blacks to leave showed up on another building, this one right next to the campuss monument to Martin Luther King. It really has rocked our community, Judith Kullberg, an EMU political scientist and president of the faculty senate told The Washington Post. In this whole context of a very tense presidential election it has raised anxiety here considerably. In the spring, a third racist message was left in a mens restroom stall. Coming as other campuses were being hit by similar acts of what appeared to be hate vandalism, the incidents sparked protests and made national news. On Tuesday, the university was shaken again when police announced that a 29-year-old black man, a former student, had been charged with all three crimes.

At this point, why should the university be shaken? Youd think that the social science practice of pattern recognition would have kicked in by now. Instead, just about every time one of these incidents occur the college will go to DefCon1, cancel classes for a day, hold garment-rending teach-ins, etc. As the Post story reports on this series of incidents:

The incidents prompted strong reactions throughout the community, both on and off campus. The faculty senate condemned them, and held a day-long teach-in about racism and diversity, and some professors held a vigil at one of the vandalized buildings, wearing black to show support for students of color. Student leaders, Ypsilanti city officials and NAACP members held a candlelight vigil. More than 100 students marched to the university presidents house, demanding action. The school launched several efforts to combat what were seen as hateful attacks, including increased spending for security, additional lighting and cameras on campus, expanded diversity training for university leaders and others, and a presidential commission examining diversity and inclusion.

Heres an idea: Instead of going to DefCon1 every time someone splashes some racist graffiti on a college campus, how about ignoring it? How about not getting all shaken every time someone does something stupid? One reason leftist provocateurs keep doing this is that it gets the desired reaction. Keep in mind that a key demand of race-mongering campus radicals these days is that courses on race, class, and gender be required for all students, and required to be offered in every departmenteven physics. That the demand their outlook be made compulsory subject matter shows how weak it is. And few things supposedly reinforce the need for such instruction that some kind of racist incident on campus.

The Post helpfully notes:

The arrest was one of several around the county over the past year in which an apparent act of racism or anti-Semitism was traced not to a hate group but to a suspect belonging to the targeted minority. In December, for example, an African American member of a historic black church in Greenville, Miss., was charged with setting fire to it, and writing Vote Trump on the outside of the building. In March, an American-Israeli Jewish man was arrested in connection with a series of bomb threats aimed at Jewish community centers in the United States and elsewhere.

Seems like maybe people would start to get a clue and not get taken in by the ultimate example of fake news.
I wrote here about the attempt of Democrats to spin the Niger ambush into President Trumps Benghazi. Other than the fact that both events occurred in Africa and resulted in four American deaths at the hands of terrorists, there is no material resemblance between the two.

The ambush of military patrols is a fact of life. The killing of a U.S. ambassador, after pleas for beefed up security were ignored, is not.

Steven Bucci, served America for three decades as an Army Special Forces officer and top Pentagon official. He is now a visiting research fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

Bucci provides some much need perspective on the U.S. military involvement in Niger and on the recent ambush. He writes:

The mission in Niger, which began in 2013, was a classic special operations operation. The type of operation is called foreign internal defense. Thats an old school term for the most fundamental task we give our Green Berets. A small team of them goes into a foreign country to work with that nations military to better prepare it to deal with its own problems. This is not a clandestine Hollywood commando mission, or a suicide raid. It is overt and open. Its purpose is to build rapport with the host nation military, to improve its capabilities, to gather open source intelligence, and to get to know both the lay of the land and the local players. The U.S. has conducted these kinds of missions around the world since the 1950s. At times we have had as few as a dozen of these operations, and at others several hundred in as many as 80-plus countries simultaneously. These missions are routine and have short-circuited conflicts on nearly every continent in the world at one time or another.

(Emphasis added)

Bucci stipulates that the missions are inherently dangerous. However, he argues, the return is worth the risk because often, the use of a small, mature, and low-profile group of quiet professionals can have greater success than a large, high-profile deployment on a massive scale.

This is particularly true with respect to combating groups like the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda when they move to numerous small or underdeveloped countries. The use of special operations missions allows the U.S. to mitigate the threat before it grows. . . without making the U.S. the worlds policeman.

In other words, instead of fighting the terrorists everywhere ourselves, these missions help our friends to better police their own backyards.

Based on Buccis description of these missions, we shouldnt be surprised when one of them goes tragically wrong. He explains:

The teams that execute them lack the huge support mechanisms Americans have come to associate with military operations. Our troops know this, and regularly volunteer for the opportunity to participate in the missions simply because they know they work. . . . They know that if trouble occurs, support is further away than in conventional operations. Intelligence is superb, often better than in regular military activities, but the logistical and response functions are thin and distant. Thats why we only send professionals on such missions. These are not kids who just joined the military six months ago. They are hardened professionals who, yes, know what the risks are, and go without hesitation.

Frederica Wilson and the widow of Sergeant Johnson may not have wanted to hear this from President Trump and maybe Trump shouldnt have said it  though Gen. Kelly told him that these words often bring some small comfort. But its absurd and rather pathetic to try to concoct a scandal over Trumps words or the ambush itself.

Its also absurd and pathetic to hear legislators express surprise that we are conducting operations in Niger. As Bucci says:

These missions have been extremely common since 9/11, so it is ludicrous that legislators now claim ignorance of both their existence and purpose. Were these legislators asleep during the last 10 years that they were briefed by the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command and the combatant commanders of U.S. Africa, Central, Pacific, or Southern Commands? Nothing about these missions is new, little is hidden, and none of it should surprise anyone who has spent more than a week on Capitol Hill.

As I said in my earlier post, we need to know if there were military and/or intelligence errors associated with the Niger ambush. But the military is investigating this. It investigates whenever any military member dies serving our country, and does not politicians or the media to prompt it to do so.

Buccis conclusion is persuasive:
Victor Davis Hanson persuasively makes a point Ive raised less cogently from time to time: The ideological differences between the establishment and populist wings of the Republican party/conservative movement are overstated:

Hanson writes, the populist-nationalist wing is said to be irreconcilable with the establishment mainstream, but it is hard to see where too many of the lasting irreconcilable differences lie  other than the same old gripe over politicians who get entrenched in Washington and the mavericks who want to take their place and likely turn into what they once damned. (Emphasis added)

He explains:

Both sides in the civil war favor increased investment in defense and especially missile defense. Both are mostly now foreign-policy realists in the sense that McMaster, Mattis, Kelly, Haley, Pompeo, Tillerson, and most of the cabinet could work in a Marco Rubio administration. Both factions are strong on the Second Amendment. Both favor bans on most forms of abortion. Both like Trumps judicial appointments. Both oppose identity politics. On illegal immigration, the establishment opposes a wall and likely strict enforcement, but in any national election (see Romneys 2012 positions), their view sounds no different from Trumps. On Obamacare, the mainstream is a bit more reluctant to repeal rather than reform, but both sides may end up supporting either.

The first paragraph glosses over the fact that many in the populists are furious with McMaster, Tillerson, and in some cases even Mattis. But I agree with much of what Hanson says here.

Hanson continues:

On security issues, there is not much Republican infighting over Trumps withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord or UNESCO, or referring DACA and the Iran deal back to Congress. Interventionists and even neocons are not damning Trump for not landing troops in Syria or not sending enough reinforcements to Afghanistan.

Trumps views on deregulation, tax reform, and energy production are not controversial among Republicans and conservatives. Trump says he opposes optional wars, but he bombed Syria, empowered U.S. forces to emasculate ISIS, sent a few more troops to Afghanistan, and is not shy about confronting North Korea and Iran.

Hanson acknowledges that immigration and trade represent a genuine divide. He suggests the gap is bridgeable.

Im not so sure when it comes to immigration. I also think theres a significant emerging divide on the issue of criminal sentencing, though this issue may not split neatly along establishment vs. populist lines.

Nonetheless, I think Hansons main point is valid as a matter of ideological analysis. The question is whether the establishment-populist gap can be bridged as a matter of psychology.

Hanson is optimistic:

If a Senate populist such as Tom Cotton had run on Trumps identical platform, but without Trumps tweets and bombast, most of the Never Trumpers would have sighed but voted for him. And if an earthy working-class sort had run  a man who felt at ease with the masses but, like a Romney or Reagan, held many orthodox GOP positions, the Trump base would probably have reluctantly supported him, too.

I think hes probably right. Its also worth pointing out, as Hanson does, that Trump himself did just fine with Republican voters. The Never Trumpers are an intellectual force, but not an electoral one.

Hanson is also cautiously optimistic about the elections of 2018 and 2020:

[T]he economy and the avoidance of war will determine Trumps popularity, as they have for most other presidents. If we achieve a 3 percent GDP growth rate over the next six months and a principled pushback to Iran and North Korea that does not result in war, then Trump will do well in the midterms and probably be reelected. But if the economy or stock market tanks, or we enter into an existential and messy war, then Trump will fail, regardless of what either his supporters or detractors say.

Im not so sure that economic growth and the absence of war would be sufficient to see Trump and his party through in 2018, but I think Hanson is spot-on when it comes to 2020.
Yesterday, U.S. backed forces seized control of Syrias biggest oil field. They beat the Syrian government and its foreign allies to the al-Omar field in Deir al-Zour province, a former ISIS stronghold.

The U.S. backed forces are Kurds and Arabs fighting under the umbrella of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). They captured the oil field by charging 60 miles through the desert and launching a surprise attack against ISIS. The attack also surprised the pro-Assad forces who were close by  only a few kilometers away, according to one account  and expecting to capture the oil field, which contains about one-fourth of Syrias oil reserves. The field was taken with little damage to the oil facilities, according to the SDF.

A spokesman for the U.S. military denied that our military and its allies are in a race with the Syrian government to capture territory from ISIS as that terrorist outfit collapses in Syria. The denial seems dubious, at least when it comes to the SDF. It is belied, I think, by reports that the SDF will next proceed to Bukamal. This town straddles the highway between Baghdad and Damascus, and is viewed as a key to Irans hopes of creating a land route between Tehran and Beirut.

The SDFs capture of the al-Omar oil field and its plan to take Bukamal carry the real possibility of a clash between this group and forces of Syria/Iran/Russia. This prospect raises rather acutely the questions of how deeply, if at all, U.S. forces are embedded with the SDF and how far the U.S. is prepared to go in defending SDF forces in the event they clash with Assads forces and its foreign backers.

The spokesman for the U.S. military said that we provide intelligence and combat advice to the SDF. However, he declined to say whether U.S. forces deployed in Syria participated in the latest operation.

He did say that we put forces where they need to be to support our partners. This suggests that, our forces might become directly involved in combat with those of Assad, Hezbollah, and Iran.

However, the spokesman also said that our mission is to defeat ISIS. This suggests that we would abstain from any direct involvement in combat with other parties.

It is unlikely, I think, that without direct U.S. involvement, the SDF will be able to maintain control of the al-Omar oil field or any other territory in that region in the face of attacks by the forces of Assad and his foreign allies.
Ive always been fond of the old line that There are two kinds of countries in the world: those that use the metric system, and those that have been to the moon. Heh. The American disdain for the metric system is one of those little tics that cosmopolite liberals like to point to as just one of many reasons for their contempt for America and its citizens. (They never seem to have the imagination to exploit the cognitive dissonance that might be had from gunowners acceptance of 9 mm ammunition.)

I like to embrace the fact that the comparison of Canada and the United States back in the 1970s is a perfect example of American exceptionalism in action. Canada, an Anglo-Commonwealth country, settled originally at the same time and by the same people who colonized what became the United States, acquired some of its historic character at the time of the American revolution, when many Tory loyalists moved there. When the world decided to move to the metric system in the 1970s, Canada followed Britain in easily making the change. Because thats what Canadians are like. But we stubborn Americans rejected the idea, despite Jimmy Carters support for it. I can still recall some metric/imperial unit distance signs appearing on some interstate highways in the mid-1970s. They didnt last long.

Well guess what? The American disdain for the metric system may be spreading overseas. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning:

English Vigilantes Use Ladders, Sticky Letters to Exterminate the Metric System: Members of The Active Resistance to Metrication launch raids, brave arrest to convert signs to imperial measures . . . Mr. Bennett is a member of Active Resistance to Metrication, a tiny group that has for years been pushing England to go back to its old weights and measures. . . . In a YouGov PLC poll after the Brexit vote, 45% preferred produce sold in pounds and ounces while 39% wanted it in kilos. Most over 50 wanted imperial measurements; those between 18 and 24 preferred metric. . . The group said it has changed about 3,000 signs since it formed in 2001most still in place, it saidand writes to local officials where signs are metric. Members use imperial-inspired code names including Yardstick and Wun Tun. They sometimes distribute leaflets at markets reminding traders they can label produce in imperial units alongside metric and have written clothing companies urging them to use imperial units only in catalogs. Movement toward metrication threatens to erode British culture, said Stephen Dixon, 56, a supporter of the Active Resistance to Metrication and a member of a sister group, the British Weights and Measures Association, which opposes compulsory metric-system use.

Looks like more #winning for the Brexiteers and global Trumpism.
Poland and Finland have developed multiple ties and share many common interests, President Andrzej Duda said in Helsinki on Tuesday, adding, the topics of his talks with the Finland's president included security issues, Ukraine and policy towards Russia.

On Tuesday morning, Polish President Andrzej Duda and First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda started their official visit to Finland.

Following his talks with the President of Finland Sauli Niinisto, Andrzej Duda stressed Polish - Finnish links and interests uniting both countries.

"We belong to the Baltic Sea community, we belong to the EU community and we also belong to the community striving to build security within the area of the so-called free Western states", Andrzej Duda enumerated.

In this context, he expressed satisfaction with Finland having been a guest participant of July 2016's Warsaw NATO Summit. He also thanked the Finnish president for building a Helsinki-based centre for combating hybrid threats, "in which NATO participates, with Poland as one of the active members".

"I am pleased (...) that together with Mr President, we see eye to eye on the military security in our part of the world", President Duda added, pointing out that the two countries shared the views on potential military threats and the way they should be countered.

According to the Polish president, Tuesday talks with his Finnish counterpart also concerned the effects of the "great relocation of the Russian troops" after the recent Zapad-17 maneuvers in Belarus, the situation in Ukraine as well as the prospects of bringing peace to the territory occupied by Russia, including Crimea. "We discussed the policy of sanctions against Russia, but also the policy of dialogue with Russia", Andrzej Duda added.

"I can say that our views, our stances in this regard, are very close", Polish president stressed. As he assessed, establishing of a "common space of security in our part of Europe" was a major task "in addressing all emerging threats".

Speaking to PAP as Andrzej Duda arrived in Helsinki on Monday evening, his top aide Krzysztof Szczerski explained "Finland is renowned for its high-quality army, not just in terms of combat ability, but also technical possibilities".

Emphasising that "the Finnish army is very advanced", Krzysztof Szczerski said the presidents would hold "a conversation about shared concerns for the security of the Baltic region and our part of Europe".

The presidential official noted the two countries had common interests as both "are situated in a highly sensitive part of Europe and, by extension, the world", adding: "it is important that we maintain political dialogue at the highest level".

Krzysztof Szczerski pointed out that, although Finland did not belong to NATO, it remained an important partner for the alliance in the security arrangement in our part of the world.

According to the aide, Duda's talks with Niinisto are set to touch upon energy security in the Baltic region, particularly, "projects such as Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 ", given their "massive, negative influence on the energy security of the whole region as well as on the broader security of the Baltic area".

The Polish president's visit has an additional, economic aspect, with the delegation featuring young high-tech entrepreneurs, who won the right to accompany Duda on one foreign mission at a recent competition for start-ups, held by the Presidential Palace.

Minister Szczerski noted Polish start-uppers would meet Finnish innovators at the Aalto university, dubbed "a sauna for start-ups", to establish "hopefully multiple and fruitful contacts" as well as exchanging ideas and experiences, "leading to joint endeavours in the future".

Finally, Andrzej Duda's stay in Helsinki will be rich in historical significance, with Finland celebrating the centenary of its independence this year, and Poland following suit in 2018.

In this connection, minister Szczerski underlined both countries owed their self-determining status to charismatic leaders, "(Carl Gustaf) Mannerheim and Marshall Pilsudski, the fathers of the independence of their respective nations, who were born in the same year".

The Polish presidential couple will lay wreaths at Mannerheim's grave and at the Cross of the Heroes. (PAP)
Bilateral cooperation and Armenias relations with the European Union and with Russia  these topics were raised in a discussion between President Andrzej Duda and the President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia, Mr Ara Babloyan.

The President received his guest on Wednesday in the Presidential Palace. In attendance was also the Chief of Cabinet of the President, Mr Krzysztof Szczerski. This year is particularly important for the relations between Poland and Armenia : it marks the 25th anniversary of starting diplomatic relations and the jubilee of 650 of the presence of Armenian diaspora on Polish soil. The President of Armenias National Assembly came to Poland for a three-day visit, accompanied by a delegation, at the invitation of the Speaker of the Senate.
Analysts:

Casino bubble

2.0 likely

{child_byline}NICHOLAS HUBA

Staff Writer

{/child_byline}

ATLANTIC CITY  Three years ago, an oversaturated gaming market and increased competition from outside the state forced four casinos in the resort to close, sending the city into a tailspin.

History may be repeating itself in a way, as over the next year, the city and the regions gaming market are again expected to grow.

While some see it as a sign the resorts gaming market is turning around, others have said it could lead to another round of closings.

Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City is scheduled to open during the summer, and Revel, which could be sold in the coming months, is expected to reopen at some point.

Meanwhile, in October 2018, MGM Springfield in Massachusetts is set to open and provide more out-of-state competition.

There is a concern with the increased supply that will be created by the opening of the Hard Rock, said Colin Mansfield, a director at Fitch Ratings and a lead analyst in the gaming, lodging and leisure sector. The market has shown signs of stabilization after the closures, the remaining operators are seeing increased profits and more supply will take away from the existing properties.

Standard & Poors Global Ratings recently said the ongoing expansion of casino gaming in the region may lead to future casino closings. The group also said the continued expansion of gaming will not have a long-term impact on the citys credit rating.

While there could be short-term economic and budgetary gains, they are unlikely to improve state credit quality. With declining tribal gaming revenues in Connecticut and the erosion of the Atlantic City gaming monopoly in New Jersey, long-term risks from commercial casino gaming are an ongoing credit risk, according to a Standard & Poors report. As states in the region continue their gambling expansion, coupled with the regions weak demographic trends, the likelihood that these revenues will meaningfully supplement state revenues over the long term diminishes and will have long-term credit implications.

For the additional properties to be successful, the city needs to do a better job of bringing people in, gaming consultant Robert Ambrose said.

The market cannot grow by adding just another casino property, Ambrose said. The formula for feeding an oversaturated market in part is to expand the amount of guests visiting the city.

The city has to continue to reinvent itself to attract people who will support the gaming industry, Ambrose said.

This is no longer just a casino city, he said.

{child_tagline}

{/child_tagline}
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BRICK TOWNSHIP  A former township employee pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing almost $1 million from the townships health insurance program by allowing a health care practitioner submit false claims in her name, according to Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino.

Kim E. Bogan, 52, of Brick, pleaded guilty to second-degree theft by deception before Superior Court Judge Linda G. Baxter in Ocean County, Porrino said.

As part of the plea agreement, the state will recommend five years in prison when she is sentenced Jan. 2, 2018. She is also required to pay $941,354 in restitution to the township, according to Porrino and and the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor.

Bogan worked in the townships Building Department. She admitted to helping an out-of-state health care practitioner submit false claims to her health insurance program, self-funded by Brick Township, between January 2011 and April 2017, Porrino said. The claims were for treatments allegedly given to individuals covered under Bogans policy.

Bogans case shares a few similarities with a federal investigation focused on a scheme in which public employees in several Atlantic County shore towns were recruited to obtain medically unnecessary prescriptions throught their state health insurance plan. Federal authorities say the scheme defrauded the states benefits plan of more than $25 million. Ten people have pleaded guilty so far and the investigation continues. The scheme involved doctors, pharmacy representatives and public employees  teachers, firefighters, municipal police officers and State Police troopers.

In exchange for the prescriptions, the recruiters and the doctors receive kickbacks from the out-of-state compounding pharmacy and pay co-conspirators, documents say.

Porrino said Bogan allowed the practitioner to submit claims in her name for services never rendered, and endorsed the insurance checks when they were mailed to her, knowing the money was stolen.

Whats even more disturbing is that she went along with the scheme knowing that the taxpayers of Brick Township  her friends and neighbors  would be responsible for picking up the tab for the bogus claims, Porrino said.

This township employee stole money meant to cover health care services for her co-workers and their families, said acting Insurance Fraud Prosecutor Christopher Iu. We will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute this kind of claims fraud to protect these resources for those who legitimately need them.

Deputy Attorney General Thomas G. Tresansky Jr. represented the state in the plea hearing. Detectives Cortney Lawrence and Jared England coordinated the investigation. Township Administrator Joanne Bergin, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield Special Investigations Unit Senior Investigator Catherine Nielsen, supervisor James Howell and manager Megan McCarthy assisted in the investigation.
A Bridgeton man has been charged with murder in the January shooting death of former Vineland resident Miguel Lopez Jr.

Authorities said Jule Hannah, 35, shot Lopez, 53, once in the head and twice in the body with a .40-caliber handgun on the 400 block of Spruce Street in Bridgeton and then ran from the area. Lopez was found dead in a vehicle by police.

A second person was seen running from the vehicle, but it is unclear whether Hannah was the person in the car with Lopez at the time of the shooting.

Hannah is charged with murder, possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose, unlawful possession of a firearm and certain person not to possess a firearm, according to the criminal complaint.

Hannah has two previous convictions in New Jersey stemming from drug charges, according to the Cumberland County Prosecutors Office.

He has been taken to the Cumberland County jail pending a hearing.
All must come together

We as a nation cant help but to see the steady stream of violence all across this beautiful country. People kill each other for little reason. The country is divided by race and over the evil we see every day on television. If its not the players on the field, its the shooting in the streets.

As Americans, all lives should matter no mater what color or race, and until this great nation comes together we will never live in peace and harmony as God would have had it.

Anthony Rando Sr.

Egg Harbor Township

Let school choice enable freedom of religion

Regarding two Oct. 6 commentaries debating the question, Is it time for public schools to put religion back in the classroom?

One article took the question to refer to the history of religion, the other to mean introducing religious practices. Good points were made in both articles. The first rightly said that religious practice is part of our history. George Washington in his Farewell Address said religion and morality make it possible for people to be governed. The second brought up a very good question: How do we speak sensibly about all the different religions? We are bound to offend one or more of them. Who decides what is said about each religion?

I believe that the complications they both brought up provide a major reason to enable parents to send their children to a school of their choice, to a school that teaches their religious history and their religions values. You can please some of the people some of the time but you cannot please all the people all of the time. In a land where choice ranks high on our priorities, why arent parents being enabled to send their children to the school of their choice?

I think this prospect might offend those who want religion out of not only the schools but also out of the public square. That is contrary to the foundations of the country.

The Rev. H. James Hutchins

Galloway Township

Against another costly Afghanistan escalation

President Trump has surrounded himself with military and corporate advisers. He apparently does not believe the advice of a former general, President Dwight Eisenhower. When leaving office, he warned about the influence of the military-industrial complex.

I thought of this recently when I read of the decision to send 3,500 more troops to Afghanistan. The Pentagon claims it will cost a billion dollars. Thats roughly $300,000 per soldier. I guess theyll be using $500 hammers.

In the meantime, social programs are on the cutting block.

Ed Dean

Somers Points
Cumberland County has some of the same tourism and economic development opportunities as neighboring Cape May County, but marketing has lagged and the state underserves the area, 1st Legislative District Republican candidates say.

James Sauro, a Cumberland County freeholder and candidate for state Assembly, said Cumberland County can learn a lot from Cape May County regarding tourism and economic development.

One of my pet peeves is marketing, Sauro said during a recent editorial board meeting at The Press. Cape May County does a better job than Cumberland does. ... We need to work on our advertised pros and work on the cons.

Republican Assembly candidates Sauro and Bob Campbell and Senate candidate Mary Gruccio are advocating for more school funding, help with economic development, property tax relief and resources to fight the opioid epidemic.

All three have different backgrounds and areas of expertise.

Gruccio is the current superintendent of the Vineland school district. She also served as a Cumberland County freeholder for seven years.

Sauro was the freeholder director in Cumberland County in 2002 and was re-elected to the board in 2013. During his time as an elected official, Sauro has sat on the county finance committee, served as chairman of the Department of Public Works, served as chairman of the Drug & Alcohol First Step Program, and been a member of the Health Department Committee.

He also is a plumber and is the CEO of A.R. Sauro Plumbing & Heating and A.R. Sauro WaterCare in Vineland.

Campbell, the other state Assembly candidate, is the mayor of Downe Township and has been involved in politics since 1992.

Some of his experience as a politician include sitting on the legislative review committee for the New Jersey League of Municipalities and being nominated to the New Jersey Clean Air Council and the New Jersey Coastal Coalition, among other memberships.

He also the director of the Delaware Bayshore Redevelopment Commission, which works to create and encourage public-private partnerships for economic development in bayshore communities like Cape May and Cumberland counties.

At the editorial board, Sauro said many issues the state faces are intertwined, and education is a good place to start when discussing the revitalization of struggling communities in Cape May and Cumberland counties.

Gruccio said one of her top priorities if elected is to fight for equitable school funding the 1st District.

I deal closely with families, I deal closely with students, and I think they need to do more with funding for our districts are in need, she said, adding the opioid epidemic has created more challenges for many schools, when students families are struggling with addiction. There are things that I deal with every day based on what our children deal with and what they see at home.

The 1st District includes all of Cape May County, a large portion on Cumberland County and a sliver of Atlantic County. Its economy continues to lag the rest of that state, and unemployment rates are higher than the national and state average.

Gruccio, who is running in a field that includes state Sen. Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat, and independent Anthony Parisi Sanchez, of Vineland, said there is a perception that Cape May County doesnt need more school funding or property tax relief because people see it as just shore towns and other thriving communities.

If you really look into it, Cape May (County) has some very poor areas and some people who are really struggling and need help, she said. So taxes seem to be an issue across the board, and then of course school funding is a big issue as well.

Sauro said he believes schools need more social workers to help children who come from broken families or whose relatives struggle with addiction.

Helping solve the opioid epidemic and getting proper funding for the schools in the 1st district would help spur economic development, he said.

We want to bring economic development in, we want to build up our base, we want to hire more people, Sauro said. Well, we cant hire people because theyre not educated. We need to start somewhere, and I do believe that we need to start with the school systems.
LONDON, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Investment in a wealth of talent across the UK and Europe, R&D for growth of unique expert community and funding for the first North American office.

iAdvize, the European leader in conversational marketing, today announces 32 million euros of series C funding with participation from Idinvest Partners, Bpifrance via Large Venture, the fund dedicated to innovating and hyper-growth companies, and Quadrille Capital.

The new funding will enable the company to:



Reinforce its European leader status by investing in its teams based in London , Dusseldorf, Madrid and Nantes with the number of staff set to multiply by 4 in the London office by 2020.

, Dusseldorf, and Nantes with the number of staff set to multiply by 4 in the office by 2020. Accelerate product innovation by doubling its R&D workforce in order to invest heavily in artificial intelligence and continue to develop ibbu, the community of savvy enthusiasts paid to advise online visitors.

Expand its international footprint by opening its first North American office in Boston USA in October 2017 .

Founded in 2010 by Julien Hervouet, iAdvize is now the European leader in conversational marketing. iAdvize is used by more than 600 businesses across 60 different countries around the world, including major brands like Cdiscount, Disney, BMW, Michelin, House of Fraser, TUI, Interflora, Feelunique and Alfred Dunhill.

The iAdvize Conversational Marketing platform enables businesses to engage their customers and prospects who need advice and support and offer them the best response. These responses can be from paid advocates (members of the ibbu community), chatbots or in-house customer service agents.

By putting authenticity back at the centre of online commerce, iAdvize generates a turnover of more than 1billion euros each year for 600 companies.

"Today, iAdvize is the European leader in conversational marketing. Our 14 million series B funding has helped us open our European offices and launch a major new offering, ibbu, the on-demand pool of experts.

This new funding gives us the means to maintain a strong pace of growth while reinforcing our presence in Europe and efficiently expanding our activity in the United-States. Our aim is to become a global leader in Conversational Marketing," said Julien Hervouet, CEO of iAdvize

This follows two previous rounds of funding, including 14 million in 2015, which allowed iAdvize to quickly open several European offices in London, Dusseldorf and Madrid. The opening up of a North American office in Boston in October 2017 will enable the company to export its offering to the US market, where it is the first marketing technology platform to offer a full-stack management of customer interactions, from technology to human resources including ibbu, the unique on-demand pool of experts for customer support.

The new funding will also enable iAdvize to grow its team to support its international expansion and develop its unique technology offerings. The business, which currently employs over 190 people, plans to recruit an additional 250 developers and sales representatives, half of which will be based in either the Boston or the European offices, including London. As part of this recruitment drive, iAdvize also announces the appointment of Pierre Soria as Chief Revenue Officer. He joins the company having spent seven years at Oracle in senior sales and management roles. Prior to this he was VP France for Salesforce.com and VP Southern Europe for SuccessFactors.

Alban Wyniecki, Investment Director at Idinvest Partners added: "The iAdvize team quickly understood the challenges and potential of international growth in order to reinforce its European leading position and be among the international leaders. Moreover, we think there is a real demand in the US market for a modern conversational marketing software coupled with a community of advocates which enables brands to implement a system of on-demand contacts. That's why we think iAdvize is well positioned on this continent to tackle and replace historical market players whose solutions are now aging."

"We've been particularly impressed by iAdvize's product vision and its capacity to constantly innovate to differentiate itself from others. Bpifrance entered into a joint venture with le Fonds Ambition Numerique in 2015 to finance the ibbu launch. Today, we are renewing our support to help iAdvize with its business growth and R&D efforts. Now, iAdvize is working on artificial intelligence by optimising the targeting of visitors in real-time, increasing the agents' handling capacity and turning their customers' chatbot strategies into a reality."

Jean Bertin, Large Venture Investment Director at Bpifrance

Expanding the team will drive further technological developments, as well as grow the ibbu service, a unique on-demand pool of experts paid to advise customers and prospects online. Achieving 90% customer satisfaction rate and multiplying conversion rates by 10, in less than a year, the concept has already convinced more than 50 businesses in Europe including large companies such as Sardegna.com, Cdiscount, Point.P, ManoMano, EDF, Mister Auto,Voyages-sncf.com and IKKS.

About iAdvize

iAdvize (http://www.iadvize.com ) is a conversational marketing platform that enables businesses to engage their customers and prospects in real time from one messaging solution (chat, voice, video), whether they're on a website or on social media. Visitors can access real-time advice from customer service teams but also from paid advocates - members of the ibbu community. Established in 2010 and ranked as a Great Place to Work, iAdvize has an average annual growth of 100%, employs 190 people and the platform is used by more than 600 brands across the world. A cross sector client base from ecommerce, luxury, tourism to finance includes Cdiscount, Disney, BMW, Michelin, House of Fraser, TUI, Interflora, Feelunique and Alfred Dunhill.

About Idinvest

With more than 8 billion under management, Idinvest Partners is a leading pan-European private equity firm focused on the mid-market segment. Idinvest Partners has developed several complementary areas of expertise including: investments in innovative European start-ups; mid-market direct lending (unitranche, senior loans and junior financing); primary and secondary investments in unlisted European companies, and private equity consulting. Founded under the name AGF Private Equity in 1997, Idinvest Partners was formerly part of Allianz until 2010 when it became an independent firm.

About Bpifrance

Equity investment are operated by Bpifrance Investissement. Bpifrance, a subsidiary of the French state and the Caisse des Depots and the entrepreneurs' trusted partner, finances businesses from the seed phase to IPO, through loans, guarantees and equity investments. Bpifrance also provides operational services and strong support for innovation, export, and external growth in partnership with Business France.

With its 48 regional offices, businesses benefit from a powerful, efficient and close representative, to answer all their needs in terms of financing, innovation and investment.

More information: http://www.bpifrance.fr Twitter: @bpifrance / @bpifrancepresse

For more information please contact:

Fran Langham

iAdvize

+44(0)7532-767-187

fran.langham@iadvize.com



Henrietta Dehn

Prosek Partners

+44(0)20-3878-8563

hdehn@prosek.com



Daniel Couzens

OneChocolate PR

+44(0)20-7437-0227

danielc@onechocolatecomms.co.uk



SOURCE iAdvize
University of Oxford is located in Oxford, England. The foundation date is unknown, but there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world.

Oxford is known as a cradle of talent. 27 British premiers, 60 Nobel laureates and a dozen politicians and royals have graduated from Oxford. Throughout its history, a sizable number of Oxford alumni, have become notable in many varied fields, both academic and political, ranging from Bill Clinton, former US president to the physicist, Stephen Hawking, and the former British prime minister, David Cameron, and Oscar Wilde.

Bathing in wisdom is what people feel at Oxford. Each young scholar is stunned by this ancient city. The words Jay Wei used in the speech, evoked something deeper in their minds.

"This bottle is full of water, the function is to quench my thirst, but I find that the more I drink, the more room it will have, therefore, it is more than a bottle of water, it may have other uses," said Jay, as he vividly illustrated the idea in Taoism.

He pointed out that people always start from nothing, gradually into a full state, and then back into a empty state again. When you are able to contain more things, you will finally find your goals and value in life.

He believes that civilization is the fruit of a interacting process which is full of conflicts and cultural shock. The kind of conflicts and shock can promote civilization ahead rather than push it aside. However, China was in retreat each time we confronted conflicts. He firmly believes that Chinese civilization will play its part in the world. As a one of the oldest civilizations, logic and the way of thinking are in our blood, it was just ignored. For example, Chinese people are particular about living in harmony with nature, "we should get it back. Now it is the time."

This was a popular speech, as even the aisles were occupied by students sitting on their own chairs. During the speech, all the students were either listening or taking notes attentively, and laughing at Jay Wei's jokes. Only two chances of questioning were provided in the Q&A session, which barely satisfied the enthusiastic audience. Even after the speech, quite a few students were still discussing in groups and reluctant to leave.

Apart from students at the University of Oxford, there were also students from Oxford Brooks University, University of Birmingham and University College London.

Today, China has stuck out its chest again and stood out among nations. Chinese culture is responsible and ready for the coming renaissance, and everyone should and will pitch in.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/588184/Jay_Wei.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/588185/Jay_Wei_giving_speech.jpg



SOURCE JC Group
HONG KONG, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Premia Partners, the Hong Kong based investment firm that focuses on ETFs and smart beta solutions, announces the launch of two smart beta China equity ETFs designed to provide investors with diversified exposure to the China A-shares markets. The ETFs track the CSI smart beta indices which employ methodology provided by Caixin Rayliant Smart Beta ("Caixin Rayliant") led by Dr. Jason Hsu, Chairman and CIO of Rayliant Global Investors, and Co-founder and Vice Chairman of Research Affiliates.

The two HKEX listed ETFs utilize a fundamental, multi-factor approach, and each consists of approximately 300 Shanghai and Shenzhen listed stocks. Both ETFs are physical A-shares ETFs utilizing Stock Connect and have a total expense ratio of 0.50% compared to the 1% average fee typically observed in the industry.

The Premia CSI Caixin China Bedrock Economy ETF ("China BEI ETF") (Ticker: 2803 HK) tracks the CSI Caixin Bedrock Economy Index , which aims to capture leading companies that drive the mainstream economy of China , based on economic size, financial health and low risk characteristics,

("China BEI ETF") (Ticker: 2803 HK) tracks the , which aims to capture leading companies that drive the mainstream economy of , based on economic size, financial health and low risk characteristics, the Premia CSI Caixin China New Economy ETF ("China NEI ETF") (Ticker: 3173 HK) tracks the CSI Caixin New Economic Engine Index , which aims to capture leaders from new economy industries, selected based on non-fixed asset size, financial health and growth characteristics.

With the inclusion of China A shares in the MSCI Emerging Market index, investors are increasingly looking for strategies that provide efficient access to the Mainland markets, while seeking to generate above-market returns relative to simply buying the largest companies by market capitalization or taking concentrated bet in the SOE or financial sectors. The Premia ETFs leverage on Caixin Rayliant Smart Beta's academic research, which identifies several equity factors -- including value, quality, low volatility, size -- as having the potential to outperform the broader A-shares equity market over the long term. The fundamental beta approach also introduces a buy-low, sell-high discipline into factor investing, as opposed to traditional market capitalization approaches that exhibit tendency to buy-high and sell-low.

"We are very excited to partner with CSI, Madam Hu Shuli and Dr. Jason Hsu and their team at Caixin Rayliant in offering these two ETFs," said Rebecca Chua, Managing Partner of Premia Partners. "Dr. Hsu has long been the leading voice in the smart beta and factor investing world, with his work at Research Affiliates widely recognized and adopted by investors globally. We are honoured to be able to leverage on him and the Caixin Rayliant team's insights and expertise in bringing to market the world's first fundamental multi-factor China A-shares ETFs. These strategies are based on robust academic research into China factor performance and are the first to capture the nuances of mainstream and new economy Mainland markets instead of following a narrow market capitalization approach."

Hu Shuli, editor-in-chief of Caixin Media and founder of Caixin Insight Group said: "As the Chinese economy continues to expand, its financial markets become increasingly relevant for global investors. We are committed to provide the best financial content through our international platform, Caixin Global, and Caixin Rayliant which empowers investors with world class smart beta capabilities to participate in China's growth."

Dr. Jason Hsu. Chairman and CIO of Rayliant Global Advisors and Vice Chairman of Research Affiliates: "We are so pleased to be working with Premia Partners on the NEI and BEI ETFs. Premia shares our passion for bringing to market state of the art investment strategies at low cost that generate long term value for investors. Particularly in Asia, where there is a culture of high fees and short-term performance selling, such strategies are in great need and Premia is taking a lead to fill the gap. These two ETFs offer the opportunity of excess return through low cost exposure to systematic sources of returns."

Media Enquiry

Premia Partners Company Limited

+852-2950-5777

enquiries@premia-partners.com

About Premia Partners

Premia Partners is an investment firm founded in Hong Kong in 2016, by a group of enthusiasts who believe in enabling investors with efficient investment tools and see enormous scope for innovation in the Asian ETF industry. The team came from various incumbent global and regional industry leaders and shares one common goal -- to reshape the ETF landscape in Asia by applying our collective knowledge and execution experience as well as by collaborating with the best-in-class global experts to curate ETF and smart beta solutions for investors. In Asia, and for Asia -- because this is our home. For more information, please visit www.premia-partners.com.

About Caixin Rayliant Smart Beta

Caixin Rayliant Smart Beta is the joint venture formed in 2017, between Caixin Insight of Caixin Media Group and Rayliant Global Advisors. This partnership brings together the vast data, research, and publishing capabilities across the Caixin family of companies, and the smart beta, factor investing and index-construction expertise of Rayliant Global Advisors ("RGA"). The joint venture is led by Dr. Jason Hsu as the Chief Index Architect and Dr. Jason Tuan as the CEO. Dr. Jason Hsu is the Founder and Chairman of RGA and co-founder and Vice-Chairman of Research Affiliates. Dr. Jason Tuan is a Managing Director at RGA. For more information, please visit www.caixinrayliant.com.

About Caixin Insight Group

Caixin Insight Group is founded by Caixin Media Group's Editor-in-Chief and the internationally acclaimed journalist Madam HU Shuli. It is a sister company of Caixin Media (www.caixin.com), the leading financial and business news provider.

The company focuses on providing best in class Chinese business and financial database, macroeconomic research, big-data analytics, smart beta index and strategy consulting services, with the goal of helping Chinese and global institutions better navigate through the structural economic development, internationalization, capital markets development and other important strategic agenda on China.

About Rayliant Global Advisors

Rayliant Global Advisors (RGA) is a Hong Kong-based investment management group founded in 2012. RGA specializes in Greater China equity strategies. Its unique quantamental approach of incorporating fundamental insights into a quantitative based portfolio construction process seeks to overcome challenges inherent in either fundamental-only or quantitative-only investment strategies.

RGA is led by Dr. Jason Hsu, a well-established leader in factor investing and co-founder of Research Affiliates. Jason has published over 40 journal articles and has won numerous awards for his work. He is Adjunct Professor of Finance at the University of California, Los Angeles, and visiting professor at National Chengchi University in Taiwan and Kyoto University. For more information, please visit www.rayliant.com.

Related Links

http://www.premia-partners.com



SOURCE Premia Partners Company Limited
NEW YORK, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Skechers U.S.A., Inc. ("Skechers" or the "Company") (NYSE: SKX). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980.

The investigation concerns whether Skechers and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices.

[Click here to join a class action]

On October 22, 2015, post-market, Skechers issued a press release announcing financial results for third quarter 2015, which included net sales that fell short of analysts' consensus estimates. The Company advised investors that $20 million in net sales were shifted from third quarter 2015 into second quarter 2015 due to early customer deliveries, and blamed its sales miss on Skechers' inability to make up this shortfall in third quarter 2015, citing a weaker-than-expected retail environment.

On this news, Skechers' share price fell $14.55, or 31.5%, to close at $31.64 on October 23, 2015.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris, 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

CONTACT:

Robert S. Willoughby

Pomerantz LLP

rswilloughby@pomlaw.com

Related Links

http://www.pomerantzlaw.com



SOURCE Pomerantz LLP
Of the nine finalists from seven different countries, VentureClash awarded six companies with investments, mentoring, customer introductions, grants and services to help them grow and succeed. The winning companies are required to establish a presence in Connecticut.

Investment Awards:

FRISS received the top investment award of $1.5 million. Based in the Netherlands, Friss uses proprietary analytics software to provide state-of-the-art solutions in the fields of fraud, risk and compliance for the insurance industry.

Two second-place winners will each receive a $1 million investment:

SCADAfence  Based in Israel , SCADAfence is a pioneer in securing mission-critical industrial networks from cyber threats, reducing the risk of connecting multiple devices in industries like manufacturing, utilities, oil and gas.

Vouchr  Based in Canada , Vouchr is a secure, payment-agnostic tool that allows users to bundle transfers of funds with photos, videos, social networking and gamification.

Three companies will each receive a $500,000 investment award:

Buzzmove  Buzzmove is the United Kingdom's only price-comparison and instant-booking platform for all services related to moving and the right level of insurance needed to cover moving-related services.

Davra Networks  Based in Ireland , Davra Networks provides a complete Internet of Things (IoT) platform that allows customers to define, build and bring to market vertical-specific IoT applications while collecting and easily sharing data.

EAVE  U.K.-based EAVE is developing the next generation of hearing protection and communication technology, utilizing noise cancellation and speech enhancement to eliminate noise-induced hearing loss.

"The talent in this year's competition was incredible," said Matt McCooe, CEO of Connecticut Innovations. "Judges struggled to make the decision, but in the end, FRISS took home the top award because of its strength in the space and ability to disrupt here in the United States."

The other finalists included:

Bought By Many  A U.K.-based interactive members-only service, Bought By Many offers targeted insurance opportunities designed to help individuals find the right insurance efficiently and customized to their needs.

PeekMed  Based in Portugal, Peek Health offers powerful three-dimensional preoperative planning software for orthopedic surgery that aims to help the surgeon better treat the patient while reducing costs and surgical times.

Tellspec  Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Tellspec is a data company with the ability to scan food, offering non-destructive real-time food testing for quality control, authentication, safety and nutritional value.

On October 20, 2017, the nine finalists, representing the most promising early-stage companies in digital health, financial technology, insurance technology and the Internet of Things, pitched their ideas in front of a live audience and a panel of judges at the Yale School of Management in New Haven, Conn.

The judges included investors and subject-matter experts from 1843 Capital, Elm Street Ventures, Greycroft Partners, The Hartford and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). In addition to the company pitches, the VentureClash program also included a keynote address from Tim Armstrong, CEO of Oath.

The VentureClash competition started with applications from 285 companies from more than 20 countries. After two rigorous rounds of judging, nine finalists were named, and they then went on to compete at the live pitch event.

For more information on qualifications, requirements, guidelines and application, visit www.ventureclash.com.

About VentureClash

VentureClash is Connecticut Innovations' global investment challenge focused on early-stage companies. The challenge identifies promising companies in digital health, financial technology, insurance technology and the Internet of Things that will receive investments from a $5 million award pool and the support of resources around Connecticut. To learn more, visit www.ventureclash.com.

About Connecticut Innovations Inc.

Connecticut Innovations is Connecticut's strategic venture capital arm, providing funding and strategic support to early-stage technology companies. In addition to equity investments, CI provides grants that support innovation and collaboration through CTNext, and connections to its well-established network of partners and professionals. To learn more, visit www.ctinnovations.com.

Contact: Lauren Carmody

Director of Marketing Communications

Phone: (860) 258-7829

Email: lauren.carmody@ctinnovations.com

Photo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/589399/Connecticut_Innovations_FRISS_VentureClash_Winner.jpg

SOURCE Connecticut Innovations
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
Seoul, Oct 20 : Top nuclear envoys of South Korea and the US met here on Friday to discuss issues concerning the North Korean nuclear programme.

Lee Do-hoon, South Korea's special representative for the Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs, met visiting US nuclear envoy Joseph Yun, according to Seoul's Foreign Ministry.

Lee and Yun represent their respective countries at the currently suspended six-party talks aimed at denuclearising the Korean Peninsula, Xinhua news agency reported.

The talks, which involved both the Koreas, China, the US, Russia and Japan, were last held in late 2008.

During the bilateral meeting, the diplomats discussed ways to encourage Pyongyang to accept denuclearisation talks.

They shared a view that Seoul and Washington would need to cooperate with major countries based on close US-South Korea coordination, agreeing to more frequently and closely communicate and coordinate with each other to achieve complete dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear programme in a peaceful manner.

The meeting followed a separate dialogue in Seoul on Thursday between the South Korean diplomat and his Japanese counterpart Kenji Kanasugi.

A vice ministerial-level meeting had also been held in Seoul between South Korea, the US and Japan to discuss the North Korean issues ahead of US President Donald Trump's visit to Northeast Asia, including South Korea.

Tensions ran high on the peninsula following the Kim Jong-un's regime's detonation on September 3 of what it claimed was a hydrogen bomb. It was the sixth and most powerful nuclear test ever carried out by Pyongyang.

On September 15, Pyongyang test-fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan, but there has been no additional provocation reported as of now.
Los Angeles, Oct 20 : The Los Angeles police is investigating a possible sexual assault case against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein -- the first one involving him in the city.

According to police spokesman Sal Ramirez, the department has interviewed a sexual assault victim who reported an incident that occurred in 2013, reports independent.co.uk.

Ramirez says the investigation is going on and he could not answer any questions about when the interview or incident took place.

Police in New York and London are also investigating the allegations of sex abuse in those cities over Weinstein.

"Mr Weinstein obviously can't speak to anonymous allegations, but he unequivocally denies allegations of non-consensual sex," his representative Sallie Hofmeister wrote in a statement.

Weinstein has been accused of sexual harassment or abuse by more than three dozen women, including several top actresses including Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie.

Several of the incidents, according to the victims, happened at hotels in Beverly Hills, which does not have an open investigation into Weinstein.
New Delhi, Oct 20 : The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday summoned RJD chief Lalu Prasad's wife Rabri Devi and son Tejashwi Yadav and in connection with the alleged irregularities in a 2006 IRCTC hotels maintenance contract case, an official said.

An ED official, confirming the dates of the summons, told IANS: "We have summoned Tejashwi and Rabri Devi on October 24 and 27 respectively."

He said Rabri Devi, who is also a former Bihar Chief Minister had asked the financial probe agency to question her in Patna. "We denied her request to question her in Patna and asked her to appear before the agency on October 27," he said. Rabri Devi has already skipped the agency's summons four times.

The agency had questioned fromer Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav on October 10, for over nine hours in connection with alleged irregularities in the IRCTC contract case.

Earlier, Lalu Prasad and Tejashwi were questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for hours in connection with the case on October 5 and 6 respectively.

The ED, on July 27, had registered a separate case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act following the CBI FIR in the matter and began probing Lalu Prasad and others for alleged transfer of money through shell companies.

The CBI, on July 5, had filed a corruption case against Lalu Prasad, his wife Rabri Devi and Tejashwi Yadav for alleged irregularities in the allotment of contracts for Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) hotels in Ranchi and Puri in 2006 to a private firm when the RJD chief was the Railway Minister.

The contracts were given to Sujata Hotels, a company owned by Vijay and Vinay Kochhar -- both named in the CBI FIR as accused -- in lieu of a bribe in the form of a three-acre commercial plot at a prime location in Bihar's Patna district, the CBI said.

A preliminary CBI inquiry found the land was sold by the Kochhars to Delight Marketing Company and the payment was arranged through Ahluwalia Contractors and its promoter Bikramjeet Singh Ahluwalia, another accused. The ED has since also questioned Ahluwalia.

Delight Marketing, which bought the property from the Kochhars, was later taken over by Rabri Devi and Tejashwi Yadav, alleges the CBI.

Sarla Gupta, wife of the RJD chief's close associate and former Union Minister Prem Chand Gupta and a director of Delight Marketing, is a co-accused in the case, apart from then IRCTC Managing Director P.K. Goel.
New Delhi, Oct 21 : Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the BJP's demand for removal of dialogues critical of the GST in Tamil movie "Mersal", asking him not to "demon-etise Tamil pride" by such interference.

"Mr. Modi, Cinema is a deep expression of Tamil culture and language. Don't try to demon-etise Tamil pride by interfering in Mersal," Gandhi said in a tweet.

Gandhi's attack came after Tamil actor Vijay's Diwali release "Mersal" came under attack from BJP leaders in Tamil Nadu, one of whom also sought to give a communal twist by raking up the actor's religion.

The actor has been panned for his dialogues in the film that takes a dig at GST and Digital India. Vijay, who had met Narendra Modi during electioneering ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, had even lauded demonetisation last year.

BJP's National Secretary H. Raja in a tweet on Friday raked up the actor's Christian origins.

"Joseph Vijay's hatred for Modi is 'Mersal'."

Referring to the actor's dialogue in the movie, Raja tweeted that in the last 20 years, 17,500 churches, 9,700 mosques and 370 temples were built. Out of these what should be avoided to build hospitals, Raja posted.

Raja even said "Mersal" shows Vijay's ignorance in economic matters as the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is not a new tax and the tax on liquor is over 58 per cent.

Tamil Nadu BJP President Tamilisai Soundararajan demanded removal of the dialogues relating to GST, digital payments and temples from the movie as they spread a wrong message.

Earlier on Saturday, senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram also attacked the BJP over its demand for removal of dialogues critical of GST in "Mersal".

"Notice to film makers: Law is coming, you can only make documentaries praising government's policies," Chidambaram tweeted.
New Delhi, Oct 21 : At a time when customers are rushing to link all their bank accounts with Aadhaar, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has clarified that it never issued any such directions, it was the decision of the Indian government.

The apex bank further clarified that in applicable cases, linkage of Aadhaar number to bank account is mandatory under the Prevention of Money-laundering (Maintenance of Records) Second Amendment Rules, 2017.

In a response to a Right to Information (RTI) Act application filed by Moneylife India and carried by it on October 18, the RBI said: "The Government has issued a Gazette Notification GSR 538(E) dated 1 June 2017 regarding Prevention of Money laundering (Maintenance of Records) Second Amendment Rules, 2017, inter-alia, making furnishing of Aadhaar (for those individuals who are eligible to be enrolled for Aadhaar) and permanent number (PAN) mandatory for opening a bank account. It may be noted that Reserve Bank has not yet issued instruction in this regard".

Clarifying its position, RBI in a statement on Saturday said: "...in applicable cases, linkage of Aadhaar number to bank account is mandatory under the Prevention of Money-laundering (Maintenance of Records) Second Amendment Rules, 2017 published in the Official Gazette on June 1, 2017. These Rules have statutory force and, as such, banks have to implement them without awaiting further instructions."

The government has made it mandatory to link bank accounts with the 12-digit biometric identification number. The deadline to do it is December 31, 2017.

This linking of Aadhaar to bank accounts is a process over and above the Know Your Customer (KYC) norms already followed by the banks.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in August had said that 524 million Aadhaar numbers had been linked to 736.2 million bank accounts in India.

Banks accounts in India are already linked to the tax-related Permanent Account Number (PAN), which is mandatory.

The Finance Minister had outlined a "one billion-one billion-one billion vision" for the country.

"That is one billion unique Aadhaar numbers linked to one billion bank accounts and one billion mobile phones. Once that is done, all of India can become part of the financial and digital mainstream," Jaitley had said.

The RTI query further asked whether RBI had Supreme Court's permission to mandatorily link Aadhaar with bank accounts. In its reply RBI said it had not filed any such petition before the Supreme Court.
Jaipur, Oct 23 : Despite criticism from various quarters, Vasundhara Raje-led BJP government on Monday tabled the Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill in the Rajasthan assembly.

This bill amends the Criminal Code of Procedure, 1973, and also bars the media from naming the public servant till the Rajasthan government allows the case to be investigated.

The bill was introduced by Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria among uproarious scenes as the main opposition Congress walked out from the assembly.

Senior BJP leader Ghanshyam Tiwari also walked out in protest of the bill.

The Congress legislators raised slogans against the government and the bill in the state assembly.

"We will oppose the bill," said Leader of Opposition and senior Congress leader Raeshwar Dudi.

"This will protect corrupt officials," he added.

Kataria said the government has introduced the bill as it wants the opposition to discuss it in the assembly.

It may be mentioned here that the Rajasthan government through an ordinance, namely Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Ordinance, 2017, made amendments in Criminal Procedure code, 1973, and Indian Penal Code, 1980, in September this year.

The bill has certain prohibitory provisions to restrain the courts to order an investigation against a person, who is or was a judge or magistrate or a public servant, in respect of the act done by them during the discharge of their official duties.

Besides, no investigation will be conducted by any investigating agency against the persons specified without there being any prosecution sanction.

The sanctioning authority will have to take its decision within 180 days from the date of the receipt of proposal. The ordinance also provides that in absence of a decision within the stipulated time period, the sanction will be deemed to have been granted.

It is also noted in the ordinance that no one shall print or publish or publicise in any manner the name, address, photographs, family details or any other particulars which may lead to disclosure of identity of a judge or magistrate or a public servant against whom proceedings under this section is pending until the sanction has been deemed to have been issued.

Whoever contravenes the provisions shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to two years and shall also be liable to fine.
Islamabad, Oct 23 : US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is scheduled to arrive in Pakistan on Tuesday to discuss joint efforts against terrorism and expanding economic ties, authorities said here on Monday.

During his one-day trip, Tillerson will hold talks with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif and Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, reports Radio Pakistan.

Tillerson is visiting Pakistan on Asif's invitation. Pakistan-US relations, Afghanistan and regional security will be discussed during the meetings.

Tillerson started his week-long five-nation tour on October 20 from Saudi Arabia that would also take him to India, Qatar and Switzerland, reports Xinhua news agency.

His visit to Islamabad came after a three-day US visit of his Pakistani counterpart earlier this month.

Asif met high-ranking American officials, discussing bilateral relations and US President Donald Trump's new strategy for South Asia.
New Delhi, Oct 23 : The Sculpture Park at Madhavendra Palace in Nahargarh Fort is all set to turn into an art gallery where contemporary along with traditional sculptures will be installed both indoors and outdoors.

The art exhibition, which will be launched on December 10, has been curated by Peter Nagy and will showcase artworks by 14 Indian artists like Huma Bhaba's 'God of Some Things' a bronze statue, Jitish Kallat's 'Annexation', 'Vertical Chronicle of a Turbulent Equilibrium', Bharti Kher's 'Impossible Triangle'.

The other Indian artists whose collection will be highlighted are Subodh Gupta, Arman, Astha Butail, Vibha Galhotra, Reena Kallat, Bharti Kher, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Manish Nai, Gyan Panchal, Prashant Pandey, Thukral and Tagra, Ravinder Reddy, Asim Waqif, Benitha Perciyal and others.

This exhibition also brings in works of six international artists like Evan Holloway whose work 'Untitled' will be put up along with the artworks of artists Arlene Shechet, James Brown, LN Tallur and others.

This exhibition is also first of its kind where the Rajasthan government has collaborated with Saath Saath Arts to bring a contemporary edge to India's heritage properties, with a purpose of boosting national and international cultural tourism and visitors to the site.

"I believe art in its many forms embraces and connects people from across continents and am therefore delighted that the Sculpture Park at the Nahargarh Fort will be the first permanent International Art Space in Rajasthan," Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje said in a statement.

"With this project, I am able to indulge my passion for art, architecture and dAcor into a marvellous synthesis of the past and the present. This exhibition is an attempt to bring a sense of life back to the palace. It is also wonderful to see that the government of Rajasthan extending their support for art," said Nagy.

"Our initiative aims to promote India's growing interest in contemporary art and culture whilst also embracing its important heritage. The exhibition is a true amalgamation of the best of India's past and present," Aparajita Jain, Founder and Director, Saath Saath Arts mentioned.
New Delhi, Oct 23 : The government's ostentatiously "important announcement" on Monday to appoint an interlocutor for initiating a dialogue with "all stakeholders" is a redux of previous similar attempts that have failed to solve the festering problem of Jammu and Kashmir.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh, in a hurriedly called news conference, announced former chief of Intelligence Bureau and 1979 IPS officer Dineshwar Sharma as the government's representative to hold a "sustained dialogue" in Jammu and Kashmir.

In the nearly three decades of armed insurgency and the relatively recent phenomenon of stone-pelting and street violence, the successive central governments have appointed several interlocutors -- some behind the doors while others were announced publicly.

History is replete with examples that the idea is hardly a sure-fire solution. Similar attempts have either proven to be non-starters or reports by interlocutors of previous such measures have been gathering dust in the corridors of the North Block here.

Though many political initiatives were also taken since the early 1990s, when militancy erupted in Kashmir, the problem has kept on getting worse since then.

The first known attempt was when a group of former militant commanders -- Imran Rahi, Babar Badr and Bilal Lodhi -- started a dialogue with then Home Minister S.B. Chavan. But the process proved short-lived.

It was in April 2001, that the then BJP government appointed Planning Commission Deputy Chairman K.C. Pant as its official envoy on Jammu and Kashmir, marking a new beginning in the central government's strategy to bring peace to the troubled-state.

But the "Pant mission", as it was often referred to in the media, was a washout. He could meet only Shabir Shah -- a veteran separatist leader whose party was not a constituent of the Hurriyat Conference that had set a pre-condition that Pakistan needed to be involved in any talks over Kashmir. The mission was wound up in 2002 sans any success.

Months later, a panel called "Kashmir Committee" was formed, with noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani -- known to be friendly with Hurriyat leaders including Syed Ali Shah Geelani -- as its head. The other known names in the panel included journalist Dileep Padgaonkar, former Law Minister Shanti Bhushan, Supreme Court advocate Ashok Bhan, retired diplomat V.K. Grover, eminent lawyer Fali Nariman and then journalist M.J. Akbar, who is now Minister of State for External Affairs.

The Jethmalani panel succeeded in talking to several separatist leaders, including Geelani. But nothing was achieved.

A year later, the NDA government at the Centre appointed former Home Secretary N.N. Vohra, now the governor of the state, as an interlocutor. But like Sharma, Vohra had no clear mandate or a roadmap. Vohra still managed to rope in moderate Hurriyat leaders, led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and took the initiative forward. The Mirwaiz-led Hurriyat faction entered into talks with the then Home Minister L.K. Advani. But the issue remained as it was and the stalemate continued.

Behind the scenes, former RAW chief A.S. Dulat also tried his hand at starting the dialogue in Kashmir but was unsuccessful.

The first major political initiative on Kashmir was taken by the Manmohan Singh government who held round table conferences in 2006, inviting all Kashmiri political parties. The Mirwaiz Hurriyat faction welcomed the move that was opposed by hardliner Geelani.

The exercise, seen as an inward-looking process, without any move to talk to Pakistan, failed to rope in the separatists. The roundtables ended in the setting up of five working groups to deal with a host of problems in Kashmir, including matters relating to the state's special status within the Indian union.

The working groups submitted their reports on extending confidence building measures for violence-affected victims, strengthening relations across the LoC in terms of more people-to-people contact, economic development, ensuring good governance and improving and strengthening centre-state ties. The group looking into the centre-state relations even discussed self-rule in terms of regional federalism and greater autonomy for the state. But the process too petered out.

It was in 2010, after months of summer unrest in the Kashmir Valley that the then Home Minister P. Chidambaram appointed a three-member team of interlocutors -- Padgaonkar, Jamia Milia Islamia academic Radha Kumar and Information Commissioner M.M Ansari -- with an objective to "begin a process of sustained uninterrupted dialogue with all sections of people of Jammu and Kashmir, especially with youths and students and all shades of political opinion".

The interlocutors after meeting some 700 delegations, including politicians, submitted their recommendations on a political roadmap for Jammu and Kashmir that would fill "the political aspirations of all the people of Jammu and Kashmir to a great extent, if not in full measure, without harming national interest".

They had broadly recommended greater autonomy with a regional devolution of power in the state to meet the aspirations of Jammu and Ladakh region. The report was made public but nothing moved.

Kashmir saw another unrest last year and this year too peace has been deceptive.

(Sarwar Kashani can be contacted at sarwar.k@ians.in)
Washington, Oct 24 : US President Donald Trump's possible trip to the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) separating North and South Korea during his tour next month is "still being worked out," a White House senior official said on Monday.

Trump is "most likely to visit" Camp Humphreys, a military base about 60 km south of Seoul, capital of South Korea, said the official on condition of anonymity, Xinhua news agency reported.

The time limit may not permit Trump to do both, the official added.

Trump's travel to Asia is slated for November 3 to 14. It will be his first trip to the region since becoming president, during which he will attend a meeting of leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies in Vietnam.

He will also join gatherings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the Philippines.
Baghdad, Oct 24 : US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in Baghdad on Monday on an unannounced visit to meet with Iraqi leaders, an Iraqi Foreign Ministry official said.

Tillerson is expected to hold talks with top Iraqi officials to discuss bilateral relations and the tensions between Baghdad and the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan following the last month's referendum on independence, Xinhua cited an official as saying on condition of anonymity.

Tillerson would also discuss the efforts to rebuild cities and towns after the defeat of Islamic State (IS) group from the major IS strongholds in the country, he said.

Hundreds of US troops are already in Iraq, serving as trainers and advisers, in an attempt to help the country win the battle against IS terrorists in the country.

The US-led international coalition has also been conducting air raids against IS targets in both Iraq and Syria.

Tillerson's visit came as tensions are escalating between Baghdad and the region of Kurdistan after the Kurds held a controversial referendum on the independence of the Kurdistan region and the disputed areas.
Kuala Lumpur, Oct 24 : At least eight people were killed and 33 others injured in a road accident in Malaysia's Penang state on Tuesday.

The accident took place at around 5.30 a.m., reports Xinhua news agency.

A bus ferrying Indonesian and Nepalese workers, had stopped on the left side of the road after an engine problem. Another bus failed to brake in time and rammed into it, the police said.

The two buses were carrying factory workers from Sony and Plexus, which have manufacturing business in the Penang state.

Out of the 33 injured, 23 sustained serious injuries, the police added.
New Delhi, Oct 24 : Known as the "king of unconventional" in the fashion world, veteran French designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac is smitten by the "smiles and colours of India", where he hopes to showcase his craft.

After over four decades in the industry, Castelbajac, who has dressed up stars like Lady Gaga, Mick Jagger, Elton John, Beyonce Knowles and Madonna, says he still has the urge to get out of the comfort zone and challenge himself.

Although he has never been to India, Castelbajac feels he is connected to the country in some way, and rues that his "paintings and art" are not exposed here.

"One of my good friends is (fashion designer) Manish Arora. His work is blooming, invading the grey urbanity with vivid colours. He is very talented and represents well for me what is designed in India.

"On the other hand, I worked in the past with the amazing Anish Kapoor who just copyrights the most absolute black colour. For me, India is a chrysalis between these two artists," Castelbajac told IANS in an email interview.

"My paintings and art are exposed in many countries except in India where I look for a gallery," added the designer, who has designed an exclusive line titled "Callection" for Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus.

So, can we expect a collaboration with an Indian designer?

"I am waiting for proposals. This would be the achievement of a wonderful dream for me," he said.

"I would love to visit India, the land of 2,000 colours, and I would be happy to collaborate with some industries there. Maybe in another life, I lived in Pondicherry, because I have thought about this city all my life but never had the opportunity to get there.

"I am sure that I will fall in love with India at first sight because Africans called me 'Man of Colours' and India's treasures are colours and smiles."

The Moroccan-born and Paris-based designer took his first step into the fashion world by designing for his mother's company and presenting his first collection back in 1970.

He started his own business in 1975, and gradually made a name for himself by playing with colours and injecting fun into fashion with his childhood themes and pop music-inspired styles. Castelbajac uses unconventional materials for his creations, but his focus is always on functionality.

Castelbajac is the man behind Madonna's Kermit the Frog coat, Katy Perry's yellow dress at MTV Europe Music Awards in 2008 with former US President Barack Obama's face emblazoned on it, Farrah Fawcett's look in the 2000 film "Charlie's Angel" -- and he also convinced Pope John Paul II to wear rainbow cross motif vestments.

Reflecting on his journey, the designer said: "In 1970, my energy and motivation to create was based on 'rock and roll' -- with a rebel attitude. I never forgot my punk spirit...

"It is easier in a digital world with social networks to propagate my philosophy of love and hope."

Castelbajac asserts that he has "always been extremely determined to reinvent perpetually the established, conventional ideas".

"I am still always curious and putting myself in danger, looking for new collaborations, new possibilities and new frontiers to my design and my style," he added.

What's his next challenge?

"Today, with the invasion of stories and images on the net, the way to provoke the imagination has changed. Creating mystery, working on poetry is the new challenge -- like to cross over an invisible frontier with surrealism," said the designer.

(Sugandha Rawal can be contacted at sugandha.r@ians.in)
Bengaluru, Oct 24 : On his maiden visit to Bengaluru after taking office, President Ram Nath Kovind will interact with scientists at the renowned Indian Institute of Science (IISc) on Tuesday.

"The President, who will be on a two-day visit to (Karnataka), will participate in an hour-long roundtable discussion with about 30 scientists from our institute and other institutions in the city," IISc spokesman Veeranna told IANS here.

Kovind will first visit the nano-science and materials laboratory in the sprawling campus of the century-old institute for a first hand account of the work being carried out in the dust-free facility.

After reaching the state-run HAL airport, the President will pay floral tributes to the founder of Bengaluru Kempegowda at the main civic office of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike.

On Wednesday, Kovind will address members of the Karnataka Legislature at a joint session to mark the diamond jubilee (60th year) of the iconic Vidhana Soudha, the imposing structure of the legislative building and the state secretariat.
Kuala Lumpur, Oct 24 : Two women charged in the murder of Kim Jong-nam, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's estranged half-brother, on Tuesday revisited the crime scene at the airport in Malaysia, the media reported.

Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong were at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, escorted by dozens of security officers, reports the BBC.

The women wore bullet proof vests and were accompanied by their lawyers and the judge presiding over the trial.

They are expected to visit the check-in hall where Kim Jong-nam appeared to have been attacked and the medical centre where he sought assistance.

If found guilty, the women face death penalty.

Their lawyers are likely to argue that the real culprits are the North Korean agents who left Malaysia, the BBC reported.

The women were accused of smearing the the VX nerve agent, a weapon of mass destruction, with their bare hands on Kim Jong-nam's face on February 13, when he was about to leave for Macau, where he lived in exile.

Malaysian forensic scientists had found traces of the poison in Kim Jong-nam's eyes, urine, blood and personal objects.

Both Doan and Aisyah, who pleaded not guilty when the trial began earlier this month, told the police they believed they were playing a prank for a television show and thought the poison was baby oil.

Four North Korean men, who the Malaysian police suspect of plotting the attack, left the country on the same day as Kim Jong-nam's murder and have been missing since.

South Korea and the US have accused North Korea of masterminding Kim's murder.
San Francisco, Oct 24 : US-based supercomputer manufacturer Cray has partnered with Microsoft to bring its devices and storage system to the Azure Cloud platform.

"Using the enterprise-proven power of Microsoft Azure, customers are running their most strategic workloads in our cloud," Tech Crunch quoted Jason Zander, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Corp, as saying.

"By working with Cray to provide dedicated supercomputers in Azure, we are offering customers uncompromising performance and scalability that enables a host of new previously unimaginable scenarios in the public cloud.

"More importantly, we are moving customers into a new era by empowering them to use HPC and AI to drive breakthrough advances in science, engineering and health," Zander added.

Microsoft and Cray might offer dedicated Cray systems in Microsoft's data centres so that Cray users can easily access the rest of the Azure cloud services.

Similarly, potential Cray users can now also get access to these machines without having to own and maintain a data centre themselves.

Each Cray system will be custom configured to match the individual customer's needs.

This might prove to be good news for people who wish to use Cray machines that are extremely expensive to even rent.

Since Cray's focus remains squarely on the high-performance computing needs of researchers in both academia and industry, the partnership could provide the potential users a cheaper option.
Washington/Kabul, Oct 24 : US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to Islamabad on Tuesday, a day after stating that the US has made some "very specific requests" to Pakistan to take action to "undermine the support that the Taliban receives and other terrorist organisations receive in Pakistan".

Talking to journalists at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan on Monday, Tillerson said that in Pakistan he will discuss US demands for securing Afghanistan and its conditions for continuing their relationship.

"We have made some very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support that the Taliban receives and the other terrorist organisations receive in Pakistan," he said.

"And we've said in this whole strategy this is a conditions-based approach, and so our relationship with Pakistan will also be conditions-based. It will be based upon whether they take action that we feel is necessary to move the process forward of both creating the opportunity for reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan, but also ensuring a stable future Pakistan," he said.

"I think the US has made it clear in terms of our support for Afghanistan, support for a sovereign, unified, and democratic Afghanistan, charting a path to peace, prosperity, and self-reliance. It is imperative at the end that we are denying safe haven to any terrorist organizations or any extremists to any part of this A the world," he said.

He said the US wants to work with regional partners to ensure that there are no threats in the region and that the strategy is a regional effort.

"So we're demanding others also deny safe haven to terrorists anywhere in the region. We are working closely with Pakistan in that regard as well."

He also said the US seeks a broader role for India not just in the South Asian area but beyond it as a strategic partner across the Indo-Pacific region.

"Our view of the relationship with India is one that's of strategic importance not just for this specific region, but in the context of that speech it was about a free and open Indo-Pacific region stretching all the way to - from Japan to India," Tillerson said. "So it's a broader relationship."

Earlier, he met Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah and other senior officials at the airbase.
Mumbai, Oct 24 : Around 3,000 government buildings in Maharashtra will become green with a proposal to retrofit lighting and cooling appliances with energy efficient ones, an official said here on Tuesday.

An agreement to this effect was signed between Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) and the state government which would be implemented under a joint venture by the Union Ministry of Power.

EESL would install around 26,500 energy efficient air-conditioners, 1.1 million LED lights, and 250,000 ceiling fans resulting in about 120 million unit savings -- or around 48 per cent reduction from baseline consumption.

This initiative, likely to be completed by 2019, is expected to entail savings of Rs 115 crore annually for the government.

Revenue and Public Works Department Minister Chandrakant Patil said in the agreement, the EESL would bear the entire upfront investment of around Rs 3.07 billion (Rs 307 crore) and the PWD would repay it from the savings in power bills accrued over a five-year period.

"I am happy that various state government departments are coming forward to adopt energy efficiency and help check the country's energy consumption. I invite other state governments and departments to adopt similar practices and help India become truly energy efficient," Patil said on the occasion.

So far, the project has already been implemented in nine government buildings including the Maharashtra Sadan in New Delhi, PWD Campuses in Nagpur and Pune, in Mumbai, Aurangabad, Amravati, Nashik and Kolhapur, said EESL CGM (Technical) S.P. Garnaik.

The country's building sector alone accounts for around 30-35 percent of the total energy consumption and grows annually at eight percent, necessitating a big push to save energy.

The EESL plans to bring investments of around Rs 1,000-crore covering more than 10,000 government and private buildings in the next two-three years, Garnaik said.

Besides retrofitting, EESL will offer centralized AC systems, Energy Audits and New Generation Energy Management Systems for buildings.

The EESL has started similar projects in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and New Delhi where 4,145 buildings have been identified and work has already been completed in 58 buildings.
Srinagar, Oct 24 : Indian and Pakistani troops clashed along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir's Kupwara district.

Defence Ministry sources said the Pakistan Army resorted to unprovoked firing at Indian positions on the LoC in Nowgam sector. "They used mortars, automatics and small arms to target our positions," an official said.

The Indian Army retaliated "strongly and effectively", the official added. No casualty or damage was reported on the Indian side.
Kolkata, Oct 24 : Outstanding credit in seven years in West Bengal has grown by more than three times to over Rs 4.18 lakh crore, Finance Minister Amit Mitra said on Tuesday.

"The outstanding credit, as on March 31, 2010, was around Rs 1.63 lakh crore in Bengal. The same has grown by more than three times to more than Rs 4.18 lakh crore by March 31, 2017," he said.

Describing the banks' credit flow as an indicator to industrial growth, he said the commercial banks' total lendings to state industries was around Rs 1.82 lakh crore during 2011-12 to 2016-17 fiscals.

"Of this, about Rs 94,153 crore was lent to micro and small units while medium industries got Rs 36,672 crore from banks during these years. Around Rs 51,200 crore was lent to large industries by the banks. It gives the impression that small, medium and large industries are working in tandem in the state," said Mitra, who also looks after the Industry, Commerce and Enterprises Department.

The Minister was addressing a programme organised by the Bharat Chamber of Commerce, Calcutta Chamber of Commerce, Credai Bengal, Howrah Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Mitra said the bank lending to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) grew by more than double after the Mamata Banerjee government came to power in 2011.

He said the state would voice the interests of MSMEs in GST council meetings.

Criticising the Centre's demonetisation move in November last, Mitra said: "It is obvious that many people lost their jobs due to demonetisation. The economic growth rate fell and potentially about Rs 4.5-5 lakh crore in Gross Domestic Product disappeared due to note ban which was executed without consulting anybody."

Education Minister Partha Chatterjee, who was present at the event, urged industrialists to invest in West Bengal.

Criticising the timing of the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax, he said: "We did not oppose the GST. We oppose the way it was implemented forcibly. As a result of demonetisation and GST, the common people have suffered a lot."
Kolkata, Oct 24 : Denying allegations that it was "suppressing or tampering with" the number of dengue cases and deaths, the West Bengal government on Tuesday said the disease has claimed 34 lives while infecting over 18,000 persons this year in the state.

Chief secretary Malay Kumar De also urged the health centres and medical facilities in the state to report if the disease was identified after scientific tests.

"On behalf of the state government, we want to clearly say that no information about dengue is being suppressed or tampered with. There is no question of doing such things. Whatever details we are getting, we are transparently giving it out on a regular basis," De told reporters at state secretariat Nabanna.

"Vector borne diseases like dengue are notifiable diseases. Therefore, if such cases are confirmed by the health professionals after following the standard medical protocol, it has to be reported.

"If cases of dengue are found in any heath centre or hospital, the legal process is to report the same to the state health department," he said.

He said there have been 34 deaths due to dengue, while 18,238 people have been found infected by the disease in the state this year.

On allegations by the opposition parties that the state government is not giving out the real data about the number of dengue patients here, he alleged that some health centres in the state are conducting tests in an unscientific way which cannot be accepted by the state government.

"Some people are saying that the details are being suppressed but it is not correct. Many diagnostic centres are conducting rapid tests to identify the disease which is not acceptable. If the tests are done in a non scientific way it is not possible for us to record that," he clarified.

The opposition CPI-M, Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party have been protesting against the state government's alleged attempts to downplay the number of fatalities and infected persons due to the mosquito-borne disease.

A section of pathological laboratories, private hospitals and medical practitioners, though reluctant to come out in the open, have also been complaining in private about pressure being mounted on them to suppress the number of dengue infections or deaths related to the disease.

Dey said the state government has already alerted the municipalities, who are working to their full capacity to stop the spread of dengue.

Asserting that there is no abnormality in the number of dengue cases in West Bengal this year, the official said no unnecessary panic should be created.

"There is no abnormality in the number of dengue cases in the state. Till this time last year, there were 20,140 dengue cases in Bengal while 40 deaths due to the disease were reported," he said.

"We want to request that there should not be any unnecessary panic about this," he added.
Mumbai, Oct 24 : Actor-comedian Kapil Sharma on Tuesday denied the infamous and controversial fight with Sunil Grover.

At the trailer launch of his second film "Firangi", Kapil opened up about the incident in which during a flight from Australia to Mumbai, Kapil had reportedly physically assaulted Sunil.

Clarifying his stance, Kapil said: "When you move with such a huge team, you have to manage a lot of things and I am really bad at it, I will say that much. Touchwood, we have been working together for many years and I would like to repeat it one more time, I didn't actually fight with Sunil Grover at all. It didn't happen."

Sunil famously essayed the role of Mashoor Gulati, a doctor, in "The Kapil Sharma Show".

Narrating what exactly happened during the flight, Kapil said the fight happened with comedian Chandan Prabhakar, and not with Sunil.

He said: "When we reached Australia, since the first day, my mood was really bad. I was juggling so many things, I was shooting the show and for other things. During that time, my film's artiste died. I was so nervous and turned so negative.

"I wanted to cancel the Australia show but couldn't and before the show, a girl came to me complaining about a guy who happens to be my childhood friend, Chandan. I scolded him.

"I had to perform for one and a half hours and that girl and boy artiste had 10-minute stints. My whole thing was, 'You are bothering me with this when I have such a long performance ahead'. I am a little impulsive.

"Chandan went missing for five days. I wanted to meet him and apologize because I didn't listen to his side of the story. I saw him one hour before the Australia flight and I lost it again and I used cuss words again".

Kapil also said he has no issues with Sunil.

"I love him. I like to work with the best of people. When I was doing 'Comedy Circus', I used to tell people, 'I met this guy Sunil Grover in 'Hans Baliye'. 'Let's get him, I saw his show, I liked him'. When you work with the best, you learn a lot.

"Sunil and I, we have known each other for nine years now, and we have been working together for five years. I don't have any problem with Sunil, but had I been in his place, I would have definitely asked one time that 'I haven't seen you like this in five years, why are you behaving like this?'

"Maybe nothing would have happened. But still nothing has happened, I love him," Kapil stressed.

Kapil also took a dig at the media for the speculation regarding the 'fight'.

He is currently excited about "Firangi", a period drama film set in the year 1920. Directed by Rajiev Dhingra, the movie also features Ishita Dutta and Monica Gill. It will release on November 24.
New Delhi, Oct 24 : The government said on Tuesday that a universal affordable housing scheme will give a big boost to the construction industry as 1.2 crore dwellings will be built in three years under PMAY's urban component and another 1.02 crore units under its rural component by March 2019.

"The universal affordable housing for all will give a big boost to the construction industry," Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa told the media in the presence of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley after a Union Cabinet meeting here.

Lavasa said 1.2 crore units under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana or PMAY (Urban) would entail an expenditure of Rs 1,85,069 crore in three years.

He said under PMAY (Gramin) 1.02 crore units would be built at a cost of Rs 1,26,795 crore by the Centre and states by March 2019. Lavasa said 51 lakh units will be built this year.

The government last month announced a new PPP (Private Public Partnership) Policy for Affordable Housing that allows extending central assistance of up to Rs 2.50 lakh per house to be built by private builders even on private land, besides opening up immense potential for private investments in affordable housing projects on government land in urban areas.

The government had launched "Housing for All" in rural areas in November 2016 under which the government proposes to provide an environment friendly and secure house to every rural household by 2022.

The government had in June 2015 given its approval for "Housing for All by 2022" for urban areas which provided for rehabilitation of slum dwellers, promotion of affordable housing for weaker sections through credit-linked subsidy and subsidy for beneficiary-led individual house construction or enhancement.
New Delhi, Oct 24 : The NIA on Tuesday arrested Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin's son Syed Shahid in a six-year-old terror funding case, a day after the government decided to open talks with "all stakeholders" in Jammu and Kashmir.

Shahid, 42, a state government employee, was arrested in Delhi after he was called for questioning at the National Investigation Agency (NIA) headquarters.

"Shahid over the years has been receiving and collecting funds through international wire money transfer from" Hizbul Mujahideen militant Aijaz Bhat, a Srinagar resident now based in Saudi Arabia, an NIA statement said.

The NIA said Shahid was one of Aijaz Bhat's several contacts who were in telephonic touch "to receive the money transfer codes". The money was meant to fund Hizbul Mujahideen's militant activities in Jammu and Kashmir.

Shahid, who lives with his family in Soibugh village of central Budgam district, has a masters degree in agriculture and works as a village agricultural assistant in the state's agriculture department. His contractual job was confirmed by the government in March this year.

The 2011 terror funding case pertains to terror money sent through hawala channels by militants based in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to Jammu and Kashmir.

The NIA had filed two chargesheets against six accused in the case in 2011. Four of them - Ghulam Mohammed Bhat, one of the closest aides of hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mohammed Sidiq Ganai, Ghulam Jeelani Liloo and Farooq Ahmad Dagga - are currently in Delhi's Tihar Jail.

Two of the accused, Mohammad Maqbool Pandit and Aijaz Bhat, are on the run and have been declared proclaimed offenders. Pandit, like Aijaz Bhat, has been an active Hizbul Mujahideen militant and is currently based in Pakistan.

Aijaz Bhat, according to NIA records, received arms training with the Hizbul Mujahideen in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in early 1990s. He never returned to Srinagar and began working for the militant group in Pakistan. He is said to have stayed in Sialkot before shifting to Saudi Arabia for generating funds for the group's activities in Jammu and Kashmir.

An NIA official said the agency through phone records found that he was in touch with Ghulam Mohammed Bhat, a Srinagar-based lawyer, in 2011.

According to NIA, the lawyer separatist had procured over Rs 4.50 crore from Pakistan through hawala channels within three years after 2008 for funding militant activities in the Kashmir Valley.

Ghulam Mohammed Bhat, Ganai, Liloo and Dagga were arrested on January 22, 2011 and Rs 21.20 lakh were recovered from them.

After their arrest, Aijaz Bhat used to send money to Shahid. The Hizb founder's son, according to an NIA official, received at least four instalments of money in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Shahid is the third son of Salahuddin, who also heads the United Jehad Council, the amalgam of Kashmir militant groups based in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan.

Salahuddin unsuccessfully fought the 1987 Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir. He then crossed over to Pakistan and founded the Hizbul Mujahideen -- the largest militant group in Jammu and Kasmir. Salahuddin has five sons and two daughters, who are all employed with the state government.

Shahid's arrest -- it is the first time any member of Salahuddin's family has been arrested -- comes a day after Home Minister Rajnath Singh announced the decision to start a dialogue process in Jammu and Kashmir and named former Intelligence Bureau Director Dineshwar Sharma to talk to all stakeholders.
New Delhi, Oct 24 : Leading journalist organisations, including the Press Club of India and the Indian Women's Press Corps, on Tuesday slammed the "draconian" Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill, 2017 tabled by the Rajasthan government, saying it restrains the media from acting as a "watchdog and ombudsman of society".

In a letter to Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia, they said the Bill, which was earlier in the form of an ordinance and promulgated on September 6, seeks to protect public servants from allegations arising out of possible vested interests and restrains the reporting by the media of any possible allegations made against such officers.

Not only does this clampdown on reporting militate against public interest as the public are impacted by government policies and decisions - good or bad - but the Bill subverts the basic freedom of the press which is enshrined in the spirit of Article 19 (1) (a) of the Indian Constitution, said the organisations that also included the Press Association and the Federation of Press Clubs in India.

In their letter, forwarded to the media, they noted that "it is ironic and unfortunate that at a time when there is a great demand and an even greater need for public accountability and transparency, your government appears to be moving in the opposite direction".

They urged the Chief Minister to withdraw the Bill as neither is it in the public interest, nor does it serve the aims and objectives of our vibrant democracy.
Kolkata, Oct 24 : The body of a diamond merchant was found inside his ransacked shop here, police said on Tuesday.

Mohammed Salim owned a jewellery shop in central Kolkata's Jakaria street, a police officer said. "He was allegedly strangled to death on Monday night."

The shop was looted. According to the family members, three valuable diamonds and other jewelleries were missing. "It seems to be a case of robbery," he said.

According to police, the family members suspected something was wrong when Salim did not come home long after the scheduled time on Monday night. They went to the shop to check on him and found his body.
Michigan, Oct 24 : US First lady Melania Trump highlighted prevention of school bullying, with a stop at a Michigan middle school where she chatted with students in a sixth-grade class working on an activity about social isolation and inclusion, a media report said.

At her side was Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Politico reported.

At one point, a group of students told Melania Trump they've been learning to embrace their own personalities. She told them that "I always believe you need to treat each other with respect and compassion."

"Be yourself," she said during the school visit on Monday.

She also told the kids that "I always say no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes, right? Because it doesn't do any good to your brains. It just damages."

The two also visited the cafeteria at Orchard Lake Middle School in West Bloomfield, Mich, to highlight the "No One Eats Alone" campaign. The campaign encourages students to ask a friend eating alone to join them at a cafeteria table.

"By our own example, we must teach children to be good stewards of the world they will inherit. We need to remember that they are always watching and listening. It is our responsibility to take the lead in teaching children the values of empathy and communication that are at the core of kindness, mindfulness, integrity, and leadership," the First Lady said in a statement announcing the visit.

Her trip comes as President Donald Trump has continued to wage war on his political opponents, often with strong language, such as recently calling Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida "wacky", the Politico said.

Melania Trump's communications director, Stephanie Grisham, told CNN that "Mrs. Trump is independent and acts independently from her husband."

"She does what she feels is right, and knows that she has a real opportunity through her role as first lady to have a positive impact on the lives of children," she told CNN. "Her only focus is to effect change within our next generation."
New Delhi, Oct 24 : The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) under the Environment Ministry has suspended the proposal to release the Genetically Modified variety of Mustard -- Dhara Hybrid 11-- for commercial cultivation, official documents showed.

It its meeting held on May 11, the GEAC, a regulator under the Ministry, deferred approval for the release despite the sub-committee giving the GM Mustard technical clearance last year.

"Subsequent to receipt of various representation from different stakeholders, matters related to environmental release of transgenic Mustard are kept pending for further review," the GEAC said in the minutes of the meeting published on the Ministry's website.

The development comes as a setback to Deepak Pental, a geneticist at Delhi University, who developed the Dhara Hybrid 11.

Earlier, it was reported that the GEAC had recommended commercial release of the GM- Mustard variety and the Environment Minister was supposed to take a final call on it.

The Central government had in July this year told the Supreme Court that it would take a decision in a month-and-a-half on whether to allow the commercial roll out of GM mustard crop in the country.

There have been voices against the commercial cultivation of GM crops raising fears that it may have an adverse impact on the health of the people and biodiversity in the country In June this year, the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, an agriculture think tank of 650 scientists, had urged the government to allow commercial use of GM mustard and to support scientists to develop such hybrids in the future.
New Delhi, Oct 24 : A court on Tuesday asked the Tihar Jail Superintendent to appear in person and respond to jailed gangster Neeraj Sehrawat's plea to ensure hygienic conditions for prisoners.

Additional Sessions Judge Rakesh Pandit sought the official's appearance on November 1 and explain Sehrawat alias Neeraj Bawana's complaint about "inhuman" conditions in the jail.

Bawana's counsel M.S. Khan urged the court to issue directions to jail officials to provide better and hygienic conditions to his client and other inmates.

Khan asked the court to appoint a Local Commissioner to visit the jail and meet the inmates.

Bawana said he was kept in a high-risk ward of Jail Number 1 along with 45 inmates and they once went on hunger strike to demand basic facilities, proper food with lodging as well as medical facilities.

He alleged that the inmates were kept locked up 24 hours a day and not allowed to breathe fresh air.

The gangster claimed that jail cells stink, were infested with thousands of insects and plaster was peeling off the walls.

Bawana, former Delhi legislator Rambeer Shokeen, Pankaj Sehrawat, Sunil Rathi, Rahul Dabas, Naveen Dabas alias Bali, Naveen Hooda alias Bhanja, Amit Malik alias Bhura, Gurpreet Singh and Deepak Dabas alias Deepa are facing trial under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) for allegedly running an organised crime syndicate.
New Delhi, Oct 24 : Questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence on the Women's Reservation Bill issue, the Congress on Tuesday demanded that the Bill be introduced in the Winter Session of Parliament and be fully implemented before the next general elections.

The Congress also alleged the "anti-women mindset" of the RSS and the "Pracharak in Modi" was stalling the bill.

On Monday, 41 Mahila Congress functionaries submitted 32 lakh signatures to President Ram Nath Kovind to seek his support for the Women's Reservation Bill and urged him to expedite the process to pass the Bill.

All district Mahila Congress presidents will submit a memorandum to the Prime Minister through the district collectorates demanding swift action in passing the Bill on October 31, which marks the Martyrdom Day of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

"Modi government has not only betrayed the youth, farmers and the poor. It is also deceiving the political aspirations of 586 million women of this country," said Congress spokesperson and All India Mahila Congress president Sushmita Dev.

"The BJP manifesto explicitly states it is committed to 33 per cent women's reservation in Parliament and state assemblies through a Constitutional Amendment. Three and half years have passed, what happened to this commitment?" she asked.

Dev said that Congress President Sonia Gandhi had on September 20 in a letter to Modi extended support of the party to this bill in the Lok Sabha.

"Till date there has been no response or acknowledgment to the letter. Why is the Modi government not implementing what could be the biggest social reform in the largest democracy in the world," Dev asked.

"Despite the support of the largest opposition party in Lok Sabha and also having absolute majority, why is the Modi government not introducing the Bill in Parliament," she asked.

"We have heard various statements from union ministers and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj that BJP has two women ministers in the Cabinet Committee on Security. Will the women leaders of the BJP convince the Prime Minister to take affirmative action to give half of the population of India their right to become a part of legislative institutions at all levels," she asked.
: New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at Hyderabad House in New Delhi on Oct 24, 2017. (Photo: IANS/PIB). Image Source: IANS/PIB

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani at Hyderabad House in New Delhi on Oct 24, 2017. Image Source: IANS/PIB

New Delhi, Oct 24 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday pledged to end terrorism, saying "closure of state-sponsored safe sanctuaries" for terrorists was essential for lasting peace in the region.

On a day-long visit to India, Ghani held detailed talks with the Prime Minister on promoting peace and security in war-torn Afghanistan.

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said Modi and Ghani discussed a "range of bilateral, regional and global issues" and expressed their "firm resolve to end menace of terrorism".

This was Ghani's fourth visit to India in three years and 12th personal interaction with Modi.

The latest trip comes ahead of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's three-day visit to India beginning on Wednesday. US President Donald Trump has asked India to play a greater role in rebuilding Afghanistan.

Tillerson also made an unannounced trip to Kabul on Monday and met the Afghan President.

Modi reiterated his government's "support for a negotiated political reconciliation in Afghanistan that is Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled", an MEA statement said.

"It was emphasised that renunciation of violence and terror and closure of state sponsored safe havens and sanctuaries were essential for any meaningful progress and lasting peace," said the statement, issued after the two leaders met here.

The two sides reiterated their commitment to their strategic partnership and assessed the outcomes of the recent high-level bilateral exchanges, including the visits of Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah and Foreign Minister Rabbani to India last month and that of National Security Adviser Ajit Doval to Afghanistan last week.

Detailed discussions were held between Modi and Ghani in one-on-one format, restricted meeting and a working lunch.

The two sides expressed "deep appreciation for the bravery with which the Afghan forces were fighting terrorism imposed on Afghanistan", according to the statement India "agreed to extend further assistance depending upon the needs of the Afghan defence and police forces" as the two sides "positively assessed" New Delhi's support in the defence and security, including training of thousands of Afghan defence and security personnel.

The two sides also assessed the New Development Partnership launched at the meeting of the Strategic Partnership Council on September 11.

They held the partnership "as a significant step in building upon the highly successful development cooperation of the past 16 years" between the two countries.

India is assisting Afghanistan in developing projects, including in the fields of health, agriculture, drinking water supply, education, renewable energy, infrastructure development, skill development and capacity building, to help the country in its reconstruction, economic development and effective governance after decades of violence.

"Both sides agreed that the recent convergence and alignment of views at regional and international arenas have created opportunities for bringing peace, security and stability in Afghanistan. It was agreed to further deepen the bilateral strategic dialogue and consultations at all levels in order to achieve the shared objectives."

The two sides discussed issues related to connectivity. The establishment of the air freight corridor that began in June was acknowledged as an important factor in providing Afghan farmers a direct and easy access to the Indian market.

The efforts for early operationalisation of the Chahbahar Port, including the shipments of wheat in coming weeks to Afghanistan through it, was considered as a step that would shape new trade and transit opportunities for the landlocked country.

Earlier, Ghani met President Ram Nath Kovind and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.
Srinagar, Oct 24 : While mainline Hurriyat leaders maintained silence over the Centre's decision to open a dialogue with all stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir, a former chief of the separatist amalgam on Tuesday said any peace process without involving Pakistan was futile.

Moulvi Abbas Ansari, a prominent Shia leader, said tripartite talks between India, Pakistan and people from Jammu and Kashmir, was the only way forward to resolve the Kashmir problem.

"When I was the chairman of the Hurriyat Conference and general Parvez Musharraf ruled Pakistan, I told both the countries that a solution can only be reached if people from both parts of Kashmir are included in a tripartite dialogue between Kashmiris, India and Pakistan," the senior separatist leader said in a statement.

The reaction from the separatist leader came a day after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh announced the government's decision to appoint Dineshwar Sharma, former chief of the Intelligence Bureau, as the interlocutor for a sustained dialogue in Jammu and Kashmir.

Other senior separatist leaders including Chairman of the hardline Hurriyat faction Syed Ali Shah Geelani, moderate Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and JKLF head Yasin Malik have not reacted to the government's move.
Berlin, Oct 24 : The German Parliament elected a veteran centre-right politician as its President on Tuesday at a time when the chamber included a far-right party among its ranks for the first time in decades.

Wolfgang Schauble has been a member of parliament with the Christian Democratic Union since 1972 and a minister for 12 years, most recently as Finance Minister.

He was voted in with the backing of 501 lawmakers, while 173 cast their ballots against him, 30 abstained and one vote was annulled, Efe news agency reported.

"I am happy to have this new task," Schauble said. "The heart of democracy beats in Parliament," he added, describing himself as "a passionate lawmaker."

He called on all members of parliament to carry out the necessary democratic battles within the rules accepted by all.

The new Bundestag, following the September 24 elections, has six parliamentary groups, of which the largest is the CDU, the party of Schauble and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 92 seats in the vote, meaning the far-right was represented in Parliament for the first time in decades.

According to Electoral Commission data, this is the largest Parliament to date, with 709 members who have an average age of 49.4 years, of which 30.7 per cent are women.

A deal is yet to be struck between conservatives, liberals and greens to form a coalition led by Merkel, though talks between them are expected later on Tuesday.

The parties' very different approaches to issues like migration, European integration and energy means negotiations are expected to extend to the end of the year.
Tokyo, Oct 24 : Japan's newly re-elected Prime Minister and the South Korean President agreed on Tuesday to continue cooperating in the face of North Korea's nuclear threats.

A government spokesperson said that Shinzo Abe and Moon Jae-in had spoken over telephone, Efe reported quoting Japanese news agency Kyodo.

The pair reportedly discussed relations between the two governments following Abe's victory in a snap election held on Sunday.

Abe and Moon reaffirmed their willingness to continue with bilateral cooperation regarding North Korea, as well as trilateral cooperation involving the US.

A spokesperson from Moon's office told South Korean news agency Yonhap that the President had congratulated Abe on his re-election and said that the strong support he had received would be a driving force in pursuing his policies.

Japan's Prime Minister on Monday promised to take counter-measures in order to tackle North Korean threats, after the ruling coalition that he leads achieved the required two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives.

Likewise, Abe agreed to step up the pressure on Pyongyang in a phone conversation with US President Donald Trump on Monday, ahead of Trump's tour of Asia in early November, which will see him visit Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing.
Gandhinagar, Oct 24 : Amid widespread speculation that the Election Commission will finally declare the Gujarat Assembly poll dates on Wednesday, the state government continued its last-minute announcements of welfare schemes and various sops to woo voters before the model code of conduct comes into play.

According to sources, the Gujarat elections might be declared on Wednesday and the possible polling dates could be December 10 and 14, while the last day for filing nominations was likely to be November 28. The Election Commission had already announced while declaring the Himachal Pradesh polls that the counting of votes in both states would take place on December 18.

However, when asked officially about the election dates, Gujarat Chief Electoral Officer B.B. Swain told IANS that "I don't have anything to say about it. My lips are sealed on this matter."

The Gujarat government, meanwhile, has been announcing schemes in a panic mode. In the last 22 days, there have been 22 major welfare announcements from the BJP government -- either at the Centre or the state.

The BJP government has lately been showering the Gujarati public with hordes of special attractive announcements like interest-free agriculture loan of upto Rs 3 lakh to farmers, minimum support price of Rs 900 for groundnut, Rs 100 bonus on 20 kg of cotton, formation of 16 new Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) units, inauguration of passenger service from Ghogha to Dahej, joining the east and west coasts of the Gulf of Khambhat, et al.

On Tuesday, in a bid to woo the angry fixed salaried workers who have long been demanding pay revision, the state government announced a hike of Rs 250 daily allowance, 11 holidays, a 40-day maternity leave and Rs 2 lakh death insurance for employees working in the Sachivalaya, various boards and corporations as well as other government offices.

Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel announced waiving of the 18 per cent Goods and Services Tax (GST) on micro irrigation equipments. This expense of around Rs 77.64 crore will be borne by the state government.

The state government also announced a 50 per cent hike in the incentives given to ASHA workers, who have been holding demonstrations at various levels for the past many days against the government. On an average an ASHA worker earns around Rs 2,000 to Rs 2,500 per month. The government also will be disbursing them two saris or dress annually.

On Monday, the government also announced the much-awaited appointments to various vacant posts of various boards and corporations in a bid to woo communities. The most striking appointment was that of rebel MLA from Congress who defected to BJP, Balwantsinh Rajput. After his loss in the Rajya Sabha elections, he has been given a key position of chairperson of the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation.

Besides him, the government also filled crucial positions of chairpersons of the newly-formed Gujarat Rajya Bin Anamat Varg Aayog (Gujarat Non Reservation Category Commission) and the Gujarat Rajya Bin Anamat Varg Shaikshanik ane Arthik Vikas Nigam, (Gujarat Non Reservation Category Educational and Financial Development Corporation).

These bodies were formed after the BJP government's negotiation with the Patidar social and religious institutions and leaders, along with Hardik Patel-led Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) and other agitating groups. These positions were given obviously to Patidar faces, Hansraj Gajera and B.H. Ghodasara.
Manila, Oct 24 : Indian Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said nations that helped North Korea in nuclear proliferation should be investigated and held accountable, even as she did not name any country.

Sitharaman was speaking at the Asean Defence Ministers' Meeting (ADMM-plus) being held in the Philippines. This is her first international tour after taking charge as the Defence Minister.

North Korea has conducted several tests in recent times. "The nuclear and missile tests conducted by North Korea in violation of its international commitments, have triggered serious concern," Sitharaman said.

"India has deplored these tests. We remain concerned about the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted India's national security and that of the entire region. It is important that North Korea's proliferation linkages are investigated and those who have supported its nuclear and missile programme are held accountable," she said.

Pakistan has been accused of transferring nuclear weapons technology to North Korea, and China's involvement as an ally of Pakistan has also been questioned.

Speaking at the meeting, being held in the Philippines which has been involved in a territorial conflict with China in the South China Sea, Sitharaman said that India supported freedom of navigation and rule based order.

"Maritime security continues to be another key concern. India supports freedom of navigation, overflight and commerce throughout the region. Nations should resolve maritime disputes peacefully and in accordance with international law. We support a rules based order for oceans and sea that is critical for the continued growth and development of the Indo-Pacific region," she said.

The Philippines had approached the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) concerning certain issues in the South China Sea including the legality of China's "nine-dotted line" claim. A ruling was given in favour of the Philippines, which was rejected by China.

Sitharaman called upon all nations in the region to be prepared for conventional as well as non conventional threats to security and added terrorism and radicalisation posed a major threat. "There are no good terrorists," Sitharaman said.

"Terrorism is now a trans-national phenomena which requires strong collective action by all members of the global community," she said adding that social media and cyberspace have expanded the threat.

"India has taken resolute measures to fight the scourge of terrorism from across its borders. We fully recognize the role of joint mechanisms with our partners and the role of international and regional forums in fighting this menace," she said.

The forum ADMM-plus includes defence ministers from the 10 Asean member countries and counterparts from countries such as Australia, China, India, Japan, US, South Korea, New Zealand and Russia.
Lucknow, Oct 24 : Several aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) on Tuesday touched down and took off as part of a special drill on a three-km stretch of the Agra-Lucknow Expressway in Uttar Pradesh's Unnao district.

The IAF exercise, held in collaboration with the Uttar Pradesh government, saw a C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft make a short landing on the highway, close to Bangarmau, around 60 km west of state capital Lucknow.

Garud Commandos disembarked from the aircraft, on foot as well as on a Gypsy, onto the makeshift runway. As part of the drill, the commandos took up position on either side of the airstrip to cordon it off for operations.

This is the first time a transport aircraft participated in such an exercise in India.

A total of 16 aircraft participated in the operation, including IAF's frontline Air Superiority Fighters like the Sukhoi-30, Mirage-2000 and Jaguar.

The operations commenced around 10.15 a.m. and continued till around noon on the stretch specially prepared for the operation.

For the exercise, Su-30s were flown in from the air force base in Bareilly, Mirage-2000 from Gwalior and Jaguar from Gorakhpur. The C-130J flew in from Hindon airbase on Delhi's outskirts.

The exercise culminated with the C-130J returning for another short landing.

"This is an important exercise for war and peace times, in cases of emergency like providing humanitarian assistance, evacuation, or distribution of relief material," IAF Spokesperson Gargi Malik Sinha said.

A team of senior IAF officials, including Senior Air Staff Officer of Central Air Command Air Marshal A.S. Butola, were present.

The operation was conducted under the aegis of the Central Air Command, Bamrauli airport at Allahabad. Air Force Station Bakshi Ka Talab Station Commander Gp Capt J. Suares and his team were responsible for overall control and coordination.

On-site arrangements were made for a Mobile Air Traffic Control, Radar Control, Meteorological Facility, Aerospace Safety and Security Control.

In addition, to deal with any situation or a crash, firefighting, rescue and medical teams were positioned.

The IAF sought assistance from the state government for temporary closure of the expressway and other matters like crowd control.

A large number of police personnel was stationed along the stretch to ensure smooth conduct of operations.

"Over the past few years, the IAF has been increasing its efforts to utilise certain straight stretches of National Highways for emergency landings. Such highway stretches are planned to be used in emergencies, if an active airport is not available for some reason," an official statement said.

"These operations increase the flexibility in the use of air power. In addition, use of transport aircraft for quick insertion of forces for human assistance and disaster relief into civil area and special forces in case of contingencies has been validated," it said.

The statement said that while Tuesday's operations required closure of the expressway stretch for road traffic, such closure will not be required in future as two diversion roads on either side of the airstrip are nearing completion.

In addition, wire fencing on both sides is also being undertaken to keep the airstrip clear of stray animals.

Two parking areas for aircraft on both ends of the airstrip are also nearing completion.

The other countries which have dedicated highway stretches for landing military aircraft on roads include Pakistan, Germany, Sweden, South Korea, Taiwan, Finland, Switzerland, Poland, Singapore and Czechoslovakia.

"This operation has majorly boosted IAF's capability to undertake unhindered operations even during non-availability of standard runways. It has demonstrated the expert flying skills of its fighter and transport aircrew, and the capability of its ground crew in activating such expressway airstrips on short notice," the statement added.

"Such activations of highway stretches all across India are planned to be practised regularly by the IAF in future," it said.

On May 21, 2016, a Mirage 2000 had touched down on the Yamuna Expressway.

A number of highways have been cleared by the government for being used as airstrips for emergencies.
New Delhi, Oct 24 : Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Tuesday invited potential investors to participate in Advantage Assam, the first ever global investors summit to be held in the Northeast, saying his state can now be termed as the land of potentialities, possibilities and prosperity.

Organised by industry body Ficci along with the state government, Advantage Assam will be held in Guwahati on February 3-4, 2018.

"The business environment we have created in Assam today is only because of the support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi," Sonowal said while addressing a curtain-raiser conference for the summit here.

"He told us that we should stand up as A for Assam," he said while inviting investments for Assam.

Sonowal said that it was Modi who gave the name Asthalakshmi collectively for Assam and the other northeastern states.

Stating that "we will have to go hand-in-hand", the Chief Minister said: "Please come to Assam with an open mind. We are ready to extend full cooperation to you."

He said that with a revamped economy and geographical proximity to southeast Asian markets, "we are a launchpad for huge business opportunities".

"We are creating a business friendly environment with visionary reforms and are developing state-of-the-art infrastructure," Sonowal stated.

"We were earlier termed as a land of trouble and insurgency, land of terrorism. Now, Assam is a land of potentialities, possibilities and prosperity."

Inviting investors to share their business smartness in Assam, he said that building infrastructure was the government's responsibility.

"Once the Brahmaputra river was considered the best waterway in the world but we lost that advantage due to sedimentation and siltation," the Chief Minister said.

"Now the Prime Minister has announced Rs. 400 crore for dredging of the Brahmaputra," he said.

Stating that Bangladesh and Bhutan have already opened consulates in Guwahati, Sonowal said: "Now we have requested the 10 member countries of the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) to also open their consulates in Guwahati."

He said that a World Trade Centre is also being developed in Guwahati with the construction of two towers, each 65 storeys tall.

The Chief Minister said that in the last one-and-a-half years that the BJP-led government has been in power in Assam, investments to the tune Rs 6,500 crore have come into the state.

As for the law and order situation in the state, he said that for the first time in its history, the country's Independence Day has been marked by three-day festivities for two consecutive years.

"We are committed to realise Prime Minister Modi's vision of the Northeast as the new engine of India's growth and will offer all support to investors," Sonowal asserted.

Speaking on the occasion, Assam Industries Minister Chandramohan Patowary said that keeping the government's new development agenda in mind, Chief Minister Sonowal has created two new government departments - one on skills development and another to work on the Centre's Act East Policy.

"People will get skilled only when there is a necessity," Patowary stated.

He also said that the state government's employment department has started an Industrial Training Institute (ITI) exclusively for differently-abled people.

In his remarks, Assam Chief Secretary V.K. Pipersenia said that it was time people stopped looking at the state as the periphery of the country and saw it as as the centre of India's links with southeast Asia.

"The state government is keen on improving ease of doing business and has passed the Ease of Doing Business Act for this," Pipersenia said.

He also referred to six new policy initiatives of the Assam government: Biotech Policy, Handloon and Textile Policy, Industrial and Investment Policy, IT Policy, Start-up Policy and Sugar Policy.

"We have 4,000 hectares of land available for industries," the Chief Secretary said.

Giving a presentation on investment opportunities in Assam, Ravi Capoor, Additional Chief Secretary (Industries and Commerce) in the state government, said that Assam has been made the platform of the Centre's Act East Policy.

He said that the southeast Asian nations have a combined population of 80 crore but very few people knew that this huge market can be reached from Assam in just two hours' flight time.

The upcoming Advantage Assam investors summit, Capoor said, will focus on eight major sectors: pharmaceuticals and medical equipment; plastics and petrochemicals; power; river transport and port townships; IT and IT-enabled services; handloom, textiles and handicrafts; tourism, hospitality and wellness; and agri-horticulture, food processing, organic cultivation and bamboo.

In Tuesday's event, Chief Minister Sonowal also launched a website for the summit, www.advantageassam.com.
Bangkok, Oct 24 : Thousands of Thai citizens on Tuesday camped outside the Grand Palace in Bangkok to attend the upcoming funeral of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died last year at the age of 88.

The mourners came dressed in black and were equipped with umbrellas and mats for the late monarch's funeral, scheduled to start on Wednesday, Efe news agency reported.

The King is to be cremated in a Buddhist ceremony on Thursday at the Sanam Luang square.

Some of the people arrived on Monday night and plan to remain until Sunday, when the five-day funeral programme is to conclude with the transfer of the sovereign's ashes to the Rajabopit and Bowonniwet temples.

Some 250,000 to 300,000 people are expected to attend the funeral rites around the square, close to the Grand Palace, amid tight security.

A spokesperson for the funeral's organising committee told Efe that around 58,000 police officers are to maintain security during the five-day programme in Bangkok and roads close to Sanam Luang will be closed for traffic.

Queen Sofia of Spain, Queen Maxima of Netherlands, Queen Silvia of Sweden, Prince Andrew of England and members of various Asian monarchies are planning to be present on Wednesday to bid the Thai monarch farewell.

According to Thai authorities, more than 12 million people have visited the mortal remains of the King since they were opened to the public at the Grand Palace after his death on October 13 last year.

The monarch died in a Bangkok hospital after a year of illness, having ruled for seven decades, one of the longest reigns by a Thai King in history.
New Delhi, Oct 24 : Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday told the central government that an expert committee should review the "nature and extent of control exercised by the Central and Delhi governments over the functioning of DMRC".

Kejriwal was replying to a letter by Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, in which Puri had agreed to set up an expert committee to look into the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).

The letter comes close on the heels of the city metro fare hike on October 10, the second increase this year, despite strong opposition from the Delhi government.

The DMRC was formed in 1995 with equal equity participation of the central and the state government.

"I'm glad that you have agreed to set up an expert committee as suggested in your letter of 12th of October," Kejriwal said in the letter dated Tuesday.

"As far as the terms of reference are concerned, the Committee should be asked to examine and make recommendations relating to the organisation, management, control and accountability of DMRC," he said.

The Chief Minister said the central government can recommend one or two members for the committee and the Delhi government will recommend an equal number.

"The committee members can then choose an eminent and independent person to be the Chairman of the Committee," he said.
New York, Oct 24 : Researchers have developed a novel mind-reading technology that uses artificial intelligence to decode what the human brain is seeing, an advance that could lead to new insights into brain function.

Using the "convolutional neural networks" -- a form of "deep-learning" algorithm -- instrumental in facial recognition technology in computers and smartphones, the researchers found how the brain processed static images.

The algorithm was for the first time used to understand brain processes while a person watches natural scenes, a step toward decoding the brain while people are trying to make sense of complex and dynamic visual surroundings, said lead author Haiguang Wen, doctoral student at the Purdue University in Indiana, US.

For the study, appearing in the journal Cerebral Cortex, the team acquired 11.5 hours of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data from each of three women subjects watching 972 video clips, including those showing people or animals in action and nature scenes.

Using the convolutional neural network model, the team was able to accurately decode the fMRI data of the activity in the brain's visual cortex while watching the videos.

"I think what is a unique aspect of this work is that we are doing the decoding nearly in real time, as the subjects are watching the video. We scan the brain every two seconds, and the model rebuilds the visual experience as it occurs," Wen said.

The finding is important because it demonstrates the potential for broad applications of such models to study brain function, even for people with visual deficits.

"We think we are entering a new era of machine intelligence and neuroscience where research is focusing on the intersection of these two important fields," explained Zhongming Liu, Assistant Professor at the varsity.
Mumbai, Oct 24 : Mumbai University Vice Chancellor, Sanjay Deshmukh, was on Tuesday evening sacked for the long delay in declaring the results of over four lakh students.

Maharashtra Governor C. V. Rao sacked Deshmukh, citing "gross negligence and failure" in declaration of examination results, an official announcement said here.

The development, expected sooner than later, came after the Governor and Chancellor of the University of Mumbai exercised the powers under Sect. 11(14)(e) of the Maharashtra Public Universities Act, 2016 to remove Deshmukh from the prestigious post.

The dismissed VC has been accused of "gross negligence and failure in implementing the On Screen Marking System", to declare the results of the examinations held in summer 2017 within the time-limits prescribed in the Act.

As per the Act, the university is mandated to declare all examination results within 30 days, and in no case beyond 45 days.

Deshmukh, 52, has also been held responsible "for his failure to comply with the directions issued by the Chancellor from time to time", regarding early declaration of the examination results of nearly 400,000 students.

The massive delays in the declaration of results -- many of which are still pending - have derailed the careers of thousands of students seeking admission to higher courses, to foreign universities, or appearing for various competitive examinations, besides causing great mental agony to them, their parents and other stakeholders.

At the height of the exams results mess, Deshmukh suddenly proceeded on leave on August 9 "for personal reasons", amidst rumours of his impending removal.

In his place, the Governor had entrusted Vice Chancellor Devanand Shinde of Kolhapur's Shivaji University with the additional charge of University of Mumbai.

Additionally, in a bid to arrest the crises over the results, Governor Rao appointed Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI) Director Dhiren Patel as Acting Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Mumbai and specifically assigned him to clear up the delayed results mess.

Patel was asked to handle the university works and hold the post of Pro-VC till the completion of the work of declaration of results of the various exams held by the University in March-April this year, or for a maximum period of three months.

Earlier, in an unprecedented step on July 4, Rao had summoned Deshmukh and ordered him to ensure that all results are declared by July 31, which was extended, but still many results remained pending, and several new deadlines kept coming.

Late in September, the Governor had sought Deshmukh's resignation failing which he could be sacked.

Directly intervening, the Governor had in July appointed an independent officer to monitor the results' progress, report daily and ordered Deshmukh to set up a "war room" to ensure declaration of results on time and submit a daily progress report to Raj Bhavan, but the measures failed to produce the desired results.

Agitations have been continuing against the university and Deshmukh, including the latest one on Tuesday when the aggrieved students staged a dharna at the Kalina Campus.

The state Congress had strongly criticised the chaos in the examination department and demanded the Governor's resignation besides sacking of Education Minister Vinod Tawde and Higher & Technical Education Minister Ravindra Waikar for the university's lapses.

"While appointing the (current) Vice Chancellor, persons with more experience and qualifications were bypassed to appoint Deshmukh, merely because he is well connected with the RSS and had spent three years with RSS think tank Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini," Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant had said in a statement at the time.

"As a 'guru-dakshina', the incumbent VC has accorded Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini the status of a research associate institute, and in future, it would award top degrees like M.A in Political Science and even doctorates," Sawant pointed out.

He condemned the VC for "wilfully" ignoring the administration of the university affairs, owing to which the future and careers of lakhs of student was at risk with results not being declared as per schedule.
New Delhi, Oct 24 : The Narendra Modi government on Tuesday approved an ambitious road construction and expansion programme of over 83,000 km over the next five years with an investment of about Rs 7 lakh crore.

The aim is to improve infrastructure, entail faster transportation and generate employment.

Briefing reporters after a cabinet meeting, Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa said the road building projects will generate 14.2 crore man-days of jobs.

The massive road building programme includes 34,800 km of BharatMala project to be constructed with an investment of Rs 5,35,000 crore.

"The historic road building programme for progress and prosperity involves building 83,677 km of roads at an investment of Rs 6.92 lakh crore," Lavasa said.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who also addressed the media, later tweeted that the huge public investment in road construction will generate employment.

There is a need to increase public investment and Rs 7 lakh crore for road expansion will generate employment opportunities, Jaitley tweeted.

The government has consistently battled accusations from the Congress and other opposition parties that the growth under the Modi government has been "jobless".

Lavasa, who made a detailed presentation, said BharatMala includes economic corridors, border roads, coastal roads and greenfield expressways.

He said there will be 9,000 km of economic corridors, inter-corridor and feeder routes (6,000 km), national corridors efficiency improvement (5,000 km), border roads and international connectivity (2,000 km), coastal roads and port connectivity (2,000 km), Greenfield expressways (800 km) and balance national highway development works (10,000 km).

The BharatMala project will be funded by obtaining Rs 2.09 lakh crore from the market, private investment of Rs 1.06 lakh crore and Rs 2.19 lakh crore from central road fund, toll-operate-transfer model and from toll.

The remaining 48,877 km roads under other schemes with an outlay of Rs 1.57 lakh crore will also be undertaken in parallel by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways with 0.97 lakh crore from the central road fund and 0.59 lakh crore from budgetary support.

Lavasa said monetisation of 82 operating highways with an investment potential of Rs 34,000 crore has been taken up.

The bid for the first bundle of nine highway stretches of 680.64 km has been made with a monetisation value of Rs 6,258 crore, he added.

The road projects are aimed not only at improving connectivity but faster movement of trucks on highways for speedier transportation of goods and bringing down logistical costs.

Lavasa said India's trade with its eastern neighbours will improve due to improvement in road infrastructure till border points.

He said India's mercantile trade with Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal was $12 billion and linking Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal motor vehicles agreement and India-Myanmar-Thailand trilateral highway will make India's northeast region "a hub of East Asia trade".

Lavasa said border connectivity will improve with development of 3,300 km of roads along the eastern and western borders.

The first phase of the programme will involve construction of 1,000 km of roads.

He said 2,100 km of coastal roads will be built to boost tourism and industrial development and 2,000 km for port connectivity.

"Connectivity to ports and road development will be in conjunction with the Sagarmala project and 2,000 km will be developed in the first phase."

While 5,013 km of national highways were constructed in 2011-12 and expenditure incurred on road construction was Rs 35,186 crore, it had gone up to 8,231 km of national highways and Rs 82,091 crore of expenditure in 2016-17.

Referring to the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, Lavasa said Rs 88,185 crore will be spent by the central and state governments over the next three years.

He said 1,09,302 km of rural roads will be laid to cover 34,434 habitations. In addition, 5,411 km of roads will be upgraded and new roads will be completed in three years in the districts affected by Left Wing Extremism.
New Delhi, Oct 24 : The Congress on Tuesday termed as "too little, too late" the government's move to recapitalise public sector banks with Rs 2.11 lakh crore and said that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's "shoddy" attempt to defend the government's performance on the economy front had failed to impress either the people or the industry.

Reacting to the government's announcements to boost infrastructure, growth and employment, Congress Communications Incharge Randeep Singh Surjewala said the decisions were a "visionless damp squib".

"Shoddy attempt of a desperate Finance Minister to defend the decimation of economy has failed to impress either the Indian industry or common people...Time has come to travel from empty jumlas to meaningful governance," Surjewala said.

He said the economic growth projected by the government was only on paper.

Referring to Jaitley's assertion about macro-economic fundamentals of the economy being very strong, Surjewala said "mindless and unsound decisions like demonetisation and the poor implementation of GST has hurt the core fundamentals."

"The fall of GDP in the last quarter of 2016-17 indicates that the country is moving towards a low trajectory. The devils called demonetisation and GST destroyed India's economic growth," he said.

Surjewala said that bank recapitalization has neither a roadmap nor a timeframe.

"The announcement to recapitalise public sector banks with Rs 2.11 lakh crore is too little too late for the hardships the economy has faced. Let the Government face a reality check and share a targeted framework of bank recapitalization rather than hyperbole and high sounding syllables," he said.

The Congress leader said the non-performing assets of 39 banks were at an all time high of Rs 8.35 Lakh crore with the government "failing completely to renegotiate the loans, recover public money and address core fundamentals of fiscal discipline".

"Borrowing money (Rs 1.35 lakh crore bonds + part of Rs 76,000 crore from the market) to recapitalise banks would obviously mean breaching the fiscal deficit target. This is a desperate move by a Finance Minister groping in the dark as demonetisation and GST failed to bring in the promised Rs 4/5 lakh crore," he said.

Surjewala said the Minister had "no clue" how and when the bonds will be issued and when will the money reach the banks.

"The government has utterly failed to lay down a roadmap of targeted beneficiaries such as MSMEs and the stressed agrarian sector."

Surjewala said the BJP-led government has already waived loans of wilful defaulters worth Rs 1,88,287 crores in the last three years.

"Is the government risking tax payer's money for more such loan waivers without commitment to MSMe and agrarian sectors? This is even more worrisome as the MSME loan portfolio of public sector lenders, which grew by an impressive 25 per cent in April 2014, is down to almost nil in April 2016."

Referring to Bharatmala, the ambitious road construction project approved by the cabinet on Tuesday, Surjewala said the slated investment of Rs 5.35 lakh crore is completely debt driven with people having to share the burden.
New Delhi, Oct 24 : The Narendra Modi government is misusing state agencies like the CBI, ED and IT to harass the opposition while turning a blind eye to cases of corruption where BJP people are involved, CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury alleged on Tuesday.

Yechury said that "blatant misuse of constitutional authorities and institutions" was being done which is "undermining the very foundation of our Constitution".

Referring to the recently released film "Mersal", which has certain dialogues taking a dig at the Goods and Services Tax (GST), Yechury said pressure was being mounted on the producers of the film to chop off these scenes despite clearance by the Censor Board.

"The actor Vishal was questioned by the GST intelligence officers," he said.

"Agencies are doing very, very selective investigations. Various scams that have come over the last three years like Birla-Sahara diaries, Lalit Modi, Panama Papers, Vyapam scam, Bihar land scam, in these cases no investigation has begun or ordered," he said.

Recently, the Rajasthan government brought an Ordinance by which the media is prohibited by law to report cases of corruption against officials. The Reserve Bank of India's autonomy is being eroded, he said.

"For the first time, the credibility of the Election Commission of India (ECI) has come under question. If the EC has decided the date before which Gujarat assembly elections will be completed then why no dates of polls announced yet?" Yechury said.

"All this is blatant misuse of constitutional authorities and institutions... undermining the very foundation of our Constitution," he said.
New Delhi, Oct 24 : A 25-year-old man was shot dead near his house here by two men on a bike on Tuesday, police said.

The incident took place around 8:30 a.m. when two bike-borne assailants opened fire at Rohit in east Delhi, police said.

The two parked the bike and fired at least four rounds before fleeing, Deputy Commissioner of Police A.K. Singhla said.

"Rohit was taken to a hospital by the locals but was declared brought dead. We are examining the CCTV footage of the nearby shops and intersections to identify the accused."

Rohit lived with his parents in Usmanpur area. He had a younger brother and a sister. His father works with BSES, Singhla said.

"Rohit had earlier worked at a shop in Chandni Chowk market. He was jobless for some months," Singhla said.

The DCP said Rohit had joined a group of local criminals but had no criminal background.

"The police are suspecting a gang war and some personal animosity behind his murder," the officer added.
Islamabad, Oct 24 : US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday told Pakistan that it must increase its efforts to eradicate militants and terrorists operating within the country.

Tillerson, who was in Islamabad for a few hours on his inaugural trip to Pakistan as Secretary of State, met with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, and discussed the continued bilateral cooperation and partnership, expanding economic ties between the United States and Pakistan, and Pakistan's critical role in the region, said a US Embassy press release.

The top US official reiterated President Donald Trump's message that Pakistan must increase its efforts to eradicate militants and terrorists operating within the country.

To address those concerns, the Secretary outlined the United States' new South Asia Strategy and the vital role that Pakistan can play in working with the United States and others to facilitate a peace process in Afghanistan that can bring stability and security to the region. The Secretary noted that Pakistan and the United States share common interests in establishing a stable, peaceful Afghanistan, defeating ISIS in South Asia, and eliminating terrorist groups that threaten both Pakistan and the United States.

In all meetings with Pakistan's leaders, the Secretary expressed appreciation for Pakistan's sacrifices in the fight against terrorism. The Secretary also expressed his gratitude to the Government of Pakistan and the Pakistani Army for their cooperation in securing the release of the Boyle-Coleman family from captivity, the statement said.

Abbasi also chaired an inter-agency meeting attended by Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, Minister of Defence Khurram Dastigir Khan, Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, ISI chief Lt Gen Naveed Mukhtar and other officials.

Tillerson's visit came a day after he made an unannounced visit to Kabul where he said the US has made some "very specific requests" to Pakistan to take action to "undermine the support that the Taliban receives and other terrorist organisations receive in Pakistan".

Talking to journalists at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan on Monday, Tillerson said that in Pakistan he will discuss US demands for securing Afghanistan and its conditions for continuing their relationship.

"We have made some very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support that the Taliban receives and the other terrorist organisations receive in Pakistan," he said.

"And we've said in this whole strategy this is a conditions-based approach, and so our relationship with Pakistan will also be conditions-based. It will be based upon whether they take action that we feel is necessary to move the process forward of both creating the opportunity for reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan, but also ensuring a stable future Pakistan," he said.

"I think the US has made it clear in terms of our support for Afghanistan, support for a sovereign, unified, and democratic Afghanistan, charting a path to peace, prosperity, and self-reliance. It is imperative at the end that we are denying safe haven to any terrorist organizations or any extremists to any part of this - the world," he said.

He said the US wants to work with regional partners to ensure that there are no threats in the region and that the strategy is a regional effort.

"So we're demanding others also deny safe haven to terrorists anywhere in the region. We are working closely with Pakistan in that regard as well."
New Delhi, Oct 24 : US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived in Delhi on Tuesday night on his maiden official visit to India.

During his three-day visit, he will call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and meet External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday.

Tillerson is on a five-nation visit from October 20-27, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan and Switzerland, according to the US State Department.
New Delhi, Oct 25 : Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu will leave on Wednesday on a three-day visit to the US to meet with his American counterpart Wilbur Ross for the first trade and commerce talks between India and the US administration led by President Donald Trump.

"Tonight, I'm going to the US to meet my counterpart Commerce Secretary as well as Trade Representative of US. This is the first time India is going to have a structured interaction on Commerce and related issues with the Trump administration," Prabhu told reporters here at the launch of the website of the Cell for IPR Promotion and Management (CIPAM).

"Therefore, it is a very important meeting in which we will be discussing issues from their side as well as our side. I will also be meeting a lot of business leaders there from India and the US," he said.

During his visit between October 25-28, Prabhu will also meet US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

Issues like visa, greater market access for goods, and intellectual property rights are expected to figure in the trade policy forum meeting between India and the US on October 25 in Washington.

Prabhu said that on the second leg of the visit, he will visit Cuba, from October 28-31, to hold discussions on boosting bilateral trade.

"I am going to meet quite a few ministers. We have invited them in Havana for meeting them on how can we promote bilateral trade with them," he said.

The Minister also said the government is trying to develop an exclusive portal for startups and working to create a single website for all exports and international trade activities.

"I have already told DGFT (Director General Foreign Trade) Aand they have started working on it. A lot of agencies have to be taken on board, particularly with Customs, because most formalities of import and export are with Customs," he said.

"Soon we want to organise a round-table on startups. Soon, you will hear good news on ease of doing business," he added.
Madrid, Oct 25 : The Spanish Senate has offered Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont a chance to debate with them over the application of Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution.

This would see him and his government sacked and the control of key Catalan institutions handed over to the central government.

The Senate is expected to approve the application of the article on Friday after it was passed by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's cabinet Saturday last week, Xinhua news agency reported.

However, it has been mooted in recent days that Puigdemont could travel to Madrid in a bid to avert this happening.

Speaking to Spanish media, the deputy leader of the Senate, Pedro Sanz, said it would "be an honour to have the President of the Generalitat (Catalan government) here to be able to participate in the debate."

Sanz added that the Senate's role was "not to oblige the (Spanish) government to act, but to give permission for measures to be applied."

Meanwhile, Rajoy's People's Party commented that if he does go to the Senate, Puigdemont should do so on Thursday or Friday, saying they have been "generous" with the offer of two dates.

Shortly after Sanz's comments, the spokesman for the Catalan government, Jordi Turul, said that Puigdemont's idea "was to go to the Senate, but they are making it harder for us all of the time."

He said this in reference to the debate in the Senate over Article 155 which will start on Thursday and could continue until Friday, while the Catalan Parliament will also hold a session on Thursday in which Puigdemont may or may not make a unilateral declaration of independence.

It is also possible that Puigdemont could use that session to call regional elections in the hope of avoiding the application of Article 155.
The Pulaski County Community Services (PCCS) Brownfields program and Harbor Environmental and Safety (Harbor) is holding a half-day Brownfields outreach seminar at the North Little Rock Chamber of Commerce at 100 Main St. in North Little Rock on Wednesday, Nov. 15 from 7:30 am to noon.

The seminar will cover topics including Brownfields funding, re-development challenges, and community engagement. Terry Sligh of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Brownfields program will be on hand to discuss Brownfields from a state perspective. Ben Goodwin of Our House, a non-profit dedicated to helping homeless women and children, will share his experiences with Brownfields redevelopment of the former Little Rock Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital. Erik Swindle, formerly of Heifer International, will also share his experiences of redeveloping a Brownfields site into the headquarters of Heifer International. Visit Harbors website for registration details at http://www.harborenv.com or call 501-663-8800.

The PCCS Brownfields Program is federally funded through U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants to identify and assess potentially contaminated properties and to assist with any possible clean up required to make a property viable. According to PCCS Brownfields Program Administrator, Josh Fout, the program was established to loan/sub-grant clean-up money to qualified prospective property buyers and adheres to the principles of promoting economic development, protecting the environment and building a better community. Fout indicated that Pulaski County has strategically leveraged over $38 million dollars from $3 million in grant dollars; used assessment grants to confirm 19 brownfield sites for potential redevelopment throughout Pulaski County; and has been critical in redeveloping sites in downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock with environmental issues. Harbor recently became the Program Manager for the Brownfields program, assisting Fout with program implementation.

Harbor Environmental and Safety is a full service environmental, safety and engineering consulting firm headquartered in Little Rock. Harbor is a certified woman-owned and certified disadvantaged business enterprise that has served clients both nationally and internationally. Specializing in turnkey compliance management systems, Harbor affords our clients the ability to focus on their business goals and maintain a commitment to the environment and the health and safety of their employees.
Allegro Development, Corp., a global leader in commodity trading and risk management (CTRM) software, and MRE Consulting, Ltd. (MRE), a market leading systems integrator, announced today that after an aggressive 12-week implementation, Kwik Trip has gone live on Allegros Horizon software to manage its refined products marketing, trading and distribution services.

Recently, Kwik Trip enlisted MRE to evaluate its business processes and help create a strategic systems plan. After completing a system selection that included multiple industry leading CTRM solutions, Kwik Trip chose to implement Allegros cloud enabled, flexible and advanced automated system, which would best complement Kwik Trips business model and growth strategy. Additionally, Allegros solution meets Kwik Trips need for an advanced CTRM platform and product roadmap dedicated to refined products and fuel distribution.

Kwik Trip chose MRE to lead the implementation, which was executed by a team of Allegro and MRE consultants with full support and guidance from the Kwik Trip fuels group. The implementation was completed on budget and in a record 12 weeks. Now that Allegros solution is deployed, Kwik Trip is equipped to further improve its refined products management from source to delivery through PNL positioning, auditing and accounting.

Frank Brienzi, CEO, Allegro Development, Corp.:

The joint effort from MRE, Kwik Trip and Allegro to implement our software in a twelve-week sprint is an incredible achievement. We look forward to continuing our relationship with these two organizations as we work to further enhance Kwik Trips commodity trading and risk management processes.

Ken Piddington, CIO, MRE Consulting, Ltd.:

Kwik Trips selection of Allegros solution was key to establishing a solid platform for its fuels business. During the implementation, all parties worked together to successfully meet the aggressive phase one timeline. We are excited to continue to work with Allegro to provide the right technology solutions to help Kwik Trip achieve its strategic objectives.

Joel Hirschboeck, General Manager of Fuel Marketing & Procurement, Kwik Trip, Inc.

We are pleased that the Allegro and MRE Consulting implementation team has made the transition to a new CTRM extremely efficient. The Kwik Trip Team was aggressive and endlessly diligent in their efforts to ensure a successful Go Live prior to our fiscal start. Utilizing Allegros software to drill down into transaction lifecycles, accounting details, settlements and end of day processing will provide Kwik Trip with a competitive advantage by enhancing our decision-making capabilities.

About Kwik Trip, Inc.

Founded in 1965, Kwik Trip, Inc. is a privately held company that has more than 500 locations in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa under its various names. Kwik Trip provides fuels, food and dairy products to its convenience stores, owns and operates a third party trucking system and has a corporate distribution center in Lacrosse, Wisconsin for enterprise distribution and storage. To learn more about Kwik Trip, visit their website at https://www.kwiktrip.com/.

About MRE Consulting, Ltd.

Headquartered in Houston, TX, MRE Consulting, Ltd. is a thriving and dynamic professional services firm that provides highly trained and experienced engineers and management professionals to help customers achieve their goals and more. MRE Consulting Ltd. delivers business solutions, service and staffing to a range of industries. MREs core capabilities include infrastructure technology management and commodities trading and risk management. For more than 20 years, MRE Consulting, Ltd. has been creating concrete and measurable custom solutions for business and IT executives. For more information, visit MRE Consultings website at http://www.mre-consulting.com/.

About Allegro Development, Corp.

Allegro is the gold standard in commodity management software for companies who buy, sell, produce or consume commodities. For over 30 years, Allegro has delivered position visibility, risk management, comprehensive controls and regulatory compliance through a forward compatible, next-generation architecture that is built for your business. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Allegro has offices in Calgary, Dubai, Houston, Jakarta, London, Singapore and Zurich, along with a global network of partners. Visit Allegros website at http://www.allegrodev.com.
A new study, published in Food & Function suggests that consuming a flavonoid-rich Wild Blueberry beverage may enhance executive function in 7- to 10-year-old children. The study, led by Professor Claire Williams and Dr. Adrian Whyte from the School of Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading in England, explores the impact of flavonoid consumption on childrens executive function, and adds to a growing body of evidence that shows flavonoids can enhance cognitive function following acute and chronic interventions in humans and animals. The study demonstrates for the first time, significantly faster response times on an executive function task in children who consumed a beverage containing wild blueberries.

We have known for some time that flavonoids promote healthy brain function in adults and have also found that acute flavonoid intervention via a wild blueberry beverage has a positive effect on episodic memory in children, said Professor Williams, a leading researcher on the effects of flavonoids in children.

This is the first study to examine the effects of a flavonoid intervention on an executive function task where we increase or decrease the cognitive demandmaking the task easier or more difficult to perform across different trials, she noted. Executive function is a set of mental skills, controlled by frontal lobe area of the brain, that helps us manage time, pay attention, and get things done.

In this double-blind cross-over study, 21 children between 7-10 years of age were tested with an executive function task after drinking a beverage containing 30g of flavonoid-rich wild blueberry powder (equal to about 1 cup of frozen wild blueberries) or a matched placebo beverage. The children could perform the tasks significantly faster after consuming the wild blueberry beverage. The study, titled: The effect of cognitive demand on performance of an executive function task following wild blueberry supplementation in 7- to 10-year old children is available here.

Our team found evidence of improved task performance in relation to cognitive demand, noted Professor Williams. In other words, when compared with the placebo, response times for the more difficult trials on this executive function task were improved following the wild blueberry beverage, she said.

The findings of this study are good news for the health and nutrition community, which advocates a copious consumption of flavonoid-rich fruits and vegetables.

This new study demonstrates that food intake affects kids brains and mental performance, and suggests that its not just adults  but also children who can benefit cognitively from consuming flavonoid-rich foods like wild blueberries, said Kit Broihier, MS, RD, nutrition advisor to the Wild Blueberry Association of North America. A practical takeaway here is that providing children with meals and snacks that incorporate a rainbow of fruits and vegetables, such as wild blueberries, is a way to help kids consume a variety of beneficial flavonoids.

Additional Flavonoid/Brain Studies from Williams Research Group

Professor Williams has published numerous studies examining the relationship of flavonoids and human brain health.

In 2017, she published Effects of Acute Blueberry Flavonoids on Mood in Children and Young Adults, the first study to show that consuming flavonoid-rich wild blueberries may significantly boost mood in both young adults and children.

In 2016: The effects of flavanone-rich citrus juice on cognitive function and cerebral blood flow: an acute, randomized, placebo controlled crossover trial in healthy young adults was published in the British Journal of Nutrition. This study revealed that consumption of flavanone-rich citrus juice in quantities commonly consumed can acutely enhance blood flow to the brain in healthy, young adults.

Also in 2016: High-flavonoid intake induces cognitive improvements linked to changes in plasma brain-derived neurotrophic factor: two randomized controlled trials was published in Nutrition and Healthy Ageing. Here they showed that increases in cognitive performance induced by high flavonoid interventions corresponded with concurrent changes in serum BDNF levels, suggesting a role for BDNF in flavonoid-induced cognitive improvements.

In 2015: Cognitive Effects Following Acute Wild Blueberry Supplementation on 7  10-Year-Old Children was published in the European Journal of Nutrition. The study revealed that Wild Blueberries boost memory and concentration in elementary school children.

Contact and Interview Opportunities:

For briefings or interviews with authors of the paper, please contact Tim Mayo at the University of Reading, UK, on +44118 378 7110 or email t.p.mayo@reading.ac.uk

Kit Broihier, MS, RD, nutrition advisor to the Wild Blueberry Association of North America, can be reached by email at nutricomminc(at)mac(dot)com

About the Wild Blueberry Association of North America

The Wild Blueberry Association of North America (WBANA) is a trade association of farmers and processors of Wild Blueberries from Maine and Canada who are dedicated to bringing the Wild Blueberry health story and unique Wild Advantages to consumers and the trade worldwide. WBANA is dedicated to furthering research that explores the health potential of Wild Blueberries. Every year since 1997, WBANA has hosted the Health Research Summit in Bar Harbor, a worldwide gathering of renowned scientists and researchers whose work is leading the way in learning more and more about the health benefits of Wild Blueberries. Hundreds of studies have been conducted on the potential health and disease fighting benefits of Wild Blueberries. For news, recipes, and related health information about Wild Blueberries, visit http://www.wildblueberries.com. For the latest updates, read our blog. Visit us on Facebook or on Twitter.
Public Service Credit Union (PSCU) is proud to recognize its three most recent graduates of Western CUNA Management School: Stan Foust, Director of Application Management; Jacob Phillips, Director of Business Intelligence; and Chris Stengle, Director of Business Development.

For more than 50 years, the Western CUNA Management School has provided a powerful curriculum, preparing todays and tomorrows leaders with the depth and breadth they need to contribute to their credit unions success and their own personal career goals. The curriculum covers Strategic Planning, Operations, Finance, Marketing, Lending, Human Resources, Technology, Business Development, Economics, Business Law, Communications, Leadership, and much more.

We are proud of our recent graduates, said Todd Marksberry, PSCU President & CEO. This is quite a commitment of time and an incredible professional accomplishment. The academic training takes place over three, yearly, two-week terms at Pomona College in Claremont, CA.

Im especially grateful to PSCU and our members for the opportunity to sharpen my skills, said recent graduate Jacob Phillips. This program enables us to keep abreast of the latest trends within the credit union movement. Most importantly, the school reinforces the mission of PSCU by compelling students to love their members, serving all with both head and heart. Phillips graduated with High Honors from the program and has been an employee at PSCU for more than nine years. His most recent position was as a Lending Application Analyst prior to being promoted to Director of Business Intelligence in July 2017.

The recent graduates join more than a dozen other PSCU employees that have completed the academic training. Its a winning investment, said Marksberry. In addition to receiving solid academic training, our staff establishes strong professional bonds within the credit union movement that benefit themselves, PSCU, and the communities we serve.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ben Greiving Promoted to PSCU Chief of Staff & General Counsel

PSCU is proud to announce the promotion of Ben Greiving to the position of Chief of Staff & General Counsel.

Greiving will be responsible for all legal matters for the credit union, along with strategic planning, project management, and compliance. In addition, he will continue to provide support and counsel to the PSCU Board of Directors and executive management.

Greiving has served PSCU for 7 years as a legal, compliance, ERM, strategic planning, and project management professional. He was promoted to VP of Strategy & Chief of Staff for the Colorado credit union in 2016 after serving almost 6 years as Staff Attorney.

A practicing attorney with a JD from Florida State University College of Law, Greiving graduated with honors from Western CUNA Management School in 2016.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

About Public Service Credit Union (http://pscu.org)

Public Service Credit Union (PSCU) has been safe, secure, and insured for the past 79 years. Today, PSCU holds assets in excess of $2.3 billion and has more than 224,000 members. PSCU provides a full array of financial products and services, including savings, checking, loans, mortgages, and online and mobile banking options. Members can access their accounts and conduct transactions at PSCUs 28 branches, and at over 200 shared branch locations throughout Colorado. In addition, through the credit unions partnership with the CO-OP network, members have surcharge-free access to more than 30,000 ATMs across the country.
These funds will allow the company to advance its program from the drug discovery phase to preclinical development, with the aim of initiating IND-enabling studies in 2018

Gismo Therapeutics Inc. has been awarded two grants to continue its development of therapies to treat Parkinsons Disease. A $384,000 SBIR grant entitled "Glycosaminoglycan-Interacting Small Molecule (GISMO) as Parkinson's Therapeutic" was awarded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) - NIH. Gismo Therapeutics also received a $150,000 Kentucky SBIR Matching Funds grant from the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development.

The funds will allow the company to investigate therapeutics directed against a newly identified disease pathway in Parkinsons. Gismo Therapeutics will leverage its expertise in small-molecule compounds that target glycosaminoglycans (GISMOs). Glycosaminoglycans have been identified as key molecules in the disease process, by promoting the internalization of amyloid peptides into nerve cells and spreading throughout the nervous system, thus advancing the neurodegeneration and disease process. By intervening with its purpose-designed GISMO compounds, the company aims to mitigate this disease progression.

Under the NINDS grant, the company is collaborating with the team of Patrik Brundin, M.D., Ph.D., the Jay Van Andel Endowed Chair in Parkinsons Research and Director of the Center for Neurodegenerative Science at Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) in Grand Rapids, MI.

We are pleased to have been awarded these two grants to identify new therapeutics for the treatment of Parkinsons disease, said Paul Gregor, Ph.D., company founder and GISMO technology inventor. These funds will allow the company to advance its program from the drug discovery phase to preclinical development, with the aim of initiating IND-enabling studies in 2018.

About Gismo Therapeutics Inc.:

Gismo Therapeutics Inc. is a biotech start-up company targeting fundamental biochemical processes that are at the root cause of amyloid neurodegenerative diseases pathogenesis. The company is developing its pioneering technology, GISMO, which is associated with a new hypothesis of the etiology of major neurodegenerative diseases. Gismo Therapeutics Inc. is developing first-in-class, disease modifying oral therapeutics for the treatment of Alzheimers and Parkinson's Disease. Gismo Therapeutics Inc. was incorporated in Delaware and has offices in Lexington, Kentucky and Queens, New York. The company is privately held and supported by grants from the NIH and the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development, and by private funding. The company was founded by Paul Gregor, Ph.D., CEO, a graduate of the Weizmann Institute of Science (Rehovot, Israel). Its Scientific Advisory Board includes Dennis Choi, M.D., Ph.D., an award-winning neurologist, Chair of Department of Neurology and Director of the Neuroscience Institute, Stony Brook University, New York.

For more information about Gismo Therapeutics Inc., visit the companys website, http://www.gismotherapeutics.com.

Contact: Dr. Paul Gregor

Tel: (347) 233-2037

e-mail: informa(at)gismotherapeutics.com
Aerial view of our facility I am glad to see that there is a growing number of people who support the connection between consumerism and the growing epidemic of drug addiction and alcoholism." Barnett Gilmer

On October 6, 2017, comedian Russell Brand appeared on HBOs Real Time with Bill Maher. When the subject of drug addiction was mentioned, Russell Brand wasted no time in stating the following:

These are times when we live on the outside; external phenomena has stimulated us to a ludicrous degree. Addiction is just the amplification of consumerism. If youre constantly broadcasting to people that they ought to be afraid that they are not good enough they can purchase somehow externally the feeling of well-being, then addiction for me is a natural conclusion of this phenomenon.

Mr. Brands comment echoes a systemic problem in the United States. The search for something outside ourselves to find happiness, contentment, serenity, etc. leads many, who are innocently looking for a solution, to drugs and alcohol. This conditioned outside search may be the reason for the increasing prevalence of drug and alcohol addiction in the United States.

Supporting Brands argument concerning consumerism and addiction, Ole Bjerg, author and professor at the Copenhagen Business School, in a 2008 article states, [Being addicted to drugs] is a radical way of fulfilling the imperative of enjoyment constantly thrown at us by the contemporary ideology of consumption.

In speaking to the inner emptiness that consumerism can create, Victor Frankl, a neurologist, psychiatrist and Auschwitz Holocaust survivor coined the term existential vacuum, claiming that it is a situation where people have the feeling of total and ultimate meaninglessness of their lives. The existential vacuum, according to Frankl, is a widespread 20th century, and some would argue 21st century, phenomenon which seems prominent in the United States. Frankl cited a statistical survey in his book, Mans Search for Meaning, revealing that among my European students, 25 percent showed a more-or-less marked degree of existential vacuumAmong my American students it was not 25 but 60 percent.

Frankl suggests implications for those experiencing an existential vacuum, Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression and addiction are not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them. It can be said that when people experience a void or emptiness in their lives, the inclination is to try and change what they perceive as a negative feeling and follow their conditioning. In the United States we are conditioned to find a product to fulfill our needs or to fill the vacuum. In numerous cases, the product many find is drugs and/or alcohol.

When speaking about finding true happiness, Russell Brand commented, For me, the only drug I am interested in is the drug we are pursuing in the first place, the drug of connection, of unity, of love. For me, all of these things are placebos  every drug, every commodity  false idols as we seek out some kind of truth and connection. Clearly the solution Brand is speaking of is one of an inside-out nature. A solution where people realize what is truly important in life.

When asked about Brands statement, Barnett Gilmer, CEO of Gulf Breeze Recovery proclaimed, I am glad to see that there is a growing number of people who support the connection between consumerism and the growing epidemic of drug addiction and alcoholism. It is also refreshing that more people are recognizing that drug and alcohol addiction are typically the result of an innocent attempt and a conditional response by someone to find peace, happiness, contentment, serenity, etc. (a way to fill the existential vacuum) through an outside source such as drugs and alcohol. The real sustainable solution to individual drug addiction problems are drug and alcohol treatment programs that help people understand the true nature of addiction and to see that the answer they are looking for is always inside of them, which is one of connection, universal truth and love. Gilmer continues, The viable solution to the systemic problem of drug and alcohol addiction is educating our youth on the true source of where their happiness comes from and to beware of falling into the outside-in consumerism trap that creates a downhill spiral of endlessly searching for that next thing that will make them happy.

About Gulf Breeze Recovery: Gulf Breeze Recovery is changing the future of addiction treatment. Gulf Breeze Recoverys THRIVE program is designed for those who are looking for a drug and alcohol treatment program that may produce a different and positive result. This non-12 step program allows you to drive beyond your addictions and promotes a new outlook on life. Gulf Breeze Recoverys THRIVE program is designed for those who struggle with chronic relapse. Gulf Breeze Recovery is now accepting select insurance policies as a full or partial payment for all program costs. The exciting news is that people can now attend one of the most highly regarded drug treatment center in the country at little to no cost to them. For more information about our program or to speak with an Admissions Counselor, please call 855-973-3551.
Clearinghouse CDFI We prioritize helping Native American communities and Sovereign Nations, many of which have suffered from systemic discrimination and centuries-long policies designed to induce hardship

Clearinghouse Community Development Financial Institution (Clearinghouse CDFI) announced today a new equity investment from the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community (SMSC), a federally recognized sovereign nation located in Scott County, Minnesota. With this investment, the SMSC becomes Clearinghouse CDFIs first Native American investor.

Clearinghouse CDFI will use this investment to benefit low-income and distressed communities in Sovereign Nations and throughout the Western United States. The investment will help Clearinghouse CDFI continue financing community facilities, affordable housing, commercial real estate, and other projects that create jobs and services in underserved areas. Specifically, these funds will be targeted at various programs and businesses serving Native American Communities and Native American tribes.

Similar projects previously financed by Clearinghouse CDFI include:



Native American Natural Foods, Pine Ridge Reservation, SDA $500,000 working capital loan and a $250,000 grant to help sustain NANFs growth nationally and support Native American entrepreneurship and jobs within the Oglala Lakota community.

Pinoleville Pomo Nation, Ukiah, CAA $2.24 million loan to reacquire former tribal land and further tribal economic development.

Washoe Travel Plaza, Washoe Reservation, NVA $10 million Federal NMTC allocation, $2 million Nevada State NMTC allocation, and $5.6 million loan to the Washoe Tribe to produce a sustainable source of revenue for this Nevada and California tribe.

We prioritize helping Native American communities and Sovereign Nations, many of which have suffered from systemic discrimination and centuries-long policies designed to induce hardship, said Douglas J. Bystry, President/ Chief Executive Officer of Clearinghouse CDFI. We are pleased with this investment and see it as indicative of our ongoing commitment to these independent peoples.

Clearinghouse CDFI has financed $1.5 billion in total loans for over 1,820 community projects over the past 20 years. These projects have created or retained more than 16,500 jobs and benefit over 1.5 million individuals. This includes the rehabilitation of more than 15.1 million square feet of blighted properties. These projects have benefited over 610 separate underserved communities throughout California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Native American Tribal Lands.

Our Dakota tradition of helping others guides the decisions our tribe makes today, said Chairman Charles R. Vig of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. The SMSC alone has provided $500 million in economic development loans to our fellow tribes. Clearinghouse CDFI shares our goal of helping tribes across the country, and we are glad to be a partner in that effort.

About the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community:

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community is a federally recognized, sovereign Native American tribe located southwest of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Following a Dakota tradition of generosity, the SMSC is one of the top philanthropists in Minnesota and is the largest contributor to Native American tribes and causes across the country. It is a strong community partner and a leader in protecting and restoring natural resources. The SMSCs government, Gaming Enterprise, and various other enterprises are collectively the largest employer in Scott County.

About Clearinghouse CDFI:

Clearinghouse Community Development Financial Institution (Clearinghouse CDFI) addresses unmet credit needs in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Sovereign Nations in the Western United States. The first CDFI in the nation to be rated by Standard & Poors Ratings Services (AA-), Clearinghouse CDFI is an industry leader helping to bridge the gap between conventional lending standards and the needs of low-income and distressed communities. Clearinghouse CDFI is also a B Corp--a certification received from the nonprofit B Lab. B Corps are companies who meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability, and use business as a force for good.

More information is available at: http://www.ccdfi.com.
We have implemented a service that allows startups to connect with investors and get the funding they need.

APPSPIRE.me will be expanding their services to connect startups and investors, and create a space where both can get all the information they need. This addition will help startups get the funding they need to increase their marketing efforts and make their business successful. We will provide 3 formats of investor pitch documents: PowerPoint, Prezi and a Video.

Startups often come to us and have certain goals they want to hit, but dont necessarily have the money to back it up, said Carson Barker, founder and CEO of APPSPIRE.me. We have implemented a service that allows startups to connect with investors and get the funding they need.

To ensure companies are getting the funding they need, APPSPIRE.me will conduct an extensive competitor analysis to discover their target audience, customer base size, quarterly earnings and more. The customers return on investment will be based on their competitors ROI methods and used as a basis for quarterly projections. Quarterly projections will be estimated for 1-3 years and will include estimated financial growth for their app.

APPSPIRE.me will also conduct a survey of at least 100 participants to make sure clients target demographics are interested in their app. It is important to implement current mobile app trends to make an app successful so clients will be presented with a document that outlines these trends. At the end, clients will be provided custom reports on all the information collected to ensure that the customer knows the success of the package and has evidence of the work paid for.

About: Based in Austin, TX, APPSPIRE.me is a leading mobile app marketing agency that specializes in maximizing downloads, user engagement, and app store rankings. Our clients have been featured in the #1 position of their store category in the iTunes "What's Hot" section, Fox Business News, New York Times, TechCrunch, CNN, Discovery Channel, Mashable, and more. With satellite offices around the world, APPSPIRE.me has been in the mobile app marketing industry since 2009, and has taken clients from zero to thousands of targeted downloads per day. For more information, please visit http://www.appspire.me.
Spooky Smile Halloween Pumpkin Card "Davia offers a wide variety of scary Halloween cards. Davia also offers many funny Halloween cards. From Scary to Funny, you can find the perfect Halloween cards for your loved ones."

OKWAVE Inc.'s e-card service, Davia, has released more than 100 Halloween greeting cards. All Halloween cards are 100% free and there is no limit on the number of cards a user can send.

In 2016, the most sent Halloween card was the Spooky Smile Halloween Pumpkin Card, which is illustrated a spooky pumpkin lantern with many bats. Based on this trend, this year Davia has released many new spooky tone Halloween cards featuring popular Halloween elements such as pumpkin lanterns, bats, cats, ghosts, spiders and witches.

Based on the wide popularity of animal themed greeting cards, Davia added dog and cat themed Halloween cards to their lineup. To meet all user needs, Davia has released Halloween wishes cards. Now, a user can send these cards leveraging pre-created Halloween wishes.

"Halloween is the only time of the year when people send scary cards," said Tatsuo Yada, CEO, OKWAVE Inc. "Davia offers a wide variety of scary Halloween cards. Davia also offers many funny Halloween cards. From Scary to Funny, you can find the perfect Halloween cards for your loved ones."

Spooky Smile Halloween Pumpkin Card

https://www.holidaycardsapp.com/cards/spooky_smile_halloween_pumpkin_card

Halloween Cards on Davia

https://www.holidaycardsapp.com/cards/holidays/halloween

Holiday Greeting Cards on Davia

https://www.holidaycardsapp.com/cards/holidays

About OKWAVE Inc.

OKWAVE Inc. operates Birthday & Greeting Cards by Davia, which is a 100 percent free e-card service. Davia offers more than 2,000 e-cards as well as customizable birthday calendars and reminders. Davia has served over 14 million users since its inception. For more information visit: https://www.holidaycardsapp.com/. OKWAVE Inc. is the U.S. subsidiary of OKWAVE (3808.NG.), which offers the Japan's first social Q&A web service and enterprise class help desk solutions. OKWAVE has received strategic investments from Rakuten and Microsoft. For more information about OKWAVE Inc. visit: http://corp.okwave.com, about OKWAVE visit: https://www.okwave.co.jp.
With Esker officially becoming a certified PEPPOL Access Point, we will now be able to enhance and expand our reach.

Esker, a worldwide leader in document process automation solutions and pioneer in cloud computing, today announced that it has officially become a certified PEPPOL (Pan-European Public Procurement On-Line) Access Point, reinforcing its commitment to worldwide interoperability.

The accreditation allows Esker to link up with the PEPPOL e-procurement platform and send electronic invoices to all private or public entities that are members of the PEPPOL network. This expands Eskers existing ability to communicate with public administrations in France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland.

The PEPPOL network includes many private companies, in addition to public administrations of eight European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom and Sweden).

With the goal of making e-invoicing the predominant invoicing method in Europe by 2020, the EU Directive on e-invoicing and public procurement gives countries the opportunity to implement local legislation requiring vendors to send e-invoices to public administrations. It is in this context that OpenPEPPOL, the non-profit international association, was created in 2012 for the development and maintenance of PEPPOL specifications  enabling businesses to communicate electronically, in a standardized electronic data interchange (EDI) format, with any European government institution in the e-procurement process.

In todays international context where each country has its own legislation, e-invoicing rules are becoming increasingly complex, said Jean-Michel Berard, CEO at Esker. Esker strongly supports the global movement to standardize exchanges between the private and public sectors. With Esker officially becoming a certified PEPPOL Access Point, we will now be able to enhance and expand our reach.

Beyond Europe

The formalization of exchanges between companies is becoming a reality in Europe, but it has already been the case for several years in the rest of the world, particularly in South America. In Chile, Argentina and Mexico, for example, to help reduce tax evasion, 100 percent of invoices are transmitted electronically, in part thanks to Eskers document process automation solutions.

"Invoices are the cornerstone of any business, said Berard. Advancements in standardization pave the way for innovations, such as financing the invoicing chain so receivables are collected more quickly.

About Esker

Esker is a worldwide leader in cloud-based document process automation software. Esker solutions, including the acquisition of the TermSync accounts receivable solution in 2015, help organizations of all sizes to improve efficiencies, accuracy, visibility and costs associated with business processes. Esker provides on-demand and on-premises software to automate accounts payable, order processing, accounts receivable, purchasing and more.

Founded in 1985, Esker operates in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific with global headquarters in Lyon, France and U.S. headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin. In 2016, Esker generated 66 million euros in total sales revenue. For more information on Esker and its solutions, visit http://www.esker.com. Follow Esker on Twitter @EskerInc and join the conversation on the Esker blog at blog.esker.com.
Dr. Jig Patel, Dentist in Schaumburg, IL Provides Complimentary Dental Care During Mission Trip

A local and highly respected Schaumburg, IL, dentist, Dr. Jig Patel, has returned from a three-day mission trip to the Dominican Republic. In an exclusive Santo Domingo facility, along with more than 40 colleagues from around the country, Dr. Patel spent up to 12 hours each day performing complimentary sinus lift and ridge split surgeries on disadvantaged patients. At the same time, he helped train up-and-coming dental students on how to use proper surgical methods, and encouraged them to refine their skills in a hands-on setting alongside him.

Dr. Patel regularly performs sinus lift surgery procedures and ridge splits on patients who have limited bone density but want the advantages of single or multiple dental implants or implant-supported appliances. Using state-of-the-art instruments and computer-aided modalities, Dr. Patel adds bone material to the jawbone under the sinuses or in the bottom of the mouth. Sinus lifts and ridge splits are necessary when the bone deteriorates due to gum disease or tooth loss, and is common preparatory work for implant surgery. In the area of the Dominican Republic where Dr. Patel volunteered his expertise, many people go without access to these types of life- and health-improvement options.

The Dominican Republic mission trip was arranged by Dr. Arun Garg, a well-known leader in the latest implant dentistry technologies and training. Through Dr. Gargs continuing education courses, he educates seasoned dentists like Dr. Patel and emerging dental professionals on evolving procedures to properly prepare patients for dental implant placements. Additionally, Dr. Garg uses his organizations mission trips to give dentists such as Dr. Patel the opportunity to give back to Santo Domingo residents in need of complimentary, quality healthcare.

Those in need of a qualified dentist in Schaumberg, IL can visit Dr. Patel for a full spectrum of dental implant options including sinus lift and ridge split procedures at his practice, Schaumberg Dental Studio. Interested patients should contact his team at 847-348-8673 to schedule an appointment to discuss his services.

About the Doctor

Schaumburg Dental Studio is a general and cosmetic dental practice offering personalized dental care to patients in Schaumburg, IL since 2004. With nearly 20 years of experience, Dr. Jig Patel provides cutting-edge care including dental implants, laser gum disease therapy, orthodontics and cosmetic dentistry treatments. Dedicated to his patients, he frequently participates in community charities including the Dentistry from the Heart Program each year. A patient-centered office, the entire team at Schaumburg Dental Studio strives to offer leading-edge treatments using the latest technology while also making them affordable for their community. To learn more about Dr. Patel, Schaumburg Dental Studio or the services they offer visit their website at http://www.SchaumburgDentalStudio.com or call 847-348-8673 to schedule a custom consultation.
Renodis celebrates 15 years of service in St Paul, MN This milestone is a big one - as I reflect on the founding of our company and the birth of my eldest daughter Chloe on that same day

Renodis (http://www.Renodis.com) is excited to announce its 15-year anniversary. Since Renodis small beginnings in 2002, the company has grown into an industry recognized leader in telecom management with 55 employees across 5 states and 100+ enterprise clients.

This milestone is a big one - as I reflect on the founding of our company and the birth of my eldest daughter Chloe on that same day, comments Craig Beason, CEO and Owner of Renodis. It gives me great pride as I see both our company and my daughter reaching new heights in achievements and having the courage to innovate among peers. We founded Renodis to help businesses solve their telecom problems. The more we solved, the more we realized our lifecycle approach to telecom management uniquely positioned us to impact our clients bottom line while giving them back more time to focus on their businesses. We are very excited about our future as the company continues to grow. I look forward to joining Renodis employees, clients and business partners in celebrating the companys 15th anniversary.

Renodis employees celebrated with a fun family picnic at the St. Paul Saints Stadium along with kicking off a new employee initiative and focus on charitable giving and employee recognition which will continue for years ahead.

About Renodis

Renodis is a Telecom and Mobility Management Company focused on freeing clients from telecom frustrations -- saving time, money, and enabling clients to focus on their business. This is accomplished through innovative processes, purpose-built systems, talented people and deep industry relationships. Our clients obtain peace of mind knowing their Telecom and Mobility environments are professionally managed yielding lower costs, better technology choices and greater service to their end users. Renodis has established an excellent reputation for delivering great value to firms such as Red Wing Shoe Company, Menards, Presbyterian Homes, Macaroni Grill Restaurants, and hundreds of other firms. A Saint Paul, Minnesota based company since 2002, Renodis has helped hundreds of organizations with Telecom and Mobility needs. Find out more at Renodis.com.
We are grateful for the outpouring of generosity from the students of Davis Intermediate, who chose to give rather than receive.

Imagine Learning, developer of the award-winning Imagine Math digital curriculum, will host a special donation ceremony for the American Red Cross Hurricane Harvey Relief at 8:25 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. on October 27 at Davis Intermediate School, Wylie ISD in Wylie, Texas.

This event represents the culmination of a nationwide campaign for Imagine Math students who chose to convert their accrued math points to dollars for Hurricane Harvey relief. After donating the most math points of any participating Texas school, students at Davis Intermediate School will act on behalf of all participants by presenting a check for $5,000 to a representative from the Red Cross.

Davis Intermediate students who participated in the Imagine Math challenge donated 184,500 math points out of the 12.5 million donated nationally. To earn those points, students completed 284 math lessons and solved 8,515 complex math problems in 10 days in mid-September.

We are grateful for the outpouring of generosity from the students of Davis Intermediate, who chose to give rather than receive, said Barb Rudolph, principal at Davis Intermediate School. Their willingness to complete more math lessons in order to support the families affected by Hurricane Harvey shows an extraordinary level of maturity and selflessness.

This Friday well see just a few of the faces that go along with all those donated math points, said Lisa Wise, manager of motivation for Imagine Learning. Our students continue to amaze us by doing more math so they can donate to those in need. This event is just one way to honor the efforts of Imagine Math students while also honoring those who will receive these critical funds.

About Imagine Learning

Imagine Learning delivers award-winning language, literacy, and mathematics solutions for K12 students, revolutionizing the way kids learn. Students and teachers love Imagine Language & Literacy, Imagine Espanol, Imagine Math Facts, and Imagine Math because they are research based, student driven, instructionally differentiated, and incredibly fun to use. The Imagine Learning family is dedicated to changing lives and opening doors of opportunity for kids.

Media Contact: Lisa Wise | lisa.wise(at)imaginelearning(dot)com
Levinson and Associates is proud to announce a merger-acquisition with Creekmore Insurance Group. Levinson brings agents to a new level with exclusive marketing programs, Turn-Key I-Genius sales platform & exclusive life/annuity products. With their multiple electronic platforms, on line licensing, E-app/drop tickets, CRM tools, Xrae auto underwriting, I-Pipeline full suite, 5 different lead programs, and a free retail website to all agents and much more, we feel this was an excellent move for Creekmore and their agents. Levinson & Associates would like to welcome all members of the Creekmore Marketing team to the Levinson Family, including John, Christianne, Susan, Ron, Robert, and Eric.

About Levinson & Associates

Levinson & Associates, Inc. is a National Insurance Marketing Company domiciled in Florida since 1972. As such, we specialize in the servicing of our field force, and the distribution of the most competitive products for term, universal life, whole life, simplified issue, annuities, and survivorship products.

We are a full service marketing company equipped to help during the entire underwriting process. From our most inexpensive term, jumbo permanent products, or annuities; our administrative staff, with over 100 years of combined insurance experience, stands ready and very able to help with all your insurance needs.

In 1998, William Levinson brought his marketing and management experience to the insurance industry. He is today a very successful Managing Partner for Levinson & Associates. Bill continues to service both new and existing agents representing our entire portfolio. William brings a youthful exuberance and enthusiasm, and servicing our agents remains his number one priority. We all want to sincerely thank you for allowing us the opportunity to quote, help, and service all of your insurance needs. IG @billylevinson
Highly Available Shared Hosting StorPools solution kills three birds with one stone. It solves the uptime problems, while decreasing the cost per user for the hosting company. And it also increases service speed and capabilities. The White Paper gives a practical and easy solution to the everyday pains which hosters have!

One of the simplest ways to determine the quality of service of a web hosting company is by measuring the uptime of the service they actually deliver to their clients. On the other hand, clients usually choose the best web hosting based on three criteria  price, support, and service quality. Is there a panacea, a single solution, which can improve all aspects of the web hosting providers?

The software-defined storage leader StorPool just released its newest White Paper - Highly Available Shared Hosting. StorPools solution kills three birds with one stone. It solves the uptime problems, while decreasing the cost per user for the hosting company. And it also increases service speed and capabilities.

The White Paper gives a practical and easy solution to the everyday pains which hosting vendors have. A highly available shared hosting setup helps companies to build an extremely cost-effective and high quality shared hosting service. The solution optimizes server resources and adds a shared SDS (software-defined storage). The increased level of automation decreases the support and maintenance effort and costs. Due to the highly available scale-out architecture in the new setup, end customers receive much better service, which boosts customer retention rates and word of mouth growth.

StorPools solution for shared hosting providers practically solves the main problems they face:



Reliability  using distributed shared storage provides unmatched levels of uptime for shared hosting. It eliminates downtime with self-healing, live migrations, and high availability features.

Improved performance - hosting companies will be able to offer extremely fast hosting, faster than the web-scale giants. Thus their customers websites and applications will be faster.

No vendor lock-in - In a software-defined environment companies are not locked to a specific hardware vendor or hardware platform. Painful hardware upgrades become a thing of the past.

Decreased costs - while implementing the solution requires an initial investment, it reduces the overall per-user costs. This means hosting companies get the benefits of higher performance and better availability and lower total cost at the same time.

More about the Highly Available Shared Hosting solution can be found in the White Paper. It includes a detailed comparison between the traditional shared hosting scenario, as typically done today with the highly available shared hosting implementation. The paper also includes a cost calculation, performance metrics and a sample hardware configuration, so to make implementing this solution as simple and easy as possible.

Get ready to overcome the most acute challenges which every shared hosting provider has and get a competitive edge!
Dr. Igor Turok of Connecticut Pain Solutions in Stamford and Wallingford

With locations in Stamford and Wallingford, Connecticut Pain Solutions has long been known as one of Connecticuts top pain clinics. With a completely redesigned website, the clinic is making it easier for patients to find information than ever before.

About Connecticut Pain Solutions

Connecticut Pain Solutions has one primary focus: to use cutting-edge, minimally invasive techniques and treatment protocols to help patients avoid surgery. The clinic offers targeted procedures for each section of the spine, as well as for neurological, abdominal, and pelvic pain. Techniques include, but are not limited to:



Platelet Rich Plasma Injections

AmnioFix Injections (stem cells)

Spine/Joint Steroid Injections

Nerve Blocks

Radiofrequency Ablation (Rhizotomy)

Kyphoplasty

Botox/Dysport/Xeomin Injections

Spinal Cord Stimulation

Genicular Nerve Blocks

Medication Management

Physical Therapy

Chiropractic Manipulation/Therapy

Connecticut Pain Solutions also offers a variety of esthetic procedures such as dermal fillers and esthetic Botox, vampire mask-PRP injections, O-shot, P-shot, treatment for excessive armpit sweating, Kybella.

About Dr. Turok

Dr. Igor Turok is one of just 200 physicians in the United States to be board certified in both neurology and anesthesia, interventional pain management. This gives him a comprehensive understanding of the complex issues involved in chronic pain, and the knowledge and skills to accurately diagnose and treat each patients pain.

Before opening Connecticut Pain Solutions, Dr. Turok was Director of Neurology and Pain Management at Masonicare Health Center and at NYCs Gracie Square Hospital. He was also Medical Director at Jackow Perlow Hospice of New York, and Director of Saint Vincents Methadone Clinic.

Dr. Turok takes a holistic, highly personalized approach to each patients needs. Depending on individual circumstances, complementary physical and chiropractic therapy may be recommended.

To learn more or to schedule an appointment, call Connecticut Pain Solutions at 203-724-9290 (Stamford) or 203-626-9080 (Wallingford), or visit the website at https://www.ctpainsolutions.com/. The Stamford office is located at 999 Summer Street, Suite 100, Stamford, CT 06905. The Wallingford office is located at 67 Masonic Avenue, Suite 2400, Wallingford, CT 06492.
DESTACO's Accelerate Deepdish Vacuum Cup Improves Grip Performance

DESTACO, the industrys leading global provider of precision movement, positioning and control solutions in industrial automation, is leading the way in vacuum-cup innovation with the introduction of its new Deepdish Series Vacuum Cups, which are designed to maximize grip performance on contoured and oily surfaces.

The new DESTACO Deepdish Series Vacuum Cups feature an all new bell-shaped body design, available in three sizes, 65, 90 and 110 mm. Unique, molded-in gussets prevent the cup edges from rolling up on convex surfaces while the thin, pliable design and special inner tread pattern allow the cups to effectively adhere to flat, convex, concave, domed and oily surfaces for maximum grip performance.

The addition of the Deepdish Series to our vacuum cup line instantly expands the number of applications and uses for our cups. These new cups establish a whole new standard of operational reliability, longevity and productivity for our customers pick-and-place parts handling needs, stated Matt Girand, Vice President, Global Research, Development & Engineering of DESTACO. Were constantly striving to innovate new ways to help manufacturers improve their production processes, and the addition of the Deepdish Vacuum Cups illustrates this commitment.

Another key attribute that sets the new DESTACO Deepdish cups apart from all others is the polyurethane materials-of-construction. Polyurethane provides superior wear-resistance when compared to rubber to promote longer service life and reduced maintenance. In addition, polyurethane will not leave any marks on handled objects and has fantastic elastic memory, even after hundreds of thousands of cycles. To top off this robust feature set, the new DESTACO Deepdish cups have a durometer of 60 (PU60, translucent red in color). The 60 durometer makes it easier to pick up highly contoured panels, while also being capable of withstanding the elevated shear forces that are created by increased acceleration and deceleration rates.

Mounting options include traditional 3/8 imperial NPT, 3/8 Metric-G and 1.25 square T-slot, along with a new lightweight plastic 3/8 Metric-G model. All mounts are interchangeable with existing standard mounts. Installation involves unscrewing the old mount and replacing it with a new one, at most a 10-second task.

DESTACOs new Deepdish Series Vacuum Cups will be on display in Booth No. 313 at The Assembly Show in Rosemont, IL, which will be held from Oct. 24-26.

For more information about DESTACOs Deepdish Series Vacuum Cups, please visit destaco.com.

About DESTACO

DESTACO, a Dover company, is a global leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance automation, workholding and remote-handling solutions. The company serves customers in a variety of end-markets, including the automotive, life sciences, consumer packaged goods, aerospace, industrial and nuclear sectors.

Built on a legacy of more than 100 years, DESTACO offers a comprehensive portfolio of products designed to engineer precise movement, placement and control solutions that drive productivity and uptime for manufacturers around the world. The DESTACO family of products consists of industry-leading brands such as DESTACO Manual Clamps, Power Clamps, and End Effectors; CAMCO and Ferguson Indexers; Robohand Grippers; and CRL Manipulators and Transfer Ports.

DESTACO is based in Auburn Hills, Michigan, U.S.A. The company has more than 800 employees with 13 locations, in 9 countries, across the Americas, Europe and Asia.

DESTACO is part of Dover Corporation, a diversified global manufacturer with annual revenues of $7 billion. The company delivers innovative equipment and components, specialty systems and support services through four major operating segments: Energy, Engineered Systems, Fluids, and Refrigeration & Food Equipment. Headquartered in Downers Grove, IL.

More information is available at destaco.com and dovercorporation.com.
At OpenIO, as we have solved the storage problem of massive amounts of data, and while much of the industry focuses on lower $/GB, we help businesses to create more value from their data.

OpenIO, an innovator in object storage and serverless computing, today announced a $5 million founding round led by Elaia Partners, Partech Ventures, and Nord France Amorcage.

OpenIO offers an innovative architecture for building object storage infrastructures that are easy to deploy and scale over time. Its event-driven computing framework allows businesses to optimize data access and simplify complex workloads by offloading some tasks directly to the storage infrastructure.

OpenIO will use the new funding to expand its team, consolidate the EMEA market, and develop new markets in the USA and Japan.

OpenIO was founded by a small team of experts, engineers, and former intrapreneurs at Worldline, a 1.5 billion Atos company. Led by Laurent Denel and Jean-Francois Smigielski, (now respectively CEO and CTO at OpenIO), the team set out to solve the problems of massive storage infrastructures more than ten years ago. They developed innovative ideas to deal with real-world problems, and OpenIOs software is the culmination of their research and design. They have successfully completed projects with petabytes scale production platforms and managing hundreds of billions of objects.

In recent years, OpenIO has built on those successes, adding innovative features to SDS, its open-source object store. At the same time, it has developed a new serverless computing framework which is gaining traction among customers and opening new markets, including big data, IoT, and machine learning applications.

According to IDG, by 2022, 93% of all data in the digital universe will be unstructured. With this unprecedented data growth, the scalability, flexibility and lightweight design of a solution like OpenIO will make a difference in building sustainable large-scale storage and compute infrastructures.

Huge amounts of data are produced and consumed every day, and the IT industry is experiencing a major revolution," said Laurent Denel, CEO and co-founder of OpenIO, Big data, IoT and machine learning applications are driving this transformation. At OpenIO, as we have solved the storage problem of massive amounts of data, and while much of the industry focuses on lower $/GB, we help businesses to create more value from their data.

The exponential growth of edge computing and new data-driven applications is forcing the industry to rethink infrastructure in general and software defined storage solutions in particular, said Reza Malekzadeh, General Partner at Partech Ventures, OpenIO has the vision, the technology and the right team to address these new needs.

The world most valuable resource is now data. We were very impressed by OpenIOs team and product: their breakthrough, field-proven technology in Software Defined Storage is today's most scalable, easy to use, and cost effective data storage solution for the data-driven enterprises," added Marc Rougier, Partner at Elaia Partners.

We were attracted by the quality of OpenIOs solution, but also by the creativity of the entire team, said Johan Cnossen, Principal at Siparex. We can see that OpenIO is thinking about the future of data storage, and that the company is at the leading edge in this area.

OpenIO is just at the beginning of a data storage revolution. Building on its existing technologies, the company will go further and enhance the way data is stored, processed, and more importantly used.

About OpenIO

OpenIO brings the future of object storage to businesses of all sizes today. It offers the most flexible and versatile solution to solve the scale-out challenges businesses face, from 1TB to thousands of Petabytes. This open-source solution provides a new way to build backend services for applications, allowing companies to combine storage with integrated data processing on a single platform.

OpenIO, next generation object storage and serverless computing. Find out more at http://www.openio.io, and follow @openio on Twitter.

About Partech Ventures

Founded in 1982 in Silicon Valley, Partech Ventures is a global investment firm with a team spread across offices in Paris, Berlin and San Francisco. Most Partners have been entrepreneurs themselves or have held management positions within tech companies. The partnership acts and invests as a single team, helping entrepreneurs build fast-growing tech and digital companies addressing large markets across multiple continents. Partech Ventures partners with entrepreneurs at the seed (Partech Entrepreneur), venture (Partech International) and/or growth (Partech Growth) stages. Companies backed by Partech Ventures have completed 21 initial public offerings and more than 50 major M&A transactions with leading international companies. Since 2012, the team has built a pioneering business development platform fostering synergies and business relationships between entrepreneurs and strategic partners. For more information visit http://www.partechventures.com and follow @partechventures.

About Elaia Partners - http://www.elaia.com

Created in 2002, Elaia Partners is an independent Venture Capital firm focused on the digital economy. Elaia Partners has more than 250m under management and invests in high potential, disruptive start-ups from the first financing rounds to the emergence of global leaders. With more than 60 years of cumulated experience in both venture capital and digital industries, the investment team offers a hand in hand, proactive and relevant support to its entrepreneurs.

Elaia Partners was an early investor in companies such as Sigfox, Mirakl, Criteo, Teads, Talent.io, Agriconomie, Shift Technology, tinyclues, Orchestra Networks, Agnitio, Stanley Robotics, etc.

Twitter: @Elaia_Partners

About Nord France Amorcage

Nord France Amorcage is a co-investment fund of  30 millions which is entirely financed by the Hauts-de-France region. It is operating in pari passu operations on the side of other private investors in order to finance local and innovating companies in their seeds and series A rounds. The fund is advised by Siparex, Frances leading independent private equity specialist, which has 1.8 billion in assets under management.
https://rubica.com/ Rubica receives calls daily from individuals who have experienced a cybercrime incident, frequently resulting in a financial loss ranging from $75,000 to $1 million and well beyond.

Rubica, the only cyber security company to offer individuals a secure, private network, a dedicated team of cyber security experts, and concierge service to address cyber security concerns, today announced that its services satisfy the risk management requirement to be eligible for $1 million of fraud and cyber fraud insurance coverage available through Privilege Underwriters Reciprocal Exchange (PURE), a member-owned insurer designed exclusively for financially successful families.

Starting today, PURE members, who also have active cyber monitoring from Rubica, can purchase up to $1 million of cyber insurance coverage through PUREs new product, PURE Starling. As an optional endorsement to PUREs Homeowners policy, PURE Starling provides broad coverage for fraud and cybercrime. This includes coverage for financial loss resulting from online and offline fraud, services to help assess and respond to cyber extortion threats, and coverage to remove malware and reinstall software after an attack. A subscription to Rubicas services satisfies the risk management requirement to be eligible for the $1 million coverage limit from PURE Starling.

Rubica receives calls daily from individuals who have experienced a cybercrime incident, frequently resulting in a financial loss ranging from $75,000 to $1 million and well beyond, said Joe Levy, Rubicas chief revenue officer. By working with PURE, we can provide individuals not only the most robust security offering available to consumers, but also enable PURE members to access a meaningful level of loss coverage backed by a leading insurance company. We are excited for this new offering and the confidence it will provide to families who will now be protected and secured from modern day digital threats.

At PURE, we focus on educating our customers about risk and helping them reduce the chances of experiencing a claim, said Martin Hartley chief operating officer, the PURE Group of Insurance Companies. Rubicas software and concierge service fits our model well  members will have the confidence that they have an increased level of safety online, access to expert advice, and will be covered should they incur an incident.

PURE members can subscribe to Rubicas services at a preferred rate. Rubicas software is designed to be easily set up and allows individuals to join the companys secure private network. Rubicas team of cyber experts continuously monitors this network, protecting customers from both known and unknown threats. In addition, Rubica provides a concierge service to help answer cyber security questions. In the event of an attack, Rubicas experts can assist the member and remedy the situation. Rubicas model is similar to what the most sophisticated organizations in the world use. It is proven to be the most effective defense against modern day cyber-criminal activity, which increasingly targets financially successful families that often lack adequate protection.

To learn more about the coverage available through PURE Starling, visit pureinsurance.com/starling. PURE Starling is currently available in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wyoming, and will be introduced to additional states throughout 2017 and 2018.

About Rubica

Rubica offers the highest level of cyber security to protect individuals, their families and business networks. Rubica was born from Concentric Advisors, a consultancy that provides physical and digital security for some of the worlds most prominent individuals. Rubicas cyber security experts bring experience from top organizations like NSA, US Navy and Scotland Yard and analyze data and custom build machine-learning tools to protect and secure Rubica clients. Rubica is based in San Francisco and Seattle. To learn more, visit http://www.rubica.com.

About PURE

Privilege Underwriters Reciprocal Exchange (PURE) is a policyholder-owned insurer dedicated to creating an exceptional experience for responsible high net worth individuals and families. PURE provides best-in-class, customizable coverage throughout the US for high-value homes, automobiles, jewelry, art, personal liability, watercraft and flood. Today PURE insures more than 65,000 responsible, high net worth families and has earned a world-class NPS of 67.4. Inspired by some of the finest policyholder-owned companies in the world, PURE emphasizes alignment of interests and transparency. PURE's low cost of capital, careful member selection and proactive risk management all contribute to highly competitive rates. In return for a fee, PURE Risk Management, LLC acts as Attorney-in-Fact for PURE. Whether or to what extent a particular loss is covered depends on the facts and circumstances of the loss and the actual coverage of the policy as issued. For more information or to find a local broker, visit pureinsurance.com. You can follow PURE on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
The Free Cab Ride Home Program is a tangible way for us to express our gratitude, by helping vets and military personnel get to their medical appointments - Paul Harding

To celebrate the sacrifices and achievements of our countrys veterans, the law offices of Martin, Harding & Mazzotti LLP  will offer complimentary cab ride services, for medical-related visits, during the week of Veterans Day, November 6 -10, from 6:00 AM  8:00 PM for the third year running. The service is available to all veterans and military personnel in the Capital District, Saratoga Springs, Amsterdam, Utica, Plattsburgh, New York areas; Burlington, Vermont, and Springfield, Massachusetts. Cab rides will cover travel for medical-related visits to and from doctors, dentists, therapists, hospitals, clinics and the like. Rides can be arranged via an easy-to-use mobile app, MHM Taxi; which can be downloaded to smartphones from the iPhone and Android app store or by calling 1800LAW1010 (1.800.529.1010). A helpful, instructional video on how to arrange the free cab ride is available on YouTube. Riders will need to show a valid military ID and Veterans Week Cab Ride certificate to the driver on the day of service.

Managing Partner Paul Harding offered his thoughts on serving veterans through this program. Martin, Harding & Mazzotti is pleased to have this opportunity to honor the dedication and loyalty of the men and women in service to our country. The Free Cab Ride Home Program is a tangible way for us to express our gratitude, by helping vets and military personnel get to their medical appointments. It is our way of taking care of them and acknowledging their sacrifice and commitment. 

The Veterans Week Cab Ride event is an extension of Martin, Harding & Mazzottis Free Cab Ride Home Program, which has been in place for more than a decade. This safety first service covers cab rides home during specified holiday periods and is designed to reduce the incidence of drunk or impaired driving accidents. The Free Cab Ride Home program will be offered again on Thanksgiving Eve, a popular party night for college students.

The law firm welcomes partners to join their Cab Ride Home Program at no charge. If you own or run a local business or organization and are interested in participating in the Free Cab Ride Home Program, please visit the Martin, Harding & Mazzotti Partner Program page. Together we can support the community and ensure a safe holiday season for all.
Robin Baron receives the "Excelsior!" award from Glenholme Development Board Co-Chairs Barbara Feeney and Doug Bowen at "An Evening in Manhattan" October 18, 2017. The Glenholme School, staff, parents and community members have made such a positive impact on my daughter's life. I will be forever grateful for her experiences and opportunities provided while at Glenholme. ~a Glenholme parent Past News Releases RSS The Glenholme School Celebrates...

Students of The Glenholme School...

Enrollment is Open to The Glenholme...

Enthusiasts from the Tri-State area gathered at Bryant Park Grill on Wednesday, October 18, 2017 for The Gleholme Schools seventh annual Evening in Manhattan fundraiser. Hailed as another notable success, the benefit raised funds for the schools scholarship and the Maryann Campbell Staff Development Fund as it honored long-time special needs crusader, former parent and Glenholme Board member,Robin Baron. The Glenholme School, a special needs boarding and day school in Washington, Connecticut, offers a tailored therapeutic program for students with high functioning autism, ADHD, OCD, Tourette, PDD, depression, anxiety, and various learning differences.

After establishing decade-long connection to Glenholme in spring, it was ideal to honor Robin Baron at the Manhattan event this year. Robin has created a thriving and vibrant multi-faceted design business while juggling her passion for helping young people with special needs. As a philanthropic leader in the Glenholme community, she blessed the school with her artistic interior design of The Center for the Arts. Her presence on the Glenholme Development Board was bold in spirit with much love for Glenholmes vision  A meaningful life for all people.

Each year, dozens of young people are unable to enroll in Glenholme because of financial constraints and special needs funding difficulties. Recognizing and understanding these challenges, the Glenholme Development Board shaped the Manhattan fundraiser to help subsidize the schools scholarship fund.

For the seventh year, the lively event offered ardent guests plenty excitement with a cocktail hour and a silent auction; dinner, captivating videos and presentations, a spirited live auction, and a truly inspiring award presentation.

Through the assistance of the many school supporters, the Glenholme Development Boards Evening in Manhattan raised nearly $175,000 for the scholarship fund and the Maryann Campbell Staff Development Fund  acknowledging the lasting effect Glenholme can have on young people with learning differences and their families.

About The Glenholme School:

Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health  The Glenholme School is an independent, coeducational, special needs boarding school for young people with high functioning autism spectrum disorders, ADHD, OCD, Tourette, depression, anxiety, and various learning differences. The program provides a treatment milieu designed to build competence socially and academically. Our learning environment supports and enhances the ability for young people with special needs to succeed. Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health is a leading nonprofit behavioral health organization that supports many of the most underserved and vulnerable members of our communities. For more information about The Glenholme School and its program, visit http://www.theglenholmeschool.org/.
New Valpress flanged ball valves from Bonomi meet API 608 requirements. They are fire safe to API 607/ISO 10497/API 6FA.

Bonomi North America has introduced a new line of Valpres flanged full-port floating ball valves for severe service applications such as oil, gas, petrochemical processing and water treatment. Standard body materials include carbon (A352 LCB) and stainless steel (A351 CF8M) in sizes -inch through 6 inches. Other materials are available on a made-to-order basis.

The new two-piece bolted-body valves conform to the design requirements of API 608 with temperature and pressure range meeting ASME B16.34 specifications. Connections and face-to-face dimensions are designed to ASME B16.10 and B16.5. They are fire safe to API 607/ISO 10497/API 6FA. They are also ISO-15848 fugitive emissions compliant.

Valpres API 608 floating ball valves offer an operating temperature range of -196C to 420C (-320F to 788F), suitable for use in standard, high-temperature and cryogenic applications. They are rated to ANSI Classes 150 and 300 throughout the size range and to Class 600 in sizes -inch through 4 inches, depending on the application.

Standard seat material is RPTFE. Optional materials include PEEK, PCTFE, VESPEL and metal to metal (TCC or CCC). FKM seals are standard, with HNBR, EPDM, FFKM, (P)VMQ and graphite available as options. Other standard features include an anti-blowout stem and anti-static device. Other options include extended stem for insulation, extended bonnet for high temperatures and extended bonnet for low temperatures.

The new valves are available with manual or automatic operators. As with all Valpres valves, the new valves are perfectly matched to the companys Valbia brand electric and pneumatic actuators. As a package, Bonomi valves and actuators offer the most reliable automation performance in the industry.

For more information on the Bonomi Groups API 608 floating ball valves or other Bonomi products, contact Bonomi North America at (704) 412-9031 or visit online at http://www.bonominorthamerica.com.

About Bonomi North America

Bonomi North America has served the U.S. and Canada since 2003 and is part of the Bonomi Group of Brescia, Italy. Bonomi Group brands include Rubinetterie Bresciane Bonomi (RB) brass ball valves and check valves; Valpres carbon and stainless steel ball valves; and Valbia pneumatic and electric industrial actuators. Bonomi North America maintains an extensive distribution network for these products from its headquarters in Charlotte, N.C. and a facility in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.
Colourful wildlife is just one of the many attractions drawing travellers to Belize there aren't too many places where you can swim in crystal clear Caribbean waters and explore ancient Maya temples in the same day

New figures released by the Belize Tourism Board show that tourist arrivals continue to rise in Belize, confirming The Lodge at Chaa Creeks belief that success and environmentally friendly tourism go hand in hand, the Belizean eco-resorts reservations manager says.

Elsie Pacheco said an October 17, 2017 BTB report shows tourist arrivals continued to rise during the first nine months of the year, with an 8.6% increase in overnight arrivals. Even during September, when dramatic weather events negatively impacted Caribbean tourism, Belize was still able to record an increase of some 1,400 arrivals, representing a growth of 7.9% over last years figures, according to the BTB data.

The third quarter, encompassing July to September, is traditionally regarded as Belizes low season for tourism, yet the country still saw an increase of 10.9% for that quarter compared to 2016.

Ms Pacheco said several factors contribute to Belizes continuing appeal.

For such a small country we have an amazingly diverse geography, and that caters to a wide variety of interests and activities. For example, there are not too many places where you can swim in crystal clear Caribbean waters and explore ancient Maya temples in the same day.

We are also blessed with near-perfect weather year round, meaning any month is a good month to be in Belize.

And people find our harmonious, multicultural society interesting, friendly and welcoming, with English as the official language making it easy for many visitors to get around, Ms Pacheco added.

The BTB statistics also showed that the United States continues to be Belizes biggest market, with the number of Canadian travellers growing as well; a trend the BTB anticipates will increase with expanding air travel choices. A new WestJet service between Calgary and Belize City is on track to commence on November 3rd 2017, and Air Canada is initiating a new route from Toronto in December.

Perhaps because of our shared Commonwealth association, weve always had a healthy number of Canadians travellers in Belize, and with these new direct flights making getting here from Canada that much easier, were expecting to see more Canadians taking a break from the cold this winter, she said.

Ms Pacheco explained how Chaa Creeks growth kept pace with Belizes since the little country achieved independence from Great Britain in 1981.

Belize was relatively unknown when we became independent, and breaking into the global tourism market seemed daunting at first. Mexico, Jamaica, and other Caribbean destinations were already well established, but not many people knew that the former British Honduras was now Belize and had so much to offer.

At the same time, Chaa Creek was just a small family farm that Mick and Lucy Fleming had a reputation for welcoming visitors to.

Ms Pacheco said that relative obscurity had a silver lining.

It meant that we had to develop Belizes tourism industry from the ground up and work that much harder to establish our reputation. But having a clean slate to work from meant that we could develop in an environmentally sustainable and socially beneficial manner, and thats made Belize a Green, happy country that people find attractive.

And these latest tourism figures show that attraction continues to grow every year.

The Lodge at Chaa Creek is located in Belizes ancient Maya heartland and offers a wide variety of accommodations ranging from glamping in rustic bungalows at the Macal River Camp to the luxurious Ix Chel Rainforest Villas situated on a ridge overlooking the Macal River, fronted with floor-to-ceiling glass walls and doors offering stunning private vistas, expansive verandas with personal plunge pools, Jacuzzis, and the attention of a personal butler. An eco-luxe thatched roof cottage collection along with individually designed suites and villas offer visitors an unparalleled choice in lodging, Ms Pacheco said.

Amenities include an onsite restaurant featuring farm-to-table dining and fresh Caribbean seafood, the internationally recognised Hilltop Spa, infinity pool and a range of activities that include horseback riding, guided birding and nature walks along miles of trails running through a 400-acre private nature reserve, canoeing, jungle and river safaris and an extensive menu of tours and expeditions.

Ms Pacheco said the popular Belizean eco-resort recently added a combination jungle lodge and Caribbean sailing vacation aboard a 50 luxury catamaran to its rainforest to Reef surf and turf all-inclusive vacation packages.

As tourism arrivals increase, well continue to expand our range of offerings to satisfy the growing number of guests with their varying tastes, interests and budgets. Trying to provide something for everybody in an environmentally friendly manner may sound ambitious, but we keep trying, Ms Pacheco said.

The Lodge at Chaa Creek is a multi-award winning eco-resort set within a 400-acre private nature reserve along the banks of the Macal River in Belize. It was recognised by National Geographic with first place honours at the 2017 World legacy Awards held in Berlin.
Simple Energy, the industry leader in utility-branded marketplaces, today introduced the new Rebates-as-a-Service (RaaS) Platform: the first platform to bring instant rebates to every place a utilitys customers make product or service purchases. RaaS allows customers to instantly validate and redeem rebates at the point of sale in both brick-and-mortar stores and other online channels.

Utilities in the US provide over $4 billion in rebates and incentives to change how their customers use energy. Rebates on products such as smart thermostats, LED lightbulbs and appliances help utilities meet their energy efficiency goals while helping customers save money. Traditionally, customers wanting a rebate were required to complete a paper form, mail in a copy of a receipt, and then wait weeks to receive their rebate in the mail.

RebatesasaService offers a better customer experience by providing instant savings at the point of sale, which increases transaction volumes, results in direct attribution and reduces program costs: a win for utilities, retailers and customers.

In 2015, we pioneered instant rebates on energy-saving products in utility-branded marketplaces because we wanted to make the process convenient and easy, says Simple Energy CEO Yoav Lurie. With RebatesasaService, were making utility-paid instant rebates available directly at brick-and-mortar retail stores and other ecommerce websites, so customers can instantly redeem rebates in their preferred place to shop.

Underlying RebatesasaService is the same patent-pending rebate eligibility engine that powers Simple Energys utility-branded marketplaces. By surfacing the engine via application programming interfaces (APIs), Simple Energy brings instant rebates into the point-of-sale system of its retail partners. When customers apply for a rebate, Simple Energy instantly validates eligibility by matching the customer-entered data with utility datasetsproviding instant rebates for customers and 100% auditability for utilities.

Simple Energy began to deploy Rebates-as-a-Service with select utility and retail partners earlier this year in limited pilots. Given the strong results, theyre ready for a full, public rollout. Our utility partners, like ComEd and Xcel Energy, have seen substantial increases in their rebate redemptions by bringing rebates to their customers wherever they choose to shop, Lurie explains.

Over 2,000 Stores and Leading Websites  Leading manufacturers and retailers have been quick to adopt the new technology. At launch, Simple Energy counts multiple retailers and manufacturers as partners -- including Lowes (in-store and at Lowes.com), Nest (via nest.com), ecobee (via ecobee.com) and ABT.com. More retailers are expected to be announced later in the year.

15,000,000 Eligible Customers  Utilities have also been quick to adopt Rebates-as-a-Service. Many of Simple Energys Marketplace customers have already implemented the service. At launch, Rebates-as-a-Service is eligible to more than 15,000,000 customers in half a dozen states.

Real Customer Results  The integrations are already proving to add real value for customers. Recently, ComEd customer Gene Ivano of Elk Grove Village, Illinois, was looking for a better way to control the temperature of his home, following the birth of his first child. I was looking for a way to control my homes temperature. With ComEds generous incentive offered at Nest.com, I was able to get a great product at an incredible price. Giving customers instant rebates in the places where we already shop is a great way for utilities to show that they appreciate their customers, Ivano said.

In-Store Innovation  Rebates-as-a-Service is also the first and only solution to provide instant rebates at brick-and-mortar retail locations where many customers buy energy-saving appliances. Xcel Energy deployed RaaS in Colorado Lowes stores and at lowes.com to increase adoption of energy efficient evaporative coolers. Customers validate their eligibility via a smartphone and generate a bar code that is scanned at checkout.

Proven Results  Rebates-as-a-Service is already having substantial results. RaaS rebates already account for over 30 percent of the online rebates we process, Lurie notes. In-store, the results have been even more impressive. Lowes stores in Colorado saw three times as many evaporative coolers rebated in five weeks of the program as they saw in the previous three months.

Engaging Hard-to-Engage Customers  Rebates-as-a-Service especially appeals to customers who dont typically engage with their utility. To date, over 70% of the customers to come through RaaS did not previously have a digital account with their utility. For utilities, RaaS offers a cost-effective way of engaging hard-to-reach customers, increasing the number of digitally engaged customers, and reducing overall cost-to-serve.

About Simple Energy

Simple Energy is the leading provider of utility-branded marketplaces for large investor-owned, municipal and cooperative utilities like Exelon, Southern Company, Xcel Energy, National Grid and SMUD. Simple Energys software as a service (SaaS) instant rebate, customer engagement, digital marketing and ecommerce solutions to engage customers, drive energy savings, facilitate the sale of energy-saving products and services, and serve as the platform for the utility of the future.
"We received word from our researchers that Puerto Rico is being to process criminal records and civil records for employment screening," said Corra Group Co-Founder, Nick Gustavson.

Corra Group is once again processing all Puerto Rico Background Checks. Following the devastation to the island, the El Segundo based background checking service put all Puerto Rico Background Checks on hold until further notice.

We received word from our researchers that Puerto Rico is being to process criminal records and civil records for employment screening," said Corra Group Co-Founder, Nick Gustavson. We thought it would have taken much longer for the island to gets its records systems up and running. I believe this is testament to the resolve and the will of the Puerto Rican people, especially the authorities who issue criminal and civil reports."

Here we thought it would be many months before we could facilitate employment screening services and records checks, with so much destruction to the island, said Gustavson, "but here we are, ready to go.

Gustavson advised that those employers conducting criminal record checks should request the statewide criminal records search, rather than the county criminal records search. Some counties are up and running, said Gustavson. With other counties, there are still major delays. The Puerto Rico statewide criminal records checks is an excellent search conducted through the Puerto Rico state police. Typically, it returns in about four or five business days. That was before the storm. Now, it may take a little longer to turnaround, but it should not be hanging up for weeks at a time.

Gustavson noted that education verification and employment verification are also available. He thought there would still be delays for driving records. He noted that even before the storm, Puerto Rico MVRS typically returned between thirty to sixty business days.

Our clients who are based in Puerto Rico will be happy to hear the news, said Gustavson. I would add that employers on U.S. Soil will also be delighted. Many Puerto Ricans fled the ravaged island and are now working or seeking working on the mainland. Besides Puerto Rico, we are able to process international background checks from the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America. Activity with Latin America, both for employment screening and due diligence, has been rather brisk.

BACKGROUND: Corra operates as Corra Group and Corra Global Research and specializes in employment screening and corporate research and investigation. It is one of the few companies that will answer the phone. You can find Corra Group at http://www.corragroup.com
MEGAComfort Hardest Worker - Vote Now Dr. Kevan Orvitz, President of MEGAComfort, commented, Were truly touched by the personal comments and stories shared. Recently our country has faced a lot of hardship, sadness, and loss. These stories are reminders that there are good, giving, and loving people doing amazing things each day."

On September 4th, MEGAComfort Inc. North America's leading provider of anti-fatigue insoles and orthotics for the workplace, launched their second annual Hardest Worker Contest, in honor of Labor Day. This year they added a second way to spread appreciation through the Hardest Working Team Sweepstakes. Both the contest and sweepstakes allowed participants to share individual and collaborative stories of strength, perseverance, and determination.

In addition to selecting the 6 finalists for the Hardest Worker Contest, MEGAComfort has also announced the winner of the Hardest Working Team sweepstakes. The team from Traverse City West Senior High School, nominated by Maya Kassab, was chosen from a select group of finalists. Their story of how they pull together as a team personifies dedication, hard work, generosity, and team spirit, all in the name of helping students fulfill their potential.

The Hardest Worker Contest asked participants to nominate the hardest worker they knew and to comment on the MEGAComfort Facebook page to enter. The six finalists are Jennifer Corrado of Columbia Station, OH; Abe Liandro of Houston, TX; Alysha Nalex McDougle of Baton Rouge, LA; Jill Nauyokas of South Boston, MA; Kerrianne Weaver of Conneaut, OH; and Denise Young of Newton, GA. Each of the MEGAComfort Hardest Worker Contest finalists shared stories of generosity, kindness, dedication, and love. Abe Liandro of Houston, Texas nominated his father, and shared that he grew up in a single parent household where his father worked multiple jobs daily just to give everything he could [to his family].Alysha Nalex McDougle also nominated her 72-year-old father who works as a Warden for the Livingston Parish in Louisiana. Even after losing everything during the flooding in Louisiana, he continued to spend hours with rescue teams going into the flooded areas on boats getting people out. Jill Nauyokas of South Boston, Massachusetts nominated her mother, who works a full-time job, takes care of her grandchildren, all while struggling with rheumatoid arthritis. These are just pieces of the remarkable stories shared. Each of the six finalists shared experiences demonstrating bravery, sacrifice, and care, making this contest so unique.

Dr. Kevan Orvitz, President and Founder of MEGAComfort commented, Were truly touched by the personal comments and stories shared. Our team is given a glimpse into the selfless and dedicated lives of people around the country, and were humbled to have the opportunity to give back to these generous individuals and teams.

Recently, our country has faced a lot of hardship, sadness, and loss. These stories are reminders that there are good, giving, and loving people doing amazing things each day. Now its time for the American public take part and help MEGAComfort select the winner of the Hardest Worker Contest. Until November 8th, you can vote for the Hardest Worker at http://www.megacomfort.com/vote. The winner will be announced on November 16th live on Facebook.

About MEGAComfort Inc.:

MEGAComfort Inc. offers a complete range of patented ergonomic, dual-layer 100% memory foam anti-fatigue insoles and orthotics. MEGAComfort products have been clinically proven to reduce muscle fatigue and pain, while simultaneously increasing worker comfort. For over a decade, MEGAComfort has advocated for cost effective Personal Anti-Fatigue Mat Insoles to replace costly standard floor mating. Our unique insoles are designed by Podiatrist and MEGAComfort founder, Dr. Kevan Orvitz. Visit us online at: http://www.megacomfort.com.
Detechtion Technologies, the world leading Industrial IoT and Mobility solution provider in the oil and gas industry, today announced that Mark E. Crews and Dennis L. Nerland, QC, have joined the companys Board of Directors as independent directors.

Chris Smith, President and Chief Executive Officer at Detechtion, said, I am delighted that Mark and Dennis have accepted our invitation to join the board. As we enjoy rapid growth, both gentlemen bring vast industry knowledge and experience that will help us manage that growth and meet our strategic goals.

Mark E. Crews retired from Lufkin Industries, Inc. in 2013 after leading the growth and restructuring of the Oilfield Division and repositioning it as a leading global supplier of artificial lift equipment and related services. These efforts led to the strategic sale of Lufkin to GE Oil & Gas. Prior to Lufkin, Mark was a senior executive at Cameron International Corporation where he held a number of significant management positions across the globe over the course of his 30-year career. Mark earned a Bachelor of Science, Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University and completed the Program for Management Development at Harvard Business School.

Dennis Nerland received his Bachelor of Science Degree with Honours in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Calgary in 1975. Further pursuing his education, he received his Master of Arts Degree in Economics from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario in 1976 and his Bachelor of Laws Degree from the University of Calgary in 1979. Dennis has completed the Rotman / Haskayne Directors Education Program and achieved the designation of Institute-certified Director (ICD.D) from the Institute of Corporate Directors in 2011. He has successfully completed the Rotman Financial Literacy Program and holds active memberships in the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, Law Society of Alberta, Canadian Tax Foundation, Calgary Bar Association and the Canadian Bar Association. In 2014, Dennis was appointed a Queens Counsel (QC) of Alberta.

Mark and Dennis join existing executive board members Virgil Haney, Chief Technology Officer at Detechtion and co-founder of Enbase LLC, Chris Smith, President & CEO, non-executive chairman Brian Taylor, founder of Detechtion Technologies, and private equity sponsor Michael DeRosa, General Partner at Element Partners.

About Detechtion Technologies

Detechtion Technologies is the market leading Industrial IoT and mobile application provider enabling the digital oilfield. Through its Enalysis, Enbase and Fieldlink product lines, Detechtion offers solutions for chemical injection, compression, and other production operations. These products and services span telematics, monitoring, control, predictive analytics, visualization and integration with other systems so that the vision of the digital oilfield will finally be achieved. Over 100 customers and thousands of users depend on Detechtion Technologies to monitor and manage over 10,000 assets worldwide.
HostMDS is one of the first providers in the market to offer unlimited hosting packages.

HostMDS, a leading provider of cost-effective and powerful web hosting, VPS and Colocation services, has announced the launch of its latest line of web hosting, vps, dedicated server and colocation along with revamping its website.

New Web Hosting package is offering unlimited disk space and bandwidth, unlimited email accounts and is equipped with cPanel, Free SSL certificate(Lets Encrypt) and Spam filter powered by SpamExperts, Starting from $2.99.

All HostMDS VPS Hosting plans come with dedicated disk space, RAM, and CPU. VPS hosting plans provide full root access and remote reboot capability so customers can install any supported application, customize their Linux VPS and manage their VPS with ease, priced from $9 per month.

Four solid packages for Dedicated Server Hosting have been introduced. Customers can configure the CPU, RAM, Disk Space, or other add-ons to customize the server based on their requirements. All servers are located in Canada, offered on Linux operating systems and guarantee 99.99% up-time, starting from $79.99 per month.

"HostMDS is one of the first providers in the market to offer unlimited hosting packages. We wanted to continue to offer the very same feature when we acquired the business back in 2016," said Ali Mirdamadi, HostMDS CEO. "HostMDS is and will remain a one-stop shop for people that want to enjoy a feature-rich, turn-key hosting solutions with truly unlimited resources. We have also added a robust and affordable VPS solution for people who want a bit extra than a regular hosting package."

You can view the new Web Hosting and VPS Hosting Plans here on HostMDS's website: http://www.hostmds.com

About HostMDS

As you might know HostMDS has recently been acquired by Cirrus Hosting, Canadas leading hosting company. Cirrus Hosting is committed to HostMDS mission in providing secure and reliable hosting solutions with high level of customer support for personal and businesses customers. HostMDS has been in hosting industry for more than 8 years and has its own share of loyal customers. HostMDSs datacenter is strategically located in the Greater Toronto Area, home to Toronto Internet Exchange (TorIX) with 150+ unique high speed networks, and is protected and equipped with 24/7 with strict security protocols, on-site security guard, video surveillance, biometric scanners, and more. The datacenter is equipped with nothing less than Enterprise class servers and multiple Tier-1 BGP providers.
Cloudamize, a leader in cloud computing analytics, today announced its Azure Site Recovery (ASR) Migration Integration, which enables companies to execute their Azure cloud migration plans in just a few clicks. Azure cloud partners leveraging Cloudamize ASR Migration Integration can significantly reduce the time it takes to execute migration to Azure for their clients, while also improving migration accuracy.

The release of ASR Migration Integration enhances Cloudamizes ability to support companies throughout their entire migration journey, said Khushboo Shah, Head of of Cloudamize. Azure cloud partners have long used Cloudamize to calculate cloud TCO, predict performance, prioritize workload move groups, and design their migrations. Now, they can also leverage our integration to seamlessly turn their cloud migration plans into successful Azure migrations.

Cloudamize ASR Migration Integration can be used to complete the setup required to successfully execute migration to Azure. Capabilities include:

--Select an ASR-ready design

--Complete set up for ASR configuration server

--Automatically install the ASR mobility services onto the target environment

--Carry out migration tasks after target environment is prepared for migration

--Execute the migration of on-premises infrastructure to Azure

ASR Migration Integration also provides ASR Reporting, which offers deep analysis on an application move group's ASR readiness, along with recommendations on what needs to be done to any that are not ready. The ASR readiness report validates against 20 checks to see if the target is ready for ASR migration and divides the outcomes into Success, Warning or Critical. It also provides workarounds for the machines that are identified as Warning. Sample checks include: General Disk, Windows OS, Hypervisor, Disk Space, .Net Version, Boot Software and Linux System Requirements. With this report, organizations can prioritize move groups and ensure successful migrations. ASR Reporting capabilities include:

--View a report that shows instances ready to be migrated via ASR

--Create move groups by filtering machines that are eligible for migration via ASR

--Specify work groups or machines to be included in the reporting

--Download all reports

ASR Migration Integration removes manual processes and drastically reduces the time required to determine which configurations are supported in Azure and ASR, said Shah. With this deep integration between our platform and ASR, Azure cloud partners can quickly identify and set up their clients ideal configurations to accelerate their Azure migration and greatly reduce the chance of errors. As a result, they can take on more migration projects, enhance customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive more revenue.

In addition to ASR Migration Integration, Cloudamize has also recently released Azure Partner Account Integration. This integration allows partners re-selling Azure to input pricing and currency information into Cloudamize, which will then automatically apply pricing to all cloud cost calculations. This release enables customers to:

--Link partner account details to the Cloudamize platform

--See account specifications automatically applied to all orders created

--Manage partner details and order creation via the partner dashboard

Learn more about the Cloudamize Partner Program here: https://www.cloudamize.com/partner

About Cloudamize

Cloudamize provides a cloud computing analytics platform that accelerates cloud migration and maximizes cloud ROI. Using the Cloudamize platform, customers can calculate and compare TCO across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform; automatically discover all applications and their dependencies; determine which applications to migrate and when; identify their optimal cloud instances and storage options; design a phased migration plan; and gain clear visibility into cloud costs for better control. Armed with high precision analytics and powerful automation, customers can make accurate cloud decisions faster, easier, and with more confidence, so they can speed and simplify cloud planning, migration, and management and ultimately realize the full potential of the cloud. Cloudamize is part of the Cloudreach Software Business Unit and is proudly located in Philadelphia. For more information, please visit https://www.cloudamize.com and follow us @cloudamize.
Complete Discovery Source (CDS), a leading end-to-end eDiscovery company, announced today that it has become a RelativityOne Certified Partner thanks to its significant commitment to offering solutions using RelativityOne, the cloud-based version of Relativity. RelativityOne offers clients the full suite of Relativity tools along with immediate access to upgrades and new features as they are released.

CDS will provide clients RelativityOne as a standalone SaaS offering as well as in a hybrid approach with on-premises deployments of Relativity. CDS will leverage the ISO certification of RelativityOne with its own robust security implementations to provide clients with enhanced cybersecurity protections. Relativity is ISO-certified for the information security program and operations for RelativityOne, which is built in Microsoft Azure's highly secure data centers. Meanwhile, CDS continues to offer its on-premises Relativity platform in a dedicated, ISO-certified and SOC 2 Type 2 audited data center environment.

Our designation as a RelativityOne Certified Partner underscores our commitment to the Relativity platform, said Nyi Htwe, CTO at CDS. CDS has been a pioneer in Relativity for nearly a decade, working closely with their developers to create new features. We look forward to continuing to provide industry-leading support and services for the platform that will help our clients achieve significant workflow improvements and cost savings.

CDS has been a great partner of ours ever since we first brought Relativity to market, said Nick Robertson, chief operating officer at Relativity. Theyve always done an exceptional job of combining leading-edge technology with unique solutions and a commitment to customer service, and were excited to continue partnering with them as one of our RelativityOne Certified Partners.

CDS offers complete, end-to-end eDiscovery services including the application of analytics, TAR, and ECA. The company recently announced its technology-driven managed review services to help clients manage the expanding amounts of ESI involved in todays litigation landscape.

About Complete Discovery Source

CDS is a leading eDiscovery company, providing litigation technology and hosting, Advisory Services consulting, and managed services to support complex discovery matters. CDS is the first choice of the Am Law 100 and Fortune 500 and is recognized as Best in End-to-End eDiscovery by The National Law Journal and New York Law Journal. With a team of seasoned industry experts and technicians, CDS uses advanced, tested, and defensible services and software to support all stages and types of eDiscovery. Supporting a number of eDiscovery tools, CDS is an Orange-Level Best-in-Service Relativity Provider and provides one of the largest and highest volume footprints delivering that platform. CDS is headquartered in New York with regional offices in Chicago, Miami and Washington D.C. The company maintains highly secure ISO 27001 certified hosting and SOC 2 Type 2 audited data centers in North America and Europe. Complete Discovery Sources web site is https://cdslegal.com/.

About Relativity

At Relativity, we make software to help users organize data, discover the truth, and act on it. Our e-discovery platform is used by more than 13,000 organizations around the world  in the cloud, on-premises, or both  to manage large volumes of data and quickly identify key issues during litigation, internal investigations, and compliance projects. Relativity has over 160,000 active users in 40+ countries from organizations including the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 70 Fortune 100 companies, and 199 of the Am Law 200. As a platform, Relativity also allows developers to design, build, and integrate applications that extend its functionality. Relativity has been named one of Chicago's Top Workplaces by the Chicago Tribune for six consecutive years. Please contact Relativity at sales@relativity.com or visit http://www.relativity.com for more information.

Relativity Media Contact

Mike Gilhooly

Public Relations Manager

mike.gilhooly@relativity.com

+1.708.814.5281
TruthSetter Believes in a Free Press for All People. Free Press is the basis for any free society. Blatant lies and misinformation serve to undercut democracy. Truth empowers. Fact-checking technology equips our customers with the ability to correct and stop the spread of misinformation, says TruthSetter Founder and CEO, Julie Wright Smith

TruthSetter empowers the public to participate in the fact-checking process in real-time. Any individual can submit potentially fake articles from their news-feeds using our U-Submit tab for immediate public view. Registered users can log-in using their Facebook accounts, or directly, and access our proprietary fact-checking tools to highlight errors and misinformation they find. Users are provided a link to attach corroborating sources. The public immediately can vote on the accuracy of the fact-check while also observing the voting trends for that article. Statistical analysis determines the votes necessary to affirm the article as fact-checked. Machine learning accounts for and mitigates personal bias.

Fact-checking and Fake News have become an international dialogue. Stopping and correcting false and misinformation will take public input, says TruthSetter Founder and CEO, Julie Wright Smith. Free Press is the basis for any free society. Blatant lies and misinformation serve to undercut democracy. Truth empowers a free society. My passion is to ensure a Free Press for all people. No-cost, full public access to transparent fact-checking technology equips our customers with the ability to protect this freedom and stop the spread of misinformation, Julie adds.

A recent Forbes article spotlighting the proliferation of inaccurate news in social media during the election cycle from August to November 2016 reports fake stories earned more shares, reactions and comments on Facebook than real news stories. According to a Pew Research Center poll, 64% believe fake news is causing a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current events. As Pew explained, [fake news] makes it harder for any of us to have a shared view of the facts.

A recent survey of 4,800 news sources found errors in 61% of news. The rate of news inaccuracy is the highest reported in 70 years of accuracy research. Over 48 million malicious bot accounts exist on Twitter to push fake news. Russia purchased 100,000 fake Facebook ads and created hundreds of fake Twitter profiles to fuel divisions during our election. Fake news transcends political ideology. Eight-in-ten Republicans and Democrats, given the platform and opportunity, will always / or sometimes correct fake news.

Truth - Fake News is a real and viral problem. Hackers, including those in organized crime and those who are Nation State sponsored, bots, and other online threats pose a risk to Free Press and national media markets. Misleading and blatant fictional news is more prevalent than ever before. The barrier to entry is extremely low; anyone can easily publish sensational articles and misinformation. Social Media injects this false and divisive news into user feeds. From there, Fake News spreads.

TruthSetter revolutionizes the global news market by providing direct fact-checking power to the individual consumer to bring real-time attention to errors and missing sources holding authors and media companies they represent instantly accountable. Built-in metrics will expose agitators and Fake News propagators while promoting those holding to journalistic integrity giving the public discernment about the news they digest. TruthSetter provides the public the tangible means to fact-check those suspect articles popping up in their news-feeds and responsibly stop the spread.

TruthSetter, in addition to launching the consumer- oriented platform, is launching a pilot program for journalists serving local communities. TruthSetter is offering full access to our fact-checking tools for vetted local journalists. TruthSetter is offering these journalists the ability to add their company branding and editorship as fact-checker for any article they upload to the platform with a teaser directing traffic to their newspaper online presence. TruthSetter believes building trust in journalistic principles occurs first at the local level where local journalists have the unique ability to engage communities in diverse civil discourse based in facts. Local news organizations are the cornerstone to our communities and are fundamental to a true and free press.

TruthSetter is an all-inclusive, non-partisan platform and follows the Poynter international code of ethics for fact-checking.

Visit the TruthSetter Fact-checking platform.

Learn more about our Team, Mission and Commitment on our Corporate page..
Miller Mayer Award

Miller Mayer, LLP, a local Ithaca law firm, was named one of CNYs Best Places to Work in 2017 by The Business Journal News Network in Syracuse. Miller Mayer was ranked #3 in the category of businesses with 51 to 150 employees. The only other Ithaca-based business to be recognized was Holt Architects. Employers were ranked based on anonymous employee responses to a detailed survey conducted by the independent research firm RMS.

Like most of the businesses recognized in the awards ceremony Thursday evening, October 19 at the Drumlins Country Club, Miller Mayer received high scores for creating a positive culture and satisfying work environment based on clear vision and values, effective management, engagement, teamwork and camaraderie.

Miller Mayer was established in 1985 and, over the last three decades, has steadily grown to become Tompkins Countys largest law firm, with 22 lawyers and over 40 staff members. As a full service firm, the practice has been guiding local clients through all aspects of their legal needs, from starting a business through family law needs to real estate transactions, to name a few. Additionally, and this may come as a surprise for a firm based in a quiet town in upstate New York, Miller Mayer has developed a sizable, world-renowned immigration law practice, with immigration lawyers regularly speaking at industry events worldwide, authoring publications and leading advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C. As a result of the rapid growth of the immigration practice, the firm recently opened a new branch office in Shanghai, China, to better service its large client base throughout Asia.

Jim Miller, name partner and founding member of the firm, said about the award, I feel truly blessed to be a part of an amazing firm that has worked hard for over 30 years to deliver exceptional legal services to clients not only locally, but also regionally and internationally. We are committed to being active in the local community and maintaining a strong presence in downtown Ithaca. Our success is due in large part to the dedication and loyalty of our staff and their recognition that we are all part of a team effort.

Indeed, the firms offices have been right on the Commons since 1987, and when it was time to expand into a larger space following the extended Commons construction period, staying right here was still the natural choice. Miller Mayer moved into the second floor of the Rothschild Building, sharing the floor with the Finger Lakes School of Massage. The space was beautifully renovated by Tetra Tech and McPherson Builders and spans 14,665 sq. ft. to accommodate the growing practice. A major perk of the location is, of course, being able to grab a pie during Apple Harvest Festival right outside the office doors.

Miller Mayer is proud of the diversity built among attorneys and staff and the multicultural, LGBTQ+ friendly environment. The firm includes people who are originally from more than 10 different countries, from Jamaica to Denmark, and who are fluent in many different languages, including Chinese, Korean and Spanish. Eleven of Miller Mayers 22 attorneys and five out of the nine partners are women, a ratio not commonly found in law firms and a testament to the dedicated efforts to grow the business as an inclusive practice, fostering the strengths of every individual.

A number of our attorneys started their professional careers working for major firms in large metropolitan cities around the world, and chose to move to the Ithaca area for the small-city lifestyle as well as the academic and cultural opportunities that our community provides. As a firm, we are committed to being part of the Ithaca community and enjoying its benefits, while at the same time providing high-quality legal services comparable to those associated with major firms in large cities, said Rosanne Mayer, one of the partners who started the immigration practice at Miller Mayer over 25 years ago.

Carolyn Lee, managing partner of the renowned EB-5 investor immigration group within the practice, added, Miller Mayer has experienced incredible growth in the last dozen years, in particular as leaders in the emergent EB-5 industry. Were proud to stay ahead of the fast pace of a global EB-5 practice while being true to who we are: excellent lawyers who enjoy our work. With offices in Ithaca and Shanghai, we joke that were the only law firm in the world with those cities on the letterhead. Indeed, it captures perfectly our roots as well as our entrepreneurial spirit. I feel grateful for the confidence of the many clients in our care and am inspired to deliver more. And we will!
Glamping began with the idea of bringing comfort and luxury to the great outdoors for a truly unique travel experience. Over the years, this trend has grown exponentially and now includes various styles of habitats and levels of luxury.

Over the last decade and more, the glamourous camping or Glamping trend has grown up and graduated to its own category of travel. Through a host of informational sources, online search data and consumer response, the team of experts at GLAMPING.COM have distilled their predictions on the top glamping travel trends  or continued growth interest areas  for 2018.

John Romfo, chief operating officer for GLAMPING.COM explained, What started as a trend has evolved into a full-blown phenomenon. As interest in experiential travel grows at a staggering rate, so has visitation to Glamping.com. The number of consumer inquiries visiting GLAMPING.COM is up over 100 percent, and were proud to serve as a major point of inspiration along the path to purchase for the curious and adventurous traveler.

As the trusted authority on all things glamping, the websites exclusive collection of recommended properties is over 800 worldwide and offers 16 types of accommodation experiences, including the newest additions of wagons, shepherd huts, domes, and luxury lodges. Here are five of GLAMPING.COMs predictions on the hottest trends or popular interest categories, growing in the glamping world.

1. Think Outside The Tent: Unique & Unusual Glamping

Glamping began with the idea of bringing comfort and luxury to the great outdoors for a truly unique travel experience. Over the years, this trend has grown exponentially and now includes various styles of habitats and levels of luxury. Today the GLAMPING.COM collection includes 16 types of accommodations. While 2017 was arguably Year of the Treehouse, and before that, Airstreams captured the attention of glampers, now Domes and an entire category dedicated to Unique & Unusual on GLAMPING.COM, are earning the spotlight for 2018. There are currently over 50 properties that provide these unique glamping experiences  theyve thought outside the box, tent, and more including glamping in caves, ice hotels, trains, glass towers, and planes.

Domes cater to experiential travelers who seek a unique accommodation through full immersion with nature and minimal environmental impact. Some offbeat, futuristic domes in the GLAMPING.COM collection include amenities such as wood-fired hot tubs and en-suite bathrooms, while providing panoramic views of nature. They are often also suitable for the four-season traveler, for example, in winter the Whitepod in Switzerland is like staying in a real life snow globe, with luxuries of wood burning stoves, plush bedding, full bathrooms, and views over the Alps. Other examples in Unique & Unusual include the Permanent Camping at Mudgee property in New South Wales, Australia - an eco-friendly glass tower which opens up to bring the landscape inside. Another example is the Jumbo Stay in Stockholm, Sweden where guests can spend the night onboard a real jumbo jet, including a stay in the Engine Room.

2. Emerging 2018 Glamping Destinations: Slovenia

Nearly landlocked between Italy, Austria, Croatia and Hungary, Slovenia is a surprisingly popular destination for glamping. With 11 locations listed on GLAMPING.COM, it ranks 6th in Europe on the website for the most glamping locations (UK at the highest, followed by Spain, Italy, France, Portugal). Some examples of Slovenias creative experiences are centered first and foremost with the natural environment in mind, and include staying on an organic family farm (producing the first organic beer in Slovenia), ethnological eco-resorts, a luxury herbal camping experience and adventurous and romantic pier tents and treehouses. These upscale, natural and interesting architectural experiences also come at a reasonable to moderate cost from $100 - $249/night.

3. Head in the Clouds: Glamping as the Ultimate Stargazing Experience

The 2017 Total Solar Eclipse across the U.S. grabbed everyones attention from age 5 to 95. Budding astrologists are now planning ahead for the next solar eclipses.

South America: Chile, Argentina, Easter Island - July 2, 2019 and December 14, 2020:

In Chile, Elqui Domos is one of seven astronomic hotels worldwide and in the direct path of the July 2, 2019 total eclipse. Their unique Dome Rooms or Observatory Cabins are each ideal for stargazing while also including modern amenities and supreme comfort. In December 2020, Patagonia Camp  which was the first glamping experience in Chile  is in the direct path of the eclipse, with tremendous stargazing yurt accommodations. Plan ahead for the trip of a lifetime to Easter Island and a stay at the incomparable Explora Rapa Nui.

North America: Mexico, United States, Canada - April 8, 2024:

Twelve states will see eclipse totality in 2024, from Texas to Maine. Travelers dont necessarily have to wait seven years to get the ultimate astrological vacation, though planning ahead will be key to availability come 2024! Stargazing experiences are abundant on GLAMPING.COM, and with user-friendly search filter functions for location (search by state); desired experience (farm, jungle, ocean, city, mountain, etc.); type of accommodation (tents, domes, cubes, cabins, yurts, villas, etc.); and type of traveler (family, solo, corporate group, couples, pet friendly, small children, etc.) its easy to find just the one for a perfect starry, starry night.

Mexico and Canada will also be eclipsed on April 8, 2024, and Toronto, Montreal, and New Brunswick in Canada will see the totality. The Ridgeback Lodge in New Brunswick, Canada has special Stargazer Domes that will amaze eclipse seekers.

4. Connecting with The Elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water

Travelers connect with nature in their own ways, being near the ocean can bring peace to some, while others look for unique, grounding experiences in a cave or jaw-dropping volcanic landscape. Pushing the limits of how travelers experience natural landscapes is what glamping can now make accessible, and comfortable. Some glamping properties that appeal to those traveling with one or more of the elements in mind include: a gentle rocking overwater in Cambodias Four Rivers Floating Lodge (water); a stunning panoramic view of the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica at the Arenal Manoa & Hot Springs Resort (fire); watch monkeys and birds at eyelevel from a tree canopy in the only Treehouse Lodge of its kind in Perus Amazon Rainforest (air); and get (under)grounded with a stay in the restored ancient caves in the village of Matera, a UNESCO World Heritage site in southern Italy, Sextantio Le Grotte Della Civita (earth).

5. Farm Stays 2.0

Taking the farm stay / agrotourism movement - vacationing on a working farm, vineyard, or a working cattle ranch - to the next level with jaw dropping accommodations is what this immersive glamping experience is all about. These three types of glamping experiences are offered by over 180 properties and accommodations on GLAMPING.COM. Passionate wine lovers will find nirvana at Entre Cielos Wine Lofts situated over the grapes themselves in Mendoza, at the foothills of the Andes mountains; Anglophiles can enjoy the English countryside in a Shepherds Hut on a small working farm in Yorkshire, UK; guests of The Resort at Paws Up and their new three-bedroom North Bank Camp (the only one of its kind in North America) can participate with cowboys in a real cattle drive activity.

About GLAMPING.COM

GLAMPING.COM, the industry authority on all things glamping for the discerning experiential traveler, is a highly-curated collection of glamping properties around the globe. GLAMPING.COM believes in extraordinary travel - destinations that offer unique, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. With over 800 glamping sites in 16 categories, on six continents, the companys mission is to empower people to try this form of experiential travel with hand-selected, personally vetted properties. Find inspiration on http://www.glamping.com and Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @glampingdotcom.
BigHand BigHand fits in perfectly with our philosophy as their market-leading products are simple and effective, and are scalable based on the firms needs.

Today, BigHand North America announced their partnership with outsourced IT support provider, CASS Tech, to recommend and deliver their full suite of productivity-enhancing software solutions to their law firm customers.

Serving businesses in the Detroit metro area since 1999, CASS Tech provides customers with IT Support such as technical help desk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses. They are dedicated to working with their customers and helping them grow their businesses by ensuring they have best technology solutions for their needs and providing ongoing support.

BigHand is well-known for their best-in-class solutions for law firms, including speech, task delegation, document formatting and process improvement that help attorneys and law firm staff effectively manage their work. Their tools streamline everyday processes within the law firm to reduce administrative time and help maximize productivity. BigHands market-leading voice technology also gives attorneys the ability to work no matter where they are  in the office or on the go.

Robert Stants, CEO of CASS Tech said, At CASS Tech, we are committed to providing our customers with enterprise-level technology that is effective and affordable for small and mid-sized businesses. BigHand fits in perfectly with our philosophy as their market-leading products are simple and effective, and are scalable based on the firms needs.

Peter Morse, Director of Channel Development at BigHand North America, commented on the partnership, saying, We are excited to be working with CASS Tech. Their care and concern for their customers is evident in the strong relationships they have built based on their excellent service and quality experience.

About CASS Tech

CASS Tech has been providing professional Managed IT Support Services for businesses in and around the Detroit Michigan area and across the United States since 1999. They strive to give their clients enterprise-level IT services and solutions at prices that work for small businesses. Time and experience has helped them develop best practices and workflow procedures around a proactive philosophy designed to keep customers focused on their business, not their technology.

About BigHand

Established in 1996, BigHand supports over 280,000 professionals globally across 2,550 organizations and the number grows daily. BigHand is based in Chicago, Eindhoven, London, Sydney, Temecula and Toronto.

BigHand specializes in speech, task delegation, document creation and process improvement solutions that help customers achieve more in less time.

BigHands Voice, Delegation and Improvement product suites are HIPAA compliant to protect the privacy and security

of protected health information (PHI) as defined in the HITECH Act. BigHand is also ISO27001 certified.
Raffi Kodikian They had my respect as a competitor, and theyve proven themselves to be a class-act since the minute I came aboard.

One of the Nations leading wholesale insurance brokerages, Founders Professional, has announced the recent hire of Raffi Kodikian to the role of Lawyers Professional Liability Practice Leader. Kodikian is a renowned West coast insurance broker and problem solver. The hiring of Kodikian will be the brokerages first West coast hire and will cement their coast-to-coast expansion plan.

In this new role, Kodikian will focus on the placement of lawyers professional liability risks for all size law firms. Hes joining a wholesale brokerage that has quickly become one of the most effective players in the professional liability arena. With a focus exclusively on the placement of professional liability and management liability risks, and a practice leader led team model, working with Founders Professional has quickly become the go-to choice for agents across the Country that focus in professional liability.

Im extremely excited to be joining the Founders team. They had my respect as a competitor, and theyve proven themselves to be a class-act since the minute I came aboard. Im very much looking forward to seeing what we can do together for both our clients and carrier-partners, commented Kodikian.

Prior to joining Founders Professional, Kodikian was a professional liability broker with another national wholesale brokerage for over 13 years, where he focused on lawyers professional liability insurance, working both on program business and open-brokerage products. Kodikians knowledge of and experience in the California lawyers professional liability marketplace will make him an invaluable resource to Founders retail partners.

Robb Williams, President of Founders Professional, commented: We are ecstatic to add Raffi to our team. Our platform, people and culture has led to us become the #1 professional liability broker in the Nation with many of our carrier-partners. Our West Coast agency partners will now have even more expertise locally, expanded carrier access, and the ability to work with our other practice leader led teams, and the resources they provide across all platforms of professional liability and management liability. Raffis background and leadership skills, especially his proven track record of handling complex lawyers professional liability accounts, will be an invaluable asset to our retail agents and the Founders team as we continue to focus on providing high quality service and solutions to our partners across the Country.

Raffi can be reached directly at 415-850-8503 or via email at raffi.kodikian(at)founderspro.com.

About Founders Professional

Founders Professional is a national wholesale insurance brokerage focused exclusively on the placement of management liability & professional liability insurance risks. The Founders Professional practice leaders and their respective teams have deep expertise and market access in the areas of Architects & Engineers, Law Firms, Healthcare/Life Sciences/Social Services, Management Liability, and Miscellaneous Professional Liability Insurance. Founders Professional represents a majority of the admitted and surplus lines insurance carriers that focus on professional liability insurance in the United States, additionally representing many exclusive or semi-exclusive programs.

If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Aaron Lipson at 312-219-6589 or via email at aaron.lipson@founderspro.com.
Baxter In The Snow It is so great to see him without pain and to have a normal life and enjoy his beach walks.

At just 1 year old, Baxter was diagnosed with severe arthritis in both of his hocks (ankles). According to his loving owner, Marian, Baxter was in real pain. She explains that during walks he would sit down frequently, not wanting to walk any further. It was difficult for him to get up from a lying down position and he frequently required assistance. He also had trouble with stairs and jumping on the couch, where he and his canine companions would rest together. Seeing his obvious discomfort, Marian spoke with her veterinarian, Dr. Joey Yazer at Cobequid Animal Hospital in Nova Scotia, Canada and he recommended VetStem Cell Therapy.

In December of 2014 at the age of two years old, Baxter received his first round of stem cell injections. Dr. Yazer collected fat from Baxters abdomen in a procedure similar to a spay. The fat tissue was sent overnight to the VetStem Biopharma laboratory in San Diego, California for processing. Once processed, the cells were quality checked and injectable doses of Baxters own stem cells were sent back to Dr. Yazer where they were injected into Baxters arthritic joints and intravenously.

After his stem cell injections, Marian reports that Baxter improved a lot but that Dr. Yazer felt that Baxter would benefit from a second round of stem cell injections. In March of 2015, Baxter received his second round of stem cell injections. This time, Baxter did not have to undergo a fat collection procedure because he had stem cells stored at VetStem from his initial procedure. These cells were once again sent to Dr. Yazer and Baxter received the injections in his arthritic joints and intravenously.

Marian stated after his second round of stem cell injections that Baxter improved even more than before. Baxter, now five years old, is still doing well. According to his owner, he now participates in normal walks, has no trouble getting up and is able to jump on the couch with no problems. Marian exclaimed, It is so great to see him without pain and to have a normal life and enjoy his beach walks. And that, He is a healthy, lovely and sweet boy who can enjoy life now without pain.

Stem cells are regenerative cells that can differentiate into many tissue types and are able to reduce pain and inflammation thus helping to restore range of motion and stimulate regeneration of tendon, ligament and joint tissues. In a study using VetStem Regenerative Cell Therapy on dogs with osteoarthritis of the hip joint it was found that regenerative cell therapy (adipose-derived stem cells) decreases patient discomfort and increases patient functional ability.

About Cobequid Animal Hospital

We are a team of animal health providers, offering high standards of care for your companion animals. Each of us has been committed to the care of animals from an early age. At Cobequid Animal Hospital we have created a joint vision, offering the best of our knowledge, and continuously expanding that knowledge in order to improve the health of our patients. Working together, with a variety of expertise and approaches available, we are better poised to tackle and resolve complex medical problems. We each have individual strengths, and together we foster the development of a variety of approaches to animal health within a scientific framework.

About VetStem Biopharma, Inc.

VetStem Biopharma is a veterinarian-lead Company that was formed in 2002 to bring regenerative medicine to the profession. This privately held biopharmaceutical enterprise, based near San Diego (California), currently offers veterinarians an autologous stem cell processing service (from patients own fat tissue) among other regenerative modalities. With a unique expertise acquired over the past 15 years and 13,000 patients treated by veterinarians for joint, tendon or ligament issues, VetStem has made regenerative medicine applications a therapeutic reality beyond the realm of research. The VetStem team is focused on developing new clinically practical and affordable veterinary solutions that leverage the natural restorative abilities present in all living creatures. The Companys stated mission being to extend and enhance the lives of animals by improving the quality of recovery in acute conditions, but also by unlocking ways to slow, stop and ultimately revert the course of chronic diseases. In addition to its own portfolio of patents, VetStem holds exclusive global veterinary licenses to a portfolio of over 70 issued patents in the field of regenerative medicine.
Airdrie Residence Riverbend has long been known for both its outstanding designs and beautiful, high quality timber framing.

Michigan home producer, Riverbend Timber Framing, received honors during the 2018 Jerry Rouleau Awards for Excellence in Marketing and Home Design presented by the Building Systems Councils (BSC), part of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). The awards were handed out on Oct. 10, 2017, during the BSCs 2017 Building Systems Housing Summit the only national conference and educational event focused exclusively on the systems-built industry.

For more than a decade, the BSCs awards program has promoted excellence in systems-built housing. Front runners in the industry are honored at the annual awards presentation for their innovative marketing strategies and unique designs.

Riverbend Timber Framing won a first place award, Excellence in Home Design  Timber Frame: 3,001  4,000 square feet, for their architectural design of the Airdrie Residence, an old-world inspired timber frame home.

Riverbend has long been known for both its outstanding designs and beautiful, high quality timber framing, said Riverbend President James Banner. The home that received this award is a shining example of both those qualities.

The annual Jerry Rouleau Awards for Excellence are judged by an independent panel of industry experts. For a complete list of award winning companies, as well as winners and projects from previous years competitions, visit the BSC's website.

ABOUT Riverbend Timber Framing: Riverbend is a leader in the design and production of amazing timber frame homes. Using a complete building system that includes structural insulated panels (SIPs) and insulating concrete forms (ICFs), Riverbend provides clients with a highly energy efficient, structural envelope. Riverbend is part of PFB Custom Homes Group, LLC which includes additional brands, PrecisionCraft Log & Timber Homes, M.T.N Design, TimberScape and Point Zero Homes. Visit http://www.riverbendtf.com to learn more.

ABOUT THE BSC: The Building Systems Councils of the National Association of Home Builders is made up of manufacturer, builder, and associate members who advocate building with concrete, log, modular, or panelized systems. Systems-built homes are constructed to the same code standards and reflect the same, and often enhanced, quality levels as any site-built construction. The advantage of systems-building is its done in a fraction of the time, with a fraction of the waste, which can significantly reduce costs. Many systems-built homes also are inherently environmentally friendly adding a green label to the finished home.

ABOUT NAHB: The National Association of Home Builders is a Washington-based trade association representing more than 140,000 members involved in home building, remodeling, multifamily construction, property management, subcontracting, design, housing finance, building product manufacturing and other aspects of residential and light commercial construction. NAHB is affiliated with 800 state and local home builders associations around the country. NAHB's builder members will construct about 80 percent of the new housing units projected for this year.
National University is honored to collaborate with HACU and members of the San Diego STEM community to inspire students toward careers in science, technology, engineering and math, subjects that are critical to our nations future, - National University President Dr. David Andrews.

National University, a member of Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), was selected to be the site of this years Youth Leadership Development Leadership Forum for students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The forum provides middle and high school students with varying levels of exposure to STEM fields an opportunity to learn about academic and career pathways in these areas. The event, which takes place on October 27 at National Universitys Spectrum campus in San Diego, is expected to bring together over 600 students from San Diego and neighboring counties.

National University, which is among the largest private nonprofit universities in California, is leading this community-wide event with participation from several organizations within the San Diego STEM community, including the University of California, San Diego, the Salk Institute, SDG&E, SPAWAR and the USS Midway Museum. Industry professionals will join university faculty members in STEM fields such as National Universitys cybersecurity and engineering programs to conduct live demonstrations and hands-on experiments for students in grades 6-12 from public, private and charter schools in San Diego, Riverside and Imperial Valley. These students, which will include first-generation college students, will also have the chance to learn about career pathways and receive advice on college acceptance, networking and success in STEM majors from organizations such as EDmin and Teach for America.

National University is honored to collaborate with HACU and members of the San Diego STEM community to inspire students toward careers in science, technology, engineering and math, subjects that are critical to our nations future, said National University President Dr. David Andrews. Through this forum we have an opportunity to give back to the communities we serve and ensure San Diego remains a place of innovation by highlighting educational pathways to future professionals in STEM workforce.

As a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), National University is dedicated to serving a diverse population of students. Like HACU, the University is committed to supporting students educational success by providing tools and resources from kindergarten through the graduate level and into the work force, and in turn, meeting workforce needs by preparing a qualified, diverse group of candidates. The event also marks the beginning of HACUs 31st Annual Conference, Championing Hispanic Higher Education Success: Driving Americas Prosperity, which will take place Oct 28-30 at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront in San Diego, CA.

The Youth Leadership Development Leadership Forum begins at 8 am on Friday, October 27 at National Universitys Spectrum campus in San Diego, CA. Students and teachers will be welcomed by Chancellor of the National University System Dr. Michael R. Cunningham, National University President Dr. David Andrews and Antonio Flores, President and CEO of HACU. To learn more about the 2017 Youth Leadership Development Forum for students in STEM, visit nu.edu/HACU2017

About National University

Founded in 1971, National University is among the largest, private, nonprofit universities in California. With more than 150,000 alumni, National University is the flagship institution of the National University System. National University is dedicated to making lifelong learning opportunities accessible, challenging, and relevant to a diverse population of students. Four schools and two colleges  the College of Letters and Sciences; the Sanford College of Education; the School of Business and Management; the School of Engineering and Computing; the School of Health and Human Services; and the School of Professional Studies  offer more than 100 graduate and undergraduate degrees and 23 teacher credentials. Programs are offered at locations throughout California and across the nation, and are also available online. National University is headquartered in La Jolla, California.http://www.nu.edu/
Georgetown Lake Residence These awards reflect the talent and dedication of our world class designers, as we continue to exceed our clients expectations with beautiful designs that define PrecisionCraft as the leader of our industry

Custom home builder PrecisionCraft Log & Timber Homes received multiple awards during the 2018 Jerry Rouleau Awards for Excellence in Marketing and Home Design presented by the Building Systems Councils (BSC), part of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). The awards were handed out on Oct. 10, 2017, during the BSCs 2017 Building Systems Housing Summit the only national conference and educational event focused exclusively on the systems-built industry.

For more than a decade, the BSCs awards program has promoted excellence in systems-built housing. Front runners in the industry are honored at the annual awards presentation for their innovative marketing strategies and unique designs.

PrecisionCraft won two, first place awards and one entry of distinction for their architectural design of mountain style homes produced for clients across the United States.

The awards presented to PrecisionCraft this year included:



Winner: Excellence in Home Design  Timber Frame: More than 4,001 sq. ft, Georgetown Lake Residence

Winner: Excellence in Home Design  Timber Frame: 2,001-3,000 sq. ft. Steamboat Springs Residence

Home of Distinction: Excellence in Home Design  Timber Frame: 3,001-4,000 sq. ft. Silver Valley Residence

These awards reflect the talent and dedication of our world class designers, as we continue to exceed our clients expectations with beautiful designs that define PrecisionCraft as the leader of our industry, said President James Banner.

The annual Jerry Rouleau Awards for Excellence are judged by an independent panel of industry experts. For a complete list of award winning companies, as well as winners and projects from previous years competitions, visit the BSC's website.

####

ABOUT PrecisionCraft: PrecisionCraft Log & Timber Homes and M.T.N Design are the premier designer and producer of mountain style homes. Producing homes for clients across the US, Canada, and internationally. PrecisionCraft is part of PFB Custom Homes Group, LLC which includes additional brands, Riverbend Timber Framing, TimberScape and Point Zero Homes. Visit http://www.precisioncraft.com to learn more.

ABOUT THE BSC: The Building Systems Councils of the National Association of Home Builders is made up of manufacturer, builder, and associate members who advocate building with concrete, log, modular, or panelized systems. Systems-built homes are constructed to the same code standards and reflect the same, and often enhanced, quality levels as any site-built construction. The advantage of systems-building is its done in a fraction of the time, with a fraction of the waste, which can significantly reduce costs. Many systems-built homes also are inherently environmentally friendly adding a green label to the finished home.

ABOUT NAHB: The National Association of Home Builders is a Washington-based trade association representing more than 140,000 members involved in home building, remodeling, multifamily construction, property management, subcontracting, design, housing finance, building product manufacturing and other aspects of residential and light commercial construction. NAHB is affiliated with 800 state and local home builders associations around the country. NAHB's builder members will construct about 80 percent of the new housing units projected for this year.
If you are interested in growing your business, making more money and continuing to improve your portfolio  this is how you do it.

National Merchants Association (NMA), an innovative merchant services provider and payments industry advocate, announced the revolutionary LeadBuy Pro program on October 10th at its annual Fire and Ice Partner Conference. LeadBuy Pro is designed to help agents and ISOs grow with NMA which is currently ranked No. 196 on the Inc. 500 fastest-growing private companies in America list.

We are creating new channels for growth, strengthening the future of the company on your behalf, and protecting what youve built, said NMA Founder and CEO, Heather Petersen. If you are interested in growing your business, making more money and continuing to improve your portfolio  this is how you do it.

To create LeadBuy Pro, NMA secured agreements with multiple lead-generating vendors regarded as the most reputable and effective in the industry to supply NMA with high-quality prospects. NMAs specialized sales team closes those leads, boards the new merchant accounts and credits the new account to participating agents portfolios.

Petersen believes this will strengthen the relationship between NMA and agent partners.

Were always going to be advocates for our merchants, Petersen told conference attendees. But as most of you already know, were also advocates for you  our agents. Our partnerships fuel this companys success. Its something we dont take for granted.

NMA Senior Vice President of Sales and Support, Brian Berkenbile, sees LeadBuy Pro as an essential component of the companys overall growth strategy as well as a way of elevating its agents standing within the payments industry.

LeadBuy Pro is a big opportunity for both of us, Berkenbile said. And its just one piece of the puzzle. As NMA moves up in the payments ecosystem, we want our partners to move upstream along with us.

To learn more about National Merchants Association and LeadBuy Pro, please visit NationalMerchants.com or call (866) 509-7199 to speak with a business development representative.

About National Merchants Association

National Merchants Association is a global leader in merchant payment processing services and is dedicated to helping merchants and agent partners grow their businesses by generating sales opportunities and maximizing profits. National Merchants Association is a true merchant advocate, working on behalf of businesses to eliminate the unnecessary and unreasonable fees associated with accepting electronic transactions. Visit http://www.NationalMerchants.com or call (866) 509-7199 for more information.
Dickinson Wright PLLC is pleased to announce that Attorney Eric Gregory has been selected as a 2017 Up & Coming Lawyer Honoree by Michigan Lawyers Weekly.

Mr. Gregory is an Associate in the firms Troy office. In his practice, he advises clients on all aspects of employee benefits including qualified retirement plans, welfare plans, and nonqualified compensation programs. He assists clients with plan design, drafting, and implementation of 401(k), profit sharing, 403(b), 457, and defined benefit plans. Mr. Gregory also provides advice on the design, implementation, and administration of insured and self-insured medical plans, dental plans, life insurance, disability, and cafeteria plans, including pre-tax premium plans, and flexible spending account plans.

Mr. Gregory is a member of the Taxation Section of the State Bar, where he serves as the Chair of the Employee Benefits Committee. He is also a member of the Oakland County Bar Associations Employee Benefits Committee, where he served as Chair (2016-2017) and Vice Chair (2015-2016). He also is a Board Member of Lakeshore Legal Aid and a past Board Member of the Free Legal Aid Clinic  Detroit. He has been named a Rising Star by Michigan Super Lawyers and a Top Lawyer in employee benefits law from DBusiness Magazine. Mr. Gregory earned his J.D. degree from Wayne State University Law School and his LL.M. in taxation with a specialization in employee benefits from Georgetown University Law Center.

Each year, Michigan Lawyers Weekly selects 30 lawyers to honor as Up & Coming Lawyers. These individuals have spent less than a decade in practice, but display the ambition, drive, determination and accomplishments to set them apart among their peers. The 2017 Up & Coming Lawyers will be honored at an annual luncheon and awards celebration on December 7, 2017 at the Detroit Marriott in Troy.

About Dickinson Wright PLLC

Dickinson Wright PLLC is a general practice business law firm with more than 450 attorneys among more than 40 practice areas and 16 industry groups. Headquartered in Detroit and founded in 1878, the firm has 18 offices, including six in Michigan (Detroit, Troy, Ann Arbor, Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Saginaw) and 11 other domestic offices in Austin and El Paso, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; Lexington, Ky.; Nashville and Music Row, Tenn.; Las Vegas and Reno, Nev.; Phoenix, Ariz.; and Washington, D.C. The firms Canadian office is located in Toronto.

Dickinson Wright offers our clients a distinctive combination of superb client service, exceptional quality, value for fees, industry expertise and business acumen. As one of the few law firms with ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certification, Dickinson Wright has built state-of-the-art, independently-verified risk management controls and security processes for our commercial transactions. Dickinson Wright lawyers are known for delivering commercially-oriented advice on sophisticated transactions and have a remarkable record of wins in high-stakes litigation. Dickinson Wright lawyers are regularly cited for their expertise and experience by Chambers, Best Lawyers, Super Lawyers, and other leading independent law firm evaluating organizations.
ClickIPO is interested in seeing a resurgence of the traditional IPO market in the US and globally, and we believe part of that solution is bringing the retail investor back to the table.

ClickIPO Holdings, LLC, today announced that it has raised just over $3 Million in its Series Seed round, and has launched the first version of its public offering technology through its wholly owned subsidiary ClickIPO Securities, LLC. (Click IPO)

The mobile-first platform will allow individual retail investors to participate in IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) and Secondary Offerings using their existing online brokerage account. By not housing investor accounts Click IPO will be able to aggregate investors from multiple online brokerages on a larger scale, providing retail investors a turnkey solution for participating in IPOs and Secondary Offerings.

ClickIPOs model of delivering offerings has already attracted some well-known early investors in the finance and technology industries during their Series Seed including John Ashcroft, former U.S. Attorney General and TAG Capital, E&I Ventures, Arizona Technology Investors, and Desert Angels. This capital raise will help ClickIPO expand its technology platform and begin offering access to the platform to a larger group of retail investors.

Launching its first public-facing app into Google and Apple app stores, ClickIPO will provide a centralized hub for discovering and researching IPOs. Each user is automatically entered into the Waitlist to begin participating in IPO and Secondary Offerings, with invitations to participate in offerings expected to be rolled out through Q4 of 2017. The app (in Beta testing) presently provides information and alerts on new offerings and lets users share those offerings via social media.

ClickIPO is committed to moving the public offering industry forward with the first-ever utility designed to optimize retail distribution. The platform is configured to benefit the industry as a whole  accessible to Issuers, Underwriters, Brokerage firms, and Investors. Individual Investors will use the app to easily access a prospectus, to conduct research and to invest in offerings through their existing brokerage. Online Brokerages will now have a workable solution to provide offering access for their customers. Underwriters and Issuers will get access to a liquidity pipeline designed to attract buy-and-hold Individual Investors.

Scott Coyle, CEO of ClickIPO Securities, added, ClickIPO is interested in seeing a resurgence of the traditional IPO market in the US and globally, and we believe part of that solution is bringing the retail investor back to the table.

To learn more about ClickIPO, visit http://www.clickipo.com or email info(at)clickipo(dot)com. Follow us on us on our Blog, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

About ClickIPO Securities

ClickIPO Securities, LLC, a registered broker-dealer, exclusively offers the mobile ClickIPO platform designed to give Individual Investors access to hundreds of IPOs and Secondary Offerings each year. It will be the first capable of aggregating many Individual Investors across multiple broker-dealers onto a single platform, where they can place conditional purchase orders for IPO and Secondary Offering shares through a first-of-its-kind app integrated with their existing brokerage accounts. Our technology gives Underwriters valuable insight into investor behavior through the data we gather and the apps ClickIPO Investor Score, providing a retail distribution channel similar to dealing with institutions. Built directly into the app, our proprietary scoring system identifies buy-and-hold investors who demonstrate a history of buying and holding shares for 30 days or more before selling and rewards them with allocation priority and, likewise reduces the likelihood of IPO Flippers from receiving allocations. Brokerage firms will be able to leverage the ClickIPO platform, that will appeal to their customers who want a way to participate in the IPO and Secondary Offering market.

The ClickIPO app is currently in private testing. Its Closed Beta phase is expected to launch in late 2017. Users can join the waitlist today or download the app at http://www.clickipo.com. Email info(at)clickipo(dot)com or follow ClickIPO on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for more information.

Click IPO Securities, LLC is a broker dealer registered with the SEC, and is a member of FINRA and SIPC. Click IPO Holdings, LLC is the parent company of Click IPO Securities, LLC, and owns the proprietary technology application known as ClickIPO. Click IPO Holdings has granted Click IPO Securities, LLC an exclusive and perpetual license to use the application and authorization to relicense it for use by other registered broker dealers, including your broker dealer of record. The application might not be available in some jurisdictions.

The information posted on the Click IPO website is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security, which can only be made by Prospectus, Offering Memorandum or Information Statement. There can be no guaranty that an investor will be allocated shares in any particular offering.

Risk of Investing in Initial Public Offerings (IPOs)

There are specific risks in investing in an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Among other things, the stock has not been subject to market valuation. Those risks are described at length in the prospectus, and we urge you to read the prospectus carefully to understand those risks before investing. An IPO is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public and may not be suitable for all investors. IPOs are often issued by smaller, younger companies seeking the capital to expand, but can also be done by large privately owned companies looking to become publicly traded. IPOs are a risky investment. For even experienced investors, it can be difficult to predict what the stock will do on its initial day of trading and in the near future because there is often little historical data with which to analyze the company. Also, most IPOs are of companies going through a transitory growth period, which are subject to additional uncertainty regarding their future values. Read more information regarding the significant risks associated with investing in IPOs.
These latest updates demonstrate our commitment to providing the most comprehensive and up-to-date data on the entire healthcare provider market.

Definitive Healthcare, the leading provider of data, intelligence, and analytics on the healthcare provider market, recently added more than 2,400 retail health clinics and 38,000 assisted living facilities to its industry-leading database of healthcare providers.

Retail clinics, often located in major pharmacy chains, continue to expand across the U.S. These clinics are becoming progressively more important to consumers seeking convenient access to healthcare services outside the traditional office-based setting. Key market intelligence on the entire landscape of retail clinics can now be found within Definitive Healthcares Clinics database, which already included renal dialysis, rural healthcare, urgent care, and federally qualified health clinics. Each retail clinic and corporation has an individual profile, offering essential data regarding service site locations, patient demographic metrics, and affiliations with IDNs or providers.

Furthermore, Definitive has expanded the reach of its Long-Term Care database with the addition of intelligence on assisted living facilities (ALFs), a fast-growing segment of care for the elderly. This enhancement to the Long-Term Care database, which already includes data on skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies, and hospices, allows clients to form a complete view of the long-term care industry.

Our product team is constantly looking for new provider data to add to our databases and better ways for our clients to filter and analyze it, said Jason Krantz, CEO of Definitive Healthcare. These latest updates demonstrate our commitment to providing the most comprehensive and up-to-date data on the entire healthcare provider market. Definitive makes major enhancements to both its data coverage and user interface throughout the year in order to meet this goal.

Some other recent data improvements include an enhanced view of physician drug prescriptions by drug class, new clinical and demographic information in hospice profiles, identification of hospitalist physicians, and physician group participation in new value-based care models.

In addition to data development, Definitive has made a number of recent enhancements to its user interface to improve the user experience and allow clients to more efficiently analyze the wealth of provider information in Definitives databases.

About Definitive Healthcare

Definitive Healthcare is the leading provider of data and intelligence on hospitals, physicians and other healthcare providers. Its product suite provides the most comprehensive and highest quality data available anywhere on 8,800 hospitals and IDNs, 224,000 physician groups, 1.6 million physicians, 10,000 ambulatory surgery centers, 14,000 imaging centers, 86,000 long-term care facilities, 39,000 clinics, 1,400 ACOs and HIEs, and 900 Canadian hospitals. The companys data provides clients with the analytics and insight needed to effectively segment and research the healthcare provider market. Definitive Healthcare is backed by Spectrum Equity. For more information or to trial the service, visit http://www.definitivehc.com.
"Newscycle is a strategic technological partner that enables the digital transformation of our newsrooms."

NEWSCYCLE Solutions and Grupo Organizacion Publicitaria S.A (OPSA) announce an agreement to implement the Newscycle ONSET web content management platform and Newscycle Content editorial system at Grupo OPSA in Honduras. The software will manage the multichannel content creation and publishing process for their publications and websites. ONSET will be deployed in the Newscycle Cloud environment, hosted by Amazon Web Services.

OPSA is a publishing leader in Latin America, specifically Honduras, where they are considered the most credible media organization in their country. They have always been a forward-thinking news organization that has applied technology to meet the changing needs of their audiences.

For Grupo OPSA, Newscycle is a strategic technological partner that enables the digital transformation of our newsrooms. ONSET is an agile system that supports the broadcast of content in different platforms in a very fast and easy way, said Ruth Marie Canahuati, Chief Audience Officer at OPSA. At the same time, it will provide key data that will enable us to optimize our newsroom operations and focus on producing content according to our audience preferences.

ONSET is fully integrated with the Newscycle Content editorial system to create and deliver all multimedia digital and print content  including news stories, images, video, links and tagging  as a part of the storytelling process. Specialized modules, widgets, tools and dashboards in ONSET will help the OPSA team in simplifying and accelerating digital content workflows and enhancing newsroom collaboration.

The ultimate goal for OPSA, as a news media leader in Honduras with expanding operations in Central America, is that our brands must be relevant to our readers, said Jorge Canahuati Larach, Chief Executive Officer at OPSA. Partners such as Newscycle, with whom we have had a strong business relationship for more than fifteen years, provides technology that enable us to be at the forefront, which translates into value for our audiences and advertisers, and has a positive impact on our business profitability in the short term.

Grupo OPSA understands the important role that technology plays in keeping publishers at the forefront of the industry, said Dan Paulus, Chief Revenue Officer at Newscycle. The integrated combination of ONSET and Newscycle Content will empower their newsrooms with agile tools to accelerate their digital initiatives and optimize their multi-channel workflows.

About NEWSCYCLE Solutions

NEWSCYCLE Solutions develops and delivers software technology that empowers the global news media industry. Our editorial, advertising, circulation and mobile solutions enable publishers to drive profitability, accelerate digital business models and optimize core print operations. We help our clients create stronger, better-informed communities while safeguarding the integrity of news, advertising and customer information. Newscycle is a trusted partner serving over 1,200 media companies with 3,000 properties producing more than 8,000 titles in 30 countries. Our company is headquartered in Bloomington, MN and has U.S. offices in Florida, Michigan and Utah; with international offices in Denmark, Germany, Malaysia, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Canada and the United Kingdom. Please visit newscycle.com for more information or write to us at info@newscycle.com.
Critical Environments Group (CEG), a leading provider of data center and critical environment infrastructure optimization solutions, will be represented at this weeks CAPRE Data Center Operations, Architecture & Engineering Workshop by its Director of Data Center Solutions Andrew Graham. Mr. Grahams topic will be Management and Operations: Fostering Cultures of Innovation. The event is being held on Thursday, October 26 at Maritime Parc in Jersey City, New Jersey.

The workshop will address the timeliest issues facing todays data center engineers, architects and operations managers. Topics will include UPS deployment strategies, the latest advancements in data center physical security, and the advent of data center information management dashboards. Mr. Graham will be one of four experts that will cover the following:



What are the tradeoffs involved in deciding whether to outsource or self-operate? How do operations teams ensure uptime when majority of downtime occurs from human errors?

What are the pros and cons for migrating to an off-premise or hybrid IT infrastructure strategy, and how does that impact data center ROI considerations?

What types of audits should data centers engage in on a regular basis to ensure their anticipated ROI will occur?

What are the unique management techniques within the data center industry today?

Devising a strategic corporate plan that addresses retired, existing, and new facilities

Having systems in place that allow us to get ahead of the problem before customers even know it happened

How to address IT and server footprints that are flat or shrinking

How IT and infrastructure roles will need to pivot to evaluate and manage cloud and colocation providers effectively

Analysis of the impact of temperature changes in the data centers

For more information on CAPREs Data Center Operations, Architecture & Engineering Workshop, visit the events home page.

About Critical Environments Group

Critical Environments Group (CEG) enables its clients to effectively manage, maintain and optimize their data centers and other IT environments. Were meeting the needs of this rapidly evolving industry by achieving value for channel partners or end users throughout the data center lifecycle. CEGs team of experts is unmatched in its ability to provide intelligent assessments and solutions for achieving readiness, reliability and efficiency today and tomorrow.

Critical Environments Group is setting a new standard in the DCIM space by making the relationship our highest priority. Were thinking beyond just a product or problem. Instead, were thinking about what we can do to take your critical environment to the next level. This client commitment, comprehensive industry expertise, and our partnerships with product vendors that are known and respected around the world, are what allows us to bring value to an engagement right from the start. criticaleg.com
When clients look to Engineered Tax Services (ETS) for proactive tax plans, the home office deduction is a factor that is always considered. After all, if the IRS allows you to take a deduction for bills you already pay each month like utilities and a mortgage, why not claim the tax deduction and save some money? The home office deduction is not as huge of a deduction as cost segregation, conservation easement, energy credits, etc., but most business owners can arrange their operations to claim it. Small tax savings each year can really add up. Additionally, a few years ago, the IRS came up with a simplified method that eliminates most of the record keeping requirements and the depreciation recapture provision.

Who Can Claim a Home Office Deduction?

If ones office space takes up 20 percent of their home, he or she can deduct 20 percent of bills for allowable business operations. The home office deduction is most commonly claimed by small business owners reporting their income and expenses on Schedule C. Form 8829, Expenses for Business Use of Your Home, is filed in association with Schedule C. However, the home office deduction may also be claimed by farmers filing Schedule F, partners receiving a Schedule K-1 (1065), and employees who are not provided a place to work by their employers.

Whats Allowable for the Home Office Deduction?



Utilities (including: electricity, water, sewer, natural gas, propane, heating oil, trash service, security system monitoring)

Homeowners or renters insurance

Repairs and maintenance (including items such as: repairs to the home or appliances, snow removal, tree removal, carpet cleaning, HVAC maintenance, calling a plumber to fix a leaky sink or remove roots from your sewer line, having a cleaning service clean the house, hiring an electrician to install a light fixture, and light bulbs. However, lawn care is specifically excluded by the IRS as pertaining to the whole house.)

Homeowners association dues and condo fees

Mortgage interest (The amount claimed as a home office deduction reduces the amount that can be claimed as an itemized deduction.)

Real estate taxes (The amount claimed as a home office deduction reduces the amount that can be claimed as an itemized deduction.)

Rent (Some people rent rather than own a home. Instead of claiming mortgage interest and real estate taxes, they can claim their rent as part of their total home office deduction.)

What is the Simplified Method for the Home Office Deduction?

The simplified method was first authorized by the IRS for tax year 2013. The exclusive use and business purpose requirements are the same as for the original home office deduction, but the record keeping requirements are greatly streamlined. Only the allowable square footage needs to be measured. The square feet of the business use of the home is multiplied by $5 to arrive at the home office deduction using the simplified method. The total square feet claimed cannot exceed 300, which limits the deduction to $1,500 per year.

Other benefits of the simplified method are: 1) Schedule A deductions for mortgage interest and real estate taxes are not reduced (as they would be using the normal computation of the home office deduction), 2) there is no recapture of depreciation when the house is sold, and 3) the calculation and recordkeeping requirements are significantly reduced.

Restrictions of the simplified method include: 1) the annual limit of $1,500 per year is often less than what could otherwise be claimed, and 2) the unused deduction in a current year may not be carried forward to future tax years (as is allowed by the traditional home office deduction).

About Engineered Tax Services

Engineered Tax Services is the largest specialty tax firm in the United States with its headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida. ETS is owned by CEO and nationally recognized tax reform expert, Julio Gonzalez. Find out more about home office deductions at EngineeredTaxServices.com.
I spent years stressing over sweat marks and was determined to create a solution for myself and others. Without the help of SCORE and the marketing resources they recommended, we would not be where we are today.

Billy Thompson and Randy Choi, co-founders of Thompson Tee, turned their patented sweat proof undershirts into a thriving international ecommerce business after reaching out to SCORE. The Thompson Tee helps men and women across the world prevent sweat marks and stains. As a result of the companys consistent growth since 2012, Thompson Tee was selected as a national SCORE success story.

SCORE assists local entrepreneurs and small business owners with advice on managing their business challenges. SCORE volunteer mentors provide free, confidential, face-to-face and email mentoring. Last year, SCORE provided services to 54,072 small business owners nationally.

Thompson and Chois SCORE mentors, John Pietro and Justin Slagle, helped the company create a business model and source a digital marketing agency to help drive sales.

Billy and Randy came to SCORE with a unique product that solved a pervasive and debilitating issue, Slagle said. "We recommended digital marketing services and provided strategic business guidance, and today their product has helped thousands of people across the world live more confidently."

Thompson and Choi leaned on their SCORE mentors for advice when setting out to build their online business. After self-funding the company with just $20,000, the company has helped more than 100,000 people in 135 countries stop sweating through their shirts. Since inception, the company has grown 100 percent year over year, earning $90,000 in 2012 revenue and $4 million in 2016 revenue. This year, Thompson Tee is on track to generate $8 million in revenue.

I spent years stressing over sweat marks and was determined to create a solution for myself and others, Thompson said. Without the help of SCORE and the marketing resources they recommended, we would not be where we are today.

Since 1964, SCORE has helped more than 10 million aspiring entrepreneurs. Each year, SCOREs more than 10,000 volunteer business experts provide free and low-cost small business mentoring, workshops and education to over 350,000 clients across more than 300 chapters. In 2016 alone, SCORE helped to create 54,072 new businesses and add 78,691 new, non-owner jobs to the American economy.

About Thompson Tee

Made in the USA, Thompson Tee manufactures affordable sweat proof undershirts for men and women to help preserve their clothes and confidence. The proprietary shirt design combines the style and comfort of high-quality undershirts with patented Hydro-Shield sweat proof technology to offer guaranteed sweat protection. For more information, visit http://www.thompsontee.com.
ODU-USA Ecommerce Webstore

ODU, a worldwide leader in designing and manufacturing high-performance connector solutions and cable assemblies is announcing its E-commerce Webstore launch.

ODU-USA is now offering online its ODU MINI-SNAP and ODU MEDI-SNAP Push-Pull circular connector portfolio available with a 48-hour turnaround time for a wide range of applications including: medical, military and security, industrial, test and measurement, energy and automotive.

Offering an extensive range of metal and plastic connector solutions tailored to customer specific requirements, the webstores product configurator, technical comparison feature and live chat support provide an effortless purchase experience.

ODU-USAs commitment is to provide the highest level of quality and customer satisfaction to all our customers, said Thomas Mittermeier, CEO and President of ODU-USA, Inc. Developing an online webstore available 24/7 was naturally the next phase of providing a seamless experience from finding the right connector solution to ordering the product online and benefiting from it in a very short period of time.

ODU-USA Ecommerce webstore can be accessed by customers worldwide and can be found here: https://store.odu-usa.com/

About ODU Group:

The ODU Group is one of the worlds leading suppliers of connector systems, employing 1,650 people around the world. In addition to its company headquarters in Muhldorf am Inn (Germany), ODU also has an international production and distribution network throughout Europe, North America and Asia. ODU combines all relevant areas of expertise and key technologies including design and development, machine tooling and special machine construction, injection, stamping, turning, surface technology, assembly and cable assembly. The ODU Group sells its products globally through its eight subsidiaries in Denmark, England, France, Italy, Sweden, the US, China and Japan, as well as through numerous international sales partners. ODU connectors ensure a reliable transmission of power, signals, data and media for a variety of demanding applications including medical technology, military and security, eMobility, energy, industrial electronics, and test and measurement.

For press inquiries, please contact:

Dana Stoica - Head of Marketing, North America

Phone +1 (805) 484-0540 Fax: +1 (805) 484-7458

Email: dana.stoica(at)odu-usa.com
451 Research, a top five global IT analyst firm and sister company to datacenter authority Uptime Institute, today published its first study of the growing datacenter market in India. It predicts that the countrys colocation and managed hosting market could reach almost $2bn in revenue by 2019, up from $1.3bn in 2016. The firm also forecasts continued solid growth for the cloud computing-as-a-service market, with a CAGR of 25% over the next four years as digital transformation takes hold in India and more businesses start outsourcing their IT infrastructure.

Comprising IaaS, PaaS and ISaaS, the cloud computing market in India will reach $1.02bn revenue by 2021 according to 451 Research Market Monitor. Hyperscale cloud and IT services providers looking to reach Indias vast potential market of customers are further driving demand for multi-tenant datacenter capacity in the country.

Analysts also reveal that 84% of Indias datacenter supply is concentrated in the countrys five largest markets: Mumbai, Chennai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Pune. Multi-Tenant Datacenter Markets: Mumbai, New Dehli and Bangalore, finds that almost one-third of all built-out footprint in the country is located in Mumbai, due to the critical role the city plays in Asia-Pacifics financial services industry, its large population and multiple international subsea cable landings.

Most datacenter investment is focused on these five cities, reflecting Indias booming economic growth in dense urban areas, said Teddy Miller, Associate Analyst at 451 Research and the reports author. Providers in the country must overcome an array of obstacles, though, including lack of infrastructure, socioeconomic inequality, government bureaucracy, and hesitation on the part of local businesses to adopt colocation services.

Despite these challenges, the opportunity for datacenter companies to thrive in India is enormous. Most homegrown providers already offer a range of managed services, and many have even launched their own public and private cloud platforms. The success of local companies such as Netmagic Solutions, NxtGen, Reliance Communications and Sify Technologies has even resulted in partnerships and acquisitions involving global players including ST Telemedia and NTT Communications, and we expect more on the horizon, Miller added.

The report finds that providers in Mumbai are adding space to satisfy the requirements of global hyperscalers that are moving their operations closer to the citys 21 million residents. 451 Research expects this demand from hyperscale cloud services providers to result in another year of solid growth in 2018, even with intensifying competition and rising land and power costs.

The colocation market in New Delhi, Indias capital, has benefited from the governments e-commerce initiatives. The city had continually maintained a modest growth rate until earlier this year, when a new large-scale datacenter came online in the business-centric Noida area. 451 Research believes providers should keep a watchful eye on demand before making any further local investment.

With Bangalores emergence in recent years as a centrally located, relatively disaster-free IT services hub, its datacenter industry has flourished. Given this unique role the city plays in the national economy, 451 Research believes there will be a steady increase in the citys utilization rates and datacenter builds going forward.

About the report

The Multi-Tenant Datacenter Markets: Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore report analyzes the competitive dynamics in Indias top markets. It includes a 451 Research Market Map of competitors, market share figures, supply and utilization trends, and examines planned multi-tenant datacenters.

The data in this report was assembled in part through the use of 451 Researchs Datacenter KnowledgeBase, which tracks hundreds of companies in the space, including product mix and regional market shares.

Subscribers can access the Multi-Tenant Datacenter Markets: Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore report here.

451 Research will be presenting a complimentary webinar on this topic on November 1. Register here.

About 451 Research

451 Research is a preeminent information technology research and advisory company. With a core focus on technology innovation and market disruption, we provide essential insight for leaders of the digital economy. More than 100 analysts and consultants deliver that insight via syndicated research, advisory services and live events to more than 1,000 client organizations in North America, Europe and around the world. Founded in 2000 and headquartered in New York, 451 Research is a division of The 451 Group.

451 Research is part of The 451 Group, which also includes Uptime Institute. Uptime Institute is the IT industrys most trusted and adopted global standard for the proper design, build and operation of datacenters  the backbone of the digital economy. For over 20 years, Uptime Institute has been providing customers with the assurance that their digital infrastructure can perform at a level that is consistent with their business needs, across a wide array of operating conditions. With its datacenter Tier Standard & Certifications, Management & Operations reviews, Efficient IT Stamp of Approval, and accredited educational curriculum for datacenter professionals, Uptime Institute helps organizations optimize critical IT assets while managing costs, resources and efficiency. Uptime Institute has become the de facto standard for datacenter reliability, sustainability and efficiency. Today, thousands of companies rely on Uptime Institute to enable their digital-centric business success.

For media inquiries please contact:

Kaitlin Buckley

Marketing Coordinator

Kaitlin.buckley(at)451research(dot)com

617-598-7212
Industrial automation manufacturer and Industrial Internet of Things tools developer Opto 22 today announced a new version of groov, embedding key IIoT technologies MQTT and OPC-UA drivers directly into its industrial edge appliance. Added to the groov View software for web and mobile visualization, and the open-source Node-RED development environment, the new release offers engineers, technicians, and developers a comprehensive set of tools for edge deployment in industrial environments.

These new embedded capabilities are made possible through forging close partnerships with technology providers Inductive Automation and Cirrus Link Solutions, and are part of the Ignition Edge Onboard program.

Partnering is vital to provide everything required for a given IIoT implementation, said Benson Hougland, Opto 22 VP of Marketing and Product Strategy. With Inductive Automation and Cirrus Link, weve combined proven applications into a single, industrially hardened appliance to address todays application needs. Visualization, data handling, security, and connectivity are all in one compact box.

Were pleased that Opto 22s groov is one of the first edge appliances to market with Ignition Edge embedded, said Don Pearson, Chief Strategy Officer at Inductive Automation. Opto 22s reputation for reliable industrial hardware and their interest in the future direction of automation systems made the partnership a natural fit.

Working with Opto 22 on drivers and embedding MQTT with Sparkplug has been great, said Arlen Nipper, President and CTO at Cirrus Link, and co-inventor of the MQTT protocol. This partnership approach combines a trusted hardware platform with resilient communication architectures for automation and SCADA systems in an extremely efficient and flexible way.

A typical use case for the new groov edge appliance is gathering data from plant floor devices or from remote plants. A customer places groov near a machine or process, uses the built-in drivers to connect to existing control systems, analyzes the data, and publishes the results back to a central server or broker on premises or in the cloud. Applications like Ignition Enterprise or any MQTT/Sparkplug-compliant software can subscribe to the data.

This scenario eliminates complex networking architectures like VPNs, firewall configurations, and remote desktop software, because all communications to the broker use a secure outbound connection from control systems, whether publishing data or subscribing to it. Additionally, because groov is a complete computing appliance, a PC is not required.

Other use cases for groov:



A controls technician who needs to see Allen-Bradley CompactLogix variables on her smartphone for access from anywhere she is located

An OEM machine builder whose machine must periodically send operational data to a central location for predictive analysis and machine learning

A SCADA engineer who needs to efficiently control and acquire data from a large number of geographically dispersed locations over a cellular or other bandwidth-constrained network

A facilities engineer who needs energy use and HVAC status data transmitted to a cloud database for historical logging

Ignition Edge in the groov appliance includes both a built-in OPC UA server and MQTT module. The built-in OPC UA server includes drivers to popular PLC brands, including Rockwell Automation Allen-Bradley PLCs, Siemens S7 PLCs, and Modbus TCP devices. Other drivers are available at additional cost. Embedding these drivers and OPC UA at the edge eliminates the cost and complexity of commissioning and maintaining a Microsoft Windows-based computer for translating PLC and device data to OPC UA, the only method available until now.

MQTT is a bi-directional, lightweight event- and message-oriented transport protocol with a publish/subscribe architecture. This architecture decouples devices from applications, allowing users to reduce reliance on traditional IT networking resources. MQTTs pub/sub architecture also reduces network traffic, because data is published and sent only when it changes. Supported over the MQTT transport is Sparkplug, a freely available, MQTT-based payload definition for industrial applications, which greatly simplifies implementation by defining topic namespaces and payload, and managing the state of devices in the field.

Ignition Edge embedded into the groov edge appliance also allows Inductive Automation customers to extend their Ignition platform to the edge with optional Panel and Edge Enterprise Administration licenses, available directly from Inductive Automation.

Originally launched in April 2013, the groov edge appliance is an industrially hardened computer appliance used for visualization, data handling, and connectivity. For visualization, groov View makes it easy to create secure, scalable operator interfaces for mobile devices and web browsers on any computing platform. For data handling, groov includes Node-RED, an IoT application builder that connects to data sources locally and in the cloud, manipulates that data, and publishes the data to anywhere. The groov edge appliance was designed for security from the ground up, with communications to the appliance over two independent Ethernet interfaces protected by TLS encryption and user authentication. All configuration of the appliance is securely managed by the included groov Admin utility.

Pricing and Availability:

Both the groov edge appliance (part number GROOV-AR1-BASE, $1295 list) and the groov Enterprise License with Ignition Edge (part number GROOV-LIC-ENT, $1595 list) are available immediately from a world-wide channel of distributors, partners, and system integrators. Customers with a GROOV-AR1 groov Box can purchase a groov Enterprise license to obtain the new features. Existing customers with a groov Enterprise License under current maintenance can request an Ignition Edge license at no additional charge. For more information, contact Opto 22

Pre-sales: 951-695-3000 or toll free, 800-321-6786. For more on groov, visit http://www.groov.com.

About Opto 22:

Opto 22 designs and manufactures industrial control products and Internet of Things platforms that bridge the gap between information technology (IT) and operations technology (OT). Based on a core design philosophy of leveraging open, standards-based technology, Opto 22 products are deployed worldwide in industrial automation, process control, building automation, industrial refrigeration, remote monitoring, and data acquisition applications. Designed and manufactured in the U.S.A., Opto 22 products have a worldwide reputation for ease-of-use, innovation, quality, and reliability. For over 40 years OEMs, machine builders, automation end-users, and information technology and operations personnel have and continue to trust Opto 22 to deliver high-quality products with superior reliability. The company was founded in 1974 and is privately held in Temecula, California, U.S.A. Opto 22 products are available through a global network of distributors and system integrators. For more information, contact Opto 22 headquarters at +1-951-695-3000 or visit http://www.opto22.com. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

All registered trademarks cited herein are the property of their respective owners.
Janet Foutty, Tara Montgomery, Stacey Wexler join Bright Pink's Board of Directors Bright Pink is honored to welcome these incredible, seasoned leaders onto our Board of Directors. Janet, Tara and Stacey's expertise will be invaluable as we strategically grow Bright Pink to reach and impact even more young women nationwide.

Bright Pink, a national breast and ovarian health non-profit, announced today that Janet Foutty, Tara Montgomery, and Stacey Wexler have been appointed to the organizations Board of Directors.

Janet Foutty is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Deloitte Consulting, LLP. Over her 25-year career, Janet has worked closely with her clients to deliver insights and innovative solutions to address their toughest issues. Based in Chicago, Janet previously led Deloittes federal practice that is dedicated to improving the efficacy and efficiency of U.S. government agencies. Preceding that role, she led Deloitte Consultings technology practice, which notably launched several businesses including Deloitte Digital.

Tara Montgomery serves as Executive Vice President, Head of Unscripted Programming for OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, overseeing non-scripted and all Oprah branded content. Prior to her work for OWN, Montgomery served as executive producer of OWNs popular flagship series Super Soul Sunday and Oprahs Next Chapter, a weekly primetime series that helped launch the network, in addition to serving as the supervising producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show during her 16-year tenure.

Stacey Wexler is Vice President of Legal at Google Inc., overseeing areas including privacy, law enforcement and information security, competition, communications, and legal online operations. She was previously Director of Litigation, Employment, and Discovery. Prior to joining Google, Stacey was a partner at Keker & Van Nest in San Francisco.

Bright Pink is honored to welcome these incredible, seasoned leaders onto our Board of Directors, says Bright Pink Founder and Board Chair, Lindsay Avner. Janet, Tara and Stacey's expertise will be invaluable as we strategically grow Bright Pink to reach and impact even more young women nationwide with our life-saving breast and ovarian health programs."

These additions to Bright Pinks Board of Directors signal transition and growth for the 10-year old nonprofit organization headquartered in Chicago. In May of 2017, the organizations Founder, Lindsay Avner, retired from her role as CEO to become Board Chair, and welcomed new CEO Katie Thiede, formerly VP of Development at Planned Parenthood of Illinois. Thiede oversees a $3.2 million operating budget, a staff of 15 and a national network of 150 ambassadors to deliver Bright Pinks programming through in-person workshops and award-winning digital tools.

About Bright Pink

Bright Pink is a national non-profit focused on the prevention and early detection of breast and ovarian cancer in young women. The organizations mission is to save womens lives from breast and ovarian cancer by empowering them to live proactively at a young age. Bright Pinks innovative programs educate and equip young women to assess their risk for breast and ovarian cancer, reduce their risk, and detect these diseases at early, non-life-threatening stages. Launched in the fall of 2016, ExploreYourGenetics.org, provides women comprehensive information about genetic testing and breast and ovarian cancer-influencing mutations. Founded in 2007, Bright Pink strives to reach the 52 million women in the US between the ages of 18-45 with this life-saving education. Put Awareness In Action at BrightPink.org.
Unconventional Medical Solutions As a veteran owned business, we are very proud to have the opportunity to support the Department of Defense in all 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Territories of Guam and Puerto Rico.

Vighter Medical Group LLC (Vighter) announced today that it has been awarded a prime position on the $7.5B Medical Q-Coded Services (MQS) indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract. The IDIQ has a 5-year ordering period and a ceiling amount of $7.5B. It is designed to allow Military Departments (Army, Air Force, and Navy) and DHA to acquire medical staffing services to augment the existing military and civilian staffs at MTFs in a standard, cost effective, and efficient manner.

The wide range of labor categories included under this contract are testaments to Vighters agility and capacity to staff a variety of medical positions, said President Dr. Maria Doria. As a veteran owned business, we are very proud to have the opportunity to support the Department of Defense in all 50 United States, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Territories of Guam and Puerto Rico.

This multiple award IDIQ contract will support MTFs including: clinics (stand alone, non-bedded facilities), community hospitals, and medical centers with teaching responsibilities. Vighter will compete for task orders in the Physician Services and Ancillary Services segments. The first includes primary and specialty care physician labor categories while the second is comprised of clinical positions other than nursing, physicians, or dental. Services under this contract vehicle may be awarded using both personal and non-personal service arrangements.

About Vighter

Vighter provides Unconventional Medical Solutions around the world. We specialize in healthcare staffing, medical support services, and the application of technology in related fields. Whether clients require healthcare professionals to fill clinical vacancies throughout the US or highly customized special operations tactical medical support in austere environments abroad, Vighter is there to help.

Vighter was founded on the principles of agility, customer service, and dedication to mission success. We are highly responsive to client requests and excel in dynamic environments. Our customer service approach caters not only to clients, but is also focused internally to support all of our great employees working around the world. Vighters dedication to overcome obstacles and achieve mission success flows throughout the organization. We are committed to exceeding our clients expectations whenever and wherever services are required.

Vighter is an ISO 9001registered Service Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) firm verified by the Center for Veterans Enterprise. It holds The Joint Commission certification in Health Care Staffing Services (HCSS) and is also accredited by the National Accreditation Alliance Medical Transport Applications (NAAMTA). Vighter is also ANSI/ASIS PSC.1-2012 certified. The company has been listed on the Inc. 5000s list of fastest growing private companies for the past 3 years.
BC-based Snore MD is growing its number of clinics to offer sleep apnea and snoring solutions across Abbotsford, Langley, Mission, Maple Ridge and West Kelowna Its been incredible to know that we can affect so many peoples lives by raising the level of health care standards.

A recent study suggests that 40 per cent of Canadians will experience a sleep disorder during their lifetime. At a growing chain of BC sleep clinics, staff have a saying: Better sleep, better life. As Snore MD celebrates the opening of its five new sleep apnea clinics, the team reflects on what a difference theyve already been able to make for families in BC.

Its incredibly rewarding, says Michael Davis, Snore MD team leader and a registered respiratory therapist. He recalls a man who wandered into their Langley sleep clinic last spring, with sallow skin and baggy eyes, desperate for help with his sleep disorder after having fallen asleep at the wheel.

He worked long hours and couldnt get to a health care professional to get help for his exhaustion. After working with us, his life has completely changed. He has a new outlook on life, and his wife and even his kids are happier because hes a rested, positive guy. He comes in all the time and drops off muffins for staff because hes so grateful.

Snore MD uses the latest technology and treatmentssupervised by its team of respiratory therapists, doctors, and nurses, all experts in sleep disordersto diagnose and help to solve sleeping issues such as sleep apnea, snoring, restless sleep, and insomnia.

The rapid, dramatic impact of BC-based Snore MDs work has led to expansion throughout the Lower Mainland and now to the Okanagan following the opening of the flagship Langley sleep apnea clinic last February. Snore MD started offering Maple Ridge sleep apnea solutions at the beginning of March, and then opened their Mission sleep clinic later that same month. Snore MDs newest clinic has offered Abbotsford sleep tests and sleep apnea solutions since September, while the Snore MDs West Kelowna sleep apnea clinic opened in May.

Snore MD also offers a free online sleep test for anyone who feels they may be suffering from a sleep disorder, the most serious being sleep apnea. Sleep apnea can cause breathing to stop repeatedly while sleeping. These breathing pauses or apneas can last up to 30 seconds and can happen many times throughout the night, leaving a person feeling tired and lacking motor function.

Traditionally, sleep apnea was thought of as a male disorder, however, females are just as much at-risk, says Davis.

If left untreated, sleep apnea can cause high blood pressure, stroke, heart attack, motor vehicle collisions, depression, decreased sexual function, and work-related injuries.

We have plans to expand more clinics throughout the province. We plan to open a clinic every six weeks for the next two years, says Davis. Its been incredible to know that we can affect so many peoples lives by raising the level of health care standards.

Unlike most medical clinics, what makes Snore MD Sleep Apnea Clinics so unique is that they are open six days a week, Monday through Saturday, and an appointment is not needed to walk in and talk to a specialist. Snore MDs services can be offered in cooperation with or without a family doctor, as no doctor referral is necessary to attend any of Snore MDs BC sleep clinics.

Thats what has made us so successful. We offer great accessibility and ease for those wanting to get tested. Weve created a form of health care that is customer centered and accountable. We put our patients first, says Davis.

The results have been reflected in customer experiences, with rave reviews for therapy received so far.

About Snore MD Sleep Apnea Clinics:

Snore MD knows exactly how the lack of a good nights sleep can affect everyone. With its sleep apnea clinics located throughout British Columbia, including its recently opened West Kelowna sleep clinic and Abbotsford sleep clinic, Snore MD helps its clients solve all of their sleep issues, including snoring, sleep apnea, restless sleep, and insomnia. Snore MD Sleep Apnea Clinics meet with clients one-on-one. No doctors referral is necessary. Patients can just walk right in. Free pre-screening is also available with Snore MDs free online sleep test.

For more information, please contact:

Michael Davis RRT

Team Lead

Snore MD Sleep Apnea Clinics

778-345-8337

mdavis[at]snoremdcanada[dot]ca

http://www.snoremdcanada.ca
Preora Chairman Vadim Backman, PhD Preora is actively seeking commercial partnerships for development and distribution rights of our technologies. President & CEO John W. Hart

Through its dedication to helping people survive cancer, the Preora team of researchers and engineers have discovered new applications for the companys proprietary Partial Wave Spectroscopy (PWS) NanocytologyTM platform. The team identified novel technologies based on its studies of the early cellular changes that cause cancer, and the corresponding impact on current and future treatments.

In order to better reflect the companys full range of technologies that extend beyond the diagnostics sector, Preoras board of directors today announced that Preora Diagnostics Inc. has changed its name to Preora Healthcare Inc.

Preora is widely acknowledged as the creator of the field of nanocytology, the study of cells at the nanoscale. As the company continues to advance its PWS NanocytologyTM platform, it will produce new applications to help cytologists, cytopathologists, physicians and researchers increase their impact and influence in new approaches to diagnosing and treating cancer.

When Dr. Hari Subramanian and our other Northwestern University team members created the PWS NanocytologyTM platform, our primary focus was to enable dramatic improvements in survival rates through the early detection of cancer, said Preora Chairman of the Board Vadim Backman, PhD. That focus drove our efforts to research and develop low-cost, minimally invasive, highly accurate and easy-to-use cancer screening tests for many of the most common forms of cancer.

Earlier this year, a confluence of developments helped us realize that the PWS NanocytologyTM platforms impact extends far beyond diagnostics. Our new name, Preora Healthcare, represents the breadth of the novel approaches we will bring to the medical community and the patients they serve in the coming years, starting in 2018.

AREAS OF OPPORTUNITY

The companys program is now composed of three distinct yet complementary opportunities that will increase the depth and quality of clinically relevant information:

1. Sample Preparation Systems to enhance the speed and accuracy of microscopic and nanoscopic evaluation of cells. The novel technology creates an improved cell monolayer, enabling a range of downstream applications that can have positive impacts on diagnosing and treating cancer. These Class 1 devices are consistent with current medical practice and are covered by current reimbursement codes. As such, no new clinical trials are required to bring the devices to the marketplace.

2. PWS Nanocytology  Fixed Cell to provide low-cost, minimally invasive, highly accurate and easy-to-use screening tests for seven common types of cancer.

3. PWS Nanocytology  Live Cell to improve the selection of treatment options, supporting the real-time needs of physicians and pathologists.

FINANCING & COMMERCIALIZATION

The company is seeking commercial partnerships and while also raising $5.0 million through a Series A round. The funds will be used to advance its sample preparation systems toward rapid entry into the U.S. healthcare market, and to continue clinical studies for its lung and colorectal cancer screening tests.

Consistent with our mission, we want to develop these technologies and get them into the hands of clinicians worldwide for the benefit of the patients they serve, said Preora Healthcare President and CEO John W. Hart. Preora is actively seeking commercial partnerships for development and distribution rights of our technologies. Our plan over the next three to five years is to license and/or sell our technologies to organizations that offer the best opportunity for adoption due to their regional or global commercialization capabilities and expertise.

With the expanded opportunities offered by the PWS Nanocytology platform, the company is committed to maintaining its focus on its two near-term priorities:



Preoras new sample preparation methods deliver efficiency improvements in a small, customer-friendly footprint, enabling automation that improves current microscale evaluations for use in applications such as ROSE (Rapid On-Site Evaluation) procedures utilizing thin-needle biopsy techniques, gynecological and non-gynecological evaluations, and scientific research conducted in both academic and commercial organizations.

The companys PWS Nanocytology  Fixed Cell technology will generate low-cost cancer screening tests that could significantly improve the ability to detect cancers earlier when treatments are most likely to be effective. The company has validated the technology and its potential to detect cancer in more than 1,500 patients in seven different cancer types (lung, colorectal, prostate, pancreatic, ovarian, thyroid and esophageal). Preora continues to advance its development programs for its screening tests for lung and colorectal cancer screening tests.

We are dedicated to doing everything we can to provide new and better options to physicians and the patients they serve, said Preora Healthcare Chief Technology Officer Hari Subramanian, PhD. We share their passion to save lives by detecting cancer sooner and then having it treated it more effectively.

ABOUT PREORA HEALTHCARE

Preora Healthcare Inc. is a private medical device company focused on developing technology for the early detection and treatment of cancer through its proprietary Partial Wave Spectroscopy (PWS) NanocytologyTM platform, which is licensed exclusively by Preora through ISO 13485-certified NanoCytomics, LLC and Northwestern University. The platform enables the study of cells at the nanoscale, resulting in an enhanced understanding of the earliest cellular changes that lead to cancer.

In recent years, several organizations have recognized the potential benefits associated with the PWS NanocytologyTM platform, including the Wall Street Journals Six New Medical Technologies Worth Watching, Corporate LiveWires international 2016 Best in Cancer Diagnostics award and as a finalist among all technology sectors in the 2017 Chicago Innovation Awards. For more information, visit http://www.preorahealthcare.com.
Great Lakes Management Services Organization (MSO) is pleased to announce the appointment of Melissa Dabrowski as Vice President of Human Resources. Ms. Dabrowski brings with her over a decade of experience in numerous business areas, including: human resources, strategic planning, information technology, forecasting, and financing. Most recently, she was Executive Partner with Behringer & Co. based in Caledonia, Mich., where she was the lead consultant on Career Exploration client engagements.

Melissas ability to collaborate with leaders at all levels and align processes is an enormous asset to Great Lakes MSO, said Bill Hughson, Grand Rapids Ophthalmologys CEO. She is passionate about fostering open and honest team environments to ensure that everyone is personally thriving and set up for professional success.

Prior to Behringer, Ms. Dabrowski led the global succession planning and talent acquisition process for Federal-Mogul, Motorparts in Southfield, Mich. Her record of success placed her on Great Lakes MSOs senior leadership team where she will be implementing new and refining current processes, increasing efficiency, and engaging employees.

About Great Lakes Management Services Organization

Sterling Partners formed Great Lakes Management Services Organization (MSO) in February 2017 as a practice management services organization. Grand Rapids Ophthalmology partnered with the MSO to pursue growth opportunities, evolve clinical capabilities to better serve its patients, and to form strategic partnerships within industries related to eye care. If you are interested in learning more about a partnership with Great Lakes MSO, contact Dan Hosler at dhosler(at)seeitclear(dot)com.

About Grand Rapids Ophthalmology (GRO)

Founded in 1982, Grand Rapids Ophthalmology is the largest fully-integrated eye care medical group in West Michigan. It offers a full suite of eye care services from routine eye exams, contact lenses and glasses, to the most advanced medical and surgical treatments such as LASIK, cataract, cornea, retina, glaucoma, oculoplastics, pediatric, and both cosmetic and reconstructive eyelid surgery. GRO employs the largest number of eye care specialists and professionals in the region: 11 ophthalmologists, 19 optometrists, and 40 certified opticians. GRO has a total of 400 employees at 12 locations throughout West Michigan. For more information, visit: http://www.seeitclear.com.

About Sterling Partners

Sterling Partners is a private equity firm with a distinct point of view on how to build great companies. Founded in 1983, Sterling is guided by its stated purpose, INSPIRED GROWTH, which describes Sterlings approach to investing in differentiated businesses and growing them in inspired ways. Sterling focuses on investing growth capital in middle-market companies in the healthcare services and business services industries. Sterling provides valuable support to the management teams of the companies in which the firm invests through a deep and dedicated team of professionals, including a strong network of outside directors and advisors. The people at Sterling believe in ideas and ideals, in people and in partnerships that drive long-term success. For more information, visit: http://www.sterlingpartners.com.
Ajinomoto Windsor, Inc., a leading company in the frozen food industry, will support the expansion of its frozen foods business in North America by opening a new state-of-the-art coated appetizer manufacturing and R&D facility in Joplin, Missouri that will allow the company to significantly boost production.

Over the last five years, demand for coated appetizers has steadily increased. This has resulted in constrained capacity, and supply issues have resulted throughout the foodservice industry. Given Ajinomoto Windsors focus on delivering high-quality products and ensuring that customers are always satisfied, the company is heavily investing into the new multimillion-dollar facility.

To prepare for the future, Ajinomoto Windsors new coated appetizer plant will allow the company to increase capacity while maintaining strict quality standards. The Joplin facility will feature cutting edge equipment, expanded innovation capabilities, and enhanced food safety. It will also bring between 220-240 new jobs to the community.

We are excited to be opening our new production facility in Joplin, Missouri in early 2018. This will allow us to not only support the growing needs of our customers, but also lead the industry in coated appetizer solutions, stated Chris Meyer, SVP Business Development at Ajinomoto Windsor.

For more information on Ajinomoto Windsor, including the companys wide variety of coated appetizers, please visit the following link: http://www.ajinomotowindsor.com

About Ajinomoto Windsor, Inc.:

With a vision to create meaningful food experiences through high quality ingredients and innovative technologies, Ajinomoto Windsor Inc. serves as a leading company in the frozen food industry. The company honors its commitment towards providing nutritious and premium meals for all consumers through its rich history of diverse ethnic brands. Whether you are seeking Asian, Italian, or Mexican flavors  Ajinomoto Windsor is dedicated to satisfying your needs. It is the companys mission to create memorable experiences through its meals, and to deliver food that not only tastes great, but feels great.

Contact:

Ajinomoto Windsor, Inc.

4200 East Concours Drive, #100

Ontario, CA 91764

1-800-548-6363

http://www.ajinomotowindsor.com
It's an honor to join such a tremendous group of experienced professionals with such a vast breadth of expertise. Ortho Sales Partners is well positioned to assist a broad scope of clients throughout various stages of growth and scale.

Ortho Sales Partners, a global leader in orthopedic sales commercialization services, is excited to announce the addition of Matt Stuttle as Senior Vice President. This addition continues the momentum of Ortho Sales Partners in assisting clients by providing access to some of the industrys top talent. Mr. Stuttle will instantly bring immense value to our clients from around the globe.

Matt has been in the medical industry for over 18 years. He began his career in sales and management with Forest Pharmaceuticals prior to transitioning to medical devices in 2003. Since then hes held roles of increasing responsibility and executive management positions at Kyphon (acquired by Medtronic in 2008 for $4.3B), Paradigm Spine, Spine Wave and most recently Spineart.

Throughout his career Matt has lead sales organizations through enormous revenue growth in both private and public sectors. Prior to joining Ortho Sales Partners Matt was U.S. Vice President for Spineart, a global spine implant company based in Switzerland. During his tenure at Spineart he was instrumental in developing the US infrastructure, commercialization, distribution, product launch and market development strategies while providing necessary operational guidance. Under his leadership the organization received FDA approval for several new technologies subsequently introduced into the U.S. market while doubling U.S. sales.

Matt was also previously U.S. Vice President for Paradigm Spine where he built and scaled the initial U.S. sales and distribution infrastructure. Matt led the organization though key product launches while also assisting in management of the IDE clinical trial for Coflex, now FDA approved and market leading technology worldwide. Under his leadership the company grew from $0 to over $13M.

"It's an honor to join such a tremendous group of experienced professionals with such a vast breadth of expertise. Ortho Sales Partners is well positioned to assist a broad scope of clients throughout various stages of growth and scale. Whether a startup company or well-established organization, OSP has the knowledge, resources and team to assist in providing real tangible value while mitigating unnecessary operational risk," said Matt Stuttle.

"I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with Matt for the past 12 years and I am thrilled to have someone of his caliber join Ortho Sales Partners," said Josh Sandberg President, Ortho Sales Partners. "We have been able to create a disruptive change to the supply chain in orthopedics over the past couple of years and with this addition, we are able to further advance the initiatives that we have been working on. We welcome Matt as a core member of our team and look forward to the contributions he will add to our team."

About Ortho Sales Partners

Ortho Sales Partners has created a unique platform to help companies in any stage commercialize their products in a very efficient way. We have worked closely with many organizations such as:



A surgeon with a product idea and limited financial wherewithal to properly execute a sales plan.

OUS companies looking to establish or enhance their presence in the United States.

Companies with recent FDA approval in need of a strategic sales plan validated against current market conditions.

Established companies looking for sales and marketing horsepower to properly launch a new product.

Our services are geared to meet you where you are today and help your business grow by utilizing proven industry executives that bring you an objective analysis and recommendations going forward. Our market knowledge is based on current trends and competitive analysis from industry stalwarts from some of the highest growth companies.

Ortho Sales Partners headquarters are in Scottsdale, Arizona but we have several offices across the US. (http://www.orthosalespartners.com)
We feel Gartner is spot on in identifying the emergence of augmented analytics, and the impact that text analytics will have across data management, analytics and BI, and data science, and were honored to be included in these reports," said Jeff Catlin, CEO of Lexalytics

Lexalytics, the leader in cloud and on-prem text analytics solutions, announced today that it has been listed as a Sample Vendor in Gartners Hype Cycle for Data Science and Machine Learning, 2017 (July 2017), Hype Cycle for Analytics for Business Intelligence, 2017 (July 2017), Hype Cycle for Imaging and Print Services, 2017 (August 2017) and Hype Cycle for Life Science Research and Development, 2017 (July 2017) in the category of Text Analytics.

In three of the reports, Gartner analysts Kurt Schlegel, Alexander Linden and Nigel Shen explain, The surge in data volumes, together with the increasing need to make sense of the underlying context of data, has fueled the evolution of text analytics. Another strong driver is the desire to complement insights gleaned from analysis of structured numerical data with text-based facts for more robust predictive modelling. Future technological advances could lead to highly automated solutions capable of accurate and deep understanding of contexts.**

Gartner further notes in its Hype Cycle for Analytics and Business Intelligence that a new paradigm called augmented analytics is emerging, in which machine-learning automation will be critical to augmenting human intelligence and contextual awareness across the entire data and analytics workflow, from data to insight to action. Augmented analytics is an umbrella term that includes augmentation of several technologies (including data preparation, data discovery and data science) with machine learning and natural-language processing capabilities.

For nearly 15 years, Lexalytics has been an innovator in text analytics, honing our machine learning and natural language processing technologies to help enterprises gain greater value and insights from their structured and unstructured data, said Jeff Catlin, CEO of Lexalytics. We feel Gartner is spot on in identifying the emergence of augmented analytics, and the impact that text analytics will have across data management, analytics and BI, and data science, and were honored to be included in these reports.

According to Gartner, text analytics is in the Slope of Enlightenment phase of the Hype Cycle where focused experimentation and solid hard work by an increasingly diverse range of organizations [is leading] to a true understanding of the technology's applicability, risks and benefits. In addition, Gartner notes that text analytics has moved into the Adolescent stage of maturity, indicating that it has moved beyond early adopters in market adoption.**

*Gartner, Hype Cycle for Analytics and Business Intelligence, 2017, 28 July 2017

**Gartner, Hype Cycle for Imaging and Print Services, 2017, 02 August 2017, Hype Cycle for Analytics and Business Intelligence, 2017, 28 July 2017, Hype Cycle for Data Science and Machine Learning, 2017, 28 July 2017

Disclaimer

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Lexalytics

Processing billions of unstructured documents every day globally, Lexalytics is the industry leader in translating text into profitable decisions. Lexalytics deploys state-of the-art cloud and on-prem text and sentiment analysis technologies that transform customers thoughts and conversations into actionable insights. The on-premise Salience and SaaS Semantria platforms are implemented in a variety of industries for social media monitoring, reputation management and voice of the customer programs. Based in Boston, MA, Lexalytics has offices in the US and Canada. For more information, please visit http://www.lexalytics.com, email sales(at)lexalytics(dot)com or call 1-617-249-1049. Follow Lexalytics on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Students visit Montreal Neon I was amazed at the complexities of sign manufacturing. I am strongly considering this field.

There is no denying that finding the next generation of workers is a challenge for the sign, graphics and visual communications industry. But in October, more than 3,700 potential employees walked through the doors of ISA-member companies participating in Sign Manufacturing Day 2017.

They left with a better understanding of the sign, graphics and visual communications industryas well thoughts of a potential career. Multiple companies reported that students completed applications soon after the tours ended.

Here is some of what students had to say:



This tour got me thinking about a career in the sign industry.

Seems like a nice place to work.

Each job that I saw was yet another profession that I was unaware that existed and it was very eye opening.

I was amazed at the complexities of sign manufacturing. I am strongly considering this field.

I would love to work in this industry. I can weld and do wood work. I would love to know more about this company.

When do I start?

In all, some 62 ISA member companies opened up 67 locations throughout the U.S. and Canada. Now in its fifth year, Sign Manufacturing Dayheld the first Friday in October**continues to grow exponentially.

In addition, the Sign Research Foundation hosted university students and professors of interior design, landscape architecture and urban planning at a workshop in conjunction with Michigan State Universitys School of Planning, Design, and Construction. The day-long workshop included opportunities to learn more about wayfinding, sign fabrication and signage within a campus setting. Participation exceeded expectations.

In previous years, participating companies have used the day to hire entry-level workers, develop co-op and internship programs and make valuable connections with local technical and community college instructors.

Instructors have indicated that they love to showcase how training relates in the work world and often incorporate future class periods to discuss what they learned by participating in Sign Manufacturing Day. Some even take the opportunity to host mini class sessions in the sign, graphics and visual communications company, showcasing the process of fabricating signs, the machines used and how their particular training relates to the overall product.

Companies participating in 2017 were:

Accurate Signs, Mesquite, TX

AD/S Companies, Corona, CA

AGS, Exton, PA

Allen Industries, Greensboro, NC

Arrow Sign, Oakland, CA

ASG (Advance Sign Group), Columbus, OH

Baker Signs and Manufacturing, Conroe, TX

Blanchett Neon, Edmonton, AB

DaVinci Sign Systems, Inc., Windsor, CO

Day Nite Neon Signs, Dartmouth, NS

Design Center Signs, Tyler, TX

Design Communications, Ltd, Orlando, FL

Design Team Sign Company LLC, Savannah, TN

Enseignes Plus, Chateauguay, QC

Faces, Pelham, AL

FDC Graphic Films, Inc., South Bend, IN

Federal Heath Sign Company, LLC, Racine, WI

Federal Heath Sign Company, LLC, Euless, TX

Federal Heath Sign Company, LLC, Oceanside, CA

Federal Heath Sign Company, LLC, Jacksonville, TX

Federal Heath Sign Company, LLC, Delaware, OH

Gordon Sign Co., Denver, CO

Hansen Signs, Moncton, NB

Hilton Displays, Greensville, SC

Howard Industries, Fairview, PA

IdentiCom Sign Solutions, Farmington Hills, MI

ISF Sign Specialists, Indianapolis, IN

Jones Signs, De Pere, WI

JSJ Electrical Display, Fairfield, CA

KAPCO, Kent, OH

Kieffer|Starlite, Sheboygan, WI

Lewis Sign, Buda, TX

LNS Legacy National Signs, Dallas, TX

LSI Industries, Inc., North Canton, OH

Mattatall Signs, Ltd., Dartmouth, NS

Media Resources, Inc., Oakville, ON

Midtown Signs, LLC, Kansas City, MO

Midwest Light & Sign, Farmington, MO

Montreal Neon Signs, Laval, QC

North American Signs, South Bend, IN

Pattison Sign, Penticton, BC

Persona Inc., Watertown, SD

Poblocki Sign Company, Milwaukee, WI

Poyant Signs, Inc., New Bedford, MA

Pride Signs, Cambridge, ON

Ramsay Signs, Portland, OR

Robert Amerding Company, San Jose, CA

Schurle Signs, Lawrence, KS

Scott Paragon Signs, Richmond, BC

Selkirk Signs & Services Ltd, Cranbrook, BC

Serigraphics Sign Systems, Inc., Golden Valley, MN

Signarama (Corporate), West Palm Beach, FL

Signs by Crannie, Flint, MI

SIGNSTAR, Tampa, FL

Signtech Electrical Advertising, Inc., San Diego, CA

Skyline Sign Services Ltd, Edmonton, AB

Sleek Advertising Ltd, Regina, SK

Spectra Advertising, Concord, ON

St. Clair Signs, Taylors, SC

Steel Art Company, Norwood, MA

Stone's Signs, Saint Charles, MO

Superior Electrical Advertising Inc., Long Beach, CA

Think Digital Signs, Edina, MN

ThinkSign, Inc., Louisville, KY

YESCO, Las Vegas, NV

YESCO, Salt Lake City, UT

Ziglin Signs, Washington, MO

Its not too early to start thinking about Sign Manufacturing Day 2018, scheduled for October 5. Participating companies are provided a toolkit that helps them connect with area educators and assists them in showcasing the diverse careers available in the sign, graphics and visual communications industry. To express interest in participating, email workforce(at)signs(dot)org.

Sign Manufacturing Day is just one of the ways that ISA is working to solve workforce issues for the sign, graphics and visual communications industry. Visit the ISA Career Center (signs.org/careers) for additional information and resources.

** Some participating companies may slightly shift dates to accommodate fall break and other school scheduling situations.

The International Sign Association (ISA) strives to be the leader in shaping and developing the sign, graphics and visual communications community worldwide.
Isabelle Moeller

Five deserving individuals will be honored as the Women in Biometrics Awards winners for 2017 during SIA Honors Night on Nov. 15, 2017, announced the Security Industry Association (SIA) and SecureIDNews.

Registration is now open for SIA Honors Night, which will be held at the Current at Chelsea Piers in New York, New York. To register, visit https://www.securityindustry.org/Pages/IndustryEvents/SIA-Honors-Night.aspx.

"The 2017 class of Women in Biometrics awardees includes leaders from state and federal government as well as association, academic and private sectors. It is a diverse group, but more importantly, the diversity of their contributions is equally great," said Chris Corum, editor and publisher, SecureIDNews. "I am truly impressed by the achievements of this latest group of winners, selected by our judges from a pool of amazingly accomplished nominees."

"The annual SIA Honors Night is a cornerstone to our work at the Security Industry Association, and the Women in Biometrics Awards is an important part of SIA Honors Night," said SIA CEO Don Erickson. "Biometrics are a crucial element of security, and the major contributions of our nominees and winners are crucial to the continued advancement of the industry. SIA is proud to present this unique recognition program."

Women in Biometrics annually recognizes the efforts of female leaders helping drive the biometric identity and security industry. Selected from a global pool of more 100 nominations, the five winners and members of the 2017 class of honorees include:

Kimberly Del Greco, Deputy Assistant Director, Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division, FBI

For nearly two decades, Del Greco has been helping to implement and shape the use of biometric technology within the FBI. Currently, she serves as the deputy assistant director of the FBI CJIS Division's Information Services Branch. She administers the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the Biometric Services Section and the Information Technology Management Section, providing services and IT support to fingerprint identification, facial recognition, criminal history records, firearm background checks and other critical operational functions of the CJIS Division.

Isabelle Moeller, Chief Executive, Biometrics Institute

In 2002, Moeller joined the Biometrics Institute, an organization dedicated to the promotion of the responsible use of biometrics by government and industry. First as the organization's general manager and now as its chief executive, she runs the international operation from London, helping to shape policy and efforts for the 200-plus members organizations from 26 countries.

Liane Moriyama, Administrator, Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center

Moriyama was part of the team that brought the first Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) to Hawaii in 1990. Since then, she has driven biometric use across the state as the administrator of the Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center under the Department of the Attorney General. During her tenure, she has overseen the rollout of biometrics in the statewide AFIS, criminal history information system, photo database and Sex Offender Registry. Her efforts have stretched beyond her home state as she has helped leaders in other states implementing robust biometric programs for law enforcement.

Stephanie Schuckers, Paynter-Krigman Endowed Professor in Engineering Science, Clarkson University

For more than a decade, Dr. Schuckers has been a leading biometric researcher, teacher and entrepreneur. At New York's Clarkson University, Schuckers serves as the Paynter-Krigman Endowed Professor in Engineering Science. She has been instrumental in educating the next generation of biometric scientists. Her research has been instrumental in advancing biometric concepts such as liveness detection, and this advancement has not been confined to the academic arena. She founded, and served as CEO of, NexID Biometrics, a university start-up for fingerprint liveness detection, which was sold to Precise Biometrics in 2017.

Frances Zelazny, Vice President, BioCatch

For more than 20 years, Zelazny has championed the use of biometrics as a marketing leader for key industry companies. In the early days of facial recognition, she led marketing efforts at Visionics, which later became L-1 Identity Solutions and was acquired by Morpho. In that role, she worked to bring global recognition to the fledgling modality. Today, as vice president of marketing for BioCatch, she is working to define messaging for another rapidly emerging area, behavioral biometrics. During the past two decades, she has actively contributed beyond her corporate roles, helping shape state and federal legislation, working with trade associations and NGOs on policy and position papers, and serving as a positive industry voice for the media's coverage of biometrics.

The Women in Biometrics Awards will be presented in New York City on Nov. 15, 2017 during the prestigious SIA Honors Night celebration hosted by SIA. In addition, a series of other important awards will be made honoring leaders from various facets of the security industry. Visit the SIA Honors Night webpage to register for the gala celebration at https://www.securityindustry.org/Pages/IndustryEvents/SIA-Honors-Night.aspx.

About the Women in Biometrics Awards

Now in its third year, the Women in Biometrics Awards (WomenInBiometrics.com) are presented by the Security Industry Association and SecureIDNews.com. Key sponsors include PSA Security and IDEMIA.

Nominees may include those working for biometric companies, peripheral suppliers, system integrators, academia, government, or security and IT departments at a variety of organizations.

The contributions meriting nomination are diverse, but could include:



Substantive and defining leadership in academic, public awareness, legislative or standards efforts

Corporate leadership that extends beyond individual company walls, impacting the larger industry

Pioneering product development, innovation or corporate start-up efforts

Industry involvement sharing expertise and mentoring peers, thus growing the market

Past winners include biometric company executives, industry lobbyists, standards creators, association leaders and issuers/security practitioners. They come from a diverse group of organizations that span industry, government and nonprofit sectors.

About the Security Industry Association

The Security Industry Association (SIA) (http://www.securityindustry.org) is the leading trade association for global security solution providers, with nearly 800 innovative member companies representing thousands of security leaders and experts who shape the future of the security industry. SIA protects and advances its members' interests by advocating pro-industry policies and legislation at the federal and state levels; creating open industry standards that enable integration; advancing industry professionalism through education and training; opening global market opportunities; and collaboration with other like-minded organizations. As a proud sponsor of ISC Events expos and conferences, SIA ensures its members have access to top-level buyers and influencers, as well as unparalleled learning and network opportunities. SIA also enhances the position of its members in the security marketplace through SIA Government Summit, which brings together private industry with government decision makers, and Securing New Ground, the security industry's top executive conference for peer-to-peer networking.

About SecureIDNews

SecureIDNews (http://www.SecureIDNews.com) is an industry-leading source for enterprise and government identity, credentialing and security markets. SecureIDNews is published by AVISIAN Publishing (http://www.AVISIAN.com). More than 30,000 subscribers and hundreds of thousands of web visitors get their ID technology news from AVISIAN's suite of identity and security publications. 
These four integrated public policy strategies would further reduce the volume of unneeded and unused opioid medications entering the public domain, and reduce the chances that they fall into the wrong hands  while taking into account the needs of those most severely affected by chronic pain...

In a letter to President Donald Trump, representatives of the Administration, and members of the United States Congress, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS) today formally announced support for four new public policy proposals intended to build on existing collaborative efforts to address the opioid abuse epidemic while providing quality patient care.

These four integrated public policy strategies would further reduce the volume of unneeded and unused opioid medications entering the public domain, and reduce the chances that they fall into the wrong hands  while taking into account the needs of those most severely affected by chronic pain as a result of cancer and other serious illnesses, said NACDS President and CEO Steven C. Anderson, IOM, CAE, in releasing the letter. The fact that these public policy proposals are gaining traction among those in the healthcare and enforcement communities reflects that much-needed consensus may be starting to build for additional and sound approaches to this epidemic.

The four new public recommendations include:



Legislate a seven-day supply limit for initial opioid prescriptions issued for acute pain.

This limit is consistent with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. CDCs clinical evidence suggests that a greater amount of initial opioid exposure is associated with a greater risk for long-term use and addiction. Nearly 20 states already have taken action, and federal legislation is needed for consistent patient care.

Legislate a requirement that all prescriptions be issued electronically, with limited exceptions.

E-prescribing enhances security and curbs fraud, waste and abuse. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) e-prescribing requirements call for two-factor authentication, reducing the likelihood of fraudulent prescribing. Federal and state action would be timely, as e-prescribing of controlled substances has only been legal in all 50 states since September 2015. Only 14 percent of controlled substance prescriptions are issued electronically.

Create a national prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) through collaboration.

Most states use data to help identify and prevent drug abuse and diversion, but program variances limit their effectiveness. It is necessary to harmonize state requirements for reporting and accessing PDMP data, and to create one system with unified expectations by healthcare providers and law enforcement. A national PDMP would leverage e-prescribing to provide guidance for prescribers and dispensers in real-time when providing patient care.

Provide manufacturer-funded mail-back envelopes for unused opioid drugs, available to patients at pharmacies upon request.

Currently, many pharmacies offer disposal programs as appropriate by community and by store. A program featuring mail-back envelopes provides an option that is universally workable. State legislation could facilitate a mail-back program. Educational materials also are in use, and could be expanded in appropriate ways.

The new proposals complement existing pharmacy initiatives, and build on prior comments submitted to the Presidents Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. Existing and extensive pharmacy initiatives include: DEA compliance programs; pioneering e-prescribing; drug disposal options for consumers; pharmacist and patient education; pharmacy security initiatives; fostering naloxone access; stopping illegal online drug-sellers and rogue clinics; and more. NACDS described these existing initiatives in todays letter.

NACDS letter also focused on the need to stop the flow of synthetic opioids entering the United States; the need to continue to advance prescriber education tools through the Food and Drug Administrations Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies for opioids; the need for a one-document solution for patient medication information; and the need for enhanced access to treatment for individuals with substance abuse disorders; among other additional approaches.

As public health authorities have indicated, face-to-face interactions between pharmacists and patients have made pharmacists keenly aware of the extreme challenges and complexities associated with this epidemic, Anderson wrote in the letter. Based on this first-hand experience and our commitment to the patients and communities we serve, NACDS remains steadfast in our efforts to partner with law enforcement agencies, policymakers, and others to work on viable strategies to prevent prescription drug diversion and abuse, including prescription opioids. Chain pharmacies engage daily in activities with the goal of preventing drug diversion and abuse.
When patients with behavioral health needs are boarding in the emergency department it creates longer wait times for all patients.

In June, 631 behavioral health patients in Cuyahoga County awaited an inpatient psych bed, according to a 30-day study released by The Center for Health Affairs.

The study, Behavioral Health Patients Utilizing Acute Care Services in Cuyahoga County, was conducted from June 1 through June 30 to collect information on behavioral health patients (psychiatric and addictions) utilizing acute care services (emergency departments and inpatient psychiatry/addictions services) across five hospital systems in Cuyahoga County. It revealed



778 patients in emergency departments

167 patients in medical beds

631 patients awaiting an inpatient psych bed

288 patients with a primary alcohol or other drug diagnosis

Seventy two percent of the reported behavioral health patients were appropriate for a lower level of care versus an inpatient admission.

Over the past few years this has been a reoccurring topic of discussion among our Behavioral Health RoundTable of Cuyahoga County, said Pam Waite, MSN, RN-BC, MHSA, director of Healthcare Workforce and NEONI operations, The Center for Health Affairs. When patients with behavioral health needs are boarding in the emergency department it creates longer wait times for all patients and when boarding on medical units it challenges staff who are not familiar in working with behavioral health patients and presents a risk to quality, safe and therapeutic care for all patients

View the full 30-day study summary on behavioral health patients utilizing acute care services in Cuyahoga County on our website here. Contact us to learn more.

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With a rich history as the Northeast Ohio hospital association, dating back to 1916, The Center for Health Affairs serves as the collective voice of hospitals and the source for Northeast Ohio hospital and healthcare information. As the leading advocate for Northeast Ohio hospitals, The Center aims to enhance the effectiveness of the healthcare community and the health of the communities it serves by providing expertise, resources and solutions to address the challenges faced by the regions healthcare providers. The Centers efforts focus on areas that benefit member hospitals from a regional approach, including healthcare workforce; emergency preparedness; public policy and advocacy; finance and reimbursement; and community initiatives. And because of its business affiliation with CHAMPS Healthcare, The Center has the resources to provide a broad level of professional services to its members. The Center, located in downtown Cleveland, is proud to advocate on behalf of more than 35 acute-care hospitals located in six counties. For more, visit neohospitals.org. The Center for Health Affairs is honored to be named as one of The Cleveland Plain Dealers Top Workplaces in 2014 and 2015, as well as to ERCs NorthCoast99 List in 2003, 2004, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017.
Imagine telling an 83-year-old woman who has lost everything and is living on a fixed-income of $600 a month that she gets no money to rebuild simply because she couldnt afford flood insurance.

Non-profit CEO says hes outraged by the lack of results and accountability in Texas, nearly two months after Hurricane Harvey hit. Hes now doubling down on CAN-DO.ORG's commitment to help residents.

In all my years doing disaster relief, Ive never seen such red-tape when it comes to getting aid to families who lost everything, Eric Klein, CEO and founder of the award-winning disaster relief organization CAN-DO.ORG (Compassion into Action Network  Direct Outcome Organization) said.

Billions of dollars were committed to help these families and Im not afraid to speak up and let Americans know it is not getting to the people.

Despite billions of dollars having been collectively raised for survivors of Hurricane Harvey from large NGOs and FEMA assistance programs, CAN-DO.ORG discovered many south Texas towns have no means to rebuild after being denied financial assistance.

CAN-DO.ORG founder and CEO Eric Klein was tipped off on the small town of Rose City, Texas - where all but 2 homes were completely under water following Hurricane Harvey  mid-September. At that time there was no distribution of aid set up and Klein discovered residents sleeping on tarps outside their destroyed homes. Klein made an emotional plea through a video he posted on social media alerting the public of the dire situation in Rose City. The video went viral  hitting more than half a million views in less than 72 hours.

Within 10 days, CAN-DO.ORG set up a large-scale distribution center in Rose City with the support of city officials. Containers and tents now house supplies that were donated from coast to coast including a food pantry, mold remediation material, cleaning products, cots, tens, fans and toiletries. CAN-DO.ORG commissioned local volunteers to help distribute directly to the community.

The distribution center has been great for phase one but were going on two months since the storm and residents in Rose City and other surrounding towns have been left in the dark to fend for themselves, Klein, who has been leading disaster relief efforts for nearly two decades, said.

After spending weeks on the ground in Rose City, Klein is outraged to discover that residents continue to live in tents outside their homes or are unable to return home because they have no electricity, no means to rebuild their destroyed homes or replace their personal belongings.

In some cases residents have become so desperate, their only alternative has been to move back into their gutted out, empty homes despite the health dangers of black mold, which nearly all homes in Rose City are now affected by.

Homes in Rose City were flooded after the Army Corp. of Engineers released the dams, which officials say was done in an effort to save other towns in the surrounding area.

Its a disgrace that elderly families and veterans in lower-income neighborhoods in south Texas had their homes flooded and are now being denied the billions in relief pledged to help, Klein said.

Nearly all residents have been denied financial assistance from FEMA and American Red Cross, according to Rose City Mayor Bonnie Stephenson.

Imagine telling an 83 year old woman who has lost everything and is living on a fixed-income of $600 a month that she gets no money to rebuild, simply because she couldnt afford flood insurance  which is as high $3,000 a year in Rose City, Klein added.

In a move that is unprecedented among non-profits, Klein has made his organizations bank statements available online to the public to prove transparency and show it is possible for donors money to go exactly where they expect it to go.

Im fed up. Imagine if it was your grandparents still sleeping outside two months later? Klein said. We want donors to see that if they're donating to a 501c3 organization, it really is possible for 100% of the money to go to the help the people -- not overinflated budgets and unnecessary administration costs.

Klein also announced a new CAN-DO.ORG fundraising campaign for residents in Rose City  pledging that 100% of monetary donations will be converted into gift cards for each household to purchase building supplies.

People need help now and this is the most efficient way to get funds directly into their hands so they can, at the very least, start to rebuild their homes.

In just 1 week since CAN-DO.ORGs donation challenge was announced on social media, theyve tripled their total.

Klein and CAN-DO.ORG is also advocating on behalf of Rose City residents to FEMA and Government officials to release the federal assistance money for Rose City and other towns in the surrounding area who have been left behind.

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ABOUT CAN-DO.ORG:

CAN-DO (Compassion into Action Network - Direct Outcome Organization) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that donors can count on to get the job done. From natural disasters to humanitarian crises, we provide critical aid to communities who need it most in a timely and transparent manner. We are not tied down by politics or bureaucracy, and do not delay delivery of lifesaving resources by getting caught up in the red tape. We are dedicated to providing lasting, self-sustainable solutions for people facing some of the world's most critical problems. We go anywhere in the world and do whatever it takes to get the job done. 100% Accountability  ZERO Red-Tape.

Contact CAN-DO, info(at)can-do(dot)org

ABOUT ERIC KLEIN:

No one defies stereotypes or cliches about aid organizations more than Eric Klein, CEO and founder of CAN-DO.ORG. Klein has a long track record cutting through red-tape and producing lasting results in disaster stricken areas in the United States and around the world. Klein started CAN-DO.ORG in 2004, after being personally frustrated watching big-name organizations collect millions of dollars in donations, but not showing results. Fast forward 13 years, Klein hasnt slowed down. CAN-DO.ORG has since completed large-scale disaster and revitalization projects around the world, including after Hurricane Isaac, Katrina and Sandy in the United States, as well as in Rwanda, Haiti and other areas that are too often ignored. Kleins unique approach to humanitarian aid  which includes hiring locals and employing U.S. military veterans  produces rapid results and direct assistance to the people impacted, which unfortunately is rare after a disaster. Being transparent with donors is another key to Klein and CAN-DO.ORGs success. They provide direct access to real-time updates from the field, LIVE video streams and completion videos after the project wraps. His work continues to revolutionize the relief industry and is leading the movement to create sustainable social change. Klein has been featured on CNN, CNBC, People Magazine, Huffington Post, among other national and local media outlets. In 2008, Oprah Winfrey chose Klein as a contestant for her ABC primetime show, Oprahs Big Give  a reality program that challenged contestants to give away money in unique ways and become one of Americas greatest unknown philanthropists. Later that year, Klein was awarded a Global Compassion Award at the United Nations for his achievements in international disaster relief efforts and humanitarian aid. In 2013, he was honored by his hometown in Massachusetts as one of the Legendary Locals of Salem, which archives in the towns records unique individuals who have made a memorable impact throughout history. He received a Heroes of Haiti award in 2010.

Contact ERIC KLEIN - ek(at)can-do(dot)org
Genesis Robotic Welding Solutions Whether automating manual processes for the first time, or enhancing an existing robotic system, FABTECH attendees will have an opportunity to talk with Genesis robotic integration specialists to gain helpful insight about whats possible.

Genesis Systems Group, an RIA Certified Robot Integrator and globally recognized specialist in multi-process robotic welding and robotic integration, is showcasing robotic solutions for metrology, laser processing, multi-process robotic welding systems, pre-engineered solutions and virtual connectivity at FABTECH 2017, North America's largest metal forming, fabricating, welding and finishing event.

Leveraging more than 30 + years of industry and application experience, our integrated robotic solutions are intelligently designed to help our customers achieve the highest production and cost efficiencies that keep them competitive, said Pat Pollock, President/CEO for Genesis. Whether automating manual processes for the first time, or enhancing an existing robotic system, FABTECH attendees will have an opportunity to talk with our robotic integration specialists to gain helpful insight about whats possible. In addition to solutions for metrology, laser processing, and multi-process robotic welding, they will learn about our pre-engineered solutions and our innovative intelligenceCenter that facilitates remote monitoring and real-time access to critical robot data to significantly minimize downtime and the high costs and production losses associated with it.

Genesis Systems Group welcomes guests at Booth B27031 and Booth B31094, Hall B at FABTECH, McCormick Place, Chicago, IL, November 6th through November 9th, 2017.

To contact Genesis Systems Group, visit https://www.genesis-systems.com or call (563) 445-5600.

About Genesis Systems Group

Established in 1983, Genesis Systems Group is a globally recognized leader in robotic systems integration. An RIA Certified Robot Integrator, as well as AS9100D and ISO 9001:2008 Certified, Genesis specializes in factory automation with robots for integrated robotic arc, spot and laser welding/cutting, non-destructive inspection, including robotic ultrasonic inspection of carbon fiber composites, adhesive application, material removal and material handling. With the governing objective to help clients win the productivity race, in-house capabilities and expertise are centered on the design, manufacture and implementation of integrated robot workcells. In addition, Genesis specializes in process related services such as computer aided engineering, (CAE) process simulation, lean manufacturing and other variation reduction techniques. Genesis has designed, engineered, manufactured and supported integrated robotic solutions for diverse industries including automotive, aerospace, agricultural, construction & forestry, primary metals, furniture, defense, energy and other general industries. Visit https://www.genesis-systems.com.
Respite Care has an inspiring story of hopes and dreams for our communitys children. Through their continued efforts, many families have been helped, and touched, and it motivates us to give back. Join with us! Together, we can help improve the quality of life for our community as a whole.

Bendele Insurance Agency, Inc. of Loveland, CO has announced the initiation of a master charity program created to strengthen the communities they serve. The agency pledges to select a new beneficiary every 60 days, working closely with nonprofit organizations and community leaders to seek out those who most need help. Their desire is to bring awareness to important local causes by forming campaigns which aid worthwhile organizations, families or individuals. Were passionate about activating community support for the beneficiaries of our Community Program, said Paul Bendele, owner of Bendele Insurance Agency, Inc.

To debut the new community involvement program, Bendele has elected to support Respite Care, Inc., a nonprofit organization which provides short-term care for children with developmental disabilities, thus enhancing the quality of life for the entire family. Fun, interactive and stimulating activities are developed according to individual needs, always keeping in mind that a child with a disability is a child first and foremost. Founded in 1981 by a group of five parents who all had children with disabilities, Respite Care now provides over 59,000 hours of quality care to local families every year.

Respite Care has an inspiring story of hopes and dreams for our communitys children, explained Bendele. Through their continued efforts, many families have been helped, and touched, and it motivates us to give back. Join us and together, we can help improve the quality of life for our community as a whole.

The donations page for this each featured campaign to come will be accompanied by a fully detailed story outlining the cause. The team at Bendele Insurance will also spread the word through its own network of customers, business associates, neighbors and friends. To join the agency in support of Respite Care for local families, donors may visit https://www.crowdrise.com/home-away-from-home2 and are encouraged to share the page with their own personal and professional networks. Bendele Insurance also produces a fun and innovative monthly publication, Our Hometown magazine, which will use a full page to highlight each selected Community Cause. The electronic Flipbook version of the current issue may be enjoyed at http://bendeleinsurance.com/magazines/.

About Bendele Insurance Agency

A full-service insurance and financial services provider serving families and businesses from offices in Loveland, CO, after 30 years in the area agency owner Paul Bendele knows many local families. This knowledge and understanding of the people of northern Colorado help him to provide customers with an outstanding level of service. Bendele and his team of dedicated professionals work diligently to help families protect the things which are most important to them  their families, homes, businesses, cars and more. They also prepare strategies to help clients achieve long-term financial goals. More information about the agency is available at http://bendeleinsurance.com/. To speak with a caring expert, please call 970-635-0695.
Since 2005, MentureME Inc has successfully helped companies located nationwide and worldwide improve their profits by optimizing hidden growth assets. MentureME Inc is proud to be the first digital marketing agency to put money in the pockets of its clients before we ask our clients to invest in us, said MentureME Inc Co-Founder and CEO Stephen Gill.

A leading digital marketing agency, MentureME Inc., recently introduced a first-of-kind business development program. It provides small-to-medium sized businesses in the United States and worldwide with a 30 Day Quick Start Done For You Sales Boost at no charge. The firms MBA educated Fortune 500 experienced management consultants will work with CEOs and C-level executives to implement strategies and tactics to increase sales and profitability during an initial one-month period. Clients pay only after MentureME Inc delivers sufficient results which will more than cover the clients investment in them.

MentureME Inc initially conducts a 57-point analysis to identify gaps and areas of potential growth for clients. The primary goals are to identify overlooked growth opportunities which will consistently attract new qualified leads, effectively increase all conversion rates affecting sales, and increase the profitability of each client to drive overall company growth. MentureME Inc accomplishes this by following 5 steps:

1. Identifying and targeting profitable customer segments

2. Determining and communicating a strong competitive advantage

3. Implementing a 3-step process for improved marketing ROI

4. Implementing customer loyalty systems to grow market share

5. Developing strong marketing alliance and strategic advertising relationships

MentureME Inc is proud to be the first digital marketing agency to put money in the pockets of its clients before we ask our clients to invest in us, said MentureME Inc Co-Founder and CEO Stephen Gill. In addition, we offer a money-back guarantee on our results. We provide solutions to the top five problems which cause small-to-medium sized businesses to fail. A business can fail for different reasons. These include inadequate market research to address changing market needs, lack of a compelling unique selling proposition, weak marketing communication, insufficient cash flow to sustain growth, and poor strategic leadership and support. A business that has all of these variables  or even just one  can fail. MentureME Inc works with clients to provide them with a winning combination of experienced strategic support, competitive advantage, a consistent flow of customers and increasing profitability all of which lead to a substantial boost in market share against competitors and company growth, concluded Gill.

Visit https://mentureme.com/ for more information or contact MentureME Inc.s CEO Stephen Gill at 647-749-6944, ext. 2 or 800-997-4345 or email Stephen (at) mentureme.com.

About MentureME Inc

Since 2005, MentureME Inc has successfully helped companies located nationwide and worldwide improve their profits by optimizing hidden growth assets. The marketing agency offers a money-back guarantee on their results. MentureME Inc multiple successes and services have been featured on numerous media outlets including NBC, Fox News and ABC.
Tethr logo With Tethr listening to, analyzing and surfacing actionable insights from every customer phone conversation, companies can finally use the information customers are telling them directly to improve business performance and drive better outcomes.

Company elevates the phone channel to the C-Suite with true voice-of-customer insights that drive business transformation

Austin, Texas  October 24, 2017  Tethr, the conversation intelligence company, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Grotech Ventures with participation from MissionOG and a number of strategic investors. This latest round represents the first institutional investment in Tethrs four-year history after raising seed capital primarily from individual investors. The company will use the funds to build out its team, scale business operations, rapidly expand sales and marketing and advance key enabling technologies to support todays top enterprises.

The customer phone conversation is a vital means of engagement, filled with valuable insights about a companys products, brands and competitors. Unfortunately, the enterprise hasnt had access to solutions that extract the full value from customer calls, leaving companies with a massive blind spot that could cost them millions of dollars annually, said Mike Mings, Tethr CEO. Companies have tried unsuccessfully to capture voice-of-customer insights by manually listening to phone call recordings, using outdated tools that provide proxy insights via sentiment or emotion, or distributing surveys that reinforce their bias. With Tethr listening to, analyzing and surfacing actionable insights from every customer phone conversation, companies can finally use the information customers are telling them directly to improve business performance and drive better outcomes.

Tethrs platform combines artificial intelligence and human intelligence, leveraging customer loyalty insights from major consulting and research institutions to help companies gain business value from each customer conversation. The platform provides organizations with a full and accurate understanding of what is said and meant by customers and employees during phone exchanges, and makes it easy to apply these insights to other engagement channels and business units through simple integration with popular BI and CRM tools. Now, organizations can quantify the immediate and long-term financial impact of each customer call, identify opportunities for improvement and take steps to achieve operational excellence, increased revenue, stronger products and services, impeccable compliance and devoted customers.

While customer experience is a priority for every executive, many companies are still falling short of providing an experience their customers truly love, simply because they arent really listening to their customers, said Lawson DeVries, general partner at Grotech Ventures. "What excites us about Tethr is their use of cutting-edge machine learning approaches that make it easy for companies to quickly and accurately turn large amounts of unstructured customer conversation data into information that fuels smarter business decisions.

Tethrs intelligent and intuitive platform makes it easy for users from the contact center to the C-Suite to surface and apply relevant insights right out of the box and to train the platform to find new insights via an easy-to-use wizard. With its simple pricing model, rapid setup and resource efficiency, users realize the full value of their customer conversations in days  not months. Tethr complements current investments and super-charges people, processes and technology with the power of AI-driven customer insights.

This financing builds on an exceptional year for Tethr, which saw the company gain significant market momentum and rapidly grow its roster of clients within the Fortune 1000.

Tethr is one of the fastest growing software companies that we have encountered. The solution can quickly integrate with any existing phone system and adds value to enterprises on Day One, remarked George Krautzel, managing partner of MissionOG. We are excited to work with this extraordinary team as they usher in the next generation of customer experience software.

About Tethr

Tethr helps organizations unlock value from the voice channel. Tethrs conversation intelligence platform combines powerful AI and a decade of customer research to analyze phone calls and offer insights that can improve sales, loyalty, efficiency and compliance. Learn more at tethr.com.

About Grotech Ventures

Founded in 1984, Grotech Ventures (http://www.grotech.com) is a leading early investor in high-potential technology companies. With more than $1.5B under management, Grotech seeks innovative, early-stage IT companies and continues to invest and add value throughout the growth of its portfolio companies. The firm has a strong combination of industry relationships and deep domain and operational expertise to accelerate growth. General partners include Frank Adams, Chuck Cullen, Lawson DeVries, Steve Fredrick, Don Rainey and Joe Zell. The firm has offices in Virginia, Maryland and Colorado. To learn more about Grotech Ventures, please visit grotech.com.

About MissionOG

MissionOG provides capital to early and growth stage B2B technology companies. We apply our experience and capabilities to a group of highly skilled and passionate entrepreneurs whose businesses are on the cusp of exponential growth. Headquartered in Philadelphia, MissionOG is managed by entrepreneurial operators who have effectively built early to growth stage businesses and guided them through successful acquisitions. For more information visit missionog.com.

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News

From Bulgaria

First meeting of the gas group Bulgaria  Macedonia for new direct connection

Temenuzhka Petkova: The gas projects Bulgaria is working on will be important for the diversification in Macedonia

AUTHOR: publics.bg



 Ministry of Energy



The main gas projects Bulgaria is working on will be important for the diversification of the sources and routes of the blue fuel in Macedonia too. The Minister of Energy Temenuzhka Petkova said this in a meeting with her colleague  the Republic of Macedonias Minister of Economy Kreshnik Bekteshi, the Ministry of Energy announced. Minister Bekteshi is in Sofia for the first meeting of the joint working group which will explore the possibilities for the development of an interconnection between the gas systems of the two counties. A memorandum for that was signed during Minister Petkovas visit to Skopje on 1 August 2017.

In the words of the energy minister missing infrastructure is a main problem for the Balkan Region and Bulgaria is working actively to overcome that difficulty. The main focus of starting next year Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU will be Western Balkans, Petkova said. She informed her Macedonian colleague about the status of the projects for construction of interconnectors with countries neighbouring Bulgaria.

Until the end of this month two public procurement procedures connected with the construction of the Interconnection Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) will be announced. Their aim is to have the construction of the pipe started in the middle of next year so that it can being operating by the middle of 2020. Minister Petkova reminded that Bulgaria has signed a contract for the delivery of 1 billion cubic metres of natural gas from Azerbaijan, which will enter the country through the IGB.

Bulgaria-Romania interconnector is already running and the development of the Bulgaria-Turkey and Bulgaria-Serbia ones is making progress, Petkova informed. The future gas distribution centre which is supported by the Bulgarian government will provide a platform for trading natural gas and a possibility for liberalization of the gas market in the whole region, Petkova underlined.

Minister Bekteshi also clarified that missing infrastructure is a major issue for Macedonia too. He added that his country needs an additional gas connection with Bulgaria so that it is not reliant on a single source. The joint working group, which meets today in Sofia, will explore the possibilities for the development of a new interconnection between the gas infrastructures of the two countries.
The ruling means that parents will have trouble defending themselves if criminal charges are filed for spanking a child.

Corporal punishment is common is a several African settings including at schools and is perceived as the most effective mode of child discipline.

The judgment did not create a new offence, as hitting a child, whether your own or someone else's, has always been assault under the countrys criminal law.

However, in the past a parent who smacked or spanked a child had special defence of reasonable chastisement to plead. They stood to be acquitted of assault if they could prove that the chastisement was moderate and reasonable.

High Court Judge Kightly in reading her ruling said it was time for parents to be held responsible .

Many parents may believe they they are behaving reasonably. However, given the levels of child abuse and domestic violence in our country, it is likely that many a child is subjected to levels of physical punishment that, regardless of their parents belief, they are unable to withstand.

Countries such as Kenya, Tunisia and South Sudan actually abolished corporal punishment in all settings.
East Africa's economic powerhouse is along what has been popularly labelled as the " Southern Route ", spanning from Afghanistan to India and Pakistan. From there the drugs are then transited to Kenya and Tanzania before its final destination of Nigeria and Europe.

The popularity of the Kenyan route is based on its almost nonexistent enforcement of maritime law, a lack of inter country co-operation and poor socio-economic circumstances.

The port of Mombasa has proven to be a popular destination with an even more worrying trend being the increased local consumption of the opiates, with the UNODC estimating about 2.5 tonnes of product being consumed annualy.

Earlier this year, representatives from the Triangular Initiative (TI) countries - Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan - recently got together for the first time with representatives from Africa and Indian Ocean states - Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Seychelles, South Africa and Tanzania - the UAE, and Colombia, to share experiences and best practices at the inter-regional level on how to detect, investigate and disrupt the methods used by transnational organized crime groups to finance their activities.
LONDON  Andrea Leadsom has told colleagues that she hopes to be Britain's first female Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Reports earlier this year suggested that the MP for South Northamptonshire wanted to be promoted to either Home Secretary or Foreign Secretary in the Cabinet re-shuffle following Theresa May's failure to win a majority in the June election.

Allies of Leadsom have dismissed these claims, suggesting that the Conservative minister's true ambition is to make it into Number 11 Downing Street.

Leadsom's allies add that she is not is actively angling to replace current Chancellor Philip Hammond, who reportedly faces a potential attempted coup in the aftermath of the upcoming budget.

However, her name has been floated as a potential candidate to replace Hammond, should he be forced out.

A Cabinet discussion on the Autumn budget held last week descended into "14 different job applications to be Chancellor," The Times reported on Monday, with Leadsom's name among a handful of ministers alleged to have made their opinions on the government's economic policy known to Hammond and Prime Minister May.

Responding to claims, Leadsom told BI in a statement: "My sole focus is on making a huge success of our Brexit legislation. I am committed to my role as Leader, and to supporting the Prime Minister in delivering a successful Brexit as well as a positive domestic programme, creating a better future for all in this great country."

The MP was also asked about the claims in an interview with the World At One's Martha Kearney on Tuesday afternoon. Here's the exchange:

Kearney: "And finally, there have been some suggestions that you'd like to be the first female Chancellor?"

Leadsom: "You know, I am absolutely focused on the quite challenging proposal of getting through all of our Brexit legislation and our domestic legislation which of course is seeking to make a country that works for everyone. That's where my central focus is and it's quite a heavy workload, and I am absolutely supporting the prime minister..."

Kearney: "You're not ruling the idea of being chancellor?"

Leadsom: "I am absolutely focused on the job I'm doing right now and I think that there's already a very good chancellor who is working extremely hard as we all are on delivering on our agenda for government."

Sharks circle Hammond

Hammond is enduring a difficult patch as Chancellor as he struggles to juggle the economic effects of Brexit with pressure on the government to reduce austerity and spend more money on areas like health and housing.

Some Tory party Brexiteers have accused Hammond of being overly-gloomy about Britain's prospects outside of the EU. Nadine Dorries MP has publicly called for Hammond to go, claiming he is a "sour Eeyore" over Brexit.

Dorries was one of a number of Conservative MPs who suggested that the country needed a Chancellor with an "upbeat message" about Brexit.

"We dont have that," she told LBC earlier this month. "We have a sour Eeyore at the moment and that is not good for the economy, its not good for UK plc, its not good for business in general."

First elected to the House of Commons in 2010, Leadsom has quickly risen to the top of the Conservative party, largely due to her vocal support for Britain's departure from the European Union.

She stood to replace former prime minister and Tory leader David Cameron in 2016, and refused to rule out another bid to become Conservative leader in an interview with BI at party's Autumn conference in Manchester.
The government through the Ministry of Education has over the years banned the use of mobile phones in secondary and basic schools, saying that they are a great source of distraction to children in school.

Some second cycle schools attract a sanction of outright dismissal should a student be in possession of a mobile phone.

But Communications Minister Ursula Owusu-Ekuful said speaking at the National Dialogue on digital transformation said the Communications Ministry is in talks with the Education Ministry to lift the ban on the use of mobile phones in such schools.

"We are currently having discussions with the Ministry of education on the opportunities being given to students to use mobile devices but not just to use them for fun in school but to have curricula loaded unto the devices so that they use as learning aids and not fun tools.
According to worldnewsdailyreport.com, between June 2016 and March 2017, a total of 86 women who had paid 50,000 yuan ($7,700) to be inseminated with sperm from candidates carefully selected from the Chinese elite were instead fertilized with swine semen.

READ MORE: Entrepreneur sets up website to find soulmate

It further reported that only 4 of these women actually got pregnant, and all of them miscarried before the end of their pregnancies.

The horrible act came to light when one of the aborted fetuses was so deformed that a doctor who saw it demanded an autopsy. The autopsy report then revealed that the embryo was part human and part animal.

The incident sparked a lot of controversy and a police investigation was initiated, leading to the discovery of an unusual fraud involving the Rhinoceros Horn Fertility Clinic and six of its employees.

They discovered that the clinic was purchasing pig semen from farmers in a nearby village and using it to fertilize its clients.

Police investigation of the clinics dozens of refrigerated containers revealed the animal semen labeled as platinum quality and sold at a higher price than regular quality human semen.
The man reported to be mentally ill violated the countrys blasphemy law.

Patrick OConnor was arrested at St. Michaels Church in Sneem after he took off his pants and began touching himself in a rather strange manner during a mass.

According to worldnewsdailyreport.com, the man, who is known to suffer from schizophrenia and repeated psychosis, allegedly masturbated for more than 5 minutes while running around the church before he was immobilized by other attendees.

The police arrived on the church premises a few minutes later and the naked man was arrested and taken away.

71-year old Dorothy McIntyre, who filed the accusations against Mr. OConnor, said she contacted the police because she was appalled by Mr. OConnor disrespect for the Catholic Church.

He was running around naked in a church and committing unspeakable acts. He will burn in hell for his sins.

She said it was her duty to complain under the Defamation Act, which makes blasphemy a crime punishable by a fine of up to 25,000 euros ($37,500.) and 10 years in prison.

Mr. OConnor was sentenced to the maximum possible sentence, by the Honorable judge Sara OLeary, who described this case as the perfect example of why the blasphemy law exists.

Patrick OConnors sentence has sparked a lot of controversy with many human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch describing it as outrageous and called for his freedom.
According sky news report, the Palestinian builder, Halawim Halawi had posted the words with a photo of himself in the Israeli settlement of Beitar Ilit where he works.

Unfortunately, Facebooks automatic translation software interpreted the post to mean attack them in Hebrew and hurt them in English, according to Haaretz.

The development sparked fear and panic among the public and Israeli police were informed of the message; leading to his arrest.

The police also became more suspicious because he was standing next to a bulldozer. Such vehicles have been used in terror attacks and officers thought he was threatening to carry out such an attack.

Mr Halawi was arrested and then questioned on suspicion of incitement.

READ ALSO: Entrepreneur sets up website to find soulmate

Fortunately, police realised they had made a mistake and released him a few hours later.

It was unclear how such a translation error could have been made as there are no apparent similarities between the Arabic expression used for good morning and the phrases in Hebrew or English.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri told the AFP news agency that a few days ago, a Palestinian was detained for questioning on suspicion of incitement through his Facebook page.

She said he was immediately released after the suspicions turned out to be false.
The white men in question have been on trial after they shoved a black man in a coffin and threatened to set him ablaze.

The men were found guilty of six out of seven charges in August 2017.

READ MORE: Man jailed 10 years for masturbating in church during service

Due to the history of protracted racism in South Africa, the courtroom was packed to capacity as activists and representatives from some of the major political parties flocked to witness the conclusion of a case that took the country aback.

In the footage, Willem Oosthuizen and Theo Martins Jackson, could be seen trying to close the lid of the coffin with their boots as Mlothshwa begged for his life.

They could also be heard hurling abuse and threatening to douse him with petrol and set him on fire.

The incident took place on a farm close to Komati power station in Middelburg, a northeastern town, and sparked a national outrage.

The development was reminiscent of the country's racist past, hence the national interest.

According to reports, about 250 people gathered to sing, dance and show solidarity for Mlothshwa.

The supporters held placards with the inscription, "Black Lives Matter", and wearing T-shirts bearing the faces of anti-apartheid icons Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, the protesters said they were demonstrating against abusive, racist behaviour.

Oosthuizen and Jackson pleaded not guilty to the charges of attempted murder, saying they merely wanted to scare Mlotshwa, who they accused of cable theft.
Fraudsters arrested by the Cyber Crime Unit often include staff of these telecom companies who illegally infiltrate the database of the companies they work for, and use the information to commit mobile money fraud, the Finder newspaper reports.

These workers, without authorization, access the database of mobile money merchants, where they change the registration details of customers in order to withdraw money from their accounts.

READ ALSO: Mobile money vendor collapses over GHC6k scam

They subsequently reset the number with the money to a new owner in the database, which gives the new owner access to change the PIN and withdraw monies.

They then acquire new SIM cards and use the pins to withdraw monies from merchants.

The Director in charge of the Cyber Crime Unit of the Ghana Police Service, Chief Superintendent Dr. Herbert Gustave Yankson, told The Finder newspaper that even though cases are reported, the Unit is only able to prosecute only 10 per cent of such cases.

He attributed this to the use of fake identities to register SIM cards.

He expressed worry about the increasing rate at which subscribers of mobile money are being defrauded, and hoped that the issue is curbed as soon as possible.

At least five out of 10 mobile money subscribers have either experienced one form of fraud or have been a target for mobile money fraudsters.
The experienced HR practitioner was appointed to the role by President Akufo-Addo on Monday, September 23, 2017.

He was taken around the office of the FWSC by the Deputy Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Honorable Bright Wireko-Brobbey, who introduced him to some staff members of the Commission.

Dr. Kwapong has a wide range of experience working at Human Resource firms and has previously served as the General Manager at the Human Resources Division of Ghana Commercial Bank, as well as the occupying the role of Chief Executive of consultancy firm HR Perspective Ltd.

READ ALSO: Physician assistants to embark on strike

He is also a graduate of the Solihull College, Birmingham, where he had his Post Graduate Certificate in Job Evaluation and holder of a Masters Degree in Public Administration from the University of Ghana.
The student, Malik S. Y. Basintale in his petition dated Monday, October 23, 2017, accused the Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, of breaching some sections of the 1992 constitution in imposing the sanctions.

He argued that although the NCA had constitutional backing in sanctioning the said stations, it failed to secure parliamentary approval.

READ ALSO: NCA names radio stations whose licenses have been revoked

The Ministry recently announced a reprieve to the over 130 defaulting radio stations, leading to some of them having their licenses restored. Others had their fines halved.

But Master Basintale believes that the previous flat-rate fine should be revisited.

Mr President, I see maintaining of the previous flat rates system in fining these media houses and saving more than 7,000 reporters, editors, hosts, newscasters, bloggers among others their jobs and goodwill to be far better than taking their frequencies and reselling them for just GH30,000 as government revenue.

I do recommend that by virtue of the fact that the Right to Information Bill will put all media houses on the same scale to getting information, we should try to create the right thing on the collection of full penalties and bills from them when all is set and done in the near future so as to favour their stands too in this matter.
At a media briefing in Accra on Monday, the Registrar of the Medical and Dental Council, Dr. Eli Atikpui, said he is worried about the rise of quack doctors in the country.

READ ALSO: Quack doctor who blackmailed women after sex nabbed

According to him, since January 2016, 20 quack doctors had been arrested across the country.

He said ten 10 of the quack doctors were arrested in the Greater Accra Region, three in the Central Region, and the others were arrested in the Volta and Eastern Regions.

Five out of the 20 have so far been prosecuted and sentenced.
This is in fulfilment of the governments promise to the family after the murder of the soldier.

The Defence Minister, Dominic Nitiwul, also told Accra-based Starr FM that the government is working on a trust fund which was established in the name of the late soldier.

The fund which will be called Major Mahama Trust Fund will cater for his wife and children.

Government promised when he was murdered that we would establish a trust fund for him as part of the four things we originally agreed to establish. So we have been working to ensure that we get that bill established.

We went to cabinet and cabinet approved of it, we took it to the Gazette, its been done and today its in Parliament. So its a bill that the President will assent to it after Parliament has done its job. The objective of the fund is to cater for the welfare of the family of the late military officer. And we are hoping by the end of the month Parliament works on it for it to be passed, he said.

Maxwell Adam Mahama was lynched on Monday, May 29, 2017, by residents of Denkyira Obuasi on suspicion that he was an armed robber.

A total of 58 suspects arrested in connection with the murder has since made an appearance at the Accra Central District Court.
#FIFA World Cup Numbers confirmed for S. Korean players South Korea released squad numbers for their players at the upcoming FIFA World Cup in Qatar on Tuesday, with captain Son Heung-min getting his usual No. 7. The Korea Football A...

#BTS Seller of BTS member Jungkook's lost hat referred to prosecution Police on Tuesday referred to the prosecution a former foreign ministry employee accused of attempting to sell BTS member Jungkook's lost hat online, officials said. The suspec...
The suspect, Issah Abdul Mubarik was said to have gone to the Tamale District Police on October 16 this year dressed in military uniform, where he handed over a suspect he claimed had stolen his motorbike some months ago.

READ ALSO: Another fake doctor jailed

The 34-year-old suspect indicated that he was a soldier with the 6BN in Tamale and even wrote same in his complainant statement to the police.

The investigators who had doubts decided to interrogate him and on Monday, October 23, the suspect admitted that he was not a soldier.

READ ALSO: Taxi driver killed

He further claimed that the military accoutrements he had were for his late grandfather.
According to the Railway Ministry, the decision is to allow investigation into the derailment of an Accra bound train from Tema at the Santana Train Station on Monday.

The Ministry has set up a three-member committee to investigate the accident which left 5 persons injured.

The committee members include; Deputy Railway Minister,Kweku Agyemang Boateng whos the Chairman, Director, Regulations and Assurance at the Ghana Railway Authority, Lord Quansah and MD of the Authority, Michael Agyei Anyetei.

The committee is expected to submit its report on November 6.

READ MORE: Several injured in Tesano train crash

On Monday, October 23, 2017, scores of people have been reported injured after an Accra-bound train from Nsawam was involved in an accident at Tesano.
According to the report, Dr. Omane Boamah, greatly contributed to the NDCs embarrassing defeat in the elections.

READ MORE: Mahama and Lordina renew their vows in lovely ceremony

The report said, apart from former President Mahama, who was described as living a life of a movie star in the run-up to the crucial general election, the two aides should take a portion of the blame for the NDCs unprecedented electoral defeat.

The report recounted how the behaviour of former Presidential Staffer Stan Dogbe, in particular, caused the partys massive defeat.

According to the report, "Dr. Omane Boamah and Stan Dogbe were the presidents undoing," adding, "The president was virtually naked with the two around him.

"Omane Boamah and Stan Dogbe convinced the president that he was more popular than the NDC ticket. The two were also the shadow actors of the government," it said.

The report also revealed how vehicles meant for the Presidential Press Corps were not given to them.

The report stated that "only 4 out of the 34 members of the Presidential Press Corps were given vehicles from a pool of about 200 vehicles available for distribution to the press corps and others."

In the report, the Committees engagement with a section of the Press provided a window into the state of the partys relations with the media. The following is a sampling of their views:

There was a disconnect between the media, party and the government communication machinery.

Party spokesperson go and mess up with other stations and come to do damage control on Radio Gold

NDC disrespected its own media

NDC is intolerant of the media

NDC sponsored pro-NPP media who painted themselves as neutral

NDC had no patience to build neutral station

NDC press corps went through inhumane treatment under the party

President Mahamas in-house communication team was squandering resources of the President meant for communication strategy

Ill-treatment of the media; no respect for the media

Presidential press corps was told by stand Dogbe that they were not part of the system and that they were privileged to be part of the presidential press corps.

Quarterly stipend meant for the press corps was not disclosed until August 30, 2016

Only 4 out of the 34 members of the Presidential Press Corps were given vehicles from a pool of about 200 vehicles available for distribution to the press corps and others.

Dr Omane Boamah and Stan Dogbe were the Presidents undoing. The President was virtually naked with the two around him.

Stan Dogbe smashed a pressman's recorder on one occasion and slapped another.

Stan Dogbe edited money meant for victims of the accident involving the Presidential Press Corps from 50,000 that was supposed to be given to them to 5,000 and others got 10,000.

President never met his own presidential press corps among other views contributed to the party's abysmal showing in the December 2016 election.

However, Omane Boamah has denied claims that vehicles intended for the press corps were not given to them.

Dr Omane Boamah said he has "absolutely no idea" about claims in the Kwesi Botchwey report.

He described the claim of diverting cars for journalists at the presidency and other allegations as "lies which have been peddled over a period by some calculated by journalists [and] some calculated by politicians."

READ ALSO: Here are the politicians deemed incorruptible in Ghana

In an interview on Accra-based Joy FM , he said "you can look it from several angles...my position is that this is not a report that the NDC authored because the NDC has not made claim to this.
On Monday, October 23, Akua Donkor was arrested by the police for allegedly defrauding a trader to the tune of GH10,500.

READ ALSO: Police arrest Akua Donkor for alleged fraud

She said relatives of Akua Donkor warned her to stay away from the land in question.

She said, she had called Madam Donkor to complain about the development but all efforts to reach her proved futile.

Akua Donkor who was granted bail accused journalists of being behind her arrest.
According to him, Nana Addo will fail if he rushes to implement his programmes.

READ MORE: 6 major achievements by Nana Addo in 10 months

The Akufo-Addo administration has delivered on some of its campaign promises since taking office in January 2017.

Though a lot of work still needs to be done to see to it that the country's economy is transformed, the government has done a significant amount of work in just ten months to set the right foundation for much needed change Ghanaians voted for.

Ayariga speaking on the achievements chalked by the NPP government said he [Nana Addo] must not rush to implement his pro-poor policies.

READ ALSO: Nurses line up to thank Nana Addo for restoring trainee allowances

"I think they should stop rushing. They have made promises, very good policies and I tell you if they can implement it, they are good policies. We all criticized those policies that they cannot, but if they are able to do it then they have moved Ghana one step ahead. But they should stop rushing and put things in place.
Defence chiefs announced on Monday that the fighting, which claimed more than 1,100 lives and left the eastern half of Marawi in ruins, had ended following a final clash in a mosque in which dozens of gunmen were killed.

The militants had occupied Marawi, the Islamic capital of the mainly Catholic Philippines, on May 23 in what President Rodrigo Duterte and security analysts said was a bid to establish a Southeast Asian base for IS.

The campaign to oust them turned into the Philippines' longest urban war, forcing about 400,000 people to flee their homes as the militants defied near daily bombing raids by hiding in basements, tunnels and mosques.

"We are afraid but we want to check on our houses,"Jamaliah Lomontong, a village official aged in her 40s, told AFP as she and some relatives walked into their neighbourhood near where the main fighting occurred.

Lomontong said her house had survived, although it bad been looted.

"Anything easy to take away has gone -- televisions, laptops," she said.

Only a few dozen civilians could be seen on Tuesday morning on the outskirts of the the mostly destroyed eastern half of Marawi, where regular bursts of gunfire and occasional explosions could still be heard.

However the sounds of war did not mean there was renewed fighting, according to Colonel Romeo Brawner, deputy commander of Marawi forces.

He told AFP they were due to soldiers going through buildings looking for militants who may still be hiding, while troops were also detonating bombs that the gunmen had planted.

"It's possible that there were some (militants) left behind. In every war, that is the SOP (standard operating procedure)," Brawner told AFP.

"So the firing is part of the mopping operations, because if there are holes, tunnels (in buildings), then the troops fire first into the hole before they check with their flashlights," he said.

In the western half of the city, which largely escaped the fighting, hundreds of residents had begun returning.

"I feel a mixture of joy and sadness," businessman Gonaranko Mapandi Jnr, 46, told AFP as he stood close to a military checkpoint.

"I'm happy because we are able to return. But I'm very sad at what happened to my city."
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The embattled chairman of the House Intelligence Committee announced on Tuesday that he had opened an investigation in conjunction with the House oversight committee into why the FBI did not inform Congress of its reported concerns over a Russian bid to control a Canadian mining firm with holdings in the US.

Devin Nunes' announcement came one week after The Hill

Nunes on Tuesday said he wanted to know "whether or not there was an FBI investigation, whether or not there was a DOJ investigation, and if so, why Congress was not informed of this matter."

Asked whether it was appropriate for him to be investigating Russia-related matters after his recusal in April because of ethics concerns over his ties to the White House, Nunes asked reporters to reread his statement and "stop referring" to his recusal.

He added that the committee had been looking into the matter and meeting with "informants" for several months and that the White House had not been involved.

But President Donald Trump took an immediate interest in the story after The Hill published its report, tweeting on Thursday that the "

enate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley.

The Iowa Republican sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions last Wednesday asking whether the Department of Justice was investigating the fact that former President Bill Clinton was paid for a speech around the time that the US government approved the Uranium One deal, and that Russians donated millions to the Clinton Foundation years before the uranium deal.

Trump used the uranium deal to try to undercut Clinton during the campaign and draw scrutiny away from his own potential Russia ties. He claimed in October 2016 that Clinton gave uranium to Russia "for a big payment," which The Washington Post latersaid inaccurate.

Fact checkers more broadly have been quick to push back on characterizations of the uranium deal as a quid pro quo between Clinton and Russia, and PolitiFactfoundthat the US produces such little uranium that the "concerns were out of proportion."

The Post's fact checkerthat although the State Department was one of several agencies that would have been able to approve the 2010 deal, "there is no evidence Clinton herself got involved in the deal personally, and it is highly questionable that this deal even rose to the level of the secretary of state."
Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican and outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, will not seek reelection in 2018, he announced Tuesday.

Flake delivered a searing 17-minute indictment of the president, who he called "reckless, outrageous, and undignified," and his fellow Republicans who remain loyal to the administration, on the Senate floor on Tuesday.

"When the next generation asks us, 'Why didn't you do something? Why didn't you speak up?' What are we going to say?" Flake asked. "Mr. President, I rise today to say enough."

The senator went on to warn his colleagues, and the country, that failing to stand up to Trump could spell disaster for the GOP and the nation.

Here are the highlights:

Independent Journal Review reporter Haley Byrd tweeted that Flake received standing ovations from both Democratic and Republican senators, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican Sens. Bob Corker, John Barrasso, Todd Young, and Democratic Sens. Chris Coons, Tim Kaine, Maggie Hassan, and Jeff Merkley.

McConnell and Flake's fellow Arizona senator, John McCain, both praised the senator's integrity and service to the country following his speech.

"I have seen Jeff Flake stand up for what he believes in knowing full well that there would be a political price to pay," McCain said.

Flake told The Arizona Republic on Tuesday that his brand of libertarian-leaning Republican politics does not square with some of Trump's policy positions, including on immigration and trade, and that he could not condone the president's behavior.

"There may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party," Flake said, adding, "This spell will pass, but not by next year."

"Here's the bottom line: The path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I'm not willing to take, and that I can't in good conscience take," he said. "It would require me to believe in positions I don't hold on such issues as trade and immigration and it would require me to condone behavior that I cannot condone."

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon predicted that Flake, whose dismal approval rating among Arizonans has hovered around 20% for the past few months, would give up his seat, telling The New York Times last month that if Flake "doesn't get a better poll in the next 30 days, you're going to see him step down or the establishment is going to make him."

Bannon has endorsed Kelli Ward, a former state senator who unsuccessfullly challenged McCain in 2016 and has won praise from Trump. Ward pledged to paint Flake as "an obstructionist to the America First agenda that Donald Trump touted on the campaign trail, and that the American people want to see enacted."

Ward may now be challenged by several other candidates in the GOP primary, including Arizona State Treasurer Jeff DeWit, former Arizona Republican Party Chairman Robert Graham, and Arizona Board of Regents member Jay Heiler.
WASHINGTON  After the mass shooting in Las Vegas, the deadliest of its kind in modern history, there was a spur of energy by lawmakers on Capitol Hill to move forward on one very specific gun control measure  a ban on bump stock devices that are used to increase the rate of fire on semiautomatic rifles, which the Las Vegas shooter had attached to a dozen of firearms inside his hotel room.

But several weeks later, the issue has faded from both headlines and the agenda in Congress, despite a bipartisan bill to ban the bump stock devices that a number of Republicans signaled they could support.

Reps. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Carlos Curbelo, a Republican from Florida, introduced a bump stock ban in the days following the attack. A similar bill was brought forth by Democrats Mike Thompson and David Cicilline, but without Republican support. The Moulton-Curbelo bill had an additional nine Republican cosponsors.

House Speaker Paul Ryan even signaled he would be open to discussing the issue, telling conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt, "C

But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has made it clear that it cannot ban bump stocks, which was noted in a 2013 letter to Colorado Rep. Ed Perlmutter.

"We remain committed to the security of our Nation and the fight against violent crime," wrote Assistant Director for Public and Governmental Affairs Richard Marianas. "However, bump-fire stocks that do not fall within any of the classifications for firearm contained in Federal law may only be classified as firearms components. Stocks of this type are not subject to the provisions of Federal firearms statutes. Therefore, ATF does not have the authority to restrict their lawful possession, use, or transfer."

The ATF did not respond to a request for comment on an updated policy regarding a potential ban on the sale, transfer, or use of bump stocks.

Now, almost a month after the shooting, any talk of a bump stock ban has left the halls of Congress.

Curbelo told Business Insider on Monday that his bill "will come back" because he "highly highly" doubts the ATF will be able to "change their regulations in a credible way."

"I think interest groups and maybe some members have convinced others to hold back for some time," said Curbelo in reference to the NRA's position of leaving it up to the ATF. "I think that's a mistake."

"A lot of the attacks that have been leveled against the bill are completely false," Curbelo added. "The bill is very clear that it bans bump stocks and devices like it that are designed to circumvent existing laws."

In terms of what Ryan and the rest of the Republican leadership are planning, Curbelo said, "I don't think they've thought that far" and that their focus is on overhauling tax code at the moment.

"So we're gonna keep demanding a vote and I think there will be more pressure to do that once, in my opinion, the [ATF] fails to adequately respond  because they've admitted that they're unable to do so already," Curbelo said.

A senior GOP leadership aide told Business Insider that House leaders and relevant committees are still discussing the best course of action and communicating with the ATF about what options are on the table, noting Ryan's preference to have bump stocks regulated by administration officials instead of Congress.

But the slow pace at which any action on gun control happens is a bit demoralizing for lawmakers who have been set on seeing the slightest change.

Sen. Chris Murphy, the Connecticut Democrat often at the forefront of pushing for increased gun control, told Business Insider that "it's difficult with a 24-hour news cycle to keep attention on the policy solutions in the aftermath of these murders."

Murphy added that what it boils down to is a lack of regular order and an ability to work in a bipartisan fashion in Congress, which prevents anything from even having a debate.
A man began throwing confetti-like Russian flags at President Donald Trump as he walked through the lobby of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on Tuesday.

Trump was on his way to a working lunch with Republican senators to discuss their efforts to push tax cuts when the protester, who identified himself as Ryan Clayton from the group Americans Take Action, interrupted pool reporters and threw the Russian flags at Trump.

As the press pool asked Trump whether he had any response to recent criticism from Republican Sen. Bob Corker, Clayton began shouting, "Trump is treason!"

Protester inside the Senate... @ Joe Perticone

Trump continued walking past the pool and did not respond to Clayton's comments.

"Why are you talking about tax cuts when you should be talking about treason?" Clayton said, as several reporters turned around and began recording the outburst.

Russian flags thrown at Trump as he arrives at U.S. Capitol

"This president conspired with agents of the Russian government to steal an election, we should be talking about treason in Congress, not about tax cuts," Clayton said before being detained by Capitol Hill police.

The congressional intelligence committees and Justice Department are conducting parallel investigations Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The investigations are also looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow to tilt the race in his favor.
US Air Force and from the US Strategic Command officials have said there are no immediate plans to put nuclear bombers on 24-hour alert.

Questions about plans for US bombers came after a Defense One report that facility upgrades at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana were part of an effort to prepare for an order to go to 24-hour ready alert with US nuclear bombers.
The two women on trial in Malaysia in connection with the murder of Kim Jong Nam were taken back to the scene of the crime on Monday  the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Kim Jong Nam was North Korea leader Kim Jong Un's half-brother. Siti Aisyah, who is Indonesian, and Doan Thi Huong, who is Vietnamese, are accused of rubbing a highly toxic nerve agent on Kim Jong Nam's face.

Both have pleaded not guilty and claim they were told it was a game show prank.

Along with the suspects, judges, lawyers, and scores of police were also brought to the airport. Many of the pictures, seen below, are from the check-in area, where authorities say Kim Jong Nam was attacked.

Armed police were everywhere in the airport.

Here's what it looked like the day of the attack: A still image from a CCTV footage shows a man purported to be Kim Jong Nam, circled in red, talking to airport staff after being attacked.

During Monday's tour, Doan Thi Huong was escorted by police around the airport. Note the Burger King "King Box" advertisement in the background.

Siti Aisyah, also on trial, toured the airport as well with armed police.

The defendants were not the only people brought to the airport. High court judge Azmi Ariffin, seen below in glasses, toured the scene as well.

Ariffin visited the check-in kiosk at the airport.

Malaysian deputy public prosecutor Muhammad Iskandar Ahmad, seen in the center, was also seen at the check-in kiosk.

Due to the sensitive nature of the trial, there was a large number of police on the scene.

Here, police pack in to an escalator.
Since ISIS made international headlines by invading Iraq from Syria in June of 2014, its territory has shrunken considerably.

The terrorist group's steady loss of territory culminated in the fall of its de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria last week.

In October 2014, ISIS territory in Syria and Iraq was at its maximum. The radical Islamist group controlled land stretching from central Syria all the way to the outskirts of Baghdad including major cities like Mosul, Fallujah, Tikrit, and Raqqa.

Although the region ISIS controlled was mostly desert, it encompassed an array of ethnic and religious groups, including Assyrian Christians, Yazidis, Kurds, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs. Many of the non-Sunni groups were the victims of targeted violence by ISIS, which perpetrated genocide against the Yazidis and Assyrians.

The map of ISIS territory from October 2017 shows that the group has lost all of its major urban strongholds and is now confined to the sparsely-inhabited border territories between Iraq and Syria.

Nevertheless, experts say the sparse desert area that ISIS has fallen back on is part of the same Sunni-majority region that fueled its rise.
An attack in Niger that left four American Green Berets and five Nigerien soldiers dead earlier this month has sparked a nationwide debate over how the Trump administration has handled the incident.

During a condolence call with Myeshia Johnson, the widow of one of the men who was killed, President Donald Trump reportedly told her that her husband "knew what he signed up for." Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida, a friend of Johnson's family who listened to the call on speakerphone, called Trump's remarks "insensitive."

In response, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly called Wilson an "empty barrel," and said he was appalled that the congresswoman shared what she heard on that call. Trump fired off several tweets calling Wilson "wacky" and disagreeing with the widow's impression of the call.

As the feuding continued, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford held a press conference at the Pentagon on Monday addressing reports that the Trump administration was withholding information about what really happened in Niger.

Here's what we know about how the attack unfolded, according to Dunford's timeline:

October 3: A reconnaissance mission

Dunford said 12 members of the US Special Operations Task Force joined 30 Nigerien forces on a reconnaissance mission from Niamey, Niger's capital city, to an area near the remote village of Tongo Tongo.

October 4: The day of the attack

US soldiers and the Nigerien troops met with local leaders to try to gather intelligence information, Dunford said. Some of the soldiers stayed behind to guard their vehicles, a US defense official told CNN.

As the meeting came to a close, the soldiers became suspicious when the village leadership started stalling and delaying their departure.

When US troops started walking back to their vehicles mid-morning, they were attacked by approximately 50 militants. Dunford said the enemy was likely from an ISIS-affiliated group of local tribal fighters.

The militants fired on the US-Nigerien patrol team with small arms, machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades. This apparently caught the Americans and Nigeriens by surprise.

One hour later: US troops request reinforcements

An hour into the firefight, the American soldiers asked for support to thwart the attack.

Dunford said a drone arrived overhead "within minutes," although it was only sent to gather intelligence. French Mirage fighter jets capable of striking enemy targets arrived at the scene "within an hour."

Later that afternoon, French attack helicopters arrived along with a Nigerien quick reaction force as well.

Sgt. La David Johnson was somehow separated from the rest of his unit. US military officials were not able to explain how or when exactly that happened.

"This [attack] was sophisticated," an intelligence official told ABC News. "Our guys not only got hit hard, but got hit in-depth."

Responding to questions about why the US troops didn't request reinforcements sooner, Dunford said he wouldn't judge why it took them an hour to ask for backup.

"I've been in these situations myself where you're confronted with enemy contact, [and] your initial assessment is you can deal with that contact with the resources that you have," he said. "At some point in the firefight, they concluded they then needed support, and so they called for additional support."

That night: US soldiers evacuated

French military Super Puma helicopters evacuated US soldiers who were wounded during the firefight to Niamey.

Three soldiers killed in action were also evacuated: Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, and Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright. One soldier, Sgt. Johnson, was still missing.

October 6: Johnson's body is finally discovered

Dunford said US officials continue to investigate how Johnson separated from the team and why it took 36 hours to recover his body.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis, meanwhile, has insisted that Johnson was not "left behind."

"The US military does not leave our troops behind, and I would just ask you not question the actions of the troops who were caught in the firefight and question whether or not they did everything they could in order to bring everyone out at once," he said.

An intelligence official told ABC News that Johnson's locator beacon was giving unclear reports, and he seemed to be moving.

"Johnson's equipment might have been taken," the official said. "From what we now know, it didn't seem like he was kidnapped and killed. He was somehow physically removed from where the combat took place."

That same day, the Pentagon identified the three other soldiers who were killed.

October 7: Johnson's body is returned to Dover Air Force Base in Maryland

October 16: Trump first addresses the incident publicly

During a press conference at the White House, CNN asked Trump why it took so long for him to come out with a statement about what happened in Niger.

"If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn't make calls," Trump responded. "A lot of them didn't make calls. I like to call when it's appropriate."

Obama administration officials pushed back hard on that claim, calling it false.

That exchange was the first time Trump addressed the Niger ambush publicly.

Tuesday, October 17 to Monday, October 23: The condolence call controversy

Trump, Kelly, and Wilson exchanged barbs last week, disagreeing over what the president said during his condolence call with Myeshia Johnson, Sgt. Johnson's widow.

The Gold Star widow broke her silence on Monday, saying that Trump had trouble remembering her husband's name and told her that "he knew what he signed up for." Johnson said she cried after she got off the phone.

After the interview aired, Trump tweeted, "I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!"

"If my husband is out here fighting for our country, and he risked his life for our country, why can't you remember his name? That's what made me upset and cry even more," she told "Good Morning America."

October 23: Dunford outlines key details in the attack

In a 45-minute briefing on Monday, Dunford acknowledged that many looming questions about the attack are still unanswered.

Questions he's hoping the military's investigation can uncover include:
New details from US intelligence officials and a survivor of the deadly ambush near the Niger-Mali border that killed four US soldiers shine a light on an incident that has created a political firestorm in Washington.

What was supposed to be a reconnaissance mission to meet with local elders shifted to a kill-or-capture operation, taking them out on a mission for over 24 hours, according to an intelligence official in an ABC News report.

"They should have been up and back in a day," the official told ABC News. "Because they were up there so f------ long on a mission that morphed, they were spotted, surveilled and ultimately hit."

As the 12-person Special Forces detachment and 30 Nigerien partner forces embarked on their mission on the morning of October 3, they received intelligence reports that contact with an enemy force was "unlikely," Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford said during a press conference on Monday.

When the US troops were heading back to base, however, they received a call to kill or capture a target that was considered to be one of the "top three objectives in Niger," several intelligence sources told ABC News. Codenamed "Naylor Road," the target was affiliated with Al Qaeda and ISIS, ABC News reported. Dunford also confirmed on Monday that a group of ISIS-affiliated tribal fighters attacked the US troops.

A second Special Forces team was supposed to meet with the original team for the revised mission, ABC News said. When the second team was unable to do so, the original team was ordered to continue their mission  which resulted in nothing substantial.

The team eventually stopped at a village on the morning of October 4, where a village elder was "obviously and deliberately trying to stall them" by displaying an ill child to the troops and grabbing a goat to prepare for them, sources told ABC News. When the troops departed, they came under fire from militants, the survivor of the battle said.

The survivor also praised the bravery of Sgt. La David Johnson, one of the soldiers killed during the battle, according to ABC News.

"Without a doubt, his courage and bravery in action that day were above and beyond expectation," the survivor said. "He died fighting for his brothers on his team. You can quote that verbatim."

"He grabbed any and every weapon available to him," the survivor added. "The guy is a true war hero."

Nigerien sources also suggested that US troops were tracking down an ISIS-affiliated target and were intentionally delayed, according to a Voice of America report.

But Moussa Askar, a specialist in terrorism in Africa's Sahel region who was briefed on the attack by defense officials, said a fake terror attack took place nearby, to which US forces responded. There, the troops were ambushed by militants with automatic rifles and heavy weaponry.

Despite the initial intelligence assessment before the troops set off on their mission, locals have painted a bleaker picture of performing military operations in the area.

"The attackers, the bandits, the terrorists have never lacked accomplices among local populations," Almou Hassane, the mayor of the village near which US troops were attacked, told Voice of America. Following the attack, the village chief was reportedly arrested and placed in government custody.

Around 800 US troops are operating in Niger, along with 4,000 French troops in West Africa, according to Dunford. US forces have reportedly been in the region for more than 20 years and are stationed there to "defeat violent extremism in Africa," in addition to dealing with the "global threat with foreign fighters, Dunford said on Monday.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford on Monday held a press conference at the Pentagon in which he addressed reports that officials were holding back information surrounding the battle in Niger that left four US troops dead and two wounded early this month.

Though Dunford offered a general timeline of events involving what he said was a 12-person Special Forces detachment and 30 Nigerien partner forces, he refused to speculate on many details until the full investigation ran its course.

Dunford said the coalition force began a reconnaissance mission in Niger on October 3. He said contact with enemy troops was believed to be "unlikely" at the time, but as the force was returning to its operating base the next morning, he said, about 50 local ISIS-affiliated tribal fighters carried out an attack.

Asked why US troops were accompanying Nigerien forces, Dunford said US forces would "only accompany partner forces when the chances of enemy contact are unlikely."

"If we have a specific threat to the homeland and local forces are unable to deal with that threat, United States forces are going to deal with that threat," Dunford said. "But the bias is towards enabling local African partners to conduct operations in Africa."

Dunford said US troops requested additional support about one hour after first taking fire from militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades, small arms, and civilian vehicles outfitted for combat. French Mirage jets responded about 30 minutes later, according to Dunford.

It is unclear whether the jets were armed with bombs or what effect they had on the battle.

Dunford said it was not yet known why the call for help came only an hour into the battle, but he suggested the coalition force may have initially thought it could handle the situation on its own.

"The one thing I would push back on hard is, I'm not putting any pressure on that unit," Dunford said. "I make no judgment as to how long it took for them to ask for support."

A remotely piloted aircraft was also dispatched after the call for backup, Dunford continued, but he said it only relayed intelligence did not strike at targets.

US casualties were evacuated by French helicopters after the firefight, but it wasn't until the evening of October 6, two days after the assault, that Sgt. La David Johnson's body was recovered by Nigerien forces, Dunford said. Though Johnson's body was found one mile from the scene of the ambush, according to administration officials in a CNN report, Dunford declined to comment on specifics, citing the ongoing investigation.

About 800 US troops are operating in Niger, along with 4,000 French troops in West Africa, Dunford said, adding that US forces had been in Niger "on and off" for more than 20 years and were stationed in the country to "defeat violent extremism in West Africa."

"This area is inherently dangerous," Dunford said, adding: "We're there because ISIS and Al Qaeda are operating in that area."

The White House has been criticized for its delayed response in offering a clear picture of the circumstances leading to the deaths of the US soldiers as well as five Nigerien troops. President Donald Trump delivered his first remarks on the attack about 12 days after it took place, and he eventually became mired in a dispute with a Florida congresswoman who took issue with his words in a call to Johnson's widow.

Dunford said in carrying out the investigation, officials were "trying to balance the need to do this quickly with the need to make sure that it's accurate."

"We owe the families of the fallen more information," Dunford said.

Lawmakers seem intent on receiving more information on the battle. Sen. John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has threatened to issue a subpoena.

On Wednesday, McCain said the White House was not being up front about the Niger ambush, and he said he would like the information his committee "deserves and needs."
1. Facebook is changing the way the News Feed works in six countries. Media organisations that don't pay to have their posts promoted will only see their content show up in users' Explore tab, but not the main feed.

2. Snap reportedly overestimated the demand for its Spectacles. There might be "hundreds of thousands" of unsold units, even though CEO Evan Spiegel previously said it had beaten expectations.

3. A number of users are reporting delays in the estimated shipping time of the Pixel 2 smartphone.Google will offer the affected customers a free Live Case, which normally costs $40 (30).

4. Tech evangelist Robert Scoble is leaving his virtual reality startup Transformation Group following a number of sexual assault allegations. Cofounder Shel Israel will keep running the company on his own.

5. IT and networking giant Cisco is buying software maker BroadSoft for about $1.9 billion (1.4 billion). The move comes as part of an effort to further expand its reach both in software and cloud services.

6. Amazon is shutting down its five-year old Amazon Wine division. The dedicated service's purpose will now be fulfilled by Amazon Prime, Amazon Fresh, and Whole Foods, which will keep selling a variety of wines at different price points.

7. Images of HTC's upcoming flagship smartphone have leaked. The tentatively named "U 11 Plus" looks similar to the standard U 11, but has far less bezel, a bigger screen, and a fingerprint reader relocated to the phone's back.

8. A new teardown revealed how Google's Pixel smartphone obtained its IP67 water and dust resistance certification. The Mountain View firm didn't just cover the device with a special waterproof coating, but apparently covered the inside of the ports with particular gels typically used in off-roading vehicles.

9. New lines of code inside the Google Search app suggested that the company is working on a touchscreen-enabled, Amazon Echo Show-like device. The tabletop, previously codenamed "Manhattan," is now referred to inside Google's code as "Quartz."
Speaking to an 80-strong delegation of Religions for Peace, he said that religion plays an important role in building peace, Independent Catholic News reports.

In his words, Religions, with their spiritual and moral resources, have a specific and unique role to play in building peace. They cannot be neutral, much less ambiguous, where peace is concerned.

"Peace is both a divine gift and a human achievement, believers of all religions are called to implore peace and to intercede for it.

"Peacemaking and the pursuit of justice go together and all men and women of good will, particularly those in positions of responsibility, are summoned to work for peace with their hearts, minds and hands.

"Religions are bound by their very nature to promote peace through justice, fraternity, disarmament and care for creation. There is a need for a common and cooperative effort on the part of the religions in promoting an integral ecology.

Religions have the wherewithal to further a moral covenant that can promote respect for the dignity of the human person and care for creation, he added.

Everything he says makes perfect sense but it does not change the fact that many have killed and died in the name of religion.

Considering this, it makes sense that some would want a world without no religion.

In this religion-less world, would faith still be an important part of building peace?

I don't think so. I think it is possible to be a kind and peace-loving person, even without religion, hence the word - moral.
1989 was the last time a student of this faculty graduated with first class in Surgery. That was 28 years ago when Obafemi Awolowo University herself was just 28 years old.

Since 1989, thousands of students have passed through the Surgery department. Thousands of them have tried their best to make first class, but none seems 'brilliant enough' to break the record that was set when Surgery was a young practice in Nigeria.

And instead of breaking the jinx to set a new record, a discouraging legacy was established. A legacy that has seen no student graduate with first class since 1989.

Students' inability to break certain records in Nigerian Universities is a tradition. It is not because the students are dull or because they have never tried their best to break the records, but some departments and lecturers believe a certain tradition has to be kept alive.

Literally, what this tradition means is that no matter how you try, you can not break the record even if you are brighter than Albert Einstein.

But somehow Aarinola Olaiya proved the Einstein in her, she grabbed the first-class record that has not been awarded to any student in 28 years at the Surgery department of the Faculty of Clinical Sciences.

While we celebrate Olaiya for her determination to break the terrible academic jinx in her department, it is pertinent to also understand why and an academic record set in 1989 is just broken in 2017.

From what many Nigerian students believe about their lecturers and the system, it is safe to conclude that OAU is one of those institutions in Nigeria that are filled with too many over-knowledgeable tutors who do not only despise their own students but also glorify their failures.

OAU and many other schools like it might pride themselves with good facilities and a great number of professors but a lot of Nigerian students obviously have a negative opinion about schools that hardly produce first class graduates.

Pointing out the systemic and orientation rots that make some lecturers celebrate students' failure, an anonymous graduate described Obafemi Awolowo University as trash.

"It is trash and it is trash just like every other Nigerian school, where they glorify failure of students instead of feeling bad when their students failed.

It is simple if you cook rice and it gets burnt every time, who do you blame? do you blame the rice or the cook? Sometimes there you can have bad rice too but guess what, there is a problem. You don't go about saying hey, my rice get burnt every time, you ought to find a solution.

Everybody knows all those lecturers that would come out to say you can not have An A in my course and they will say it with pride. It is very shameful.

"We have learnt from students that are leaving to study abroad that they are pretty smart. You will remember your classmate that was just average and went abroad and start smashing, everybody has such classmate. So, it is either Nigerian students are dumb or the teaching method makes no sense. And I think Nigerian lecturers are as responsible as the bigger system that rewards failure. It is a culture that celebrates suffering, it is disgusting, we have a mentality in this country."

The ego of some Nigerian lecturers have on many occasions stood in the ways of many students from making first class. These lecturers believe the best of grades is not for students and there is nothing anybody can do about it.

For instance, a department in Lagos State University School of Communication has a maxim that A is for God, B for lecturers and C D and E are for students, who work hard. In other words, no student deserves to have an A in any course.

There is a similar egocentric culture in OAU and that is why the university has been very barren in producing first class graduates.

An English graduate of the University who pleaded anonymity identified a link between OAU lecturers' ego and their culture of glorifying failure.

"I just think there is a culture of glorifying failure as there are many departments without first-class students for certain years and the lecturers even do come to class to point out that their course is so hard that even the most brilliant students could not pass it. I just think most of this boils down to stroke their egos. When I was there, I know a couple of departments that have not produced first-class students for decades."

While it may be argued that OAU is not a University that distributes the first-class award like newspapers, it must also be noted that a faculty that produces no distinction student in five years should cover its face in shame, because it shows something is wrong with the faculty.

It is against this background that Twitter Nigeria chose to bash OAU and celebrated Olaiya for not only breaking the jinx but for also defeating the professors who have made making first-class an unrealistic dream in the University.

Nigeria is losing its best brains to foreign countries on a daily basis. The students adjudged to be below average at home jet out to become the best students in foreign Universities.

While some of them would return to the country to brandish the certificate in the face of the egocentric lecturers, others might choose to stay behind and become senior lecturers like Salihu Dasuki who now lectures at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK.

The Nigerians students abroad do not have two heads, it is the system that made things possible for them. We need to have same system and orientation in the Nigerian Universities to make learning an exciting experience for these students.
It would be recalled the music star lost three of his friends, Tagbo Umeike, Olugbemiga 'DJ Olu' Abiodun and Chime Amaechi all within one week.

It was indeed one terrible period for the star, as he was caught in the drama which saw him being accused by Nollywood actress, Caroline Danjuma of complicity in the mystery surrounding the death of Tagbo Umeike.

Just before the shock of the death of Tagbo was about to settle in, the sudden death of DJ Olu and Chime was announced as they were both found dead in DJ Olu's car. This indeed sounded like the world was collapsing on Davido. Even though the police is still investigating the deaths, there are alleged reports that he has been cleared of any involvement in the incidents.

Looks like he is putting those incidents behind him as he is getting back in the business of making good music and sold out concerts with his ever-energetic attitude.

A big example of Davido getting back to his good old self-was his recent journey to two African countries, Sierra Leone and Guinea Conakry where he had sold out shows.

Just a few days ago, it was the one year coronation anniversary of the Oba of Benin Kingdom, and Davido was the lead performer, performing to the spectacle of the guest and the royal family.
He also found time to share his wealth of knowledge with young journalists at Pulse Nigeria and the Lagos Business school.

This time, on his second visit, days ago, he chose instead to hear the voices of the people, or if you will, the Vox Pop. Kai joined the Pulse Video team for an episode of the aptly-named Vox Pop, a show that samples opinions on matters of daily life.

This time, he and the face of the show, Cee Classic went a step further to ask Nigerians how much they earn and need on a monthly basis.

Even though it is one of the main driving forces, Nigerians are typically reluctant to talk about their personal finances.

Kai himself seemed aware of this. Before kicking off, he said I am particularly excited about this It will not be easy but we will try.

However, whether by the novelty of his persona or just plain old experience and skill, the renowned journalist was able to elicit some very interesting answers from his subjects.

Kai's love of the city and ear for a story reflected in his enthusiastic demeanour as he asked these somewhat-sensitive questions.

One point of note was that while a fair share of the young people asked are still in school or job-hunting, they seem to have a clear idea of how much they need on a monthly basis and its a lot of money.

While the older subjects earn more (one subject says he earns a million naira a month), they are more practical about money.

Kais co-host, Cee Classic did not enjoy the reactions that he did. His subjects, confronted with one of their own, reverted to default settings and gave him vague answers, such as between 100 and 150 thousand and over 200 thousand.

Somehow, it inspires the feeling that Nigerians are more reluctant to discuss their finances with people they share a sort of common ground with.

Regardless of who asked, most subjects agreed that their earnings were barely enough to meet their needs, especially where they earn fixed salaries.

Kai then asked, how do you plan to raise your earnings?

Almost everyone chose the entrepreneurial route, saying that their best chance of financial freedom lay in starting their own business.

Nowhere did this reflect more than in the responses from those who said they earned the most. They were middle aged men who had set up their own businesses.

After hours on the streets of Ikeja, Kai dropped the mic as a newly-crowned Vox Pop veteran.

Visibly excited, he also left with a new dose of insight on how Nigerians view their earnings and their needs.
The Benue State-born priest, Rev. Father Gospower Inalegwu, had shocked many when he denounced the priesthood and dumped the vocation after he alleged that he was kidnapped some few months ago and that the abduction had a telling effect on him.

But while many thought his sudden decision to dump the priesthood was as a result of the trauma he must have suffered following the kidnap, a social media user, Shadrack Okpomhe, who claims to know Father Inalegwu who was serving at the Kano Diocese, posted that he got married secretly a few weeks before he quit the church having served to 11 years.

Okpomhe who also shared photos of Father Inalegwu and his bride on both their traditional and white wedding, added that he faked his kidnap to present a front to warrant leaving the priesthood while in essence, he had made up his mind to discontinue and get married.

Read what Okpomhe posted on his Facebook page?

During the week, a report came in that Rev. Fr. Godspower Inaelegwu who resigned in Kano, got married even before his resignation.

Also, rumour has it that he actually faked his kidnap in order to quit the priesthood. So pathetic and some persons will come and tell me to pray for him, when he himself allowed the devil to use him, accumulating wealth for himself through the priesthood; rubbish, rubbish.

He knew quite alright he wasnt capable, yet he pretended for 11 years in the seminary. It's time CBCN come up and address this issue.

It's becoming so annoying that some hungry men now see the priesthood as an avenue to make money just as did and report coming from his end has it he is also planning to walk down the aisle anytime soon. Too bad.

This is not the first time a Catholic priest will abandon the vocation to settle for a secular life, get married and have children.
From baby throwing to living with dead bodies, below is a list of jaw-dropping cultures from around the globe.

Pulse Nigeria

1. Walking Dead

The Toraja people of Indonesia practice this absurd culture of putting a body in a temporary coffin before resurrecting 'it'.

In villages located in the mountains of South Sulawesi, Indonesia, Shamans have been raising the dead for centuries.

According to the religious beliefs of the Toraja people, in order for a deceased person to reach the afterlife known as Puya or The Land of Souls, their corpse must be returned to the place of their birth for burial.

The corpse is raised from the dead and walks to its new resting place.

2. El Colacho Baby Jumping

The residents of Spain have been taking part in this dangerous and weird culture called El Colacho since 1620. El Colacho means baby jumping and is organized to keep the Devils away. In this festival, infants are laid on the mattresses in the street and the jumpers wear the traditional costumes to look like the Devils.

3. Living with Dead

Can you imagine yourself living with dead bodies? But, its very common practice for some ethnic groups in Indonesia to wrap the deceased up in special garbs and keep it safe in the house they live. It is believed that the soul of their loved ones will be preserved until burial.

Pulse Nigeria

4. Hanging Coffins

You can witness the countless suspended artefacts and occult phenomena on the chillingly steep cliffs along Yangtze River, China.

Some cultures in China bury their family members and hang them over some cliffs after death. Coffins are generally hung 33 to 164 feet high and some even as high as 328 feet above the ground. It is still not known for sure how the coffins were placed at such great heights. Records of hanging coffins date back almost 2000 years.

Pulse Nigeria

5. Throwing babies

Its a common practice for the people in Solapur village, Maharashtra, India, to toss newborn babies off from the terrace of 50ft tower. There are people at the foot of the tower holding sheets to catch the baby safely. It is believed that this gives their children good luck, long and healthy life.

6. Carrying women on hot coals

In Chinese culture, a husband should carry his bride over a pan of burning coals before entering their home for the very first time.

Myth says that this strange custom is performed to ensure she will have an easy and successful labour.

Pulse Nigeria

7. Mourning of Muharram

Every year Muslims from around the world hold religious mourning ceremonies for the third Shia Imam who achieved martyrdom in the desert of Karbala in 680 AD.
Of course, I was yanked out and banned from attending parties for a long time. My only consolation was joining my Church dance group (poor me).

Anyways, I grew older and started practising pole dancing in secret, took a couple of salsa classes on YouTube and bam I felt I could dance! But, deep down, I still yearned to do those sexy Latina moves while grooving to 'Despacito'.

So, imagine how I felt when I learnt there was going to be a Latina rave. Boy oh boy! Was I excited? With my sexiest outfit, I dragged my colleagues on Friday, October 20, 2017, and headed down to Victoria Island for my first Latin rave.

Sultry ladies, sexy men, sensual music, body heat, upbeat lively music, I swear I was swamped. Never in my wildest dream would I have expected to witness what I did. Young people swaying to the beat, becoming one with their partner. I was lost! I could barely do a basic move.

Some poor guy had to put me through the basic steps but I kept messing it up. I was almost in tears, I felt bad as I watched my age groups dancing like pros.

Along the line, the music began to overtake me, I felt sexy, svelte and sultry at the same thing. I was beginning to get into it.

I barely understood what the artists were saying but trust me, the rhythm is enough to get you dancing for days. You can't overcome that feeling, the feeling that makes the average person with intellectual capabilities go mush. You just can't express it but dance and wish you could speak Latin.

I was really excited that Nigeria had a community of such exotic dance lovers and I was welcomed into their fold too.
Starting August 23, a Knowledge Panel will appear in the search results that will give people the option to select, check if youre clinically depressed. Previously, when users searched for this in the U.S., the Knowledge Panel only provided people with general information like symptoms and possible treatment options.

Users who select this will now be directed to PHQ-9, a clinically validated screening questionnaire to test what their likely level of depression is. Google partnered with the National Alliance on Mental Illness to ensure that the information from the questionnaire is both accurate and useful.

"Depression is the leading cause of workplace presenteeism and absenteeism, and so should be of concern to employers," says Ken Duckworth, Medical Director of NAMI. "Untreated depression is associated with the risk of suicide, so this is a public health concern."

According to a study on PHQ-9, the assessment looks at the nine DSM-IV criteria for clinical depression and has people score how often they feel irritability, decreased interest or pleasure, significant weight change or change in appetite, change in sleep, change in activity, fatigue or loss of energy, guilt/worthlessness, concentration issues, and suicidality.

The information is gathered from the private self-assessment, which is not a singular tool for diagnosis, but will help people determine their level of depression and their need for an in-person evaluation. As the first step to getting a proper diagnosis, the results can also help patients have a more informed conversation about their depression with their doctor.

"Many people turn to Google for information about their health, in fact one in 20 searches on Google are health-related," says Vidushi Tekriwal, Product Manager of Google. "Googles mission is to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful."

With one in five Americans experiencing an episode of clinical depression in their life, according to NAMI, Google is hoping this initiative will raise awareness about it, while giving people suffering access to the tools they need to get through tough times.
The Committee on Alleged Misuse, Under-Remittance and Other Fraudulent Activities alleged that the former minister had issued a memo, dated November 11, 2011, to government agencies to only remit 25% of revenue they generated and spend 75% on their expenditures.

According to a report by The Punch, the amount that was supposed to have been remitted to the Federal Government during the period by 93 agencies it investigated was N21.5 trillion.

The memo is blamed for the low remittance of revenue to the Federal Government within the period under probe as 25 of the 93 agencies defrauded the government of a total of N1,695,585,887,406.

According to the panel, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) operated at a deficit of N3.1 trillion, while the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), which generated N335.855 billion, failed to remit N83.963 billion to the Federal Government during the four-year period.

The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) also allegedly failed to remit N33.83 billion after generating N455.5 billion, while the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) reportedly remitted N86.636 billion even though it generated N789.104 billion.

Others indicted by the panel include the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), remitting N13.716 billion out of N3.098 trillion generated; Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), N184.489 billion out of N301.160 billion; and Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), N5.567 billion out of N56.817 billion.

In its interim report, the committee argued that the memo "is a clear violation of Section 120 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) and the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 as well as the establishment acts of some of these institutions."

The committee recommended to the Senate to amend the necessary laws to compel all agencies and institutions of government to comply with all financial regulations.

The report read, "Most of the revenue generating agencies deny the Auditor General of the Federation access to their financial books and records, which is in conflict with Section 125, Subsection (3) a (i and ii); and Subsection (4) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).

"Consequently, the committee recommends as follows: that the Senate should amend the laws where necessary to make it mandatory for all revenue generating agencies to accommodate resident auditors to be posted by the Auditor General of the Federation that will have access to all financial records and books, and to ensure compliance with Section 120(i) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).

"The Fiscal Responsibility Act should be amended in a way to compel all agencies and institutions of government on compliance with financial regulations regarding income generation, accounting and remittances.

"The Senate should also amend the laws where necessary to make it mandatory for all revenue generating agencies to accommodate resident treasury officers to be posted by the Accountant General of the Federation that will have access to all financial records and books."
In 2013, Maina was Chairman of the Presidential Task Team on Pension Reforms (PTTPR) when he was accused of theft to the tune of N2B in the office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation.

Maina was subsequently dismissed by the Federal Civil Service Commission following recommendation by the Office of the Head of Service.

Fugitive

According to the allegation lodged by the senate at the time, Maina had defrauded civil servants of their pensions and had diverted pension funds totaling N2B into his personal bank accounts.

Soon after the senate issued an arrest warrant for Maina, the man allegedly fled to Saudi Arabia to evade law enforcement back home.

In July of 2015, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) charged Maina alongside a former Head of Service, Steve Oronsaye, Osarenkhoe Afe and Fredrick Hamilton B Global Services Limited before a Federal High Court on a 24-count charge bordering on procurement fraud and obtaining by false pretense.

In November of 2015, EFCC declared Maina a wanted man and launched a manhunt for the former chairman of the PTTPR.

According to multiple reports, Maina often sneaked back into Nigeria between 2013 and 2015 and was often on the run.

The EFCC said Maina had remained at large. He also shunned court summons as the EFCC and police officers scoured the planet for him.

N195B theft

In June of 2016, Maina announced that he had been cleared by the senate of an alleged N195B theft.

Maina said the senate had discovered that the 'missing' N195B is in the governments coffers.

He also asked for an apology from the nation and from the national assembly.

I was singled out and I suffered so much as a result of the false allegation, Maina said.

He added that; it is really sad that the same man ( chairman of the senate committee), who told the whole world that I stole N195B has come out to say that the money is intact in Buharis TSA account in the CBN. He must pay for destroying my character, integrity and the loss of my job. I was being haunted all around, and people who had confidence in me thought otherwise of me.

Maina decried that he had been maligned, shot at, psychologically traumatized, denied my due entitlement, hounded for serving my country diligently. If this is the reward for serving ones country, I fear for Nigeria because it would be hard for people to serve this country.

And then he disappeared again.

Reinstatement

On Friday, October 20, 2017, online newspaper Premium Times reported that Maina had returned to the governments payroll.

According to the story; Mr. Maina, who is wanted by the anti-graft agency, EFCC, was secretly recalled and promoted to the position of Director in charge of Human Resources in the Ministry of Interior.

Before his appointment to chair the pension task force, Mr. Maina was an Assistant Director in the ministry.

On Sunday, October 22, 2017, Interior Minister Abdulrahman Dambazau admitted that Maina is now back in the federal civil service.

Dambazau however washed his hands off Mainas re-instatement and blamed the office of the Head of Service for the man's re-emergence in government circles.

The attention of the Honorable Minister of Interior, Lt Gen (Rtd) Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau, has been drawn to a report on the recall of the wanted pension boss sacked for alleged corruption, read a statement from the interior ministers office signed by the press secretary to the Honorable Minister of Interior, Ehisienmen Osaigbovo.

Dambazau who said he wasnt behind Mainas reinstatement added that the ex-Chairman of the Presidential Task Force Team on Pension Reforms, Abdulrasheed Maina was posted few days ago to the Ministry of Interior by the office of the Head of Service on an Acting capacity to fill a vacancy created following the retirement of the Director heading the Human Resources Department in the Ministry.

For the avoidance of doubt, issues relating to discipline, employment, re-engagement, posting, promotion and retirements of federal civil servants are the responsibility of the federal civil service commission and office of the Head of Service of the Federation, of which no Minister exercises such powers as erroneously expressed in the publication.

It is understood that Mainas last posting was with the Ministry of Interior and that is probably why he was re-posted back to the Ministry.

It is therefore improper for anybody to think that a minister could exercise such powers or influence the process of discipline, re-engagement, and deployment of any civil servant to his ministry or any other ministry for that matter.

Again, such responsibility is that of the Federal Civil Service Commission and/or the Head of Civil Service".

Setback

Mainas recall to the federal civil service had been described as an embarrassment for the Muhammadu Buhari administration and a setback for the administration's much vaunted war against widespread corruption.

Buhari won the 2015 election mainly on the back of a promise to tackle corruption and endemic graft in government operations.

ALSO READ: Buhari fires Maina

The presidents anti-corruption adviser, Prof Itse Sagay, says Maina should be arrested without further delay.

This man was accused of embezzling billions of naira meant for pensioners who had spent all their lives serving this country. One man took the money they should rely on in their declining years, subjecting them to misery and hopelessness.

This is a moral and criminal issue. So, to hear that the man is in the country and somebody employed him means he is not the only criminal in the system. It means there is an accessory.

Whoever was involved in employing him and then giving him promotion is an accessory after the fact to the crimes committed by this man if it is established that he is culpable. I dont see why he escaped if he was not guilty.

The EFCC should not just say they are aware; they should take action. The EFCC should now arrest him, interrogate him and if they can establish a case, prosecute him. They should also investigate all those in the reabsorbing and promotion of this man.

Human Rights lawyer, Femi Falana told Punch newspaper that the EFCC has a duty to immediately prosecute Maina.

Maina was declared wanted by the EFCC because of his indictment in a pension scam. Now that he has been located, the EFCC has a duty to charge him without any further delay.

The Head of Service and interior minister who shielded him from prosecution ought to be charged with aiding and abetting the felon.

Those who recalled and promoted the fugitive ought to be sanctioned by President Buhari to serve as a deterrent to others who may wish to sabotage the war against corruption.

Still a wanted man

The EFCC says Maina is still a wanted, runaway fugitive.

In a statement on its website, the anti-graft agency says; the public is hereby notified that Abdulrasheed Abdullahi Maina, former chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team, whose photograph appears above, is wanted by the EFCC for offences bordering on procurement fraud and obtaining by false pretences.

Dark complexioned Maina is allegedly complicit in the over N2B pensions biometric scam in the office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation. He remains at large after charges were filed against his accomplices.

Anybody with useful information as to his whereabouts should contact the commission in its Enugu, Kano, Lagos, Gombe, Port Harcourt or Abuja offices.

Maina is also on the wanted list of INTERPOL (International Police).

However, campaign posters of Maina emerged in the social media space earlier in the year. Hes being positioned as a governorship candidate for Borno State in the 2019 general elections.

STOP PRESS: President Muhammadu Buhari has just fired Maina.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had declared Maina wanted about two years ago after he was indicted in the pension scam.

He reportedly fled the country at the time.

Maina was still on the Commission's wanted list when it came to light over the weekend that he has since been back in the country, reinstated and promoted - a development that has caused outrage amongst Nigerians and put another dent on the President Muhammadu Buhari anti-corruption war.

The EFCC has reportedly launched a manhunt for the ex-pension task force chairman, who was immediately sacked by the President on Monday, October 23, after his embarrassing reinstatement became public.

Although Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau and the Head of Service, Winifred Oyo-Ita had denied involvement in Maina's reinstatement, fresh documents show that they played major roles in the reemployment of the fugitive.

The documents also revealed that the Minister of Justice and the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, was actively involved in Maina's reinstatement.

According to NAN, Maina, who had been reinstated as an acting director in the Ministry of Interior, did not show up at the office on Monday, where he was billed to meet with yet to be identified persons.

The office located at the Old Secretariat in Area 1, consists of a reception, a waiting room before a massive door leading up to the directors office.

The reception looked dreary while two young men in the waiting room fiddled with their phones as they conversed in low tones, the report said.

In response to enquiries about the whereabouts of her new boss, Maina's female secretary was said to have snapped, "I dont know where he is."

ALSO READ: Maina's family battle politicians

A source said Maina travelled to Kano during the weekend and had given appointments to some persons to meet him at the office on Monday but went into hiding soon afterwards.

"He planned to meet with some visitors in his office on Monday but for him to have aborted the appointment and switched off his phones meant he had gone underground. He may not be seen for a little while," the source said.

It was learnt that the fugitive had over the last few months held meetings with several groups and individuals with respect to his ambition to contest in the 2019 governorship election in his home state of Borno.

"Maina has not hidden his political plans as he is known to broadcast his ambition on WhatsAppplatform to his friends and associates," the source further explained.

The EFCC Spokesman, Mr. Wilson Uwujaren, also said the commission is still on his trail.
THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER

Buhari sacks Maina, orders probe of recall, posting

President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the immediate disengagement from service of a former chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abdullahi Abdulrasheed Maina.

Three suicide bombers kill selves, 13 others in Borno

Three suspected Boko Haram suicide bombers have killed themselves and 13 other people as they attacked Muna Garage and Dalti community on the outskirts of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, with strapped Improvised Explosive Devices (IFDs).

Government mulls new petrol pricing model

The Federal Government is considering a review of pricing policy for Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) also known as petrol, to save the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) from the burden of under-recovery in the downstream sector.

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VANGUARD NEWSPAPER

Maina: Outrage as Danbazzau, Head of Service trade blames

President Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday, angrily ordered the immediate dismissal from the civil service of the federation, of Abdulrasheed Maina, the erstwhile boss of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms.

Why Court ordered Police to pay Evans brother-in-law N2m

A Federal High Court sitting in Lagos, yesterday, ordered the Nigerian Police Force to pay Okwuchkwu Obiechina, brother-in-law to popular kidnap kingpin, Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, alias Evans, N2 million.

Southern govs unite on true federalism, devolution of powers

For the first time in 12 years, Governors of the Southern States of Nigeria on Monday met in Lagos, where they unanimously reiterated the call for true federalism and devolution of powers to States.

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THE PUNCH NEWSPAPER

N2bn fraud: Maina on the run

The embattled ex-chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abdulrasheed Maina, who has been accused of complicity in a N2bn fraud, has gone into hiding.

Metuhs trial: Court orders Jonathan to appear on Wednesday

The Federal High Court in Abuja on Monday ordered President Goodluck Jonathan to appear before it to testify as a witness in defence of a former National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh.

I dont know where Kanu is, Abaribe replies FG

Embattled senator representing Abia South Senatorial District, Enyinnaya Abaribe, has denied the claim by the Federal Government that the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, is in his custody.

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THISDAY NEWSPAPER

Southern Governors Unite, Insist on True Federalism, Devolution of Powers

Rising from a three-hour meeting held in Lagos Monday, the governors of the 17 states of Southern Nigeria have asked the federal government to devolve powers to the states.

Osinbajo: Nigeria Still Grappling with Consequences of Malabu Oil Scandal

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo on monday in Jakarta, Indonesia, said Nigeria was yet to overcome the consequences of the shady award of OPL 245 to Malabu Oil and Gas Limited in 1998.

Fidelity Bank Grows Profit by 65%, Records PBT of N16.2bn

Following its half-year audited financial results, Nigerian lender, Fidelity Bank Plc, has again posted another impressive financial performance for the nine months period ended September 30, 2017.

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BUSINESSDAY NEWSPAPER

FG overshoot personnel costs by N406bn

Nigeria eclipsed its budgeted spend on personnel by 37 percent in the first six months of 2017, spending N1.4 trillion as against the planned N1.08 trillion, data obtained from the Budget Office has shown.

Nigerian brewers dump barley for sorghum in hunt for local substitute

Cultivation of sorghum, an important cereal crop, is fast booming in the Nigerian market as brewers in the country are now using a larger percentage of the crop in place of barley for brewing beer and malt drinks.

Banks, EM investors take position in Nigerias pension industry
In a report by TheCable, Maina's return into the the President Muhammadu Buhari led government, was facilitated with series of letters from the ministries headed by the Minister of Interior as well as Ministry of Justice.

Oyo-Ita, who had denied her involvement was reported to have played prominent role alongside Dambazau and the Attorney General of the Federation.

Abdulrasheed Maina, the ex-chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT),has been in the news since his reinstatement was blown open by a media report.

In a letter dated September 17, 2017, the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) made a strong case for Mainas reinstatement.

The letter, signed by Mustapha Sulaiman on behalf of the chairman of the commission, referred to previous correspondence on the issue.

The letter showed that while Dambazau and Oyo-Ita played supervisory roles, as committees under them made recommendations, Malami was actively involved.

Kindly refer to the Attorney General of the Federation/Honourable Minister of Justice letter ref no HAGF/FCSC/2017/VOL.1/3 dated 27th April, 2017 requesting Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) to give consequential effect to the judgement that voided the warrant of arrest issued against A.A. Maina which formed the basis for the query and his eventual dismissal, the letter read.

Further to the aforementioned letter, the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) at its meeting held on 14th June 2017 deliberated on the Attorney General of the Federation (AGFs) letter and requested the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) vide letter FC.4029/82/VOL.III/160 of 21st June, 2017, to advise the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Interior to consider the AGFs letter, the officers case and make appropriate recommendation to the commission.

The OHCSF accordingly advised Ministry of Iinterior to consider the matter. The Ministry of Interior at its Senior Staff Committee (SSC)s meeting held on 22nd June, 2017 considered the disciplinary case against the officer and the letter by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice seeking the reinstatement of the officer as a Director (Administration), SGL.17 in the Federal Civil Service.

The Ministry of Interiors Senior Staff Committee (SSC) deliberated on the case and recommended that Mr Maina be reinstated into the service as Deputy Director, SGL. 16. The Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) vide letter Ref. No. HCSF/LU/COR/FCSC/749/III/135 dated 14th August 2017 forwarded to the recommendations of the Senior Staff Committee (SSC) of the Ministry on Interior to the FCSC for further necessary action.

The letter also said FCSC had approved the reinstatement of Maina and directed that he should be made to sit for next promotion examination to the post of director.

It should be noted that the federal civil service commission dismissed Maina in 2013 for absconding from duty following a recommendation by the office of the head of service.

He was accused of being involved in pension fraud running into over N100 billion.
The traders made the pledge at a rally in Onitsha on Monday.

Addressing the rally, President-General of the traders association, Mr Sunday Obinze, said that Obiano had provided enabling environment in the last four years for trade and commerce to thrive.

We have absolute confidence that Obiano will in the next four years. touch on all other grey areas he was unable to touch within the first tenure.

He has for the first time since the creation of the state, involved traders in the scheme of things, he said.

Also speaking, Mr Traders in various markets at the Onitsha Bridge Head have assured Gov. Willie Obiano of their votes at the Nov. 18 governorship election in the state.

The traders made the pledge at a rally in Onitsha on Monday.

Addressing the rally, President-General of the traders association, Mr Sunday Obinze, said that Obiano had provided enabling environment in the last four years for trade and commerce to thrive.

We have absolute confidence that Obiano will in the next four years. touch on all other grey areas he was unable to touch within the first tenure.

He has for the first time since the creation of the state, involved traders in the scheme of things, he said.

Also speaking, Mr Anthony Chiloli, Chairman of UBA Plank and Joint Association (UPJA), said it would be detrimental for the state to return to politics of god-fatherism.

We dont want to return to god-fatherism era and we dont want our market and property to be set ablaze again.

We are ready to swim and sink with Obiano in the Nov. 18 election, he said.

In his speech, Mr Ignatius Ejike, Chairman of Gods Favour Building Materials Dealers Association, said their support was also based on the fair principle of zoning in the state.

According to him, allowing Obiano to complete his two tenures will enhance development of Anambra North Senatorial zone which had been neglected over the years.

This will further sustain peace and unity and reduce waste of money and energy during elections in the state, he added.

Others who spoke at the occasion advised candidates of other political parties contesting the election not to waste their money and time for electioneering as Obiano was preferred., Chairman of UBA Plank and Joint Association (UPJA), said it would be detrimental for the state to return to politics of god-fatherism.

We dont want to return to god-fatherism era and we dont want our market and property to be set ablaze again.

We are ready to swim and sink with Obiano in the Nov. 18 election, he said.

In his speech, Mr Ignatius Ejike, Chairman of Gods Favour Building Materials Dealers Association, said their support was also based on the fair principle of zoning in the state.

According to him, allowing Obiano to complete his two tenures will enhance development of Anambra North Senatorial zone which had been neglected over the years.

This will further sustain peace and unity and reduce waste of money and energy during elections in the state, he added.
Guterres is expected on Tuesday, ahead of a requested renewal in November of the UN force in CAR, called MINUSCA, which has been accused by some of passivity.

"If they're just television spectators of the conflict, that won't do," Cardinal Dieudonne Nzapalainga, the Catholic archbishop of Bangui said in a joint interview on Saturday alongside the country's Muslim and Protestant leaders.

"A revision of strategy" has to go hand-in-hand with a mandate for UN troop renewal, said Protestant leader Nicolas Guerekoyamene-Gbangou.

Poor but mineral-rich, CAR has become a byword for conflict and misery.

Thousands have lost their lives and half a million people have been displaced, according to the UN, out of a population of roughly 4.5 million.

In their interview with AFP, the religious leaders pleaded with the world not to see the conflict as a matter of religion, but of gangs who often exploited faith to further their own goals.

In 2013, CAR's then president Francois Bozize, a Christian former army chief, was overthrown by a pro-Muslim Seleka rebel coalition.

Militias known as "anti-balaka" launched a counter-offensive in the name of defending the Christian majority population.

'Not religion'

"The religious stance has been used only for political ends, for looting and for making off with the (mineral) riches beneath the soil," said Oumar Kobine Layama, head of the Islamic Conference in CAR.

"This is not a religious conflict."

In the southeastern town of Bangassou, where anti-balaka forces unleashed a new wave of violence in May, MINUSCA troops "made all the Muslims come to the mosque and abandoned them," Kobine said.

"If the cardinal and the bishop hadn't come to protect them, what would have become of them. Who would have been responsible?"

The imam added: "Christians and Muslims are now together at the displaced persons' site. If this was really a war of religions, would they be in the same place?"

Those who kill in the name of Christianity are beyond the pale, said Guerekoyame-Gbangou.

At Kembe in the southeast, the anti-balaka in October attacked "a place that's a sanctuary in usual times, a mosque," he said.

"They can't say they're Christians and go on to kill. All those with such ideas in their heads are outside their faith."

In 2013, the three leaders set up a "platform of religious confessions" in a show of inter-faith unity and to act as a mediator in the conflict.

The "platform" earned the UN Human Rights Prize in 2015, but at some personal cost to their founders. Kobine has been forced to move house and relatives of Guerekoyame-Gbangou were killed in 2015.

UN mandate

Guterres' four-day stay in CAR will be his first visit since taking office on January 1, although he regularly visited the country as former head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

He will go Bangui and Bangassou and also meet victims of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers as part of his effort to address damaging allegations that have hit the blue helmets in several missions.

The secretary general's visit comes at a time when the United Nations faces a precarious financial situation, as the United States pushes for cost-cutting measures in peacekeeping.

The international body has maintained some 12,500 troops and police on the ground in CAR since September 2014 to help protect civilians and support the government of Faustin-Archange Touadera, who was elected last year.
A defiant Wong said the activists stood ready to face what he called "suppression by an authoritarian regime" as he stood alongside Law outside the Court of Final Appeal following the decision.

"The government can lock up our bodies but they can't lock up our minds," he told reporters.

"They cannot put aside our determination to fight for democracy."

The pair were jailed in August after the Beijing-backed Hong Kong government pushed for tough sentences. Fears are growing that China is tightening its grip over the semi-autonomous city and that the rule of law is being compromised.

Wong, 21, who became the face of the mass pro-democracy protests while still a teenager, was imprisoned for six months while Law, 24, was sentenced to eight months.

They were granted bail Tuesday until November 7, the first appearance in appeal proceedings against the jail terms.

A third activist, Alex Chow, who was jailed for seven months alongside Law and Wong, was not part of the hearing.

Emerging from the courthouse in a neat white shirt and with his hair growing back after being shaved in prison, Wong said he planned to enjoy a meal with his family Tuesday night.

Law told reporters there had been "unpleasant times" behind bars.

"I hope the result of the case showcases the protection of human rights in our law system," Law said of the activists' appeal.

"The world is watching."

Hong Kong enjoys freedoms unseen on the mainland under a "one country, two systems" deal made when Britain handed the city back to China in 1997.

But Beijing stands accused of breaching the agreement.

Supporters outside punched the air at news of the pair's release.

Lawmaker Eddie Chu said it was "encouraging news for supporters of democracy".

'Message to society'

The Umbrella trio were found guilty last year on unlawful assembly charges for storming a fenced-off government forecourt known as "Civic Square" as part of a September 2014 protest calling for fully free leadership elections.

Their arrests sparked wider rallies which exploded two days later when police fired tear gas at the crowds. This triggered demonstrations that blocked some major roads for more than two months in an unprecedented challenge to Beijing.

Wong and Law initially received community sentences and Chow a three-week suspended sentence at a magistrates' court over the Civic Square protest.

But Hong Kong's justice department applied to increase those terms, with prosecutors arguing they should receive harsher punishment.

The judgement jailing them in August said the court must "send out a clear message to society" that protesters must abide by the law.

Wong's imprisonment prevented him from running for Hong Kong's partially directly elected legislature.

Law had already succeeded in becoming a legislator but was among six rebel lawmakers disqualified from parliament after inserting protests into their oaths of office.

Wong and Law each offered cash bail of HK$50,000 ($6,400). They were required to surrender their passports and to report to police once a week.

Wong has yet to be sentenced on a separate charge of contempt for obstructing the clearance of a major encampment during the Umbrella Movement rallies.
After IS lost its de facto capital Raqa in Syria this month, and its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul earlier, the group "has aspirations to establish a larger presence" in Africa, the US military's top officer General Joseph Dunford said on Monday.

From Libya to Egypt's Sinai, to East Africa and West Africa the jihadists have already posed a threat, Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a press conference.

He was discussing the October 4 clash in Niger, West Africa, that cost the lives of four American soldiers.

Along with five Nigerien troops, the US soldiers died on the Niger-Mali border in an attack carried out by locals associated with IS, according to Dunford.

The incident shocked many Americans unaware of the hundreds-strong US military presence in that country.

Dunford said the military will make recommendations to President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis "for the allocation of forces that meet what we see as the threat, what we anticipate the threat to be."

On Tuesday he meets military chiefs from 75 countries "to talk about the next phase of the campaign" against IS.

Speaking to reporters following a meeting with Mattis last Friday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate's Armed Services Committee, said bluntly: "The war is morphing. We're going to see more actions in Africa, not less."

After the Middle East, Africa already has the greatest presence of American special forces. Official figures show more than 1,300 of the troops are deployed there.

These elite units train local forces in counter-terrorism and "will only accompany those forces when the prospects of enemy contact is unlikely," Dunford said.

These rules of engagement "are going to change when it comes to counterterrorism operations," Graham said.

He hinted that American troops would be authorized to shoot first on "terrorist" targets, which is not the case now.

A growing threat

The European Union's presidency also warned this month that countries in that bloc must monitor "very carefully" a growing IS threat in North Africa, where fighters have relocated.

Dunford said the war is moving to multiple arenas.

"I'm not sure I'm ready to say it's shifting just to Africa. We're dealing with a challenge that exists from West Africa to Southeast Asia," he said.

"I believe ISIS will attempt to establish a physical presence outside of Iraq and Syria" after losing Mosul and Raqa, the general added, using another acronym for IS.

"That's exactly why we're conducting the kinds of operations we're conducting in Niger, to ensure that local forces have the capability to prevent that from happening."

The US supports with aerial refueling and intelligence France's Operation Barkhane against jihadists in five Sahel nations: Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso.

In all, the US military has about 6,000 personnel in 53 African countries, Dunford said.

According to a report to Congress by General Thomas Waldhauser, who heads the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), the American presence is notable in Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya.

The numbers of US special forces varies but the Niger contingent of about 800 is currently the largest in any one country on the continent.

Dunford vowed the US will remain, despite the four fatalities in Niger.
Over the past month, social media networks have been flooded with memes poking fun at the main players in Spain's biggest political crisis since returning to democracy following the death of dictator General Francisco Franco in 1975.

After Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont made a cryptic "suspended" declaration of independence following a banned October 1 referendum on secession, one jokester depicted him as a candidate on a TV dating show with the caption: "Carlos, 54, independent but not too much".

Carlos is the Spanish version of Puigdemont's Catalan first name.

As calls for dialogue to end the crisis intensified, another popular meme depicted Puigdemont finally talking to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy -- from behind a glass partition in jail.

Many conservatives believe this is where he belongs for trying to break up Spain.

A video called "Help Catalonia", distributed by a powerful separatist organisation, elicited endless mockery for displaying a distressed, young Catalan woman appealing for help from Europe.

Internet users compared the expression on her face to adverts for gastric relief medicines.

"People use humour as an escape from this hard reality," Edu Galan, the founder of satirical monthly magazine Mongolia, told AFP.

'Catharsis'

Before the independence referendum organised by the Catalan regional government, despite being deemed illegal by the courts and Madrid, jokes over the conflict flourished.

Internet users also had a lot of fun mocking the interior ministry's use of a cruise ship plastered with images of Tweety, the yellow cartoon canary called Piolin in Spain, to house hundreds of extra police officers deployed in Catalonia to try and stop the vote.

"#FreePiolin" became a trending topic on Twitter.

But the mood changed dramatically on the day of the referendum. Police fired rubber bullets and charged would-be voters with batons. Videos of the violent crackdown made headlines around the world and deeply shocked Catalans.

The team behind "Polonia", a popular weekly satire show on Catalan public television even questioned "if it was worth doing the show" that week, for the first time in its 12-year history, one of the show's writers, Albert Martorell, told AFP.

"It was the most difficult show to write because most of us experienced what happened first hand, at polling stations," he said.

In its first episode after the referendum, Spanish police officers were depicted in a sketch as characters in a war movie called "We Must Save the Spanish Soldier", beating up grandmothers at a polling station.

"It served as catharsis for people. They say: 'I got hit, but at least I could laugh at it'," said Martorell.

Divisions

Catalan comedian Txabi Franquesa, said the violence "changed everything" and he now avoids the topic of independence in his routines.

Polls show Catalonia's roughly 7.5 million residents are divided on the issue of independence, though the vast majority are in favour of a legal referendum to settle the issue once and for all.

"Nothing hurts more than national identity," said Galan, whose satirical magazine recently depicted a cartoon Rajoy taking a selfie in Barcelona as a nuclear bomb goes off over the Catalan capital.
Nearly three weeks after jihadists attacked a joint US-Niger patrol in a sensitive border area, General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US is firmly committed to supporting Nigerien forces in counter-insurgency operations.

With some 800 US forces deployed in the country, "our intent is to continue operations there," Dunford told a news conference.

The October 4 clash, the deadliest US combat incident since President Donald Trump took office in January, has shocked many Americans unaware of the military presence in the African country, the largest US deployment on the continent.

The four troops died on a reconnaissance patrol on the Niger-Mali border directly north of Niamey. Dunford said five Nigerien solders were killed, and another two Americans wounded.

The 12 American and 30 Nigerien soldiers on the mission were attacked by about 50 fighters Dunford characterized as locals associated with the Islamic State group.

Questions have been raised over why it took hours before backup support reached the patrol, and why one US soldier's body was left behind and only recovered the following day.

'Very complex situation'

Dunford said the October 3-4 mission was originally approved based on an intelligence assessment that they were "unlikely" to come into conflict with any local forces.

The unit went to a village near the border and was attacked as they returned to their base to the south.

Dunford said that, based on what investigators know so far, the patrol did not call for support until one hour after first being attacked, suggesting perhaps they believed they could handle the situation.

A surveillance drone was sent to the location quickly after they did call for support, and two French Mirage jets arrived overhead an hour later.

But Dunford gave no details of what took place on the ground, and said he did not know, for example, why the French jets did not drop bombs.

"This is a very complex situation that they found themselves in," he noted.

"When they didn't ask for support for that first hour, my judgement would be that that unit thought they could handle the situation without additional support."

The incident has drawn calls from Congress for an investigation into the US presence in Niger.

A US special operations raid on Mogadishu in 1993 became a massive firefight leaving 19 US soldiers dead and resulted eventually in the pullback of US forces from Somalia.

The 800 deployed in Niger are part of around 6,000 US forces on the continent, mostly there to train local partners.

"We mitigate the risk to the US forces with specific guidance that we will only accompany those (local) forces when the prospects of enemy contact is unlikely."
Moline, IL (October 24, 2017) - Southeast National Bank is pleased to announce that we have filed an application to become a state-chartered bank effective January 1, 2018. This change will have no effect on our customers or their relationship with the Bank. Coincident with the change in charter, the Bank will adopt the name SENB Bank, and adopt minor changes to the Banks familiar logo.

The State-chartered SENB Bank (subject to regulatory approval) will take advantage of expanded authorities to enhance our products and services to provide a more expansive level of service to meet the growing needs of our customers. Your Bank remains committed to growing our digital banking, deposit products, mortgage lending, retail lending, commercial lending, leasing and wealth management, while retaining our focus as a community bank that is big enough to meet your needs and small enough to know your relationship matters.

The revised charter will require the designation of the 3535 Avenue of the Cities, Moline, Illinois 61265 as the Banks home office. All Bank branches will remain in operation and will continue to deliver the high level of service expected by our customers. We continue to be a locally owned bank with local ownership. We also remain committed to the Quad Cities as good corporate citizens, contributing to the growth in our community.

Southeast National Bank (to be renamed SENB Bank, subject to regulatory approval) is locally owned with a local Board of Directors and team who live in the communities we serve since 1961. We have been providing a full range of financial services for over 50 years, and are proud to be serving the Quad Cities, and Buffalo, Iowa communities. Our professional team combines industry experience with superior services to deliver a full range of personal, business and wealth management products and services. We understand what it means to be a trusted financial partner and stand committed to keeping our promise to be a Smart, Easy. Notably Better financial solution for you.
Kevin and Karen Urick are touring the Quad-Cities one meal at a time for the column Dinner for Two. The Geneseo couple love everything about food. They grow food, travel the world for food, enjoy eating all styles of food and look forward to sharing their passion with readers! The column will appear periodically in the Your Food section. If you know of a place you want them to review, email them at quadcitiesrestaurants@gmail.com.

Mulkeys Restaurant, 3800 14th Ave., Rock Island. 309-788-1441, mulkeysrestaurant.weebly.com

Its all in the family. Thats what great about Mulkeys Restaurant in Rock Island.

Change is only good when something needs to be changed, and nothing needs to be changed here. Mulkeys has been owned by the same family for over 60 years.

When you enter the dining room, there is no doubt that this place is family-owned and has family pride. Photos of four generations of Mulkey men  Bob, Chuck, Ryan and Charlie  are hanging on the wall. Each photo looks the same  white shirt, black bow tie, mustache and goatee  with the exception of the youngest Mulkey, who broke tradition by not sporting a mustache and goatee in his photo, which was taken several years ago when he was 3.

Bob Mulkey and his wife, Alice, opened Mulkeys in 1957. Bob had a cousin who worked for Tri City Equipment and sold Henny Penny Chicken Fryers, which were first introduced commercially in 1957. He convinced Bob to buy one, and a franchise was born.

Henny Penny Chicken Fryers employ a form of pressure cooking  the meat and cooking oil are brought to a high temperature, allowing the food to cook more quickly. Very few Henny Penny franchises are left in the United States, and only the franchises can use the original Henny Penny breading mix that gives this chicken an old-school taste. You know a restaurant is a Henny Penny Chicken franchise when you see the Henny Penny Chicken wearing glasses on the marquee.

Chuck came back from college in 1971 to work in the family business alongside his mother after Bob died unexpectedly. Chuck got his start in the business breading chicken when he was 11 years old.

Chucks youngest son, Ryan, began pouring gelatin and peeling potatoes at the restaurant when he was 10. Ryan returned home from college to work at Mulkeys when Alice passed away. Ryan is now in his 18th year at the restaurant, and Chuck continues to work a couple of days a week.

Part of the charm of Mulkeys is the staff. The night manager, Joe, has been there 38 years, and the morning cook, Tammy, has been there 42 years. Between 80 percent to 90 percent of the employees are from four families, some on their third generation. Many of the customers are greeted by name when they enter, and it is easy to feel at home here.

Mulkeys is known for its breakfast and lunch selections, in addition to dinner choices. The breakfast menu has all of our favorites: eggs, omelettes, Denver scramble, country-fried steak, buttermilk pancakes, and biscuits and gravy. We wish we lived around the corner so we could walk over for breakfast on a whim.

Tammys skillet, consisting of scrambled eggs with ham and sausage over fried potatoes topped with cheese, is first on our list.

The salad menu has great-sounding choices, including a raspberry chicken salad. You can order a variety of sandwiches, including some unique ones like a grilled turkey Reuben, Texas burger, and a blue cheese burger. A low-cal plate and vegetarian sandwich are available for those watching their waistlines.

We were hungry for old-fashioned home cooking, so we decided the area of the menu for us was Mulkeys Features. It was hard to choose, so we ordered all three: Henny Penny Chicken, a whole catfish and a hot roast beef sandwich. All entrees come with a choice of salad or homemade soup, choice of potato, and a roll with butter.

We had to have the Henny Penny Chicken first. Do not confuse this chicken with fried chicken, it isnt fried; it is broasted. Broasted chicken is pressure-fried, a process that yields a more tender and better-tasting product. This chicken is crispy on the outside, but juicy on the inside.

The four pieces of white and dark meat chicken were a bargain for $8.25. We had ours with a baked potato and coleslaw. The coleslaw is a classic  perfectly creamy and tangy.

The catfish is cooked the same way as the chicken is. It, too, turns out crispy on the outside but juicy on the inside with the catfish taste we love. It was more than enough for one person at $10.49.

The hot roast beef sandwich featured tender slabs of roast beef layered on top of white bread, topped with a generous scoop of whipped potatoes and covered in brown gravy. Priced at $8.89, it is the perfect comfort food for cold fall days.

We opted for the lettuce salad with Alices creamy garlic dressing, another Quad-Cities staple. The red-tinged dressing was thick and well studded with garlic.

Specials offered daily include chicken a la king on Mondays, liver and onions on Tuesdays, hamloaf on Wednesdays, beef tips on Thursdays, Swiss steak on Fridays, and roast beef on Saturdays. Everything on the menu is available for carry-out. You can order tubs of Henny Penny Chicken ranging in size from 6 pieces to over 200 pieces. Mulkeys also offers catering services.

Located at the top of the hill above Augustana College, on the corner of 38th Street and 14th Avenue, Mulkeys is open from 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day except Sundays. On Sundays, it is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. for limited carry-out (anything broasted), in order to allow their employees a day off.

Some places need to stay the same, and Mulkeys is one of them. We look forward to eating here for years to come.

He said: Mulkeys chicken is some of the best I have had in the Quad-Cities. It was crispy on the outside and moist on the inside. The hot roast beef sandwich took me back to Bakers Cafe.

She said: The hot roast beef sandwich reminds me of my dad. It was his favorite meal. You get near perfection when you combine the food staples of white bread and gravy with beef and potatoes.
MIAMI  Deep down, Michelle James knew something was wrong when she ran her hand along the side of her left breast and felt a hard, well-defined, almond-sized lump.

But there was no reason to panic. After all, it wasnt James first scare.

In November 2014, doctors had found a mass during a routine mammogram, that time in her right breast. But it was small, and doctors found it wasnt cancerous. They waited and monitored it, but by late 2015, nothing had changed. James was in the clear.

This would be the same, she thought.

But something bothered her. It was December 2016, and her next mammogram wasnt for another 10 months. So she called her general practitioner and asked her to move it up.

She prayed to God for a negative result.

But a few days after her biopsy in May, James was about to leave her office at Miami Dade Colleges Wolfson campus when the radiologist called.

Is this a good time to talk? she asked.

James stopped. She sat down. She said yes. And she braced herself for the diagnosis she knew was coming.

She didnt cry. Instead, she turned her focus to her new immediate future.

OK, whats next? she asked the radiologist. Im going to get through this. I need to know whats next.

Penned in her black notebook, on the day of her diagnosis, she asked God whether this diagnosis and journey would end in death.

I dont want to die. I want to live: Isnt there more for me to accomplish here, God? she wrote. Even as I write it on paper I feel  I feel like its not quite real. I know that will change.

And it did.

But she stayed calm, keeping faith in God and praying to Him.

The fact that I had this unexplainable peace meant I was going to be OK, she said. If it meant I was going to pass away, God was going to see me through that, too.

Days after her diagnosis, she went to see Dr. Danny Yakoub, a Miami surgical oncologist. In his office, Yakoub pulled up her medical record, brow furrowed, before turning to look her in the eye as he began to spell out the next six to 12 months: chemotherapy, a lumpectomy or mastectomy, radiation and BRCA tests that can determine the likelihood a woman will develop breast cancer in the future.

And with that, for the first time, James burst into tears.

After a few minutes and several deep breaths, Yakoub asked James about her support network and whether she was a woman of faith.

Yes, James said.

Good, he replied. Patients with faith tend to do better in treatment.

As far as breast cancer goes, James, who came to Miami from Jamaica in her mid-20s, was young, just 45 years old, when diagnosed. The median age for diagnosis in the United States is 62, according to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

But research done by Dr. Judith Hurley, a breast oncologist at the University of Miami Health System, shows Caribbean women are at a high risk of finding breast cancer at a younger age. At the core of this are different inherited mutations held by women in the Caribbean.

And trying to get some from the region to seek modern medical treatment can be difficult, said Dr. Carmen Calfa, a medical oncologist. Some from the culture are still fearful of side effects of chemotherapy. She said advances in medicine have led to mitigation of these symptoms.

She still sees patients who will seek natural remedies that are less effective, she said. Shes had patients drink baking soda, believing that would help while the cancer advances, sometimes to the point where it cant be stopped. If a woman wants to try natural remedies, Calfa recommends discussing it with an oncologist.

Its a big mistake, and most of them pay with their lives, she said.

Though friends mentioned natural remedies, James said she picked the treatment that would give her the best chance.

I didnt explain it to anybody, she said. I didnt try to. I thought it was my decision.

And as chemo worked to kill the cancerous cells, God helped her spirits. In church, shed come in between treatments, leading Sunday services as she had for years at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Hollywood. They were her family. Her pastor came to her first chemo treatment, saying a prayer with her at the start. Members reached out, telling her they were survivors who had kept their stories quiet.

When she got scared, shed remember her favorite Bible verse, Jeremiah 29:11:

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

James has since become an advocate, telling others not to skip a mammogram, to do self-examinations and to always check rather than wait.

Do it now, she said. Dont let fear stop you. You have power over fear.
For real frights, Halloween has nothing on tonight's "Putin's Revenge, Part I" on "Frontline" (10 p.m., PBS, check local listings). A two-part report, concluding Nov. 1, "Revenge" is based on interviews with more than 60 intelligence experts from the United States, Europe and Russia, as well as journalists who have been covering Vladimir Putin for decades.

Tonight's documentary begins during the days leading up to the 2016 election, when American intelligence grew increasingly alarmed by Russian cyber activity that appeared aimed at tampering with the Nov. 8 vote, actions that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described as "warlike."

The balance of "Revenge" surveys Putin's rise to power since 2000 and his increasing distrust of the United States. As a KGB officer in 1989, he looked on with horror at crowds gathering in the streets of Dresden, East Germany, as the Communist regime collapsed and Moscow failed to come to its aid.

Putin's distrust of the United States only grew when the George W. Bush administration pursued regime change in Iraq and eventually killed Saddam Hussein and his sons. To experts here, Putin saw himself as the ultimate target of such personalized overthrows. After Obama became president, he saw American conspiracies at work in the Arab Spring and was personally repulsed by the brutal murder of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's seemingly callous reactions to his death.

Part II will expand upon Putin's personal obsession with Clinton and how it contributed to his decision to launch a politically motivated cyber assault on the U.S. in 2016.

TONIGHT'S OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

* The Los Angeles Dodgers host Game 2 of the World Series (8 p.m., Fox).

* Otters cavort on "Nature" (8 p.m., PBS, TV-PG, check local listings).

* A creature seeks comfort food on the premiere of "Massive Monster Mayhem" (8 p.m., Nicktoons, TV-Y7).

* The 2017 American Humane Hero Dog Awards (8 p.m., Hallmark, TV-G) extols the links between dogs and people.

* "NOVA" (9 p.m., PBS, TV-PG, check local listings) looks for evidence of a giant volcano that plunged Europe into darkness during medieval times.

* A drug bust exposes a child trafficking ring on "Chicago P.D." (10 p.m., NBC, TV-14).

* Fake news and intelligence sharing on "Designated Survivor" (10 p.m., ABC, TV-14).

LATE NIGHT

Maggie Gyllenhaal appears on "The Daily Show With Trevor Noah" (11 p.m., Comedy Central) ... Paul Reiser, Abbi Jacobson and JD McPherson are booked on "Conan" (11 p.m., TBS) ... Expect Hugh Laurie, Gretchen Carlson, Adam Savage and Michael Stevens on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" (11:35 p.m., CBS) ... Jimmy Fallon welcomes Jessica Alba, JB Smoove and Kevin Delaney on "The Tonight Show" (11:35 p.m., NBC).

Megyn Kelly, Nathan Fielder, Colton Dunn and Sonny Emory visit "Late Night With Seth Meyers" (12:35 a.m., NBC) ... Anna Wintour and Everything Everything appear on "The Late Late Show With James Corden" (12:35 a.m., CBS).
"I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I've ever met," iconic San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen told his readers.

Quad-Citians of all ages can relate. Our Niabi Zoo superstars, Babe, Sophie, and the late Kathy Sh-Boom, hold special places in our hearts. Fans still feel their absence deeply.

But almost four years to the day since Babe and Sophie said their final public goodbye to our community, count us among those now convinced that the Little Rock Zoo is a better home for these treasures.

We congratulate the Rock Island County Forest Preserve Commission for making the tough call four years ago to send our elephants south, and for conducting the national search that found their Little Rock home. Their health and well-being demanded it.

Another round of the applause for county board members, who sit as commissioners, for agreeing last week to begin transferring ownership of Babe and Sophie to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums accredited facility.

The folks in Little Rock, who have been caring for Sophie and Babe at no cost to RICo, have shown their zoo is the right place for the pair to live out the rest of their days.

They appear to be thriving from the pair of great photos, courtesy of the Little Rock Zoo, which accompany this piece.

Zoo director Susan Altrui confirmed on Friday that Babe and Sophie are real hams and relish their roles as ambassadors for the Little Rock Zoo and in raising awareness of endangered elephants. They remain devoted to one another. Now that both Babe and Sophie have made friends with Zina, the Arkansas zoo's resident elephant and fellow Ringling Bros. retiree, the Little Rock herd is complete.

The trio is enjoying a renovated yard that provides daily enrichment opportunities and allows visitors to see them every day. It also features a walk-around track that gives keepers better access to keep them busy, happy and healthy.

All of this should be good news for fans of our girls. So should this: Little Rock is just 600 miles from their former Coal Valley home, and Ms. Altrui says the Little Rock Zoo is happy to welcome Quad-Citians who want to visit the zoo to see for themselves.

Quad-Citians who would like to get more intimately reacquainted with Babe and Sophie can also do so. For $56 per person, you can get behind-the-scenes tours of the elephant barn and yard and watch as zookeepers bath, feed and interact with all three members of the zoo's herd.

Visit littlerockzoo.com/behind-the-scenes to book a tour or call 501- 661-7229. Money from the tours goes directly to the Little Rock Zoos Conservation Fund to benefits animals worldwide.

Find out more about Little Rock Zoo at littlerockzoo.com, or on the zoo's facebook page.
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ECHR awards 50,000 to Russian citizen tortured by police in age of 16

MOSCOW, October 24 (RAPSI)  The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) awarded 50,000 in compensation to Russian national Nikolay Devyatkin, born in 1986, who complained of tortures by police in 2003.

The ECHR held that there was violation of the applicants right to prohibition of tortures and right to effective investigation.

In November 2003, Devyatkin, 16 years old at the time, was stopped by two police officers. The applicant insisted that he was strangled, beaten and forcibly taken to a local police office. According to Devyatkin, he received multiple injuries, including a fracture of the hyoid bone, cuts and bruising to his neck, face and elbow.

Russian investigators refused to open a criminal case against police officers on the request of the teens mother basing their decision on a pre-investigation inquiry which had concluded that the applicants injuries must have occurred when he had attempted to escape the police, necessitating the use of force.

In August 2006, Devyatkin lodged an application with the ECHR claiming that Russian authorities had violated Article 3 (prohibition of tortures) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
It took 14 years, but now we have an answer.

It was March 2003, the invasion of Iraq was underway, and Major General David Petraeus was in command of the 101st Airborne Division heading for the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Rick Atkinson, Washington Post journalist and military historian, was accompanying him. Six days into a lightning campaign, his division suddenly found itself stopped 30 miles southwest of the city of Najaf by terrible weather, including a blinding dust storm, and the unexpectedly fanatical attacks of Iraqi irregulars. At that moment, Atkinson reported,

[Petraeus] hooked his thumbs into his flak vest and adjusted the weight on his shoulders. Tell me how this ends, he said. Eight years and eight divisions? The allusion was to advice supposedly given the White House in the early 1950s by a senior Army strategist upon being asked what it would take to prop up French forces in South Vietnam. Petraeus's grin suggested the comment was more droll quip than historical assertion.

Certainly, Petraeus knew his history when it came to American interventions in distant lands. He had entered West Point just as the American war in Vietnam was beginning to wind down and did his doctoral dissertation at Princeton in 1987 on that conflict ("The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era"). In it, he wrote,

Vietnam cost the military dearly. It left America's military leaders confounded, dismayed, and discouraged. Even worse, it devastated the armed forces, robbing them of dignity, money, and qualified people for a decade... Vietnam was an extremely painful reminder that when it comes to intervention, time and patience are not American virtues in abundant supply.

So no wonder he was well acquainted with that 1954 exchange between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and former Korean War commander General Matthew Ridgeway about the French war in Vietnam. Perhaps, the droll quip aspect of his comment lay in his knowledge of just how badly Ridgeway underestimated both the years and the troop numbers that the American version of that war would eat up before it, too, ended in disaster and in a military as riddled with protest and as close to collapse as was imaginable for an American force of our era.

In his thesis, Petraeus called for the military high command to be granted a far freer hand in whatever interventions the future held. In that sense, in 1987, he was already mainlining into a twenty-first-century world in which the U.S. military continues to get everything it wants (and more) as it fights its wars without having to deal with either an obstreperous citizen army or too many politicians trying to impose their will on its actions.

And by the way, though his Najaf comments have regularly been cited as if they were sui generis, as the Ridgeway reference indicates, he was hardly the first American military commander or political figure to appropriate Joan of Arcs question in Bernard Shaws play Saint Joan: How long, oh Lord, how long?

As Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam recounted in his history of the Vietnam years, The Best and the Brightest, for instance, President Lyndon Johnson turned to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Earle Wheeler in a June 1965 meeting and asked of the war in Vietnam, What do you think it will take to do the job?

Wheelers answer echoed Ridgeways 11 years earlier, though in the escalatory mode that was typical of Vietnam: It all depends on what your definition of the job is, Mr. President. If you intend to drive the last Vietcong out of Vietnam it will take seven hundred, eight hundred thousand, a million men and about seven years. But if your definition of the job is to prevent the Communists from taking over the country, that is, stopping them from doing it, then youre talking about different gradations and different levels. So tell us what the job is and well answer it.

A Generational Approach to Americas Wars

Not so long after that moment on the outskirts of Najaf, the 101st Airborne made its way to Baghdad just as the burning and looting began, and that would only be the prologue to David Petraeuss war, to his version of eight years and eight divisions. When an insurgency (actually several) broke out in Iraq, he would be dispatched to the northern city of Mosul (now a pile of rubble after its 2017 liberation from the Islamic State in Washingtons third Iraq War). There, he would first experiment with bringing back from the Vietnam experience the very strategy the U.S. military had hoped to be rid of forever: counterinsurgency, or the winning of what in that war had regularly been called hearts and minds. In 2004, Newsweek was already hailing him on its cover with the dramatic question: Can This Man Save Iraq? (Four months after Petraeus ended his stint in that city, the police chief he had trained there went over to the insurgents and it became a stronghold for them.)

By the time the occupation of Iraq turned into a full-scale disaster, he was back at Fort Leavenworth running the U.S. Army's Combined Arms Center. During that period, he and another officer, Marine Lieutenant General James Mattis -- does that name ring any bells? -- joined forces to oversee the development and publication of Field Service Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency Operations. It would be the first official counterinsurgency (COIN) how-to book the military had produced since the Vietnam years. In the process, he became "the world's leading expert in counterinsurgency warfare." He would famously return to Iraq in 2007, that manual in hand, with five brigades, or 20,000 U.S. troops, for what would become known as the surge, or the new way forward, an attempt to bail the Bush administration out of its disastrous occupation of the country. His counterinsurgency operations would, like the initial invasion, be hailed by experts and pundits in Washington (including Petraeus himself) as a marvel and a success of the first order, as a true turning point in Iraq and in the war on terror.

A decade later, with Americas third Iraq War ongoing, you could be excused for viewing the successes of that surge somewhat differently.

In the process, Petraeus (or King David as he was supposedly nicknamed by Iraqis during his stint in Mosul) would become Americas most celebrated, endlessly featured general, and go on in 2008 to head U.S. Central Command (overseeing Americas wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq). In 2010, he would become the U.S. Afghan commander, largely so that he could perform the counterinsurgency miracles in Afghanistan he had supposedly performed in Iraq. In 2011, he became Barack Obamas CIA director only to crash and burn a year later in a scandal over a lover-cum-biographer and the misuse of classified documents, after which he morphed into a go-to expert on our wars and a partner at KKR, a global investment firm. In other words, as with the three generals of the surge generation now ascendant in Washington, including Petraeuss former COIN pal James Mattis (who also headed U.S. Central Command), he presided over this countrys failing wars in the Greater Middle East.

And only recently, 14 years after he and Atkinson were briefly trapped outside Najaf, in his role as a pundit and prognosticator on his former wars, he finally answered -- and not quippingly either -- the question that plagued him then. Though his comments were certainly covered in the news (as anything he says is), in a sense no one noticed. Asked by Judy Woodruff of the PBS News Hour whether, in Donald Trumps America, it was smart to once again send more U.S. troops surging into Afghanistan, he called the Pentagons decision heartening, even as he warned that it wasnt a war that would end any time soon.

Instead, after so many years of involvement, experience, thought, and observation, in a studio without a grain of sand, no less a dust storm in sight, he offered this observation:

But this is a generational struggle. This is not something that is going to be won in a few years. Were not going to take a hill, plant a flag, [and] go home to a victory parade. And we need to be there for the long haul, but in a way that is, again, sustainable. We have been in Korea for 65-plus years because there is an important national interest for that. We were in Europe for a very long period of time, still there, of course, and actually with a renewed emphasis now, given Russias aggressive actions. And I think thats the way we need to approach this.

In proposing such a generational struggle to be handed on to our children, if not grandchildren, hes in good company. In recent times, the Pentagon high command, too, has been adopting a generational approach to Afghanistan and assumedly our other wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa. Similarly, the scholars of the Brookings Institution have urged on Washingtons policymakers what they call an enduring partnership in Afghanistan: The U.S.-Afghan partnership should be recognized as generational in duration, given the nature of the threat and the likely longevity of its future manifestations.

Even if, under further questioning by Woodruff, Petraeus wouldnt quite cop to a 60-year Afghan war (that is, to a war lasting at least until 2061), his long-delayed answer to his own question of the 2003 invasion moment was now definitive. Such American wars wont end. Not now. Maybe not ever. And in a way you cant be much blunter or grimmer than that in your assessment of the successes of the war on terror.

A Military Success Story of the Strangest Sort

Until James Mad Dog Mattis hit Washington in 2017, no American general of our era was ever written about as much as, or in a more celebratory fashion, than David Petraeus. Adulatory (if not fawning) profiles of him are legion. Even today, in the wake of barely avoided felony and other charges (for, among other things, lying to the FBI) -- he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in the handling of classified documents and was sentenced to two years of probation and a fine -- he may still be this countrys most celebrated general.

But why exactly the celebration? The answer would have to be that he continues to be lauded and considered a must-quote expert because in Washington this countrys war on terror and the generalship thats accompanied it are now beyond serious analysis or reconsideration. Sixteen years after the invasion of Afghanistan, as Americas wars continue to spread across the Greater Middle East and Africa, its generals -- thanks in part to Donald Trump and the need for adult day care in the White House -- are still treated like the only adults in the room in our nations capital, like, in short, American winners.

And yet consider recent events in the central African country of Niger, which already has an operating U.S. drone base, another under construction, and about 800 American troops quietly but permanently stationed there. Its also a country that, until this moment, not an American in a million would have been able to locate on a map. On October 4th, four Green Berets were killed and two others wounded during a routine training mission there. Patrolling with Nigerien troops, they were ambushed by Islamic militants -- whether from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or a new branch of ISIS remains unclear. That officially makes Niger at least the eighth country, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and Libya, to be absorbed into Washingtons war on terror and, in case you hadnt noticed, in none of them has that war ended and in none have U.S. forces triumphed.

And yet you could comb the recent mainstream coverage of the events in Niger without finding any indication that those deaths represented a modest new escalation in the never-ending, ever-spreading war on terror.

As was inevitable, in Iraq and Syria, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadis Islamic caliphate is finally collapsing. The city of Mosul is back in Iraqi hands, as is Tal Afar, and more recently the town of Hawija (with a rare mass surrender of ISIS militants). Those were the last significant urban areas controlled by ISIS in Iraq, while in Syria, the apocalyptic ruins of the Islamic States capital, Raqqa, are also largely in the hands of forces allied with and supported by the air power of the U.S. military. In what are now the ravaged ruins of Syria and Iraq, however, such victories will inevitably prove as hollow as were the successful invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq or the successful overthrow of Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi. Meanwhile, the Islamic State may have spread its brand to another country with U.S. forces in it. And yet, across a vast swath of the planet, the wars of David Petraeus, James Mattis, and the other generals of this era simply go on and on in a region being fractured and devastated (and whose vast numbers of displaced refugees are, in turn, helping to fracture Europe).

Worse yet, its a situation that cant be seriously discussed or debated in this country because, if it were, opposition to those wars might rise and alternatives to them and the by-now brain-dead decisions of those generals, including newly heightened air wars and the latest mini-surge in Afghanistan, might become part of an actual national debate.

So think of this as a military success story of the strangest sort -- success that can be traced directly back to a single decision, now decades old, made by a long-discredited American president, Richard Nixon. Without returning to that decision, there is simply no way to understand Americas twenty-first-century wars. In its own way, it would prove an act of genius (if, at least, you wanted to fight never-ending wars until the end of time).

In any case, credit, when owed, must be given. Facing an antiwar movement that wouldnt go away and, by the early 1970s, included significant numbers of both active-duty servicemen and Vietnam veterans, the president and his secretary of defense, Melvin Laird, decided to try to cut into its strength by eliminating the draft. Nixon suspected that young men not endangered by the possibility of being sent into the Vietnam War might be far less eager to demonstrate against it. The military high command was uncertain about such a move. They worried, with reason, that in the wake of Vietnam it would be hard to recruit for an all-volunteer military. Who in the world, they wondered, would want to be part of such a discredited force? That was, of course, a version of Nixons thinking turned upside down, but the president moved ahead anyway and, on January 27, 1973, conscription was ended. There would be no more draft calls and the citizens army, the one that had fought World War II to victory and had raised such a ruckus about the grim and distasteful war in Vietnam, would be no more.

In that single stroke, before he himself fell prey to the Watergate scandal and resigned his presidency, Nixon functionally created a legacy for the ages, paving the way for the American military to fight its wars generationally and lose them until hell froze over with the guarantee that no one in this country would seem to care a whit. Or put another way, can you truly imagine such silence in "the homeland" if an American draft were continually filling the ranks of a citizens army to fight a 16-year-old war on terror, still spreading, and now considered "generational"? I doubt it.

So as American air power in places like Yemen, Somalia, and Afghanistan is ramped up yet again, as the latest mini-surge of troops arrives in Afghanistan, as Niger enters the war, its time to put generals David Petraeus, James Mattis, H.R. McMaster, and John Kelly in context. Its time to call them what they truly are: Nixons children.

Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch. Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He is a fellow of the Nation Institute and runs TomDispatch.com. His latest book is Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
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By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 10/23/2017



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.
Louis Condes draw to get into fitness started out like many others: to get himself into better shape than where he was at. However, Condes simple quest for physical self-improvement quickly turned into something much bigger than he could have imagined.
As autumn sets in, nights become darker and the air becomes chillier, making the excitement and suspense that much greater surrounding the exhibition, Specter, set to unveil Friday, Oct. 20 at the Trio Contemporary Art Gallery from 7 to 9 p.m.
The protests will highlight the impact of the twin blows of demonetisation and GST

Opposition parties, including the Congress, plan to hold nationwide protests on the anniversary of demonetisation on November 8.

The protests will highlight, they say, the impact of both demonetisation and hurried implementation of the goods and services tax (GST) that led to an economic slowdown, job losses and other problems for farmers and traders.

A preparatory meeting was held on Monday.

An Opposition Coordination Committee for the purpose will announce the protests at a joint press conference on Tuesday morning.

Leaders said the call would be made jointly but protests will be carried out by parties on the same day but separately.

In Gandhinagar, addressing a public rally on Monday afternoon, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi termed GST as Gabbar Singh Tax. Small shopkeepers are finished.

Lakhs of youths have gone unemployed. They are still not ready to listen, he said. Cult Hindi movie Sholay has had a prime villain, a dacoit called Gabbar Singh.

He also mocked the Prime Minister Narendra Modi over last years demonetisation.

He hit the axe and for two-three days, he could not understand what happened.. the prime minister only realised his mistake after five-six days. Narendra Modiji ruined the economy of the entire country, Gandhi said.

In Patna, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad said his party would hold protests across Bihar on November 8.

We will ask the BJP what the common people gained by the arbitrary step of invalidating Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, Prasad said.

The note ban wreaked havoc on small traders. Millions were forced to stand for hours in queues outside banks to get their notes exchanged. The countrys economy is in tatters as a result.

The meeting in Delhi was attended by Congress leader and opposition head in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Trinamool Congress Derek OBrien, dissident Janata Dal (United) leader Sharad Yadav, Communist Party of Indias D Raja, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagams Kanimozhi and the Bahujan Samaj Partys Satish Chandra Mishra, among others.

Photograph: Shailesh Andrade/Reuters
'What we are today witnessing is the final act of the Pakistani army trying to retain its turf,' argues Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).

It is surprising that major events in our neighbourhood are largely ignored by our media.

One refers to the unseating of Nawaz Sharif as Pakistan's prime minister and his and his daughter Maryam's subsequent indictment on corruption charges.

Parallel with this, one has seen the military's increasing hold on the government apparatus in Pakistan.

General Qamar Javed Bajwa, the current Pakistan army chief, has publicly commented on the government's economic policies.

There is widespread speculation in the Pakistani media that the Pakistan military, always the country's behind-the-curtain ruler, may be planning to emerge from the shadows.

It is almost a cliche to say that while other countries have armies, the Pakistani army has a country. It is a little more complicated than this simplistic notion.

We need to understand Pakistan in its historical context to understand its present and predict its future. The history of a society and nation is what DNA is to an individual.

It is the lack of understanding of the Pakistani DNA that has seen Indian leaders from Jawaharlal Nehru to Narendra D Modi making periodic peace attempts and failing (remember Modi's surprise visit to Lahore on December 25, 2015).

Since the area that forms Pakistan was an integral part of India or Hindustan until 70 years ago, it is necessary to have an integrated approach to Islamic rulers.

The Muslims have a belief that that Islam is the final code of religion as revealed by Mohammed, the last Prophet. Hence, no new religion or fresh prophet is expected. Islamic tradition does not rule out the coming of mahdis (restorers) and mujaddids (regenerators).

According to tradition, the mahdi will emerge when Islam is in its last gasp in the world; he will restore the religion to its true glory.

A mujaddid is sent by Allah in times of spiritual decay and religious crisis.

In the early centuries of Islam, when Muslims faced great difficulties, the faithful in their distress looked for the promised mahdi who would dispel oppression and fill their world with equity and justice.

This desire for a promised mahdi has been successfully exploited by several imposters in Asia, Africa and Europe. In India, at different times, many imposters claimed to be the promised mahdi.

However, mujaddids have often been accepted and many have been officially listed in each century.

Sheikh Ahmad -- (born in 1563 at Sirhind in Punjab), the first mujaddid born in India -- is known as Mujaddid Alaf-I-Sani (Regenerator of the second millennium).

Historically, it is accepted that Emperor Akbar accelerated the natural process of the Indianisation of the Muslim community in Hindustan, politically, culturally and spiritually.

Akbar was the first great moderniser. But because Akbar attempted to chalk out a programme for the betterment of the community at the secular level, he was never accepted by Sunnis as a true regenerator of Islam.

On the other hand, Sheikh Ahmad is not only accepted as a mujaddid, but is also considered as the founder of the religio-political reform movement of orthodox Islam in India.

Sheikh Ahmad's mission in India, at a critical period in its history, ended Akbar's work and won over the emperor's successors to his view of orthodox Islam.

Sheikh Ahmad preached dynamic hatred against non-Sunnis in general and against non-Muslims in particular.

From that point of view, Sheikh Ahmad is the father of communal hatred, religious bitterness and fanaticism in India.

Because of his anti-Shia activities he antagonised Jahangir's Persian-dominated court which warned the emperor about the orthodox movement that could threaten his throne.

Sheikh Ahmad was imprisoned by the emperor on the pretext that he had neglected court etiquette. There were many moves to have the sheikh killed, but Jahangir saved him each time and released him after a year.

There is evidence that thereafter he functioned as Jahangir's adviser. The occasional outbursts of bigotry on Jahangir's part and his anti-Hindu sentiments and policies may be traced to the sheikh's influence on the fickle-minded emperor.

The work of rejuvenating Islam in India was continued by Sheikh Ahmad's sons and disciples after his death. One of his sons was Aurangzeb's adviser.

The puritan in Aurangzeb was not a sudden outburst based on whims, but the logical outcome of far-sighted reactionary influences.

But fanaticism is never long lasting.

Islam, like other great religions, is a product of the social malaise in which it was born. It is a moral and social system. Its moral theories are timeless and universal.

But its social codes and laws, which were conceived and meant for 7th century Arab lands, could not be valid in modern times.

Towards the beginning of the 19th century, because of the growing domination of the Marathas and Sikhs, the Muslim elite and ulema began to feel insecure.

After the Mughal army was defeated at Buxar in 1764, clerics Shah Abdul Aziz and Haji Shariatullah issued a fatwa in 1803 declaring that India was no longer Darul Islam, but Darul Harb (enemy country).

The 19th century saw the rise of the Barelvi sect in India. Sayyad Ahmed Barelvi went to Mecca in 1822 and became a 'Wahhabi'. In 1830 he returned to India and captured Peshawar. He declared a jihad against Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

Through a network of mosques and propaganda, Barelvi attracted recruits from all over the country. Even Muslims from far away Kerala joined him. Such was his appeal of jihad.

But his strict Islam was not to the liking of the Pathans. The Barakzai tribe revolted against him.

Militarily, he was no match for the Sikhs. Barelvi and his disciple Shah Mahhamed Ismail were killed in the battle of Balakote in 1831.

At that time, Muslims in some respects were culturally indistinguishable from their Hindu neighbours.

For example, the Moplahs in Travancore observed matrilineal rules of descent and the Muslims of South Canara and Coimbatore followed the Moplahs.

Hindu laws of joint family were common amongst the Khojas, Kutchhis, Halai Memons and Bohras of Gujarat.

Muslim peasants in Punjab and the 'taluqdars' in the then United Province followed Hindu laws of succession.

The Sharia was prevalent only among the Muslim elite in Delhi and north India.

The Barelvi movement marked the beginning of a deliberate move on the part of the Muslims to culturally separate themselves from the Hindus.

The British played upon this and the Lucknow pact of 1916 granting separate electorates put a seal on this artificial divide.

Apart from the cultural divide, British agents played a major role in stirring up riots. British agents were caught red handed while provoking riots in the 1930 Chittagong riots.

As the freedom struggle intensified and the Congress led by Hindus was in the forefront, the British created the Muslim League to counter this.

Pakistan was born out of this process.

Armed might or the army was at the centre of Islamic rule in India. The rest of the country existed to support it economically.

The jiziya or poll tax imposed only on Hindus was a major source of revenue, hence, there was no incentive to convert people to Islam.

Pakistan subconsciously follows the Mughal model with the army at the centre of the State.

In earlier centuries, the vast non-Muslim economic resource base provided revenue, this was no longer available in a Muslim majority State.

Luckily for Pakistan, for most of its 70 years, the US and the West with its generous military and economic aid as well as Arab countries sustained this bloated military apparatus.

The Americans found the Pakistan army a reliable tool to control the Middle East (remember Zia-ul Haq and his Pakistani brigade massacring Palestinians?).

The conditions that permitted the militarised State of Pakistan to remain afloat economically are changing.

Thanks to the rise of fundamentalism and terrorism based on Pakistani soil, the West is no longer willing to pay its mercenary army.

The meltdown in oil prices has reduced Arab oil money flowing to Pakistan.

Caught in this twin pincer, Pakistan today stares at a bleak economic future.

What we are today witnessing is the final act of the Pakistani army trying to retain its turf.

Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) is a military historian.

IMAGE: Pakistan's army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa arrives to attend the Pakistan day military parade in Islamabad, March 23, 2017. Photograph: Faisal Mahmood/Reuters
'In all likelihood, the Congress will fall short in Gujarat.'

'The Modi-Amit A Shah duo will hold on to the state for the BJP,' predicts Sudhir Bisht.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has ruled Gujarat for over 19 years now, since March 4, 1998.

The BJP won the 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th assembly elections on the trot. The dates for the 14th assembly election are yet to be announced, but there is tremendous value being attached to the election.

Political pundits make it appear that the election is some kind of referendum for the Narendra D Modi government. I believe that there is much more at stake for Rahul Gandhi than Modi in the Gujarat election.

I will not blame the political analysts for their obsession with Modi in all elections. Even BJP sympathiser Ratan Sharda, who may not hold a position in the government or in the BJP/RSS, declared on television recently that the BJP has much more at stake in the Gujarat election than the Congress.

Since there are a large number of traders and small scale businessmen in Gujarat, Sharda felt the assembly election would be a referendum on the Goods and Services Tax. I believe Sharda, the ERP professional, has committed a faux pas by this utterance.

If indeed the Gujarat assembly election is a referendum on GST's acceptance by the trading community, then losing Gujarat would be a mega failure for the BJP.

But as I said, the Gujarat election is less about the BJP winning or losing Gujarat. It is about what the Congress does with its bright chances at the Gujarat polls.

Any party that has ruled a state for 19 years is supposed to lose an assembly election.

Even if one is a Naveen Patnaik, chief minister of Odisha since March 2000, or a Dr Raman Singh who has been the CM of Chhattisgarh since December 2003, or a Shivraj Singh Chauhan who has been Madhya Pradesh CM since November 2005.

No doubt, Gujarat is the home state of Narendra Modi, the most powerful leader in recent times, but Modi has ceased to be the man responsible for Gujarat since May 2014.

The BJP leaders in Gujarat since Modi went on to manage national politics have been an ineffectual Anandiben Patel and an inconsequential Yangon-born Vijay Rupani.

A combination of anti-incumbency and lackadaisical performance by two chief ministers for the past 40 plus months should lead to a change of political order in the state.

Even if we factor in the fact that Gujarat happens to be Modi's home state, the state should be an easy win for a serious minded Opposition party.

But the Congress-friendly media going gaga about a possible win for the Congress is something I don't quite understand!

The BJP, to my mind, should be prepared to lose its stranglehold in Gujarat.

The people of Gujarat have given the BJP an opportunity to lead the state for 19 long years.

The people of Gujarat have given Modi unstinted support when he was the CM.

In 2014, the people of Gujarat gave Modi a 100 percent clean sweep when they voted for the BJP in all 26 Lok Sabha seats.

It is obvious that the voters in Gujarat would like to opt for change even if out of sheer boredom, just to ensure that the BJP does not take them for granted and to see how the other national party, the Indian National Congress, performs if it is given an opportunity to lead the state.

Is it not true that the children of the deprived try harder to make a mark in life?

So from the psychological perspective of the Gujarat electorate, the Congress is supposed to win the assembly election hands down.

The Congress should be a party with a hungrier belly. It has not been in power in Gujarat since 1995.

So what would be so amazing if the Congress wins Gujarat? It is something that should be expected. In fact, it would be disastrous for the Congress if it is unable to win Gujarat.

As per Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, who is leading the Gujarat charge from the front, Modi's GST implementation and demonetisation have been the biggest disasters for the country.

And since Gujarat is all about the business sector, winning Gujarat should be a cakewalk for Rahul Gandhi.

The general mood of Congressmen too seems to be on the ascendance nowadays. A slew of senior Congressmen, all sons of their illustrious fathers, are seen on television, talking about the magic woven by the Prince of 10 Janpath in the US recently.

Twitter is abuzz with Rahul Gandhi followers praising him for the Congress winning an election. They are referring to the Delhi University Students Union polls in September. Many in the Congress attribute this victory to their vice-president's new found passion and zing.

Nothing ceases to amaze me about the Congress party that celebrates the ghosts of its resurrection even as their building columns collapse one by one.

Only one family surname can lead them, others are objects of ridicule even though there is not one Congress MP today who isn't better equipped to lead the Congress than Rahul Gandhi.

Sachin Pilot has a fair degree of education and some kind of mass base in Rajasthan.

Jyotiraditya Scindia has more hair on his head and more grey matter beneath the hair than Rahul Gandhi.

Even an old timer like Anand Sharma has some combativeness left to snarl and roar from the Rajya Sabha benches.

Kamal Nath can still win a Lok Sabha election from Madhya Pradesh and even a Pramod Tiwari has some degree of oratory left to make an impressive impromptu speech.

The tentative Ghulam Nabi Azad can still make an unimpressive but complete speech on the internal affairs of the country.

All these guys, highly mediocre or gloriously below par in their own way, are titans when compared to the waffling, wobbly Rahul Gandhi.

Shashi Tharoor hasn't made my list of people who could easily have usurped Rahul Gandhi's position even though he gained new followers with his anti-British tirade that helps him with an image of being a proud Indian.

But Tharoor faces an uncertain future with the ongoing investigation of his wife Sunanda Pushkar's death.

With all these men rallying around Rahul Gandhi, what would happen if the Congress loses Gujarat?

By the time the Gujarat election results are announced, Rahul Gandhi's well orchestrated ascension to the position of party president would have taken place.

He would, in all probability, be elected unopposed to the post although I wish that Jiten Prasada lives up to his reputation of being his father's son and challenges Rahul in the Congress party's presidential election.

His father, the late Jitendra Prasada, had challenged Sonia Gandhi in November 2000 for the Congress president's post.

In all likelihood, the Congress will fall short in Gujarat. The Modi-Amit A Shah duo will hold on to the state for the BJP. This in itself would need a herculean effort to achieve.

So what happens if Rahul Gandhi loses yet again?

Nothing much, I suppose.

It would make Digvijaya Singh gloat! He had been the fall guy for being unsuccessful at forming a Congress government in Goa in spite of the Congress being the single largest party in the state.

He is currently on a six month sabbatical for a 'Narmada parikrama' -- he will travel down the river for 3,300 kilometres and will be back in April to defend Rahul while the rest of the old guard pleads with Priyanka Gandhi to take greater interest in party affairs.

Sudhir Bisht, author and columnist, tweets at @sudhir_bisht

IMAGE: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi at the Chamunda Mata temple, Chotila, Surendranagar, September 27, 2017. Photograph: PTI Photo
'The government is in no hurry to talk to the separatists and would like to approach the Kashmiri people directly through various other organisations.'

'Officials in charge of J&K affairs at the Centre are clear that there would be no let up in the operations against terrorists,' reveals BharatShakti.in founder Nitin A Gokhale.

Former Intelligence Bureau director Dineshwar Sharma's appointment as the interlocutor for a 'sustained' interaction and dialogue with stakeholders in Jammu and Kashmir is a logical step forward in the Centre's outreach to the people of the state that began with Prime Minister Narendra D Modi's Independence Day declaration that 'Neither by bullet nor by abuses but only by an embrace we can solve the problem of Kashmir (Na goli se na gali se baat banegi gale laga ne se).'

The prime minister's declaration was followed up by Home Minister Rajnath Singh's four-day visit to J&K in September.

Singh's extensive meetings with more than 80 delegations of various hues was confirmation of the Centre's intention to reach out to the awam (common people) in J&K.

The 'soft' approach comes on the back of a nearly year-long hard crackdown that the government was forced to order after the unrest in the wake of the killing of Hijbul Mujahideen 'commander' Burhan Wani in July 2016.

Having got the security situation under manageable control with a sustained and focused counter-insurgency, counter-terrorist (CI-CT) operations, the Centre, in consultation with J&K Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, felt the time was right to make the conciliatory move.

Initial reactions from the state are understandably cautious. The separatists have chosen not to comment so far perhaps because it is not clear yet if Sharma will reach out to them.

The government press note, announcing Sharma's appointment speaks of 'a dialogue with the elected representatives, various organisations and concerned individuals in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.'

Sharma will initiate a 'sustained interaction and dialogue to understand the legitimate aspirations of the wide cross sections of society, particularly the youth in Jammu and Kashmir and communicate them to the state government and the Centre, the press note added.

Questions have been raised about the cases initiated by the National Investigation Agency against some separatist leaders and whether those cases would prove to be an impediment in the reconciliation process.

Indications are that the cases -- mostly related to terror and terror funding against specific individuals -- will continue even as we await clarity on the government's approach towards the Hurriyat leadership.

My sense is: The government is in no hurry to talk to the separatists and would like to approach the people directly through various other organisations.

Similarly, officials in charge of J&K affairs at the Centre are clear that there would be no let up in the pin-pointed, intelligence-based CI-CT operations against terrorists.

A lot of hard work has gone into getting the security situation under control in the past year and there is no plan to ease the pressure, they contend.

Sharma, who retired as director, IB in December 2016, is known to be a low profile but effective official with wide-ranging experience in the security domain as well knowledgeable about the core concerns in J&K.

He was chosen over a host of political choices, mainly because Prime Minister Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval felt that a non-political person would have wider acceptance across the spectrum in J&K.

A politically affiliated personality would, on the other hand, be restricted in his or her approach, the decision-makers felt.

Sharma, a 1979 batch IPS officer of the Kerala cadre, has worked closely with Doval and Rajnath Singh (when he was Uttar Pradesh chief minister) and has Prime Minister Modi's confidence.

With the rank of Cabinet Secretary, Sharma has been given the appropriate status and the requisite authority to deal with various government departments to initiate measures that would be required to signal the government's commitment towards development of Jammu and Kashmir.

The Centre has long felt that the development package for J&K worth Rs 80,060 crores (Rs 800.60 billion) announced by Prime Minister Modi in November 2015 needs a big push on the ground.

While it is not clear if Sharma's mandate includes overseeing the implementation of the development assistance, his authority should ensure that government departments entrusted with releasing funds and completing promised projects would speed up delivery.

In all fairness though, Sharma's main task is to bridge the trust deficit that currently exists between the people and the state government in J&K.

In much the same manner as the government's approach towards the Naga issue -- where its interlocutor R N Ravi has spent a good part of three years in creating confidence and a sense of unity in a deeply divided society -- the Centre will be hoping that Sharma will be able to reach out to larger sections of the society in J&K.

In a way, his appointment will take some pressure off the beleaguered Mehbooba Mufti government and lend some heft to its legitimacy.

The government has rightly refrained from putting a timeframe and desisted from defining desired outcome at this stage.

However, indications from within the government suggests that it is clear on one aspect: The new outreach is entirely internal to India and a third party (read Pakistan) will have no role whatsoever in the process.

Sharma is not the first interlocutor to be appointed by the Centre.

Since 2001, three such attempts have been made with K C Pant, N N Vohra and a three-member panel of Dileep Padgaonkar, Radha Kumar and M M Ansari acting as interlocutors. None of those efforts were however taken to their logical conclusion.

Hopefully, Dineshwar Sharma will be able to break that jinx since the government has taken the decision from a position of strength and not compulsion under any pressure.

IMAGE: Former Intelligence Bureau director Dineshwar Sharma, right, with Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh after being appointed the Centre's representative in Jammu and Kashmir, October 23, 2017. Photograph: ANI
'This bill is to relieve the government of accountability and to cover up its corruption.'

Rajasthan's Vasundhara Raje government has come under fire from civil society and activist groups after it tabled a new bill in the assembly on Monday, October 23.

If the bill -- the Criminal Laws (Rajasthan Amendment) Bill -- is passed, it will amend the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, to bar the media from naming a public servant accused of wrongdoing until the state government allows the case to be investigated.

The bill wants to turn into law an ordinance passed by the state government on September 7, amending Sections 156 and 190 of the CrPC.

People's Union for Civil Liberties Secretary Kavita Srivastava -- a resident of Rajasthan -- tells Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf what this bill means for a democracy like India.

How will you explain this new bill to a layperson?

It is a two-fold attack.

One on the judiciary, by attacking the most significant functionary of the judiciary, the magistrate, or a first class judicial magistrate, who has an extremely significant power of ordering investigation in or taking cognisance of a case (against government officers).

So this new bill is an attack on the judiciary by taking away the power, thwarting it by saying they do not have power to prosecute until the government gives a sanction.

Now, even to initiate an investigation one needs to take the government's permission.

This over-reach will completely finish the independence of the judiciary.

The other point is that they are trying to gag the media.

The government has no right to tell the media what to do and what not to do.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly said this. Even in the judgment which struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, it clearly said the government cannot interfere.

This bill is an attack on freedom of speech and expression.

This bill doesn't only apply to sitting judges and public servants, but also to retired public servants.

What is this nonsense!

In short, this bill is to relieve the government of accountability and to cover up its corruption.

A year is left for elections in Rajasthan and therefore this bill has been brought.

Can we say this bill endangers democracy in our country?

Absolutely. This bill is tinkering with the pillars of democracy which are independent of each other.

The government cannot have this kind of overreach or control.

Vasundhara Raje is going against the Constitution.

Justifying the bill, state Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria said he was an accused in the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case, whereas he was discharged later. He was mentally harassed for long.

This bill will avoid such possibilities is the belief.

His acquittal is being challenged in the Supreme Court by (activist) Harsh Mander. So Kataria is not out of it as yet.

And if he is bringing this bill on a personal ground, then that is a good reason to scrap it.

He cannot bring this bill on a personal ground. This is nonsense.

Kataria must get his laws vetted better. He cannot amend the Indian Penal Code or the CrPC.

We totally disagree with the government and the intent is very clear -- to cover the crimes.

If you see the bill from the government's perspective, 73 per cent of all such cases fall through. It is nothing more than mental harassment for public servants.

A police closure report does not mean a closure (of the case). It can be challenged in a magisterial court. You know how these things function.

If the police closes your case, then you go and get it open through a magistrate.

You file a protest against police closure and get it challenged. We keep doing it all the time.

The government is telling only half the story. The police may close the case, but that is not enough.

The police may have closed a genuine case.

What happened in the Aarushi murder case? The CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) filed a closure report, but the judge did not agree and he opened the case.

It is up to the judge to reopen the case on request.

Maharashtra also brought in a similar ordinance, so why can't Rajasthan do it?

That law has also been challenged in the Bombay high court though I don't think it (the Maharashtra ordinance) has a provision to gag the media.

Also, it (the Maharashtra ordinance) stipulates a waiting period of three months to get government sanction.

In the Rajasthan ordinance, this period is six months.
The National Investigation Agency on Tuesday arrested Syed Shahid Yousuf, son of globally wanted terrorist Syed Salahuddin, in connection with a 2011 terror funding case for allegedly receiving money from his father.

An NIA spokesman said 42-year-old Shahid, at present working in the agricultural department of the Jammu and Kashmir government, was summoned to the agency's headquarters on Tuesday following which he was arrested. He will be produced before a designated NIA court on Wednesday.

The NIA alleged Shahid used to receive funds through a United States-based international wire transfer company from Aijaz Ahmed Bhat, another accused in the case who is absconding and based in Saudi Arabia.

The agency alleged Shahid was 'one of several Indian contacts of Bhat' who had been in telephonic contact with him for receiving money transfer codes.

The NIA claimed so far he had received a total of nearly Rs 4.5 lakh through eight international wire transfers.

The case, registered by the NIA in April 2011, relates to the transfer of money from Pakistan to Jammu and Kashmir through hawala channels via Delhi, which the agency believed was used in funding terrorism and secessionist activities.

The NIA has so far filed two charge sheets against six people including G M Bhat, a close aide of pro-Pakistan separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mohammed Siddiq Ganai, Ghulam Jeelani Liloo and Farooq Ahmed Dagga. All four are in judicial custody.

Two others -- Mohammed Maqbool Pandit and Bhat -- were also charge sheeted by the NIA but are absconding. An Interpol Red Corner notice has been issued against them.

Shahid's father Mohammed Yusuf Shah -- better known as Syed Salahuddin -- was declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US Department of State in June this year.

Besides heading terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, he is the chairman of the United Jehad Council (UJC), a conglomerate of terrorist outfits operating in the Kashmir Valley.

The NIA had also registered two others cases related to terror funding -- one in November 2011 and the other in May this year.

The agency had filed a charge sheet against 10 people including Syed Salahuddin in the April 2011 case. In the recent case, the NIA arrested 10 people including some close relatives and aides of Geelani.

Image: Terrorist Syed Salahuddin's son. Photograph: ANI
IMAGE: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson upon his arrival at AFS Palam in New Delhi on Tuesday. Photograph: Kamal Kishor/PTI Photo

United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday bluntly told Pakistan's top leadership that it must increase efforts to eradicate terrorists operating within the country.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi assured the Secretary of State that his country is committed to the war against terrorism.

Tillerson arrived in Islamabad on a whirlwind visit to reset bilateral ties strained after President Donald Trump accused Pakistan of providing safe havens to terrorist groups.

During his meeting with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Tillerson discussed the bilateral cooperation and partnership, expanding economic ties between the US and Pakistan, and Pakistans critical role in the region.

Abbasi chaired an inter-agency meeting attended by Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif, Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal, Minister of Defence Khurram Dastigir Khan, Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua, Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa, Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lt Gen Naveed Mukhtar and other officials.

The US embassy in Islamabad said that the Secretary reiterated President Trump's message that 'Pakistan must increase its efforts to eradicate militants and terrorists operating within the country'.

To address those concerns, the Secretary outlined the United States' new South Asia Strategy and the vital role that Pakistan can play in working with the US and others to facilitate a peace process in Afghanistan that can bring stability and security to the region, the embassy statement said.

'The Secretary noted that Pakistan and the United States share common interests in establishing a stable, peaceful Afghanistan, defeating ISIS in South Asia, and eliminating terrorist groups that threaten both Pakistan and the United States'.

During the meeting, Abbasi assured Tillerson that his country is committed to the war against terrorism.

"The US can rest assured that we are strategic partners in the war against terror and that today, Pakistan is fighting the largest war in the world against terror," Abbasi said.

Abbasi said Pakistan is 'committed in the war against terror'.

He said Pakistan has produced 'results' in its war against terrorism and it was looking forward to moving ahead with the US and building a tremendous relationship.

So far no official statement was issued by Pakistan but Defence Minister Khan talking to Geo TV said that all aspects of relations were discussed and there was agreement to increase cooperation to defeat militancy.

"They asked Pakistan to take action against groups which are involved in militancy and also urged Pakistan to help create peace in Afghanistan," he said.

IMAGE: Tillerson shakes hand with US Charge dAffaires to India MaryKay Loss Carlson on his arrival in New Delhi. Photograph: Kamal Kishore/PTI Photo



He said the Pakistani side insisted that its efforts for peace were derailed twice -- once when the news of the death of Mullah Omar was divulged and second when Taliban leader Mullah Mansoor was killed.

He said Pakistan the tone of the US delegation was reconciliatory and it insisted that Pakistans role was important for regional peace as it lies between India and Afghanistan.

Khan said that Pakistan also highlighted the issue of Indian presence in Afghanistan and raised concerns about New Delhi's role in security affairs in the war-torn country.

"We said that we do not have any issue with Indian development work in Afghanistan but we have issued with its security role," he said.

He said the US official tried to 'tell us that India is not a threat to Pakistan but our perception was different'.

He said Tillerson expressed gratitude to Pakistan in securing the release of the Boyle-Coleman family from Taliban captivity.

Earlier, Tillerson quietly landed at a military airport in Rawalpindi in the afternoon and was driven to US embassy where he was briefed by senior US officials about relations with Pakistan.

He later met Abbasi at the Prime Minister House and held detailed talks on various aspects of relations.

It was Tillersons first visit to the region after Trump unveiled his policy for Afghanistan and South Asia. Trump's remarks in August unruffled the ties already under strain due to various issues.

Later in the evening, Tillerson arrived in New Delhi. He will hold talks with the Indian leadership on Wednesday to discuss further strengthening of Indo-US strategic partnership in key areas, and collaboration on security in the Indo-Pacific region.

Tillerson, who is the second high-ranking official of the Trump Administration to visit India in the last two months, will call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and hold talks with External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

US Defence Secretary James Mattis visited India last month.

Ahead of Tillerson's three-day visit, the external affairs ministry had said that there will be detailed discussions on further strengthening of Indo-US partnership.

Strengthening cooperation in strategic areas of defence, counter terrorism, security, energy and trade are expected to figure during the meeting between Swaraj and Tillerson.

Tillerson will meet with senior Indian leaders to 'discuss further strengthening of our strategic partnership and collaboration on security and prosperity' in the Indo-Pacific region, State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert had said in Washington last week.

The US Secretary of State, who paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Monday, said the Trump administration was of the view that India can play a positive role in creating a peaceful and stable Afghanistan.

Meanwhile in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani expressed their 'firm resolve' to end the menace of terrorism while emphasising that closure of cross-border safe havens and sanctuaries was essential for lasting peace.

IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the President of Afghanistan Dr Mohammad Ashraf Ghani at Hyderabad House in New Delhi on Tuesday. Photograph: Press Information Bureau of India.



The two leaders also 'positively assessed' the support extended by India in the defence and security fields, including training of thousands of Afghan defence and security personnel with New Delhi agreeing to extend further assistance depending upon the needs of the Afghan defence and police forces.

Detailed discussions were held between the prime minister and the president in one on one format, restricted meeting and a working lunch, a statement by the external affairs ministry said.

The Indian leadership reiterated its support for a negotiated political reconciliation in Afghanistan that is Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled, the statement said.

'It was emphasised that renunciation of violence and terror, and closure of cross border safe havens and sanctuaries were essential for any meaningful progress and lasting peace,' the Ministry of External Affairs statement said, in an obvious reference to Pakistan. However, the statement did not name Pakistan.

During the wide-ranging talks, deep appreciation was expressed for the bravery with which the Afghan forces were fighting terrorism imposed on Afghanistan.

"The support extended by India in the defence and security fields, including training of thousands of Afghan defence and security personnel was positively assessed. The Indian side agreed to extend further assistance depending upon the needs of the Afghan defence and police forces," it said.

MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted, 'Prime Minister Modi and president Ghani discussed range of bilateral, regional and global issues, express firm resolve to end menace of terrorism.'

This was President Ghani's fourth visit to India in the last 3 years and 12th personal interaction between the two leaders, the ministry said.

Earlier in the morning, President Ghani met his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind and received the external affairs minister.
Sherin Mathews, the three-year-old Indian girl missing for over two weeks, is dead, the United States police said on Tuesday.

Sherin, who had developmental issues and limited verbal communication skills, was last seen outside her family's backyard in Richardson city in Texas on October 7.

The Richardson Police earlier announced that they discovered the remains of a small child in a tunnel beneath a road, expressing apprehension that it was most likely that of Sherin. The body was found about one km from the house of her adoptive parents Wesley and Sini Mathews.

Police said medical examiners used dental records to identify the child.

Her cause of death is still pending.

Meanwhile, Sherin's foster father has told police that his daughter choked on milk and he 'believed she had died', according to a media report .

Wesley Mathews, 37, was re-arrested and charged with first-degree felony injury to a child due to a conflicting statement to police.

The arrest came a day after the body of a small child was found in a culvert near their home in suburban Dallas and police fear that it could be that of Sherin.

An arrest warrant obtained by local TV Station WFAA detailed the 'conflicting story' that led to the re-arrest of Sherin's father.

The warrant states that Mathews told police that his daughter choked on milk in the early morning hours of October 7 and he 'believed she had died'.

He said he 'physically assisted' Sherin in drinking her milk when she wouldn't listen to him, according to the warrant.

'She was coughing and her breathing slowed,' the warrant reads.

'Eventually, Wesley Mathews no longer felt a pulse on the child and believed she had died.'

He then admitted to police that he removed the body from the home, the warrant reads.

Mathews had previously claimed that Sherin went missing after he sent her outside their home at around 3 am on October 7 as punishment for not drinking her milk.

He was arrested then and charged with felony endangerment to a child and was placed on electronic ankle monitoring. He also surrendered his passport as a condition of making bond on October 9.

He was re-arrested for felony injury to a child after providing investigators at the Richardson Police Department with the conflicting story.

"When they came in, they provided us with some information that was contrary to what we had previously been told regarding her [Sherin Mathews] disappearance," said Kevin Perlich, Richardson Police Department spokesperson.

His bond has been set at $1 million and he was booked into the Richardson City Jail.

"It is possible that he could bond out again," Perlich said.

When asked on Monday about the milk story Mathews originally told police, Perlich wouldn't provide specifics because it was an ongoing investigation. All he could say was that 'it was not what he told us originally'.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation seized dozens of items from the family's home and their vehicles between October 8 and 12, including a washer and dryer, electronics and DNA swabs.

Mathews, who hails from Kerala, was booked into the Richardson City Jail on a $1 million bond.

Mathews and his wife Sini reportedly adopted Sherin two years ago from an orphanage in Bihar.

Photograph: Kind courtesy @RichardsonTX_PD/Twitter
Irresponsible data? The risks of registering the Rohingya

Publisher IRIN Author Zara Rahman Publication Date 18 October 2017 Cite as IRIN, Irresponsible data? The risks of registering the Rohingya, 18 October 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59eef7f34.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Massive amounts of personal and biometric data are being gathered from hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. This should set off multiple alarm bells.

As bystanders to likely crimes against humanity against the Rohingya, the humanitarian community has a particular responsibility to ensure their rights are not violated further, through data and technology. Now is the time to push for safeguards, before it's too late.

Gathering data on marginalised groups can be a risky business, and the Rohingya are no strangers to having information about them used to further diminish their human rights. What is being proposed in Bangladesh raises broad concerns about the responsible and ethical use of data and is potentially dangerous.

The Bangladeshi government registration process includes scanning in "biometric" data - at this stage, fingerprints, with the UN providing "technical assistance". At the same time, the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, announced this week that it is carrying out a separate counting exercise, including taking photographs.

Refugees may reasonably think their access to aid and protection may depend on one or both registrations, so the power asymmetry is stark between those designing and carrying out the data collection and those on the receiving end of it.

The responsible data considerations are numerous and complex.

What data should be collected, by whom? Who has access to it? In case of machine or human error, what processes are in place to review and make changes? What could be the unintended consequences of these growing databases? How could the data be abused?

All of these questions, and more, need to be thought through and the conclusions intentionally planned into any kind of data collection about the Rohingya, before more harm is done.

Registering the Rohingya

According to local media, Bangladeshi firm Tiger IT has provided the government with a software system to register Rohingyas. It will record the individual's fingerprints, alongside name, gender, age, photograph, parents' names, birthplace, nationality, country, and religion - all of which will be linked to an ID card. The card does not use the term "Rohingya", and some are refusing to be registered because of this omission.

The experience in Bangladesh echoes that in Myanmar. The 2014 census in Myanmar listed 135 ethnic groups but deliberately omitted any option for "Rohingya". This led many to refuse the national ID cards that followed, which used the loaded substitute term "Bengali". Rohingya worried that this was just another attempt to erase them as a community. In a mirror move, a Bangladeshi census in 2016 labelled Rohingya as "Myanmar nationals" - a status Myanmar itself does not recognise.

This month, UNHCR announced it is engaged in a separate counting exercise: Once refugees' information, including photographs, have been gathered digitally with an unnamed "app", a laminated yellow card with a unique number is assigned by the Bangladeshi government's Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission. It's unclear how, if at all, this exercise links up with the other registration, led by the Department of Immigration and Passports.

Producing separate datasets (and possibly providing more than one official identification card) is not an efficient use of resources and indeed might lead to complications for the refugees on the receiving end of the questions and the cards.

Roger Arnold/UNHCR Rohinyga refugees are being registered in Bangladesh Using biometric data as proof of identity might allow aid and services to be delivered to Rohingya refugees more effectively, but it's a double-edged sword for several reasons:

Firstly, it can be used to drive repatriation (voluntary or otherwise). Bangladeshi Industry Minister Amir Hossain Amu has openly stated that the country has "no plan to give any refugee status to Rohingya", adding: "the reason behind the biometric process is to keep record of Rohingya. We want them to go back to their own place."

Secondly, it can digitally enable discrimination. Rohingya have to follow a "code of conduct" that forces them to stay inside the camps and limits their interaction with locals. If the database of Rohingya people were to be leaked, hacked, or shared (for example, with the Myanmar government), it could make it easier to deny Rohingya access to basic services, or target them, or discriminate against them. For example, Bangladeshi mobile phone operators have been banned from selling SIM cards to Rohingya refugees. Biometric data could in theory be shared with mobile phone operators to enforce the ban.

Thirdly, errors and omissions can be harder to resolve. Unlike passwords, fingerprints can't be changed. Once collected, it may be virtually impossible to get rid of them or correct them. Biometric devices are not 100 percent accurate - and it's unclear what action could be taken if mistakes are made.

Responsible data

So how could data collection on the Rohingya help their cause?

There need to be accountability processes in place in case of error, and responsible data practices must clearly be followed. According to data minimisation principles, only data that is necessary should be collected, and access to stored personal data should be strictly limited - many decisions around aid can be made with aggregate numbers, rather than personal data on individuals.

Choices around what data is gathered should be made with a long-term strategy in mind. The collection, storage, and use of that data should then be carefully planned in line with this strategy.

The Rohingya have long been persecuted, even before the horrors they face today in Myanmar.

We have a responsibility to ensure their rights are respected and protected - and that the data purportedly gathered as part of the humanitarian response is used for that purpose and not for further persecution.
Bangladesh resists greater UNHCR role in Rohingya crisis

Publisher IRIN Author Ben Parker Publication Date 24 October 2017 Cite as IRIN, Bangladesh resists greater UNHCR role in Rohingya crisis, 24 October 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59eef8bc4.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Bangladesh is refusing calls from some states and NGOs for a bigger role for the UN's refugee agency in the international response to the Rohingya refugee crisis.

As previously reported by IRIN, Bangladesh, in an unorthodox move, has chosen the International Organization for Migration to lead international relief efforts, not UNHCR.

The issue punctuated informal conversations at a Geneva pledging conference for the Rohingya, where officials gathered new promises of close to $100 million, making a total of $335 million since 25 August.

Several senior observers, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IRIN the policy has led to wasteful friction between IOM and UNHCR, and a weakening of the UN's ability to effectively protect Rohingya refugees' rights.

Despite growing concern over the issue, M. Shameem Ahsan, Bangladesh's representative to the UN in Geneva who was speaking at the donor conference, told IRIN today: "There is no need to change."

William Lacy Swing, director general of IOM, dismissed rumours that the organisation's position was linked to a close relationship with senior figures in the government and suggested he would hand back control immediately to UNHCR if Bangladesh asked him to. "It's the [Bangladeshi] prime minister's decision," he told IRIN. "Meanwhile, I can't say I won't do it."

For his part, UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi told reporters he hoped for a "progressive adjustment towards a more traditional structure in which we can fully exercise our protection and coordination responsibility."

"In the end," he added, "these are choices by the government."

"Not entirely adapted"

A significant number of speakers returned to the theme and called for UNHCR to be allowed to take a leading role, something it has been denied up until now.

In his opening speech, Grandi himself referred diplomatically to the current coordination setup as "not entirely adapted to the current situation"; he even said he was making a "very strong pitch" for his own agency.

The European Commission's top humanitarian official, Christos Stylianides, spoke via video message of priorities, including sticking with "international law and procedures". Other speakers called for UN bodies to be allowed to work "in accordance with their mandates".

Bangladesh is not a signatory to the 1951 refugee convention, and for years has entrusted IOM with a major role in refugee affairs, Ahsan explained. Despite sustained diplomatic lobbying, he told IRIN things would not change. "They [IOM] were with us for a long time."

Ahsan directly rejected calls for UNHCR to take a bigger role, saying: "They [IOM] have been on the ground; they know the problem; they have been dealing with it; and they have done it very well... We have given everyone due scope to deal with the issues under their core competence and we don't see any problem."

Growing concern

Behind the scenes, feelings are running high: One observer said the dispute inside the UN had become a "food fight"; another described it as a "dog's breakfast". Observers worry that the relief operation will suffer. Several said that without putting UNHCR's experience in protection front and centre, Bangladesh would get away with a security-driven response, with military-style closed camps, and feared it would blur the lines on whether the "Myanmar nationals" are in fact entitled to de facto refugee status.

Another analyst suggested even wider ramifications: Eroding UNHCR's role in Bangladesh could further weaken respect for refugee rights, which are already under siege around the world, while IOM lacked the mandate, the technical skills, and the organisational culture to stand up to Bangladesh, the analyst claimed.

Gareth Price-Jones of the NGO CARE, however, said he was "fairly ambivalent" about the UN lead agency issue. "We just need effective coordination," he said.

Manuel Bessler, head of Switzerland's Humanitarian Aid Unit, told IRIN that even though Bangladesh was not a signatory to the refugee convention, the operation needed an "'A-team" not only in terms of staffing "but also in terms of coordination". He said Switzerland refused any weakening of the refugee regime. "For this, we have a refugee agency, that's why we are calling for the proper roll-out of the system."

Androulla Kaminara, a director in the EC's humanitarian department, ECHO, acknowledged coordination is under discussion, saying: "Definitely, it's an issue; a lot of people have raised it. I think it's challenging everybody involved - on the Bangladeshi side and also from the international NGOs and UN system."

A six-month appeal for the UN and key partners is priced at $434 million. UN fundraisers told IRIN they were satisfied with the financial response of today's conference, which brings total pledges for the crisis (including non-UN channels) to $335 million. This donor response is healthy, officials said, given the fast-moving crisis and the fact that many donors are approaching the end of their planning cycles. New money is also expected from the World Bank, which is working on a Bangladeshi government request for support. No figures were released.
Disclaimer

This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.
Algeria: Mass racial profiling used to deport more than 2,000 sub-Saharan migrants

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 23 October 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Algeria: Mass racial profiling used to deport more than 2,000 sub-Saharan migrants, 23 October 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef008b4.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The Algerian authorities have launched a discriminatory crackdown against foreign nationals, rounding up and forcibly expelling more than 2,000 sub-Saharan African migrants from a range of countries to neighbouring Niger and Mali over the past three weeks, said Amnesty International. Those expelled include more than 300 minors, among them at least 25 unaccompanied children.

The new wave of arrests started on 22 September when Algerian police and gendarmes began arbitrarily detaining migrants in the capital, Algiers, and neighbouring suburbs. Research by Amnesty International indicates they made arrests on the basis of racial profiling as they did not seek to ascertain whether the migrants had the right to stay in the country, either by checking their passports or other documents. Some of those arrested and deported are undocumented migrants, while others have valid visas.

"There can be no justification for rounding up and forcibly deporting hundreds of people based on the colour of their skin or their assumed country of origin - a blatant case of mass racial profiling," said Heba Morayef, North Africa Research Director at Amnesty International.

"This and the chilling scale of arbitrary arrests and summary mass expulsions in recent weeks reveal the Algerian authorities' deeply discriminatory attitude towards migrants from sub-Saharan Africa. They must urgently halt these unlawful arrests and deportations."

The latest wave of mass arrests and expulsions comes just few weeks after more than 1,000 people - mainly nationals of Niger - were returned to Niger in August 2017. Arrests also took place during the first weeks of September. In July the Algerian Minister of Foreign Affairs had said organised crime networks are behind the massive flows of migrants in Algeria, while the Cabinet Director of the Presidency of the Republic referred to migrants in the country as a source of criminality and illicit traffics, including drugs.

Meanwhile, at the level of the public, there has been an alarming number of xenophobic comments by Algerian social media users blaming migrants for spreading HIV and taking Algerians' jobs. In September, the Algerian Ministry of Transport issued an .order barring undocumented migrants from using public transport, although this was later withdrawn.

While Algerian authorities have not given any justification for the latest arrests, on 20 October the Algerian Ministry of Justice declared that Algeria "hasn't closed its doors to foreign migrants", but is working "to protect the borders and secure the country".

Under international standards, no one can be forcibly expelled from a country without being given a fair opportunity to challenge their expulsion. In addition, no one can be returned to a country where they would face a real risk of serious human rights violations.

"Instead of trampling over the rights of migrants and carrying out mass expulsions, the Algerian authorities should be trying to counter racial discrimination and hate speech against sub-Saharan Africans and reform laws on the rights of migrant workers to stay in the country," said Heba Morayef, Amnesty International's North Africa Research Director.

Moreover, since 22 September, around 15 refugees and asylum-seekers who were among those detained by police have been released after the UN Refugee Agency's (UNCHR) intervention.

Mass expulsions

Amnesty International has reviewed video evidence and gathered testimony from witnesses to build up a picture of what happened to those who were detained and expelled. It also interviewed some migrants after their arrest and deportation, as well as staff from several international and local humanitarian organizations in Algeria, Niger and Mali. told Amnesty International that they had their passports confiscated, were beaten upon arrest or in detention, and were denied medical care.

Hundreds arrested on 22 September were held by the Algerian gendarmerie in poor conditions at a camp run by the Algerian Red Crescent in Zeralda, a suburb 30km from the centre of Algiers, according to some of those who spoke to Amnesty International. Migrants told Amnesty International that they were made to sleep on the floor with no mattress or covers for two nights, and were given bread with margarine and no water. They were also prevented from speaking to their consular representatives.

On 22 September, more than 600 migrants arrived in Agadez, Niger, according to International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Niger. They included nationals from Niger, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Benin. Among them, more than 100 women and 200 minors.

Six days later, on 28 September, more than 350 of the detained migrants were transferred at night by bus to a camp run by Algeria's gendarmerie in Tamanrasset, a city in the south of Algeria. They were later taken by trucks to In Guezzam, a town near the border with Niger, before being left by Algerian security forces on Nigerien side of border in the northern city of Assamaka. Nigerien authorities, with the cooperation of international humanitarian organisations, then transferred them to Agadez in the centre of the country.

By 30 September, around 357 people had arrived in Assamaka after being expelled from Algeria, according to the International Organization of Migration in Niger. They included nationals from Guinea, Mali, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger, Liberia, Cameroun and Sierra Leone.

In a second wave of arrests in Algiers on 2 October, more than 500 migrants, mainly construction workers, were arrested. After being detained in Zeralda for three days, they were transferred to Tamanrasset and then abandoned at the border in In Guezzam, a witness told Amnesty International. At least 100 were then forced to cross the border and walk six hours through the desert to reach Assamaka, while others were left by Algerian authorities in the Nigerien side of the border.

Arrests, detentions and deportations have continued over the past two weeks in Algiers and Blida, with another 500 migrants transported to Tamanrasset on 13 October, according to local journalists. More than 200 people arrived in Niger on 15 October, more than 300 on 18 October, including more than 90 children - among them unaccompanied minors - and 450 on 22 October, according to IRC in Niger. A new convoy with 500 migrants is expected to arrive in Agadez on 25 October, IRC told Amnesty International.

At least two people have applied for asylum in Niger, according to UNHCR in Niger, after the last expulsions. Local sources told Amnesty International that arrests have continued and that several hundred are still held in Zeralda camp in Algiers and in Tamanrasset awaiting expulsion.

Civil society organizations in Mali have told Amnesty International that the Algerian authorities have also expelled migrants to Mali, in particular through the border crossing next to the village of In Khalil, Mali, south-east of the Algerian town of Bordj Badji Mokhtar. They were unable to provide a total number for those expelled to Mali, however. The Malian organizations say they have received at least 100 people of different nationalities, including children, over the last two weeks. Some were suffering from dehydration upon arrival.

Background

Algeria is a party to the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, which prohibits collective expulsions of migrant workers and their families irrespective of their status and states that each case of expulsion must be examined individually. The mass expulsion of non-nationals is also prohibited by Article 12 of the African Union's (Banjul) Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, which Algeria has ratified.

This is not the first time Algeria has carried out mass deportations without due process. In December 2016, more than 1,400 sub-Saharan migrants were arrested and at least several hundred deported to Niger, according to Human Rights Watch. At least seven asylum-seekers from the Democratic Republic of the Congo were reported to have been among those deported, according to UNHCR representatives in Niger. The Algerian authorities attempted to justify those expulsions by claiming they were undertaken within the framework of a 2014 bilateral co-operation agreement with the government of Niger. Since 2014, Algeria has repatriated more than 18,000 nationals of Niger to that country, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Mass deportations without due process contravene both international standards and Algerian Law 08-11 of 2008.

Despite being a party to the UN Refugee Convention, Algeria continues to lack legislation on asylum and offers inadequate protection to UNHCR-registered refugees and asylum-seekers in the country. Despite the high numbers of migrant workers in the country, Algeria also lacks a clear legal framework for migrant workers and Law 08-11 of 2008 treats irregular migration as a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in prison.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Iran: Prominent academic sentenced to death after grossly unfair trial

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 23 October 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Iran: Prominent academic sentenced to death after grossly unfair trial, 23 October 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef01b04.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

The Iranian authorities must urgently quash the death sentence against Iranian-born Swedish resident and specialist in emergency medicine Ahmadreza Djalali, said Amnesty International today.

The medical doctor and university lecturer had studied and taught in Sweden, Italy and Belgium. Since his arrest in April 2016, several European officials have called for his release.

Zeynab Taheri, one of Ahmadreza Djalali's lawyers, told Amnesty International that he was sentenced to death for the charge of "corruption on earth" (ifsad fil-arz), and has been given a 200,000 euro fine. The court verdict, which was shown to one of the lawyers, states that Ahmadreza Djalali worked with the Israeli government, who subsequently helped him obtain his residency permit in Sweden.

"Ahmadreza Djalali was sentenced to death after a grossly unfair trial that once again exposes not only the Iranian authorities' steadfast commitment to use of the death penalty but their utter contempt for the rule of law," said Philip Luther, Amnesty International's Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

"No evidence has ever been presented to show that he is anything other than an academic peacefully pursuing his profession. If he has been convicted and sentenced for peacefully exercising his rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly, including through his academic work, the authorities must immediately and unconditionally release him and drop all charges against him."

Ahmadreza Djalali was arrested by Ministry of Intelligence officials in April 2016 and held without access to a lawyer for seven months, three of which were in solitary confinement. Even after that period, every lawyer he selected was rejected by the court.

In a voice recording that was published on YouTube on 22 October, Ahmadreza Djalali is heard saying that, while in solitary confinement, he was twice forced to make "confessions" in front of a video camera by reading out statements pre-written by his interrogators. He says that he was put under intense pressure through psychological torture and threats to execute him and arrest his children to "confess" to being a spy for a "hostile government". In the recording, he says that his academic beliefs have been used to convict him and sentence him to death. He also denies the accusations against him and says they have been fabricated by Ministry of Intelligence interrogators.

"At a time when the Iranian authorities are actively strengthening ties with countries in the European Union, it is absurd that they are using Ahmadreza Djalali's academic links to a European country as part of the 'evidence' against him," said Philip Luther.

Ahmadreza Djalali's wife Vida Mehrannia, who lives in Sweden with their two children, has told Amnesty International that his physical and mental health have sharply deteriorated since he was detained. She added: "We are calling for his release because he has not committed any crime."

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender, or the method used by the state to kill the prisoner. The death penalty is a violation of the right to life and the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Iraq: Fresh evidence that tens of thousands forced to flee Tuz Khurmatu amid indiscriminate attacks, lootings and arson

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 24 October 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Iraq: Fresh evidence that tens of thousands forced to flee Tuz Khurmatu amid indiscriminate attacks, lootings and arson, 24 October 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef02474.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Lootings, arson and house demolition targeted predominantly Kurdish areas

At least 11 civilians killed by indiscriminate attacks

Tens of thousands now displaced afraid to go back home

Amnesty team analysed satellite imagery, videos, photos and dozens of testimonies

Satellite images, videos, photos and dozens of testimonies collected by Amnesty International show that civilians were forced to flee their homes after fierce clashes erupted between Iraqi government forces, supported by the Popular Mobilization Units, and Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Iraq's multi-ethnic city of Tuz Khurmatu on 16 October 2017.

Residents reported that at least 11 civilians were killed by indiscriminate attacks, while hundreds of properties were looted, set on fire and destroyed in what appears to be a targeted attack on predominantly Kurdish areas of the city.

"Within hours the lives of countless men, women and children were devastated in Tuz Khurmatu. Thousands have lost their homes, shops and everything they owned. They are now scattered in nearby camps, villages and cities, wondering whether they will ever be able to return," said Lynn Maalouf, Director of Research for the Middle East at Amnesty International.

"The Iraqi authorities already stated they would not tolerate any attacks against civilians, and would hold perpetrators accountable. They must now put word to action, and promptly initiate impartial investigations into these violations. Victims must receive full reparation and those responsible held to account."

Between 18 and 23 October, Amnesty International interviewed 42 displaced residents of Tuz Khurmatu, conducted analysis of satellite imagery of the city and analyzed and authenticated photos and videos provided by residents showing damage to homes and other civilian property caused by arson and looting.

Tuz Khurmatu residents told Amnesty International that heavy clashes broke out after midnight on 16 October. Most of the civilians interviewed reported that they fled the city between 2am and 6am as a result of the fighting. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) informed Amnesty International that nearly 35,000 civilians have fled Tuz Khurmatu since 16 October.

"Hameed", a 68-year-old man, told Amnesty International that on 19 October he travelled from Zinana, the village to which he had fled on 16 October, to Tuz Khurmatu to check on his house, which is located near Sitar Mosque in al-Jumhuriya neighbourhood. He described what he saw:

"When I got to my house, I saw that the door was broken, and the TV and the refrigerator were burnedWhen I went in, I realized my house was still on fireWe went to my son's room, and it was like a pressure cooker inside. I fell over from the shock of the heat, and I almost fainted. My house was beautiful - it had two storeys. I loved that house. I kept trying to put out the fire, but finally my nephew said, 'Uncle, we have to go - it's not safe for us here'."

"Sangar" returned briefly to the city to check on his house. He told Amnesty International: "I was creeping through the city, trying to avoid seeing anyoneThe market in al-Jumhuriya was completely burned out. And I saw some houses that had been exploded. They were completely collapsed. My house was burned, tooIt looked like 90% of the buildings in al-Jumhuirya were burned."

Witnesses reported receiving threatening messages or phone calls from their Turkmen neighbors. Those who had returned briefly to the city reported seeing extensive damage to homes in al-Jumhuriya and Hai Jamila, both Kurdish-majority neighbourhoods. Amnesty International authenticated photos and videos it received from witnesses showing the damage caused to civilian homes and property by looting and arson in Tuz Khumatu.

Residents who are still in the city, as well as others who fled and then attempted to return, described how Iraqi government forces, as well members of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), Turkmen fighters and Turkmen civilians engaged in rampant arson, looting and demolition of civilian homes.

"I can't describe what I saw. There is so much destruction - you can't even imagine this was a city." Zargos

Burning, looting, and house demolitions

According to "Sarhang", who stayed in al-Jumhuriya neighbourhood until 6pm on 16 October: "More than 100 people on motorcycles were riding around the neighborhoodThey knew the houses [and entered them] one by one. They took anything valuable or worth something. Then they set fire to a blanket and threw it into the house. The fire is [then] lit, and the whole house catches fire. They leave it to burn. I saw trucks and lorries [driven by] the PMU and Turkmen. The Turkmen are PMU anyway. They would take kitchen counters, fridges, stoves - whatever they can."

Residents also mentioned the history of clashes and revenge attacks between Kurdish and Shi'a Turkmen residents of Tuz Khurmatu. In a chilling example of the tension between the two groups, "Sherine" a resident of al-Jumhuriya neighborhood told Amnesty International that on 15 October, her Turkmen neighbour saw her buying plates and pots in the market. She told her: "Keep buying. I want Kurds to buy things, because in the end it will be left behind for me."

Indiscriminate attacks

Tuz Khurmatu residents reported that the weapons used in the densely populated city included mortars, RPGs, DShk heavy machine guns and Kalashnikov assault rifles. Civilians interviewed by Amnesty International were unable to determine whether the attacks they experienced were attributable to Kurdish or Iraqi government forces; however, in several of the cases documented by Amnesty International, the indiscriminate fire was launched into crowds of Kurdish residents fleeing the city.

According to "Sherine":

"One [mortar] fell very close to our front door. It was about 2am and very dark. The children started screaming and I screamed too. I didn't take anything. I'm still wearing the same dress as I wore that night. It's so filthy, but what can I do? I don't know how I managed to get the children into the car. Everyone was on the street. People were running and in their cars. It was so dusty. The mortars kept coming. We heard the Peshmerga were running away, and that really frightened us. We drove into the emptiness and didn't stop until Qala Dawoodi [a village about 12km from Tuz Khurmatu]. We slept outdoors until dawn."

"Sherine" told Amnesty International that there are no military installations near her house.

"Soran", an 18-year-old man from Hai Jamila, told Amnesty International:

"A mortar fell near my house, and because of that, we fled. I was with my family. We are six people - my mother, father, my brother, two sisters and me. I saw at least a thousand people fleeing with us - it looked like a sea of people. We had to get through the irrigation project to get out. There are all of these ditches and small ponds we had to get through. The mortars were falling around us, and snipers were shooting at us. Some of the elderly people were left behind. Others were carried in blankets - we had to carry them so they didn't fall in the water. I saw one man who was hit in the leg by a sniper's bullet. He fell down, and I don't know what happened to him. Another man was shot in the head and died instantly, in front of me."

"Soran" told Amnesty International that there were no military installations near his house and that the crowd fleeing was made up solely of civilians.

"Jamil" also fled Tuz Khurmatu with his family, around 3:30am on 16 October. He explained:

"We left on a tractor. It was all we had. We had to go out by a route that goes by the mountains and the irrigation system. It was really difficult - there were bullets whizzing by our head and mortars flying around us. We were so scared. I was with my wife and four children. When we left, I thought to myself: I will definitely lose my house to the burning and the looting, so now I need to take care of my family."

"Jamil" told Amnesty International that there were no fighters near him during his flight outside the city.

Nowhere to Turn

Of the 42 civilians interviewed by Amnesty International who fled the city and are now sheltering in nearby villages, camps and cities, none felt safe enough to return to Tuz Khurmatu. Amnesty International spoke with four Tuz Khurmatu residents who had returned briefly to check on their homes or shops, but all had returned within hours, citing concerns for their safety. Tuz Khurmatu residents who had fled the city also consistently reported that none of their Kurdish neighbours have returned to the city permanently after 16 October or had any plans to do so.

"Abbas" told Amnesty International:

"I want you to know that for us as Kurds, we can't go back to Tuz Khurmatu At any moment they can come in a car and pick me up, for any reasonIf I need to get a national ID or get some official documents, I would have to go to the intelligence. If I go there, I might never come backThey could kill me, or hold me hostage. We are afraid. And we are sure this is what will happen."

"Othman" added: "I will never go back until we have guarantees for our safety. They even burn our mosques - how can we be safe there?"

"Residents of Tuz Khurmatu have suffered repeated cycles of violence in past years, and violations such as these lead to future cycles, unless the Iraqi government sends a strong signal  not only in word, but by way of concrete action  that perpetrators will be held to account, victims compensated and that the authorities will take all necessary steps to protect the displaced civilians," said Lynn Maalouf.

"Humanitarian support for the tens of thousands of people who have fled Tuz Khurmatu must be earmarked and provided as a matter of urgency, both by the international community and the Iraqi government. It is also essential that the authorities swiftly restore security and the rule of law and establish conditions conducive to the safe, voluntary and sustainable return of tens of thousands of displaced residents."

Background:

Tuz Khurmatu was under the joint control of the Kurdistan Regional Government forces, the Population Mobilization Units (PMU) and local police, until Iraqi government forces supported by factions of the PMU took control of the city on 16 October. Its population of more than 100,000 is multi-ethnic, comprised of Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs. The city has been the site of sporadic clashes and communal violence since 2003.

The most recent clashes had occurred between October 2015 to January 2016, when Kurdish Peshmerga and members of Shia Turkmen militias killed, wounded and abducted civilians and destroyed hundreds of homes and shops.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
How do you build a health system from scratch in the middle of a refugee crisis?

Publisher IRIN Author Stefanie Glinski Publication Date 24 October 2017 Cite as IRIN, How do you build a health system from scratch in the middle of a refugee crisis?, 24 October 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef04144.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

He lies exhausted on a metal bed that has a cut-out hole in the middle of it and a plastic bucket underneath. His frail body is weakened by severe, constant diarrhoea.

Noor says he is the sole survivor of a family brutally killed by soldiers in Myanmar. When he fell ill, neighbours in Bangladesh's swelling refugee camps carried him to a doctor. But now he's alone.

Just a week earlier, the bustling 20-bed dysentery clinic he is recovering in was an empty warehouse. But relief efforts have to move fast in the Rohingya camps, where aid agencies are scrambling to construct a healthcare system in record time for the world's fastest-growing refugee crisis.

While new health posts are sprouting up in the camps, the needs are immense. Vast distances and still-growing refugee numbers make delivering life-saving aid a monumental challenge.

Keeping pace

More than 600,000 refugees have flocked into southern Bangladesh since 25 August, after a Rohingya militant group's attacks in Myanmar's Rakhine State triggered a brutal military crackdown. Refugees say they have survived killings and forced expulsions from their villages. Many are malnourished; most require some form of health assistance.

Many have set up tents in the existing Kutupalong camp, which has hosted previous waves of Rohingya refugees since the 1990s. But new settlements are mushrooming throughout Cox's Bazar district. Clean water and sanitation are largely unavailable in many of the new sites, making the camps breeding grounds for dangerous infectious diseases.

The magnitude of the sudden influx has made it impossible to reach all of the refugees. Aid groups in Cox's Bazar estimate that about 300,000 people have received health services - half the number of new arrivals.

The government has set aside a large swathe of land to house most of the newly arrived refugees. Authorities and aid groups have earmarked one health post for every 14,000 camp residents. But while many refugees have already moved in, most of the health facilities have not.

"The Rohingya arrived quickly and before structures were put in place. The humanitarian community responded immediately to the crisis, but at this point many people had already settled," said Frank Tyler of Medical Teams International, whose team runs the dysentery clinic where elderly Noor is being treated.

The in-patient facility was the first dysentery clinic to be set up in the camp; its 20 beds are somehow supposed to serve 50,000 refugees.

Preventing cholera

With such large numbers living in close quarters and with little access to proper sanitation, health officials fear the risk of disease outbreaks like measles and cholera. The World Health Organisation has warned of a "very highly likely" chance that small clusters of cholera will emerge.

A massive cholera vaccination campaign has been underway in the camps this month. Reaching more than 700,000 people, UNICEF is calling it the second-largest oral vaccination campaign the world has ever seen.

Stefanie Glinski/IRIN Volunteers administer cholera vaccines to people in Rohingya refugee camps. Many of the volunteer teams walk hours into the camps to distribute the vaccine.

The teams who distribute the vaccines have to be hardy. Equipped with 500 doses in small glass containers, they hike deep into the muddy camps, walking for kilometres in the scorching sun to reach the most remote communities.

"The camp is a logistical challenge. We adjust our plans daily and remain flexible," said Maya Vandenent, chief of health at UNICEF Bangladesh, which is coordinating the campaign with the WHO and Bangladesh's Ministry of Health.

The rapidly evolving emergency has made it essential for the plethora of aid organisations in Cox's Bazar to work together. Aid groups and UN agencies, which occasionally have overlapping mandates or competing priorities, are partnering across sectors to coordinate aid alongside the government. International groups are working with local organisations, while Bangladesh's army has taken on a key role constructing parts of the new camp area.

"The situation in the camps has been catastrophic, and during the rainy season much of it wasn't accessible by road at all," said Rashed Hasan, a lieutenant colonel in the army.

Hasan stands outside an army tent where soldiers are screening patients and passing out medication. Behind him is another, seemingly nondescript white tent. Hasan is not allowed to enter it.

"It's the maternity ward," he said.

Inside the tent, Monura Begum sits on a bed with her newborn baby boy. He's less than a day old and doesn't have a name yet. Monura doesn't comprehend how the local army can work with aid agencies to help people.

"The Burmese soldiers tortured us. I saw them raping many women in my village when I fled," she said, holding her baby's feet softly. "It's very different here."

The small maternity centre was planned and set up in less than two weeks.

"We have a delivery room and a resting area and at least five women give birth here every day," said Laila Begum, a Rohingya refugee who was hired as a birth attendant by BRAC, a Bangladesh-based NGO that has partnered with the army to run the facility.

Overwhelmed

The camp's biggest hospital, run by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, opened last week just down the road in Kutupalong.

The 60-bed clinic's white tents sit in the shade of leafy rubber trees. The facility includes an operating theatre, a maternity ward, an out-patient department, as well as an isolation unit.

On its first day, the hospital had a stillbirth in the delivery room and a life-saving surgery in the operating theatre.

Eight-month-old Mohammed's left lung had collapsed when his mother brought him in from a smaller clinic. But within hours he was recovering in the hospital's paediatric ward, his mother sitting by his side in disbelief.

"My son was ill for many weeks. I know that he would have died. The doctors here have saved him," Halima Khartoom said, watching fresh oxygen being pumped into her son's now functioning lungs.

For healthcare providers, one basic challenge is just finding enough room to set up.

"Every piece of land is used by people already, so it was tough to find space and to ensure there is proper drainage," said the IFRC's Caroline Holt.

But while the hospital has already saved lives, the rapid refugee surge into Bangladesh will continue to test aid providers.

"The health sector is certainly overwhelmed by the big influx," Holt said. "Even a 60-bed hospital in a scenario of almost 600,000 people can only do so much."

'I don't know where to go'

Aid groups have turned to local communities - and refugees themselves - to help respond. A growing number of local Bangladeshis work as rickshaw ambulance drivers, employed by aid agencies to transport patients.

More than 1,000 Rohingya in the camps have been trained up as community health workers on the front lines of disease prevention. Equipped with gumboots and backpacks full of diarrhoea treatment and soap, they visit homes throughout the camps to spot diseases and refer severe cases to hospitals.

But vital health services have not reached everyone.

Mohammed Nuan lives a several-hour walk away from the camp's entrance, deep in Kutupalong's muddy hills. His home is a simple plastic sheet, propped up with bamboo sticks.

He's almost three years old, but severely malnourished. Hunger is widespread among the Rohingya and one in five children under five is likely malnourished, according to UNICEF.

"His mother was killed in Myanmar and I am now alone with my son," explained Abdul, the toddler's father, holding his frail son in his arms.

"I don't know where to go for medical help. I've lost everything in Myanmar. Having my son alive with me is my hope."
Tajikistan: One more prisoner of conscience

Publisher Forum 18 Author Mushfig Bayram Publication Date 20 October 2017 Cite as Forum 18, Tajikistan: One more prisoner of conscience, 20 October 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef09074.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Jehovah's Witness conscientious objector to military service Daniil Islamov has been jailed for six months. And the government has imposed highly intrusive Mourning Regulations ordering among other things: "Crying while grieving for the dead is allowed. But crying and wailing loudly .. is forbidden".
Brazil and Haiti: Foreigner identity cards (Cedula de Identidade de Estrangeiro, CIE) issued to Haitian residents, including the purpose of the information indicated on them (2010-September 2017)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 17 October 2017 Citation / Document Symbol ZZZ106003.FE Related Document(s) Bresil et Haiti : information sur les cartes d'identite de l'etranger (Cedula de Identidade de Estrangeiro, CIE) delivrees aux residents haitiens, y compris la signification des renseignements y figurant (2010-septembre 2017) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Brazil and Haiti: Foreigner identity cards (Cedula de Identidade de Estrangeiro, CIE) issued to Haitian residents, including the purpose of the information indicated on them (2010-September 2017), 17 October 2017, ZZZ106003.FE, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef0fe84.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

The website of the Federal Police (Policia Federal) of Brazil reports that the foreigner identity card (Cedula de identidade de Estrangeiro, CIE) [translation] "is the physical identification document for foreigners registered in Brazil  valid throughout the country" (Brazil 13 Sept. 2017). The same source indicates that, according to article 30 of Law No. 6815 of 1980, foreigners admitted to Brazil temporarily, permanently or as refugees must register with the Federal Police within 30 days of their arrival or after being granted asylum and, once registered, they are issued a foreigner identity card (ibid.). Article 30 of Law No. 6815 of 19 August 1980, which defines the legal status of foreigners in Brazil, states the following:

Art. 30. An alien who enters the country as a permanent resident, or temporary resident (sub-paragraphs I and IV to VI of art. 13) or as a political refugee shall be obliged to register with the Ministry of Justice within thirty days as of his/her entry, of the granting of the refugee status (asylum), and to identify himself/herself by fingerprinting in accordance with the regulatory provisions. (Wording based on Law no. 6964 of 12/09/81). (Brazil 1980)

Article 2 of Decree No. 2236 of 23 January 1985 (Decreto-lei no 2.236, de 23 janeiro de 1985), concerning the [translation] "foreigner identity document," provides the following: [translation] "The foreigner identity document shall be replaced every nine years, starting from the date of issuance or the date of extension of stay" (Brazil 1985). A document published in May 2015 by EMDOC, an "advisory firm" located in Sao Paulo that specializes in immigration (EMDOC n.d.), indicates that CIEs always have a period of validity, "even in the case of [foreigners] who already have a permanent residence permit" (EMDOC May 2015, 78). The website of the Department of Justice and Public Safety of Brazil (Ministerio da Justica e Seguranca Publica) indicates that foreigners with permanent status have a CIE valid for a period of nine years and that they must renew their CIE before it expires (Brazil n.d.). The EMDOC document states that "as a rule, the [CIE] must be changed and the registration renewal must be done every nine years," thereby allowing the government to monitor foreign nationals living in Brazil (EMDOC May 2015, 78).

According to the same source, the National Registry of Foreigners (Registro Nacional de Estrangeiro, RNE) was created as a means to register all foreigners residing temporarily or permanently in Brazil, and enrollment in this registry is "what will prove the effective residence of the foreigner" in Brazil (ibid., 77-78). The same source indicates that the purpose of the RNE is to identify foreigners by their personal information, such as "name, nationality, date and place of birth, name of the parents," and by their fingerprints (ibid., 77). According to the website of the Federal Police, the CIE contains the RNE [translation] "alphanumeric number" (Brazil 13 Sept. 2017).

Article 2, paragraph 1 of Decree No. 2236 of 23 January 1985 provides the following:

[translation]

Foreign nationals holding a permanent visa who have previously completed a registration renewal and who

have reached 60 years of age by the date of expiration of the identity document; (clause added by Law No. 9.505 of 15/10/1997) and are physically disabled, (clause added by Law No. 9505 of 15/10/1997)

shall be exempt from the replacement required under this article (single paragraph added by Law No. 9.505 of 15/10/1997). (Brazil 1985)

According to the website of the Federal Police,

[translation]

Foreign nationals holding a permanent visa who previously completed a registration renewal and who have reached 60 years of age at the time of the card's expiry date or who are physically disabled shall be exempt from the requirement to replace the CIE, including after the card's expiry date (Brazil 13 Sept. 2017.).

According to the website of the Federal Police, those individuals can, if they so wish, replace the CIE with a CIE valid for an indefinite period [translation] "by paying a fee" (Brazil 13 Sept. 2017).

The EMDOC document indicates that according to "Ordinance Number 2524/2008 of the Ministry of Justice," foreigners aged 51 years and older at the time of registration and disabled persons of any age shall receive a CIE that is valid indefinitely (EMDOC May 2015, 78). An article published on the website of Rolim, Viotti and Leite Campos (RV&LC), a law firm whose offices are located mainly in Brazil (RV&LC n.d.) and which deals with the issuance of CIEs to foreigners aged 51 years and older and to disabled persons, reports that:

This Ordinance [No. 2524 of 2008] sets forth that CIE with unlimited validity shall be issued to foreigners permanently resident in Brazil (i) who are 51 or more years old at the time of the registration and (i) who are handicapped, of any age

The Ordinance also allows foreigners permanently resident in Brazil, holders of CIE with limited validity and over 60 years old, to require, without any burden, the replacement of their CIEs in the nearest unity of the Federal Police (RV&LC 2 Feb. 2009).

For information on the laws relating to CIEs issued to Haitian nationals in Brazil, see Response ZZZ105986 of October 2017.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Brazil. 13 September 2017. Policia Federal. "Cedula de Identidade de Estrangeiros." Unofficial translation by the Translation Bureau, Public Services and Procurement Canada. [Accessed 6 Oct. 2017]

Brazil. 1985 (amended in 1997). Decreto-lei no 2.236, de 23 de janeiro de 1985. Unofficial translation by the Translation Bureau, Public Services and Procurement Canada. [Accessed 10 Oct. 2017]

Brazil. 1980 (amended in 2016). Lei n 6.815, de 19 de Agosto de 1980. In The Foreign National in Brazil: Legislation and Comments, 4th edition, by EMDOC, October 2009. [Accessed 29 Sept. 2017]

Brazil. N.d. Ministerio da Justica e Seguranca Publica. "Carteira de identidade de estrangeiro." [Accessed 6 Oct. 2017]

EMDOC. May 2015. Rene Ramos, Guilhermo Francisco Alves Ribeiro Dias and Fabiano Tatsushi Kawai. The Foreign National in Brazil: Legislation and Comments. [Accessed 10 Oct. 2017]

EMDOC. N.d. "About the Company." [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017]

Rolim, Viotti and Leite Campos (RV&LC). 2 February 2009. "Issuance of CIE to Foreigners over 51 Years Old and to Handicapped Ones." [Accessed 12 Oct. 2017]

Rolim, Viotti and Leite Campos (RV&LC). N.d. "The Law Firm." [Accessed 13 Oct. 2017]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Brazil - Brazil visa application centre, consulate in Toronto, consulate in Montreal, Conselho Nacional de Imigracao; Conectas; Viva Rio.

Internet sites, including: ecoi.net; International Crisis Group; United Nations - Refworld, ReliefWeb; United States - Department of State, Library of Congress.
Bresil: information sur le statut de resident des citoyens d'Haiti, y compris leurs droits et obligations. (2010-septembre 2017)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 3 October 2017 Citation / Document Symbol ZZZ105986.F Related Document(s) Brazil: Resident status of Haitian citizens in Haiti, including their rights and responsibilities (2010-September 2017) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Bresil: information sur le statut de resident des citoyens d'Haiti, y compris leurs droits et obligations. (2010-septembre 2017), 3 October 2017, ZZZ105986.F, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef115d4.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Status of Haitian Asylum Seekers in Brazil

Sources from 2016 state that the number of Haitian nationals who had migrated to Brazil since 2012 was estimated at 85,000 (US 3 Mar. 2017, 11) and over 85,000 since the 2010 earthquake (Jubilut et al. Oct. 2016, 77). Sources report that most of the Haitians who arrived in Brazil [from 2010 to 2012 (IJDH and NWIRP 3 Apr. 2017, 1) or from January 2010 to February 2011 (IPPDH and IOM Aug. 2017, 64)] claimed refugee status (IJDH and NWIRP 3 Apr. 2017, 1; IPPDH and OIM Aug. 2017, 64).

Article 21 of Law No. 9,474 of 22 July 1997, on refugee status, states the following concerning temporary residence in Brazil:

[translation]

Art. 21. After the application is submitted, the Federal Police Department will issue a receipt to the applicant and their family group located in the national territory, and consequently, they will have the right to stay until the final decision.

 1 Having issued the receipt to the refugee, the Ministry of Labour may issue them the temporary permit in order to work in Brazil.

 2 Minors, under the age of 14, will be included in the receipt issued to the refugees. (Brazil 1997)

A document dated 3 April 2017, on Haitians in Brazil and prepared by Norwest Immigrant Rights Project (NWIRP), an organization that defends the rights of immigrants, among others, by providing legal services and community education (NWIRP n.d.), in partnership with the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), a non-profit organization in the United States that supports "the Haitian people in their struggle to achieve universal human rights, access to a just legal system, social justice, a society without violence and the right to participate fully in choosing their government" (IJDH n.d.), explains that, according to article 21 of Law No. 9,474, a migrant who applies for refugee status in Brazil will receive a provisional ID document, a temporary work permit, and a taxpayer ID number (Cadastro de Pessoas Fisicas, CPF) (IJDH and NWIRP 3 Apr. 2017, 1). Similarly, an article titled Haitian Migration in Brazil: Destination Study Results (La migration haitienne au Bresil : resultat de l'etude a la destination[1]), published in July 2014 in the Cahiers migratoires n 6 of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), states that applying for asylum in Brazil enables applicants to obtain a work permit and a CPF [2] (Fernandes and de Castro July 2014, 53).

Sources state that the National Committee for Refugees (Comite Nacional para os Refugiados, CONARE), the Brazilian organization responsible for assessing and deciding on asylum claims and providing protection and assistance to asylum seekers (Brazil n.d.a), refused to grant Haitians refugee status (IJDH and NWIRP 3 Apr. 2017, 1; IPPDH and IOM Aug. 2017, 64), rendering the situation of Haitians in Brazil and of Haitians who had arrived at the Brazilian border [translation] "irregular" (IPPDH and IOM Aug.2017, 65). According to a 2016 article in Revue Migrations Forcees (RMF), published by the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford (RMF n.d.), the Brazilian government does not consider environment crises a valid reason for granting refugee status (Jubilut et al. Oct. 2016, 77).

According to sources, under Recommended Resolution No. 08/06 [of 19 December 2006 (de Souza Rodrigues 2016, 173)], the National Immigration Council of Brazil (Conselho Nacional de Imigracao, CNIg) was able to consider the asylum claims of Haitian nationals and allow them to stay in the country (IPPDH and IOM Aug. 2017, 64; de Souza Rodrigues 2016, 173), by granting them [translation] "authorization to stay in Brazil for humanitarian reasons" (IPPDH and IOM Aug. 2017, 64). A report on Haitian migration to Brazil, prepared in November 2014 by Carlos Nieto, holder of a doctorate in social and political sciences at the Universite de Louvain in Belgium and consultant for OIM (La RED n.d.), states that the Resolution No. 08/06 enabled Haitians to obtain [translation] "permanent residence [in Brazil] for humanitarian reasons" (Nieto Nov. 2014, 76).

An article published in January 2014 [3] on the website of the Instituto Migracoes e Direitos Humanos (IMDH) (Institute of Migration and Human rights), a non-profit organization located in Brazil whose mission is to promote recognition of citizenship for migrants and refugees and their rights and inclusion in public policies (IMDH 6 Jan. 2014), states that, during a plenary meeting in March 2011, the CNIg granted, under Resolution 08/06, [translation] "permanent residence in Brazil for humanitarian reasons" to 199 Haitian nationals (IMDH 20 Jan. 2014). According to that same source, the applications for refugee status presented to CONARE by Haitians continued to be sent to CNIg and, still based on Resolution No. 08/06, in September 2011, CNIg had granted [translation] "authorization for permanent residence" to more than 600 Haitians (IMDH 20 Jan. 2014).

Recommended Resolution No. 08/06 provides as follows:

[translation]

RECOMMENDED RESOLUTION N 8 of 19 December 2006

To resolve on applications for refugee status to the National Committee of refugees (CONARE), and at the latter's discretion, on the possibility of being examined by the National Immigration Council (CNIg) as special situations.

MINISTRY OF LABOUR AND EMPLOYMENT

NATIONAL IMMIGRATION COUNCIL

The NATIONAL IMMIGRATION COUNCIL created by Law 8,490 of 19 November 1992, organized by Law No. 10,683 of 28 May 2003, under the authority granted to it by Decree No. 840 of 22 June 1993,

DECIDES:

Article 1. To recommend to the National Committee of Refugees (CONARE), organization attached to the Ministry of Justice, that the admissible applications for refugee status be sent to the National Immigration Council (CNIg) and, at the discretion of CONARE, that foreign nationals be granted the opportunity to remain in the national territory for humanitarian reasons.

Sole paragraph. The situation of staying in the country of foreign nationals, whose application was sent by CONARE to CNIg, is examined under Normative Resolution No. 27 of 25 November 1998, which resolves on missing and/or special cases.

Article 2. The present resolution becomes effective on the date of its publication.

NILTON FREITAS

Current Chair, National Immigration Council. (Brazil 2006, emphasis in the original)

Normative Resolution No. 27, mentioned in the Recommended Resolution No. 08/06, provides as follows:

[translation]

Normative Resolution No. 27 of 25 November 1998

[]

Art. 01 Special cases and other contingencies that are not set out in the legislation will be subjected to the National Immigration Council, on a case-by-case basis.

First paragraph. Special cases will refer to cases that, although they are not expressly defined in the resolutions of the National Immigration Council, will have elements that enable them to be considered satisfactory for obtaining the visa or permanency.

Second paragraph. The other contingencies not set out in the legislation will refer to conditions that are not described in the resolutions of the National Immigration Council.

Art. 02 For the assessment of applications based on this normative resolution, the immigration criteria, the principles and the reasons, as set out in the concerned legislation, must be respected.

Art. 03 The decision based on the above constitutes neither evocable precedents nor cases of jurisprudence for decisions from other organizations or agencies.

Art. 04 Resolution No. 32, of 19 October 1994, is therefore revoked.

Art. 05 This normative resolution will be effective as of its date of publication.

JOAO CARLOS ALEXIM

Chair, National Immigration Council. (Brazil 1998)

An undated document prepared by the CNIg, the Ministry of Labour in Brazil (Ministerio de Trabalho) and the IOM, on Haitian immigration in Brazil, states that 51,124 [translation] "authorizations for residence" were issued to Haitian nationals from January 2012 to May 2016 under Normative Resolution No. 27 (Brazil and IOM n.d., 1).

1.1 Normative Resolutions Adopted from January 2012 to September 2016

Sources state that in January 2012 the CNIg adopted Normative Resolution No. 97 to grant for a period of five years, to Haitian nationals [whose asylum claim was rejected (Fernandes and de Castro July 2014, 53)], [translation] "a permanent humanitarian visa" (Fernandes and de Castro July 2014, 53) or a [translation] "'permanent' visa [] for 'humanitarian reasons'" [4] (IJDH and NWIRP 3 Apr. 2017, 2). Normative Resolution No. 97 of January 2012 provides the following:

[translation]

CNIg Normative Resolution No. 97 of 12/01/2012

Resolve on the issuance of a permanent visa to Haitian nationals under article 16 of Law No. 6,815 of 19 Aug. 1980.

The National Immigration Council, created under Law No. 6,815 of 19 August 1980, and organized by Law No. 10,683 of 28 May 2003, under the authority granted to it by Decree No. 840 of 22 June 1993

States:

Article 1. A permanent visa set out in article 16 of Law No. 16 of Law No. 6,815 of 19 August 1980 may be granted to a Haitian national for humanitarian reasons, for a duration of five (5) years under article 18 of that same law, a circumstance that must be noted on the incumbent's ID card.

Sole paragraph. For the purpose of this resolution, humanitarian reasons are considered to be those that result from the deterioration of the living conditions of the Haitian population following the earthquake in Haiti on 12 January 2010.

Article 2. Under this Normative Resolution, the visa is granted on an ad hoc basis by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Embassy of Brazil in Port-au-Prince. (Paragraph written pursuant to CNIg Normative Resolution CNIg No. 102 of 26/04/2013)

(Revoked by CNIg Normative Resolution No. 102 of 26/04/2013):

Sole paragraph. A maximum of 1,200 (one thousand two hundred) visas may be granted per year, which corresponds to an average of 100 (one hundred) visas per month, without prejudice to the other forms of visas set out in the legal provisions of the country.

Article 3. In compliance with the legislation in effect, prior to the end of the period set out in paragraph 1 of this normative resolution, Haitian nationals are required to provide justification of their employment to validate their permanence in Brazil and be issued a new foreign ID card.

Article 4. This normative resolution is in effect for a period of two (2) years. The length of validity may be extended.

Article 5. This normative resolution enters into effect on the date of its publication.

PAULO SERGIO DE ALMEIDA

Chair, Council. (Brazil 2012, emphasis in the original)

Sources explain that Resolution No.97 limited to 1,200 the number of humanitarian visas granted per year to Haitian nationals, that is, 100 per month (IPPDH and IOM Aug. 2017, 64; Fernandes and de Castro July 2014, 53; Nieto Nov. 2014, 76), excluding the visa applications for family reunification (IPPDH and IOM Aug.2017, 64; Fernandes and de Castro July 2014, 53). Sources state that these humanitarian visas could only be issued by the Consulate of Brazil in Port-au-Prince (IPPDH and OIM Aug. 2017, 64; Nieto Nov. 2014, 76).

Sources report that the adoption of Normative Resolution No. 97 failed to decrease both the surge of Haitian immigrants at the Brazilian border and the number of visas issued in Port-au-Prince (Fernandes and de Castro July 2014, 53; Lois and Rodriguez 2015, 396). According to the article published in July 2014 in the IOM's Cahiers migratoires n 6, [translation] "[i]n November 2012, the schedule for the authorization of visas for 2013 was full, and the Consulate [of Brazil in Port-au-Prince] opened a waiting list" (Fernandes and de Castro July 2014, 53). A 2015 article on the protection of Haitian migrants in Brazil, written by Rivana Barreto Ricarte de Oliveira, who holds a Juris Doctor degree at the University of Sao Paulo and is currently [translation] "public defender at the 9th office of criminal defense" (Escavador 28 Aug.2017), explained that some Haitians had been [translation] "isolated" for about three months in Inapari, a Peruvian city on the border with Brazil (Ricarte de Oliveira 2015). A 2017 joint publication on Haitian migration, prepared by the Instituto de Politicas Publica en Derechos Humanos (IPPDH) (Institute of Public Policy and Human Rights) of the Mercado Comun del Sur (MERCOSUR) (Southern Common Market), with the support of the IOM, states that in Brasileia, in the Brazilian state of Acre, local authorities had established a camp for Haitians (IPPDH and IOM Aug. 2017, 66).

According to sources, the Brazilian government adopted Normative Resolution No. 102 in April 2013 (IPPDH and IOM Aug. 2017, 66; Fernandes and de Castro July 2014, 53). Normative Resolution No. 102 of 26 April 2013 provides as follows:

Normative Resolution No. 102 of 26/04/2013

Published in the Official Journal on 29 March 2013.

Modifies article 2 of Normative Resolution 97 of 12 January 2012.

The National Immigration Council, created under Law No. 6,815 of 19 August 1980, and organized by Law No. 10,683 of 28 May 2003, under the authority granted to it by Decree No. 840 of 22 June 1993

States:

Article 1. The paragraph of article 2 of Normative Resolution No. 97 of 12 January 2012 enters into effect with the following wording:

"Article 2. Under this Normative Resolution, the visa is granted on an ad hoc basis by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."

Article 2. The sole paragraph of article 2 of Normative Resolution No. 97 of 2012 is repealed.

Article 3. This normative resolution enters into effect on the date of its publication.

PAULO SERGIO DE ALMEIDA

Chair, Council. (Brazil 2013a)

Sources explain that Normative Resolution No. 102 revokes the limit of visas granted and eliminates the requirement that the visas be processed only from Port-au-Prince (IPPDH and IOM Aug. 2017, 66; Fernandes and de Castro July 2014, 53-54), opening up the opportunity for them to be issued by, [translation] "among others," the Brazilian consulates in Ecuador, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic (IPPDH and IOM Aug. 2017, 66).

The following normative resolutions extend the validity of Resolution No. 97 of 12 January 2012 for the periods indicated: Normative Resolution No.o106 extends the validity for twelve months (Brazil 2013b), Normative Resolution No.o113 extends the validity until 30 October 2015 (Brazil 2014), Normative Resolution No.o117 extends the validity until 30 October 2016 (Brazil 2015) and Normative Resolution No123 extends the validity until 30 October 2017 (Brazil 2016).

The following table, published in the undated document prepared by CNIg, the Ministry of Labour in Brazil and the IOM, shows the number of visas issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil (Ministerio das Relacoes Exteriores, MRE) between 2012 and May 2016, under Normative Resolution No. 97, for a total of 48,361 humanitarian visas:
Yemen: Treatment of returning Yemenis born or living abroad in Saudi Arabia, particularly by the Houthis (2014-April 2017)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 13 April 2017 Citation / Document Symbol YEM105787.E Related Document(s) Yemen : information sur le traitement reserve aux Yemenites nes ou ayant vecus en Arabie Saoudite qui retournent au Yemen, en particulier par les Houthis (2014-avril 2017) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Yemen: Treatment of returning Yemenis born or living abroad in Saudi Arabia, particularly by the Houthis (2014-April 2017) , 13 April 2017, YEM105787.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef130e4.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

Sources report that Houthi [Huthi] forces took over Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, in 2014, leading to the displacement of the government as well as an escalation of fighting between supporters of the Houthis and supporters of President Hadi (Freedom House 2016; UN Apr. 2015, 1). According to Freedom House, President Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia, and the Houthis have gained control over large parts of the country (Freedom House 2016). Sources state that the Houthis are, in part, supported by forces loyal to former Yemeni president Al Abdullah Saleh (Freedom House 2016; AI 22 Feb. 2017, 400). According to sources, a coalition of countries under the leadership of Saudi Arabia have joined the fight against the Houthis and their allies (AI 22 Feb. 2017, 400; Freedom House 2016).

According to Human Rights Watch, "[o]n July 28, 2016, the Houthis and former president Ali Abdullah Saleh's General People's Congress [political party] announced the formation of a governing council to run the country" (Human Rights Watch 17 Nov. 2016). Amnesty International (AI) states that the Houthis and their allies control Sana'a "and other areas," while President Hadi's forces control southern parts of the country, "including the governorates of Lahj and Aden" (AI 22 Feb. 2017, 400). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, an associate professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, who specializes in comparative politics of the Middle East and has done fieldwork in Yemen, stated that the Houthis and their allies are "strongest in Northern regions closer to [Saudi Arabia], but reversals have occurred and may occur again" (Associate Professor 28 Mar. 2017).

2. Return of Yemenis from Saudi Arabia

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Michigan who researches Islamic movements that present in countries such as Yemen and who teaches about Sufism and Islamic intellectual history, stated that, given the current security situation in Yemen, information about conditions in that country is not reliable (Professor of Islamic studies 24 Mar. 2017).

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a professor of geography at Towson University who researches Yemen and acts as a consultant for US government institutions and security agencies on issues regarding the political and cultural situation in the country, stated that

Yemenis regularly return from Saudi Arabia.  Without a doubt the war has reduced the number of people returning from Saudi Arabia, but people are still going to need to come home to tend to affairs in Yemen. (Professor of geography 23 Mar. 2017)

Similarly, in correspondence with the Research Directorate, a research associate at the London Middle East Institute at the University of London, who specializes in social and political landscapes as well as in rural development in Yemen since the 1970s, stated that

people are going back and forth between [Saudi Arabia] and Yemen and have continued to do so throughout the war. In general most of those who are "welcome" in [Saudi Arabia] are southerners, but others from other parts [of Yemen] who have legal status can travel back and forth. The main impediments are those related to the fighting, transport, cost of transport and obviously the risk of aerial strikes. (Research Associate 31 Mar. 2017)

3. Treatment of Returnees

According to Amnesty International,

Huthi and allied forces severely curtailed the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly in areas they controlled, arbitrarily arresting critics and opponents, including journalists and human rights defenders, forcing NGOs to close. They subjected some detainees to enforced disappearance and to torture and other ill-treatment. (AI 22 Feb. 2017, 400)

Human Rights Watch similarly states that "Houthi and allied forces have committed enforced disappearances, tortured detainees, and arbitrarily detained numerous activists, journalists, tribal leaders, and political opponents" and have "closed several dozen NGOs and barred human rights advocates from traveling" (Human Rights Watch 12 Jan. 2017, 680). Likewise, the Associate Professor stated that "[m]any opponents (and perceived opponents) of the Houthis, including several with known ties to [Saudi Arabia], have been disappeared by Houthi militias, and I have confirmation via diplomatic sources of the deaths of at least some of the disappeared" (Associate Professor 28 Mar. 2017).

The US Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2016 states that "Saleh al-Sammad, president of the [Houthi's] Supreme Political Council, issued a decree on September 21 providing amnesty to those who had helped the Saudi-led coalition" (US 3 Mar. 2017, 7). Human Rights Watch likewise reports that

[o]n September 20, the council adopted Decision 15 of 2016, which declared a general amnesty for anyone, civilian or military, who had assisted the Saudi-led coalition and had returned home within two months, given up arms, and signed a pledge disavowing any further support to the coalition. The amnesty excludes those accused of "terrorism" or war crimes, and people who escaped detention or continued to fight with the coalition. (Human Rights Watch 17 Nov. 2016)

Country Reports 2016 adds that "[t]here was little information, however, on whether the Houthi-Saleh rebels effectively implemented this decree" (US 3 Mar. 2017, 7). Human Rights Watch also reports that,

[o]n November 12 [2016], a local nongovernmental organization told Human Rights Watch that no steps had been taken to implement the decision and that the authorities were continuing to arrest and detain people without charge. (Human Rights Watch 17 Nov. 2016)

Regarding the treatment of Yeminis retuning from Saudi Arabia, the Research Associate provided the opinion that she is "sure that there must be cases of mistreatment of people who may be suspected of being against [the Houthis], but that is no truer for those coming from [Saudi Arabia] than for the resident population" (Research Associate 31 Mar. 2017). The Professor of geography similarly stated that,

[t]he Houthis will not treat returnees from Saudi Arabia different from others living in areas under their control. There is nothing particular that characterizes Yemeni workers in Saudi Arabia from Yemenis living in Yemen. Yemenis in Saudi Arabia do not have particular political perspectives or social characteristics, other than being younger and hard working. Returnees from Saudi Arabia are subject to the same harassment that those living in Yemen are subject to. (Professor of geography 23 Mar. 2017)

The same source added that

[t]he Houthi are the government in the areas they control, so no, there is no recourse to mistreatment by Houthi authorities. Tribal areas will have recourse to the tribe, but in urban areas it will be more difficult to challenge Houthi authority. (Professor of geography 23 Mar. 2017)

The Associate Professor likewise stated that "[i]n areas under [the control of the Houthis and their allies], policing and judicial functions do occur, but these include trials in absentia and significant violations of due process" (Associate Professor 28 Mar. 2017). The source provided the opinion that he has "no reason to believe that someone facing persecution or mistreatment at the hand of Houthi forces or their allies could seek any formal redress via the police or the courts" (Associate Professor 28 Mar. 2017). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Amnesty International (AI). 22 February 2017. "Yemen." Amnesty International Report 2016/2017: The State of the World's Human Rights. [Accessed 6 Apr. 2017]

Associate Professor of political science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges. 28 March 2017. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Freedom House. 2016. "Yemen." Freedom in the World 2016. [Accessed 6 Apr. 2017]

Human Rights Watch. 12 January 2017. "Yemen." World Report: Events of 2016. [Accessed 6 Apr. 2017]

Human Rights Watch. 17 November 2016. "Yemen: Abusive Detention Rife Under Houthis." [Accessed 5 Apr. 2017]

Professor of geography, Towson University. 23 March 2017. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Professor of Islamic studies, Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan. 24 March 2017. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Research Associate, London Middle East Institute, University of London. 31 March 2017. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

United Nations (UN). April 2015. High Commissioner for Refugees. "UNHCR Position on Returns to Yemen." [Accessed 7 Mar. 2017]

United States (US). 3 March 2017. Department of State. "Yemen." Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2016. [Accessed 6 Apr. 2017]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Professor of political science, University of Guelph; Research Fellow, New America Foundation.

Internet sites, including: Al Arabiya; Al Jazeera; Arab News; BBC; The Cipher Brief; ecoi.net; Factiva; The Guardian; Gulf News; International Crisis Group; International Organization for Migration; IRIN; UN - Refworld; The Washington Post; Yemen Times.
Togo: Procedures for issuing a passport abroad, particularly from Canada; whether it is necessary to go to the embassy; whether passports are produced at the embassy or in Togo

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 1 June 2017 Citation / Document Symbol TGO105813.FE Related Document(s) Togo: procedures pour la delivrance d'un passeport depuis l'etranger, notamment depuis le Canada; information indiquant s'il est necessaire de se presenter a l'ambassade; information indiquant si les passeports sont produits a l'ambassade ou au Togo. Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Togo: Procedures for issuing a passport abroad, particularly from Canada; whether it is necessary to go to the embassy; whether passports are produced at the embassy or in Togo, 1 June 2017, TGO105813.FE, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef148d4.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Issuing a Passport From Abroad

The website of the Embassy of Togo in Germany indicates that the National Documentation Branch (Direction generale de la documentation nationale, DGDN), through the Passport and National Identity Card Directorate (Direction des passeports et des cartes nationales d'identite), is responsible for producing passports and that [translation] "the DGDN produces passports for all Togolese citizens, including those residing abroad" (Togo n.d.a).

According to Public Service (Service public), the website of the Togolese government, Togolese living abroad must apply for passports at the [translation] "nearest" consulate or embassy (Togo n.d.b). The same source indicates that [translation] "all Togolese citizens can apply for and obtain a passport" and that passports are valid for five years (Togo n.d.b).

Republicoftogo.com, Togo's official information portal (Togo n.d.c), reports that the country introduced the biometric passport in August 2010 (Togo 22 Jan. 2010). According to the portal, the DGDN launched [translation] "travelling campaigns" in 2009 and in 2010 to collect data to "quickly issue passports" abroad (Togo 22 Jan. 2010). The same source explains that Togolese government employees were planning to travel to the embassies and consulates in Paris, Berlin, Brussels, Rome, Turin, Geneva, Washington and New York starting on 27 January 2010, to collect the data and to proceed with [translation] "the permanent installation of computer terminals in the diplomatic missions in Paris, Berlin and Washington" (Togo 22 Jan. 2010).

The website of the Embassy of Togo in Germany provides information on the procedures for filing passport applications at that embassy as of 1 October 2009, and states that [translation] "for technical reasons, the Embassy does not produce passports on site. However, it does carry out all related formalities and sends complete and compliant files to the proper service in Lome" (Togo n.d.a).

The website of the Embassy of Togo in Germany also indicates that, to file a passport application, [translation] "the applicant must be physically present at the embassy for fingerprinting and other formalities" (Togo n.d.a). Similarly, the website of the Embassy of Togo in France reports that [translation] "physical presence is required for fingerprinting and a digital photograph" (Togo n.d.d).

The website of the Embassy of Togo in Germany reports that [translation] "properly completed files, that is, files containing authentic and compliant documentation, take between two and three months to process, up to and including issuance of the [passport], on average" (Togo n.d.a). Similarly, the website of the Honorary Consulate of Togo in Portugal states that [translation] "the processing time for a Togolese passport is approximately two (2) months" (Togo n.d.e).

2. Issuing a Passport From Canada

According to the website of the Embassy of Togo in Canada, the following documents must be provided when applying for a passport:

[translation]

Birth certificate (original); Certificate of nationality (original); Employment certificate or copy of diploma; Photocopy of previous passport that has expired or is near expiry; Emergency contact acknowledgement (a photocopy of the person's identity document with photograph and signature must be attached); Parental authorization for minors (under age 18); attach a photocopy of the identity document of the father, mother or legal guardian; Two (2) passport sized photographs of the applicant (50 mm wide by 70 mm high); Application fee of one hundred and fifty (150) Canadian dollars in cash; Copy of marriage certificate for women who are legally married (for divorcees, attach the certificate of divorce) [in bold in the original] (Togo n.d.f).

The information on the websites of the various embassies of Togo abroad reveals certain differences in the documents required as part of a passport application, including the following:

The Embassy of Togo in Germany does not request parental authorization for minors (Togo n.d.a);

The Embassy of Togo in Belgium requests a photocopy of the applicant's valid national identity card, if the applicant has one (Togo n.d.g);

The Embassy of Togo in Germany requests a residence certificate (Togo n.d.a); the same is true for the embassy of Togo in France (Togo n.d.d);

The Embassy of Togo in France requests a photocopy of residency documents, residence permit or receipt (Togo n.d.d).

The website of the Embassy of Togo in Canada reports that for all passport applications, the applicant must be physically present at the embassy [translation] "to complete the information sheet and for biometric registration" and that applicants must "contact the consular service regarding the formalities for returning a passport" (Togo n.d.f).

Information on whether passports are issued at the Embassy of Togo in Canada or in Togo, or whether the process has changed since 2016 could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Togo. 22 January 2010. Republicoftogo.com. "Le passeport biometrique vient a vous." [Accessed 26 May 2017]

Togo. N.d.a. Embassy in Germany. "Etablissement de passeports." [Accessed 24 May 2017]

Togo. N.d.b. Public service. "Obtenir un passeport." [Accessed 26 May 2017]

Togo. N.d.c. Republicoftogo.com. "A propos." [Accessed 31 May 2017]

Togo. N.d.d. Embassy in Paris. "Passeport." [Accessed 24 May 2017]

Togo. N.d.e. Honorary consulate in Portugal. "Presentation du Consulat honoraire du Togo." [Accessed 24 May 2017]

Togo. N.d.f. Embassy in Canada. "Passeport." [Accessed 24 May 2017]

Togo. N.d.g. Embassy of Togo in Brussels. "Passeports." [Accessed 24 May 2017]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Togo - embassy in Canada, embassy in Washington.

Internet sites, including: ecoi.net; Embassypages.com; Factiva; IciLome.com; Radio France internationale; Togo - embassy in London, honorary consulate in Quebec; Togosite.com; United Nations - Refworld; Xinhua news agency.
Mexico: Treatment of Tzeltal people in Chiapas by society and authorities, including displacement of members or supporters of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN); situation in Tenejapa in 2011 and presently (2015-September 2017).

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 22 September 2017 Citation / Document Symbol MEX105980.E Related Document(s) Mexique : information sur le traitement reserve par la societe et les autorites aux Tzeltals au Chiapas, y compris le deplacement de membres ou de partisans de l'Armee zapatiste de liberation nationale (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional - EZLN); information sur la situation actuelle et en 2011 a Tenejapa (2015-septembre 2017) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Mexico: Treatment of Tzeltal people in Chiapas by society and authorities, including displacement of members or supporters of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN); situation in Tenejapa in 2011 and presently (2015-September 2017)., 22 September 2017, MEX105980.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef166d4.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Tzeltal People

According to an entry on the Tzeltal people published in Native Peoples of the World: An Encyclopedia of Groups, Cultures and Contemporary Issues and prepared by Gloria E. Chacon, Assistant Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, specializing in indigenous studies (UCSC 2 June 2015), the Tzeltal are a group of "Maya Indians that live primarily in the eastern highlands of Chiapas in southeastern Mexico" (Chacon 2013, 166). According to sources, the Tzeltal people account for approximately one third of the indigenous population of Chiapas (Rodriguez and Fortier 2007, 91; Houston Institute for Culture 2004).

A BBC report notes that "the levels of poverty and marginalisation in Chiapas are among the highest in Mexico, particularly for indigenous peoples, who make up roughly 65% of the local population" (BBC 1 Jan. 2014). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a Professor of social anthropology at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, specializing in the study of indigenous groups in Chiapas, noted that the Tzeltal population in Chiapas receives [translation] "unequal treatment" from mestizo [mixed race] society, while indicating that the human rights situation varies for Tzeltal groups depending on political and religious affiliation, as well as economic status (Professor 7 Sept. 2017).

1.1 Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in Chiapas

According to the encyclopedia entry, the Tzeltal participated in the 1994 Zapatista uprising which asserted indigenous rights (Chacon 2013, 166).

For further information on the Zapatista National Liberation Army (Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional, EZLN), see Response to Information Request MEX103776 of June 2011.

A 2014 report by Al Jazeera notes that "the Zapatistas remain popular at the local level" in Chiapas (Al Jazeera 1 Jan. 2014). Associated Press (AP) reports that the 20 years following the Zapatista rebellion have featured periods of tense relations between the government and the Zapatista movement (AP 1 Jan. 2014).

In 2011, La Jornada, a Mexico City-based newspaper, reports that Tzeltal communities are being persecuted by government groups in an attempt to deprive the Zapatistas of their land (La Jornada 7 Oct. 2011). According to the Professor, indigenous EZLN supporters are [translation] "victims of systematic repression and harassment" by members of governmental institutions, paramilitary groups, non-zapatista armed groups and members of the civilian population (Professor 7 Sept. 2017). The Professor also noted that being an EZLN supporter in Chiapas, including in Tenejapa, poses a high risk (ibid.).

1.2 Displacement of members and supporters of the EZLN

According to a 2014 report by the International Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), which monitors internal displacement around the world under the aegis of the Norwegian Refugee Council (IDMC May 2015, 3), "30,000 IDPs [internally displaced people] have been living in protracted displacement in Chiapas since the 1994 to 1995 Zapatista conflict, with no durable solutions in sight" (ibid., 19). A 2012 report by the same source highlighted that "99 per cent of those affected [were] members of indigenous groups with an acknowledged special attachment to their land" (IDMC Apr. 2013, 39). The same source further adds that because many indigenous IDPs in Chiapas "have lost access to their land and livelihoods, they have reportedly become poorer as a result of their displacement" (ibid.). According to the professor, in the past two years, the indigenous population has experienced a lot of displacement due to the political situation in the region, caused by the arrival of new political parties which created social conflict resulting in the appearance of armed fronts and divisions in the indigenous communities (Professor 7 Sept. 2017).

SinEmbargo, a digital Mexican newspaper, reports that in cases of dispossession in Chiapas, operators of the state government, with the support of police, force indigenous groups and Zapatista supporters to leave their land, with impunity (4 Feb. 2015).

El Universal, a national Mexican newspaper, reports that in 2016 indigenous Zapatistas staged a protest in San Cristobal de las Casas, in Chiapas, to demand an end to "harassment and threats" to a group of 47 displaced supporters of the EZLN, 36 of which were living in "inhumane conditions, without employment or medical attention" (El Universal 3 Feb. 2016). According to another report by the same source, in July 2017, members of four indigenous communities, displaced by political conflict, staged a protest outside the state palace of the government in Tuxtla Gutierrez, in order to claim a safe return and reparations for losses and financial damages (ibid. 10 July 2017).

1.3 State Protection

Sources indicate that, in 2012, the state of Chiapas adopted the Law for Prevention and Response to Internal Displacement (The Brookings Institution 17 Feb. 2012; El Universal 14 Feb. 2012). However, according to some sources, application of the law has been lacking (IDMC May 2015, 19; Frayba Oct. 2014, 12). The Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Centre (Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolome de Las Casas, Frayba), a non-profit, independent NGO that was founded in 1989 and promotes human rights in the state of Chiapas (Frayba n.d.), reports that the Mexican government is a [translation] "persistent offender" regarding forced internal displacement and human rights violations (ibid. Oct. 2014, 11).

El Universal reports that the National Commission for Human Rights (Comision Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, CNDH) have asked the federal government to create a national law regarding displacement and quotes the CNDH as noting that the country's legal system lacks regulation regarding forced internal displacement (El Universal 12 May 2016). According to the professor, no official program exists to assist victims of armed conflict and forced displacement (Professor 7 Sept. 2017). The IDMC reports that "[e]fforts to assist IDPs have been piecemeal and fragmented" (IDMC 31 Dec. 2013).

1.4 Civil Society

Sources indicate, without providing further details, that the Indigenous Development Commission (Comision Nacional para el Desarollo de los Pueblos Indigenas, CDI) provides some assistance to IDPs, including housing (IDMC 31 Dec. 2013; CDI 12 May 2016).

2. Situation in Tenejapa in 2011

According to sources, on 4 December 2011 four families of Zapatista sympathizers were displaced in Tenejapa after they were assaulted by individuals affiliated to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) (La Jornada 7 Mar. 2013; SinEmbargo 4 Feb. 2015).

The following information comes from several reports in La Jornada:

The displaced families belong to the Tzeltal community of Banavil, in Tenejapa (17 July 2013). The families stated that they were [translation] "attacked with fire arms, displaced, incarcerated, persecuted like criminals, and mocked by the authorities" due to their being indigenous and EZLN supporters (7 Dec. 2013). Lorenzo Lopez Giron, one of the victims and son of Alonso Lopez Luna, who disappeared following the incident, is quoted as saying that the public prosecutor [translation] "has been an accomplice of the aggressors and has refused to search for his father's body" (7 Mar. 2013). In a press release on the commemoration of the fifth year of the disappearance of Lopez Luna, Frayba indicated that on 21 February 2013, one of the members of the displaced families, an 11 year old girl, died due to the [translation] "consequences of suffering the vulnerability of forced displacement," as the family remained in a "precarious" situation (5 Dec. 2016).

Sources also indicate the following about the incident of 4 December 2011:

Pedro Mendez Lopez was killed (La Jornada 20 Jan. 2012; Frayba Oct. 2014, 22);

Lorenzo Lopez Giron was injured and arrested in the incident (ibid.; La Jornada 7 Mar. 2013);

Six others were injured (La Jornada 7 Dec. 2013; Frayba Oct. 2014, 22);

Alonso Lopez Luna was disappeared (ibid.; La Jornada 20 Jan. 2012). According to La Jornada, he is an indigenous Tzeltal from Banavil, Tenejapa (ibid. 5 Dec. 2016). The same source reports that on 23 December 2011, a severed arm was found in Mercedes, adjacent to Banavil, which, according to the family, belongs to Lopez Luna, based on a scar he had on one of his fingers (ibid. 20 Jan. 2012). La Jornada states that evidence suggests that Lopez Luna was killed (ibid. 17 July 2013). According to Frayba, five years after his disappearance, the government has not searched for his body (ibid. 5 Dec. 2016);

EZLN supporter Francisco Santiz Lopez was arrested and imprisoned for 14 months (ibid. 7 Mar. 2013). La Jornada indicates that although witnesses report that he was not present at the time and place of the incident, he was accused of having initiated the violence (ibid. 20 Jan. 2012). A judge reportedly declared that the charges against him were unfounded (ibid. 8 Oct. 2012).

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Associated Press (AP). 1 January 2014. Jose Maria Alvarez. "Mexico's Zapatista Rebel Movement Marks 20 Years since 1994 Uprising." (Factiva) [Accessed 29 Aug. 2017]

Al Jazeera. 1 January 2014. Duncan Tucker. "Are Mexico's Zapatista Rebels Still Relevant?" [Accessed 29 Aug. 2017]

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 1 January 2014. Will Grant. "Struggling On: Zapatistas 20 Years After the Uprising." [Accessed 29 Aug. 2017]

The Brookings Institution. 17 February 2012. Elizabeth Ferris. "Good News from Chiapas - But a Larger Challenge for Mexico." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolome de Las Casas (Frayba). October 2014. Los derechos humanos a debate: Entre el cinismo oficial y la Dignidad de los Pueblos. [Accessed 25 Aug. 2017]

Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolome de Las Casas (Frayba). N.d. "Sobre nosotros." [Accessed 6 Sep. 2017]

Chacon, Gloria E. 2013. "Tzeltal and Tzotzil." Native Peoples of the World: An Encyclopedia of Groups, Cultures and Contemporary Issues. Edited by Steven Danver. London and New York: Routledge.

Comision Nacional para el Desarollo de los Pueblos Indigenas (CDI). 12 May 2016. "Visita a Casa del Nino Indigena en Chiapas." [Accessed 5 Sep. 2017]

El Universal. 10 July 2017. Oscar Gutierrez. "Indigenas desplazados realizan planton en Chiapas." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

El Universal. 12 May 2016. Marcos Muedano. "CNDH pide crear ley sobre desplazados." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

El Universal. 3 February 2016. Oscar Gutierrez. "Indigenas zapatistas exigen retorno de desplazados en Chiapas." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

El Universal. 5 July 2015. Katia Torres. "Crime, Poverty and Conflicts Trigger Exodus in Mexico." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

El Universal. 14 February 2012. Oscar Gutierrez. "Chiapas aprueba iniciativa de Ley para desplazados." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

Houston Institute for Culture. 2004. John P. Schmal. "Chiapas: Forever Indigenous." [Accessed 11 Sep. 2017]

Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). May 2015. Global Overview 2015: People Internally Displaced by Conflict and Violence. [Accessed 23 Aug. 2017]

Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). 31 December 2013. "Mexico: Internal Displacement in Brief." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). April 2013. Global Overview 2012: People Internally Displaced by Conflict and Violence. [Accessed 6 Sep. 2017]

La Jornada. 5 December 2016. Elio Henriquez. "Gobierno, sin accion ante desaparicion de Tzeltal hace 5 anos: Frayba." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

La Jornada. 1 April 2014. Hermann Bellinghausen. "Crean en Chiapas ONG en defensa de desplazados." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

La Jornada. 7 December 2013. Hermann Bellinghausen. "Denunacian a fiscal especializado indigena de Chiapas por incumplir aprehensiones." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

La Jornada. 17 July 2013. Hermann Bellinghausen. "Tzeltales desplazados de Tenejapa exigen atencion del gobierno." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

La Jornada. 7 March 2013. Hermann Bellinghausen. "Desplazados de Banavil piden intervenga Pena Nieto." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

La Jornada. 13 January 2013. Hermann Bellinghausen. "Libertad inmediata para el indigena Francisco Santiz Lopez, exige el Frayba." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

La Jornada. 8 October 2012. Hermann Bellinghausen. "Un juez reconoce su inocencia, pero Santiz sigue en la carcel." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

La Jornada. 20 January 2012. Hermann Bellinghausen. "Demanda el Frayba detener las agresiones de priistas contra indigenas." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

La Jornada. 7 October 2011. Hermann Bellinghausen. "Se recrudece la persecucion contra bases de apoyo zapatistas en los Altos de Chiapas." [Accessed 30 Aug. 2017]

Professor, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City. 7 September 2017. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Rodriguez, Jeanette and Ted Fortier. 2007. Cultural Memory: Resistance, Faith and Identity. Austin: University of Texas Press.

SinEmbargo. 4 February 2015. Sandra Rodriguez Nieto. "Chiapas: Tierra de desplazados  por su proprio gobierno." [Accessed 25 Aug. 2017]

University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). 2 June 2015. Institute for Humanities Research. [Accessed 11 Sep. 2017]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Centro de Derechos Fray Bartolome de las Casas; Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Francisco de Vitoria; Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Augustin Pro Juarez; Comision Mexicana de Defensa y Promocion de los Derechos Humanos; Congreso Nacional Indigena; Federacion Indigena Empresarial y Comunidades Locales de Mexico; Mexico - Comision Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indigenas, Consejo Nacional para Prevenir la Discriminacion; UN - Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons.

Internet sites, including: Agencia Mexicana de Noticias; Amnesty International; ecoi.net; Estudios Politicos; Freedom House; The Guardian; Human Rights Quarterly; Human Rights Watch; International Crisis Group; IRIN; Minority Rights Group International; Mundo de Hoy; NOTIMEX; Radio France internationale; Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty; ReliefWeb; Reuters; UN - OHCHR, Refworld.
Haiti: Meaning of the letters "RL" in the alphanumeric passport code (2016-September 2017)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 25 September 2017 Citation / Document Symbol HTI105997.FE Related Document(s) Haiti: information sur la signification des lettres RL faisant partie du code alphanumerique apparaissant sur les passeports (2016-septembre 2017) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Haiti: Meaning of the letters "RL" in the alphanumeric passport code (2016-September 2017), 25 September 2017, HTI105997.FE, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef17664.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, an official at the Embassy of Haiti in Ottawa stated that the letters "RL" that are part of the alphanumeric code on the Haitian passport, indicate that the passport [translation] "was applied for and issued" at the Consulate of Haiti in Orlando, Orange County, in the State of Florida (Haiti 21 Sept. 2017).

The official stated that the letters "TA" are used for passports applied for and issued in Ottawa, while "ML" is the code for Montreal (ibid.). For further information on the alphanumeric code on Haitian passports, please consult Responses HTI103594 from October 2010 and HTI103241 from August 2009.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Reference

Haiti. 21 September 2017. Embassy in Ottawa. Correspondence from an official to the Research Directorate.
Bangladesh: Whether the court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate in Dhaka issues order sheets and arrest warrants in absentia of the accused in petition cases; whether an accused person can obtain a copy of an order sheet and an arrest warrant in petition cases from the court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate; whether there is a registry of such documents held at the court; how court documents can be verified; appearance and security features; prevalence of fabricated petition cases at the court (2014-October 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 18 November 2016 Citation / Document Symbol BGD105614.E Related Document(s) Bangladesh : information indiquant si le magistrat en chef de la metropole (Chief Metropolitan Magistrate  CMM) de Dacca delivre des ordonnances et des mandats d'arret en l'absence des accuses dans des affaires concernant des requetes; information indiquant si un accuse peut obtenir une copie d'une ordonnance ou d'un mandat d'arret aupres de la Cour du CMM dans des affaires concernant des requetes; information indiquant si un registre de avec de tels documents est tenu a la cour; information sur les methodes de verification des documents de la cour; l'aspect et les caracteristiques de securite; la prevalence des requetes inventees a la cour (2014-october 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Bangladesh: Whether the court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate in Dhaka issues order sheets and arrest warrants in absentia of the accused in petition cases; whether an accused person can obtain a copy of an order sheet and an arrest warrant in petition cases from the court of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate; whether there is a registry of such documents held at the court; how court documents can be verified; appearance and security features; prevalence of fabricated petition cases at the court (2014-October 2016), 18 November 2016, BGD105614.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef39ca4.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Issuance of Order Sheets and Arrest Warrants in Absentia

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a lawyer from Dhaka-based law-firm The Law Counsel who practices banking and corporate law stated that the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's (CMM) Court in Dhaka

is empowered in certain cases and does issue warrants of arrest on the first date against an accused in absentia. Whether or not a warrant shall be issued on the first date a matter comes to court depends on the nature of the offence. In less serious offences, the [CMM] would issue a summons first and then if the accused did not appear pursuant to the summons, [he or she] would [be] issue[d] a warrant of arrest to compel appearance on the following date. (Lawyer, The Law Counsel 1 Sept. 2016)

In further correspondence, the lawyer indicated that arrest warrants are issued with "Bangladesh Form 3905 (High Court Criminal Process Form No. 12)" (ibid. 19 Sept. 2016). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. The same source noted that the form for an arrest warrant is in Bengali and can be found on the website of the Law and Justice Division of the government of Bangladesh (ibid.). A sample of the form, including its translation into English, is attached to this Response.

2. Obtaining Copies of CMM Documents

2.1 Copies of Witness Statements and "Order Sheet"

Sources indicated that an accused person is allowed to obtain certified copies of an "'Order Sheet'" [1] and witness statements from the CMM court in Dhaka in a petition case by making an application for the documents (Lawyer, FM Associates 18 Aug. 2016; Lawyer, The Law Counsel 15 Aug. 2016). Sources indicate that in order to obtain these copies, the accused person has to have surrendered him or herself to authorities and not be a fugitive (ibid.; France June 2015, 23). However, the report of a fact-finding mission organized by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Office francais de protection des refugies et apatrides, OFPRA) cites a Bangladeshi lawyer as stating that if there is more than one accused person in a given case, they could possibly obtain a [translation] "simple copy of a 'certified copy'" of court documents through the lawyer of a co-accused (ibid.). The report further states that according to another lawyer, trials in absentia are [translation] "relatively rare," and that for such a trial to happen, several conditions to declare the accused a fugitive, which are set in the criminal procedure code, must be met first (ibid.). These conditions include a proclamation that has to be posted in different places, including at the last known home address of the accused, followed by an Order of Seizure of Property (ibid.). Finally, a notice to appear has to be published in the Bengali language in at least two daily newspapers (ibid.). Additional and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a lawyer and managing partner at the Dhaka's office of FM Associates and who is also a barrister and advocate before the Supreme Court of Bangladesh indicated that fees also have to be paid to the court, after which the court takes two to three weeks to issue the certified copy of the documents (Lawyer, FM Associates 18 Aug. 2016). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

According to sources, applications for certified copies of CMM court "'Order Sheets'" and witness statements in petition cases do not need to be made in person, and can be obtained through a lawyer or a representative (ibid.; Lawyer, The Law Counsel 15 Aug. 2015) such as a family member or a friend (Lawyer, FM Associates 18 Aug. 2016). However, the lawyer at The Law Counsel indicated that, "in practice such applications will only be accepted from the accused or his lawyer" (15 Aug. 2016).

2.2 Copies of Arrest Warrants

Sources stated that, when an arrest warrant is issued, a copy is sent to the relevant police station and not to the person who is being accused (Lawyer, The Law Counsel 15 Aug. 2016; Lawyer, FM Associates 18 Aug. 2016). The Lawyer at FM Associates specified that arrest warrants are sent to the court's "dispatch section" prior to being forwarded to the police (ibid.). Sources indicated that neither the accused or his or her lawyer or representative can obtain a copy of an arrest warrant (ibid.; Lawyer, The Law Counsel 15 Aug. 2016). The Lawyer at The Law Counsel noted, however, that "the accused (if he is not a fugitive), or his or her legal representative, may obtain a copy of the order authorising the issuance of a warrant of arrest" (ibid.). Further and corroborating information, or information on how to obtain the order authorising the issuance of an arrest warrant, could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3. Appearance and Security Features

3.1 Court Documents

According to the lawyer at FM Associates, CMM court documents in a petition case exhibit the court seal, the case number, and the signature of the authority (18 Aug. 2016). The lawyer at The Law Counsel further stated that certified copies of court records are "issued on government printed paper (popularly known as folio)," and these contain "several" dates at the top of the sheet, including the date of application for the certified copy, the date on which the copy was ready for delivery, and the date of delivery of the certified copy, and the fee amount paid for the copy (15 Aug. 2016). He added that certified copies also have the signatures of the court officials who have verified the certified copy, and the seal of the court from which the copy was issued (ibid.).

3.2 Arrest Warrants

The lawyer at The Law Counsel stated that arrest warrants do not have security features (15 Aug. 2016). According to the lawyer at FM Associates, arrest warrants exhibit the seal of the court, memo number, date of issuance, and the signatures of the "Present Officers" (POs) of the court (18 Aug. 2016). Further information, or information on how to obtain the order authorising the issuance of an arrest warrant, could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

4. Verification of Court Documents

4.1 Court Documents

Without providing further information, the lawyer at FM Associates indicated that, in order to verify whether court documents are genuine, "the appropriate court seal, the case number and signature of the relevant judge of the court, the date of the issue of the documents along with the signature of the court authority shall be present" (18 Aug 2016). The Lawyer at The Law Counsel stated that there is a "separate office" at the court that maintains a register of the issuance of certified copies, including date of application for the copies, "case particulars (i.e. case numbers and name of the parties in the case)," and the date of delivery of the certified copies (15 Aug. 2016). The same source added that, in order to determine whether or not a document is genuine, it can be verified, "to a certain extent," by checking whether an entry has been made in such register (ibid.).

4.2 Arrest Warrants

According to the lawyer at The Law Counsel, arrest warrants are issued through a formal court order, and therefore "the fact of issuing a warrant of arrest will be found in the order sheet of the court which issued the warrant of arrest" (Lawyer, The Law Counsel 15 Aug. 2016). He further provided the opinion that, "[i]f there is any doubt as to the genuineness of the [warrant of arrest], it has to be compared with the order of the court authorising its issuance" (ibid.). The same source also noted that in his opinion, "there have been very good forgeries in recent times" and that "the only reliable method of checking the genuineness of a certified copy is to compare [it] with the original kept in the court's record" (ibid.). In further correspondence, the same lawyer explained that the verification of court documents for a pending case must be completed in person by a lawyer of one of the parties to the case (ibid. 19 Sept. 2016). Verification requests cannot be made by third parties (ibid.). According to the same source, "once a proceeding has come to an end, an application may be made by any person to check/verify [court] documents" (ibid.). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

5. Prevalence of Fabricated Petition Cases

The lawyer at the Law Counsel provided the opinion that it is "highly unlikely" that the CMM Court itself fabricates petition cases, but that it is "usually" the complainant who will fabricate and file a petition case, "to harass the accused," after which the CMM Court, depending on the nature of the offence, issues a summons or arrest warrant (Lawyer, The Law Counsel 1 Sept. 2015). In further correspondence, he explained that "in certain cases," fabrication of allegations in Bangladeshi courts is "not uncommon" (ibid. 19 Sept. 2016). The same source provided the following examples of "fabricated allegations [that] are very common":

where the complainant and the accused are members of opposing political parties, with the fabricated complaint being filed to show loyalty to political superiors in the hope of advancement or where a divorced/separated wife alleges domestic violence or alleges demand of dowry after the divorce proceedings have been initiated by the (former) husband (this is usually done to prevent the divorce as it still carries a lot of social stigma in the rural areas). (ibid. 19 Sept. 2016)

Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

Information on instances of fabricated cases at the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate's Court Dhaka between 2014 and October 2016 could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Note

[1] According to the report of a fact-finding mission organized by the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Office francais de protection des refugies et apatrides, OFPRA), in the case of a procedure in absentia of the accused, the details on actions taken by the court to find the accused are registered in the Order Sheet, which is a part of the administrative court file (France June 2015, 23).

References

France. June 2015. Office francais de protection des refugies et apatrides (OFPRA). Rapport de mission en Republique populaire du Bangladesh. [Accessed 15 Sept. 2016]

Lawyer, The Law Counsel, Dhaka. 19 September 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Lawyer, The Law Counsel, Dhaka. 1 September 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Lawyer, The Law Counsel, Dhaka. 15 August 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Lawyer, FM Associates, Dhaka. 18 August 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Ain o Salish Kendra; Asian Human Rights Commission; Bangladesh - Bangladesh Police, Law and Justice Division; Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust; British School of Law; Dhaka - Metropolitan Police; lawyer based in Bangladesh specializing in corporate law; lawyer based in Bangladesh specializing in criminal law; lawyer based in Toronto trained in Bangladesh specializing in immigration.

Internet sites, including: Amnesty International; Bangladesh - Bangladesh Police, Ministry of Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs; BBC; CNN; The Daily New Nation; The Daily Observer; The Daily People's Time; The Daily Star; Dhaka - Metropolitan Police; ecoi.net; Factiva; Federation internationale des ligues des droits de l'homme; Freedom House; Human Rights Watch; The Independent; IRIN; The News Today; Norway - Landinfo; Observatoire pour la protection des defenseurs des droits de l'Homme; Odhikar; Radio France internationale; Transparency International; UN - Development Programme, Refworld; US - Department of State.

Attachment

Bangladesh. N.d. Law and Justice Division. Bangladesh Form No. 3905, High Court Criminal Process Form No. 12: Arrest Warrant, Section of Criminal Proceedings. Translated by the Translation Bureau, Public Works and Government Services Canada. [Accessed 19 Sept. 2016]
Central African Republic's message to UN: 'The only thing we want is peace'

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 23 October 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Central African Republic's message to UN: 'The only thing we want is peace', 23 October 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef41804.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

It was once known as the 'Bridge of Death,' the frontline between warring factions in the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR). Legendary tales were shared of the bridge being drenched in blood, with even Government security forces scared to set foot on it. Fast forward to 2014, when the United Nations peacekeeping mission was deployed to CAR and steps began to be taken to bring together the militias in attempts at community reconciliation. It was not till October 2016, that local leaders joined forces with the UN peacekeepers to convince the militia groups to disarm and re-open the bridge. Today, it is simply known as the Yakite Bridge. Located in the PK5 neighbourhood of Bangui, the strife-torn capital, it is booming with traffic and local merchants from both Christian and Muslim communities, thanks in part to the stabilization efforts of the UN peacekeeping mission. This commercial suburb of Bangui is crowded with small traders trying to get back to normal business. Many traders have returned from neighbouring countries, including Cameroon, Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they escaped violence. "We are looking for peace. Now we want reconciliation, but they are still killing Muslims," says Lawadi Ismael, a representative for the neighbourhood, adding: "When the fighting broke out in 2013, I never left. Now, business is slowly resuming, but these attacks against Muslims must stop," as he blames the Government for its alleged passivity, while asking the UN peacekeeping mission, known as MINUSCA, to do more to protect them.

We followed a joint patrol of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the CAR (MINUSCA) to the PK5 neighbourhood, the site of numerous clashes between the mainly Muslim Seleka rebels and the anti-Balaka militia, which are mostly Christian, during the civil conflict that erupted in 2013. A unique aeronautics surveillance unit supports the patrol with live information gathering capacity: a camera equipped aerostat balloon, and three hover masts mounted on vehicles, send videos in real time to the joint operation centre, indicating any crowd movement or potential threats. This is used to guide the patrol to areas which need security, while protecting their members. Even as technology helps the peacekeepers, reconciliation is still fragile, especially after recent attacks in the south-east and the centre of the country, often targeting minority communities. "The police assist mostly when we apprehend a suspect; the military takes the lead when the use of force is required," explains Jean-Marie Vianney, commander of the 36-strong Rwandan military platoon, as they head together with the 12-member Cameroonian Formed Police Unit (FPU) towards PK5. "We need to reassure the population and discourage bandits," says Sergeant Epouba Martine Martial, a Cameroonian police officer with MINUSCA. Despite noteworthy progress and successful elections, and a UN presence to shore up stability, support governance and provide humanitarian assistance, CAR has remained in the grip of instability and sporadic unrest. The deteriorating situation has driven about a quarter of the people in the country from their homes and since the start of 2017, the number of IDPs has reached 600,000 and refugees in neighbouring countries number over 500,000. More than 1 million Central Africans are displaced - inside the country or abroad - and in Bangassou, the camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) has reached 1,800 people and is still growing. When he arrives in the area on 24 October, which is also United Nations Day, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected to pay tribute to the 12 peacekeepers who have died since January 2017 due to hostile acts. "Across the country, communal tensions are growing. Violence is spreading. And the humanitarian situation is deteriorating," said Mr. Guterres, who made it a point to mark UN Day with peacekeepers who put themselves on the frontlines in some of the most dangerous areas of the world. In his latest report to the Security Council on CAR, the Secretary-General has requested reinforcements of 900 additional troops for the mission. Lieutenant General Balla Keita, Force Commander of MINUSCA, is quite clear that the effect of this surge in capacity will help the mission stabilize the situation. However, he noted: "There will never be a military solution for a peacekeeping operation. The solution will be a political one - a genuine negotiation with all parties."
Vietnam: Drop Charge Against Student Activist

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 24 October 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Vietnam: Drop Charge Against Student Activist, 24 October 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef434b4.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

Vietnam should drop all charges and immediately release student blogger Phan Kim Khanh, Human Rights Watch said today. Vietnam's donors and regional leaders should make it clear that they will demand that all political prisoners be released before the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit taking place in Da Nang the week of November 6-11.

Phan Kim Khanh is set to face trial on October 25, 2017, at the People's Court of Thai Nguyen province. He was arrested in March 2017 for posts critical of the government on the internet and charged with "conducting propaganda against the state" under article 88 of the penal code, one of the country's many national security provisions that has been regularly used to arbitrarily punish critics and stifle dissent. If convicted, he faces up to 12 years of imprisonment.

"The bogus crime of conducting propaganda against the state is designed to silence peaceful critics of the Vietnamese authorities," said Brad Adams, Asia director. "Vietnam ought to get rid of these laws and stop persecuting students and ordinary people for just talking about the country's problems on the internet."

Phan Kim Khanh, 24, is a student at the Department of International Relations at Thai Nguyen University. During his freshmen year, he helped found and manage a student club at the university to facilitate volunteer work. Later, he served as a member of the secretariat of the board of the student association. Phan Kim Khanh received many awards from the Thai Nguyen Students Association and the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth League of Thai Nguyen province. He also received a 2015 scholarship to attend a training course provided by the U.S Embassy in Hanoi for members of the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI).

Students should be encouraged to write about social and political problems-not punished. International donors and trade partners need to step up pressure on the country's leaders to improve its abysmal rights record, and the APEC Summit is a good moment to start.

Brad Adams

Asia Director

In a published personal statement, he wrote: "I was born in a village in Phu Tho where everybody woke up very early in the morning to work hard to earn their livings. Some would go to the field to cut fresh vegetable and carry them to the market to sell. Others quickly lit their charcoal fire to warm up rice and some left-over food from the night before and promptly left home for their morning shift at the industrial brick kiln. They worked hard and struggled all day, but their lives remained poor During my sophomore and junior year at the university, I began to examine the problems why Vietnam could not become a developed country I want to work for genuine media in a near future. I would like to participate in the struggle movement for democracy and freedom of press in Vietnam."

Police arrested Phan Kim Khanh on March 21, 2017, for founding and managing two blogs in 2015 called "Newspaper of [anti]Corruption" (Bao Tham Nhung) and "Vietnam Weekly" (Tuan Viet Nam). In addition, he allegedly opened three accounts on Facebook and two accounts on YouTube. The authorities accuse him of "continuously publishing information with fabricated and distorted contents that aim to oppose the Socialist Republic of Vietnam; most of these contents were taken from other reactionary websites."

Phan Kim Khanh's arrest is part of Vietnam's ongoing crackdown on bloggers and activists. Within the last 12 months, the police have arrested at least 28 people and charged them with vaguely-interpreted national security violations. The most recent arrest occurred on October 17 when police detained environmental activist Tran Thi Xuan in Ha Tinh and charged her with alleged activities that aim to overthrow the government.

Blogger Nguyen Van Dai and his colleague Le Thu Ha remain in police custody since December 2015 without trial. The initial charge against them was propaganda against the state. In July 2017, it was changed to subversion.

More than 100 activists are currently serving prison terms for exercising their basic freedoms of expression, assembly, association, and religion. Vietnam should unconditionally release them and repeal all laws that criminalize peaceful expression.

"The only crime Phan Kim Khanh committed was to express political views disapproved by the authorities," said Adams. "Students should be encouraged to write about social and political problems-not punished. International donors and trade partners need to step up pressure on the country's leaders to improve its abysmal rights record, and the APEC Summit is a good moment to start."

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
48 journalists on trial this week in Turkey

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 24 October 2017 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, 48 journalists on trial this week in Turkey, 24 October 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef46a14.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

No fewer than 48 journalists will be in court this week in three different trials in Turkey. Most of them are in prison. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the baseless charges on which they are being tried and calls for the immediate release of those detained.

Nowadays barely a week goes by in Turkey without journalists being arrested or tried. Another six are going on trial today in connection with their coverage of information obtained in 2016 by a group of far-left hackers from the emails of President Erdogan's son-in-law, energy minister Berat Albayrak.





The information they published, in which there was a clear public interest, involved petroleum trade with Iraqi Kurdistan, the crackdown on the "Occupy Gezi" movement and the government's progressive subjugation of the Turkish media.





Scapegoats





Three of these six journalists - investigative reporter Tunca Ogreten, DIHA news agency reporter Omer Celik and Mahir Kanaat of the left-wing daily BirGun - have already spent ten months in provisional detention. The other three - Derya Okatan, Metin Yoksu and Eray Sargn - were arrested at the same time as the others but were freed after 24 hours in police custody.





They are accused of distorting the content of Albayrak's emails, divulging state secrets and benefiting various terrorist organizations by "creating a negative perception of the authorities."





Despite an obvious ideological contradiction, Ogreten is also accused of being simultaneously linked to the DHKP-C, a far-left armed group, and to the movement led by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, which is alleged by the government to have been behind the abortive coup in July 2016. Similarly incongruous accusations have also been made against some of his colleagues.





"The fate of these journalists is yet another example of the absurd and contradictory accusations that many journalists are facing in Turkey," said Johann Bihr, the head of RSF's Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk. "Provisional detention is being used in a punitive and arbitrary manner. We again call for the immediate release of all media personnel who have been jailed in connection with their work."





Spate of trials





The trial of 29 journalists accused of Gulen Movement membership also resumes today. Twenty-three of them have been held provisionally for more than a year. The court ordered the release of most of them at the end of the first hearing but their release was blocked at the last moment. Thirteen of these journalists, including Murat Aksoy and Atilla Tas, are also being prosecuted on charges of "trying to overthrow the government and constitutional order."





Thirteen other journalists, including Faruk Eren, Ertugrul Mavioglu and Celal Baslangc, are due to appear in court on 26 October for participating in a campaign of solidarity with Ozgur Gundem, a Kurdish newspaper that had been the victim of judicial persecution.





In this campaign, a total of 56 journalists, human rights defenders and intellectuals took turns at being the newspaper's "editor for a day" from May to August 2016. Human rights defender Murat Celikkan was released on 21 October after several months serving a jail sentence for his role in the campaign.





RSF's Turkey representative, Erol Onderoglu, is another of the participants in this campaign who is being prosecuted. His trial is due to resume in Istanbul on 26 December.





The trial of 11 human rights defenders, including both the president and the director of Amnesty International in Turkey, is due to start in Istanbul tomorrow. Like independent journalists, they are being subjected to vitriolic attacks in Turkey's pro-government media for, inter alia, following the Cumhuriyet newspaper trial. They are facing up to 15 years in prison on charges of belonging to various terrorist organizations.





Turkey is ranked 155th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press Freedom Index. The already worrying media situation has become critical under the state of emergency proclaimed after the July 2016 coup attempt. Around 150 media outlets have been closed and more than 100 journalists are currently in prison.
Sleeping with Fear, Waking with Fear

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Author Nahla Mustafa Publication Date 23 October 2017 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Sleeping with Fear, Waking with Fear, 23 October 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59ef4af34.html [accessed 15 November 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States.

We fled to the town of Maar Tahroma after the army took control of our village. A few days later, my elder sister Mary came to visit us.

On August 20, 2015, she and I were drinking coffee. We were talking about everything, from our beautiful memories to our painful reality. We prayed and I dreamt that one day I would see my parents home again, the house where my children were born and raised.

As we talked, my sister looked up at the sky. Then she said, "What is this thing falling from the sky?"

I looked up and saw a barrel being thrown out of a helicopter.

I shouted, "It's a helicopter, it dropped a barrel bomb!"

I looked at my children as they ran. I felt for a moment that the bomb would fall on our heads.

Hugging my youngest, I said the shahada prayer, "There is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger."

The light in my eyes went out; I saw death. A few seconds later, that barrel fell with a terrifying noise not far from us. A whole neighborhood in the city centre was demolished in the blast and smoke and dust filled the air around us. We could no longer see each other.

My sister screamed hysterically,"Where are my children? Did they die?"

"No, everyone is here, they are all fine," I answered.

My sister breathed as if she was coming back to life and said, "I thought it had fallen on us."

The barrel bomb had demolished part of our house and and broken the windows. Still, I thanked God that no one was hurt. My sister, my children and I ran to seek shelter in the cave owned by our neighbour, Abu Ahmad.

On our way there, I remembered my husband. My fear for my children had made me forget about him for a moment. I didn't know where he had gone and I was afraid that he had been hurt.

I began imagining the worst and sat down, crying, with my children. A man passed by who had been at the site of the bombing and said that everything was okay, there was no victims.

I relaxed a little and went into Abu Ahmad's cave. It was underground. We weren't used to sitting in a dark place like this. I felt uncomfortable.

I asked my neighbour's wife, "How can you stay inside this cave?"

She told me that there were people who had made their homes in caves, who lived, slept and ate there.

I felt very upset, like I was suffocating. I couldn't take it anymore. I left out of the cave and found my husband outside. He had been looking for us.

"Were you hurt?" he asked me. I reassured him that all was well and we went with him.

My mother-in-law returned home later in the afternoon. I asked her where she had been and she told me that she had heard warnings of a bombing in Maar Tahroma over a special wireless device.

As for us, we had neither heard the planes nor did we have access to a such a device to track news of the raids. So we had been oblivious.

That night, every time we heard the sound of a plane my husband and I took the children to the basement. We weren't used to living like this and felt consumed by anxiety. Ever since I had seen the barrel falling from that damned plane with my own eyes, I could no longer sleep at night.

I asked my husband to buy a wireless device too so that we could monitor the air traffic and receive warnings of attack. He agreed to get one and we began carrying it duing night and day.

Nearly a year-and-a-half later, we are still displaced within our own country. We are still subjected to shelling and attack by all kinds of missiles and barrel bombs. The Syrian regime Has tried all types of weapons on the Syrian people; phosphoric, concussive, clustered, chlorine. Even internationally banned sarin gas has been used on the children of Ghouta and Idlib. We sleep with fear, and we wake up to fear.

Nahla Mustafa, 22, is married with three children. A housewife from western Hama countryside, she now lives in the town of Maar Tahroma.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
HARTFORD  Legislative proposals to use money from Connecticuts Green Bank and energy efficiency programs to balance the states budget could translate into thousands of jobs lost and millions of dollars in unrealized tax revenue, according to analysis by a New England environmental group.

Current plans call for the Connecticut Green Banks $27.5 million budget to be cut completely and for $50 million to be taken from the states energy efficiency programs in each of the next two years, which amounts to 25 percent of funding.

An analysis by the Acadia Center predicts that raiding the energy-related funding would cost the state 5,200 jobs and nearly $17 million in lost tax revenue. The groups analysis was presented at a press conference Monday at the Legislative Office Building held by environmentalists and renewable energy advocates.

If these cuts go through, it will be devastating, said WillIam Dornbos, advocacy director and senior attorney with the Acadia Center.

Chris Lenda owns a Branford business, Aegis Solar, which installs photovoltaic systems on homes and at businesses. Lenda said his company, which employs 25 people, and others like it rely heavily on funding for renewable energy in Connecticut.

Without that funding, companies like mine would simply leave the state for other states or wouldnt exist at all, he said. Raiding clean energy funding here in the state is the equivalent of chopping down the apple tree and then wondering why theres not enough apples.

Brian Garcia, president and chief executive officer of the Connecticut Green Bank, said if the proposed budget raids the full $27.5 million. it would effectively put the quasi-public agency out of business. The Green Bank uses public funding that comes from a charge on Connecticut ratepayers electric utility bills to leverage private sector capital needed to finance a number of renewable energy projects.

Garcia said the Green Bank has attracted more than $910 million in private investments for energy projects in the six years its been in existence.

These facts, this demonstrated track record of providing tangible value to the citizens and businesses of Connecticut represents anything but a luxury, he said.

Joel Gordes, a West Hartford-based energy consultant, said this is not the first time the state legislature has raided energy funds in order to balance the budget. Previous raids of energy funds occurred in 2003 and 2009, Gordes said.

They do it because its there, its easy pickings and because theyre lazy, he said of lawmakers.

Calls seeking comment to state Senate Republican President Len Fasano and represetatives of Senate Democratic President Martin Looney and House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz were not returned.

State Rep. Matthew Lesser, D-Middletown, reserved the hearing room in which the press conference was held. But when asked whether he would vote against any budget version that called for energy fund raids, he declined.

Youve got to look at it in context, Lesser said. A budget is a very large document. Theres a lot of issues still being negotiated and when theres a document for me to review, Ill review it.

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
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U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has threatened to ban Cambodian officials from traveling to America if Cambodias government does not release opposition chief Kem Sokha from pre-trial detention ahead of a voter registration deadline for the countrys July 2018 general elections.



In a letter to Cambodias Ambassador to the U.S. Chum Bun Rong dated Oct. 23, Cruz expressed deep concern regarding the Sept. 3 arrest of opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) President Kem Sokha on charges of treason for allegedly collaborating with Washington to overthrow the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP), and demanded that he be freed.



The charges of treason brought against him appear to be political in nature, and the latest step in Prime Minister Hun Sens quest to evade democratic accountability, Cruz said.



The evidence presented against Kem Sokha so far is a video recorded in 2013 in which he discusses a strategy to win power with the help of U.S. experts, though the U.S. embassy has rejected any suggestion that Washington is interfering in Cambodian politics.



Cambodias National Assembly also recently approved four amendments to the countrys electoral law, despite a boycott by the parliaments 55 CNRP lawmakers, paving the way for their seats to be redistributed to smaller government-aligned parties in the event that the opposition party is dissolved.



Cruz called Hun Sens actions to reallocate the CNRPs seats further evidence of his effort to disable the institutions of democratic governance in Cambodia.



The Texas lawmakerwho is a member of the Senates Judiciary, Commerce, and Joint Economic committeesnoted that the U.S. has taken a leading role in providing humanitarian and economic aid to Cambodia in support of democratic elections, and in establishing reliable trade and commerce.



He said that in addition to targeting the political opposition, Hun Sens removal of independent election monitors and human rights groups, and shuttering of hundreds of radio stations in recent months, is endangering the future not only of U.S.-Cambodia relations, but of Cambodian democracy.



If Kem Sokha remains imprisoned on November 9th, the final day for voters to register for the July elections, it will be impossible for any impartial observer or nation to certify that elections in your country have been free and fair, he said.



This attempt to undermine the Cambodia peoples faith in their democratic process must cease immediately. If your Prime Minister does not release Kem Sokha by November 9th, I will work with my colleagues in Congress and in the [U.S. President Donald] Trump administration to see that specified government officials responsible for these actions are prevented from travelling to the United States.



Cambodian response



On Tuesday, Council of Ministers spokesperson Phay Siphan dismissed Cruzs threat, telling reporters that the U.S. senator doesnt have any influence on Cambodia and that the people of Cambodia can decide the fate of their own country, without foreign interference.



The court will take action against Kem Sokhas treason in conspiring with foreign countries, such as the U.S., he said.



Independent analyst Lao Monghay, however, said U.S. sanctions would likely have a strong effect on Cambodias government.



Visa sanctions are the most effective way to deal with the Cambodian government, based on what the U.S. has done before, he told RFAs Khmer Service.



CNRP deputy president Eng Chhay Eang, who is living in self-imposed exile from Cambodia, said he hopes the government will resolve political tension in the country without a need for international sanctions.



The CNRP doesnt want to see Cambodia or the Khmer people suffer as a result of international sanctions, he said.



We want to see the Khmer people solve this issue through the Paris Peace Accord mechanism, he added, referring to the agreement that ended war between Vietnam and Cambodia in 1991 and led to the U.N.s administration of Cambodias government while the country transitioned to a system of democratic elections.



On Monday, a group of 55 nongovernmental organizations called for a reconvening of the Paris Peace Conference due to a severe deterioration in the state of human rights and democracy in Cambodia, in a letter marking the 26th anniversary of the accords.



Amendments



Meanwhile, the Constitutional Council of the National Assembly on Tuesday approved the four amendments that would see the CNRPs seats reallocated to government-aligned parties if the opposition party is dissolved, after reviewing their constitutionality.



The decision without undue urgency did not find any faults with the amendments, which will now be forwarded on to King Norodom Sihamoni for final approval before they can become law.



The CPP had also proposed a controversial amendment to the Law on Political Parties which was approved amid a boycott of parliament by opposition lawmakers in February, banning convicted criminals from holding a leadership position in a party and forcing Sam Rainsy to resign as president of the CNRP.



The February amendment of the Law on Political Parties was approved by Senate president Say Chhum, who had assumed the role of Acting Head of State while King Sihamoni was in China for a medical examination.



Since Kem Sokhas arrest, some 20 CNRP lawmakers, along with deputy presidents Mu Sochua and Eng Chhay Eang and a number of party activists, have fled Cambodia fearing retaliation by the CPP following important electoral gains by the opposition in Junes commune ballot, which are seen as pointing to a strong showing in next years vote.



Reported by Sovanarith Keo and Nareth Muong for RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Sarada Taing. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Hong Kong Protest leaders Joshua Wong and Nathan Law talk to reporters after they were released on bail pending an appeal of their jail terms, Oct. 24, 2017.

Two Hong Kong activists jailed for their role in the 2014 pro-democracy movement were released on bail on Tuesday pending an appeal of their jail terms, as a Chinese official called on the city to resurrect a shelved program of "patriotic education" in schools.

Former Occupy Central protest leader Joshua Wong, now general secretary of the political party Demosisto, was granted bail while serving a six-month jail term, while ousted lawmaker Nathan Law was bailed from his eight-month prison term.

The pair were jailed on Aug. 17 alongside former student leader Alex Chow after the Hong Kong government requested a review of a previous community service sentence they had already served for "illegal assembly."

The charges were linked to the storming of the forecourt of government headquarters at the start of the 79-day civil disobedience campaign for fully democratic elections after the possibility was nixed by China's parliament on Aug. 31, 2014.

Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma approved the bail applications, on payment of HK$50,000 bail and on condition that they surrender their travel documents and report weekly to police.

But Wong said there are no guarantees that the appeal against their jail terms will be successful, and they could soon be back behind bars.

"There is also another case against us running concurrently, the case relating to the clearing of the [last of the] Umbrella Movement in Mong Kok," Wong said. "It is likely that we'll see a sentence in that case next month, or by the end of the year."

"So our bail today only means that we regain our liberty for a brief time," he said. "We could be back in prison again by the end of the year."

On Oct. 13, a district court in Hong Kong found 20 democracy activists, including Joshua Wong, guilty of contempt of court after they ignored a court injunction to leave a protest area during the 2014 Occupy Central, or Umbrella movement, with some expecting to be sent to jail "in the near future."

Wong said it would be business as usual while they were out, however.

"Whatever happens under the oppression of an authoritarian regime, we will take it in our stride," he said. "We will not give in or give up, regardless of the difficulties."

"I don't think that will be our only time in jail, and maybe more young people will go to jail in future," he said. "But we will stick to our principles."

'Mentally prepared' for prison

Law, who was stripped of his seat in Hong Kong's Legislative Council (LegCo) following a ruling from China's National People's Congress rendered his oath of allegiance invalid, said he had been mentally prepared for the experience of prison.

"Of course there were times when I couldn't hack it, times when I felt it was awful, but I think a lot of democracy activists are mentally prepared for that," Law said.

"I think the biggest problem we face is that the government is now using the legal system to target protesters," he said. "So I think we need to do more citizenship education about the rule of law."

A recent analysis by Democratic Party lawmaker Ted Hui of text books, exercise books and other Education Bureau study materials used in Hong Kong's schools found that they are strongly biased against protests and civil disobedience movements.

Hui said on Monday that the materials cite "unreasonable examples," such as public housing tenants not paying rent to protest against rent increases.

Chinas education minister on Monday called on the Hong Kong government resurrect a controversial "patriotic education" program in the city's schools after it was shelved in 2012 following mass protests in which Joshua Wong first emerged as a protest leader.

"There is no country and no government in the world that does not implement national education. It is closely related to the publics self-identity, national viewpoint, and values," Chen Baosheng told government broadcaster RTHK.

He warned that growing debate over independence would harm the city's long-term prosperity and stability

But pan-democratic politicians hit out at Chen's remarks, saying they undermine the city's promised autonomy.

"According to the Basic Law, educational policy comes within the remit of Hong Kong's autonomy, so I can't see why officials in Beijing would want to give us pointers on that," Civic Party lawmaker Tanya Chan told RFA.

"This patriotic education of course isn't just aimed at the students; it's aimed at the teachers as well," she said. "I don't think we need pointers from them, because people will feel that it is starting to look like total control of an important aspect of life [in Hong Kong]."

"Now, students and teachers alike are going to feel under pressure, but this is also aimed at putting pressure on the Hong Kong government," she said.

Chen overstepped boundary

Lawmaker Ip Kin-yuen, who represents the education sector in LegCo, said Chen's comments went far beyond his remit as an education minister for mainland China.

"It's inappropriate for the education minister to be making public and directive statements about Hong Kong's educational affairs," Ip said.

"The education minister should respect the right of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to govern its own affairs."

A treaty signed in 1984 by then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang set out how Britain would end its century-and-a-half long rule over Hong Kong, and how China would govern the city using the "one country, two systems" principle promising the maintenance of the city's traditional freedoms for at least 50 years.

But a string of legal interpretations by China's parliament of Hong Kong's mini-constitution, the Basic Law, as well as cross-border detentions of five Hong Kong booksellers, have left many fearing that the city's traditional freedoms of press and association, and its judicial independence, have been seriously eroded.

Sweden on Tuesday said that one of the booksellers, Gui Minhai, has been released two years after he was detained and taken to mainland China from Thailand.

But Gui's daughter Angela said she has yet to hear from him, despite his allegedly having been released on Oct. 17.

"Even though we have been told by Chinese officials that he has been released, this does not mean that he is free," Angela Gui said.

"Nobody has heard anything from him, I haven't, my family certainly hasn't."

"It's very unclear where he is at the moment and until we know that, and until we know that he is free to travel as these Chinese officials claim, then it is misleading to say that he has been released," she said.

In February 2016, the U.K. accused Beijing of breaching the handover treaty by "involuntarily removing" Gui Minhai's colleague, British national Lee Bo across the internal immigration border to mainland China.

There is no record of Lee leaving Hong Kong, suggesting that he was spirited across the internal immigration border by Chinese police, while Gui, who holds a Swedish passport, was apparently kidnapped while on vacation in Thailand.

Gui's Causeway Bay bookstore colleagues Lui Por, Lam Wing-kei and Cheung Chi-ping were also detained in late 2015 after they crossed the border into China.

Lui, Cheung and Lam were later released after making televised "confessions" with a set of instructions from China's state security police: to reappear in Hong Kong, refute reports of their disappearance, and claim to be voluntarily helping police with their enquiries.

Only Lam refused to to stick to that script, and has since traveled to the democratic island of Taiwan.

Reported by Lam Kwok-lap for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party on Tuesday voted to enshrine President Xi Jinping in its constitution, the only Chinese leader to be named in the document alongside late supreme leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

An amendment including "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" as a guiding principle in the party's founding document passed unanimously on the last day of the 19th party congress.

"Xi Jinping Thought ... represents the latest achievement in adapting Marxism to the Chinese context, and encapsulates the practical experience and collective wisdom of our Party and the people," an official statement said.

"It is an important component of the theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and a guide to action for all our members and all the Chinese people as we strive to achieve national rejuvenation," it said, adding that Xi's personal brand of politics "must be adhered to and steadily developed on a long-term basis."

At the same time, Xi ally Wang Qishan has stepped down from the all-powerful Politburo standing committee, following months of rumors that Xi would override an unwritten rule requiring those over 68 to retire at five-yearly party congresses.

While the full standing committee line-up isn't expected until Wednesday, Wang's name wasn't among the 204 names making up the new Central Committee, from which the Politburo and its standing committee are drawn.

A Beijing source who declined to be named said Wang could still play a key role in Chinese politics in future, as the party under Xi now appears to be structured around financial, rather than military, power.

"Political power comes from money, so as long as he still has that, [Wang] could still rise again," the source said.

"If the situation changes again, then things could get even more complicated."

Lifetime ruler?

The mention of Xi by name in the party's constitution suggests that he has won a major battle with members of rival factions, at least for now. Xi's power flows more from his position as party general secretary than from his role as state president.

But there are still no guarantees that his brand of "thought" will be widely adopted by the party's more than 90 million members, according to a political analyst who gave only his surname, Wang.

"History is written by the people, and not by [the party]," Wang said.

"If the wind changes, then these things can always be changed again."

An anonymous academic said Xi looks set for a bid to be lifelong ruler in the vein of Mao, however.

"In the Mao era, the party was the party of Mao, and when Deng was in power, he made it the party of Deng," the academic said. "Now, Xi Jinping wants to make it into the party of Xi."

"I think he's definitely going for lifelong rule: this is very clear."

Party personnel chief Zhao Leji, 60, was announced on Tuesday as Wang's replacement spearheading Xi's controversial and ongoing anti-graft campaign at the helm of its Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, confirming his place on the new standing committee.

Multiple media reports have predicted that, of the previous, seven-member Politburo standing committee, Xi and his premier Li Keqiang will remain in their posts, while former vice premier Wang Yang looks set to be promoted to executive vice premier.

New faces, few women

New faces will likely make up the rest of the standing committee: current Politburo member Wang Huning, staunch Xi ally and director of the General Office of the Central Committee Li Zhanshu, and Shanghai party secretary Han Zheng as head of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), reports said.

Li is seen as a capable administrator and loyal Xi aide whose job on the standing committee would be shore up suppport for the president.

"They say that Xi Jinping likes to hire his own people, old friends whom he knows well," U.S.-based rights activist Wei Jingsheng told RFA. "But if he makes the standing committee, it'll just be for show."

"He's not really capable of taking on something big ... he would suit a portfolio like the [rubber stamp] National People's Congress or [its sister advisory body], the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference," Wei said.

"He would probably run into trouble if they gave him a real project to oversee."

U.S.-based scholar Xia Yeliang said that, contrary to media reports, Wang Huning seemed an unlikely candidate for elevation to the highest echelons of power, however.

"I don't think the chances of Wang Huning getting a seat on the Politburo standing committee are very high, and he could still be given plenty to do without making the standing committee," Xia said.

"He is a scholar ... an ideologist, who works with theories that never held water in the first place," he said. "If he did make the standing committee, he would most likely be put in charge of ideology ... which is dirty work, and creates a lot of ill-feeling."

Just 10 women are on the Central Committee, comprising just under five percent of members, while 15 delegates are from ethnic minorities, three of whom are female.

China's top banking regulator Guo Shuqing, veteran banker Jiang Chaoliang and securities regulator Liu Shiyu also made the Central Committee. All three are contenders to replace retiring Central Bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan.

Meanwhile, former U.N. representative Liu Jieyi, 59, was also elected to the Central Committee, and is widely seen as the next head of the Taiwan Affairs Office.

The Congress pledged to improve standards of living among the country's 1.4 billion population, and "ensure harmony between human and nature," in an oblique reference to widespread pollution of China's air, water and soil.

It also vowed to "promote national reunification," in a reference to separately governed and democratic Taiwan.

Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Ma Lap-hak for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
The American, Japanese and South Korean defense chiefs jointly called on North Korea to put an immediate end to its nuclear and missile tests, after they met Tuesday on the sidelines of an ASEAN ministerial conference in the Philippines.



U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis joined his counterparts from Japan and South Korea, Itsunori Onodera and Song Young-moo, in discussing recent actions by Pyongyang that have ratcheted up security tensions in the Korean Peninsula and East Asia.



The three ministers condemned, in the strongest terms, North Koreas continued provocative actions, the three officials said in a statement.



North Koreas two recent launches of missiles that flew over Japan and its nuclear tests in September constitute an unprecedented and grave threat to their countries as well as to the rest of the world, the ministers said.



They called on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to abandon his regimes unlawful nuclear and ballistic missile programs and allow complete and verifiable independent inspections consistent with its international obligations.



The three agreed to boost intelligence sharing and enhance defensive capabilities to include, among others, execution of multiple combined flight training missions with U.S. bomber aircraft.



They also committed to continue missile warning and anti-submarine warfare exercises, the statement said.



Mattis is on a tour of Asia that will take him to Seoul for annual defense talks, which will precede a visit to South Korea next month by President Donald Trump.



Kim has not backed down in the face of international pressure and traded threats with Trump, amid fears that a war of words could escalate into a physical war that could draw in Japan and South Korea, which host American bases.



Mattis and the defense chiefs of both East Asian nations agreed that North Koreas development of nuclear and ballistic capabilities threatens the security and prosperity of the three countries.



They also agreed to push for a diplomatic solution to the North Korean crisis and curb Pyongyangs weapons of mass destruction programs.



Inherently dangerous to global stability



During the meeting at Clark freeport, a former U.S. military base north of Manila, Mattis met separately with his counterparts from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc to push for stronger multilateral defense cooperation.



In a statement, the Pentagon said that Mattis pushed the need for ongoing cooperation and for applying greater diplomatic and economic pressure on the North, until it implements its obligations to the U.N. Security Council.



Australian Defense Minister Marise Payne, who was at the Philippine conference, said her country supported calls for Pyongyang to exercise restraint, warning that it risked more sanctions.



The greatest possible pressure must be brought to bear on the regime through the exercise of sanctions, she said. At the end of the day, the regimes behavior is inherently dangerous to global stability.



She said Australia supported the U.S. describing North Koreas weapons test as provocative and in breach of global agreements and international norms.



And Australia has been extremely strong in reiterating our position which supports the U.N. Security Council and the U.S., which is, we will impose the strongest possible sanctions on the North Korean regime, she said.



All of the ASEAN member-states maintain relations with North Korea.



On Tuesday, Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana suggested that U.N.-backed international sanctions on North Korea were counter-productive in pressuring Pyongyang to rein in its nuclear ambitions.



Sanctions [are] not working but still strengthening the hand of Mr Kim Jong Un, Lorenzana told reporters, according to Agence France-Presse.



It feeds on his fears of being invaded also and so he rallies his people to fight against invaders, to support me. Instead of weakening him, it is strengthening his hold on his people, said the defense chief of the Philippines, a longtime U.S. ally in Asia.

Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.
Myanmars Home Affairs Minister Lieutenant General Kyaw Swe (2nd from L) and Bangladeshs Home Secretary Mostafa Kamal Uddin (3rd from R) show memorandums of understanding they have signed in Myanmar's capital Naypyidaw, Oct. 24, 2017.

Myanmar signed agreements with Bangladesh on Tuesday to beef up security cooperation and set up border liaison offices to deal with the exodus of Rohingya Muslims who have fled recent violence in Myanmars northern Rakhine state.

Myanmars Home Affairs Minister Lieutenant General Kyaw Swe and Bangladeshs Home Secretary Mostafa Kamal Uddin signed two memorandums of understanding in Naypyidaw where they met to discuss plans to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who fled to Bangladesh after a brutal military crackdown in northern Rakhine in response to terrorist attacks on Aug. 25.

Last month, Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed to begin a process to repatriate the refugees under a 1993 agreement that allows the return of Rohingya who can prove residency in Myanmar.

At an Oct. 2 meeting in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, Myanmar and Bangladeshi government officials agreed to form a joint working group comprised of officials from the two countries to work on the process of repatriating the refugees.

The Myanmar authorities have informed our honorable minister that the joint working group will be formed by Nov. 30, Sharif Mahmud Apu, the public relations officer of Bangladeshs Home Ministry, told BenarNews, an RFA-affliated online news service, on Tuesday.

They have also assured us that they will take the Rohingya refugees back, he said.

A statement issued later in the day said that Bangladeshs Home Ministry said Myanmar authorities agreed to a sustainable repatriation of Myanmar citizens from Bangladesh, but avoided referring to the refugees as Rohingya.

Officials from both sides who participated in the ministerial-level meeting earlier on Tuesday also discussed implementing the recommendations by the Myanmar government-appointed Advisory Commission on Rakhine State led by former United Nations chief Kofi Annan, employing counterterrorism measures, taking action against separatists, eliminating cross-border human trafficking and drug smuggling, and maintaining a peaceful border, the statement said.

It is agreed that the chiefs of the border security forces of both countries will meet once a year, and the regional level official will meet on a quarterly basis to resolve border concerns, it said.

Armys version of events

Also on Tuesday, the Myanmar military issued a 10-point statement laying out its version of events of the Aug. 25 attacks by the militant group the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), defending its actions amid heavy international criticism, including charges of ethnic cleansing and threats of sanctions.

About 4,000 extremist Bengalis led by ARSA carried out simultaneous attacks on 30 police outposts and one army unit headquarters using superior force under well-hatched plot, the statement said, using a derogatory term for Rohingya Muslims who are considered illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

The office of President Htin Kyaw declared a military operation zone immediately after the attacks, and military commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing received directives from the president on Sept. 4 to make reinforcements to ensure adequate troop strength and to strengthen the fence along the border with Bangladesh, it said.

Some military units performed area clearance operations acting on tip-offs that terrorists were performing training activities to carry out additional attacks, it said.

No further incidents occurred after Sept. 5 because the terrorists had fled the country, the statement said.

The military also said that its security forces took action in accordance with the law, and did not overstep the law.

One-sided statements and accusations against Myanmar and security members over the terror attacks of extremist Bengalis in the west of Rakhine state are totally untrue, and the intentional acts done under the pretext of the facts such as human rights and humanitarians may hamper national security and national interest, the statement said.

U.N. agencies and aid workers in Bangladesh, however, say they have tracked tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees that have continued to flee Rakhine since mid-October.

US restrictions

The Myanmar military issued its statement a day after the United States imposed additional restrictions on Myanmars military for its abuse of Rohingya Muslims during the recent violence in northern Rakhine state.

Rights groups, the U.N., and the international community have hit out at the army for committing atrocities against the Rohingya, which they say amount to ethnic cleansing.

The U.S. State Department announced that as of Aug. 25, it had stopped consideration of travel waivers for current and former senior military leaders under the 2008 Junta's Anti-Democratic Efforts (JADE) Act of 2008, which prohibits U.S. imports of jadeite and rubies from Myanmar, even if the gems are processed in and exported from another country.

The government also said it was assessing authorities under the JADE act to consider economic options available to target individuals associated with atrocities.

The U.S. government has also rescinded invitations for senior military officials to attend U.S.-sponsored events and deemed units involved in operations in northern Rakhine ineligible to receive or participate in any U.S. assistance programs, the statement said.

It is imperative that any individuals or entities responsible for atrocities, including non-state actors and vigilantes, be held accountable, it said.

The new restrictions have been imposed in addition to existing restrictions on the U.S.s already-limited engagement with the Myanmar military and its long-standing embargo on all military sales.

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that U.S. officials are preparing a recommendation for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to declare that ethnic cleansing is occurring against Myanmars Rohingya Muslims, a move that would put pressure on the Trump administration to consider new sanctions against Myanmar.

At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, outraged U.S. lawmakers pressed the administration to unequivocally adopt the term.

The administration of former President Barack Obama lauded Myanmars progress in its transition to democracy under Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the countrys de facto leader whose government has been in power for more than 18 months.

She has been sharply criticized for not speaking out on the treatment of the Rohingya and not doing enough to stop the violence against the minority group at the hands of state security forces following the Aug. 25 ARSA attacks and deadly smaller scale raids by the same group in October 2016.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service and by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
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A Richmond man accused of selling heroin with the street name Gray Death, a form of the narcotic that has caused overdoses, will be held in jail pending federal grand jury proceedings.

Emmanuel O. Robinson, 27, described by authorities as a five-time convicted felon, was arrested last week and appeared Monday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Roderick C. Young, who issued the detention order.

According to an FBI affidavit and criminal complaint filed Oct. 17, confidential sources said Robinson traveled to the Fredericksburg area to sell a kind of heroin that was responsible for five overdoses. Authorities would not comment Monday on whether any of the overdoses were fatal, or say whether they were caused by heroin from Robinson.

However, the affidavit alleges that a sizeable quantity of heroin and fentanyl distributed in the Fredericksburg area came from Robinson, who on five occasions allegedly sold heroin to a cooperating source in Richmond.

Robinson also is accused of commonly conducting drug deals in the Walmart parking lot just off Forest Hill Avenue in South Richmond.

In all, Robinson allegedly sold more than 100 grams of heroin to the FBI source or sources last month, and testing by the Drug Enforcement Administration Laboratory showed the Gray Death contained heroin, fentanyl, and a new form of fentanyl the DEA has not seen before.

On Oct. 4, the FBI alleges that Robinson was observed from an aircraft and from surveillance units driving from his residence to the Walmart parking lot and another man was seen entering and leaving Robinsons vehicle. That man drove off and was stopped a half-mile away by the Virginia State Police Interdiction Team. That man allegedly admitted to agents that he bought four to five grams of heroin from Robinson every other day.

The affidavit said his prior convictions include possession of a firearm by a felon, possession with the intent to distribute an illegal drug, grand larceny and malicious wounding. The FBI sources also said Robinson kept a Glock handgun in the glove box of his vehicle and was always armed.

Christopher G. Healy, a special agent with the FBI, testified at a brief hearing before Young on Monday that a search of Robinsons residence turned up two handguns  one hidden inside an air duct  and a total of $7,320 in cash.

Under cross examination by Robinsons lawyer, Paul G. Gill, Healy said that no drugs were found in the search and that investigators were told the cash was from a 401k and savings for children and was meant to pay for a funeral.

Court records show Robinson pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm as a felon and was sentenced to five years in prison in federal court in Richmond in 2010.
Alleging he was falsely depicted as a stupid liar who was a sex-crazed maniac, former Richmond mayoral candidate Joe Morrissey has filed a lawsuit against Richmond CBS affiliate WTVR and longtime local columnist Mark Holmberg over a report the television station aired in the run-up to last years election.

The suit accuses Holmberg and the station of slander and seeks $1.35 million in damage.

The video column at the center of the allegations ran Sept. 2, 2016, and followed polling in the race that indicated Morrissey was the earlier front-runner in a field of eight candidates.

In the WTVR piece, Holmberg recounted Morrisseys history of legal troubles, including the loss of his Virginia law license for misconduct, repeated citations for contempt, a courthouse fistfight for which he was jailed while serving as the citys commonwealths attorney, and, most recently, the jail term he served in connection with allegations he had sex with a 17-year-old receptionist in his law office. He continues to deny the charge involving the former receptionist, though police produced scores of explicit text messages they said the two exchanged and he has since married the woman, who was pregnant with his child at the time the case was being adjudicated.

Holmberg noted in the column that the city had recently been buoyed by positive national attention as a cool place to live. He argued Morrisseys success in the race would weigh the city down.

Do we really want to elect this clown, this nonstop, one-ring circus, this liar? Holmberg said  one of several statements from the TV piece that Morrissey alleges are untrue and defamatory in the suit.

Instead, Morrissey describes himself as a learned man in the filing.

In truth and in fact, Mr. Morrissey is not a clown who has his own one-ring circus, Morrisseys suit alleges. Such an accusation is malicious, spiteful, the product of ill-will and is an overt attempt to discredit and destroy his reputation for honesty and integrity.

Stephen P. Hayes, WTVRs general manager and president, said in an email Tuesday that it is WTVRs policy not to respond to pending legal matters. The suit was filed Sept. 5 in Richmond Circuit Court, but its not clear whether the station or Holmberg has been served with the complaint.

Holmberg, who also writes occasional columns for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, could not immediately be reached for comment.

As a public figure, Morrissey would need to prove not only that the claims are false, but also that they were made with actual malice, said Carl Tobias, a constitutional law professor at the University of Richmond.

I think it would be an uphill battle, Tobias said. Thats about the highest standard you can have. Its like trying to prove criminal intent. It has to really be malicious.

This is not the first time Morrissey has sued a local news outlet. In 2009, he sued Style Weekly over an article detailing his business dealings and legal battles, ultimately receiving an undisclosed cash settlement from the publication.

More recently, Morrissey has been engaged in a legal back-and-forth with former Gov. Doug Wilder alleging Wilders National Slavery Museum owes Morrisseys law firm $130,000 in fees related to a 2013 tax dispute with the city of Fredericksburg. Morrissey withdrew the suit last month but said he plans to refile it.
The Richmond Police Department spent thousands on overtime, protective equipment and food in the run-up to, and during, the pro-Confederate rally held on Monument Avenue in September, a detailed breakdown of the departments spending provided to the Richmond Times-Dispatch shows.

Earlier this month, Mayor Levar Stoneys administration disclosed that the city spent about $570,000 to prepare for and staff the Sept. 16 rally . The event saw about a half-dozen pro-Confederate demonstrators from Tennessee and a few hundred counterprotesters coalesce around the Robert E. Lee monument.

Police accounted for the vast majority of the citys spending, with the costs split between overtime for officers to work the event and equipment and operating expenses the department incurred.

Police spent $252,328 in overtime to plan for and work the event. In addition to overtime costs, the department reported $250,189.27 in equipment and operating expenses, a full breakdown of which the department provided to The Times-Dispatch in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The department paid an average of $43.15 per hour in overtime to 204 officers who worked on Friday, Sept. 15, to notify residents of street closures for the impending event and help set up fencing on Monument Avenue that police used to control entry to the protest on that Saturday.

Police also wanted to have officers on standby in case the pro-Confederate group showed up early, said Richmond Deputy Police Chief Eric English, alluding to the torch-lit march that occurred the night before the scheduled white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in August.

We didnt want people coming out there Friday carrying Tiki torches through the city of Richmond, English said.

On Sept. 16, the day of the event, the department paid an average of $43.56 an hour to 475 officers  two-thirds of its sworn force. Not all officers were assigned to Monument Avenue that day, English said; some were stationed in other areas police wanted to monitor. There was a larger area we were focused on, English said, not just the stretch of Confederate monuments.

The department paid an average of $41.39 an hour in overtime to 16 officers on Sunday to monitor in case a second demonstration cropped up, similar to a counterprotest march that happened in Richmond after the events in Charlottesville in August, English said.

In addition to the weekend of the event, the department paid overtime for 30 days leading up to the event in preparation and execution of the departments operation plan, according to a FOIA response provided to The Times-Dispatch.

Stoneys administration earlier this month said the department spent $254,041 for equipment and operations related to the event, a figure the mayors office said included one-time purchases that would prepare police for future demonstrations.

The initial accounting released by the administration erroneously duplicated an expense of $3,851.51, a department breakdown denoted.

The largest equipment expenditure related to the event was 75 body cameras police purchased for $84,280.85. The department didnt have enough body cameras to outfit each officer assigned to the protest area, English said.

We had to order more of those.  We felt like that was important to equip our folks who would be out there with body cameras so they could capture the events as they occurred, English said.

An additional $3,612.57 was spent on eight handheld high-definition cameras so a handful of officers could film people entering and leaving the protest area and the demonstration itself, English said.

Police purchased two license plate readers from the Virginia State Police at a cost of $53,600. English said the department stationed the cameras around the protest area, which was closed to traffic, to aid police in tracking down a suspect in case of an incident involving a vehicle.

The department spent $24,538.50 on 75 radio earpieces to help officers communicate during the event. It also bought 50 gas masks at a cost of $24,250 to outfit officers in case police deployed tear gas to control the crowd, English said. The department didnt have enough masks available for the officers working the event, he added.

With the exception of the gas masks, which English said he wasnt certain about, the department purchased all of the equipment during the roughly one-month period from the Aug. 12 rally in Charlottesville until the Sept. 16 rally on Monument Avenue.

Anticipating mass arrests during the Richmond rally, police designated the Arthur Ashe Center on North Boulevard as an intake center where it would process people who were arrested, English said.

The department spent $14,982 to erect a temporary perimeter fence meant to provide security by limiting access to the building, English said.

It also purchased three laser printers for the center at a cost of $3,054.72. Asked whether the department had printers it could have used at the site temporarily, English said it did not.

Police arrested seven people during the event.

The department rented 14 vans from Enterprise from the Wednesday prior to the event through Monday at a cost of $9,492. It used the vans to shuttle officers to and from the departments staging area at the Greater Richmond Convention Center and the protest and elsewhere they were stationed, English said.

The vans also came in handy for delivering one of the departments other big operating expenses for the event: food.

Police reported spending $17,938.46 to feed and hydrate officers and other personnel working over the weekend.

That figure includes $6,000 for 1,400 box lunches from Mission BBQ on Saturday; $4,196 for 1,000 meals from Feedmore for dinner on Saturday night; $3,818.54 for bottled water, Gatorade, coffee, cups, sugar and creamer, plates and utensils, hand sanitizer and 10 coolers to store drinks; $2,633.14 for scones, fruit, bagels, juices, sodas and other snacks from Wegmans; $822.50 for 250 Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches; $371 for Papa Johns pizzas and another $97.28 for pizza.

Richmond police footed the bill for Virginia State and Capitol police to eat during the event, English said.

Weve had protests before where we only fed Richmond officers, but were asking for assistance from other agencies, English said. Were asking for assistance for them; we budgeted for their feeding as well. I feel like thats the proper thing to do.

Jim Nolan, a Stoney spokesman, wrote in an email that the city took the necessary steps to make sure no people or property were hurt during the demonstration.

We prepared for the worst and hoped for the best and didnt take any chances. We are proud of the outcomes from that day. Many of the investments we made to keep our city safe and peaceful and protect our officers and first responders can and will be used to respond to future events, should they arise.

Andreas Addison, the 1st District councilman and a member of the councils Public Safety committee, said that while the cost was high, the money spent was worth it to ensure safety of all involved.

For me, its a lot of money to spend on something that were not prepared for, but I feel that its in the best interest to make sure everyone is safe.

Capitol Police said last week that it spent $4,400 on overtime and equipment for the event. Virginia State Police has not disclosed its expenditures related to the rally to date.
Police arrested a 40-year-old man Monday night after a 3-year-old Chesterfield County boy was abducted and later safely located after an Amber Alert was issued.

The suspect, James Benjamin King, 40, was arrested in the 1700 block of Ferndale Avenue in Petersburg. King was charged with abduction and is being held in the Chesterfield County Jail.

The boy, who was believed to have been in extreme danger, was found at a residence in Petersburg. He had last been seen in the 9100 block of Germont Avenue in North Chesterfield about 6:30 p.m. Monday.

The Amber Alert was issued at 10:45 p.m. and then canceled at 11:32 p.m. Police said the child was located thanks to "immediate tips."
Richmond Public Schools has hired a special assistant to the superintendent at a pay rate of $85 an hour.

Janet Crawley, a retired superintendent of Charles City County Public Schools, was hired to a project management role. Shell help various RPS departments with the corrective action plan process the division has with the Virginia Department of Education as part of the division-level academic review.

Crawleys hiring was approved 6-1 by the school board last week. Jonathan Young, who represents the citys 4th District, was the lone board member to vote in opposition of the hiring.

Hiring decisions along with allocation of resources says a lot about an organizations priorities and when we have so many needs in the classroom and when we already have a downtown-knows-best, top-down, straitjacket culture, it boggles my mind that we would even consider doubling down on the very impediment that our teachers lament every day, Young said when asked why he voted in opposition.

Crawley started with Charles City County Public Schools in 1971 as an English teacher and moved up to be the director of instruction and assistant superintendent for instruction before being named superintendent. She holds degrees from Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), Virginia State University and the College of William & Mary.

Crawley served as superintendent from 1999 to 2014 before retiring. Since retiring, shes worked as an adjunct professor at Virginia State University and as interim superintendent for Mecklenburg County Public Schools in southern Virginia.

The role as special assistant to the superintendent is a temporary one, said RPS spokeswoman Kenita Bowers.

Division-level academic reviews work to determine whether a school board is meeting its responsibilities under the Standards of Quality, which a major portion of state funding is based on. The standards are established in the state constitution.

Crawleys appointment, which was subject to board review and approval, is not the only one to draw some opposition from the board recently.

Board members called for more transparency from the administration after finding out about the appointment of consultant Dallas Dance. Dance, a former Baltimore County school superintendent, was paid $25,000 for his services, which, according to a contract obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch through a Freedom of Information Act request, meant helping interim Superintendent Tommy Kranz and other senior staff members until a new superintendent takes over.

Dance, whose hiring was not subject to board approval, is no longer a consultant for the division after the two sides mutually decided to part ways. Richmond is still looking for a permanent superintendent.
CHARLOTTESVILLE  As hundreds of men with torches descended the stairs in front of the University of Virginia Rotunda, dozens of people surrounding a statue of Thomas Jefferson in protest watched in fear, unsure of what might happen next.

Moments later, tiki torches, flames and fists were flying in all directions as smoke and pepper spray filled the air immediately around the statue of the university founder and U.S. president.

Only two people have been arrested in connection to the event. For now, its unlikely that Albemarle Countys top prosecutor will be seeking any more charges despite allegations of additional crimes and a recent memo from his Charlottesville counterpart suggesting that some of the torchbearers could be prosecuted for appearing to use the torches to threaten victims before violence was unleashed.

Earlier this month, after white nationalist leader Richard Spencer held another nighttime torch rally in downtown Charlottesville, Dave Chapman, the city commonwealths attorney, said he would not pursue charges against Spencer or his followers for their demonstration on Oct. 7. In a memo to City Manager Maurice Jones, however, he provided examples of how a state statute that makes burning an object to threaten an individual or a group a felony can be applied.

The first two examples might be reflected in the events in front of the Rotunda at the university on Aug. 11, when torch-bearing members of the alt-right became involved in a confrontation with counterdemonstrators and presented a threat to them by being armed with menacing devices that were also a symbol of their views, Chapman said in a memo.

Because the Oct. 7 rally did not include any form of direct violence or an audience that had reason to fear an immediate threat, Chapman said, there was not enough evidence to prosecute Spencer or anyone else on those charges.

In an interview the day after he submitted the memo to Jones, Chapman said he wasnt suggesting that Albemarle County Commonwealths Attorney Robert Tracci should pursue charges.

Its hard enough to do my own job, Chapman said. Im not going to tell somebody else how to do their job.

I dont mean by any of what Ive written or said to suggest anything whatsoever with respect to Albemarle County and the people who are responsible for law enforcement there, he added.

What I can say is that I could see from whats been reported and documented  is that there are things that happened on Aug. 11 that begin to get at more squarely the kinds of circumstances that can be prosecuted under Virginia Code Sec. 18.2-423.01, he said. That law makes it a Class 6 felony to burn an object on a highway or other public place in a manner having a direct tendency to place another person in reasonable fear or apprehension of death or bodily injury.

Ian Hoffmann, of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, was arrested by University of Virginia police the night of the event and charged with assault and battery. According to court records, an Albemarle General District Court judge found him not guilty because of a lack of evidence.

Later in August, white nationalist and self-described shock jock Chris Cantwell, a featured Aug. 12 rally speaker who participated in the march on U.Va., was charged with illegal use of tear gas and malicious bodily injury by means of a caustic substance or agent. He later turned himself in to Lynchburg police.

Following Cantwells arrest, Traccis office succeeded in appealing to the county court to rescind a bond that had been set at $25,000.

In an email earlier this month, Tracci dismissed the idea that he could pursue charges against anyone for the events of Aug. 11 under the statute Chapman referenced in his memo, but he said that shouldnt dissuade victims from submitting evidence of any crimes that might have been committed.

I dont read his memorandum to clearly support that proposition, Tracci said. Rather, the memorandum contains speculative observation layered in measured distinction couched in additional qualification(, for example,) the following examples may present circumstances ... and it might be possible under the circumstances; and it might be reflected, etc.

Emily Gorcenski, a local anti-racism activist who was among the counterprotesters on Aug. 11, testified to a magistrate that Cantwell was the aggressor that night. Cantwell, who remains incarcerated at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, has said he acted in self-defense.

In an interview, Gorcenski said a group of activists had presented a U.Va. police investigator with evidence of additional crimes that they said occurred that evening, alleging that the myriad assaults amounted to criminal mob violence.

Videos presented in an online dossier compiled by Gorcenski and other activists appear to show some torchbearers ordering colleagues to surround the students.

They deliberately penned us in. Those people were not only carrying the torches but also used them as weapons, Gorcenski said. Im still trying to encourage the investigator to sign off on a warrant.

In a tweet responding to Gorcenskis claim that the counterprotesters were surrounded and prevented from escaping the scene, Spencer wrote: Fact check: true. Gorcenski said the tweet is an admission to criminal kidnapping.

Tracci said he declined to seek further charges after the U.Va. investigator contacted him about Gorcenskis allegations.

Explaining his reasoning, Tracci referred to the American Bar Association guidelines for the minimum requirements to file criminal charges, which say that a prosecutor should seek or file criminal charges only if the prosecutor reasonably believes that the charges are supported by probable cause, that admissible evidence will be sufficient to support conviction beyond a reasonable doubt, and that the decision to charge is in the interests of justice.

That explanation did not placate Gorcenski.

We need to do a better job holding our elected officials accountable, Gorcenski said. Its absurd that I can be smashed with a torch on video and nothing happens  where is the justice here?

Somebody has to do something. They cant keep coming into our town with torches. What do you think the natural end of this is going to be?

In other developments:

* Charlottesville police are asking the public to help identify 10 assault suspects in an Aug. 12 incident on the Downtown Mall during the Unite the Right rally.

According to a news release, authorities are investigating an alleged assault in the area of the Fourth Street crossover on the Downtown Mall. An officer investigating the case the incident was reported on Sept. 28.

Detective Brady Kirby said the incident took place shortly after a car drove into a crowd of people near the crossover, killing one and injuring dozens more. Some of the suspects appear to have physically attacked one person in the course of about a minute, Kirby said.

Kirby did not identify a suspected motive for the attack or provide any information about the alleged victim or the suspects.

Anyone with information about the suspects is asked to contact Kirby at (434) 970-3694 or Crime Stoppers at (434) 977-4000.

* White nationalist leaders and organizers of the Aug. 12 Unite the Right rally are now facing a series of lawsuits after the fatal event this summer, but Charlottesville City Councilor Bob Fenwick wants to take more legal action against them.

In a news conference Monday afternoon, Fenwick announced his intention to ask Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore to assemble a special grand jury to investigate whether Richard Spencer, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and rally organizer Jason Kessler can be prosecuted for inflicting financial damages and personal injuries on the public.

This is something the citizen can do, Fenwick said. We dont have to ask for anybodys permission to do it.

Fenwick, whose single term on City Council will end this year, demurred when asked what charges he hopes they can be prosecuted on. He said he expects the citys attorneys will figure it out but suggested that the defendants could be forced to pay reparations to the city following recent events.

Fenwick said he felt compelled to act because he and other residents are frustrated by the feeling of a lack of progress in the justice system following the recent white nationalist events. Fenwick alleged those forces are funded by far-right Russian operatives, citing a recent Newsweek article that connected Spencer and Duke to Russian ultranationalist and political theorist Alexander Dugin.

I want to make sure the city of Charlottesville has what it needs to be able to adequately defend the citizens and the city, Fenwick said.

Though he did not mention him by name, Fenwick criticized city Commonwealths Attorney Dave Chapmans recent decision against pressing charges against Spencer following a torch-lit rally on Oct. 7. Earlier this month, Chapman said he was personally disturbed by the incident but that there was not enough evidence that Spencers demonstration posed an immediate or true threat to anyone who saw them in Emancipation Park that evening.

Whenever the people of Charlottesville  at least a certain part of Charlottesville  see a tiki torch, they see it as a burning cross, Fenwick said. To then be told by a city official that a tiki torch is not a burning object and that theres no judicial precedent to put charges forward, to me and many people, it doesnt make sense.

Fenwick, who said he plans to petition the court as a private citizen, said it requires only five signatures for a judge to consider impaneling a special grand jury. He did not say whether there are already other people planning to sign the proposed petition, but he said he is confident that the grand jury will be able to conduct its own independent investigation into the events of Aug. 12.

Im very hopeful that this does what I think it can do, he said.

Though the city has recently consulted various civil liberties attorneys and a team of lawyers who are now representing the city in one lawsuit to prevent militia groups from participating in paramilitary operations in Virginia, the idea of a special grand jury was never advised, Fenwick said.
A Democratic candidate for a House of Delegates seat in Fairfax County has sent mailers using the face of her Republican opponent, a Latina, next to two Halloween masks, including a wolf.

While Democrat Kathy Tran says the mail piece attacking Lolita Mancheno-Smoak is Halloween-themed, Republicans and one independent observer said it has racial undertones.

This Halloween season, protect your family from the scariest threats, Trans mailer reads. The back of the mailer says Mancheno-Smoaks support for spending cuts would hurt public school funding, says she opposes expanding Medicaid expansion and points out her opposition to abortion rights.

But it is the wolf thats catching attention.

If the @Va_GOP did this we would be called racists instantly, tweeted state GOP Chairman John Whitbeck.

Mancheno-Smoak emigrated from Ecuador as a child with her parents. She and Tran are competing in the 42nd House District, where Del. David B. Albo, R-Fairfax, is not seeking re-election. Albo has had a lock on the district for years, but with the seat open Democrats are hoping to flip it with the better-funded Tran.

This is simply a Halloween-themed mailer where were highlighting the key policy differences, which I find to be really scary, Tran said in an interview.

When asked if Whitbeck had a valid point, Tran replied that she herself was an immigrant and said she supports a Virginia thats welcoming for all. Tran came to the United States as an infant with her parents from Vietnam.

Leslie Caughell, an assistant professor of political science at Virginia Wesleyan University, said she was surprised a Democratic candidate in a diverse Northern Virginia district would put her name on the mailer in the middle of a statewide campaign already rife with anti-immigrant rhetoric and messaging.

I imagine a lot of Democratic voters are looking at this mailer and seeing the same racial undertones that I am. And they probably wont vote for a Republican, but they may not be eager to vote for a candidate that they perceive as racist and stay home, Caughell said by email.

Which makes me wonder if whoever designed the mailer thought it would be timely and didnt think about the optics of presenting a Latina woman as a threat. Although that seems like a glaring oversight.

Mancheno-Smoak spokesman John Arnold said she was busy at events Tuesday when asked if she could do an interview.

The Tran masks mailer is silly, so were ignoring, he said by email. He also said Mancheno-Smoak has advocated for smaller classrooms and higher teacher pay.

Katie Baker, a spokeswoman for the House Democratic Caucus, downplayed the mailer in an emailed statement.

We compared Lolita Mancheno-Smoaks policy positions to masks from the Halloween aisle at Target, while Republicans attacked Latina candidates with the words thugs, violent criminals, gang members, and child predators, and images of bullet holes, guns, and men in hoodies.

But Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, who has pushed to change the Democratic Partys tone, had a different take.

Consultants running campaigns push these negative ads as necessary to win, but we must demand better, he said by email. Ads we have seen from both sides this election season do more to divide Virginians than unite. People deserve more respect than this.

The controversy over Trans mailer comes amid complaints from a Democrat running for the Henrico County Board of Supervisors over campaign material by the Republican Party of Virginia.

Courtney Lynch said two mailers with doctored images of her alongside Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney had racial undertones. Some of the images were made using stock art photos with Stoneys and Lynchs faces superimposed on them.

John Findlay, executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia, said that the party used artistic license to illustrate Stoneys endorsement of Lynch and that the mailers do not have racial undertones.

Lynch is running against Republican Robert Bob Witte Jr., who said he was not involved with the mailers.

In another Northern Virginia House race, Democrat Hala Ayala, who is challenging Del. Richard L. Anderson, R-Prince William, said last week that she was personally hurt by what her opponent said about her in campaign mailers.

The mailers read: Hala Ayala: Restore rights to felons: thugs, violent criminals, gang members and child predators. The mailers included a photo of a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt and holding a blunt weapon.

Ayala, whose mother was Lebanese and Irish and whose father was an immigrant from El Salvador with African roots, said the mailers reflected downright racist campaign tactics.

Anderson did not return a message asking for comment on the mailers. His campaign manager said we fully stand by it.
CHATHAM  The Drewry Hall case will go on as scheduled. That was the ruling Monday from a Pittsylvania County General District Court judge, who rejected two defense motions in the case of a Martinsville man charged after a fatal boating accident in 2016.

Drewry Woodson Hall, 21, faces misdemeanor charges of operating a boat in a reckless manner and purchasing or being in possession of alcohol, as he was 20 years old at the time of the incident. Hall also was originally charged with getting documents to make a false statement, but was found not guilty of that during a hearing on Aug. 14.

The trial began May 16, continued Aug. 14, a motion hearing was held Monday, and closing arguments are scheduled to be heard Oct. 30.

The charges stem from the death of Gabby Ayers, of Clemmons, North Carolina, who was killed after the Polaris personal watercraft she was a passenger on collided with a 21-foot Key West Boat on Smith Mountain Lake. The incident happened in a cove near the Anthony Ford Boat Ramp, on the Pittsylvania County side of the lake.

The 17-year-old Ayers was riding the watercraft with her friend, 19-year-old William Rentz Brandt, whose grandparents own a house on the lake. Hall was the driver of that Key West Boat and 22-year-old Capers Penn Zentmeyer of Martinsville was a passenger. Both men helped pull Ayers and Brandt to shore after the wreck. William Brandt, of Danville, was taken to Carilion Franklin Memorial Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Mondays hearing involved two requests from the defense. The first was a request to disallow testimony from two witnesses, as the defense claimed they had engaged in collusion. The second was a motion to dismiss the case entirely.

In Mondays presentation, the defense argued that on May 16, the judge had ordered all witnesses to be sequestered, or separated. The prosecutions lay witnesses were directed to sit in witness rooms located in the foyer immediately outside the courtroom, and the defense witnesses were directed to sit in the hallway outside the courtroom. The prosecution presented evidence from 10 witnesses on May 16, but did not rest its case on that day.

After the May 16 hearing, Halls lawyers say they were informed that two witnesses allegedly had violated the courts sequestration order and engaged in witness collusion. Four people witnessed this alleged misconduct and provided affidavits.

One of those was a 10-year-old boy, Caleb Lloyd, who had been subpoenaed to testify. He was sequestered in one of the rooms with several other witnesses and was accompanied intermittently by his foster mother, Julia McIntosh.

Lloyd said in his affidavit, in part, The other witnesses talked amongst themselves about the accident and how they believed the driver of the boat intentionally ran over the jet ski. They said the jet ski was not moving when it was struck. Since I did not agree with their opinions, I thought I was in the wrong room.

In the affidavit, the boy also said, At one point the teenage girl who was standing in the foyer asked me if I had seen the incident. I advised her I had seen everything.

In his statement, Lloyd also said he saw several witnesses stand in the foyer and try to listen to other testimony in the case.

Another person who provided an affidavit was Richard A. Ress, a private investigator hired by the defense. Ress, a retired agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was also sequestered in the hallway outside of the courtroom on May 16. He stated that several witnesses for the prosecution appeared to be listening to testimony, in violation of the sequestration order.

When questioned by Commonwealths Attorney Robert Bryan Haskins on Monday, Ress said he could hear noise coming from the courtroom when these incidents occurred but he didnt know what was happening in the courtroom at the time, for example whether it was a witness talking or someone else talking in the courtroom. When asked by Haskins, Ress also said that he did not tell bailiffs at the time what he saw, but he did tell the defense.

Defense accuses a witness of lying

The second part of Mondays motion by the defense involved one specific witness. Leah M. Stiegler  a lawyer with Woods Rogers PLC who is part of the defense team representing Hall  left the courtroom on May 16 during a trial recess and went to the restroom with Lucille M. Saunders, a legal assistant at Woods Rogers PLC, according to the defense motion and Stieglers testimony Monday.

While in the restroom, Stiegler allegedly heard a witness state, I flat out lied, and then something along the lines of, I wanted to make you all look better, and I pray for you guys, the motion claims.

Stiegler identified that witness Monday as Mary Katherine Layne and said that Layne was talking with another witness, Francis Ella Brandt. In another affidavit, Saunders also claims that she heard Layne say I flat out lied and that she was praying for you, to Brandt.

However, in her affidavit, Stiegler admitted that she was in a bathroom stall when she heard the person say I flat out lied, so she did not see who was talking. When she exited the stall, she saw Layne with Ella Brandt and Brittany Ayers, the sister of Gabby Ayers, standing near the bathroom exit. It was then she heard Layne say something along the lines of I pray for you guys. This was the same voice I had previously heard state I flat out lied, while I was in the stall, Stiegler says in the affidavit. I therefore concluded that Mary Katherine Layne had made the statement about lying.

Mondays motion by the defense stated that these alleged comments by Layne resulted in dishonest and tainted testimony that prejudices Hall and undermines the defendants right to a fair trial.

However, neither Stiegler or any other member of the defense team could tell the court what Layne allegedly lied about. When asked by prosecutor Bryan Haskins, Stiegler acknowledged she did not know the context of Laynes conversation and could not say what the witness was talking about when she allegedly made the statement I flat out lied.

Layne was not called to testify during Mondays hearing and neither side presented any written or verbal statements from the witness, talking about the incident.

The judge weighs in

The defense argued that witness collusion, as allegedly seen by the multiple people who presented affidavits, resulted in tainted testimony. They argued that by listening to others testify and talking about the case amongst themselves, it shaped how witnesses answered certain questions. Also in their motion, defense attorneys claimed that Layne perjured herself, as a result of the statement Stiegler and Saunders claimed to hear. Defense attorneys acknowledged, however, that they cannot say what, if anything, was lied about in court. As a result, they argued the only safeguard in such a situation is to strike Laynes testimony completely.

On the prosecutions side, Haskins argued that the May 16 testimonies of the two witnesses in question, Layne and Brandt, were similar to statements they gave following the accident.

He also added that the defense did not establish what Layne allegedly was lying about and that there was no context for the allegation, but just a conversation overheard in a bathroom.

Haskins argued that the judge, as the examiner of fact, should not disallow the testimony of the two witnesses, but should determine how much weight and credibility to give to each. Haskins also said he felt there was no basis for the judge to dismiss the case.
Image Group LA/ABCAs an Irishman, Niall Horan probably didn't grow up surrounded by a lot of country music, but he'll be performing on the Country Music Association Awards next month on ABC.

Niall will duet with country star Maren Morris on "Seeing Blind," a track from his debut solo album, Flicker. Maren recorded the song with Niall for the album.

Carrie Underwood and country star Brad Paisley will co-host the 51st annual CMA Awards, airing November 8 on ABC at 8 p.m. ET.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Former Presidents of the United States Barack Obama, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, George Bush senior and Jimmy Carter gathered for a hurricane relief concert in Texas this week. Two of the Presidents were struck with a delightful fit of giddiness during the ceremony.

The group (who almost look like members of a band reuniting after decades) urged people to support the recent victims of natural disasters in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and The US Virgin Islands.

While the event had a serious message, it was also described as a fun benefit and relaxed affair. At one point, while Bill Clinton was making a speech, you can catch Bush leaning over to Obama to whisper something to him. Obama laughs while Clinton has a distinctly mischievous look on his face.

The moment has gone viral on social media:

W cracking a joke to Obama while Clinton gives a speech is me in middle school pic.twitter.com/Sw6uQwXRcf  Justin Taylor (@TheSmarmyBum) October 22, 2017

Bush's reaction after he gets Obama to laugh at his joke is the ultimate post dad joke face pic.twitter.com/lH7o3EuMCw  spOooOoky steph Y' (@__stephandstuff) October 23, 2017

Bush pulling a dad move, cracking a joke to Obama during Clinton's speech, and glancing repeatedly to see his reaction. pic.twitter.com/Y3dLIkQUAn  Classic Dad Moves (@ClassicDadMoves) October 22, 2017

After sharing a laugh during Bill Clinton's speech at Texas A&M Barack Obama & George Bush enjoy buddy time on campus pic.twitter.com/hEdeKqQKgI  Denlesks (@Denlesks) October 24, 2017

Tonight at 11/10c, what did President Bush say to give President Obama the giggles? pic.twitter.com/sAZzfcW3C9  The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) October 24, 2017

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The Commonwealth Transportation Board on Tuesday approved a nearly $410 million contract to design and build a new High Rise Bridge over the Elizabeth River as well as widen Interstate 64 in Chesapeake.

The contract, which was awarded to the Granite-Parsons-Corman Joint Venture of Tarrytown, N.Y., is the largest design-build contract in Virginia Department of Transportation history, the department said in a statement. The total cost of the job, including right of way acquisition, engineering, utility relocation and construction management, is $550 million, said Dave Forster, a VDOT spokesman.

The project dwarfs the states second-largest design-build contract, valued at $138.7 million for improvements elsewhere on I-64 in Hampton Roads. Another segment of that project is expected to cost $240 million.

The bids for the Chesapeake project came in lower than estimates prepared by VDOT, which had projected the cost of the design-build portion at about $490 million, Forster said.

The new bridge will be built just south of the existing High Rise Bridge to carry three lanes of outer loop traffic on the Hampton Roads Beltway. The existing bridge will remain to carry three lanes of inner loop traffic. A second phase with no set schedule will replace that bridge and widen the road in each direction to eight lanes.

The first phase also includes replacement of the overpass bridge and road realignment at Great Bridge Boulevard and widening bridges at Military Highway, Yadkin Road and Shell Road.

I-64 will go from four to six lanes beginning a half-mile east of the Interstate 264 interchange at Bowers Hill to a mile east of the Interstate 464 interchange, a total length of 8.75 miles.

One high-occupancy toll lane in each direction will be added alongside two general purpose lanes. VDOT will employ dynamic pricing, meaning the toll prices will fluctuate based on traffic flow.
RADFORD  Radford University's provost was removed from his position Friday.

After serving less than a year as the chief academic officer at the school, Graham E. Glynn was relieved of his duties as provost and vice president for Academic Affairs.

The decision came from university President Brian Hemphill, who announced the change in an email to the campus community that afternoon.

In order to continue the momentum we have established in achieving our shared goals for academic excellence in the traditional areas such as teaching and learning and the additional areas of research and service, Dr. Graham E. Glynn will no longer serve provost effective today, Hemphill wrote. After a sabbatical for the remainder of the academic year, Dr. Glynn will begin a full-time teaching role for the 2018-2019 academic year within the Artis College of Science and Technologys Department of Biology, where he is a tenured faculty member.

Kenna M. Colley, dean of the college of education and human development, has been named the the interim provost.

After he was hired by RU following a national search, Glynn began serving as provost in July. He started with a salary of $280,000. His new salary as a member of the faculty in the biology department will be $210,000, according to the university.

The provost spot at RU has been somewhat of a revolving door since its creation in 2007 by former President Penny Kyle. The school had three different provosts between 2007 and 2011.

Members of the university's faculty senate say frustration regarding a discrepancy in common ground regarding shared governance and the schools overall academic mission had been an issue since Glynn started as provost.

There were some issues with his management style and way of communication, said Jake Fox, president of the faculty senate. The President felt strongly that we needed to make a change and he acted quickly.

When he was hired in December of 2015, Hemphill said that the provost job was among the most important hires he would have to make in the early going in his new gig. Hemphill apologized to the faculty senate in person on Oct. 20 for Glynns disappointing performance, Fox said.

That really meant a lot, Fox said. I applaud him for owning it. He was very proactive with this.

Both members of the faculty senate and administrators at the university have declined to give specific examples of complaints against Glynn.

It is inappropriate to discuss the details of personnel matters, said Joe Carpenter, a spokesman for the university. The extent of (Hemphills) comments are contained in his communication to RU students, faculty and staff.

Glynn did not return a message seeking comment.

Carter Turner is a longtime member of the faculty at RU and served on the committee that hired Glynn.

We were optimistic about him, Turner said. We worked really hard with new president to create an expectation of transparency and shared governance. The feeling was we were moving in the wrong direction.

Continuing, Turner said: Weve gotten much more clear about who we are as a university. That picture has come into focus over the last year and a half. The President recognized very quickly this was not going to be a good fit and acted quickly and decisively.

The process of finding a new provost will not begin until prior to the end of the 2018-2019 academic year.
A Stafford County man died while hunting Monday afternoon, according to the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Mark Richard Summers, 58, was hunting deer with a friend in the area of Twin Oaks Lane in Stafford around 3:45 p.m. when someone heard a tree limb break and went to see what happened, according to Lee Walker, outreach director for VDGIF.

That's when Summers was found on the ground beneath a hunting stand he'd been in.

Walker said it's unclear whether Summers died from the fall or if he suffered a medical emergency.

Lawrence Emerson, a friend who allowed Summers to hunt on his Fauquier County property, said Summers was an experienced outdoorsman who hunted and fished all over.

Emerson said in an email that a friend texted him that Summers and his wife celebrated their wedding anniversary on Monday. Summers returned home after killing an eight-point buck and gave his wife money for a spa session. Then he headed back out to hunt more with a friend, a fireman who found Summers on the ground below the tree stand.
The largest corporations and the richest people in America  who donated billions of dollars to Republican candidates for the House and Senate in the 2016 election  appear on the way to getting what they paid for: a giant tax cut.

The New York Times reports that business groups are meeting frequently with key Republicans in order to shape the tax bill, details of which remain secret.

Speed and secrecy are critical. The quicker Republicans get this done, and without hearings, the less likely the rest of the country will discover how much it will cost in foregone Medicaid and Medicare or ballooning budget deficits.

Donald Trump has been trashing democratic institutions  the independence of the press, judges who disagree with him, uncooperative legislators  while raking in money off his presidency. But dont lose sight of the larger attack on our democracy that was underway even before Trump was elected: the flood of big money into politics.

Lest you conclude its only Republicans who have been pocketing big bucks in exchange for political favors, consider what Big Tech  an industry that has mostly bankrolled Democrats  is up to.

Its mobilizing an army of lobbyists and lawyers  including senior advisers to Hillary Clintons campaign  to help scuttle a proposed law requiring Google, Facebook, and other major internet companies to disclose who is purchasing their online political advertising.

After revelations that Russian-linked operatives bought deceptive ads in the run-up to the 2016 election, youd think this would be a no-brainer. But never underestimate the power of big money, whichever side of the aisle its aimed at.

Often, its both sides. Last week, The Washington Post and 60 Minutes reported that Big Pharma contributed close to $1.5 million to Democrats as well as Republicans in order to secure enactment of the so-called Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016.

This shameful law weakened the Drug Enforcement Administrations power to stop prescription opioids from being shipped to pharmacies and doctors suspected of taking bribes to distribute them  a major cause of the opioid crisis. Last year, Americans got 236 million opioid prescriptions, the equivalent of one bottle for every adult.

Overwhelming majorities of House and Senate Democrats voted for the bill, as well as Republicans, and President Obama signed it into law.

There you have it, folks. Big money is buying giant tax cuts, allowing Russia to interfere in future elections, and killing Americans. And thats just the tip of the corrupt iceberg thats sinking our democracy.

Republicans may be taking more big money, but both parties have been raking it in.

Average Americans know exactly whats going on.

I just returned from several days in Kentucky and Tennessee, two states that voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

A number of Trump voters told me they voted for him because they wanted someone whod shake up Washington, drain the swamp and get rid of crony capitalism. They saw Hillary Clinton as part of the problem.

These people arent white nationalists. Theyre decent folks who just want a government thats not of, by, and for the moneyed interests.

Many are now suffering buyers remorse. They recognize that Trump has sold his administration to corporate lobbyists and Wall Street. He conned us, was the most polite response I heard.

The big money thats taken over American politics in recent years has created the biggest political backlash in postwar American history  inside both parties.

Its splitting the Republican Party between its large corporate patrons and a base that detests big corporations and Wall Street.

Trump is trying to straddle both sides by pretending hes a champion of the working class while pushing for giant tax cuts. But if my free-floating focus group in Kentucky and Tennessee is any indication, the base is starting to see through it.

You might think this creates a huge opportunity for Democrats heading into the 2018 midterms and the presidential election of 2020. Think again. Much of the official Democratic Party is still in denial, continuing to debate whether it should be on the proverbial left or move to the middle.

But when it comes to getting big money out of politics and ending crony capitalism, theres no right or left, and certainly no middle. Theres just democracy or oligarchy.

Democrats should be fighting for commonsense steps to reclaim our democracy from the moneyed interests  the public financing of elections, full disclosure of all sources of political funding, an end to the revolving door between government and business, and attempts to reverse the bonkers Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

For that matter, Republicans should be fighting for these things, too.

Heres a wild idea. What if the anti-establishment wings of both parties came together in a pro-democracy coalition to get big money out of politics?

Then it might actually happen.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
Donald Mink wasnt prepared for the call that came on Feb. 23: His mother had died in North Dakota, just days after entering hospice at the age of 77.

Mink, at home in Indiana, was suddenly faced with a dilemma: How could he lay his mother to rest from several states away?

He decided to have his mothers body cremated, then to send her ashes to Seymour, Indiana, so he could bury them in her home town, between his grandparents graves. The state of North Dakota would cover the cremation costs, since his mother had been a ward of the state. Mink would pay the $65 shipping fee.

So on Feb. 28, the cremated remains of Mary Louise Mink were shipped by the North Valley Crematory in Grand Forks, North Dakota, via U.S. Postal Service Priority Mail Express.

Donald Mink said he was told to expect the package to be delivered to his home within two days.

His mothers ashes never arrived.

What followed, Mink said, were months of anguish, legal disputes with both the crematory and the Postal Service, and an alleged falling-out with his own attorney.

Now, eight months after his mothers death, he still doesnt know where her ashes are, and may have no recourse.

Mink, 43, told The Washington Post the situation began to escalate in mid-March, when he called the crematory to ask why he hadnt received the package.

An employee answered, Mink recalled, and his exact words were, The post office is supposed to get a hold of you. I was like, why? Well, theyre going to call you and explain everything to you, and theyre going to make it right.

He tells me that the post office told (him) not to give me a tracking number. I called the post office. The lady on the other end said theres no way that theyd ever do that.

Mink called the crematory employee back and said a few words to him I probably shouldnt have before the man finally gave him the tracking number and a note of caution: I didnt want to be the one to tell you but your moms remains have been lost.

Mink looked up the package on the USPS website.

It was listed as Dead Mail.

Your item could not be delivered or returned to the sender, the tracking tool stated. It is being forwarded to a USPS mail recovery center where it will be processed.

Mink filed a complaint against the crematory with the North Dakota State Board of Funeral Service and hired an attorney, who obtained an electronic copy of a Postal Service picture of the missing package as it was last seen: The image showed a flat Priority Mail Express Tyvek envelope, roughly 11 by 15 inches, ripped open and empty. The boxed temporary urn that had been inside was gone.

Mink was shocked to learn that the crematory had placed the temporary urn inside an envelope, rather than a cardboard box, as the Postal Service recommends in its guidelines for mailing cremated remains.

In letters, his then-attorney, Stephen Welle, alleged that the crematory staff did not properly package the remains for shipping, nor did they include a full return address on a slip of paper inside the box, as the USPS also recommends.

Not only are Donald and Marys other family members unable to complete the process of saying their final farewell by laying Mary to rest, they must struggle daily with the knowledge that Marys remains are lost, Welle wrote in May. Mary Minks remains have not been handled in a dignified manner and my clients have suffered severe emotional distress as a result.

Minks attorney demanded $1 million from the crematory in a settlement. He also filed a complaint against the Postal Service for negligence, but the USPS denied the claim, saying it was protected from liability for lost mail under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

The Postal Service has repeatedly reassured Mink that it is continuing to search for his mothers remains, which have likely been routed to a processing facility for undeliverable mail in Tennessee.

Its ridiculous that they tell me that my mothers remains are just missing mail, Mink said. It may be to them but its more than that to me and my family.

Neither the Cremation Association of North America nor the National Funeral Directors Association keeps statistics on how frequently cremated remains are lost in the mail.

My sense, and this is just anecdotal, is that it happens infrequently. Its not a regular occurrence, CANA executive director Barbara Kemmis said. She noted the most frequently visited page on the groups website outlines exactly how to package and ship cremated remains. So clearly its a topic of interest.

Mink never thought he would cremate his mother. Though they hadnt seen each other in nearly 20 years, Mary Louise Mink had frequently expressed her end-of-life wishes  and was clear about what she wanted, Donald Mink said.

My whole life I could remember (her saying), I dont want to be cremated; I dont want to burn,  Donald Mink said.

And yet, the cost to ship her body to Indiana for burial would have been prohibitive, he said.

I had no choice, you know what I mean? Because I didnt have the money to have her body brought back here for a funeral, Mink said. That was one of the hardest things Ive ever done.

What he couldnt have known then were the legal battles that would lie ahead as the result of that decision.

In response to Minks $1 million settlement demand, the crematory denied any wrongdoing, laying blame on the Postal Service for accepting, then losing, the package.

The remains had been placed in a heavy plastic liner bag that was zip-tied and put inside a black vinyl temporary urn, with surrounding empty space filled with foam packing peanuts, crematory manager Wayne Sykes told the North Dakota funeral service board in April. That temporary urn was then boxed and placed inside the Tyvek envelope, he added.

The crematory had shipped hundreds of urns without incident in this manner, Sykes said.

Reached by phone, a man who identified himself as the North Valley Crematory manager said: Im not going to speak to you about this. Its not our doing. Its the U.S. Postal Service. Goodbye.

An attorney for the crematory told Minks lawyer the packaging was consistent with North Dakota administrative code, even though the inside label lacked a complete return address.

The crematorys attorney also accused Mink  who in early June had shared his story with several local media outlets  of spreading misinformation and defaming the crematory, threatening to sue for slander if Mink didnt retract a quote he had given to Valley News Live: Obviously, they didnt know what they were doing.

Mink said his own attorney had advised him in June to recant his statement if he wanted to move forward with a possible settlement.

Theres no way in hell Id do that, he said. His lawyer soon dropped him as a client.

Months later, Mink didnt mince words in his summation of the case, lashing out at nearly every party involved in crude terms.

Of the crematory, he said: They got a little butt-hurt and their lawyer threatened to sue me. I told (my attorney) to tell them to do an explicit act, and he said I cant tell him that. He said he couldnt represent me anymore. Ive been trying to deal with the post offices lawyers myself.

Mink described his former attorney as a big sissy who didnt have the balls to fight and quit me because he said I had a terrible attitude.

Reached by phone at his office in Fargo, Welle declined to comment on the case but confirmed he is no longer representing Mink.

The last significant development in the case came on July 12, when Mink received a letter from the North Dakota attorney generals office: The state funeral board had ruled that the North Valley Crematory met all of the states legal requirements when shipping Mary Minks remains.

In short, Minks complaint was dismissed.

We feel terrible about it, but the package was shipped according to the law and so we couldnt discipline the crematory, said Dale G. Niewoehner, the funeral boards executive secretary.

Niewoehner said the board has since published updated suggested packing guidelines  complete with step-by-step instructions that echo USPS recommendations. The new instructions emphasize the use of a box for the outside packaging, as well as more complete inside labeling; Niewoehner said the board is also working on getting state code changed.

Mink has little hope his mothers remains will ever be recovered, though he continues to receive periodic Postal Service notifications saying investigators are still searching for the lost package. One was dated on what would have been his mothers 78th birthday.

The Postal Service offers our deepest condolences to the family, spokeswoman Kimberly Frum said in an email. We are keenly aware of their desire to locate the missing package as soon as possible. We regret that, to date, the remains havent been located. But we are committed to our ongoing, vigilant search to find them.

The Postal Service keeps undeliverable packages of cremated remains indefinitely, Frum said.

Mink said he has literally called every single lawyer in North Dakota but has not been able to find a new attorney willing to represent him so he can sue for emotional damages. He also wants a public apology from the post office, as well as one from the crematorys lawyer for threatening to sue him, he said.

Its not about the money. Me and my family, we live comfortably. We go on two or three vacations a year. I work my tail off, said Mink, who noted he works two jobs. Its just, my thing is, the only way to get peoples attention is to hit them in the pocketbook. Thats the truth.
By Laura Belleville

Belleville is Vice President of Conservation and Trail Programs for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. She lives in Blacksburg.

Why would you choose to build a highly-flammable gas pipeline through the most active seismic area in Virginia when you can choose to build it somewhere else?

Thats what EQT, a billion-dollar out-of-state pipeline developer, is proposing to do.

EQT wants to build the 300-mile long Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) to transport natural gas from West Virginia to Pittsylvania County, Virginia near Danville.

The pipeline is routed to cross the world-famous Appalachian Trail (A.T.), one of the most visited National Park properties in the country. Its construction could leave huge gashes in the hillside near the A.T.  that will be seen from several miles away  and could harm up to one-fifth of the Trails 550-mile route in Virginia.

Each year, the A.T. brings over 100,000 tourists to central Virginia from the U.S. and around the world. Damage to the A.T. could hurt tourism and the local economy upon which so many small towns in rural Virginia rely.

But the earthquake last month in Monroe County, West Virginia is a good reminder of the dangerous path that EQT is proposing for this poorly-planned pipeline. The epicenter of that September 13 earthquake was only 1.5 miles away from the proposed MVP route.

The September quake is not the first one in the area. The MVPs proposed route runs right through the middle of the Giles County Seismic Zone, where the huge 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck in 1897. That quake was so powerful that it knocked down chimneys in Knoxville, Tennessee and shook the streets in Durham, North Carolina. It was also felt as far away as Ohio, Indiana and Georgia.

Imagine what happens if there is an earthquake near a future Mountain Valley Pipeline  a pipeline that is 3.5 feet in diameter, or about the size of an average Kindergartner. That earthquake could cause a rupture, possibly even an explosion and fire, and impact an area three miles wide.

On top of this, the pipeline builders want it to route through areas which get repeated flooding and substantial rain. Pipeline construction coupled with heavy rains could cause landslides and contaminate the drinking water on which thousands of rural Virginians depend. And even if the MVP remains intact, its construction alone will increase the sediment load in headwater streams, degrading water quality for everyone downstream. The public is being kept in the dark about the effect that MVP will have on our drinking water.

Pipeline proponents often try to minimize these concerns, yet the data show that pipelines built since 2010 have a much higher failure rate than at any time since before World War II. Experts suggest that this poor performance is due to hasty construction in unsatisfactory terrain, a description that fits MVP.

This pipeline will run through counties that voted for Donald Trump in overwhelming numbers in 2016, and many Republican elected officials have announced their opposition to MVP. They cite threats to the local economy and central Virginias clean drinking water supply. And they are concerned about private businesses using eminent domain to take public land and the potential harm to the A.T.

Virginia does not need another pipeline to fulfill Americas energy needs, particularly one that runs through an earthquake zone, violates local environmental laws and is strongly opposed by local elected officials and citizen groups. Virginias Department of Environmental Quality  which has yet to decide on the pipeline  should send it back to the drawing board.
Rother Valley MP Sir Kevin Barron

CAMPAIGNING MP Sir Kevin Barron has suggested cigarette companies help people trying to stub out their tobacco habit.

The Rother Valley MP welcomed the publication of the Governments Tobacco Control Plan, he welcomed the plan but questioned where the funding for smoking cessation services would come from.

He said politicians should look at whether a link-up with industry might bridge the gap.

Sir Kevin said during a Parliamentary debate last Wednesday: Despite a long-term reduction in smoking rates, tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable, premature death and ill health, accounting for around 100,000 deaths each year in the UK.

In Rotherham, alone the smoking rate among people in managerial and professional occupations is 10.2 per cent, but that leaps to 29.4 per cent amongst those who have never worked or are long-term unemployed.

These facts clearly show that we are still struggling to get through to certain groups within society, the government must do more to identify ways of getting through to these difficult to reach people.

If the tobacco industry is willing to commit to a future based around e-cigarettes and other reduced harm products, we should take them up on the offer and allow Government and Local Authorities to partner with them for the financial and technical help needed to help smokers quit.

In Rotherham, 18.3 per cent of the population smoke.

This compares to 17.7 per cent across Yorkshire and the Humber and is well above the England average of 15.5 per cent.

The Government plan aims to achieve a smokefree generation with a combination of preventing, support for people quitting smoking, focussing on areas with higher smoking rates and keeping duty rates high to make tobacco less affordable.

Smoking causes around 79,000 preventable deaths in England every year and is estimated to cost the economy more than of 11 billion annually.
Petra Diamonds said its first quarter production for the fiscal year 2018 dropped 4 percent to 1,06 million carats when compared with 1,1 million carats produced, a year earlier.

The drop was attributed to a planned reduction in tailings production at Finsch and Kimberley Ekapa Mining Joint Venture in South Africa.

Despite the labour disruptions at Finsch, Koffiefontein and KEM JV, the group has made a strong start to FY 2018, delivering close to 1.1 Mcts for Q1, said Petra chief executive Johan Dippenaar.

The group is continuing its production build up and it is encouraging to see the increasing contribution of run of mine (ROM) production.

Petra said that its revenue was also down 17 percent to $78.7 million during the period under consideration from 711,277 carats sold against $94.7 million from 745,447 carats sold during the first quarter of the fiscal year 2017.

It said no sales from Williamson in Tanzania were included, due to a parcel of diamonds (71,654.45 carats) detained by the government of Tanzania.

Tanzania claimed that the diamonds were worth $29.5 million, but Petra had under-declared the stones for export.

However, the diamond company said that it was not responsible for the provisional evaluation of the stones.

Meanwhile, Petra said diamond prices on a like-for-like basis were down about 3 percent during the first quarter in comparison to the second half of the fiscal year 2017, and by a 2 percent at the companys second tender held this month.

It said its expansion programmes remain on track.

All components of the Cullinan plant are now fully operational, with ramp-up and optimisation activities ongoing; the plant is expected to achieve nameplate capacity of 6 Mtpa during H2 FY 2018, said Petra.

Its net debt of $613.8 million as at 30 September 2017 was higher than previously expected levels due to no sales from Williamson.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




India's overall exports from the gem and jewellery sector during the month of September 2017, stood at $ 4.51 bn, a drop of 2.3% over the $ 4.62 bn exported in the month of September in 2016, as per the provisional data released by The Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC) of India.

Exports of gold jewellery (both studded and plain), during September, rose by 23.9% to $ 1.2 bn from $ 968.6 mn in the same month last year.

Exports of gold medallions and coins during the month dropped sharply to $ 58.42 mn as against $ 671.2 mn in September 2016. Exports of silver jewellery rose to $ 372.08 mn in September 2017 as compared to $ 237.39 mn in September last year.

Coloured gemstone exports remained flat in September 2017 at $ 58.51 mn as compared to $ 58.01 mn exported during the same month a year earlier.

Indias overall exports from the gem and jewellery sector during the (H1) six month period ended September 30 of the fiscal year 2017-18 declined by 4.8% year-on-year to $ 21.06 bn as against $ 22.11 bn recorded for H1 of FY 2016-17.

While exports of gold medallions & coins declined by 36.8% to $ 1.66 bn in the six month period, silver jewellery exports rose by 24.4% to $ 2.39 bn, and coloured gemstones exports displayed flat growth at $ 212.60 mn in April-September 17.

Exports of synthetic stones during April-September 2017 from Surat SEZ were $101.95 mn, with synthetic diamonds accounting for around $ 67.31 mn as compared to $ 53.82 mn during the comparative period a year earlier.



Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished




Leaders of the Senate Health Committee revealed Tuesday they have reached an agreement on legislation to provide short-term stability to Obamacare.

Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., announced the bipartisan agreement.

The proposed bill would reportedly restore the Obamacare subsidies to insurers that President Donald Trump eliminated last week.

In exchange for two years of funding for the cost-sharing program, the bill would provide states more flexibility in how their Obamacare are run.

Asked about the news at a press conference with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Trump called the deal a short-term solution that will "get us over this intermediate hump."

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Business News
Today's Daily Dose brings you news about promising results from Albireo's phase II study of A4250 in children with cholestatic liver disease; Complete Response Letter for Antares' Xyosted, designed for treating hypogonadism in adult men; disappointing results from DBV Technologies' phase III trial of Viaskin Peanut and of GlaxoSmithKline's Shingrix for the prevention of shingles.

Read on...

Shares of Aimmune Therapeutics Inc. (AIMT) were up 45% in after-hours on Friday as the Company gets ready to discuss global screening data from its phase III PALISADE trial on October 27, 2017.

The PALISADE trial is designed to investigate the efficacy and safety of AR101 in peanut-allergic children, adolescents, and adults. The top line data from this trial are expected to be available in the first quarter of 2018.

On October 16, 2017, Aimmune entered into a clinical collaboration with Regeneron (REGN) and its strategic alliance collaborator Sanofi (SNY) to study AR101 treatment with adjunctive *dupilumab in peanut-allergic patients in a Phase 2 clinical trial.

Regeneron's Dupilumab, approved on March 28, 2017, is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with inadequately controlled moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis. It is sold under the brand name Dupixent.

AIMT closed Friday's trading at $25.66, down 0.23%. In after-hours, the stock was up 45.36% to $37.30.

Albireo Pharma Inc.'s (ALBO) final results from its Phase 2 study of lead product candidate A4250 in children with cholestatic liver disease have been found to be promising.

In the study, A4250 reduced serum bile acids (sBA) and improved pruritus in most patients, particularly patients with progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis (PFIC). A4250 exhibited a favorable overall tolerability profile in the study, with all patients completing the four-week treatment period and no reports of diarrhea associated with multiple dose therapy, noted the Company.

Progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis is a devastating rare liver disease for which there is currently no approved drug treatment.

Based on the promising results, the Company looks forward to advancing its planned Phase 3 clinical trial of A4250 in patients with progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis.

ALBO closed Friday's trading at $28.14, up 2.36%.

The FDA has declined to approve Antares Pharma Inc.'s (ATRS) Xyosted, a drug-device combination product, for the treatment of adult men with low testosterone associated with a diagnosed condition known as hypogonadism.

In its Complete Response Letter, the FDA has raised two concerns regarding XYOSTED - a clinically meaningful increase in blood pressure and the occurrence of depression and suicidality.

Robert F. Apple, President and CEO of Antares said, "We are disappointed with the outcome of the review and are assessing the content of the Complete Response Letter, including the information that may be needed to resolve the deficiencies. The Company remains committed to bringing XYOSTED to market and will work closely with the FDA to determine the appropriate responses to the deficiencies noted in the letter."

ATRS closed Friday's trading at $2.18, up 2.83%.

DBV Technologies SA (DBVT) slumped nearly 53% in after-hours on Friday as its phase III trial of Viaskin Peanut in children four to 11 years of age failed to meet its primary endpoint.

In the trial, dubbed PEPITES, Viaskin Peanut 250 g after 12 months of treatment did not reach the 15% lower bound confidence interval (CI) in the difference in response rates between the active and placebo arms.

However, there was a statistically significant response with a favorable tolerability profile, with 35.3% of patients responding to Viaskin Peanut 250 g after 12 months of treatment as compared to 13.6% of patients in the placebo arm.

Another phase III trial of Viaskin Peanut, dubbed REALISE, is underway. Results from this trial are expected in November 2017.

DBVT closed Friday's trading at $48.07, up 1.95%. In after-hours, the stock was down 52.6% to $22.75.

The FDA has approved GlaxoSmithKline plc's (GSK) Shingrix for the prevention of shingles (herpes zoster) in adults aged 50 years and older.

In clinical studies, the vaccine has shown over 90% efficacy across all age groups in the prevention of shingles, a painful and potentially serious disease that affects 1 in 3 people in the United States.

Shingrix contains Agenus Inc.'s (AGEN) proprietary immune adjuvant, QS-21 Stimulon.

Merck & Co. Inc.'s (MRK) Zostavax is the other shingles vaccine available for use in the United States. The effectiveness of Zostavax at preventing shingles is 70% in adults aged 50-59 years and just around 18% in adults aged 80 years or older.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is expected to vote on a recommendation for the use of Shingrix at its meeting on 25 October 2017.

Shingrix is expected to be available in the U.S. shortly. It was approved in Canada on October 13, 2017. Regulatory filings in the European Union, Australia and Japan are underway.

GSK closed Friday's trading at $40.84, down 0.61%.

Organovo Holdings Inc. (ONVO) on Friday presented new preclinical data showing extended survival and sustained functionality of its 3D bioprinted human liver tissue when implanted into diseased animal models.

The pathologic evaluation of diseased animals receiving implanted bioprinted liver tissues suggests an approximately 75 percent reduction in the pathologic hallmarks of the disease in treated animals versus non-treated control animals in the region of implant, according to the Company.

Organovo intends to submit an Investigational New Drug application to the FDA for its therapeutic liver tissue in calendar-year 2020.

ONVO closed Friday's trading at $1.61, up 15%.

Xencor Inc. (XNCR) will be presenting final results from its open-label, Phase 2 study of XmAb5871 in patients with IgG4-Related Disease in a late-breaking, oral presentation on Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) 2017 Annual Meeting.

In June of this year, the Company reported encouraging data from an ongoing, open-label, pilot phase II study of XmAb5871 in patients with active IgG4-Related Disease. According to the trial results, 93% of patients achieved a response to therapy, 12 of them within two weeks of their first dose.

XNCR closed Friday's trading at $21.29, down 2.34%.

Zosano Pharma Corp. (ZSAN) has entered into a common stock purchase agreement with Lincoln Park Capital Fund, LLC for up to $35 million.

As part of the agreement, Zosano will have the right and the sole discretion to sell to LPC up to $35.0 million worth of shares over a 30-month period subject to certain limitations.

Proceeds from the purchase agreement will be used to fund the long term safety study for the Company's lead product candidate, M207, and for general corporate purposes.

M207 is under a pivotal Phase 2/3 study, dubbed ZOTRIP, for the treatment of migraine.

ZSAN closed Friday's trading at $0.84, up 0.50%.

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Business News
Petmed Express Inc. (PETS) reported second quarter EPS of $0.43 Monday morning, up from $0.24 in the prior year period. Analysts expected EPS of $0.30.

Petmed Express gapped open sharply higher Monday, but traded in a range throughout the session. Shares finished with a gain of 6.67 at $43.41 on above average volume. The stock leaped to a 2-month high.

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Business News
(Agencia CMA Latam) - Venezuela and China strengthened their strategic alliance in energy, primarily aiming at increasing crude oil output in their joint ventures, investments, financing and trade. The compromise was agreed at a meeting between Venezuelan officials and a delegation from China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

"Energy cooperation has been a fundamental basis for strengthening political, social, cultural and economic ties. We better know our friends at difficult times, and CNPC will continue to be a partner of Venezuela," CNPC Vice-President Wang Dongjin told Venezuela's Oil Minister, Eulogio Del Pino, and state-owned PDVSA chairman, Nelson Martinez.

Both companies set up six joint crude oil production companies operating in the Orinoco Oil Belt and advanced in energy trading through the Chinese currency, the yuan.

by Agencia CMA Latam

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Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.
Adam Mosseri, Head of News Feed, Facebook said that there have been a number of reports about a test we're running in Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guatemala, and Cambodia. Some have interpreted this test as a future product Facebook plans to deliver globally. But, Adam Mosseri clarified that the company currently has no plans to roll this test out further.

Mosseri noted that people told the company they want an easier way to see posts from friends and family. The company is testing having one dedicated space for people to keep up with their friends and family, and another separate space, called Explore, with posts from pages.

Mosseri said the goal of this test is to understand if people prefer to have separate places for personal and public content. The company will hear what people say about the experience to understand if it's an idea worth pursuing any further. There is no current plan to roll this out beyond these test countries or to charge pages on Facebook to pay for all their distribution in News Feed or Explore. Unfortunately, some have mistakenly made that interpretation  but that was not the company's intention.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Crude oil futures continued to rise Tuesday morning amid the threat of supply interruptions from Iraq, where the conflict involving Kurds is escalating.

Iraq has added some key oil facilities in the south, but fighting in the north of the country has limited production.

WTI light sweet oil was up 20 cents at $52.30 an ounce, edging near multi-month highs.

US crude oil inventories data will be in focus over the next two sessions. The American Petroleum Institute is out with its weekly report this afternoon, followed by the Energy Information Administration's tomorrow morning.

Oil stockpiles plunged 5.7 million barrels last week, due in part to greated refinery demand as gasoline producers hustle to make up for hurricane-related interruptions.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
Canada-based department store operator Hudson's Bay Co. (HBC.TO) said Tuesday that it has agreed to sell the Lord & Taylor Fifth Avenue building in New York to WeWork Property Advisors in a deal valued at $850 million, or C$1.075 billion.

The transaction comes as Hudson's Bay or HBC is under intense pressure from activist shareholder Land & Buildings Investment Management LLC to evaluate all strategic options to maximize value for shareholders, including monetization or repurposing of the company's real estate.

HBC announced the deal as part of a series of strategic transactions with WeWork Companies, Rhone Capital and an affiliate of WeWork Property Advisors, a joint venture between WeWork and Rhone.

HBC and other large retailers are struggling amid stiff competition from online retailers and a drop in traffic as customers migrate online.

HBC said that the Lord & Taylor flagship store will continue to operate in the entire building through the 2018 holiday season. Thereafter, the building will be converted into WeWork's New York headquarters and office space, as well as a redesigned Lord & Taylor store of about 150,000 square feet.

HBC currently anticipates minimal impact on its earnings from the sale of the Lord & Taylor Fifth Avenue building, which is many times less productive in comparison to the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship building.

In addition, Rhone Capital will make $500 million equity investment in HBC in the form of eight-year mandatory convertible preferred shares. This will be initially convertible into HBC's common shares at $9.82 or C$12.42 per share, with the conversion price subject to adjustment from time to time in accordance with the terms of the preferred shares.

HBC also said it has entered into agreements with WeWork to lease retail space within select HBC department stores, including the Queen Street location in Toronto, Granville Street in Vancouver and Galeria Kaufhof in Frankfurt, Germany. The company currently anticipates minimal impact on the earnings from these locations.

HBC expects the transaction to result in an aggregate debt reduction of C$1.6 billion and an increase in total liquidity of about C$1.1 billion.

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Business News
(Agencia CMA Latam) - The energy sector regulator in Brazil approved the rules for an electricity transmission lines auction that will be held on December 15, when 4,919 kilometers of power lines distributed in 11 lots will be offered. The government estimates around R$ 8.7 billion (US$ 2.68 billion) in investments.

From August 31 to September 29, the local government held public hearings to improve the rules of the auction. The third of the eleven lots will require the most substantial investment (R$ 2.773 billion) since it would require the expansion of the North-Southeast and North-Northeast interconnections - part of the solution to drain Belo Monte's hydroelectric power production.

Lot 1, in Parana, the second largest of the auction, will have eight transmission lines, five line extensions and five substations, requiring R$ 2.017 billion in investments. Another relevant block is the 4, between the states of Tocantins and Bahia, which will require R$ 1.396 billion.

According to Aneel, the other lots will be in Rio Grande do Norte, Ceara, Piaui, Minas Gerais, Bahia and Pernambuco. The expectation is to generate at least 17,980 direct jobs. The deadlines for the deliveries of the enterprises vary from 36 to 60 months, depending on the lot. The concession contracts are expected to be signed in March 2018.

by Agencia CMA Latam

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Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.
The NIA on Tuesday arrested Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin's son Syed Shahid in a six-year-old terror funding case, a day after the government decided to open talks with "all stakeholders" in Jammu and Kashmir.

Shahid, 42, a state government employee, was arrested in Delhi after he was called for questioning at the National Investigation Agency (NIA) headquarters.

"Shahid over the years has been receiving and collecting funds through international wire money transfer from" Hizbul Mujahideen militant Aijaz Bhat, a Srinagar resident now based in Saudi Arabia, an NIA statement said.

The NIA said Shahid was one of Aijaz Bhat's several contacts who were in telephonic touch "to receive the money transfer codes". The money was meant to fund Hizbul Mujahideen's militant activities in Jammu and Kashmir.

Shahid, who lives with his family in Soibugh village of central Budgam district, has a masters degree in agriculture and works as a village agricultural assistant in the state's agriculture department. His contractual job was confirmed by the government in March this year.

The 2011 terror funding case pertains to terror money sent through hawala channels by militants based in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to Jammu and Kashmir.

The NIA had filed two chargesheets against six accused in the case in 2011. Four of them - Ghulam Mohammed Bhat, one of the closest aides of hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mohammed Sidiq Ganai, Ghulam Jeelani Liloo and Farooq Ahmad Dagga - are currently in Delhi's Tihar Jail.

Two of the accused, Mohammad Maqbool Pandit and Aijaz Bhat, are on the run and have been declared proclaimed offenders. Pandit, like Aijaz Bhat, has been an active Hizbul Mujahideen militant and is currently based in Pakistan.

Aijaz Bhat, according to NIA records, received arms training with the Hizbul Mujahideen in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in early 1990s. He never returned to Srinagar and began working for the militant group in Pakistan. He is said to have stayed in Sialkot before shifting to Saudi Arabia for generating funds for the group's activities in Jammu and Kashmir.

An NIA official said the agency through phone records found that he was in touch with Ghulam Mohammed Bhat, a Srinagar-based lawyer, in 2011.

According to NIA, the lawyer separatist had procured over Rs 4.50 crore from Pakistan through hawala channels within three years after 2008 for funding militant activities in the Kashmir Valley.

Ghulam Mohammed Bhat, Ganai, Liloo and Dagga were arrested on January 22, 2011 and Rs 21.20 lakh were recovered from them.

After their arrest, Aijaz Bhat used to send money to Shahid. The Hizb founder's son, according to an NIA official, received at least four instalments of money in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Shahid is the third son of Salahuddin, who also heads the United Jehad Council, the amalgam of Kashmir militant groups based in Muzaffarabad in Pakistan.

Salahuddin unsuccessfully fought the 1987 Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir. He then crossed over to Pakistan and founded the Hizbul Mujahideen -- the largest militant group in Jammu and Kasmir. Salahuddin has five sons and two daughters, who are all employed with the state government.

Shahid's arrest -- it is the first time any member of Salahuddin's family has been arrested -- comes a day after Home Minister Rajnath Singh announced the decision to start a dialogue process in Jammu and Kashmir and named former Intelligence Bureau Director Dineshwar Sharma to talk to all stakeholders.

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David P. Adongay Jr., (wearing black jacket) District Engineer inspects the on-going widening along Naval-Caibiran Cross Country Road (NCCR) with a construction budget of P37,418,424.94. Adongay reported that the project is being fast-tracked to finish the project on or before October 8, 2017. As of August 30, 2017, it has an accomplishment of 58%.

DE Adongay monitors on-going and completed FY 2017 projects

By CHELSEA QUIJANO-SALLOMAN

September 24, 2017

NAVAL, Biliran  Engr. David P. Adongay Jr., District Engineer of Biliran District Engineering Office (BDEO) conducts inspection around the district on August 16, 2017 together with Engr. Ginisar M. Romero, Engineer II.

The first project inspected by DE Adongay is the substantially completed Asphalt overlay along Naval-Caibiran Cross Country Road with a construction cost of P33.322M.

The project entails the application of asphalt overlay on existing concrete pavement with minor corrections with a width of 6.10 m. and a thickness of 50 mm covering an area of 7.316 lane km.

According to Adongay, application of a Reflective Thermoplastic Stripping Materials will be the last activity of the project. The completion of this project will provide a smooth riding surface for the traveling public as well as provide convenience in transporting agricultural and aquatic products to market centers.

Construction of Drainage along Biliran Circumferential Road is another project inspected by DE Adongay. The project is still on-going upon DEs inspection. Major scope of work of the project is the construction of both open drainage on some sections and covered drainage on another section with a total length of 1,860 ln.m. It is to be constructed after a 3.05 m. widened shoulder.

Adongay reported that the project has already 58% accomplishment as of August 30, 2017 and is target to be completed on October 1, 2017. The completion of this project will provide a drainage structure that will contain runoff water from the mountain sides during rainy days which will prevent flooding along the National Road thereby preventing its deterioration.

The district engineer also took time to inspect the on-going Rehabilitation of Damaged Paved National Road along Naval-Caibiran Cross Country road (NCCR). Adongay said that the major scope of work of the project is the replacement of damaged concrete pavement to new concrete with a construction budget of P1.457M.

The project was prioritized because of the significant cracking along the above section which when left unattended might cause vehicular accident, said Adongay.

Adongay reported that as of August 30, 2017, the project is already completed.

The last project inspected by DE Adongay is the Widening along Naval-Caibiran Cross Country Road (NCCR) with a construction budget of P37.218M The project involves the construction of additional lanes on both sides of the existing paved road with a width of 3.35 m., a thickness of 0.28 m. and a length of 1.30 Kms. on one (1) section along Naval-Caibiran Cross Country Road. It includes also construction of drainage and installation of road safety features. Adongay reported that the project is being fast-tracked to finish the project on or before October 8, 2017.

As of August 30, 2017, it has an accomplishment of 58%.
DEPENDS WHICH SIDE YOURE ON

Does that adage "one swallow make a summer" apply to football?

If youre an Aussie rugby fan and have been waiting for a win for yonks, its a resounding yes.

N.Z. fans? Not so much.

Still its great to see theres still a competitition as evidenced in the Bledisloe Cup played on Saturday evening which the Aussies took out.

We wont mention that the All Blacks team was missing star players; that would be like an excuse, right?

Eds Note: So why DID you mention it?

MAKES YOU WANT TO THROW UP

Sometimes sighing audibly, rolling your eyes theatrically and throwing up your hands and saying Oh puleeze! is not enough for the exasperation you feel about those politicians who utter pious comments and cite God as some kind of backup reference.

You know who you are.

These same people obviously put God back in some kind of locked, sound proof box when they were Ministers or C.E.O.s as they gaily went about wasting taxpayers money on office trappings, brokering dodgy deals, ticking off unauthorized decisions  the list goes on.

And then, when allowed to bow out instead of the legal alternative, they cried - big, fat, crocodile tears.

Parents wouldnt put up with that manipulative behaviour from their kids at home but then again, were talking about Parliament.

Friends reassure us that What goes around comes around or Karma will take care of it.

But our question is, When?

CRISIS - ALREADY

While we prattle on about Non Communicable Diseases, thats all we are doing  prattling.

The number of patients weve been told who are using the dialysis machines at the National Kidney Foundation is so unbelievable that we hesitate to put the number in this column  we need to triple check it!

Worse still, we believe the number quoted is just the tip of the iceberg and doesnt include those diabetics who are borderline cases and who will, in the very near future be joining the queues at N.K.F.

We havent got a crisis looming; its already here.
Think a minuteThere were two sick men who shared a room in a hospital. The man whose bed was by the window was allowed to sit up for an hour each day to help drain the fluid from his lungs. But the other man had to spend all of his time lying flat on his back.

These two ill men talked for hours every day. They talked about their wives and children, their jobs, and their many life experiences. Each day when the man by the window sat up in his bed for an hour, he told his roommate all the things he could see outside the window, especially the park with its lovely pond and gardens.

This made the other man so happy that he eagerly looked forward to that one hour every day as he listened to his roommate talk about the people and beauty of the world outside their hospital window.

One night the man by the window died in his sleep. The other man who shared his room was deeply sad. He greatly missed his roommate who had shared with him about the beautiful world outside their window. The other man asked if his bed could be moved to the window where his friend had been, so he himself could see the beauty outside. But when he turned his head to look out the window, he was shocked to see nothing but a dirty blank wall!

When he told the nurse all the things outside their window that his roommate had described to him, the nurse said to him: Your friend who sat by the window was blind. He could not see anything. I think he wanted to make your life happier.

Jesus teaches that we are much more blessed and satisfied when we give to others rather than receive for ourselves. The only way to be truly and fully happy is to make others happy.

The only way to find a life of real meaning and purpose is to give your life away by loving and helping others. This is how our Creator Himself lives. He loves us so much that He became a human being to die for all our wrong living and sins, so He could give us His forgiveness and new, everlasting life.

Wont you ask Jesus to forgive you and start changing you from the inside out? He will give you His power to start loving and living for others the way He does, and designed you to. Just think a minute
Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi has officially congratulated New Zealands new Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern.

On his first day back at work on Monday from a medical evacuation in New Zealand, Tuilaepa, who has been the Prime Minister of Samoa for more than 16 years, wrote to offer his congratulations to the Labour Leader who has taken over the reigns from former P.M, Leuluaialii-o-tumua Bill English.

In a letter dated 23 October 2017, Tuilaepa expressed delight at Arderns victory.

On behalf of the Government and the people of Samoa, I wish to warmly congratulate you on your appointment as the new Prime Minister of New Zealand, Tuilaepa writes.

New Zealand and Samoa have enjoyed warm relations in various areas of mutual interest and I look forward to working with you to further strengthen the ties between our two countries and people.

Tuilaepa also highlighted New Zealands critical role in the Pacific Islands Forum, of which he is the Chairman.

Similarly, I look forward to our close collaboration on issues of importance to our Pacific region and cooperation arrangements among Pacific Forum countries, Tuilaepa added.

Please accept my best wishes for your personal well-being and the success of your government.

In writing to Ardern, Tuilaepa has joined a host of world leaders to offer their congratulations to one of the youngest world leaders at 37.

At the beginning of the week, Ardern took a call from US President Donald Trump offering his congratulations after her electoral victory.

The pair planned to talk further on New Zealand's role in the Asia Pacific region and a commitment to a strong relationship with the United States.

Ardern became New Zealands Prime Minister-elect last week after Vaovasamanaia Winston Peters turned his back on a New Zealand First and National coalition.

Interestingly enough, a leading American newspaper has linked Ardern in a controversial line-up of far right leaders dubbed the offspring of Donald Trump.

In an article examining newly appointed world leaders, U.S.A. Today said the Trump influence is spreading across the globe.

It said countries were being influenced by the unconventional American political leader and at least two countries - the Philippines and the Czech Republic - had elected leaders identical to Trump.

Those critiqued included New Zealand Prime Minister-elect Jacinda Ardern, French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen, Netherlands' far-right leader Geert Wilders, British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson and Bulgarian politician Veselin Mareshki who founded an anti-immigration party.

U.S.A. Today said the global "political offspring of President Trump" all emulated key characteristics including being wealthy, controversial, outspoken and skilled at delivering electoral upsets by appealing to voters' nativist instincts on immigration, Islam, trade, jobs and law and order.

It lumped Ardern with the likes of Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte, who is known for his brutal war on drugs that have led to widespread killings by police.

In assessing Ardern's supposed Trump-like characteristics it cited her strong stance on immigration. It did note her position scrapping tax cuts and championing the welfare state.

The article referred to a tweet last month by the Wall Street Journal dubbing Ardern as "New Zealand's Justin Trudeau [Prime Minister of Canada] - except she's more like Trump on immigration".At the time Ardern said she found it "offensive" to be compared to Trump.

The latest critique comes as Ardern prepares to meet Trump at next week's Apec summit in Vietnam.

Back in New Zealand, Ardern and Vaovasa Peters signed a coalition agreement in Parliament's legislative chamber, before standing side-by-side to take media questions for the first time together.

"Today represents a huge step change in the future of the New Zealand Government. Today we have established the beginnings of a strong, proactive Government," Ardern said.

"We have prioritised regional economic development and job creation for New Zealanders. There has been a period of neglect in the last nine years for our regions.

"New Zealand First has brought enormous advocacy at the negotiating table to make sure we see the beginnings of the reinvestment that is needed.

"You will see a reduction in inequalities... around investing in health, investing in education and significant increases in the minimum wage.

"And, finally, you will see real progress on environmental issues. Particularly water quality and climate change."
An inception workshop for the Green Climate Fund (G.C.F.) and Government of Samoa (G.o.S.) funded project themed: Integrated Flood Management to Enhance Climate Resilience for the Vaisigano River Catchment begins today at Tanoa Tusitala Hotel.

The objective of the two-day workshop is for the project team to present the project overview, G.C.F. requirements for the project; and with Government partners to confirm the logical framework, multiyear work plan, annual work plan and the implementation and procurement plans which will be finalized through detailed technical discussions at the activity level.

The G.C.F. project is for a duration of six years, funded with US$57,717,748 ($146,417,543.89) from the G.C.F. Trust and co-financing from the G.o.S of US$8 million ($20,296,340).

The project will be implemented by the Ministry of Finance (M.o.F.) in close collaboration with the project Government partners (Responsible Agencies) which includes the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (M.N.R.E.), Ministry of Works, Transport and Infrastructure (M.WT.I.), Land Transport Authority (L.T.A.), Ministry of Health (M.o.H.) Samoa Water Authority (S.W.A.) and Electric Power Corporation (E.P.C.) who are responsible for different project components.

The project represents the G.o.Ss initial steps in operationalizing a comprehensive flood management solution.

It has three major outputs: assessments and mechanisms in place for an integrated approach to reduce vulnerability towards flood-related risks,

infrastructure in the Vaisigano River are flood-proofed to increase resilience to negative effects of excessive water and drainage in downstream areas upgraded for increased regulation of water flows.

In conjunction with G.o.S. co-financing leveraged for this project, G.C.F. resources will be used to address a number of key technical issues including infrastructure; capacity and information based barriers to enhancing the effectiveness of flood management systems.

The primary direct beneficiaries include approximately 26,528 people in the Vaisigano river catchment area and 37,000 people indirect beneficiaries.
A NEW PROJECT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE: Samoa Prisons and Corrections Services launched their Art Therapy Programme in partnership with Business Systems Limited last week.

The Art Therapy Programme to help inmates who are artists to improve their skill.

This will not only help them, but it will help their families when they finish serving their time.
While Samoan families are attending church and settling down to their traditional Sunday lunch, there are tourists wandering around looking for a place to brunch.

There are not a lot of cafes open on a Sunday, so when Cass and Irene of New Zealand happened to stumble across B.N.H.Q. in town opened and serving, they were delighted and sat down to check out what was on offer.

Over coffee, the girls told Dear Tourist about their plans.

Originally from Malyasia but living in New Zealand, both Cass and Irene were guided to Samoa by recommendations of close friends and colleagues.

We have friends from New Zealand who have been here before and they told us it was a really nice place to visit, said Cass.

It came highly recommended by them and some of them have been here multiple times already.

Our colleagues told us of their experience in other islands like Fiji and Vanuatu and from there we decided that we didnt want to go somewhere too commercialized and thats why we chose Samoa.

We would like to have a local and authentic type of experience.

Irene added seeing pictures of the beautiful Tosua trench also helped them decide on their destination.

The trench, its really quite amazing. We kind of thought it would be great to come over and have a look for ourselves, she said.

Cass continued, saying she was glad they had chosen to come to Samoa.

Our friends said to us, if you want to go to a Pacific Island and enjoy the nature, definitely go to Samoa, so I think that this is the right choice for us. We wanted to come to a place where there were tours that were more adventurous rather than the honeymoon type tours.

Accepting that Sunday is a day of rest for most Samoans, the girls took the opportunity to mull over their plans for the next couple of days.

We are going to go all around Upolu and visit the trench, the waterfalls, the beaches and then we are going to go to the other island, Savaii in a couple of days and spend maybe three nights there at Stevensons Hotel. Two of our friends recommended this hotel, said Cass.

Even though the girls hadnt been here for very long, they shared their first impression of Samoa which began long before their plan touched down on Samoan soil.

We havent been here long, but our first impression even from just the view from the plane before we landed, I thought it is beautiful, said Irene.

I had the window seat, I knew it was going to be beautiful here but I didnt think from the plane Id see this!

Being of Malay descent, the girls mentioned that while taking in the view of the villages, they felt that they were looking at Malaysia many years ago and it made them feel at home.

It looks and feels like Malyasia from many years ago. The beauty is very similar to the way the Malay people used to live and dress in their sarongs. Also the resources too like the coconuts also with the tropical weather it feels like home in Malaysia where we are originally from.
San Diego Gas & Electric has argued it should be able to charge ratepayers $379 million in costs it incurred following the deadly 2007 wildfires that blazed through parts of San Diego County.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is scheduled to vote on Nov. 9 whether it will buy SDG&Es argument or reject it.

But in the lead-up to the vote, two other investor-owned utilities  Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison  have jumped into the case, supporting SDG&E even though the 2007 wildfires in the San Diego area did not occur in their service territories.

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Whats going on?

For utilities, the SDG&E case highlights a larger question about how to fairly distribute costs and ensure power in backcountry areas in an environment in which wildfire risks grow more deadly each year.

In filings with the CPUC in September, PG&E and Edison each said they wanted to provide input because the outcome of the vote would directly impact them.

But critics of the states utilities see PG&E and Edisons advocacy as a thinly veiled attempt to protect their own interests.

April Maurath Sommer, executive director and lead counsel for the Protect Our Communities Foundation (POC), an environmental group based in San Diego County, said if the CPUC rules in SDG&Es favor, there would no impetus whatsoever for the utilities to put money into safety, maintenance and the other things they can do to prevent these disasters.

Officials at Southern California Edison declined a request for an interview about why it got involved in the SDG&E case, opting instead to issue a statement.

Southern California Edison intervened because wildfires are a statewide issue and all regulated utility providers could be threatened if they must pay costs regardless of fault and denied the ability to socialize those costs, the statement said.

In an email, PG&E spokesman Donald Cutler said the utility felt it was important that the Commission hear perspectives of all the energy companies that operate in California.

Catastrophic wildfires pose real risks to our entire state, Cutler said. They dont recognize or respect the boundaries of one energy company versus another  Wildfires and the method with which they are treated presently have real world and potential long-term impacts on the operations, risk management and financial standing of every energy company in the state.

The utilities filed with the CPUC just weeks before the Wine Country wildfires broke out, killing at least 42 and destroying 8,400 structures, many in PG&Es service territory.

The 2007 wildfires in San Diego County killed two, destroyed more than 1,300 homes and forced more than 10,000 to seek temporary shelter at Qualcomm Stadium.

An investigation one year later by the CPUC determined the Witch and Rice Canyon fires were caused by sparks from downed wires and the Guejito fire was caused when a lashing wire owned by Cox Communications hit an SDG&E power line.

The CPUC blamed poor maintenance for the sparking of all three fires.

SDG&E has apologized but has not admitted negligence regarding its role in the wildfires, saying the conditions leading up to the blazes were beyond the utilitys control.

The utility had $1.1 billion of liability insurance in place in 2007, which SDG&E officials say was the maximum amount they could obtain.

SDG&E ended up paying more than $2 billion in settlements and other costs in the decade since the wildfires, leaving it with about $379 million in outstanding costs.

The utility is asking the CPUC to allow it to pass those costs onto ratepayers, estimating the average customer would pay $1.67 more per month if costs are spread out over a six-year period.

But in August, a pair of administrative law judges recommended commissioners reject SDG&Es request, saying SDG&Es management and control of its facilities leading up to the wildfires was imprudent and unreasonable.

The recommendation from the administrative law judges is just that  a recommendation that the five commissioners at the CPUC can accept, reject or alter.

SDG&E strenuously objected to the proposed decision, saying it was flawed and within days, PG&E and Southern California Edison filed to intervene.

Earlier this month, PG&E and SCE submitted joint comments with the CPUC, saying the administrative law judges ruling commits legal error and arbitrarily and disproportionately shifts the entire risk of any uninsured costs arising from a wildfire to a utility.

San Diego attorney Mike Aguirre addresses members of the California Public Utilities Commission at a meeting Sept. 28 in Chula Vista. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / San Diego Union-Tribune )

San Diego attorney Michael Aguirre, representing a ratepayer advocate challenging SDG&E, said the CPUC should not have allowed PG&E and Edison to intervene in the case and filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday.

SDG&E cannot recover the $379 million from its customers because it acted imprudently when its equipment ignited the fires, according to the (administrative law judges) who decided case, Aguirre said. Allowing PG&E and SCE into the case to join SDG&Es argument is a violation of utility customers due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.

The CPUC last week announced it has launched an investigation into whether PG&Es maintenance and equipment played a role in the Wine Country fires.

In April, the CPUC fined PG&E $8.3 million for failing to maintain a power line that sparked the Butte fire that killed two and destroyed 549 homes in September 2015.

Its quite disturbing that the other utilities are permitted to jump in at the 11th hour and make these arguments that are at best academic and at worst fictional, Maurath Sommer said.

The CPUC originally had scheduled to vote on the SDG&E case last month. But the commission has postponed making a ruling three times  most recently on Tuesday.

The commissioner assigned to the case, Liane Randolph, said in September the commission would allow additional comments from the parties involved. In particular, attorneys from both sides are arguing about a legal notion called inverse condemnation  a California constitutional claim that requires just compensation when property has been taken or damaged for the public use.

The utilities point to greater risks of wildfires in recent years due to drought conditions, vegetation growth, climate change and home construction in wooded areas.

If this commission votes out this (proposed decision) as written, we will have to re-evaluate whether we lower the standards for shutting off the power in our back countries, Lee Schavrien, SDGEs chief regulatory officer, told commissioners last month.

We will have to consider whether we remove trees instead of trimming them, Schavrien said. We will have to consider purchasing insurance that is not economical and have to put forth applications before the commission that would cost billions of dollars.

Frank Wolak, professor of economics and an energy expert at Stanford University, would not hazard a guess how the CPUC will vote Thursday.

The best way I would describe it is, the commission very rarely feels at all constrained by the (administrative law judges) decision, Wolak said. Their view is, look, were the commission, were charged with making this decision.

Wolak said he was not surprised that PG&E and Edison jumped into the case.

Yes, it is true that whatever decision comes down has implications for them so they also have a financial interest but I think they can also provide useful input to the process.

This story has been updated to report the CPUC on Tuesday postponed a vote on the SDG&E request for a third time. The vote is now scheduled for Nov. 9.

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rob.nikolewski@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1251 Twitter: @robnikolewski

Why is it taking so long for CPUC to decide SDG&E wildfire case?

Emotions raw over SDG&E proposal to raise rates after 2007 wildfires

The high cost of preparing for wildfires
A free performance of the Shakespearean comedy Twelfth Night by actors from the Old Globe is coming to Lemon Grove and El Cajon the second week of November.

The Balboa Park-based theater is bringing its mobile show to 17 stops in the county through a partnership with the Lemon Grove Historical Society, the Lemon Grove Academy and the Lemon Grove Library.

Globe for All, the touring arm of the Old Globe, will perform the play at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 8, at the Alvarez Auditorium, 3171 School Lane on the academy campus.

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The show will be preceded at 5:30 pm. by free refreshments in the quad beside the auditorium.

Globe for All is an outreach program that takes Shakespeare into a variety of untraditional venues throughout the county.

Director Jerry Ruizs production will integrate Spanish-language words and phrases into the piece, whose setting of mythical Illyria is transplanted to a Southern California getaway.

The mobile Twelfth Night begins its 17-stop tour Oct. 31, finishing with low-cost public performances on Nov. 19 at the Balboa Park theater.

The theaters description of the show reads,  Twelfth Night reimagines Illyria as a sunny, modern-day Southern California getaway for the rich and fabulous and their entourages. Crashing onto this luxurious scene is Viola, a Mexican immigrant who comes into the U.S. via the Pacific, but who is tragically separated from her twin brother Sebastian in the process.

Determined to start a new life, she disguises herself as a young man and goes to work for Orsinowho is hopelessly in love with the wealthy heiress Oliviaand quickly falls in love with him herself.

As Viola unintentionally gets herself and everyone around her twisted into knots, she addresses the audience in asides and soliloquies in her native tongue, adding a bicultural twist to Shakespeares great romantic comedy about people divided from their true selves, in one form or another.

A free workshop that explains the plays cultural context will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 1, at the Lemon Grove Library, 3001 School Lane. The workshop, led by a Globe Teaching Artist, is called Bard Basics.

There is also a Twelfth Night performance scheduled in El Cajon at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7., at St. Michaels Chaldean Catholic Church, 799 E. Washington Ave.

karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.com
One of Molly Eldredges favorite quotes is by the 18th-century thinker Georg Lichtenberg: In each of us, there is a little of all of us.

In her years of international travel, community service and philanthropy, the La Jolla resident said that the more she sees of the world, the more she realizes how people everywhere have the same aspirations and desire to succeed.

Whether its abandoned boys in India, African refugees in Southeast San Diego or sex-trafficked teens in Tijuana, Eldredge wants to help them all achieve their potential.

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Next month, Eldredge will be honored by Project Concern International (PCI) with its inaugural Anne Otterson Community Connector Award. Named after its longtime benefactress who died last November, the Otterson award will recognize Eldredges advocacy work for the San Diego-based global humanitarian charity.

Molly shares many of the characteristics that Anne demonstrated over many years, said Carrie Hessler-Radelet, PCIs president and CEO. Like Anne, shes been an incredible force multiplier for PCI. Her advocacy has brought our work to the attention of so many others in the community who want to make a difference in the lives of people in San Diego and around the world. Thats why we gave her this award. Shes the consummate networker for good.

Eldredge said shes honored by the award, most importantly because it is named for her longtime friend, who was among the first to introduce her to PCIs programs.

We loved to refer to Anne as the epitome of grace and grit, Eldredge said. She was beautiful and graceful in her work and advocacy, and was the first one to roll her sleeves up and say, there is more work to be done.

Eldredge spends 20 to 30 hours a week volunteering her time for both PCI and the World of Children Award program, the latter of which is run by Rancho Santa Fe philanthropists Harry Leibowitz and Kay Isaacson-Leibowitz. Both charities are dedicated to solving global problems such as poverty, hunger, family health, lack of education, human rights and sex trafficking.

Born in La Mesa and raised in La Jolla, Eldredge said she was taught from an early age to give back. The eldest of five children in a Roman Catholic family, she was active in youth and church outreach programs for the needy and homeless. She was also inspired by the philanthropy of her parents, Betsy and Doug Manchester (who is a former publisher and owner of the San Diego Union-Tribune).

At the University of Colorado, she studied international relations and was active in the campus chapter of Amnesty International. But when she returned home to San Diego after college, other responsibilities got in the way of her desire to work and help overseas.

She owned retail boutiques in La Jolla and San Diego for 15 years, married Ted Eldredge and together they raised three children: Madeleine, now 23, who works for Teach for America; Annie, 21, whos studying anthropology and art history at Santa Clara University; and Ford, 17, whos a junior at The Bishops School in La Jolla.

It was through a program at Bishops that Eldredge was first introduced to PCI in 2010. The college prep school has a global initiative program that sends students to India to volunteer at (and raise money for) PCIs Orphan and Vulnerable Children program. Madeleine took the Bishops trip to India in 2011 and two years later, Annie followed.

Fueled by her daughters stories of life-changing experiences in India, Eldredge signed on as the volunteer president for Bishops global initiative, and in 2014, she joined Otterson on a trip to visit PCIs campuses for homeless children and pregnant women in India.

It was such an incredible experience, she said of the trip. The staff there is so amazing in how they work there every day to build trust with the kids and rescue them and give them tools they need to become independent and thrive.

Eldredge said meeting the young boys who had been paired up with her daughters during their trips was one of the top five special moments of my life but she said that coming home to her comfortable life made her a wreck.

When you return from India it takes a while to reintegrate and try to understand why was I so blessed? she said. Theres something so powerful when you see it with your own eyes. You cant help but be humbled by their hearts and dedication. A lot of people hesitate. They see how big the problem is and they get overwhelmed and wonder what difference they can make. I believe every little bit does create an impact.

Since then, Eldredge has become one of PCIs most-active volunteers. She has chaired PCIs annual gala, given of her time and money and brought in other donors. She has also hosted several forums and fundraisers in her home, including an awareness event on human sex trafficking in the San Diego and Tijuana areas, Hessler-Radelet said.

Molly has a humanity about her that makes people very comfortable with her right away, she said. When she sees people who are struggling at being successful, her heart goes out them.

Eldredge also serves on the board of governors for World of Children, which provides grants to childrens programs around the globe.

World of Children is much smaller than PCI, but the work they do is profound, as well, Eldredge said. Harry and Kay Leibowitz are such beautiful, compassionate people. I have loved the work that World of Children and PCI collaborate on here in San Diego in the areas of human trafficking, as well as helping with the refugee community.

Eldredge likes to take a hands-on approach to global issues. With PCI, she has visited India and Mexico and will go to Guatemala in January. With World of Children, she has visited South America and the Middle East and is planning to visit Nepal and India next spring.

I feel its important to be involved with my time and my treasury and in being able to see the work thats being done in the field, Eldredge said. I can go to these places and be an advocate and report back.

Eldredge said her next goal, which she hopes to achieve in the next few years, is to earn a masters degree in Peace and Justice from the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego. In a way, it completes the circle she started as a teen volunteer and college activist.

I always felt the experiences I had when I was young provided me with such a great opportunity to see things, meet people and interact with different cultures, she said. I had a sense of wanting to unite humanity on all different levels. I wanted to reach out and empower people of all communities.

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
San Pasqual High School is hosting its first health fair to offer health information and screenings to North County families.

The fair will feature 46 exhibitors on topics ranging from preventative health to substance abuse, said Noemi Antonio, the bilingual parent liaison for San Pasqual High School.

The goal of this event is to connect with and serve all the Escondido Union High School District families with resources, also providing a healthy community by providing awareness of services that are there to help them in their daily life, Antonio said.

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The health fair is open to the general public, and anyone can attend, she said. Organizers expect about 500 visitors including Escondido families and those from surrounding areas.

Among the services available are free blood-pressure screenings provided by North County Health Services, dental screenings by Vista Community Clinic and basic vision exams by UC San Diego. Health officials will offer information about health coverage programs and low-cost medical services, helping participants identify assistance they may qualify for, Antonio said.

A health educator from the University of California cooperative extension will talk about physical activity, fitness and nutrition, Antonio said. And Escondido Education Compact will provide information about drug and alcohol prevention for teens, Antonio said.

Theyre going to let parents know about the signs and red flags to look for for drug and alcohol abuse, she said.

Mental Health Systems and Palomar Family Counseling will discuss treatment options for issues including anxiety, depression, stress or anger management, domestic violence, homelessness, parenting and family crisis.

The fair is geared toward the general public, but organizers are reaching out to Latino families, who may have financial or immigration issues that limit their access to healthcare.

We as Latinos wait until the last minute until were completely sick to go to a doctor, rather than getting preventative care, Antonio said.

The fair will also offer crafts for kids, sponsored by Home Depot, and performances by San Pasqual High Schools Ballet Folklorico, and its Marimba music team, she said.

The fair will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 28, at San Pasqual High School at 3300 Bear Valley Pkwy in Escondido.

deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennan
Theres a moment in North Coast Reps arresting Of Mice and Men where George Milton details to his pal Lennie Small the dream of someday tending a ranch of their own.

As George speaks, he illustrates his words by building little structures out of cards pulled from a euchre deck: A smokehouse, a rabbit hutch, a tidy home.

If you know the Steinbeck story, you know this house-of-cards vision of a happy future for the pair is fated to topple.

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But the on-point visual is typical of director Richard Bairds insightful staging, which stays faithful to the 1937 original yet brings the plays vivid immediacy to the fore like a freshly printed photo from an aged negative.

The sense of place and time  Depression-era Central California  seeps into every crease of the production, thanks in large part to Marty Burnetts tremendously inventive set, which transforms from rustic barn doors to a humble old bunkhouse and other interiors.

And the cast, led by Jacob Sidney as George and Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper as Lennie, etches distinct characters and lets the plays aching silences breathe, even if the first act does prove to be a long sit.

The story is about as familiar as any in American literature: George and Lennie are itinerant ranch hands, with little to their names but their grimy clothes (Elisa Benzonis costumes seem steeped in sweat and dust) and willingness to work.

The wiry and wily George serves as protector to the towering, mentally disabled Lennie, and much of the play focuses on the hard-to-articulate but clearly strong connection between the pair.

Thats part of the works larger preoccupation with loneliness and alienation, heightened by the unsettled times and summed up in the words of Slim (an excellent J. Stephen Brantley), the taciturn but good-hearted mule driver: Maybe everybody in the whole wide worlds scared of each other.

Sidney captures every bit of Georges toughness as well as his almost fatherly regard for his longtime traveling companion. And Mongiardo-Cooper is wonderfully alive as Lennie, whose innocent but problematic enthusiasm for caressing soft things  whether fragile animals or the dresses of spooked young women  has made the pairs lives much more complicated.

It all comes to a head at a ranch in Soledad, where the bosss jealous son Curley (Wallace Bruce, in perpetually fuming mode) and Curleys lonely, ingratiating wife (Sierra Jolene, who has an admirable touch for conveying pain beneath the surface flirtiness) lead Lennie down a dark path.

The supporting performances are strong all around: Laurence Brown is a beacon of agonized humanity as the put-upon Crooks, the sole man of color at the place, who is only too aware of his seeming invisibility.

(The play includes numerous uses of the n-word, which is faithful to the time and to Steinbeck but no less difficult to hear.)

John Greenleaf has a heartrending turn as Candy, the aging laborer who keeps a beloved old dog as company; Max Macke is fittingly rough-edged as Carlson, who itches to use his gun on man or animal; Justin Lang brings heart and humor as the rabble-rouser Whit; and Ted Barton makes for a brusque, unforgiving boss.

Matt Novotnys almost sepia-toned lighting flatters Burnetts set, and Aaron Rumleys sound design fills out the places atmosphere skillfully.

Director Baird bookends his show with striking, silhouetted stage pictures of George and Lennie. From start to tragic end, the two are together.

Of Mice and Men

When: 7 p.m. Wednesdays; 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays; 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Through Nov. 12.

Where: North Coast Repertory Theatre, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach

Tickets: $45-$56 (discounts available)

Phone: (858) 481-1055

Online: northcoastrep.org

jim.hebert@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @jimhebert
When the U.S national anthem echoed across the wooden deck of the French warship Bougainville on Monday, Gerhard R. Lorenz lurched to attention.

Which was difficult. And painful. Because Lorenz lost his leg 72 years ago in combat, shortly after the U.S. staff sergeant and his fellow Thunderbirds in the 45th Infantry Division helped to liberate France.

During a special afternoon ceremony aboard the vessel at Naval Base San Diegos Pier 4, Lorenz and four other veterans received Frances Legion of Honor Medal for their heroism in World War II.

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I never thought Id get an award, said Lorenz, 92, the ruby red ribbon and shimmering white and blue Maltese Cross spangling his chest. It was a wonderful gesture.

Established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, the Legion dhonneur medal is the highest French decoration. Its awarded to about 400 non-French recipients annually  most of them aging allied veterans of World War II who fought to free France from German occupation.

Christophe Lemoine, the Los Angeles-based consul general of France, pinned the awards on Lorenz, retired U.S. Air Force Col. Douglas C. Willett, retired U.S. Navy Capt. Robert A. Sulit, former U.S. Army Technician 5th Grade John J. Roach and 2nd Lt. Helen L. (Lange) Cronk, an Army nurse who landed on Omaha Beach after the D-Day landings to care for the wounded.

San Juan Capistranos Cronk became the first female World War II Legion of Honor recipient from Southern California.

Facing the five veterans, Lemoine said that the French people would never forget that they fought to restore their freedom.

Youre examples of the Greatest Generation, who faced the despair and deprivation of the Great Depression and still went on to fight for liberty and freedom during the Second World War, he said. And then you rebuilt Europe. You rebuilt Japan.

You invented a freer and more democratic world after the war. And through this you remind us that no matter how great the challenge, it can be met when honest men and women stand up with determination and courage. Youre an inspiration to us all and to the younger generations.

Although all of Mondays honorees live in Southern California, there was a strong Michigan flavor to the festivities. Cronk and Roach, a former Hughes Aircraft draft artist, were born there and Lorenz grew up on a Michigan farm after immigrating to America with his German parents in 1929.

Once I was four years old, over in our country, this was our country, said Lorenz, a retired engineer who worked for both Ford and General Motors. I didnt think of the Germans anymore.

During World War II, Col. Willett served as a B-17 Flying Fortress navigator in the 410th Bombardment Squadron of the 94th Bomb Group. He later flew support missions for the Nuremberg War Crimes trials and returned to active duty for the Korean War in 1950.

Capt. Sulit retired as a Navy officer but he fought as machine gunner on an Army halftrack in the 69th Armored Infantry Battalion in the 16th Armored Division after duty clearing mines in the area of the French port of Le Havre.

A forward observer with the 870th Field Artillery Battalion of the 66th Infantry Division  the Black Panthers  Roach was introduced to the horrors of the war before he even reached France.

Rushed across the English Channel on Christmas Eve of 1944 to confront the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge, Roach witnessed the U-boat torpedoing of the troop carrier Leopoldville carrying combat replacements in his sister units, the 262nd and 264th Infantry Regiments, off the French coast.

Although details of the tragedy remained classified for two decades, the Americans believed that 763 soldiers drowned or later succumbed to hypothermia and other injuries.

We were heading for the Battle of the Bulge and our entire infantry regiment was destroyed, said Roach, 93. So we had to take over for the French. We fired for the French.

To Lt. Alexis Gollnisch, the commander of the Tahiti-based Bougainville, the symbolism of Mondays ceremony was a testament to Franco-American friendship, punctuated by courage and loyalty, that spanned more than two centuries and continues in Afghanistan.

A Batiment multi-mission vessel, the warship bears the name of the Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville, a French admiral and explorer who fought in the decisive 1781 Battle of the Chesapeake.

His warships held off the British fleet during the siege of Yorktown, effectively securing the American colonies victory over London.

In France, we do not forget that the Americans were always by our side during World War I and World War II, when many young Americans lost their lives for freedom and peace, said Gollnisch.

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cprine@sduniontribune.com
A suspect was in custody on Monday following a shooting early Sunday morning that claimed the life of a 19-year-old woman and wounded eight others inside a bar near the U.S. border, Baja California authorities said.

The incident occurred shortly after 3:30 a.m. at the El Torito Bar on Avenida Revolucion between Second and Third streets.

A witness told investigators that there was no notable disturbance leading up to the moment when the sound of gunfire broke out. Afterward, people began to scream, everybody began to drop to the ground, said Miguel Angel Guerrero, coordinator of special investigations for the Baja California Attorneys Office.

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The initial report from Tijuana Municipal Police said that five gunshots alerted officers to the incident. Approaching the bar, they saw a man in black pants and a gray sweatshirt in the process of fleeing, and caught him shortly afterward in a nearby parking lot. Authorities said that the man had dropped a pistol into a flowerpot as he fled; it was described as a 9 mm handgun of the Desert Eagle brand.

Authorities have named the suspect as Reynaldo N and described him as a man in his mid-30s who is linked to the street drug trade and known to frequent Tijuanas Zona Norte.

The suspect has denied any relation to the incident, and has refused to answer further questions from investigators, Guerrero said. The motive has remained unclear, Guerrero said, adding that authorities were in the process of sifting through the evidence and determining charges in the case.

Little was known about the victims. Those wounded were four females and four males. There is one girl who is in very grave condition, while the other seven appear stable, Guerrero said.

The establishment has surveillance cameras, but they were not operating, Guerrero said.

Tijuana law enforcement authorities have been grappling with an unprecedented number of homicides this year, and attribute much of the violence to disputes among street drug dealers. This year, the city has registered more than 1,400 homicides, with 127 this month.

sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com

@sandradibble
Ref Rodriguezs closest allies on the Los Angeles school board on Tuesday called on him to step aside until he resolves his criminal case and other legal problems.

Rodriguez flatly refused, in a statement he posted on social media.

The three board members made their request on a day that Rodriguez appeared in court, pleading not guilty to felony and misdemeanor charges for alleged campaign money laundering.

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Their joint statement was a stunning development, given what was at stake. They and Rodriguez now essentially control the board with a 4-3 majority. All the members of the bloc were elected with substantial financial support from charter-school supporters. The loss of the majority could stall the goals of those charter advocates.

But Rodriguezs continued presence on the board  while he faces criminal charges  comes with its own set of perils, particularly when it comes to the blocs reputation.

Rodriguez indicated from the start that he planned to remain on the board as his criminal case moves forward. Before Tuesday, board members had publicly maintained a wait-and-see attitude regarding the criminal case and separate questions about conflicts of interest.

They issued their statement at about 1 p.m. Tuesday, just as board members gathered for a study session.

Nobody should be tried in the press or the court of public opinion without having a fair hearing, board members Monica Garcia, Nick Melvoin and Kelly Gonez said of the allegations that Rodriguez illegally reimbursed 25 donors to his 2015 campaign. But in order to keep making progress towards our goal of 100% graduation, we have asked Dr. Rodriguez to take a leave of absence from the Board.

Rodriguez did not speak to reporters during his court appearance. At a later school board meeting, he seemed composed and engaged.

He made his statement about two hours after his colleagues made theirs, while the board session was still in progress.

Earlier today, three members of the LAUSD Board requested that I take a leave of absence. I am not doing so, he wrote. I have dedicated my life to provide better educational opportunities to all students in our communities. I have worked with parents, community members, and students to tear down barriers to success, and together, we have proven that grassroots policy making is alive and well.

Rodriguez knew what his colleagues were planning, said Melvoins chief of staff, Sarah Angel.

Around midday Monday, Garcia and Melvoin visited Rodriguez in his office at district headquarters, and pleaded with him to take a leave, Angel said. They also told him they were prepared to go public with the request.

In light of our ask, I disagree with his decision, Melvoin said in a statement Tuesday afternoon, but of course will continue my focus on moving the district forward and putting kids first.

The trio, in a way, ended up with a double win. The board members were able to take a strong public stand for clean government, while still seeing their four-vote majority preserved.

The public dispute puts L.A. Unified in uncharted territory. District officials searching through records dating to 1935 could find no previous instance of a board member who has taken a leave.

Senior district administrators were scrambling to determine how they would proceed in such a scenario. The districts general counsel, David Holmquist, said the board has no authority to compel Rodriguez to step aside.

This is a gentler rebuke than asking him to resign, Charles Kerchner, professor emeritus at Claremont Graduate University, said of the board members statement. But a leave of absence  thats weird. I dont know how a leave of absence from a public body works. It seems youre a sitting member of a body like that or youre not.

In the money-laundering case, Rodriguez, 46, is charged with three felony and 25 misdemeanor counts. If convicted, he faces up to four years and four months in jail.

Prosecutors accuse him of giving $24,250 to his own campaign while illegally representing that the donations had been made by more than two dozen friends and family members, including 13 who worked for his charter school organization.

The donations were made in their names, and prosecutors say he used his own money to pay them back. He faces felony charges of conspiracy, perjury, and procuring and offering a false or forged instrument, as well as the misdemeanor counts  one for each of the 25 donors he is accused of illegally reimbursing.

The charges grew out of an investigation by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.

Also appearing Tuesday morning in the downtown Los Angeles criminal courthouse was Rodriguezs cousin Elizabeth Tinajero Melendrez, 45, who is charged with assisting Rodriguez and also pleaded not guilty.

Rodriguezs morning court appearance conflicted with the start of a 10 a.m. school board meeting in closed session, which included a briefing from the school systems inspector general.

That briefing was probably to cover a problem for Rodriguez that emerged last week. The charter school network that he co-founded alleged that Rodriguez had a possible conflict of interest when he authorized $285,000 in payments in 2014, the year before he joined the Board of Education.

Most of that money went from the charter group Partnerships to Uplift Communities, or PUC Schools, to a nonprofit that Rodriguez ran. The nonprofit, Partners to Develop Futures, had been set up to develop minority-led charter schools and train minority educators for leadership roles.

An attorney representing PUC Schools said he has so far found little or no evidence that the charter network received a benefit for these payments.

PUC alerted the L.A. Unified School District, which has oversight responsibilities for charter schools, and filed a conflict-of-interest complaint with the states Fair Political Practices Commission.

The FPPC said it will not consider opening an investigation until the criminal case is resolved.

In another development, which would normally be major news in the nations second-largest school system, Supt. Michelle King announced in an email Tuesday that her medical leave would be extended through years end. Her last day in the office was Sept. 15. She had previously projected a return by Nov 1. Neither she nor the district has released details about her medical issues.

howard.blume@latimes.com

Twitter: @howardblume

sonali.kohli@latimes.com

Twitter: @Sonali_Kohli

UPDATES:

7:30 p.m.: This article was updated throughout for context.

4 p.m.: This article was updated with Rodriguez saying he will stay put on the board.

2:15 p.m.: This article was updated with board members urging Rodriguez to take a leave of absence.

11:45 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from Nixon and Ser.

10:35 a.m.: This article was updated with a photo from the arraignment and entering of pleas.

10:05 a.m.: This article was updated with details on Melendrezs plea.

This article was originally published at 9:40 a.m.
Some community college districts are facing an unexpected but not unwelcome problem following the passage of a state bill that partly duplicates their own efforts to provide free education.

Assembly Bill 19 was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown earlier this month and covers the fees for California community college first-year students beginning Jan. 1.

College districts throughout the state already have been raising money for their own programs to fund the first year of school for students.

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Now, districts must decide what to do with their money and what to tell their donors.

Theres going to be confusion among students and donors, said Jack Beresford, director of communications for the San Diego Community College District. Theres a lot of people writing checks for these programs, and their question is, what happens now?

About 700 students are in the districts San Diego Promise program. Palomar Colleges Palomar Promise program is even larger and has benefited 800 students.

While the situation may be awkward, there are worse problems to have.

Beresford and Laura Gropen, communications director at Palomar College, said the Promise programs at their schools could continue and be expanded to work conjunctively with AB 19.

We dont have all the particulars, and I think theres going to be a lot of conversations in the chancellors office and and SDICCCA (San Diego and Imperial Counties Community College Association) about how AB 19 is going to impact current Promises, Gropen said. SDICCCA represents six community college districts.

President Barack Obama called for two years of free community college in 2015 as a proposed Americas College Promise, but did not identify any federal funds for the idea. Instead, states were asked to come up with their own funding plans.

San Diego Community College launched its pilot version in 2016 with 201 students, including 175 from local high schools and 25 from San Diego Continuing Education, the districts adult education division.

MiraCosta Colleges Promise program began this year and provides funding toward textbooks and instructional supplies for students who also qualify for the state Community College Board of Governors fee waiver.

About 60 percent of community college students in the state already do not pay fees, largely through the Board of Governors fee waiver for low-income students.

Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College Districts Higher Edge Promise Scholarship has plans to offer a free year of classes at either of its two colleges to local high school students beginning with the class of 2019.

At Southwestern Community College, public information officer Lillian Leopold said the new Southwestern Cares local scholarships will award $1,200 each to 30 students this year.

In a twist from other Promise programs, the scholarships are open to anyone who has graduated from Sweetwater Union High School District, including people already in the workforce who want to return to school.

The scholarships are not intended to pay for fees, she said, because 70 percent of Southwestern students already qualify for state fee waivers.

Instead, the money will help pay for books, transportation and other living expenses. Leopold said studies have shown that an extra $1,000 can help a student stay in community college.

At Palomar College, Gropen said the school also may look at using its Promise funds for things other than fees now that AB 19 has been signed. Many Palomar students also qualify for the state fee waiver, she said.

Gropen said its unclear how many students will take advantage of AB 19.

While the Palomar Promise is open to incoming high school students, AB 19 states it is for first-time college students, which might include adults who graduated some time ago.

In any case, the new bill creates an opportunity to expand the Palomar Promise, which already provides students with up to $1,000 for textbooks, she said.

The Palomar Promise has raised $1.5 million, with $1 million coming from Follett Bookstores. With the additional help from the state, Gropen said the Palomar program might be expanded to fund a second year of student fees.

Beresford said San Diego Community College District also may use its Promise money to fund a second year of school or pay other student expenses.

The district has raised $300,000 for its program so far, and has a goal of raising $700,000 this year, he said.

San Diego District Chancellor Constance Carroll already has sent a letter to donors about how AB 19 complements the work that San Diego Promise is doing.

I wouldnt call it a concern as much as a communications challenge, Beresford said about letting donors that there still is a need to support San Diego Promise.

We want our donors to realize all of our students are coming back for a second year, he said about the potential of funding two years of fees. This is not about one and done. We want students to complete an academic program.

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Twitter: @GaryWarthUT

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Students at more than 80 San Diego Unified schools will have another short day Wednesday for the third time this week because of the ongoing heat wave.

Under its policy, the district may call for a half day at schools where less than 80 percent of classrooms are air conditioned on days when the temperature is expected to be 95 degrees or higher. The district plans to have air conditioning at all schools by the summer of 2019.

The district announced that 83 schools would have half-days on Wednesday. The complete list can be found at the districts website. Guidelines for the districts hot-weather policies also are available online.

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Three fewer schools will have shorter days Wednesday than on Tuesday: New Dawn at Riley School, Riley School and Sunset View Elementary.

San Diego Unified also called for minimum days at some schools during an August heat wave.

Coronado Unified School District also called heat days for Monday and Tuesday.

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UC San Diego has been ranked 16th best university in the world by U.S. News and World Report, slightly behind Yale University and beating out such schools as Duke and Cornell universities.

The publication released its national rankings for 2018 Tuesday, and placed Harvard University on top, followed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, UC Berkeley and the University of Oxford.

Last year, UC San Diego was ranked 15th on the list of top schools worldwide for 2017. It ranked 19th in 2016 and 18th in 2015.

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UC San Diego is proud to receive this recognition and to have the academic achievements of our faculty and students commended by U.S News and World Report, said Chancellor Pradeep Khosla. As a top-ranked public research university, UC San Diego advances the frontiers of knowledge to find innovative, non-conventional solutions to global challenges and make the world a better place.

In its national rankings released in September, U.S. News and World Report named UC San Diego 9th best public school and 42nd best among all universities.

In the newly released ranking, which uses a different methodology, UC San Diego was 5th among public schools in the United States.

U.S. News and World Report has ranked U.S.universities since 1983, and this is the fourth year it has released a global ranking.

The global ranking includes the top 1,250 institutions in 74 countries, up from the top 1,000 in 65 countries ranked last year.

The U.S. led the ranking with 221 universities making the overall list, followed by China with 136 schools.

Japan had 76 institutions on the list, the United Kingdom had 73 and Germany had 58.

To create the international ranking, the publication included schools ranked by through a Clarivate Analytics global reputation survey, the number of papers and books published, the number of conferences held and the impact on its research.

The complete list of universities included in this years ranking can be found at https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities.

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Health officials in San Diego County said Monday they wont be looking for hepatitis A in the San Diego River and that such an effort wouldnt be a wise use of resources.

The response comes after City Councilman David Alvarez sent out letters to regional water-quality researchers and Mayor Kevin Faulconer calling for testing in the watershed  which officials have recently identified as significantly polluted with human feces.

The county has been experiencing the largest hepatitis A outbreak of its kind since a vaccine for the contagious virus was introduced in the late 1990s, according to officials.

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So far, the outbreak has killed 19 and sickened at least 507  primarily homeless people and illicit drug users, a population that routinely takes shelter in the regions network of riverbeds.

As opposed to many outbreaks of hepatitis A that are spread through contaminated food, San Diegos contagion has been spread from one individual to another through contact with human fecal matter, officials said.

The county has repeatedly said theres almost no chance that the river has been a continuous source of infection in the outbreak, which has been traced back to at least November.

The epidemiological data of San Diegos hepatitis A outbreak indicates that this outbreak is being spread by person-to-person transmission and that water bodies, such as rivers, have not been a source in the initial infection or continued transmission, the county said in a statement. Therefore, water sampling efforts would not provide any additional information for addressing the continued transmission of hepatitis A or combating this outbreak.

To confirm its decision, the county recently reached out to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for guidance.

The federal agency responded last week in a letter that stated: There is no evidence that either water or environmental sampling provides additional information for addressing person-to-person (hepatitis A virus) transmission. Thus, investing in these activities could unnecessarily divert resources that are needed to contain the outbreak in proven and effective ways 

Paz Gomez, deputy chief operating officer of infrastructure and public works for the city of San Diego, echoed those statements in a letter responding to to Alvarezs request.

The CDC did not respond to multiple requests for interviews for this story.

County health officials said they currently dont have a way to test for hepatitis A in rivers and creeks, and that the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project would need to help local officials develop a method, as well as standards for interpreting the results.

The San Diego River watershed saw contamination from human feces dramatically increase last winter over the previous year, according to testing by health officials.

County officials also believe that ongoing contamination is coming from some combination of leaky sewer pipes, homeless encampments and broken septic tanks. Results from an investigation are expected as early as summer 2018.

Last winters spike in human waste could partly be the result of a massive 900,000-gallon spill of raw sewage that went undetected between Feb. 28 and March 17 into El Cajons Los Coches Creek, a tributary of the San Diego River.

That kind of contamination would make contact with the water dangerous, said Sunny Jiang, professor and chair of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Irvine.

Jiang  the co-author of a 2004 study that found hepatitis A in at least one location on the San Diego River  said sewage spills significantly increase the risks posed by hepatitis and other deadly, stomach-churning bugs, such as norovirus.

I hope actions are taken towards warning residents of the spill and avoiding contact with the rivers and creek water, and even the beach water where San Diego River empty into, Jiang wrote in an email on Monday.

Richard Gersberg, who heads San Diego State Universitys division of environmental health, said someone could catch hepatitis by ingesting as few as 10 particles of the virus.

Gersberg said millions of those particles could live on a single gram of feces, perhaps even on some of the human waste running through the pipes when raw sewage was dumped into Los Coches Creek earlier this year.

But Gersberg said its hard to tell what role, if any, the spill played in the ongoing outbreak.

My hunch is that the spill is not responsible, he said, but its not impossible that it contributed.

County health officials have said they still dont know where or how the outbreak started exactly.

The first person suspected to be infected in the outbreak was a homeless man treated at a La Mesa hospital in November and believed to have been living in El Cajon. He was released long before the hepatitis outbreak was determined in March and officials have been unable to track him down because the health care provider had little information on the individual, according to the county.

The two main areas where cases have been identified are downtown San Diego and El Cajon.

The strain of the virus, 1B, generally circulates in the Middle East and North Africa.

Los Angeles, Santa Cruz and Phoenix are also grappling with similar eruptions of the virus.

Twitter: @jemersmith

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Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com
Though she added nine more cases to the total Tuesday, the regions top public health official said there are continuing signs that San Diegos hepatitis A outbreak is slowing down.

Dr. Wilma Wooten, the countys public health officer, reported to the county Board of Supervisors that the total number of outbreak cases has increased to 516 from a previous total of 507 one week ago.

All of the cases added to the total came from a pool of previously-identified patients whose blood tests have been awaiting confirmation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for weeks, Wooten said.

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From Oct. 8 though Oct. 19, no new hepatitis A cases were reported to her department for investigation, she said.

But Wooten cautioned that there remain 40 additional cases awaiting CDC confirmation, and they will be added to outbreak totals. But all of them track back to before Oct. 8.

County releases information on hep A deaths

Does this mean the San Diego region is approaching the end of the biggest hepatitis outbreak the nation has seen in more than 20 years?

Not quite, Wooten said.

Its always hopeful, but we know that hepatitis A has up to a 50-day incubation period, so we can expect that there could still be more new cases coming, Wooten said. If we go two incubation periods without any new cases, then we can declare the outbreak over. Thats the CDC standard that we will follow.

She added that currently there are no new deaths under investigation.

On Tuesday the county provided a list of specific death dates for the 19 people who died in the outbreak so far. The list shows that the last death occurred on Oct. 6, and there were only two deaths in September. July was the most fatal, with six people reported to have been killed by the viral liver infection. Five more died in August.

Overall, the percentage of deaths to cases in the outbreak has been nearly 4 percent. According to official documents from the CDC, the expected hepatitis A death rate is from 0.3 percent to 0.6 percent for all ages and up to 1.8 percent for adults age 50 and older.

Wooten said that the San Diego outbreak has been significantly more deadly than guidelines would suggest because the CDCs fatality rates are calculated for the general population. San Diegos current outbreak is, for the most part, centered in the regions homeless and drug-using populations which she said have a higher-than-average incidence of the kinds of liver problems known to make death from hepatitis A infection more likely.

Almost 5 percent of our cases have hepatitis B and almost 20 percent have hepatitis C, Wooten said. These are underlying factors where, if you get hepatitis A, you have an increased risk of complications and death.

About 26 percent of those sickened in the current outbreak are neither homeless nor illicit drug users, and the county has said that many of these share some link to those who are in high-risk groups. On Tuesday Wooten said that half of the 138 people who fit into this category were somehow connected to a drug user or homeless person or lived in a place where they shared facilities, such as a bathroom or kitchen, with people who are risk.

The other half  69 people  do not have any link to an at-risk group. According to the countys latest death list, two of the 19 people who died were neither homeless nor drug users but it was unclear whether either of those people had been linked to at-risk groups.

County supervisors were openly critical Tuesday of news coverage, including some in the Union-Tribune, which highlighted questions about the role that the San Diego River may or may not have played in the outbreak.

Recent water quality reports detected a significant increase in the amount of fecal matter detected in the river, and a county memo indicated that several cases, and one death, were among homeless people who were living in the river valley. Under advice from the CDC the county has not tested river water to determine if the specific and unique strains of hepatitis A causing the outbreak are present.

The hepatitis A virus spreads when a person swallows even a tiny amount of infected human fecal matter. This is most likely when people share close contact, including food, drink and drugs, when an infected person does not wash their hands after using the bathroom.

The CDC does not recommend river water testing because there has not been a documented waterborne outbreak of hepatitis A infections in well over 30 years. The federal agency said testing could unnecessarily divert resources that are needed to contain the outbreak in proven and effective ways.

Wooten said Tuesday that she sees no reason for testing not just because the CDC does not recommend it, but also because interviews with hundreds of people who have become infected during the outbreak have not mentioned situations that they have have swallowed river water.

Remember, for hepatitis A, you would have to consume the water intentionally or inadvertently in order to become infected, Wooten said. In case interviews that has not come up as a factor.

As to the fact that some cases have popped up among those who have lived near the river, Wooten said they represent only about 10 percent of the overall caseload in the outbreak so far.

Staff writer Morgan Cook contributed to this report.

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Several thousand people will braid Challah bread in five locations around San Diego County on Thursday as part of an international movement to celebrate a traditional Jewish day of rest.

The event, hosted by Shabbat San Diego, calls on Jewish San Diegans, whether orthodox, reform or secular, to observe a Shabbat, or Jewish Sabbath, as a sign of unity with Jews around the world. During a traditional Shabbat, observers refrain from from all work, including driving and using electronic devices.

Youre abstaining from plugging into anything else, anything thats distracting, and youre plugging into what the meaning of Shabbat is, said Robyn Lichter, co-founder of Shabbat San Diego. I think its just such a powerful force that youre feeling happening for so many people in every nook and cranny around the world, and theyre all identifying with the same Jewish connection.

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Shabbat San Diego encourages people to participate, even if theyre not ready to unplug the entire day, Lichter said. The point is for the person to do more than he or she normally would.

The celebration started in South Africa in 2013 and has spread to 95 countries. Lichter and co-founder Selwyn Isakow both immigrated from South Africa to the U.S. years ago.

Thousands gathered to make the traditional Jewish challah bread before the largest Shabbat unity gathering in San Diego history.

This is San Diegos fourth year participating. Last year, organizers estimated that 12,000 people participated over the course of the weekend. This year, they are hoping for 20,000, Lichter said. To make the event accessible for more people, organizers added Challah Bakes in Oceanside and Bonita.

Lichter said the Bonita event will include participants from Tijuana, and Challah-making kits will be distributed to those who cant cross the border to attend.

As in previous years, the largest Challah event will be at the San Diego Jewish Academy. A chef from Mexico City will teach an estimated 2,000 people how to make the braided bread.

Challah bread is more than food to satiate hunger, Lichter said. The seven traditional ingredients  sugar, oil, yeast, flour, water, eggs and salt  are symbolic, and the process is full of meaning.

Theres a physical kneading as youre doing the bread, and then theres a soulful part, Lichter said. Theres a mindful part about it.

The Shabbat goes from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday and includes prayer services and hosted dinners in individual homes and at organizations across San Diego.

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A 17-year-old boy died a day after he and two others were stabbed near the San Luis Rey River east of the Oceanside Harbor, and police have released a composite sketch of a man they are calling a person of interest in the case.

Witnesses told police the person depicted in the sketch had accompanied the man who stabbed the trio, said police spokesman Tom Bussey.

The attack on the two 17-year-old boys and 18-year-old man was reported about 1:20 a.m. Saturday along San Luis Rey Drive near Monterey Drive, police said. Police did not offer a possible motive.

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The teen suffering the most serious wounds was pronounced dead at 1:15 a.m. Sunday by doctors, Bussey said. His name has not been released. The boys companions were treated at a hospital for minor injuries.

The suspect was described as white, about 5 foot 11inches tall, 160- pounds, in his mid 20s, with dark, curly blond hair. He was last seen wearing a gray T-shirt and brown cargo shorts.

Anyone with information helpful in the homicide investigation was asked to contact Detective Erik Ellgard at (760) 435-4748 or the departments anonymous tip line at (760) 435-4730.

Staff writer Karen Kucher contributed to this report.

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On one point proponents and opponents of physician-assisted suicide can agree: A public health crisis surrounds the way we die. Our modern technological prowess in fighting disease has inadvertently made dying hazardous.

It occurs despite the best intentions of professionals, relatives and friends. We matter to one another and dont want to lose the people we love. Yet the unintended consequences are undeniable. Patterns of excessive, ultimately futile, disease treatments and inattention to patients personal needs and priorities are commonplace. Many Californians today receive state-of-the-art treatments for their cancers or heart, lung or liver diseases, but go on to receive astonishingly bad care during the waning months, weeks and days of their lives.

Lets be clear: This is one crisis we can solve. Taking much better care of dying people is possible and actually saves money. The highest quality centers tend to have the lowest costs because doctors there help people weigh complex treatment options, thereby avoiding unneeded and unwanted treatments and hospitalizations. Clinical teams there focus on coordinating home and community services, preventing emergencies and supporting patients caregiving spouses, sons and daughters, enabling people to stay at home whenever possible. These meticulous attributes of care are too often ignored, causing needless suffering and wasting money. Regulations and payment reform could go a long way to making the right care routine.

Doctors do not deserve blame, but they are undeniably part of the current predicament. Medical schools and residency programs are culpable for continuing to under-train and graduate well-meaning physicians who are ill-prepared to effectively treat patients pains or counsel people who are facing the end of life.

Instead of correcting these deficiencies, SB 128 would simply give doctors authority to write lethal prescriptions. And this is good government?

Many people seem surprised that a palliative care physician would oppose physician-assisted suicide. You must be a conservative Republican or You must be Catholic, they say. I am neither. Im a liberal Jew (although my observances lead me to delis more often than synagogues). This is not about religious morality. Its basic civics. We dont allow bankers to steal from depositors or prosecutors to lie to judges and juries. We dont allow doctors to kill patients.

Professional boundaries are the I-beams of civil society; undermine them and scary things happen. In an era in which providers of health care  doctors and hospitals  share financial risk with payers of health care, vigilance is warranted. Lethal prescriptions will always be less expensive than comprehensive whole person care and family support.

Proponents of SB 128 contend that Oregon-style safeguards would prevent abuses and keep insurers from offering suicide as an alternative to costly treatments. Then how does one explain the Oregon Health Plans initial refusal in 2008 to pay for expensive treatments for Barbara Wagners lung cancer or Randy Stroups prostate cancer, while informing each of their right to prescription drugs to end their lives. The state cant cover everything for everyone, an Oregon administrator explained. An honest response, but the optics were bad so the agency later reversed the decisions.

Under provisions of SB 128, anyone who is terminally ill and desires a hastened death would be eligible. But in order to receive hospice services, the person would also still have to give up medical treatments intended to help them live better or longer. When did a right to die take the place of human caring?

To glimpse the future, we need only look to Holland, Belgium and Switzerland where assisted suicide and euthanasia have long been practiced. There, despite universal health care, it is no longer uncommon for doctors to euthanize people who request to die due to non-terminal pain, depression, early dementia or loss of desire to live. In the United States, the Final Exit Network, one of the national groups promoting assisted suicide legislation, advocates for a right-to-die for people with non-terminal and nonphysical suffering. Asked about assisting people with dementia to end their lives, the president of Compassion and Choices said, It is an issue for another day, but is no less compelling,

Legislators can take boldly brighter actions. Bills could impose real curriculum reform on Californias medical and nursing programs, ensuring that they teach and test for basic palliative care skills before awarding degrees and licenses. The state could report staffing levels and quality ratings for hospitals, nursing homes, home care and hospice programs so that people could make informed consumer choices.

Instead of offering a lethal solution to this social crisis, we could make it safe for seriously ill people to live fully and die well.
The top four Democratic candidates vying to replace termed-out Gov. Jerry Brown in the 2018 election shared the stage Sunday for their first major joint forum, an Anaheim event hosted by the National Union of Healthcare Workers. Treasurer John Chiang, former Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa mostly focused on health care and labor issues, with both journalists and union members asking detailed questions. But the forum also focused on issues of broad interest, starting with the growing push for Senate Bill 562  which would commit the state to adopting a single-payer health-care system.

While each of the candidates endorsed the concept of health care for all, Villaraigosa deserves credit for demanding details  and acknowledging that SB 562s estimated $400 billion annual tab would require tough choices. Sure, some existing spending could be used, but paying for it would require massive tax increases or service cuts or both.

Chiang, Eastin and Newsom said California needs bold leaders. It also needs leaders who understand what theyre getting into  and who can say why California wont suffer the fate of Vermont, which gave up on single-payer health care because of the heavy cost and obstacles posed by federal law.

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On two other huge issues  education and the housing crisis  all of the candidates fell flat.

Newsom and Villaraigosa were smart to emphasize the importance of training and educating our kids for the jobs of our future, in Villaraigosas words. But all the candidates need a point A to point Z blueprint on how they would reshape schools for the needs of the modern economy  especially Newsom, who on Saturday secured the endorsement of the change-resistant California Teacher Association. Villaraigosa, in contrast, has said unions have too much influence over schools, to the detriment of students. Eastin depicted any problems with education as being able to be solved by adding more money  a retro view at odds with history. Chiang didnt say much on the topic.

When it came to housing, the candidates were particularly humdrum. Eastin said better education would raise incomes and help housing affordability, but that wont help current graduates. Villaraigosa spoke of leveraging a housing bond to streamline local government approval processes, a milquetoast proposal. Chiang touted his efforts to promote housing tax credits, another marginal solution. But it was Newsom who raised red flags. After citing the states need to add millions of housing units, he said that when it came to housing regulations, localism is determinative  suggesting Sacramento shouldnt take on local NIMBYs. He also backed renter protection, even though he has to know rent control increases overall housing costs.

California voters should hope and expect the four Democrats and the missing Republicans  Assemblyman Travis Allen of Huntington Beach and Rancho Santa Fe businessman John Cox  will sharpen their plans and talking points in coming forums. Tax reform, immigration, energy, climate change, water, transportation, public pensions and the bullet train project all deserve debate  for starters.

Related: California governors race: lines drawn on housing, education

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President Donald Trump and Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker escalated a public feud Tuesday when the senator told CNN that the president debases our country and has great difficulty with the truth, after the president sent a series of tweets in which he called Corker was lightweight, incompetent and liddle.

Corkers remarks came in a morning interview on CNN ahead ahead a meeting between the president and GOP senators to discuss tax overhaul legislation  a meeting that was set to include a number of senators Trump has personally attacked in the past, including Corker, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Sen. Jeff Flake , R-Arizona, The Hill reported.

In an impromptu interview with CNN correspondent Manu Raju, Corker offered his harshest criticism yet of Trump. When asked whether he regrets supporting Trump in 2016, Corker said, I would not do it again.

"I don't know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and debases our country in the way that he does. But he does, Corker said. When asked whether the president is a liar, Corker said he was taught in his familiy not to use the l-word but that The president has great difficulty with the truth.

Trump started Tuesday with a series of five consecutive tweets over a two-hour span in which he criticized Corker as someone who couldnt get elected dog catcher in Tennessee. Corker has been a U.S. senator since 2007. He recently announced he would not seek re-election.

The spat comes after the two traded barbs on Twitter 16 days ago in the latest back-and-forth in a war of words that dates back to 2016 when Corker hesitated to endorse Trump during the presidential election last year.

Corker is not the only GOP senator (or Democratic senator) to be on the receiving end of Trumps attacks, but the senator has been one of the harshest critics of the president since elected into office. Here is a brief timeline of their public feud:

May 2017

Corker sharpened his criticism of Trump in early May when it was reported that the president shared intelligence to Russias foreign minister and its ambassador to the U.S. during a visit to the White House

They are in a downward spiral right now and have got to figure out a way to come to grips with all that's happening, Corker said about the White House.

You know the shame of it is there's a really good national security team in place, there's good productive things that are underway through them, and through others. But the chaos that is being created by the lack of discipline is creating an environment that I think  it creates a worrisome environment.

August 2017

At an event in Tennessee, Corker criticized Trumps remarks in the aftermath of a white supremacist rally that turned violent in Charlottesville, Virginia, by saying that the president has not demonstrated he understands the character of this nation.

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, Corker is seen saying in a video posted on Facebook.

Trump responded days later via Twitter, saying, Strange statement by Bob Corker considering that he is constantly asking me whether or not he should run again in 18. Tennessee not happy!

October 2017

Following his announcement to retire at the end of his term in the U.S. Senate at the end of 2018, Corker told reporters that close advisers to Trump help separate our country from chaos.

"I think Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mattis, and Chief of Staff Kelly are those people that help separate our country from chaos, and I support them very much," Corker said on Oct. 4.

The remarks incensed Trump who, days later, slammed Corker over Twitter.

Corker responded with a barb of his own: Its a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning, referring to Trumps Sunday morning tweets.

And later in an interview with The New York Times, he said the president could set the U.S. on the path to World War III.

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Sen. Jeff Flake , R-Arizona, on Tuesday said he would not seek re-election and, in a stunning speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate , the conservative lawmaker denounced President Donald Trump and his reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior.

In announcing his retirement, Flake told The Arizona Republic that there may not be a place for a Republican like me in the current Republican climate or the current Republican Party ."

Flake is among a number of Republican senators who have been publicly criticized by Trump  the president has called him weak on immigration and has vowed to support Flakes opponents  and he is the second to publicly blast the president on the same day.

The speech he delivered on the senate floor captivated the internet and the media as Flake delivered what seemed to be his strongest rebuke of Trump as of yet.

Reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is, when it is actually just reckless, outrageous, and undignified, Flake said in his speech. And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else: It is dangerous to a democracy.

And then, he added: When the next generation asks us, Why didn't you do something? Why didn't you speak up? -- what are we going to say? Mr. President, I rise today to say: Enough.

Watch the whole speech here:

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ): "I am announcing today that my service in the senate will conclude at the end of my term in early January 2019." Watch complete Senate session here: https:/ ...

Below is a transcript of his speech in full:

Mr. President, I rise today to address a matter that has been much on my mind, at a moment when it seems that our democracy is more defined by our discord and our dysfunction than it is by our values and our principles. Let me begin by noting a somewhat obvious point that these offices that we hold are not ours to hold indefinitely. We are not here simply to mark time. Sustained incumbency is certainly not the point of seeking office. And there are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles.

Now is such a time.

It must also be said that I rise today with no small measure of regret. Regret, because of the state of our disunion, regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics, regret because of the indecency of our discourse, regret because of the coarseness of our leadership, regret for the compromise of our moral authority, and by our -- all of our -- complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs. It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end.

In this century, a new phrase has entered the language to describe the accommodation of a new and undesirable order -- that phrase being "the new normal." But we must never adjust to the present coarseness of our national dialogue -- with the tone set at the top.

We must never regard as "normal" the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country - the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve.

None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal. We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking that this is just the way things are now. If we simply become inured to this condition, thinking that this is just politics as usual, then heaven help us. Without fear of the consequences, and without consideration of the rules of what is politically safe or palatable, we must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. They are not normal.

Reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as "telling it like it is," when it is actually just reckless, outrageous, and undignified.

And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else: It is dangerous to a democracy. Such behavior does not project strength -- because our strength comes from our values. It instead projects a corruption of the spirit, and weakness.

It is often said that children are watching. Well, they are. And what are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, Why didn't you do something? Why didn't you speak up? -- what are we going to say?

Mr. President, I rise today to say: Enough. We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that the anomalous never becomes normal. With respect and humility, I must say that we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it. We know better than that. By now, we all know better than that.

Here, today, I stand to say that we would better serve the country and better fulfill our obligations under the constitution by adhering to our Article 1 "old normal" -- Mr. Madison's doctrine of the separation of powers. This genius innovation which affirms Madison's status as a true visionary and for which Madison argued in Federalist 51 -- held that the equal branches of our government would balance and counteract each other when necessary. "Ambition counteracts ambition," he wrote.

But what happens if ambition fails to counteract ambition? What happens if stability fails to assert itself in the face of chaos and instability? If decency fails to call out indecency? Were the shoe on the other foot, would we Republicans meekly accept such behavior on display from dominant Democrats? Of course not, and we would be wrong if we did.

When we remain silent and fail to act when we know that that silence and inaction is the wrong thing to do -- because of political considerations, because we might make enemies, because we might alienate the base, because we might provoke a primary challenge, because ad infinitum, ad nauseum -- when we succumb to those considerations in spite of what should be greater considerations and imperatives in defense of the institutions of our liberty, then we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations. Those things are far more important than politics.

Now, I am aware that more politically savvy people than I caution against such talk. I am aware that a segment of my party believes that anything short of complete and unquestioning loyalty to a president who belongs to my party is unacceptable and suspect.

If I have been critical, it not because I relish criticizing the behavior of the president of the United States. If I have been critical, it is because I believe that it is my obligation to do so, as a matter of duty and conscience. The notion that one should stay silent as the norms and values that keep America strong are undermined and as the alliances and agreements that ensure the stability of the entire world are routinely threatened by the level of thought that goes into 140 characters - the notion that one should say and do nothing in the face of such mercurial behavior is ahistoric and, I believe, profoundly misguided.

A Republican president named Roosevelt had this to say about the president and a citizen's relationship to the office:

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile." President Roosevelt continued. "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

Acting on conscience and principle is the manner in which we express our moral selves, and as such, loyalty to conscience and principle should supersede loyalty to any man or party. We can all be forgiven for failing in that measure from time to time. I certainly put myself at the top of the list of those who fall short in that regard. I am holier-than-none. But too often, we rush not to salvage principle but to forgive and excuse our failures so that we might accommodate them and go right on failinguntil the accommodation itself becomes our principle.

In that way and over time, we can justify almost any behavior and sacrifice almost any principle. I'm afraid that is where we now find ourselves.

When a leader correctly identifies real hurt and insecurity in our country and instead of addressing it goes looking for somebody to blame, there is perhaps nothing more devastating to a pluralistic society. Leadership knows that most often a good place to start in assigning blame is to first look somewhat closer to home. Leadership knows where the buck stops. Humility helps. Character counts. Leadership does not knowingly encourage or feed ugly and debased appetites in us.

Leadership lives by the American creed: E Pluribus Unum. From many, one. American leadership looks to the world, and just as Lincoln did, sees the family of man. Humanity is not a zero-sum game. When we have been at our most prosperous, we have also been at our most principled. And when we do well, the rest of the world also does well.

These articles of civic faith have been central to the American identity for as long as we have all been alive. They are our birthright and our obligation. We must guard them jealously, and pass them on for as long as the calendar has days. To betray them, or to be unserious in their defense is a betrayal of the fundamental obligations of American leadership. And to behave as if they don't matter is simply not who we are.

Now, the efficacy of American leadership around the globe has come into question. When the United States emerged from World War II we contributed about half of the world's economic activity. It would have been easy to secure our dominance, keeping the countries that had been defeated or greatly weakened during the war in their place. We didn't do that. It would have been easy to focus inward. We resisted those impulses. Instead, we financed reconstruction of shattered countries and created international organizations and institutions that have helped provide security and foster prosperity around the world for more than 70 years.

Now, it seems that we, the architects of this visionary rules-based world order that has brought so much freedom and prosperity, are the ones most eager to abandon it.

The implications of this abandonment are profound. And the beneficiaries of this rather radical departure in the American approach to the world are the ideological enemies of our values. Despotism loves a vacuum. And our allies are now looking elsewhere for leadership. Why are they doing this? None of this is normal. And what do we as United States Senators have to say about it?

The principles that underlie our politics, the values of our founding, are too vital to our identity and to our survival to allow them to be compromised by the requirements of politics. Because politics can make us silent when we should speak, and silence can equal complicity.

I have children and grandchildren to answer to, and so, Mr. President, I will not be complicit.

I have decided that I will be better able to represent the people of Arizona and to better serve my country and my conscience by freeing myself from the political considerations that consume far too much bandwidth and would cause me to compromise far too many principles.

To that end, I am announcing today that my service in the Senate will conclude at the end of my term in early January 2019.

It is clear at this moment that a traditional conservative who believes in limited government and free markets, who is devoted to free trade, and who is pro-immigration, has a narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican party -- the party that for so long has defined itself by belief in those things. It is also clear to me for the moment we have given in or given up on those core principles in favor of the more viscerally satisfying anger and resentment. To be clear, the anger and resentment that the people feel at the royal mess we have created are justified. But anger and resentment are not a governing philosophy.

There is an undeniable potency to a populist appeal -- but mischaracterizing or misunderstanding our problems and giving in to the impulse to scapegoat and belittle threatens to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking people. In the case of the Republican party, those things also threaten to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking minority party.

We were not made great as a country by indulging or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorying in the things which divide us, and calling fake things true and true things fake. And we did not become the beacon of freedom in the darkest corners of the world by flouting our institutions and failing to understand just how hard-won and vulnerable they are.

This spell will eventually break. That is my belief. We will return to ourselves once more, and I say the sooner the better. Because to have a heathy government we must have healthy and functioning parties. We must respect each other again in an atmosphere of shared facts and shared values, comity and good faith. We must argue our positions fervently, and never be afraid to compromise. We must assume the best of our fellow man, and always look for the good. Until that days comes, we must be unafraid to stand up and speak out as if our country depends on it. Because it does.

I plan to spend the remaining fourteen months of my senate term doing just that.

Mr. President, the graveyard is full of indispensable men and women -- none of us here is indispensable. Nor were even the great figures from history who toiled at these very desks in this very chamber to shape this country that we have inherited. What is indispensable are the values that they consecrated in Philadelphia and in this place, values which have endured and will endure for so long as men and women wish to remain free. What is indispensable is what we do here in defense of those values. A political career doesn't mean much if we are complicit in undermining those values.

I thank my colleagues for indulging me here today, and will close by borrowing the words of President Lincoln, who knew more about healing enmity and preserving our founding values than any other American who has ever lived. His words from his first inaugural were a prayer in his time, and are no less so in ours:

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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It wasnt the sort of thing that usually happens.

San Diegos valleys and canyons are typically hotter than the coast. But as people were rising for breakfast Tuesday, Mother Nature exhaled, switching things around.

Santa Ana winds streamed from the deserts to the sea, growing hotter along the way. By 11 a.m., the temperature had hit 100 or above at virtually every beach town from Oceanside to Chula Vista.

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Inland areas also became crazy hot. But it was truly unique at the coast, which rarely experiences temperatures in triple digits.

The phenomenon broke or tied seven temperature records, and persuaded educators to shorten class time in nearly 100 schools in San Diego and Coronado. There will be more early closings in the San Diego Unified and the Coronado Unified school districts on Wednesday, when temperatures return to the 90s and 100s in many areas. It will be the third straight day of shortened instruction at scores of schools.

The furnace-like conditions surprised many people, but not Brett Albright, a veteran forecaster at the National Weather Service in Rancho Bernardo. By 7 a.m. Tuesday, the temperature had risen to 90 in Poway. That was startling, but Albright knew that the real stunner was unfolding at the coast, where the heat flat out soared.

There was a warm layer of air left over from yesterday, and the winds mixed it down to the surface, said Albright .

Camp Pendleton hit 104 degrees before the noon. Miramar MCAS hit 103, en route to 107. Oceanside Airport hit 102 degrees. It was 101 in Del Mar Heights and nearly as hot in Carlsbad.

The first record fell at San Diego International Airport, which reached 97, breaking the high for Oct. 24th by three degrees.

Chula Vista hit 99, breaking the record set in 1980 by eight degrees. Alpine also reach 99, breaking the record set in 1968 by one degree. Oceanside Harbor  which is normally on the cool side  hit 98, breaking the record set in 1965 by 11 degrees.

Vista topped out at 107, breaking the record of 96 set in 1965. Ramona reached 100, breaking the record of 96, set in 2007. And Escondido hit 104, tying the record set in 1909.

The heat was bad  and so was the lack of relative humidity, which dropped to about 10 percent in places like San Diego, where it is usually about 50 percent this time of year.

High winds largely remained in the hills and valleys of East County. As a precautionary safety measure, San Diego Gas & Electric shut down electricity in sparsely populated areas of Wynola, Pine Hills and Santa Ysabel because of the potential effect of winds on power lines.

The National Weather Service fire weather warning will remain in place until 6 p.m. Wednesday.

With the prospect of more heat on Wednesday, authorities decided that more than 80 San Diego schools will have another short day Wednesday, as will the handful of schools in Coronado.

Under its policy, San Diego Unified may call for a half day at schools where less than 80 percent of classrooms are air conditioned on days when the temperature is expected to be 95 degrees or higher. The district plans to have air conditioning at all schools by the summer of 2019.

Three fewer schools will have shorter days Wednesday than on Tuesday: New Dawn at Riley School, Riley School and Sunset View Elementary.

Such closures arent unprecedented; San Diego Unified also called for minimum days at some schools during an August heat wave and in years past.

Its unclear whether shorter school days will be necessary on Thursday.

The weather is going to cool off, but only by a few degrees per day, said Albright. We wont be close to normal temperatures until the weekend, when daytime highs are in the upper 70s in San Diego.

Staff writer Gary Warth contributed to this report.

Twitter: @grobbins

gary.robbins@sduniontribune.com
The ongoing show at the Mu Xin Art Museum in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, features manuscripts of such well-known British writers as George Byron, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf and Charles Lamb. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The late Chinese poet and writer, Mu Xin (1927-2011), said British poet George Byron was like his brother and praised him as "a hero" and "the strongest voice in human civilization", according to The Memoir of Literature, a book comprising Mu's lectures on world literature in New York over five years.

Now, the British lord is having a "dialogue" with his Chinese admirerthrough their manuscriptsat the Mu Xin Art Museum in Mu's hometown of Wuzhen in East China's Zhejiang province.

Besides Byron's manuscripts, the museum also has works by three other well-known British writersOscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf and Charles Lamball of whom were loved by Mu.

The ongoing show, In Mu Xin's Words: Treasures of the British Library, is one of the key activities of a three-year project financed by the British government to deepen cultural exchanges between China and the United Kingdom.

Chen Danqing, director of the Mu Xin Art Museum and a long-time student of the late Chinese author, says: "In Mu Xin's words, Byron is a hero, like the sun, totally burning himself out. Mu, on the other hand, remained low-key during his lifetime, like the moon, suffering in silence while being a hero in his books." Chen has compiled The Memoir of Literature.

The book on Mu features four of his lectures on British literature, one of which totally focused on Byron, whom he admired for his independent spirit and passion.

Alexandra Ault, the lead curator of the British Library in China project, says the Mu Xin Art Museum is a perfect fit for the ongoing exhibition and a "dialogue" between Chinese and British literature.

Previously, the British Library had exhibited its manuscripts in conjunction with the National Library of China in Beijing, displaying 11 manuscripts by authors including William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte and William Wordsworth.
A New York dancer takes matters into her own hands when a newly married man ditches his wife to dance with every other woman at Geisenheimers.

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He came breezing up to me with Hicks Corners written all over him.

Why, Miss Roxborough!

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Why not? I said.

Dont you remember me?

I didnt.

My name is Ferris.

He was probably right, but still the glad light of recognition kept out of my eyes. The name meant nothing in my young life.

I was introduced to you last time I came here. We danced together.

This seemed to bear the stamp of truth. If he was introduced to me, he probably danced with me. Its what Im at Geisenheimers for.

When was that? I asked.

A year ago last April, he said.

Youve got to hand it to these rural charmers. They think that New York is folded up and put away in camphor when they leave, and not taken out again till they pay their next visit. The notion that anything could possibly have happened since he was last in our midst, to blur the memory of that happy evening, had not occurred to Mr. Ferris.

I suppose he was so accustomed to dating things from when I was in New York that he thought everybody else must do the same.

Why, sure I remember you, I said. Algernon Clarence, isnt it? 

Not Algernon Clarence. My names Charlie.

My mistake. And whats the big idea? Do you want to dance with me again?

He did. So we went to it. Mine not to reason why, mine but to do and die, as the poem says. If an elephant had blown into Geisenheimers and asked me to dance, Id have had to do it. And Im not saying that Mr. Ferris wasnt the next thing to it. He was one of those earnest, persevering dancers  the kind that have taken twelve correspondence lessons.

I guess I was about due that night to meet someone from the country. There still come days in the spring when the country seems to get a strangle-hold on me and to start in pulling. I got up in the morning and looked out of the window, and the breeze just wrapped me round and began whispering about pigs and chickens. And when I went out on the Avenue, there seemed to be flowers everywhere. I headed for the Park, and there was the grass all green and the trees coming out, and a sort of something in the air. Why, if there hadnt been a big cop keeping an eye on me Id have flung myself down and bitten chunks out of the turf.

And the first tune they played when I got to Geisenheimers was the one that runs something like this:

I want to go back, I want to go back

To the place where I was born,

Far away from harm

With a milk-pail on my arm.

Why, Charlie from Squeedunks entrance couldnt have been better worked up if hed been a star in a Broadway show. The stage was just waiting for him.

But somebodys always taking the joy out of life. I ought to have remembered that the most metropolitan thing in the metropolis is a rube whos putting in a week there. We werent thinking on the same plane, Charlie and me. I wanted to talk about last seasons crops  the subject he fancied was this seasons chorus girls. I wanted to hear what the village patriarch said to the local constable about the hens  he wanted to hear what Georgie Cohan said to Willie Collier about the Lambs. Our souls didnt touch by a mile and a half. Not that he cared.

This is the life! he said.

Theres always a point where this sort of man says that.

I suppose you come here quite a lot.

Pretty often, I said.

I didnt tell him that I came there every night, and that I came because I was paid for it. If youre a professional dancer at Geisenheimers you arent supposed to advertise the fact. The management has an idea that, if you did, it might send the public away thinking too hard when they had seen you win the Great Contest for the Lovely Silver Cup, which they offer later in the evening. And I guess theyre right, at that. That lovely silver cups a joke. I win it on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; and Mabel Francis wins it on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Its all perfectly fair and square, of course. Its purely a matter of merit who wins the lovely cup. Anybody could walk right into Geisenheimers and get it. Only somehow they dont. And the coincidence that Mabel and I always happen to gather it in has kind of got on the managements nerves, and they dont like us to tell people were employed at the restaurant. They prefer us to blush unseen.

Its a great place, said Mr. Ferris, and New Yorks a great place. Id like to live all the time in New York.

The loss is ours. Why dont you?

Some city! But dads dead now, and Ive got the drug store, you know.

He spoke as if I ought to remember reading about it in the papers.

And Im making good with it, whats more. Ive got push and ideas. Im doing fine. Say, I got married since I saw you last.

You did, did you! I said. Then what are you doing, may I ask, cutting up on Broadway like a gay bachelor? I suppose you have left Friend Wife at Bodville Center, singing Where is my wandering boy tonight?

Not Bodville Center; Ashley, Maine. Thats where I live. My wife comes from Rodney. Pardon me, Im afraid I stepped on your foot.

My fault. I lost step. Well, arent you ashamed even to think of your wife, when youve left her all alone out there, while you come whooping it up in New York? Havent you any conscience?

But I havent left her. Shes here.

In New York?

In this restaurant. Shes up there.

I looked up at the balcony. There was a face hanging over the red-plush rail. I had noticed it before when we were dancing round. I had wondered why she was looking so sorry for herself. Now I began to see.

Why arent you dancing with her and giving her a good time, then? I said.

Oh, shes having a good time.

She doesnt look it. She looks as if she would like to be down here dancing.

She doesnt dance much.

Dont you have dances at Ashley?

Its different at home. She dances well enough for Ashley, but  well, this isnt Ashley.

I see. But youre not like that.

He gave a kind of smirk.

Oh, Ive been in New York before.

I could have slapped his wrist, the sawed off little rube! He made me mad. He was ashamed to dance in public with his wife, didnt think her good enough for him. So he had dumped her in a chair, fed her a lemonade, and then sashayed off to give himself a tall time. They could have had me pinched for what I was thinking just then.

The band started again.

This is the life, said Mr. Ferris. Come along!

Let somebody else do it, I said. Im tired. Ill introduce you to some friends of mine.

So I took him off, and wished him on to some girls I knew at one of the tables.

Shake hands with my friend Vernon Castle, I said. He wants to show you the latest steps. He does most of them on your feet.

This is the life! said Charlie.

And I left him and headed for the balcony.

She was leaning with her elbows on the red plush, looking down at the dancing-floor. They had just started another tune, and hubby was moving round with one of the girls Id introduced him to.

She didnt have to prove to me that she came from the country. I knew it. She was a little bit of a thing, old-fashioned looking. She was dressed in gray, with white muslin collar and cuffs, and her hair done simple under a black hat.

I kind of hovered for a while. As a general thing Im more or less there with the nerve, but somehow I sort of hesitated to butt in. I guess it was because she looked so sorry for herself. Then I took a brace on myself and made for the vacant chair.

Ill sit here, if you dont mind, I said.

I could see she was wondering who I was and what right I had horning in, but wasnt certain whether it might not be Broadway etiquette for strangers to come and sit down and start chatting.

Ive just been dancing with your husband, I said to ease things along.

I saw you.

She gave me a look with her big brown eyes, and it was only the thought that the management might not like it that prevented me picking up something large and heavy and dropping it over the rail on to hubby. That was how I felt about Mr. Ferris just then. The poor kid was doing everything with those eyes except cry, and it didnt look as if she could keep off that for long. She looked like a dog thats been kicked and cant understand why.

She looked away and began to fiddle with the string of the electric light. There was a hatpin on the table. She picked it up and dug at the red plush.

Ah, come on, sis, I said, tell me all about it.

I dont know what you mean.

Quit your kidding. You cant fool me. Tell me your troubles.

I dont know you.

You dont have to know a person to tell her your troubles. I sometimes tell mine to the cat that camps out on the wall opposite my room. What did you want to leave the country for, with the summer just coming on?

She didnt answer, but I could see it coming, so I sat still and waited. And presently she seemed to make up her mind that, even if it was no business of mine, it would be a relief to talk about it.

Were on our honeymoon. Charlie wanted to come to New York. I didnt want to, but he was set on it. He has been here before.

So he told me.

Hes crazy about New York.

But youre not?

I hate it.

Whats your kick?

She dug away at the red plush with the hatpin, picking out little bits and dropping them over the edge. I could see she was bracing herself to put me wise to the whole trouble. Theres a time comes, when things arent going right and youve had all you can stand, when youve got to tell somebody about it, no matter who it is.

I hate New York, she said, getting it out with a rush at last. Im scared of it. It  it isnt fair, Charlie bringing me here. I didnt want to come. I knew what would happen. I felt it all along.

What do you reckon will happen, then?

She must have picked away an inch of the red plush before she answered. It was lucky that Jimmy, the balcony waiter, didnt see her. It would have broken his heart. Hes as proud of that red plush as if he had paid for it himself.

When I first went to Rodney, she said, two years ago  we moved there from Illinoisand began to get to know people, I found there was a man there named Tyson, Jack Tyson, who lived all alone and didnt seem to want to know anybody. I couldnt understand it, till someone told me all about him. I can understand it now. Jack Tyson married a Rodney girl, and they came to the city for their honeymoon, just like us. And when they got there I guess she got to comparing him with the fellows she saw and comparing the city with Rodney, and when she got home she just couldnt settle down.

Well?

After they had been back in Rodney for a little while she ran away  back to the city, I guess.

And he got a divorce, I suppose?

No.

He didnt?

He still thinks she may come back to him.

Still thinks she may come back? After three years?

Yes. He keeps her things just the same as she left them  everything the same as when she went away.

But isnt he sore at her for what she did? If I was a man and a girl treated me that way Id be apt to swing on her, if she tried to show up again.

He wouldnt. Nor would I, if  if anything like that happened to me. Id wait and wait, and go on hoping all the time. And Id go down to the depot every afternoon to meet the train, just like Jack Tyson.

Something splashed on the tablecloth. It made me jump.

For the love of Mike! I said. Whats the trouble? Brace up! I know its a sad story, but its not your funeral.

It is. It is. The same things going to happen to me.

Take a hold on yourself. Dont cry like that!

I cant help it. Oh, I knew it would happen. Its happening right now. Look  look at him!

I glanced over the rail, and I saw what she meant. There was her Charlie, cutting up all over the floor as if he had just discovered that he hadnt lived till then. I saw him say something to the girl he was dancing with. I wasnt near enough to hear him, but I bet it was This is the life! If I had been his wife and in the same position as this kid, I guess Id have felt as bad as she did, for if ever a man exhibited all the symptoms of incurable Newyorkitis, it was this Charlie Ferris.

Im not like these New York girls, she choked. Im not smart. I dont want to be. I just want to live at home and be quiet and happy. I knew it would happen if we came to the city. He looks down on me. He doesnt think me good enough for him.

Stop it! Pull yourself together!

And I do love him so.

Goodness knows what I should have said if I could have thought of anything to say. Seeing someone really up against it simply makes a dummy of me, as if somebody had turned off my ideas with a tap. But just then the music stopped, and somebody on the floor below began to speak.

Ladeez n gemmen! There will now take place our great num-bah contest. This gen-u-ine sporting contest

It was Izzy Baermann, doing his nightly spiel, introducing the lovely silver cup; and it meant that, for me, duty called. From where I was sitting I could see Izzy looking anxiously about the room, and I knew that he was looking for me. Its the managements nightmare that one of these evenings Mabel or I wont show up and some stranger will get away with the lovely cup. It doesnt cost above ten dollars, that cup, but they would hate to have it go out of the family.

Sorry Ive got to go, I said. I have to be in this.

And then suddenly I had the great idea. It came to me like a flash. I looked at her, and I looked over the rail at Charlie, the Debonair Pride of Ashley, and I knew that this was where I got a cinch on my place in the Hall of Fame, along with the great thinkers of the age.

I took her by the shoulder and shook her  shook her good.

Come on! I said. Stop crying and powder your nose, and get a move on. Youre going to dance this.

She looked up at me as if I had suggested that she should jump off the Brooklyn Bridge.

But I couldnt!

Youre going to!

But Charlie doesnt want to dance with me.

It may have escaped your notice, but your Charlie is not the only man here. Im going to dance with Charlie myself, and Ill introduce you to someone who can go through the movements. Listen!

The lady of each competing couple  this was Izzy, getting it off his diaphragm  will receive a ticket containing a num-bah. The dance will then proceed, and the num-bahs will be eliminated one by one, those called out by the judge kindly returning to their seats as their numbah is called. The num-bah finally remaining is the winning num-bah. This contest is a genuine sporting contest decided purely by the skill of the holders of the various num-bahs, as judged upon by the competent judge appointed by the management. Izzy stopped blushing at the age of six. Will ladies now kindly step forward and receive their num-bahs? The winner, the holder of the num-bah left on the floor when the other num-bahs have been eliminated  I could see Izzy getting more and more uneasy, wondering where on earth Id got to  will receive this love-r-ly silver cup, presented by the management. Ladies will now kindly step forward and receive their num-bahs!

I turned to the kid.

There, I said, wouldnt you like to win a love-r-ly silver cup?

But I couldnt.

You never know your luck.

But it isnt luck. Didnt you hear him say? Its a contest decided purely by skill.

Well, try your skill then. For the love of Mike, I said, show a little pep. Exhibit some ginger. You arent a quitter, are you? Arent you ready to stir a finger to keep your Charlie? I thought you had more sand. Suppose you win, think what it will mean. He will look up to you for the rest of your life. When he starts yawping about New York all you will have to say is New York? Ah, yes, that was the town where I won the love-r-ly silver cup, was it not? And hell drop as if you had hit him behind the ear with a sand-bag. Cant you see that this is your chance to get the ball and chain on him for the term of his natural life? Pull yourself together and try!

Well, the girl had sand, after all. I saw those brown eyes of hers flash.

Ill try, she said after a second.

Good for you! Now get those tears dried off and fix yourself up, and Ill go down and get the tickets.

Izzy was mighty relieved when I bore down on him. Gee! he said. You got my goat! I thought you was sick or something. Heres your ticket!

I want two, Izzy. Ones for a friend of mine. And say, Izzy, Id take it as a personal favor if you could square the competent judge appointed by the management to let her stop on the floor as one of the last two couples. Theres a reason. Shes a kid from the country, and she wants to make a hit.

Sure, said Izzy, thatll be all right. Here are the tickets. He lowered his voice. Yours is thirty-six, hers is ten. Dont forget and go mixing them up!

I went back to the balcony. On the way I got hold of Charlie.

Were dancing this together, I said.

He grinned all across his face. I could hear him saying to himself: Am I a hit? I guess not!

I found Mrs. Charlie looking as if she had never shed a tear in her life. She certainly had pluck, that kid. Her eyes were shining, and she was bursting to get action.

Come along! I said. Stick to your ticket like glue and watch your step!

I guess you have seen these sporting contests at Geisenheimers. Or, if you havent seen them at Geisenheimers, youve probably seen them someplace else. Theyre all the same.

When we began, the floor was crowded so that there was hardly standing room. Dont tell me there arent any optimists nowadays! Why, everyone was looking as if they were the guys who had put the trot in fox-trot and was wondering whether to have the cup in the parlor or the bedroom. You never saw such a happy, hopeful crowd in your life.

Presently Izzy gave tongue. The management expects him to pull some comedy stuff on these occasions, so he did his best.

Num-bahs seven, eleven, and twenty-one will kindly rejoin their sorrowing friends.

That gave us a little more elbowroom, and the band started again.

I want to go back, I want to go back,

I want to go back to the farm,

Far away from harm,

With a milk-pail on my arm.

I miss the rooster,

The one that useter

Wake me up at four a. m.

I think your great big citys

Very pretty,

But nevertheless I want to be there. . ..

Num-bahs thirteen, sixteen and seventeen, goodbye! Off we went again.

I was born in Michigan,

And I wish and wish again

That I was back

In the town where I was born. . .

Num-bah twelve, we hate to part with you, but  back to your table!

A plump dame in a red hat, who had been dancing with a kind smile as if she were doing it to amuse the children, left the floor.

Num-bahs six, fifteen and twenty, thumbs down!

And pretty soon the only couples left were Charlie and me, Mrs. Charlie and the fellow Id introduced her to, and a bald- headed man and a girl in a white hat. He was one of your stick-at-it performers. He had been dancing all the evening. I had noticed him from the balcony. From up there he looked like a hard-boiled egg.

He was a trier all right, that guy, and had things been otherwise than what they were, so to speak, Id have been glad to see him win. But it was not to be. Ah, no!

Num-bah nineteen, youre getting all flushed. Take a rest!

So there it was, a straight sporting contest between me and Charlie, and Mrs. Charlie and her man. Every nerve in my system was trembling with excitement, was it not? It was not.

Charlie hadnt a suspicion of the state of the drama. As Ive already hinted, he wasnt a dancer who took much of his attention off his feet while in. action. He was there to do his durnedest, not to inspect objects of interest by the wayside. The correspondence college he had graduated from doesnt guarantee to teach you to do two things at once when it mails you your diploma.

He was breathing heavily down my neck, with eyes glued to the floor. All he knew was that the sporting contest had thinned out some, and the honor of Ashley, Maine, was in his hands.

You know how the public begins to sit up and take notice when these dance contests have been narrowed down to two couples. There are evenings when I quite forget myself, when Im one of the last two left in, and get all excited.

Theres a sort of hum in the air, and as you go round the room people at the tables start applauding. Why, if you werent wise to the inner workings of the thing youd be all of a twitter.

It didnt take my practiced ear long to get next to the fact that it wasnt me and Charlie that the great public was rooting for. We would go round the floor without getting a hand, and every time Mrs. Charlie and her guy got to a corner there was a noise like election night.

I took a look at her across the floor, and I didnt wonder that she was making a hit. Say, she was a different kid. I never saw anyone look so happy and pleased with herself. Her eyes were like lamps, and her cheeks all pink, and she was going to it like a champion. I knew what had made the hit with the people. It was the look of her. She made you think of fresh milk and new- laid eggs and birds singing. Just to take a slant at her was like getting away to the country in August. Its funny about guys who live all the time in the city. They chuck out their chests, and talk about little old New York being good enough for them, and theres a street in heaven they call Broadway, and all the rest of it, but it seems to me that what they really live for is the three weeks in the summer when they get away into the country. I knew exactly why they were rooting so hard for Mrs. Charlie. She made them think of their vacation which was coming along, when they would go and board at the farm, and drink out of the old oaken bucket, and call the cows by their first names.

Gee! I felt like that myself. All day the country had been tugging at me, and now it tugged worse than ever.

I could have smelled the new-mown hay if it hadnt been that when youre at Geisenheimers you have to smell Geisenheimers and nothing else, because it leaves no chance for competition.

At-a-boy! I breathed into Charlies ear.  Keep-a-working. It looks to me as if we were going back in the betting.

Uh-huh! he grunted, too busy to blink.

Pull some of those fancy steps of yours. We need them in our business.

And the way that boy worked  it was a sin!

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Izzy Baermann, and he wasnt looking happy. He was nerving himself for one of those quick referees decisions  the sort you make and then duck under the ropes and run five miles to avoid the incensed populace. It was this sort of thing happening now and again that prevented Izzys job, otherwise one of the worlds softest, from being the perfect cinch. Mabel Francis told me that one night, when Izzy declared her the winner of the great sporting contest, it was such raw work that she thought thered hp.ve been a riot. It looked pretty much as if he was afraid the same thing was going to happen now. There wasnt a doubt which of us two couples were the one the customers wanted to see pull down that love-r-ly silver cup. It was a walk-over for Mrs. Charlie, and Charlie and I were simply among those present.

But Izzy had his duty to do, and drew a pay envelope for doing it, so he moistened his lips, looked round to see that his strategic railroads werent blocked, swallowed twice, pulled at his collar, and said in a husky voice:

Num-bah ten, please re-tiah!

I stopped at once.

Come along, I said to Charlie. Thats our exit cue.

And we walked off the floor, amidst applause.

Well, says Charlie, taking out his handkerchief and attending to his brow, which was like the village blacksmiths, we didnt do so bad, did we? We didnt do so bad, I guess! We 

And he looks up at the balcony, expecting to see the dear little wife draped over it with that worshiping look in her eyes, adoring him. And just as his eye is moving up, it gets caught by the sight of her a whole heap lower down than he had expected  on the floor, in fact, behaving like Mrs. Castle and the Dolly Sisters rolled into one.

She wasnt doing much in the worshiping line just then. She was too busy.

It was a regular triumphal procession for the kid. She couldnt have felt much more popular if she had been Queen of Coney at the Mardi Gras. She and her partner were doing one or two rounds now for exhibition purposes, like the winning couple always does at Geisenheimers, and the room was fairly rising at them. Youd have thought from the way they clapped that they had been betting all their spare cash on her.

Charlie gets her well-focused, then he lets his jaw drop till it pretty near bumped against the floor.

But  but  but  he began.

I know, I said. It begins to look as if she could dance well enough for the city after all. It begins to look as if she had sort of put one over on somebody, dont it! It begins to look as if it were a pity you didnt think of dancing with her yourself.

I  I  I  You come along and have a nice cold drink, I said, and youll soon pick up.

He tottered after me to a table, looking as if he had been hit by a street car. He had got his.

I was so busy looking after Charlie, flapping the towel and working on him with the oxygen, that, if youll believe me, it wasnt for quite a time that I thought of glancing round and finding out how the thing had struck Izzy Baermann.

If you can imagine a fond and trusting father whose only son has swung on him with a brick, jumped on his stomach, and then gone South with all his money, you have a pretty good notion of how poor Izzy looked. He was staring at me across the room and talking to himself and jerking his hands about. Whether he thought he was talking to me or whether he was rehearsing the scene where he broke it to the boss that a mere stranger had got away with his love-r-ly silver cup, I dont know. Whichever it was, he was being mighty eloquent.

I gave him a nod, as much as to say that it would all come right in the future, and then I turned to Charlie again. He was beginning to pick up.

She won the cup! he said in a dazed voice, looking at me as if he expected me to do something about it.

You bet she did!

But  but  well, what do you know about that!

I saw the moment had come to put it straight to him.

Ill tell you what I know about it, I said. If you take my advice youll hustle that kid straight back to Ashley, or wherever it is that you poison the natives by making up the wrong prescriptions, before she gets New York into her system so deep that you cant get it out. Otherwise youre in for trouble. When I was talking to her upstairs she was telling me about a fellow in her village who got it in the neck just the same as youre apt to do.

He started.

She was telling you about Jack Tyson?

That was his name. It seems he lost his wife by letting her have too much Broadway. Say, dont you think its funny she should have mentioned him, if she hadnt had some notion that she might act the same way his wife did?

He turned quite green.

You dont think she would do that!

Well, if you had heard her! She couldnt talk of anything except this Tyson and what his wife did to him. She spoke of it sort of sad, kind of regretful, as if she was sorry but felt that it had to be. I could see she had been thinking about it a whole lot.

Charlie stiffened in his seat, and then began to melt with pure fright. He held up his empty glass with a shaking hand and took a long drink out of it. It didnt take much observation to see that he had had the jolt he wanted and was going to be quite a lot less jaunty and metropolitan from now on. In fact, the way he looked, I suspected that he was through with metropolitan jauntiness for the rest of his life.

Ill take her home tomorrow, he said. But  will she come?

Thats up to you. If you get real smooth and persuasive, maybe Here she is now. I should get busy at once.

Mrs. Charlie, carrying the cup, came to the table. I was wondering what would be the first thing she would say. If it had been Charlie in the same position, of course he would have said This is the life! but I looked for something snappier from her. If I had been in her place there were at least ten things I could have thought of to say, each nastier than the other.

She sat down and put the cup on the table. Then she gave the cup a long look. Then she drew a deep breath. Then she looked at Charlie.

Oh, Charlie dear, she said, I do wish I had been dancing with you!

Well, Im not sure, but I guess that that must have stung about as much as any of the things I would have said.

Charlie got right off the mark. After what I had told him he wasnt wasting any time.

Darling, he said humbly, youre a wonder. What will they say about this at home!

He did pause here for a moment, for it took nerve to say it; but then he went right on.

Mary, how would it be if we went home right away  first train tomorrow  and showed the folks the cup?

Oh, Charlie! she said.

His face lit up as if someone had pulled a switch.

You will? You dont want to stop on? You arent crazy about New York?

If there was a train Id start tonight. But I thought you loved the city so, Charlie?

He gave a sort of shiver.

I never want to see it again in my life! he said.

Youll excuse me, I said, getting up. I think theres a friend of mine wants to speak to me.

And I crossed the room to where Izzy had been standing for the last five minutes, making signals to me with his eyebrows.

You couldnt have called Izzy coherent at first. He certainly had trouble with his vocal cords, poor fellow! There was one of those African explorer men used to come to Geisenheimers a lot when he was home from roaming the trackless desert, and he used to tell me about tribes hed met, who didnt use real words at all but talked to one another in clicks and gurgles. He pulled some of their chatter one night to amuse me and, believe me, Izzy Baermann was talking the same language now. Only he wasnt doing it to amuse me.

He was like one of those talking machines when its getting into its stride.

Be calm, Isadore, I said. Something is troubling you. Tell me all about it!

He clicked some more, and then he got it out.

Are you crazy?

Im not. Why do you ask?

What did you do it for? Didnt I tell you as plain as I could, didnt I tell you twenty times, when you came for the tickets, that yours was thirty-six?

Didnt you say my friends was thirty-six?

Are you deaf? I said hers was ten.

Then, I said handsomely, say no more. The mistake was mine. It begins to look as if I must have got them mixed.

He did a few Swedish exercises.

Say no more? Thats good! Thats great! Thats the best Ive heard! Youve got the nerve! I will say that.

It was a lucky mistake of mine, Izzy. It saved your life. These guys would have lynched you if you had given me the cup instead of her. They were solid for her all right.

Never mind about that. Whats the boss going to say when I tell him?

Forget the boss! Havent you any romance in your system, Izzy? Look at those two, sitting there with their heads together. Isnt it worth a silver cup to have made them happy for life? They are on their honeymoon, Izzy. Tell the boss exactly what happened, and say that I thought it was up to Geisenheimers to give them a wedding present.

He clicked for a spell.

Ah! he said. Ah! Now youve said it! Now youve given yourself away! You did it on purpose. You meant to mix those tickets. I thought as much. Say, who do you think you are, getting fresh that way? Dont you know that professional dancers are three for ten cents? I could go right out now and whistle and get a dozen girls for your job. Just one minute after I tell the boss what youve done youll find yourself fired.

No, I shant, Izzy, because Im going to resign.

Youd better!

Thats what I think. Im sick of this joint, Izzy. Im sick of dancing. Im sick of Broadway. Im sick of everything. Im going back to the country while the going is good. I thought I had got gingham and sunbonnets clear out of my system, but I hadnt. You can write this out and stick it up over your shaving mirror, Izzy, because its true: Once a rube, always a rube. Ive suspected it for a long, long time, and tonight I know it. Tell the boss that Im sorry, but it had to be done. And if he wants to talk back, hell have to do it by mail. Mrs. John Tyson, General Delivery, Rodney, Maine, is the address.
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/24/2017 -- WiseGuyReports published new report, titled "The Cards and Payments Industry in Saudi Arabia".



Synopsis



'The Cards and Payments Industry in Saudi Arabia: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides detailed analysis of market trends in Saudi Arabia cards and payments industry. It provides values and volumes for a number of key performance indicators in the industry, including check payments, credit transfers, direct debits, payment cards and cash transactions during the review period (20102014).



The report also analyzes various payment cards market operating in the industry and provides detailed information on the number of cards in circulation, and transaction values and volumes during the review period and over the forecast period (20152019). It also offers information on the country's competitive landscape, including market shares of issuers and schemes.



The report brings together research, modeling, and analysis expertise to allow banks and card issuers to identify segment dynamics and competitive advantages. The report also covers detailed regulatory policies, recent changes in regulatory structure and profiles of card issuers operating in the country.



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Summary



'The Cards and Payments Industry in Saudi Arabia: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides top-level market analysis, information and insights into Saudi Arabia cards and payments industry, including:



- Current and forecast values for each market in Saudi Arabia cards and payments industry, including debit card, credit and charge cards. It also includes detailed analysis of the prepaid card market.



- Detailed insights into payment instruments including credit transfers, cash transactions, checks, direct debits and payment cards. It also, includes an overview of the country's key alternative payment instruments.



- E-commerce market analysis and online payment types.



- Analysis of various market drivers and regulations governing Saudi Arabia cards and payments industry.



- Detailed analysis of strategies adopted by banks and other institutions to market debit, credit and charge cards.



- Comprehensive analysis of consumer attitudes and buying preferences for cards.



- The competitive landscape of Saudi Arabia cards and payments industry.



Scope



- This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Saudi Arabia cards and payments industry.



- It provides current values for Saudi Arabia cards and payments industry for 2014, and forecast figures to 2019.



- It details the different demographic, economic, infrastructural and business drivers affecting Saudi Arabia cards and payments industry.



- It outlines the current regulatory framework in the industry.



- It details marketing strategies used by various banks and other institutions.



- It profiles major banks in Saudi Arabia cards and payments industry.



Key points to buy



- Make strategic business decisions, using top-level historic and forecast market data, related to Saudi Arabia cards and payments industry and each market within it.



- Understand the key market trends and growth opportunities in Saudi Arabia cards and payments industry.



- Assess the competitive dynamics in Saudi Arabia cards and payments industry.



- Gain insights into marketing strategies used for various card types in Saudi Arabia.



- Gain insights into key regulations governing Saudi Arabia cards and payments industry.



Key Highlights



- To encourage the use of electronic payments, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) undertook a number of initiatives, including the establishment of its new electronic payment system 'mada', and mandatory wage payment into bank accounts. It launched its modified Saudi Payment Network (SPAN) as 'mada' in September 2015. SPAN links all the ATMs and point-of-sale (POS) terminals to a central payment switch across the country. The regulator expects that the new system will increase the use of POS terminals. To encourage the use of the POS terminals, the daily purchase limit was increased from US$5,333.3 (SAR20,000) to US$16,000 (SAR60,000).



- SAMA, in collaboration with the Ministry of Labor, launched the Wage Protection System (WPS) in June 2013. Under the law, employees' salaries were paid directly into bank accounts, from which they can withdraw with debit cards. WPS was implemented in phases depending on the number of employees an organization had. Initially, it was mandatory for companies with an employee base of more than 3,000, which was further reduced in phases to companies with 100 or more employees from November 2015.



- Technology adoption in the cards and payments industry achieved a new level in Saudi Arabia, when Riyad Bank issued the country's first contactless debit card  Riyad Bank Debit MasterCard  in May 2015. The card provides enhanced security and convenience, and is accepted across 35 million merchants globally. The card can be used for small value transactions of less than US$20 (SAR75) without the need to enter a PIN. With payment cards gaining in popularity among consumers, the introduction of contactless cards is likely to encourage card based payments even for low value transactions.



Table of Contents



1 Definitions and Methodology

2 Key Facts and Events

3 Executive Summary

4 Payment Instruments

5 E-Commerce

6 Alternative Payments

7 Regulations in the Cards and Payments Industry

8 Analysis of Cards and Payments Industry Drivers

9 Market Segmentation and New Product Launches

10 Payment Cards

11 Debit Cards

12 Credit Cards



Contact Us

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Reach Us at: +1 339 368 6938 (US) +44 208 133 9349 (UK)



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Researchers involved in the E. coli long-term evolution experiment (LTEE) have debunked an established evolutionary theory with a study that provides a high-resolution view of the molecular details of adaptation.

Evolutionary adaptation is driven by the accumulation of mutations, but the temporal dynamics of this process are difficult to observe directly. Our study provides a high-resolution view of the molecular details of adaptation over substantial evolutionary timescales, said study co-author Dr. Michael McDonald, from the School of Biological Sciences at Monash University, Australia.

The insights we provide into the rate, repeatability, and molecular basis of adaptation will contribute to a better understanding of these evolutionary processes and challenges.

Dr. McDonald and his colleagues are involved in the LTEE experiment, an ongoing study led by Michigan State University evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski that has been tracking genetic changes in twelve initially identical populations of E. coli bacteria since 1988.

LTEE is the longest running microbial evolution experiment with more than 67,000 generations of E. coli, which is equivalent to over one million years of human evolution, Dr. McDonald explained.

In the current study, the scientists analyzed the dynamics of molecular evolution in the twelve LTEE populations of E. coli.

To do this, they sequenced mixed-population samples taken at 500-generation intervals across 60,000 generations of the bacteria.

We found that even though the E. coli populations have been evolving in a very simple environment for a long time, they are still adapting to their environment. In other words the fit get fitter, Dr. McDonald said.

But the established theory tells us that adaptation should have stopped by now since there should be a fitness peak that the E. coli should have reached by now  and our work shows that this is not the case.

According to the team, one explanation is that as E. coli evolve, they change the environment that they are growing in.

This change to the environment then drives further evolution, so that the populations may never stop adapting.

The findings were published online this month in the journal Nature.

_____

Benjamin H. Good et al. The dynamics of molecular evolution over 60,000 generations. Nature, published online October 18, 2017; doi: 10.1038/nature24287
KINGSTREE, S.C.  The Williamsburg County Council has approved the third reading of an ordinance that supervisor Stanley S. Pasley said will allow the county to issue bonds for its one-cent sales tax projects.

Ordinance No. 2017-006 authorizes the issuance and sale of up to $14,500,000 general obligation bonds and general obligation bond anticipation notes in an amount to be determined in one or more series and years.

The sales date for the bonds is Nov. 2, Pasley said.

And after the sales of the bonds occur, then were in a position to begin to allow the projects that are shovel-ready to begin the preliminary work in terms of engineering, design and etcetera, Pasley said.

County Finance Director Stephen Edwards said the county is not going to borrow the entire $14,500,000, but only $6 million right now. Edwards said the county expects to collect around $1.7 million a year in revenue from the capital sales tax to pay off the bonds.

The $6 million will help start a number of capital project sales tax projects. Edwards said most of the first available funds will go toward the Priority One list which is mostly equipment. Priority One includes radios and E911 dispatch equipment, according to Edwards. A generator is at the top of the Priority Two list, he said.

There are three projects that will really start to get rolling pretty quick and thats the South Lynches project, the Hemingway project and the Kingstree project because theyre the most shovel-ready outside of the equipment, Edwards said.

According to Ordinance No. 2017-006, the South Lynches Fire District project includes acquiring, constructing and equipping a new fire station. The South Lynches Fire District serves the Cades, Hebron, Bakers Crossroads, Hog Eye, White Oak, Bethesda, Roper Woods, Moores Crossroads, Springs Crossroads and Clark Crossroads communities in Williamsburg County.

The town of Hemingway project includes acquiring, constructing and equipping a building addition for police headquarters and town hall, according to the ordinance.

Its renovating their town hall and their courtroom and that sort of stuff, Edwards said. They have bids in hand. Theres no property, so that project will start rolling fairly quickly.

The town of Kingstree project includes acquiring, constructing, equipping and acquiring land for a public safety building, the ordinance states. Edwards said Kingstree has begun to spend some of its own money to get property and other things for the project.

Pasley said a payment to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a loan the county incurred for radios could be executed quickly when the funds from the bond become available.

Edwards said that when the first funds become available, the county should also be able to spec out ambulances and firetrucks.

Several other projects voted on by Williamsburg County residents are set to be funded from the capital project sales tax. They include:

Williamsburg County Fire/EMS  Acquiring, constructing and equipping a new County Fire and EMS Headquarters Building.

Williamsburg County EMS  Acquiring, constructing and equipping an EMS addition for the St. Lawrence Fire Station.

Town of Greeleyville  Acquiring, constructing and equipping a building addition for police headquarters.

Town of Lane  Acquiring, constructing and equipping a new community building.

Town of Lane  Acquiring, constructing and equipping a new community building.

Town of Stuckey  Acquiring, constructing and equipping a new community building.

Town of Stuckey  Acquiring and constructing addition to water system for Henry Town Extension.

Williamsburg County Sheriffs Department  Acquiring, constructing and equipping a new training facility.

Williamsburg County EMS  Acquiring, constructing, and equipping two new ambulances and equipment.

Williamsburg County Fire Department  Acquiring, constructing and equipping a new fire station with equipment.

Williamsburg County Environmental  Acquiring, constructing and equipping new storage building and kennels.

Williamsburg County Fire Department  Acquiring, constructing and equipping a new fire station with equipment.

Town of Hemingway  Upgrades to Hemingway Fire Department and equipment.

Williamsburg County Sheriffs Department  Acquiring, constructing and equipment upgrades to training facility.

Williamsburg County Fire Department  Acquiring, constructing and equipping a new fire station.

Town of Kingstree  Acquiring a fully equipped fire engine.

Emergency Management  Acquiring and equipping new mobile communications command center.

Williamsburg County  Community development projects.

Emergency Management/911  Acquiring and upgrading the radio communication infrastructure.
Wednesday at Alabama  3 p.m. EST/2 p.m. CT

Thursday vs. Georgia (diving)  6 p.m.

Friday vs. Georgia  10 a.m.

The first 200 students to the Stephen C. O'Connell Center Natatorium on Friday will receive a free pink T-shirt for breast cancer awareness.

Wednesday's meet against Alabama will be streamed on the SEC Network +, as well as the WatchESPN app.

Updates for Wednesday's meet will also be provided through @GatorsSwimDv on Twitter and final results and a recap can be found at FloridaGators.com.

Thursday's diving session will not be streamed, but results will be available through the Meet Mobile app and @GatorsSwimDv on Twitter.

Friday's meet at 10 a.m. can also be found on the SEC Network + and the WatchESPN app.

Results will be on the Meet Mobile app, as well @GatorsSwimDv on Twitter.

Follow the Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla.  The Gators have a busy week of SEC meets ahead of them, beginning with Alabama on Wednesday at 3 p.m. EST/2 p.m. CT in Tuscaloosa.Florida continues its week by returning home to face Georgia on Thursday and Friday. Thursday's session will feature only diving, beginning at 6 p.m., while Friday kicks off at 10 a.m. and contains both swimming and another diving session. Parking for Friday's meet will be in the grassy lot on the north side of the stadium.The Crimson Tide men are ranked 13th in the nation, while the women are receiving votes in the CSCAA poll. Both Georgia squads are also ranked, with the women sitting at fourth and the men tied for eighth in the country.The last time the Gators took on Alabama was the 2013-14 season, when both the men's and women's teams came out victorious. The women topped the Crimson Tide, 179-113, while the men defeated Alabama, 169-123.Only three Gators from that squad remain on the team today:and, who were all redshirting at the time.Looking ahead to end of the week, Florida's men are looking for the first win against Georgia since 2013-14 and the women are looking for their first win since the 2006-07 season.The Gators totaled eight race wins last year against the Bulldogs, including seven individual victories.led the way with two first-place finishes, winning the 100 breaststroke and 200 IM.took home first in the 100 fly, while the relay team ofandwon the 400 freestyle relay.On the men's side,claimed victory in the 50 free, whiletook home first in the 200 IM.Former Gator Sam Smith won the 1-meter for the men andtopped the 1-meter women's field.Updates for all meets can be found at @GatorsSwimDv on Twitter and the sessions for both Wednesday and Friday will be streamed on the SEC Network + and the WatchESPN app.
ICTSI said in a press release that chairman and president Enrique Razon Jr had just signed the expansion agreement paving the way for the two new berths, Berth 25 and Berth 26 to be developed.

The berths will boost annual capacity at BGT by 600,000 teu to a total of 1.2m teu and the terminal will be able to take in vessels of up to 10,000 teu. Combined with the adjacent Berth 27, it will offer a 600m continuous quay length and 50 hectares of yard area, with new container handling systems working in conjunction with state-of-the-art terminal operating systems.

This new $100m investment follows hot on the heels of ICTSIs development of Berth 27 and the rehabilitation and upgrade of berths 19, 20 & 21, a $150m investment," noted Razon.

"Our commitment to provide international standard port facilities and services in Iraq is plain to see. It also represents the fruit of a positive working relationship with the Iraq Ministry of Transport, General Company for Ports of Iraq (GCPI) and Governorate of Basra as well as other government agencies. This combined effort will, when the new facilities are completed in 18 months time, deliver the new facilities that are essential to support Iraqs key economic objectives including the resurgence of the non-oil economy, he added.

The expansion project will be undertaken by ICTSI unit BGT, with construction scheduled to start immediately.

BGT ceo Phillip Marsham noted the increasing demand for bigger vessel calls at the Port of Umm Qasr. Since we commenced operations at the North Port, Umm Qasr, we have striven to meet the new requirements of ship owners and deliver international standard services. The development of Berth 27, formally inaugurated in October 2016, represented enormous progress in this respect and the current expansion project will consolidate and expand this important work. Like other ports worldwide, Umm Qasr is now facing the challenge of handling larger size vessels," Marsham said.

ICTSI was awarded concessions in 2014 to operate, develop, and expand the container, general cargo and roro handling facilities at the Ports of Umm Qasr in Iraq.

A 21-year concession covers the management, operation and rehabilitation of the ports existing facilities at Berth 19, 20 and 21, while a further 26-year concession has been granted to build a new container and general cargo terminal at Berths 25, 26, 27.
Press Release

October 24, 2017 ANGARA PRODS BOC TO ISSUE LONG-OVERDUE GUIDELINES ON TAX-FREE BALIKBAYAN BOXES Senator Sonny Angara has urged anew the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to fast-track the issuance of proper guidelines for the implementation of tax-free balikbayan boxes that would truly benefit overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). "Magpa-Pasko na naman pero wala pa ring kasiguraduhan kung mapapakinabangan na ng ating mga kababayang abroad ang pribilehiyong ito. Noong nakaraang taon pa ho tayo nananawagan na ipatupad na nang klaro at tama ang batas sa paraang hindi magiging pahirap lalo na sa mga OFW," said Angara, sponsor of Republic Act 10863 or the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act (CMTA) that was signed into law in May last year. The BOC has recently suspended two Customs orders providing the guidelines on tax-free balikbayan boxes after receiving numerous complaints regarding the tedious requirements to avail of the tax incentive. Under Customs Administrative Order 05-2016 and Customs Memorandum Order 04-2017 that the bureau issued in August, qualified Filipinos while abroad must accomplish an information sheet that includes an itemized list of the contents of the balikbayan box, and must submit a copy of the receipts for brand new items and a photocopy of their passport. "Isang magandang hakbang para sa bagong pamunuan ng Customs na maitama sa lalong madaling panahon ang alituntunin sa balikbayan box para manumbalik ang kumpiyansa ng taumbayan sa Customs," the senator said. The Customs order also stated that "all balikbayan boxes per sender in any calendar year shall not exceed P150,000." Angara pointed out that such rule is contrary to the true intention of the law which provides that OFWs can send up to three P150,000-worth of tax and duty free balikbayan boxes, or not exceeding P450,000 in a year, given that the goods are not in commercial quantities. "Itinuturing nating bagong bayani ang ating mga OFW kaya nga natin itinulak ang batas na ito bilang dagdag pribilehiyo para sa kanila. The laws that Congress makes should always be interpreted in favor of the people-and in this instance, it should be in favor of our OFWs and their families," the lawmaker said. He further stressed that exempting balikbayan boxes from taxes means "doing justice to OFWs who remit billions of pesos every year." The CMTA also provides for a less intrusive examination of goods brought in to the country so as to prevent the alleged tampering of balikbayan boxes from happening again.
Press Release

October 24, 2017 Sen. Bam calls on rural banks to expand support to small businesses Senator Bam Aquino urged rural banks to expand their services to more small businesses, saying many local entrepreneurs still need access to reasonable loan packages that can help them grow their business. Sen. Bam issued this plea during his speech at 60th Charter Symposium of the Rural Bankers Association of the Philippines (RBAP) recently. "Nagpapasalamat ako sa RBAP sa inyong pagsisikap na maabot ang ating mga kababayang nangangailangan ng serbisyong pinansiyal. Marami pa po ang nangangailangan ng ating tulong," said Sen. Bam. During his time as a social entrepreneur, Sen. Bam learned that lack of financing poses a big challenge for micro, small and medium enterprises as it hampers their development. "So when I became a senator, we focused on policies that can help support our MSMEs in the Philippines," Sen. Bam pointed out. One of them is finding ways to link MSMEs to financial institutions, including rural banks, to help their search for fresh capital to start or expand their businesses. In his four years as senator, Sen. Bam worked for the passage of Republic Act 10644 or the Go Negosyo Act, the first of his 19 laws as legislator. The law mandates the establishment of Negosyo Centers in every town, city, municipality, and province of the country to serve as support hubs for entrepreneurs. As of now, there are over 600 Negosyo Centers across the country that link MSMEs to suppliers and markets, providing training and support and connect them to sources of capital and financing. As its principal sponsor and co-author, Sen. Bam also pushed for the enactment of Republic Act 10679 or the Youth Entrepreneurship Act , which mandates the inclusion of financial literacy and entrepreneurial training will be included in basic education. "This will help groom young Filipinos to be responsible with their money and savings," said Sen. Bam. Sen. Bam also passed other laws in support of MSMEs, such as the Philippine Competition Act, Foreign Ships Co-Loading, Microfinance NGOs Act and the Credit Surety Fund Cooperative Act. In the 17th Congress, Sen. Bam has filed the Philippine Islamic Financing Act, National Payment Systems Act and the Secured Transactions Act, measures that will help enhance the credit-worthiness and bankability of Filipinos, particularly small business owners.
NANCY: EXPEDITE MARAWI CLEARING OPERATIONS FOR EARLIER REBUILDING

Senator Nancy Binay today called on the authorities to hasten the clearing of war-torn areas in Marawi City, saying that the earlier the clearing operation ends, the soonest rebuilding can start in the area.

"I call on the authorities, especially the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) na pabilisin ang clearing operations sa loob ng mga apektadong barangay, lalong-lalo sa main battle area, sa Marawi City," Binay said.

"This way, ang mabilis na pagtatapos ng clearing ay mas mapapaaga ang simula ng rebuilding ng lungsod," she added.

The lady solon earlier called on the inclusion of indigenous peoples (IPs) and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the 23-member Task Force Bangon Marawi, which was tasked by the national government to lead in the recovery and rehabilitation of the war-torn city.

Clearing operations by government forces are currently ongoing in the city.

Binay said that the government should pour more resources for the recovery and clearing of unexploded ordnance that can pose danger to rehabilitation workers.

"Magpadala pa po tayo ng dagdag na mga Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Units o bomb squads upang tumulong sa paghahanap at pagdidispose ng maayos ng mga hindi sumabog na mga bomba at mga bala," Binay said.

"Hangga't may mga naiwang mga bomba, bala, improvised explosive devices o booby traps sa mga pinagkutaan ng mga Maute fighters ay malalagay sa panganib ang buhay ng mga rehabilitation workers," she added.

Defense secretary Delfin Lorenzana earlier said that the government has spent over PhP5 billion for ammunition, fuel, food and soldiers' allowances of soldiers during the last four months of fighting.
Press Release

October 24, 2017 De Lima asks SET to cite Tolentino in contempt Senator Leila M. de Lima today asked the Senate Electoral Tribunal (SET) to cite former senatorial candidate Francis Tolentino in contempt for his false and misleading statements of alleged fraud and irregularities in the 2016 national elections. De Lima, a former justice secretary, filed the motion to cite Tolentino in contempt of court through her lawyer Teddy Rigoroso before the SET at 10 a.m today. In a four-page motion, De Lima stated that Tolentino violated the sub judice rule when he granted media interviews predisposing the public to think that she supposedly manipulated the election results in 2016. "When protestant Tolentino makes false and misleading utterances, the integrity of the Tribunal's proceedings is put in question. Such public utterances also tend to violate the sub judice rule," she said. By citing news reports, De Lima took issue on Tolentino's media statements that there were several ballot boxes in pilot precincts of Calbayog City, Western Samar that purportedly contained ballots used in the 2013 polls. The truth is there is only one (1) ballot box that turned out to be used for 2013 elections but mistakenly turned over by the City Treasurer to the SET collection team. She called out on Tolentino for questioning before the media the presence of 2013 ballots that have purportedly been mixed up with the 2016 ballots. "This statement serves no purpose but to mislead the public and this Tribunal. Protestant Tolentino and his entire revision team knew that only one (1) ballot box pertaining to Clustered Precinct No. 60030008 of Calbayog City, Western Samar referred to the 2013 elections. "But by impressing upon the public that 2013 ballots are mixed up with the 2016 ballots, protestant Tolentino is trying to insinuate fraud or irregularity that is not really there," De Lima pointed out. In her motion, De Lima also stated that Tolentino, through media interviews, made it appear that there was "statistical improbability" in relation to the zero votes he got from Isabela City, Basilan province and six other areas in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). De Lima, however, explained the doctrine of statistical improbability does not apply to Tolentino's poll results especially since she also garnered zero votes in the same precincts that Tolentino identified as his pilot precincts. In the 2016 national elections, Tolentino lost by more than 1.3 million votes to De Lima for the 12th spot in the winning senatorial candidates. The SET started last week the recount of ballots included in the electoral protest of Tolentino
Press Release

October 24, 2017 STATEMENT OF SEN. LEILA DE LIMA ON TOLENTINO'S FALSE CLAIMS IN THE REVISION PROCEEDINGS The claims of failed senatorial aspirant Francis Tolentino at the start of the revision proceedings in his election protest against me are intended to mislead the public. First of all, at the outset, it must be clarified that even the official election results for the senatorial position as reported by one newspaper is wrong, when it cited 13,793,947 votes for myself, De Lima, and 12,518,891 votes for Tolentino. For the record, the correct figures are, as follows: the official COMELEC returns state a total votes cast of 14,144,070 for De Lima and 12,811,098 votes for Tolentino, or a proclamation margin of 1,332,972 votes in De Lima's favor. Secondly, as to Tolentino's claim that the SD cards used could have been "pre-loaded" with votes, this is not relevant, much less material, to the ongoing revision proceedings, as such issue is not even covered therein. The revision proceedings pertains to his election protest, while the speculation about pre-loading of SD cards relates to his claim for the annulment of the election results - a claim which he has, in any case, miserably failed to substantiate when he did not present any evidence to prove this allegation, and which I am sure he will not be able to substantiate ever. Thirdly, as to Tolentino's claim that several ballot boxes from Calbayog City contained ballots used during the 2013 elections, this is misleading. The ballot box itself (only one [1] ballot box, and not several) and all of its contents are election paraphernalia from the 2013 elections that were erroneously transmitted to the SET (instead of the ballot boxes used for the 2016 elections) through no fault on my end, but due to the error of the City Treasurer of Calbayog City. The retrieval of the ballot boxes subject of the initial revision of pilot protested precincts happened during the period July 3-10, 2017. During said retrieval, the ballot boxes of Calbayog City, including the ballot box for Clustered Precinct No. 60030008, were found in the City Treasurer's Office. Noticing that the ballot box was black in color, my representative called the attention of the SET retrieval team and the City Treasurer, and said that that could pertain to the 2013 elections. The City Treasurer, however, insisted that that was the correct ballot box. On 19 October 2017, that same ballot box for Clustered Precinct No. 60030008 was brought inside the revision area. When it was opened, it was discovered that the entire contents of the box pertain to the 2013 elections. To repeat, all the documents inside pertain to the 2013 National and Local Elections. There was not a single ballot or election document pertaining to the 2016 elections. Since it was for the wrong elections, none of the contents of said ballot box has any bearing in the instant election protest. Fourthly, Tolentino claims it to be impossible that he garnered zero votes in certain precincts since he was the "No. 1 endorsed senatorial candidate of the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) while De Lima was not supported by the bloc-voting Iglesia Ni Cristo" (Tolentino's Original and Amended Protest). I beg the understanding of protestant Tolentino. I am certainly unaware that a particular religious group's endorsement entitles him to a claim of electoral victory and question the votes cast in the various clustered precincts in the provinces of Basilan, Maguindanao, and Tawi-Tawi. For the information of protestant Tolentino, he was not the only one who garnered zero votes in the clustered precincts listed in his protest. I also got zero votes in most of the clustered precincts indicated in his pilot protest. If protestant Tolentino's logic is to be followed - that getting zero votes means that he was cheated - then, by the same logic I was also the victim of cheating in several of these precincts where both of us obtained zero votes. This demolishes Tolentino's theory that getting zero votes automatically benefitted me, since I did not get his fictional votes. In several instances, I also obtained zero votes. The simplest reasonable explanation is almost always the right one - that the voters in those precincts simply decided not to vote for either of us. That is the choice of the people. The unreasonable supposition is to automatically ascribe fraud in the way the people expressed their choice in the polls, simply because that choice did not favor one's candidacy. Finally, in the 74 ballot boxes opened so far, Tolentino was able to recover 19 votes on physical count, while my votes even increased to 40 more votes, a net gain of 21 more votes in my favor. Plainly, Tolentino had no reasonable recovery in all those precincts so far revised. And his party revisors have been claiming ballots categorized as ballots for others even when there is no Tolentino vote anywhere on the ballots claimed. In other words, his revisors' claims on those ballots are fictitious. This only shows the desperation that he and his revision team is experiencing right now. They have also objected to all of my valid ballots without any legal basis whatsoever. All in all, these initial results only show that the revision is a waste of time and resources, resources that only Tolentino has. He is, after all, the political adviser to the President who has undertaken all efforts to destroy me and remove me from my office as Senator of the Republic.
Press Release

October 24, 2017 GORDON EYES AMENDING NATIONAL PROSECUTION SERVICE LAW TO ADDRESS BACKLOG OF PENDING CASES To address the backlog of 384,625 pending cases as of 2016 that is handled by the Department of Justice (DOJ), Senator Richard J. Gordon vowed to immediately look into a bill proposing amendments to the National Prosecution Service (NPS) law. During the deliberation of the 2018 budget of the DOJ, Gordon pointed out that the backlog of cases, both criminal and civil, should be addressed to stop criticisms that the country's justice system is very slow. "Mr. President, let me lay the predicate for this, ang caseload po nila ay 384,625 as of 2016. These are prosecution statistics. This is too much for any department. This is a caseload for several departments of justice...But I will look into this right away, because I think one of the big criticisms about our country is that our justice system is very, very slow," he manifested when informed that a bill had been filed by Senator Loren Legarda that was referred to the Committee on Justice and Human Rights, which he chairs. The DOJ admitted that the department needs to hire additional prosecutors, stating that there is already an allocation. However there is a need to amend the NPS law to expedite the hiring process to ensure the speedy processing in the appointment of prosecutors. Under Republic Act No. 10071 or the Prosecution Service Act of 2010, Prosecutors I to Prosecutors V shall be appointed by the President of the Philippines upon the recommendation of the Secretary of Justice. Meanwhile, prosecution attorneys and special counsels shall be appointed by the Secretary of Justice. Gordon assured that the Committee on Justice and Human Rights is prepared to work on the proposed bill immediately and he could sponsor the bill at the soonest time possible so it could be passed before the end of the year. "Certainly, the Committee on Justice should be ready to consider it and try to get it amended. Because you cannot have 384,625 cases and say that the President is not appointing lawyers because of that simple provision," he said.
Press Release

October 24, 2017 Legarda Lauds Military, Police in Marawi, Assures Assistance to Bereaved Families Senator Loren Legarda today lauded all the military troops and police personnel who fought in Marawi City, which eventually led to the city's liberation from terrorists. Legarda, Chair of the Senate Committee on Finance, also assured that the bereaved families of slain soldiers and policemen would be given financial support as mandated under the law. "We honor the bravery and gallantry of the personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) who were deployed in Marawi City, especially the 157 soldiers and six police personnel who sacrificed their lives defending the city from terrorists," said Legarda. "I extend my deepest condolences to the bereaved families of our fallen soldiers and cops and we will ensure that they will be provided what is due them. This is the only way we can repay them for their ultimate sacrifice," she added. The Senator noted that under Republic Act No. 6963, families of deceased or permanently incapacitated soldiers and policemen should receive special financial assistance for the next six months after the personnel's death or incapacity. The surviving spouse, or an employable child if the spouse is employed, should be given priority in employment in a government or agency or office where his/her qualifications are fitted. Moreover, all surviving children of the deceased or permanently incapacitated military or police personnel are entitled to scholarship up to college in a nonexclusive institution. Legarda said that this is assured in the 2018 national budget because aside from the funding for the free tuition in state universities and colleges (SUCs), there is a special provision under the AFP budget which states that "Thirty percent of the net proceeds of the firearms license fees collected by the PNP shall be used for scholarship privileges to surviving children of deceased or permanently incapacitated military or police personnel in accordance with RA 6963." Meanwhile, the National Housing Authority (NHA) said that under the new AFP-PNP Housing Program, families of soldiers and policemen who were killed in action are entitled to free housing units. The Senator said she will also look into the possibility of providing financial assistance to all soldiers and policemen who fought and survived the war. "We thank all our brave men and women who fought in Marawi. You have sacrificed so much to ensure peace and order in our communities. We salute you. In return, we want to be able to provide you with financial assistance and other forms of support, as a way of saying 'Thank you.' To all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, we want to express our gratitude to them by ensuring that the families they left behind will be provided with the necessary government support," Legarda concluded.
Press Release

October 24, 2017 Sen. Villar keynotes Int'l Convention on Conservation of Migratory Species Sen. Cynthia A. Villar was the opening speaker in the opening ceremony of the 12th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wildlife Animals (CMS COP 12) at the Philippine International Convention Center. Villar, Chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, was invited by Department of Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu, citing that the senator's participation in the event will highlight the significance and affirm the Philippines' commitment in ensuring the success of this important international event. "It is a great opportunity for me to be speaking in front of 1,000 delegates who are all very passionate about the conservation of migratory species of wild animals. It is even more significant for us that the Las Pinas- Paranaque Critical Habitat and Ecotourism Area was the selected site for daily early morning bird watching activities for the convention participants, "Villar said. Villar adds that it is very significant for the Philippines to be hosting the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) event as this is the only global convention specializing in the conservation of migratory species and migration routes. Other distinguished personalities who were part of the opening ceremony program were Zach Beaudoin, UN Foundation Competition winner, who read the statement and the other keynote speakers- Yann Arthur-Bertrand, Ambassador of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP); ystein Strkersen, Chairman of the Standing Committee on the Agreement on the Conservation of African Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds; Ibrahim Tinio, Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme; Sen. Loren Legarda, Chair of the Senate Committee on Climate Change; John Scanlon, Secretary General, Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora; Cristina Pasca Palma, Executive Secretary on the Convention on Biological Diversity and Eric Solheim, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. Dr. Bradnee Chambers, Executive Secretary, Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) delivered the Opening Address. The CMS is an inter-governmental treaty supported by the United National Environment Programme (UNEP) which provides a global platform for the conservation and sustainable use of migratory animals and their habitats. As of August 2016, CMS has 124 parties. The Philippines has been a party to the Convention since 1993 and is considered to be a major pathway for several species of migratory birds as well as turtles, sharks, whales, dolphins and fishes.
Author's Note: I recently built myself a new bookshelf in the kitchen, and in the process of reorganizing my ever-expanding book collection, I ended up blowing the dust off of more than a few majorly dog-eared pages. Old friends that carried me through college, my early days of faking it in fancy restaurants, my time as a test cook and writer, and some newer volumes as well. So, every weekday through the end of October, I'll be writing a short post featuring a food book that I really like. All of these books had a major influence either on my career or on my day-to-day cooking. They aren't necessarily the best or most essential cookbooks out there, but they are all worthy reads.

Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet was my first real introduction to the cuisines of Southeast Asia. I mean, I'd eaten at Thai and Vietnamese restaurants growing up, but it was only after reading this gorgeous book that I thought, Oh, I get it now.

That's because the book is far more than a simple recipe book. Rather than focusing on the cuisine of a specific country, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid trace the connections between flavors and cultures along the Mekong river. The book starts in Southern China and follows their travels through Burma, into Laos and Thailand, and finally down into Vietnam. With gorgeous photography (seriously, this is one of the best-photographed books you'll ever see) and compelling essays, Alford and Duguid capture a version of Southeast Asia that is at once peaceful, dynamic, and captivating. Never has a book caused me to want to book a plane ticket so quickly, though this urge was matched by an even stronger desire to jump into the kitchen.

From a culinary perspective, the authors contend that the foods native to this 3,000-mile-long strip of land pay particular attention to the harmony between four distinct flavors: hot, sour, salty, and sweet.

Of course, this isn't exactly accurate. Unlike, say, Fuchsia Dunlop or Rick Bayless, who spent enough time studying and living in China and Mexico, respectively, to write from a true cultural insider's perspective, Alford and Duguid take a knowledgeable, but very outside-in approach to Southeast Asia. In the 17 years that have passed since this book was published, dozens of fantastic texts on regional Thai, Vietnamese, Lao, and Southern Chinese cuisine have addressed the fact that the hot/sour/salty/sweet balance is a vast oversimplification. And in my own trips to Southeast Asia, I've found the region is quite a bit grungier and more hectic than the book makes it out to be. But these are all things I'm glad I discovered for myself.

As a general framework to guide home cooks, though, the four dimensional hot-sour-salty-sweet mapping works fantastically well. Given that my culinary training was mostly in the Western European tradition, I was used to tasting and adjusting for salt levels in dishes instinctively. Sourness or acidity was also in the back of my head, but not something I actively considered with every taste. Sweetness and heat? Forget itI didn't really consider them in my savory cooking. If something needed to be hotter I'd add some hot sauce or chili flakes at the table.

This book unlocked those last two dimensions of flavor for me, and got me cooking in a whole new way. What I found is that the one- to five-chili rating system you're used to seeing at Thai restaurants in the West does a disservice to the cuisine. Heat is intrinsically balanced and linked to other dimensions of flavor; simply increasing it is like tossing the largest kid in the class on one end of the see-saw: it hits hard and heavy, instead of striking an accessible balance.

I also really like Alford and Duguid's flexible approach to meal-planning. Rather than organizing dishes by region, they group dishes by their role at the table. The "Sauces, Chile Pastes, and Salsas" chapter has recipes for Yunnanese Chile Pepper Paste next to Vietnamese nuoc cham. Lao Stir-Fried-Eggs With Cellophane Noodles are paired with Thai-Style Chinese Greens in the "Mostly Vegetables" chapter. Many of these recipes come with photographs that are every bit as stunning as the images of landscapes and people that populate the book.

That said, if there's one big downside to Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, it's the recipes themselves. First off, there aren't as many as you'd expect a book this heavy and thick to house. Secondly, the results are hit and miss. Alford and Duguid are world-class travel writers and photojournalists, but their cooking and recipe-development chops leave something to be desired. Timing doesn't quite work how it's supposed to, and instructions are vague enough that when something goes wrong, you're left to yourself to try to figure out why.

I find it best to use their recipes in the same way that I use their photographs and essays: as aspirational tools. Enjoy them as introductions to new ideas or flavorsones that will hopefully inspire you to do more research, be it by traveling to Southeast Asia yourself or diving into other books and online resources to gather more data on particular dishes you'd like to master.

You can buy Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet here.
Telecommunications giant AT&T chipped in $5,000 for a festival co-hosted by a San Francisco supervisor who later helped dilute a law requiring the company to decorate its sidewalk utility boxes, according to filings from the citys Ethics Commission.

Records show that on Aug. 22, AT&T donated $5,000 to the Richmond District Neighborhood Center  sponsor of the Autumn Moon Festival  at the behest of Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer. Three weeks later, Fewer helped advance a law that allowed the company to pay fees instead of painting murals on its boxes or planting trees nearby.

Fewers chief of staff, Chelsea Boilard, said Monday that it was actually Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, not Fewer, who requested the donation. AT&T had reached out during the summer to Ting, who was also a festival host, Fewer was not involved in those conversations, Boilard said. Tings district director, Mark Chekal-Bain, confirmed that the assemblyman had asked for the donation.

But because Fewers name was on the event, she reported the contribution, Boilard said.

AT&T spokesman Steven Maviglio said the company has donated to the Richmond District Neighborhood Center many times over the past 15 years, and that this years award was part of a corporate campaign to fund community organizations that promote education, technology and economic growth.

Fewer is a member of the Board of Supervisors Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee, which approved the sidewalk utility box measure on Sept. 13, advancing it to the full board. The new measure revised a 2014 ordinance by former Supervisor Scott Wiener, who saw the army-green boxes as hideous sidewalk obstructions that should be spruced up with artwork and greenery.

AT&T has 305 of the boxes  bulky green or beige bunkers containing high-speed Internet equipment  installed throughout the city. There are an additional 155 boxes owned by other companies or by the city itself.

AT&T went to great lengths to pass the new measure, which allows companies to avoid the box-beautification requirements by paying a fee of $2,000 per box or $48 multiplied by the square footage of the boxs surface area  whichever is greater.

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.

It was sponsored by Supervisor Malia Cohen, who is running for the state Board of Equalization in 2018. She received a $7,300 donation from AT&Ts San Francisco lobbying firm, Lighthouse Public Affairs, and an additional $500 from Lighthouse lobbyist Matt Dorsey.

Cohen said the contributions from Lighthouse had not inspired her to write the utility box legislation.

Boilard said AT&Ts donation to the Autumn Moon Festival had not swayed Fewers votes in favor of the new law.

Members of the citys Ethics Commission have raised concerns about political trading in the form of behested payments. The commission is considering a measure that would bar officials from asking companies to donate to a political cause when they have a decision pending before the city.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
Backers of a ballot measure to divert a portion of San Franciscos hotel-tax revenue to pay for arts programs and homeless family services watched with dismay last year as their initiative won well over half the vote, yet still lost.

Now they may go back to the ballot  and thanks to a legal opinion by the city attorney, half the vote plus one will be enough.

City Attorney Dennis Herreras office told the Elections Department in a legal memo last week that, thanks to a recent state Supreme Court ruling, citizen-instigated ballot initiatives to raise taxes now need only a simple majority to pass instead of two-thirds, the standard that had been in place for more than 20 years.

The finding could help usher in a profound shift in the way in which public projects, like roads, schools or arts programs, are funded in San Francisco.

Ever since state voters passed Proposition 218 in 1996, special taxes  ones intended to fund specific projects  have needed a two-thirds vote to pass. However, in August, the state Supreme Court issued a ruling that appeared to apply that tough standard only to measures put on the ballot by government officials, not ordinary citizens.

The city attorneys memo said thats exactly what the ruling did  good news for the backers of the hotel-tax measure, Proposition S, which gained a 63.7 percent yes vote in November, and other citizens who qualify a tax measure by gathering signatures on petitions.

The city attorneys conclusion certainly means that we should expect to see more initiative-based tax proposals, for good and for bad, said Alan Auerbach, an economics professor at UC Berkeley and the director of the Robert D. Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance.

The state courts ruling had touched off a debate among tax policy experts, legal scholars and local officials over whether the justices meant to upend decades of precedent by relaxing the requirement for citizen ballot initiatives. The case itself had to do with whether the city of Upland (San Bernardino County) had violated the rights of the California Cannabis Coalition in 2014 when it refused to put a measure on the ballot that included a tax on marijuana businesses.

Despite lingering uncertainties about the courts intentions, and the prospect of future lawsuits challenging the ruling, it seems very likely that voters may now propose special taxes by initiative subject only to a majority vote, said the memo by Herreras office.

The issue of whether a tax measure could be approved by a simple majority, rather than a two-thirds majority  that was not clear from that (court) opinion, said John Arntz, director of the citys Elections Department. We needed to know what the number is to indicate whether something passed or not, so thats what the city attorneys office is providing guidance on.

Jonathan Moscone , chief of civic engagement at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and a co-author of Prop. S, said the city attorneys memo has reinvigorated discussions among the arts community about putting a similar measure in front of voters next year . Prop. S would have diverted slightly more than half of the citys 14 percent hotel tax to the arts and to programs to help homeless families. All the taxs revenue now goes to the citys general fund.

Im heartened, and I think anybody would find this heartening, Moscone said. It changes the threshold for the city to coalesce around the will of the majority of the people and democratizes the process in a way that gives citizens more of a voice to make change. Its a powerful time to be a citizen in San Francisco.

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.

Anti-tax activists and some state Republican lawmakers, however, are chafing at the prospect that the courts ruling will make it easier to pass new taxes. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which represented Upland before the state Supreme Court, has asked the justices to clarify their ruling and has filed a petition to reargue portions of the case. Assemblyman Chad Mayes, R-Yucca Valley (San Bernardino County), has introduced legislation that would ask voters to reinstate the supermajority requirement for special taxes through a constitutional amendment.

You use the supermajority to ensure greater consensus on really, really important matters, said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. At the very core of it, this opens the door to additional taxation.

Requiring only a simple majority to pass citizen-sponsored measures could embolden interest groups, like casino operators, stadium backers or unions, to try to levy new taxes for their own benefit, Coupal said. His group has also raised concerns about local governments doing the same  colluding with interest organizations to enact new taxes more easily.

The court will decide by the end of November whether to grant a rehearing on the two-thirds issue.

The case is not over, Coupal said.

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa
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Kara Zordel has worked with homeless people for nearly two decades and has learned that everyone on the streets has their own painful story for why theyre there.

Sometimes its a major health problem. Or the breakdown of a marriage. Or the loss of a job. Or the inability to pay rent. Sometimes its all of the above, mixed into one of those atomic life bombs, as Zordel put it.

Ironically, the longtime CEO of Project Homeless Connect, the citys one-stop shop for homeless people to receive services, is now experiencing the fallout of one of those atomic life bombs herself.

After three years of struggling with a mysterious neurological condition that causes seizures, tremors and falls  but which myriad doctors have not been able to diagnose  Zordel can no longer perform the job shes loved for the past seven years.

Shes officially leaving her post next week, though shes been confined to working from home for the past few months. She and her husband split up after weathering the illness proved too hard on their marriage.

Without her job and its health insurance  and without a partner to support her  Zordel cant afford the medical care she needs. And she can no longer pay the rent on their lovely home in Bernal Heights.

Zordel said that despite her $120,000 annual salary, shes in dire financial straits. Even with good health insurance, shes racked up $30,000 in medical bills on top of the $60,000 in student loans she already owed.

So shes packing it all in to move, at least for a while, into a cheap rented flat in Alicante, Spain, a beach town that she says has a big expatriate community with access to affordable health care. She plans to write about her work with the homeless and, for the first time in her life, just slow down.

Im going to Eat Pray Love the s out of this, Zordel said in her trademark candid, funny way during an interview at her home on a recent afternoon.

Zordel, 43, said she didnt even like the 2006 bestseller by Elizabeth Gilbert about traveling the world after a divorce, finding the author self-indulgent and self-centered. But, hey, it worked for Gilbert, so the constantly whirring Zordel says shell give it a try.

Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle

For somebody like Zordel, who joked she cant even sit still long enough to use her homes hot tub, having nothing to fill her days is daunting.

Its this really weird thought of, now what? she said of her suddenly empty calendar.

I need to be selfish and say, Im broken. Im not just broken physically right now, Im broken in every part of my life. Ive never felt this way before. Its very uncomfortable.

Zordel said that despite her discomfort with being so public, she wanted to tell her story because she wants people to understand that everybody  from a homeless person on the streets to a CEO  has value. And anybodys fortunes can rapidly turn.

People look at me and would have no idea whats actually happening in my life, Zordel said. The thing Ive learned from this work is everybody has a story, and everybody has a pain point. Finding compassion can be really difficult when you dont know the whole story.

Zordel said she also wanted to share her story in light of the frustrating national conversation about health care. She said too many of the countrys leaders are blaming sick people for their fates rather than figuring out how to pay for their care.

Remember Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., who said in May that there are people who live good lives and whove done things the right way and implied that they should pay less for health insurance? Zordels comments about him arent printable in a family newspaper, but suffice it to say she vehemently disagrees.

The culture that is being created of thinking people who are ill have no value, its disheartening, to say the least, she said.

Besides, if anybodys led a good life, its Zordel. As a child, she was often homeless  traveling around the country with her father, a conservative Baptist pastor, who moved the family to wherever a congregation needed him, regardless of whether it could pay.

But despite her rough beginnings, Zordel worked her way through Columbia University, where she earned a dual masters degree in social work and public policy in 2002. She worked at a homeless shelter in the Bronx and then ran an eviction prevention project for New York City.

In 2010, Zordel was recruited to run Project Homeless Connect, a bimonthly day of service for homeless people thats usually held at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. Two years later, she launched Every Day Connect, which offered services on a smaller scale out of the nonprofits offices on Van Ness Avenue.

She also was instrumental in founding Lava Mae, the nonprofit that provides mobile shower services for the homeless; HandUp, which runs online fundraising campaigns for individual homeless people; and Replate, which facilitates the donation of extra food from events and offices to the needy.

If she thinks its a great idea, she gets behind it 100 percent and works with you to make it happen, said Doniece Sandoval, founder of Lava Mae. Losing her is definitely a sad day.

Zordel tried to brush off her tremors and falls for a long time, until an experience at the office earlier this year convinced her she had to step back. A homeless man came in, saying hed just been beaten up. Zordel knelt and tried to put bandages on his face.

I couldnt  my hands werent working, she said. Thats when I realized I was actually doing more harm than good. Because he thought I was afraid of him, and he kept being like, Im not going to hurt you!

She felt OK about resigning after finding a replacement: Meghan Freebeck, founder of Simply the Basics, which provides hygiene products to homeless people. Next week, Freebeck will lose the acting part of her title to become, simply, CEO.

These are huge shoes to fill  Im kind of swimming in them, Freebeck said of replacing Zordel. Its just such a humbling honor that she trusts us to do this, to achieve her vision.

Zordels future is one big question mark, but heres a certainty: San Francisco is a better place because she was here.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf
Amid the recent tsunami of #MeToo accounts by victims of sexual predators, reader Elizabeth Platt forwarded a job listing she found on Craigslist. The person being sought, in the Marina/Cow Hollow district, was described as a multi-tasker/assistant.

After specifying that this job would be right for someone looking for more adventure in life, the notice asked: Are you an attractive, motivated young woman looking to expand your horizons? There was a bit of blather about professional skills and street smarts, and then, Are you ready to use your sexuality as an asset in a safe environment and professional etiquette?

The company seeking this employee described itself as a SF Investment Firm ... looking for an open-minded self-starter who is responsible and is interested in bringing fun into different projects all the time ... Typical day at the office may include: answering the phones or procure carburetor rebuilt kit or hike up your skirt and flirt with potential clients.

Was this for real? Her, too? I tried to answer the ad, but no one returned my call. I wrote to Craigslist and even Craig Newmark, with no response. After a couple of days  perhaps the job was filled  the ad had been taken down. Its message, however, lingers.

P.S. At Richard Stephens memorial gathering, I ran into actress Diane Baker, executive director of the Academy of Art Universitys School of Acting. She has long experience working in Hollywood, so I asked her about the me, too phenomenon. Im not shocked, said Baker, ... But its a great thing because every man who has tried something is shaken.

She said that while women in strong positions of power can afford to say no, its the defenseless we have to fight for.

As to her own experiences, For years, I could have talked about Hitchcock, she said. But Tippi did it and I didnt need to.

A few months ago, when in response to Nordstrom dropping Ivanka Trumps clothing line, Kellyanne Conway and the whole White House crowd seemed to be hawking the first daughters wares, Modern Appealing Clothing filed a class-action suit claiming that was unfair competition. People who didnt like Trump cheered them on. But many Trump supporters, less favorably inclined, responded by calling the store and sharing fashion criticism of MACs often avant-garde offerings.

Last week, owners Ben and Chris Ospital opened Have a Bay Day, a monthlong exhibition of artists works reacting to those responses. Just by the front door, for example, is Sam Tripodis Potato Sacks for Whores, a table set for a tea party with porcelain plates decorated with mincing lords and ladies, adorned by Tripodi with quotes from critics describing the clothes (as potato sacks for whores, for example).

The legal action came to naught, but the exhibition is in its fightin spirit. To quote the revered political activist Flo Kennedy, When you spit in someones eye, youre not trying to drown them. Youre just saying you dont like them.

A solo show of works by Wayne Thiebaud will be at the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum at UC Davis next year and Wayne Thiebaud: Land Survey, opens at Allan Stone Projects in New York on Thursday, Oct. 26. The artists first major solo show was in 1962 at the Allan Stone Gallery, which  along with its heir, the Projects gallery  has held 27 Thiebaud exhibitions since then.

 Jim Hannah saw the T-shirt on a customer waiting in line for ice cream at Bi-Rite: Peace is not healthy for generals and other killing things.

On the middle island of Lombard Street, Doug Kroll spotted a panhandler with the sign, Donations needed for DNA test. My partner may be my sister.

Abe Battat says his British houseguests told him they couldnt find Lou Rawls in the bathroom (a rim-shot-worthy joke that may have been passed down through a generation or two of comedians).

A sign Richard Delman saw stenciled on the rear bumper of a pickup truck: Grow your own dope. Plant a politician.

Leah Garchik is open for business in San Francisco, (415) 777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @leahgarchik

Public Eavesdropping

Im here, manifesting.

Young woman on cell at Montclair Village Peets, overheard by Steve Koppman
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Three San Francisco restaurants made Esquires latest Best New Restaurants compilation, but unlike past years, this years iteration encompasses more than 365 days worth of openings.

Its a format shift that covers the time when the list went dormant in memory of Esquires late food and drink editor, Josh Ozersky, who died in 2015. The acclaimed writer was appointed in 2014, replacing the outlets longtime food figure John Mariani.

The latest version of the list comes via Jeff Gordinier, Esquires current food and drinks editor, and even though it leans heavily on New York brands, it manages to include San Franciscos Tartine Manufactory, the Morris, and the Charter Oak in St. Helena.

Below are a few quotes pulled from the Esquire restaurant descriptions.

No. 6. The Morris: The Bay Area worships its produce, sure, but thanks to chef Gavin Schmidt and sommelier Paul Einbund, the Morris serves up a messier, tawdrier spin on the usual California love. Its San Francisco farm-to-table with muddy knees and hay in its hair.

No. 14. Tartine Manufactory: Whether youre craving something familiar (a BLT and a chocolate-chip cookie) or something whose components lead to a group analysis at the communal table (the tiny orblike cucumbers in your bean salad are known as cucamelons), you will come away thinking about how Alice Waters was right  the quality of ingredients really does make a difference.

No. 18. The Charter Oak: Three-star joints can be perilously precious, prone to this egg is not what it seems trickery, but at the Charter Oak, where chef Katianna Hong (above) commandeers the fires of a raging hearth, eggs are eggs (dusted with salt and cooked right in the fudgy zone between soft- and hard-boiled), ribs are ribs, vegetables are newly plucked from nearby soil.

When it comes to food awards and recognition, the star of stars is the Michelin Guide, which is being released Wednesday, Oct. 25. The selection announcement was first slated for Oct. 12 but the Wine Country region was still in the throes of unprecedented wildfires.

On Oct. 5, the Michelin Guide unveiled its 2018 Bib Gourmand list for the Bay Area  a collection of moderately priced restaurants that also serves as a precursor to Michelins annual announcement of the stars.

While its important to point out how Bib Gourmand restaurants are not eligible for Michelin stars, its worth noting that neither the Morris, Tartine Manufactory or the Charter Oak received Bib Gourmand status. Take from that what you will.

Check back for details on the Michelin Guide stars.

Justin Phillips is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JustMrPhillips
The scandals involving Harvey Weinstein, Silicon Valley and Fox News have shone a spotlight on corporate tolerance of sexual harassment by executives. The U.S. Supreme Court recognized people could sue for such harassment more than 30 years ago. But at least 25 percent of women say that they are still harassed in the workplace. So, why does sexual harassment persist? A surprising part of the story lies with federal judges. Despite coverage under the law, when an employee alleges sexual harassment, a judge will likely dismiss the case.

Lets look at the facts of some dismissed cases: co-workers and a supervisor engaged in conduct toward a female employee, such as making comments about the workers breasts, requesting to lick whipped cream and wine off of her, and rubbing her shoulder, arms and rear end; a supervisor asked a female worker to go to hotel room and spend the night with him, asked her for a sexual favor, constantly referred to her as Babe, and unzipped his pants and moved the zipper up and down in front of her; a supervisor told a worker she had been voted the sleekest posterior in the office and on another occasion deliberately touched her breasts with some papers he held in his hands.

In deciding whether to dismiss a case, a judge examines the paper records of the evidence  a written account of what the witnesses will say and relevant documents. Using this information, if the judge thinks a reasonable jury could not find for the employee, then the case is dismissed. When employers request dismissal of discrimination claims, including harassment claims, more than 70 percent are dismissed in whole or in part, according to a 2007 federal study.

This high dismissal rate should give us pause to consider whether judges are making the right decisions. Judges are not supposed to dismiss cases based on their own opinions of the evidence. But, their own opinions are all they have, and a judges opinion may differ from a jurys. A 2015 Columbia Law Review study showed this. It examined cases where judges dismissed cases, appellate courts subsequently reversed those decisions, and juries ultimately tried the cases. In 25 percent of these cases, juries decided the opposite of what the trial judge had said the jury could find.

For structural reasons, judges are more likely than juries to reject claims of sexual harassment. First, the judiciary is not as diverse as the general population. For example, most federal judges are men  people whom studies often show are not as empathetic toward claims such as sexual harassment. Many federal judges also come from privileged backgrounds, possibly viewing situations differently than many people from the community. Second, most judges  unlike jurors  do not deliberate together and thus will not consider different perspectives. Third, judges are subject to pressures to dismiss cases. They must report the number of requests for dismissal that they have not decided, and unsurprisingly more dismissals occur when those reports are due. Finally, judges may want higher positions in the judiciary or elsewhere, which can influence their decisions.

Sexual harassment is only part of the story.

Courts also regularly dismiss horrific cases of racial harassment. An example includes where: plaintiff testified he saw displays of the rebel flag on tool boxes and hard hats, the letters KKK on a bathroom wall and on a block-saw console, and a noose in another employees locker; another supervisor told him that if he looked at that white girl he would cut him; another supervisor called him black boy on one occasion.

More than 25,000 charges of workplace harassment are filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission each year.

The founders thought judges could not fairly decide cases like this, and consequently, vested juries  not judges  with decision-making authority.

If a shift to juries were to occur, then the sexual harassment that persists in companies will be subject to more public exposure and perhaps less of this bad corporate behavior will be tolerated in the future.

Suja A. Thomas is a professor of law at the University of Illinois College of Law. She has co-authored Unequal: How Americas Courts Undermine Discrimination Law with Sandra Sperino (Oxford University Press, 2017). David Lopez is the former general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and a partner at Outten and Golden, in Washington, D.C.
SACRAMENTO  Following reports of widespread sexual harassment in the state Capitol, the Senate hired two outside investigators Monday to look into allegations and examine policies.

Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, announced he has hired the Berkeley law offices of Amy Oppenheimer to investigate, on the Senate side, claims by women that groping, harassment and retaliation are an unacceptable reality in Sacramento. De Leon said another firm, CPS HR Consulting of Sacramento, will review the Senates harassment and discrimination policies and recommend improvements in how the Senate responds to complaints.

The Assembly made no similar announcement. Its rules committee oversees complaints, with serious allegations referred to an outside investigator.

Theres always more employers can do to protect their employees, de Leon said in a statement, noting that the Senate hired the firms in response to reports of a pervasive culture of sexual harassment in the Capitol community. Everyone deserves a workplace free of fear, harassment and sexual misbehavior.

The allegations in the state Capitol were inspired by a recent movement among women in Hollywood identifying men who have been frequently accused of sexual assault and harassment, including the powerful film industry mogul Harvey Weinstein. In Sacramento, more than 300 women who work in politics began signing a letter on Oct. 13 written by Adama Iwu, a government relations executive for Visa, that said, As women leaders in politics, in a state that postures itself as a leader in justice and equality, you might assume our experience has been different. It has not.

Men have groped and touched us without our consent, made inappropriate comments about our bodies and our abilities, said the letter signed by female lawmakers, lobbyists and legislative staffers. Insults and sexual innuendo, frequently disguised as jokes, have undermined our professional positions and capabilities. Men have made promises, or threats, about our jobs in exchange for our compliance, or our silence.

The letter and accompanying website, We Said Enough, prompted many women to speak out about their experiences with sexual assault or harassment in the Capitol, including one allegation from a lobbyist that a male legislator trapped her in a bathroom and masturbated in front of her.

Iwu said Monday that it remains unclear how the investigators where chosen or what the scope of their work will be.

We would have liked something more transparent, Iwu said. This smacks of people investigating themselves, and thats difficult for us to have confidence in.

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez
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Even as the national debate over access to health care insurance continues to rage, San Francisco has quietly become a city where nearly every resident is covered.

That achievement is due in part to the San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance, one of the countrys most innovative, and most hotly debated, health care initiatives. When it took effect in January 2008, requiring businesses with 20 or more employees to contribute money toward their health care expenditures, 10.4 percent of San Franciscans  15 percent of the working-age population  were uninsured.

Focus on health care The unintended consequences of health care costs in SFs...

As the programs 10-year anniversary approaches, the ordinance, together with the federal Affordable Care Act, appears to have helped close that gap almost entirely.

According to the U.S. Census 2016 American Community Survey, 96.7 percent of San Franciscans now have health care coverage, well over the statewide average of 92.7 percent. When you add in the City Option, a program created by the ordinance that provides limited health care services for 13,500 uninsured residents and manages medical reimbursement accounts for 186,000 others, that figure brushes up against 100 percent.

The two work incredibly well together, Supervisor Hillary Ronen said of the federal and municipal laws.

Along with that success, though, some significant issues have surfaced.

Perhaps the biggest is the fate of one aspect of the City Option, a growing pool of money that employers have placed in medical reimbursement accounts, or MRAs, for workers to help cover what insurance does not. Those funds, managed by the citys Department of Public Health, now amount to $160 million, The Chronicle has learned, not including another $17 million in more than 28,000 accounts deemed inactive and recently closed for lack of use.

The growing pool of MRA money, along with the thousands of accounts so far made inactive, suggests that many workers are not using their accounts fully or at all. The average amount in each individual account is $1,478, the Public Health Department says, but the average annual claim amounts to less than a third of that, $441.

And while the city is obligated to retain the MRA funds for the use of enrolled employees only, health plan officials are currently reviewing just how the accounts, both active and inactive, will be managed going forward.

Some question whether the city and some employers are doing enough to educate workers about accessing the funds set aside for them. Others have wondered if the city has properly reconciled the requirements of the ordinance and the Affordable Care Act, which has provided much of what San Franciscos initiative was meant to do.

Meanwhile, the city has not publicized any data demonstrating the programs successes and problems. The San Francisco Health Plan, which oversees the City Option for the Department of Public Health, has not been required to publish figures on its usage. The citys Office of Labor Standards Enforcement is supposed to put out annual reports showing Health Care Security Ordinance contributions, but the last published report is from 2013.

The City Option is essentially a stopgap solution that has become institutionalized, said Micah Weinberg, president of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. When we passed the Health Care Security Ordinance, the idea was this is what we needed to get to the passage of the ACA or some other health care legislation. But it is rare that government programs are put in place and then they go away.

The City Option was created, alongside the Health Care Security Ordinance, to provide two separate patches for health care coverage gaps. It would channel employer set-aside funds to Healthy San Francisco, which provides services to San Francisco residents, or to the MRAs, which anyone who worked for a qualifying San Francisco business could have.

After the Affordable Care Act expanded Medi-Cal coverage in 2013, the number participating in Healthy San Francisco dropped from nearly 60,000 to 13,500. The citys administrative costs shrank as well, from $159.9 million in 2013-14 to $74.4 million in 2015-16.

According to the San Francisco Office of Labor Standards Enforcement, in 2016, employers affected by the ordinance spent 89 percent of their set-aside funds, about $2.05 billion, on insurance premiums. The remaining 11 percent went toward privately managed MRAs and City Option programs.

In 2014, the Board of Supervisors closed a loophole in the 2008 ordinance that had allowed employers to reclaim funds theyd paid into private MRAs after two years if workers hadnt used them. Since January, 100 percent of those funds must be held in perpetuity.

Part-time and low-income workers, particularly in the retail and hospitality sectors, are more likely to have MRAs rather than full insurance. Many others use their reimbursement accounts in conjunction with high-deductible coverage plans.

The City Option, say workers who do use it, provides a much-needed boost to cover health care costs.

Damon Bird, 39, and his partner, Lauren Loiselle, are both cicerones, the beer equivalent of sommeliers. When they moved to San Francisco from Dallas three years ago, they discovered their new restaurant jobs came with a major perk: health insurance for the couple, plus a medical reimbursement account, which allowed Bird to have much-needed hernia surgery he had put off for years.

In Texas, he was paying more than $300 a month for an insurance plan with a $6,000 deductible. Saving enough money for surgery was impossible.

In San Francisco, Loiselles job as the manager of a Mission bar and restaurant offered her and Bird health insurance with a much lower deductible. Bird asked his employer at the time to contribute his own health care funds to an MRA. Last year, the account had accrued enough money for Bird to have the operation. His final out-of-pocket cost: $500.

Russell Yip/The Chronicle

It was pretty miraculous, he said recently.

According to the Department of Public Health, the City Options MRA program has paid out $244 million in claims since its founding in 2008.

After nearly 10 years, the reimbursement process appears to work well for those who have figured it out.

Lindsay Stripling, an artist and the manager at Outerlands restaurant in the Outer Sunset, pays for a Kaiser HMO plan out of pocket and then uses the City Option to cover expenses like orthopedic shoes and root canals. She receives a quarterly statement from her employer letting her know how much money has been transferred into the account. She submits receipts for medical expenses through the City Option website, receiving a check within a few days.

She has become a City Option evangelist to co-workers and friends. But, she cautioned, You have to be on top of it yourself and show incentive to save your receipts. If you dont use (the account), the money is stagnant.

Bird concurs. His employer didnt know enough about the program to help him access the funds in his name, so he went to the office of the San Francisco Health Plan, which oversees the City Option for the Department of Public Health.

Its confusing, and unless you spend some time with it, no one has any clear answers, Bird said.

Language barriers may be one factor, despite the fact that the programs website, as well as its print educational materials, are available in English, Chinese (spoken Cantonese), Tagalog and Spanish.

Shaw San Liu of the Chinese Progressive Association said his organization, which often counsels non-English-speaking workers in the restaurant industry, said: Nine times out of 10, talking to workers eligible for an account, they didnt know about it and it was difficult to access.

Colleen Chawla, deputy director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said, I feel like restaurant owners or other employers have a role in making employees know theyre making contributions on their behalf. Employers, if theyre making that contribution, Im sure they want their employees to use it.

But not many employers, it appears, are seeking help in accessing the program. The San Francisco Health Plan has six program administrators available for telephone and in-person training for employers and workers. Agency staffers, though, say they receive relatively few requests from employers each month.

Employers, meanwhile, particularly in the restaurant industry, continue to complain that the ordinance deters some businesses from adding staff for fear of incurring the ordinances requirements.

While the amount of unused MRA funds surprised her, Supervisor Hillary Ronen said the fact that individual accounts are not being fully accessed does not trouble her.

Many of the lowest-cost health insurance plans carry huge deductibles, she said, creating a gap that MRA funds can fill. Sure, they might not go to a doctor now, Ronen said, but if they get into a car accident and have huge bills, they could use up their MRA in one day.

Last year, the city decided to deactivate the accounts of employees who had not spent any funds for two years or did not respond to multiple notices warning them their accounts might be closed.

Greg Wagner, chief financial officer for the Public Health Department, emphasized that the money in those accounts will remain within the City Option program, as required by ordinance. City controller Ben Rosenfield confirmed that the funds will remain in the San Francisco Health Plans budget, and wont end up in any other part of the citys funds. Officials say participants only need to call to reinstate an account.

The San Francisco Health Plan is currently in the process of doing an actuarial review to figure out, of those dollars, how much of that (amount) is likely to have people come back and reopen the account, Wagner said.

The city will hold a pool in reserve for those reopened accounts and pass any excess to the other parts of the program.

Ronen said she was glad to hear that the San Francisco Health Plan is accruing more information about how people use the accounts.

It will be really useful to look at the data, Ronen said. How is this working? Did we move in the right direction? Do we need to tweak things?

Jonathan Kauffman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jkauffman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jonkauffman

Health care

by the numbers

239,790 Number of San Francisco employees covered by insurance* under the Health Care Savings Ordinance in 2016 (does not include family members or people covered by their work in other ways)

192,000 San Franciscans currently enrolled in Medi-Cal (Medicaid)

186,471 Total number of City Option medical reimbursement accounts opened since 2008

28,628 Accounts deactivated since September 2016

$244 million Amount of claims City Option MRAs have paid since 2008

$1,478.26 Average amount held per person in a City Option MRA (as of August 2017)

$441.03 Average claims made per person per year

Coverage rates

Percentage of residents who reported health care coverage in 2016:

San Francisco: 96.7%

San Jose: 95.0%

San Diego: 92.3%

Los Angeles: 88.7%

California: 92.7%

U.S. as a whole: 91.4%

New York City: 92.2%

Chicago: 90.4%

Dallas: 77.8%

Who participates in the Health Care Security Ordinance?
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For nearly a decade, Tom Silargorn has made a name cooking what many consider some of the most interesting and distinct Thai food in San Francisco.

At Lers Ros, which now has three locations in San Francisco, Silargorns food challenges diners to think beyond familiar (and often overly sweetened) dishes like pad thai with balanced yet complex Thai specialties like pad ped pla lai, a stir-fried eel with green peppercorns and galangal.

With his latest project, Esan Classic (739 Larkin St.)  located just across the street from his original Lers Ros location  Silargorn wants to push the envelope even further by narrowing his culinary focus to the cuisine of northeastern Thailand. Bordered by neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia, the Esan region (also called Isan or Isaan) is known for food that is more spicy, more sour and more flavorful than other Thai cooking, says Silargorn. The chef grew up in the coastal town of Chonburi, about 45 minutes southeast of Bangkok; he fell in love with Esan cooking a long time ago.

Esan food is more tasty. More real. Its the heart of Thai culture. Everything is from Esan, Silargorn says.

Joining Silargorn in this new venture is his friend and longtime Lers Ros cook, Chanon Hutasingh, who oversees the day-to-day operations in the kitchen while Silargorn continues to focus on Lers Ros.

Liz Hafalia/The Chronicle

Hutasingh  who learned to cook from his father, a chef in Bangkok  has been working with Silargorn to develop the dishes at Esan Classic. Over the past five years, the pair has traveled to Thailand regularly to get inspiration for the new restaurant.

When you go to Thailand, this is what you will find on the menu, Silargorn says.

While a few Lers Ros favorites, like nuer tod (fried sun-dried beef) and the requisite pad thai make cameos on the menu, Silargorn says that about 70 percent of the dishes on the Esan Classic menu  an epic tome of over 120 items  are new.

Among these new dishes are sai on tod kratiem (fried pork intestines with garlic) and tom sabb nuer peuay (a spicy beef soup thats flavored with lemongrass, chile and galangal).

Another specialty is pla sam ros  a deep-fried whole fish thats topped with a garlicky, sweet, sour and spicy sauce and crispy basil leaves. (See recipe.) Its a dish the chefs say captures the spirit of Esan cooking. Not only is it an impressive main course, its also surprisingly easy to make at home (see recipe).

In addition to celebrating the food of northeastern Thailand, Silargorn views Esan Classic as a continuation in his efforts to give back to his community in the Tenderloin.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

The chef helped guide the development of the menu at Pak Nam, a nearby Thai restaurant on Larkin Street owned by a friend. He also has a nephew who runs nearby Thai noodle joint Lapats, and hes working on establishing a partnership with other neighboring Thai restaurants for a project called Eat Tenderloin, which will encourage more diners to visit this stretch.

Before, I was just thinking to open a restaurant and sell something, says Silargorn. Right now, Im thinking Im going to make the Tenderloin a destination.

Esan Classic: 739 Larkin St., San Francisco. (415) 800-7646; (415) 800-7979; esanclassic.com (website under construction)

Sarah Fritsche is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sfritsche@sfchronicle.com Twitter/Instagram: @foodcentric
Californias chief justice called for a sweeping overhaul of the states bail system Tuesday, saying that the long-standing practice of holding suspects in jail until they can post enough money to free themselves before trial is systemically unfair to poor people.

In a statement accompanying the release of a judicial report suggesting a number of broad reforms to the states pretrial detention system, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye endorsed the notion of doing away with Californias money-bail system in favor of one that uses risk-assessment and supervision to determine a defendants threat to public safety and likelihood of appearing for court dates.

I support the ... recommendation to replace our current system of money bail with one based on a defendants risk to the public, Cantil-Sakauye said. She said she hoped the report would serve as a framework for future discussions with lawmakers and Gov. Jerry Brown on the issue.

Her statement Tuesday reflects similar remarks she made in her March 2016 State of the Judiciary address, during which she suggested that the states money-bail system was both prejudiced against the poor and ineffective at preventing crime. We must not penalize the poor for being poor, she said at the time.

The vast majority of state courts across the country require suspects to post bail after being arrested in order to get out of jail before their trial or next court date. Each year, state court systems create guidelines to determine how much bail to assign to specific crimes, but judges have wide latitude on setting the amount for every defendant before them.

The money-bail system has long been regarded as essential to providing incentive to defendants to return to court, in order to get their money back. Some defendants whom judges deem to be dangerous or an acute flight risk are denied bail altogether.

Critics have long assailed the system as one that creates a two-tiered system of justice, one in which poor people who cant make bail are required to sit behind bars while those who can afford to pay are able to walk free.

Approximately two-thirds of Californias jail population  nearly 48,000 people  are sentenced and awaiting court proceedings, Cantil-Sakauye wrote on the Harvard Law Reviews blog last week. That figure takes in people who pose public safety risks or are otherwise ineligible for release, but it also includes a large number of people who are eligible for release but have not, or cannot, afford to post bail, she wrote.

Court systems across the country have instituted a number of pretrial diversion programs aimed at keeping low-level offenders out of jail. And a two bills working their way through the state Legislature seek to prevent defendants from being jailed simply because of their inability to make bail.

The money-bail system in San Francisco was thrown into sharp relief in 2015 when Equal Justice Under Law, a civil-rights group, filed a federal lawsuit against San Francisco and Sheriff Vicki Hennessy, challenging the practice. The California Bail Agents Association successfully lobbied to take up the defense of the current system after Hennessy, City Attorney Dennis Herrera and then-Attorney General Kamala Harris all declined to do so.

Phil Telfeyan, Equal Justices executive director, said his organization and the Bail Agents Association will both be asking the judge in the case next week to issue a final ruling, which could be handed down by the end of the year.

I applaud Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauyes working group for recognizing the fundamentally unfair qualities of the money-bail system and calling for an end to the discriminatory practice, Telfeyan said.

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa
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The fight to protect San Franciscos cultural enclaves against gentrification and displacement typically takes the form of opposition. Activists show up at public meetings to decry upscale housing, to bash new office towers, or to disparage chain stores or fancy restaurants catering to well-heeled newcomers.

But the speed with which these neighborhoods are changing suggests that it hasnt been working very well.

Now Supervisor Hillary Ronen is betting that those fighting to save whats left of San Franciscos cultural districts would be better served by saying yes.

We all agree that gentrification is happening  everyone is on the same page there, Ronen said. But mostly the response to gentrification has been to say no  to keep people out, to prevent new buildings from being built. Its been no, no, no, no, no. I wanted to create a tool that helps us fight the displacement of the rich cultural districts by saying yes.

On Tuesday, Ronen will introduce legislation that would create a process to designate cultural districts  and, she hopes, a set of tools to preserve, stabilize and grow those communities.

The legislation would direct city departments  Public Works, the Mayors Office of Housing and Community Development, the Planning Department and others  to find ways to strengthen these districts. Those could include increasing affordable housing, attracting and keeping more businesses, putting up signs or public art, and changing street names.

It would also direct the mayor to create funds to help each cultural district. They would probably be paid for with a combination of money from the citys general fund, grants and payments that developers make to offset the effects of large projects.

The legislation defines a cultural district as a geographic area or location that embodies a unique cultural heritage. To qualify, a district would have to have a concentration of cultural and historic assets of culturally significant enterprise, arts, services, or businesses, as well as a large number of residents who are members of a specific cultural, community, or ethnic group.

Groups hoping to have an area designated as a cultural district would need the backing of the mayor, a member of the Board of Supervisors or a city department. The proposed district would go through a detailed study  including an assessment of historic buildings and businesses  and would need the approval of several city commissions in addition to the Board of Supervisors.

The legislation recognizes six cultural districts that already exist or are being designated: Japantown, Chinatown, the Missions Calle 24 Latino Cultural District, Comptons Transgender Cultural District in the Tenderloin, and two areas in the South of Market: the Filipino Cultural Heritage District, and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer Leather Cultural District.

Ronen said she doesnt have any preconceived notions about which other districts might be designated. But she said the Vietnamese American community in the Tenderloin, the Fillmore Jazz District and the African American community in the Bayview would be strong contenders.

Every cultural district will look a little different, Ronen said. This is not creating a cookie- cutter approach.

San Franciscos ethnic enclaves like Chinatown, Japantown and the Mission District have long attracted visitors and been mainstays of a $9 billion annual tourism industry, Ronen said.

Raquel Redondiez, project manager of the Filipino Cultural Heritage District, said residents and visitors are hungry for the only-in-San Francisco experience that ethnic districts provide. The response to the monthly Filipino night market her group started in August in the Old Mint building at Fifth and Mission streets, on the third Friday night of the month , has been overwhelming, she said.

The first month we had 10,000 people show up  thousands couldnt get in, she said. Families came all the way from Stockton.

Although the South of Market has been losing Filipino businesses and residents since the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, there is still enough of a concentration to build on, Redondiez said. Establishing a formal cultural district would help focus attention and city resources on preserving arts groups and affordable housing, and would help businesses open and stay afloat, she said.

SoMa is transforming before our very eyes, which represents both challenges and opportunities, Redondiez said. We want to make sure that as the neighborhood is built out, we dont have a Filipino cultural district with no Filipinos in it.

Supervisor Malia Cohen, a co-sponsor of the legislation, said discussions have been going on for years about what an African American cultural district in the Bayview might look like. The legislation will codify what Bayview neighbors have been talking about for the last 15 years, she said.

Cohen said the discussion will help define what the community values  everything from arts and music to entrepreneurship to medicine to the role African Americans have played on the industrial waterfront.

We are going to capture the nuances and make it our own, Cohen said. What blocks should be included? What buildings? These types of questions have not been answered.

J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen
A suspect was arrested in connection with the death of man found bludgeoned on Sunday near the Fox Theater in downtown Oakland, police said Monday.

A man with a baseball bat ran up from behind the victim in the 1900 block of Telegraph Avenue, a witness said, before hitting the victim in the head. The witness said he saw the victim fall to the ground while the attacker ran back down the street.
One of the two people fatally gunned down in a rampage Monday in the Lake County town of Clearlake Oaks was the 85-year-old father of the gunman, who also shot and wounded a woman and a California Highway Patrol officer, authorities said Tuesday.

Investigators have yet to determine why 61-year-old Alan Ashmore went on the deadly shooting spree, but said it started just after 11 a.m. at the home of his father, Douglas Ashmore.

Alan Ashmore fatally shot his dad with a semiautomatic handgun outside the elderly mans home in the 13000 block of Anchor Village in the Clear Lake Keys area of Clearlake Oaks, said Lt. Norm Taylor of the Lake County Sheriffs Office. The suspect also shot a 22-year-old Middletown woman in the foot during an argument inside the house, Taylor said.

Ashmore also fired at several neighbors, but missed, Taylor said.

During the spate of violence, which lasted about 90 minutes, Alan Ashmore fired shots at several houses, a winery and two gas stations and set wildfires. He left authorities with seven crime scenes to investigate, Taylor said.

Even before the gunfire began, neighbors noticed trouble was afoot, Taylor said. Richard Braden, 64, a longtime friend of Ashmore, was seen at Douglas Ashmores residence banging on the front door and windows, Taylor said.

When no one answered, Braden parked nearby on Anchor Village and sat in his car, only to be shot to death by Ashmore, Taylor said.

Ashmore then tore around town in his white Chevrolet Tahoe, armed with a Remington 1200 12-gauge semiautomatic shotgun, a Raven arms .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol and numerous rounds of ammunition, Taylor said.

He drove to a neighbors house on Anchor Village and shot at the residence, prompting a woman inside to jump out a window and suffer non-life-threatening injuries, Taylor said.

Ashmore shot at several other houses, including one of a former employer, before a CHP officer tried to pull him over, Taylor said. The officer was shot in the leg during the confrontation and was treated at a hospital and released, said Officer Kory Reynolds of the CHP office in Kelseyville.

Ashmore fled in his sport utility vehicle to a Chevron station in the 13200 block of Highway 20, Taylor said.

Bob George, the owner of the Chevron station, said he was in a backroom receiving a delivery from a beer vendor when he heard a great, big, loud boom.

He said Ashmore entered the stations market just as the vendor was leaving. He said Ashmore bumped into the vendor and nearly knocked him over.

The vendor turned to him and said, What the hell are you doing? and the guy turned around and shot the gun, George said. He was like 5 feet away from the vendor when he shot the gun.

The round missed the vendor and hit an advertising sign, breaking the front window.

As George ran out of the back door, he saw Ashmore running to his vehicle with a shotgun and a 2-liter Pepsi. The beer vendor, who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, returned fire, shattering the windows of Ashmores SUV, George said.

After the shooting at the Chevron, Ashmore drove to the Power Mart on Highway 20 near Foothill Boulevard, where he stole a pack of cigarettes, a cigarette lighter and had an altercation with another person, Taylor said. There were no reported injuries.

As he drove east on Highway 20 toward High Valley Road, Ashmore set several wildfires, Taylor said, just days after the Sulphur Fire tore through the area and destroyed more than 150 homes while burning 2,207 acres. The fires were quickly put out by the Northshore Fire Protection District and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Taylor added.

Ashmore made a pit stop at Brassfield Winery, on the 10000 block of High Valley Road, where he shot at a person there, but missed, Taylor said.

Police caught up with Ashmore and chased him until he ran into a roadblock set up by CHP officers and a Lakeport police officer at Bartlett Springs and High Valley roads. He surrendered without incident and was arrested on suspicion of murder and robbery.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @SarRavani
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The three people who were arrested by Fremont police on suspicion of fatally shooting a man at a hotel over the weekend were identified as Fremont and Newark residents, police said Monday.

Luis McLaughlin, 34, of Newark, Robert Bettencourt, 30, of Fremont, and Leticia Hermosillo, 31, of Fremont, were taken into custody on murder charges Sunday night in Hayward, police said.

A 48-year-old man, who was not identified, was killed about 11:35 p.m. at the Extended Stay America Hotel on the 5300 block of Farwell Drive.

Police received a 911 call that a man was in the lobby with a gunshot wound. The victim was shot inside a hotel room by someone he may have known, police said.

When officers arrived, they administered first aid just outside the hotel until paramedics came on scene. He was pronounced dead shortly after.

McLaughlin is being held at Santa Rita Jail without bail. His arraignment is scheduled for 9 a.m. on Wednesday.

Bettencourt is being held at the Fremont Jail without bail and will be arraigned on at 2 p.m. on Tuesday. He has a record of domestic violence and unlawful driving or taking of a vehicle.

Hermosillo is also being held at Fremont Jail without bail and is scheduled to be arraigned at 2 p.m. on Tuesday. Her prior record includes arrests for identity theft, and possession of a controlled substance, stun gun and tear gas by a convicted felon.

This is the first non-officer-involved killing in Fremont since 2015.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
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Most did not notice the slight figure dressed all in black on San Franciscos Pier 14, but a few who did testified Tuesday about the mans unusual behavior before and after the single shot rang out that killed Kate Steinle.

On the second day of the trial into the shooting that intensified a national debate around immigration enforcement and sanctuary policies, the prosecution sought to bolster its assertion that the defendant, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, intentionally fired toward Steinle as she walked along the waterfront with her father on the evening of July 1, 2015.

The defense, which says Garcia Zarate found the gun wrapped in a T-shirt under a bench before it fired accidentally in his hands, questioned the reliability of the witnesses recollections.

A tourist, Michelle Lo, testified that she saw Garcia Zarate spinning in his seat and laughing to himself just before a bullet pierced Steinle in the back.

Now Playing: A "freakish ricochet" after a stolen gun went off in the hands of the homeless man who found it led to the accidental shooting of Kathryn Steinle as she walked on Pier 14 with her father two years ago, according to Matt Gonzalez, chief attorney for t Video: Fox5Atlanta

Later, Maria Moreno, an elementary school teacher who had been visiting San Francisco, told jurors she witnessed the aftermath of the shooting from her fifth-floor room in a nearby hotel, and saw Garcia Zarate hurrying away with a scowl on his face and his hands balled into fists in his pockets.

Neither witness could settle the main question in the Superior Court trial, which is whether the shooting was intentional or accidental, but prosecutors are seeking to build evidence establishing that Garcia Zarate acted with the implied malice, or intent, needed to convict him of second-degree murder.

Through a Cantonese interpreter, Lo testified she was visiting San Francisco from the East Coast when she and her sister brought their children to the pier. Just before the shooting, she said, she glanced briefly at Garcia Zarate as she walked by him.

Garcia Zarate was dressed in black, grinning and looking at everyone who passed him as he spun on a seat near the middle of the pier, Lo said. She said she noticed him because of his movements, and that she continued to the end of the walkway to take pictures of San Francisco Bay.

In cross-examination, Matt Gonzalez of the public defenders office questioned Los recollection, asking if she remembered telling officers after the shooting that she did not see the mans face.

He asked why Lo did not initially tell officers she saw Garcia Zarate laughing and grinning, and suggested her identification of the defendant may have been influenced by seeing photos of him after his arrest.

I saw him physically that day, and then I saw his photograph, Lo said. That is how I remember him.

Gonzalez questioned the teacher, Moreno, about her description of Garcia Zarates hands balled into fists, and why that differed from photos she took of him. Moreno stood by her recollection, saying that while two photographs may show him with one hand out, she saw him with a scowl on his face.

Her roommate, Aryn Carpenter, who was with her in the hotel room, testified that she and Moreno zeroed in on the man because he appeared to be the only one leaving the pier as others rushed to help Steinle, though he walked slowly, almost casually.

Gonzalez is seeking to prove the shooting was an accident that occurred when his client stumbled upon the .40-caliber Sig Sauer.

The gun had been stolen from a U.S. Bureau of Land Management rangers car four days before the shooting, when the off-duty ranger drove into the city and parked along the Embarcadero. No one has been arrested in the burglary.

Because Garcia Zarate, a 45-year-old Mexican citizen, was in the country illegally, the case added fuel to the anti-immigration fervor that helped propel President Trump into the White House.

Before the shooting, Garcia Zarate had been on track for a sixth deportation after serving 46 months in prison for felony re-entry into the country. But he was transferred from federal custody to County Jail in March 2015 on an old warrant alleging he fled marijuana charges in 1995.

When city prosecutors discharged the case, the Sheriffs Department released Garcia Zarate despite a federal request to hold him for deportation, relying on the citys sanctuary policies.

The case sparked a push against the policies, and the House of Representatives in June passed Kates Law, which would boost punishment for people who repeatedly enter the U.S. illegally.

San Francisco has stood by its sanctuary laws, with officials saying they benefit public safety by ensuring that immigrants, including witnesses to crimes, feel comfortable working with authorities. Gov. Jerry Brown this month signed a bill to create a statewide sanctuary policy.

Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo
The old Chronicle building's past unfurled with the turning of each leaf in a photo album, whose existence was unknown to all but a few who work in the building. It was shared with me by Richard Geiger, a longtime Chronicle librarian.

I've spent a good part of the last 23 years in the fine old San Francisco Chronicle building that sits at 5th and Mission streets. There's not a lot left from 1924. In April 1906, the only thing that existed on the site was rubble and ash, in the shadow of one of the city's only downtown survivors, the Old Mint building.

When Richard, who knew of my love of the city's history, pulled out the old album, I was blown away by the images. As I rapidly approach retirement, I thought it befitting to wind up my column with an article about the place, since it's now home to more than just the Chronicle.

The paper got its start in 1865, when the de Young brothers borrowed a $20 gold piece that had to be returned within the week. Fast forward to 1924, when M.H. de Young spent $1.75 million for the 5th and Mission location, and proudly hailed it as the "most modern newspaper plant on earth." The main entrance, which was at 925 Mission Street, had "groined stone Gothic vaults in the lobby, with walls of variegated marble and mosaic marble tiled floors."

The 3rd floor was the heart of the building, and in many ways, still is. Most facets of publishing a newspaper  from editorial to printing and preparing for distribution  were done at this location, and can be seen in the rare cache of photos documenting a great newspaper era.

Designed by the architectural firm Weeks and Day, there's not much left of the once Gothic style details inside the structure, due to nearly a century of modernization. In the my years here, I've worked in many parts of the building. Ironically, I now sit in the area where the paper's founder and publisher, M.H. de Young, once had an office.

I recently learned from Dave Byers, the head of building services, that the room in the corner of the suite, below the iconic clock tower, was not M. H. de Young's office. It was his apartment! He lived in Hillsborough at that time, which in 1924 was not a short jaunt. I also learned that there were traces of the old pneumatic system in the basement, a pair of now defunct walk-in safes, and parts of the old terrazzo and marble floors. One of the stairways still has the original iron and oak railings, with marble wainscoting.

The exterior, while very recognizable through the decades, was stripped of some of its ornamentation, possibly in the 1960s. The Gothic style, which originally covered the 11th to 16th century ecclesiastical builders of Europe, bears a lizard, birds and other creatures taken from nature. During the latter part of this era, Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type. And William Caxton put through the press the first books printed in the English language. So, it was fitting to depict sculptured scenes of the early days of printing. The details were designed by Charles P. Weeks, of Weeks and Day.

In 1924, de Young had his office in the old Chronicle building on Market near Kearny Street disassembled and moved to the new Chronicle building (see photo #1 in the gallery). The woodwork in the 3rd floor lobby still matches that seen surrounding the fireplace in that photo.

The photos, mostly taken by a photographer named Gabriel Moulin, are evocative of an era when newspapers lined doorsteps, and reporters wore vests and garters on their arms. They had cigarettes dangling from their lips as the newsroom chattered with current events, decades before the digital age. When the Chronicle building was new, the pneumatic system was used to communicate with other parts of the building. You'd insert a tube and send it to another department. Banks used them in their drive-throughs not that many years ago.

One of the photos that amazed me showed two people on a "man lift." You would stand on a circular disk, hold on to a firehouse-like pole, then be transported to another floor. When I first started working here, in 1994, there was still a little barbershop. I learned from the article, published in 1924, that the new San Francisco Chronicle building featured a full-service barber shop. It had three barbers, a manicurist and porter service! It was located in the lobby.

Almost unbelievably, Moulin Studios, which was founded by the photographer Gabriel Moulin in 1909, is still in business. Moulin moved to San Francisco with his family in 1884, and worked as an assistant to the city's leading photographer, I.W. Taber. He was only 12 years old. He finished school by taking classes at night.

In 1906, Moulin was working with R.J. Waters & Co. On April 18 of that year, Moulin pleaded with Waters to move their archives to a safe place, due to the approaching fire, subsequent to the devastating earthquake. Waters didn't heed his warning, and all the archives were lost. Gabriel went to work independently, and took many photos of the ruins. The Moulin Studio archives contain more than 10,000 unique photographs, many never published or seen by the public. The last part of the slideshow shows some of the vestiges of the early days.

I want to thank the many readers who have shared my passion for San Francisco's history. It's been quite a journey here at 5th and Mission streets. I started out in one of the tougher departments, customer service for circulation. I came from a background in crisis intervention. Boy, I had no idea that a wet or missed paper would rise to a greater challenge. But, I felt people's frustration, and put myself in their shoes. I was proud to help resolve any and all problems that our subscribers encountered. For nine years, I taught others in the department just how to do that.

I was part of the inception of customer service moving into the next century, when it went digital. That opened the door to a position at SFGATE, a site that I love and admire. I've had many responsibilities in my years at the Gate. And, once in a while, I'd contribute an article about antiques, collectibles, and especially San Francisco's past. The readers ate it up, and that's where I wind down. Thank you Brandon Mercer and Bill Disbrow for the incredible opportunity. As of June 1, 2017, I'll be retiring.

Bob Bragman is a producer for SFGATE. His writing reflects his love of the Bay Area, in addition to his passion for vintage pop culture, ephemera and vernacular photographs. To see more of his content, please click here.
WASHINGTON  Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who has tangled with President Trump for months, announced Tuesday that he will not seek re-election in 2018, saying he will no longer be complicit or silent in the face of the presidents reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior.

Flake made his announcement in an extraordinary, 17-minute speech on the Senate floor, in which he challenged not only the president but also his partys leadership. He deplored the casual undermining of our democratic ideals, the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedom and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency that he said has become so prevalent in U.S. politics.

The remarkable moment came just hours after Trump had renewed his attacks on another critic in the Republican Party, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, saying he couldnt get elected dogcatcher in Tennessee. Corker, appearing more weary than angry, said the president is debasing our country.

Flakes dramatic decision and the back-and-forth between Trump and Corker appeared to mark a moment of decision for the Republican Party. A week ago, Sen. John McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, spoke in Philadelphia, decrying the half-baked, spurious nationalism that he sees overtaking U.S. politics. Former President George W. Bush, in yet another speech, lamented, Weve seen nationalism distorted into nativism.

But Flake, choosing the Senate floor for his fierce denunciation, appeared to issue a direct challenge to his party. Without mentioning Trump by name, Flake, 54, took direct aim at the presidents policies, notably his isolationist tendencies, but also his behavior and that of his aides. He had already touched on these themes in a book he published in August that was highly critical of the president.

We must stop pretending that the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal, Flake said. They are not normal. Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified. And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy.

It is often said that children are watching, he continued. Well, they are. And what are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, Why didnt you do something? Why didnt you speak up? What are we going to say?

As he spoke, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, McCain and Corker sat listening on the Senate floor. The speech was delivered less than an hour after Trump met with Republican senators for lunch, amiably discussing the partys push for tax cuts.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg is a New York Times writer.
This article first appeared on The Oregonian/OregonLive

A 36-year-old southern Oregon woman underwent a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy based on genetic tests that medical professionals mistakenly said showed she carried cancer-causing genes, she claims in a $1.8 million lawsuit.

Elisha Cooke-Moore's lawsuit says that she had the radical, life-altering surgeries only after her gynecologist, Dr. William Fitts, determined that genetic blood tests indicated she had a 50 percent chance of getting breast cancer and up to an 80 percent chance of getting uterine cancer. The suit states her nurse practitioner, Lori Johns, also misread the test results and recommended a mastectomy.

Cooke-Moore's lawsuit says Fitts erroneously told her she had the MLH1 gene mutation and Lynch syndrome -- which indicate an increased risk of colorectal, uterine, ovarian and other cancers. But she later discovered after the surgeries that her test results indicated no such thing, according to the suit and her attorney.

"Quite frankly, we are stumped to why they would make this mistake," said Cooke-Moore's attorney, Christopher Cauble.

The lawsuit was filed last Thursday in Curry County Circuit Court.

Fitts' attorney didn't return a request Monday from The Oregonian/OregonLive for comment.

The lawsuit also lists Curry Medical Practice and Curry Medical Center as defendants. A spokeswoman declined to comment, and referred questions to Virginia Razo, chief executive officer of the Curry Health Network, which encompasses the medical practice and center. Razo didn't return a message seeking comment.

In addition, the lawsuit lists surgeon Jessica Carlson based on claims that she should have reviewed the test results and picked up on the other medical professionals' alleged error. Neither could be reached for comment through their attorneys.

Cooke-Moore is a mother of five with children between ages of 9 and 18. She manages a laundromat with her husband in Gold Beach. She said she's on the Oregon Health Plan and asked her doctor about getting screened for cancer genes given that her grandmother and mother both had cancers.

Cooke-Moore told The Oregonian/OregonLive that she didn't learn her medical providers had made a mistake until she was reading through her medical file and happened across the test results.

But by then, she'd already undergone a hysterectomy in August 2016 by Fitts and a double mastectomy in October 2016 by Carlson. She said she called the lab to verify she was reading the results correctly, then was floored.

"It's terrible, I can't even find the words to tell you," Cooke-Moore said. "As a woman, they took what God gave me. I don't even feel like I am one at times."

A hysterectomy puts women, such as Cooke-Moore, into forced menopause. It also prompts patients to receive hormone therapy.

Cooke-Moore's lawsuit also claims Carlson, the surgeon, botched the mastectomy and placement of implants. Cooke-Moore said she's had to have more than 10 corrective surgeries over the course of months, she's disfigured and she's still in pain every day.

"Almost every week, every seven to 10 days, I was in there for surgeries," Cooke-Moore said.

She said her counselor has diagnosed her with post traumatic stress disorder.

Cooke-Moore shared a photo of her bare chest with The Oregonian/OregonLive, as it looks today, because she said she doesn't want anyone else to go through the same thing.

"Sometimes I don't believe this is real," Cooke-Moore said. "How could this happen to me?"

The lawsuit doesn't explain why doctors would remove her breasts based on the diagnosis of a MLH1 gene mutation and Lynch syndrome. But Cooke-Moore said Fitts also told her she had the BRCA1 gene mutation, which is known to indicate a higher risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

Genetic screenings for future cancer risks and the ability to detect a faulty BRCA1 gene became widely talked about in popular culture in 2013 after actress Angelina Jolie announced that she had been diagnosed with the gene mutation and underwent a preventive double mastectomy. In 2015, she announced that she'd followed up with another preventive surgery by removing her Fallopian tubes and ovaries.

Read Cooke-Moore's lawsuit here.

-- Aimee Green

agreen@oregonian.com

This article first appeared on The Oregonian/OregonLive
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Lonely Planet, a popular travel guide book publisher, has released its list of the 10 best cities for world travelers to visit in 2018.

Among them is the hurricane-hit San Juan, Puerto Rico, which was selected prior to the storms. Following the disaster, Lonely Planet noted that editors believe "it will rebuild and remain the enchanting city it's always been."
1 Syria conflict: After losing major strongholds and key urban areas across Syria, including its self-proclaimed capital, the city of Raqqa, the Islamic State now controls only 5 percent of the countrys territory, according to Russias defense minister. Thats a dramatic decline from the height of the rise of Islamic State in 2014, when the extremist group seized about a third of both Syria and Iraq. Also Tuesday, a report by the security consultancy Soufan Group said at least 5,600 people from 33 countries have returned home after spending time in territory controlled by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

2 Egypt arrests: Egyptian police arrested 12 suspected militants in a province southwest of the capital, Cairo, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday, days after a deadly attack on the countrys security forces killed at least 16 policemen. The ministry statement said the militants were cadres of Hasm, which authorities say is a breakaway faction of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood that has targeted security troops in recent years in a series of brazen attacks. The arrests were made in Fayoum province, 50 miles southwest of Cairo, it said. Police also seized 13 weapons and two explosive devices.
4th Civil Relations Group, Civil Relations Service Armed Forces of the Philippines/Associated Press

CLARK, Philippines  The Islamic State sent at least $1.5 million to finance the recently ended siege of the southern Philippine city of Marawi, with the assault leaders using the 2014 Islamic State seizure of the Iraqi city of Mosul as a blueprint, the Philippine military chief said.

The battle defeats of the brutal group in Syria and Iraq, and now the Islamic State-aligned gunmen in Marawi, however, show a major vulnerability of the extremists: Their audacious territorial occupations tend to crumble over time as theyre cornered in urban settings by the relentless firepower of U.S.-backed offensives, Gen. Eduardo Ano said late Monday.
The agreements between the Labour, New Zealand First and Green parties are good news for investment in railways, public transport, regional development, and green technology, and even farmers get a break on how quickly or fully they will be brought into the emissions trading scheme.

Prime Minister-elect Jacinda Ardern released the coalition agreement with NZ First and the confidence and supply it will have with the Green Party to secure a six-seat majority in the 120-member Parliament, promising to "work together to provide New Zealand with a transformational government".

Most of the details come as little surprise, reflecting the overlap between the policies the three parties campaigned on before the Sept. 23 election.

Ministerial responsibilities will be released tomorrow, but notable is the decision to give the climate change portfolio to the Greens, while NZ First ministers will have key infrastructure, regional development, foreign affairs, state-owned enterprises, forestry and the children's portfolio, which Ardern had been widely tipped to take.

Other key Green portfolios are Land Information, covering the Overseas Investment Office, Conservation, and Women.

Among notable initiatives to get the nod are a $1 billion-a-year Regional Development (Provincial Growth) Fund, an NZ First policy, and endorsement for the Greens' $100 million green infrastructure fund, which they hope to leverage into $1 billion of new investment in green technologies.

Labour gave ground on its proposal to tax commercial water use to the extent that there will be no such move "in this parliamentary term".

Among areas where NZ First did not get its way: the review of the Reserve Bank Act will not include exchange rate targeting; the ETS remains in place, and there is no mention in the agreement of Labour agreeing to repealing recent Resource Management Act reforms enhancing Maori consultation provisions and which NZ First labelled "separatist".

Ardern said the new government was determined there would be a "ban" on the sale of existing homes to non-resident foreign buyers, but remained opaque on how that might be achieved while keeping New Zealand in the group of 11 countries still supporting the controversial Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, which may progress at the November APEC leaders' summit in Vietnam if renegotiations can either be avoided or finessed in time.

"We will find the mechanism in order to meet that goal," she said, refusing to be drawn on whether existing provisions allowing punitive tax measures to effectively discourage foreign investment in existing homes.

NZ First leader Winston Peters volunteered that high stamp duties had not worked in other countries.

The coalition will also "strengthen the Overseas Investment Act", with a view to existing provisions being better enforced, and a "comprehensive register of foreign-owned land and housing" will be established.

Existing irrigation subsidies under the previous government's Crown Irrigation scheme will be honoured and farmers will enter the ETS only if the independent Climate Commission to be established by the new government recommends it. If so, 95 percent of agricultural emissions would not be covered by the ETS for a start, compared with Labour's pre-election policy that 90 percent free allocation would apply.

The NZ First agreement also promises reviews of government procurement to improve opportunities for New Zealand businesses, investigate capitalising KiwiBank to allow it to become the government's banker when the current contract with Westpac expires, increase penalties for fraud and corporate tax evasion, and review how unemployment is measured.

The minimum wage will rise progressively to $20 per hour over the next four years, starting with a move to $16.50 in April 2018, but with the track for further increases yet to be determined and the final increase to that level occurring in April 2021.

As well as the regional investment fund, an NZ Forestry Service will be re-established, although the Greens' policy of planting one billion trees is not specifically mentioned.

The NZ First agreement includes a commitment to make the government transport fleet "emissions-free" by 2025/6 "where practicable".

NZ First also secured a commitment to "introduce and pass" a 'waka jumping bill', to prevent an MP elected for one party from joining another without first facing an election or by-election, reflecting NZ First's experience in the 1996-99 government, when several of its MPs abandoned the party.

(BusinessDesk)

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New Zealand shares eked out another gain as the market digested the details of the governing deals made by the incoming Labour government, with A2 Milk hitting a fresh record while retirement village stocks fell.

The S&P/NZX50 Index edged up 0.55 points, or 0.007 percent, to 8,130.10. Within the index, 21 stocks rose, 21 fell and eight were unchanged. Turnover was $205 million.

Matt Goodson, MD at Salt Funds Management, said the market was focused on the new government and figuring out the relative winners and losers from the policies announced as part of the deals Labour has made with New Zealand First and the Green Party.

Retirement stocks are set to be one of the biggest losers and starting to decline before the September election as Labour's polling improved. Goodson said the stocks have been huge beneficiaries of rising house prices, and moves to lessen immigration and increase house building will change the backdrop for those companies.

Ryman Healthcare was the worst performer, down 3.7 percent to $8.85. Metlifecare dropped 2.6 percent to $5.73, and Summerset Group Holdings fell 2.2 percent to $4.85. Arvida Group slipped 0.9 percent to $1.17, while outside the benchmark index Oceania Healthcare dropped 3 percent to 98 cents.

A2 Milk, which has booked strong gains this year as its sales in China continue to improve, was the best performer, up 3.6 percent to $8.28.

"Particularly in the Australian market, there is a small number of stocks that attract momentum-type money," Goodson said, adding that the stock has benefited from the weaker kiwi dollar against the Australian dollar, along with other exporters. A study from the University of Auckland's Liggens Institute, released over the weekend, showed A2 Milk can help with symptoms of lactose intolerance, although Goodson said the research was "more of a marketing angle until more information is available."

Freightways rose 2.6 percent to $7.62, Z Energy gained 2 percent to $7.14 and Property for Industry advanced 1.9 percent to $1.63.

The Labour/NZ First coalition deal included plans for a full review of retail power pricing has been promised, although no further details have yet emerged. Goodson said the market is still trying to figure out what form the review will take.

"It's hard to say at this point exactly what this means, the impacts on the listed gentailers remains to be seen and it hasn't had a noticeable impact today," he said. Genesis Energy, the biggest energy retailer in New Zealand, rose 0.8 percent to $2.43, while Mercury New Zealand gained 0.4 percent to $3.445. Meridian Energy dropped 2.4 percent to $2.82 and Contact Energy fell 1.8 percent to $5.55.

Fletcher Building shares are in a trading halt and were last at $7.96, having dropped 25 percent this year, ahead of tomorrow's annual meeting as a review of its Building + Interiors (B+I) business unit hangs over the company's 2018 earnings outlook.

"The company is taking the necessary time to carefully consider this matter. We expect the trading halt to cease on Wednesday 25 October 2017, with the announcement of earnings guidance for the 2018 financial year," it said in a release to the stock exchange. Fletcher also said it expects to announce a new CEO prior to market opening tomorrow.

(BusinessDesk)

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Vodafone New Zealand's pilot programme for the Government Communications Security Bureau showed the Cortex technology could "significantly" dent malicious software incursions.

The country's second-biggest internet service provider launched the 'Malware-Free Networks' pilot by the GCSB last year, using top-of-the-line technology to protect a small number of its commercial customers from a growing number of cyber attacks. GCSB was scheduled to report back to Cabinet in the first quarter of this year with options for the future of programme, with any extension needing ministerial approval.

"GCSB has provided a report to Cabinet on the Malware-Free Networks pilot indicating its potential to disrupt a significant volume of malicious activity," a spokesman said in an emailed statement. "We are continuing to work with Vodafone to maintain the Malware-Free Networks capability until a decision has been made about post-pilot options, and will provide a further report back to Cabinet."

Malware threats accounted for about 17 percent of the government's Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert NZ) direct responses in its three months of operation, the second most common category behind phishing.

Any potential extension will now fall to the new government, with Prime Minister-elect Jacinda Ardern indicating she planned to take the intelligence portfolio, and ministers are expected to get their warrants on Thursday.

The GCSB had been keen to test its Cortex technology with an ISP since 2014, however, Cabinet wanted the intelligence agency to report back before signing off on such a deal.

The Cortex system became public when former Prime Minister John Key declassified some documents in response to claims by Intercept journalist Glenn Greenwald and former US National Security Agency contractor-turned-whistleblower fugitive Edward Snowden that New Zealand's GCSB embarked on plans to implement mass metadata surveillance, including the tapping of the Southern Cross Cable, in 2012 and 2013, in an initiative called 'Speargun'.

Project Cortex wasn't seen as causing material privacy issues, with controls including how data is access, stored, shared and disposed of. The business plan said there will be no mass surveillance, and that data will be accessed by GCSB only with the consent of owners of relevant networks or systems.

(BusinessDesk)

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PGG Wrightson has hired former Gold Coin/Zuellig Agriculture head Ian Glasson to take over the Kiwi rural supplies business starting next month.

Glasson replaces Mark Dewdney, who signalled his departure in June, and has an extensive career in agricultural business including Gold Coin, where he was responsible for running a billion-dollar business including animal feed operations and farming ventures, and related Zuellig business CB Norwood Distributors, a farm machinery business in Australia and New Zealand.

"Ian brings impressive qualifications for leading an agricultural business such as PGW and we are pleased to have him join the company," chair Alan Lai said in a statement. "Ian will remain an external director of SunRice, one of the largest branded rice food companies in the world, and is looking forward to relocating to Christchurch with his family for his role at PGW."

Dewdney, a former chief at Livestock Improvement Corp, replaced George Gould in charge of Wrightson, coming in just after the rural services firm wrote off $321 million from the goodwill accrued in the 2005 merger with Pyne Gould Guinness. Since then, Wrightson has posted stable earnings despite last year's dairy price slump.

Wrightson increased annual profit 5.7 percent to $46.3 million in the June 2017 year, even as sales were weighed down by wet autumn conditions hampering the New Zealand harvest and dragging on the firm's seed and grain business.

The shares last traded at 57 cents and have gained 15 percent so far this year.

(BusinessDesk)

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Fiona Mackenzie, head of external investments at the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, is leaving to take up a position as head of direct wealth for First NZ Capital.

FNZC chief executive James Lee confirmed that Mackenzie will take up the position in the new year. The Super Fund did not respond to questions.

Mackenzie joined NZSF in 2011 and was previously head of markets and strategy at NZX. Before returning to New Zealand, she worked within Morgan Stanley's institutional equities division in New York and San Francisco, and at Credit Suisse in New York as part of their e-commerce product development team.

The Super Fund was set up in 2001 to help meet the country's future pension needs. It returned 20.7 percent after costs, before New Zealand tax in the year to June 30 and finished the year valued at $35.37 billion, an annual increase of $5.27 billion.

Between 2003 and 2009, the government contributed $14.9 billion the fund but suspended payments in response to the global financial crisis. Under the previous National-led government, contributions were scheduled to restart in 2020/21.

However, the new government - led by Prime Minister-elect Jacinda Ardern - has said it will resume contributions to the fund to help safeguard the provision of universal superannuation at age 65 within the first 100 days in office.

(BusinessDesk)

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A merged media entity of the country's biggest newspaper publishers could cut coverage quality or introduce a paywall without losing much advertising revenue, disadvantaging the public, the Commerce Commission's lawyer told the Wellington High Court.

In the sixth day of Stuff and NZME's appeal against the regulator's decision earlier this year, James Farmer QC continued setting out the commission's case for rejecting the merger. The media companies argued interdependency between reader numbers and advertising revenue would prevent it from increasing costs to consumers or reducing quality, but Farmer said that was not a universal truth and had no regard to the facts of this case.

Farmer said it was obvious the merger would result in cost savings and synergies for the media companies, otherwise they wouldn't do it. Those savings would translate into reduced quality of news coverage, but that wouldn't be seen by all audiences, as some readers wouldn't be aware of what they were missing out on, he said.

The media companies' lawyers argued the prospect of reduced advertising dollars created incentives for the merged company to maintain quality news coverage. However, Farmer said there may be very little impact on advertising revenue as the number of readers wouldn't necessarily decrease enough to cut ad sales even if quality declined.

"The commission came to the conclusion that the cost savings might be with it because they would not translate into such a loss of readers that there would be detrimental impact on advertising revenue," Farmer said. James Every-Palmer, another of the commission's lawyers, will argue more fully on that point later in the case, he said.

Farmer made a similar argument on the issue of a paywall, saying the current competition between NZME and Stuff prevents either from imposing a paywall but a merged entity would have no such competitive concerns. The commission had found that a paywall post-merger would likely be more expensive and restrictive than paywalls that could be introduced by either of the companies without the merger, he said.

"A paywall could be introduced without losing a disproportionate amount of revenue through loss of readers," Farmer said. "That's the issue. That's the commission's assessment, and this court has to be satisfied it is not able to make that assessment and it wasn't open to it to make that assessment.

"Bearing in mind the lack of evidence put before the commission on that question, our submission would be the commission is perfectly entitled to make that assessment."

Farmer also said the Commerce Commission was well within its jurisdiction under the Commerce Act to consider the issue of plurality in rejecting the merger, under its concern for public benefits or detriments of the merger. The media companies argued that's outside the scope of the regulator's considerations.

(BusinessDesk)

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NZME updates investors on strategic progress

IPL - Interim Results HY23

NPH - 2022 Full Year Results

November 16th Morning Report

ALF - Mark Franklin

Geneva Appointments new Head of Sales and Lending

A shiny new system or the Wazgij of planning systems?

THL - Apollo shareholders approve merger

TWL - TradeWindow and EMA partner-up to build export capability

November 15th Morning Report


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Philippa Haas would like her remains scattered into the sea. Judith Barnes wants her ashes spread over a nice spot in Jugiong.

The pair don't want to die - but they're happy to talk about what should happen when they do.

Philippa Haas of Toscan Dinn Funerals, and death doula Judith Barnes. Credit:Jamila Toderas

"I find death as exciting as birth," Ms Barnes, an "end-of-life doula", said.

"It's the next big thing. Birth's the first big thing, death's the next big thing, and there's all this wonderful circus in the middle."
Siblings Luke Dorsett and Kate Goodchild at their mum Kim's 50th birthday.

Enough mucking around. Let's take a look at today's headlines.

Welcome to the middle of the week. We're looking at a top of 25 degrees today and a minimum of nine. Our friends at Weatherzone say there's a pretty high chance of showers, so again, pack your umbrella.

A year on from the horrendous Dreamworld tragedy, the amusement park's owners are refusing to admit liability for the suffering of families of two of the victims, Canberra mother Kate Goodchild, 32, and her brother Luke Dorsett, 35.

Lawyers for a number of family members, Aulich Civil Law, last year gave Ardent Leisure Limited notice of their intention to make claims for damages for personal injury, wrongful death, and loss of dependency arising from the accident.

Ardent has also received a notice of claim with respect to the estates of Ms Goodchild and Mr Dorsett.

But more than 10 months later, Ardent Leisure continues to deny liability for the majority of the claims.

Michael Inman has the story here.
Workers in Woden have described the "terrifying moment" they saw a group of young people with their feet dangling from the roofs of two abandoned buildings.

On Monday afternoon, Department of Health staff in the building across spotted the youths on top of the nine-storey Alexander and Albemarle buildings, which have sat vacant for seven years awaiting demolition.

People on the roof of the abandoned Woden building on Monday afternoon.

"They were jumping from one roof to another," one worker said.

She said her department had watched the site become a target for vandals "with great alarm" since Health staff were moved out of the buildings, but things had "gotten worse" over the past few days.
An "industrial scale" dump on a residential property near the ACT border is visited by hundreds of trucks from Canberra every day, concerned residents say.

The Yass Valley Council says the dumping is not dangerous or illegal, but concedes there could be compliance issues with "the quantity of material going on to the site".

Protest organiser John Connelly stops a moving truck outside the ANU construction site. Credit:Karleen Minney

On Tuesday residents from Wallaroo, NSW, picketed a construction site at the Australian National University in a protest against the dumping.

For months clean fill soil from the university's Union Court redevelopment has been trucked across the border to be dumped at a residential property on quiet Oakey Creek Road.
Labor politicians have been accused of boycotting an awards night focused on mental health because of a feud between the construction industry and union peak bodies.

No Labor MLAs attended the Master Builders Association ACT's dinner on Thursday, despite an invitation being extended to all ACT Legislative Assembly politicians.

A spokesman for the Canberra Liberals' asked Chief Minister Andrew Barr if the no-show was because of Unions ACT's influence. Credit:Karleen Minney

The night aimed to "shine the light" on mental health in the construction industry, Master Builders Association ACT chief executive Michael Hopkins said.

Retired senior detective constable and Cross of Valour recipient Allan Sparkes was listed as the keynote speaker.
Canberra Liberals leader Alistair Coe says the party will look to filling retiring MLA Steve Doszpot's seat in the ACT Legislative Assembly in "coming weeks", as the parliament paid tribute to the terminally ill politician on Tuesday.

Mr Doszpot will step down as a member for Kurrajong on December 5 after nine years in the ACT's parliament.

ACT Liberal parliamentarian Steve Doszpot. Credit:Jamila Toderas

He was diagnosed with liver cancer last year and plans to spend his remaining time with family and friends.

His retirement will spark a countback of the 2016 territory election.
Given he was the person tasked by Tony Abbott with taking the axe to Labor's original "fibre to the home" vision for the NBN, one would think Malcolm Turnbull would be the last person to throw stones at the multibillion-dollar internet project.

Glass houses don't come any bigger than the one the Prime Minister built for himself in the wake of the 2013 election when he oversaw the downgrade to a "fibre to the node, then copper to the home" system.

That short-sighted attempt at cost-cutting, which critics say was intended to cut off a large part of the Rudd-Gillard government legacy at the knees, has given Labor a "get out of jail free card" as far as the NBN is concerned.

And, given virtually every IT expert in the land was saying what a bad idea this was at the time, Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull can't say they weren't warned.
Neighbour Dieu Do said she had been woken in the middle of the night to the sounds of a man bellowing for help and then, a short time later, gunshots.

A woman has been killed and a man is in hospital following a vicious dog attack in Watson in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Credit:Jamila Toderas

Other neighbours expressed their shock at the attack on their "usually quiet street" and said they had often heard a dog growling and barking at the property in recent months. Ms Do said she was afraid a dog on the property might attack her two children.

"A dog, [I think] it was from there, jumped over my back fence a few times last year and almost got my boys," she said. "I often hear [a dog] growling near my window, so I always lock up."

A neighbour, who called police when he heard calls for help from the property, said if the dog was dangerous then he was "glad it was gone" as he also had young children at home.
An investigation into the circulation of a photograph of a topless woman wearing a Richmond premiership medal has been halted.

Victoria Police said on Tuesday evening the woman had requested an end to the investigation.

A Richmond premiership medal.

"At the request of the complainant the investigation into the circulation of intimate images has ceased," a police spokeswoman said.

"This current development does not preclude the investigators from reopening the investigation at a later date."
The letters, with the heading "disconnection warning notice", stated that gas was being used at her property, and as her nominated supplier, she would have to start paying Energy Australia for it. She was confused as she had no gas appliances in her flat. "I wasn't sure if it was gas hot water," she said of her complex. Nicky did as the letters instructed and gave her details to Energy Australia. After getting more letters in the mail, she did as they instructed: she gave her details to Energy Australia, which set up an account in her name and started sending her bills. After a few months she asked her neighbours about the building's hot water system. They told her it was electric hot water and that they did not receive gas bills.



"When I asked about the gas, no one else in the building was receiving them," she said.

Nicky then looked around the grounds of her apartment block and found some gas meters, which were quite old. She found the meter that corresponded with her apartment. The reading? Zero. When Nicky checked her gas meter, the reading was zero. Nicky complained to Energy Australia, asking it to produce evidence that she was using gas. It didn't. But the bills kept coming. After paying close to $986 in bills, she contacted Victoria's Energy and Water Ombudsman.



The ombudsman resolved the matter, as Energy Australia could not produce evidence that she was using any gas.

Nicky was then repaid the total amount she had paid to Energy Australia. Her account was shut and the case was closed. But two years later, in August, the "to the occupant" letters started arriving in the mail again. She has received another one in the past few weeks. "It's madness," she said of the experience. "Is it a scam? ... Are their systems that inefficient? Clearly they are." Asked why Nicky was again receiving letters following the ombudsman's ruling, an Energy Australia spokesman said the company had since discovered that her building had a bulk gas hot water system. "The zero usage shown on the meter you're referring to shows natural gas consumption by household appliances such as a gas cook-top. Hot water usage is listed on a different meter."

He said Energy Australia would conduct site visits and meter inspections to resolve the matter and "prevent this happening again". A meter that doesn't exist Gaby Gering and her husband bought a duplex in the Sydney suburb of Bronte in 2010, and in 2012 converted it into a single home. As part of the redevelopment, their tradesmen consolidated the services, in consultation with utility companies. This involved removing one of the two gas meters. "We did an extensive renovation, pulled the place apart and consolidated the services," Ms Gering said.

They then started receiving bills addressed "to the customer" for the meter that had been removed, in addition to bills in their own name for their existing gas meter and usage. "We have one meter, but we would get a second bill for a second apartment," Ms Gering said. What started as a bill for $20 would grow each quarter, and be followed by an overdue notice that eventually reached about $2000. Over the course of five years Ms Gering repeatedly rang AGL to complain. "Every time I rang I'd get put through to senior people who said to ignore it, because it says 'dear customer' ", she said.

Eventually she contacted the NSW Energy & Water Ombudsman. A text from AGL Energy confirming Ms Gering's account had been closed and the case resolved. "They resolved it," she said of her case. "Then, believe it or not, we started getting them again," she said of the letters. "I've called so many times, and spent so many hours on the phone, eventually I just gave up. "I really don't know why they don't stop it," she said. "It's like a computer-generated thing that has a life of its own. No one has control over it."
If Myer boss Richard Umbers fails to impress investors at a strategy day to be held on November 1, his days will be numbered.

Until now the spotlight has been on the board as major shareholder Solomon Lew publicly aimed his bullets at directors, promising to vote against their re-election and threatening to pull the trigger on an extraordinary general meeting at some stage in the future.

Myer chief executive Richard Umbers. Credit:Josh Robenstone

But the day of reckoning for executives is coming. On November 1, Umbers will take centre stage to outline the state of its five-year transformation strategy, including targets which are looking very unachievable.

Chairman-elect Garry Hounsell and the rest of the board have backed the Myer strategy. If the update doesn't go down well, the company will be staring down the barrel of an EGM, and what that might bring. At the very least it means more public embarrassment and more board disruption.
Chemical supplier Nufarm has agreed to pay $691 million for a European portfolio of crop protection products, and has its eye on another acquisition.

The purchase announced on Tuesday includes established brands of herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, seed treatments and plant growth regulators sold in 29 countries including Germany, Spain, France and Italy.

Chief executive Greg Hunt said the acquisition would strengthen the supplier's presence in Europe, where it generated its highest crop protection margins. Credit:Pat Scala

Nufarm said the acquisition from Adama Agricultural Solutions, Syngenta Crop Protection and related companies covered more than 50 formulations and more than 260 registrations.

Nufarm said it would also have access to additional registrations for new products currently being reviewed for regulatory approval.
While Sydney median prices increased 9.8 per cent over the past 12 months, prices in Melbourne surged 19.6 per cent.

In the past 10 years, Sydney prices increased 83 per cent while Melbourne land soared 159 per cent. Credit:Rob Homer

The price of residential land in Sydney has reached a record high of $1051 a square metre, setting a new benchmark for land values.

The median price for an Australian housing lot increased 8.5 per cent to $256,683 in the June quarter, an all-time high for vacant residential land, according to the HIA-CoreLogic Residential Land Report.

In the past 10 years, Sydney prices have increased 83 per cent but Melbourne land soared 159 per cent in the same 10-year period, according to the report.

HIA senior economist Shane Garrett said "the speed at which land price is increasing is a concern as it compounds the housing affordability problem".

CoreLogic's commercial research analyst Eliza Owen said "record-high lot prices over the past five quarters are likely to have contributed to worsening affordability and influenced the unprecedented level of high density developments under construction".

The report shows the volume of sales slowed in the past year, but turnover is picking up. The number of sales increased 13.1 per cent to 17,830 in the June quarter - but that figure remains 8.7 per lower than a year ago.

Nearly two-thirds of residential land transactions take place in capital cities, but regional areas account for 37.7 per cent.
Following many a collective groan on the pun front (C8), comes some welcome support in the form of David Davies of Callala Beach: "I'm pleased to see the use of puns has been introduced to Column 8 and the way that correspondents have responded to them. I wrote to Garry Linnell at 2UE, who likes punning, to see if he had had a hand in the move. He said he hadn't but said in his view it was a good move as puns are a very underrated form of humour."

The past is a dangerous thing, according to Garrett Naumann of Cammeray. "So before you use one of those ancestry websites promoted on TV, be warned: 'I nearly fell off my chair' claimed one user, while another one 'was blown away'."

Why, O why did we open this can of worms? Steve Cornelius of Brookvale writes: "No vowels in 'rhythms'? Such rot. How is the y a consonant, when it sounds exactly like the i in 'with'? Compare 'with' and 'myth'. On your logic, one has a vowel and the other doesn't. Rubbish. English doesn't have any word with no vowels (C8). A word without a vowel would be unpronounceable." Hmmm.

Garth Clarke of North Sydney asks: "Might I suggest it is madness to release more of those pesky bikes on Sydney's streets without first conducting cycle-analysis."

The movement continues. "Like Harry Bell, I have enjoyed Angas Park Prunes (C8) for years. Presently, I have two packs on hand, both purchased on different weeks and both state 'Proudly 100% Australian grown', with the 'unobtrusive square' at the bottom stating 'Grown in Australia', and no mention anywhere on either pack of imported ingredients. Mysterious, says William Williams of Manly. We agree. In fact, we might give it double-billing.
They say history is full of surprises. That's because when you probe into the detail, it turns out the grand sweep of history isn't really predictable at all.

It's astonishing, for example, how things that (in retrospect) appear "inevitable" are actually utterly contingent on events and personalities. It's not so much the cards players are dealt but how they play their hand that determines who wins.

Take East Timor. Australian prime minister John Howard proposed limited autonomy for the (then) Indonesian province. Indonesian president Jusuf Habibie responded by bringing the whole independence question forward. He held a referendum and the rest, as they say, is history. A nation was born. It didn't have to end that way.

Similarly, it would be a very big mistake to assume that that's the way things will necessarily finish in Catalonia or, even more particularly, Iraqi Kurdistan.
I'm sure I'm not the only person in Australia who has enjoyed that wonderful feeling of a belly laugh brought on by watching Magda Szubanski herself or in character mode. Magda has made me laugh so many times over the years. And recently she made me cry.

This happened when she told the story of her friend with a cancer diagnosis who was denied being with her partner during a treatment. I cried not only for her friend but for all those Australians who would have similar experiences.

These people who in 10, 20 or 30 years' time may have stories akin to Magda Szubanski's friend and whose stories will be depicted in movies in years to come and we will all wonder why we hadn't sorted this earlier.

Well, 2017 is the year when we can make this change and stop any more of these experiences happening to future generations of Australians.
The Australian Workers Union is expected to mount an urgent Federal Court challenge to an investigation into its conduct, after the union's Sydney and Melbourne headquarters were dramatically raided by the Australian Federal Police on Tuesday evening.

The AFP raids were part of an investigation by newly established union watchdog the Registered Organisations Commission into AWU donations to activist group GetUp!, when Opposition Leader Bill Shorten led the union.

The surprise raids triggered allegations from the union movement, activists and the Labor Party that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has politicised the police to harm the opposition, a claim the government has dismissed as "an offensive slur and a disgraceful distraction".

Union lawyers are likely to challenge the examination of the documents at the Federal Court in Melbourne on Wednesday, an AWU spokesman said.
Australia will give urban warfare and counter-terrorism training to the Philippines within days to help in the fight against Islamic State-pledged terror groups in the country, Defence Minister Marise Payne has announced.

Up to 80 Australian soldiers will work on Philippines bases to provide the expert training they have learnt from many years fighting Islamist groups in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, Senator Payne announced in Manila alongside her Philippines counterpart Delfin Lorenzana on Tuesday morning. They will be regular Army rather than special forces soldiers.

"The [Australian Defence Force] will provide mobile training teams that will begin providing urban warfare, counter-terrorism training in the Philippines in the coming days," Senator Payne said. "It is very practical training by the ADF, which will support the Philippines Defence Force to be able to counter what are very brutal tactics that are employed by terrorists."

Australia will also help provide more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, increase information-sharing, and carry out more maritime patrols, Senator Payne said.
Federal police have raided the Sydney and Melbourne offices of Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's old union, the Australian Workers Union, as part of an investigation into donations made a decade ago to activist group GetUp!

The raids are linked to an investigation by the Registered Organisations Commission, which is also examining donations by the AWU to Labor campaigns in three seats at the 2007 election, including the seat of Maribyrnong, now held by Mr Shorten.

A spokesman for the Registered Organisations Commission said it received information which raised suspicions that documents relevant to the investigation at the AWU offices in Sydney and Victoria may be being concealed or destroyed.

The commission put the information to a magistrate who on Tuesday issued warrants under section 335K of the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act allowing documents to be seized from the AWU's national office in Sydney and the Victorian Branch office.
Labor frontbencher Linda Burney will take leave from Parliament after her 33-year-old son was found dead in the family home on Tuesday night.

In a statement, Ms Burney asked for privacy "in this dire, grief-stricken time" and said NSW Police had advised there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death.

"I wish to advise that my beloved son, Binni Kirkbright-Burney was found dead last night at our family home in Sydney," she said, describing him as a "caring and loving man".

"I returned to Sydney last night to be with him this one last time ... He has struggled with mental health and with addiction. He tried so hard to conquer his demons, as I and my family have tried so hard to support him in every way we could.
Time for me to call it a day. What happened?

there was claim and counter claim about Australian Federal Police raids on the offices of the Australian Workers Union last night;

and about on the last night; the government says the raids were needed as part of an investigation into a $100,000 donation to the Labor Party ;

says the were needed as part of ; the opposition says the raids are part of a smear campaign and unnecessarily politicise the police ;

says the are part of a and ; the Greens say it is further evidence of the need for a national anti corruption body ; and

say it is further evidence of the ; and MPs paused to offer condolences to Labor MP Linda Burney whose son died last night.

My thanks to Andrew Meares and Alex Ellinghausen for their wonderful work and to you for reading and commenting.

You can follow me on Facebook.

Alex, Andrew and I will be back tomorrow. We'll also be here on Friday for the High Court's decision if you're wondering. See you in the morning.
The Productivity Commission has thrown a spanner in the Turnbull government's attempts to settle Australia's intractable climate wars, calling the policy landscape a "regulatory mess" and calling for a price on carbon.

It comes a week after the government released its much-anticipated energy blueprint, the national energy guarantee, which was designed to quell debate and meet Australia's international emissions obligations without a carbon price.

The Liddell power station, slated to close in 2022. Credit:AAP

The independent Productivity Commission released its five-year productivity review on Tuesday. It was commissioned by Treasurer Scott Morrison.

The review said immediate action was needed to manage the looming risk of summer blackouts, however there was a real danger Australia's longer-term electricity needs would not be met if "the regulatory mess persists".
An "uncomfortable" Andrew Colvin, Australia's top cop, has rejected claims by the Australian Christian Lobby that a mentally ill man's suicide attempt outside its headquarters was "obviously" motivated by ideology.

The Australian Federal Police commissioner faced questions over the case of Jaden Duong, a 36-year-old man who tried to kill himself by driving a van full of gas cylinders into the ACL's Canberra building last year.

Australian Christian Lobby managing director Lyle Shelton outside the bombed headquarters. Credit:Andrew Meares

Mr Duong, who reportedly engaged in gay activism in the US, had a history of mental illness and suicidal ideation, and succeeded in taking his own life last month.

He was facing charges of arson and property damage, but police did not allege his actions were ideologically or religiously motivated - a position which shocked ACL director Lyle Shelton, who has publicly criticised the AFP's investigation.
There's a reason celebrity divorce stories do well in tabloid media  and it's not just salacious devouring of plastic-coated pain. There can often be some comfort in watching the realities of our own lives play out in the lives of public figures. We can see we're not alone and maybe even take strength from the strength we find in strangers.

Despite all the sexist guff about her appearance and the immeasurable financial advantage she has over most single mothers, Cassandra Thorburn's interview with Woman's Day about how she felt after the end of her marriage to Karl Stefanovic is eminently relatable.

Thorburn articulated the anger, grief and betrayal most of us feel when a marriage ends. But it's interesting that she refused to toe the "amicable split" line.

"The children still have a father but I don't have a husband. He really is dead to me and no, we won't ever be friends again," she said.
The mother-of-two's latest venture which took 12 months of research and 6 months of testing on everyday women to develop.

The brand, founded by Kristy Chong in 2014, already has a range of leak-free absorbent underwear which replaces menstruation and leakage products by absorbing fluids.

Set Me Freestyle leak-proof one-piece and Got Your Backstroke leak-proof active bikini both come in black for the time being.

But it's 2017 and one Australian label, Modibodi , is set on"normalising" conversations around these taboo areas in the market by creating a "fashionable fused with functional" collection of swimwear that aims to solve the issue.

As most women will attest, having your period or bladder leakage during a trip to the beach or pool is an uncomfortable experience, and a topic not often thought about by brands.

It took 12 months for founder Kristy Chong to develop the new range.

"These areas are still taboo, and one in two women don't partake in physical activity when they have their periods or bladder leakage to not risk embarrassment . We don't talk about it openly enough, we do among friends but that is all we want to be as a brand," says Chong.

"There's not really been any functional developments in the swimwear market for [a] very long time and for the one in two women with heavy periods and one in three women with bladder leaks it is not much option for them when they want to go swimming to keep them protected. I am unabashedly unashamed to talk about these issues because they are common. Someone had to take that leap."

The range, developed, designed and made in Australia, currently consists of a Set Me Freestyle leak-proof one-piece and Got Your Backstroke leak-proof active bikini and places a great focus on size inclusion, with the brand looking to expand still from their size 6-18 offering and girls sizes 12-14.

Similar to its underwear technology, the swimwear is suited for spotting, light period days and pelvic floor issues. It works by using a dry-fast water repellent outer fabric, as well as a patent-pending 'Modifier Swim Technology' and gusset which absorbs up to "10mls or one tampon of fluid," and has layers to avoid odour and bacteria according to Chong.
Dreamworld is fighting back against a lawsuit from relatives of people killed on one of its water rides.

A year after the accident that claimed four lives, the amusement park's owners, Ardent Leisure, are refusing to admit liability for the suffering of families of two of the victims, Canberra mother Kate Goodchild, 32, and her brother Luke Dorsett, 35.

The funeral at St Christophers Catholic Church in Griffith for Kate Goodchild and Luke Dorsett. Credit:Karleen Minney

Queensland authorities are considering whether to impose penalties over the deaths, having recently finished investigating the Gold Coast theme park.

Ms Goodchild, Mr Dorsett, his partner Roozi Araghi, 38 and Sydney mother Cindy Low, 42, were killed on October 25 last year when the iconic Thunder River Rapids ride malfunctioned.
The estranged husband of Australian teacher Gabrielle Maina could face the death penalty in Kenya if he is charged and convicted of her murder.

The 40-year-old mother of two sons was killed by a single gunshot to the neck in the upmarket Nairobi suburb of Karen on Thursday.

Her husband Cyrus Bernard Maina Njuguna and his cousin, John Njuguna Waithira, were arrested on Monday local time over the shooting but no charges have been laid.

The Kenyan judiciary has warned the pair could face a "mandatory death penalty" if charged and convicted.
Former Auburn deputy mayor Salim Mehajer has shown up at a Sydney court for a civil hearing a week after he was injured in a car crash on his way to court.

Mehajer was involved in a crash last Monday on his way to court for the first of two hearings over alleged assaults, with his solicitor later producing a medical certificate to have the matters adjourned until early 2018.

The certificate covered Mehajer until October 24, but the 31-year-old was at Sydney Local Court on Tuesday concerning a civil dispute over a property sale that went awry.

Mehajer had been told that if he didn't appear the defence would be struck out, according to court documents.
Three people face up to 20 years imprisonment after more than $1 million cash was seized during raids on several properties in Sydney's south-west.

The raids followed an Australian Federal Police investigation into alleged money laundering and dealing with the proceeds of crime.

People covered in sheets and towels are escorted from a house during police raids on Wednesday. Credit:AAP

Tactical police swooped on eight properties on Wednesday morning, including a weatherboard home in Bass Hill, which had a boat on a trailer parked in the driveway, and a partly demolished home in Bankstown.

During the investigation more than $1 million in cash was seized by authorities, with a further $105,000 in cash seized at the Bankstown property.
A City of Sydney councillor has accused colleagues of not taking the illegal sex trade seriously after his proposal to establish a "proactive inspection regime" failed to win support at a council meeting on Monday night.

Liberal councillor Craig Chung said councillors allied with the City of Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore had "shut down the debate" after rejecting his call for action to combat illegal brothels and target sex crime.

The illegal sex trade is flourishing in Sydney, according to Liberal City of Sydney councillor Craig Chung. Credit:Jacky Ghossein

"Residents and businesses have been contacting all councillors about this problem and the Clover Moore team just isn't taking it seriously," he said.

"What I don't understand is, why the city conducts proactive inspections of food premises, boarding houses, cooling towers and backpackers but not illegal brothels."
Liana Levin says she felt as if she was evicted from much of a suburb not just an apartment.

For nearly three years the working single mother-of-two's life was tied to an apartment in Zetland, an inner eastern Sydney suburb in the heart of the major urban redevelopment of Green Square.

Childcare was downstairs. Her separated partner lived across the road.

But in April this year Ms Levin was served with a no grounds eviction notice compelling her to vacate her property within 90 days.
Demolishers have moved in to begin Queenslands biggest infrastructure project, the $5.4 billion Cross River Rail.

The work to demolish the single-storey concrete Go Print building is set to be finished by January.

The company, Caylamax, last week took possession of the Go Print site at Woolloongabba, next to the Gabba stadium, and began the $330,000 demolition.

"This milestone for the new Woolloongabba underground station is a pivotal part of our early works program," Deputy Premier Jackie Trad said.

"Once the Go Print site has been cleared it will be the central staging location for massive tunnel boring machines that will dig Cross River Rails twin 5.9 kilometre tunnels, creating a new rail expressway for south-east Queensland," she said.
Police are investigating the killing of a Brisbane father in his own yard overnight, including whether he was lured outside when someone turned the power off.

The 35-year-old suffered significant wounds after he was attacked with a weapon believed to be a "cutting implement like a knife" in the front yard of his home on Saint George Street at Kuraby, in the city's south.

His wife called police and they found him in the yard about 12.30am on Wednesday. Emergency crews fought to revive him but he could not be saved.

Police launched a homicide investigation, blocking off the street and involving detectives from across Brisbane and the dog squad in the search for the killer.
Four men photographed swimming into a baited croc trap not far from the scene of a fatal attack in Queensland appear to be vying for the "idiots of the century award", a local mayor says.

Photos of the men swimming around and even climbing into the trap at the Port Douglas Marina have surfaced online, leaving Douglas Shire Mayor Julie Leu stunned.

The men who were photographed in a crocodile trap near Port Douglas have been widely criticised. Credit:Facebook

"I was absolutely gobsmacked, this is incredibly stupid and dangerous behaviour. I'm wondering if these fellows are vying for the idiots of the year award or the idiots of the century award," she told ABC radio.

The pictures show the men frolicking in the water, climbing on top of the trap and sitting in the mouth of it. The marina is not far from where a 4.3-metre crocodile took 79-year-old dementia sufferer Anne Cameron.
The hunt for a convicted Brisbane rapist continues after he removed his electronic monitoring device on Monday afternoon.

Damien Kennedy

The last known location of Damien Paul Kennedy, 28, was the suburb of Salisbury in Brisbane's south at 4.13pm and police believe he may be travelling in a silver 1999 Hyundai Sonata with Queensland registration 739WQU.

Mr Kennedy has been described as Caucasian, about 178 centimetres tall with a solid build, black hair, blue eyes and various distinctive tattoos including Southside text on his neck, a full sleeve tattoo on his right arm, and other text on his hands, legs and ankle.

Investigators believe Damien may be in Brisbanes south or Logan areas and anyone with information regarding his whereabouts is urged not to approach him and contact police.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk will name and shame companies in an attempt to get them to pass on cost savings, following a meeting with the state's energy retailers.

On Tusesday, Ms Palaszczuk and some of her top ministers met with electricity retailers to demand they pass on savings to consumers.

Credit:AAP Image/ Darren England

There were representatives from 16 organisations in the meeting, including AGL, QEnergy, Energy Queensland, Origin and Click Energy.

It comes after the government announced $50 off electricity bills per year and other savings, by rediverting $2 billion of the state's publicly-owned energy dividends, in what many are viewing as a pre-election sweetener.
A grieving father has come face-to-face with the man who was behind the wheel when his daughter was killed walking to the bus earlier this year.

The confrontation came after a Brisbane court heard 35-year-old Aashish Tiwaris charge of driving without due care and attention was the most mild charge he could possibly get in the circumstances.

Yasmin McAllister and father Glynn Harnell at her engagement party.

Yasmin McAllister, 27, died in June when her family turned off her life support more than a day-and-a-half after she was hit while walking to a bus stop at Camp Hill.

Her father, Glynn Harnell, was there to watch Mr Tiwari front the Holland Park Magistrates Court on Tuesday morning, deliberately showing a large photo of his daughter to the accused as both men left the courtroom.
Too embarrassed to ask, you leave still worried about your health and feeling a bit stupid.

What does this mean, you think. Am I dying? Do I have the all clear?

I'm sorry, did you say idiopathic? Credit:Shutterstock

After running a series of tests, they give you their diagnosis: your condition is idiopathic.

You go to your doctor feeling unwell.

Idiopathic is medical jargon for a disease or condition for which the cause is unknown.

In fact, you might say your doctor is the slow one as they have not been able to find out the cause of your sickness.

Idiopathic is one word being targeted by Drop the Jargon Day on Tuesday.

Jargon is words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand.

Every industry uses jargon, but for those that need to communicate with the public, such as doctors, nurses, child protection, councils or community organisations, it can be problematic.
A woman who killed her 13-month-old daughter with a stab wound to the throat has pleaded guilty to infanticide, becoming the third Victorian mother this year to admit to the rare offence.



The 28-year-old woman, who cannot be named, telephoned her husband on June 5 and told him she had "done something to the baby" in their home, Melbourne Magistrates Court heard earlier this year.



The mother was initially charged with murder but on Tuesday she appeared in court via video link from the Thomas Embling psychiatric hospital to plead guilty to infanticide. Prosecutors withdrew the murder charge.



The woman cannot be named to protect the identities of her surviving children.



The charge of infanticide applies only to women who kill their biological child when affected by a mental-health problem related to childbirth. It only applies when the victim is aged under two and carries a maximum penalty of five years in jail.



Only a handful of women have pleaded guilty to infanticide in Victoria, but the 28-year-old is the third mother this year to have pleaded guilty.



In January, Akon Guode pleaded guilty to infanticide, two counts of murder and one of attempted murder after driving her car into a lake in Wyndham Vale in April 2015. Her four-year-old twins Hanger and Madit and their 16-month-old brother, Bol, all drowned. Her daughter, now seven, survived.



Guode was in May jailed for 26 years and six months and must serve 12 months on the infanticide charge, which related to Bol's death.



Last month Sofina Nikat pleaded guilty over the death of her 15-month-old daughter, Sanaya Sahib. Nikat last year smothered the toddler during a walk through parkland in West Heidelberg and rolled her body into Darebin Creek.



Nikat served more than a year in custody but is now on bail awaiting sentence.

Guode and Nikat both faced murder charges before the offences were struck out and replaced by infanticide.



In the most recent case, the woman has a psychiatric illness and significant mental-health problems, the court heard previously.



There had been nine reported incidents of family violence between the woman and her husband from 2013, according to court documents.



The woman is due to appear before the Supreme Court on Thursday when a date for her pre-sentence hearing will be set.
The internal insurgency against Victorian Labor's factional warlords is gaining momentum, with the votes counted in the the first part of the pre-selection process for next year's state election.

Candidates backed by former Andrews government minister Adem Somyurek are in strong positions to clinch pre-selection in the safe western suburbs seats of Tarneit  vacated by disgraced former speaker Telmo Languiller  and Footscray.

Former minister Adem Somyurek.

The Somyurek sub-faction could also gain control of Williamstown, also in Melbourne's west, by throwing its support behind the clear front-runner in the contest to replace former minister Wade Noonan, who resigned this month.

Mr Somyurek and his allies are challenging decades of dominance by former federal minister Stephen Conroy and his "Short-Cons" sub-faction of Labor right politics in the state.
Red-hot house prices in Melbourne's inner-north have forced one of the area's federal MPs to find a cheaper place to live.

Federal MP for Wills Peter Khalil says he and his family were "effectively priced out" of Brunswick, after they were given notice to vacate their rental property, despite having a pre-tax annual household income of more than $200,000.

The Labor backbencher says the "stressful experience" of the forced move has highlighted the plight of local renters and would-be home owners who are not lucky enough to enjoy six-figure incomes.

Mr Khalil is not alone in being overwhelmed by the cost of living in Brunswick where median house prices have soared from $860,000 in 2016 to $1.06 million this year, according to the latest data from Domain.
A 43-year-old disability pensioner from Melbourne's outer suburbs is suspected of funnelling cash to an American-born senior Islamic State fighter.

Hampton Park father Isa Kocoglu  who is on a pension because he is morbidly obese  was charged on Tuesday morning, accused of donating money to Yahya al-Bahrumi.

Bahrumi, born in Texas as John Georgelas, is considered to be IS's top producer of "high-end English language propaganda", according to an investigation by The Atlantic.

Mr Kocoglu has been charged with one count of giving money or performing services for a person who intends to engage in hostile activity in a foreign state. The offence carries a maximum 10 years in jail.
The refugee supporters have surrounded a cellist at the Spring Street intersection.

A media release says they are there "in solidarity with the men of Manus who are being deserted by the Australian Government".

"For four years the men of Manus have had no safety and no certainty and still the injustice continues," Whistleblowers, Activists and Citizens Alliance spokesperson Sumarlinah Raden Winoto said.

"There is a looming humanitarian emergency as the Government begins to close Manus and abandons all responsibility.'

He said cellist was playing a Kurdish poem composed to song by journalist Behrouz Boochani, who has been imprisoned on Manus for the past four years.
Boys at a Melbourne high school claim they were told to put on shorts after showing up for their final day of classes wearing the traditional girls' uniform.

But the principal says the issue was not the boys wearing dresses, but that they were too short.

Bentleigh Secondary College year 12 students decided to swap uniforms for the day, in a final statement endorsing the Safe Schools policy of gender diversity.

But what was planned as an empowering message to younger students quickly turned sour.
A Ballajura home sprayed with bullets six weeks ago has been set alight overnight.

Emergency services arrived at the Northbridge Drive home around 11.30pm Monday to find the house and rear workshop on fire.

The Ballajura home has been destroyed by fire. Credit:Radio 6PR / Anthony Anderson

It took firefighters 45 minutes to control the blaze, which caused an estimated $600,000 damage.

The home was vacant at the time.
"He looked identical," Jemma Lilley replied as she sat in the witness box being questioned in front of a packed court room on Tuesday.

The 26-year-old was referring to her former husband who she had nicknamed Gacy because he bore a striking resemblance to notorious 1970's US serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

A court sketch of Trudi Lenon, left, and Jemma Liley, right. Credit:Anne Barnetson

Four decades on, 'serial-killer obsessed' Ms Lilley was on trial in the Supreme Court of Western Australia accused of murdering Perth teenager Aaron Pajich alongside her co-accused Trudi Lenon, 43.

State prosecutors claimed the housemates targeted the 18-year-old, lured him to their Orelia home and stabbed him to death before burying him underneath a freshly laid concrete slab in their backyard on June 13, 2016.
The City of Wanneroo says it is "deeply disappointed" after it emerged several punters were attempting to scalp tickets for a free community concert by Perth band Birds of Tokyo next month.

The gig's 12,000 tickets were snapped up last month in record time, going in sixty minutes with locals given priority for the concert at the Wanneroo Showgrounds.

Birds of Tokyo will play a free concert at Wanneroo Showgrounds.

"The City of Wanneroo Presents: Birds of Tokyo ticket release was hugely popular, with 12,000 tickets snapped up by our residents in just over an hour," Wanneroo mayor Tracey Roberts said at the time.

"We knew Perth's own Birds of Tokyo would create a lot of excitement but we were amazed at how quickly we reached capacity."
New tourism initiatives to make Rottnest Island more enticing for tourists and cheaper for families will be announced on Tuesday.

The state government and Rottnest Island Authority hope the changes on the island will boost visitor numbers from around 650,000 a year to 900,000 by 2019.

Tourism Minister Paul Papalia will announce a new tourism initiative at Rottnest Island on Tuesday. Credit:Rottnest Island Authority

Tourism Minister Paul Papalia told Nine News Perth one of the new initiatives would be family accommodation at Kingstown Barracks from $80 a night.

"Once people realise what is on offer and they fall in love with Rottnest all over again, they'll be back," he said.
The son of former WA premier Peter Dowding has been sentenced over a string of child sex offences.

Kymberley Dean Dowding, 42, pleaded guilty in the Karratha Courthouse on Monday to 11 child sex abuse offences in the town of Roebourne between 2015 and 2016.

Dozens of paedophiles have been arrested in the Pilbara as part of a police crackdown. Credit:Viki Lascaris

The charges included two counts of encouraging a child to engage in sexual behaviour and six counts of sexual penetration of a child.

He was jailed for three years and three months.
WA Premier Mark McGowan has banned controversial UK commentator Milo Yiannopoulos from using government sites when his tour comes to town in December.

The self-described 'supervillain' and 'anti-feminist' will bring his Troll Academy show to Australia in December, and controversy with it.

Milo Yiannopoulos is coming to Perth on a speaking tour. Credit:AP

Mr Yiannopoulos is infamous for his outspoken views against refugees, gay rights, and feminism, as well as comments that surfaced earlier this year that critics said showed him defending paedophilia, which he has since denied.

He has close ties to the alt-right and neo-Nazi movement, and has been permanently banned from Twitter following a series of controversial comments.
London: A former pro-Brexit campaign spokesman has angrily denied that they used Twitterbots to influence the public in the lead-up to the 2016 referendum.

The comment came as a group of UK parliamentarians are stepping up efforts to investigate whether Russian money was behind a push to influence the vote through targeted social media misinformation.

"It does feel at long last as if politicians in Britain are waking up to the fact of Kremlin subversion of our democracy," Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said on Tuesday.

"Putin had made no secret of the fact he wanted a Brexit vote. His main strategy is to weaken and destabilise Europe and Brexit is so far his biggest success."
It's been widely noted that first lady Melania Trump's visit Monday to Michigan schoolchildren, in which she urged an end to bullying, was slightly off her husband's brand. (Why, he tweeted mean things about a senator's height just this morning!)

But another one of the first lady's messages to the kids is attracting the internet's attention, too.

First lady Melania Trump sits with sixth grader Valerie Abulu while visiting a school in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Credit:AP

"Don't try to copy somebody," she said, according to the pool report of the event in what the New York Times called a "somewhat stilted" sidebar conversation with a small group of kids. She might have been warning them not to give into peer pressure, since she added: "No drugs. No cigarettes."

But some folks on social media found her instructions a little ... interesting. Remember that speech she gave at the 2016 Republican convention that turned out to be partially, ah, copied from a speech by Michelle Obama?
PHILIPSBURG:--- On October 2nd, the Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport (ECYS), Silveria Jacobs, received a letter from the President of the Board from the University of St. Martin Foundation (USMF), Mrs. Valerie Giterson-Pantophlet. In said letter, the USMF requested the intervention from the Minister of Education, and by extension the Government of St. Maarten, to increase the subsidy to approximately 3 million guilders for the institution to be sustainable due to loss of donors as a result of the hurricane. This does not serve as an official request for subsidy increase based on Article 11 and 13, sub 1, of the Subsidy Ordinance, which states that a subsidy request must be submitted by March 1st of the preceding year for which subsidy is being sought and should include the institutions programs and budget.

Despite the manner in which the ultimatum was handled by the USMF, Minister Silveria Jacobs, including several stakeholders within the Ministry, scheduled a meeting as soon as possible to bring clarity and seek solutions to the urgent issue at hand in the interest of continuing education at this level as well.

During said meeting, held on Wednesday October 11, 2017 the USMF was able to bring clarity on their situation, and government made it clear that while there is total understanding for the position the University finds itself in, it also finds itself in a precarious financial position due to loss of income for the foreseeable future. The government of St. Maarten is cognizant of the important role the USM plays in the society of St. Maarten and is willing to work together with the USMF to seek a solution that will safeguard the future of the institution as well as not jeopardize the current students and staff.

The University of St. Martin (USM) has had a history of well documented difficulties in the areas of daily operations, organization and financial structures and has, over the years, received assistance from the territory of the Netherlands Antilles, the Government of St. Maarten as well as the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science in the Netherlands to gain accreditation for programs. Since 2014, USMF has been receiving a subsidy amount of Fls. 850,000 from the Government of St. Maarten, of which 10% is withheld until financial reporting obligations are lived up to.

USMF has submitted unaudited financial reports for 2013 and 2014 in February of 2017, citing cost of audited reports as the reason. The Ministry ECYS is currently processing the advice, which still has to be decided in Council of Ministers, in order to be able to award USM the remaining 10% of the subsidy owed for the years 2013 and 2014. Had the semester been able to start as scheduled, USMF would also have received the tuition payments of students who had been awarded Study Financing.

USMF is currently receiving said subsidy under an agreement with the government of St. Maarten made in December 2014 by Ministerial Decree in which the following points, among others, are highlighted:

USM will allocate Fls. 425,000 of the subsidy for the personnel and operational costs associated with USMs TEP and Fls. 425,000 of the subsidy for other personnel and operational costs incurred during the delivery of the various undergraduate programs Ensure all degree programs are in line with the needs of the wider community of St. Maarten Provide copies of the policies A report detailing the quality of education at the institution during the academic year. Report to the Minister of Education, Culture, Youth, and Sport in accordance with the guidelines established in Article 16 of the Subsidy Ordinance. Submit a subsidy request including USMs program and budget for the subsequent academic years by March 1st of the preceding year for which subsidy is being sought as established in Article 11 and 13, sub 1, of the Subsidy Ordinance.

An increase in subsidy under the current regulations, as requested in the correspondence from the board of the USMF can only be processed when all the necessary documentation is submitted according to the subsidy ordinance mentioned above and highlighted in the Ministerial Decree cited above.

The reality of the situation is that the pre-Irma 2017 Budget of the Ministry of ECYS was already stressed and projected to end in deficit in 2017 based on subsidy obligations among others. Post Irma, both the 2017 and 2018 budgets will have to be amended due to lower income being projected. Realistically speaking, government is being asked to stretch a budget which just like USMs has taken a major hit in income. The request to increase by over 2 million guilders in this critical time is therefore not executable, even with the best intentions, unless government:

a) decides to cut it from somewhere else, b) proposes it as part of the recovery fund and/or c) finds a creative way to finance the newly accredited programs the University claimed it now has.

All these possible scenarios, however, would require justification via proper documentation which is still pending, as the 2015 and 2016 financial reports have not yet been submitted. This has been discussed with USMF, as well as sent via correspondence.

Government would like to reassure all concerned that it is committed to dialogue with USMF in order to find a way to resolve this challenge in the interest of the students and staff of USM and the continuity of education at tertiary level and has made its intentions very clear to the USMF.

Ministry of ECYS Press Release
MARIGOT:--- The Collectivite of Saint-Martin informs all business that the collection of household garbage, bulky refuse, and green waste has resumed normal operation.

Business owners are kindly asked to no longer store up cardboard boxes and substantial litter upon sidewalks moreover to dispose of them at customary public garbage dumps.

All 11 temporary public depositary sites that were opened following Hurricane Irma, for urgent debris discharge, are now officially closed. Throughout the upcoming weeks, those sites will be cleaned up, returning to their initial state.

It is imperative to ensure that merchants take their own trash and hulking wastes to the Galisbay dump or either to the eco-site of Grand Cayes. In an effort to bring about waste reduction, the Galisbay dump and Grand Cayes eco-site will allow free offloads of rubbish until Tuesday, October 31st, 2017.

The Collectivite is encouraging all business to conform to these public clean up instructions and to follow-through by a show of civic-mindedness. Thanking you in advance.

COM Press Release
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Brand Networks Names Google Veteran Dave Fall as New CEO

BOSTON, MA  (Marketwired)  10/24/17  Brand Networks, the software and services provider that brings intelligent automation to social advertising and was recently named a Leader in Social Advertising Technology by Forrester Research, Inc., today announced that it has appointed Dave Fall to the position of Chief Executive Officer.

Fall is a digital media veteran. Prior to joining Brand Networks, he served as the Chief Operating Officer of Tapad, a cross-device marketing solution, where he led the day-to-day execution of the companys corporate strategy during a time of aggressive growth. Tapad was acquired for $360 million by Telenor Group in 2016. Before that, Fall spent more than 10 years in strategic roles at DoubleClick and Google, where he specialized in product, technical services and corporate development.

The Board and I are thrilled that Dave will lead Brand Networks through our next stage of growth, said Jamie Tedford, Founder and Chairman, Brand Networks. While API access and media buying technology have become somewhat commoditized in our industry, there is a growing demand for human and artificial intelligence which delivers outsized business results. Daves knowledge of this space, combined with his experience leading organizations in this ever-changing industry, make him an obvious fit.

Wrote Jessie Liu, Forrester Senior Analyst, in : For any kind of social marketing to make the most of its opportunities, it must be moved out of its operational and technical silos.  social adtech wont thrive in its own niche ecosystem as marketers social programs expand, mature, and evolve.

We are proud to be one of two companies recognized as a Leader in social adtech according to Forrester, said Tedford. Leading our industry over the last 11 years has always been about looking forward, embracing innovation and helping advertisers to simplify social media marketing. Dave is poised to lead this team, our customers and this industry into the future.

As CEO, Fall will lead Brand Networks into the future as it readies the release of a reimagined Brand Networks Platform in early 2018. The new release will focus on delivering added power to social ad campaigns through artificial intelligence, optimization, and insights. The Brand Networks Platform will also be designed for unparalleled ease-of-use that lowers the learning curve for media teams while helping them achieve maximum time savings and performance.

What an exciting time to join Brand Networks, a trusted and proven leader in social advertising for more than a decade. We have an amazing opportunity to deliver the future of data-driven advertising, helping marketers connect disparate marketing technologies and unify the customer experience, said Fall. Jamie and his team have built an incredible company, best-of-breed technology, and a culture of innovation unmatched by competitors. Im honored that Jamie and the Board have selected me to lead Brand Networks into this exciting era of growth.

Brand Networks has grown significantly since its founding eleven years ago, from its roots as a bootstrapped startup, to the acquisition of two competing social advertising SaaS platforms  Optimal and SHIFT  supported by an infusion of equity from AEA Investors, a leading private equity fund based in New York. The company now serves hundreds of enterprise customers and is powering more than $500 million in media spend with high-performance digital advertising strategies across every leading social media channel.

Brand Networks Simplifies Social. The company delivers award-winning social media advertising software and services to hundreds of enterprise customers, including half of the Fortune 100 and 17 of AdAges 25 Most Advertised Brands. The Brand Networks Platform uses personalization data and powerful automation technologies to help marketers optimize their media investments across the social web. Media buyers can reduce campaign management time by up to 75% while increasing their return on advertising spend across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. Brand Networks was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Boston with offices in San Francisco, New York City, Rochester, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Sydney. For more information, please visit bn.co.

Jen Holmes

LaunchSquad

617.945.1915

Kyle Psaty

Brand Networks

585.454.8437
Jamf Accelerates Mac Growth in the Enterprise with Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) Partnership

MINNEAPOLIS, MN  (Marketwired)  10/24/17  Organizations are continually working to address security vulnerabilities, ward off cyber threats and protect intellectual property. Announced at , Brad Anderson, corporate vice president, Microsoft Corp., today demonstrated s integrated solution with that provides automated compliance management for Mac devices accessing applications set up with Azure AD authentication.

Organizations are often overexposed today. More and more, corporations have Mac devices, but they arent necessarily managed, said Joe Bloom, product manager, Jamf. Further, leveraging only traditional login methods makes it hard for organizations to ensure that all of the data and email passing through Office 365 or other corporate applications is indeed secured. With Microsoft EMS and Jamf Mac management, organizations can validate user credentials, while also confirming a Mac is managed and compliant before granting access.

Together, and EMS prevent an authorized user from using a personal Mac, an unmanaged Mac or a managed corporate Mac that is not compliant with security policies and therefore is more vulnerable to security threats. Jamf and EMS address this by requiring the user to register devices they want to use to access applications connected to Azure AD, including Office 365. First, compliance criteria is established in Intune, and then the criteria is measured on the Mac device by Jamf. The device information collected by Jamf is then sent to Intune. Finally, Intune computes the devices compliance state and feeds the status into Azure AD for Conditional Access policy evaluation. If the device is not in compliance, a notification is sent to the user, requiring remediation in Jamf Self Service.

This integrated solution will be available in late 2017. Talk with your Microsoft or Jamf account executive to find out more about how to leverage this to secure your organization or register for the public beta, by visiting .

Since 2002, Jamf has been solely focused on helping organizations succeed with Apple. Jamf is committed to enabling IT to empower end users and bring the legendary Apple experience to businesses, education, and government organizations via its Jamf Pro and Jamf Now solutions, and the 50,000+ member community. Today, more than 13,000 global customers rely on Jamf to manage over eight million Apple devices. To learn more, visit .

Media Contact:

Kaitlin Shinkle

Jamf

(612) 508-2643
Jamf Kicks Off 2017 Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC) Announcing General Availability of Jamf Pro 10

MINNEAPOLIS, MN  (Marketwired)  10/24/17  With a record 1,500 Apple IT administrators from around the globe in attendance, , the management standard for the Apple ecosystem, today announced at its the general availability of Jamf Pro 10 on Oct. 31. Jamf also showcased its extensive network of integrations through its newly launched Jamf Marketplace and Jamf Developer Program, demonstrating its commitment to helping companies and schools succeed with Apple.

Complete with a restyled interface as well as the ability to brand Jamf Self Service and automate patching software, Jamf Pro 10 aims to make it even easier for IT teams to manage the entire Apple ecosystem while empowering end users.

Jamf Pro has a new look and features that make it easier for new users get started and be productive. Driven from extensive user feedback and testing, Jamf Pro 10 is equipped with breadcrumbs, collapsible navigation and context-aware warnings so IT administrators know what to do next and why. In addition, new dashboards are report-ready, so users can easily keep stakeholders apprised and their environments in compliance.

Jamf Pro 10 gives IT administrators automatic visibility into which devices are eligible for each patch and purpose-built patch policies to help automate the scoping and delivery of software patches.

Jamf Self Service is now completely customizable. Organizations can brand it with their own logo, banner or doc icon, creating a seamless experience for end users to conduct Mac updates, app installs or get the resources they need to do their jobs.

Weve been actively testing the Jamf Pro 10 Beta. The entire UI is more intuitive for both our new and experienced users, and the custom Jamf Self Service branding is a breeze, said Dan K. Snelson, engineer, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In addition, patch management in Jamf Pro 10 is intuitive, robust and fast. A single software title can include multiple patch policies, which allows us to easily deploy the latest version of mission-critical software to our internal beta testers via Jamf Self Service. End users are automatically notified of new testing requests, and once internally reviewed and approved, we can quickly enable the automatic updating of the remainder of our devices.

With more than 53,000 members, Jamf Nation announced new social features to help members sift through and locate the most valuable information among the community. Further, Jamf Nation is now equipped with the ability to engage in the renewal process at any time, making it easier for organizations to keep pace with growing device counts. And, with the ability to run concurrent Betas, Jamf Beta program participants can now give feedback on various feature sets, increasing the quality and delivery efficiency of new versions of Jamf Pro.

Jamf is focused on the power of AND because we understand that together, with other tools, we can reduce gaps, bridge IT services and deliver a more complete solution, said Charles Edge, director, professional services, Jamf. From cross-industry integrations to apps, Jamf integrates with dozens of leading tools to solve the broadest set of IT challenges for our customers.

Specifically, over the past year, Jamf worked to integrate with leading business tools that organizations already have to report on the rich set of data found in Jamf Pro. Building on the , Jamf now integrates with Tableau, Splunk, RobotCloud and .

In addition to its vast network of integrations, Jamf announced a to showcase its most current integrations, apps and consultancies, as well as a . The Marketplace is designed to serve as a central location for prospects and customers to find, learn about and utilize valuable tools to integrate with and extend the Jamf platform. To make it easy for organizations to integrate Jamf within their environment, Jamf also announced the Jamf Developer Program. Accessible through a , developers now have a single location to access Jamfs API, webhooks and other resources to integrate with Jamf Pro.

Lastly, Jamf is launching two new Jamf Cloud Global Regions in Tokyo and Sydney. Opening today, the new cloud locations offer Jamfs global customer base enhanced performance as well as greater flexibility, control and security to successfully manage their Apple devices.

The 2017 JNUC is our most exciting yet. In addition to delivering on the promise of Jamf Pro 10, we are thrilled to offer customers new integrations and new products to make it easier for IT to manage the Apple ecosystem and empower end users with Apple devices, said Dean Hager, CEO, Jamf.

Tune into tomorrows JNUC Keynote address via to learn more about our customers news.

Since 2002, Jamf has been solely focused on helping organizations succeed with Apple. Jamf is committed to enabling IT to empower end users and bring the legendary Apple experience to businesses, education, and government organizations via its Jamf Pro and Jamf Now solutions, and the 50,000+ member community. Today, more than 13,000 global customers rely on Jamf to manage over nine million Apple devices. To learn more, visit .

Kaitlin Shinkle

Jamf

(612) 508-2643
UltraSoC appoints Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli as Chairman

CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom, 24 October 2017  UltraSoC today announced that Professor Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli has joined the company as Non-Executive Chairman, bringing the benefits of his significant experience in the electronics design industry. The appointment comes as UltraSoC drives accelerating adoption of its IP for debug during chip design, and of its embedded intelligent analytics capabilities for monitoring wider system performance on all processor platforms: in particular the open-source RISC-V architecture. UltraSoCs technology is now enhancing safety, security and power for system design, in applications including automotive, enterprise IT, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, an electronics industry luminary, joined the companys Strategic Advisory Board in June of this year. It was immediately clear to the Board that UltraSoC could benefit significantly from his experience and his vision for the system-wide potential for the companys technology. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli replaces outgoing Chairman, Chris Gilbert, who steps down having served as UltraSoCs Chairman since January 2014.

Sangiovanni-Vincentelli is a major figure in both commercial and technological developments in the electronics industry and brings significant experience of direct relevance to UltraSoC and its applications and development of its technology. In the 1980s, Sangiovanni-Vincentelli helped to found both Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys  the two industry leaders in Electronic Design Automation (EDA). He has also fulfilled many advisory roles, ranging from Intel, HP and ST microelectronics in the semiconductor industry to General Motors and UTC in systems.

A distinguished academic, Professor Sangiovanni-Vincentelli has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, since 1976. He is also an author of 950 papers, 19 books and 2 patents, and a recipient of numerous academic and industry awards with plaudits referring to his pioneering contributions to EDA and ground-breaking contributions that have had an exceptional impact on the development of electronics and electrical engineering or related fields.

The industry is now benefitting from the power of embedding UltraSoC IP into systems not only to debug the silicon in development, but to analyze and continually monitor performance, power, safety and security in critical applications, commented Sangiovanni-Vincentelli. UltraSoC has made a very strategic move in applying this capability to the growing ecosystem for the RISC-V open-source processor platform, as well as to all standard processor architectures.

Rupert Baines, UltraSoC CEO, commented: Chris Gilbert has made a significant contribution to UltraSoC and we are indebted to him for his involvement and excellent support over the last three years. Baines continued: We are excited to welcome Alberto into the Chairman role and are convinced that his background as a serial entrepreneur and distinguished academic makes him the ideal choice for guiding UltraSoCs future growth and direction.
As I write this, it is early morning and Im sitting in front of an open window. The breeze is lightly ruffling some of the papers on my desk and I am enjoying a hot cup of coffee in the coolness of an October morning. A morning like this makes me so grateful.

One of the things on todays to-do list is to bake cookies. There is something about a gorgeous autumn morning that makes me want to turn on my oven and make something delicious to enjoy with a cup of hot tea in the afternoon.

I suppose the desire to bake this time of the year stems back to the smell of cookies fresh out of the oven when I would walk into moms kitchen after a day at school. The aroma of something baking takes me back to those cozy afternoons, curled up in my favorite reading corner with a glass of milk and cookie or two. Life was good.

I know Im not the only one with memories like these and that is probably why October is designated as National Cookie Month.

My good friend Loretta recently dropped by with a copy of a section from the Betty Crocker Cooky Book that she was looking over at her good friend Kays kitchen. This book was published in 1963 and Kay received it as a gift from her mother-in-law. She still uses it when she bakes cookies.

This volume also has a section that Loretta knew I would love because it combines my two favorite things  history and cooking. The Best Cooky section looks at various decades and the cookies that were popular during that time.

For example, the Best Cooky of 1880-1890 was the Hermit. They are described as being rich with spices from the Indies, plump with fruits and nuts, Hermits originated in Cape Cod in Clipper Ship days. They went to sea on many a voyage, packed in canisters and tucked in sea chests. The Best Cooky designation of 1920-1930 went to Brownies. I did not know that the first brownies are rumored to have been the creative use of a fallen chocolate cake. They caught on and became a favorite treat.

Each section also features Historical Highlights that tell the story of food through the years. Here we some of my favorites from the Highlights:

 1880  Miss Parloas New Cook Book, published and distributed with the compliments of Washburn Crosby Company, forerunner of General Mills.

 1896  A Chinese chef in New York concocted the first Chop Suey.

 1906  Pure Food and Drug Act passed by Congress.

 1914  Electric refrigerator for home use introduced.

 1921  Betty Crocker chosen to represent General Mills to American homemakers and the Gold Medal Flour test kitchen opened.

 1941  Wartime food rationing prompts Betty Crockers booklet Your Nations Rations, to help women make the best use of scarce foods.

 1946  Home freezers introduced, promising greater mealtime variety.

Thats enough history and on to two recipes from this volume for your fall cooky baking sessions with thanks to Kay and Loretta for sharing.

The Best Cooky

1880-1890

Hermits

1 cup shortening

2 cups brown sugar (packed)

2 eggs

1/2 cup cold coffee

3 1/2 cups flour

1 teaspoon soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 1/2 cups raisins

1 1/4 cups broken nuts

Mix shortening, sugar and eggs thoroughly. Stir in coffee. Stir dry ingredients together; blend into shortening mixture. Mix in raisins and nuts. Chill dough at least 1 hour.

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of dough about 2 inches apart on lightly greased baking sheets Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until almost no imprint remains when toughed lightly in center. Recipe Question: How did the family cook chill dough when the weather was warm in 1880? Where these a cool weather treat only?

The Best Cooky

1910-1920

Ginger Creams

1/3 cup shortening

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup molasses

1/2 cup water

2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon soda

1 teaspoon ginger

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix shortening, sugar, egg, molasses, and water thoroughly. Stir dry ingredients together and blend into shortening mixture. Chill dough. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls about 2 inches apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Cookies will spread slightly during baking. Bake about 8 minutes or until almost no imprint remains when touched lightly. While slightly warm, frost with icing.

Easy Creamy Icing

1 cup sifted confectioners sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla or other flavoring

1 1/2 tablespoon cream

Blend sugar, salt and flavoring. Add cream and blend until easily spread on cooky surface.

Quote of the Week: Its hard to be sad while eating a cookie! -- Cooky Monster
HashiCorp Raises $40 Million to Meet Demand for Cloud Infrastructure Automation

SAN FRANCISCO, CA  (Marketwired)  10/24/17  HashiCorp, a leader in cloud infrastructure automation, today announced that it has raised $40 million in Series C funding from its existing investors, bringing the total raised to $74 million. The round was led by GGV Capital and Redpoint, with Mayfield and True Ventures also participating. The company plans to use the new funding to accelerate investment across its go-to-market, engineering, and customer success teams to support its rapidly growing customer base.

Broad usage of our products by operations, security, and development professionals has meant that HashiCorp products play an increasingly critical role for many large enterprises as they adopt cloud, said Dave McJannet, CEO of HashiCorp. Our products provide consistent workflows to provision, secure, connect, and run any infrastructure, so we are uniquely positioned to help enterprises address the realities of multi-cloud. Our commercial customer base has grown significantly over the past 18 months and this funding will allow us to invest aggressively across the breadth of our organization and with a particular emphasis on customer support and success.

Mitchell Hashimoto and Armon Dadgar, HashiCorps founders and co-CTOs, launched the company in 2012. In the past year, HashiCorp has seen growth and success across all of these key areas:

The company had record numbers of new customers in each of the four quarters since the company began selling commercial products, including Adobe, Barclays, Citadel, Comcast, Ellucian, Lotto New Zealand, New Relic, SAP Ariba, Segment, and Spaceflight.

HashiCorp had 22 million downloads of its open source products and released 150 updates across its suite of enterprise and open source products.

The company extended its work with key cloud providers, including Alibaba Cloud, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud.

HashiCorp launched the HashiCorp Partner Program, which expanded to include resellers and system integrators in North America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific.

HashiCorp held its third annual HashiConf user and technology conference with more than 800 attendees and featuring speakers from organizations including Adobe, Barclays, Box, Bridgewater, eBay, Fastly, Google, Joyent, Microsoft, PagerDuty, Under Armour, and others.

The community now has HashiCorp User Groups in 44 cities around the world and nearly 8,000 members.

The company expanded its executive team to include leaders for its support and customer success, finance, and marketing functions.

This past year, HashiCorp has begun to see really amazing results from both the markets shift to multi-cloud architectures and the focus the company has put into its products, its team, and building its community and organization, said Glenn Solomon, managing partner at GGV Capital and a member of HashiCorps Board of Directors. We are eager to work closely with the company to dramatically accelerate efforts on all fronts to meet this immense wave of enterprise interest and adoption.

We think HashiCorp is a key component for making cloud adoption work, said Scott Raney, partner at Redpoint. The company is devoting its energy to supporting the large, global companies that are making bets on the cloud. This round of investment will enable HashiCorp to continue to build aggressively on its success in both the open source community and with large enterprises.

HashiCorp is a cloud infrastructure automation company that enables organizations to adopt consistent workflows to provision, secure, connect, and run any infrastructure for any application. HashiCorp open source tools Vagrant, Packer, Terraform, Vault, Consul, and Nomad are downloaded thousands of times per day and are broadly adopted by the Global 2000. Enterprise versions of these products enhance the open source tools with features that promote collaboration, operations, governance, and multi-data center functionality. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and backed by Mayfield, GGV Capital, Redpoint, and True Ventures. For more information, visit or follow HashiCorp on Twitter @HashiCorp.

Media and Analyst Contact:

Amber Rowland

+1-650-814-4560
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First National Bank has awarded a total of $996,000 in community development grants to 58 organizations in Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, South Dakota and Texas, announced Alec Gorynski, Vice President, Corporate Philanthropy and Social Responsibility.

The grants, which support programs focused on educated workforce initiatives that will help strengthen individual core competencies and lead to improving personal economic self-sufficiency, mark the banks final disbursement of grant funding for the year. First National Bank awarded a total of $1,800,000 in community development grants in 2017 to 104 organizations across its seven-state service area.

In Nebraska, First National Bank awarded $694,500 in community development grants to 32 organizations across the state. Grants supporting Educated Workforce initiatives will enable a projected 6,726 individuals in Nebraska to move closer to self-sufficiency.

In the Fremont area, a $10,000 grant was awarded to the Fremont Public Schools Foundation. The funds will aid low-income junior and senior students at Fremont High in taking dual credit courses toward graduation and college credit earned.

First National Bank awarded $804,000 in community development grants to 46 organizations in Nebraska, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas and South Dakota in the second quarter of this year. The grants supported programs focused on stable housing, vibrant neighborhoods and strong local economies.

First National Bank is a subsidiary of First National of Nebraska.
Georgetown, SC (29440)

Today

A steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 53F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

A steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 53F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
Aug. 10, 1935  Oct. 9, 2017

FREMONT -- Gary Lee Freeman passed away on Oct. 9, 2017, in his wifes loving embrace; his three children were with him in spirit and prayer. He was 82, a resident of Fremont.

Gary was born Aug. 10, 1935, to Garland and Leona Freeman. After graduating from Fremont High School at 16, he attended Wesleyan College, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Midland College. He next graduated from St. Paul Bible College with Bachelor of Science in Missions. While at Midland College he met Sharon Glee Halseth, who became Garys bride on June 5, 1959. They shared a life of joy together.

A deeply spiritual man, Garys pursuit in life was to honor God through serving the needs of others. His greatest happiness came from the deep bonds of love he shared with his family.

In 1956, Gary joined the U.S. Navy and served during the Korean War on the heavy cruiser, the USS Macon. Visiting every continent but one, he traveled to ports throughout Europe, Scandinavia, Africa, Cuba and South America.

Gary later enlisted in the United States Naval Reserve and rose to the highest enlisted rank of Master Chief Petty Officer. For several years and until retirement, he had been given command of the US Naval Reserve Area 5 Exhibit Center. There he designed and manufactured exhibits, scale model reproductions and models of U.S. Navy ships, submarines, and aircraft. Gary retired from active service in 1991 and started a private business designing, creating and manufacturing museum quality scale model reproductions. In recent years, he built a commercial workshop in Nickerson with his family, and enjoyed creating models, small tractors, and furniture.

He was the editor of the Red Edge Newsletter, devoted to the local chapter of the International Harvester Collector Club. He enjoyed hosting the Annual Christmas gathering for the areas U.S. Naval Reservists.

Gary was a life-long builder, creator and artisan. Throughout his life he loved working on projects, creating new art, models, woodworking and making things beautiful. He read daily and had numerous interests in the world, including design, inspirational architecture, art, aviation, astronomy and the universe. He appreciated the era he lived in and looked to the future, while at the same time valued old-fashioned machinery, history and stories. He enjoyed well-designed gatherings and creative spaces, happy music, doing projects with his son and daughters and spending time with his wife.

His imagination was fueled by the birth of Americas space program of the 1960s as he watched the Apollo missions unfold, then the space shuttle and planetary missions. He often enjoyed sharing favorite Hubble Space Telescope images. He was thrilled with the advent of computers and fascinated with the creative and communication capabilities computers offered.

He lived his life with honor, kindness and deep respect for others. He lived each day in service of faith and goodness, was deeply empathetic, had an amazing sense of humor, was optimistic, patient, generous, giving and loving. He was a private, humble man, who most enjoyed spending his time creating a beautiful home with his wife, reading or creating something new. Gary is deeply loved and respected.

He is survived by his wife, Sharon; children, David, Rachel and Deborah, their spouses, Michael and Morgan; his grandchildren, Ryan, Hannah, Christine and Mark; great-grandchildren, Trevor and Madison; his brother, Stanley and spouse Marilyn; and many loved nieces, nephews and dear cousins.

The Celebration of Life memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Oct. 28 at Cornerstone Bible Church, 406 E. Third St., in Fremont. Following the service there will be a reception at Gallery 92 West, the Fremont Area Art Association, located at 92 W. Sixth St., in Fremont.

In lieu of flowers, a memorial has been established in care of the family to create a lasting legacy in our beloved Garys name. The family wishes to express gratitude to all those who shared Garys life.
Two men were sentenced by Judge John Samson to spend time in prison Monday morning during Dodge County District Court.

Jeremy J. Fisher, 28, of Omaha was sentenced to spend a minimum of 2 years in the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services for being in possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver, a Class II felony.

At the time of his arrest, Fisher was in possession of a registered firearm which he did not have a conceal carry permit for, however, that charge was dropped through a plea agreement, Dodge County Deputy Attorney Marti Sleister said.

Sleister said prison time was warranted in this case.

The court found substantial evidence that he was likely to be a repeat offender, she said.

Fisher was arrested in January 2017 following a traffic stop conducted by members of the III CORPS Drug Task Force, court records show. After locating the firearm inside of a backpack sitting in Fishers backseat, 1.36 grams of methamphetamine was subsequently located, an arrest affidavit shows.

In other court news, David L. Dryden, 50, of Fremont was sentenced to spend the next 4-7 years in prison for conspiracy to deliver methamphetamine, a Class II felony.

Dryden pleaded guilty to the offense in April 2016, and with no prior felony offenses on his record, applied and was accepted into Drug Court.

Following acceptance, Dryden absconded to the Oklahoma City, Okla., area for more than one year before being arrested on a warrant and returning to Nebraska.

On Sept. 11, Drydens Drug Court bond was revoked.

Judge Samson believed that he wasted a golden opportunity, Dodge County Attorney Oliver Glass said. And I believe the same thing.
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According to one email, Monsanto conducted no "such testing" on the "carcinogenicity" of Roundup. Another one reads: "We do not conduct any subchronic, chronic or teratogenicity studies with our formulations." The latter would show whether Roundup can cause deformities, as some studies suggest. Rat embryos sprayed with diluted Roundup, for example, developed skeletal damage.

Monsanto didn't even trust its own experts. This is how Farmer summed up an analysis by Monsanto consultant James Parry: "Dr. Parry concluded in his evaluation that glyphosate is capable of producing genotoxicity." But Farmer did not want this to be seen as a warning. Instead, she wrote, further studies should be sent to him in order to "move Dr. Parry from his position."

Glyphosate appears not to be as harmless as the industry likes to claim, in part because it also kills many microorganisms in addition to plants. Although this is unlikely to directly affect humans and animals, it does apparently affect the millions of bacteria in the intestinal flora known as the microbiome.

Leipzig-based veterinarian Monika Kruger has observed that the prevalence of certain microorganisms in the rumen changes when cattle feed on pellets containing glyphosate, and that this affects the health of the animals. However, the German Federal Institute for Risk Research (BfR), which is responsible for the assessment of glyphosate in the EU, disagrees with her conclusions.

The Monsanto researchers also behaved irresponsibly when it comes to the question of Roundup's absorption into the body. In their own animal experiments back in 2002, the company's experts discovered that "between 5 and 10 percent" of the substance penetrated the skin of rats.

The rate was much higher than expected and the result had the potential to "blow" the "Roundup risk evaluations," reads one e-mail. As a consequence, the author of the email wrote: "We decided thus to STOP the study." Laboratory animals also absorbed more Roundup ingredients through the digestive tract than had been hoped for.

Above all, the Monsanto papers show that the experts were very aware of a fact that is often lost in the public debate: In addition to glyphosate, herbicides like Roundup contain other dangerous chemicals that are necessary to enable the active ingredient to penetrate hard plant walls, among other things. These ingredients are often more harmful than the active ingredient on its own.

Different Verdicts

As a result of years of industry lobbying, many regulatory agencies assess the toxicity of glyphosate in isolation, but not that of the mixtures that are sprayed.

The Environmental Protection Agency in the United States, the European Food Safety Authority and the BfR all carry out so-called risk analyses. In the studies evaluated for this purpose, researchers drip pure glyphosate into rat feed. Then they determine the amount of glyphosate at which no damage is inflicted on the animals. Other studies determine the actual concentration of the substance in the environment. The substance is deemed safe for use if the two values are far apart, as is the case with glyphosate, which is which why it was deemed non-carcinogenic.

The hazard-related assessment that led to the IARC decision is different. Researchers at the agency investigate whether a substance is dangerous in principle, irrespective of the dose. They also evaluate what happens when the complete mixtures, in this case Roundup, are sprayed. Although it is difficult to effectively control the conditions in such epidemiological studies, they are a more accurate reflection of reality - and led to the IARC verdict: probably carcinogenic.

The Monsanto experts came to a similar conclusion. "Glyphosate is OK, but the formulated product causes the damage," Monsanto researcher Heydens wrote to Donna Farmer.

Monsanto did nothing to warn the public. Instead, the company continued its massive lobbying campaign and did everything conceivable to discredit researchers whose work was not in Monsanto's interest.
Brussels, Oct 24 2017] - The European Parliament will today vote on the EU-Morocco Euro-Mediterranean aviation deal, The proposed deal includes the territory of the Western Sahara in violation of EU law. Commenting ahead of the vote, POLISARIO EU Representative Mohammed Sidati, said:

This is yet another example of EU lawmakers seeking to sideline EU law for the sake of ties with Morocco, which bolsters an illegal occupation, violates the international legal rights of the Sahrawi people, and undermines the UN-led political process. Morocco has neither sovereignty nor jurisdiction over the territory of Western Sahara. As the European Court of Justice made clear in December 2016, the EU cannot be party to deals with Morocco which include the separate and distinct territory of Western Sahara. Any such agreements require as a matter of law the independent consent of the Sahrawi people.

"It is clear that this legislation has not been part of an open and transparent process. As the legitimate representatives of the Sahrawi people, our consent has not been sought, nor have we been informed or consulted about the proposed deal. Such efforts are counter-productive, and only further serve to undermine EU claims to support a genuine and credible political process to achieve a lasting solution to the conflict.

We therefore call on the European Parliament to postpone this vote until the European Commission provides legal clarity on the territorial scope of the proposed amendment with regards to the European Court of Justice ruling of December 2016, opens a constructive channel of dialogue with POLISARIO as the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people, and focuses its efforts first and foremost on ensuring EU Member States and Institutions are in compliance with EU law concerning ties with Morocco. SPS

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After nearly two years of renovations, the inn at GrayBarns on the Silvermine River in Norwalk has opened. Formerly the Silvermine Inn and Tavern, the property was purchased by the Glazer Group in 2015 and has undergone extensive renovations in advance of its reopening.

The Glazer Group purchased the inn for $1.1 million, according to city records.

"The building was built around 1800. It had been a tavern for at least 100 years so there's always been something here," Andy Glazer, owner of Glazer Group, said. "It got very run down over the years ... so the neighbors are thrilled to have it renovated."

Over the years, in addition to being an inn, the building has been used as a small textile factory and speakeasy. Now a six-suite inn, the Perry Avenue property has a fresh country style, a decor of soft white walls, wooden beams, original fireplaces and surrounding views of the Silvermine River.

The suites each have custom wood bed frames, luxurious baths and spacious sitting areas. Some even have private balconies overlooking the courtyard and river.

"People that have stayed here before would be surprised probably to see the transformation," said Alyssa Nollman, co-manager at the inn at GrayBarns.

Reservations are already rolling in. Pam James, co-manager at the inn, said guests are coming from surrounding Connecticut towns, as well as from out of state.

"There's a lot of history with this place," James said. "It's been home to a lot, there's been a lot of weddings here, and people want to come back."

Silvermine Arts Center, a nearby business, said it's also looking forward to the newly restored property.

"We are especially pleased with developer/owner Andy Glazer's careful restoration of the 200 year old Silvermine Tavern building, which stood at the center of the community providing a gracious ambiance and place to gather," said Rose-Marie Fox, the center's Board Chair. "This important landmark is soon to be a gleaming beacon to attract visitors to our area and resurrect the gentility of former days."

Business at the inn is expected to pick up even more following the opening of the Tavern, which is set for after Labor Day. The restaurant will seat about 100 people and will serve traditional American fare that integrates fresh ingredients grown on site. There will also be an area upstairs to accommodate private parties between 30-40 people.

"We want to make sure we're serving the community," said Nollman. "We want to become the local restaurant that it once was."

To complete the GrayBarns project, Glazer Group also purchased the nearby general story which they will open as a mercantile in early 2018. Its plans include a cafe, spa, along with a variety of items for sale.

"GrayBarns will restore the architectural details of the building as well as feature country market staples and carefully curated items for the home," the GrayBarns' website writes.

On the property also stands an old barn transported from upstate New York. The barn, which now serves as a workshop for the carpenters, will eventually be home to community events.

"True to its history, GrayBarns on the Silvermine River has remained the ideal setting to unite city slickers, international travelers and the local community over food and libations, relaxation and leisure," the release said.
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STAMFORD  Our middle class is thinning while our upper class is swelling.

The number of people in Stamford living at the bottom rung of the middle class  households earning $50,000 to $75,000 a year  dropped to less than 14 percent of the population from 20 percent between 2006 and 2016.

This figure represents the biggest redistribution in median household income during that period, followed by the change in households earning $200,000 or more, which climbed to more than 17 percent from 12 percent, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Experts believe the numbers represent a hollowing out of the middle class that the United Way of Western Connecticut has been following for years.

Thirty-five percent of Stamfords some 46,000 households meet the ALICE  Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed  threshold by the United Way. These are households that earn above the U.S. poverty threshold but below what it takes to cover basic expenses, such as housing, child care, transportation and health care.

The 2016 ALICE threshold for Stamford is around $71,000 for a family with two adults and two children in child care, and around $22,000 for a single adult  amounts that many find challenging to live on in Connecticuts third largest city, where the median income in 2016 was nearly $88,000.

When people talk about the term middle class, that used to mean that you could afford to live. You werent flushed with cash, but you could manage well, said United Way of Western Connecticut CEO Kimberly Morgan. I dont think that applies anymore.

Stamford has seen its share of struggles over its middle class, mostly centered around development that has changed the fabric of neighborhoods including the downtown, South End, Springdale and Glenbrook.

Its hard to find housing anywhere near these peoples incomes, Mike Battinelli, co-founder of the Stamford Neighborhood Coalition, said of young adults who are first-time home buyers and many in the middle class.

Battinelli, 58, a city firefighter who considers himself middle class, started the coalition based on concerns about zoning in Springdale and Glenbrook.

He said hes seen many middle-income earners leave the city.

I know a lot of our middle class are moving up the line, Battinelli said. A lot of people I know moved to Trumbull, Monroe and Shelton.

He points to the manufacturing hubs that have left the city along with unskilled jobs.

As Stamford residents, were losing all our industry and its changing over to corporate  and that drives the prices of houses up, he said.
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STAMFORD  If enthusiastic applause is an indication, Republican challenger Barry Michelson bested Democrat incumbent Mayor David Martin Monday in a debate that covered development, illegal immigration, zoning enforcement and school performance.

Maybe more Michelson supporters showed up for the debate at Rippowam Middle School, hosted by the Prometheum Foundation, or maybe they were better at clapping, woo-hooing and whistling. But their support was louder when Michelson challenged Martins assertions that Stamford is doing well and on track to do even better.

When Martin touted the citys AAA bond rating, for example, Michelson said it is just an indication of the citys ability to tax and ability to pay.

Taxes went up a total of 12.5 percent during your term  thats three times the cost of living, Michelson said, looking across the stage at Martin. Thats what people are feeling.

Martin said he asked for the tax increases to cover the citys long-unfunded pension and retirement benefits. At a time when several Connecticut municipalities are struggling financially, Stamford is strong and thriving  a success story, Martin said.

He criticized Michelson for a newspaper opinion piece he wrote last month saying that, though the school system has many high-achievers, it also lets many students down. Tests show only half are proficient in English and math, Michelson wrote.

Board of Education members rebuked you, Martin said, because the school system during his tenure has begun moving in a much more positive direction.

Its easy to stay on the sidelines and say bad things about Stamford and the schools, Martin said. Youre just complaining  you offer no solutions.

Michelson said his letter addressed what he learned from Stamford educators who told him that the test scores reflect a decrease in the number of classroom instruction hours.

Parents and teachers called me and thanked me for recognizing this problem. You cant make anything better by sweeping it under the rug, Michelson said to loud applause.

More than 600 people filled the Rippowam auditorium Monday evening. Before the debate began, the third candidate in the race, John Zito, who is unaffiliated, stood outside distributing his campaign brochures.

Zito was not invited to take part in the debate because organizers said he failed to meet criteria that includes raising at least $10,000 in contributions, holding a previous municipal office, or winning at least 5 percent of the vote in a previous mayoral race. Zito ran in 2013 and got 2 percent.

Zito shook hands with people as they made their way into the auditorium.

They are telling me its disrespectful I wasnt invited, since Im on the ballot, Zito said. They said if its because I didnt raise enough campaign money, then thats awful.

He introduced himself to a man in shorts and a windbreaker who said, I know who you are. You should be in there.

Traffic jams

So Zito did not have a chance to answer questions that included one about whether Stamford is considered a sanctuary city, given the number of residents who are undocumented immigrants. The term refers to a city that limits cooperation with federal authorities to enforce immigration laws.

We are, for all intent and purpose, a sanctuary city in every way, except for name, Martin said.

Undocumented immigrants who break the law are reported to federal authorities, but Stamford police do not ask law-abiding people to provide their documentation papers, Martin said. For police to keep the community safe, people must not be afraid to call for help and report crimes, he said.

Michelson said he agrees.

But the candidates differed on the effects of increasing development in Stamford.

Both said traffic is worse. Martin said he brought all traffic-related functions under one department head and hired a second traffic engineer.

It still takes longer than ever to get from one end of the city to the other, and driving is more aggressive because of it, Michelson said.

Were fixing it, Martin said.

It takes longer, Michelson said.

Development question

Michelson questioned whether the sewer system can handle the addition of hundreds of housing units, mostly in the South End and downtown.

Martin said the system is running 19 percent below capacity because many sanitary pipes were replaced with the new developments.

The old sewer lines were leaking, and when it rained we got huge amounts of water in the (sewer) plant, Martin said. Its an empty claim that development is causing problems.

Michelson, a city planner by trade who served six years on the Zoning Board, questioned whether thats accurate, given past problems at the plant. It requires a lot more study.

He made a point of saying that zoning enforcement is inadequate.

People tell me they call the city constantly to report illegal trucks parked on the streets, illegal apartments in basements, and they dont get a reply, Michelson said. We have a zoning enforcement officer who, by his own admission, does enforcement only one-third of the time.

Martin said enforcement is difficult because it is dictated by state law, and the problem goes back 33 years, when he first sat on the Board of Representatives.

The demand from people who want to live in Stamford has increased, Martin said. We have a task force out there working on it ... I dont have a magic wand or any pixie dust.

Michelson said all cities are under the same statutes and theres no reason the problem should be as acute as it is in Stamford. We have not had the will to enforce the regulations.

Martins final message, to some applause, was this: Im not saying that everything is perfect  much remains to be done. But we are on a good path.

Michelsons message, to loud cheers, was this: The sky is not falling, but the clouds are looming. We have a caring, energetic population but we need a change of direction, a city government that works for everyone.

acarella@stamfordadvocate.com.
NEW CANAAN  A clerk at A1 Cellars was issued an infraction after selling tobacco products to a minor, police said.

The violation was discovered as part of an unannounced tobacco and electronic cigarette compliance inspection Oct. 20 held by New Canaan Police along with the Connecticut Department of Mental Heath and Addiction Services Tobacco Prevention and Enforcement Program. A supervised minor was sent to various establishments around town to try and purchase tobacco and electronic cigarettes to ensure stores are complying with state law prohibiting the sale of such products to anyone under the age of 18.
Nazis forced Jay Ipson, just 6 years old, and his parents into the Kovno Ghetto in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1941.

His father found work just outside the ghetto as a car mechanic, while Ipson and his mother lived under the daily fear theyd be rounded up and send to their deaths in a concentration camp.

On three separate occasions, I was selected for execution, Ipson recalled. Ive got pictures, me and my mother, standing in a line of thousands to be killed.

But each time, the mother and son were miraculously spared. Her other family members werent so lucky.

Eventually, the risk became too great and the Ipsons fled the ghetto in November 1943 by cutting the barbed wire. A farmer that his father, a lawyer, had previously helped met them at the fence with a wagon full of straw in which to hide. He drove them to the countryside where a family of Catholic farmers took them in and hid them, while nearly 29,000 Lithuanian Jews were shipped to concentration camps and murdered.

They were so poor. They had a one room house with one window. The floor was dirt. He had three sheep and hed shear them and bring the wool inside so they wouldnt freeze to death. But they offered to save our lives, Ipson said.

Ipsons father dug out a small hiding place beneath a potato field where the small family hid for six months to elude the Nazis and their local anti-Semitic collaborators.

It was just a 4-by-12 chamber and 13 people hid there until we were liberated by the Soviets, said Ipsen.

From 12:30 to 2 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 26, Ipson will share his experiences as a survivor with Germanna Community College students and interested members of the public. The free event will take place in the Workforce and Technology Building, room 105 A&B at the Fredericksburg Area Campus.

Adjunct instructor of history Marijayne Kruss organized the event and invited Ipson to speak after hearing about his story. Shes teaching a class on the Holocaust this semester, the first time its been offered at GCC.

I know how powerful first-hand testimony can be, said Kruss. When I heard his story, because of the nature of it, were really like to open it up to the public and invite as many people as possible.

Kruss said current events, including the violence that took place in Charlottesville on Aug. 12 have placed the spotlight back on Nazis and white supremacy.

We definitely talk about it, she said. I let them draw their own conclusions. One of the things we teach is that we all have a choice, morally, when were in a given situation.

The Holocaust was not inevitable. If we teach ourselves not to look away, if we teach ourselves we have power together, those things cant happen.

Ipsen experiences strong feelings when he sees Nazis marching in the streets of the United States.

It makes me feel like Hell, he said. I really would like to face them and talk to them.

To spread his message, the survivor speaks to more that 4,000 students across Virginia each year.

Its my responsibility to teach the younger generation, Ipsen said. They are the future of our nation.

In 2013 he was picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church at a speaking engagement. He gathered a group of supportersChristians and Jews aliketo stand behind him as he faced protesters carrying signs that read, God hates Jews.

He stepped up and told them, God doesnt hate this Jew, because Im alive. They turned around and left without incident, he recalled.

I feel like God saved me for a purpose, said Ipson.

According to GCC history professor Kellie Bradshaw, recent research by the United States Holocaust Museum estimates that between 15 and 20 million people died or were imprisoned in the Nazi ghetto and camp system. Ipson and his parents were the only survivors to make it out of Kovno Ghetto.

Mr. Ipsons story of survival is something I believe everyone should hear, Bradshaw said.

After liberation, Ipson and his family eventually immigrated to the United States in 1947 and settled in Richmond. He attended local public schools in the city of Richmond starting with sixth grade, studied accounting at the University of Richmond, joined the U.S. Army Reserves and served as an instructor attached to the 2079th Judge Advocate Corps.

In 1959, he married Eleanor Gaffen, of Montreal, Quebec; the couple has two daughters, one son and four grandchildren.

Ipson owned American Auto Parts Co., operated the Hopewell Airport, and worked for the Hopewell News.

Hes also the co-founder and former president of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond and was appointed by former governor Bob McDonnell to the Virginia Israel Advisory Board.
Prisons play a key role in Nebraskas criminal justice system by protecting public safety and preparing inmates for return to our society. Under the leadership of Director Scott Frakes over the past two years, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services has been making great strides and working to better achieve their mission. From expanding facility capacity to automating sentence calculation processes and expanding programming, the agency has been adopting data-driven practices to modernize its operations and facilities.

While Scott and his team have accomplished much over the past couple years, their efforts havent come without support from numerous partnerships.

To realize many of these changes, we have taken an all hands on deck approach by working with all three branches of state government on several initiatives.Since 2014, Nebraskas three branches of government have collaborated with the Council of State Governments Justice Center on justice reinvestment initiatives, which included the successful passage of sentencing reform with LB 605 (2015).In August, NDCS announced they had successfully completed implementation of their justice reinvestment initiatives. These included risk/needs assessments and programming reviews to protect public safety and help prepare inmates for -entry into the community upon completion of their sentence.

Successful outcomes for NDCS also require proper funding. Since entering office I have made it a priority to adequately fund our corrections system. I worked with the Legislature in 2015 to secure an additional $37 million over two years to improve operations in the corrections system. In 2016, the Legislature and I agreed upon an additional $26 million to expand our current prison facilities. This year, we worked together again to provide another $75 million in housing investments to appropriately house and care for the needs of elderly inmates and to deliver better programming for those with behavioral health needs.

We are beginning to see tangible results from these investments. Eight of our 10 facilities are successfully filling vacancies and retaining staff members. The agency has put more of a focus on leveraging data to manage the prison population and better deliver programming. This year, NDCS completed over 7,000 risk-needs assessments on inmates to determine where they should be housed and what programming can help prepare them for re-entry. Last month, the agency opened a new 100-bed dormitory at their community corrections facility in Lincoln, which is preparing inmates to return back into society.

While we continue to see great progress, we still have work to do. Staffing at two of the states maximum security facilities continues to present a challenge. To address this, Director Frakes recently instituted a new hiring bonus for corrections officers at these facilities along with raises for more experienced workers. These bonuses and incentives aim to decrease the amount of overtime required by the current workforce. If these strategies succeed, a higher level of staffing will alleviate pressure on our workforce, allowing our officers to better focus on their jobs, families and personal well-being.We want our corrections officers to go to work each day feeling secure and supported in their environment as they protect public safety.

Hiring more corrections officers not only benefits our loyal officers, but also saves the taxpayer money as well. Every vacant position that is filled by a full-time team member rather than overtime saves an estimated $13,000 per year.

Looking to the future, we also continue to put a focus on programming to prepare inmates for their return to the community. More than nine in 10 people currently in our prisons will re-enter society. One program new to NDCS is titled Thinking for a Change. It is helping inmates to recognize criminal thinking and replace them with constructive thinking and problem-solving skills. The program aims to reduce recidivism (the rate of reoffending) as well as lower incidents of inmate misconduct in our facilities.

Weve also seen great community support for innovative partnerships thanks to the philanthropic support of Nebraskans like Rhonda and Howard Hawks as well as Ken Stinson and others. Last fall, NDCS launched a new partnership with Defy Ventures, a nonprofit organization that transforms the lives of individuals with criminal records by hosting entrepreneurship, employment and character development training programs. Defy Ventures currently operates in three NDCS facilities: the Nebraska State Penitentiary, the Omaha Correctional Center and the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution. By providing this opportunity, Defy not only equips inmates with multiple skills they can use once they return home, but it also makes our prison environments healthier and safer.

Thinking for a Change and Defy Ventures are just two examples of the innovative programming changes NDCS has made. These changes are evidence-based and are helping accomplish our goal of rehabilitating the individual rather than simply holding onto them until their sentence is finished. Ultimately, this approach helps ensure inmates have a constructive pathway to re-entering society rather than a quick return to a taxpayer-funded prison. These programs, combined with increased housing and new hiring initiatives, are building a bright future for NDCS.

If you have any questions or comments on our work in transforming our criminal justice system, I hope youll share your ideas. Please call my office at 402-471-2244 or email me at pete.ricketts@nebraska.gov.
Geekologie has shut down.

Thank you to everybody.

Now go be happy.
From 2 p.m. Wednesday through noon Friday, you will have an opportunity to see four iconic American aircraft from World War II at the Statesville Regional Airport.
A two-part Veterans Day event will be held next month.

The Uncle Sams Memorial Tribute Display will be exhibited Nov. 10-12 at The BOAT, 800 Bailey Farm Road, Statesville. This memorial features the NC Moving Wall which lists the names of all North Carolina natives killed in the Vietnam War along with photos of all 100 N.C. counties war memorial monuments, and photos of all 50 state capitals war memorial monuments.

The 2017 RumbleQuake VI will be held on Saturday, Nov. 11. This motorcade will begin at 11 a.m. at the Carolina Field of Honor Veterans Memorial Park in Kernersville and will travel along I-40 West through Winston-Salem and Davie County to Exit 150, then through Iredell County via Highway 115 to Statesville. The motorcade will end at The BOAT at approximately noon Saturday.

For more information, visit www.therumblequake.com or call Burgess Bailey at 704-500-1621.
To be considered on time and to avoid late penalties, mailed payments for 2022 tax bills must be postmarked by the USPS on or before December 31st 2022. All mail in this area goes to a St. Louis facility to be postmarked. Dropping a letter in the mail in the last few days of December,
On a visit to Latvia, October 23-24, Romanian Senate Chairman Calin Popescu-Tariceanu underscored the highly important role that national parliaments play in shaping up European policies especially in the current context that is dominated by intense debates among member states to agree on a unitary position that will reflect their citizens' expectations.

According to a Senate press statement, the visit included parliamentary consultations with Chairman of the Latvian Parliament Inara Murniece and Chairman of the European Affairs Committee Lolita Cigane, as well as meetings with Latvia's President Raimonds Vejonis and Latvian Foreign Affairs Minister Edgars Rinkevics. Tariceanu also toured the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga and laid a wreath at the Freedom Monument built in the memory of the heroes of the Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920).

"Romania's Senate chairman underscored the highly important role that the national parliaments play in shaping up European policies,especially in the current context that is dominated by intense debates among member states to agree on a unitary position that will reflect their citizens' expectations. The Romanian dignitary voiced a wish for cooperation between the two countries to be intensified in all areas and for parliamentary consultations to be held with Latvian partners, including for the preparation of Romania's presidency of the Council of the European Union, giving that Latvia held the officein the first half of 2015."

Tariceanu underscored that Romania will continue to promote, based on the pro-European option of a wide majority of Romanian citizens, the strengthening and cohesion of the European construction, so that the historical gap among the new states of the European Union and the founding countries can be bridged. "Regarding bilateral economic cooperation, the discussions highlighted an interest in boosting commercial exchanges, with both sides welcoming the establishment of the Romanian-Latvian Chamber of Commerce as a potential instrument to create tighter connections between the business leaders of the two countries and also to contribute to increasing their interactions," according to the statement.

Also featuring on the agenda was defence and security cooperation amidst the recent developments in the Eastern vicinity, especially in the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea regions. Also mentioned was a shared wish to increase the efforts of NATO member states to further strengthen the defence and deterrence capacity against conventional and hybrid threats, as well as the resilience of the NATO eastern border countries.

Tariceanu renewed an invitation extended to the chairman of the Latvian Parliament to participate in the first parliamentary summit of the Bucharest 9 (B9) format to be held in Bucharest in the first part of 2018. Also included in the Romanian delegation were Senator Nicu Falcoi and Senator Laszlo-Odon Fejer. The visit was part of celebrations this year of the 95th anniversary of diplomatic ties between Romania and Latvia.

Agerpres.
CEDAR FALLS | Keri and Mike Byrum "hopped to it" not long after they moved to Cedar Falls from Orlando, Fla.

Keri Byrum, a Cedar Falls native, and husband Mike Byrum, originally from Virginia, were previously involved in real estate development in Florida. They spent a big part of the spring on their hands and knees planting nine acres of hops plants  about 4,200 in all. They plan to add another three acres yet this fall.

The result is Cedar Falls Hops Co. While there are a number of smaller backyard-style hops-growing operations, this is one of the larger hops-growing operations in northeast Iowa, just west of Cedar Falls, in partnership with Keri Byrum's dad, Rusty Leymaster.

They got into the business for two main reasons: The first is craft brewing is a growing industry in Iowa.

The second?

"We also like beer a lot," Keri Byrum said.

And there's market demand, Mike Byrum chimed in.

"People aren't going to be drinking less beer," he said.

They recently held an open house for their hops operation, where people were able to pick hops. And then there were curious neighbors from down the road who wondered what those tall poles and plants were.

The Byrums met in Orlando, have been married 3 years and just moved back to Cedar Falls.

Keri Byrum's dad also owns a drainage tile business, Leymaster Tile.

"He decided he was going to retire. And we decided we were going to move back and take that over," Keri Byrum said. "My background is in horticulture. I figured I'd find something to do. And after doing some research, hops seemed like a great joint project for my dad. He's a farmer  I don't know if you know farmers; when they retire they still run circles around the rest of us. So between his farm background and my horticulture experience, it seemed like a good joint project for us.

Keri Byrum said they moved back in April and got to work.

"Our goal was to get the first four acres planted this spring," Keri Byrum said.

They installed poles, a cabling system and irrigation to provide the structure within which to grow the plants.

"We have about 4,200 plants," Keri Byrum said. "This is as big as they'll get this year before the frost. They're perennials, so they'll come back. It'll be the third year before they hit their full production."

Eventually, the plants will grow the length of the poles, which protrude 18 feet above the ground. A scissors truck will be needed for harvest if they grow that tall.

"This year we decided to harvest just a small percentage of the plants so that we could have samples to give out," Keri Byrum said. That first public event was "kind of practice, if you will," she said.

"There's a lot of people good at growing corn and beans. It just didn't fit my skill set as much. Hops is a lot more hands on," she said. "And it's a new industry in Iowa. The people who are doing it the longest are just in their third year. So it's kind of exciting to get at the start of a new industry."

It's a big year of change for the Byrums, who are expecting a baby in January.

Keri broke open a fresh hop berry and offered a sniff of its aroma.

"Since I can't drink it just makes my mouth water," she said.

"See, she tries to play it off to like she's counting down to the baby," Mike Byrum joked. "She's really counting down to when she can have a beer"  drawing a giggle from his wife.
Every time a national story about sexual assault dominates the headlines and airwaves, I write Amy Harms.

Generally, each email contains an apology.

It started in June when a judge declared a mistrial in the sexual assault case against comedian Bill Cosby.

Im sorry I havent written about your case yet, I wrote Harms. I promised Id get to it soon.

But I didnt.

Two months passed and then came Taylor Swift.

The pop star won a civil lawsuit against a Denver radio personality. She says he groped her at a concert four years ago. Swift asked for, and received, a $1 verdict from the jury.

I wrote Harms again. Now is the time, I said. Their cases seem so similar.

In April, Harms filed a civil lawsuit against state Rep. Steven Roberts Jr., a Democrat from St. Louis. The lawsuit alleges that two years previously, at a downtown St. Louis bar, Roberts sexually assaulted Harms. She was a law student at the time at St. Louis University. He was an assistant prosecutor for the circuit attorneys office in the city.

Defendant then stuck his hand inside of Plaintiffs pants and underwear, Harms lawsuit alleges. Defendants hand made contact with Plaintiffs genitals.

Harms had filed a complaint with the police about the alleged assault in 2015. They investigated and sent a report to Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce. She recused herself since Roberts was an employee and sent the case to St. Charles County, where assistant prosecutor Jillian Anderson handled the case.

No charges were filed. Roberts denied wrongdoing, and still does. Harms went public about her complaints after I wrote about another alleged sexual assault case involving Roberts. Last year, state Rep. Cora Faith Walker, D-Ferguson, accused Roberts of rape. Again, he denied the allegation, saying the two had consensual sex. Police investigated. Joyce recused again. The St. Charles County prosecutor decided against filing charges. Now Roberts is suing Walker for defamation claiming that the allegations were false. She, in turn, has countersued him for assault. Roberts is moving for a judgment in his favor and the case is set for trial in December.

After the Swift case, Harms told me she hoped the result would raise awareness nationally about sexual assault.

It is my sincere hope that Ms. Swifts case will continue to get people talking, to bring attention to and raise awareness of issues related to sexual violence, she said. Until we address these issues as a society, our efforts toward prevention will fall short of our goals.

But I still didnt write. One thing came up, then another.

Then Harvey Weinstein happened.

The Hollywood mogul is facing multiple allegations of sexual harassment, assault, and rape from actresses and other women who allege he has used his power over women and their careers in the most heinous of ways for decades. Many of the women say they had tried to come forward before but police or prosecutors always found a reason not to go to court.

After multiple exposes in The New Yorker, the New York Times and the Washington Post, the reaction has been swift. Weinstein lost control of the company he founded, hes been expelled from the Academy of Motion Pictures and Arts and Sciences. He maintains his innocence.

Last week, following the Weinstein allegations, actress Alyssa Milano sparked a social media avalanche of women talking about their own instances of sexual assault and harassment. If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote Me too as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.

Amy Harms is a me, too.

She understands how one woman finding courage helps another do the same. Its why even though charges have not been filed in her case, she continues to carry her fight forward, challenging the very system that could control her career path.

The court has not yet ruled on the merits of Harms case. On Oct. 13, Circuit Court Judge Joan Moriarty denied a defense motion to dismiss the case. More motions could follow, and a trial, before the case is decided.

Roberts attorney, Jeremy Hollingshead, says he plans to file a second motion to dismiss the case. He criticizes Harms for representing herself. Its causing a lot of issues, he said.

Harms also filed a complaint against Anderson with the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel. She alleges Anderson knowingly made false statements of material facts and the law, didnt provide her victim services in violation of the Victims Rights Statute, and failed to properly handle her case.

If a victim verbally expresses a lack of consent before a defendant ever touches her and that isnt enough, what is sufficient? she wrote in her complaint. Is no weight given to whether the defendants claim is believable? What is ever going to be sufficient?

The complaint against Anderson was investigated but dismissed by the Regional Disciplinary Committee.

Harms also filed a Sunshine Law complaint with the attorney generals office saying the St. Louis Police Department twice failed to give her the records she was seeking in her case. She has sent a letter to lawmakers advocating for stronger laws so that more victims of sexual assault will come forward and believe the judicial system will take them more seriously.

This fight  has been exhausting, Harms says. Just when I have a victory to celebrate, another loss soon follows. It isnt easy for me, but I know it might be harder for anyone else. Short of exposing what happened in my case in the media, I dont think the truth will come out. If the truth doesnt come out, I do not believe that anything will change; those in power can sweep this, too, under the rug. These things must change.
ST. LOUIS  Authorities on Tuesday morning again raided a St. Louis home where police officers had shot and killed a man while serving a warrant in June.

No shots were fired in Tuesdays raid, but police kicked in the front door about 5 a.m. Tuesday and threw a flash-bang device into a childrens bedroom, residents there said.

Police said the raid Tuesday came as they executed a search warrant in a robbery investigation. Two men were arrested, and guns and stolen merchandise were seized, police said.

Two boys, ages 6 and 10, were sleeping in the room where the flash-bang device left behind some shattered glass on the floor and bed. It exploded on the corner of the bed, burning a hole in a blanket and charring the mattress, said the childrens mother, Gina Torres. The children were shaken but unhurt, she said.

The home in the 5400 block of South Kingshighway is the same house where SWAT officers shot and killed Isaiah Vinny Hammett, 21, as they tried to serve a warrant on June 7.

Police said Hammett, who was suspected of being involved in the sale of illegal guns and drugs, fired at them with an AK-47. Hammett was Torres son. His family has disputed the police account and held vigils and marches for justice in the case.

After that June raid, police said they found more than a dozen guns in the home and a quantity of marijuana, though they havent said how much.

Tuesday morning, city officers executed a search warrant with the help of FBI in a robbery investigation, St. Louis police said. Torres said police took away three young men who arent related to her but who sometimes stay at the house.

Two men were arrested, and stolen property and multiple firearms were recovered from the home, said Schron Jackson, a city police spokeswoman.

Police told Torres that her home had been under surveillance for about a week, with officers watching the men come and go, she said.

Police are saying that, supposedly, one of the kids robbed somebody and took a phone from one of the robbery victims, Torres said.

Police confiscated cellphones, including Torres, and handguns, including one from Torres, two that belonged to her father, and one from a man who was sleeping in a chair in the front room. The gun was under his leg. Torres said all of the guns were legally purchased.

Police tactics

Torres wanted to know why the officers had to raid her home and couldnt have instead arrested the men on the street or at their relatives homes. She said officers told her they thought her home on Kingshighway was being used by the men as a safe house.

She complained about the flash-bang device thrown into the childrens room. She also said her father suffers from breathing problems and other medical issues and needed an ambulance about the time of the raid, but the police activity delayed paramedics.

Torres said she fears that police are targeting the house to try to force the family out. She is angry that the flash-bang device came so close to her sons, including a 10-year-old boy who is autistic.

They couldve been killed, Torres said. I dont care what that cop said, that flash-bangs dont kill kids. They could blow up your (expletive) face.

A comforter that had been covering the window like a curtain had a scorched, blackened hole about 8 inches in diameter. Torres said the flash-bang made the hole.

Over the doorway to that bedroom is a photocopy of a photo of Hammett that says Vinnys Room.

The house still has reminders from the June raid that killed Hammett. On a wall leading to the bedroom are at least 15 bullet holes, underneath framed pictures of a hunting dog and a Victorian era woman. Those bullet holes have been there four months.

One of the witnesses to Tuesday's raid was Robert Holbrook, 23. He is a friend of the Torres family. Holbrook was asleep on a chair in the living room when the raid began. Beams from police weapons were shined on his head, he said.

"I had beams on my head and I heard 'FBI' right as they busted down the door and threw a flash-bang and it rolled right toward the kids," Holbrook said.

He said he had his handgun tucked underneath his right leg. A police officer yelled, "'That one's got a gun,' and you could hear him clutch his rifle up," Holbrook said. They confiscated his gun.

Hammett was one of eight people St. Louis police have shot and killed in 2017, the highest number in a decade. All have been armed, according to police. One stabbed an officer and the other seven pointed a firearm at officers, with three actually firing shots, police say.

State Rep. Bruce Franks Jr., who has been active in protests against police violence, was at the Torres home a few hours after Tuesday's raid. After visiting with the family, Franks and another man headed to a store to get something to board up the broken window.
UPDATED at 12:45 p.m. Wednesday with name of both victims.

ST. LOUIS  A man and woman were found shot to death early Tuesday near a stolen motorcycle in the Carondelet neighborhood in St. Louis.

Police said they were shot at about 1 a.m. in the 200 block of Bellerive Boulevard, near Minnesota Avenue.

Megan Nieder, 27, and Joseph Finger, 40, were killed. Nieder lived in the 7400 block of Gayola Place in Maplewood. Finger's address was in the 8400 block of Pennsylvania Avenue in St. Louis, in the Patch neighborhood south of the shooting scene.

Police spokeswoman Leah Freeman said it's unclear if Nieder and Finger were riding the motorcycle when they were shot. The motorcycle, reported stolen in September, was confiscated by police and will be part of the homicide investigation.

Officers went to the scene on Bellerive after getting a report of a shooting. They found Nieder and Finger on the ground, dead. A suspect ran off, but police have no description of that person.

Finger had pending charges filed in St. Louis on Oct. 13 of vehicle tampering, unlawful use and possessin of a firearm, meth and drug paraphernalia possession. The charges said a police officer saw Finger sleeping in a vehicle and knocked on the window to wake him up. Charges said the officer saw a .40-caliber pistol and several bags of heroin, meth and a digital scale inside.

Finger also faced two federal charges at the time of his death accusing him of being a felon in possession of a firearm for incidents on July 29 and Oct. 6, but that case was dismissed Wednesday after his death.

The victims are at least the 164th and 165th homicide victims in St. Louis for the year. At this same time in 2016, the city had recorded 156 homicides, said Schron Jackson, a department spokeswoman.

The double homicide Tuesday comes on the heels of an especially violent weekend in St. Louis when three people were slain Saturday.

Reported crime in the Carondelet neighborhood is up from a year ago.
Chuck Raasch Chuck Raasch is a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Follow Chuck Raasch Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

WASHINGTON  Bob Corker, a United States senator from Tennessee who, hours before, had engaged in a Twitter fight with the president of the United States, was asked Tuesday about how lunch went with Donald Trump and 51 other Republican senators.

Delicious, Corker deadpanned.

Minutes earlier, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and other Republican leaders had tried to put on a united face, even as one of their own  Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a frequent Trump target  was preparing to announce that he, like Corker, would not seek re-election in 2018.

Republicans, McConnell argued, were united on the need for tax cuts and tax reform. Blunt, repeating a mantra hes used throughout 2017, said he was delighted with Trumps rollback of environmental and regulatory reform.

But the questions after the private lunch with Trump in the Capitol kept coming:

How could Trumps frequent fights with Republican senators, which often seemed more like schoolyard taunts than serious policy differences, not affect outcomes?

What is the message to America about the stability and effectiveness of their leadership when the president taunts a retiring senator as incompetent and a lightweight, and when that senator  Corker  says Trumps White House is nothing more than an adult day care center?

Going into that lunch, befitting the sour atmosphere, a left-wing activist had thrown Russian flags at Trump and McConnell and accused Trump of treason. McConnell later tried to brush it off, but that scene was made for TV and cable newss relentless loop of D.C. dysfunction.

The biggest elephant in the room  pardon the political pachyderm pun  came with a trunk of questions: Are the Republicans, given a majority to tackle promises on health care and taxes theyve campaigned on for years, capable of getting beyond their familial dysfunction? Can anyone, beyond despots, dictators and tyrants, successfully govern by insult and threat?

Given ample opportunity to comment on the Corker-Trump dispute, McConnell kept sending the elephant down the road. He talked about Republican unity, and expressed exasperation that he kept getting asked about the latest contretemps between Trump and a member of his caucus.

All this came a day after first lady Melania Trump had encouraged more compassion in a visit to a suburban Detroit middle school.

We need to remember that they are always watching and listening, the first lady said of the children. It is our responsibility to take the lead in teaching children the values of empathy and communication that are at the core of kindness, mindfulness, integrity and leadership.

Does the president read the first ladys press?

The one thing that may unify Republican senators is that least 10 of them have been the targets of Trump attacks. He has ridiculed everything from their height (remember little Marco Rubio?) to their fathers integrity. Last year, then-candidate Trump repeated debunked National Enquirer innuendo that a man in a picture with the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald could have been the father of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Flake, at 54 a relatively young senator, had decided hed had enough. Trump had attacked him as weak on crime & the border, among other tweet assaults. Flake  who had already drawn a primary opponent and the attention of Trump acolyte Steve Bannon, who has threatened to recruit right-wing primary opponents against Republican senators such as Flake  wrote a book, Conscience of a Conservative, that was highly critical of Trump.

Flake wrote that Trumps tweets were all noise and no signal, and declared: Volatile unpredictability is not a virtue.

Flake gave an extension of that message in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday saying hed decided to give it up.

Anger and resentment, he said, was not a governing philosophy. He said he regretted that roads to Republican nominations were getting narrower and narrower because of rigid ideologies and intemperate behavior.

Politicians should assess their counterparts hearts, Flake said, and always look for the good. This spell will eventually break. That is my belief.

When, how? Blunt could be a key. He has, so far, tried to be the ultimate team player, asserting hed rather be without drama but not directly criticizing Trump, whom he had said in January would bring a fresh synergy to a capital used to doing things certain ways.

On almost all things policy, Blunt and Trump are simpatico. Blunt is a clarion of regular order in the Senate, a historian in its ways and traditions and collegiality and a consummate Republican team member. If he would ever take the road of Corker, Flake and others and take on Trump more directly, Washington would take notice.
A previous version of this article misstated the scope of the ruling.

JEFFERSON CITY  A Jackson County judge on Monday denied a motion made by Planned Parenthood affiliates and the ACLU of Missouri that would've stopped implementation of a provision in Missouri's newest abortion law.

On Oct. 10, the ACLU of Missouri and two Planned Parenthood affiliates sued the state to block implementation of a provision in Senate Bill 5, approved by lawmakers during an abortion-focused special session over the summer.

The groups moved for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction against the "same-physician" provision in the law, which will require the doctor providing an abortion to be the one who tells a woman of medical risks 72 hours in advance of the abortion.

Judge S. Margene Burnett declined to halt that provision from taking effect, saying Planned Parenthood's argument in favor of a preliminary injunction did not meet the court's high bar.

The plaintiffs, arguing the provision violated women's constitutional rights, argued the same-physician rule would force out-state women to travel twice to faraway abortion clinics, and force doctors into scheduling conflicts which will delay care.

They also argued the law was "vague and conflicting" in spots, and said the scope of the law was in conflict with the original intent of the bill, a violation of the state constitution.

The plaintiffs also asked the court to rule on the overall constitutionality of Senate Bill 5, said Jesse Lawder, a spokesman for Planned Parenthood's St. Louis affiliate, but the court did not issue any opinion on that on Monday.

With nothing stopping Senate Bill 5, the newest abortion law in Missouri is set to take effect on Tuesday.

Among the law's provisions is a provision laying out a new abortion clinic inspection regime, new prosecuting powers for the attorney general, new whistleblower protections for clinic employees, and a section requiring tissue removed during an abortion be sent to a pathologist within 72 hours.

The measure also exempts agencies that offer alternatives to abortion from a new St. Louis ordinance barring discrimination against women on the basis of whether they take birth control or have had an abortion.

Mary Kogut, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood's St. Louis affiliate, said the group would continue to fight Senate Bill 5 "and any bill that allows politicians to stand in the way of a womans ability to make personal medical decisions that are best for her health and well-being."

Attorney General Josh Hawley, a Republican whose office defended the law, said he was pleased with Burnett's decision, saying he would continue to "vigorously defend" such regulations.

Burnett wrote that before granting the preliminary injunction, she would have to weigh the plaintiff's probability of success, the threat of irreparable harm without an injunction, the harm the injunction would cause others, and the public interest.

She said the plaintiffs did not establish a probability of success.

Burnett wrote that on the plaintiffs' three main points  that the provision impedes the rights of women, that it was drafted unconstitutionally and that it is vague and contradictory  that there was not "sufficient showing that Plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of these particular claims."

Burnett seemingly sided with Planned Parenthood and the ACLU on the question of whether there would be irreparable harm to women seeking abortions under the new same-physician provision.

She said the defense admitted that the provision could cause "irreparable harm to some. Even so, this factor is just one of four that the Court must weigh."

On the third question, the plaintiffs argued the only adverse impact to the defense would be the state temporarily not being able to implement the rule. But the defense successfully argued they would also be impacted by the court "preventing the execution of duly enacted legislation."

Burnett said that plaintiffs could not argue harm caused based on the scarcity of abortion providers, impacted further by the same-physician requirement.

"The issue of abortion provider scarcity is not one of the state's making and, therefore, should not be considered by this Court in its consideration of the undue burden analysis," Burnett wrote, ultimately deciding the "balance of harm" would be greater to the state if the injunction were issued.

On the last question  the public interest in granting an injunction  Burnett said public interest aligned with not granting an injunction, because the Legislature, an elected body, enacted the requirement.
The Legislature will gather for its fall veto session on Tuesday with gun control legislation to consider again in light of a national tragedy, including a provision to ban bump stocks, the devices used by the gunman in what is now the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

At least two bills are being considered following the shooting in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead and more than 500 wounded on Oct. 1.

House Bill 4107 introduced Oct. 5 by state Rep. Martin Moylan, D-Des Plaines, would ban the sale of bump stocks, as well as assault weapons, large-caliber rifles and large-capacity magazines, described in the bill as holding 10 or more rounds of ammunition. Senate Bill 1657 would create state licensing for gun dealers and was filed by state Rep. Kathleen Willis, D-Addison.

Gun control is a sore subject with gun enthusiasts, said Dan Cooley, owner of the Bullet Trap in Macon, Ill.

Were keeping our customers abreast of the situation, and as soon as we can, well go ahead and file witness slips, Cooley said, referring to formal objections to legislation that can be filed by individuals or groups. Were giving instructions on our Facebook page for customers who want to object to it.

Moylan has previously proposed similar measures, but they havent passed the Legislature. He thinks circumstances may change since it was discovered that Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock had reserved hotel rooms in Chicago overlooking the Lollapalooza music festival last summer. Paddock didnt use the rooms.

Im passionate about it this time because of the events that happened in Las Vegas, Moylan said. Especially since the guy was scoping out a Chicago site, I think this bears a lot of weight on it. I would hope I get a lot of support, both on Republicans and Democrats.

But finding support for their bills among downstate lawmakers may prove problematic for Moylan and Willis.

As a strong supporter of our constitutional rights, I will be voting against these anti-Second Amendment bills, and I urge my colleagues in the General Assembly to do the same, said state Rep. Bill Mitchell, R-Forsyth.

State Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, said he would oppose Moylans bill if it comes up for a vote in its current form.

I represent a diverse Senate district, and my goal has always been to weigh all opinions on every piece of legislation, and that approach has been no different and will be no different for Moylans bills. He has several bills or any bills that deal with gun control.

Two sides of a very important debate are talking past each other, and I think the key to this is I think trying to find common ground.

Taking sides

No one at the Locked & Loaded gun store near Pana is surprised legislators are making another run at more gun control measures in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre. But store co-owner and gunsmith Jarred Agney said that, as usual, its misdirected effort.

Agney said lawmakers call for bans on rifles labeled as assault weapons based on looks, like having a pistol grip, while having no idea how the weapons work. Some of these assault weapon features you can find on bolt-action rifles, he said.

The gunsmith said describing a high-capacity magazine as holding 10 or more bullets was also ridiculous. Many pistols today hold significantly more than 10 rounds, he added. Picking 10 is just taking an arbitrary number.

Agney said the mass murderer of Las Vegas was an evil man intent on performing an evil act. He said lawmakers want someone to blame in the aftermath, and something to ban, and the anti-gun lobby look for an opportunity to push their legislative agenda. But he said the bottom line is there is no law that would have stopped the Las Vegas shooter, or anyone bent on doing others harm.

Agney said Locked & Loaded doesnt sell bump stocks and said for most shooting purposes they are useless. But he doesnt like the idea of legislation to ban them because he doesnt trust Illinois politicians who, he said, are always looking for the thin end of a wedge issue.

What will happen, and weve seen it a hundred times, is they will have one issue and then pack everything else behind it, he said, referring to other gun laws and restrictions.

But the legislation is a piece of a puzzle, said Colleen Daley, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Hand Gun Violence.

We are supportive of the measure. I dont think weapons of war should be on our streets, she said. We ban automatic weapons for a reason. Bump stocks are not something people should have access to.

Its part of a bigger issue of people having easy access to guns and the illegal trafficking of them, Daley said.

We definitely need to see some changes, she said.

The Illinois State Rifle Association, the state arm of the National Rifle Association, said it is keeping an eye on all legislation as it relates to gun rights, but Executive Director Richard Pearson said he doesnt see much to support in the latest proposals.

We oppose it ... no wiggle room (on Moylans bill), Pearson said. Theres a lot of bills out there right now; theres several bump stocks bills, so well be looking at those to see if theres anything we can deal with there. Were still watching things being proposed. Well see what happens; we always look at legislation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report, along with Herald & Review staff writers Claire Hettinger, Tom Lisi, Tony Reid, Valerie Wells and Ryan Voyles and the Journal Gazette/Times-Courier staff writer Jarad Jarmon.
OSAGE | A traffic stop has led to a felony meth charge for an Osage woman.

Rebecca Sue Worth, 45, was stopped by an officer for driving without license plates Oct. 9, according to an Osage Police Department criminal complaint.

The officer determined Worth was on federal probation for drug-related convictions and requested consent to search her vehicle, according to the complaint.

The search yielded a glass pipe and a clear, plastic baggie with meth, the officer said.

Upon being placed in the squad Car, Worth told the officer she had a baggie of meth in her pocket and didnt want to enter the jail with it as contraband, the complaint states.

Upon searching the remainder of her vehicle, the complaint says the officer found an additional bag of meth and a homemade urine catheter.

Worth admitted she used manufactured urine and the homemade catheter to provide a urine sample to her probation officer, according to the complaint.

Worth has been charged with felony possession of a controlled substance  third offense.

She is being held in the Bremer County Jail. A court date hasnt been set.
A common defense of President Donald Trump points to the positive things he has done from a Republican perspective  his appointment of Justice Neil Gorsuch and other conservative judges, his pursuit of the Islamic State, his honoring of institutional religious freedom. This argument is not frivolous. What frustrates is the steadfast refusal among most Republicans and conservatives to recognize the costs on the other side of the scale.

Chief among them is Trumps assault on truth, which takes a now-familiar form. First, assert and maintain a favorable lie. Second, attack and discredit sources of opposition. Third, declare victory based on power or applause. So, Trump claimed that Florida Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilsons account of his conversation with a Gold Star widow was totally fabricated. (Not true.) Wilson, after all, is wacky. (Not relevant.) And Trump won the interchange because Wilson is killing the Democrat Party. (Well see.)

The pattern is invariable. Barack Obama is a Kenyan; the Mexican government deliberately dumps criminals across the border; thousands and thousands of people in New Jersey celebrated the 9/11 attacks; Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruzs father consorted with Lee Harvey Oswald; vaccination schedules can be tied to autism; Obama was wiretapping Trump Tower during the presidential campaign; Obama asked British intelligence to spy on Trump; at least 3 million immigrants voted illegally in the 2016 election. Any source that disputes Trump is personally defamed or dismissed as fake news. And how is truth ultimately adjudicated? The country believes me, Trump said earlier this year. Hey, I went to Kentucky two nights ago. We had 25,000 people. Confronted by a reporter about his routine deceptions, Trump answered, I cant be doing so badly, because Im president and youre not.

Thirty years ago, University of Chicago professor Allan Blooms The Closing of the American Mind began with the words: There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: Almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. Bloom found this deeply problematic, because the ability to determine truth from falsehood, right from wrong, is essential to personal flourishing and civic health. I wonder what Bloom would make of a political philosophy in which truth is determined by 25,000 screaming partisans and reality is a function of fabulism. Conservatives were supposed to be the protectors of objective truth from various forms of postmodernism. Now they generally defend our thoroughly post-truth president. Evidently we are all relativists now.

Not quite all. Some of us still think this attack on truth is a dangerous form of political corruption. The problem is not just the constant lies. It is the dismissal of reason and objectivity as inherently elitist and partisan. It is the invitation to supporters to live entirely within Trumps dark, divisive, dystopian version of reality. It is the attempt to destroy or subvert any source of informed judgment other than Trump himself. This is the construction of a pernicious form of tyranny: a tyranny over the mind.

Not that the attempt is fully conscious. Some of this preference for deception may be the result of pathological compulsions. Some of it is surely the intuitive use of trolling to draw attention away from scandals and failures. Some of it may be a strategy to discredit contending sources of truth in Trumps upcoming public battle with special counsel Robert Mueller.

But here is the cost. When there is no objective source of truth  no commonly agreed upon set of facts and rules of argument  political persuasion becomes impossible. There is no reasoned method to choose between one view and another. The only way to settle political disputes is power  determined by screaming mobs or because Im president and youre not. Politics becomes an endless battle of true believers, conditioned to distrust and dismiss every bit of evidence that does not confirm their pre-existing views. The alternative to reasoned discourse is the will to power.

This is the frightening direction of Trumpism. It is the corruption that good men such as chief of staff John Kelly are enabling. And it is a source of enduring shame for many conservatives. Sycophancy toward those who hold power, said Bloom, is a fact in every regime, and especially in a democracy, where, unlike tyranny, there is an accepted principle of legitimacy that breaks the inner will to resist. ... Flattery of the people and incapacity to resist public opinion are the democratic vices, particularly among writers, artists, journalists and anyone else who is dependent on an audience.

Exactly how the conservative movement was broken.

Michael Gerson michaelgerson@washpost.com Copyright The Washington Post
Whatever troubles President Donald Trump may be having, it must be said that in a perverse sort of way, his Environmental Protection Agency is a screaming success.

Trump has ping-ponged from one attention-grabbing controversy to another. He hasnt passed a single substantial piece of legislation and continues to baffle Republican congressional leaders with his shifting positions and his penchant for personal attacks. Meanwhile, as public attention focuses elsewhere, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is quietly dismantling decades of work done under Republican and Democratic presidents alike to protect the environment.

If you voted for Trump because you wanted dirtier air and water, Pruitt is delivering. If you wanted industry insiders in charge of EPA divisions overseeing dangerous chemicals and pesticides, youve got em. If you agree with Trump that climate change is a hoax and nonsense and a barnyard epithet, then he and Pruitt deserve the credit.

Weve ended the EPA intrusion into your jobs and into your lives, Trump boasted in a North Dakota speech last month. And were refocusing the EPA on its core mission: clean air and clean water.

That second sentence, like so much of what Trump says, is the opposite of true. Pruitt has begun taking steps to revoke the Obama administrations Clean Water Rule, which asserted federal jurisdiction over smaller bodies of waters that feed into larger streams and rivers. Two weeks ago, Pruitt signed an order to begin dismantling the Obama administrations Clean Power Plan that regulates industrial greenhouse gas emissions.

Pruitt has the support of industries that say complying with tighter environmental regulations is too costly and difficult. Its easier and cheaper for industries to dump crud into the air and water, and industry has a special place at Pruitts EPA.

Michael Dourson, nominated to be the new head of EPAs Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution, used to run a consulting company whose clients included Dow Chemical, Koch Industries and Chevron Corp. His top deputy would be Nancy Beck, until recently an official of the chemical industrys top lobbying group.

Pruitt has moved to muzzle EPAs climate scientists and delete mentions of climate change and global warming from EPA publications. In just the latest example, three EPA scientists were forced to cancel speeches planned at a conference on efforts to clean up Rhode Islands Narragansett Bay.

All of Pruitts success  if you define success as making the air and water dirtier and the country safe for the coal and chemical industries  comes at a price. Pruitt is so concerned about his own security that hes had a $25,000 cone of silence phone booth installed in his office and wants to add a dozen agents to his 18-person security detail.

This is the reality of the Trump administration: A government by and for special interests at a terrible cost.
Nadhim Zahawi, MP for Stratford-on-Avon, left, and Jeremy Wright, MP for Kenilworth and Southam.

A PROPOSED second redrawing of the county's political battle lines appears to have been welcomed by local MPs.

This week the Boundary Commission for England put forward fresh proposals to alter constituency boundaries across the country, which will see the number of constituencies in the West Midlands fall from 59 to 53.

The changes have been proposed in an attempt to reduce the number of MPs in England from 533 to 501 and equalise the number of voters in each constituency.

The previous proposals  published late last year  drew controversy because they put forward the creation of a Stratford and Warwick constituency, with some parts of the district in a new Evesham and South Warwickshire constituency.

Kenilworth and Leamington were also set to be joined together in a new constituency. But the latest proposals were published this week and are something of a U-turn.

They will see Stratford-on-Avon remain as its own constituency, but taking in Kineton and Wellesbourne, which are currently in Kenilworth and Southam.

Nadhim Zahawi, Stratfords MP, said: I am very pleased that the Boundary Commission took on board the strong opposition from with the Stratford-on-Avon constituency to the initial proposals that split the constituency between three others.

The new proposals are much more suitable and I am delighted that the Stratford-on-Avon constituency will remain the same as it is now with the very welcome additions of Kineton, Wellesbourne East and Wellesbourne West wards along with the totality of Red Horse ward.

Warwick and Leamington MP Matt Western, who won the constituency for Labour at Junes general election, would see his constituency also remain and expanded to incorporate areas such as Leek Wootton, Stoneleigh and Lapworth.

Mr Western said: The Boundary Commission proposals recognise the fantastic response from the local public that urged the commission to retain our towns, including Whitnash, within the one constituency. It is testimony to the many who wrote or spoke to the commissioner in making the case for our continued existence as a political entity.

We are economically, politically and socially bound as one and it is vital that we remain so. These proposals are in response to the last coalition government making the case to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 whilst at the same time increasing the number of Lords in the unelected House of Lords from 778 to 820 in the last two years.

It utterly defies logic and weakens our democracy to reduce our elected representation by almost 10 per cent whilst increasing our unelected representation.

It is particularly short-sighted to be considering this during a period when the UK is looking to repatriate its laws from Brussels which is going to prove a titanic task by any measure.

"Some of the proposals are questionable, such as the suggestion to exclude Radford Semele from our constituency despite it being virtually connected to West Leamington, separated merely by the River Leam. It is absolutely linked to the towns.

But under the proposals Jeremy Wrights current constituency of Kenilworth and Southam, would completely change, losing much of the area to the north and west of Warwick, including Kenilworth, instead becoming Rugby and Southam.

Such a change could present a selection dilemma for the Tories with Rugby currently held by Conservative MP Mark Pawsey.

Despite the difficulties the changes could pose, Mr Wright, who is the governments Attorney General, said: The principle that parliamentary constituencies should be of approximately the same size is the right one. Carrying out a boundary review to implement that principle involves inevitable change and disruption.

I support the principle and it wouldnt be right for me to object to proposals which enact it simply because they inconvenience or disadvantage me.

I have been honoured to represent the constituency of Kenilworth and Southam since 2010 and, if these proposals are implemented, I hope for the sake of my constituents that the situation then remains stable for the foreseeable future.

There will be further consultation on these proposals before final conclusions are reached and it is far too soon for decisions on which seats I may or may not seek election in.

To comment on the proposals visit www.bce2018.org.uk before 11th December.
OSAGE | An Osage man faces felony charges after police say he assaulted at least two people and threatened them with a kitchen knife at his house.

Police say Daniel Robert Warner, 29, fractured a mans jaw Oct. 13 after he knocked him down, pinned him to the floor and struck his head and face, according to an Osage Police Department criminal complaint. The man also sustained cuts, swelling and bruising.

During the alleged assault, court documents say Warner held a kitchen knife to the mans throat. The man, who sustained cuts to his neck, told police he thought he was going to be stabbed.

The complaint says witnesses tried to pull Warner off the man to stop him from harming the man further.

Warner is also accused of assaulting other individuals  including a 14-year-old girl  and telling them he would kill them with the knife if they called police, according to the complaint.

The girl was trying to stop Warner from assaulting a family member, court documents say, and sustained bruising and broken blood vessels in her eye after Warner struck her.

Warner has been charged with felony assault causing serious injury, felony assault with a dangerous weapon, misdemeanor assault with a dangerous weapon and assaulting a juvenile.

He is being held in the Mitchell County Jail. A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for Oct. 27 in Mitchell County District Court.
Pakistan Peoples Party Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari has taken notice of reports regarding Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairperson Imran Khan being barred from entering the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan.

According to a statement issued from Bilawal House, the party chairperson has said the shrines of Sufi saints should not be used for political point scoring.

While mentioning the clarification given regarding the issue, Bilawal said police and officers of the local administration have said before the media that Imran wanted to go inside the shrine with his private guards, which is why he was intercepted. However, as per media reports, others present with Imran were allowed inside the shrine without their guards.

Nevertheless, Bilawal has directed the Sindh government to constitute a committee over the matter and present a report to him, the statement reads.

Earlier, Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan was barred from entering the shrine of Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan on Sunday.
Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif on Wednesday said that Pakistan, in the meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, made it clear that no terrorist safe havens exist on Pakistani soil.

Tillerson arrived on a one-day visit to Pakistan today (Tuesday), after he earlier met with the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in a surprise visit to the country on Monday.

Khawaja Asif said that in the meeting with Tillerson earlier in the day, the civil and military leadership presented a detailed narrative about its stance on the countrys war against terrorism.

In response to a question about the conditions put forward by the US for Pakistan today, the minister said that Tillerson emphasised on the need for Pakistan to deal with the Haqqani Network and terrorists safe havens on its soil.

Terrorist attacks are not planned on or executed from Pakistani soil, there are no terrorist safe havens in Pakistan, and we made this clear to the US delegation today, Asif said, insisting that the Pakistani leadership firmly holds on to the stance that it is not protecting or supporting the Haqqani network.

We emphasised again and again that their [US] assessment [about Pakistan] is wrong, he said. We are not responsible for the increase in the drug trade in Afghanistan or the increasing [Afghan] territory occupied by terrorists.

He insisted that even if Pakistan were to be blamed, it could not be involved in any of the deep-rooted issues that exist in its neighbouring country beyond the borders joining the two countries.

Who is responsible for all the issues that exist in Afghan territory? Asif said. Where are the coalition forces when a truck [full of explosives] successfully reaches its target in the heart of the country and blows up?

The foreign minister firmly put across the countrys stance on the war against terrorism.

Our armed forces and law enforcement agencies have taken action, we have yielded results and will continue to do so but not for Afghan or American interest, he said. Our fight against terrorism is our own and the results we yield are our win.

Responding to a question about US allegations of housing terrorists on Pakistan, Asif said that the countrys leadership thinks that sending Afghan refugees back is a plausible solution to the security situation in the region.

We asked them [US] to send the refugees back and then hold us accountable if any security lapses occur, the foreign minister said, adding that Pakistan is already actively engaged in border management and fencing.

We stated very clearly [to the US delegation] that the difficulties both, they and we are faced with, were in fact created by them when they came to this region in the 80s, he said. Radicalisation wont end overnight and it is our problem first.

The minister also said that the purpose of a joint meeting of the civil and military leadership with the US secretary of state and his delegation was to convey a united narrative of the country.

It was a deliberate move and a coordinated effort from civil and military leadership to have a joint meeting in an effort to convey a single, united narrative from the country, Asif said. We want to convey national unity from the very top.

The US has assured that it will make efforts for a peaceful eastern border [with India], the minister said. He added that the US delegation, in todays meeting, said that it was aware that India is directly or indirectly involved in disrupting peace on the Pak-Afghan border.

The US secretary of state, in a statement to the Afghan media, had said that he would pressure Islamabad to take action on the support Taliban and other "terrorist organisations" receive in the country.

The statement brought a backlash from Pakistan's parliament, which denounced the US official's. The Chairman of Senate Raza Rabbani declared Tillersons statement about Pakistan unacceptable.

His [Tillersons] statement seems like that of a viceroys before they visit a country, Rabbani had said in a Senate session earlier today, adding that the US secretary of state's tone was 'inappropriate.'
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan said on Tuesday that the resources of Sindh should be used on the people of the province, adding that Sindhs biggest disease is former president Asif Ali Zardari.

The PTI chairman was addressing the media in Karachi, where he said that Sindh is his province because it has Karachi.

Imran alleged that Zardaris sugar mill mafia is usurping rights of the people of Sindh.

I can see Zardari being middle-stumped, said the PTI chief.

Regarding the arrest of Pakistan Peoples Party's Sharjeel Memon by the National Accountability Bureau on Monday, Imran hailed the institutions decision, saying it is a positive step.

Imran claimed that the previous chairman NAB saved big criminals from action.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif led the country to a historic level of loans, said Khan.

Imran also spoke about the disgruntled PTI MNA Ayesha Gulalai, who was not denotified according to todays ECP decision of the disqualification reference against her.

He said that Gulalai said in front of the media that she is resigning from the party and it is present on the record.

The PTI chief is currently on a visit to Sindh. On Sunday, he held a rally in Sehwan and called for the people of Sindh to reject Zardari.
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CLEAR LAKE | Motorists exiting off Interstate 35 near Clear Lake, and then traveling eastbound on Highway 122 might spot a good amount of construction workers slowly taking apart a massive building to their left.

That's because the site, formerly the home of Andrews Prestressed Concrete and the Coastal Mart convenience store, is undergoing demolition.

Clear Lake City Administrator Scott Flory told the Globe Gazette on Monday that the owner of the site is completely demolishing all buildings on the roughly 62-acre site.

Outside of that, it's unclear what type of redevelopment could occur.

"While I'm sure the rumor mills are spinning, there simply is nothing more to comment on at this time," Flory wrote in an email.

Mike Ritter, Clear Lake's chief building official, said several construction items had been auctioned off from the site in the past couple of months.

According to Bidspotter, a website that tracks online auctions and sales, dozens of items were auctioned by Backes Auctioneers and Realty on Aug. 15. A wealth of construction equipment was available, ranging from safety harnesses to bar clamps to gang boxes.

The owner for the site -- 1305 N. 32nd St., Clear Lake -- is TD Fuel LLC, according to Cerro Gordo County Assessor's records. TD Fuel is owned by Hall Industries in Sheffield, a subsidiary of LeMar Industries Corp, according to documents filed with the Iowa Secretary of State.

Todd and Lorrie Hall, the founders of Hall Industries, could not be reached for comment by phone Monday. The company works in grain and seed storage, and expanded its headquarters in Sheffield by 48,000 square feet in 2012, according to a news release on LeMar Industries' website.

Petersen Contracting Inc., based in Reinbeck, is the company conducting the demolition. Corey Dungey, project manager at Petersen Contracting, could not be reached for comment by phone Monday.
Doug Rozendaal has been flying airplanes for more than four decades, but when he took off from Mason City Airport on Friday it was a first for
MASON CITY | 214 days.

That is how long it took for Mvskoke rap and hip-hop artist Sten Joddi to go from one of the worst days of his life to one of the best.

On March 14, after a successful kidney transplant, his mother Vernona Lagers died after sudden heart failure.

Other than my children, she was the single most inspirational person Ive ever known, said Joddi. She instilled in me my passion for big dreams and self-worth. She taught me that no matter where youre from or the circumstances youre born into, you can be anything you want as long as youre ready to work hard and sacrifice to get it.

The days following her death were filled with grief for the Oklahoma-born and raised artist, who now calls Mason City home.

But soon, the grief gave way to inspiration and a drive to honor her memory, culminating in perhaps the biggest night of his musical career.

On Oct. 14, Joddi won his first Native American Music Award in Niagara Falls, New York, in the Best Hip-Hop Album category for his fourth studio album, The 7th Generation Prophecy.

That moment was bittersweet. I broke down instantly thanking her for everything, he said. Its been very hard since she left, but I honor her by living every day to the fullest. She lived and died for her family and loved unconditionally, so the win was great but I would give it all back to have her here with us.

As far back as the age of 10, a fire was lit inside the Mvskoke artist for music. He recalls listening to rock n roll and country on his parents home and car stereos, but it was not until he heard hip-hop that he was captivated.

It was in this music that he truly found an identifiable connection.

The struggle, the stories, the beats, the fashion, the art, just the culture as a whole totally hooked me with the first tape cassette played on a boom box, he said.

Soon after, he began crafting his own lyrics and style. He became confident in the abilities that he was showcasing and found himself separating from the countless internet and YouTube famous rappers as he says, into a legit profession.

And at the forefront of his musical career is his Mvskoke heritage. It was that heritage in fact that inspired the award-winning album The 7th Generation Prophecy.

Joddi found himself personally and spiritually engulfed in the Standing Rock situation in North Dakota as Native opposition to a pipeline on the Sioux reservation commanded national attention. And naturally, his raw feelings went from pen to paper to the recording studio.

It is quite possibly the most powerful and epic album I have ever recorded, he said. It pushes the boundaries and speaks on a lot of touchy subjects. It gives everyone listening a Native perspective of the way todays society views indigenous peoples, their rights, their sovereignty and how that effects everyone spiritually, economically and environmentally all over the world.

He also draws on his own personal struggles in life and uses them as a way to reach out and give a story of hope to Native youth. Surviving an abusive childhood, a life on the streets, time in jail and an addiction to drugs and alcohol are all experiences he shares in hopes of imparting wisdom on young Native Americans in regards to the paths they choose in life.

Aside from his mother, his five children are the greatest motivation in his life and have led him to have a heart for the younger generation.

At this point in my career, Im able to reach out to youth everywhere and especially Native youth with a positive message, he said. I share 100 percent real-life experiences and with that comes wisdom, wisdom that some youth may not be ready to hear but needs to hear. I make sure to let them know they do have self-worth and that they can do anything they want as long as they work hard, dedicate themselves and never stop pushing to be the best human they can be.

Joddi lives the example he shares of work ethic, showing no signs of slowing down by producing three full-length mix tapes and four studio albums in the last five years. A fifth studio album, #TheSingles, is in the works and will debut this winter.

I have always had a passion for drawing and art, he said. I did my first tattoo on myself at the age of 12 and now I am a very well-known, accomplished tattoo artist of over 10-plus years.

From a guy that has a hit song called Big Dreams, you would have to assume that there are still goals remaining for Joddi to check off his list. He is now working on booking a tour across the U.S. and hopes to one day play the main stage back home for his tribe at the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Festival.

That would be nice, and you know Im coming anyway, he laughed. Just to get on that stageit would show that Creeks can achieve anything just like everyone else.

Through every experience, hardship and obstacle Joddi has maintained a singular focus that keeps the drive to succeed alive in him. He just wants to make his family proud. That includes his wife, Amber, their five children and the memory of his mother.

She instilled the passion of big dreaming in me and that journey is never complete until the day I go on my journey to the spirit world, he said. I will continue to reach for greatness as she would want me to.
New rules for Bay of Plenty mean jetski owners now need to register their vessels.

This change was introduced as part of the new Navigation Safety Bylaw for identification and safety reasons.

It means Bay of Plenty joins Waikato, Auckland and Northland as places where you are required to register your jetski.

Jetski are incredibly powerful, fast and maneuverable machines. For the most part users play safe and follow the rules, but we do get a lot of speed related complaints about them, says Bay of Plenty Harbourmaster Peter Buell.

Registration will help us to locate the owners or users of machines seen breaking the rules. It can also be a useful way of identifying jetskis if they are stolen or if an unattended ski is found. One registration will be valid for regions that have this requirement.

To keep things easy, and costs to a minimum, Regional Council have teamed up with Auckland Transport who have recently launched their online registration tool. T

o register your jetski visit www.boprc.govt.nz/pwc and you will be directed to their online tool.

Registration is a one-off process, costs $53.50 (plus $20 for registration stickers), and is valid for the lifetime of the vessel.

For more information on the 2017 Navigation Safety Bylaw visit www.boprc.govt.nz/navbylaw
The Ministry for Primary Industries has identified the moths infesting a ship bound for New Zealand.

An MPI spokesperson says the moths on board the ANL Warragul were identified as the bogong moth and southern armyworm moth.

They are considered biosecurity pests and are therefore regulated by MPI.

We have advised the vessel it will require decontamination before it can enter New Zealand, but we understand it is returning to Australia.

The ANL Warragul was heading to the Port of Tauranga from Sydney when the insects were discovered on Sunday morning.

The vessel remained outside the 12 nautical mile mark while MPI undertook and investigation to determine the moth species.

The bogong moth, named for an Aboriginal word meaning brown, is found primarily in southern and western areas of Australia, while the southern armyworm moth is native to the American tropics, occurring widely in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

SunLive has contacted the Port of Tauranga for comment.
The Waikato man accused of murdering his partner Kim Richmond is due to stand trial next year.

Cory Scott Jefferies, 45, appeared for callover at the Hamilton High Court on Tuesday, where Justice Sarah Katz scheduled July 23 next year as the start date for a two-week trial.

He was remanded on continued bail until that date.

His case will be called again on April 10, to check on the availability of ESR evidence, however Jefferies has his attendance excused on that day.

Police say Kim, a mother-of-three, was last seen at her home in Arohena, near Te Awamutu, in the early hours of July 31, 2016.

The police dive squad found her inside her silver Ford Ranger in Arapuni Lake almost a year later on June 15.

Jefferies was arrested and charged with Richmonds murder on June 20.

- Stuff
Labour and New Zealand First have signed their coalition agreement, which contains significant policy gains for New Zealand First.

The policy wins for New Zealand First include keeping the age of superannuation at 65, re-establishing a forestry service, and committing to re-entering Pike River Mine.

The deal also contains a strong focus on regional development. The new government will establish a $1 billion annual regional development fund, which will include "significant investment" in rail.

The re-established New Zealand Forestry Service will also be based in the regions.

Incoming Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the deal represented a huge change for the government, with regional development and job creation a priority.

"There has been a period of neglect in the last nine years for our regions," she says.

"New Zealand First has brought enormous advocacy at the negotiating table to make sure that we see the beginnings of the re-investment that is much needed in New Zealand."

Other priorities included housing, health, education, the environment and an increase in the minimum wage, says Jacinda.

The policies outlined in the agreement fit within Labours budget responsibility rules it set prior to the election campaign, she says.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters campaign push to shift Aucklands port to Northland appears to be on the backburner - the deal contained an agreement simply to look at the feasibility of moving the port elsewhere.

However, the agreement stated that Northland would be given serious consideration in any study.

Winston says he is happy with the deal New Zealand First has made.

"We were never going to get everything we wanted."

"Politics has been always an issue of compromise, but principles as well, and we have got a balance on both that our team in New Zealand First is entirely happy with, and were grateful to the Labour Part for understanding that and reaching the agreement weve got."

Heres whats in the agreement:

Regional and economic development and primary industries:

A $1 billion annual Regional Development (Provincial Growth) Fund, which will include significant investment in regional rail and commissioning a feasibility study on the options for moving the Ports of Auckland, including giving Northport in Whangarei serious consideration.

Re-establishing the New Zealand Forestry Service, to be located in regional New Zealand.

Economy

Review and reform of the Reserve Bank Act.

Progressively increase the minimum wage to $20 an hour by 2020.

Increase penalties for corporate fraud and tax evasion.

Strengthen the Overseas Investment Act and undertake a comprehensive register of foreign-owned land and housing.

Health

Re-establish the Mental Health Commission.

Annual free health check for seniors, including an eye check, as part of the SuperGold Card.

Free doctors visits for all under-14s.

Progressively increase the age for free breast screening to 74.

Housing

Establish a Housing Commission.

Law and Order

Strive towards adding 1800 new police officers over three years and commit to a serious focus on combatting organised crime and drugs.

Establish a Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Superannuitants

Introduce a new generation SuperGold smartcard containing entitlements and concessions.

Superannuation eligibility to remain at 65.

Environment

The governments vehicle fleet, where practicable, to become emissions-free by 2025/26.

Introduce a Zero Carbon Act and an independent Climate Commission, based on the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment.

If the Climate Commission determines that agriculture is to be included in the ETS, then upon entry, the free allocation to agriculture will be 95 percent but with all revenues from this source recycled back into agriculture in order to encourage agricultural innovation, mitigation and additional planting of forestry.

No resource rentals for water in this term of Parliament.

Introduce a royalty on exports of bottled water.

Work with Maori and other quota holders to resolve outstanding issues in the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill in a way that is satisfactory to both Labour and New Zealand First.

Democracy

Independent review of the integrity of electoral processes and enrolments.

Review the processes of Parliament to reflect an MMP environment.

Introduce and pass a Waka Jumping Bill.

Immigration

As per Labours policy, pursue Labour and New Zealand Firsts shared priorities to ensure work visas issued reflect genuine skills shortages and cut down on low quality international education courses.

Take serious action on migrant exploitation, particularly of international students.

Other

Commit to re-entry to Pike River.

Hold a full-scale review into retail power pricing.

Allow a conscience vote for MPs on New Zealand Firsts Supplementary Order Paper to the End of Life Choice Bill, which provides for a referendum.

Work towards a Free Trade Agreement with the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan Customs Union and initiate Closer Commonwealth Economic Relations.

-RNZ
If not neutered, one female cat could give birth to 25 kittens in one year. Uncastrated kittens can then start reproducing at five months old. This is a real problem in Mijas and Fuengirola, where dozens of unsterilised cats are abandoned on the streets every week. This is where charities like Mijas Felina and Aristochat step in. Both based in Mijas, Aristochat is a cat shelter and adoption centre, and Mijas Felina cares for stray cats in the streets.

Formed in 2015, Mijas Felina aims to neuter all abandoned cats and control the stray cat population. President Almudena Calzado explains that her association follows the 'Trap, Neuter, Return' (TNR) method for controlling the number of stray cats. Mijas Felina relies on the help of the 25 active members to carry out this work on their own residential estate. You could wait for hours and hours to just capture one cat, says Almudena. After trapping a cat, the members then take it to one of three vets with whom they have arranged lower-priced spaying and neutering. Once recovered, the cat is then returned to where it was found and is continually monitored by the members. This involves visiting the cat colonies, which are populated by around four cats each, every day, rain or shine, to check on them, feed them, and take them to the vet if necessary. It is clearly not easy work.

Our goal is that the Spanish government makes neutering pets compulsory and opens a centre for cheap neutering, if not the problem will never stop, Almudena Calzado says. She believes that there are so many abandoned cats because people do not know how to treat cats; they see them as things which are easy to dispose of. Therefore, part of her mission at Mijas Felina is to change mentalities and educate people, from a young age, about the importance of caring for pets. She wants to stress that everyone can help, even if they are not directly associated with Mijas Felina. If someone finds a stray cat but is unable to home it themselves, they are encouraged to inform the association about it.

The best way of tackling the problem is by neutering the stray cats and highlighting their value as pets

While members of Mijas Felina look after cats on the streets in order to save them from being hurt or poisoned by people who find them to be a nuisance in their residential area, Aristochat takes in abandoned cats and cares for them at one of the two shelters in Mijas until they are adopted. Each shelter currently homes around 150 cats.

Most of the cats are brought in by people who find them on the streets, explains Chantal Lancelot, owner of Aristochat. In the main office there are currently three six-week-old kittens. They were all abandoned outside the gates of Aristochat and found there by Chantal the next morning. Apparently this is a common occurrence.

Both centres need money and volunteers. Aristochat costs over 5,000 euros per month to run and Mijas Felina needs funds for the traps and neutering. For Mijas Felina, volunteers would carry out the vital TNR work and sometimes foster kittens that need socialising. At Aristochat, Lancelot says that she just needs people to come in occasionally to stroke the cats and pick them up to prepare them for adoption. Both organisations have money boxes in shops around Mijas, and Aristochat is selling a cat calendar rto aise some extra money.

Despite the challenges, Almudena Calzado stresses that she is very proud of doing this job. Sometimes it is a burden and you don't want to go every day, but then you see the cats, and they are OK, and it's worth it. She believes that cats are under-appreciated. They are skilful hunters and can prevent actual pests, like mice, from entering residential areas, she points out.

Neither organisation is supported financially by the local authorities and rely solely on one-off donations or the regular support of members.

According to Mary de Sojo, a member of Mijas Felina who also collaborates with Aristochat, the work of the organisations is not recognised by the authorities, despite helping the people of Fuengirola and Mijas. De Sojo has set up her own cat-sitting service for when owners are on holiday, visiting them and feeding them in their own homes, and funds raised go to Aristochat and Mijas Felina.

We need to help each other; what the authorities are currently doing does not work so they should support Mijas Felina in controlling the stray cat population instead, she said.

Members of the charity have special permits from the Mijas town hall to feed stray cats, something which is usually forbidden, but they are still fighting for this permission in Fuengirola.

The organisations say that, ideally, this work will not continue forever. They hope that future neutering schemes will mean that the stray cat population will not keep increasing at such a concerning rate.
British people living in Spain will be allowed to stay in the country even if the event of a "no-deal" Brexit scenario, according to foreign minister Alfonso Dastis.

Dastis, speaking to Andrew Marr on British television on Sunday, said: "I do hope that there will be a [Brexit] deal. If there is no deal we will make sure that the lives of ordinary British people who are in Spain are not disrupted."

He went on to highlight the strength of ties between Spain and the UK, "in terms of economic relations and also social exchanges", with figures from the Office for National Statistics showing that Spain is host to the largest number of British citizens living in the EU (308,805). Just over a third of them are aged 65 and over.

With over 17 million Brits coming to Spain every year, Dastis made his government's intentions clear: "We want to keep it that way as much as possible."
OSAGE | Mitchell County may join a class-action lawsuit targeting opioid manufacturers.

The suit is being brought on behalf of cities and towns who are choosing to sue opioid manufacturers, County Attorney Mark Walk said during the board of supervisors meeting Tuesday.

If the county chose to join it, Walk said there would be no cost.

Mitchell County Sheriff Greg Beaver said Osage has "all kinds of costs related to drugs, from crime to housing inmates."

People get hooked on painkillers like oxycontin, and when they stop being able to get it, they switch to things like heroin," Beaver said. "Ninety percent of crimes around the county  the domestic abuses, the robberies  could be solved if we could get rid of the drugs.

Iowa lawmakers target opioid addiction DES MOINES | Lori Peter shares her devastating experience with opioid addiction often, and a

A New York City firm is filing the suit and sending similar letters to cities and towns across the countries. The firm says opioid manufacturers knew there was no way the population of small towns could be supporting the amount of pills that were being sent to them.

It should have been a red flag, supervisor Shannon Paulus said. Im not surprised about the class-action suit; we have been discussing the opioid epidemic at the substance abuse coalition and how much it has grown. I feel like this is going to be a message to the manufacturers.

They should have known, just with the amount of prescriptions going out. They convinced the medical profession of this new product, but they werent careful of how much of this potent drug was getting out there.

"I want it to change," Paulus said.

The supervisors will revisit the potential for joining the lawsuit at next week's meeting.
CARMEL, Indiana | The Great American Songbook Foundation has launched a website showcasing the archives of composer and playwright Meredith Willson.

The Meredith Willson Digital Collection can be viewed at www.songbook.historyit.com.

The project is the result of a collaboration between the Songbook Foundation and HistoryIT, a digital history company that helps organizations transform their archives into engaging online collections.

Working with foundation staff, HistoryIT team members identified and digitized a representative sample of compositions, scrapbooks, correspondence and photographs from Willsons career.

Items in the collection include photos and musical scores dating to the 1920s, scripts from radio shows he hosted, character sketches and early drafts for "The Music Man", correspondence with famous figures and Vietnam-era letters exchanged with a nephew who later died in combat.

One theme that emerges from this collection is that so much of his life was rolled into 'The Music Man', even though it wasnt strictly autobiographical, Songbook archivist Lisa Lobdell said in a news release. You can see the connections to characters and events in his life, how important his hometown was. He was kind of an everyman, and he never lost touch with that.

As funding is secured, the foundation plans to create digital versions of all of Willsons archives. It also plans to produce interactive features, such as exhibits and educational modules.
The FBI Tuesday released hundreds of pages of heavily redacted documents from its investigation into the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting. More than 1,000 pages of documents were released on the agency's archives page.

The documents show that the FBI opened a grand jury within days of the shooting to collect information from Internet companies that shooter Adam Lanza frequented.

There also are field notes from agents who canvassed the Yogananda Street neighborhood in Newtown where Lanza lived. One neighbor told agents that the FBI had visited the Lanza home a few years earlier because Adam had hacked into a government computer system when he was in ninth grade.

The neighbor said that Lanza made it through the second level of the unnamed government computer system before the FBI and CIA agents showed up at the house.

The neighbor said that Nancy Lanza, the shooter's mother, told them the agents remarked that Adam "could have a job with them someday." Adam Lanza shot his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School of Dec. 14, 2012 and killed 26 people, including 20 first graders.

He fired 154 shots in five minutes before killing himself. Before going to the school he killed his mother in their Yogananda home shooting her 4 times with a rifle while she slept.

FBI agents assisted the state police in the aftermath of the shooting. The documents released Tuesday are mostly redacted grand jury subpoenas and interviews agents conducted as well as records they obtained from schools and health providers.

The investigators hand-written field notes on the day of the massacre show how the agents, during their initial canvass of witnesses, gathered a wide range of facts about Nancy and Adam Lanza's relationship that would later shed light on his increasingly isolated existence in the weeks before the murders.

Another person told agents that Nancy had confided in them that Adam hadn't left his bedroom for three months prior to the massacre and that she only communicated with him via e-mail. Several mentioned about how he had been freaked out by Storm Sandy when they lost power for days.

"He had no real friends," an investigator noted, "and would not go out of the house to a hotel when electricity [was] out during Hurricane Sandy." Another friend told agents that while in school Adam was "bullied, but not excessively, for his social awkwardness and his physical gait."

Lanza weighed only 111 pounds at the time of his death. In the hours after the massacre, federal authorities, in an effort to rapidly provide aid to the victims' families, authorized the use of Terrorism Emergency Victim-Assistance Funds, newly released documents state.
CHARLES CITY | A fire caused by an electrical malfunction Monday caused $3 million in damage to a chicken building owned by a Charles City business.

It was found an electrical wire began arcing due to a malfunction, sparking the fire, investigators from the Iowa State Fire Marshal's Office, Charles City Fire Department and Zoetis determined.

Zoetis, which makes medicine and vaccines for animals, said in a news release there were approximately 6,000 chickens in the building at the time of the fire, which was reported around 4:57 p.m. Monday. The building was recently built, opening in March. It and its contents were valued around $3.08 million.

Eight North Iowa fire departments battled the blaze at 2640 7 Mile Road, which they said was fueled by gusty winds and a lack of hydrants, due to the building being located outside city limits. No one was inside the building when the fire started.

Due to the size of the fire and the initial shortage of water, Charles City firefighters called in other area departments to assist  Colwell, Marble Rock, Nashua, Nora Springs, Osage, Rockford and Rudd.

One person was hurt  a firefighter was treated and released at the scene for a minor lower leg injury, the department said.

The Charles City Fire Department remained on the scene for about five and a half hours Monday.

Firefighters responded back to the site from 12:30 to 4:15 a.m. Tuesday due to a flare-up and hot spots fueled by strong winds.

The Charles City Police Department, Floyd County Sheriffs Office, AMR Ambulance, Floyd County Search and Rescue, Floyd County EMA, Charles City Water Department, Zoetis Maintenance and Management, Ron Hillegas and Popp Excavating also provided assistance.

Previous story:

CHARLES CITY | A fire Monday afternoon caused major damage to an animal outbuilding owned by a Charles City business.

The Charles City Fire Department said in a news release it responded to a report of smoke and fire coming from a building at 2640 7 Mile Road around 4:57 p.m.

The building is owned by Zoetis, which makes medicine and vaccines for animals.

When firefighters arrived, they found smoke and fire engulfing most of the western half of a building, the department said. No one was in the building when the fire started.

With the building outside city limits, water supply was hampered by the lack of hydrants.

Gusty west-northwest winds caused the fire to spread rapidly through the rest of the main building, which housed chickens. The building was recently built and opened in March.

Due to the size of the fire and the initial shortage of water, firefighters called in other area departments to assist -- Colwell, Marble Rock, Nashua, Nora Springs, Osage, Rockford and Rudd.

One person was hurt -- a firefighter was treated and released at the scene for a minor lower leg injury, the department said.

The Charles City Fire Department remained on the scene for about five and a half hours. The cause of the fire remains under investigation by the department and the Iowa State Fire Marshals Office.

The Charles City Police Department, Floyd County Sheriffs Office, AMR Ambulance, Floyd County Search and Rescue, Floyd County EMA, Charles City Water Department, Zoetis Maintenance and Management, Ron Hillegas and Popp Excavating also provided assistance.

Earlier story:

CHARLES CITY | Multiple departments were battling a blaze at an animal outbuilding in Charles City Monday evening.

Highway 14 was closed west of Charles City due to the fire, the Floyd County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post around 5:30 p.m. Monday. The road has since reopened.

The fire is located near Zoetis, which makes medicines and vaccines for animals.

"Every Fire Department from Floyd County is there along with others responding from out of county," the sheriff's office said in the post. "Please stay clear."

This is a developing story. Check back later for more details.
It is an arresting sight  along the walls of a hall within Girton College is a series of photographs depicting early female students of the college. Dressed in a fashion long since dated, many are pictured with solemn expressions, yet with racquets and other sporting equipment in their grasps.

As the first college in the university established for women, Girton is undoubtedly making a point with these photographs  these are the pioneers, the precedents, and it is in these touches throughout the university that I am reminded of the long battle to where we are today.

In this spirit, two other exhibitions hosted by the university are worthy celebrations of womens achievements  the first is Murray Edwards Colleges New Hall Art Collection and the second is the Centre for Computing Historys exhibition on women in computing.

The New Hall Art Collection is a permanent showcase of modern and contemporary artists by female artists, and now features over 450 art pieces.

The college describes inspiration for the collection to be Murray Edwards Colleges role as a womens college and its sympathetic setting for contemporary art, and it now has the distinction of being the most significant collection of its nature in Europe.

Located in Murray Edwards famous Dome, the collection features the work of artists including Mary Kelly, Sandra Blow and Anthea Alley.

The New Hall Art Collection successfully evokes social and historical themes alike, as it charts through its art the achievements of women in the visual arts of over 50 years. From the abstract to still life, the portrait to the landscape, Murray Edwards collection is far an artistic statement in more ways than one.

While its name might evoke a very different set of associations, Cambridges Centre for Computing Historys temporary Computing History: Where Did All the Women Go? charts too the historical achievements of women. Running from 5 October to 26 October, it celebrates the work of women including Ada Lovelace, widely regarded as the first programmer, and Delia Derbyshire, the composer of the 1960s Doctor Who theme song.

Closer to home is a talk by Professor Jean Bacon, who, in 1985, was the first woman to be appointed to a Lectureship in Cambridge Universitys Computer Laboratory. Other events at the centre include a film screening of the acclaimed Hidden Figures and a pop-up exhibition on women in gaming.


It was a cold, damp evening in week three and freshers blues were beginning to kick in. A night of Cold War-esque mud-slinging was promised to lighten the load of Russian declensions I had to learn by my next rapidly approaching oral class. Disappointment was in the air as Vladimir Pozner, son of a Soviet spy and now Russian TV presenter himself, had pulled out as a result of illness. The audience did not and could not have foreseen the train of events that the remaining eclectic mix of characters would deliver in this polemic and highly-strung debate.

First to the podium was Oksana Boyko, the host of Worlds Apart, a geopolitical analysis show on the notorious, vaguely pro-Putin Russia Today channel. Despite cold shoulder not being defined, nor a plan of attack given, we were just about able to gather a few things from the somewhat convoluted speech. She confessed that Russia has learnt some lessons from the Ukraine sanctions, such as the importance of investing in industrialisation other than hydrocarbons. Russia has a history of planning big vs getting by and reform and an independent judiciary might just be needed. Oksana concluded with an inspiring moral politics is like good parenting and good parenting is never achieved with sanctions. I was able to follow up on this point and to my question, so do you view the west as a parent to Russia? a no was returned and over three minutes of detail in which I learned that, there are good and bad actors within any system [] For the westerners it is all about Putin and the bloody Putin regime. For me it is different, I know there are corrupt hoards []. There are people who are being killed in prisons and there also lots of people in Russia who are trying to change the culture. There are people introducing totally new policies, and now it is a very very moving field. Perhaps not very related to my question, but good to know nonetheless.

The opposition was then introduced by the humble Radislaw Sikorski, former foreign-minister in Poland and Bullingdon club member. Decked in military medals, he stepped up to the plate with I came from Poland probably for the last time with a visa. Round of applause for the mandatory Brexit banter! From the onset, the ex-Oxford Union president had his audience enraptured. Tales of his work in politics and Polands old friendship with Russia abounded. He reeled off the establishment of visa-free travel between Kaliningrad and Poland, his unblocking of Russia from the OECD, its invitation to G7, WTO and the Council of Europe, to assure us that it was not as if the west has somehow been snobbish or irrational towards Russia. Yet Putin, he informed us, had decided that it was just too hard, and thus the cleptocracy of oligarchs had ensued. Radislaw asserted that the Russian president had prioritised national glory and grabbed Ukrainian territory, the first time since WW2 that borders had been changed by force, a pronouncement which was challenged by member of the public.

Somewhere along the way we were reminded that, the West has been playing Pictionary with African and Middle Eastern borders and that the sanctions were not directed at Russian people, yet until Russia left Ukraine they would continue. A vibrant bow-tie-clad character in the audience stood up abruptly and questioned Polands own aggression in asking for 1 trillion in reparations from Germany. A silence hit the crowd as Radislaws face darkened, not for the first time in this debate. And with his heated response of a moral case and a reorientation to the Russian question, he retired.

Next up for the proposition was Cambridge researcher on Sino-Russian relations, Tim Reilley, stepping in for Vladimir Pozner. All cliches of reserved academics were blown out of the water while he instructed us on this marmite subject. We need to put Russia in a geopolitical setting, he announced, forget Crimea, and look forward. Our hypocrisy was laid bare as he compared the inequality in the US to that in Russia, while warning us that they take risks and we dont [] they are moving fast. Arguing for the need to accept Russia in order to not be left behind in the Sino-Russian ascension, the quotable sections of his position are endless; indeed it may be worth having a go at fitting in as many juicy bits as possible: we have to have leadership to make things happen, we need effective not efficient people, China is converting petro-dollars to petro-yan, your life is predictable, and perhaps my favourite, we have forgotten the rules [] we are at war. I followed up on this spicy nugget after the debate and Reilly said it wasnt about war but seeing Russia as it is and knowing that it still thinks as a superpower. A hark back to the days of detente, how comforting!

It would be nice to elaborate fully on opposition Tom Brake, Lib-dem MP, but difficult as the majority of his time was hijacked by Oksana. After two minutes on the importance of human rights, and another reminder of long-forgotten Brexit, which Tom narrowed down to traipsing around begging for deals (with Russia and the like), he talked about his refusal to partake in meetings that involved the corrupt Kremlin and Russia Today. He has allegedly been invited on numerous occasions, but only after having been quoted criticising the UK government. At this, Oksana burst out with, you are talking about something that you have no idea about [] why does everyone criticise the Putin regime? [] you are telling a lie [] libel! After this dramatic interlude, with one minute for concluding remarks, Tom persisted in claiming that RT had been investigated by Ofcom for opinion polls on Ukrainian and Crimean independence, and had also misquoted Hollande about sanctions. To a question on the feasibility of promoting human rights in a country we are giving the cold shoulder to, an answer was not noticeably given, and actually, the most memorable bit of his ending was Tim Reilly standing back up and proclaiming: it is important to maintain dialogue [] watch them walking in the door.

The final two speakers were Maria Long for proposition and Sarah Lain for opposition. Both were a relatively subdued affair in contrast to the preceding hour. For Maria, who works with Open Russia and Modern Russia, Russia is comprised of two countries: politicians, oligarchs and their friends and then everyone else. Dont equate Russia with Kremlin as 70% of Russians want normalisation of relations with the West. When questioned on her position by a son of East Germans in the audience who said that East Germany would not have been liberated if it werent for sanctions, Maria argued that times were different now as civil society needs civil society. If unsure what this means, fear not as she clarified by saying dont roll the red carpet for the corrupt officials. Surely she is pro-cold shoulder then? No, as Putin is not here forever, and for the sake of Russian youth, dont make Russia a threat. Use more targeted sanctions [] seize stolen property [] dont legitimise the power of those people.

In the case of academic and Cambridge alumna Sarah Lain, straightforward arguments sufficed. It is difficult for sanctions to pass in the EU, and they had a reason: Russia had boosted the Ukrainian civil war with a campaign to ferment instability. The aforementioned colourfully-attired member of the audience then shouted about the Wests role in the Iranian revolution, to which she gave the blunt response: Im talking about Ukraine. There had been huge HR violations in Donbas, the shooting down of the MH17 plane, and at the end of the day sanctions had ensured that Russia did not install a pro-Russian government in Kiev. Concluding by referencing a New Cold War may not be useful but we can certainly learn from the past, she returned to he subdued but forceful seat.

The night left me thinking there was a hopeful future.
Baroness Hale's address to a packed room at the Union on Friday night was understandably popular  as the first woman to be appointed as President of the Supreme Court (the UK's most senior judge), and a champion of diversity in the judiciary and public life generally, she has had a high-profile and varied career. Hale was eloquent and witty, touching on subjects ranging from press treatment of the judiciary, to why representation matters in terms of the legitimacy of Supreme Court rulings.

Hale began by discussing what she wishes she had known as an undergraduate at Cambridge. She studied law at Girton College, graduating in 1966. She wishes she had understood how unfair it was that the opportunities she received were so often out of reach for people who did not fit the typical Cambridge mould. She had been the first girl from her school in Yorkshire to study law, and first to go to Cambridge  at a time when there were nine times as many males than females at the University. However, she also felt that at Cambridge she learnt ambition; if so many privileged young men took passing the bar for granted, she could do it too. While she had received many of her posts through a 'tap on the shoulder', which was the case until 2005, she saw the new system of having a Judicial Appointments Commission as much more transparent and useful in improving diversity, albeit slowly.

Rather than following the typical career path of a Supreme Court judge, Hale specialised in family law and worked as an academic at Manchester University, then as a public servant. She emphasised how exceptional her appointment had been, as the first woman in the British Supreme Court until a month ago (despite being its longest-serving justice), and the only non-privately-educated justice until three years ago. Hale explained why judicial bodies should better represent all segments of British society. If the laws affecting everyone are to be legitimate, they should not be decided solely by a narrow pool of 'socioeconomic elites'. She acknowledged the need to address gender imbalances in the judiciary, as well as a lack of ethnic and cultural diversity. Hale sees strength in collectivism: people from all kinds of backgrounds are needed, because each person will have their experiences of how life has treated them inform their judging. At one point she said, 'I am only as powerful as I can persuade others of my point of view.' This was exemplified by the Yemshaw v LB Hounslow case in 2011, in which a woman left the family home and applied to the council as homeless, because of the emotionally and financially abusive treatment she had received from her husband. Since she had not been assaulted, her case had been dismissed by the council and Courts of Appeal. However, it was brought to the Supreme Court and Hale expanded the definition of violence to go beyond physical assault to threatening, intimidating and controlling behaviour. Hale felt that as a woman, she had an implicit understanding of the insidious nature of emotional violence, and how it can make staying in a toxic environment impossible. This differed to the understanding of her male colleagues, and had allowed her to make the debate fairer.

Brexit was a common question topic throughout the night. Hale said it would be inappropriate to comment on what she perceived as its relative advantages and disadvantages. However, she did comment on the press coverage of the Miller Case, when the Supreme Court ruled 8-3 that Members of Parliament had the right to vote on triggering Article 50. Hale said she found the attacks on the Lord Chief Justice disturbing and irresponsible, with it running contrary to the idea of an independent, impartial British judiciary. Hale also criticised the Daily Mail for branding the three judges who decided the Miller case "enemies of the people," alongside profiles of their personal lives and the price of their family homes. Hale answered a wide range of questions, revealing that she feels Northern Ireland's abortion law, and whether it defies basic human rights, is the most important legal issue currently facing the Supreme Court.

While a show of hands revealed the audience to be split between law and non-law students, the range of Hale's speech went beyond a discussion of her many legal cases, and was illuminating and insightful for all those lucky enough to listen.
On Friday (20th October), the Relaxed Theatre Company announced their scheduled Corpus Playroom show would be cancelled. Any Little Thing was due to open today (24th); the second relaxed show the company has put on in Cambridge. TCS met up with producer Georgina Evans, and producer and director Georgina Taylor to discuss what was next for the RTC.

The two are clearly deeply enthusiastic about the company; and are quick to launch into an explanation about their aims.

Taylor stresses that they provide theatre anyone can enjoy- if you need to make a noise, or need space around you, the theatre space will be tailored to that. The audience is the focus, not the actors or the production

She rushes on, detailing how although there are no blanket solutions to providing accessible theatre to everyone, as some requirements are the opposite of others, the theatre experience will be made as comfortable as possible for anyone watching the show.

Rehearsals and auditions are held in accessible places, and we opened applications via DRCs at the University and Anglia Ruskin, to allow anyone interested in relaxed theatre to get involved.

Both Taylor and Evans are eager to says that they think [Any Little Thing] is a story worth telling, as the piece of new writing focuses on minority voices- providing friendship on stage for the audience.

Its clear that both are passionate about the project. Rushing from topic to topic, the RTC producers launch into an explanation of their plans to make Corpus Playroom accessible. Plans to build wheelchair ramps and temporary solutions to the inaccessibility of the space were met with encouragement from ADC staff initially- the company spent weeks measuring St Edmunds Passage; designing various solutions so no audience member would be unable to watch the show.

Less than a week before the show was about to open, Evans and Taylor were rushed into the ADC for an emergency meeting. After initial encouragement, the pair were told their temporary ramps would not be in accordance with fire safety regulations. Their plan for a small ramp on the back door of Corpus was disallowed by the college porters.

The pair are quick to praise the work of ADC staff, however, and said the problem did not lie with them- rather the ADC executive committee, Cambridge council, and the fire officers and porters at Corpus.

After the pair were told the show would not be able to to fully accessible, a meeting was held with the Any Little Thing team. Taylor explains how nobody would have felt right putting on the show, as the Relaxed Theatre Company has accessibility as its forefront.

She goes on, every ticket we sell would be funding a stubbornly inaccessible venue, and so Any Little Thing was postponed.

Their plan now is two-pronged, and necessarily political. The Company are working with Florence Oulds, the CUSU Disabilities officer, to find an accessible venue. Theyre also working to create a student front fighting all aspects of inaccessibility in Cambridge, from writing open letters to campaigning through petitions.

An open letter from the cast and crew of Any Little Thing was sent to the executive committee of the ADC, asking them to fix Corpus now, or stop using it immediately.

Evans hurries on, saying Were not asking people to boycott shows on at Corpus this term, as the shows that are booked now are important in their own right. However, we are asking those applying to produce shows in Lent term- will they accept a place at the Playroom, and activiely choose to alienate disabled people from their show? As an audience member, are you going to pay money and support this alienation?

Their plan for the long term is to encourage all shows to have at least one relaxed performance per show. Theyre keen for producers and directors to contact them too, stressing that they will do the legwork for shows to find them accessible venues, and make them appropriate for as many needs as possible.

Taylor and Evans finish with by asking even those who arent theatre people to follow their Facebook, fill out the petition, let us know your thoughts.

The Relaxed Theatre Companys petition can be found here.
With Prime Minister Theresa Mays recent speech to the Conservative Party conference indicating a possible reduction in the maximum university fee of 9,250, fault lines are emerging among vice-chancellors over how new gaps in their finances will be filled.

Some Russel Group vice chancellors are advocating for post-1992 universities to be targeted for the introduction of reduced fees. They feel that modern universities will spend significantly less on carrying out research and teaching individual students than institutions like Cambridge. The cost of education was highlighted by the Times Higher Education in September 2016, writing that the University spends an average of 18,000 on educating each undergraduate, leaving a funding gap of 7,700. This raises significant questions over whether all universities should be allowed to charge the maximum annual tuition fee.

Others point to the disparities in earnings between graduates of the same subjects at different institutions, and whether the perceived worth of certain institutions, reflected in lifetime earnings, could justify differential fees. In an interview with the Guardian, Professor David Green (vice-chancellor at Worcester University), argues that Jo Johnson, the HE minister, is wrong to point at value for money as the primary concern of students, as students do feel graduates are being asked to pay too much and that the government and firms should be making more of a contribution. Also in the Guardian, Nick Hillman of the Higher Education Policy Institute, criticised the belief that post-1992 universities should receive less in student funding, being caught in a perfect storm, losing full-time students at the same time as part-time student numbers have collapsed.

We approached the University communications officer for comment, but were informed that we could not be provided with one at this time. The news comes as Cambridge University Vice-Chancellor Stephen Toope faces controversy over his annual salary of 365,000 (more information on page 7). Many Russel Group vice-chancellor contributers to the Guardian article were anonymised, feeling that focus on their salaries casts their comments on funding in a negative light.
Leading Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors in both the City and Country councils have expressed their disappointment at the rejection by the Conservatives at the Cambridgeshire County Council of the plan for a national arts, education and research centre to be built in the north of the city.

In June 2017, the Arts Council awarded a 1,000,000 grant to Cambridgeshire County Council for the development of the CREATE (Centre for Research and Engagement in Arts, Technology and Education) project, to be located near some of the most deprived areas of Cambridge. The project would have also enabled educational content to be live streamed to homes and schools across Cambridgeshire.

The plan involved the redevelopment of St Lukes Barn, however Tory councillors on the County Commercial and Investment Committee have now decided to sell St Lukes Barn, meaning the likely loss of the 1,000,000 grant for the CREATE project.

Speaking to Cambridge News, Lucy Nethsingha, the Lib Dem leader at the County Council, expressed her disappointment: I am horrified that the Conservatives have made this decision in the same week that they have voted to close a huge number of the county's childrens centres.

Time and again the Conservatives seem to put the needs of children and young people at the bottom of the list."

The value of this site to the County Council in terms of a capital receipt is minimal, and there is no guarantee they will be able to sell it at all, given the constraints of the site. The value to educational opportunity in Cambridgeshire could have been huge.

They are selling off our childrens educational opportunities for a short-term gain. I am disgusted."

Joshua Schumann, Tory member of the Cambridgeshire County Council, has since defended the decision, arguing that the site was not ideal for the project and that only 1 million had been secured for the project when the overall cost was estimated to be around 3.6 million.

Although alternative sites are being sought out, there are fears that without the grant, the plan may not go ahead.
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Re: Gujarat's Ro-Ro ferry to cut down 6.5 hour trip to 90 minutes



While in school, we watched this news on the only TV channel back then and were excited to learn how fast were these hovercrafts and back then itself, they said it will cut short the travel time from 8 hours to 40 minutes!



Sadly, this service didn't continue beyond 6 months since inception for whatsoever reasons.



Here is the snippet of the news



Quote: The much talked about prospects of an hovercraft service between Surat in south Gujarat and Bhavnagar in the Saurashtra peninsula seems to have brightened with at least three parties having evoked keen interest in the proposal of starting a hovercraft service.





It was exactly ten years back in 1992 that a hovercraft service had started between Surat and Bhavnagar via Ghogha. However, the service folded up within six months.



I remember passing Surat past 2200 Hours on my way to Ahmedabad once and I could notice a sea of buses coming out of the city headed to various destinations in Gujarat and Rajasthan. Surat being the second largest city in Gujarat, with its immense reputation for attracting diamond workers will largely be benefited with this service if its executed in a better manner this time - Regular & frequent service, easy on pocket (comparable to fare of overnight AC sleeper buses).



Back then no one saw how the domestic aviation industry took us by storm that today so many take a flight to reach their destinations. More than 2 decades ago, precisely in the year 1992 was when the first hovercraft service was started, connecting the Diamond City of Surat to the coastal city of Saurastra (Bhavnagar)!While in school, we watched this news on the only TV channel back then and were excited to learn how fast were these hovercrafts and back then itself, they said it will cut short the travel time from 8 hours to 40 minutes!Sadly, this service didn't continue beyond 6 months since inception for whatsoever reasons.Here is the snippet of the news article that even referred about this hovercraft service:We may have better road connectivity today, including Airports. A lot of cities here are way too urban with sprawling SSIs, especially the Saurashtra region. Back then, it didn't have many takers but today if one considers the travel time even with good roads and toll, this one indeed saves a lot of time lost in traversing through the land while the route via salt waters is simply a hop between 2 shores located so close.I remember passing Surat past 2200 Hours on my way to Ahmedabad once and I could notice a sea of buses coming out of the city headed to various destinations in Gujarat and Rajasthan. Surat being the second largest city in Gujarat, with its immense reputation for attracting diamond workers will largely be benefited with this service if its executed in a better manner this time - Regular & frequent service, easy on pocket (comparable to fare of overnight AC sleeper buses).Back then no one saw how the domestic aviation industry took us by storm that today so many take a flight to reach their destinations. Last edited by Aditya : 24th October 2017 at 11:30 . Reason: As requested
CD Projekt Red is on the receiving end of negative staff morale rumors, and now it's speaking up to set things straight.

More importantly, though, the developer of The Witcher also confirms that the development of Cyberpunk 2077, its upcoming RPG, is "progressing as planned."

CD Projekt Red Staff Morale

Taking things to Twitter, CD Projekt Red is particularly addressing the negative reviews it has received on Glassdoor, a website where employees of various companies can rate their employers anonymously.

This might come across as odd since most gaming studios typically don't bother with the posts there, not to mention that just about anyone can register and grade companies on Glassdoor. In other words, the low ratings that the Polish company are getting could simply be from online trolls.

For what it's worth, the gist of the aforementioned negative reviews is that CD Projekt Red gives out low wages and too much work hours, with some saying that the higher-ups don't even play and love games.

At any rate, the company provided an explanation why it felt necessary to post an open letter on Twitter.

"We'd normally avoid commenting on company reviews on spaces like Glassdoor, but this time around  especially in light of the fact that we haven't communicated anything about Cyberpunk 2077 for a long time and saw some gamers getting worried about the project  we'd like to elaborate on a few things," studio head Adam Badowski and cofounder Marcin Iwinski say.

It goes on to talk about the departure of the staff members and how CD Projekt Red approaches game development like for the series of The Witcher, saying that it's "not for everyone."

The thing is, the letter doesn't really answer the negative reviews  regardless of whether or not they're real  posted on their Glassdoor page, but what the company is saying is simple: Don't accept the job if the pressure is too much to handle.

Cyberpunk 2077 Underway

The bit about Cyberpunk 2077 isn't much of an update, but nevertheless, any news about it is very much welcome.

"Cyberpunk 2077 is progressing as planned, but we are taking our time  in this case, silence is the cost of making a great game," CD Projekt Red says.

The takeaway here is that gamers can stop worrying about the release of Cyberpunk 2077 because, one way or another, it's coming in due time.

For the record, it's confirmed to be available for the PC, and it's been said to "most probably" make its way to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, according to a 2013 interview of Polygon with CD Projekt Red's business development manager Rafal Jaki.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Tesla has reportedly reached a deal to build an electric vehicle factory in Shanghai, China.

The electric car maker hasn't confirmed the news yet, but it did reaffirm the promise it made in June, which is to outline its plans in the region before the end of 2017.

Tesla Factory To Open In China

According to Wall Street Journal (paywall) sources, Tesla has landed a deal with China, where it will set up shop in the free trade zone located in Shanghai.

For years, the company has been selling its electric vehicles in the country. However, it hasn't been easy because of the hoops that foreign carmakers have to go through to penetrate the market there, not to mention that it was "misled" by Chinese speculators.

If the report turns out to be true, though, then the automaker will finally be able to jump-start its sales in China, allowing its electric cars to be more acceptable locally, and even more or less guarantee it can meet the increasing demand for such vehicles.

The Problem In China

The aforementioned "hoops" that foreign carmakers have to jump through refer to the 25 percent import duty fee and costs of shipping vehicles to China.

One way they can circumvent these restrictions is to team up with a local company, but that would mean they will have to share their technologies and give up profits.

In Tesla's case, it doesn't want to compromise its intellectual property and independence.

To put two and two together, those factors are the roots of the problem why the electric car maker hasn't had the chance to establish a stronger presence in the country.

How Tesla's Deal With China Will Turn Out

If the deal indeed pushes through, then Tesla will retain its independence and technologies while potentially gaining a prominent position in China.

It will, however, still be subjected to the 25 percent import duty, but that's a small price to pay for what it wants to keep intact. More than that, reduced costs in production and shipping will make up for the tax charges.

The Bottom Line

Tesla could be starting up a factory in China soon  in Shanghai's free trade zone, to be exact  and it could finally see improved sales in the country, whose market it has wanted to crack for so long. And in the process, it won't be losing its independence nor its intellectual property by partnering with a local company, which are some of the reasons it has been holding out before.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
NASA and Google have joined forces to create a new virtual reality (VR) experiment that uses real images captured by NASA's 'Curiosity rover'. The 'Access Mars' experiment allows its users to visit planet Mars and experience it from the comfort of their homes.

NASA And Google's VR Experiment: Access Mars

Those who are curious about how it looks like to walk on the surface of the red planet can now get a chance to experience it in the virtual world, using NASA and Google's latest "Access Mars" experiment.

Access Mars uses real digital images that were captured by NASA's Curiosity rover, a car-sized robotic vehicle designed to explore the surface of Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL).

The new VR experiment enables users to virtually walk on the surface of the planet and visit the actual terrains and paths explored by Curiosity. The experiment provides a new virtual reality learning experience that teaches users about Mars and the rover's mission.

According to Google, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory plans to update the data continously so that users will be able to view where the rover has been.

How Does Access Mars Work?

The VR experiment is based on NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's software that helps scientists plan and manage the Curiosity rover's operations. The Access Mars exprience can be viewed from most VR headsets available in the market, including Oculus, Gear VR, Daydream, Google Cardboard and HTC Vive.

Those who don't have a VR headset need not worry as the experience can also work on web browsers by allowing users to click their way around the virtual world.

"The experience is built using WebVR, a technology that lets you see virtual reality right in your browser, without installing any apps. You can try it on a virtual reality headset, phone, or laptop," said Ryan Burke, Interactive Producer at Google's Creative Lab, in a blog post.

Curiosity Rover

Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Nov. 26, 2011. It was launched aboard the MSL spacecraft and landed on Mars on Aug. 5, 2012.

The primary goal of Curiosity was to determine whether the red planet could ever have supported life, and its mission could also help scientists prepare for human exploration in the future. This year in August, NASA celebrated the 5th anniversary of the Curiosity rover's landing.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Two films from east Aleppo and one from Mosul took the top prizes at the The Rory Peck Awards 2017, which celebrates the work of freelancers working behind the camera in news and current affairs.

Photographic work from Burma was also honoured in the ceremony last night at Sadlers Wells hosted by BBCs Lyse Doucet and NBCs Katy Tur.

The Rory Peck Award for News, sponsored by Google, was presented to Syrian camerawoman Waad Al Kateab for her Channel 4 News report Inside Aleppo: The Last Hospital (click link to see film). Filmed in Al-Kuds hospital in November 2016, it captures the daily horrors of civilians and families trapped in the citys diminishing enclave. Judges called her report, An exemplary piece of journalism. Not one shot is fired yet Waad shows us so powerfully the horrors of war.

The Rory Peck Award for News Features was won by French freelance cameraman and filmmaker Oliver Sarbil for Battle for Mosul, an intimate and unvarnished study of the slow and grinding battle to free the people of Mosul from so-called Islamic State, told through the eyes of a group of young men from Iraqs 1st Battalion. Broadcast by Channel 4 News, judges praised Oliver  a brilliant observer  for his incredible footage and intimate insights into real life in Mosul. Its captivating, great work, they said.

The Sony Impact Award for Current Affairs was won by Siraj Al Deen Al Omar, Mojahed Abo Al Jood, Basim Ayyoubi, Ahmad Hashisho, four young Syrian video journalists, for their BBC Arabic film Goodbye Aleppo. The film is their personal story of the fall of East Aleppo at the end of 2016, revealing what life is like for a population under siege as their city is about to fall. Judges said it is The most intimate, gripping and moving work we could see of these last days in Aleppo.  It is like a love story, a love diary, to their city. A superb, a tremendous film.

The Martin Adler Prize, sponsored by Hexagon, was presented to Burmese photographer, Minzayar Oo, in recognition of his work in Myanmar. This special prize honours a local freelancer who has made a significant contribution to newsgathering, either through a single story or body of work, but who is largely un-recognised by the international news media. He is the first photographer to receive the prize.

Tina Carr, Director of the Rory Peck Trust said, These awards are all about freelancers and the powerful work that they produce. But as we celebrate their achievements we are also aware that the challenges they face are changing, growing, and coming from new sources. After 22 years, the mission of the Rory Peck Trust remains the same: to support freelance journalists through these challenges, and help them to become stronger and more resilient.

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NEW ORLEANS, Oct. 23, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC (KSF) and KSF partner, former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., remind investors that they have until December 22, 2017 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Skechers U.S.A., Inc. (NYSE:SKX), if they purchased the Companys shares between April 23, 2015 and October 22, 2015, inclusive (the Class Period). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.



What You May Do

If you purchased shares of Skechers 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-skx/ to learn more. If you wish to serve as a lead plaintiff in this class action, you must petition the Court by December 22, 2017.

About the Lawsuit

Skechers and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws.

On October 22, 2015, the Company released its Q3 2015 results, which revealed net sales far below analysts consensus estimates based on $20 million in net sales being moved from Q3 to Q2 2015 because of early customer deliveries as well as a weaker retail environment than expected.

On this news, the price of Skechers shares plummeted $14.55 per share, or 31.50 percent, to close on October 23, 2015 at $31.64 per share.

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:
CEDAR PARK, TEXAS and BAGLEY, MINNESOTA, Oct. 23, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TEAM Industries (TEAM) and Fallbrook Technologies Inc. (Fallbrook) announced today that TEAM has a production-ready innovative new transmission design for all-terrain vehicles (ATV) and utility task vehicles (UTV) available to OEMs for vehicle implementation. The transmission incorporates Fallbrooks NuVinci continuously variable planetary (CVP) technology. NuVinci is a platform technology for a new class of continuously variable transmissions (CVT). It utilizes spheres instead of gears or belts, and can be deployed in a wide variety of applications to improve performance and/or system efficiency. TEAM has an exclusive licensing agreement with Fallbrook for the use of NuVinci CVP technology in North America and Europe in electric and gasoline light vehicle applications. TEAM is also working with Fallbrook to provide a source for NuVinci transmissions in other applications, as well.

We are one of the largest suppliers, if not the largest, of rubber-belt CVTs in the ORV [off-road vehicle] market. We continue to drive innovation in this market, and that is why we are incorporating NuVinci CVP technology into our product lineup; delivering an advanced drivetrain solution that improves reliability and provides greater capability over rubber-belt CVTs, said Micah Ricke, Director of Product Development at TEAM.

TEAMs new CVP transmission has a variety of innovative or advanced features, said Aaron Shagrin, Fallbrooks VP of Licensing and Business Development, many of which stem from the incorporation of NuVinci technology. There are no belt or wear items to replace. It is sealed and needs no periodic lubrication. There is lower NVH [noise, vibration, and harshness] compared to current belt-CVTs and it is programmable and tunable for varying conditions or modes. This provides excellent low-speed drivability with no jerking or stick-slip phenomenon.

TEAM is in active discussions with OEMs and is prepared to begin production to support OEMs as they integrate it into their vehicles. The feedback from OEMs who have test driven a NuVinci Optimized demo vehicle has been extremely positive. A Product Manager of a major North America OEM stated: The ride experience exceeds anything Ive ever experienced from a belt CVT, this is the real deal. Getting to a production-ready design is a significant accomplishment, said Sharon A. OLeary, Fallbrooks president and COO. We are pleased to have a partnership with TEAM and it further demonstrates the scalability and broad potential for commercialization of NuVinci CVP technology.



For additional information on TEAMs transmission for OEMs, please visit: www.team-ind.com or contact Micah Ricke, Director of Product Development at TEAM Industries via email at micahricke@team-ind.com.

If there is interest in using TEAMs transmission into a new market and application, please email: idbusdev@nuvinci.com.



About TEAM Industries, Inc.

TEAM Industries is a vertically- integrated engineering and manufacturing company that has been driving innovation in performance and reliability-enhancing components for nearly half a century. Headquartered in Bagley, MN, TEAM offers a complete range of services, from collaboration on new product designs to custom contract manufacturing. Their principal products include transmissions and transaxles, axles and four-wheel-drive systems, continuously variable transmissions (CVTs), and electric vehicle drivetrains. For more information, visit www.team-ind.com.



About Fallbrook Technologies Inc.

Fallbrook Technologies is the inventor of the revolutionary NuVinci continuously variable planetary (CVP) technology, which enables performance and efficiency improvements for machines that use an engine, pump, motor, or geared transmission system. Fallbrook has a unique collective development model and community through which NuVinci technology licensees share enhancements, which adds to the value of the technology and accelerates product development. Fallbrook licensees are developing products for urban mobility vehicles, cars and trucks, all-terrain vehicles, industrial equipment, and many other applications. Fallbrook is based in Cedar Park near Austin, Texas, USA and holds rights to over 800 patents and patent applications worldwide. For more information, visit www.fallbrooktech.com.



Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/96478a00-5264-44a6-9e16-5714714416cd
Nonprofits in Baton Rouge can apply for part of a $150,000 grant to help them hire experts or expand in a way that makes it easier to invest in affordable rental housing, a group of East Baton Rouge Parish officials and nonprofit leaders announced Tuesday.

The Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center is gifting $150,000 to the Housing First Alliance of the Capital Area  a collaboration of about 30 local nonprofits that formed after the 2016 floods to focus on housing in Baton Rouge. Sam Sanders, the coordinator for the Housing First Alliance, said most of the groups have concentrated on rehabbing single family homes after the floods, but he hopes the new grant will turn more attention toward rental housing.

The grant is geared toward helping nonprofits to hire people or purchase what they need to navigate the bureaucracy-laden affordable housing sector, said those at the news conference Tuesday. Sanders and his team will determine how to divvy up the money among interested nonprofits, and he said the Housing First Alliance has secured $300,000 to continue its work.

Rental housing that's affordable for low- and middle-income Baton Rougeans was already hard to come by before floods swamped about 12,000 rental properties last year in Baton Rouge. The trend nationwide is also troubling, according to a new Freddie Mac report Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome cited Tuesday.

Rents keep increasing while incomes are staying stagnant, the Freddie Mac report says. And nationally, the number of affordable apartments has dropped more than 60 percent in the last six years for families earning less than 50 percent of an area's median income, according to the report.

"Today is a good opportunity for us to continue to change those numbers," Broome said.

Cashauna Hill, the executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, said they wanted to ensure that the money was going to nonprofits that have been on the ground in Baton Rouge and already working to revive communities. She said the Fair Housing Center wants to see an equitable long-term recovery in Baton Rouge.

"That's why we're offering this support to build the capacity of local housing developers and ensure that the city and its partners can bring rental homes that are affordable back online in all communities," Hill said.

The state's programs to rebuild rentals affected by the floods also aim to increase the number of affordable units. The state offered $36 million in a "landlord rental program" to help those who owned a few rental properties. The landlord program is expected to translate into rebuilding 1,200 to 1,500 rentals across the state.

The state also offered $28.25 million in a "multifamily gap program" for larger apartment complexes to rebuild. State officials said over the summer that they hoped interest in the programs would be high so they could make the case for more federal money to help rebuild affordable rentals.

The city-parish also dispersed $11.1 million from Department of Housing and Urban Development to help repair rental and owner occupied housing in Baton Rouge.
The conflict between Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome's office and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation has ratcheted up in 2017: first with pro
In an op-ed recently published in The Seattle Times, U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., calls for the support of the REACH Act by members of Congress.

Even as we debate and divide ourselves with partisan and tribal issues, I believe the U.S. will continue its moral leadership globally.

We take for granted that most children and moms in the U.S. have access to health care and nutrition. Although things have gotten better, this is not the case for millions of moms and kids around the globe living in poor circumstances. We've gone from losing 12.9 million children under age 5 each year to preventable causes in 1990 to 5.9 million today. This is progress but still a sad state of affairs.

The good news is that U.S. leadership has been critical to this progress, and we actually know how to end preventable maternal and child deaths. Estimates are that we can achieve this by 2030.

The Reach Every Mother and Child Act (S. 1730) will put the U.S. in the position to lead on achieving this goal. The Reach Act does the following:

Dad heads up effort to raise money for Second Harvest in son's name As a way to honor his deceased sons passion for feeding the hungry, Master Sgt. Joel Cortes

1. Calls for an ambitious U.S. government strategy with measurable goals, accountability and transparency for ending preventable child and maternal deaths globally by 2030.

2. Focuses on the poorest and most vulnerable populations.

3. Scales up the highest-impact, evidence-based interventions and country ownership.

4. Requires a child and maternal survival coordinator to oversee resources directly linked to reducing maternal and child mortality.

5. Creates new, innovative funding sources to complement U.S. investments.

We need these policies to give moms and kids a chance. I ask U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy to support the Reach Every Mother and Child Act.

Steven McGee

IT manager

Prairieville
The legislative assembly is set to debate revelations the government can't track the movement of young offenders from youth detention into adult prisons.

Minister for Children Rachel Stephen-Smith recently told the legislative assembly that it was too hard for the government to collect and provide such data.

The ACT government says it can't track the movement of young offenders from Bimberi (pictured) into the adult justice system. Credit:Rohan Thomson

In response, the Canberra Liberals have introduced a motion on Wednesday, saying the government must find a way to collect statistics on recidivism among youth.

"Recidivism is one key indicator of the effectiveness of juvenile justice interventions," read the motion, from Elizabeth Kikkert.
Benefits of Corning Valor(TM) Glass, an advancement in the storage and delivery of injectable drugs, to be demonstrated

CORNING, N.Y., October 23, 2017 - Corning Incorporated (NYSE: GLW) announced it will exhibit Corning Valor(TM) Glass at CPhI Worldwide in Frankfurt, Germany, Oct. 24 - 26.

Valor Glass was announced in late July, in MRK) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE)," rel="nofollow">collaboration with Merck (NYSE:MRK) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), as a remarkable new glass technology. Valor Glass mitigates several longstanding issues with the performance of current pharmaceutical glass packaging and will be displayed in the InnoPack Zone, Stand No. 42G32.

Valor Glass offers benefits to both pharmaceutical manufacturers and to patients receiving injections because it:

Offers superior chemical durability with low extractable concentrations, making Valor Glass containers ideally suited to eliminate delamination and protect drug products. Glass delamination can cause adverse patient events and lead to costly corporate recalls for drug manufacturers

Resists damage and breakage during pharmaceutical processing and transit, as well as during in-home and clinical settings

Prevents cracks that may lead to contamination, loss of sterility, or product recalls

Substantially reduces particulate generation during bulk filling operations, thereby reducing the risk of particle contamination

Enables smoother filling operations with fewer glass-related interventions

"We are excited to showcase Valor Glass for the first time at an industry event. The response from the industry and our customers since we announced Valor Glass in July has been exceptional," said Ron Verkleeren, general manager and vice president of Corning Pharmaceutical Technologies. "We are leveraging our expertise in glass science, optical physics, vapor deposition, precision forming, and extrusion to deliver a 21st-century glass to protect medicines."

Pharmaceutical and biologic manufacturers are encouraged to visit the Corning booth to learn more about Corning Pharmaceutical Technologies' portfolio. Corning representatives will be available to discuss more about Valor Glass' benefits and will conduct live Valor Glass demonstrations in the booth.

Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" (within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995), which are based on current expectations and assumptions about Corning's financial results and business operations, that involve substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include: the effect of global political, economic and business conditions; conditions in the financial and credit markets; currency fluctuations; tax rates; product demand and industry capacity; competition; reliance on a concentrated customer base; manufacturing efficiencies; cost reductions; availability of critical components and materials; new product commercialization; pricing fluctuations and changes in the mix of sales between premium and non-premium products; new plant start-up or restructuring costs; possible disruption in commercial activities due to terrorist activity, armed conflict, political or financial instability, natural disasters, adverse weather conditions, or major health concerns; adequacy of insurance; equity company activities; acquisition and divestiture activities; the level of excess or obsolete inventory; the rate of technology change; the ability to enforce patents; product and components performance issues; retention of key personnel; stock price fluctuations; and adverse litigation or regulatory developments. These and other risk factors are detailed in Corning's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the day that they are made, and Corning undertakes no obligation to update them in light of new information or future events.

Digital Media Disclosure

In accordance with guidance provided by the SEC regarding the use of company websites and social media channels to disclose material information, Corning Incorporated ("Corning") wishes to notify investors, media, and other interested parties that it intends to use its website (http://www.corning.com/worldwide/en/about-us/news-events.html) to publish important information about the company, including information that may be deemed material to investors. The list of websites and social media channels that the company uses may be updated on Corning's media and website from time to time. Corning encourages investors, media, and other interested parties to review the information Corning may publish through its website and social media channels as described above, in addition to the company's SEC filings, press releases, conference calls, and webcasts.

About Corning Incorporated

Corning (www.corning.com) is one of the world's leading innovators in materials science, with a 166-year track record of life-changing inventions. Corning applies its unparalleled expertise in glass science, ceramics science, and optical physics along with its deep manufacturing and engineering capabilities to develop category-defining products that transform industries and enhance people's lives. Corning succeeds through sustained investment in RD&E, a unique combination of material and process innovation, and deep, trust-based relationships with customers who are global leaders in their industries.





Corning's capabilities are versatile and synergistic, which allows the company to evolve to meet changing market needs, while also helping our customers capture new opportunities in dynamic industries. Today, Corning's markets include optical communications, mobile consumer electronics, display technology, automotive, and life sciences vessels. Corning's industry-leading products include damage-resistant cover glass for mobile devices; precision glass for advanced displays; optical fiber, wireless technologies, and connectivity solutions for state-of-the-art communications networks; trusted products to accelerate drug discovery and delivery; and clean-air technologies for cars and trucks.



Media Relations Contacts:

Lee Bansil

(607) 974-7341

bansill@corning.com

Chelsea Tracy-Zelko

(607) 974-4450

tracycr@corning.com



Investor Relations Contact:

Ann H.S. Nicholson

(607) 974-6716

nicholsoas@corning.com
The tally is in: Amazon received 238 proposals from cities, states, districts and territories interested in hosting the company's second headquarters.

The online retail giant published a map on Monday showing that bids came from DC and all but seven states - Arkansas, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming - as well as from most of southern Canada, three regions of Mexico and Puerto Rico.

Last month, Amazon announced it wanted to open a second North American headquarters, setting off a scramble among economic development officials from the United States, Canada and Mexico eager for as many as 50,000 jobs and $US5 billion ($6.4 billion) of investment the company says it plans to make in another city.

Seattle-based Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, launched the search for "HQ2" by publishing its criteria online.
Office landlords are in the box seat, with office rental growth forecast to rise by 10 per cent in the coming year as demand outstrips supply.

While this is little joy for traditional tenants, the new entrants into the core capital cities, being the technology businesses, are willing to pay the higher prices to get space where possible. This includes Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google and co-sharing groups such as WeWork.

Office rental growth is rising as demand increases and supply is tight. Credit:Louise Kennerley

Major office owners Dexus and Mirvac have released first-quarter updates, saying the prime sectors are heading into record territory in terms of low supply and rising "net" rents, meaning incentives are diminishing in rental contracts.

Both groups said they had maintained their full-year earnings guidance announced with their annual results in August.
Fletcher Building shares have been placed in a trading halt at the company's request, as the construction giant considers the financial performance of one of its key business units.

In a statement to the NZX, Fletcher Building said it was reviewing the performance of the Building + Interiors business unit, including the findings of a KPMG probe into the unit's two largest projects, and the impact this would have on its financial performance.

Fletcher Building chairman Ralph Norris is in the hot seat after losses in NZ construction market. Illustration: David Rowe

The company did not say which of its projects were covered by the review. Fletcher Building has had well-publicised problems with the Justice Precinct in Christchurch, which has been hit by a series of delays.

Other major projects in the division include the convention centre at SkyCity and Precinct Properties' Commercial Bay development, both in Auckland.
Myer's outgoing chairman says there would be no value in giving Solomon Lew seats on the department store's board, and has described the veteran retailer's meddling in the company as a "train wreck".

It comes after Mr Lew's Premier Investments drastically stepped up its attack on the company on Tuesday by threatening to call an extraordinary general meeting to win board seats, and calling on fellow shareholders to vote against the appointment of Myer's new chairman and other appointments at next month's AGM.

Solomon Lew drastically stepped up his attack on Myer, threatening to call an early general meeting to get board seats.

"If he genuinely was seeking to build some sort of relation with the company, he couldn't have done it worse," Myer chairman Paul McClintock told Fairfax Media.

"The behaviour of Premier since they arrived has been aggressive and disruptive, and I think the chances of actually being able to incorporate a representative of that group in the company, and expect the board to keep a sense of cohesion and a sense of unity with the management I think it would be serious disruption, and I see no value in doing so."
Solomon Lew has threatened to call an extraordinary general meeting to get two seats on Myer's board, after the under-siege department rebuffed his request earlier this month.

The billionaire retail veteran, whose Premier Investments is Myer's largest investor, is also calling on fellow shareholders to reject Myer's own board appointments, saying that "enough is enough" and action was needed to arrest any further decline at the iconic business.

But Myer has returned fire, saying the request for board representation raised concerns of conflict of interest because Mr Lew is both a supplier to and competitor with Myer.

In a statement to the ASX on Tuesday morning, Premier - which owns the Smiggle, Just Group, and Peter Alexander brands and 10.8 per cent of Myer - said it had no "current" intention of making a takeover bid for Myer.
The dairy and food company Bega Cheese has signalled its willingness to make further acquisitions and expand, telling shareholders fresh opportunities for growth would inevitably arise.

Investors attending Bega's annual general meeting on Tuesday were given a number of messages that the company was interested in growing, and that it had the financial capacity to do so.

Mondelez's Australian vice president Amanda Banfield and Bega Cheese executive chairman Barry Irvin. Credit:Simon Schluter

The comments were made as a number of dairy companies, both Australian and international, are believed to have lodged expressions of interest in the troubled dairy processor Murray Goulburn. Bega is expected to be one of them.

Bega has already shown its willingness and ability to expand, with its recent acquisition of the iconic Australian brand Vegemite, which came when it bought the Mondelez grocery business.
He didn't want to roll out a nationwide high-speed broadband, and instead wanted a regulatory holiday to roll out an FttN broadband network to about 50per cent of the population. He wanted a regulatory guaranteed subscription charge of $95 a month (later reduced to $85).He sued the government when it wanted to change the Telstra monopoly.

If we want to go even further, it was under John Howard's watch that Telstra was privatised without any conditions attached to regional broadband or to an upgrade of the network from copper to fibre. Trujillo happily used the monopoly handed Telstra by the Howard government.

The situation in New Zealand  as it was in most of the other leading broadband countries such as , Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan, as well as Scandinavia and eastern Europe  was far more co-operative. With the current Telstra management in place a better outcome would have been possible. Conroy had to shape his plan around a privatised Telstra which didn't want to co-operate.

But if a "train wreck" was already on the way in 2013, before the government changed the plan, one would have expected some push-back from the engineering experts (the NBN companies). Instead, they kept talking it up.

My advice all along was to keep the original NBN in place. Perhaps take a longer time to complete. Spread the costs over a longer period. Take advantage of the cost reducing over time. The City of San Francisco just proposed a FttH network that will cost $US2000 ($2500) per home to roll out; the cost of FttH roll-outs is dropping by the day.
The man at the centre of a controversy gripping Australia's wool industry has admitted he should not have secretly watched an anonymous focus group behind a one-way mirror or told an ABC journalist to "f--- off" when he was later asked for a comment on the issue.

Wal Merriman, the scandal-plagued chairman of industry group Australian Wool Innovation, was grilled in a fiery Senate hearing on Tuesday following the "man in the mirror" controversy and broader troubles allegedly plaguing the taxpayer-funded organisation.

Earlier this year, leading woolgrowers from across the country were invited to attend a focus group on controversial genetic techniques used in sheep breeding and were subsequently shocked to discover that Mr Merriman and others had been observing proceedings.

Months later, Mr Merriman called ABC agricultural journalist Marty McCarthy a "useless prick" and told him to "f--- off" at an industry event, when McCarthy questioned him over the controversy.
It's time for me to wrap up. What happened?

the High Court's decision on the seven MPs facing eligibility questions will be announced on Friday;

on the seven MPs facing eligibility questions will be announced on Friday; if Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is found to be ineligible there could be a byelection on December 2;

is found to be ineligible there could be a byelection on December 2; the government wants a new productivity agenda ;

; the ABC will not reveal the salaries of its highest paid staff; and

will not reveal the salaries of its highest paid staff; and the Australian Bureau of Statistics says it has received the same-sex marriage forms of 74.5 per cent of eligible Australians.

My thanks to Andrew Meares and Alex Ellinghausen for their work and to you for reading and commenting.

You can follow me on Facebook.

Alex, Andrew and I will be back with you in the morning. Until then, enjoy your evening.
Lithuanian English

Siauliai, Lithuania, 2017-10-24 09:03 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

On 23 October 2017Moodys Investors Service announced that it upgraded ratings of Siauliu Bankas. Long-term deposit rating was improvedto Baa3from Ba1, the rating outlook adjusted to positive.

Moody's indicated that the higher rating was provided to Siauliu Bankas due to improved operating environment in Lithuania, stable bank's profit indicators and increased capitalization.

Chief Executive Officer Vytautas Sinius
Fashion is exasperating. Even when it tries to do the right thing, it often only manages to remind the world just how tone deaf it really is.

Terry Richardson is a fashion and celebrity photographer who has worked with everyone from Beyonce and Miley Cyrus to Barack Obama. He is a skilled shooter, but one who has long had an extraordinarily sleazy reputation for being sexually abusive to models. In public, he's recognisable thanks to his signature style, which includes work shirts, long sideburns, a moustache and eyeglasses that give him the incongruous look of a nerdy pornographer.

Not 'cool'' anymore: Terry Richardson. Credit:Alamy

In 2014, New York magazine published a profile of him detailing the often sordid nature of his work. While the story contained all the usual biographical data points and resume highlights, it also made it clear that Richardson was known for being an awful person who regularly coerced models into sexually compromising circumstances. At the time the story was published, there were still people willing to defend Richardson, who took pains to acknowledge his accomplishments as a photographer. But after it ran, the magazine published a follow-up that included the personal stories of models who alleged that Richardson had been a sexual bully and worse. Richardson, for his part, seemed to view himself as a somewhat tortured and unfairly maligned artist who sometimes happened to work nude.

Richardson was mostly unscathed by the stories.
It was at iconic Oxford Street gay bar Midnight Shift that Sydney couple Bill and John met in 1982.

At the time, homosexual relations were illegal in NSW, and it would remain so for another two years. Bars like Midnight Shift were "the few places gay guys could socialise in without having to worry about harassment," according to Bill, 64.

Thirty-five years later, the couple don't go out quite as much  but they are still quietly defying government restrictions on their relationship.

While the Midnight Shift closed its doors earlier this month after 37 years in business, Bill and John's partnership is destined to outlast the venue where it all began. On Friday, the pair were married in a boardroom overlooking Circular Quay, at Sydney's British consulate.
A crime scene has been declared as police work to determine what sparked the fire that tore through an abandoned house on a busy Brisbane road on Tuesday.

Firefighters were called to the house at the corner of Old Cleveland Road and Lilly Street in Greenslopes about 7.20am.

Russell Tobin, who owns a used-car business across the road, was getting ready to open up shop about 7am when he saw smoke pouring out of the windows of the house.

It was pretty big, the smoke came out of the windows, then the flames started flying out, he said.
Greg Carter was working as a school teacher in London with only $30 to his name when he met up with his mate Chad Carey at the pub for a pint.

The pair originally met when working a ski season in California a few years earlier and over a pint or two that evening they came up with their business idea on the back of a beer coaster.

"He wanted to go to South America and he wasn't sure whether to go with a tour or as a backpacker and I said I thought I could do a tour for half the price so we decided to start a business," Carter says. "We had no idea what we were doing. Neither of us came from a business background. When we first started our big motto was bums on seats."

This simple approach paid off with Chimu Adventures now employing 60 people and turning over more than $40 million a year.
Some small businesses have landed themselves in hot water thanks to their approach to same-sex marriage.

One Canberra business could end up in the Fair Work Commission for sacking a staff member who denounced marriage equality on social media.

'Sacking anyone for their views on marriage shows a lack of tolerance and demonstrates toxicity in a workplace': Bec Brideson, who specialises in gender issues in the workplace. Credit:AAP

The business owner justified her response by saying her former staff member's actions were bad for business, the behaviour displayed "shit morals" and she doesn't want homophobes working for her.

Bec Brideson specialises in gender issues in the workplace. While sexual preference is a different issue, she says the same principles she uses in her work apply across the board.
A body found at a vacant property on the Mornington Peninsula has been identified as that of Hastings father Jade Goodwin.

The body of Mr Goodwin, who was in his late 30s, was found on Sunday night at Tyabb, about an hour south-east of Melbourne, and about five kilometres from his Hastings home.

"No worldly tribute will offer comfort or peace or respect for my brother, only Jesus Christ our lord and saviour can," his twin brother said.

Homicide Squad detectives have so far remained tight-lipped about Mr Goodwin's cause of death. His body was found on a 29-acre property on the Dandenong-Hastings road.
When Manfred Ulrich Kobert moved into a rental property in Mitcham his young house-mates would not have suspected the 77-year-old had an extraordinary history of violence that included a brutal murder in the outback, the manslaughter of his former partner and a prison break.

Kobert, who has a pacemaker and takes blood-thinning medication, was jailed for at least three years in the County Court on Tuesday for shooting a man in the stomach. He faces deportation to Germany once released.

A jury in the County Court found Manfred Kobert guilty of recklessly causing injury. Credit:Penny Stephens

A County Court jury found Kobert guilty of recklessly causing serious injury, after his trial heard two conflicting versions on how victim Matthew Lovitt was shot in the abdomen. Mr Lovitt was staying at the house with his girlfriend, Amanda Swanson, and Kobert.

Ms Swanson told the court Kobert came home drunk on the night of May 30 last year, armed with a tomahawk and a gun, and shot Mr Lovitt, before Kobert and Ms Swanson wrestled over the gun.
Boston: New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu is publicly calling on US President Donald Trump, a fellow Republican, to halt an effort to deport 69 Indonesian Christians who fled violence in that country two decades ago and are living illegally in the state.

The group had been living near the state's coast under the terms of a 2010 deal worked out with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that allowed them to remain so long as they handed in their passports and turned up for regular check-ins with immigration officials.

New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu Credit:Twitter/@govchrissununu

That changed starting in August when members of the group who arrived for scheduled meetings with ICE officials at the agency's Manchester, New Hampshire, office were told to buy one-way plane tickets back to Indonesia, which they fled after 1998 riots that left about 1000 people dead.

"I am respectfully requesting that your administration reconsider its decision to deport these individuals, and I urge a resolution that will allow them to remain in the United States," Sununu said in a letter to Trump dated Friday, which his office made public on Monday.
English Lithuanian

Panevezys, Lithuania, 2017-10-24 11:54 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Draft Resolutions suggested by the Board of AB Linas for the Repeated Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders to be held on 09 November 2017:

1. The Audit Committee new editing regulations confirmation.

Project of resolution: to confirm the regulations of new edition of AB Linas Audit committee.

2. Election of members of the Audit Committee.

Project of resolution: the Companys audit committee members to propose to elect Lina Liesyte, Justina Ryskiene and Inga Mikeniene.
Jakarta: The Indonesian military chief Gatot Nurmantyo "chose not to travel" to the United States, according to the US Department of Homeland Affairs, even after he was cleared to fly.

In its first comments on what has been described in Indonesia as a "diplomatic scandal", the US department has said in a statement that General Gatot's office was warned there might be a delay due to "US security protocols."

Indonesian Armed Forces Chief General Gatot Nurmantyo Credit:AP

He was denied boarding his Emirates flight but was then cleared to travel and rebooked on a later flight.

General Gatot then chose not to travel, the statement said.
Monday 05 September, 2016 Reliable information reaching Biafra writers desk has it that the life of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indi...
ATLANTA, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- QASymphony, a leader in enterprise software testing, wraps up an outstanding third quarter enjoying revenue growth of 107%. During the quarter QASymphony was named the 8th fastest growing software company in America by Inc 5000 with three-year sales growth of 3700%. In anticipation of continued rapid growth, QASymphony plans to significantly expand its team across a multitude of functions (view job openings).



The company also announced the appointment of Kira Mondrus as CMO. In this role, Mondrus will elevate brand awareness and drive demand to support future revenue growth. A major focus for Mondrus will be on customer marketing, empowering and engaging QASymphony customers throughout their entire customer journey. Previously at SecureWorks, Mondrus comes to QASymphony with nearly 20 years of global B2B technology marketing experience including ten years in various global marketing leadership roles at BMC Software.

This addition to the executive leadership team comes after a record bookings and revenue performance. Below are some of the main highlights from the quarter:

Added 59 new customers, including Kayak, Cambridge Assessment and several other prominent Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises

Announced plans to invest and expand over the next three years while its primary competitor, Micro Focus (formerly known as HP Quality Center), announced their new strategic vision to rationalize and stabilize their portfolio

Named the 8th fastest-growing private software company in America on the Inc. 5000 2017 list

Recognized by Atlanta Business Chronicle Best Places to Work - Medium Companies as the 4th best place to work in Atlanta

Expanded Quality Jam, QASymphonys software testing conference (originated in Atlanta in 2015), to London (the companys London office was launched in January, 2017) with a standing room only audience.

We are thrilled to welcome Kira to our growing team, said Dave Keil, CEO of QASymphony. Kiras experience as a marketing leader in Enterprise Software is a perfect fit and I am confident she will have a transformational impact on our demand generation and brand growth efforts. Our results from Q3 demonstrate that we are continuing to move large enterprises away from legacy solutions like like HP Quality Center to modern solutions like our qTest platform. Having an experienced marketing leader like Kira join our team will accelerate our growth and success.

I am incredibly excited to join the QASymphony executive team, said Mondrus. This company has experienced a lot of recent success, and I am looking forward to helping take it to the next level.

About QASymphony

QASymphony is a leading provider of software testing solutions for the enterprise, enabling teams to test smarter, test faster and test at scale. QASymphonys innovative qTest Platform covers test case management, exploratory testing, test analytics and behavioral driven development (BDD). The platform integrates with a wide range of open source and commercial software including Atlassians JIRA, VersionOne, CA Agile Central (formerly Rally), Selenium, Jenkins and many more. The company has over 500 customers across 30+ countries including Salesforce, Barclays, Cisco, Samsung, Verizon and Office Depot. QASymphony was selected by Gartner as a Cool Vendor in Application Development and recognized as the 8th fastest-growing private software company in America on the Inc. 5000 list for 2017. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, GA. To learn more, visit www.qasymphony.com or follow the company on Twitter at @QASymphony.

Media Contact:

Kira Mondrus, CMO

QASymphony

844-798-4386

Kiramondrus@qasymphony.com
SAN MATEO, Calif., Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Argyle Data has demonstrated the ground-breaking capabilities of its machine learning-based predictive analytics for two European wholesale carriers in U.S. and European lab tests.



According to recent reports by industry analysis firm ABI Research, machine learning-based predictive analytics are applicable to all aspects of the telecom business, and these technologies will lead operators to profoundly change how they manage the telecom business. ABI estimates that mobile operators will devote more than U.S.$50 billion to big data and machine learning through 2021.

Two-thirds of all carrier fraud losses are related to international traffic, and much of this traffic passes through wholesale networks.

Mobile broadband operators worldwide have made major investments to develop internal fraud detection and prevention systems. However, the wide variations in technology, internal processes and national regulations make it difficult for operators to orchestrate fraud defenses beyond their own systems.

For wholesale carriers, the task is exponentially tougher. Wholesalers typically receive only minimal data about their retail telecoms customers traffic  too little for rules and thresholds-based detection systems and too late for any action other than historical analysis.

In an increasingly competitive and tight-margin industry, wholesale carriers are seeking new ways to provide added value to their retail customers and affiliates. With international scams the highest contributors to mobile fraud losses, wholesalers are increasingly looking to predictive analytics to stop fraud as it occurs, regardless of the origin or destination of the suspect traffic.



1. Top tier French operator

One of the largest mobile/internet services operators in France and Africa with 265 million users worldwide was aware of largescale International Revenue Share Fraud cases leveraging their wholesale telecom network. Their rules-and-thresholds-based fraud detection approach made it impossible to detect fraud in real time. In fact, their existing system took up to six months to detect Subscription Fraud.

The operator provided two weeks of historical data for their proof of concept trial in Argyle Datas U.S. laboratories. A Supervised Machine Learning algorithm approach was used, leveraging a Hadoop architecture to create a data lake that eliminated the isolation of data into silos.

Even with this limited data, Argyle Data:

Identified multiple fraud types: IRSF, Wangiri (call back), SIMbox, CLI spoofing and CLI absent

Uncovered an international fraud ring collaborating from three separate countries, none of which was the operators home country

Conclusively demonstrated that, despite the random and widely different traffic types routing through the wholesaler, Argyle Datas machine learning application could establish a baseline norm from which anomalous traffic could be identified.

2. European Communications Hub Provider

This European wholesaler provides an ecosystem for the creation and consumption of global communications in the areas of IP & Data, Cloud & Data Center, Corporate, Mobile and Voice.

One month of very limited historical data was provided. This was analyzed in the local country laboratories for reasons of data security. Again, a Supervised Machine Learning algorithm approach was used, based on a Hadoop data lake architecture. Even with this severely restricted data, results included:

Identified high-cost /high intensity fraud that had been missed by the internal fraud system.

Generated almost double the number of alerts as the existing rules-based system for multiple fraud types including IRSF, Wangiri (call back), SIMbox, CLI spoofing and CLI absent

Confirmed machine learnings detection capabilities to provide in-depth results with only minimal data

Argyle Data VP of Engineering Padraig Stapleton said, Initially, each of the wholesalers doubted whether a machine learning approach could be applied to wholesale traffic routing, because they were all too aware of the hugely varied amount of traffic crossing their networks and large gaps in traffic flow from different customers at different times. The fear was that the machine learning system could not learn what was normal in order to create a baseline for detecting abnormalities. Both operators were totally convinced after seeing our results, and our work with them is ongoing. Its hard to argue with an unprecedented achievement in fraud detection at the wholesale level.

More information on these case studies is available at www.argyledata.com/resources.

About Argyle Data

Argyle Data provides mobile carriers with machine learning analytics tools for high volume, high velocity data, allowing them to profile, detect, predict and act upon fraud, security or credit issues and address deteriorating subscriber behaviors that financially impact their business. More information is available at www.argyledata.com.








UPDATE: College Station police have arrested a 22-year-old in connection to Saturday's shooting at the Flats on 12 apartment complex.

Traigh Liam Gonzalez of College Station was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

An arrest warrant was issued Sunday for a College Station man wanted in the shooting death of a 19-year-old killed during a drug deal in an apartment complex parking lot.

The aggravated assault warrant identifies Liam Gonzales, 22, as the culprit in the Saturday evening incident outside the Flats on 12, which is across Harvey Mitchell Parkway from Walmart.

Paramedics were called at about 8:45 p.m. Saturday to the scene, where they found Christopher Maurice Idlebird Jr. in the parking lot, which faces Valley View Drive.

Police on Sunday declined to specify information regarding the type of drugs being dealt or where the victim was shot until the investigation is complete and an autopsy has been performed, according to a spokesman. It wasn't clear why the charge filed against the suspect was aggravated assault since the shooting resulted in a death.

In an email sent to residents at Flats on 12 about an hour after the shooting, management stated that "there was an incident on the property that resulted in a casualty. It is very unfortunate when something so delicate occurs, but we would like you all to know that the local police department is taking extensive measures to care for our property as well as the victim."

Residents were asked to avoid common areas and remain inside, according to the email obtained by The Eagle. No one at the complex could be reached Sunday.

A shooting occurred in a parking lot of that same apartment earlier this month. Several residents reported hearing gun shots just before 7 p.m. Oct. 10. No one was injured, but police say a car was shot at several times. Authorities said the car sped away; a license plate number was not caught.

A day later, police arrested Christian Juwan Nelson, a 20-year-old College Station resident, in connection with the incident. Nelson was charged with deadly conduct, a third-degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and $10,000 in fines.

It was unclear late Sunday if the shootings were related. CSPD is asking anyone with information about the whereabout of Gonzales contact them at 979-764-3600.
You have a character that goes through the scrutiny of being sexualised , and then an audience that does the same thing.
TORONTO, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Leo Acquisitions Corp. (NEX:LEQ.H) (the Corporation or Leo) and Blue Nordic Partners Inc. (BNP) are pleased to announce the entering into of a letter of intent (the LOI) pursuant to which LEO will acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares in the capital of BNP pursuant to a reverse-takeover transaction (the RTO). BNP is a private corporation incorporated pursuant to the laws of the Province of New Brunswick. BNP is a corporate advisory firm which accepts equity positions in small and medium sized companies, which in managements view have the short-term potential for sustainable value enhancement, in exchange for its services, know how, human capital, in-depth business understanding and other tools and means necessary to enhance company value.



It is anticipated that each of Leo and BNP will hold an annual and special shareholders meeting on or about December 18, 2017 or such other date to which the parties mutually agree, to seek approval for, among other things, the RTO.

The RTO is expected to be completed by way of a share exchange, plan of arrangement, amalgamation or other form of business combination determined by the legal and tax advisors to each of Leo and BNP, each acting reasonably, which will result in BNP becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Leo or otherwise combining its corporate existence with that of Leo (the Resulting Issuer). The Resulting Issuer will carry on the business heretofore carried on by BNP upon completion of the RTO.

Leo and BNP anticipate that the RTO will close on or about December 21, 2017 or such other date as mutually agreed to by the parties.

The LOI contemplates that Leo and BNP will promptly negotiate and enter into a definitive agreement (the Definitive Agreement), together with such other documents that may be required to effect such filings and applications as are required in order to more fully delineate, formalize and execute the terms of the RTO as outlined in the LOI.

The Board of Directors of the Resulting Issuer is expected to be comprised of Gerry Goldberg, Remo Mancini, Michael Newman and Juergen Schlebrowski. Mr. Schlebrowski also is expected to be the Chief Executive Officer of the Resulting Issuer.

Mr. Schlebrowski, currently Chairman and CEO of BNP, started his career with Procter & Gamble. He brings more than 25 years of national and international experience as a senior executive (including the positions of General Manager and Vice President) having worked for many multinational companies in the consumer goods sector. In 2005 he founded SH Consulting providing strategic and operational support as well as interim management. Prior to joining BNP in 2014, he was the Interim-CEO of a medical group (health care and medical technology). His main business focus is primarily on repositioning and turnaround management. Mr. Schlebrowski has experience with all facets of business and extensive industry knowledge in the areas of consumer packaged goods, office products, fashion, sports, retail, health care and medical technology.

Mr. Schlebrowski commented, The entering of the LOI is a positive step for BNP in its business development as having its securities traded publicly may enhance the ability of BNP to attract the capital necessary to further expand its business and to effect additional transactions to obtain equity interests in small and medium sized business with attractive growth profiles. We look forward to working with Leo to pursue completion of this transaction.

Mr. Michael Newman, Chairman of Leo commented, I look forward to working with BNP's experienced management team with a background of successful SME transactions in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. The Canadian public listing will provide an attractive platform to grow BNP's current European equity portfolio through additional opportunities in North America.

The LOI was approved by the Board of Directors of BNP on the unanimous recommendation of the Special Committee of BNP, chaired by Remo Mancini, the Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors. The LOI also received approval from the Board of Directors of Leo on the unanimous recommendation of the Special Committee of Leo.

Mr. Gerry Goldberg, as a director of both Leo and BNP, declared his conflict in respect of the matters forming part of the LOI and recused himself from deliberations of the board of directors of each of Leo and BNP.

Completion of the RTO is subject to a number of conditions, including but not limited to, receiving all relevant exchange approvals. The RTO cannot close until the required shareholder, regulatory and other approvals are obtained. There can be no assurance that the RTO will be completed as proposed or at all.

Additional information in connection with the RTO will be provided in subsequent press releases.

Reader Advisory

Except for statements of historical fact, this news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. In particular, forward-looking information in this press release includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to timing and completion of the RTO, satisfaction of the conditions precedent to the completion of the RTO and the anticipated business of the Resulting Issuer following the completion of the RTO.

Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. We cannot guarantee future results, performance or achievements. Consequently, there is no representation that the actual results achieved will be the same, in whole or in part, as those set out in the forward-looking information.

Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking information. Some of the risks and other factors could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements which include, but are not limited to: general economic conditions in Canada, the United States and globally; industry conditions; unanticipated operating events; competition for and/or inability to retain services and inputs; the availability of capital on acceptable terms; the need to obtain required approvals from regulatory authorities; stock market volatility; volatility in market prices for commodities; changes in tax laws and incentive programs; and the other factors described in our public filings available at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned that this list of risk factors should not be construed as exhaustive.

The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. We undertake no duty to update any of the forward-looking information to conform such information to actual results or to changes in our expectations except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

Completion of the RTO is subject to a number of conditions, including but not limited to, TSX Venture Exchange approval pursuant to applicable requirements of the TSX Venture Exchange and satisfaction of the listing criteria on the securities exchange on which the shares of the resulting issuer are to be listed. The RTO cannot close until the required shareholder, regulatory and other approvals are obtained. There can be no assurance that the RTO will be completed as proposed or at all.

Investors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in the management information circular to be prepared in connection with the RTO, any information released or received with respect to the RTO may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon.

Trading in the securities of Leo should be considered highly speculative. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange (nor the NEX) nor their Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

For further information, please contact:

Leo Acquisitions Corp.

Gerry Goldberg, President and Chief Executive Officer

416-780-2244

Gerry.goldberg@slf.ca

Blue Nordic Partners Inc.

Juergen Schlebrowski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

+49-172-283-7635

schlebrowski@blue-nordic.com




The Connecticut area is home to many celebrities, so it's no surprise that they are spotted doing everyday things every now and then.

This past October, A-listers Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick and Anne Hathaway were all seen hanging out in Fairfield County.
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Several southwestern Connecticut restaurants land among Connecticut's best, according to a new guide released by Thrillist.

The lifestyle site named the state's top restaurant in several categories ranging from ramen and sushi to Polish food and modern Italian cuisine.

"Connecticut is responsible for gifting the world a number of important foods: the hamburger, the lobster roll, and New Haven-style pizza," the site writes. "And while you'll still find excellent versions of all of these in the Nutmeg State, its dining culture has also expanded well beyond them."

The site named The Green Grunion as the best food truck in the state. The truck is based in Danbury, but often travels around to local breweries.

"Connecticut may be more than 2,000 miles from California, but you can still get a proper San Diego-style burrito here," Thrillist said. "(The Green Grunion) doles out tightly wrapped, house-made tortillas filled with ingredients like chicken, beef, chorizo, and the requisite French fries."

With area locations in Fairfield, New Haven and Norwalk, Mecha Noodle Bar ranked number one in the noodle category.

The site writes, "While you'll find ramen and plenty of other noodle varieties at this local chain, the main focus here is pho, served with both traditional ingredients (like chicken, beef, and shrimp) and not-so-traditional ones (like beef meatballs)."

Click through the slideshow above for a look at the local restaurants named among the best in Connecticut by Thrillist, and here for the full list.

If you're looking for the best barbecue the state has to offer, Hoodoo Brown BBQ in Ridgefield is the place for you, according to the list. The site said the "Texas-style barbecue joint" opened in 2015, and quickly saw lines out the door.

Cody Sperry, owner of Hoodoo Brown BBQ, said in a recent interview, "Connecticut isn't exactly a barbecue mecca, but we are definitely a unique dining experience in the area."
NEW MILFORD  An 18-year-old New Milford man appeared in court Friday on charges that he kidnapped and beat his girlfriend last week.

Paul Stormy Pacheco kicked and hit his girlfriend in the head and shoulder before taking her phone and forcing her into his car last Thursday evening, police said. He is charged with second-degree kidnapping and three second-degree assault charges.

Pacheco also faces misdemeanor drug charges for marijuana and traffic violations.

New Milford police first heard of the kidnapping when Pachecos neighbors on Paper Mill Road called police to report a loud fight, according to court documents. When police arrived, they learned that Pacheco had sped off with his girlfriend in his spray-painted black Honda Accord.

Police set off in search of the Accord, and soon got another call from residents of the Bel Air condominium complex, who reported that the two were now fighting in the Bel Air parking lot, police said.

Police started tracking the girlfriends cellphone, which they located at Chappuis Park, about a mile north of Pachecos home. There, police found the two.

Pacheco was in the driver seat of the car  with both his girlfriends cellphone and her ID  while she sat, bloodied, in the passenger seat, police said.

She was injured from the assaults and when Pacheco slammed on the brakes causing her head to hit the dashboard, police said.

The girlfriend, who had protective orders against Pacheco stemming from earlier assaults, was taken to New Milford Hospital.

According to court documents, police learned early Friday that the girlfriend was believed to possibly have internal cranial bleeding.

Pacheco was also taken to the hospital, where he was evaluated and released to police. But once in his jail cell, Pacheco slammed his head into walls and cell bars, police said, so he was taken back to New Milford Hospital.

Pacheco, who is being held in lieu of $50,000 bond, is next due in state Superior Court in Torrington on Nov. 13.

blytton@hearstmediact.com; 203-731-3411; @bglytton
NORWALK  A 72-year-old New Canaan man who apparently walked into the wrong store with a BB gun that resembled a rifle slung over his shoulder Tuesday has been charged with breach of peace.

Multiple Norwalk police units responded to P.C. Richard & Son at 444 Connecticut Ave. around 1 p.m. on a report of a man who had entered the store with a rifle propped on his shoulder.
NORWALK  Even a 136-year-old French cannon that hasnt fired a shell in a century or so needs a little sprucing up from time to time.

With that in mind, Cultural Preservation & Restoration, Inc. of Belvidere, N.J., spent two weeks sandblasting, repainting and lacquering the 155-millimeter field gun that has graced the Norwalk Green for about a decade.

After this (cannon) was installed nine and a half years ago, Hurricane Sandy came through and theres been a lot of weather that has done damage to it, said Gary McGowan, president and principal conservator of CPR, as he worked on the cannon with dust mask over his face. And its close to the road so there are pollutants from cars and what not, and the sun beats down on it and the cold.

To protect the cannon from the elements for another decade, CPR sandblasted its surface with crushed glass to remove the old paint. The company next applied primer before putting down a lacquer coat over the weekend.

The gun is going to go back to that sort of sky-blue color, said McGowan as he worked last Thursday.

The plaques, which are located on the cannons pedestal and carry the names of Norwalkers who fought in World War I, also were cleaned and repainted as part of the $15,950 rehabilitation project undertaken by the First Taxing District, which owns and maintains the Green.

The cannon was last rehabbed in advance of its re-dedication on the Green on June 7, 2009. The event, which included patriotic music performed by the U.S. Military Academy Band, was part of the Taxing Districts annual Flag Day ceremony.

We hired the same person because theres not many people that can do this kind of work, said Taxing District Operations Manager Lauren Mappa, referring to McGowans company. This canon is so important to us it has its own notebook.

The cannon was forged in Bourges in 1881 as part of Frances rearmament after the Franco-Prussian War. It was fired at the Battle of Verdun during World War I.

The French government donated the cannon to Norwalk after World War I as a thank you for the citys contribution to the allied war effort.

For decades, a World War I memorial comprising the cannon and granite pedestal was located on the Taxing District property on Wall Street near the Norwalk Library. When the pedestal was moved to the Green in 1950, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 603 acquired the cannon and moved it to the post headquarters on High Street. In 2008, the VFW Post sold its headquarters and transferred ownership of the cannon to the district.

McGowan said the cannon is unique for its construction  a combination of wood, concrete and steel  as well as its enormous size.

I dont know of one quite this size, said McGowan, when comparing the cannon to others his company has restored. Its a field gun and would have had to been maneuvered during the war either by steam tractor or teams of horses. So this is a big one.

At any rate, Taxing District officials dont plan on moving the cannon any time soon. Theyre proud to have it stay right where it is on the Norwalk Green.

What were doing is just sprucing it up a little, said Frank Zullo, First Taxing District Commission chairman and former Norwalk mayor. We are committed at the district, obviously, to keep the Green attractive and very pleasant. We look at it as the gateway to the city of Norwalk and so we want to keep it in top shape.
Edmund Burkes greatest service to liberty was to remind the world that freedom is anchored in a transcendent moral order and that for liberty to flourish, social and personal order and morality must exist, and radical innovations must be shunned

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) is rightly renowned as the father of conservatism. In this bicentennial year of his death, we do well to recall that Burke was also a champion of ordered liberty. A practical politician and statesman as well as a profound philosopher, skilled alike in writing and oratory, Burke devoted his public life to defending natural rights and liberties and battling arbitrary government, in America, Ireland, India, and, most famously, France.

Burke was born in Dublin on January 12, 1729, and educated at Trinity College. After studying law in Dublin for two years, he went to the Middle Temple in London to complete preparation for the bar, but forsook law, opting to become a man of letters.[1]

Besides mastering law, Burke steeped himself in the major writers on Natural Law philosophy, such as Cicero and St. Thomas Aquinas. This philosophy maintains, essentially, that God rules existence through an eternal, immutable, universal Natural Law, always binding on all people everywhere. Man-made laws are morally valid insofar as they conform to the Natural Law; otherwise, they are not. Under Natural Law, people possess certain inalienable rights, namely to life, liberty, and property. As leading Burke scholar Peter Stanlis has convincingly shown, Burke believed in the Natural Law, and it was the foundation of his worldview.[2]

Burkes first few years after leaving the Middle Temple are obscure. In 1756, he published his first major philosophical work, A Vindication of Natural Society, satirizing Lord Bolingbroke, a famous deist and rationalist. Next year he married Jane Nugent and ventured into aesthetics with An Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. Seeking his livelihood in letters, for about six years he edited and published The Annual Register, a periodical covering each years major political events, plus literature and philosophy. In 1759, Burke was introduced to William Hamilton, who became Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1761 and was later Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and who employed Burke as his secretary.[3]

As an Irishman, Burke sympathized keenly with his Roman Catholic countrymen, who were denied basic rights and liberties under the Penal Laws of the 1690s. Burke turned his pen to their cause. His Tracts on the Popery Laws (1765), an early and illuminating example of his devotion to liberty, argued that laws, which transgress considerably on common right and the ends of just government, cannot command obedience and are subject to repeal.[4] Governments have no right to make unjust or generally injurious laws because this flouts divine Natural Law.[5] Burke asserted that a conservation and secure enjoyment of our natural rights is the great and ultimate purpose of civil society; all forms of government are only good as they are subservient to that purpose.[6] Hence, the Penal Laws were wrong. As for claims that coercion is necessary for societys improvement, improvement must be pursued through persuasion and encouragement, not compulsion:

The coercive authority of the State is limited to what is necessary for its existence. To this belongs the whole order of Criminal Law. It considers as crimes (that is, the object of punishment) trespasses against those rules for which society was instituted. The Law punishes delinquents, not because they are not good men; but because they are intolerably wicked. It does bear, and must bear, with the vices and the follies of men, until they actually strike at the root of order.[7]

In 1763, Burke parted from Hamilton. Two years later, he became private secretary to Lord Rockingham, a prominent Whig politician. The Whig party, long dominant in British politics, was split into factions, some corrupt, others, like Rockinghams, reform-minded. Through Rockinghams patronage, Burke entered the House of Commons in 1765.[8]

He soon became involved in the worsening conflict between Britain and her American colonies. Britains conquest of French Canada had greatly increased her national debt. Hence, King George III and Parliament sought to tax the American colonies. In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, requiring virtually all documents in the colonies to bear British revenue stamps. Bitterly resented, it was repealed the next year. Other taxes followed, but colonial opposition brought their repeal also. Retaliating for the Boston Tea Party, Parliament closed the port of Boston, Massachusetts, in 1774.[9]

Throughout, Burke urged conciliation. His first Parliamentary speeches argued against the Stamp Tax. While conceding that Parliament had an abstract right to tax the colonies, Burke maintained that policy must suit circumstance. Americans were not used to being taxed and had a liberty-loving spirit; people must be governed in a manner suitable to their character.[10] In 1774, in a great speech, Burke condemned the imposition of taxes without representation as a departure from the colonists accustomed liberty under the British constitution, and as perfect uncompensated slavery.[11] He warned that if forced to choose between their freedom and Britains sovereignty, the colonists will cast your sovereignty in your face. Nobody will be argued into slavery.[12] After fighting began, he pleaded for reconciliation and peace.[13]

With the British surrender at Yorktown in 1782, Lord Norths government fell and King George III picked Burkes patron, Lord Rockingham, to be Prime Minister. Burke became Paymaster to the Forces. Refusing to abuse his office to enrich himself, he reduced corruption and established Parliaments control over the civil bureaucracy. He left office, in 1784, when William Pitt II became Prime Minister.[14]

Burkes concern for natural rights and liberties also prompted his prosecution of Warren Hastings (1732-1818), Governor-General of Bengal for the East India Company. He suspected Hastings of responsibility for the Companys arbitrary and rapacious conduct in Bengal and wanted the Company reformed. In 1783, Charles James Fox introduced his East India Bill to bring the Company under government control. In a speech supporting Fox, Burke declared that the natural rights of mankind, are indeed sacred things, that political power must ultimately be used for its subjects benefit, and that this power is a trust, with those who hold it accountable for how they use it.[15] Reflecting his conviction that all people, Hindus no less than Englishmen, are endowed with equal natural rights, Burke lauded Foxs bill as furnishing a real chartered security for the rights of men.[16]

Though Parliament rejected Foxs bill for another incorporating some of its points,[17] Burke decided to impeach Hastings on charges of levying exorbitant tributes on native princes, confiscations, and other abuses. In a four-day impeachment speech to the House of Lords in February 1788, Burke vigorously rejected moral relativism and arbitrary power. Arbitrary, despotic rule is not excused simply because another country has arbitrary practices.[18] Natural Law applies to all people, all power is of God, therefore Law and arbitrary power are at eternal enmity. It is a contradiction in terms, it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in politics to say that any man can have arbitrary power. Rather, eternal laws of justice are binding on all.[19] After an eight-year trial, Hastings was finally acquitted.[20]

But it was the French Revolution which provoked Burke to serious, sustained political philosophizing, yielding his greatest work, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which explored the Revolutions causes, exposed its unsoundness, and condemned its tyrannies. In the Reflections and his subsequent writings on the French RevolutionA Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791); An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791); Thoughts on French Affairs (1791); Thoughts on a Regicide Peace (1796-1797); and A Letter to a Noble Lord (1796)Burkes Natural Law philosophy of ordered liberty, natural rights, and prudent, conserving reform received its fullest expression.

Enlightenment philosophes and revolutionaries posited a state of nature without laws, government or society, and argued from this to abstract rights of man which supposedly obtain in this situation. Burke denied that a state of nature ever existed. Rather, civil society is our true state of nature, not a savage and incoherent mode of life. Man is by nature reasonable, hence our natural state is where reason may be best cultivated, and most predominates. Art is mans nature.[21]

These abstract rights are also extreme and unrealistic.[22] As to the right of men to act anywhere according to their pleasure, without any moral tie, no such right exists. Men are never in a state of total independence of each other. Our actions affect others, and we are responsible for our conduct.[23]

And having propounded abstract rights, the revolutionaries inflicted tyranny to coerce Frenchmen into the republic of virtue. You lay down metaphysical propositions which infer universal consequences, and then you attempt to limit logic by despotism.[24]

We do indeed have rights, Burke affirmedbut not as the French radicals understood them:

In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those, which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice. They have a right to the fruits of their industry; and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring; to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favourall men have equal rights; but not to equal things. He that has but five shillingshas as good a right to it, as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock.[25]

Where do these rights come from? Not a priori reasoning; an individuals reason is inadequate to wisely invent rights out of whole cloth, disregarding human nature, history and circumstance.[26] Rights derive from Natural Law and were established historically by prescriptionby prolonged exercise of their powers, and longstanding custom and practice.[27] Worked out by actual people in a real world, prescriptive rights can accommodate the give-and-take of life, hence endure better than abstract rights.[28]

Liberty derives from Natural Law; it is our birthright, forfeited only through irrationality or violence.[29] But liberty is not license to act from sheer self-will; rather, it is social freedom. [Burkes italics] It is that state of things in which liberty is secured by the equality of restraint, with no individual or group able to violate the liberty of any other.[30] Moreover, liberty must comport with orderin both the society and the individual soul. A believing Christian, Burke knew mans capacity for evil. Liberty without wisdom and virtue, he warned, is the greatest of all evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition and restraint.[31] Liberty can only flourish and be beneficial in an orderly society of moral, religious people. To be fit for freedom, people need self-control and morality:

Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be withoutmen of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.[32]

Burkes practical liberty also requires such social and institutional prerequisites as a government powerful enough to protect it; equitable taxation; an independent judiciary; and a perfect state of legal security for the individual in life, person, and property.[33]

What Burke wanted, then, was a free government, [his italics] which would combine those opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work. This, he warned, is a task requiring great wisdom and reflection.[34] In words that ring uncannily true today, he argued that when leadership becomes a popularity contest, politicians will become mere flatterers of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular.[35]

If creating a free government is a difficult undertaking, so is reform. Burke recognized that a state which cannot change cannot preserve itself.[36] But reform should be done very prudently.[37] Not only does sinful human nature enjoin caution, but respect for both our forebears and our unborn descendants dictates refraining from radical innovation. Hence it is terribly presumptuous of a politician to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.[38] Moreover, constitutions and social orders develop from many minds over many years by a process only dimly understood, and Burke cautioned against the ignorant innovator, who is not fool enough to meddle with his clock, but thinks himself clever enough to dismantle and rebuild a whole society. Good intentions dont redeem the immorality of such rashness.[39]

While he wrote no major work on economics, Burke consistently upheld a free economy with a very limited government role. His Tracts on the Popery Laws condemned the Penal Laws for infringing the right to acquire, keep and dispose of property. Every Law, which obstructs itis in proportion to the force and extent of the obstruction a discouragement to industry. For a Law against property, is a Law against industry, the latter having always the former, and nothing else, for its object.[40] Burke repeatedly called for removing restrictions on Irish trade, permitting Ireland to enjoy that to which she had a natural right.[41] His Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, (1795) a paper sent to Prime Minister William Pitt on food prices and other economic topics, elaborated. Statesmen cannot, Burke argued, provide for our needs. The people maintain them, and not they the people. It is in the power of Government to prevent much evil; it can do very little positive good in this, or in any thing else.[42] Redistribution would be both useless, as each poor person would receive little, and foolish, as destroying accumulated wealth would devour societys seed corn.[43] The magistrates effort to dispense charity is a violation of the property which it is his office to protect. Charity to the poor is a Christian duty, but it is a private one, done more cheerfully if done freely.[44] Dubious about meddling in transactions by unskilled third parties without an interest in the outcome, Burke argued that the interests of parties in economic contracts are harmonious, that markets are too complex for coarse regulation, and that price control is harmful.[45] In short, the State ought to confine itself to what regards the Statethe judiciary; revenue; the armed forces; and so onto what is truly and properly [Burkes italics] public, to the public peace, to the public safety, to the public order, to the public prosperity.[46] In the last year of his life, Burke summed up his political economy: Let Government protect and encourage industry, secure property, repress violence, and discountenance fraud, it is all that they have to do. In other respects, the less they meddle in these affairs the better.[47]

Underlying Burkes struggles against arbitrary rule overseas was an anxiety to protect the British peoples rights and liberty against encroachment. All his life, Burke grasped the threat to freedom from pernicious example and tyrannical precedent. Arbitrary rule of the colonies, he feared, could bring tyranny at home, as when, in 1777, Parliament partially suspended Habeas Corpus, so as to treat rebel seamen as pirates. This provoked his Letter to the Sheriffs of the City of Bristol, which warned that the true danger to freedom is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts. Now a line is drawn, which may be advanced further and further at pleasure, on the same arguments of mere expedience on which it was first described.[48] And his fear that the French Revolutions atrocities and tyrannies would be emulated in Britain made him a relentless foe of Jacobinism.

Difficulties dogged Burkes last years. He left Parliament in June 1794, sixty-five years old, exhausted, 30,000 in debt, with an annual income of only about 500, and in danger of losing his country home. The King and Prime Minister succored Burke with a modest pension, much criticized by his enemies; he skirted financial ruin. Shortly after Burkes retirement, his beloved only son, Richard, died of tuberculosis. Devastated, Burke nevertheless threw himself into writing, condemning the Jacobin regimes horrors and urging on the British government to war against France. Burke struggled on in worsening health, working until the day he died, July 8, 1797.[49]

Edmund Burkes impact has been enormous. Widely read after his death, Burke influenced such statesmen as George Canning and the Duke of Wellington. Men of letters and philosophers who drew on Burkes philosophy include Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Irving Babbitt.[50] Dr. Russell Kirk, whose The Conservative Mind (1953) gave post war conservatism intellectual respectability and coherence, was a disciple of Burke. Through Kirks energy and voluminous writings, Burkes thought has reached multitudes in the present day.

All his life, Edmund Burke resisted tyranny. But his greatest service to liberty was to remind the world that freedom is anchored in a transcendent moral order and that for liberty to flourish, social and personal order and morality must exist, and radical innovations must be shunned. Two centuries after Burkes passing, as America grapples with the chaos and criminality of a liberty without orderitself promoted by the sort of reckless innovators he opposed and outlastedthe wisdom of this great insight is ever more painfully clear. Hence Burkes writings, and the growing scholarly literature on Burke, continue to merit our attention. Insofar as the cause of freedom evades both the Scylla of license and the Charybdis of a tyrannical Utopia of abstract rights, the ships pilots owe much to Edmund Burke.

Republished with the gracious permission from The Intercollegiate Review (Fall 1997).

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politicswe approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

Notes:

1. Russell Kirk, Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1997), pp. 1, 12-16; Russell Kirk, Introduction to Reflections on the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1965), p. vii.

2. Peter J. Stanlis, Edmund Burke and the Natural Law (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1958), pp. 7, 34-40.

3. Kirk, Edmund Burke, pp. 1530.

4. Edmund Burke, Tracts relating to Popery Laws, in Edmund Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. IX: I. The Revolutionary War 1794-1797, II: Ireland, ed. R.B. McDowell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 453-454.

5. Ibid. p. 455.

6. Ibid., pp. 463-464.

7. Ibid., pp. 467-468.

8. Kirk, Edmund Burke, pp. 29-32, 36-38.

9. Stephen W Sears, ed., The Horizon History of the British Empire, 2 vols. (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., Inc., 1973), Vol I, pp. 78-82.

10. Edmund Burke, Observations on a Late State of the Nation, in Edmund Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. II: Party, Parliament, and the American Crisis 1766-1774 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 176, 187-188, 194.

11. Edmund Burke, Speech on American Taxation 19 April 1774, Writings and Speeches, vol. II, pp. 428, 430.

12. Ibid. p. 458.

13. Kirk, Edmund Burke, pp. 62-64.

14. Ibid., pp. 87-91, 96.

15. Edmund Burke, Speech on Foxs India Bill 1 December 1783, in Edmund Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. V: India: Madras and Bengal, 1774-1785, ed. P.J. Marshall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 383-385.

16. Ibid., p. 386.

17. Ibid., p.451;Kirk, Edmund Burke, pp. 104-106.

18.Edmund Burke, Speech on Opening of Impeachment 15, 16, 18, 19 February 1788, in Edmund Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. VI, India: The Launching of the Hastings Impeachment 1786-1788, ed. P.J. Marshall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 346.

19. Ibid., pp. 350-351.

20. Kirk, Edmund Burke, p. 116-117.

21. Edmund Burke, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, in Edmund Burke, Further Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Daniel B. Ritchie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1992), pp. 168-169.

22. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, intro. Russell Kirk (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1965), p.75.

23. Edmund Burke, First Letter on a Regicide Peace, Writings and Speeches, Vol. IX, p. 249.

24. Burke, Reflections, p. 239.

25. Ibid., pp. 71-72.

26. Ibid., p. 100.

27. Ibid., pp. 4546.

28. Ibid., pp. 72-75.

29. Edmund Burke, Letter to Charles-Jean-Francois Depont, Further Reflections, p. 7.

30. Ibid., pp. 7-8.

31. Burke, Reflections, p. 263.

32. Edmund Burke, A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, Further Reflections, p. 69. See also Reflections, p. 73. See also Reflections, p. 20.

33. Burke, Letter to Charles-Jean-Francois Depont, Further Reflections, pp. 8-11.

34. Burke, Reflections, p. 263.

35. Ibid., pp. 263-264.

36. Ibid., p. 33.

37. Ibid., p. 74.

38. Ibid., p. 172.

39. Burke, An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, Further Reflections, p. 196.

40. Burke, Tracts relating to Popery Laws, Writings and Speeches, Vol. IX, p. 476.

41. Edmund Burke, Speech on Irish Trade 5 May 1778, Writings and Speeches, vol. IX, p.519.

42. Edmund Burke, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, Writings and Speeches, vol. IX, p. 120.

43. Ibid., p. 121.

44. Ibid., p. 129.

45. Ibid. pp. 123-125, 133.

46. Ibid., p. 143.

47. Edmund Burke, Third Letter on a Regicide Peace (1797), Writings and Speeches, vol. IX, pp. 354-355.

48. Edmund Burke, Burkes Politics: Selected Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke on Reform, Revolution, and War, ed. Ross J. S. Hoffman and Paul Levack (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), pp. 98-99.

49. Kirk, Edmund Burke, pp. 189-207.

50. Kirk, Introduction to Reflections on the Revolution in France, p. xvii; Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1979).
Carey Reilly became a paraprofessional at Seedling Mile Elementary nearly 12 years ago because of her own three children, and she quickly discovered that she loved working with all the schools kids and staff members.

Reilly applied for the job in part because she thought it fit her background and training.

I actually have a degree in psychology and early childhood development, she said. I just really enjoy children, that has always been my passion.

What motivated me to apply to Grand Island Public Schools was that I had three young children, she said. I wanted to be available, to be their mom. They were all in school full time, but I wanted to be able to share their breaks, their days off, and have my summers with them.

Her initial schedule was especially advantageous for a mother with young children. Reilly said she only spent five hours a day at Seedling Mile, working in the lunchroom and second-grade classroom. Over time, her duties as a paraeducator grew into a full time job.

Things are far different now.

I have one son in medical school at Creighton, he just started his first year, she said, one son who is a senior at UNL, and then my daughter just started Doane College. Ive got three children who are out of the house now, so were empty nesters.

Reilly said she has had other employment opportunities, but likes where shes at.

I just cant leave the school, she said. I dont need to work here, I have the flexibility of doing other employment, but my hearts here.

I love this school,Reilly continued. Were small enough that we really are a family. I love the teachers and the people Im surrounded by every day. I feel very blessed.

In addition to getting her bachelors degree in psychology from Creighton University, Reilly did almost all her work on her masters degree in counseling at the University of Kansas, with the exception of finishing her thesis. So I dont actually have my masters degree.

Reilly said when she and her husband were first married and living in Arizona, she ran an early intervention program for children from birth to age 3 and who had developmental delays. She said the program was in a small mountain community of about 5,000 people. She met monthly with an occupational therapist, speech therapist and physical therapist. Those specialists would see the children and then make recommendations to her on the homebound therapy she should do with each child.

Reilly said she would go into each childs home at least once a week to provide the therapy needed. She also worked with the parents so they could meet the special needs of their own children. She did that work for six years.

When Reilly and her husband first moved to Grand Island, she stayed at home with their three children. Then, when her children became school age, Reilly began working at Seedling Mile.

As time went by, her duties shifted from the lunchroom and second-grade classroom to all Seedling Mile classrooms. She typically worked with students who did not need special education services, but who still benefited from getting some extra one-on-one help to master some of the school work they might be struggling with.

It was so motivating to see the growth from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, Reilly said. I think that was one of the things that really touched my heart and kept me coming back for more.

The past two school years, that model has flipped upside down, Reilly said. Now the classroom teacher works with the students who need extra work, and Reilly works with the students who understood the lesson the very first time it was presented. She gives direction to the students who grasped the material immediately so they can complete that days lesson. Or, at times, she even gives those students more challenging work to extend their learning.

Im in every classroom at some point throughout the day, usually for 20- to 30-minute blocks, Reilly said. She noted those are the times the classroom teacher needs to give extra attention to some of the students. She said it does not matter that her classroom duties, in some ways, have changed 180 degrees from the past couple of years.

Just as long as she is in the classroom.

My passion has always been young children, she said.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mobetize Corp. (OTCQB:MPAY), a provider of mobile financial services (MFS) technology for the multi-billion-dollar business to business (B2B) segment of the Fintech as a Service (FaaS) sector and FICANEX Technology Limited Partnership (FICANEX), the provider of tunl., a technical platform linking fintechs and tier-2 financial institutions throughout Canada, are pleased to announce that they have entered into a Master Services Agreement (Agreement) to co-develop and market innovative financial services solutions. The initial solution is focused on providing mobile international money remittance services.



FICANEX will adopt certain services and technologies from the Mobetize FaaS Supermarket (Hub) to position itself as a fintech banking services accelerator to over 170 member financial institution across Canada. The Agreement is in sync with a growing trend that partners financial institutions with fintechs to optimize efficiency, accelerate growth, maintain customer loyalty, and offer a competitive advantage.

FICANEX has a long history of providing services to Canadian financial institutions in a collaborative way. We are thrilled to be working with Mobetize as we start this new chapter of expanding the services provided to our member financial institutions, that will strengthen their position in the marketplace for years to come, said Andrew Obee, President & CEO of the FICANEX Group of Companies.

Our partnership with FICANEX enhances our respective advantages as we facilitate better banking experiences for fintech customers. Together, we offer financial institutions a fast and iterative approach to innovation without massive expenditures of capital. Our goal is to help FICANEX financial institution members increase revenues, support their communities and realize a higher standard of security for their customers. We are excited to work with FICANEX in re-imagining the digitization and consumption of financial services and inspiring a new era in digital banking, stated Ajay Hans, Chief Executive Officer of Mobetize Corp.

About the FICANEX Group of Companies

FICANEX Services Limited Partnership owns and operates THE EXCHANGE surcharge-free ATM Network in Canada. Since the formation of FICANEX Services Limited Partnership over 17 years ago, THE EXCHANGE Network has grown from a B.C. regional based network to a network that spans coast to coast to coast. With over 170 financial institutions participating in THE EXCHANGE Network, providing their over 3,500 ATMs nationally, THE EXCHANGE Network saves 5.5 million Canadian cardholders millions of dollars each year in needless surcharges.

FICANEX Technology Limited Partnership was formed in July 2017 to create tunl., The technical pathway between the fintech world of services and solutions and tier-2 financial institutions. Utilizing the connectivity that has been developed between THE EXCHANGE Network and member financial institutions, tunl. will provide new and innovative solutions to member financial institutions in an efficient, collaborative way.

For more information please visit:

www.Ficanex.ca

www.TheExchangeNetwork.ca

Contact Information:

Andrew Obee, President & CEO

FICANEX Group of Companies

(289)-242-1472

About Mobetize Corp.

Mobetize Corp. (OTCQB:MPAY) is re-imagining Mobile Financial Services and has developed a global B2B Fintech as a Service (FaaS) Supermarket (the Hub). Mobetize digitizes bricks and mortar financial services to deliver mobile money services to leading telecommunications companies and financial institutions. Mobetize ensures end-to-end integration for services such prepaid air-time top ups, data gifting, mobile lending, international money transfers, P2P transfers, Visa/MasterCard programs and mobile bill payments. Mobetize seamlessly integrates and white labels its secure mobile money platform services for customers who then offer the services to millions of users. Mobetize experts to help telecom and banking providers discover new revenues, new customer relationships and navigate the emerging fintech ecosystem. For more information, visit http://www.mobetize.com

Forward Looking Statements

This press release includes statements that are not historical in nature and may be characterized as "forward-looking statements," including those related to future financial and operating results, benefits, and synergies of the combined companies, statements concerning Mobetize's outlook, pricing trends, and forces within the industry, the completion dates of capital projects, expected sales growth, cost reduction strategies, and their results, long-term goals of Mobetize and other statements of expectations, beliefs, future plans and strategies, anticipated events or trends, and similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. All predictions as to future results contain a measure of uncertainty and, accordingly, actual results could differ materially. Among the factors which could cause a difference are: changes in the general economy; changes in demand for Mobetize's products or in the supplier costs; the actions of its competitors; the success of our customers; technological change; changes in employee relations; government regulations; litigation, including its inherent uncertainty; difficulties in plant operations and materials; transportation, environmental matters; and other unforeseen circumstances. A number of these factors are discussed in Mobetize's previous filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mobetize disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this press release.

Mobetize Corp.

Shareholder Relations 778-588-5563 X 209

info@mobetize.com




Karla McGeorge is clearly devoted to the Literacy Council of Grand Island  its what she loves to talk about.

McGeorge is director of programs at the Literacy Council, an organization which exists solely to provide tutoring and teaching to individuals needing assistance in learning to speak and write the English language.

Its personally rewarding for me, said McGeorge, who added that the Literacy Council fulfills her dreams and goals. As director of programs, she reports to the councils executive director, Kurt Stoppkotte, and serves as acting executive director when Stoppkotte is away for an extended period of time.

What does McGeorge actually do as director of programs? She splits her time between discharging various administrative duties and assisting the councils volunteers.

Essentially I help coordinate relationships between the tutors and the students, she said. I do also work with students on an individual level, she says.

Council volunteers work one-on-one with the men and women who come there to learn the ins and outs of the English language. A great majority of the students are new immigrants to the community.

McGeorge and Stoppkotte are the councils only full-time paid employees. Most of the other work is done by volunteers, with a few part-time employees on hand.

Sometimes McGeorge assists students with matters as mundane as figuring out how to pay a utility bill.

A recent development is that our attendance numbers have increased exponentially, she says. The council has therefore been forced to augment its traditional one-one-one tutoring with classes for groups of students.

For an immigrant or anyone whos come to Grand Island with a primary language other than English, becoming one of the Literacy Councils students is very easy, she said. McGeorge is typically the one who introduces new students to the councils program.

Its rewarding to get to meet all these individuals, she said.

Most of the Literacy Councils current students are immigrants or new citizens whove come from countries in northeastern Africa, but there are also students from western Africa, from all over Central and South America, and from Caribbean countries and Southeast Asia.

Primarily our student base is immigrants and refugees, but we do also serve adults who are native-born U.S. citizens who may have just fallen through the cracks of the public school system, McGeorge said. We also have adults with developmental disabilities.

The council is currently serving almost 480 students. It never advertises its services  all students come to the council after hearing about it by word of mouth from other students who are receiving services, McGeorge said.

McGeorge started her post-secondary education at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, but graduated from Bellevue University, in Bellevue, with a major in political science and a minor in social work.

She has been at the Literacy Council for only 1 1/2 years. Previously she worked at Hope Harbor shelter, also in Grand Island.

She and her husband Matt live in a rural area north of Wood River.

The Literacy Council office and study areas are located at 312 N. Elm, Suite 101, in downtown Grand Island.

Its really a true blessing for me to be able to work and serve with our students and the individuals seeking our services, she said. I feel like they are the true inspiration. So many of our students have had such troubled pasts and they still would like to come in, learn English, become a citizen, and be contributing members of society.
Darker Disney.

Sam Skalberg, Phoenixx Carroll, Tamia Wilson and Tyler Murphy all agree with the suggestion that is an apt description of the Grand Island Senior High fall musical, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Most times, audience members can count on a Disney musical to be all sweetness and light, with everybody at the end living happily ever after. However, living happily ever after is not what happens with most of the main characters in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Not at all, said Wilson, who portrays the gypsy, Esmeralda. She said that makes the stage version of the famous Victor Hugo novel of the same name more realistic and more adult than a typical Disney movie. Wilson said the stage musical really expands on the darker themes of the movie.

Wilson described her character as the gypsy of all gypsies, in part because Esmeralda is very sure of herself, as well as being extremely confident, very independent and headstrong.

In many tales, complications arise because of a love triangle. But Esmeralda is involved in a love quadrangle because she had three would-be suitors that include Carroll as Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon of Notre Dame; Murphy, the captain of Frollos guard; and Skalberg, the deformed orphan who hides himself in the bell towers of the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

Carroll said Frollo sees the traveling gypsies, who have arrived in Paris during a festival celebration, as the other, that is, people who should be shunned. I dont like walking among the gypsies during the Feast of Fools, he said. I dont like even walking by them, theyre just different. Despite Frollos deep prejudices against the gypsies, Carroll said, the archdeacon finds himself becoming attracted to Esmeralda during The Rhythm of the Tambourine.

Its like, Oh, wait - whos this person? Carroll said.

He said Frollo has highly conflicted emotions when it comes to loving Esmeralda. During Hellfire, its like, I dont know what Im supposed to do because Im a priest and shes a gypsy, She doesnt want me and Im just going to burn, anyway, Carroll said.

Frollos relationship with Quasimodo also is complicated. The priest promises his dying brother - who is Quasimodos widowed father - that he will care for the infant boy. But Frollos guardianship is not performed with love and joy, but as a cross I must bear.

Carroll said Frollo does do his very best to keep the physically deformed Quasimodo safe inside the Cathedral of Notre Dame. His said Frollos attitude toward Quasimodo is, I just want to protect you and keep you safe. He warns him, Dont go outside. Im telling you, theyre going to make fun of you. He goes outside and they make fun of him.

Frollos protectiveness spills into an extremely constricted life for Quasimodo , with Murphy noting the hunchback is spending his entire existence inside the small confines of Notre Dame bell towers, where his only job is to ring the cathedral bells at the appointed hours. Thats all Im supposed to do.

Skalberg said Quasimodo longs for human contact beyond his solo encounters with his priestly protector. He said Quasimodo can look down from the bell towers and see what everyone below is doing. Hes been up there in the tower so long that he can talk to everything that is up there, like the gargoyles can talk to him. Everything (in the tower) he can listen to.

Skalberg noted that Quasimodo carries on his conversations with the gargoyles even though they are made of stone and not actually alive. The extreme isolation finally prompts Quasimodo to sneak away from Notre Dame, but Skalberg said Frollos prediction that people will torment him comes true.

The one human connection Quasimodo does make is with Esmeralda, whom he saves from deadly harm. The result is that both Quasimodo and Esmeralda become fugitives, who briefly find sanctuary inside Notre Dame. The brief kindness that Esmeralda shows to Quasimodo is enough for the reclusive bell ringer to fall in love with her. Unfortunately for Quasimodo, his is an unrequited love.

Murphy noted that Phoebus is the third man to fall in love with the enchanting Esmeralda. He said that Phoebus love Esmeralda does not begin with strictly pure intentions. Captain Phoebus originally is more of a ladies man. He hangs out with all the ladies. Murphy said that after meeting Esmeralda, Phoebus decides shes the one and he will fully commit his love to her.

Skalberg said he believes one of the overarching themes from The Hunchback of Notre Dame is found in the song, Someday.

The songs lyrics include these words: Someday, life will be fairer, need will be rarer, greed will not pay. Godspeed this bright millennium on its way. Let it come someday.

Wilson said Esmeralda serves as a light of change, so that the townspeople discover they can accept others as they really are and they can also accept themselves as they are, even though that means accepting everyones differences as well as their common humanity. Murphy said the other overarching theme is captured in the answer to the question, What makes a monster and what makes a man?

Drama teacher Christine Kier said that The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a big production, with a huge set and 130 costumes. She said described all of the all the student cast members as talented and driven. Theyve put their heart and soul into this show, she said. They want this show to be successful. They want the audience to love it.
In a role reversal, Brady and Max Myers helped their mom get dressed on Monday. The two boys assisted their mother with her robe as part of her investiture as clerk magistrate of Hall County Court.

Brady, 10, and Max, 4, were called forward by Hall County Court Judge Arthur Wetzel. The judge told the boys that they get to come up and help Mom put her dress on.

A moment earlier, Wetzel had sworn in Jennifer Myers as the countys new clerk magistrate. Myers started work on Sept. 18, but Mondays ceremony made it official.

State Court Administrator Corey Steel, who spoke at the ceremony, said the court system is shining more attention on the states clerk magistrates.

As administrators of all the records and documents in county courts, they play a vital role in the court system, Steel said.

Filling the Hall County position was a lengthy process, but we came out on top with the skills and abilities that Myers brings to the position, he said.

Wetzel said Myers has been doing a wonderful job so far, and hes confident that will continue.

In her remarks, Myers thanked her staff. She is responsible for 12 employees, consisting of 10 office staff members and two bailiffs. The latter work with the county judges.

Her family, she said, has provided a good support system.

As a mother, Im very proud of her accomplishments, said Myers mother, Cheryl Shrewsbury of Grand Island.

Shes worked very hard to get here, Brady said of his mother.

Myers was also joined by her sister, Alison Feeney, and Alisons husband, Kirk, both of Hastings.

These people have stood by me all along the way and I cant thank them enough for being here, Myers said in an interview.

For the last nine years, she worked as planning and zoning administrator in Merrick County. She also served in the assessors office as geographical informational system coordinator. Her boss in Merrick County, Jan Placke, attended the swearing-in ceremony.

A Chapman native, Myers graduated from Grand Island Central Catholic in 1993. She received a bachelors degree from Nebraska Wesleyan in psychology and a masters degree from the University of Nebraska at Omaha in public administration, with a specialization in criminal justice.

Among the clerk magistrates major duties are training and managing the staff and making sure that all the work is done appropriately, said Trial Court Services Director Cheryl Connolly of Lincoln.

The clerk magistrates responsibilities are to provide support to the judges and ensure that the staff is trained to provide the services to the public that we expect, Connolly said.

If assigned, clerk magistrates can have quasi-judicial responsibilities in a judges absence, But those duties are rarely needed in this day and age because judges are much more accessible. With email and fax, They never really get away from their work, Connolly said.

Each Nebraska county has a clerk magistrate. They are chosen by county judges, but are employees of the state.

Hall County Court is part of the Ninth Judicial District. That district consists of Hall and Buffalo counties.

From 1997 to 2004, she worked as a probation officer in York and Papillion. She then became a community resource coordinator at the Douglas County Juvenile Assessment Center in Omaha. From 2005 to 2008, she worked at UNO, first as disproportionate minority contact state coordinator and then as the community planning coordinator.

Typically, a clerk magistrate in a county the size of Hall starts out earning $48,000 to $56,000 a year, Steel said in an interview.

Hall Countys last clerk magistrate was Reynalda Carpenter, who served in the job from 2005 until April of this year.
At 27, Taylor Royal is looking for the Republican Nebraska State Treasurer nomination.

Don Stenberg is the current State Treasurer and cannot seek re-election because of term limits. State Sen. John Murante of Gretna is also seeking the Republican nomination.

Royal works with his father, Scott Royal, as a financial manager at Northwestern Mutual. Earlier this year, Royal lost in the primary election for Omaha mayor. Republican Jean Stothert was elected mayor and has endorsed Royal for state treasurer.

Royal is an Omaha native and went to Skutt Catholic High School. He graduated with an accounting and finance degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and received his Masters Degree in accounting from Southern Methodist University. He is a certified public accountant.

Royal said when he moved back to Omaha, Conagra was moving their headquarters and that it was an incentive for him to run for mayor.

It was a huge red flag for our economy, Royal said.

As a younger candidate, Royals mayoral campaign catered to the generation widely referred to as millennials.

He said his background in business and finance is an important asset for the state treasurer position.

That mindset is so valuable in government, Royal said. We want to make sure we are treating our taxpayers as good clients. That they are seeing good benefits from the taxes they are paying.

He said Stenberg has done a good job as state treasurer.

If you look at my qualifications, my education, training and experience, I can add value to Nebraska as treasurer.

He described the state treasurers job as administrative.

I can do that very well for the benefit of the taxpayers, Royal said.

Royals platform for the state treasurer position includes:

- Fighting for property tax relief for all Nebraskans.

- Ensuring Nebraska taxpayers funds are accounted for, effectively invested and protected.

- Working with the Nebraska Investment Council to make the NEST program the nations best tax-advantaged 529 college savings plans.

- Advocating for a curriculum that teaches high school students financial principles.

It is important our next generation is financially prepared, Royal said.

He said that would give the next generation sound financial footing.

If you start early and are diligent with your plan, that can set you up for major success moving forward, Royal said. That is good for all Nebraska.

Royal also said he wants to grow the NEST program.

I want to make sure all Nebraskas know about it, he said.

The program helps parents save for their childrens future education.

I will work hard to make sure that it is one of the best plans in the country, Royal said.

He also wants to update security in protecting taxpayers dollars.

I would do a complete review on who has access to state credit cards and the bank accounts that we have, Royal said. I want to make sure that we have the financial controls in place to safeguard taxpayers fund.

Royal said he wants to be Nebraskans eyes and ears in the State Capitol. He wants to be an advocate for tax relief and more competitive taxes in Nebraska.

Being state treasurer fits my expertise and qualifications, he said. Im running because I can do a good job. This is my background. This is my education. This is my experience.

To learn more about Royal, visit his website www.taylorjroyal.com. He is also on Facebook and Twitter.
Police/Sheriff

Anyone with information about any crime in the state may call the Grand Island-Hall County Crime Stoppers, (308) 381-8822. Callers will remain anonymous.

A reward of up to $1,000 will be paid after law enforcement agencies have determined the seriousness of the crime and the usefulness of the information.

Inmate custody status can be obtained by calling the VINE hotline at (877) NE 4 VINE or by visiting www.vinelink.com. Information is available 24 hours a day.

If you see a crime happening, call the Grand Island-Hall County Emergency Center  911.

Grand Island Police

The following felonies were reported:

 A 17-year-old male was arrested for third-degree domestic assault and strangulation for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend Friday evening at 2300 N. Webb Road.

 Jola Thompson reported an attempted burglary Friday to a residence at 2110 Cottage St.

 Travis Baetz reported attempted burglary Friday to a tool shed and garage at 1413 Sylvan St.

 Tammy Sartin reported a burglary Saturday night to a detached garage at 720 W. 17th.

 Jon Davis was arrested for terroristic threats and first-offense resisting arrest after being involved in a verbal altercation with family members Sunday evening at 1104 Kennedy Drive.

 A 14-year-old male was arrested for sexual assault, first criminal attempt, and incest (the victim was under 18) Sunday evening. The complainant was a 12-year-old female.

 Diamond Engineering reported a construction trailer at 3308 Langeheder St. was entered and several items were stolen between Friday and Sunday.

 Abigal Lopez-Rodriguez reported a residence at 1309 N. Eddy St. was forced into and she was threatened Sunday morning.

Hall County Sheriff

Law enforcement arrested eight people on warrants in 13 cases. There were 141 calls for service.

For more information visit www.hallcountyne.gov and click on the sheriff link.

 Jennifer Lampkin reported criminal mischief Friday night at Triad Fastener, 106 Apollo Ave.

 Jeffrey Whitaker reported trespassing/criminal mischief Saturday night at 7501 W. Lepin Road.

Court report

Hall County District Court

 Anthony R. Warner, 22, Plattsmouth, attempt of a Class 2A felony, $500 fine, 36 months probation, $900 probation fee.

 Cynthia Gonzales, 19, Grand Island, two counts of third-degree assault, 24 months probation for each.

 Michael B. Enquist, 24, homeless, obstructing a peace officer, 24 months probation, $600 probation fee. Also guilty of tampering with physical evidence, 24 months probation.

 Cory R. Meyer, 28, Grand Island, third-offense DUI, $1,000 fine, 54 months probation, 60 days in jail with credit for two days served, $1,200 probation fee, license revoked seven years, ordered not to drive 45 days. Also guilty of attempt of a Class 2 misdemeanor, $100 fine; no proof of insurance, $50 fine, and no valid registration for a car, pickup or stepvan, $50 fine.

 Bryan Charles Hostetler, 32, Grand Island, two counts of burglary, seven to 10 years in jail for each with credit for 33 days served. Sentences will be served concurrently.

Hall County Court

 Jon P. Davis, 48, Grand Island, was charged with terroristic threats and first-offense resisting arrest, both on Sunday. Preliminary hearing set for 2 p.m. Dec. 8.

 Michael J. Menzies Jr., 38, Downs, Kan., was charged with possession of a controlled substance and possession or use of drug paraphernalia, both on Monday. Preliminary hearing set for 2:30 p.m. Dec. 8.

 Travis C. Thompson Jr., 19, Grand Island, was charged with two counts of failure to appear when on bail for a felony. Preliminary hearing set for 10:30 a.m. Dec. 8.

 Brian M. Molina, 25, Grand Island, was charged with domestic assault-third degree/prior and committing child abuse negligently with no injury, both on Sunday. Preliminary hearing set for 3 p.m. Dec. 8.

 Hannah D. Wilson-Greigo, 25, homeless, was charged with failure to appear when on bail for a felony on Sept. 26. Preliminary hearing set for 10 a.m. Dec. 7.

 Scott A. Brandt, 47, Alda, was charged with speeding 36 or more MPH county/state, possession of a controlled substance, possession or use of drug paraphernalia and possession of 1 oz. or less of marijuana, first offense, all on Saturday. Preliminary hearing set for 3 p.m. Nov. 30.
Springfield quarry plan still unresolved as residents wait, worry

Conditional Use Hearing on a proposed quarry along Rt. 309 in Springfield may be nearing an end after two years. Here's what residents have to say.
There is a ghost wandering countries, societies, and even the halls of academia. It is the ghost of tribalism and that ghost is as old as the dawn of the human species.

One of the defining characteristics of people around the world, is to group ourselves for our own benefit. Since before any civilization could be described as such, we bound together to defend ourselves from other humans, for cooperating to seek food, to build our shelters, and many more things. That is why we fought wars, conquered territories, subjugate others, and developed characteristics that define ourselves based on physical appearance, behaviors, and beliefs. That is why we developed a well-defined language to communicate, dressed in certain ways, and unified behind a particular set of religious beliefs or political systems.

As more efficient means of transportation and communication allowed us to see what other tribes were doing, in some cases we tried to exchange resources or entered into conflicts with them for the same resources. Totalitarian states knew very well that if you wanted to be a larger and fiercer nation (a tribe of larger dimensions) you needed to unified the members of that group behind an ideology; by force if necessary. That is why the Soviet system, Nazism, all forms of fascism, and North Korea have done what they did or do.

With the advent of the concept of globalization epitomized by the development of Internet, many thought that tribalism was going to die. That was, at least, what the Canadian public intellectual Marshall McLuhan predicted in his 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man in which he metaphorically saw a shrinking of the world into a village thanks to the tools of telecommunications. That is what he called a global village.

Now the world is seeing a global movement in the opposite direction. The dream of an European Union is being shattered by Eurosceptic drives within many countries from Britain to central and eastern Europe. European countries are also seeing tribalism with nationalist movements trying to break apart their own countries. The more recent example is Catalonia, in Spain, whose independence movement is being led by an unlikely amalgamation of center-right, leftists, anti-capitalist and neo-anarchist tribes of their own, all united behind the idea that Catalonia should be its own tribe, separated from the tribe of Spain. They even fight among themselves on whether they should belong to the tribe of Europe or not.

Academia has been also the victim of its own tribalism. It was born as a trade group in Medieval Europe and endowed itself with its own tribal codes such as tenure. They have remained for the most part- insensitive to societal changes, to fluctuations in demography, and shifts on how they are being seen by public opinion. They have also internalized their own differences in the form of sub-tribes: disciplines, tenured or tenure-track vs. non-tenured track faculty, males vs. females, Ivy-league types vs. those who do not have that kind of pedigree, and we could go on and on.

Political differences and external money have also sow some of those differences, leading to intolerance toward ideas (even slightly different) by others, to bigotry, to violence. And that is why we need to examine what tribalism is all about.

Tribalism makes us irrational and that has consequences: intolerance, hatred, wars. It makes us shield bad guys by assuming that they need to be protected no matter what because they belong to our tribe, which can be summarized by the aphorism He may be a jerk, but he is our jerk.

What is more concerning is that in higher education we are in a position of great responsibility. For those of us who have seriously meditated about how we influence the behavior of students. We know that they may not listen to what we say, but they are certainly watching us both in and outside the classroom.

If we continue to display tribal behavior, those students will consider that as the new normal, that it is ok to adhere to only one way of thinking, that it is very comfortable to get the news only from the sources with which we already ideologically agree. That if we hear contrarian voices we should either ignore them or, even worse, shouting them down, as evidenced by many recent incident on campuses. The idea of debating ideas in a civilized and well-informed fashion, is over. Even when discussing matters, we tend to shout or just voice falsehoods, misleading statements, or twisted half-truths, knowing very well that what we are doing is wrong.

After all, why not? Our political leaders lie without remorse. Their supporters tolerate not only their lies but also their unethical behavior, and when confronted with the facts, those supporters come up with even more lies to justify the unjustifiable.

Unless more of us in academia thrive to become moral leaders by example, we will be failing in one of our most relevant obligations in our profession. Whether we like it or not we are examples for future generations. Tribalism and its allies are not the kind of legacies that we should leave after spending decades and decades in classroom, labs, studios, of field sites.

Students can learn the material facts of the subjects by reading the textbook, but it is up to us the provide moral guidance, not for indoctrination purposes but as lighthouses that deliver advice and help to avoid wreckages in life. Can we do it? It is entirely up to us, but it will be a tall order.

As I once heard the late Spanish Nobel Prize Winner Severo Ochoa say, Men may have landed on the moon, but we keep the same morals of the primates from whom we descended. Think about it.

Dr. Aldemaro Romero Jr. is the Dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College-CUNY. He can be contacted through his website at: http://www.aromerojr.net.
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CANCUN, QUINTANA ROO, Mexico, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NexusTours, the leading destination management company, continues its expansion, thus its presence in the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America by including now two new destinations: Antigua and Bonaire with a complete catalog of products and services that feature attractive excursions and transfers.



During recent years, Antigua has shown important growth in the touristic sector, hosting travelers from different parts of the world. Thanks to this, during 2017 the hotel chain Blue Diamond Resorts- a subsidiary of the vertically integrated Canadian group Sunwing Travel Group-, started management and operation of one of the largest, All-inclusive resorts in the island: the Jolly Beach Resort & Spa, with 464 rooms. Meanwhile, Sunwing Airlines has established new direct flights from main North American markets, with an estimated of 30,000 visitors during the first year.

Nexus Tours, same as in every destination where it has presence, will take care of passengers coming from different countries, by being able to provide a total travel experience through the local excursions portfolio and transfer services within the island, at competitive rates.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a8c68533-46e1-4f99-94b3-e031addb1299

Likewise, by the end of 2018, there are plans for developing a new hotel, the first Royalton Luxury Resort, which will also rely on the collaboration of Nexus as the groups Destination Management Company, thus generating around 2000 new jobs and benefits for Antiguas economy.

Bonaire also makes the list of this companys destinations with the inauguration of direct flights from Canada, starting December 17th 2017 until April 15th, 2018, totalling for NexusTours 15 countries and 47 destinations in which the brand is now present.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f1b6c30b-dcca-4070-be1a-9d950da7b44e

Committed to offer an exceptional vacation experience, many services on destination, the most popular excursions and personalized attention will be offered by its representatives in the island. In the same way, travelers will get telephone support 24/7 through our Contact Center, website, Chat-Online Service, and Connect2Nexus App, which comprises all the information necessary for their stay.

ABOUT NEXUSTOURS

We are the leading Destination Management Company in the region, with a presence in over 15 countries and more than 47 destinations in the Caribbean and Latin America, transporting more than 2 million passengers a year. We belong to the Sunwing Travel Group and, backed up with more than 20 years of experience in the field, we have our own fleet of modern vehicles for transfers and excursions. We offer the most comprehensive program of in-destination services, both at the airport and at the tour and hospitality desks in the hotels. We are committed to excellence in customer service and assistance; for this reason we offer the most up-to-date channels providing customer service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, through our Contact Center, website, online chat service and our App Connect2Nexus whereby travelers can find all the information they need and are able to contact our professional team free of charge.

In addition to the Tour Operators within our group such as Sunwing Vacations, Signature Vacations and Vacation Express, we are honored to be trusted by more than 500 prominent Tour Operators, leaders in their markets of Latin America, Mexico and Europe, among them, TUI Travel Group.

For more information, visit www.nexustours.com/corporate

For media queries please contact:

Milagros Alfonzo

Communication Coordinator

malfonzo@nexustours.com




Two fifth grade girls from Holiday Shores heard about the devastation caused in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria and decided to help. Together with their parents and community, they raised over $2,000 and several items for the island.

Ashlyn and Alexis attend Worden School. I lived in Florida for the first part of my life, Ashlyn said. I had a friend there from Puerto Rico. We found out that his school was destroyed. Although both families moved, their moms kept in touch, so Ashlyn heard about the school.

Im Puerto Rican, Alexis said. I was born in New York, but I have relatives in Puerto Rico. She said the family had heard from all of the relatives on her mothers side, but not all of them on her fathers side.

Both girls said they knew they wanted to help. We didnt have air conditioning for three days once, Alexis said. To think they didnt have any for weeks was hard. They talked to their parents about what they could do.

The first thing we did was we had a sign and we had some friends come help us, Alexis said. They set up outside of a gas station in Holiday Shores and asked for donations. They gave away dessert and bottled water to anyone who came by.

They also set up a table to collect donations at a Holiday Shores movie night.

They met with the owners of Wigglers. With their parents, they collected raffle items and had an evening at Wigglers with a raffle. They had donations from the St. Louis Cardinals, St. Louis Blues, The Edge apartments, Edison, St. Louis Ambush, and several local businesses. The party was the same day that the girls set up at the gas station, so they were able to tell everyone who stopped by.Our community helped us a lot. The people at Wigglers helped us a lot, Alexis said.

We raised over $2,600.00 and about two to three hundred dollars worth of cat food, water and cleaning supplies, Ashlyn said.

A representative from the Puerto Rican Society in St. Louis came and we gave him the check and the stuff, Alexis said.

Alexis father explained that the Puerto Rican Society already had connections to receive the donations. The money was going to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico and a group of chefs that has been providing food to workers and residents. The animal food was going to an animal organization that has been helping with displaced animals.

What is next for the girls? Weve talked to our principal, Alexis said, about having a fundraiser at the school.

I like doing it, Ashlyn said of the fundraising. It makes me feel good to do it.
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Linkedin EDITORIAL (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 07:58 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25ab769 4 Editorial #Editorial,Gatot-Nurmantyo,TNI-commander-Gatot-Nurmantyo,diplomacy,bilateral-ties,Jokowi,Jokowi-administration,#Jokowi,international-relations,US,human-rights-abuse Free

By any standard, the abruptly canceled trip of Indonesian Military (TNI) commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo to the United States on Saturday is a diplomatic scandal, even though American officials may rush to convince us of unintentional mistakes.



The commander and his wife had US visas and an invitation from the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, to participate in the Chiefs of Defense Conference on Countering Violent Extremist Organizations from Monday to Tuesday. However, when Gatot was already at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, an official from Dubai-based carrier Emirates told him that the US Customs and Border Protection Agency had barred him and his delegation from boarding the US-bound flight.



The incident is an insult not only to Gatot and the TNI, but also to the commander-in-chief, President Joko Jokowi Widodo. Therefore, a written apology from the US Embassy to Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi for any inconvenience to General Gatot reflects outstanding ignorance of the gravity of the incident.



Unlike a few former officers accused of human rights abuses, Gatot had no problem traveling to the US earlier. Worse still, notification of the US denial of his entry came from an airline official, who naturally could not explain the reason for the TNI chief being barred from US territory.



Such carelessness of the US government may result in fallout in bilateral defense and military ties. Close relations between high-ranking officials may help control the damage ahead of a possible visit by US President Donald Trump to Indonesia in the near future  but still leave us agog at how the worlds biggest power could be so reckless.



Further, the absence of Gen. Gatot at the talks on countering violent extremism is unfortunate as Indonesia leads in this issue. Our citizens continue to face terrorist threats, leading to the necessary build-up of skills and international cooperation networks, apart from facing challenges in spreading awareness to counter the threat, and the constant resistance faced on the ground by antiterrorism forces under the National Police.



Jakarta-Washington military-to-military ties have been improving, though they have yet to return to the level of the Soeharto years. Indonesia has long ended its dependence on the US for defense purposes and has diversified its shopping sources for military equipment since bilateral military ties were severed following the November 1991 shootings in Dili, former East Timor.



We are no fawning fans of our military, which still has many problems constraining its professionalism, including accountability for human rights abuses. We are also aware of criticism from the US government and Congress regarding measures seen as undeserved concessions to the TNI amid continued reports of violence against civilians, such as in Papua.



Indonesia, nevertheless, hopes to increase cooperation with the US,including in counterterrorism and maritime security. At least we expect respect for our leaders, aside from a coherent policy, from the US government.
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Linkedin Irthe Blokhuizen (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 14:34 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25bd37e 3 Opinion Rodrigo-Duterte,#RodrigoDuterte,#Jokowi,Jokowi,Jokowi-administration,drugs,#drugs,war-on-drugs,human-rights-abuse Free

Is Indonesia copying Philippine President Rodrigo Dutertes war on drugs? Human rights activists fear the worst for Indonesias shoot-on-sight policy that was adopted in an attempt to fight illegal drug trafficking in the country.

The number of drug-related extrajudicial killings reportedly skyrocketed to a total of 80 since January this year, a sharp increase from last years 16.

Reported arrests related to drug abuse [in Indonesia] always involve death. Did the suspects resist arrest every time or were they just killed [by the police?], asks Indonesian Ombudsman commissioner Adrianus Meilala who recently initiated investigations into the accountability of anti-drug operations.

It is not hard to draw a parallel to the bloody war on drugs in the Philippines which to date has claimed the lives of more than 13,000 civilians. President Joko Jokowi Widodo shows no hesitation in expressing his strong stance against what he claims to be a narcotics emergency: Gun them down. Show no mercy, he says of drug traffickers.

Calls from the authorities for tougher drug policies are not uncommon in Indonesia. National Police Chief Gen. Tito Karnavian proclaims that a Duterte-style shoot-on-sight policy serves as a deterrent and effectively contributes to the clampdown of drug-related crimes. The head of National Narcotics Agency (BNN), Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso, praised Dutertes anti-drug policy, pointing out, It shows he is taking care of his citizens.

Indonesias drug policy aims to protect the youth from becoming a so-called drug generation, to prevent alleged destruction of the nation and its morals and to curb the number of drug-induced deaths. It is unlikely that mass criminalization and fighting a war against drugs will resolve Indonesias drug problem.

First of all, there is no convincing evidence that criminalization has a positive influence on drug use, trafficking or production. In fact, extensive research conducted into this matter has shown no deterrence; in the months following the executions of January and April 2015, the number of drug-related crimes in Indonesia reportedly increased. Insofar as Indonesias drug policy is concerned, the classic deterrence theory is thus an illusion.

Drugs in their very essence are consumer goods that satisfy particular human wants. Arguing from a purely economic rationale, as long as there is demand for illegal drugs, there is going to be supply. In order to tackle drug-related issues, it is therefore crucial to bear in mind the underlying demand for illegal drugs.

Why do people resort to drug use in the first place? According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), vulnerability to drug use is influenced by the interplay of many risk factors from different developmental contexts. They include, among others, the availability of drugs, poor parenting, violence, dropping out of school and risky sexual behavior.

A significant problem is the fact that Indonesian law hardly distinguishes between drug users and traffickers and criminalizes both for involvement in illicit trade. Consequently, Indonesias prisons are overloaded with low-level, non-violent drug offenders, which cost the state a lot of money and negatively impact social structures and family ties.

Mass criminalization instigates a climate of fear, which discourages drug users from seeking treatment or rehabilitation for an addiction. The outcome is less awareness, less transparency, less monitoring and a rising number of HIV infections due to sharing needles.

If a war on drugs is not the answer, then what is?

Outside the borders of Indonesia, some countries have adopted an alternative approach to combat the spread of illegal drugs. Portugal, for instance, has flipped its strategy in 2001 from fighting a war on drugs to decriminalizing the possession of less than what is considered a 10-day supply of any illicit drug and launching major public health campaigns to tackle addiction. In contrast to a drug boom prediction by the critics, the number of drug users steadily declined and the rate of new HIV infections allegedly dropped from 1,016 cases in 2001 to only 56 in 2012  a considerable success.

The Netherlands divides drugs between hard (ecstasy, cocaine, heroin, LSD) and soft (hashish, marijuana). The Netherlands policy allows the sale of soft drugs in coffee shops under strict regulations to prevent soft drugs user from coming into contact with hard drugs. Coffee shops are thus established to cut links with the criminal underworld associated with hard drugs and to create a safe environment for cannabis users.

Portugal and the Netherlands experiences show that in order to protect society from illegal (hard) drugs, it is crucial to break the link between drugs and crime. Indonesias war on drugs, however, is currently doing the opposite, tightening the link between drugs and crime.

This may be time for Indonesia to reconsider its current drug policy. Shoot-on-sight operations are not merely non-deterrent and highly ineffective, they also result in less transparency and monitoring. This does victims of drug abuse more harm than good.

As an alternative to criminalization, Indonesia could explore a policy that is built around harm-reducing interventions instead. According to the Target-Setting Guide proposed by the WHO, UNODC and UNAIDS, harm-reducing measures, whose practical effectiveness in the prevention and treatment of drug addiction has been demonstrated, include among others: clean needle and syringe programs; targeted information; education and communication with regard to drug-related matters; stigma reduction initiatives, and voluntary and community-based treatment.

It is beyond doubt that a shift in drug policy is likely to unfold a highly sensitive debate in Indonesia. Let us embrace this process and collaborate in the search for alternative policies that in the end aim for the same outcome: a healthy and drug-free Indonesian society.

***

Irthe Blokhuizen graduated cum laude from Utrecht University with a masters degree in international law and human rights. She is an independent human rights researcher who has been living in Indonesia for over four years.

---------------

We are looking for information, opinions, and in-depth analysis from experts or scholars in a variety of fields. We choose articles based on facts or opinions about general news, as well as quality analysis and commentary about Indonesia or international events. Send your piece to academia@jakpost.com.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 08:35 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25ad338 4 Books old-manuscripts,library,Berlin,history,Indonesia Free

The Berlin State Library in Germany houses approximately 700 historical Indonesian manuscripts among its collection of 80,000 from all over the world.

Thoralf Hanstein, an expert on Arabic, Islamic and Ottoman Studies at the library, told the Antara news agency during a recent library visit that many of the manuscripts from Indonesia dated back to the 18th century.

The ancient items are stored in a temperature-controlled room for preservation, and only authorized personnel are allowed to handle them.

One hundred thirty of the Indonesian manuscripts at the library, which is locally known as Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, had been digitized, Hanstein said.

Here are some of the old manuscripts from Indonesia housed at the Berlin State Library, according to Antara.

Majmuah manuscript

The Berlin State library hosts one of the oldest collections of ancient Quran manuscripts and Majmuah manuscripts. Hanstein presented the Majmuah manuscripts, a collection of many Javanese texts written in the Arabic or Pegon alphabet.

In the text on Islam in Java, there is a picture of animals resembling lions.

"This is Buraq, the vehicle of the Prophet," said Hanstein, who is fluent in Indonesian.

Read also: Great Indonesian literature: Tales of Panji

Bhinneka Tunggal Ika

The library also holds parts of Mpu Tantular's Book of Sutasoma, a Javanese manuscript written on palm leaves in the Balinese alphabet.

"An original text of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika is written on this manuscript," Hanstein said, referring to the national Indonesian motto translated as "Unity in Diversity."

Multilingual texts

Hanstein also noted that there were 69 Bataknese manuscripts in the collection, some of which contained instructions on choosing a good day for marriage.

Some of the Javanese manuscripts, meanwhile, are about issues related to Islam and mysticism.

There are also manuscripts written in the Ternatenese language using the Arabic alphabet and featuring wax seals.

Indonesia's second-oldest manuscript

The oldest Indonesian manuscript owned by the library is one that dates back to the 15th century. It includes 70 sheets written on the bark of the Gebang palm tree.

"[It's from] between the year 1407 and 1467, it is Indonesia's second-oldest manuscript, the first one being housed at the National Library [in Jakarta]," Hanstein said. (liz/asw)
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Linkedin Syafrizaldi (The Jakarta Post) Berau  Tue, October 24, 2017 09:19 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25ae28f 4 Science & Tech East-Kalimantan,renewable-energy,clean-energy,#environment,environment,carbon-emission,energy Free

The heat of the sun was seemingly boiling the waters of Maratua Island in Berau regency, East Kalimantan, as the single-engine boat owned by Lasahi, 52, was passing Alulu Bay making it necessary to cool the engine so as not to stall at sea.

Unlike in the past, however, Lasahi had no need to pump sea water into the boats cooling device. For almost two years now, the pumping work has been replaced by a solar power cooling system that is connected with a solar panel through a battery to transmit its energy by means of simple electric cables.

I use a wet-cell battery, said Lasahi, who cannot afford a dry-cell battery because its expensive even though its recommended for solar power. Nonetheless, he can manage to transport 50 to 150 sacks of sand daily to be sold to contractors undertaking building construction in several parts of Maratua Island.

With a land zone of only 384.36 square kilometers and a water area of 3,735.18 square km, the island is shaped like a curved blade, bending from the south to the north and pointing at the southeast. Shallow waters stretch from the middle to the upstream area, which turns into an expanse of sand when the tide is ebbing.

Sea transportation by boat is widespread, carrying passengers and goods from one bay to another on Maratua. Land transportation is limited due to the absence of inter-village ring roads and unless the government expedites the construction of land routes, the island will continue to depend on waterways.

Sea conveyance is costlier and often hampered by weather, Lasahi said.

Yet sea trips are certainly Lasahis personal choice. As long as his boat keeps operating to transport sand and passengers along the coves on the island, he will always rely on the solar panel installed atop the boats roof, which he received from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources.

Dynamic duo: Residents on Maratua use the combination of solar energy and a windmill to generate electricity. (JP/Syafrizaldi)

Meanwhile, an Alulu Bay villager, Ayu Siti Wahyuni, 22, said that like the 135 other families in the village, she was allocated 800 watts of electricity daily, derived from a solar power generator located at the tip of the settlement nearly 3 km away from her home.

The solar power generator (PLTS) of Alulu Bay has a capacity of 44 kilowatts-peak (kWp), with around 120 solar panels capturing, storing and converting energy to meet the locals electricity demands.

Ayu uses the power supply only for illumination, as its impossible to use a washing machine and refrigerator.

For watching TV, it just lasts one to two hours, she said, adding that her family prioritized the use of electricity for her sixth-grade niece, who needed it to study in the evening.

A native of Alulu Bay, Maidah, 60, now feels happy to see her grandchildren getting lights to study in the evening. Previously, the family used torches made from dried coconut leaves for outdoor lighting. They used oil lamps made of used bottles or cans for indoor lighting.

Kirno, a fisherman and Ayus husband, has to store his catch in fiber boxes filled with ice blocks to keep the fish fresh.

This is even more required if the fish has to be sold in Tanjung Redeb [Beraus capital]. It can take 12 hours to sail from Maratua to Tanjung Redeb, he said.

Therefore, Kirno is now actively involved in the building of an ice factory located right next to his home and covering an area of almost half a hectare. The plant uses a PLTS to absorb solar energy.

The fund for the construction comes from the Millennium Challenge Account-Indonesia [MCA-Indonesia] program, committed to develop environmentally friendly businesses. Were fortunate to be part of this effort, said Kirno.

Inside the facility: Operators of the PLTS (solar power generator) Teluk Harapan explain how the facility works. (JP/Syafrizaldi)

The factorys 54-kWp PLTS will be able to operate ice-making machines with a daily capacity of two tons. The local community is directly participating in planning, training, factory development and product management. The ice factory would be use to support fishermen, so they would be able to reduce their ice block purchase expenditures.

Kirno and his fellow villagers are handling the factory development through the facilitation of the Indonesian Bio-Diversity Foundation (KEHATI) as the fund management agency and the Java Learning Center (JAVLEC) as a partner of MCA-Indonesia.

Still, Kirno has to learn from PLTS failures in various places on Maratua.

In Teluk Harapan village, for example, residents regretted the improperly managed PLTS construction.

Road lamps only lasted for two months and theyve been off for two years, Nursiah said. The road lights, she added, were built along with the villages PLTS development, but right now generator was no longer operating, making local people rely again on costly diesel power.

Former Teluk Harapan PLTS operator Dadang Wahyudi acknowledged the far cheaper solar power. Each of the 100 village homes supplied by the PLTS only pays Rp 30,000 a month. Technically, according to him, PLTS durability is determined by the maintenance of equipment like batteries and the repair or replacement of worn-out batteries.

He has reported the battery damage to the village administration, but new batteries are too expensive to purchase. Dadang confirmed Kirnos view of the importance of direct community involvement. The key to continuity lies with the community, which should understand how to manage and should have common awareness.

The PLTS is a community asset that should be maintained together. If this happens it will keep operating, he said.

Green energy: Two workers check a street lamp that uses solar power on Teluk Harapan. (JP/Syafrizaldi)

Dadang disclosed that Maratua villages had owned PLTS units, but many had ceased operation after two to three years because of operational and repair cost shortages as well as the lack of community awareness.

The same applies to the Alulu Bay ice factory. Without the participation of Pak Kirno and villagers there, Im afraid the plant wont work, he said.

Asep Suntana, the director of the community-based natural resources management program of KEHATI, said Kirnos effort should be appreciated. This will facilitate Maratua fishermens operations and set an example for their peers in remote regions. The same is true of Lasahis transportation business and other similar initiatives.

PLTS projects constitute a joint commitment to lower carbon emissions and at the same time promote peoples economy, he said. In Aseps observation, the earths temperature will increase unless people make prompt adaptation and mitigation. Such efforts should conform to the use of renewable energy like solar energy.

Although remote from the State Electricity Company (PLN), Maratua wont keep silent. The islands renewable energy development will keep going.

This will contribute to Indonesias carbon emission cut in 2020, Asep said.
TheJakartaPost

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Linkedin Rizal Harahap (The Jakarta Post) Pekanbaru  Tue, October 24, 2017 17:15 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25c5723 1 National #Riau,Riau,#Terrorism,terrorism Free

The National Police's elite counterterrorism squad Densus 88 apprehended four persons in three separate locations in Riau on Tuesday, on suspicions they were planning attacks on police premises in the province.

Two men, who go by the aliases Abu Afif and Abu Ibrohim, were arrested in Pandau Permai residential complex in Kampar regency at around 7.15 a.m. on Tuesday.

After digging for information from the two suspects, Densus 88 launched another operation later that day and arrested two other suspected terrorists, one who goes by the alias Abu Zahid in Tangkerang area, Pekanbaru city, and another who goes by the alias Abu Bukhori, in Taman Griya Anggrek residential area in Kampar.

Through their preliminary investigations, the police found indications the four men were linked to Jama'ah Anshar Daulah (JAD) and had been making plans to attack the police, including small posts and the Riau Police headquarters in Pekanbaru, said Riau Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Guntur Aryo Tejo.

"Abu Afif is allegedly their leader. There are indications that they are part of a terrorist network [whose members] were recently arrested in Jambi," Guntur said. "The four persons are also suspected to have learned bomb-making in Jambi."

Across the country, police have become the targets of terror attacks by militant groups in the past few years, with the worst attack occurring on May 24 when two suicide bombers linked to the Islamic State (IS) group detonated explosives at a bus terminal in Kampung Melayu, East Jakarta, killing three officers. (ipa)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 15:58 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25c1655 4 Business Freeport-Indonesia,divestment,Rini-Soemarno,cooperation Free

State-Owned Enterprises Minister Rini Soemarno has said the government wants to cooperate closely with gold and copper miner PT Freeport Indonesia to continue exploiting resources from its Grasberg mine in Papua.

[Freeport has] the capability in the mining sector. We certainly dont want them to go, said Rini as reported by kompas.com on Tuesday.

She expressed the hope that PT Freeport Indonesia would remain supportive of the government after its divestment of 51 percent shares to Indonesian entities as required by the prevailing law.

PT Freeport Indonesia's agreement to divest its shares was announced on Aug. 29 by Richard Adkerson, the CEO of US mining giant Freeport McMoRan, its parent company.

Government and Freeport representatives are still discussing a number of key issues, including the structure and timing of the divestment. One of the tougher issues include the valuation of Freeport shares.

Rini has repeatedly said the government wanted to assign state-owned mining firm PT Indonesia Asahan Aluminium (Inalum) to buy the Freeport shares.

The government is also preparing a holding company comprising Inalum, PT Tambang Batu Bara Bukit Asam, PT Timah and PT Aneka Tambang as an alternative.

Rini said the government and Freeport needed to build mutual trust so that they could jointly manage the mining site. We stress the importance of building mutual trust between partners. This could be done by signing an agreement between the [two] shareholders, she added. (bbn)
TORONTO, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lydian International Limited (TSX:LYD) (Lydian or the Company) announced today that the Company will host an information booth at the 2017 New Orleans Investment Conference to be held October 25  28, 2017. Management will be available to provide an update on the Amulsar Gold Project.



The Companys current investor presentation is available on Lydians website at www.lydianinternational.co.uk.

About Lydian International Limited

Lydian is a gold developer, focusing on construction at its 100%-owned Amulsar Gold Project, located in south-central Armenia. Amulsar presents an opportunity for a large-scale, low-cost operation with production expected to begin in mid-2018. Open pit mining and conventional heap leach processing contribute to excellent scale and economic potential. Amulsar will be Armenias largest gold mine, with estimated mineral resources containing 3.5 million measured and indicated gold ounces and 1.3 million inferred gold ounces. Gold production is targeted to average approximately 225,000 ounces annually over an initial 10-year mine life. Existing mineral resources and open extensions provide opportunities to improve average annual production and extend the life of mine. The Company is committed to good international industry practices in all aspects of its operations including production, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility. For more information and to directly contact us, please visit www.lydianinternational.co.uk.

For further information, please contact:

Doug Tobler, CFO

+1 720-307-5087 (d) or +1 303-905-4442 (m) Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations

+1 720-464-5649 (d) or +1 303-810-4863 (m)

Or: moreinfo@Lydianinternational.co.uk

Caution regarding forward-looking information

Certain information contained in this news release is forward looking. All statements in this news release, other than statements of historical fact, that address events, results, outcomes or developments that the Company expects to occur are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as plans, expects, intends, anticipates, proposed or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results will, may, could, would, should, or occur or the negative connotation of such terms. Forward-looking statements in this news release include, among others, statements with respect to: the realization of mineral resource estimates and the timing of development of the Amulsar Gold Project, including the expected start date of production; the potential improvement of average annual production and extension of the Amulsar Gold Project mine life through the evaluation of currently defined inferred resources and from open extensions at depth; the commitment to and implementation of good international industry practices; the expected gold production from, and life of mine of, the Amulsar Gold Project; the expected mining methods at the Amulsar Gold Project; the estimated cash cost per ounce of gold over the life of mine of the Amulsar Gold Project; and the expected cost of operations at the Amulsar Gold Project. Statements concerning mineral resource and mineral reserve estimates may also be deemed to constitute forward-looking information to the extent that they involve estimates of the mineralization that will be encountered when the property is developed.

Forward-looking statements are necessarily based on estimates and assumptions that are inherently subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks, uncertainties and factors include, without limitation: changes in gold and silver prices; adverse general economic, market or business conditions; regulatory changes; failure to improve average annual production and extend the Amulsar Gold Project mine life through the evaluation of defined inferred resources and from open extensions at depth; as well as Risk Factors included in the disclosure documents filed on and available at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results and future events could materially differ from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. All of the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are qualified by these cautionary statements. The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, events or otherwise, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.
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Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 09:57 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25b0c42 1 Politics house-of-representatives,ambassador,screening,fit-and-proper-test,screening-process,ambassador-candidates Free

The House of Representatives Commission I, which oversees defense, information and foreign affairs, on Monday kicked off a two-day selection process of candidates who will fill 18 ambassador posts.

Thirteen candidates underwent a closed-door screening process attended by Commission I members on Monday while five other candidates are scheduled to be screened on Tuesday.

Commission I deputy chairman Tubagus Hasanuddin said the 13 candidates had career backgrounds as officials at the Foreign Affairs Ministry, while the remaining five candidates were from outside the ministry. They included prominent lawyer Todung Mulya Lubis, who is proposed to fill the Norwegian ambassador post. Todung is set to attend Tuesdays screening process.

Among candidates undergoing the screening process at Commission I on Monday include former Indonesian Ambassador to Moscow Djauhari Oratmangun, who is proposed to fill the ambassador post in Beijing, China, as well as Mongolia. Other candidates are diplomat Arif Havas Oegroseno, who is prepared to fill the Germany ambassador post, and former Bank Indonesia deputy governor and Financial Services Authority (OJK) chairman Muliaman Darmansyah Hadad, who will be placed in Switzerland.

Candidates with no diplomatic background include former North Sulawesi governor Sinyo Harry Sarundajang, who once joined a presidential candidate convention held by the Democratic Party in 2014. Sinyo is set to serve as the Indonesian ambassador for the Philippines, Palau and Marshall Islands.

The ambassadors will not only represent the Indonesian government but also have significant power to decide what is best to do for Indonesias relations with other countries, Hasanuddin said. (ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 16:04 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25c1def 1 Business bali,tourism,Mount-Agung Free

The Indonesian government is trying to convince tourists across the globe that the resort island of Bali is a safe destination amid the alert status of Mount Agung, which has been trembling since last month.

In efforts to convince tourists, the Tourism Ministry has started to organize familiarization trips (fam trips) for travel writers and journalists in Bali.

The ministry has invited nine journalists from China, one of the largest contributors of tourists to Indonesia, to visit the island to provide firsthand information about the latest condition of the island.

With the fam trips, we want to convince tourists that Bali is a safe place to visit, the Tourism Ministrys official in charge of Asia-Pacific market development Vinsensius Vinsen Jemadu said in Jakarta on Tuesday as reported by tribunnews.com.

This year, the government is set to welcome 15 million tourists from across the country, 2 million of whom are expected to come from China.

The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) recorded that 1.48 million Chinese tourists arrived in Indonesia in the period from January to August this year. The number is 54.78 percent higher than the figure for the corresponding period last year.

There is not yet any data about the decrease in tourist arrivals, but hotels in Bali have started to report a number of postponements of their guests' arrivals, following the increase in Mt. Agung's volcanic activities . (bbn)
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 13:46 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25bc575 1 Politics Gatot-Nurmantyo,US-administration,deny-entry,TNI Free

Indonesian Military (TNI) commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo has expressed his disappointment after having been denied permission to board a US-bound flight even though he has a valid visa and an invitation from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"I am disappointed since I have a good relationship with Gen. (Joseph) Dunford, Gatot told reporters at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta on Tuesday.

[I] once had my morning coffee at his house, had a good dinner while other US soldiers performed the song Bengawan Solo for me, Gatot recalled his close relationship with the US military official.

I wanted to go to the US to meet him but [the meeting] never happened, he lamented.

Read also: US defense chief apologizes for Gatot being denied entry to US

Gatot was informed he was barred from entering the US as he and his wife, who both had valid visas, were about to fly from Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Saturday. He was scheduled to attend a conference at the invitation of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford in Washington DC.

Despite US officials having apologized for the incident and saying the TNI chief is now free to go to the US, Gatot dismissed any chance that he might go in the near future.

"I will follow the President's instruction. [I havent received] any instruction from the President yet, Gatot said.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said Jakarta was still waiting for a clear explanation about why the incident happened in the first place. (dmr)
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Linkedin Indra Budiari (The Jakarta Post) Clark  Tue, October 24, 2017 09:38 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25afe77 1 World Marawi,Philippines,Islamic-State,IS,terrorism,terrorists Free

After months of clashes between IS foreign fighters and the Philippines military that had destroyed the last part of Marawi, the Southern Philippines area has reportedly been liberated from terrorism, as an official from the country said the last terrorist in the area had been killed.

Philippines Secretary of National Defense Delfin Lorenzana said during the opening of the 11th ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM) in Clark, the Philippines, on Monday that he received the report just moments before the meeting began.

I just received the news that now I can assure you that the last foreign fighter has been killed and now Marawi is clear from IS, he said, applauded by defense ministers from other ASEAN state members.

(Read also: Mini-Interpol proposed for ASEAN counterterrorism)

Since May, Marawi has been under attack by a local terrorist group known as the Maute Group, whose leaders had pledged allegiance to the IS organization.

During five months of fighting, more than 150 soldiers and policemen were reportedly killed while the city was heavily destroyed. (ebf)
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) New York, United States  Tue, October 24, 2017 21:45 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25cfdcb 2 Business McDonalds,profit,China Free

McDonald's reported a jump in third-quarter profit Tuesday, boosted by better sales in key markets and a one-time infusion of funds from refranchising Chinese and Hong Kong restaurants.

Net income for the quarter ending September 30 was $1.9 billion, up 47.7 percent from the year-ago period. That included a gain of about $850 million from the sale of China and Hong Kong businesses to franchising companies.

Revenues fell 10.4 percent to $5.7 billion due to the divestments in Asia.

McDonald's reported that global comparable sales increased six percent and cited growth in several key markets, including the United States, China, Britain and Canada.

US sales were lifted by some aggressive discounting initiatives, including the McPick 2 value deal, which charged $5 for two meal-sized items, such as the Big Mac and Chicken McNuggets.

McDonald's said the refranchsing efforts in Asia were ahead of schedule, with some 4,000 restaurants spun off more than a year before the original plan.

The refranchising "brings us closer to the customers and communities we serve in these markets and creates a better opportunity to unlock their full growth potential," said chief financial officer Kevin Ozan.

"Our more heavily franchised structure will continue to drive shareholder value by providing a more stable revenue and income stream with higher returns on invested capital."

Shares of McDonald's rose 0.4 percent to $164 in pre-market trading.

Topics : McDonalds profit China
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 20:35 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25cd094 1 City anies-baswedan,MUI Free

The Jakarta chapter of the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) has asked Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan to allow his official residence on Jl. Taman Suropati to be used as the venue for monthly Quran recitations.

The request was made during the councils plenary meeting in Central Jakarta on Tuesday directly to Anies who attended the meeting.

If it is convenient, the recitations can be held at the governors official residence. I hope Pak Anies does not mind. It is usually held on the first Saturday every month, said the councils general secretary Zulfa Mustofa, as quoted by tempo.co.

Zulfa added that the first recitation was held during then governor Sutiyosos tenure from 2002 until 2007 at his deputy governor Fauzi Bowos official residence. When Fauzi became governor from 2007 until 2012, the recitations were held in his official residence.

During the tenure of governors Joko Widodo, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama and Djarot Saiful Hidayat, between 2012 and 2017, the recitations were halted for a year but then re-held in city secretary Saefullahs official residence.

Furthermore, Zulfa revealed that for the past four years no Jakarta governor had attended the MUI plenary meeting.

It proves that [Anies] considers the MUI important. Thank you, Pak Anies, Zulfa said, while also reminding Anies of his promise to build MUI Jakarta an office. (wnd)
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Linkedin News Desk (AFP) Geneva, Switzerland  Tue, October 24, 2017 07:15 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25a9579 2 World Myanmar,Rohingya,Rohingya-people,refugees,UN,Bangladesh Free

Nations have pledged $345 million (294 million euros) to care for Myanmar's Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, an "encouraging" step in the response to the intensifying crisis, the UN said Monday.

Many of the funds for the minority Muslim group, who have fled from violence in the northern part of Myanmar's Rakhine state, were promised at a high-level conference in Geneva, co-hosted by the United Nations, the European Union and Kuwait.

The UN says it needs $434 million to provide support through February for the 900,000 Rohingya who have fled across the border, as well as the 300,000 local Bangladeshis hosting the influx.

UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock called the haul "encouraging" and praised donors who "expressed their solidarity and compassion with the families and communities in need."

Some of the money was promised in the run up to the conference and Lowcock said he expected more commitments in the coming days.

A group of nations had also offered $50 million of in-kind donations.

Lowcock stressed the importance of countries actually delivering the cash, with the UN having confronted unfulfilled pledges in past crises.

"Pledges are one thing," he told reporters. "It's really important to us that the pledges are translated as soon as possible into contributions".

Among the 35 nations and blocs that promised funds were Britain ($63 million) the EU ($42 million), the United States ($38 million) and Sweden ($24 million), according to the UN.

With no apparent resolution to the crisis in sight, Lowcock noted that there may be a need to raise more funds again next year.

The head of the International Organization for Migration, William Lacey Swing, called the wave of Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh "the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world."

"It is, in its own way, a nightmare," he added.

Bangladesh's government and the community in the Cox's Bazar area on the Myanmar border have been broadly praised for the response to Rohingya refugee influx, notably for keeping the border open.

More than 600,000 Rohingya refugees have headed for Bangladesh in huge numbers since late August after militant attacks on Myanmar security forces in Rakhine sparked a major army crackdown on the community likened to ethnic cleansing by the UN.

Rohingyas have been systematically deprived of basic rights over decades in majority Buddhist Myanmar.

In the latest crackdown, Myanmar's security forces have fired indiscriminately on unarmed civilians, including children, and committed widespread sexual violence, according to UN investigators. (**)
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Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 12:54 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25babb3 1 Politics Gatot-Nurmantyo,TNI,TNI-commander-Gatot-Nurmantyo,Indonesian-Military,DHS,US-Department-of-Homeland-Security,#GatotNurmantyo Free

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said Indonesian Military commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo chose not to fly to the US although the countrys authorities had booked a new flight for him on Saturday after he was denied boarding on his initial flight.

Citing a DHS spokesman, CNN reported Tuesday that the US Embassy in Jakarta informed Gatot that he might be delayed in his ability to board his flight because of security protocols.

The passenger was rebooked on another flight and cleared to board. He chose not to travel, the spokesman said.

Gatot, his wife and his entourage were due to travel to Washington on Saturday to attend a counter-terrorism conference. He has a valid visa and an invitation by Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

However, in the last minutes prior to boarding his flight, he was approached by an airline official informing him that he and his wife were not allowed to enter the US by order of US Customs and Border Protection, military spokesman Major Gen. Wuryanto previously said.

(Read also: Indonesian Military chief denied departure on US-bound flight)

The Foreign Affairs Ministry summoned a US embassy official on Monday to clarify the matter but the official did not provide an explanation, suggesting that the embassy was equally clueless about what had happened.

The US embassy issued an official apology to Gatot for the inconvenience, but Retno said the ministry was still awaiting a detailed explanation of why the incident happened.

Following the incident, reactions in Jakarta have already been stirred with some banners found at a major thoroughfare calling for the expulsion of the US ambassador from Indonesia.

Analysts have warned that leaving the issue without explanation could cripple relations between the two countries. (ebf)
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Linkedin Nethy Dharma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jayapura, Papua  Tue, October 24, 2017 15:30 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25c062a 1 National Papua,Papua-elections,Brimob,Constitutional-Court,election-dispute Free

Papua has received an additional 400 Mobile Brigade personnel to secure its two regencies, Intan Jaya and Tolikara, as security incidents related to the elections of regional heads held simultaneously in 11 regencies and municipalities across the province on Feb.15 continue.

Two hundred Brimob personnel from the South Sulawesi Police will be deployed to Intan Jaya regency while 200 other personnel from the East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) Police and the North Maluku Police will be dispatched to Tolikara regency.

Although the Constitutional Court (MK) has declared the winner of the election for Intan Jaya regent and deputy regent, the elected pair has not yet been inaugurated. Meanwhile, the elected Tolikara regent and deputy regent were inaugurated on Oct.16.

Papua Police chief Insp.Gen. Boy Rafli Amar said the security situation in Intan Jaya and Tolikara had not yet been fully calmed because supporters of the defeated candidates could not yet accept the election results. Protest rallies had still occurred in the two regencies. Road blockades continued in Tolikara.

Although the elections have ended, the MK has issued its ruling on the elections, and the elected regents and deputy regents have been inaugurated, we are still facing protests by several societal groups who are disappointed with the results of the elections, said Rafli, during a ceremony to mark the arrival of 200 Brimob personnel from the NTT Police and the North Maluku Police at Kotaraja Brimob Field in Jayapura on Monday.

Rafli said the security measures taken would put forward a dialogue and efforts to prevent horizontal conflicts. (dra/ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 15:20 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25c0372 1 City greenpeace,PLTU,health Free

Jakarta will be surrounded by more than 10 coal-fired power plants (PLTU) within a 100-kilometer radius, which could lead to premature deaths, Greenpeace Indonesia has reported.

The report entitled Silent Murder in Jakarta predicted that the presence of the PLTU could cause 10,600 premature deaths and 2,800 low weight births per year in Greater Jakarta areas.

Jakarta is already surrounded by eight PLTUs. The other four will begin operating between 2019 and 2024 and another one, which is currently operating, will be expanded in 2019.

Greenpeace Indonesias climate and energy campaigner Didit Wicaksono said on Tuesday that the citys air quality was bad, and it was mostly caused by transportation and housing.

But the fact is, it's not only transportation that damages the health of Jakartas residents and their children, it's also large capacity PLTUs in Java, specifically around Jakarta, and two steam and gas power plants [PLTGU] in Jakarta, Didit said in a statement on Tuesday.

Pollution generated from the power plants has also caused Jakartas air to be unhealthier.

Based on Greenpeace Indonesias study, the combined emissions from the PLTUs will likely affect cities located to the north and west of the power plants, namely Cilegon and Tangerang in Banten, Bogor in West Java, Jakarta, as well as Bekasi, Depok, Tambun and Karawang in West Java.

The pollution could cause serious respiratory disease, stroke, cardiovascular disease and other heart related disease. Children, pregnant woman and the elderly are the most vulnerable to the pollution.

For the sake of public health, Greenpeace encourages the Indonesian government to improve the emissions standard for thermal power plants and monitor their performance, Didit added. (wnd)

Topics : greenpeace PLTU health
HUNTSVILLE, Ala., Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aerojet Rocketdyne, a subsidiary of Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:AJRD), marked a key milestone today when it officially broke ground on a new, 136,000-square-foot manufacturing facility located in Huntsville, Alabama. During a ceremony, attended by Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle and other local dignitaries, the company took the next step in its journey to expand its existing presence in the region with a new, state-of-the-art Advanced Manufacturing Facility.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/4cdd4b76-af4f-48e9-894e-7ea454aaa2af

Aerojet Rocketdyne earlier announced that it was headquartering its Defense business unit in Huntsville, along with its defense advanced programs group known as the Rocket Shop, bringing roughly 800 new jobs to the region. In addition to the new manufacturing facility, Aerojet Rocketdyne recently leased 122,000 square feet of office space at 950 Explorer Blvd. in Cummings Research Park to accommodate newly hired employees and those relocating to Huntsville from other company locations. The changes are part of a larger Competitive Improvement Program the company launched in 2015 that is on track to deliver $230 million in annual savings once complete.



The new Advanced Manufacturing Facility we are officially breaking ground on today is an essential component of Aerojet Rocketdynes Competitive Improvement Program, said Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and President Eileen Drake. The steps we are taking are focused on making our company increasingly agile and able to deliver high-quality, affordable products to our customers as we position Aerojet Rocketdyne for the future.



The new Advanced Manufacturing Facility, which is expected to begin production by the end of 2019, will be used to build a variety of aerospace products, including production work on the AR1 advanced rocket engine; composite cases for solid rocket motors; case pneumatic and hydrostatic proofing; and additive manufacturing (3-D printing) production work to support of a variety of programs in the space and defense sectors. This new facility will also be used to conduct advanced rocket propulsion research and development activities.



Aerojet Rocketdyne has been a member of the Huntsville community for more than 50 years, added Drake. Our major expansion in this region that started in 2016 underscores Aerojet Rocketdynes belief that Huntsville, which is known as Rocket City, will continue to grow as a key aerospace and defense hub for our nation for many decades to come, and Aerojet Rocketdyne plans to be a leader in that growth.



Aerojet Rocketdyne is an innovative company delivering solutions that create value for its customers in the aerospace and defense markets. The company is a world-recognized aerospace and defense leader that provides propulsion and energetics to the space, missile defense and strategic systems, tactical systems and armaments areas, in support of domestic and international markets. Additional information about Aerojet Rocketdyne can be obtained by visiting our websites at www.Rocket.com and www.AerojetRocketdyne.com.

Lynn Machon, Aerojet Rocketdyne, 916-355-3587

Lynn.Machon@Rocket.com

Todd McConnell, Aerojet Rocketdyne, 561-882-5395

Todd.McConnell@Rocket.com
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 18:42 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25c97a2 1 City restaurant,tax Free

Some 30 to 40 percent of restaurants and nightlife spots in South Jakarta havent paid their taxes since January, an official said.

South Jakarta Tax and Levy Board head Yuspin Dramatin said on Tuesday that among 2,297 restaurants, 31.4 percent of them had not paid their taxes, while the percentage for nightlife spots was 40.5 percent of 234 places.

In South Jakarta, 730 out of 2,297 restaurants have tax arrears, and for nightlife spots its 95 out of 234 places, Yuspin said on Tuesday, as quoted by kompas.com, adding that most of the places were located in Kebayoran Baru.

The agency has tried to collect the tax arrears, from sending warning letters to installing stickers or banners stating that the restaurant or the nightlife spots have not paid their taxes.

From the end of October until the beginning of November, we will keep chasing them by installing bigger banners, Yuspin said.

South Jakarta targets to collect Rp 6.3 trillion (US$465.5 million) in tax revenue this year, but so far has been able to collect only Rp 5.3 trillion as of this month.

Meanwhile, restaurants are the third-largest tax contributors, paying Rp 983 billion in taxes, with the Land and Building Tax (PBB) accounting for most of that figure.

To solve the problem, Deputy Jakarta Governor Sandiaga Uno earlier said that the city administration would ask for assistance from the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and the Jakarta Prosecutors Office to collect tax arrears from restaurants. (wnd)

Topics : restaurant tax
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Linkedin Andi Hajramurni (The Jakarta Post) Makassar, South Sulawesi  Tue, October 24, 2017 20:39 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25cd890 1 National rape,rape-victim,South-Sulawesi,sex-abuse,Sexual-assault,sexual-violence,sexual-violence-against-children Free

A 13-year-old girl from Walenrang district, Luwu regency, South Sulawesi, is psychologically unstable after being raped by 21 men in two separate locations and at different times.

The victim is afraid to meet new people. When we came to see her yesterday [Monday], she was afraid to meet us. After we explained our identities, she agreed to meet us, said Andi Fatmawati Syam, the head of the Womens Empowerment and Child Protection (PPPA) division at Luwu administration, on Tuesday.

Not only is she terrified to meet new people, Fatmawati said the girl had become reserved and sensitive, especially if asked to discuss the ordeal to which she had been subjected.

She spoke very little. Each time we touched on the tragic incident, her eyes suddenly welled with tears. We could not bring ourselves to look at that terrible condition, she said.

Fatmawati said the PPPA Luwu was providing the victim both legal assistance and counseling to help her overcome the ordeal.

The girl, a first grader at a junior high school in Luwu, was raped by 21 men aged 13 to 30 years. Fourteen suspects were arrested last week while seven others remain at large.

We have obtained the identities of the seven perpetrators. We are sure they can be immediately arrested, said Luwu Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Ahmad Yanuari Insan on Tuesday.

He said the girl was raped during Ramadhan in June, but the case had been reported to the police only on Oct.11. (ebf)
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States  Tue, October 24, 2017 19:35 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25cb0b1 2 World Myanmar,Rohingya,US,sanction Free

Washington announced it was pushing for targeted sanctions against Burmese officers involved in violence against Rohingya Muslims, while withdrawing invitations to senior members of the security forces to visit the US and ending travel waivers.

The move came after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the US holds Myanmar's military leadership "accountable" for the Rohingya refugee crisis, drawing a distinction with Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government.

More than 600,000 members of the minority Muslim group have fled across the border into Bangladesh in an intensifying crisis that began in late August.

Militant attacks on Myanmar security forces in Rakhine sparked a major army crackdown on the group, who are labelled illegal Bengali immigrants by most Burmese.

"We express our gravest concern with recent events in Rakhine state and the violent, traumatic abuses Rohingya and other communities have endured," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in announcing a raft of measures.

"It is imperative that any individuals or entities responsible for atrocities, including non-state actors and vigilantes, be held accountable."

According to a statement, the State Department was "assessing authorities...to consider economic options available to target individuals associated with atrocities."

It added that the US had halted its consideration of travel waivers for senior Myanmar military leaders, and is weighing targeted individuals under the Global Magnitsky Act.

The measure allows the US executive branch to impose visa bans and sanctions on individuals anywhere in the world responsible for committing human rights violations.

"We are consulting with allies and partners on accountability options at the UN, the UN Human Rights Council, and other appropriate venues," added Nauert.

The US has also rescinded invitations to senior members of Myanmar's security forces to US-sponsored events and is pressing for "unhindered access" to the affected areas for a United Nations fact-finding mission, international organizations and the media.

Tillerson warned last week the world won't stand and "be witness to the atrocities that have been reported," adding that the military must be disciplined and "restrained."

Myanmar's army chief Min Aung Hlaing defended his forces on Tuesday.

"One-sided statements and accusations against Myanmar and security members over the terror attacks of extremist Bengalis in the west of Rakhine State are totally untrue," he said in a post on his Facebook page Tuesday.

Topics : Myanmar Rohingya US sanction
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Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 19:52 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25cc229 1 National #1965Tragedy,1965-mass-killing,#KomnasHAM,Komnas-HAM,human-rights,#HumanRightsAbuse Free

Survivors and families of victims of the 1965 communist purge have urged the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) to use the recently released declassified United States files on the purge to renew a long-stalled investigation into the mass killings.

Bejo Untung of the 1965 Murder Victim's Research Foundation (YPKP 65) said that the US files had further revealed that the Indonesian Army had, at that time, orchestrated the mass killings of alleged sympathizers of the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

On Tuesday, Bedjo, along with five colleagues, came to Komnas HAM to voice their demands, urging the government-sanctioned rights body to "request the documents [from the US embassy] and use them as evidence to renew its investigation into the tragedy.

"We also hope Komnas HAM ensures that it will be followed up by the Attorney General's Office [AGO]," Bedjo said. "We have suffered from getting stigmatized for 52 years. We only demand for our rehabilitation and the revelation of truth.

Komnas HAM concluded in 2012 an investigation into the purge and has submitted their findings--that it constituted a gross rights violation--to the AGO and recommended that military officials involved in the purge be brought to trial. Yet, the AGO returned the documents to Komnas HAM after the prosecutors found insufficient evidence to build a case.

Komnas HAM commissioner M. Nurkhoiron said it had yet to decide whether to use the declassified US files to complement its investigation, which was concluded years before the release. (ipa)
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Linkedin M Jegathesan (Agence France-Presse) Sepang, Malaysia  Tue, October 24, 2017 12:36 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25b839e 2 SE Asia KimJongUn,murder,trial,Malaysia Free

Two women on trial for murdering the North Korean leader's half-brother have visited the Malaysian airport where they allegedly poisoned him, escorted by huge numbers of heavily armed police on Tuesday.

Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong, wearing bulletproof vests, were brought to Kuala Lumpur International Airport's budget terminal along with the judge in the case, defence lawyers and prosecutors.

About 200 police, many armed with rifles and wearing masks, fanned out as the entourage arrived at the terminal, where a huge pack of journalists was waiting.

The visit was aimed at giving the judge and others involved in the case a better idea of how events unfolded on the day of the murder, according to lawyers. Such crime scene visits often take place in Malaysian criminal trials.

Huong, 29, and Aisyah, 25, are accused of killing Kim on February 13 by rubbing the nerve agent VX on his face in a Cold War-style hit that stunned the world.

The women, who were arrested a few days after the assassination and face death by hanging if convicted, have pleaded not guilty to murdering the estranged half-brother of Kim Jong-Un.

The assassination sparked a fierce row between Malaysia and North Korea, which the South says ordered the hit, an allegation Pyongyang denies.

However, four other unidentified suspects still at large are accused in the charge sheet of committing the murder with the women. Four North Koreans fled Malaysia on the day of the killing.

At the airport, the group was first taken to the check-in area where they allegedly smeared the nerve agent in Kim's face. He died an agonising death within 20 minutes of the attack with a chemical so deadly it is classified as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations.

High Court judge Azmi Ariffin (unseen) lawyers for Vietnamese and Indonesian defendant arrive at the low-cost carrier Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA2) during a visit to the scene of the murder as part of the Shah Alam High Court trial process in Sepang on Oct. 24, 2017. Indonesian Siti Aisyah, 25, and Huong, 28, have been charged with the murder of Kim Jong-Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2 (KLIA2) in February. (Agence France -Presse/Mohd Rasfan)

The suspects were then taken to a cafe called Bibik Heritage, where Aisyah met a man identified in court as "Mr Chang" who allegedly wiped a liquid on her hands before she carried out the attack.

Chilling evidence

The group headed to the clinic where Kim was taken after the attack and then to a taxi stand, where the women went after the alleged murder. They also visited a toilet where one of the women had headed after the attack, and walked through a shopping area.

The women were put into wheelchairs at one point during the visit, with prosecutor Fairuz Johari saying it was because they were tired due to the weight of the bulletproof vests.

The prosecutor said the group had traced the routes taken by Huong, Aisyah and Kim on the day of the murder.

Gooi Soon Seng, a lawyer for Aisyah, told AFP that "the purpose of the visit was to better understand how it (the killing) happened".

Their lawyers claim they are scapegoats who were tricked into carrying out the murder and a witness has testified it was possible that the other suspects on the charge sheet could have administered the VX on Kim before he arrived at the airport.

Experts have been confounded by how Aisyah and Huong could have attacked Kim with such a deadly poison without causing any harm to themselves.

Still much evidence points to the women's involvement. Traces of VX were found on their clothes and CCTV footage was viewed at the trial that shows Huong wiping something on a person's face at the airport just days before the attack in an apparent practice run.

Chilling details have emerged during the proceedings. A witness testified that Kim suffered extensive organ damage -- with his lungs and brain swelling -- and CCTV footage showed Kim lying on a stretcher after he was assaulted.

Topics : KimJongUn murder trial Malaysia
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 14:01 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25bc73e 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Batam,piano,Competition Free

The Batam International Open Piano Competition 2017 event officially ended on Oct. 22. The two-day event's closing featured performances from the winners. The competition managed to attract participants from countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, China and Vietnam, as well as participants from different cities in Indonesia.

The events committee head Eleonora Aprilita explained that the event aims to facilitate young pianists to compete and to form a community of young talented pianists as well as supporting the Wonderful Indonesia program.

One visitor named Hoai Dhang Thanh flew from Vietnam to accompany his son, Bamboo, who was a participant and fifth spot winner of the competition.

This is my first time coming to Batam and Indonesia. Ive heard a lot of things about Bali and I will go there someday, Hoai said, adding that since there is no direct flight yet from Ho Chi Minh to Batam, they had to travel to Singapore first in order to get to Batam.

Read also: Five must-visit places in Vietnam

According to tourism ministry's archipelago tourism marketing development deputy Esthy Reko Astuti, Batam is in the third position in the list of cities in Indonesia that welcome the largest number of tourists, right after Bali and Jakarta.

Batam contributes 20 percent from the total number of international tourists who visit Indonesia, this why we are supporting this event to be held in Batam, said Esthy. Additionally, Batam is closely located to Singapore and Malaysia. (asw)
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Linkedin (Pesona Indonesia) Jakarta  Tue, October 24, 2017 16:07 1848 1f87594453bb792833e1ece3a25c2442 2 News Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Malang,tourist-village Free

Malang regency in East Java is developing smart village system to its tourist villages.

Currently there are 16 tourist villages that use the smart village system, one of them is Boon Pring Andeman ecotourism app in Sanankerto Village, Turen district, said Malang tourism department head Made Arya Wedhantara.

The smart village system makes it easier for tourists to gain information about tourist villages in Malang from their Android smartphones that are connected to the Internet. The information includes facilities, services, tourist attractions, entrance fees, tickets selling and bookings and other, all of these are available in the app.

With this creative innovation, the tourism ministry has decided to include Boon Pring Andeman Ecotourism app in one of its 30 pilot projects.

Read also: Glintung, saving rainwater and preventing floods

The more use of digital technology, the more we can use different kinds of applications and digital tools to get in touch with every customer. We are able to know about the demography, psychography and their individual behavior, told tourism minister Arief Yahya.

Now there is this term called always-connected travelers, meaning that travelers are always connected through their smartphones and applications, if we don't adapt we will eventually die. This smart village is a solution for innovation, Arief added. (asw)
Earlier today, New Jersey Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino filed a lawsuit in New Jersey Superior Court alleging that the Township of Mahwah had discriminated against Orthodox Jews in enacting two ordinances: one, prohibiting the construction of any eruv in the Township; and the second, banning non-New Jersey residents from using Mahwahs public parks.

Both of these ordinances, the lawsuit alleges, were motivated by unlawful anti-Orthodox bias.

Mahwah borders certain parts of heavily Orthodox Rockland County, and the Township Council was seeking ways to discourage Orthodox Jews from moving to Mahwah or even from enjoying its public facilities. Hence the two ordinances.

Said Attorney General Porrino, This is an extensive complaint that lays out a variety of serious allegations and a number of legal theories, but the bottom line is very simple  the Township Council in Mahwah heard the angry, fear-driven voices of bigotry and acted to appease those voices.

Agudath Israel of Americas New Jersey director, Rabbi Avi Schnall, called the lawsuit a landmark development.

Newspaper accounts of the Attorney Generals action described it as stunning, Rabbi Schnall noted. But what is truly stunning is that the haters who sought to employ every means possible to prevent Orthodox Jews from moving into Mahwah or even visiting its public parks were quite open in expressing their hatred. Attorney General Porrino deserves all the credit in the world for challenging this blatant discrimination in a court of law.

In a a letter this past July to Mahwahs Mayor, William C. Laforet, Agudath Israels executive vice president Rabbi David Zwiebel implored the Mayor to allow the maintenance of an eruv in Mahwah.

Statements by opponents of the Eruv reek of anti-Semitism and anti-Orthodox animus, wrote the Agudah leader. Clearly, what opponents of the Eruv are troubled by is not the presence of unobtrusive plastic strips on utility poles, but by the continued growth of the Orthodox community . . . The fact that so many of those opponents make no effort to hide their hatred is shocking and should not be tolerated.

With todays lawsuit, said Rabbi Schnall, it now appears that such efforts will in fact no longer be tolerated.
DALLAS, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Smithfield Foods joined forces with WinCo Foods to donate 40,000 pounds of protein to North Texas Food Bank. The donation was part of Smithfields Helping Hungry Homes initiative, a program focused on alleviating hunger and helping Americans become more food secure. Smithfields contribution, equivalent to 160,000 servings, will help those fighting hunger in North Texas, where one in six individuals are food insecure.



A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/99e20cbe-3827-495d-80cb-879b69660c7b

Protein is a critical, high in-demand resource, with a scarcely low supply that has been amplified even more during our states disaster recovery, said Dale Long, interim vice president of operations for the North Texas Food Bank. We are tremendously grateful to Smithfield and WinCo for todays donation, which will provide nutrient-rich protein to countless families and individuals across our service area during this time of immediate-need.

Smithfield and WinCo representatives presented the donation to North Texas Food Bank this morning at an event that raised awareness of hunger in the local community. Members from all three organizations discussed the significance of this donation in helping the more than 800,000 individuals, including the one in four children, who face hunger in North Texas every day.

At WinCo, our staff-owned stores carry a direct connection to the communities we call home, said Noah Fleisher, director of corporate communications at WinCo Foods. We are proud to partner with Smithfield at yet another Helping Hungry Homes donation, to continue WinCos support of our communities and the fight against hunger for our neighbors in need.

Throughout its 2017 Helping Hungry Homes tour, Smithfield will make large-scale protein donations to more than 60 food banks across the country. Since 2011, Smithfield has provided more than 80 million servings of protein to hunger relief organizations through this initiative.

As a global food company, we value our responsibility to provide hunger-relief to those in need, especially in areas that have been faced with disaster and the long road to recovery that follows, said Dennis Pittman, senior director of hunger relief for Smithfield Foods. The impact of recent storm destruction is being felt across the entire state, and we are proud to continue our Texas relief efforts by providing thousands of North Texans with much-needed protein.

For more information about Smithfield Foods Helping Hungry Homes initiative and a list of upcoming donation events, visit helpinghungryhomes.com.

About Smithfield Foods

Smithfield Foods is a $15 billion global food company and the world's largest pork processor and hog producer. In the United States, the company is also the leader in numerous packaged meats categories with popular brands including Smithfield, Eckrich, Nathan's Famous, Farmland, Armour, John Morrell, Cook's, Kretschmar, Gwaltney, Curly's, Margherita, Carando, Healthy Ones, Krakus, Morliny and Berlinki. Smithfield Foods is committed to providing good food in a responsible way and maintains robust animal care, community involvement, employee safety, environmental and food safety and quality programs. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com.

About North Texas Food Bank

The North Texas Food Bank (NTFB) is a top-ranked nonprofit hunger-relief organization with its primary distribution center in Southwest Dallas, and administrative headquarters located in the Dallas Farmers Market. Each day, NTFB provides access to more than 190,000 meals for hungry children, seniors, and families through a network of more than 1,000 programs and more than 200 Partner Agencies. In fiscal year 2016, NTFB provided access to some 70 million nutritious meals. While the NTFB is making steady progress toward closing the hunger gap, much work remains to be done to reach the organization's 10year goal of providing 92 million nutritious meals annually by 2025. NTFB is a member of Feeding America, a national hunger relief organization.

About WinCo Foods

WinCo Foods is a family of 118 employee-owned stores, with its own distribution and transportation network. The company can trace its beginnings back to 1967 and a discount warehouse grocery store in Boise, Idaho under the name of Waremart. The company operated stores under the names of Waremart Food Centers and Cub Foods until 1999 when it changed its storefront name and the corporate name to WinCo Foods, which stands for Winning Company. WinCo Foods became employee owned in 1985. WinCo Foods currently has about 17,000 employees and operates throughout Washington, Idaho, Nevada, California, Oregon, Utah, Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma.

Media Contacts:
TORONTO, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Canadian Bioceutical Corporation (the Company or BCC) (CSE:BCC) (OTC:CBICF) today announced that it made an initial drawdown of US$10 million under the US$25 million revolving credit facility originally announced in the Corporations press release of May 3, 2017. The funds drawn down against the facility will be earmarked specifically for making further acquisitions, capacity expansion and the development of new facilities in Massachusetts and Maryland.



The lender shall have the right to convert outstanding principal amount of the initial drawdown plus any accrued interest (accruing at the rate of 7% per annum calculated and compounding on a monthly basis) into common shares of the Company at a conversion price of CAD$0.50 per common share.

The funds available to us through the credit facility are an attractive form of capital that will allow the Company to continue to aggressively pursue our expansion strategy and also fund our organic growth plans currently underway, stated Scott Boyes, CEO of the Company.

Resignation of Director

The Company also announced today that Marilyn Bloovol resigned from the Companys board of directors. On behalf of all shareholders, the board thanks Ms. Bloovol for her years of service and leadership to BCC and we wish Ms. Bloovol all the best in her future endeavors.

The Company will not appoint a replacement for Ms. Bloovol prior to the forthcoming annual general and special meeting (the Annual Meeting) of the shareholders of the Company to be held at 11:00 a.m. (Toronto time) on Monday, October 30, 2017.

At the forthcoming Annual Meeting, the persons to be nominated by management to be elected as directors of the Company at the Annual Meeting are as follows:

W. Scott Boyes

Robert R. Galvin

Andrew R. Ryan

Randall G. Stafford

Elizabeth M. Stavola

Senator Richard S. (Tick) Segerblom

Dr. Miles D. Thompson

About The Canadian Bioceutical Corporation

BCC, an Ontario corporation, through its wholly owned subsidiaries in the U.S., provides substantial management, staffing, procurement, advisory, financial, real estate rental, logistics and administrative services to two medicinal cannabis enterprises in Arizona operating under the Health for Life (dispensaries) and the award-winning Melting Point Extracts (MPX) (high-margin concentrates wholesale) brands. The successful Health for Life (H4L) brand operates in the rapidly growing Phoenix Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). The Company also owns assets in Massachusetts, supporting cultivation, production and up to three dispensaries in Massachusetts, as well as is supporting development of a third licensed dispensary in Arizona.

BCC continues to expand its U.S. footprint, being in the process of acquiring three dispensaries and a production license in Maryland, as well as a further operational dispensary in Arizona. The Company also leases a property in Owen Sound, Ontario, for which an application to Health Canada has been made for a cannabis production and sales license. In addition, the Company will continue its efforts to develop its legacy nutraceuticals business.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release includes certain "forward-looking statements" under applicable Canadian securities legislation that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results, performance, prospects, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to, BCC's objectives and intentions. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based on a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, legal, regulatory and social uncertainties; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, legal, regulatory, political and competitive developments; delay or failure to receive board, shareholder or regulatory approvals; those additional risks set out in BCC's public documents filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com; and other matters discussed in this news release. Although BCC believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on these statements, which only apply as of the date of this news release, and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames or at all. Except where required by law, BCC disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

The Canadian Bioceutical Corporation

Scott Boyes, President and CEO

For further information please contact:



Scott Boyes, President and CEO

The Canadian Bioceutical Corporation

info@canadianbioceutical.com

www.canadianbioceutical.com

Marc Lakmaaker

NATIONAL Equicom

T: +1 416 848 1397

mlakmaaker@national.ca
The best books draw the reader into their worlds, and now a new audio book is using the GPS in smartphones to use the real world as a trigger for different parts of its story.

The Cartographers Confession tells the story of a young immigrant in post-Second World War London, and encourages users to head to the areas of London featured in the story to unlock new parts of the tale.

Using the GPS built into all modern smartphones, the free iOS and Android app that houses the story presents audio recordings, letters, notes and photographs to readers as they move both literally and figuratively through the story.

Part of a wider project called Ambient Literature, the developers say that it can be completed in around four hours, though an armchair mode that enables readers to explore the content wherever they are is also included in the app.

The apps information page also urges users to set off with their phone fully charged, with their journey taking in Leicester Square, the South Bank and Bermondsey.

The story was written by author James Attlee, and the project is the result of a collaboration between the University of the West of England, Bath Spa University and the University of Birmingham.
Fashion photographer Terry Richardson has been dropped by magazines including Vogue, GQ, Glamour and Vanity Fair, despite denying allegations about his treatment of models.

The media group Conde Nast International has ceased working with Richardson, who is known for his sexually explicit pictures in which he frequently appears.

An email circulated around the company, and seen by the Daily Telegraph, announced that any work by Richardson that had not yet been published would be killed or substituted with other material.

Terry Richardson (Ian West/PA)

Conde Nast International publishes 143 editions of magazines such as Vogue, GQ and Glamour as well Vanity Fair, Wired and Conde Nast Traveller.

The email, reportedly sent by executive vice president and chief operating officer James Woolhouse, to country presidents, said: I am writing to you on an important matter. Conde Nast would like to no longer work with the photographer Terry Richardson.

Any shoots that have been commission[ed] or any shoots that have been completed but not yet published, should be killed and substituted with other material.

Please could you confirm that this policy will be actioned in your market effective immediately. Thank you for your support in this matter.

Richardson is well known for his photographs of stars including Beyonce, Rihanna and Lady Gaga, and has directed videos for musicians including the notorious Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball film, in which the former child star appeared naked.

Allegations about his conduct over the years have resurfaced in recent days in the wake of harassment and assault claims made about movie producer Harvey Weinstein.

Richardson addressed the rumours in a blog on the Huffington Post in 2014, writing: I collaborated with consenting adult women who were fully aware of the nature of the work, and as is typical with any project, everyone signed releases.

I have never used an offer of work or a threat of rebuke to coerce someone into something that they did not want to do.

I give everyone that I work with enough respect to view them as having ownership of their free will and making their decisions accordingly, and as such, it has been difficult to see myself as a target of revisionist history.

A spokeswoman for the media company said: I can confirm that Conde Nast International wont be releasing any comment about this.

A spokeswoman for Richardson did not respond to a request for comment.

Claims about sexual exploitation generally across the modelling industry are increasingly common

Models Cameron Russell and Edie Campbell have been sharing anonymous stories of harassment on their Instagram pages using the hashtag #MyJobShouldNotIncludeAbuse.

Edie Campbell (Ian West/PA)

Next to one post from an anonymous model, Russell wrote: She has asked to remain anonymous but asked that I share her words here because the photographer still works in the industry. She wants to encourage other women to speak up.

We need a way to begin breaking the silence while remaining protected. We are not talking about one, five, or even twenty men. We are talking about a culture of exploitation and it must stop.

Model Christy Turlington previously told US industry magazine WWD that harassment of photographic models is tolerated in fashion.

She said: I can say that harassment and mistreatment have always been widely known and tolerated in the industry.

The industry is surrounded by predators who thrive on the constant rejection and loneliness so many of us have experienced at some point in our careers.
Gunpowder tells the story of the persecution of Englands Catholics in the early seventeenth century and of the failed plot to assassinate the Protestant King James VI and his government and install a Catholic-friendly regime.This is a series where there is no respite from bleakness, moral messiness and horror - from the tense opening scene of Sir William Wades (Shaun Dooley) hunt for illegal Catholic priests, evoking Nazis searching for Jews in hiding, to Catesbys horror at witnessing religious persecution enacted by those of his own faith akin to what he has seen in England- namely, the burning of non-Catholics by the Spanish authorities. The latter scene demonstrates the murky moral aspect of the series- ultimately nobody is in the right and it is quite legitimate to wonder whether, had the Gunpowder Plot succeeded, one religious tyranny would have been replaced by another.The series inherent darkness is emphasised by the direction, settings and lighting - it is mostly gloomy, damp and dingy, as befits a drama which is centred on a plot in a cellar. Nonetheless, we sympathise with the plotters and their friends and allies because we are shown how terribly they suffer under the Protestant regime. The suffering inflicted on Catholics in Jacobean England is made brutally clear right from the off. Following the opening scene, the captured priest, Daniel Smith (Thom Ashley) and the owner of the house in which he was found, Dorothy Dibdale (Sian Webber) are executed in a horrendously cruel manner as Catesby and his cousin Anne Vaux (Liv Tyler) watch on. One theme which runs through the series is the strength those on the execution block or the torture rack exhibit through their faith - not one of these condemned and brutalized individuals gives in to the demands or questions of their persecutors. This makes for moving, if sometimes uncomfortable, television. The three episodes of the series follow the story of the Gunpowder Plots background, planning, execution and ultimate failure. That we know the plan is doomed to fail increases the tragedy of what we are witnessing. Catesby, played exquisitely by Harington as an angry, bitter, humiliated revolutionary, offers a rare smile in the final episode just before the plot is enacted. He and his allies are confident and inspired but the viewer knows that death, defeat and torture await them. One especially interesting aspect of Gunpowder is that we are presented with a far more complex picture of this famous event in history which we are mostly familiar with as something do with blowing up parliament and letting off fireworks every year to commemorate the foiling of the plot. In fact, the famous picture of Guy Fawkes (Tom Cullen) in the cellar is a very small part of Gunpowder. The character does not even appear until the end of the first episode, and is not as prominent as Catesby. More focus is rightly given to the background and aftermath of the plot and the persecution and complex nature of events which inform this historical moment. This series enlightens us about the period- as was a stated aim of the people involved in making it. That picture of Fawkes in a cellar is widened to include, among other things, the debate between extremism and moderation in the Catholic movement (Henry Garnet, the peaceful Chief Jesuit of England is beautifully portrayed by Peter Mullan as he remonstrates against Catesbys path) and the complex international nature of events which show how highly politics was involved in the affair (tragically, the Spanish are the ones who discover and betray the plot and allow persecuted members of their own faith to be killed for their own political gain). The series also shows us that there was a black community in England at this time, and that King James was possibly homosexual or bisexual, which many people are not aware of. We are therefore reminded that there is far more to the Gunpowder Plot than what we have been conditioned to remember. Many people besides Guy Fawkes were involved and many complex factors were at play. Though I study history, I am no expert on this period and so I cannot comment on the exact veracity of events portrayed here - but nonetheless Gunpowder does portray a very welcome, non-simplified, humanised story at odds with our general view of the plot. There has not been time enough to commend every actor in this series, but rest assured they are all of a high calibre and bring real pathos to the story. Harington, Tyler, Mullan and Mark Gatiss (as the villainous Richard III-esque schemer Lord Robert Cecil, persecutor in chief of Englands Catholics) are of particular note, though Liv Tyler deserved more screen time and a larger part in the story. Nonetheless, Gunpowder is a remarkable and complex, if depressing, piece of television.
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO THE U.S.A. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION TO THE U.S.A.



CALGARY, Alberta, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Groundstar Resources Limited (TSXV:GSA) (the Company) is pleased to announce that it intends to complete an offering of common shares in the capital of the Company (the Common Shares) at a price of $0.01 per share and/or common shares in the capital of the Company to be issued on a flow-through basis within the meaning of the Income Tax Act (Canada) (the Flow-Through Shares) also at a price of $0.01 per share, all by way of a non-brokered private placement, for aggregate total gross proceeds of up to $500,000 (the Offering) and resulting in the issuance of up to 50 million shares. Notwithstanding the foregoing, in the event that demand for the Offering is greater than anticipated, the Board of Directors of the Company may increase the size of the Offering to such amount as they may determine in their sole discretion, subject to approval of the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) regarding same. In addition, while the Company intends to seek an exemption for the anticipated pricing of the Offering, the granting of such exemption is subject to approval of the TSXV. The Offering may be completed in multiple tranches over the next few months, with the initial tranche expected to close on or about October 31, 2017.

The Company will utilize the net proceeds from the Common Shares sold pursuant to the Offering for general corporate purposes and to seek different corporate opportunities, which may involve drilling new wells, seeking a farm-in opportunity or acquiring producing assets. The proceeds received by the Company from the sale of the Flow-Through Shares is expected to be used to incur eligible Canadian Exploration Expenses (CEE) which will be renounced in favor of subscribers for the 2017 taxation year. Groundstar will be utilizing the Small Cap Company provision to allow for the conversion of eligible Canadian Development Expenses (CDE) to be converted to CEE. This permits the Company to utilize the funds for lower risk Development drilling in contrast to higher risk Exploration drilling.

The Common Shares and Flow-Through Shares will be issued on a private placement basis in the Provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and such other jurisdictions as the Company may determine in its sole discretion and will be subject to a statutory hold period of four months and a day from the applicable closing date of each tranche of the Offering. Closing of the Offering and the issuance of the Common Shares and Flow-Through Shares are subject to approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. The Offering is open to all existing shareholders of the Company and such other individuals or entities as the Company may determine in its sole discretion. It is currently anticipated that insiders of the Company will subscribe for a significant amount of the Offering.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the U.S. Securities Act) or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available.

About Groundstar Resources Limited

Incorporated in 1968, Groundstar Resources Limited is a publicly traded oil and gas company actively growing a portfolio targeting producing oil and gas assets with development opportunities and exploration upside. The Companys current portfolio of resource assets provides both near term and longer-term potential. Groundstar is quoted and trades under the ticker symbol GSA on the TSX Venture Exchange.

Contact Information:

Groundstar Resources Limited, Suite 430, 440 - 2nd Avenue SW, Calgary, Alberta T2P 5E9

www.groundstarresources.com

Stephen Hughes

587.580.9344

shughes@groundstarresources.com

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including expectations regarding the anticipated closing of the Offering and the timing thereof, the gross proceeds expected to be received in connection therewith, the price at which the shares are being issued and the anticipated use of proceeds from the Offering. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. These statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties and may be based on assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. These risks include, but are not limited to: the risks associated with the oil and gas industry (e.g. operational risks in development, exploration and production; delays or changes in plans with respect to exploration or development projects or capital expenditures; the uncertainty of reserve and resource estimates; the uncertainty of estimates and projections relating to production, costs and expenses and health, safety and environmental risks), commodity price and exchange rate fluctuation, uncertainties resulting from potential delays or changes in plans with respect to exploration or development projects or capital expenditures and uncertainties regarding whether regulatory approval for the Offering will be received and if received, on the timelines expected and at the anticipated pricing, as well as the intended use of the net proceeds of the Offering. The Companys forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof and the Company undertakes no obligations to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.
When Sydney Kings mother Christina had a professional photo shoot with her family, she expected to have some memories to take home with her  but perhaps not quite like this.

A photo from the shoot has gone viral after Sydney posted it to Twitter, accumulating over 127,000 likes.

In the image Christina had asked her children to help her spell out the word love  but they had other ideas.

Oh my gosh we really dont deserve my mom. All she wanted to do was spell out love in our family pictures. She had no idea pic.twitter.com/AP7mvtzH46  Sydney King (@SydneyKing3) October 17, 2017

My mom had no idea that we had talked about doing this and she still didnt know when it was actually happening, Sydney, 20, told the Press Association.

Sydney said she thought up the revision whilst at work with her sister. The photographer, Gabby Corner, is a family friend and was happy to play along.

During the shoot me and my sister casually whispered to my brother to do a C instead of a V and he just played along, said Sydney. She could hear us giggling but we had it so that we were staggered and she was in front so that she couldnt see us in her peripheral.

When she got the pictures back she called me and said she didnt know whether to laugh or beat us. We didnt mean it in any disrespectful way towards her and she knows that. We think the world of our mom.

Mum Christina can take heart from the fact she walked away with some very nice family photos too.

(Gabby Corner)

Shes not quite sure how she feels about it going viral, added Sydney. She says its weird that so many people have seen it and it kind of freaks her out but I secretly think she finds it funny.

I never thought it would reach this many people but if it brightened someones day a little then thats great.

Indeed it has.
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Ottawa, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Restaurants Canada is pleased the government plans to enhance the Working Income Tax Benefit (WITB) by $500 million per year, as announced in todays fiscal update.

As much as we dont like the absence of a plan to rein in the deficit, we believe budgetary measures that encourage work are a great way to help low-earning Canadian families and the economy, said David Lefebvre, Vice President, Federal and Quebec for Restaurants Canada. Our association has been a fan of the WITB since it was first introduced in 2007 because it is an efficient tax measure to boost the earnings of working Canadians while also being positive for business competitiveness.

Other well-meaning policies, intended to help low-earning Canadians, such as too-high, too-fast minimum wage increases, result in less hours and less work for entry level workers who may be part of high income families. Because the WITB is based on family income, it directly benefits those most in need.

The WITB also provides incentives to work, which is valued by restaurant operators, who are experiencing labour shortages in many parts of the country.

Small business tax changes

With regard to small business tax changes, the government is continuing to give signals that it is listening to concerns raised by Restaurants Canada and other small business groups. Though many details have not yet been unveiled, the Finance Minister reiterated that government will facilitate in family business transfer, and respect the need for capital accumulation for business development and to prevent hardship due to seasonality and downturns. As much as the initial tax change proposals announced on July 18 were unacceptable, government appears to now be willing to take into account some realities of family businesses. As they stand, proposals are not perfect but they are much better than a few months ago.

Restaurants Canada is still concerned that proposed tax changes will affect retirement tax planning by restaurateurs, and that it could result in prohibitive tax rates. Restaurants Canada also awaits final details on in-family business transfers.

Restaurants Canada is a growing community of 30,000 foodservice businesses, including restaurants, bars, caterers, institutions and suppliers. We connect our members from coast to coast, through services, research and advocacy for a strong and vibrant restaurant industry. Canadas restaurant industry directly employs 1.2 million Canadians and serves 18 million customers every day.

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/4feb6253-f035-44d1-9fb8-44d9ecb27371
Last week, a delegation of executives from major German corporations met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Such delegations are unremarkable. Sometimes they travel together to meet with foreign leaders. It is sometimes routine, sometimes a courtesy. But occasionally, it has significance. In the case of Russia-Germany relations, such meetings are always potentially significant. Unsteady Relations There are two relationships that are central to Germany. One is with the European Union, the other is with the United States. Neither relationship is stable right now. Brexit, the Spanish crisis, German feuding with Poland and the unsolved economic problems of southern Europe are tearing at the fabric of the European Union. The Germans and the EU apparatus claim that none of these threaten the fundamental health of the bloc, and point to the fact that, almost a decade after 2008, Europe appears to be achieving very modest economic growth.

The Germans, of course, know the dangers that lie ahead, even if Brussels does not. Many of the EUs problems are political, not economic. Poland and Germany have butted heads over the tension between the right to national self-determination and EU rules. This is also what Brexit was about. Spain is locked in a dispute over the nature of a nation and the right of a region to secede, while the EU considers what role it should play in the domestic matters of a member state. And although southern Europes problems are economic, the fact that Europe has eked out minimal growth means neither that such growth is sustainable nor that the growth rate comes close to solving the Continents deep structural problems. As the de facto leader of the EU, Germany has to appear confident while considering the implications of failure.

The German relationship with the United States is at least as unsettled  and not just because of President Donald Trumps personality. The strategic and economic situation in Europe has changed dramatically since the early 1990s  when the Soviet Union fell, Germany reunified and the all-important Maastricht treaty was signed  but Germanys structural relationship with the U.S. has not. Both are members of NATO, but they have radically different views of its mission and its economics. Germany has the worlds fourth-largest economy, but its financial contribution to NATO doesnt reflect that. Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) attends a meeting in Sochi on Oct. 12, 2017, with heads of German companies. Chairman of the Management Board of METRO AG Olaf Koch is seen in the background. MAXIM SHEMETOV/AFP/Getty Images Then there is Russia. The American policy toward Russia has hardened since the Democratic Party adopted an intense anti-Russia stance following the presidential election  more intense even than that of the Republican Party, which has always been uneasy with Russia. The Ukraine crisis continues to fester while U.S. troops are deployed in the Baltics, Poland and Romania. This has widened rifts within the EU. Germany isnt interested in a second Cold War; Eastern Europe believes its already in one. The Eastern Europeans are increasingly alienated from the Germans on the issue and more closely aligned with the Americans. At a time when German relations with key Eastern European countries are being tested, the added strain of U.S. policy in the region is a threat to German interests. Germany wants the Russia problem to subside. The U.S. and its Eastern European allies think the way to accomplish that is through confrontation. A Most Dangerous Option Germanys foreign policy has remained roughly the same since 1991, even as the international reality has changed dramatically. This is forcing Germany toward a decision it doesnt want to make. But it must consider what happens if the EU continues to disintegrate and if European foreign policy and politics continue to diverge from its own. It must consider what happens if the U.S. continues to shape the dynamics of Europe in such a way that Germany will have to confront American enemies with it, or refuse to do so. This isnt just about Russia  we can see the same issue over Iran.

Germany cant exist without stable economic partners. Never has it been self-sufficient since it reunified . It must explore alternatives. The most obvious alternative for Germany has always been Russia, either through alliance or conquest. Germany needs Russian raw materials. It also needs the Russian market to be far more robust than it is so that it can buy more German goods.



But Russia is incapable of rapid economic development without outside help, and with the collapse of oil prices, it needs rapid development to stabilize its economy. Germany needs Russias economy to succeed, and what it has to offer Russia is capital, technology and management. In exchange, Russia can offer raw materials and a workforce. An alignment with Russia could settle Eastern Europe in Germanys orbit. With the way things are going, and given Germanys alternatives, the Russian option is expensive but potentially very profitable.

But Germany has a problem with Russia. Every previous attempt at alignment or conquest has failed. Building up the Russian economy to create a robust market for German goods would certainly benefit both countries, but it would also shift the balance of power in Europe. Right now, Germany is militarily weak and economically strong. Russia is moderately powerful militarily and economically weak. An alignment with Germany could dramatically strengthen Russias economy, and with it, its military power. Having moved away from the United States and de-emphasized military power in the rest of the European peninsula, Germany could find itself in its old position: vulnerable to Russian power, but without allies against Russia.

The corporate chiefs trip to Russia is not a groundbreaking event, nor does it mark a serious shift in German policy. But it is part of an ongoing process. As the international reality shifts from what Germany needs, Germany must find another path. In the short term, the United States is vulnerable to a cyclical recession, and hostility toward Germany is increasing in Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe. China is facing internal challenges of its own. There are few other options than Russia, and Russia is historically a most dangerous option for Germany.
Dr. Byron Tarr

Byron Tarrs older brother Phillip Tarr and I graduated Bassa High School together in 1960. Somehow our paths diverged and the younger Byron entered my orbit in the late 60s. As Byron and I received our terminal degrees in the United States in 1972 we began long and intense conversations about Liberias past, its present and future prospects. A bond was established then and it remained firm through the vicissitudes of Liberian national life since then, broken only with his passing earlier this month. Funeral Services were held at his home village of Zondo, No, 4 District, Grand Bassa County where his remains were interred on Saturday, October 21, 2017.

As I pause to remember my friend, I extend heartfelt condolences to his family particularly his three surviving children  Stanley Byron Tarr, Seymour Bruce Tarr and Aimee Zeoweh Tarr. Your dad loved Liberia with an uncommon passion and strove all his life to make it a better country. The records of his deeds are there for public examination and evaluation.

I walked into Byrons office at the Finance Ministry in 1972 shortly after he took the job of Special Assistant/Assistant Minister of Finance for Revenues. I was on a visit home as a freshly minted Ph.D. We talked about the challenges facing the new Administration of President William R. Tolbert, Jr. I returned to my teaching job in the U.S. but we stayed in close touch.

Finance Minister Steve Tolbert directly recruited Byron and though he held titles as Assistant, then Deputy Minister of Finance for Revenues, he became a highly regarded principal adviser to Minister Tolbert. When the history of Steves effective though controversial stewardship of the Finance Ministry of the era is written, Bryon will perforce figure prominently. Remodeling the Maritime program, establishing systems for tax collection, chairing the committee that drafted Liberias first ever law toward strengthening the Auditor Generals Office, strides in government debt servicing, and creating an enabling environment for a vibrant Liberian entrepreneurial class were only some of the highlights of what transpired in the first half of the 1970s.

Two years later, I returned home with my family and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As the year 1974 came to a close tragedy struck my friend as he lost one of his twin sons to a drowning accident. Though this tragedy was the proximate cause for his withdrawal from government service and returning to the U.S. landing a job as a tax expert with the U.N. system in New York, there were also echoes of personal disillusionment with the Administration. However, by 1977 Byron was back in Liberia at the personal invitation of President Tolbert. The new Job was Comptroller General of State-Owned Enterprises with mandate to improve the sector, including privatizing some of the state enterprises. But Byrons responsibilities extended beyond public corporations, as he soon became an informal advisor to President Tolbert on matters affecting the national economy. As he brought to bear his intellect and passion for Liberia, I heard the President on several occasions marveling at Byrons skills but also remarking: You must have strong stomach to digest Byrons doses of advice.

A couple of years after Byron left the Tolbert Administration for the second and last time, the military coup detat of 1980 occurred. Byron was recruited with others to help stabilize a major national crisis. He remained engaged in the 1980s, serving briefly as Minister of Planning and Economic Affairs, a member of the National Constitution Commission that drafted what became the 1986 Constitution of Liberia, and among the founders of the Liberia Action Party/LAP along with Harry Greaves, Sr., Jackson F. Doe, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Nah Doe Patrick Bropleh.

He would soon pay a costly price for his political activities, for while he was serving as Secretary General of LAP he was arrested in 1985 by the military government of Samuel K. Doe, imprisoned and his house deliberately burned to the ground by Does soldiers. Upon his release from prison he briefly settled in the United States, but professional opportunities in short order took him further afield.

Travelling throughout the African continent and residing in several African countries for periods of time, Byrons many professional engagement included contractual assignments with the United Nations Development Program, the United States Agency for International Development, the Africa Capacity Building Foundation, the African Development Bank, the African Union, the European Union and the World Bank.

Such professional opportunities abroad did not preclude his commitment to Liberia, for as the country descended into civil war, he was in the thicket of the goings-on to contain war and restore peace to his beloved country. But it was not peace at any price that he sought. He wanted a different, reformed Liberia of greater equity and justice. Again, when the records of this dark period in Liberian history are fully uncovered Byron Tarrs uncompromising stances tending toward equity and justice will become evident. And so he became a part of at least the first interim governing arrangement during the war years, even serving briefly as Finance Minister in the Interim Government of National Unity (IGNU).

Once a semblance of peace was restored to the country, Tarr resumed his private consultancy work. He accepted membership on the Core Team and leader of the economy team preparing LIBERIA VISION 2030 long-term perspective study. His last major engagement was as founding Executive Director of the Liberian independent think tank, Center for Policy Studies/CERPS, which survives him.

Even as his health failed he was being recruited by the Liberian Senate to serve on a panel of economic experts known as the Independent Economic Review and Advisory Panel to study and advise on the parlous state of the national economy. I was visiting his home when he informed the President Pro Tempore of the Senate of his health inability and thus his decline of the offer. In the last few years of his life Byron was researching a book seeking to analyze the interrelationship of the political and economic architecture of Liberia by reviewing some three-dozen public sector reform projects Liberia and its development partners implemented between 1908 and 2008. Tentatively titled To Rouse Liberia, Long Forlorn: Overcoming Challenges to Economic Governance, the study sought to replace the politics of reform with the reform of politics.

Byron and I collaborated on a wide range of issues related to our country, among them the Vision 2030 exercise and CERPS. We provided critical editing to each others work. We even co-authored a book, Liberia: A National Polity in Transition (Published 1988). We worked well together for some 45 years in service to our ideals and to our country.

Goodbye my friend! You have played well your role! Rest in peace until we meet again!

What is your take? Please post your comments below:


Attorneys for NYPD Officer Wayne Isaacs argued in court on Monday that their client was justified in fatally shooting 37-year-old Delrawn Small in a Brooklyn intersection last July 4th because Small was a "menace" who "assaulted" their client.

Monday marked the opening arguments in the criminal trial for Isaacs, the first NYPD officer to be charged by State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in his role as Special Prosecutor in police-killing cases. Isaacs was charged with second-degree murder and first-degree manslaughter last September in connection with the alleged road rage incident in East New York, which ended with Small being fatally shot three times.

According to prosecutors, Small became upset when Isaacs cut him off "without any warning." At the next red light, Small got out of the car, despite his girlfriend's protestations, and approached Isaacs's car.

Isaacs, who was off-duty at the time, said Small punched him through his open car window before he fired. But Small's family and defense team point to security camera footage that appears to show Small falling back moments after approaching Isaacs's car.

The incident took place near the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Bradford Street in East New York, shortly after midnight on July 4th.

Defense attorney Stephen Worth took pains Monday to present Small as a large, intimidating person whom Isaacs shot in self-defense. He also argued that Small was "legally drunk" when he approached the cara position Small's lawyers dispute.

"What you are going to see is a 6'1", 237-pound man, 37 years old at the time, get out of his car, walk two lanes over to the defendant's car, and he's not walking over to have a conversation about safe driving," Worth said. "He's a menace, he's angry, he's intoxicated, and he in fact assaulted Officer Isaacs."



Wayne Isaacs, in red, leaves the courtroom with his lawyer, Stephen Worth. (Emma Whitford/Gothamist)

Victoria Davis, Small's sister, dismissed Worth's description of her brother as "propaganda."

"I believe they are painting a picture as propaganda to divert the attention from what the real story is," Davis told reporters outside the courtroom. "The real story is that Delrawn was an unarmed man, a father of three, a loving kind man who was killed unjustly by Wayne Isaacs, who had plenty of options but chose to shoot and kill Delrawn in cold blood and leave him in the street."

Prosecutors said Monday that they will show that Isaacs was "callous, [and] indifferent to what he was seeing" as Small lay dying. This is demonstrated, they argue, by Isaacs's failure to attempt CPR, instead making phone calls in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

"He got out of his car, not to check on this person, not to render medical aid, no," said Assistant Attorney General Jose Nieves in his opening argument. "This defendant stepped out of his car and coldly walked by Mr. Small's body, and barely even looked at him."

Prosecutors also entered two photographs from the scene as evidence, one of which they say shows Small in shorts and a T-shirt and "no bulge" that Isaacs might have construed as a concealed weapon. (The defense tried to block the photos, arguing that they are "shock value and shock value only," but Supreme Court Justice Alexander Jeong denied the request, instead ordering the prosecution to print them in black-and-white and crop out some of the blood.)

"There was absolutely no time for anything to happen that would legally justify this defendant's decision to pump three bullets into Delrawn Small that night," Nieves added. "Even if you believe Delrawn Small may have thrown a punch at this defendant."

Worth countered that "a guilty man flees."

"Maybe we can forgive him for not having compassion for the man who just assaulted him," he added.

Small attended a barbecue with family the night of his death, according to prosecutors, and had three alcoholic drinks "over the course of hours." He helped in the kitchen that night, they said, laughed and joked, and took pictures. Small left around 11:30 p.m. with his girlfriend, Zaquanna Albert, his fourteen-year-old stepdaughter, and his four-month-old son.

"The [defendant's] legal team is making a very tragic mistake here," said Hawk Newsome, president of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, standing outside the courtroom during a lunch break. "They are saying that somebody being punched in the face is justification for being shot three times in front of their child."

Newsome said he disputes the punch allegation.

"That's disgusting," he added, "and nobody would make that argument if it was any other situation than a black man being shot by a police officer."

Isaacs's trial will continue Wednesday.
New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman has opened an inquiry into the Weinstein Company over whether movie producer Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct allegations reflect a broader atmosphere of gender discrimination at the company. "No New Yorker should be forced to walk into a workplace ruled by sexual intimidation, harassment or fear," Schneiderman said in a statement on Monday. "If sexual harassment or discrimination is pervasive at a company, we want to know."

According to the Times, the attorney generals Civil Rights Bureau sent a subpoena to the company seeking "a long list of documents, including personnel files; criteria for hiring, promoting and firing; formal and informal complaints of sexual harassment or other discrimination based on gender or age; and records showing how such complaints were handled, according to a person who has seen the confidential subpoena and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The office is also seeking any documents and communications related to private out-of-court settlements struck with accusers, the person said."

Weinstein was fired from the company on October 8th after dozens of women came forward with accounts of being sexually harassed and sexually assaulted by Weinstein over several decades at the company. Weinstein reached at least eight settlements with women to settle sexual harassment complaints while there. In addition to the Attorney General's inquiry, the NYPD is also investigating a 2004 rape accusation against Weinstein, who is also under investigation for incidents in Los Angeles and London.

Bob Weinstein, Harvey's brother and co-founder of Weinstein Company, has also been accused of sexual harassment; his former assistant Kathy DeClesis said that he knew his brother was sexually harassing actresses and female employees throughout their working career together.

More women seem to be coming forward day by day since the first bombshell NY Times and New Yorker reports on Weinstein's behavior in early October. Today, actress Britt Marling wrote an essay for The Atlantic about meeting Weinstein in 2014 and him asking her to have a shower together: "It was clear that there was only one direction he wanted this encounter to go in, and that was sex or some version of an erotic exchange."
Four criminals were beaten to death with sticks and stones by a vigilante mob in a Bihar village, police said on Tuesday.

The incident took place in Rohtas district of Bihar, when the eight criminals were trying to flee after firing indiscriminately at a man in Koath area, said police officer Alok Kumar and added that the criminals had sought to extort money from Arun Choudhary, husband of a Rohtas District Council member Rinki Kumari.

The police said the eight men had allegedly demanded Rs 3 lakh from Rinky Devi nearly one-and-half-months ago and threatened her of dire consequences if she did not pay.

The criminals fired at Arun after he refused to pay the extortion money. The bullet missed him and injured another, Kumar said.

Locals rushed to the spot after hearing the sound of gunshots and caught four of the attackers and beat them up while the four others managed to escape.

Police took the four criminals to a nearby hospital where doctors declared them dead.

Police have registered murder case against unidentified persons in connection with the lynching, DIG Rahman said.

The identity of the four men was yet to be established, said Rahman and added that raids are being conducted to nab the other four who fled the spot.

(With agency inputs)
Taj Mahal is again at the centre of controversy, three-days after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath visited the monument in Agra.

The youths of Hindu outfits, belonging to Rashtra Swabhimaan Dal (RSD) and Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV), were caught on Monday by Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel reciting Shiva Chalisa (hymn) on the premises of the Taj Mahal.

According to media reports, the youths said that if namaz can be offered on the premises, then reciting Shiva Chalisa should be acceptable too as the monument was made over a razed Lord Shiva Temple.

Also read: SC orders demolition of parking lot near Taj Mahal, slams UP govt

According to media reports, the group while validating their actions said that the Taj Mahal was originally a Shiva temple known as Tejo Mahalaya and since Monday is a Lord Shiva day, the chanting of the hymn to Lord Shiva at Taj Mahal is justified.

The CISF later released the group after they gave a written apology for their action.

The incident comes after a BJP Member of Parliament (MP) from Kanpur, Vinay Katiyar, had claimed that the mausoleum was built on the site where once a Hindu temple stood. Katiyar had also said that Taj Mahal was called Tejo Mahalya  a Lord Shiva temple.

Senior Haryana Minister Anil Vij had also termed the monument a khubsoorat kabristan (beautiful cemetery). He had tweeted that Taj Mahal ek khoobsurat kabristan hai.

Earlier, controversial BJP MLA Sangeet Som said that Taj Mahal was built by traitors who targeted Hindus.

In a move to stem controversy over the Taj Mahal, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had said the Taj Mahal is an important tourist draw and it was immaterial who built it and for what reason.

Earlier in November, the UP government has omitted reference to the Taj Mahal from a tourism booklet published on completion of six months of the Yogi Adityanath government.
A Hong Kong court on Tuesday approved the release of two pro-democracy movement leaders  Joshua Wong and Nathan Law  who were jailed in August, the media reported.

Wong and Law were jailed after the Court of Appeals sentenced them to between six and eight months in prison, controversially upgrading their previous community service sentence for offences related to the 2014 mass pro-democracy street protests, reports CNN.

Both paid bonds worth $6,400. Wong and Law are required to report to the police weekly and cannot leave Hong Kong before their appeal on November 7, authorities said.

A third protest leader  Alex Chow, who is serving a seven-month prison term  did not apply for bail.

Wong and Law are two of the most famous protest leaders to come out of the 2014 protests, which shut down parts of central Hong Kong for more than two months.

In legislative elections last year, Law was elected the citys youngest ever lawmaker while Wong has been featured in a Netflix documentary about himself and the citys pro-democracy movement.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Monday that Washington was keen on dialogue between Iraqi government and the Iraqi Kurdish region to solve the Kurdish issue.

Tillerson made his remarks in his discussion with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi over the tension between Baghdad and the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, Xinhua news agency reported.

In a statement by the Prime Ministers Office, Tillerson said that the US supported Iraqs unity and called for the importance of adherence to the constitution.

For his part, Abadi said what Baghdad did in Kirkuk was redeployment and imposition of state power, which are legal and constitutional procedures.

We do not want to fight a battle with any (Iraqi) components, all of them are our sons, and when we entered Kirkuk we sent a clear message that the Kurdish citizens are Iraqis and we deal with them like other components, Abadi said.

The statement said that the two sides also discussed enhancing bilateral cooperation in various fields and the war against terrorism.

Abadi told Tillerson the paramilitary Hashd Shaabi unit is an official institution which is part of the Iraq institutions. We have to encourage the (Hashd Shaabi) fighters because they will be the hope for the country and the region.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson heads to Islamabad on Tuesday, a day after stating that the US has made some very specific requests to Pakistan to take action to undermine the support that the Taliban receives and other terrorist organisations receive in Pakistan.

Talking to journalists at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan on Monday, Tillerson said that in Pakistan he will discuss US demands for securing Afghanistan and its conditions for continuing their relationship.

We have made some very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support that the Taliban receives and the other terrorist organisations receive in Pakistan, he said.

And weve said in this whole strategy this is a conditions-based approach, and so our relationship with Pakistan will also be conditions-based. It will be based upon whether they take action that we feel is necessary to move the process forward of both creating the opportunity for reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan, but also ensuring a stable future Pakistan, he said.

I think the US has made it clear in terms of our support for Afghanistan, support for a sovereign, unified, and democratic Afghanistan, charting a path to peace, prosperity, and self-reliance. It is imperative at the end that we are denying safe haven to any terrorist organizations or any extremists to any part of this  the world, he said.

He said the US wants to work with regional partners to ensure that there are no threats in the region and that the strategy is a regional effort.

So were demanding others also deny safe haven to terrorists anywhere in the region. We are working closely with Pakistan in that regard as well.

He also said the US seeks a broader role for India not just in the South Asian area but beyond it as a strategic partner across the Indo-Pacific region.

Our view of the relationship with India is one thats of strategic importance not just for this specific region, but in the context of that speech it was about a free and open Indo-Pacific region stretching all the way to  from Japan to India, Tillerson said. So its a broader relationship.

Earlier, he met Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah and other senior officials at the airbase.
New Yorkers aren't strangers to ghost roommates, whether they be literal dead spirits or Craigslist randos who pay rent but never seem to sleep in the apartment. Still, if you'd like to upgrade your number of haunted bedrooms from two to seven, Staten Island's famed Kreischer Mansion is on the market, murdered mafioso ghosts and all. (We visited the place in 2015, and you can watch our tour here.)

Curbed notes that the 130-year-old home is listed for a cool $2 million. The mansion is considered one of the most haunted places in the city, thanks in part to its pretty bloody history. Balthalzar Kreischer, a Bavarian immigrant who ran a fire-brick manufacturing company, built the home in 1885, then died a year later. His sons, Edward and Charles Kreischer, subsequently feuded over their father's companyso much so that Edward allegedly shot himself in the head in the house over an argument with his brother. Then, a second mansion Kreischer built for Charles burned down, with both Charles and his wife inside.

Subsequent residents said they experienced a series of hauntings following the Kreischer deaths, with creepy spirits including both Kreischer sons, a German cook, and some small children who were locked in closets. Things got even grislier in 2005, when the house's then-caretaker, Joseph Young, was convicted of killing Bonanno family associate Robert McKelvey by stabbing him in the house's basement, drowning him in the pool, chopping up his body and burning it in the then-kitchen's oven.

Though the asking priceand $1,233 in monthly taxesis a tad steep for an allegedly haunted house, that cash also nets you seven bedrooms, three bathrooms, several dining rooms and parlors, basement and attic space, and a tiny outdoor pool. Happy bidding!
Patnaik's close aides say that to understand him, one has to understand his empathy

By Pratul Sharma/Photos Sanjay Ahlawat
The Infosys board, under new chairman Nandan Nilekani, gave clean chit to Panaya acquisition, saying there was no wrongdoing.

"After careful consideration led by our chairman, the board reaffirms the previous findings of external investigations that there is no merit to the allegations of wrongdoing," the statement said.

It also concurred with stand of former CEO Vishal Sikka on not disclosing full investigation report on the Panaya deal. Infosys founder N.R. Narayanamurthy had demanded that the probe report on the Panaya acquisition be made public.

In February, Infosys had said it will investigate claims levelled by a whistleblower in an anonymous mail to markets regulator Sebi, alleging wrongdoings by the company when buying Israeli automation technology firm Panaya.

The company had also hired Gibson Dunn and Control Risks to conduct an internal investigation into the charges which had given clean chit to the deal.

In February 2015, Infosys had announced buying the Israeli automation technology company for $200 million or Rs 1,250 crore in cash.

The Infosys board has said appropriate and timely disclosures were made on severance payments to the former CFOan issue that was flagged by the founder.

On the ongoing search for CEO, Infosys said: "The process of identifying the next CEO and shareholder consultation outreach have been initiated and are progressing well."

Meanwhile, Indias second-biggest software services exporter reported a surprise 3.3 per cent rise in second-quarter profit, beating analysts estimates.

Profit rose to Rs 3,726 crore ($573.03 million) in the three months ended September 30, from Rs 3,606 crore a year earlier, Infosys said on Tuesday.

Analysts on average had expected a net profit of Rs 3,523 crore. Revenue from operations rose 1.5 per cent to Rs 17,567 crore.

The results are the first since Vishal Sikka quit Infosys as CEO in August after a lengthy feud between the board and the company founders that also led to a reorganisation of the board. Nandan Nilekani, a co-founder and a former CEO, was named chairman with the company continuing to search for a new CEO.

The company, however, lowered its revenue growth forecast for 2017-18 to the 5.5-6.5 per cent range, from the earlier 6.5-8.5 per cent in constant currency. "During the quarter, we responded quickly to the management and Board changes through proactive communication with all stakeholders minimising any negative impact to the business and allowing us to deliver growth across all our large industry units," Infosys interim CEO and Managing Director U.B. Pravin Rao said in a statement.

On a sequential basis, the company's net profit rose 6.9 per cent and revenues by 2.8 per cent in rupee terms.
Dairy giant Amul on Monday reached out to the Indian Railways on its official Twitter handle with a business proposition to use its refrigerated parcel vans to transport Amul Butter across India.

The Railways promptly responded on the micro-blogging site, using a popular tag line of the company for the brand.

"IR will be utterly butterly delighted to get the taste of India to every Indian," the ministry's handle @RailMinIndia tweeted.

IR will be utterly butterly delighted to get the taste of India to every Indian. https://t.co/dwUGzcBhBi  Ministry of Railways (@RailMinIndia) October 23, 2017

The Indian Railways extensively uses Twitter to address passenger woes. But this could perhaps be the first time the national transporter has received a business proposition on the micro-blogging site.

"@RailMinIndia, Amul is interested in using refrigerated parcel vans to transport Amul Butter across India. Request to please advise," the dairy major had tweeted to the Railways.

@RailMinIndia, Amul is interested in using refrigerated parcel vans to transport Amul Butter across India. Request to please advise.  Amul.coop (@Amul_Coop) October 23, 2017

The Indian Railways had introduced the refrigerated van service a few years ago with an aim to facilitate the transportation of perishable commodities such as fruits, vegetables, frozen meats/poultry and chocolates, but most of the vans were lying defunct, according to a ministry official.

However, this service exists only on specific routes.

"We would certainly like to capture this traffic. Let us see what can be done," the official added.

The senior divisional manager of the Ahmedabad Division will meet officials from Amul today to discuss this, said the official.

He said the South Western Railway has some refrigerated vans, they can be repaired and used by the Railways to assist Amul.
Hollywood star Matt Damon revealed that he knew media mogul Harvey Weinstein sexually harassed Gwyneth Paltrow.

The 47-year-old star had initially dismissed the reports that he knew about the disgraced producer's misconduct towards women when the scandal first broke out.

In an appearance on Good Morning America, Damon said that he learned Weinstein had abused Paltrow from his friend Ben Affleck, who was in a relationship with her.

"I knew the story about Gwyneth from Ben, because he was with her after Brad, so I knew that story. But I was working with Gwyneth with Harvey on Ripley. I never talked to Gwyneth about it. Ben told me.

"I knew that they had come to whatever agreement or understanding that they had come to. She had handled it and she was the first lady of Miramax. He treated her incredibly respectfully. Always," the actor said.

Damon, however, said that Weinstein's womanising nature was known to the industry.

"When people say everybody knew, yeah, I knew he was an a**hole. He was proud of that. That's how he carried himself. I knew he was a womaniser. I wouldn't want to be married to the guy, but that's not my business, really. But this level of criminal sexual predation is not something that I ever thought was going on. Absolutely not."

According to Damon, Weinstein was on his best behaviour around the actor. He, however, apologised for being unaware of the misconduct that women suffered at the producer's hands.

"He didn't do it out in the open. If there was ever an event where there was something I was at with Harvey in public and he was doing this thing and I missed it, and there's some woman who was somehow assaulted and was at the Golden Globes or something and I somehow missed it, then I'm sorry."

The actor, along with actor Russell Crowe, was under fire for killing a 2004 expose by The New York Times on Weinstein's alleged history of sexual abuse, an allegation he denied.

Weinstein's previous company Miramax had produced Damon and Affleck's breakout film, Good Will Hunting.
He can dance like a dream, effortlessly beat up a band of baddies, bring down a giant wheel with a rope to save those trapped in fire, perform surgeries for Rs 5 and can even turn a toy tiger into a real one through his magic. He has now been giving tough time to the party in power at the Centre. A few dialogues on GST and demonetisation in the climax scene in his latest movie Mersal has irked the BJP and his take on medical practitioners has enraged the doctor fraternity. Mersal, however, is just another stepping stone for the 43-year-old actor who has always harbored political ambitions.

In a state where politics and cinema are strange bedfellows, after Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth, the next in the line who wants to make a mark in politics is Vijay. It is no wonder then that he has been carefully crafting his fan base like Vijayakanth did.

For the past one decade, the actor has been meticulously building up his image off screen. In 2009, Vijays fan clubs were turned into Thalapathy Makkal Iyakkama social welfare movement to help those in need. On screen too, the actor has always been playing the role of a 'leader' or 'saviour'.

In Mersal too, Vijay is portrayed as a leader of the massesa man who wants to reform the society. It takes a year for a child to be born, three years for a graduate to come out, but it takes a long time to make a leader, was one one of his dialogues from the film.

There was also a fight scene in the film in which the actor was shown walking parallel to MGR whose movie is being played in a theatre, sending the fans in to a frenzy. Mersal opens with the actor doing push ups with MGR's photos in the background. The film and all the three characters Vijay played may have been developed by the director, Atlee, but there are enough things in the movie to remind the movie goers about the actor's activism over the years.

Not just Mersal, in his earlier films like Thalaiva, Thuppaki and Kaavalan among others, Vijay always showcased himself as a leader in the making, someone who will stand with the masses and fight for them. He also lauds the Tamil pride and its culture through his dialogues. Most of his recent films had at least a few dialogues that clearly told the audience about his political ambitions.

BJPs criticisms have only catapulted him to yet another level. The dialogues in Mersal, more than Thalaiva impress a fan like me, tells Ranjith Kumar, a Vijay fan.

Not just in films, in real life too, Vijay had expressed his political inclinations in the past decade. From flying all the way to Delhi to meet with Anna Hazare during his anti-corruption crusade, meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Coimbatore during an election rally in 2014 to meeting with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Vijay has been dropping enough hints about his political ambitions.

In January this year, when the jallikattu protests was raging in Chennai's Marina beach, Vijay walked in to express his support. When every politician in the state was crying foul over the death of Anitha in Ariyalur over the NEET issue, the actor called on the bereaved family to express condolences. The pictures of both these incidents have gone viral.

While many other leading actors in the state, who have been contemplating politics, talk about corruption and welfare of people, Vijay has been trying to gain the empathy of the people. He does it through actionshe doesnt issue press statements or audio clips, like jallikattu and NEET issue. He only acts, doesn't talk, says Ranjith.

In fact, Vijays fan club, unlike any other actor in Kollywood, is huge. Launched amid much fanfare on July 26, 2009, in Pudukottai district, to carry out his philanthropic activities, his Thalapathy Makkal Iyakkam reportedly pledged its support to Jayalalithaa in 2011 elections, saying they want a change in the political scene in the state. His father S.A. Chandrasekhar then called on Jayalalithaa and expressed support. However, Vijay did not campaign or talk in favour of any political party.

In fact, Vijays indecisiveness over entering politics over the years has put him in trouble. Vijays activism on one side and his films projecting him as a leader of the masses on the other side is looked at as a reason for many of his films getting into trouble before their release. Many of his films, including Thalaiva, Thuppaki, Puli and Kaavalan faced trouble prior to release.

...I cannot tell anything about his ambitions. But I want him to be a leader. A leader can be anyone even without power, says his father Chandrasekhar. Chandrasekhar has directed several films which had strong political messages, including Paalaivana Cholai, Sattam Oru Iruttarai and Naan Sigappu Manithan In fact, Sattam Oru Iruttarai was the political launch pad for Vijayakanth in the 90s.

However, nobody knows what Vijay is capable of as the actor hasn't said a word about his ambitions. He is extremely careful while giving interviews and interacting with his fans to ensure that his public image doesn't take a beating. Of late, he is seen talking about farmers and other social issues.

The actor, however, is still an onlooker in the world of politics, but the many hurdles he faces may push him into the ring.

Mersal, meanwhile, has been raking in moolah. The film has already made Rs 200 crore.
Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed legislation that would decriminalize certain gravity knives for the second year running on Monday night, to the chagrin of police reform advocates and the knife lobby, who both say the rules on the books are arcane and punitive.

Critics in New York City say the current law, signed in 1958, falls unfairly on chefs and other tradespeople, who use folding knives for work and can purchase them easily in hardware stores. The NYPD relies on a wrist-flick test, according to advocates, meaning New Yorkers can be charged for possessing folding knives that require force to open.

The legislation vetoed Monday, which passed both houses of the State legislature in June, would have outlawed "only those knives with blades that release from their handle solely by the force of gravity," according to the official veto document. The Assembly approved the bill in a landslide 136-1; the Senate 61-1.

The Legal Aid Society recently reviewed cases where a client was arrested for gravity knife possession between July and December 2015, and found that 84 percent of those prosecuted were black or Hispanic.

In the same six month period, misdemeanor cases far outweighed felony gravity knife cases in all five boroughs. In the Bronx, for example, there were 297 misdemeanor arrests and only four felony arrests. But Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance appears to bump up misdemeanor gravity knife arrests to felonies much more frequently than the other NYC DAs. Over those six months, there were 65 felony gravity knife cases in Manhattan (and 254 misdemeanors), compared to four felony arrests in the Bronx, five felony cases in Brooklyn, five in Queens, and zero in Staten Island.

Vance has long been opposed to gravity knife reform, arguing, along with the NYPD, that the knives are particularly dangerous. "The ban has enhanced public safety, and ending it now amid highly publicized slashing incidents in our citys streets and subways is not advisable, he wrote last summer.



A folding knife. (Jim Jurica/iStock)

Mayor de Blasio told reporters Tuesday that "I think [Cuomo] did the right thing" in vetoing the bill.

"I fully subscribe to the viewpoint of the NYPD that these knives should not be out in public circulation," he said. "It's a danger."

Yet gravity knives made up less than two percent of the 2,000 weapons recovered during violent felony arrests in the second half of 2015, according to the Legal Aid Society. Belts, canes and crutches are more likely to be employed as weapons, their case history suggests.

Governor Cuomo laid out his reasoning in his official veto Monday, citing the State's "law enforcement community" being "uniform in its opposition" to the bill because, according to state police, knife-related crimes increased in 2016 even as overall crime dipped. Cuomo also vetoed legislation in 2016 because he deemed the definition of "gravity knife" confusing. This year, according to the veto, "while the bill did succeed in removing any ambiguity in the definition of 'gravity knife'.... it did so in a way that would essentially legalize all folding knives."

This, Cuomo wrote, goes "far beyond the innocent laborers carrying these knives for legitimate purposes." He laid out an attempt at a three way compromise that would have reduced the penalty for carrying a gravity knife from a misdemeanor or felony to a violation and exempt anyone who carries a gravity knife for work (the NYPD agreed to retrain its officers to identify those exempt, according to the Governor's Office).

"Unfortunately, an agreement with both houses of the Legislature could not be reached," according to Cuomo.

"We worked on reaching an agreement until the last possible moment," added Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi via email.

"Today's veto of gravity knife reform is a dark mark on our legislative process," challenged Assembly sponsor Dan Quart, a Democrat. "For the second year in a row this legislation was overwhelmingly supported by a broad and diverse coalition. And, for the second year in a row, it was vetoed by one single signature."

"The governor should not pretend as if he cannot solve this problem," added Todd Rathner, Director of Legislative Affairs for Knife Rights, an advocacy group for knife owners and sellers. "In the end Governor Cuomo chose to side with Cy Vance over the citizens of the state of New York."

"For decades, black and brown New Yorkers have been arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated for possessing a basic work knife sold at retail stores across the state," said Legal Aid Society Criminal Practice Attorney-In-Charge Tina Luongo. "Albany had a second chance to right this injustice tonight but failed to enact needed reform."
Renowned Malayalam director I.V. Sasi is no more. He was 69. He was suffering from cancer.

A veteran of over 150 films, I.V. Sasi was a well-known figure in the Malayalam film industry and his heyday were during the 1970s and '80s.

He along with his family was residing in Chennai, where he breathed his last. After he complained of breathlessness early on Tuesday, he was rushed to the hospital. But he died on the way. He was to travel to Australia on Tuesday meet his daughter.

Director with most number of movies

Some of his best known movies are: Anubhavam, Aavanazhi, Aalkkoottathil Thaniye, 1921, Mrigaya and Devasuram. He started his career as an art director for Kaliyalla kalyanam in 1968. The veteran director is credited with making the most number of films in Malayalam. He shares the honor with J. Sasikumar.

His film Avalude Raavukal helped him etch his place in the Malayalam film industry. The movie has gained a cult status over years.

In 1982, he won the National Award for the best feature film on national integration for his movie Aroodam. He had twice won the state award for best direction. He was a recipient of J.C. Daniel Award in 2015.

Yesteryear Malayalam actress Seema is his wife. Anu and Ani are his children. He met his life partner, Seema, during the shoot of Avalude Raavukal. They have worked together in over 30 films.

RIP I.V. Sasi

Condolences poured in for the veteran filmmaker. Actors Innocent, Lalu Alex, captain Raju, Suresh Gopi, Dulquer Salmaan and director Fazil and producer Liberty Basheer were some of the prominent people from the industry who mourned the death of director.

Irruppam Veedu Sasidaran was born in Kozhikode in March 1948. He entered the world of cinema as an art director after gaining diploma from Madras School of Arts. He then started working as an assistant director, and finally donned the director's hat. Vellathooval that released in 2009 was his last film. He had also worked in Tamil and Hindi film industries.
The fourth estate is an important institution of our democracy and it is the duty of the state to ensure safety and security of journalists, said the Union home ministry in a first of its kind advisory issued to all states and UTs. The fourth estate ensures that citizens are able to express their opinions freely without any fear or coercion as provided under the Constitution, says the advisory expressing concern over safety of journalists.

The immediate trigger for the advisory appears to be the shocking murder of Gauri Lankesh in Bengaluru and Shantanu Bhowmik in Agartala, and concerns being raised by certain quarters about the tardy pace of investigations. The SIT probing Lankeshs murder has failed to arrive at any conclusion so far and those demanding justice have already lost hope of nailing the real perpetrators of the crime. Lankesh, the editor of a Kannada weekly tabloid, was shot dead outside her house in Bengalurus southwest suburb on the night of September 5, sparking outrage and street protests across the country.

An advisory on safety of journalists has been issued by the centre-state division of the ministry on October 20, which has taken a note on the attacks on journalists taking place from time to time. The ministry has said that all such cases need to be investigated in a time bound manner so that the criminals are prosecuted.

The states should take all preventive and deterrent actions, said the ministry. It reminded state governments that they are already empowered to provide security to individuals based on the threat perception .

While law and order is a state subject, the Centre has been emphasising the need for a robust criminal justice system with significance on prevention and control of crime. The ministry further reminded the states of its earlier advisories on media relations issued in 2010 and May 2017, highlighting the importance of time bound investigations for speedy delivery of justice.

The home ministry has said that states need to enforce the law so that a peaceful environment prevails allowing journalists and media persons to exercise freedom of speech and expression in their professional pursuit and investigations are completed in a time bound manner and trust in the criminal justice system is maintained.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday discussed a range of bilateral, regional and global issues and expressed their "firm resolve" to end the menace of terrorism.

The two leaders also discussed ways to further the shared objective of promoting security and stability in Afghanistan.

"Furthering 'neighbourhood first' policy with a strategic partner. Prime Minister Modi receives president Ghani at Hyderabad House," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted.

"Prime Minister Modi and president Ghani discussed range of bilateral, regional and global issues, express firm resolve to end menace of terrorism," he added.

Earlier, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called on Ghani, who is here on a one-day working visit.

Ghani also met his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind. Welcoming the Afghan President to India, President Ram Nath Kovind also condemned the series of terror attacks in his country, including in the provinces of Kabul, Kandahar, Ghazni and Paktia, that have resulted in over 200 people being killed in the past week.

Kovind expressed admiration for the astute leadership that Ghani has provided to Afghanistan through difficult times and commended the Afghan President for strengthening bilateral relations between India and Afghanistan.

Kovind added that India itself has been victim of state-sponsored, cross-border terrorism for decades.

"We can fully empathise with the ongoing quest of the Afghan people to secure peace.

"India believes that whatever initiatives are taken for bringing peace in Afghanistan should be Afghan-led and Afghan-controlled," he said.

His comments come days after Afghanistan participated in the 6th Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) meeting along with the US, China and Pakistan in Muscat, Oman, on October 16 to revive stalled peace talks with the Taliban.

Ahead of his visit, the ministry had said both sides will have the opportunity to review the entire gamut of multifaceted bilateral strategic partnership, including the New Development Partnership. They would hold consultations and coordinate on furthering the shared objective of promoting peace, security, stability and prosperity in Afghanistan and efforts to combat the menace of terrorism.
The NIA on Tuesday arrested Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin's son Syed Shahid Yusuf in connection with its probe into terror funding in Jammu and Kashmir, agency officials said.

An official said: "Yusuf was arrested today in Delhi after he was called for questioning at the NIA headquarters in an old case of terror funding registered in 2011."

The arrest comes a day after Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday announced the decision to start a dialogue process in Jammu and Kashmir and named former Intelligence Bureau Director Dineshwar Sharma as its representative for the talks with all stakeholders in the state.

According to the agency official, investigation revealed that one of the accused, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, based in Syria, had allegedly transferred money to Yusuf on Syed Salahuddin's orders between 2011 and 2014.
The ongoing controversy over Taj Mahal took a fresh turn on Monday with a group of Hindu Yuva Vahini activists chanting 'Shiva Chalisa'devotional hymn dedicated to Lord Shiva in front of the historic monument.

According to a report in a national daily on Tuesday, half a dozen Vahini men led by Bharat Goswami, the Aligarh city unit president of the outfit, demanded that they be allowed to pray inside the Taj premises. Their demand was rejected by the CISF officials leading to an altercation between the two.

The Vahini men reportedly argued that the namaz, too, should be stopped at the Taj if they could not be allowed to pray. Later the activists were forcefully removed from the premises by officials.

The latest incident came two days ahead of the proposed visit of of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to the 17th century monument in the wake of the fresh controversies surrounding on it. Interestingly, the Hindu Yuva Vahini was founded by Adityanath in 2002.

The iconic structure in Agra has been in the middle of a storm ever since the BJP-led state government reportedly left out the 'monument of love' from its tourism booklet. BJP MLA Sangeet Som sparked an outrage recently when he said Taj Mahal was built by 'outsiders' and 'traitors' and that it cannot be included in Indian history. In what seemed like a damage control attempt, Adityanath said the Taj Mahal was built by blood and sweat of Indian labourers."It does not matter who built the Taj Mahal and for what reason," he had said.

Vinay Katiyar, a BJP MP from Kanpur, had claimed that the Mughal mausoleum was built on a Hindu temple which had once housed a Shivling.
The already heated up political atmosphere in Gujarat got curiouser on Monday evening amid rumours that Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi quietly met Patidar agitation spearhead Hardik Patel, who has been maintaining that he would not join the opposition and his fight was against the ruling BJP.

After local Gujarati TV channels splashed CCTV grabs of Patel entering a luxury hotel around 2 a.m. and leaving after Rahul Gandhi had checked in there, Hardik Patel admitted at a public meeting and then told reporters in the evening that he met AICC general secretary in-charge of Gujarat Ashok Gehlot, but stressed that he did not see Gandhi.

"The Congress leaders had invited me to meet them but I was at a rally in Mahisagar district. I reached very late, may be 3 am., and met Ashok Gehlot. I presented the demands of the Patidars and the issues we are concerned about," Patel said.

"It had got very late, so I put up at the hotel and left in the morning," the Patel leader said.

He stressed, "It is absolutely wrong that I met Rahul Gandhi. I will meet when he comes next. And if I want to meet him, I don't have to do so secretly. I am not meeting a terrorist, or meeting Nawaz Sharif at midnight like Narendra Modi did."

Earlier, at a public meeting in Mandal in North Gujarat, Patel said, "If BJP is a mahachor, the Congress is a chor. And if a chor's help is needed to trounce a mahachor, we will do that also."

Meanwhile, Ashok Gehlot demanded to know through a tweet how could the police or the government ask for CCTV grabs of a hotel. "I met Hardik and Jignesh in Ummed Hotel. IB, Police are checking hotel rooms. What is happening in Gandhiji's Gujarat?"

"I condemn all this surveillance being done on BJP's orders."

"Are HardikPatel and Jignesh Mevani criminals or absconders? If that is so, BJP must clear its stand. When they met BJP leaders, then their offices were not checked. Why it is being done now?," he asked.

"The rooms which have been booked in my name are being checked. We are openly saying, we have met them and will keep meeting them in future too," he said.

Interestingly, the CCTV grabs were almost simultaneously telecast by all Gujarati TV channels, each one claiming it to be an exclusive.
The foster father of a missing 3- year-old Indian girl in the US was today arrested and charged with first-degree felony injury to a child, a day after the body of a small child was found in a culvert less than a kilometre from the family's home.

[File] Sherin Mathews | AP

Wesley Mathews, 37, was arrested after he changed his story about his adoptive daughter Sherin's disappearance, Texas police said.

Mathews, who hails from Kerala, provided "an alternate statement of events" about Sherin to detectives after the body of a small child was found, police said, without providing any additional details.

He had previously claimed that Sherin went missing after he sent her outside their home at around 3 am on October 7 as punishment for not drinking her milk.

Sherin, who has developmental issues and limited verbal communication skills, was last seen outside her family's backyard in Richardson city in Texas on October 7.

Mathews reportedly adopted Sherin two years ago from an orphanage in Bihar.

He was today charged with first-degree felony injury to a child, a crime punishable by up to life imprisonment. Bond was set at USD 1 million for him, Richardson police Sgt Kevin Perlich said.

Yesterday, the Richardson Police announced that they discovered the remains of a small child in a tunnel beneath a road, expressing apprehension that it was "most likely" that of Sherin. They, however, did not confirm the identity.

The body was discovered in a culvert beneath a road with the help of search dogs. Police have not released any details about how the child died.

The body was found about one km from the house of Mathews.

"This afternoon, Wesley Mathews was arrested and charged with Injury to a Child (TPC 22.04), a first degree felony punishable by life or from five to 99 years in prison," according to Richardson Police.

"He voluntarily arrived at the Richardson Police Station with his attorney and asked to speak with detectives. He provided an alternate statement of events from those which he had given previously, regarding the disappearance of Sherin," police said.

"Mathews is currently in the Richardson City Jail and his bond has been set at USD 1,000,000. We are still awaiting a positive identification from the Dallas County Medical Examiners office for the child's body found yesterday, believed to be Sherin Mathews," a police spokesman said.

Investigators are awaiting confirmation that the body of a child found in a culvert is that of the missing girl.

The father was previously arrested and charged with felony endangerment to a child and was placed on electronic ankle monitoring. He surrendered his passport as a condition of making bond on October 9. He was later released.

Child Protective Services took custody of the Indian- American couple's other biological daughter, age 4, shortly after Mathews was arrested.

Sini Mathews, the girl's mother does not face any charges. She was in the house at the time, but was reportedly asleep and unaware of what her husband was doing, police had said earlier.

The older sibling of the missing girl will remain in foster care for at least three more weeks.

A Dallas County judge today postponed custody hearing until November 13 for the sister of Sherin to allow their father to hire an attorney.

Sherin's case also caught the attention of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

"We are deeply concerned about the missing child. Indian Embassy in US is actively involved and they keep me informed," Swaraj tweeted on October 19.

"We are closely monitoring the Sherin Mathews case. We have established contact with the community and authorities," India's Consul General in Houston, Anupam Ray had tweeted.

 PTI
Italy has pledged 7 million euros (approx. $8.2 million) to help more than half a million Rohingyas, mainly women and children, who have fled to Bangladesh to escape conflict in Myanmar, Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said.



"We are deeply concerned about the situation of the Rohingya people. During the last few weeks, over half a million people, mostly women and children, had to leave Myanmar and find refuge in Bangladesh," he said.



Alfano's remarks came as the UN and the European Union called a Donors Conference in Geneva to raise over $430 million to help the mainly Muslim Rohingya refugees who have fled a deadly military crackdown in Myanmar's Rakine state since August 25.



"In Geneva, Italy pledged 7 million euros in humanitarian aid to finance emergency relief activities to assure food, healthcare and protection by the specialised UN Agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross both in Bangladesh and in Myanmar," Alfano said.



Italy's diplomats will also work within the EU and the UN Security Council to ensure that Myanmar's security forces respect human rights, that civilians were protected and that the UN gains humanitarian access to the area, the Foreign Ministry said.



Italy will also try to help Rohingya refugees return to Myanmar as quickly as possible and "in conditions guaranteeing their security and dignity", the Ministry said.
With the amount people are now spending on their footwear, it has increased the number of people who want to look after their luxury footwear. Many...
Kalman Yeger, the Democratic and Conservative candidate for New York City Council, is calling on the city to ease issuing sanitation tickets where it is clear that the violation is a result of stray litter. This comes in the wake of an astounding increase in dirty sidewalk tickets from 28,690 in 2013 to 65,272 in 2017. New York City is giving out twice as many sanitation tickets as ever before. Its a money grab, and its just not fair, said Yeger. Meanwhile, our streets are not getting any cleaner. These summonses are just a way for the city to make money off of hardworking homeowners and I wont stand for it when I am in the City Council.

I demand that the city stop focusing on innocent homeowners and instead direct its enforcement on egregious violators, like illegal dumping, Yeger added.

Yeger has committed to meeting with the Sanitation Commissioner immediately upon taking office to discuss how the city can reduce the number of sanitation tickets issued in our community. Our city has become greedy on the backs of the taxpayers, Yeger said.

Sanitation tickets are a tax, plain and simple. I will make passing a New York City law to have a photo of each sanitation violation my top priority. No one should get smacked with a fine because a gum wrapper flew onto their property.

We need to use every tool at our disposal to clean up our streets, but not on the backs of honest homeowners and small business owners. If I am elected to the City Council, I will fight to get government off of our necks, Yeger concluded.

Kalman Yeger is the Conservative and Democratic parties nominee for City Council in Brooklyns 44th Council District (Boro Park, Midwood, and Bensonhurst).

follow us on Twitter @Yeger4Brooklyn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftpiagtP6aE&feature=youtu.be
A Queens state Senator has introduced new legislation that would require the city's massage parlors to register with the New York State Department of State, in a move that he says will help shutter establishments that also sell sex.

Filed by Senator Jose Peralta earlier this month, the bill would require all massage-therapy establishments to obtain a four-year license from the Department of State, with a penalty of $2,500 imposed on those that fail to register.

Registered businesses would also have to list their hours on a searchable database, which Peralta believes would make it easier to weed out the "bad actors."

"We've been getting a lot of complaints from constituents...because some of these locations are open past 1 a.m.," Peralta told Gothamist. "Who gets a massage at 1 a.m.? Who gets a body rub at 1 a.m.?"

While state law requires nail and hair salons to obtain businesses licenses, massage parlors have so far been able to skirt the regulation, according to Peralta, because massage-therapists are technically licensed by the Department of Education. The difference in laws has created a regulatory loophole, Peralta says, allowing plenty of illicit establishments to employ a single licensed therapist to show up in the event of a raid.

It's unclear what the change in law would mean for the sex workers currently operating out of these establishments. In recent years, raids on massage parlors have spiked, with 649 arrestsmostly of Chinese and Korean womenmade at these parlors in 2016. According to the Legal Aid Society, 91 percent of the last year's cases were against non-citizens.

"The vast majority of our clients are recent immigrants and they don't understand the licensing laws," Leigh Latimer, a supervising attorney with the Legal Aid Society who represents clients charged with prostitution, told Gothamist. "Invariably they are not advised by the boss or owner that they themselves have to be licensed to practice massage in New York."

While the NYPD promised earlier this year to focus its enforcement on johns, pimps, and traffickers, police have continued to arrest women on prostitution charges. Some worry that Peraltas bill would serve to increase these arrests.

"Our experience with massage parlors where unlicensed masseuses are working is that typically the owner and boss are not present, so when police go into these locations, they're making assumptions about who the owner is based on who is behind the desk, and they don't do much, if any, investigation about who the owner is, Latimer added. "Our concern is that this would be another layer of liability for people who are being exploited by owners, without effectuating the stated goal of the legislation."

In Peralta's view, however, the bill would have a positive impact on both sex workers and the city's massage parlors. "One, we're legitimizing these massage parlors," he said. "And two, if you are part of this and you happen to be sex trafficked, you now can blow the whistle on these guys and get some help."
PIGGS PEAK  There was probably no other way to celebrate the life of popular bus rank marshal Mzimela Maseko than for his former colleagues to strip naked during his funeral.

This is exactly what happened during Masekos funeral on Saturday near Nkomazi, where he was laid to rest. Mzimela, as he was popularly known, was a bus rank marshal as well as conductor. He was most popular for dancing completely naked, especially when drunk. Prior to the funeral, his body was taken to the Piggs Peak Bus Rank for colleagues to pay their last respects, as some of them shouted in celebration of his life as the casket was driven around. Several kombi drivers and bus rank marshals then later on Saturday proceeded to the funeral to pay their last respects. Mzimela was known in many bus ranks, including Manzini and Nhlangano. During national events such as the Marula Festival, he was known for pretending to be a police officer but used his own version of a uniform. He would carry a stick around and pretend to be the police commissioner and control crime, mainly at Buhleni during national events.

For many roadshows held at the Buhleni Business Complex, residents there said a roadshow would not be complete without seeing Mzimela dancing.

At his funeral on Saturday morning, the mourners insisted in celebrating his final moments the way he lived. Several of his former colleagues stripped naked while othersstarted spinning their vehicles. In a video that the Times has in its possession, Mzimelas naked colleagues are also seen carrying rocks while walking towards a church where the service was held. Others conducted a spinning and drifting session using the Quantums that they drove. To give him a funeral fit for a celebrated conductor, transport operators also financially contributed to his funeral. They also provided free transport for some of the mourners who wanted to pay last final respects to Mzimela. This was not the first funeral where marshals and conductors displayed disorderly conduct, as in another last year, they even threw condoms and alcohol into the grave of their colleague. Hope Shiba, the Secretary of the Pigggs Peak Mini and Midi Buses Association, described Mzimela as a dedicated worker.

He said his commitment was unmatchable and many people loved him. You will know that when he calls the customer to board the bus, it will fill up quickly, said Shiba. He commended Mzimelas former employers Siphiwo, Phumzakhele and Kwesabas for contributing towards the funeral to give him a worthy farewell. Shiba also revealed that even his friends contributed in a way that they could, to ensure that Mzimelas funeral was well catered for.
LOBAMBA  Biblical verses were thrown around as Members of Parliament (MPs) finally debated the report on the Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Bill.

A majority of the MPs supported the adoption of the report, including the four contentious clauses which had earlier caused an uproar after the Deputy Prime Ministers (DPMs) Portfolio Committee had suggested that they be removed. The clauses were unlawful stalking, flashing, abduction and incest. Dvokodvweni MP Sitezi Dlamini cited Corinthians1:7 as he justified that there was nothing like marital rape. He said the Bible stated that no wife had a right over her body and the same applied to the husband. MP Sitezi said the Bible provided that if there was a break between the couple, such should not be long and they must get back to each other. He said the spirit of the Book was sacrifice from each party which in SiSwati he said meant mnike.

However, Somntongo MP Sandile Nxumalo, who was also said to be a pastor, said verse five of the same book said there should be an agreement. Sexual intercourse is more psychological than physical and if you force someone to engage in this act, what are you trying to achieve?, wondered Nxumalo. This was after Mntfongwaneni MP Mjuluko Dlamini had wondered how the clause on marital rape had been reinstated because they had agreed that it should be scrapped. Speaking before a public gallery packed with women from various constituencies was Mhlangatane MP Mbalekelwa Ndwandwe, who said he supported the report and Bill fully.

He said people, particularly men, should learn how to properly approach a lady and propose love without stalking them. I am not the most handsome looking man, but I can guarantee you I know how to charm a lady and those men who struggle in that department should come for lessons, said Ndwandwe.

He admitted that some women were hard to ignore because females have a natural magic, but said it was crucial that men knew how to approach ladies without harassing them. Ndwandwe said parents should also take care of their children and know where they acquired expensive items like laptops, from. Maphalaleni MP Mabulala Maseko said he was more than happy that the Bill would finally be passed as he had personally been a victim of being stalked. This one woman was on my case and I even wondered what she would do if my wife was there. but I am now glad that we can also report women for stalking, said Maseko. Matsanjeni South MP Sikiza Mhlungu said he was happy that the Bill would see the light of day. He said the clause on abduction was very crucial because lately, people abused the kuteka custom under the pretext that they were marrying them, yet they were abducting young girls.




MBABANE  We want our fathers remains to be brought back to Swaziland so we can give him a fitting funeral in the land of his ancestors.

This is the plea by two children of the late sugar tycoon Dumisa Mbusi Dlamini ,who was buried in the Republic of South Africa. Mzwandile Dlamini, who claims to be the elder son of the late businessman and his brother Nhlanhla, have since filed an application at the High Court. The duo is seeking an order directing the Registrar of Births Marriages and Deaths to issue a death certificate in respect of the late businessman. The first respondent in the matter is the Master of the High Court. Mzwandile and his brother alleged that the businessman was born on June 25, 1953 and he died intestate and of natural causes in Pretoria, Republic of South Africa. They informed the court that while residing in South Africa, their father had several farms and hotels both in Swaziland and in South Africa.

According to the applicants (Mzwandile and Nhlanhla), their father was unbeknown to them buried in the Republic of South Africa. The applicants are desirous of returning the remains of the deceased to Swaziland so that they can give him a befitting burial in the land of his ancestors, submitted the applicants. In their application, they further pointed out that they wanted to open an Estate file for Dlamini in Swaziland, where he owed substantial property consisting of farms, houses, cattle and numerous immovable assets. They informed the court that they had been advised and verily believed that in order to do so, they have to be in possession of the death certificate of their father, indicating that he was indeed no more. We have approached the Master of the High Court and have been advised to obtain the deceaseds death certificate for purposes of opening an Estate file for him, alleged the duo in their papers.

They claimed that they were, however, unable to find the documentation and or his identification documents which they believed were non-existent. In the past, there was confusion over the sale of the businessmans farm at Picardi and Metlock Farm in Big Bend, as some of his sons warned would-be buyers to desist from purchasing the farm, pending the disbursement of the estate of Dlamini. The matter is still pending at the High Court.
LOMKIRI  Furious SCU students yesterday set Minister Dumisani Ndlangamandlas luxurious house on fire.

SCU is an acronym for Swaziland Christian University. Ndlangamandla, who is the Minister of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT), was in Nhlangano when the assailants struck. According to eyewitnesses, Elvovo Dube and Siphamandla Xaba, the students arrived at the ministers home, which is still under construction, at around 9:30am, armed with three car tyres, matches and what appeared to be a flammable liquid. One student who stays adjacent to the ministers house was said to have showed the about 100 students the politicians home. The students were singing political songs while moving towards the house. As this happened, Xaba, Dube and two of their colleagues, were working outside the house. What happened next left them traumatised.

The students entered the home in song, opened the aluminium sliding door and tried to light a fire. After noticing that the fire did not ignite, the students went back to reignite the fire and poured the flammable liquid to ensure that it did not go off. Xaba and Dubes attempts to reason with the students proved futile as all hell broke loose. The students used stones and anything they could lay their hands on to further vandalise Ndlangamandlas house, leaving it with shattered windows and a shattered glass door. The garage door was also not spared as the students used an axe they took from the house to vandalise it. The shocked Xaba narrated that they took to their heels after the students started throwing stones at them. He narrated that while some pelted the house with stones, others were standing in the middle of the road singing.

A car that was driving past the ministers house was almost set on fire, as students were stopped by others in a bid to set it alight. A tyre had already been put on top of the car bonnet and all that was left was setting it on fire.

As the flames got bigger, the students are said to have proceeded to block the road. They lit another tyre in the middle of the road by the Hilltop traffic circle and further placed rocks, blocking the road to SCU. As they did that, the four workers who stay at the ministers home swiftly connected a pipe to a tap and put out the fire that had already reached the roof. Had we waited a moment longer, the whole house would have caught fire, Xaba said.

When this reporter arrived at the scene, two tyres were found in the sitting room but they were not lit. Right outside the glass door were remains of another car tyre. The garage door had several slashes which resulted from it being hacked with the axe taken from the ministers house.

There was smog in and outside the house and windows were smashed. The incident left Xaba and Dube terrified as they never thought the students would ever do such a thing. They reported the matter to the police, who promptly attended to the incident. Found at the scene was the dejected ministers wife, Phindile Ndlangamandla, who had a tough time putting her emotions to words. When students burnt the house, she was at work. She stated that after she saw the house she felt shuttered and added that they were looking forward to moving in early next year. She failed to understand why the students resorted to vandalising their house and added that the construction of the house started in March. Minister Ndlangamandla could not state the value of his house or how much damage was caused. He said he had not done an assessment of the damages but stated that it was huge as the students vandalised expensive items. When asked if he would lay any charges against those responsible, he said the matter involved criminal elements and such had to be dealt with by the law.

We hope the police will do their work as they are currently investigating the matter, the minister said. The minister further stated that the law had to take its course with regard to those responsible, and added that it should be a lesson to everyone that things did not end with people committing crimes. Recently, Swaziland College of Technology (SCOT) students vandalised and looted food from the institutions kitchen during a strike, where they were demanding that the administration conducts Student Representative Council (SRC) elections among other issues. This resulted in the college shutting down for about two weeks and three students being arrested and charged in connection with the crimes.

In September, students from the University of Swaziland (UNISWA), Luyengo Campus, overturned a police vehicle during a strike where they were demanding their allowances. They further vandalised university property and this led to the UNISWA Senate shutting down the institution for about two weeks.

Last month, students from Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (LUCT) hit a police vehicle with open hands, while others attempted to overturn it during a strike over allowances.

The vehicle was attempting to enter the institutions gate to deliver food for officers who were on duty.
As U.S.-allied fighters hurtle down the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, a showdown could ensue between the U.S. and Russia, whose allies are racing to take over the same strategic oil-rich territory from the Islamic State group.

While the two sides will likely avoid a direct confrontation, the capture of Raqqa by the U.S.-backed forces, followed by their swift seizure of Syria\s largest oil field from IS, has irked Damascus, which needs the oil to boost its flagging economy.

As the rival international coalitions compete to defeat the militants and snap up oil and gas fields, the Russian military has issued a stream of angry statements, accusing the U.S. of colluding with the Islamic State and other extremist groups in a bid to stymie the government\s advances.

Both the U.S. and Russia have embedded special forces with their respective partners and are supporting their advances with aggressive airstrikes. They have so far avoided any significant confrontations by maintaining talks and a hotline intended to prevent midair and ground incidents.

Ryan Dillan, spokesman for the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition, said contacts with Russia were continuing to avoid friction on the ground around Syria\s Al-Omar oil field, which was seized by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces on Sunday. But he indicated the coalition was prepared for any possibility.

"We are prepared to defend our partners if they are attacked, whether by ISIS fighters or by anyone else. We certainly don\t want to come to that and we will continue to de-conflict with our Russian partners," he told The Associated Press on Tuesday. He suggested the SDF would continue to march south into the town of Boukamal on the Iraqi border after consolidating their gains, fueling concerns of conflict between the two groups and their superpower sponsors.

The stakes are high and the two sides have exchanged accusations of firing on one another in the past.

As the Islamic State group sheds its hold on territory, Iranian- and Russia-backed Syrian government forces have been gaining ground on the western bank of the Euphrates River, while the U.S.-backed SDF is advancing on the eastern bank and has already seized a major natural gas field and other smaller oil fields in addition to Al-Omar.

The Al-Omar field, which before the war produced around 9,000 barrels a day, is a major prize for both sides, particularly the Syrian government whose coffers have been decimated by the country\s war, now in its seventh year.

The Syrian government and the Kurds have maintained a complicated relationship throughout Syria\s war, mostly refraining from fighting one another while some rebels have accused the Kurds of being secretly aligned with the Syrian president. But U.S. support in the fight against IS has emboldened Syria\s Kurds, who now control nearly 25 percent of Syrian territory and have expanded into non-Kurdish, Arab-dominated areas, unsettling Damascus.

Their capture of Raqqa, the former heart of the Islamic State group\s so-called caliphate, was a highly prestigious win and has further raised their profile. Syrian state-run media ignored reports about the U.S.-backed force\s capture of Raqqa for days, and it\s not clear how Syrian troops will respond to their seizure of the Al-Omar field.

Both sides have upped the rhetoric, and have started talking about a possible confrontation.

"We don\t consider any town to be liberated before the Syrian army enters it and raises the Syrian flag over it," Syrian Information Minister Mohammad Ramiz Turjuman said in an interview with the RIA Novosti news agency on Monday.

A prominent Damascus-based Syrian lawmaker went even further.

"We will confront any side that stands in the way of the Syrian Arab Army and its allies recovering any area they want," said Khaled Abboud, whose views reflect government thinking.

Ahmed Abu Khawla, commander of the Deir el-Zour military council leading the battle for the SDF, said the goal was to completely liberate the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, adding that his troops did not wish to clash with any party other than IS at this stage.

"We were determined to get this oil field. We are expecting everything. We can see clashes and we have taken our precautions. Our project is to liberate the eastern bank  all of it," he said.

"We are ready for all solutions: political, diplomatic or military," he added.

Some have suggested the SDF now has enough cards to bargain with the Syrian government in future negotiations.

"I do expect the Assad regime will pressure the SDF to relinquish control of the oil field in return for some form of financial or energy support from the regime," said Jennifer Cafarella, lead researcher at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. She said Russia, Iran, and Assad were likely preparing to cut a strategic deal with the main Kurdish militia for the future governance of eastern Syria.

"Russia and Assad could actually demand limits on the U.S. presence in eastern Syria as a condition of a deal," she said.

Hassan Hassan, a Syria expert who co-authored a book about the Islamic State group, said he did not think there would be a showdown.

"We assume the SDF will continue to control the oilfield and surrounding areas if Russia sticks to the de-confliction understanding with Washington, which stipulates that they avoid attacking the other side in a certain area once the other side expels ISIS from it," he said.

"The regime would have wanted to control the oilfields, but the SDF checkmated it," he added.

SOURCE: AFP
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Bethlehem

Town Board and supervisor candidates agree that preserving open space and the historic character of hamlets like Slingerlands in the face of pressure from commercial development would be their top priorities if elected in November.

Some just have different ideas on how to get there.

The six candidates, four of them vying for two open town board seats and two for the supervisor's office, sat down Monday at Town Hall for two hours to participate in a forum focused exclusively on land-use planning, zoning law and historic preservation policies.

All agreed the town's character - a mix of walkable hamlets like Delmar and Slingerlands along with more quiet suburban and rural residential areas in Glenmont and Selkirk - sets Bethlehem apart from other towns like Colonie and Clifton Park that host large-scale commercial development and have much worse traffic woes.

But to maintain those attributes, the town needs to revisit its comprehensive plan completed in 2005, the candidates said.

"We really need to look at updating it," said Republican town board candidate James Foster. "It's not exactly where we want to be. We need to reevaluate it seriously."

The plan, which was designed to be updated every five or 10 years, never could have envisioned the 2008 financial crisis or the fallout from a controversial 2014 tax re-assessment on vacant land that led many large family landowners to sell.

Several large parcels that have been acquired by developers eager to build new homes and apartment buildings in one of the Capital Region's most desirable school districts.

"We can't stop change, but we can manage it better," said town board hopeful Democrat Daniel Coffey.

Monday's event, which followed a more general town election candidate forum held last week, was organized by the Bethlehem Alliance for Historic and Community Preservation.

Although there was little debate for the need for historic preservation, the candidates were generally wary of supporting an outright moratorium on new development, which was done in 2004 as the comprehensive plan was being drafted.

Although such a move is allowed under state law, the candidates are concerned about the ripple effect a building stoppage would have on local contractors, some still rebounding from the 2009 recession.

"I think it should be a last resort," said George Harder, a Democratic town board candidate.

The most contentious issue is the idea of creating an open space fund for the town to protect undeveloped land from construction - and how such a fund would be financed.

The town of Warwick in Orange County has a community preservation fund that buys land and development rights using money raised by a real estate transfer tax on property sales.

Such town taxes require state Legislature approval and subsequent OK by the town board and later by citizens through a town-wide referendum to be enacted, so they are difficult to put in place. A recent push by Bethlehem's state legislators to pass an enabling bill failed this past session.

David VanLuven, a Democrat and current town board member running for supervisor, says open space funds are difficult to sustain on grants and private donations alone.

The town could exempt average home purchases from the tax to ensure that it didn't discourage first-time home buyers and affordability of living in town.

"Are we going to be serious about creating an open space fund, or are we going to rely on bake sales to raise millions of dollars?" VanLuven said.

Gary Fish, a Republican opposing VanLuven, disagreed.

"I do not think that the government should be in the business of purchasing land," Fish said.

Democrat Maureen Cunningham, running for town board, says the key to encouraging economic development without eating up too much open space or overrunning town services is to focus on enhancing the town's existing assets such as Henry Hudson Park on the Hudson River and hamlets like Delmar, which is undergoing a $3 million streetscape project that adds new sidewalks, curbs, lighting and landscaping along Delaware Avenue.

"I think when you beautify an area it's always going to make people want to go there," Cunningham said.
Albany

A meeting on a proposed electrical microgrid from the state plant on Sheridan Avenue in Albany will be held from 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Albany Public Library.
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Albany

A now-shelved plan to store oil barges on the Hudson River south of the Capital Region would face added state scrutiny, under a bill signed Tuesday by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The new law gives the state Department of Environmental Conservation added power to consider potential environmental and waterfront impacts of transporting petroleum on state waterways like the Hudson, including the power to ban tanker storage from certain areas.

"We are taking concrete steps to preserve the beauty of this natural resource as well as protect the New Yorkers who live along it," said Cuomo on Monday.

The law drew support from a broad coalition of environmental groups and elected officials along the Hudson who had opposed a plan to store up to 43 barges  each of which could potentially contain enough oil to fill six Olympic-sized swimming pools  at anchor along 70 miles of the Hudson between Kingston and Yonkers.

"The state is in a much stronger position to keep future anchorages from being sited anywhere along the Hudson River," said state Assembly member Didi Barrett, a Democrat from Columbia and Dutchess counties. "An increase in petroleum tankers would pose a direct threat to coastal fish and wildlife, local drinking water, the safety of waterfront communities, and economic development in our beautiful region."

Environmental leaders praised the law. "Governor Cuomo has taken bold and decisive action," said Scenic Hudson President Ned Sullivan. "Now, we call on the Department of Environmental Conservation to do its part by issuing regulations to protect the Hudson River."

Said Eric Weltman, a Brooklyn-based senior organizer with Food & Water Watch, "Governor Cuomo has, once again, prioritized New York's health and the environment over the profits of the fracking industry."

DEC could create anti-tanker zones based on factors including navigational hazards; environmental conditions; presence of aquatic and wildlife habitats; proximity to waterfront communities; and federally or state identified environmental remediation sites, according to the law.

In June, faced with the opposition and a wave of more than 10,000 submitted comments, the U.S. Coast Guard shelved its review of the tanker proposal, which had come from the shipping industry.

Recently, the Coast Guard also announced it will hold a series of public meetings to consider navigation and safety issues on the Hudson. Public planning sessions are scheduled in Albany on Nov. 15-17 for what is called a Ports and Waterways Safety Assessment.

Industry groups say more anchorages are needed to deal with increased commercial trade on the Hudson, fueled in part by a potential surge in crude oil shipments resulting from the lifting of the U.S. export ban in late 2015.

Oil has been traveling down the Hudson from the Port of Albany, brought in by train from the Bakken fracking fields of North Dakota.

A slump in global oil prices has stemmed the flow over the last year, but should prices again rise, shipments through Albany would likely resume.

The anchorage plan is being requested by the Maritime Association of the Port of New York/New Jersey, the American Waterways Operators and the Hudson River Pilots' Association.

Environmental opponents have questioned whether the long-term storage aspect of the plan would allow owners of oil barges to park them temporarily in order to profit when prices start to rise.
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More than 200 locales submitted formal bids to house Amazon's second North American headquarters and become the new Seattle -- including several of Seattle's neighbors.

The online giant announced Monday it received 238 proposals from cities and regions eager to host "HQ2," a $5 billion investment that Amazon says will bring 50,000 high-paying jobs to the winning city.

RELATED: A bird's-eye tour of Amazon's Seattle campus

When Amazon announced its search for a second home on Sept. 7, the company included a list of requirements: a city with over 1 million people, a business-friendly environment, the ability to attract tech talent, and "communities that think big and creatively when considering locations and real estate options." Amazon said it would consider cities that offer a downtown location, but the company also insisted it isn't wed to the idea of duplicating their Seattle campus.

Hundreds of cities and regions made their cases before Thursday's deadline to submit proposals.

Some were distinctive: Calgary, Alberta, put up a billboard Thursday announcing the city would "fight a bear" for HQ2, while New York turned the city's prominent buildings "Amazon orange" the night before the deadline.

King and Snohomish counties were among the local areas submitting a bid, which touted the region's "world-class workforce," ''unbeatable lifestyle" and "sustainable environment with a growing public transportation infrastructure." The King County/Snohomish County proposal offered 10 sites to choose from: Arlington and Marysville, Auburn, Bellevue, Bothell, Everett, Kenmore, Lynnwood, Renton, Tukwila and the Tulalip Tribes' reservation.

Other cities made news simply by announcing they wouldn't make a bid.

"Blindly giving away the farm isn't our style," San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff wrote in a joint letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Wednesday. "It's hard to imagine that a forward-thinking company like Amazon hasn't already selected its preferred location. And if that's the case, then this public process is, intentionally or not, creating a bidding war amongst states and cities."

RELATED: What is Jeff Bezos doing?

Little Rock, Arkansas, preemptively broke up with Amazon in a full-page ad in the Bezos-owned Washington Post Thursday morning.

"Amazon, you've got so much going for you, and you'll find what you're looking for," the ad read in part. "But it's just not us."

The company will make a decision on its new home sometime in 2018.

Founded by Bezos in 1994 as an online bookstore before growing into the world's third-largest retailer, Amazon has transformed Seattle, particularly the city's South Lake Union neighborhood, which houses most of the company's current 33-building headquarters and 40,000 employees.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Seattlepi.com reporter Stephen Cohen can be reached at 206-448-8313 or stephencohen@seattlepi.com. Follow Stephen on Twitter at @scohenPI.
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David Letterman was never known as a particularly political comedian, preferring a detached, irony-drenched tone that favored the surreal and silly over topical humor. But there was an unmistakable political tint to much of Sunday night's ceremony to present Letterman with the Mark Twain Prize for American humor.

Several of the comedians honoring Letterman took shots at President Donald Trump.

Late night host Jimmy Kimmel jokingly blamed Letterman for helping to bring Trump to power.

"It's like you went out for cigarettes one day and left us in the hands of our abusive, orange stepfather," Kimmel quipped.

He praised Letterman, recalling a monologue he delivered on his show shortly after the 9/11 attack.

"You let us know it was OK to move on and OK to laugh again," Kimmel said. "Dave, you led the way for all of us."

But Kimmel also noted that in that same monologue, Letterman offered glowing praise to then-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who went on to become a Trump supporter.

"Well Dave, we all make mistakes sometimes," Kimmel said.

A comedian-turned-senator, Al Franken, thanked Letterman for a post-retirement series of videos that he and Letterman recorded together designed to raise awareness on climate change. Comedians Martin Short and Steve Martin, a previous Mark Twain honoree, needled Letterman about his bushy white retirement beard with a line touching on the country's current divisive political atmosphere.

"Dave has always had excellent instincts. What better time than now to choose to look like a Confederate war general," Steve Martin said.

Speakers Sunday night included comedians John Mulaney, Amy Schumer and Jimmie Walker.

 Associated Press

AG subpoenaes Weinstein firm

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office has subpoenaed the Weinstein Company as it probes any potential violations of state civil rights law or New York City human rights law in the wake of sexual harassment and assault allegations against former executive Harvey Weinstein.

Schneiderman's civil rights bureau issued the subpoena on Monday, according to a person familiar with the investigation. The subpoena seeks all documents, records and correspondence related to all complaints, formal or informal, relating to sexual harassment or other gender- or age-based discrimination against any employee or manager, the person said. The subpoena also seeks documents concerning how complaints were handled, whether a formal investigation was initiated and all records relating to any settlements.

In addition, the subpoena covers documents related to hiring, promotion, casting, selection, rejection and termination criteria for applicants or employees.

"No New Yorker should be forced to walk into a workplace ruled by sexual intimidation, harassment, or fear," Schneiderman said in a statement. "If sexual harassment or discrimination is pervasive at a company, we want to know."

According to The New York Times, which first reported on the subpoena Monday, attorney David Boies, who has represented Weinstein and the Weinstein Company, has said the company and its board were aware of as many as four payouts to women in exchange for their silence about sexual harassment allegations.

Allegations have piled up against Weinstein in recent weeks following stories in the Times and the New Yorker.

Schneiderman isn't the only law enforcement official interested in Weinstein. Police in New York and other cities are investigating sexual assault allegations, according to published reports.

Weinstein, a co-founder of the Weinstein Company, was fired earlier this month.

 Matthew Hamilton

Stamos proposes at Disneyland

John Stamos picked "the happiest place on earth" to get engaged over the weekend.

The 54-year-old Stamos is engaged to 31-year-old actress Caitlin McHugh.

"I asked ... she said yes! ... And we lived happily ever after." The post included a drawing of the couple standing in front of Sleeping Beauty's castle at Disneyland.

He proposed after showing McHugh romantic scenes from Disney films.

 Associated Press
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Hurricane damage in Puerto Rico is having an effect on Capital Region hospital supplies.

The situation is not affecting patient care or alarming anyone  yet. But a shortage of so-called Mini-Bags filled with fluid for diluting and administering intravenous medications has hospital pharmacy managers getting creative, while they keep tabs on the status of the supplier outside San Juan.

IV solutions and Mini-Bags are kind of a staple for us, said Michael Pasquarella, pharmacy director at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady. Itd be like going to the grocery market and not being able to buy salt and pepper.

Ellis uses hundreds of Mini-Bags a day. St. Peters Health Partners, which operates four hospitals in Albany and Troy, goes through thousands daily.

Like most hospitals in the country, they get their Mini-Bags from Baxter, a multinational company that makes them at a plant in Puerto Rico, where production has been halted since Hurricane Maria hit the island on Sept. 20. According to Pasquarella, who has kept track of Baxters status through conference calls with company officials, the Puerto Rico plant had been producing 250,000 Mini-Bags a day.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recently allowed Baxter to import Mini-Bags from its plants in Ireland and Australia. But with 65 percent of American hospitals needing to stock up, Pasquarella expects competition among buyers to be high.

Statewide, there is a heightened level of awareness among hospital officials about the Mini-Bag production stoppage and pending shortages, said Courtney Burke, chief operating officer of the Healthcare Association of New York State, a trade association.

Its not at a crisis level yet, Burke said. Its being managed pretty well now.

Hospital officials said they are accustomed to adapting to various drug shortages on occasion.

Ellis is addressing the Mini-Bag shortage through efforts like filling its own small bags with solutions of dextrose or saline, asking doctors to switch patients to oral medications as soon as possible and conserving Mini-Bags for situations where nothing else is appropriate.

The additional work requires more staff hours, but Pasquarella said so far the pharmacy has been able to pull regular pharmacy employees off less critical tasks.

Unfortunately, theres no script here, we have to take some things as we go and adjust accordingly and safely, he said.

In talks with company officials, Pasquarella said hes not confident Baxters Mini-Bag production will pick up soon. The company is operating on generator power to produce two of 20 products made in Puerto Rico, he said. Employees are not making it to work, and the companys primary focus is getting its products to residents of the island.

HANYS plans to speak with state officials Wednesday about what might be done to secure more supplies, Burke said.
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ALBANY  A state Senate task force has called for a comprehensive plan to combat Lyme disease and other tick-borne illness, as well as a legislative commitment to fund research and arm patients with information needed to advocate for adequate treatment.

A report released Tuesday, titled Ticking Time Bomb, follows a hearing in August at which patients told the Senate Task Force on Lyme and Tick-borne Diseases about agonizing pain, loss of memory and motor skills, and financial ruin due to delayed diagnoses and a lack of effective treatments.



The report comes during a year in which it wasn't Lyme disease, but the rare, tick-borne Powassan virus that made headlines. There were four cases this year, including three in Saratoga County. The illness killed a 74-year-old Gansevoort man.

Lyme disease is the most common illness spread by ticks in New York, with 7,000-8,000 cases annually. Other diseases carried by ticks are also on the rise in the Capital Region, including anaplasmosis and babesiosis; they cause similar symptoms and can be fatal if not treated.

The majority of Lyme disease cases are treated easily with antibiotics. But a battle has raged over how to treat the 10 percent to 20 percent of patients who have lingering symptoms.

According to an influential doctors' group, the Infectious Disease Society of America, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome is an aftereffect of infection. A separate group, the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, subscribes to the controversial notion that the bacteria that causes the illness lingers in the body undetected, requiring long-term antibiotic treatments. Overuse of antibiotics is a concern, because it causes the medications to become less effective as germs become resistant to them.

The conflict has confused sick New Yorkers who suspect they may have Lyme disease or another tick-borne illness, but are not sure if they have been properly diagnosed or tested.

Ticks spread disease through fall Ticks are still active - in fact, fall is prime time for adults to be out, said Bryon Backenson, director of the State Health Department's Vector Surveillance Unit. The adult ticks are more likely to carry disease, but also more likely to be detected on your skin, he said. "People should still take precautions," he said. Here's the Health Department's advice: Make sure shirts are tucked in and also tuck pants into socks to prevent ticks from accessing the skin.

Wear long-sleeved shirts and pants.

Wear light-colored clothing that will make it easier to spot and remove ticks.

Check for ticks every two to three hours while outdoors, and brush off any ticks before they attach.

Bathe or shower as soon as possible after coming indoors.

Perform a full-body check multiple times during the day to ensure that no ticks are attached.

If you need to remove a tick, pull the tick straight up with fine-tipped tweezers, as shown in the video at this link.

Ignore the advice to use dish soap to remove a tick. Yes, it will irritate the tick. But that might not encourage the tick to back out. Instead, it may salivate heavily and be more likely to infect you. See More Collapse

The task force report calls for the state Health Department to create a protocol to guide medical practitioners in diagnosing and treating tick-borne illness and to provide patients with information to help them understand test results.

That was among the most promising aspects of the report to Holly Ahern of Charlton, a patient advocate who testified before the task force. She was pleased to see that patients would be put on the alert that, among other things, their negative test results could be false. Another item that Ahern praised was Anthem BlueCross BlueShield's pledge to consider sponsoring a study of long-term treatments for patients with lingering Lyme disease symptoms.

She was discouraged, however, in the call for the Health Department to establish a comprehensive plan to address tick-born disease. The same recommendation was made by a task force four years ago.

"That's sort of a failure on the part of the Department of Health," Ahern said. "What have they been doing for the last four years, obviously not paying any attention to the Senate directive that this is a big problem in New York State."

Health Department spokesman Jeffrey Hammond said the agency could not comment on the 34-page report, because it was under review.

Other recommendations include dedicating funding in the next state budget to tick-borne disease and pursuing other funding to invigorate research, reinstating a commission to assess the cost of insurance coverage for long-term antibiotic treatments and promoting testing in children to avoid delays in getting diagnosed.
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TROY  The developer of the proposed 11-theater multiplex project 1 Monument Square site demanded the city reimburse nearly $250,000 in fees and costs, claiming in its letter ending the deal that the city couldnt fulfill its promises.

Meanwhile, Mayor Patrick Maddens administration waited 17 days before disclosing to the City Council and the public that Bow Tie Cinemas Inc., through its BTP Monument Square LLC subsidiary, had terminated the land development agreement for the 1.18-acre former City Hall site on Sept. 26.

Council President Carmella Mantello said Madden should have come to the council in an effort to see if problems with Bow Tie could have been resolved instead of waiting nearly three weeks to announce the project was done.

"It's definitely not providing an open and transparent government," said Mantello.

The Sept. 26 letter sent by A. Brooks Hock, Bow Ties attorney, and addressed to Maddens attention said that among the citys obligations was that the city owned the site and was supposed to transfer the land.

The former City Hall site is at the south end of Riverfront Park between River Street and the Hudson River.

As we are all painfully aware, it appears that the City will no longer be able to fulfill its obligations under the LDA (land development agreement) , and in fact, may never have been able to do so, wrote Hock, a partner in Williams Mullen, a law firm in Richmond, VA.

Hence we are hereby terminating the LDA and demanding the return of our $60,000 deposit and reimbursement of its costs to pursue the project thus far, which currently total $186,065.79, Hock continued.

The Bow Tie letter came after Sam Judge of Judge Development Corp. filed a lawsuit Sept. 1 in Rensselaer County State Supreme Court to block the $22.7 million movie theater development, claiming it failed to follow proper environmental reviews and that a portion of the proposed project would be on city parkland. Judge sued the city, Bow Tie and Bonacio Construction.

The lawsuit halted the project shortly before it was expected to receive final approval from the city Planning Commission. The lawsuit is still pending in court.

The Madden administration said its attempting to resolve the situation with Bow Tie.

As previously announced, the city is confirming the receipt of the termination letter from Bow Tie Cinemas pertaining to the redevelopment of the One Monument Square site. There is no litigation between the city and Bow Tie Cinemas, but there are legal matters still under consideration which need to be addressed, said John Salka, a Madden spokesman.

The city of Troy is optimistic about exploring other opportunities between Bow Tie Cinemas and hope to welcome them back to our community in the future, Salka said.

Hock and representatives of Bow Tie and Bonacio did not respond Monday to requests for comment.

The city promoted the theaters with an estimated patronage of 10,000 people weekly as the cornerstone for creating an 18-hour downtown that would funnel more customers into local businesses. Some residents and business owners expressed concerns about parking and the building's design.

Councilman Robert Doherty, a Democrat, said the ownership of the property has never been considered an issue. Doherty pointed out this is the fourth time a proposal has been made to develop the site and failed. One proposal was submitted by Judge Development Corp.

Its pretty contentious. They certainly want the money, said Doherty, who added that council members were advised by the Madden administration to be cautious in their comments about the situation.

Councilman Mark McGrath said the City Council has only acted on what was presented to it by the administration and was not involved in the negotiations or project development.

The whole thing is unfortunate. It seems like they keep stepping on a rake and it keeps hitting them in the head, said McGrath, a Republican.

Former Mayor Harry Tutunjian first suggested developing the City Hall site at 1 Monument Square. The city began razing City Hall in 2011 to clear the parcel for new construction. City government moved first to the Judge-owned Verizon Building at 1776 Sixth Ave. and then to its current location on the fifth floor of the Hedley Building at 433 River St.

Its just a freaking mess that site. Harry never should have torn it down. They should have gutted it and redeveloped it, said Councilwoman Lynn Kopka, the leader of the Democratic minority.
MILTON - The $1 million land deal between Milton and the Boy Scouts to purchase the organization's 300-acre camp Boyhaven may turn out to be a lucrative one for the town.

Larry Woolbright, chair of the town's planning board who is heading up the purchase, said there is a chance that if the deal goes through, the state will buy a large swath of the land at a price that might be three times what the town paid for it. The town would use the parcel it keeps as a nature preserve with trails and access for swimming in the lake.

"I've talked to the DEC," Woolbright said. "They have been interested in the land. I've been told that they want to add to their Middle Grove State Forest, which is across the street. If the state approves it, we will sell off what we don't think we will need for the park. I think it's very possible."

Since 1924, Boyhaven has been the exclusive domain of the Twin Rivers Councils of the Boy Scouts of America. But as membership in the organization has dropped, the camp has gone underused. The Boy Scouts council decided to sell the property between Middle Grove Road and Route 29. Dennis Dugan, assistant scout executive with the council, said the council sought a buyer that would not develop it. Milton, which would use it for recreation, fit the bill.

The town, which is currently facing a deficit and a tax increase, would purchase the land with a $500,000 anonymous donation. The remaining $500,000 would be bonded. The first years of the bond, Woolbright said, could be paid for by its Open Space fund, which totals about $140,000. Woolbright said that would buy the town time to sell a portion of the land to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

"It's a good cushion that will allow us time," Woolbright said.

The town board voted unanimously last week to move forward with the purchase. Supervisor Dan Lewza said there will be a lot involved, including a likely permissive referendum. He said the town must also consider the insurance and maintenance cost of the camp's upkeep.

"I think the project is great for the town, but I have a lot of concerns," he said. "We have to make sure that the town is financially moving forward before we go into an agreement."

Supervisor candidate Scott Ostrander also has concerns, especially the approaching sale deadline in December.

"The one problem I have is if we are going to bond the project, that will take several months," Ostrander said. "We obviously need to ask for an extension. There are also around six stipulations that need to be met before the sale can be completed."

Councilwoman Barbara Kerr believes any obstacles can be overcome because the project is too good to turn down.

"I'm very excited about Boyhaven," Kerr said. "It's a great opportunity for the town. We don't need to rush. We can take our time and it will be there forever for our kids and grandkids. We don't want to lose it."

Woolbright agrees.

"The Boy Scouts will give us an extension," he said. "They want us to buy it. We want to buy it. And we will get our money back by selling a fraction of the place. It should be enough to renovate it and make a very nice facility."
BROOKLYN  The executive director of good-government group Citizens Union has been arrested on a drug possession charge, according to New York City police.

Dick Dadey, a well-known advocate in Albany, was charged with misdemeanor criminal possession of a controlled substance after turning himself in Tuesday morning, police said.
Washington

The U.S. special forces unit ambushed by Islamic militants in Niger didn't call for help until an hour into their first contact with the enemy, the top U.S. general said Monday, as he tried to clear up some of the murky details of the assault that killed four American troops and has triggered a nasty political brawl.

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the American people and the fallen soldiers' families deserve answers about the deadly ambush in the West African nation. But he said he still lacks many details about how the attack unfolded, and he asked for patience as the investigation continues.

Dunford's description of the incident, however, underscored how long the midmorning attack dragged on, and that it was many hours before the wounded and killed were evacuated. He said "within minutes" after the unit called for assistance, a U.S. drone was moved into position overhead, providing surveillance and full-motion video. He declined to say if it was armed, but said it did not fire.

Another hour went by before French fighter jets arrived, but the wounded weren't taken out until later in the afternoon when French helicopters arrived along with additional Niger troops. The bodies of the three Green Berets who were killed were evacuated that evening, he said.

"I make no judgment as to how long it took them to ask for support," Dunford said. "I don't know that they thought they needed support prior to that time. I don't know how this attack unfolded. I don't know what their initial assessment was of what they were confronted with."

Dunford added that under the military's rules, U.S. forces only accompany Niger troops on missions in that area when "the chances of enemy contact are unlikely." But he also agreed that it is an inherently dangerous area, and U.S. forces are there as part of a training and advising mission to help local Niger forces learn to deal with the various al-Qaida and IS-linked groups operating in the region.

Dunford acknowledged that nearly three weeks after the attack, many questions remain. They include whether the U.S. had adequate intelligence, equipment and training, did they have an accurate assessment of the threat in that area, how did they become separated in the fight and why did it take so long to recover the body of Sgt. La David Johnson, who was missing for two days before his body was found by Niger troops and turned over to the U.S.
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ALBANY  Amid what one person described as intolerably hot conditions, dozens of state workers at 40 North Pearl St. were sent home Monday when the building heated up from an unseasonably warm weekend and after the Office of General Services had disabled the cooling system.

The cooling system was shut down as part of a planned renovation project, OGS spokeswoman Heather Groll said in an email.
Washington

President Donald Trump on Monday turned a Medal of Honor ceremony for a Vietnam-era Army medic who risked his life to help wounded comrades into a mini homework tutorial for the boy and girl who came to watch their grandfather be enshrined "into the history of our nation."

Every Wednesday, retired Army Capt. Gary M. Rose's grandchildren  Kaitlyn and Christian  head to his Huntsville, Ala., home for "homework night" with him and Margaret, their grandmother, Trump said. "I think that Kaitlyn and Christian will agree this field trip is their best homework assignment yet. Right?"

Trump said he had been told that Christian recently asked Rose about the Medal of Honor. Then he proceeded to explain.

"It's the award given to America's bravest heroes who earn our freedom with their sacrifice," said Trump, whose lack of military service has drawn renewed attention during the debate over the fate of four service members who were killed this month in an ambush in Niger.

"Those who receive the Medal of Honor went above and beyond the call of duty to protect their fellow service members and defend our nation," he said.

He said Rose is a "patriot who never gives up, never gives in, and always stands strong for God, for family, and for country."

With that, a military aide read a citation recounting the acts of heroism the now 70-year-old Rose performed on Sept. 11, 1970, as the only medic for 136 men who embarked on a mission designed to keep the North Vietnamese from funneling weapons along the Ho Chi Minh trail to use against American troops.

Throughout the four-day mission in Laos, Trump said, "Mike rescued those in distress without any thought for his own safety," including in one instance by using his body to shield a wounded soldier from the rat-tat-tat of machine gunfire while treating the man and then carrying him to safety.

A helicopter sent to extract the men was downed by enemy fire. At that point in the retelling of Rose's story as a member of the 5th Special Forces Group, Trump paused to say, "Mike, this is serious stuff. This was not a good four days."

Before the chopper crashed, Rose rushed to the aid of a Marine gunner who was shot in the throat. Rose was thrown from the helicopter before it hit ground, but raced to the crash site less than a mile from where it had taken off and pulled one man after another from the smoldering wreckage, Trump said.

Another helicopter rescued them. Rose, covered in blood by the time he reached the base, refused treatment until all of his men had received care.
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ALBANY  The statistics have bugged Albany for years: While a majority of the city's students are black or Latino, the adults who teach them are usually white.

Just 10 percent of teachers in the city school district are black or Latino compared to 66 percent of the students. In its charter schools alone, 15 percent of the teachers are black or Latino compared to 95 percent of the students.

But does it matter?

It does, according to a growing body of research  including a new report from the Education Trust of New York out this month. For students of color, having a teacher of color has been shown to boost academic performance, increase the chances that a black student will be identified as gifted, cut down on suspensions and dropout rates, and improve a student's hopes of attending college.

"New York's educator workforce does not come close to representing the rich diversity of the state's students, leaving many Latino and black students without access to teachers or school leaders of the same race or ethnicity," said Ian Rosenblum, executive director of the Education Trust-New York, a nonprofit funded by the Gates Foundation that works to close achievement gaps.

The group analyzed unpublished state data from the 2015-16 school year and found that just 16 percent of New York's teachers are black or Latino compared to 43 percent of its students. The result was that 41,718 black students attended a school that year without a single black teacher and 74,267 Latino students attended a school without a single Latino teacher.

"Role models come in all shapes, sizes and colors, but it is important for students to see people who look like them aspiring for greatness," said Albany Superintendent Kaweeda Adams. "Having someone to look up to and respect is important, because it causes you to expect more of yourself."

Albany County Data by Bethany on Scribd

The disparity may be most glaring in diverse city school districts, where a larger share of the population is black or Latino. In Schenectady, for example, just 4 percent of the teaching force is black or Latino compared to 51 percent of the student body. And in Troy, 3 percent of teachers are black or Latino compared to 47 percent of the student body.

But it's not a problem unique to city school districts, the report notes. In fact, the racial disparity is often worse outside of large cities.

"If it's only talked about as a poor city problem, then people will say it's just a poor city problem; it's a problem for all of us," said Shenendehowa Central School District Superintendent L. Oliver Robinson in the report.

Fewer than 1 percent of teachers in the suburban Clifton Park school district are black or Latino, compared to 8 percent of students.

A growing number of education officials and advocates are talking about the lack of representation in America's largely white teaching force in response to studies that have come out in recent years showing the positive effects of racially representative classrooms.

The one that's arguably caught the most attention is a working paper published in March by the Institute of Labor Economics, which found that having at least one black teacher in third through fifth grades reduced a black student's probability of dropping out of school by 29 percent. The results were even greater for very low-income black boys  their chance of dropping out fell 39 percent.

But why?

The answers are so far subjective. Some students of color reported feeling more comfortable approaching a teacher of color with a concern, feeling that they're more likely to be understood or have their struggles affirmed. And in an education system where students of color have historically been held to low standards, students report feeling that teachers of color hold them to higher expectations than other teachers.

"Teachers of color are harder on me," said Frantzy, a New York City student cited in the report. "As teachers of color, they know a lot of students of color tend to slip through the cracks. They were particularly hard on me because they wanted me to succeed."

In order to get more teachers of color into New York schools, the report recommends the state address the disparity at its roots.

"Part of the reason that Latino and black teachers and school leaders are underrepresented is that New York's elementary and secondary schools need to do better for students of color," the report notes. "The education system currently leaves too many students from historically underserved groups unprepared for college and for highly skilled careers like teaching. This in turn magnifies the shortage of teachers of color."

New York should start collecting enrollment, completion and job placement data from its teacher preparation programs to identify and correct where students of color are falling through the cracks, the report recommends.

More and earlier teaching opportunities would help too  aspiring teachers could get practice by tutoring afterschool or shadowing a longtime teacher as an apprentice for a year.

In Albany, school officials partnered this past spring with New York University's Steinhardt School to offer a teacher residency program to a diverse crop of candidates. Of the 15 candidates enrolled so far, 60 percent are students of color, said Adams, the superintendent.

Other efforts to promote diversity, according to the report, could include name-blind candidate recruitment (essentially, looking at resumes without the names to avoid any unconscious biases) and building support and mentorship opportunities for young teachers as they get started to prevent burnout and improve retention.

The full report can be viewed here.
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Albany

Lacking what they said were any feasible proposals, the states economic development arm has quietly halted its effort to find a new use for the shuttered Mount McGregor prison complex in Saratoga County.

Stopping the search for a buyer who would redevelop the historic 325-acre mountaintop site into a job-producing enterprise comes nearly a year after Empire State Development first started seeking input in January 2017. It also came after ESD had pushed back the deadlines for accepting proposals.

They ended up getting three proposals, but all were rejected.

"After review, responses to the Mount McGregor (request for proposals) have been deemed unfeasible and the RFP was canceled on Thursday, Oct. 19," ESD said in a statement. "Following the cancellation, Empire State Development will pursue direct marketing strategies consistent with its property disposition guidelines."

"ESD cannot currently disclose any additional information regarding the three proposals received, as it could jeopardize future efforts to market the property," the agency added. "We are currently evaluating the next steps for the reuse of the Mount McGregor Correctional Facility, which could include having direct discussions with potential developers."

The projects that I had seen didnt seem to match up because of the money, said Dennis Brobston, president of the Saratoga Economic Development Corp.

He became aware of the suspension after a reporter from the Saratogian newspaper called him several days ago and he looked on the ESD website: Canceled  Purchase and Redevelopment of Mount McGregor Correctional Facility, it read.

While ESD had received three proposals, the proponents were apparently not willing to put enough money for a realistic retooling of the site that would bring it up to current building codes and standards.

New York State was offering up to $8 million for help with infrastructure improvements, but such offers generally come with a commitment of at least a 10 percent or 20 percent match from the developer. But people who had toured the site recently had been talking about smaller initial commitments, said Brobston.

The state wants to see that theres a partner there, he said.

He added that the site would likely need costly infrastructure upgrades to the water system, which relies on a pond on the grounds; there is no natural gas line serving the area.

Theres also the challenge of being in three different municipalities Corinth, Wilton and Moreau, where most of the buildings are  that can slow and complicate the permitting process.

At least one bidder said he was disappointed that his plan was rejected. Were kind of speechless, said Mark Adams, President and CEO of Global Energy Research Associates, which conducts research into alternative energy systems.

He envisioned turning Mount MacGregor into an energy research park that would include a small-scale nuclear power device that he said is designed to reuse spent fuel rods.

While he said the firm would eventually spend millions on overhauling the site, they had only offered $1,000 as the purchase price  which might have been off-putting to ESD officials.

First developed as a hotel by Duncan McGregor in the 19th Century, the site was later used by the Metropolitan Life insurance company as a sanitarium for tuberculosis sufferers. Many of those buildings remain in place.

After World War II, it served as a rest camp for veterans and it was refurbished in 1960 as a home for developmentally disabled people.

It became a prison in 1976, and was closed in 2014 as part of an initiative by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to downsize the states vast upstate prison system.

Now, economic development officials are focused on replacing some of the 300-plus jobs that left with the prison closure and getting the property back on the local tax rolls.

Ideas that were mentioned during a tour in March included retrofitting the facility as a school, or as a set for cable-TV reality shows with prison themes.

Others noted that it would be a good spot for a company that wants a certain level of privacy and security.

The site is on a mountaintop overlooking Saratoga County, at the end of a winding road and surrounded by a 10-foot fence.

For now, Brobston said, State Police use the sites old shooting range for practice as well as some of the abandoned buildings for SWAT drills.

Rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU
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The National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm warning for parts of the Capital Region on Tuesday afternoon.

Until 3:45 p.m.: Chatham, Averill Park, Hudson and Valatie

Until 4 p.m.: Albany, Schenectady, Troy, Saratoga Springs and Watervliet

Earlier in the day, the weather service issued a wind advisory for the Capital Region and eastern upstate New York as a series of thunderstorms with potentially punishing gusts moves through the area.

The high temperature - 70 degrees - was already reached early Tuesday.

The winds will lessen but continue into the evening. Rain is expected to persist too.

It will be partly cloudy on Wednesday though the rain will be gone.

Tuesday: Scattered thunderstorms in the morning, then mainly cloudy during the afternoon with thunderstorms likely. A few storms may be severe. High near 70F. Winds SSE at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 90%.

Tuesday night: Thunderstorms in the evening will give way to cloudy skies overnight. Low 54F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Locally heavy rainfall possible.

Wednesday: Partly cloudy. High near 65F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.

Wednesday night: A few clouds. Low 42F. Winds light and variable.

Thursday: Cloudy skies early. A few showers developing later in the day. High around 55F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%.

Thursday night: Partly cloudy skies. Low near 40F. Winds light and variable.
SULLIVAN COUNTY  When it came to buying a home, Tony Lance found haven in quaint Livingston Manor in the Catskills.

A two-hour drive from his main base in Manhattan, the hamlet with a population of about 1,200 is a place to connect with nature. It also comes with a bonus: A chance to vote outside New York City.

Lance, a Democrat, is one of a number of vacationers and weekenders in the Hudson Valley and Catskills who have registered to vote in the 19th Congressional District, where Republican and Democratic enrollment is virtually split, with unaffiliated voters making up another large chunk of the population.

Lance, who bought his property in December, hasn't been here as long as many others who split time between upstate and the New York metropolis. But he plans to vote next month and in 2018, when U.S. Rep. John Faso, R-Kinderhook, will be up for re-election in a district that prognosticators say is a toss-up.

"Buying a house upstate was not to have an opportunity to vote in a district that was not necessarily Democratic," Lance said. "But that was a nice little side part of that, knowing that the work that I can do on the ground, grassroots and talking to other people and neighbors and the things I can do in the community can actually go further and make a greater change than what I can actually accomplish in New York City."

Lance fits the profile that some Democratic activists are looking for in the 19th district, which includes parts or all of Rensselaer, Columbia, Greene, Schoharie and Montgomery counties in the Capital Region. NY 19 Votes, an activist group, started a website in July called Smart Vote NY to help drive registration of those with a second address upstate. The group will send pre-stamped voter registration forms to those who use the website to help ease the transition, NY 19 Votes Campaign Director Dustin Reidy said.

"We're definitely not advocating voter fraud," he said. "You can only vote at one address. We want folks to register up here and keep voting up here."

Hard numbers for how successful the Smart Vote NY drive has been are not available, nor is a count of how many registered voters of both political stripes split their time elsewhere. Reidy estimated that a couple hundred people have re-registered, and about 50 people have gone through Smart Vote NY seeking to re-register.

While the grassroots political efforts have become energized since the 2016 election, the re-registration concept isn't new.

Bruce Ferguson of Sullivan County has been involved in efforts to convince second-home owners to register to vote there since 2009 and runs votewhereitcounts.org, which provides information on registering to vote where one owns a second home.

Ferguson and others note state laws are flexible in terms of where someone can register to vote. For one, state Election Law deems a person's residence to be a "place where a person maintains a fixed, permanent and principal home and to which he, wherever temporarily located, always intends to return." That could include rental properties owned by someone who doesn't live there, but may intend to reside there in the future.

The courts have also determined that to mean the second-home crowd can register at those addresses. In particular, a 2008 decision by a mid-level state appeals court found that weekend homeowners in Bovina, Delaware County, may cast ballots there because "their intent is to spend as much of their lives in Bovina as possible," thus there was no evidence they sought to create addresses solely to circumvent residency requirements.

"This has nothing to do with the Democratic Party," said Democrat Tom Lauricella, the son of two of the homeowners in that case. He now co-owns the property with his sister. "We are residents of these communities. The Republican officials want our tax dollars. ... I should have a right to vote in my community."

Still, for Republicans, tying Democrats to New York City is at the top of the playbook in upstate districts.

"These shady political tactics epitomize the desperation of a divided and leaderless Democratic Party," National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Chris Martin said.

The GOP has used the carpetbagger claim in past election cycles in the district, with Faso regularly deploying it against his 2016 opponent Zephyr Teachout, a Vermonter by birth who lived in New York City before moving to Dutchess County. Many 2018 candidates have made a point of stressing their roots in the region  even as some have lived elsewhere in recent years.

Lance said that he would ask neighbors who may accuse him of carpetbagging why he would be any less valuable to the community than they are.

"Democracy only works when people get invested in it, and I'm taking time to get invested in local democracy that matters to me," he said.

mhamilton@timesunion.com  518-454-5449  @matt_hamilton10
[October 24, 2017] 24 Hour Fitness Expands Florida Presence

24 Hour Fitness is expanding its presence in Apopka, the second largest city in Orange (News - Alert) County, Florida. Named in 2012 by Forbes Magazine as the friendliest city in America, the city's population topped 45,000 in 2016, increasing by more than 50 percent since 2000. By 2020, city officials expect the population projections to nearly double. A grand opening event is scheduled for Saturday, October 28, 2017, 9:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m., 24 Hour Fitness Apopka Club, 2360 E. Semoran Blvd. Apopka, FL 32703. The community is invited to this free celebration, which includes club tours, prize drawings, group training demonstrations, innovative GX24 studio classes and more. Widely recognized as a farming community, Apopka's reputation may soon be changing with the addition of three major developments. The 25 mile long Wekiva Parkway is scheduled for completion in 2021 and will create a loop around Orlando, connecting surrounding cities, communities and businesses, offering a much-needed alternative to congested local roads. Additionally, Apopka is developing a 207,000 square foot City Center comprised of restaurants, shops and office space, and a new, $203 million Florida Hospital Apopka with 120 private-patient rooms, a 50,000-square-foot emergency department and an 80,000-square-foot medical office building. These developments will provide thousands of jobs, shopping and health and wellness resources for the growing Apopka community. "The growth of Apopka is evident all around us, and 24 Hour Fitness is honored to be a part of the expansion of this city. Apopka is known for its friendly and welcoming residents, and we hope to mirror that energy within the walls of our new club," said Danny Azon, General Manager. "24 Hour Fitness offers a variety of programs and fitness solutions for every age and fitness ability. We invite the community to visit our new location and speak with our certified fitness professionals to help you reach your fitness goals." The modern new 38,000 square foot club features quality amenities, including: GX24  and cycle studios with popular studio classes such as Zumba , BodyPump  , POP Pilates, RPM  and bootybarre  included with membership

and cycle studios with popular studio classes such as Zumba Hundreds of digital studio classes available on demand, for times when you want to take a class on your own or with friends

Personal and small group training programs, designed to elevate performance and motivation*

Rows of cardio and strength machines, plus free weights for every level of fitness

Dedicated zones for TRX  resistance training, core work, stretching, functional and sports-specific workouts

resistance training, core work, stretching, functional and sports-specific workouts Multi-functional Olympic Training rig, used by athletes and fitness enthusiasts for both high-intensity training and Olympic lifting

Basketball court

Indoor lap pool for swim workouts and aqua classes

Whirlpool, steam room and sauna for relaxation and recovery

Spacious locker rooms with private showers

Pro shop for convenient access to nutritional products, snacks and workout gear

Kids' Club for children up to age 12*

Towel Service



*Additional fees apply 24 Hour Fitness offers a network of more than 420 locations nationwide, as well as signature content and programming including:

24GO on-demand workouts, including discounted access to Daily Burn  , streamed to any device, anytime

, streamed to any device, anytime Fit:Perks  Rewards program, featuring exclusive sweepstakes, deals and VIP passes

Rewards program, featuring exclusive sweepstakes, deals and VIP passes Innovative My24  app with class finder, XCapture fitness tracking and compatibility with leading fitness apps and wearables

app with class finder, XCapture fitness tracking and compatibility with leading fitness apps and wearables 24Life  digital magazine, packed with ideas and lifestyle advice from world-class experts and celebrities on how to think, eat, move and recover better

digital magazine, packed with ideas and lifestyle advice from world-class experts and celebrities on how to think, eat, move and recover better 24 Day Smart Start program, created in partnership with top health and fitness coaches to help you maximize your membership and your results To experience the new gym, download a free guest pass from www.24hourfitness.com/Apopka About 24 Hour Fitness As an industry leader for more than 30 years, 24 Hour Fitness changes lives every day through fitness. Conveniently located clubs, furnished with a wide variety of strength, cardio and functional training equipment, are the perfect environment for fitness professionals to deliver dynamic personal and group training programs. GX24 and cycle studios feature a popular array of live studio classes included with membership. A multitude of additional offerings engage and inspire every member to lead a full and healthy life both inside and outside of the club. Opening new clubs on average at the brisk pace of one every few weeks, 24 Hour Fitness is headquartered in San Ramon, CA (News - Alert) and serves nearly 4 million members in over 420 clubs nationwide. To learn more about us and to find the club nearest you, visit www.24hourfitness.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024005359/en/

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[October 23, 2017] Geoswift Partners With Bank of Shanghai to Launch Payment Remittance Services

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Geoswift, a leading provider of cross-border payments between China and the rest of the world, announced its partnership with Bank of Shanghai to launch a new remittance service in 2017. This announcement was made at Money 20/20 Las Vegas today. This partnership will enable businesses and individuals globally to remit funds into China through a secure and efficient medium that is well recognized by China's regulators, combining the network and market expertise of Geoswift and Bank of Shanghai. This service allows continuous real-time remittance of funds from seven currencies USD, GBP, HKD, CAD, AUD, JPY and EUR to the local currency RMB for recipients in China. The service uses a fixed daily rate to minimize risks arising out of foreign exchange fluctuations, and is designed to provide ease of transaction and transparency for both the sender and receiver. Factors such as the mobility of labor, rise in global emigrants, as well as the e-commerce boom have been instrumental in the popularity of digital remittances. According to the latest statistics from the World Bank1, China has received a total of US$32.2 billion worth of personal remittance in 2016. Geoswift performs transactions between China and the rest of the world through online and offline payment services, operating across key segments in ravel, e-commerce and education.



Raymond Qu, Founder and CEO of Geoswift said, "We are proud to be partnering with Bank of Shanghai in delivering swift, secure and efficient remittance services for our clients and partners globally. Given our expertise in understanding the requirements of China's authorities, we are strategically positioned to guide businesses and consumers through the complex regulatory system in China." "Our aim has always been to simplify transactions amidst the multilayered and constantly changing regulatory environment in China. The fact that Geoswift operates at a global scale with its roots deeply embedded in China -- makes our knowledge and expertise of the Chinese market our core capability. With regards to remittances, we understand that speed and clarity play a key role in the cross-border payments and remittance process. High standards of regulatory compliance is key to our business success and why we continue to work with global financial partners and merchants."

Geoswift will be exhibiting at Money 20/20, October 22 - 25, 2017. Feel free to drop by booth 1634 for more information. 1 The World Bank Group, Personal remittances received. 2016. About Geoswift Geoswift is an innovative payment technology company connecting China and the rest of the world. The company comprises the world's leading payment technology experts that have a deep understanding of the industry, technology, and global and China monetary policy. Geoswift provides clients with customised one-stop cross-border payment solutions to and from China. Geoswift is relied upon by the world's leading e-commerce companies, most prestigious universities and the largest brands in the travel industry to grow their businesses. Geoswift is an acquirer of UnionPay International in North America, and a long-term partner of many other leading financial institutions. It also maintains numbers of currency exchange outlets throughout mainland China. Geoswift is headquartered in Hong Kong with operating offices in Shanghai, Singapore, London, Vancouver, Seattle and San Francisco for strategic and regulatory functions. For more information visit, please visit www.geoswift.com or send in your queries to [email protected]. SOURCE Geoswift

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[October 23, 2017] Money20/20 to launch in China

LAS VEGAS, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ascential plc (LSE: ASCL.L), the global business-to-business information company, announces today that its Chief Executive Duncan Painter has personally signed a long-term partnership agreement with the city of Hangzhou and the district of Xiaoshan to run a new edition of its highly successful Money20/20 event series. The agreement was signed with Xie Shuang Cheng, Vice Mayor of Hangzhou and Gu Chun Xiao, Deputy Warden of Xiaoshan. The new event called Money20/20 China will be held in November 2018 at the Hangzhou International Expo Center, the venue where the 2016 G20 Summit was hosted. Money20/20 brings together visionaries and innovators from across the entire spectrum of payments, fintech and financial services to connect and create the future of money. Already operating US, European and pan-Asian editions, Money20/20 offers participants unparalleled networking opportunities and a high-profile agenda, all of which underpins Money20/20's mission to create a simpler, fairer, faster financial world for business and society. Tracey Davies, President, Money20/20, cited "China's unique market and domestic appetite to both invent and embrace new fntech products" as the reason to launch this new edition of the leading payments and fintech event, adding that "The rise of fintech in China is something that no one in this industry can ignore."



The host city of Hangzhou, in China's Zhejiang Province, has been chosen based on its long-term commitment to the future of finance. It is also home to such financial innovators as Alibaba and LianLian Group to name a few. Cashless, environmentally designed and home to a new wave of China's internet entrepreneurs, Hangzhou will provide the perfect, long-term home for Money20/20 China. Mr. Xie commented, "Our partnership with Ascential and Money20/20 will enable better information and resource sharing. The platform of Money20/20 China will support us with our strategic vision for Hangzhou's financial development as we further facilitate cooperation across industries, integrate our resources, expand our international network, and accelerate innovation in the region."

Commenting on the launch in China, Davies said, "Thanks to the formidable speed, skill and scale of China's inventiveness in fintech, China is often the country innovators look to for inspiration. It represents the largest fintech investment market in the world and at Money20/20 China, companies from China and international markets will have an unprecedented opportunity to learn about what makes China's fintech industry so forward-looking and progressive." The launch of Money20/20 in China is being widely supported by prestigious partners including ACI Worldwide, Ant Financial, Baidu Finance, China Everbright Bank, DHGate.com, IDG Capital Partners, LianLian Pay, Phoenix Finance, Tencent WeChat Pay, Union Mobile Financial, as well as other key players from the industry. Support also comes from trade associations that include the Payments and Clearing Association of China, Zhejiang Association of Internet Finance and the Zhejiang Association of Banks. About Money20/20: Founded in 2011, Money20/20 creates destination events where the most innovative people in payments, fintech and the broader financial services industry connect. Famed for their high-impact networking, the Las Vegas (October) and Amsterdam (June) editions are widely considered unmissable by the industry they serve. The new Asian edition will debut in Singapore in March 2018. Money20/20 is the space where the industry's smartest visionaries and innovators come together to create the future of money. Money20/20 is an Ascential event. www.money2020.com www.ascential.com Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20171023/1972278-2 SOURCE Ascential

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[October 23, 2017] Fifth Industry Report Recognizes OutSystems as a Leader in Low-Code Platforms for Application Development



ATLANTA and SINGAPORE, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- OutSystems, the number one low-code platform for application development, was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Low-Code Development Platforms For AD&D Pros, Q4 2017. This is the fifth report in the last 18 months that has identified OutSystems as a Leader in the low-code app dev market, which includes low-code development, mobile low-code development, mobile application development platforms, and high-productivity application platform as a service. "OutSystems has strengths across the board," the authors stated in the Forrester report. "The platform's tooling to support professional AD&D teams is excellent -- broad in application and portfolio management, platform and security administration, and development-process management; and deep in troubleshooting and performance management. OutSystems' strengths make it an oft-mentioned choice and contribute to its high growth rate and expanding roster of customers." Across 13 vndors, OutSystems achieved among the highest scores in four criteria groups including product/service vision, commercial model, app deployment and security features, and declarative tooling for platform and app admin.



Enterprise Organizations Find Value in Low-Code Platforms Low-code platforms are emerging as a key driver of digital transformation projects, helping organizations quickly deliver effective, innovative apps. OutSystems supports a full scope of use cases such as building new customer digital experiences, improving employee efficiency, and even replacing aging systems of record.

"We deliver digital transformation in 150 countries in over 17 industries and needed a platform that supports the widest range of use cases," said Rui Vaz, Technology Consulting Partner at Deloitte. "OutSystems exceeded our expectations, helping us beat our timelines and effect real change within the organization. With a team of 33,000 technology practitioners, we were distinguished as a Deloitte OutSystems Centre of Excellence, able to cover business and technology transformations, from strategy to support, worldwide." Deloitte and Prudential recently demonstrated the power of the OutSystems platform at a recent industry conference where they presented an application using AI and IoT for automated risk analysis built with the OutSystems platform. "Our product vision has always been to support the widest range of application development needs with speed, scale and security," said Paulo Rosado, CEO and founder of OutSystems. "With OutSystems, our customers can achieve all of their digital transformation objectives faster and never have to worry about hitting a development wall." Most recently, OutSystems raised the bar even higher for low-code platforms. A new benchmark report demonstrates how an app built with OutSystems scaled to support 20 million financial services customers managing 11,000 transactions per second. "OutSystems is key to helping us integrate many different sources of data and launch products faster," says Steven Schmidt, Enterprise Collaboration Manager at Logitech. "We now have set up a fully ramped digital factory with a highly-distributed team that can produce apps in weeks." About OutSystems Thousands of customers worldwide trust OutSystems, the number one low-code platform for rapid application development. Engineers with an obsessive attention to detail crafted every aspect of the OutSystems platform to help organizations build enterprise-grade apps and transform their business faster. OutSystems is the only solution that combines the power of low-code development with advanced mobile capabilities, enabling visual development of entire application portfolios that easily integrate with existing systems. Visit us at www.outsystems.com, or follow us on Twitter @OutSystems or LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/outsystems. Explore careers at OutSystems. Logo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20160902/8521605564LOGO



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[October 24, 2017] Smartphone Average Selling Price Sees Record Year-on-year Growth in 3Q - GfK Data

NUREMBERG, Germany, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ASP accelerated further in 3Q 17 , posting the highest year-on-year increase in any observed quarter

Strong 3Q demand for smartphones is powered by Latin America , Central and Eastern Europe Global smartphone demand reached 367 million units in 3Q17, up three percent year-on-year. This is the highest 3Q tracked by GfK, in terms of absolute demand, despite moderating growth. The record demand was primarily driven by Latin America (up 11 percent year-on-year) and Central and Eastern Europe (up nine percent year-on-year). Global average sales price (ASP) continued to increase in 3Q, rising by a record seven percent year-on-year.







Smartphone sales Units sold (in million) Sales value (in billion USD) 3Q 2017 vs. 3Q 2016 3Q17 3Q16 Y/Y % 3Q17 3Q16 Y/Y %





change



change Western Europe 30.9 33.2 -7% 13.7 13.2 4% C & E Europe 22.3 20.5 9% 5.4 4.3 26% North America 49.3 50.0 -1% 19.1 18.9 1% Latin America 27.8 25.1 11% 8.8 7.8 13% Middle East & Africa 45.2 41.9 8% 10.7 10.2 5% China 117.0 111.9 5% 38.3 31.9 20% Developed Asia 16.4 17.6 -7% 10.3 11.3 -9% Emerging Asia 57.7 55.2 5% 10.5 8.7 21% Global 366.6 355.4 3% 116.8 106.3 10% Source: GfK Point of Sales (POS) Measurement data in 75+ markets, monthly data to the end of August 2017, plus weekly data to 30 September 2017. Percentages are rounded.

Arndt Polifke, global director of telecom research at GfK, comments, "Although unit sales may be down in some regions, the increase in ASP reveals the fantastic opportunity to grow the value of the smartphone market. This is welcome news for manufacturers, particularly in regions such as Western Europe where saturation has resulted in declining sales volumes year-on-year. The industry has clearly been switching its focus to drive sales value, and top tier global brands, such as Apple, Google, HTC, Huawei, LG, Moto, Nokia, Samsung and Sony, either already have, or will release, new premium models in an effort to upsell customers to their flagship devices. At the same time, premium features are increasing in importance to consumers, so we expect to see more emphasis on water and dust protection, battery power and memory, high resolution sound, camera and video capabilities, bezel-less design and even biometric sensors on new launches." Western Europe: Revenue grows despite market saturation Smartphone demand totaled 30.9 million units in 3Q17 in Western Europe, down seven percent year-on-year. The combination of the saturated market and delayed launch of the iPhone X has led to a year-on-year decline for the fourth consecutive quarter. Demand in Germany is set to decline by seven percent year-on-year and both Great Britain and France are expected to experience an eight percent fall. However, sales value in the region rose four percent year-on-year, driven by an 11 percent increase in ASP. As a result, GfK raised its 2017 smartphone revenue outlook for the region to six percent year-on-year. The shift towards very high end devices is a clear trend in this region, with one out of eight smartphones sold in this quarter priced above USD 900, compared to one out of 16 in 3Q16. Central and Eastern Europe: Revenue up 26 percent Smartphone demand continues to recover in Central and Eastern Europe, with a nine percent increase year-on-year in 3Q17, bringing demand to 22.3 million units. Sales value, however, increased at a faster rate of 26 percent year-on-year, driven by a shift in consumer demand towards higher-priced devices. The improvement in the region's demand in 3Q17 is mainly due to strong growth in Russia (up 10 percent year-on-year) and the Ukraine (up 19 percent year-on-year). The outlook is also positive, with 2017 smartphone demand forecast to grow nine percent year-on-year to 85.2 million. North America: A slight fall in 3Q17 but a positive outlook to round the year off In North America, smartphone demand totaled 49.3 million units in 3Q17, down one percent year-on-year. This represents a return to decline, following growth in 2Q. However, the outlook for 4Q17 is positive, as major product releases have been announced for this quarter. GfK forecasts 2017 smartphone demand to total 201 million units, a growth of one percent year-on-year. Latin America: Brazilian sales give the region a boost In this region, smartphone demand reached 27.8 million units in 3Q17, a rise of 11 percent year-on-year. Demand in Brazil remains the driver of this sterling regional performance. Brazil experienced a 17 percent increase in demand in 3Q17 compared to the previous year. GfK has raised its 2017 forecast for Latin America to growth of nine percent year-on-year. Middle East and Africa: Egypt returns to growth Smartphone demand totaled 45.2 million units in the Middle East and Africa, up eight percent year-on-year. This increase in sales has been driven by a faster-than-expected recovery in Egypt, where demand returned to growth in July 2017 for the first time since November 2016. Overall, GfK forecasts smartphone demand to grow by five percent year-on-year in 2017. This is driven primarily by Sub-Saharan and South African countries, where smartphone penetration remains relatively low. China: Unit demand up, with prices set to increase further as new models are launched In China, smartphone revenue is up 20 percent year-on-year in 3Q17. This growth was driven by a 15 percent year-on-year rise in ASP, while demand increased five percent year-on-year, reaching 117 million units. Launches from key domestic brands that were postponed to 3Q17 contributed to the positive performance of this quarter. Overall, smartphone demand in China is expected to total 464 million in 2017, a growth of four percent year-on-year. In value terms (USD), 16 percent year-on-year growth is forecast. Developed Asia*: Declining demand in South Korea continues to bite Smartphone demand in the region reached 16.4 million units in 3Q17, down seven percent year-on-year, weighed-down by a 15 percent year-on-year decline in South Korea. Demand in Japan grew two percent year-on-year, delivering moderating growth from to the previous quarter. GfK's 2017 forecast for the region has been lowered to minus four percent year-on-year, with smartphone demand totaling 70.1 million units. Emerging Asia*: Still on track to post the strongest growth across all regions in 2017 In emerging Asia, smartphone revenue increased 21 percent year-on-year in 3Q17, while demand increased five percent year-on-year, reaching 57.7 million units. Demand growth in India and Indonesia in the quarter moderated to three percent and five percent, respectively, year-on-year. In Malaysia demand grew by 25 percent year-on-year, representing the sixth consecutive quarter of growth. Bangladesh also saw strong demand in the quarter, with growth of 22 percent year-on-year. GfK forecasts smartphone demand in emerging Asia to total 238 million units in 2017 (up 11 percent year-on-year), the strongest of all regions this year. Smartphone sales 2017 vs. 2016 Units sold (in million) Sales value (in billion USD)

2017 2016 Y/Y % 2017 2016 Y/Y %

sales sales change sales sales change Western Europe 126.7 131.0 -3% 56.6 53.5 6% Central and Eastern Europe 85.2 78.0 9% 21.0 16.8 25% North America 201.1 198.5 1% 80.6 77.5 4% Latin America

115.4 105.9 9% 36.2 30.9 17% Middle East & Africa 176.8 168.9 5% 41.9 42.1 0% China 464.3 448.5 4% 154.3 133.1 16% Developed Asia 70.1 72.9 -4% 44.7 46.1 -3% Emerging Asia 238.6 214.5 11% 43.0 34.5 25% Global 1478.2 1,418.2 4% 478.3 434.5 10% Source: GfK Point of Sales (POS) Measurement data in 75+ markets, monthly data to the end of August 2017, plus weekly data to 30 September 2017. Percentages are rounded. Yotaro Noguchi, product lead in GfK's trends and forecasting division, concludes, "This quarter's results reveal the complexity of the global smartphone market and explain why, when it comes to forecasting performance and meeting future demand, manufacturers really do need to examine and understand the nuances of each individual market." Note to editors This release is based on final GfK Point of Sales data for July and August, and September estimates based on weekly data to 30 September 2017. *Developed Asia: Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan *Emerging Asia: Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam http://www.gfk.com / https://twitter.com/GfK SOURCE GfK

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[October 24, 2017] JinkoSolar Invited to Attend the World Bank PSLO Energy Mission Conference

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. (NYSE: JKS) (the "Company," or "JinkoSolar"), a global leader in the solar PV industry, today announced that it was invited to attend the World Bank's Private Sector Liaison Officers (PSLO) Energy Mission Conference hosted at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington D.C. from October 23-25th, 2017. The conference will focus on the topic of "Financing in the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Sectors" and will be attended by representatives from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and other international energy corporations.

With over 100 participants from over 85 countries, the conference is a global dialogue focused on energy investment opportunities by international financial institutions. As the world's largest solar module manufacturer, JinkoSolar was invited to represent the renewable energy industry and to share ractical insight from a private sector perspective.





Given its status as the world's largest solar module manufacturer, JinkoSolar has been invited to attend an array of high-profile conferences in recent years. From co-chairing the B20 Energy, Climate, and Resource Efficiency taskforce to speaking at the BIRCS Summit earlier this year, JinkoSolar has represented the renewable energy industry well and shared valuable insight on the industry's development. JinkoSolar's focus on high-end technology, technical innovation, global expansion, and sustainable development has won the recognition of the entire industry.



"We are honored to be invited to such an esteemed dialogue with the global banking community. The invitation to JinkoSolar is an affirmation of the important work the renewable energy industry is doing. At the conference, we hope to bring valuable insights on recent advancements in solar deployment. Furthermore, we hope to aid the global sustainable development conversation that will soon affect every aspect of people's lives and the global economies" Kangping Chen, CEO of JinkoSolar said. To find out more, please see: www.jinkosolar.com For investor and media inquiries, please contact:

Mr. Sebastian Liu

JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd.

Tel: +86 21-5183-3056

Email: [email protected]

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jinkosolar-invited-to-attend-the-world-bank-pslo-energy-mission-conference-300541769.html SOURCE JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd.

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[October 24, 2017] 63 Percent Social Customer Service Engagement was led by Complaint Escalation for the Indian Banking Industry

BANGALORE, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a research by Simplify360, the social customer service engagement for both private and public banks in India was led by complaint escalations with 63% share of engagement. These escalations were generally call centre and branch related issues. Though public and private banks are slowly making a shift to increase their presence on social media, many customers are still using it as a complaint escalation medium. However, banks have started using social media to communicate with their customers extensively, only in 2017. Currently, only 49% of the banks are actively using Facebook to engage with their customers, while only 24% are using Twitter for the same. (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/589231/simplify360.jpg )

A thorough research report by Simplify360 was carried out to analyse the sentiment and engagement across 37 public and private sector banks in India. Metrics such s share of voice, engagement rate, activity rate and response time were used to benchmark these banks and make a qualitative analysis of engagement on Twitter and Facebook.



Quantitative benchmarking of these 37 public and private banks show that Private Banks led the share of voice by 59% on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. In addition to this, unlike among Private Banks, the distribution of SOV is dominated by a single public bank. However, in case of private, it is distributed among many brands. This shows how the adoption of social media is skewed among public banks. The other very important analysis was the first response time calculation, which considered all the brand engagements on Twitter and Facebook. Response time is an important criterion for measuring the pro-reactiveness of brands towards delivering customer experience on social media. The faster the response time the better the customer experience. However, the research showed that banks in India are still maintaining a response time between 2.5 to 3 hours, which is quite high. The report looks into distribution of the first response time among top banks according to their share of voice.

Download the report to get an idea of how banks are performing on social media. Download here . About Simplify360 Simplify360 is one of the leading social customer service platforms. We provide integrated social enterprise solutions for large enterprises across industry verticals like Telecom, Retail, Media, FMCG and Internet companies. The platform is also widely used by digital media agencies for social listening, reporting and engagement. Media Contact:

Rimjhim Saikia

[email protected]

+91-9620040584

Social Media Manager

Simplify360



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[October 24, 2017] Ninebot Inc. Raises $100 Million USD in C-Round Financing for Mobile Robotics and Intelligent Short-Distance Transportation Products

BEIJING, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ninebot Inc., a leading company in the short-distance electric transportation industry, announced today that it has raised the equivalent of $100 million USD in C-round financing from SDIC Fund Management Company Ltd. and the China Mobile Fund. China Renaissance is an exclusive financial adviser in this financing. In a bid to further enhance the deployment of Ninebot's business around the world, this round of financing will be dedicated to mobile robotics and intelligent short-distance transportation solutions. Lufeng Gao, Founder & CEO of Ninebot, shared this great news with all the staff in an internal letter. Ninebot has enjoyed rapid growth since its inception in 2012, winning support from investors and shareholders such as Xiaomi, Sequoia Capital, Shunwei Capital, Huashan Capital, Intel, GIC, Haiquan Funds, and many others. In March 2015, Ninebot acquired Segway Inc., the world leader in electric self-balancing transprtation. This resulted in the formation of the Segway & Ninebot Group, and enabled the company to become a world leader in intelligent short-distance transportation solutions. Currently, the group boasts leadership in two major business items: personal transportation and Segway Robotics.



"I believe that AI and intelligent robotics will exert profound influence on all aspects of society in the future. This will usher in another round of growth and development" said Lufeng Gao, Founder & CEO of Ninebot. Earlier this year Ninebot unveiled Segway Loomo, a result of Ninebot's devotion to the development of Segway Robotics, at the AUVSI XPONENTIAL 2017 event. Loomo has already become the archetype of the general-purpose robotic service platform. Ninebot will adhere to its mission of "Simply Moving!" by investing more in the R&D of robotics and intelligent short-distance transportation solutions, with the goal of providing more futuristic and technically advanced products to users. Lufeng Gao said, "We attach great importance to innovations of R&D, talent cultivation, and business operation. In this respect, we have established an independent lab to experiment with new projects and ideas and have also sponsored recruitment advertising worldwide to attract more outstanding talents."

About Segway & Ninebot Ninebot Inc. is headquartered in Beijing, China. Ninebot Inc. acquired Segway Inc. to form a new, global Segway company. Its business focuses on two major business items: Personal Transportation and Segway Robotics. For more information, visit http://www.segway.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ninebot-inc-raises-100-million-usd-in-c-round-financing-for-mobile-robotics-and-intelligent-short-distance-transportation-products-300541887.html SOURCE Segway & Ninebot

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[October 24, 2017] Harness Launches with $20 Million Series A to Simplify Continuous Delivery Using Artificial Intelligence

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Harness, the industry's first Continuous Delivery-as-a-Service platform leveraging artificial intelligence, launched from stealth today with $20 million in Series A funding led by Menlo Ventures and BIG Labs. Jyoti Bansal, the founder and former CEO of AppDynamics, heads the company as CEO and co-founder just nine months after selling AppDynamics to Cisco for $3.7 billion. Bansal is joined by Rishi Singh, former DevOps platform architect at Apple, as CTO and co-founder. Harness is the first company spun out of BIG Labs, Bansal's newly launched startup studio. Businesses are under unprecedented pressure to deliver new software and technology to users faster than ever, and with zero margin for error. Yet current approaches to software delivery remain complicated, highly manual, and risk-prone. Continuous delivery  a new software engineering practice that allows development teams to deliver their changes to end-users in hours instead of months  has only been successfully implemented by a handful of companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook. A recent Forrester survey found 64 percent of businesses are dissatisfied with the time it takes to release new features to customer-facing business services or applications. Harness' mission is to make the practice of continuous delivery accessible to every business, empowering engineering teams to move fast and ship code without the fear of failed deployments. With its Smart Automation technology, Harness provides the first ever solution to automate the entire continuous delivery process. By applying unsupervised machine learning to the process  a new technology called Continuous Verification  the platform understands an application's baseline environment and can initiate automatic rollbacks when irregular activity is detected, avoiding application downtime or widespread failures. To date, Harness has reduced deployment time from many weeks to a few hours, and has reduced errors by nearly 99 percent. "The machine learning aspect of Harness give us the peace of mind and confidence to conduct multiple deployments on any given day," said Ed Rose, director of software engineering at Build.com. "In a pre-Harness world we would spend maybe an hour with several of our senior engineers monitoring activity post-release. We can now reduce tht to one individual who oversees Harness as needed, freeing up our engineering talent."



"Harness helped in reducing our deployment times tenfold. The continuous deployment platform connects our monitoring and logging, while giving us the option to do canary deployments and blue/green deployments with automatic rollbacks. It would take weeks, months, even years to develop those features in-house," said John Stuart, VP of DevOps, IT and Security at Jobvite. "At AppDynamics, our customers were happily using our platform to monitor their complex software applications, but almost all of them told me that the process for delivering rapid changes to those applications remained a huge problem," said Harness CEO Jyoti Bansal. "Software engineering teams need a platform that's intuitive and powered by modern AI to meet demand for incredibly fast, high-quality releases. Rishi and I are excited to launch Harness and address a massive problem challenging software engineering teams everywhere."

"Nobody knows how to make engineering teams' lives easier than Jyoti Bansal. He proved it at AppDynamics and I believe he's found an even bigger market opportunity with Harness," said Matt Murphy, partner at Menlo Ventures who is joining the board of Harness. "Every company on the planet is now in the business of developing software, and those that are able to deliver software into production rapidly, simply, and securely have a competitive advantage. I couldn't be more thrilled to be backing Jyoti again. We worked together successfully at AppDynamics and his vision, leadership, and experience are sure to create yet another world-class company." Key product features include: Pipeline Builder - allows teams to build and execute complete CD pipelines with serial or parallel workflows across their applications, services and environments.

- allows teams to build and execute complete CD pipelines with serial or parallel workflows across their applications, services and environments. Workflow Wizards - enables teams to rapidly build deployment workflows with out-of-the-box support for canary deployments, blue/green deployments using cloud technologies such as AWS EC2, AWS Lambda, Docker and Kubernetes.

- enables teams to rapidly build deployment workflows with out-of-the-box support for canary deployments, blue/green deployments using cloud technologies such as AWS EC2, AWS Lambda, Docker and Kubernetes. Continuous Verification - applies unsupervised machine learning to automatically verify application deployments, detecting performance and quality regressions from tools such as AppDynamics, New Relic, Splunk, Elastic and Sumo Logic.

- applies unsupervised machine learning to automatically verify application deployments, detecting performance and quality regressions from tools such as AppDynamics, New Relic, Splunk, Elastic and Sumo Logic. Smart Rollbacks - automates rollback to the last working artifact version and run-time configuration with no required scripting or code.

- automates rollback to the last working artifact version and run-time configuration with no required scripting or code. Continuous Security - offers full role-based access control capabilities with the ability to manage secrets, compliance rules and audit trails across deployments. Additional Resources: Hear more from Jyoti Bansal on the Harness blog here

on the Harness blog here See how the product works here

Reach out for early access here

Download product images and headshots here About Harness:

Based in San Francisco, Harness is the industry's first Continuous Delivery-as-a-Service platform designed to provide a simple, safe and secure way for engineering and DevOps teams to release applications into production. Harness uses machine learning to detect the quality of deployments and automatically roll back failed ones, saving time and reducing the need for custom scripting and manual oversight. Harness was started and launched by Jyoti Bansal's BIG Labs, and is backed by top-tier venture capital firm Menlo Ventures. Follow us on Twitter and request early access at www.harness.io. About BIG Labs:

Based in San Francisco, BIG (Bansal Innovation Group) Labs is Jyoti Bansal's startup studio focused on turning innovative ideas into enduring companies. After founding and selling AppDynamics to Cisco for $3.7 billion, Bansal founded BIG Labs to give visionary products a place to reach their potential. Learn more at www.biglabs.com. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/harness-launches-with-20-million-series-a-to-simplify-continuous-delivery-using-artificial-intelligence-300541699.html SOURCE Harness

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[October 24, 2017] Oscilloquartz Synchronization Solution Wins BTR Award at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2017

Broadband Technology Report Judges Honor Industry's Most Agile Timing Toolkit With Diamond Technology Review Award Denver, Colorado, USA. October 24, 2017. Oscilloquartz, an ADVA Optical Networking company, announced today that its OSA 5420 Series has won the 2017 Diamond Technology Reviews award for Active Network Hardware. Organized by the Broadband Technology Report, the award recognizes the value of Oscilloquartz's comprehensive synchronization toolkit, including recent innovation for precision timing in cable networks. Deployed in major enterprise and Tier 1 carrier networks across the globe, the OSA 5420 Series is a family of highly accurate and efficient Precision Time Protocol (PTP) grandmaster synchronization distribution and assurance devices. This innovative technology delivers robust and secure packet-based timing across a wide range of industries and applications. "We designed the OSA 5420 Series from the ground up to provide unparalleled value and it's great to see that recognized at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2017. This award shows the strength of our vision for phase synchronization and highlights our incredible success in that market," said Gil Biran, general manager, Oscilloquartz. "No other frequency and phase synchronization device offers the same combination of precision, integration, reliability and cost-efficiency, and no other can be utilized in as many different sectors. With our OSA 5420's integrated Syncjack(TM) technology, operators can continuously monitor timing performance while in service without using expensive test equipment. This is especially valuable for cable multiple-system operators (MSOs) synchronizing remote PHY devices as they evolve towards a distributed access architecture." The OSA 5420 Series is the most agile synchronization PTP grandmaster toolkit on the market and a core element of Oscilloquartz's comprehensive timing tehnology portfolio. Recent enhancements include improved security, delivery of phase synchronization over IPv6 and support for every major GNSS. It enables MSOs to implement synchronization networks in the most flexible, reliable and manageable way. Oscilloquartz's wider portfolio includes a compact SFP-based edge grandmasters featuring integrated GNSS receivers, indoor and outdoor compact edge grandmasters, and a highly precise cesium clock for primary reference source applications. With a common management system and a consistent feature set, MSOs can easily evolve their synchronization networks alongside increasing timing requirements.



"Collecting first prize in such a prestigious product review is a real honor. It demonstrates the growing importance of accurate, robust network synchronization and underlines how our OSA 5420 Series is the ideal solution to deliver it," commented Stephan Rettenberger, SVP, marketing and investor relations, ADVA Optical Networking. "The judging panel were looking for innovation that displayed ease of use, efficiency, reliability, uniqueness and contribution to profitability. Our OSA 5420 excels in each of those key areas. What's more, it can now be used in an incredibly wide range of applications, empowering more operators to cost-effectively drive highly precise synchronization throughout their existing networks without the need for major upgrade cycles." Watch this video for information on the OSA 5420: https://youtu.be/mTCaJnEB61Y.

Supporting technical specifications can be found in this data sheet: http://adva.li/osa-5420-data-sheet. # # # About Oscilloquartz

Oscilloquartz is a pioneer in time and frequency synchronization. We design, manufacture and deploy end-to- end synchronization systems that ensure the delivery and assurance of highly precise timing information over next-generation packet and legacy networks. As an ADVA Optical Networking company, we're creating new opportunities for tomorrow's networks. For more information, please visit us at: www.oscilloquartz.com. About ADVA Optical Networking

ADVA Optical Networking is a company founded on innovation and driven to help our customers succeed. For over two decades, our technology has empowered networks across the globe. We're continually developing breakthrough hardware and software that leads the networking industry and creates new business opportunities. It's these open connectivity solutions that enable our customers to deliver the cloud and mobile services that are vital to today's society and for imagining new tomorrows. Together, we're building a truly connected and sustainable future. For more information on how we can help you, please visit us at: www.advaoptical.com.





Published By:

ADVA Optical Networking SE, Munich, Germany

www.advaoptical.com



For Press:

Gareth Spence

t +44 1904 699 358

public-relations(at)advaoptical.com



For Investors:

Stephan Rettenberger

t +49 89 890 665 854

investor-relations(at)advaoptical.com

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[October 24, 2017] IIIT-Hyderabad's Machine Learning Lab Launches State-of-the-art Programs for Tech Professionals

HYDERABAD, India, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- - 4-month program will address rising demand for AI/ML solutions - Will bridge serious AI/ML knowledge gap between academic research and industry - Program to be executed with support from TalentSprint IIIT-Hyderabad's Machine Learning Laboratory announced Foundations of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, a new state-of-the-art program for technology professionals. The program will be executed in association with TalentSprint. As one of the largest AI research clusters in the country, the institute is seeing a rising demand from the industry for AI and ML advisory services, technology prototypes, and capacity building. American research and advisory firm Gartner Inc. recently forecasted the creation of 2.3 million jobs in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and deep learning (DL) within the next three years. While some of the top engineering institutions in the country have strong academic and research programs in AI and ML, the number of engineers that graduate from them is still quite negligible in comparison to demand in these areas from the industry. In order to strengthen the competitiveness of the Indian IT sector, IIIT-Hyderabad has embarked on a series of initiatives to disseminate its deep knowledge of AI, ML and DL across the industry. This 4-month program on the Foundations of AI and ML is the first such initiative. The hands-on teaching approach will enable engineers in the industry to build deep ML programming capabilities in their companies. Speaking on the occasion, Prof. P. J. Narayanan, Director of IIIT-Hyderabad, said, "We are pleased to launch this high impact program that will enable software engineers to build well-designed AI and ML solutions. We are taking a holistic view. Beyond our excellence in technology and research, we are also conducting studies on the societal impact of AI. We are building awareness and appreciation of these new-age technologies among management nd top leaders as well."



Dr. Santanu Paul, Co-founder and CEO of TalentSprint, said, "It has been repeatedly said in the last year that AI/ML is the next industrial revolution. From self-driving cars to chat-bots to robo-advisors, the new age of computing is already upon us. We believe that this program is the bridge that will help today's technology professionals successfully cross over to the new era of automation and intelligent systems. We are very excited to work with IIIT-Hyderabad to deliver this world-class offering." Commenting on the launch, R. Chandrasekhar, President of NASSCOM, said, "The fourth Industrial Revolution is about harnessing complex, high-volume, high-speed data into insights for decision-making. It's true for enterprises and to no lesser extent for governments. Unarguably, proliferation of Deep-tech such as AI/ML is central to this revolution. It is most commendable that IIIT-H through its outreach program has decided to offer its deep research experience for the benefit of working professionals, through a first-of-its-kind 4-month program on AI and ML techniques. Indeed, it is an important step towards capacity building. I am confident that it would prove highly beneficial to the industry while enabling it to leverage the new opportunities."

The program will be directed by Dr. C.S. Jawahar, a leading expert in the field of AI and ML. He will be supported through the program by a team of academicians and industry leaders. Industry professionals may apply for the program by visiting: https://cie.iiit.ac.in/aiml/. About IIIT-Hyderabad The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) is an autonomous research university founded in 1998 that focuses on the core areas of Information Technology, such as Computer Science, Electronics and Communications, and their applications in other domains through inter-disciplinary research that has a greater social impact. Some of its research domains include Visual Information Technologies, Human Language Technologies, Data Engineering, VLSI and Embedded Systems, Computer Architecture, Wireless Communications, Algorithms and Information Security, Robotics, Building Science, Earthquake Engineering, Computational Natural Sciences and Bioinformatics, Education Technologies, Power Systems, IT in Agriculture and e-Governance. For more information, visit: http://www.iiit.ac.in. About TalentSprint TalentSprint is India's leading Career Accelerator for Youth. It's a technology-driven platform that attracts youth with high aspirations and equips them for exciting careers in the knowledge sector. Funded by Nexus Venture Partners and the National Skill Development Corporation, TalentSprint aims to empower ONE MILLION young job seekers to pursue careers in Information Technology, Banking and Financial Services, and Education. TalentSprint has enabled 150,000+ Youth from 200+ colleges find their career with 400+ employers since inception. The skill acceleration platform delivers technology-enabled experiential learning through a mix of cloud, contact, and colleges. It leverages digital and social media for youth outreach and forward integrates with a high quality employer network. For more information, visit: https://www.talentsprint.com. For further details, contact: Sridhar K, Senior Vice President, Banking and Financial Sector, TalentSprint, E-mail: [email protected] Media Contact:

Tanushree Kulkarni

[email protected]

+91-8861005345

Candour Communications





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[October 24, 2017] ConsumerTrack Executive to Speak on Women in Leadership at FinCon 2017

DALLAS, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ConsumerTrack Executive Beta Karimzadeh will be speaking at the Women in Leadership discussion at FinCon 2017, alongside a group of female professionals in the financial space. This will be the sixth-consecutive year that ConsumerTrack, the parent company of personal finance website GOBankingRates, will be attending FinCon. The conference is geared towards the financial media community and allows industry members to explore new trends in personal finance and digital content creation. Beta Karimzadeh is the Senior Director of National Accounts for ConsumerTrack, and will be speaking at the panel alongside a group of female professionals in the financial space. According to FinCon's website, attendees will "hear from top female executives and innovators in the industry on tips for aspiring young women to navigate and thrive in the predominately male finance space." "It's about women supporting other women, and navigating an environment that involves working closely with men at the executive level," Karmizadeh told ConsumerTrack. "Ad tech has been an industry primarily dominated by male leadership. That's changing  and we've seen that particular change in the last five to 10 years." ConsumerTrck attributes its success to maintaining a balanced team of men and women. The company recently revealed an employee roster consisting of 56 percent women and 44 percent men. The company is proud to break the trend of tech and digital companies that lack gender equality across their organization.



Karmizadeh will share how ConsumerTrack's inclusive culture has been instrumental to the success of the company and why there are advantages in supporting women in the industry. The Women in Financial Leadership panel takes place on Thursday October 26th, 10:30 AM  11:15 AM in Dallas D3. It will be available to stream in real time for those who purchase a #FinCon17 Virtual Pass, available at Finconexpo.com.

About ConsumerTrack ConsumerTrack Inc., an internet marketing agency that launched in 2004, provides lead generation, performance-based marketing and customer acquisition services to its clients for credit scores and credit monitoring, auto insurance, banking, CD accounts, savings accounts, credit cards and home loans, as well as home, life and health insurance. ConsumerTrack specializes in creating, managing, optimizing and monetizing marketing campaigns for a variety of companies, ranging from small banks and finance groups to Fortune 500 institutions, insurance companies and other blue-chip organizations. ConsumerTrack released the first-of-its-kind GoMediaNetwork (www.GoMediaNetwork.com) in 2007, with a network of nearly 2,000 consumer finance web properties, which rank organically for thousands of local keywords and generate traffic for ConsumerTrack clients. For more information, please visit www.consumertrack.com or contact Business Development at 310.297.9233. PR Contact

Kim Dahlgren, Media Relations

[email protected]

310-297-9233 x138 View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/consumertrack-executive-to-speak-on-women-in-leadership-at-fincon-2017-300541388.html SOURCE ConsumerTrack Inc.

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[October 24, 2017] Innovation Pharmaceuticals Provides Development Update on Brilacidin for Inflammatory Bowel Disease

BEVERLY, Mass., Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Innovation Pharmaceuticals Inc. (OTCQB:IPIX) (the Company), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, is pleased to provide a development update for Brilacidin as a promising novel, non-corticosteroid, non-biologic treatment for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).

Following the successful completion of its Phase 2 Proof-of-Concept (PoC) trial in Ulcerative Proctitis/Ulcerative Proctosigmoiditis (UP/UPS), in which a majority of patients treated with Brilacidin achieved Clinical Remission (including Endoscopic Improvement), the Company is making plans to advance the clinical development of Brilacidin-IBD. Update Oral formulation plans are underway to deliver Brilacidin more widely throughout the GI tract so as to enable treatment of more extensive forms of IBDCrohns Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. A meeting with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is being requested to help inform appropriate next steps for our Brilacidin-IBD program, such as the size and scope of subsequent clinical trials. Finally, the Company plans to continue exploration of Brilacidins various mechanisms of action, including its anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties, as well as its immunomodulatory and wound healing capabilitiesall of which likely have a role in Brilacidins ability to treat IBD. Brilacidin already has been shown to inhibit Phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4), which has been identified as a novel therapeutic approach in treating IBD. The academic literature further suggests a defensin/mucin deficiency in IBD, indicating Brilacidin may also have an important compensatory effect in this area. On the heels of a successful Proof-of-Concept study of Brilacidin in IBD, we look forward to continuing the Companys momentum in this area, commented Arthur P. Bertolino, MD, PhD, MBA, President and Chief Medical Officer at Innovation Pharmaceuticals. Given IBDs complex pathogenesis and variability in patient response to any one drug, new treatments are needed. More broadly, discussions remain ongoing with numerous global pharmaceutical companies, which, like us, see the considerable potential of Brilacidin as a multi-faceted drug candidate, with possible application across multiple therapeutic areas. The beauty of Brilacidin is that it was designed not only to mimic but actually to improve the bodys innate immune responseand thats exactly what were now seeing translate into the clinic in the form of favorable patient outcomes. The results of the Brilacidin distal colitis study are exciting, noted Dr. Francis A. Farraye, MD, MSc, Clinical Director, Section of Gastroenterology at Boston Medical Center, Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and Scientific Advisor to Innovation Pharmaceuticals. Brilacidinparticularly once formulated for oral delivery, offering broader coverage for more extensive forms of IBD and possibly an even greater therapeutic effecthas the potential to offer GI practitioners a novel, easily-administered therapeutic option for chronic, hard-to-treat Inflammatory Bowel Disease. I am pleased to continue my involvement with the Company as we look to advance Brilacidin into future IBD trials. Linked to blow is additional information on PDE4-inhibition and defensin-based therapies as promising new treatment approaches in IBD drug development:





PDE4 Inhibition and Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Novel Therapeutic Avenue

Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2017, 18(6), 1276

http://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/18/6/1276/htm Deficient Defensins and Missing Mucins in the Pathogenesis of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

http://www.ipharminc.com/new-blog/2017/10/24/deficient-defensins-and-missing-mucins-in-the-pathogenesis-of-inflammatory-bowel-disease About Brilacidin

Brilacidin is Innovation Pharmaceuticals lead drug candidate in its defensin mimetic franchise. Modeled after Host Defense Proteins (HDPs), the front-line of defense in the immune system, it is a small, non-peptidic, synthetic molecule that kills pathogens swiftly and thoroughly. Just as importantly, Brilacidin also functions in a robust immunomodulatory capacity, lessening inflammation and promoting healing. Due to its unique properties, the Company is studying Brilacidins effect on Oral Mucositis (under Fast Track designation) and on Ulcerative Proctitis / Proctosigmoiditis (UP/UPS) in Phase 2 trials. Additional trials of Brilacidin are planned in other conditions, including: Atopic Dermatitis, Hidradenitis Suppurativa and Acne. Brilacidin is also being developed under FDAs Qualified Infectious Disease Product (QIDP) designation as an antibacterial product for Acute Bacterial Skin and Skin Structure Infection (ABSSSI)qualifying it for Fast Track and possible Priority FDA Review and an extra 5 years of United States market exclusivity upon drug approval. Learn more here:

http://www.ipharminc.com/brilacidin-1 Alerts Sign-up for Innovation Pharmaceutical email alerts is available at:

http://www.ipharminc.com/email-alerts About the Company Headquartered in Beverly, Massachusetts, Innovation Pharmaceuticals Inc. (IPI) is publicly-traded under the company symbol IPIX. The Company is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative therapies in multiple diseases. The Company believes it has a world-class portfolio of first-in-class lead drug candidates and is now advancing them toward market approval, while actively seeking strategic partnerships. The Companys Psoriasis drug candidate Prurisol completed a Phase 2 trial and a Phase 2b study is ongoing. Prurisol is a small molecule that acts through immune modulation and PRINS reduction. The Companys anti-cancer drug Kevetrin successfully concluded a Phase 1 clinical trial at Harvard Cancer Centers Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and the Company has commenced a Phase 2 study in Ovarian Cancer. In the laboratory, Kevetrin has been shown to modulate p53, often referred to as the Guardian Angel Gene due to its crucial role in controlling cell mutations. Brilacidin, a defensin mimetic compound, has shown in an animal model to reduce the occurrence of severe ulcerative Oral Mucositis (OM) by more than 94% compared to placebo. The Company is in a Phase 2 clinical trial with its novel compound Brilacidin-OM for the prevention of OM in patients with Head and Neck Cancer; interim results have shown a marked reduction in the incidence of severe OM (WHO Grade = 3). The Companys lead antibiotic, Brilacidin, has completed a Phase 2b trial for Acute Bacterial Skin and Skin Structure Infection, or ABSSSI. Top-line data have shown a single dose of Brilacidin to deliver comparable clinical outcomes to the FDA-approved seven-day dosing regimen of daptomycin. Brilacidin has the potential to be a single-dose therapy for certain multi-drug resistant bacteria (superbugs). Topline results are now available for the Phase 2, open label Proof-of-Concept trial, treating patients with Brilacidin for Ulcerative Proctitis/Ulcerative Proctosigmoiditis (UP/UPS), two types of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). The Company has formed research collaborations with world-renowned research institutions in the United States and Europe, including MD Anderson Cancer Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and the University of Bologna. More information is available on the Company website at www.IPharmInc.com. Forward-Looking Statements: This press release contains forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 including statements concerning projected timelines for the initiation and completion of clinical trials, our future drug development plans, other statements regarding future product developments, including with respect to specific indications, and any other statements which are other than statements of historical fact. These statements involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause the Companys actual results and experience to differ materially from anticipated results and expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements. The Company has in some cases identified forward-looking statements by using words such as anticipates, believes, hopes, estimates, looks, expects, plans, intends, goal, potential, may, suggest, and similar expressions. Among other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements are the Companys need for, and the availability of, substantial capital in the future to fund its operations and research and development; including the amount and timing of the sale of shares of common stock to Aspire Capital; the fact that the Companys compounds may not successfully complete pre-clinical or clinical testing, or be granted regulatory approval to be sold and marketed in the United States or elsewhere. A more complete description of these risk factors is included in the Companys filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to release publicly the results of any revisions to any such forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this press release or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by applicable law or regulation. INVESTOR AND MEDIA CONTACT

Innovation Pharmaceuticals

Leo Ehrlich

[email protected]

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[October 24, 2017] Beleave and Dr. Michael Rogers Begin Research in Cannabis Food and Drug Delivery

TORONTO, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Beleave Inc. (Beleave) (CSE:BE) (OTCQX:BLEVF) is pleased to announce that it will begin a research program with Dr. Michael Rogers to develop and characterize the bioavailability of novel cannabinoid food and drug delivery systems for oral administration using lipid-based nano-systems. Dr. Rogers is an Associate Professor in the Department of Food Sciences at the University of Guelph, and the holder of a Canada Research Chair in Food Nanotechnology.

The goal of the program will be the development of proprietary cannabinoid food and drug delivery systems with optimized bioavailability and shelf-life properties compared to currently available cannabis products. Drug development will be geared towards the current medicinal cannabis market, while food development will be geared towards the upcoming adult recreational market. Development of novel cannabis formulations with optimized bioavailability will be a tremendous benefit to the medicinal cannabis market, as well as pre-emptively provide valuable technologies for the upcoming recreational market, commented Beleave Chief Science Officer, Dr. Roger Ferreira. Principle Investigator Dr. Rogers will be joined by a research team including Dr. Paul Spagnuolo, Associate Professor in the Department of Food Sciences at the University of Guelph, and Dr. Peter Chen, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo, School of Pharmacy. The work will involve the use of the TIM-1, an in vitro gastrointestinal digestion model which simulates the human stomach, duodenum, jejunum, and ileum in order to study stability and bioavailability events after oral ingestion. This willgreatly accelerate the ability to assess the oral bioavailability of novel cannabinoid food and drugs, as well as drastically reducing costs associated with bioavailability studies in humans or animals.



This unique collaboration brings together scientists from across disciplines to take a bottom-up, fundamental approach to developing novel vehicles for delivery of cannabis products, creating the best possible products for both the medicinal and recreational markets, states Dr. Rogers. Assessing for bioavailability can pose serious challenges, as human or animal subjects are required and plasma samples must be drawn. The TIM-1 simulated in vitro gastrointestinal digestion model was developed by TNO in the Netherlands, and is currently being used by only four laboratories in Canada. This advanced dissolution model has high correlation to in vivo testing and has been validated for use in drug delivery (See PubMed).

Novel cannabinoid formulations will be assessed for bioavailability in a quick and cost-effective manner without the need for ethical approval as in when dealing with human or animal test subjects. This will allow rapid assessments of formulations and significantly increase the rate of innovation and discovery into enhancing oral bioavailability of cannabinoids. This research coupling novel cannabis food and drug delivery systems with the TIM-1 will be the first-of-its-kind. About Beleave

Beleave Inc. is a biotech company and Beleave's wholly-owned subsidiary Beleave Kannabis Corp. (formerly First Access Medical Inc.) is a licensed producer pursuant to the ACMPR. Beleave's purpose-built facility is located near Hamilton, Ontario. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains forward-looking statements. The use of any of the words "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. This news release includes forward-looking statements with respect to the completion of the ACMPR licensing process, meeting the requirements of the ACMPR, and the start of production. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. These statements speak only as of the date of this news release. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks including various risk factors discussed in the Company's disclosure documents, which can be found under the Company's profile on www.sedar.com. For more information contact: Sebastian de Kloet

Phone: 1 (905) 979 - 5173

Email: [email protected]

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[October 24, 2017] Desjardins's Cybersecurity Kit: A great toolkit for SMEs

MONTREAL, Oct. 24, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - Companies are confronted with a number of risks that can compromise their productivity and growth on a daily basis. Data theft, fraud, computer piracy and ransomware can be devastating, particularly for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In response, Desjardins introduced an online Cybersecurity Kit. Desjardins is the first financial institution in Canada to offer this kind of kit to help small business owners protect themselves against cyberattacks. It includes: Information on the main threats to SMEs and practical advice

An information security policy

Videos and checklists to raise employee awareness about cybersecurity

A self-assessment to identify potential vulnerabilities "Most fraud cases we see are preventable. That's why we need to educate business owners and their employees on the different scams fraudsters use to take advantageof people. Desjardins is committed to raising awareness and providing people with the necessary tools to lower the number of fraud-related incidents," said Stephanie Gohier-Coulombe, Fraud Prevention Advisor at Desjardins.



According to a report by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce published in April 2017, entitled Cyber Security in Canada: Practical Solutions to a Growing Problem, SMEs are aware that they need to do more but they're not sure how. Due to a lack of resources, nearly half of all SMEs in Canada have been the victim of a cyberattack and 71% of data breaches happen to small businesses. In 2012, 69% of 520 Canadian SMEs surveyed by the International Cyber Security Protection Alliance had experienced a cyberattack in the previous year. These types of incidents cost small businesses, on average, $15,000.

About Desjardins Group

Desjardins Group is the leading cooperative financial group in Canada and the sixth largest cooperative financial group in the world, with assets of $272 billion. It has been rated one of the Best Employers in Canada by Aon Hewitt. To meet the diverse needs of its members and clients, Desjardins offers a full range of products and services to individuals and businesses through its extensive distribution network, online platforms and subsidiaries across Canada. Ranked one of the world's strongest banks by to The Banker, Desjardins has one of the highest capital ratios and credit ratings in the industry. SOURCE Mouvement Desjardins

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[October 24, 2017] Tim Campbell Becomes PASSUR's Chief Operating Officer with the Objective of Ensuring PASSUR's Unique Solution Delivery Platform Delivers Value to Aviation Customers Now and in the Future

STAMFORD, Conn., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- PASSUR Aerospace, Inc. (OTC: PSSR), a business intelligence, predictive analytics, and big data company, serving the airlines and the aviation industry, announced that Tim Campbell has become Chief Operating Officer, a new position. Tim will lead the design, development, and delivery of PASSUR's Integrated Suite of Solutions. His role also includes responsibility for operations of PASSUR's program and technology infrastructure. Tim joined PASSUR in August 2017 as Executive Vice President of Innovation and Customer Advocacy. "I'm both honored and excited to assume this important new role at PASSUR," said Tim Campbell. "It is a natural extension of my current role of promoting innovation and advocating for our extensive network of current and future customers. My immediate focus will be helping our team ensure we are internally positioned to delight our customers with solutions that solve some of their biggest operational problems. Our technology and solution delivery practices must meet or exceed our customer's expectations," commented Tim on his new position. "Tim's becoming Chief Operating Officer is another important step in expanding PASSUR's role in providing the preeminent air traffic management solutions tools for the industry," said Jim Barry, PASSUR President and CEO. "Tim's experience in leading Air Operations and the related technologies at one of the largest airlines in the world, coupled with his deep understanding of PASSUR and our customers, make him the perfect choice for this important new role. As Chief Operating Officer, Tim's leadership will be essential as we, in the partnership with GE announced in June of this year, continue to create the next generation of aviation intelligence solutions which address the biggest operational challenges and system-wide capacity constraints in the air traffic system, while improving overall airline and airport reliability, service, and cash flow. Tim will be PASSUR's chief customer advocate, using PASSUR capabilities, to bring fast and dynamic change to satisfy customer needs." Before joining PASSUR, Tim was most recently Senior Vice President, Air Operations for American Airlines Group. Tim led the effort to combine American's Integrated Operations Control (IOC) and US Airways Operations Control Center (OCC). The integration work also included flight and inflight teams, crew resources, operations planning and performance engineering functions. Over his 30 years in the aviation industry, Tim has acquired a diverse set of skills and experience, both in the airline and aerospace manufacturing spaces. Before joining American, he was Founder and President of Mountain Vista Consulting, LLC. Prior to founding the company, Tim was president of Compass Airlines, a wholly-owned regional airline for Northwest Airlines and later Delta Air Lines. About PASSUR Aerospace, Inc. PASSUR Aerospace (OTC: PSSR) is a leading business intelligence company, providing predictive analytics and decision support technology for the aviation industry primarily to improve the operational performance and cash flow of airlines and the airports where they operate. PASSUR Aerospace's information solutions are used by the five largest North American airlines, more than 60 airport customers, (including the top 30 North American airports), hundreds of business aviation customers, and the U.S. government. PASSUR owns and operates the largest commercial passive radar network in the world that provides aircraft position updates every 1 to 4.6 seconds, powering a proprietary database that is accessible in real-time and delivers timely and accurate information and solutions via PASSUR's industry leading algorithms and business logic included in its products. Visit PASSUR Aerospace's website at www.passur.com for updated products, solutions, and news. PASSUR, Airwayz, NextGen2 and NextGen3 are trademarks or registered trademarks of PASSUR Aerospace, Inc. in the U.S. All other companies and product names of those companies contained herein may be trademarks of their respective holders.







Media Investor Relations Ron Dunsky Louis Petrucelly SVP Marketing and Communications Chief Financial Officer (203) 989-9197 (203) 622-4086 [email protected] [email protected]

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tim-campbell-becomes-passurs-chief-operating-officer-with-the-objective-of-ensuring-passurs-unique-solution-delivery-platform-delivers-value-to-aviation-customers-now-and-in-the-future-300541979.html SOURCE PASSUR

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[October 24, 2017] dynaCERT Provides Corporate Update

TORONTO, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- dynaCERT Inc. (TSX VENTURE:DYA) (OTCQB:DYFSF) ("dynaCERT" or the "Company") is pleased to provide an update on various corporate matters. Litigation Matters: dynaCERT reports that it has filed a claim in Ontario Superior Court for damages in the amount of approximately $47.7 million to recover costs, lost revenue and damages associated with the non-functioning electronics from a previous supplier and the resulting delay in production and deliveries. A re-design of the electronic system began in early June and was completed in late August. The Company has shifted component production to another supplier. Operations: HG1 units advance in their commercial stage. All units in the field have been updated, or are in the process of being updated, with the most recent technology, including the latest software, to ensure optimum performance. Updated HG1 units are available for shipping by dynaCERT and we expect to make available for shipping our HG2 units near the end of this year. dynaCERT reports that the testing of the SMART ECU2 has now been completed and regulatory approvals were successfully obtained for the use of our new exclusive technology for use throughout all of North America. Our Smart ECU systems, our Electronic Control Units that power our proprietary HydraGEN line of products that target reduction of harmful gas emissions and improved fuel consumption, incorporate dynaCERTs proprietary ECU technology, which has been developed by us after years of extensive trials and research. Meaningfully, dynaCERT now has an approved state-of-the-art capability to accurately track, measure and report on greenhouse gas emissions associated with many proponents operating in a diverse set of trades such as Residential, Industrial, Commercial, Power Generation, Railway, Marine, Aviation, On/Off Road and Agricultural applications including the world-wide diesel trucking industry. The data collected with our proprietary ECUs can be used to determine the amount of greenhouse gas credits or offsets with a view to certify carbon credits in a scientific manner and moreover, do so quickly and in opportune time. Initially, the newest miniaturized ECU2 version of our ECU line of technology, will be utilized in dynaCERTs new HydraGEN HG2 units. Production of the new HydraGEN HG2 unit is targeted to be underway promptly as procurement of parts and equipment have begun for the new HG2 unit. PIT Group testing of HydraGEN technology continues. Following the announcement dated September 21, 2017, the break-in period and testing by PIT for fuel consumption is expected to be completed by the first week of November and a report received by mid-November. One received and confirmed by PIT, these results are expected to be announced by dynaCERT.



European Market update: In Europe, dynaCERT is in the process of Homologation Certification in Germany working with TUV NORD GROUP, the largest German safety organization. For this purpose, the dynaCERT board has approved the creation of dynaCERT GMBH as a subsidiary LLC company in Germany, to be wholly-owned by dynaCERT Inc. This process is expected to be the key final regulatory requirement to permit sales in the European Market. TUV NORD GROUP is a technical service provider with worldwide activities. Founded in 1869 and headquartered in Hanover, Germany, the Group employs more than 10,000 people in more than 70 countries of Europe, Asia, America and Africa.

Jim Payne, President & CEO of dynaCERT, commented, I congratulate our COO, Robert Maier and our team at dynaCERT for their professionalism and dedication, as well our loyal clients for their close collaboration, and together helping dynaCERT make our products robust and effective for a world that requires working solutions to the enormous challenges of Climate Change. We are relentlessly pursuing our long-standing corporate mission to help the world reduce its carbon footprint in a most effective manner. About dynaCERT Inc.

dynaCERT Inc. manufactures, distributes, and installs Carbon Emission Reduction Technology for use with internal combustion engines. Our patent-pending technology creates hydrogen and oxygen on-demand through electrolysis and supplies these additives through the air intake to enhance combustion, resulting in lower carbon emissions and greater fuel efficiency. Our technology is currently in use with on-road applications. Website: www.dynaCERT.com. READER ADVISORY

Except for statements of historical fact, this news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. In particular, forward-looking information in this press release includes, but is not limited to: future development and production of our HG2 units and potential shipments by end of the year; reporting of fuel savings results from PIT testing; homologation certification in Germany and potential sales in the European Market; and litigation matters. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. We cannot guarantee future results, performance or achievements. Consequently, there is no representation that the actual results achieved will be the same, in whole or in part, as those set out in the forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking information. Some of the risks and other factors that could cause the results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information include, but are not limited to: uncertainty as to whether our strategies and business plans will yield the expected benefits; availability and cost of capital; the ability to identify and develop and achieve commercial success for new products and technologies; the level of expenditures necessary to maintain and improve the quality of products and services; changes in technology and changes in laws and regulations; the uncertainty of the emerging hydrogen economy; including the hydrogen economy moving at a pace not anticipated; our ability to secure and maintain strategic relationships and distribution agreements; and the other risk factors disclosed under our profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned that this list of risk factors should not be construed as exhaustive. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. We undertake no duty to update any of the forward-looking information to conform such information to actual results or to changes in our expectations except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the release. On Behalf of the Board Murray James Payne, CEO

For more information, please contact: Jim Payne, CEO & President

dynaCERT Inc.

#101  501 Alliance Avenue

Toronto, Ontario M6N 2J1

(416) 766-9691 x 2

[email protected]dynaCERT.com Investor Relations

dynaCERT Inc.

Nancy Massicotte

(416) 766-9691 x 1

[email protected] dynaCERT .com

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[October 24, 2017] Sherpany Announces Expansion to Include Several Countries in Europe

ZURICH, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sherpany is a B2B SaaS company that creates technological tools to transform decision-making skills in the boardroom. The goal is to facilitate more efficient decision-making at a lower time-cost for leadership teams of all sizes of companies. With an increased customer base and strong sales activities across several European countries, Sherpany is excited to announce strategic initiatives to foster its growth to better serve its customers. "These countries have shown interest in the tools Sherpany offers, more specific to the user-friendliness of the applications and the continuation of releasing new features and enhancements. To further develop our activities in Europe was a logical next step," says Tobias Hackermann, CEO Sherpany. Sherpany's main goal is to provide technology and tools for Directors that will help keep meetings and sessions and organized. This will help executive board as well as the board of directors to make decisions quickly in fast-paced environments, and help them keep up with the digital era. Boards often need to make quick decisions that depend on information delivered to them through a variety of means: through board books, from in-person meetings, and especially through online and offline channels within thei networks. Sherpany believes that technology can assist and organize this information, making it accessible for every user with ease.



Technology, in particular, the applications that Sherpany, provides better ways to organize, examine and securely store or archive important information. This gives decision makers more ways to view and understand data, which will help them make more informed and better decisions. Sherpany Boardroom is offered as both a mobile application and a web application. The web application is available only online, but it is updated automatically. The mobile applications do require a download from the respective App store and deliver offline capabilities. Tablets are recommended for use of this application, as they have access to both web and mobile applications, bridging capabilities of both. However, admins will need to use the web application, since it alone gives the user the capability to set up meetings, plan agendas and upload documents. Admins do have more control and viewing capabilities when using the web application, which will further help to keep meetings time efficient.

For more information about Sherpany, or to find out about getting this application for your company, visit www.sherpany.com or go to https://board.sherpany.com/. Information Media Relations Mathias Brenner, +41 78 754 80 30 [email protected] About Sherpany Sherpany is the leading european provider of digital boardroom solutions delivering it's service to some of Europe's largest companies. With our platform we transform decision-making of Boards to enable better decision making at a lower time-cost. Sherpany is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland with offices across Europe. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sherpany-announces-expansion-to-include-several-countries-in-europe-300541452.html SOURCE Sherpany

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[October 24, 2017] Questback Announces the Appointment of Radu Immenroth as New Chief Technology Officer

NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Questback, the global leader in enterprise feedback management, has announced the appointment of Radu Immenroth as it's new Chief Technology Officer. Immenroth replaces outgoing CTO Oliver Trabert and will join the company's senior leadership team effective immediately. Immenroth has held multiple leadership roles during his six-year tenure at Questback, most recently as Global Head of Product Strategy. As CTO, Immenroth will continue leading product strategy while also overseeing engineering and cloud operations. The appointment represents Questback's continued commitment to creating next-gen technology and innovative customer-centric solutions to leverage the disruptive power of feedback. Immernroth reflects, "I have personally experienced the enormous positive impact that feedback can bring to people's lves. At Questback, we are embarking on a technology journey that will open up new, unprecedented opportunities and I look forward to guiding this effort."



Immenroth holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering degree from the German RWTH University and a Master of Business Administration degree from the British University of Surrey. ABOUT QUESTBACK

Questback is a complete feedback system that helps companies transform customer, employee and market research programs. Used by thousands of companies, including one third of the Forbes list, Questback is the smarter, faster way to manage feedback. Get the software, services and human support you need to manage customer, employee and market feedback  all in one place. People matter. Get their insight. Learn more at www.questback.com. Media Contact: Roslyn Sakaguchi [email protected] 832.482.8003 View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/questback-announces-the-appointment-of-radu-immenroth-as-new-chief-technology-officer-300541913.html SOURCE Questback

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[October 24, 2017] SPi CRM Bags Prestigious Management Team of the Year Citation in 2017 International Business AwardsSM

MANILA, Philippines, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SPi CRM, a global leader in customer relationship management outsourcing was named the winner of a Gold Stevie Award in the Management Team of the Year category in the 14th Annual International Business Awards held in Barcelona, Spain.

The International Business Awards are the worlds premier business awards program. All individuals and organizations worldwide  public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small - are eligible to submit nominations. The 2017 IBAs received entries from more than 60 nations and territories. Stevie Award winners were determined by the average scores of more than 200 executives worldwide who participated on 12 juries. The Gold Stevie Award for Management Team of the Year recognizes the merits of SPi CRMs Leadership Team following a change of ownership in late 2016 to Japan-based investor Relia, Inc. Consequently, the company rebrande as SPi CRM, forging ahead to sustain double-digit growth for the seventh year in a row, and onto a global expansion in Asia and the Americas.



Echoed by the judges, the Leadership Team was praised for proving successful organizational and management skills, and likewise commended the company for its business growth and revenue maximization amid a critical juncture. Moreover, the panel was impressed by SPi CRMs grace and precision in its transition of parent company, attesting: It speaks for a management team to work through an acquisition so smoothly while still increasing the company's growth. Inspiring nomination and a team worthy of acclaim.

President and CEO Maulik Parekh warmly accepted the award on behalf of the entire SPi CRM senior management team. It is indeed an honor and a pleasure, with judges composed of respected leaders in the international business community, to be considered for the prestigious IBAs. We are thrilled, being chosen the Best Management Team of the Year. This milestone validates not only the Management Teams efforts, but also reflects SPi CRMs culture of excellence. Since we embarked on a new chapter in our companys history, right alongside us, our 11,000 employees have been championing our brand promise and we couldnt be prouder of SPi CRM. We are no stranger to change and we look forward to facing what lies in our future, as a stronger organization, Parekh added. Contact:

May Dizon

Senior Vice President, Sales, Marketing and Corporate Communications

SPi CRM

T 632 884 6166

E [email protected]

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[October 24, 2017] Altizon Wins Frost & Sullivan's 2017 India IoT Energy Monitoring New Product Innovation Leadership Award

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. and PUNE, India, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Altizon, a global industrial IoT (IIoT) platform company creating connected intelligence for enterprises, today announced it has won the Frost & Sullivan 2017 India IoT Energy Monitoring New Product Innovation Leadership Award. Altizon received the award for its technology innovation using its Datonis Industrial IoT (IIoT) platform to develop a real-time electricity monitoring solution that helps ensure quality of power generation and best practices. A vast majority of rural areas around the world have inconsistent electric supplies, resulting in frequent interruptions, load shedding/blackouts, and voltage fluctuations that negatively impact daily life.Using its Datonis IIoT platform, Altizon worked closely with Prayas Energy Group, an India NGO that works on governance, regulation and electricity and energy sector policy, to build WatchYourPower.org. Altizon's platform enabled the Prayas team to rapidly develop its solution in less han 3.5 months, which now efficiently monitors the availability and quality of electricity across hundreds of villages and towns in India and in several other Asian and African countries.



Altizon's Datonis supports hundreds of global projects across the industrial landscape using sophisticated cloud computing, big data analytics and machine learning. Datonis enables industrial enterprise clients to ramp up and reap immediate benefits from IIoT including significant time and cost savings. The technology has been deployed in several smart city projects to monitor energy and water meters in India, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. "Projects like watchyourpower.org are a powerful example of how Altizon and our Datonis IIoT platform are helping companies and governments monitor the quality and consistency of their power generation and energy consumption as well as support their energy advocacy efforts," said Yogesh Kulkarni, COO, Altizon. "We are truly honored to receive this prestigious award as we continue to make new inroads in helping our customers quickly realize the benefits of IIoT."

The Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards is a global program that recognizes outstanding industry achievements by companies worldwide. The award recipients are selected through an extensive process including a deep dive research and analysis conducted by Frost & Sullivan industry experts, which is then presented to an independent panel of judges representing the top companies in India. This year's jury includes senior executives from renowned organizations like Mahindra & Mahindra, Ashok Leyland, Kotak India Bank, Morgan & Stanley & MENASA, the mobility practice of F&S. About Altizon

Altizon is a global industrial IoT (IIoT) platform company creating connected intelligence for enterprises. Its flagship Datonis IIoT platform is driving rapid business outcomes through solutions that enable Smart Manufacturing, modernize Asset Performance Management and pioneer new Business Models for service delivery. Datonis accelerates IT/OT integration by quickly connecting diverse industrial assets and launching new applications over a hybrid infrastructure with edge computing, advanced in-stream analytics and deep learning capabilities. Altizon has a broad international partner ecosystem and is part of the Microsoft Accelerator program. Its award-winning platform is recognized by analyst firms including BCG and Forrester Research and the company has recently been cited by Gartner as a leading global IoT platform vendor. To learn more about Altizon, please visit www.altizon.com View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/altizon-wins-frost--sullivans-2017-india-iot-energy-monitoring-new-product-innovation-leadership-award-300541963.html SOURCE Altizon

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[October 24, 2017] Gap Celebrates Family Togetherness with the 'Meet Me in the Gap' Holiday Campaign starring Janelle Monae

NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Gap, the iconic American clothing brand, today announces the holiday 'Meet Me in the Gap' campaign starring actress and Grammy nominated recording artist Janelle Monae alongside a cast of individuals from different places, backgrounds and genres to collaborate and celebrate the festive season. The hero campaign video captures Monae harmonizing with six talented choirs as they "meet in the gap," performing an optimistic and cheerful song to invite all families to get together, spend real time with one another and find the little things that unite us. Directed by legendary Director Paul Hunter, the video, set in a blank space, embraces the magic of the holidays with the entire cast outfitted in classic Gap crazy stripes styled with cozy seasonal essentials. Through an acapella rendition of Freddie Scott's original version of "(You) Got What I Need," Janelle and the accompanying choirs embody the melody and its message of togetherness. "The Gap has been a part of my life since I was a little girl so it was very exciting to be involved in this campaign," said Monae. "I love the unity of the 'Meet Me in the Gap' concept. It really reflects the idea that although we may be from different parts of the world, when we come together, we can create something magical." In addition to the hero video, there are a series of short videos and a print campaign that feature a mix of families, models and influeners who come together and inspire by creating optimistic energy that ties back to the theme of togetherness and appreciating the different families we develop over time and celebrate with during the holidays.



"As a brand, holiday has always been a memorable and emotional moment for Gap, marked by crazy stripes and togetherness," said Gap chief marketing officer Craig Brommers. "This holiday season, we offer an invitation to families from all over the world to get together, spend real time with one another, and ultimately, meet in the Gap." Launching on November 6, the campaign spans television, mobile, social, in store and digital. The television spots will air on major networks and be incorporated into high impact moments including digital takeovers on ABC, YouTube, Vevo, Hulu and Spotify and live commercial integration with "Late Late show with James Corden" during the week of Thanksgiving. Lastly, we are continuing our partnership with Spotify to sponsor one of Spotify's most popular holiday playlists, 'Pop Christmas.'

For more information on 'Meet Me in the Gap,' visit gap.com. About Gap Gap is one of the world's most iconic apparel and accessories brands and the authority on American casual style. Founded in San Francisco in 1969, Gap's collections are designed to build the foundation of modern wardrobes  all things denim, classic white shirts, khakis and must-have trends. Beginning with the first international store in London in 1987, Gap continues to connect with customers online and across the brand's about 1,600 company-operated and franchise retail locations around the world. Gap includes Women's and Men's apparel and accessories, GapKids, babyGap, GapMaternity, GapBody and GapFit collections. The brand also serves value-conscious customers with exclusively-designed collections for Gap Outlet and Gap Factory Stores. Gap is the namesake brand for leading global specialty retailer, Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS) which includes Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta, Intermix and Weddington Way. For more information, please visit www.gapinc.com. Contact: Will Davis, [email protected], 212-463-7245 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gap-celebrates-family-togetherness-with-the-meet-me-in-the-gap-holiday-campaign-starring-janelle-monae-300541994.html SOURCE Gap

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[October 24, 2017] Parasoft Continuous Testing Solutions Extend Support for Continuous Integration (CI) to Accelerate End-to-End Testing

MONROVIA, Calif., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Parasoft, the leading provider of automated software testing solutions, announced today the latest release of Parasoft SOAtest and Virtualize with expanded support for CI platforms. To support continuous testing, new plug-ins for continuous integration allow users to parse test results from automated test executions back into common CI platforms such as Bamboo, Jenkins, Microsoft VSTS, and Team City. These test results fully integrate into existing continuous delivery (CD) pipelines along with specific information indicating exactly what happened under the hood, enabling teams to facilitate their go or no-go decisions required for true continuous testing. To learn more about the latest release, read the detailed blog post, or request a demo of Parasoft SOAtest and Parasoft Virtualize. "Software engineering teams attempting to implement Continuous Testing into a Continuous Integration process flow face the typical conflict of time-to-market vs. taking the time necessary to build a solid foundation of API tests," stated Theresa Lanowitz, Founder of voke, inc. "Time constraints force software engineering teams to accept a good enough approach and continue with the same ineffective, high level, and brittle web tests. It is critical that software engineering teams adopt solutions to enable easy creation and maintenance o API tests that can truly enable testers to help protect the brand and the business."



In addition to enhancing support for the Continuous Integration process, the new release of Parasoft SOAtest also helps businesses by extending support for organizations leveraging Behavior Driven Development (BDD), to augment the next evolution for test case creation in which human-readable language can be efficiently translated into test cases. Through the new integration with Cucumber, which facilitates human-language test creation, Parasoft SOAtest customers can associate Gherkin plain-text feature specifications with SOAtest test cases, simplifying the task of associating business requirements with testing. This integration requires no scripting, which opens the testing process to more people and allows business analysts to drive test case execution without writing any code. Additionally, Parasoft has continued to focus on simplifying test data by enhancing many of the workflows in the web portal. The new release provides users with greater access to create, manage, manipulate, copy, and sort existing data, as well as import and export data from the data repository infrastructure to extend data coverage.

Business initiatives supported in the release include: Continuous Integration (CI): New plugins for industry-standard CI systems accelerate and simplify continuous testing.

New plugins for industry-standard CI systems accelerate and simplify continuous testing. Behavior Driven Development (BDD): SOAtest's new Cucumber extension enables any team member (software developer, tester, manager, etc.) to create meaningful API test scenarios, bridging the gap between testing and business requirements.

SOAtest's new Cucumber extension enables any team member (software developer, tester, manager, etc.) to create meaningful API test scenarios, bridging the gap between testing and business requirements. Internet of Things (IoT): New tooling extends support for functional testing in the IoT era through industry-specific protocols (MQTT and WebSockets), giving teams full access to configure, send, and validate messages in IoT environments.

New tooling extends support for functional testing in the IoT era through industry-specific protocols (MQTT and WebSockets), giving teams full access to configure, send, and validate messages in IoT environments. Using realistic test data: New test data workflows allows teams to reduce data friction by reducing the amount of time needed to wait for usable data. View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/parasoft-continuous-testing-solutions-extend-support-for-continuous-integration-ci-to-accelerate-end-to-end-testing-300541697.html SOURCE Parasoft

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[October 24, 2017] Westbrook Intermediate Prepares for 'Crossfire' Robotics Competition

HOUSTON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- After a late start due to Hurricane Harvey, the Westbrook Intermediate Robotics Engineering Division (WIRED) is hard at work preparing for this year's BEST USTEM regional robotics competition that will occur on November 11th, 2017. Located in the Bay Area of Houston, Westbrook Intermediate School is home to the WAVE GT magnet in the Clear Creek Independent School District. The BEST robotics competition invites intermediate and high school robotics teams to compete in a scenario using a robot they design and build from scratch, using only the consumable materials given to them at the competition kick-off. Sponsored by the BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) organization, the competition is dedicated to educating future engineers, scientists, and technical professionals through participation in an annual robotics competition. This year's game, entitled Crossfire, is a fire rescue themed game, requiring the teams to build a robot capable of rescuing a person, retrieving chemical drums and putting out a simulated fire, all within a 3:00 minute timeframe. Teams from around the country participate in the competition in their regions, with winners attending state level competitions. Last year, WIRED won the 1st place BEST award at the Houston UTEM competition. The award is scored based on teamwork, sportsmanship, creativity, positive attitude/enthusiasm, school/community involvement and outreach, and application of the engineering design process as evidenced in the engineering notebook.



The students do the work under the watchful eye of their faculty advisor and dedicated mentors: Mrs. Pfeifer, Mr. Knerr, and Mr. Quiocho. When asked about what students get from WIRED, Mrs. Pfeifer replied, "They learn to apply engineering principles, math, and problem solving skills to fabricate parts. In the workshop, girls and boys learn to use manual and power tools to turn plywood, PVC, string, motors, etc. into a working robot. I hope that they take something from this experience as they go into a STEM field in high school, college and beyond." WIRED has been very successful and Mrs. Pfeifer attributes this to "learning from previous years, having mentors and faculty advisors who come back year after year." Mr. Les Quiocho, an Engineer from NASA was asked why he volunteers his time. Mr. Quiocho replied, "I find it very rewarding to listen to all of the ideas that come from our diverse team of students. I hope that they learn that engineering is important. I also hope that they get inspired to get a job in the STEM field." Another mentor, Mr. Steve Knerr, who works for ExxonMobil, had children in the program years ago and stayed on as a volunteer. He credits the success of the program to, "A lot of it is dedicated kids. They are very hard working, smart, and stay focused. Also, we are very lucky to have supportive parents, without them WIRED would not be what it is today."

For more information, please visit our website at www.ccisd-wired.com or find and like us on, Instagram (WIREDROBOTICS), YouTube (WIREDROBOTICS) and Twitter (@404Wired). Contact: Lisa Pfeifer

Westbrook Intermediate School

Phone 281.284.3800

[email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/westbrook-intermediate-prepares-for-crossfire--robotics-competition-300542080.html SOURCE Westbrook Intermediate School

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[October 24, 2017] zendatamarketing open an office in Toronto

MONTREAL, Oct. 24, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - zendatamarketing, one of the leaders in interactive relationship marketing, has opened a new office in Toronto to better meet the needs of its national clients, and to continue the development of the company. With more than 66 clients in the Montreal office, some of whom radiate across Canada, the company's expansion into Toronto became a must. Initially, a team of two key people will be able to count on the 15 resources of the Montreal office and the 55 people of the technical team in Stockholm: - Adrian Kaule, Services Consulting Director, was at Compost Marketing in Denmark, will balance the marketing strategy with the technology offered by the Carma Marketing Hub omni-channel platform. - Mike Sullivan, Regiona Sales Manager, was previously at Return Path (Expert in e-mail platform deliverability), he will be responsible for business development.



The office is located at 140 Yonge Street # 200 in downtown Toronto. Zendatamarketing President Rene Godbout says: "After 11 years, we are very proud of the agency's evolution and the opening of an office in Toronto will allow Ontario and Canadian companies to benefit from our expertise being hybrid in e-marketing and technology. As a member of the Compost Marketing family in Sweden for 2 years, we are able to offer effective personalized interactive communications, thanks to the constant development of the Carma Marketing Hub platform. "

For Robert Kimber, President of Compost Marketing SE: Following the acquisition of zendatamarketing in Montreal, the opening of an office in Toronto is a logical extension of Compost Marketing's expansion into the North American market. Already present in Sweden, Denmark, China and Canada, we aim to have a presence in the United States in a few years. About zendatamarketing Founded in 2006, zendatamarketing (www.zendata.ca) is an interactive relationship marketing agency serving companies who want to take advantage of their customer data and thus increase their return on investment in marketing. With Canadian offices in Montreal and Toronto, the agency provides comprehensive data marketing services to help businesses establish, maintain and improve relationships with clients and target audiences. zendatamarketing is part of Sweden's Compost Marketing family, owner of the Carma Marketing Hub (CMH) platform. More than 6.5 billion e-mails and 100 million SMS are sent annually via CMH that support more than 1,000 organizations in North America, Europe, and Asia. SOURCE zendatamarketing

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[October 24, 2017]

Agnovi REX v2.0 - Investigation Software for Small Teams

OTTAWA, Oct. 24, 2017 /CNW/ - Agnovi Corporation, a leading industry provider of world-class investigative software solutions, is excited to announce the release of REX version 2.0, an investigative and criminal intelligence database software.

REX was designed with small teams of police and law enforcement in mind. Its easy-to-use interface helps you manage investigation and intelligence information. You can easily docment, search and report law enforcement activities (e.g. statements, tactical operations) and subjects (e.g. suspects, offenders, informants, places and things).







REX is currently being used in the Americas by law enforcement agencies in the areas of:

Investigation Management

Intelligence Management

Occurrence Management (e.g. Tips, Complaints, Observations)

Reporting (e.g. Court Reporting, Management Reporting)

REX allows users to:

Manage investigations, intelligence probes and distinct incidents

Document and link entities and events

Produce relationship and timeline charts

Add file attachments, search the database, and set alerts

Audit usage activity and manage record retention

Output reports with the click of a button

Contact Agnovi Corporation for additional information OR a live demonstration of REX Investigation Software for Small Teams.

About Agnovi: Agnovi provides Law Enforcement Case Management Database Software solutions to help government compliance and law enforcement agencies gather, store, sort, access and analyze investigative information. Agnovi also offers training, integration, customization and data transfer services as they relate to our product line.

SOURCE Agnovi Corporation
Mert & MarcusTaylor Swift hosted another secret session for her Reputation album, and this time she invited some famous pals.

The exclusive listening party at Taylors Los Angeles home Sunday night was attended by Jack Antonoff, Alana Haim of the band HAIM, and actress and model Ruby Rose.

A lucky group of handpicked super-fans also got to preview the upcoming album, as well as hang with Taylor and her pals. Some took to Twitter to express their excitement.

Dont judge the album yet guys theres so much to it like if you think you have an idea you really....you dont. Im so shook, one fan wrote.

Another wrote in all caps, REPUTATION IS SUCH A SEXY ALBUM YOU GUYS ARE GOING TO LOVE IT.

Even Jack Antonoff commented on the evening, writing, Loved the people i met tonight. that's who the music is for.

Taylor previously held secret listening sessions in London and Rhode Island. Reputation comes out November 10.

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[October 24, 2017] amaZEN U Announces New Website Launch

SOLON, Ohio, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The leading yoga and mindfulness video platform, amaZEN U, launches its new website www.amazenU.com to provide an enriched experience for users. Key features of the site include a clean, beautifully designed interface, a more engaging user experience, and improved navigation and functionality throughout. The update also includes the release of 30 new yoga and mindfulness videos, making a total of over 100 videos for grades PreK-12, featuring real, diverse children. This website offers quick and easy access to yoga and mindfulness videos for students and is the only web-based tool that is outcomes based on current mood, eliminating the hassle of filtering through hundreds of videos. Users can also access a comprehensive resource section that includes a guided curriculum and exclusive tips to seamlessly integrate yoga and mindfulness in the classroom or home as well as track their progress. amaZEN U's new website is designedto use yoga and mindfulness to teach children and teens how to manage stress, decrease anxiety, and improve focus via on-demand, 5 minute or less videos. Teachers and administrators are advised to include these simple videos in their classrooms throughout the day. Caregivers are encouraged to use amaZEN U as part of a daily routine at home. The videos are accessible on web-enabled devices and can be used at any point during the day. No special equipment or space is needed. Teaching children and teens how to manage stress and anxiety while learning focus through yoga and mindfulness yields positive social and academic outcomes. This focus on the "whole child" is made easier than ever through amaZEN U's new website.



Interested teachers, administrators, and parents are encouraged to sign up for a free 14 day amaZEN U trial at www.amaZENU.com. About amaZEN U: amaZEN U is the only web-based yoga and mindfulness tool that features curated videos and a guided curriculum to seamlessly integrate yoga and mindfulness into every child's life/daily routine. Created by a group of experienced educators and yogis, amaZEN U provides an evidenced-based, effective tool for teachers and caregivers to help achieve desired outcomes based on current mood and can be used at any point during the day.

To view the site and activate your free trial, visit amazenu.com.

Media Contact: Sonya Patel / [email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/amazen-u-announces-new-website-launch-300542030.html SOURCE amaZEN U

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[October 24, 2017] New Reaper IoT Botnet Leaves 378 Million IoT Devices Potentially Vulnerable to Hacking

SAN FRANCISCO and LONDON, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In the wake of Reaper, the latest IoT botnet, Paul Lipman, CEO of award winning consumer cybersecurity company, BullGuard, today urged the security industry and device manufacturers to address the growing threat from unprotected smart devices. The call follows the discovery of the latest Internet of Things (IoT) botnet threat, known alternatively as Reaper or IoT Troop that has already enveloped smart devices on more than a million networks worldwide. Reaper uses actual software hacking techniques to break into devices  evolving beyond the October 2016 Mirai IoT botnet, which exploited weak or default passwords on impacted IP cameras and internet routers, and took down major websites across the U.S. including Twitter, Netflix and the New York Times. Reaper's potential for major Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks that rapidly take down online services is enormous, and makes last year's Mirai IoT botnet look like child's play. "Reaper is a landmark evolution for hacked smart devices. Unlike Mirai it doesn't rely on exploiting devices with simple default credentials, rather it exploits numerous vulnerabilities in different IoT devices. It uses sophisticated techniques to hack routers and various smart devices," said Paul Lipman, CEO of BullGuard. "The industry must wake up and address this issue. Taking down websites may seem relatively innocuous, but Reaper has the potential to cause massive amounts of damage including crashing important online services. How long before we see organizations held to ransom or critical national infrastructure brought to a halt? These are very real and plausible scenarios, yet those responsible for security seem to have gone to sleep." BullGuard protects consumer's smart homes with Dojo by BullGuard, a consumer cybersecurity product buit from the ground-up as an enterprise-class network security service, and delivered in a way that is incredibly easy for consumers to use. Dojo utilizes unprecedented multi-layered cybersecurity protection including: Automatic Device Discovery and Categorization, Smart Firewall, Smart IPDS (Intrusion Prevention and Detection System), Secure Web Proxy and Network Behavior Anomaly Detection. Dojo's device and application aware cybersecurity service automatically adjusts the security envelope by constantly monitoring device behaviors.



378 Million Devices Potentially Vulnerable to Hacking in 2017.

The scale of poor IoT device security was recently revealed by an analysis of BullGuard's IoT Scanner, a tool that scans home networks searching for vulnerabilities. Approximately 310,000 users accessed the BullGuard IoT Scanner to scan their network for vulnerabilities. The scan analysis revealed that 4.5 percent, or nearly 14,000 devices, could be easily hacked. Industry analysts at Garner forecast that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017, and will reach 20.4 billion by 2020. Extrapolating BullGuard's IoT Scanner results means 378 million devices are potentially vulnerable to hacking now, growing to more than 900 million potentially susceptible devices by 2020. According to a recent consumer study conducted by BullGuard, 66 percent of Americans and 55 percent of Brits stated the number one thing that would prevent them from buying more IoT connected devices are security concerns. "The widespread adoption of IoT has brought with it tremendous convenience, but consumers are starting to have high expectations about the responsibility device manufacturers should bear to ensure their connected gadgets are secure from cyberattacks," added Lipman. "Robust multi-layered protection needs to be adopted at a wider level in society if we don't want to see globally coordinated IoT cyberattacks that could be potentially calamitous."

About BullGuard

BullGuard is a leader in consumer cybersecurity. We make it simple to protect everything in your digital life  your data, your identity and your Smart Home. BullGuard combines technical expertise with a genuine understanding of your needs to deliver complete protections across all of your connected devices. As part of our ongoing promise to be champion of today's digital consumer, we've added Dojo by BullGuard to our multi-award winning product portfolio. It's the best custom-built solution to protect Wi-Fi enabled devices in the home, and gives customers the freedom to add as many Smart Home devices as they want without compromising privacy or security. Dojo is the cornerstone of a Smart Home, ensuring a connected world where every consumer, in every home, is smart, safe and protected. Follow us on Twitter @BullGuard and @DojoSafe, like us on Facebook at BullGuard and Dojo, or learn more at https://www.bullguard.com or https://dojo.bullguard.com. All trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners. View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-reaper-iot-botnet-leaves-378-million-iot-devices-potentially-vulnerable-to-hacking-300542019.html SOURCE BullGuard

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[October 24, 2017]

ProcessUnity Introduces New Version of its Cloud-Based Risk and Compliance Platform

CONCORD, Mass., Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ProcessUnity, a leading provider of cloud-based applications for risk and compliance management, today introduced its Fall 2017 Release. The latest version of ProcessUnitys platform includes more than 70 new features and enhancements that continue to reduce administrative tasks, make users more efficient and maximize program effectiveness. These new capabilities are available across all ProcessUnity risk and compliance applications, including Third-Party Risk Management, Policy and Procedure Management, Enterprise Risk Management, Regulatory Compliance Management, and Product and Service Offer Management.



Highlights of ProcessUnitys Fall 2017 Release include:

Even More Configuration Options  The Fall 2017 Release further extends customers ability to configure ProcessUnity solutions to their individual program requirements. New custom buttons provide customers with even more control over application workflows, while additional layout options and custom objects power personalized end-user experiences. With this release, customers can better tailor ProcessUnity to fit their processes with dynamic record setup and automatic issue creation.





The Fall 2017 Release further extends customers ability to configure ProcessUnity solutions to their individual program requirements. New custom buttons provide customers with even more control over application workflows, while additional layout options and custom objects power personalized end-user experiences. With this release, customers can better tailor ProcessUnity to fit their processes with dynamic record setup and automatic issue creation. Productivity & Reporting Enhancements  ProcessUnity adds several new capabilities to its already easy-to-use interface to make users even more productive. Search extensions allow users to configure which keywords are included in queries. Persistent report headers, display window resizing and icon/emoji support improve control over the user interface and make reporting more effective. New file management improvements streamline the organization f attachments and reduce end-user clicks. Bulk assessments for individuals allow organizations to more readily distribute questionnaires, certification quizzes and surveys to employees.









ProcessUnity adds several new capabilities to its already easy-to-use interface to make users even more productive. Search extensions allow users to configure which keywords are included in queries. Persistent report headers, display window resizing and icon/emoji support improve control over the user interface and make reporting more effective. New file management improvements streamline the organization f attachments and reduce end-user clicks. Bulk assessments for individuals allow organizations to more readily distribute questionnaires, certification quizzes and surveys to employees. Vendor Risk Management Enhancements  Enhancements to ProcessUnitys Vendor Risk Management module improve the quality of due diligence and ongoing assessments by reducing vendor fatigue. Updates to the Vendor Portal permit third parties (with permission) to keep their vendor profile data up-to-date. Via bulk attachments, vendors can upload all their policies in one step, and then link them to specific assessment responses as they answer individual questions. Assessment question serial numbers allow vendors to import responses from previously completed assessments to save time. An extension to dynamic scoping allows customers to automatically show or hide individual or groups of assessment questions based on inherent risk, service type and/or any related vendor attribute in the system. The new controls testing worksheet incorporates a vendors due diligence responses alongside the related controls to be tested for onsite controls assessments.

Every company runs its risk and compliance programs differently. By continuing to extend the power and flexibility of our platform while maintaining ease of use, ProcessUnity can support companies of all sizes and program sophistication, said Paul Carroll, Executive Vice President of Product and Engineering at ProcessUnity. The key themes to our Fall 2017 release are flexibility and efficiency. Were giving our customers more options to configure their programs and more tools to complete tasks with less effort.

Leading organizations rely on ProcessUnitys governance, risk and compliance solutions to assess, measure and mitigate risk, and ensure the optimal performance of key business processes. As cloud-based technology, ProcessUnity deploys quickly with minimal effort from customers and their IT resources. Product enhancements are installed frequently, immediately, and automatically, and require no work from the customer. The inherent efficiency of the platform delivers faster, better results, and the ability to scale governance, risk, and compliance programs over time.

ProcessUnitys suite of applications includes Third-Party Risk Management, Policy and Procedure Management, Enterprise Risk Management, Regulatory Compliance Management, Product and Service Offer Management, and more.

For more information on ProcessUnitys cloud-based risk management solutions, visit www.processunity.com.

About ProcessUnity

ProcessUnity is a leading provider of cloud-based applications for risk management and service delivery management. The companys software as a service (SaaS) platform gives organizations the control to assess, measure, and mitigate risk and to ensure the optimal performance of key business processes. For public companies and regulated industries, ProcessUnity Risk Suite delivers effective governance and control, vendor risk mitigation, and regulatory compliance. For benefit plan administrators and other financial service firms, ProcessUnity Offer Management controls complex product offerings and strengthens client service experience. ProcessUnity is used by the worlds leading financial service firms and commercial enterprises. The company is headquartered outside Boston, Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.processunity.com.

For additional information on ProcessUnity, contact:

Rosalind Morville

ProcessUnity, Inc.

978.513.8436

[email protected]
[October 24, 2017] Go Ahead, Be Cheap: CheapOair Launches New Campaign to Get Consumers Excited about Saving on Travel

NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In the battle for consumers' attention, travel providers have stiff competition. Over the years, CheapOair.com, a leading seller of flights worldwide with almost $5 billion in annual sales, has quietly gained market share with a digital-heavy media strategy. That's now evolving, with the first Brand offering from the online travel agency. The company's new tagline, "Go Ahead, Be Cheap" is an anthem, designed to give consumers permission to embrace their inner-cheapness. "We spent a lot of time doing the research. Once completed, our path was clear," says Kathi Moore, Vice President, Branding, for CheapOair.com. "Our name is quirky, it's memorable. By using it as an asset, we are taking maximum advantage of what that means in terms of building awareness for the brand." In the new commercial, consumers are encouraged to understand that "cheap" means value. A series of fun and appealing travel scenarios are supported by a clear copy direction and a friendly and accessible music track. :30 and :15 second versions of the spots, in both English and Spanish language, were written and produced by Manhattan-based, Rogue Producer. The English language versions began airing nationally in October.



Sam S. Jain , Founder and CEO of Fareportal, the corporate owner of the CheapOair.com brand, explains, "CheapOair.com has grown exponentially over the last decade. With 'Go Ahead, Be Cheap' we are creating the foundation for the hyper-growth we expect in the next few years. Tactically, and technically, we are ready. The next logical step for us is to reach out to the travel consumer with strong, branded messaging to increase our customer base." For more information, please visit www.cheapoair.com, www.cheapoair.com/mobile, or our social media pages, www.facebook.com/cheapoair and www.twitter.com/cheapoair.

About CheapOair

CheapOair is a flight-focused, hybrid travel agency that enables consumers to book online, on mobile apps for iOS and Android, by phone or live chat. CheapOair (https://www.cheapoair.com, 1-800-566-2345) bridges the gap between an online and traditional travel agency with certified travel agents available 24/7 to help find deals and offers to destinations worldwide on over 450 airlines, 1 million hotels, and 100s of car rental companies. Partner airlines benefit from access to CheapOair's broad customer base that books high yield international travel and add-on ancillaries at above the industry average. Follow CheapOair on Facebook and Twitter to learn how to travel the world for less. About Rogue Producer

Rogue Producer is an independent production department that partners directly with marketers to outsource the execution of all production needs. Rogue created a new, industry model in which content production is decoupled from agencies to create a company that services all the production needs of clients, across all platforms, at a fraction of the cost. Rogue is a cost-efficient, alternative production choice for companies and brands without the high overhead. Rogue takes creative ideas and works together with marketers to turn them into engaging forms of consumer communications. View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/go-ahead-be-cheap-cheapoair-launches-new-campaign-to-get-consumers-excited-about-saving-on-travel-300541583.html SOURCE CheapOair

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[October 24, 2017] Kindred Piloting Robots As a Service with Major Retail Partners

Kindred, the company building human-like intelligence in machines, today announced major global retailers have started pilot programs integrating Kindred Sort, the company's first commercial offering, in existing fulfillment centers. Kindred also announced it raised $28 million in Series B funding led by Tencent, bringing the total amount raised to $44 million. Previous investors Eclipse Ventures and First Round Capital participated in the new round. Kindred's team of scientists are exploring new types of cognitive architectures that can make any machine smarter. The company is focused on uncovering how brains learn through a physical body, and applying those learnings to create and teach a new intelligent class of robots that will enhance the quality of our day-to-day lives, and in particular, the way we work. The additional capital will go towards the continued research, development and deployment of Kindred's robots as a service. The new funds will also be used to advance the company's broader mission to build human-like intelligence in machines. Kindred Sort was developed for use in retail distribution and ecommerce fulfillment centers to quickly and accuraely sort an endless variety of products into orders, side by side with warehouse staff. The robots will help retailers increase productivity and expand capacity to serve more customers faster, enabling top line revenue growth.



"Kindred Sort is only the beginning when it comes to showcasing the company's unique approach to AI," said Pierre Lamond, Partner at Eclipse Ventures. "Their technology is powering a new class of robots that learn to do far more than traditional industrial robots. These intelligent robots complement human workers to meet the greater efficiency, flexibility and output demands of modern ecommerce fulfillment centers." With Kindred Sort, the company aims to alleviate the massive pressures facing the retail and fulfillment industry, which includes significant online sales growth, labor shortages, and a lack of advancement in technology. Though overall employment in fulfillment centers grew by more than 6 percent last year, employers struggle to fill an increasing number of open positions. Kindred Sort allows retailers to more efficiently manage the exploding growth and demand of this sector.

"Industrial robots, despite their accuracy and precision in the controlled environments of modern manufacturing facilities, do not adapt well to less controlled environments where the items could be randomly placed or come in a nearly infinite variety of sizes, shapes and weights," said George Babu, co-founder and head of product at Kindred. "Kindred Sort leverages our advancements in applying artificial intelligence (AI) to physical world systems and our unique approach to delivering intelligence to robots that can help solve the capacity issues facing modern fulfillment centers." "In the future, all machines will benefit from being able to understand and interact intelligently with the world around them, and Kindred is on the forefront of creating the building blocks for this future," said Babu. About Kindred Kindred Systems Inc.'s mission is to build machines with human-like intelligence. The company's central thesis is that intelligence requires a body. Since its founding in 2014, Kindred has been exploring and engineering systems that enable robots to understand and participate in our world, with the ultimate goal of a future where intelligent machines work together with people to create abundance shared by all. Kindred has offices in San Francisco, Toronto, and Vancouver. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024006117/en/

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[October 24, 2017] Voxbone Teams up with Gridspace to Integrate AI And Enhance Insights Gained from Business Communications

Voxbone, the Communications as a Service (CaaS) provider that supports both giants and growing enterprises with voice and messaging services in the cloud and via API, announced today that it has formed a strategic partnership with leading speech-processing company Gridspace. This collaboration will integrate Gridspace's AI capabilities to complement Voxbone's (News - Alert) already robust voice analytics services (Voxbone.ai). With this expanded offering, customers will be able to automatically record conversations and receive real-time transcriptions/analytics from interactions made in contact centers, conferencing and other venues for spoken business communications. Such insights include identifying missed opportunities during sales calls, optimizing customer satisfaction and discovering trends among top-performing teams or employees. "Our collaboration with Voxbone will open up a world of opportunities for businesses looking to turn daily conversations into more valuable data," said Evan MacMillan, Founder & CEO of Gridspace. "Using APIs from both of our companies will allow customers to automate recording, analyze conversations and optimize interactions within contact centers, on conference calls and across many other conversations."



"AI is quickly becoming a vital part of business communication processes," said Itay Rosenfeld, CEO of Voxbone. "The partnership with Gridspace came as a direct result of our desire to enable and further simplify communications for our customers. Through this expanded offering, our users can now extract data from voice conversations and tap into quantitative insights from interactions that may have otherwise gone undocumented." Gridspace joins a list of partners (VoiceBase, CallMiner, Google (News - Alert) Talk) that provide external analytics processing using Voxbone's cloud-based call recording. A demo of the service is available at Voxbone.ai.

ABOUT VOXBONE Voxbone makes it unbelievably simple to set up and manage global business communications. Our on-demand virtual numbers and SMS services allow businesses to extend their reach into over 9,000 area codes in 60+ countries-at the touch of a button. Voxbone's happy customers include: Skype (News - Alert), Zoom, 8x8, Dialpad, CafeX, Orange Business Services, foodpanda, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, InContact and Serenova. Check out our website at www.voxbone.com. ABOUT GRIDSPACE Gridspace was formed as a collaboration between SRI (News - Alert) Speech Labs, the lab behind Siri, and a multidisciplinary team of designers and engineers. The company's software enbles businesses to analyze their mission-critical voice communications. The company is backed by top investors including Bloomberg Beta, Wells Fargo Accelerator, Stanford University, the former COO of Facebook, CTO of Oracle, founding CTO of Yammer, and COO of Business Objects (News - Alert), among others. Gridspace is based in Los Angeles and San Francisco. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024006119/en/

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[October 24, 2017] VentureClash Announces Winners of $5 Million Global Investment Challenge

The Netherlands' FRISS takes home top investment award ROCKY HILL, Conn., Oct. 24, 2017 /CNW/ -- Connecticut Innovations (CI), the leading source of financing and ongoing support for Connecticut's innovative, growing companies, today announced the winners of VentureClash, a $5 million global investment challenge for early-stage companies in digital health, financial technology, insurance technology and the Internet of Things. Of the nine finalists from seven different countries, VentureClash awarded six companies with investments, mentoring, customer introductions, grants and services to help them grow and succeed. The winning companies are required to establish a presence in Connecticut. Investment Awards: FRISS received the top investment award of $1.5 million. Based in the Netherlands, Friss uses proprietary analytics software to provide state-of-the-art solutions in the fields of fraud, risk and compliance for the insurance industry. Two second-place winners will each receive a $1 million investment: SCADAfence  Based in Israel , SCADAfence is a pioneer in securing mission-critical industrial networks from cyber threats, reducing the risk of connecting multiple devices in industries like manufacturing, utilities, oil and gas. Vouchr  Based in Canada , Vouchr is a secure, payment-agnostic tool that allows users to bundle transfers of funds with photos, videos, social networking and gamification. Three companies will each receive a $500,000 investment award: Buzzmove  Buzzmove is the United Kingdom's only price-comparison and instant-booking platform for all services related to moving and the right level of insurance needed to cover moving-related services. Davra Networks  Based in Ireland , Davra Networks provides a complete Internet of Things (IoT) platform that allows customers to define, build and bring to market vertical-specific IoT applications while collecting and easily sharing data. EAVE  U.K.-based EAVE is developing the next generation of hearing protection and communication technology, utilizing noise cancellation and speech enhancement to eliminate noise-induced hearing loss.



Matt McCooe , CEO of Connecticut Innovations. "Judges struggled to make the decision, but in the end, FRISS took home the top award because of its strength in the space and ability to disrupt here in the United States ." The other finalists included:

Bought By Many  A U.K.-based interactive members-only service, Bought By Many offers targeted insurance opportunities designed to help individuals find the right insurance efficiently and customized to their needs. PeekMed  Based in Portugal, Peek Health offers powerful three-dimensional preoperative planning software for orthopedic surgery that aims to help the surgeon better treat the patient while reducing costs and surgical times. Tellspec  Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Tellspec is a data company with the ability to scan food, offering non-destructive real-time food testing for quality control, authentication, safety and nutritional value. On October 20, 2017, the nine finalists, representing the most promising early-stage companies in digital health, financial technology, insurance technology and the Internet of Things, pitched their ideas in front of a live audience and a panel of judges at the Yale School of Management in New Haven, Conn. The judges included investors and subject-matter experts from 1843 Capital, Elm Street Ventures, Greycroft Partners, The Hartford and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). In addition to the company pitches, the VentureClash program also included a keynote address from Tim Armstrong, CEO of Oath. The VentureClash competition started with applications from 285 companies from more than 20 countries. After two rigorous rounds of judging, nine finalists were named, and they then went on to compete at the live pitch event. For more information on qualifications, requirements, guidelines and application, visit www.ventureclash.com. About VentureClash

VentureClash is Connecticut Innovations' global investment challenge focused on early-stage companies. The challenge identifies promising companies in digital health, financial technology, insurance technology and the Internet of Things that will receive investments from a $5 million award pool and the support of resources around Connecticut. To learn more, visit www.ventureclash.com. About Connecticut Innovations Inc.

Connecticut Innovations is Connecticut's strategic venture capital arm, providing funding and strategic support to early-stage technology companies. In addition to equity investments, CI provides grants that support innovation and collaboration through CTNext, and connections to its well-established network of partners and professionals. To learn more, visit www.ctinnovations.com. Contact: Lauren Carmody

Director of Marketing Communications

Phone: (860) 258-7829

Email: [email protected] View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ventureclash-announces-winners-of-5-million-global-investment-challenge-300542148.html SOURCE Connecticut Innovations

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[October 24, 2017] GE Transportation Unveils EdgeLINC Software, Advances Industrial IoT Management Solutions

(NYSE:GE) Today GE Transportation introduced EdgeLINC Software, a comprehensive solution for IIoT edge-to-cloud connectivity with efficient device management, configuration and streaming analytics capabilities. Industrial assets generate valuable information at the edge - or on a machine or device - where embedded sensors collect vast amounts of data. When operating heavy machinery in variable environments, the ability to compute, manage, analyze and act upon that data is essential for companies to benefit from the Industrial Internet. In the rail industry, assets are mobile and constantly moving in and out of communication, making it even harder to derive value from data that lives on the edge. "When it comes to transportation and other heavy industrial settings, seconds matter. Operators require the ability to take action on their physical assets immediately, either automatically with a train adjusting itself or by human intervention," said Laurie Tolson, Chief Digital Officer, GE Transportation. "Edge-level computing and analytics are about giving people actionable information to better manage how the physical world operates in real-time to improve industrial performance." EdgeLINC enables complete user control over configuration, telemetry, alerts and leverages SAS's (News - Alert) Event Stream Processing (ESP) engine integrated with Predix Machine, Predix Edge Manager and Asset Performance Management (APM) solutions. EdgeLINC is capable of running on GE Transportation's GoLINC platform as well as third party devices, and supports on-premises, cloud and hybrid cloud deployment and integration. "The combination of EdgeLINC's extensible architecture and easy deployment on any edge device, any time, is further strengthened by the contributions of GE's ecosystem partners" explained Tolson. "SAS ESP drives EdgeLINC's rules-based, highly configurable analytics at the edge and Infosys (News - Alert) brings an enterprise scale capability for integration services. Together, we can increase speed to value and success of delivery for our customers - not only those in the rail industry, but in other industrial verticals as well." "An edge-first approach is increasingly important as we migrate to a digital world. The combination of GE's EdgeLINC and SAS Event Streaming Processing enables enterprises to gain real-time insights and drive improved outcomes by harnessing the power of streaming edge analytics running on board connected locomotives," said Jason Mann, Vice President of IoT, SAS. "EdgeLINC moves away from static management techniques, with flexible rules processing for continuous updating and adapting on he fly."



"As a strategic partner of GE focused on developing IoT solutions, we are excited about GE's EdgeLINC solution," said Ravi Kumar S., President and Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Infosys. "The solution streamlines the collection of edge-level sensor data, enables faster, seamless aggregation and integration into other cloud and enterprise systems, dissolving the layers of complexity for transportation organizations and operators. GE and Infosys are working together on developing and deploying this solution, enabling customers to leap forward into Industrial IoT and improve operational metrics while reducing Total Cost of Ownership." EdgeLINC is already being deployed on over 1,000 locomotives by a major Class I railroad in North America, driving productivity from consolidation of management of multiple devices and applications, and operational efficiencies from real-time analytics of train crew performance.

GE Transportation unveiled EdgeLINC at Minds + Machines 2017, GE's premier industrial Internet event dedicated to software, innovation and digital industrial transformation. About GE Transportation At GE Transportation, we are in the business of realizing potential. We are a global technology leader and supplier of equipment, services and solutions to the rail, mining, marine, stationary power and drilling industries. Our innovations help customers deliver goods and services with greater speed and savings using our advanced manufacturing techniques and connected machines. Our digital solutions, which provide data-driven insights to improve efficiency, leverage Predix - GE's platform for the Industrial Internet. Established more than a century ago, GE Transportation is a division of the General Electric Company that began as a pioneer in passenger and freight locomotives. That innovative spirit still drives GE Transportation today and is strengthened by our ability to serve customers more holistically through the GE Store - a global exchange of knowledge, technology and tools across all GE businesses that ultimately provides better outcomes for customers. GE Transportation is headquartered in Chicago, IL, and employs approximately 10,000 employees worldwide. About SAS SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative analytics, business intelligence and data management software and services, SAS helps customers at more than 83,000 sites make better decisions faster. Since 1976, SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW. About Infosys Infosys is a global leader in technology services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countries to create and execute strategies for their digital transformation. From engineering to application development, knowledge management and business process management, we help our clients find the right problems to solve, and to solve these effectively. Our team of 198,000+ innovators, across the globe, is differentiated by the imagination, knowledge and experience, across industries and technologies that we bring to every project we undertake. Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise thrive in the digital age. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024005536/en/

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[October 24, 2017] AXA Financial Board Member Bertram Scott Named to Savoy Magazine's roster of Most Influential Black Corporate Directors

AXA Financial, Inc. announced today that Bertram Scott, a member of its Board of Directors, has been named one of the Most Influential Black Corporate Directors in 2017 by Savoy magazine. Scott joins some of the nation's most accomplished executives and business leaders who were selected based on their exemplary records of achievement and influence within their companies and communities. Scott joined the AXA Financial board in 2012, bringing his expertise as an audit committee financial expert and strong strategic and operational skills acquired through the variety of executive roles in which he has served during his career. He also serves on the boards of Lowe's Companies, Inc., and Becton, Dickinson and Company. In addition, Scott currently serves as Senior Vice President of Population Health Management at Novant Health, Inc. "I'm very pleased to congratulate Bert on this noteworthy achievement," said Mark Pearson, director, president and chief executive officer of AXA Financial, Inc. "He is a valued member of our AXA Financial Board of Directors. His deep knowledge of the industry and experience in strategy and operations have been essential in advising the company." Scott has a wealth of leadership experience in the financial and health services industries. He served as president and CEO of Affinity Health Plan from 2012-2014, and as president of U.S. commercial markets for CIGNA Corporation from 2010-2011. Prior to Cigna, he enjoyed a 10-year career at TIAA-CREF, beginning in 2000 as president of the company's life insurance business. In 2003, he took over management of all products for the company, including group annuities and mutual funds.



"Savoy is committed to providing comprehensive coverage of African Americans recently selected to serve on their first public board and those that are currently serving on public boards," said L.P. Green, II, CEO & Publisher of Savoy Magazine. "We continue to be inspired by these accomplished executives, their distinguished careers and the corporations that demonstrate inclusive board composition in Savoy. We offer congratulations and appreciation to the directors recognized in Savoy's Most Influential Black Corporate Directors edition for their leadership." Learn more about the Savoy Most Influential Black Corporate Directors list here.

About AXA Financial, Inc. AXA Financial is one of the premier organizations in financial protection strategies and wealth management. Affiliated companies include AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company, AXA Advisors, LLC (member FINRA, SIPC), AllianceBernstein, L.P., AXA Distributors, LLC and MONY Life Insurance Company of America. AXA Financial is a part of the global AXA Group, a worldwide leader in financial protection strategies and wealth management. "AXA Group" refers to AXA, a French holding company for an international group of insurance and financial services companies together with its direct and indirect consolidated subsidiaries. For more information, visit www.axa.com. GE-130633(10/17)(exp.10/19) View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024006222/en/

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[October 24, 2017] BAHP Launches Spanish Translation of Diaper Answers Website

ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Center for Baby and Adult Hygiene Products (BAHP) announced today the launch of a Spanish version of its popular consumer-focused website, http://www.diaperanswers.org/es/, which provides BAHP members, consumers and the media with information about the advantages, safety and convenient use of disposable diapers. "As a pediatrician and parent, I am excited that BAHP has launched the Spanish version of this website. It now reaches a much broader audience and provides parents and caregivers with beneficial information on the safety of disposable diapers," said Rachel W. Tellez, MD. "Users of the site will find the data credible and helpful when faced with important issues regarding the safety of their children." The website also features important information about how diapers are made, environmental issues, and includes Frequently Asked Questions. BAHP membership is available to all U.S. and Canada-based companies that manufacture and distribute their own branded disposable iaper products. For more information about the Center for Baby & Adult Hygiene Products and its members please visit www.bahp.com.





BAHP is an affiliate of the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates, a trade association representing specialty chemical manufacturers.

About The Center for Baby and Adult Hygiene Products

The Center for Baby and Adult Hygiene Products (BAHP), formerly known as the Personal Absorbent Products Council (PAPC), is the trade association for personal hygiene products. It provides information on the scientific, regulatory and related issues which may impact upon health, safety and environmental aspects of the manufacture, use and disposal of consumer products containing superabsorbent material including disposable diapers, training pants, feminine hygiene products, adult incontinence products, and wet wipes. About SOCMA

Since 1921 SOCMA has represented a diverse membership of chemical companies located around the world bringing world-class support uniquely tailored to enhance the operational excellence of our member companies. SOCMA is the only U.S.-based trade association dedicated solely to the specialty chemical industry, making us the leading authority on this sector. For more information visit www.socma.com. Media Contact:

Ryan Cinney

Manager, Marketing and Communications

(571) 348-5120

[email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bahp-launches-spanish-translation-of-diaper-answers-website-300542177.html SOURCE The Center for Baby and Adult Hygiene Products (BAHP)

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[October 24, 2017] Transfix Appoints Brian Christman as Vice President of People

NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Transfix, the technology platform that is changing the way companies manage their supply chain, today announced that it has named Brian Christman Vice President of People. Brian will be responsible for driving overall strategic growth through the development of the Transfix team and the scaling of people and workplace operations. He will report directly to co-founder and CEO Drew McElroy. "As Transfix continues to grow, we are committed to the long-term strategic development of our team. This is why we are investing in Brian at this point in our growth," commented Drew. "Brian brings exactly the right experience to this role, having successfully developed the talent of several fast-growing technology companies that have revolutionized their respective industries. We welcome Brian to the team and look forward to his contributions as we continue to build a world-class team." Brian joins Transfix from Etsy, where he served as Senior Vice President, People & Workplace. At Etsy, he successfully built best-in-class talent development, operations, and recruitment and retention programs that supported the company's rapid international growth across nine offices in seven countries and its transition to a publicly-traded company. Prior to joining Etsy, Christman was Vice President, HR Operations at Gilt Groupe. H has also held senior leadership positions at other industry-changing, technology oriented companies including Sirius XM Radio and DoubleClick.



"I am energized by young companies that are leveraging technology to transform their industries the way Transfix is modernizing the freight logistics industry," said Brian Christman. "I am thrilled to join the company at this important time and look forward to working hand-in-hand with the team to make Transfix the best place to work in New York City. We will be active in looking for talented technology professionals that want to join a company with a real vision for the future." Transfix works with many of the world's largest retailers, consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brands and manufacturers to streamline and optimize full truck load shipment logistics. Transfix's platform enables shippers to amplify their existing carrier relationships with their contracted carriers and provides real-time visibility, exception management, and data analytics to facilitate informed decision making. This speeds delivery of goods while lowering costs. The company announced a $42 million Series C round led by NEA in July 2017.

Brian is based in Transfix's New York City headquarters. He holds a B.A. in Human Services from Villanova University. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and three sons. About Transfix Transfix is changing the way companies view their supply chain. Transfix eliminates waste and inefficiencies that exist through a deep understanding of the dynamics that exist today for the world's leading shippers and the 3 million truck drivers in the U.S. that move their goods. Transfix is able to identify blind spots where data can fundamentally transform the way shippers and carriers work together. Ultimately, the company's promise is simple: to improve the lives of shippers and carriers by creating a more efficient platform by which a product can be moved from anywhere to anywhere at anytime. Media Contact:

Abby Aylman Cohen

Spark for Transfix

[email protected]

917-596-4758 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/transfix-appoints-brian-christman-as-vice-president-of-people-300542086.html SOURCE Transfix

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[October 24, 2017] Bridging the Gap in Access to Healthcare

MELVILLE, N.Y., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Canon Solutions America, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Canon U.S.A., Inc., today announced that on October 12, 2017, its Enterprise Managed Services Division (EMSD) led by the Healthcare Advisory Team (HEAT), collaborated with the American Hispanic Healthcare Executives (AHHE) to host the Manager's Council Healthcare Roundtable Series on "Bridging the Gap in Access to Healthcare." This session focused on the challenges of Healthcare Executive Officers in ensuring their hospitals provide affordable and comprehensive care to the communities they serve, and how the formulation of strategic partnerships between the private and public sectors can support the community by providing access to healthcare for everyone. The event began with introductions by Pedro A. Rivera, Esq., LL.M and George Zeppenfeldt-Cestero, president & CEO of AHHE, who invited EMSD to sponsor the event. The first presentation of the night was a conversation between Andrea Rai, senior manager of Strategic Partnerships with the Healthcare Advisory Team, and Sasha Dolgicer, senior director of Corporate Relations for the University of Miami (UM). They discussed the history of the relationship that began in 2013 between EMSD and UM, encompassing UHealth, the University's hospital system. EMSD's commitment to a holistic partnership that focuses on UM students, patients, the university, and the hospital has helped lead to positive impacts on underserved portions of the South Florida community and their access to healthcare. Steve Lorig, the EMSD account executive managing the NYC Health + Hospitals engagement and a HEAT healthcare ambassador, presented on EMSD's recent collaboration with the health system, and how EMSD has begun developing strategic partnerships within the system. The keynote speaker for te event was Alina Moran, the Chief Executive Officer of NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan. Ms. Moran's presentation examined the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Medicaid redesign in New York State, and the Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment (DSRIP) Program.



Ms. Moran's presentation also explored OneCity Health goals, which among other things, seeks to drive long-term community engagement and partnership while building healthier communities. The final topic of the keynote was NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan Transformation Goals: Strengthen Primary Care and Behavioral Health, Enhance Outreach and Activation, Ensure Robust, Targeted Care Management, and Support Seamless Care Transitions.

Over forty healthcare executives attended the event, representing major hospitals across New York City. "Our collaboration with Canon's Enterprise Managed Services Division on the AHHE Managers Council Roundtable was a great success," stated Pedro A. Rivera, Esq., LL.M, director of Labor Relations for NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue, and a member of the AHHE Managers Council. "The event was very well attended by AHHE members and the healthcare community. This was an incredible opportunity to learn from the experiences of those who support the effort to make healthcare accessible to all." Strategic collaborations have become the foundation of Canon Solutions America's Enterprise Managed Services Division's engagements with healthcare clients. EMSD's healthcare offering seeks to go beyond delivering multifunctional print devices, software, and services by seeking to align the strategic goals of the client and vendor at the outset of each engagement. To assist in this effort, the Healthcare Advisory Team was created to conduct primary research on industry trends and to focus on opportunities in the healthcare print space by identifying and implementing best practices, including benchmarking metrics to track program goals and successes. To learn more, please contact the Healthcare Advisory Team (HEAT). About Canon Solutions America, Inc.

Canon Solutions America provides industry leading enterprise, production, and large format printing solutions, supported by exceptional professional service offerings. With the technology offerings of the Canon and Oce brands, Canon Solutions America helps companies of all sizes improve sustainability, increase efficiency, and control costs through high volume, continuous feed, digital and traditional printing, and document management solutions. A wholly owned subsidiary of Canon U.S.A., Inc., Canon Solutions America is headquartered in Melville, N.Y. and has sales and service locations across the U.S. For more information on Canon Solutions America, please visit csa.canon.com. Canon is a registered trademark of Canon Inc. in the United States and elsewhere. Oce is a registered trademark of Oce-Technologies B.V. in the United States and elsewhere. All other referenced product names and marks are trademarks of their respective owners and are hereby acknowledged.

 2017 Canon Solutions America, Inc. All rights reserved. Canon Solutions America, Inc. Website:

http://csa.canon.com

For sales info/customer support:

1-844-443-INFO (4636) Editorial Contact:

Conor Febos

631-330-4109

[email protected] View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bridging-the-gap-in-access-to-healthcare-300542219.html SOURCE Canon Solutions America, Inc.

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[October 24, 2017] ProsperWorks Deepens Google Cloud Integration with New Add-on for Gmail

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- ProsperWorks, the CRM recommended and used by Google, today announced a new time-saving Add-on for Gmail for its users. This coincides with G Suite revealing Gmail support for third-party add-ons back in March 2017, where ProsperWorks was named as one of its launch partners. The integration support gives users the ability to install add-ons directly from the G Suite Marketplace. While ProsperWorks launched a powerful Chrome extension in 2014 to give users the ability to access their CRM data directly through their Gmail, the Gmail Add-on feature gives users the flexibility to use this functionality on all browsers, not just Chrome, providing unprecedented efficiency. "Sales teams are working a mile a minute to close deals and drive revenue. They don't have time to toggle between apps or manually input data," said Jon Lee, ProsperWorks co-founder and CEO. "As a Google launch partner, we're proud to reinforce our existing G Suite integration and provide the same powerful functionality we've had with our Chrome extension to customers who use other browsers. By eliminating the need to switch between apps, we're helping sales teams save valuable time and focus on what matters - clsing deals."



In addition to allowing users to instantly access their ProsperWorks data through Gmail, regardless of which browser or Android device they're using, the Add-on for Gmail delivers: Browser agnostic and mobile compatibility  The Gmail add-on is compatible with any browser and works on the Gmail mobile app. This gives users even more ways to access their data.

Instant visibility into contact information  Users can easily access their prospect or customer data from ProsperWorks through Gmail, including personal details and any logged activities from calls, demos and meetings. They can also quickly scan for related opportunities, tasks and calendar events. Simplified data input  This feature allows users to instantaneously add new leads and contacts into ProsperWorks directly from email, eliminating manual entry and downtime. Access to social profiles  The add-on tool provides a link to any of the contact's social profiles associated with their email, which can help inform prospecting and sales strategies. To learn more about ProsperWorks' Add-on for Gmail, visit: https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/prosperworks_gmail_add_on/307884588814 About ProsperWorks ProsperWorks is a recommended CRM for G Suite (formerly Google Apps for Work). ProsperWorks helps companies sell more with a CRM that's simple to use, deeply integrated with G Suite and automated to eliminate tedious data entry. Founded by entrepreneurs Jon Lee and Kelly Cheng, ProsperWorks is based in San Francisco, has 140 employees and has raised $87M in venture capital financing. For more information, visit http://www.prosperworks.com. Media Contact

[email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/prosperworks-deepens-google-cloud-integration-with-new-add-on-for-gmail-300542229.html SOURCE ProsperWorks

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[October 24, 2017] Mayor Emanuel Joins Peapod To Announce Company Is Relocating Corporate Headquarters To Chicago

CHICAGO, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Mayor Rahm Emanuel today joined Peapod, the country's leading online grocer, to announce the company is relocating its headquarters to downtown Chicago at 300 S. Riverside Plaza. This relocation to the vibrant downtown area comes as Peapod is experiencing year over year growth across all of its markets. "Peapod is a national leader in both the food and tech industries and will be a strong addition to Chicago's thriving innovation community," Mayor Emanuel said. "In Chicago, the company can continue to expand, create new jobs and contribute to our growing economy." "Over the last 28 years, Peapod has revolutionized the way people across the nation shop for groceries," said Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner. "My administration is proud to work with companies that embrace innovation and push our economy forward. I will continue to work hard to support great companies and make our state an even better place to do business." "Since Peapod was founded in Chicago in 1989 as the country's first online grocer, we have always considered this city our home," Walt Lentz, acting President of Peapod said. "Moving our headquarters downtown will allow us to become a bigger part of the Chicago business community and invest in the city's diverse pool of talent while also growing our business throughout the country." Wth the move, Peapod looks forward to continuing to be a supportive member of the Chicago community, including increased involvement with the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Peapod has long supported the food bank and will continue to partner through employee volunteering, fundraising and food donations.



"Every day we distribute 164,000 meals across Chicago," Kate Maehr, Executive Director and CEO of the Greater Chicago Food Depository said. "We can't do this alone and count on support from businesses such as Peapod. As a grocer, Peapod is a valuable partner and with their help, we'll continue to fight hunger in Chicago and work to ensure all of our neighbors have enough to eat." The new location is expected to be complete in the spring of 2018, at which time the headquarters will transfer from the current Skokie, IL location. All employees at Peapod's current Skokie headquarters will be relocating to the new Chicago headquarters and Peapod is dedicated to making it a smooth transition.

With the move Peapod joins a number of other food industry leaders that have relocated to Chicago, including McDonald's, Conagra Brands, ADM, Mead Johnson, Beam Suntory, Kraft Heinz and Oscar Mayer. For more information on Peapod, visit www.Peapod.com and find Peapod on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. About Peapod

Peapod, an Ahold USA company, is America's leading online grocer with over 40 million orders delivered to date. Peapod's intuitive, inspiring website and award-winning mobile app allow customers to shop faster and smarter as well as save time and money with each order. Peapod is an easy and convenient solution for the busy consumer shopping for fresh groceries, pantry staples and meal solutions. Peapod offers delivery to both homes and businesses, and has over 200 pick-up locations. Peapod is available in 24 metro markets across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Maryland, District of Columbia, and Virginia. View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mayor-emanuel-joins-peapod-to-announce-company-is-relocating-corporate-headquarters-to-chicago-300542220.html SOURCE Peapod

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[October 24, 2017] Leonovus announces Military Grade Cloud Storage webinar

OTTAWA, Oct. 24, 2017 /CNW/ - LeoNovus Inc. ("LeoNovus, the Company") (TSXV: LTV) announces an open invitation to potential customers and investors to register on our website and attend our October 26 12PM EST webinar on Military Grade Cloud Storage. This is a joint webinar with our partner Storage Made Easy ("SME"). See how Leonovus 3.0 blockchain hardened, software-defined object storage uses military grade tactics for securing highly distributed systems along with home-grown patented algorithms that virtualize and slice data across a network of on-premises, hybrid or multi-cloud storage nodes and then how File Fabric from Storage Made Easy complements this secure storage infrastructure. File Fabric focuses on the application layer allowing organizations to apply policy-based controls to manage and secure end-user and application access to instructed data. In particular, we'll touch on upcoming European GDPR regulations and the importance of defensible privacy and governance controls. The exponential growth of unstructured data coupled with rising data security threats is creating huge challenges for IT organizations. Leonovus and Storage Made Easy have met this challenge creating not only a secure but also a cost-effective scalable approach to storage. Leonovus' algorithms can identify existing idle or under-utilized storage assets, on-premise or in the cloud, like Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive, and redistribute for use by the rest of the organization. End-user collaboration and governance support from Storage Made Easy with File Fabric provdes cost-effective self-service file synchronization and sharing for organizations and service providers that scales to hundreds of thousands of users.



About Leonovus Leonovus is a cloud solutions software provider that offers the leading block-chain enable software-defined object storage solution (SDOSS) and governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) solution for the modern enterprise. Designed with the IT manager in mind, Leonovus' patented algorithms virtualize, transform, slice and disperse data across a network of on-premises, hybrid or multi-cloud storage nodes  allowing for the most secure yet internally accessible form of object-based data storage that provides GRC across the entire solution. The advanced geo-distributed architecture minimizes latency, optimizes geo-availability, reduces remote backup costs and meets data sovereignty requirements. With its software and hardware agnostic design, Leonovus provides Petabyte scalability and allows the enterprise to utilize its existing idle storage resources, extend the useable lifespan of depreciated resources and improve the enterprise's overall ROI. To learn more, please visit www.leonovus.com.

This press release may contain forward-looking statements and information, which may involve risks and uncertainties. The results or events predicted in these statements may differ materially from actual results or events. Factors that might cause a difference include, but are not limited to, competitive developments, risks associated with LeoNovus' growth, the state of the financial markets, regulatory risks and other factors. There can be no assurance or guarantees that any statements of forward-looking information contained in this release will prove to be accurate. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. These and all subsequent written and oral statements containing forward-looking information are based on the estimates and opinions of management on the dates they are made and expressly qualified in their entirety by this notice. Unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, LeoNovus disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Readers should not place undue reliance on any statements of forward-looking information that speak only as of the date of this release. Further information on LeoNovus' public filings, including its most recent audited consolidated financial statements, are available at www.sedar.com. 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. SOURCE LeoNovus Inc.

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[October 24, 2017] Spigit Partners With Industry and Academic Leaders to Launch Innovation Forum Series

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Spigit, the worlds leading provider of ideation management software, today announced the kick-off of its Fall Innovation Forum series, which connects Spigit clients and partners with business leaders to discuss the latest advancements, best practices, and processes that drive successful innovation. The first event of the series, hosted today by Pepperdine University, will be held at the universitys West Los Angeles graduate campus.

Our Innovation Forums are designed to share key learnings from our industry-leading clients and partners with executives and their teams so they can build, enhance, and sustain their innovation programs, said Scott Raskin, President and CEO of Spigit. With most industries facing accelerated change, driven by disruptive technologies and new business models, innovation is more critical than ever. Through these Forums we are forming a network for sharing learnings and experiences based on the notion that creating a culture of innovation must be senior executives top priority. The initial Innovation Forum events will be held: October 24: Los Angeles, California, hosted with Pepperdine University

November 1: Boston, Massachusetts

November 2: New York City, New York

November 15: San Francisco, California

November 15: London, England We are delighted to host our first Innovation Frum with Spigit. Innovation is at the heart of our university and is a skillset we seek to instill within our students, said Shawn Herrera, Director of Corporate Partnerships at Pepperdine Universitys Graziadio School of Business & Management. We have an intriguing event planned, including a session on the Digital Workspace for the Cognitive Era, led by IBM, a keynote from Marcus Shingles, CEO of XPRIZE, and a CEO panel on Building a Culture of Innovation, moderated by Pepperdine Associate Professor Dr. John Mooney. Pepperdine is hosting events like this, and inviting Southern Californias top business leaders, because we are committed to being on the forefront of innovation in both higher education and industry. We are confident that attendees will take away a tremendous amount of actionable ideas to ensure that their companies can innovate now and in the future.



Spigits Innovation Forums provide attendees with an opportunity to connect with innovation thought leaders and other corporate executives to learn from their experiences, challenges, and successes in creating a culture of innovation. For more information about the Fall Innovation Forum series and to register your interest in attending, please read the blog post here and visit www.spigit.com/innovation-forums/.

About Spigit Inc.

Spigit is the largest provider of ideation management software to some of the worlds foremost companies, including AT&T, Citibank, Duke Energy, MetLife, Pfizer, Unilever, UnitedHealth Group and more. Spigit has powered ideation for large enterprises across major industries of financial services, manufacturing, healthcare, and energy. For a demo, click here.



Spigit global HQ is in San Francisco, European HQ in London, and our Asia-Pacific HQ is in Sydney. Learn more at www.spigit.com.



 2017 Spigit Corp. All rights reserved. Spigit, the Spigit logo, Kindling, the Kindling logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Spigit Corporation and/or its in the U.S. and elsewhere. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.



Spigit Media Contact:

Nicola Frazer-Reid

(415) 988-0497

[email protected]



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[October 24, 2017] JACOB'S CREEK(TM) Launches 'DOUBLE BARREL' Wine Campaign Narrated By Chris Hemsworth

BAROSSA VALLEY, Australia, Oct. 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- JACOB'S CREEK has added serious star-power to the latest campaign for its premium wine range DOUBLE BARREL, with the release of a new commercial titled Two Barrels, One Soul narrated by the acclaimed Australian actor Chris Hemsworth. To view the full multimedia release, click here: http://www.prnasia.com/mnr/jacobscreek_20171024.shtml div id="prni_dvprnejpgdf3dleft" style="TEXT-ALIGN: left; WIDTH: 100%">



The story takes viewers behind-the-scenes of the production of DOUBLE BARREL, an award-winning Australian wine range. The epic journey begins in a rustic whisky distillery in Scotland, then spans the continents, ending at the winery in the Barossa Valley, Australia. The development of the JACOB'S CREEK DOUBLE BARREL range has been a complex undertaking that has taken years to perfect. Matured in wine barrels, the wine is finished in whisk(e)y barrels for a richer, deeper and smoother finish. The dedication of the people and winemakers behind DOUBLE BARREL is brought to life in this new creative approach, expressing the true passion and relentless spirit of those involved.

The actor, Chris Hemsworth, star of THOR and THE AVENGERS, commented: "I'm proud to narrate this story for JACOB'S CREEK. DOUBLE BARREL is a true example of Australia's ingenuity, to create a unique wine. I look forward to tasting the next vintage in the Barossa in 2018." Derek Oliver, Global Marketing Director at JACOB'S CREEK, said: "Our award-winning DOUBLE BARREL range brings to life the spirit of innovation and expertise of our winemakers. At JACOB'S CREEK we celebrate an authentic sense of place as well as our belief in taking quality Australian wine to the world. "Chris is the perfect embodiment of the confident, inclusive Australian attitude synonymous with our wines. He has a commanding presence yet is approachable, and he clearly values spending quality time with family and friends. This, coupled with his global stature, makes him the right person to share this story with the world and we are extremely excited to be working with him." Two Barrels, One Soul was created by the Australian office of leading global agency AnalogFolk, with production by The Sweet Shop. The new video can be viewed online at http://www.jacobscreek.com/au/our-wines/double-barrel. JACOB'S CREEK DOUBLE BARREL: Launched in 20 markets around the globe

90+ points for Double Barrel Cabernet Sauvignon and Double Barrel Shiraz

Gold Medal and Trophy winning for Double Barrel Shiraz Notes to Editors: About Jacob's Creek Jacob's Creek is one of Australia's leading global wine brands, offering quality wines with great varietal expression. The brand was first launched in 1976 and is named after the place where Johann Gramp planted his first vines on the banks of Jacob's Creek in 1847. In doing so, Johann founded the Barossa Valley's first commercial vineyard, the Gramp & Sons business and a history of winemaking innovation that dates back 170 years. The wines are crafted with great care, with consumers' tastes at the forefront of the winemakers' mind. Having earned over 7,000 medals at wine shows across the brand's portfolio over the last 30 years, Jacob's Creek wines are trusted by consumers for their genuine quality. www.jacobscreek.com Jacob's Creek is a trademark of Pernod Ricard Winemakers Pty Ltd. Enjoy Jacob's Creek wines responsibly. Follow us:

#jacobscreek #doublebarrel #twobarrelsonesoul Twitter: @JacobsCreek

Facebook: facebook.com/jacobscreek

Instagram: @jacobscreekwine

YouTube: youtube.com/JacobsCreekWine Media contact:

Prue Bartholomaeus

Global Brand Communications Manager

Pernod Ricard Winemakers

T: +61 2 8874 8391 M: +61 438 565 077

[email protected] Video - http://static.prnasia.com/pro/media/mnr/201710/jacobscreek/video.mp4

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20171024/1973537-1-a

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20171024/1973537-1-b

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20171024/1973537-1-c

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20171024/1973537-1-d SOURCE Pernod Ricard

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[October 24, 2017] QTS Announces Development of Mega Data Center Campus in Ashburn, Virginia

OVERLAND PARK, Kan., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- QTS Realty Trust (NYSE: QTS), an international provider of data center, managed hosting and cloud services, today announced it has commenced development of a mega data center campus in Ashburn, Virginia. Since the end of the second quarter of 2017, the Company has agreed to acquire a total of 52 acres of land in Ashburn, Virginia in two parcels for a total purchase price of $53 million. The first parcel, representing 24 acres and a $17 million purchase price, closed during the third quarter of 2017. The second parcel, representing 28 acres and a $36 million purchase price, closed subsequent to the end of the third quarter of 2017. The combined site is located adjacent to QTS' existing Vault campus in Dulles, Virginia, and provides significant capacity to support the Company's ongoing growth in the nation's largest Tier 1 data center market. In addition, the combined land parcels enhance the company's strategic options in the Northern Virginia market where available land for development has become increasingly scarce. QTS believes the new combined site can ultimately support a total of more than 700,000 square feet of raised floor capacity and 140 megawatts of gross power. QTS has commenced construction on the first 24-acre parcel of land in Ashburn, and currently expects to deliver Phase 1 of its multi-tenant development, representing approximately four megawatts of critical sellable capacity, by mid-2018. To date, QTS has pre-leased 2.2 megawatts, representing over 50 percent of Phase 1 development capacity, to a global health insurance provider, reflecting typical enterprise wholesale pricing. QTS remains in active dialogue with a number of potential customers and currently expects to sign additional pre-lease commitments prior to the completion of Phase 1 development. Ultimately, the pace of future development at the Northern Virginia site will be dictated by market demand and ongoing discussions with existing and potential customers. Through the first half of 2017, the Northern Virginia data center market has accounted for approximately 25 percent of total wholesale capacity bsorption among the top 10 data center markets in the U.S., largely driven by strong demand from hyperscale companies, according to JLL. QTS' mega scale data center development in Ashburn, Virginia supports the next phase of the Company's growth strategy. This approach includes an intentional focus on satisfying large, multi-megawatt requirements, engineered to meet the need for speed, flexibility, infrastructure visibility, economics and operator excellence. Together, with its recently introduced QTS HyperBlock solution, which delivers multiple smaller block deployments over time, QTS is able to deliver a broad set of solutions designed for hyperscale customers.



"We are excited to have additional sellable capacity in a strategic QTS market to expand our ecosystem of more than 130 customers currently supported within our Northern Virginia footprint," said Chad Williams, Chairman and CEO  QTS. "Our fully-integrated 3C platform, combined with mega data center scale, position QTS to take advantage of increasing hybrid IT requirements, particularly from hyperscale companies." Additional land acquisitions

Since the end of the second quarter of 2017, QTS also purchased land for future development in two additional strategic markets. During the third quarter of 2017, QTS acquired 84 acres of land in Phoenix, Arizona for a purchase price of $25 million. The land parcel is located approximately five miles from QTS' existing data center in Phoenix, and provides the opportunity for significant future potential expansion. Phoenix remains a high demand data center market due to an abundance of cost-effective power, fiber-rich connectivity, and low natural disaster risk.

Subsequent to the end of the third quarter of 2017, QTS acquired 92 acres of land in Hillsboro, Oregon for a purchase price of $26 million. Hillsboro, Oregon is attracting technology companies and rapidly becoming one of the largest hyperscale data center markets on the west coast due to multiple key factors, including affordable power, robust connectivity, and local and state tax incentives. QTS plans to complete pre-construction work over the coming months to position both the Phoenix and Hillsboro locations for future development. Ultimately, development of either site into sellable data center capacity will be subject to market demand and ongoing interest from existing and potential new customers. "Our announced development in Ashburn combined with new strategic optionality in Phoenix and Hillsboro, enhance QTS' ability to deliver scalable capacity solutions in the top U.S. hyperscale data center markets," said Jeff Berson, Chief Financial Officer  QTS. "The ability to extend our hyperscale growth strategy with a de-risked development plan is consistent with QTS' overall balanced approach to capital allocation." About QTS QTS Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: QTS) is a leading provider of secure, compliant data center, hybrid cloud and managed services. QTS features the nation's only fully integrated technology services platform providing flexible, scalable solutions for the federal government, financial services, healthcare and high tech industries. QTS owns, operates or manages more than 5 million square feet of data center space and supports more than 1,100 customers in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. In addition, QTS' Critical Facilities Management (CFM) provides increased efficiency and greater performance for third-party data center owners and operators. For more information, please visit www.qtsdatacenters.com, call toll-free 877.QTS.DATA or follow us on Twitter @DataCenters_QTS. Investor Relations Contact:

Stephen Douglas, VP Investor Relations and Strategic Planning

QTS Realty Trust

[email protected] Media Contact:

Sharon Goldmacher

communications 21

404.814.1330

[email protected] View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/qts-announces-development-of-mega-data-center-campus-in-ashburn-virginia-300542521.html SOURCE QTS Realty Trust, Inc.

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[October 24, 2017] Magenta Therapeutics Appoints Alison Lawton, Jeff Albers and Blake Byers to its Board of Directors

Magenta Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing therapeutics to improve and expand the use of curative hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for more patients, today announced the addition of Jeff Albers, Blake Byers and Alison Lawton to its Board of Directors. The Company also announced that it has appointed Chris Klee and Roger Kitterman as Board observers. "I am very pleased to welcome Jeff, Blake and Alison as directors on our Board at this exciting point in Magenta's story. All three bring a wealth of strategic and operational experience, which we believe will be important as we continue to work to revolutionize transplant medicine for patients and healthcare providers," said Michael Bonney, Chair of the Board of Directors, Magenta Therapeutics. "We are also delighted to add Chris and Roger as observers to the Board. Their insights and relevant industry expertise will be invaluable as Magenta continues to mature as a company." The new Board members will join Magenta's existing Board of Directors: Jason Gardner, Michael Bonney, Bruce Booth, Alexis Borisy, Tom Daniel and David Scadden. Alison Lawton spent more than 20 years at Genzyme, which included serving as head of Genzyme Biosurgery, where she was responsible for the company's global cell therapy, regenerative medicine, orthopedics and surgical businesses; and head of Global Market Access, with responsibility for regulatory affairs, global health outcomes and strategic pricing, global public policy and global product safety. Currently, she is the chief operating officer of Aura Biosciences. Alison is the past president and chair of the Board of Regulatory Affairs Professional Society and past FDA Advisory Committee member for the Celland Gene Therapy Committee. She earned her B.Sc. with honors in pharmacology from King's College London.



Jeff Albers is CEO, president and a member of the board of directors at Blueprint Medicines. Prior to this role, Jeff served as president of the Norwegian biotechnology company, Algeta ASA, and was head of all U.S. operations. Previously, Jeff held senior commercial and corporate development positions at Genzyme, most recently as vice president of the U.S. hematology and oncology business unit, where his responsibilities included the U.S. launch of Mozobil for mobilization of hematopoietic stem cells. Jeff holds a B.S. from Indiana University (News - Alert) and an MBA and J.D. from Georgetown University. Blake Byers is a general partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures) and has worked with GV since 2010. He is an engineer, scientist and entrepreneur. As an investor and partner at GV, Blake partners with founders of life science and digital companies. Prior to joining GV, Blake helped start two companies, led research projects on biomedical engineering and stem cells at Stanford University and was an angel investor. Blake received a Ph.D. and M.S. in bioengineering from Stanford University and holds a B.S. in biomedical engineering and economics from Duke University.

Chris Klee is the chief financial officer for Novartis US. Most recently, he served in a dual capacity as chief operating officer for Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) and country chief financial officer for Novartis US. Chris originally joined Novartis as a business planning analyst, and held a number of increasingly senior positions in the Pharma division. In 2005, he joined NIBR as chief financial officer and later assumed an expanded role as chief operating officer. Chris graduated from the Business School of the University of St. Gallen with a degree in finance and economics. Roger Kitterman is Vice President, Venture, and Managing Partner of the Partners Innovation Fund. In this role, he leads the Innovation Fund and Licensing teams for Partners HealthCare. Roger also serves as Executive Director of the Boston Biomedical Innovation Center, an NHLBI-funded program to develop technologies in the areas of heart, lung, blood, and sleep. Roger has been with the Partners Innovation Fund, a $165 million fund investing in Partners spinouts, since its launch in 2008. He is an experienced venture capital investor with more than 20 years in the industry and has guided multiple venture-backed companies through the earliest stages of development. Roger holds an MBA in Finance and Business Development from the Columbia Business School and an A.B. from Harvard College. About Magenta Therapeutics Magenta Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing therapeutics to revolutionize stem cell transplantation for patients with immune and blood-based diseases. By creating a platform focused on critical areas of transplant medicine, Magenta Therapeutics is pioneering an integrated approach to stem cell therapies to create patient benefits. Founded by internationally recognized leaders in stem cell transplant medicine, Magenta Therapeutics was launched in 2016 by Third Rock Ventures and Atlas Venture and is headquartered in Cambridge, Mass. For more information, please visit www.magentatx.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024006573/en/

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[October 24, 2017] Solium to Host Third Quarter 2017 Investor Conference Call on Tuesday, November 7, 2017 at 5:30 P.M. (EDT)

CALGARY, Oct. 24, 2017 /CNW/ - Solium Capital Inc. (TSX: SUM) the leading global provider of software-as-a-service for equity administration, financial reporting and compliance, today announced details of its fiscal 2017 third quarter investor conference call. Solium expects to report its financial results for the third quarter 2017 on Tuesday, November 7, 2017, after the close of markets. SECOND QUARTER CONFERENCE CALL:







DATE: Tuesday, November 7, 2017



TIME: 5:30 p.m. EDT; 3:30 p.m. MDT



DIAL IN NUMBER: 647-427-7450 or 1-888-231-8191



CONFERENCE ID: 8797509



TAPED REPLAY: 403-451-9481 or 416-849-0833 or 1-855-859-2056

Available until 12:00 midnight (EDT), November 14, 2017

Reference number: 8797509



LIVE WEBCAST: http://bit.ly/2y1XnaG Webcast will be archived for one year

About Solium Solium Capital Inc. (TSX: SUM) provides cloud-enabled services for global equity administration, financial reporting and compliance. From offices in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and Hong Kong, our innovative software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology powers share plan administration and equity transactions for more than 3,000 corporate clients with employee participants in more than 100 countries. Follow us @Solium and visit us at solium.com. SOURCE Solium Capital Inc.

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A 45-year-old Missoula woman is charged with a pair of felonies after allegedly driving while intoxicated, her fifth DUI, and striking another vehicle in Lincoln.

Sara Nicole Opsahl faces the felony DUI charge and one count of criminal endangerment.

Authorities allege that Opsahl fled after deputies attempted to stop her, swerving in and out of oncoming traffic and striking a vehicle containing two adults and endangering their lives, according to court documents.

Authorities further allege that Opsahl refused to conduct field sobriety tests but did provide a preliminary breath sample, which registered 0.181. The legal limit in Montana is 0.08.
GE INVESTOR ALERT: Law Offices of Howard G. Smith Commences Investigation on Behalf of General Electric Company Investors

Law Offices of Howard G. Smith announces an investigation on behalf of General Electric Company ("General Electric" or the "Company") (NYSE: GE) investors concerning the Company and its officers' possible violations of federal securities laws.

The investigation concerns whether defendants allegedly failed to disclose the underperformance of several of the Company's operating segments. On October 20, 2017, the Company announced earnings per share ("EPS") of $0.29, falling well below estimates of $0.49 per share. The Company also lowred 2017 earnings expectations, lowering EPS to $1.05-$1.10 from $1.60-$1.70.







On this news, General Electric fell 6.5%, or $1.56 per share, to close at $22.32 on October 23, 2017.

If you purchased General Electric securities, have information or would like to learn more about these claims, or have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Howard G. Smith, Esquire, of Law Offices of Howard G. Smith, 3070 Bristol Pike, Suite 112, Bensalem, Pennsylvania 19020 by telephone at (215) 638-4847, toll-free at (888) 638-4847, or by email to [email protected], or visit our website at www.howardsmithlaw.com.

This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024006718/en/
[October 24, 2017] SHAREHOLDER ALERT: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP Reminds Investors of an Investigation Involving Possible Securities Fraud Violations by the Board of Directors of Rio Tinto plc

Levi & Korsinsky announces it has commenced an investigation of Rio Tinto plc ("Rio Tinto" or the "Company") (NYSE:RIO) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws. On October 17, 2017, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Rio Tinto and two of its former top executives with fraud, alleging they inflated the value of coal assets in Mozambique and concealed critical information from the investing public. On the same day, The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced it had fined Rio Tinto more than 27 million after determining that the Company "breached the Disclosure Rules by failing to carry out an impairment test and to recognize an impairment loss on the value of [certain] mining assetswhenpublishing its 2012 interim results." To obtain additional information, go to:



http://www.zlkdocs.com/RIO-Info-Request-Form-5068 or contact Joseph E. Levi, Esq. either via email at [email protected] or by telephone at (212) 363-7500, toll-free: (877) 363-5972.

Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, California, Connecticut and Washington D.C. The firm's attorneys have extensive expertise in prosecuting securities litigation involving financial fraud, representing investors throughout the nation in securities and shareholder lawsuits. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024006789/en/

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Last week we broke the Samsung PM981 / 980 NVMe SSD story with a first look at the drive in 512GB and 1TB capacity sizes. Today we tracked down the PM971 NVMe SSD that may come to market with Samsung SSD 970 branding.

The PM971 was first introduced to us as a 22mm x 16mm x 1.5mm multichip package that crams the Samsung Proton controller, LPDDR4 DRAM, and V-NAND flash into a single chip. The drive is said to deliver up to 1,500 MBps sequential read and up to 900 MBps sequential write speeds. Samsung claims random performance up to 190,000 IOPS read and 170,000 IOPS write.

These are the first images of the PM971 in an M.2 form factor.

When announced, Samsung stated the PM971-NVMe BGA drive would ship in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacity sizes. With new 64-layer V-NAND in both TLC and QLC on the horizon, Samsung could quickly ramp up capacity sizes. This product could be used to aggressively enter the consumer entry-level NVMe segment where the Intel 600p currently owns the majority of the marketshare.

BGA SSDs are not sold to consumers as standalone components because they are embedded parts that must be installed by expensive machines. Samsung will not be the only company to release a BGA SSD soldered to an M.2 card, but the PM971 may be the most exciting. The other products in this configuration are DRAMless models with Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology. The PM971 still has an actual DRAM chip, even if we can't see it. We've proven that DRAM is required to deliver a pleasant user experience with our extensive product testing.



MORE: Best SSDs



MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs



MORE: All SSD Content
INDEPENDENCE, Mo. - The Independence Health Department is investigating a report of bedbugs at the AMC Independence Commons 20 Theater. A representative at the theater said that pest control did treat the theater in question along with several others on Monday as a precaution. It was triggered by a single complaint.
After students posed with a swastika beer pong and an African American student complained about racial micro-aggressions at St. Teresa Academy, the all-girls Catholic school is taking steps to educate its young women about discrimination. "Several initiatives are in place to strengthen our efforts to educate our students at St.
Lenexa police investigate 'gun-pointing' incident at area church Lenexa Police are investigating an incident in which someone pointed a gun at another person on church grounds. It happened shortly after 5 p.m. Monday afternoon outside the Lenexa Baptist Church. The church is located on West 87th Street Pkwy just west of Lackman Road. No injuries were reported.

Hands were held high among the denizens of this faith community . . . And not just in praise. Take a look:
Based in a 1,000 square-foot space in the former Goetz Brewery in St. Joseph, Missouri, Kansas City Cider Company is quietly preparing to launch its line of craft cider on Nov. 3 in select bars and restaurants in Kansas City. Brad Means, Jeffrey Means, cidermaker Trafe Brewer, and Chris Meyers formed the venture in September 2016.
Fredrick Scott, an accused serial killer charged with three murders in the metro area, pleaded not guilty to all charges on Monday. He is also the suspect in three more murder cases. The family of the victims was in court as Scott was formally charged with three counts of murder and three more counts of armed criminal action.
With no court order stopping it, Missouri's new abortion law set to take effect Tuesday JEFFERSON CITY * A Jackson County judge on Monday denied a motion made by Planned Parenthood affiliates and the ACLU of Missouri that would've stopped implementation of a provision in Missouri's newest abortion law. On Oct.

Arguments touting easy access to infanticide wereand now new rules are enacted today . . ."Under the new law, the doctor performing the abortion must be the one providing the information about the procedure's medical risks. Jackson County Circuit Judge S. Margene Burnett found that the requirement did not impose an undue burden on women seeking an abortion. In her ruling Monday, Burnett described the same-physician requirement as at best a moderate modification of the informed consent restraints already in place and
CHECK OUR RESPONSES TO CITY HALL HYPE VIDEO PUSHING TO THE NEW AIRPORT!!!

Everybody Loves Freebies!!!

Not As Much Money In Remodeling . . .

Fighting Future Kansas City Costs . . .

The Sordid Topic Of Kansas City Coin . . .

Tonight we offer a look at propaganda from City Hall television that's basically serving to promote the new airport despite very clear rules about "electioneering" by city employees in municipal elections.Behind the scenes, tax fighters are complaining about so many KCMO resources being used to serve up City Hall new airport promotion at a bunch of local cocktail parties, coffee chat groups and lunching lady gatherings . . . Sadly, we don't really care about the antics of the local civic social scene., video evidence is right up our alley and offers an opportunity for fact checking tonight . . .Feel free to offer even better responses than ours in the comments . . .Newsflash - Everybody loves free stuff, even huge corporations. If somebody wanted to share BILLIONS of dollars with you . . . You might be willing to lend your support as well.A Kansas City contradiction and just a bit of local gaslighting targeting the electorate - We're gonna do more with less space??? The scam here is that airlines will be free to charge more with fewer competitors in the new configuration.Anybody who says airline prices aren't going to steadily increase over time, as they have since the advent of the flight is simply looking into your face, lying and insulting everyone you ever met. Just a bit of news proof:To be fair, higher prices are inevitability no matter what happens with the airport.For those who really believe that locals won't pay for a new airport one way or another,You decide . . .
Opponents of Hecla Mining Cos projects near the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness claim its chief executive officer cant seek new permits until he accounts for millions of dollars in reclamation work incurred by his previous mining company.

In a letter released Monday, the coalition of environmental groups asked the Montana Department of Environmental Quality to suspend all permitting efforts requested by Hecla CEO Phillips Baker. Baker was formerly chief financial officer of Pegasus Gold Inc., whose bankruptcy in 1998 left the state responsible for at least $33 million in acid mine contamination at the Zortman and Landusky mines between the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation and Malta.

The Pegasus bankruptcy was a major factor in the Legislature updating the Metal Mine Reclamation Act in 2001, with its bad actor provision prohibiting officials of uncompleted reclamation efforts from starting new projects.

The fact there is a bad actor provision was something that almost got lost in our internal archives, said Clark Fork Coalition Director Karen Knudsen, one of the Hecla challengers. When we realized this handle existed, we wanted to make sure DEQ was aware of the connection of Hecla and these mining messes that were still paying for. And the law requires that DEQ take action.

Earthworks, the Montana Environmental Information Center, Rock Creek Alliance and Save Our Cabinets joined the Clark Fork Coalition on the DEQ letter. Through the lawfirm Earthjustice, they asked the agency to suspend Heclas Rock Creek and Montanore mine permits within 60 days. DEQ officials said they were reviewing the request on Monday.

Heclas subsidiaries own the exploration license for the Rock Creek mine near Noxon and the operating permit for the Montanore mine by Libby. The projects intend to produce copper and silver with hard-rock tunnel mine operations.

We are reviewing the assertions made by Earthjustice, and we believe they are misconstruing the statute regarding Mr. Baker and Hecla, Luke Russell, Hecla vice president for external affairs, said on Monday. Hecla has no relations with the projects referenced, and this action continues efforts by serial litigants to block responsible economic development in northwest Montana.

Baker doesnt mention his Pegasus experience in his corporate biography on the Hecla website. Knudsen said the Cabinet mine opponents have kept track of shifting corporate ownerships and executives as the project wound through decades of different management. One of Pegasus founders, Frank Duval, went on to become chief executive officer of Sterling Mining Co. when it owned the Rock Creek mine near Noxon before Heclas takeover.

Pegasus Gold incorporated in Canada in 1973, specializing in cyanide heap-leach extraction techniques that released profitable amounts of gold from low-grade ore bodies. In the 1970s and '80s, it operated mines in Montana, Nevada, Idaho and Australia. But after gold prices slipped from $850 an ounce in 1980 to $238 at the end of 1997, it filed for bankruptcy in January 1998.

That November, Montana voters banned cyanide heap-leach mining in the state through a ballot referendum. In 2003, they rejected an attempt to overturn the ban despite a $3.5 million campaign by Canyon Resources Corp., which wanted to use the process for a gold mine near Lincoln.

The Zortman-Landusky mine produced about $300 million in gold over 20 years. While Pegasus posted a $30 million bond for cleaning up the remains, the actual cost came to $63.5 million. That included extensive damage to the reservation land just north of the mines.

Pegasus desecrated the land, water, and sacred sites of the Fort Belknap Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Tribes and then disappeared into bankruptcy, Fort Belknap Community Council President Mark Azure wrote in the submission to DEQ. It would be a great injustice to let the former leadership of Pegasus profit from new mining ventures in Montana while the Tribes continue to suffer from the devastating pollution Pegasus left behind at the Zortman-Landusky mines.

Russell said those past actions dont reflect Heclas current operating standards.

Hecla has a track record of meeting its ecological responsibilities and mine reclamation requirements, as evidenced by ongoing work at the Troy mine, Russell said. Were covering 140 acres of tailings this year. Were doing that right now. Thats what Hecla does.

In addition to the Zortman and Landusky mines by Malta, Pegasus owned the Beal Mountain mine near Anaconda and Basin Creek mine near Boulder. It also owned the Montana Tunnels mine between Helena and Butte and the Diamond Hill mine near Helena. Those projects shifted over to Apollo Gold after Pegasus bankruptcy.

Montana Attorney General Tim Fox was a staff attorney for DEQ at the time. He called Pegasus liquidation plan abysmal for Montana because it obscured who would be responsible for the cleanup costs and excused the company from state reclamation laws.

Were looking for accountability here, said Bonnie Gestring of Earthworks, another Hecla opponent. Montanans have shouldered the costs of reclamation for far too long. This may be the first time the bad-actor provision has been used since it was approved under the Martz administration in 2001.
The two ministers, who have also met in Athens in July, will take part in a bilateral meeting on the forum sidelines

Greek Economy and Development Minister Dimitris Papadimitriou will attend the Economic Forum of the Aegean in Izmir on October 25-26, accompanied by the the managing director of the organisation Enterprise Greece, Elias Athanasiou.

Papadimitriou will deliver a brief address at the forum, which will be opened officially by Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. The Greek minister will take part in the "Two Coasts, One Sea" panel with his Turkish counterpart, Nihat Zeibekci.

The two ministers, who have also met in Athens in July, will take part in a bilateral meeting on the forum sidelines.

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: Lfdder License: CC-BY-SA

Source: ANA-MPA
Three ships of the Chinese Navy sailed at Piraeus Port on Monday to pay a courtesy call.

They are the frigate Plans Jing Zhou (FFG-532), destroyer Plans Chang Chun (DDG-150) and the general support ship Plans Chao Hu (AOR-890), which belong to the fleet of ships promoting the Chinese initiative titled "Silk Road", as described in the Belt and Road International Cooperation Summit Forum of May 2017.

After the May forum, the three ships had arrived in Greece and docked at Piraeus from July 23 to 26. On the last day, they had held a joint training with the Greek frigate Navarino in the Saronic Gulf area. At the time, Chinese Vice Admiral Shen Hao - head of the Silk Road fleet and vice commander of the Chinese Navy's Eastern Sea Fleet - had met for bilateral cooperation issues with Greek Navy Chief of Staff and Vice Admiral Nikolaos Tsounis. Vice Admiral Shen Hao had also paid a visit to ships at the Greek fleet's base.

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 Diakidis License: CC-BY-SA

Source: ANA-MPA
While summer might be the most popular time to visit the beautiful island of Rhodes  and understandably so, as thats when the weather is hottest  there are plenty of reasons to visit in Autumn instead. From festivals to quieter streets to up-and-coming hotspots, heres our guide to Autumn in Rhodes.

1. Ohi Day and other Festivals

Rhodes comes to life again in Autumn with a series of festivals and parades. The most famous of these is Ohi Day, which is celebrated on 28 October each year. This celebration marks the anniversary of Greece resisting the threat of invasion from Benito Mussolini during World War II  Ohi is Greek for no, which was Greeces simple response to Mussolinis ultimatum. Rhodes celebrates Ohi Day in style, with big crowds gathering at Madraki Harbour. Young and old come out to watch and its a great experience for visitors to the island too.

2. Explore the island like a local

As a highly popular tourist destination, Rhodes is often packed with visitors in the summer months, particularly its historic old town. Visiting the island in Autumn allows you to enjoy a more leisurely pace of life, exploring Rhodes narrow alleys and pretty squares, or watching the world go by from a cafe. Take advantage of the extra space and the islands quieter atmosphere to explore Rhodes like a local.

3. Swim in the sea  its still warm!

Unlike many destinations in Europe, Rhodes is still very warm in Autumn  the average maximum temperature is a very pleasant 28C. Of course, this means the sea is not only warm enough to swim in but its necessary in order to cool down after a hot day exploring the island! Rhodes boasts some great beaches  why not head to one in the afternoon after visiting the Old Town in the morning?

4. Visit Petaloudes (Butterfly Valley)

Petaloudes  known in English as the Butterfly Valley  is one of Rhodes most famous attractions, and for good reason. The beautiful nature reserve combines gorgeous rivers and waterfalls with colourful butterflies and exotic moths and trees. Located in the north of the island, Butterfly Valley is reachable by bus or of course car hire. Unsurprisingly, Petaloudes can be very busy in summer, but Autumn is the perfect chance to visit when nearly all the tourists have gone home. In addition, its your last chance to see the butterflies for the year, as they dont inhabit the valley in winter.

5. Be the first to try trendy new hangouts

The trendiest new bars and restaurants in tourist destinations are often revealed between holiday seasons. Indeed, travel experts Lonely Planet have only just released their list of the best places to go in Rhodes for 2017. By visiting in Autumn, you can be among the first to try out these new trendy hotspots, before the next wave of tourists arrives in summer.

Source: By AutoRhodes  car hire Rhodes.

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: Norbert Nagel License: CC-BY-SA








International Hospital Group (IHG), a leading international healthcare services company based in Britain, has signed an agreement worth 1.8 billion ($2.1 billion) with Iran to finance the construction of a network of cancer centres in the country, reported Iran Daily.



The MoU was signed between Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education and IHG following months of negotiations, said the report, citing Hamid Baeidinejad, the Iran's ambassador to the UK.



The agreement will see IHG invest in and build modern cancer treatment centers across the country in three phases, he stated.



As per the terms of the agreement, the Iranian Health Ministry and IHG will also co-operate in exchange of information, data and the latest findings in the field of cancer treatment and manpower training, said the report.
Plans are in the pipeline for the establishment of Turkish manufacturing facilities in Qatar to help in the production of more locally-made products, said an official.



The Turkish companies will be involved in direct production to help Qatari companies make their own products, Fikret Ozer, Turkeys ambassador to Qatar, was quoted as saying in a Gulf Times report.



Ozer said that a delegation composed of major furniture manufacturing companies from Turkeys Kayseri province visited Qatar earlier this month to seek investment opportunities and potential partnerships with Qatari companies.



Yakup Deveci, chairman of Kayseri Furniture Industrialists Association (Kaymos), told Gulf Times during the visit that as a business and government policy Qatar is a priority country for Turkey.



The chairman noted that the company wants to establish its presence in the Qatari market not only for its own businesses but also a show of support for Qatars business community.



Aside from the furniture industry, the ambassador also revealed that Turkey wants to make contributions to Qatar in the field of medicine.
Copthorne Hotel Dubai, the popular hotel located in Port Saeed in Deira, has appointed Liji Chacko as the hotels new director of finance and business support.

Bringing more than two decades of experience in finance, accounts and general administration, Chacko will provide guidance on all plans, targets and business drivers and also ensure timely closing and reporting of accounts and financial statements of the property.

Holding a Masters degree in commerce, he started his hospitality career as chief accountant at Millennium Airport Hotel in 1994, overseeing the entire accounts and finance-related functions of the property before rising to the role of Director of Finance and Business Support at Copthorne Hotel Dubai this year.

Glenn Nobbs, General Manager of Copthorne Hotel Dubai, said: We are delighted to welcome Mr Liji Chacko to our team. Liji has been part of the Millennium family since 2003 when Millennium & Copthorne took over the management of our sister hotel, Millennium Airport Hotel. With his solid years of experience in finance and accounts, he will play a vital role in developing the business strategy across all areas of the property. - TradeArabia News Service
Air passenger numbers are expected to double to 7.8 billion in 2036 from 4 billion travellers expected to fly this year, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said.

The prediction is based on a 3.6 per cnet average compound annual growth rate (CAGR) noted in the release of the latest update to the associations 20-Year Air Passenger Forecast.

The Middle East will grow strongly (5 per cent CAGR) and will see an extra 322 million passengers a year on routes to, from and within the region by 2036. The total market size will be 517 million passengers.

"All indicators lead to growing demand for global connectivity. The world needs to prepare for a doubling of passengers in the next 20 years. Its fantastic news for innovation and prosperity, which is driven by air links. It is also a huge challenge for governments and industry to ensure we can successfully meet this essential demand," said Alexandre de Juniac, Iatas Director General and CEO.

Eastward shift, developing market focus

The biggest driver of demand will be the Asia-Pacific region. The region will be the source of more than half the new passengers over the next two decades. The point at which China will displace the US as the worlds largest aviation market (defined as traffic to, from and within the country) has moved two years closer since last years forecast, Iata said.

"We now anticipate this will occur around 2022, through a combination of slightly faster Chinese growth and slightly reduced growth in the US. The UK will fall to fifth place, surpassed by India in 2025, and Indonesia in 2030. Thailand and Turkey will enter the top 10 largest markets, while France and Italy will fall in the rankings to 11th and 12th respectively," it said.

Risks, opportunities and sustainability

A number of risks to the forecast have been identified. Maximizing the potential benefits of aviation growth will depend on current levels of trade liberalization and visa facilitation being maintained. If trade protectionism and travel restrictions are put in place, the benefits of air connectivity will decline as growth could slow to 2.7 per cent, meaning 1.1 billion fewer passenger journeys annually in 2036. Conversely, if moves towards liberalization increase, annual growth could be more than two percentage points faster, leading to a tripling in passengers over the next 20 years.

Planning for growth will require partnerships to be strengthened between the aviation industry, communities and governments to expand and modernize infrastructure. Runways, terminals, and ground access to airports will come under increasing strain. Innovative solutions to these challenges, as well as to the baggage and security processes, cargo handling, and other activities, will also be needed. And air traffic management needs urgent reform to cut delays, costs and emissions, Iata said.

"Increasing demand will bring a significant infrastructure challenge. The solution does not lie in more complex processes or building bigger and bigger airports but in harnessing the power of new technology to move activity off-airport, streamline processes and improve efficiency. Through partnerships within the industry and beyond, we are confident that sustainable solutions for continued growth can be found," said de Juniac.

The aviation industry has adopted a robust strategy to reduce its environmental impacts, particularly its carbon emissions. "No industry has done more to meet its environmental obligations than aviation. Our tough targets to achieve carbon-neutral growth from 2020 and to cut our CO2 emissions to half-2005 levels by 2050 are backed by a comprehensive strategy. Our immediate aims are to work with governments to increase the production of sustainable aviation fuels, and to deliver air traffic management efficiencies, which promise significant emissions savings. And from 2020, a Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) will play a major role in meeting our carbon-neutral target," said de Juniac.

Key facts (all figures based on central growth forecast)

Fast-growing markets

The five fastest-growing markets in terms of annual additional passengers in 2036 compared to 2016 will be

 China (921 million new passengers for a total of 1.5 billion);

 US (401 million new passengers for a total of 1.1 billion);

 India (337 million new passengers for a total of 478 million);

 Indonesia (235 million new passengers for a total of 355 million);

 Turkey (119 million new passengers for a total of 196 million).

Many of the fastest-growing markets are achieving a compound growth rate of more than 7.2 per cent per year, meaning their market will double in size each decade. Most of these markets are in Africa, including: Sierra Leone, Benin, Mali, Rwanda, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Senegal, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, Malawi, Chad, Gambia and Mozambique.

Regional growth

 Routes to, from and within Asia-Pacific will see an extra 2.1 billion annual passengers by 2036, for an overall market size of 3.5 billion. Its annual average growth rate of 4.6% will be the third-highest, behind Africa and the Middle East.

 The North American region will grow by 2.3% annually and in 2036 will carry a total of 1.2 billion passengers, an additional 452 million passengers per year.

 Europe will also grow at 2.3%, and will add an additional 550 million passengers a year. The total market will be 1.5 billion passengers.

 Latin American markets will grow by 4.2%, serving a total of 757 million passengers, an additional 421 million passengers annually compared to today.

 The Middle East will grow strongly (5.0%) and will see an extra 322 million passengers a year on routes to, from and within the region by 2036. The total market size will be 517 million passengers.

 Africa will grow by 5.9%. By 2036 it will see an extra 274 million passengers a year for a total market of 400 million passengers. - TradeArabia News Service
ON THE MOVE: ITI Nabs KCGs Manca; Cantor Hires Prime Head

Elio Manca, formerly head of KCG's ETF sales in Europe who spent six years at the firm before departing last year before the Virtu deal, has just taken a role as a managing director and head of sales and business development at ITI Funds. ITI Funds is a Russian fund platform that offers a range of emerging markets ETFs. Manca joined KCG Holdings in March 2010 after nearly six years at Citigroup, where he was a director in equity derivative sales. Before that, he spent close to seven years in equity derivative sales at Morgan Stanley.

If you have a new job or promotion to report, let me know at jdantona@marketsmedia.com

Ilya Ustilovsky, the former head of ETF quantitative research at KCG Holdings, joined Two Sigma in September as a senior vice president within its New York operation. He previously spent over eight years at KCG, having joined from UBS in 2009, where he was an executive director and quant researcher within its electronic volatility group. Ustilovsky was co-head of options market making at KCG until 2013, when he moved into his role heading up ETF quant research within its customer market making unit.

Goldman Sachs has hired Nick Baltas as the head of research and development for its systematic trading strategies (STS) group. Baltas previously spent over four years at the UBS quantitative research unit in London. He will report to Tom Leake, global head of the STS sales strategy team, The Goldman STS group builds indices and strategies for all products traded within the banks securities division globally, using a proprietary platform across asset classes and geographical regions.

William Blair has announced Stephanie Braming, CFA will lead the William Blair Investment Management (WBIM) business. She will join the firms executive committee and will be based in Chicago. As global head of Investment Management, Braming will be responsible for the strategic direction of the business. Ms. Braming was most recently a portfolio manager for the William Blair International Small Cap Growth and William Blair International Growth strategies. In this role, she had responsibility for nearly $20 billion of client assets.

Former Bank of America Merrill Lynch executive Jon Yalmokas has joined Cantor Fitzgerald as the firms global head of prime brokerage. New York-based Yalmokas was set to join Canadian bank RBC earlier this summer to build out the companys financing business for investment managers. However, a statement on Monday confirmed a move to Cantor for the executive who was head of Americas prime brokerage at BAML from 2011 until this year.

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(TRAVPR.com) 22nd October, 2017 - HMH  Hospitality Management Holding has announced the appointment of Ms. Hala Al Ramadhi as the groups new Director of Technical Services. Ms. Al Ramadhi brings over 15 years of outstanding experience and expertise in managing and delivering multiple hotel projects.

Making the announcement, Mr. Aboudi Asali, CEO of HMH, stated, We are delighted to welcome Ms. Al Ramadhi to our team. She is a dynamic professional with a proven track record. With her vast experience, Ms. Al Ramadhi will play an instrumental role in supporting our existing and upcoming projects defined by high standards of design excellence and unique brand differentials. We are committed to offer the highest quality of service and expertise to our owners and associates and every aspect of the hotel experience is designed with our guests in mind.

In her new role, Ms. Al Ramadhi will liaise with various project teams including all required consultants, contractors and suppliers to provide technical services input across the groups various projects. Drawing on her knowledge and experience she will ensure that all projects are developed in compliance with HMH and internationally recognized standards and procedures.

Ms. Al Ramadhi began her career in 1998 as an Architectural and Interior Design Assistant with Gensler in London. Working her way up, she subsequently gained valuable experience with a number of prestigious architectural firms in the UK such AJP Frankham and WAT&G before moving to the UAE in 2007. She then joined Aldar Properties PJSC, Hotels & Hospitality as Design Manager.

A British national, Ms. Al Ramadhi holds a degree in Architecture from De Montfort University in Leicester in UK. She completed a thesis project in Tailoring & Architecture from University College Dublin in Ireland followed by a professional diploma in Architectural Practice, Construction Legislation, Procurement and Contracts from the same institute. Ms. Al Ramadhi has a strong interest in how sustainable practices can be incorporated into all architecture and qualified as a Certified Passive Designer by the Passive House Institute (PHI), Darnstadt in Germany.

About HMH

Founded in 2003 in Dubai, HMH  Hospitality Management Holding is a fully integrated hotel management company that prides itself for being one of the pioneers among local groups that are specialized in the dry segment. Being the largest operator in the sector within the region, HMH provides hotel owners and developers a broad spectrum of world-class management solutions with five distinct, yet complementary, hotel brands catering to varied market segments from luxury to budget. These include Bahi Hotels & Resorts, Coral Hotels & Resorts, Corp Hotels, EWA Hotel Apartments and ECOS Hotels.

HMHs strategic expansion in the Middle East and North Africa has been successful in unlocking a world of opportunities while creating value for its stakeholders, associates, staff members and customers. The existing portfolio is located in some of the most desirable destinations across the MENA region, with a pipeline of hotels under development to grow HMHs regional footprint even further.

For more information about HMH please visit http://www.hmhhotelgroup.com

or https://www.hmhhotelgroup.com/subscribenow

For media contact:

Hina Bakht

Vice President

MPJ (Marketing Pro-Junction)

Mob: +971 50 697 5146

Email: h.bakht@mpj-pr.com

http://www.mpj-pr.com

###
The Clement Palo Alto has announced that Meliza Lessard, Director of Food & Beverage at The Clement, is now Director of Food & Beverage for The Clement, The Westin Palo Alto and Sheraton Palo Alto.



(TRAVPR.COM) USA - October 22nd, 2017 - Palo Alto, CA. October 22, 2017  The Clement Palo Alto has announced that Meliza Lessard, Director of Food & Beverage at The Clement, is now Director of Food & Beverage for The Clement, The Westin Palo Alto and Sheraton Palo Alto.

All three hotels are owned by Pacific Hotel Management, LLC, based in San Mateo, California.

Lessard has been Director of Food & Beverage at The Clement since September 2016. Prior to joining The Clement, Lessard was Food & Beverage Director from 2014-2016 at the Claremont Club & Spa, in Berkeley, California, and Assistant Food & Beverage Director at the Fairmont Mayakoba at Playa del Carmen, Mexico, from 2011-2014. She also held positions in hospitality in Mount-Tremblant, Canada, Ste- Adele, Canada, and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic.

She received a degree in 1999 in Hotel Management and a Sommelier Certificate Master, Level 1, at Lasalle College, Montreal, Canada, and studied for a bachelors degree in Hotel Management at Universite du Quebec a Montreal in Montreal, Canada. Lessard is also a certified wedding professional.

About The Clement Palo Alto

The Clement Palo Alto opened its doors March 2016 and is one of the most innovative, personalized and unique luxury hotels in the country.

With 23 spacious and richly appointed one-bedroom suites, The Clement Palo Alto sets a new standard for personalized luxury accommodations in a contemporary residential-style atmosphere.

While unparalleled service is key to any great luxury hotel, The Clement Palo Alto takes its impeccable service to another level with an all-inclusive concept, including personalized concierge services, breakfast, lunch and dinner in an on-premise location of the guest's choice.

All wine, beer and cocktails, in-room mini-refrigerator (stocked with the guest's favorites), and fully-stocked Guest Pantry available around the clock, are just a few of the amenities included in this all-inclusive experience.

In fact, The Clement Palo Alto is more than all-inclusive, it is all-exclusive, catering exclusively to the guest's personal tastes and desires.

The Clement Palo Alto is ideally located across from Stanford University and next to downtown Palo Alto, with its award-winning restaurants, world-class shopping and upscale spas. It is just 45 minutes south of San Francisco and only 30 minutes north of San Jose, not only making it convenient, but easily accessible to the world-famous sights and myriad activities of both cities.

Overall, The Clement Palo Alto offers a unique, one-of-a-kind 6-star experience in the heart of Silicon Valley with unparalleled personal service, all-inclusive luxury and privacy in a warm, inviting and luxurious residential environment.

The Clement Palo Alto Hotel

711 El Camino Real

Palo Alto, California 94301

650.322.7111

www.theclementpaloalto.com

Contact:

Marci Bracco Cain

Chatterbox PR

Salinas, CA 93901

(831) 747-7455

http://www.theclementpaloalto.com

###


Search News Archive : Fast Travel News Promotion Via Search, Social Media + Email Follow Us On : SWISS-BELHOTEL INTERNATIONAL CONTINUES EXPANSION IN SAUDI ARABIA Industry: Hotels

Continuing its expansion in Saudi Arabia, Swiss-Belhotel International (SBI) has signed Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan.



(TRAVPR.COM) UAE - October 24th, 2017 - Continuing its expansion in Saudi Arabia, Swiss-Belhotel International (SBI) has signed Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan. The announcement was made by Mr Laurent A. Voivenel, Senior Vice President, Operations and Development for the Middle East, Africa and India, Swiss-Belhotel International. Featuring 210 keys, the upscale 4-star property is owned by Cardamom International Property Management LLC and is superbly located in the port city of Jazan with direct access to the beach.



Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan enjoys close proximity to Red Sea coast merely 20 minutes drive from Jazan regional airport. Boasting 210 keys including 140 well-appointed rooms and 70 studios plus apartments, the hotel is being designed to cater to a diverse mix of travellers. Included in its extensive facilities will be an array of business and lifestyle features making it the ideal address for both corporate and leisure guests. On site are four dining outlets, a spectacular ballroom and three meeting rooms, a health club with steam and sauna and a swimming pool. Among these a key highlight is the beautiful marina and restaurant on the beach that will be exclusively dedicated for the hotel guests.



Mr Nawaf bin Mansour bin Saleh Al Sharif, Owner of Cardamom International Property Management, stated, We are delighted to collaborate once again with Swiss-Belhotel International and are confident together we will make Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan a preferred choice for residents and travellers to Jazan. It is a market that is currently under supplied in terms of hotels and is, therefore, projected to show strong growth in the near future and we are keen to take advantage of this massive opportunity.



Mr Gavin M. Faull, Chairman and President of Swiss-Belhotel International, said, As part of our global expansion strategy, we are dedicated to enter new markets and particularly excited about our debut in Jazan with a reputable partner like Cardamom International Property Management. Jazan is witnessing major economic development in KSA and we believe our brand will be ideally placed to cater to the needs of travellers to the city with an exceptional property like Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan.



Mr Voivenel, stressed, We are delighted to expand our footprint in Saudi Arabia strengthening further our relationship with Cardamom International Property Management LLC with whom we had recently signed Swiss-Belhotel Al Aziziya Makkah. The new agreement demonstrates the confidence of the owners in the strength of Swiss-Belhotel International brand. Jazan City is a significant market with a growing demand for hotels. The development of Swiss-Belhotel and Suites Jazan will enable us to cater to travellers looking for quality accommodation with world-class facilities at a great value.



Saudi Arabia currently has the most hotel rooms under construction in the Middle East and North Africa, with 36,742 keys in 85 projects. In addition to massive development of hotels, the Saudi government is investing in major infrastructure projects to grow tourism. Jazan has got some of the largest and most significant infrastructure projects in the country worth billions of dollars including Saudi Aramcos 400,000 bpd refinery with associated terminal facilities on the Red Sea.



For further information visit http://www.swiss-belhotel.com



For media contact:

Hina Bakht

Vice President

MPJ (Marketing Pro-Junction)

Mob: +971 50 697 5146

Email: h.bakht@mpj-pr.com

http://www.mpj-pr.com



About Swiss-Belhotel International

Swiss-Belhotel International currently manages a portfolio of more than 145* hotels, resorts and projects located in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Australia, New Zealand, Bulgaria, Georgia, Tanzania and Turkey. Awarded Indonesia's Leading Global Hotel Chain for six consecutive years, Swiss-Belhotel International is one of the world's fastest-growing international hotel and hospitality management groups. The Group provides comprehensive and highly professional development and management services in all aspects of hotel, resort and serviced residences. Offices are located in New Zealand, Hong Kong, Australia, China, Europe, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam. www.swiss-behotel.com

*Numbers may fluctuate ### Please contact the person or company listed above for information regarding the content of this press release. TravPR.com are not the issuers of this press release and are not responsible for the accuracy of the content. Share Release :



CONTACT INFORMATION Name: Hina Bakht Company: Marketing Pro Junction Phone: +971 50 697 5146 Email: pressrelease@mpj-pr.com Web: PRESS RELEASE TAGS
TI Infotech at World Travel Market in London on 6-8 Nov 2017



(TRAVPR.COM) INDIA - October 24th, 2017 - TI Infotech at World Travel Market in London on 6-8 Nov 2017

TI Infotech - a Premier Information Technology company with a focused approach on delivering quality services. We are participating at World Travel Market - the leading global event for the travel industry. World Travel Market happens every year in the Excel London Exhibition Centre, United Kingdom. Travel industry professionals from around the world attend this travel event to showcase their product, get information, buy and sell services ranging from Travel to Technology. Majorly the Travel and Tourism Sector, Hotel Industry, Transportation Industry, Aviation Sector, Travel Technology Partner and many more.

We are very excited & looking forward to welcoming you at WTM 2017 for the unique opportunity to network and discuss your technology requirements, said Ms. Meenu Sachdeva, Co-Founder & Managing Director of TI Infotech, who along with her team will represent company at Stand no. TT-510 from 6 - 8 November 2017 at WTM London.



TI Infotech is a CMMi Level3 appraised company and follows A Total Solution Approach in providing travel technology solutions to its global clients. The company has recently won Best Travel Technology Provider award from Arabian Travel Award 2017. The company is promoted by a dynamic team of techno-functional consultants with extensive experience in providing technology solutions to the Travel, Tourism and Hospitality industry. The service area aims to meet up with business situations with internal expertise to help boost their customers business. The two signature products of TI Infotech is Travel Cloud Suite - a real time web based booking engine with transaction capability, real time inventory with instant pricing, booking status & confirmation online and Travel Assist - a comprehensive application covering all aspects of the tour business. Learn more on http://www.tiinfotech.com/

Contact Details:



T.I. Infotech Pvt. Ltd.

C -7, 2nd Floor, Sector -3,

NOIDA - 201 301, India

Tel: +91 120 3341800

Email: mktg@tiinfotech.com

###


Search News Archive : Fast Travel News Promotion Via Search, Social Media + Email Follow Us On : MILLENNIUM AIRPORT HOTEL DUBAI PARTICIPATED IN 4TH DUBAI WEDDING SUMMIT Industry: Hotels

Crisle Cabug-os, Sales Executive  MICE at the Millennium Airport Hotel Dubai recently attended the 4th Dubai Wedding Summit



(TRAVPR.COM) UAE - October 24th, 2017 - Crisle Cabug-os, Sales Executive  MICE at the Millennium Airport Hotel Dubai recently attended the 4th Dubai Wedding Summit held at the Five Palm Jumeriah Dubai. The summit brought together a number of guest speakers who are among the worlds top names in the wedding industry. Their sessions guided professionals on developing their full potential to attain new heights in the wedding sector.



One of the key speakers was Mr Alan Berg who has been called the Leading International Expert on the Business of Weddings & Events. He shared valuable tips on creating dream weddings.



In addition to the interesting presentations, the attendees were treated to a delicious lunch. The later part of the day gave delegates the exciting opportunity to network and interact with each other. A whole lot of professionals in the wedding industry mingled together while broadening their knowledge and connections in the business.



Wrapping a spectacular day, guests headed to the hip Elevate lounge. Here they enjoyed complimentary drinks overlooking the exhilarating Dubai skyline.



Mr. Simon Moore, General Manager of Millennium Airport Hotel Dubai, said, MICE is an important segment for us that is why we upgraded our ballroom and meeting facilities with a massive expansion of eight new meeting rooms as well as Al Garhoud Ballroom with over 6, 448 sq. ft space. These developments will help our growing share in the MICE business and will greatly boost our positioning in the local and international market. 



For more information about the hotel, visit www.millenniumhotels.com



For media contact:

Hina Bakht

Vice President

MPJ (Marketing Pro-Junction)

Mob: 050 697 5146

h.bakht@mpj-pr.com

http://www.mpj-pr.com ### Please contact the person or company listed above for information regarding the content of this press release. TravPR.com are not the issuers of this press release and are not responsible for the accuracy of the content. Share Release :



CONTACT INFORMATION Name: Hina Bakht Company: Marketing Pro Junction Phone: +971 50 697 5146 Email: pressrelease@mpj-pr.com Web: PRESS RELEASE TAGS
HELENA  Autopsies were completed Monday on twin brothers from southeastern Montana who died last week in an apparent murder-suicide.

Agents with Montana's Division of Criminal Investigation are investigating the deaths of 39-year-old brothers Travis and Eric Carlson.

The Department of Justice says Travis Carlson died of a gunshot wound late Thursday afternoon southeast of Ekalaka. Officers suspected his brother was responsible.

Investigators looking for Eric Carlson found him dead at his home Friday morning of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Once the state agents finish their investigation, the report will be presented to the Carter County attorney's office. Officials have not released any information about a possible motive.
Singapore, October 24

Two Indian nationals were charged in court under outrage of modesty cases in Singapore and may face up to two years jail, fine or canning.

Dadyala Balwinder Singh, 30, allegedly molested a 37- year-old woman in a pub at Orchard Towers, one of the most popular spots along hotels on Orchard Road, The Straits Times reported today.

Singh is alleged to have committed the offence at around 3.45 pm on January 29, 2017.

Jagjit Singh, 31, is the other Indian accused of molesting two women, aged 24 and 41, in another nightspot at the same shopping centre between 10.50 pm and 11.10 pm on August 2, the report said.

Their cases have been adjourned to next month.

They were charged in court yesterday along with six other Singaporeans on outrage of modesty charges in separate incidents, amid an increase in molestation cases in the first nine months of this year.

Police said there had been a 19.9 per cent jump in outrage of modesty cases in the first nine months of this year with 1,168 reported cases.

Offenders convicted of outrage of modesty can be jailed for up to two years and fined or caned. PTI
Washington, October 24

A team of researchers has suggested that open channels of communication may help patients with serious medical problems to overcome the misperceptions of prognosis.

In long-term acute care (LTAC) patients with serious medical problems require intense, special treatment for an extended period of time  usually 20 to 30 days.

The study explained that by establishing optimal channels of communication to overcome barriers and empower patients' family members could improve the quality of transitions of care in the intensive care setting.

The team from the Aventura Hospital Medical Center in Aventura, Florida, aimed to assess the quality of continuity of care by analysing family perceptions, education and their psychological stress during the process.

Lead researcher Dr. Lee said that the perception of patients' prognosis, disposition and length-of-stay varies significantly among patients' families.

Perception diversity could precipitate families' emotional distress and challenge effective communication," Dr. Lee added.

From April 2016 to March 2017, the team conducted a quality improvement project in long-term acute care (LTAC) facilities in South Florida.

Family members of individuals transferred to an LTAC were given a 15-item questionnaire to complete.

The patients were asked to recall their experiences prior to ICU hospitalisation.

Of the 50 patients who participated, 44 returned a questionnaire and results varied significantly.

As it pertains to recovery, 25 percent expected their family members to completely recover, 73 percent expected recovery with disabilities and 2.2 percent expected no recovery.

Additional responses showed that knowledge of care was very limited in patients' family members  66 percent of participants did not report a satisfactory level of knowledge, equipment or medical services their family members required.

Establishing optimal channels of communication to overcome barriers and empower patients' family members could improve the quality of transitions of care in the intensive care setting, Dr. Lee explained.

The results are scheduled to be published at CHEST Annual Meeting 2017 in Toronto.  ANI
Mumbai, October 24

Continuing the tradition of releasing his films on the festive occasion of Eid, Bollywood superstar Salman Khan has booked the auspicious date for his 2019 release titled "Bharat".

The film is an official adaptation of 2014 South Korean film "Ode to My Father", which depicted modern Korean history from the 1950s to the present day through the life of an ordinary man.

It showcased events such as the Hungnam Evacuation during the 1950 Korean War, the government's decision to dispatch nurses and miners to West Germany in the 1960s and the Vietnam War.

The film was identified as potential content for the Indian audience following its screening at the Berlin Film Festival, which was attended by filmmaker Atul Agnihotri who will be backing "Bharat" as a producer, read a statement.

It traces the journey of a man that starts in 1947 and ends in 2002.

Agnihotri, who is also Salman's brother-in-law, said: "It's the journey of a country and also a person, both of whom go by the name of Bharat."

"That film is just the starting point for us, but since it was an inspiration, we wanted in all fairness to officially own it and acquired the remake rights before going ahead with 'Bharat'," he added.

"Bharat" will be helmed by director Ali Abbas Zafar and will feature Salman as the protagonist.

"I feel I contribute better as a producer. Ali is a friend, I love his work and eventually it's all about connecting with the source. If you speak to him, you will realise that Ali is far more passionate about the material," Agnihotri said.

He also said it's a "huge responsibility" to make a film with Salman as "there are big expectations that come with the job".

"I'm very conscious about Salman's fan base and what they want. And once again, I'm convinced that being a family film it's worthy of coming during the festive time. And anyway, an Eid release is always every producer's preferred choice," Agnihotri said.

The film will go on floors in April next year and it will require a lot of travel and elaborate sets.

They will shoot in Abu Dhabi and Spain, besides Punjab and Delhi in India.  IANS
New Delhi, October 24

Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani arrived here on Tuesday on a day-long visit. He met his Indian counterpart Ram Nath Kovind and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

Ghani, who landed at the Palam airport at 8 am, met Kovind at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar tweeted that Sushma Swaraj called on Ghani and discussed bilateral and regional issues.

The Afghan leader is set to hold delegation-level talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. IANS
Our Correspondent

Jaipur, October 24

An Army helicopter during its training flight on Tuesday made a precautionary landing at a ground near Balesar in Jodhpur district around 2 pm.

All pilots (number yet to be confirmed) are safe, and a second chopper arrived to assist the first one, Defense PRO Lt Col Manish Ojha said here.

The training chopper was on way from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer when the pilots observed a warning indicator.

Emergency landing is different from precautionary landing as the pilot finds an initial warning indicator active and decides to land at a suitable place. In this case no emergency procedure had to be invoked, the sources said.
New Delhi, October 24

The Supreme Court on Tuesday came down heavily on the Union Environment Ministry for not finalising pollution emission standards for industries using pet coke and furnace oil in the National Capital region and slapped a cost of Rs 2 lakh on it.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Terming it as a completely disgusting state of affairs, the top court asked the ministry why the standards were not finalised despite its earlier direction that it should be done on or before June 30 this year.

You (environment ministry) tell us what you were doing for 3-4 months? You file an affidavit and say we do not care about pollution. Industries have said they would comply with whatever standards are fixed. Industries say so and the ministry sits on it. We do not know what is going on, a Bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta said.

Additional Solicitor-General Maninder Singh, representing the ministry, told the court that a draft notification in this regard was issued on Monday and a period of 60 days has been given for raising objections on it.

He told the Bench there were 34 categories of industries in the National Capital Region (NCR) which use pet coke and furnace oil and pollution standards were fixed earlier for several categories.

The Bench, while expressing its surprise and unhappiness, imposed a cost of Rs 2 lakh on the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF).

During the hearing, the Bench was informed that despite the May 2 order of the apex court, the ministry has not come out with a notification in this regard.

The court, in its May 2 order, had directed the ministry and Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to fix sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides standards for these industries after giving a hearing to a limited number of their authorised representatives keeping in mind the provisions of Environment Protection Act, 1986.

It had said that standards should be fixed on or before June 30.

When the court today asked the CPCB on this issue, its counsel said they had indicated certain emission standards to the ministry in June itself.

The Bench observed that four months have passed since the order was passed, but still the emission standards have not been finalised by the ministry.

The court was hearing a PIL filed in 1985 by environmentalist M C Mehta who had raised the issue of air pollution in Delhi-NCR.

Earlier, the court was told about the ill-effects of pet coke and furnace oil used in industries on ambient air and it was said that emissions from such units were highly toxic as these released high sulphur content.

The apex court-appointed Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) had claimed that even China has stopped using sulphur-heavy fuels since 2014 and Indian industries have been buying pet coke.

EPCA had said emission of sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides has to be brought down for improving the quality of air in the national capital and the adjoining areas.

The apex court had on December 2 last year accorded its nod to the Graded Responsibility Action Plan (GRAP) to tackle different levels of pollution. It had also asked the CPCB to upgrade its existing infrastructure and set up additional monitoring stations in Delhi-NCR within six months.

The GRAP, aimed at reducing air pollution, has enumerated a number of measures which include closing brick kilns, hot mix plants, stone crushers, intensifying public transport services besides increase in frequency of mechanised cleaning of road and sprinkling of water on roads. PTI
Veterans from around the state expressed frustration over the Veterans Choice program, meant to increase access to health care, during a listening session in Helena on Monday night.

Nearly 50 veterans came to American Legion Post No. 2 to talk about their experiences with Veterans Affairs Department health care. The town hall is one of about a dozen the Legion will hold around the country this year to gather feedback to share with state congressional delegations and VA officials.

That Choice is broke, broke, broke, said veteran Tom Johnson, who said he was employed by the VA for more than three decades. The VA has gone downhill drastically in the last eight years.

Johnson, like many others who spoke, had conflicting views about Fort Harrison, the VA's medical center in Helena. Johnson said while he has nothing but accolades and applause for most of the care hes received, he also has concerns about the direction the VA is going.

Johnson said he spends time at the VA at least once a month, drinking coffee with the staff and visiting with patients.

Overall, for the most part those patients have nothing but praise for the hospital out there, the medical care theyre receiving. But on the downside, trying to get in for appointments, scheduling, administration stuff  it isnt working.

Karen Semple said her husband, who is 100 percent disabled, had a serious accident recently and went to the VA, where several of his doctors were veterans.

It made all the difference in the world how he was treated, she said. That is a fantastic connection you cant always get in the civilian world.

She said she was frustrated with the Choice program because it makes it less likely veterans will have fellow veterans as their doctors.

Thats what bothers me about this Choice stuff and getting funnelled to civilian doctors, she said. This is really important to us to not get funnelled to the civilian world where people do not understand your mentality because you are a veteran. Theyre civilians. Theyre clueless.

Don Paul said the Choice program has been a disaster. After having some problems with his throat, he was told he needed to see an ear, nose and throat doctor. He went through a maddening process to schedule an appointment and get an authorization, which at one point was canceled because his appointment was not scheduled quickly enough.

He was then told there was not a specialist in the program locally and he would need to travel to Salt Lake City, only to later meet one in his own neighborhood who said he participated in the Choice program.

I ended up calling it the last Choice instead of the first Choice, he said.

Kelly Ackerman, a service officer with the Legion, said the Choice program has not worked as effectively in Montana as more populated areas.

The Choice program was passed by Congress in 2014 in an effort to reduce wait times for veterans at VA facilities. Its goal was to allow veterans who live more than 40 miles away from the nearest VA clinic or who are unable to get appointments in a reasonable time frame to get treatment at a non-VA facility.

It didnt work in a rural state, Ackerman said.

She told those gathered that Montana is a pilot site for an alternative to Choice, a program called Care. It stands for Coordinated Access, Rewarding Experience. Ackerman said the program puts scheduling, something many who spoke Monday were frustrated with, back in the hands of the VA.

Other frustrations veterans discussed included hassles with getting emergency care paid for at non-VA facilities.

James Heffernan, who told the crowd hes 80-some years old, went to a hospital out of state last May when he was experiencing chest pains and has struggled to get his claims processed.

He held several letters as he spoke, all with conflicting information from the VA about billing.

It was convoluted, frustrating and confusing all the way around, Heffernan said.

Ackerman said network authorizations can get get really messy, a statement that got head nods from many in the crowd.

Steve Combes, from Kalispell, had a slew of appointments with the VA in town, including two on the day of the meeting. He said he recently had to wait 92 days to be reimbursed for his mileage to appointments.

It didnt hurt me at all, but there are many veterans who have friends, neighbors, who have people that drive them over (from) Ekalaka, Plentywood and so forth. Why does it take so long?
Malappurran (Kerala), October 24

A mosque committee in Kerala's Malappurran district called for boycott of a Muslim family after their daughter was married in a Christian family.

A mosque committee in Keralas Malappuram called for boycott of a Muslim man & his family after he allowed his daughter to marry a Christian pic.twitter.com/QmVGJnAxl7  ANI (@ANI) October 24, 2017

On October 19, the secretary of the Madarul Islam Sangham's Mahallu committee (the mosque's administrative committee) issued a special circular urging all people connected with the mosque to break off all relations with Kunnummal Yusuf and his family who had marry off his daughter Jaseela to Tiso Tomy.

A circular printed in Malayalam read, Since Kunnummal Yusuf has agreed to his daughter's wedding to a non-Muslim, we have decided that people need not cooperate with his family, neither for mosque-related affairs, nor for other matters.

The couple got married at a local office of the state registration department on October 19, which was attended by many people from the community.

ANI
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, October 24

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered demolition of a parking lot being constructed within a kilometre of the Taj Mahal  a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Agra.

A Bench headed by Justice Madan B Lokur ordered state government authorities in Agra to demolish the parking lot for tourists in four weeks as it was being built within one kilometre of the eastern gate of the monument.

Known as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Taj Mahal was built between 1632 and 1653 by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a tomb for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. She had died in 1631 while giving birth to their 14th child.

After environmentalist MC Mehta filed a PIL, the SC has been passing orders, including closure of polluting industries in Agra, for conservation of the Taj since the 1980s.

At the outset of the hearing, the Bench sought to know if the counsel for the Uttar Pradesh Government was present. When it was told that no advocate was present on behalf of the Uttar Pradesh Government, it said the parking lot built near the eastern gate of the Taj Mahal would be demolished.

Later Uttar Pradesh Governments standing counsel Aishwarya Bhati mentioned the matter before the Bench and sought recall of the order. But the Bench asked her to move an appropriate restoration application.

The order comes barely two days before Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanaths visit to the Taj Mahal which hit national headlines after being dropped from the state governments tourism booklet.

Later it was mentioned as a place of pride in the Uttar Pradesh Governments 2018 calendar. Adityanath is to visit Agra on October 26 to review tourism schemes.

In August last, the Bench had pulled up the state government for seeking permission for felling of over 400 trees to lay down an additional railway track between Mathura in Uttar Pradesh to Delhi.

This (Taj Mahal) is a world famous monument and you (government) want to destroy it? Have you seen the recent pictures of Taj? Go to the internet and have a look at it, the Bench had said.
Smita Sharma

New Delhi, October 24

Ahead of his Delhi stopover, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson paid a surprise visit to Kabul on Monday.

He was hosted by Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive of the National Unity government Dr Abdullah Abdullah.

Tillerson, who is on his first official visit to South Asia after the West Asia leg, discussed US President Donald Trumps recently unveiled Afghanistan strategy. Trump had sought a larger active development role for India in the war-torn country.

Tillerson in his remarks stressed it is imperative to deny safe havens to terrorists and sent out a message to Pakistan.

We have made some very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support the Taliban and other terrorist organisations receive in Pakistan. As weve said in this whole strategy, this is a conditions-based approach and so our relationship with Pakistan will also be conditions-based, said Tillerson in response to a question by the travelling American press pool.

It will be closely watched if Tillerson echoes similar messages when he holds talks with Pakistani leadership on Tuesday before arriving in Delhi on Tuesday night or softens his tone on the frontline non-NATO ally. Pakistan needs to, I think, take a clear-eyed view of the situation theyre confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organisations that find safe haven inside of Pakistan. And so we want to work closely with Pakistan to create a more stable and secure Pakistan as well, added Tillerson.

There has been a sharp spike in attacks by the Taliban in Afghanistan, including the deadly terror strike at the Afghan National Army base in Kandahar last week killing nearly 60 people and the earlier Kabul attack during the visit of US Defence Secretary Gen Mattis.

Tillerson in his press interaction confirmed that the political commission, the Taliban political commission office is still open and the US is looking to engage with the moderate voices within the Taliban to seek reconciliation.

Ashraf Ghani assured Tillerson of his commitment to anti-corruption, governance and the fairness of the elections coming up in 2018 in the country.

Interestingly, Tillersons Kabul stop-over came hours ahead of President Ghanis one-day working visit to India. Regional security challenges, cross-border terrorism and economic cooperation will dominate talks between India-Afghan and India-US leaders over the next 48 hours. New Delhi and Washington have intensified engagements over the reconstruction work in Kabul, even as the Trump administration has sent out mixed signals of re-hyphenation of India and Pakistan.
Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, October 24

A major fire was on Tuesday reported at a yarn mill near Shingar Cinema in Ludhiana.

#WATCH: Fire rages at a building near #Ludhiana's Shingar Cinema, more than 12 fire tenders present at the spot. pic.twitter.com/m8CWgJ6Jnm  ANI (@ANI) October 24, 2017

At least 12 fire brigades are trying to douse the flames. The incident took place early morning. Police said the cause of the fire was yet to be ascertained. No loss of life has been reported.

More details are awaited.
Naypyitaw, October 24

Government officials from Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed to halt the outflow of Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh and enable the refugees to return home.

The two sides met on Tuesday in Myanmars capital, Naypyitaw, to discuss a crisis that has seen hundreds of thousands of Rohingya flee to Bangladesh to escape violence in Myanmars Rakhine state.

The sides said in a joint statement that Myanmar affirms its commitment to immediately halt the outflow of Myanmar residents to Bangladesh, to restore normalcy in Rakhine to enable displaced Myanmar residents to return from Bangladesh at the earliest possible time.

More than 6,00,000 Rohingya from northern Rakhine have fled to Bangladesh since August 25, when Myanmar security forces began a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages.  AP
Islamabad, October 24

Under pressure to dismantle terror safe havens in Pakistan, Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi today assured US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that his country is committed to the war against terrorism.

Tillerson arrived here on a whirlwind visit to reset bilateral ties strained after President Donald Trump accused Pakistan of providing safe havens to terrorist groups.

The US can rest assured that we are strategic partners in the war against terror and that today, Pakistan is fighting the largest war in the world against terror, Abbasi told Tillerson just before their closed-door talks began.

Abbasi said Pakistan is committed in the war against terror.

He said Pakistan has produced results in its war against terrorism and it was looking forward to moving ahead with the US and building a tremendous relationship.

Tillersons maiden visit to Islamabad comes days after he made a major policy speech on Americas growing strategic relations with India and Trumps move to offer a bigger say to India in war-torn Afghanistan.

Ahead of his visit to India, Tillerson during a surprise visit to Afghnaistan indicated that he will firmly tell Pakistan to stop providing safe havens to terror groups on its soil to improve bilateral ties.

We have made some very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support that the Taliban receives and the other terrorist organisations receive in Pakistan, he had told reporters travelling with him at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

Islamabad needed to take a clear-eyed view of the situation that they are confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organisations that find safe haven inside the country, he had said.

Tillerson is visiting Pakistan on the invitation of Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif.

During his four-hour stay here, he also met Asif and Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Tillersons visit to Islamabad marks the first by a senior member of the Trump administration.

Tillersons visit is significant as it could clarify Trumps policy and set a course for future Islamabad- Washington relations.

In August, Trump had unveiled his Afghanistan and South Asia policy in which he had hit out at Pakistan for providing safe havens to agents of chaos that kill Americans in Afghanistan and warned Islamabad that it has much to lose by harbouring terrorists.

Pakistan regularly denies that it hosts terror groups fighting the US and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

Trumps criticism led to further strain in US-Pakistan relations with a peeved Islamabad saying the president ignored its efforts in the war against terrorism.

But bilateral relations improved slightly after a meeting between Prime Minister Abbasi and Vice President Mike Pence on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month.

Ties also improved after Pakistani troops rescued an American-Canadian family from militants who had held them captive for over five years.

There was another step forward when the Quadrilateral Coordination Group of Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, and the US held its meeting last week in Oman after a hiatus of over a year to help start peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban.

The US also met a major demand of Pakistan for action against militants operating against it from Afghanistan when a drone strike killed the chief of Jamaatul Ahrar Umar Khalid Khurasani last week.

The top militant was involved in several terrorist attacks in Pakistan including the Peshawar school attack in 2014 that killed 150 people, mostly schoolchildren.

In Pakistan, officials said they are wary of demands by the US without taking into consideration Pakistani concerns about the increasing role of India in Afghanistan. PTI
Washington, October 24

US President Donald Trump will urge President Xi Jinping to make good on his commitments to pressure North Korea when he visits China next month, a senior White House official said on Monday, stepping up a strategy to have Beijing help rein in Pyongyang.

Isolating North Korea further over its nuclear and ballistic missile tests is a key goal for Trump on what will be his longest foreign trip to date.

Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Trump will call on Xi to fully implement UN Security Council resolutions against Pyongyang and take other steps to pressure North Korea.

China, North Koreas sole major ally, accounts for more than 90 percent of trade with the isolated country.

China has said it will strictly enforce UN Security Council sanctions banning imports of coal, textiles and seafood, while cutting off oil shipments to the North.

But a senior White House official who briefed reporters ahead of Trump's trip said China needs to do more to comply with two U.N. Security Council resolutions that were approved unanimously, including with China's support.

"We would like to see China follow through on those commitments. We would like to see China do things bilaterally as well that might even go beyond things that are mandated by those U.N. Security Council resolutions," the official said.

Though China has been angered by North Koreas repeated nuclear and missile tests and demanded they stop, Beijing also sees the United States and South Korea sharing responsibility for rising tensions because of military drills they carry out in the region.

South Korea, the United States and Japan started a two-day missile tracking drill on Tuesday, South Korea's military said in a statement, in preparation for any missile or nuclear threats from North Korea.

The exercises will be held in waters off the coasts of South Korea and Japan, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said, with four Aegis combat system-equipped ships from all three countries participating in the drill.

"Critical" threat

China's special envoy for the North Korea nuclear issue, Kong Xuanyou, met his US counterpart, Joseph Yun, in Beijing on Monday, China's Foreign Ministry said, where they had a "deep exchange of views on the Korean peninsula issue". The ministry did not elaborate.

Trump, who has threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea, has frequently asked China to help rein in North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

But this strategy has so far failed to stop Pyongyang conducting nuclear bomb tests at an underground facility and firing ballistic missile tests into the Pacific Ocean over Japan.

The threat from North Korea has grown to a "critical and imminent level" and the United States, Japan and South Korea must address the matter, Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera told his U.S. and South Korean counterparts in talks on Monday.

Onodera's remarks underscored the deep concern in Tokyo about North Korean weapons tests as Pyongyang seeks to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States.

The White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Trump is looking for a peaceful resolution of the North Korea standoff.

Asked by reporters whether an offer by former President Jimmy Carter to serve as a U.S. envoy to North Korea would be accepted, the official said: "There's nothing planned."

No quick solution

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Monday he outlined for Trump his country's efforts to pressure North Korea over its nuclear program but also advised the US leader to use talks to help resolve the conflict.

"There is no quick and easy solution. Pressure is necessary but so is dialogue. The U.S. will need to work with others, including China, South Korea and Japan and Russia to resolve the issue," he said.

With Xi consolidating power in the wake of a Communist Party Congress in Beijing, Trump believes the Chinese president will have a greater authority to take steps against North Korea, senior administration officials said last week.

Trump's November 3-14 trip will include visits to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Trump will also be tough on trade during talks with Xi as he seeks to reduce the US trade deficit with China, the White House official said.

"We have huge barriers that Americans companies have to surmount to gain access to the Chinese market. The president is intent on rectifying that situation," the official said.

Despite Trump's fierce criticism of China's trade practices during the presidential campaign, he has mostly held off on any major trade action while his administration works with Beijing on North Korea.

China has insisted it is doing all it can, and some Chinese diplomats say the Trump administration has overestimated how much influence Beijing has over its defiant neighbor.

Even as China has shown signs of tightening enforcement of sanctions on North Korea, it has stopped short of agreeing to US demands for a fuel embargo and has urged the United States to negotiate with Pyongyang. Reuters
Washington, October 24

President Donald Trump would reaffirm the American leadership in promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific region during his maiden trip to Asia next month, the White House has said.

Ten months into the worlds most powerful executive office, the US President would embark on a two-week-long trip to Asia.

The Presidents travel is going to underscore his commitment to longstanding United States alliances and partnerships and reaffirm the United States leadership in promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific, a senior administration official told reporters in a preview of the trip.

Trump himself told reporters in a joint media appearance with the visiting Prime Minister of Singapore that he is looking forward to his trip to Asia from November 3 to 14.

This trip will be the Presidents longest to date, underscoring the importance that he places on the Indo-Pacific region, the senior administration official said.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

While his visits to Japan, South Korea and China are bilateral ones, during his stops in Vietnam and the Philippines, Trump will be participating in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and the US ASEAN Summit.

In Vietnam and the Philippines, Trump also plans to hold bilateral and trilateral meetings with other world leaders, details of which are still being worked out.

Trump would embark on his Indo-Pacific sojourn on November 3 via Hawaii wherein he will receive a briefing from the US Pacific Command.

He will also visit Pearl Harbour and the USS Arizona Memorial.

The President will officially commence his visit to Asia beginning with Japan on November 5.

In Japan, he is going to affirm the US-Japan Alliance as the cornerstone for regional peace and security, the official said, adding that he would focus on ways for the US and Japan to work together to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific Region.

During his state visit to South Korea on November 7, Trump will participate in bilateral meetings with President Moon Jae-in and also visit American and South Korean service members.

The next day, he will speak at the National Assembly in Korea, where he will celebrate the enduring alliance and friendship between the United States and the Republic of Korea and call on the international community to join together in maximising pressure on North Korea.

Trump is likely to highlight the enduring strength of the US-South Korea alliance, which is stronger than ever in the face of North Korean aggression, the official said.

Trump would fly to Beijing the next day for a series of bilateral, commercial and cultural events, including meetings with President Xi Jinping.

I anticipate that the President will seek to secure Chinas commitments to exert more pressure on North Korea and to rebalance our economic relations.

The visit will send a clear message that for bilateral economic relations to be sustainable over the long term, China must provide fair and reciprocal treatment to US firms and cease predatory trade and investment practices, the official said.

The President will then travel to Da Nang in Vietnam on November 10, where he will participate in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), economic leaders meeting and deliver a speech at the APEC CEO Summit.

In the speech, Trump will present the United States commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific region, and underscore the important role the region plays in advancing Americas economic prosperity, the official said, adding that Trumps engagements at APEC would reinforce the US commitment to an equitable, sustainable and rules-based international economic system based on market principles.

On November 11, Trump will travel to Hanoi, where hes going to have an official visit and bilateral engagements with President Tran Dai Quang and other senior Vietnamese leaders.

President Trump will arrive in Manila in the Philippines on November 12 to participate in a special gala celebration dinner for the 50th anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The next day on November 13, the President will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the US-ASEAN relations at the US-ASEAN Summit, and will participate in bilateral meetings with President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines.

The Presidents participation in ASEAN events will advance US leadership, promoting Indo-Pacific trade and security architecture thats based on freedom and openness and adherence to the rule of law, the official said. PTI
ATA president and CEO Chris Spear. Photo: Evan Lockridge

ORLANDO [CORRECTED]  Chris Spear, president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations, delivered a wide-ranging state of the industry address at its annual Management Conference & Exhibition Monday, promoting everything from proposed tax reforms to a pending mandate for electronic logging devices, and Trumps commitment to raise more than $1 trillion for infrastructure.

In the past year, the group has met with U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and all 10 House and Senate Committee leaders and ranking members. But a clear highlight, demonstrated through pictures around the convention hall, was an appearance at the White House with 12 Americas Road Team captains.

ATA is now fully engaged in reforming our countrys decaying tax laws, he added, referring to the association hosting a recent meeting with Trump in Pennsylvania. Citing trucks as the barometer for the nations economy," Trump at that meeting introduced a proposal for a 20% cut in corporate tax rates and eliminating estate taxes.

With the president now championing our best interests, the entire nation is paying attention to what we have to say, Spear said.

Meanwhile, ATA is supporting a coalition led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to advance trade policy  including that which governs truck freight between Canada and the U.S. Trucks move 76% of the NAFTA surface freight, 82% of the cross-border traffic with Mexico, and 71% with Canada: our nations largest trade partner. Ive visited our borders and can tell you first hand that our industry will be the first to feel any changes in NAFTA, good or bad, he said.

The ATA issued a joint statement with The Canadian Trucking Alliance and Mexico's Camara Nacional del Autotransporte de Carga supporting NAFTA and the efforts of the three nations to improve the pact for all counties involved.

The trucking industries in Canada, Mexico, and the United States have all benefited significantly from NAFTA and we, the national trucking associations from all three countries, urge negotiators to update the trade agreement in a manner that continues to benefit trade, the statement reads in part. We strongly encourage our governments to update NAFTA to keep North America competitive internationally. In this endeavor, making border crossings and rules governing international commercial transportation more efficient is a crucial element that will only help our industries make North America stronger.

The ATA urged all NAFTA members to keep the benefits to the economy and the trucking industry in mind while it renegotiates the deal.

Trucking and trade are synonymous, said Spear. In the more than two decades since NAFTA was enacted, we have seen strong growth in trade  the majority of which is moved by truck  between the United States, Mexico and Canada. It is vital to the health of our industry and our economy that we maintain and strengthen these relationships.

Throughout the strongly worded address, Spear committed the ATA to fighting anti-truck and amateur-hour advocacy groups," and credited the group with helping to strike down ill-conceived, special interest-driven hours of service rules from the U.S. Code.

ATA and its coalition partners are looking to continue this winning streak by sending a strong message to policymakers in Sacramento  this is not the United States of California, he said, challenging whats known as FA4, the states meal and rest breaks that collide with federal standards.

This confusion has generated a litigious frenzy. Over $250 million in settlements to date and immeasurable exposure in pending and potential litigation. Apparently Californias lawmakers care more about the plaintiffs bar than public safety, or even jobs, Spear said. This an issue we have to win, and we will. Itll happen by working with Congress and this administration, continuing to invest over $9.5 billion each year in safety technologies, and giving a voice to the 7.4 million employees in trucking jobs throughout the nation.

Spear gave the ATA credit for convincing the House of Representatives to defeat efforts to delay the rollout of the ELD mandate that goes into effect in December. This issue has been legislated, promulgated, and litigated. And it is now time to move forward, he said.

On a morning when the American Transportation Research Institute identified the driver shortage as the industrys top priority, drawing on an annual survey, Spear noted that todays shortage of 50,000 drivers is expected to double in just five years. Almost 1 million drivers and technicians will be needed in the next decade just to meet economic demands.

Our industry faces several barriers that must be addressed if were going to grow, including: establishing pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship training programs, and hiring and training 18-21 year olds. We need interstate recognition of credentials, entry-level training standards for veterans and non-veteran employees, solutions for the impact of detention time, and congestion on drivers Hours of Service and more, he said.

Spear pulled no punches in an attack against groups that oppose ATA work.

Back in Washington, anti-truck and amateur-hour advocacy groups believe they know whats best for our industry. This wave of special interests has built a cottage industry fueled by ideology, emotion, and misguided narratives  all intended to divide our industry and this association, he said. Obstruction is their weapon of choice. From bad bills to frivolous lawsuits, trolling social media and issuing personal attacks. Theirs is an agenda purely based on the notion that if it feels good, do it  and if it fails, blame someone else.

Agendas rooted in ideological divisions are nothing more than self-fulfilling prophecies, he said.

And he called on industry representatives to joint forces in the fight.

Our industry, our 84-year-old association, is at its best when were working together, he said.

Said the lyrics in a song after his speech: Together we stand, divided we fall.

Corrected 10/25/2017 to reflect $1 trillion in infrastructure, not $1 million. We apologize for the error.

John G. Smith is the editor of the award-winning Canadian publication Today's Trucking. This article was used under a cooperative editorial sharing agreement between HDT and its Canadian counterpart.
A Democratic congressman on Tuesday called for an investigation into a $300 million contract awarded to a small company based in Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's hometown of Whitefish.

A company spokesperson for Whitefish Energy Holdings said the company would be happy to answer any questions Congress may have.

Its unclear what they think the issues are or what their jurisdiction is, but we would certainly be cooperative, said Whitefish Energy spokesman Chris Chiames.

The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority awarded the contract to Whitefish Energy Holdings to help crews restore transmission and distribution lines damaged or destroyed during Hurricane Maria.

At the time, the company only had two employees and its largest federal contract had been a $1.3 million deal to replace and upgrade parts of a 4.8 mile transmission line in Arizona.

Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, senior Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said Congress "needs to understand why the Whitefish contract was awarded and whether other, more cost-effective options were available."

Rep. Greg Gianforte of Montana serves on the same committee. His press secretary directed questions Tuesday to the committee's staff.

Chaimes said the company already had a connection with PREPA before the hurricane struck on Sept. 20.

Whitefish CEO Andy Techmanski visited Puerto Rico in late summer while on vacation and established contact with PREPA and discussed potential future work, Chiames said. When Maria struck, Whitefish was one of the companies that power authority officials were able to reach by satellite phone.

"We got here quicker than anybody else and we built a plan that PREPA had confidence in," Chiames said in telephone interview.

The companys business model is to ramp up quickly when it earns a contract.

At this point, Chiames said the company has 300 people working in Puerto Rico. Its numbers are growing by about 10 to 20 a day as workers obtain the necessary clearances to begin working in the U.S. territory.

Our goal is 1,000-plus, Chiames said. How fast that occurs depends on a number of factors. We have 100 in the queue to come online.  There is a steady stream of interest.

The company has been tasked with rebuilding six transmission lines that go from the southern end of the island, where most of the power generation capabilities are located, to the north where the industrial and population centers are found.

Crews are working in difficult and rugged terrain and face challenges getting the necessary equipment to the sites.

Many times we are first on the scene to assess the damage, Chiames said. We have had to revise what needs to be done completely once we actually see it.

Ricardo Ramos, director of Puerto Rico's power authority, said the government has a $300 million contract with Whitefish and a separate $200 million contract with Oklahoma-based Cobra Acquisitions after evaluating up to six companies for the job.

Whitefish was one of two companies on the government's shortlist, Ramos said. The other company was requiring a $25 million down payment, given the power authority's troubled finances. PREPA filed for bankruptcy in July and has put off badly needed maintenance for years. It just finished dealing with outages from Hurricane Irma in early September.

Whitefish is providing hotel rooms for it workers and brought its own materials, Ramos said.

"They're doing an excellent job," he said.

The Interior Department said Zinke, a former Montana congressman, played no role in the contract award. Zinke's son had a summer job at a Whitefish construction site.

"Neither the secretary nor anyone in his office have taken any meetings or action on behalf of this company," the department said in a statement.

Zinke knows Techmanski "because they both live in a small town where everyone knows everyone," the statement said.

Grijalva said lawmakers also need to know why the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and public sector utilities "failed in Puerto Rico to conduct the disaster-response planning they carried out ahead of other disasters this year" in Texas, Florida and other states.

In a briefing last week, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite said responding to the hurricanes on the island and mainland were completely different paradigms.

On the mainland, Semonite said power companies can call on neighboring states to help respond with hundreds of crews following a hurricane. That wasnt possible on Puerto Rico.

Semonite said it could take nearly a year for the Corps, working in concert with PREPA, to fully restore power to all the islands inhabitants.

The Corps of Engineers has spent or committed about $1.1 billion in funding through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including a recent $240 million contract to Fluor Corp. for work on power restoration. Semonite said the eventual cost of the Fluor contract could reach $1.3 billion.

Chiames said Whitefish Energys contract is with PREPA.

Whitefish Energy was formed in 2015 by Techmanski, who had more than 20 years experience in the electrical field in the West.

Techmanski told the Flathead Beacon he hoped to build a transformer manufacturing plant on the former site of the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. in partnership with a Brazilian firm. But the deal had not materialized because Whitefish needed up to $20 million in orders to make it happen.

NBC Montana reported Oct. 1 that Techmanski had asked Zinke for help in getting personnel and equipment to Puerto Rico.

Chiames confirmed that to the Washington Post.

Once the company got the go-ahead from PREPA on September 26 to begin work, company executives did reach out to contacts in case they could help expedite getting qualified linesmen to the island, he said.

But he took issue with the Post's characterization of the $300 million contract with Whitefish as unusual.

"We're here. We have a good-sized workforce and we're building a bigger one," Chiames said. "We're doing work while others are still trying to figure out how to get here. The Washington Post spent a week reporting that story and all they could come up with was allegations, but there's no proof of anything nor will there be because the work we secured was directly with PREPA.

"It didn't involve federal officials," he said. "We're not working for the federal government. We're working for PREPA."
Correction: This story incorrectly stated how the members of the Oklahoma Cattlemen's Association received the ballot for the beef checkoff vote. The ballots were sent to members who requested them. They will also be available at county extension offices. The story has been corrected.

HEAVENER  Some 40 Oklahoma ranchers are backing Montana-based Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund against the Oklahoma Cattlemens Associations vote for an increase in the beef checkoff amount.

On Monday, R-CALF and Nebraska-based Organization for Competitive Markets filed an application for an injunction with the state Supreme Court requesting it stop the Oklahoma State Department of Agriculture from certifying the results of the Oklahoma beef checkoff referendum to take place Nov. 1.

Ballots have been mailed out to members of the Oklahoma Cattlemens Association who requested them. The remaining members will vote at county extension offices. The association has 3,200 registered cattlemen.

If approved, the checkoff referendum would increase the drop-off fee from $1 per head sold to $2 per head.

The fee hike would raise an additional $3.2 million annually to be used to promote beef sales.

In a joint statement, the two organizations claim the petition that allowed the vote contains constitutional and legal irregularities.

For 44-year-old Heavener rancher Kendall Stacy, who has 130 head of cattle, said its about time the vote was halted.

The extra dollar should go to the organization I choose, Stacy said. The National Cattlemens Association is supposed to represent the ranchers and the middle men like the packers, but more and more it seems to be pandering to the packers and feeder lot owners rather than to us ranchers.

Stacy also expressed concerns on how funds might be handled by the Oklahoma Beef Council once collected. He cited a recent embezzlement of council funds by OBC accountant Melissa Day Morton, who pleaded guilty in May to stealing $2.6 million from the agency.

Michael Kelsey, president of the Oklahoma Cattlemens Association, said the organization is open and does not handle the funds to be collected by the beef checkoff.

We are just advocating it, said Kelsey. The vast majority of our members are of all shapes and sizes. Some have just 20 head of cattle, and some have thousands of head.

Heather Buckmaster, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Beef Council, said it would be inappropriate for the organization to comment on the injunction.

Late Monday afternoon, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture issued a statement saying it was reviewing the lawsuit and is confident proper procedures were followed in approving the petition for the referendum.

R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard could not be reached for comment.
A Tulsa man convicted of first-degree murder for shooting another man amid an argument over the ownership of a car will, barring a successful appeal, spend the rest of his life in prison.

Jurors on Aug. 30 found 21-year-old Joseph Johnson guilty of killing 23-year-old Quavis Cato in the 1200 block of South 73rd East Avenue on Oct. 10, 2016, and recommended a no-parole life term. During a sentencing hearing Oct. 16, District Judge Doug Drummond upheld the jurys sentencing recommendation.

Johnson was arrested in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, two days following the shooting after three people told Tulsa police that he shot Cato during a dispute about who owned a black Mercedes.

Assistant District Attorney Kevin Keller said during Johnsons trial that Cato did not deserve to be shot 14 times and said nothing about the case suggested that Johnson had any right to self-defense.

A probable cause affidavit says Johnson became upset when Cato, his girlfriend and another friend went to retrieve the vehicle they purchased from Johnsons cousin. Catos girlfriend alleged that Johnson drove away briefly and went back to the area a few minutes later, which was when she saw him carrying two pistols.
Update (9 a.m. Tuesday): A 30-year-old man has been arrested after a gunfight in a north Tulsa street left one person dead and two others hospitalized Monday night.

Raymond Rivera was arrested early Tuesday on a complaint of first-degree murder, according to Tulsa Police Homicide Sgt. Dave Walker.

Capt. Mike Williams said police received a call about a fight in the area of 4900 North Boston Place and that while en route to the scene they received a call that shots were heard in the same location.

He said officers found a man lying in the street in the 4900 block of North Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard with a gunshot wound to his face.

"He was speaking with officers, and we got information that he was looking for his cousin," Williams said. He said the man's cousin's body was found shortly afterward in the 4900 block of North Boston Place.

Walker said the deceased man was in his 20s and lived with the other injured man.

The motive was not immediately clear. Homicide detectives determined that the shooting occurred during a fist fight on Boston Place between two groups of people.

The other group of people fled the area, where one man was shot and killed and another shot and injured, Walker said.

While police were at that scene, a dispatcher notified them that a woman had arrived at St. John Medical Center with a bullet wound in her shoulder, Williams said.

"It's pretty evident that there was some type of gunfight out here," he said.

The woman may be connected to the two people who fled the fight after the shooting. Walker said, however, she was a bystander to the fight and got "caught up in the gunfire."

Williams said the man who was shot in the face had an empty gun holster when he was found but that police were able to recover a gun he threw in a ditch about 20 yards away. That man, Williams said, was able to walk a couple of blocks before collapsing in the street and subsequently being taken to a hospital.

Police did not find a gun on or near the homicide victim, Williams said.

Williams said no independent witnesses have come forward and that neither person hospitalized has been able to give information that could lead authorities to a shooter.

Officers cordoned off several blocks around Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Boston Place while they collected evidence, including shell casings from 9 millimeter and .45-caliber firearms.

Anyone with more information about the shootings is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 918-596-COPS (2677.)

Below is a version of this story as it appears in Tuesday's Tulsa World.

One person was fatally shot and two others were wounded in a gunfight in a residential area of north Tulsa around 9:20 p.m. Monday, police said.

Police initially were called to the 4900 block of North Boston Avenue, but the shooting scene involved a multiblock area.

Police at the scene said the man who was killed was found lying in the street near 48th and Boston. That mans cousin was shot in the fact around 48th or 49th street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, police said.

Meanwhile, a woman showed up at St. John Medical Center with a bullet wound to her shoulder. Apparently she also had been shot in that area of north Tulsa.

Police said they found two types of shell casings  .45-caliber and 9 mm  where the shootings occurred.

Police have no suspects and have found no witnesses to the shootings. Officers are going door to door in the area seeking anyone with information about what happened.
Gov. Mary Fallin and Republican lawmakers presented a budget plan Monday that is highlighted by a $3,000 teacher pay raise and includes increased tax money from cigarettes, alcohol, gasoline and diesel.

The plan was unveiled after four weeks of negotiations in the Legislatures ongoing special session. Lawmakers are trying to fill a current budget hole and look ahead to future legislative sessions, since a budget hole already looms for next year.

The decisions being made at the Capitol now will affect almost every Oklahoman. Here is a look at critical questions concerning the proposal:

What should you do right now?

No matter how you feel about the details below, you should contact your lawmaker.

Go to tulsaworld.com/contactthecapitol. Enter your address and youll have information about your lawmakers, including their phone and email contacts.

If you want to call the House of Representatives, the numbers are: 405-521-2711 and 800-522-8502. If you want to call the Senate, the number is 405-524-0126.

What are details of the plan proposed Monday?

Here is the overview, with preliminary numbers from House Speaker Charles McCalls office. (The numbers could change, because they are still being reviewed by the Office of Management and Enterprise services.)

 A $3,000 teacher pay raise that would take effect Aug. 1, 2018. Cost: $144 million per year.

 A $1,000 employee pay raise that would take effect Aug. 1, 2018. Cost: $36.2 million per year.

 A re-creation of the earned income tax credit, which benefits low-income families. Cost: $28.9 million per year.

 A $1.50 per pack increase in the cigarette tax. Anticipated revenue: $257.8 million

 A 6-cent per gallon tax on gasoline and diesel. Anticipated revenue: $170.4 million

 Tax on smokeless tobacco and cigars. Anticipated revenue: $12.9 million

 Accelerating the impact of an alcoholic beverage tax increase due to go into effect with voter-approved changes in beer and wine laws. Anticipated revenue: $14.6 million

What is the next step?

Lawmakers must determine how many pieces of legislation this will require. Its still unclear, because the proposal was being finalized late Monday. But it could be about six. Legislative leaders expect to hold committee meetings Tuesday and then present the plan on the House floor Wednesday, when a vote is expected.

What is needed for this to become law?

First, it must pass the House of Representatives with a supermajority of 76 votes out of the current 100 members. Then, it must pass the Senate, where it also needs a supermajority of its 46 members. If it passes both chambers, the governor would sign it into law. The taxes would go into effect 90 days later.

There is urgency. The longer lawmakers take to reach a deal, the harder the budget hole becomes to fill because the number of days to collect higher taxes shrinks. In the case of a revenue failure, state agencies that include core services  such as health care, education and human services  face deeper cuts.

Will this pass the House?

Republican leadership faces some work. If this passes, it will be the first time a revenue-raising measure passed the 75-percent threshold since the supermajority was enacted by a statewide vote in 1992. Here is how the numbers break down in the House:

There are 72 Republicans. House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka, says he believes about 75 percent of Republicans will support the package. Thats approximately 54 votes.

There are 28 Democrats in the House. McCall says he believes that 75 percent of Democrats will support it. Thats 21 votes  putting the package at 75 votes, close enough to the 76 for supporters to believe there is a chance.

The House Democratic caucus has issued a strong statement against the proposal, but proponents hope pressure from those who would benefit from the proposal will help turn those votes.

Will it pass the Senate?

It seems likely to pass the Senate if it passes the House. There are 39 Republicans and seven Democrats in the Senate. President Pro Tem Mike Schulz said he was confident the supermajority would be met.

Who opposes it in the House?

Some Democrats will oppose this, because it doesnt include an increase in the gross production tax, the money energy companies pay when they extract oil and gas in Oklahoma. Democrats have insisted for months that the gross production tax should be part of any budget deal.

A news release issued by the Democratic caucus on Monday afternoon included this statement: It is obvious that this budget is meant to meet one objective, which is to find a way out of this budget shortfall without restoring the gross production tax on oil and gas wells. Instead of asking the oil and gas industry to pay a fair and just tax, Republican lawmakers would rather tax working class Oklahomans.

Fallin said the state has changed laws in the last two years to produce more revenue from the oil and gas industry. She noted that five exemptions were removed in the most recent regular legislative session. When the oil and gas industry says, Youve touched us, we have touched them, Fallin said.

McCall said that when members of the Republican caucus conducted informal votes, there wasnt enough support for a gross production tax increase.

Opponents say the state is not close to the historic level of gross production taxes. Some oil industry leaders have argued that geology and petroleum prices have much more to do with production decisions than a few points in the state tax rate.

Are there other House opponents?

Yes. Some Republicans will not support a tax increase, which is the primary reason why McCall estimates he will lose about 25 percent of his caucus votes.

Why is a plan necessary?

Gov. Mary Fallin called the special session to plug a $215 million budget hole that was created when the state Supreme Court ruled that legislators created a $1.50-per-pack cigarette fee in an unconstitutional fashion during the regular legislative session. The revenue from that fee, which the court ruled was actually a tax, had been expected to fund part of state government, particularly the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, the Department of Human Services, and the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services.

Beyond that, the Legislature has about a $400 million deficit looming next year. That hole is because there were one-time funds  instead of recurring revenue  used last session.

Most lawmakers, in both parties, seem to have reached agreement on this point: Oklahoma doesnt have enough general revenue money to fund core services such as education, health care, transportation and more. Where they disagree is how to raise the money to fund them.

Twitter: @mikestrain
Denial of climate change fills political discourse, the news, and public space. To many people in positions of power and those loyal to them, scientific consensus of the grave and imminent danger to our planet -- and therefore to ourselves -- does not matter, and is simply untrue. Visible signs all around us are not signs at all. Energy by burning coal and petroleum is as much the wave of the future as it is the wave of the past and present. We humans -- not to mention all life -- are immune to the effects of befouled air, befouled land, and befouled water. Besides, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, or some think tank, can right every ecological threat. All problems are simple -- complexity is virtually un-American. And all problems have simple solutions.

How does what-makes-no-sense somehow make complete sense? There are obvious and well-known economic and cultural answers and arguments that contribute to denial of climate change. Corporations and their leaders place profit ahead of public good. Belief in climate change threatens profit and the doctrine of unregulated growth that accompanies it. We Americans have long held a short-term view of most problems and their solutions. The sacred corporate quarterly report keeps shareholders, leaders, and employees focused and entranced. Many people do not think beyond the next election, when policies can dramatically be reversed. It is difficult if not impossible to fathom irreversible geological time.

There is a yet deeper, even more troubling, level to climate change denial. If for some thoughtful people, denial is a problem, for countless others it is a solution. In human thinking and feeling, denial is a way of obliterating reality and substituting for it a fantasized reality. In a single stroke, denial rids us of anxiety. Suddenly, we are comforted rather than afraid, because there is nothing to be anxious about. That is what magical thinking is supposed to do. Shared fantasy becomes the New Reality, and its adherents now defend it as life itself.

One of denials most effective mental ramparts is rationalization: e.g., We have our own scientists who are skeptical of climate change. This past winter, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, brought a snowball into the Senate Chamber to refute the idea of climate change. Further, the very process of scientific thought and investigation is disavowed. For instance, the contention that Climate change is only a theory, is a declaration that wholly misunderstands how science and scientists work by constantly testing proposed explanatory notions. By contrast, for those who deny climate change, one theory is as valid as another.

For peoples around the world, culture largely serves as a huge glass or plastic bubble in which people dwell. For its inhabitants, it constitutes the world. To question the bubble is heresy. For many Americans, denial of climate change is that delusional protective bubble in which they find comfort and safety -- even as they endanger all life on earth. We might ask ourselves: What would the climate change deniers stand to lose if they gave up their convictions? We must take denial with utter seriousness, and not dismiss it as simply wrong-headed thinking, roll our eyes, and walk away. We must, I believe, listen for the fear that lies behind the protective shield of ideology.

Howard Stein, an organizational, applied, psychoanalytic, medical anthropologist, psychohistorian, organizational consultant, and poet, is professor emeritus in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, where he taught for nearly 35 years. He is most recently (2017) author of the Second Edition of Listening Deeply, published by the University of Missouri Press. He can be reached at howard-stein@ouhsc.edu
Polo Grill to host benefit for California

Tulsa restaurateurs, Oklahoma wine brokers and local wine shops will join forces for From the Heartland to Wine Country from 1-3:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 29, at Polo Grill, 2038 Utica Square.

The event will benefit the fire-ravaged regions of Mendocino, Napa and Sonoma wine country in California.

A tax-deductible donation of $100 will allow guests to receive a tasting glass for the event, with funds distributed to Napa Valley Community Foundations Disaster Relief Fund, Community Foundation of Sonoma Countys Resilience Fund and Community Foundation of Mendocino County Disaster Fund.

Participating restaurants include Polo Grill, Bodean Seafood, Biga, Cox Business Center, Justin Thompson Restaurants, McGills, Mahogany Prime Steakhouse and Summit Club, with support coming from Oklahoma State University School of Hospitality and Tourism students.

Tickets are available at eventbrite.com.

Tulsa Farmers Market sets benefit dinner

Tulsa Farmers Market has scheduled a dinner to benefit the market from 5-9 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 29, at The Silo Center at Redberry Farm, 4501 W. 41st St.

Area chefs will create a six-course dinner featuring local produce, meats and cheeses paired with local beer, wine and craft cocktails. An alternative vegetarian menu also will be available.

Proceeds contribute to programs designed to integrate local food into all areas of the community, including access to fresh foods for low-income populations, school children and the elderly.

Cost is $125 per person. Tickets are available at paypal.com.

Bricktown Brewery adds to special menu

Bricktown Brewery has added four new items to its special Twisted Comfort Foods menu. The items:

Chicken-fried ribs ($12) feature St. Louis-style ribs battered and fried, served with mac n cheese and bread-and-butter pickle slaw with mustard barbecue sauce on the side.

BBQuban ($9.50) is a sandwich with ham, pork carnitas, mustard barbecue sauce, Swiss cheese and pickles on a French bread bun with choice of side.

Boom Boom shrimp poboy ($10.25) includes battered and fried shrimp, Boom Boom sauce, shredded lettuce, mayo and tomato on a French bread bun with choice of side.

Extreme grilled cheese and tomato soup ($9) features a sandwich with American, pepper jack, cheddar, Swiss and Pecorino Romano cheeses melted on grilled bread. San Marzano tomato soup is topped with pretzel croutons.

Area Bricktown Brewery restaurants are at 3301 S. Peoria Ave., 9409 E. 71st St. and 11909 E. 96th St. North, Owasso.

Juniper dinner to benefit Iron Gate

Juniper, 324 E. Third St., has scheduled a fall-themed harvest dinner at 6 p.m. Nov. 5 to benefit the Iron Gate soup kitchen.

Chef Neil Trumpy will create a five-course dinner with dishes paired with beer, wine and cocktails.

The dinner will include charcuterie cornucopia (Glider Cider Dry Cider), cranberry salad (Raptor Ridge gruner veltliner), butternut squash bisque (Juniper infused cocktail), beer-braised short rib and pork shank (Ogier Dentellis syrah blend) and pumpkin spice creme brulee (Marshalls Big Jamoke Porter).

Cost is $60 per person, plus tax and gratuity. Reservations: 918-794-1090 or email derek@junipertulsa.com.

Zaxbys opens third restaurant in Tulsa

Zaxbys has opened a new restaurant at 1717 S. Yale Ave., its third in Tulsa.

The Georgia-based chain features chicken fingers, wings, sandwiches, salads and more.

Other Zaxbys restaurants are at 6995 S. Mingo Road and 10801 E. 31st St.
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The Trump administration announced it will sell leases for 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest U.S. sale ever of offshore leases.

The Trump administration today announced it will sell leases for 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico, the largest U.S. sale ever of offshore leases.

The sale, scheduled for March, comes as some operators have pulled back from offshore operations to focus on shale fields.

The University of Houston has several experts available to discuss the decision, including the likely demand for the leases. To speak with one of them, please contact Jeannie Kever, jekever@uh.edu, 713-743-0778.

Ramanan Krishnamoorti, chief energy officer and professor of chemical engineering. Krishnamoorti can discuss trends in energy policy and production, along with the technical issues involved in offshore exploration and production. He notes that despite price concerns, some majors are moving ahead with offshore exploration, with new technologies lowering the risk.

Craig Pirrong, professor of finance and the energy markets director for Gutierrez Energy Management Institute. Pirrong is an authority on power markets, economics of commodity markets, the relation between market fundamentals and commodity price dynamics. He says there will be interest in the leases, depending on the price.

Ed Hirs, economics lecturer. Hirs is an expert on energy markets and policy and can discuss a range of issues related to oil and gas production, as well as the ways in which energy prices affect the broader economy. He is also managing director of Hillhouse Resources LLC, an independent E&P company working onshore conventional oil and gas along the Texas coast. Hirs expects to see interest, depending on location and companies capital budgets.

Cover photo: Getty Images
DECATUR  Police said an Indiana man on his way to Decatur was arrested after K-9 unit alerted to the presence of drugs during an interstate traffic stop Monday night.

An affidavit filed Tuesday by Decatur police officer Jason Hesse said Guy M. McDaniel of Mishawaka, Ind., was pulled over on Interstate 72 near Decatur, and the K-9 alerted to the presence of drugs after conducting a free air sniff.

Hesse said a search of the van found more than 345 grams of crystal methamphetamine stashed on board, along with 1,514 grams of cannabis. Police also recovered 21 grams of cocaine and, hidden behind a plastic panel, a loaded 9 mm handgun that was resting on top of some cannabis.

McDaniel, 62, who does not have an attorney yet, was jailed on preliminary felony charges of two counts of trafficking a controlled substance. He also faces preliminary charges of the manufacturing/delivery of cannabis and unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon. Preliminary charges are subject to review by the state's attorney's office.

Based on prior training and experience, the amount of narcotics seized is consistent with possessing narcotics with intent to deliver, Hesse said in the affidavit.

The police said McDaniel told them the van did not belong to him and that he was driving it to Decatur from South Bend, Ind., for a man who was paying him $200 to do it. He said his instructions were to drive the van to a specific location in Decatur where someone else would be waiting for him.

McDaniel remained in the Macon County Jail on Tuesday night in lieu of posting $200,000 bond. He is due in court Tuesday.
A family flee violence in Kamonia, Kasai Province, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, October 2017,  UNHCR/John Wessels

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is increasingly concerned by escalating displacement we are seeing in several key regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Since 2015 the number of people displaced internally has more than doubled and now stands at 3.9 million people  some 428,000 of these having been displaced in the past three months alone. Over the past year, some 100,000 Congolese have fled to neighbouring countries as refugees. With widespread militia activities, and unrest and violence fueled by ethnic and political conflict affecting many areas, the risk of further displacement is high. The challenges of getting aid to people in need are growing fast.

See also: Civilians in DRC struggle for survival amid growing violence at home

Tanganyika province

In the eastern province of Tanganyika, where some 584,000 people are internally displaced, intercommunal conflict between the Twa and Luba groups spilled into neighboring Haut-Katanga province earlier this year. Clashes with the army continue and there is wide prevalence of armed militia. Scores of civilians have been forced to flee, and there have been reports of murders, looting and extortion, and torture or other inhumane treatment. With people finding it difficult to sustain their livelihoods, more are becoming dependent on aid.

Refugees crossing from DRC into neighbouring Zambia are hosted temporarily at the Kenani transit center, close to the border. Over 5,400 people are currently staying at the center, receiving assistance from the authorities, UNHCR and partners. As the rainy season has started, it is becoming urgently important to beef up public health, sanitation and water supplies to prevent diseases. Psychosocial support, as well as care for people with specific needs  some 27 per cent of the refugee population  is also urgently required.

North and South Kivu provinces

Further north in the east of DRC, violence involving mostly local armed groups is also plaguing North and South Kivu provinces. In North Kivu alone, over one million people are displaced. In South Kivu, where 545,000 people are internally displaced, the security situation further deteriorated in September as conflicts escalated between militias and the armed forces in the territories of Fizi and Uvira. Fear is widespread, including among the 30,000 Burundian refugees hosted at Lusenda camp in Fizi.

Congolese from North Kivu have mainly been fleeing to Uganda, and those from South Kivu to Tanzania  usually transiting through Burundi to escape attacks in their villages. Currently, Uganda hosts the largest number of DRC refugees, over 236,500 people, mostly in the south-west. In Tanzania, there were 76,890 DRC refugees as of the end of September.

The Kasai region

Meanwhile, in the Kasai region in central-southern DRC, displaced people and refugees who fled the violence that started over a year ago have begun to return. As of 23 October, over 710,000 people had gone back. Many are finding their property in ruins and family members killed. At present the situation in the Kasai region is far from stable and humanitarian access has only just become possible in many areas.

In total, over 762,000 people are displaced in the Kasai region. In Angolas Lunda Norte province an additional 27,555 Congolese who have fled the Kasai conflict are being assisted by UNHCR and partners.

UNHCR is coordinating protection activities for the displaced from the Kasai conflict, returnees and other vulnerable civilians. We have also distributed basic relief items and are preparing additional support, particularly for the communities where returns take place.

In light of the situations in these three regions, UNHCR and partners have recently upgraded the situation in Democratic Republic of the Congo to level 3  the highest level of emergency. UNHCR, as part of this response, will be fulfilling its responsibilities focusing on protection and assistance of the displaced populations, including through leadership of the Protection cluster.

Refugees

In all, there are today some 621,711 refugees from the DRC in more than 11 African countries. And funding is urgently needed. Of some US$236.2 million required for the needs of refugees, IDPs and other people of concern in the DRC, only US$49.7 million has been received so far  a fifth of the amount required.

At the same time, the number of refugees from neighboring countries seeking refuge inside Democratic Republic of the Congo has grown by a third since early 2016 and now stands at 526,000 people. We continue to see new arrivals from Burundi, the Central African Republic and South Sudan.

For more information on this topic, please contact:
After five months of hiding in the bush from armed men and soldiers, Marie Kapinga is finally back at her family home in Matamba, a village in the Democratic Republic of the Congos Kasai Central province.

Once a wealthy businesswoman, 45-year-old Marie now faces an uncertain future. The familys small shop and their restaurant lie in ruins after violence erupted in her village. They were destroyed by a rocket launcher, Marie says. Their guesthouse still stands but was pillaged. They even stole the beds.

Today, Marie finds herself caring for 17 children and grandchildren, but does not know how to feed them. Her husband was killed when he returned to the village during the violence to find food while they hid in the forest.

Marie is one of over 600,000 displaced people who have returned to their homes in the Democratic Republic of the Congos Kasai region this year, which has been affected by conflict since 2016. Like her, many of those who have returned do not even have the basics to reestablish their lives.

DRC: Displaced families face uncertain future (Thomas Nicolon, producer / Vania Turner, editor)

When they arrive they find that their houses have been burned, the schools have been destroyed, the clinics are no longer functioning and their livelihoods are also not there, says Steven Corliss, the Special Advisor on Internal Displacement at UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. So the needs are truly massive.

And despite the recent returns to Kasai, UNHCR has warned that displacement in DRC is still at a record high and humanitarian actors are overstretched.

"Since 2015 the number of people displaced internally has more than doubled and now stands at 3.9 million people  some 428,000 of these having been displaced in the past three months alone," UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards told a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday (Oct 24).

Over the past year, some 100,000 Congolese have fled to neighbouring countries as refugees. With widespread militia activities, and unrest and violence fueled by ethnic and political conflict affecting many areas, the risk of further displacement is high.

Marie is one of over 600,000 displaced people who have returned to their homes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Kasai region this year.  UNHCR/John Wessels

A family flee violence in Kamonia, Kasai Province, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, October 2017,  UNHCR/John Wessels

Kadima Kabenge, 28, fled the Kasai region and his job in a diamond mine.  UNHCR/John Wessels

Mathieu Buende, 71, fled Kasai province with six children. The walk caused his feet and legs to swell.  UNHCR/John Wessels

UNHCR's Special Advisor on Internal Displacement Steven Corliss talks with internally displaced people.  UNHCR/John Wessels

Even in the Kasai region, where after one year of conflict calm has for the most part returned, new displacement has been reported from some areas, as in several eastern provinces such as North Kivu, South Kivu and Tanganyika.

UNHCR is currently gearing up its emergency response in several areas of the country, focusing on the coordination of protection activities and life-saving humanitarian assistance such as shelter. In light of the situation, UNHCR and partners recently upgraded the situation in the Kasai region, South Kivu province and Tanganyika province to Level 3  the highest level of emergency.

Of some US$236.2 million required for the needs of refugees, internally displaced people (IDPs) and other people of concern in the DRC, only US$49.7 million has been received so far  a fifth of the amount required. UNHCR warns of dire consequences if mounting population needs are not met and funding gaps remain.
BRUSSELS, 24 October - LI Yong, Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), has travelled to Belgium to attend the Global Science, Technology and Innovation Conference (G-STIC) 2017 and to meet with the Minister-President of the Flemish Government of Flanders, Geert Bourgeois and others.

Speaking at the GSTIC 2017 conference, Director General LI Yong highlighted the importance of the active participation of all sectors of society to contribute to the world-wide implementation of new technologies, and new ways of producing and consuming. GSTIC aims to accelerate the development, dissemination and deployment of technological innovations that enable the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) primarily through providing a platform for exchange, bringing a great multitude of global actors together.

The Director General also spoke at the UN Day and met with the Minister-President of the Flemish Government of Flanders, Geert Bourgeois during his two-day visit. The meeting aimed to strengthen UNIDOs ties with Flanders and explore opportunities for cooperation in areas including Industry 4.0, the circular economy, and sustainable cities.

Meetings with representatives of the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), and Chantal De Bleu, Director-General of the Wallonia Export and Foreign Investment Agency (AWEX) focussed on strengthening technical cooperation based on expertise in green technologies and their innovation clusters.

During his visit, Li highlighted UNIDOs unique position as a gateway to markets, investment and partnerships in the developing world. UNIDOs technical cooperation portfolio consists of 850 projects distributed over around 100 countries with a total budget of US$1.3 billion.

For more information please contact:

Mark Draeck

Industrial Development Officer

Renewable and Rural Energy Division

E-mail

Images courtesy of VITO Belgium.
MOWEAQUA  The Moweaqua Village Board will look to hire a new full-time police officer, its mayor said Monday, even as dozens of concerned residents questioned why the last officer resigned and why Police Chief Rob Maynard was recently suspended.

The board held a special meeting Monday to accept the resignation of officer Chad Lamb, who submitted his resignation earlier this month.

Mayor Boomer Neece said he did not know why Lamb resigned. Lamb did not attend the meeting and could not immediately be reached for comment.

An advertisement for the position will be put out when Maynard returns from a five-day suspension on Oct. 31, Neece said.

Neece also did not comment on the reason for Maynard's suspension, saying it was a personnel matter that could not be publicly disclosed. Ed Flynn, an attorney for the village, said the village would release details if Maynard signed a waiver allowing it.

Flynn also would not elaborate on why Maynard was suspended, but he did say it was not due to a onetime incident.

This has been a progressive issue, Flynn said.

Attempts to reach Maynard directly were unsuccessful on Sunday night and Monday.

The resignation and suspension set off a chain of reaction in the small, tight-knit community, as dozens of residents came to the meeting to raise concerns about personnel matters and how the village handled them.

Among them was Larry Morrell, 73, who has lived in the community his entire life. He said after the meeting that he has known Maynard and Lamb for years and the two are great guys who everyone in the community trusts to watch over their safety.

I dont want my family to be in jeopardy, Morrell said. When you have those like (Maynard and Lamb) in squad cars, you know you can trust them to watch over your kids.

For now, policing in the village will be handled by Shelby County, with Christian County assisting as well.

Shelby County Undersheriff Robert McCall, who attended Mondays meeting, said the current schedule is to patrol the village for one week, which started Monday morning. One deputy will be there every night, and one will be there "as much as possible" during the day, McCall said.

Several residents asked the board if Lamb could come back to the force, with some saying he was an "instrumental" part of the community. Neece said there would be no problem if Lamb wanted to re-apply for the position.

When asked, Flynn said he could not say whether Lamb himself has been disciplined or whether that was the impetus for his resignation.

The ramifications of the last week were seen early in the meeting, when one part-time officer submitted his resignation to the board, saying he did not wish to work for a board that no longer has our backs.

The officer declined to give his name when asked after the meeting.

Several residents also brought up concerns that the posting of Mondays meeting violated the Illinois Open Meetings Act, saying the time of the special meeting was changed from 6 p.m. to 4 p.m. without at least 24-hour notice.

Both Neece and village Clerk Mischelle Davis denied the allegation, saying the meeting time and location were finalized and posted Oct. 19, well before the 48 hours required under the act.

Davis told the Herald & Review she would provide documents sent to board members that verified the scheduled meeting time, but the paper had not received them by late Monday night.
Will farmers be getting any cash from the settlement in the multitude of class action suits now being negotiated between corn growers and Syngenta? Syngenta was blamed for the early release of genetically enhanced corn designed to be toxic to corn borers and corn rootworms before it was approved by China. And when the genetics arrived in shiploads of U.S. corn in the fall of 2013, only to be rejected by China, the corn market dropped.

China was not involved back in the 1990s when unapproved genetics from corn known as Starlink were leased onto the market, and class action lawsuits were also filed. In that case, a few pennies per bushel filtered down to farmers; and now, few farmers expect to get anything of significance from Syngenta based on that past experience with Starlink.

But this may be different, believes Donald Swanson, an Omaha attorney familiar with such cases, whose column for the Ag law department at Iowa State University points to some cash going into the pockets of corn growers. He calculates about $100 per 1,000 bushels of corn produced annually by farmers from the 2013-14 crop through the 2017-18 crop.

The attorneys for Syngenta and the farmers who participated in the class action lawsuits have not said anything about a specific amount, and say that has to be announced by the court when the settlement is approved. So how can Swanson estimate how the $1.4 billion settlement is going to be divided among tens of thousands of farmers?

Swansons contention is based on the work of two agricultural economists, Bruce Babcock of Iowa State and Colin Carter of the University of California-Davis. Their cents per bushel loss estimates are fairly close, putting national cash losses at $3.95 billion to $4.68 billion.

Babcock says the the annual cents per bushel loss ranges from 11.5 cents down to 4.8 cents, for an average of 8.18 cents per bushel. Carter says the annual cents per bushel loss ranges from 14.84 cents down to 5.44 cents, for an average of 9.74 cents per bushel.

Swanson says those totals are different, but within $700 million of each other. Additionally, the two economists had estimated the financial losses to the Kansas farmers whose successful bellwether lawsuit pointed to $217 million in damages determine by the federal court jury in June. Using the economist s estimates and the Kansas City verdict, Swanson says the negotiated settlement of $1.4 billion would be the midpoint of 36.71 percent for Babcocks total damage estimate and 30.99 percent for Carters total damage estimate.

Once a farmer multiplies his or her total bushels from those five crops by the appropriate cents per bushel loss number(s), deductions need to be made from there. The first deduction is likely to be a settlement discount, which is from 36.71 percent to 30.99 percent of the professors total national damage estimate, and then a farmers total bushels multiplied by the appropriate cents per bushel loss number(s) must be discounted in the same way.

The second deduction is the attorney fees. As a broad rule of thumb, Swanson says this amount might be viewed as one-third of the total damage amount the farmer is entitled to recover from the settlement fund.

Swanson says once the numbers are approved by the court, then farmers will be notified and will need to present their claims in writing to receive settlement funds; and procedures for doing so will be established.

What is the legitimacy of Swansons crystal ball gazing? Chris Ellis, of Bolen, Robinson, and Ellis, one of the members of the attorney executive committee negotiating with Syngenta, was asked for his assessment of Swansons approach. Ellis said of Swanson, I wish I could agree or disagree with his statement. I don't think anything he writes is out of line, but I also don't know how accurate it will end up being. I can tell you that the negotiations continue to move forward and I am cautiously optimistic that we will report a very good settlement in the coming weeks/month.

Since few farmers are really expecting to be compensated for Syngentas early release of its genetics, anything that might come in the mail on the order of what Swanson suggests will be like Christmas.
(Oct. 23, 2017) -- UTSA President Taylor Eighmy today announced a third initiative to make UTSA San Antonio's university of the future. The Presidents Initiative on Finance and Budget Modeling will create a strong foundation for UTSAs fiscal health and lays the groundwork for the growth and innovation to come.

"Research intensive institutions have extraordinarily complex budgets that are influenced by a multitude of internal and external factors," said Eighmy. "Though some of these factors are outside of an institution's control, such as state appropriations, ensuring UTSA's financial trajectory positions us to best invest in our future."

Similar to the Student Success and Strategic Enrollment initiatives launched last week, Eighmy expressed an urgent need for this initiative, in an email sent today to UTSA faculty and staff.

"Sound financial practices are paramount to achieving institutional goals," he said.

The Finance and Budget Modeling Task Force will develop strategies to optimize UTSA's resources and identify opportunities to improve financial performance. Through a careful examination and adoption of best practices, the task force will explore possible new budget models, identifying those that will work best for UTSA and align to its mission, vision and institutional themes.

Eighmy encouraged the task force to prioritize budget models that are transparent and data-driven, and emphasize incentivizing strategic practices for revenue growth.

UTSA Vice President for Business Affairs Kathy Funk-Baxter will lead the Finance and Budget Modeling Initiative. She has 25 years of experience in financial management as well as proven leadership at UTSA and in multiple professional organizations.

The task force will begin with a deep dive into UTSA's current financial position and areas for greatest opportunity. To assist in the effort, UTSA has hired Huron, a leading higher education consulting firm that has partnered with the institution on a variety of projects.

"The time and energy that will go into this initiative is a direct investment in UTSAs future and our march toward excellence," said Eighmy. "As we embark on this new chapter of thinking bigger, I am grateful to our students, faculty, staff and supporters for collectively owning UTSAs success."
(Oct. 24, 2017) -- The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) has received a five-year, $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to create a multidisciplinary center fostering education and research at the intersection of cybersecurity and cloud computing. The Center for Security and Privacy Enhanced Cloud Computing (C-SPECC) will act as a pipeline to create well-trained professionals in the industry and strengthen San Antonio as a cybersecurity hub. The project is led by Ravi Sandhu, Lutcher Brown Endowed Professor of computer science and founding executive director of the UTSA Institute for Cyber Security.

Cloud computing allows computer processing resources and data to be shared on-demand on Internet-ready devices using privately-owned clouds or public cloud providers. The practice, which offers consumers simplicity, affordability and reliability, has grown quickly over the last decade. Security and privacy, however, remain a concern among researchers and other industry experts. Additionally, well-trained and innovative professionals are needed to strengthen the industry and take on the hundreds of thousands of industry jobs in the U.S. alone that are currently unfilled.

For nearly two decades, UTSA has been a national leader in cybersecurity, a dynamic field that requires an equally nimble approach from academia, government and industry, said UTSA President Taylor Eighmy. Creating a place where UTSA can expand its cybersecurity focus and apply its vast expertise to cloud computing will enable the university to make meaningful contributions with a practical impact. The center will also give UTSA students an unparalleled learning opportunity to conduct research alongside the universitys nationally recognized experts in cyber, cloud, computing and analytics.

Four UTSA colleges -- science, engineering, education and business -- will join the center. Other lead researchers will include Nicole Beebe, associate professor of information systems and cybersecurity and Melvin Lachman Distinguished Professor in Entrepreneurship, Guadalupe Carmona-Dominguez, associate professor of interdisciplinary learning, Ram Krishnan, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and Microsoft Presidents Endowed Professor and Jeff Prevost, assistant professor of electrical engineering.

The goals of C-SPECC are to become nationally recognized for excellence in research and innovation in secure cloud computing, to increase participation among underrepresented minorities in high-tech computing and to pursue innovative research-based educational strategies for high school and college students.

To accomplish these goals and expand UTSAs role as an urban serving university, the center will participate in an innovative UTSA-Northside Independent School District (NISD) partnership that broadens the universitys cybersecurity recruitment to the high school level. Through C-SPECC, the UTSA College of Education and Human Development will offer certificate programs to NISD teachers and students, who will become known as C-SPECC Scholars.

In the certificate programs, the NISD teachers will expand their understanding of cybersecurity and cloud computing, and how to teach it to high school students. Each semester, UTSA will offer a new course for teachers, to keep their educational approaches as fresh as possible to reflect the constantly growing and changing fields of cybersecurity and cloud computing.

High school students from NISD will be recruited to study cybersecurity and cloud computing at C-SPECC. The outreach program will give the teens an opportunity to try on security-related careers, engaging them as they consider areas of study to pursue in college and embark on college preparedness paths. These C-SPECC Scholars will participate in certificate programs that are tailored for their education level and will help build their interest and understanding of cybersecurity and cloud computing.

Four schools within NISD will participate: Business Careers High School, Earl Warren High School, William Howard Taft High School and John Marshall Harlan High School. UTSA will work with these schools to offer local industry internships and foster mentorships with leaders in cybersecurity and cloud computing, expanding the pipeline of local talent prepared for cybersecurity careers and strengthening San Antonio as a cybersecurity hub.

Research estimates that the world will have 1.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by the year 2020, said Sandhu. In addition to leading research at the intersection of cloud computing and cybersecurity, C-SPECC will play a critical role in attracting more youth to the profession. If we want to fill 1.5 million jobs, we need to begin recruiting smart kids and giving them the opportunity to experience a security career first hand.

Rackspace, a San Antonio-based managed cloud provider, will recruit students from C-SPECC for internships and part-time employment and participate in coding "hackathons" to promote interest in the field.

"The importance of information in business, society and our personal lives will only continue to become more important. From financial or personal information to autonomous vehicles, businesses must be prepared to protect information and critical systems," said Dave Neuman, Rackspaces chief information security officer. "It's critical to have the right people in place to help implement and strengthen a business' security plan, which is why we're excited UTSA has recognized this critical need for talent and invested in the Center for Security and Privacy Enhanced Cloud Computing to help educate and train students as San Antonio becomes a hub for industry-leading cybersecurity experts."

The National Institute of Standards and Technology and NSS Labs, an Austin-based security testing and analysis company, will similarly partner with C-SPECC.

In addition to its community engagement mission, C-SPECC will focus on shaping the theories and standards that advance secure cloud computing through academic and research programs in cloud computing protection, detection and policy technologies. Over time, these UTSA contributions will advance the way businesses, consumers and governments utilize the cloud as it evolves.

UTSA first identified cybersecurity as an area of strategic importance in 2001 and has since made considerable investments to grow its academic and research programs in security. Today, it is known for its expertise in cyber, cloud, computing and analytics and academic and research programs that are producing well-trained graduates to meet the public and private sectors' need for new and highly qualified cybersecurity professionals. Alumni of UTSA have secured jobs with industry, government and military employers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Rackspace, USAA, Raytheon, Booz Allen, the National Security Agency and the U.S. Army.

The Institute for Cyber Security opened the universitys first cloud computing research laboratory in 2008, which focused on sponsored research in secure cloud computing. In 2015, UTSA founded the Open Cloud Institute to support cloud computing and big data research and development. The 80/20 Foundation supported the launch of the institute with $4.8 million to support endowed professorships, faculty research positions, graduate student endowments and research funding. The institutes researchers are helping the international business community improve its computing platforms through open-source hardware and cloud and big data technologies such as Open Compute, OpenStack and Software Defined Networks.

That same year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security awarded UTSA a $10 million grant to develop cybersecurity information sharing standards to facilitate collaboration between the private sector and the government. The creation of the UTSA Information Sharing and Analysis Organization is promoting secure, rapid and widespread information sharing that helps organizations detect and block increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, through the UTSA CIAS.

Today, UTSA is home to the nations leading cybersecurity program, according to a nationwide survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute. The universitys unique approach includes researchers in business, science and engineering who work in multiple centers and institutes focused on solving global security challenges in today's increasingly technological world: the Institute for Cyber Security, the Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS), the Open Cloud Institute and the Cyber Center for Security and Analytics.

UTSA is ranked among the top four universities in the nation under 50 years old, according to Times Higher Education.
On October 25, in accordance with the arrangement reached with the authorities of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh Republic), the OSCE Mission will conduct a planned monitoring of the Line of Contact between the armed forces of Artsakh and Azerbaijan, in the south-east direction of the Hadrut region.

From the positions of the Defense Army of the Republic of Artsakh, the monitoring will be conducted by Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, his Field Assistant Ognjen Jovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Office staff member Martin Schuster (Germany), as well as representative of the OSCE High-Level Planning Group, Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Farrely (Ireland).

The authorities of the Republic of Artsakh have expressed their readiness to assist in conducting the monitoring and to ensure the security of the OSCE Mission members.
An evening of Japanese music performed on traditional instruments will take place on November 9 and 10 at Yerevans Hovhannes Tumanyan Puppet Theatre.

The performance will celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations between Japan and Armenia.

The Embassy of Japan in Armenia invites all to attend this free performance.

Tickets will be available at the theatre.
Shrimp exports to the European Union (EU) increased constantly in August and September, making it the biggest consumer of the Vietnamese product, according to the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (Vasep).-Photo thanhnien.vn

Vasep has reported that shrimp exports to the market in June and July came to a standstill due to supply shortage and price hikes, while EU businesses reduced their shrimp imports. However, since August, exports to the EU have been restored with increased supply from domestic businesses.

The countrys shrimp export revenue hit US$2.5 billion in the first nine months, up 21.9 per cent against the same period last year. Exports to the EU grew 32 per cent in this period.

Vasep said that to boost exports to the market, businesses should pay more attention to labels and the quality of products to build brand names and expand markets. They should make proper plans to improve their competitiveness against other exporters, such as India.

The EU tends to increase its shrimp imports in the remaining months of the year to serve cultural and food festivals, offering a chance for domestic businesses to spur exports.

Tran Van Pham, director of the Soc Trang Seafood Joint Stock Company, said an important factor was to provide clean raw materials to the export shrimp processing industry. This means that Viet Nams shrimp industry must invest more in technology and the equipment for processing.

To form a large-scale production system, each enterprise must have a large area with synchronous investment at all stages, and then reduce the production costs to improve the quality of products for higher profits.

Ma Huy, deputy director of Ca Mau Agricultural Extension Centre, said the growth of shrimp exports to Europe promoted domestic shrimp consumption at high prices. The price was VND220,000 per kg (30 units of shrimp) and VND190,000 per kg (40 units).

Shrimp exporters like to buy shrimp that have 70 to 100 units per kg to meet the demands of European consumers.
US President Donald Trump (right rear) and Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (left rear) clap as Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong (left) and Boeing's commercial airplanes CEO Kevin McAllister (right) shake hands in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC. (JIM WATSON/AFP)

WASHINGTON: Boeing Co on Monday (Oct 23) signed a previously announced deal with Singapore Airlines Ltd (SIA) to sell it 39 aircraft worth US$13.8 billion (S$18.8 billion) at list prices during a White House event with Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The airline said last week it would finalise the order during the visit as part of its bid to modernise its fleet over the next decade.

The purchase includes 20 Boeing 777-9 model aircraft and 19 Boeing 787-10 Dreamliners.

Mr Lee is currently in the United States for an official working visit at the invitation of US President Donald Trump.

Both leaders held talks at the White House on Monday and reaffirmed the strong relations between the two nations.

Mr Trump recounted his plan for a November trip to Asia, where he will visit Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.
HCM City General Publishing House on Saturday launched the 11th Book Week to celebrate its 40th anniversary.- VNS Photo

The Book Week is hosted at three areas, including General Publishing Houses bookstore No 1 on District 1s Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street, General Publishing Houses bookstore No 2 on District 4s Nguyen Tat Thanh Street and booth M01 on District 1s Nguyen Van Binh Book Street.

Twenty-nine new book titles from writers such as Pham Phuong Thao, Nguyen Dinh Tu, An Chi, Huynh Ngoc Trang and Nguyen Thi Hau will be introduced during the Book Week.

Two titles have been published just in time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution (1907  1917).

According to the organisers, a discount is applied to both hard copies and e-books in an effort to encourage more people to read.

In addition to displaying books, two meetings with writers Nguyen Dinh Tu and Nguyen Thi Hau will be held.

The event welcomes visitors until October 28.
Since Doi moi in 1986, Vietnam has achieved a significant transformation of its economic structure. As part of this process, it successfully integrated with the global economy, adopting a socialist-oriented market economy with state-owned enterprises.

Also as part of this process, Vietnam has been trying to move from resource based and low skilled labour intensive production to medium and high technology production as a result of its economic restructuring. Progress on this front has been very limited, however, because of a number of supply side constraints such as the quality and skills of its human capital, the state of infrastructure and many enabling environment policy constraints. While strong political commitment and the full support of economic and social stakeholders have significantly contributed to this reform process, political reforms to enable economic and social reforms have been gradual and need to be accelerated to enable the next necessary phase of economic and social transformation. This will not be possible without bolder political reforms to create a more enabling environment.

More specifically, in the first phase of reforms, land reform provided for recognition by the state of private land use rights, the foreign investment law accelerated foreign direct investments, the company law acknowledged the recognition of private ownership, and the law on enterprises and the common law on investment created incentives for investors.

After establishing the legal framework to implement these structural reforms, the roles of state and the market were more effectively and efficiently balanced and defined. In this period, Vietnam also joined ASEAN, became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and signed the now stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement as well as bilateral and multilateral trade agreements that strengthened the trade liberalisation process and its integration with global markets.

In the period 1986-2008, GDP per capita increased more than fivefold increase since 1986 and reached $2,100 as a result of an average annual growth rate of 6.7 per cent which represented the third highest in the region(1), while poverty declined from 58 per cent in 1993 to around 7 per cent in 2015(2).

As of 2010, Vietnam was elevated from low income country to lower middle income country status as a result. However, in more recent years, economic growth has slowed and needs fresh sources of momentum. The acceleration of appropriate domestic political reforms will also be essential to ensure more rapid and sustainable economic growth and to allow Vietnam to adapt to the fast changing global economic landscape.

In Vietnams modern era the country has made admirable strides, and is now able to prepare for its next development leap

While the Vietnamese economy has successfully integrated with global markets, this success has been largely fuelled by a combination of exports in low skilled labour intensive, natural resource and foreign direct investment (FDI) based sectors(3). However, even though FDI based exports contribute the lions share in total exports, they are based on limited backward linkages in the domestic economy.

This situation strongly signals that Vietnam cannot continue to implement its existing growth model if it wishes to enhance the future prospects of the country. A new growth model needs to be constructed that will focus especially on quality issues. More specifically, higher technological value-added, productive and dynamically competitive sectors need to be key ingredients of a new growth model. The government needs to take the necessary steps to strengthen these key qualitative dimensions of the domestic economy.

There are also challenges which the Vietnamese economy faces arising from shifts in the global technological frontier and the rise of automation which should be seriously considered. In that respect, necessary actions should be taken to increase human resource skills and the technological base. Only then will it be possible to increase the value-added share of Vietnamese companies in global value-chains.

Vietnams growth performance started to decelerate after the global economic crisis. After Doi moi, the welfare of society increased but with some distortions. As a result, while the Vietnamese economy has converged to the middle-income country grouping and the percentage of poor people has fallen to single digit levels, there are a significant number around 70 per cent of the population) whose income levels are very close to the poverty line. As a result, Vietnam needs to urgently implement structural reforms to further transform its economic structure through more productive and higher value added competitive sectors to create decent jobs so as to support its missing middle population and avoid the middle income trap in the future. Institutional reforms in the fields of public administration, public investment, and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are among those which will need to be accelerated to address existing distortions in the economy.

There have also been significant changes in the fundamentals of the global economy after the global economic crisis and Vietnam needs to adapt herself to this changed environment proactively. As a result, legal frameworks need to be introduced that will empower the role of an independent and robust private sector in the economy to create a productive and competitive market structure.

In this context, the role of state needs to change to focus on establishing and providing an effective regulatory and supervisory framework with greater emphasis on transparency. These measures, taken together, will lead to more robust, inclusive and sustainable economic growth.

UNDP will continue to support the reform process. The existing reform agenda is examined and a number of policy recommendations were made in UNDPs last National Human Development Report (NHDR) for Vietnam.

To follow through on these recommendations, a recently initiated study will analyse, the productivity and competitiveness structure of Vietnams economy by examining backward and forward linkages in value chains.

By doing so, the weakest and the strongest components of different sectors and their value-added capacity will be determined and necessary policies designed and implemented to increase their productivity and strengthen their competitive power.

Through another UNDP study, more appropriate and integrated economic models will be developed for the Vietnamese economy in order to strengthen the intellectual capacity of the relevant ministries and the national statistical institute. Through this study, national modelling and statistical capacity will be strengthened and policy options, based on more rigour and analysis, should underpin the governments future policy decisions.

Through yet another UN program, implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be supported and reported through the Voluntary National Review (VNR) which will be presented at the UNs High Level Political Forum on the SDGs in July 2018 in New York and through Vietnams national 2018 SDG report. The UN will continue to play a key support role at various levels in Vietnams VNR preparation process. The SDGs can be an appropriate platform for Vietnam to show her visionary

perspective through strategically-designed and well-implemented structural policies which serve to fulfil the 2030 Agenda.

Vietnams recent experience has been remarkable for its simultaneous achievements of a dramatic reduction of poverty, sustained high economic growth rates and high levels of exports which together have contributed to its economic and social transformation from an impoverished, war-devastated country to a modern and dynamic society in just a generation. However, this transformation can only be sustained and taken to the next level if there is a consistent and simultaneous implementation of higher value-added productivity, appropriate institutional strengthening and governance policies.

The UN will be pleased to continue to play a key role in this process. We are celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Vietnam joining the UN in 2017 and it is clear that the UN has played a very special, indeed unique role in contributing to Vietnams successful trajectory over the last 40 years.

I expect our engagement with the Government of Vietnam to continue to strengthen during its development journey over the coming decades.
Tech heavyweight Panasonic owes a substantial part of the tax arrears Photo: Le Toan

Phan Minh Le, deputy director of the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, noted in a recent report to Vietnam Customs, After post-clearance checks, firms admitted that the adjustment of the HS code of LCD products is right. An HS code classifies a traded product according to an internationally-standardised system.

Under the intended tariff rate, firms would have had to pay a 3 per cent import tax instead of 0 per cent.

According to the report, firms imported these LCD-coded products valued at VND16,056 billion ($729.8 million).

Panasonic AVC Vietnam is reported to have 891 customs declaration numbers that snuck through with a 0 per cent tax, valued at nearly VND1.956 trillion ($88.9 million) for their imported products.

LCD stands for liquid crystal display  a flat-panel display or other electronically-modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals. LCDs are used in a wide range of applications including computer monitors, televisions, instrument panels, aircraft cockpit displays, and indoor and outdoor signage.

The misattributions were discovered in a review of information on the customs data system. HS codes that should have fallen under LCD product numbers were instead attributed to the categories of TV panels, LCD panels for producing LED screens, backlighting, and liquid crystal display  all of which have import tax rates of 0 per cent.

According to the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, citing a guideline by the General Department of Vietnam Customs, some of these product types are listed in a 3 per cent tax category.

However, firms complained that the guideline had only been circulated internally within customs agencies and not made known to the public.

In 2016, the Ministry of Finance issued a judgement saying that Panasonics LCD backlighting belongs to HS code 8529.90.91, and import taxes must be imposed at a 3 per cent rate.

The Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department said, The tax arrears are large VND481.68 billion ($21.89 million), so we must consider the appropriate means of collection.

According to its website, Panasonic AVC Networks Vietnam Co., Ltd. was founded in 1996 as a joint venture. As from August 1 2014, the company was transformed to a 100 per cent foreign invested company. The company manufactures and sells a wide range of televisions and other audio-visual devices with premium Japanese quality and technology.

Panasonic AVC Networks Vietnam Co., Ltd. is one of six Panasonic companies operating in Vietnam.
Egyptian authorities have been accused of rights abuses but President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi says he is trying to balance rights with security needs. (Photo: AFP/Khaled Desouki)

Egyptian authorities have been accused of rights abuses but President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi says he is trying to balance rights with security needs. (Photo: AFP/Khaled Desouki)

Sisi, a former general who ousted the elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, will meet the French defence and foreign ministers as well as business groups during his three-day trip that started on Monday.

Macron, a 39-year-old centrist elected in May, is pushing a pragmatic, results-oriented foreign policy but also one that sees France uphold its historic mission of defending human rights.

The visit will be a test of this balancing act because Egypt is a major buyer of French arms and a crucial partner in the war-wracked Middle East. But Sisi is accused of systematic abuses and repression.

"President Macron should refuse to continue France's disgraceful policies of indulgence toward al-Sisi's repressive government," the head of Human Rights Watch in France, Benedicte Jeannerod, said in a statement on Monday.

The New York-based group said France should "stop ignoring serious abuses" and pressure Sisi by making future economic cooperation and military support conditional on improvements in human rights.

At a press conference of various rights groups on Monday in Paris, Amnesty International also urged Macron to speak out about human rights.

"The silence of foreign governments sends a message to the Egyptian authorities that they can continue," said Hussein Baoumi, Egypt expert at Amnesty International.

'DIFFICULT EQUATION'

Asked about the criticism of his rule, Sisi told France 24 "there are no political prisoners in Egypt", insisting all detainees were interrogated and brought before the courts according to normal judicial procedure.

In a separate interview with French daily Le Figaro, the president said he was trying to balance rights with security needs.

"Egypt wishes to achieve the necessary balance between the rights and duties of citizens on the one hand, and the security challenges of the fight against terrorism on the other," he told the paper.

"It's sometimes a difficult equation when your responsibility is the security of a hundred million citizens."

Regarding Islam, Sisi said there needed to be religious discourse to combat extremism.

"We must work together and unite to correct erroneous interpretations of religious precepts erected as ideological pretexts to justify violence and terrorism," he told Le Figaro.

A statement from Macron's office last week said their talks would focus on security and regional stability "but also the human rights situation to which France is particularly attentive".

In one of his first meetings as president, Macron welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin in May and surprised some observers by speaking out against Russian state propaganda and raising alleged abuses in Chechnya.

But government sources told AFP behind-the-scenes diplomacy would be favoured over any public confrontation with Sisi.

"If we arrive saying 'what you're doing is wrong', it's not effective. What works is bringing up specific cases. We need to be stubborn but discreet," one diplomat told AFP.

Egypt is a major buyer of French military equipment with orders worth more than 5.0 billion euros ($5.8 billion) since 2015 including for 24 Rafale fighter jets.

Those deals were negotiated by former defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian who is now foreign minister in Macron's government.

VITAL PARTNER

Rights groups have repeatedly accused former army chief Sisi of repressive policies that stifle dissent in the media and politics, as well as the use of torture by security forces.

"It's important that he raises it publicly," Mohamed Zarea, vice-president of the FIDH global association of human rights groups, told reporters on Monday as he sounded the alarm about Egyptian NGOs being strangled.

But the most populous country in the Middle East is viewed as a vital partner by Western countries which fear more instability in the war-ravaged region.

US President Donald Trump in April congratulated Sisi on a "fantastic job" during a meeting at the White House. The previous month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel travelled to Cairo to hold talks with the Egyptian leader on stemming migration to Europe.

Sisi's visit to France come as Egypt continues to battle extremist groups that stepped up their attacks after Morsi's ouster.

Sixteen policemen were killed in a shootout with militants on a road 200 kilometres (125 miles) southwest of Cairo at the weekend.

Le Drian sent his condolences and pledged solidarity in "the fight against terrorism".
A sign for Merrill Lynch's headquarters is seen in New York. (AFP PHOTO/Nicholas ROBERTS)

A sign for Merrill Lynch's headquarters is seen in New York. (AFP PHOTO/Nicholas ROBERTS)

The Financial Conduct Authority said in a statement that the fine relates to 68.5 million unreported transactions over two years to February 2016 - and follows previous warnings and fines for similar offences.

The FCA added that this time around, it was "the first enforcement action against a firm for failing to report details of trading in exchange traded derivatives, under the European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR)" that was introduced following the global financial crisis to provide greater transparency on deals.

Merrill Lynch International, part of US giant Bank of America Merrill Lynch, would have been required to pay 49.32 million had it not settled at an early stage of the investigation, the FCA said.

"Reporting exchange traded derivative transactions helps authorities assess and address the risk inherent in financial systems caused by a lack of transparency," the watchdog said.

"The reporting requirement was one of the key reforms introduced following the financial crisis in 2008 to improve transparency within financial markets."

Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a separate statement that it had self-reported the issue to the UK watchdog, insisting that none of its clients had been financially impacted.
The victims were returning from performing religious rituals at a nearby river when they were hit by the train in the Munger district of Bihar state.

"It was slightly foggy and they might have failed to notice the oncoming train," Asish Bharti, Munger police chief, told AFP.

They were crossing at an unauthorised spot, the officer said. The injured victims were being treated at a state-run hospital.

Every day thousands of Indians take short cuts across railway tracks but this can prove deadly.

Nearly 28,000 people were killed in accidents along tracks in 2014, mostly run down by speeding trains, the latest data from India's crime record bureau shows.

India's railways transport nearly 23 million passengers every day. But critics say the creaking British-era network is inefficient, overburdened and unsafe.
Authorities advised thousands living in coastal areas or near rivers to evacuate to shelters before Typhoon Lan, described as "very large and very strong", hit Tokyo and surrounding regions early Monday morning.

The typhoon left the Japanese archipelago by about 9am (8am, Singapore time) after making landfall in Shizuoka southwest of Tokyo six hours before, the weather agency said.

The storm, which had already dumped torrential rain over much of the country during the weekend, packed gusts up to 162 km per hour, the meteorological agency said.

Train operators suspended some commuter trains in Tokyo suburbs early Monday and cancelled some "Shinkansen" bullet trains in northern Japan after a blackout left passengers stranded overnight in the country's central region.

Nearly 300 flights scheduled for Monday have already been cancelled, public broadcaster NHK said, after strong winds forced 500 flights to be grounded Sunday.

Some ferry services in western Japan were also cancelled as the weather agency warned of high waves, landslides and floods across the Japanese archipelago.

The typhoon claimed its first victims Sunday as a male passer-by died when scaffolding collapsed on him at a construction site in Fukuoka in western Japan.

A 70-year-old man was found dead after he dived into the sea to grab a rope from another vessel as he attempted to escape from his troubled boat, a coastguard told AFP.

Two more people were missing after landslides in Osaka and Wakayama prefectures, private broadcasters FNN and TBS reported.

At least 89 people were injured across the nation, while a 85-year-old man was unaccounted for after his house was hit by landslides, NHK said, while the government confirmed 17 injuries.

Television footage showed rescuers tugging a rubber boat carrying an elderly woman in a residential area in Chiba southeast of Tokyo as a flooded river engulfed the area.

Toyota Motor said it would suspend operations at all domestic plants on Monday.

LOW VOTER TURNOUT

On Sunday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered his minister in charge of disasters to be ready to mobilise rescue and evacuation forces, including troops.

"In order to protect people's lives, the Abe cabinet will unite and do its best to provide an emergency response to a disaster," he told reporters.

Voters in the capital braved torrential rain and driving wind on election day, but turnout across the country was expected to be only a fraction higher than the all-time low, boosted largely by people voting early to avoid the typhoon.

Near complete projections Monday showed Abe's ruling conservative coalition was on track to win a two-thirds "super-majority".

The foul weather did affect the election, with ferries to a remote island in the west cancelled due to high waves, forcing officials to suspend the counting of votes there.

On Saturday, voters on remote southern islands in the path of the storm cast their ballots early, heeding a call from Abe.
A new era is expected for US investment in Vietnam with the visit of US President Donald Trump Photo: Le Toan

As one of the first American companies to invest in Vietnam in 1995, Cargill is upbeat about US President Donald Trumps upcoming visit, and excited about new business opportunities in the country.

According to Bruce Blakeman, vice president of corporate affairs at Cargill Asia Pacific, it is a positive signal that President Trump will be joining the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting in Danang this November. At the same time, the US presidents first official state visit to Vietnam will also underscore the US commitment to the bilateral long-standing partnership.

We hope the presidents discussions with other leaders will foster more open trade and investment in the region. Some of the challenges we would like to see addressed by President Trump and the APEC leaders are a harmonisation of standards in the region and science-based regulations, he noted.

The US presidents visit to Danang to attend the APEC Summit is very significant. It aims to underscore his commitment to longstanding US alliances and partnerships, including continued importance of the bilateral economic relationships between Vietnam and the US, said Natasha Ansell, managing director and Citi country officer for Vietnam.

According to Ansell, Vietnam is the new darling of the emerging markets. Underpinning this is strong growth with prudent economic management and a combination of a fast growing emerging affluent population and continued attractiveness of Vietnam for foreign investors. This trend continues to underpin diversification of the economy and positions it well for a sustainable growth for the years to come.

As the first US financial institution licensed to open a bank branch in Hanoi, just before the normalisation of the diplomatic relationship in 1994, Citi, has proudly partnered with Vietnam through many changes over the past two decades, as Ansell noted.

We have been playing an integral part in boosting bilateral ties between Vietnam and the US by facilitating the development of various aspects of financial markets, as well as helping to bring together American companies and local businesses. Those partnerships have grown and prospered over the years and we look forward to continuing to partner with the nation as the US  Vietnam bilateral relations get to the next level, she stressed.

Daryl Tay, managing director of delivery firm UPS Vietnam, said that President Trumps upcoming visit and his presence at the APEC Summit reflect the new administrations intention to remain engaged in the Asia-Pacific region, and grow the US-Vietnam relationship.

US businesses have been an important cornerstone of the US-Vietnam bilateral relationship. They have been valuable partners throughout the journey of Vietnams international integration, starting from the US-Bilateral Trade Agreement to Vietnams WTO accession. While the US has withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), we are hopeful that the presidents visit will serve to solidify this partnership further, understanding not only the commercial but also strategic value of a strong bilateral relationship, Tay told VIR.

A new wave of interest

The prospects for US investment in Vietnam look promising as investors turn more bullish on the market. In the last two months alone, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has welcomed several leaders of major US companies including Philip Falcone, chairman of Harbinger Capital Partners; Timothy Geithner, president of Warburg Pincus; Paul Greenwood, vice president of ExxonMobil; and most recently Kevin McAllister, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

Emboldened by Vietnams growing economy, stable political system, and a large population, many US businesses are eager to cash in on the market. Falcone has been candid with his ambition to extend investment in the $4.2 billion The Grand Ho Tram Strip in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau.

Warburg Pincus inked a deal with Becamex IDC Corporation to establish a joint venture (JV) company with an initial investment of $200 million, projected to reach $1-2 billion in the next four to five years. The JV is aimed at developing internationally-compliant logistics warehouses and prefabricated factories.

In addition, ExxonMobil is en route to developing the Blue Whale deepwater gas reserve for power generation. The estimated $10 billion project is the largest of its kind in Vietnam, with an estimated 150 billion cubic metres of natural gas reserves. It aims to supply the first gas to power plants by 2023. Meanwhile, Boeing is looking to capitalise on Vietnams booming aviation market by offering aircraft orders and maintenance services.

Jonathan L. Moreno, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Vietnam, believes that in the short run, US investment inflows into Vietnam will likely be steady and measured. As Vietnam further develops its economy with more advanced infrastructure and communications systems, I believe increases in American direct investment, specifically in the areas of higher technology, finance, and services industries, will follow closely behind.

Movements in US investment

In fact, all key sectors in Vietnam are home to big US investors, including oil and gas (ExxonMobil), aviation (Boeing and Airports Worldwide), IT (Microsoft, Intel, and HP), and electricity and electrical equipment (GE, General Atlantic, and AES).

In recent years, renewable energy has been in the spotlight for US investors thanks to the countrys great potential and preferential tariffs for solar and wind power. GE signed an agreement with the Vietnamese government to develop one gigawatt of wind energy capacity, while First Solar decided to resume its $1.2 billion solar panel manufacturing project in Ho Chi Minh City.

The logistics sector has increased its appeal to US giants like UPS and FedEx. UPS Vietnams Tay said, UPS is optimistic for Vietnams growth. This is why we have enhanced services nationwide in a total of 19 cities and provinces in northern, central, and southern Vietnam. The service enhancements demonstrate UPS strong commitment to developing competitive trade lanes to help Vietnamese businesses connect to the world.

US investors also explore the latest developments in technology. Visa Vietnam is currently stepping up its efforts to implement electronic payment as well as looking at options to bring world-class digital payments to Vietnam. Meanwhile, Uber has plans to expand its coverage in Vietnam on the back of the robust demand for ride-hailing services.

Given the new investment opportunities, US companies with a firm presence in Vietnam are continuing to branch out into other areas. Cargill has been doing business in the country for more than 22 years, focusing on animal nutrition, food and beverage ingredients, and agriculture.

Our ongoing investment in the expansion of manufacturing capacity, local workforce development, farmers betterment, and continuous community development is a strong testament to our long-term commitment to the country. We believe there is significant growth potential in many sectors and we continue to look for new opportunities to invest, Blakeman said.

Moving forward

Despite strong interest from investors, US-backed investments in Vietnam ranked ninth from January to August, just behind Thailand. The total registered capital from the US during the same period  $370 million  is only 6 per cent that of Vietnams leading foreign investor, South Korea, which registered over $6 billion, according to AmChams Moreno.

He pointed out that the barriers and restrictions in industries which are more likely to receive American investments should be removed. For example, operating, importing, distribution, warehousing, and transportation restrictions on foreign-invested pharmaceutical and medical device companies cause significant under-investment in Vietnams healthcare system. Another example would be banking and technology regulations that limit investments in financial services sectors.

Mary Tarnowka, US Consul-General in Ho Chi Minh City, said that Vietnam remains committed to economic reforms. In the Joint Statement during his May visit to the US, PM Phuc affirmed Vietnams pursuit of a consistent policy of economic reforms and international integration, creating favourable conditions for foreign companies to do business and invest.

We understand that Vietnam has committed to following that path of reform, because the country recognises that such reforms will attract investment, spur economic growth, and connect Vietnam to the global supply chain, Tarnowka said.
Serato looks awful in my opinion... but apart from the looks Virtual DJ wins over anyone in one important feature (at least important for me)



Native Streaming!



The build-in streaming ability that comes with the software is so easy to do, and gives you the ability to go live to your online-audience without much hassle. Hence why Virtual DJ was my pick, because it couldnt be found anywhere else...



Yes Traktor does have a feature to stream but from what I ve heard it a huge hassle and only compatible with Icecast.



Every software has a thing that makes it shine and stick out from others. Mostly negative comments towards Virtual DJ, is from people that have actually never tried it and just think its a software for kids. But as said before.... Serato or the other "established" DJ Software might have become Pro-Stuff because they have had hardware partners...



"Oh look Pioneer and Serato make a controller! So it must be awesome!"



I never bought a Serato Controller because the silvertrim all over the controller makes it look cheap and toyish... and when I look at the laptops with Serato on it next to the controller, the thought doesent go away. So... whats the deal with it?



Rekordbox. It came with my controller along with other fancy stuff like Video Mixing ect (whut? VDJ has it all in one package. No extra license needed) and hey I gave it a try to see how it is. I liked it. Rekordbox comes with a nice UI, dark tone as I prefer it.



BUT... CPU is always at max. Loading songs or analysing it takes some time. The whole UI feels slow. Now people might say: "Get a better machine" but hey why should I do that when VDJ 8.2 runs super smooth on it with the same results right? So Rekordbox... really nice software.



Lets see how we can stream when we mix... oh wait we cant ... why?



I reasearched what Pioneer says about native streaming and I did not like it. "We dont plan to add native streaming because of legal issues that come with the streaming"



Uh huh.



So yeah, as I said: Every software shines with some things. Why is Virtual DJ so unpopular or DJ Software for Wannabee's?



I seriously have no Idea. I remember VDJ beeing the thing for the digital DJ's back in the day before I ever heard names like Traktor, Serato or Rekordbox. I think Rekordbox is the youngest Software around the market but Pioneer fans treat it like it was the beginning of Digital DJing... I like Pioneer too, but come on people get a grip.



In the end I dont care what other people say. I use what suits me the best and others should do so too, regardless if you smiled upon or called a "Noob" DJ. Many people forget that not the Soft- and Hardware does the DJing. You do the DJing, so judging someone by his tools is retarded.



In the end usage its all personal perference and I think using or not using a DJ Software because everyone else does so is wrong!



Thats my 2 cents in this matter!
The Han Chinese are the largest ethnic group in China, covering about 92 per cent of its mainland population. Other ethnic groups in China include the Zhuang, Hui, Manchus, Uyghurs, and Miao. They make up the five most significant ethnic minorities in mainland China, with nearly 10 million or more populations. In addition, the Yi, Tujia, Tibetans and Mongols each have populations between 5 and 10 million.

According to National Geographic, border regions are embroidered with the homelands of most of Chinas 55 minority peoples. Though only 6 percent of the population, these groups number some 56 million and inhabit more than half of the countrys territory, much of it desert, steppers, or mountains.

The national minorities, as they are called in China, differ from the predominant Han Chinese in one or more of the following ways: language, customs, historical development, religion, race. They vary in numbers from 12,090,000 Zhuang to 600 Russians. Those pictured around the map represent most of the populous minorities, with a sampling of others to suggest their diversity. Though shown in traditional costumes, many daily wear such utilitarian garments as shown for the Han.

What was to become the Chinese empire grew from Neolithic settlements in the Yellow River Basin. Peoples on the empires borders were simply and officially barbarians and in the third century B.C. China built that most colossal artefact of policy toward those to the north: the Great Wall to keep them out.

With the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. to A.D. 220), China expanded into Central Asia and sent armies into Mongolia. Trade along the Silk Road reached as far west as Rome.

Chinese imperial fortunes rose and fell over the centuries, but even policy governed the treatment of minorities. Those who were lowland farmers were absorbed by the Han majority (named for the dynasty); others were taxed and their lands garrisoned. Some paid only nominal tribute and allegiance, while still others retreated into remote mountain strongholds.

The Han majority was overrun by the Mongols under their khans (1260-1368) who didnt adopt Chinese ways, and by the Manchu who, as the last dynasty (1644-1911), gradually adopted them.

Comprehensive policies for minorities issued after the Communist revolution include limited regional autonomy, training programs, freedom to develop native languages, and cultural and economic assistance. The use of the symbol for a dog as part of written characters for ethnic names was abolished and the symbol for man was substituted.

During the Great Leap Forward (1957-59) and the tumultuous Cultural Revolution (1966-69), the rights of minorities were restricted. Rebellions were suppressed in Tibet in 1959 and in Xinjiang (Sinkiang) in 1962. In recent years the rights of minorities have been reaffirmed and their development accelerated. They have also been exempted from the national birth-control campaign.

These diverse peoples supply most of Chinas livestock, have in their territories most of Chinas mineral resources, and inhabit Chinas borders with, among others, the Soviet Union and Vietnam. Often their kinsmen live across those national boundaries. Such factors argue for an even greater role for Chinas other peoples in the campaign for peaceful national development.

XINJIANG

The Silk Road threading through Xinjiangs deserts and mountains carried Chinas trade westward and eventually opened the way for Islams expansion eastward. Seven of the 12 minorities here are Muslims, most of whom speak Turkic languages and for centuries used Arabic script. The Uygur once called high carts, raise fruit, wheat, cotton, and rise by extensive irrigation. Their faces combine Indo-Iranian and Mongoloid features.

The Kazak, renowned for their horsemanship, and the Kirgiz, who keep Bactrian camels, have reduced their pastoral wanderings as herders of sheep and goats and live in communes during winter. The Xibe, transplanted from the northeast as part of a border guard 300 years ago, is the largest single group of Manchu speakers in the country. 

NORTH CENTRAL

The Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan and his successors swept as far as Vienna in the 13th century. Probably less than 10 percent of Inner Mongolias people are Mongol today, but their population is increasing. Livestock, coal, iron, salt, steel, and grain are economically important, yet many Mongols remain seminomadic. They follow their flocks in summer, covering great distances and living in felt tents called yurts. Their yearly Nadam Fair features stock sales and contests of horsemanship, wrestling, shooting, and archery The Hui are essentially the same as the Han, except that they are Muslim, the Islamic religion having been introduced by Arab soldiers; and merchants 1,200 years ago. The Ilui are widely dispersed in many occupations, notably butchers and restaurateurs. The Tu (Monguor) clans once served as frontier defenders for imperial China, which earned them limited

NORTHEAST

The Manchu, once herders and hunters, conquered China in the 17th century. They were gradually assimilated and are now found in all trades across the northeast, with little remaining of their ancient customs or language. Only in the past 25 years, however, have the Oroqen and Ewenki begun giving up the birch-bark and hide tents of migrant hunters for a more settled life. They still hunt, but also breed deer, tend flocks, and farm. Man) now live in communes with warehouses, bams, and pens. The Daur has a tradition of grain and vegetable farming and animal husbandry, as well as logging, hunting, and fishing. Korean immigrants have been filtering into China for centuries. Once rice growers, they have lately joined in the industrialization of Manchuria.

TIBETAN HIGHLANDS

Herders of yaks, sheep, and goats and farmers of barley, peas, and tubers, the Tibetans sparsely inhabit a high, desolate region surrounded by mountains and barricaded on the east by the canyons of the Yangtze, Mekong, and Salween Rivers. The advent of Buddhism in the seventh century led to a theocratic state intermittently controlled from China from the 13th century until 1959, when it took full power in the aftermath of a rebellion. Serfdom was abolished, government secularized, communes established, and mechanized agriculture and other modernizations begun. Surface transportation is as yet rudimentary; the first railroad may reach Lhasa in

SOUTHEAST

Some minorities had been so absorbed that their status as separate peoples was nearly lost Despite their numbers, the Tujia were not recognized until the 1950s. (The Jino of Yunnan in the southwest were only designated a minority in 1979.) The Tujia farm rice and com, gather fruit and fell trees for lumber, produce an oil made from tea, and are adept at handicrafts. The She, who now speak mainly Chinese, may be descended from the Yao who retreated to die west 500 years ago under pressure of Han expansion.

Kaoshan is a general term applied to the aboriginal mountain peoples of Taiwan: millet farmers, hunters of game, and, until the early 20th century, hunters of heads. Their languages seem to stem from the Malayo-Polynesian group and may be the result of several migrations, perhaps from the mainland 4,500 years ago or from the Malay Archipelago.
Trump against the Establishment

During the last three months, the crisis that pits Donald Trump against the US ruling class has not stopped getting tougher. The Republican Party has no qualms about betraying the President, who was one of their own. Thus it has allied itself with Trumps adversary, the Democratic Party, against the White House. On 27 and 28 July, the two parties had Congress adopt Countering Americas Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. What this Act does, is to divest the President of his foreign policy prerogatives [1]: no more, no less.

Our aim here is not to take positions in this conflict. Rather we seek to analyze it to understand the permanent contradictions between words and actions as well as the incoherencies in US foreign policy.

Barack Obama has been supported by his administration. So he would use his communications to let his decisions be adopted by his people and the world. Thus he developed a nuclear arsenal by claiming that he was going to dismantle it. He made the enlarged Middle East a bloody battlefield by announcing a new beginning with the Muslim world. Donald Trump is trying to do quite the opposite. He is trying to take back his countrys institutions from the ruling class and make them serve his people once again. Thus he communicates thus by changing his mind like his shirt, by sowing trouble and confusion. He fills his opponents minds with his disorderly gesticulations yet when he is out of their sight, he patiently follows through with his policy.

It has already been stamped out of our minds but as soon as he arrived in the White House, Donald Trump had taken positions that contradicted some of the speeches he made in his electoral campaign. He had been accused of systematically distancing himself from his predecessors policy and adopting a practice that was too nice to North Korea, Iran, Russia and Venezuela.

Commentators had accused him of being unable to use force and, on final analysis, being an isolationist on account of his weakness. Of course they abandoned this on 7 April, when he bombed the Shayrat base (Syria) with 59 Tomahawk missiles. Yet soon after, they returned to this charge. The same commentators once again charged him with being weak, but this time they highlighted his moral relativism, which prevented him seeing how dangerousness the enemies of the United States really were.

During an almost unanimous vote of the Congress against him, the President seemed to have been defeated. He separated himself brutally from his special advisor Steve Bannon and, seeming to reconcile himself with the Establishment, he engaged himself against North Korea, Venezuela, Russia and Iran one at a time.

On 8 August, he launched a diatribe against Pyongyang, announcing that its threats would be met with fire, wrath and force such that the world had never witnessed before. A verbal escalade on both sides followed, allowing us to think that a nuclear war was imminent, while the Japanese descended to their anti-atomic shelters and the inhabitants of Guam left the island.

On 11 August President Trump declared that faced with the dictatorship of the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the military option was back on the table. Caracas responded with a full page advert in the New York Times accusing President Trump of preparing a regime-change (cut from the same mould as the coup dEtat rolled out against Salvador Allende) and calling upon US citizens to help [2].

On 31 August, the State Department opened a diplomatic crisis with Russia by ordering a number of Russian diplomatic premises to close down and personnel in the USA to be reduced. To reciprocate, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs made the US close its diplomatic premises and expelled a fair number of diplomats.

On 13 October, Donald Trump delivered a speech accusing Iran of being the global sponsor of terrorism and challenging the nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama. This speech had been preceded by the same sort of accusations that the State Department levelled against Hezbollah [3].

Commentators think that finally, Donald Trump is on the right path, but that he is too late and it is going badly for him. Some consider that he has a disease of the mind; yet others hope that he reproduces the mad dog strategy that Richard Nixon implemented before him: to make the enemy fear him, thinking that he is capable of everything.

However, on the facts, nothing has changed. Nothing with respect to North Korea. Nothing with respect to Venezuela. Nothing with respect to Russia. And now, nothing against Iran. Quite to the contrary: Trump continues to take a firm position against the creation of Jihadist states to the extent he is able to. The Gulf countries have not stopped supporting Daesh which has now been defeated at Mossul and Raqqa. Jihadism is in the process of descending once again to the sub-state level. All is happening as if the President had simply played a comedy and bought time.

The Bannon Card

The Summit of Values Voter took place from 13 -15 October at Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington. This annual conference is organized by a consortium of Christian family associations that the mainstream press qualified as either racist or homophobic. A number of speakers followed on from the US President and spoke before an anti-establishment audience. On President Trumps request, Steve Bannon was on the programme, despite protests made by some organizers who were in fact homophobic. In actual fact, Bannon has made the Conference organizer, Milo Yiannopoulos, very popular. The latter is a young homosexual who is fighting against gays being made use of by the Democrats.

Taking the floor, the White Houses former special advisor delivered an attack, assaulting the interests of globalized billionaires. We know that while Bannon is described as alt-right by the mainstream press, he is fighting to tax the income of the super-rich at the rate of 44%.

Bannon drew up an indictment against the elites both corrupted and incompetent, who have taken Hillary Clinton as their muse; people that according to him, have derived a personal interest in the destruction of US jobs and their delocalization to China. He accused them of trying to destroy President Trump, his family and friends. Bannon challenged Senator Bob Corker for mocking the Commander-in-Chief, by claiming that Trump is incapable of running the country without triggering a Third World War and the leader of the Senatorial majority, Mitch McConnell, for organizing this sabotage. He recalled his vision of economic nationalism that would serve the US Republic: fair-handed, taking no account of your race, religion and sexual orientation. He concluded that since the Republic Party had declared war on the US people, he was going to deliver it over to them.

Bannons friends immediately registered against the Republican Party Leaders to obtain the investiture of the party in their place at all local elections. This situation which has never presented itself until now and noone knows if they are going to manage it. But obviously Bannons success during this conference is a positive omen for them.

The White Houses double-dealing

During a cabinet meeting, President Trump declared that he understood the frustration of his former adviser because while Congress is dominated by the Republicans, Congress is not doing its job. Then he went to parade about Senator McConnell and assured him that he would calm Bannon down  on certain points.

The President continues with his extravagant declarations to satisfy Congress while weaponizing the hand of his former advisor to get rid of the leaders of the Republican Party.

So here before us is a combat that is no longer political but cultural. It opposes puritanical thinking and that of the Republic (that is, the Common Good) [4].

From an outsiders perspective, we observe that behind his sweeping declarations, Donald Trump is discretely continuing with his action against Daesh. He has squeezed the Islamic State dry and has recovered its capital. He has transformed Nato so that this organization too is anti-jihadist. For the moment, we dont know whether, once Daesh has been destroyed, President Trump will continue to fight against other jihadi groups. Nor either do we know how he will react to initiatives taken by the Pentagon to obliterate state structures of the North West of Latin America and South East Asia. He still has a long path to tread to make the decadent Empire a Republic again.
The vote in the independence referendum for an Iraqi Kurdistan of 25 September 2017 was a sham  for the vote was rigged. This fact is now boomeranging back to those who initiated it: the Barzani family and the Taliban family.

During the referendum campaign, the Kurdish regional government of Iraq declared that 80 countries in the world  including the United States and France  were in support of establishing a new State. This argument appeared decisive for a number of voters.

The General of the Guardian of the Iranian Revolution, Qasem Soleimani, alerted the Barzanis at the last minute. The arrival of 200,000 Israelis and the stationing of missiles in the Iraqi Kurdistan can only open a new war. But the Barzani family did not wanted to take on board any of this information.

Taking the initiative, the Iraqi national troops then liberated the region of Kirkouk and its oil fields from Kurdish occupation, on 16 October. More than 100 000 Kurds, had installed themselves there and coordinated their activities with Daesh and had expelled the indigenous population. In two days they fled. Yet the international community has failed to react.

The Iraqi national government has just returned to the Arabs, Christians and Muslims territories that had been stolen from them. It has also avoided Turkey intervening and occupying the country.

The Western media which has not stopped supporting the Barzani dictatorship, have said nothing about:

 the political assassinations of those who oppose the Barzanis;

 the impossibility of holding elections but the possibility of organizing a referendum;

 their agreement with Israel;

 their agreement with Daesh;

 their responsibility in the genocide of the Kurdish Yezidis; and

 the annexation of 80% of their territory within just a few years.

And no medial spotlight is shone on the ethnic cleansing which follows.

The Iraqi Kurds realize, but a bit too late, that the Barzani and Taliban have taken them for a ride. No country apart from Israel can admit the creation of another state established through annexation and ethnic cleansing.

Massoud Barzani, who is the de facto but not the de jure President of the Iraqi Kurdistan, will no longer be able to artificially extend his mandate for much longer. Without waiting, the Taliban have acted sensibly and have distanced themselves from Erbils illegitimate power.

Bagdad has just issued an arrest warrant for Kosrat Rasul, the de facto but not de jure Vice President of the Iraqi Kurdistan, for his role and for his speech when Kirkouk was set free.
Photo: on 8 February 2016, President Sheikh Hassan Rohani decorated the Canadian-Iranian Abdolrasoul Dorri Esfahani for his role during the 5+1 negotiations. Today he quashes his punishment for spying: 5 years in prison.

At the end of 2016, 12 personalities have been arrested in Iran for spying during international negotiations on the nuclear sector. They have just been tried and sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison. However no one has confessed to the crime that they have been reproached of.

The Iranian judicial system is heavily politicized. It is frequent that personalities in the spotlight are accused of imaginary crimes and are held in remand for a long time. In contrast, it is exceptional that the outcome of these investigations is a sentence.

Coming out of his silence, the Minister of Intelligence, Mahmoud Alavi, has recalled that his department is the only one able to determine cases of espionage. He has confirmed that those convicted had not in any way committed treason but had, in contrast, rendered an unimaginable service to the Islamic Republic.
RACINE COUNTY  A group of Gateway Technical College interns will be some of Foxconns first local hires.

Debbie Davidson, Gateways vice president of business and workforce solutions, said Foxconn officials approached the college and asked if they could put together paid internships for engineering, manufacturing and IT students. They put it together in about 10 days.

It came together pretty quickly, she said.

The students starting pay will be $14 an hour and they will not receive college credit. Interns could be asked to work up to 30 hours a week, though Davidson said the agreement with Foxconn stipulated that they had to accommodate students schedules.

We want the students to still continue on their education pathway, even if they are working on an internship, Davidson said. An internship is typically a way to do on-the-job training and to give them experience in a job environment that adds to their classwork.

Foxconn officials told the college they were looking for about 10 students. Dozens of resumes arrived at the Career Employment Services offices, whose staff reviewed them and passed along the strongest to Foxconn. Davidson believes the students selected will have interviews starting next week.

The internship is the latest in a series of initiatives by Gateway to prepare students for the future Foxconn plant, including the $5 million-plus expansion of the SC Johnson iMET Center at 2320 Renaissance Blvd., Sturtevant, to provide more training opportunities.

Davidson said that by getting Gateway students in the door, college officials are hoping a few will be picked up permanently by Foxconn after they graduate.

Were glad that our students are able to get in on the ground floor at this operation which may turn into a job opportunity for them, she said.
Articles in the Het Laatste Nieuws [1] and a TV documentary on Flemish television, have reopened the case of the Brabant Killers. Christian Bonkoffsky is the brother of a policeman working in an elite squad. Christian declared that his brother had revealed to him on his death bed that he was one of the mysterious killers. Furthermore, a lawyer for the victims denounced the failures of the judicial inquiry.

Between 1982 and 1985, individuals whose identity is still not known today, carried out a series of attacks without financial motive in Belgium and North France, killing 28 people. They are known as the Brabant Killers or the Band from Nivelles (Bende van Nijvel). The preliminary inquiry judges, the Minister of Defense and a House of Representatives Commission of Inquiry clashed with NATO Top-Secrecy [2].

During the eighties, Nato organized a series of attacks in Europe based on the model applied later, in more recent years, with the jihadists.

The Belgian Authorities, which are taking these revelations very seriously, consider that this former police officer of an elite squad (Diane), fits the police sketches at the time. Checks confirm that he was not physically present at work when many attacks took place. The Belgian Investigating Judge is interrogating all the former colleagues of the deceased suspect. The witness also revealed that two other former members of Squad Diane came to visit the suspect at his home. The witness also revealed that two other former members of Squad Diane had come to visit the suspect at his home.
The Ministry for Heritage has announced that three new interpretation panels have been placed within our Old Town in order to provide information on our Medieval History, namely our Islamic and Spanish Periods.
HMS Dragon Arrives in Gibraltar

HMS Dragon is set to arrive in the Naval Base on Tuesday 24th October. Dragon will be conducting a routine port visit, continuing the strong ties between the Royal Navy and Gibraltar and building on recent visits by HMS Diamond, HMS Pembroke and HMS Ocean, as well as RFA Tidespring and RFA Wave Knight.

HMS DRAGON is the fourth of the Royal Navy's six Type 45 air defence destroyers and was launched on 7th November 2008. After successful firing the Sea Viper, intensive at-sea training, her maiden deployment was to the Gulf region in March 2013.

The visit will primarily allow the Ships Company to undertake some rest and recuperation prior to continuing with their tasked programme.
Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Amazon Studios extreme TV makeover continues. Joe Lewis, a five-year veteran of the company who helped develop Transparent and One Mississippi, is leaving his job as head of comedy, drama, and VR development for the streaming outlet, two sources familiar with the situation tell Vulture. His departure, first reported by The Hollywood Reporter Monday evening, comes days after boss Roy Price abruptly left the company following public disclosure of an alleged incident of sexual harassment involving Price and producer Isa Hackett.

While there have not been any public charges of similar misbehavior made against Lewis, media reports have raised questions about a potential conflict of interest involving Lewiss girlfriend, Yara Martinez. Perhaps more damning for Lewis, however, was a Wall Street Journal story published earlier this month in which some well-known former Amazon producers, including David E. Kelley, complained about the companys management style under Price and Lewis. As we noted last week, not all in Hollywood share a negative assessment of Lewis: He had no problem recruiting top talent for upcoming projects, including Matthew Weiner, Julia Roberts, and Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins. And while Amazon isnt talking about the reason for Lewiss exit, the company seems to have at least some faith in his abilities: Sources tell Vulture the company is in the process of converting his executive contract into a production deal with Lewis. As for what happens next at Amazon, a person familiar with the situation says Sharon Tal Yguado, who has been overseeing production of event series at Amazon since January, will soon be named to a new role, essentially taking on Prices old responsibilities.
Lovebirds, from writer-director Ahamed Weinberg, is one of the three Funny or Die short films debuting on Amazon. Photo: Amazon Video

Amazon is deepening its ties with Funny or Die, signing a deal to finance and distribute original short-form content from the comedy powerhouse. Following a summer partnership on FODs Justin Long web mini-series, The Real Stephen Blatt, Amazon will now fund production of three FOD comedy shorts set to bow exclusively on Amazon Prime Video next month, Vulture has learned. While audiences will stream the shorts on the same service that gives them One Mississippi and Transparent, the Amazon-FOD team-up is the result of an entirely different  and less well-known  unit of the Seattle-based digital giant.

FOD is getting its content to Amazon Prime Video subscribers by partnering with Amazon Video Direct, a YouTube-like platform launched in mid-2016 that lets filmmakers and studios self-distribute their wares via Amazons various video services. Some AVD content is made available to Prime Video members as part of their subscription; other programming can be rented or purchased by Amazon customers the same way a digital copy of, say, Get Out can be accessed. Until now, AVD hasnt paid for any content in advance: Individuals and companies  including FOD  have been compensated based on either viewership or how much money they generate in subscription and rental fees. For example, when distributor FilmRise acquired the rights to Grace Under Fire, A Different World, and a number of titles from the Carsey-Werner sitcom library, it decided to make them available to Prime Video customers via AVD. Amazon was able to offer customers a slew of classic TV at zero upfront cost.

So why start spending money for content, as AVD is now doing with this new deal? Funny Or Die has become one of the top AVD partners in total streams and driving new Prime Video customers, AVD chief Eric Orme tells Vulture via email. In addition to strong viewership for the Long series, Stephen Blatt, he says FODs Between Two Ferns was one of the most watched AVD shows on Prime Video in the U.S. over the summer. Because of that early success, Orme says, teaming up with FOD to produce original content is a natural extension of the existing relationship.

For its part, FOD is able to use AVD and Amazon Prime Video as yet another way to expand the footprint of its content beyond its own website. Earlier this month, the company launched FODTV, a night of short-form programming on cables IFC (whose parent company, AMC Networks, is a minority investor in FOD). FOD has also gotten into half-hour programming with shows like IFCs Brockmire, Netflixs American Vandal, and Hulus Sarah Silverman showcase, I Love You, America. The new Amazon deal is smaller in scale than those other efforts. For now, it covers just three short films: Lovebirds, from writer-director Ahamed Weinberg; The Jury, written and directed by Anna Kerrigan; and Soojung Dreams of Fiji, a documentary satire written by S.J. Son and directed by Hye Yun Park. (As part of an earlier agreement, AVD will continue to premiere  but not finance  a number of FOD titles exclusively through mid-2018.)

But while the AVD agreement is relatively low-key, it does have advantages for a studio like FOD. For one thing, AVD is completely hands-off in the development and production process: Unlike a show produced directly for Amazon Prime Video (or, say, Netflix), theres no development exec from the streaming network giving notes. Whats more, FOD execs believe the AVD deal will let the company showcase up-and-coming talent whose projects are distinct from the hypertopical content you will often find on our social channels, as FOD vice-president of partner content Brian Toombs puts it. In addition, he says, these shorts are elevated by being hosted in the [Amazon] Prime environment. [It] gives the creative talent a different type of exposure for their work, being included among studio films and television shows. Just because it is short form doesnt mean it cant look and feel filmic. The first of the FOD shorts produced under the new deal will premiere on November 10.
Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

After tackling campus rape in their 2015 documentary The Hunting Ground, Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick are shifting their focus, if not their subject matter, for the upcoming film The Untitled Sexual Assault Documentary. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the pairs new project will focus on predators in Hollywood and the industrys pervasive sexual-assault problem.

What our film will capture, especially at this pivotal turning point in Hollywood history, is the underlying current of abuse and manipulation at the hands of power, Dick told THR. Our film will also underscore the courage it takes to come forward and be a catalyst for change. The Hunting Ground, shortlisted but not nominated for an Oscar, was distributed by the Weinstein Company; Lady Gaga famously performed the films Academy Awardnominated original song Til It Happens to You at last years Oscars.

The timing might suggest Dick and Ziering were inspired by the recent allegations of sexual harassment and abuse against producer Harvey Weinstein, director James Toback, and others. However, the duo says the documentary had already been in the works. It was the post-Weinstein public outcry that apparently made financiers and distributors more willing to get involved with the project. Explained Ziering, Then the Weinstein stories broke, and its like an invisible dam collapsed. Earlier this month, the duo called for the now-disgraced Weinstein to be removed from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The former studio head later lost his membership to the Academy on October 14.
Wahlberg. Photo: New Line Cinema

Mark Wahlberg didnt just want one holy man to forgive him for a questionable cinematic outing. After a little more reflection in the confessional, Wahlberg is seeking some exoneration from participating in a certain 90s-era porn romp. In a conversation with the Chicago Tribune, Marky Mark admitted that hes prayed many times to the big guy in the sky to forgive him for being the lead in Paul Thomas Andersons Oscar-nominated Boogie Nights, in which he played a saucy porn star on the rise with a big dong named Dirk Diggler. I just always hope that God is a movie fan and also forgiving, because Ive made some poor choices in my past, he explained, pausing to think of specific films hes done a few extra Hail Marys for. Boogie Nights is up there at the top of the list. First Ted, now this?! Youre gonna need a lot more Our Fathers for Sofia Coppolas favorite film, buddy.
The glamorous launch of Kamerons Sparkle Dog pink dog food is nigh, but theres just one tiny, individual kibble-pellet-sized problem: The product isnt ready yet. The most recent test sample came out not pink but, horror of horrors, red.

But then again, the flashback in which we see Kam open the box is in black and white, so we cant actually evaluate the color of the dog food for ourselves. (What if it was perfectly pink from the beginning? Wake up, sheeple.) As a professional business businesswoman, DAndra advises denial: Act as if everything is perfect, postpone nothing, and keep barreling ahead with the party. But when DAndra visits the lab to approve a sample of her new skin-care product, shes dismayed to learn theyre missing a key ingredient, despite being scheduled to launch in two short weeks. With her terrifyingly glamorous and glamorously terrifying mother looking over her shoulder  having reluctantly invested $100,000 in this project  will DAndra follow the same advice she gave Kameron?

As Stephanie and Cary meet to pick up the emotional glass shards of the white partys aftermath, Cary ominously warns Stephanie not to let Brandi control her. Meanwhile, Brandi heads to LeeAnnes with a floral arrangement as tall as she is. She knows LeeAnne was out of line with Cary (who, in my Law & Orderwatching opinion, probably has legal grounds for a restraining order), but hey, shes recovering from a flesh-eating bacteria (Dont Google ItTM), so Brandi is willing to forgive. LeeAnne warns Brandi that Stephanie might let Cary control her. Uh-oh. Is it possible that Brandi and Stephanie, my OTP, could be headed for another months-long estrangement? I dont think my sparkly pink heart can take it. But on this episode, anything seems possible. Brandi and Kameron even get together for a successful peacemaking lunch outside Dallas, in lowly Plano. Though Kameron was worried about the Keeper of the Sacred Dildo jeopardizing [her] brand  her brand being, again, novelty colored dog food, so  she ultimately decides to invite her to the launch party. This is new, to be around people who believe in different things, says a visibly distressed Kameron in a confessional. Its a big, wide, not-necessarily-pink world out there, Kam.

The Sparkle Dog event looks like a vision out of Toddlers & Tiaras, if it aired on Animal Planet: gift bags, a pink carpet, a step and repeat, bedazzled dog-food bowls, and a dog psychic. Kameron is resplendent in a long-sleeved pink sequined gown. Louis the Yorkie is brought out on a silver sequined pillow, despite his attempts to squirm off, followed by a train of venue staff members holding sparklers aloft. I have seen wedding cakes presented with far less fanfare.

The good news is that the makers of Sparkle Dog were able to achieve the bubble-gum pink of Kamerons vaguely rendered beef-scented dreams after all. The bad news is the final product is awfully short on that pink. The contents of the bag are mostly raw, brown kibble. (Picture the ratio of oat trash to marshmallows in a box of Lucky Charms.) What happened? We did a focus group and there was a little bit of a freakout over the pink potty situation, Kam explained. So we had to compromise and add a little bit of raw kibble.

I have so many questions. First of all, was that a hypothetical freakout, or did they really test out the pink kibble and find it resulted in pink shit? I, for one, would have thought that fun-to-scoop pink poops would be the explicit endgame for Sparkle Dogs target clientele. To Kamerons credit, she does snack on some Sparkle Dog herself, and encourages other partygoers to do the same  easily the weirdest, most likable thing she has ever done on RHOD. DAndra ends up weeping when the dog psychic tells her that her pup Gypsy is worried shes working too hard. It reminds her of her all-business relationship with her own (human) mother. Its a moving moment, but also a welcome reminder that everyone on all these shows should be in mandatory therapy on Bravos tab, which would ideally not be facilitated by a dog psychic.

LeeAnne has invited everyone but Cary and Mark to her engagement party, but shes torn. Why? Rich likes them! At the Sparkle Dog party, she decides to approach husband rather than wife, which I guess is a good choice in that she hasnt made any death threats toward Mark specifically so far this season. She does manage to invite him to the party, but spends most of the conversation complaining to Mark that Cary is a liar. He takes this opportunity to confront her about saying he was soliciting men for favors. (I still wake up in a cold sweat at 3 a.m. nightly, screaming, Her husband gets his dick sucked at the Round-Up! and yet the people actually involved cant even be bothered to remember LeeAnnes exact, perfect words.) LeeAnne deflects, saying that the matter only came up after Cary said Rich has a small penis, which is both false (she told Brandi that before they went to Mexico) and a reasonable excuse only according to the melty, swirling, bendy-wendy principles of LeeAnne Logic.

Cary and Brandi sit down for the first time since Brandi dropped the Nanny Bomb. Cary feels betrayed by Brandis character assassination, and insists there was never anything shady about her nannying for Mark and his first wife. In fact, she worked as a nurse for multiple plastic surgeons and watched all their kids. Brandi apologizes, and Cary tentatively accepts.

Look, I am not a dog psychic, so I have no idea what, if anything, happened between Mark and Cary while he was still married to someone else. (Then again, Brandi clearly thinks they had an affair, and who knows what she knows?) But to go there, just because Cary was obviously lying about whether shed told Brandi that a surgeon had killed patients on the operating table? According to International Housewives human rights law, that constitutes a war crime. In fact, there was only one reason for Brandi to resort to that nuclear weaponry in the first place. That reason? It has seven letters, two syllables, and just hands, not knives, but they work quite well.
Terry Richardson Photo: Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images

Notoriously predatory photographer Terry Richardson has been barred from working with Conde Nast Internationals publications, according to the Telegraph.

An email, sent by Conde Nast COO James Woolhouse to the country presidents, said all unpublished work by Richardson should be killed or substituted. The decision will bar Richardson from some of the worlds top magazines, including American and international Vogue, Vanity Fair, and W. Per the Telegraph:

I am writing to you on an important matter. Conde Nast would like to no longer work with the photographer Terry Richardson.

Any shoots that have been commission[ed] or any shoots that have been completed but not yet published, should be killed and substituted with other material.

Please could you confirm that this policy will be actioned in your market effective immediately. Thank you for your support in this matter.

The email obtained by the Telegraph did not explicitly say why they were severing ties with Richardson. However, the photographer has long been controversial. Richardsons work  when hes not photographing Barack Obama  is often explicitly sexual, and he has been repeatedly accused of breaking contracts, pressuring models to pose nude, or outright sexually harassing and assaulting models. In 2014, he wrote in the Huffington Post, I collaborated with consenting adult women who were fully aware of the nature of the work, and as is typical with any project, everyone signed releases.

Brands have been under pressure to sever ties with Richardson since 2014. At the time, when petitions against the photographer were circulated, a BuzzFeed article asked 25 major brands if they had any plans to work with Richardson, and Vogue said they had no plans.
David Greenspan, the only performer in this Strange Interlude. Photo: Carol Rosegg

When Eugene ONeill finished Strange Interlude in 1923, he was 35 years old, the same age as his heroine Nina Leeds in the seventh act out of nine in his paradigm-shifting, Pulitzer Prizewinning, six-hour domestic epic. I cant believe it, says Nina, Im 35  five years more  at 40 a woman has finished living  life passes by her  she rots away in peace!  I want to rot away in peace!  Im sick of the fight for happiness!

Actually, Nina doesnt say this. She thinks it. Or, well, both. ONeills innovation with Strange Interlude was to have his characters recite their inner monologues. Speakers shift seamlessly between the conversation actually at hand and verbalizations of their deepest thoughts  the latter elevating the play from a fairly typical family melodrama to a sort of psychological symphony of anxiety and desire. (The technique was so revelatory that the original Broadway production ran for 17 months, and even became a target for that highest form of flattery: a parody by Groucho Marx.) Cut everything thats not literally spoken, and the play might last about two hours. The protracted dives into the subconscious are both Strange Interludes agony  in the words (and thoughts) of Nina, No more depths, please God!  and its ecstasy. ONeills project is a kind of transcendence through endurance.

If I were a betting woman, Id hazard that that project has never found a more fitting or fascinating expression than the production by Transport Group Theatre Company, now playing at the Irondale Theatre Center in Brooklyn. Advertised as an almost preposterous feat and directed with a crisp, light touch by Jack Cummings III, this Strange Interlude finds the incomparable David Greenspan  actor, playwright, five-time Obie-winner, and New York experimental theater royalty  performing all six hours of ONeills epic absolutely solo. All eight characters  everything they say and everything they think (and its ONeill, so they do a boatload of both)  live in Greenspans slight, graceful frame and his malleable, reedy voice. Audiences that go along on this epic journey follow him back and forth between three different playing spaces built within the Irondale, gradually learning the subtle shifts in his eyes, hands, and manner that signal a different character, or a shift from speech to thought.

Is it exhausting? Yes. (Probably more so for Greenspan.) Is it also utterly hypnotic, intermittently brilliant, and both a proof of ONeills genius and a fascinating framing of his ideological shortcomings? Also, yes. The mad test of endurance that Greenspan has set for himself is no mere gimmick. In fact, it cracks open this unwieldy, expansive, impossible piece in ways that convinced me I never really need to see eight actors performing it.

Strange Interlude is full of references to ghosts, shadows, hauntings. A death throws its story into motion. Before the play begins, the young and beautiful Nina Leeds has lost her dream fiance  that perfect specimen of manhood, Gordon Shaw  to a plane crash during WWI. Gordons ghost is the first of several to suffuse the play, and Ninas life, like an unmoving fog. Soon enough hell be joined by her father and by a baby that she has aborted. Greenspan  all alone in an elegant costume by Dane Laffrey, a dark three-piece suit that calls to mind portraits of ONeill  is a kind of ghost himself. He is both the plays creator and its undertaker. As he flits between characters and voices, sketching them lightly in space, he might be a shadow of the author giving birth to his story, embodying the spirits that populate his own mind. Or he might be performing a kind of autopsy  deconstructing the plays anatomy as one would a body, moving through rooms that once housed living souls and channeling the dead voices that still hang there.

Almost a century after they first resounded, these voices can still take the breath away. Especially Ninas. She is a fascinating, infuriating creation: In her, ONeill seems at moments to leap out of his time, and then suddenly to land back in it with a myopic, melodramatic thud. She speaks stunning lines The mistake began when God was created in a male image!  We should have imagined life as created in the birth-pain of God the Mother!  and then she turns around and, as if following a textbook, enacts each step of a stereotypical, hysterical womans emotional journey, as conceived of by a man. Is ONeill pointing the finger at the puritanical, sexist hypocrisies of his  our  society, or is he enacting them? David Greenspans answer would seem to be: both. His virtuosic performance, which at once embodies and dissects the plays characters, makes a compelling case against Occams Razor. In this case, the most complex answer might be the right one.

The wheels of Strange Interlude start turning all because of that most terrifying of things to a patriarchal society: a womans sexuality. Nina, who didnt consummate her relationship with Gordon, is consumed by frustrated desire and a twisted sense of guilt for not giving herself to her husband-to-be before his deployment. She begins sleeping with strangers in a secret, wild attempt to exorcise Gordons ghost. In response, the men in her life  her father; the effete, avuncular writer Charlie Marsden; the self-satisfied, pragmatic doctor Ned Darrell; and the jocular, none-too-bright admirer Sam Evans  launch a complex, subconscious, lifelong campaign to put her sexuality back into an acceptable box. They must make her into something they can understand: a wife, a mother, even a mistress (but within the rules that men have made and that society plays by).

As Strange Interlude follows the quartet (Nina, Charlie, Ned, Sam) over 25 years, Nina marries Sam, she has Neds baby, she names the baby Gordon and passes it off as Sams (speaking of ghosts, there are heavy shades of Ibsen in the sensational twists and turns that make such a scheme necessary). She lives through the loss of her husband (he dies), her lover (he leaves her), and her son (who leaves her, too, for a wife of his own). In the final act she turns to dear old Charlie, who has waited in the shadows for a quarter century, and now lays claim to her in the evening of their long day. The men around her want to possess her, and Nina gives each of them his chance. She moves among them in a kind of exhausting dance, set to the repeated, excruciating refrain of the Pursuit of Happiness. Its a kind of American nightmare: Our national obsession with personal happiness  our conception of it as an inalienable right  drives us to lead lives that, consumed by the anxiety of the pursuit, never come close to achieving the goal.

The brilliant idea that Greenspan and his director have here is to do with ONeill what ONeills men would do with Nina: They put Strange Interlude into a box, thereby letting us observe it as a kind of living artifact. Laffrey, also the scenic designer, has built a literal plywood box inside the Irondales vast, gymnasium-like space. This theater-within-a-theater contains the productions three playing spaces, and as you approach it from the outside, you get the sense that youre entering a kind of diorama, or perhaps even a coffin. Inside the box, and eventually atop it, Greenspan dances with the ghosts of a 94-year-old play and a 129-year-old playwright. In a single body and a single voice, he reveals the extraordinary combination of startling progressiveness, sexist melodrama, cosmic poetry, and pure camp at the heart of ONeills play. His Strange Interlude becomes a body turned inside out  a dated domestic drama with its bloody, complex musculature exposed. Here, it seems Wordsworths famous idiom was wrong: Greenspans dissection is not murder but a kind of resurrection.

Strange Interlude is at the Irondale Theater Center through November 18.
The research of Gail Robertson, a neuroscience professor at UW-Madison shown in her lab, could be impacted by a proposed ban on the use of aborted fetal tissue in Wisconsin. Robertson's research uses a line of cells derived from a single aborted fetus in the 1970s that are widely used by other researchers around the country.
The Community Race Relations Coalition is conducting a membership drive event Tuesday at Little Caesars Pizza, 1412 N. Valley Mills Drive.

The event is from 6-9 p.m. and all interested in joining are encouraged to attend.

Those attending will pay for pizza, and membership dues upon joining.

For more information, contact Paige Davis at 292-9169.

Pack of Hope fundraiser

Casa de Castillo, 4820 Sanger Ave., will host a Pack of Hope fundraiser Tuesday.

The restaurant will donate 25 percent of all sales between 11 a.m. and 10 p.m. to the nonprofit organization, whose sole mission is to erase child hunger in McLennan County by providing school districts and their eligible students with backpacks filled with food to be used on weekends.

Contact Lisa Wilhelmi at lwilhelmi@mclennan.edu for more information.

Theology, racism lecture

Bill Leonard, a Baptist studies and church history professor, will give a lecture titled A Theology for Racism: Southern Fundamentalists and the Civil Rights Movement at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday at Baylor Universitys Miller Chapel, Tidwell Bible Building, 600 Speight Ave.

Halloween carnival

South Waco Community Center, 2815 Speight Ave., will host a Halloween carnival Wednesday from 6-8 p.m.

The event is free and includes games, free hot dogs, drinks, candy and a photo booth. Call 750-8650 for more information.

Dia de los Muertos

The Waco Hispanic Museum will celebrate Dia de los Muertos from 2 to 5 p.m. Wednesday at 2815 Speight Ave.

Mr. Planters and the Planters Peanuts Nut-mobile will be on hand to give away free samples. Call 548-9730.

Doris Miller Halloween carnival

Doris Miller Family YMCA will have its annual free Halloween Carnival on Wedesday. The outside candy truck and car candy giveaway will be from 5:30-6:00 p.m., the inside carnival and haunted house from 6:00-7:30 p.m. and cake/prize walk to music from 7:45- 8:15 p.m.

For more information, call 752-1605.
A man who pleaded guilty in July to two counts of sexually assaulting a Baylor University student in 2013 was sentenced to deferred probation Monday and ordered to pay for the womans counseling.

Dontrell Lee Hullett, of Humble, pleaded guilty in 19th State District Court for raping a former Baylor student in October 2013. Judge Ralph Strother sentenced Hullett to deferred probation and ordered him to pay for past counseling for the victim and additional counseling for up to the next year.

According to an arrest affidavit, Hullett was arrested in November 2013 for having sex with an intoxicated Baylor student on Oct. 20, 2013. The student told the Tribune-Herald that her grades plummeted after her assault and that police blamed her for the assault, saying it would not have happened if she had not been drinking.

Hullett, who was never a Baylor student, acknowledged multiple times in the interview with Baylor police that woman had been drinking and was intoxicated, according to the affidavit. At one point, he said she was drunk and invited him to her room.

In March 2014, Hullett was indicted for the assault. He pleaded guilty in July and prosecutors recommended Hullett be placed on deferred-adjudication probation.

Hullett was enrolled at Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, for the spring 2014 semester and was on the wrestling team, according to a Bacone College spokeswoman. She said he also was a student at the college for the fall 2015 semester, but the school did not allow him to re-enroll.
A Waco police SWAT officer and trained sharp-shooter testified Monday that he shot four bikers during the 2015 battle between rival groups at Twin Peaks and said he saved lives that day by his actions.

Heath Jackson told jurors in the trial of Bandidos Dallas chapter president Jacob Carrizal that he shot the bikers to end threats to other bikers, those eating and shopping nearby and to his fellow officers.

Jackson and fellow Waco police officers Ben Rush and Sam Key testified Monday, the ninth day of testimony in Carrizals trial in Wacos 54th State District Court.

Carrizal, 35, is charged with directing the activities of a criminal street gang, one count of engaging in organized criminal activity with the underlying offense of murder and a second count of engaging in organized criminal activity with the underlying offense of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

As Jackson testified, prosecutors played video from the dash cam of the police vehicle he and officer Michael Bucher were in that day. He said police planned to display a visible presence at Twin Peaks, hoping to serve as a deterrent to any potential violence between the warring Bandidos and Cossacks.

Jackson said he was not there in his capacity as a SWAT sniper. However, after the violence erupted, he grabbed his rifle, chambered a round and went to work as a counter-sniper in an effort to eliminate threats and save lives.

You know you saved innocent lives that day, dont you? Carrizals attorney, Casie Gotro, asked Jackson.

I like to think so, maam, Jackson said.

Gotro has tried to paint the defense scenario that the Cossacks crashed a meeting they were not invited to, set a trap for the Bandidos and ambushed them as they rode up, not giving them a chance to get off their motorcycles.

Jackson testified he and Bucher circled the Central Texas Marketplace parking lot a couple of times before parking at the corner of the Don Carlos Mexican Restaurant lot to get a better view once Carrizal and about 20 other Bandidos rode into the Twin Peaks parking lot. He said their vehicle was 50 to 60 yards from the patio area, where the fighting started.

Officers radioed that tension was increasing around the Twin Peaks patio area and Jackson said he saw someone throw a punch, followed seconds later by gunshots.

Jackson and Bucher opened the doors to grab their rifles. Before Jackson could get out, a bullet hit the door just above the window, he said.

He moved to the rear of the vehicle, which provided him more cover but restricted his view because he left the door open, he said.

Jackson saw a man with a gun walking down the center of the skirmish, which Jackson thought was odd given the chaotic scene around him, he said.

He said he got the man in his rifle sights just as he pointed the gun at a man on the ground. Jackson said he fired and ended the threat.

Jackson said Bucher pointed out two men under the Twin Peaks banner near the patio who were lying on the ground using bikes as cover. The one on the right was aiming his pistol at Jackson and Bucher, and Jackson fired again. The man reacted like he got hit but kept aiming, so Jackson fired again. The man dropped the gun, he said, but it was unclear if he killed him.

The man lying beside him was aiming his gun at someone to his right, Jackson said. The officer fired one shot, ending the threat, he said.

Under questioning from District Attorney Abel Reyna, Jackson talked about ballistics reports that showed he also engaged a fourth biker. As the gunfire was subsiding, a biker came off the patio area, firing in the officers direction. Jackson fired and the man went down, although Jackson said he does not remember firing at him.

Jackson said the fact that he doesnt remember is likely the brains coping mechanism for dealing with trauma.

After the shooting stopped, Jackson and other officers went about the monumental task of securing the area, collecting hundreds of weapons from bikers and identifying suspects.

Some of the wounded Bandidos could be seen on the video helping their wounded from the scene. Some carried those injured and helped others to a spot on the ground just in front of Jacksons vehicle.

As this portion of the video was being played, Carrizals mother, Sonia, who has been sitting on the front row of the courtroom throughout the trial, began to sob quietly. She was comforted by Carrizals brother, Zach.

Sonia Carrizal said after the trial recessed Monday evening that she became emotional because she saw her husband and Carrizals father, Christopher Julian Carrizal, being helped on the video after he was shot in the right shoulder.

In other testimony, Rush, also a member of the SWAT team, described the aftermath of the shootout like a scene from a movie.

It was like a horror movie, with bodies lying around and so much blood everywhere and so many weapons, he said.

At one point, Rush became emotional on the stand, remembering how his worried family tried to get in touch with him following the gun battle.

I always try to play out every scenario in my head, but it wasnt supposed to go like this, Rush said. There was no pause button to hit so we could regroup.

Rush and other officers testified they did not expect the level of violence they encountered that day.

From what we had dealt to us that day, our folks did a heck of a job, Rush said, adding officers saved lives that day.

Prosecution testimony resumes Tuesday morning.
Early voting kicks off Monday for eight McLennan County city and school races, and seven statewide referendums on constitutional amendments.

Mart Independent School District residents can cast a ballot on a proposed $9.2 million bond, while Connally ISD voters will decide on a tax-rate increase that will also bring in more state money. West and Riesel ISDs will have school board elections.

The cities of Robinson, Bruceville-Eddy, Moody and West will have elections for city council members.

McLennan County residents can vote from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and Oct. 30 through Nov. 1. Voting hours will be extended to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Nov. 2 and 3. All vote centers are open to all voters in the county.

Election Day is Nov. 7.

Anyone needing a ballot by mail must submit an application by the close of business Oct. 27 at the McLennan County Elections Office.

Every McLennan County resident can vote on the seven constitutional amendments also on the ballot. State legislators approved seven joint resolutions during the last legislative session to put before voters.

There are 132,823 McLennan County residents registered to vote, which includes people who may have moved but not updated their address, McLennan County elections administrator Kathy Van Wolfe said. There are 119,550 active registered voters in the county, Van Wolfe said.

During the November 2015 joint general election, the most recent election featuring a comparable slate of races, about 2.7 percent, or 3,400, of the countys 126,148 registered voters cast an early ballot. Early turnout for the November 2013 constitutional election stood at about 2.3 percent.

Despite seven constitutional amendments on the ballot, the elections office predicts a small turnout to the polls next week, Van Wolfe said.

We do have some cities and schools that have issues on the ballot so that may drive a few more people in, she said.

There are no county elections on the ballot, only elections the county has been hired to administer, Van Wolfe said. For residents of cities or school districts holding elections, those items will be first on the ballot, followed by the statewide constitutional referendums, she said.

Sample ballots and more election information are available at www.co.mclennan.tx.us/337/Elections.
A 20-year-old man who was spotted having consensual sex with an underage girl was arrested early Sunday morning on a felony charge of indecency with a child, Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said.

Johntrayious Austin, 20, of Waco, was arrested after a security officer patrolling a North Waco apartment complex saw two people having sex in a car at about 1:30 a.m.

Police were notified and determined that although Austin and the girl were both willing participants, the girl could not give legal consent because she was under the age of 17, Swanton said.

Austin was arrested on a second-degree felony charge of indecency with a child and was taken to McLennan County Jail. He remained jailed Monday evening with a bond listed at $10,000.
Jaime Botero Salazar

Feb. 12, 1931 - Oct. 6, 2017

Jaime Botero Salazar, 86, of Woodway, Texas passed away on Friday, October 6, 2017. A Rosary will be prayed at 9:30 a.m. followed by a Memorial Mass at 10:00 a.m. Saturday, October 28, at St. Jerome Catholic Church wilh Rev. Rakshaganathan Selvaraj as Celebrant. Inurnment will be at The Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham, Houston, Texas, at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, November 18.

Jaime Botero Salazar was born February 12, 1931 to Eustaquio and Esther Botero in Palestina, Colombia and joined his lifelong love Gina in heaven on October 6, 2017. Jaime grew up in the coffee region of Colombia and was the oldest son of five children. As a young man he enjoyed horses and farming.

He graduated from the University of Michigan, and while there met the love of his life, Gina Rovedo. They were married July 18, 1956 and were blessed with four daughters; Cecilia, Monica, Claudia and Aura. Jaime worked for Exxon for over thirty years in Colombia, Argentina, Costa Rica, Brazil, Miami and Houston. In retirement he returned to Colombia to manage the family coffee farm. Cafe La Mesa, became one of the largest and most progressive coffee producers in Colombia.

Jaime loved new technology, operas, and being with his grandchildren. He took great pleasure in hosting many family, friends, and visitors at Hacienda La Mesa.

He is preceded in death by his true love and wife of almost sixty years, Gina; his grandson, Alex Lowry; and great-granddaughter, Eliza Abbott, are also with them in heaven.

Jaime is survived by siblings, Gustavo Botero, and sister, Esther Botero; daughters, Cecilia and husband Steve, Monica and husband Jeff, Claudia and Aura; nephew, Elias and wife Norma; grandchildren, Vanessa, Gabriela, Daniella and Jacob; and great-grandson, Logan. Other family members include many cherished and loved nieces and nephews, and many beloved friends.

Descanse en paz don Jaime.
Ken Burns and Lynn Novicks documentary series on the Vietnam War is filled with the stories and voices of ordinary soldiers on all sides of the conflict. But the most tragic aspect of the tale, for me, was hearing President Lyndon Johnson on tape, before full U.S. engagement, admitting the war could not be won. Johnsons dilemma is one that presidents dread facing  and one that President Trump is bringing upon himself with both North Korea and Iran.

In May 1964, when the United States had fewer than 20,000 troops in Vietnam serving as advisers and trainers, Johnson said to his national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy: I just stayed awake last night thinking about this thing. . . . It just worries the hell out of me. I dont see what we can ever hope to get out of there with once were committed. . . . I dont think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and ever get anywhere in that area. I dont think its worth fighting for and I dont think we can get out.

I look at this sergeant of mine this morning, Johnson continued. Hes got six little old kids . . . What in the hell am I ordering him out there for? What the hell is Vietnam worth to me? . . . What is it worth to this country?

Johnson was asking all the right questions. He understood that Vietnam was not actually vital and that it could easily become a quagmire. Yet he could never bring himself to the logical conclusion  withdrawal. Like so many presidents before and after him, he could not see how he could admit failure. No president could do that.

And so, because the president of the United States could not think of a way to admit that the United States needed to reverse course, Johnson increased troop levels in Vietnam from fewer than 20,000 to more than 500,000, tearing apart Indochina, American society and his presidency. The example is dramatic, but it is generally true that in foreign policy, when the United States is confronted with a choice between backing down and doubling down, it follows the latter course.

In two crucial arenas, North Korea and Iran, Trump has dramatically raised the risks for the United States, and for no good reason. Determined to seem tougher than his predecessor, he has set out maximalist positions on both countries. He wants a totally denuclearized North Korea and an Iran that stops making ballistic missiles and stops supporting proxy forces in countries such as Syria, Iraq and Yemen. There is a vanishingly small possibility that North Korea and Iran will simply capitulate because Washington demands it. And if they dont, what will Trump do? Will he back down or double down? And where will this escalation end?

Trump seems to view international negotiations as he does business deals. He has to win. But there is one big difference. In the international arena, the other person also has to worry about domestic politics. He or she cannot appear to lose either.

As a leading businessperson recently said to me, Trump is playing a two-person negotiation, thinking its just him and the other guy, two principals, making a deal, as in business. But actually there are people outside the room  the two nations publics  that place huge constraints on the negotiators. Its not a two-person game at all.

For any international negotiation to succeed, there has to be some element of win-win. Otherwise, the other side simply will not be able to sell the deal back home. But Trump seems to believe above all that he must win and the other side must lose.

A senior Mexican official told me there would have been a way to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, even find a way to fund the border wall, but Trump needed to allow us to also declare some kind of victory, give us some concessions. Instead he started out by humiliating us and made it impossible for [President Enrique] Pena Nieto to make a deal. After all, no Mexican government can be seen to simply surrender to Washington.

Trumps way of negotiating might have worked in his past life, although there, too, many argue it was not the way to build a great reputation. But hes not doing real-estate deals anymore. The arena is different, the conditions are far more complex and the stakes are higher  astronomically higher.
WAVERLY  After two crashes in three days earlier this month, local experts and officials are asking drivers to prioritize attentive driving in construction work zones.

One of those two accidents had an impact on the Eagle community. Volunteer Firefighter Eric Walkenhorst lost a leg after a car pinned him against a construction sign Oct. 13 near 16th Street and Old Cheney Road in Lincoln. Walkenhorst was on the job as a worker.

Earlier in that same week, a different worker was struck by a driver near 33rd and Superior streets in Lincoln.

The drivers received citations in both incidences. The driver that struck Walkenhorst was cited for inattentive driving, something safety experts are increasingly concerned about.

It really is alarming, said Mark Segerstrom, Road Safety Projects Coordinator with the Nebraska Safety Council.

The number of work zone crashes in Nebraska crossed a threshold last year, with 1,000 such accidents over the course of 2016, Segerstom said. The amount of work zone fatalities doubled from the previous year.

The numbers, the statistics, say more crashes, more fatalities are occurring, Segerstrom said.

From his, and many others, perspective the biggest contributor to the increase in accidents is distracted driving, Segerstrom said. And cellphones are the biggest distraction.

So, he and other safety experts are trying to spread awareness.

We just need to get the message across that we are not able to, we cant multi-task behind the wheel, he said. Physiologically the brain isnt able to multi-task like that efficiently.

The moment a driver begins making or answering a call, their brains activity changes. The parietal lobe, responsible for processing a whole host of sensory information, takes a big hit, decreasing its function by 37 percent.

The way that the brain processes that information is that we lose 50 percent of our peripheral vision, Segerstrom said. Its effectively tunnel vision. That tweeting, that texting, that social media  the brain is focused on that.

Driving while distracted means missing hazards, Segerstrom said. That includes everything from other cars to light poles to pedestrians.

We look at those other alarming statistics, the reason for those is inattention, he said.

Segerstrom said paying attention to the road is always important while driving, but especially so while navigating work zones.

Drivers need to understand the significance of a work zone, he said.

Most importantly, avoid distractions like smartphones, he said. Drivers should also focus on scanning ahead to spot and prepare for potential hazards. Maintaining flow with traffic and avoiding lane changes is also particularly important.

Segerstrom, in talking with construction workers, has found some other issues that increase accident risk in work zones. One example he noted was that construction zones often allotted more space for workers.

We used to keep a whole lane of distance between vehicles and the workers, he said, adding that that could be potentially adding to the increase in work zone accidents as well.

On rural roads, drivers need to be even more attentive.

In rural areas there are twice as many fatalities as there are in urban areas, he said. That could be because rural roads have narrower shoulders  if there are shoulders at all.

He said he and his fellow safety experts will continue to get the message out.

All of us are active in trying to get information out to create awareness and let people know this is an issue, he said.

He said drivers often dont consider themselves to be the problem.

Its not uncommon for us to think of ourselves as good drivers, he said. Its the other person.

With that thought in mind, he asked residents to consider that driving is a serious responsibility.

When youre behind the wheel, you have one job, he said. Put that phone down and drive. When you dont do that, things can go bad very quickly.
STILLWATER, Okla.  Dr. Lawrence D. McGill of Cottonwood Heights, Utah has been named a 2017 Distinguished Alumnus of Oklahoma State Universitys Center for Veterinary Health Sciences.

McGill, who has been involved in private veterinary diagnostic work for more than 40 years, earned his bachelors of science and doctor of veterinary medicine degrees from OSU in 1966 and 1968, respectively.

A graduate of Waverly High School, McGill earned a Ph.D. in veterinary pathology from Texas A&M University. In 1975, he became a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists.

McGill will be honored at a Distinguished Alumni Award Luncheon to be held on Friday, Nov. 10, at 11:30 a.m. in Room 101 at the Wes Watkins Center located on the Oklahoma State University Stillwater campus. Tickets are $36 each and can be purchased through Sharon Worrell at 405-744-5630 or sworrel@okstate.edu.

Although his primary training is in anatomic pathology, McGill has extensive practical experience in clinical pathology and cytology. He has been instrumental in the growth of three different private diagnostic laboratories in Utah.

Throughout his career, McGill has been active in organized veterinary medicine including the Nebraska and Utah Veterinary Medical Associations, the American Veterinary Medical Association and the American College of Veterinary Pathologists. He served as president of the Utah VMA.

To his knowledge, he is the only veterinarian who has chaired four different Public Relations/Communications committees, including two national organizations.

In 1990, McGill received the Utah Veterinarian of the Year Award. In 2015, he received an ACVP Presidential Award for his contributions and service.

McGills involvement in multiple articles and presentations led to his documentation and presentation of the Vaccine Associated Sarcoma Task Force report. He has since shared practical aspects of vaccination adverse reactions while strongly affirming the necessity of vaccinations to keep patients healthy.

He has also been associated with two National Institutes of Health research studies. McGills research emphasis is implant reaction and the healing response. He is associated with approximately 50 publications in various research journals.

McGill is an adjunct clinical associate professor at the University of Utah. After several years as Clinical Pathology Section Editor for Elseviers Advances for Small Animal Medicine and Surgery, he was named Editor-in-Chief in January 2016.

He is active in his family, church and community, including 27 years as a bass in the Utah Symphony Chorus.
The media critic Eric Deggans told a UW audience Thursday that when it comes to race, even the best television shows dont get everything right.
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Seventh case of TB in four months at Fatebenefratelli.

Rome's Fatebenefratelli hospital says it is "monitoring and managing" an outbreak of tuberculosis which has infected seven of its employees over the last four months.

The first six cases involved medical workers in frontline departments, including a trainee student, while the seventh and most recent person infected was an employee in the hospital bar.

Fatebenefratelli, which is located on Tiber Island, says that it is implementing preventive measures to halt the risk of the infectious disease spreading to patients and staff.

Tuberculosis or TB is a curable and preventable disease caused by airborne bacteria that usually affects the lungs and whose symptoms include a chronic cough, fever and weight loss.

TB was a killer disease in the 19th- and 20th centuries but was brought under control by vaccines and long-term treatment with antibiotics. However it remains one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide, with 10.4 million cases recorded in 2015, resulting in 1.8 million deaths.
Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.
It's our Prime Minister's birthday today. In a spirit of charity, we should wish him many happy returns. We must acknowledge, though, that, at the moment, he's not in a sweet spot politically. He never will be.

To thrive in the job, a prime minister must be a canny politician. Yet Malcolm Turnbull, even though he has held the office for more than two years, has only ever exhibited a limited mastery of the art and craft of politics.

Evidence of Turnbull's fitful strike rate as a political performer can be drawn from past decades as well as more recent events.

Back in 1999, a masterful John Howard easily outfoxed Turnbull's badly organised republican campaign. In an eerie near-reprise 18 years on, the poorly plotted same-sex marriage postal survey looks like being carried partly because Turnbull is running dead on the issue.
It's easy to get a bit depressed by the state of the world's problems, so we should take a moment to mark the triumphs. One of the world's most malicious and vicious groups, Daesh, which wants to be called Islamic State, has just been crushed. It's been crushed in the Middle East and, simultaneously, crushed in South East Asia. To its credit, Australia is one of only three countries that joined the effort in both theatres, together with the US and Singapore.

At its peak, its "caliphate" straddled 90,800 square kilometres of land across Iraq and Syria. That made it bigger than Austria or Jordan, bigger than 86 of the world's nation states. With some 2000 new recruits estimated to be joining its forces every month from countries across the globe, Daesh was conservatively estimated to have a maximum strength of some 50,000 fighters.

Daesh's leader, Baghdadi, dressed as an imam, took to the minbar, or pulpit, of the historic al-Nuri mosque in Mosul on July 5, 2014, to declare the creation of the caliphate: "O Muslims everywhere, glad tidings to you and expect good. Raise your head high, for today  by Allah's grace  you have a state and Khilafah [caliphate], which will return your dignity, might, rights, and leadership."

And now? As it retreated from Mosul in June, Daesh blew up the al-Nuri mosque. And on the weekend a headline in the Jordan Times newspaper updated the condition of Daesh's capital, the Syrian city of Raqqa: "After Daesh, rotting corpses and empty jail cells in Raqqa." So much for the vision splendid.
Senior Nationals MPs are increasingly nervous the High Court will rule against Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and order him to fight a byelection when it finally rules on the status of the so-called "citizenship seven" on Friday.

The High Court held three days of hearings earlier this month on whether seven federal politicians, including Mr Joyce, were invalidly elected because they held dual citizenship, which is a breach of section 44 of the constitution, which prevents MPs from serving if they have dual citizenship.

And two weeks after those hearings, the court will rule on Friday at 2.15pm on Mr Joyce's fate, and that of six senators: Nationals deputy leader Fiona Nash, former Nationals cabinet minister Matt Canavan, former Greens senators Larissa Waters and Scott Ludlam, One Nation's Malcolm Roberts and NXT leader Nick Xenophon.

If a byelection is ordered in Mr Joyce's northern NSW seat of New England, the earliest the poll can be held is December 2.
By Australian standards, my workplace has an excellent parental leave policy  the product of a strong union and a supportive attitude amongst key senior leaders at the firm  and pregnancy is not viewed as a barrier to career progression; I was one of four staff members promoted this year while on parental leave.

Obviously I was on maternity leave by this point, but the timing had a nice serendipity to it. My daughter arrived after a particularly busy and gruelling time at work, and the promotion felt like the culmination of a significant period in my career.

Two days before I gave birth to my first child, I was promoted. She was 13 days past her due date and for a while there, I thought the two events may have happened on the same day.

Katie Robertson and her daughter

It was my male boss (and now CEO) who encouraged me to apply for promotion, around the same time I told him I was expecting. He was genuinely excited about the arrival of my baby. He has three daughters of his own and at one point took a year's break from work to raise his first daughter while his wife returned to her successful career.

He talks about this time as one of the best and most valuable in his life. Another senior female colleague took me out for coffee shortly after I announced my pregnancy and shared her personal insights and tips with me about balancing motherhood and a dynamic career. She was honest about the fact it isn't easy and all workplaces including ours have room for improvement. She also encouraged me to take the full 12 months parental leave I have available to me and enjoy this time watching my child grow.

I do not take this advice for granted; law is a cut-throat industry in which lawyers brag about their long hours and time spent in the office over weekends and public holidays. Years ago, a friend who worked at a top tier corporate firm told me about a colleague of hers who had returned to work full time just two weeks after giving birth. This was what was expected of her.

Having recently experienced the sleep deprived haze of the two week mark with my daughter, I can't physically imagine doing this, let alone working in a firm where it was expected of me in order to maintain both my rung on the ladder and respect amongst my colleagues.
Judge alone trials could soon be more common place in WA courts if a bill set to be introduced into state parliament by the state's youngest MP gets the green light.

WA Liberal Democrats MP Aaron Stonehouse has drafted a private members bill which is proposing amendments to the Criminal Procedure Act 2004.

Liberal Democrats MP Aaron Stonehouse.

The proposed amendments outlined in Mr Stonehouse's bill would mean courts must, upon a request from an accused person, make an order for a criminal trial to be judge alone, unless the court was satisfied it was not in the interests of justice.

Currently, the courts can make an order for a judge alone trial but only when it is considered to be in the interests of justice.
Small bars have made a big impact energising Perth since special licences were introduced in 2007.

An impressive bunch of boutique venues have since opened, and rapidly changed the cultural fabric of Perth and inner-city villages by offering new and boutique experiences in spaces once dominated by the big pubs.

Varnish on King is in the running for several Small Bar awards in 2017. Credit:Instagram

And with them have come savvy and passionate bartenders who have proven the equal if not better of their cocktail counterparts interstate.

Now you can visit a bar like Frisk in Northbridge, whose sole focus is gin, and experience the nuances of the spirit in all its glory, or if single malts are in order, you can hit up Helvetica (CBD) and sip on a tasting paddle of scotch, before buying your favourite bottle, and storing it at the venue for the next time you drop by.
US President Donald Trump's four-month worldwide ban on refugees has ended, as his administration prepared to unveil tougher new screening procedures.

Under an executive order Trump signed earlier this year, the US had temporary halted admissions for refugees from all countries, with some exceptions. The end-date written into the order came and went on Tuesday with no new order from Trump to extend it.

One of those exceptions was a deal brokered between former president Barack Obama and Australia to take 54 of Australia's refugees from Manus Island and Nauru. Trump labelled it a "dumb deal" and hung up on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during a testy phone call over the deal.

Many of those refugees entered the United States last month.
The WCO Secretariat hosted a working lunch at its Headquarters for H.E. Ambassador Daniel Blockert during his visit on 17 October 2017.

He is the Swedish Ambassador to the WTO in Geneva and the current Chairperson of the WTO Trade Facilitation Committee, and was also the keynote speaker during the 8th Meeting of the WCO Trade Facilitation Agreement Working Group (TFAWG).

The lunch, which was also attended by the Chair and Vice-Chair of the TFAWG, was a great opportunity to introduce the Ambassador to the full body of work being undertaken at the WCO, including the specific work being done by the Secretariats three Directorates, as well as its Research Unit.

Ambassador Blockert was very appreciative of the vast array of information that was shared, and suggested that the WCO should consider ways to more proactively and dynamically communicate its broad scope of work to other international organizations, the trade community, and the public at large.

The WCO welcomed the opportunity to engage directly with Ambassador Blockert, and looks forward to continued dialogue and collaboration on trade facilitation matters.
State Rep. Cory Mason, D-Racine, shown here Feb. 7 at a press conference introducing a bill to help lower the cost of college loans, emerged as one of the steadiest and most impassioned critics of Gov. Scott Walker's anti-labor agenda. Though he made his name with his fights on economic issues, Mason also battled for women's rights, racial justice and environmental protection. He will take office Nov. 7 as Racine's new mayor. PHOTO BY SAIYNA BASHIR
By WestKyStar and City of Paducah Staff Oct. 24, 2017 | 01:01 PM | PADUCAH, KY

The City of Paducah surveyed residents in 2016 and in 2013 using The National Citizen Survey. Compared with all of the communities that participated in the 2016 surveys, Paducah residents reported the highest levels of improvement in the category of Recreation and Wellness.





City Manager Jeff Pederson and Assistant to the City Manager Michelle Smolen attended the conference and accepted Paducahs award.



Pederson said, The City of Paducah is committed to moving this community forward, listening to its residents, and providing exceptional services and programs. Asking our residents how we are doing is the highest form of engagement, and I am thrilled that our citizens have noticed that Paducah has made strides in what we offer.





NRC President Tom Miller said, This is a unique opportunity to see evidence of best practices quantified by survey results."



Miller added that others can understand the successes of their colleagues and get to know whats working best in America.





In comparing the two survey results, Paducah noticed statistically significant increases in the following community characteristics: paths and walking trails, overall natural environment, and recreational opportunities. Paducah also noticed that the positive ratings for using Paducah recreation centers and visiting a city park increased in the three-year span between surveys.





To further validate the increase in ratings between surveys, Paducah reviewed its rating trend for quality of life. For the 2016 survey, 68 percent of Paducahs residents gave positive ratings regarding the overall quality of life in Paducah. That number increased from the 63 percent approval rating in 2013. According to the National Research Center, this is an impressive increase since a variety of factors come into play when looking at quality of life.





The reception was part of the 103rd Annual ICMA Conference in San Antonio, Texas.



Monday night in San Antonio, Texas, the National Research Center and the International City/County Management Association presented the City of Paducah with the 2017 Voice of the People Award for Transformation in Recreation and Wellness.
By WestKyStar & Rotary Club of Paducah Staff Oct. 23, 2017 | 10:03 PM | PADUCAH, KY

Since Rotary International and its partners launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) nearly 30 years ago, active polio cases have plummeted by more than 99.9 percent, from 350,000 cases a year to just 37 cases in 2016. To sustain the progress, Rotary International has committed to raising $50 million per year over the next three years toward eradicating polio. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation matches Rotarys commitment at a ratio of two-to-one.





Paducah Rotarians have traditionally, and generously, supported polio eradication efforts, said Paducah Rotary President Melanie McNeill. We join Rotarians everywhere in realizing the importance of suppressing this dreaded disease that has affected so many people worldwide, she added.



Rotarians donate to the GPEI regularly through voluntary contributions to the Rotary Foundation. In addition, the clubs annual Polio Plus Dessert Auction last February raised almost $5,000 in one day. Internationally, Rotary Clubs have contributed more than $1.7 billion dollars toward ending polio since 1985.





To raise public awareness of the fight against polio, Rotary International and the Gates Foundation will host a web-based live stream event Tuesday, Oct. 24 at 4:30 pm. The live webcast brings together more than 50,000 viewers around the world for presentations by global health experts and celebrities sharing the programs progress. The link to the webcast is www.endpolio.org.





The Rotary Club of Paducah is one of the largest and most active civic clubs in Kentucky. In addition to polio eradication efforts, its 200 members regularly conduct Rotary service projects that provide funding for local youth education programs and various local charities. Paducahs Rotary club was founded in 1915 and is the second largest chapter in the state.





For more information, visit the clubs website www.paducahrotary.org, or on Facebook at Rotary Club of Paducah.

Members of the Rotary Club of Paducah are among millions reaching out on World Polio Day to raise awareness and support of ending polio.
Youth-only and Military/Veteran-only waterfowl hunts canceled this weekend at Ballard WMA; Fewer blinds available at Boatwright WMA
By The Associated Press Oct. 24, 2017 | 04:47 AM | FRANKFORT, KY

Juvenile justice officials in Kentucky are launching an incentive fund for local programs that supervise young offenders in the community.

Officials say the program is aimed at cutting taxpayer costs and reserving secure juvenile justice facilities for only the most serious offenders.

The incentive fund is an outgrowth of the overhaul of Kentucky's juvenile justice system that took effect in 2015. The legislation called for better use of community interventions to protect public safety and hold offenders accountable.

As a result, the state Department of Juvenile Justice will award up to $1 million in grants this year to local judicial districts that provide community-based services, treatment programs or alternatives to out-of-home placement.

Programs may include family and community reintegration and prevention services, community work projects and job skills and employment training.
SHEBOYGAN  A not guilty plea was entered Monday for John Hammen, 57, who is charged as a result of a 2016 crash that led to the death of another Beaver Dam man.

Hammen, who owns Johnnys Lounge, has been charged with homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle and homicide by negligent operation of a vehicle.

Hammen appeared with his attorney, Dennis Melowski, who told the court that Hammen had a tracheotomy and could not speak due to his injuries from the accident. A not guilty plea was entered on Hammens behalf.

Hammen is accused of crashing his 2001 Dodge Viper while driving more than 100 mph in Sheboygan County on Sept. 16, 2016. A passenger in his car, Freddie O. Nelson, died from injuries suffered in the crash.

According to the criminal complaint, Hammen veered off the road at more than 100 mph on County Road SS, east of Wisconsin 28 in the Sheboygan County town of Sherman. The car struck a culvert and went airborne for more than 100 feet, landing in a grassy area and sliding into several trees.

Nelson had to be extracted from the vehicle with the Jaws of Life. He was transported by helicopter from the scene to Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee.

The complaint says that Hammen told emergency responders he had consumed two beers earlier in the afternoon. A blood draw at the hospital found that he had a blood-alcohol level of .098; the legal limit is .08.

Hammen has been convicted of driving while intoxicated at least four times previously.
In 1991, in a string of attacks, three women were sexually assaulted by a man in a ski mask in and around Baraboo.

One victim was kidnapped after finishing her shift at a Hardees, bound and gagged with duct tape in the trunk of a car. The others were assaulted at knifepoint in their homes, one while her young son slept in the next room.

Two years later, then-Sauk County Assistant District Attorney Kevin Calkins charged 31-year-old Larry Fandrich with the kidnapping and sexual assaults.

Each womans description of her attacker  a thinly built man of medium height, with a soft voice  seemed to point to Fandrich, who had been convicted of a prior kidnapping. During the Baraboo Police Departments 1991 investigation, officers found a small paring knife, a jacket with a roll of duct tape in the pocket and a ski mask in Fandrichs truck.

Fandrich said he had been prepared to plead not guilty. But when state prosecutors said FBI forensic experts had overwhelming evidence tying Fandrich to the crimes, he reluctantly decided to take a deal, pleading no contest.

I was forced to accept a plea deal, as there is no jury that would disregard an FBI experts testimony, Fandrich, now 55, wrote in a letter to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Among the prosecutions forensic evidence were gray carpet fibers collected from duct tape left at two of the crime scenes, which an FBI crime lab report claimed exhibited the same microscopic characteristics and optical properties as the fiber samples taken from the duct tape roll seized from Fandrichs truck.

A single pubic hair found in one victims underwear also showed the same microscopic characteristics as Fandrichs pubic hair, according to the lab.

In 1995, after 18 months of court proceedings, Sauk County Circuit Judge James Evenson sentenced Fandrich to 50 years in prison for the crimes. Had he gone to trial, Fandrich said, he would have faced a sentence of up to 265 years. He remains incarcerated today.

Faulty analysis

Fandrichs case is among at least 13 prosecutions in Wisconsin in which the FBI has acknowledged its hair or fiber analysis was faulty. The FBI is conducting a nationwide review of criminal cases involving microscopic hair analysis prior to 2000, when mitochondrial DNA testing became a routine forensic practice.

The Center has identified seven of those cases through dozens of public records requests and a trove of documents provided by FBI whistleblower Frederic Whitehurst. In addition, there are at least two more cases in which Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory analyses tying suspects to specific hairs have been proven to be wrong by later DNA testing.

The Wisconsin cases are among hundreds nationwide that have been found to be tainted by FBI analysis that falsely implied or claimed that hairs or fibers could be matched to specific sources. The task force reviewing the cases  which includes the Innocence Project and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers  has acknowledged that more than 90 percent of hair cases involve flawed testimony by the FBI.

The Center has identified defendants in Dane, La Crosse, Milwaukee, Sauk and Waukesha counties and four federal defendants whose cases included flawed hair or fiber comparison by the FBI or the state crime lab. In some of those cases, while the FBI made errors, prosecutors said the hair or fiber evidence was not a key factor in the conviction.

Attempts by the Center to discover all of the cases tainted with flawed FBI hair and analysis have been thwarted by district attorneys who have invoked their power under state law to shield prosecutorial records from public view. Federal Freedom of Information Act requests to the U.S. attorneys in Milwaukee and Madison sent in March seeking records of federal cases remained unfulfilled as of mid-October.

In Dane County, the conviction of Richard Beranek was overturned in June after DNA testing found the hair the FBI claimed was a match to Beranek was, in fact, not his. He was released after spending 27 years in prison. Prosecutors, who are pursuing additional DNA testing in the case, have not announced whether they will retry him.

Few prosecutors turn over records

In May, the Center sent public records requests to all 71 of Wisconsins district attorneys, asking each county office for documents pertaining to cases that involved microscopic hair or fiber comparison. The Center also requested any correspondence related to the nationwide FBI review.

About half of the district attorneys have acknowledged the records request. Several of those offices declined to fulfill the request under Richards v. Foust, a 1991 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision holding that prosecutorial files are exempt from public access under the state public records law. Others said they had no records or no system for locating such records.

Two district attorneys  Calkins in Sauk County and Tim Gruenke in La Crosse County  provided the FBI reports.

The states largest county, Milwaukee, released records related to two homicide cases that have undergone FBI review. Deputy District Attorney James Martin said in a letter that he would not make the FBI records available, however, because they are covered under Foust and an agreement with the FBI not to disseminate records for purposes unrelated to criminal prosecution and investigation.

Martin did, however, provide testimony from the two cases, noting that such trial transcripts are public records.

Longstanding problems

By the early 1990s, when Fandrichs case was being investigated, the FBI knew that microscopy had its limitations. Hair or fiber samples that look identical, even under a high-powered microscope, could come from a number of individuals or sources.

Twenty years later, in August 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice notified Calkins, now Sauk Countys district attorney, that the microscopic analysis in the FBI lab report in Fandrichs case contained erroneous statements that exceeded the limits of science and were therefore invalid. Calkins provided the letter under the state public records law.

The FBI review found the lab report for Fandrichs case, which implied that the pubic hair and carpet fibers tied him to the crimes, contained inappropriate statements.

Fandrichs attorney, Raymond DallOsto, said the hair evidence was very important to his clients decision to change his plea from not guilty to no contest. That, combined with the purported DNA match, made acquittal very unlikely, he said.

Suffice it to say that Mr. Fandrich was faced with a Himalayan climb without a rope or oxygen tanks, DallOsto said. You cannot separate the two forms of forensic evidence and resulting opinions of the FBI. If one was knocked out or called into question, it would potentially topple the other or at least raise a substantial reasonable doubt as to the reliability of the so-called match.

The Center also reported that 15 cases in the state involved testimony or a lab report by a Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory analyst who had been trained by the FBI in microscopic hair and fiber comparison. The state Department of Justice told the Center it has no plans to launch an independent review of any hair or fiber cases, although several other states, including Arizona, Iowa and Massachusetts, have done so.

Hair, fiber evidence limit options

The states case against Fandrich did not exclusively turn on the FBI crime labs microscopy work. Prosecutors also presented DNA testing of semen samples taken from the crime scenes. DallOsto vigorously disputed the admissibility of that DNA evidence, arguing that the FBIs test methodology was so flawed it could not be relied upon. But that argument was never tested in court: Fandrich agreed to a plea deal.

When a defense lawyer is faced with this, youve got to have a very difficult discussion with your client, DallOsto said. Do you go forward with the chance of losing on multiple counts, or do you try to cut your losses and limit the exposure and damage?

Fandrich opted to cut his losses. I became overwhelmed with the circumstantial evidence and the statistical numbers from the experts, Fandrich wrote in a letter to the Center. I feared that I would spend the rest of my life in prison, and I would never see my sons again.

But had the defense team known about the errors in the states microscopic analysis evidence, DallOsto said, the discussion of whether Fandrich should plead no contest would have been much different.

As for whether he is guilty, Fandrich wrote that to qualify for parole, he must complete sexual offender treatment  one condition of which is to accept responsibility for the crimes for which he was convicted. As a result, he said, I am unable to answer your question as to whether I am innocent of these crimes.

Fandrich said he hopes to petition for a sentence modification. Since his 1995 conviction, Fandrich said he has been denied parole 10 times.

He should be out of prison now, DallOsto said. Hes been a model prisoner and should have been paroled a lot earlier. I hope some relief can be gotten for him.
Ashleys Arcadia facility in Wisconsin, hosted more than 200 sixth and seventh grade students from the Whitehall and Arcadia School Districts. The students toured the facility and participated in a manufacturing-based activity to learn about team work, communication and the workflow of an assembly line. Ashleys Founder and Chairman of the Board, Ron Wanek, spoke about the economic impact manufacturing has on the local and national economy. In addition, Wanek spoke on the need for engineering and technology skills to support the future of advanced manufacturing.
Join the fun and fellowship at the Halloween Chili Supper, Bazaar & Bake Sale being hosted by First Presbyterian Church of Utica from 4 to 7 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 29.

The menu includes chili, relishes, bread, cookies, rainbow sherbet and beverages. Tickets are $8 for adults, $3 for ages 6-12 and free for children 5 and under. The church is located at 145 S. Center St. in Utica. All are welcome.
The Winona Seventh-Day Adventist Church will celebrate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church with a documentary-style series that explores the future of Christianity by exploring the history that led to the Reformation.

"A Pale Horse Rides," a three-day event is free and open to the public. It begins at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 2, continues at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 3 and concludes at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4. The event will be held at the Tau Center at 511 Harrison St., Winona. Attendees may register by calling 888-457-153, going to palehorserides.com/winona or on site.

The series is hosted by Voice of Prophecy Speaker/Director Shawn Boonstra. It will involve both documentary-style and live elements.

More information is available at palehorserides.com/winona.
Winona

Monday

9:45 a.m.  A man reported rocks and bricks thrown through windows on a building at 30 Liberty Street.

10:46 a.m.  A woman reported that a Specialized brand bicycle was missing from the 900 block of West King Street.

10:51 a.m.  A man reported a wallet missing with $40 from the 100 block of Market Street.

5:47 p.m.  Benjamin James Rotering, 30, was cited for trespassing at Midtown Foods.

6:54 p.m.  Charges of third-degree assault, fifth-degree domestic assault causing fear and harm, theft, interfering with an emergency call and fifth-degree assault were referred against Demarlo Keuita Haywood, 33, Chicago, after allegedly punching a woman on the 350 block of East Sarnia Street several times in the area of the head, neck and face, breaking her phone as she tried to call the police, and putting a 14-year-old boy in a headlock when he tried to intervene.

Haywood fled prior to police arriving and allegedly took around $400 from the womans coat also. He was later found in a laundry room.

7:38 p.m.  Charges of fifth-degree domestic assault causing fear and harm were referred against James Patrick Murray, 37, Winona, after reportedly kicking and shoving a woman on the 550 block of East Third Street.

8:02 p.m.  A man reported damage to a car that appeared to be scratches while it was on private property on the 100 block of East Sixth Street.

9:25 p.m.  Charges of felony possession of marijuana were referred against Amnabear Omot Nyigwo, 19, Winona, after police reported seeing him with a large bag of marijuana, recorded as 279.6 grams, through the window of a garage on the 350 block of East Mark Street.

Police responded to a report a suspicious vehicle with a dragging bumper and a man who got out and changed clothes before going up to the residence, and could have been a suspect in a different case that was being searched for.
Supporters and opponents of Winona Area Public Schools upcoming facilities referendum agree on one thing: The future of the district and its students is very much at stake.

WAPS officials went back and forth Monday with members of the Save Our Schools Committee of Winona, with the sides outlining their respective and often conflicting visions for Winonas public schools during a 90-minute forum sponsored by the citys League of Women Voters.

Theres a dark cloud hanging over these discussions, said Emilio DeGrazia of Save Our Schools, lamenting the poisonous and divisive nature of school-closure talk in recent years. The narrative needs to change. We need to ask ourselves about the future (we want), and we need to ask ourselves what really counts.

DeGrazia and the grassroots Save Our Schools group stand firmly opposed to the districts $82 million facilities referendum, which calls for the closure of Jefferson and Madison elementary schools, and for the expansion of W-K and Goodview elementary schools.

Under the plan, Winona Senior High School, Winona Middle School, Rollingstone Community Elementary School and the Winona Area Learning Center would also receive maintenance or construction dollars.

The plan is estimated to save the district $1.1 million annually, which would likely prevent further cuts to staff and programming.

This plan would set up the district educationally and financially, said Superintendent Rich Dahman, who, while admitting the plan isnt perfect, touted the referendum for its ability to modernize both the districts buildings and educational offerings.

Im hearing that our current status might be driving families away, he added. They look at the age of our schools, at our large budget cuts, and theyre making decisions to go to schools in other areas.

DeGrazia, however, said the district might lose even more families if the referendum were to pass. The loss of Jefferson and Madison  both neighborhood schools near the center of Winona  might be enough for families to consider transferring their children to private or charter schools, he said.

If youre bleeding, do you cut off your arms and legs to solve the problem? DeGrazia asked the panel and crowd. I dont think so. I think this will be harmful to WAPS down the road.

Added Natalie Siderius of Save Our Schools: You close these schools, and its one more thread of our community fabric thats pulled out.

Instead of consolidating schools, DeGrazia and Siderius recommended the district ask voters to help fund repairs and improvements to the aging buildings, some of which were built in the 1930s.

Yes, we need to make ourselves more attractive, Siderius said. But that can be done by investing in the schools that we have.

Dahman and other district administrators said theres been a flurry of misinformation among the public concerning the referendum, and that the plan has its fair share of under-publicized strengths.

Margaret Schild, the districts community education director, said the plan would better meet the needs of preschool and early childhood students.

Kevin Flies, the districts information systems director, said the plan would streamline the districts technology needs and lead to reduced costs.

And Pat Blaisdell, the districts human resources director, said the plan would make it easier for the district to recruit and retain teachers and staff members.

Neither the district nor the grassroots committee members budged from their positions as they exchanged barbs and talking points, addressing an array of questions submitted by audience members and those watching the broadcast from home.

The goal of the referendum is to help students thrive, Dahman said.

I think this proposal would be disastrous for the city of Winona, DeGrazia said.

Theres a dark cloud hanging over these discussions. The narrative needs to change. We need to ask ourselves about the future (we want), and we need to ask ourselves what really counts. Emilio DeGrazia, member of the Save Our Schools Committee
RACINE COUNTY  Construction could resume on the Interstate 94 project through Racine County as soon as next spring, following legislative approval of the Foxconn deal, according to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

Foxconn formally announced on Oct. 4 that it would be building a multibillion-dollar facility in Mount Pleasant. As part of the deal in getting the plant to come to this area, the Legislature included funds to widen Interstate 94 and to reconstruct frontage roads.

The seven miles of frontage roads between highways 20 and KR in Racine County will be included in reconstruction, said Mike Pyrtiz, regional communication manager for the Southeast Region of the DOT.

While all schedules are subject to weather and project site construction needs affiliated with Foxconn, construction of the west frontage road, Sylvania Avenue, is slated to begin in March and aims to be completed in July. The East Frontage Road is scheduled to be completed by November 2018, said Pyrtiz.

The estimated cost of that project alone would be from $17 million to $20 million.

As part of the project, I-94 is to be widened from six to eight lanes between the Mitchell Interchange and Highway 142 in Kenosha County, Pyrtiz said. When the project is complete, the Interstate will be eight lanes all the way to the state line. The Interstate between Highway 142 and the state line was widened to eight lanes before the project was put on hold due to funding restraints.

The seven-mile stretch is set to be completed in late 2020, with the full project being completed in late 2021. Along the entire route set for construction, six interchanges will be rebuilt including the interchanges at highways 20 and KR, Pyrtiz said.

The DOT also plans to reconstruct interchanges at Highway K and 7 Mile Road.

The DOT is seeking just under $300 million in federal money for the project.
Mary Farrell was a college freshman in 1976 when she voted Jimmy Carter for president. It was her first presidential vote, and that experience holds a special place in her heart.

So when Farrell learned that the 92-year-old Carter teaches a Sunday school class in Georgia, and that class is open to the public, she knew what she had to do.

I started looking into it and decided I was going to go to one, said Farrell, who works with Visit Winona and the Winona Catholic Workers. Hundreds of people show up every time for it.

The class, which is held at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., is recorded and made available for purchase. So Farrell brought one with the idea that she would share it with people back in Winona.

On Wednesday, Farrell will show the video from the class she attended. The screening will be held at 7 p.m. at the Winona Arts Center on the corner of Franklin and Fifth streets. The event is free and open to the public.

Farrell said shes always admired his humanitarianism, especially in his post-presidential life.

He still does so much and hes still got so much charisma, Farrell said.

On Aug. 27, Farrell and a friend arrived at Maranatha Baptist Church to line up at 6 a.m. for the 10 a.m. service. Once the service was over people had the opportunity to take a picture with the former president.

He was the first president I voted for, Farrell said. I thought there might be other people who might be interested in seeing (the video).

Jimmy Carter sort of visited Winona back in 1979, although it was more of a pass through as he never actually stepped foot in the city. He and his family were traveling on the Delta Queen steamer, and it docked about 100 feet off the shore of Winonas levee. Carter spoke a bit about his energy policy. First Lady Rosalynn was also celebrating her 52nd birthday at the time.

Farrell said theres probably a number of people in Winona who remember that day, and theres probably others who have personal experiences or memories of the 39th president of the U.S.

I thought, I bet other people would come that have memories or personal experiences with Carter,  she said.

After the screening, there will be a general discussion where people can ask questions and recall experiences and memories of his presidency, among other things.

If people are looking for inspiration on a person who has done so much good, Id encourage people to come to this event, Farrell said.
Most Baraboo merchants say business is good, but theres room for improvement.

In April, volunteers conducted a Business Walk, surveying more than 200 merchants to gauge the pulse of local commerce. Now that the results are in, business leaders are discussing how to act on them.

We want to see whether there are practical, pragmatic solutions, said Andy Bingle, who chairs the Baraboo Economic Development Commission's Business Walk committee.

Ninety-one percent of respondents said business is somewhere between fair and great. They listed friendly customers, Baraboos location and support from local business groups as the best things about doing business here.

Business owners listed a lack of parking, along with poor road design and conditions, as a top obstacle. Better marketing of Baraboo in the Wisconsin Dells and Madison markets is needed, as are a more diverse base of businesses, a new hotel and affordable housing.

The Business Walk committee discussed the results last week, with another of the commission's committees set to discuss Wednesday how the results might be applied to the citys study of its east side commercial corridor.

Bingle said the goal is to pinpoint trends affecting businesses, and enact policies that remove roadblocks. For example, some merchants said city red tape makes it difficult to place signs and expand businesses.

This is local government taking steps to listen to businesses and find out what they need most, Bingle said.

The survey was supported by partners including the city, village of West Baraboo, Baraboo Area Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Baraboo Inc., Madison Region Economic Partnership and Workforce Development Board of South Central Wisconsin.

Bingle hopes to see the Business Walk committee formulate four or five suggestions to go before the full board of the local economic development group, which would then present recommendations to the Common Council.

Baraboo is in it for the long haul, Bingle said. I feel like we have some good momentum going forward.
Local artists may have a chance to showcase their skills  and collect a $500 prize  in a contest to determine Sauk County governments next official logo.

Although details still are being finalized, the Sauk County Boards Economic Development Committee plans to commission a design contest within the next several months.

Administrative Coordinator Alene Klekzek Bolin told committee members Monday that a local nonprofit group recently inquired about using the countys logo, prompting a discussion about the current design.

We just have a lot of logos that float around out there that arent consistent, Klekzek Bolin said. So we need something consistent and, really, something that is updated.

One version of the countys logo published on its website includes a crane and feathers. Another, drawn on a window at the Sauk County Sheriffs Department, features a Native American in headdress.

The committee has tentative plans to begin accepting entries in January, and a winner may be selected as soon as March 1. The chosen artist would have to relinquish the rights to their design, but would be awarded $500.

The contest would require artists to sign a usage agreement upon entry, and initial plans called for submissions only from artists over the age of 18.

Supervisor Peter Vedro of Baraboo said there may be younger artists who wish to participate, and he asked that the countys legal staff research whether it would be possible to open the contest to them as well.

Its not yet clear who will judge the entries, although there was some discussion of a special panel.

Sauk County Board Chair Marty Krueger of Reedsburg cautioned against using social media to get public feedback on the three finalists.

I think that would be really dangerous because somebody who submits a logo who has a large Facebook presence could just absolutely skew the results, he said.

Other committee members said they worried that publishing finalists could stir controversy if some members of the public disagreed with the contests outcome.

Concerns also were raised that the county board may not appreciate being asked to certify the winner without having input in the selection process.

The contest is expected to be formally announced after officials finalize rules and entry agreement requirements.
More than 40 communities across Wisconsin are hosting activities during the 2017 Wisconsin Science Festival (WSF), held Nov. 2-5, making the 2017 festival the most expansive one yet. The Discovery Charter School in Columbus will be the site of one of the festivals, Thursday, Nov. 2 from 6 p.m.7 p.m.

In its seventh year, the Wisconsin Science Festival continues to engage communities in the enterprise of science and discovery and aims to communicate the power of knowledge and creativity, promote innovation and cultivate the next generation of global citizens.

I think every kid starts out a little bit as a scientist. At some point, they all ask how or why questions about the world, said Eric Wilcots, chair of the Wisconsin Science Festival steering committee. Somewhere along the line, that curiosity can get lost. Weve got to bring back that natural curiosity for people, and festivals are one way to get science to the public.

Plastics in the Great Lakes will be held at the Discovery Charter School. The presentation will be called What to Know and What to Do About It, presented by Anne Moser. She is a senior special librarian at the Wisconsin Water Library at UWMadison. She provides STEM story times to libraries around Wisconsin, along with education and outreach in support of Wisconsin Sea Grant and Wisconsin Water Resources Institutes.
Donald Coughlin was sentenced to 48 years in prison Oct. 24 for 21 counts of child sexual assault. Coughlin, 60, was convicted May 9. Statements were made by victims and by Coughlins family members.

Prosecutor Richard Dufour recommended a sentence of 150 years, while Coughlins attorney Dan Berkos urged leniency.

Five men, who today range in age from the adult teens or early 20s to the early 30s, told investigators that Donald Coughlin forced them to perform sex acts at Coughlins Lyndon Station home, at Coughlin Custom Specialties, a family business, at other family-owned property and also at an Ashland hotel. The victims ranged in age from 7 to 16 at the time of the crimes, according to the complaint.

Coughlin denies all allegations and insists the victims have testified falsehoods on behalf of his ex-wife.

In 2015, Coughlin was convicted of 22 counts of sexual assault of the same victims. However, Juneau County Judge John Roemer found that a juror was not credible, and granted a new trial. Judge Roemer has since retired.

The sentencing was passed by retired Sauk County Judge James Evenson, who is temporarily assisting Juneau County until Roemers vacancy can be filled. Judge Evenson ruled out probation as a sentencing option.

I do not believe [that] is appropriate here, Evenson said.

Judge Evenson mentioned the toll of Coughlins actions on the victims during the sentencing.

The result of what occurred here has had tremendous impact on them, Evenson said.

Donald Coughlin formerly served as village president of Lyndon Station. He was last re-elected in April 2009. Coughlin was also chief of the Lyndon Station Volunteer Fire Department from 1978 to 2008.

At least a quarter of Coughlins sentence must be served before he would be eligible for parole.

On May 1, the jury was sworn in and attorneys began cross-referencing witnesses on the stand. Twelve jurors were selected with four alternates.

Witness testimony continued on May 2 with a wife of one of the victims testifying. The witness said she has been married for almost 20 years, but didnt hear about the abuse allegations from her husband until the early 2000s. She overheard a phone conversation with her husbands mother after he had been drinking.

The witness gave an emotional testimony saying her husband told her he was molested as a child by his uncle and stepfather and his mother didnt do anything for him.

Berkos questioned the witness about the timeframe between her hearing about the abuse allegations and the victim reporting it to the police, which was in 2009, several years after she was told of the incidents.

I actually didnt know every detail until I sat in court (in the first trial), she said.

The couple lived in Lyndon Station for a few months in 2004. When Berkos asked her if they borrowed money from Coughlin during this time, she laughed a bit and said no, we never borrowed money from Don for anything.

On April 28, during jury selection, Coughlin tried to dismiss Berkos as his attorney, according to a court report. The court ruled against Coughlins request.

On April 6, Berkos filed a motion to dismiss the case based on double jeopardy. In double jeopardy rulings, a defendant cannot be convicted twice on the same charge. On April 12, Berkos request to schedule a hearing and call witnesses was denied. Dufour opposed the motion for a lack of due process and the court denied Berkos double jeopardy motion.
President Donald Trump, for the second time in his presidency, awarded the Medal of Honor during a ceremony Monday at the White House.

Trump presented the highest military honor to Gary Michael Rose, a retired US Army captain who served as a medic in the Vietnam War, saving lives while risking his own during a four-day operation despite being seriously wounded himself.

Rose is receiving the honor for repeatedly risking his life to provide medical aid to fellow soldiers throughout the operation, using his own body at one point to shield a wounded American from enemy fire and helping to load wounded comrades onto helicopters while under fire.

"This will enshrine him into the history of our nation," Trump said as he told the story of Roses heroism. "Mike, today we have a room full of people and a nation who thank God that you lived. Your will to endure, your love for your fellow soldier, your devotion to your country inspires us all."

The ceremony came as Trump remained embroiled nearly a week later in the controversy surrounding his call with the widow of a US soldier who was killed in an ambush in Niger earlier this month.

Trump has refused to shake the controversy, tweeting criticism over the weekend of the Democratic congresswoman who first publicly criticized his call with the widow and again taking to Twitter on Monday to rebut Sgt. La David Johnson's widow's account of the call. The President's tweets came despite the White House's repeated attempts to turn the page on the controversy late last week.

Monday's solemn ceremony provided Trump an opportunity to show his respect for military veterans, hours after Johnson's widow said she was "upset and hurt" after her conversation with Trump last week.

Rose is the second person to receive the Medal of Honor since Trump became president. The previous honoree, James McCloughan, was also a Vietnam War medic.

Before adorning Rose with the medal, Trump retold Rose's exploits in detail, noting at one point that Rose "used a branch as a crutch" after he was wounded and "fired at the enemy with one arm" as he rushed from one wounded comrade to the next.

Rose, the only medic for the 136 men on the mission, repeatedly put himself in the line of enemy fire to load wounded soldiers into rescue helicopters. After one helicopter crashed shortly after taking off, Rose pulled the wounded helicopter crew out and gave medical aid until another helicopter arrived to evacuate the soldiers.

"Mike, this is serious stuff," Trump remarked at one point as he read through Rose's actions.

Several soldiers in Rose's unit during the September 1970 mission were in attendance at the White House for the ceremony Monday and were also recognized by the President.

"To Mike and all of the service members who fought in the battle, you've earned the eternal gratitude of the entire American nation. You faced down the evils of communism, you defended our flag and you showed the world the unbreakable resolve of the American armed forces. Thank you, and thank you very much," Trump said.

A White House statement before the ceremony described Rose's actions during the mission.

"From September 11 through September 14, 1970, while his unit was engaged with a much larger force deep in enemy-controlled territory, then-Sergeant Rose repeatedly ran into the line of enemy fire to provide critical medical aid to his comrades, using his own body on one occasion to shield a wounded American from harm," the White House said in a statement explaining his citation for "conspicuous gallantry."

"On the final day of the mission, although wounded himself, Sergeant Rose voluntarily exposed himself to enemy fire while moving wounded personnel to the extraction point, loading them into helicopters, and helping to repel an enemy assault on the American position. As he boarded the final extraction helicopter, intense enemy fire hit the helicopter, causing it to crash shortly after takeoff. Again, ignoring his own injuries, Sergeant Rose pulled the helicopter crew and members of his unit from the burning wreckage and provided medical aid until another extraction helicopter arrived."
Four men were arrested in Baraboo after an armed robbery was reported Monday at a convenience store west of Portage.

The Columbia County Sheriffs Office responded to a 911 call just after 3 p.m. reporting a robbery at the Cascade Quick Mart W10620 State Road 33 in the town of Caledonia near the Interstate 90/94 interchange.

The caller reported a knife was shown during the robbery and that four men left in a green sedan, heading west on Highway 33, according to a press release from Sheriff Dennis Richards.

Officers from Columbia and Sauk counties, the city of Baraboo and the Wisconsin State Patrol immediately began looking for the suspect car.

A vehicle matching the description was stopped by an officer with the Sauk County Sheriffs Office in Baraboo less than 20 minutes after the robbery was reported. Four men found in the sedan were taken into custody and turned over to Columbia County authorities.

The names of the men and possible criminal charges have not been released by the Sheriffs Office, which is continuing to investigate the incident.
The Portage wine walk has grown from an experiment in alternative local nightlife to an expected marker of the start of spring and the peak of autumn.

Theyve been talking about it since June, Prairie Flower Beads owner Rita Briant told members of Downtown Portage Inc. on Monday.

The Fine Vine Wine Walk takes place Friday and features 19 stops with the latest inclusion of the recently opened Neils Wine House on Pleasant Street.

The Portage Wine Walk started in 2013 and we did it the next year, Briant said. The group saw the opportunity following the success of the Portage Area Chamber of Commerce organized spring Wine Walk.

We started with 350 tickets, Briant said. Tomorrow I will run around to compile and see how many are left.

DPI has sold the $30 tickets online through the organizations Facebook page, with tickets also being available at Big Dog Saloon, Prairie Flower Beads, Smart Woman, the Chamber of Commerce and Bon Bon and Bordeaux.

Those with tickets  and an ID  can pick up a glass from Big Dog Saloon on Friday evening starting at 6 p.m. going until 9 p.m. Big Dog Saloon also has provided wine for businesses not usually in the food service industry, which will turn around about the usual closing time to greet wine walkers.

Most places will have appetizers or treats, and through the night you run into friends, said Abra Shimpach, a DPI organizer and manager for Forever Yours Jewelry. DPI organized the temporary license for businesses to serve alcohol during the event, though stores need to find a licensed bartender to pour during the event.

Because DPIs alcohol license is strictly timed, non-alcohol selling businesses will have a hard cutoff with no drinks served after 9 p.m. Though Shimpach said that once countertops are cleared, she expects to see business owners and managers out at some of the later establishments once they no longer have to watch over their own.

The Fine Vine Wine Walk is one of an establishing tradition of these events, but this year also marks the anniversary of one participating business and the opening of another.

We are going to be celebrating our one-year anniversary, said Tracy Cooper, co-owner of the wine, chocolate and gift shop Bon Bon and Bordeaux. We will be having a store sampling  cheese samples, spiced wine to get into the holiday spirit.

The following day, the day of their anniversary, they will offer discounts, with visitors entered into a drawing for a $100 gift basket.

We knew that the wine walks were a happening thing when we opened and we were excited to be a part of it, Cooper said. We take a lot of pride in the wine that we have and try to have unique labels and we like to have samples for people to get a taste of what they are getting.

I think that the wine at 205 Vino opened the doors for a lot of people in Portage and unfortunately there was a gap when they closed, said Bon Bon and Bordeaux co-owner Olivia Fuqua of the wine bar that shut down, to become a Masonic lodge. Were so excited to be celebrating our first year  it has gone by so fast  and we really appreciate the opportunity to be a part of the community.

Although the gap in real estate left by 205 Vino was filled by the Masons, the gap in the market will potentially be filled by Neils Wine House, a wine bar at West Wisconsin Street and West Pleasant Street. The house on West Pleasant Street was the home of the restaurant Le Croissant restaurant and bakery, but for months has been empty until recently with new activity.

The wine walk is an invitation to mingle in downtown Portage and get to know local stores, but for Downtown Portage Inc., it is also an open invitation to businesses.

We would love anyone showing up to add their input, said Shimpach. All we ask for is a desire to bring people to downtown Portage.
Madisons Overture Center announced Monday that it will cut ties with Tom Wopat, the former TV star for whom Overtures regional Tommy Awards program for youth talent was named, after the Lodi native was charged with indecently grabbing or touching actresses in Massachusetts.

Wopat, 66, who achieved fame in the 1980s action/comedy series The Dukes of Hazzard and went on to a Broadway career, faces charges he groped an adult female cast member and indecently assaulted a 16-year-old girl while rehearsing for the musical 42nd Street at a theater near Boston, the Boston Globe reported late last month.

In the latter charge, Wopat is accused of poking the girl in the stomach, hitting her buttocks with a script and intruding in a female dressing room, the Globe reported.

Given the recent news surrounding Mr. Wopat, Overture Center for the Arts has severed all ties with him and will be moving forward with discussions for the high school musical awards programs name, said a statement from Overture Center.

However, the program will continue to be known as the Tommy Awards at least into mid-2018, Overture officials said.

Live shows headlined by Wopat scheduled for this fall and winter at the Janesville Performing Arts Center and Stoughton Opera House were recently canceled.

Overtures decision is a moral dilemma for me because I am a strong believer in (presumed innocence)  and we should be in this day and age, said Tim Sauers, vice president of programming and community engagement for Overture, who created the Tommy Awards nine years ago to encourage and honor excellence in high school musical theater.

But the allegations against (Wopat) have just been building, Sauers said. Even if he comes off innocent, its tarnished our program.

We feel this is an unfortunate decision, Wopats publicist Dan Fortune said. Tom would love to do an interview when these legal issues are settled.

Sauers said news of the allegations against Wopat nearly brought him to tears because I love this program and I love the kids, and I love everybody whos involved with this.

At the launch of the Tommy Awards, Wopat agreed to let Overture use his name, but he has not participated in or supported the program financially, according to the performing arts center.

The Tommy Awards program sends skilled reviewers to see high school musical theater productions and rate them. The top shows and performers are honored at an annual awards gala in the centers Overture Hall.

In the 2016-17 season, the judges viewed 87 musical theater productions at 82 Wisconsin schools in 23 counties, according to Overture. More than 400 students performed in the annual Tommy Awards ceremony.

The wealth of regional talent discovered through the Tommy Awards program led to the creation of the Tommy Ensemble, a performance group of top high school musical theater talent.

The next Tommy Awards will be on June 10, 2018, and the name will remain until then, Sauers said.

Program partners, alumni, schools and others will be consulted as the program is renamed, he said. We want to do this in a very thoughtful, inclusive way, and we see that rolling out after the end of our fiscal year on June 30, he said.

With news of the first allegations, Overture removed Wopats signature from electronic media and contacted him by email about the change, Sauers said.
A significant rise in local property values has pushed the school tax rate for property owners living in the Portage Community School District down 16 cents from last year.

District Administrator Charles Poches and Business Manager Margaret Rudolph reported a tax rate of $9.24 per $1,000 of equalized value in the 2017-18 budget, which was finalized by the school board Monday.

The tax rate amounts to $924 for a $100,000 home.

Property values in the district increased 5.3 percent.

Thats a very nice trend, Rudolph said. We havent had that kind of increase for years, and thats great for our community.

Enrollment in the district fell by 106 students, a decline that will impact us greatly next year, Rudolph said about state aid for next years budget. Declining enrollment in Portage all but guarantees next years tax rate will be higher than this years, she said.

Categorical aid from the state went up $200 per pupil, which also helped drop the schools portion of local taxes 1.7 percent from last years rate of $9.40. Categorical aid is money from the state that is issued to school districts for specific spending categories, such as transportation and special education.

This years per-pupil spending rate is $9,346, Poches said. Thats up $26 from last year.

Portage voters in April 2016 passed a five-year referendum that allows the district to exceed the state-mandated revenue limit by up to $2.6 million each year. This year, the district will use $2.4 million instead of the full $2.6 million.

Portage has 24 students using the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program this year, most of them choosing to attend St. Johns Lutheran School in Portage. Poches estimated the Choice Program will cost the district about $181,000 in lost state aid, a loss thats made up using referendum dollars.

This years private-school voucher cap rises from 1 percent to 2 percent, so Portage could have had as many as 48 students using proceeds from the state program. The district originally projected that 30 students would use it.

Were still digesting all aspects of the new state budget, Poches said when asked if he expects private vouchers to take a bigger bite out of state aid in future years. Eligibility issues related to the Choice Program are still confusing public school leaders across the state, he said.

Pay increases for all staff, including administrators, averaged 2 percent.
Rep. Mark Pocan (D- 2nd Congressional District of Wisconsin) visited Reedsburg Public Library Oct. 19 for a town hall meeting.

In his opening remarks, Pocan talked about health care, tax reform and international relations with North Korea. Pocan said with the challenges revolving the current healthcare system there have been around 60 repeal and replace votes to try and replace Obamacare.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Oct. 12 which eliminates subsidies for health insurance. The plan also puts in place three insurance entities: association health plans, short-term limited duration insurance and health reimbursement arrangements. Pocan said the new order could disrupt the insurance market.

What happened is the president saying hes going to stop subsidies and create some of these non insurance health insurance policies, Pocan said. It could really disrupt the market to a point where were going to have tens of millions of people perhaps lose access or certainly lose real healthcare.

On the topic of tax reform, Pocan said the President Trumps plan doesnt affect the vast majority of people in the second congressional district. In addressing international relations with North Korea, Pocan said the country has to develop stronger relations with China, a strong trade partner with North Korea.

Ninety percent of the economy of North Korea comes in via China, he said.

Audience members asked other questions related to other topics from health care to immigration, as well as social security and Medicaid. Pocan said Congress needs to strengthen social security based on the consumer price index for the elderly.

Especially when you look at medicines for healthcare for the average senior its about twenty-five percent of their income, Pocan said.

In addition, the topic of the $3 billion deal to build Taiwanese manufacture factory Foxconn in Racine County was mentioned. Despite the possibility of adding 13,000 jobs to the state, Pocan said it was a terrible deal.

Racine (is) the only area thats going to see any benefit besides all the Illinois people coming up and working, Pocan said. Scott Walker keeps saying 13,000 jobs, the CEO keeps saying 3,000 jobs. So the problem is if you take the maps of ($)3 billion of 3,000 versus 13,000 it looks even worse than it is.
Raymond H. Brandt, 88, of Reedsburg, passed away Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2017, at the Sauk County Health Care Center.

He was born May 7, 1929, in Hillpoint to the late Herman and Emma (Erdman) Brandt. On June 24, 1949, he married Virginia (Fry) in Hillpoint.

Raymond was a faithful member of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Hillpoint, where he was active with the choir, in addition to serving as president of the congregation and superintendent of their Sunday school. He also served as president of the local Thrivent Chapter, and the Weston District School Board.

He had a great love for singing and dancing. Together with Virginia, they were well known to be the last couple dancing at any wedding dance off.

Together the couple farmed for many years, but Raymond always found the time to drive bus for the district every day, including many sporting events.

He will be truly missed, and was an anchor to Virginia, his wife of 68 years, and his children; Cathryn (James) Keller of Cazenovia, Kevin Brandt and Donna Brandt of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Cindy (Mark) Berberich of Reedsburg, Kim (Tammy) Brandt of Loganville and Kraig (Juli) Brandt of Hillpoint. He is also survived by his sister Dolores Goetsch of Reedsburg, and a brother LaVerne (Barbara) of Roswell, New Mexico; 14 grandchildren; two step-grandchildren; 23 great-grandchildren, with one more great-granddaughter due in December; eight step-great-grandchildren; and two step-great-great-grandchildren. He is also survived by many other nieces, nephews; aunts, uncles; cousins and friends.

In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by a sister Mildred Rose.

Funeral services for Raymond will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 21, 2017, at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Hillpoint with Pastor Tim Anderson officiating. Burial will follow services at St. Paul Cemetery. Visitation will be from 4-7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 20, 2017, at Farber Funeral Home in Reedsburg, and from 10 a.m. until the time of service Saturday at the church.

The family would like to recognize the Sauk County Health Care Center for their care, love and respect that they provided for Raymond and all of his family.

The family would prefer memorials be given to St. Paul Lutheran Church Memorial Fund in Raymonds memory.

Farber Funeral Home is assisting the family with arrangements.
After decades of work, the Great Sauk State Trail is officially open.

A ribbon cutting ceremony for the trail took place Oct. 19, just below Eagle Overlook Point in Prairie du Sac. Community stakeholders, local politicians, representatives from the villages of Prairie du Sac and Sauk City, and the public were on hand to celebrate the opening.

The event kicked-off with a speech from Friends of the Great Sauk State Trail President Jeff Wright.

The only reason the view of this river and this land is accessible is because it was once a railroad that brought goods and services to our community, Wright said. The trains have been gone for decades, but the high vision of seeing these twin villages rise to a position of importance continues to this day.

Wright said the trail opening marks a decades-long dream, and celebrates the linking of the Wisconsin River to the Sauk Prairie Recreation Area.

We commit to ourselves to continuing on to Devils Lake, and then to Dane County, and then to the 400 Trail in Reedsburg, Wright said. These twin villages will then find themselves on a trail connecting to the Mississippi River to our state capital. When many of us gathered at this spot a few months ago, I commented that by the time the leaves on these trees behind me fell to the ground wed be welcoming residents and visitors to this trail for this incredible view. The leaves are still here, and weve got a trail.

Dan Meyer, cabinet secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, said the Great Sauk State Trail is an example of what partnerships can do.

I understand this trail will tie together local communities with great natural resources including the Wisconsin River and eventually the Sauk Prairie Recreation Area and Devils Lake State Park, Meyer said. I understand community support for this trail has been astounding.

Students from Bridges Elementary School lined up along the trail to hold the commemorative ribbon for cutting. With Sauk County Board of Supervisors chair Marty Krueger at the helm, along with village board presidents Cheryl Sherman and James Anderson, of Prairie du Sac and Sauk City the ribbon was cut, marking the opening of the Great Sauk State Trail.

From the beginning I think everyone agreed, and this is key to the product you see today and will see in the future, that is the vision of this commission was to create a world class recreational trail, Krueger said.

Krueger said they have made Dane County officials aware of the desire to connect the trail into Dane County, and that can only happen once the derelict railroad bridge in Sauk City is demolished and reestablished as a trail bridge over the Wisconsin River.

The real magic happens when we go through Badger and hook up with Devils Lake, Krueger said. Steve Schmelzer, who is here today and manages that park for the DNR recently told the Friends group the moment we make that connection to Devils Lake, this becomes the busiest recreational trail in the state of Wisconsin.

Krueger said the Friends group was still accepting contributions toward phase two of the trail, which makes the connection to Devils Lake a reality.

If you think this is good, wait until you see what we have coming as we extend into Dane County and connect with Devil Lake, Krueger said. Its going to be fantastic. Happy trails to you, and congratulations. The Great Sauk State Trail is open.
The Sauk Prairie area is getting a little help with visioning for the Water Street corridor from students in the UW-Madison Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture and MDRoffers.

The partnership is a commitment made by the communities of Sauk City and Prairie du Sac to find ways to revitalize Water Street, the main thoroughfare connecting the two communities along the Wisconsin River.

Masters students in the department will work with UW alumnus and certified planner Mark Roffers, who serves as planner for the village of Prairie du Sac and a consultant for Sauk City at times. The students work to fulfill a degree requirement and gain practical knowledge and experience in planning.

In turn the villages will receive a visioning document with guidance on the latest in planning thought and practice, with emphasis on making Sauk Prairie a better place to live and work while furthering a high quality of life.

According to a news release issued by UW-Madison, the goal is for students to work with community leaders, residents and stakeholders to leverage Sauk Prairie areas advantages  like easy access to Highway 12, close proximity to Devils Lake, the Great Sauk State Trail, Vintage Brewery along the Sauk City waterfront, Wollersheim Winery in Prairie du Sac, the scenic Wisconsin River, national headquarters for Culvers Franchise System and restoration of the former Badger Army Ammunition Plant as prairie land and recreational area.

Dave Marcouiller, a professor at UW-Madison who also serves as an extension specialist, said the project started in the fall of 2016 when the school out a call for proposals across the state about potential planning projects the students could participate in.

The Sauk Prairie area answered.

This looked to be a good opportunity to get the students involved, Marcouiller said. It provides a service to the community and is a great opportunity. Its a capstone project for the students to get real world experience in planning.

Prairie du Sac Village Administrator Alan Wildman said it was due to a recent updated provision in the Sauk Prairie Comprehensive Plan that was adopted in April to consider an inter-community Water Street visioning process. After seeing the request from UW, Wildman said the village put together a proposal, which the school accepted.

We are thrilled this project was accepted and that we will get to do this with the students, Wildman said. It will be looking at Water Street through the two villages and beyond, River Road to highway Z and how to get a consensus vision of what the corridor should look like.

Wildman said it could include anything from signage, building fronts, pedestrian usage, the roadway and more, all with the goal of making the Sauk Prairie area a better place to live.

It can only benefit us to have people from the outside come here and take a look, Wildman said. There might be things they come up with we really like. Some things might even get implemented. Some might not. But it will be a learning experience for both us and the students.

According to Ken Smith, communications liaison for the UW-Madison Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture, the project began last semester with a pre-workshop class which provided students with expectations and a chance to prepare them for the project.

Right now we are working on getting the gears turning, Smith said. We have reviewed a number of studies which have been done including a 2015 Great Sauk Trail Cooperative plan, a 2017 Sauk Prairie Commuter survey done by UW-Extension, a 2017 Sauk Prairie Market Analysis and other documents. We have also done precedence studies on other communities both in Wisconsin and across the United States for examples pertaining to the three different groups.

Smith said the student group will continue to explore examples from other communities and will conduct outreach in a way that will prevent duplication of previous work done.

We want to hear from youth, the elderly, as well as working-age adults in the community because each demographic group has a different perspective to offer on what they want Water Street to be, Smith said.

Marcouiller said there has been a shift in focus on communities near bodies of water on how to recapture the water front.

A lot of emphasis tends to be on Water Street but there is also a focus on how to recapture the waterfront, Marcouiller said.
Thomas J. Sollmann, 49, of Merrimac, passed away at University Hospital in Madison on Friday, Sept. 29, 2017.

Thomas was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 10, 1968, to Adam and Klara (Bandle) Sollmann. He graduated from Mather High School in Chicago, class of 1986. Following high school, he obtained an associates degree and enlisted in the United States Navy. In the Navy, he served aboard the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt as an AO  aviation ordnance, further services as a SeaBees connected with the aircraft carrier the USS Eisenhower. He retired as an I.T. 1  internet tech from the Navy after 25 years of service. Once retired, he moved back to the Merrimac area near the shores of Lake Wisconsin where he enjoyed fishing and hunting. He was a recognized marksman, and enjoyed playing darts and pool. He was a lifetime member of the VFW.

Tom is survived by his father, Adam Sollmann (Rose Barth); his mother, Klara (Tony) Kozar; stepmother Rosemary Sollmann; brother Lorenz (Patty) and their children, Lea, Josef and Jehannah Sollmann; close friends, Shellie (John Jr.) Benish and their boys, Kyle and J.J. and their dog that Tom adored, Clover.

A memorial mass will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 28, 2017, at St. Marys Catholic Church in Merrimac. A visitation will be held from 10 a.m. until the time of service. Military honors will be accorded by the Lachmund-Cramer VFW Post 7694.

Toms family would like to thank the doctors and nurses of University of Wisconsin Hospital Neuroscience ICU and his military family for all their care and support at this time.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to UW Organ & Tissue Donation, 450 Science Dr., Suite 220, Madison, WI 53711-9135.

Fair winds and following seas.

Hooverson Funeral Home is assisting the family with arrangements. For online condolences, visit hooversonfuneralhomes.com.
Safe trick or treat planned for Oct. 31

The Golden Living Facility in Wisconsin Dells will hold a community safe trick or treat event from 6 to 7 p.m. Oct. 31. Chili, hot dogs and apple cider will be available for the trick or treaters. Tour the facility, or just visit the residents in the dining room, who will hand out treats.

Trick or treat hours set

The City of Wisconsin Dells will hold trick or treat hours from 4 to 7 p.m. Oct. 31.

Red Cross blood drive scheduled for Nov. 4

A Red cross blood drive will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 4, at the Fire Station, 116 N. Lemonweir St., Lyndon Station. To donate blood, either download the American Red Cross Blood Donor App, visit redcrossblood.org or call 1-800-733-2767 to make an appointment or for more information. All blood types are needed. A blood donor card or drivers license or two other forms of identification are required at check-in.
Madisons wine, beer and liquor crowd could soon have another major shopping option.

Total Wine & More, a Maryland-based liquor store company, has filed a request with the city for a liquor license for a 23,146-square-foot store at West Towne Mall. The store would be nearly twice the size of the nearby liquor store at Woodmans Market and be located in the highly visible southeast corner of the mall near the intersection of South Gammon Road and the Beltline.

The proposed store would use part of the space that became available last year when the Sears store was reduced in size and be located adjacent to a 31,000-square-foot Dave & Busters restaurant scheduled to open this spring.

Total Wine bills itself as the countrys largest independent retailer of fine wine, beer and spirits and by the end of this year is scheduled to have over 170 locations in 20 states. In November 2016, Total Wine opened its first store in Wisconsin in Brookfield and will open a 24,000-square-foot store next spring in Greenfield.

The Madison store would be its third location in the state and is scheduled to open in May, according to documents filed with the city. Total Wine is requesting a class B liquor license similar to what a bar would obtain. Such a license would allow special events in the store, which would be equipped with a 48-seat education center, tasting bars and a growler station to fill jugs of beer for home consumption.

The Greenfield store has a class B license, but Brookfield officials rejected that stores plan for a class B license, resulting in a class A license that allows the store to pour only limited samples. Ald. Paul Skidmore, who represents the Far West Side of Madison, said the Madison license request will be introduced to the City Council next week, and he plans to meet with Total Wine representatives prior to the November meeting of the Alcohol License Review Committee.

Im not sure its going to be an issue given its location, Skidmore said of the request for a class B license. There are no residential neighbors, and Total Wine has a good reputation.

But the arrival of Total Wine will mean more competition for long-established retailers like Woodmans, Pick n Save, Hy-Vee, Metcalfes and Costco. In addition, Kwik Trip, which has beer and wine sections at most of its stores, is scheduled to remodel PDQ stores in the Madison area after purchasing the convenience store chain this year.

Smaller independent stores, however, could be vulnerable. Steves Liquor was founded in 1952 and has stores at Orchard Point in Fitchburg and in Madison at 122 Junction Road and 3618 University Ave., both of which are relatively short drives to West Towne.

Wayne Crokus, general manager at Steves on University Avenue, said the store added a six-tap growler bar in 2016 and this year increased the size of its beer cooler by 50 percent. He believes the arrival of Total Wine will be widely felt.

Anytime anyone comes in, whether its a big chain or a small store, it makes you go back and re-evaluate what youre doing, Crokus said. There are competitors all over the place.

Seritage Growth Properties in New York purchased the 18-acre Sears property from CBL & Associates, which owns West Towne Mall, in 2015, and in recent months has been renovating the Sears building and the parking lot. The $17 million project has included reducing the 111,000-square-foot Sears store to 56,000 square feet to make room for Dave & Busters and Total Wine.

Seritage, however, has backed away from plans to convert the Sears Automotive Center into two restaurants. Designs for the automotive center had called for outdoor patio seating on the ground level and outdoor dining space on the second level for one of the unidentified restaurants on the northern half of the building.

Total Wine was founded in 1991 by brothers David and Robert Trone, who opened a small store in Delaware. Now a typical store carries 8,000 different wines, 2,500 different beers and 3,000 different spirits. But the company has also developed a strategy that over the years has upended state liquor laws in a number of states.

According to the Boston Globe, the company is tilting the marketplace to its advantage through a mix of litigation, lobbying, and rallying support from customers.

Among the examples cited include lifting the ban on Sunday alcohol sales in Minnesota, lobbying for later closing times for liquor stores in Connecticut, overturning a ban on volume discounts in Maryland and lifting the cap on the number of store licenses in South Carolina, the newspaper reported.

State records show the company spent about $135,000 lobbying state officials since January of last year, the majority of those efforts directed at issues regarding class B liquor licenses.

A company spokesman for Total Wine did not return a message seeking comment.

Jerry OBrien, executive director of the Center for Retailing at UW-Madison, said while lower prices can drive shoppers to new stores, other tangibles are also at play.

It would seem to me that the location for Total Wine will require a special trip to shop there and that grocery stores where you can simply pick up a wine to go with your meal will continue to do well, OBrien said.

As far as Steves go, they have convenient locations with easy in and out and I would see that as an advantage, OBrien said. My experience is that they also have knowledgeable staff. So Ill wait to see if Total Wine could improve on the shopping experience and value.
If Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos had ever served in the military or in law enforcement, he might know what an actual terrorist  foreign or domestic  looks like.

So when he called three senators terrorists for hatching a backroom budget deal with Gov. Scott Walker, what he probably meant was that they engaged in some terrible government.

This is something Vos does know something about, although hed look a bit hypocritical accusing someone else of engaging in it.

Four GOP senators initially said they couldnt vote for the $76 billion 2017-19 state budget the Assembly passed on Sept. 13. That was just enough of them to kill the measure. So Walker reportedly promised Sens. Duey Stroebel, Chris Kapenga and Steve Nass that in exchange for their yes votes, hed use his partial veto powers to make the changes they wanted to the budget.

Vos is right that the pet concerns of three senators shouldnt hold up an entire two-year spending plan.

This is the document that appropriates basic funding, after all, for everything from schools to economic development to Medicaid.

But Vos has been far less distressed about terrible government when its promised to benefit his political fortunes.

He supported the effort in 2011 to create new legislative and congressional redistricting maps in secret, at a GOP-friendly law firm, and with vows from fellow Republicans that they wouldnt talk about the effort.

All of the cloak, dagger and gerrymandering had its intended effect: The GOP has won big majorities in the Legislature, despite statewide vote totals that suggest the states voters, as a group, are much more purple than red.

To add insult to injury, Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald have authorized spending more than $2 million (and counting) to defend the maps all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Then in 2015, Vos was discovered to be a major driver behind an attempt to eviscerate the states open records law by way of an anonymous, 11th-hour amendment to the 2015-17 state budget. Public outcry killed the effort, but that didnt stop his office from later drafting legislation that would have had the same effect. He ultimately backed off that, too.

If Vos was really that upset about budget changes made possible by backroom dealing and Walkers veto pen, he had ways to retaliate that are more substantive than name-calling.

For one, he could have brought the measure up in his chamber to override Walkers vetoes. Assembly Democrats, at least, would have jumped at that opportunity.

He also could have called for new limits to the governors partial veto power. Wisconsin got rid of the so-called Frankenstein veto  by which governors could delete words and cobble together sentences to create new budget provisions  in 2008. But Wisconsins governor still has an unusually powerful veto pen, said Dennis Dresang, a UW-Madison professor emeritus of political science.

Vos apologized for the terrorist jab on Monday, and its probably best to reserve the label for those who kill and maim people.

If not, it would prove pretty easy to find terrorists in state government.




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Attorneys for a Wisconsin man convicted of homicide in a case featured on the Netflix series "Making A Murderer" are asking a circuit court to reconsider a prior ruling rejecting a request for a new trial.

The motion for reconsideration filed on behalf of Steven Avery in Manitowoc County Monday says the latest request is based on new evidence and legal errors.

A judge earlier this month rejected Avery's request for a new trial, saying his attorneys failed to establish any grounds to warrant a new trial. Avery was sentenced to life in prison for the 2005 slaying of Teresa Halbach, a 25-year-old photographer. Avery maintains police framed him.
Gov. Scott Walker says Wisconsin's economy is "on fire" thanks to tax increases passed by Illinois' most powerful Democrat in a new political advertisement to help out a fellow Republican governor's re-election bid.

In an ad paid for by Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, Walker appears with the governors of Indiana and Missouri to thank Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan for making moves that they say prompted job growth in their states.

"We want to say  thank you," Walker says to kick off the advertisement, appearing in front of what looks like a green screen showing the interior of the Wisconsin State Capitol.

"For raising Illinois' taxes ... our economy's on fire," Walker continues. Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens adds, "Were growing good jobs." And Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb says "were growing union jobs faster than Illinois."

Walker then tells Madigan: "So, we owe you."

Holcomb: "Hoosiers love you, Mike Madigan."

Walker: "Cheeseheads love you, Madigan."

Madigan, who this year became the longest-serving House Speaker in U.S. history, and his fellow House Democrats voted this year to override Rauner's veto of the state's first budget in two years and also to increase income taxes in Illinois from from 3.75 percent to 4.95 percent.

Madigan and Rauner have been fiercely at odds since Rauner first announced he was seeking the state's top office, which he won in 2014. Rauner's successful campaign was mounted, in part, on imitating Walker's tough stance against labor unions.
Regulator assess readiness of new Leningrad unit

24 October 2017

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The Russian regulator Rostechnadzor has started "testing the readiness for physical start-up" of unit 1 of the Leningrad Phase II nuclear power plant under construction in western Russia. Rosenergoatom, the nuclear power plant operator subsidiary of Rosatom, started cold and hot function testing at the VVER-1200 unit in April.

The construction site of Leningrad Phase II (Image: Rosatom)

Vladislav Manakov, deputy head of Rostechnadzor's department for regulating the safety of nuclear power plants and research facilities, presented the plant's director, Vladimir Peregud, with the official documents of the audit for signing.

According to the Rosatom statement, Manakov said: "This stroke of the pen opens a new milestone in the life cycle of the Leningrad NPP power units."

The large-scale inspection will take two weeks to complete and will be conducted by specialists in construction supervision, licensing, the design and manufacturing of equipment, and nuclear and radiation safety, among others.

Consideration will be given to the fact the project includes a significant amount of documentation, which covers: putting into operation the unit's buildings and premises; commissioning the readiness of its technological systems and equipment; and test reports on safety systems and systems important for safety, Rosatom said. Particular attention will be paid to issues concerning nuclear power plant personnel, training and qualifications, it added.

Based on the results of the inspection, the regulator will make an independent assessment of the readiness of the unit for start-up, during which fresh nuclear fuel assemblies will be loaded into its core.

The company did not give the expected date for the unit's start-up, but confirmed it would be before the end of this year.

The existing Leningrad plant site has four operating RMBK-1000 units, while Leningrad II will have four VVER-1200 units. The general designer of Leningrad II is Atomproekt, while the general contractor is TITAN-2 JSC.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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South African minister recognises nuclear future

24 October 2017

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Economics remain the key driver behind South Africa's policy decision to pursue nuclear power, newly appointed energy minister David Mahlobo told a meeting of the Generation IV International Forum (GIF). He said the country is still interested in the possible future deployment of Generation IV technology, such as the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, but that it is currently focused on "readily deployable" technologies to meet its electricity needs.

Mahlobo addressed a GIF Policy Group meeting in Cape Town on 19 October, the day after President Jacob Zuma announced his appointment as energy minister as part of a reshuffle of the National Executive. The previous energy minister, Mmamaloko Kubayi, who was appointed to the role in a cabinet reshuffle in March, has become minister of communications.

Mahlobo said South Africa recognised the role of nuclear power in ensuring security of energy supply and meeting the challenge of climate change and promoted an energy mix of coal, gas, renewables and nuclear.

"Each of these options has their role; some of the energy sources are intermittent supply, while others, such as nuclear and coal, are base-load supply," he said. "South Africa has made a policy decision to pursue nuclear energy as part of the energy mix and recognise the role of nuclear as a base-load source of energy in ensuring security of supply and climate change mitigation," he added.

The two-unit Koeberg nuclear power plant provides about 6% of South Africa's energy mix, he noted. South Africa's Integrated Resource Plan for 2010-2030 calls for construction of 9600 MWe of new nuclear capacity - supplying 23% of the country's electricity - to come on line by 2030.

Mahlobo welcomed a recent decision by the country's Department of Environmental Affairs to authorise utility Eskom's Final Environmental Impact Report for a new nuclear power plant at Duynefontein, next to the existing Koeberg plant.

"We welcome this decision as it allows for a public participation process which we believe will propel the country towards the fulfilment of the government policy position on an all-inclusive energy mix," he said.

"Being a developing country, our key driver to our policy decision for nuclear power is the economics of the energy source. Currently Koeberg is one of our lowest cost electricity sources, and generation III nuclear power plants remain a good economic choice for South Africa. Generation IV nuclear power plants promise improved economics and South Africa looks forward to deploying such advanced energy systems for its development," he said.

South Africa is one of the founding members of the GIF, an international task force founded in 2001 to develop and design the next generation of nuclear energy systems. Mahlobo said the country is focusing on "readily deployable technologies" to address its electricity needs as coal-fired power plants are decommissioned. Although South Africa's own Generation IV-type reactor project, the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, was placed in care and maintenance in 2010 "we remain interested to still deploy such technology in the future", he said.

Prior to the cabinet reshuffle, Mahlobo served as minister of state security.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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Located in both the Quay County of the state of New Mexico and the Deaf Smith County of the state of Texas, Glenrio is an unincorporated community in the US, formerly known as Rock Island. Glenrio is a ghost town that sits on the New Mexico/Texas state line found on Route 66. The community comprises of the Glenrio Historic District, which in 2007 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Glenrio was established in 1903 on the Rock Island Railroad as a railroad siding. The communitys name was derived from a Scottish word glen meaning valley and rio the Spanish word meaning river, but it is neither a river nor a valley. Glenrio was once a monument along the boom and bust highway of Route 66, but now it is a forgotten ghost town that is home to the blowing tumbling winds and critters.

Town History

Around 1901, the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad found its way through the area, and about two years later the small town of Glenrio was established. By 1905, the settlement was open to small farmers who lived on plots of land measuring about 0.23 square miles. A year later, the Chicago, Rock Island, and Gulf Railway built a station in the area. Glenrio began to scurry with freight shipments and cattle. At first, the settlement was predominantly populated by big cattle ranches, but as time went by wheat and sorghum were planted on a large portion of the area. The expansion of farming had a great impact on the growth of the areas population. Despite there being a post office on the New Mexico side of Glenrio, mail arrived at the railroad depot office on the Texas side. Due to the communitys precarious location, the area became the subject of a lengthy battle on tax rights between both states. By 1920, there was a land office, service stations, a hardware store, several grocery stores, cafes, and a hotel in Glenrio. There was even a newspaper known as the Glenrio Tribune which was published between the years of 1910 to 1934. Since Deaf Smith County was a dry county, there were no bars on the Texas side of Glenrio, similarly, the New Mexico side had no service stations because the state had a higher gasoline tax rate. During the communitys thriving years both entrepreneurs and politicians decided that the US needed a national highway system, thus Route 66 was established a decade later. Soon after, the surrounding area became a popular stop over for travelers on Route 66.

From Prospering Town to Ghost Town

Despite its prosperity, the towns population never grew, and its few residents survived on the tourism based businesses they had established. However, Glenrio suffered a severe blow when the Rock Island Depot was closed, and things went further downhill following the establishment of interstate 40, which by passed the small town. Slowly the towns small businesses were uprooted and relocated elsewhere until no residents remained in the area.

Present-day Glenrio

At present, Glenrio is only visited by tourists who wish to relive the history of the old Route 66. The area is now home to a collection of dusty buildings that have long been abandoned. The buildings include a post office, an old motel, and a gas station. Glenrio also remains home to the Little Juarez Cafe which has long been closed. The old main street on Glenrio still remains intact and continuous to old Route 66.
Tirana is the capital and the largest city of Albania. It is the center of the country's economy, culture, and government activities. To the east of Tirana is the Dajti Mountain and to its north-west side is the slight valley opening. The city is 700 kilometers from Athens in Greece, 290 kilometers from Skopje and 160 miles from Pristina. The precise coordinates of the city are 4119'44" N 1949'04" E.

History

The city was founded is 1614 and thousands of different ethnicities have inhabited the area. Tirana Mosaic, which is an ancient building in the town, is believed to have been built by Romans during the third century. The establishment of the city was later done down the line in the twentieth century by the act of Congress following the country's declaration of its Independence in 1912. In the year 1989, there was the introduction of the Albanian language in Tirana's schools. The Serbian army later occupied the city for a short period. Austro, a Hungarian architect, organized and compiled the outline and designs of the city, and in 1923 Austrian architects Armando Brasini and Florestano Di Fausto created the first plans during the reign of the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini. In 1939, the fascist forces of Mussolini took over the city leading to the appointment of a puppet government within the town. From 1944 to 1994, improvements to city layout and design took place through the construction of magnificent complexes, large factories, and companies. The transportation within the city during this period was by bicycles, trucks, and buses. Besides, private car ownership was against the law at the time, hence limiting private means of transport. In 2000, the former city mayor launched a campaign that propagated the demolition of the illegal building within the city so that it could provide space for the expansion of Major roads and streets.

Climate

From the Koppen climate interpretation, Tirana has a humid subtropical climate during the summer time, and is the eighth sunniest city in Europe. The city experiences a vast rainfall of up to 44 millimeters whereby the winters are cold and wet with occurrences of snowfall that melt after a short period.

Demography

Tirana is the city with the largest population in Albania, probably because it is the largest among all the cities in the country. The city houses more than 800,000 people and its occupants belong to different ethnicities just like any other city in developed nations. The ethnicity distribution includes 84% Albanians, 0.35% Greek, and a negligible percentage of Macedonians. Moreover, Tirana has an impressive fact in that the female population living in the city is higher than the male population.

Economy

The heart of Albania's economy is in Tirana because it hosts thousands of companies that belong to the local and international investors. The city's economy can be categorized into the service sector, which is the most significant source of income at 68.5%. The city's industrial sector contributes 26.1% of revenue, while its agricultural sector contributes to 5.4% of income.
Decrying repeated failures by the state to better staff his office, Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne called on Dane County officials Tuesday to approve three new attorney jobs for the DAs office that were among those turned down in the latest state budget.

He also said prosecutors will be more selective about the cases they charge in light of caseloads that outstrip staffing levels.

Ozanne said the three attorney jobs he sought were not included in Dane County Executive Joe Parisis budget, so he is now asking the County Board to put the jobs into next years budget. He said that earlier, as he has done every year since 2011, he asked the state to add about a dozen new prosecutors to his office, but that request was denied.

Prosecutors are generally state jobs, funded by state money. Before 1990, prosecutors were paid by counties. Support staff for DAs offices is generally provided by counties.

County Board Chairwoman Sharon Corrigan said, however, that no budget amendments seeking attorneys have been submitted, and even if one was, its prospects would be slim. The state is responsible for funding assistant district attorneys, she said, and it needs to step up and provide funding increases.

Ozanne said that given the shortage of staff, prosecutors will become more selective about the cases that they charge. He said priority will continue to be given to homicides, gun-related and violent crimes, sexual assaults, human trafficking, domestic violence and drunken driving, but other kinds of cases may not be prosecuted.

Ozanne declined to be specific about what kinds of cases those might be, only saying that we are evaluating that right now.

We will continue to read every referral that comes into this office, Ozanne said. We will evaluate each individual case on its own merits. Unfortunately, there are going to be some tough decisions that were going to have to make.

He said his office seeks alternative funding and grants for staff jobs, has restructured the office and curtailed some work outside the office in the community, but lawyers are still working nights and weekends to keep up.

We are being taxed beyond our limits, Ozanne said.

Ozanne said he is asking Dane County for the three attorney positions because there is a perfect storm in the DAs office in which almost all prosecutors with at least 20 years of experience have retired, and several mid-career prosecutors have taken jobs elsewhere, such as in the state Attorney Generals office or the U.S. Attorneys Office.

Younger lawyers dont stay long, he said, because of high case volumes and little to no pay increases. This year, he said, thats been challenged by Dane Countys highest number of homicides, along with many more non-fatal shooting incidents.

Ozanne called the situation a public safety crisis, a term he has used in the past to describe staff shortages in his office. He said the office continues to be staffed at the same level it was in 1985, despite a population in Dane County that has grown from about 300,000 to more than 500,000.

Ozanne is asking Dane County to fund a prosecutor who would specialize in serious traffic crashes, a sensitive crimes prosecutor and a violent felony case prosecutor. He said that some other counties, such as Brown, Eau Claire and Ozaukee, have funded attorneys to work as prosecutors.

Corrigan said the countys funding of the DAs office has increased from $3.7 million in 2011 to $5.2 million this year, as paralegals and support staff have been added, some to aid diversion programs as alternatives to prosecution.

A budget amendment asking for money for attorneys would have to be proposed in writing through a county committee, such as Public Protection and Judiciary, which met Tuesday and will meet again Monday. No amendment has been submitted, Corrigan said.

When Ozanne has sought money from the county for attorneys in the past, Corrigan said, the response from the board has been that funding for lawyers is a state function.

We need to be able to rely on the state for doing the part that theyre responsible for, Corrigan said.

Sheriff Dave Mahoney, appearing at a news conference with Ozanne, said law enforcement relies on attorneys in the DAs office to represent crime victims in court, and said he applauds Ozannes decision to speak out Tuesday.

Its inexcusable that our state leaders, our lawmakers who are entwined in petty name-calling and arguments at the state level, fail to meet the needs of our citizens who are victims of crime, Mahoney said.
Madisons Overture Center announced Monday that it will cut ties with Tom Wopat, the former TV star for whom Overtures regional Tommy Awards program for youth talent was named, after the Lodi native was charged with indecently grabbing or touching actresses in Massachusetts.

Wopat, 66, who achieved fame in the 1980s action/comedy series The Dukes of Hazzard and went on to a Broadway career, faces charges that he groped an adult female cast member and that he was indecent toward a 16-year-old girl while rehearsing for the musical 42nd Street at a theater near Boston, the Boston Globe reported late last month.

In the latter charge, Wopat is accused of poking the girl in the stomach, hitting her buttocks with a script and intruding in a female dressing room, the Globe reported.

Given the recent news surrounding Mr. Wopat, Overture Center for the Arts has severed all ties with him and will be moving forward with discussions for the high school musical awards programs name, said a statement from Overture Center.

However, the program will continue to be known as the Tommy Awards, at least into mid-2018, Overture officials said.

Live shows headlined by Wopat scheduled for this fall and winter at the Janesville Performing Arts Center and Stoughton Opera House were recently canceled.

Overtures decision is a moral dilemma for me because I am a strong believer in (presumed innocence)  and we should be in this day and age, said Tim Sauers, vice president of programming and community engagement, who created the Tommy Awards nine years ago to encourage and honor excellence in high school musical theater.

But the allegations against (Wopat) have just been building, Sauers said. Even if he comes off innocent, its tarnished our program.

We feel this is an unfortunate decision, Wopats publicist Dan Fortune said. Tom would love to do an interview when these legal issues are settled.

Sauers said news of the allegations against Wopat nearly brought him to tears. I love this program and I love the kids, and I love everybody whos involved with this.

At the launch of the Tommy Awards, Wopat agreed to let Overture use his name, but he has not participated in or supported the program financially, according to the performing arts center.

Advocacy for theater

The Tommy Awards program sends skilled reviewers to see high school productions and rate them. The top shows and performers are honored at an annual awards gala in the centers Overture Hall.

In the 2016-17 season, the judges viewed 87 productions at 82 Wisconsin schools in 23 counties, according to Overture. More than 400 students performed in the annual Tommy Awards ceremony.

The wealth of regional talent discovered through the program led to the creation of the Tommy Ensemble, a performance group of top high school talent.

The next Tommy Awards will be on June 10, 2018, and the name will remain until then, Sauers said.

Program partners, alumni, schools and others will be consulted as the program is renamed, he said. We want to do this in a very thoughtful, inclusive way, and we see that rolling out after the end of our fiscal year on June 30, he said.

With news of the first allegations, Overture removed Wopats signature from electronic media and contacted him by email about the change, Sauers said.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Florida's Legislative Black Caucus on Tuesday called for an apology from White House Chief of Staff John Kelly for misstatements about U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla.

State Sen. Perry Thurston, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat and chairman of the caucus, said the group is not making the same request from President Donald Trump.

We understand that (Trump) may say anything on any given day, Thurston said. But we expect a four-star general (Kelly) to bring this president up to his level, not for the general to come down to the president's level. And that's why we're so disappointed with (Kelly's) conduct.

Trump and Wilson, an African-American, have sparred over details of a telephone call that the president made to offer condolences to the widow of U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson.

Amid the sparring, Kelly claimed last week that Wilson boasted in 2015 about raising money for the FBI's Miami field office during the building's dedication ceremony.

In a video of the ceremony --- posted by the Sun Sentinel --- Wilson discussed how she pushed for legislation to name the building after two fallen agents. No mention was made of Wilson securing the building's funding.

When asked about the Sun Sentinel video, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said last week during a press briefing that it would be highly inappropriate to get into a debate with a four-star Marine general.

Members of the Legislative Black Caucus wouldn't back Wilson's assertion that Kelly made a racist remark in calling her an empty barrel. But state Sen. Audrey Gibson, D-Jacksonville, said comments from the White House that Wilson is wacky and all hat with no cattle, are very demeaning and dehumanizing to Wilson, a former state legislator.

As far as I'm concerned, it's very sexist as well, Gibson said. I doubt that if it were a white male member of Congress, or a black male member of Congress, as a matter of fact, that what we have seen would not happen.

The caucus also called for an explanation of the Oct. 4 death of Johnson and three other U.S. soldiers in Niger, as well as the military's purpose in the West African country.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A former Tallahassee restaurant owner, who is also designated as a "high risk" sex offender, has been arrested for re-activating his Facebook account.

Stacy Eugene Ethridge, 48, re-activated his Facebook account on Oct. 5, 2017, according to a probable cause affidavit. He is designated as a sex offender in both Florida and Georgia.

As a result, the court revoked his bond on October 11, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. On Monday, he turned himself in to the Leon County Detention Facility.

According to official documents, Ethridge has been classified as a "high risk" sexual offender.

He had been free on bond after being arrested in April 10, 2017, for failing to update his permanent residency within 48 hours of his change and for failing to register his Facebook account.

A plea hearing has been set for Nov. 15.

Ethridge owned a restaurant in Tallahassee, Zin & Sin, that closed on Jan. 1, 2017, for what he described as financial struggles.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Leon County Schools says its reached a tentative agreement with the Leon County Teachers Association on contracts for the 2018 - 2019 school year.

Among some of the agreed upon language are guaranteed bonuses for highly rated teachers. The contract proposal also includes:

A guaranteed $1,200 bonus for teachers rated as Highly Effective who are not covered in the Florida Best and Brightest Programsuch as guidance counselors, media specialists, and speech and language pathologists among others.

A guaranteed $800 bonus for those teachers not covered in the Florida Best and Brightest Program who are rated as rated as Effective.

A 10% increase in the supplement base for teachers who work primarily with students after hours in the areas of academics, performing arts and athletics.

LCS will vote on a final decision on the contract's language in the Leon County School Board meeting Tuesday afternoon.

Superintendent Rocky Hanna says they're excited to bring the proposal to the school board.

"The speed and positivity of the negotiation are indicative of our strong relationship with LCTA and the professionalism on both sides of the table, said Hanna. While this agreement means additional dollars for our teachers in the way of a small bonus, it falls short of what really needs to be done, which is to eliminate the Florida Best and Brightest Bonus program. I continue to lobby the state legislature to give school districts the autonomy to properly compensate employees based on local needs and priorities.

The LCTA voted to ratify the contract last Tuesday.

The Leon County School Board will take up the issue for a vote Tuesday evening at 6 p.m. The school board will meet in the Aquilina Howell Building at 3955 W. Pensacola Street.

You can also watch the meetings live on the Leon County Schools YouTube channel.
ATHENS, Ga. (WTXL) - A judge is weighing in on the Tara Grinstead murder case and a gag issue that was ordered surrounding it.

Tara Grinstead was a teacher and a former beauty queen that vanished back in 2005. There were no developments until this year, when two people were arrested in relation to the case.

Attorneys on both sides of the argument presented their argument to Georgia's highest court.

Media outlet attorneys inside the courtroom said that the gag order is a prior restraint on the public, while Dukes' attorney argued that Bo Dukes will not have the right to a fair trial if the gag order is lifted.

He says all of the media attention is hindering the state from being able to find an area where they can try Bo Dukes for the murder of Tara Grinstead.
TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) -- Following the destruction caused by Hurricane Maria, the dean of the College of Law at Florida State University reached out to the dean at the University of Puerto Rico at offered to host students. Yesterday, there was a welcome luncheon held on campus and all the law students and faculty were in attendance to welcome the new students.

With all resources expected to be impaired for months, students made the difficult choice to come to America and continue their studies. The students arrived early in the semester, so they were able to keep current with their studies. This helped smooth a difficult transition after so much disruption in their personal lives. Students said it was challenging making the decision to leave their family, but they felt it was something they needed to do.

Also, the College of Law ensured each guest student was assigned an F.S.U. law student and local lawyer mentor to help them get settled and to offer whatever support they might need. Alumni in the area donated apartments or houses near campus, so the students don't have to worry about transportation. Julian Rendon, a San Juan Local and 2nd year law student noted, "It's super hard leaving your family behind and country behind in such a bad situation. When I was there I tried doing everything I could to help, but I made it here and I'm happy to be here. Everything has been great and everyone has been treating me so well."

Unfortunately, about 5 students were simply out the tuition money paid at the University of Puerto Rico. So, not only did F.S.U. alumni offer housing, but President Thrasher waived all tuition fees, which allowed these students to continue their studies. The 2nd and 3rd year law students will be here for the remainder of the semester.
(WTOL) - The Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force is searching for a man wanted for the rape and murder of a 13-month-old girl.

Police are looking for 37-year-old Joshua Gurto, who is now a fugitive in this case.

Police say Gurto is a white male standing at about five feet 10 inches tall and weighing 145 pounds. He has a deformed right ear and misaligned jaw, as well as tattoos on his right forearm.

Police say Gurto has ties to Ashtabula County and western Pennsylvania, but could be anywhere.

The task force is offering up to $5,000 for information that would lead to Gurto's arrest.

Anyone with information should call the Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force at 1-866-4WANTED or text WANTED and the information to 84711.
CRAWFORDVILLE, Fla. (WTXL) - The Wakulla County Sheriff's Office kicked off the holiday season early with a special donation to the Children's Miracle Network.

A $300 check was presented Monday at the Sheriff's Office headquarters.

The Children's Miracle Network serves more than 10 million children every year by providing health care and improving the lives of the youth.

Since 1983, Childrens Miracle Network Hospitals has helped fill funding gaps by raising more than $5 billion.

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QUINCY, Fla. (WTXL) - After a mysterious fire takes down a Quincy landmark, the community is trying to figure out how to use the empty site left behind.

The old William Stevens High School burned down in March. The building went up in flames overnight, destroying the old school in just six hours. State officials say this case is closed and the fire is ruled as undetermined.

Now that the debris is cleared away, it's time to do something with the space left behind. Quincy and Gadsden County leaders held a community meeting looking for suggestions Monday night.

Not everyone agrees about how the space should be used, but one thing is certainly clear: the folks in Quincy are passionate about making sure they use this opportunity to improve their community and honor its history.

"We can only move forward if we work together," said one meeting attendee.

For nearly a century, the Stevens High School building stood on 4th Street, but after a fire destroyed the Quincy landmark back in March, all that's left is the old cafeteria building and an empty field. Now many in the area are weighing in about what to do with the site.

"We want startups for small businesses," said one resident.

"You have to have something there to make poor people want to feel good about themselves and have skills to go to work," said Gadsden County Commissioner Brenda Holt.

"Some folks wanted a substation because this is an area that does have a lot of drug activities as well as crime. A lot of burglary," said Sherrie Taylor, Gadsden County Board of County Commissioners Chair. "Some people want to have a health [clinic]. Some people wanted after-school tutorial programs for school-aged children. An art gallery. It was a smorgasbord of ideas, great ideas."

The issue now: planning out and funding all the ambitious ideas. The Gadsden County Administrator says they have about $465,000 in insurance money from the fire and the city could apply for grants. However, one meeting attendee warned that when it comes to taking on a new project, there are a lot of details to work out.

"Consider parking, staffing and how much of a presence through the course of the day will someone be there to ensure that, whatever we do, it's something that is here for the long haul," said the attendee.

At this point, much is still up in the air, but one thing everyone agrees on is using some of the bricks from the old building to create a memorial for the lost local landmark.

"We certainly don't want to get rid of the history," said Taylor. "We don't want to let all that has come out of that school die down just because it burned down. We still want to preserve that."

Another meeting will be held at the community center on Saturday, November 4th, to narrow down the list of ideas and begin formulating a plan for what's next.

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YAKIMA, Wash. -- A federal judge has handed a defeat to tribal members who say a sacred site was destroyed to expand a highway near Oregons M
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These are critical times for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ministers. These are the hours, the days, perhaps the weeks, in which they will be tested for their integrity, morality and leadership. If they fail to stand firm in the coming weeks against MK David Amsalems bill which is known as the French law, yet increasingly seems like the Bibi lawwe can close up shop.

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Did Netanyahu say he hoped the State of Israel would last 100 years? If thats what he meant, that the state would keep a prime minister suspected of criminal offenses while its elected representatives ensure no one could touch himIm not sure we want the remaining years.

Up until Sunday, when we saw Coalition Chairman David Bitan storm the Israeli parliament in a bid to get the bill approved as soon as possible, things werent clear enough. It seemed like a lot of talk that would result in nothing. Now its clear: Netanyahu wants a tailor-made law immediately, and the coalition is required to support him.

Prime Minister Netanyahu (Photo: EPA)

We heard what Minister Ofir Akunis told the leaders of the coalition parties Sunday: We give you everything and get nothing in return. In other words, a tailor-made pro-Bibi law is a demand Likud is presenting to its partners as part of the political give and take.

Theres no shame left. Everything is being done in broad daylight, aggressively, in an unbridled manner and without even trying to pretend. We knew where things were headed, we saw the trend, but we didnt understand how desperate and determined Netanyahu was to stop the investigations against him.

All of his preparation workthe attacks on the Supreme Court, on the State Attorneys Office, on the police and on the media, the mass Likud rallies, the long trips abroadwas intended for the decisive moment, for the creation of a quick aggressive legislative move, which would end up becoming the Bibi law. A law that would determine all the investigations against him must be stopped immediately. And if the High Court intervenes and tries to overturn the law, he would get the Right to enact the override clause, which prevents the court from striking down Knesset laws. The Right, which has a personal interest in a law against the High Court, would gladly enact the override clause.

Hard to believe? Ask yourself why is Netanyahu so motivated to pass this law. Why is he so interested in it, if it supposedly wont apply to his own investigations? It was enough to see the clash at the coalition heads meeting over a weeks delay in voting on the law to understand its direct connection to the prime ministers affairs.

Prime Minister Netanyahu and MK Amsalem. Everything is being done aggressively, in broad daylight (Photo: MK Amsalem's Facebook page)

A bill passes a preliminary reading, and then, ahead of its first reading, clauses can be added and changed. Netanyahu's aim is to enact a law that would apply to his investigations retroactivelynot to what will happen in the future, but to everything that has already happened. He will toss in a limitation on a prime minister to only two terms in office, to satisfy Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon and provide them with an alibi to support the law.

But dont be confused. Its a joke. This restriction wont actually apply to Netanyahu. Trust him and his Rottweilers. The prime minister has no interest and no time to pass the law and then move up the elections, which he denies he has any interest in. He has even given Kahlon his word that he would pass the 2019 budget.

Its possible he knows whats waiting in the interrogation rooms and must delay the investigations to prevent an upgrade of the suspicions from breach of trust to bribery following the new evidence collected. In such an event, the new law would protect him and stop any new investigations. Every day that goes by charges with new meaning his famous saying that theres nothing because there was nothing.

What Netanyahu wants is quick legislation, with a retroactive Bibi law that would apply to him to and stop the investigations right away. And then he would remain in office for the next two years and run for prime minister again. Thats the deal, theres no other deal, and thats where the political system is headed. And if no one puts his finger in the dike and ward off the muddy waves led by Amsalem and Bitan, it will happen. The plan exists. The question is will it work. Pressure makes people do bad things, and pressure is what Netanyahu's emissaries are conveying.

Lets hope the commissioner and the police dont cave, that the State Attorneys Office and the attorney general examine the evidence according to the letter of the law, that the public realizes Netanyahu is acting like a guilty person and trying to halt a personal investigation, that the coalition refuses to take part in this move and that the Likud party doesnt opt for mass suicide against all the states authorities for Netanyahu's sake.

And it depends on the Israeli public as well, on when will it open its eyes and realize whats taking shape under its nose, and on how willing is it to be a partner in crime.
If Breaking the Silence didnt exist, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have had to invent it. Otherwise, who would be his ultimate punching bag, his alibi, his excuse?

Those young leftists, the bleeding hearts, who speak out in the name of morality and who care for Palestinian rights more than they care for their own people. For the settlers, for example. These people are just what he needs in times of distress, when the hatred on the Israeli street must be further inflamed and when he must divert the attention from himself, to ensure that the terrible stench emanating from his investigations wont affect his public status.

Elor Azaria, the far-right soldier convicted of manslaughter, was embraced and turned into a hero by the prime minister. The left-wing fighters, those who personally experienced the ills of the occupation, are being turned into traitors. Netanyahu excitedly informed the people of Israel that he would finally put an end to these dangerous enemies in the Knessets winter session. He would destroy Breaking the Silence.

Breaking the Silence members. These people are just what Netanyahu needs in times of distress (Photo: Amit Magal)

This attack and elimination operation would be performed in a two-pronged flanking maneuver: a parliamentary commission of inquiry would be appointed to determine that Breaking the Silence is harming Israels security and putting the IDF at risk of being prosecuted at the International Criminal Court in The Hague; and simultaneously, legislation would be completed to outlaw the traitors. Thats the fate of a person who slanders Israel, even if he is among its finest sons.

Only two days went by, and one initiative was already thwarted by the Knessets legal advisor: A parliamentary investigation of civil society organizations on an ideological background contradicts basic regime principles, Eyal Yinon wrote. One bird has been intercepted. Netanyahu may have another one in his hand, but it will likely die too before spreading its wings.

By the way, if the Israeli government seeks to outlaw Breaking the Silence by arguing that the publication of their testimonies would lead the IDF to The Hague, it would likely have to outlaw the Military Censor as well. Its a matter of basic logic: In March 2016, Chief Military Censor Col. Ariella Ben-Avraham cleared Breaking the Silence of all suspicions. Everything Breaking the Silence published was handed over to the censor in advance and approved for publication, as it did not compromise state security in a direct manner, she ruled. Naturally, the censor suppresses any information it believes might get IDF soldiers in trouble in international tribunals.

The chief military censor and the Knessets legal advisor defended not only Breaking the Silence. They defended Israeli democracy too. Netanyahu will have no choice but to understand that he isnt Vladimir Putin, and that Israel isnt Russia.
Former Mossad director Efraim Halevy met his Saudi counterpart Prince Turki al-Faisal, former director of Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Directorate, at a public event held in New York Monday, where the two discussed different Middle-East issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran nuclear deal and internal Syrian conflict.

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The meeting of the two former intelligence agency directors of countries that have no diplomatic relations came shortly after the Saudi kingdom explicitly refuted rumors Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud visited Israel.

Prince Turki, 72, headed Saudi intelligence from 1979 until 2001 and was also the kingdom's envoy to the United States. When he began speaking, Turki clarified that although he has met several senior former security establishment officials since his retirement, he will not speak to current representatives of the Israeli government or its authorities.

The former heads of Israeli and Saudi intelligence met in New York (Photo: Israel Policy Forum)

Saudi Arabia has never conducted relations with Israeli representatives, even covert ones , Turki claimed, but hinted the rumors of the crown prince's visit can be sourced to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "mistaken impression he has adopted."

"I don't think there are any 'under the table' talks. I think Mr. Netanyahu painted a picture for himself in which there are some clandestine understandings between the two countries because of Iran, and is thus trying to present supposed support from the Arab world in order to encircle Iran while avoiding the Palestinian issue altogether," the Saudi chief said.

"I think Netanyahu believes this picture. Unfortunately, from what I heard from Saudi officials and from what I can glean from looking at the international arena, there are currently no talks between Israel and any Arab states," he claimed.

Al-Faisal said PM Netanyahu wishes to believe there are covert talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel, but there aren't (Photo: EPA)

Halevy then surprised the pair's audience by recounting a secret meeting held in London in the 70s between Kamal Adham, Turki's predecessor in Saudi intelligence, and Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Abba Eban.

This attempted liaison failed for rather astounding reasons, Halevy said. "Adham used to go on months' long trips throughout the Arab world, and legend has it he would carry bags of money on these trips and hand them out to drum up support," the former Israeli Mossad director recounted.

"We thought we might be able to put together a meeting between (Adham) and our Minister of Foreign Affairs Abba Eban, and everything was set. But it was early in the morning and a colleague of mine failed to wake Eban up in time, so he missed the meeting. I was always regretted that incident. Maybe things would look differently today, but sometimes that's the way it is: people shouldn't sleep on the job," Halevy joked.

Halevy said former Minister of Foreign Affairs Eban missed a meeting with a top Saudi official because he overslept (Photo: Fritz Cohen, GPO)

The public meeting between Halevy and his Saudi counterpart, who insisted on pronouncing the Israeli official's name as "Halabi" (meaning from Halab, or Aleppo, in Syriaed.), also included former US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy.

The meeting was the culmination of a conference organized by the Israel Policy Forum in collaboration with Commanders for Israel's Security at the Streicker Center in Manhattan's Temple Emanu-El.

Using fluent English, Turki underlined the importance of the Arab initiative to resolving the Middle-East's conflicts and determined that despite Israel and Saudi Arabia's shared interests when it came to Iran, any collaboration between the two countries will not lead to resolving Israel's conflict with the Palestinians.

"What we need is 'over the table' talks, not underneath it. Israel needs to officially present its stance, and we can go from there. Iran is a goal shared by my country and Israel, and if that's the case then let us remove the Palestinian issue from the agenda. If we do so, then we can have back-channel talks," Turki said.

PA President Abbas. Al-Faisal said the Palestinian issue needs to be taken off the agenda before back-channel talks are possible (Photo: Reuters)

Despite his reservations about Israel's attitude towards Palestinian negotiations and the Saudi peace initiative Turki himself is trying to promote, the Saudi official admitted Iran was the biggest threat to the region's stability and may grow bolder still under the auspices of the nuclear deal.

Scuttling the deal altogether, as US President Donald Trump is considering , will be too extreme a move at this phase, al-Faisal said. Nevertheless, he attached great import to exerting continuous pressure on the leadership in Tehran in order to "make them acquiesce not just to the letter of the agreement but also to its spirit."

"On the eve of the signing of the agreement, Iran painted a positive picture of itself as being friendly and open to negotiations. That couldn't be farther from the truth. The deal has made Iran overly adventurous, and caused it to adopt an expansionist policy," Al-Faisal said, admitting his greatest concern was the day after the agreement's duration ended.

"We have 13 years to handle not only the nuclear issue, but all of the region's deployment of weapons of mass destruction. Not just in the Arab world but also in Israel and Turkey. This is what we're after," he added.

Iranian President Rouhani. Al-Faisal said the nuclear deal exacerbated Iran's aggression (Photo: EPA)

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, it was HalevyMossad chief from 1998 to 2002 and secret envoy of successive Israeli governments for clandestine talks with the Arab world before his tenure therewho lauded the nuclear deal and the long stay it allowed Israel, the US and the international committee to stem the Islamic republic's destructive potential.

"The Iran deal is far from ideal, there are a lot of details we wanted to include in it that were excluded," Halevy revealed.

"Israel pushed for a rapid agreement limiting Iran's nuclear capacity, one that disavows the country's support of terrorism and developing its missile capabilities ," he added.

"Israel never wanted the talks between Iran and the world powers to include all of the issues of concern. We believed focusing only on the nuclear issue was warranted, and nothing else. The deal doesn't deal with missile development because we didn't want it to deal with missile development," the Mossad chief explained.

An Iranian Khorramshahr missile. Halevy said Iran deal excluded missile development because Israel wished it to exclude it.

Halevy, who chaired the National Security Council in the past and is the head of the Hebrew University's Shasha Center for Strategic Studies today, wished to conclude his talk with a touch of optimism: "Iran is undergoing some changes. They may not be as rapid as those taking place in the US at the moment, but things are moving."

Halevy further cautioned Israel's existential security cannot serve as an excuse for its leaders to abdicate the Mid-East arena. "We have no other choice but to find a way to live alongside our neighbors. And in order to do that we have to accept them as they are, and mustn't interfere with their internal political processes. If they want unification , let them have it. And if they want to come to us to negotiate, we must negotiate with them. Even with terrorists," he concluded.
Bahaa Awisat, a 22-year-old Jabel Mukaber resident, was sentenced to 16 years in prison on Monday for the attempted stabbing of a police officer in 2015.

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Awisat, who was convicted of attempted murder and illegal possession of a weapon, was said to be radicalized after watching videos of "martyrs" on Facebook, leading him to carry out a terrorist attack against Jews.

Armed with a knife, Awisat waited for an opportunity to do so in Jerusalem's Nof Zion neighborhood in October 2015. Alert residents noticed him and called in police.

The knife used in the attack (Photo: Police Spokesperson's Unit)

A police officer arriving on the scene ordered him to identify himself, but he refused and attempted to stab the officer. Other officers prevented him from doing so.

Jerusalem District Court Justices Yoram Noam, Rivkah Friedman and Moshe Bar explained the severity of the sentence in their ruling. "The sentence for attempted murder must appropriately reflect the sanctity of life in the eyes of the publiccitizens and law enforcement alikevalues which the defendant and his ilk wish to eradicate through stabbing attacks," they elucidated.

Jerusalem's Nof Zion neighborhood (Photo: Amit Shabi)

"An ideology of yearning to become a martyr, while murdering others, which makes death a goal unto itself and the murderer a revered figure, is a murderous one, disseminating its vile venom in various systems of extreme incitement brought to fruition both by extremist zealots who share this ideology and by others easily susceptible to influence such as children and people in distress, a group the defendant may belong to," they added.

Attorneys Sagi Ofir and Lizu Wolfus from the Jerusalem District Attorney's Office said: "The court has once again levied a harsh punishment on a terrorist, even one whose attack was thwarted by the swift action of other police officers and claimed no lives. The court's continued message with these prolonged sentences is crucial in complementing the struggle to foil and prevent terrorist attacks in Jerusalem in particular and Israel in general."
Brig.-Gen. Mordechai Kahane, a chief combat intelligence officer and head of the IDF's border defense force, was suspended from duty for two weeks following an inquiry into his conduct over suspicions he kept illicit military equipment in a container for personal use.

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The decision to suspend him was made by GOC Army Headquarters Maj.-Gen. Kobi Barak and approved by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot.

The IDF Criminal Investigation Division (CID) inquiry turned up suspicions the officer improperly received and possessed for a prolonged period of time both civilian and military gear. The CID's investigation is ongoing and pursuant decision regarding the senior officer will be made according to its findings.

Brig.-Gen. Kahane was suspended for two weeks for possessing illicit military equipment

The senior officer held a private container in the base in which he served where he kept an AK-47, a handgun, night-vision instruments and bullets, Israel Radio reported. The officer allegedly improved, renewed and utilized the weapons for his own purposesand then had his personal driver hide it.

The AK-47 may have been taken as a spoil of war, possibly used by Hamas in the past.

The contents of Kahane's container included an AK-47 possibly previously held by Hamas

"Brig.-Gen. Kahane has been in the IDF's service for 28 years, almost entirely in combat roles andsince Operation Protective Edgein command roles. The officer is principled and honest and has been fully cooperating with investigators and provided his account. Brig.-Gen. Kahane is of the opinion the inquiry should proceed to its conclusion and the IDF's enforcement authorities should be allowed to make judgments on this matter, and therefore accepts the decision of GOC Army Headquarters to suspend him for a short period of time," said Chief Military Defense Councils, Col. Ran Cohen and Lt. Ariel Hebron, who represent the officer.

"In Kahane's view, an IDF commander taking personal responsibility is not just empty words and he intends to live by that credo should any faults be found in his conduct. The information we hold shows Kahane's conduct has no criminal aspects, and the inquiry should therefore be concluded post haste and the cloud hanging over him dispersed," they added.

Brig.-Gen. Kahane was reared in the Golani Brigade after joining the army from a Hesder yeshiva. As an army private, he was wounded in a Jerusalem stabbing attack, but went on to be selected for command courses, in which he stood out and excelled.

He commanded both Sayeret Golani and the Egoz Unit and fought under enemy fire in Maroun al-Ras during the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Kahane, the nephew of Rabbi Meir Kahane, later commanded the Gaza Division's southern brigade and the squad commander school's brigade.

In his current position, Kahane effectively transformed the Combat Intelligence Collection Corps into a border protection force integrating the army's mixed-gender battalions, with hundreds of female combat soldiers and officers serving under him.
In anticipation of her impending retirement from the Supreme Court's bench Thursday, outgoing Chief Justice Miriam Naor gave an interview to the Israel Bar Association's journal, in which she said, "The Supreme Court was a strong court, is still strong and will continue to be strong. No one can threaten or strong-arm this court."

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Naor added some politicians' remarks on the court were needless and their attempts to sway its judges "had no influence."

Chief Justice Naor will retire Thursday (Photo: Yoav Dudkevich)

The politicians' attempts failed, Naor said, "because there wasn't an option of capitulating to threats and slander, which is an attitude I instilled in generations of judges."

Naor also described her personal relationship with her political contemporary Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked. "(The relationship is) Excellent. We have a rapport carried out in both frequent personal meetings and through texting, which we use to resolve outstanding issues. Each of us has her own role to play within the system, and each of us wants to safeguard that system," she explained.

Above all else, Naor professed that she pines for the day she can walk around Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda Market without security guards. Naor said after a short "post-service break" she plans for the end of her 38-year term in Israel's courts system, she intends to write two books: one on fact finding during trial proceedings and the other a children's mystery book.

Despite Naor's attesting to her "excellent" relatiosnship with Minister Shaked, the outgoing chief justice and the justice minister did manage to air one last confrontation, concerning the golden jubilee ceremony commemorating 50 years of Jewish settlement in the West Bank, Jordan Valley and Golan Heights.

Naor (L) clashed with Justice Minister Shaked recently over the judiciary's participating in a ceremony commemorating West Bank settlement (Photo: Ministry of Justice Spokesperson)

After Naor blocked representatives of the court from attending the ceremony, Shaked wrote her, "I regretted learning of your decision. The ceremony was to be held by virtue of a government decision numbered 2605 dated April 9, 2017, and as such is considered to be a state event that all of the country's dignitaries will attend, including a representative of the judiciary.

"In your announcement, you've undone the stateliness of an official ceremony decided on by the government, and created the false impression that this was an event with political undertones," Shaked added.

Shaked went on to say that "Even though you sought to avoid a political dispute, your goal was missed. The Movement for Quality Government was right in its letter to you today when it said 'this could play into the hands of those who wish to portray the court as a player in the political field.'"

Chief Justice Naor pulled the judiciary from participating in the ceremony (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

Chief Justice Naor, for her part, claimed, "The event is a matter of public controversy. Therefore, and without the chief justice or any other justice expressing their opinion on the matter, it would be inappropriate for the judiciary to participate."

It was further stated that ethics rules stipulate representatives of the judiciary will not participate in an event with political or party undertones. Naor's office added then the judiciary will continue participating in state ceremonies, but abstain from controversial ones, especially a ceremony with "only one side receiving the platform."
BEIRUT  The US-led coalition on Tuesday denied striking Deir ez-Zor city in eastern Syria after Damascus accused its jets of killing more than a dozen people.

Syrian state television had said the US-led coalition hit the government-held Qusur district, killing 14 civilians and wounding 32, on Monday.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was unclear which aircraft carried out the raid, but that it killed at least 22 people.
The Minister of Intelligence and Transportation Yisrael Katz met Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono during the latter's visit to the region.

In their meeting, Katz called for Japan to support measures amending the Iranian nuclear deal.

The two also discussed increasing Japan's involvement and support of the steps taken by President Donald Trump against Iranian ballistic missile programs and sanctions levied against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for their support of terrorism.

"Japan, similarly to Israel, is on the frontlines of the struggle against North Korea, as Israel is on the frontlines of the struggle against Iran. The lessons of North Korea are dictatorships must not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons," Katz said.
Employees of the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Social Services bristled at a decision made by the ministry's management to organize a recreational activity day for the ministry's Labor Division employees during the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Day, held this year on November 1, and to make attendance mandatory.

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The event, dubbed an "educational tour" by the ministry, included a trip in the Dead Sea area combining various leisure activities, and even a party.

The Ministry of Labor set an employee recreational day on the same date as the memorial day for slain Prime Minister Rabin (Photo: Yaakov Saar, GPO)

After employee reaction to the planned event was somewhat tepid, among other reasons due to the selected date, management announced participation would be mandatory and any employee wishing to skip the day must convey a detailed request for their absence. In addition, exemptions will only be provided by the ministry's director-general.

The ministry defined the two-day trip as a "unique educational tour to the Dead Sea region, emphasizing getting acquainted with Israel, its vistas and its history and a fun team-building itinerary."

"There's nothing educational about it. I don't think a government ministry should hold an upbeat, fun event on the Rabin Memorial Day. It looks and feels wrong. People in the office talked about it, it's not like it flew under their radar and nobody noticed," said one of the employees protesting the recreational day's timing.

"A lot of people said they didn't want to go, and then they notified attendance was mandatory, so I realized I had no choice. It's a slain prime minister. It hasn't been 25 years yet and we're already celebrating over his grave. It's improper and unpleasant. Why not move it to a different day?" he wondered.

The ministry's invitation

The state-sanction Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Day, for the prime minister murdered by an assassin in 1995, is commemorated by law in schools while Israeli flags fly at half mast in all state institutions.

Chairman of the ministry's employees' union Yoni Abuhatzeira, who organized the recreational day, said, "This is a work day that includes an educational tour. Employee requests to not participate for whatever reason will be taken under consideration."
The head of Vienna's Jewish community warned of the dangers of including the right-wing Freedom Party in the Austrian government, asserting that it remains xenophobic despite its newly moderate tone.

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Oskar Deutsch says even if the "nationalistic wolf puts on a (...) sheepskin, it changes only its appearance and not character."

Freedom Party head Heinz-Christian Strache toned down his rhetoric to increase electability (Photo: Reuters)

Deutsch's weekend Facebook posting comes as the People's Party prepares to seek a coalition partner after winning elections. The Freedom Party is seen as its most probable partner given that both parties campaigned on an anti-migrant platform.

Freedom Party head Heinz-Christian Strache has sought to reach out to voters that reject extremist messages by toning down his inflammatory rhetoric. He also has tried to move the party away from anti-Semitism, but it continues to attract the neo-Nazi fringe.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has defended his bold reform plans, including the kingdom's decision to lift the ban on women driving, saying that "we were not like this in the past."

The prince says that "we want to go back to what we were: moderate Islam," speaking during a rare public appearance at a major investment conference in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

The heir to the throne says the kingdom will work to defeat extremist ideas and ensure that young Saudis live in harmony with the rest of the world.

He says: "We will eradicate the remnants of extremism very soon... We represent the moderate teachings and principles of Islam."

He addressed a panel that included business titans Stephen Schwarzman of U.S. private equity firm Blackstone and Masayoshi Son of Japan's technology conglomerate SoftBank.

The panelists later lavished praise on the 32-year-old prince for his "passion", "vision" and "enthusiasm" but he interjected, saying he is only "one of 20 million people. I am nothing without them."
Iran has sentenced to death a person found guilty of providing information to Israel to help it assassinate several senior nuclear scientists, Tehran's prosecutor said on Tuesday.

At least four scientists were killed between 2010 and 2012 in what Tehran said was a programme of assassinations aimed at sabotaging its nuclear programme. Iran hanged one man in 2012 over the killings, saying he had links to Israel.
The State Department is declining to say there has been ethnic cleansing in Myanmar before it completes a review into the matter.

Three officials testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign were asked for yes or no answer on whether the crackdown that has caused an exodus of Rohingya Muslims to Bangladesh was ethnic cleansing.

Patrick Murphy, a senior diplomat for Southeast Asia, said: "My bosses have said it appears to be ethnic cleansing. I'm of that view as well." But he added that he couldn't make that call himself.

He said there have been "atrocities, massive displacement, depopulation of villages."

US officials tell The Associated Press the department is preparing a recommendation as early as this week for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to declare that "ethnic cleansing" is occurring
Iraqi pro-government paramilitaries launched an offensive against Kurdish troops on Tuesday near the Turkish frontier, pushing towards a strategic border crossing and oil export pipeline hub that Baghdad says must come under its control.

The Iraqi government has transformed the balance of power in the north of the country since launching a campaign last week to seize back territory from the Kurds, who govern an autonomous region of three northern provinces and had also seized a swathe of other territory in northern Iraq.

The Kurds held a referendum on independence last month that Baghdad called illegal. Baghdad responded by seizing back the city of Kirkuk, the oil-producing areas around it, and other territory that the Kurds had captured from Islamic State.
This has been a long time in the making, but in our continuing pursuit to bring only the best of firearms, 2nd Amendment and defence related news to our readers, we are very excited to announce the next step in our evolution as a company.

As of 2020, Minuteman Review is now the proud owner and operator of Your Defence News, a website with a long history of breaking huge news stories and investigative journalism.

We hope you are equally as excited as us.

This means that now the teams of Minuteman can combine with the firepower of Your Defence News to stay at the absolute forefront for our readers.

Keep an eye. Big things are coming soon. We couldn't be more excited.

In the meanwhile, here are some of our most popular posts and categories to keep you busy.

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Arizona News

Tempe, Arizona - Dr. Kelli Ward of Arizona, candidate for U.S. Senate, released the following statement today on Arizona Senator Jeff Flake announcing his retirement:

"Arizona voters are the big winner in Jeff Flake's decision to not seek re-election. They deserve a strong conservative in the U.S. Senate who supports President Trump and the 'America First' agenda. Our campaign proudly offers an optimistic path forward for Arizona and America."
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - Arizona Avenue is closed this week at 20th Street for underground work installing water and sewer lines.

Through traffic should consider an alternate route such as 1st Avenue or Pacific Avenue. The following detours are available:

Factor Avenue via 18th Place and 22nd Street.

Walnut Avenue via 19th Street and 21st Street.

Business access is currently available via northbound Arizona Avenue from 24th Street; motorists will be able to travel north on Arizona past the detour sign at 22nd Street to reach businesses from the Yuma Sun to the south.

If work proceeds without complication, the closure is currently slated to last through Friday, October 27.

A second phase of this work is scheduled for November 16-24. This will take place at Arizona Avenue and 22nd Street, where 22nd will be right-turn-only for northbound Arizona Avenue motorists with a detour to Factor Avenue. Arizona Avenue will be closed to through-traffic southbound motorists at 20th Street, while business access to locations south of 20th Street will be maintained.

The City incorrectly published this second phase of work on social media as being the first phase of work, resulting in incorrect information being printed in the Yuma Sun. The City regrets this error.
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - Arizona Western College will be holding their 3rd Annual English Symposium on Friday, November 17, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. in BA 111. The symposium is co-sponsored by the Center for Teaching Effectiveness and the AWC English Department.

The purpose of the symposium is to present papers and facilitate discussions on issues related to English pedagogies. This will be an opportunity for participants to hone in on their own composition skills and share ideas. Participants may discuss any interest broadly within the topic, including controversial issues, in a spirit of candor and collegiality.



Topics and presenters for the event include:

Renaissance Mathematics by Luis Martinez

The Controversy and Hypocrisy Surrounding the N-word in Huckleberry Finn and Nationwide by Mizaba D. Abedi

Polynesian Students at AWC by Donna Taylor

Composition Pedagogy (On-line) by Bree McGregor

Cracking the Code for Continuing Online Classes by Dave Hannah

Marvelous Reality and Magic Realism by Daniel H. Herrera

Mother Night by Mark Schauer

Getting Gritty: Mining the Poetics of Discomfort for Embraceable Authenticity by David E. Kern

AWC faculty, staff, students, and Yuma and La Paz residents are welcome to attend. For more information, contact Julissa Fitts at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at (928) 344-7757.
New Delhi: Talented actress Vidya Balan is ready to entertain the masses with her impeccable acting prowess in Tumhari Sulu. The south beauty will be seen playing a housewife who becomes a radio jockey and that's when all the naughtiness comes into play.

Tumhari Sulu is helmed by Suresh Triveni and stars Manav Kaul in the lead, who plays Vidya's on-screen husband. Also, Neha Dhupia will be seen playing a classic boss at a radio station. The trailer has already left the audience wanting to see more of Vidya's antics. Noted film critic and trade analyst Taran Adarsh took to Twitter and shared the third new poster of the film.

Tumhari Sulu will hit the screens on November 17, 2017. The film also stars popular RJ Malishka Mendosa. So, are you ready to watch Sullu aka Vidya as a night RJ?
New Delhi: Dismissing a sexual harassment complaint against Vodafone Essar Ltd (it is now Vodafone) and its former top executives, the Bombay High Court has imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 fine on the company.

The court said that the penalty is to be paid to the War Widows Association for not having an internal complaints committee as per Vishaka guidelines in place at the relevant time.

While passing the judgement, a division bench of Justice Amjad Sayyed and Justice MS Karnik said, "Though we are not inclined to direct payment of compensation to the petitioner (ex-employee) by the Respondent No.1 (Vodafone-Essar Limited), we do note that company had not followed the guidelines laid down by the Supreme Court in Vishaka as there was no Complaints Committee constituted, at the relevant time."

The case was filed by an employee who was terminated from service in August 2000. She had alleged that she was terminated from the job because of her refusal to the demands of sexual favours by her Chief Operating Officer.

She had further alleged that her immediate senior and another executive helped the COO put pressure on her.

Further, directing the amount to be deposited within six weeks, from October 13, the court said, "Even assuming that there was no complaint of the petitioner on record of the company, during the course of her employment, we find that nothing prevented the company from inquiring into her grievance even after her termination. However, there was no Complaints Committee in place to inquire into the sexual harassment complaint made by the petitioner.

With DNA Inputs
Delhi: The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Tuesday expressed displeasure over rampant use and availability of prohibited plastic in the national capital.

The tribunal has sought report from the Delhi government and has directed it to take strict action, ANI reported.

Yesterday too, the Delhi government and the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) had come under fire for delaying compliance of orders on the Yamuna cleaning project of the NGT, which asked them to show cause why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against them.

In a chamber meeting held at the NGT premises, a bench headed by Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar had rapped the authorities saying that except for shifting blame, the stakeholders, including the city government, had no reasons to offer in support of their "inaction and non-cooperation" for completing the project.

It had also asked them to explain why the amount earmarked by the Delhi government and the DJB for Yamuna rejuvenation should not be attached for violation of the NGT orders, as per PTI.

The Phase-I of the clean Yamuna project aims to lower the pollution levels in the Najafgarh and Delhi Gate drains, while Phase-II deals with Shahdara, Barapullah and other drains.

During the meeting which had gone on for over an hour, DJB CEO Keshav Chandra had told the tribunal that work on Phase-1 of the project was stopped as the AAP government had initiated enquiry against him for alleged financial irregularities over the setting up of sewage treatment plants.

The NGT had taken exception over this submission and asked why the DJB CEO did not approach the NGT, instead of stopping the work.

It had directed the DJB to file a detailed reply in ten days and posted the matter for further hearing on November 6.

The tribunal had earlier directed the Delhi government and DJB to submit a status report on the progress of the work in the first phase of cleaning the river Yamuna.

It had then directed Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh to file a complete report of the stretch of the Yamuna falling beyond the national capital.

(With Agency inputs)
Ahmedabad: In view of Rahul Gandhi's alleged 'secret' meeting with Hardik Patel, Gujarat Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel on Tuesday attacked Congress, saying that the Grand Old Party can do anything to form a government in the BJP-ruled state.

Congress would even send invitation to terrorists like Hafiz Saeed if it feels they can help them form government in Gujarat, Patel was quoted as saying by ANI.

Patel made this remark after it emerged that Hardik Patel, the leader of Gujarat's powerful Patidar community, had a 'secret' meeting with Rahul Gandhi at a hotel in Ahmedabad on Monday.

The rumoured Hardik Patel-Rahul Gandhi meeting had triggered intense speculations about the Congress warming up to the Patel community ahead of crucial assembly elections in Gujarat.

Gujarati TV news channels had on Monday claimed that Hardik Patel had reportedly met Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, for about 40 minutes at The Ummed Hotel in Ahmedabad on Monday.

The channels also aired video clips showing Hardik Patel entering and leaving the hotel where Rahul Gandhi was staying.

Notably, the Gandhi scion was seen at The Ummed from Monday morning, while AICC member in-charge of Gujarat, Ashok Gehlot, held a series of meetings at the same hotel since late Sunday evening.

The speculation about Hardik's secret meeting with Rahul started doing the rounds after the Patel community leader claimed that he would not be able to meet the Gandhi scion on Monday morning as he would be at a public function in Mandal town. He reportedly showed up at the hotel around 4 pm yesterday and later went to Mandal around 7.30 pm to address a meeting there.

While it was claimed that Hardik met Rahul at the hotel along with Nikhil Savani, the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) co-convener who had quit the BJP on Monday, Congress leader Gehlot categorically denied that any such meeting took place between the two.

Hardik Patel also reportedly denied meeting Rahul Gandhi and said that he instead met Ashok Gehlot and Gujarat Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki to discuss the issues affecting the Patidar community, including OBC quota.

"Had I met Rahul, I would have met him in public, which would give me more mileage. Why should I meet Rahul secretly?" he was quoted as saying.

Solanki corroborated the statement, saying, "Hardik met me, Ashok Gehlot and other Congress leaders but not Rahul Gandhi. Though both were in the same hotel, they did not meet."

Later, Gehlot, in a series of tweets, accused the Gujarat government of spying on Congress leaders.
Ahmedabad: In view of reports claiming that Patidar community leader Hardik Patel had a secret meeting with Rahul Gandhi at a hotel in Ahmedabad, speculations are rife about Congress warming up to Gujarat's powerful Patel community ahead of crucial assembly elections in the BJP-ruled state.

According to a Gujarati TV news channel, Hardik Patel had reportedly met Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, for about 40 minutes at The Ummed Hotel in the city on Monday.

The channel also aired video clips showing Hardik Patel entering and leaving the hotel where Rahul Gandhi was staying.

Notably, the Gandhi scion was seen at The Ummed from Monday morning, while AICC member in-charge of Gujarat, Ashok Gehlot, held a series of meetings at the same hotel since late Sunday evening.

The speculation about Hardik's secret meeting with Rahul started doing the rounds after the Patel community leader claimed that he would not be able to meet the Gandhi scion on Monday morning as he would be at a public function in Mandal town. He reportedly showed up at the hotel arond 4 pm on Monday.

From there, Hardik then proceeded to Mandal around 7.30 pm to address a meeting and even apologised for the delay.

Interestingly, OBC leader Alpesh Thakor had also joined the Congress at a rally in Gandhinagar on Monday.

While the reports claimed that Hardik met Rahul at the hotel along with Nikhil Savani, the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) co-convener who had quit the BJP on Monday, Gehlot categorically denied that any such meeting took place between the two.

Hardik Patel also reportedly denied meeting Rahul Gandhi and said that he instead met Ashok Gehlot and Gujarat Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki to discuss the issues affecting the Patidar community, including OBC quota.

"Had I met Rahul, I would have met him in public, which would give me more mileage. Why should I meet Rahul secretly?" he was quoted as saying.

Solanki corroborated the statement, saying, "Hardik met me, Ashok Gehlot and other Congress leaders but not Rahul Gandhi. Though both were in the same hotel, they did not meet."

Later, Gehlot, in a series of tweets, accused the Gujarat government of spying on Congress leaders.

"I condemn all the surveillance being done on the BJP's orders," Gehlot said, asking, "Why did the police take CCTV footage from the hotel?"

Why CCTV footage was taken by IB n police from Hotel? Is the right to privacy, sole proprietorship of #JayAmitShah?  Ashok Gehlot (@ashokgehlot51) October 23, 2017

Speaking in the same vein, Gehlot tweeted, "Is the right to privacy, sole proprietorship of Jay Shah?"

He later tweeted, "Are Hardik Patel and Jignesh Mevani criminals or absconders? If that is so, BJP must clear its stand."

Interestingly, the CCTV grabs were almost simultaneously telecast by all Gujarati TV channels, each one claiming it to be an exclusive.
AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat government on Tuesday announced a 50 per cent hike in the salaries of Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers.

ASHA workers are local women who act as health activists in their community.

Last month, the ASHA workers went on a protest demanding equal rights and equal pay and social security benefits. They also protested against taking up additional responsibilities of anganwadi.

On Monday, few protesting ASHA workers were detained by the police.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his visit to home state Gujarat, launched ImTeCHO (Innovative mobile-phone Technology for Community Health Operations) aimed to empower ASHA workers and to improve maternal, neonatal and paediatric care.

The pay hike comes before the upcoming Gujarat elections, scheduled to be held before December 18.
Ahmedabad: Gujarat's powerful Patidar community leader Hardik Patel, who is believed to have secretly met Rahul Gandhi at a hotel in Ahmedabad, said on Tuesday that his main aim is to defeat BJP in the upcoming assembly elections.

Our aim is to defeat BJP. We are awaiting a response from the Congress party since it has agred to our demands, Hardik Patel was quoted as saying by TV news channels.

The remarks from Hardik Patel, who had spearheaded the Patel quota agitation in Gujarat, came after it appeared that he had a 'secret' meeting with Rahul Gandhi at a hotel in Ahmedabad yesterday.

The rumoured Hardik Patel-Rahul Gandhi meeting had triggered intense speculations about the Congress warming up to the Patel community ahead of crucial assembly elections in Gujarat.

Gujarati TV news channels had on Monday claimed that Hardik Patel had reportedly met Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, for about 40 minutes at The Ummed Hotel in Ahmedabad on Monday.

The channels also aired video clips showing Hardik Patel entering and leaving the hotel where Rahul Gandhi was staying.

Notably, the Gandhi scion was at The Ummed from Monday morning, while AICC member in-charge of Gujarat, Ashok Gehlot, held a series of meetings at the same hotel since late Sunday evening.

The speculation about Hardik's secret meeting with Rahul started doing the rounds after the Patel community leader claimed that he would not be able to meet the Gandhi scion on Monday morning as he would be at a public function in Mandal town. He reportedly showed up at the hotel around 4 pm yesterday and later went to Mandal around 7.30 pm to address a meeting there.

While it was claimed that Hardik met Rahul at the hotel along with Nikhil Savani, the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) co-convener who had quit the BJP on Monday, Congress leader Gehlot categorically denied that any such meeting took place between the two.

Hardik Patel had denied meeting Rahul Gandhi and said that he instead met Ashok Gehlot and Gujarat Congress president Bharatsinh Solanki to discuss the issues affecting the Patidar community, including OBC quota.

"Had I met Rahul, I would have met him in public, which would give me more mileage. Why should I meet Rahul secretly?" he had told reporters.

Solanki too corroborated the statement, saying, "Hardik met me, Ashok Gehlot and other Congress leaders but not Rahul Gandhi. Though both were in the same hotel, they did not meet."

Later, Gehlot, in a series of tweets, accused the Gujarat government of spying on Congress leaders.

Meanwhile, reacting to the issue, Gujarat Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel today attacked Congress, saying that the Grand Old Party can do anything to form a government in the BJP-ruled state.

Congress would even send invitation to terrorists like Hafiz Saeed if it feels they can help them form government in Gujarat, Patel was quoted as saying by ANI.
Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin's son, Syed Shahid Yusuf, has been arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with the 2011 terror funding case. Yusuf was questioned by the investigating agency on Tuesday.

The summons issued to Shahid on October 16 said that it appears that he is acquainted with the facts and circumstances of the case because of which he needs to answer some questions regarding the same.

A resident of Soibugh Budgam, Shahid the third son of the Hizbul Mujahideen chief. With a Masters in Agriculture, he was regularised in the state's agriculture department this year.

The allegations in the case are that money from Pakistan is being sent to Jammu and Kashmir through Hawala channels via Delhi and it is suspected that it is being used to fund terrorism and secessionist activities in the state. It also suspects that this money might have been provided to the terrorists and their sympathisers in J&K.

Yousuf's father Mohammed Yusuf Shah -- better known as Syed Salahuddin -- was in June this year declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US Department of State.

The case was registered by the Delhi Police Special Cell against Hizb-ul-Mujahideen in 2011.
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday questioned the Gujarat government over re-employment of cops and doctors convicted of tampering evidence in the 2002 Bilkis Bano gangrape case. Seeking answers, the top court also asked what actions have been taken by the state against the convicted persons  five policemen and two doctors.

The SC was listening to a petition filed Bano seeking enhanced compensation and initiation of departmental action against the convicted persons.

During the 2002 Godhra riots, a mob attacked Bano and 16 members of her family on March 3. Bano, who was five-months pregnant, was gang-raped.

The CBI charged 18 people, including five policemen and two doctors. A lower court awarded life imprisonment to 11 people, but acquitted the policemen and doctors. On the CBI's appeal, the HC convicted the seven.

The Bombay high court, in it's 2017 judgement that upheld life sentences to 11 men, directed the seven convicts to pay Rs 55,000 as compensation to Bano.

The bench, comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, allowed Bano to file a fresh appeal seeking adequate compensation.
Houston: Sherin Mathews, the three-year-old Indian girl missing for over two weeks, is dead, US police said on Tuesday hours after her foster father admitted that she choked while drinking milk.

Sherin, who had developmental issues and limited verbal communication skills, was last seen outside her family's backyard in Richardson city in Texas on October 7.

The Richardson Police earlier announced that they discovered the remains of a small child in a tunnel beneath a road, expressing apprehension that it was "most likely" that of Sherin. The body was found about one km from the house of her adoptive parents Wesley and Sini Mathews.

Police said medical examiners used dental records to identify the body and confirmed it was that of missing Indian girl. Her cause of death is still pending.

The Richardson Police Department has re-arrested the foster father of the girl.

Mathews, 37, who hails from Kerala, is being held on USD 1 million bond.

Mathews and his wife reportedly adopted Sherin two years ago from an orphanage in Bihar.

According to an arrest affidavit, Mathews told police that his daughter choked while drinking milk and he removed her body from the house as he "believed she had died".

He said he "physically assisted" Sherin in drinking her milk when she wouldn't listen to him, according to the warrant.

"She was coughing and her breathing slowed," the affidavit said.

"Eventually, Wesley Mathews no longer felt a pulse on the child and believed she had died," it said.

Mathews was arrested yesterday and charged with injury to a child, a first-degree felony.

He voluntarily turned himself in, police said. He gave a statement that was different than he had initially given.

Mathews had previously claimed that Sherin went missing after he sent her outside their home in suburban Dallas in Texas state at around 3 am on October 7 as punishment for not drinking her milk.

He was arrested then and charged with felony endangerment to a child and was placed on electronic ankle monitoring. He also surrendered his passport as a condition of making bond on October 9.

He was re-arrested for felony injury to a child after providing investigators at the Richardson Police Department with the conflicting story.
New Delhi: The Congress on Tuesday hit out at the Narendra Modi government at the Centre over the appointment of an interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir claiming that it was merely a publicity stunt. Doubting the "intent" of the NDA government in resolving the Kashmir issue, leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said the government "wasted" three-and-a-half years during which many precious lives were lost.

"We are not opposing the decision of the government. But at the fag end of their tenure, they have done this. This is only for publicity. This government has no Kashmir policy," he said. Azad said they had maintained that this was a "political issue" and should be resolved politically.

He alleged that the government only has a divide and rule policy. "They have a policy only on how to divide and rule the country. That was the only policy pursued by foreign rulers," he said.

"For three-and-a-half years, the BJP is talking about 'hot pursuit'. We all opposition parties both inside and outside of Parliament have been talking about 'confidence building' measures, besides 'hot pursuit'," he said.

"No political issue can be resolved by hot pursuit and we had asked the government to talk to all stakeholders. We had said that if you have to take political decision, we have to talk to all stakeholders," he said.

Congress made the statement a day after the Central government announced its decision to appoint former Intelligence Bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma as an interlocutor for Jammu and Kashmir. Sharma, with the rank of Cabinet Secretary, will have complete independence in deciding whom to hold talks with, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said while making the crucial announcement.
New Delhi: In a major boost to road connectivity in India, the government on Tuesday gave the go-ahead to the ambitious BharatMala project which envisages to lay a whopping more than 83,000 km of roads across the country.

Here are the key facts of the project:

1. Rs 5,35,000 cores will be invested under the BharatMala project for construction of 34,800 km, while the balance works of 48,877 km would be built under other schemes with an outlay of Rs.1.57 lakhs cr.

2. The focus is on point-to-point expressways, border connectivity and international connectivity.

3. In the first phase of the project, about 2,000 km of coastal roads will be constructed.

4. The funding for the project will be raised from markets (Rs.2.09 lakh crore), pvt. investments (Rs. 1.06 lakh crore), and CRF/ToT/Toll (Rs.2.19 lakhs cr.)

5. The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) will also be part of the project and will raise 0.97 lakhs cr. from CRF and 0.59 lakhs cr. from budgetary support.

6. As part of the project, 82 highways will be 'monetized' with an investment potential of Rs 34,000 cr.



7. According to the government, the first bundle of 9 National Highway stretches of 680.64 km has already been bid out with a monetization value of Rs 6258 cr.
NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is headed towards yet another clean sweep victory in the 2017 Gujarat Assembly election, an opinion poll has found. The survey concluded that the BJP is likely to win between 115 and 125 seats in the 182-seat Gujarat Assembly. This, despite many of the big ticket moves of the Modi government being viewed unfavourably.

The India Today-Axis My India opinion poll prediction puts the BJP in reach of an absolute majority. The Congress, with some pundits predicted would put up a fight this time, was expected to win 57 to 65 seats in the opinion poll, which also gave 0-3 seats to 'others'.

The India Today-Axis My India opinion poll indicated that the BJP is likely to get 48 percent of the votes, with the Congress booking 38 percent.

As for the most preferred Chief Minister, 34 percent of the respondents preferred the incumbent, Vijay Rupani. Congress's Shaktisinh Gohil and Bharatsinh Madhavsinh Solanki found 19 percent and 11 percent support on this metric. BJP chief Amit Shah would make a good Chief Minister, thought 10 percent of the respondents, while six percent thought similarly of the Patel agitation leader Hardik Patel.

The opinion polls also found that 66 percent of the respondents believed Narendra Modi becoming the Prime Minister was beneficial for Gujarat. The opposite view was held by 31 percent of those who took part in the survey.

The result prediction notwithstanding, the opinion poll revealed that a number of key economic initiatives of the Modi government have not gone down well in Gujarat. This is significant considering the clout that traders wield in the state.

The rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) made 51 percent of the respondents unhappy. Demonetisation too took a hit, with 53 percent saying they did not find it beneficial. 49 percent of the respondents said they were dissatisfied with the Centre, while seven percent said they were angry.

The survey was conducted across all the constituencies of Gujarat between September 25 and October 15, and saw the participation of more than 18,000 respondents.

Other findings of the opinion poll include:

- Development, jobs and price rise emerged as the key issues in the polls.

- 31 percent said that price rise was the biggest issue, 24 percent said jobs, 16 percent development, 9 percent roads, 6 percent water, 4 percent agriculture and 3 percent water.

- 38 percent are happy with the GST, while 51 percent are unhappy with the new tax reform.

- 53 percent said that demonetisation was not beneficial. 44 percent gave thumps up to the note ban announced on November 08, 2016.

- 38 percent farmers are satisfied with the incumbent government, 49 percent are dissatisfied, while 7 percent are extremely angry as per the poll.
New Delhi: India on Tuesday told visiting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that it believes peace efforts in his war-wracked country should be "Afghan-led" and "Afghan-controlled".

Welcoming the Afghan President to India, President Ram Nath Kovind also condemned the series of terror attacks in his country, including in the provinces of Kabul, Kandahar, Ghazni and Paktia, that have resulted in over 200 people being killed in the past week.

Kovind expressed admiration for the astute leadership that Ghani has provided to Afghanistan through difficult times and commended the Afghan President for strengthening bilateral relations between India and Afghanistan.

Kovind added that India itself has been a victim of state-sponsored, cross-border terrorism for decades.

"We can fully empathise with the ongoing quest of the Afghan people to secure peace.

"India believes that whatever initiatives are taken for bringing peace in Afghanistan should be Afghan-led and Afghan-controlled," he said.

His comments come days after Afghanistan participated in the 6th Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) meeting along with the US, China and Pakistan in Muscat, Oman, on October 16 to revive stalled peace talks with the Taliban.

On the same day, India`s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval had flown to Kabul to meet with the Afghan leadership.

"Securing sustained peace and security remain the key fundamentals in leading Afghanistan on the pathway of economic recovery and growth. Unfortunately, mindless and senseless violence is being imposed on the people of Afghanistan," President Kovind was quoted as saying in a statement.

The President said that for India, Afghanistan is not just a strategic partner, but a nation that evokes endearing affection.

He recalled President Ghani`s speech at the Heart of Asia Summit in Amritsar in December 2016, and his visit to the Golden Temple. He added that civilisational links and people-to-people contacts provide a strong foundation to the ever-growing bilateral friendship.

Kovind also said that in recent times, the two countries have deepened their strategic partnership. The India-Afghanistan Trade and Investment Show in New Delhi brought the businessmen of both nations together and generated business worth over US$200 million.

The President expressed happiness at the opening of the air freight corridor between Kandahar and Kabul and Delhi. He also noted that the Afghan cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat have been connected directly by air to Delhi.

The Afghan President is on a day-long visit to New Delhi.
Union Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Dharmendra Pradhan on Tuesday hit back at Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi for mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Pradhan said "May God give him better sense. (Bhagwan unko sadbuddhi de). Someone who can call their PM nonsense is used to saying such things."

His comment comes after Rahul called the Goods and Service Tax the Gabbar Singh Tax and hit out at the PM for "ruining the economy of the entire country." "Congress GST= Genuine Simple Tax. Modi ji's GST= Gabbar Singh Tax =''    "," he tweeted on Tuesday.

Rahul had also said that the GST that the Congress party had conceived was way different from what has been implemented by the Modi government. He also claimed that the suggestions by the Congress were not considered by the ruling government.

"Their GST is not GST. GST means Gabbar Singh Tax. This is causing a loss to the country. Small shopkeepers are finished. Lakhs of youths have been unemployed. But they are still not ready to listen," Rahul had said.

Rahul also attacked Modi over demonetisation saying it acted as an "axe" that hit the country adversely. "Don't know what happened. On November 8, Modi ji says that 'these Rs 500, Rs 1,000 notes, I did not like it, so from 12 at night, I am going to scrap it'. He hit the axe, and for the first 2-3 days he could not understand what happened," he said adding that Modi realised his mistake 5-6 days later.
Adding fuel to fire over the Mersal movie controversy, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader H Raja has dragged the religion of Tamil actor Vijay. Taking to Twitter, the politician shared a picture of the popular actors voter ID showing his full name as Joseph Vijay.

The BJP leader posted the voter ID of the actor with caption  Truth is bitter.

Truth is bitter pic.twitter.com/woFdxOntRn  H Raja (@HRajaBJP) October 22, 2017

This is not the first time that Raja raked up the religion of the actor over the issue. He had earlier written, Joseph Vijays hatred for Modi is Mersal.

He had also raised questions over a dialogue in the movie that said hospitals must be built before temples. Pointing that as many as 17,500 churches, 9,700 mosques and 370 temples were constructed in the last 20 years, he had asked, out of these what should be avoided to build hospitals?

The BJP has been on an offensive against the movie, directed by Atlee Kumar, since its release on October 18 in theatres.

Tamil Nadu BJP chief Tamilisai Soundararajan had demanded removal of the dialogues relating to GST, digital payments and temples from the movie as they allegedly spread a wrong message.

She also wondered whether Vijay had asked his fans to distribute milk to poor children instead of pouring it on his cutouts erected outside the theatres.

There was also a war of words between senior BJP leader GVL Narsimha Rao and Bollywood actor-producer Farhan Akhtar. Speaking on the issue, Rao had told a television channel that most of our film stars have very low general knowledge.

Reacting to this, Farhan Akhtar expressed his anger on Twitter, saying how dare you, sir?? And to all the film people in his ranks.. heres what he thinks of you.

How dare you, sir?? @GVLNRAO



And to all film people in his ranks.. heres what he thinks of you. #shame https://t.co/6C8v6hZa23  Farhan Akhtar (@FarOutAkhtar) October 22, 2017

Farhan ji, Expressing an opinion is not a dare. Respect stars4work. Pl do take criticism in stride. No intolerance please!!@FarOutAkhtar https://t.co/Fn1igWvKHi  GVL Narasimha Rao (@GVLNRAO) October 22, 2017

The movie and the actors, meanwhile, also got the backing of Tamil superstar Rajinikanth, who has been hinting on making a foray in politics. He had extended his support to the movie team on Twitter and lauded them for addressing important topic. "Important topic addressed... Well done!!! Congratulations team Mersal," Rajinikanth tweeted.

Important topic addressed... Well done !!! Congratulations team #Mersal  Rajinikanth (@superstarrajini) October 22, 2017

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and senior party leader P Chidambaram had also hit out at the BJP for demanding cuts in "Mersal".

"Mr Modi, Cinema is a deep expression of Tamil culture and language. Don't try to demon-etise Tamil pride by interfering in Mersal," Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet which was retweeted by Chidambaram.

The makers of the film have, however, said that if needed they would delete scenes that have caused misunderstanding.

Claiming that the BJP leaders have accepted their explanation, Sri Thenandal Films head Murali Ramaswamy said, "From their perspective, their opposition is just. If opinions (expressed in the movie) that may lead to misunderstanding need to be removed, we are ready for that too."

(With agency inputs)
Manila: India today sought a probe into North Korea's nuclear proliferation linkages and demanded that those responsible for it be held accountable, in a veiled reference to Pakistan.

Nirmala Sitharaman, who is on her first foreign visit since taking over as India's first woman defence minister last month, said here in the capital of the Philippines that the nuclear and missile tests conducted by North Korea were in violation of its international commitments and have triggered serious concerns.

North Korea has launched a series of ballistic missiles that potentially can strike the US mainland and recently conducted its largest ever underground nuclear explosion, triggering a fresh round of sanctions on Pyongyang from the international community.

US President Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly last month that if America was "forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."

Addressing the 4th ASEAN Defence Ministers' meeting here, Sitharaman said India had criticised North Korea's nuclear and missile tests. "India has deplored these tests. We remain concerned about the proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies which has adversely impacted India's national security and that of the entire region," she was quoted as saying by an official statement.

"It is important that North Korea's proliferation linkages are investigated and those who have supported its nuclear and missile programme are held accountable," she said, in a veiled reference to Pakistan's links with Pyongyang.

Pakistan had secretly supplied North Korea with nuclear enrichment technology when A Q Khan headed the country's nuclear programme.

According to western media reports, Pakistan supplied vital machinery, drawings and technical advice to North Korea, allowing Pyongyang to enrich uranium as early as 2002.

Earlier, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had also raised India's concerns over North Korea's nuclear proliferation and demanded that those responsible for it be held accountable.

Swaraj's remarks came during her trilateral meeting with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and her Japanese counterpart Taro Kono on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in New York last month.


NEW DELHI: The opposition will observe November 8, 2017  the first anniversary of demonetisation  as 'Black Day' across the country.

Announcing this, leader of the opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad said, Announcement made on November 8 is the scam of the century, which is why we are observing this as Black Day.

"Demonetisation was an ill-conceived and hasty decision of the government. It is unprecedented, perhaps in the entire world, that a government had to alter its policy 135 times within a month," Azad said.

Eighteen political parties will hold protests across the country over demonitisation and it's "ill-effects" on the economy. The party list includes Congress, RJD, Trinamool, SP, BSP, DMK, the Left and the breakaway JD-U faction.

Each political party will try to give a regional name to observe this as a 'Black Day' and will hold protests and processions, said Trinamool leader Derek O'Brien, further adding his party would call it "Kalo Dibas"

"History of modern India will remember the 'scam' which took place on November 8. We had raised a number of questions and our doubts regarding the policy but the government could not answer or erase our doubts," he added.

On November 8, 2017, the centre decided to scrap Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.
New Delhi: Rajani Javadekar, the mother of Union minister Prakash Javadekar, passed away after suffering cardiac arrest in Delhi today, an aide of the minister said.

She was 92. She breathed her last at 9 am at the RML Hospital, he added.

She is survived by two sons and a daughter, the aide said.

Prakash Javadekar is the minister for human resource development (HRD).


New Delhi: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will arrive here on Tuesday on a three-day maiden official visit to India, during which he will call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and meet External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

On Wednesday, he will hold a meeting with Sushma Swaraj before calling on Modi, according to the External Affairs Ministry.

Tillerson is on a five-nation visit from October 20-27, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan and Switzerland, according to the US State Department.

Ahead of his visit to New Delhi, Tillerson, in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, put both China and Pakistan on notice by saying that Beijing's provocative actions in the South China Sea and Indo-Pacific regions went against international norms and rules the US and India stood for.

He categorically said that Washington expected Islamabad to take "decisive action" against terrorist groups operating within Pakistan's boundaries.

With IANS inputs
New Delhi: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will arrive here on Tuesday on a three-day maiden official visit to India during which he will call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and meet External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

On Wednesday, he will hold a meeting with Sushma Swaraj before calling on Modi, according to the External Affairs Ministry.

In a major policy speech last week, Tillerson had said reassured that the US is the "reliable partner" that India needs, adding that the two countries have the responsibility to "do the needful".

Discussing the importance of developing the Indo-Pacific region into one of peace and stability, Tillerson said that India and the US need to serve as eastern and western beacons, so that it does not become a region of disorder, conflict and predatory economics.

Tillerson is on a five-nation visit from October 20-27, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan and Switzerland, according to the US State Department.

Ahead of his visit to New Delhi, Tillerson, in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, put both China and Pakistan on notice by saying that Beijing's provocative actions in the South China Sea and Indo-Pacific regions went against international norms and rules the US and India stood for.

He categorically said that Washington expected Islamabad to take "decisive action" against terrorist groups operating within Pakistan's boundaries.

With IANS inputs
NEW DELHI: Soon, there'll be no parking space around the world heritage monument Taj Mahal.

In an effort to preserve the environment and the iconic monument, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered demolition of the parking lot surrounding Taj Mahal.

The top court noted that the parking ground could be an environmental hazard, said a lawyer appearing for Archaeological Survey of India or ASI.

A multi-level car parking facility being built within a kilometre of the Taj Mahal.

Earlier in August, the top court rapped the state while hearing of an application to cut over 400 trees for down an additional railway track between Mathura in Uttar Pradesh to Delhi.
Jammu: The trade between Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) has been suspended for the last 16 weeks resulting in a loss of over Rs 80 crore.

The trade across the Line of Control (LoC) was suspended on July 11 after heavy firing and shelling from the Pakistani side caused damage to trade facilitation centres and police barracks. "Due to the suspension of trade along the LoC, there was a loss of over Rs 80 crore during the period," custodian of LoC trade (Poonch), Mohammad Tanveer said.

The cross-LoC bus service via Poonch-Rawalakot road has also been suspended for the last 16 weeks.

There have been multiple ceasefire violations along the LoC this year. Till August 1, there have been 285 such violations by the Pakistan Army, a sharp increase from 2016 when the number of violations were 228 for the entire year.

As trade remains suspended, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti had said that it should be resumed, stating that the PDP would not allow its closure. She had said that the government will work towards opening more routes across the Line of Control with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The cross LoC trade has been mired in a controversy amid the National Investigating Agency (NIA) investigating terror funding in Kashmir.

Meanwhile, probing the 2011 terror funding case, the investigating agency on Tuesday arrested Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin's son Syed Shahid Yusuf. According to the agency official, the investigation revealed that one of the accused, Ghulam Mohammad Bhat, based in Syria, had allegedly transferred money to Yusuf on Syed Salahuddin`s orders between 2011 and 2014.



(With PTI inputs)
A Twitter war has erupted between Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over Chhath puja.

It started with a tweet posted by Sushil Kumar Modi targeting former Bihar chief minister and Tejashwis mother Rabri Devi.

Modi posted that Rabris sons had spent crores of rupee in the name of Vaastu to seek protection in alleged scams involving them, and now their mother would do Chhath puja to rescue them.

   ,           -         ... pic.twitter.com/osgFsB6qdK  Sushil Kumar Modi (@SushilModi) October 21, 2017

His tweet further said: People forget that no puja done with illegal money succeeds.

Responding to the tweet by the BJP leader, the young RJD leader threw a challenge to him targeting his wife Jessie George, who is a Christian.

Tejashwi posted that his mother Rabri and Modis wife Jessie must stand in river Ganga and do the Chhath puja, and let people see who does it better for more time.

         ,       ,        https://t.co/n74RjGKpbS  Tejashwi Yadav (@yadavtejashwi) October 23, 2017

    -   ,     "Mrs Jessie George"      ?          https://t.co/n74RjGKpbS  Tejashwi Yadav (@yadavtejashwi) October 23, 2017

Lalu Yadavs son also asked Modi to answer if his wife even does Chhath puja, since he was speaking so much about the same. He added that people from Bihar would never any insult to Chhathi Maiyya.

                             " "              ?    ? https://t.co/n74RjGKpbS October 23, 2017

Lashing out at the Deputy Chief Minister, Tejashwi said that his tweets showed his hatred and narrow mindedness towards Chhath puja.

Chhath Puja has been historically dedicated to Lord Surya and his wife Usha. The devotees thank the lord and his wife for supporting life on earth and seek their protection and blessings. The festival is native to Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh and is also celebrated in Nepal.
Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said that terrorism and radicalisation are the most immediate and serious security challenges that the world is currently facing. Asserting that 'terrorism anywhere is a threat everywhere', she said that the new developments in social media and cyberspace have expanded the threat.

Speaking at the Asean Defence Ministers Meeting, she said: "Terrorism is now a trans-national phenomena which requires strong collective action by all members of the global community. New developments in Social Media and Cyberspace have expanded the threat, as these are exploited by terrorists to develop less visible but lethal ways and means of manipulating minds of the people."

The Defence Minister added that the conduct of irresponsible states which provide safe havens, funding and even encouragement to terrorist groups needs to be addressed comprehensively. "We should be clear and unequivocal in our condemnation of terrorism," she said.

Addressing the member nations, she said that India has taken resolute measures to fight the scourge of terrorism from across its borders. "We fully recognise the role ofjoint mechanisms with our partners and the role of international and regional forums in fighting this menace.

She also said that maritime security has been a key concern and countries should resolve maritime disputes peacefully, in accordance with international law.

Her visit to Manila for the Asean Defence Ministers Meeting is her first foreign as the Defence Minister.
New Delhi: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived here on Tuesday on a three-day maiden official visit to India.

He will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday.

Tillerson's visit is part of a five-nation tour to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, India and Switzerland.

He received a frosty welcome in Pakistan after he accused Islamabad of providing "safe havens" to Taliban militants.

Ahead of his tour, Tillerson, in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, had said that US expected Islamabad to take "decisive action" against terrorist groups operating in Pakistan.

The top US diplomat was quietly greeted by a mid-level Pakistani Foreign Office official at a Rawalpindi airport, -- a welcome devoid of the pomp that usually marks high-level visits, AFP reported.
Pulwama: A group of heavily-armed terrorists attacked a police patrolling party in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on Tuesday.

The police party was attacked in Tral, according to ANI. No casualty was reported due to the attack.

Soon after the attack, the entire area was cordoned off by the security forces and a massive search for the attackers was launched.

People were also evacuated to safer areas after the grenade attack.

Earlier on Sunday, at least two people, including an 18-year-old girl, after some terrorists attacked the opposition National Conference leaders residence with a grenade at Seer Jagir area.

The attackers also ransacked the house of a police officer and PDP workers in south Kashmir.

A joint search operation by police, CRPF and Army was launched in the area in an attempt to track down the militants.

The police suspected the hand of Jaish-e-Mohammad behind the killings.

Just recently, a BSF camp near the Srinagar international airport was attacked by terrorists. All the militants were killed in the encounter.
Ranchi: While the state governments in Bihar and Delhi have made elaborate arrangements for devotees during the Chhath puja, the BJP government in Jharkhand has cancelled the leaves of policemen and asked them to report on duty.

According to an order issued by Jharkhand DGP DK Pandey, all leaves sanctioned earlier stand cancelled till October 27.

The order has been issued to ensure maximum safety for the devotees and hassle-free Chhath puja celebrations.

All police personnel across the state have been asked to report back on duty till October 27  the last day of the Chhath puja, which is one of the most popular festivals in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Meanwhile, the Delhi government had on Monday declared a public holiday on the occasion of Chhath puja on October 26.

Offices will remain closed on October 26 to mark Chhath puja. A notification in this connection will be issued very soon, a Delhi government official said.

The Aam Aadmi Party government was the first to announce a public holiday on Chhath puja when it came to power in 2015, he added.

Chhath puja is celebrated on the sixth day after Diwali and is dedicated to the Sun God.
MALAPPURAM: A masjid committee in Keralas Malappuram has called for boycotting a Muslim man and his family for allowing his daughter to marry a Christian man.

On October 19, the Madarul Islam Sanghams Mahallu committee issued a notification asking everyone connected with the mosque to boycott with Kunnummal Yusuf and his family.

"As Kunnummal Yusuf has allowed his daughter marry a non-Muslim, we have decided that people (members) should not cooperate with the family, either for mosque-related affairs or for any other matters," states the circular in Malayalam.

A day later, Yousuf's daughter Jaseela married Tiso Tomy, a Christian from Nilambur in Malappuram.

Now here comes the interesting part.

Several members of the mosque decided to openly defy the boycott notification.

The family threw a reception in Perinthalmanna, which was attended by hundreds.

The development comes amid Kerala High Court stating that not all inter-religious marriages can be called Love Jihad. The court further said that these kind of marriages should be encouraged as there is no boundary for love.

With agency inputs
Kolkata: As many as 14 Muslim organisations will hold a massive protest march in support of Rohingyas on Tuesday.

According to ANI, the rally will be held from Park Circus to the Myanmar Consulate at 12 noon.

No big leaders or influential imams are participating in today's rally.

Among the prominent organisations which are participating in today's rally are - Bangiyo Imam Parishad, Jati Jagran Manch, Bhasa-o-Chetna Samity, Sankhyalaghu Parishad.

Since Myanmar Consulate falls under the high-security zone, a heavy security blanket has been put in place there.

The local police has also set up barricades at the Rani Rashmoni Avenue in view of the protest march.

Earlier on September 12, a similar protest march was organised by the Muslim bodies in support of Rohingyas.

At least 25,000 to 35,000 protesters marched from Park Circus to Rani Rashmoni Road - a distance of about 5 km - and paralysed traffic.

The slogans, banners and posters condemned Prime Minister Narendra Modi for failing to raise the plight of the Rohingyas with the Nobel laureate, Aung Sang Suu Kyi.

The rally ended in a mega meeting at Rani Rashmoni Road where the event took on a further political twist.

A team of protesters even went to the Myanmar Consulate in Kolkata and submited a memorandum of demands.
WASHINGTON: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan feels that roads in his state are better than those in United States.

Speaking at the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum on Tuesday, he said, "When I got down at Washington Airport and travelled on roads, I felt roads in MP are better than US."

Talking about the state of India's economy, the MP CM said, "India today is on the cusp of great economic progress under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi. GST is a game changing tax reform."

He added, "One Nation, One Tax, One Market is a dream come true for any investor. GST has made life simpler for businesses in India."

Lauding the progress made by his state, Chouhan said, "Madhya Pradesh is the land of opportunities. We have identified several focus sectors such as Agro and Food Processing, Defence and Tourism. Madhya Pradesh being at the centre of India, our focus on logistics would bring lot of opportunities for the state in the post GST era."

"We've constructed 1.75 lakh KM (approx) of roads in MP. Have connected all villages with roads. Value addition in an agricultural sector is my first priority as that ties in with our PM Modi's vision of doubling farmers income. Food Processing, Farm-to-Fork logistics, organic farming etc are areas where we are looking for expertise and investments," he pointed out.

"Defence is another major focus area for us. MP already has a strong ancillary ecosystem to support defence manufacturing. Madhya Pradeshs tourism potential is unmatched. Its a land with exponential potential to develop tourism around tigers, jungles, and water," the MP CM said.

(With ANI inputs)
New Delhi: After the controversy over Tamil film Mersal, it was being said that a team of Goods and Services Tax intelligence wing officials recently raided actor Vishal's film production company, Vishal Film Factory, in Chennai. According to the online buzz, the squad paid the office of the 40-year-old star a visit as he had allegedly evaded service tax.

However, as per an official statement from the Directorate General of Goods and Services Tax Intelligence, all such reports are mere rumours.

It read, "Certain news channels are circulating the news that the officers of DGGSTI Chennai Zonal Unit have searched the premises of Shri Vishal, who is the president of the Tamil Nadu Film Producers' Council. It is to clarify that the officers of DGGSTI have not conducted any such search operations and the news which is being circulated is factually incorrect and false."

The Vishal Film Factory, set up in 2013, has produced six films including Kathakali, Naan Sigappu Manithan and Aambala, all movies in which Vishal himself was the lead actor.

Earlier, Vishal was in news for announcing a reward for tracking down the admins of Tamil Rockers - a website that uploads pirated copies of newly-released Tamil films.

Recently, he also called out Tamil Nadu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader H. Raja for saying that he watched parts of Vijay starrer Mersal, online.

(With ANI inputs)
Mumbai: Actor-comedian Kapil Sharma on Tuesday denied the infamous and controversial fight with Sunil Grover.

At the trailer launch of his second film "Firangi", Kapil opened up about the incident in which during a flight from Australia to Mumbai, Kapil had reportedly physically assaulted Sunil.



Clarifying his stance, Kapil said: "When you move with such a huge team, you have to manage a lot of things and I am really bad at it, I will say that much. Touchwood, we have been working together for many years and I would like to repeat it one more time, I didn't actually fight with Sunil Grover at all. It didn't happen."



Sunil famously essayed the role of Mashoor Gulati, a doctor, in "The Kapil Sharma Show".



Narrating what exactly happened during the flight, Kapil said the fight happened with comedian Chandan Prabhakar, and not with Sunil.



He said: "When we reached Australia, since the first day, my mood was really bad. I was juggling so many things, I was shooting the show and for other things. During that time, my film's artiste died. I was so nervous and turned so negative.



"I wanted to cancel the Australia show but couldn't and before the show, a girl came to me complaining about a guy who happens to be my childhood friend, Chandan. I scolded him.



"I had to perform for one and a half hours and that girl and boy artiste had 10-minute stints. My whole thing was, 'You are bothering me with this when I have such a long performance ahead'. I am a little impulsive.



"Chandan went missing for five days. I wanted to meet him and apologize because I didn't listen to his side of the story. I saw him one hour before the Australia flight and I lost it again and I used cuss words again".



Kapil also said he has no issues with Sunil.



"I love him. I like to work with the best of people. When I was doing 'Comedy Circus', I used to tell people, 'I met this guy Sunil Grover in 'Hans Baliye'. 'Let's get him, I saw his show, I liked him'. When you work with the best, you learn a lot.



"Sunil and I, we have known each other for nine years now, and we have been working together for five years. I don't have any problem with Sunil, but had I been in his place, I would have definitely asked one time that 'I haven't seen you like this in five years, why are you behaving like this?'



"Maybe nothing would have happened. But still nothing has happened, I love him," Kapil stressed.



Kapil also took a dig at the media for the speculation regarding the 'fight'.



He is currently excited about "Firangi", a period drama film set in the year 1920. Directed by Rajiev Dhingra, the movie also features Ishita Dutta and Monica Gill. It will release on November 24.
Mumbai-based Lodha Group has changed the face of Lower Parel with iconic projects like The World Towers (worlds tallest residential tower), The Park, and Trump Tower Mumbai. Now, the largest real estate developer in the country is all set to redefine the way Mira Road lives.

Set to be the finest residential development in the Mira Road micro market, this development offers spacious 1 and 2 BHK residences.

Overwhelming Response To The Pre-Launch

The most awaited pre-launch in the western suburbs, Lodha Groups new development has witnessed 2500 walk-ins within a week of the pre-launch. Additionally, 300 families have already chosen it to be their future home, with 70% of the open inventory already being sold.

Lodha Groups Midas Touch

Established in 1980, Lodha Group is amongst the world's few multinational real estate brands, with its presence extending beyond just India to the United Kingdom. It has about 30 real estate projects that are spread across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Pune, Hyderabad, and London, covering a total area of more than 40 million sq. ft. It also owns a land bank of 350 million sq. ft. saved for future development.

The companys Midas touch is visible in its projects like Palava City and Upper Thane that have transformed micro markets. Its projects have brought some of the most globally renowned names, including Armani/Casa, Trump, Philippe Starck, Jade Jagger, Kelly Hoppen, Greg Norman, and Pei Cobb Freed, to India.

The realty group, which has turned around many micro markets in the past, sees vast potential in the future landscape of Mira Road.

Some of the groups notable land parcels in Mumbai include the 88-acre Thane land parcel, the 17-acre Mumbai Textile Mills parcel, and the famous Washington House property on Altamount Road.

About The Project And Location

Thoughtfully planned, the apartments at Mira Road are designed to offer enhanced spaciousness within the rooms, a contemporary lifestyle and amenities, and beautifully carved out landscapes. Its offerings help to make it a dream home for every buyer.

Lodha Group will be the first renowned developer to have a presence in Mira Road, which has increasingly become a desirable residential option, over the last couple of years. The real estate companys vision of 'Building a Better Life' extends across markets, with several landmark developments to its credit. Continuing with the same philosophy, Lodha Group is aiming to transform the lifestyle of Mira Road residents.

Owing to the variety of commutation options available, people belonging to different parts of the state are taking a keen interest in properties located around this area.

Several upcoming developments like the Dahisar-Mira Road metro (extension of metro 7), the Coastal Road (connecting Kandivali to Nariman Point), etc. are bound to further improve connectivity in the days to come.

This location also lies close to the Western Express Highway. Mira-Bhayandar Municipal Transport (MBMT) is making travelling convenient, with its bus transport services.

All prime proficiencies are a short walk away from most of Mira Roads residential hubs. These include essential utilities like ATMs, banks, petrol pumps, playschools, hospitals, restaurants, colleges, schools, train stations, and bus stations.

Combining superior quality and unmatched design, the upcoming project by Lodha Group is to offer the most superior product in the Mira Road micro market. The entire project, spread across 3.5 acres, lets homebuyers opt for 1 or 2 BHK residences with prices starting at Rs 56 lakh.

Located opposite GCC Club, a famous landmark in Mira Road, this residential development is easily accessible from Borivali, Dahisar, Bhayandar, and Ghodbunder Road.

Smartly Designed Development

These masterfully crafted homes will be equipped with L-shaped living rooms that allow for better accommodation of dining areas. The apartments will also offer grand features like air-conditioned rooms, marbital flooring, etc.

Buyers of this project will get to experience better-utilised layouts that eliminate space wastage. The project has been conceptualized after conducting extensive consumer research and understanding their needs.

The project also aims to address other consumer issues such as bathroom-facing kitchens, wastage of area due to flower beds, etc. by offering homes that integrate smart designs with aesthetics and premium appeal.

Each tower has a unique T-shaped design, leading to better views, natural ventilation, ample daylight, while also ensuring utmost privacy at the same time.

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New Delhi: Even after its end, NASA's Cassini is still providing information on the planet it studied for 13 years.

On Monday, NASA released an image of Saturn captured by Cassini, with the iconic rings gracefully winding their way around the planet to pass beyond the horizon.

A tiny Pandora  Saturn's moon  barely the size of a speck can also be seen orbiting just beyond the F ring.

Also in this image is the gap between Saturns cloud tops and its innermost D ring through which Cassini would pass 22 times before ending its mission in spectacular fashion.

Scientists scoured images of this region, particularly those taken at the high phase (spacecraft-ring-Sun) angles, looking for material that might pose a hazard to the spacecraft.

According to NASA, this view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 19 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in green light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Aug. 12, 2017. Pandora was brightened by a factor of 2 to increase its visibility.

The Cassini mission came to an end last month  September 15  after it performed a death plunge into the planet's atmosphere.

The mission was launched 20 years ago in August 1997.
San Francisco: Tech giants Samsung Electronics and Apple will face each other in court over design patent infringement US federal judge has ordered a new trial to determine how much Samsung Electronics Co should pay Apple Inc for copying the look of the iPhone.

US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California the order 10 months after the US Supreme Court set aside a $399 million award against Samsung for mimicking the iPhone`s look for its Galaxy and other devices.

The Supreme Court said damages could be based only on parts of a device that may have infringed patents, not necessarily the entire device.

Koh said the jury instructions at the Apple-Samsung trial "did not accurately reflect the law" and may have prejudiced Samsung by preventing jurors from considering whether any infringement covered "something other than the entire phone."

Earlier in 2012, the lawsuit was settled with a court ordering Samsung to pay damages to Apple.

The federal judge signed an order instructing the two companies to return to court and said that the onus would be on Apple to make its case.

Samsung and Apple, the world`s top two smartphone makers, have been embroiled in a legal battle called "patent war of the century", in more than 10 countries across the globe since 2012.

With Agency Inputs
Agra: The controversy surrounding Taj Mahal  the iconic historic monument located in Agra  refuses to die down.

And now, a group of activists belonging to two Hindu outfits recited Shiva Chalisa' on the premises of the Taj Mahal on Monday, claiming that it was originally a temple dedicated to Lord Shiva.

The incident triggered tension at the iconic monument following which they were detained by the police for questioning.

The youths, belonging to the Rashtra Swabhimaan Dal (RSD) and Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV), were taken away by CISF personnel deployed there and handed over to the local police.

They were released after they submitted a written apology, reports said.

Agra: The Members of Rashtriya Swabhimaan Dal & Hindu Yuva Vahini were detained for questioning and released later pic.twitter.com/wgGrK7aAiY  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) October 24, 2017

The incident was reported a week after BJP's Sardhana MLA Sangeet Som made a controversial remark on the Taj Mahal and said that it should have no place in history as it was built by traitors.

Som's remarks triggered a political storm across the country evoking a bitter response from the opposition parties.

In the wake of Som's criticism, the BJP distanced itself from the controversy, saying it was purely his view.

UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath too asked Som to explain why he made such a remark.

The UP CM is slated to visit Taj Mahal on October 26 to review various schemes related to tourism in Agra.

Earlier, a controversy erupted after the Taj Mahal was omitted from Uttar Pradesh Government's newly released Tourism Booklet aimed to promote tourist spots in the state.
Ayodhya: The controversy over Taj Mahal refuses to die down any time soon, and now BJP leader Vinay Katiyar has asked the authorities to rename the iconic historic monument located in Agra as Taj Mandir.

The firebrand BJP MP on Tuesday said that nothing is wrong in it as the whole compound belongs to Lord Shiva.

It was a temple earlier, Katiyar added.

Katiyar made these remarks after some activists belonging to Hindu outfit Hindu Yuva Vahini were arrested for reciting 'Shiv Chalisa' inside the premises of the Taj Mahal on Monday.

The incident triggered tension and the activists were formally arrested by the local police. They were released only after they submitted a written apology.

The MP had last week claimed that the Mughal mausoleum was actually a Hindu temple.

Kaityar said that the Taj Mahal was known as 'Tejo Mahal' and had a shivling, which was later removed from the monument.

It was Tejo Mahal, Lord Shivas temple, where Shahjahan buried his wife and turned it into a mausoleum, Katiyar, who had been in the forefront of the Ram temple movement of Ayodhya, had claimed.

It was constructed by Hindu kings, the rooms and carvings there prove that it was a Hindu monument it has also been termed as one by historian PN Oak, he claimed.

The firebrand BJP lawmaker said like a Shiva temple, water drips from the ceiling in the Taj Mahal, which is not a case in any mausoleum anywhere and is like that only on a Shivlinga.

It was a famous monument and was grabbed by Shahjahan, Katiyar said.

It was our temple but was made a mausoleum as they had more power. But it is a grand monument and national heritage people come to see it and so it should be kept safe and secure, he said.

Last week, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath gave a clear snub to his BJP colleague and MLA Sangeet Som for stirring the Taj Mahal controversy, stating that "it does not matter who built it and for what reason; it was built by blood and sweat of Indian labourers".

Som had courted controversy on Sunday, stating that the iconic Taj Mahal was built by traitors and hence, cannot be included in the Indian history.

Taj Mahal was also recently omitted from the UP Government's Tourism Booklet. However, the Taj Mahal later found a place of pride in the 2018 calender brought out by the Uttar Pradesh government.

With ANI inputs
London: A Briton has claimed that he raped a woman for more than two hundred times because he was suffering from a condition called 'sexsomnia' which made him assault her.

In his bizarre defence, Lawrence Barilli, 35, told the Glasgow High Court that his rare condition 'made him do it'.

The 'sexsomniac' claimed that he doesn't remember committing any such crime when the victim confronted her, Daily Mail reported.

'He said it was sexsomnia. I would wake up with him having sex with me,' the Mail quoted her as saying in court.

Barilli has been charged with assaulting and raping the woman between September 2011 and October 2012.

The rapes are said to have occurred in multiple locations.

She reportedly met Barilli after she broke up with her partner.

She claimed that the first incident happened months after they first met.
Islamabad: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson got a frosty welcome to Pakistan on Tuesday after Washington turned up the heat on Islamabad for allegedly providing "safe havens" for Taliban militants.

America's top diplomat was quietly greeted by a mid-level Pakistani Foreign Office official at the military airport in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, an AFP photographer saw -- a welcome devoid of the pomp that usually marks high-level visits.

He was then driven in a convoy of Land Cruisers amid tight security to the US embassy in Islamabad`s diplomatic enclave, before scheduled meetings with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and the powerful military chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

The secretary`s visit, the first to nuclear-armed Pakistan by a senior Trump administration official, comes months after the US President angrily accused Islamabad of harbouring "agents of chaos" who could attack US-led NATO forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.

It follows on the heels of an unannounced stop in Afghanistan Monday, where Tillerson reiterated America`s commitment to the country and warned that Washington has made "very specific requests" of Pakistan seeking to "undermine the support that the Taliban receives".

Washington and Kabul have long accused Islamabad of supporting Afghan militant groups including the Taliban. They are believed to have links to Pakistan`s shadowy military establishment, which aims to use them as a regional bulwark against arch-nemesis India.

Pakistan has repeatedly denied the charge, insisting it maintains contacts only to try to bring the militants to peace talks.

During his brief visit to Afghanistan`s Bagram air base Monday, Tillerson told reporters Pakistan needs to "take a clear-eyed view of the situation that they are confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organisations that find safe haven inside" the country.

US and Pakistani sources say his visit to Islamabad will be followed later in the year by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis as Trump seeks to send a tough message to the wayward Cold War ally.The US-Pakistan relationship has waxed and waned dramatically since Trump took office in January.

Pakistan said the President had praised its then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif as "terrific" in an effusive phone call when Trump took office in January.

But Trump`s blistering speech in August accusing Pakistan of harbouring militants saw Islamabad angrily hit back at the claims, insisting the US took no account of the thousands of lives lost and billions spent in fighting extremism.

Following the August speech, Tillerson cautioned Pakistan that it could lose its status as a privileged military ally if it continued providing support to Afghan militant groups.

As one of 16 "Non-NATO Major Allies", Pakistan benefits from billions of dollars in aid and has access to advanced US military technology banned from other countries.

However political analyst Zahid Hussain said there may be little Islamabad can do at this point to convince the US that it had prevented militants from using its territory to target forces in Afghanistan.

"I think they would like to assure to the Americans that they are sincere and they are taking action against some of the groups," Hussain told AFP.

"The perception here is whatever they do, it is not going to please the Americans."

Earlier this month Pakistani forces acting on American intelligence rescued a US-Canadian family which had been in Taliban captivity for five years, sparking hopes that ties were on the mend.

The rescue was followed by a series of drone strikes on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border targeting long-time foes of both Washington and Islamabad.

The US has vowed to send more than 3,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, on top of the 11,000 already deployed there, to train and advise Afghan troops and police as part of a new strategy outlined by the administration.
New Delhi: Rex Tillerson's positive words on US-India bonhomie seems to have rattled Beijing as much as the US Secretary of State's strong message against China's foreign policy. With Tillerson scheduled to arrive in India on Tuesday, several strategy and diplomatic experts in China are terming the visit as a 'divide and conquer' startegy of the Americans.

Tillerson last week had said that American President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are committed towards building a lasting friendship. Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Tillerson then went on to chide China. "Well never have the same relationship with China, a nondemocratic society, that we can have with India, he was quoted as saying by the Washington Post.

His statements, obviously, have not gone down too well with the Chinese.

In a report in the state-run Global Times, US has been accused of trying to undermine Asian solidarity. "Although over the past decade the US has been trying to make India quasi-ally to balance against China, this "divide and conquer" method is not clever enough to outsmart the eastern wisdoms of China and India," read the report. "Although Beijing and New Delhi hold different opinions on border issues, Indian strategists of vision are still eager for independent diplomacy and strategic autonomy instead of opposing China."

In the past week, several reports in the state-controlled Chinese media have underlined why India needs to focus on its neighbours 'rather than ally with Americans.' Some of these reports have even 'advised' India on how it should deal with terrorism emanating from Pakistan - telling New Delhi to recognise Islamabad as a victim of terror rather than its propagator. India though has maintained that its foreign policy - much like its sovereignty - won't be affected by any other country or external elements.



Tillerson's visit to India, therefore, assumes a lot of significance as he has already communicated to Pakistan - now a budding ally of China - to clamp down on terrorism. Closer US-India ties can be in the greater interest of both countries with economic and defence ties set to strengthen.

For China though, it may well be a catch-22 situation as it gets ready to host Trump in Beijing next month. Here, it is mostly agreed upon that the US President pays a lot of attention to ties with India. Some even go to the extent of saying Trump and Modi are similar and hence share a bond. "They are both acknowledged as center-right wing politicians who enjoy anti-establishment posturing," wrote Zhao Minghao, a senior research fellow with The Charhar Institute, for the Global Times. "Over the past few months, Trump and Modi have tightened interactions via phone calls and other means."

While the similarities - if any- between Trump and Modi are open to interpretations, US-India ties - it is clear - has China on tenterhooks.
What is it to be a Muslim in the UK amid rising cases of Islamophobia? A white woman went out to find answers for this question as a part of a social experiment for the documentary "My Week as a Muslim". The documentary was aimed at showing the abuse that Muslims face on a daily basis in the UK.

For a week, 43-year-old Katie Freeman dressed as a Muslim and realised the sort of questions that she was asked which even included 'if she was going to blow us all up'.

A healthcare assistant, Katie had prejudices because of which she feared Muslims. I would see a Muslim out and I would be on my guard because of what I had seen on the news," she was quoted by the Mirror.

As a part of the programme she lived for a week with Saima Alvi, a 49-year-old Muslim teacher and mother-of-five from Altrincham.

Katie went out shopping in Rusholme wearing a hijab, met worshippers at the Altrincham Islamic Centre and attended a vigil at the British Muslim Heritage Centre. She also spent time with Saima's daughters.

Saima says she wanted Katie to get an idea of everything that she does in the community and seeing Katie change her views about Muslims was emotional for her. "She was willing to learn and immerse herself in the community and as a result it was a very positive response. Katie was willing to go beyond her prejudices. It was an emotional rollercoaster," Saima said.

The documentary was shot in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing in which 22 people were killed. When Katie crossed Winsford, Cheshire, dressed as a Muslim, she was told Muslims are not welcome here. A passerby even shouted on her saying 'are you going to blow us up'?

"I have never had any verbal abuse before in my life. This is what its like every day for people like Saima," Katie recalls.

However, the show is facing criticism from many who feel that the programme promotes a stereotype of Muslims by using 'brownface' makeup.

Defending herself, Katie said they did not want to be offensive but it was important to get the truth of what it's like to be a Muslim. Saima also added that the disguise was necessary for Katie to get an authentic experience.
Beijing: Xi Jinping was elevated to the pantheon of China's most powerful leaders Tuesday as his name was enshrined in the Communist Party constitution alongside Chairman Mao.

The inclusion of Xi`s eponymous guiding philosophy for the nation at the end of a week-long congress could lay the foundation for him to remain China`s paramount leader far beyond his upcoming second five-year term.



Communist China`s founder Mao Zedong, and the architect of its market reforms, Deng Xiaoping, are the only other Chinese leaders to have their names in the document -- and only Mao was alive when his was included.



Xi, 64, presided over the congress`s closing session where some 2,300 delegates approved the constitutional amendment to include "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era".



The concept places a heavy emphasis on the party`s role in governing every aspect of the country from the economy to what people are writing on social media.

"We must work tirelessly and forge ahead on the journey of realising the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," Xi, who is due to be reappointed as party chief on Wednesday, told the congress in concluding remarks.



With his name in the constitution, Xi will have the last word on all political matters. He could stay on as the nation`s top leader even if he gives up the title of party general secretary when his second term ends in 2022, analysts said.



Xi`s predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao had their concepts included in the constitution, but without their names and only when they retired after two terms.

"China has a tradition of combining emperor and teacher, which means that the emperor is also the thought leader. Xi achieved it at the end of his first term. That`s rare in our history," Chinese political scholar Hu Xingdou told AFP.



Xi also managed to get at least two of his cherished programmes written into the constitution: an anti-corruption campaign that has brought down 1.5 million crooked officials since 2012 and the Belt and Road initiative, the massive global trade infrastructure project intended to increase China`s influence abroad.



The congress declared the Communist Party China`s "absolute leader", a clear sign that it intends to further tighten its grip on the country.



"Those who approve, raise your hands," Xi said during the vote as a flurry of arms shot up in unison. When he asked if anyone was not in favour, shouts of "None!" echoed in the imposing Great Hall of the People.



"Now our country is unified, cohesive, and moving up in the world," northeast Jilin province delegate Li Hualiang told AFP.The congress also elected a new 204-member Central Committee, which included just 10 women. It will elect the party`s new ruling council, the Politburo Standing Committee, on Wednesday.



Xi is expected to secure a second five-year term as general secretary of the party and could also consolidate his power by filling the standing committee with allies, possibly without even presenting an obvious heir apparent.



A vast security apparatus was thrown around the congress, with businesses ranging from nightclubs to gyms closing to avoid any incidents and factories shuttered in what turned out to be a failed attempt to clear the city`s notorious smog.



When he opened the gathering last week, Xi declared that China had entered a "new era" with the ambitious goal of becoming a "global leader" by mid-century.



Xi has sought to portray himself as a responsible global leader while US President Donald Trump trumpets a nationalist "America First" policy and the European Union grapples with Britain`s exit.



His blueprint foresees no change in the single-party political system, and gives no sign that crackdowns on human rights activists will ease.



Some of his goals, such as building a modern military by 2035, go beyond the end of his second term, a hint that he foresees himself staying at the centre of China`s political life for years to come.



At the closing session, Xi said the Congress established "the goal of securing a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and then embarking on a journey to fully build a modern socialist China".Despite Xi`s rising power, the composition of the Politburo Standing Committee, the body that controls power, will still be crucial to his efforts, said Willy Lam, politics professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.



Xi and Premier Li Keqiang are expected to remain on the committee while the five other current members are supposed to step down under an informal retirement age set at 68.



There is no agreement among China-watchers about who will end up on the committee, or if anybody will emerge as a potential successor.



If the right allies are named, Lam said, it would show that "he has full control over the Politburo Standing Committee".
A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter crew was dispatched to remove the unidentified injured crewman from a 655-foot Ultramax bulk carrier.



A crewman had to be medevaced from the bulk carrier M/V Delsa recently after falling and sustaining serious injuries while working about the vessel, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Coast Guard Communications Detachment Kodiak said on Oct. 20 that watchstanders received a call from the captain of the Delsa at 7:30 p.m. the previous evening stating that a 42-year-old crewman fell 20 feet from scaffolding and had possible back and hip injuries.

A Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew then was dispatched to remove the unidentified crewman from the 655-foot motor vessel, which at the time was located 130 miles southeast of Cold Bay, Alaska.

Once the helicopter and crew arrived on scene, aviation survival technician Chief Petty Officer Matt Laub and a rescue basket were lowered to the top deck of the Delsa. Laub, according to the Coast Guard, was then escorted by Delsa crew members to a narrow staircase where it led to the cargo hold.

Laub stabilized the man on the rescue basket, then proceeded to direct the 150-foot hoist of the man from the cargo hold to the helicopter.

The Jayhawk helicopter crew hoisted the man at 10:45 pm, and safely transported him to Cold Bay where he was transferred to commercial medical services. He was further transported to Anchorage, Alaska, for further medical care, the USCG explained in a statement.

This was a complex rescue due to the location of the man and the location of the Delsas mast and crane, Laub said. Due to our training and the superb coordination between the watchstanders, the crew of the Delsa and this aircrew, we were able to get this man to a higher level of medical care.

The Delsa, a Malta-flagged bulk carrier, is owned and operated by Greece-based Franco Compania Naviera SA. The 2015-built 63,166-deadweight-ton (dwt) Ultramax bulk carrier is currently on en route to the Port of Portland, where it is expected to arrive on Oct. 25.
A lack of space at the terminal has resulted in imposed fees ranging from $150 to $300 per container, which cover all trades into Banjul, Gambia, according to announcements issued by CMA CGM and Maersk Line.



Ocean carriers CMA CGM and Maersk Line have issued customer advisories stating an emergency port congestion surcharge would be added to all cargo flowing into the port of Banjul, Gambia.

A Maersk Line spokesman told American Shipper that the congestion is due to lack of space at the terminal. The current high yard density is delaying operations, the spokesman said.

CMA CGMs customer advisory stated that, Port congestion in Banjul, Gambia, is currently increasing our operational costs and generating service disruptions. CMA CGM will therefore implement the following Emergency Port Congestion Surcharge (PCS). Several surcharges from Europe and the Mediterranean to Banjul were issued effective Oct. 15, with surcharges from Asia to Banjul become effective Oct. 22.

In order to continue offering our high quality and unmatched reliability, we will be introducing a congestion fee (CFD) applicable to ALL Import Cargo in Banjul, effective October 24 for non-FMC corridors and November 13 for FMC corridors, announced Maersk Line on Monday.

The CMA CGM fees range from $150 to $300 while Maersk is imposing fees of $150 per TWU and $250 per FEU.
The intra-Americas subsidiary of ocean shipping giant Maersk Line will add the South Florida port to the weekly rotation of the South American Express service at the end of the month, according to Port Everglades terminal operator SAAM.



Ocean carrier SeaLand, the intra-Americas subsidiary of industry leader Maersk Line, will begin calling the SAAM-operated Florida International Terminal (FIT) in Port Everglades-Fort Lauderdale on its South Atlantic Express service, the terminal operator announced.

The service operates weekly and with direct calls in call South Florida, Honduras and Guatemala. According to ocean carrier schedule and capacity database BlueWater Reporting, the loops full port rotation is Norfolk, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Savannah, Port Everglades, Santo Tomas de Castilla, Puerto Cortes, Moin Bay, Manzanillo (Panama), Colon (Panama), Puerto Cortes, Santo Tomas de Castilla, Port Everglades, Wilmington and back to Norfolk. Port Everglades will be added as a port of call beginning with the Oct. 28 voyage of the Maersk Winnipeg.

This new service will enable importers and exporters to reduce transit days and provide mid-week cargo alternatives, thereby efficiently supporting foreign trade between North and Central America, explained Klaus Stadthagen, the CEO of FIT.

The service will also offer inland transfers from and to Nicaragua and El Salvador, said SAAM.

FIT is one of eleven terminals operated by Chilean-based SAAM in the Americas. SAAM holds the operating concession until 2025 (with a 5+5 extension option) and in 2016 reported container port throughput of more than 202,000 TEUs, according to the terminal operator. The company also offers towage services and logistics operations.
The U.S. Commerce Department on Monday said it has instructed Customs to collect cash deposits from importers of biodiesel from Argentina and Indonesia, but is considering Argentinas request to suspend the antidumping and countervailing investigations.



The U.S. Commerce Department will instruct Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to collect cash deposits from importers of biodiesel from Argentina and Indonesia based on preliminary rates determined in its ongoing antidumping investigation, the department said in a statement Monday.

The duties are pegged to dumping margins determined by Commerce investigators, which found that Argentina and Indonesia sold biodiesel in the United States at dumping margins of 54.36 percent to 70.05 percent and 50.71 percent, respectively.

However, Commerce said it has already been approached by the Argentine government about suspending the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations against its biodiesel shipments. The department said its considering possible suspension agreements and would only sign such agreements if they ensure that injury to the domestic biodiesel industry is eliminated and that the unfair trade practices are addressed.

Imports of biodiesel from Argentina and Indonesia in 2016 were valued at an estimated $1.2 billion and $268 million, respectively. Biodiesel is manufactured from a diverse mix of resources such as recycled cooking oil, soybean oil and animal fats, and can be used in existing diesel engines without modification.

The petitioner for the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations is the National Biodiesel Fair Trade Coalition, an ad-hoc association composed of the National Biodiesel Board (NBB) and 15 domestic producers of biodiesel.

Dumping occurs when a foreign company sells its product in the U.S. market at less than fair value, while countervailable subsidies are issued by foreign governments to a company contingent on its export performance or use of domestic sources over imports.

The coalition called the Commerce antidumping determination a win.

It is reassuring with each decision that the Commerce Department is reviewing the data and facts at face value. The law is clear, and violations of trade law shouldnt be ignored at the expense of the livelihoods of thousands of Americans employed or affected by biodiesel, said Doug Whitehead, NBBs chief operating officer, in a statement.

The coalition said it filed the petitions to address a flood of subsidized and dumped imports from Argentina and Indonesia that has resulted in market share losses and depressed prices for domestic producers.

Biodiesel imports from Argentina and Indonesia increased 464 percent from 2014 to 2016, taking 18.3 percentage points of market share from U.S. manufacturers. Subsequent to the coalition filing the petition, Argentine biodiesel imports jumped another 144.5 percent, the group said.

These surging, low-priced imports prevented producers from earning adequate returns on their substantial investments and caused U.S. producers to pull back on further investments to serve a growing market, NBB said.

Unless the final determinations are postponed, Commerce is currently scheduled to announce its final antidumping determinations on Jan. 3, 2018. If the department makes affirmative final determinations of dumping and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) also makes affirmative final injury determinations, then Commerce will issue antidumping orders. If Commerce, on the other hand, makes negative final determinations of dumping or the ITC finds no injury, the investigations will then be terminated and no orders will be issued.
" " Toe bones, the upper jaw and snout of the fossilized remains of a tyrannosaur skeleton found in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The skeleton is the most complete of its kind found in the Southwest United States. Mark Johnston/NHMU

Tyrannosaurus rex and its closest relatives comprised a family known as the tyrannosaurids. An awe-inspiring group, their ranks included some of the biggest land-dwelling carnivores of all time. They first appeared on Earth around 86 million years ago and would remain at large until a mass extinction wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs 20 million years later.

Tyrannosaur material has surfaced in both Asia and North America. Here in the Western Hemisphere, a century of big discoveries has made the family all but synonymous with one particular region: The Northern Great Plains. This sprawling, grassy frontier is a tyrannosaur-hunter's paradise. After all, the first partial T. rex skeleton ever found emerged in Montana back in 1905. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

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A smaller species called Albertosaurus sarcophagus was named after the Canadian province where a mass grave site or bonebed  was discovered with 22 skeletons. Across the U.S. border, South Dakota was the final resting place of Sue, the most complete T. rex specimen ever found. Speaking of the Mount Rushmore State, Harding County, South Dakota has yielded so many Tyrannosaurus remains that it's been nicknamed "The T. rex Capital of the World."

Yet, American tyrannosaurs weren't restricted to the north; the beasts had a big presence in the Southwest, too. Paleontologists have found T. rex material in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Texas. Furthermore, it turns out that this iconic killer wasn't the first member of its family to inhabit the region. Since 2010, scientists have formally described three new tyrannosaurs  Bistahieversor, Lythronax and Teratophoneus  which all pre-dated T. rex and called the Southwest home.

The discovery of Teratophoneus in southern Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was announced in 2011. The new carnivore had an abnormally short skull for a tyrannosaur, but what really caught the media's attention was its striking genus name. Translated from Greek, Teratophoneus means "monstrous murderer." Pretty intense, right?

One of the paleontologists who co-authored the animal's scientific description was Dr. Thomas Carr, who told us a little bit about the moniker. "The name was suggested to us by a colleague who does not work on dinosaurs  Dr. Sean Modesto  but who has a talent for formulating striking [scientific] names," Carr says in an email exchange. "He suggested 'Teratophoneus' for us to consider, and the team took to it!"

Now, six years later, Teratophoneus is making headlines again. The University of Utah announced that the most complete tyrannosaur skeleton ever found in the Southwest has come to light. And paleontologists are fairly confident that it belonged to one of these "monstrous murderers."

The fossil, which is approximately 76 million years old, comes from the previously mentioned Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. So far, more than 75 percent of the skeleton  including most of its skull  has been accounted for. Scientists think the dino was buried  either in a river channel or by flood  which helped keep its skeleton intact. They suspect it was about 12 to 15 years old and 17 to 20 feet (5.1 to 6 meters) long at its death.

It was first spotted in 2015 by Alan Titus, a paleontologist who works for the Bureau of Land Management. The process of digging this thing up and transporting it to the Natural History Museum of Utah (where it's now located) was a herculean undertaking. Volunteers in the field spent somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 man-hours excavating the skeleton, which was then airlifted out via helicopter. Another 10,000 hours of work remain to prepare the fossil for research.

" " A team from the Natural History Museum of Utah encase a tyrannosaur fossil in a plaster jacket while on an expedition in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Mark Johnston/NHMU

Randall Irmis, the museum's curator of paleontology, says the skeleton looks very much like a Teratophoneus, but it can't be positively identified until the skull is fully prepared (with all the rock removed) in the lab. "If it isn't Teratophoneus," he says via email, "it would most likely be something new."

Should this in fact be a hitherto-unknown dinosaur, it would be in some good company. The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is rife with dino species found nowhere else  including the flashy, horned herbivores Kosmoceratops richardsoni and Utahceratops gettyi.

Back when these animals were still breathing, Utah looked markedly different. At the time, the Arctic Ocean was connected to the Gulf of Mexico by a shallow, inland sea. This body of water ran through the heart of North America, splitting the continent in half. The result was two separate landmasses: An eastern expanse called "Appalachia" and a western one known as "Laramidia." Modern-day Utah sat on the latter, just a quick jaunt from the coastline. "It would have been very similar to the bayous of Southern Louisiana today, both in terms of temperature/humidity and landscape," Irmis says. A warm, wet floodplain, the area was covered by an intricate web of rivers and streams.

This find could shed a bit of light on a paleontological hot topic. The extent to which Laramidia's geography affected tyrannosaur evolution has been debated in recent years. During the early 2010s, some scientists suggested that a physical divide on the landmass separated the northern and southern species. But more recently, this idea has been challenged. According to exhaustive studies published in 2016 and 2017, the various tyrannosaurs of Laramidia were free to intermingle. Maybe the new skeleton will help clear things up a bit.

Fossil hunters have prospected the American West for well over 140 years now. Yet, even after all this time, blockbuster discoveries  like the new Grand Staircase tyrannosaur skeleton  are still being made out there. Who knows what'll turn up next.

Now That's Interesting Was the world's most famous dinosaur a cannibal? Suspicious bite marks on a few Tyrannosaurus rex fossils imply that the animal sometimes ate members of its own species. Now pass the fava beans and Chianti ...
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urged Iraq and Kurdistan to resolve the conflict through dialogue, Reuters reports.

On October 23 Tillerson arrived in Baghdad on unannounced visit during which he met with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi.

We are concerned and a bit sad. We have friends in Baghdad and friends in Erbil and we encourage all parties to enter into discussion ... and all differences can be addressed, he said, referring to the Iraqi and Kurdistan region capitals.

Secretary Tillerson said if the sides are committed to the united Iraq, the Iraqi Constitution, it would be possible to solve all disagreements.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. After attending the JUNWEX Moscow international exhibition with the support of the Development Foundation of Armenia (DFA), Yerevan Jewelry Plant  1 Gnomon company concluded a new export contract with value of 480 million AMD: the export will be directed to the Russian Federation, the DFA told Armenpress.

By signing the contract, the export orders received as a result of the jewelry exhibition exceeded 1 billion AMD. The export deals of Armenian ornaments and jewelry worth more than 580 million AMD had already been concluded during the exhibition days.

I am confident that after the unification of fineness testing, the volume of orders of Armenian jewelry from Russia and EAEU will significantly increase, Vahe Safaryan said, who coordinates the participation of the Armenian companies in the exhibition.

Currently, the negotiations on export of jewelry products to Russia and Kazakhstan worth 24 million AMD are in progress.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. On October 24 a solemn ceremony of donating Armenian style carpets took place at the Artsakh Republic President's residence, press service of the Presidents Office told Armenpress.

President Sahakyan expressed gratitude to Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Armenia to Vatican Mikael Minasyan and president of the "Megerian Carpet" company Raffi Megerian for implementing this initiative, stating that through such undertakings our historical and cultural heritage is being presented to our society, the world as well as maintained and developed.

According to the Artsakh President weaving such beautiful carpets had been a painstaking work, involving a big, consolidated and patriotic team.

Bako Sahakyan noted that these pieces of arts would serve the Artsakh people for decades as an integral part of national historical and cultural heritage.

On the same day the President discussed with the guests issues related to the development of carpet weaving in Artsakh highlighting within this context the cooperation with such famous organizations as the "Megerian Carpet" company.

Primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan and other officials were present at the event and the meeting.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan on October 24 received Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of China to Armenia Tian Erlong and Xiong Lixin  Executive Vice President at Sinohydro Corporation, which is engaged in the construction program of North-South highway, press service of the government told Armenpress.

PM Karapetyan attached importance to the constant development and strengthening of Armenian-Chinese economic ties and said the Armenian government is interested in attracting the Chinese capital to the Armenian market. The PM expressed confidence that the two countries have great potential for mutually beneficial cooperation, taking into account Armenias opportunities for the business and the fact of entering the EAEU, European and Iranian markets.

In his turn the Chinese Ambassador said China also highlights strengthening the mutually beneficial ties with Armenia, adding that today there are wide opportunities to finance key programs of bilateral interest.

As for the process of construction works in Talin-Lanjik part of North-South highway, that are being carried out by Sinohydro, the Armenian PM emphasized the need to implement the works in a high quality and urged to take the necessary steps to solve all problems.

Other issues relating to Armenias possible involvement in the Silk Road project and Armenian-Chinese relations were discussed during the meeting.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. RPA faction head Vahram Baghdasaryan says the international community must react to Azerbaijans actions on escalating the tension in the line of contact after the Geneva meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents and make addressed assessments, reports Armenpress.

Baghdasaryan told reporters in the Parliament that out of his land Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev is very kind, but when he returns to his land, he becomes an aggressor.

The international community should draw attention on these events. We have already urged the Minsk Group and the international community to make addressed assessments. We didnt have any other expectations since our enemy is unpredictable. This is not the first case when Azerbaijan violates the agreements. It always violated them, the RPA faction head said.

Commenting on the question that there are no addressed statements by the international community, and Azerbaijan doesnt implement the agreements, what is the solution, Vahram Baghdasaryan said: We should be able to reach the point that the international structures will focus on these events and will be able to give a right assessment.

Vahram Baghdasaryan also ruled out the possibility of large-scale war. He said Azerbaijan assesses its capabilities and powers: the April war was a lesson for them. The MP said the slow war as well is not beneficial for us, as well as for the Azerbaijani people. There is just the interest of the authorities, the interest of Aliyevs power for whom the losses of his soldiers have no value, the lawmaker stated.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Foreign minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian delivered a speech at the OSCE Mediterranean conference in Palermo, Italy, press service of the ministry told Armenpress.

Armenpress presents the full text of his speech:

Mr. Chairman,

Dear Colleagues,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to thank Minister Alfano and his team for the organization of this Conference.

It is widely acknowledged that the security of the OSCE area and of the Mediterranean region is interconnected and the recent developments came to prove the veracity of this assumption. The unprecedented large movements of migrants and refugees across Mediterranean and Middle East, in particular from Syria and Iraq require close regional cooperation in order to address such security related issues as combating terrorism, countering trafficking, dignified treatment of refugees, to name a few.

From Syria alone Armenia has harbored about 22.000 refugees, on per capita basis making our country the third largest recipient of Syrian refugees in Europe. This has caused a number of challenges for a country of just 3 million which has in the recent past already received hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing from Azerbaijan. Many of the Syrian Armenian refugees are descendants of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide who found shelter in Syria. One hundred years passed, they were forced once again to abandon their places of residence. Thus, Armenians know what it means to be a refugee and to host refugees.

The Government of Armenia has undertaken substantial efforts in assisting the refugees and facilitating their integration. We offered wide variety of protection tools such as accelerated asylum procedures, facilitated naturalization, emergency and medical assistance, housing, scholarships, simplified access to educational institutions and labor market, flexible taxation and business environment. We are grateful for certain international support provided to Armenia in this regard and look forward for the continued cooperation.

Armenia has also tried to reach out to the people who need assistance in Syria by continuous provision of humanitarian aid. The Consulate General of Armenia in Aleppo has been the only diplomatic mission in the city that despite challenging conditions has never stopped operating.

It goes without saying that comprehensive response to the large movements of migrants and refugees requires addressing root causes of this phenomenon, such as terrorism and identity based crimes. Armenia was among the first in the OSCE to raise these issues and strongly advocate for the strengthening of the OSCE commitments in this regard. The condemnation of persecutions of individuals and communities, including on the basis of their religion or belief, bringing to justice those who participate in perpetrating terrorist acts, preventing cross-border movement of foreign fighters, weapons, funds connected to the terrorist activities are important parts of the OSCE commitments enshrined in the Hamburg ministerial declaration on terrorism. We are convinced in the continuation of the OSCE efforts in this regard.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to inform you on the upcoming OSCE conference on Countering and preventing hate crimes against Christians and members of other religious groups, to be held in Yerevan on November 22. The participation and contribution of our Mediterranean partners will be welcome.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Historically the Mediterranean has been not a natural barrier dividing Europe, Africa and the Middle East, but rather a bridge linking so many civilizations, Armenians among them, thriving on its hospitable shores. We strongly believe that these traditions should be further strengthened.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Baku has made uncalled-for statements at the OSCE Mediterranean Conference in Palermo, which has nothing to do with the NK conflict, in an attempt to deviate the attention of the audience from the mass human rights violations in Azerbaijan, Armenian foreign ministry spokesperson Tigran Balayan said on Twitter.

Baku once again abused an international conference in Palermo that has nothing to do with the Nagorno Karabakh conflict with cheap manipulations aimed at shifting the attention from Azerbaijans worldwide humiliation as a result of internationally discredited Laundromat policy of corruption, aggressive criminal posture, gross violations of humanitarian law, Balayan said.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Armenia will host the OSCE conference on Countering and preventing hate crimes against Christians and members of other religious groups on November 22, foreign minister Edward Nalbandian said in his remarks at the OSCE Mediterranean conference in Palermo, the foreign ministry told Armenpress.

I would like to inform you on the upcoming OSCE conference on Countering and preventing hate crimes against Christians and members of other religious groups, to be held in Yerevan on November 22. The participation and contribution of our Mediterranean partners will be welcome, the FM said.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Members of the Parliament of Mexico Blanca Margarita Cuata Dominguez, Maria Cristina Teresa Garcia Bravo, and Carlos Hernandez Miron and Vice Speaker of Armenias Parliament Eduard Sharmazanov on October 24 were hosted in the Artsakh Parliament, the parliament told Armenpress.

The guests were welcomed by Parliament Speaker Ashot Ghoulyan who said the Artsakh Republic is interested in having friendly relations with different countries. He said this visit is a very good beginning for the bilateral relations.

Speaking about the fight of the Artsakh people, Vice Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Eduard Sharmazanov touched upon the anti-Armenian propaganda by the Azerbaijani authorities, as well as the regular military operations in the line of contact.

The Artsakh peoples fight is not against Azerbaijan, their fight is for freedom and peace, Sharmazanov said.

In response to the question of MP Blanca Margarita Cuata Dominguez on the reasons of restriction of Artsakh freedom by Azerbaijan, Ashot Ghoulyan said it is possible to present Artsakh in international platforms through parliamentary ties and ban Azerbaijans anti-Armenian propaganda.

Our visit is a very good precedent for the further visits of Mexican officials and we are going to cooperate with you since we believe that freedom and human rights are above everything, Blanca Margarita Cuata Dominguez said.

MP Carlos Hernandez Miron highlighted the importance of the meeting and noted: Its very important that we raise voices during such meetings and call for peace and dialogue.

The meeting also touched upon the process of statebuilding in Artsakh, the structure of the Parliament and inter-parliamentary ties.

At the end of the meeting Ashot Ghoulyan expressed hope that the inter-parliamentary relations with Mexico will further deepen.

The meeting was also attended by Vice Speaker of the Artsakh Parliament Vahram Balayan and Deputy Foreign Minister Felix Khachatryan.

The Mexican lawmakers also met with the representatives of the Artsakh parliamentary factions.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Army today is strong and powerful, capable of fulfilling its tasks, President and Commander in-Chief of the Armed Forces Serzh Sargsyan said during the session the Defense Ministrys National Defense Research University signaling the launch of the universitys new educational program, reports Armenpress.

Today our Army is strong and powerful, but this doesnt mean that our Armed Forces should not be improved and develop. Today we are setting a new, extremely high threshold. The drastic upgrading of the Armenian Armed Forces is a requirement of time. This is also dictated by todays and futures challenges. Today I set a task to develop a new 7-year program for modernization of the Army for 2018-2025. We should implement this program through joint efforts, including me, as Commander in-Chief, the defense minister, the commanding staff of the Armed Forces, our soldiers and the entire society, Serzh Sargsyan said.

The President tasked the defense minister to report on the works carried out within two months. After discussions and amendments this program will be approved on January 28, 2018  the birthday of the Army.

At this stage this program must be one of the major tasks of our state, if not the most important. 7 years later todays powerful Army should reach a new qualitative level. The first key direction of modernization is the smooth shift to new governance system of the Armed Forces deriving from the Constitutional changes. The draft law on Defense which at the moment is being discussed in the Parliament solves an important, but only the first part of this issue, that is the legal formulation. Thereafter, a detailed work will be required in terms of developing and introducing sub-legislative acts and implementing practical steps in the correct order, the President said.

He highlighted that the Army modernization refers to the organizational level, the weapon types, and the social issues of servicemen, in other words to th entire range of issues linked with the Army.

We have always been engaged in this, but now the task is to accelerate these processes by ensuring quick development. We need to move forward by progressive rates. As you know, sharp increase of military expenditures is expected in the budget of the next year. The increase, however, will not be limited to only one year, it will be continuous. You know that over the past years the number and quality of our weapons has been sharply improved. These works are going to be continuous. Year by year we will have new and significant achievements on this path, the Armenian President said.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. We should have one of the most modernized armies in the world, Armenian President and Commander in-Chief of the Armed Forces Serzh Sargsyan said during the session of the Defense Ministrys National Defense Research University signaling the launch of the universitys new educational program, reports Armenpress.

The Army cannot develop independently, so the whole state should move forward in line with time. This means that we should have a constantly improving state thanks to which the army is also being modernized. This is possible, and we together with you and our society will fulfill this goal. The conditions of military service should be improved for everyone starting from a soldier in the frontline up to the commander. Here there are trifles and should not be. Everything is important starting from an outfit up to apartments for the officers. Social security guarantees on this issue are strictly important, the President said.

According to him, discipline in the army should at the highest level. Serzh Sargsyan said the parent, by sending his son to the army, must be sure that his son is in a new caring family.

The officer and the commander should be a senior brother and parent for the recruits. Non-statutory relations and negligence should be excluded completely. Therefore, we should not have any losses. We need to specifically focus on medical services. The work in this field should be increased to a new level. Months later the most modernized rehabilitation center for military disabled will open its doors in the Yerevan State Medical University. It should become a single address of treatment, social protection and reintegration of soldier with disabilities, the President said.

He highlighted that the army is the place where both the soldiers and officers should receive further education. Conditions must be created in the military units for enriching the knowledge of soldiers. Here I want to make a small deviation and say that all those manipulations today we see in connection with shifting to a new system for study in the universities and eliminating the right to deferment, are just nonsense. Previously, when we were trying to pass to this system, I mean 15-16 years ago, the same manipulations were being circulated, but during that time our problems were somehow different, and we didnt reach up to the end. But by examining this issue at that time we saw that serving in the army for two years or working for two, three or four years has never hindered anyone to reach the highest academic achievements. Thus, I ask you to give tough response to such manipulations in case of such occasion. I want to inform you that I also suspended my studies, served for two years and then returned and continued them, he said.

Serzh Sargsyan also commented on the rumors according to which it is necessary to form a professional army. He said all those people, who talk about this, are unaware that two third of the Army are almost professional, contractual servicemen, contractual officers, civil servants.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Armenia is following the serious military-political processes which are happening not far from its borders, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said in his speech at the National Defense Research Universitys session on October 24.

I presented my principle approaches over the Nagorno Karabakh conflict recently at the UN General Assembly. I dont see the need to repeat what Ive said there. Nevertheless, Id like to emphasize several circumstances.

First, at this phase we do not have a goal to solve or put forward a military task in Artsakh. We have solved the task of protecting the civilian population of Artsakh from the adversarys indiscriminate gunfire, and we have solved it long ago. The peaceful settlement of the conflict, among other conditions, must completely exclude any military threat towards the peaceful population of Artsakh.

Second, the Nagorno Karabakh conflict indeed has no military solution. Therefore it is impossible to pull the trigger with one hand, and to negotiation with the other hand for finding this solution. We either negotiation or we shoot. We are ready for both, the President said.

The President emphasized that the negotiations should take place in conditions of mutual trust via gun silence. Serzh Sargsyan mentioned that by achieving short-term tactical or propaganda advantage, neither of the sides solves any significant issue for itself. On the contrary, the provocations make the serious negotiations simply impossible.

Here Id like to make a small deviation from the topic and say that honestly a very strange situation has been created for me, when after the Geneva talks the Azerbaijani side is attempting to emphasize with a special cruelty that I have violated some kind of agreements. It is honestly strange, and I am waiting for our next meeting very impatiently in order to ask my colleague what had angered him. Moreover, those who talk are people who shouldnt have absolutely any information about our conversation, because it was the two of us talking, and If we had an agreement on non-disclosure, then how did his assistants, or, I dont know, deputies and others get acquainted with the topic? I reassure you I havent said a single word from our conversation anywhere. And what did I say at the meeting with the Armenian community of Switzerland? I said that no Armenian leader can sign a document which can put at risk the security of Nagorno Karabakh. Secondly, I said that Karabakh must not be part of Azerbaijan. And third, I said that the Azerbaijani President is also concerned over the safety and fatalities of his soldiers. Is there anything new here? I repeated what Ive been saying for 20 years, what we are talking about for 25 years. Meaning, if it seemed to anyone that if we negotiate in Geneva, adopted a statement that the tension must be reduced, it doesnt mean that striving for Karabakhs independence should also reduce. Honestly, it is very strange for me, the President said.

The President said that Armenia does not carry out, and wont carry out revenge and collective punishment actions. Nevertheless, the President warned that for every military loss, a compensation action against the soldiers of the other side will take place.

The third group of my points is about our ideology. The Nagorno Karabakh conflict doesnt have an ethnic or religious nature. We dont have any problems neither with the Azerbaijani people, nor moreover with Islam. We are convinced that the Azerbaijani people want peace, it is simply necessary to put this desire onto the right track, the President said.

He reminded that since the very first day of the Artsakh Liberation Movements, the Armenian side did everything within the then-active laws and international rights. We really proceeded by carrying out all actions in compliance with the then-active USSR law and international rights. I dont how to what extent we must be grateful to our senior friends who were able to instill this right idea in us. And it is because of this that we clearly say that the Nagorno Karabakh conflict differs from all conflicts in the post-Soviet territory, not only because the origins of the conflicts are different, but first of all because everything was done within the laws and rights, he said.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. The trade turnover between Armenia and Russia has increased, Armenian PM Karen Karapetyan said during a meeting with Russias PM Dmitry Medvedev in Yerevan.

Trade turnover between Armenia and Russia has increased by 23.5% in the first 8 months of the current year, Karapetyan said, adding that a huge potential exists for development of relations between the two countries, which are proved by the often organized bilateral meetings.

According to him, both sides have all opportunities to not only maintain the current level of relations, but also enhance it.

I think todays meeting is a good chance in order to discuss agenda issued and prospects of their further development. Today we prepared several documents, the signing of which will definitely contribute to the development of our cooperation, the PM said.
YEREVAN, 24 OCTOBER, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 24 October, USD exchange rate is up by 0.08 drams to 482.33 drams. EUR exchange rate is up by 1.15 drams to 567.22 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate stood at 8.39 drams. GBP exchange rate is up by 0.49 drams to 635.52 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price is down by 94.40 drams to 19770.22 drams. Silver price is down by 1.19 drams to 263.55 drams. Platinum price is down by 90.68 drams to 14158.14 drams.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Armenian and Russian Premiers Karen Karapetyan and Dmitry Medvedev have issued a statement for the mass media summing up the results of their talks. First of all we summed up the results of the works done in the recent period. We have recorded that the allied relations between our countries dynamically develop year by year. We have recorded rise also in numbers and at the same time we emphasized that we have great opportunities for growth. We discussed the prospects for implementing joint, investment and other projects. A number of documents were signed today that will undoubtedly foster the future development and strengthening of our cooperation, ARMENPRESS reports Karapetyan saying.

The Armenian Premier added that the important role of the Intergovernmental Commission for Economic Development was highlighted for all the bilateral economic processes. Ending my speech I want to record that we are satisfied with the works done, and also I want to stress that our negotiations as always were very constructive, saturated and friendly, Karen Karapetyan concluded.

Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev underlined that the relations develop in all the directions.

By the way, this year we mark the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between our countries, and I will not talk about the history of our relations since they are about a much longer period of time. Russia remains Armenias leading partner in foreign trade, trade turnover grew both in 2016 and 2017 and rises at quite a good pace. We have already told about that. All our joint ventures successfully operate in all the spheres  these are high technologies, energy, construction and telecommunications, the Russian Premier said. He added that they have outlined the projects for the future. According to him, cooperation in the humanitarian sphere also develops.

We are preparing for holding cultural days of Armenia in Russia that will take place in November, Medvedev concluded.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan received on October 24 Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev who is in Armenia on an official visit.

As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the Armenian Presidents Office, greeting the guest, and emphasizing that the visit of the Russian Premier to Armenia takes place in the year marking the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Russia, President Sargsyan documented with satisfaction that huge works have been carried out during that period.

Today constant political dialogue at all levels is characteristic for our relations  broad coordination of foreign policy, good work at international and regional platforms, productive cooperation in the economic, military and military-technical spheres, and particularly in the sphere of bilateral trade. Last year we ended with a 15% growth while the rise in our trade turnover during the first 8 months of the current year has been a bit more than 23%. Its very good.

I am convinced your official visit will become another important step on our path to further strengthening our relations, President Serzh Sargsyan said.

The Russian Premier thanked President Serzh Sargsyan for the reception and conveyed the greetings and warm wishes of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Dmitry Medvedev informed Serzh Sargsyan with satisfaction that the trade turnover between the countries is even more than the President mentioned  nearly 30%.

I am thankful for the opportunity to meet. We are really partners and friends and we have very developed relations in all the spheres. A little ago we held inter-governmental negotiations, we have signed important documents and recorded that the relations develop.

Moreover, there is practically no sphere where we do not cooperate. For example, very good dynamics have been recorded in the sphere of agricultural supplies and here Armenia has well developed its presence in the Russian market, though its clear that these processes can be developed further. Other spheres also rapidly develop. These are cooperation in high technologies, security and defense, as well as investment partnership. We have discussed the opportunities to launch activities at the free trade zone to be created in your country in cooperation with Iran, as well as some other major projects, Medvedev said.




YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan received on October 24 the delegation of the Mexico-Armenia Friendship Group of the United Mexican States' Chamber of Deputies.

As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of ARtsakh Presidents Office,a range of issues of mutual interest were addressed at the meeting. Special attention was paid to the establishment of parliamentary ties, the development of cooperation in public and humanitarian spheres.

Vice-speaker of the Armenian National Assembly Vice President Eduard Sharmazanov, Artsakh Republic National Assembly deputy chairman Vahram Balayan and other officials partook at the meeting.
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 24, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Karen Karapetyan received on October 24 Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Sapar Isakov.

As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the Government of Armenia, Karen Karapetyan congratulated his colleague on the occasion of assuming the post and wished him success. He expressed conviction that the traditionally friendly relations between the two peoples are a good ground for expanding political dialogue and implementing mutually beneficial economic projects. The Premier noted that though trade turnover between Armenia and Kyrgyzstan is not at a high level, but there is positive trend and there is development potential. This positive trend should be fostered, including by the activities of the intergovernmental commission. Undoubtedly, both in Armenia and Kyrgyzstan there are promising projects that can be jointly implemented and which can be mutually beneficial, the Armenian Premier said.

Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan Sapar Isakov expressed readiness to deepen partnership, noting that the current economic relations between the two states do not match the level of the political dialogue. As for us, we are fully ready to support the development of bilateral economic relations, Isakov said.

The sides mutually emphasized the role of the Eurasian integration processes.
Death By Overwork

Trending News: Can You Literally Work Yourself To Death? Yes, Just Ask Japan

Long Story Short

Dont be like Japan. Reports out of the worlds third biggest economy suggest its facing a death by overwork problem.

Long Story

Much of the western world is grappling with the issue of overwork.

A national study in the United States last year found that more than half of the 1003 respondents felt overworked or overwhelmed at least some of the time. A 2013 study in the United Kingdom discovered that a creeping culture of all work and no play was putting major stress on relationships and the family unit.

In Australia, the Centre for Future Work at the Australia Institute found that $116 billion worth of labour time each year goes uncompensated, with the average worker performing more than five hours a week in unpaid overtime.

Its a major issue, but at least all three countries can say one thing: things arent as terrible as they are in Japan.

Ever since the 1970s Japanese culture has had its own word for overwork  karoshi. Things have been that intense for that long. Its not uncommon for Japanese workers to arrive at the office early in the morning and not leave until close to midnight. In 2013, 31-year-old journalist Miwa Sado actually worked herself to death, succumbing to heart failure after logging 159 hours of overtime in one month at news network NHK.

Japans grinding work culture was born in the 1950s, when the government focused on rebuilding the country after World War II. Central to the plan was corporations offering employees lifelong job security, workers repaying the favour through loyalty to the job.

History has proven the plan a success. But the issues the country is now grappling with indicate its been at some cost.

Business Insider reports that Japan is now trying to solve its karoshi problem with various strategies from both the government (a 3pm knock-off time on the last Friday of the month) and companies themselves (offers of supplied breakfast in the morning, meaning workers can get home that much earlier; allowing workers to take time off as needed). Apparently theyre not having much of an effect.

This might tap into where Japan is different from the US, Australia and the UK. Frances Rosenbluth, a political scientist at Yale, told BI its a cultural problem in Japan  that the best way to tackle working hours is to encourage firms to hire more women, increasing the labour pool. But she said changing such an ingrained culture would be hard.

So what can you do about being overworked? You need to push back, but gently. And dont wait until youre overwhelmed and ready to burnout. Your manager learning youre overworked via one of your horizontal panic attacks isnt a good look. So instead, be sure to define your goals and key projects with management and provide regular updates, so that when it comes time to push back they understand where youre coming from.

From the perspective of a business owner or manager, you need to encourage your employees to go home at a certain time, take vacation days and lead by example when it comes to unplugging from the job. Interestingly, recent research found that killing overworking habits might be as simple as retiring your thirst-inducing bonus scheme.

There are a lot of tools out there for worker and manager. Use them.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Could countries like the United States or Australia ever end up like Japan in terms of work hours?

Drop This Fact

According to the OECD, Mexico works the longest hours in the world, followed by Costa Rica. South Korea, Greece and Chile complete the top five.
Global bakery business Aryzta Food Solutions has introduced a nine-strong seasonal bakery range in the run-up to Christmas.

Available now, the range comprises sweet and savoury products, which the business claims will enable retailers to meet shopper demand for treats that provide a dash of festive indulgence.

The festive line-up includes Cuisine de France-branded 90g Cranberry Torsades (twists) at 1.00 and 80g Brandy Mince Puffs (pictured), priced at 1.25, as well as festive 140g sausage rolls at 1.25. Also available are 160g festive slices, which are available in turkey, pork sausage, bacon and cranberry in a creamy gravy, for 1.50 each.

Vincent Brook, head of UK retail at Aryzta Food Solutions, said that the run-up to Christmas provided a major opportunity for retailers to maximise their in-store bakery and food-to-go profits.

Bakery is already one of the top-performing sectors in convenience, Brook said. Combine this with the fact that food-to-go shoppers spend 10% more than the average c-store shopper, and 42% cite hot food as a reason to return. Were enabling retailers to use our high-margin products to capitalise on the festive feelgood factor at a time when shoppers want to indulge.

The rest of the range comprises:
Bells Food Group has spent 500k to create a dedicated cake bakery at a former council depot in Shotts, Scotland.

The new site, which is 4,500sq ft and located next to its Dykehead Bakery site, will create 10 new jobs for the business and is expected to be fully operational by Christmas 2018.

The cake manufacturing aspect of the business will move into the new facility, with the Dykehead Bakery focusing solely on pastry manufacturing.

The move follows Bells Food Group making a 3.6m investment in doubling its pastry production capacity at Dykehead and creating Bells Professional Pastry, a new arm of the business dedicated to the manufacture and supply of pastry.

The investment in a dedicated cake bakery is the latest in a programme of capital expenditure and new product development across our sweet, savoury and pastry businesses, said Bells Food Group managing director Ronnie Miles.

A planning application to support the redevelopment of the former council depot into a dedicated cake bakery is expected to be submitted in spring 2018.

The investment by Bells is very welcome and its fantastic to see a national brand such as this put its faith in our community, said councillor Thomas Cochrane. It has been my pleasure working with Bells and the council to facilitate the sale, which will enable the company to expand within the town. I hope the company continues to go from strength to strength.
Utilities Commission asked developer to work with community to find suitable location away from Terra Ceia school



Residents of the Terra Ceia community line up outside the Beaufort County Courthouse in May to protest a solar facility slated at the time to go near the historic Christian school. (CJ photo by Don Carrington)

The N.C. Utilities Commission approved a massive Beaufort County solar project in October after the developer relocated the portion of the project that would have surrounded the Terra Ceia Christian School.When plans for the solar project became public in March, the developer had already secured leases on the parcels it planned to use for the project. Several area residents and school supporters spoke loudly in opposition to the project after they realized it would surround the small school in the heart of the Terra Ceia community.The school, founded in 1937, sits on 3 acres at Christian School and Terra Ceia roads east of Washington and near the community of Pantego. It provides a Christian-based education for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade and has about 125 students from Beaufort and three adjoining counties.Wilkinson Solar will build the solar facility. It's a subsidiary of Chicago-based Invenergy, an international renewable energy developer. Plans call for a 74-megawatt solar electric generating plant that will take up 600 acres. It will be the largest solar array in North Carolina, with 288,120 solar panels rising six to 10 feet above the ground.Invenergy has built one other solar project in North Carolina - the 20-megawatt Morgan's Corner facility near Elizabeth City, completed in 2015. In 2011, Invenergy tried to build a wind energy facility in the same general area of Beaufort County near Terra Ceia.In May, a three-member Utilities Commission panel held hearings and took testimony from opponents and the developer. After those hearings, panel chairwoman Commissioner ToNola Brown-Bland said she agreed Terra Ceia Christian School is an important part of the community and urged Wilkinson Solar and school supporters to come together and coexist.On Oct. 9, seven months after it made the initial request, Wilkinson amended its application with a new site layout. While the project is still in the Terra Ceia community, the closest solar panels will be about 1,400 feet from the school property.The commission Oct. 11 issued its formal permission, called a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, for Wilkinson to build the solar facility. Wilkinson officials have said the project won't proceed until it finds a buyer for the electricity.
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.
As was announced on September 29, 2017, President Donald J. Trump will travel to Japan, the Republic of Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Hawaii, from November 3-14, 2017. This update provides further details about the President's itinerary.The President's travel will underscore his commitment to longstanding United States alliances and partnerships, and reaffirm United States leadership in promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific region.On November 3, the President will visit Hawaii and receive a briefing from the U.S. Pacific Command. He will visit Pearl Harbor and the USS ARIZONA Memorial.The President will commence his visit to Asia beginning with Japan on November 5. While in Japan, President Trump will meet with American and Japanese service members, and participate in bilateral meetings with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who will also host the President for a meeting with the families of Japanese citizens abducted by the North Korean regime.During his visit to the Republic of Korea on November 7, the President will participate in a bilateral meeting with President Moon Jae-in and visit American and South Korean service members. The President will speak at the National Assembly, where he will celebrate the enduring alliance and friendship between the United States and the Republic of Korea, and call on the international community to join together in maximizing pressure on North Korea.On November 8, President Trump will arrive in Beijing, China for a series of bilateral, commercial, and cultural events, including meetings with President Xi Jinping.The President will travel to Danang, Vietnam, on November 10. There, he will participate in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting and deliver a speech at the APEC CEO Summit. In the speech, the President will present the United States' vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific region and underscore the important role the region plays in advancing America's economic prosperity. On November 11, the President will travel to Hanoi, Vietnam for an official visit and bilateral engagements with President Tran Dai Quang and other senior Vietnamese leaders.President Trump will arrive in Manila, Philippines, on November 12 to participate in the Special Gala Celebration Dinner for the 50th Anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). On November 13, the President will celebrate the 40th anniversary of U.S.-ASEAN relations at the U.S.-ASEAN Summit and participate in bilateral meetings with President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and other leaders.White House 
"This is amazing! That is absolutely phenomenal!"byAfter White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly gave a deeply personal and emotionally-charged statement against the politicization of fallen soldiers and their grieving families, Florida Democratic Congresswoman Frederica Wilson laughed to reporters about her role in stirring up the controversy over President Trump's painful call to a Gold Star widow."You mean to tell me that I have become so important that the White House is following me and my words," Rep. Wilson laughingly told Miami 7 News on Thursday. "That's amazing! This is amazing! That is absolutely phenomenal! I'll have to tell my kids that I'm a rock star now! WATCH:What Wilson is so flippantly laughing off is a controversy she helped inflame when she accused President Trump of handling a call to the Gold Star widow of fallen soldier Army Sgt. La David Johnson in a supposedly callous manner. Along with the widow, Wilson, who says she was on the speaker phone when Trump called, accused Trump of saying callously that Sgt. Johnson "knew what he was getting into."In a briefing on Thursday, Gen. Kelly condemned the politicization of grieving Gold Star families and said he was "stunned and broken-hearted at what I saw a member of Congress doing." He also described what went on behind the scenes leading up to the call and explained how difficult those calls are to make.Kelly said he advised Trump to say, "He was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1%. He knew what the possibilities were because we were at war. And when he died he was surrounded by the best men on this Earth, his friends.""That's what the President tried to say to the four families the other day," said Kelly, who lost his own son in combat in 2010 during Barack Obama's presidency.Rep. Wilson responded by cynically accusing Kelly of simply trying to "keep his job.""John Kelly's trying to keep his job," said Wilson. "He will say anything. There were other people who heard what I heard."After clearly enjoying her time in the limelight over the controversy on Thursday, the congresswoman issued a statement saying she would no longer comment publicly on Trump's call to Johnson. "The congresswoman will not be making any further comment on the issue because the focus should be on helping a grieving widow and family heal, not on her or Donald Trump," Wilson's spokesperson told the media Thursday.Video of Kelly's remarks below
The tax relief and tax cuts supported by President Donald J. Trump will boost wages for hardworking Americans. The average American household income could increase between $4,000 and $9,000 a year in wages and salary alone by cutting the Federal corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, according to an analysis by the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA).o Developed countries with the low corporate tax rates have seen significantly higher wage growth compared with developed countries with higher rates.o Reducing corporate tax rates will raise wages for workers of all skill levels. Wages and corporate profits used to grow at nearly the same rate, but that is no longer the case. In the last eight years, wage growth has stagnated while corporate profits increased by an average of 11 percent per year, according to an analysis by the CEA.o Wage growth has failed to keep pace with corporate profits as corporate tax rates in the United States have become uncompetitive.o More than 70 percent of the corporate tax burden falls on Americans workers, according to an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.: The Unified Framework for Fixing Our Broken Tax Code supported by President Trump will end the "offshoring model" as companies will bring profits back and invest in American workers. In 2016, a Federal corporate tax rate of 20 percent could have brought more than $140 billion in corporate profits back to America, according to an analysis by the CEA.o Those profits could have helped boost the incomes of U.S. households. Our current uncompetitive corporate tax rate encourages U.S. firms to keep profits offshore.o The United States has the highest corporate income tax rate among the 35 industrialized Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, according to the OECD.o The U.S. corporate tax rate has been higher than the OECD average for almost 20 years. Last year, more than 70 percent of foreign profits earned by U.S. firms were kept offshore, up from 42 percent in 1984, according to an analysis by the CEA.o Companies hold an estimated $2.8 trillion in earnings offshore, according to Audit Analytics. Cutting corporate tax rates will encourage firms to invest back in the United States, creating well-paying jobs for hardworking Americans.o After President Bush's 2003 tax cuts, the economy created 7.8 million jobs over five years, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.o After President Reagan's 1981 tax cuts, the economy created 14.8 million jobs over five years based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.o After President Kennedy's tax cuts, the economy created 12.0 million new jobs over five years based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.The Unified Framework supported by President Trump will mean hardworking Americans can keep more of their money. Double the standard deduction so that more income is taxed at zero percent.o The first $12,000 of income for individuals and $24,000 for married couples will be income tax-free. Lower individual income tax rates to: 12 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent. Increase the Child Tax Credit and expand it to benefit more middle-income families and eliminate the marriage penalty. Create a new $500 tax credit for those caring for an adult dependent or elderly loved one.White House 
Caldwell County - Dozens of homes damaged, many are in the Grace Chapel area. A shelter is open at South Caldwell High School; nearly 1,700 power outages.

Alexander County - Approximately 10 to 15 homes damaged; multiple roads blocked, power outages.

Catawba Co. - severe damage at the Hickory Regional Airport; several roads blocked by downed trees; a few homes damaged; nearly 14,000 power outages.

Cleveland County - post office roof damaged.

Ashe County - minor flooding and trees down.

Burke County - multiple buildings damaged in the Hildebran area; approximately 5,000 power outages throughout county.

Henderson County - area flooding.

Contact: Ford Porter

Ford Porter govpress@nc.gov

RALEIGH: A line of strong storms moved across North Carolina Monday afternoon and evening devastating a regional airport, damaging dozens of homes, toppling trees, closing roads and leaving several western North Carolina communities without power.said Governor Roy Cooper.Tornado warnings and watches were in effect for many western and central counties, and National Weather Service meteorologists will be on the ground conducting a survey today to confirm if tornadoes actually touched down. Local emergency management crews will conduct initial damage assessments today, then coordinate with state EM officials this week to determine what types of state or federal assistance may be available.By 2 p.m., approximately 54,500 homes and businesses still were without power, down from a peak of more than 92,000 last night. The greatest numbers of outages were in Catawba, Wilkes, Alexander, Burke and Caldwell counties. Authorities in Watauga and McDowell counties reported completing water rescues as heavy rains caused flash floods in some areas. Shelters are currently open in Caldwell, Wilkes and Watauga counties.A short section of US 64 in Henderson County was closed due to a small mudslide but has since reopened. Downed power lines and trees closed multiple secondary roads in Alexander, Ashe, Caldwell, Catawba, Cleveland and Wilkes counties. High water submerged low bridges in Watauga County and flooded several secondary roads in Henderson and Polk County. At the Hickory Regional Airport, winds destroyed a hangar and overturned planes and cars.A retaining wall at the top parking lot in the Chimney Rock section of Chimney Rock State Park in Rutherford County collapsed from heavy rainfall. Chimney Rock at Chimney Rock State Park will be closed until further notice while repairs are completed.NC Emergency Management is sending chain saw crews from the N.C. Forest Service to Alexander, Burke and Caldwell counties to help clear debris.Burke, Caldwell, Wilkes and Catawba counties declared local states of emergency due to the storms. The formal declaration enables jurisdictions to seek state or federal aid if needed.Schools are closed today in Alexander County, while Ashe, Caldwell and Catawba County schools are on a two-hour delay. Five Caldwell schools will be closed for the day due to trees blocking roads or power outages.The following is a brief synopsis of known damages at this time:"As our county emergency managers survey their communities, we'll have a better ideasaid state Emergency Manager Mike Sprayberry.Sprayberry said once emergency managers have a clearer picture of the nature of the damages, they will be able to determine what, if any, state or federal aid may be available to help individuals and communities recover from these latest storms.
The misnamed Saving Americas Endangered Species Act would eliminate protections for foreign species held as captives in the United States and would have immediate and devastating consequences for chimpanzees, elephants, and African lions. Photo by Vanessa Mignon

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There are radical maneuvers among some Republicans in the House to eviscerate the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and to cherry-pick species from the list to enable trophy hunting or wildlife trafficking targeting the rarest of species. If any or all of these anti-wildlife provisions were to be adopted, animal species already at great risk will see the dangers to them compounded in life-threatening ways. Republicans and Democrats not aligned with these maneuverings need to stand against these efforts to enable the exploitation of rare species and defend one of the nations most popular and important animal protection laws.

Ive written multiple times about a raft of efforts to eliminate federal protections for gray wolves in the Great Lakes region. A U.S. District Court said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services plan to remove federal protections was illegal, and a unanimous panel of judges on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed that ruling. Some lawmakers want to circumvent the federal courts and enable an illegal plan to proceed. If they succeed, what would stop lawmakers from a region from plucking other species off the list to serve parochial interests? The listing and delisting process is to be conducted by professionals at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and its subject to judicial review. The process is not supposed to be micromanaged by Congress.

One of the most outrageous efforts comes from U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, who has introduced a bill, H.R. 2603, the misnamed Saving Americas Endangered Species Act, that would eliminate protections for foreign species held as captives in the United States. His bill would also enable the free flow of parts of some endangered species to be sold or carried into the United States. It would have immediate and devastating consequences for chimpanzees, elephants, and African lions in the United States, and it would put these species at risk in their native lands as well.

Though we made great progress with the National Institutes of Health in phasing out the use of chimpanzees in invasive experiments, the legal protection for the chimpanzees is derived from the listing of the species as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The HSUS led the effort to petition the agency to class all chimps as endangered, including the captive animals held in the United States. In 2015, the Service categorized all chimpanzees as protected. If the Gohmert bill is enacted, federal protections for chimps for invasive experiments would be ended overnight. Unfortunately, laboratories that once experimented on chimps are still holding on to hundreds of them, and some labs might resume experiments if they had the legal authority to do so.

For other species coveted by trophy hunting interests, the legal strictures of the Endangered Species Act are critical to protecting captive animals in the United States. African elephants, lions, leopards, and a number of other species could be legally hunted in the United States, on canned hunting operations, if lawmakers passed the Gohmert legislation. There are more than 1,000 captive hunting facilities that offer up exotic species already in the United States; these businesses could just add a few species to the list of huntable targets, and many of them could be obtained through exotic animal dealers.

The ESA also restricts the trade to the United States in endangered animal parts. Last year, The HSUS and HSI succeed in getting the African lion listed as threatened or endangered across its range in Africa. Prior to that, American trophy hunters killed and imported the heads and hides of about 700 lions a year, most of them killed in captive hunts in South Africa. With the federal listing of lions as threatened or endangered, those imports have stopped, and American trophy hunters now cant bring the heads back, so most of them wont kill them in the first place. If Gohmerts bill passes, American trophy hunters will rush over to range nations with lions and renew their killing in earnest.

Gohmerts bill has passed the House Natural Resources Committee, but Speaker Paul Ryan would be well advised not to bring up this terrible bill.

Some lawmakers are taking a different tack to weaken the ESA. Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Rand Paul, R-Ky., recently introduced the also-misnamed Native Species Protection Act, S. 1863. Contrary to its title, this bill would strip ESA protection from species found entirely within the borders of a single state. Examples of such species include the polar bear, the Puerto Rican parrot, and the Sonoran pronghorn. This legislation has implications for trafficking too, since rare and declining species can have economic value in illegal trade markets, and can generate harmful interstate commerce beyond a range states borders. The good news is, when Sen. Lee offered an amendment to this effect in last weeks budget resolution vote, the Senate rejected it by a vote of 51 to 49, with Tennessee Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander and Maine Sen. Susan Collins joining all Democrats in opposing it.

Endangered and threatened species, whether native to the United States or not, desperately need all the protections they can get. Removing ESA protections for these imperiled animals is a sop to American and foreign trophy hunters, wildlife traffickers, pet traders, and even laboratory researchers. Our hard-earned gains for animals, achieved through years of campaigning, would be unraveled overnight for species that deserve better.
The HSUS acknowledges that round-ups of horses and burros are likely, but believes that more active and professional adoption programs and rigorous herd-by-herd application of contraception are essential components of any sound plan. Photo by Wayne Pacelle

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Looks like weve got four of them, my colleague Grace Kahler offered as our HSUS truck bounced up and down on a rock-strewn dirt road at the foothills of the Black Mountains, shimmering as the first rays of sunlight warmed these desert hills Sunday morning. We were in the Golden Valley of the Mojave Desert of northwest Arizona for The Platero Project, an HSUS-Bureau of Land Management project aimed at stabilizing and reducing the burro population growth rate in the Black Mountain Herd Management Area (HMA) through fertility control. The four-year project is financed by an HSUS donor and a supplementary grant from the BLM, and is named for the Spanish Nobel Laureate Juan Ramon Jimenezs beautiful book about a faithful and friendly burro named Platero.

The night before, as the sun was setting, Grace and I had traveled those same bumpy roads on these austere yet beautiful federal lands and baited a corral trap with alfalfa. This fall, its exceptionally dry in the Arizona desert, and in the best of times the desert is sparse in edible plants for the burros. With edible foods hard to come by, the burros are easily tempted by bales of rich grass left for them in the makeshift corrals, and it was with excitement that Grace signaled, squinting and peering over the steering wheel, that wed caught four burros. I hope they arent all jacks, she cautioned. The fertility control program is aimed at the female burros, or jennies, who are treated with PZP, a fertility control vaccine that temporarily stalls reproduction. We set the males free after taking hair samples from their tails (in order to mark them as previously captured and to do some follicle testing for genetic diversity).

Weve got one female, Grace relayed with excitement, eyeballing three tall, lean males and a more stout but agitated female, after we got out of the truck and peered through the bars of the metal corral. I am going to text Chad, and have him bring the horse trailer up here.

Chad is the BLMs Chad Benson  the wild horse and burro specialist overseeing the Black Mountain HMA and four other HMAs along the Colorado River, stretching from far northern Arizona all the way down to Yuma, on the border with Mexico and California. Its a big job, given that hes the sole BLM specialist working every day on equine management in his district, and his territory encompasses millions of acres. The Black Mountain HMA alone is 925,000 acres, and he believes there are more than 2,000 burros in that HMA, making it the single biggest population of burros the BLM manages. Chad knows this terrain and the horses and burros very well, and hes committed to this project and to the idea of fertility control as a population management strategy.

I wanted to see our field work on this project, and especially so because there is raging debate in Washington, D.C, about the management of wild horses and burros. The HSUS acknowledges that round-ups of horses and burros throughout the West are likely, but believes that more active and professional adoption programs and rigorous herd-by-herd application of contraception are necessary features of any sound plan. What were doing with the skittish burros at Black Mountain is a test of whether that strategy can work with burros who often flee at the first sighting or approach of a person.

Ive been in the field with our wild horse and burro specialists before. In my book, The Humane Economy, I wrote about wild horses and our fertility control work in the Sand Wash Basin HMA in far northwest Colorado, where The HSUS and volunteers with the Sand Wash Basin Wild Horse Advocate Team (SWAT) worked with BLM personnel there to treat wild mustangs with darts filled with PZP. The old model of rounding up wild horses by the thousands and doing nothing to control the growth rate of the remaining horses on our public lands has been a ruinous strategy, resulting in fast-growing populations on the range and in holding facilities, and breaking the bank for the BLM. It was more than encouraging to see dedicated volunteers like Stella Trueblood and others giving their time and expertise to the task of carefully stalking the horses and then calmly delivering a dart in the rump of a mare. This painlessly delivers the vaccine without any need to handle the animal. Its far better from a fiscal perspective to keep the horses on the range and to avoid gathering them up, thereby allowing them to forage on what nature offers, as compared to feeding them every day in a holding facility. BLM estimates it now has nearly 45,000 horses in holding facilities, gobbling up as much as two-thirds of the agencys budget.

During the first year of the Platero Project, well work with BLM to capture 150 or so jennies, including 15-25 habituated jennies living around the historic mining town of Oatman, Arizona. Trapping will occur only during the first year of the study and that capture method relies on the baited traps located strategically throughout the Black Mountain HMA in places where the burros spend much of their time. Well also work to use dart guns, and Grace and I talked about the idea of having BLM recruit horsemen and women in the future to help gather some of the jennies, in order to treat more of them with PZP.

While the project calls for 150 jennies to be treated, its my view that the BLM has to be more aggressive in this HMA and in other HMAs throughout the West. The agency has always been reluctant to turn our teams, volunteers, and BLM staff loose with fertility control tools. But since the agency claims that about 72,000 wild horses and burros currently live on the range  nearly triple the number of horses and burros that the BLM wants to see on our public lands, only a very intentional, focused, and well-resourced fertility control program will arrest reproductive rates on the range.

The Black Mountain HMA is a striking but forbidding landscape, with very wild and highly alert burros (except for the habituated burros in Oatman). If we can administer fertility control to the animals here, we can do it just about anywhere. Only when BLM goes all in on fertility control will the nation have a viable, fiscally sound, and effective strategy for humanely managing wild horses and burros. The idea of mass slaughter or euthanasia will never be acceptable to the American public, nor should it. Fertility control, in combination with selective gathers and more effective adoption programs, is the only viable path forward. The Platero Project in the Black Mountains is the latest project to affirm that these ideas will indeed work on the ground, and its my hope that senior leaders at BLM and Congress will swing behind the concept across their HMAs and work with us and other partners to make it work on a national scale.

P.S. Learn how to adopt a wild horse or burro by clicking here, or call 866-468-7826.

Disclaimer: The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the author and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the U.S. government. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute their endorsement by the U.S. government. Research reported here was supported by the Bureau of Land Management under award number L16AC00008. The content is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Bureau of Land Management.
Carrara marble is one of the most sought-after types, and these remarkable images by Bernhard Lang show how enormous some of the quarries are.

AERIAL VIEWS CARRARA MARBLE MINES Above the city of Carrara in the Apuan Alps in Italy there are the Carrara Marble mines where the creamy white stone is extracted. The exceptional quality of this white marble is know since roman times, when the roman empire already used it for the construction of their most prestigious monuments and sculpting. The noble marble from Carrara was valued by various artists and masters including Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Bernini and Rodin,  The Carrara quarries have produced more marble than any other place on earth. Working in the quarries has been dangerous and continues so to this day. Photographed in September 2017.

More cool stuff at his site.

 Carrara Marble (Behance / Bernhard Lang)


Since 2010, photographer Noritaka Minami has documented life in Tokyo's Nakagin Tower, a "metabolist" building constructed in 1972 in just one month. Each prefabricated cube attached to the core tower is a 107-square-foot apartment complete with a tiny lavatory. Since designer Kisho Kurokawa's death in 2007, its fate has been uncertain. From National Geographic:





Some capsule owners have moved out or converted their rooms into offices, while others have chosen to renovate and remain in the one-of-a-kind dwelling.





Minami avoided photographing the tenants directly, preferring to have their presence communicated through their objects. "[The room] functions as a container of people's identity, personal interest, hobbies and taste."
I live in Los Angeles, and it seems like half the billboards in the city are advertising a movie called Daddy's Home 2. I didn't even know there was a Daddy's Home 1, so I wasn't planning on seeing it anyway, but when I saw that it was co-starring the misogynist antisemite homophobe Mel Gibson, I did a double take. Who would want to see that miserable creep's face on the screen. It turns out that Ira Madison III of the Daily Beast is wondering the same thing as me.

From his piece, titled, "What the Hell Is Mel Gibson Doing in the Family Comedy 'Daddy's Home 2?':

In the wake of at least 40 women accusing him of sexual harassment or assault, Harvey Weinstein lost attorney Lisa Bloom, but has gained a new one: Blair Berk.

A powerful Hollywood lawyer, Berk has represented stars like Kanye West, Ryan Seacrest, Heather Locklear, Kiefer Sutherland, and Lindsay Lohan in their paparazzi scuffles, stalking problems, and DUI arrests. But one of Berk's most infamous clients was Mel Gibson. She represented Gibson when tapes were released exposing an anti-Semitic rant against a police officer, a subsequent recording of racially charged threats against his ex-girlfriend and mother of his child Oksana Grigorieva, and her domestic-violence accusation against him. She's damn good at her job. That's why, despite the damning audioand Grigorieva's claim that the actor-filmmaker knocked her teeth out  Gibson managed a comeback tour at the Oscars this year for his war drama Hacksaw Ridge, and is now, inexplicably, starring in the purported family comedy Daddy's Home 2.

TMZ provided a transcript of the rant in 2006, when Gibson was pulled over for driving drunk in Malibu and told a male deputy, who is Jewish, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." He then is alleged to have turned to a female sergeant and said, "What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?"

In the rant against Grigorieva, portions of which leaked online, he got even more explicitly racist and misogynistic: "You go out in public and it's a fucking embarrassment to me. You look like a fucking bitch in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of ns it'll be your fault. All right? Because you provoked it. You are provocatively dressed all the time with your fake boobs." In 2011, Gibson pleaded no contest to battery charges against Grigorieva.
Israeli artillery shelled three Syrian regime positions in the Golan Heights amid threats that Tel Aviv would escalate its response to rocket fire from the Syrian side of the Golan.





The Israeli shelling came in retaliation to five rockets being fired from Golan territories that are held by gunmen in Syria. The rockets had veered off their course and landed in the Israeli-occupied section of the region.
Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blog spot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

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..Gatestone Institute..23 October '17..In a historic reawakening, Iran is once again meddling in the internal affairs of the Palestinians. This this does not bode well for the future of "reconciliation" between Hamas and Palestinian Authority's Fatah faction run by President Mahmoud Abbas.The re-emergence of Iran, as it pursues its efforts to increase its political and military presence in the region, does not bode well for the future of stability in the Middle East.The Iranians are urging Hamas to hold on to its weapons in spite of the recent "reconciliation" agreement signed between Hamas and Fatah under the auspices of Egypt. Iran's goal in this move? For Hamas to maintain and enhance its preparation for war against Israel.A high-level Hamas delegation headed by Saleh Arouri, deputy chairman of Hamas's "political bureau," traveled to Tehran last week to brief Iranian leaders on the "reconciliation" deal with Fatah. During the visit, Iranian leaders praised Hamas for resisting demands (by Fatah) to disarm and relinquish security control over the Gaza Strip."We congratulate you on your refusal to abandon your weapons, an issue that you consider as a red line," Ali Velayati, a senior Iranian politician and advisor to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei, told the visiting Hamas officials. "The Palestinian cause is the most important cause of the Islamic world, and after all this time you remain committed to the principle of resistance against the Zionists despite all the pressure you are facing."
Internet of Things

Babson Lab to Experiment with IoT for Social Good

Babson College's Lewis Institute for Social Innovation has launched the IoT For Good Lab to encourage the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) for social good.

The new initiative will seek to bring together interdisciplinary teams of entrepreneurs, designers, engineers, artists, liberal arts students and others to experiment with ideas to meet the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals using the Internet of Things.

Sponsored by Verizon, the lab will offer seed funds, course resources and other support for social ventures featuring IoT technologies.

"An example of a course supported by the lab is an interdisciplinary product design course with students from Babson College, Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Olin College of Engineering, which is team-taught by professors Jennifer Bailey, James Read, Ben Linder and Lawrence Neeley," according to a news release. "This year, the course's theme is leveraging IoT to design for equality and inclusivity."

"The IoT is being hailed as the next technological revolution and will generate new entrepreneurial opportunities, business models and solutions to some of the world's toughest challenges," said Jennifer Bailey, professor and faculty director of Babson's IoT For Good Lab, in a prepared statement. "As a top-ranked school for entrepreneurship, Babson is ready now more than ever to help its entrepreneurs of all kinds leverage and integrate their combined knowledge in technology, business and design to amplify and accelerate social impact solutions."

For more information, visit babson.edu.
When President Donald Trump outlined his administrations comprehensive strategy toward Iran, he not only highlighted his concerns with the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA; he stressed the necessity of countering Irans support for terrorism and its destabilizing activity in the Middle East.

That support stretches from the regimes earliest days, when its agents seized the U.S embassy in Tehran. It includes Irans founding and funding of Hezbollah, whose operatives bombed the U.S. embassy in Lebanon twice in the 1980s; and its backing of groups in Iraq and Afghanistan that have killed hundreds of American military personnel.

The Iranian dictatorships aggression continues to this day, President Trump said:

The regime remains the worlds leading state sponsor of terrorism, and provides assistance to Al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist networks. It develop, deploys, and proliferates missiles that threaten American troops and our allies. It harasses American ships and threatens freedom of navigation in the Arabian Gulf and in the Red Sea. It imprisons Americans on false charges.

President Trump stressed that Irans antagonistic behavior is not directed at the United States alone: it violently suppresses its own citizens and others in Iran and has fueled sectarian violence in Iraq and vicious civil wars in Yemen and Syria, where its support props up the Assad regime - a regime that uses chemical weapons against helpless civilians, including children.

President Trump said that after consulting U.S. allies, the new strategy will best address the full range of Irans destructive actions. It includes working with partners to counter the regimes support for terrorist proxies; placing additional sanctions on the regime to block its financing of terror; addressing Irans proliferation of missiles and the actions that threaten global trade and freedom of navigation; and, finally, denying the regime all paths to a nuclear weapon.

The execution of this strategy includes the U.S. imposing sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for its support for terrorism. President Trump urged U.S. partners to join the United States and take strong actions to curb Irans continued dangerous behavior.

We hope these new measures directed at the Iranian dictatorship, he said, will compel the government to reevaluate its pursuit of terror at the expense of its people.
The Catalan deputy premier, Oriol Junqueras. PAU BARRENA (AFP)

Oriol Junqueras, Catalonias deputy premier and head of the economy department for the region, published a report on October 15 titled La situacio de leconomia en un Estat catala (The situation of the economy in a Catalan state). This document listed the reasons why an independent Catalonia is a viable, desirable project. Yet the 13 pages are filled with erroneous statistics  such as claims that the Catalan gross domestic product (GDP) is like Denmarks. There are also half-truths, like the assertion that the business flight from the region will not have any effects on the economy. And there are entirely false statements, such as the claim that an independent Catalan state would have guaranteed access to the European Single Market. The following is an EL PAIS analysis of the reports more questionable passages.

1. THE FALSEHOODS

Self-government

It is misleading to say that Catalonia enjoys a very high degree of self-government, reads the text

Catalonias degree of self-government is among the highest in the world. In its classification of the fiscal autonomy of sub-central governments, the OECD attributes 23.1% of tax revenue to Spains autonomous regions, higher than Germanys lander (21.3%) or US states (20.9%). The only country where regional authorities get more taxes than Spain is Switzerland, with a difference of one percentage point. It is evident that Catalonia and the other autonomous regions enjoy a degree of decentralization that is absolutely comparable with the worlds main federal models. From that starting point, you can argue whether a German Land has more or fewer devolved powers than a Spanish region, because each one will have jurisdiction in different areas. Whats true is that in the last 15 or 20 years the decisions coming out of the Constitutional Court have favored the central government over the regional governments, says Eduardo Virgala, chair of constitutional law at Valencia Polytechnic University (UPV).

Sabadell is one of two major Catalan lenders to have changed their registered addresses out of Catalonia. AFP

Fit within the EU

Catalonia is a competitive economy that is open to the world and this situation is not going to change. [...] The economic and political interests of the Union make it evident that the will is there to ensure that Catalonia will continue to be a member of the EU and the euro zone.

The EU treaties do not expressly state what would happen if there was a secession process within a member state. But in 2004 Romano Prodi, who was then president of the European Commission, said: If a territory stops being a part of that state in order to become an independent state, the Treaties can no longer be applied to that part of the territory. And the new independent region becomes a third country. Ever since then, the Prodi Doctrine has remained unchanged. In recent days, there has been a succession of statements by European leaders suggesting that there would be a collective back-turning to an independent Catalonia.

Fit within the EFTA

[An exit from the EU and the euro zone] will not happen. But if it did, there are mechanisms in place to ensure that Catalonia could remain in the common market through a bilateral agreement with the EU or with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). [...] Continuity in the European Economic Area (EEA) can be guaranteed through EFTA.

The EFTA is a free trade association that includes Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, and through which the first three are part of the EEA. But the EFTA spokesman has noted that in order to join the EEA, it is necessary to have a unanimous vote by all 28 EU members. So Spain or any other EU member could veto Catalan membership, as per Article 128 of the agreement. An independent Catalonia could join EFTA if its members agreed, but could only trade freely with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

CaixaBanks weight

70% of la Caixas profit comes from Catalonia.

Around 39% of CaixaBanks credit and 37.8% of its deposits are in Catalonia. This makes it very difficult for 70% of profit to be generated in Catalonia. In fact, the other major Catalan bank, Sabadell, has explained that only 15% of its turnover corresponds to Catalan territory. Queried by EL PAIS, the Catalan economy department admitted that this figure is wrong, and said it has been corrected in a later version of the report.

2. HALF-TRUTHS

Wealth

Catalonias GDP is similar to Finlands, Denmarks or Irelands, and its per capita GDP surpasses the European average by 14.5%.

The Catalan GDP, which Eurostat placed at 204.2 billion in 2015, lags significantly behind Denmarks (271.8 billion) and Ireland (255.8 billion), although it does resemble Finlands (209.5 billion). It actually comes closer to the GDP of countries like Greece (175.7 billion) or Portugal (179.5 billion). And according to Eurostat, Catalonias per capita GDP is 7% higher than the EU average, not 14.5%. Sources at the Catalan government said that their figure is taken from Idescat, the Catalan statistics bureau, and that it means per capita GDP at purchasing power parity.

Exports

Catalan exports increasingly aim abroad. In 2016, they represented 62.7% of total exports.

The Catalan government omits the fact that imports of foreign goods far exceed exports, to the extent that Catalonia had a foreign trade deficit of 12.6 billion in 2016. This deficit is only balanced out thanks to Catalonias trade with the rest of Spain, leading to a 4.9 billion surplus.

The report further states that Catalonia has a goods and services surplus of 12.1% of GDP thanks to its strong services sector, including tourism. But there are no data to support this claim  it is merely an estimate by Idescat.

Business flight

There is no reason for businesses to leave Catalonia. [] The change of registered address will have practically no effects on the economy.

Bypassing the fact that over 1,300 companies have changed their registered address in recent days  including some of Catalonias biggest names  it is true that this move does not, in itself, entail any major changes to workforce numbers or tax revenue in the short run. Although some companies have also changed their tax address, this does not immediately affect corporate tax, which is collected by the central government. But company flight does affect the economy: first, there is the matter of reputation, which will likely affect foreign investment levels. And once a business leaves, it is very unlikely that it will return, as evidenced by a similar trend that took place in Quebec in the 1980s. Sabadell Bank has already announced that it will transfer some of its executives to Madrid. This type of move generally heralds a move of operating HQ.

3. MISREPRESENTATIONS

Debt sustainability

A study by Morgan Stanley estimates that a Catalan state would improve its rating by between three and six notches.

This report exists, and it does say that. But it was written in 2014, and assumed a scenario in which Catalonia would achieve fiscal autonomy, not outright independence. In other words, the other conditions in the scenario did not change  not in the markets, not in debt, not in pensions, among other things. So this report would only be applicable in the event that Catalonia achieved a tax deal similar to the Basque Countrys. All recent assessments by ratings agencies have ranked Catalonia at junk-bond level, and made it clear that it could get even worse.

Legal security

The transition to independence will be conducted in a gradual and orderly manner, with full legal security.

The trouble with this statement lies in the fact that the Catalan government cannot even guarantee Catalonias permanence in the euro zone. And companies are leaving precisely because of this lack of legal security. Businesses and institutions with ample exposure to Catalonia would be directly affected by the risk of legal uncertainly and greater regulation, said S&P. Many experts agree that there is no greater legal insecurity than having two tax agencies fighting over the same revenue.

Tax framework

The Republics treasury would collect 24 billion more [...], far above the approximately 10.5 billion of excess spending involved in carrying out this new role.

This assertion does not take into account the costs of creating a new state out of the blue, or the benefits of economies of scale. Nor does it contemplate the loss of revenue that would result from the economic crisis triggered by independence. Looking at the figures of the fiscal balance accounts, it seems like the new states outlays would be greater than 10.5 billion. Just sending out pension and unemployment checks could cost around 7 billion. The new costs entailed by defense, foreign relations, infrastructure, subsidies, general services and more would raise the price tag significantly.

Savings are guaranteed

The document explains that banks moved out because they need to guarantee their customers deposits. The Spanish fund has a little over 1 billion, of which the Catalan government attributes 270 million to itself. The latter has also announced the creation of its own Catalan Deposit Guarantee Fund, and is contemplating the possibility of sharing this fund with Spain. During the transitional period, Spain might not recognize Catalonias independence, the report admits. Thus, with or without a declaration (of independence), Catalonia and its banks remain under the umbrella of European financial regulations and deposits are guaranteed. There is no risk of losing ones savings.

But Spanish legislation only covers Spanish deposits. Any use in Catalonia of the Deposit Guarantee Fund would have to be negotiated. A new Catalan state would have no access to European Central Bank (ECB) liquidity and would therefore have trouble financing a bailout or guaranteeing deposits.

English version by Susana Urra.
A pair of Catalan regional police officers walk down La Rambla in Barcelona. Carles Ribas

Relations between the Spanish National Police and the Civil Guard, on the one hand, and the Catalan police force, the Mossos dEsquadra, have hit rock bottom. Joint operations are on hold, medals have been handed back and some Civil Guard officers have stopped working as instructors at the Mossos police academy.

Relations between the forces havent always been easy, but in the past it was chiefly the top brass who were at loggerheads

The deterioration in relations can be seen even at the most basic level, in situations like the non-sharing of tables in canteens, and its not just the top brass who are divided: the breach has affected all levels.

But its at the operational level, in areas including investigation and information-sharing, that the breakdown is hurting most. In terms of information-sharing, the failure of communication began with the terrorist attack in Barcelona on August 17, with accusations of disloyalty coming from both sides, according to police sources consulted for this article.

Those problems have deepened during recent events in Catalonia, culminating with the independence referendum of October 1, when many believe that the Mossos failed to carry out their duty to prevent people from casting their ballots in a vote that had been banned by the courts.

But inter-force problems aside, nobody denies that terrorism remains a top priority. Naturally, we are pushing ahead with the operation related to the Barcelona attacks and coordinated by the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO), says one high-ranking officer with the Mossos. The Catalan police force is still attending weekly meetings on terrorist threat assessment. We go wherever we are invited as police, the officer stresses.

Things that used to be a phone call away now have to be done in writing

On the investigative front, however, there is a freeze in joint judiciary-led operations while everyone waits for someone else to take the initiative, sources within the different forces agree. Communication is down to the bare essential. We are waiting to see what happens, another high-ranking police officer says.

At the day-to-day level, there has been a slowdown as well. Now a reply to a normal request takes longer, like the ones made to Immigration (which is under the exclusive control of the National Police). And things that used to be a phone call away now have to be done in writing, investigators say. The buddy feeling is gone, but everyday work relations are the same. You cant let your differences end up harming women, for instance, who are victims (in abuse cases), another police source working in immigration says.

On the street, relations between the law enforcement agencies are also cool. Mossos and National Police officers share guard duty outside government buildings. In the past, both forces worked side by side. Now we are generally not even on the same sidewalk, and we stand across from them, or, if there are a lot of people, between the crowd and the National Police, says one Mossos source.

Its the same at the courts. If the National Police bring in detainees, they are anxious to leave. Before it was different, they would say hello and talk for a while, one police source explains. The story is similar in prisons too, where cold relations are the order of the day.

Inter-force problems aside, nobody denies that terrorism remains a top priority

No one denies that relations between the law enforcement agencies havent always been easy, but in the past it was chiefly the top brass who were at loggerheads. Operating teams would try to stay away from that kind of conflict.

That is going to be hard now. No one is going to forgive the fact that car windshields were broken while detainees were being taken out, and they [the Mossos] just stood there with their arms crossed, says another Civil Guard source, referring to the events of September 20.

On that day  and well into the early hours of September 21  thousands of protesters congregated in front of the Barcelona building that houses the Catalan governments department of economic affairs, to protest the arrests of several officials involved in organizing the illegal independence referendum of October 1. The protest hindered the work of officers who were inside the building in search of election material to confiscate. The judicial representative who was overseeing the court-ordered search was forced to leave the building from the rooftop, and three Civil Guard patrol cars were vandalized.

The head of the Mossos, Josep Lluis Trapero, is being investigated for possible sedition in relation to events of that day.

English version by George Mills.
The forum held at the Valladolid International Film Week aims to combat all the issues women in the industry are facing. Javier Alvarez

Concern about sexual harassment of women in the movie industry has spread to Spain, following the Hollywood scandal with the powerful producer Harvey Weinstein and the silence that lead to a cover-up of his alleged sexual harassment over many years.

Harvey Weinstein. CHRIS PIZZELLO (AP)

At a meeting held as part of the Valladolid International Film Week, women filmmakers have called for the creation of a forum to address and deal with the problems generated by possible and future cases of sexual harassment in the sector. The board of directors of the Spanish film academy has pledged to study the petition. The womens association CIMA (Association of Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media), created 11 years ago, will prepare a questionnaire that will serve as a basis for a bank of possible cases of sexual harassment.

The Valladolid International Film Week is the Spanish film festival of reference in terms of equity, both in terms of the official section, where nine of the 18 films that will opt for the Espiga de Oro award are directed by women, as well as in the honorable mention category where half were directed by women. By comparison, the San Sebastian Festival had only four of 18 films directed by women, Cannes had three of 18, Venice two of 21, and Berlin four of 24.

We do not feel represented at all. Cinema reproduces stereotypes of women that arent real Director Chus Gutierrez

The data tells an important story. According to a CIMA study, which will be presented in full in November, in 2016 only three of the 31 films that received production assistance were directed by women (Isabel Coixet, Iciar Bollain and Maria Ripoll). As for other forms of aid given out in 2017, only 27.7% of ICAA funds has gone to projects presented by women  mostly low budget films or documentaries.

Gender inequality in the audiovisual industry came to the forefront at a round table discussion with representatives of the various cinema trades. Director Chus Gutierrez said she did not know of specific cases of sexual abuse, but emphasized how women are portrayed in cinema. We do not feel represented at all. Cinema reproduces stereotypes of women that arent real. Producer Maria Zamora, responsible for titles such as Summer 1993, which will represent Spain at the Oscars, has advocated for a greater presence of women in decision-making forums and committees. We have to be at the decision-making tables, at the festivals and television committees, in public institutions. This is where our presence is essential, said Zamora.

Of the top ten Spanish blockbusters in 2016, none had a female writer

Being an actor in Spain is complicated, but its much worse as an actress, says actress Ana Gracia. According to a study by the Union of Actors, 60% of film roles for actors aged 35 and under are given to men, while 40% go to women. Between the ages of 39 and 45, the percentage in favor of the male actors increases to 67%. Between 45 and 64, it reaches 70%. Women in the world of fiction do not exist in relation to our presence in society, said Ana Gracia.

Female writers are not spared either. Of the top ten Spanish blockbusters in 2016, none had a female author. Coral Cruz, who has acknowledged that she has not been mistreated for being a woman, encouraged the writers to break the pressure that binds them to write small films. Women are able to write stories for the general public. We should not be reduced to only intimate and low-budget films. It makes it difficult for the industry to see us as an example of profitability. We have to rely on ourselves more.

English version by Debora Almeida.
Oriol Junqueras in a protest at Plaza Sant Jaume in Barcelona. Massimiliano Minocri (EFE)

Well see. Forecasts like this have been made before and so far nothing has happened. This was the reaction of Catalan deputy premier and regional economics chief Oriol Junqueras on October 5, after Banco Sabadell informed Spains stock market watchdog, the CNMV, that its board planned to vote on a possible departure that evening.

Five hours later, the forecast came true: Banco Sabadell, one of two major lenders in the region, voted to move its registered and tax addresses away from the breakaway region.

To date, around 1,300 companies have left Catalonia, according to the employers association Pimec. Meanwhile Junqueras, of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), has consistently tried to talk down the impact of this flight, even going as far as to say companies will return when the region is independent, and claiming Madrid was pressuring businesses into leaving.

To date, around 1,300 companies have left Catalonia

The exodus began in September, when a large number of multinationals started to freeze investments and prepare their exit strategies depending on the outcome of the October 1 referendum. Some companies, such as the brokers GVC Gaesco, jumped the gun, leaving before the vote even took place. And after October 1, law firms and consultancies became a hive of activity as businesses activated their plan B: moving their legal and tax addresses away from Catalonia.

There wont be an exodus of businesses, said Junqueras, just hours before banks and companies listed on Spains blue chip Ibex 35 index signed off on their transfer, or announced that they were considering it.

External warnings

The business world tried to convince the Catalan government, which is headed by a coalition called Junts pel Si (Together for Yes), to plug the dam. The Barcelona-based Circulo de Economia business lobby did so in a private meeting with Catalan Premier Carles Puigdemont, just two days before he appeared in the regional parliament and declared independence, then immediately suspended it. After his ambiguous speech, companies continued to leave  not just financial players and Ibex firms, but small and medium-sized businesses as well.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has also weighed in, along with credit rating agencies. The PR firm Kreab said that 55% of international firms are not going to look at Catalonia as an investment destination.

55% of international firms are not going to look at Catalonia as an investment destination

Junqueras eventually accepted the situation but played it down. The movement of a registered address does not affect the productive reality of companies, he said, ignoring the fact that firms are also changing their fiscal residence, and that executives are relocating. The Catalan government pushed the line that companies would return, but some, such as the publishing giant Planeta, said their decision was definitive.

All of these ideas were laid out in a document prepared by Junqueras department, which sent it to investors and consulting firms. The report presents a rosy picture of Catalan growth, investment and exports but is based on pre-referendum data. It concludes by stating that given that companies know the desire of Catalonia to become a state, the independence process was not going to affect the economy. But sources says many investors blanched at the second part of the document, where it was stated that it was very unlikely that Catalonia would remain outside the European Union and announced plans to create a Bank of Catalonia.

Junqueras was set to meet with multinational firms this past Friday, but called off the meeting. Meanwhile, on October 17 the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC) called on Junqueras to appear in the Catalan parliament, but this has not happened yet. Last Friday, the PSC said it was now calling for Junqueras to appear before the parliament's economics committee, where the independence bloc has a minority, alongside Santi Vila, the head of the regional business department. Vila, of the Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCat), is said to be far more active in dealing with the economic crisis than Junqueras, according to sources in Catalan business circles.

While Junqueras was ruling out an exodus of firms, Vila was setting up a crisis cabinet that periodically looks at economic indicators and consults with business groups and unions. Retailers have participated in this cabinet, for example, asking for the Catalan government to ensure that pro-independence demonstrations do not take place on work days.

Large firms account for almost 40% of Catalan GDP and just 100 firms account for half of all exports

Sources in the Catalan executive say the reality seen by this group is distinct from what Junqueras has observed. The numbers are not what the central government has announced, but we are seeing a drop-off in activity in sectors like tourism, those sources say, confirming the concerns of Vila.

Last Thursday, speaking to the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Junqueras finally admitted that he wasnt pleased by the departure of some businesses from the region but noted that 260,000 businesses have decided to stay. However, he failed to note that many of those businesses are actually self-employed people. Large firms account for almost 40% of Catalan GDP, and just 100 companies account for half of all exports.

English version by George Mills.
CUP deputy Carles Riera (R) said that early elections are a nuclear weapon against independence. EFE

The Catalan government is considering the option of calling early elections in the region, according to its far-left ally in the regional assembly, the CUP party.

But the small separatist group, whose support is crucial to the governing coalition Junts pel Si (Together for Yes), will oppose an election radically, because this is the nuclear weapon designed to end the Catalan independence process, said CUP deputy Carles Riera on Tuesday.

The governments deliberations are secret. I will not answer in order to avoid speculation

Jordi Turull, Catalan government spokesman

If Catalan premier Carles Puigdemont were to call elections, it could potentially halt the activation of emergency measures due to be rolled out on Saturday and allowing Madrid to take over Catalonias affairs.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has invoked Article 155 of the Constitution, which allows the central government to temporarily impose direct rule in a renegade region.

The Spanish Senate is scheduled to meet this coming Friday to approve measures that include relieving the entire Catalan governing team of its duties and transferring these to Spanish ministries. In a public appearance last Saturday, Rajoy added that fresh elections will be called within the next six months.

Socialist spokeswoman Margarita Robles speaking on Tuesday. JJGuillen (EFE)

The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), which helped the Popular Party (PP) goverment draft the list of emergency measures along with the reform party Ciudadanos, said on Tuesday that if Catalonia calls new elections within the constitutional framework and rejects a unilateral declaration of independence, there would be no reason to implement 155, according to the PSOEs congressional spokeswoman, Margarita Robles.

Justice Minister Rafael Catala cautioned on Tuesday morning that even if Puigdemont were to announce new elections this week, this in itself would not be enough to stop the application of the emergency measures. That can only happen if Puigdemont drops his plans for independence entirely and embraces the Constitution once again.

In the meantime, Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria has told the Onda Cero radio station that the Senate has the ability to adapt to whatever Puigdemont and the Catalan parliament do.

The Catalan parliament is scheduled to meet on Thursday and Friday for a debate on the implications of Article 155 for the region, and what the response should be. The CUP has suggested that a full declaration of independence could be issued and put to the vote, following the symbolic declaration of October 10.

But the CUP, whose role as a necessary ally has made it a major player in Catalan politics despite having the fewest deputies in the chamber (10), will fight the push for early elections.

It would be an act of submission, of serfdom. They (Spain) are treating us like a colony, said Riera. Calling regional elections would be the most demolishing tool to halt the independence process.

The Catalan government spokesman, Jordi Turull, would not confirm whether elections are on the table.

The governments deliberations are secret. I will not answer that in order to avoid speculation, he said at a news conference.

The Senate has offered Puigdemont the possibility of a one-on-one debate, very possibly with PM Mariano Rajoy, when the committee in charge of the emergency measures meets on Thursday, or else at the plenary session on Friday. But those dates coincide with the debate scheduled inside the Catalan parliament.

English version by Susana Urra.
A senior Iranian official on Monday expressed concern that foreign powers may interfere in the country's elections through social media.

Social media tools, such as the messaging application Telegram could control and analyze the behavior of a society and estimate the election results with 97% accuracy, the head of Irans Civil Defense Organization, Gholam Reza Jalali said in a press conference in Tehran.

Jalali claimed that Telegram could sell the information acquired from Iranian users, to Israel, United States, and Saudi Arabia.

"With the information it possesses, Telegram is able to engineer public opinion, the head of Irans Civil Defense Organization, Jalali told journalists. The fact that Saudi Arabia has control over our society and can create crisis from time to time, is because it is in possession of this information.

According to Pavel Durov, The Russian CEO and co-founder of Telegram, the messaging application has an estimated 40 million active users in Iran -- meaning half of the country's population.

Iranian officials admit the popular social messaging tool has 30 million users.

Last month, prosecutors in Tehran filed charges against Durov alleging that his application was providing services to terrorist groups such as ISIS and for spreading and facilitating child pornography, human and drug trafficking.

According to experts, social media played a crucial role in the victory of President Hassan Rouhani in this year's presidential election. This makes conservatives nervous and from time to time they call for more control over social media.

Iran has a sophisticated system of filtering millions of websites and internet users deploy an array of circumvention tools to gain access to everything from western movies, to music to independent news and political information.

However, smart phones and social media have opened the flood gates, which makes cyber censors concerned and nervous.

Jalali also added, if Iran cannot impose its sovereignty over social media, other countries will have cultural control over Iranian society.

The servers of any social media website or application that has more than 30 million Iranian members should not be outside the country, he demanded. This is a national security necessity and not a political one, Jalali said according to Irans News Agency, IRNA.

According to Irans Civil Defense Organization, after the recent announcement by the U.S. President Donald Trump about taking actions against cyber threats from Iran, Tehran expects cyber attacks from the United States.
AFP - Fleeing grinding poverty and unemployment, thousands of Afghan Shiites have been recruited by Iran to defend Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, former fighters and rights activists say.

Afghan men and boys as young as 14 are signing up to fight on the promise of money and legal residency in Shiite-dominated Iran, Assad's regional ally, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Since 2013 the Afghans, including undocumented migrants living in Iran, have joined the Tehran-backed Fatemiyoun division fighters in Syria, said HRW and ex-members who spoke to AFP on condition their real names were not used.

"For me it was just about money," said Shams, a former fighter.

The 25-year-old, a member of the Hazara ethnic group, went to Syria twice in 2016 to fight in a conflict that has now been raging for more than six years.

"Whoever I saw was going for money and to have free entry to Iran. I never saw anyone fighting for religious reasons," said Shams, who now lives in the Afghan capital Kabul.

The withdrawal of US-led NATO combat troops at the end of 2014 drained the Afghan economy and left many people out of work, fuelling the flow of migrants into Iran in search of a better life.

HRW estimated last year that Iran hosts around three million Afghans.

In this desperate pool Iranian recruiters targeted Shiites to swell the ranks of Fatemiyoun soldiers, who HRW says fight alongside Syrian government forces.

"I went there (Iran) because I was jobless and it was a way to get money for my family," said Shams.

"My idea was to find a job in Iran. I had no plan to go to fight in Syria but after a month of being jobless I decided to go.

"They were encouraging us saying 'you will be a freedom fighter and if you return to Iran alive you can stay with a 10-year residence permit'. But my main goal was to earn money."

Afghan Shiites are given 1.5 million toman (about $450) to register at a recruitment centre for the Fatemiyoun, Shams said. Once they have signed up they receive three million toman a month, a fortune for many poor Afghans.

Bodies

Shams' first mission was in June 2016 in the Syrian capital of Damascus, where he was assigned to protect a barracks for two months.

He went back to the country in September and was deployed to Aleppo, where he was given his first AK-47 after receiving rudimentary weapons training from Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

On the front line of the battle between Islamic State militants and the Al-Nusra Front jihadist group, Shams said he found himself caught up in an intense and deadly battle.

"In Aleppo we faced an ambush -- out of 100 fighters we lost almost all of them. There were 15 of us left alive," Shams said.

"The bodies were sent back to Iran and the families in Afghanistan held funeral ceremonies in mosques without a coffin or grave."

Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council, estimates more than 760 Afghans have been killed in Syria since September 2013.

Another man who fought in Syria in 2014 when he was 17, said it was not just Afghans in Fatemiyoun. "There were also Pakistanis, Iraqis -- all the Shiites," he told AFP.

"We were mixed up with the Arabs, we didn't understand their language."

HRW says the Iranians refuse to provide accurate figures, but estimates there are nearly 15,000 Afghans fighting for Fatemiyoun.

Treated like slaves

"They are used by the Iranian government, which treats them like slaves," said Ramazan Bashardost, a Hazara member of parliament in Kabul.

"The sorrow, pain and hunger of the people is not a major concern of the Afghan government."

Afghanistan's foreign ministry called on Iran in October to stop sending young Afghans to Syria after the HRW report condemning the recruitment of minors.

But preventing Afghans from volunteering will not be easy.

"Money and the prospect of a guaranteed residency for your family in Iran are major draw cards," said Shuja.

Shams returned to Afghanistan after pleas from his family and he now hopes to buy a shop. He has no intention of going back.

"I would never advise anyone to go there if he has a job here," he said.
(Reuters) - Iran has sentenced to death a person found guilty of providing information to Israel to help it assassinate several senior nuclear scientists,

Tehran's prosecutor said on Tuesday. At least four scientists were killed between 2010 and 2012 in what Tehran said was a program of assassinations aimed at sabotaging its nuclear energy program.

Iran hanged one man in 2012 over the killings, saying he had links to Israel. On the latest conviction, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi told the judiciary's news agency: "The person had several meetings with (Israeli intelligence agency) Mossad and provided them with sensitive information about Iran's military and nuclear sites in return for money and residency in Sweden."

The headline of the report described the convicted person as a "Mossad agent". Dolatabadi did not identify the defendant, but Amnesty International said on Monday that Ahmadreza Djalali, an Iranian doctor who studied and taught in Sweden, had been sentenced to death in Iran on espionage charges.

Amnesty said the court verdict states that Djalali worked with the Israeli government and that it subsequently helped him obtain a residency permit in Sweden. Neither Iran nor Amnesty said when the verdict was issued.

Sweden condemned the sentence and said it had brought the matter up at high-level meetings with Iranian representatives in Stockholm and Tehran.

"We condemn the use of the death penalty in all its forms. The death penalty is an inhuman, cruel and irreversible punishment that has no place in modern law," Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said in an emailed comment.

Djalali was arrested in April 2016 and held without access to a lawyer for seven months, three of which were in solitary confinement, according to London-based Amnesty.

"Djalali was sentenced to death after a grossly unfair trial that once again exposes not only the Iranian authorities' steadfast commitment to (the) use of the death penalty but their utter contempt for the rule of law," said Philip Luther, Amnestys Middle East advocacy director.

The United States has denied Iran's accusation that it was involved in the scientists' deaths, while Israel has a policy of not commenting on such allegations.

Dolatabadi said the convicted person gave Mossad information about 30 nuclear and military scientists including Massoud Ali Mohammadi, who was killed by a remote-controlled bomb attached to a motorcycle outside his home in Tehran.

The judiciary said the defendant was also linked to the assassination of nuclear engineer Majid Shahriari, killed in a bomb attack in November 2010.

Djalali's wife Vida Mehrannia, who lives in Sweden with their two children, has told Amnesty that his physical and mental health has sharply deteriorated since he was detained. "We are calling for his release because he has not committed any crime," Amnesty quoted her as saying.
According local media in Iran, labor protests have gained momentum again in different parts of the country.

Despite attempts by security forces to end the demonstrations, workers were actively participating in peaceful assemblies, demanding their overdue wages.

A group of workers at the Persian Gulf International Transport Company gathered in front of the Labor, and Social Welfare Ministry on October 23 to protest privatization of the company and demanding unpaid salaries, the Iran Labor News Agency (ILNA) reported.

The management of the Persian Gulf International Transport Company was transferred to the private sector in May 2016 and the payment of our wages and insurance premiums has since been in shambles, ILNA quoted the protesters as saying.

Furthermore, the protesters asserted that nearly 1,200 workers had either not received overtime bonuses or received them with considerable delay.

Earlier, workers at several industrial complexes in Iran, including privatized companies like Hepco, Poly Acryl, a ball bearing factory, Haft Tappeh Sugar Cane and Azarab, had also called for the companies to be returned to the public sector.

Workers usually complain that privatized companies are not paying wages regularly.

However, Rouhanis administration has so far ignored these demands and still insists on shrinking the governments work force by promoting the privatization of public plants and factories.

Problems are created when private owners fail to properly downsize an enterprise. Instead of legally paying off unneeded workers and reducing workforce, the privatized company, without government subsidies, is unable to pay people regularly.

In other instances, the private buyer is simply not interested in investing and improving production, rather the real purpose of purchasing a government owned enterprise is to strip it down and use the land for construction.

Workers at Rampco Project, a subdivision of Bu Ali Sina (Avicenna) Petrochemical Complex, also peacefully assembled to demand three months overdue wages and salaries.

Nevertheless, the director of public relations at Bu Ali Sina , Ebrahim Gholamshahi, insisted that Rampco Project is run by private contractors and has no direct relation to its mother company.

However, Gholamshahi maintained that as soon as they were informed of the problem, managers were attempting to address workers demands.

Furthermore, Irans Free Trade Union reports that 170 workers at Shakhiss company, a contractor for Bandar Imam Petrochemical Complex, went on strike on October 21 and 22 to protest not receiving bonuses for their hard work in a disagreeable climate.

The governments official news agency, IRNA, also reported that 400 workers at the South Pars Natural gas field in Asaluyeh, southern Iran, went on strike on October 22 to protest overdue wages and salaries.

The strike was later ended when contractors promised to address the problem.

Moreover, ILNA reported that nearly 1,000 industrial workers, forest rangers and pensioners of Mazandaran wood and paper mill went on strike on Sunday. They assembled at the factorys compound demanding their two-month overdue wages and salaries.

In the meantime, workers at Hepco industrial unit in the city of Arak are also struggling to receive their overdue wages. They have held several rallies in the past few years to call for help.

In a peaceful rally in front of the governor-generals office, Hepco workers were carrying a banner, declaring, No Compromise, No Submission  Combat until Victory.

In one of the video clips published on social media, protesters are heard chanting slogans, shouting, Poor workers dont deserve to be battered.
Vice President Mike Pence and White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster paid tribute Monday American service members, including 220 Marines, on the anniversary of the truck bombing.

In the early morning of October 23, 1983, a huge explosion demolished the compound of U.S. Marines stationed near the Beirut International Airport, killing 241 U.S. service members in total.

This was the second such attack against a U.S. target in Lebanon that year. In April, a car bomb had severely damaged the American Embassy, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans.

The Beiruts barracks bombing was the opening salvo in a war that we have waged ever since, the global war on terror, Pence said, speaking from the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C.

The bombing linked to Iran was the deadliest attack against U.S. Marines since the battle over Iwo Jima in February 1945.

The ceremony and parade at the Marine Barracks in Washington included families of service members who died in the attack.

Investigations and research work published much later revealed that in 1983 Iran was organizing the Lebanese Hezbollah and the twin bombings in Beirut were done, at least partly using Hezbollah assets.

Pence described the enormity of the truck bomb in his remarks. Within seconds -- within just moments the driver detonated his deadly cargo, the light of the dawning sun was virtually eclipsed by what was described as the largest non-nuclear explosion in the history of the world.

Iran has always strongly denied any links to the Beirut bombings, but in 2004 a memorial column was erected in Tehrans Behesht Zahra cemetery, commemorating the Martyrs of the Marines Operation.

Although this was sponsored by a little known group, but in Irans tightly controlled security environment no group could build a politically sensitive memorial without some sort of tacit approval by the state.

The vice president then emphasized the Trump administration efforts against Hezbollah. Earlier this year, under President Trumps leadership, our law enforcement arrested two Hezbollah operatives in New York and Michigan. And earlier this month, our administration announced rewards for information leading to the location, arrest, and conviction of two of Hezbollahs senior-most leaders, including Fuad Shukr, one of the masterminds behind the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks.

Pence, however, focused on Irans role, saying that Hezbollah is merely a proxy for the leading state sponsor of terrorism.

He highlighted President Trumps new and tougher policy on Iran, saying that the president has put Iran on notice.

This President will not sit idly by while the ayatollahs in Tehran plot more attacks like the horrific attack that we remember today.

In the early morning of October 23, 1983, a huge explosion demolished the compound of U.S. Marines stationed near the Beirut International Airport, killing 241 U.S. service members, including 220 Marines.

This was the second such attack against a U.S. target in Lebanon that year. In April, a car bomb had severely damaged the American Embassy, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans.

The Beiruts barracks bombing was the opening salvo in a war that we have waged ever since, the global war on terror, Pence said, speaking from the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C.

The bombing linked to Iran was the deadliest attack against U.S. Marines since the battle over Iwo Jima in February 1945.

The ceremony and parade at the Marine Barracks in Washington included families of service members who died in the attack.

Investigations and research work published much later revealed that in 1983 Iran was organizing the Lebanese Hezbollah and the twin bombings in Beirut were done, at least partly using Hezbollah assets.

Pence described the enormity of the truck bomb in his remarks. Within seconds -- within just moments the driver detonated his deadly cargo, the light of the dawning sun was virtually eclipsed by what was described as the largest non-nuclear explosion in the history of the world.

Iran has always strongly denied any links to the Beirut bombings, but in 2004 a memorial column was erected in Tehrans Behesht Zahra cemetery, commemorating the Martyrs of the Marines Operation.

Although this was sponsored by a little known group, but in Irans tightly controlled security environment no group could build a politically sensitive memorial without some sort of tacit approval by the state.

The vice president then emphasized the Trump administration efforts against Hezbollah. Earlier this year, under President Trumps leadership, our law enforcement arrested two Hezbollah operatives in New York and Michigan. And earlier this month, our administration announced rewards for information leading to the location, arrest, and conviction of two of Hezbollahs senior-most leaders, including Fuad Shukr, one of the masterminds behind the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks.

Pence, however, focused on Irans role, saying that Hezbollah is merely a proxy for the leading state sponsor of terrorism.

He highlighted President Trumps new and tougher policy on Iran, saying that the president has put Iran on notice.

This President will not sit idly by while the ayatollahs in Tehran plot more attacks like the horrific attack that we remember today".
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

Trend:

Azerbaijan is one of the countries, which has the largest internally displaced population per capita in the world, said the countrys Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov addressing the High-Level Segment entitled Advancing Mediterranean security and cooperation in an age of large movements of migrants and refugees of the 2017 OSCE Mediterranean Conference on Oct. 24.

The topic of this years conference is high on the agenda of the international community as one of the most urgent and complicated issues. We share the view that this phenomenon is truly a multi-dimensional, cross-cutting challenge that will affect security not only of Mediterranean but also throughout the OSCE for the foreseeable future, said the minister.

As stated by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres at the 72nd Session of the General Assembly, refugees, internally displaced persons and migrants are not the problem; the problem lies in conflict, persecution and hopeless poverty, he noted.

Indeed, while the number of people fleeing their homes has reached the unprecedented level of 65.6 million people, we see no solutions in sight for the too many unresolved conflicts that continue to produce displacement and human sufferings, said the foreign minister.

While the plight of refugees and migrants makes the headlines, the international community must also keep in mind the millions of internally displaced men, women and children made extremely vulnerable by conflicts and who still find themselves in protracted situations in different corners of the globe, said Mammadyarov.

He noted that the UNHCR reported the total number of IDPs has reached 41 million all over the world, the highest figure on record.

Azerbaijan fully supports all efforts to raise the visibility to the sufferings of IDPs. The references to IDPs in the 2030 Agenda, the goal set by the Agenda for Humanity to reduce internal displacement by at least 50 percent by 2030 as well as the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, which notes the need for reflection on effective strategies to ensure adequate protection and assistance for IDPs and to prevent and reduce such displacement, certainly, are right steps, but clearly not sufficient, noted the Azerbaijani official.

The grave situation of millions of IDPs requires strong attention, rethinking of approaches to prevention, addressing the root causes as well as concerted action at all levels. We believe that the OSCE should be also used as a platform for elaborating a comprehensive OSCE response addressing the protection of the rights of internally displaced persons, added Mammadyarov.

Azerbaijans sensitivity to IDPs cause are understandable. Displacement in my country is a consequence of the ongoing military aggression and occupation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and seven other surrounding regions of Azerbaijan by Armenia in blatant violation of international law and the UN Security Council relevant resolutions, said the minister. By impudently violating humanitarian law, Armenia carried out ethnic cleansing policy against almost one million Azerbaijani civilians in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan and in Armenia itself. It left Azerbaijan with one of the largest internally displaced population per capita in the world. Currently, the number of IDPs and refugees exceeds 1.2 million as a result of the increase of the displaced population. The only solution to their displacement is the return to their homes in security and dignity and it is the first priority of my government.

Until the ultimate solution to the IDPs displacement is reached, my government continues to improve living conditions of IDPs. During last twenty years about 6 billion USD was invested, which has resulted in significant decrease of poverty and unemployment among IDPs, noted Mammadyarov.

Till now, more than 250,000 IDPs were provided with new houses and flats. However, the above-mentioned measures are not viewed as a permanent local integration, since the voluntary return to places of origin in security and dignity is regarded by IDPs themselves as the only preferable option.

Mammadyarov said that in that regard, the government of Azerbaijan has developed a comprehensive repatriation program called the Great Return to enable the IDPs to exercise their right to return to their homes voluntarily, in security and dignity and to access their properties, as soon as Armenia withdraws its troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

Another element of concern for Azerbaijan is that in searching for effective ways out of the migration crisis currently faced by the international community, it is of utmost importance to pay careful attention to the attempts of some political leaders to misuse suffering migrants in their own malicious interests. Policy pursued by Armenia aimed at resettling Armenians from Syria on the occupied lands of Azerbaijan in a grave breach of international humanitarian law, in particular the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention and Additional Protocols is a vivid example to these attempts of misuse of human suffering for illegal purposes, noted the foreign minister.

These policies and practices implemented by Armenia in the occupied territories, including attempts to change the economic, cultural and demographic character at the occupied territories, demonstrate its intention to prevent the expelled Azerbaijani population from returning to their homes and to further continue the annexation of Azerbaijani territories, he said.

It is worth mentioning that the European Court of Human Rights in its judgment on the case of Chiragov and others v. Armenia affirmed the right of displaced persons to return to their homes and called for respecting international humanitarian law and human rights law provisions relating to property rights issues, noted Mammadyarov. The court stressed the ongoing negotiations within the OSCE Minsk Group do not provide a legal justification for the interference with the rights of the Azerbaijani IDPs and recalled Armenias obligations towards Azerbaijanis who had to flee during the conflict.

Consequently, the courts ruling highlights the unlawfulness of any purported transfer of property in the occupied territories. Strong international and public condemnation of the illegal activities in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan can seriously undermine intentions of Armenias leadership to consolidate existing status-quo and enrich perspectives for the peaceful resolution of the conflict, concluded the foreign minister.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

Trend:

The OSCE is expected to monitor the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops on October 25, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry said in a message Oct. 24.

The monitoring will be held under the mandate of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative along the line of contact near Horadiz village of Azerbaijans Fuzuli district, according to the message.

On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring will be held by field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative, Ghenadie Petrica and Mikhail Olaru, and representative of the High Level Planning Group Alexander Nepokrytykh.

On the Azerbaijani territories occupied and controlled by Armenian armed forces, the monitoring will be held by Ognjen Jovic, Martin Schuster, who are field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative, and representative of the High Level Planning Group Patrick Farrelly.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.24

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

The illegal visit of the head of Mexico-Armenia Friendship Group, Blanca Margarita Cuata Dominguez, a member of that group Maria Cristina Teresa Garcia Bravo and another person accompanying them to Azerbaijani lands occupied by Armenia is under investigation, Hikmat Hajiyev, spokesman for Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry, told Trend Oct. 23.

In this regard, relevant instructions have been given to Azerbaijani Embassy in Mexico, he added.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

Trend:

Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on Oct. 23 on measures to build the Shaki-Kish road in Shaki city.

Under the decree, 4.8 million manats will be allocated to Azeravtoyol JSC for the construction of Shaki-Kish road, connecting two settlements with 17,000 people, from the countrys state budget for 2017.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Samir Ali  Trend:

Invitation of President Ilham Aliyev as a special guest to the summit of the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation (D-8) in Istanbul is an indication of Azerbaijan's international authority, the countrys MP Musa Guliyev told Trend.

This also suggests that the position of Ilham Aliyev and the Azerbaijani state are taken into consideration by the leading states of the world, according to him.

Speech by President Ilham Aliyev at the summit demonstrated once again that Azerbaijan is a very important and authoritative state not only for the region but for the world as a whole. Today our country plays an important role in the international arena both in terms of its energy resources, economic and international importance in the region, and as the author of a number of transregional projects, he noted.

The MP said that Azerbaijan demonstrated its experience as a multicultural state as well.

The fact that in his speech, the president addressed to the countries of the world, brought humanism and tolerance to the fore is an important issue. The Azerbaijani presidents address to the Muslim countries was also quite courageous and historic. The head of state in his speech stated that the country destroying sanctuaries, cultural monuments and mosques cannot be friends with Muslim countries. This was a serious message to our neighbors as well, Guliyev said.

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, at the invitation of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, participated in the D-8 summit in Istanbul on Oct. 20 as a special guest.
Details added (first version posted on 14:20)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

Trend:

Azerbaijan is one of the countries, which has the largest internally displaced population per capita in the world, said the countrys Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov addressing the High-Level Segment entitled Advancing Mediterranean security and cooperation in an age of large movements of migrants and refugees of the 2017 OSCE Mediterranean Conference on Oct. 24.

The topic of this years conference is high on the agenda of the international community as one of the most urgent and complicated issues. We share the view that this phenomenon is truly a multi-dimensional, cross-cutting challenge that will affect security not only of Mediterranean but also throughout the OSCE for the foreseeable future, said the minister.

As stated by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres at the 72nd Session of the General Assembly, refugees, internally displaced persons and migrants are not the problem; the problem lies in conflict, persecution and hopeless poverty, he noted.

Indeed, while the number of people fleeing their homes has reached the unprecedented level of 65.6 million people, we see no solutions in sight for the too many unresolved conflicts that continue to produce displacement and human sufferings, said the foreign minister.

While the plight of refugees and migrants makes the headlines, the international community must also keep in mind the millions of internally displaced men, women and children made extremely vulnerable by conflicts and who still find themselves in protracted situations in different corners of the globe, said Mammadyarov.

He noted that the UNHCR reported the total number of IDPs has reached 41 million all over the world, the highest figure on record.

Azerbaijan fully supports all efforts to raise the visibility to the sufferings of IDPs. The references to IDPs in the 2030 Agenda, the goal set by the Agenda for Humanity to reduce internal displacement by at least 50 percent by 2030 as well as the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, which notes the need for reflection on effective strategies to ensure adequate protection and assistance for IDPs and to prevent and reduce such displacement, certainly, are right steps, but clearly not sufficient, noted the Azerbaijani official.

The grave situation of millions of IDPs requires strong attention, rethinking of approaches to prevention, addressing the root causes as well as concerted action at all levels. We believe that the OSCE should be also used as a platform for elaborating a comprehensive OSCE response addressing the protection of the rights of internally displaced persons, added Mammadyarov.

Azerbaijans sensitivity to IDPs cause are understandable. Displacement in my country is a consequence of the ongoing military aggression and occupation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and seven other surrounding regions of Azerbaijan by Armenia in blatant violation of international law and the UN Security Council relevant resolutions, said the minister. By impudently violating humanitarian law, Armenia carried out ethnic cleansing policy against almost one million Azerbaijani civilians in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan and in Armenia itself. It left Azerbaijan with one of the largest internally displaced population per capita in the world. Currently, the number of IDPs and refugees exceeds 1.2 million as a result of the increase of the displaced population. The only solution to their displacement is the return to their homes in security and dignity and it is the first priority of my government.

Until the ultimate solution to the IDPs displacement is reached, my government continues to improve living conditions of IDPs. During last twenty years about 6 billion USD was invested, which has resulted in significant decrease of poverty and unemployment among IDPs, noted Mammadyarov.

Till now, more than 250,000 IDPs were provided with new houses and flats. However, the above-mentioned measures are not viewed as a permanent local integration, since the voluntary return to places of origin in security and dignity is regarded by IDPs themselves as the only preferable option.

Mammadyarov said that in that regard, the government of Azerbaijan has developed a comprehensive repatriation program called the Great Return to enable the IDPs to exercise their right to return to their homes voluntarily, in security and dignity and to access their properties, as soon as Armenia withdraws its troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

Another element of concern for Azerbaijan is that in searching for effective ways out of the migration crisis currently faced by the international community, it is of utmost importance to pay careful attention to the attempts of some political leaders to misuse suffering migrants in their own malicious interests. Policy pursued by Armenia aimed at resettling Armenians from Syria on the occupied lands of Azerbaijan in a grave breach of international humanitarian law, in particular the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention and Additional Protocols is a vivid example to these attempts of misuse of human suffering for illegal purposes, noted the foreign minister.

These policies and practices implemented by Armenia in the occupied territories, including attempts to change the economic, cultural and demographic character at the occupied territories, demonstrate its intention to prevent the expelled Azerbaijani population from returning to their homes and to further continue the annexation of Azerbaijani territories, he said.

It is worth mentioning that the European Court of Human Rights in its judgment on the case of Chiragov and others v. Armenia affirmed the right of displaced persons to return to their homes and called for respecting international humanitarian law and human rights law provisions relating to property rights issues, noted Mammadyarov. The court stressed the ongoing negotiations within the OSCE Minsk Group do not provide a legal justification for the interference with the rights of the Azerbaijani IDPs and recalled Armenias obligations towards Azerbaijanis who had to flee during the conflict.

Consequently, the courts ruling highlights the unlawfulness of any purported transfer of property in the occupied territories. Strong international and public condemnation of the illegal activities in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan can seriously undermine intentions of Armenias leadership to consolidate existing status-quo and enrich perspectives for the peaceful resolution of the conflict, concluded the foreign minister.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Ilhama Isabalayeva  Trend:

In Azerbaijan, research universities will receive the appropriate material support from the state, the countrys Education Minister Mikayil Jabbarov said.

He made the remarks Oct. 24 at the 21st Republican scientific conference of doctoral candidates and young researchers.

With the adoption of the Law on Science, a provision on the establishment of research universities has been included into Azerbaijani legislation, Jabbarov said. The universities that are endowed with this status will receive the appropriate material support from the state. In research universities, along with fundamental analysis, personnel and information provision of knowledge-intensive industries based on high technologies is envisaged.

Regarding the organization of the research work, the minister noted that this is becoming a decisive factor in the ever growing competition between universities.

He added that the research activity of universities is one of the main criteria taken into account when compiling global ratings.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

Trend:

The first meeting of the Joint Working Group on Military Cooperation between the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics of the Islamic Republic of Iran has kicked off in Baku, the press service of Azerbaijans Defense Ministry said.

Minister of defense of Azerbaijan, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov has met with the delegation led by the Deputy Minister of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the head of the Joint Working Group on Bilateral Military Relations and Military-Technical Cooperation from the Iranian side, Major General Hojatollah Ghoreishi.

Having greeted the guests, Hasanov congratulated in connection with the start of the work of the Joint Working Group on Military Relations and Military-Technical Cooperation between the Defense Ministries of the two countries in Baku and stressed that this would play an important role in the further development of relations in the field of defense and security.

It was noted that the foundation of today's meeting was laid during the discussion of the issues of establishing a joint working group between the armed forces of the two countries, which took place during the meetings held within the framework of the visit of the Iranian defense minister to Azerbaijan in 2015.

The minister of defense informed the guest that Nagorno-Karabakh and its surrounding regions have been under the occupation of Armenia for many years, as a result of which more than one million people became internally displaced persons, adding that the enemy continues to aggravate the situation at the front up to this day.

Having expressed satisfaction with the current state of cooperation in the military sphere, Goreishi noted the importance of mutual visits of military specialists in the development of these relations. Touching upon the military-political situation in the South Caucasus, including the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the guest, stressing the importance of a peaceful settlement of the conflict, brought to the attention that Iran has always supported the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.

During the meeting, the sides also exchanged views on the current state of cooperation between the two countries in the military sphere, security issues in the Caspian Sea basin and other issues of mutual interest.

The meeting will last until October 25.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

Trend:

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has signed an order on additional measures to continue the project on reconstruction of water supply and sewerage systems in Lankaran city.

In accordance with the order, Azersu OJSC will receive 2.1 million manats from the funds provided by the presidential decree On the Application of the 'Law on Azerbaijans State Budget for 2017' dated Dec. 27, 2016.

The Ministry of Finance was instructed to provide financing in the amount indicated in the order.

The Cabinet of Ministers was instructed to resolve issues arising from the order.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

Trend:

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has signed an order to mark the 135th anniversary of the prominent Azerbaijani poet and playwright Huseyn Javid.

Considering proposals of the Union of Azerbaijani Writers, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism together with Azerbaijans National Academy of Sciences (ANAS) and the Supreme Assembly of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic are instructed to prepare and implement a plan of events for the 135th anniversary of Huseyn Javid, according to the order.

The Cabinet of Ministers was instructed to resolve issues arising from the order.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

Trend:

Italy is one of the most important partners of Azerbaijan in the EU, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said.

Mammadyarov made the remarks at a meeting with Mayor of Italys Palermo Leoluca Orlando at the 2017 OSCE Mediterranean Conference, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said Oct. 24.

During the meeting, Orlando recalled his visit to Azerbaijan when he was a member of the Italian Parliament and the fruitful high-level meetings he held during the visit and impressions about Azerbaijan.

Mammadyarov and Orlando exchanged views on the development of relations between Azerbaijan's regions and Palermo.

The sides also stressed great opportunities for exchanging experience in agriculture, culture, tourism, and cooperation in other spheres.

Stressing that Italy is one of the most important partners of Azerbaijan in the EU and the dynamic development of ties between the two countries in all spheres, Mammadyarov emphasized the importance of intensifying cooperation between the regions of the two countries.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:

People's Artist of Azerbaijan Konul Khasiyeva has been provided with an apartment upon the instruction of First Vice-President of Azerbaijan, President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Mehriban Aliyeva.

First of all, on behalf of our family, on behalf of Azerbaijani people who love mugham, I express my deep gratitude to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva, Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva, Khasiyeva told Trend Oct. 24.

I regard this as great attention not only to me, but also to the Azerbaijani national musical art, she said. Highly respected Mehriban Aliyeva always shows care for the figures of art. We have always witnessed that and today I have experienced this joy."

Khasiyeva said that she has been provided with the apartment on the Heydar Aliyev Avenue, not far from the Heydar Aliyev Center.

This is a three-room apartment with an area of 110 square meters, she said. "The apartment has been fully equipped with furniture and household appliances. I am pleased that the apartment is located on the avenue named after Azerbaijani great leader Heydar Aliyev and near the center also named after the national leader."
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

Trend:

The United States, via the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), supported a conference in Baku entitled The Establishment of an Effective Response Mechanism for Combating Domestic Violence in Azerbaijan organized by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the State Committee for Family, Women and Childrens Affairs.

The conference marked a milestone in the Combating Gender Based Violence in Azerbaijan (GBV) program funded by USAID and implemented by UNFPA. U.S. Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission William Gill, Ms. Hijran Huseynova of the State Committee for Family, Women, and Children Affairs, and Mr. Gulam Isaqzai, UN Resident Coordinator attended the event.

Representatives of government agencies, the diplomatic corps, and civil society also participated in the conference and affirmed their commitment to continued cooperation to combat Gender Based Violence.

The program aims to support development of an inter-agency coordination mechanism on Gender Based Violence prevention and response in Azerbaijan. Toward this end, Ms. Pramila Patten, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sexual Violence and Conflict, in providing expert advice to the Government regarding an inter-agency coordination mechanism and a national legal framework for GBV prevention and response.

In her opening speech, Hijran Huseynova underlined the importance of gender-sensitive policy by the Government.

Ghulam Ishaczai, for his part, noted the essence of legislation improvement. It is commendable that the Azerbaijani Government is determined to ensure that women enjoy full protection from all forms of violence. The adoption of the Law on Prevention of Domestic Violence in 2010 reinforces that cases of domestic violence will no longer be tolerated as matters of internal family affairs. It is important that legal reforms are accompanied by an effective prevention and referral mechanism to ensure that the survivors of violence are helped. The draft National Action Plan and the guidelines for inter-agency cooperation on GBV prevention and response were developed to reinforce cooperation and coordination between all agencies concerned," he said.

William Gill said violence against women is a grave violation of human rights.

"Worldwide, 1 in 3 women will experience Gender-Based Violence in their lifetimes. Governments must ensure Gender-Based Violence is addressed at individual, institutional, and structural levels. A holistic approach is needed to ensure protection efforts include legislative reforms and policy initiatives in addition to response and prevention. I want to applaud the Government of Azerbaijan for its efforts to address this issue. The adoption of the Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence is a significant achievement. I hope that through our continued joint efforts to address this issue, an effective national referral mechanism for the prevention of, and response to, gender-based violence will be established.

During the conference, representatives of various government agencies and NGOs discussed the adverse effects of Gender Based Violence on society.

Earlier this month, the GBV program also launched an online database that systematically collects data from different regions, enabling evidence-based intervention strategies to combat Gender Based Violence.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Elchin Mehdiyev  Trend:

New tourist and recreation zones will be created in Azerbaijan, as stated in the draft concept of socio-economic development for 2018 and the next three years, submitted to the Azerbaijani parliament.

The government will also support the creation of private airlines providing services at affordable prices and national airlines offering to increase the number of direct flights to the target countries.

In order to increase the number of incoming foreign tourists, it is planned to hold major festivals in winter tourist complexes.

Besides, it is planned to create new private and public beaches to use the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea for tourism purposes more rationally.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.24

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

The main objective of the memorandum of uderstanding (MoU) signed between Baku International Sea Trade Port and Romanian NC Maritime Ports Administration SA Constanta is to promote the efficient cooperation between the two ports, Nicolae Dan Tivilichi, General Manager, NC Maritime Ports Administration SA Constanta told Trend.

The MoU signed on Oct.5, was concluded having in view the strategy of the National Company "Maritime Ports Administration" SA Constanta to increase the traffic of goods through the Port of Constanta, by developing new links with countries located in Central Asia, he said.

Tivilichi pointed out that the main objective of this MoU is to promote the efficient cooperation between the Port of Baku and the Port of Constanta.

Particularly, the parties are willing to promote cooperation in view of utilizing the potential capacities of the two ports for the transportation of all types of cargo (dry bulk, liquid bulk, general cargo, containerized cargo), Ro-Ro transport and passenger transport, added the general manager.

Also, in respect of increasing the volume of cargoes, the two ports will exchange information regarding relevant traffic data, know-how and the best practice examples on port logistics, productivity and innovation, he added.

Tivilichi noted that the ports located on the Caspian Sea have a great importance along the new Silk Road as distribution centers. They are important points of origin and consumption for European goods, but especially hubs between China, India and Iran, on one hand, and the European Union, on the other hand.

By signing this MoU, the two ports will make joint efforts to increase the traffic of cargoes, by promoting their competitive advantages as main hubs on the Silk Road. The port of Baku and also the Port of Constanta are open to initiate projects with mutual benefits that can provide a better approach and knowledge, with the possibility to identify and develop opportunities to increase the traffic of cargoes, he said.

The general manager noted that having in view the recently signed MoU, the NC Maritime Ports Administration SA Constanta is willing to develop an efficient and prolific cooperation with the Baku Port Authority.

We want to mention that this MoU was signed with the occasion of an important event  the Silk Road Summit, that was held in Constanta Port, between October 5-6, 2017. The Port of Constanta is aware of the importance of developing efficient and economically sustainable international multimodal transport corridors, as a reliable solution for the transportation of cargoes between China and Europe, he said. We consider that the advantages of the strategic position of Baku and Constanta ports on these international corridors can contribute to the improvement of the current business environment in both Black Sea and Caspian Sea regions.

Tivilichi pointed out that the Port of Constanta is open to initiate joint projects with the Port of Baku, in order to enable a better approach, knowledge and exchange experience, with the possibility of identifying opportunities for the development of cargo traffic.

NC Maritime Ports Administration SA Constanta will make all the necessary efforts to promote a pro-active approach of the current situation regarding this cooperation with Baku Port Authority, he added.

We are strongly confident that new ways and means of cooperation will be found in the future, Tivilichi concluded.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Azad Hasanli  Trend:

Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping CJSC plans to order the construction of vessels to Australian companies, President of Azerbaijani Chamber of Commerce in Australia Nizami Jafarov told Trend.

"Talks on the construction of new vessels are not yet underway, but we have such plans for the future," he said.

Jafarov reminded that in 2013, Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping and Caspian Marine Services already ordered the construction of two vessels from Australian companies Incat Crowther and Austal.

"In 2015, based on the design of Incat Crowther, Austal built the "Muslim Magomayev" vessel for Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping, and in 2016, the same companies built a similar vessel "Rashid Behbudov" for Caspian Marine Services. These high-speed passenger vessels are mainly used for transporting engineers to oil platforms. The total cost of the built ships amounted to about $100 million," he noted.

According to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee, trade turnover with Australia amounted to $3.7 million in January-August 2017, and $3.3 million of this amount accounted for import of Australian products.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Anvar Mammadov  Trend:

An export mission of Azerbaijani entrepreneurs will visit Saudi Arabias Jeddah and Riyadh cities on Dec. 6-8, Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) said Oct. 24.

The entrepreneurs specialize in production of fruits and vegetables, mineral water, fruit juices, sugar and confectionery products, wine and other alcohol products, honey, tea, meat and other products.

The composition of the export mission will be formed on the basis of a competition, to be held on Nov. 20 at the AZPROMO office.

Applicants will be selected on the basis of the following criteria:

Production potential of goods  10 points;

Export potential of goods  10 points;

Experience in goods export (indicating the export volume for 2016)  5 points.

Minimum passing score is 20 points.

For additional information please call: +994 12 598 01 47/48 (ext. 141)

Contact person: Fuad Jafarov

E-mail: [email protected]

According to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee, the trade turnover with Saudi Arabia amounted to $12.05 million in January-September 2017.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Anvar Mammadov  Trend:

Trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Georgia amounted to $567.07 million in January-September 2017, which is 36.6 percent more than in the same period of 2016, reads a report of Georgias National Statistics Office.

According to the report, Azerbaijan ranks fourth among Georgias foreign trade partners, with a specific weight of 7.5 percent. Meanwhile, Turkey ($1.12 billion or specific weight of 14.8 percent) ranks first and is followed by Russia ($806.27 million or 10.7 percent) and China ($640.64 million or 8.5 percent).

Azerbaijan ranks second among importers of goods from Georgia. The goods delivery from Georgia to Azerbaijan increased by 79.8 percent to $167.79 million in January-September 2017. Azerbaijans share in the Georgian export operations went up from 6.2 to 8.6 percent.

Azerbaijan ranks fourth among suppliers of goods to Georgia $399.28 million (with a share of 7.1 percent as compared to 5.9 percent a year before). During the year, the export of Azerbaijani goods to Georgia has increased by 30.2 percent.
Details added (first version posted on 10:59)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Azad Hasanli  Trend:

Investments in the Azerbaijani economy have exceeded $233 billion since 1995, the countrys Deputy Economy Minister Sahil Babayev said at the International Investment Policies: The Way Forward conference in Baku Oct. 24.

Babayev noted that almost half of these funds are foreign investments.

The deputy minister spoke about reforms carried out in Azerbaijan in recent years in order to improve the business environment and investment policy, including the creation of industrial parks, the introduction of various customs and tax incentives, the creation of the ASAN Service and others.

The International Investment Policies: The Way Forward conference kicked off in Baku Oct. 24. Representatives of about 40 local government agencies, private companies and institutions, international organizations and state structures from 11 countries are participating in the conference.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Ali Mustafayev - Trend:

Kazakhstan has many obstacles and problems in diversification of economy that should be resolved, and the main problem is the countrys dependence on oil and gas, said the Kazakh Minister of Economy Timur Suleimenov during the Eurasian week of OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) forum.

It is not a secret that we depend on oil and gas and it remains one of the main obstacles on the way of diversification of economy. The share of natural sources in the economy of Kazakhstan has been reducing for about 7-8 years since the government adopted the program of industrialization. However the decrease of oil price in the international market delayed this process, said Suleimenov, Kazinform reported.

Other difficulties in diversification of the economy are the long distances between the countrys regions and the climate, he said.

Elsewhere, the minister said that Kazakhstan spends a lot of money on infrastructure.

Transportation and delivery processes in Kazakhstan are more expensive than in Europe. The satisfactory functioning of routes and transport nodes requires investments, he said.

However, the countrys service sector and processing industry are being improved, and the economy is currently being stabilized by the government, according to the minister.

Our state programs and development strategies include diversification, development of export, as well as the transition from centralized economy to decentralized economy, Suleimenov said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Ali Mustafayev  Trend:

Kazakh "Air Astana" company plans to launch additional number of flights in Almaty-Tashkent-Almaty direction in parity with "Uzbekistan Airways" in December 2017.

Flights in this direction will be carried out daily. The Astana-Tashkent-Astana flight is currently being carried out 3 times a week, and we also plan to increase the number of flights in this direction from June 2018, a source in Air Astana told Trend.

Previously, the representatives of Air Astana and Uzbekistan Airways companies met in Uzbekistan to discuss the frequency of direct flights between the two countries with further expansion of the geography of cooperation.

The parties discussed the importance of development of passenger transportation between the two countries in order to increase the tourist flow. The companies also concluded an agreement on increasing frequency of flights from Tashkent to Almaty, Astana and back.

The sides agreed to open new flight directions from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan's Urgench, Bukhara and Samarkand cities and to repair the Kazakh aircraft at the Uzbekistan Airways Technics.

The companies signed a negotiations protocol during the meeting.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Maksim Tsurkov  Trend:

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan intend to reconsider the draft road map on increase of trade turnover and expansion of trade and economic cooperation between the countries.

This decision was made following the meeting between Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov and Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan Beybit Isabaev in Baku, the Azerbaijani Energy Ministry said in a message Oct. 24.

During the meeting, Shahbazov and Isabaev stressed the current relations between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan and the importance of expanding economic ties.

The sides also emphasized that the mutually beneficial cooperation will give a new impetus to the relations in the energy sector.

Shahbazov said that Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayevs upcoming visit to Azerbaijan is of paramount importance.

"Before the visit, the presidents of both countries made a number of important instructions to the Azerbaijan-Kazakhstan joint intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation," Shahbazov said.

The discussions on specific areas and directions of the road map which is under preparation were also held at the meeting. The importance of reconsidering the document on the basis of new proposals was stressed.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Huseyn Valiyev  Trend:

Azerbaijans AFB Bank OJSC has started to issue e-references through the Electronic Government portal (e-gov.az), the Information and Computing Center of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies told Trend Oct. 24.

One can use the service via "E-reference on citizens' personal data" section.

Citizens will be able to establish personal information via registration on the "Electronic Government" portal and send it to the bank. The e-reference will be valid and simplify the paperwork for the issuance of loans by the bank.

Currently, more than 25 banks and credit organizations have joined the project. It is planned to expand cooperation in that sphere with other banks in future.

To date, one can get 18 references through the E-government portal. The E-government portal is a key tool supporting the work with citizens, as well as state and private enterprises.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 25

By Huseyn Veliyev  Trend:

Construction of Azerspace-2/Intelsat-38, Azerbaijans second geostationary satellite, has been completed by 90 percent, a source in the Azerbaijani satellite communications market told Trend.

According to the source, it is planned to complete the remainder of the work within the next four months.

"The construction work will be completed in January 2018," the source said. "The launch of the satellite is scheduled for the first half of 2018."

Frances Arianespace company, which earlier launched the first Azerspace/Africasat-1a satellite (46 degrees east longitude), will launch the second satellite into orbit.

According to the message of ELA-3 (launch complex located at the Kourou Space Center in French Guiana), the launch of the Ariane 5 ECA rocket with the VA-242 mission aboard with the Azerspace-2/Intelsat-38 satellite is scheduled for the first quarter of 2018.

The main advantage of the Ariane 5 ECA launcher is its ability to deliver a payload of 10 tons into orbit. Unlike other launchers, the Ariane 5 ECA is capable of bringing into orbit two satellites at once.

In addition to Azerbaijans Azerspace-2/Intelsat-38 satellite, the Ariane 5 ECA rocket will also launch the Avanti Communications HYLAS 4 satellite into orbit.

The second Azerspace-2/Intelsat-38 satellite will be placed into geostationary orbit 45 degrees east longitude. Its service zone will include the countries of Europe, Central and South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The satellite is being manufactured by Space Systems Loral (SSL), a subsidiary of Canadas MDA, The SSL also acts as a provider of satellite control systems.

The second satellite is being built on the SSL 1300 spacecraft platform, which is used to create medium- and heavy-lift geostationary and highly elliptical telecommunications satellites.

Azerspace-2/Intelsat-38 satellite will be equipped with Ku-band transponders and is intended for providing digital broadcasting services, data transmission, etc. The life span of the satellite in orbit will be 15 years.

The second satellite of Azerbaijan will also support the DTH (Direct-to-Home) satellite broadcasting platform, which will contribute to the emergence of DTH operators in Azerbaijan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Nigar Guliyeva  Trend:

Uzbekistan will introduce more environmentally and socially responsible cultivation of cotton, meeting the world standard "Better Cotton".

The project is implemented by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, with the financial support of the Hungarian EXIM Bank. The presentation of the project took place within the framework of the 13th International Uzbek Cotton and Textile Fair Oct. 24.

The goal of the project, designed for 2017-2022, is to increase the efficiency of cotton production by implementing the best world practices and minimize the risk of using forced labor in the cotton sector. The estimated cost of the project in the form of investments from IFC is $5 million, the Uzbek media reported.

In the first phase covering 2017-2018, IFC is implementing a pilot program - development and testing of a system of standards for sustainable cotton production based on the "Better Cotton" standards in Fergana (3 cotton plants and 6 farms) and Zhizak (2 cotton plants and 4 farms) areas.

After successful testing, the system will cover 3,000 farms and agribusinesses that produce cotton in these areas.

In 2019-2022, it is planned to expand the application of the system of standards throughout Uzbekistan.

The "Better Cotton" standard does not imply the use of manual labor in the cotton harvesting, so cotton bush should be fully adapted to the machine collection.

By 2020, the capacity of Uzbek enterprises will ensure the full processing of domestic cotton, which can lead to a significant decrease in the cotton export volume.

"In accordance with the program on development of the textile industry of Uzbekistan, by 2020 the capacity of enterprises will allow to ensure full processing of cotton produced in the republic," said Ilkhom Khaidarov, chairman of board at Uzbekengilsanoat JSC.

Head of IFC consulting services in industry, agribusiness and services, Tatyana Lozanskaya, for her part, noted that support for sustainable development of the private sector is a strategic objective of IFC.

"Our project on the development of the cotton sector in Uzbekistan will accelerate the transformation processes in Uzbekistan aimed at increasing the role of the private sector in the country's economy. The introduction of best practices in the production of cotton will also provide an opportunity to increase the global competitiveness of Uzbek cotton and textile products."

Uzbekistan ranks sixth in the world in terms of cotton fiber production and the fifth in its exports. The country yearly grows about 3,500 tons of raw cotton and produces 1.1 million tons of cotton fiber.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Oct. 24

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

The first meeting of the Peoples Council of Turkmenistan will be held in Ashgabat in 2018 under a presidential decree.

Priority issues of state life will be included in the agenda. According to the document, a relevant state commission will be created to receive, collect and analyze incoming proposals and appeals.

The document also says that this will help to discuss the tasks of strengthening the unity and cohesion of society.

In early October 2017, Turkmenistans President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov announced the decision to transform and rename the Council of Elders to Peoples Council.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Oct. 24

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Turkmenistan is actively cooperating on various issues with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), according to a press release from the countrys State Migration Service.

The main points of partnership are the counteraction to various threats and challenges, migration and health, fight against human trafficking and other issues.

Recently, a meeting of employees of the Turkmen State Migration Service with IOM representatives has been held.

The parties discussed key aspects of providing safe, reliable and cost-effective services for people in need of international migration.

Turkmenistan joined the IOM as a full member in 2013. Prior to that, an agreement on cooperation was signed between the government of Turkmenistan and IOM in June 1998. The IOM mission began its work in Turkmenistan in 2005.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Oct. 24

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

The next  28th  session of the Energy Charter Conference will be held in Ashgabat on November 28-29, 2017, said the organization in a message.

Turkmenistan was elected as a chairing country of the Energy Charter Conference for 2017 in late 2016.

The Energy Charter is a declaration of political intention at strengthening energy cooperation between East and West.

The Energy Charter Treaty was signed in December 1994 and entered into force in April 1998.

The main objective of the treaty is to strengthen the legal norms in energy issues by creating a single field of rules that all participating governments must comply with, thus minimizing the risks associated with investment and trade in the field power engineering.

Turkmenistan is one of the rich countries for its natural gas resources. According to BP, the countrys recoverable reserves are estimated at 17.5 trillion cubic meters of gas or nine percent of total global reserves, which puts Turkmenistan on the fourth position in this field after Iran, Russia and Qatar.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Oct. 24

By Diana Aliyeva  Trend:

President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev will pay a state visit to Turkey Oct. 25-26 at the invitation of the countrys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the Uzbek presidents press service.

During the summit talks in Ankara, the sides will discuss the expansion of Uzbek-Turkish cooperation in political, trade, economic, investment, transport and other spheres, as well as exchange views on international issues.

The Uzbek delegation will also visit Istanbul.

Following the visit, they are expected to adopt a joint statement, sign a package of intergovernmental and interdepartmental documents aimed at further developing bilateral relations in various fields, including the creation of favorable conditions for mutually beneficial contacts between Uzbek and Turkish business communities.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Nigar Guliyeva Trend:

Uzbekistan's specialized foreign trade company Uztrade for the first time in the history of the country exported fresh Uzbek melons to the U.S..

The company sent the first batch of melon in volume of one ton to the Trade House Uz-American Trade Corp in New York (USA), Uzbek media reports.

Uztrade JSC also concluded export contracts worth $ 5.1 million for the supply of ready-made textile, dried fruit and vegetable and other domestic products to the U.S.

Uztrade JSC operating under the Foreign Trade Ministry of Uzbekistan opened a new Trading House in New York in September 2017.

The trading house was opened to increase the volume of export supplies, strengthen the positions in the US market and ensure consistent and multifaceted development of bilateral relations.

Uztrade JSC noted that the showroom of the goods of Uzbek producers will constantly operate on the basis of the Trade House.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Oct. 24

By Diana Aliyeva  Trend:

Uzbek Cabinet of Ministers resolution of Oct. 18 provides for the issuance of long-term mortgage loans to employees of tax bodies to buy housing on favorable terms.

The countrys State Tax Committee has said that to qualify for a mortgage loan, an employee needs to have a sum of not less than 25 percent of the cost of housing. However, the initial payment may also be made by the Special Fund for financial assistance, social protection and development of tax authorities.

The employee should submit the required documents to a specially created territorial commission.

The documents will be considered by the territorial commission within 10 days, after which they will be submitted to the State Tax Committee. The Committee will examine the documents within a week and draw up a protocol reflecting the decision made.

A loan agreement will be signed with the applicant if the decision is positive.

In addition, employees of tax authorities will be paid monthly cash compensation for rent of housing. The compensation amount will depend on the location of the housing.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 23

By Khalid Kazimov  Trend:

Iran and Oman are planning to launch a direct shipping route, an Iranian trade official said.

The co-chairman of Iran-Oman trade chamber, Mohsen Zarrabi, has said that the trade chamber is seeking to implement the agreements achieved between the two countries, Irans news channel IRINN reported.

At a meeting with Saud bin Ahmed bin Khalid Al-Birwani, the ambassador of the sultanate to Tehran, Zarrabi touched upon plans to export Irans date to international markets in collaboration with Oman, describing the plan as significant.

In turn, Al-Birwani expressed his satisfaction over the expansion of trade ties between the two countries, saying the banking ties between Iran and Oman are also improving.

The long-awaited plan for launching a direct shipping route to Oman is expected to help diversify access to international export markets for the Islamic Republic.
Tehran, Iran, October 23

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

An Iranian delegation is planned to visit Baku, Azerbaijan in the coming weeks in order to discuss the funding of an international railway project, according to Abbas Nazari, the director for international affairs at the Islamic Republic of Iran Railways (RAI).

The talks will serve the two countries to draft the text of the $500 million agreement that will oversee completing the Rasht-Astara section of the North-South Corridor, Nazari said, RAI public relations office told Trend Oct. 23.

The official noted that the Astara-Astara section (from Iranian city of Astara to the Azerbaijani city with the same name) of the railroad is under construction with a $60 million finance.

The upcoming talks, he explained, will serve building the remaining section from Rasht to Astara (Iran), which is 164 kilometers long.

The talks will be held during a trip to Baku by Minister of Finance Masoud Karbasian, Nazari said, adding the two sides have already agreed on the general framework of the deal.

The Astara-Astara section of the North-South Corridor consists of a 2 km railroad in the Iranian territory, an 8 km railroad in the Azerbaijani territory, and a bridge over the Astarachay River (which is being built jointly by Iran and Azerbaijan).

The strategic North-South Corridor, when completed, will cut the Mumbai-Moscow cargo travel time from 40 to 14 days.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Fatih Karimov  Trend:

Iran has exported over six billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas to neighbouring countries during the first half of the current fiscal year (started March 20), Yadollah Baibordi, an official with Gas Transmission Company (IGTC), said.

Baibordi, who heads Zone 8 of the IGTCs Gas Transfer Operation said that about 13 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas was transferred via the zone in the 6-month period, of that 7 bcm was delivered for domestic consumption in various sectors including households, power plants and industry.

He further said that the delivered gas via the zone is 20 percent more compared to the same period of the preceding year, the IGTC reported.

On the other hand, Saeid Tavakoli, managing director of the IGTC, said that the company has delivered over 101.7 bcm of gas to various sectors during the first half of current fiscal year.

He further said that Iran ranks fourth in the world after the US, Russia and Canada in terms of size of pipeline network and delivery facilities.

Tavakoli added that the IGTC has carried out cleansing pigging operations for 5,200 kilometers of pipelines and smart pigging for another 520 km during the period.
Tehran, Iran, Oct. 23

By Mehdi Sepahvand  Trend:

Iran and South Korea are finalizing talks to jointly manufacture railbuses to serve public transportation in suburban Tehran.

The announcement was made by the CEO of the Islamic Republic of Iran Railways Said Mohammadzadeh during a press conference Oct. 23, Trend's correspondent reported from the event.

According to preliminary agreements, Iranian and Korean companies will jointly create railbuses under a to-be 700-million-euro deal that is expected to be signed by March, the official noted.

According to Mohammadzadeh, each day over 500,000 cars serve to take commuters to and from the capital city of Tehran, posing great economic, environmental, and health tolls on the people.

He said in a period of four years, an Iranian-Korean consortium will provide part of the wagons needed to create the railbus system in suburban Tehran.

Railways are responsible for 30 to 50 percent of suburban transportation in many countries. In Iran, the number hovers around 1.

In the past Iranian fiscal year (which ended March 20), 6 million out of 32 million suburban passengers in Iran were transported by rail.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Azer Ahmadbayli  Trend:

It seems that US President Trumps policy against Iran is not having an effect he was hoping for.

Tehran continues to fight fire with fire and does so efficiently. None of Iran's malicious activities listed in the broader US strategy has undergone any changes. Iran continues to influence situation in Iraq and Syria.

The European leaders keep supporting safety of the nuclear deal, making timid attempts to voice concerns on Irans ballistic missile program and come to any kind of compromise, which, on the contrary, excites Tehrans tough reaction.

Europe has no right to meddle in our defense affairs, Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani said yesterday. He warned that if Europeans want to follow the US and interfere in Irans defense affairs, then Iran will stand against them as they are doing against the US.

Meanwhile, the Islamic Republic is actively working on its economic issues by sending and receiving trade delegations, organizing trade exhibitions, and building new economic ties with neighbors in the region and beyond. It is also a sign that White House isolation attempts stall.

Meanwhile, Irans intransigence, especially its military presence in Syria, can cause a sudden and unpredictable reaction of Israel, which has repeatedly shown that when it comes to the vital interests of the Jewish State, Tel Aviv never stops.

Recent meetings of Israeli defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman with his Russian and American counterparts show that Israel is utterly concerned of the regions current developments and will not put up with Iranian presence close to its frontiers.

Speaking in Washington with Secretary of Defense James Mattis and with National Security Advisor General Herbert McMaster, Lieberman said that "any attack on Israel's sovereignty will meet a determined response," and "we will not tolerate a situation in which Iran and its satellites will sit along our borders and we will defend our interests in every way we see fit and according to our red lines."

The same was discussed in details within a short visit of Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu to Israel. Allegedly, Russians took charge to hold away pro-Iranian forces from dangerous vicinity to Israeli borders.

Stakes are rising up every day of the week. The visiting spokesman for the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, praised the bilateral relations between the movement and Iran, saying that Hamas delegations trip to the Islamic Republic was a practical response to the Israeli regimes anger over Hamas-Tehran ties.

So far, the sides were managing not to cross red lines, but perhaps, we are closer to the onset of war than we believe.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.24

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Azerbaijans accession to the Developing Eight Organization for Economic Cooperation (D-8) would further enhance the countrys cooperation with member states, Malik Ayub Sumbal, Pakistan-based senior political analyst, told Trend Oct.24.

Azerbaijan deserves the membership of D-8, because the economy of Azerbaijan is constantly flourishing and even in the oil slump, the country has a stable economy, he said. I dont think that there will be any problem in Azerbaijans D8 membership.

The political analyst believes that Azerbaijans accession to this organization would definitely be a positive step.

I am sure that this membership would further enhance the cooperation between Azerbaijan and D-8 members, he added.

Turkey hosted the 9th Summit of Developing Eight Organization for Economic Cooperation (D-8) on Oct.20.

The event was held under the theme Expanding Opportunities Through Cooperation.

D-8, also known as Developing-8, is an organization for development cooperation among the following countries: Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey.

The objectives of D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation are to improve member states position in the global economy, diversify and create new opportunities in trade relations, enhance participation in decision-making at international level, and improve standards of living.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
The hailed aircraft will arrive at the Kadena Air Base at the start of November as part of a six-month deployment initiative, EXPRESS reports.

General Terrence OShaughnessy, a Pacific Air Forces commander said: The F-35A gives the joint warfighter unprecedented global precision attack capability against current and emerging threats while complementing our air superiority fleet.

He also told Defence News: The airframe is ideally suited to meet our commands obligations, and we look forward to integrating it into our training and operations.

Twelve A-models of the fighter jet will be supported by 300 airmen from Utah as part of the deployment.

The aircraft announcement comes after F-35s made an appearance at the Seoul International Aerospace and Defence Exhibition last week.

The F-35A fighters will join the F-35B planes that have been stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni since January.

The F-35A is used for traditional take-off and landings while the F-35B is capable of short take-offs and vertical landings.

Both are stealth aircraft capable of inflicting incredible destruction on a chosen target.

The news of an increased military presence in Japan comes as the US and North Korea are engaged in a tussle that has upped World War 3 tensions another palpable gear.

The hermit kingdom recently labelled Japan a stooge and threatened the country with bitter doom in a statement from Kim Jong-uns puppet news agency.

Rodong Sinmun, the paper under control of the despot leader, fired the threats of annihilation at Tokyo as the rogue nation seems determined to provoke nuclear war.
U.S. President Donald Trump will urge President Xi Jinping to make good on his commitments to pressure North Korea when he visits China next month, a senior White House official said on Monday, stepping up a strategy to have Beijing help rein in Pyongyang, The Nation reports.

Isolating North Korea further over its nuclear and ballistic missile tests is a key goal for Trump on what will be his longest foreign trip to date.

Trump will call on Xi to fully implement U.N. Security Council resolutions against Pyongyang and take other steps to pressure North Korea.

China, North Koreas sole major ally, accounts for more than 90 percent of trade with the isolated country.

China has said it will strictly enforce U.N. Security Council sanctions banning imports of coal, textiles and seafood, while cutting off oil shipments to the North.

But a senior White House official who briefed reporters ahead of Trumps trip said China needs to do more to comply with two U.N. Security Council resolutions that were approved unanimously, including with Chinas support.

We would like to see China follow through on those commitments. We would like to see China do things bilaterally as well that might even go beyond things that are mandated by those U.N. Security Council resolutions, the official said.

Though China has been angered by North Koreas repeated nuclear and missile tests and demanded they stop, Beijing also sees the United States and South Korea sharing responsibility for rising tensions because of military drills they carry out in the region.
At least 14 civilians were killed and 32 others wounded on Monday in a U.S.-led airstrike in Syria's eastern city of Deir al-Zour, Xinhua reported, citing the state TV.

The strike targeted the government-controlled Al-Qosoor neighborhood in the city, said the report.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the identity of the warplanes, which carried out the airstrike, is unknown.
On Monday, the UN Security Council expanded the export prohibitions to North Korea. The UN committee that monitors sanctions against Pyongyang has added 32 goods to a list of banned items that have both civilian and military uses, Sputnik reported.

The "dual-use items, materials, equipment, goods and technology related to weapons of mass destruction" includes 32 new items that range from ring magnets, software for neutronic calculations/modeling to particle accelerators, seismic detection equipment and radiation-hardened television cameras, according to the report published on Monday.

On September 11, in response to missile launches by North Korea, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted its toughest resolution yet against North Korea over its latest nuclear test and repeated missile launches.

Resolution 2375 restricts oil exports to Pyongyang, bans imports of textile products from the Asian nation as well as the country's access to gas liquids among other restrictions. Resolution 2375 constitutes the strictest sanctions regime placed on any nation in the 21st century.

According to the document posted on the government portal of legal information last Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree on measures to implement the UN Security Council resolution stipulating a number of restrictions on North Korea in regard to its missile and nuclear programs.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

A dismembered and weak Syria is not in Turkey's interests, Turkish media cited the countrys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as saying Oct. 24.

The president said that despite Russia's support, the Syrian authorities control only around a quarter of Syrias territory.

Erdogan added that the continuation of the military conflict in Syria greatly harms the Syrian people.

Syria has been suffering from an armed conflict since March 2011, which, according to the UN, has claimed more than 500,000 lives.

Militants from various armed groups are confronting the Syrian government troops. The Islamic State, the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) are the most active terrorist groups in Syria.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
By Ko Shu-ling, KYODO NEWS - Oct 24, 2017 - 11:30 | World, Feature, All

Fireflies don't have a lot going for them. For one thing, a firefly is a bug, and not one like a butterfly that we normally enjoy having around, but the kind you swat away from your lunchbox or squash on the sidewalk.

Even when they do their signature thing and light up, fireflies can be nearly invisible in cities due to ambient light. They also come out after dark when many people are indoors. Even if you manage to catch sight of one, they can be difficult to photograph without special equipment.

And, once again, a firefly is a bug. Well, a beetle to be precise.

(Supplied by Kexy Huang of the Taipei Zoo)

Yet, for anyone who has ever walked in the forest at night and found themselves suddenly surrounded by waves and squiggles of blinking fireflies, it is a memory not soon forgotten.

As biologist and firefly expert Sara Lewis vividly describes in her 2016 book "Silent Sparks: The Wondrous World of Fireflies," the flickering insects "create a magic that transcends time and space. Their resplendent displays change ordinary landscapes into places ethereal and otherworldly."

This otherworldliness explains how the lowly firefly has made its way not just into the hearts of countless children, but also mythology and folklore around the world.

Sadly, firefly populations are dwindling, particularly in cities where pollution and habitat destruction have nearly eliminated them, but also in rural environments where fireflies are under pressure from agricultural pesticides, forest clearance and water management projects that drain wetlands where they reproduce.

As environmentalists have tended to focus on species that are economically important, like tuna, or exotic, like migratory birds, insects have flown largely under the radar of concern.

This has begun to change, however.

Earlier this year, Taipei hosted the International Firefly Symposium, a triennial event first held in 2008 to share information and research on fireflies.

Taiwan's capital was selected for this year's meeting mainly due to its remarkable progress in restoring fireflies to areas of the city from which they disappeared 25 years ago.

There are about 2,000 firefly species in the world and Taiwan is home to 63, including three aquatic varieties, according to Wu Chia-hsiung, an ecology professor and deputy executive officer of Friends of Daan Forest Park Foundation spearheading the restoration project.

Over the past four years, Taipei has spent NT$50 million (about US$1.6 million) on the project, which has established sustainable firefly populations in the Wenshan, Daan and Chungshan districts of the city.

Taipei's achievement is not unprecedented, and when environmentalists began to explore the possibility of recovering the city's fireflies, they turned to Japan's Kitakyushu in Fukuoka Prefecture, which nearly four decades ago successfully reintroduced them.

A center for heavy industry, Kitakyushu was severely polluted in the 1960s, with air and water quality so poor as to threaten public health, prompting the start of a government cleanup.

Residents also became concerned about the threat posed to indigenous plants and animals, fireflies in particular.

"The decreasing number of aquatic larva raised an alarm for local communities," Mitsuo Nakamura, chairman of the Kitakyushu Firefly Association, said recently in Taipei.

Nakamura was not exaggerating the depth of feeling for the vanishing bug.

For centuries, fireflies have been part of Japanese cultural life, celebrated in books, poems, songs and movies, where they serve as metaphors for everything from passionate love to memories of student life.

Older traditions say that fireflies are the souls of the dead or of warriors who fell in battle.

"In Japanese culture, fireflies are like glowing pearls, steadily accreting value with each new layer of symbolic meaning," Lewis writes in her book.

Seeking to re-establish local firefly populations, groups organized the cleanup of the rivers where pollution made reproduction impossible.

Those efforts paid off, and by the 1980s larva of Genji fireflies, Japan's most common type, were released and they survived.

Learning from Kitakyushu's success, environmentalists used similar methods to restore the firefly population in Taipei, beginning in 2012 with one small project in Wenshan, then moving to other districts once their methods were perfected.

Key to the success of the artificial breeding is the environment, Wu said.

"Fireflies are an indicator for a good environment, especially water and air," he said.

A firefly's environment of choice is warm, humid and close to standing water such as ponds or marshes. Darkness is also important because fireflies emit light to attract mates, so special LED lights have been installed in parks to facilitate breeding.

As in Kitakyushu, the local foundation eventually received support from the city to complete the initial project and begin expanding to other parts of the city.

Currently there are four firefly sanctuaries opened to the public with more planned.

Although it takes time and money to restore firefly populations, "it is priceless to bring back the childhood memories and happiness to the city," said Foundation Chairman Lin Ming-hsiung.

Indeed, Taiwanese, like the Japanese, have developed profound love for fireflies. Every year, tens of thousands sign up for firefly viewing tours in Taipei and elsewhere in Taiwan.

Scott Lai, who grew up in central Taiwan and now lives in Taipei, took his wife to their first firefly viewing five years ago, hoping to recapture his childhood memory of the "twinkling stars in the wilderness."

However, they saw only so few of them.

"I felt totally desolate," he said.

Now a proud father of two, Lai tried again in 2015 and then again last year and was glad to find more. Although they did not go on another tour this year, he said he will definitely sign up for more in the future.

"I want my boys to see nature's wonder like I did when I was little," he said. "I also want them to understand how important the environment is to those fragile creatures."
New Delhi [India], October 24: At least 100 shops were affected after the fire broke out in Delhi's Kamla Market late night.

At least 30 fire tenders reached the spot to quench the flames.

The fire is now under control.

No casualties or injuries have been reported yet.

"There was fire at three different places. The fire has been doused. The cooling operation is still in progress. Around 50 shops are involved in this. No injuries have been reported. At least 30 fire engines are at the spot," Deputy Chief Fire Officer Virendra Singh said to reporters.

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Casino tycoon Steve Wynn may have played a central role in a U.S.-Chinese diplomatic episode strange enough that the Wall Street Journal wrote it was " worthy of a spy thriller. " The billionaire CEO of Wynn Resorts (NASDAQ: WYNN) , who maintains substantial holdings in the Chinese region of Macau, hand-delivered a letter to President Donald Trump written by the Chinese government, the Journal reported. The letter urged the president to return Guo Wengui, a Chinese businessman who fled the country in 2014 and is now seeking asylum in the United States. Wynn is the Republican National Committee finance chairman.The White House and Wynn did not respond to requests for comment from CNBC. Wynn resorts told the Journal the report was false. Wynn's China properties account for a significant share of his business. Those properties include the Wynn Macau (Hong Kong Stock Exchange: 1128-HK) and the Wynn Palace, a $4.1 billion gambling giant that opened in Macau in 2016. Macau is a so-called "special administrative region" of China that operates with some legal autonomy, according to an agreement signed by China and Macau in 1999. It's one of the world's gambling capitals, and gaming taxes account for more than three quarters of the region's tax revenues. Both properties are operated on land leased under multi-decade agreements from the government. The casinos are subject to a license renewal process that takes place once a year, according to the company's SEC filings.The Wynn Palace has been a successful venture for the company.Earlier this month Deutsche Bank analysts raised their price target for Wynn Resorts after the casino posted results that beat expectations. J.P. Morgan upped its earnings estimates for the property Oct. 5, saying the casino was benefitting from a substantial VIP presence.In 2016, the Macau properties accounted for more than 60 percent of the company's net revenues, according to the company.Guo has been a vocal critic of alleged government corruption in China, and is seeking asylum in the United States as Chinese authorities investigate him for crimes such as bribery and rape.Whether the United States will return him remains a flashpoint in the diplomatic relationship between the two superpowers, the Journal reported, as they go back and forth on trade disputes and a security crisis in North Korea.According to the Journal, the letter Wynn delivered influenced the president. In a June meeting in the Oval Office the president referred to Guo as a "Chinese criminal" that the United States needed to immediately deport."We need to get this criminal out of the country," Trump said, flanked by top advisers and Vice President Mike Pence, according to the WSJ report.Aides later convinced the president to refrain from deporting Guo, the Journal reported, including by telling the president that Guo is a member of the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. The property is owned by Trump, who has visited frequently throughout his presidency and nicknamed the resort the "Winter White House."Read the full Wall Street Journal report here. Casino tycoon Steve Wynn may have played a central role in a U.S.-Chinese diplomatic episode strange enough that the Wall Street Journal wrote it was " worthy of a spy thriller. " The billionaire CEO of Wynn Resorts (NASDAQ: WYNN) , who maintains substantial holdings in the Chinese region of Macau, hand-delivered a letter to President Donald Trump written by the Chinese government, the Journal reported. The letter urged the president to return Guo Wengui, a Chinese businessman who fled the country in 2014 and is now seeking asylum in the United States. Wynn is the Republican National Committee finance chairman. The White House and Wynn did not respond to requests for comment from CNBC. Wynn resorts told the Journal the report was false. Wynn's China properties account for a significant share of his business. Those properties include the Wynn Macau (Hong Kong Stock Exchange: 1128-HK) and the Wynn Palace, a $4.1 billion gambling giant that opened in Macau in 2016. Macau is a so-called "special administrative region" of China that operates with some legal autonomy, according to an agreement signed by China and Macau in 1999. It's one of the world's gambling capitals, and gaming taxes account for more than three quarters of the region's tax revenues. Both properties are operated on land leased under multi-decade agreements from the government. The casinos are subject to a license renewal process that takes place once a year, according to the company's SEC filings. The Wynn Palace has been a successful venture for the company. Earlier this month Deutsche Bank analysts raised their price target for Wynn Resorts after the casino posted results that beat expectations. J.P. Morgan upped its earnings estimates for the property Oct. 5, saying the casino was benefitting from a substantial VIP presence. In 2016, the Macau properties accounted for more than 60 percent of the company's net revenues, according to the company. Guo has been a vocal critic of alleged government corruption in China, and is seeking asylum in the United States as Chinese authorities investigate him for crimes such as bribery and rape. Whether the United States will return him remains a flashpoint in the diplomatic relationship between the two superpowers, the Journal reported, as they go back and forth on trade disputes and a security crisis in North Korea. According to the Journal, the letter Wynn delivered influenced the president. In a June meeting in the Oval Office the president referred to Guo as a "Chinese criminal" that the United States needed to immediately deport. "We need to get this criminal out of the country," Trump said, flanked by top advisers and Vice President Mike Pence, according to the WSJ report. Aides later convinced the president to refrain from deporting Guo, the Journal reported, including by telling the president that Guo is a member of the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. The property is owned by Trump, who has visited frequently throughout his presidency and nicknamed the resort the "Winter White House." Read the full Wall Street Journal report here.



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Deteriorating trade deal talks is a major downside risk for Mexican stocks, according to a top Wall Street firm. Government officials from the U.S., Canada and Mexico announced last week the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiation talks will go into next year due to "challenges" in reworking the trade deal. NAFTA took effect in 1994 to lower trade barriers among the three countries. JPMorgan derivatives strategist Shawn Quigg told investors to bet against Mexican shares Monday especially after the market's strong run so far this year. The iShares MSCI Mexico Capped ETF (NYSE Arca: EWW) (EWW) is up 18 percent year to date through Friday versus the S&P 500's 15 percent return. "NAFTA renegotiation talks have taken a turn for the worse, and the launch of the political cycle is quickly approaching.  NAFTA renegotiations appear at an inflection point as many of the issues presented by the White House are being outright rejected by both Mexican and Canadian authorities," Quigg wrote in a note entitled "Mexico: Cheap Volatility & Approaching Confluence of Potentially Highly Negative Events - Buy EWW Puts."The strategist said the firm's Mexico equity strategist Nur Cristiani is concerned "chances of a 'worst case' or no-deal scenario have significantly increased."JPMorgan's team is worried over the timing of the talks into Mexico's presidential election next year. The fifth round of trade talks will be conducted Nov. 17 to 21."This leaves little time for Mexican authorities to renegotiate before political campaigns officially begin in March," he wrote. "It is important for Mexico to have an agreement in place prior to the 2018 presidential elections to avoid NAFTA becoming a political tool."Quigg recommends buying January 2018 iShares MSCI Mexico Capped ETF $51 strike put options. Deteriorating trade deal talks is a major downside risk for Mexican stocks, according to a top Wall Street firm. Government officials from the U.S., Canada and Mexico announced last week the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) renegotiation talks will go into next year due to "challenges" in reworking the trade deal. NAFTA took effect in 1994 to lower trade barriers among the three countries. JPMorgan derivatives strategist Shawn Quigg told investors to bet against Mexican shares Monday especially after the market's strong run so far this year. The iShares MSCI Mexico Capped ETF (NYSE Arca: EWW) (EWW) is up 18 percent year to date through Friday versus the S&P 500's 15 percent return. "NAFTA renegotiation talks have taken a turn for the worse, and the launch of the political cycle is quickly approaching.  NAFTA renegotiations appear at an inflection point as many of the issues presented by the White House are being outright rejected by both Mexican and Canadian authorities," Quigg wrote in a note entitled "Mexico: Cheap Volatility & Approaching Confluence of Potentially Highly Negative Events - Buy EWW Puts." The strategist said the firm's Mexico equity strategist Nur Cristiani is concerned "chances of a 'worst case' or no-deal scenario have significantly increased." JPMorgan's team is worried over the timing of the talks into Mexico's presidential election next year. The fifth round of trade talks will be conducted Nov. 17 to 21. "This leaves little time for Mexican authorities to renegotiate before political campaigns officially begin in March," he wrote. "It is important for Mexico to have an agreement in place prior to the 2018 presidential elections to avoid NAFTA becoming a political tool." Quigg recommends buying January 2018 iShares MSCI Mexico Capped ETF $51 strike put options.



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The U.S. News Short List, separate from our overall rankings, is a regular series that magnifies individual data points in hopes of providing students and parents a way to find which undergraduate or graduate programs excel or have room to grow in specific areas. Be sure to explore The Short List: College, The Short List: Grad School and The Short List: Online Programs to find data that matter to you in your college or grad school search.

One way to help close the gap between college savings and any need-based aid is with merit aid.

Merit aid, sometimes referred to as non-need-based aid, comes into play when colleges, especially those out of the top tier, use funds to attract desirable students. Typically, these students have a stronger academic profile or a specific talent, such as standing out with a particular extracurricular activity.

[Learn strategies for students too rich for financial aid but too poor for college.]

At each of the 10 ranked colleges where merit scholarships were awarded to the most students, more than 43 percent of full-time students in fall 2016 received merit awards, according to data submitted to U.S. News by schools in an annual survey. These colleges gave merit aid at a much higher rate than the average among the 1,111 ranked colleges that reported these data: 14.5 percent.

Half of these schools are National Liberal Arts Colleges -- schools that emphasize undergraduate education and award at least half of their degrees in the liberal arts fields of study.

Opponents of merit aid say it reduces financial resources for needy students. In fact, some highly ranked colleges do not award merit scholarships, including Princeton University, Middlebury College, Amherst College and Dartmouth College, to name just a few.

[Explore the costs of attending college.]

Many schools only reserve merit aid for exceptional circumstances. Among the ranked schools that submitted these data, 628 colleges awarded merit aid to less than 15 percent of full-time students.

Story continues

Below is a list of the 10 ranked colleges where the highest percentage of full-time students in fall 2016 received merit aid. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.

School name (state) Percentage of full-time students awarded merit aid in 2016-2017 U.S. News rank and category Rhodes College (TN) 57.5% 51 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges John Brown University (AR) 50.5% 17 (tie), Regional Universities (South) University of Puget Sound (WA) 49.6% 68 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges University of Mary (ND) 48.8% 109 (tie), Regional Universities (Midwest) Trinity University (TX) 48.3% 1, Regional Universities (West) Samford University (AL) 47.5% 3, Regional Universities (South) New School (NY) 46.8% 133 (tie), National Universities Denison University (OH) 45.9% 46 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges Hillsdale College (MI) 45.6% 71 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges Furman University (SC) 43.6% 53 (tie), National Liberal Arts Colleges

Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News College Compass to find financial aid data, complete rankings and much more. Sign up for the U.S. News Extra Help: College Admissions free email newsletter to receive expert advice twice a month.

U.S. News surveyed more than 1,800 colleges and universities for our 2017 survey of undergraduate programs. Schools self-reported myriad data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News' data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Colleges rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News' rankings of Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools or Best Online Programs. The financial aid data above are correct as of Oct. 24, 2017.





More From US News & World Report


Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT) stock has soared in 2017, on the back of a string of consensus-busting earnings and analyst upgrades. The main reason has been its improving construction, mining, and energy industry verticals. Moreover, analysts have recently raised price targets for the stock in anticipation of a strong set of third-quarter earnings.

Clearly, the company has a lot of good momentum behind it, but can it continue? Let's preview the earnings report that comes out on Oct. 24 to see what investors need to keep an eye out for.

a caterpillar excavator going through a field

Image source: Getty Images

Guidance

Caterpillar's management has progressively raised full-year sales and earnings guidance as the year has progressed. Essentially, Caterpillar's high degree of operating leverage means it takes a relatively small revenue increase to translate into increased profits -- similarly, when sales downturns occur, Caterpillar's earnings will take a big hit. Therefore, the increases in sales guidance, resulting from better end markets, have led to a dramatically increased profit outlook.

Here are some estimates for the full year 2017.

Metric January April July Current Analyst Consensus Revenue $36-$39 $38-$41 $42-$44 $43 Profit per share excluding restructuring $2.90 $3.75 $5 $5.29

Data source: Caterpillar Inc. presentations. Revenue in billions.

That said, the current analyst consensus is above management's guidance range, so the market appears to be expecting a guidance increase in the results. It's definitely something to look out for, because the stock could be at risk if management doesn't deliver a good sales growth and margin outlook. For example, Deere & Company (NYSE: DE) stock took a notable hit after the company's third-quarter earnings report disappointed with its margin outlook.

Construction outlook

An analysis of how Caterpillar makes money reveals that construction is its key long-term end market. Although the cyclicality of its energy and resources revenue creates near- to mid-term earnings volatility that can be the swing factor in its stock-price movements, the health of the construction industry is still the long-term consideration.

Story continues

Indeed, it's part of the reason some investors prefer Caterpillar to Deere, a company more focused on the agricultural equipment sector. Looking ahead to Caterpillar's upcoming earnings, we can see two reasons to believe in a Caterpillar surprise on the upside with its construction numbers and commentary.

Deere's full-year worldwide construction and forestry segment outlook has strengthened significantly as the year has progressed, from 1% full-year sales growth last November to 7% in February, 13% in May, and 15% in August. Note that Deere's last earnings came in August, compared to July for Caterpillar.

In addition, U.S. residential and construction spending continues to improve in 2017, while the market waits for a potential boost in infrastructure spending from President Trump.

US Construction Spending Chart

US Construction Spending data by YCharts

China

Investors shouldn't underestimate the importance of the country and the Asia-Pacific region on Caterpillar's earnings this year. There's no doubt that better-than-expected economic growth in China has positively affected earnings at industrial companies this year. For example, Caterpillar's segment equipment sales rose by 10% to $10.6 billion in its second-quarter, and a breakout of the numbers demonstrates the contribution made by improving end markets in Asia/Pacific in the quarter. Here's a look at the company's Q2 sales improvements:

Region Construction Resource Industries Energy and Transportation North America $71 $73 $173 Latin America $87 $41 $35 Europe, Middle East, and Africa ($46) $79 $17 Asia-Pacific $392 $109 ($34)

Data source: Caterpillar Inc. presentations. In millions of U.S. dollars.

The question is, what will China's GDP growth be in the second half of the year? In particular, will capital spending in its mining and construction end markets be as supportive to Caterpillar's sales as they were in the first half? It's something for investors to focus on, because many economic commentators are expecting China's rate of GDP growth to slow in the second half.

Looking ahead

Whenever a stock has the kind of strong run-up in stock price that Caterpillar has -- up nearly 50% in the last year -- it usually makes sense to keep a close eye on developments. I would argue that Caterpillar's stock needs a guidance boost to keep going higher, along with a combination of strong U.S. construction spending and ongoing China GDP growth. These are three key things to focus on in the upcoming results.

More From The Motley Fool

Lee Samaha has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abes snap election gamble paid off, giving his Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner more than two-thirds of the seats in parliament and a political fillip ahead of his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Tokyo next month.

The trouncing of what turned out to be a disjointed opposition  compared to 2014, when the opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, was in a sorry state but at least held together in both houses of parliament  puts a summer of scandals behind Abe and promised to raise his stature with Trump, Carnegies James Schoff said at an event on Monday organized by Sasakawa USA. Indeed, unlike German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Abe got a congratulatory phone call within hours (not days) of his electoral win.

But there are still a couple of big points of potential tension on the horizon between Japan and the United States: the North Korea mess and trade. In recent days, the Trump administration has signaled that it is seriously considering a pre-emptive military strike on North Korea. Abe after his big win focused on North Korea  but seemed to put a lot more emphasis on a diplomatic solution to the impasse.

My immediate task is to deal with North Korea, he told reporters. It will take tough diplomacy. With the mandate given by the people, I would like to exercise my command in diplomacy.

And while Abes parliamentary majority seems big enough to push through a more militaristic national security policy, in reality it might be a poisoned chalice. While the opposition is smaller than it was, it is more radicalized. And its rallying cry is Japanese constitutional pacifism. That promises to make it harder for Abe to summon political support for an interventionist security policy.

But at any rate, North Korea wasnt the focus of the Japanese election  the economy was, said Takako Hikotani of Columbia University, speaking at the same event. But the two leaders hardly see eye to eye on that, either.

Story continues

Trump pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a planned 12-nation trade pact spanning North and South America and the Pacific Rim, early in his term. That dismayed Japan, which had finally offered painful trade concessions with the hope of getting access to a massive pool of global consumers. Tokyo still holds out hope that the Trump administration will reverse its TPP stance.

And while the Trump team wants a simpler bilateral trade deal with Japan, thats unlikely to happen. First, clawing out concessions on issues like auto manufacturing and agriculture were hard enough when U.S. negotiators could dangle lots of potential carrots; a bilateral deal holds less appeal than the massive TPP.

Second, Tokyo is not keen on becoming the first country to let Trump prove his vaunted dealmaking skills by signing off on a bilateral trade agreement that could be disadvantageous to Japanese firms and workers.

Abe, Hikotani said, knows very well [the election result] is not a full endorsement of his agenda, or a green light to pursue whatever military and economic policies might please Trump.
The Gujarat High Court on Tuesday heard a suo motu PIL on Morbi bridge tragedy and asked the state government as to how no expression of interest was tendered, and how the "largesse of the state" was given to an individual without floating a tender.
By Jeffrey Dastin

(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) has received 238 proposals from cities and regions across North America vying to host the company's second headquarters, it said on Monday.

The number of applicants underscores the interest in the contest, which Seattle-based Amazon announced last month. The world's largest online retailer said it would invest more than $5 billion and create up to 50,000 jobs for "Amazon HQ2". The deadline for submitting proposals was Thursday.

Amazon said 54 states, provinces, districts and territories in the United States, Canada and Mexico were represented in the bids.

Some said this month they could offer Amazon billions of dollars in tax breaks if they were chosen. New Jersey proposed $7 billion in potential credits against state and city taxes if Amazon locates in Newark and sticks to hiring commitments, for instance.

Amazon did not disclose the range of incentives it was offered in the proposals.

Others took different tactics. The mayor of the Atlanta suburb of Stonecrest, Jason Lary, said his city would use 345 acres of industrial land to create a new city called Amazon. Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos would be its mayor for life, Lary said.

Amazon is expected to choose a city that will help it recruit top talent to stay competitive with rivals such as Alphabet Inc's Google (GOOGL.O).

The company has said it will make a decision next year.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Susan Thomas)
Job seekers line up to apply during "Amazon Jobs Day," a job fair being held at 10 fulfillment centers across the United States aimed at filling more than 50,000 jobs, at the Amazon.com Fulfillment Center in Fall River, Massachusetts, U.S., August 2, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder (Reuters)

By Jeffrey Dastin

(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc has received 238 proposals from cities and regions across North America vying to host the company's second headquarters, it said on Monday.

The number of applicants underscores the interest in the contest, which Seattle-based Amazon announced last month. The world's largest online retailer said it would invest more than $5 billion and create up to 50,000 jobs for "Amazon HQ2". The deadline for submitting proposals was Thursday.

Amazon said 54 states, provinces, districts and territories in the United States, Canada and Mexico were represented in the bids.

Some said this month they could offer Amazon billions of dollars in tax breaks if they were chosen. New Jersey proposed $7 billion in potential credits against state and city taxes if Amazon locates in Newark and sticks to hiring commitments, for instance.

Amazon did not disclose the range of incentives it was offered in the proposals.

Others took different tactics. The mayor of the Atlanta suburb of Stonecrest, Jason Lary, said his city would use 345 acres of industrial land to create a new city called Amazon. Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos would be its mayor for life, Lary said.

Amazon is expected to choose a city that will help it recruit top talent to stay competitive with rivals such as Alphabet Inc's Google.

The company has said it will make a decision next year.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Susan Thomas)
American Electric Power Company, Inc. AEP is set to release third-quarter 2017 financial results on Oct 26, before the market opens. Last quarter, this electric utility witnessed a negative earnings surprise of 8.54%.



Lets see how things are shaping up prior to this announcement.



Factors to Consider



American Electric is highly dependent on coal for production of electricity. Therefore, President Trumps emphasis on improving the coal industry and relaxing the stringent environmental regulations in recent times are likely to boost the companys prospects in the near term..



Also, American Electric is expected to benefit from the improving economic conditions in its service territories and its efficient cost-management initiatives.



Markedly, Ohio and Texas represents more than one-half of utility revenues of the company. However, the power generation from these states is deregulated, consequently leading to the current lower price environment. This, in turn, is expected to hurt earnings of American Electric Power.



Moreover, hurricane Harvey that hit the coasts of Texas at the onset of last month, hampered the smooth flow of electricity through the transmission lines leading to widespread outages in the state. As American Powers subsidiary, AEP Texas, engaged in the transmission and distribution of electric power to approximately 1 million retail customers therein, we expect the companys third-quarter bottom line to be affected severely.



In line with this, the Zacks Consensus Estimate reflected an annual decline of 3.6% on revenues of $4.17 billion, reflecting a 10.4% decline year over year.

American Electric Power Company, Inc. Price and EPS Surprise

American Electric Power Company, Inc. Price and EPS Surprise | American Electric Power Company, Inc. Quote

Earnings Whispers



Our proven model does not conclusively show that American Electric will beat estimates this quarter. That is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. But that is not the case here, as you will see below.



Zacks ESP: American Electric has an Earnings ESP of -2.39%, this is because the Most Accurate estimate is $1.22 while the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at $1.25. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.



Zacks Rank: American Electric carries a Zacks Rank #3, which increases the predictive power of ESP. However, the companys negative ESP makes surprise prediction difficult.



Note that we caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell rated) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.



Stocks to Consider



Here are a few companies in the utility sector that have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter.



NiSource, Inc. NI will report third-quarter results on Nov 1. The company has an Earnings ESP of +7.69% and a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



EverSource Energy ES has an Earnings ESP of +1.85% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company is expected to report third-quarter results on Nov 1.



Avista Corporation AVA has an Earnings ESP of +17.24% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company is slated to release third-quarter results on Nov 1.



Today's Stocks from Zacks' Hottest Strategies



It's hard to believe, even for us at Zacks. But while the market gained +18.8% from 2016 - Q1 2017, our top stock-picking screens have returned +157.0%, +128.0%, +97.8%, +94.7%, and +90.2% respectively.



And this outperformance has not just been a recent phenomenon. Over the years it has been remarkably consistent. From 2000 - Q1 2017, the composite yearly average gain for these strategies has beaten the market more than 11X over. Maybe even more remarkable is the fact that we're willing to share their latest stocks with you without cost or obligation.



See Them Free>>



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American Electric Power Company, Inc. (AEP) : Free Stock Analysis Report



NiSource, Inc (NI) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Avista Corporation (AVA) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Eversource Energy (ES) : Free Stock Analysis Report



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Zacks Investment Research
Netflix is fattening up its war chest.

The streaming service plans to offer $1.6 billion in new debt to ensure its able to buy or produce whichever new shows it wants in 2018, the company said in a statement Monday. Netflix also said it could potentially use the money for other strategic transactions (including acquisitions).

The streaming service, which is facing increasing competition from Hulu, as well as portals from CBS and, in the coming year,Disney, plans to release 80 films next year, a 60% increase over what it produced this year. Raising debt to fund programming is nothing new for Netflix. The company announced an $800 million debt offering a year ago, with another $1.1 billion raise taking place six months later. The company raised its subscription prices earlier this month.

All of that debt, and the interest thats tied to it, means Netflix will likely continue to have negative cash flow for the next several years. But the company says thats necessary as it fights for viewers and builds a library of original contentincluding hits like House of Cards, Stranger Things, Daredevil and Jessica Joneswhich will make it less reliant on outside producers and studios in the years to come.
Leading refining player Phillips 66 PSX is expected to report third-quarter 2017 results on Oct 27, before market opens.



The company has an impressive earnings surprise history. Phillips 66 beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the trailing four quarters, with an average positive earnings surprise of 433.14%.

Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement.



Phillips 66 Price and EPS Surprise

Phillips 66 Price and EPS Surprise | Phillips 66 Quote

Which Way are Estimates Treading?



Lets look at the estimate revisions in order to get a clear picture of what analysts are thinking about the company before earnings release.



The Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.60 for the third quarter has seen one upward revision and one downward revision by firms in the last seven days. It reflects year-over-year growth of 52.4%.



Further, analysts polled by Zacks expect revenues of $2,994 million for the impending quarter, up 35.8% from the year-ago quarter.

Earnings Whispers



Our proven model shows that Phillips 66 is likely to beat on earnings this time around, as it has the right combination of the two key ingredients.



Zacks ESP: Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is +2.43%. This is because the Most Accurate estimate is pegged at $1.64, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate is at $1.60. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.



Zacks Rank: Phillips 66 carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Note that stocks with Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 have a significantly higher chance of beating on earnings. The combination of Phillip 66s favorable Zacks Rank and Earnings ESP makes us confident about an earnings beat.



Conversely, Sell-rated stocks (Zacks Rank #4 or 5) should never be considered going into an earnings announcement.



Factors Likely to Influence Earnings



The company has plans to allocate money for more profitable business units like Midstream and Chemicals instead of extensive refining and marketing operations. Midstream business is in high demand in the central United States, due to increasing requirement for fresh pipeline and infrastructure properties in the flourishing shales. Moreover, improving petrochemical demand should call for more chemical business in the United States. Such decisions reflect the companys efficiency, which would be reflected in current quarters operations.



We appreciate the companys decision to invest $1.3 billion out of the total 2017 capital budget of $2.3 billion in growth projects.



However, the companys free cash flow has been negative over the last two years, reflecting weak business operations. Hence, its ability to pay dividends is at risk. Since the beginning of 2012, there has been exponential increase in long-term debt, reflecting Phillips 66s weak balance sheet.



Q3 Stock Price Performance



During the reporting quarter, pricing chart reveals that Phillips 66s shares have outperformed the industry. During the aforesaid period, the companys shares have returned 10.7% compared with the industrys 10.5% increase.



Other Stocks to Consider



Here are some firms that you may want to consider on the basis of our model. These have the right combination of elements to beat earnings this quarter.



Noble Midstream Partners LP NBLX, headquartered in Houston, TX, has diversified energy infrastructure properties. The company has an Earnings ESP of +1.91% and boasts a Zacks Rank #1. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



Tesoro Corporation ANDV, based in San Antonio, TX, operates as the refiner and marketer of petroleum products. The company has an Earnings ESP of +5.02% and carries a Zacks Rank #3.



Gulfport Energy Corporation GPOR, headquartered in Oklahoma City, OK, owns and operates mature oil and gas properties in the Louisiana Gulf Coast area. The company has an Earnings ESP of +0.97% and carries a Zacks Rank #3.



Today's Stocks from Zacks' Hottest Strategies



It's hard to believe, even for us at Zacks. But while the market gained +18.8% from 2016 - Q1 2017, our top stock-picking screens have returned +157.0%, +128.0%, +97.8%, +94.7%, and +90.2% respectively.



And this outperformance has not just been a recent phenomenon. Over the years it has been remarkably consistent. From 2000 - Q1 2017, the composite yearly average gain for these strategies has beaten the market more than 11X over. Maybe even more remarkable is the fact that we're willing to share their latest stocks with you without cost or obligation.



See Them Free>>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



Phillips 66 (PSX) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Gulfport Energy Corporation (GPOR) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Noble Midstream Partners LP (NBLX) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Tesoro Corporation (ANDV) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Heres a look at some of the stocks the Yahoo Finance team will be watching for you today.

Caterpillar (CAT) shares gave a big boost to the Dow Industrials this morning. The construction equipment company is raising its profit outlook for the year after revenue and earnings blasted past analysts estimates for the third quarter. Caterpillar says revenue was driven by strong demand for its machines in North America and China.

3M (MMM) is also doing its part to lift the Dow. Earnings and revenue blew past expectations last quarter. The maker of Post it Notes and Scotch Tape saw its boost in its electronics and energy divisions.

Lockheed Martin (LMT) is on the defensive this morning. The stock fell early Tuesday after it missed on earnings and revenue for last quarter. CEO Marillyn Hewson is urging investors to focus on the companys backlog that supports long term growth. Lockheed Martin has confirmed its increasing its defense spending. The stock is up around 35% since Election Day.

Whirlpool (WHR) shares are getting put through the ringer. The appliance maker lowered its full year guidance after profits and revenue missed expectations. The companys CEO cited rising material costs and slow growth in Europe for the shortfall. Whirlpool is also in a trade battle with two South Korean washing machine makers. And to top it off, embattled retailer Sears will no longer sell Whirlpool appliances after a pricing dispute.

And theres potentially some bad news for Apple (AAPL). Japans Nikkei is reporting that the tech giant may ship just half the number of iPhone Xs it promised for Nov. 3rd. The newspaper says Apple is struggling to fix a problem with the phones 3D sensor.
Celgene Corporation CELG is scheduled to report third-quarter 2017 results on Oct 26, before the opening bell.

Celgenes stock has moved up 6.1% year to date compared with the industrys gain of 11.8%.

Celgene has an excellent track record with the company beating earnings estimates in the last four trailing quarters. Last quarter, the company beat expectations by 2.8%. Overall, the company has delivered an average positive surprise of 3.8%. We expect the company to beat estimates once again on the back of strong performance of key drug Revlimid.

Why a Likely Positive Surprise?

Our proven model shows that Celgene is likely to beat on earnings estimates this quarter. This is because it has the right combination of two key ingredients, a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold).

Zacks ESP: The Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is +0.08%. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks Rank: Celgene currently carries a Zacks Rank #3. The combination of Zacks Rank #3 and a positive ESP makes us confident of an earnings beat.

Conversely, Sell-rated stocks (Zacks Rank #4 or 5) should never be considered going into an earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.

Celgene Corporation Price and EPS Surprise

Celgene Corporation Price and EPS Surprise | Celgene Corporation Quote

Revlimid to Drive Growth

Concurrent with the second-quarter earnings results, Celgene raised its guidance for 2017. The company anticipates earnings in the range of $7.25-$7.35 per share compared with the previous guidance of $7.15-$7.30 per share. Net product sales are projected at $13-13.4 billion.The Zacks Consensus Estimate for product sales in the third quarter currently stands at $3.4 billion.

Revlimid, an oral immunomodulatory drug, is currently approved for several indications including MM, myelodysplastic syndromes and mantle cell lymphoma. The drug performed well in the first half and combated the challenges of uneven buying patterns and coverage gap. Market share gains in key markets and longer treatment duration are contributing to the drugs growth.

Story continues

Meanwhile, Celgene is working on expanding Revlimids label further. Revlimid received the FDAs approval for use as a maintenance treatment in NDMM patients after they receive an autologous stem-cell transplant. NDMM market share continues to grow outside the United States, with a positive uptake both in the EU and Japan.

Continued momentum in the core indication, label expansion and global launches should help the product to keep contributing to the top line. The Zacks Consensus estimate for Revlimid currently stands at $2.1 billion for the third quarter.

Other key products  Pomalyst/Imnovid, Abraxane and Otezla  continue to perform well. Pomalyst/Imnovid is being evaluated in multiple combination studies in relapsed/refractory MM. The drugs label was updated in the United States and the Europe to include data from a pooled pharmacokinetics analysis of patients with relapsed and/or refractory MM and impaired renal function. Pomalyst, in combination with Darzalex and dexamethasone for relapsed/refractory myeloma was approved in the United States and should propel sales further.

The approval of Idhifa for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory AML (R/R AML) will further boost Celgenes portfolio. The drug was developed in collaboration with Agios Pharmaceuticals AGIO. Otezla achieved the blockbuster status in 2016 driven by solid demand in the United States and trend is expected to continue in 2017. Increased contribution from European countries also impacted sales positively. It is currently being evaluated in phase III studies for Behcet's disease, atopic dermatitis and expanded indications in psoriatic arthritis and plaque psoriasis.

The company is keen to expand its oncology franchise beyond Abraxane. Label and geographical expansion of approved drugs in additional indications will increase their commercial potential further. Abraxane sales are estimated to be around $1 billion. While Pomalysts revenues are projected around $1.6 billion, the same for Otezla are estimated around $1.5-1.7 billion.

During third-quarter earnings call investors are expected to remain focused on the companys performance and label expansion efforts, along with updates on the pipeline front.

Other Stocks Poised to Beat Estimates

Here are some other health care stocks that you may want to consider, as our model shows that they too have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter.

Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. VRTX has an Earnings ESP of +7.24% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is scheduled to release third-quarter results on Oct 25. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

GlaxoSmithKline plc GSK has an Earnings ESP of +1.28% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is scheduled to release third-quarter results on Oct 25.

Will You Make a Fortune on the Shift to Electric Cars?

Here's another stock idea to consider. Much like petroleum 150 years ago, lithium power may soon shake the world, creating millionaires and reshaping geo-politics. Soon electric vehicles (EVs) may be cheaper than gas guzzlers. Some are already reaching 265 miles on a single charge. With battery prices plummeting and charging stations set to multiply, one company stands out as the #1 stock to buy according to Zacks research. It's not the one you think. See This Ticker Free >>



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GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Agios Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (AGIO) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (VRTX) : Free Stock Analysis Report



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Zacks Investment Research
Oil prices have undergone resurgence recently with WTI crude closing in on the $52 per barrel mark on more than one occasion. Meanwhile, Brent crude is hovering around the $58 per barrel mark, in yet another sign of better days the commodity. The reasons for this rebound are not hard to seek. The most recent catalyst for gains has been a decline in Iraqs oil exports, to the tune of 200,000 barrels per day.

OPEC Compliance Triggers Price Rise

But it is greater compliance to the OPEC production controls agreement concluded last November that is triggering the recent upsurge. A high level of compliance to the agreement, which was extended through March 2017, has helped to mop up the oversupply plaguing the oil market for a long time. Additionally, the global economy is enjoying an extended run of gains during a period which is possibly its best in a decade.

Of course, skeptics are quick to characterize the cut in supply as a temporary one. This group of commentators ascribe part of the drop in supply to the refinery shutdowns caused by the recent hurricanes experienced by the United States. Additionally, an increase in prices is likely to trigger the United States ultra efficient shale sector to ramp up production, which may lead to a subsequent fall in prices.

Given this backdrop, it may be a good idea to examine which of the two oil supermajors, Chevron Corporation CVX or Exxon Mobil Corporation XOM, is better placed ahead of their third quarter earnings releases. Both companies are scheduled to report earnings on Oct 27.

Other prominent companies scheduled to report earnings this week include Microsoft Corporation MSFT and Alphabet Inc. GOOGL. Each of these stocks have a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Price Performance

When considering price performance over a six-month period, Exxon has gained 1.8%, lower than the broader industrys 7.6% increase. On the other hand, Chevron has gained 11.4% over this period, which exceeds both Exxons and the broader industrys performance.

Story continues

However, over the last one month, Exxon has gained 2.8%, outperforming Chevron and the broader industry which have increased 0.8% and 1.7%, respectively.

Current Ratio

This metric measures the ability of a company to service both short-term and long-term debt. In other words, it is the ratio of the current level of total assets and expresses to that of the current level of liabilities. Here, Chevron is a clear winner with a current ratio of 1.15, which is superior to the industry average of 1.14 as well as Exxons reading of 0.84.

Return on Capital

This is an important profitability metric for capital intensive industries such as oil and gas, since it measures profitability with regard to invested capital. Our research shows that the average 12-month ROC for Exxon Mobil is 6.6%, much higher than the industry average of 4.2% and Chevrons level of 3.3%.

Dividend Yield

In a year's time, the dividend yield for both Exxon Mobil and Chevron was lower than the broader industry. The industry has an average dividend yield of 4.4%, higher than 3.7% for Exxon Mobil and 3.6% for Chevron.

Hence, on a comparable basis, Exxon Mobil shareholders earned a better dividend yield than Chevron.

Valuation

Compared with the S&P 500, the broader industry is undervalued. This implies that the industry has the potential to gain in the near future. The industry has an average one-year EV/EBITDA ratio  one of the best multiples for valuing oil and gas companies because these energy firms have a large amount of debt and EV (Enterprise Value) includes the parameter  of 6.91, which is below the S&P 500 average of 11.63. Hence, it might be a good idea not to stay away from stocks belonging to this industry.

Both Exxon Mobil and Chevron are overvalued compared with the industry. But with an EV/EBITDA ratio of 9.85, Exxon Mobil is clearly cheaper than Chevron, whose value for the metric stands at 10.53.

Earnings History, ESP and Estimate Revisions

Considering a more comprehensive earnings history, both Chevron and Exxon Mobil have delivered positive surprises in three of the trailing four quarters. However, Chevron has a higher average earnings surprise of 19.4% compared to Exxons figure of 8.9%.

When considering Earnings ESP, however, Exxon Mobil is the clear winner with an ESP value of +1.78%, clearly superior to Chevrons value of -6.16%. At the same time, Chevrons earnings estimate for the current year has increased by 5.1% over the last thirty days, compared to Exxons increase of 1.8%.

Conclusion

Our comparative analysis shows that Chevron holds and edge over Exxon when considering price performance over an extended period, liquidity, estimate revisions and average earnings surprise. However, when considering return on capital, dividend yield, EV/EBITDA ratios, price performance in the short term and ESP values, Exxon is clearly the better stock. What clinches the case in favor of Exxon Mobil is its superior ESP value of +1.78%, compared to Chevrons figure of -6.16%. This is why it may be better to bet on Exxon Mobil over Chevron as they prepare to report earnings later this week.

Today's Stocks from Zacks' Hottest Strategies

It's hard to believe, even for us at Zacks. But while the market gained +18.8% from 2016 - Q1 2017, our top stock-picking screens have returned +157.0%, +128.0%, +97.8%, +94.7%, and +90.2% respectively.

And this outperformance has not just been a recent phenomenon. Over the years it has been remarkably consistent. From 2000 - Q1 2017, the composite yearly average gain for these strategies has beaten the market more than 11X over. Maybe even more remarkable is the fact that we're willing to share their latest stocks with you without cost or obligation.

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In a rare and complex surgery, doctors reconstructed a finger and a thumb on a 10-year-old boy's hand, which had to amputated after an accident two years ago.

Doctors at Safdarjung hospital performed a 'toe hand transfer' surgery on Virendra Singh, 10, which will enable him to write.

By Priyanka Sharma: For about two years, Virendra Singh, 10, could barely use his arms as both his hands were amputated after he suffered burn injuries from an immersion rod while taking a bath.

But a rare and complex toe-to-hand transfer surgery at the central government's Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi has restored the functions of his right hand.

In this procedure, a thumb and a finger were reconstructed using his toes that were attached to his hand with the restoration of blood circulation in it.

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Virendra, a resident of south Delhi's Chhattarpur area, was a chirpy child before the mishap.

The incident took place when he was getting ready for a family get-together after returning from school. His whole body suffered burns and the hands got cut off, resulting in gangrene below the wrist.

'LIFE BECAME MISERABLE'

"My son is very active in studies. He was in class 1 when he suffered the trauma," Birendar Singh, Virendra's father, told Mail Today.

"His life became so miserable that he was unable to do anything."

Singh kept running from one hospital to another. His son's keenness to study and hold a pen was not letting him sleep at night.

"I wanted that somehow my child should be able to hold a pen and write. I brought him to Safdarjung Hospital around seven months ago and doctors planned to reconstruct his fingers from his toes," said the father adding that his son would soon be able to write.

Virendra is now in class 3 at a school in south Delhi. His father has removed all types of electrical equipment from his house which can cause mishaps.

(Prof) Dr R P Narayan, head of the burns and plastic surgery unit at Safdarjung Hospital, told Mail Today, "The patient was in follow-up for at least seven to eight months and also on physiotherapy. Before conducting this highly complex surgery, we studied his medical conditions very thoroughly."

"Virendra suffered burns on his chest and abdomen as well. His hands were amputated. Only his right hand had a little palm on it which two toes were transplanted on," the doctor said.

The department is in the process of bringing a hand transplant programme to the institution as a large number of patients lose their hands because of electric burns or accidents.

COMPLEX PROCEDURE

Chief operating surgeon Dr Rakesh Kain said, "This procedure required a lot of monitoring and specialised anaesthesia to keep microvascular blood flow for the survival of the toes transplanted on to the hand."

"It was a very complex surgery and its failure could have resulted in trauma to the patient. The child will now use his fingers to do a lot of his routine work," Dr Kain added.

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According to doctors, Virendra will not face any problems in walking. The surgery took 10 hours with fixing of bones to restoration of blood circulation.

Surgeons say only one or two procedures have been conducted in southern India.

--- ENDS ---
By Phil Stewart CLARK FREEPORT ZONE, Philippines (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he would talk with Asian allies about North Korea and the crisis caused by Pyongyang's "reckless" provocations, as he kicked off a week-long trip to the region on Monday to meet defense chiefs in the Philippines. Mattis' trip to Asia, which will also include stops in Thailand and South Korea, comes just weeks before President Donald Trump's first visit to Asia. Trump has been locked in a war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, calling him a "rocket man" on a suicide mission for openly pursuing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States. Trump, in a speech last month at the United Nations, threatened to destroy North Korea if necessary to defend the United States and its allies. Kim has blasted Trump as "mentally deranged." Mattis, who has emphasized diplomacy, was expected to meet both his Japanese and South Korean counterparts on Monday before meeting with all three of them together. He will attend a meeting from Monday to Wednesday of defense ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as ASEAN, in the Philippines. He will go to Seoul later in the week for more defense talks. "I will talk with my counterparts, discussing the regional security crisis caused by the reckless DPRK North Korea provocations but also discuss our respect for shared values like sovereignty of the states, their territorial integrity, freedom of navigation through historically international waters, and fair and reciprocal trade," Mattis told reporters. A U.S. Navy destroyer sailed near islands claimed by China in the South China Sea last week, seeking to promote freedom of navigation. The maneuver prompted anger in Beijing. Trump's trip next month will include a visit to China, which he has been pressuring to do more to rein in North Korea's missile and nuclear programs. China is North Korea's neighbor and biggest trading partner. Mattis, while in the Philippines, said he would commend the military for defeating insurgents in Marawi City on the island of Mindanao. Some experts see the siege as a prelude to a more ambitious bid by Islamic State loyalists to exploit Mindanao's poverty and use its jungles and mountains as a base to train, recruit and launch attacks in the region. "It was a tough fight," Mattis said, adding he thought the Philippines had sent "a very necessary message to the terrorists." On Thursday, Mattis will lead the U.S. delegation in Thailand for the cremation rites for the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej. (Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Upstream Energy firm Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation COG is set to report third-quarter 2017 results before the opening bell on Oct 27.

Headquartered in Texas, Cabot is an independent oil and gas exploration company with producing properties mainly in the continental United States. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2017 earnings for the current quarter has been revised downward by 16.7% over the last 30 days. Further, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2017 earnings has also moved south by 3.2% over the last 30 days.

Last quarter, the company delivered a negative earnings surprise of 6.67% owing to increased costs. However, Cabot delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 3.02% in the last four quarters.

Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation Price and EPS Surprise

Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation Price and EPS Surprise | Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation Quote

Lets see how things are shaping up for this announcement.

Factors to Consider

Being an upstream firm, weakness in the commodity prices might lower the companys exploration and production activities. Natural gas prices dropped about 3.5% in the July-September period, owing to the fuels tepid demand due to mild weather conditions and hurricane-related power outages.

With natural gas prices trading just around $3 per MMBtu during most part of the third quarter and Cabot being one of the most gas-weighted E&Ps, the company's earnings and revenues are under pressure. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for average realized gas price is pegged at $2.32 per thousand cubic feet, lower than the prior quarter figure of $2.38. Even the crude price realization is estimated at $43.81 per barrel, lower than the $44.03 per barrel recorded in second-quarter 2017.

We also note that the current Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarterly output stands at 164 billion cubic feet (Bcf) compared with $166 Bcf in second-quarter 2017. This might negatively affect the companys revenues. Analysts polled by Zacks expect revenues of $410 million for the third quarter, down 10.9% from the prior quarter.

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Further, during 2017, Cabot is likely to spend $845 million which is more than twice of the 2016 spending level of around $375 million. This might lower the company's cash flows. Last quarter, Cabots operating expenses were higher by around 27% on increased administrative, general and other costs. If the trend continues, the companys earnings are expected to get hurt.

Earnings Whispers

Our proven model does not conclusively show that Cabot is likely to beat earnings estimates this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. That is not the case here as you will see below.

Zacks ESP: Earnings ESP, which represents the difference between the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate, is -18.81%. This is because the Most Accurate estimate is 8 cents, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at 10 cents. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter

Zacks Rank: Cabot presently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). Please note that we caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Strong Sell) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is witnessing negative estimate revisions.

Stocks with Favorable Combination

Though an earnings beat looks uncertain for Cabot, here are some firms from the energy space you may want to consider as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post earnings beat:

Unit Corporation UNT has an Earnings ESP of +29.17% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company is expected to release third-quarter earnings report on Nov 3. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Newpark Resources, Inc. NR has an Earnings ESP of +33.33% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is likely to release third-quarter earnings result on Oct 30.

Suncor Energy Inc. SU has an Earnings ESP of +8.07% and a Zacks Rank #2. The company is anticipated to report third-quarter earnings numbers on Oct 25.

Today's Stocks from Zacks' Hottest Strategies

It's hard to believe, even for us at Zacks. But while the market gained +18.8% from 2016 - Q1 2017, our top stock-picking screens have returned +157.0%, +128.0%, +97.8%, +94.7%, and +90.2% respectively.

And this outperformance has not just been a recent phenomenon. Over the years it has been remarkably consistent. From 2000 - Q1 2017, the composite yearly average gain for these strategies has beaten the market more than 11X over. Maybe even more remarkable is the fact that we're willing to share their latest stocks with you without cost or obligation.

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Shares of Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) dipped almost 2% on Monday, just a few trading periods before Google's parent company is scheduled to release its Q3 earnings.

Shares of Alphabet Inc. GOOGL dipped almost 2% on Monday, just a few trading periods before Googles parent company is scheduled to release its Q3 earnings.

As we approach Alphabets report date, analysts and investors should begin to hone in on what to expect from the companys Q3 results while trying to drown out the negative noise surrounding the new Pixel 2 smartphone.

GOOGL has climbed nearly 27% this year, spurred in part by growth in new business segments. Still, a few days out from Alphabets third-quarter earnings report, our current consensus estimates call for earnings to fall 7.4% to $8.39 per share. Luckily for investors, the companys revenues are projected to jump 20.1% to $21.94 billion.

But earnings and revenues are just two of the many different things investors will be focused on come Thursday. While Alphabet has invested in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, ecommerce, and mobile payments, its core business is still its ubiquitous search engine and the billions of advertising dollars that it generates, so well be particularly interested in seeing how this segment performed.

Not too long ago, investors worried that Googles search-related revenues would be hampered by the massive shift to mobile. This concern stemmed from the simple fact that advertisers do not currently value mobile ads and clicks as much as they do traditional web advertising.

Today, this fear has been curbed because Googles overall growth in total paid clicks has skyrocketed high enough to outweigh lower mobile cost-per-click rates. Last quarter, Alphabets advertising revenues grew 18.4%, which topped our consensus estimate.

This quarter, total paid clicks growth is set to help Googles advertising revenues soar by over 18%, according to our exclusive non-financial metrics consensus estimate file.

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These important stock drivers are from our exclusive non-financial metrics consensus estimate file. These estimates are updated daily and are based on the independent research of expert stock analysts. Learn more here>>>

If Google proves it can still command a hefty amount of advertising dollars when it reports earnings on Thursday, investors should be elated, as it gives Alphabet the capital to experiment and invest more heavily in the future while its cash cow keeps climbing.

For more stock-moving estimates ahead of Alphabets Q3 report, check out our full guide: 3 Key Estimates for Google's Q3 Earnings Report

And make sure to check back here for our full analysis of Alphabets actual results later this week!

Will You Make a Fortune on the Shift to Electric Cars?

Here's another stock idea to consider. Much like petroleum 150 years ago, lithium power may soon shake the world, creating millionaires and reshaping geo-politics. Soon electric vehicles (EVs) may be cheaper than gas guzzlers. Some are already reaching 265 miles on a single charge.



With battery prices plummeting and charging stations set to multiply, one company stands out as the #1 stock to buy according to Zacks research.



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trump

Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

The Trump White House's claim that workers would see large gains from tax cuts rests on dubious assumptions, according to Obama's ex-chief economist

Jason Furman writes in an opinion piece that the Trump team's analysis assumes broad benefits from the tax cuts that are 'more than far fetched'

Furman says overall plan 'offers almost no direct benefit to the middle class'

The Trump administration is pitching its tax cut plan as a boon to the middle class even though a wide range of independent analyses shows the proposals outlined so far would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans.

In the latest pitch, Kevin Hassett, head of the presidents White House Council of Economic Advisers, argued the following about the corporate tax portion of the Trump plan, which envisions a cut in the rate from 35% to 20%: "Conservative estimates from the literature imply an increase in average household income of $4,000 and more moderate estimates show increases of $9,000."

That was too bold a claim for Hassetts predecessor at the helm of the Council of Economic Advisors, Jason Furman, to let it slide. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Furman makes a convincing case for why Hassetts claims rest on some rather dubious assumptions.

"If all 125 million households got a raise like that, it would amount to an annual increase in total wages of between $550 billion and $1.1 trillion," writes Furman, now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (where I used to work).

This amounts to between 275% and 550% of the $200 billion corporate tax cuts total cost, says Furman, implying growth benefits to workers that are "more than a little far-fetched."

According to Furman's own calculations, he writes, the White House methodology "yields the absurd conclusion that eliminating the corporate tax altogether would boost annual household wages by up to $20,000."

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Furman also notes that one of the authors of a paper cited by Trumps advisors to justify the claim of a possible $9,000 increase in wages took to Twitter to say that the CEAs math "misrepresented" his findings.

Tweet Embed:

https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/920306122506096646?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Recent @CEA report on corporate tax cuts misinterprets results of our (Desai Foley Hines) paper on corporate tax incidence (1/4)

Another problem Furman identifies: Many of the measurements used by Trumps economists are based on estimates for US states as well as smaller and lower-income countries.

"North Carolina and Estonia might get much more inbound investment with a lower rate, but the trick would not work nearly as well for an economy as big as Americas," Furman writes.

As for the overall bend of the tax plan, Furman confirms what so many other analyses have found: the rich win.

On the individual side, "the Republican plan offers almost no direct benefit to the middle class," Furman says.

NOW WATCH: A $6 trillion investment chief reveals the one area of the stock market to avoid

See Also:

SEE ALSO: Trump's tax plan champions 'pass-through' businesses that helped fuel the rise of the 1%
Watch the video of Simple Year-End Moves to Make Now and Save Big at Tax Time on MoneyTalksNews.com.

Can you really save up to $1,000 in only a half-hour? Absolutely. However, there is a catch: We have to talk about taxes.

I know! Who wants to talk about taxes in August? But getting a head start on your taxes pays off. And while tax planning isnt anyones idea of fun, it doesnt have to be long, difficult or painful.

If you already have tax debt, your first move should be to look for help in our Solutions Center. Once you get there, go to our tax debt page to find help. Then, after youve taken care of the debt, its time to think about how you can save.

Following are five ways to spend 30 minutes now to save an extra $1,000 next April.

1. Find deductions hiding in your closets

Clean out your closets so you can donate what you no longer need or use. Set the timer for 30 minutes and go wild.

Be ruthless. Those skis junior never used? Gone. The baby clothes from your 4-year-old? Outta there! The scrapbooking supplies that havent seen the light of day in two years? Sayonara.

If you plan to itemize on your tax return, you can get a tax deduction that will lower your tax bill next year. You will also make space before the rush of holiday gifts that will be arriving shortly.

If you struggle to get rid of stuff, check out 7 Ways to Declutter You Probably Havent Tried.

2. Beef up your retirement savings

Take 30 minutes to review your retirement accounts and see if you can afford to contribute a little more.

For 401(k) and 403(b) accounts through your workplace, you can contribute up to $18,500  an amount that can be deducted from your taxable income. If youre 50 or older, a catch-up contribution option of $6,000 means you can contribute up to $24,500 in total.

You also can contribute money to your own traditional IRA and get the same tax benefits. Most workers can contribute up to $5,500 to IRAs in 2018. A catch-up contribution option of $1,000 means those 50 and older can contribute up to $6,500 altogether.

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Remember, there are income caps for some of these deductions, and you get a tax deduction only if you have a traditional 401(k), 403(b) or IRA.

On the other hand, if you have a Roth IRA or Roth 401(k), you dont get the tax break upfront. However, you will get it later after you retire. To learn more about the differences between traditional and Roth accounts, check out Confused by Retirement Accounts? Roth, Regular IRAs and 401(k)s Made Simple.

3. Dump your stock losses

If you are invested in stocks, grab a cup of coffee and spend 30 minutes reviewing your portfolio.

Are any stocks perpetually underperforming? If so, now might be a good time to dump them. If your capital losses exceed your capital gains, you can deduct the amount of the excess loss from your income  up to $3,000, according to the IRS.

Alternatively, you can often donate stocks to your favorite 501(c)(3) organization, then take a deduction for the donated stocks full value at that time.

You avoid the capital gains tax by making a donation in such cases and potentially reduce your tax liability with the deduction.

4. Max out your health savings account

Americans who have an eligible high-deductible health insurance plan can save money by opening or adding money to a health savings account, or HSA.

These accounts enable you to use pretax dollars on eligible health care expenses. In 2018, you can contribute up to $3,450 to your HSA if you have self-only coverage, or $6,900 if you have family coverage, according to the IRS.

If you have the financial means to do so, contributing the maximum allowable amount to your HSA each year can be an excellent way to reduce your tax liability. Your HSA will roll over each year, so you can build up a healthy savings account for medical emergencies.

5. Check in with a pro

Despite feeling confident managing my own money and savings, I sat down with an adviser for a financial checkup last year. I didnt go into the meeting expecting much but was surprised at the outcome.

Having a fresh set of eyes looking at the numbers proved to be helpful in identifying new ways to save. It also gave me a shot of motivation to stay the course when it comes to sticking to my spending and saving goals.

The right financial adviser can provide you information and advice on how to minimize your tax liability as well as how to maximize investments and cut out unneeded expenses and fees.

For help finding or evaluating advisers, check out:

Do you have any great tips for saving $1,000 quickly? Share your thoughts by commenting below or on our Facebook page.

Ari Cetron contributed to this post.

This article was originally published on MoneyTalksNews.com as 'Simple Year-End Moves to Make Now and Save Big at Tax Time'.

More from Money Talks News
By PTI: Kolkata, Oct 24 (PTI) Since January this year, 18,238 cases of dengue have been reported from different parts of West Bengal, while 35 people have died due to the vector-borne disease till today, state Chief Secretary Malay Dey said.

He said during the same period last year, 20,140 cases of dengue were reported and the number of deaths stood at 40.

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Asserting that there was nothing to panic, Dey told reporters, "There have been reports of viral fever but not all are dengue. Laboratories are conducting rapid tests to ascertain dengue which is not acceptable."

While ascertaining dengue, laboratories should follow the protocol set by the World Health Organisation (WHO) or else the state government would take necessary action against them for wrong diagnosis and creating panic, he said.

"We are monitoring the situation on a daily basis. We have taken appropriate preventive measures," Dey said, adding that all municipalities and panchayats have been asked to be cautious.

"The figures (dengue cases and deaths) were much higher last year. There is no abnormality in dengue incidences this year. So there is nothing to panic," the officer said.

Dey said the state government is not trying to suppress any information regarding dengue cases or deaths.

Though dengue is mostly a city-centric, this year, such cases were from suburban areas and districts, he said. PTI SCH SUN KK NSD

--- ENDS ---
Ford Motor Co. F is set to report third-quarter 2017 results on Oct 26 before the market opens.



Last quarter, Ford beat estimates by 27.3%. The automaker managed to beat earnings in three of the trailing four quarters, delivering an average positive surprise of 14.9%.



The long-term earnings per share growth (three-five years) for the company are currently pegged at 12.3%.



Ford shares have lost 0.7% year to date, underperforming the 25.9% rally of the industry it belongs to.



Lets see how things have shaped up for the upcoming announcement.



Ford Motor Company Price and EPS Surprise

Ford Motor Company Price and EPS Surprise | Ford Motor Company Quote



Factors Influencing This Quarter



Ford expects 2017 adjusted EPS to be in the range of $1.65-$1.85 per share. Moreover, the company expects adjusted effective tax rate to be around 15%, which is considerably more favorable than the prior guidance.



Fords vehicle unit sales in the United States declined 2.1% year over year in August 2017. In July 2017, Fords US sales too were down 7.5% on a year-over-year basis. However, it rose 8.7% in September.



Earnings Whispers



Our proven model does not conclusively show an earnings beat for Ford this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have both a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) for this to happen. This is not the case here as you will see below.



Zacks ESP: Fords Earnings ESP is -5.69% because the Most Accurate estimate and the Zacks Consensus Estimate are pegged at 29 cents and 31 cents, respectively.



You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.



Zacks Rank: Ford carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).



We caution against Sell-rated stocks (Zacks Rank #4 or 5) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is witnessing negative estimate revisions.



Stocks to Consider



Here are a few other stocks in the auto industry you may consider as our model shows that they have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter.



Dorman Products, Inc. DORM has an earnings ESP of +3.05% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company is expected to report third-quarter 2017 financial results on Oct 27. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



Horizon Global Corporation HZN has an earnings ESP of +5.82% and a Zacks Rank #3. The companys third-quarter 2017 results are expected to release on Oct 31.



Magna International Inc. MGA has an earnings ESP of +1.91% and a Zacks Rank #2. The companys third-quarter 2017 financial results are expected to release on Nov 9.



Todays Stocks from Zacks Hottest Strategies



It's hard to believe, even for us at Zacks. But while the market gained +18.8% from 2016 - Q1 2017, our top stock-picking screens have returned +157.0%, +128.0%, +97.8%, +94.7%, and +90.2% respectively.



And this outperformance has not just been a recent phenomenon. Over the years it has been remarkably consistent. From 2000 - Q1 2017, the composite yearly average gain for these strategies has beaten the market more than 11X over. Maybe even more remarkable is the fact that we're willing to share their latest stocks with you without cost or obligation.



See Them Free>>







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Halliburton Company (NYSE:HAL) saw its stock dip on Monday despite reporting an earnings beat for the third quarter of 2017.

Halliburton Company (HAL) Stock Dips Despite Q3 Earnings Beat

Source: Jason Sussberg via Flickr

Halliburton Company reported earnings per share of 42 cents on revenue of $5.44 billion for the quarter. This came in above its earnings per share of 1 cent on revenue of $3.83 billion from the same time last year. It also beat out Wall Streets earnings per share and revenue estimates of 37 cents and $5.35 billion for the quarter.

Halliburton Companys third quarter of 2017 had it beating out estimates thanks to strong performance in North America. This includes revenue of $3.2 billion. The company says this is thanks to increased utilization and pricing throughout the United States.

InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips

While not as strong as its North America revenue, Halliburton Company also saw positive results from its International segment. Revenue from this segment was $2.3 billion. The company attributes this to more activity from its product lines in Latin America and increasing pressure pumping services and drilling activity in the Eastern Hemisphere.

During its third quarter of 2017, Halliburton reported operating income of $634 million. This is an increase over its operating income of $128 million from the same period in the year prior. Net income for the quarter was $361 million. This is up from the $7 million in net income reported in the third quarter of 2016.

Halliburton Company didnt provide a guidance for the full year of 2017 in its most recent earnings report. However, Wall Street is expecting the oil and natural gas company to report earnings per share of $1.12 on revenue of $20.16 billion for the year.

HAL stock was down slightly as of Monday morning and is down 21% year-to-date.

More From InvestorPlace

As of this writing, William White did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

The post Halliburton Company (HAL) Stock Dips Despite Q3 Earnings Beat appeared first on InvestorPlace.
Henry Schein, Inc. HSIC is expected to report third-quarter 2017 results on Nov 1.

Last quarter, the company delivered a positive earnings surprise of 1.2%. Encouragingly, Henry Scheins earnings surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in all of the past four quarters, at an average of 2.8%.

Lets see how things are shaping up prior to this announcement.

Why a Likely Positive Surprise?

Our proven model shows that Henry Schein is likely to beat earnings because it has the perfect combination of two key ingredients.

Zacks ESP: Henry Schein has an Earnings ESP of +1.23% as the Most Accurate estimate is 91 cents, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate is lower at 90 cents. A favorable Zacks ESP serves as a meaningful and leading indicator of a likely positive earnings surprise. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks Rank: Henry Schein currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Note that stocks with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 have a significantly higher chance of beating earnings estimates.

Conversely, we caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Sell-rated stocks) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.

The combination of Henry Scheins Zacks Rank #3 and +1.23% ESP makes us reasonably confident of an earnings beat.

Henry Schein, Inc. Price and EPS Surprise

Henry Schein, Inc. Price and EPS Surprise | Henry Schein, Inc. Quote

Factors at Play

Henry Scheins second-quarter 2017 results were quite impressive, recording growth across all four segments  Dental, Animal Health, Medical and Technology and Value-Added Services. Geographically, the company gained traction in both North America and overseas. We expect a similar trend in the third quarter as well.

The companys strategy to expand digital dentistry globally is also encouraging. We are also upbeat about managements expectations to witness at least low single-digit growth in North Americas dental consumable merchandise market in the second half of 2017. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for third-quarter total revenues of $3.049 billion reflects an increase of 6.4% from the year-ago quarter.

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The company is currently banking on digital dentistry, which is part of its strategic plan. Henry Schein is busy promoting digital workflows for general dentistry as well as dental specialties. Beginning Sep 1, 2017, the company started selling the full range of Dentsply Sirona dental equipment across North America, including the leading CEREC CAD/CAM restoration system. This is expected to boost the top line to some extent.

Notably, during the second quarter, Henry Schein Animal Health opened a new National Distribution Service Center (NDSC) in Columbuss Brookhollow neighborhood. This has helped the company operate as a complete solution provider for veterinary practices across the country. We expect this to boost the top line in the yet-to-be-reported quarter.

On the flip side, Henry Scheins disappointing gross and operating margins over the past few quarters due to higher cost of sales and expenses is a matter of concern.

This apart, currency fluctuations and a tough competitive landscape add to the woes. Also, the entry of group purchasing organizations (GPOs) in the United States has intensified competition.

Overall, Henry Schein expects 2017 EPS in the range of $7.17-$7.30, reflecting 8-10% growth from the 2016 EPS figure of $6.61.

Stocks Worth a Look

Here are a few medical stocks worth considering as they have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter.

The Cooper Companies, Inc. COO has an Earnings ESP of +0.43% and a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. TMO has an Earnings ESP of +0.19% and a Zacks Rank #2.

Align Technology, Inc. ALGN has an Earnings ESP of +0.74% and a Zacks Rank #3.

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Amazon acquired two rounds of live Premier League matches for three years from the 2019/2020 season, the league announced (AFP Photo/John MACDOUGALL) (AFP/File)

San Francisco (AFP) - Amazon said Monday it has received 238 pitches from places across North America vying to be home to its second headquarters.

It's the prize of a lifetime -- a $5 billion investment creating 50,000 well-paid jobs that everyone wants, but only one city will get.

"We received 238 proposals from across North America for #HQ2," the Seattle-based internet colossus said in a post from its official Twitter account.

"The team is excited to review each of them!"

From East to West and North to South, metropolises across the United States are locked in a frenzied bidding war, desperate to woo Amazon into favoring them as the site of the e-commerce giant's second headquarters.

Proposals were also reported to have come from Canada and Mexico.

From $7 billion in tax breaks in Newark, New Jersey -- 50 years ago aflame in deadly race riots -- to a giant cactus shipped inter-state from Tucson in Arizona, bids ranged from the extremely ambitious to the silly before the deadline for submissions recently passed.

The e-commerce giant announced last month that it planned to invest more than $5 billion in opening Amazon HQ2, a second company headquarters in North America that would also create tens of thousands of spin-off jobs.

"We expect HQ2 to be a full equal to our Seattle headquarters," promised Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, America's second richest billionaire worth $85.8 billion.

The unusual announcement unleashed competitive streaks nationwide as some of America's most glittering cities vie with lesser-known backwaters looking to exit oblivion.

In addition to direct hiring and investment, Amazon expected construction and operation of HQ2 to create tens of thousands of additional jobs.

Amazon said in an online post that it is making the selection of its second headquarters a public process because "we want to find a city that is excited to work with us."

It has expressed a preference for places with more than one million people, a business-friendly environment and urban or suburban locations able to attract and retain strong technical talent.

A study commissioned by World Business Chicago claimed that in 17 years, HQ2 would generate $341 billion in total spending, including $71 billion in salaries.
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was returned to power with a mandate for his hardline stance on North Korea - REUTERS

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe vowed on Monday to tackle North Koreas nuclear threat with "decisive and strong diplomacy after his conservative party won a landslide victory in a snap election.

Mr Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner won a comfortable majority of at least 312 out of 465 seats in the powerful lower house of parliament in Sundays election.

The results enabled the conservative coalition to retain its crucial two-thirds super majority which paves the way for Mr Abe to pursue his controversial goal of amending the pacifist post-war constitution.

Speaking after his electoral win, Mr Abe told reporters that he would have a deep discussion on North Korean policies with Donald Trump, the United States President, who is due to visit Japan early next month.

I will pursue decisive and strong diplomacy to tackle North Koreas missile, nuclear and abduction issues and put further pressure to get it to change its policy, he said.

More than 100 million Japanese braved strong winds, heavy rains and widespread travel chaos from an approaching typhoon to vote in the snap election which Mr Abe called more than a year early.

Ruling Liberal Democratic Partys newly elected lower house parliament member Takeaki Matsumoto celebrates his victory Credit: Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images

New opposition emerged in the form of the recently-created Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDPJ), which won 54 seats, while the high-profile Party of Hope (Kibo no To), founded by Yuriko Koike, the Tokyo Governor, shortly before the election, obtained 49 seats, according to NHK, the state broadcaster.

Despite his electoral successes, Mr Abe still faces the challenge of having to boost his popularity as a leader, with media exit polls showing that 51 per cent of Japanese do not trust him following a string of corruption scandals.

Profile | Shinzo Abe

In addition to the North Korean situation, issues topping his post-election agenda will range from dealing with a rapidly shrinking and ageing population, to policies of Abenomics in efforts to revitalise the world's third largest economy.

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His most pressing issue, however, most likely remains his long-cherished but deeply divisive goal of reforming the pacifist constitution, in particular war-renouncing Article 9, with a view to redefining the exact role of the nation's Self-Defence Forces.

"Mr Abe is trying to create a legacy," said Jesper Koll, head of WisdomTree Japan, the equities fund.

"His first legacy project was to get the economy out of deflation. "The second legacy is to change the constitution. You can debate whether he has a mandate but what will make or break him ... is the constitutional issue."
Deepak Sharma, leader of the group told India Today that, Mughals destroyed numerous temples in North India and the Taj Mahal is actually a Hindu Temple.

By Siraj Qureshi: The Taj Mahal has become a matter of national debate yet again. Now, it seems UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has been tasked by the party high command to end this debate by visiting Agra on October 26.

However, before the CM's visit could control the things from shooting up, the Hindu Yuva Vahini activists have raised another dispute by chanting Shiv Chalisa inside the mausoleum, claiming it to be a Shiva Temple 'Tejo Mahalay'.

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Another right-wing outfit, the Rashtra Swabhiman Dal was also involved in the incident. When the security personnel posted at the Taj tried to prevent them from creating a scene which was in clear violation of the Supreme Court's order.

TOURISTS PETRIFIED

These activists also clashed with the security personnel and scared away tourists. Subsequently, the Central Industrial Security Force jawans arrested them and took them to CISF headquarters, where they were made to sign an apology letter before they were let off.

Deepak Sharma, the leader of this group told India Today that, Mughals destroyed numerous temples in North India and Taj Mahal is actually a Hindu Temple. Therefore, Shiv Chalisa program was held with prior planning. He said, Taj Mahal is not a tomb, it is n actually 'Tejo Mahalay' and should be known by this name.

He said that he came from Delhi to Agra specifically for this purpose and even got a video recorded of himself chanting Shiv Chalisa. He said, he did not sign any apology for chanting the chalisa, he only apologized for violating SC's orders against such activities at the Taj Mahal.

Although, he also questioned that if the Court can allow Namaz to be held at the Taj Mahal, why was it preventing the worship of Lord Shiva in the premises of Shiva's temple?

WHAT DOES THE ASI ACT SAY?

Answering this question, ASI Superintending Archaeologist, Dr Bhuvan Vikram said, "Apart from the established tradition, no religious activity is permitted inside the Taj, and that is the reason why this group was prevented from creating ruckus inside the monument.

He said, the ASI Act itself prohibits such activities inside protected monuments. However, but there is no provision of any prosecution or punishment, so the group was allowed to leave after signing an apology.

Earlier too, the CISF had prevented some international models from entering the Taj Mahal because they were wearing saffron scarves which could have had religious connotations. The local court at Agra is also hearing a petition for the declaration of the Taj Mahal as Tejo Mahalay.

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Bhartiya Muslim Vikas Parishad Chairman, Sami Aghai, told India Today, such attempts to raise a non-existent issue were a part of the communal agenda of some Hindu outfits. They are trying to incite communal violence and religious animosity between Hindus and Muslims, who have been living peacefully since centuries.

He said, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, which held this program inside the Taj, is headed by none other than UP CM Yogi Adityanath, who will be arriving in Agra on October 26.

Aghai also said, a delegation of Muslim intellectuals will try to meet the CM on his Agra arrival and hoped that the CM will give them time to voice their grievances.

"If the CM does not manage to put an end to such activities, then the Muslim organizations will be forced to enter the fray as well, to denigrate the Muslim community", Aghai stated.

TOURIST ACTIVITY IN AGRA DISTURBED

Agra Tourist Welfare Chamber President, Prahalad Agarwal said, "Tourism season has started in Agra and such disputes over Taj Mahal are not in best interest of the industry;. It turns off the tourists, especially those coming from abroad, who are not aware of the local sentiments.

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He said that if the Taj continues to be in the centre of such debates, it will adversely affect the tourist footfall in Agra, which is already falling for the past three years due to such disputes.

The unseasonal heat this year in the month of October has also deterred a lot of domestic tourists who could have otherwise visited Agra in the first couple of weeks of October, especially in the long Diwali weekend.

--- ENDS ---
By Stanley White

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's government will next week host the latest round of negotiations for the 11 nations remaining in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but reaching a final deal has been thrown into doubt by New Zealand's change of government.

Incoming Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has insisted she will push to renegotiate the trade pact to include curbs against foreign real estate speculation as New Zealand grapples with soaring housing prices.

Originally the United States was also a member of TPP, but talks were thrown into limbo in January when U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement to prioritise protecting U.S. jobs.

Japan hopes to finalise the deal next month to show other nations that it can act as a champion of free trade, but there is a risk talks could stall if New Zealand's new government is not satisfied with the details of the pact.

"We hope these talks will allow us to take a step further towards reaching an agreement," Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said.

The 11 TPP members had set a goal of reaching broad agreement on the pact in November at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting set to be held in Vietnam's central city of Danang.

The TPP negotiations to cut trade barriers in some of Asia's fastest-growing economies are ambitious in scale but have been fraught with problems.

After Trump withdrew from the agreement Vietnam tried to change TPP provisions on labour rights and intellectual property. If other partners seek changes of their own, reaching a final agreement could be some way off.

The TPP talks will take place from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1 in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo.

(Reporting by Stanley White; Editing by Chris Gallagher and Eric Meijer)
Netflix is still surprised that Stranger Things, a science-fiction series starring five young kids, became a worldwide sensation immediately after it was released. Unlike some of its biggest hits, like House of Cards (which is based on a British series), Stranger Things was an unknown property when it premiered in July of 2016. But it quickly captivated audiences, thanks to its '80s nostalgia and the perfectly executed homages to Hollywood classics from the likes of Stephen King and Steven Spielberg.

As the series created by the Duffer Brothers enters its second season on October 27th, we talked to Director of Photography Tim Ives about what it's like to shoot it. Ives, who has previously worked on shows like Girls, Mr. Robot and House of Cards, said one of the most important elements was to keep Stranger Things 2 feeling retro. That's something that can become challenging, particularly as he relies on new technologies, such as 4K cameras with high-dynamic range.

Stranger Things

Ross (left) and Matt Duffer (right) during the production of Stranger Things 2.

"You have to protect what you're trying to show," Ives said. "We tested quite heavily to make sure that our images had the soft and round tones that are in '80s films." He claimed that effect was achievable with a combination of Leica lenses and state-of-the-art cinema cameras. For the second season, Ives shot with the Red Weapon 8K S35, an upgrade over the 6K Red Dragon that was used on the first season of the show.

Netflix only streams the shows at up to 4K resolution, of course, but those cameras help provide the highest-quality images possible. Shooting the show with that latest sensors makes it futureproof too, as that might make it possible to see better versions than UHD in the future. Stranger Things also supports 4K in HDR, which delivers better detail in darker scenes. This technology is far from mainstream, though, since compatible TVs are still on the pricey side -- at least if you want a good one.

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Ives said that when it comes to softening the image, a process that gives Stranger Things that '80s style, it's important to ensure the shots are going to look perfect for both HD and HDR. Essentially, he wants people to have a similar experience while watching, whether they're using a low- or high-end TV. He added that as HDR becomes more accessible, the way HD did, the entire process of editing for different sets will be streamlined.

At the same time, Ives also has to take into account that many people watch on their smartphones. He said that the Duffer Brothers know this, and that's why their filming technique is composed in a way "where you're gonna get the same impact whether you [watch] on a small or a big screen." Naturally, Ives said he would prefer if viewers enjoyed the show on the largest display possible, but he's fully aware that we're living in the era of mobile devices.

As much as all of this tech can help behind-the-scenes and with distribution, guarding the wistful magic of Stranger Things also happens through the set and costume design in the narrative. In the first season, the main characters rely on walkie-talkies to communicate as the plot unfolds, and then there are the Walkman and ham radio cameos. For season two, we know arcades and Ghostbusters will be a big part of the story, based on the first trailer.

Ives said he's inspired by Blade Runner, Star Wars, The Shining as well as Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, and you can clearly see bits and pieces of those in Stranger Things. While the show is often categorized as sci-fi, it's actually tough to nail down where exactly it fits, given that it pulls from a variety of genres. There's conspiracy, comedy, friendship, horror and supernatural sprinkled throughout. That, combined with Ives' and the Duffer Brothers' cinematic influences and homages, is really what preserves the '80s vibes from the series.

Heading into season two, and with the third already in the works, one thing that's changed is that Ives' team has incorporated drone work in the new episodes. He couldn't provide specific examples from Stranger Things 2, in order to avoid spoilers, but he noted that the tech gives the series an even bigger feel.

Ives added that he's intrigued by augmented reality and virtual reality, though he doesn't feel those technologies are "ready for this show" right now. As great as it would be to have the Stranger Things world come to life in AR or VR, it will probably never happen -- not in full, anyway. "Maybe if we get a season 15, we'll do it," he said.

Netflix VP of Product Innovation Todd Yellin told Engadget that the company saw Stranger Things as "a good-size bet," but "we didn't realize the magnitude" of it. "The way it grabbed our members," he said, "people really raced through the show." Still, Yellin knows the biggest test is still ahead, and Netflix can only hope that Stranger Things 2 isn't just a one-season wonder.
US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping: AFP/Getty Images

During a visit to Beijing next month, President Donald Trump will attempt to persuade Chinas leader to do more to rein in North Korea, after having criticised the country for not taking more action on the issue.

In a bilateral meeting, Mr Trump will also urge President Xi Jinping to fully implement sanctions by the United Nations Security Council against Pyongyang and to take steps that go beyond that, an official told reporters.

Mr Trump will travel to Asia next month for a 12-day trip, during which he will visit Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. It will be his longest tour abroad as President to date.

Along with having a sit-down with the Chinese president, Mr Trump will also have bilateral meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, South Korean President Jae-in Moon, Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, a White House official confirmed.

The official said Mr Trump will likely not visit the Korean demilitarized zone, the heavily guarded strip of land that has divided North and South Korea for 64 years.

Mr Trumps trip comes during a tense standoff between the US and North Korea over the latters continued development of its nuclear and ballistic weapons programme.

The UN Security Council unanimously voted in September to ratchet up sanctions on North Korea following the regimes sixth and largest nuclear test, although the penalties fell short of the sweeping sanctions the Trump administration had demanded.

Both Russia and China, North Koreas main economic ally, had opposed the USs call for an oil embargo and other far-reaching sanctions.

The new penalties include a ban on the sale of natural gas to North Korea and limits the amount of refined petroleum sales to the country to two million barrels per year. China supplies most of North Korea's crude oil.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has warned that China could face further sanctions from the US if it does not abide by the new UN sanctions placed on Kim Jong-uns regime.

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Mr Trump has said repeatedly that he is disappointed in China for not doing more to help control North Korea.

In August, Chinas state media hit back, blasting Mr Trump for his emotional venting on Twitter.

Trump is quite a personality, and he likes to tweet, said Xinhua, Chinas official news agency, in an editorial displayed on Chinese news websites. But emotional venting cannot become a guiding policy for solving the nuclear issue on the peninsula, it said, referring to the divided Korean Peninsula.

In the past, Chinese diplomats have asserted that the US and its allies should not depend so much on China to ease tensions created by North Koreas growing nuclear weapons and missile capabilities.

The US and North Korea hold the primary responsibility to keep things moving, to start moving in the right direction, Ambassador Liu Jieyi said at a news conference to mark the end of Chinas July term in the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council.

Mr Trump has suggested that if China does do more to help rein in North Korea, he may change his views on trade between Americans and the Chinese  a topic which he has constantly said he will do something about.

We lose hundreds of billions of dollars a year on trade with China, Mr Trump said in August, referring to the large US-China trade deficit, which he has repeatedly railed against. They know how I feel. Its not going to continue like that. But if China helps us, I feel a lot differently toward trade, a lot differently toward trade.

A White House official said Mr Trump will also try to pressure Mr Xi next month to ease what Washington views as unfair trade practices.
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / October 24, 2017 / Owens-Illinois, Inc. (NYSE: OI) will be discussing their earnings results in their Q3 Earnings Call to be held on October 24, 2017 at 8:00 AM Eastern Time.

To listen to the event live or access a replay of the call - visit https://www.investornetwork.com/company/1377.

To receive updates for this company you can register by emailing info@investornetwork.com or by clicking get investment info from the company's profile.

About Investor Network

Investor Network (IN) is a financial content community, serving millions of unique investors market information, earnings, commentary and news on the what's trending. Dedicated to both the professional and the average traders, IN offers timely, trusted and relevant financial information for virtually every investor. IN is an Issuer Direct brand, to learn more or for the latest financial news and market information, visit www.investornetwork.com. Follow us on Twitter @investornetwork.

SOURCE: Investor Network
As per the Seventh Pay Commission, the government stopped providing uniforms to all ranks and troops. They are instead provided a fixed amount depending upon their ranks.

By Ajit Kumar Dubey: With the government now only paying a fixed amount of money to Army personnel to buy their uniforms against the previous arrangement, where they were provided the dresses, the forces want they should be provided uniforms instead of a cash allowance.

As per the Seventh Pay Commission, the government stopped providing uniforms to all ranks and troops. They are instead provided a fixed amount depending upon their ranks.

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"The troops have to maintain different kinds of uniforms. A naval sailor has to have eight types of dresses which are to be worn on different occasions. Such maintainance have become difficult," sources in defence told Mail Today.

"The forces are planning to make a representation to the ministry of Finance for restoring the older arrangement," they said.

WHAT CHANGED?

As per the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission, the government has merged all clothing and other uniform-related allowances in armed forces into one calling it the dress allowance.

Earlier, the troops of different services were given separate allowances such as kit maintenance, shoe, robe, robe maintenance and washing.

As per the recommendations, soldiers in the armed forces are to be paid Rs 10,000 for buying dresses while officers of the three services are to be paid Rs 20,000 annually.

'COSTLY AFFAIR'

"Buying a fire-resistant overall for the troops is a costly affair as the special cloth itself costs around Rs 3,000," the sources said.

The various field formations of the armed forces have been sending feedback from the personnel to service headquarters that are trying to manage the situation by using the existing inventory of different types of clothing material with them.

As per the government order issued in this regard earlier this year, the Special Protection Guards were provided the highest dress allowance of Rs 27,800 followed by the nurses in government hospitals who would get Rs 1,800 per month to maintain their white attire.

Defence forces' officers were to be paid Rs 20,000, which was also causing heartburns among some of them as they were kept below the nurses in terms of the amount paid.

The nurses from the Military Nursing Service would get allowance of Rs 15,000 - lower than their civilian counterparts. Officers of Delhi and Union Territory police services would also be given the same amount.

--- ENDS ---
As the price of bitcoin falls from its record high above $6,000, Saudi Prince and businessman Alwaleed bin Talal is making it clear: Hes in J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimons camp when it comes to the cryptocurrency.

On Monday, the billionaire predicted that bitcoin will eventually implode as an Enron in the making. The price of bitcoin dipped 4% on Monday, to about $5,800.

I just dont believe in this bitcoin thing. I think its just going to implode one day. I think this is Enron in the making, Alwaleed said on CNBC. He was referring to the Enron scandal of the 2000s, in which the one-time Wall Street darling hit rock bottom after revealing that its meteoric rise had been built on a house of cards: Its growth had been achieved via accounting loopholes and offshore entities used to hide billions in debt. In December 2001, Enron filed for bankruptcy, with many executives eventually destined for prison sentences.

This thing is not regulated, its not under control, its not under supervision, Alwaleed said.

His remarks came after Saudi Arabias financial regulator, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, said its still too early to judge, and therefore too early to regulate, bitcoins impact.

I think its about another five years before we can really see whether there is a real impact on the currencies in general, Abdulmalik Al-Sheikh, a senior advisor at SAMA, told CNBC on Sunday.



Alwaleeds comments also fall in line with those previously made by J.P. Morgans CEO. The banking executive slammed bitcoin as a fraud in early September, when the price of the cryptocurrency was about $3,800. Dimon argued that bitcoin would eventually be subject to a crackdown by world governments.

It will blow up, he said at the time.

Still, the price of bitcoin has defied that prediction so far this year, rising 771% over the past 12 months.
Starting next February, residents of of Singapore won't be able to drive additional cars in the small city-state. It's introducing the ban as a line in the sand to keep the island from being overrun with vehicles and clogging traffic, especially as it's spending billions of dollars on public transit projects.

The move is the latest by Singapore's Land Transport Authority, which had already limited the rate of new cars and motorcycles at 0.25 percent. Not to mention all the import taxes and registration fees making vehicles, on average, four times more expensive to own in the island nation. Given that Singapore has about a sixth of the area of the US' smallest state, Rhode Island -- and that a stunning 12 percent of its space is taken up by roads -- preserving it is essential.

This isn't an eternal ban, as authorities will review it in 2020. But for the next few years, the about 600,000 total private and rental vehicles will have to serve the 5.6 million people living in Singapore -- though drivers can still file to replace their old vehicles for new ones. This doesn't apply to goods vehicles and buses, which will retain a 0.25 percent growth rate -- and that could be good news for any more autonomous trucking experiments.
Southwest Airlines Co. LUV is scheduled to report third-quarter 2017 results on Oct 26, before the market opens.

In the second quarter of 2017, the carriers earnings per share (on an adjusted basis) of $1.24 surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.20. The bottom line also improved 4.2% on a year-over-year basis. Operating revenues of $5,744 million was marginally above the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $5,733.2 million.

However, this Dallas-based low-cost carrier is likely to face turbulence in the to-be-reported quarter. The companys third-quarter results are expected to be hurt due to the recent hurricanes (Harvey, Irma and Maria) and the earthquake in Mexico. These natural disasters have forced the airline to cancel approximately 5,000 flights. Markedly, the negative sentiment surrounding the stock can be gauged from the fact that the Zacks Consensus Estimate for third-quarter earnings has moved down 22.3% over the last 90 days.

Consequently, the stock has struggled so far this year underperforming the Zacks Airline industry over the last six months. Shares of Southwest Airlines have gained 5.1% compared with the industrys rally of 5.9%.

Let's delve deep to find out the factors likely to impact Southwest Airlines third-quarter results.

Owing to the multiple flight cancellations, the company expects third-quarter operating revenues are likely to be hurt to the tune of $100 million. Moreover, the carrier expects operating revenue per available seat mile (RASM) in the quarter to be flat to down 1% year over year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for third-quarter passenger unit revenues is pegged at 12.33 cents, lower than 13.03 cents reported in the second quarter of 2017.

Increased costs (fuel and labor) are expected to hurt the bottom line. Cost per available seat miles, excluding special items, is estimated to increase between 3% and 4%. Fuel price per gallon is anticipated between $2.00 and $2.05 in the quarter. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for third-quarter fuel price is pegged at $2.00 per gallon, higher than $1.93 reported in the second quarter of 2017.

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Apart from Southwest Airlines other carriers like American Airlines Group AAL and JetBlue Airways JBLU are also likely to be hurt by the natural calamities.

We are, however, appreciative of the company's efforts to enhance its shareholders wealth through dividends and share buybacks. At its annual meeting of shareholders, Southwest Airlines announced that its board of directors approved a new share repurchase program worth $2 billion. Notably, share repurchases benefit a companys earnings per share by lowering outstanding share count.

What Does Our Model Say?

Our quantitative model does not conclusively show an earnings beat for Southwest Airlines in this quarter. This is because a stock needs to have combination of two key ingredients  a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) or better  to increase its odds of an earnings surprise. However, this is not the case as highlighted below.

Zacks ESP: Southwest Airlines has an Earnings ESP of -0.61%. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Zacks Rank: Southwest Airlines Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

We caution against stocks with a Zacks Rank #4 or 5 (Strong Sell) going into the earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.

A Transportation Gem

With Southwest Airlines likely to disappoint, investors interested in the broader transportation sector may consider Norfolk Southern Corporation NSC as our model shows that it possesses the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat in the current reporting cycle.

Norfolk Southern has an Earnings ESP of +0.59% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company is slated to release its third-quarter 2017 results on Oct 25. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Will You Make a Fortune on the Shift to Electric Cars?

Here's another stock idea to consider. Much like petroleum 150 years ago, lithium power may soon shake the world, creating millionaires and reshaping geo-politics. Soon electric vehicles (EVs) may be cheaper than gas guzzlers. Some are already reaching 265 miles on a single charge.



With battery prices plummeting and charging stations set to multiply, one company stands out as the #1 stock to buy according to Zacks research.

It's not the one you think.

See This Ticker Free >>



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



Southwest Airlines Company (LUV) : Free Stock Analysis Report



JetBlue Airways Corporation (JBLU) : Free Stock Analysis Report



American Airlines Group, Inc. (AAL) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Norfolk Souther Corporation (NSC) : Free Stock Analysis Report



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Zacks Investment Research
Sprint is the first major wireless carrier to announce a deal for the new iPhone X, which will be available for preorder starting on Friday.

Apple is pushing the starting pricing of the new device, its first with an OLED display, to $999. But new or current Sprint customers who preorder the device and trade in another recent premium smartphone will save $350 off the carriers 18-month phone leasing deal.

With AT&T t , Verizon vz and T-Mobile tmus yet to announce promotional offers on the new iPhone X, Sprint has the best deal on the new phone at the start.

Under the Sprint Flex program, customers who trade in a phone like the iPhone 7 or Samsung Galaxy S7, will pay $22.22 per month for the iPhone X, down from the usual price of $41.67, saving a total of $350. At the end of the lease, of course, customers dont own the phone. But the flex program allows participants to upgrade to a new iPhone after 12 months, effectively taking out a new 18-month lease. Customers who leave the carrier early would have to pay the outstanding balance, however.

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Like its initial deal on the new iPhone 8, which went on sale last month, the new Sprint s offer isnt as lucrative as its iPhone deals last year. Sprint and other carriers offered $650 of credit for trade ins last year on the iPhone 7. Sprint did improve its iPhone 8 deal after a week to cover the full cost of an entry-level model, however.

Sprint also said it would offer a best price guarantee to customers who buy an iPhone X. If the customer sees the phone sold for a lower price within 14 days of their purchase, Sprint will refund the difference on a Visa prepaid card.

Sales of the iPhone 8 have been slow as many Apple aapl fans await the availability of the iPhone X. In 2017, for the first time, Apple unveiled three new models at once. The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus went on sale in September, but pre-orders for the X model, which is rumored to be in short supply, dont start under Oct. 27 with deliveries starting Nov. 3.
As the Trump administration continues to spar with a Democratic lawmaker over the Presidents efforts to console a grieving military widow, some people are wondering: What was the slain soldier, Sgt. La David Johnson, doing that led to his death in the Western African country of Niger?

The specifics of the U.S. mission in Niger, and in Africa more broadly, have been largely overshadowed by the feud between President Trump, his Chief of Staff John Kelly, and Democratic congresswoman Frederica Wilson. Heres what to know.

What happened to Sgt. La David Johnson?

Many of the details concerning the event remain unclear as the Pentagon continues to investigate the incident. But the Washington Post reports that, on Oct. 4, a group of eight to 12 U.S. soldiers were ambushed by around 50 Islamist militants while accompanying 30 to 40 Nigerien troops near the village of Tongo Tongo, just south of Nigers border with Mali.

A thirty-minute firefight ensued, during which four Americans were killed. They included Staff Sgts. Dustin Wright, Bryan Black and Jeremiah Johnson, and Sgt. La David Johnson. Johnsons remains were returned to the U.S. earlier this week.

The incident went relatively unnoticed until earlier this week, when Rep. Wilson told a local Florida TV station that, when trying to console Sgt. Johnsons widow, President Trump told her over the phone that Johnson knew what he signed up for. Wilson, who said she overheard Trumps call on a car speakerphone, has been at the center of a political firestorm over the conversation ever since.

Why are U.S. troops in Niger, and where is Niger?

When we think of the U.S. counterterrorism effort overseas, we tend to think of the Middle East. But there has long been a pocket of radical Islam in sub-Saharan Africa  particularly in the countries of Nigeria, Niger, Mali, Chad, and Mauritania  and that pocket continues to grow. The terror inflicted upon northeastern Nigeria by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram, for instance, has been well-documented.

Story continues

Who was behind the attack on U.S. soldiers in Niger?

According to the Washington Post, the Defense Intelligence Agency has linked the attack to the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara. Thats a confederation of jihadists who pledged their allegiance to the greater Islamic State movement, or ISIS, in 2015. Terror experts report that the group earned credibility in the jihadist realm after a string of attacks in sub-Saharan Africa in the fall of 2015.

What comes next?
South Korean police will restrict public rallies near the country's presidential palace during Donald Trump's first visit as head of state, a report said Thursday, reducing his chances of being exposed to public opposition (AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski)

Donald Trump may not visit the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, breaking with what has become a rite of passage for US presidents seeking to demonstrate America's resolve to face down Pyongyang.

Most previous US presidents have visited the eerie sliver of land that separates US and South Korean troops from their North Korean adversaries.

"There are certain elements of the schedule that are still being worked out," said a senior administration official.

Trump has instead been invited by the government in Seoul to visit Camp Humphreys, south of the South Korean capital and away from the DMZ.

"Security is not a concern. The president is most likely going to be visiting Camp Humphreys, it's going to be very difficult for him to have time to visit both," the official said.

All recent presidents, except one-term commander-in-chief George H.W. Bush, have visited the DMZ.

But it would not be unheard of for the mercurial Trump to change plans at the last moment.

The frontier, which is 2.5 miles (four kilometers) wide, spreads from sea to sea and is just a short distance from Seoul.

For the most part, it is a chilling mix of near-empty farmland, forest, wire fencing, watchtowers and turrets, all set against a soundtrack of propaganda blasted from both sides.

- North Korea nuclear concerns -

The area has been guarded by both North Korea and the US-led United Nations Command since the Korean War ended with an armistice in 1953.

Despite its name, the DMZ separating the two Koreas is one of the world's most heavily-militarized frontiers, bristling with watchtowers and landmines.

In April, Vice President Mike Pence visited, declaring that standing with US forces in Korea, along with "courageous soldiers from the Republic of Korea is a message of resolve."

Trump will be in South Korea in early November as part of a five-nation Asia visit that is set to be dominated by concerns about North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

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Since coming to office, Trump has ratcheted up pressure on North Korea, insisting it must get rid of nuclear weapons. That is unlikely to happen, resulting in a dangerous standoff.

A bellicose Trump used his maiden address to the UN General Assembly in September to warn "Rocket Man" Kim Jong-Un that he will "totally destroy" North Korea if it threatens the United States or its allies.

Trump will arrive in Japan on November 5, heading on to South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.

His visit also comes as leaders in Japan and China consolidate their power.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this week won a huge electoral victory that would allow him to change Japan's pacifist constitution -- a move that could change the balance of power in the region.

And Chinese leader Xi Jinping declared a "new era" in for his country, as he secured another term in power and enshrined his thinking in Communist Party doctrine.
By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will urge Chinese President Xi Jinping to fully implement U.N. Security Council resolutions against North Korea and take other steps to pressure Pyongyang when he travels to China next month, a senior White House official said on Monday. Isolating North Korea further is a key goal for Trump on what will be his longest foreign trip to date. His Nov. 3-14 trip will include visits to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. China, Pyongyangs sole major ally, has said it will strictly enforce U.N. Security Council sanctions banning imports of coal, textiles and seafood, while cutting off oil shipments to the North. China accounts for more than 90 percent of trade with the isolated country. But a senior White House official who briefed reporters ahead of the trip said China needs to do more to comply with two U.N. Security Council resolutions that were approved unanimously, including with China's support. "We would like to see China follow through on those commitments. We would like to see China do things bilaterally as well that might even go beyond things that are mandated by those U.N. Security Council resolutions," the official said. Though China has been angered by North Koreas repeated nuclear and missile tests and demanded they stop, Beijing also sees the United States and South Korea sharing responsibility for rising tensions because of military drills they carry out in the region. Trump is in a standoff with North Korea over its nuclear weapons ambitions and has threatened to "totally destroy" the country. Trump has frequently asked China to help rein in North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but this strategy has so far failed to stop Pyongyang conducting nuclear bomb tests at an underground facility and firing ballistic missile tests into the Pacific Ocean over Japan. The failure to confront and reverse the nuclear and missile threat from North Korea will lead to a "much darker era," the White House official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. But the official also said Trump is looking for a peaceful resolution of the North Korea standoff. With Xi consolidating power in the wake of a Communist Party congress in Beijing, Trump believes the Chinese president will have a greater authority to take steps against North Korea, senior administration officials said last week. Trump will also be tough on trade during talks with Xi as he seeks to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China, the senior White House official said. "We have huge barriers that Americans companies have to surmount to gain access to the Chinese market. The president is intent on rectifying that situation," the official said. (Additional reporting by Makini Brice; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Alistair Bell)
President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed the possibility of curbing a popular tax-deferred U.S. retirement savings program to help pay for his sweepingtax cuts, and voiced doubts about adding another top bracket targeting the wealthiest Americans.

The potential scaling back of 401(k) plans, which for four decades have helped millions of workers save for retirement, is one of several important details yet to be ironed out in a major tax overhaul that Trump promised as a candidate and wants his fellow Republicans who control Congress to pass by years end.

The White House and its congressional allies have floated the idea of paring certain tax deductions to make up for revenue that would be lost because of their proposed tax cuts, the centerpiece of which is a sharp reduction in the corporate income tax rate.

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported on Friday that Republicans were considering an annual cap of about $2,400 on pre-tax contributions to 401(k) plans, roughly 13% of what workers under age 50 currently can contribute on a tax-deferred basis. That would slash the amount of money that workers can save for retirement in 401(k) plans, which typically are invested in a portfolio of mutual funds.

There will be NO change to your 401(k), Trump wrote on Twitter. This has always been a great and popular middle class tax break that works, and it stays!

Tampering with 401(k) plans, which have largely replaced defined benefit pensions in the United States, would risk alienating tens of millions of workers as well as Wall Street, which generates fees from managing the plans. Many companies match a percentage of their employees 401(k) contributions.

It also would provide ammunition to Democrats, who have painted Trumps plan, with its $6 trillion in tax cuts, as a gift to the rich and corporate America that would balloon the federal deficit.

Senator Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the tax-code writing Senate Finance Committee, criticized Republicans for not making decisions on issues related to middle-class taxpayers, while having already decided to cut taxes for corporations.

Story continues

I am really struck with how the Republicans are handling this question of retirement accounts, which are a real lifeline for working families and as of this moment, it is still not clear whether they are going to include a really bad idea that would make it harder for working families to prepare forretirement, Wyden said.

More than 94 million Americans are covered by defined contribution plans like a 401(k), according to a recent study by asset manager Vanguard. Total assets in such plans exceed $7 trillion.

For more on Trumps plans for tax code reform, watch Fortunes video:

New tax bracket?

Securing congressional passage of his tax plan is critically important to Trump, who has yet to get major legislation through Congress since taking office in January, including a healthcare overhaul he promised as a candidate last year.

The White House argues that tax cuts are needed to boost economic growth and create jobs, but has shown sensitivity in recent weeks to arguments that it is endangering Americas long-term fiscal health.

Based on the outline of the plan that was unveiled last month, independent experts have concluded that corporations and the highest earners would benefit the most, and many upper middle-income people would face higher taxes.

There are signs Republicans may add a fourth income tax bracket for high earners to the taxblueprint, which envisions reducing the number of brackets to three from the current seven.

The idea of an additional top tax bracket was floated by Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan.

In an interview broadcast on Fox Business Network on Monday, Trump appeared to pour cold water on the idea.

It may not happen, Trump said. The only reason I would have (it)  is if for any reason I feel the middle class is not being properly taken care of.

There is also pressure from investors to pass the tax overhaul. The expectation of deep tax cuts has helped fuel a stock market rally during Trumps first year as president, with the broad S&P 500 index up more than 13%.

The index hit record highs every day last week, although it retreated on Monday.

The question becomes what happens if tax reform doesnt happen in 2017, does the market sell off into the year-end? said Andrew Slimmon, portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management in Chicago.

Trump is expected to participate on Tuesday in Senate Republicans weekly policy lunch. He said he would press the lawmakers to act on taxes and that he thinks there are enough votes to pass the plan. While its broad parameters have been made public, the detailed legislation has not yet been unveiled.

Democrats have urged Trump to include them in the development of the legislation. The Republican blueprint was devised without Democratic input. The last major tax restructuring, Republican former President Ronald Reagans 1986 overhaul, received significant input and support from Democrats.
An Army helicopter made an emergency landing near Balesar in Rajasthan's Jodhpur district today.

By Dev Ankur Wadhawan: An Army helicopter made an emergency landing near Balesar in Rajasthan's Jodhpur district today.

The helicopter Chetak had taken off from Jodhpur for Jaisalmer's Pokhran Range. The chopper had to make the landing in the court's premises due to some technical fault.

Along with the helicopter, which had developed technical snag, another chopper also landed at the court premises for providing support to the other copter.

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A large number of people gathered around the two helicopters. While the police had a tough time controlling the crowd, many of them were busy clicking selfies.

The pilots informed the Jodhpur-based control room about the technical snag. A team of technical experts has left from Jodhpur.

Five Chetak helicopters had left from the Army's Aviation Core along with a few jawans for the Pokhran firing range.

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Apple delayed preorders of its new premium iPhone X until this Friday, and now the big wireless carriers have started announcing their deals.

Pre-orders start on Oct. 27, with deliveries starting a week later on Nov. 3. But customers may have to wait days, or even weeks to get their hands on the hot new phone amid rumors of component shortages.

Without any special deal, the new iPhone X starts at $999 with 64 GB of storage, a $300 premium over the smaller screen iPhone 8. The more expensive X model is completely redesigned on the exterior and has a few upgrades from the 8 line up, including a 5.8-inch OLED screen and better cameras.

So far, the carriers deals both on the X and on the 8 models are not nearly as generous as last year, when most offered a free iPhone 7 with the trade in of another recent model iPhone. Thats part of the reason why the new iPhone upgrade season hasnt led to as many customers switching networks as in the past. Sales of the iPhone 8 have also been disappointing, but that may be because more customers than expected are holding out for the higher-priced model.

T-Mobile iPhone Deals

At T-Mobile, the company isnt offering a direct discount, but it says it will give a credit of up to $300 for iPhone X buyers who trade in a recent vintage used iPhone. The credit is paid out over 24 monthly installments. The deal so far is the same offer that T-Mobile made to iPhone 8 buyers.

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AT&T iPhone Deals

AT&T t didnt yet announce any trade in offers on Monday for new iPhone buyers.

Verizon iPhone Deals

Verizon vz like T-Mobile, said it would give up to $300 in credit to iPhone X buyers who trade in a recent model smartphone. The offer applies to new or existing customers who sign up for the carriers unlimited plan.

Sprint iPhone Deals

Sprint s said it would give a credit of $350 paid out over an 18-month lease for new iPhone X buyers if the customer traded in a recent vintage smartphone. That means customers would pay $22.22 a month for the iPhone X instead of $41.67. Unlike purchase arrangements at other carriers, Sprints leases require the customer to turn their iPhone in at the end of the 18-month term or make a lump sum payment (customers can also upgrade their phone after 12 months).
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has arrived in Pakistan for a visit in which he says he will urge Islamabad to do more to deny safe havens to terrorists.

Tillerson was scheduled to meet with Pakistans Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif during his day-long visit in Islamabad on October 24.

Speaking to journalists at Bagram Airfield in neighboring Afghanistan on October 23, Tillerson said it was imperative that any terrorist organizations or any extremists are denied safe havens.

This is very much a regional effort, Tillerson said. So were demanding others also deny safe haven to terrorists anywhere in the region. We are working closely with Pakistan in that regard as well.

In August, President Donald Trump announced a new U.S. policy and strategy for South Asia as the Western-backed government in Kabul is struggling to beat back insurgents in the wake of the exit of most NATO forces in 2014.

Trump accused Pakistan of supporting "agents of chaos" and suggested that his administration would impose further cuts to U.S. aid for Pakistan if Islamabad doesn't do more to rein in Taliban militants and other extremist groups within its borders -- particularly in the tribal regions along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

Trumps allegations have strained relations between Islamabad and Washington. Pakistan denies that it harbors terrorists and has said the United States is using Islamabad as a "scapegoat" for its own failure to win the 16-year war in Afghanistan.

But Pakistani officials now say that Islamabad is looking for a reengagement with Washington after the disruption that followed Trump's strategy announcement.

We have made some very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support that the Taliban receives and other terrorist organizations receive in Pakistan, Tillerson said on October 23.

In this whole strategy, this is a conditions-based approached, and so our relationship with Pakistan will also be conditions-based, Tillerson said. It will be based upon whether they take action that we feel is necessary to move the process forward of both creating the opportunity for reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan, but also ensuring a stable future Pakistan.

Tillerson said the United States is as concerned about the future stability of Pakistan as it is with Afghanistan.

Pakistan needs to, I think, take a clear-eyed view of the situation that theyre confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organizations that find safe haven inside of Pakistan, he said.

Tillerson also said he would speak to Pakistani officials about Washingtons changing relationship with India, Pakistans archrival in South Asia.

The two nuclear-armed neighbors have fought three wars since independence from British colonial rule in 1947 and have not engaged in any high-level political dialogue for nearly two years.

I think our view of the relationship with India is one thats of strategic importance not just for this specific region, but in the context ofa free and open Indo-Pacific region stretching all the way from Japan to India, Tillerson said.

Tillerson is scheduled to arrive in New Delhi late on October 24 after his stop in Pakistan. He is scheduled to meet with Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in New Delhi on October 25.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and dpa
FALLS CHURCH, Va., Oct. 23, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A group of investors and stakeholders has called on energy companies doing business in Myanmar/Burma to reassess their dealings in light of that country's brutal military crackdown on its ethnic Rohingya minority.





Organized by the International Campaign for the Rohingya and Azzad Asset Management, letters signed by 31 investor organizations representing more than $53 billion in assets under management were sent to executives at six oil and gas companies, emphasizing the serious risks of doing business with the Myanmar regime. Commodities make up a majority of Myanmar's exports and are often controlled in whole or part by the armed forces.

Simon Billenness, Executive Director of the International Campaign for the Rohingya, said, Corporations that do business in Burma are supporting a government engaged in ethnic cleansing and possibly even genocide against the Rohingya. The oil companies in Burma must take affirmative steps to avoid complicity in these crimes against humanity.

In addition to citing the moral obligation to address the humanitarian situation in Myanmar, the letters express concern about the potential risks to investments in the country as well as harm to corporate reputations stemming from doing business with a regime engaged in what the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has characterized as "a textbook case of ethnic cleansing."

The letter to oil companies states in part:

"We believe that [your] operations and investment in Myanmar and relationships with both the government and the state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise creates a special obligation for [your company] to both express its concern over recent events and to reassess its relationship with the government in light of the Burmese governments recent military actions against Rohingya communities. We cannot maintain 'business as usual' in a country where allegations of crimes against humanity and genocide persist."

Companies receiving the letter were China National Offshore Oil Corporation, Daewoo, PetroChina, Petronas, Total, and Woodside Petroleum.

In August, an investor coalition representing more than $30 billion in assets sent a similar letter to Chevron Corp., which also operates in Burma.

For decades, the Rohingya ethnic minority in Myanmar have been subject to a government-sanctioned campaign of forced relocation, violence, and persecution. In 2012, Burmese military forces moved more than 120,000 Rohingya from their homes into detention camps. Human rights observers report that the Myanmar military has carried out campaigns of mass rape and killing of Rohingya civilians, including children.

The recent Burmese army crackdown on the Rohingya has caused an estimated 500,000 Rohingya refugees to flee to neighboring Bangladesh, triggering a humanitarian and refugee crisis.

About International Campaign for the Rohingya

The International Campaign for the Rohingya advocates and amplifies the voice of the Rohingya with international organizations, governments, corporations, and civil society. Its mission is to help the Rohingya secure peace, security, and their rights wherever they reside. Through the "No Business With Genocide" campaign, the International Campaign for the Rohingya puts pressure on corporations in Burma to be a force for preventing genocide and mass atrocities against the Rohingya.

About Azzad Asset Management

Azzad Asset Management is a socially responsible registered investment advisor committed to providing investment services designed to help people enjoy optimum performance without compromising their values. Azzad believes that companies operating in ethical lines of business offer relatively less business risk and are in a better position to thrive in the long term. Azzad is a member of the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, and the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions. The firm is based in Falls Church, Virginia.

END

International Campaign for the Rohingya: Simon Billenness, Executive Director, 617-596-6158 (cell), simon.billenness@rohingyacampaign.org

Azzad Asset Management: Investment Communications Director Joshua Brockwell, 703-207-7005, ext. 109 (office), 571-970-8695 (cell), joshua@azzadfunds.com; Amina Rubin, 703-207-7005, ext. 120, amina@azzadfunds.com

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e9a07f4c-edf7-4469-bbc1-88acd5f0da40
Lithuanian English

Panevezys, Lithuania, 2017-10-24 11:48 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AB Linas General Meeting of Shareholders didnt take place on October 24, 2017 because there was no quorum.

Repeated General Meeting of Shareholders of AB Linas (company code 147689083, address S. Kerbedzio str.23, Panevezys) will be held on November 09, 2017 acc.to the decision and initiative of the Board.

Date of the meeting  November 09, 2017, thursday.

Time of the meeting  12:00 a.m. Registration of participants from 11:00 a.m. till 11:45 a.m.

Place of the meeting  AB Linas premises, S. Kerbedzio str. 23, Panevezys.

Agenda of the meeting:

1. The Audit Committee new editing regulations confirmation.

2. Election of the members of Audit Committee.

The accounting date of Repeated General Meeting of Shareholders is November 02, 2017. In the Repeated General Meeting of Shareholders have the right to participate and vote persons who were companys shareholders at the end of accounting date (November 02, 2017), personally or their authorized persons, or persons with whom voting right transferring contract is signed.

The Company doesnt form the right to participate and to vote in the meeting with the help of electronic communication equipment.

Decision projects on the agenda, documents which will be presented for General meeting of Shareholders will be announced in companys web page http://www.linas.lt. Companys shareholders have the right to acquaint with this information on working days from 9:00 a.m till 16:00 a.m. at companys premises S. Kerbedzio str.23, Panevezys.

Shareholders the shares of whom provide not less than 1/20 of all votes, can offer new decision projects for the questions which are included or will be included into the agenda of the meeting. Offers can be presented in written form or by e-mail. The offers in written form can be taken till November 09, 2017, 10:00 a.m. (on working days) to the companys premises or sent by registered letter to address S. Kerbedzio str.23, LT-35114, Panevezys. Offers by e-mail are sent to address office@linas.lt . During the meeting there will be discussed only offers received in the company till November 09, 2017, 10:00 a.m.

Shareholders have the right to provide questions in relation with agenda of the meeting in advance. Shareholders can provide questions by e-mail office@linas.lt not later than 3 working days till the meeting. The company will present answers by e-mail till the meeting. The company has the right not to give answers to shareholders questions if they are in relation with companys commercial (production) or confidential information.

All the persons who are participating in General Meeting of Shareholders and have the right o vote have to present the document certifying person identification. Representative of the shareholder for the meeting has to present the original of authorization acc.to law indicated form and content. The company doesnt indicate special form of authorization. The shareholder has the right with the help of electronic communication equipment to authorize other natural or legal person to participate and to vote in the meeting in the name of shareholder. The shareholder has to inform the company about the issued authorization by e-mail office@linas.lt not later than till the last working day 16:00 p.m. to the meeting. In the report the shareholder has to indicate web page from which the shareholders electronic signature checking program could be sent for free.

It would be able to vote on the Repeated Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders questions completing the general voting bulletin in written in advance. Printed general voting bulletin is available at companys premises, address S. Kerbedzio str.23, Panevezys. If the shareholder requires, then the company is sending general voting bulletin by registered letter or handle with written confirmation not later than 10 days till the meeting. Shareholder or his authorized person has to sign general voting bulletin. If the general voting bulletin is signed by the representative, then the document confirming his right for voting has to be added to the bulletin. Properly completed voting bulletins with the attached documents should be presented to the company personally, through authorized person or by registered letter to the address S. Kerbedzio str.23, LT-35114, Panevezys, not later than the last working day to up to the meeting.
Which of the following would be the most logical continuation of this argument?

Opponents to the mayors plan for express bus lanes on the citys major commuter arteries objected that people could not be lured out of their automobiles in that way. The opponents were proved wrong; following implementation of the plan, bus ridership rose dramatically, and there was a corresponding drop in automobile traffic. Nonetheless, the plan failed to achieve its stated objective of reducing average commuting time.(A) The plans opponents failed to realize that many people would take advantage of improved bus transportation.(B) Unfortunately, politically attractive solutions do not always get results.(C) The number of people a vehicle can transport varies directly with the size of the passenger compartment of the vehicle.(D) Opponents cited an independent survey of city commuters showing that before the plans adoption only one out of every seven used commuter bus lines.(E) With the express lanes closed to private automobile traffic, the remaining cars were forced to use too few lanes and this created gigantic traffic tie-ups.
mikemcgarry wrote:

B is quite wrong because the passage makes very clear --- when a stream is polluted, straying happens, which means dilution happens. The passage describes clearly the straying that resulted from the Mount St. Helen's eruption, and then around line (70) says that the effect of pollution probably would be about the same as what they saw at Mount St. Helen's. When the stream is polluted, the salmon can't use it to spawn, so they stray.





mikemcgarry wrote:



(E) is a typically GMAT RC distractor, and you fell for the bait. It is a statement that's true in general, but not relevant to the argument. Suppose we said that there was no such thing as a "pristine" perfect place for salmon --- suppose even the environments with zero pollution had natural challenges. Well, then, the salmon in those environments, over the centuries, would adapt to those particular conditions and be quite fit, and then if others stray into their unique stream and interbreed with them, it will reduce the fitness of that population.



Mike,Thanks for your kind reply. I am not clear, and I am still confused about both the answer choices.For the first one, as you have stated above, I think that both of us are on the same page : when the stream gets polluted, the polluted stream's salmon population cannot spawn, and hence they have to find other stream to spawn, leading to straying. Isn't this same as saying "preserving without dilution" i.e. the polluted stream's population can be preserved when there is low-level of straying? Now to extend this idea - why do I think that we can preserve the polluted stream's population? It's because in lines 35-40 it's stated that their genes can be preserved. I am still not able to see why B) is incorrect.I see dear Douvik's point in that "dilution" is not explicitly stated while discussing 'low levels of straying.' I am not sure whether these are grounds to eliminate B. The passage does talk about high-levels of straying, and has explicitly stated that low-levels of straying is better than high-level straying because of the dilution issue. Can't we infer that the dilution doesn't happen in the case of low-level straying. I am not sure about this. It seems logical to me and within the boundaries of the passage.For the second one, this is a great 'assumption' question. Let's dissect this further. Conclusion: "Disturbances cause by humans lower the overall fitness of subsequent generation in 'mixed' streams." Premise, as you stated, the salmon in those pristine areas had adaptions particular suited to those areas, which made them quite fit, and along come a bunch of salmon from the polluted stream next door, and they genetically dilute the salmon of that pristine stream, making them less adapted to that unique niche, and hence less fit. I agree 100%. That was my understanding as well. However, I am still not able to see the correctness of C).No let's negate C - Salmonids in none of the streams benefit from particular local adaptations. In my opinion, this has no effect on the conclusion. The conclusion is about comparing the overall fitness levels between "pristine" population (i.e. native population) and "mixed" population (i.e. native + newly strayed ones). Who cares whether 1% of population benefits from the adaptation or 90% of the native population benefits from the adaptation. We are concerned about the causal link between human activity and the lowering of the overall fitness. It could be possible that the native population is only 1% fit, and the straying would decrease this further down to 0.05%. Do I care about the level of fitness of the native population? No. I am only concerned about the "lowering" of fitness. I am still not clear.Now let's negate E- (I must admit that while solving this question, I was unsatisfied with all the answer choices and had no option than to choose E) from C and E (50% chance) ) -- I agree that we don't care whether the pristine streams are affected by natural disaster or not. We are only concerned about the link between "human activity" and the lowering of overall Darwinian fitness.Can you please help me? I am really confused.ThanksVoodoo Child
By PTI: Mumbai, Oct 24 (PTI) Actor Asin Thottumkal and husband Rahul Sharma today welcomed their first child - a baby girl.

The "Ghajini" star and Sharma, co-founder of tech company Micromax, confirmed the news in a statement.

"We are ecstatic to announce the arrival of our angelic baby girl earlier today. The last nine months have been most special and exciting for the both of us and we would like to thank all our wellwishers and everyone who has been part of our journey for all their love and support," the statement read.

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The couple tied the knot last year on January 19 in a Christian wedding ceremony followed by Hindu rituals near Delhi.

Asins "Khiladi 786" co-star Akshay Kumar served as Rahuls bestman at the low-key ceremony. PTI KKP RDS ZMN

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souvik101990 wrote:

A 1972 agreement between Canada and the United States reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities had been allowed to dump into the Great Lakes.





(A) reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities had been allowed to dump



(B) reduced the phosphate amount that municipalities had been dumping



(C) reduces the phosphate amount municipalities have been allowed to dump



(D) reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities are allowed to dump



(E) reduces the amount of phosphates allowed for dumping by municipalities





Meaning is crucial to solving this problem:

Concepts tested here: Tenses + Meaning

A:

B:

practically

permitted

C:

D:

Correct.

permitted

E:

Hence, D is the best answer choice.

Additional Note:

Dear Friends,Here is a detailed explanation to this question-Understanding the intended meaning is key to solving this question; the intended core meaning of the sentence is that a 1972 agreement between Canada and the United States reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities are allowed to dump into the Great Lakes. The simple present tense is used to indicate actions taking place in the current time frame, indicate habitual actions, state universal truths, and convey information that is permanent in nature. The simple past tense is used to refer to events that concluded in the past. The past perfect tense (marked by the use of the helping verb "had") is used when a sentence contains two actions in the past; the helping verb "had" is used with the action in the "greater past". The past perfect continuous tense (marked by the use of helping verb "had/have been") is used when a sentence contains two actions in past and one action is in greater past as well as continuous in nature; the helping verb "had been" is used with the action that is in the greater past and continuous in nature. The present perfect continuous tense (marked by "has/have been") is the correct tense to refer to actions that started in past and continue into the present. For referring to the purpose or intent of an action, the infinitive verb form (to + base form of verb"- "to + dump" in this sentence) is preferred over the present participle ("verb+ing" - "dumping" in this sentence) construction.Trap. This answer choice incorrectly uses the past perfect tense verb had been allowed to refer to an action taking place in the current time frame; please remember, the simple present tense is used to refer to actions taking place in the current time frame, and the past perfect tense (marked by the use of helping verb "had") is used when a sentence contains two actions in the past; the helping verb "had" is used with the action in the "greater past".This answer choice incorrectly uses the past perfect continuous tense verb had been dumping to refer to an action taking place in the current time frame; please remember, the simple present tense is used to refer to actions taking place in the current time frame, and the past perfect continuous tense (marked by the use of helping verb "had/have been") is only used when a sentence contains two actions in past and one action is in greater past as well as continuous in nature. Further, Option B alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase municipalities had been dumping; the construction of this phrase incorrectly implies that the 1972 agreement reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities hadbeen dumping into the Great Lakes; the intended meaning is that the 1972 agreement reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities areto dump into the Great Lakes.This answer choice incorrectly uses the simple present tense verb reduces to refer to an action that concluded in the past; please remember, the simple past tense is used to refer to actions that concluded in the past, and the simple present tense is only used to indicate actions taking place in the current time frame, indicate habitual actions, state universal truths, and convey information that is permanent in nature. Further, Option C incorrectly uses the present perfect continuous tense verb have been allowed to dump to refer to an action taking place in the current time frame; please remember, the simple present tense is used to refer to actions taking place in the current time frame, and the present perfect continuous tense (marked by "has/have been") is the correct tense to refer to actions that started in past and continue into the present.This answer choice correctly uses the simple past tense verb reduced to refer to an action that concluded in the past. Further, Option E correctly uses the simple present tense verb are allowed to refer to an action taking place in the current time frame. Moreover, Option D uses the phrase are allowed to dump, conveying the intended meaning  that the 1972 agreement reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities areto dump into the Great Lakes. Additionally, Option E uses the infinitive verb form (to + base form of verb"- "to + dump" in this sentence) to refer to the intent of the action allowed.This answer choice incorrectly uses the simple present tense verb reduces to refer to an action that concluded in the past; please remember, the simple past tense is used to refer to actions that concluded in the past, and the simple present tense is only used to indicate actions taking place in the current time frame, indicate habitual actions, state universal truths, and convey information that is permanent in nature. Further, Option E uses the present participle ("verb+ing" - "dumping" in this sentence) construction to refer to the intent of the action allowed; please remember, for referring to the purpose or intent of an action, the infinitive verb form (to + base form of verb") is preferred over the present participle ("verb+ing" - "dumping" in this sentence) construction.Please note that the verb construction "had been allowed", used in Option A, is the passive version of the past perfect tense construction "had allowed", not a past perfect continuous tense verb.To understand the concept of "Simple Tenses" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):To understand the concept of "Past Perfect Tense" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~2 minutes):To understand the concept of "Perfect Continuous Tenses" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~2 minutes):All the best!Team_________________
jerrywu wrote:

The first trenches that were cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar, Syria, have yielded strong evidence for centrally administered complex societies in northern regions of the Middle East that were arising simultaneously with but independently of the more celebrated city-states of southern Mesopotamia, in what is now southern Iraq.





(A) that were cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar, Syria, have yielded strong evidence for centrally administered complex societies in northern regions of the Middle East that were arising simultaneously with but



(B) that were cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar, Syria, yields strong evidence that centrally administered complex societies in northern regions of the Middle East were arising simultaneously with but also



(C) having been cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar, Syria, have yielded strong evidence that centrally administered complex societies in northern regions of the Middle East were arising simultaneously but



(D) cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar, Syria, yields strong evidence of centrally administered complex societies in northern regions of the Middle East arising simultaneously but also



(E) cut into a 500-acre site at Tell Hamoukar, Syria, have yielded strong evidence that centrally administered complex societies in northern regions of the Middle East arose simultaneously with but





Concepts tested here: Subject-Verb Agreement + Tenses + Parallelism + Idioms + Awkwardness/Redundancy

A:

B:

C:

D:

E:

Correct.

Hence, E is the best answer choice.

Dear Friends,Here is a detailed explanation to this question- Any elements linked by a conjunction ("but" in this sentence) must be parallel. The simple past tense is used to refer to events that concluded in the past. The present perfect tense (marked by the use of the helping verb has/have) is used to describe events that concluded in the past but continue to affect the present. The simple present tense is used to indicate actions taking place in the current time frame, indicate habitual actions, state universal truths, and convey information that is permanent in nature. The simple past continuous tense is used to refer to actions that were ongoing over a period of time in the past. Present participles ("verb+ing"  having and arising in this sentence) are used to modify nouns, refer to ongoing events in any time period, and (when preceded by a comma) express cause-effect relationships. In modifying a noun, the past participle implies that the noun took an action that concluded in the past. "evidence of + noun" and "evidence that + clause" are the correct, idiomatic constructions.Trap. This answer choice incorrectly uses the simple past continuous tense verb "were arising" to refer to an action that concluded in the past; please remember, the simple past tense is used to refer to events that concluded in the past, and the simple past continuous tense is used to refer to actions that were ongoing over a period of time in the past. Further, Option A incorrectly uses the unidiomatic construction "evidence for"; please remember, "evidence of + noun" and "evidence that + clause" are the correct, idiomatic constructions. Additionally, Option A uses the needlessly wordy phrase "that were cut", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.This answer choice incorrectly refers to the plural noun "trenches" with the singular noun "yields". Further, Option B incorrectly uses the simple present tense verb "yields" to refer to an action that concluded in the past but continues to affect the present; please remember, the present perfect tense (marked by the use of the helping verb has/have) is used to describe events that concluded in the past but continue to affect the present, and the simple present tense is used to indicate actions taking place in the current time frame, indicate habitual actions, state universal truths, and convey information that is permanent in nature. Additionally, Option B incorrectly uses the simple past continuous tense verb "were arising" to refer to an action that concluded in the past; please remember, the simple past tense is used to refer to events that concluded in the past, and the simple past continuous tense is used to refer to actions that were ongoing over a period of time in the past.This answer choice incorrectly uses the present participle phrase ("verb+ing" - "having" in this sentence) "having been cut" to refer to an action that concluded in the past; please remember, the simple past tense is used to refer to events that concluded in the past, and present participles ("verb+ing"  having in this sentence) are used to modify nouns, refer to ongoing events in any time period, and (when preceded by a comma) express cause-effect relationships. Further, Option C incorrectly uses the simple past continuous tense verb "were arising" to refer to an action that concluded in the past; please remember, the simple past tense is used to refer to events that concluded in the past, and the simple past continuous tense is used to refer to actions that were ongoing over a period of time in the past. Additionally, Option C fails to maintain parallelism between "arising simultaneously" and "independently of"; please remember, any elements linked by a conjunction ("but" in this sentence) must be parallel.This answer choice incorrectly refers to the plural noun "trenches" with the singular noun "yields". Further, Option D incorrectly uses the simple present tense verb "yields" to refer to an action that concluded in the past but continues to affect the present; please remember, the present perfect tense (marked by the use of the helping verb has/have) is used to describe events that concluded in the past but continue to affect the present, and the simple present tense is used to indicate actions taking place in the current time frame, indicate habitual actions, state universal truths, and convey information that is permanent in nature. Moreover, Option D incorrectly uses the present participle ("verb+ing" - "arising" in this sentence) to refer to an action that concluded in the past; please remember, the simple past tense is used to refer to events that concluded in the past, and present participles ("verb+ing"  arising in this sentence) are used to modify nouns, refer to ongoing events in any time period, and (when preceded by a comma) express cause-effect relationships. Additionally, Option D fails to maintain parallelism between "arising simultaneously" and "independently of"; please remember, any elements linked by a conjunction ("but also" in this sentence) must be parallel. Besides, Option D uses the needlessly wordy phrase "but also", leading to awkwardness and redundancy.This answer choice correctly refers to the plural noun "trenches" with the plural verb "have yielded". Further, Option E correctly uses the past participle "cut" to refer to an action that concluded in the past; please remember, in modifying a noun, the past participle implies that the noun took an action that concluded in the past. Moreover, Option E correctly uses the simple past tense verb "arose" to refer to an event that concluded in the past and uses the present perfect tense verb "have yielded" to refer to an action that concluded in the past but continues to affect the present. Additionally, Option E maintains parallelism between "simultaneously with" and "independently of". Plus, Option E correctly uses the idiomatic construction "evidence that + clause". Besides, Option D is free of any awkwardness or redundancy.To understand the concept of "Simple Tenses" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):To understand the concept of "Simple Continuous Tenses" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~1 minute):To understand the concept of "Present Perfect Tense" on GMAT, you may want to watch the following video (~2 minutes):All the best!Team_________________
Official Solution:

Wilhelm I was recognized by the Treaty of Frankfurt as the Emperor in 1871, when Germany first became a single, unified state.



1. The recognition happened in 1871.



2. Wilhelm was recognised as emperor only for the year 1871.



D. CORRECT.

A. Wilhelm I was recognized by the Treaty of Frankfurt as the Emperor in 1871, when Germany first became a single, unified state.B. Wilhelm I was recognized by the Treaty of Frankfurt in 1871 as Emperor, when Germany first became a single, unified state.C. Germany first became a single, unified state in 1871, when the Emperor Wilhelm I was recognized by the Treaty of Frankfurt.D. Germany first became a single unified state in 1871, when the Treaty of Frankfurt recognized Wilhelm I as Emperor.E. In 1871, Germany first became a single, unified state, when the Treaty of Frankfurt recognized Wilhelm I as the Emperor of the country.A. A is wrong not because it conveys a wrong meaning, but because it may be interpreted in two different ways and is hence ambiguous:B. Wrong position of dependent clause modifier "when Germany...."- should ideally touch "1871".C. Problematic meaning: This option conveys that Wilhelm was already an emperor when the treaty recognized him. It is not clear the treaty recognized him as what.E. Wrong position of dependent clause modifier "when Germany...."- should ideally touch "1871".Answer: D_________________
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The Bihar government has handed over investigation into the Rs 90 lakh soil scam to the state vigilance department involving Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: Trouble is mounting for RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav's sons with the Bihar government on Tuesday announcing that it will hand over probe in the Rs 90 lakh soil scam, involving Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejaswi Yadav, to the state vigilance department.

Tej Pratap, who was the Forest and Environment Minister when the scam took place, allegedly facilitated the purchase of soil excavated from an upcoming mall belonging to Tejaswi Yadav and sold it to the Patna zoo.

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"The state govt has handed over the investigation in the soil scam to the vigilance department. The department has been asked to finish probe at the earliest and submit its report", said deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi.

The state government after the expose on the soil scam by Sushil Modi in April this year asked Chief Secretary Anjani Kumar Singh to investigate the matter and surprisingly, he had given a clean chit to Tej Pratap in the case.

The Patna High Court too, which is hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) in this case filed by lawyer Mani Bhushan Sengar, has sought an inquiry status from the state government in the soil scam.

It is notable that after the scam had come to light in April, Lalu had dismissed allegations levelled against his son of selling soil from an upcoming mall site owned by Tejaswi to the Patna zoo for Rs 90 lakh. He had argued that when he can give cow dung of his gaushala to the Patna zoo for free, why will his son sell the soil from the mall site to the zoo?

Also Watch : Investigations show substantial evidence against Lalu Yadav in IRCTC hotel scam

--- ENDS ---
As a result, 241 US service personnel were killed, most of whom were Marines.

Iran has tried very hard to shirk responsibility for the attack, but evidence points to the involvement of Hezbollah. It is thought that the Lebanese Hezbollah carried out and planned the attack, but not by itself. The Iranian government was handing out orders.

This was the start of a new relationship between the United States and Iran.

At that time, the US hostages that were being held in Iran had been long released. Also, the US military mission to Lebanon was in place to help the countrys longsuffering government and to fight back against the various local sectarian blocs that were stirring up large amounts of violence in the country.

The memorial for all of those that died during the attack points out that the US Marines came to Beirut in peace. They were sent to Lebanon to help, not to target Irans interests.

Iran, on the other hand, did not come to Lebanon in peace. It came to the country to further its own interests and it saw the influence of the United States as going against its efforts to dominate the Middle East under Khomeinist-hegemony.

Since then, nothing drastic has changed. Irans goals remain the same and it still sees the US as standing in its way. Since the 1983 attack, Iran has continued to plan terrorist attacks against the US and it has targeted Americans in the region, especially in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iran has also tried to get rid of all US allies in the region because it knows that there is no way Iran can fully achieve its goal if the United States is there.

A military intervention with Iran is not the way to move forward. Iran avoids participating directly in conflicts and used its many militias and proxies to fight on its behalf. Since October 1983, Iran has continued to target the United States, and this is not going to change any time soon.

It was hoped that this would change when the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was signed, but it didnt. The previous administrations in the US have tried the diplomacy and appeasement approach with no success, so it is pointless to keep these up.

The Trump administration has recognised that the Iranian regime is the single-most dangerous threat to peace and security in the Middle East and he has recognised that the Iranian people are the first victims.

Trump has hinted that there needs to be peaceful regime change in Iran, and this can be achieved by supporting the Iranian Resistance that has been working towards a free and democratic Iran for decades. The opposition presents a viable solution to the problem, but it just needs the support of the international community.
This is What's Trending Today.

Harry Potter lovers around the world may want to thank Alice Newton.

She was eight years old when her father brought home a manuscript for her to read. At the time, he was working for Bloomsbury Publishing.

After reading the manuscript, Alice wrote a note to her father: The excitement in this book made me feel warm inside, she wrote. I think it is probably one of the best books an 8 or 9 year old could read.

Based in part on Alices comments, Bloomsbury went on to publish Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone.

Alices note to her father is part of the British Librarys new exhibition, Harry Potter: A History of Magic. It celebrates the 20th anniversary of the publication of J.K. Rowlings first book about Harry and his friends at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

When Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone was released in 1997, Bloomsbury sent just 500 copies to stores in Britain and another 500 copies to British libraries.

Now, Harry and his friends are known worldwide.

The exhibit at the British Library includes Rowling's outline for her books, her artwork of its characters and a map of the Hogwarts School. It also includes early versions of Rowlings books that were rejected by other publishers.

The show has two rooms. They are divided up based on the subjects offered at Hogwarts. Areas include Potions, Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures and Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Each area describes the stories and beliefs that Rowling included in her books.

Included in the exhibition are discussions of alchemy, the European traditions that led to modern chemistry, and the Ripley Scroll -- a six-meter-long document from the 1500s. It describes how to make a Philosopher's Stone.

The British Library has already sold about 30,000 tickets to the exhibit  the most advance tickets ever sold for a British Library exhibition.

The show closes on February 28, 2018. It will then travel to New York for the 20th anniversary of the release of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," the book's title in the United States.

And thats Whats Trending Today.

The Associated Press reported this story. Ashley Thompson adapted it for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

exhibition - n. an event at which objects (such as works of art) are put out in a public space for people to look at : a public show of something

manuscript - n. the original copy of a play, book, piece of music, etc., before it has been printed

library - n. a place where books, magazines, and other materials (such as videos and musical recordings) are available for people to use or borrow

outline - n. a written list or description of only the most important parts of an essay, speech, plan, etc.

ticket - n. a piece of paper that allows you to see a show, participate in an event, travel on a vehicle, etc.
General Xu Qiliang, currently Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) which Xi heads, was also named, and is set to retain his post as VC.

By Ananth Krishnan: Among the top People's Liberation Army (PLA) officers included in the Chinese Communist Party's new five-year Central Committee, announced on Tuesday, is the PLA General in charge of the army's Western Theatre command, which includes the border with India.

General Zhao Zongqi, 62, heads the Western Command, and was hence considered responsible for China's handling of the 72-day-long stand-off in Doklam near the India-China-Bhutan trijunction. He is the key PLA figure that is responsible for China's military posture and engagement vis-a-vis India.

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General Zhao was among the 204 members of the new 19th Central Committee, that was announced on Tuesday, following the conclusion of the 19th Party Congress.

General Xu Qiliang, currently Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) which Xi heads, was also named, and is set to retain his post as VC.

On Wednesday, Xi will appoint at least one more VC to replace General Fan Changlong who is set to retire. A favourite is General Zhang Youxia, who is thought to be close to Xi with both sharing ties that go back to their childhood--both were children of CPC revolutionary heroes from Shaanxi province.

The former Army Commander General Li Zuocheng, recently promoted to head the Joint Staff Department after the removal of General Fang Fenghui on corruption charges, is another candidate, should Xi add a third VC.

The current CMC has two VCs and eight other members. The South China Morning Post reported on Tuesday that Xi is considering changing the composition and installing even as many as four VCs, partly to dilute the power wielded in the past by the two VCs and to share the workload as he pushes sweeping military modernisation reforms.

An amendment to the Party Constitution passed on Tuesday called on the military to explicitly "implement Xi Jinping's thinking on strengthening the military". The new CMC will be announced on Wednesday, along with the new Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee.

--- ENDS ---
On October 25, 1917, Vladimir Lenin ordered Bolshevik forces to attack the Winter Palace, the official home of Russias rulers, in Saint Petersburg.

The raid started the Bolshevik Revolution, also called the Red October revolution. It led to the ouster of Czar Nicholas II, and the creation of the Soviet Union.

The Reuters news agency notes that Wednesday marks the 100th anniversary of the attack, based on Russias old calendar. But not a lot has changed over the past century, in terms of the Russian economy.

Renaissance Capital is an investment bank specializing in the country. It says the Russias of 1917 and 2017 have more in common than might be expected.

For example, before the Red October revolution, about a third of Russian debt was held by foreigners. That is the same as the rate today.

Before 1917, foreigners earned dividend rates of five to eight percent from shares of Russian utility stock. The dividend rates from such shares are the same today.

One hundred years ago, Russia had less industry than major world powers. It was considered to have the same level of industrialization as Brazil and Mexico. That is generally true today.

Raw materials were Russias main exports before the 1917 revolution. It is still at the same two-thirds level a century later.

Finally, Russia was the worlds biggest exporter of grain back then. The investment bank estimates that from 2015 to 2017, Russia was again the worlds biggest exporter of grain.

This is not to say that nothing has changed.

More Russians now have the ability to read and write as compared to those living before the Soviet Union. And the country became more industrial during the Soviet years.

Charlie Robertson is an economist with Renaissance Capital. He told the Reuters news agency that the Soviet years stopped the development of a modern Russian economy.

In the first half of the 20th century, Russia was catching up to industrialized nations like Italy and Japan.

Robertson added, If that progress could have been maintained  Russia would be more populous, more wealthy and more democratic than it is today.

Im Anne Ball.

Hai Do adapted this story for Learning English based on a Reuters story by Jeremy Gaunt. George Grow was the editor.

Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

old calendar - n. Russia, and the old Soviet republics, adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918. But the Russian Orthodox Church continues to use the old Julian calendar.

dividend - n. an amount of profits pays to people who own stock

raw - adj. in a natural state
Both sides in Spains dispute with Catalonia are standing firm as Spanish lawmakers prepare for a vote on suspending the areas rights to self-rule.

Spains national Senate is set to vote Friday on whether to enforce direct rule in Catalonia. The government has already put in effect constitutional powers to dismiss Catalan officials and call an election.

One pro-independence party is calling for mass civil disobedience across the area to answer the latest Spanish moves. The CUP party has called the central governments actions an aggression against all the people of Catalonia.

Pro-independence students called for a strike at Catalan universities on Thursday to urge officials to move forward with a declaration of independence.

Catalonia has long sought independence from Spain. The area held an independence referendum on October 1. Catalan leaders say the results gave them a clear mandate to declare independence.

Spains government and Constitutional Court declared the referendum illegal. Independence movement leaders said more than 90 percent of those who voted supported independence. Yet only about 43 percent of registered voters took part in the election.

Several hundred Catalan government officials oppose direct rule from the central government in Madrid. They have asked the areas parliament to vote on a measure rejecting the move. Some teachers and firemen working in the area said they would not recognize Spains direct rule.

A group of Spains political parties chose 27 senators on Monday to study how the government might intervene in Catalonia. The special commission includes 15 members of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoys ruling Popular Party. Six senators were from the leading opposition Socialist party, with smaller parties sharing the rest.

Among possible constitutional measures the group will study is one calling for dismissal of Catalonias government, led by the pro-independence governor Carles Puigdemont. The commission is expected to inform Puigdemont of its plans and invite him to defend his case before Fridays vote in parliament.

Prime Minister Rajoys party holds a parliamentary majority, making it likely the measure will be approved. Rajoy announced government plans last Saturday to remove Governor Puigdemont and begin steps toward direct rule in Catalonia.

The Catalonia crisis has led to concerns across the European Union. EU officials fear that similar pro-independence movements could develop in other areas.

On Sunday, two of Italy's wealthiest areas - Veneto and Lombardy - held their own autonomy referendums. The presidents of both areas said more than 90 percent of those who marked ballots wanted more autonomy from the Italian government.

Results of the voting were non-binding. But the presidents say the voices of the people will give them more power when officials begin talks with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.

Leaders of both regions want to keep more tax money and have a greater say over local education, immigration, security, and the environment.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English. His story was based on reports from VOA News, the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Do you think the people of Catalonia have the right to break away from Spain? Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

referendum  n. election in which the people in an area vote for or against an issue of public concern

mandate  n. the approval of a large part of the population

commission  n. official group of people chosen to study something and decide what they think should be done about it

autonomy  n. existing or acting separately from others

non-binding  adj. not able to be enforced by law
The social media website Facebook and the search engine Google are struggling to ensure that what they present as news is correct.

The huge internet companies have been fighting fake news for nearly one year.

But their efforts have not been as successful as many people would like.

The internet services are designed to provide news and information that interests users. Now, people at the companies are finding it is not easy to make sure that this information is truthful.

This is especially the case when so-called internet trolls use these websites. Trolls are people who try to make others angry with their posts. And people with harmful plans continuously work to avoid the new controls that the companies put in place to stop them.

Immediately after the mass shooting in Las Vegas in early October, Facebook launched its Crisis Response page for the event. The page was meant to share helpful information about the attack. But it also shared a false news story that wrongly identified the gunman and claimed he was a politically far left, mentally sick person.

Googles Top Stories search results shared a similar story from the website 4chan. It also wrongly identified the gunman.

The site 4chan is an imageboard website, which mainly posts images with the most recent postings showing first. It lets its users post things without revealing their identity.

One day after the attack, searches for Las Vegas shooting on the video-sharing website YouTube, which is owned by Google, showed one video as the fifth result. This video explained a conspiracy theory video claiming that several people were involved in the attack.

The stories were not true. Police identified the gunman as Stephen Paddock from the American state of Nevada. The reason why he shot at people at the music festival on October 1 is still not known. His attack left 58 people dead and hundreds wounded.

Facebook and Google quickly removed the stories and changed the way stories appeared on their websites. These changes tried to give greater importance to sources of information with stronger knowledge of the events.

But the companies still have a lot of work to do.

Why do these mostly computer-operated services keep failing to separate truth from lies? One reason is that most Internet-based service systems often bring greater attention to posts that get and keep their users interested.

This is exactly what a lot of fake news is designed to do.

David Caroll is a professor of media design at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. He told the Associated Press that Facebook and Google get caught without warning because their computer programs look for signs of popularity.

That problem is much bigger soon after a disaster when facts are still unclear and the demand for information is very high.

Mandy Jenkins told the Associated Press that people with harmful plans make use of this problem. Jenkins is the head of news at the news and social media research agency Storyful.

They know how the sites work, she said. They know how the media works.

Users of 4chans Politically Incorrect page often discuss how to deploy fake news strategies, Dan Leibson told the Associated Press. Leibson is the vice president of search at the internet advertising company Local SEO Guide.

Hours after the deadly attack in Las Vegas, people were talking about it online supporting their theories. Leibson said there were people discussing how to get and keep reader interest all night.

More and more people all over the world have been separating themselves from others because of their political beliefs. And this has made the idea of what makes sources of news credible a point of disagreement.

Many reporters with the largest and most popular media companies often express opinions about the credibility of different publications. They base their opinions on the history of the publications and how strongly they present facts.

But that is a much more complex issue for services seeking to appeal to millions of people like Facebook and Google. This is especially true given how popular many false news sources are among different political groups.

Gateway Pundit, for example, is a website that supports President Donald Trump. It published the false Las Vegas story that Facebook shared. Its reporters also have received an invitation to White House press briefings. And it has more than 620,000 fans on its Facebook page.

Earlier this month, Facebook said it is working to fix the issue that led it to share false reports about the Las Vegas shooting. However, it did not say exactly what it planned to do.

The company has already taken steps to fight fake news since last December. It now includes fact reviews from outside organizations. It also puts warnings on disputed stories and has taken attention away from false stories on peoples social media pages.

Making sure facts are correct is harder with developing news

News that is developing is especially difficult for computer-operated systems to judge. Google said the 4chan post that wrongly identifying the Las Vegas gunman should not have appeared among its Top Stories. However, it took the computer program that controls Google search results a few hours to replace it.

Outside experts said two different issues created problems for Google.

First, its Top Stories program provides results from all of the internet, not only from news agencies. Second, the signals that help Google examine the credibility of a website are not available in breaking news situations.

Matthew Brown is an expert who helps internet search engine companies improve their operations.

Brown told the Associated Press: If you have enough  references to something  thats going to look good to Google.

United States federal law does not currently hold Facebook, Google and other similar companies responsible for material their users publish. But recent events are forcing the technology companies to accept more responsibility for the information they spread.

Also earlier this month, Facebook said it would employ an extra 1,000 people to look at advertisements. This comes after the company found that a Russian agency had bought ads meant to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Sally Lehrman is the project director of the Trust Project at Santa Clara University in California. The project is supported by Google.

She says Google is working to include markers, such as where reporters are from, awards they have received and other information. Future computer programs that operate Google could then use this information to decide what news stories people will see.

Im Pete Musto. And Im Anna Matteo.

Barbara Ortutay and Ryan Nakashima reported this for the Associated Press. Pete Musto adapted it for VOA Learning English. Mario Ritter was the editor.

We want to hear from you. How responsible are companies like Facebook and Google for the materials their users publish? How can they best fight fake news? Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

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Words in This Story

social media  n. forms of electronic communication, such as websites, through which people create online communities to share information, ideas, and personal messages

fake - adj. meant to look real or genuine but not real or genuine

source(s)  n. a person, book, or website that gives information

conspiracy theory  n. a theory that explains an event or situation as the result of a secret plan by usually powerful people or groups

post(s)  n. a message on an online message board

page  n. one section of a Web site that is found at a single address

strategies  n. careful plans or methods for achieving a particular goal usually over a long period of time

credible  adj. reasonable to trust or believe

reference(s)  n. something, such as a book, dictionary, or encyclopedia, that people can look at or in to find information about something
Welcome to Let's Teach English. This series offers free online training for English language educators worldwide. Voice of America and the University of Oregon are partners on this project.

Summary

The focus of this lesson is teaching analytical thinking skills. The teacher leads the class through an exercise developed by Stella Ting-Toomey called Describe, Interpret, Evaluate (See-Think-Feel).

The students move through the process of carefully examining an event before they form an opinion about it. The teacher compares this process to intercultural contact, and encourages thoughtful reflection on cultural differences.

Teacher Preparation Video Transcript

This episode shows a model of teaching through role plays and group projects. Click on the image below to download a pdf of the transcript.

Women Teaching Women English Text

Click on the image below to download a pdf of the student text and teacher manual. At the end of the ten-unit course, the whole book will be available for download.

Women Teaching Women English Listening

These audio files go with Unit 5 of Women Teaching Women English. Click on the "Direct Link" button to the right of the player to download them.

Conversation: Reading a Coffee Cup

Reading: Mystery 1

Reading: Mystery 2

What Do You Think?

Let us know what you think about this course. Email us or write your comment in the comments section below.

Poll
Diplomats from the United States and Turkey are working to ease tensions after disputes led the countries to place visa restrictions on each other.

This past weekend, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made sharply critical remarks about the U.S. over a diplomatic dispute from the summer.

Erdogan was angry that the U.S. had given arrest orders for Turkish security officials in August.

He said, If the United States issues arrest warrants for my 13 bodyguards in a country where I went upon invitation, I am sorry, but I will not say that country is civilized.

The warrants were given for officials who were accused of attacking peaceful protesters outside the Turkish embassy in Washington in May. The violence took place during Erdogans visit to the U.S.

Arrests raise tensions further

Tensions increased earlier this month after Turkey arrested two men who were working for the U.S. diplomatic mission in Turkey.

As a result, the U.S. placed visa restrictions on Turkey.

One of those facing charges in Turkey is Metin Topuz. He is accused of links to the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. Turkey blames Gulen for last years attempt by some members of the military to seize power.

Turkey answered the U.S. travel restrictions by placing visa restrictions of its own on U.S. travelers.

Talks about the restrictions took place Thursday. The U.S. State Department called the talks productive.

Semih Idiz is with the Al Monitor website. He says Erdogan often gives strong criticisms of western countries at unexpected times. However, he said the Turkish leader wants to keep good ties with the West as well.

But, we must realize Erdogan was in New York very recently and had a very chummy meeting with Donald Trump who called him a special friend. So Turkey is aware, for all the problems it has with America, too, that it has to tread cautiously.

Observers note that Erdogans criticisms are linked to Turkeys domestic politics. They say Erdogan is seeking to gain support for the 2019 presidential and general elections.

However, U.S. relations with Turkey could be hurt further by another court case involving a Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab.

Zarrab is accused of being involved in secret trade with Iran, which was barred by U.S. law at the time. U.S. government lawyers say the businessman developed a plan involving billions of dollars that permitted Iran to avoid U.S. sanctions. They say a top Turkish state bank employee and a former minister are linked to the case.

The United States support for Syrian Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State militants is another issue that angers Turkish leaders. They say the Syrian Kurdish fighters are linked to Kurdish separatists fighting Turkey.

Im Mario Ritter.

Dorian Jones reported this story for VOA News. Mario Ritter adapted it for VOA Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

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Words in This Story

issue v. to send out, to give out in an official way

warrant n. a court order that give police the power to do something

chummy adj. friendly

tread v. to walk, to act in a certain way

sanctions n. actions to cause a country to obey international law usually by restricting trade or financial exchanges

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This is Whats Trending Today

Many universities this week are marking Open Access Week. The yearly event centers on improving the online availability of academic research to the public.

Cambridge University in England celebrated by releasing the 1966 doctoral thesis of Stephen Hawking for free online. Hawking was a graduate student at Cambridge from 1962 to 1966.

Hawking is the world's best-known physicist. He completed his thesis, Properties of Expanding Universes, when he was just 24 years old. The work explores ideas about the origins of the universe -- ideas that Hawking has studied throughout his career.

News of Hawkings publicly available thesis spread quickly. Within hours, Cambridges website collapsed because of the high number of people trying to access Hawkings research paper.

A Cambridge spokesman said in a statement, We have had a huge response to Professor Hawkings decision to make his PhD thesis publicly available to download, with almost 60,000 downloads in less than 24 hours. The spokesman said that, as a result of the popularity, the website may perform slowly at times.

Hawkings research was already the most-requested item in Cambridges library. He recently gave the university permission to make it an Open Access document.

Hawking said he hoped making his thesis freely available for everyone would inspire people around the world to look up at the stars and not look down at their feet; to wonder about our place in the universe and to try to make sense of the cosmos.

Hawkings newly available thesis -- and talk of how it shut down Cambridges website -- became trending topics on Twitter and Facebook.

Many on social media said they were pleased that so many people around the world are interested in reading Hawkings research.



Others wrote that they loved that Hawking is the famous person breaking the internet this week.





And that's What's Trending Today...

The Associated Press reported this story. Ashley Thompson adapted it for Learning English, with additional materials. Hai Do was the editor.

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Words in This Story

academic - adj. of or relating to schools and education

access - n. a way of getting near, at, or to something or someone

thesis - n. a long piece of writing on a particular subject that is done to earn a degree at a university

physicist - n. a scientist who studies or is a specialist in physics -- the science that deals with matter and energy and the way they act on each other in heat, light, electricity, and sound

response - n. something that is done as a reaction to something else

download - v. to move or copy (a file, program, etc.) from a usually larger computer system to another computer or device

origin - n. the point or place where something begins or is created

cosmos - n. the universe, especially when it is understood as an ordered system

item - n. an individual thing: a separate part or thing

inspire - v. to make (someone) want to do something : to give (someone) an idea about what to do or create


Chinas President Xi Jingping is now considered among the most influential of the countrys leaders.

Chinas Communist Party added Xis political thought to its constitution during the closing session of its 19th Party Congress. Only two other Chinese leaders have had their ideas added to the constitution in this way: They are Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

The congress chooses the partys leaders and presents policy for the next five years.

Observers say the move shows that Xi might seek a third term. They also note that there is no apparent successor to Xi among Chinese leaders at this time.

Xi Jingping thought now part of Chinas constitution

Chinese state media praised as historic the move to put Xi Jinpings Thought on Socialism With Chinese Characteristics for a New Era into the constitution.

The change passed without opposition.

The amendment to the constitution says Xi Jinping Thought will provide a guide for Chinas development on a long-term basis.

In addition to adding Xis name and political ideas, amendments established the partys absolute leadership over the military and society.

Among the important policy moves is a major anti-corruption campaign that has targeted both powerful and lower level officials. Another initiative is the Belt and Road development project, which seeks to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure-related projects in Asia, Africa and Europe.

When he took power in 2012, Xi spoke of a Chinese Dream an idea for the redevelopment of China into a great, modern nation.

In his speech at the start of the congress, Xi promised that China would become what he called a modern socialist country by 2035. He also said by 2050, China would be a leading world power.

Near the close of the meeting, Xi called the party congress a success. He said the Chinese people embrace the possibilities of a bright future.

Will Xi stay in power beyond his term?

Willy Lam is with the Center for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

He told VOA that he believes Xi will seek to stay in power beyond the end of his second term in 2022.

Chinas Constitution states that the president can only serve two terms. Also, the party traditionally requires leaders who are 68 or older to step down. Xi is currently 64-years-old.

However, Lam says Xi could step aside as party chairman but keep control of Chinas powerful Central Military Commission as Deng Xiaoping did. He could also remain chairman of the countrys national security commission, which oversees the police.

Lam said, According to long established tradition, whomever controls the army and the police controls everything, not to mention the fact that he has this additional title of core leader.

However, Lam is concerned that Xis gathering of power represents a step backward. He notes that Chinas reform leader Deng Xiaoping was adamant in repudiating one-person rule. Deng also forbid a cult of personality from being set up around leaders and helped set up age and term limits.

No apparent successor

Xi received the title of core leader about a year ago. The title represents a level of power not seen since Deng led reform and opening up efforts to modernize China.

Experts note that there is no one who is considered able to take Xis place in five years.

The head of the partys Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Wang Qishan, is considered the second most powerful man in China. He has overseen Xis anti-corruption campaign, which has brought down a number of powerful competitors in the party.

But Wangs name was not included on a list of leading party officials on the Central Committee.

On Wednesday, the members of the Politburo Standing Committee are to be announced. The Politburo Standing Committee is a small group of about seven members, including Xi, who hold top positions.

Im Mario Ritter.

Bill Ide reported this story for VOA News. Mario Ritter adapted it for VOA Learning English with additional material from AP and Reuters. Hai Do was the editor.

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Words in This Story

characteristics n. the special qualities of a person or group

absolute adj. total, complete, unquestioned

initiative n. a plan or program that is meant to create a solution to a problem

embrace v. to accept something willingly

adamant adj. determined, unchanging

repudiate v. to refuse to accept

cult n. a group that cares about someone or something too much

core adj. very central

Politburo n. a small leadership group in a Communist government that makes decisions about policy

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Congress IT cell has released 6 pictures of Gabbar Singh and has rephrased his dialogues.

By Mayuresh Ganapatye, Gopi Maniar Ghanghar : A day after Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, described GST as 'Gabbar Singh Tax', IT cell of Congress party was quick to post a few memes of 'Gabbar Singh', a famous villainous character from Bollywood blockbuster 'Sholay', on social media with message against Modi and BJP government.

Congress IT cell has released 6 pictures of Gabbar Singh and has rephrased his dialogues.

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In one poster where Gabbar is sitting on a rock, the Congress IT cell has replaced a famous dilaogue of Gabbar Singh "Are O Samba Kitna Inam Rakhe Sarkar hum par?" to "Are oh Jaitley kitna tax rakhe hain sarkar sab par?"

In another poster, Gabbar is saying, "Kya sochkar aye the, Sahab 15 lakh dega, sabasi dega? Kyon? Ab Tu de.. GST de ?"

Hitting at Rahul Gandhi, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani told India Today, "It was Congress who wanted to implement GST. In GST counsel there are Congress Chief Ministers also, why didn't they take objection that time?"

Congress is relentlessly running a campaign against BJP on social media. This is the first time that Congress is ahead of BJP, at least on social media. Congress' biggest success on social media was its campaign against BJP called 'Vikas gando thayo chhe', which roughly means - 'Development has gone crazy' and 'Gando Vikasni Chilli Diwali', meaning last Diwali of crazy vikas.

"After we put out these posters on social media, people have now started tagging us with their own creative ideas about 'Gabbar Singh Tax.'

People are getting connected to us as they also feel pinch of GST and other issues thus we are getting this response.

WATCH | Rahul Gandhi launches scathing attack on BJP in poll-bound Gujarat, calls GST Gabbar Singh Tax

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Most current efforts in the hunt for dark matter particles spend serious resources building detectors, with the aim of directly snagging WIMPs.

The mechanics of WIMP detectors tap into calculations that Freese cooked up in the 1980s. Her work predicted ways that WIMPs would scatter in theoretical collisions with atomic matter. By her estimate, one in ten billion WIMPs traveling through Earth would strike a detector nucleus so it leaves some sign of its existence. Dozens of teams of physicists have built such detectors with government and philanthropic support based on Freeses predictions, which promise a deeper understanding of the universe, along with an abysmally low probability of success. In other words, you can look for thembut theyre going to be really hard to find.

Yet teams of scientists are holding out on vanishingly low odds of ever detecting WIMPs.

Underground and in the Dark

If I didnt have hope, Id be working on something else, insists Wolfgang Lorenzon, a professor in LSAs Department of Physics.

Lorenzon first got involved in the hunt for dark matter particles with the PandaX experiment in China. I think its probably the best place in the world to do a dark matter experiment, because its covered by 2.5 kilometers of marble, he says. Its the deepest laboratory in the world by a wide margin, though all WIMP detectors lie low underground, often buried beneath a mountain or stashed in a tunnel.

All of these experiments have to go deep underground to get away from cosmic rays that otherwise would be bombarding the detector constantly, says Freese. The mountain topping PandaX, in particular, has an almost crystalline marble structure that expels a lot of the impurities that you dont want, says Lorenzon. Still, WIMPs are teeny-tiny and hard to come by. Interference by other small particles presents a confounding challenge, he says, that plagues you all the time.

Lorenzon and his lab now work with the LZ experiment, built 1,480 meters deep in an abandoned South Dakota gold mine. Theyre building a device that will remove radon contaminants released by the experiment itself, including radon from the welded stainless steel tubing that transports gases through the detector.

A handful of dark matter detectors have some features in common. To try to catch WIMP particles, some research teams fill a giant tank with hundreds of pounds of liquid xenon, which nests within an even larger tank of ultrapure water to further shield against contaminating particles.

Harvesting xenon involves distilling it from the air as a liquid, keeping in mind that radioactive krypton also lurks there as another contaminanta lingering residue in the atmosphere from historic nuclear weapon tests.

Xenon should work better than many other elements in WIMP detectors because its nucleus is so large; it offers the biggest practical target for the putative dark matter particle. If a WIMP strikes a xenon nucleus, the collision should produce a tiny spark of light that the detector then magnifies as a signal we can see.

But the hunt for dark matter particles, involving dozens of detectors internationally, has yielded nothing for decades. The one exception comes from an experiment called DAMA, housed beneath an Italian mountain. The detector has caught consistent WIMP hits for more than 15 years, but few in the scientific community accept the data. For one thing, instead of using xenon, the DAMA experiment operates with a proprietary crystal in its detector. Their exclusive access to the material makes comparison difficult among experiments  not to mention that it lends an unusual secrecy to their methods and people wonder whether their results just reflect particle contamination. It doesnt help that the DAMA team refuses to release its data.

Researchers continue building new detectors all over the world, some with similar crystal materials as DAMA, so they can validate DAMAs results. Maybe soon, those sole signs of WIMPs may start to make more sense. But with all other detectors coming up empty for decades, how long will researchers look for WIMPs before they give up on them as the building blocks of dark matter?

The Gravity of the Situation

The disquieting alternative is that a paradigm shift is required to make sense of the data, Freese admits in her book, The Cosmic Cocktail. Perhaps an entirely different way of looking at the world will replace the need for these invisible pieces of the universe.

In other words, what if all these physicists excited over WIMPs turn out to be a bit too excited about the elusive particle?

To be sure, most proposals that explain the wonky speeds of celestial objects in outer orbits trace back to reasonable theory. But some scientists speculate: Could dark matter exist as clouds of several different particles at once? Does it act less like a particle and more like a wave? What if dark matter isnt matter at all?

Heres another possibility: What if gravity just works differently at the enormous scale of the universe? Isaac Newtons laws first captured what we know about gravity, motion, inertia, and momentum. We take for granted the physics we experience every day, and now we even accept the revolutionary idea that those familiar forces dont apply at the tiniest quantum scales. Would it be so discomfiting for Newtons laws to transform once more at the opposite end of the range, at sizes that span galaxies?

Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) suggests exactly that: Maybe we and Newton dont fully understand gravity.
Tissue Engineering Part C brings together scientific and medical experts in the fields of biomedical engineering, material science, molecular and cellular biology, and genetic engineering. Credit: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers

Novel approaches to tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are first evaluated and optimized in animal models before making the leap to clinical testing in human subjects. For many of these innovative new techniques and materials to succeed and advance to the clinic, the selection of an appropriate animal model and design of the experiments to gauge performance and outcomes can determine whether a particular approach, and the field in general, continue to move forward. A special issue devoted to the latest research on using animal models in regenerative medicine research is forthcoming in Tissue Engineering, Part C, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. Select articles from the issue are now available online on the Tissue Engineering website.

Guest Editors Jorge Piedrahita, PhD, North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Raleigh, and J. Koudy Williams, DVM, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston Salem, NC oversaw the development of the special issue. They compiled a series of outstanding papers on diverse topics contributed by leading researchers. These include the article entitled "Inflammation-Induced Osteogenesis in a Rabbit Tibia Model," in which F. Cumhur Oner, MD, PhD, et al., University Medical Center Utrecht, Delft University of Technology, and Utrecht University, The Netherlands, examined the inflammatory responses to bacterial infection that can promote bone formation. The researchers showed that the inflammatory response caused by exposure to Staphylococcus aureus antigens, in the absence of bacterial infection, could stimulate bone growth and might be a useful strategy in bone regenerative medicine.

In the article "Rise of the Pigs: Utilization of the Porcine Model to Study Musculoskeletal Biomechanics and Tissue Engineering During Skeletal Growth," Matthew Fisher, PhD and coauthors from North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC School of Medicine, present the unique opportunities and challenges for using pigs as translational models in the development of musculoskeletal regenerative medicine approaches. In particular, the researchers describe the advantages porcine models offer for studying biomechanics.

Johan Lammens, MD, PhD and coauthors from University Hospitals KU Leuven, KU Leuven, Medanex Clinic (Diest), and University of Liege, Belgium, caution that techniques for repairing large bone defects developed in the laboratory will only ultimately be successful in humans if the preclinical studies are performed in a reliable animal model using a bone defect of sufficient size created by following well-defined methods. They share their perspectives in the article entitled "Warning About the Use of Critical-Size Defects for the Translational Study of Bone Repair: Analysis of a Sheep Tibial Model."

"This special issue emphasizes not only the need for appropriate animal models to increase our understanding and knowledge, but also for the final clinical application of regenerative medicine-based products," says Methods Co-Editor-in-Chief John A. Jansen, DDS, PhD, Professor and Head, Department of Biomaterials, Radboud University Medical Center, The Netherlands.

More information: Michiel Croes et al, Inflammation-Induced Osteogenesis in a Rabbit Tibia Model, Tissue Engineering Part C: Methods (2017). Michiel Croes et al, Inflammation-Induced Osteogenesis in a Rabbit Tibia Model,(2017). DOI: 10.1089/ten.tec.2017.0151
The Local Government Department, Punjab today refuted reports of taxes to be levied on people owning pets.

By India Today Web Desk: Reported earlier that the Punjab government will soon levy taxes on people owning pets, a clarification by the the Local Government Department, Punjab today debunked the news of any such order.

According to initial reports, people living in urban areas were expected to pay Rs 250 per year for owning dog, cat, pig, sheep or deer. Those owning buffalo, bull, camel, horse, cow or elephant were to shell out Rs 500 per year.

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The government spokesperson in the clarification elaborated that the Punjab and Haryana High Court today passed an order, asking both states to act on stray biting incidents and to award compensation to the family of the victim.

While adding that under this proposal, no new tax is intended to be imposed on pets.

Also Watch : Chennai horror: Angry man bludgeons dog to death with cricket bat

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(HealthDay)Opioid-free anesthesia is feasible and well-tolerated, and only 36 percent of patients requested oral opioids in the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU), according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, being held Oct. 21 to 25 in Boston.

Enrico M. Camporesi, M.D., from the University of South Florida in Tampa, and colleagues conducted a retrospective review of surgical cases of 1,009 patients with a single anesthesiologist at an outpatient surgery center to describe the provision of anesthesia services without opioids. The opioid-free intraoperative anesthesia protocol included acetaminophen, magnesium, ketamine and lidocaine, and ketorolac (for adult patients if the surgeon allowed it). All patients also received Decadron, Zofran, and supplemental sevoflurane. Middle-ear surgery patients received gabapentin.

The researchers found that patients and surgeons reported satisfaction with the protocol for anesthesia, and postoperative pain management was well-tolerated. In the PACU, only 36 percent of patients requested oral opioid medications, with notably more pain medications for certain procedures, such as complex facial plastics and nasal/sinus surgeries with longer case lengths. More nausea medication was also required by patients in these two groups.

"In conclusion, safe anesthesia for multiple procedures varying in duration from an hour to several hours while using minimal opioids is possible," the authors write.

Copyright  2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Emma Towlson, Postdoc at the Center for Complex Network Science Research, is an author on a new paper describing for the first time researchers' ability to predict, test, and confirm with unprecedented detail how a nematodes brain controls the way it moves. Credit: Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

The human brain is a mysterious supercomputer. Billions of neurons buzz within an intricate network that controls our every thought, feeling, and movement. And we've only just begun to understand how it all works.

To conquer the puzzle of the human mind, researchers at Northeastern's Center for Complex Network Research start with simpler models. The brain of a nematode worm, for example, has about 300 neurons and 2,200 synapses.

Using the nematode as one test system, scientists at CCNR have spent the past several years understanding how a network controls itselffor instance, which individual neurons in the worm's brain are in charge of a backward wiggle. And in research published online Wednesday in Nature, they describe for the first time their ability to predict, test, and confirm with unprecedented detail how a nematode's brain controls the way it moves.

"I am delighted to have the first direct experimental confirmation of the control principles," said Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science and University Distinguished Professor of Physics, and director of the Center for Complex Network Research. "And I'm equally excited that it offered us a way to systematically predict, with exceptional accuracy, the neurons that are involved in specific processes."

Researchers in Barabasi's lab studied the nematode brain, which has been mapped neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. They developed a theory to predict precisely what neurons would control specific types of locomotionthe worm's ability to squirm and scoot around. Then, colleagues from the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, tested the predictions by killing individual neurons from the nematode brain with a laser. They then measured the effects of these "microsurgeries" on behavior.

"Remarkably, the predictions were confirmed, supporting the theory and providing new insight into how individual neurons control body movements," said William Schafer, a scientist at the MRC lab who led the laser experiments.

I think the next sensible steps for us are zebra fish, maybe mouse, and then human, Towlson said. The human brain is always the ultimate dream. Credit: Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

This is an important first step toward what Emma Towlson, a postdoctoral researcher at CCNR and one of the study's lead authors, calls "the dream." One day, researchers may be able to translate a version of the nematode control model to the human brain. This would be life-changing for patients with cerebral palsy, Lou Gehrig's disease, and other ailments that lead to loss of muscle function.

"We could, in theory, turn something that is uncontrollable into something that is controllable. This is the ultimate ambition, but there is a huge leap in the middle," Towlson said.

To make sense of the nematode brain, Towlson created a map of the connections between neurons and muscles. She was surprised by the relative simplicity of the model, composed of ones and zeros that indicated whether or not there was a connection. Researchers also made a number of assumptions with regard to the biological parameters.

"And it still comes out with this level of prediction," Towlson said. "That amazes me. In my mind, that says we're really getting at something fundamental."

Moving forward, Towlson would like to examine the nematode brain network in more detail. She knows which neurons control which muscles and their corresponding movements. But how much energy and time does one wiggle take compared to another, and does that explain why the worms move in the ways they do?

Towlson also wants to apply the control principles to other models.

"I think the next sensible steps for us are zebra fish, maybe mouse, and then human," Towlson said. "The human brain is always the ultimate dream."

More information: Gang Yan et al. Network control principles predict neuron function in the Caenorhabditis elegans connectome, Nature (2017). Journal information: Nature Gang Yan et al. Network control principles predict neuron function in the Caenorhabditis elegans connectome,(2017). DOI: 10.1038/nature24056
A study of 100 people with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) receiving chemotherapy found that patient and physician perceptions of treatment risk and the likelihood of a cure varied widely. Overall, patients tended to overestimate both the risk of dying due to treatment and the likelihood of a cure. These findings will be presented at the upcoming 2017 Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium in San Diego, California.

"Patients with AML face very challenging treatment decisions that are often placed upon them within days after being diagnosed," said senior study author Areej El-Jawahri, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA. "Because they face a grave decision, they need to understand what the risks of treatment are versus the possibility of a cure."

About the Study

The researchers enrolled 50 patients who were receiving intensive care for AML (which usually meant hospitalization for 4 to 6 weeks) and 50 patients who were receiving non-intensive care (often given as outpatient treatment). The median patient age was 71 years, 92% were white, more than 50% had a college education, and most were from higher income brackets.

Within three days after starting treatment, both the patients and their physicians were given a questionnaire to assess how they perceived the likelihood of dying from the treatment. One month later, they completed a follow-up questionnaire to assess perceptions of prognosis. Within that timeframe, most patients received laboratory results that more definitively established the type and stage of cancer.

Key Findings

Regardless of whether they received intensive or non-intensive care, 63% of patients thought it was somewhat likely they would die due to treatment, and 28% thought it was extremely likely they would die. In contrast, 80% of the treating oncologists thought it was very unlikely that their patients would die due to treatment.

One month later, nearly all (90%) of patients thought it was somewhat or very likely they would be cured of their AML. In contrast, 74% of their oncologists thought it was unlikely or very unlikely that their patients would be cured. The gap between patient and doctor perceptions was most striking for patients receiving non-intensive therapy, with 44% of patients believing they would very likely be cured, while none of their oncologists thought this was very likely.

"There were several very important factors we were not able to capture in our study, including what was actually discussed between patients and their oncologists, and whether patients simply misunderstood or misheard the information conveyed to them," said Dr. El-Jawahri. "Perhaps most importantly, we did not audio-record the discussions between the patients and their physicians, which could provide additional details regarding barriers to accurate prognostic understanding in these conversations."

Prior to this study, the authors had looked at similar perceptions in people with lung, colorectal, and other cancers, as well as in people with blood cancers receiving hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The gaps in perception of treatment risk and cure for patients as compared to their physicians were not as large in those diseases as in AML. The researchers attribute this to higher levels of distress seen in people with AML due to the urgency of their treatment decisions.

Next Steps

The researchers have found that early consideration of palliative care in a treatment plan for patients with solid tumors improves patients' understanding of the prognosis. They hope to implement a similar study in patients with leukemia.

"Clearly there are important communication gaps between oncologists and their patients," said Dr. El-Jawahri. "We need to find ways to help physicians do a better job of communicating with their patients, especially in diseases like AML where stress levels are remarkably high."
ECG Pillow Samples. Credit: Radar Advertising

A team of scientists from the SUSU's Institute of Sport, Tourism and Service is developing modern devices for non-contact ECG monitoring in order to improve its efficiency and expand the possibilities of diagnostics. At present, an innovative device is being tested at an intensive therapy unit of one of the Chelyabinsk hospitals which would allow to perform ECG screening of the condition of bed-case patients and disabled people. The final results of testing will be summarized in the end of October.

In modern medicine, early diagnostics and monitoring of the state of both people with various diseases and healthy people is very important. Electrocardiography is quite a simple and efficient method of controlling heart status.

For 3 years now, a team of scientists under supervision of Vladimir Kodkin, Doctor of Engineering Science, Professor at the ISTiS Department of Physical Education and Health, has been working on creating modern devices using a unique technology of non-contact electrocardiogram tracing. One of such devices is an orthopedic pillow with an in-built ECG monitoring system.

"At present orthopedic memory pillows are in very big demand at our hospitals. Most often such pillows are a necessity for patients with limited physical capacity to move around, that is bed-case patients. So, we came up with this idea: what if we could combine a pillow and a system for functional state monitoring?" says Vladimir Kodkin.

A pillowcase of such a pillow is made of special electrically conductive fabric with silver-plated fiber, to which graphene fibers are planned to be added in the future in order to enhance its conductivity. The scientists from South Ural State University are testing this innovation device at the intensive therapy unit of the Regional Children's Hospital. The obtained results already allow us to speak of high efficiency and big potential of such diagnostic devices. "Rosava" Trading Company acts as a partner in this research. Besides the pillow for bed-case patients, a pillow for newborns is also being designed.

"For now it is quite a problem to perform electrocardiogram tracing with a baby as you have to undress it, attach special electrodes to its arms, and since it is constantly moving, it is difficult to do the ECG screening. Our pillow will help resolve these problems because with our device a baby can remain in napkins  the main condition is that its head touches the pillow," explains Vladimir Lvovich.

Vladimir Kodkin developed a special computer program for this research. But since the non-contact method produces a non-standard ECG signal, doctors and physiologists will have to learn to read it.

Another field where the SUSU scientists are using the system of non-contact electrocardiogram tracing is working with athletes. A special T-shirt was created for them made of the same electrically conductive fabric with in-built electrodes. Anastasia Khafizova, a postgraduate at the Department of Physical Education and Health and Director of a small innovative enterprise fulfilling this program, has been actively participating in this scientific work.

"Wearing this T-shirt an athlete will not feel any discomfort which could be associated for instance with using a heart-rate monitor. We performed tests with a stationary bicycle which proved that seeing an electrocardiogram is not a problem at all. You could also calculate heart rhythm and a range of other parameters,"explains Anastasia Khafizova.

As of today, quite a big number of papers on heart rate variability have been published in Chelyabinsk and other Russian cities. But in all of them heart rate variability is assessed without loads. The experiments by the scientists from South Ural State University show that using modern gadgets, such as a non-contact ECG T-shirt, you can monitor how a person works out under load, how his or her heart rate variability changes, you can trace the variability character and see what is happening to body when it relaxes. This allowed the scientists to come up with certain hypotheses of human heart behavior under load.

"After a work-intensive phase athletes normally undergo a recovery period, during which medications are frequently used," elaborates Vladimir Kodkin. "In order to prevent severe recovery process, you may, using our device, monitor the electrocardiogram readings already during the training period. It will allow to timely advise an athlete on when it is better to take a short break, lower load, or at which exact moments the fatigue is the highest. This will help reach the best results in sports, as well as prevent serious health problems."

Today, the heads of the SUSU's Institute of Sport, Tourism and Service are developing various programs on launching non-contact ECG T-shirts into mass use. Also, the scientists are working on wireless communications, what requires implementation of certain technical innovations.

"Surely, analogous developments already exist around the world," admits Vladimir Lvovich. "For instance, there is a similar ECG T-shirt in the USA. However, in the American version only such parameters as heart rhythm and rate are monitored. These readings may be obtained with a common heart-rate monitor. Our device deals with a wider complex of human health status parameters."

For several solutions, for instance one for non-contact ECG, the SUSU scientists have already obtained patents. Now, they have filed a patent application for the non-stop monitoring device and the use of electrically conductive fabrics, and a series of other patent applications is being prepared. Moreover, the scientists are developing a program which will be independently analyzing data and suggesting simple recommendations such as "take a break," "consult a doctor," and others. But to reveal the required data, an experimental data base should be augmented. The joint work planned with the Chelyabinsk Regional Hospital will undoubtedly provide the required data for further research.

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Gayathri Devi, PhD, studies how inflammatory breast cancer cells are able to evade the bodys programmed cell death mechanisms that normally get rid of damaged or abnormal cells. We see that these cancer cells ... are basically saying, Bring it on, Im going to use this fundamental cellular process to my advantage. Credit: Ken Huth

When you think of breast cancer, you probably picture a telltale lump. Gayathri Devi, PhD, dispels that image with a few photos: a person's chest with what looks like a rash, then a thermographic version of the image showing the heat from elevated blood flow spread throughout the chest. This is inflammatory breast cancer (IBC).

Most patients with IBC don't have a single tumor mass that can be isolated and removed. Instead, the cancer appears as clusters of tumor cells called tumor emboli that infiltrate the skin and lymphatic vessels of the chest. "It's highly diffuse, so that even if you collect the tissue, there are hardly any tumor cells in the biopsy," says Devi, an associate professor of surgery and pathology. And, patients are treated with chemotherapy and radiation before surgery, which adds to the lack of tumor samples for research. Devi is developing better ways to sample, image, and understand IBC, enlisting help from researchers and clinicians in many other fields.

IBC is studied by only a handful of groups in the world, in part because it is rare. But it is the most aggressive form of breast cancer. IBC accounts for only about 6 percent of all breast cancers in the United States but causes 10 percent of the overall breast cancer deaths.

Because IBC is so dangerousit resists treatment and easily spreads (metastasizes)Devi thinks that what she learns can be applied to help fight other types of aggressive cancers. The

Department of Defense agrees; in August 2017, they gave Devi and collaborators a $1.9 million "Breakthrough Award" to study why some breast cancers are more metastatic than others, based in large part on her pilot research with IBC. Collaborators include Mark Dewhirst, PhD, and Greg Palmer, PhD, who provide expertise in imaging; Mike Morse, MD, who helps with identifying immune biomarkers; and Shelley Hwang, MD, chief of breast surgery, and Shannon

McCall, MD, Director of the Duke Biorepository and Precision Pathology Center, who work to increase banking of patient tumor samples.

It is IBC's differences that may hold the key to understanding all types of metastatic breast cancer. One characteristic that makes any breast cancer more likely to spread is if it invaded the lymphatic system. And about 95 percent of IBCs have already done that when diagnosed. Rather than spread through a single cell that travels the bloodstream, most IBC travels in clusters, via vessels in the skin that carry lympha fluid that contains immune system cells whose very job is to fight intruders. "How do these tumor clusters and tumor cells not only survive in that environment but also invade and go into different organs?" Devi says.

To study that question, Devi has developed some unique models; one takes cancer cells collected from patients and grows them in culture, and another in mice. "We aim to study

the disease from bedside to bench, then back," she says. They take cell samples from patients, grow them in these models, then look for activation or inhibition of genomic and protein markers that regulate the cancer cells' ability to survive, proliferate, and become invasive. Then the team will determine if patients express those same markers. The hope is that the markers that ring true in both the models and in the patients will be targets for better treatment.

Inside the body, IBC cells are accustomed to the "shear stress" of the lymphatic systemthe movement of lymph flowing through vessels in the skin. Devi's cell-culture IBC model uses machines to mimic that motion, enabling the researchers to study the actual formation of the tumor emboli a hallmark of IBC.

Using these more realistic models, Devi has found that IBC is very good at escaping a tightly controlled process that our bodies use to get rid of abnormal cells, called programmed cell death. "To maintain homeostasis and cell populations in tissues, millions of our cells die every second and are replaced," she explains.

To escape cell death, her laboratory has found, IBC cells take advantage of a process that normal cells use to survive during times of cellular stress, called the adaptive stress response. "The cancer cells are changing and adapting and signaling in the tumor microenvironment such that they are basically saying, 'Bring it on, I'm going to use this fundamental cellular process to my advantage.'" If Devi could shut down that ability, she could slow down IBC and make it more sensitive to anti-cancer drugs.

Devi's team recently found that IBC cells express high levels of proteins that inhibit programmed cell death. After screening drug and chemical libraries, her team tested an existing drug used to manage alcoholism, called disulfiram, and found that it can counteract those proteins. "We showed that disulfiram is able to override this adaptive stress response at multiple points," Devi says. "It was able to kill the cancer cells while sparing normal cells in IBC."

When the researchers combined disulfiram with copper, it improved the ability of the drug to get inside the IBC tumor clusters. "It's very difficult to target and get all the way inside the tumor emboli, because it's a cluster of tumor cells that are constantly moving and have different features," Devi says. "Disulfiram in combination with copper provides a novel way to target and inhibit formation of the IBC tumor emboli directly."

Devi and collaborator Hwang (the breast cancer surgeon) are seeking funding for a clinical trial that adds disulfiram to IBC treatment. That isn't easy to get, because this treatment won't be a money-maker. "Disulfiram is a generic drug. It's very inexpensive to buy and therefore a challenge to get industry support for drug repurposing," Devi says. "We need to engage advocates and increase community awareness. This is the reality of trying to fight an orphan disease."
Anwar Gargash: UAE has no interest in choosing sides between great powers

Ukraine suspends oil pumping through Druzhba pipeline towards Hungary

Germany urgently needs gas turbines to stabilize power grids

Polish media report on fall of two missiles on country's territory

Economic downturn worsens in eastern EU due to a spike in inflation

U.S. believes that meeting between Biden and Jinping was strong signal to rest of world

Karabakh MFA welcomes resolution adopted by French Senate

Italy bans facial recognition technology and smart glasses

Germany to establish maintenance center in Slovakia for weapons supplied to Ukraine

Energy Ministry: Russia carried out most massive shooting of Ukraine's energy system since war starts

French Senate passes resolution calling for sanctions against Azerbaijan

Rishi Sunak hints that he will abandon plans to declare China 'threat' to national security

EU supports any call to phase out fossil fuel use

Secretary of Security Council of Armenia receives delegation of EU special envoys, member states

Armenian President Vahagn Khachatryan receives newly appointed ambassador of Cyprus

Zelenskyy's adviser: The situation after Russian shelling is critical

Newly appointed ambassador of Cyprus visits Armenian Genocide memorial

Borrell: EU countries must work together to replenish their military stocks

French Senator: Are the lives of Armenians worth less than the lives of Ukrainians?

Turkey plans to strike targets in northern Syria

Emergency power outages in Kyiv due to explosions

Lavrov calls Zelenskyy's speech at G20 summit performance beyond all regulations and decency

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince embarks on Asian tour

Ukrainian media report missile strikes in number of areas

Chinese 50-year-old man runs marathon smoking

Pashinyan receives delegation of EU special envoys, EU member states on Eastern Partnership

Bloomberg: Paris overtakes London to become Europe's largest stock market

Anti-Iranian rally held in Baku

Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin: Pashinyan's approaches and wordings do not contribute to solving urgent problems

Borrell announces appearance of EU rapid reaction force in 2023

Norwegian Defense Minister pledges $30 million to NATO fund for Ukraine

Italy auctioned biggest truffle for record 184 thousand euros

Serviceman kills fellow soldier in Armenia

Kyodo: 67-year-old Japanese princess diagnosed with breast cancer

Mehriban Aliyeva hurriedly gives up her role of UNESCO 'Goodwill Ambassador' before French Senate meeting

Jeff Bezos says he's ready to give away most of his fortune

Britain to allocate $11.8m to rebuild Ukraine's energy infrastructure

Peskov: Kyiv cannot and doesn't want to negotiate, SVO will continue

Turkey detains another suspect in planning terrorist attack in Istanbul

Tasnim: Iranian authorities released 38 protesters in southeast

Terrorist attack: Number of detainees in Istanbul grows to 50

Armenian FM presents to Europeans consequences of September Azerbaijani aggression

Biden and Erdogan back extension of grain deal

Macron and Erdogan meet on G20 margins

UN: Earth's population is 8 billion people

Indian PM urges G20 countries to find peaceful solution to Ukraine

Minimum wage to rise in Armenia

Ministry: Air pollution level in Armenia up by 30-40% over the past five years

Erdogan and Biden hold talks in Bali

Media: Macron asks Xi Jinping to 'pressure' Putin to return to negotiations

UN: Armenia's population will decrease by 2050

Zelenskyy states that only realistic model of POW exchange is all for all

Ameriabank launches Google Pay, Google Wallet support for card users in Armenia

Argentine President Fernandez feels ill at G20 summit

Ruben Vardanyan receives head of ICRC mission: We must ensure a peaceful childhood for children living in Artsakh

Copper rises in price

Newspaper: Armenian Prime Minister wants to hold referendum on constitutional amendments in spring

Ardshinbank showcases the Google Pay for Android fans in Armenia

Zelenskyy calls not to offer Ukraine compromise with territory and independence

Secretary of State: U.S. stands ready to continue support for Karabakh settlement

Google Pay is a new contactless payment option for Converse Bank customers

French Senate to consider resolution on sanctions against Azerbaijan

Zelenskyy addresses G20 leaders: It's time to stop Russia's war

Karen Vardanyan donated 112 million drams for the medical equipment for National Center for Infectious Diseases

Another four-day parliamentary session begins in Yerevan

Gold declines in value

World oil prices go down

Plans to build 'death pyramid' in London that will hold millions of bodies

Armenian and Georgian Foreign Ministries hold consultations in Tbilisi

Azerbaijani and Iranian FMs hold phone conversation

Steve Jobs' sandals sold for more than $200,000

Armenian PM accuses Azerbaijani leader of terrorizing Armenian civilians

Azerbaijan shells Armenian positions on border again

OPEC downgrades its forecast for global oil demand growth in 2022

White House: Biden and Xi Jinping agree on Blinken's visit to China

CNN: CIA chief Burns meets with SVR director Naryshkin in Ankara

Turkish FM Cavusoglu thanks Ararat Mirzoyan for condolences

Putin signs decree allowing stateless persons to serve in Russian army

Airbus CEO: There is no question of them breaking off trade ties

Armen Grigoryan receives Igor Khovayev

Britain and France sign agreement on strengthening cooperation on illegal migration

US updates its sanctions list for Russia: Milur Electronics LLC, an Armenian company listed

Potatoes prices grow by 20%: expert claims agriculture collapse in Armenia

Peskov says Russian-American talks in Ankara initiated by Washington

Morgan Stanley: UK and euro zone economies are likely to face recession

Xi Jinping hopes for comprehensive dialogue between NATO, the EU and the US and Russia

Japan proposes to deploy Australian nuclear submarines

Biden calls talks with Xi Jinping at G20 summit frank

WB: Debt levels among low- and middle-income countries soared in 2021

Xi Jinping: China does not intend to challenge the U.S.

Scholz: Adopting a joint G20 summit statement is a tough task

Biden and Xi Jinping oppose use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine

Nikol Pashinyan receives Russian co-chair of OSCE Minsk Group

IMF head warns of risks for world economy because of rivalry between China and US

Irakli Garibashvili: Georgia is ready to promote in every possible way the dialogue between Armenia and Azerbaijan

Red Wings airline launches direct flights from Makhachkala to Yerevan

Olaf Scholz: EU should expand its cooperation with Southeast Asian countries

Global Leadership Foundation will visit Armenia

Kurdistan Workers' Party denies its involvement in Istanbul terrorist attack

NATO Secretary General says they must not make mistake of underestimating Russia
A Russian contracted serviceman fired on a fellow soldier and killed him and, subsequently, committed suicide in Armenia, informed the press service of the Southern Military Okrug (district; SMO) of the Russian Armed Forces.

According to the respective statement, while handing over weapons after exercises at Alagyaz shooting range on Monday, the said contracted serviceman violated safety rules, unintentionally fired from an automatic weapon, causing a fatal gunshot wound to another contracted serviceman. And in fear of the accountability for what occurred, he killed himself.

It is noted that the SMO commission is working on site to find out the circumstances of this incident.
After a 100-year gap, Armenian handmade carpets will again decorate the altars and entrance halls of Armenian Apostolic Churches.

The launch of this charity project initiated by Mikayel Minasyan, Armenias Ambassador to the Holy See, was given Monday at Gandzasar Monastery in the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic/NKR) (PHOTOS).

Rugs in many Armenian churches were factory-made and non-Armenian, and Minasyan had observed this during his pilgrimage to Gandzasar, two years ago.

The place where I work [i.e. The Vatican] is known for two things: great attention to symbols and recollection, the ambassador noted, in particular, at the blessing ceremony for three carpets in Gandzasar Monastery. Now, the Gandzasar carpet bears those two [things] in it.

This charitable project aims to prepare handmade entrance rugs as well as altar and entrance hall carpets for Gandzasar, Dadivank, Ghazanchetsots, and Green Monastery (St. John the Baptist) churches in Artsakh.

The carpet-blessing ceremony at Gandzasar monastery also brought together NKR President Bako Sahakyan, businessmen, and MPs.

The other three churches that are included in the project also will soon have unique handmade rugs of their own.
By PTI: New Delhi, Oct 24 (PTI) Lt Governor Anil Baijal has approved the Delhi governments proposal to declare October 26 a public holiday on the occasion of Chhath puja in the city, an official said today.

Delhi government offices will be shut on October 26 in the national capital.

Last year too, the AAP government had declared the public holiday on the occasion of this festival in Delhi.

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"The L-G has approved the governments proposal to declare a public holiday on October 26 on the occasion of Chhath Puja," said the official, who did not wish to be named.

Meanwhile, with the beginning of the four-day festival in the city, the Delhi government said that it has chalked out a plan to check arrangements at all ghats by the ministers, including the chief minister, MLAs and officers concerned.

Development Minister Gopal Rai said that the government had developed 565 Chhath ghats across the city which include 50 permanent ghats.

The remaining are semi-pucca ghats. These have been made for the ease of the people for performing the puja, he told reporters here.

Rai said that the AAP government had allocated Rs 20 crore in its Budget for developing the Chhath ghats.

"MLAs, SDMs, assistant engineers, junior engineers will inspects all the ghats in their respective areas and will take stock of situation on October 25 and 26, while the chief minister and all the ministers will inspect the ghats next day, during the celebration," he said.

According to the minister, the revenue department and the Delhi Tirth Yatra Samiti will arrange for the tents, temporary toilets, ambulances, lighting, seating arrangements, drinking water and other requisite arrangements. PTI BUN ANB

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In accordance with the arrangement reached with the authorities of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic; NKR), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Mission on Wednesday will conduct a planned monitoring of the Line of Contact between the armed forces of Artsakh and Azerbaijan, in the southeast direction of Hadrut Region of the NKR.

From the positions of the Defense Army of the Republic of Artsakh, the monitoring will be conducted by Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office; his field assistant Ognjen Jovic (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Office staff member Martin Schuster (Germany); as well as Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Farrely (Ireland) representative of the OSCE High-Level Planning Group,.

The authorities of the Republic of Artsakh have expressed their readiness to assist in holding the monitoring and to ensure the safety of the OSCE Mission members.
Now, there is some tension, as compared with the situation a week ago.

The Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic/NKR) Defense Minister and Defense Army Commander, Levon Mnatsakanyan, stated the abovementioned at a press conference on Tuesday. He noted this reflecting on the Azerbaijani armed forces firing of Spike anti-tank guided missiles twice on Monday.

He noted that this tension is due to Azerbaijans violation of the ceasefire, and recalled that a serviceman was killed by an Azerbaijani sniper on October 19.

Mnatsakanyan added that tension along the line of contact may gradually increase.

We have already informed that if such strikes [by Azerbaijan] occur later on [as well], there will be a response, said the NKR defense minister. We will meet with representatives of the OSCE Minsk Group in the coming days, and we will discuss the created situation.
YEREVAN.  The European Union (EU) will continue cooperation in assisting local and regional authorities.

Ambassador Piotr Switalski, Head of the Delegation of the EU to Armenia, stated about the aforesaid at a press conference on Tuesday.

In his words, the EU makes all efforts so that the new partnership agreement with Armenia will be signed and implemented.

Switalski added that Yerevan likewise is determined, and it stands ready to make all efforts to resolve the matter.
YEREVAN.  Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian, who has arrived in Palermo, Italy, on Tuesday met with the Austrian Secretary-General for Foreign Affairs, Michael Linhart, who heads the delegation of Austria which currently chairs the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE); and Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).

They reflected on OSCE agenda issues and Armenias active involvement in the activities of this organization, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia informed Armenian News-NEWS.am.

Also, the interlocutors discussed preparations for the OSCE conference that will be held in November in Armenias capital city of Yerevan, and which will be devoted to the prevention of and reaction to hate crimes against Christians and other religious groups.

In addition, they conferred on the OSCE Ministerial Conference to be held in Vienna in December.
From Syria alone Armenia has harbored about 22,000 refugees, on per capita basis making our country the third largest recipient of Syrian refugees in Europe.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian on Tuesday stated the aforementioned in his address at the 2017 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Mediterranean Conference in Palermo, Italy.

I would like to thank Minister Alfano and his team for the organization of this Conference, Nalbandian noted, in particular. It is widely acknowledged that the security of the OSCE area and of the Mediterranean region is interconnected and the recent developments came to prove the veracity of this assumption. The unprecedented large movements of migrants and refugees across Mediterranean and Middle East, in particular from Syria and Iraq require close regional cooperation in order to address such security related issues as combating terrorism, countering trafficking, dignified treatment of refugees, to name a few.

From Syria alone Armenia has harbored about 22,000 refugees, on per capita basis making our country the third largest recipient of Syrian refugees in Europe. This has caused a number of challenges for a country of just 3 million which has in the recent past already received hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing from Azerbaijan. Many of the Syrian Armenian refugees are descendants of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide who found shelter in Syria. One hundred years passed, they were forced once again to abandon their places of residence. Thus, Armenians know what it means to be a refugee and to host refugees.

The Government of Armenia has undertaken substantial efforts in assisting the refugees and facilitating their integration. We offered wide variety of protection tools such as accelerated asylum procedures, facilitated naturalization, emergency and medical assistance, housing, scholarships, simplified access to educational institutions and labor market, flexible taxation and business environment. We are grateful for certain international support provided to Armenia in this regard and look forward for the continued cooperation.

Armenia has also tried to reach out to the people who need assistance in Syria by continuous provision of humanitarian aid. The Consulate General of Armenia in Aleppo has been the only diplomatic mission in the city that despite challenging conditions has never stopped operating.

It goes without saying that comprehensive response to the large movements of migrants and refugees requires addressing root causes of this phenomenon, such as terrorism and identity based crimes. Armenia was among the first in the OSCE to raise these issues and strongly advocate for the strengthening of the OSCE commitments in this regard. The condemnation of persecutions of individuals and communities, including on the basis of their religion or belief, bringing to justice those who participate in perpetrating terrorist acts, preventing cross-border movement of foreign fighters, weapons, funds connected to the terrorist activities are important parts of the OSCE commitments enshrined in the Hamburg ministerial declaration on terrorism. We are convinced in the continuation of the OSCE efforts in this regard.
At the invitation of Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan, his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday arrived in Armenia on a two-day official visit. He was greeted at the airport by Karapetyan.

Within the framework of the visit, the two PMs will have a tete-a-tete that will be followed by extended format discussions. In addition, several documents on cooperation are expected to be signed in capital city Yerevan.

In addition, Medvedev is scheduled to be received by President Serzh Sargsyan.

And on Wednesday, the Russian PM will attend the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council meeting with his colleagues from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Despite the Haryana government's claim that it strictly bars the slaughter of cows, biryani made of cow meat is openly sold in the state's Mewat region.

Cops say cows are slaughtered in almost every house in Mewat, the reason for easy availability of beef biryani.

By Ajay Kumar: Despite a stringent ban, beef appears to be easy meat for traders in Haryana's Muslim-dominated Mewat region.

The state's cow protection laws are among the toughest in the country as the punishment for slaughter is 10 years in jail and a person could be imprisoned for five years for trading in beef and fined up to Rs 50,000.

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Sources say on an average two FIRs are filed every week under the Haryana Gau Sanrakshan and Gausamvardhan Act (HGSSA) at the Nuh police station alone.

But the station house officer (SHO) isn't hesitant in admitting the rampant cow killing and easy availability of beef biryani in the district.

"We have registered 70 FIRs under HGSSA only in Nuh police station this year," Vipin, the SHO, told Mail Today. "Slaughtering of cows is taking place in almost every house and beef biryani is available in the market."

Sources say being the district head quarters, Nuh city and adjoining Tawru witness fewer cases and FIRs pertaining to cow slaughter, while police stations in remote areas like Firozpur Jhirka, Punhana and Hodal record higher numbers.

Nuh district was created as Mewat by taking areas from Gurugram district and the Hathin Block of Faridabad district in 2005. However, it was renamed in 2016 as Mewat is a cultural region which spans Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

VENDORS CLAIM SELLING BIRYANI WITH COW MEAT

Mail Today visited Mewat and found more than a dozen food carts on either side of the historic Ghaseda village where vendors said they were selling biryani with cow meat. This newspaper could not independently verify the claims.

This reporter went undercover and asked Samshuddin, a vendor, to serve a plate of beef biryani. The hawker was initially hesitant and said the dish contained buffalo meat.

But on being prodded a little, he claimed that the biryani available on every cart in the locality was of beef.

Samshudin said it is a common practice in Ghaseda and all locals know about it. "But we cannot disclose this to people of other districts as chances of a raid are always looming on us," he said.

The slaughter of cows, revered by many Hindus, was already banned in most parts of India.

But right-wing leaders and cow vigilante groups have been increasingly asserting themselves since the BJP took power at the Centre in 2014 and won a series of state polls, including in Haryana.

FEAR OF POLICE RAIDS

While the vendor displayed a fear of surprise police sweeps and sample collection, business is as usual in Mewat.

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"The current government in Haryana is not good for people like us as officials often take samples from our carts, followed by registering an FIR on us. They have done it in the past and so we always take precautions while selling biryani to outsiders," Samshuddin said.

The situation was similar at the main traffic intersection of Nuh on NH-248. Mail Today found two food carts on either side, adjacent to a police check post, with hawkers claiming they were selling beef biryani.

Before admitting to this, one of the sellers, Shahrukh, asked the undercover reporter his religion.

"The consumers are mostly locals and they know the taste of biryani made from cow meat. If we would sell them the dish with buffalo meat or mutton, they would not buy it," Shahrukh said.

Beef biryani is in huge demand in Mewat and vendors like him easily earn Rs 3,000-3,500 a day by selling at least two big tubs of it, he said. Another hawker, Salim, added beef is readily available here at Rs 200-225 per kilogram.

COW TRAFFICKING

According to sources, most cow slaughtering happens in houses owned by more affluent residents of the region.

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Killing of the bovines also takes place in the Aravalli hills as it only requires small rooms. Because of the huge demand, cow smugglers are very active in the area.

They traffic cows from across states using various routes and do not shy away from even attacking the police and cow protectors.

Bhani Ram Mangla, chairman of Haryana government's Gau Sewa Ayog, told Mail Today that his team collected samples of biryani from Mewat's Firozpur Jhirka area and a laboratory found beef in all of them.

"We also registered an FIR following this, but activists from the region also filed cases in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, arguing that beef is a traditional and religious food," he said.

"This case put us on the back foot. But we are hopeful the matter would be cleared up by this year-end and following that, an intense drive will be launched against offenders."

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The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) conference on Countering and preventing hate crimes against Christians and members of other religious groups will be held in Armenias capital city of Yerevan on November 22. The participation and contribution of our Mediterranean partners will be welcome.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian on Tuesday announced the above-said in his address at the 2017 OSCE Mediterranean Conference in Palermo, Italy.

Historically, the Mediterranean has been not a natural barrier dividing Europe, Africa and the Middle East, but rather a bridge linking so many civilizationsArmenians among themthriving on its hospitable shores, he added. We strongly believe that these traditions should be further strengthened.
YEREVAN.  The tete-a-tete between Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, who on Tuesday arrived in Armenia on an official visit, has begun in capital city.

This private conversation will be followed by extended format discussions and document signing ceremony.

In addition, Medvedev is scheduled to be received by President Serzh Sargsyan.

And on Wednesday, the Russian PM will attend the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council meeting with his colleagues from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.
The April 2016 war was not just an attack by Azerbaijani forces, but a large-scale war, Karabakh President Bako Sahakyan said in an interview to the "Military Diplomat".

According to him, the goal of this attack was the destruction of the Karabakh statehood through the lightning war.

"This "blitzkrieg" failed; aggressor has not achieved its goals. The defense army once again showed a high level of combat readiness, and our people showed unshakable will, dedication and high patriotism.

But this does not mean that we did not have shortcomings and omissions. And the main task is to constantly improve the defense system, taking into account changes in the military-political situation, development of scientific and technical progress and many other factors," Bako Sahakyan said.
YEREVAN.  Turnover between Armenia and Russia has increased by 23.5 percent in the first eight months of 2017.

Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan on Tuesday stated the aforementioned during his talk with his Russian colleague Dmitry Medvedev, who has arrived in Armenia on an official visit.

In Karapetyans words, new opportunities for economic growth are ahead.

I believe todays meeting is a good opportunity to discuss the prospects for further development, he added, in particular.

Medvedev, for his part, decided to make a correction. My numbers are better, he said. The turnover of our countries has increased by 30 percent in the period of January to August. So, I suggest using that number.

The Russian PM added that the growth in Armenias exports shows that the line of economic hardship has been surmounted, and it remains to hope that investment cooperation will not lag behind that of trade.

Most importantly, in recent times, Armenia and Russia have been able to build a cooperation model not solely at a bilateral level, but [within] the EAEU [Eurasian Economic Union, which comprises Armenia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan], Dmitry Medvedev concluded, in particular.
YEREVAN.- In the framework of Russian PM Dmitry Medvedevs official visit to Armenia, a number of documents have been signed today in the Office of Government, related to telecommunication and logistics, emergency situations, as well as direct cooperation between individual administrative units.

The intergovernmental agreement on international automobile communications was signed by Armenian Minister of Transport, Communication and Information Technologies Vahan Martirosyan and Russian Minister of Transport Maxim Sokolov.

The Armenian Ministry of Transport, Communication and Information Technologies and the Russian Ministry of Transport also signed a memorandum of understanding on Reducing Tariffs for Roaming Data Communication Services between the Republic of Armenia and the Russian Federation. The document was signed by Armenian Minister of Transport, Communication and Information Technologies Vahan Martirosyan and Russian Minister of Communications and Mass Media Nikolai Nikiforov.

An agreement on cooperation in the field of industrial safety regulations was signed between the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Republic of Armenia and the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological, and Nuclear Supervision. The document was signed by Armenian Minister of Emergency Situations David Tonoyan and Head of Russian Federal Service for Environmental, Technological, and Nuclear Supervision Alexei Aleshin.

Gegharkunik Marz Governor Karen Botoyan and Saratov Governor Valery Radayev signed a protocol on intentions between Gegharkunik Marz Administration and the Government of Saratov Region of Russia.
YEREVAN.  Russian business will be welcomed in the free economic zone on the border with Iran. Armenian Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan said during his joint briefing with Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.

Armenia is open to any investments, including the Russian ones, he said answering reporters questions on Tuesday.

Russian PM also confirmed readiness to work with Iran.

We have good relations with Iran, whether someone likes it or not. Therefore, if our friends in the Eurasian Union create such a zone with Iran, we are ready to participate in its development, including the efforts to invite Russian business there, Medvedev said.

Thus, the possibility of participation of Russian state-run organizations on support of exports will be considered, he added.
Russia is ready to broaden cooperation with Armenia in terms of agricultural machinery deliveries, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced after the talks with his Armenian colleague Karen Karapetyan held at the Armenian Government.

"We are ready to continue working on supplies of agricultural machinery products," the prime minister said. "I believe we have vast opportunities in this area," he said.

Fruits and juices from Armenia enjoy demand in Russia, Medvedev said. The food embargo currently effective in Russia is positive for the increase in deliveries from member-states of the Eurasian Economic Union, including Armenia, he noted.

"We do not have major greenhouse and processing projects so far. We should definitely deal with that," Medvedev said.
The trailer of Kapil Sharma-starrer Firangi was released on the internet today.

By India Today Web Desk: After making his debut with the 2015 film Kis Kisko Pyar Karoon, Kapil Sharma is back with another big screen outing, Rajiev Dhingra's Firangi. Firangi is a period drama set in British-ruled India, and fans are excited to see their favourite comedian do something different.

At a time when the freedom movement was gaining momentum in India, Kapil's character Manga believes that the British are of no harm. In fact, he even gets employment with the British, thanks to his unique talent of curing the Britishers' back pain with a swift kick.

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All is hunky-dory, till he falls in love with a local beauty (played by Ishita Dutta). The girl's family is vehemently opposed to their match because they see Manga as "angrez ka naukar". How Kapil's character fights for his love forms the rest of the plot.

Firangi, which marks Kapil Sharma's foray into production, will hit the theatres on November 24.

WATCH FIRANGI TRAILER HERE

--- ENDS ---
By PTI: By Seema Hakhu Kachru

Houston, Oct 24 (PTI) The foster father of a missing 3- year-old Indian girl in the US was today arrested and charged with first-degree felony injury to a child, a day after the body of a small child was found in a culvert less than a kilometre from the familys home.

Wesley Mathews, 37, was arrested after he changed his story about his adoptive daughter Sherins disappearance, Texas police said.

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Mathews, who hails from Kerala, provided "an alternate statement of events" about Sherin to detectives after the body of a small child was found, police said, without providing any additional details.

He had previously claimed that Sherin went missing after he sent her outside their home at around 3 a.m. on October 7 as punishment for not drinking her milk.

Sherin, who has developmental issues and limited verbal communication skills, was last seen outside her familys backyard in Richardson city in Texas on October 7.

Mathews reportedly adopted Sherin two years ago from an orphanage in Bihar.

He was today charged with first-degree felony injury to a child, a crime punishable by up to life imprisonment. Bond was set at USD 1 million for him, Richardson police Sgt Kevin Perlich said.

Yesterday, the Richardson Police announced that they discovered the remains of a small child in a tunnel beneath a road, expressing apprehension that it was "most likely" that of Sherin. They, however, did not confirm the identity.

The body was discovered in a culvert beneath a road with the help of search dogs. Police have not released any details about how the child died.

The body was found about one km from the house of Mathews.

"This afternoon, Wesley Mathews was arrested and charged with Injury to a Child (TPC 22.04), a first degree felony punishable by life or from five to 99 years in prison," according to Richardson Police.

"He voluntarily arrived at the Richardson Police Station with his attorney and asked to speak with detectives. He provided an alternate statement of events from those which he had given previously, regarding the disappearance of Sherin," police said.

"Mathews is currently in the Richardson City Jail and his bond has been set at USD 1,000,000. We are still awaiting a positive identification from the Dallas County Medical Examiners office for the childs body found yesterday, believed to be Sherin Mathews," a police spokesman said.

Investigators are awaiting confirmation that the body of a child found in a culvert is that of the missing girl.

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The father was previously arrested and charged with felony endangerment to a child and was placed on electronic ankle monitoring. He surrendered his passport as a condition of making bond on October 9. He was later released.

Child Protective Services took custody of the Indian- American couples other biological daughter, age 4, shortly after Mathews was arrested.

Sini Mathews, the girls mother does not face any charges. She was in the house at the time, but was reportedly asleep and unaware of what her husband was doing, police had said earlier.

The older sibling of the missing girl will remain in foster care for at least three more weeks.

A Dallas County judge today postponed custody hearing until November 13 for the sister of Sherin to allow their father to hire an attorney.

Sherins case also caught the attention of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

"We are deeply concerned about the missing child. Indian Embassy in US is actively involved and they keep me informed," Swaraj tweeted on October 19.

"We are closely monitoring the Sherin Mathews case. We have established contact with the community and authorities," Indias Consul General in Houston, Anupam Ray had tweeted. PTI SHK PMS

--- ENDS ---

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I did not know that about Hitchcock. Huh. I have never seen any of his movies though so I'm not a fan.



Fuck all these men. At this point you can't trust famous or non-famous men really.

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Hitchcock also always imagined much more gruesome deaths for his 'icy blondes' than he was allowed to film at the time.

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His movies are amazing and I feel like trash for liking them so much. w

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BOO! SHAME ON YOU! i love art and creativity but i will never put those things above the well being of CHILDREN.

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Yikes @ all of them, but also at the source of that last video.



I'm glad ONTD favourite Ewan McGregor is finally getting called out too.

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lmao yeah there are a few other copies of that meryl video on youtube but they're all from those conservative sources. still, #exposeha

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lmao the anger I had when typing all of this up

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Jude Law must have offended the OP so much, he's listed twice. But yeah, list these people so I never forget, a lot of them I actually like, the fuckers.

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omg lmao I didnt even notice

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also Walter Salles, the Brazilian director

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So on top of every horrible, despicable thing Woody Allen has done, he also stole a joke from Groucho Marx?

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Hitchcock was fucking scum

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disney hiring a known child predator...

disgusting everyone on that list

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JFC.



Just burn the whole place down and start over. These men are the worst.

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crusty motherfuckers, i'm upset only one of them is dead



also can we talk about that greed commerical? omg what is that

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Seriously, it's fucking repulsive.

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Glad to see you shooting the big guns today, OP! These creeps are the worst of the Hollywood worst and every celebrity who works with and defends them deserves to be called out for it.

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so these past few days Asia Argento renounced her support of Polanski (she signed the petition). did we have a post about it?

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yep it makes me sick. although anyone SHOULD believe the farrows re: w**dy/look at his marriage and be like "what the actual fuck", polanski literally got tried and convicted for child rape, publicly, and still has people turn a blind eye. it honestly blows my mind

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yep, he didn't even have the balls to stay and assume the consequences.

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Scum

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the detail, the comments, the color coding.. I love this post

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By PTI: (Eds: Updating with more details and quotes)

By Seema Hakhu Kachru

Houston, Oct 24 (PTI) The foster father of a missing 3- year-old Indian girl was today arrested and charged with first-degree felony injury to a child, a day after the body of a small child was found in a culvert near their home in suburban Dallas.

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Wesley Mathews, 37, was arrested after the Indian- American changed his story about his adoptive daughter Sherins mysterious disappearance over two weeks ago, police in Richardson city, Texas, said.

Mathews had previously claimed that Sherin went missing after he sent her outside their home at around 3 a.m. on October 7 as punishment for not drinking her milk.

"He voluntarily arrived at the Richardson Police Station with his attorney and asked to speak with detectives. He provided an alternate statement of events from those which he had given previously, regarding the disappearance of Sherin," Richardon Police Department Spokesman Sergeant Kevin Perlich said.

The particulars of his statements that might have led to the charge have not yet been explained by authorities.

Mathews, who hails from Kerala, was booked into the Richardson City Jail on a USD one million bond.

First-degree felony injury to a child is punishable by up to life imprisonment or from five to 99 years in prison, US media reported.

Sherin, who has developmental issues and limited verbal communication skills, was last seen outside her familys backyard in Richardson city on October 7.

Mathews and his wife Sini reportedly adopted Sherin two years ago from an orphanage in Bihar.

Yesterday, the Richardson Police announced that they discovered the remains of a small child in a tunnel beneath a road, expressing apprehension that it was "most likely" that of Sherin. They, however, did not confirm the identity.

The body was discovered in a culvert beneath a road with the help of search dogs. Police have not released any details about how the child died. The body was found about one km from the house of Mathews.

"We are still awaiting a positive identification from the Dallas County Medical Examiners office for the childs body found yesterday, believed to be Sherin Mathews," Perlich said.

The father was previously arrested and charged with felony endangerment to a child and was placed on electronic ankle monitoring. He surrendered his passport as a condition of making bond on October 9. He was later released.

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Child Protective Services took custody of the Indian- American couples other biological daughter shortly after Mathews was arrested.

Sini Mathews, the girls mother does not face any charges. She was in the house at the time, but was reportedly asleep and unaware of what her husband was doing, police had said earlier.

Earlier in the day Mathews and his wife, Sini, attended a court hearing to determine whether they could regain custody of their 4-year-old biological daughter who was placed in protective custody after Sherin went missing.

But the judge at a Dallas County court decided that the older sibling of Sherin will remain in foster care for at least three more weeks.

The judge postponed custody hearing until November 13 to allow Mathews to hire a civil attorney.

The girl will remain in foster care until that hearing or until a judge orders a change in custody, said Marissa Gonzales, a spokeswoman for Child Protective Services.

"We do have the names of some relatives who have expressed interest in taking care of her," Gonzales said.

"We can begin looking into those relatives, but it is entirely up to the judge where she is placed," she said.

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On Monday evening, people gathered near the culvert where police found the body of a small child.

Many people expressed shock at the fathers second arrest.

"Justice should be done for this little child," said Indian-American Anthony Sabu. "This little child has gone through the worst things in her life. She was abandoned when she was born and this family adopted her, and this is not what we expected," Sabu was quoted as saying by NBC News.

Sherins case also caught the attention of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

"We are deeply concerned about the missing child. Indian Embassy in US is actively involved and they keep me informed," Swaraj tweeted on October 19.

"We are closely monitoring the Sherin Mathews case. We have established contact with the community and authorities," Indias Consul General in Houston, Anupam Ray had tweeted. PTI SHK PMS AKJ AKJ

--- ENDS ---
he's such trash

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mte

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Came here to comment exactly this

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mte I fucking hate this guy

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Whoa, he killed someone?

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He almost did. But he beat up the poor man so badly that he left him blind (either from one eye or both, dont remember the specifics). Also the man was a PoC



Edited at 2017-10-24 08:23 pm (UTC)

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he forgave himself so it's ok

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ifkr? or for stoning those innocent black kids...

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beating Vietnamese people was fine tho

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Ofc it is when Mark forgives himself. /s

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I thought I read the man he beat also forgave him?

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So he hopes God forgives this...does he think God is gonna forget about the times he violently assaulted people?

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are you also hoping to be forgiven for the only good thing you've ever done, ontd??



my god the accuracy. any goodwill i had for him before knowing his history was solely based on that movie.

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I loved The Departed. That's about it.

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he was shockingly good in that imo. i was like "who is that, and why are they trying to tell me it's mark wahlberg?"



he's been shit in pretty much everything else





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I feel like a lot of things that are happening right now are proof God doesn't exist.

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Not gonna ask God for guidance + forgiveness for your involvement in the Transformers franchise? For that haircut in the last film?



Poor. Choices.





PS God prefers Broadway > movies

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Look racist fuck, if you want forgiveness for any film you've done, let it be The Happening.

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Edited at 2017-10-24 05:37 pm (UTC) I'm gagging. CACKLING CACKLING. I laughed so hard in tears irl. Oh my gosh. This shit has to be the most fucking hilarious thing ever. My cheeks hurt rn. Fuck. CACKLING

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appropriate reaction tbfh

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lmao basically!

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I love her crazy ass, in and out of character

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Boogie Nights was about people being open about their sexuality in the porn industry. Women owning their sexuality, and being shamed for it. Plus, he'd be nothing without it.



If anything, I hope God forgives him for that horrible Transformers movie.

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What about The Happening?

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What no

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An iconic movie. Watching it in the theaters and literally everyone screaming "bitch, what?" like a million times throughout the movie was an experience!

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Well now you see why he hates it. Women?? Owning their sexuality?? Far worse than violently beating up a Vietnamese man.

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i hope god never forgives him for being a racist piece of shit

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RME

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Also, there is a difference in asking for the humane treatment of people who will eventually rejoin society and forgiving rapists and murderers.

Link to the post: https://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/108129482.html Also, there is a difference in asking for the humane treatment of people who will eventually rejoin society and forgiving rapists and murderers.

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What!? When did this happen?!

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Wait, what did I miss?

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wait what the fuck

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Overreacting much

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lmao, so now advocating for the humane treatment of prisoners, rehabilitation and reintegration when possible, & being against the death penalty = forgiving murderers and rapists? a-okay. have fun with your outdated, barbaric and ineffective legal system!

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This misrepresentation...

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fuck off.

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This place is filled with thieves not surprised they feel bad for fellow criminals.

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i read that posts and you're wrong and flaming on purpose.

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Nuance is really lost on you, huh?

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He picked the highest of SO MANY low points.

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That hair color doesn't suit her.

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it looks bad with her skin tone, imo, the color itself is cute af

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i think it looks better in the stills but it looks kinda uneven

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I can't wait for this! Saw the preview before The Florida Project and it's right up my alley. I love Saoirse, I love coming of age stuff, I liked Frances Ha... thank you for making this movie for me, guys!

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What did you think of The Florida Project? It's on my list of movies to watch for awards season.

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I thought it was really, really good. The story is simple and the plot is loose, but the emotional arc is pretty damn powerful. A lot of people didn't like it (I was reading twitter reactions and they are *very* divided), but I think if you are prepared going into it that it's an indie flick without a lot of heavy plotting, you will be able to appreciate it.

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It's terrible and problematic for so many reasons

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Went to a screening over the weekend. I was expecting it to be amazing but I thought it was alright.

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It is getting amazing reviews.





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i might check this out bc i like saoirse and laurie

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love Saoirse

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Saoirse is so beautiful

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It's so weird seeing Saoirse play teens again

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lmao i always wonder if there's like a level of which you can't go back after playing adults but whatever

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This looks cute and I'm always here for Laurie Metcalf.

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I saw this last weekend and it was pretty cute.

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oh my god

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a classic

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omg this was Anna Paquin? We had this on VHS and I loved it.

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oh nice to see you again

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get that oscar nom saoirse!

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She picks the most...mundane, talk to death movies but somehow I end up watching just because I like her that much.

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I didn't know this was happening. I love Saoirse and idc what anyone says I loved Frances Ha.

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He's a disgusting piece of shit and any designer who still uses him as their photographer can walk off a cliff

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i'm sorry.... that picture of obama is not real, is it? i am so concerned rn

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tooooootally missed that one, holy shit

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oh honey

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It's real...but it's not like Obama knows anything about fashion photography/probably has never heard of Terry Richardson before.

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i side eye people like gaga, oprah, and beyonce that say they're for female empowerment but still work with this piece of shit

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lol they're no more differ than the people on ontd who preach about mental health being taken seriously yet making fun of ppl who suffer from it or calling themselves feminists yet the same ones picking apart an actresses looks so

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Hypocrisy makes the world go round.

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Clearly there is no way they could be expected to know that is creepy and scummy!!!!!

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i ordered dinner, then i read this, and promptly lost my appetite.

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lmao who is that stone-faced girl?

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Olivia Munn, who is a huge slut-shamer.

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Olivia Munn

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omggg what's happening in that gif

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Olivia Munn grew on me that night.

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I like Taylor but that gif is everything.

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who is that? she either massively hate taylor or idk what.

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loool are that olivia munn and that dude that's not sheldon, from tbbt?

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wow what a total bitch

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Was this a real reaction or for the cameras? Either way, HA!

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this pos can rot in hell

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What the fuck at that picture. How the hell is that real.



Does he have mind control powers?



ETA: OK, I see it's from 2008 and pre-president. Crisis somewhat averted.



Edited at 2014-03-12 10:23 pm (UTC)

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OP, would you mind including a trigger warning in the title. Not being snarky, it's just that this story brought back a lot of emotions for me. As a survivor of 3 separate instances of sexual abuse and assault I can say that I would like nothing more than to watch this predator burn. Nevertheless, I can't find it within myself to write off every single person who's ever worked with my abuser. I feel the same way about celebrities who've posed for Terry.

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Pretty sure the OP's title of "A Horrifying Timeline of Terry Richardson Allegations, From Trash Cans to Tampon Tea" would be all the warning one would need.

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Idk why the fashion industry protects him other than those in charge must be involved in similar shit I'm sure celebs know/suspect stuff but the mags and studios I'm charge of hiring him have more to answer for They see behind the scenes and they let h get away with this shit because he's an 'artist' or they don't care about the girls Unknown models are treated so badly sometimes almost like human trafficking victims People don't give a shit about protecting these girls unless they come from money or are a big name Sick Jesus Christ what a fucking monster

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ew fucking disgusting

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let's see how this post turns out

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Someone needs to knock his ass out.

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I hope this fucker falls so far from grace that even the devil won't take his ass in hell.

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As a woman who is also a photographer, I just want to castrate him and send him into the sun.

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is it really that difficult at this point to understand that hollywood has no moral compass, they don't care about social justice or peoples feelings etc, money is all that matters to them

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ikr. I appreciate stuff like this bc at least it gets out there. It just sucks that the people who should care/have authority don't even give a fuck.

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even if that is the case, why the fuck would you hire this guy with the controversy surrounding him, when he isn't even a good fucking photographer? He objectively sucks and is only in the business because of his dad. Like why would you put your brand's reputation at risk for someone so mediocre?





And no, ONTD, I don't want you to show me examples from his ~early work.

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And no, ONTD, I don't want you to show me examples from his ~early work.



lol.



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Yea, this is something I don't get either. I don't listen to Terry fanboys (shudder)  but even the argument of him being prompt with the job is hard to accept.



You can't tell me there aren't more photographers out there who can meet deadlines and produce good work.

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Yep, people always forget that Mr. Indie Photographer is only relevant because of daddy. We already had Juergen Teller, we didn't need Terry.

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Because he's "in" ATM, so the brand/company gets hype just by hiring/using him. It's not a hype that every company would want, but enough do to keep TR in business. I hope some more widespread backlash happens soon, b/c this guy is a rapist.

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seriously and how is Hollywood different from any other corporation? Money is the only thing they care about.

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money and fame.



With Terry celebs are desperately looking for the next Warhol so they can be immortalized in history.

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Look at the fact that he ran away like the chicken shit he is when that model confronted him Celebs/police aren't going to listen to what lbr could be argued are 'just' rumours at this point and people lie about famous people all the time so it's easier to 'look away" as shameful as that is I believe the women totally but there's nothing really out there that's enough in this fucked up world to damn him I suspect he's messed with a celeb before they got famous and I hope they get the courage to speak out soon coz that would help The more of these stories the better, I hope it gets too much for anyone celeb, magazine or that pig to ignore IA to an extent but at the same time you KNOW that the way he behaves around people with power is completely different to how he acts with vulnerable models

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Same goes for Washington, DC fyi

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Celebs are always super interesting and hilarious when they do these worldly charities and speak out against political beliefs. They can call out what his awful if what is awful isn't in their own little celebrity world. They can be human and preach about what is wrong, but if it happens to people they like and respect they protect them and work with them. It's gross really.

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This is why I'm never surprised when a story comes out about a really likable celeb is actually an asshole or has done something really fucked up. The whole business is shady as hell.

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Executive Order Issued for Post-Fire Waste Cleanup in California

The order allows qualified professionals at the federal agency to assist state and local officials in immediately removing visible hazardous debris such as batteries, flammable liquids, asbestos siding, paint, and pipe insulation from burned homes.

California Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order on Oct. 21 allowing EPA officials to help with the initial removal of hazardous waste that poses an imminent threat to public health and safety following major wildfires this month in the state. The order allows qualified professionals at the federal agency to assist state and local officials in immediately removing visible hazardous debris such as batteries, flammable liquids, asbestos siding, paint, and pipe insulation from burned homes.

Initial removal of these hazards will help to protect public health and the environment, and it lets residents and cleanup crews more safely enter properties and continue long-term recovery efforts.

Brown earlier declared a state of emergency for the counties of Solano, Napa, Sonoma, Yuba, Butte, Lake, Mendocino, Nevada, and Orange because of the fires and also issued an executive order to cut red tape and help streamline recovery efforts. Because of a major disaster declaration to support the state and local response to the fires and federal direct aid for residents of Napa, Sonoma, Butte, Lake, Mendocino, Yuba, Orange, and Nevada counties, workers in those counties who have lost jobs or had work hours substantially reduced as a result of the fires are also eligible for federal Disaster Unemployment Assistance benefits.

The wildfires destroyed more than 6,000 homes and other structures, "creating extraordinary amounts of hazardous debris," his order says. It says local health officers of Butte, Lake, Mendocino, Napa, Nevada, Sonoma, and Yuba Counties have proclaimed local health emergencies as a result of the debris, and the debris "poses an imminent threat to public health and safety" because it is "filled with dangerous toxins including heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, and lethal asbestos and must be removed cautiously and expeditiously."
OH&S Wins 2017 Folio Digital Edition Award

The awards recognize excellence in magazine editorial and design across all sectors of the industry, with the OH&S entry selected from among 2,800 entries by a panel of more than 300 judges.

Occupational Health & Safety magazine has won the B-to-B -- App/Digital Edition/Standalone Digital Magazine award in the 2017 Folio: Eddie & Ozzie Awards for its May 2017 issue. The awards recognize excellence in magazine editorial and design across all sectors of the industry, with the OH&S entry selected from among 2,800 entries by a panel of more than 300 judges.

In addition to winning the B-to-B Digital Edition category, OH&S was named as an Eddies finalist for B-to-B -- Full Issue -- Construction/Manufacturing for its October 2016 issue and as an Ozzies finalist for B-to-B Site Design for its website, www.ohsonline.com. The magazine is part of the Infrastructure Solutions Group of 1105 Media, a group that includes the media brands Security Today, School Planning & Management, College Planning & Management, Environmental Protection, Mobility Management, HME Business, and Campus Security & Life Safety, as well as ancillary products related to these brands. It is an industry leader in every category it includes.

"Winning this award and also being recognized in these other categories is the perfect way to wrap up another successful year for Occupational Health & Safety," said Susan May, group marketing director for the Infrastructure Solutions Group. "OH&S has a large number of subscribers who prefer to read their issues digitally, and we are proud to serve them with such an outstanding platform for doing so."

"Occupational Health & Safety has been serving the safety marketplace since 1932," said Kevin O'Grady, president and group publisher of the Infrastructure Solutions Group. "As the industry evolves, OH&S has continually invested in new design and products to keep our audience engaged. Winning Folio's digital edition award and being recognized for our full magazine and our website shows that we are providing quality content in multiple ways to this key audience."
MANILA, Philippines  US Defense Secretary James Mattis praised the Philippine military following the end of the five-month war against ISIS-inspired terrorists in Marawi City.

The US Defense chief said that the success of the Philippines sends a message to terrorists around the world that governments can suppress terrorism.

It was a very tough fight as you know in Mindanaos and I think that the Philippine military has sent a very necessary message to the terrorists anywhere, Mattis said.

He also noted that the United States will further strengthen its ties with the Philippines.

Mattis added that it will be discussed during his attendance at the Southeast Asian Defense Ministers Meeting (ADMM) currently being held in Clark, Pampanga.  UNTV News & Rescue

The post US Defense Sec. Mattis commends Philippines for winning war vs Maute-ISIS terrorists appeared first on UNTV News.
Regions with agricultural economies suffer greatly from climate change. Credit: Duke University

The effects of climate change can creep into nearly every aspect of life in heavy-hit areas. They may even limit children's access to education, says Nicholas School of the Environment graduate Heather Randell.

"Investments in education are an important pathway out of poverty, yet lack of access remains a barrier," Randall said in a presentation to Nicholas School students and faculty.

Randell became interested in the relationship between climate change and education when she visited Ethiopia before pursuing her doctorate. She noticed many school-age kids were working rather than pursuing an education, and began to wonder what factors influence children's time use.

Although the UN's Millennium Development Goals and Beyond 2015 aimed to ensure universal primary education for all school-age children, 20 percent of children in Sub-Saharan Africa were still out of school in 2017.

Using data from the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey, Randell found that when children experience milder temperatures and more ample rainfall during their early life, they are more likely to stay in school longer. This trend can be attributed to the close ties between the economy and climate in agricultural areas like those in rural Ethiopia.

Agricultural economies are inherently dependent on temperature and rainfall. Increased temperature and decreased rainfall lower crop yield, which in turn decreases individual families' incomes.

Children in Ethiopia are less likely to continue their education if they experienced hotter temperatures and less rainfall in their early childhood. Credit: Duke University

With less disposable income, families are more likely to spend their money on necessities like food rather than on schooling fees. Families are also more likely to pull children out of school so kids can work and contribute to the diminished family income.

After finding these patterns in Ethiopia, Randell expanded her research to include regions in the tropics, including Central America, the Caribbean, South America, East Africa, West Africa and Southeast Asia. Each of these regions has variations in their typical rainfall and temperatures, but all are inherently susceptible to climate change because of their location near the equator.

Comparing standardized census and climate data from these regions, Randell found a similar pattern, with increased temperature and changes in rainfall being associated with decreased educational outcomes.

This study also found that climate change and its negative effects often outweigh typical advantages that improve educational access, such as parents who have had a longer schooling.

Randell concluded her talk by stating that true and lasting change to educational accessibility will only be brought about by policy change. School must be less expensive and more accessible, and more importantly, livelihood diversification must be taught and encouraged. Families must learn how to generate income in ways other than agriculture so that their income and familial decisions are more resilient to climate variability.

From her research in Ethiopia, Randell found two mechanisms by which climate change influences educational outcomes. Credit: Duke University

More information: Heather Randell et al. Climate variability and educational attainment: Evidence from rural Ethiopia, Global Environmental Change (2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.09.006
Credit: Duke University

Before it was stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court in February 2016, the Clean Power Plan offered state electric utilities and their regulators a degree of certainty as they confronted a rapidly changing market and technology landscape. Although not all agreed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's approach, the Clean Power Plan's predictable long-term emissions reduction targets provided clear goals to evaluate investments in traditional generation sources like coal and nuclear energy and resources on the rise like natural gas, wind, solar, and distributed generation.

Over roughly the last decade, market upheavals and the technological advances underpinning them have led to a rebalancing of generation sources and to more complex interactions between customers and the electric grid, creating significant uncertainty about existing business and regulatory models. This combination of technology, market, and policy shifts is roiling the electricity sector as never before, sending utilities and regulators on the hunt for new frameworks and tools to support decision making.

Having worked with utilities, regulators, and other stakeholders to examine Clean Power Plan compliance options, researchers at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions have developed a deep understanding of both the electricity sector's potential responses to regulatory, market, and technology changes and the emissions consequences of those responses. Our legal analyses and modeling have provided a solid foundation to help states address their own distinct decision-making challenges amid uncertainty, which has only deepened as the Trump administration looks to roll back Obama-era climate policies.

Demand and Nuclear Unknowns in the Southeast

For utilities and regulators in the Southeast, where utility-led integrated resource plans guide investments, climate policy uncertainty adds to the unknowns about future electricity demand and the role of nuclear energy. Although the region is expected to gain an additional 16 million residents by 2030, electricity demand growth is not inevitable, in part because of increasing energy efficiency and potential growth in behind-the-meter distributed generation. That demand uncertainty adds risk to investments in large, capital-intensive projects like nuclear power. As a supplier of approximately 25 percent of the region's energy generation, nuclear energy is by far the Southeast's largest zero-carbon generation source, but its future is unclear because plant operating licenses will expire after 2030, new nuclear plants will take more than a decade to build, and most next-generation plants exist only on paper.

For Southeast states, the question of whether to seek extensions of nuclear plant operating licenses or, alternatively, what to replace retiring units with is a critical one. As much as 90 percent of nuclear power could disappear over the next 30 years if existing units retire at 60 years of operationthe current maximum length of operating licenses.

"Efforts to better understand and balance risks could allow utilities and regulators to improve their investment decisions and integrated resource planning processes," said Adair, a senior policy associate with the Nicholas Institute's Climate and Energy Program who has researched how the potential loss of existing nuclear power plants in the Southeast interacts with the region's other electricity sector challenges.

One of those challenges is managing carbon regulatory risk. Despite the uncertainty of short-term national limits on carbon dioxide emissions for the electricity sector, electricity planners tend to take a long-term view of potential climate regulation, given power plants' decades-long operating life. Concerted efforts to mitigate climate change could require carbon emissions reductions from the sector on the order of 80 percent or morea magnitude of reductions nearly impossible without a major source of zero-carbon generation. Moreover, if retiring nuclear capacity was replaced by natural gas generation, carbon emissions would increase.

"The bottom line is that unanticipated nuclear retirements could make it more difficult for the Southeast to comply with future climate policies," Adair said.

One venue for nuclear planning emissions reduction strategizing is proceedings of utility commissions, which regulate investor-owned utilities, approve (or disapprove) utility capital investments, and oversee integrated resource planning. Among other steps, these commissions can take action to ensure that integrated resource planning efforts look far enough into the future to capture potential retirements and that they include scenarios that reflect the range of potential futures for existing nuclear units. For this purpose, modeling through 2035 or 2040 is recommended.

Additionally, states might wish to consider the role of nuclear generation in state energy plans. These visions for energy policy and technology development and deployment help state governors, legislators, agencies, state utility regulators, and businesses to prioritize policy directives, regulatory actions, utility planning, and investments. Importantly, they typically reflect stakeholder engagement and consensus building and can include strategies to mitigate the effects of potential retirements, for example by expressing a policy preference to retain existing nuclear capacity that is safe to operate, increasing the use of other zero-emission resources, or establishing goals related to the deployment of advanced nuclear technologies.

Nicholas Institute researchers looked at how such planning efforts work in North Carolina, where the North Carolina Energy Policy Council is responsible for creating the state energy plan and the North Carolina Utilities Commission approves utility-developed integrated resource plans. In a working paper, senior policy associate Kay Jowers and State Policy Program director Amy Pickle described the stakeholder-engagement opportunities, forecasting requirements, and outcomes of each agency's planning process. They concluded that robust electricity planning is based on a comprehensive and coordinated policy framework across agencies that creates strong stakeholder alignmentand that kind of planning, they say, offers multiple benefits, including increased regulatory certainty and clear understanding among stakeholders and decision makers of electricity generation, transmission, and distribution options.

"North Carolina has a range of options to improve comprehensive electricity planning to align with effective planning principles and build on some past successes," said Jowers. "Equally clear is that without improvements to the process, the state might not be able to realize the full economic and public benefit presented by innovative technologies, say, for grid modernization and electricity storage."

Jurisdictional Uncertainty in the PJM Interconnection

The role of nuclear energy also looms as a large uncertainty for the 13 states plus the District of Columbia that are covered in part or whole by the PJM Interconnection, one of several regional transmission organizations (RTOs) that coordinate the movement of wholesale electricity. Those states are Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

In RTO states, the line between federal and state jurisdiction over the electricity sector is shifting. Regionalization of the electric grid and development of interstate markets for electricity, electric capacity, and transmission development have expanded the responsibilities of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) even as states have retained jurisdiction over generation facilities and retail markets. The result has been skirmishes over state policies, such as mandates for renewables and clean energy standards that include incentives for existing nuclear energy to remain in operationskirmishes that may affect federally regulated wholesale markets.

A report co-authored with researchers from the University of North Carolina and Harvard Law School discusses these jurisdictional disputes and the role that the president might play in them through FERC appointments and other mechanisms.

Some of the federal-state friction relates to issues that have broad implications regardless of a state's system of utility regulation, noted the authors, and some are pertinent to states with restructured electricity marketslike PJM states. Among the former issues are whether and how FERC could use its jurisdiction over interstate markets to influence the economics of nuclear power or to accommodate or preempt state's policies on nuclear power.

Beyond influencing FERC's oversight of wholesale markets, the Trump administration could affect the future of the existing nuclear fleet through its approach to climate policy. Although it appears to have little appetite to do so, it could price carbon through a carbon tax, an RTO carbon price, or another market-based policy, thereby giving value to nuclear-powered electricity's zero-carbon attribute.

Forecasting for Change

In October 2016, the Nicholas Institute and the Duke University Energy Initiative co-hosted a one-day workshop that brought together experts on the electricity sector in the Southeastincluding representatives of electric utilities, other market participants, nonprofit organizations, and energy and environmental agenciesto discuss these factors affecting the region's electricity sector.

We found that participants' have a growing need for increasingly sophisticated models and forecasting tools to help them deal with new sources of uncertainty and rapid rates of change. These tools, including some developed by the Nicholas Institute, have the potential to help utilities quantify the bounds of uncertainty under different policy and technology-adoption scenarios.

"There's no doubt that demand for these analytical tools is high among utilities and among regulatory and third-party groups," Adair said. "It's one way that institutions like ours can contribute to understanding of the potential future impacts of technological innovation."

Acknowledging state policy makers' difficulty in interpreting economic modeling of the electricity sector, the Nicholas Institute partnered with the Bipartisan Policy Center to present recent analyses by organizations that show how such modeling can be used to simulate the various policy, market, and technology uncertainties facing states.

"This work was originally designed to help policy makers think through the impacts of the Clean Power Plan," said Martin Ross, senior research economist at the Nicholas Institute. "But the value of the work extends to helping them understand how to best use economic models and interpret their results when grappling with the challenges and opportunities that this tremendously complex and changing sector presents."

What models can't do is predict the actual futurefor example, they can't capture real-world decision making, wherein decision makers must deal with information gaps and non-economic factors. But what these types of modeling analyses can do well, said Ross, is to "highlight findings that are robust under different sets of assumptions about the future, reveal the sensitivity of results to different assumptions, and identify least-cost compliance options."
Theres a margin of error in relying on fingerprinting to catch criminals. Credit: www.shutterstock.com

Police have used fingerprint evidence to catch and convict criminals for more than 100 years. It's a commonly used technique in Australia: more than 10,000 fingerprint matches were made in Victoria alone last year.

But in a recent report, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has questioned the scientific validity of fingerprint analysis.

The report is a reminder that although fingerprinting is an essential tool for investigating crime, it's not infallible. We need to minimise the inappropriate application of the "science" of fingerprinting, and reduce repeats of miscarriages of justice linked to fingerprint analysis that have already occurred.

Most notoriously, Brandon Mayfield, an American lawyer, was wrongly linked by four fingerprint experts to the 2004 Madrid train bombing. He was arrested and detained for two weeks, before investigators realised that an Algerian man, Ouhnane Daoud, was the real source of the print.

How does fingerprint examination work?

Everybody's fingers, palms and soles have "friction ridges" on them. These ridges occur in patterns (such as arches and loops) that contain specific features (for example, ridge endings and dots).

Fingerprint examiners use these patterns and features to compare an unknown (or "latent") print with a known print, to determine if they may have come from the same person.

In Australia, police use the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System  a database with more than 2.6 million sets of fingerprints - to narrow down the field of fingerprints to compare. But the final decision about whether there is a "match" is made by a person.

A 2010 report, published by the US National Institute of Justice, concluded that automated systems were significantly less accurate than well-trained examiners at making comparisons between latent and known prints.

Problems with the underlying science

Until the mid-2000s, little scientific research had been done on most forensic disciplines, including fingerprinting. This lack of research became widely publicised in 2009, when the US National Research Council published a landmark report on the forensic sciences.

It found that the only forensic method that had been rigorously validated was nuclear DNA analysis. All other forensic sciences  including fingerprinting  lacked a proper scientific foundation.

When examining this issue again in 2016, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in the US found that only two properly designed studies of latent fingerprint analysis had been conducted. These both found the rate of false matches (known as "false positives") to be very high: 1 in 18 and 1 in 30.

One of the main reasons for these high error rates is that fingerprint analysis involves human judgement, and relies on a methodology (known as "ACE-V") that is not sufficient to ensure the accuracy and reliability of an examiner's conclusions. This means there is no guarantee that two different examiners who follow its steps will reach the same result.

Recent improvements

Since the National Research Council report was released, scientists have worked hard to prove that fingerprint examination is scientific.

Research has now convincingly established that the ridge patterns on fingers vary greatly among individuals, and that there is little variation in a person's fingerprints over time. This provides a scientific basis for using fingerprints to distinguish individuals, even identical twins.

But there is still no scientific basis for concluding that a print must have been left by a specific person, or even for estimating the number of people who might be the source of a print.

The most that can be said is that two prints have many corresponding features, with no differences that would indicate they were made by different fingers. It may also be possible for an examiner to say that the set of features found in the prints is unusual.

Cognitive bias

Because fingerprint analysis depends heavily on human judgement, an examiner's conclusions may be improperly influenced by non-scientific factors, such as irrelevant contextual information.

This phenomenon, which is known as "cognitive bias", has been demonstrated in various studies.

In one study, five fingerprint experts were told they were comparing Brandon Mayfield's fingerprint with the fingerprint found in Madrid. They were asked whether they would also have (wrongly) found a match.

In reality, the experts were given fingerprints from a different case they had personally found to match years earlier, in the normal course of their casework. Four of the five experts changed their opinion. This was seen to be due to their expectation that the fingerprints did not match.

Another study found that fingerprint examiners can be improperly influenced by the use of automated fingerprint identification systems, which provide ordered lists of the most likely matches.

The study found that examiners are more likely to wrongly identify one of the prints near the top of the list as a match, and to fail to make correct identifications if the print is down low on the list.

Implications

While these reports and studies indicate a need for caution when relying on fingerprint examinations, they do not mean that police should stop using fingerprints.

Fingerprinting is an essential tool for investigating crime, and should continue to be used for this purpose. But steps need to be taken to limit the likelihood of future miscarriages of justice.

Everyone in the system has a role to play. Scientists need to conduct further research under realistic conditions.

Police forces must take steps to minimise the risks of cognitive bias. For example, they should use context management procedures to avoid exposing examiners to unnecessary contextual information.

Lawyers and judges must make sure that only scientifically valid opinions are given in court, and that the value of fingerprint evidence is not overstated. Fingerprint examiners should make it clear that they are expressing an opinion and not a fact.

And everyone should acknowledge that errors do occur in fingerprinting analysis, and have happened in the past.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
"To facilitate taxpayers, late fee on filing of GSTR-3B for August and September has been has been waived," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley tweeted.

By Press Trust of India: The government today waived penalty on delayed filing of initial GST returns for the months of August and September.

"To facilitate taxpayers, late fee on filing of GSTR-3B for August and September has been has been waived," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley tweeted.

He said that the late fee which has been already charged to businesses will be credited back to taxpayers accounts.

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The government had earlier waived late fee for delayed filing of the maiden returns for the month of July under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime.

Businesses have been demanding that the government waives penalty for delayed filing of 3B returns.

To facilitate taxpayers, late fee on filing of GSTR-3B for Aug&Sept has been waived. Late fee paid will be credited back to taxpayer ledger.- Arun Jaitley (@arunjaitley) October 24, 2017

As per the data, 55.87 lakh GSTR-3B returns were filed for July, 51.37 lakh for August and over 42 lakh for September.

Preliminary returns GSTR-3B for a month is filed on the 20th day of the next month after paying due taxes.

As per the data with the GST Network (GSTN), a huge chunk of businesses file their returns after the expiry of the due date.

While only 33.98 lakh July returns were filed till the due date, the number has now gone up to 55.87 lakh.

Similarly for August 28.46 lakh returns were filed till the last date, but the figure went up to 51.37 lakh later.

Also for September while 39.4 lakh returns were filed by the due date, the number is rising and was over 42 lakh till yesterday.

The GST law provides for a nominal fee of Rs 100 per day on Central GST and an equivalent amount on State GST in case of late filing of returns and payment of taxes.

VIDEO | Midnight tryst with GST: Full coverage of India's biggest tax reform in Central Hall

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Development of a magma ocean through induction heating in the mantle of exoplanet Trappist-1c. Credit: IWF/OAW

Induction heating can completely change the energy budget of an exoplanet and even melt its interior. In a study published by Nature Astronomy an international team led by the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences with participation of the University of Vienna explains how magma oceans can form under the surface of exoplanets as a result of induction heating.

When a conductive material is embedded in a changing magnetic field, an electrical current is produced inside the body by a process called electromagnetic induction. If the electrical current is strong enough, it can heat the material in which it flows because of electrical resistance. This process called induction heating is widely used in industry to melt materials and at home to cook using induction stoves.

Fast rotation causes heating

An international team led by the Space Research Institute (IWF) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) with participation of the Department of Astrophysics of the University of Vienna was inspired by these examples. "We wanted to investigate if induction heating can play a role on a much bigger scale," explains first author Kristina Kislyakova. "We were particularly interested in planets orbiting stars that have strong magnetic fields." These stars can rotate very rapidly, which causes the magnetic field at the planet's orbit to change rapidly as well. In such cases, induction heating can take place inside the planet.

Impacts on planetary habitability

The team studied low mass stars that exhibit some exotic characteristics in comparison to our Sun. They are much smaller and dimmer. Some of them rotate very fast and possess magnetic fields hundreds of times stronger than the solar one. A good example of such a low-mass star is Trappist-1, which hosts a big family of seven close-in rocky planets, three of which may have liquid water on their surface. This planetary system is a top candidate for the search of Earth-like planets.

Kislyakova and her team have calculated the energy release inside the Trappist-1 planets due to induction heating. "We have shown that for some of the planets, the heating is strong enough to drive enormous volcanic activity or even lead to the formation of a magma ocean beneath the planetary surface."

As we know from Earth, strong volcanic activity can have a severe influence on a planet's atmosphere. "Therefore, induction heating can strongly influence the habitability of an exoplanet," adds IWF co-author Luca Fossati. This new study shows that this effect has to be taken into account when studying the habitability and evolution of planets orbiting low-mass stars.

More information: K. G. Kislyakova et al. Magma oceans and enhanced volcanism on TRAPPIST-1 planets due to induction heating, Nature Astronomy (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-017-0284-0 Journal information: Nature Astronomy
Wine output was squeezed to a 50-year low this year, according to the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV)

Worldwide wine production tumbled 8.2 percent this year to hit a 50-year low due to climate fluctuations, the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) said Tuesday.

The total output of 246.7 million hectolitres was due in large part to steep drops in the top three wine producing countries: Italy, France and Spain.

In Italy production slumped 23 percent to 39.3 mhl, while in France the drop was 19 percent to 36.7 mhl.

Production in Spain fell 15 percent to 33.5 mhl, according to the Paris-based OIV, an intergovernmental organisation that provides scientific and technical advice on vines and wine.

In the world's fourth-largest producer, the United States, production is forecast for to have held up better, with just a slide of 1 percent to 23.3 mhl.

However, the OIV noted that the forecast was based on US government estimates made before the outbreak of wildfires in California that ravaged two of the state's top wine producing areas: the Napa Valley and Sonoma County

A six percent increase in wine production to 13.9 mhl helped Australia to fifth place. It was the nation's third consecutive annual increase in output.

Argentina rebounded from a bad 2016 harvest, with output shooting up 25 percent to 11.8 mhl. But it still has not recovered to its 2015 level.

In South Africa, production was steady at 10.8 mhl.

There was no 2017 data available for China, which produced 11.4 mhl in 2016

 2017 AFP
Credit: BlueOrange Studio / shutterstock

The small Pacific archipelago of Palau has a poaching problem. When I went there in 2016 for instance, four Vietnamese crews were held for nearly two months after their timber-hulled "blue boats" were apprehended in local waters. They were fishing for tuna, but sharks were also found on board as well as sea cucumber  an expensive delicacy on the Chinese market.

The Palauan authorities burned three of their boats at sea, while the crews were escorted on the remaining vessel to Palau's maritime boundary. Whether they made it over the horizon seemed of little concern to the government. Such fishermen are often trafficked as slaves and while they were held they had no communication with loved ones at home. As one humanitarian NGO worker told me: "They're victims and they need to be dealt with as victims. Most have just signed up to catch fish. They don't know where they're going. They don't know how to navigate. They have no options."

Nonetheless, this method of repatriating Vietnamese crews is standard practice. Since 2014, numerous crews have had their boats sunk and been repatriated in this way.

Palau is a sovereign state with a UN vote, albeit one with just 18,000 residents. In 2015 the country designated 80% of its territorial waters  an area roughly the size of Spain  as a National Marine Sanctuary. In the "Bul", as the sanctuary is known locally, commercial fishing is off limits.

The reserve has attracted many of the world's largest conservation and development NGOs. It has received more than US$90m in pledges, mostly from corporate donors, charitable trusts and government agencies in Australia, Japan and the US.

Coral reefs aren't protected

Yet the scientific rationale behind the sanctuary is questionable. Consider Palau's coral reefs, which are among the most biodiverse places in the entire ocean and remain the ultimate symbol of the region's pristine waters. They are the key lure for "high-end" sports-fishers, divers and yachters to the islands and, thanks to the sanctuary, many more are expected.

The reefs feature heavily in promotional materials and strategic plans for the marine reserve. Yet the sanctuary doesn't actually begin until 12 nautical miles from the coast  too far from shore for any coral reefs. Access to the reefs is regulated through various other pieces of legislation but, unlike the sanctuary, those other regulations were not designed to promote tourism.

Palau's conservation efforts are part of a vision to become a tourist destination for the super-rich. New laws and tax incentives mean only five-star hotels will get planning approval in future while the country's famous Rock Islands, a UNESCO World Heritage site, will likely prove out of bounds to anyone without a private yacht. A significant airport expansion plan, managed by the Japanese, will likely see the overall number of tourists increase substantially.

This begs the question of what the sanctuary is for. If it is in place to protect the reef, then it isn't doing a very good job as it doesn't cover the right area. If it is there to protect the offshore environment, then instead of using it to boost tourism, Palau should also limit the numbers of international arrivals who largely go sport fishing further offshore.

Palau lies in between Indonesia, the Philippines, and Micronesia. Credit: TUBS / wiki, CC BY-SA

Protecting fish and sovereignty too?

Out to sea, Palau is planning to develop the often uninhabited outcrop of Helen Reef, 350 miles south of Palau's main islands, ostensibly for monitoring and surveillance. But in addition to a dock, fuel depot and rangers station, Palau's project leaders say potential expansion could include tourist development, including a dive resort complex. Japanese NGOs, the Nippon Foundation and the Sasakawa Peace Foundation have also contributed to Palau's coastguard, and the latter recently donated a new 40-metre patrol vessel, the PSS Kedam and has previously helped Palau survey the area.

Waters surrounding Helen Reef are contested with neighbouring Indonesia. The geopolitical implications of this are still unclear, though it is likely that Japan has a significant interest in the sanctuary acting as a buffer to Chinese expansion in the region. Palau's president, meanwhile, has stated that the marine sanctuary is "not just a conservation policy; it is also a national security policy".

Bearing in mind this latter motivation, the president has sponsored a plan to adopt similar conservation enclosures around at least 30% of the world's oceans. This position is no longer radical  it's the mainstream. Since 2006, seven Pacific island nations have designated huge swathes of their oceans as protected areas. Michelle Grady, from the Pew Charitable Trust, recently suggested the 30% target "had the status of expert advice, much like the science underpinning the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change".

But such bold targets can serve to promote heavy-handed, perhaps even violent conservation. But unless consumption is reined in at home, and the drivers of poverty and slavery are tackled out to sea, few will benefit except the super-rich in search of paradise.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Sediments deposited by ice sheet meltwater provide clues about ancient climates, as well as the future effects of global warming. Credit: Francesco Muschitiello

Volcanic eruptions have been known to cool the global climate, but they can also exacerbate the melting of ice sheets, according to a paper published today in Nature Communications.

Researchers who analyzed ice cores and meltwater deposits found that ancient eruptions caused immediate and significant melting of the ice sheet that covered much of northern Europe at the end of the last ice age, some 12,000 to 13,000 years ago.

"Over a time span of 1,000 years, we found that volcanic eruptions generally correspond with enhanced ice sheet melting within a year or so," says lead author Francesco Muschitiello, who completed the research as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

These weren't volcanoes erupting on or near the ice sheet, but located a thousand miles away in some cases. The eruptions heaved huge clouds of ash into the sky, and when the ash fell on the ice sheet, its darker color made the ice absorb more solar heat than usual.

"We know that if you have darker ice, you decrease the reflectance and it melts more quickly. It's basic science," says Muschitiello. "But no one so far has been able to demonstrate this direct link between volcanism and ice melting when it comes to ancient climates."

The discovery comes from the cross-sections of deposits, called glacial varves, most of which had been collected in the 1980s and 1990s. Varves are the layered sediments that form when meltwater below an ice sheet routes large amounts of debris into lakes near the sheet's edge. Like the rings of a tree, the layers of a glacial varve tell the story of each year's conditions; a thicker layer indicates more melting, since there would have been a higher volume of water to carry the sediment.

The team also compared the varves to cores from the Greenland ice sheet, whose layers contain a record of ancient atmospheric conditions. Testing of those layers for sulfates revealed which years experienced explosive volcanic eruptions, which tend to release large amounts of ash. Matching up the ice layers with varve layers from the same time periods, the team found that years with explosive volcanic activity corresponded to thicker varve layers, indicating more melting of the northern European ice sheet.

James Lea (left) and Francesco Muschitiello drill into the ground to sample the sedimentary deposits of an ancient glacial lake in Sweden. The layered deposits, called varves, document the ice sheet's response to changing atmospheric conditions. Credit: Francesco Muschitiello

Muschitiello and his colleagues studied a period ranging from 13,200 to 12,000 years ago, when the last ice age was transitioning into today's warm climate. They focused specifically on volcanic eruptions in the northern high latitudesevents similar to the 2010 eruptions of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Although that eruption was relatively minor, its large ash cloud shut down air traffic across most of Europe for about a week.

How much melting could an eruption like that cause? "It's difficult to put an exact number to it," says glaciologist and coauthor James Lea from the University of Liverpool. "It depends on many factors." Running thousands of model simulations, the team found that the amount of melting depends on the individual eruption, which season it occurs in, the snowpack conditions at the time, and the elevation of the ice sheet. "Change any one of these and you would get different amounts of melt," says Lea. In the worst scenarios, the model predicted that ash deposition would remove between 20 centimeters and almost one meter of ice from the surface of the highest parts of the ice sheet.

The model results should be taken with a pinch of salt, Muschitiello cautions, due to uncertainties about past conditions. However, because the team simulated a very broad range of potential conditions, he's confident that the ice sheet's real response lies somewhere within their range.

Michael Sigl, a paleoclimatologist from the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland who wasn't involved in the new study, says the hypothesis that ash particles might counteract the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions is intriguing. But, he said, "coincidences in the timing of rapid ice-sheet melting events and eruption dates do not automatically imply causation, and there may be other scenarios that could be consistent with the presented data." Sigl's own work has found a link between eruption-induced ozone depletion and deglaciation in the Southern Hemisphere. Nevertheless, he says, the new study shows that more work is needed to understand the effects of aerosol emissions from volcanic eruptions.

The preliminary results suggest that "present day ice sheets are potentially very vulnerable to volcanic eruptions," says Muschitiello. They also point to a possible hole in the climate models that scientists use to make predictions about the future: Models currently don't simulate the ice sheets' response to changes in particulate deposition from the atmosphere in an interactive way.

Another intriguing implication is that previous research has suggested that melting ice sheets and glaciers could increase the frequency of volcanic eruptions in glaciated areas by lightening loads on earth's crust, allowing underlying magma to rise. If the link between volcanism and ice sheet melting is confirmed, it could indicate the presence of a so-called "positive feedback loop" in which eruptions exacerbate melting, and more melting causes more eruptions, and so on.

Muschitiello says the study "can give us hints about the mechanisms at play when you're expecting rapid climate change."

More information: Francesco Muschitiello et al, Enhanced ice sheet melting driven by volcanic eruptions during the last deglaciation, Nature Communications (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01273-1 Journal information: Nature Communications
Shima Hamidi -- director of UTA's Institute of Urban Studies and assistant professor in the College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs -- has produced a study investigating Dallas' transit system. Credit: UT Arlington

Lack of access to good-paying jobs is one of the primary products of a largely inefficient Dallas transit system, according to a city of Dallas-commissioned study conducted by Shima Hamidi, director of The University of Texas at Arlington's Institute of Urban Studies, and her research team.

The study, which was presented to Dallas officials Monday, investigated how economic disparity and transportation are intertwined in Dallas.

This study found that more than 65 percent of residents living in the transit-dependent core of Dallas have access to less than 4 percent of regional jobs within a 45-minute transit and walking commute time. The study also showed more than 65 percent of residents in the transit-dependent core have to spend at least 1.5 hours commuting per day by transit to gain access to less than 4 percent of jobs if they want to or have to take transit.

The study showed that Dallas Area Rapid Transit ranks 23rd of 39 large- and medium-sized transit agencies in the nation in terms of the bus passenger miles per capita and passenger trips per capita. The city and the DFW region are facing transportation equity challenges when it comes into the transportation, according to the study. Hamidi says this has contributed to the increased poverty rate in Dallas, which has increased by 22 percent since 2000, while the total population increased by about 9.7 percent.

"The city of Dallas could experience an even higher concentration of poverty if transportation practices remain the same," said Hamidi, who also is a UTA urban planning assistant professor in the College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs. "From the planning perspective, these trends would cause the city to be more spatially segregated, especially in economic terms, and consequently the city could experience even more isolation of areas with poverty concentration."

Theresa O'Donnell, chief resilience officer for the city of Dallas, said the study will help Dallas build a better transportation system that helps more transit-dependent residents.

"Transportation Equity is one of the four discovery areas of the 100 Resilient Cities initiated by Rockefeller Foundation in Dallas," O'Donnell said. "Learning from Dr. Hamidi's study and incorporating its recommendations can improve quality of life for Dallas' residents in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, allowing them access to more jobs, economic opportunities as well as cultural events, parks, retail hubs and health-care facilities."

Hamidi said that identifying transit-dependent populations is the first step in addressing these transportation challenges.

"Quantifying and identifying Dallas' transit-dependent core, and where the majority of transit-dependent population lives compared with where employment centers are critical to better understanding potential spatial mismatches for disadvantaged groups of population," Hamidi said.

Hamidi's study identified a hot spot core, largely in the southern part of the city, that is transit dependent. The results of hot spot analysis can be used to understand transit demand catchment areas within cities and regions. Transit demand catchment areas can be defined as the core location of transit riders with a high density of transit-dependent population.

The study also quantified and measured various performance components of transit system. Here is a summary of the findings:

A typical Dallas household spends more than 19 percent of its income on transportation which is much greater than the 15 percent transportation affordability threshold, as outlined by the federal Location Affordability Index.

About 30 percent of Dallas' overall population and 41 percent of the city's transit-dependent population in the transit-dependent core has access to less than 1 percent of regional jobs in a 45-minute commute via transit.

Except for a few block groups in downtown Dallas, almost the entire study area is shown to be unaffordable in terms of transportation costs.

The majority of households, living in southwest and southeast neighborhoods in Dallas, spend between 20 and 26 percent of their income on transportation which makes it almost at the same level as housing costs for these households.

Compared to other transit agencies, DART fare options are relatively affordable. A low-income household with a household size of 2.5 and one employee in the household would spend on average about 10 percent of income on transit fare if they use the daily pass for the entire year.

Areas with a higher percentage of population below poverty level, particularly in south Dallas, receive better coverage and more frequent transit availability, but lower accessibility to jobs via transit when considering their entire commute trip.

Even though the transit-dependent core has slightly better transit coverage than the rest of the city, more than a third of the population cannot access transit by walking. No physical access to a transit station means no transit use by a third of the population in Dallas, which could contribute to the low rate of ridership.
A ring of cyclones swirls around Jupiter's south pole.

NASA's Juno spacecraft has plumbed the depths of Jupiter, revealing that the planet's famous bands of swirling winds extend thousands of kilometres down. The work is the sharpest glimpse yet into Jupiter's interior.

Jupiter's colourful stripes are atmospheric patterns composed of winds that flow alternately east and west. Until now, researchers haven't been able to say whether those bands are confined to a shallow layer or reach deeper into the planet. "Determining this is one of the main goals of the Juno mission," said team member Yohai Kaspi, a geophysicist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, on 18 October at the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Provo, Utah.

Juno arrived at Jupiter in July 2016 and has been looping around it once every 53 days. The mission has already revealed several mysterious phenomena, such as Jupiter's patchy magnetic field and sets of cyclones that whirl around the planet's north and south poles like dancers around a maypole.

By studying Jupiter's gravitational field, researchers can probe thousands of kilometres into the planet. On each close fly-by, Juno measures the planet's complex gravitational tug. These observations have already revealed that Jupiter has a small, 'fuzzy', poorly defined core1.

Inner whirl

The latest results show that Jupiter's gravitational field is askew, with different patterns in its northern and southern hemispheres, said Tristan Guillot, a planetary scientist at the Observatory of the Cote d'Azur in Nice, France. That suggests that its hydrogen-rich gas is flowing asymmetrically deep in the planet. "This is something that was not expected," Guillot said at the meeting. "We were not sure at all whether we would be able to see that."

Another clue to the structure of Jupiter's interior came from how the gravity field varies with depth. Theoretical studies predict that the bigger the gravity signal, the stronger the flow of gas deep down2, 3. That information is important for teasing out whether all of Jupiter's interior is rotating as a single solid body, or whether different layers spin separately from one another, like a set of nesting Russian dolls moving within each other.

Juno detected a gravity signal powerful enough to indicate that material is flowing as far down as 3,000 kilometres. "We're just taking the clouds and the winds and extending them into the interior," Kaspi said. Future work could help to pinpoint how strong the flow is at various depths, which could resolve whether Jupiter's interior really resembles Russian dolls.

Juno scientists are now looking to see what else the gravity data will tell them, such as how far the famous storm called the Great Red Spot extends into the atmosphere.

Another instrument aboard Juno has already hinted that the Great Red Spot's roots may go hundreds of kilometres down, and it could go even deeper. "It's not yet clear that it is so deep it will show up in gravity data," said David Stevenson, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "But we're trying."

Polar circles

Juno has also been peering into Jupiter's depths in other ways. One big surprise from the mission was the clusters of cyclones at each pole, seen by Juno's cameras in visible and infrared wavelengths. Scientists had not spotted the storms before because Juno is the first spacecraft to fly over Jupiter's polar regions. There are eight cyclones around the north pole and five around the south poleall are mysterious, because computer modelling suggests that such small storms would not be stable in swirling polar winds.

The answer may lie in a quirky physics concept known as a vortex crystal, said Fachreddin Tabataba-Vakili, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Such crystals have been seen in a few Earth-based phenomena such as rotating superfluids; they are born when small vortices form and persist as the material in which they are embedded continues to flow.

Something about the flow around Jupiter's poles may set up the same dynamics, Tabataba-Vakili said. Next up is to work out why there are eight cyclones at one pole and five at the other, he added.

Between Jupiter's polar cyclones and its deep interior flows, Juno continues to tease out new surprises from the Solar System's biggest planet. "It's clear that giant planets have a lot of secrets," Guillot said.
Simulations by CWI researchers showed an afterglow of gamma radiation after lightning, which lasted up to up to 10,000 times longer than previously assumed. The image shows the altitude and time of the radiation. The color (red to yellow) indicates the radiation strength. A terrestrial gamma flash that starts at an altitude of 8 kilometers, creates a cloud of neutrons (blue) at an altitude of 3 kilometers. This cloud, in turn, creates the afterglow. Credit: CWI

Lightning can produce X-rays and gamma radiation. In the past, researchers thought that this phenomenon only lasted for a very short time, about one ten-thousandth of a second. However, the ionizing radiation of lightning appears to emit much longer than presumed. An afterglow of gamma radiation arises, which lasts up to 10,000 times longer. This is demonstrated for the first time by computer simulations by researchers from Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam. Their article "TGF afterglows: a new radiation mechanism from thunderstorms" has been published in Geophysical Review Letters. This discovery can provide more insight into how lightning develops.

Terrestrial gamma flashes were discovered about two decades ago. When lightning strikes, electrons are accelerated to very high energies and crashing into air molecules, causing an explosion of gamma radiation, the so-called terrestrial gamma flashes. Bursts of up to a trillion gamma particles can be measured. However, taking these measurements is difficult, since these bursts are very focused and only last for a short time, around 0.0001 seconds. There is still much unknown about how these terrestrial gamma flashes arise and what their role is in the development of lightning. The recently discovered afterglow helps to study this phenomenon.

CWI researcher Casper Rutjes explains what happens during the newly discovered radiation mechanism: "The radiation of a terrestrial gamma flash is so strong that nuclear reactions can take place. When the gamma rays hit the atomic nuclei of the air molecules, the protons and neutrons can be detached. The loose neutrons can wander longer and farther than protons because they don't have electrical charge. After a while, the neutron is captured by another atomic nucleus, which can again produce gamma radiation. The high energy of the gamma ray flash, which is used in releasing neutrons, is, so to speak, temporarily stored in the released neutrons." The CWI researchers calculated that this causes afterglow of gamma radiation, which lasts for 1,000 to 10,000 times longer than the gamma ray flash itself, and which is not focused, but radiates in all directions, which facilitates measurements.

The CWI researchers found hardly any measurements in the scientific literature corresponding to the predictions, because almost none were taken on the right time scale. Researcher Casper Rutjes says, "Recently, our simulations have also been confirmed by experiments. Almost simultaneously, G.S. Bowers and collaborators at the University of California-Santa Cruz measured a clear afterglow of gamma ray flashes in Japan after a lightning bolt struck a wind turbine."

That article, "Gamma-ray signatures of neutrons from a terrestrial gamma-ray flash," also appeared now in the scientific journal Geophysical Review Letters.

About the radiation risk, Rutjes says, "The chance of being hit directly by a terrestrial gamma ray flash is very small. If someone in a plane is hit directly by such a narrow terrestrial gamma ray flash, this person will receive a radiation dose approximately equal to 400 times an X-ray picture (30 mSv). The afterglow that we discovered radiates in all directions, increasing the chance that a plane flying above a thunderstorm will be hit, but fortunately, that radiation is much weaker. The radiation dose of the afterglow following lightning is not dangerousless than what passengers already receive through background radiation when they fly for an hour."

More information: C. Rutjes et al. TGF Afterglows: A New Radiation Mechanism From Thunderstorms, Geophysical Research Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1002/2017GL075552 G. S. Bowers et al. Gamma Ray Signatures of Neutrons From a Terrestrial Gamma Ray Flash, Geophysical Research Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1002/2017GL075071 Journal information: Geophysical Research Letters
Illustration of tetrapods on land. Credit: PlanetEarth Online

An ancient little lizard-like creature from the Scottish Borders is the missing ancestral link between human beings and the fish we evolved from millions of years ago.

Dubbed 'Tiny', its fossilised remains were found in in a piece of rock smaller than a clenched fist after people spotted a minute part of its skull sticking out.

360-345 million years ago, Scotland was a very different place. Lying close to the Equator, the vegetated land was hot, humid and subject to droughts and flooding. It was here that a major evolutionary event occurred: tetrapods (backboned animals with four limbs) invaded land.

These four-legged creatures are our ancestors.

But, for many years, scientists had no idea how this had happened. There was a 15 million year 'gap' in the fossil recordno four-legged fossils had been found dating from that time, so there was no evidence to show how this giant step had taken place.

That was until the late fossil hunter Stan Wood began excavations in the Borders that uncovered a haul of four-limbed creatures that help explain one of evolution's greatest mysteries.

There is still the bigger question of why creatures moved from water to land, but with every new find like Tiny, today's scientists get closer to answering that too.

Tiny was one of the first four-legged creatures on land, which makes it our ancestor. Credit: PlanetEarth Online

David Millward at NERC's British Geological Survey said:

Every specimen tells us something new. Tetrapods are our ancestors. They are the missing evolutionary link from fish and on to lizards, then ultimately to birds, dinosaurs, mammals and to us as people today. If tetrapods had not made that fundamental step we would not be where we are today.

David suggested one theory of why creatures moved to the land:

There were some very big, carnivorous fish in the lakes and creeks and no large predators on land so developing limbs to live on land would give any creature an advantage.

Credit: PlanetEarth Online

David is sure there are numerous other specimens worldwide, though the only other major site where tetrapods have been found to date is in Canada. Excitingly, unlike Scotland, they have also uncovered well-preserved footprints which are helping to create a better understanding of how these ancient animals moved on land.

"We haven't found good footprints here yet," Millward says, "but we're still looking."
On Oct. 24 at 12:45 a.m. EDT (0425 UTC) NASA's Aqua satellite found top temperatures of strongest thunderstorms (yellow) in Tropical Storm Saola.Temperatures were as cold as or colder than minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62.2 Celsius). Credit: NRL/NASA

Infrared data from NASA satellites helped confirm that former Tropical Depression 27W has strengthened into a tropical storm near Guam. The storm has been renamed Tropical Storm Saola and NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed the system in infrared light to determine the location of its strongest storms.

The U.S. Territory of Guam has issued a Small Craft Advisory and High Surf Advisory for the island that extends from Oct. 24 to Oct. 25.

Infrared light provides valuable temperature data to forecasters and cloud top temperatures give clues about highest, coldest, strongest storms within a hurricane.

On Oct. 24 at 12:45 a.m. EDT (0425 UTC) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed Tropical Storm Saola's cloud top temperatures in infrared light. MODIS found cloud top temperatures of strongest thunderstorms were as cold as or colder than minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62.2 Celsius) in two areas, south and southwest of the center.

Cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) that animated multispectral satellite imagery showed the main convection has sheared southwestward of a partially exposed, broad, low level circulation center. That indicates that the storm was still being battered by vertical wind shear.

On Oct. 24 at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) the center of Tropical Storm Saola was located near 13.6 degrees north latitude and 141.1 degrees east longitude, about 159 nautical miles west of Navsta, Guam. The island of Guam is located approximately 3,300 miles West of Hawaii, and 1,500 miles east of the Philippines and south of Japan. Guam is a territory of the United States and its residents are U.S. citizens.

Saola had maximum sustained winds near 40 knots (46 mph/74 kph) and was moving to the northwest at 25 knots (28.7 mph/46.3 kph).

The National Weather Service in Guam issued a Small Craft Advisory until 6 p.m. CHST (local time) on Wednesday, Oct. 25. NWS Guam noted: "As Tropical Storm Saola moves away from the Marianas, combined seas of 10 to 13 feet will subside to 8 to 9 feet Wednesday night, Oct. 25. Fresh to strong winds will prevail through Wednesday decreasing Wednesday night."

There's also a High Surf Advisory in effect for Guam until Wednesday, Oct. 25 at 6 p.m. CHST, local time. The Advisory states "expect hazardous surf of 12 to 14 feet along east facing reefs and 8 to 10 feet along south facing reefs. Along west and north facing reefs...surf will be hazardous up to 9 feet. Surf will remain hazardous through Wednesday."

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expects that Saola will continue strengthening and become a typhoon by Oct. 25 as it moves in a northwesterly direction. Extended forecasts call for the storm to curve to the northeast beginning on Oct. 27 when it is parallel to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan.
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis said Tuesday a strategic review of its eye care unit showed that Alcon can deliver strong growth, but that a possible spin-off or listing is at least two years away.

While a decision on Alcon's fate had been expected by the end of this year, the firm said it wanted further quarters of sales growth and better profit margins before taking a decision, meaning that no action was likely before the first half of 2019.

Novartis also released Tuesday quarterly results which showed a 7 percent increase in net profit to $2.08 billion on a 2 percent increase in sales to $12.4 billion.

But over the first nine months of the year net profit was down 1 percent to $5.7 billion.

Novartis confirmed its annual outlook of sales similar to the $48.5 billion registered last year and operating profits near or slightly below the $12.9 billion recording in 2016.

The firm said it had made significant progress in its strategic review of Alcon, part of which was a decision to transfer over-the-counter Novartis ophthalmic products into the division beginning in January.

As part of the review it "updated Alcon's strategic plan which confirms that it has the potential to grow sales at or above market while delivering profitability at least in line with the industry," the company said in a statement.

Sales rose by 6 percent in the third quarter to $1.5 billion. Over nine months, the rise in sales was 3 percent to $4.5 billion.

"Alcon delivered strong growth in both sales and core operating income," chief executive Joseph Jimenez said in the statement.

Numerous analysts had doubted Novartis would come to a decision on Alcon's fate by the end of the year given the upcoming change in leadership.

Jimenez, who has been chief executive since 2010, is set to hand over the reins at the end of January to Vasant Narasimhan, who has been the firm's global head of drug development and chief medical officer since February last year.

 2017 AFP
By India Today Web Desk: In an exclusive interview to India Today Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani tore into the allegations levelled by Patidar leader Narendra Patel on a bribe offer by BJP.

Rupani rubbished the claims made by Patel and Congress leaders by calling them baseless. Further he said that the opposition is afraid of real 'development' that is why they were maligning it through social media.

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"Congress is scared of BJP's development drive. They are conspiring against the BJP. For the Congress it is a battle of existence," said Rupani.

The chief minister confidently said that the Congress party is set for a huge defeat in the upcoming Gujarat Assembly election.

"Growth may be a joke for Congress, but it is vital to the BJP," said Rupani.

Rupani's scathing comments come in the wake of allegations made by Patidar leader Narendra Patel who alleged that he was offered Rs 1 crore to join BJP. After accepting a token sum of Rs 10 lakh, Patel called a press conference to reveal the ploy.

Following the development, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, who is creating ripples through his Twitter presence lately, lauded Patel and said that Gujarat is priceless and cannot be bought.

While young leaders from both Patidar and OBC communities are burgeoning in a tirade against the ruling BJP in Gujarat, on Monday Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath dismissed any such developments saying that Gujaratis had faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of development.

Adityanath had inferred to the lackluster performance of youths - Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav - in UP Assembly polls earlier this year. He asked where were the youths who challenged BJP in UP polls.

CONGRESS DOING CASTEIST POLITICS

The chief minister criticised Congress leadership by saying that they were indulging in caste-based politics ahead of the Assembly election. When asked about the flak over GST, Rupani said that traders were not upset and it is the Congress that is browbeating about it.

Rupani said that the Narendra Patel's allegation of bribe offer by BJP was a Congress conspiracy.

He further said that Congress workers were present when the transaction took place. Rupani also alleged that there were reports on social media suggesting that anyone who met Rahul in his hotel were given bags full of cash.

Rupani also slammed the Congress by saying that the crowd present at the rally was solely because of the popularity of Alpesh Thakor. When asked about Hardik Patel, Rupani said that he was getting exposed on his own.

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VIDEO | Yogi hopeful of BJP win in Gujarat; Narendra Patel's claim of being offered Rs 1 crore to join party; more

--- ENDS ---
In a forthcoming opinion piece in the journal eLife, eight scientists and science policy experts make the case for standardizing how postdoctoral researchers are categorized by human resources offices and provide a framework that willing institutions can follow.

The authors argue that the widespread use of inconsistent titles for researchers who've earned Ph.D.s and hold temporary research positions, primarily at academic institutions, makes tracking their progress difficult and counting them simply impossible. What's more, the authors say, different designations come with different salaries, benefits and professional-development opportunities, leading to disparities in treatment of similarly ranked employees both within and across institutions.

"Postdocs are a key component of our biomedical research workforce," says Wesley I. Sundquist, co-chair of the biochemistry department at the University of Utah and emeritus chair of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology's Public Affairs Advisory Committee. "We owe it to them, and also to the overall health of our enterprise, to ensure that they are treated equitably and professionally, receive great scientific training and have strong career development opportunities. Standardizing postdoc titles and positions is one important step along that path."

In recent years, the number of scientists holding Ph.D.s and seeking permanent research positions has exceeded demand for them, forcing many of those job seekers to prolong their existing postdoctoral positions or complete multiple short-term stints. Given that postdoc positions are designed to be temporary, some institutions have resorted to instituting term limits to ensure turnover.

"Unfortunately, this effort has led to the proliferation of new designations for similar positions," the authors write, and devising new names for basically the same jobs has consequences. "First, scientists in other designations may not receive the training and career development that is provided to their postdoc counterparts. Second, redesignating scientists who have exhausted their postdoc eligibility so that they can simply continue to perform the same work does not constitute advancement."

In addition, changes to the overtime rules in the Fair Labor Standards Act last year prompted many U.S. universities to raise postdoc salaries. "However," the authors write, "the use of nonstandard designations has meant that these improved pay scales and benefits packages have not always been extended to researchers who are essentially postdocs."

The authors point out that some young scientists even are willing to accept unpaid positions to avoid gaps in employment.

"While this situation is rare, this is a most extreme example of inequities in compensation between scientists at a similar career stage. A task force that studied nonfaculty research positions at Boston University this past spring specifically addressed this issue," explains Michael D. Schaller, chair of the biochemistry department at West Virginia University and the lead author on the eLife article.

The authors say policies at the University of Chicago and Boston University are worth examining. Both institutions have taken steps to standardize their postdoc titles and treatment. At Chicago, there now are only two designationsfellow and scholarand both get equitable pay and experiences. In Boston, administrators cut down 12 professional research titles to four, one of which describes postdocs (termed "postdoctoral scholars"), and eliminated unpaid research positions entirely.

"In our paper, we take the lessons learned by the University of Chicago and Boston University and provide a blueprint to perform the necessary task of postdoc consolidation at any institution," says Andre Porter, policy analyst at ASBMB and an author. "Our hope is that institutions use the step-by-step outline that we've developed and implement many of these recommendations in order to ensure that these young researchers not only receive parity in treatment but in career opportunities as well."

The proposal is overdue, says Gary McDowell, executive director of Future of Research and one of the article's authors. "As one colleague recently said to me, it makes no sense that we can use gene editing in human embryos, but we can't count our postdocs. We hope that we can give institutions a framework to find and more efficiently administer their postdoc populations."

More information: Michael D Schaller et al, What's in a name?, eLife (2017). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.32437 Journal information: eLife
Former CU Boulder doctoral student Matthew Weingarten, now at Stanford, shown here with CU Boulder doctoral student Jenny Nakai setting up a seismic network in Colorado. Credit: David Oink, CIRES

A rash of earthquakes in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico recorded between 2008 and 2010 was likely due to fluids pumped deep underground during oil and gas wastewater disposal, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.

The study, which took place in the 2,200-square-mile Raton Basin along the central Colorado-northern New Mexico border, found more than 1,800 earthquakes up to magnitude 4.3 during that period, linking most to wastewater injection well activity. Such wells are used to pump water back in the ground after it has been extracted during the collection of methane gas from subterranean coal beds.

One key piece of the new study was the use of hydrogeological modeling of pore pressure in what is called the "basement rock" of the Raton Basin - rock several miles deep that underlies the oldest stratified layers. Pore pressure is the fluid pressure within rock fractures and rock pores.

While two previous studies have linked earthquakes in the Raton Basin to wastewater injection wells, this is the first to show that elevated pore pressures deep underground are well above earthquake-triggering thresholds, said CU Boulder doctoral student Jenny Nakai, lead study author. The northern edges of the Raton Basin border Trinidad, Colorado, and Raton, New Mexico.

"We have shown for the first time a plausible causative mechanism for these earthquakes," said Nakai of the Department of Geological Sciences. "The spatial patterns of seismicity we observed are reflected in the distribution of wastewater injection and our modeled pore pressure change."

A paper on the study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. Co-authors on the study include CU Boulder Professors Anne Sheehan and Shemin Ge of geological sciences, former CU Boulder doctoral student Matthew Weingarten, now a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, and Professor Susan Bilek of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro.

The Raton Basin earthquakes between 2008 and 2010 were measured by the seismometers from the EarthScope USArray Transportable Array, a program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to measure earthquakes and map Earth's interior across the country. The team also used seismic data from the Colorado Rockies Experiment and Seismic Transects (CREST), also funded by NSF.

As part of the research, the team simulated in 3-D a 12-mile long fault gleaned from seismicity data in the Vermejo Park region in the Raton Basin. The seismicity patterns also suggest a second, smaller fault in the Raton Basin that was active from 2008-2010.

Nakai said the research team did not look at the relationship between the Raton Basin earthquakes and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

The new study also showed the number of earthquakes in the Raton Basin correlates with the cumulative volume of wastewater injected in wells up to about 9 miles away from the individual earthquakes. There are 28 "Class II" wastewater disposal wells - wells that are used to dispose of waste fluids associated with oil and natural gas production - in the Raton Basin, and at least 200 million barrels of wastewater have been injected underground there by the oil and gas industry since 1994.

"Basement rock is typically more brittle and fractured than the rock layers above it," said Sheehan, also a fellow at CU's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. "When pore pressure increases in basement rock, it can cause earthquakes."

There is still a lot to learn about the Raton Basin earthquakes, said the CU Boulder researchers. While the oil and gas industry has monitored seismic activity with seismometers in the Raton Basin for years and mapped some sub-surface faults, such data are not made available to researchers or the public.

The earthquake patterns in the Raton Basin are similar to other U.S. regions that have shown "induced seismicity" likely caused by wastewater injection wells, said Nakai. Previous studies involving CU Boulder showed that injection wells likely caused earthquakes near Greeley, Colorado, in Oklahoma and in the mid-continent region of the United States in recent years.
The Tongariro Crossing is one of New Zealands most popular walks in a national park. Credit: AAP, CC BY-ND

New Zealand is one of 36 global hotspots for biodiversity. Its unique wildlife is a major draw card for tourists.

About three million international visitors arrive in New Zealand each year, adding NZ$15 billion to the economy. At least half explore a national park or protected area (PA), but they contribute very little to these conservation lands.

Government policies implemented since 2009 as part of a "conservation economy" vision aimed to stimulate economic growth by opening up business access to national parks.

Contracts have been granted with an expectation that businesses that benefit from New Zealand's natural capital would bring environmental and infrastructural gains. My research finds no evidence of such improvements. Here I propose how businesses could help to make nature tourism more sustainable.

Challenge of saving threatened species

Globally, biodiversity is in crisis. Experts agree that the world is undergoing its sixth mass extinction.

In New Zealand, a third of the land area is protected. Many animals and plants are found nowhere else, but 80% of the country's native bird species are in trouble.

Biodiversity conservation in PAs is funded primarily from the state budget. Historically, the appropriations for the Department of Conservation (DOC) have been too small to tackle the challenge of protecting some 2800 species considered to be endangered, at risk of extinction or vulnerable.

The contribution of tourism to DOC's budgets has so far been below 9%. This includes concession fees from tourism operators approved to access PAs, user fees for huts and other facilities, donations and sponsorships.

Conservative budgets for protected areas

Funding cuts are reported around the world, particularly under neoliberal or conservative governments. Stagnant or diminishing budgets sometimes occur despite growing visitor numbers and ambitious tourism growth targets.

The previous New Zealand government aimed to lift the contributions from natural resources to 40% of GDP by 2025. DOC has been asked to prioritise spending on tourism-related operations over biodiversity spending such as pest control and species recovery programmes. This is inconsistent with the agency's legislative mandate.

New Zealand law does not allow charging entry fees for PAs. Attempts to change that have been met with opposition from recreation groups and some tourism businesses. Tax instruments are generally opposed by the tourism industry.

Regulatory options for sustainable tourism

Concessions and planning are powerful tools for an ecologically sustainable use of PAs. Several regulatory approaches could help reverse biodiversity decline, while enhancing the environmental performance of tourism.

Concession contracts could include responsibilities that reflect the latest developments in conservation practice. Such contracts would need to be followed by adequate monitoring and enforcement. This has been used for some time in several countries, including Australia, Canada, Chile, Rwanda, South Africa and the United States. In these countries, concession contracts are also regularly revised to ensure businesses keep apace with environmental innovation, new ecological threats and changing pressures from visitors.

Concession applicants could be selected for their environmental track record and the most deserving environmental design of tourism services. Options here are tenders or auctions, which are already used in the countries mentioned above. Other methods should be used in parallel to ensure that small businesses are not disadvantaged. In the United States, the legal framework for concessions has been revised in 2010 to ensure this doesn't happen.

The planning of tourism development needs to be sufficiently specific to the ecosystems in each zone. Under a concession plan, authorities determine the ideal location of particular tourism activities and maximum numbers of tourists and tourism operators. Recently, authorities have restricted the number of tourism operators allowed to operate in the Haleakala National Park in Hawai'i to only four, based on a concession management plan aiming to ensure environmentally and culturally acceptable tourism.

Such planning is already practised in many countries, including Australia (Queensland, Western Australia), Canada, Rwanda and Argentina.

Best practice for doing business

Currently, New Zealand is not using best practice in regulation and planning. Concession contracts are designed on a "do no harm" approach. The culture has been that if concessionaires rectify and mitigate environmental effects, then all should be fine.

The 1987 Conservation Act enables DOC to insert environmental responsibilities and requirements. However, the analysis of 30 concession contracts and tens of official documents reveals that compliance with more generic environmental regulations is typically deemed sufficient. In addition, DOC's performance on monitoring and enforcing concessions has raised many complaints, even from tourism operators.

Even more problematic is that DOC mostly uses the non-competitive "first-come first-served" method to allocate concessions in PA plans that do not use visitation quotas, except for a few tracks and sensitive sites, such as caves or wetlands.

The cumulative impact of approved concessions has led to a number of tourism hotspots in several national parks. For example, helicopter landings have increased dramatically in the Fiordland and Westland National Parks. The famous Tongariro Crossing track is now used by thousands of visitors on any day with reasonable weather.

However, DOC views this as a social carrying capacity issue. The government needs to demonstrate concern by implementing innovative regulatory and planning instruments with proven effectiveness. If a government cannot ask businesses that profit from access to a country's most precious lands to use the best available environmental practices to manage biodiversity, then who can it ask?

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Scott Hall makes some final adjustments on the thruster before the test begins. Credit: NASA

An advanced space engine in the running to propel humans to Mars has broken the records for operating current, power and thrust for a device of its kind, known as a Hall thruster.

The development of the thruster was led by Alec Gallimore, University of Michigan professor of aerospace engineering and the Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering.

Hall thrusters offer exceptionally efficient plasma-based spacecraft propulsion by accelerating small amounts of propellant very quickly using electric and magnetic fields. They can achieve top speeds with a tiny fraction of the fuel required in a chemical rocket.

"Mars missions are just on the horizon, and we already know that Hall thrusters work well in space," Gallimore said. "They can be optimized either for carrying equipment with minimal energy and propellant over the course of a year or so, or for speedcarrying the crew to Mars much more quickly."

The challenge is to make them larger and more powerful. The X3, a Hall thruster designed by researchers at U-M, NASA and the U.S. Air Force, shattered the previous thrust record set by a Hall thruster, coming in at 5.4 newtons of force compared with 3.3 newtons. The improvement in thrust is especially important for crewed missionit means faster acceleration and shorter travel times. The X3 also more than doubled the operating current record (250 amperes vs. 112 amperes) and ran at a slightly higher power (102 kilowatts vs. 98 kilowatts).

The X3 is one of three prototype "Mars engines" to be turned into a full propulsion system with funding from NASA. Scott Hall, a doctoral student in aerospace engineering at U-M, carried out the tests at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, along with Hani Kamhawi, a NASA Glenn research scientist who has been heavily involved in the development of the X3. The experiments were the culmination of more than five years of building, testing and improving the thruster.

A side shot of the X3 firing at 50 kilowatts. Credit: NASA

NASA Glenn, which specializes in solar electric propulsion, is currently home to the only vacuum chamber in the U.S. that can handle the X3 thruster. The thruster produces so much exhaust that vacuum pumps at other chambers can't keep up. Then, xenon that has been shot out the back of the engine can drift back into the plasma plume, muddying the results. But as of January 2018, an upgrade of the vacuum chamber in Gallimore's lab will enable X3 testing right at U-M.

For now, the X3 team snagged a test window from late July through August this year, starting with four weeks to set up the thrust stand, mount the thruster and connect the thruster with xenon and electrical power supplies. Hall had built a custom thrust stand to bear the X3's 500-pound weight and withstand its force, as existing stands would collapse under it. Throughout the process, Hall and Kamhawi were supported by NASA researchers, engineers and technicians.

"The big moment is when you close the door and pump down the chamber," Hall said.

After the 20 hours of pumping to achieve a space-like vacuum, Hall and Kamhawi spent 12-hour days testing the X3.

Even small breakages feel like big problems when it takes days to gradually bring air back into the chamber, get in to make the repair and pump the air back out again. But in spite of the challenges, Hall and Kamhawi brought the X3 up to its record-breaking power, current and thrust over the 25 days of testing.

Looking ahead, the X3 will at last be integrated with the power supplies under development by Aerojet Rocketdyne, a rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer and lead on the propulsion system grant from NASA. In spring 2018, Hall expects to be back at NASA Glenn running a 100-hour test of the X3 with Aerojet Rocketdyne's power processing system.
A new report by the Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools at New York University (NYU Metro Center) explores patterns of segregation in New York City public schools and finds a link between increased school diversity and modest academic benefits.

The report compares student outcomes in New York City's most diverse (i.e., "non-segregated") and least diverse (i.e., "segregated") schools using 2015-16 achievement and graduation data.

"While there is evidence that supports increasing school diversity, the data regarding the benefits of school diversity in New York City are complex," said David E. Kirkland, executive director of the NYU Metro Center and the report's lead author. "In many cases, the benefits associated with attending the City's most diverse schools were not equally shared across student groups."

Despite the diversity of New York City's population, many of its schools are racially segregated. In June, the New York City Department of Education released a plan to stimulate diversity in its schools. In this report, the NYU Metro Center examined whether achieving the goals outlined in the plan and increasing school diversity would lead to better outcomes for the City's most vulnerable students.

For the purposes of the report, the researchers classified the most diverse (non-segregated) schools in New York City as serving a student population that is highly racially representative, between 50 and 75 percent Black and Latino. The least diverse schools, or segregated schools, were classified as those with a student population between 76 to 100 percent Black and Latino or more than 50 percent White and either very high or very low economic needs.

Using these criteria, 109 schools were identified as the City's most diverse schools, while 839 met the criteria for the City's least diverse schools. Of the least diverse schools, 117 had a student population that was more than 50 percent White. In total, 96,444 students - or 9.1 percent of all New York City students - attended the City's most diverse schools, and 515,032 students - or 39.3 percent of students - attended the City's least diverse schools.

The researchers found that diversity in New York City schools appears to be regional, with the most diverse, non-segregated schools concentrated significantly in Queens. In addition, Black students were the most likely to attend the City's least diverse schools, comprising one-third of the population of these segregated schools, but only 19.3 percent of students attending the most diverse schools.

Analysis of 2015-16 achievement data suggests that there is a modest benefit for vulnerable students attending the City's most diverse schools. Third and eighth grade students attending the most diverse schools modestly outperformed students attending the City's least diverse schools on state standardized tests in both English and math.

In addition, students attending the most diverse high schools were slightly more likely to graduateon-time than their peers attending the least diverse schools (68.8 percent versus 66.5 percent); less economically advantaged students in particular seemed to benefit from attending the most diverse high schools. By contrast, White, Asian, and more economically advantaged students were much more likely to graduate in four years in the City's least diverse schools than their peers.

"White and Asian students seem to benefit incongruently from segregated schooling, which means that school segregation may give some students an unfair and seemingly unhealthy advantage - thus, sanctioning uneven opportunities for success," said Kirkland.

The analysis also suggests that younger students, as a whole, do not reap large benefits from attending the City's most diverse schools, but older students do - providing evidence of the long-term benefits of school diversity.

"The academic achievement and high school graduation evidence that we analyzed suggests that increasing diversity can increase equity in New York City schools and significantly decrease gaps in some student outcomes such as high school graduation," Kirkland concluded. "Thus, plans to stimulate diversity in New York City schools can pay off for the City's most vulnerable students."

The report includes recommendations for stimulating diversity, expanding opportunity, and interrupting segregation in New York City schools, including challenging "opportunity monopolies," such as specialized high schools, that only provide privileges to certain groups of students. The researchers also recommend recruiting and retaining teachers of color and hiring from the beginning culturally competent educators.
Breezy Point in the Rockaways was one of the communities hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Now its on the road to recovery. Credit: Sarah Fecht

Breezy Point isn't next to the beachit more or less is the beach. It's a community built on sand. Occupying the Rockaway Peninsula that juts out of Queens, NY and into the Atlantic Ocean, residents are never more than a few minutes' walk to the brackish bays that surround the thin strip of land. The flat landscape and many of the alleys and parking lots swim in loose drifts of sand. It's not hard to see why this area was so badly damaged by Hurricane Sandy five years ago.

When John Mutter was last in the Rockaways, he saw houses that were crushed to bits, and some that had burned down to their foundations. That was a few weeks after Sandy struck in October 2012, carrying a 12-foot storm surge and killing 43 people in New York City. The storm knocked over buildings, drowned basements, and caused tens of billions of dollars in damages. In Breezy Point, flooded streets prevented firefighters from putting out fires, which eventually consumed more than 100 homes.

Now, on an unseasonably hot October afternoon, Mutterwho studies the socioeconomic effects of natural disasters at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairsis standing in the same neighborhood he witnessed in shambles five years ago, and he's pleasantly surprised. New homes, many extravagantly large, line the streets, some with stickers still on the windows. Others are under construction, boxed in by green plywood fences. Most are now raised high off the ground to avoid rising seas and intense storms, both of which climate change is expected to exacerbate in the coming years. A few vacant lots signal homes that must have been destroyed, but there aren't many.

"It's a little bit more built back than I expected," says Mutter. "A lot of this looks really new, like it's either been recently renovated or newly built. And everything that looks new is elevated."

By all accounts, Breezy Point is doing well compared to some of the hurricane disaster sites Mutter has seenin New Orleans, for example, many homes still haven't been repaired or rebuilt since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.

But how well has New York City really recovered, and how prepared are we for the next big storm? Behind the big shiny beachfront homes, the smaller homes that remain squat and huddled on the groundsome still damaged by floodwatersindicate that not everyone has bounced back from the storm, and not everyone is prepared for the next one.

The Lingering Impacts

In Long Beach, not too far from the Rockaways, Sandy destroyed the entire ground floor of Earth Institute executive director Steve Cohen's summer bungalow. Gutting and renovating rang up an $80,000 bill. "We had flood insurance, so it eventually covered it, but a lot of our neighbors didn't," he says. And while Cohen and his wife had enough savings to front the money to the contractors while waiting for the insurance to pay up, many of their neighbors didn't. Some were homeless for a year or more, shacking up with family or friends.

"Some people did very well from this storm, and ended up in houses that were far and above any houses they would have had, and some people ended up not so well off," says Donald Conceicao, a Breezy Point resident. "I think it all depends on who you talk to."

Almost without fail, natural disasters hit poorer people harder than wealthier people. "Those who are the most vulnerable when the sky is blue become even more vulnerable when the sky is gray," says Jeff Schlegelmilch, the deputy director for Columbia's National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP).

Just after Sandy, some Breezy Point houses looked unscathed, says Mutter, while others were badly damaged or completely destroyed. It's the older, flimsier structures, owned by people who are less well-off, that fall into the second category. Poorer people are also less likely to have the resources to rebuild while they spend years fighting for help from the government or an insurance companyif they even had insurance to begin with.

"There are still some people who have yet to get back to their homes," says Cohen.

NYC's Build It Back program says that by the end of 2016, 90 percent of its participants had received aid and/or began construction on their homes, and 76 percent of single-family homes were completed. But those stats are boosted by the fact that more than half of the program's 20,000 applicants have dropped out or been disqualified. "It is startling you have so many people in need, but for one reason or another they're dropping out," Schlegelmilch says. "We need to understand why people have left." He suspects many were frustrated with trying to navigate the program's complex bureaucracy and paperwork.

Meanwhile, for every year that someone doesn't have a home, "they're struggling to get back to a baseline while everyone else is moving forward," says Schlegelmilch. And the effects of that displacement aren't just physical. Families must find (and pay for) temporary housing while trying to get their careers back on track and their kids back in school.

After Sandy, a study by the NCDP found that New Jersey children whose homes were damaged were more likely to act out or withdraw from class, possibly due to witnessing the financial and emotional stress of their parents and community. Although the researchers don't have data on how those kids are doing today, "I think it is very plausible that there are children still dealing with these issues," says Schlegelmilch. "We know not everyone is back in their home."

Resilient Infrastructure

There are people who believe that nobody should live in places like Breezy Point, because they're so vulnerable to rising seas and storm surge. But if you've raised a family and built a community in one of these coastal neighborhoods, leaving is not so easy. Plus, "New York City has 600 miles of coastlinewhere are we going to go?" asks Cohen. "It's not feasible to move away from where these impacts are coming. We need to be able to build stronger and more resilient communities, and at the same time we have to mitigate climate change."

Long before Sandy struck his house, Klaus Jacob, a disaster and climate expert at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, drew up plans to elevate his home in Piermont, New York. But because of zoning restrictions, he wasn't allowed to raise it as high as he thought was necessary. "Sandy came and I had two-and-a-half feet of water in my house, which was exactly the difference between what I wanted and they would allow," he says. So, instead of spending $15,000 dollars to add on few extra feet while his house was already being lifted, he spent $40,000 repairing the flood damage and wet-proofing the ground flood. The town's zoning restrictions have since been updated, allowing residents to elevate their homes to at or above Sandy's flood levels, and a few neighbors have raised their houses on higher foundations. It isn't cheap, thoughJacob estimates that starting a new construction project to elevate his house those few additional feet would have cost at least $100,000.

In addition to elevating homes and converting ground floors into storage areas, the city is repairing sea barriers, building and replenishing sand dunes, and incorporating more green areas and permeable structures that will help absorb floodwaters. The new Rockaway Boardwalk replaces a wooden boardwalk swept away by Sandy with concrete, sandbags, and other coastal protection measures.

Columbia architect Kate Orff has plans to build a breakwater around the south shore of Staten Island, another area that suffered badly in Sandy's path of destruction. The project, called Living Breakwaters, would use manmade oyster beds to absorb wave energy and prevent coastal erosion, while cleaning the water and creating a natural habitat for fish and other marine animals. The project has received funding from New York State and construction is expected to begin in 2018.

To examine how best to protect the New York City region, researchers from Columbia's School of Engineering and Applied Science are teaming up with the International Research Institute for Climate and Society and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. By combining information about sea level rise, storm severity, and potential flooding levels into computer models, the team will evaluate the effectiveness of suggestions such as seawalls, artificial sand dunes, and a proposal to build a giant gate near the Verrazano-Narrows bridge that closes off the passage to New York Harbor when a storm approaches. The study will help to specify where these structures would be most useful, how high they need to be, whether there are less costly options that provide the same amount of protection, and whether they might exacerbate flooding elsewhere.

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded the New York City subways with millions of gallons of water. The MTA was able to get most of the trains back up and running within a few days after the storm, but the damage would have been much worse if it hadn't been for Jacob's 2011 study, which predicted which tunnels would flood. Based on his assessment of the system's vulnerabilities, the MTA removed many of its underground electrical control and signal systems before the storm hit, to save them from saltwater corrosion. Without the 'playbook' that Jacob devised, he estimates recovery would have taken four weeks and cost the economy tens of billions of dollars.

Since then, the MTA has identified 3,600 openings that allow water to flow into the subway tunnels, and is currently installing devices that can be closed during flood situations. Jacob is now re-doing the 2011 calculations to see how well the devices perform, since they do allow some water to leak through. He and his team are still in the midst of the study, but so far "it looks like it's quite effective," he says, "provided that all the devices can be put into place before landfall and perform as designed."

Despite these positive steps toward protecting New York City's infrastructure and some communities, many think the measures don't go far enough. Residents of Belle Harbor and Neponsit in the Rockaways are calling for greater protection, and Jacob says that "development still continues around New York City often in total ignorance of long-term flooding conditions from sea level rise." He thinks the government should be pushing buyout programs in low-lying, low-density areas like the Rockaways, which are expected to be mostly underwater by 2100. In lower Manhattan, where a buyout program isn't feasible, Jacob suggests abandoning the basements and ground floors of skyscrapers, or at least relocating critical utilities to a higher floor.

Resilient Communities

Resilience isn't just physical. Building barricades and lifting homes can take years or decades, but Sandy taught the city lessons in emergency preparedness and response that we can benefit from today.

For one thing, Sandy shows that the city's mandatory evacuations for low-lying areas worked, says Mutter. "The death toll was actually quite low given the number of people that were affected," he says.

In addition, since Hurricane Sandy (and Katrina before it), governments have gotten better at having emergency resources pre-deployed before the storm hits, says Schlegelmilch. They're also better able to integrate federal resources into the state and local levels, and to work with non-traditional first responders, such as the faith-based organizations that sometimes get to the disaster site before FEMA does.

The NCDP is also working to make communities themselves more resilient in order to protect children. Working with Save the Children under a grant from GSK, they've established child-focused community resilience coalitions in New York and Arkansas to analyze disaster response procedures, train caretakers, and run through practice drills. Increasing cohesion and connectedness is one of the program's focuses. "Resilience is not just about building flood walls," says Schlegelmilch. "We're creating environments for neighbors helping neighbors."

The Next Big Storm

With Hurricane Sandy, flooding caused most of the devastation in the New York City area. But future storms may be different. Wind was the major problem when Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico a month ago; millions of people are still reeling from the damages.

The problem with disaster preparedness is that you're always fighting the last war, says Cohen. "You really don't know what's going to happen and who will be impacted in what way. You can't be fully prepared for it." But if a clone of Hurricane Sandy were to strike New York next week, he thinks that New York would do better this time around, thanks to the infrastructure upgrades and emergency response lessons.

However, the road to recovery is a long one. Schlegelmilch says it generally takes a decade or longer to recover from a large natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy.

By his measureand many otherswe're halfway there at best.
With the announcement of the first list of 11 AAP candidates in Gujarat, Congress is yet again convinced of a 'design' by the party.

By Sweta dutta: AAP's entry into the poll fray in Gujarat has widened the chasm between them and Congress that has been suspicious of a 'pattern' in AAP's political battles.

Even as highly placed sources told Mail Today that AAP has tried to make friendly overtures in the past few months in Gujarat, the Congress leadership failed to trust the party owing to its previous moves.

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With the announcement of the first list of 11 AAP candidates in Gujarat, Congress is yet again convinced of a 'design' by the party. Of the 11 seats, nine have sitting BJP MLAs and the remaining two have Congress MLAs.

"Nobody in the AAP has approached me and I have not heard of any talks with them in Gujarat. The AAP instead has been working to help the BJP. That is how they have worked in every poll so far. They have strategically contested only in states with incumbent BJP governments, taking away the anti-incumbency votes that would have otherwise gone to Congress.

"It will not be accurate to say they are eating into our voteshare but into the votes that BJP would have lost due to anti-incumbency," Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee chief Ajay Maken told Mail Today.

"How is it that AAP did not contest in UP or Uttarakhand and not even in Haryana? These states are closer to Delhi, where they already have a government. Even now Himachal Pradesh is geographically closer to Delhi than Gujarat and they should have contested in that state too. But they chose to contest only in Gujarat and there too on all the 11 seats where they have announced their candidates, the BJP stands to benefit from it? How else can this be read?" Maken alleged.

"In Goa the difference in vote share between Congress and BJP was around 4 per cent and though AAP did not win any seat, it took away 6 per cent of the votes. They deliberately announced a Christian chief ministerial candidate knowing well that Christians in the state are traditionally Congress voters. It directly benefitted the BJP."

AAP spokespersons and leaders could not be reached for a comment.

However cabinet minister and Gujarat state in-charge Gopal Rai had previously clarified during the announcement of the first list of candidates on Saturday that the party's main aim was to give a "direct fight to the ruling party (BJP)."

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Regardless of factors such as anti-incumbency, unrest over demonetisation and GST and agitations from Patidar, OBC-Thakore and Dalit communities, BJP seems set to retain its bastion of Gujarat, say India Today-Axis My India Opinion Poll results.

By Rahul Kanwal: Despite facing 22 years of anti-incumbency, despite major trader unrest over the implementation of GST and demonetisation, despite the Patidar, OBC-Thakore and Dalit agitations, the BJP seems set to retain its bastion of Gujarat, according to the results of the India Today-Axis My India Opinion Poll. Axis My India is the polling agency which correctly called the extent of Modi's sweep in the 2014 general elections and followed it up with accurate predictions for the Delhi, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh assembly elections.

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According to the opinion poll conducted by Axis between September 15 and October 15 in all the 182 constituencies of Gujarat, the BJP is projected to bag between 115-125 seats. This is in the same range as the BJP's performance in the 2007 and 2012 assembly elections. The Congress, which is the principal opposition in the state, is projected to bag between 57-65 seats. In the last assembly elections held in 2012, the Congress party had bagged 60 seats.

Out of the 18,243 respondents sampled by Axis My India, 48 per cent said that they would vote for the BJP, while 38 per cent said that they would vote for the Congress. A 10 per cent gap in vote share in a bipolar race is enough to ensure that BJP is able to overcome all the anti-incumbency that has been building against the party during its reign in power.

The poll shows that the Congress has an edge among 32 per cent of the electorate - Muslims 10 per cent, Dalits 6 per cent and Patidars 16 per cent. On the other hand, the BJP has a decisive edge among 67 per cent of the electorate - OBC 37 per cent, ST 15 per cent and General 15 per cent.

This opinion poll takes into account the extra votes the Congress may get with the support of OBC youth leader Alpesh Thakore and Dalit activist Jignesh Mewani. But the vote share predictions do not account for the additional bump the opposition can get if Patidar leader Hardik Patel announces that he too will back the Congress. Over the last few years, Hardik Patel has emerged as an influential leader of the Patidar community. The Patidars are the dominant caste in the state, making up 16 per cent of the total electorate. They play a decisive role in 21 out of the state's 182 seats.

So far, Hardik has been ambivalent about whether he will support the Congress directly. In his rallies and interviews, Hardik has been saying that he wants his supporters to "overthrow the arrogant BJP which attacked Patidar youths." But Hardik has thus far not come out in open support of the Congress. Hardik went to great lengths to keep his meeting with Congress leaders in Ahmedabad on Monday secret. Officially, he has denied meeting Rahul Gandhi even though Congress leaders say the meeting did take place in an Ahmedabad hotel room.

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In this opinion poll, Axis My India did ask respondents whether they would back whichever party Hardik decided to support. Two percent of the total respondents said they would back the party which had the support of the Patidar young turk. Axis My India has also made a Scenario Two projection for what may happen if Hardik Patel were to officially declare his support for the Congress. According to the pollsters at Axis My India, if Hardik openly supports the Congress, the party's vote share can climb from 38 per cent to 40 per cent. This could lead to a gain of about 5-10 seats for the Congress and a commensurate loss in seat share for the BJP.

While Hardik's support for the Congress will dent BJP's chances, it is not enough to upset the ruling party's applecart in this high-voltage election, which is being seen as a mega prestige battle for the mighty Modi-Shah combine. What must be kept in mind is that this poll was conducted before October 15 and does not capture the impact of events which have transpired after the surveyors had completed their fieldwork.

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What is clear though is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to remain the BJP's main draw in the elections. 66 per cent of the respondents felt that Gujarat had benefitted after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister and a whopping 74 per cent of the respondents felt that the Modi government had done well or very well. The BJP in the state may be feeling the pressure of anti-incumbency but this has not impacted the image of the son of the soil who went on to become India's Prime Minister. In past elections, Modi has successively worked his magic and won over the electorate despite facing strong anti-incumbency. The opinion poll numbers suggest that citizens of Gujarat are still captivated by Modi's spell.

The biggest headache for the BJP by far is the backlash faced by the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax. In a state dominated by traders, more than half the respondents said that they were dissatisfied with the GST. Only 38 per cent approved of the GST. It is very clear from the poll numbers that there is anger with the way GST has been implemented, but what is not clear is whether anger over GST will impact voter behaviour. For a long time now, traders have been strong supporters of the BJP in Gujarat and are considered the party's principal support base. Whether these traders will go to the extent of dumping the BJP over GST is one of the big X-factors of the Gujarat polls. The BJP, for its part, has been going all out to assuage the anger of the trading community and ease the bottlenecks caused by the rollout of the GST.

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In this poll, incumbent Vijay Rupani of the BJP emerges as the number one choice of the voters to be the state's next chief minister with 34 per cent of the respondents picking him as their number one choice. Shaktisinh Gohil of the Congress comes in second with 19 per cent approval ratings. Former Chief Minister Madhavsinh Solanki's son and current Congress state party chief Bharatsinh Solanki comes in third place with 11 per cent approval ratings.

Also watch: India Today-Axis My India Opinion Poll: Congress unlikely to dent BJP hold in Gujarat; Modi wave to sweep all

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Inventory needs to be managed and managed well, or you are going to get in recurring trouble, and lose your credibility and hard-earned conversions, whether 

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BJP will register victory in the November 9 Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections by defeating the Congress government led by Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, an opinion poll conducted by India Today-Axis My India has indicated.

By India Today Web Desk: BJP will register victory in the November 9 Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections by defeating the Congress government led by Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, an opinion poll conducted by India Today-Axis My India has indicated.

According to the poll, BJP will garner 43 to 47 of the total 68 seats in the Himachal Pradesh Assembly. As the majority mark is 35, BJP will easily romp home victorious.

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On the other hand, the Congress will bag 21 to 25 seats and will lose to the BJP, according to the opinion poll. Other parties, including independents are likely to win just two seats.

In the 2012 Assembly elections, the Congress contested under the leadership of Virbhadra Singh and won 36 seats. The BJP could garner just 26 seats. Virbhadra Singh took oath as the chief minister for a record sixth time.

As far as the vote share is concerned, BJP, which looks poised to win the Himachal Pradesh elections, is likely to get 49 per cent - almost half - of the votes polled. Against this, the ruling Congress will garner 38 per cent of the vote share.

BJP TO MAINTAIN LEAD OVER CONG IN SHIMLA

The BJP is likely to maintain a lead over the Congress in all the three regions of Kangra, Mandi and Shimla which have 25, 24 and 19 Assembly constituencies respectively. The BJP may win 18, 15 and 12 seats while the Congress seven, nine and seven respectively.

On vote share too, BJP will be ahead of the Congress in all the three regions. It will garner 52 per cent, 49 per cent and 46 per cent vote share in Kangra, Mandi and Shimla respectively while the Congress will bag 35 per cent, 37 per cent and 39 per cent.

Though the BJP appears to be winning the Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections, Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh is still the most popular leader in hill state. Of all the people surveyed, 31 per cent felt that Singh should be the chief minister.

JP NADDA, PREM KUMAR DHUMAL OTHER POPULAR LEADERS

Singh was followed by Union Health Minister of the BJP JP Nadda (24 per cent), former chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal of the BJP (16 per cent), former chief minister Shanta Kumar of the BJP (9 per cent) and BJP Himachal Pradesh president Satpal Singh Sati (2 per cent).

List of contenders.

Asked to give their opinion on Singh, 28 per cent of those surveyed said he had contributed for development while 8 per cent found him impressive. On the contrary, 6 per cent said he was involved in various issues and 3 per cent said he did not contribute towards the state's development.

Issues before the people of Himachal. Issues before the people of Himachal.

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Whatever the politicians may harp on, but an overwhelming majority (82 per cent) of the people felt that employment is the biggest issue in the elections. Just 7 per cent felt employment, 4 per cent roads and 3 per cent felt the chief ministerial candidate will make a difference.

WATCH VIDEO | Himachal Pradesh Opinion Poll: BJP set for big win defeating Congress CM Virbhadra Singh

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" " A plutonium-238 oxide pellet glows from its own heat; the radioisotope is used as fuel to power spacecraft bound for deep space. U.S. Department of Energy

A recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warns that NASA's ability to mount future missions in deep space may be hindered by a shortage of plutonium-238 (Pu-238) fuel.

Pu-238 is used in radioisotope power systems. Also called "nuclear batteries," these power sources produce electricity for spacecraft when their solar panels aren't producing adequate juice  while surveying planets far from the sun, for instance. They've also been used to power probes such as NASA's Curiosity Rover, which since 2012 has been exploring the surface of Mars, where dust storms can interfere with solar energy generation.

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" " Plutonium-238 is stored in a ceramic form inside a protective cylindrical shell of graphite. The fuel source provides heat for the Curiosity Mars rover's electrical power systems. U.S. Department of Energy/Idaho National Laboratory/NASA

But Pu-238 isn't something that can be easily obtained. As Wired reported back in 2013, the only known natural source of the isotope is from exploding stars, and with a half-life of just under 88 years, any Pu-238 produced out in the cosmos quickly decays and disappears before ever reaching Earth. The only way to obtain Pu-238? Scientists have to make it in nuclear reactors. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, that wasn't a problem, because the nation's nuclear weapons program could double as a fuel source for the space program.

But the U.S. source for Pu-238 dried up on 1988, when the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River Plant in South Carolina shut down production as the U.S.-Soviet Cold War was dwindling down. From that point in time through the early 1990s, the U.S. purchased the plutonium it needed from Russia, but that country stopped selling it in 2009, probably because its own stock was shrinking.

In 2015, U.S. government scientists again started producing Pu-238 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and other facilities. But it isn't easy to make the fuel, and according to GAO, an agency that investigates issues on behalf of Congress, they've only been able to produce about 3.5 ounces (100 grams) of it so far, and production won't ramp up to 3.3 pounds (1.5 kilograms) a year untl 2023 at the earliest. Meanwhile, according to GAO, the U.S. supply has dwindled to only about 77.2 pounds (35 kilograms), which includes only 37.5 pounds (17 kilograms) that meet the specifications for use in spacecraft. Some spacecraft power systems require as much as 7.5 pounds (3.4 kilograms) of Pu-238, so it's not too hard to see the predicament NASA will find itself in, unless DOE finds a way to boost production.

Now That's Interesting According to a 2009 report by the National Research Council, humans have identified 22 radioisotopes capable of powering a spacecraft. But aside from Pu-238, the rest are either too expensive, lack enough heat output, or are too radioactive to be used safely.
(PHOTO: Getty Images)

An account executive who forged company cheques and stole $106,390.62 from her employer was jailed 12 months on Tuesday (24 October). Yeo Kim Lan, 54, had earlier pleaded guilty to 10 counts of forgery. Twenty other similar charges were taken into consideration during her sentencing.

The court heard that part of Yeos job at MSG Singapore was to prepare company accounts, audits and cheques. She was also required to prepare bank transfer forms and cheques from MSG Singapore and its parent company, NSG Asia. Between 2 April 2014 and 2 June 2016, Yeo forged 30 company cheques under NSG Asias Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation bank account.

After handing a cheque she had prepared to the companys director, Tan Pel Hui, to authorise payment to MSG Singapore, she would then alter the name of the payee listed on the cheque. She did so by using typewriter correction tape to cancel out the original name and would then insert her own name with a typewriter.

Yeo would then cash the cheques or have the funds deposited into her POSB bank account. The amount listed on the cheques was usually $3,807.06, apart from three occasions when the sum was $1,200.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Thiam Jia Min said that Yeo covered up her misdeeds by listing said funds under the companys debtor ledger during audits. Yeo also covered up the shortfall in MSG Singapores bank account by altering the bank transfer forms for fund transfers from NSG Asias foreign dollar account to NSG Asias Singapore dollar account and changing the payee to MSG Singapore.

The crimes were uncovered on 25 June last year, when Tan asked Yeo for both NSG Asia and MSG Singapores bank statements. Yeo lied that the bank did not issue any statements, but Tan discovered otherwise when he contact the bank. Yeo then provided falsified bank statements to Tan who later discovered the truth about the documents. Tan then conducted an internal audit and lodged a police report.

Yeo claimed that she spent her ill-gotten gains on the interest accrued on her pawn tickets, bank debts and gambling expenses at Singapore Pools. She has since made full restitution of the amount she stole.

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DPP Thiam called for the court to impose a 12-month jail term, given that the offences were pre-mediated and involved a large sum of money. For committing forgery, Yeo could have been jailed up to 15 years and fined on each charge.

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FILE PHOTO: Australian Defense Minister Marise Payne shakes hands with her Filipino counterpart Delfin Lorenzana, before their meeting to discuss military strategy and assistance in the Philippines' fight against Islamist militants in Marawi, at Villamor Air Base in Pasay, Metro Manila, Philippines, September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Erik De Castro/File Photo (Reuters)

By Manuel Mogato

CLARK FREEPORT ZONE, Philippines (Reuters) - Australia on Tuesday announced the expansion of its security support to the Philippines, which will involve training in urban counter-terrorism, to fight the rise and spread of Islamist militancy in the region.

The announcement follows the end of the 154-day battle for Marawi city which stunned the Philippine's military inexperienced in urban combat, and fuelled concerns Islamic State loyalists wanted to use the southern island of Mindanao as a base for Southeast Asia activity.

The battle for Marawi ended on Monday. Philippines authorities said 920 militants, 165 troops and police and at least 45 civilians were killed in the conflict, which displaced more than 300,000 people.

Australia, along with the United States, Singapore and China, provided weaponry and technical support, including surveillance aircraft.

"All nations must learn from the recent Marawi conflict and the Philippines' experience," said Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne, adding Canberra and Manila will host a post-conflict seminar to learn from the five-month Marawi conflict.

About 80 soldiers from Australia's mobile training team will be deployed in local bases in the Philippines to train army and marine units in urban counter-terrorism warfare, said Payne on the sidelines of an ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting in Clark, a former U.S. air force base.

"The practical training the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) will provide will ensure the Philippines defence force is better able to counter the brutal tactics being employed by terrorists," Payne told a news conference.

"The spread of Daesh-inspired (Islamic State) terrorism is a direct threat to Australia and its interests and we are committed to working with our partners and allies to ensuring Daesh cannot establish a geographic foothold in the region."

Payne said Australia was concerned with Islamic State fighters returning from Iraq and Syria to home countries in Southeast Asia and was working closely with Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore to monitor militant movements.

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Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said in the same briefing the government had been provided by Kurdish intelligence, through Manila's embassy in Baghdad, with a list of Indonesians, Malaysians and a few Filipinos who might return home.

Lorenzana said the Philippines and Australia are now reviewing the deployment of surveillance planes, which flew four times a week over Marawi since late June.

Apart from urban warfare training, Australia will also enhance provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability, share information and intelligence and strengthen maritime security engagement and bilateral maritime patrols.

An increasing number of Australian warships are expected to make visits to Manila. Canberra is also emerging to be the top source of education and training for local troops.

(Reporting By Manuel Mogato; Editing by Michael Perry)
Austria's far-right FPOe party on Tuesday agreed to enter talks on forming a coalition government with incoming chancellor Sebastian Kurz, offering a fresh boost to populist parties in Europe. The conservative chancellor, 31, invited the FPOe (Freedom Party) for talks, paving the way for the party to return to power nearly two decades after it last entered government in 2000. "We have accepted this invitation," said FPOe leader Heinz-Christian Strache. His party came third in elections on October 15. The last time the FPOe entered government, Austria was ostracised in Europe. The party's then leader Joerg Haider praised Hitler's "orderly" employment policies. But such a backlash is not expected this time. The FPOe -- founded by ex-Nazis after World War II -- has sought to soften its image. Its recent rise has mirrored that of other populist parties in Europe. - 'Stable government' wanted - Kurz earlier said that "very constructive" preliminary talks had already been held between his People's Party (OeVP) and the FPOe. He said he hoped an agreement would be reached by Christmas. "Austria deserves to have a stable government formed quickly," he said. Kurz, nicknamed "wunderwuzzi" ("whizz-kid"), took over the conservative OeVP in May. He attracted supporters by depicting himself as a breath of fresh air, talking tough on immigration and vowing to slash taxes and red tape. The OeVP won 31.5 percent of October 15's vote, followed by the centre-left Social Democrats on 26.9 percent. Their leader Christian Kern is preparing his party to lead the opposition, saying they will face "two right-wing populist parties whose positions have been getting closer for some time." The FPOe, which has long been critical of the European Union, came a close third with 26.0 percent, just short of its 1999 record of 26.9 percent under Haider. - 'Sushi coalition' - Kurz, who is set to become the world's youngest leader, on Tuesday insisted a "clear pro-Europe orientation" was a prerequisite for entering a coalition with his party. He said last week he expected Austria to play an "active" role in the EU. Strache has called the talks a "starting point" but warned that an agreement is not guaranteed. "They will not necessarily succeed because we have several conditions and we do not seek to enter the government at any cost," he said. The FPOe is demanding increased border security, Swiss-style direct democracy and economic reforms. Its leaders have also said Islam "has no place" in Austria. After he dined in Strache's home following his electoral victory, Austria dubbed Kurz's ties with the FPOe leader the "sushi coalition", named after the dish that was served. "We agree on some points and disagree on others," Kurz said Tuesday, without elaborating. Last week he vowed "zero tolerance" on anti-Semitism in any future government. - Israel ties - Israel temporarily withdrew its ambassador to Austria in 2000 over Haider's praise of Hitler and SS veterans, but relations were normalised in 2003 under prime minister Ariel Sharon. Strache, who has headed the FPOe since 2005, has moved to improve relations with the Jewish state. The 48-year-old has visited Israel several times, lastly in April 2016 when he met members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and laid a wreath at the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem. Israel's foreign ministry stressed at the time that it was a "strictly private visit" that included no official meetings. But members of the Austrian Jewish community have raised concerns about the possible coalition government and some have urged Kurz to renounce an alliance with the FPOe. "That the nationalist wolf is wearing a blue sheepskin (the colour of the FPOe) does not change its nature, only its appearance," said Oskar Deutsch, president of the Jewish Community (IKG) of Austria.
Reuters

India has asked state-owned firms to consider moving the country's insolvency court to shut loss-making units, hoping for speedier resolutions as the government looks to slim down its public sector holdings. Public sector companies will have to file an insolvency application under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) for the resolution of a loss-making unit within three months of approval from a committee comprising top cabinet ministers, according to guidelines released by the government on Monday. The government is looking to close loss-making units in nearly nine months from the day a firm seeks approval to do so.
(In this Oct 13 story, Sheriff's office corrects suspect's first name to Arron, not Aaron in paragraph 2, and corrects victim Staci Jackson's age to 25, not 28, in paragraph 4.)

By Suzannah Gonzales

(Reuters) - An Ohio man has been arrested in connection with the shooting deaths of four people in a rural area of the state this week after an extensive manhunt, the local sheriff said on Friday.

Arron Lawson, 23, of Pedro, a small community in southern Ohio, faces three counts of murder and one count of aggravated murder, Lawrence County Sheriff Jeff Lawless told reporters.

Lawson is charged with the deaths of three adults and an 8-year-old boy, all of whom were found shot to death in a Pedro trailer.

The adults' identities were not immediately provided by officials, but media reports named them as 25-year-old Staci Jackson, 43-year-old Tammie McGuire and 50-year-old Donald McGuire. The 8-year-old boy was identified by authorities as Devin Holston.

"I can't believe they're gone ... You don't go and kill family," Brandon McGuire, who said he was the son of Tammie McGuire, tearfully told reporters after the sheriff's news conference.

Police responded on Wednesday to the trailer after a report of a man being attacked there with a knife by someone believed to be Lawson, sheriff's officials said.

They found three adults shot to death inside but did not search the premises thoroughly because they did not want to disturb the scene, Lawless, the sheriff, said previously.

When they returned with search warrants and combed through the trailer, investigators found the boy's body on Thursday.

The sheriff's office had earlier issued a missing child alert for the boy, which was cancelled after his body was found.

Family members of the victims told reporters that Lawson was related to Tammie McGuire. He was known to visit the mobile home where the victims were found and lived nearby, the sheriff said.

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The search for Lawson included local, tri-state and federal agencies, more than 100 officers, and the use of aircraft, Lawless said.

A resident who saw Lawson walking near Pedro notified sheriff's officials and the tip led to his capture, Lawless told reporters. He was arrested without incident and is being held in the county jail, Lawless said.

"It makes you feel good that our efforts, our very strong efforts, were successful. I know that the public were a little afraid and rightly so," Lawless said.

Additional charges could be brought against Lawson, the sheriff said. Officials still have no motive and are waiting for autopsy and coroner's reports and an investigation to determine the time of death of each person, he said.

(Editing by Patrick Enright and Bernadette Baum)
Powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pledged a "moderate, open" Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, breaking with ultra-conservative clerics in favour of an image catering to foreign investors and Saudi youth. The Saudi strongman, 32, did not mince words in declaring a new reality for the kingdom, hours after announcing the launch of an independent $500 billion megacity -- with "separate regulation" -- along the Red Sea coastline. "We want to live a normal life. A life in which our religion translates to tolerance, to our traditions of kindness," he told international investors gathered at an economic forum in Riyadh. "Seventy percent of the Saudi population is under 30, and honestly we will not spend the next 30 years of our lives dealing with destructive ideas. We will destroy them today and at once," the crown prince said. "We will end extremism very soon." Prince Mohammed, known by his initials MBS, said he would see to it his country moved past 1979, a reference to the rise of political Islam in the years following the assassination of King Faisal in 1975. The early 1970s had ushered major change into the oil-rich kingdom, including the introduction of television and schools for girls. But that came to a halt as the Al-Sheikh family, which controls religious and social regulation in the kingdom, and the ruling Al-Saud family slowly reinforced the conservative policies Riyadh is known for. Prince Mohammed's statement Tuesday is the most direct attack by a Saudi official on the Gulf country's influential conservative religious circles, whose stranglehold on Saudi society now appears to face serious challenges. - 'Return to what was' - "We are returning to what we were before -- a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions, traditions and people around the globe," he said. While the Saudi government continues to draw criticism from international rights groups, the crown prince has pushed ahead with reforms since his sudden appointment on June 21. Monitors, including Amnesty International, say Saudi Arabia has in parallel stepped up its repression of peaceful rights activists. Saudi authorities last month arrested more than 20 activists, including two popular Muslim preachers, without disclosing any charges against them. But the young prince is widely regarded as being the force behind King Salman's decision last month to lift a decades-long ban prohibiting women from driving. He has vied to modernise certain sectors in the kingdom, hinting that long-banned cinemas would soon be permitted as part of ambitious reforms for a post-oil era that could shake up the austere kingdom's cultural scene. Prince Mohammed's comments came hours after the opening of the Future Investment Initiative, a three-day economic conference that brings together some 2,500 dignitaries, including 2,000 foreign investors. Earlier Tuesday, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund -- controlled by MBS -- announced the launch of an independent economic zone along the kingdom's northwestern coastline. The project, dubbed NEOM, will operate under regulations separate from those that govern the rest of Saudi Arabia. NEOM covers an uninterrupted coastline of nearly 470 kilometres (290 miles) in northwestern Saudi Arabia and will extend into territories in neighbouring Jordan and Egypt, a statement released by the kingdom's Public Investment Fund said. Authorities in Jordan and Egypt did not immediately comment on the statement.
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish student Ibrahim Halawa was greeted by cheering crowds at Dublin Airport on Tuesday as he arrived home following his acquittal last month in a four-year mass trial.

Halawa, who was born and raised in Dublin and is a son of the most senior Muslim cleric in Ireland, was 17 when he was arrested along with hundreds of others in 2013 as part of a crackdown on protests in Egypt.

"It still feels like a dream, it's a moment I've waited for for four years. I'm a free man. I'm hoping I can get my life back, get back to college and get my career," a smiling Halawa, draped in an Irish flag, told reporters upon his arrival home.

Halawa thanked the Irish people, the government and his family for working hard to secure his release. A member of the Irish government, which had lobbied for his return, was among the well-wishers.

Halawa and three of his sisters were charged along with nearly 500 others with crimes including breaking into a mosque, killing 44 people, and illegal possession of firearms in violence that followed the military's overthrow of Egypt's Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi, in 2013.

The Halawas said they were on vacation visiting extended family in Egypt and joined a protest against the military's ouster of Mursi while they were there.

The defendants had all faced the death penalty and though none received it, hundreds were given hefty jail sentences. Halawa's sisters were released shortly after their arrests.

"This case has been one of the most complex, sensitive and difficult consular cases to which the Irish Government has ever responded. I and all of my colleagues are very pleased Ibrahim's ordeal is now at an end," Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said in a statement.

Halawa has said he was regularly tortured during his period in detention. The Egyptian authorities have repeatedly denied allegations of abuses from rights groups.

"They all claim that (torture) and we have often denied (it took place)," a senior Egyptian interior ministry source said.

"In the end, there is the prosecution and the court, they are decisive. Anyone who experiences assault in jail must report it to the prosecution or the court...and the prisons are all subjected to inspections."

(Reporting by Padraic Halpin in Dublin and Patrick Markey in Cairo; Editing by Jon Boyle)
Voters look for their names on an electorate list near a polling station ahead of the presidential election in the slum area of Mathare in the capital Nairobi, Kenya, October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola (Reuters)

By John Ndiso

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Official results from Kenya's repeat presidential election on Thursday are likely to take several days to collate, election officials told Reuters, due to changes in the process to try to make it more transparent.

The Supreme Court on Sept. 1 ordered a repeat of the election after judges annulled the results of an Aug. 8 poll, pitting incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta against opposition leader Raila Odinga, due to procedural irregularities.

Official results said Kenyatta won on Aug. 8 by 1.4 million votes, but Odinga said the vote was rigged. Odinga has refused to participate in Thursday's rerun because he said election officials have not carried out sufficient reforms.

Judges criticised the election board for rushing to announce the official results based only on numbers sent from the polling stations, without having the tally forms from all 40,883 polling stations showing the results. The paper forms are a back-up system meant to help prevent rigging.

The board has up to a week to announce official results.

This time, polling stations will only transmit scanned images of tally forms from polling stations, not numerical results, Andrew Limo, spokesman for the election commission, said on Tuesday. The scanned images will be posted online.

The election board will collate and publish results by constituency once all polling stations there have reported. This could take several days in rural constituencies with poor phone networks and far-flung polling stations. There are 290 constituencies.

Without Odinga running, Kenyatta is the firm favourite to win. The other six candidates failed to poll more than 1 percent in the August polls; one has since been disqualified for bankruptcy.

Odinga has urged supporters to boycott the ballot and opposition leaders have called for protests on the day of the elections.

"The key thing to watch in this election will be turnout," said Murithi Mutiga, a senior regional analyst for the International Crisis Group, a global thinktank.

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"This will really be a referendum on the legitimacy of Kenyatta's second term."

Just over 79 percent of Kenya's 19.6 million registered voters cast a ballot in the last poll.

(Additional reporting and writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe addresses the 72nd United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo/File Photo (Reuters)

By MacDonald Dzirutwe

HARARE (Reuters) - Robert Mugabe would have rejected the role of World Health Organization goodwill envoy had he been formally asked, his spokesman said on Tuesday, days after state media cheered the Zimbabwean president's appointment.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus named Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador on Wednesday at a conference in Uruguay that both men were attending.

But the appointment was rescinded on Sunday following a backlash from Western donors, rights groups and opposition parties.

Last Friday, the state-owned Herald celebrated the largely ceremonial appointment as a "New feather in President's cap", adding that Mugabe, 93, had accepted the role.

His spokesman told the same newspaper on Tuesday that Zimbabwe's sole leader since independence from Britain in 1980 had only heard about the appointment via the media.

"Had anything been put to the president ... (he) would have found such a request to be an awkward one," Charamba was quoted as saying, citing Zimbabwe's role as a tobacco producer.

"The WHO cannot take back what it never gave in the first place, and as far as he is concerned, all this hullabaloo over a non-appointment is in fact a non-event."

Charamba did not respond to calls seeking further comment.

Mugabe's critics were outraged by Tedros' announcement, saying he was rewarding a man whose government had presided over the collapse of Zimbabwe's health system.

In Geneva, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a U.N. briefing that there were "no fixed guidelines" for appointing a WHO goodwill ambassador, but that the director-general or his deputies had the power to select them.

On Tedros' decision to rescind Mugabe's appointment, he said: "I think in terms of transparency we were pretty good. A, it was tweeted and B it appeared on the website with the statements immediately."

Charamba said the fact that Zimbabwe was a producer and exporter of tobacco, mostly to China, would have meant Mugabe campaigning against a crop that underpins the economy.

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Tobacco is Zimbabwe's single largest foreign currency earner, bringing in an average $800 million annually in the last four years, according to official data.

"To be seen to be playing goodwill ambassador in respect of an agency which has a well-defined stance on tobacco growing and tobacco selling, that would have been a contradiction," Charamba said.

"In other words, he was not going to oblige the invitation had it come his way anyway."

A Western diplomat in Geneva told Reuters: "It was a mistake, apparently there were no preparations or consultations.

"It seems the idea was cooked up in a small group in Uruguay. He acted quickly to rescind it, some would have waited.

"But it will be interesting to see what the damage is," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

(Reporting and writing by MacDonald Dzirutwe in Harare; Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Joe Brock and Alison Williams)
Police were gathering CCTV footage on Monday to identify the accused, who stole Rs 2,000 and a mobile phone from the victim.

By Ashish Pandey: A 33-year-old woman alleged she was gangraped by three men who offered to drive her and a friend of hers to Hayathnagar, a suburb of Hyderabad.

Police were gathering CCTV footage on Monday to identify the accused, who stole Rs 2,000 and a mobile phone from the victim. Meanwhile, she was sent for a medical examination.

She and her friend were waiting for a bus near the Saibaba temple in Saroornagar when the accused offered them a lift. The men started misbehaving with the women as soon as they entered the car.

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The victim's friend jumped out of the car, sensing their motive.

The accused allegedly gangraped the victim, and left her at a deserted location near Outer Ring Road.

A case was registered, and an investigation is under way.

ALSO WATCH | Drunk man rapes mentally ill woman in Vizag, pedestrians ignore inhuman act

--- ENDS ---
US Vice President Mike Pence described the 1983 bombing of a Marine Corps barracks in Beirut as the opening shots of the "war of terror" Monday, as he issued fresh warnings to Iran and Hezbollah. Speaking during a ceremony at another building used to house Marines in Washington, Pence berated Tehran and framed the attack that killed 241 Americans as part of a series of outrages that included 9/11. "Thirty-four years ago today, America was thrust into war with an enemy unlike any we had ever faced," said Pence -- who is the father and brother of US Marines. "The Beirut barracks bombing was the opening salvo in a war that we have waged ever since -- the global war on terror," he said. "It's a conflict that has taken American troops across the wider world -- from Lebanon to Libya, from Nigeria to Afghanistan, from Somalia to Iraq, and many other battlefields in between." Pence's remarks come amid a broad Trump administration effort to ratchet up pressure on Iran. Since coming to office, Trump has stepped back from a deal curbing Iran's nuclear weapons and vowed to push back against Tehran's influence across the Middle East. The White House argues the nuclear deal -- forged by president Barack Obama -- resulted in America turning a blind eye to Iran's support of militia groups and terror financing across the region. "This president will not sit idly by while the ayatollahs in Tehran plot more attacks like the horrific attack that we remember today," Pence said. Many of Trump's inner circle, from White House Chief of Staff John Kelly to National Security Advisor HR McMaster have tangled with Iranian-backed militia in Iraq during their military service. According to officials, Pence's appearance came after an invitation transmitted by the National Security Council. - The main enemy - But the inclusion of Iran in the "war on terror" is likely to raise questions. For much of the last two decades, that "war" declared after 9/11 has become synonymous with US efforts to unravel predominantly Sunni terror groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. The 1983 attack was blamed on Shia militia group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran. "The brutal act that brings us here today was planned and perpetrated by the terrorists of Hezbollah," said Pence, taking aim at the premier Iranian-backed armed group, which remains powerful in Lebanon and Syria. "Under President Trump's leadership, we've redoubled our commitment to cripple Hezbollah's terrorist network and bring its leaders to justice," Pence said. Earlier this month, the Trump administration offered $7 million for information that leads to Talal Hamiyah, alleged head of Hezbollah's "External Security Organization." A further $5 million was offered for leads on Fuad Shukr, "a senior military commander" of Hezbollah in Lebanon, who Pence described as "one of the masterminds behind the bombing of the Marine Corps barracks." "But as we all know, that terrorist group is merely a proxy for the leading state sponsor of terrorism," Pence said, referring to Iran. "President Donald Trump has put Iran on notice that we will no longer tolerate their destabilizing activities or their support of terrorism across the region and across the world." Pence said "Iran's theocratic rulers aided and abetted the Beirut bombers 34 years ago. And even now, Iran praises the attackers and remembers them as martyrs." "Worse yet, the Iranian regime continues to funnel funds and weapons to its terrorist minions, with the goal of shedding blood and sowing chaos throughout the wider world," the US vice president added.
President Trump and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong departing together following a joint statement in the Rose Garden at the White House on Monday 23 Oct. (Photo: AP)

United States president Donald Trump got Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loongs name wrong in a social media post referring to Lees official visit to the White House.

On Monday evening Singapore time (23 October), Trump posted his days agenda on Facebook, saying that he had a Working luncheon with Prime Minister Loong. The post was later corrected to refer to the Singapore prime minister as Prime Minister Lee.

A screenshot of Trumps Facebook post referring to PM Lee as Prime Minister Loong.

A handful of Singaporeans attempted to correct him by posting in the comments section, pointing out the presidents mistake but their posts were soon overtaken by other comments on the Presidents Facebook page.

Lee is on a working visit to the US from 22 to 26 October and was at the White House on 23 October at the invitation of Trump.

Previous US President Barack Obama made a similar mistake when Lee visited the White House last August when he mispronounced the name of Singapores founding father Lee Kuan Yew.

Describing Singapores progress, Obama said, In less than a generation, under the vision and stewardship of Prime Minister Lee Kew, er, Wan, er, Lee, Lee Kuan Yew, Singaporeans transformed their nation from third world to first.

Obama chuckled at his mistake, while Lee briefly glanced away.

The US has a history of gaffes when it comes to welcoming Singapore prime ministers to the White House. In October 1985, during the Arrival Ceremony at the White House welcoming then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to the US, President Ronald Reagan said, It gives me great pleasure to welcome Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Mrs Yew  Mrs Lee  to Singapore.

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Russia on Tuesday vetoed a US-drafted resolution that would have extended for a year the mandate of a panel investigating who is behind chemical weapons attacks in Syria. It was the ninth time Russia has used its veto power at the Security Council to block action targeting its Syrian ally. Russia opposed renewing the mandate of the joint UN-Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) panel before the commission releases a report on a sarin gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, which is expected on Thursday. The United States, France and Britain have accused President Bashar al-Assad's forces of carrying out the April 4 attack on the opposition-held village, killing scores of people including children. Following the Russian veto, US Ambassador Nikki Haley accused Moscow of "once again" siding "with the dictators and terrorists who use these weapons." "Russia has once again demonstrated it will do whatever it takes to ensure the barbaric Assad regime never faces consequences for its continued use of chemicals as weapons," Haley said in a statement. "By rejecting the renewal of the work of the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM)  an independent, purely technical body  Russia has made it clear that it does not care about stopping the use of chemical weapons in the world." Russia failed at the opening of the meeting to garner enough support for a measure that would have delayed the vote until next month. The JIM's mandate ends on November 17. China and Kazakhstan abstained, while Bolivia voted against the renewal and 11 other countries backed extending the mandate. Russia used its veto to block adoption. A resolution requires nine votes to be adopted at the council, but five countries -- Russia, Britain, China, France and the United States -- can block adoption with their veto power. - Dishonouring Russia - Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia accused the United States and its partners of seeking a vote on the measure "to show up and dishonor Russia." "What is taking place today is not very pleasant," said Nebenzia. "It stinks, in fact." The ambassador renewed his criticism of the panel, saying its methodology and "the lack of evidence" in the Khan Sheikhun investigation was "laughable." Last month, UN war crimes investigators said they had evidence that the Syrian air force was behind the Khan Sheikhun attack, despite repeated denials from Damascus. More than 87 people died in Khan Sheikhun, drawing global outrage and prompting the United States to fire cruise missiles at a Syrian air base from which the West says the attack was launched. Russia maintains that the sarin attack was most likely caused by a bomb set off directly on the ground, not by a Syrian air strike as alleged by the West. While the OPCW has established that sarin was used in the April attack, it does not have a mandate to assign blame for the attack, leaving that determination to the JIM. The JIM has already concluded that Syrian government forces were responsible for chlorine attacks on three villages in 2014 and 2015, and that Islamic State jihadist group used mustard gas in 2015. In February, a resolution put forward by the United States, Britain and France to impose sanctions on Syrian officials who were allegedly involved in those chlorine attacks was vetoed by Russia and China.
FILE PHOTO - Migrants rescued by "Save the Children" NGO crew approach the ship Vos Hestia in the Mediterranean sea off Libya coast, June 18, 2017. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini/File photo (Reuters)

By Steve Scherer

ROME (Reuters) - International humanitarian group Save the Children said on Monday it had suspended migrant rescues in the Mediterranean Sea as departures from Libya slow and security conditions worsen.

Save the Children has operated a ship, the Vos Hestia, since September last year, rescuing more than 10,000 migrants from dangerous and overcrowded boats launched by people smugglers.

"For too long we have been the substitution for the inexistent and inadequate European policies for search and rescue and for hosting migrants," Save the Children Director General Valerio Neri said in a statement.

Italian police searched the Vos Hestia on Monday as part of a wider investigation into the role non-government organisations are playing in picking up migrants off the Libya coast and bringing them to Italy. Save the Children said its decision to halt rescues was already planned before the police search.

Earlier this year, the government asked humanitarian groups to sign a "code of conduct". The government said the rescuers were providing an incentive for smugglers to put migrants to sea.

Police in August seized a migrant rescue boat operated by a German aid group Jugend Rettet. The chief prosecutor in the Sicilian city of Trapani said he had evidence of encounters between traffickers, who escorted illegal immigrants to the NGO boat, and members of its crew.

Jugend Rettet denied any wrongdoing.

Save the Children said in a statement it was not under investigation and was cooperating with authorities. The documents seized by police on Monday concerned "presumed illegal actions committed by third persons", it said.

Several months ago some 10 rescue ships took turns patrolling the North African coast, picking up migrants who reached international waters and bringing them to Italy.

Now only one large ship and a few small ones remain, with many organisations -- including Doctors Without Borders -- pulling out for various reasons, including security concerns and unhappiness with the attitude of the Italian authorities.

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The Libyan Coast Guard, funded and trained by Italy, has taken a hostile stance toward the humanitarian boats in a series of incidents on the high seas.

In August, a Libyan vessel intercepted a charity ship and ordered it to sail to Tripoli or risk being fired on.

Departures from Libya have fallen dramatically since July, when an armed group that had been deeply involved in smuggling from the city of Sabratha began blocking departures.

So far in October sea arrivals to Italy are down more than 75 percent compared with the same month last year.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer; editing by Peter Graff)
Spain ramped up pressure on Catalonia's secessionist leaders Tuesday as rumblings grew louder of civil resistance to a threatened regional power grab by Madrid. As the central government moved to depose Catalonia's leadership unless it abandons all secession threats, new ultimatums were given. Only three days remain to find a solution, before Madrid invokes an article of the constitution designed to rein in rebel regions. Spain's justice minister insisted that simply calling elections for a new Catalan parliament would not be enough to prevent the takeover of the region's political power and finances. "Mr Puigdemont's violation of his obligations cannot be resolved merely by calling elections," Rafael Catala told public radio RNE, referring to Catalan leader Carles Puidgemont. He would need to offer "something extra" -- including an unequivocal renouncement of his threat to unilaterally declare Catalonia an independent state. Pedro Sanz, a senior senator and member of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party (PP), said Puigdemont has been invited to state his case in Madrid this week. This could be Thursday, before a senate committee created to draw up a roadmap for seizing power in the region, or at a full Senate sitting Friday set to give final approval for the takeover. "He (Puigdemont) is willing to go, to challenge this action of the Spanish state," Catalan government spokesman Jordi Turull told journalists. However, "I cannot give any assurances that it will be practically possible." - Resistance threats - Turull also announced that Catalonia intends to go to court to challenge any moves to seize regional power, but was waiting to see exactly which steps Madrid intends to take. The worst political crisis in Spain in decades was sparked by a banned, and deeply divisive, October 1 independence referendum. About 90 percent of participants voted "Yes", according to Catalonia's Generalitat executive, though only about 43 percent of voters turned out. Many anti-secessionists stayed away. The region of 7.5 million people is fiercely protective of its culture, language and autonomy, though polls indicate its inhabitants are divided on whether to break away from Spain. As a nervous nation waited to see who will blink first in the standoff, the far-left, pro-independence CUP party, which had threatened "massive civil disobedience", scheduled meetings in cities and towns to plot a way forward. On Monday, the CUP accused Madrid of the "biggest assault" on the Catalan people since Francisco Franco's 1939-1975 dictatorship, which suppressed the region's staunchly-defended autonomy, language and culture. Firefighters, teachers and students have also warned of strikes and protests, while social media brimmed with "tips" for Catalans planning civil resistance. "Millions of people are ready to go to the Catalan parliament to prevent the arrest of its president (Puigdemont)", Ruben Wagensberg, founder of "En peu de pau (Stand up for Peace in Catalan) -- warning of "a tough campaign" ahead. The government stuck to its guns. Under the never-before-used Article 155, Madrid has threatened to depose Catalonia's government, wrest control from its police force, replace the heads of its public news outlets, and take over the entirety of its finances. - Will it, won't it? - After Friday's senate approval, the measures would come into effect once published in the government gazette on Saturday, effectively ousting Puigdemont and his team. Catalonia's regional parliament will hold a "general debate on the application of Article 155 of the Spanish consitution in Catalonia and its possible effects" two days earlier, on Thursday, the assembly said in a statement. The debate will begin at 10:00 a.m. (1200 GMT), it added. Two options -- fresh Catalan elections or a unilateral declaration of independence -- were still firmly "on the table", the kingmaker CUP party said Tuesday. The impacts of the standoff are already been felt. Spain's companies' registry said nearly 1,400 enterprises have moved their legal headquarters out of Catalonia since the troubles began. CaixaBank, Spain's third largest lender, said Tuesday its relocation to Valencia was permanent. burs-mlr/ach
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis addresses a news conference during a NATO defence ministers meeting at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, February 16, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir/Files

By Phil Stewart and Manuel Mogato

CLARK, Philippines (Reuters) - The timing of U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' trip to the Philippines this week couldn't have been better, coming just as it celebrated a victory against Islamist militants in Marawi City - with a critical dose of help from the U.S. military.

But as Mattis prepared to meet President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday, five Russian warships were parked off the Philippines and Moscow was preparing to formally hand over thousands of assault rifles, a million rounds of ammunition and 20 army trucks at a public ceremony on Wednesday.

Duterte, known for his strident anti-American rhetoric, has made no secret of his plans to cultivate ties with America's rivals, Russia and China. Those efforts appear to be starting to bear fruit.

Just before he meets Mattis, Duterte was scheduled to sit down with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday, who, like Mattis, was attending a gathering of Asian defense ministers north of Manila. Shoigu also signed two military deals, including the procurement of unspecified equipment.

On Wednesday, Duterte was scheduled to visit a Russian anti-submarine ship, the Admiral Pantaleyev, docked in Manila.

U.S. Ambassador Sung Kim played down any U.S. concerns about Duterte's outreach to China and Russia and noted that the United States, a former colonial power, was the country's only treaty ally, with far deeper ties in the Philippines.

"I'm not really threatened by this notion that China or Russia are providing some military equipment to the Philippines," Kim told a small group of reporters traveling with Mattis.

"We have been providing very important equipment to the Philippines for many, many years. The fact that the Chinese and the Russians have provided some rifles, I'm not sure is really such a cause for concern for the United States."

Duterte's often profanity-laden tirades against the United States have become his trademark during his year-old presidency, and he has chided Washington for treating his country "like a dog," despite the longstanding U.S. assistance.

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Still, Duterte's rhetoric has been inconsistent, and he warmly greeted visiting Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in August, calling himself a "humble friend" of the United States at the time.

Ahead of a visit by U.S. President Donald Trump to the Philippines, the U.S. envoy cited an improvement in "tone and substance" in bilateral ties over the 10 months since he's been in his post.

"President Duterte has made clear that even as he pursues improved relations with countries like China and Russia, he will continue to focus on making sure that the U.S.-Philippines alliance remains strong," Kim said.

MARAWI OPERATION

The same day that Mattis landed in the Philippines, Manila announced the end of five months of military operations in a southern city of Marawi held by pro-Islamic State rebels, after a fierce and unfamiliar urban war that marked the country's biggest security crisis in years.

The rebel occupation stunned a military inexperienced in urban combat and stoked wider concerns that Islamic State loyalists have gained influence among local Muslims and have ambitions to use the island of Mindanao as a base for operations in Southeast Asia.

Mattis, on his flight to the Philippines, commended Manila on the operation and on Tuesday discussed ways to deepen U.S.-Philippines military ties in talks with the Philippine defense minister.

"It was a tough fight," Mattis said during his flight, adding he thought the Philippines had sent "a very necessary message to the terrorists."

Kim said the U.S. military assistance made a "huge difference" in the battle in Marawi, particularly its intelligence support, including with the deployment of Gray Eagle and P-3 Orion aircraft.

"I think all of us were surprised by the extent of infiltration by the terrorists into Marawi City," he said.

"When you encounter a situation like that, you obviously need good intelligence to be able to target key areas and I think that's where our support was quite critical."

On Monday night, Philippine military chief General Eduardo Ano said the U.S. technical support "tilted the balance" because "we had a very hard grasp of the situation in the early days" until information flowed and helped defeat the militants.

The United States also provided information Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi gave $1.5 million in January for the attack on Marawi, Ano said.

But even in Marawi, Duterte has also credited U.S. rival China for its assistance.

Duterte said it was one of the 100 sniper rifles donated by China that fired the bullet that killed Isnilon Hapilon, Islamic State's "emir" in Southeast Asia, on Oct. 16.

The ranger unit conducting the operation said the shot was fired from a heavier weapon mounted on an armored vehicle.

Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told reporters on Tuesday about the receipt of heavy equipment from China to help rebuild Marawi, and also noted the receipt of rifles and ammunition from Beijing. He expected to receive four fast boats from China before the end of the year.

The United States has for decades been the Philippines' defense treaty ally and its biggest source of hardware and training, providing about $1 billion in equipment since 2000.

(Additional reporting Karen Lema; Editing by Nick Macfie)
Last week, Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Patty Murray of Washington unveiled a bipartisan deal designed to stabilize Obamacares marketplaces, which have been thrown into tumult by President Trumps decision to cut off certain key payments to insurers. Shortly thereafter, they announced that their bill had 24 co-sponsors, including 12 Republicans, suggesting it could win the 60 votes necessary to pass the chamber.

Some congressional right wingers, however, seem to feel that Murray and Alexanders compromise doesnt offer them enough in the bargain. So now, Axios reports, two Republicans are offering their own, more conservative alternative. The proposal, from Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and House Ways and Means Chair/Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, is a bit of a head scratcher. Framed as a compromise to fix Obamacare, it is in fact neither a compromise nor a fix.

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Alexander-Murray proposed a fairly straightforward trade. Republicans agreed to fund critical subsidies to insurers that keep Obamacares markets functioning as intended, and which Trump has halted. In return, Democrats offered to loosen the restrictions on how states could tweak the Affordable Care Acts rules within their borders, potentially leaving room for states like Iowa to change up their insurance markets.

Hatch-Brady is not that kind of a bargain. It would fund the subsidy payments. But in return, it would also suspend Obamacares individual mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance for five years, waive the employer mandate for two years, introduce new abortion-related restrictions on the subsidy money, and expand health savings accounts.

The key item in this laundry list of conservative demands is the individual mandate, which most health care policy wonks still consider fairly essential to making Obamacare work, since it keeps at least some young, healthy Americans in the market. Eliminating the mandate while restoring the insurer subsidies would be rather pointlessit would simply mean replacing one destabilizing Obamacare emergency with another. Which makes Hatch-Brady not much more than another half-baked partial repeal bill.

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Obviously, there is no way Democrats will vote for such a thing, which at the moment means it probably cant pass Congress. This raises the question of what exactly the bill is for. Its possible House conservatives will merely use it as a starting point for their demands while negotiating with the Senate, and that theyll be willing to drop the nonsense about the individual mandate if it means they can claim victory on something like the employer mandate. Or, its possible Hatch and Brady really want to derail a potential bipartisan compromise by peeling off Republican votes with a dead-on-arrival alternative. If so, the party will be falling back into its old habit of dealing with health care by embracing un-passable messaging bills.

Unfortunately for them, those tend to work better when your partys own president isnt causing a debacle someone needs to clean up.
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Influencers sometimes get caught up in trying to appear perfect to their audiences. But being authentic and kind can be more important than that.

Small Business Trends spoke with author, consultant and trainer Jill Lublin at the recent Influencer Marketing Days conference in Midtown New York City. Lublin works with influencers looking to build strong networks through authentic connections and kindness. She also recently released a book, The Profit of Kindness, which focuses on building lasting relationships as an influencer.

Building Authenticity in Influencer Marketing

During the conversation, Lublin revealed some of the top ways influencers can build those authentic connections. Of course, kindness is a big one. But she also revealed the power of speaking naturally to your connections and followers, rather than getting caught up in complicated buzzwords and jargon.

Lublin says, Keep it really simple. Keep it really narrow. And most importantly, speak in soundbites.

But being authentic means more than just speaking naturally to your audience. Sometimes, it also means sharing the bad along with the good. Nobody is perfect. So if you make mistakes or dont know something, its okay to admit that and be real with those people youre connecting with  rather than putting on that perfect facade all the time.

Lublin adds, Dont spill everything. And keep it professional. I think thats really important. But I do not think sitting on a throne is going to, shall we say, endear you to your lovely people you influence.

Finally, Lublin said its helpful for influencers to use every part of their story, their personality and all of their interests to make those authentic connections. You never know whats going to resonate with a particular person. And using all of those aspects can help you be who you really are while you grow your following and build up your influence.

Use every thing youve got, she says.

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ST. MARY'S CITY, Md. (October 24, 2017)St. Mary's College of Maryland's Board of Trustees and President Tuajuanda C. Jordan dedicated the Hilda C. Landers Library on Saturday, Oct. 21, named after an alumna whose support for the College has touched the lives of nearly 2,000 students and counting.



The Board of Trustees officially approved the naming during the Board of Trustees meeting in May, and subsequently the Maryland Board of Public Works approved the naming over the summer.



Hilda C. Landers was a longtime friend of the College and in her lifetime, her giving was anonymous. Her philanthropy at St. Mary's College began more than 50 years ago with a gift of $1,000. Her generosity continued year after year and through trusts, gifts in her name will continue to support St. Mary's students.



Support to date from the Landers and their trusts (Hilda C. Landers Trust and the Arthur E. Landers, Jr. and Hilda C. Landers Trust) is estimated at $6.4 million.



When Landers (then Elizabeth Hilda Combs) graduated from the St. Mary's Female Seminary in 1923, the library as she knew it was located in Calvert Hall and was modest at best. In recognition of her generosity of spiritwhich is anything but modest the library, as it stands today, will be known as the Hilda C. Landers Library.



In attendance at the dedication ceremony were Don Mering, senior council for Baker, Donelson and overseer of the Landers trusts, along with numerous students who have benefited from the trusts.



"Speaking on behalf of the entire Board of Trustees, we are honored to name the Hilda C. Landers Library after one of our most generous benefactors," said Sven Holmes, Board chairman. "For more than 50 years Hilda has assisted countless students by a variety of ways including helping to expand the DeSousa-Brent program increasing retention and graduation rates, offering scholarships to Baltimore City students, and by generously contributing to our $2.5 million Capital Campaign."



"Today's dedication ceremony gives me a deep sense of gratitude and pride," said Dr. Tuajuanda C. Jordan, president, St. Mary's College. "Hilda C. Landers' impressive lifetime and legacy of philanthropy speak strongly to the lasting impact our College has on its students. It is fitting that her gift will touch each and every member of our campus community in some way both now and in the future."
Observers do not expect the results of the Czech election to impact Czech-Slovak relations.

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There is more than one post-election development scenario in the Czech Republic. Most of them are counting on Andrej Babis, the controversial tycoon of Slovak origin, to become prime minister.

Babis, who served as the Czech finance minister in the past election term, is considered a controversial figure in Slovak business. Deemed the richest Slovak, Babis bought two Czech leading dailies, MF Dnes and Lidove Noviny, in 2013. His Agrofert conglomerate also owns the Hospodarske Noviny daily in Slovakia.

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I broke not only the political system, but also the media system, Babis said in a pre-election interview.

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Another controversy is linked to Babis court dispute with Slovakias Nations Memory Institute (UPN), which listed him as a confidant of the Communist-time secret service StB in 2013. Babis denied any collaboration with StB. The Bratislava Regional Court and the Supreme Court decided in Babis favour but most recently the Constitutional Courts senate issued a verdict on October 12 stating that the UPNs rights were violated and changes the way courts are supposed to deal with such cases.

Concerns

Major Slovak dailies commented on Babiss victory with concerns. They have likened him to the Hungarian and Polish governments, which have recently been moving away from principles of liberal democracy.
By PTI: New Delhi, Oct 24 (PTI) Hyundai Motor India today said it has received order for 10,501 units of its recently launched all-new Verna from the Middle East.

The all new Verna, which was introduced in the country in August this year, will be sold as Next Gen Accent in the Middle East markets, including Saudi Arabia and Oman.

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"This is the single largest order for the Next Gen Verna that the company has received since inception and a big jump compared to the earlier generations of Verna and Accent," Hyundai Motor India Ltd (HMIL) said in a statement.

The units will be shipped out in December, it added.

The company said it had invited 33 distributors from the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE and other Asian countries like Vietnam, Philippines, Sri Lanka, to its Chennai-based plant on September 21, 2017.

The visitors were given a detailed plant tour, a presentation on the product, its quality parameters and the plant capabilities, which finally culminated with exclusive drive experience of Next Gen Verna, HMIL said.

HMIL MD and CEO Y K Koo said the company is proud to receive such a large single export order within one month of showcasing the product to the distributors from overseas markets.

"It is in perfect harmony with Hyundais commitment of Make in India, for the world and also is in line with the Indian governments Make in India vision, he added.

HMIL said the model would also be exported to South Africa and various other Gulf and Asian countries from the beginning of next year.

In the domestic market, the company has till now received over 18,600 bookings and more than 1.43 lakh enquiries in just two months since its launch.

In the last month, Verna led the mid-size sedan segment with sales of 6,053 units.

The fifth generation Verna is based on a newly developed K2 platform and has been developed with an investment of Rs 1,040 crore.

The company has so far sold 3.17 lakh units of the sedan in the country since the introduction of the model in 2006. Globally, around 88 lakh units have been sold. PTI MSS SBT

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Despite the various differences and disputes, the three top officials of Slovakia signed joint priorities in the NATO and the EU, making it the country with strongest pro-European orientation in the region.

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President Andrej Kiska, Prime Minister Robert Fico, and Speaker of Parliament Andrej Danko signed on October 23 a joint statement on European Union issues, the countrys security and its NATO membership.

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In a statement constituting an exception in his usual habits, Fico commented that we remained a pro-European island in the region, as a reaction to results of the recent Czech general election, the Dennik N daily wrote.

The meeting of the three officials at Bratislava Castle was something of a surprise, accoring to Dennik N, as just recently, Fico criticised Kiska for his tax issues and his insufficient support for government in its foreign policy.

Uniting the quarrelling officials

We dont always have to be of the same opinion in domestic politics, but we have to show that in strategic issues, we stick together, Kiska said, adding that Slovak ministers must be heard from more.

Kiska, Fico and Danko agreed that they wanted to clearly communicate the pro-European and pro-Atlantic orientation of Slovakia, as well as towards their citizens, while also supporting the Slovakias integration into the EU core. They signed a document pointing to the worsening security in Europe, the growth of extremism and populism, migration and financial crisis or lack of trust in EU institutions. The EU has no alternative though, according to them, and for general security, cohesion and solidarity within NATO is also important.

Im very pleased that the three of us have agreed on and prepared a joint statement on EU issues, our security and NATO membership, the president said, as quoted by the TASR newswire. Its important for our country because it concerns peoples lives, the future of our country and public security. I consider it to be of the utmost importance that the three of us will always and on every occasion confirm the direction of our country as well as the values and alliances to which Slovakia has adhered.

It is the duty of the three to show citizens, and convince them that Slovakia can be a self-confident, influential and prospering country only within a strong and cohesive EU, Kiska noted, adding that the voices against integration are growing stronger, while anti-EU policy has become part of political campaigns, here as well as in surrounding countries.

We cannot automatically rely on the support of public opinion, either. We have to be honest and frank with people and always strive for their support in our decisions, he summed up, as quoted by TASR.

Kiska also stressed the need for the transparent modernisation of army  which may be a hint directed at Andrej Danko and his SNS party, which is protracting the replacement of old MiG-29 fighter planes for newer types.

How to show unity

The president further proposed to Danko and Fico for the three of them to meet before every important EU and NATO summit.

We have to show our people that when it comes to the countrys strategic interests we stick together, said Kiska, as quoted by TASR.

Slovak ministers should speak more about current EU issues, such as creating a joint European Public Prosecutors Office, completing the single market or banking union, the president added.

Were a respected country that has shown that its capable of managing complicated processes, Fico said, as quoted by TASR. Weve demonstrated sovereignty in the issues of migration and double standards in food quality, and we also want to demonstrate it when it comes to drafting the EU budget. Weve become a certain pro-European island in central Europe, and I want to maintain this orientation, as nothing suits Slovakia better than European integration.
The Slovak Foreign Ministry plans to purchase a building and move the diplomatic residence, now located outside Washington, D. C., to the capital itself.

Slovakia got its new diplomatic residence building in Washington, D.C., in 2001. (Source: TASR)

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The location of the Slovak Embassy diplomatic residence in the USA will be moved to Washington D.C. The Foreign Ministry is about to purchase a building in the capital and move the embassy diplomatic residence into the capital, the TASR newswire wrote on October 23.

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The ministry is asking the government to approve the launch of the procurement proceeding. The proposal is undergoing an inter-departmental debate.

Currently, the embassy diplomatic residence is located in McLean, Virginia.

Due to poor accessibility, currently location does not fulfil the requirements connected with the fundamental purpose of a diplomatic residence, the ministry explained, as quoted by TASR. Slovakia is the only European Union member state that has a residence outside the capital.

The ministry also points out that the current site was built immediately after World War II outside the capital, and in a locality where there are no diplomatic buildings. Its state is adequate to its age, as well as the limited resources, ensuing lack of maintenance and reconstruction work.

After the future location of the embassy diplomatic residence is completed, the foreign minister will send the best offer to the Finance Ministry and ask for resources. The costs should go from the public administration budget. Later, the building in McLean will be sold, the Foreign Ministry stresses.

In the 25 years of Slovak diplomatic service, the investments in the properties owned and administered abroad were insufficient, reflected in the current unsatisfactory state of real estate owned by Slovakia abroad, TASR cites the ministry.

Thus, it is trying to gradually invest in the renovation of the existing properties, also through reconstructions and sale.
For some visitors, wines are not as big a lure as the fact that several mediaeval cellars are opened just for this one occasion in a year.

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More information about travelling in Slovakia

Please see our Please see our Spectacular Slovakia travel guide

By the end of October, the 15th Day of Wine Cellars will take place in Trnava. About 60 winemakers will present their products, and organisers are offering 850 wine passes that can lead fans of wine around local cellars,

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Almost 30 wine cellars will be open on October 28, the TASR newswire informed. Out of the 850 wine passes issued by the Trnava Union of Friends of Wine, most are already sold, its chair Eduard Kristofovic told TASR.

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Even though wine is the biggest attraction, some people also use the opportunity to visit the mediaeval cellars, some of which are open to the public on this single day only, Krisofovic added. These include, for example, the cellar close to the Franciscan Church on Franciscan Street, which used to have two grounds, the Cajka (Gull) cellar in Halenarska Street, or the cellar in city walls on Franciscan Street.

video //www.youtube.com/embed/sRmQLJAwOYA

In the past, the Day of Wine Cellars had the ambition of offering wines from all over the country, while now, it instead offers products from local winemakers, mostly from the Small Carpathian Wine Route: wines from Modra, Dolany, Vinosady, Limbach, Horne Oresany, Ruzindol, Hlohovec and from the more distant Topolcianky and Velka Trna as well.

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Alongside this October celebration, other events connected with wine are scheduled the whole year round. They commemorate the wine-growing and winemaking dating back to the 13th century. Back then, the first free royal town in Slovakia, Trnava, belonged among the biggest wine exporters in the Hunagrian Kingdom, and burghers built vast cellars to store the wine.
A woman suffering from the flu virus has been put in artificial sleep.

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A 59-year-old woman from Bratislava, who is currently hospitalised in the Ruzinov hospital in critical condition, is suffering from a pandemic flu virus. The doctors confirmed that this is the first case reported during this years flu season, the TVnoviny.sk website reported.

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The laboratory tests confirmed that it is a pandemic flu virus from 2009, said chief hygienist Jan Mikas from the Public Health Authority (UVZ).

The laboratory tests were positive for the flu virus type A/H1pdm09, Mikas added, as quoted by TVnoviny.sk.

The woman is currently in artificial sleep.

This type of virus is common

The pandemic flu virus type A/H1pdm09 is a common seasonal flu virus that occurs in the population. Every flu virus can be dangerous, not just this one, UVZ informed.

It is necessary to warn patients with chronic diseases and old people in particular, while flu can also be serious in the case of small children, said UVZs spokesperson Zuzana Drobova, as quoted by the TASR newswire.

The hygienists recommend that people with weakened immunity, pregnant women and medical workers are vaccinated. The vaccination against flu is covered by all three health insurers.

The hygienists reported an occurrence of the A/H1pdm09 virus last year, but it was not fatal for the patient, TASR wrote.
The Supreme Court has suspended the work of its panel headed by ex-minister Stefan Harabin; it is not clear how long this situation will last.

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The Supreme Court (SC) senate of Stefan Harabin will not rule in the case of the ex-ministers sentenced for the botched bulletin-board tender who have appealed the verdict. Back in August, the council of justices of the Supreme Court suspended the allocation of new cases to this senate, the Sme daily wrote. The council's decision was published on the Supreme Court's website.

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This step was taken due to the enormous number of unsolved cases compared with other panels, which has led to the current massively overburdened situation, spokesperson of the Supreme Court, Boris Urbancik, told the Dennik N daily. He added that It is hard to tell how long the suspension will last or whether it will continue after the appeal in the bulletin-board case arrives at the Supreme Court.

Read also:

Read also: Historic verdict as first ex-ministers were sentenced for the bulletin-board tender Read more

No other panel has a suspended allocation of cases, Urbancik said, as quoted by Dennik N.

This specific case can be allocated to one of four panels, while the actual allocation will be decided by the electronic filing office, according to the spokesperson.

The current schedule of case allocation is valid until the end of 2017, by which time the appeal of the ex-ministers should already be at the court.

Harabin does not mind

Harabin told Dennik N that he does not mind. He added that he thinks the situation is connected with a case in which his senate has already twice overturned the life sentence for gangman Robert Lalis, aka Kybel (Bucket).

Read also:

Read also: Why did we have to wait ten years for the verdict in the bulletin-board case? Read more

After the Lalis case is finished, his senate will receive new cases, Harabin added. He also admitted that he had 'inherited' many old cases from Supreme Court justice Emil Bdzoch, who stopped working in March 2015 and was recalled by President Andrej Kiska in June 2016.
This is a current list of the top 250 companies by market capitalization on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). Learn more .

Many investors understand the reasons for having a diversified portfolio. One way to accomplish this is to diversify within an asset class. For equity investors in the United States this can mean investing in both growth and value stocks.

It can also mean investing in international stocks. And when investors want to do this, they need look no further than our neighbor to the north. Canada has a range of stocks for investors to consider. This article will focus on strategies that investors can use when looking to invest in Canadian stocks.

Why Buy Canadian Stocks?

There are a few reasons for investors to consider Canadian stocks as part of their diversification strategy:

A Large Natural Resources Sector  The sheer size of the country and its location lets investors know that it is an area rich in natural resources. This also means that the country has a source of current and future wealth.

An Advanced Skills-Based Economy  In this regard, Canada is similar to other western nations. The difference is that it is not as common to find these skill-based professions in a country with so many natural resources.

Stability  Canada is not exempt from any problems that impact the global economy. However, the country is known for stable financial and business policies that have kept the economy relatively stable. This Goldilocks economy has meant that many Canadian stocks havent enjoyed the outsized growth of some U.S. equities. However, it also comes with a bit of protection against downside risk.

How Have Canadian Stocks Performed?

According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, there was a time when U.S. stocks and Canadian stocks performed nearly identically. Heres a graph that shows the performance of the S&P 500 Index vs. the TSX Index



Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence

You can see that with a couple of exceptions, the two indexes performed remarkably similar. That all changed around 2012 and Canadian stocks became less attractive.

Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence

This disparity is widely due to one sector, technology. However, Canadian technology stocks have been on the rise. And in 2022, the country is benefiting from renewed interest in materials stocks as well as a spike in commodity prices.

What Are the Best Sectors of Canadian Stocks?

For different reasons finance, materials, and energy stocks are among the best performing stocks as of September 2022. Heres a brief overview of each sector and some of the top names for investors to consider.

Financial  Similar to the United States, Canada has a strong banking industry. Many Canadian banks have a track record of solid performance that can provide long-term value to a portfolio. And several of these stocks pay dividends with attractive yields for investors.

This sector makes up the largest percentage of the TSX at roughly 30%. And the Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE:RY)is the top-weighted constituent in the TSX. Beyond the Royal Bank of Canada some of the other top-performing Canadian financial stocks include:

Materials and Mining  Canadian stocks can be an ideal choice for investors looking to diversify into gold and precious metals without owning the physical metal. Canada has a large natural resources sector. So, its not surprising that there are a number of gold mining companies with Canadian origins. This sector also gives investors exposure to other components in the mining and agriculture sectors. This sector makes up approximately 11.5% of the TSX. Some of the top Canadian materials and mining stocks include:

Energy  Canadian stocks offer both traditional fossil fuel-based energy stocks as well as some renewable energy stocks. This sector makes up approximately 18.5% of the TSX. Some of the top Canadian energy stocks include:

Technology  As mentioned earlier, technology stocks have largely been the domain of the United States. As evidence of this, information technology stocks make up only about 5.5% of the TSX. However, there are a few Canadian companies that have become stars in the new economy being created. Some of the more popular names include:

What Are the Risks of Investing in Canadian Stocks?

One concern about investing in Canadian stocks is that they can be heavily weighted towards cyclical industries. For example, as of February 2022 financials (33.5%), energy (14.8%) and industrials (11.7%) made up nearly 60% of the index. That may be too much for some investors particularly because those sectors all tend to correlate roughly the same way as the economic cycle. But as a long-term play, Canadian stocks are worth considering with a small part of your portfolio.

How to Buy Canadian Stocks

Buy Individual Stocks on a Stock Exchange

Hundreds of Canadian stocks have dual listings on either the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or the NASDAQ. This is the most convenient way to get exposure to Canadian stocks because there are no barriers to stock ownership. These shares can be purchased in U.S. dollars directly from the exchange just like purchasing a U.S. stock.

However, for a full list of the best Canadian stocks, investors should look at the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). The TSX is one of the oldest stock exchanges having been founded in 1852. Its also the third largest stock exchange in North America in terms of market capitalization.

The Toronto Stock Exchange includes approximately 1,500 companies. It allows investors to trade stocks, investment trusts, exchange-traded products, bonds, commodities, futures, options, and other derivative products. All transactions on the TSX are executed in Canadian dollars.

Invest in a Mutual Fund or ETF

There are many mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that supply exposure to Canadian stocks. Some funds supply exposure to both U.S. and Canadian stocks. Other funds hold just Canadian stocks. Some examples of those include:

BMO S&P/TSX Capped Composite Index ETF

Horizons S&P/TSX 60 Index ETF

Vanguard FTSE Canada All Cap ETF

As with investing in any asset class, investors need to consider their investment objective, time horizon and risk tolerance before choosing a fund that fits their needs. Investors will also want to pay attention to the funds fee structure to ensure youre making the most efficient use of your capital.

The Final Word on Investing in Canadian Stocks

Investing in Canadian stocks is one way for investors to add diversification to their portfolio. MarketBeat provides a list of the top Canadian stocks that trade on the TSX. This is Canadas version of the NYSE or NASDAQ in the United States and includes many of the same stocks.

Thats one advantage of investing in Canadian stocks is that many have a dual listing which removes many of the obstacles that can come with investing in international stocks.

However, investors should be aware that many of the best Canadian stocks are in highly cyclical industries which can lead to underperformance when those sectors are out of favor. Still, due to their relative stability and in some cases an impressive dividend, Canadian stocks may have a place in an investors portfolio.
Genesee & Wyoming Inc. owns and leases freight railroads. It operates through three segments: North American Operations, Australian Operations, and U.K./European Operations. The company transports various commodities, including agricultural products, autos and auto parts, chemicals and plastics, coal and coke, food and kindred products, lumber and forest products, metallic ores, metals, minerals and stone, petroleum products, pulp and paper, waste, and other commodities. It owns or leases 122 freight railroads, including 105 short line railroads and 2 regional freight railroads located in the United States, 8 short line railroads located in Canada, 3 railroads located in Australia, 1 railroad located in the United Kingdom, 1 railroad in Poland and Germany, and 2 railroads in the Netherlands with a total of approximately 16,200 miles of track. The company also operates 6,200 additional miles of track that is owned or leased by others. In addition, it operates deep sea maritime containers and provides bulk haulage, including coal, aggregates, cement, and infrastructure services. Further, the company provides rail service at approximately 40 ports; rail-ferry service in North America, Australia, and Europe; and contract coal loading and railcar switching for industrial customers. Genesee & Wyoming Inc. was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in Darien, Connecticut.
While people are overall satisfied with the performance of the Narendra Modi government, they are unhappy with its two big moves - GST and demonetisation.

By India Today Web Desk: A majority of people in Gujarat, which will go to polls later this year, are satisfied with the performance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who hails from the state.

An opinion poll conducted by India Today-Axis My India ahead of the Gujarat Assembly elections, found out that 66 per cent of those surveyed feel that Gujarat has benefitted after Modi became the prime minister.

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Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat almost till he became the Prime Minister on May 26, 2014. He was on the chief minister's chair for more than 12 years.

Against the majority who felt that Gujarat had benefitted from Modi as Prime Minister, 31 per cent felt otherwise while 3 per cent are not in a position to say anything.

People were also asked to respond on the functioning of the Modi government at the Centre. Asked to assess the manner in which the Modi government was functioning, an overwhelming majority (74 per cent) felt it was doing "good" or "very good".

While 25 per cent thought its functioning was very good, 49 per cent (almost half) felt it was good.

On the contrary, 26 per cent (one-fourth) people felt the functioning of the Modi government was either "bad" or "very bad".

While most felt that Gujarat had benefitted from Modi or they were happy with the functioning with his government, a majority was dissatisfied with GST, the tax regime which was implemented in July. Just 38 per cent expressed satisfaction with GST while 51 per cent gave a thumbs-down.

More or less like GST, a majority expressed their dissatisfaction with demonetisation, which PM Modi had announced on November 8 last year. While 44 per cent of the people felt that demonetisation was for good, a majority - 53 per cent - thought it did not benefit.

Also watch: Gujarat Opinion Poll: Congress unlikely to dent BJP hold despite unhappiness on GST, DeMo

--- ENDS ---
The wait for first ever launch of Falcon Heavy rocket is now coming to an end. The Elon Musks SpaceX will be launching the spacecraft any time in November. However, exact dates are not available yet.

The fore-mentioned information was obtained from a data page at NASAs Kennedy Space Centre, which was inaugurated for those who are interested in attending this inaugural launch and flight.

Currently, this launch is targeted for no earlier than (NET) November 2017, with a date and time TBD, NASAs Kennedy Space Center said. Viewing time has to be approved by USAF (US Air Force) and NASA.

The interested enthusiast folks will be able to watch the event live by purchasing some tickets to get a closer look at the launch pad. Whereas, if one doesnt want to spend money on it and there will be other live streaming options available.

The information regarding the launch of Falcon Heavy rocket will be Kennedy Space Centres official page for the event.

The page further reads, the most powerful rocket this generation has ever seen, SpaceXs new Falcon Heavy rocket, launches no earlier than this November. Kennedy Space Centres historic launch pad 39A has not supported this much thrust since the last Saturn V rocket nearly 45 years ago.

The officials have also done some modification of the launch pad to enable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy Rocket launches.

SpaceX on its Instagram handle posted, Falcon Heavys three first stage cores have all completed testing at our rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas. This side booster previously launched SpaceXs ninth resupply mission to the @ISS.

In September Elon Musks company has also posted a separate video on Instagram account portraying Falcon Heavy Rocket being tested for launch.

Besides in January, on its official YouTube channel, the company has posted an animated video of the forthcoming launch showing the complete launch procedure with the initial phases of the recovery of the rockets.

Citing all of the videos, it could be predicted that the SpaceX is targetting to land all three first phases from the rocket  two at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and one on a drone ship named Of Course I Still Love You present in the Atlantic Ocean.

SpaceX is also all prepared to launch a communications satellite  Koreasat 5A  using a regular SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on October 30, 2017, spaceflightnow.com has revealed.

Earlier this week, the Falcon 9 carried the third set of 10 Iridium-NEXT communication satellites which further deployed into low Earth Orbit. The launch was scheduled to take place from SLC-4E at 05:37 local time.

While, a month ago, SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket and deployed the US Air Forces X- 37B spaceplane in the Earths orbit. SpaceX has signed a contract with communications company Iridium to launch 75 Iridium NEXT satellites so as to create a constellation of 66 telecommunication probes in lower Earth orbit along with nine in-orbit spares.

SpaceX will conduct total 8-rocket launches to deploy all those 75 satellites. The first set of 10 Iridium satellites were launched in the month of January and the second batch of ten was launched in June and on Monday Falcon 9 will deploy the 3rd set of 10 satellites. Iridium uses a large constellation of spacecraft in low Earth orbit to provide mobile satellite communications all over the world. The first generation constellation was launched in-between 1997, and 2002, and the company has started launching its second-generation satellites. All the 66 satellites will operate in six planes of eleven spacecraft each.

Iridium expects that by operating satellites in low Earth orbit, it will be able to provide less latency to its customers as compared to geostationary satellite communications and also there is no need to carry a large antenna to communicate with the satellites. But the main problem is the company needs to deploy all the satellites in orbit before it begins to provide those advanced communication services to its users.
Chinese sapcelab Tiangong-1 might crash on your head soon; Heres how to see it

The Chinese space station, Tiangong 1 launch six years ago in 2011 has already been reported to crash soon in Earth anytime by April 2018. The satellite which name translates to Heavenly Palace was orbiting Earth has lost its track and become out of control.

The Guardian reported that the Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell said that the Tiangong-1 is decaying quickly and one can expect it will come down a few months from now  late 2017 or early 2018, he said. However, whats surprising is that China also doesnt know where the collision will occur as scientists have lost the track of space lab module.

The space station is revolving around the Earth at an average distance of 200 miles from the surface. And last week, it was observed across a city skyline in the UAE. However, later it was claimed that the observed spacecraft was Russian Cargo Ship, which just left ISS with trash-filled in.

The 8.5-ton spacecraft Tiangong-1 was not a very big module and most of the debris will get burnt due to frictional force of atmosphere and chances are there that entire space lab module gets burnt in the air itself. Even if it manages to crash into Earth, it will shrink into a very small size but it will be moving at a speed greater than of a bullet which can be catastrophic.

Based on our calculation and analysis, most parts of the space lab will burn up during falling, said Wu Ping, deputy director of the manned space engineering office, reports Xinhua.

The unmanned part of space lab weighed over 8 tons. The space lab module has performed several key operations including a series of docking of exercises back in 2012. China wants to make its own version of International space station and Tiangong-1 (meaning Heavenly Palace) was the first brick.

The loss of Tiangong-1 came as a shock for Chinese space agency as their mission for modular space lab of the class of International

International Space Station will retire in 2024 and Chinese space station is a promising alternative. Other space agencies are looking forward to collaborating with China as Chinese station can become the international base for astronauts in coming years.

We have been able to form an impression of the cosmos around us through the ingenious work in space exploration. Not only have we managed to send spacecraft into space for finding new planets and celestial bodies but also improvised continuously on the technology used for space exploration.

How to keep an eye on the voyage?

China recently launched the Tiangong-2 space lab module. The module was aimed at testing life support systems and refuelling technology for its 60-ton modular space station.

Tiangong-2 is placed in an orbit of 393 kilometres above the Earth and it will help in studying fundamental physics, biology, fluid mechanics in microgravity, space science and will monitor Earth from space. In addition, it has the capability to measure the topography of the oceans with very high precision which will enable scientists to study Earths gravity field.

The sky gathers can keep an eye on the Tiangong 1 with naked eyes. As one will be easily able to identify the crashing Chinese space station and a flying aeroplane. Unlike aircrafts, satellites look like an unblinking white light gliding swiftly across the sky.
Policy

Newark School Reform Shows Mixed Impact

What does $200 million in school reform buy you? Improved English scores and no big change in math achievement. That's the bottom line offered in a working paper issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which examined an education transformation project in Newark Public Schools undertaken by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and then-Newark Mayor Cory Booker and underwritten by the fortune that Facebook made. The $100 million invested in the effort by Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan and matched by $100 million from foundations and other private donors made up about 4 percent of Newark's school budget over the five years of the grant. What the funding provided, according to the NBER researchers, was the flexibility needed by the city and district "to implement an ambitious slate of reforms."

Changes included "within school" reform: a new teacher contract, new school leaders (including a new superintendent), a new curriculum aligned to the Common Core standards, and school turnaround efforts (known as "renew schools"); as well as "between school" reform: charter school expansion, school closure and a "universal choice" plan that allowed families to submit a single application to attend a more "effective" district or local charter school.

The updated teacher contract accommodated a new teacher evaluation system (that combined classroom observations with student growth and other indicators such as teacher attendance); differentiated teacher compensation, including incentives for high performers to stay in low-performing schools; extended learning time; and greater school-based control, including the ability for teachers to vote to overturn parts of the collective bargaining agreement.

According to the report, compared to the two academic years preceding the reforms (ending in the spring of 2010 and 2011), "achievement growth in Newark improved significantly in English by 2016 and showed no significant change in math." However, the report added, progress didn't follow a straight line. Early in the reform efforts, annual average achievement sunk in both subjects for all schools; then it rebounded and increased in the two most recent years. After bouncing back in 2014-2015, "achievement growth in the average Newark school is now significantly higher than for similar students in the rest of the state in English and higher, though not significantly so, in math," the authors stated.

Decomposition of Newark's change in math and English language arts relative to the rest of New Jersey. Source: NBER Working paper, "School District Reform in Newark: Within- and Between-school Changes in Achievement Growth."

Most of the improvement in English achievement  61 percent  can be attributed to shifting enrollment to "higher value-added schools," the report asserted. Those shifts occurred because schools with below-average achievement were shuttered, charter schools expanded, and universal choice simplified the process of applying for multiple and different types of schools. In fact, math growth would have declined in Newark compared to the rest of the state if enrollment hadn't shifted to those other schools, the researchers found.

While school choice advocates might point to the overall positive outcomes of student learning in Newark as a reason for supporting parental choice, the researchers offered a caution: "First, reallocation was not always 'market-based,' as school closures required some students to move involuntarily," the report emphasized. "Closing schools is politically difficult." Second, Newark families had access to "an unusually effective set of charter schools nearby, which is not present in most other cities." Thus, the researchers concluded, "It would be an oversimplification to suggest that most of Newarks progress was due solely to greater parental choice. In Newark, the positive effects of parental choice were enhanced by a series of difficult, but generally well-targeted school closures and ready access to an unusually effective charter sector."

The report is available for a $5 download from the NBER website.
Chandra Bahadur Khatri, an ex-Army man is arrested for producing forged documents for youngsters seeking jobs with the Indian Army.

By Munish Pandey: The Uttar Pradesh's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has arrested a Nepali citizen Chandra Bahadur Khatri for an ex-Army man which were used by youngsters seeking jobs with the Indian Army.

Khatri, an ex-Army man, came under the ATS radar after the Indian Army found that a recently recruited Nepali citizen, Dilip Giri, had produced forged documents during the recruitment process. "While questioning Giri, we found that Khatri has prepared all the fake documents required for the Army recruitment. We prepared a team which arrested Khatri from Varanasi," said an officer of the Uttar Pradesh ATS.

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Who is Chandra Bahadur Khatri ?

Khatri was recruited by the Indian Army in 1982 and was part of the Gorkha Regiment in Gorakhpur. He was thrown out of the Army in 1991. Khatri subsequently shifted base to Varanasi and stayed in a rented apartment near the Army regiment.

According to the Uttar Pradesh ATS, Khatri would target Nepalese youth who wanted to join the Indian Army. After making contact with them, he would allegedly prepare fake documents such as local resident letter and school certificate and charge a huge amount of money from them.

Khatri is a repeat offender and was arrested and jailed in 2010 for preparing fake government documents. Uttar Pradesh ATS said that a few more arrests may take place soon in connection with the racket.

Also Watch : Inside story of Army's daring surgical strikes

--- ENDS ---
Here are the news stories you should not miss today, October 24:

Society

-- The Government Inspectorate of Vietnam on Monday ordered a stern punishment upon Pham Sy Quy, director of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment in the northern province of Yen Bai, for the dishonest declaration of his property. Quy and his family own a 1.3 hectare villa complex in the locality.

-- A man and his wife in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum were killed on Monday, while their two children were hospitalized, after an M79 grenade exploded. He found the grenade near a local stream and was trying to pierce through it before the blast.

-- A 63-year-old woman and her three-year-old granddaughter were killed, while four others were severely burnt after a house in District 9, Ho Chi Minh City caught fire on Tuesday morning.

-- Police in the southern province of Binh Duong on Monday arrested Tran Van Duong, 36, for stealing VND2 billion (US$87,834) from a company. Duong had been at large for six years.

- The Urban Traffic Management Zone No.1 under the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport began the construction of a pedestrian bridge in front of Le Hong Phong High School on Nguyen Van Cu Street in District 5 on Monday.

-- The Peoples Committee in Da Lat, a tourist city in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong, on Monday suspended the construction of a conference center within Dalat Palace Hotel as the developer did not follow the original design.

Business

-- Mitsubishi Motors is set to recall 2,519 Mitsubishi Pajero cars in Vietnam, which were manufactured between 2007 and 2016, to examine and replace their airbag detonators. The call will be carried out from November 1, 2017 to October 30, 2019, according to the Vietnam Register.

-- Since its establishment in 2013, the Vietnam Asset Management Company (VAMC) has collected VND66 trillion ($2.89 billion) worth of bad debt.

Education

-- Thirty young people will represent Vietnam to attend the Ship for Southeast Asian and Japanese Youth Program (SSEAYP) 2017, which takes place from October 24 to December 12.

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With less than a week to the start of the 2017 APEC Economic Leaders Week, the central Vietnamese city of Da Nang is making its final preparations to host the event.

At the construction site of a hotel in Da Nangs Son Tra District, workers are erecting panels printed with the citys iconic landscapes to shield the works from public sight.

The idea is part of a campaign initiated by the administration of Da Nang, which calls on local businesses to help beautify the city ahead of welcoming world leaders to the APEC Economic Leaders Week.

We cover up [the construction sites] so that the city can look tidier and more beautiful for APEC, said Doan Hung, the owner of a paint distribution company that paid for panels at buildings whose operators had bought his paint.

Panels are erected around a construction site in Da Nang. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Panels are erected around a construction site in Da Nang. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Running November 6-11 in Da Nang, the Economic Leaders Week is the culmination of Vietnams year-long hosting of a series of meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), a forum for 21 Pacific Rim countries that promotes free trade throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

At least 18 world leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, are expected to arrive in the central city for the 25th edition of the forum.

Sanitation workers in Da Nang will work extra hard on these days to clean up the citys streets and beaches, while patrol units have been set up to deal with environmental issues at construction sites.

Along the streets, locals have voluntarily put up decorative flower baskets in front of their houses to celebrate the festive occasion.

It feels like the New Year holiday with all these people bustling around, said Le Thi Thu Hang, who works at a local coffee shop. The atmosphere is extraordinary. Im overwhelmed by the scale of this event. I hope APEC will open doors for Vietnam and help our country integrate with the global community.

Le Thi Thu Hang, who works at a coffee shop in Da Nang, waters a flower basket. Photo: Tuoi Tre

At the APEC Park, dozens of workers rushed to finish the final decorations in time for the conclusion of work on Wednesday.

Work is harder compared to regular days, but its fun nonetheless since we are beautifying our city to host an international event, said Dang Van Hoang, a park worker.

For Tran Duy Vu, a driver for a local greenery company, his daily routine has been to wake up before dawn to transport flowers and plants to APEC Park.

We work not only because its our job, but also because as a Da Nang-based business we want to contribute to the success of APEC, said Phan Quang Huong, director of the Dai Ngan Greenery Company.

A worker plants flowers at APEC Park in Da Nang. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Da Nangs golden chance

According to Huynh Duc Tho, chairman of Da Nang, the city is ready for the APEC Economic Leaders Week with the completion of most works, including the construction of a new international terminal at Da Nang International Airport featuring an expanded apron large enough to accommodate up to 75 jets at a time.

A fully-equipped media center where some 3,000 international and local reporters are expected to stay and work during the event has also been completed.

Meeting venues and temporary residences for APEC leaders have been prepared for the week-long event.

Tran Chi Cuong, deputy director of Da Nangs Department of Tourism, said that the occasion would be a golden chance for the local tourist industry to promote its attractions to the world.

Between November 2 and 12, the Son Tra Peninsula will be off-limits to regular visitors, with access granted only to APEC delegates, Cuong said.

The citys administration has announced a plan to impose restrictions along a number of roads in the downtown area.

A worker plants flowers outside the Museum of Cham Sculpture in Da Nang. Photo: Tuoi Tre

According to Lam Quang Minh, director of the municipal Department of External Affairs, over the last twelve months the city has coordinated with the embassies of Australia and New Zealand to teach English to Vietnamese personnel responsible for the running of the APEC Leaders Week.

We are happy with the positive changes to the city so far. The image of a dynamic and prospering city has become known to international friends thanks to APEC videos, reportage and trailers, Minh said.

Da Nang tourism is expected to experience a boost following the APEC summit, which will be attended by some 10,000 international delegates, he said.

A worker fixes reinforcements to a newly planted tree at APEC Park in Da Nang. Photo: Tuoi Tre

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Authorities in Ho Chi Minh City are considering the production of artificial sand amidst suggestions that Vietnam is running out of the naturally occuring material.

About 100 million cubic meters of sand is required for construction projects across the country every year, the Institute of Transport Science and Technology (ITST) said during a meeting with the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport on Friday last week.

Experts have warned that the natural material could be depleted in five years given its excessive exploitation.

To meet the increasing demand, sand should be manufactured by crushing certain types of rocks, which can be found in southern Vietnam, the ITST suggested.

Artificial sand is about 10 to 15 percent cheaper than natural sand, and produces better quality concrete for construction, experts from the institute have also claimed.

During the meeting, several businesses proposed that Ho Chi Minh City authorities allow the use of manufactured sand and provide assistance for its production.

Several project developers asked the ITST to issue an official price on artificial sand and create a legal basis for the material to be used in the construction of buildings and city infrastructure.

According to pundits, manufactured sand has been widely used in countries including Canada, the United States, Germany, Australia, China, and Japan.

In Vietnam, the Ministry of Transport approved the use of the material in 2014.

A sand-pumping boat is seen off the south-central province of Khanh Hoa. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Ngo Hai Duong, head of the Road Infrastructure Management and Exploitation Division under the Ho Chi Minh City transport department, believes that there is a market for manufactured sand, given its lower cost.

Nguyen Thanh Nam, an official from the citys Infrastructure Investment JSC, the developer of projects along the Hanoi Highway, said that the expansion of several sections of the highway had been halted because the price of naturally occurring river sand had skyrocketed.

If artificial sand meets our requirements, we will start using it to build pavements along the Hanoi Highway, Nam said.

Sand has historically been in high demand in Vietnam as it is crucial for construction projects across the country.

It was previously over-exploited along local rivers and exported to foreign countries, in particular Singapore.

Following the authorities efforts to deal with illegal sand mining, river sand prices rose by up to 200 percent, creating immense challenges for everyone from small-scale construction companies to major, state-owned projects.

In Ho Chi Minh City, the price hike began in April.

The Vietnamese government has ordered the Ministry of Construction to cease the export of sand.

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A married couple were killed and their two children wounded on Monday in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam after the man tried to break open an unexploded wartime shell using a hammer and chisel.

According to his father-in-law, the local man had found the unexploded shell, designed for use with an M79 grenade launcher, while fishing at a local stream in Kon Tum Province in the morning.

The man, 46-year-old A Then, then brought the ordnance home to disassemble himself for scrap metal and gunpowder.

At around 12:20 pm the same day, A Then used a hammer and chisel to try to break open the shell while his wife Y Duch and children Y Thuy, 17, and A Theo, 9, were having lunch nearby.

The shell exploded after the force of the external impact, killing A Then on the spot and injuring his family members.

Locals rushed the wife and two children to the General Hospital of Kon Tum Province, but Y Duch died on the way.

Y Thuy suffered injuries to her face, while A Theo was struck in the arms and legs.

The provincial police and authorities arrived shortly after to investigate the scene and carry out an autopsy, according to Pham Ngoc Quang, deputy chairman of Dak Cam Commune.

Local authorities have provided VND3.5 million (US$154) in financial support to the family, Quang said.

According to the Vietnam National Mine Action Center (VNMAC), all 63 provinces and municipalities of Vietnam have explosive remnants of the war that ended more than 40 years ago.

Fifty thousand Vietnamese civilians have lost their lives and more than 60,000 have been injured in accidents related to unexploded ordnance across the country since the end of the American war in Vietnam in 1975, Deputy Minister of Defense Col. Gen. Nguyen Chi Vinh said at a conference on unexploded ordnance last year.

Approximately 6.1 million hectares of mainland Vietnam remain contaminated with explosive remnants, 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.

Accidents involving locals trying to disassemble unexploded shells are not uncommon. Last year, an explosion occurred in Van Phu Victoria Urban Area in Hanois Ha Dong District, killing four and causing 11 others to be hospitalized.

The deadly incident was later declared as having been caused by the mishandling of unexploded wartime ordnance by locals.

The practice of breaking open bombs and shells for their metal and gunpowder is common among Vietnams poor, who make money selling the scrap material on bomb markets,' or in scrap collection hubs.

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The Vietnamese government has announced violations by the head of the environmental department in northern Yen Bai Province, including the dishonest declaration of his villa complex, and ordered a report of his punishment.

The Government Inspectorate publicized their findings regarding the offenses of Pham Sy Quy, director of the Yen Bai Department of Natural Resources and Environment, on Monday.

Quy came to the publics attention in June after local media outlets revealed that a 1.3 hectare villa complex in Yen Bai City was owned by his family.

The official claimed that he had borrowed about VND20 billion ($887,000) in bank loans, another sum from friends, and saved since he was young in order to build the property.

According to the results of a four-month investigation, Quy had not declared several portions of his assets since 2014, in violation of Directive No.33 of the Politburo.

In Vietnam, officials are required to write down a list of assets they own in their profiles.

Deputy Chief Inspector of the Government Bui Ngoc Lam chairs the meeting on October 23, 2017. Photo: Tuoi Tre

In 2014, the official failed to declare 1,200 square meters of land and over 59,000 square meters of agricultural land, along with a bank loan worth VND3.8 billion (US$166,884).

In 2015, over 13,000 square meters of residential land, 41,000 square meters of agricultural land, a VND6 billion ($263,502) bank loan, and some VND1.9 billion ($83,442) gifted by his parents were also not declared.

In 2016, after Quy was appointed director of the provincial environment department, he failed to make known of over 7,900 square meters of residential land, 27,336 square meters of agricultural land, a 600 square meter house in Minh Tan Ward, Yen Bai City, more than VND9 billion ($395,253) worth of bank loans, and 60 taels of gold borrowed from his friends.

Official documents state that the land is owned by his wife, Hoang Thi Hue.

The villa complex owned by Pham Sy Quy and his family in Yen Bai City. Photo: Tuoi Tre

The Government Inspectorate consider Quys dishonest asset declarations a serious violation and have ordered a suitable penalty.

In addition, his wife, Hue, faces charges of altering the original design of a three-story home during the period of investigation. She was also found to be constructing several facilities without a proper building permit.

Several individuals at the Peoples Committee in Yen Bai City, including the chairman and his deputies, will be sanctioned for allowing the violations to continue.

The Yen Bai provincial administration has been requested to make a report regarding appropriate punishment and submit it to the prime minister and Government Inspectorate before November 30.

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A man has been captured by police in the southern Vietnamese province of Dong Nai after stealing over US$92,000 more than six years ago.

Officers from the provincial Department of Police confirmed on Monday that they had apprehended Tran Van Duong, 36, a resident of the northern province of Ha Nam, for theft.

According to the case file, Duong and three other suspects, Nguyen Xuan Lam, Tran Hong Quan, and Vu Quang Son, were broke and conspired to commit the crime together.

In January 2011, the gang broke into the headquarters of Co Tong Company, a textile and garment manufacturing firm in Binh Chuan Ward, Thuan An Town, Binh Duong, where Quan had previously worked as a security guard.

The suspects used hammers and crowbars to open the safe kept inside the facility and stole about VND2.1 billion ($92,225) in cash before dividing it between each member.

Lam, Son, and Quan were eventually arrested by officers in Binh Duong Province while Duong remained on the run for the next six years.

In similar news, earlier this month Binh Duong police arrested Le Nhu Thom, 37, a suspect in a murder case that is now 15 years old. He was also accused of attempted assault and disturbing public order.

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A South Sudanese refugee girl is seen at the Nguenyyiel refugee camp during a visit by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley (not pictured) to the Gambella Region, Ethiopia October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Thomson Reuters

By Michelle Nichols

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is due to travel to war-torn South Sudan on Wednesday to meet with the country's President Salva Kiir  and she is angry.

After visiting South Sudanese refugees in Gambella, western Ethiopia on Tuesday and hearing of the brutal violence they fled, Haley asked a small group of reporters: "How can the international community allow this to go on?"

The United Nations has warned that South Sudan's civil war is providing "fertile ground" for a genocide. Kiir's government has denied U.N. allegations of ethnic cleansing.

"At some point President Kiir needs to be held accountable for all of the tragedy that he's caused these people," said Haley, who will be the most senior member of President Donald Trump's administration to visit South Sudan.

One woman at the Ngueyyiel camp told Haley she had been made to eat the flesh of her own baby after the child was taken from her and thrown in a fire. Another woman said she had been forced to eat the flesh of "her enemy." As they recounted their stories many other women in the room wept.

"I was mad when I left the camp," said Haley. "The fact that this is a man-made conflict, that one man has done so much harm to so many people, it's heartbreaking."

When asked what she would say to Kiir, Haley said: "I don't know ... because I think that what I was going to say was probably tame now compared to what I want to say."

Since South Sudan spiraled into civil war in 2013, just two years after it gained independence from Sudan, nearly 350,000 refugees have flooded into Gambella. Almost 90 percent are women and children and they are mainly from the Nuer ethnic group.

'TRUMP WANTS TO BRING PEACE'

The war was sparked by a feud between Kiir, a Dinka, and his former deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer. It has plunged parts of the world's youngest nation into famine and forced a third of the population - some 4 million people - to flee their homes.

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Haley is also visiting Ethiopia and Democratic Republic of Congo during a week-long trip that diplomats hope will shed light on the Trump administration's plans to engage with the continent.

A fragile peace deal in South Sudan broke down last year and international efforts to bring warring sides to new talks have not succeeded. The United States is considering how to pressure Kiir into peace, but withdrawing aid may not work, Haley said on Monday.

"I don't think the U.S. has a sole responsibility (for South Sudan), but I think the U.S. will do what the U.S. has always done, which is try and help people the best way that we can," Haley said.

The Trump administration last month imposed sanctions on two senior South Sudanese officials and the former army chief for their role in the conflict, atrocities against civilians and attacks against international missions in South Sudan.

Haley said she planned to discuss with Trump what more the United States could do to end the violence in South Sudan.

"When you tell him the stories and you tell him what people think, he wants to be helpful, he wants to be someone who brings peace," she said.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Andrew Hay)

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By Huw Jones

LONDON, Oct (Shenzhen: 000069.SZ - news) 23 (Reuters) - The City of London must remain the top global financial centre after Brexit to avoid its financial services drifting to other parts of the world, Luxembourg Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna said on Monday.

Financial centres such as Luxembourg, Paris and Frankfurt are battling each other to attract banks, insurers and asset managers in Britain who need an EU base after the UK departs the bloc in 2019.

Companies from across the EU use London for currency trading, derivatives and managing investment funds. Some EU policymakers want parts of these activities shifted to the continent after Brexit to avoid relying on what will then be a foreign financial centre.

"It's key for Europe ... that the Number 1 financial centre in the world remains in Europe," Gramegna told students at the London School of Economics.

There was a need to harness the City of London (LSE: CIN.L - news) to Europe to ensure that London continued to perform well, Gramegna said.

Punishing London to get a "chunk" of the pie was a very short-term view, and a "no deal" Brexit would not benefit the EU, but send UK financial services to countries outside Europe, Gramegna said.

Britain would then, in a sense, drift away into the Atlantic (Shanghai: 600558.SS - news) , he added.

"I find that a balanced final agreement with the UK, specifically for financial services, is in the interests of Europe itself," Gramegna said.

Britain and the EU have held several meetings to agree a divorce settlement, with too little progress to begin talks on future trading relations.

Gramegna declined to put a figure on Britain's divorce bill, a key stumbling block.

"What is the value of access to the EU single market? Can you put a figure on that? I cannot. Money is really not what's the most important," he said.

As regards Britain's future trading relations with the EU, he said Switzerland has shown how it could work when it comes to the free movement of people, which many Britons want to curb.

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He urged British and EU politicians to "dedramatise" the divorce talks, avoid megaphone diplomacy, and focus on the factual.

"We must be neither complacent, nor try to punish the UK," he said. Having no trading deal would be bad for both sides.

A transition period between Brexit and new trading terms was needed to reassure business, he said.

"The pressure on companies is much higher than what governments anticipated," he said.

Financial technology firms in London, for example, have already met with Luxembourg, saying they need access to EU customers after Brexit.

"This is much more of an urgent matter than people think," Gramegna said. (Reporting by Huw Jones, editing by David Evans)
(Adds detail)

OSLO, Oct (Shenzhen: 000069.SZ - news) 24 (Reuters) - Statoil ASA (LSE: 0M2Z.L - news) has evacuated staff from its Mongstad refinery in western Norway following a naphtha leak, the company said in a statement on Tuesday, confirming earlier police reports.

"Employees who are not part of the emergency organisation at the plant were evacuated, and parts of the plant are being shut down," it said.

"The Statoil emergency response organisation has been mobilised and is handling the situation on an ongoing basis. We have notified the police, ambulance and fire departments according to our procedures, and continue notifying other public authorities."

Local (Stuttgart: 19549987.SG - news) police separately said on Twitter (Frankfurt: A1W6XZ - news) that no injuries were reported and that the leak had been stopped. (Reporting by Terje Solsvik, editing by Ole Petter Skonnord and Jason Neely)
A Muslim family in Kerala's Malappuram district allowed their daughter to marry a Christian man and this lead to a local mosque issuing a circular to boycott the family from the community.

By India Today Web Desk: A Kerala mosque committee called for a boycott of a Muslim family for allowing their daughter to marry a Christian man. This incident has come up at a time when inter-religion marriages are a topic of contention in Kerala.

A mosque committee in Kerala's Malappuram called for boycott of a Muslim man & his family after he allowed his daughter to marry a Christian pic.twitter.com/QmVGJnAxl7- ANI (@ANI) October 24, 2017

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A mosque committee in Malappuram district called for social boycott of a family for allowing their daughter to marry in another faith. What's surprising is that hundreds of people in the district have gone against the diktat; attended the wedding and supported the couple.

On October 19, a special circular was issued by the secretary of Madarul Islam Sangham's Mahallu committee urging the people associated with the mosque to break off all contact with Kunnummal Yusuf and his family, The News Minute reported.

"Since Kunnummal Yusuf has agreed to his daughter's wedding to a non-Muslim, we have decided that people need not cooperate with his family, neither for mosque-related affairs, nor for other matters," said the circular.

The marriage took place on October 20 under the Special Marriages Act. 26-year-old Jaseela married Tiso Tomy, and the reception was then held a day after the wedding. Interestingly, hundreds of people from the neighbourhood attended the wedding.

In a Facebook post Jaseela's uncle Rasheed wrote: "Yesterday was my niece's wedding. She has the right to marry a person of her choice. Jaseela and Tiso Tomy's wedding is not the first inter-religious marriage here, though it is not common to see such functions conducted with the consent of both the families. I appreciate my sister Najmayusaf Yusaf and brother-in-law for this bold move. Why is Mahallu Committe reacting against this decision? How can they stop the changing tides of time? I just wanted to remind you that the wedding was attended by many Muslim devotees."

Here is the Facebook post:

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BRUSSELS (AP)  The Belgian government says that it wants to finally conclude an investigation into the "Mad Killers" gang which killed 28 people during the 1980s. The announcement followed a breakthrough into the possible identity of one gang member.

Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon told the VRT network on Monday that "we have to take a decision that this investigation can finally be brought to a close." Not a single person has been convicted in the killings and the lack of success in the investigation has raised all kinds of conspiracy theories.

The case came to life over the past week with a family report of a deathbed confession of one possible gang member who came to be known as "the giant" and was often seen as the gang attacked supermarkets.

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BRASILIA (Reuters) - The Brazilian government told the Supreme Court on Monday that President Michel Temer has the authority to revoke the asylum status a former left-wing guerrilla convicted of murder in Italy and extradite him at his country's request.

Cesare Battisti committed four murders in the 1970s when he belonged to a guerrilla group called Armed Proletarians for Communism, according to the Italian government. He escaped from prison in 1981 and lived in France before fleeing to Brazil to avoid being extradited to Italy.

Brazil's Supreme Court authorized Battisti's extradition in 2009, but he was not sent back to Italy because former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva granted him refugee status on his last day in office in 2010.

In a note to the top court, the government's chief lawyer Grace Mendonca argued that extradition was a political decision that only the president could make.

She reminded the court that it had approved Battisti's extradition in 2009 and asked the justices to reject a habeas corpus writ issued ten days ago by one of its members.

Battisti was arrested on Oct. 4 as he tried to cross the border into Bolivia in a taxi, apparently fearing that Brazil's government was about to revoke his asylum status at Italy's request. He was freed two days later.

Lula's refusal to extradite Battisti upset relations between Brazil and Italy. Temer, a centre-right president who took office when Lula's handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached last year, decided it was time to remove that thorn.

(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu and Ricardo Brito; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
FILE PHOTO: Members from the pro-democracy Civic Party carry a portrait of Gui Minhai (L) and Lee Bo during a protest outside the Chinese Liaison Office in Hong Kong, China January 19, 2016. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo (Reuters)

STOCKHOLM/BEIJING (Reuters) - A Swedish bookseller detained in China after publishing books on the personal lives of President Xi Jinping and other Communist Party leaders has been released, Chinese authorities said on Tuesday.

The whereabouts of Gui Minhai, a Chinese-born Swede, could not be confirmed, however, and he has yet to contact his family.

Gui was abducted in Thailand while on holiday in 2015, one of five Hong Kong booksellers who went missing that year and later appeared in mainland Chinese custody. The four others have returned to Hong Kong.

Chinese authorities say Gui was involved in a traffic accident in 2003, although that is questioned by his family.

"According to what we understand, because Gui Minhai has served his sentence for the crime of causing traffic accident casualties, he was released on Oct. 17," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in an e-mailed statement to Reuters.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry said it had been informed by its Chinese counterpart of Gui's release and that it was working to confirm the information.

However, Gui's family questioned if he really was free. His daughter said he had made no contact with her or any other relatives.

"Today it has been a week since October 17 and I still do not know where my father is," Angela Gui said in a statement. "I am deeply concerned for his wellbeing."

The report of Gui's release coincides with the end of China's 19th Communist Party congress which has further consolidated President Xi Jinping's power.

Lam Wing-kee, one of the other four booksellers, told Reuters he did not know Gui's whereabouts.

Lam said he feared the government of Xi would further erode the "one country, two systems" formula that is supposed to guarantee Hong Kong a large degree of autonomy under Chinese rule.

"He (Xi) will continue to tighten things (for Hong Kong). There will be no loosening," he said.

Earlier this year, Gui won a prize for free speech and press freedom awarded by Swedish media organisation Publicistklubben.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander, additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing and James Pomfret in Hong Kong, editing by Niklas Pollard and Ed Osmond)
Andy Rubin Essential

Brian Ach/Stringer

The high-end Essential Phone's price has been slashed by $200 (151).

It's the latest project from Andy Rubin, the inventor of Android.

But reports suggest it hasn't been selling well as it competes with the likes of Google and Apple.



The Essential Phone, a high-end smartphone designed by Android creator Andy Rubin, is getting its priced slashed by $200 (151).

The drop, from $699 (530) to $499 (378), comes after reports of disappointing sales for the new PH-1 devices  and alongside the launch of multiple new high-end devices from the likes of Apple and Google.

(The Essential Phone isn't yet available in the UK. The Financial Times reported in July that it would launch by the end of 2017. The UK price will presumably be in line with this lower price point.)

The Essential Phone is the first device released by Essential, a startup founded by Android creator Andy Rubin after leaving Google in 2014. It started with phones, and plans to branch out from there. There are already modular add-ons available for the Essential Phone, including a 360-degree camera.

Essential PH 1

Essential

In a blog post announcing the price drop, Essential took a not-so-subtle dig at its rivals, writing: "We could have created a massive TV campaign to capture your attention, but we think making it easier for people to get their hands on our first products is a better way to get to know us." (Customers who already bought a device are being offered $200 credit.)

So how may people have "got their hands" on Essential's products? The company hasn't released sales figures, but some reports don't look positive.

Market research firm BayStreet Research said the smartphone sold just 5,000 devices in its first two weeks in the US  a drop in the ocean compared to the likes of Apple, Samsung, and so on. (In 2015, Apple's iPhone 7s sold 13 million units in its first weekend available.)

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Per Fortune, that equates to just $3.5 million (2.6 million) in revenue. That's almost nothing when you consider Essential raised $300 million (227 million) from investors earlier this year in a Series B funding round.

Meanwhile, Google has announced its new Pixel 2 Android smartphones, to positive reviews (concerns about the screen on the Pixel 2 XL notwithstanding). And Apple is about to release the eagerly anticipated iPhone X, a tenth anniversary edition of its iconic smartphone with a major new redesign.

It's a crowded field, and it sounds like the Essential Phone is finding it hard to compete.

NOW WATCH: How to read a tape measure  and five things you didn't know you could do with it

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By Bart H. Meijer

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch politician Geert Wilders questioned the objectivity of the judge hearing his appeal on Tuesday against a conviction last December for inciting discrimination, in a trial he said was politically motivated.

On the first day of preliminary hearings Wilders confronted presiding judge Jeanne Gaakeer with her leading role in a foundation that awarded an academic prize in 2016 to someone he called "a left-wing activist".

"This concerns me and raises the question whether you are the right person to judge me," Wilders said, adding that the award winner "has helped organise a large anti-Wilders protest... and represents everything I fight against politically".

The judge gave no immediate reaction to Wilders' remarks, but said she would discuss her position with the other members of the three-judge panel after the conclusion of the day's hearings.

Wilders' far right Party for Freedom came second in elections in March, but he was locked out of coalition talks with mainstream parties and now leads the opposition in parliament.

The case against the 54-year-old stemmed from a 2014 campaign rally at which he led chants calling for fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands.

He was found guilty but received no sentence and was acquitted of a separate count of inciting hatred. The prosecution, which had sought a fine of 5,000 euros without a prison sentence, has also appealed against the verdict.

Wilders' lawyer said the verdict had been a "fatal blow" to freedom of speech.

"What should have been the trial of the century on the freedom of speech, became an absolute low point", lawyer Geert-Jan Knoops said in court.

This week judges will hear the grounds for appeal from both parties before the full case commences in May.

The hearings are being held at a special high-security courtroom. Wilders has lived in safe houses under 24-hour guard since 2004 to protect him from Islamist militants who threatened to kill him.

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At the 2014 rally, Wilders led a group of supporters chanting that they wanted "Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!" in reference to the number of people of Moroccan origin in the Netherlands.

There are around 400,000 people of Moroccan origin among the Netherlands' population of 17 million people.

As in other EU states such as Germany and France, anti-immigration sentiment in the Netherlands has risen in recent years. Wilders has called for the borders to be closed to immigrants from Muslim countries and mosques to be shut down.

A previous attempt to prosecute Wilders for anti-Islam remarks, such as likening the religion to Nazism and calling for a ban on the Koran, ended in acquittal in 2011.

(Reporting by Bart Meijer,; Editing by Anthony Deutsch and Ed Osmond)
STRASBOURG (Reuters) - The European Union should investigate Malta's anti-money laundering system, EU lawmakers said on Tuesday in response to the murder of a Maltese journalist who reported widely on financial and political corruption.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was blown up by a car bomb last week, had published leaked documents on alleged money laundering cases involving top Maltese officials. EU parliamentarians said Malta now needed to show it was clean.

"The Maltese government has failed to take serious action against high level cases of money laundering in its country", Green Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) Eva Joly and Sven Giegold said in a joint statement.

"We want a serious investigation by the European Commission on Malta's respect of the European rules against money laundering."

EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said in a letter to Green MEPs dated Oct. 23 that "based on the information available so far, there appear to be no grounds to suspect a systematic breach of Union law pertaining to the prevention of money laundering" in Malta.

But she added that the Commission had requested more information from Malta on cases of alleged money laundering involving Keith Allen Schembri, the chief of staff of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat. Schembri has denied the allegations.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told Reuters in an interview last week that the island's "financial services sector is as transparent, solid and compliant as any other European jurisdiction."

Ahead of a debate on the "protection of journalists and the defence of media freedom in Malta", the European Parliament held a minute's silence, at a session in Strasbourg attended by Caruana Galizia's widower and children.

Parliament President Antonio Tajani said the parliament's press room would be named after the murdered reporter.

He added that Europol, the EU law enforcement agency, should help investigate Caruana Galizia's murder "as part of an international investigation where all police forces can contribute to find the culprits".

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The Maltese government has sought assistance from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and from Dutch experts to help resolve the case.

The head of the Italian parliament's anti-mafia committee urged Malta to toughen laws to combat organised crime.

Italian investigators have traced criminal proceeds to companies set up in Malta to launder money by the southern Italian mafia groups. Anti-mafia committee head Rosy Bindi said during a visit to the island that Malta had to close legal loopholes.

"Those who order assassinations are often the ones who fear that loopholes will be closed," she said.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Additional reporting by Chris Scicluna in Valletta and Steve Scherer in Rome; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
A restaurant in Manchester leaves boxes full of food outside for the homeless, after its closing each night. This place wastes nothing much and feeds the hungry.

By India Today Web Desk: A restaurant run by Michael Beck in the streets of Manchester earned him a lot of praise on the social media for its initiative of leaving boxes full of food for the poor and needy after its closing each night.

The restaurant in a Facebook post was seen encouraging its customers as well to donate warm clothes and other necessary items for the ones in need. It would then send the collected items to the local charities which would help distribute them further among the ones in need.

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Another Facebook post by the restaurant said, "If you see anyone on the streets of Manchester or Didsbury who looks hungry, let them know where they can find a meal in a bag".

"When we close the doors for the day, we promise to leave bags outside full of tasty food."

"Fill a small bag with some comforts, maybe a hat, a scarf, a pair of old socks or a jumper you no longer need."

In conversation with one of the news dailies in Manchester, the owner of the restaurant said, "Its either that or the bin. It's as simple as that."

Michael's statement inspired many and paved way for love and hope in times of despair.

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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP)  A Palestinian cellular provider said Monday it will soon expand coverage from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian and Qatari officials are attending the announcement event at a Gaza City hotel.

Wataniya Mobile, a subsidiary of Qatar's Ooredoo, says it will launch operations in Gaza on Tuesday.

Until now, Gaza has only been served by one operator, Jawwal, which was launched in the Palestinian territories in 1999. Wataniya has been operating in the West Bank since 2009. Both companies offer 3G through an agreement with Israel, which controls the frequencies.

Wataniya's expansion was held up by the political divide between the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority and the Islamic militant group Hamas which rules Gaza, and an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the coastal territory.

The two rival Palestinian groups say they are close to reaching a reconciliation agreement that would return Gaza to the control of the Palestinian Authority.

Wataniya Mobile CEO Durgham Maraee said hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on building the network in the Palestinian territories. "This was the largest investment that Gaza has known in nearly two decades," he said. "We hope our success in Gaza would encourage others to invest in Gaza like us."

In 2015, Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed a preliminary deal granting 3G service to the West Bank only, excluding Gaza, but the service has not yet begun in either area.

Allam Moussa, the Palestinian minister of telecommunications, said a meeting was held with Israeli officials Monday to discuss allowing 3G equipment to enter Gaza. "The service will be launched in the West Bank soon and we have started talks about Gaza," he said.

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BERLIN (AP)  A German court has convicted an alleged anti-government extremist of murder and sentenced him to life in prison over the fatal shooting of a police officer as authorities tried to confiscate the defendant's firearms.

News agency dpa reported that the Nuremberg state court convicted the 50-year-old, identified as Wolfgang P. in line with privacy rules, of murder and two counts of attempted murder Monday. Defense lawyers had sought his conviction on a lesser charge of manslaughter.

One officer died and two were wounded after the defendant fired at an armed response unit sent to his home in Georgensgmuend last October to confiscate his weapons.

The defendant is believed to belong to the Reich Citizens Movement, a loose grouping that refuses to acknowledge the authority of Germany's post-war federal republic.

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By Maher Chmaytelli

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi pro-government paramilitaries launched an offensive against Kurdish troops on Tuesday near the Turkish frontier, pushing towards a strategic border crossing and oil export pipeline hub that Baghdad says must come under its control.

The Iraqi government has transformed the balance of power in the north of the country since launching a campaign last week to seize back territory from the Kurds, who govern an autonomous region of three northern provinces and had also seized a swathe of other territory in northern Iraq.

The Kurds held a referendum on independence last month that Baghdad called illegal. Baghdad responded by seizing back the city of Kirkuk, the oil-producing areas around it, and other territory that the Kurds had captured from Islamic State.

Prime Minister Haidar Abadi has ordered his army to recapture all disputed territory, and has also demanded central control of Iraq's border crossings with Turkey, all of which are inside the Kurdish autonomous region itself.

A Kurdish official said Kurdish security forces known as Peshmerga had successfully beaten back an advance by Iranian-backed pro-government paramilitaries in the region of Rabi'a, 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of the Fish-Khabur border area.

Fish-Khabur is strategically vital because oil from both Kurdish and government-held parts of northern Iraq cross at a pipeline there into Turkey, the main route out of the area for international export, crucial for any Kurdish independence bid.

Abadi told a news conference in Baghdad he will discuss the issue of the border crossing with his Turkish counterpart Benali Yildirim on Wednesday in Ankara.

The fighting so far has taken place outside the Kurdish autonomous region, but Fish-Khabur is located within it, so any assault on the border crossing would mark a major escalation, bringing government troops into undisputed Kurdish territory.

Crude oil flowing through the Iraqi Kurdistan pipeline to Turkey's port of Ceyhan were up slightly at 300,000 barrels per day on Tuesday, about half the level before the Iraqi takeover of Kirkuk, a shipping source in London said. The pumping rate has risen by about 50,000 bpd since Monday.

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TRICKY FOR WASHINGTON

An Iraqi military spokesman denied there had been any clashes in the area. But an Iraqi security source in Baghdad and a rights activist in northwest Iraq said the confrontation had started at dawn and was still going on by midday.

"Peshmerga repelled the attack and pushed Popular Mobilisation back in to Rabi'a," tweeted KRG President Masoud Barzani's media advisor, Hemin Hawrami. A military spokesman in Baghdad said in response: "There are no clashes."

The fighting between the central government and the Kurds is particularly tricky for the United States which is close allies of both sides, arming and training both the Kurds and the central government's army to fight against Islamic State.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Baghdad this week, but Abadi rebuffed his call for Iraq to reject the role of Iran-backed Shi'ite paramilitaries that fight alongside government troops and have taken a hard line on the Kurds.

An Iraqi government security advisor said on Monday Baghdad aimed to bring the three-way border crossing with Turkey and Syria at Fish-Khabur under its control, but he declined to say if a military move was being prepared.

The Iraqi government's advance over the past week has been achieved with comparatively little violence, with Kurds mostly withdrawing without a fight.

Nevertheless, Amnesty International reported that at least 11 civilians were killed and tens of thousands displaced from Kurdish areas of Tuz Khurmato, a town south of Kirkuk. It said images, videos, photos and dozens of testimonies indicated that hundreds of properties had been looted in a rampage targeting Kurdish parts of the ethnically mixed town.

Elections for the presidency and parliament of Iraq's Kurdistan region set for Nov. 1 have been delayed by eight months, the regional parliament announced on Tuesday.

The electoral commission said on Monday that parties had failed to present candidates amid turmoil in the region following the Sept. 25 independence referendum.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; editing by Peter Graff)
RABAT (Reuters) - Moroccan authorities said on Monday they had arrested six suspected Islamic State militants who had been planning attacks.

The arrested belonged to a group linked to Islamic State that was dismantled this month which had been active in eight towns and cities and which had planned terrorist operations, an official statement said.

One of the six arrested was an expert in explosives, the statement said. Eleven other militants had already been arrested earlier this month.

Moroccan authorities say they have dismantled dozens of jihadist cells since 2002, including about 50 with alleged links to Islamic State.

(Reporting by Zakia Abdennebi; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Mozambique President Filipe Jacinto Nyusi addresses the United Nations General Assembly in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S. September 21, 2016. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz (Reuters)

MAPUTO (Reuters) - Mozambique has fired its head of intelligence and army chief of staff, two weeks after 16 people were killed in attacks in the north of the country, the presidency said on Tuesday.

Lagos Lidimo was dismissed as director general of information and state security service; he will be replaced by Julio Jane, previously the commander of police, Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi said in a statement. Graca Chongo has been dismissed as army chief, with no replacement named.

The presidency did not provide reasons for the dismissals, which were effective immediately.

Earlier this month, police and unidentified gunmen clashed in the Indian Ocean port of Mocimboa da Praia, leaving 16 people dead, two of them police officers.

The motive for the attacks was not clear. Local media have reported that the attack was carried out by Islamists, but the government has not confirmed that.

(Reporting by Manuel Mucari; Writing by Tanisha Heiberg; Editing by Larry King)
WINDHOEK (Reuters) - Namibia's government on Tuesday rejected accusations by the coordinator of the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea who accused the southern African nation of not complying with UN Security Council sanctions against Pyongyang.

Namibia said that it rejected allegations that it had not submitted a report for more than a year to the Security Council's sanctions committee on North Korea.

"The Government of Namibia wishes to categorically state that it has submitted reports to the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee as required, the last having been submitted on 8 April 2017," Lineekela Mboti, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation, said in a statement.

Hugh Griffiths, who is the coordinator of the body charged with monitoring sanctions enforcement on North Korea, said Namibia had contracted North Korean workers and state companies to construct an ammunitions factory in clear violation of UN sanctions dating back nearly a decade.

Griffiths alleged in a report on CNN that the UN panel had not received responses from Namibia to specific queries for more than a year.

"It is not enough to talk in the media. It is not enough to say you have been exonerated by the UN for North Korean sanctions violations because that is not true," Griffiths was quoted by CNN as saying.

Mboti said Namibia terminated the contracts with Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation and Mansudae Overseas Projects in the southern African nation, "which will remain in place" for as long as the UN Security Council sanctions continued.

She said Windhoek was committed to complying with all relevant UN resolutions on North Korea, and had invited the UN experts to visit Namibia to see for themselves.

(Reporting by Nyasha Nyaugnwa; Editing by Richard Balmforth; Editing by James Macharia)
The green panel directed the railway stations to submit 25 per cent of the fine amount with the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and rest with the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC).

By Mail Today Bureau: Addressing the issue of filth and trash at railway stations and their tracks in Delhi, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Monday imposed major fines on them for not following the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016.

A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar imposed penalty of one lakh each on Anand Vihar railway station, Vivek Vihar railway station, Shahdara railway station and Shakur Basti railway station for failure to manage waste and treat sewage.

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The green panel directed them to submit 25 per cent of the fine amount with the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and rest with the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC).

Advocate Om Prakash, appearing for the railways, assured the bench that the transport behemoth would take all necessary steps to maintain hygiene and cleanliness at the stations.

The NGT order came after it perused an interim report submitted by a committee set up by it recommending action against defaulting bodies for improper management and treatment of sewage and lack of mechanism to recycle waste.

The tribunal had earlier constituted a committee to inspect major waste generators in the Capital, including five-star hotels, malls, hospitals, educational institutions with hostels and housing societies.

The green panel had directed the Delhi government to provide a list of all such establishments to be inspected by the committee.

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A storm caused severe damage in the city of Spartanburg, South Carolina, on Monday, October 23.

A video shared on Instagram by Rhakeem Vanderburg revealed a row of toppled trees near Spartanburg Community College after the area was hit by a possible tornado. Thousands of residents were left without power after the storm hit and there was significant damage to property across the city, according to the Spartanburg Herald Journal. Credit: Instagram/ Rhakeem Vanderburg via Storyful
Russian President Vladimir Putin waves to participants of the 19th World Festival of Youth and Students Reuters

As if there wasnt enough to worry about with the threat of nuclear war on the horizon, Vladimir Putin has suggested something worse might be on the horizon.

The Russian leader said that human beings genetically engineered to be immune to pain and fear would actually be more dangerous than a nuclear weapon.

Speaking to students at the 19th World Festival of Youth and Students in Sochi, Putin warned of the dangers of playing God with the genetic code.

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Putin said: One may imagine that a man can create a man not only theoretically but also practically.

He can be a genius mathematician, a brilliant musician or a soldier, a man who can fight without fear, compassion, regret or pain.

The idea is similar to the premise of the classic Jean-Claude Van Damme thriller Universal Soldier.

As you understand, humanity can enter, and most likely it will in the near future, a very difficult and very responsible period of its existence.

What I have just described might be worse than a nuclear bomb.

Putin warned that nations would have to agree on ethical regulations around the technology, according to the Express.

He warned: When we do something, whatever we do, I want to reiterate it again  we must never forget about the ethical foundations of our work.


Diamond development company Stellar Diamonds gained environmental approval for a key mining licence in Sierra Leone for the Togo portion of its proposed Togo-Tonguma mine.

Following receipt of the environmental licence from Sierra Leone's Environmental Protection Agency, the company said it now expected the National Minerals Agency to draw up the Tongo mining licence, which will then be considered by the government's mining minister.

Stellar chief executive Karl Smithson spoke of potential at the Tongo-Tonguma mine.

"The next milestone will be the drafting of the Tongo Mining Licence. Tongo forms part of the proposed 4.5m carat combined Tongo-Tonguma mine development which has the potential to be the second largest hard rock diamond mine in West Africa and have one of the highest $/t kimberlite ore values globally. We look forward to providing a further update in due course."

An independent mine plan, based on over 66,000m of drilling completed so far, indicates there is more than 4m carats of diamonds in the kimberlite, which are expected to generate gross revenues of more than $1.2bn over a 21 year life of mine.

Initial production at Tongo-Tonguma is scheduled to occur in the first year of development, building up to over 200,000 carats per annum, with a weighted average modelled diamond value of $229 per carat.
Kent Holliday, professor of music in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech, has been conferred the title of professor emeritus by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The emeritus title may be conferred on retired professors, associate professors, and administrative officers who are specially recommended to the board by Virginia Tech President Tim Sands. Nominated individuals who are approved by the board receive an emeritus certificate from the university.

A member of the university community since 1974, Holliday was one of Virginia Techs earliest music faculty members. Virginia Tech first offered a bachelors degree in music in 1974, and he helped to graduate the initial class of music majors in 1978.

The more than 65 compositions Holliday wrote during his time at Virginia Tech have been performed in hundreds of concerts on campus, in the region, and at distinguished state and national conferences. These compositions have also been recorded in six different collections.

Hollidays work has been recognized with several awards, including one at the Aliener International Harpsichord Competition, the Barto Prize, and First Prize at the Delaware New Music Conference Music Festival. In addition, he received First Prize at the Virginia Music Teachers Association Composition Competition five times between 1983 and 2009 and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers Plus Awards 10 times between 2003 and 2014.

In the classroom, Holliday taught a range of undergraduate courses across the music curriculum, including piano, music literature, music theory, and composition.

He was also a founding member of the Whitman Trio, the first faculty ensemble ever created at Virginia Tech.

Holliday received his bachelors degree from Hamline University and a masters degree and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
Scott Klopfer, director of the Conservation Management Institute, based in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, said, Our objective is to gather information on why, where, and when birds collide with windows and use it to develop practical, effective solutions applicable at Virginia Tech and beyond. The experience also will equip students with the skills they need for success after college as young professionals.



Students participating in the study will work alongside Conservation Management Institute professionals to monitor bird-window collisions in business and residential settings. Understanding such factors as facing exposure of windows, angle of the sun, time of day, presence of artificial lighting, and proximity of food sources and predators is needed to develop protective measures, Klopfer said.

The $5,000 goal will support undergraduate researchers, who will develop research proposals and plans, organize volunteers, manage data collection, complete analysis, and present research findings. Follow-up projects will test methods for reducing the rate of bird-window collisions.

For me, I think that I would not have gotten the experience I needed without undergraduate research, said Marissa Hahn, of Holden Beach, North Carolina, a senior majoring in environmental resources management. Its going through the triumphs and the challenges of real research projects that you cant get in that classroom experience, and it makes you feel like you are making a difference, especially with a project like this.

The bird-window study also includes a reporting mechanism for the community at-large. Members of the public are encouraged to submit their own observations via the Report a Collision link on the project webpage. Such information as date, address, species (if known), and side of building is requested.

We will use this information to look at collision patterns at larger scales, Klopfer said.

A total of 242 bird fatalities representing 56 species was recorded during a 2013-14 study on bird-window strikes conducted at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center. While most wild bird species are prone to window strikes, the ruby-throated hummingbird was at the top of this list, with 24 deaths. The American robin (21), gray catbird (15), and mourning dove (14) followed. The dark-eyed junco and white-throated sparrow had nine deaths each.

The study also identified the worst of the corporate centers 21 buildings for bird collisions and narrowed attention to the most fatal exposures of each of six high-strike structures.

Windows on the forested sides of a building are often deadly when lighting results in the prominent reflection of surrounding wildlife habitat, Klopfer said.

The challenge is convincing building owners and others to implement proven techniques to prevent bird-window collisions, he added.

A Senate bill directing General Services Administration to incorporate bird-safe building materials and design features into federal buildings was introduced Oct. 4. Like those in the recent past, the bill was referred to committee.

The Conservation Management Institute bird-window crowdfunding campaign will run through Nov. 11. Supporters can contribute a gift of any amount and help to promote the program on Facebook and Twitter.
By PTI: By Shirish B Pradhan

Kathmandu, Oct 24 (PTI) The Nepal government has accepted the resignation of Deep Kumar Upadhyay, the countrys ambassador to India, who had quit to contest the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Upadhyaya had tendered his resignation to Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Krishna Bahadur Mahara on October 6.

A Cabinet meeting headed by Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba yesterday accepted the resignation of Upadhyay, leaving the envoys post vacant.

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Upadhyay has filed his nomination for the November 26 parliamentary election from Kapilastu district in western Nepal as the ruling Nepali Congress candidate.

Upadhayay was appointed during former prime minister Sushil Koirala-led government in April 2015. He was recalled by the subsequent government headed by the CPN-UMLs K P Sharma Oli in May, 2016 on charge of working against the countrys interest.

He was reappointed last year by Prachandas government.

Upadhyaya had played a key role in reducing the tension between Nepal and India, when the Himalayan country had suffered blockade on its southern border following the promulgation of the new Constitution. PTI SBP KIS MRJ

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Dril-Quip, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, designs, manufactures, sells, and services engineered drilling and production equipment for use in deepwater, harsh environment, and severe service applications worldwide. The company's principal products include subsea and surface wellheads, subsea and surface production trees, mudline hanger systems, specialty connectors and associated pipes, drilling and production riser systems, liner hangers, wellhead connectors, diverters, and safety valves, as well as downhole tools. It also provides technical advisory services, and rework and reconditioning services, as well as rental and purchase of running tools for use in the installation and retrieval of its products; and downhole tools comprise of liner hangers, production packers, safety valves, and specialty downhole tools that are used to hang-off and seal casing into a previously installed casing string in the well bore. The company's products are used to explore for oil and gas from offshore drilling rigs, such as floating rigs and jack-up rigs; and for drilling and production of oil and gas wells on offshore platforms, tension leg platforms, and Spars, as well as moored vessels, such as floating production, storage, and offloading monohull moored vessels. It sells its products directly through its sales personnel, independent sales agents, and representatives to integrated, independent, and foreign national oil and gas companies, as well as drilling contractors, and engineering and construction companies. The company was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
GSK plc, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the creation, discovery, development, manufacture, and marketing of pharmaceutical products, vaccines, over-the-counter medicines, and health-related consumer products in the United Kingdom, the United States, and internationally. It operates through four segments: Pharmaceuticals, Pharmaceuticals R&D, Vaccines, and Consumer Healthcare. The company offers pharmaceutical products comprising medicines in the therapeutic areas, such as respiratory, HIV, immuno-inflammation, oncology, anti-viral, central nervous system, cardiovascular and urogenital, metabolic, anti-bacterial, and dermatology. It also provides consumer healthcare products in wellness, oral health, nutrition, and skin health categories. The company offers its consumer healthcare products in the form of nasal sprays, tablets, syrups, lozenges, gum and trans-dermal patches, caplets, infant syrup drops, liquid filled suspension, wipes, gels, effervescents, toothpastes, toothbrushes, mouthwashes, denture adhesives and cleansers, topical creams and non-medicated patches, lip balm, gummies, and soft chews. It has collaboration agreements with 23andMe; Lyell Immunopharma, Inc.; Novartis; Sanofi SA; Surface Oncology; Progentec Diagnostics, Inc.; Alector, Inc.; and CureVac AG., as well as strategic partnership with IDEAYA Biosciences, Inc. and Vir Biotechnology, Inc. The company was formerly known as GlaxoSmithKline plc and changed its name to GSK plc in May 2022. GSK plc was founded in 1715 and is headquartered in Brentford, the United Kingdom.
By PTI: Indore, Oct 24 (PTI) Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan today came out in defence of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetisation, saying new shoes bite for the first few days, but become comfortable to wear thereafter.

He also dismissed reports that the noteban and implementation of GST have reduced jobs and said a wrong impression was being created about the NDA government over the two issues.

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"Unnecessarily an atmosphere is being created that demonetisation and the GST had curtailed job opportunities," he told reporters on the sidelines of a function at Dudhia village near here.

Replying to a query over the reported adverse impact of the GST and demonetisation on jobs, the Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Minister said, "When you buy some new shoes they bite for the initial three days, but on the fourth day they fit perfectly."

He claimed that the implementation of GST has increased the number of taxpayers and simplified the taxation system.

On the Oppositions charge that the government has failed to provide jobs to the countrys youth, Pradhan targeted the Nehru-Gandhi family saying, "Those who were ruling the country for the last three generations, are now shedding crocodile tears in the name of countys youth."

To Congress vice president Rahul Gandhis description of the GST as "Gabbar Singh Tax", Pradhan said it was his "incivility".

"He (Rahul) has the habit of using such words. May God give him wisdom ... In the 2014 general elections, people made him bite the dust. Therefore, I can understand his mental condition," the minister added.

"He (Rahul) is concerned about his future. I wish him good luck," Pradhan said.

In a scathing attack on the BJP-led Union government over the GST, Rahul Gandhi, while addressing a rally in Gujarat yesterday, described it as the "Gabbar Singh Tax" and called for changes in the new tax regime to make it simple. PTI HWP LAL MAS NP GVS

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Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has set March 13, 2018, as the date for a special election to fill the vacant 18th Congressional District seat. That seat was previously held by Republican Tim Murphy, who resigned earlier this month after text messages surfaced of him urging a woman with whom he was having an affair to seek an abortion.

There are now two vacancies in the U.S. House. The other is in UT-03, vacated earlier this year by Republican Jason Chaffetz. That seat will be filled in a special election on November 7th. The current U.S. House has 239 Republicans and 194 Democrats, along with the two vacancies.

At this point, those two seats are expected to remain in Republican hands. That said, Pennsylvania Democratic governor Wolf's scheduling of the vote on a different date than the state's general 2018 primary (May 15) could benefit his party as turnout is often much lower in one-off special elections.

Nearly 30 House members have announced they will not seek reelection to that body in 2018. Visit our retirements page for the latest information.
According to the bands website, the anniversary edition includes the albums original 1967 stereo mix, which is being released on CD for the first time, thanks to technology that allowed the damaged master tapes to be repaired. The DVD includes previously unreleased video footage of the Moody Blues performing three tracks live in January 1968.

In an interview with Albany radio station Q103, Moody Blues bassist John Lodge said the DVD will feature a full performance of the album with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, recorded in July at the Sony Centre.

Rolling Stone has ranked Days of Future Passed as one of the 50 essential albums of 1967, a seminal year in rock history. According to rock historian David Weigel, the bands label, Decca, originally asked them to make a rock-and-roll version of Dvoraks New World Symphony. Instead, they went into the studio and created their own seven-song cycle.

The Moody Blues are nominees for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Theyll get word in December about whether theyve made the cut.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, 56, has now completed her second chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer. She posted an update, with a comical photo, to Instagram on Friday. We are NOT f-----g around here. Ive got the eye of the tiger. The Fighter dancing through the fire cuz I am a champion and youre going to hear me ROAR. She was pictured wearing a black hoodie, sunglasses and a fake mustache.

The popular actor revealed her diagnosis in September. 1 in 8 women get breast cancer. Today, Im the one, she wrote on Twitter. The actress went on to say: The good news is that I have the most glorious group of supportive and caring family and friends, and fantastic insurance through my union, The bad news is that not all women are so lucky, so lets fight all cancers and make universal health care a reality, she wrote.



The diagnosis came on the heels of a historic Emmy Award win. On Sept. 17, Louis-Dreyfus received her sixth straight Emmy for best actress in a comedy series for Veep. With the win, Louis-Dreyfus became the performer with the most Emmys for the same role, surpassing Candice Bergen and Don Knotts, who each earned five Emmys for their parts in Murphy Brown and The Andy Griffith Show.

In a statement, HBO said it would adjust the Veep production schedule as needed, but that the diagnosis has not affected the networks decision to renew the political comedy for a final seventh season.

Our love and support go out to Julia and her family at this time, HBO said. We have every confidence she will get through this with her usual tenacity and undaunted spirit, and look forward to her return to health and to HBO for the final season of Veep.

In addition to her six Emmy wins for her role as Selina Meyer, Louis-Dreyfus also nabbed Emmys previously for her supporting role as Elaine Benes in Seinfeld and her leading role as Christine in The New Adventures of Old Christine.

Fellow actress Christina Applegate, who underwent a double mastectomy almost a decade ago after receiving a breast cancer diagnosis, responded to Louis-Dreyfus by tweeting, Mama, find me. Lets talk if you want.
The Washington Post is just one media outlet that recently got a sneak peek inside the museum. The newspaper noted the facilitys arcade games about courage for children, in addition to a sensory room filled with images of animals and creaking boat sounds designed to mimic the chaos on board Noahs ark. The point of all the exhibits, according to the museums planners, is to engage an America that is losing its connection with the Bible.

After the Post noted in its headline that the museum contains "lots of tech  but not a lot of Jesus," Steven Bickley, the museums vice president of marketing, administration and finance, emailed a response to the Christian Post. He pointed out that an exhibit titled The World of Jesus of Nazareth focuses on the sights and sounds of Jesus day and contains a movie telling the story of "the spread of the early church, as told from the perspective of those who knew Jesus.

As the film unfolds, guests will hear the New Testament story of a new community of both Jews and Gentiles, whose growth was fueled by a belief that God is leading people home through Jesus, whom they believed God raised from the dead to rule as king. Throughout the 430,000-square-foot building are quotes by and about Jesus and images of Jesus, as he is a key figure in the Bible, Bickley said.
SUNLAND PARK  Religious leaders and immigrant rights advocates on Monday stood at the tall rust-colored fence that extends along this stretch of border to denounce the plan to build a new barrier.

Its criminal because its a symbol of racism, said Christian Church Bishop William J. Barber II, co-chairman of the Poor Peoples Campaign, who traveled from North Carolina to the border.

Youve never heard of this country talking about building a wall along the Canadian border, and yet thats where the terrorists came through, he said.

The gathering at the border fence is part of a 15-state tour designed to bring communities of color together  to fight against those systems that have been promoting racism, xenophobia poverty and displacement of marginalized people in the U.S.,said Fernando Garcia, director of the Border Network for Human Rights, based in El Paso.

Members of the nonprofit organization that advocates for immigrant rights stood along the border fence in Sunland Park holding signs that read No Hate. No Wall. A Border Patrol agent in his truck kept a watchful eye on the gathering, and curious children on the Mexican side peeked through the border fence at the people speaking at a small lectern set up in the desert.

The administration of President Donald Trump is moving forward with prototypes for a new border wall in San Diego and expects to award a contract for the construction if it can get funding from Congress.

This wall is a sign of the failure of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a symbol of the lies we Mexicans were told, said Bishop Jose Raul Vera Lopez of the Catholic Diocese of Saltillo, Mexico.

The Rev. Liz Theoharis, Presbyterian co-chairwoman of Poor Peoples Campaign, said the goal of the border trip was to connect communities with shared concerns, the right for health care, the right to making a living wage, the right to housing, the right to education for our children, the same rights that people here on the border deserve and need.

Organizers are calling for a moral revival and want to mobilize Americans to speak out against the new border wall.

We had the nerve to go over to Germany, and rightfully so, and send the president there who said, Tear down this wall. America loses her moral authority unless we unite together (to) say tear down this wall, as well, Barber said.
SANTA FE  The widow of a Santa Fe County deputy has filed suit against the former deputy who fatally shot her husband to death and the bar where the two lawmen were drinking, maintaining the bar staff should have known better than to serve the defendant a combination of vodka and energy drinks.

Tai Chan, 30, is awaiting his third trial in the death of 29-year-old Jeremy Martin in April, after the first two ended with hung juries.

Prosecutors say Chan, a former Santa Fe County deputy, shot and killed Martin the evening of Oct. 27, 2014 at the Hotel Encanto in Las Cruces while the two were returning to Santa Fe after transporting a prisoner to Arizona. They got into an argument while drinking at Dublins Street Pub in Las Cruces before going to the hotel for the night, according to evidence presented at trial.

Martins widow, Sarah Martin, filed her wrongful death lawsuit Friday in Sandoval County District Court against Chan, owners of Dublins and unnamed bar employees.

The suit says the Dublins staff continued to serve Martin and Chan alcohol even after they had to intervene between the two due to their behavior on the premises.

The suit also says the bar should not have served Chan a mix of vodka and Red Bull because the label on Red Bulls can says not to mix the caffeinated energy drink with alcohol and the bar staff should have known what the mixture could do.

By serving Chan and others with the combination of alcohol and Red Bull, as well as additional alcohol, the Defendants knew or should have known of the affects that the combination of alcohol and Red Bull would have on a person, the lawsuit states.

Upon information and belief, Defendants were informed by Red Bull, through a warning posted on the can, to not serve a combination of Red Bull and alcohol.

Sarah Martins lawyer, David Foster, could not be reached Monday.

At least one study has compared the effect of Red Bull mixed with alcohol to cocaines and another says the caffeine from energy drinks allows for longer periods of less inhibited behavior from the alcohol.

Santa Fe attorneys John Day and Tom Clark, who are representing Chan in his criminal case, said they wouldnt represent him in the civil case and dont believe Chans been served with the wrongful death suit yet. An owner for Dublins could not be reached Monday.

Sarah Martin wants compensatory damages as well as punitive damages to punish Chan and the Defendants for their failure to properly dispense alcohol in a reasonable and prudent manner and amount.
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

A brother, half-brother and cousin who police say killed two men and wounded two others over a drug debt last year are now facing federal charges in connection with running large quantities of methamphetamine from California to New Mexico since February 2015  some of which agents say they sold at a South Valley ice cream shop or paleteria.

Documents previously filed in state District Court have said the men, who were all born in Sinaloa, Mexico, are suspected of having ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, but recently unsealed federal court documents dont mention the link. Immigration authorities have not responded to questions about whether the men were in the United States legally.

However, the federal documents do lay out a long-term investigation into the drug trafficking organization that agents say Eder Ortiz-Parra, 25, his half-brother Edwin Ortiz-Parra, 26, and their cousin Rafael Gonzalez-Parra, 26, ran.

All three were arrested last March and have been charged with two counts of murder as well as several other charges in the quadruple shooting in a Southeast Albuquerque home in August 2016. Eder Ortiz-Parra is also charged with murder in a December shooting death on Albuquerques West Side.

But agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration had begun investigating the drug trafficking ring, and even tapped Gonzalez-Parras phone, months before the murders.

Last month, on Sept. 21, authorities indicted the three men  who have remained in jail without bond since their March arrests  on federal drug trafficking and conspiracy charges. Attorneys representing each defendant either did not respond to emails or said they had no comment on the case.

Five others were also charged in the drug trafficking ring.

Undercover tactics

In June 2016, agents intercepted Gonzalez-Parras cellphone text messages for two weeks until he stopped using the phone, according to a search warrant affidavit. And they had previously conducted approximately three controlled drug purchases from him.

They said these tactics helped them identify Gonzalez-Parra as a drug trafficker and an active member of the group agents called the Ortiz-Parra Drug Trafficking Organization. He also faces charges in Arizona for being caught with about 5 pounds of meth in Edwin Ortiz-Parras vehicle.

It is unclear from the documents if agents continued their surveillance of Gonzalez-Parra and his cousins after mid-June, and DEA officials would not comment on the case when reached by the Journal last week.

But two months later, Albuquerque police say the men shot and killed Daniel Chumacero, 24, and Juan Carlos Saenz-Ponce, 23, and wounded two other men over $7,500 worth of bad cocaine.

And in mid-September, Carmen Celeste Velasquez, 33, a woman with ties to the slain men, was found dead from a gunshot wound to her neck by the side of the road in Taos County. No one has been charged in her slaying.

Then, in mid-December, police say Eder Ortiz-Parra shot and killed Gilberto Medina-Pena, 32, over a drug debt on Albuquerques West Side.

That same month a DEA confidential source bought about a pound of meth from him but it is unclear if this transaction happened before or after the killing.

Case intensifies

It wasnt until early February 2017 that the investigation into the group heated up when agents began intercepting Eder Ortiz-Parras phone calls, according to the search warrant affidavit.

Thats how they knew he had instructed his half-brothers father, Miguel Avila-Moreno, to deliver a $2,800 pound of meth to a buyer in the parking lot of Michoacana Del Sur  a paleteria or ice-cream shop in the South Valley, according to the affidavit. In the affidavit, the agent refers to Avila-Moreno as Avila, and Yuren Miranda Vasquez, who he said was buying the drugs, as Miranda.

In sum, based on my training and experience, as well as my familiarity with this investigation, there is probable cause to believe that, on February 11, 2017, Eder arranged to sell Miranda one pound of methamphetamine, which Avila retrieved and delivered to Miranda pursuant to Eders instructions, the agent wrote in the affidavit. There is also probable cause to believed that Eder directed Avila to provide $2,800 of the proceeds to Edwin, the leader of the DTO (drug trafficking organization).

Both Avila-Moreno and Miranda Vasquez have been indicted on drug charges along with the Ortiz-Parras.

Three other associates, Cristina Ornelas-Aragon, Cesar Omar de la Rocha-Avila and Adolfo Celaya-Lozoya, also face federal charges for roles in the organization.

According to the affidavit, in a call intercepted by agents, Ornelas-Aragon ordered 8 ounces  which she referred to in code as tacos  to be delivered to a South Valley house in late February 2017. Video surveillance from a camera near the house shows Eder Ortiz-Parra meeting her outside the house in her vehicle.

After the meeting, agents say Ornelas-Aragon and another man drove the drugs west on Interstate 40 until agents asked New Mexico State Police to pull them over for a traffic stop near Grants. Thats when they found the 8 ounces of meth packed into a black cardboard box.

And according to the indictment, over the past couple of years Celaya-Lozoya had helped the Ortiz-Parras bring at least 30 pounds of meth from California to New Mexico and Rocha-Avila had helped them distribute meth.

The investigation into the organization culminated on March 7, 2017, when Eder Ortiz-Parra, Edwin Edsel Ortiz-Parra, and Gonzalez-Parra were taken into custody on murder charges after two SWAT standoffs around Albuquerque. Eder Ortiz-Parra was arrested in a Southwest Albuquerque home that agents had previously identified as where the organization stored and sorted drugs.

Charges

 Edwin Edsel Ortiz-Parra: Charged with two counts of conspiracy, two counts of distribution of 50 grams of methamphetamine, conspiracy to commit money laundering, money laundering, and aiding and abetting.

 Eder Ortiz-Parra: Charged with conspiracy, use of a telephone to facilitate a drug-trafficking offense, conspiracy to commit money laundering, money laundering; aiding and abetting, possession with intent to distribute of 50 grams and more of a mixture and substance containing methamphetamine, possession with intent to distribute heroin, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.

 Rafael Gonzalez-Parra: Charged with conspiracy.

 Miguel Avila-Moreno: Charged with three counts of distribution of 50 grams and more of methamphetamine, two counts of conspiracy, use of a telephone to facilitate a drug trafficking offense.

 Yuren Miranda Vasquez: Charged with conspiracy, use of a telephone to facilitate a drug trafficking offense.

 Cristina Ornelas-Aragon: Charged with conspiracy, use of a telephone to facilitate a drug trafficking offense.

 Cesar Omar de la Rocha-Avila: Charged with three counts of distribution of 50 grams and more of methamphetamine, two counts of conspiracy.

 Adolfo Celaya-Lozoya: Conspiracy.
The former program specialist for the LGBTQ Resource Center at the University of New Mexico, Alma Rosa Silva-Banuelos, misused a university P-Card, essentially a credit card, for unallowable/questioned travel and nontravel expenses amounting to $14,758, according to a just released audit.

The report by UNMs Internal Audit Department looking at fiscal year 2016-17 also found that the Division for Equity and Inclusion, which oversees the Resource Center, had internal control deficiencies, including inadequate management oversight, and noncompliance with the state Constitution and UNM policies and procedures.

Neither Silva-Banuelos nor her attorney could be reached for comment.

The LGBTQ Resource Center provides support, advocacy and education to UNM students, faculty and staff of all gender identities and sexual orientations. The Resource Center is funded by student fees and an allocation from the Instruction and General fund.

The audit confirms many of the allegations made earlier this summer during an investigation by UNMs Division of Human Resources. As a result of that investigation, Silva-Banuelos received a notice of disciplinary action for incurring more than $50,000 in travel expenditures without receiving prior approval. She had been with the Resource Center since 2010 and was terminated on June 17.

Of that $50,000, $14,758 was for unallowable/questioned travel and nontravel expenses  such things as meals, groceries, clothing, a tent, Uber and taxi transportation, and holiday decorations.

All LGBTQ Resource Center-related travel was supposed to be approved by Josephine de Leon, the former vice president for Equity and Inclusion. A reminder email to get that prior approval at least a month before traveling was sent out on Sept. 14, 2016, at 1:26 p.m. That same day, at 6:15 p.m., the audit says, Silva-Banuelos purchased tickets on her UNM credit card for a conference in Bangkok, Thailand. The trip was subsequently canceled.

One trip to Ojo Caliente and two to Standing Rock, S.D., were neither pre-approved nor apparently for valid LGBTQ Resource Center business reasons, according to the audit.

For an approved study-abroad trip to Cuba, Silva-Banuelos put airfare on her UNM credit card for a former Resource Center employee, despite a rule that students attending the trip pay their own domestic airfare. Further, according to the audit, the former employee was neither a student nor staff member at the time and was therefore ineligible.

UNM spokeswoman Cinnamon Blair said the findings of the audit were turned over to the UNM Police Department, which investigated and subsequently forwarded the case to the District Attorneys Office, which will decide if it wants to pursue criminal proceedings.
Jharkhand's poor are being denied subsidised supplies under the public distribution system for not linking Aadhaar to their ration cards.

By Dharambir Kumar Sinha: Jharkhand's poor appear to be reeling under a food crisis as they are being refused their subsidised supplies for not linking Aadhaar to their ration cards, an India Today investigation has found.

The Raghubar Das government came under opposition attack after an 11-year-old girl died in Simdega last month. Local activists alleged she died from starvation because her family could not furnish Aadhaar number to receive their PDS quotas.

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Another death, of a 40-year-old rickshaw puller, in Dhanbad's Jharia area was also blamed on starvation. The state administration denied the accusations in both cases, but has recently recalled its PDS-Aadhaar linking order.

India Today's teams fanned across the state for a reality-check of public-distribution supplies. The findings revealed devastating truths.

VILLAGE NEAR RANCHI

In tribal-dominated Keonjhari village near Ranchi, a young man, Pahna Ekka, disclosed the local PDS store had stopped his supplies since his mother's death.

The store owner, he alleged, had been asking him to "bring his mother" for biometric identification if he wanted to get his share of foodgrains.

Shukro, a woman villager, revealed she too had been refused the supplies because her ration card is not linked to Aadhaar.

DHANBAD

Home to 22,000 people, as many as 35 poor families at Dhanbad's Ward Number 9 were found to be missing from the ration-card roster.

Another 60 families are not being given their PDS supplies because they have not linked their ration cards with Aadhaar, residents alleged.

India Today's team found how villagers collected donations to hospitalize a woman who they said had not eaten for four days.

RAMGARH, SIMDEGA

At Ramgarh's Mandu block, many poor families alleged they had not been given pink or yellow cards that would have made them eligible for subsidised food. Instead, they were issued white cards to receive only kerosene supplies, the families alleged.

At Simdega, India Today's investigation found as many as 2,000 ration cards have been cancelled because they were not linked to Aadhaar, depriving those families of much-needed cheap foodgrains.

'ISSUE BEING POLITICISED'

Meantime, chief minister Ragubar Das denied allegations that the deaths in Simdega and Dhanbad were starvation related. He accused the opposition of politicising the issue.

According to the CM, around 99 percent of ration cards have been already linked with Aadhaar. The process, he insisted, helped the state save Rs 225 crore.

As many as nine lakh new cards had been issued in place of eleven lakh, which the chief minister said, had been cancelled.

--- ENDS ---
NEW YORK  For more than 50 years, every American president has been forced to grapple, in one way or another, with the quagmire of the Vietnam War. Now its Donald Trumps turn.

The ghosts of Vietnam are stirring anew, just as Trump prepares to visit the nation on his first presidential tour of Asia. Vietnam war hero Sen. John McCain, who spent more than five years in a prisoner of war camp after his plane was shot down, this week put an unwelcome spotlight on Trumps five draft deferments to avoid military service. And Trumps prolonged political tussle over the proper way for presidents to honor and grieve with the families of fallen soldiers has focused attention on his lack of military service as well.

Trump tried to set all that aside Monday as he presented the Medal of Honor to retired Capt. Gary Rose, a Vietnam era medic who repeatedly ran into the line of enemy fire and ignored his own wounds to save his colleagues during a fierce firefight in enemy-controlled territory in September 1970.

Mike, this is serious stuff, Trump said. Your love for your fellow soldier, your devotion to your country inspires us all.

But the matter of Trumps lack of service wasnt far off stage.

McCain, the Arizona Republican who has frequently clashed with the president, made clear he had Trump in mind Monday as he criticized the Vietnam draft system that forced low-income Americans to serve while the wealthy could avoid war with a doctors note. Trump, the son of a millionaire developer, received draft deferments, one attained with a physicians letter stating that he suffered from bone spurs in his feet.

I dont consider him so much a draft dodger as I feel that the system was so wrong that certain Americans could evade their responsibilities to serve the country, McCain said on ABCs The View. McCain was being pressed about earlier comments on C-SPAN in which he lamented that the military drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say they had a bone spur.

When a host on the ABC show remarked that people thought McCain had been talking about Trump on C-SPAN because the president had sought a medical deferment, McCain interjected, More than once, yes.

Over the decades, Vietnam has become shorthand for a bogged-down military conflict, a comparison invoked during more recent struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has served as a cautionary lesson about the political peril for presidents ensnared in prolonged overseas military operations.

President Lyndon Johnson abandoned his re-election quest after an escalation in the war led to more American deaths, while President Richard Nixon took fierce criticism for expanding the conflict. President Bill Clintons wartime deferment before he entered the Vietnam draft generated considerable heat during the 1992 presidential campaign.

More recently, questions about the service of George W. Bush and John Kerry were prominent in the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard but faced scrutiny over his status and why he was never deployed overseas. Kerry was a decorated veteran who threw away his medals and testified against the war before Congress. His service record was questioned in campaign ads.

Obama, the first post-Vietnam president, positioned himself as the one who might heal the rift between those who served and those who didnt. Although he, too, was burdened with lessons of the war.

Let us resolve that when America sends our sons and daughters into harms way, we will always give them a clear mission; we will always give them a sound strategy; we will give them the equipment they need to get the job done, Obama said at a visit to the Vietnam Memorial in 2012. We will have their backs.

Trump is slated to make his first presidential trip to Vietnam early next month as part of his 12-day, five-nation Asia tour. He will participate in an international summit in Da Nang before meeting the Vietnamese president in Hanoi. The White House said Monday it had not been decided if Trump would visit any war sites, like the prison where McCain was held.

Trump ignited a feud with McCain in July 2015 when he belittled the senators time in captivity.

Hes not a war hero, said Trump. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who werent captured.

Trump once compared his ability to avoid sexually transmitted diseases in the Manhattan dating scene of the 1980s and 1990s to the perils of wartime that claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans in Vietnam.

It is a dangerous world out there, Trump said in a 1997 interview with shock jock Howard Stern. Its like Vietnam, sort of. It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.

The renewed focus on Trumps lack of service in Vietnam comes as he faces scrutiny over his treatment of the families of Americas war dead.

Trump has been pushing back against criticism from the family of slain Army Sgt. La David Johnson, killed this month in Niger, that he was disrespectful in his condolence call to the new widow.

Trump has steadfastly denied the claim. But the Johnsons are not the only family of a slain solider to be angry at Trump.

The family of Capt. Ben Cross of Bethel, Maine, who was one of three Marines killed in an MV-22 Osprey crash in August off the coast of Australia, received a condolence letter from Trump on Friday.

The family questioned the timing of the letter, which arrived via overnight mail after the controversy over Gold Star families had erupted.

I think that anyone who received five deferrals in order to avoid military service is unfit to be commander in chief and even less qualified to console a grieving family who has lost a loved one defending our country, Cross brother Ryan said Monday. He doesnt know the first thing about service or sacrifice.

___

Associated Press writer David Sharp contributed reporting from Portland, Maine.

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Follow Lemire on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@JonLemire
NAIROBI, Kenya  A Kenya police official says the husband of an Australian teacher has been arrested as a suspect in her murder last week.

Area police chief Cunningham Suiyanka Tuesday confirmed the arrest of Cyrus Bernard Maina Njuguna, and his cousin, John Njuguna Waithira. Suiyanka said Maina is the prime suspect in the murder of his estranged wife, Gabrielle.

Suiyanka said Gabrielle had complained of receiving threats from her husband before her killing and had obtained a restraining order as the couple was divorcing.

Her death was initially reported as robbery but a post-mortem indicated she could have been shot while kneeling. Police said Gabrielle was killed while walking home in Karen, one of Kenyas most affluent neighborhoods that has experienced several crimes of passion that have caught national and international attention.
FARMINGTON  A Farmington man is accused of leading law enforcement on a high-speed chase, crashing his vehicle and ditching a jacket that contained multiple types of drugs.

Ralph Shawn Gabilondo, 37, is set for a preliminary hearing this morning in Farmington Magistrate Court on two sets of criminal charges stemming from his arrest on Sept. 28, according to court records.

Gabilondo is accused of aggravated fleeing a law enforcement officer, driving while license revoked and failure to maintain lanes in one case, according to the criminal complaint.

In the other case, he is accused of possession of a controlled substance, dangerous drugs (conditions for sale), use or possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of marijuana (one ounce or less), according to the criminal complaint.

Gabilondo has at least four other pending cases in magistrate and district courts in New Mexico, according to court records.

He has multiple aliases in court records including Ralphshawn Gabilondo, Shawn Gabilondo and Ralphshawn Gabillondo.

Graham Gurnee, Gabilondos public defender, did not respond to requests for comment.

Officers for the Farmington Police Department were dispatched on the morning of Sept. 29 to the area of U.S. Highway 64 and West Broadway Avenue, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.

An officer observed a silver passenger car matching the description of a reported stolen vehicle traveling eastbound in the 3100 block of Bloomfield Highway.

When the officer slowed down to observe the vehicle, it quickly accelerated, according to court documents.

The officer made a U-turn and started following the vehicle but stopped pursuing it due to safety reasons.

Another officer later observed the vehicle crash near the intersection of Anna Lane and Sycamore Street and Gabilondo fleeing on foot, according to court documents.

Officers received reports that a man was on the roof of a residence in the 1300 block of Sycamore Street.

Gabilondo was brought down from the roof and taken into custody, according to court documents.

While speaking to officers, Gabilondo said he had no alcohol to drink and stated he was trying to kick the black, a slang term for heroin and that he used heroin four days earlier, according to court documents.

Officers also found a blue jacket near the intersection of Anna Lane and Sycamore Street in the area where Gabilondo crashed the vehicle he was driving.

The jacket contained a black bag with items including less than one gram of a brown and tarry substance that later tested positive for opiates and is believed to be heroin, along with a silver tube containing five pills of a prescription-only medication buspirone hydrochloride, according to court documents.

A wallet found near a house in the 1300 block of Anna Lane contained a clear plastic bag with less than one gram of a leafy, green substance that appeared to be marijuana, the affidavit states.

An order to hold Gabilondo for pretrial detention without bond at the San Juan County Adult Detention Center was filed by District Judge Karen Townsend on Oct. 13, according to a copy of the order.

Judge Townsend wrote Gabilondo was out on bond when three new sets of charges were filed against him, that he had five prior felony convictions and has a history of warrants issued for failing to appear in court.

Joshua Kellogg covers crime, courts and social issues for The Daily Times. He can be reached at 505-564-4627.



2017 The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.)

Visit The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.) at www.daily-times.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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FARMINGTON  The New Mexico Supreme Court has removed suspended Aztec Magistrate Court Judge Connie Johnston from judicial office and have permanently barred her from holding a judicial office statewide.

The decision was rendered this afternoon at a hearing in the Supreme Court building in Santa Fe, according to Farmington-based attorney Steve Murphy.

Multiple attempts today to reach Johnston by phone for comment were unsuccessful. Johnston has previously denied the accusations and any wrongdoing.

The Judicial Standards Commission filed a petition on April 10 with the state Supreme Court to remove Johnston after the eight commissioners determined Johnston had violated the states Code of Judicial Conducts eight times.

A hearing was initially scheduled for July 24 but it was postponed, according to court documents.

Todays hearing lasted nearly 90 minutes, according to Murphy. The Supreme Court justices deliberated for about 25 minutes before giving their order.

The April 10 petition by the Judicial Standards Commission said the commissioners believed Johnstons actions did substantial harm to the public perception and operations of the Aztec Magistrate Court, according to a copy of the petition.

Johnston was initially charged with 15 charges of violating the states Code of Judicial Count and suspended without pay on Feb. 10, 2016, following a hearing in the state Supreme Court.

The Judicial Standards Commission filed a petition on Feb. 4, 2016, alleging willful misconduct in office.

Removing a judge from the bench is a rare recommendation, Randall Roybal, executive director and general counsel for the Judicial Standards Commission, previously told The Daily Times.

A message left for Roybal today was not returned.

Rio Arriba Magistrate Judge Thomas Rodella was the last magistrate judge removed from office by the state Supreme Court in 2008.

Johnston was initially suspended with pay in December 2015 by the state Supreme Court after Johnston ordered court clerk Amy Verholst be jailed for contempt. That order was later reversed by the high court.

Murphy filed a complaint in December 2015 on behalf of Verholst with the Judicial Standards Commission.

Governor Susana Martinez will appoint a new judge to fill the remainder of Johnstons term, according to state statute.

Johnston was appointed to the Division 1 magistrate judge seat on Aug. 15, 2014, by Martinez.

She was elected to a four-year term in November 2014 when she ran unopposed for the bench.

The term started on Jan. 1, 2015, and is set to end on Dec. 31, 2018, according to the San Juan County Clerks website.

The New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts has not notified the Governors Office about Johnstons removal from office as of this afternoon, according to spokesman Michael Lonergan.

Joshua Kellogg covers crime, courts and social issues for The Daily Times. He can be reached at 505-564-4627.



2017 The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.)

Visit The Daily Times (Farmington, N.M.) at www.daily-times.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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A volcanic eruption takes its time.

Whether its weeks, months or years, theres a way to track it but not to know exactly when it will occur.

In Novas Killer Volcanoes, which airs at 8 tonight on New Mexico PBS, viewers will get a chance to follow a team of volcano sleuths as they embark on a worldwide hunt for an elusive volcanic mega-eruption that plunged medieval Earth into a deep freeze.

The team investigates the geologic evidence from Greenland all the way to Antarctica to identify the 750-year-old culprit.

One of those featured is Dr. Nelia Dunbar, who is the state geologist and director of the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources. She is based out of New Mexico Tech in Socorro.

Ive worked on volcanic record in Antarctica, Dunbar said. One of the geological processes is trying to determine if an eruption happens quickly or slowly. In some environments that can be challenging. In ice you drill 3,000 meters deep and ice is really hard to date. So we measure volcanic ash within the ice and that can help determine the chemistry and tie it to an eruption.

As director of the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, Dunbar oversees the research and service activities of the state geological survey.

Her scientific background is mainly in the study of volcanic rocks, and she received funding for, and previously directed the electron microprobe laboratory, where she is also an adviser.

Dunbar said working with the Nova team was quite fun.

The producer arrived in Socorro and spent some time filming her working in her lab.

Then she traveled with the crew to the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev.

My colleague there looks at the chemistry of ice, she said. Hes figured out a clever way to analyze it.

Dunbar also jumped at the chance to be on the show because she thinks its important to get the work scientists do out to the world.

She also worked on the documentary Sleeping Monsters, Sacred Fires: Volcanoes of New Mexico, which is a KNME project.

Its about volcanoes in New Mexico and we learned quite a lot from doing the film, she said. Getting our work out to the world helps everybody learn a little more about what we do.

On TV

Novas Killer Volcanoes will air at 8 tonight on KNME New Mexico PBS channel 5.1
Happy mcgarrybowen, the creative agency from Dentsu Aegis Network, has been appointed as the creative partner for the outdoor and adventure product company, Wildcraft. The mandate was won post a multi-agency pitch.

The agency has been brought on board to manage the mainline mandate for the brand. Shortly after winning the account, Happy mcgarrybowen has already released the AW 17 campaign for Wildcraft and looks forward to partner with them for their aggressive growth plans in the future.

Commenting on the partnership, Kartik Iyer, CEO, Happy mcgarrybowen says, Wildcraft has a certain raw power to it as an indigenous adventure brand. It is something we have been excited by since the first time we met the founders. The market is huge and the canvas is wild. I am certain it is going to be an absolute pleasure creating for Wildcraft.

Siddharth Sood and Gaurav Dublish, Co-founders, Wildcraft, said in a joint statement, In a short span of a decade, people know Wildcraft as the pioneer and leader in outdoor gear and adventure equipment. What we need now is to establish the brand Wildcraft. With Happy mcgarrybowen's young and passionate team, we are certain that their strategy-driven creative approach will help propel the brand and aid it to moving into its next orbit.
Jose Martin Tharakan, Executive Editor of Livemint.com, has been appointed as Executive Director of Hindustantimes.com. Tharakaran has had a decade-long association with HT Media, joining Mint, the business publication from the group, in 2007 as Assistant Managing Editor.

Tharakans appointment was announced by Sukumar Ranganathan, Editor-in-Chief, Hindustan Times, in an internal mail, where he stated, I am delighted to appoint Jose Martin Tharakan, the Executive Editor of Livemint, as the Executive Editor of Hindustantimes.com, responsible for all the digital operations of Hindustan Times with immediate effect.

Ranganathan further mentioned that all digital department heads in Hindustan Times would report to Tharakan, while Tharakan would report to him.
Senior Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said that Opposition parties have decided to observe November 8 as Black Day.

By India Today Web Desk: A day after RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav said that his party will organise rallies across Bihar on November 8 to protest against demonetisation, many Opposition parties today said that the date will be observed as a 'Black Day'.

Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said that Opposition parties have decided to "observe November 8 as Black Day". Calling demonetisation "the scam of the century", the Congress leader said that protests will be held across the country to highlight the ill-effects of note ban.

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"This particular announcement made on November 8 is the scam of the century, which is why we are observing this as Black Day," Ghulam Nabi Azad said while addressing a joint press conference of the Opposition coordination committee.

Azad said that the BJP-led government's decision to scrap high-value currency was "most ill-conceived and hasty", adding that "never ever in the world people have died because of government policy". He announced that 18 Opposition parties have decided to hold protests in every state against demonetisation.

"Each political party will try to give a regional name to observe this as a 'Black Day' and will hold protests and processions," said Azad who was accompanied by TMC leader Derek O'Brien and breakaway JD(U) faction leader Sharad Yadav. Derek O'Brien said the Trinamool Congress (TMC) will observe November 8 as "Kalo Dibas", which is 'Black Day' in Bengali.

Azad said that since opposition leaders from all parties including regional ones cannot be in Delhi, the coordination committee decided "to have protests at every state according to the capacity of various opposition parties. Our purpose is to show our unity".

The coordination committee of Opposition parties met in the Parliament House on Monday and authorised Ghulam Nabi Azad to talk to other parties and finalise the protest plan on November 8. The seven-member coordination committee comprises leaders of the Congress, Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party, breakaway Janata Dal (United) faction among others.

(Inputs from PTI)

ALSO WATCH: Arun Jaitley lists 3 benefits of demonetisation

--- ENDS ---
Madison Media has been appointed as the media agency of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi. The mandate includes print, television and radio. The agencys Bangalore office will be handling the business.

Though there is no official confirmation, industry sources have pegged the account size at an estimated Rs 100 crore.

Xiaomi is the worlds 4th most valuable technology start-up after it received $1.1 billion funding from investors, making Xiaomis valuation more than $46 billion. Xiaomi entered the Indian market in July 2014, launching on e-commerce portal Flipkart. It has grown to become fifth largest smartphone manufacturer in 2017.
India has seen an exceptional growth in adoption of the digital world, and its emerging paradigms. Despite the oft-cited lacunae of poor infrastructure, last mile connectivity, cost of data and mobile telephony, the Indian consumer is changing and is connecting to a new digital reality. A lot of this has to do with large investments by telecom companies and network solutions providers and their emerging business models, which have been able to create low cost solutions, facilitating online connectivity. Mobile data connectivity is becoming ubiquitous and online connectivity is no longer a preserve of the rich and the upper middle class.

More than half of the worlds population now uses the internet, with more than 3.75 million people online today. Over the last few years, organisations have made serious changes to their media budgets and marketing strategies to expand their presence to where their audience now is: online.

With the emergence of digital and online media, companies have significantly changed the scope of their marketing strategies. A strong focus is now on managing online brand presence; and no marketing team today is complete without having a strong talent base and expertise in the digital medium. The advantage of the digital medium is that it comes with the innate ability of influencing a purchase decision, managing customer experience, enhancing service delivery, creating sustained engagement, all the while providing superior effectiveness measurement metrics, which is so critical for any marketer. As the online world moves increasingly into the mobile phone, customer stickiness becomes all the more pertinent. It becomes increasing difficult to have a new adoption for a similar service, for example, when the customer is already highly engaged with an app.

As with the entire digital space, digital marketing, too, has been moving at an incredible pace. New and innovative methods keep emerging as to how brands convert fans to customers, and how it transitions customers to endorsers and influencers. As in any marketing journey, the process of discovering what works best is driven by research; and then to a large extent, by a structured process of iteration. The smallest of things, such as the colour of your creative, the tone of your advertisement, how online responses are worded on an online query, etc., goes a long way in establishing a strong brand identity online.

We have become dependent on the internet in both our personal and professional lives. This evolutionary change that has fostered the development of an entire industry that did not exist prior to the internet. Some marketers still continue to grapple with this rapidly changing world. At the end of the day, digital marketing is nothing but the means of promoting business objectives online. The message remains the same, but the medium and how the message is conveyed changes significantly. Technology therefore becomes a means of reaching a target audience.

Digital terms, simplified

At the forefront of internet integration in everyday life are search engines. Not only have they become the driving force in internet innovations, but also in digital marketing. The terms Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are the original foundations of digital marketing. Typically, the higher a business ranks on search results and the more frequently it appears in searches, the more traffic that site will receive. Driving ranking on search engines is both an art and a science, and clever deployment of investments towards this is critical.

Social media is an integral part of digital marketing. It is, however, critical to have a judicious mix of social media, and this involves having a well thought through social media strategy. Content marketing is another strategic marketing approach, focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience  and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action and behaviour. Design, navigation and layout of a website is extremely critical and ensuring compatibility on mobile devices, to provide the user with a seamless experience, is key. While this may sound simplistic, examples still abound of sites which are poor on navigation, or which have not yet adapted to mobile compatibility.

We are seeing a series of emerging trends in the digital space. In recent times virtual reality is a growing trend seen in the video gaming industry. Live streaming allows you to engage with your audience instantaneously. Product placement in these areas is creating new marketing opportunities. Influencer marketing has become digital marketings word of mouth strategy. In real life, if a friend raves about an incredible restaurant she recently visited, her opinion would have an influence on you your next restaurant visit. In the digital world, if a popular travel blogger eulogises and recommends a travel destination, that would significantly influence the purchase behaviour of the readers. This provides, for example, a travel company an opportunity to leverage off the influencer and create packages and market them accordingly.

Digital Marketing has changed the marketing landscape simply because its the one means of communicating with consumers that is always right there; on smartphones and tablets that go with consumers literally everywhere.

In order to sustain growth in any business, you will need to focus on building your brand. While this may seem like an impossible task, with the right digital marketing strategies you will be able to enhance the recognition and reputation your brand has to offer.

The work that you put in regarding the building of your brand is worth it considering just how beneficial it can be when trying to retain loyal customers.

Creating and managing content online is essential to promoting a brand and having a content strategy is vital for the astute marketer. The key is to create content that is interesting and different. Smart marketers are able to take (at times!) mundane information and turn it into an interesting narrative, gripping for the consumer and culminating in a desired call-to-action. Almost everyone loves a good story. A well-constructed digital story manages to connect and engage the audience by using a message that is empowering and inspiring.

Creative content can be used to chat, connect and answer questions. This is not only a great way to understand client needs and concerns, but also promotes an image of a caring organisation, which is willing to listen.

Some things never change. The good old time-tested practice of taking feedback from salespeople and understanding from them as to what customers are thinking, remains as critical today: What do they talk about? How can you help them? Research will help, but sometimes its the salespeople who feel the real pulse from the field. Companies that put their customers first when creating content are bound to win, because they will produce something of real value. And thats the secret behind content marketing.

A few thoughts that could be of use while devising your digital communication strategy which feeds into your marketing plan:

Diversify: It is unlikely that your entire customer base and target audience are all on the same social network. Age as a simple variable can sometimes segregate social media platform adoption. Diversify your companys engagement efforts by participating in multiple platforms. Aside from your blog, Twitter and Facebook, connect via Pinterest, Tumblr and LinkedIn and other platforms. Not only will these different platforms allow you to reach out to a larger audience, your brand can experiment with different types of content for each platform. Remember, one size does not fit all when it comes to social channels. It is critical to be nimble and fleet footed to adapt to content consumption patterns and tastes.

Creativity of content is key: If your brand is already well established and is already considered a thought leader in the industry, it isnt necessary for every tweet, post and article to be about your company. General interest content works well for creating and sustaining brand interest and patronage. Share connected stories or news related to your business, or even ask your customers what they think the next blog post should be about! Customer-focused content will sometimes work much better than tom-tomming your products directly.

The digital medium provides for an end to end delivery, from a customer life-cycle perspective. Right from igniting customer interest to the influence on the purchase decision through to servicing and renewal/ replacement decisions, the digital media can be used to drive customer preference and engagement. The role of the marketer starts blurring in a digital world. A digital marketer plays an important role not just in influencing the purchase decision but in the entire lifecycle. How customers interact with the brand, the digital tonality, the look and feel of the digital engagement screens, the digital engagement devices, driving influencer behaviour, etc., all come in within the marketers purview.

Even in a fast-moving digital age, some things have remained the same. An obsessive focus on the customer, and keeping the customer in the forefront is still the key to a successful marketing and business strategy.

The medium may have changed. The messages remain the same, though communicated in a different manner and, perhaps, more effectively!

(Anil Ramachandran is Head of Marketing and Corporate Communication at IndusInd Bank.)
WASHINGTON and ATHENS, Greece, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Distinguished Leaders from across the globe were recognized at the 21st Global Goddess Artemis Award Ceremony held at the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece. The program was under the auspice of and hosted by the Honorable Elena Kountoura, Minister of Tourism of the Hellenic Republic. Distinguished leaders in business, academia, philanthropy, and the arts from across the globe were in attendance.

The Honorable U. S. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney stated in her video address, "I congratulate all Honorees, I also congratulate the Founder, CEO and President of EAWC, Loula Loi Alafoyiannis." The Congresswoman is founder and co-chair of the Hellenic Caucus, one of the largest caucuses in U.S. Congress. "The goal (of the Caucus) is to increase the friendship and cooperation of these two great countries," she said.

The Honorable Elena Kountoura, stated, "On this occasion I would like, first of all, to applaud Loula Loi Alafoyiannis and all of the EAWCs' spectacular work for more than two decades in the field of strengthening the status of women in leadership positions. "This program held in Greece provides a unique opportunity for prominent leaders and prestigious personalities to interconnect and exchange thoughts and ideas on how to move forward on a national and international level and to become partakers of the Greek Spirit and culture." she said

The Honorees from the United States, Greece and around the world are:

MIKIS THEODORAKIS

Renowned songwriter, composer, politician and activist

The Greek of the World

HONORABLE CAROLYN B. MALONEY

US Congresswoman (D-NY)

The "Bouboulina" of the Greek Americans & Cypriot Americans

HONORABLE ELENA KOUNTOURA

Minister of Tourism of the Hellenic Republic

Goodwill Ambassador of Social Volunteering

President of Organization, EUROPA DONNA GREECE

Father ANTONIOS PAPANIKOLAOU

Pioneer of The Ark of the World (Kivotos tou Kosmou)

Provider of care and protection for mothers and children

KATERINA PANAGOPOULOS

Executive Global National Ambassador of Greece to

The Council of Europe for Sports,

Citizen of Europe for Year 2017

The fearless and daring woman with a can-do attitude & extraordinary achievements

MAURO SERRA

Executive President of A.S. STAR TEAM FOR THE CHILDREN MC

The person with exceptional love and passion for children in need

DR. FOTINI A. POMONI

Professor, University of Athens and

Doctor Honoris Causa of the University Liceo Cervantino of Irapuato, Mexico

Visionary promoter of bilateral educational and scientific relationships

DAISY GALLAGHER

CEO of Gallagher & Gallagher Worldwide, Inc.

Global Business Person and Entrepreneur of the Century

DR. TERRY NEESE

Founder of the Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women

Her thirst to help Rwandan and Afghani women to receive a degree in Business Administration

SUN XIAN

Awarded Film Director

His passion and love promoting Greece worldwide

ADA ILIOPOULOU

The Journalist and Goodwill Ambassador of Fashion for Hellenic Institute of Cultural Diplomacy

The real visionary who connects the fashion with society

MARIA LOIZIDOU

Professor, National Technical University of Athens

Honored by the European Union

For her contribution to environmental issues related to desalination

DELLA ROUNICK

The famous Greek American sculptor

A distinguish Greek American philanthropist and artist

VICTORIA WOODS

Founder, CEO and Chief Investment Advisor

For ChappelWood Financial Services

Champion for Women and Wealth Management Leader

NIKOLETTA TSITSANOUDIS-MALLIDIS

Associate Professor, University of Ioannina & Harvard University

The academician who connected media with Greek language and culture

NATASSA N. SPAGADOROU

Editor-in-Chief of the medical and scientific website "onMed"

Outstanding contributions to the world of print and online media

TASSOS KOROSSIS

Createur de la mode

Athens - Paris - New York

For bringing the Hellenic Spirit and his creativity to celebrities around the world

VALAVANIS LASKARIS

High Fashion designer

The distinguished Greek fashion ambassador

ANTHOULA ANAKEFALOU

Public Relations Advisor at Greek Public Relations Company,

Journalist in Greece and Abroad

For her contribution to the humanity

WANG FEN-QIN

Innovative Artist

The woman who empowers people to create their own unique life path

XIE JING

Chairman of HUAJING Group Corporation

Successful young woman entrepreneur in Asia, Europe and USA

SUN QI

President TAIE Homelike Life Hall in Chengdu, China

The woman who created a life experience Museum by merging tradition and technology

ANNA BILLIS

Business Owner and Entrepreneur of the Year USA

SCOTT LIU

Executive Associate Dean of Global Programs,

Director of the Centre International Business Studies in New York Institute of Technology

Creator of an acclaimed MBA Executive Program that emphasizes experiential learning

The Honorees and Guests were part of an 8 day cultural program, visiting the gorgeous Island of Mykonos, enjoying the luxurious five star Royal Myconian Resort & Villas. Festivities hosted by The Honorable Kostas Koukas, Mayor of Mykonos who met with them and attended celebrations at Nice and Easy Restaurant. Afterward the trip continued in Athens, distinguished honorees and guests enjoyed the luxury of the five star Hotel St. George Lycabettus Lifestyle Boutique Hotel. They toured historic landmarks, including the Acropolis and Temple of Poseidon. Special visits were held withThe Honorable Elena Koutoura, Minister of Tourism of the Hellenic Republic, The Honorable George Patoulis, Mayor of Amaroussion City and President Central Union of Municipalities of Greece and a visit to the Greek Parliament.

Loula Loi Alafoyiannis EAWC, Founder & CEO Executive Global President and organizer of the 21st Annual Global Goddess Artemis Award ceremony, thanked the Honorable U.S. Congressman Maloney for her support and long stance commitment to public service, thanked The Honorable Elena Kountoura for her support and also praised her for her commitment to public service. She acknowledged the Honorable Katerina P. Panagopoulous, National Ambassador of Greece to the Council of Europe for Sports, Tolerance and Fair Play, Citizen of Europe 2017. She also gave special acknowledgement to the EAWC Board.

Loula acknowledged Dignitaries, VIPs, Hosts and Honored Guests in the audience and those whose support helped to make the 21st Annual Global Goddess Artemis program possible. Biographics of Honorees, media wall from the program, and acknowledgements may be found at www.eawc.org.

Gallagher & Gallagher Worldwide, Inc. on behalf of EAWC

press@gallagherworldwide.com

Washington DC



Media Contact: Daisy Gallagher, Gallagher & Gallagher Worldwide, Inc. on behalf of EAWC, 2024650009, ceo@gallagherworldwide.com

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

SOURCE Global Goddess Artemis Award Ceremony
BP Energy Partners, LLC (BPEP) and I Squared Capital are pleased to announce they have entered into a definitive agreement by which BPEP will sell Pinnacle Midstream, LLC (Pinnacle), a portfolio company of BPEP, to I Squared Capital through its ISQ Global Infrastructure Fund II. Pinnacle is a strategically located provider of crude and natural gas gathering, natural gas processing and related midstream solutions in the Delaware portion of the Permian Basin of West Texas. The newly built infrastructure serves multiple producers in an area with some of the highest rig activity in the United States. Pinnacles current management team will continue to run the company as it pursues its growth strategy. The transaction is expected to close following customary regulatory approvals.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024005447/en/

This transaction is a very important milestone for our team, said Greg Sargent, Founder and CEO of Pinnacle. Over the past three years, we have worked hard to create significant value by developing, constructing and bringing into operation a full-service midstream solution in Culberson and Reeves Counties. This asset will serve some of the best producers in the basin and we look forward to working with I Squared Capital to expand the system.

Michael Watzky, Managing Partner at BPEP, said, We are proud of the success that Greg Sargent and his team achieved at Pinnacle. Pinnacle and BPEP have built a strategic asset in one of the most active basins in North America.

Commenting on the transaction, Adil Rahmathulla, Partner at I Squared Capital noted, We are excited to work with the Pinnacle team to bring I Squared Capitals operating expertise and capital to the company as it expands its footprint and service offerings to provide additional downstream optionality for producers in the region.

RBC Capital Markets served as the exclusive financial advisor to Pinnacle in the transaction and Thompson & Knight LLP served as legal counsel to BPEP.

About Pinnacle Midstream

Pinnacle Midstream is a midstream company based in Houston, Texas with an additional office in Midland, Texas. Pinnacle provides gas gathering and processing, crude oil gathering and transloading services to oil and gas producers.

About BP Energy Partners

BP Energy Partners LLC is a Dallas based middle market private equity firm focused on the energy industry. BPEP brings operating experience, knowledge, relationships and executional know-how, in addition to capital, to partner with entrepreneurs, family-run businesses and management teams with the goal of growing investments in the energy space. Investing growth capital across a wide range of energy dependent sectors along the natural gas value chain, including oil field services, midstream, power, logistics / transportation and basic industry. BPEP will also invest in producing resources (oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids) in North American basins. For more information please visit: www.bpenergypartners.com

About I Squared Capital

I Squared Capital is an independent global infrastructure investment manager focusing on energy, utilities, telecommunications and transport in the Americas, Europe, and select high growth economies. The Firm has offices in New York, Houston, London, New Delhi, Hong Kong and Singapore.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171024005447/en/

Media

For BP Energy Partners

Loren Soetenga, 214-265-8473

loren@bpenergypartners.com

or

For I Squared Capital

Andreas Moon, 212-339-5339

Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations

andreas.moon@isquaredcapital.com
TOKYO, October 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

UK consumer demand for Japanese car brands rises 38.2% in five years, with more than 350,000 registrations in first three quarters of 2017. [ 1 ]

Japan remains UK Auto's second biggest Asian export market, as 34.5% more Japanese buyers choose British brands. [ 2 ]

remains UK Auto's second biggest Asian export market, as 34.5% more Japanese buyers choose British brands. UK's Japanese plants account for half of British car production, highlighting significance of mutual automotive trade and investment in relationship's 36th year.

Trade between the Japanese and UK automotive industries is as strong as ever in the relationship's 36th year, according to figures released today by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT). Demand for Japanese car brands in the UK has risen by 38.2% over the past half decade, with year-to-date registrations reaching some 352,824 - almost 100,000 more than in the same period five years ago.[3]

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160118/323200LOGO )

At the same time, UK production of cars for Japanese buyers has risen 34.5%, making the country Britain's sixth biggest export market, and the second biggest in Asia after China. The growth is thanks to an increasing appetite among Japanese motorists for the UK's growing range of premium, luxury and high performance models. After Germany, the UK is the EU's second biggest manufacturer of these premium, aspirational products, and latest production figures show that in the first half of 2017, 12,656 Japanese motorists chose a British-built car.

The Japan-UK automotive manufacturing relationship has a strong heritage, stretching back to 1981 when Honda set up a joint venture with British Leyland to develop and produce the Honda Ballade, combining Honda engine and transmission with a British Leyland body. By 1989, Honda was making engines at Swindon and five years later, the plant began producing the Civic. Meanwhile, in 1986 Nissan became the first Japanese manufacturer to open a British plant in Sunderland and in 1992, Toyota entered the market with a factory at Burnaston in Derbyshire, where the Avensis and Auris Hybrid models are now built. Japanese component manufacturers have since followed suit, with those based in the UK including five of the world's largest automotive suppliers.[4]

These investors were attracted to the UK by our large automotive market - now the EU's second biggest after Germany - access to the European market and strong support from government. Our Japanese-owned plants became some of the most productive and efficient in Europe - and still are. Today they account for almost half (47.7%) of UK car production and exporting to markets worldwide, with the British-built Toyota Avensis and Honda Civic Type R even sold back to Japanese buyers.

Speaking today at the 45th Tokyo Motor Show, Mike Hawes, SMMT Chief Executive, said, "World class engineering and products, government collaboration and huge investment have helped UK Automotive become a global success story. Our relationship with Japan goes back many years and is built on our mutual commitment to trade and investment, with local production of Japanese brands since the 1980s and supply chain following soon after.

"This summer's agreement of an EU-Japan Free Trade Deal is welcome news for both our industries. However, for our relationship to benefit post-Brexit, the UK will need to secure trade agreements with both the EU and Japan, underlining the importance of securing the right deal during Brexit negotiations."

Top 5 British-built Bestsellers in Japan

MINI One MINI Clubman Honda Civic Type R Range Rover Evoque Land Rover Discovery Sport Toyota Avensis Jaguar XE Range Rover Sport Jaguar F-Pace Land Rover Discovery

Notes to editors

Japanese brands registered by UK new car buyers (Honda, Infiniti, Lexus, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, Suzuki, Toyota) currently represent 17.1% of the UK new car market. The UK exported 12,656 cars to Japan January- June 2017 , compared with 9,409 over the same period in 2012. 97,452 more Japanese brands registered by UK consumers in January- September 2017 than same period five years ago. Japanese-owned supply chain companies with operations in the UK include five of the world's top 20: Aisin Seiko Co; Calsonic Kansai, Denso, Sumitomo Electric Industries and Yazaki.

About SMMT and the UK automotive industry

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) is one of the UK's largest and most influential trade associations. It supports the interests of the UK automotive industry at home and abroad, promoting a united position to government, stakeholders and the media.

The automotive industry is a vital part of the UK economy accounting for more than 77.5 billion turnover and 21.5 billion value added. With some 169,000 people employed directly in manufacturing and 814,000 across the wider automotive industry, it accounts for 13.0% of total UK export of goods and invests 2.75 billion each year in automotive R&D. More than 30 manufacturers build in excess of 70 models of vehicle in the UK supported by 2,500 component providers and some of the world's most skilled engineers.

More detail at http://www.smmt.co.uk/facts17.
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Many Christian doctors from across the world came together, presented and shared various divine healing cases, which had occurred by the power of God, at the 14th WCDN (World Christian Doctors Network) Conference held in St. Petersburg, Russia. This has a great significance in view of Russia's anti-terrorism laws, which restrict Christians from evangelizing outside of their churches. For example, the Yarovaya Law is in effect to restrict the practices of religious minorities, such as evangelism or the importation of foreign religious literature so that the Russian government gives priority to the Russian Orthodox Church. The 14th International Christian Medical Conference was held on the 20th and 21st day of October, hosted by WCDN (World Christian Doctors Network). Approximately 400 medical doctors and professionals from 13 countries, including Russia, Korea, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Belarus attended the conference.

"The presentations given at the conference, which were about the root causes of diseases and spiritual and divine healings were absolutely necessary for Russian doctors," said Dr. Oleg Ostreiko, the chairman of the organizing committee. "The atmosphere of the whole conference was excellent. The case presentations were very inspirational, and especially the performance of the Korean team was of very high quality and spirituality," said Dr. Andre Gasiorowski, the president of "Helping Hands Coalition" and one of the organizers of the 2018 WCDN conference in Poland. He also said he would do everything in his power to make the next conference a success.

WCDN (www.wcdn.org) is headquartered in Seoul, Korea and was organized to attest to the spiritual power of divine healing with medical data. Through the ministry of WCDN, a lot of Christian medical doctors around the world actively share their opinions and perform their ministries in enthusiastic collaboration. This International Christian Medical Conference begun in Seoul, Korea in 2004 and since then it is held in different countries every year. The 15th International Christian Medical Conference, hosted by WCDN, will be held in Poland.

Contact:

Jong Min Kim

Office: +82-2-818-7247

Email: littlesuho@daum.net

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/588240/WCDN1.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/588241/Jaerock_Lee.jpg


SCARSDALE, N.Y., Oct. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- New York-based Zachys announced a fundraising effort to support California wildfire relief. Called "The California Strong Initiative," the company plans to equally distribute proceeds amongst the following charities' relief and resilience funds: Napa Valley Community Foundation, Community Foundation of Sonoma County and The Community Foundation of Mendocino County.

Zachys is raising money through the following efforts:

Hosting a week-long California wine campaign where a portion of proceeds from California wine sales (in-store and online) will be donated to the noted charities. Zachys has set a goal to raise $25,000 in California wine sales by Wednesday, October 25 .

wine campaign where a portion of proceeds from wine sales (in-store and online) will be donated to the noted charities. Zachys has set a goal to raise in wine sales by . At Zachys D.C.'s "Extravaganza," a consumer wine tasting featuring over 100 premium wines from around the world, the company will be donating a portion of all wine sales from the evening. The event will be held Tuesday, October 24 at D.C.'s Longview Gallery .

at D.C.'s . At Zachys D.C.'s Extravaganza, Zachys will holding a silent auction where 100 percent of proceeds from the 16-lot auction will be donated to the charities. Absentee bidding ends Tuesday, October 24 at 11:59pm ET .

at . At Zachys' "The Capital Collection" Auction on October 27 and 28 at Charlie Palmer Steak D.C., 100 percent of the buyer's premium of all California lots will be donated.

"As is the case for most fine wine stores in America, the growth and popularity of California wines has played a major role in Zachys' foundation. The best way we can all support our industry family in Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino is by purchasing their wines," remarks Zachys' Vice President Andrew McMurray.

Zachys recently expanded its enterprise to Washington, D.C., opening a 20,000-square-foot operations center in D.C.'s Northeast District. "The Capital Collection" Auction is the first commercial live auction in D.C. in the last 30 years. The two-day, single-owner sale features 1842 lots and comes from an anonymous D.C. collector.

For more, visit www.zachys.com.

About Zachys: Zachys is the trusted and preferred choice for buying, collecting and consigning fine wines. As a third-generation family-owned business based in Scarsdale, New York, Zachys' holdings include Zachys Wine & Liquor, Zachys Wine Auctions in the U.S. and Hong Kong, and Zachys Storage New York and D.C.

Press Inquiries:

Genna Cappellini

914.874.8082

gcappellini@zachys.com

View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zachys-announces-fundraising-effort-for-northern-california-wildfire-relief-300541648.html

SOURCE Zachys
October 23, 2017

After a two-month vacancy, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has finally submitted two names to fill vacant ministries. According to speaker of parliament Ali Larijani, Rouhani proposed Mansour Gholami and Reza Ardakanian for the Science and Energy ministries, respectively.

The selection and vacancies have been a source of controversy, especially for the position in the Science Ministry, which selects the heads of universities. Historically, universities have been the hotbed of political activity in Iran and a sensitive post for the security establishment.

On Oct. 16, Mahmoud Sadeghi, a Reformist parliamentarian, tweeted that according to sources involved in the choosing of the science minister, Rouhani had introduced the names of more than 10 individuals for the position, but Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not give consent. According to Khameneis own website, the supreme leader wants to be involved in choosing the ministries of Defense, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs due to his position as commander in chief. Khameneis website added that the supreme leader had concerns over certain ministries, such as the Science Ministry, because any deviations in those places would lead to deviations in the movement of the country as a whole.

Sadeghi is not the only individual to claim that Khamenei has been involved in choosing the Science Ministry position. Mohammad Ghomi, a member of parliaments Education and Research Commission, said on Sept. 26 that both parliament and the Cultural Revolutionary Council have concerns, but also it appears that the supreme leader has opinions on the Science Ministry.

When Rouhani began his second term in August, he did not introduce anyone for the Science Ministry. Instead, he appointed Zia Hashemi, who was previously deputy for cultural and social affairs for the Science Ministry, as caretaker for the position.

Of the two selections, Gholami, who is currently the head of Bu-Ali Sina University in Hamedan, has caused a backlash online. Student activists accused Gholami of having illiberal positions. One of the more popular tweets came from a Bu-Ali Sina student who wrote, Leave Dr. Gholami for us at Bu-Ali, we are used to a political-security suffocation.

Sadeghi tweeted a screenshot of a private message of a student activist. The student called Sadeghi an opportunist for his alleged support of Gholami and said it was a betrayal of student activists who supported the Reformist List of Hope candidates. Sadeghi was criticized online for making light of the criticism and also for publishing the individuals name.

The Science Ministry was a difficult position for Rouhani to fill even in his first term, when conservatives overwhelmingly dominated parliament due to a heavy Reformist boycott of parliamentary elections. Rouhanis first three choices for the ministry were rejected. Reza Faraji-Dana was eventually approved by parliament but only lasted three months and was impeached. Mohammad Ali Najafi, who is currently the mayor of Tehran, was appointed as caretaker for a period of time until Mohammad Farhadi was approved.
October 23, 2017

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently pledged the construction of 3,800 new housing units in West Bank settlements. But in fact, the civil administrations High Planning Council approved only a few hundred Oct. 16-17. This elicited a bitter argument among leaders of the settlement umbrella organization Yesha Council, who had hoped to obtain many more construction permits.

But despite the settlers criticism over the reduced number of permits, they could not decide whether to issue a sharp protest or launch a full-blown campaign against Netanyahu. Head of the Samaria Regional Council Yossi Dagan, who pushed for a more aggressive approach, was forced to accept a limited, almost private, protest against delays in the paving of bypass rounds for settlers to use around Arab villages and other security measures to prevent terrorist attacks.

This internal argument among the settlers and, especially, its consequences, are indicative of Netanyahu's considerable maneuverability and of his ability, at least for now, to wiggle his way without angering either side. On one the hand, he is renewing settlement construction, even if only on a limited scale. On the other hand, he is doing this without really upsetting the US administration or the settlers.

US presidential candidate Donald Trump made statements during his campaign in favor of the settlement enterprise, but once Trump was elected, Netanyahu decided to take a careful approach, rejecting several requests to build new housing units in the West Bank. This comes after eight years of the Obama administration, in which construction was effectively frozen, since settlements were considered to be an obstacle to any potential agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Discussions about new construction with Trump's team, headed by envoy Jason Greenblatt, lasted two months. They ended with agreement on a new outline. According to one senior political source, speaking on condition of anonymity, the guiding principle behind this outline is, "Dont surprise us." What this effectively means is that construction can only be advanced after coordination with the White House. Apart from Greenblatt, the American team also includes US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and staff members from the embassy and the consulate in Jerusalem. According to the Israelis, they are directly involved in the discussions and are intimately familiar with every detail, including every movement on the ground. Among the tools at the Americans' disposal are satellite imagery, but they also keep close tabs on publications about the issue. Nevertheless, Trump's pro-Israel appointments, including Greenblatt and Friedman, and his overall change in policy regarding Israel and the settlements, often face a stubborn State Department, which preserves the old policy of restraint in construction, if only partially.

Netanyahu presented several of these understandings to the Cabinet in March and received its approval for the new outline. In June and again in September, Netanyahu decided to postpone approval of new housing units at the behest of the Americans, since they were trying to get negotiations with the Palestinians started again. Apparently, this postponement can also be attributed to the ongoing process of internal Palestinian reconciliation and increased Egyptian involvement in the region.

But Netanyahu eventually did give the green light. The planning committee met last week and approved the construction of hundreds of new units. Dozens of new units were approved in Hebron, while 300 were approved in Beit El. Similarly, a new settlement, Amichai, was also approved for the settlers evacuated from Amona in February. The permits were granted in accordance with agreements reached with the Americans.

The political source listed the basic agreements reached with Trump's envoys: In Area C, which is under Israeli civilian and security control, construction was limited to new housing units adjacent to existing units. There will be no new construction at a distance from existing settlements, and there will be no new outposts. Special permission was given to establish Amichai, because of the evacuation of Amona. In addition, there is a limit on the number of housing units in every new West Bank project. There is almost no restriction on construction in Jerusalem, but even there, new construction must be adjacent to existing structures. Construction in the major West Bank settlement blocs is not restricted.

The source noted that according to the procedure agreed upon by the parties, once each construction project is approved in Israel, it will be brought before the Americans. Only after discussions with them will a final list of projects be brought to the Cabinet for approval. Once that happens, the projects will be sent for planning.

Peace Now, a left-wing organization that polices settlement construction, claims that 6,500 new housing units will be advanced through the process this year, as compared with just over 2,600 last year.

Still, the settlers aren't really happy about it. Dagan told Al-Monitor, "It is inconceivable that all construction in Judea and Samaria will require American approval. We are very disappointed in the way the prime minister is acting, especially toward a particularly supportive US administration and the most right-wing government Israel has ever had." Dagan claims that the fact that so many Republicans support Israel should be used as leverage to overturn the restrictions. He said that over the past few months, he hosted several American politicians from the president's own party, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Alan Clemmons of the South Carolina House of Representatives.

In contrast, David Alhayani, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, told Al-Monitor that while the number of construction permits is, in fact, small, they are what he calls "high-quality permits," referring in particular to new housing units in Hebron, Beit El and Amichai. Nevertheless, even he was critical of the way discussions are held with the Americans, describing them as "failing." Avi Roeh, the head of the Yesha Council, said that while Israel should not need any US approval to build, and while thousands of housing units are on hold due to White House opposition, the situation is still much better than it was under the Obama administration.

In his Sept. 27 meeting with the leaders of the settlers, Netanyahu quoted Friedman, who cited a Talmudic adage at a meeting with the Israeli team, saying, If you have seized a lot, you have not seized (Yoma, Chapter 8). Netanyahu was hinting to them that it is in the interest of the settlers to keep the United States on Israel's side, which is why the Israeli government must be careful to coordinate construction with them, even if it is slow and even if the numbers are less than expected.

In sharp contrast to the American response is the reaction by the European Union, which commented on the announcement of renewed construction by saying that it "would severely jeopardize the contiguity and viability of a future Palestinian state" and that "all settlement activity is illegal."

The approval of these new housing units helped only partially to settle the growing sense of unease in the Netanyahu government. Ministers from HaBayit HaYehudi may have approved the construction outline with the Americans in March, but they continued to protest the postponements and delays. Even among Netanyahu's own party, criticism has intensified, especially among the right-wing flanks, led by Tourism Minister Yariv Levin and Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely. On the other hand, Netanyahu received the support of his defense minister, Avigdor Liberman.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior associate of Netanyahu summarized his guiding principle as "the ability to maneuver between internal politics, the egos of the coalition partners, genuine construction needs and the limitations imposed by our friend in the White House." But, he warned, what seems like a relative achievement now could collapse if one of the political partners mistakenly concludes that reshuffling the deck vis-a-vis the White House could get the government more.
October 23, 2017

Now that US President Donald Trump has refused to certify that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) meets congressional requirements, much attention has been focused on the reverberations in Washington and within the Transatlantic alliance. No less important, however, are the emerging policy ramifications in Tehran. Contrary to assertions at home and conjecture abroad, Trumps Iran policy may in the long run strengthen rather than weaken President Hassan Rouhanis administration in several key ways.

First, Iranian stakeholders are now more united as a result of US threats, thereby solidifying the executive branch within Irans political system. Trumps choice to decertify has reinforced the strategic vision offered by Rouhani and agreed to by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after the 2013 presidential election: to maintain unity on policy toward the United States, (nuclear) deal or no deal. This vision was predicated on eliminating the diplomatic and financial isolation that plagued Iran from 2005 to 2013. Whatever their differences, Khamenei needs Rouhani and his technocrats to repair the damage wrought by former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Rouhani needs Khamenei to provide political protection while he does so.

Since entering office four years ago, Rouhani has maintained arguably the most diverse and inclusive political coalition in the 38-year history of the Islamic Republic. The infighting will not subside anytime soon, but the survival instinct of most elites has kicked in, helping them recognize the need to deepen the middle ground that Rouhani has been cultivating. In nine months, the Trump administration has managed to spur a level of political unity and rally-around-the-flag nationalism not seen in Iran since the immediate aftermath of Irans 1979 Islamic Revolution and Iraqi dictator Saddam Husseins subsequent invasion.

Rouhani may also be strengthened because such unity has been a linchpin in the approach he has been advocating for the past 15 years and outlined in his 2011 memoir, National Security and Nuclear Diplomacy. In the book, he defends using that approach during his stewardship of Irans 2003-2005 nuclear negotiations with Europe because all decisions were made by consensus, with Khameneis endorsement. He criticizes subsequent negotiating teams for repeatedly miscalculating and abandoning his strategy of internal consensus-building and blames them for the polarization in Irans foreign and domestic politics that threaten to destabilize the country. Each of Rouhanis criticisms have proven true  and Khamenei approved each of those mistakes, reinforcing Rouhanis political standing.

Second, Trumps hostile approach may help shore up Rouhanis domestic standing because it vindicates the strategy employed to achieve Irans national interests both from 2003 to 2005 and 2013 to the present. In his memoir, Rouhani says his approach toward handling the nuclear dispute had three facets: cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to address the violations noted in Irans nuclear file, engaging with Europe to improve relations and neutralize American aggression and pursuing both of those objectives to allow for Iranian nuclear scientists to continue different aspects of their work.

Rouhanis strategy worked in the early 2000s. It helped thwart the threat of war after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, and his team successfully prevented the referral of Irans nuclear file to the UN Security Council. An updated version of the same strategy has proven successful since Rouhanis election in 2013. The JCPOA removed Irans nuclear file from Chapter VII in the UN Security Council without the country being bombed  a first  and it appears to be serving as a bulwark against Trumps aggression given that Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China, the UN, the European Union and the IAEA all currently oppose US policy.

Rouhani sold his nuclear strategy to Khamenei by arguing that Tehrans openness to negotiations and compromise would put the onus on Washington to accept the Islamic Republic accordingly. In turn, Khamenei sold the nuclear talks inside and outside the government by arguing that such engagement means the onus will be on the United States to compromise.

Thus, Rouhani  and by extension, Khamenei  is vindicated regardless of whether the JCPOA remains intact. If it dies, neither Khamenei nor the Iranian people will blame Rouhani, because he can accurately pin the blame on Washington. Conversely, neither Rouhani nor the Iranian people will blame Khamenei for the same reason.

Finally, while the long-term impact may be to strengthen Rouhani, it should be noted that Trumps bombast might complicate the Iranian presidents agenda in the short run. US escalation of tensions will likely securitize the atmosphere in Iran, thereby slowing down political and economic development  similarly to 2005-2013, when tensions with the United States spiked. At that time, key stakeholders justified empowering the military-security apparatus as a necessary instrument to counter threats to the Islamic Republics survival. As senior Iranian officials told Al-Monitor back then, Tehran invested more money into security and intelligence operations, with such budget allocations ballooning and new projects proliferating. Such a thing would likely not have happened under normal circumstances, as demonstrated by how Rouhani successfully shifted the Iranian states priority to domestic economic stabilization during his first term. However, in the long run, it would be an exaggeration to associate securitization with Rouhani being a lame duck. His domestic agenda may be curtailed, but thats in large part because its now more difficult for him to argue internally that additional funding for security purposes is unnecessary.

Thus, the biggest loser right now is not Rouhani, but rather the Iranian people. Trump shifting the onus back to the United States could allow Iranian officials to successfully blame foreign bogeymen for the Islamic Republics economic shortcomings  and divert the publics attention from the governments role in causing them. While disillusionment among ordinary Iranians will grow, Trumps bluster has ensured that most vitriol will be directed at decision-makers in Washington rather than Tehran  precisely because Rouhanis strategy has succeeded.

For nearly four decades, the United States has tried to isolate Iran. But after nine months of Trump in office, it is the United States that seems isolated. Decertifying Iranian compliance with the JCPOA is only the latest instance of Tehran capitalizing on Washingtons self-inflicted wounds. Rouhani has been proven right that Iran and his own political standing are more secure thanks to less bombast, deeper unity, better negotiators, more diplomacy and a realistic assessment of the Islamic Republics policy strengths and weakness both at home and abroad. If Trump forges ahead with his confrontational posturing, he will likely empower rather than weaken the very politicians hes trying to undermine.

Correction: Oct. 27, 2017. An earlier version of this story mistakenly stated that US President Donald Trump had refused to certify Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal. More precisely, Trump instead declared that US sanctions relief was not appropriate and proportionate to actions taken by Iran under the deal.
By PTI: Hyderabad, Oct 24 (PTI) MIM president Asaduddin Owaisi today said he agreed with the Supreme Courts observations that people "cannot be forced to carry patriotism on their sleeves".

The Lok Sabha MP from Hyderabad said a cinema hall is not a place to display patriotism.

"If the Supreme Court has said what you are saying, then I feel that there is merit in it. Because, why should one show patriotism in a cinema hall?" he told reporters here.

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"Usually, when people go to a cinema hall, they are going there for a very different purpose... I dont think you need to show your patriotism in a cinema hall," he said.

He was replying to a query on the Supreme Courts observation yesterday that people need not stand up in movie halls to prove patriotism.

The apex court has asked the Centre to consider amending the rules to regulate the playing of the national anthem before a film.

Owaisi said standing up in cinema halls when national anthem is played is not going to inculcate patriotism.

He, however, said one has to stand up when the national anthem is played on occasions like August 15.

"If the national anthem is being played on 15 of August or 26th of January or any official function, then of course, one has to stand up," he said.

Owaisi criticised the NDA government for allegedly not having a consistent policy on the Kashmir issue.

"We do not know whether the government will allow him (Centres interlocutor on Kashmir Dineshwar Sharma) to speak to all stakeholders... We do not know what the government wants. Because, they do not have a consistent policy as far as Kashmir is concerned," he said.

Replying to a query, Owaisi took exception to the criticism over the announcements made by the Telangana government for the welfare of minorities.

The state government yesterday decided to provide financial assistance of up to Rs 2.5 lakh for the self- employment of youth from minority communities on a full subsidy basis without any bank linkage.

Among other decisions, the TRS government also decided to "develop an exclusive industrial estate and IT corridor for Muslims". PTI SJR RSY SC

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Apple could be playing catch up if it hopes to move up on Consumer Reports list of recommended smartphones for consumers, after its latest device  the iPhone 8  managed to end up rated lower than last years Samsung Galaxy S7. More directly, it should be said that both devices actually received the same score of 80 points. However, the non-profit magazine saw fit to place the Galaxy S7 at a higher ranking than the iPhone 8 because of comparisons between the two in terms of both call quality and battery life. For Apple, that means that although the iPhone 8 did manage to move up the list from where its iPhone 7 placed. However, the new handset still landed a full point lower than Samsungs Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus in Consumer Reports ranking.

On the other hand, the Galaxy S7 wasnt the only older Android flagship that managed to tie things up, at least in the number of points received, with Apples latest offering. LGs G6 managed to score 80 points, as well, despite that it has since been one-upped in performance and size by a new phablet flagship from the company, which arrived in the form of the more recent LG V30. Samsungs S Pen-enabled Galaxy Note 8 phablet, meanwhile, also earned a solid 80 points. Unfortunately, both of those devices also fell below both the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 8 in terms of placement on Consumer Reports consumer recommendations rating list.

In fairness, it should also be pointed out that Apple does have a new flagship  the iPhone X  that is expected to outperform the companys iPhone 8, at least in terms of specifications on paper. Its equally important to note, however, that it remains to be seen whether or not it can beat out any of the above-mentioned devices on Consumer Reports list of recommendations. After all, the ratings are not based on performance alone but instead focus on how useful or usable any device is when it finally reaches a consumers hands and is put to the test through real-world use. With that said, the news that an older Android OS device managed to be more highly recommended by Consumer Reports than Apples latest offering should be encouraging to fans of the Android platform.
A new report from Chinese Market Intelligence firm IDC has now predicted that Apple will soon be beaten out by yet another Android smartphone manufacturer in terms of global market share  Huawei. If the prediction turns out to be accurate, Huawei would effectively knock the iPhone manufacturer out of the number two spot overall. As to when, exactly, that is likely to happen, IDCs analysis says the shakeup could take place within the next one to two years. Thats following last years market share report for the mobile market and this years Q2 reports. The more recent of those reports places Huawei at 11.3-percent, as compared to Apples 12-percent global market share, while last year Huawei only had 9.4-percent of the market cornered  around 2.5-percent behind the iPhone maker. Thats a gain of around 1.8-percent for Huawei over the course of two quarters. With regard to how many smartphones that actually represents, the numbers equate to Huawei being behind by around 4 million smartphones at the global level at last report.

The prediction from IDC shouldnt be too surprising since Huawei actually managed to beat out Apple quite recently to become the worlds second-largest smartphone manufacturer for the first time, according to earlier reports. Following the highs and lows over the past several months, it makes sense that Apple could hold out for a bit longer, with regard to overall leadership. The companys next flagship, for example, hasnt been released yet and Apples numbers will almost certainly bounce back up by a considerable amount following that. However, it appears as though Huaweis upward trend is expected to continue into the foreseeable future, while Apples market share numbers continue to decline on a global scale as compared to the market gains of Android as a mobile operating system.

The shake-up, meanwhile, would also represent the second time a handset running Googles Android OS managed to beat out the once-dominant, smartphone manufacturer in terms of market share. Samsung recently became the leader in global market share, stealing the throne from Apple and becoming the most profitable mobile manufacturer around  thanks largely to its chip sales. Huaweis gains, in the meantime, appear poised to push the iPhone maker back further, possibly paving the way for further companies in the future.
Snaps Spectacles are underperforming both in terms of sales and user retention, the latter of which has been described a shockingly low by one person close to the company, The Information reported on Monday. The company behind social media app Snapchat reportedly has hundreds of thousands of unsold units on hand, with this state of affairs indicating it overestimated the demand for its camera-equipped glasses which allow users to quickly record and post short Snapchat video clips known as Snaps.

Snap Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel recently revealed that the Venice, Los Angeles-based company sold approximately 150,000 units of the Spectacles, adding that this performance was above the firms expectations and not heavily below them like the latest report suggests. The device still retails for $130 and is on sale in the United States and parts of Europe. The ephemeral vending machines that were exclusively selling the Spectacles at first generated some artificial scarcity and buzz around the product but that business strategy didnt prove to be successful in the medium term, as indicated by the newly uncovered information.

The latest development suggests that Snap still isnt close to completely transforming itself into a camera company that the firm said its seeking to become in the run-up to its initial public offering in early 2017. Snaps market performance is still worrying investors as the firm quickly dropped below its IPO price of $24.48 in March and never recovered, with its stock currently being valued at $14.90. Sources familiar with Snaps operations claim that some of its officials previously considered hardware to be the most viable road to sustainability and not just a way for the firm to differentiate itself in the highly competitive market. Snap has reportedly been exploring other consumer electronics projects in recent months, including drones and various handheld cameras, but no new products have yet been announced by the firm. The company recently made some minor layoffs and is planning to slow hiring for the time being, according to recent reports, with some industry watchers still criticizing Snap for not implementing concrete performance review standards and defining a method for evaluating its employees.
In spite of the Google Pixel 2 and 2 XL only having recently been announced, it is now being suggested that the codenames for the 2018 Pixel lineup are Albacore, Blueline and Crosshatch. At present, the details are quite light and due to the very early arrival of these codenames, they are subject to change, or being wrong. However, the details on these new codenames come from a report out of Droid Life which in turn credits a trusted source with the information.

What is interesting about these codenames is their seemingly alphabetically nature. Which is also something the report states is how Google may refer to them going forward. According to the details, by adopting an ABC naming scheme Google is hoping to better keep their identities under wraps. In either case, of the three suggestions it does seem as though crosshatch is currently the most likely to be correct as Droid Life has picked up on a Pixel-related AOSP listing (shown below) which has gained a new comment today. A comment which does indeed mention the crosshatch name. Although as the current report also points out, that same listing does also reference a wahoo device. This is another name that is not currently associated with a known device and the details on this are even more limited (and somewhat contradictory) than those suggested for the other three names.

As for the actual devices, and as to be expected, next to nothing is actually known about them. By definition, the details here suggest that there will be three devices arriving although this is something that should not be taken for granted. Prior to the release of the current (2017) Google Pixel line it was believed there would be three Pixel phones released this year and much of the speculation on this was due to three codenames having come to light. However when it came to the launch only two were announced. So there is history to suggest the same thing could happen again next year. In the meantime though the details suggest there will be three. What may be of additional interest is the latest information does go on to note that while two of the codenames refer to premium devices, one of them (no mention of which one) refers to a high-end device, but not necessarily a premium one. While that distinction is a difficult one to make, it is possible that it relates more to the pricing structure that might be in place next year.
The London-based consultancy firm Brand Finance has now revealed that Samsung has managed to take the top valuation spot among brands originating from South Korea. That probably wont come as any surprise to anybody who has been following the companys economics over the past year. Over that stretch of time, Samsung has been battling it out with both Apple and Intel in terms of global sales and neither of those has proven to be a losing fight. Beyond that, the company has managed to, thus far, maintain its hold on the top mobile manufacturer spot in one of the worlds most important burgeoning marketplaces  India. Moreover, despite high-profile legal problems with some of the companys leadership, it has managed to maintain a high-portion of the overall global mobile market share with new flagships in both the smartphone and phablet categories.

As to the Brand Finance valuation itself, the firm values Samsungs brand at around $51.4 billion USD. That is reportedly around a 12-percent increase from the last valuation  placing the previous valuation at around $45.87 billion. Meanwhile, Brand Finance says the new figures come as a direct response to an almost 50-percent increase in Q4 2016 operating profits but also stem from predictions about the future of Samsungs business in the chipset sector. Samsung has been increasingly focused on that portion of its business, following a sharp decline in its mobile operations after the now infamous Galaxy Note 7 fiasco. Thats also one part of the business that Brand Finance predicts will be growing at an accelerated rate thanks to high pricing, increased demand, currency exchange rates, and, of course, this latest brand valuation.

Interestingly enough, rivals for the title included at least one secondary company also owned by Samsung  namely Samsung Fire and Marine, which took the second spot overall. The insurance brand rose in value by 42-percent from the last valuation. Behind that, the automotive group Hyundai grew in valuation by $8.8 billion  which is a 4-percent increase. That companies fortunes have been a veritable roller coaster over the past several years but Samsungs valuation is expected to continue its upward trend for the foreseeable future, according to Brand Finance.
Samsung and Apple traded blows in one of the most drawn-out court battles in the tech world not long ago, and thanks to Samsung pushing for a retrial, it seems theyre set to do it all over again. The South Korean giant took the case to the US Supreme Court after Judge Lucy Koh, the judge who had presided over the previous string of courtroom spats, denied a retrial. When the Supreme Court decided that the case was worth another look, Judge Koh reportedly went ahead with the decision to reopen the case without further ado. The two parties have to put together case plans and schedules by October 25, but do have the option to settle out of court before the case opens up.

Samsung managed to get the case looked at again on the grounds, basically, that the previous verdict had not been entirely correct. To put it as simply as possible, a clause known as article of manufacture in US law says that an infringer on a design patent is liable to the patent owner for their entire ill-gotten profit. During the course of the case, it was determined that the clause could be applied not only to a physical product sold to an end user, but also to hardware and software components. This made it easier to see where Samsung and Apples products were too similar, and where they were distinct. Samsungs challenge to the case posits that the court misjudged some articles of manufacture in its product lineup, and that the given verdict, while correct in a general sense, was inaccurate.

For those unfamiliar with the monumental case and how things got to the state they are now, its been ongoing for over half a decade. It started out with Apple pointing out, not incorrectly, that Samsungs original Galaxy S was so similar to early incarnations of the iPhone that a consumer not in the know could even wind up confusing the two. The case went on as both firms cranked out more devices, and devolved at some points into outright absurdity; at one point, Judge Lucy Koh insinuated that a lawyer in the case was using drugs, and sales of brand new Galaxy S3 units, among other old Samsung devices, became banned in America years after the phones relevance in the commercial space had faded. This new trial seems poised to follow a similar path, though its likely to be far shorter than the original saga.
It seems like Xiaomi is on its way to Spain. Xiaomi Spain actually released a rather interesting teaser on its official Twitter page, suggesting that the company is planning to open up shop in Spain. This teaser image shows off Xiaomis mascot dancing, and above it youll notice the Hola Espana tagline. Now, along with this image, Xiaomi also shared the following tagline: Spain, are you ready for Xiaomi?, which obviously suggests that the company will start officially selling their products in the country soon.

Xiaomi is a really well-known brand at this point, though in some markets, the company is far better known than in others. Xiaomi has opened up shop in a number of countries outside of China, but it still doesnt exactly have a worldwide reach. People are importing Xiaomis phones to various parts of the world, but Xiaomi is not exactly officially selling its products in that many countries outside of China, as China and India are its main markets, while the company is trying not to overextend itself and expand too much at once, which is a mistake LeEco did. In any case, Xiaomi did not release any specific info regarding its Spain expansion, but were presuming that the companys devices will be available for purchase from the companys official website, or through some of the companys retail partners in Spain, well just have to wait and see. It is also possible that Xiaomi is planning to open up a retail store (or more than one) in Spain, but who knows, well see what happens, based on todays teaser, Xiaomi will release more info in the near future.

That being said, Xiaomi is having a really good year in terms of sales, the company had managed to sell 10 million smartphones in September alone, and is aiming to hit the magic 90 million sales number by the end of this year, which will require it to sell around 10 million devices in October, November and December. Xiaomi had managed to sell around 60 million units, reportedly, last year, and it had to make changes in order to boost its sales in 2017, needless to say, those changes did the trick it seems. It will be interesting to see if the company is aiming any other European countries next to Spain, stay tuned.

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ISI has trained its spies not only to don traditional Punjabi attire and speak the local dialect fluently in order to set honey traps for women in Punjab, sources say.

Pakistani spy, Ahsan Ul Haq, who was arrested on October 12 from Jalandhar, married Balwinder Kaur, a resident of Mukundpur village, Punjab, in 2012.

By Manjeet Sehgal: Pakistan's ISI has found a novel way to snoop on and disturb the law and order situation in Punjab, which involves sullying the sacred bond of marriage.

Investigations have revealed that the spy agency is using much-sought-after NRI grooms to lure women from the state.

In the past, the ISI has used beautiful women with made-up Indian names as honey trap for military personnel.

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Sources say the agency is making a bid to revive terrorism in Punjab that has witnessed decades of bloodshed in the past.

ISI has trained its spies not only to don traditional Punjabi attire but also to speak the local dialect fluently.

Pakistan-based Khalistani terrorists have allegedly been roped in for this mission. These spies, who claim to be non-resident Indians, hold citizenship of various foreign countries.

THE 'AUSTRIAN' PAK SPY

A Pakistani spy, Ahsan Ul Haq, who was arrested on October 12 from Jalandhar, had an Austrian passport.

Sources say these operatives first enter Nepal and then sneak into Punjab via Uttar Pradesh. They meet their targets on social media, usually Facebook, and then exchange contact information after introducing themselves as NRIs.

Sources say the spies meet the local women and then propose marriage. Ahsan Ul Haq had also met Balwinder Kaur, a resident of Mukundpur village, on Facebook in 2011.

Investigations have revealed that Ahsan managed to reach Jalandhar in 2012 and allegedly got married to Balwinder, a Sikh woman.

He had visited Punjab five times between 2012 and 2017. When arrested, he was on a three-month visa, which was valid till November 29 this year. He had reached Jalandhar on August 30.

ARREST

"Ahsan Ul Haq is divorced. He had migrated to Saudi Arabia from Pakistan and married an Austrian woman. He also managed to get Austrian citizenship after the marriage. He divorced his Austrian wife after three years in 2009. He has been arrested for violating IPC 419, 420 and 471. The investigation is on," said ACP Manpreet Singh Dhillon.

After marrying his Punjabi bride, he also obtained an Aadhaar card and a PAN card. He had purchased a plot in Alipur village near Jalandhar on the basis of forged documents.

Ahsan was arrested on a tip-off. He has not confessed during interrogation but Indian security agencies believe the motive behind this marriage was spying.

THE GOLGAPPA SELLER

Two other alleged spies who had lured local girls were arrested seven years ago from Jalandhar and Ferozepur, sources say.

The Jalandhar police on August 21, 2010 had arrested Mohammad Alam, who had entered Punjab from Nepal. He was arrested while selling golgappas at a traffic intersection.

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He later confessed that he along with other spies were trained to befriend women and then lure them into marriage. The idea was to get Indian passports besides other documents.

Ferozepur police had also arrested 24-year old Rajaula, another alleged Pak spy, in August 2010. He was accused of luring as many as three local girls into his trap.

In fact, one of the victims alerted the police after she came to know that she was not the only one he was wooing.

Rajaula's modus operandi was also the same. He had managed to enter Punjab from Nepal and started a catering business from the Housing Board Colony of Ferozepur.

He also managed to get an Indian driving licence and a voter ID card, pre-requisites to get a passport.

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By PTI: Srinagar, Oct 24 (PTI) Pakistani troops today opened unprovoked fire on the Naugam sector along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, prompting a strong retaliation by the Indian Army.

It is for the fourth consecutive day that Pakistan has violated the truce agreement along the LoC in the Kashmir Valley.

"Pakistan started unprovoked firing in Naugam sector along the LoC at 9.30 am today," an Army official said.

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He said Indian troops retaliated strongly to the Pakistani action and intermittent exchange of fire was going on till reports last came in.

No casualties have been reported in the ceasefire violation on the Indian side, the official said.

Pakistani troops targetted Indian posts and villages in the Uri sector over the past three days, resulting in the death of a civilian porter and injuries to two women. PTI MIJ GVS

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Everything You Need To Know About Cheating In A Relationship

Can Relationships Survive Affairs? Here's Everything You Need To Know

The AskMen editorial team thoroughly researches & reviews the best gear, services and staples for life. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service.

Unless you're in an open, polyamorous relationship, engaging sexually with someone who isn't your partner is almost always considered cheating. And as far as the topic of cheating goes, the general consensus is that it's wrong. No ifs, ands or buts.

But the reasons behind why people cheat, what actually constitutes cheating in a relationship, and the whole issue of whether or not a couple can ever come back from one partner being unfaithful, well, that's not so black and white.

If you've ever been cheated on, you know that it feels pretty awful. It's a blow to your ego and your self-esteem. It makes you question your judgement in terms of choosing a partner. You start to blame yourself, wondering if you could have done anything to keep them more interested so that they didn't feel like they had to look elsewhere. Your trust is shot, and if you do decide to start over with someone new, the process for building it back up again becomes harder than ever.

RELATED: Here's How to Cheat-Proof Your Relationship

But the flip side of cheating is no walk in the park either. The anxiety that comes with sneaking around, the guilt you feel after committing the crime and having to see your partner who is none the wiser about what you've done, and, if you decide to, breaking the news is incredibly unpleasant.

So then, why do people do it? And if it does happen, what should you do about it? Here's everything you need to know about cheating, straight from the experts (and a few real women who have been there).

1. Why Do People Cheat?

The reasons for cheating can run the gamut. According to Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D., one main driver (that can be especially harmful) is the compulsion to feel good at any given moment regardless of relationship status. "Certain types of people are focused on instant gratification," she explains.

"They cheat as a matter of course, and don't consider that they should be faithful. People who feel entitled to sex any way they can get it, will always rationalize cheating, and just keep doing it. They don't want to work on marital issues, or learn to keep intimacy alive with the same person. They get their jollies from illicit sex."

If you've had a conversation about infidelity with any group of people, there's usually someone who throws out the idea that happy people don't cheat. Dr. Tessina says that there is some merit to that, albeit, not always the case. "Research shows that women cheat because they feel emotionally deprived, and men because they feel sexually deprived," she says. "With illicit affairs quite easily available online or at the office, it's often easier for a spouse who is dissatisfied with the relationship to transfer affection to someone else than to take the emotional risk of talking to a partner about dissatisfaction."

Relationships take work, and when one or both parties aren't willing to put the effort in, it can feel easier to find what's lacking elsewhere. "While most marital dissatisfaction is not that hard to fix, and cheating is usually emotionally devastating for everyone, the cheater has an 'instant gratification' mentality, and is just doing what feels good, and feeling unable to control it," says Dr. Tessina. "He or she is not thinking of future problems (at least, when connecting with the other person) and is just masking emotional pain."

You may have heard the idea (or even joked with your partner) about the idea of a "pass" list  essentially, 2-3 celebrity crushes you have that, if ever the opportunity presented itself, your significant other would be OK with you sleeping with as a one time thing. Granted, these types of conversations are all in fun  because there's no way you're likely ever going to have the chance to nail that supermodel. But author Kevin Darne says that this concept is actually not that farfetched in terms of one type of cheater who can't say no to an unbelievable opportunity. "This person is not proactively looking to cheat," he explains.

"They may have a secret crush on a coworker or even a stranger they cross paths with at Starbucks or wherever. One day this person flirts or hits on them! There's an opportunity to turn a fantasy into reality and be with this hot person. Maybe the married person's spouse is out of town or the would be cheater is away on business and the chance of getting caught is extremely remote. Essentially, this may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to be with him or her. On occasion, this type of cheater may give into peer pressure. They may be hanging out with their friends in hotel lounge bar who are egging them on to go for it. Cheaters like this are guilty of caving in to temptation."

RELATED: Why Do Women Cheat? We Got 5 To Reveal Their Motivations

What Real Women Say: "Cheating for me was a total escape from day-to-day life," says Simone, 34. "It was exciting. But I'm not sure if it means you shouldn't be together. I think that depends on the reason why you cheated. In my case, it was like therapy to get through what I was unhappy with in my life. I think it is different for everyone, but I will say if you're only in a relationship a short time and you or your partner is cheating, then you probably shouldn't be together."

2. Can Your Relationship Recover From Cheating?

You've seen it whenever a new extramarital affair scandal breaks with someone in the public eye  the spouse stands by throughout the turmoil. If a couple that's facing infidelity so publicly can reconcile, we should be able to do it too, right? Yes, and no.

Sexologist Dr. Megan Stubbs says that having your relationship make a full recovery can be a very long road  one that, if you ever do reach the destination, would require a lot from both parties in order to rectify. "Cheating is one of the most devastating things that can happen in a relationship," says Dr. Stubbs. "Cheating is a violation of trust, and that is one of the key foundations in any kind of relationship. Once you (or the cheater) come clean, there needs to be a plan put in place. It takes energy from both sides to rebuild the trust and intimacy in the relationship."

And this process can come with new parameters being enforced  ones that may be hard for both sides to acclimate to. "Sometimes the adoption of new rules like open social media or cell phone access will be requested from the other partner," she says. "Whatever rules or agreements you put in place in your relationship are personal. There is no list of must-haves on the healing-from-cheating plan. Know that the healing process takes time. It is up to you and your partner to determine how long you need to heal and when trust is reestablished. This isn't a two-week fix."

Dr. Tessina agrees, and says that if both parties are willing and focused on mending the relationship after one person cheated, it can be done. "As a therapist who works with couples every day, I know that it is possible to repair the marriage after infidelity," she says. "Not only is it possible, but when children are involved, it's desirable." However, in order to do so, the person who was cheated on needs to not continue to use this fact to start or win arguments.

"Often both partners have contributed to the problem, and if the other spouse continues to blame and vilify the one who made the mistake, then both will suffer for a long time, and so will their families and children. If there is a sincere change in behavior, and if the problems that led to the infidelity are addressed and corrected, and both parties approach the problem with a sincere wish to discover what went wrong and fix it, then forgiveness is an important part of the healing process, whether the couple stay married or not."

But sex educator and columnist Gigi Engle advises to approach the optimism of being able to continue a relationship after cheating with caution. "Most experts will say that they believe a relationship can recover from infidelity if both partners want to fix the relationship badly enough," she says.

"I am not of this persuasion. I truly think that if you cheat on someone, the relationship is over. You're essentially ending it by betraying your partner. Some people can forgive their cheating partner and try to move on, but how can you really let that go? It will always be something that is between you. If you are in a relationship that you really want to save, you won't do something that is disrespectful like this. Think about it: Cheating is not something you just accidentally do. You have to kiss someone, go somewhere private with them, take all their clothes off, and then physically have sex with them. The factors to consider here are why you [or your partner] did this. At the heart of that question nearly every time is a lack of respect for your partner, your relationship, and yourself. People cheat because they want their relationship to end, but don't know how to or don't have the nerve to break up with their partner."

What Real Women Say: "When I was in my teens it was because of boredom and power," says Kate, 38. "It felt exciting to be wanted by anyone at any time. Once I was in college and in a long-term relationship, it was because there were things I wasn't getting from the relationship, but I had no idea how to communicate that to my partner. I was afraid. So I just cheated. Emotionally and physically. Sometimes with different people for different things I needed. It was also fun. (Yep, I said it. It was fun.) I also didn't believe I would find the right guy, anyway. This was back in the '90s when us ladies were way less woke on our self-worth and ability to tell a guy to take a hike. This lasted into my first marriage, who I cheated on as well because he was abusive and neglectful. Eventually I moved out and initiated a divorce, and got lots of therapy to figure out where this behavior was coming from. Now I'm remarried and have been happy for 10 years. Cheat free. Although it's like alcoholism  the trigger and the desire is always there  I know how to control it now, and more importantly, where it actually comes from."

3. What To Do If You've Cheated

First things first, after you've committed the crime, you need to take a hard look at whether or not you want the relationship to continue. Was the motivation behind your actions due to the fact that you want out of your current romantic situation? Or was it truly a one time mistake that you wish you could take back if you could? If it's the latter, Dr. Stubbs says step one is to tell your partner  no matter how unpleasant it may be to do. "Ultimately if you want this relationship to work and be long-term, you need to come clean," says Dr. Stubbs.

"If you cheated, this isn't necessarily a sign that you shouldn't be in this relationship. Communication with your partner is key. Ask yourself why you did what you did and then see if you can tease out an underlying reason of why. And chances are, if you've been feeling that something is off in your relationship and this is what led you to act the way you did, your partner is likely feeling the same change. Ultimately cheating comes down to a violation of trust. Whether this is a one-night stand or an affair, you are keeping these intimate secrets from your partner and that isn't OK."

Dr. Tessina aggress. "If you're serious about fixing the problems in your relationship, it's crucial that you both begin to face each other honestly and openly," she says. "Most of the time, affairs occur because the communication and intimacy in the relationship have broken down. It's time to take an honest look at what went wrong. You may need professional help from a counselor or therapist to open up your communication, but it's the only way to repair the damage done." Once you've talked with your partner, it's time to begin the process of identifying the problems in your current relationship. "Be willing to make the changes that will fix them," says Dr. Tessina.

"Doing things the same way you always have will give you the same results. Again, it may take the objectivity of a counselor to help you figure out what changes are needed." The final component that's often time the hardest is forgiveness on the ends of both parties. "As long as you're stuck in blaming each other and defending yourself, you won't be able to move forward," Dr. Tessina says. "Forgiving each other doesn't mean condoning what happened, or that it would be OK if it happened again. What it does mean, is that you're willing to close that chapter and move on. Your therapist can help you understand and create mutual forgiveness."

If, during this reflection period, you realize you truly do want out, Engle encourages using this as a learning experience to inform your future relationship endeavors. "Once a cheater does not necessarily mean always a cheater," she says.

"You need to find a relationship that is fulfilling enough to not lead you to cheat  you need to be with someone you respect enough to communicate your unhappiness to before you go and sleep with someone else. It's really about being mature enough to have a relationship that you don't try to sabotage. We've all done it. It's a part of becoming an adult. The best thing you can do is take some time to be single and truly explore what you want out of life and out of a partner. Set realistic expectations. Don't enter into a relationship until you're ready to commit and stick to your word."

What Real Women Say: "If you cheated don't beat yourself up about it," says Michelle, 27. "Take a hard look at why you did it and why. If it's a one time thing just brush it off and look forward but if it's reoccurring then maybe it's time to move on from your current relationship."

4. Different Types Of Cheating

The term "cheating" isn't necessarily limited to sexual contact or connecting physically. The truth is, there are different types and levels of infidelity. In today's digital age, with so many opportunities to connect both with people who we know in real life and others who we get to know only virtually, there are plenty of opportunities to stray simply using our words and emotions.

"Emotional cheating is when there is a level of intimacy without necessarily being physical," explains Dr. Stubbs. "This can be something like a relationship you build with a coworker, but you never (or haven't) engaged in physical acts."

Drinks with a coworker may seem innocent enough, but to get to the bottom of whether or not what you're doing constitutes emotional unfaithfulness, take a look at the context of the things you're sharing. Are you finding yourself confiding more and more in your coworker, to the point that you're not sharing as much with your partner or spouse? Are you opting for multiple nights out per week at happy hour over spending time at home with the person you're in a relationship in? If those lines start to blur, it could fall under this category.

Then there's the type of cheating that falls under the category of a one-night stand. "One-night stand is an isolated incident when you engage in sexual acts with someone," Dr. Stubbs explains. "The key for this type of cheating is that it happened once and may or may not have strong emotional attachment." This one-off type of infidelity means you don't have a lasting vested interest in the person you cheated with, but it's still beneficial to take a look at why you felt compelled to go through with it in the first place when the opportunity presented itself.

Once you're in affair territory, you're cheating on your partner with the same person. "Short term affairs are when you have sex with the same woman a few times (or maybe over the course of a few weeks or months) and then end it to go back to your primary relationship," Engle says. "A long-term affair means you're have sex with same woman regularly for a prolonged period of time  years even."

In the case of chronic infidelity, being unfaithful is considered the norm for the cheater  and can be an indicator of a deeper issue. "If cheating is a way of life, even though it's destroying your life, then it's sex addiction," says Dr. Tessina. "This also may be a learned pattern from a father who was unfaithful."

What Real Women Say: "Every relationship is different," says Lynn, 27. "Every cheat. Every motivation behind cheating. They are all different. I really believe there are times when it's not worth it [to tell your partner]. Like a kiss at an office Christmas party. Or a hook up when one of you has been traveling for work for many months. Or the guy who's visiting his corporate office in Thailand and goes to get a 'massage.' These are all places I don't believe it is necessary to say anything because they are one-offs and don't necessarily reflect the state of the relationship itself. However, if you have lasting feelings for someone, or are repeatedly drawn to unfaithfulness, then it's time to look at the relationship and be honest with your partner. But chances are, if you are drawn to cheating often or in a compulsive way, you need to take a harder look at yourself and the real reasons behind it."

5. Further Reading On Cheating

There have been plenty of books penned on the topic of affairs and infidelity to help those who have been affected cope with the situation  and to help cheaters understand the motivations behind why they did what they did. Here are a few titles to consider for further reading about cheating:

Stronger Than Broken, by Stacey Greene

If you've been cheated on by a spouse, it can be enormously helpful to hear from someone who has been through it themselves. Author Stacey Greene details her journey toward mending her relationship with her husband in Stronger Than Broken, providing a first hand look at the work involved. "For most of us, kicking the cheater to the curb is the norm," says Greene. "I guess I am not normal. We chose to resurrect the marriage and make it even stronger."

$10.99 at Amazon.com

When Good People Have Affairs, by Mira Kirshenbaum

Celebrated therapist Mira Kirshenbaum tackles the conundrum of why "good" people get themselves involved in affairs, leveraging her real life experience of treating thousands of patients who have had to face and overcome the emotional impact of being cheated on. Kirshenbaum lays out easy to understand steps to achieving clarity on cheating, and identifies seventeen different types of affairs to shed some light on this heavy topic.

$11.66 at Amazon.com

Not Just Friends, by Shirley P. Glass, Ph.D.

The thing about being cheated on that can be the toughest to swallow is that more often than not, we get the sense that something is going on before we catch our partner in the act. Shirley P. Glass delivers the much needed validation that readers are right to be suspicious of the dismissive, "We're just friends" response when questioning their spouse about someone they've been spending a lot of their time with. The book also provides guidance on how to prevent these situations from happening, and puts readers on the path to healing.

$11.58 at Amazon.com

Living and Loving After Betrayal, by Stephen Stosny, Ph.D.

Being cheated on greatly impacts the success of your future relationships. The process of getting back out there is hard enough after a break up, but coming off of one where the partner you trusted turned out to be dishonest can end up setting you up for failure when you to meet a new potential love interest. Stephen Stosny, PhD, helps readers see the light at the end of the tunnel, offering effective tools for getting past the shadow of betrayal and learning to trust again.

$12.83 at Amazon.com

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As always with the Neunelfer, the generation change won't bring a massive styling update and the camouflage used for the 2019 Neunelfer prototypes takes full advantage of this, allowing the newcomer to impersonate the model you'll currently find in showrooms.Unsurprisingly, the posterior is the most important bit of the car and we'll probably have to wait for next year in order for Porsche to remove the heavy camo that covers this bit.Note that the active wing is extremely generous, with this being just one of the moves aimed at allowing the next-gen model to seriously up the ante on the performance front.Sure, Porsche has stated that Nurburgring lap times aren't its number one priority (that title goes to driving engagement), but then the 991.2 GT2 RS stole the Lamborghini Huracan Performante's Nurburgring record - the 700 hp thing can lap the Nordschleife in 7:47.3.Another way of improving the handling comes from the the wider tracks of the car. Speaking of the chassis, we're expecting the rear-engined layout to allow the flat-six heart of the car to get slightly closer to the center of the car, albeit with the configuration still allowing the rear seats to remain in place.Once the Carrera and Carrea S models, which will use slightly massaged versions of the current turbocharged 3.0-liter flat-six motors, will make their debuts, you can expect the German automaker to come with all sorts of versions and derivatives. And it's enough to check out the 2018MY debuts, which range from the brilliantly elegant GT3 Touring Package to the arguably unnecessary Carrera T , to understand just how happy the German comes when enriching the 911 lineup.
FWD

The first engine to be built in a V8 configuration started life as a patent in 1902. First produced in 1904, the so-called Antoinette V8 was installed in various aircraft and speedboats. A year after the first-ever V8 engine came into the world, Rolls-Royce developed a 3,535 cc (216 cu.in.) V8 powerplant. Only three cars were equipped with this eight-cylinder lump before the British luxury manufacturer reverted to a straight-6 design.All told, Cadillac was the first automaker to mass-produce the V8 engine. Introduced in 1914, the Cadillac Type 51 L-head V8 produced 70 horsepower from a displacement of 5.15 liters (314 cu. in.). But then again, Cadillac didnt make the V8 popular. It was Ford who did that when it introduced a V8 in its engine lineup.By the 1950s, the V8 became the most popular engine choice in the United States, with the height of their popularity being in the 1970s, right before the oil crisis came on the scene. To this day, motors with eight cylinders arranged in a V are the go-to configuration for most domestic automobiles.From all the V8s that were bestowed upon us over the years, some of the most important designs come in the form of the GM LS Generation III and IV small-block V8 engines. It might have started life as a clean sheet design, but the creators of the GM LS engine family didnt ignore the historical importance and timeless appeal of the classic small-block V8. General Motors introduced the LS series in the then-new 1997 Corvette (C5).Known as the LS1 small-block V8, this motor eventually replaced the LT1 small-block V8 of the Chevrolet Camaro. Whereas these go-faster machines were animated by the aluminum version of the LS1, trucks and SUVs used the iron-block version of the motor. Similar to the previous-gen small-block V8, the LS1 eight-cylinder mill displaces 5.7 liters.The Gen III family spawned the high-performance LS6 in 1999 for the Chevrolet Corvette Z06. Finally, the Gen IV LS engine family was born in 2005. Differences over the Gen III include cast-in provisions for fuel-saving cylinder deactivation technology and updated camshaft sensing. Taken together, the Gen III and Gen IV families include iron-block V8s ranging from 4.8 to 5.3 liters plus 6-liter and 6.2-liter premium engines. As for the cast aluminum engines, the GM LS family comes in 5.3, 5.7, 6.0, 6.2, and 7-liter displacements.Even though there are some significant differences between the Gen III and Gen IV, all LS family engines share some common features. These include the 4.40-inch bore centers (similar to the original Chevrolet small-block V8), six-bolt cross-bolted main bearing caps, a center main thrust bearing, 9.24-inch deck height, 4-bolt per cylinder head bolt pattern, 0.842-inch lifter bores, as well as a distributor-less coil-near-plug ignition system.The LS family might have been replaced by the Gen V LT in 2013, yet the LS soldiers on in the Chevrolet Silverado HD and GMC Sierra HD pickup trucks. Because the Gen IV LS is nearing the end of its career, the autoevolution team has decided that the time is right to name the bread winners that come to mind from the 30+ different versions of LS V8 engines.Produced between the 1997 and 2004 model years, the 5.7-liter (346 cu.in.) LS1 V8 has animated models such as the Corvette (C5), Camaro, as well as the GTO and Firebird. 2001 saw the introduction of the LS6 in the Corvette Z06. Until its demise in 2005, the mighty LS6 was also found in the Cadillac CTS-V. Whereas the LS1 and LS6 share the 5.7-liter displacement, the LS6 engine differs from the LS1 V8 with a much stronger block, improved bay-to-bay breathing, and more capable heads, intake manifolds, and camshaft.It was 2005 when the Gen IV design debuted with the 6-liter (364 cu.in.) LS2 V8 engine. Offered in the Corvette, Pontiac G8 GT, Pontiac GTO, and the hideous Chevrolet SSR, the LS2s larger displacement came with greater output compared to the LS1. In terms of interchangeability, the LS1, LS6, LS3, and L92 cylinder heads work well on the LS2 motor.The LS3 announced the era of unprecedented performance for the Chevrolet Corvette. First seen under the hood of the 2008 model year Corvette, the LS3 brought 430 horsepower to the table from 6.2-liter (376 cu.in.) displacement. At the time, the LS3 was the most powerful base Corvette engine ever. Boasting larger bores than the LS2, the LS3 was also offered on models such as the Pontiac G8 GXP and the 2010 model year Chevrolet Camaro. As for the L99 variant, this fuel-efficient motor is standard on the 2010 Camaro SS automatic and its selling point is the Active Fuel Management cylinder deactivation system.Oh, where do we start with the LS4? Commonly labeled as the most intriguing engine of the LS family, the LS4 is a 5.3-liter lump that equipped the front-wheel drive (yes,) Chevrolet Impala SS and Pontiac Grand Prix GXP. The 303 horsepower LS4 features a transverse mounting position, which sort of spoils everything thats good about this engine.The legendary LS7 was the focus point of the sixth-generation Chevrolet Corvette Z06. Its 7-liter (427 cu.in.) displacement made it the largest LS offered in a production vehicle. To cope with the 4.125-inch bores, engineers gave the LS7 a Siamese-bore cylinder block design. Hand-built at the GM Performance Build Center in Wixom, Michigan, the LS7 Vee-Eight blunderbuss was good for 505 horsepower when it was new thanks to go-faster components, such as competition-proven heads, titanium rods, and titanium intake valves.Before the Gen V LT4 and its 650 all-American horsepower, the LS9 claimed the title of most powerful production engine made by General Motors. The 6.2-liter supercharged and charge-cooled motor powered the Corvette ZR1 with 638 horsepower. Components that made this output possible include a 2.3-liter Roots-type supercharger, dry-sump lubrication, and roto-cast cylinder heads.For most, the LSA is nothing more than a detuned LS9. Standard in the 2009 Cadillac CTS-V, the 6.2-liter supercharged LSA V8 differed from the LS9 with a distinct charge-cooler system, a 1.9-liter supercharger, hypereutectic pistons versus the LS9s forged pistons, and so forth. Thats why the former-gen Cadillac CTS-V uber sedan was good for 556 horsepower instead of the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1s 638 horsepower.
By PTI: (Eds: Correcting figure in para 6)

New Delhi, Oct 24 (PTI) Pepsico India is aiming to double sales of its bottled mineral water brand Aquafina in next five years on account of value-based growth.

The company would keep on adding value-added new products under its Rs 1,000 crore Aquafina brand.

"If you take the brand growth, Aquafina should double in the next five years (in terms of value)," PepsiCo India Senior VP Beverage Category Vipul Prakash told PTI.

advertisement

He further added:"The hydration industry is growing by 10 per cent and my mandate is that Aquafina should grow faster."

As part of that, PepsiCo India today forayed into the vitamin fortified water category by launching Aquafina Vitamin Splash.

Aquafina Vitamin Splash will be available in Kiwi Lime and Raspberry Mint flavours at Rs 30 and Rs 50 (rpt) Rs 50 for 300 ml and 500 ml respectively.

"In the first phase, it would be available in top 20-25 cities," he said adding that depending on the market response, the company would decide to expand it to other cities in next six months.

Aquafina Vitamin Splash is the lowest calorie vitamin fortified water to be introduced in India.

"This launch reiterates PepsiCo Indias commitment to introducing new beverage products, only if they contain 100 calories or fewer from added sugar per serve (355ml), in line with PepsiCos global Performance with Purpose agenda," the company said in the statement. PTI KRH ANU SBT

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One Aviation, the company that includes both Eclipse Aviation and Kestrel, announced layoffs late last week. The job cuts reflect the phaseout of production for the EA550 twinjet, which is being replaced by the new EA700 Project Canada aircraft, the company said in a statement. As we transition through the development stages of the highly anticipated EA700 serieswe made the very difficult, yet necessary, decision to reduce our workforce, said CEO Alan Klapmeier. The workforce reduction affects employees in Albuquerque, Chicago, Wisconsin and Maine, media spokesperson Linda McDonough told AVweb in an email on Tuesday. Kestrels efforts in Wisconsin and Maine havestalled, according to recent reports.

Its the second round of layoffs this year, according to the Albuquerque Journal. The company wouldnt say how many workers were affected, or how many staffers remain. The company continues to explore strategic partnerships and investment in the future growth of the EA700 series, according to the news release. One Aviation also said they continue to provide engineering, maintenance, service and support for the Eclipse 500 and Eclipse 550 fleet.
A whopping 42% of children ages 0-8 have their own tablet device, up from less than 1% in 2011, according to Common Sense Media's newest national "Media Use by Kids" census.

Key numbers: Families with young children are now more likely to have a subscription video service such as Netflix or Hulu (72%) than they are to have cable TV (65%). 10% of kids age 8 or under own a "smart" toy that connects to the internet and 9% have a voice-activated virtual assistant device available to them in the home, such as an Amazon Echo or Google Home.

Why it matters: Axios' Ina Fried spoke with Sara DeWitt, vice president of PBS Kids Digital, who argues that screen time isn't necessarily a bad thing. But DeWitt says a few things got lost in the message. "It's not like blanket all screen time is great," she said in a recent interview with Axios.

The bottom line: There are two things to keep in mind, she says. One is that the right amount of screen time really depends on the kid, and the other is that not all screen time is created equal. The key, she says, is for parents to be proactive.

Go deeper: Read Ina's full interview here.
Forget politics. The culture wars are raging in corporate America, and many CEOs and businesses are grossly unprepared. The war gets ignited by employees, shareholders, customers and social media. The wave of sexual-harassment scandals shows that companies have crime in their workplace. And the new, high-stakes collisions CEOs are getting pulled into include immigration, climate change, diversity and inclusiveness, and whether their ads run on controversial websites.

The problem: Most big companies are run by straight, white men who are unaccustomed to navigating a fast-changing America. And most comms departments were built for 1990s media, with 1990s speed.

Why it matters: In the social-media age, corporate reputation and corporate image matter as much (sometimes more) than the delivery of your product or service.

A behind-the-scenes adviser to some of the world's largest corporations told me: "The amount of time that these companies now have to spend on non-market [non-revenue] issues has increased exponentially."

Some of the newer topics, like climate change, affect both a corporation's culture and bottom line. "Sustainability has become a business requirement, not a political statement," the adviser told me.

like climate change, affect both a corporation's culture and bottom line. "Sustainability has become a business requirement, not a political statement," the adviser told me. Any business that cares about younger demographics has to ask: "Do you want to be associated with my company when you're making a purchasing decision?"

that cares about younger demographics has to ask: "Do you want to be associated with my company when you're making a purchasing decision?" More companies, including entertainment and utility companies, are becoming more consumer-facing (for example, selling movies or phones directly).

including entertainment and utility companies, are becoming more consumer-facing (for example, selling movies or phones directly). Social media lets anyone call out a brand, in a way that can instantly metastasize.

Be smart: Axios CEO Jim VandeHei had vital survival advice for every organization in his post on our secret sauce and corporate culture, "The Axios Way: How you do it":"Think of your brand as a political candidate. You need to be hyper-aware of how you're seen by your core constituencies (employees and customers) and by the broader public.""How you do it: Be vigilant for signs of erosion in your base; or failing to respond forcefully to negative attacks; or under-utilizing technology to connect with your people in authentic, compelling ways."Sign up for Axios newsletters to get our smart brevity delivered to your inbox every morning.
A new NPR poll finds that a majority (55%) of white Americans believe they face discrimination in America today, but a much smaller share say they've experienced it while: applying for a job (19%), being considered for raises or promotions (13%) or applying to college (11%). It's worth noting that 84% of white people surveyed believe minorities in the U.S. face discrimination.

Why it matters: This view echoes President Trump's campaign rhetoric that white Americans are under attack. And since taking office, Trump has offended every group except for straight, white, Christian men in America, Axios' Mike Allen reports.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, is coming to Washington, D.C. Tuesday to make the case for ethanol in planned meetings with Vice President Mike Pence and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.

Driving the news: She'll be defending a federal mandate that requires refineries to blend biofuels  mostly corn ethanol  into the nation's gasoline supply. Corn-rich Iowa is the nation's top biofuels producer, and also a pivotal political battleground.

Highlights from my chat with her:

Why she's meeting with them: "In Iowa, we have Obamacare failing citizens in the state, so we're also going to be talking about that. The RFS, that's our priority though."

"In Iowa, we have Obamacare failing citizens in the state, so we're also going to be talking about that. The RFS, that's our priority though." Is President Trump just backing the mandate because Iowa is an important political state? "He traveled the country and listened to U.S. farmers, and we made our case and he supported it. I'm very appreciative of that."

"He traveled the country and listened to U.S. farmers, and we made our case and he supported it. I'm very appreciative of that." Critics say biofuel backers aren't open to any compromise. "That's not true. There used to be subsidies and we got rid of that. We have changed along the way."

"That's not true. There used to be subsidies and we got rid of that. We have changed along the way." Are you worried electric cars could erode the need and support for biofuels, which are liquid like oil, in the longer term? "That's part of the future too and we're embracing that in Iowa."

Go deeper

: Check out my latest Harder Line column on

the latest ethanol fights

.
A thick trail of smoke is seen in the sky soon after the launch of Chandrayaan-1, India's maiden lunar mission at the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota. Photo: Aijaz Rahi / AP

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is conducting a series of tests to prepare for India's second trip to the moon since 2008, Nature reports. The organization is only operating on a $93 million budget, which Nature notes is relatively low for these kinds of missions.

The motivation: Preparing for the possibility of human colonization on the Moon. By exploring the planet, India's researchers can better understand the Moon's atmosphere and suitable living conditions for humans. The country's first mission there discovered the presence of water, but the ISRO's next mission hopes to analyze floating lunar dust  particles that penetrate everything from astronauts' suits to space machinery, potentially causing significant damage.

The spacecraft for the Chandrayaan-2 mission will include a rover, a lander that will attempt to touch down near the Moon's south pole, and an orbiter that will travel around the Moon.

What's different this time: The Chandrayaan-2 mission will test whether India's space technology is capable of pulling off a controlled landing (the original mission ended after 10 months when India's Space Organization lost contact with the orbiter). ISRO developed new systems to assist with the soft landing this time around, per Nature.

ISRO's tests in preparation for its second mission mimic the Moon's atmosphere and environment: rovers navigate over rocky surfaces in Bangalore. One of the spacecraft's final tests will begin in three to four weeks.
Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has announced a proposal for the largest oil and gas lease sale in U.S. history, totaling 76.9 million acres on the Gulf of Mexico.

Why it matters, per Axios' Amy Harder: Offering lease sales of federal waters and lands is one of the easiest and simplest ways the Trump administration can show it's supportive of the oil and gas industry.

per Axios' Amy Harder: Offering lease sales of federal waters and lands is one of the easiest and simplest ways the Trump administration can show it's supportive of the oil and gas industry. But, but, but: Persistently low oil prices make new, expensive offshore drilling projects a lot less attractive to the industry than if prices were high. This is more rhetoric than substantive change. Also, the Obama administration actually initially planned this sale a few years ago.

Planned for March 2018, the proposed Lease Sale 250 includes regulations to protect species in the area, biologically sensitive resources, and to avoid any other potential consequences of oil and gas development, per the department's press release. The terms are not yet final.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, said: "In order to strengthen America's energy dominance, we must anticipate and plan for our needs for decades to come...the administration's decision to move forward with the largest offshore lease sale in our nation's history is a key part of that effort."
President Trump awarded retired Army Capt. Gary Michael "Mike" Rose the Congressional Medal of Honor on Monday for his heroism in the Vietnam War.

"Today we have a room full of people and a nation who thank God that you lived," Trump said after recounting Rose's narrow escape after days tending to the wounded behind enemy lines. "Your devotion to your country inspires us all."

Watch the ceremony
Sen. Bob Corker unloaded on President Trump during a CNN interview today, stating that Trump will be most remembered for "the debasement of our nation." Corker also said that he "would not" support Trump again, though he stopped short of saying that Trump should be removed from office.

Don't forget: Trump is heading to Capitol Hill for a Senate Republican policy lunch this afternoon. Corker will be in attendance.

Their backstory

Back in April 2016, Corker stopped short of explicitly endorsing Trump, instead telling CNN that he'd made a "really good transition in the campaign." But the lack of a full-throated endorsement didn't stop Corker from being floated as Trump's running mate or secretary of state.

The Tennessee senator was also quick to criticize the administration after reports that Trump had accidentally disclosed classified intelligence to top Russian officials during an Oval Office meeting in May, saying that Trump's White House was in a "downward spiral." And after Trump's botched response to the Charlottesville violence, he told local Chattanooga website Nooga that 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."

However, it was Corker's September 14 announcement that he would not be seeking reelection to the Senate in 2018 that fully allowed him to open up against the president. In October, he told reporters that the group of Chief of Staff John Kelly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Defense Secretary John Mattis "separate our country from chaos." Later that week, Trump blasted Corker on Twitter, stating that Corker's comments were precipitated by Trump's refusal to endorse Corker in his upcoming Senate race. Corker then responded with his infamous retort that "the White House has become an adult day care center."

What happened today:

How it all kicked off: Corker appeared on both NBC News' TODAY and ABC News' Good Morning America earlier this morning, where he doubled down on his comments earlier this month that the White House is an "adult daycare center," adding, "I don't make comments I haven't thought about."

Trump responded on Twitter: President Trump continued his attacks against Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker via Twitter this morning: "Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts....Corker dropped out of the race in Tennesse when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!

Corker's fired back on Twitter just before his CNN interview: "Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff"

Trump responded to the CNN interview, again via Twitter: "Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done. He doesn't have a clue as the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us. People like liddle' Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!"
President Trump once raised the idea of turning a wealthy Chinese businessman living in exile in New York over to the Chinese government, the Wall Street Journal reports in a story the newspaper justifiably calls "worthy of a spy thriller."

The lead character: Guo Wengui, who made a fortune in real estate before fleeing China in 2014 and gaining a large following by making allegations of corruption against Chinese officials on Twitter.

Guo Wengui, who made a fortune in real estate before fleeing China in 2014 and gaining a large following by making allegations of corruption against Chinese officials on Twitter. The climactic scene: Chinese security agents reportedly visit Guo's apartment to pressure him to return to China, in violation of their visas and after being warned by the FBI. FBI agents plan to intercept and arrest them later that day at JFK airport but no decision comes from the State Dept. in time and they are allowed to board a plane back to China.

Chinese security agents reportedly visit Guo's apartment to pressure him to return to China, in violation of their visas and after being warned by the FBI. FBI agents plan to intercept and arrest them later that day at JFK airport but no decision comes from the State Dept. in time and they are allowed to board a plane back to China. The twist: Trump, having received a letter from the Chinese government directly from the hand of casino magnate Steve Wynn, says in a meeting that includes Pence, Kushner and Bannon, "We need to get this criminal out of the country," referring to Guo (the Chinese government has raised various criminal allegations against Guo). The Journal notes that Wynn needs a license from the Chinese government to operate his casinos in Macau.

Trump, having received a letter from the Chinese government directly from the hand of casino magnate Steve Wynn, says in a meeting that includes Pence, Kushner and Bannon, "We need to get this criminal out of the country," referring to Guo (the Chinese government has raised various criminal allegations against Guo). The Journal notes that Wynn needs a license from the Chinese government to operate his casinos in Macau. The resolution: Aides steered Trump away from the topic, while "noting Mr. Guo is a member of the president's Mar-a-Lago club."
By PTI: New Delhi, Oct 24 (PTI) Union Minister Suresh Prabhu today said it is "extremely important" to protect Indias intellectual property rights (IPRs) as the country now stands at the forefront of innovation.

At a meeting here, the commerce and industry minister also reviewed the initiatives taken by the government on strengthening Indias intellectual property rights regime.

"India is now at the forefront of innovation and developing new ideas. In such scenario, protection of IPRs becomes extremely important," Prabhu said.

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Secretary in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) Ramesh Abhishek provided the details of how recent initiatives by the Centre are transforming the IP landscape in India.

The government has been working relentlessly to streamline IP processes and modernisation of IP offices through various steps, according to an official statement.

These are comprehensive e-filing facilities made available for patents and trademarks, auto-allotment of patent applications to ensure uniformity and utilisation of the specialised expertise of all examiners and controllers and by auto generation of trademark certificates, it said.

The examination of patent applications has increased over three times in the last six months compared to the same period last year.

"To reduce the pendency, 458 patent and 59 trademark examiners have been appointed in addition to the existing manpower. Pendency in Patent examination is targeted to be brought down from the present 7 years to 18 months by 2019," said the Commerce Ministry statement.

Moreover, it said, the pendency of trademark applications at the examination stage has been reduced drastically -? the time taken for examination has been brought down from 13 months to less than one month.

On this occasion, the minister also launched the official website of Cell for IPR Promotion and Management (CIPAM) which is a professional body created under the DIPP for focused action on issues related to IPRs and smooth implementation of the objectives of the National IPR Policy adopted in May 2016. The website will provide regular updates on the latest IP trends ? statistics on applications filed, examined, grants and disposal for various IPRs. It would provide information on the various initiatives being taken by the Government to strengthen the IPR regime in the country. PTI RSN MKJ

--- ENDS ---
Russia will refrain from raising the price of its natural gas supplied to Armenia next year, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said during an official visit to Yerevan on Tuesday.

Speaking after talks with his Armenian counterpart Karen Karapetian, Medvedev also praised the current state of Russian-Armenian relations and growing bilateral trade in particular. We made sure that our ties are developing in all directions, he told a joint news conference.

Russia remains the leading trading partner of Armenia, Medvedev said. Bilateral commercial exchange has been growing -- both in 2016 and 2017 -- and growing at a good pace.

In that regard, he pointed to increased exports to Russia of Armenian agricultural products and prepared foodstuffs which he said are of excellent quality. Citing a continuing Russian ban food imports from Western nations, he spoke of good potential for a further rise in those exports.

Medvedev went on to announce that the special price of Russian gas for Armenia will not rise next year even though we had agreed on somewhat different parameters before. I think that this will help to improve the overall economic and investment situation in Armenia, he stressed.

Alexei Miller, the chairman of Russias Gazprom giant who accompanied Medvedev on the trip, confirmed that Armenia will thus continue to pay $150 per thousand cubic meters of Russian gas. This wholesale price was set in April 2016.

Armenias Gazprom-owned gas distributions network cut its retail tariffs in November 2016, more than two months after Karapetian was appointed as prime minister. Karapetian managed the network from 2001-2010 and held senior executive positions in Gazprom subsidiaries in Russia from 2011-2016.

Gazprom accounts for over 80 percent of Armenias annual gas imports. The South Caucasus country also buys gas from neighboring Iran. Energy Minister Ashot Manukian insisted last week that Russian gas costs it less than Iranian gas.

Incidentally, Medvedev and Karapetian discussed the possibility of Russian companies investing in a free economic zone which is due to be set up on Armenias border with Iran later this year.

We believe that the free economic zone is a good platform for Russian capital and Russian business with interests in Iran, said the Armenian premier. Russian-Armenian intensive discussions on the matter will be completed soon, he added without elaborating.

There are practically no spheres where we do not cooperate, Medvedev told President Serzh Sarkisian when they met later in the day. He again singled out a 30 percent rise in Russian-Armenian trade registered by Moscow this year.

Medvedev and Karapetian will attend on Wednesday a regular meeting in Yerevan with fellow prime ministers from the three other ex-Soviet states that are part of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union.
24 October 2017 10:10 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 103 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said on October 24.

Armenians were using large-caliber machine guns.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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24 October 2017 12:48 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

An export mission of Azerbaijani entrepreneurs will visit Saudi Arabias Jeddah and Riyadh cities on December 6-8, Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO) said on October 24.

The entrepreneurs specialize in production of fruits and vegetables, mineral water, fruit juices, sugar and confectionery products, wine and other alcohol products, honey, tea, meat and other products.

The composition of the export mission will be formed on the basis of a competition, to be held on Nov. 20 at the AZPROMO office.

Applicants will be selected on the basis of the following criteria:

Production potential of goods  10 points;

Export potential of goods  10 points;

Experience in goods export (indicating the export volume for 2016)  5 points.

Minimum passing score is 20 points.

For additional information please call: +994 12 598 01 47/48 (ext. 141)

Contact person: Fuad Jafarov

E-mail: [email protected]

According to Azerbaijans State Customs Committee, the trade turnover with Saudi Arabia amounted to $12.05 million in January-September 2017.

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24 October 2017 18:03 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

A memorial evening dedicated to the 120th anniversary of the birth of a prominent actor of theater and cinema, People's Artist of Azerbaijan Agasadikh Geraybeyli will be held at the Azerbaijan State Theater Museum named after Jafar Jabbarli on October 27.

The event is organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, State Film Fund, Theater Museum named after Jafar Jabbarli and Azerbaijan Union of Cinematographers , Trend Life reported.

The memorial evening will tell about the life and creativity of famous actor. Guests will be invited to watch short shows fragments from the films in which he played. A photo exhibition will be also organized as part of the event.

Agasadikh Garaybeyli was born in 1897 in Shamakhi. After the Shamakhi earthquake, the actor's family moved to Baku, his father worked as a gendarme.

For the first time Garaybeyli performed on stage in 1917. From 1933 until the end of his life Agasadikh Geraybeyli worked in Azerbaijan Drama Theater.

He performed in such plays as "Nadir Shah", "Arshin Mal Alan", "Sevil", and many others.

Since 1923 he acted in movies "The Legend of the Maiden Tower" (1924), "Haji Kara"(1929), Sevil (1929), "Fatali Khan"(1947), " Favorite Song " (1956), "If Not That One, Then This One" (1958), "Under the Sultry Sky" (1958), "The Legend about love " (1961).

His most famous role was Rustam bay in movie "If Not That One, Then This One".

In 1940, the actor was awarded the title of People's Artist of the Azerbaijan SSR.

The actor passed away on December 5, 1988.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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24 October 2017 11:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijans Defense Minister, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov met with the newly appointed head of the European Union (EU) Delegation to Azerbaijan, Ambassador Kestutis Jankauskas on October 23.

Hasanov congratulated the Ambassador with the beginning of his activity in Azerbaijan and wished him success in developing relations between the country and the EU.

During the meeting, the parties discussed issues related to the current situation in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The defense minister informed Jankauskas about the continuing occupation of the Azerbaijani territories, recognized by the international community, for more than 20 years, as a result of which more than one million people became internally displaced persons. Hasanov also noted that Armenia continues to aggravate the situation up to this day.

The minister stressed that due to threats to the lives of civilians and military personnel caused by provocations by the Armenian armed forces, the best way to resolve the conflict is the unconditional withdrawal of the occupation troops from the territory of Azerbaijan in line with the norms and principles of international law.

Ambassador Jankauskas, in turn, emphasized that the European Union supports the early and peaceful resolution of the conflict, and the continuation of negotiations in this sphere in order to ensure stability in the region.

The sides also exchanged views on the military-political situation in the region and other issues of mutual interest.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign state with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.

Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.

Azerbaijan has long ago stated it is ready to settle the conflict through direct negotiations with Armenia with mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs. However, the Armenian side is constantly trying to make up reasons to avoid a constructive dialogue and preserve the unacceptable status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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24 October 2017 13:57 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The OSCE is expected to monitor the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops on October 25, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry said in a message on October 24.

The monitoring will be held under the mandate of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative along the line of contact near Horadiz village of Azerbaijans Fuzuli district, according to the message.

On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring will be held by field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative, Ghenadie Petrica and Mikhail Olaru, and representative of the High Level Planning Group Alexander Nepokrytykh.

On the Azerbaijani territories occupied and controlled by Armenian armed forces, the monitoring will be held by Ognjen Jovic, Martin Schuster, who are field assistants of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative, and representative of the High Level Planning Group Patrick Farrelly.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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24 October 2017 16:50 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The illegal visit of the head of Mexico-Armenia Friendship Group, Blanca Margarita Cuata Dominguez, a member of that group Maria Cristina Teresa Garcia Bravo and another person accompanying them to Azerbaijani lands occupied by Armenia is under investigation, Hikmat Hajiyev, spokesman for Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry, told Trend on October 23.

In this regard, relevant instructions have been given to Azerbaijani Embassy in Mexico, he added.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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24 October 2017 11:03 (UTC+04:00)

Vice president of the Senate of the Czech Republic Jiri Sestak has hailed his country's political relations with Azerbaijan as he met with Deputy Speaker of Milli Majlis, Chairman of the Committee for Natural Resources, Energy and Ecology Valeh Alasgarov.

Sestak recalled the signing of a strategic partnership document, and underlined the prospects for expanding economic cooperation between the two countries, Azertac reported.

Alasgarov described both interparliamentary and intergovernmental relations between Azerbaijan and the Czech Republic as excellent, saying they are developing year by year. He noted that the talks to be held during the visit will contribute to the development of bilateral ties. Alasgarov also underlined the interparliamentary relations and hailed the activities of the friendship groups in this regard.

The two also discussed prospects for developing bilateral relations between the two countries.

They emphasized mutual cooperation of the Azerbaijani and Czech companies, including in the field of transport, underlining the positive impact of this collaboration on bilateral ties between the two countries.

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24 October 2017 12:49 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

People's Artist of Azerbaijan Konul Khasiyeva has been provided with an apartment upon the instruction of First Vice-President of Azerbaijan, President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Mehriban Aliyeva.

First of all, on behalf of our family, on behalf of Azerbaijani people who love mugham, I express my deep gratitude to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva, Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva, Khasiyeva told Trend on October 24.

I regard this as great attention not only to me, but also to the Azerbaijani national musical art, she said. Highly respected Mehriban Aliyeva always shows concern for the figures of art. We have always witnessed that and today I have experienced this joy."

Khasiyeva said that she has been provided with the apartment on the Heydar Aliyev Avenue, not far from the Heydar Aliyev Center.

This is a three-room apartment with an area of 110 square meters, she said. "The apartment has been fully equipped with furniture and household appliances. I am pleased that the apartment is located on the avenue named after Azerbaijani great leader Heydar Aliyev and near the center also named after the national leader."

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Rumours from Gujarat say Rahul Gandhi secretly met with Hardik Patel, even as a local news report claimed the Patidar leader and some Congress leaders had a hand in the Narendra Patel-BJP "expose".

By India Today Web Desk: Secret meetings. Backroom deals. Supposedly sensational exposes. These are but some of the hallmarks of an Indian election cycle.

And all of this seems to be happening in Gujarat, if media reports and journalist chatter from the poll-bound state are to be believed.

The reports say that Hardik Patel, who spearheaded the Patidar reservation movement in the state, secretly met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Monday.

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Reports also say that Patel, who hasn't openly backed either the BJP or the Congress, along with some leaders of the Grand Old Party, 'guided' Narendra Patel who on Sunday claimed he had been offered Rs 1 crore to join the Bharatiya Janata Party.

BREAKING NEWS

On Monday evening, Gujarati TV channels animatedly broadcast CCTV footage from cameras installed at a five-star hotel in Ahmedabad.

The footage purportedly showed Hardik Patel entering and moving about the hotel, and the media channels' assertion was that he was there to meet Rahul Gandhi, who was in Gujarat to address a rally in state capital Gandhinagar.

Click here to Enlarge Hardik Patel was seen at The Ummed, informally called the Taj

A source close to the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) founder told India Today TV that Hardik Patel did indeed meet with Gandhi in room number 224 of Ahmedabad's The Ummed, a five-star hotel which is informally called the Taj as it was once operated by the hospitality chain.

Patel denied meeting the Congress vice-president, but accepted that he was at the hotel. Hardik claimed he was at The Ummed to meet Ashok Gehlot, the Congress general secretary in-charge of Gujarat, and other leaders of the party.

"The Congress leaders had invited me to meet them but I was at a rally in Mahisagar district. I reached very late, may be 3 am, and met Ashok Gehlot. I presented the demands of the Patidars and the issues we are concerned about," Hardik Patel was quoted as saying by news agency IANS.

Why's @HardikPatel_ "hiding" & lying about his meeting with Rahul Gandhi @OfficeOfRG That Hardik was at Taj room number 224 is confirmed.- Deepal Trivedi (@DeepalMirror) October 23, 2017

The Patel leader had earlier on Monday said that he would not be able to meet Gandhi during the Congress vice-president's visit. He told news channel NDTV that a meeting with Rahul was supposed to take place but was postponed due to "unavoidable engagements".

CURIOUS CASE OF THE CCTV FOOTAGE

Clips from the CCTV cameras at The Ummed, however, seemed to tell a different story. While Patel said, according to IANS, that he was at the hotel at "may be 3 am", one of the CCTV clips showed him at The Ummed at around 11.30 pm Sunday night.

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IndiaToday.in does have access to and has seen some of the intriguing CCTV footage (you can watch it here or at the end of this report), but has not been able to independently verify the videos' accuracy.

Rahul, anyway, was likely not in Gujarat Sunday night. But the rumours that Hardik met the Gandhi scion, who is tipped to take over the Congress party soon, perhaps came from another CCTV clip that purportedly showed the Patel leader still at the hotel Monday evening, at around 4 pm.

IndiaToday.in does not have access to this particular video clip, which was shared on Twitter by a local journalist based out of Ahmedabad. In this clip, a man who looks like Hardik Patel is seen being escorted out of an elevator by a person dressed in a black suit.

Patel while denying he met Rahul had said that he left The Ummed Monday morning. "It had got very late, so I put up at the hotel (on Sunday night) and left in the morning," Hardik was quoted as saying by IANS.

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But, where did the CCTV footage come from in the first place?

There are no solid answers to the question, but Congress's Gujarat in-charge Ashok Gehlot, who confirmed he had met Hardik, had something to say on the topic.

"I met Hardik and Jignesh in Ummed Hotel. Intelligence Bureau, Police are checking hotel rooms," Gehlot said on Twitter, questioning, "Why CCTV footage was (sic) taken by IB and police from Hotel?"

Why CCTV footage was taken by IB n police from Hotel? Is the right to privacy, sole proprietorship of #JayAmitShah?- Ashok Gehlot (@ashokgehlot51) October 23, 2017

MEANWHILE, THE NARENDRA PATEL ANGEL

Interestingly, a local daily used the CCTV footage to advance a report that Hardik Patel and several Congress leaders, Gehlot included, had met at The Ummed to plan the Narendra Patel expose from Sunday night.

On Sunday, just three hours after joining the Bharatiya Janata Party, Narendra Patel, a local convenor of Hardik Patel's PAAS, spectacularly claimed that he had been offered Rs 1 crore to switch loyalties to the party.

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At a press conference late Sunday night, Narendra Patel claimed Varun Patel, a former aide of Hardik, had arranged the deal and had advanced Rs 10 lakh in cash. Narendra Patel displayed the cash at the presser.

Varun Patel took me to a meeting where it was discussed that I will be given Rs 1 Cr & received the money from his hands: Narendra Patel pic.twitter.com/pltGEGxV6G- ANI (@ANI) October 23, 2017

Now, Divya Bhaskar has reported that while Narendra Patel was brandishing wads of Rs 500 notes at his press conference, Hardik Patel was with a few Congress leaders at a room at The Ummed.

Narendra Patel contacted Hardik after purportedly joining the BJP, which was when the plan to "expose" the BJP was hatched, the Bhaskar report said.

The Gujarati daily, quoting unnamed sources, further said that Narendra Patel was "guided" by Hardik Patel and the Congress leaders on how to "expose" the BJP.

(With inputs from Gopi Maniar in Ahmedabad)

--- ENDS ---
24 October 2017 14:53 (UTC+04:00)

By Aygul Salmanova

Characterized by high seismic activity and situated in the active collision zone of Arabian plate with Eurasian, the territory of Azerbaijan has complicated block structures differing from each other by the level of seismic activity.

Indeed, the Alpine-Himalayan seismic belt passing through Azerbaijan makes the whole country vulnerable to dangerous seismogenic activities.

A rapid population growth, water and land instabilities, the lack of public awareness and an intensive industrial and civil construction may partly be responsible for the possibility of the capital city being vulnerable to earthquakes.

In a workshop on seismology held in October 23, Academician Akif Alizade, president of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS), mentioned that seismic activity and seismic zones have been fully examined in Azerbaijan.

Alizade added that seismological studies have been intensively carried out in Azerbaijan over the last 50-60 years.

"Geophysics has a long history of development in Azerbaijan, he said. Geophysics began to develop after 1950s."

The study of the seismicity of the Caspian Sea is one of the main tasks of seismologists, he claimed, adding that bottom seismographs were acquired for that purpose.

Gurban Yetirmishli, Republican Center of Seismological Service (RTSS) of the ANAS earlier told journalists that there are many seismic reservoirs that have possible potential since the Caspian Sea is rich in oil and gas reserves.

The danger of the earthquake in Absheron and Baku depends on the foci that exist in the Caspian Sea, he said.

Yetirmishli noted that three years ago the devices for installing seismometers at the bottom of the Caspian Sea were acquired.

However, they have not been established. Recently, the heads of the Emergency Situations Ministry and ANAS appealed to the leadership of SOCAR for help in this matter. Although the seismometers were purchased three years ago, but still lie in the warehouse of the RCSS, complained the director of the center.

Additionally, he stressed that more accurate investigation of the seismicity of the bottom of the Caspian Sea will be possible with the help of these devices. "They will also help minimize the risks on the platforms and communication lines in the Caspian Sea. Their installation will bring great benefits from a scientific point of view," Yetirmishli said.

Yetirmishli further commented on the reports of a possible magnitude 8-9 earthquake in Baku, noting that no earthquake of this magnitude is expected in Baku.

The information provided by an employee of the Republican Seismic Survey Center on seismological situation in Baku was misunderstood, Yetirmishli explained.

The RSSC employee didnt say a magnitude 8-9 earthquake is expected in Baku, he said. This can happen once in 50, 100 and 500 years. Therefore, one shouldnt spread panic among the population.



Currently, Azerbaijani scientists are working on a new project on assessment of a seismic risk in Baku city. Prior to this, German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) agreed to give relevant support to Azerbaijan regarding this issue, Yetirmishli said as he visited the German Research Center in Potsdam, Germany on September 19-23, 2016.



For several years, we are conducting negotiations with them. This year we signed a memorandum. We have brought to the fore issues such as seismic micro zoning of Baku, determination of seismic risk zones in the capital and assessment of risk zones, he said.
24 October 2017 11:59 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Turkeys decision to improve its relationship with Uzbekistan can be explained by a mixture of economic aspirations which are mutually beneficial for both sides.

Uzbekistans President Shavkat Mirziyoyev will pay an official visit to Turkey on October 25-26 at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the press service of the presidents office reported.

During the high-level talks in Ankara, issues of expansion of Uzbek-Turkish cooperation in the political, trade-economic, investment, transport-communication and other fields will be discussed.

The sides are expected to exchange views on international issues and joint counteraction to global and regional challenges.

The delegation of Uzbekistan will also visit the city of Istanbul.

As a result of the visit, it is planned to adopt a Joint Statement by the heads of state. Moreover, the parties will sign a package of intergovernmental and interdepartmental documents aimed at further development of bilateral relations in various fields, including the creation of favorable conditions for mutually beneficial ties between the business circles of Uzbekistan and Turkey, the intensification of tourist exchanges and cultural and humanitarian contacts.

Turkey became the first country to recognize Uzbekistans independence on 16 December 1991. The diplomatic relations were established between two countries on 4 March 1992.

More than 90 bilateral agreements and protocols were signed to form the legal basis of relations and numerous mutual high-level visits were carried out. These documents cover the spheres of trade, economy, science, transport, culture and others.

There are currently 700 companies in Uzbekistan with Turkish capital, 100 of which are representation offices. They carry out activities in the sectors of textile, commitment, food, hotel management, building materials, plastic, medication, and service. There are 114 companies in Turkey with Uzbek capital.

In 2016, the mutual trade turnover between the countries reached $1.2 billion. In February 2017, Turkey and Uzbekistan signed cooperation agreement to boost economic relations.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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24 October 2017 10:53 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The European Unions trade with Iran amounted to 13.2 billion euros in the first eight months of 2017, according to the latest figures released by the European Unions statistics agency Eurostat.

The figure indicates a 75 percent rise year-on-year compared to 7.5 billion euros in the same months of 2016.

Irans exports to the EU stood at 6.5 billion euros from January to August 2017, 144 percent more compared to 2.7 billion euros during the same time span in 2016.

Meanwhile, Irans imports from the 28-member Union increased by 37 percent to 6.7 billion euros in first eight months of 2017.



International and Western sanctions on Iran, including the banking related sanctions, were removed in January 2016.

From January to August 2017, EU28 exports of goods stood at 1,233.3 billion euros, registering an increase of 9.3 percent compared with January-August 2016.

The imports of the 28 EU countries amounted to 1,227.8 billion euros, 9.4 percent more year-on-year.

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24 October 2017 14:11 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

The international community continues its attempts to stop Pyongyang from its missile program and nuclear tests.

The Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council on North Korea has expanded the list of export prohibitions on October 23, RIA Novosti reported.

The list included items, materials, equipment, dual-use goods and technologies related to weapons of mass destruction. In total, the UN committee that monitors sanctions against Pyongyang has added 32 goods to a list of banned items.

These items range from ring magnets, software for neutronic calculations/modeling to particle accelerators, seismic detection equipment and radiation-hardened television cameras, according to the report.

The document was prepared and submitted to the UN Security Council as well as distributed in the UN documents system.

In such a way international structures and institutions are trying to prevent Pyongyang from developing its nuclear ballistic missile program.

The EU Council previously put new restrictions on North Korea targeting the countrys oil trade, financial transactions and the establishment of joint ventures.

The EU action follows sanctions announced by the UN last month, which came after nuclear tests, missile tests and war-like rhetoric from the North Korean regime.

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously imposed a set of sanctions against North Korea on September 11 over the countrys hydrogen bomb test which was conducted on September 3.

The sanctions included limits on import of crude oil and oil products, a ban on textile exports and new visas for North Korean oversees workers.

However, North Korea tested another missile on September 15 in response to the latest set of sanctions imposed by the UN.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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24 October 2017 16:38 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

The new U.S. line on Syria raises many questions for Moscow.

This was stated by the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a press conference following a meeting with his Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim al-Jaafari on October 23, TASS reported.

"Hearing about a new line of the United States that involves the creation of some local councils in the territory of the sovereign Syrian Arab Republic, of course, raises many questions for us. We are sending these questions to Washington and expecting that we will receive an honest and understandable answer," he noted.

The diplomat also drew attention to some "strange things" that are taking place in the activities of the American-led coalition in Syria.

"There were numerous cases when during the periods of the Syrian army's attack on the positions of the ISIS militants, the same fighters, from the areas controlled by the United States-sponsored coalition, quietly went out and directed to provide additional resistance to the Syrian government army," he explained. , there were cases of mass exodus of Igilovites from Rakki at the very moment when a coalition supported by the United States led the siege of this city. "

Earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump said that the actions of the international coalition "will soon move into a new phase." They will support local security forces, reduce violence across Syria and create proper conditions for lasting peace so that "the terrorists could not return and again threaten our collective security," he noted.

Syria has been locked in civil war since March 2011. According to UN's special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, around 400,000 people have died in the conflict while half the population has been driven from their homes.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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24 October 2017 17:35 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Ecologically sustainable cotton varieties will be grown in Uzbekistan in accordance with the Better Cotton world standard.

The project is implemented by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group with the financial support of the Hungarian EXIM Bank.

The presentation of the project took place on October 24 in the framework of the 13th International Uzbek Cotton and Textile Fair.

The goal of the project, designed for 2017-2022, is to increase the efficiency of cotton production by implementing the best world practice, and thereby minimizing the risk of using forced labor in the cotton sector. The estimated cost of the project in the form of investments from IFC is $5 million, Uzbek media outlets reported.

At the first stage (in 2017-2018), IFC carries out a pilot program - the development and testing of a system of standards for sustainable cotton production based on the world standards in Fergana (3 cotton plants and 6 farms) and Jizzakh (2 cotton plants and 4 farms) areas . After successful testing, the system will be scaled to 3000 farms and agribusinesses that produce cotton in these areas.

In 2019-2022, it is planned to expand the application of the system of standards for sustainable cotton production to the rest regions of Uzbekistan.

The Better Cotton standard does not imply the use of manual labor in the collection of cotton.

The head of IFC consulting services in industry, agribusiness and services Tatyana Lozanskaya said that support for sustainable development of the private sector is a strategic objective of IFC.

Our project on the development of the cotton sector in Uzbekistan will accelerate the transformation processes in Uzbekistan aimed at increasing the role of the private sector in the country's economy. The introduction of the best practices in the production of cotton will also provide an opportunity to increase the global competitiveness of Uzbek cotton fiber and textile products," she noted.

Uzbekistan will achieve full processing of cotton fiber in 2021. At the same time by 2021 the production of textile and clothing and knitted products will increase by 2.2 times compared to 2016, including ready-made fabrics - 2.7 times, knitted fabrics - 3 times, knitted goods  3.4 times, hosiery  3.7 times. It is planned to increase the export of products by 2 times.

One of the policy priorities of Uzbekistan, the worlds sixth-largest cotton producer, is further development of its textile industry. Uzbekistan takes consistent steps to increase the volume of cotton fiber processing.

In particular, it is planned to create 112 modern, high-tech industrial factories, expand, modernize and technologically upgrade 20 operating capacities. All this will increase the export potential of the industry up to $2.5 billion a year and create more than 25,000 jobs.

In the period 2010-2014, the textile industry of Uzbekistan received and spent foreign investments worth $785 million while 147 new textile enterprises with participation of investors from Germany, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, the U.S., Turkey and other countries were commissioned. Export potential of these enterprises amounted to $670 millions.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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24 October 2017 18:33 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Unlike the US, Turkey bases its statements on facts, Turkish media quoted the countrys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as saying on October 24.

President Erdogan said the US states that the Syrian wings of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) - YPG (Peoples Protection Units) and PYD (Democratic Union Party) - are not terrorist organizations, while YPG and PYD units hang portraits of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in Syrias Raqqa city.

"Turkey is no longer a country that can be deceived," Erdogan said. The US actions towards Turkey do not coincide with ally relations between the countries.

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A Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society subsidiary recognized San Jose, Calif.-based Santa Clara Valley Medical Center for its EMR initiatives.

HIMSS Analytics granted Santa Clara Valley Medical Center Stage 7 of the eight-stage HIMSS Analytics EMR Adoption Model, which measures the degree to which a hospital or health system uses its EMR functions. Five percent of U.S. hospitals have reached Stage 7, which represents the highest designation.

One of the hospital's health IT initiatives enabled specialists in each department to provide immediate feedback to referring providers through the EMR. The effort led to a reduction in needed referral visits, according to Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.

"I am very proud of this achievement," said Paul Lorenz, CEO of Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. "It is about more than having the best technology. It is about using that technology in a meaningful way to provide quality care and improve patient outcomes."


A team of UC San Francisco health informatics researchers analyzed EHR data from a three-year period to identify one source of Clostridium difficile, a common hospital-acquired infection.

For the study, the research team used time and location stamps from EHRs to trace the movements of more than 85,000 patients seen at UCSF Medical Center at Parnassus between 2013 and 2016. They detected 435,000 location changes, which they used to construct a map of where patients with C. diff infections had traveled in the hospital.

The research revealed one location in particular  a CT scanner in the emergency department  as a significant source of infection. Four percent of patients who entered the scanner within 24 hours of a patient with C. diff contracted the infection within two months, while the overall rate of infection for those who used the scanner was 1.6 percent.

The research results, published in the Oct. 23 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, led UCSF Medical Center at Parnassus to align cleaning practices for the CT scanner with those used in other radiology suites.

"Most studies looking at C. diff in hospitals typically only look at whether patients were on the same hospital floor," said Russ Cucina, MD, senior author on the study and chief health information officer at UCSF. "But they don't think about everywhere else in the hospital patients go. If we just look at transmission in their room, we're missing potential opportunities for disease transmission."
Lewiston, Maine-based St. Mary's Health System received a record-breaking $10 million gift from the Albert Lepage Foundation, with one caveat  the money must be used on people and cannot be spent on buildings or infrastructure, according to the Lewiston-Auburn Sun Journal.

The largest gift in the health system's history will establish the Albert Lepage Center for Patient Experience, which will focus on improving the way patients and their families interact with St. Mary's. The new center will feature aspects such as low-stress waiting areas with free coffee and work to create technologies to ease patient anxiety.

The donation is a pledged gift, meaning the Albert Lepage Foundation will provide $250,000 per year to St. Mary's. A portion of each year's donation will go toward an endowment for continued patient experience work.

"[Mr. Lepage] wants programming. He wants services," J. Bradford Coffey, president of St. Mary's Health System Foundation, told the Lewiston-Auburn Sun Journal.

Mr. Lepage donated to St. Mary's because he cares about its mission and believes the community has benefited from the hospital's compassion.

"I'm confident the new center will position St. Mary's to lead the industry in ensuring a patient's experience is exceptional," Mr. Lepage told the Lewiston-Auburn Sun Journal.

Mr. Lepage was the former president of Lepage Bakeries  the producer of Country Kitchen and Barowsky's breads. The bakeries were acquired by Flowers Foods for $370 million in 2012.

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By Shivani Chhabra: After his Condom-look and Super Mario avatar, we were convinced that there wasn't anything really left for Ranveer Singh to pull off. But standing true to his reputation of being the Lady Gaga of B-town, he showed up dressed in a long skirt at a red carpet. From sheer surprise to unbridled appreciation, the reactions to his quirky outfit varied extensively, but what stayed with us was the charm he oozed even in a skirt.

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In his sexy, box-pleated skirt with white pinstripes, Ranveer looked just so dapper. Apart from how effortlessly stylish he looked in the skirt, we were in awe of how perfectly he styled it with a V-neck, semi-formal shirt with blue, patch details. Sprinkling a skosh of edge to his ensemble, he sported a thick beard and neatly parted greasy hair that really elevated the look.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/ranveersingh

Also Read: Ranveer Singh wore a skirt to this award function. We're not kidding

While Ranveer made us believe that he'll be the hottest man we'll ever see in a skirt, the stunning Ayushmann Khurrana decided to change the way we looked at men dressed in skirts. The Vicky Donor star embodied elegance in his black, Nehru-collar jacket, which he teamed with an asymmetric, black skirt. Mr Khurrana made our jaws drops with how royal-yet-trendy he looked in this all-black attire with little, silver details on the jacket.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/ayushmannk

Also Read: It's the perfect day to appreciate Ayushmann Khurrana's beautiful fashion sens

Recently, the actor known for his unconventional roles and acting skills, Irrfan Khan, joined the not-so-usual B-town men on the skirt bandwagon, but with a twist of his own. Donning a serene, white outfit, Irrfan embraced the idea of androgynous dressing and aced it too. The star was seen wearing a brilliant, ivory, ethnic jacket teamed with a flowy, A-line, pleated skirt.

Though the A-line aspect of the outfit looked pretty much like an easy-breezy skirt, it was interesting how he teamed a pair of chudidaar bottoms with it that made it reflect the style of a kurta as well. Unlike the other two stars, Irrfan had more ethnicity about his unique attire, which he complemented with a pair of brown sandals, and looked so spruce.

Picture courtesy: Instagram/ishabhansali

While these stars are donning skirts with different flavours to their looks, it's the progressive idea of androgynous-dressing seeping into the industry that is making us proud.

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State Rep. Betty Price, MD, R-Rosewell, and wife of former HHS Secretary Tom Price, MD, asked state health officials last week if individuals who identify as HIV positive could be legally quarantined, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The House Study Committee on Georgian's Barriers to Access to Adequate Healthcare met Oct. 17 to discuss the prevalence and spread of HIV statewide and the public health implications of a state law criminalizing potential HIV exposure. Dr. Price, who sits on the committee, asked Pascale Wortley, MD, director of HIV epidemiology section of the Georgia Department of Public Health, about possible methods to prevent the spread of HIV.

"I dont want to say the quarantine word, but I guess I just said it," Dr. Price said during the meeting, according to the report. "Is there an ability, since I would guess that public dollars are expended heavily in prophylaxis and treatment of this condition?  What would you advise or are there any methods legally that we could do that would curtail the spread?

Georgia maintains the second-highest rate of new HIV infections in the nation. The statistic continues to rise because more than one-third of HIV positive residents do not receive care for the condition, according to the report.

In a statement to The Atlanta-Journal Constitution Saturday, Dr. Price said, "I made a provocative and rhetorical comment as part of a free-flowing conversation which has been taken completely out of context. I do not support a quarantine in this public health challenge and dilemma of undertreated HIV patients. I look forward to continuing to work with all to accomplish this goal."

To read Dr. Price's full statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, click here.
A California judge has reversed a jury ruling against Johnson & Johnson in a lawsuit associating ovarian cancer to talcum powder, according to a Bloomberg report.

Jurors in August ordered the New Brunswick, N.J.-based company to pay $417 million to 63-year-old Eva Echeverria, who used the company's talcum-based baby powder more than 50 years and developed ovarian cancer. Ms. Echeverria has since died.

But Judge Maren Nelson, with the Superior Court of Los Angeles County in California, reversed the $417 million talc trial, Johnson & Johnson said via email.

Specifically, the company said Judge Nelson granted its motions "for judgment notwithstanding the verdict" as well as "our motions for new trial, as to both Johnson & Johnson (the parent company) and Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. (the subsidiary that actually manufactures and markets Johnson's Baby Powder)."

"The Court is of the firm view that Yessain's [plaintiff's expert on specific causation] 'ruling out' of age and ovulatory cycles, amounted to no more than speculation. Her testimony that it was 'probable' the cause of the cancer was unknown, but then putting a 'less than 50 percent chance' on same (with no reasoning) likewise amounted to mere speculation," the judge wrote in her ruling. "Those facts show that the expert did not properly employ the methodology she espoused and independent of the fact that there was no evidence of substance to rule talc 'in,' persuade the court that JNOV must be granted to JCCI and Johnson & Johnson on the basis that no specific causation was shown."

The company said this means the judge ruled in favor of Johnson & Johnson, and the judge's ruling would have to be reversed by an appellate court for a new trial to take place.

In response to the ruling, Johnson & Johnson issued the following statement: "We are pleased with Judge Maren Nelson's ruling. Ovarian cancer is a devastating disease  but it is not caused by the cosmetic-grade talc we have used in Johnson's Baby Powder for decades. The science is clear and we will continue to defend the safety of Johnson's Baby Powder as we prepare for additional [similar] trials in the U.S."

Mark Robinson, who represents Ms. Echeverria's case, told Bloomberg he planned to appeal Friday's decision.

"We disagree with the courts decision," he said in an email to the publication. "A jury of Ms. Echeverria's peers found the Johnson & Johnson defendants liable. We will ask the appellate court to uphold this jury's verdict. We will continue to fight on behalf of all women who have been impacted by this dangerous product."

Friday's ruling comes about a week after the Missouri Eastern District appeals court tossed a $72M award in a separate Johnson & Johnson baby powder case.
Lawyers on behalf of Brattleboro (Vt.) Memorial Hospital asked a judge to compel the hospital's emergency department operator, Lebanon, N.H.-based Dartmouth-Hitchcock, to pay all potential fines and damages associated with a patient malpractice lawsuit filed in May, according to the Brattleboro Reformer.

Former BMH patient Cynthia Hawthorne filed a lawsuit against the hospital in May, alleging BMH and the hospital's ED director failed to notify her about a "highly suspicious mass on her left kidney," which was later discovered to be cancerous. Ms. Hawthorne claimed ED specialists at the hospital identified the mass during a CT scan at the hospital in March 2014, the complaint states. However, BMH allegedly did not notify Ms. Hawthorne of the mass for two and a half years. By then, the cancer had spread to her lungs and necessitated the removal of her left kidney, the complaint states.

Lawyers on behalf of BMH filed "a third-party complaint against Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic that asserts a claim for indemnification" earlier this month. The complaint alleged Dartmouth-Hitchcock should be held responsible for any damages and court fees associated with Ms. Hawthorne's malpractice case based on a 2012 agreement allowing Dartmouth-Hitchcock to operate BMH's ED, the report states.

The institutions' 2012 agreement designated Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic the "exclusive provider of physicians and providers to operate BMH's emergency room" and declared Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic would assume "any liability incurred by [BMH] as a result of  [DHC's] physicians and providers, agents or employees," the report states.

A judge has not yet issued a ruling on Ms. Hawthorne's case, so it is unclear if BMH or Dartmouth-Hitchcock will be required to pay any damages associated with the case.

However, the Vermont Agency of Human Services' Division of Licensing and Protection issued findings related to the incident in March. The agency cited BMH for failing to notify Ms. Hawthorne and for failing to thoroughly investigate the incident, the report states.
A 36-year-old woman pleaded guilty Oct. 19 in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to healthcare fraud and identity theft after she lied about her nursing credentials to work at a St. Louis hospital and teach nursing at a New Mexico college, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Samantha Rivera first pretended to be a nurse in 2015, when she lied on her resume to get a job teaching nursing at Brown Mackie College in Albuquerque, N.M. Although the college could not verify details she provided, including her education and employment history, the school did not notify the state's nursing board that Ms. Rivera was posing as a nurse.

In September 2016, Ms. Rivera secured a job at St. Alexius Hospital in St. Louis by using the name and license number of a New Mexico nurse with a similar name to apply for a job through a staffing agency. On the application, she also falsely claimed to have a bachelor's degree in nursing and experience working at a New Mexico hospital, according to the report.

Ms. Rivera worked as a nurse in St. Alexius Hospital's intensive care unit and a geriatric psych ward, but her contract was not extended in February. She then applied for a job through a Chicago staffing agency, which discovered her nursing license and resume were fraudulent.

Ms. Rivera is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 17 and faces up to 16 months in federal prison, according to the report.

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A man and his grandson visiting an unidentified individual at UCHealth Yampa Valley Medical Center-Steamboat Springs (Colo.) said soon after they ate an au jus sandwich served in the hospital's cafeteria, another visitor said they found a used adhesive bandage in the sauce, according to Steamboat Today.

Erik Lacasse told Steamboat Today the incident "was gross, but [he'd] seen worse," according to the report. He said he was more concerned about the health and safety issues the incident posed, especially for younger individuals like his grandson.

Mr. Lacasse said he contacted UCHealth on four separate occasions via phone and email, but failed to hear back from the health system. He claimed at least one week went by before he heard back from hospital officials, who said they had looked into the incident but were not alerted to his concerns, the report states.

Hospital officials reportedly met with Mr. Lacasse Oct. 19, stating they had tested the employee and determined she did not pose any health risks to patients. Officials said the employee had used the bandage to cover a paper cut, according to the report.

Officials said steps have since been taken to ensure a similar incident does not occur in the future.

"Hospital food and nutrition services play an important role in the experience of our patients, their family members and our community," a spokesperson for the hospital told Steamboat Today.

"Safety for everyone is a top priority, and we will continue to ensure the highest quality of our dining services and facilities.  We take concerns such as this very seriously and work diligently to ensure the very best care for patients," the spokesperson added.
Aurora Spine Chairman of the Board David Rosenkrantz acquired the 1.25 million common shares of the company in a non-brokered private placement.

Here are four things to know:

1. Mr. Rosenkrantz now holds more than 5 million common shares, representing nearly 17.5 percent of the issued and outstanding common shares.

2. Prior to the offering, Mr. Rosenkrantz owned just over 4.1 million common shares, approximately 14 percent of the issued and outstanding common shares on a fully diluted basis.

3. Mr. Rosenkrantz's acquisition of the shares under the offering was indicated for investment purposes and there were no joint actors in connection with the purchase.

4. Proceeds of the offering, more than $150,000, will be used for general working capital purposes. Aurora Spine continues to focus on minimally invasive spine surgery technologies.
Stryker plans to commercially launch the Serrato pedicle screw system during the North American Spine Society Annual Meeting taking place Oct. 25 to 28.

Here are five things to know:

1. The Serrato pedicle screw is a dual-lead screw intended for use in the non-cervical spine. The device aims to reduce work, increase speed and enhance surgical efficiency.

2. The screw is designed with enhanced cutting flutes that reduce work by lowering the insertion torque; the screw's TrueTip geometry allows for precise insertion and bone engagement.

3. Stryker has gathered feedback from initial surgeon customers since the device first released in August. The screw will be more widely available after the full commercial launch over the next few days.

4. Serrato received FDA clearance in August as well, and in the first month more than 100 surgeons used the technology with the Xia 3 Spinal System.

"The Serrato pedicle system from Stryker has added a new level of versatility to the armamentarium that a spine surgeon has in all complex spinal procedures," said Alexander Vaccaro, MD, PhD, president of Philadelphia-based Rothman Institute and one of the first surgeons to use Serrato. "The new screw design affords excellent screw purchase."

5. Xia 3 Spinal System is intended for use in the noncervical spine and to provide additional support during fusion using autograft or allograft in skeletally mature patients to treat acute and chronic instabilities of deformities: degenerative disc disease, spondylolisthesis, trauma, spinal stenosis, curvatures, tumor, pseudarthrosis and failed previous fusion.
King County Superior Court Judge Ken Schubert confirmed the $17.5 million awarded to former Seattle-based Swedish Health neurosurgeon David Newell, MD, in September, The Seattle Times reports.

Here are five things to know:

1. Arbitrator Paris Kallas awarded Dr. Newell $16.5 million for lost earnings and $1 million for emotional distress. The case saw Dr. Newell saying Swedish Health fired him in 2016 because he brought forth concerns about Johnny Delashaw, MD. Dr. Delashaw resigned from his post as chair of the Swedish Neuroscience Institute on the Cherry Hill campus in March, amid a state health regulatory investigation into complaints filed against him.

2. Dr. Newell said he filed concerns about Dr. Delashaw, claiming the neurosurgeon was taking over some of his work as well as trying to "dismantle his practice and harass him," reports The Seattle Times.

3. Following the arbitration ruling, Swedish Health appealed. The health system attributed Dr. Newell's firing to failing to disclose his arrest in relation to a Seattle prostitution sting in 2016. Swedish Health argued this action broke Dr. Newell's contract, which states an employee must tell the organization if he/she is under "criminal investigation." Further, the health system argued the $16.5 million for lost earnings is inaccurate.

4. Additionally, Judge Schubert confirmed the $685,000 award that mandates Swedish Health and its parent organization Providence pay the case's attorney fees and costs.

5. Swedish Health CEO Guy Hudson, MD, told The Seattle Times, they will appeal the ruling.
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By India Today Web Desk: National Award-winning Malayalam filmmaker IV Sasi breathed his last in Chennai on Tuesday. He was 69 years old, and survived by his wife, Seema, son, Ani, and daughter, Anu.

IV Sasi, who made his directorial debut with the 1975 film Utsavam, directed over 150 films in his career spanning over three decades. Not only Malayalam, he has also directed films in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi, with several A-list actors like Mohanlal, Mammootty, Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan and Rajesh Khanna.

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In 1982, his film Aroodam won the National Award for the Best Feature Film on National Integration. He had also won four Kerala State Film Awards.

My friend for 45 years I.V.Sasi is no more. The industry & I mourn a great technician. My support & love to my sister Seema Sasi &family- Kamal Haasan (@ikamalhaasan) October 24, 2017

The man who rewritten the course of mainstream Malayalam cinema #IVSasi is no more.We been discussion a film together,its my personal loss!- resul pookutty (@resulp) October 24, 2017

Sad to hear abt the passing away of film maker I.V.Sasi, hav worked with this dynamic director.Sympathies 2his wife Actress Seema &kids.- Radikaa Sarathkumar (@realradikaa) October 24, 2017

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Check out the top stories from BGSU and beyond in our newscast and online edition of our newspaper every Wednesday. You can also view past papers by clicking the e-edition header above.
Rashtriya Sikh Sangat, Sikh arm of RSS kicks of a controversy by organizing a multi faith conclave on October 25 in New Delhi.

By Manjeet Sehgal: The Sikh arm of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) - Rashtriya Sikh Sangat and hardliner Sikh groups like Dal Khalsa are at loggerheads on the issue of multi-faith conclave being organised by RSS at Talkatora stadium on Wednesday in New Delhi to mark the 350th anniversary of tenth Sikh Guru Gobind Singh.

Hardliner Sikh group Dal Khalsa has dubbed the event as anti-Sikh and as an interference into the Sikh affairs.

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Describing the formation of Rashtriya Sikh Sangat (RSS) as 'grand nefarious design' of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Dal Khalsa, a hardliner Sikh group has accused RSS of making an attempt to penetrate into Sikh rank in Punjab.

"RSS has no locus standi to interfere in the affairs of Sikhs. As per Sikh concept, there's only one Sikh Sangat that is fully wedded to the ten Guru's and their philosophy and it had nothing to do with any nation nor any boundary," Harpal Singh Cheema said rubbishing the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat, chief of Dal Khalsa.

The hardliner Sikh group has cautioned the Sikhs to wake up timely to the 'evil designs' of the RSS that's hell bent to subsume Sikh religion into Hinduism.

Blaming RSS for systematically sabotaging Sikh doctrine, Dal Khalsa's spokesperson Kanwar Pal Singh said the Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh was an 'anti-Sikh' organisation that has been hitting at the roots and foundations of Sikhism.

"Ironically it has spread its tentacles in Punjab since tercentenary celebrations of Khalsa Panth in 1999 when A B Vajpayee was the prime minister and P S Badal was chief minister of Punjab," said Kanwar Pal Singh.

Citing a 2004 Akal Takhat edict against the RSS, the Sikh group has warned Sikhs that anyone participating in the conclave would be branded as traitors.

It is worth mentioning here that RSS by forming it's Sikh arm Rashtriya Sikh Sangat is keen to expand its Shakha base in Punjab. However, the move has not gone well with the hardliner pro-Khalistan Sikh organisations who are against RSS expansion in Punjab.

RSS influx in Punjab, border areas in particular, has led to tension between RSS and Khalistan groups. According to the sources, there were nearly 600 RSS shakhas in the state till 2014 which has now increased to about 900.

There are ideological differences between the two right wing organisations. While RSS believes that Sikhism is a branch of Hindu religion, hardliner Sikhs believe Sikhism was an independent religion and has nothing to do with Hinduism.

It is only due to these differences between the two organisations that the then Rashtriya Sikh Sangat chief Rulda Singh was allegedly shot dead by the Babbar Khalsa International terrorists in Patiala in 2009.

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Also Watch : Shocking video of Sikh family being attacked by neighbours in Bengaluru

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By PTI: New Delhi, Oct 24 (PTI) Syed Shahid Yousuf, son of globally wanted terrorist Syed Salahuddin, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency today in connection with a 2011 terror funding case for allegedly receiving money from his father.

An NIA spokesman said that 42-year-old Shahid, at present working in the Jammu and Kashmir governments agricultural department, was summoned to the headquarters today after which he was placed under arrest.

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The NIA alleged that Shahid used to receive funds through international wire money transfer from Aijaz Ahmed Bhat, an absconding accused, at present based in Saudi Arabia.

The agency alleged that Shahid is "one of several Indian contacts of Bhat" who have been in telephonic contact with him to receive the money transfer codes.

The case, registered by the NIA in April 2011, relates to transfer of money from Pakistan to Jammu and Kashmir through Hawala channels via Delhi which was suspected to be used in funding terrorism and secessionist activities.

The NIA has so far filed two charge sheets against six people which included G M Bhat, a close aide of pro-Pakistan separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mohammed Siddiq Ganai, Ghulam Jeelani Liloo and Farooq Ahmed Dagga. All the four were in judicial custody.

Besides them, two others -- Mohammed Maqbool Pandit and Aijaz Ahmed Bhat -- have also been chargesheeted by the NIA but both of them were absconding. An Interpol Red Corner notice has been issued against both.

Shahids father Mohammed Yusuf Shah -- better known as Syed Salahuddin -- was declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US Department of State in June this year.

Besides heading terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, he is also the chairman of United Jehad Council (UJC), a conglomerate of various terrorist outfits operating in the Kashmir Valley.

The NIA has also registered two others cases related to terror funding -- one in November 2011 and another in May this year.

The agency has already filed a charge sheet against 10 people which included Syed Salahuddin in the second case of 2011.

In the recent case, the NIA has arrested 10 people including some close kin and aides of Geelani. PTI SKL SC

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Teachers are under increasing pressure to be "counsellors, researchers or data analysts" as well as educators, a new global report has found, amid concerns that parents are expecting schools to pick up their "slack".

"Pressures on teachers are well documented and appear to be increasing, in part owing to new expectations," according to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation's latest global education monitoring report, released on Tuesday.

The report also found that despite increasing expectations for teachers, teaching continues to be undervalued in society. Credit:Tamara Voninski

"Beyond instruction and facilitating learning, teachers are asked to be counsellors, researchers or data analysts."

President of the NSW Secondary Principals' Council Chris Presland said that expectations being placed on Australian teachers are "now massive".
One year ago, Alfonso del Rio was 110 kilograms and on the path to diabetes. He couldn't climb a flight of stairs without leaning on the handrail, exhausted and gasping for breath.

Confronted with worrying health assessment results, he was spurred into action. The 55-year-old lawyer swapped chips for fruit, steak for fish and began walking 10,000 steps a day.

"I made changes and lost 30 kilograms," the Clayton Utz partner said. "I now 'swim' in my old clothes, I can't wear them and I can sustain greater levels of intense concentration. I've lengthened my life."

Mr del Rio's transformation, as well as his ability to maintain a healthy lifestyle, reflects the results of a new study that shows the legal sector has the healthiest executives in Australia, followed by the banking and consulting sectors.
One in four Canberrans have not yet lodged a tax return, despite the October 31 deadline looming next week.

The ACT had the second lowest rate of lodged returns at 75 per cent, behind NSW, at 72 per cent. Tasmania had the highest return rate, with 94 per cent of Tasmanians having already lodged their returns for 2016-17, according to figures released on Tuesday by the tax office.

CPA Australia head of policy Paul Drum: People who lodge early are expecting to have a refund. Credit:Josh Robenstone

Tax Office Assistant Commissioner Kath Anderson said while almost 150,000 Canberrans had beaten the deadline to lodge their return, time was running out for everyone else.

"We know some people are leaving their run pretty late," Ms Anderson said.
By PTI: (Eds: Updating with more information about the case)

New Delhi, Oct 24 (PTI) The National Investigation Agency (NIA) today arrested Syed Shahid Yousuf, son of globally wanted terrorist Syed Salahuddin, in connection with a 2011 terror funding case for allegedly receiving money from his father.

An NIA spokesman said 42-year-old Shahid, at present working in the agricultural department of the Jammu and Kashmir government, was summoned to the agencys headquarters today following which he was arrested.

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He will be produced before a designated NIA court tomorrow.

The NIA alleged Shahid used to receive funds through a US-based international wire transfer company from Aijaz Ahmed Bhat, another accused in the case who is absconding and based in Saudi Arabia.

The agency alleged Shahid was "one of several Indian contacts of Bhat" who had been in telephonic contact with him for receiving money transfer codes.

The NIA claimed so far he had received a total of nearly Rs 4.5 lakh through eight international wire transfers.

The case, registered by the NIA in April 2011, relates to the transfer of money from Pakistan to Jammu and Kashmir through hawala channels via Delhi, which the agency believed was used in funding terrorism and secessionist activities.

The NIA has so far filed two charge sheets against six people including G M Bhat, a close aide of pro-Pakistan separatist Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mohammed Siddiq Ganai, Ghulam Jeelani Liloo and Farooq Ahmed Dagga. All four are in judicial custody.

Two others -- Mohammed Maqbool Pandit and Bhat -- were also charge sheeted by the NIA but are absconding. An Interpol Red Corner notice has been issued against them.

Shahids father Mohammed Yusuf Shah -- better known as Syed Salahuddin -- was declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the US Department of State in June this year.

Besides heading terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, he is the chairman of the United Jehad Council (UJC), a conglomerate of terrorist outfits operating in the Kashmir Valley.

The NIA had also registered two others cases related to terror funding -- one in November 2011 and the other in May this year.

The agency had filed a charge sheet against 10 people including Syed Salahuddin in the April 2011 case.

In the recent case, the NIA arrested 10 people including some close relatives and aides of Geelani. PTI SKL BDS

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They never mentioned Trump's name, but in the past week, two former presidents began building the case for Donald Trump as a growing problem for American democracy. "We've seen nationalism distorted into nativism," George W. Bush lamented in a speech in New York. "Bigotry seems emboldened." Barack Obama, appearing the same day in Virginia, likewise denounced "the politics of division", offering a frustrated reminder that "it's the 21st century, not the 19th century. Come on!".

Though neither issued an outright attack, the sight of two former presidents from different parties appearing on the same day to criticise a sitting president is a striking sign of how much politics has changed in the Trump era. It's not only because the former presidents spoke out, which is itself quite unusual. Rather, it's striking that the comments about bigotry, nativism, division, and the weakening of American democracy were widely understood as attacks on President Trump, even without direct reference to him.

The American tradition of post-presidential deference is about as old as the country itself. When George Washington stepped down in 1797 after two terms in office, he not only set a tradition of self-imposed term limits (not made an official rule until 1951) but also one of polite withdrawal. Returning to his home at Mount Vernon, he conspicuously avoided commenting on the actions of his successors.

For the most part, other presidents followed his example. But there were exceptions. Theodore Roosevelt, never one for circumspection, left office after two terms in 1909 with things seemingly in good hands: his vice-president William Taft had won the election, securing Roosevelt's legacy.
A leaked Australian Federal Police memo suggesting anti-drug operations have suffered because of the need to protect Malcolm Turnbull's mansion has sparked extraordinary scenes in Parliament, including accusations of collusion between Labor and the ABC.

The memo, seen by Fairfax Media, was written by a senior AFP officer in NSW and alleged high-level operations were compromised due to obligations to protect its own facilities and the Prime Minister's Point Piper residence, which he uses instead of the official prime ministerial residence at Kirribilli.

Consequentially, the AFP was unable to investigate a 1.6 tonne cocaine importation ring, leaving it to be handled overseas, among 23 investigations that had to be moved or transferred due to lack of capacity.

The internal July memo claimed the situation in Sydney was at tipping point, with officers falling asleep on duty due to fatigue associated with excessive overtime.
This was Labors foreign minister, the person charged with selling Australia - and his prime ministers vision - to the world! Swan, Rudd says, was out of his depth in Treasury and failed to improve over time. (At this stage, you are probably wondering why he didnt get rid of him. Im wondering that, too). Years later, one Treasury official would describe Swan as a small man with a big ego and a giant chip on his shoulder who  was not interested in and apparently incapable of being educated in the Treasury craft by his own department, Rudd says. Keatings office christened the pair the glimmer twins, policy-free zones and the state secretaries club, good for polling rotten for policy, were told.

Kevin Rudd with Stephen Smith and Stephen Conroy. Credit:Andrew Taylor And the pair, along with Rudds media minister Stephen Conroy, were known as the Roosters, who were deeply accomplished in the dark arts and who loathed Julia Gillard with a passion. Their loathing for me ran a close second, Rudd says. Conroy was a mercurial personality. From laughter to rage, from friendship to near-mortal combat, from highs to lows, and all in an instant. The three of them had painstakingly constructed a plan over the years to see Kim Beazley lead the party first, followed by Swan or Smith. They wanted to ensure Simon Crean never did. Rudd says it was his refusal to back a challenge against Crean that broke off his relationship with Smith, Conroy and Swan. I had refused to act as factional cannon fodder, he says.

Rudds assessment doesnt stop there, even towards those on his own side. Mark Latham was one of the most divisive figures in modern Australian Labor politics. Even his friends from that time, including Joel Fitzgibbon - who in time became a friend of mine - would later find, to their personal distress, that Latham had no difficulty whatsoever in turning on his own, including those closest to him. With then-opposition leader Mark Latham. Rudd adds that he found Lathams utterly impenetrable tome Civilising Global Capital an attempt to brand himself as the new intellectual leader of the Labor movement. Closer to home, here in Queensland, his view of his colleagues is no less savage.

Take Bill Ludwig, for example. In Queensland, the main right-wing faction was the Australian Workers Union, led by Bill Ludwig, whose views of the world ranged somewhere between Neanderthal and Neolithic, Rudd explains. And Bill's son, former senator Joe Ludwig? He was sent to the Senate by his father, the Cro-Magnon man of the Australian Labor movement and the closest Australia came to having a Chicago boss controlling such a large slice of the party. Former ALP state secretary Cameron Milner was a young thugster in training, working hard to become a senior, respected thug at the AWU finishing school for conservative party apparatchiks. Of course, thank goodness, some venom is left for the other side. Former Liberal prime minister John Howard, Rudd tells us, was an abysmal failure as a political leader and misled the public on the reason we went to war. He had also gone after my wife because he had failed in his pursuit of me and his dirt unit would have had to watch 6400 hours of tape to find the footage of Rudd picking wax out of his ear.

Peter Costello would never have the gumption to challenge Howard, who recognised that core weakness in Costellos character early on. To be fair, Rudd has also given a big tick to some of his former parliamentary colleagues. Anthony Albanese, "firebrand of the left, is the most gifted natural politician of his time. John Faulkner "had a withering eye for anything resembling posturing and puffery. He was a man elementally dedicated to the Labor cause. Alan Griffin was one of the best marginal seats campaigners in the country and Robbie McClelland was himself the essence of common sense, decency and reason.

Gareth Evans was the most effective foreign minister in Australian history, rivalled only by Bert Evatt in the war and immediate postwar years. On the other hand, Alexander Downer was the least significant foreign minister in Australian history. Rudds book is written in an entertaining way and gives his views from childhood, through to the desk of prime minister. Kevin Rudd's autobiography. At times its funny, self-deprecating and downright intriguing.

But it also shows why voters are turning against the big parties. It shows how our leaders can stand in front of a camera and fulsomely support someone they despise. This is part one of Rudds two-part autobiography. And it ends with Rudd still supporting, strongly, his colleague Ms Gillard. Shes friendly. She does her job well. She has a wicked sense of humour. And she made mistakes - like the strange request of wanting to sit next to him at the front table in Parliament. I was lost for words. Julia said it would underline the fact that this was a team from day one. I was uncomfortable with the idea. Also thought it was nuts  she eventually relented, Rudd says. Its just a hunch, but I reckon Kevin Rudd is setting Julia Gillard up for a big fall. Well just have to wait for volume two, to find out.
The Queensland government's approval rating among businesses has risen to its highest level since the 2015 election, according to a poll.

The latest Sensis Business Index delivered a ray of sunshine for the Palaszczuk government, as rumours swirl the Premier will pull the trigger for a November election.

The Queensland government's approval rating has risen to its best score since the 2015 election. Credit:Tammy Law

But despite its score rising five points, small and medium businesses still gave the Queensland government an overall negative rating of -13 in the September quarter, with excessive bureaucracy the most common criticism.

Sensis chief executive John Allan said the result should be a boost for the government as the election date looms, with many businesses appreciating the creation of employment and training schemes.
Several new Australian-developed medicines showing promise treating childhood epilepsy, stroke and autoimmune diseases have emerged from an unusual source: the fangs of venomous creatures.

Big pharmaceutical companies are excited by results showing these new venom-drugs are often superior to man-made drugs, and they are starting to pour money into research.

Many of the drugs come from spiders. The secret to their success? About 400 million years of evolution.

That has allowed arachnids to refine their chemicals into weapons with extraordinary effectiveness and accuracy. Venom-derived medicines retain this characteristic, able to target individual biological processes with precision and without nasty side-effects.
The new-look Sonos app. You can crank up the volume on the Sonos One with minimal distortion, or for an extra boost you can link two speakers as a stereo pair (but not a Sonos One and Play:1). Otherwise you can step up to the more powerful Play:3 or Play:5 to fill a larger room. You can also take advantage of Trueplay to calibrate Sonos speakers for your room, which makes a noticeable difference to the sound quality. The Sonos One is well-suited to the kitchen, bathroom or bedroom  the kind of place where you might want to place a smart speaker. While it's a bit more bulky than the $199 Google Home or the US$99 Amazon Echo, the Sonos One easily surpasses them in terms of sound quality, not to mention the tiny Google Home Mini and Echo Dot. It's easy to tell whether or not Alexa and Google Assistant are listening in for their trigger words. It will be interesting to see how the Sonos One's sound quality stacks up against the upcoming Apple HomePod, which is roughly the same size, or the upcoming Google Home Max which appears to be a rival to the Sonos Play:3 or 5.

Bending the rules Alexa can send music to every member of the Sonos multi-room audio family. The Sonos One's party trick is that it features a six-microphone array so it can play host to the new generation of talkative smart assistants. It supports Amazon's Alexa out of the box, with Google Assistant coming next year. Alexa doesn't officially work in Australia yet, although she shouldn't be far away considering that Amazon's local expansion plans are imminent. Thankfully it's not too difficult to bring Alexa into Australian homes today, especially if you have some geo-dodging experience under your belt. Firstly set your Sonos account to the US, then download the Alexa app on your mobile device from the US iTunes or Google Play store. Now you should be able to use your existing Amazon.com account, linked to an Australian mailing address, and then add Sonos to your list of Alexa "skills'. Alexa's timezone will be out, but you can fix this in the Alexa app.

The processing of jumping between apps to authorise everything is a little time-consuming and cumbersome, but you'll get there. You'll also need to add a US credit card if you want to sign up for Amazon's streaming music service. You might be able to get around this by adding a Visa Load & Go card as a payment method on your Amazon account (my card has expired so I need to grab a new one from the post office to test this). Ensure the card is registered to a US street address  Delaware is a good location to avoid state-based sales tax. Alternatively you can save your money and just upload some of your own music to your Amazon account for Alexa to access. UPDATE: I've used a Load & Go with US Amazon in the past but I can't get it to accept it as a valid payment method for Amazon Music, so you'll need to investigate other options. Thankfully this will all be much simpler when Amazon finally gets serious about Australia in the next few months, as well as when Google Assistant comes to the Sonos One. Speak up

With Alexa hanging on your every word you can put the Sonos One through its paces. To grab her attention just start your sentences with "Alexa", which quickly feels more natural than "Okay Google" but is also easier to accidentally drop in conversation. A look at the top of the Sonos One speaker reveals a key design difference to the Play:1. The new speaker features touch-sensitive play/pause and volume buttons, along with a backlit on/off mic button that you can press when you want to ensure that Alexa isn't listening. When you say her name, Alexa plays a subtle tone to reassure you that she's listening  unlike Google Home which only flashes its lights, which is of little help if you can't see the speaker. Both speakers' noise-cancelling microphone arrays make them good listeners and their performance is on par in noisy environments or when you're calling out from the next room. Alexa recently gained Google Assistant's ability to recognise different voices. Both smart assistants have an impressive grasp of natural language and are a fountain of information. They can handle contextual follow-up questions, but you still need to say their name again. Both can also control smart home gear and tap into personal information like your calendar, although in terms of capabilities it's not really a fair comparison until Alexa has been localised for Australia. Even so, it's a moot point here as Sonos One will eventually support both Google and Amazon's assistants so you can test them yourself.

Ignoring the elephants in the room One of the biggest frustrations at this point is that Alexa can only access music from Amazon Music (including your uploads), Pandora, iHeartRadio and TuneIn, with Spotify coming soon. Apple Music and Google Play Music subscribers are out of luck for now, you can still play these services via the Sonos One speaker using the Sonos app but Alexa can't access them. Presumably Google Play Music access will come when Sonos adds support for Google Assistant, while Apple fans will benefit from support for AirPlay 2  also coming to the Sonos One "next year" in a firmware update. If you already have a home full of Sonos speakers, you can ask Alexa to play different songs to different Sonos speakers around the house  a feature which Google Home sadly lacks, preferring Chromecast Audio speakers. It will be interesting to see whether Google Home ever fully embraces Sonos now that Google is releasing a rival in the Home Max speaker. So what's the verdict
Beijing: They raised their hands in unison and the scrutineers called out that there was not one vote in dissent: "Mei you".

The Great Hall of the People, where the leading cadres sat under the red star, erupted with applause. And with that, Chinese president Xi Jinping has risen in Chinese Communist Party history, to be right up there with Mao Zedong.

Chinese President Xi Jinping raises his hand to show approval of a work report during the closing ceremony for the 19th Party Congress Credit:AP

Xi Jinping Thought joined Mao Zedong's and Deng Xiaoping's eponymous theories in the Chinese constitution.

"A guide to action for the entire party and all the Chinese people to strive for," said the resolution passed by the twice-a-decade meeting of the party.
By PTI: Mumbai, Oct 24 (PTI) Superstar Salman Khan has booked Eid 2019 as the release date of his next film, "Bharat".

The 51-year-old star will play the title role in the movie, which will be directed by Ali Abbas Zafar.

With "Bharat", the actor is continuing with the trend of releasing his films on Eid.

The movie is an official adaptation of 2014 South Korean film, "Ode to My Father", which narrates modern Korean history from the 1950s to the modern day through the life of an ordinary man and events such as the Hungnam Evacuation during the 1950 Korean War.

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The film will also depict the governments decision to dispatch nurses and miners to West Germany in the 60s and the Vietnam War.

"Bharat" will be backed by Atul Agnihotri, who attended the South Korean films screening at Berlin Film Festival, where it was identified as potential content for the Indian masses.

Agnihotri says their adaptation will be inspired by the original movie but the story will be based closer to home.

"Its the journey of a country and also a person, both of whom go by the name of Bharat.

"That film is just the starting point for ours but since it was an inspiration, we wanted in all fairness to officially own it and acquired the remake rights before going ahead with Bharat," he said in a release.

The producer also said Salman was the right choice to play the role of the protagonist, given his long association with his brother-in-law as an actor, producer and director.

The actor-producer duos film will hit the celluloid on the festive period once again post the blockbuster 2011 "Bodyguard".

"Its a character that I thought would resonate with him. Its a huge responsibility making a film with Salman as there are big expectations that come with the job.

"Im very conscious about Salmans fan base and what they want. And once again, Im convinced that being a family film its worthy of coming during the festive time. And anyway, an Eid release is always every producers preferred choice."

Agnihotri added director Zafar is excited and "passionate" to a part of the project.

"Ali is a friend, I love his work and eventually its all about connecting with the source. If you speak to him, you will realise that Ali is far more passionate about the material," he said.

Salman has worked with Zafar in 2016s blockbuster "Sultan" and their much-awaited film "Tiger Zinda Hai" up for release on December 22.

"Bharat" will be shot on elaborate sets in Abu Dhabi and Spain, besides Punjab and Delhi in India.

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"Casting will be our main agenda over the next three months and since its a character-driven story, we will take actors who fit the part," he added. PTI RDS RDS

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The latest statistics from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show an increase of 2.9% in overseas visits to Ireland for the first nine months of 2017, compared to the same period of 2016.



At 7,661,200 visits, overall trips to Ireland were up 2.9% in the first nine months of 2017 compared to the same period in 2016.



The figures show that visits from Mainland Europe grew by 3.5% for January to September 2017 (2,704,800 visits) while North America registered an increase of 18.6% for January  September 2017 (1,654,900 visits).

Not surprisingly, the effects of the Brexit are becoming more pronounced with visits from Great Britain decreasing by -6.7% for January  September 2017 (2,810,500 visits).

Visits from the rest of the world, mostly long-haul and developing markets, were up by 16.2% totalling 491,000 visits.



Commenting on the figures, CEO of Tourism Ireland, Niall Gibbons said, "The decline in visitor numbers from Britain continues to be a real concern, down -6.7% for the January to September period. The fall in the value of sterling has made holidays and short breaks here more expensive for British visitors and has made Britain more affordable for visitors from many of our top markets."

He added, "This year, Tourism Ireland has placed a greater focus on our culturally curious audience, who are less impacted by currency fluctuations. However, competitiveness and the value for money message are more important than ever in Britain right now."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Flight Centre Travel Group (FCTG) yesterday announced plans to create more than 30 new roles to facilitate its expansion in Ireland.



The company is one of the worlds largest travel agency groups with operations in 23 countries and a corporate travel management network in 90 countries. The company anticipates clear growth opportunities in Ireland and is now choosing to reinvest in its Irish operations. The skills required for the new roles include Trained Travel Agents, IT staff, Finance staff, Sales & Marketing and Administration staff.



The company, which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, plans to expand its Dublin-centred leisure and corporate travel footprint over the next five years as part of a dedicated growth strategy in Ireland. The expansion will take FLT's workforce in the country beyond 100-people and will set the company up for further longer term growth.



This announcement follows a trade mission to Australia with Tanaiste and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Frances Fitzgerald TD and Martin Shanahan CEO of IDA Ireland as part of the State Visit by President Michael D. Higgins to Australia and is supported by the Irish government through IDA Ireland.



Speaking yesterday, An Tanaiste and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Frances Fitzgerald TD said, "Ireland welcomes quality Foreign Direct Investment from around the world and it was a pleasure to meet the senior leadership teams of so many companies during my Investment Mission to Australia last week. International travel is growing fast but also changing dramatically too, especially with the advent of the Internet."

She added, "Flight Centre Travel Group are one of the world leaders in this evolving industry and I am delighted that they will create an additional 30 jobs over the next 5 years in their Irish operation. We look forward to a mutually beneficial relationship as they grow their business here."



Source: www.businessworld.ie
A majority of Ryanair pilots at its largest base have rejected management's offer of improved pay and conditions, the airline said on Friday, dealing a blow to its efforts to address a recent pilot shortage.

Europe's largest airline by passenger numbers sparked outrage in recent weeks by cancelling about 20,000 flights after admitting it did not have enough standby pilots to operate its schedule without significant delays.

It responded by promising pilots significant improvements in pay and conditions, exceeding rates paid by rivals, with negotiations to take place with each of its 86 bases individually.

Pilots at London's Stansted Airport rejected the Ryanair offer by a margin of 60% to 40% at Friday evening's vote, the Irish airline said.

"Ryanair will continue to engage with the London Stansted ERC (Employee Relations Council) to understand how it can address their remaining concerns, especially as it will be recruiting new pilots in Stansted from November at these higher pay rates," it said in a statement.

Two Ryanair pilots with knowledge of the vote told Reuters that the turnout was above 90%.

The deal included a pay increase for all grades of pilots of about 20% and improvements in conditions, two separate sources told Reuters.

Ryanair said in its statement that it would lift captain salaries to 20% more than those offered by rival Norwegian Air Shuttle.

A significant portion of the increase is by way of a "productivity bonus" of between 500 euros and 1,000 euros a month on condition that pilots make themselves available to work three extra days in November and three in December, according to a copy of the letter to pilots that was seen by Reuters.

The bonus also requires pilots to deal directly with the company through the ERC at Stansted.Ryanair does not recognise unions and instead agrees conditions with pilots through ERCs.

A number of pilots who have been organising on social media in recent weeks to use the pilot shortage to press for better conditions have demanded a new independent and pan-European representative body.

Ryanair has rejected criticism of its ERC system. A 2007 Irish Supreme Court ruling rejected arguments by pilots that the ERC system did not constitute genuine collective bargaining.

Organisers pushing for pan-European unionisation have told pilots that more than 30 bases have rejected the deal so far, a number of pilots have told Reuters.

A Ryanair spokesman said that figures was untrue and that more than 10 other bases had agreed new pay deals, with the majority of bases yet to vote. He would not provide a breakdown of how many had accepted or rejected deals so far.

"Based on what we have been hearing from Ryanair pilots, this is not a surprise," said British Airline Pilots' Association General Secretary Brian Strutton.

"Stansted is the critical base for Ryanair and I think other bases will now also reject." (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
The worlds leading cyber security experts, hackers and cyber-strategists will converge on Dublin City University today for the European Cyber Threat Summit. The day-long summit is the largest event of its kind in Europe and will include security specialists, law enforcement, military and hackers.



The European Cyber Threat Summit is organised by Cyber Risk International, the Irish cyber-security and data protection firm. Among the guests at today's event are Edward Snowden - former CIA operative and whistle-blower, Steven Wilson - Head of Europols European Cybercrime Centre, Ira Winkler - a leading global expert in cyber-espionage and London cyber-fraudster - Tony Sales.



The conference will explore how both cyber security and business can work together to mitigate risks and improve safety without compromising efficiency. It will also feature a hackathon session by a globally renowned team of hackers from Hungary.



The final session of the day will be a talk by Edward Snowden on the geopolitical nature of hacking by nation states followed by a no holds barred interview hosted by Paul C. Dwyer. Edward Snowdens explosive NSA (National Security Agency) leaks in 2013 have changed the way the cyber security world works today. Unable to return to the US, Snowden will be speaking to the summit via video link from Russia.



Speaking this week, CEO of Cyber Risk International, Paul C Dwyer said, "As an ex CIA operative, we believe Edward has a unique perspective on how Ireland is being surveilled by other nation states. It is an honour and a major coups to have Edward speak to the Summit. We have come under intense pressure for inviting him to speak, which just serves to underline the importance of what he has to say."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Global wine production this year is set to fall to its lowest level since 1961 after harsh weather in western Europe damaged vineyards in the world's largest production area, international wine body OIV said on Tuesday.

Global output is expected to fall to 246.7 million hectolitres in 2017, down 8% from last year, the Paris-based International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) said in its first estimates for the year.

A hectolitre represents 100 litres, or the equivalent of just over 133 standard 75 cl wine bottles.

The global decline reflects a plunge in output in the European Union, where the world's top three producers -- Italy, France and Spain -- are each projected to see a sharp drop.

The European Commission, the EU's executive, estimates the bloc's wine grape harvest will shrink to a 36-year low in 2017 as adverse weather from spring frosts and summer heatwaves takes its toll.

In France, the weather has affected most of the main growing regions including Bordeaux and Champagne, and the government has projected production will sink to its lowest in decades.

The OIV's projections, which exclude juice and must (new wine), put Italian wine production down 23% at 39.3 million hectolitres, French output down 19% at 36.7 million and Spanish production down 15% at 33.5 million.

Reduced global production may erode a surplus over demand seen in recent years, when consumption was curbed by the effects of a world financial crisis in 2008.

The OIV said it was initially assuming a consumption range of 240.5 to 245.8 million hectolitres based on medium and longer-term trends, but did not yet have firm demand data for 2017.

However, the impact of reduced production on actual market supply and prices depends on levels of stocks from previous years and the quality of wine in landmark regions.

In France, the world's leading exporter by value, producers have pointed to the prospect of good quality wine.

Outside Europe, the United States, the world's fourth-largest producer and the biggest consumer, was expected to see output remain little changed at 23.3 million hectolitres, down 1%, the OIV said.

Production in Australia was expected to rise 6% to 13.9 million hectolitres while Argentina was projected to post a 25% jump to 11.8 million after a weather-hit 2016, the OIV said.

The preliminary world estimates lacked data from some countries, notably China, for which the OIV provisionally assumed stable production compared with last year at 11.4 million hectolitres. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Written By:Sandy McDowell

In his lab at Boston University, Darren Roblyer, PhD, studies mice, invents new medical devices, and guides a clinical trial for women getting chemotherapy as their first treatment for breast cancer. All 3 of these projects are funded by his grant from the American Cancer Society. They all also have the same goal: To learn how well chemotherapy is working to destroy a tumor, as quickly as possible after the treatment is started. With that information, patients may not have to cope with side effects of chemotherapy drugs that arent helping them. Oncologists can try another combination of drugs right away. And, women with breast cancer may survive longer. Roblyers expertise is using light to take pictures of whats happening inside a tumor. His field of work is called optical imaging. How Optical Imaging Works If youve ever put a flashlight against your palm, youve seen how light shines through skin and spreads out on the other side of your hand. Some health and medical devices make use of these optical traits. One example is a Fitbit that monitors heart rate by shining a green light through the skin above the wrist. Another optical device is a pulse oximeter. Thats the little clamp nurses put on a patients finger in the hospital to measure the percentage of blood thats carrying oxygen. The oximeter works by shining a red light and an infrared light through one side of your finger and using a detector on the other side to measure any light that your finger didnt absorb. Roblyer uses near infrared light, which is a little bit redder than humans can see. Whats cool about light in the near infrared is that it can penetrate deep into tissuecentimeters deep, Roblyer says. He and his team send light through the skin of the person with cancer, and photons (particles of light) travel through the tissue and through the tumor. Then, a tiny number of the photons come back out of the tissue. We can look at the photons with a camera or sensor, Roblyer says, and based on how theyve changedhow many were absorbed, how many scatteredwe can tell an amazing amount about the tissue.

 If Digital Optical Spectroscopy (DOS) becomes part of the standard of care, cancer patients could receive only drugs that effectively treat their tumors. And doctors might be able to make timely changes in chemotherapy to avoid side effects for drugs that aren't working. Darren Roblyer, PhD - American Cancer Society Grantee

What Optical Imaging Shows About a Tumor A common reason someone has chemotherapy as the first treatment for breast cancer is to shrink a tumor so it is easier to remove with surgery. That can mean the difference between having the whole breast removed (mastectomy) and having only the tumor removed (lumpectomy). To see how effectively chemotherapy is decreasing the tumors size, doctors can use traditional imaging devices like mammography and ultrasound. But in up to about 20% of patients, surgeons find that chemotherapy didnt shrink the tumor at all. That means a patient may have had months of treatment thats making them feel horrible but thats not doing anything to the cancer, Roblyer says. In addition to shrinking the tumor, another big benefit of chemotherapy before surgery can include increasing how long patients live. And that isnt related to the tumors size or shape. Studies show a woman lives longer when chemotherapy before surgery leads to a pathologic complete response. That means when the tumor is removed by surgery, doctors dont see cancer cells actively growing in the tumor. In the infusion center, one major issue for doctors is that you cant tell if chemo even gets to the tumor, Roblyer says. His teams optical imaging methods could change this. Diffuse Optical Spectroscopy (DOS) lets doctors see the biological changes occurring inside the tumor earlier. The first time Roblyer and his team use DOS is at the same time patients are receiving chemotherapy. They also measure patients during the first week after infusion and at other times during the treatment cycle. DOS can track a tumors blood supply and metabolism by taking images of how the tumor affects light. These kinds of changes occur before changes in tumor shape or size do. The kinds of imaging currently used to check for a pathologic complete response, include certain types of PET and MRI scans. Because their size makes these machines unmovable, PET scans and MRIs cant be used during chemotherapy infusions. Doctors tend to use these scans after a patient has received 1 or 2 cycles of chemotherapy. There are several benefits of seeing how the chemotherapy affects the tumor early on. First, doctors can stop using chemotherapy drugs that arent working on the cancermaybe before they can cause major side effects. Plus, doctors may be able to use DOS to predict how well a different drug or set of drugs will work to help them choose the most promising one(s). Finding the chemotherapy that leads to a pathologic complete response earlier might increase a patients chance for surviving longer. Some Early Exciting Findings Its really, really fascinating, Roblyer says. Some of the changes his team sees are predictive for how well the chemotherapy will work. Youd think that youd see less oxygen in the tumor as it starts to die from chemo, Roblyer says, But, we found something kind of weird. In the first 24 hours after a patients very first infusion, sometimes we saw an increase in oxygenated blood, not a decrease. Even more provocatively, he adds, in earlier studies, we discovered that spike was a predictor of whether the patient would respond to the treatment, weeks and months into the future. It seems to be a positive indicator that the chemo will work well. Roblyer and his team were inspired. We started to think, Wow, theres probably a lot of biology happening during treatment that hasnt been studied because the tools havent been available to measure patients at the right time points. Thats what stimulated his team to design a wearable device that would use optics to study chemotherapys effect on a breast tumor. But, as Roblyer says, You cant build something and just start measuring patients. There are many steps in between. And thats why Roblyer and his group simultaneously test optics in both mice and humans. The Benefits of Studying Mice and Humans at the Same Time In text books and journal articles, Roblyer says, it looks like research happens sequentiallya direct path from working with cells, then small animals in a preclinical setting, then with people in clinical trials. But in our lab, its all simultaneous, all the time. Even his grant covers 3 distinct, but overlapping projects. We dont just translate what weve learned from the lab to the clinic like you hear about with drug development, Roblyer explains. We translate in both directionsback and forth from the clinic to the lab. I call it reverse translation. The benefit, he says, is that you can do things using small animals that you cant do in humans. For instance, you can try drugs that arent FDA approved yet or different doses. So, we may see something in clinical studies that raises a question we can only answer with an animal study.

Designing a New

Wearable Optical Device For the clinical trial Roblyers co-leading with oncologist Naomi Ko, MD, he uses a handheld probe against the surface of the skin to measure a tumor with DOS. At the same time, hes designing a flexible DOS that women can wear that conforms to the same shape of their breast. It will be the first-ever wearable imaging pad that can take continuous optical measurements in breast cancer patients. Its been an iterative process. Roblyer is perfecting his device with the help of a grant from the American Cancer Society. The current model has 32 light sources (LEDs) and 16 photodiodes. Roblyer's team kept modifying the places for light sources and diodes to find one that would allow the highest sensitivity to measure what they wanted at different depths. Right now, the device doesnt store data. It has to be connected to a computer to download its information. Its hard to measure as frequently as we want with the device we have, Roblyer says. Were thinking about how to make it untethered in the future because the chemotherapy infusion center is just the first place we want to measure the effects of chemo on the tumor. It would be fantastic if the patient could wear the device at home so we could learn more about what the most valuable timepoints are. They could be a day, or a week after treatment. In addition to portability, there are some things to work out with the devicelike Roblyers team is still looking for the best way to adhere it to the skin. He still has another year of work through his American Cancer Society grant, though, so his team has room for more innovation. When the grant's over, Roblyer and his team likely have several years of work to do before the wearable DOS device will be ready for doctors to use it with patients. "We still need to test it with healthy volunteers and with people who have breast cancer," Roblyer says. "Plus, FDA approval, and much more." But simultaneous work continues. Receiving the grant from the American Cancer Society spurred Roblyers success with grants from other sources. He and his team are working on several new projects. Theyre using optical monitoring to explore less toxic treatments for chemo-resistant breast tumors. Theyre also using DOS to monitor the effects of treatment in children with osteosarcoma, a cancer that starts in the bones.

A Phantom in the Optics Lab A big part of a cancer scientists job world is validating that the research theyre doing is accurate and can be used safely in humans. One tool Roblyers lab uses to help make sure their measurements are correct is called an optical phantom. In a research lab, a phantom is a model of human tissue that can be used to test medical devices. Optical phantoms are designed to mimic how light is distributed in human tissue. Roblyers team makes optical phantoms with a piece of silicone mixed with a type of dye that absorbs light and particles of titanium dioxide that scatter light. We can make distinct types of phantoms. Some absorb light like a tumor, and some absorb light like normal tissue. We can make phantoms that are curved like the human breast or flat like skin, he says. Roblyers team uses phantoms to: simulate how light will be distributed in the

breast with and without tumors

breast with and without tumors calibrate their DOS to make sure its measuring

accurately

accurately record a measurement for reference

Imaging phantoms have been used for decades, he explains. There are phantoms for X-rays, MRIs, and ultrasound. Theyre considered the gold standard for testing a device, and everyone needs standards to test against.
Shia Central Waqf Board president has sent a letter to PM Modi suggesting that Humayun's Tomb can be demolished and converted into a graveyard for Muslims.

By Kumar Abhishek: The Uttar Pradesh (UP) Shia Central Waqf Board has suggested demolition of Humayun's Tomb and its conversion into a graveyard for Muslims. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Board president Waseem Rizvi has said this would solve the grave problem being faced by the Muslims of Delhi for burying the dead.

The All India Rabta-e-Masajid and Madaris-e-Islamia of Yamuna Vihar, in letters to the UP Shia Central Waqf Board dated October 15, lamented the paucity of space for graveyard in the national capital. They said the old burial grounds had got filled up and there no space for building new ones either.

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The two organisations have requested the UP Shia Waqf Board to provide land for burial ground in the neighbouring state close to the Delhi border.

The Board said it examined the cities in UP close to the Delhi border but found that there was no land available with it for the purpose. However, it said, the problem concerning the Muslims living in Delhi was really serious and required to be solved in public interest.

The Board has suggested to the PM to demolish the Humayun's Tomb situated in the Nizamuddin area of the national capital and convert it into a burial ground.

Shia Central Waqf Board president suggests demolition of Humayun's Tomb for graveyard

Shia Central Waqf Board president suggests demolition of Humayun's Tomb for graveyard

Giving the reasons behind its proposal, Rizvi said the Humayun's Tomb is spread in an area of 35 acres. "It is not a religious place. It will be considered as a graveyard because of the grave present there."

He further said the Mughals had come from various countries to loot India. "These Mughals snatched away the kingdoms from the kings, looted them and became the rulers. They extorted the hard-earned earnings of the people by imposing lagans for several generations.

"The Mughals caused immense harm to India's old culture and traditions. According to historians, the Mughals demolished more than 3,000 temples by misusing their power and rule," he said.

The Board went on to allege that the Mughal kings were neither propagators of Islam nor they were efficient rulers. "That is the reason why their grand graves cannot be the national heritage," he said.

The Board has suggested that Humayun's Tomb should be removed from the list of national heritage, demolished and converted into a graveyard for the Muslims.

The Board said there was no hindrance as per Islam in demolishing the Humayuns's Tomb. "The community to which Humayun belonged does not recognise any tomb," it said and cited some cases of Sunni Muslims in Saudia Arabia.

He said those graves, called Jannatul Baqi, were in the form of a grand tomb. "The tomb was razed on April 21, 1925 by the then ruler of Saudi Arabia after not according Islamic recognition to it," he said.

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The Board said Humayun's Tomb should meet the same fate as Jannatul Baqi. He hoped that those Muslims identifying themselves with Humayun's community should not have any problem.

The Board further said the government does not earn from the Humayun's Tomb. On the contrary, it said, the government has to spend lakhs of rupees on the maintenance of the tomb. This money is the hard-earned income of the people of the country and should be used for development of the country. "Money should not be wasted on the upkeep of tombs of rulers who were loots and ruffians," it said.

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Racism in colleges is a common trait. Why? Especially for students from India and other countries where uniforms with a dress code were mandated in schools, entering into college means a gateway to freedom of speech and dressing. When these students get into colourful attires, it is only at this epoch that they actually start looking at people's face values.

Also, just breaking out of adolescence, importance on looks and other etiquettes play an important role in the college life. However, the glamour and beauty is ephemeral. For those who go on to study abroad into a new environment, it would be hard. To those who are victimised through racial discrimination in colleges, here are cognizant ways to combat.

Identify your marks

Even though some things aren't really your vices, you sure know what are the things that people remark at you. Its okay to be put down, you get to know the challenges. But be sure to display your resilience valiantly. Only when you know whats happening around you, can you actually work on it. So gather knowledge on the malicious remarks but don't chew over the thought because you are more than what people portray you to be.

5 Tips To Be a Successful Working Student

Be proud and loud

Firslty, it takes confidence to show people that it is an unabashing thing to be yourself. Do not shy off when someone passes a derogatory remark at your identity. Tell them that you are proud of who you are and let them know that only insecure people try to pull down others. Your confidence will take you through the hardships

Create support system

This is one of the powerful means to tackle any problem in life. If you have people around you to support you, there is nothing greater that can help you to celebrate life. Once you get the emotional balance that you require from friends and family, you will be reassured that you can handle racism efficiently.

5 Things A College Fresher Must Do

Talk to policy makers

Change is something that is inevitable. Not all varsities might be forward thinking or have already progressed in their policies. But you suggesting an anti-ragging/anti-eve-teasing policy can spark a change in the stagnated environment. Be the torch bearer to ignite the change that you want to see.

File complaint duly

When you know that something is not okay, do not hesitate to register a complaint with the college authorities. Not filing it might get you into even more trouble when the problem blows out of proportion. Just in case, the action is not taken, you could even escalate it to the management or even the police. Staying silent is hazardous in this issue. Speaking up will give you a solution.

Titbit:

Recently, a Tamil talk show Neeya naana's episode was banned from being aired after its promo revealing the topic, "Who is beautiful - Tamilnadu girls or Kerala girls?" Although meant to be viewed frivolous, desensitising racism was taken into account through a police complaint lodged by a viewer.

Happy Friendship Day: How to Make Friends at School and College?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: In Atlanta, Soyia Ellison, soyia.ellison@cartercenter.org

In Nairobi, Don Bisson, don.bisson@cartercenter.org

NAIROBI  The current political and electoral context in Kenya is marked by increased insecurity, a lack of dialogue, and narrowing prospects for a credible presidential election on Oct. 26. Therefore, The Carter Center urges Kenyas key political leaders to use the limited time remaining before the scheduled polls to engage in dialogue to find a mutually acceptable way forward so that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) can conduct fresh presidential elections in a peaceful and secure environment.

Although the IEBC has taken steps to improve the technical conduct of the election following the Supreme Courts Sept. 1 ruling annulling the August election, and Chairman Wafula Chebukati has indicated that the IEBC is technically prepared to conduct the polls, recent statements by Chebukati make clear that the current political impasse constrains the IEBCs ability to conduct a credible election. Notwithstanding the 60-day deadline mandated by the Supreme Court to hold the fresh election, there are cases pending before the court that could result in a decision to delay the elections. Any such delay should be used to ensure that the political leaders and the IEBC agree quickly on parameters so that a competitive, inclusive, and credible election can be held as soon as possible.

Given the heightened political tensions, it is imperative that Kenyas political leaders find a mutually acceptable path forward for holding credible democratic elections, said former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. If sanctioned by the Supreme Court, the main political leaders should signal their support for a short delay in the elections to allow space for renewed dialogue and to agree on any additional electoral reforms necessary to enable credible elections.

The continued refusal of the two candidates to meet jointly with the IEBC to discuss an agreed-upon way forward has exacerbated an already precarious situation. Raila Odinga, the main opposition candidate and leader of the National Super Alliance (NASA), has indicated that he will not take part in the election and has threatened that NASA supporters might try to disrupt the polls. In the face of such disruptions, and the potential response by security forces, there is a serious risk of election-related violence should the elections go forward, especially in areas with strong NASA support. While Odinga has recently called on his supporters to refrain from violence, it remains to be seen what will transpire. The recent disturbances by NASA supporters to prevent the IEBC from training staff in the partys strongholds are troubling and unacceptable. Election officials should not fear for their safety in the conduct of their duties.

If there are disruptions, it is incumbent upon President Uhuru Kenyatta and other state actors to exercise restraint when confronted by citizens who are exercising their right to protest peacefully. Security forces should refrain from excessive use of force and take all measures to facilitate an environment in which all Kenyan citizens can securely exercise their right to vote. Officers found to use excessive and disproportionate force should be held accountable for their actions. Any injury or death related to an election is unacceptable and a tragedy both for those families affected and for the country.

Because of the growing insecurity, the uncertain political environment, and the lack of a fully competitive election, The Carter Center does not plan to deploy a full election observation mission to assess the Oct. 26 election. Instead, the Center will deploy a limited observation mission with 10 long-term observers and a small team of election experts to assess the general electoral environment, and key procedural changes implemented by the IEBC, especially related to tallying processes at the constituency tally centers. Given the small size of the team, the Center will not conduct a robust assessment of polling station level processes.

Background:

The Carter Center has had a core team of experts in Kenya since April, monitoring key parts of the electoral process, including voter registration, campaigning, electoral preparations, and the recent resolution of disputes in the courts. That team was joined by a large group of observers who helped monitor voting, counting, and tallying in the days surrounding the Aug. 8 election. Following the Sept. 1 decision by the Supreme Court to annul the August election, the Center was invited by the IEBC to extend its presence to observe the Oct. 26 fresh election. Long-term observers rejoined the core team on Oct. 4 and have been deployed to various locations in the country to observe critical pre- and post-election processes.

The Center has issued several public statements throughout the process regarding its observation and findings, including a pre-election statement on July 27, a preliminary statement about the Aug. 8 election on Aug. 10, another statement regarding the tabulation process on Aug. 17, and two statements on the Supreme Court ruling and its implementation on Sept. 1 and Oct. 4. These public statements are available at cartercenter.org.

###

"Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope."

A not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in over 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care. The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide.
Tokyo Cement makes settlement over brand name

ICR Newsroom By 24 October 2017

Tokyo Cement Company (Lanka) PLC agreed to a settlement over a suit filed against Ruhunu Lanka Cement (Pvt) Ltd in the Commercial High Court of the Western province, Sri Lanka. Tokyo Cement alleged infringement with regard to the similar trade names of the brands that the two companies distributed under.



The plaintiffs company, Tokyo Cement, distributes under various brands including Tokyo Super, Mitsui and Nippon. The company stated that it was in joint venture with Japans Mitsui Mining Co Ltd (now Nippon Coke and Engineering Company Ltd), and used its brand name Mitsui and Nippon in its distribution brands.



The defendants company, Ruhunu Lanka Cement, is part of distribution conglomerate, Hansagiri Group of Companies and is the sole agent in Sri Lanka for DG Cement Industries (Pakistan). It distributes under cement brands such as Ruhunu Cement, Maha Cement, DG Cement and Mitsuki.



Tokyo Cement said that Ruhunu Lanka Cements brand name "Mitsuki Cement" was confusingly similar to its own brand "Mitsui Cement" along with the prominent green and red horizontal lines and blue lettering, which were in both brand logos.



Both parties mutually agreed to a settlement, and Ruhunu is able to continue to retain its trade name "Mitsuki", putting any allegations of trademark infringement to rest.

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Cemex Victorville wins California energy award

24 October 2017

Cemexs Victorville Cement plant received the Southern California Edison (SCE) 2017 Energy Efficiency Award for its land stewardship and commitment to conserving energy. The award was presented during the 7th Annual Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration, reports Aggregates Manager.



"Cemex considers energy usage and the environment at all of our operations," says Eric Wittmann, Cemex USA regional president  west region. "ts an honor to be recognised for the hard work we do each day. Conserving energy is not only the right thing to do, but it is our responsibility to do it."

"At Cemex, we are always looking for ways to improve our energy usage at our cement plants," says Dr Hugo Bolio, Cemex USA's executive vice president  Cement Operations and Technology. "We care about the communities in which we live and operate, and by using less energy, we have a positive impact on them and the environment."

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The Enforcement Directorate is now likely to approach the court for non-compliance of summons against RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav's son Tejashwi Yadav.

By Munish Chandra Pandey: Former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav failed to depose before the ED today after ignoring two prior summons in the IRCTC case. The agency was unsatisfied with Yadav's earlier interrogation and had summoned him to appear for further questioning.

The Enforcement Directorate is now likely to approach the court for non-compliance of summons against the RJD supremo, Lalu Prasad Yadav's son.

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On October 10th, Tejashwi Yadav was interrogated by the ED for more than eight hours in association with the IRCTC scam. Yadav was questioned about money laundering vis-a-vis the railway hotel allotment case.

Meanwhile, in this case involving the entire family of Lalu Prasad Yadav, Rabri Devi has been asked to appear for questioning on 27th October.

"The investigative officer was expected to record Tejashwi Yadav statement under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), under which it had registered a case against the Lalu Prasad family and others but he did not appear," said a senior officer of ED.

Earlier, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) grilled Lalu Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav for their alleged involvement in the IRCTC scam case.

WHAT IS THE CASE?

It has been alleged by the agency when Lalu Yadav was the railway minister in UPA government, he handed over the maintenance of two hotels run by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) in Ranchi and Puri to Sujata Hotel.

Sujata Hotel is a company owned by Vinay and Vijay Kochhar. It has been alleged in the complaint that Kochar brothers were given the two hotels in return for a prime plot of three acres in Patna through a benami company called Delight Marketing Company.

According to the complaint, after the tender was awarded to Kochar brothers, the ownership of Delight Marketing also changed hands from Sarla Gupta to Rabri Devi and Tejashwi Yadav between 2010 and 2014.

ALSO WATCH VIDEO | After Tejashwi, Lalu's elder son Tej Pratap Yadav faces corruption heat over soil scam

--- ENDS ---
As Israeli PM hails evangelical 'best friends,' a heartfelt cry from Bethlehem's mayor over the 'strangling' of Jesus' birthplace

The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday told a group of Christian media representatives that Israel has no better friend than the world's Christian communities. He was speaking at the Christian Media Summit in Jerusalem, the first such event hosted by Israel.

The message he delivered has become something of a common theme since the election of Donald Trump, who relied heavily on support from white, conservative evangelicals, some of whom support Israel for a range of reasons varying from solidarity against Islamic fundamentalism in the region, to ideological Christian Zionism.

In July, Christian Today reported how Netanyahu told the annual conference of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) that Christian evangelicals were Israel's best friends in the world.

In a video address to the Washington gathering that was notable for the pointed absence of any reference to President Donald Trump or his administration's efforts in the region, Netanyahu said: 'When I say we have no greater friends than Christian supporters of Israel, I know you've always stood with us.'

To cheers, he told the crowd: 'You stand with us because you stand with yourselves, because we represent that common heritage of freedom that goes back thousands of years.'

And reaching a crescendo, he added: 'America has no better friend than Israel and Israel has no better friend than America. And Israel has no better friend in America than you.'

Perhaps most controversially of all, Netanyahu said: 'The only place where you have religious freedom guaranteed is Israel. The only place where Christian communities in the Middle East thrive, they grow, not only survive but they have a future. That place is Israel, because Israel guarantees religious freedom. Israel represents the freedom that we all cherish.'

Many, including the dwindling number of Palestinian Christians, would disagree.

Indeed, as Netanyahu addressed the Christian media summit yesterday, the respected Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz published an opinion piece by the new mayor of Bethlehem, Anton Salman, directly contradicting the Israeli prime minister's caims, and questioning why American evangelicals are 'celebrating' Israeli policies which are 'strangling' the birthplace of Jesus.

That Bethlehem is indeed being 'strangled' by the wall, or 'separation barrier' that cuts through the West Bank and by the settlements deemed illegal under international law, is not in doubt (and indeed Christian Today used the word in a headline above a feature on the city last Christmas).

'There are no words to describe the incarceration of Jesus' birthplace, Bethlehem. It is enclosed by 18 illegal Israeli settlements, segregated road networks and infrastructures. Bethlehem's 2,000 years old contiguity with Jerusalem has been cut by a network of Israeli settlements and annexation, which also prevents the town from ever expanding further,' Salman wrote.

'Left with limited control over just 13 per cent of its governorate, Bethlehem is an example of what 50 years of Israeli occupation have meant for Palestine and Palestinians in general, and to the Christians of the Holy Land in particular.'

Normally, the suspicion among Palestinian Christians is that the Israeli government discourages pilgrims to visit Bethlehem, because that is the point when a pilgrim's trip inevitably becomes political.

But as Salman says: 'Ironically, in a few days, significant numbers of Christian Evangelicals, mainly from the US, will come to celebrate those same Israeli policies strangling the birthplace of Jesus Christ. The Prime Minister's office has joined efforts with various agencies normalizing Israeli violations of international law, including the Israeli Ministry of Tourism and the so-called 'Jerusalem Municipality', to bring in "Christian media" representatives. The conference, to be held in an Israeli hotel built on Palestinian, illegally confiscated land in Occupied East Jerusalem, includes a tour in support of the illegal wall which surrounds Bethlehem. They will also be taken to the lands of Beit Jala, to visit the illegal settlement of Gilo, thus supporting Israel's destruction of the Cremisan Valley and the dispossession of dozens of Palestinian Christian families.'

In an article which repeatedly made comparisons with apartheid in South Africa, Salman continued: 'This conference is not only an attempt to normalize the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but also part of the systematic Israeli strategy to exploit religion and holy texts as a political tool.'

He went on: 'As the newly elected mayor of Bethlehem I witness on a daily basis the effects of the blind support of Israel given by my Christian co-religionists. How fundamentalist theological positions are used to justify injustice. But no church worthy of its name should offer a theological smoke screen for the denial of our most basic rights as Palestinians.

'To those who choose to stand on the oppressor's side, I ask them to remember our origins as Christians, and to resurrect the universal message of hope born in a grotto in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. Only when human dignity is respected and equal rights are granted, only when the Israeli occupation is over and Palestinians are able to achieve their full potential on their own land, will we be able to say that peace has returned to the land of peace.'

For anyone who has visited Bethlehem, while of course respecting Israel's absolute right to existence and indeed to security, it is indeed hard to understand the Christian mentality that supports the expansion of the settlements, not to mention the wall. After all, Catholic bishops who make an annual trip to the Holy Land take a very different approach to that of the evangelicals.

Those who do venture to Bethlehem cannot avoid seeing the checkpoints and the wall erected by Israel supposedly to stop suicide bombers entering Jerusalem 10 km to the north, with detrimental effects on the everyday lives of ordinary Palestinians.

The majority of pilgrims and tourists who enter the city stay for just an hour or two, visiting the Church of the Nativity and driving out again on buses, usually organised by Israeli-run firms.

For Palestinian ID holders, entry to Jerusalem remains restricted. Of those who are lucky enough to obtain an Israeli military permit, the vast majority are still restricted to certain hours and are forbidden from using a car.

Ultimately however, it is the growing settlements that increasingly act as the primary obstacle to a lasting agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

As they survey the scene, American evangelicals could do worse than to ask themselves, in the name of the Prince of Peace, do they really want a lasting peace in the region?
Russian Orthodox Christians sing prayers to protest controversial movie about last Tsar's affair

Around 20 Orthodox Christians in Russia last night sang prayers to protest against the controversial release of a movie about the last Russian tsar's affair with a ballerina.

The protesters gathered outside the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, where Matilda was shown yesterday to a selected audience ahead of its release this week.

The film, which tells the story of Nicholas II's infatuation with ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya, has angered hard-line nationalists, with some Orthodox believers seeing it as blasphemous. The tsar, who was executed along with his family by Bolsheviks in 1918, is glorified as a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church.

There have been a number of incidents in the build-up to the film's release. Last month, police detained several activists accused of setting cars on fire outside the office of the attorney for the movie's director.

Also last month, Russia's largest operator of movie theatres said it would not screen the controversial film following threats of arson attacks. Russian news agencies quoted cinema chain director Roman Linin as saying, in reference to the decision: 'The security of our viewers remains a priority for us.' The chain, which is operated by Formula Kino and Cinema Park, has 75 theatres. The announcement came a day after two cars were set on fire outside the office of the attorney for the film's director Alexei Uchitel.

Set in the late 19th century, the film tells the tale of the romance between Nicholas II, before he became tsar, and half-Polish dancer Matilda Kshesinskaya, who described the relationship in her memoirs.

Nicholas 'loved me dearly', she wrote. 'I adored Nikki, I thought only of him, of my sweetheart.'

Opposition to the film has ranged from street demonstrations to appeals from prominent clergy, with some activists making physical threats against cinemas who plan to show it.

Uchitel last month told Reuters: 'The tense atmosphere for the studio these past few months, for those who are making the movie and for the exhibitors, is a serious test. They could say [to a cinema] over the phone: You have two showings, for the sake of form, and that's it. I'm not afraid of an official ban in particular regions, but I fear this kind of pressure.'

The director said that the main Russian distributor of the film, Karo, had received a letter from a hardline Orthodox Christian group, calling itself 'Christian State  Holy Rus'.

In a statement on its website, the hardline group said the film was an insult to Russia and its history and warned that it could drive some people to commit violence, such as setting cinemas on fire. It denied it planned to do anything illegal or had anything to do with acts already committed.

In late August, someone tried to set fire to a studio complex in St Petersburg that houses Uchitel's studio. There was minor damage to a part of the complex used by another organisation.

Also, a man drove a car packed with gas canisters into the entrance of a cinema in Yekaterinburg, the city where Bolshevik revolutionaries executed the Tsar and his family.

Authorities said the driver had been arrested. The cinema, which caught fire, had been hosting a film festival at which the chairman of the festival jury spoke in support of Uchitel.

Tensions over the film come against the backdrop of close ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and President Vladimir Putin.

The new closeness between Church and state comes some 26 years after the end of the Soviet-era repression of the Church, which has around 165 million members worldwide.

President Putin and Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, share similarly authoritarian positions on human rights as well as issues relating to foreign policy, family values and more.
India's Believers Church: We feel forced to bring legal case against Church of South India

The Believers Church feels forced to bring legal action against another church in India after allegations were made against their controversial leader, KP Yohannan, a spokesman has told Christian Today.

The dispute spilled over into a defamation suit after Believers Church, an evangelical denomination in India that claims to have more than 2.6million members, accused the Church of South India (CSI) of slander. The argument centres around the CSI's present moderator Most Reverend Thomas K. Oommen, Bishop of Madhya Kerala Diocese, who refuses to recognise Yohannan as a true bishop.

Speaking to Christian Today, Father Sijo Pandapallil, spokesman for Believers Church, said the disagreement was with Bishop Oommen himself, father than than the wider Church.

'The issue is not with the Church of South India as a whole, but with its present moderator bishop,' he told Christian Today. 'We do not understand why he is doing this. Perhaps, it is church politics playing out?'

Bishop Oommen said: 'The CSI never considers the Believers Church as an episcopal church or accepts its leader, KP Yohannan, a bishop. As per the CSI view, KP Yohannan is a layman and the KCC decision, overlooking the CSI objection, was unfortunate.'

Fr Pandapallil said the consecration of KP Yohannan into a bishop, which the CSI deny was official, happened 14 years ago without controversy. He said it was only now that questions were raised.

'We hate to take this to court but we absolutely had to in order to protect our bishops and churches because their ability to operate legally (including performing rites like marriage) is based upon the Metropolitan's consecration,' he told Christian Today.

'We must protect our bishops and churches. We have all the appropriate and ecclesial documentation, including the minutes of meeting of CSI bishops and official letters we received from then moderator on matters related to consecration which we can present to the court.'

The conflict escalated after the Kerala Council of Churches  an ecumenical body in Kerala State affiliated to the National Council of Churches in India  admitted Believers Church as one of its members. The Church of South India responded by announcing it would withdraw its four dioceses in Kerala from participation in protest.

But other Christians leaders have rebuked both sides for fuelling the argument when Christians in India face increasing attacks on free speech and even beatings and killings. One senior Indian church figure described it to Christian Today as the last thing the Indian Church needs as Christians are facing increasing violence and persecution for their beliefs.

But Fr Pandapallil responded by saying the Church must continue as normal. 'Persecution and difficulties always been part of the church from the beginning,' he told Christian Today. 'We must operate normally and legally despite persecution and - fortunately - on this matter we believe India's judicial system will absolutely rule in our favour. I just want to mention again that we cherish our relationship with the CSI, apart from the present challenge with the moderator bishop.'

Christian Today has approached the Church of South India and Bishop Oommen for comment.
Jerusalem's Greek Orthodox Patriarch to meet with Welby, UK church leaders and politicians in major visit

The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem will meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, Cardinal Vincent Nichols and British politicians, on a visit to the UK from October 31 to November 3, Christian Today has learned.

Theophilus III, widely seen as the most senior church figure in the Holy Land, is likely to raise pressing issues in the Israeli parliament relating to the 'Status Quo' arrangement whereby Christians can live alongside people of other faiths in Jerusalem and its Old City.

The Patriarch yesterday met at the Vatican with Pope Francis, who said: 'The Holy City, whose Status Quo must be defended and preserved, ought to be a place where all can live together peaceably; otherwise, the endless spiral of suffering will continue for all.'

The visit comes after 40 members of the Israeli Knesset, or parliament, signed a proposed bill in July that, the Church argues, would restrict the rights of the churches to deal freely and independently with their lands and would threaten their confiscation. The bill proposes to allow the state to confiscate lands of the churches that have been leased to third parties.

In response, the Patriarch and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem released a joint statement condemning the bill at the time. The statement said: 'We cannot stress strongly enough the very serious situation that this recent systematic assault on the Status Quo has had on the integrity of Jerusalem and on the well-being of the Christian communities of the Holy Land, as well as on the stability of our society.

'We therefore, as those to whom Divine Providence has entrusted the care of both the Holy Sites and the pastoral oversight of the living, indigenous Christian communities of the Holy Land, call upon our fellow Church leaders and faithful around the world, as well as the heads of governments, and all people of good will, to support us in order to ensure that no further attempts are made from any quarter to change the historical Status Quo and its provisions and spirit.'

Intriguingly, the Patriarch's visit to the UK appears likely to coincide with that of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu is set to visit from November 1 to November 5 in a trip hosted by the Prime Minister, Theresa May to 'celebrate' the 100th anniversary of the Balfour agreement, according to the Jerusalem Post.

May initially invited Netanyahu to mark the anniversary with a visit back in February.

The anniversary marks Arthur Balfour's famous letter to Lord Rothschild announcing that 'His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people'.

May has rejected Palestinian calls for a British apology over the 'broken promise' in the 1917 declaration, which also held that a national Jewish home should not prejudice the rights of 'existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine'.
Mass ISIS executions leave more than 100 dead in Christian town of Al-Qaryatayn, Syria

Mass executions by ISIS in the Syrian-Christian town of Al-Qaryatayn have left more than 100 civilians dead, according to a monitoring group.

The militant group's killings over almost three weeks happened just days before the Syrian regime recaptured the town, according the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has an extensive network of sources in Syria.

'ISIS has over a period of 20 days executed at least 116 civilians in reprisal killings, accusing them of collaboration with regime forces,' observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

The town, some 300 kilometres (190 miles) from another ISIS stronghold in Deir Ezzor, was recaptured by the militants in an unexpected attack earlier this month.

Over the weekend the Syrian government took the town back after more than 200 extremists withdrew overnight.

'After the regime retook it [on Saturday], the town's residents found the bodies on the streets. They had been shot dead or executed with knives,' Abdel Rahman said.

'Most of the Daesh fighters who attacked the town a month ago were sleeper cells... They are from the town, know the town's residents and who is for or against the regime,' he said.

Most of those killed were executed in the last two days before Daesh lost the town again, he added.

Despite the success in briefly retaking Al Qaryatayn, ISIS is largely on the retreat and last week its de facto capital in Raqqa was declared ISIS-free.

Before the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, Al-Qaryatayn was considered a high-point for religious coexistence in the country with several hundred Christians among the 30,000 population.

But many churches were reduced to rubble during ISIS' eight-month long occupation.
Myanmar takes first step to ease Buddhist-Muslim tension

Myanmar today launched its first bid to improve relations between Buddhists and Muslims since an eruption of deadly violence in August inflamed communal tension and triggered an exodus of some 520,000 Muslims to Bangladesh.

Rohingya Muslims are still fleeing, more than six weeks after Rohingya insurgents attacked security forces in western Myanmar's Rakhine state.

The United Nations has denounced a ferocious military crackdown in response to the attacks as ethnic cleansing aimed at driving out Rohingya.

A new surge of refugees has entered Bangladesh in recent days, including about 11,000 on Monday. Some have told of increasing hunger in Rakhine as well as of more mob attacks on Muslim villagers.

Despite growing international condemnation of the refugee crisis, the military campaign is popular in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where there is little sympathy for the Rohingya, and for Muslims in general, and where Buddhist nationalism has surged in recent years.

The party of government leader Aung San Suu Kyi took the first step towards trying to ease animosity with inter-faith prayers at a stadium in the biggest city of Yangon, with Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Christians and others.

Thousands of people packed the stands of the stadium, with Buddhist monks, Hindus, Christian nuns and Muslim men with beards and caps listening to religious leaders who took turns to appeal for friendship.

'Be free from killing one another, be free from torturing one another, be free from destroying or demolishing one another,' the chief Buddhist monk of Yangon, Iddhibala, told the crowd.

Stepping off the podium, he shook hands with Muslim leader Hafiz Mufti Ali.

'Citizens should collaborate in friendship and work for the country,' Ali said, adding: 'Freedom of life, freedom of education, freedom of religion, it is absolutely necessary for the country to fulfil all these rights.'

The Rohingya had pinned hopes for change on Suu Kyi's party but it has been wary of Buddhist nationalist pressure. Her party did not field a single Muslim candidate in the 2015 election that it swept.

Rohingya are not classified as an indigenous minority in Myanmar and so are denied citizenship under a law that links nationality to ethnicity.

Regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, they face restrictions and discrimination and are derided by ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in Rakhine, and by much of the wider population.

The militants of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) who launched the August 25 attacks that triggered the latest spasm of violence are demanding full citizenship rights and recognition as an indigenous community.
On this day: The Treaty of Westphalia ended a religious war in which 8 million died

Today marks the official end of one of the most destructive conflicts in European history and religion was at the heart of it.

The Treaty of Westphalia was signed October 24, 1648, and ended the Thirty Years War. The war began in 1618 when the Catholic Hapsburgs tried to crush the Protestants in Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic). A series of devastating conflicts spread across what is now Germany. The area was reduced to a wasteland. Some regions lost as much as three-quarters of their population due to massacre, starvation and disease. As well as the great armies of France, Spain and Sweden, roving bands of mercenaries spread terror.

'We live like animals, eating bark and grass,' says one entry in a family Bible from a Swabian village. 'No one could have imagined that anything like this would happen to us. Many people say that there is no God...'

There were even cases of cannibalism.

Some of the great hymns we still sing today come out of this period, including Martin Rinkart's Now thank we all our God. A Lutheran pastor in Saxony, he found himself conducting 50 funerals a day before the death toll became too great and the corpses were thrown into pits. On one occasion a Swedish army was besieging his city and demanded a huge ransom to leave. Rinkart went out to plead with them and they withdrew.

Another dreadful consequence of the war was a rise in the persecution of 'witches', blamed for the evils that had come upon the land; many thousands of innocent people were tortured and burned alive.

The Treaty of Westphalia was the culmination of a series of agreements that brought an end to the carnage. It meant all parties would accept the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, which gave each ruler the right to determine the religion of his own state, and stopped attempts by Catholic powers to enforce their faith on Protestants. As well as a territorial realignment giving independence to Switzerland and Holland, Christians whose Church was a minority in the state where they lived would have the right to worship.
Reformation 500: Archbishop of Canterbury to mark Protestant and Catholic unity on justification

The Archbishop of Canterbury will mark a key point of agreement between the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation in a service at Westminster Abbey for the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation.

The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification was agreed by the two bodies in 1999 after years of study and resolves the most contentious issue between them, dating back to the Reformation  how is someone saved?

The Declaration says that 'on the basis of their dialogue the subscribing Lutheran churches and the Roman Catholic Church are now able to articulate a common understanding of our justification by God's grace through faith in Christ'.

It encompasses 'a consensus on basic truths of the doctrine of justification and shows that the remaining differences in its explication are no longer the occasion for doctrinal condemnations'.

The Declaration has also been affirmed by the World Methodist Council and the World Communion of Reformed Churches.

The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) passed a resolution in 2016 that 'welcomes and affirms the substance of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification'. The resolution was noted in a motion approved by the General Synod of the Church of England earlier this year as it welcomed 'signs of convergence between the Churches on the doctrine of salvation'.

During the service Justin Welby will present copies of the ACC's text to Roman Catholic and Lutheran representatives.

The Bishop of Coventry, Rt Revd Dr Christopher Cocksworth, said: 'The Joint Declaration was a historic breakthrough in overcoming the divisions that emerged from the Reformation through a fresh statement of its key concern, how sinners can be put right with God and empowered to live in a new way. The good news of forgiveness and freedom through Jesus Christ is what unites us as Christians. It's the word of grace and hope that  together  we want to share with all the world.'

The service will take place on October 31, the anniversary of the Reformation.
Rosh Hashanah: Six facts you need to know as Justin Welby wishes 'Shanah Tovah'

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish festival marking the start of the new year, begins tonight and marks the beginning of ten holy days before Yom Kippur, the day of repentance, on 29 September.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby added his own 'Shanah Tovah' greeting on Wednesday - meaning 'have a good year' - as he reflected on his 'unforgettable' trip to Jerusalem with Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis.

'As we look back on the year that has been, the growing depth of trust, friendship and mutual respect between us has been a joy and a privilege to share' said Welby. 'In the midst of all that frequently feels challenging and often bleak in increasing polarisation in society, it is vital that we commit to nurture and deepen our relationships beyond the confines of our own faith communities and across the country more generally.'

He added: 'May I take this opportunity to wish you a blessed Rosh Hoshanah as you celebrate and give thanks to God for all that has been and for all that is to come. Please be assured of my prayers for the gift of this time.'

As Jews around the UK and the rest of the world gather for the annual celebration, here are six facts you need to know about Rosh Hashanah.

1. It means 'head of the year' and is referred to in the Book of Leviticus 23:24-25 as 'a sacred assembly commemorated with trumpet blasts'. As such a shofar, an ancient musical horn, is still blown during services at the synagogue.

2. The date is based on the Hebrew calendar, which is entering its 5778th year, and is celebrated at the beginning of the month of Tishri, the seventh month in the Jewish calendar.

3. Because it is based on the Jewish calendar, the exact date it is celebrated varies although it usually falls around September or October.

4. It is not just humans who celebrate  the festival also marks the new year for animals and legal contracts as well.

5. The majority of Jewish people celebrate the festival by going to the synagogue and spending time with their family and friends. They also light candles and eat festive meals together. Traditional foods include dipping apples in honey, honey cake and raisin challah bread, all symbolising the hope of a sweet new year.

6. But it is not all singing and dancing. Rosh Hashanah is also seen as a time to cast off sin and ask for forgiveness. On the first afternoon, religious observers perform the Tashlich ceremony and using an idea taken from Michah 7:19  'You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea'  the ceremony is commonly marked by throwing breadcrumbs into water.
Scotland's smacking ban and the Church: Should Christians care?

The Scottish Government has indicated that it will support a proposed bill from the Green MSP, John Finnie, which will outlaw all forms of physical chastisement on children.

Cue incredulity on all sides.

For some the idea of 'physically assaulting' children (which is what they call it) is unthinkable. For others, including an American friend who gave me a book where a whole chapter was devoted to whether one should 'paddle' with the diaper on or off, it is unbelievable that anyone would 'spare the rod and spoil the child'! I have no wish to go into all the arguments about smacking  as it happens I am not that keen on the practice  but there are two areas of great concern for me here. The first involves the government, and the second the church.

I am opposed to the ban because it is unenforceable, will not protect or help children who are in danger of abuse; and is largely a relatively trivial form of virtue signalling allowing us to say how we are among the progressive 52 nations that ban smacking, and not among the backward 150 who don't. As Brendan O'Neill sharply observes in the Spectator: 'What we have in Scotland  and which we might soon have across the UK, if campaigners get their way  is the imposition of parenting diktats, the use of legal pressure to force every parent in the land to raise their kids in a way that the cultural elite approves of.'

Kevin McKenna writing in the Herald put it even more trenchantly: 'SNP seems bent on turning Scotland into a fantasy state; a holiday island for middle-class dilettantes where they can indulge their cultural fads and fetishes about how the working classes ought to behave.'

But there is another aspect that disturbs me about this smacking ban and the reaction to it - the response of some churches and Christian organisations. I am against the ban because of the reasons cited above  not theological ones. I know of fine Christians who support it and they are not heretics for doing so. This is a disagreement about process and politics, not about whether we should protect children or not. Which is why I think it is wrong for Christian churches and organisations to campaign against this ban. As individuals fine...we are free to argue our own political and philosophical views as we please  and indeed I often do. Over the past few days I have participated in discussions on BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Ulster, Talk Radio and various local radio stations on the burning issue of the day  banning smacking. I have even written about it.



But the Church as a whole should not be associated with this campaign.

Firstly we need to ask why we should specifically campaign on this issue? Is it as important as the fact that children are going to foodbanks? Or being sold into sex slavery? Or growing up in dysfunctional homes? I know we can't do it all but why pick on this one issue? Because to be frank in today's society it makes us just look weird  as though we are harking back to the hang 'em and flog 'em days. (Note  in principle I accept that Christians are going to look weird  but I would prefer that it was our basing our lives on the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, rather than a defence of a particular form of child discipline!).

Secondly it opens us up to the charge of hypocrisy. After all hasn't there been much abuse within the Church? I have a friend who was a social worker in the Netherlands whose job was basically to identify and help children who had been abused by parents (usually fathers) who justified their abuse in the name of their God. Well  the God who encourages abuse of children is not the God of the Bible. Those who use Christ to justify their evil are the ultimate blasphemers. Of course the evil that others have done should not discourage us from doing good  but is campaigning for the right to hit our children, a 'good' that is worth fighting for?

Thirdly  even if this were an issue worth expending precious time and money on  is campaigning the right way to do it? We need to recognise what is going on here. This is not an attempt to criminalise parents. It is a sadly now all too familiar process in which our politicians seek to use the blunt instrument of the law in order to change the culture and the way people think. As Christians our concern is also about changing minds and hearts  but we don't use the law to do so. We do not use the weapons of this world. We are much more subversive.

Finally what does this have to do with the Church? Yes of course we are all for family values  a key one of which is discipline. But discipline does not necessarily mean hitting children. Besides which there are surely a thousand issues more important than this. Compared with same-sex marriage, abortion, poverty, racism and social injustice this is a relatively trivial issue. So why spend time and money campaigning on it? I know that some mean well but at the end of the day I wonder if Christian organisations are not themselves in danger of 'virtue signalling'  letting their supporters know that they are on the ball. I'm sorry, but this is not that important an issue.

So was it hypocritical of me to go on radio discussing the issue? No. It is precisely because it is a relatively trivial issue that I did the interviews and sought to stress more important things and use the opportunity to argue for 'the least of these little ones'. We make the most of every opportunity (and to be honest I also wanted to speak instead of those who would have argued the most extreme case!). Please don't let the church be known because of its weird and OTT defence of one aspect of discipline. Instead let us be known, on this issue, for our passionate defence of all the little ones. Isn't that what Christ would do?
By PTI: New Delhi, Oct 24 (PTI) Congress MP Shashi Tharoor today urged the Delhi High Court to stop journalist Arnab Goswami and his news channel Republic TV from "misreporting" his wife Sunanda Pushkars death, saying his "right to be left alone" and "right to silence" must be respected.

The submission was made before Justice Manmohan, who reserved the verdict on Tharoors plea seeking to restrain Goswami and his channel from airing any news or debate about the death of Pushkar.

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The journalist and the channel, on the other hand, said they had only placed the actual evidence and the police report while broadcasting the news.

The Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha MP has filed an interim application for stopping the channel from broadcasting the incident in the pending Rs two crore civil defamation suit against the TV anchor and Republic TV.

Senior advocate Salman Khurshid, appearing for Tharoor, submitted that the court must direct Goswami and the channel not to mention the expression "murder of Sunanda Pushkar", as it is yet to be established by a competent court that her death was "murder", and ensure that the trial is not prejudiced.

"Goswami and channel must not involve in rhetorical assertions," Khurshid contended.

Senior advocate Sandeep Sethi, appearing for Goswami and the channel, said they have neither "condemned" Tharoor, nor suggested that he was involved in the death of his wife.

The counsel also submitted that the Congress leader was not called "the killer" of his wife by the journalist or the channel, as claimed by Tharoor.

After hearing the arguments of all the parties, the court reserved its order.

Tharoor has filed three different applications through his counsel Gaurav Gupta seeking various directions, including not to make any defamatory publication against him in any manner.

Pushkar was found dead in a suite of a five-star hotel in south Delhi on the night of January 17, 2014. The matter is still under investigation.

Tharoor had on May 26 this year filed the civil defamation suit against Goswami and Republic TV in the High Court.

He had also sought a direction from the high court to restrain the TV channel from broadcasting any show relating to the death of his wife till the investigation is completed by the Delhi Police.

Tharoor has referred to the broadcasting of news items from May 8 to 13 when the TV channel claimed to have aired an expose connected to the death of his wife.

The politician has alleged that despite assurances given in the court on May 29 by the counsel for Goswami and Republic TV, they were engaged in "defaming and maligning" him.

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The court had on May 29 said the journalist and his news channel could put out stories stating facts related to the investigation of Pushkars death, but could not call the Lok Sabha MP a "criminal". It had also told their counsel to reduce the rhetoric.

Goswami and the channel had in their affidavit said that they have abided by the courts direction and in "no manner misreported or misled the viewers as the facts were correctly reported".

They have also claimed that the suit has been "instituted with an oblique and ulterior motive and is a misguided attempt to muzzle a media channel and the dissemination of true facts to the public". PTI PPS HMP SKV RKS ARC

--- ENDS ---
The Christian way to cure your bad mood swings

If you experience mood swings, you know how unpredictable your moods can be. Don't you just wish you knew how to deal with them once and for all? I'm pretty sure you do  especially if you realize just how troublesome they are.

I am writing this for all beloved brothers and sisters who wish to be free from their mood swings. Don't worry. There's hope in Christ.

Foundations

I know that people who have a medical background might say mood swings are caused by hormonal or chemical imbalances in their brain. Let me just say that according to the Bible, anything that we can't say "no" to is our slave driver. Romans 6:16 tells us,

"Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?"

If you're tossed and driven around by your uncontrolled emotions, then you're simply a slave to your moods. It simply follows that your moods are your master.

If you've been enslaved by your mood swings for the longest time, you'll know how oppressive they are. You want to have fun in your life or your ministry, but your mood changes and suddenly you're irritable and can't serve others right. You want to go to prayer group, but then your mood changes and you choose to stay home to eat a whole cake or binge watch your favorite Netflix show instead. Frustrating, right?

Freedom from Mood Swings

Dear Christian, you've got to realize that you can break free from slavery to your moods. How? Here are a few things you should do:

Repent

Friend, we can only have one master, and if our moods are our masters, then Christ surely isn't (see Matthew 6:24). As Christians, we have to realize that having a master other than Christ is wrong!

First, we need to repent of our obedience to our mood swings. When we enslave ourselves to our moods we enslave ourselves to our fleshly and soulish desires, rendering us unable to obey God's word.

Put your faith in Christ

The Lord Jesus Christ's finished work sets us free from everything that held us captive, even our emotions that aren't in line with God's will! Read what the Lord Jesus said:

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." (Luke 4:18-19)

Christ Jesus came to set you free from all that oppressed you and hindered you from coming to Him, and that includes your mood swings. Believe it. At salvation, Christ freed you from the grip of sin and death, even your moods.

Take control of your emotions

Did you know that in Christ, you can take control of the emotions that used to control you? The Bible commands us,

"Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 1:13)

When we say "gird up the loins of your mind," we picture ourselves holding straps or ropes to bind and tighten our minds and command it to think of what Christ has done for and to us, just like how farmers guide oxen. When the mood swings from joyful in God to fearful in the flesh, we yank it back to trusting in God!

Moods are very closely connected to our thoughts. In fact, a wrong thought often triggers the bad mood. We may not be saying it out loud, but our internal voice is saying bad things about someone or even about ourselves or our situation; we're passing judgment; we're complaining; we're not speaking words of gratitude or praise; we're choosing to focus on the negatives.

Closely examine your thoughts. What are you saying to yourself? What are you thinking about? Do they line up with the Word of God? Are you seeing others or your situation as God would want you to?

Take command of your thoughts and control them with the Word of God. Don't let them control you.

Make your feelings  and yourself  obey Christ

We must command our feelings and thoughts to obey the Lord Jesus Christ all the time. 2 Corinthians 10:5 tells us to take "every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ."

Friend, when your mood swings, realize that you can grab a hold of it and command it to obey God's word. When our feelings tell us to obey the longings of the flesh, like binge-eating or doing sinful things, we have to ignore our feelings and continue living in repentance, choosing to do what's right, not what we feel.

Most important of all

Friends, we must learn to live by the Spirit of God. When we walk in the Spirit, mood swings are easily handled and stopped.

I leave you with this exhortation:

"I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish." (Galatians 5:16-17)
'The Holy City, prepared as a bride': 5 Bible verses about Jerusalem

The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilus III, who is widely seen as the most senior church figure in the Holy Land, will soon visit the UK, having met Pope Francis. He is likely to raise issues relating to Christians living in peace in the Holy City which remains divided to this day.

Jerusalem is of course mentioned countless times in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, being the centre of worship for the Jews as well as the place where Jesus wept over and was crucified, buried and resurrected.

Here are a five New Testament Bible verses about Jerusalem.

1. 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing (Matthew 23:37).'

2. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem (Luke 2:38).

3. 'In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next dayfor surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!' (Luke 13:33).

4. As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it (Luke 19:41).

5. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband (Revelation 21:2).
The parable of the workers in the vineyard: God gives us what we need, not what we deserve

The parable usually known as 'The workers in the vineyard' in Matthew 20: 1-16 is a strange tale. It seems to go against the principle of fairness  and it turns out that this is the point. And it turns out too that as well as being about God's generosity, it is about economics and justice.

It's one of the parables Jesus tells to illustrate what the kingdom of heaven is like. A landowner hires men to work in his vineyard early in the morning and agrees to pay them the standard wage. He goes back a few hours later and hires more, promising to pay 'what is right'; then again a few hours later; and then again just before the end of the day.

When the time comes to pay the men, they all get the same  starting with those who came last. Not surprisingly, those who'd worked all day aren't impressed. But the landowner rebukes them: 'Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?'

In his book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, Kenneth Bailey draws out the oddities of the story. Any landowner would know how many men he needed to work his land for the day; he would have no need to go back for more.

Bailey writes of his own experience of living in Jerusalem, where unemployed Palestinians would gather near the Damascus Gate in hopes of work. 'I usually looked the other way when I passed, trying not to think about the humiliation those young men suffered and the quiet desperation that their presence reflected,' he says. But they, he notes, were gone by noon  in Jesus' story, the men were still there at the end of the day, because 'no one has hired us'.

Rather than humiliate them in their own and their families' eyes by giving them charity, however, he gives them what they needed  a job.

And Bailey also notes the order in which they're paid. If the first-comers had been paid first they would have left happy, and so on down to the last-comers. But the master wants everyone to see what he has done  perhaps so their characters can be tested and exposed. As Bailey says: 'The story focuses on an equation filled with amazing grace, which is resented by those who feel that they have earned their way to more.'

So the story is about God's gracious generosity expressed in a very practical way. It's been interpreted as referring to the first of Jesus' disciples and those who came later; as the Pharisees who worked all day in the heat of the sun before Jesus' disciples came in at the last minute; or even as a picture of the Jews and the Gentiles.

But it also speaks to us of work  why it matters, how workers should be treated and how employers should be generous. It's a warning against jealousy and legalism.

And most of all it's a picture of God's enduring love: the landowner makes the journey to and from the vineyard again and again, deliberately seeking out those who are lost and helpless, treating them with respect and giving them honourable work. In Jesus' parable, they can go home with their heads held high. They have been given not what they deserved, buy what they needed.

Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
Three Israelis shot dead by a Palestinian, who is also killed, at settlement near Jerusalem

Three Israelis were shot dead today by a Palestinian at the entrance to the Jewish settlement of Har Adara in the occupied West Bank near Jerusalem, Israeli police have said.

The gunman, identified in the Israeli media as Nimer Jamal, a 37-year-old from a nearby village, was also shot and died later.

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the incident on Palestinian incitement, which came as Donald Trump's Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt arrived in Jerusalem to attempt to revive dormant peace talks between the two sides.

Police say Jamal struck after he raised the suspicions of security personnel at a rear gate at Har Adar.

He shot two security guards and a border policeman at close-range and seriously wounded another person, before being shot by security forces, the police said.

According to Israeli officials, the gunman was a father-of-four who had an Israeli permit to work in Jewish settlements along the boundary of the West Bank.

He came from the village of Beit Surik, about a mile east of Har Adar. The area is around 11 miles north-west of Jerusalem.

Hamas, based in Gaza, and Islamic Jihad welcomed the attack, though no group has so far taken responsibility for it.

Fatah, the political faction of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said that Israel bore responsibility for the attack, because of its 'continuous aggression' against the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu said that the attacker's home would be demolished and relatives' work permits revoked. He called on Abbas to condemn the attack unequivocally.

Around 36,000 Palestinians have permits to work in the controversial Jewish settlements, which are deemed illegal under international law, though that is disputed by Israel. More than 600,000 Jews live in about 140 settlements built since Israel's occupation in 1967 of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The Big Lottery Fund has told a House of Lords committee that funders, including itself, should be more open to funding risky projects.

The Big Lottery Fund, which is the largest community funder in the UK, made the recommendation in its submission to the Citizenship and Civic Engagement Committee. It said: Funders, including the Big Lottery Fund, should be more open to funding risky projects.

It said that it has trialled a more conversational approach to grant giving, where it has a strong focus on grassroots social innovations that address the root cause of pressing issues.

Big Lottery Fund said that it has also taken a test and learn approach to funding, by supporting a cluster of projects around themes, including ageing, dementia and food, to find projects and interventions that work well. It mentioned its funding of projects such as Apps for Good, and said that as a funding community, we must come together to support more projects like these.

In the submission it said that it, as well as other funders, should simplify funding application processes.

It said that too often funders create barriers to innovative projects and hard to reach communities seeking funding through complex processes.

It said: At the fund we are moving our small grants online, reaching out to new communities (e.g. by running funding fairs targeting rural communities in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and talking about the Fund in Urdu on local Manchester radio) and cutting processing times. But more needs to be done.

The submission also recommended that the sector better engage with the opportunities and threats provided by the shift to digital.

It said: The ever increasingly role of digital in UK life presents both dramatic opportunities for change, and poses significant threats to individual and collective wellbeing. The digital revolution has allowed people to build new communities and convene existing ones with ease.

The Lloyds Bank Foundation has said that foundations are well-placed to support small and local charities, who often work with the most at risk individuals and communities in society but are underfunded.

It said: Engaging people who feel left behind has to start with understanding the challenges they face and support they need, and small and local charities are the gateway for enabling this to happen.

Foundations are well placed to support and facilitate this, given the strong relationships they hold with charities across the country and the information they gather about needs and interventions.
Read other Survival Stories from around the country.

I have no idea what we have done to Mother Nature, said Senator Pat Roberts, the curmudgeonly Kansas chairman of the US Senate Agriculture Committee, after the freakish weather events that hit his home state of Kansas earlier this year. But she sure has taken it out on us.

Mother Natures wrath brought a March fire that burned up roughly 2 million acres of pasture and wheat fields in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and Coloradoan event shaped by drought and gusting winds whose speeds topped 70 mph across parts of the Plains. At least seven people died, as did thousands of cattle. In early May, a snowstorm dropped as much as 18 inches of snow during a critical stage of development for much of the Kansas wheat crop.

ICYMI: We spoke to ordinary people about fake news. What they qualify as a false story is notable.

For DC ag-policy wonks, climate change is the fire everyone dances around without really acknowledging its heat. People go to excruciating means to avoid using terms such as climate change or carbon emissions, and that avoidance can harm agriculture. Leaders of the agriculture committees in Congress dont hold hearings with climate scientists about potential dangers to farmers, rural America, or the nations food supply. Some well-meaning farm groups talk about soil health as a way to help farmers deal with extreme weather. Out of regulatory fear, farm lobbies maintain that climate science isnt settled. Some also repeat the usual mantra that climate change has always occurreda kernel of truth that neglects the reality that Earth has never before been inhabited by 7.5 billion people.

When Hurricane Harvey hit in August, my job as ag media was to explain what the storms devastation meant for farmers. What were the impacts on crops and livestock? What was the storms effect on grain shipments? How did markets react to the destruction? I wrote about the floods impacting ranchers, as well as the devastated cotton crop, which was expected to be the best in years before the storm. (I wrote this piece days before Hurricane Irma hit the US.)

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Fewer and fewer journalists use their beats to report on the natural intersection between climate change, agriculture, and food. This is especially true on the local and regional levels where, much like the environmental beat, the ag beat has largely disappeared.

Farms and ranches werent entirely left out of media coverage when Harvey hit. There were videos all over social media of cattle swimming through flood waters as ranchers and volunteers tried to herd them to higher ground.

Beyond national disasters, however, fewer and fewer journalists use their beats to report on the natural intersection between climate change, agriculture, and food. This is especially true on the local and regional levels where, much like the environmental beat, the ag beat has largely disappeared. In a country full of millennial foodies, middle-aged barbecue enthusiasts, vegans, organic consumers, and paycheck-to-paycheck grocery shoppers, most newsrooms lack a reporter who is dedicated to telling stories about how their food is produced.

ICYMI: The problem with police body cam videos

Food production and the economy around agriculture are both highly susceptible to climate risks. Farms in every corner of the country play a different role in the climate cycle. Farmers face greater exposure to either drought or floods. Farm practices sequester carbon, or else release greenhouse gases. Their crop practices help reduce soil and water runoff, or their topsoil melts into the local streams. The water collecting that runoff is either a little cleaner or is better prepared for creating toxic algae, a function of warmer temperatures. Livestock production is either evolving to warmer climates, or else it is migrating. Warmer weather suits new cash crops while others are pushed out.

If newspapers want to teach a little climate science to readers, they should look at what the pests are doing. Pests enjoy warmer climates; they damage yields, cost farmers money, and lead to more chemical use. A bug or fungus may move north because the winters arent as cold, or the nights are too warm. Southern corn rust can now be found in Wisconsin. The Hessian fly, the red-banded stink bug, and the wheat streak mosaic virus are just a few examples of pests thriving and expanding their range with the changing climate. The wheat streak mosaic virus is transmitted by an insect called the wheat curl mite, which survives longer and infests more wheat each year. Wheat streak mosaic also defeats any genetic tolerance when nighttime temperatures remain warmer, which increasingly happens earlier in the spring and later in the fall.

American journalism is just scratching the surface of potential climate hazards to national and global stability. Our food supply must support a planet with a population that has doubled since 1970, and is projected to add a couple billion more mouths to feed by midcentury.

These impacts are verifiable. Reporters dedicated to covering agriculture could provide another critical window to the impacts of climate change in their communities. But agricultural reporters are fewer and farther between.

Reporting on climate change to a rural audience can also be a risk. Readers are as likely to treat climate change as a reason for regulatory mandates on their lives rather than a societal challenge. And reporting on climate issues has become more complicated since Donald Trump took office. Now, to write about climate change in agricultural media is to essentially tell farmers that President Trump is wrong. Reader complaints to the DTN/The Progressive Farmer newsroom, where I work, have increased over what they see as anti-Trump reporting.

And yet American journalism is just scratching the surface of potential climate hazards to national and global stability. Our food supply must support a planet with a population that has doubled since 1970, and is projected to add a couple billion more mouths to feed by midcentury. To demonstrate the broad impacts of climate change, newsrooms need to send reporters out into the countryside to rediscover the farm and food beats.

ICYMI: CNN aired a problematic gun photo a few weeks ago. All journalists can learn from the mistake.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Chris Clayton is ag policy editor for the Omaha, Nebraska-based DTN/The Progressive Farmer. He is also the author of an ebook, The Elephant in the Cornfield: The Politics of Agriculture and Climate Change, available on Amazon.
The Chandigarh administration has decided to provide transgenders with an option to prefix Mx with their names while filling application/admission forms.

By Manjeet Sehgal: In yet another win for transgenders in Chandigarh, the administration has acceded to their demands to grant them a separate prefix for their names- Mx.

The administration has decided to provide transgenders with an option to prefix Mx with their names while filling application/admission forms. Which means that applications/admission forms besides Mr, Ms and Mrs will now also have an option for the third gender- Mx.

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"The decision has been taken in a Transgender Welfare Board meeting held recently which was also attended by the members of this community. The transgenders had demanded inclusion of the new prefix in various forms which has been accepted by the board. All the departments have agreed to include this prefix in their forms," said Additional Deputy Commissioner Rajiv Gupta who chaired the board meeting.

Gupta added that transgenders are now coming forward with their problems after the Transgender Welfare Board was constituted in Chandigarh.

He further said that educated members of transgender community who earlier considered themselves male or female now want the society to recognise them as the third gender.

SEPARATE HOSTEL

One of the members of the Transgender Welfare Board, Dhananjay Chauhan who has been instrumental in raising these issues is now gunning for separate hostel in Punjab University.

"As we are a different gender, we are neither accepted by males nor by females. I was molested by male students when I joined this university. I was subject to ragging and was compelled to leave my LLB course immediately after the admissions as it was difficult to stay in a male hostel. That is why we are demanding a separate hostel," says Dhananjay Chauhan.

HAPPY WITH DECISION

"We are happy that the Chandigarh administration has accepted our demand to allow us a prefix Mx in various application and admission forms but the biggest problems being faced by the transgender community is illiteracy..." says Dhananjay Chauhan.

--- ENDS ---
Its been just over three weeks since the deadliest shooting in modern US history, but coverage of Las Vegas and gun violence in America seems to have quickly faded from the national conversation. After Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, and Orlando, as well as a daily drumbeat of less publicized shootings, have we simply become inured to the violence?

CNNs Chris Cillizza notes that the interest in bump stocksthe modification that allowed Stephen Paddock to transform his rifles to simulate automatic firespiked shortly after the shooting, but has since dropped to pre-Vegas levels. That fading interest has been reflected in Washington, where The Daily Beasts Sam Stein reports efforts to pass even scaled-down gun-control legislation have effectively stalled.

ICYMI: CNN aired a problematic gun photo a few weeks ago. All journalists can learn from the mistake.

Part of the problem with media coverage, writes The Traces Ben Hallman in a piece for CJR, comes from journalists lack of knowledge about guns as physical objects. Citing examples from the past few weeks, Hallman says that when journalists get the details wrong in their reporting.gun owners tune out.

Hallman, whose nonprofit newsroom focuses on guns, also argues the national media gives mass-casualty events like Las Vegas outsized coverage: The most pernicious challenge facing any outlet that covers gun violence, including The Trace, is one of emphasis: the blanket coverage of mass shootings, and underreporting on daily gun violence. Though six of the 10 deadliest modern mass shootings happened during the past decade, these events actually do little to help us understand the scourge of gun violence in America. As Hallman writes, In the seven days following the Las Vegas attack, at least 809 people were shot in the US, 247 of them fatally.

Below, more on Las Vegas, gun coverage, and a uniquely American issue.

10 Minutes. 12 Gunfire Bursts. 30 Videos.: The video team at The New York Times has an incredible multimedia re-creation of what actually happened during the attack.

The video team at The New York Times has an incredible multimedia re-creation of what actually happened during the attack. At least 2,500 shot since Vegas: Noting that Americans overwhelmingly favor strengthening gun laws, The Traces Jennifer Mascia and Alex Yablon write public sentiment is not the same as attention, and the latter seems to have faded since the carnage and terror in Las Vegas.

Noting that Americans overwhelmingly favor strengthening gun laws, The Traces Jennifer Mascia and Alex Yablon write public sentiment is not the same as attention, and the latter seems to have faded since the carnage and terror in Las Vegas. This is the NRA: This bizarre, dystopian video from the National Rifle Association somehow makes media organizations the enemy of Americas future.

This bizarre, dystopian video from the National Rifle Association somehow makes media organizations the enemy of Americas future. Visualizing gun deaths: FiveThirtyEights Gun Deaths in America series from last year is one of the best Ive seen in addressing the issue.

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ICYMI: The problem with police body cam videos

Other notable stories

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Pete Vernon is a former CJR staff writer. Follow him on Twitter @ByPeteVernon.
Algorithms. Algorithmic transparency. Algorithmic accountability.

These are terms we have all become accustomed to hearing whenever journalists, industry executives, commentators, or academics contemplate the contemporary media landscape. Less is known about how everyday news consumers understand these terms. It turns out they have a lot to say.

As part of our ongoing research into the relationship between platforms and publishers, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism conducted 13 focus groups with news consumers aged 18 to 65 from four cities around the US: Bowling Green, Kentucky; Elkhart, Indiana; New York; and San Francisco. Full results from the focus groups are available here.

One of the key areas we interrogated in the study is everyday news consumers attitudes towards the little black boxes that control which news they receive via social platforms. The specific term algorithm, deliberately avoided by the moderators, only cropped up in four of our sessions. But while the terminology varied, themes related to algorithms recurred throughout. And the consequences of platforms secretive approach to how their algorithms function were observable wherever we went.

We came away convinced that the need for algorithmic transparency is more urgent than ever. Some people explicitly say they want to know more. Others, underestimating the reach of algorithms, arguably need to know more.

One participant in Elkhart memorably described the moment she awakened to Facebooks algorithm: I started watching information about Facebook and found out they were following me enough that they only sent me the stuff that I clicked on. I wasnt getting both sides of the story They were just following me and giving me sugar when I was really looking for more They were skewing the news to what I had picked. They personalized it and thats not why I was there. I was there to get information that was different or a different viewpoint than I was getting, and Im very mad at Mark Zuckerberg.

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In Bowling Green, Kentucky, one of the younger participants realized during the discussion that his Instagram feed was now also dictated by an algorithm, leading him to reflect on how little understanding he had about what his feeds present him: Its just now hitting me that Instagram is not [chronological] either. Like, Im sorry, but I would like to know why theyre telling me that Im more likely to like this persons pictures other than a different persons pictures I dont understand exactly how that works, and I would definitely like to.

While platforms often announce major algorithm changes via blog posts, they are often somewhat vague and, arguably, under-publicized. Instagram, for example, announced it was introducing an algorithm via a blog post that said users feeds would soon be ordered to show the moments we believe you will care about the mostwithout giving any indication of how it could or would make such decisions.

Some participants underestimated the role or complexity of algorithms by taking platforms at face value. One described how responsibility for Reddits scoring system is up to all users, neglecting the role of the platforms algorithm. He told the group, If its something interesting, its voted up, and if its not, its useless. Consequently, correct stuff [is] usually towards the top. This, of course, is not the case. Reddit, like Facebook and Instagram, is controlled by an algorithm. Indeed, following a change to Reddits front page algorithm in December 2016, TechCrunch reported:

Yes, its true: Those numbers on the site arent just upvotes minus downvotes or anything so simple. The blue ball machine gif [that Reddit CTO Christopher Slowe] shared as an indication of how the system works is probably closer to the truth. And he indicated in another comment that there is some slight fuzzing to stymie would-be reverse engineers of the algorithm.

The blue ball machine gif (pictured below) is truly baffling, yet it was apparently shared to provide a sense of the complexity of the algorithm without giving away any proprietary information.

The image doesnt reveal any trade secrets. But it does show why platform users are confused about how information is served to them, and how far there is to go for any degree of transparency to be achieved.

Other participants argued that they or their friends held the balance of power, likely overestimating the level of control they have on the platforms. A participant in Elkhart, Indiana, insisted, Its up to me what I see. What the social networks provide, I dont know, I guess thats also voluntary because youre following who you want to follow Its not really Twitters fault. Its not Facebooks fault. They have their faults, but what I see may not be their fault.

In New York, a participant made the case that Facebook friends have more power over what appears than the platforms algorithm: Your news feed is populated by your friends, and your friends are the ones perpetuating your news feed As far as Facebook having the control, I really dont agree with that. I think its definitely your social circle that controls that, at least on Facebook.

Finally, multiple participants described abandoning certain platforms due to a lack of transparency about algorithm changes or how their personal data is used to shape their news feeds (and, indeed, how it is collected and used more generally).

One participant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, went into great detail about Reddits supposed lack of transparency about changes made to its front page algorithm. These changes, coupled with a more concerted effort to remove material deemed to be offensive, were, in his opinion, tantamount to filtering and designed to suppress right-wing perspectives. This, he argued, had been sufficiently egregious to drive him away from Reddit and over to 4Chan, a platform he felt was less filtered.

Participants from separate age groups in New York described similar rationale for either curtailing their use of Facebook or abandoning it completely. I live in a very liberal bubble, New York and [a college], so Ive been trying to mediate. I dont think Facebook helped that, theres all sorts of stuff about their algorithm and stuff like that, so I dont go to it for news anymore because I dont want to keep spiraling down that sort of very narrow worldview, one said.

Having travelled 9,000 miles around the country, and dissected 20 hours worth of discussion, we saw a pressing need for algorithmic literacy. People have a right to know more about how and why the information served to them is being prioritized.

The problem, of course, is that we cant have algorithmic literacy before we have algorithmic transparency. For that, we are dependent on the tech companies, who have arguably skirted around what is arguably a pretty straightforward ethical responsibility. The ball is in their court.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Pete Brown is the Research Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and runs the Content Analysis Hub for the Publishers and Platforms project.
When, in the future, we look back on the history of American journalism, the collapse of local newspapers will be a source of shame. Local, the on-ramp for public understanding of and participation in news, has been crushed under the wheels of progress, with repercussions for all media. The social platforms that promised all citizens a voice, and gave small business an incredibly effective advertising platform, made it all but impossible to pay enough local reporters to keep their communities informed. The number of statehouse reporters dropped by a third in the first 15 years of the century. Local news organizations rapidly consolidated into companies such as Gannett and Tronc, which, despite their scale, cannot solve the equation of how to place enough reporters in markets where news does not generate enough advertising or subscription revenue to support the costs.

In research released today from Columbia Universitys Tow Center, we convened focus groups from across the country to find out how local news audiences view the rise of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit as new intermediaries for their news and information. It is not surprising that our interviewees noticed that local news seemed to be subjugated to both national and international events in their algorithmically determined social news feeds. It was also the case that all groups were anxious to discuss misinformation (or fake news as they described it), even though we did not bring it up as a topic. Here the platforms ought to be especially concerned: Respondents did not see the spread of misinformation as the fault of those who shared it, but as the responsibility of the platforms that showed it to them.

ICYMI: We spoke to ordinary people about fake news. What they qualify as a false story is notable.

Facebook and Google are not the sources that respondents identify as being designed for news but out of convenience of using the social platform and search engine for other purposes it is where citizens now encounter their news. The responsibility for the health of the news feed was therefore by default seen in the focus groups as a platform responsibility.

Respondents did not see the spread of misinformation as the fault of those who shared it, but as the responsibility of the platforms that showed it to them.

Both Google and Facebook are now involved in initiatives that directly address the havoc their own business models have wrought on local news markets. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebooks CEO, identified local journalism as a priority area to be addressed by the Facebook Journalism Project, a broad-based initiative to foster better relations with news publishers. At the same time Google, which has already funded interesting local projects through its Digital News Initiative in Europe, is joining an effort dubbed Report for America, which aims to put 1,000 reporters into local newsrooms, in a similar manner to how Teach for America puts resources into under-staffed classrooms.

The application of big tech money to the problems of local journalism is cautiously welcomed by struggling newsrooms, and ultimately necessary. It is hard to imagine how the yawning gaps in basic coverage might be addressed unless through the transfer of wealth from platforms that have enriched themselves with local advertising while returning little to no local information producers. However, the application of big tech methodologies and tools raises a new set of questions about how these initiatives might create long term sustainability for local news.

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Googles involvement in Report for America puts it in partnership with the Ground Truth Project and a number of other backers and nonprofit organizations. It starts with 12 funded reporting positions in 2018 and details on Googles own blog suggest the company will be supplying Chromebooks, cameras, and phones as well as training in journalism. Critics of the scheme have wondered whether parachuting reporters into hard-pressed newsrooms is the right way to address the long term issue of local communities being cut out of how they cover their own stories.

Googles European Digital News Initiative is a more mature plan that has followed the path of returning grant-based funding to independent news. However there are also indications that the technical abilities of the big tech companies will unlock ways of making local reporting scalable. In the recent Google Digital News initiative grants, the company gave $800,000 to the Press Association (the UK equivalent of the Associated Press) to pursue an automated reporting scheme for local courts and town hall meetings.

Similarly the Facebook Journalism Project has attempted to foster engagement between the journalism team at the social media company and local newsrooms. Like Google, Facebooks training includes a level of integration with Facebook tools and technologies; in the first six months of the project, Facebook launched initiatives that offered newsrooms help with tools and technologies that would more deeply assimilate newsrooms to the platform. In the Knight-Lenfest News Initiative (disclosure: the Tow Centers research is funded by the Knight Foundation), Facebook will be working hands on with eight local publishing organizations to provide training, tools, and integration.

There is a significant question over whether the best route forward for local news is actually embedding it into the fabric of global data aggregators, but the urgency of the crisis has put pressure on the time for thinking through and funding alternatives. The heavily integrated approach of technology companies to the local market might be seen as a testing ground for what more explicit integration between platforms and publishers might look like. The barriers of policy and skepticism are lower here, as the need for support is more urgent.

ICYMI: Facebook is eating the world

The approach to the local news market gives rise to anxiety that the independence of journalism, and the control local communities have over their own information and news environment, could be compromised at ground level. There would be many ways for technology firms to help local news without high levels of direct intervention. Rutgers Law Professor Ellen P. Goodman recently called for Facebook to back initiatives similar to Googles Report for America project by endowing local news funding. I have argued for similar philanthropic intervention to create a new type of technological public media institution that could fix some of the problems of institutional weakness.

The local news market is not short on innovation. In remarkably difficult circumstances, a number of promising organizations and projects have emerged to tackle issues of scale and community engagement. The Digital Democracy Project, out of California Polytechnic University, has developed a model for aggregating and archiving digital feeds of public meetings to make them easily searchable and reportable, and which will become even more useful as artificial intelligence improves the utility of the material over time. There is a great deal of unexplored possibility for local news organizations to become centers for collecting and keeping their own data. Here the intervention of big tech is arguably unhelpful, as it by nature does not allow for the possibility of separate data infrastructures emerging.

Local-facing initiatives such as Hearken, Spaceship Media, and the Solutions Journalism Network have all developed models for deepening ties between stories and local communities. None of these projects can solve the problem of putting more human reporting resources on the ground permanently.

The will of technology companies and philanthropic institutions to revive local journalism is not in doubt. The encouragement for more diverse initiatives that make local reporting attractive to members of local communities, and that build permanent distributed resources within the changed news environment, is still a work in progress.

ICYMI: CNN aired a problematic gun photo a few weeks ago. All journalists can learn from the mistake.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Emily Bell is a frequent CJR contributor and the director of Columbias Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Previously, she oversaw digital publishing at The Guardian.
In 2014, the French investigative filmmaker Laurent Richard was reporting on government corruption in Azerbaijan when his fixer told him he was being watched. Richard made a copy of his footage and gave it to the Azerbaijani reporter Khadija Ismayilova, who smuggled it to France on his behalf. Sure enough, Richard was detained at the airport, and officials seized his equipment. But thanks to Ismayilova, his reporting escaped unharmed.

That experience stuck with Richard. Now hes launching a centralized online platform for investigative journalists in dangerous situations, vowing to keep their stories alive should they be killed or jailed. Richards nonprofit Freedom Voices Network will officially launch a new platform at the Newseum in Washington, DC, on October 31, inviting journalists to upload their reporting to a secure central portal and giving Richard and his team the means to continue their work if they are silenced.

Richard is currently being sued by the government of Azerbaijan in French court for calling the country a dictatorship. But it wasnt just his treatment at the hands of the secretive oil-rich state that moved him to help threatened reporters. Richard was the first outsider on the scene after two terrorists assassinated 12 people at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015 (its offices were next door to Richards documentary company, Premieres Lignes, at the time). This happened in my environment. Not abroad, not on the frontline. This time it was in the middle of Paris, says Richard. That was a kind of turning point. [It made me] much more aware about the fragility of the free press.

ICYMI: The problem with police body cam videos

The need for an organization like Freedom Voices Network is more pressing now than it was even two or three years ago. Threats to reporters who dig up incriminating secrets are mounting the world over. Just last week, blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia, a vocal and influential critic of Maltas political class, was murdered in a car bombing. Richard says its exactly this kind of incidenton a tiny tourist island known more for its nightlife than its political intriguethat his team will spotlight.

Although Richards mission is to keep unfinished stories alive in the face of tragedy, he hopes journalists will use his platform to protect themselves against reprisal and censorship so they dont have to rely on outside help. By telling sources that silencing them wont silence their story, reporters can remove incentives to hurt them. Richard and his team will also launch publicity campaigns should harm befall a colleague, telling the world exactly why they were targeted and sending a deterrent message to would-be copycats.

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The idea is to say to the people who would arrest or kill a journalist that if they do so there will be 10, 20, 30, or perhaps 40 journalists who will continue his work, and make sure that the story doesnt get killed as well, but continues and makes more noise, says Richards deputy at Freedom Voices Network, Jules Giraudat.

While Richard will head up the project at the same time as his TV work, Giraudat and another French reporter, Remi Labed, are coming onboard full-time to manage the portal and pick up the work of fallen colleagues. Labed will take responsibility for the projects digital securitywhich is of critical importance given that hacks could endanger the journalists Freedom Voices Network wants to protect.

The projects website will host detailed instructions on how best to keep files safe when uploading thembe it via encrypted email, the secure messaging app Signal, or SecureDrop, an open-source information portal managed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. SecureDrop is the most secure. It requires a little bit more work on the journalists side, but its really worth the effort. Its a state-of-the-art system, says Labed. If [youre working on] a very sensitive story wed recommend SecureDrop every time.

TRENDING: Site sparks uproar on social media with Vegas massacre headline

The concept behind Richards project isnt new. After Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was killed in a car bombing while investigating mob activity in 1976, nearly 40 journalists from across America rallied to carry on his work. Richard has taken this model and used modern technology to enhance it. Hes also leaning on existing global reporting networks to make it tick.

Reporters Without Borders, for example, will lend the assistance of its worldwide team of reporters and monitors, coordinating reporting in countries where Richards team lacks expertise or contacts on the ground. The organization will also fund Giraudats and Labeds salaries, and publicize Freedom Voices Networks efforts from its Paris headquarters. Laurent contacted me saying he had this idea, which was perfectly consistent and complementary with what we do as a press freedom watchdog, says Christophe Deloire, secretary general of Reporters Without Borders. We use the weapon of journalism to defend press freedom.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journaliststhe DC-based collective that spearheaded (and won a Pulitzer for) the Panama Papers storyis supporting the project, too. ICIJ Deputy Director Marina Walker Guevara will be at the launch next week, while Bastian Obermayer, a reporter with German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung who received the initial Panama Papers leak, will serve as its vice president.

By working together, journalists can make it harder for censorship to win. We're proud to support #FreedonVoices https://t.co/XogG472reB  ICIJ (@ICIJorg) May 26, 2017

The Panama Papers story was a case study in the potential of collaborative investigative journalism across borders. While Freedom Voices Network might not be the first port of call for journalists who are already sharing big data leaks with colleagues in other countries, it will still offer a useful backstop. When we started to confront people we planned to write about, like friends of Putin, that was the most dangerous phase, Obermayer says. It would have been really great to have had a safe-box, so we could have at least deposited a basic understanding of what we had, and what we were gonna use it for, and who my contacts were.

Obermayer and Richard studied together as Knight-Wallace fellows at the University of Michigan last year. It was in Ann Arbor that Richard started fleshing out how his project might take concrete shapewith input from other fellows, professional journalists and digital experts, and even Edward Snowden, who Skyped with Richard to offer advice and support. It all originated with this very simple, clear passion for wanting to preserve information, then his dedication to put the pieces in place, says Lynette Clemetson, director of the Knight-Wallace program.

While its mission is clear, the exact form Freedom Voices Networks new portal will take remains a little fuzzy. How exactly it will set about finishing storiesand its success ratewill only become clear once it has formally launched and tackled its first cases. For safety reasons, Richard cant say much about what stories his team intends to pick up first, though he does have plans in place.

Following in the footsteps of targeted colleagues is a perilous and difficult undertaking. Our mission is to focus on dangerous stories, so there is danger all the time. There is danger on the computer, there is danger on the devices, there is legal danger.There is danger at every corner, says Richard. But I do think the best protection for this dangerous mission is a collaborative aspect. If we are together we are stronger.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets. He writes CJRs newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop.
Today, October 24, is celebrated across the world as United Nation Day. Here is why this day is considered significant.

By India Today Web Desk: United Nation Day, above and beyond, is celebrated to remember the organisation of the United Nations and its agenda of promoting human rights, diversity and progress across the world.

Basically, it is the United Nation's birthday, but there is more to it.

WHAT IS UNITED NATION DAY?

Exactly 72 years ago from today, in 1945, the United Nation officially came into being. The majority of its signatories came together to sign the founding document, and the UN Charter was started up with the promise to be "devoted to making known to the people of the world the aims and achievements of the United Nations and to gain their support for" its work,".

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However, October 24 started being celebrated as United Nations Day in 1948. Since 1971, after the United Nations General Assembly's recommendation, the day was registered by Member States as a public holiday.

72 yrs of service to the ???17 #GlobalGoals for people & planetOn Tuesday's #UNDay see how the UN makes a difference https://t.co/yrG53kUchh pic.twitter.com/SLhwfgj4QF- United Nations (@UN) October 23, 2017

Today is also celebrated as World Development Information Day.

Tuesday is World Development Information Day, highlighting cooperation to achieve #GlobalGoals https://t.co/nUBIOnQt8m pic.twitter.com/hAotXVx7ua- United Nations (@UN) October 24, 2017

HOW IS INDIA CELEBRATING THE UNITED NATION DAY?

On the account of United Nation Day, Home Ministry has announced that the UN flag will be flying along with the national flag atop all important buildings in India today.

In a directive to all central departments and administrations in states and Union territories, the ministry said every year October 24 is observed as United Nations Day when the UN flag is flown along with Indian national flag on all buildings on which the Tricolour is regularly flown.

"The United Nations Flag is, however, not flown on Raj Bhawans/Raj Niwas and buildings housing Legislative Councils, Legislative Assemblies and High Courts," it said.

HOW IS UNITED NATION DAY CELEBRATED ACROSS THE WORLD?

Traditionally, United Nations Day is spent on meetings and events that revolve around the various agendas of the United Nations.

In many countries, the day is a public holiday, while some others celebrate with awareness programmes, cultural shows, etc.

The US has been celebrating United Nations Day each year since 1946 with their president issuing a proclamation, while in countries like in Kosovo, United Nations Day is an official non-working day as the province is administered by the Interim Administration Mission.

In the Philippines, schools kids are encouraged to put on the national costumes of member states and organise a programme.

So, here's wishing the United Nations a very happy birthday. Keep up the good work!

Happy birthday UN! ?????? The United Nations works to keep the peace all day, every day. More about #UNDay here: https://t.co/glIZBenaiy pic.twitter.com/naloL3QB3A- United Nations (@UN) October 24, 2017

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One of the world's most secretive states is going green  for national security reasons. Pyongyang may be interested in developing algae as "a strategic resource," according to a note on 38 North, a website focused on North Korea that's part of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. related investing news This gene-editing company that went public last month could rally 20%, Jefferies says Algae, plantlike organisms that includes kelp and spirulina, is a multipurpose resource that can produce food, fertilizer, feedstock and fuel from the same biomass. And it makes sense for Pyongyang to be interested: Over time, an algae industry could gradually "mitigate the negative effects of sanctions both on the country's energy supply and food security," the note said. Research facilities dedicated to open ponds and aquaculture systems  key infrastructure for algae growth  have existed in the rogue state since the early 2000s but they have recently become more complex, 38 North said, pointing to large plants in two different areas as examples.

38 North

"It is not surprising that the North Korean government is developing thousands of rural open ponds producing algae and bigger and more sophisticated sites, whose purpose increasingly looks like algae production," the note said.

Benefits of green gold

The isolated nation lacks domestic petroleum reserves as well as fertilizer. To make up for that, its agricultural deficiencies and chronic food shortages, Pyongyang has long attempted to become resource independent. Self-reliance is even part of its official state ideology known as Juche. But the rogue state still remains dependent on foreign imports of fuel and food for survival. Historical ally China has long been Pyongyang's primary trading partner and economic lifeline, but Beijing banned certain energy exports to comply with United Nations resolutions. As international sanctions take their toll, the North Korean economy is under pressure. Ordinary households face insufficient food supplies and a lack of electricity, former senior North Korean economic official Ri Jong Ho told the Asia Society in New York earlier this year.

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The shift from taxis to ride-sharing companies may have hit a tipping point in New York City, while Lyft continues to show impressive growth.



A new report by the business travel expense firm Certify shows Lyft is gaining on both taxis and Uber. The percentage of business travel receipts for Lyft rides in the third quarter climbed 3 percent, the biggest quarterly increase since Certify began tracking expense reports.



While Lyft receipts cover just 11 percent of the business travel expenses analyzed by Certify, it's ahead of taxis at 7 percent and it is gaining on Uber, which still dominates the category with 54 percent of the receipts.

This is the first quarter Certify has seen a drop in the percentage of receipts for Uber rides. Car rental receipts fell to 28 percent of the business travel category.



A separate report on ride-sharing shows Uber hit a milestone in New York City. Uber passed taxis in New York City in July for the number of dispatched trips, Morgan Stanley said. It is the first time Uber logged more trips in New York than taxis, according to Morgan Stanley.



"We believe that Uber now has a larger share of the mobility 'pie' in New York City than yellow taxis," Morgan Stanley wrote in a note to clients.



To be sure, people shifting from taxis to Uber and other ride-sharing operators in New York City has been happening for years. In fact, Morgan Stanley says New York's taxi operators have now seen about 35 consecutive months of year-over-year declines in trips per day and in revenue.
By PTI: Black Day

Lucknow, Oct 24 (PTI) The Congresss Uttar Pradesh unit today said that it will mark November 8, the first anniversary of

demonetisation, by observing a Black Day in the state, and hold processions to highlight its "ill-effects".

Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the scrapping of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes on November 8.

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"We will observe November 8 as a black day for the economy throughout the state, and take out a candlelight march at 8:00 pm. During the day, meetings, processions and nukkad sabhas will also be held.

"On this day, we will pay tributes to martyrs (balidaaniyo) of demonetisation," Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee chief Raj Babbar told reporters here.

Terming the GST (Goods and Services Tax) as "Gabbar Singh Tax", he said, "The implementation of the GST has hurt the traders in general, and the small traders in particular. Owing to demonetisation, people have lost their lives either in police action or due to heart attack. The promise that things will change and improve in 50 days was also not fulfilled."

Babbar also said that if voted to power, the Congress will change the GST in such a way that it does not attack the common man and also usher in job revolution.

The Uttar Pradesh Congress chief said a memorandum will be given to the Prime Ministers office demanding families who lost their members during demonetisation be paid Rs 25 lakh as compensation and the next kin be given a job.

"The people of the country had put their faith in the prime minister, but they have been betrayed," he said.

There were no benefits of demonetisation, but only losses. There was unemployment, development came to a standstill and farmers are feeling harassed, Babbar claimed.

Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, "We demand that the PM tender an apology to the people for causing damage to the economy."

"We also demand compensation for those who died due to demonetistaion. The PM should be sensitive. A situation should not arise that elections are held on choosing the tolerant and intolerant, instead of being held on issues," he said.

"On November 8, 2016, the prime minister declared that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes would be reduced to mere pieces of paper. This type of farmaan (announcement) has not been made by any prime minister. This is the job of the RBI or the finance minister," Babbar said.

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Economists in India and other countries, including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that due to demonetisation the GDP growth rate will decline by 2 per cent, the Congress leader said.

"BJP leaders, at that time, made various comments. Not even a year has passed, and the GDP growth rate has declined by more than 2 per cent, and the economy has virtually collapsed," he said.

On the recent controversy surrounding the Taj Mahal, Babbar said, "When we speak of shahzaade, they start talking about Shah Jahan. We talk about issues pertaining to the public, they start talking about Taj Mahal." PTI NAV ANB

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Maayan Zilberman oozes style. Top to bottom, her look is thoughtful, cool and sexy. So it's no great surprise to find she's a former lingerie designer. The fashionista and serial entrepreneur also has been making candy  yes candy  with a stylish twist.

Zilberman, 38, is the brains behind New York-based Sweet Saba, a luxury candy line launched in November 2015. Her avant-garde collection includes edible versions of candy lipsticks, sunglasses, mix tapes and records that include hand-painted details. She also produces sugar crystal candy that looks like glass statues, which are handmade, with flavors including champagne and ginger.

The only problem? The yummy treats just might be too beautiful to eat.

"The way I approach candy is more from an artistic perspective," she said. "It's for grown-ups. I'm asking customers to take a moment to think about what it looks like, what it might taste like and what the experience might be."

Prices range from $5 into the thousands for custom orders.
Amazon shares have nearly doubled the market's gain so far this year. But even after the big runup, Wall Street analysts are recommending that investors buy them before this week's earnings report.

Deutsche Bank on Tuesday reiterated its buy rating for Amazon shares, predicting solid results from its e-commerce business.

"Heading into Amazon's 3Q results, we expect strong top-line growth to continue, especially in retail where Amazon has been aggressively investing in fulfillment facilities and content to improve the overall value to consumers / Prime members," analyst Lloyd Walmsley wrote in a note to clients.

"We remain bullish on the name as a core long-term holding with the largest TAM [total addressable market] of any company we cover and strong long term barriers."

Walmsley raised his price target to $1,192, which is 23 percent higher than Monday's closing price. His old price target was $1,175.

The analyst said the company has significantly increased its fulfillment and operational capabilities in international markets such as India, Singapore, Brazil and Europe. He is also optimistic about Amazon's ability to take advantage of its recent Whole Foods Market acquisition.

In the near term, Amazon should be able to use the Whole Foods stores as a way to draw its Prime subscribers to order food online, he said.

Longer term, he said, "we expect Amazon to leverage the Whole Foods Market brand and supply chain to source high-quality food and build demand for it, but ultimately leverage Amazon's expertise to drive efficiency in the logistics efforts, fulfilling orders outside of the Whole Foods Market store footprint."

JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth reaffirmed his overweight rating for Amazon shares, predicting strong growth trends for its Whole Foods business.

"Going forward we expect Whole Foods Market revenue to accelerate," he wrote Tuesday. "We believe Amazon is well positioned as the market leader in eCommerce  We believe Amazon continues to show strong ability to take share of overall eCommerce, and its flexibility in pushing first-party vs. third-party inventory and its Prime offering both serve as major advantages."

Anmuth raised his price target for the company to $1,180 from $1,175.

Amazon's stock is up 29 percent this year through Monday compared with the S&P 500's 15 percent gain. Its shares rose 1 percent shortly after Tuesday's market open.

The company will report third-quarter results on Thursday, according to its website.




The Fitbit Ionic has a few apps, with more to come

Fitbit has launched its payments processing system in the U.K.

Fitbit Pay, the wearable tech firm's answer to competitor giants like Apple Pay and Android Pay, will be available initially with one bank in Britain  fintech start-up Starling.

Starling customers in the U.K. can now use Fitbit's Ionic smartwatch to make contactless payments in stores.

"Starling Bank was founded to empower consumers to take control of their money and better manage it on the move, so Fitbit Pay is a perfect partner for us," Starling CEO Anne Boden said in an announcement Tuesday.

Starling is a challenger bank  one of many small retail lenders set up with the intention of eating away at the consumer base of larger banks.

It is also the first British bank to offer Apple Pay, Android Pay and Fitbit Pay on its app; it introduced the former two features last month.
It is very possible that 2017 may see the end of the wild poliovirus.

"What we're looking at now is sort of the endgame of polio eradication," says Dr. Jay Wenger, who leads the Gates Foundation's polio eradication efforts. "We are closer than ever, and we're optimistic that we can see the end of wild poliovirus disease by as early as this year," he said.

According to Dr. Wenger, there are only 12 known cases of the wild poliovirus in existence today, in just two countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan. "In the last couple of years, we've seen unprecedented progress. In 2015 we could only find 74 cases; in 2016 we found 37, and then this year so far we've found only 12 in only two countries."

The reason: a mass immunization effort to orally vaccinate 2.5 billion children in 122 countries, bolstered by the 1988 launch of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

Although Dr. Jonas Salk is credited with developing the first safe and effective polio vaccine in 1955, there were still about 350,000 cases of polio worldwide 30 years later. "In a lot of places, children don't always get all the vaccines that they are supposed to, and that's a chronic problem, said Dr. Wenger.

The virus can only live in people, he says, and it needs new people to infect to keep on spreading and keep on living. "If you make all those people in an area immune, then the virus can''t find new people to infect. So if we can get enough children in an area vaccinated, the virus dies off."

Dr. Wenger explained that even after seeing the last known case of polio, the Gates Foundation will still be monitoring the situation over the next three years. Continual surveillance is necessary, he said. Until there are no additional cases after a several-year period can polio be deemed completely eradicated.

Since the World Health Assembly's 1988 launch of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the number of cases has been reduced by 99.9 percent, saving more than 13 million children from paralysis. Economic modeling has found that the eradication of polio would save at least $40 billion to $50 billion between 1988 and 2035, mostly in low-income countries.

Bill Gates is hopeful the disease will become the second disease after smallpox to disappear for good. "Progress in fighting polio might be one of the world's best-kept secrets in global health," he acknowledged in the foundation's 2017 annual letter. But soon, he hopes, it will be a secret no more. "If things stay stable in the conflicted areas, humanity will see its last case of polio this year."
When bitcoin was trading at $2,600 earlier this year, Moas predicted it would hit $5,000 . The digital asset was trading at about $5,700 on Tuesday.

Bitcoin's current market value is about $95.9 billion as of Tuesday afternoon Asia time, according to the website Coinmarketcap.com. Meanwhile, Thomson Reuters data showed Goldman Sachs had a value of $93.67 billion, and Apple's market cap was at $806.65 billion.

"People need to start taking this seriously because today bitcoin caught up with Goldman Sachs," Ronnie Moas, founder and director of Standpoint Research, told CNBC's "Capital Connection." He added, "Within five years, it's going to catch Apple which has (a more than) $800 billion market cap."

One market observer told CNBC on Tuesday that at the rate the price of bitcoin was moving, its total market value could overtake Apple within five years.

Bitcoin has taken flack from financial luminaries in recent weeks, but their skepticism did little to stop the most popular cryptocurrency from setting a new record high over the weekend.

On Monday, Saudi billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said the cryptocurrency with no controlling body was an "Enron in the making."

Previously, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink called the cryptocurrency "an index of money laundering," while JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon predicted if "you're stupid enough to buy it, you'll pay the price for it one day."

Moas said that the three prominent critics of bitcoin were "heavily invested" in publicly-traded U.S. banks that are currently being threatened by the cryptocurrency. "I don't expect those people to come out and recommend ... to buy bitcoin. Because that hurts their business," he said.

He said he expects the price of bitcoin to jump to $50,000, possibly within a decade and the market value could cross a trillion dollars.

"You have a supply-demand equation here that is mindboggling to me," Moas said. Bitcoin has a limited supply of 21 million tokens, which is expected to be reached only in the next century.

But Bitcoin's growing popularity and acceptance among users to carry out financial transactions could mean a wider adoption in the future  and greater demand for the cryptocurrency. According to Moas, in a few years, there could be about "200 million people around the world trying to get their hands on a few million bitcoin." That, he said, would drive the price to $50,000 per token.

Other cryptocurrency proponents have also said in the past they expect bitcoin to hit a market value of at least $1 trillion by 2025. Regulation may help lend more credibility to the cryptocurrency among investors.

Moas added that out of the 1,000 or so cryptocurrencies that are currently in existence, he is focusing only on the top 20 names that account for more than 90 percent of the total market value. A majority of the rest are "pump-and-dump scam operations," he said.
BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink said Tuesday investors should expect only a 4 percent investment return with a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds.

"We're talking about a balanced portfolio. We're talking about over a 10-year horizon," Fink said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

"Obviously, this year we are making far better because of the equity market return," he added, but warned some years could be much worse. "There are going to be some times where you're going to have a market setback where you could lose 20, 30, to 40 percent of the market."

BlackRock is the world's biggest money manager with nearly $6 trillion in assets under management.

Fink was reiterating a prediction he made during a panel discussion at a Saudi investor summit moderated by CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin earlier Tuesday. His comments raised eyebrows because investors have come to expect bigger investments returns.

The S&P 500 has returned 7.6 percent annually during the last 10 years, a period that includes the financial crisis.

Fink said on CNBC that BlackRock researchers actually published the 4 percent return estimate two months ago. But since he talked about it at the conference it's getting attention.

The BlackRock chief appeared from Riyadh at the Future Investment Initiative, a summit presented by the Saudi Arabia's massive sovereign wealth fund to showcase investment opportunities as the kingdom aims to diversify its economy to be less oil dependent.

The transformation of Saudi Arabia's economy is "pretty impressive," Fink said.

"It's a whole new ballpark," Fink said. "Saudi is underinvested for over 20 years. They began the investment process over the last five years."

"They're really trying to push the whole society forward."

Fink also said the global economy is starting to see acceleration. "We're in our eighth year from the Great Recession," he said. "We're seeing Japan and China accelerating. Japan may grow 2 percent over the next quarter."

If President Donald Trump passes his tax reform plan in the first quarter of next year, Fink added, the U.S. market will see "another leg up."
The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note sat higher at around 2.414 percent at 3:16 p.m. ET, its highest level since May. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was up at 2.926 percent. Bond yields move inversely to prices.

U.S. government debt yields tested daily highs Tuesday afternoon, as investors digested the latest news surrounding the decision of the next Federal Reserve chair.

President Donald Trump asked Senate Republicans for a show of hands in support of potential nominees for chairman of the Federal Reserve as he took part in a lunch meeting with the fractious caucus, reported Bloomberg. The president alone is responsible for choosing Chairs of the Fed.

According to the report, Senator Tim Scott said Trump asked specifically about economist John Taylor and Fed Governor Jerome Powell, both of whom are considered strong contenders for the central bank's top job.

The Treasury Department auctioned $26 billion in 2-year notes at a high yield of 1.596 percent. The bid-to-cover ratio, an indicator of demand, was 2.74.

Indirect bidders, which include major central banks, were awarded 48.2 percent. Direct bidders, which includes domestic money managers, bought 14.1 percent.

While no major speeches by the U.S. Federal Reserve are scheduled to take place Tuesday, talk of who will take on the role of Fed Chair in early 2018 will remain a key topic of conversation among investors. At present, five people have been named as potential candidates, including current Fed Chair Janet Yellen.

With a verdict looming, investors will likely be looking for any new developments or announcements when it comes to the U.S. central bank.

In an interview aired in recent days, President Donald Trump acknowledged that the markets expected that he would likely go for Stanford economist John Taylor or Fed Governor Jerome Powell for the top role. One of the two could be put up for the position of Fed chair, while the other could be nominated for the vice chair role, a recent FBN report suggested.

PredictIt, and online site where users can place bets on the probability of various events, currently gives Powell a 55 percent chance of getting the job.

Tax reform will also likely be at the back of investors' minds Tuesday, as markets look for any new developments.

Last week, the Senate passed a budget proposal that allowed Republicans to move closer to eventually passing tax reform  a measure that was approved by a vote of 51-49.

The tax plan crafted by Trump and Republican leaders calls for steep tax cuts for corporations and potentially for individuals. It would double the standard deduction used by most Americans, shrink the number of tax brackets from seven to three or four, and repeal inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates.

Republicans aim to release their tax bill on Nov. 1, a Capitol Hill source tells CNBC.

Meanwhile on Wall Street, investors will be paying close attention to the latest deluge of corporate earnings, as a number of major brands get ready to report.
By PTI: By Sajjad Hussain

Islamabad, Oct 24 (PTI) US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson today arrived in Pakistan on a whirlwind visit to normalise bilateral ties strained after President Donald Trump accused the country of providing safe havens to terrorist groups.

Tillersons crucial visit to Islamabad comes days after he made a major policy speech on Americas growing strategic relations with India and Trumps move to offer a bigger say to India in war-torn Afghanistan.

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During a surprise visit to Afghanistan yesterday, the top US diplomat indicated that he will firmly tell Pakistan to stop providing safe havens to terror groups on its soil to improve bilateral ties.

"We have made some very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support that the Taliban receives and the other terrorist organisations receive in Pakistan," he told reporters travelling with him at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

Islamabad needed to "take a clear-eyed view of the situation that they are confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organisations that find safe haven inside the country," he said.

Tillerson is visiting Pakistan on the invitation of Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif.

During his four-hour stay here, he will also meet Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Asif, and Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa.

Tillersons visit to Islamabad marks the first by a senior member of the Trump administration.

Radio Pakistan reported that Pak-US relations, stability in Afghanistan and regional security issues will be discussed during the meetings.

Foreign Office sources said the discussions would focus on improving security and economic relations but "cooperation against militants would be prominent during talks".

Tillersons visit is significant as it would clarify Trumps policy and set a course for future Islamabad- Washington relations.

In August, Trump had unveiled his Afghanistan and South Asia policy in which he had hit out at Pakistan for providing safe havens to "agents of chaos" that kill Americans in Afghanistan and warned Islamabad that it has "much to lose" by harbouring terrorists.

Pakistan regularly denies that it hosts terror groups fighting the US and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

Trumps criticism led to further strain in US-Pakistan relations with a peeved Islamabad saying the president ignored its efforts in the war against terrorism.

But bilateral relations improved slightly after a meeting between Prime Minister Abbasi and Vice President Mike Pence on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month.

Ties also improved after Pakistani troops rescued an American-Canadian family from militants who had held them captive for over five years.

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There was another step forward when the Quadrilateral Coordination Group of Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, and the US held its meeting last week in Oman after a hiatus of over a year to help start peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban.

The US also met a major demand of Pakistan for action against militants operating against it from Afghanistan when a drone strike killed the chief of Jamaatul Ahrar Umar Khalid Khurasani last week.

The top militant was involved in several terrorist attacks in Pakistan including the Peshawar school attack in 2014 that killed 150 people, mostly schoolchildren.

In Pakistan, officials said they are wary of demands by the US without taking into consideration Pakistani concerns about the increasing role of India in Afghanistan. PTI SH PMS AKJ KUN

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People react as they watch a sesion of the Catalonian regional parliament on a giant screen at a pro-independence rally in Barcelona, Spain, October 10, 2017. Susana Vera | Reuters

Spain's central government is prepared to discipline Catalan citizens who chose to disobey direct rule from Madrid, the Spanish government's official representative in Catalonia told CNBC.



"The Spanish government is going to have the responsibility of taking decisions of a disciplinary nature if there is a rejection, by any functionaries, of any of the orders that they receive," Enric Millo told CNBC on Monday, according to a translation. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy invoked unprecedented constitutional powers on Saturday, vowing to curtail some of the freedoms of Catalonia's parliament, sack some of its political players and force regional elections within six months. A vote in the national Senate to implement this direct rule is scheduled for Friday.

Disobedient politicians 'will resign'

In response, the far-left CUP party  a key supporter of Catalonia's pro-independence minority government in the regional parliament  described Madrid's actions as an aggression against all Catalans. The secessionist group also urged Catalan citizens to engage in "massive civil disobedience."

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Millo said he was hopeful the "large majority" of public servants based in the northeast of Spain would resist calls from separatist leaders to disobey the constitution. However, when he was asked what preparations had been made for those who ignored Madrid's direct rule, Millo said that it would be the politicians who had decided to break with "democratic legality" that would be dealt with first. "These people will resign  And therefore, although they may not agree, they will not have any type of responsibility, validity, nor any type of authorization in any institutional decision. They will be left without any responsibilities," he said.

'Serious failure by Puigdemont' to meet obligations

Spain was plunged into its worst constitutional crisis in decades after Catalonia held an independence referendum on October 1. Of the 43 percent of Catalans reported to have taken part, around 90 percent are believed to have voted in favor of independence.



The Catalan government, led by Carles Puigdemont, has consistently argued that the "yes" vote provides the Catalonian region with a mandate to announce a split from Spain. However, Madrid has repeatedly dismissed the legitimacy of the outcome, saying the referendum was illegal.

Catalan regional government president Carles Puigdemont attends a regional government meeting at the Generalitat Palace in Barcelona on October 10, 2017. Pau Barrena | AFP | Getty Images

On Tuesday, Spain's justice minister warned that the country's constitutional crisis could not be solved just by calling regional elections. "When the government proposes an option so extreme as article 155 (to impose direct rule), it's because we believe that there has been a serious failure by Puigdemont to meet his obligations," Justice Minister Rafael Catala said during a radio interview, Reuters reported on Tuesday. The Catalan parliament are poised to meet to discuss an appropriate response to Madrid on Thursday, just 24 hours before the Senate is due to vote on direct rule. And speculation has intensified as to whether the Catalan leader could push ahead with a formal declaration of independence. Spain's central government has so far refused to meet with Puigdemont until he drops the call for independence.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has committed to spending $45 million so far toward prison reform and affordable housing, according to Vice News.

CZI was formed by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and pediatrician Priscilla Chan, Zuckerberg's wife, to advance social causes in areas such as health care and education. Last month, CZI said it was funding groups advocating for immigration reform and better standards for criminal investigations into sexual violence.

Because CZI isn't registered as a nonprofit, it's not required to regularly disclose its spending. Zuckerberg has said he intends to cash in up to $12.8 billion in Facebook shares in the next year and a half to fund his philanthropic endeavors.

In response to a request for comment on the Vice report, CZI referred CNBC to its prior public announcements about funding for work around criminal justice and housing, including advocacy work supporting those issues.

Zuckerberg's investments, paired with a tour of the U.S., have drawn comparisons to a presidential campaign. But David Plouffe, former Obama advisor and policy boss at CZI, told Vice News those rumors were "silly" and "political scuttlebutt."

For the full story, see the report at News.Vice.com.
No one is safe from a cyber attack, not even elementary school children.

Recently, a hacking group named "The Dark Overlord," known for hacking Netflix, has been linked to a series of attacks on school districts in three different states reports CNN. The Wall Street Journal reports that cyber-thieves have attacked more than three dozen schools.

On October 16, the Department of Education issued a warning for K-12 teachers, parents, students and administrators against the dangers of hackers like The Dark Overlord, citing instances of cyber attacks against school districts in three different states.

"Schools have long been targets for cyber-thieves and criminals," writes the department. "We are writing to let you know of a new threat, where the criminals are seeking to extort money from school districts and other educational institutions on the threat of releasing sensitive data from student records."
The absence of Jamie Dimon from Saudi Arabia's Future Investment Summit should not be seen as a sign that Saudi Aramco's upcoming Initial Public Offering (IPO) is in some kind of trouble, the CEO for the Middle East and Africa at Deutsche Bank told CNBC Tuesday.

Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company, plans to list its shares on the Saudi domestic stock market  the Tadawul  and one or more foreign exchanges in the second half of 2018. However, JPMorgan boss, Jamie Dimon, was notable in his absence from Riyadh's so-called " in the desert" event this week.

When asked whether it should worry investors that a major CEO from one of the lead underwriters for the Saudi Aramco's IPO was missing from the conference in Riyadh Tuesday, Deutsche Bank's Jamal Al Kishi said: "I think that interpreting that as a sign that the process is derailed or in some kind of trouble is probably a bridge too far in my view."
The pan-European Stoxx 600 closed down 0.36 percent provisionally with most sectors in negative territory. Health care and travel and leisure stocks led the losses in Europe, with both sectors down more than 1 percent.



Britain's Whitbread reported a first-half pretax profit rise of 6.7 percent as it added more Premier Inn rooms and opened extra Costa coffee outlets. Despite the profit rise in the first six months of the year, the U.K.'s biggest hotel and coffee shop operator slumped towards the bottom of the benchmark Tuesday, closing down almost 5 percent.

Italian oil services firm Saipem meanwhile said it had returned to profit, reporting a net profit of 53 million euros in the third quarter. Chief Executive Stefano Cao told analysts the market outlook remained challenged, according to Reuters. The news sent shares of the firm up more than 10 percent.



Swedish defense firm Saab posted earnings Tuesday, reporting that bookings and profits were above market forecasts in the third quarter. The company said it had been further aided by increases in defense spending and growing investments in civil security. Its shares closed up 4 percent.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average rose sharply on the back of strong quarterly results from 3M and Caterpillar.
The negative view of Russia from the U.S. is being fueled by an internal political struggle in Washington and needs to be resolved, according to the CEO and president of Russia's second-largest bank.

"We are sick and tired of what's happening in America and this anti-Russian stance," VTB Bank's Andrey Kostin told CNBC Tuesday morning.

"We don't believe it's very much about Russia. It's about the domestic conflict among the political elite in America," Kostin added.

The relationship between the U.S. and Russia has deteriorated despite the initial perception that President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin could strike stronger ties. Aside from their diverging views on international issues such as North Korea, U.S. authorities have also blamed Russia for interfering in last year's U.S presidential election, leading to new sanctions against Moscow.

The tense issue of Russian meddling in the election has dragged on. Putin warned last week that U.S. media companies could be restricted when operating in Russia after calls from American lawmakers to limit Russian outlets, namely RT and Sputnik, for their involvement in the 2016 presidential election. Putin also said that Moscow's biggest mistake in the last 15 years was trusting the West "too much."

According to Kostin, the negative sentiment on Russia is bad for the relationship between the two countries, but also for the world. "But I don't think we can very much influence the situation until the American elite will sort out this issue by itself," Kostin added.
Lockheed Martin, along with Korea Aerospace Industries is proposing the T-50A for the Air Force's T-X Trainer competition.

CEO Marillyn Hewson said the company has "a record backlog that supports long term growth." Lockheed Martin raised its expectation for its full-year earnings to a range of $12.85  $13.15 per share, up from $12.30  $12.60.

Shares of the aerospace and dense contract slipped more than 2 percent in midday trading.

EPS: $3.24 per share vs. $3.26 expected, according to Thomson Reuters.

Revenue: $12.17 billion vs. $13.81 billion expected, according to Thomson Reuters.

Lockheed Martin said on Aug. 9 it is fielding more missile defense queries amid North Korea tests. The company said customers want to defend themselves against possible incoming missile attacks and are increasingly asking about missile defense systems.

Major defense stocks have surged to record highs this year as President Donald Trump has responded in kind to threats from North Korea. Lockheed Martin's stock closed at an all-time high of $321.15 on Oct. 12, according to FactSet.

Lockheed Martin's stock is up more than 28 percent this year as of Monday's close, according to FactSet.
The City of London must remain the top global financial centre after Brexit to avoid its financial services drifting to other parts of the world, Luxembourg Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna said on Monday.

Financial centres such as Luxembourg, Paris and Frankfurt are battling each other to attract banks, insurers and asset managers in Britain who need an EU base after the UK departs the bloc in 2019.

Companies from across the EU use London for currency trading, derivatives and managing investment funds. Some EU policymakers want parts of these activities shifted to the continent after Brexit to avoid relying on what will then be a foreign financial centre.

"It's key for Europe ... that the Number 1 financial centre in the world remains in Europe," Gramegna told students at the London School of Economics.

There was a need to harness the City of London to Europe to ensure that London continued to perform well, Gramegna said.
The head of payment processing firm Mastercard has told an audience in Saudi Arabia that data could be as effective as oil as a means of generating wealth.

Ajay Banga, president and CEO of MasterCard, was speaking at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, on a panel debating how business and society is coping with an explosion of digital information.

"I believe that data is the new oil. I am saying it in this country because I believe that the prosperity that oil brought in the last 50 years, data will bring in the next 50, 100 years if you use it the right way," Banga said.

He added that data had the additional advantage of not being a finite resource.

Banga told the audience that Mastercard was using data to inform its clients how they can improve top-line business.

"I use it for everything from Boots trying to figure out where to relocate its pharmacies, or for McDonald's trying to figure out if they should have all-day breakfasts in their menu," he said.
By the end of the year, McDonald's plans to offer delivery from 5,000 of its U.S. locations. Currently, the burger chain delivers out of about 3,700 of its stores nationwide.

"We're learning a lot about delivery and seeing success in dense urban metros with commerce, like New York, Boston, Miami and Los Angeles," Chris Kempczinski, president of McDonald's USA, said Tuesday on a call with analysts and investors. "I truly believe we're just beginning to scratch the surface on this opportunity."

Earlier this summer, Chief Executive Steve Easterbrook offered an update and said delivery was available at more than 2,000 locations, and he expected McDonald's partnership with UberEats to expand to more than 3,500 locations by the end of June.

Previously, the Golden Arches had expanded third-party delivery to more than 1,000 chains nationwide.

In the U.S., 60 percent of McDonald's delivery orders are placed in the evening or late at night, and arrive, on average, within 30 minutes, Easterbrook has said.

It's worth noting that McDonald's already has well-established delivery services in Asia and the Middle East, where for some restaurants delivery represents 40 percent of sales. In 2016, the burger chain brought in nearly $1 billion in delivery sales globally.

On Tuesday, McDonald's said the company remains on track to offer delivery in 10,000 total restaurants by the end of the year.

Looking at the future of the restaurant industry, delivery has become a key priority, and especially for fast food players.

Companies like Uber, Postmates and DoorDash have proven to be important third-party partners, offering up their drivers and services.

Tech giants like Amazon and Facebook are also beginning to break into the delivery business, as they partner with restaurants like Chipotle and Shake Shack and encourage them to sell from third-party platforms.
Veere Di Wedding has finished its first schedule in Delhi and now will probably head to Bangkok.

By India Today Web Desk: After months of speculation, Kareena Kapoor Khan's and Sonam Kapoor's Veere Di Wedding is finally on track. Earlier, the film was said to be delayed because of Kareena's pregnancy.

Well, now we have the first teaser poster of Veere Di Wedding with us, and we're already excited. Check out those beautiful lehengas! The poster is a bit of a tease, as Sonam is hiding Kareena's face with a fan, and even Swara Bhaskar's face can't be seen clearly.

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Sonam posted the picture on Twitter.

All said and done, they look stunning.

The first schedule of the film happened in Delhi. Kareena's son Taimur was there too, and was of course, everyone's favourite. In fact, Kareena even joked that Rhea Kapoor (Sonam's sister) had banned Taimur from the sets. Earlier there were rumours that Taimur might be a part of the film, but Kareena refuted those.

According to a source, "Shashanka Ghosh (director) and his team have done an extensive recce in Delhi where the major portion of the film is set. The first schedule will be a smaller one, of a few days, after which they will mostly head to Bangkok for the second schedule."

We can't wait for the main poster tomorrow!

ALSO WATCH: EXCLUSIVE: Sonam Kapoor says Neerja helped her conquer her own fears

--- ENDS ---
As for Notre Dame, where the Cleveland native got an accounting degree and played trumpet in the Band of the Fighting Irish, "the one thing they don't have is money they can do what they want with."

The transfer of the money won't happen until after his death, the timing of which is anyone's guess, he said. But the donation is a way to set aside some money for his family and their foundation while also resolving the transfer of ownership in his business after his death at the best possible terms, assuming none of his three children is interested in stepping up to run them.

The pledge is coming from 1978 graduate Kenneth Ricci, a private pilot and investor, who is making the gift in part to resolve some trickier issues he had encountered in planning for the future of his privately held businesses.

A wealthy alumnus is promising to give the University of Notre Dame its biggest unrestricted gift yet, $100 million it can use for any purpose under the sun.

As a single bequeath, it would eclipse the $75 million given by fellow alum Jay Jordan, a Chicago-area private equity investor, in 2014, though Jordan has given twice that to Notre Dame over the years, much of it earmarked for research in science and technology and a science building bearing his name. Both men are on the board of trustees.

But it is an enormous amount of money that doesn't have any directive attached to it, and that is what is turning heads in the philanthropic world. "There aren't many people who give this much unrestricted," said Greg Dugard, the university's associate vice president who works with donors like Ricci on gift planning. "I'm not aware of it anywhere in higher ed."

Overall giving by individual alumni to their universities was $9.9 billion last year through June, according to the Council for Aid to Education. That is out of $41 billion in total given by foundations, individuals and others. In 2016 there were only two gifts of $100 million or more, down from eight in 2015.

A commitment such as the one Ricci has made wouldn't be counted in the tally yet because it has yet to happen, said Ann Kaplan, who runs the survey for the Council for Aid to Education. But she said unrestricted giving is unusual and makes up less than 10 percent of gifts, and one of that size is very unusual.

The way it works is Notre Dame will be bequeathed a stake in Ricci's family limited partnership. including his privately held business Directional Aviation Capital, which holds stakes in a collection of aviation-related companies. As successor general partner, the university will be responsible for selling the business assets and returning any proceeds above $100 million to the family. Ricci says he may increase the amount of the donation depending on growth in the value of the businesses.

Directional Aviation holds stakes in Flexjet, a private plane fractional ownership rival to NetJets, and similar aviation-related companies. The $100 million is roughly one-third the current value of the holdings, Ricci said.

His three children  two are in their 20s and one is a teenager  each have a 20 percent stake and the option to buy into the business. But if they don't want to (and he says only one daughter has been involved in management so far), this gives them a way to cash out using the expertise of Notre Dame, which will be responsible for valuing the assets when the time comes and finding the best buyers for them.

Privately held businesses often have succession as their main stumbling block, said Michael Baker, an estate and business planning lawyer in Boston who did not work on this matter. The big unknown here is when and who will be able to take over, especially given it could be two or more decades in the future. Signing the university up as the caretaker answers that question. "This allows him some comfort in who he is selecting," Baker said.

Ricci went to Notre Dame as an Air Force ROTC scholarship recipient and worked as a commercial pilot in the early 1980s before attending law school and going into business as a private pilot. One of his early claims to fame was flying around then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton during his first run for the White House in 1992.

Ricci and his wife donated $5 million last year to Notre Dame to build an outdoor home for the marching band, and they have previously given the funds for a band rehearsal hall. The $100 million is in addition to those funds.

The most likely use of the money, he said, will be for financial aid. Notre Dame costs more than $69,000 a year but three-quarters of the undergraduate students get financial aid. Dugard said the university is currently aiming to raise $1 billion for financial aid in a capital campaign that has so far raised $3.5 billion.
Novartis's third-quarter core net income rose 4 percent at constant currencies, beating expectations, as the drugmaker said it had made "significant progress" in preparing its Alcon eyecare unit for a possible spinoff by the first half of 2019.

Core net income rose to $3.02 billion, compared to the average analyst estimate of $2.93 billion in a Reuters poll. Sales rose 2 percent to $12.4 billion, compared to the $12.2 billion Reuters poll average.

The Swiss group confirmed its full-year outlook.

On Alcon, where sales rose 7 percent in constant currencies, Novartis said on Tuesday a final decision on the unit's future hinged on continued sales growth and margin improvement over multiple quarters, making potential action "not likely before the first half of 2019".
The GOP wants to approve a plan by the end of the year to dramatically lower individual and corporate tax rates, double the standard deduction and scrap certain taxes that largely affect wealthier Americans. The party released a framework of its proposal last month , but it lacked some details Republicans aimed to hash out before releasing a draft bill.

The plan's release will follow an expected House vote on the Senate-approved budget plan on Thursday. The Senate resolution unlocks a tool that would allow the tax bill to pass with only a simple majority of Republican votes in the Senate.

Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., conducts a news conference in the Capitol after a meeting of the House Republican Conference on October 24, 2017.

President Donald Trump was attending the Senate GOP policy lunch on Tuesday afternoon following a fresh war of words with Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, had already expressed concerns about deficits generated by tax cuts.

Once they release the bill, Republicans will still have to overcome obstacles. Among those, some Republicans have already expressed concerns about the potential budget deficit generated by the plan.

The party has also struggled to find provisions to raise money to offset major individual and business tax cuts without running into political opposition. Trump on Monday tweeted that "there will be NO change" to the popular 401(k) contribution benefit, a tool considered to help to offset the cuts.

The GOP has also faced opposition to a proposal to get rid of state and local tax deductions. Those provisions affect high-tax blue states the most.

The Senate GOP will have to walk the same tightrope that it did when two high-profile attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed earlier this year. The party can only lose two of its own votes and still pass a plan. Concessions to some lawmakers could risk alienating others.

For instance, while Corker has sounded the alarm about deficits, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has raised concerns that the proposal does not go far enough to reduce the tax burden on the middle class.

Paul previously cited an analysis from the Tax Policy Center that estimated 28 percent of middle-income Americans could eventually see a tax increase under the plan.

 Reporting by CNBC's Ylan Mui.
One year after the U.S. lifted decades-long trade sanctions against Myanmar, the booming developing economy looks set to re-enter Washington's bad side. In a statement released late on Monday, the U.S. State Department said it was considering "economic options" to target individuals associated with atrocities against Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims. Washington is also "exploring accountability mechanisms available under U.S. law, including Global Magnitsky targeted sanctions," the State Department added, referring to penalties specifically targeted for human rights violations.

A woman collapses from exhaustion as Rohingya refugees arrive by a wooden boat from Myanmar to the shore of Shah Porir Dwip, in Teknaf, near Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, October 1, 2017 Mohammad Ponir Hossain | Reuters

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Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told CNBC on Tuesday that Venezuela's government is incompetent, dictatorial and tyrannical. In an interview ahead of a crucial debt payment due Friday, Rubio was asked if the U.S. is prepared for any fallout that may occur if Venezuela misses the payment. "The world markets are going to react to that. Certainly, their creditors are. And look, this is where they're headed anyway," he said. "They do not have an economy, they've made terrible economic decisions." Rubio said in the "Squawk Box" interview that the Venezuelan government is "stealing the treasure of the people of Venezuela" and that U.S. sanctions against the regime are "rightfully" accelerating Venezuela's economic downturn. "Their moment is coming," he added.

At the CNBC GOP Debate, Sen. Marco Rubio pointed to vocational schools as a lower-cost alternative to the traditional on-campus four-year college degree. David A. Grogan | CNBC

Creditors wonder if that moment may come Friday. If Venezuela misses the payment deadline, it could lose control of Citgo, its U.S.-based refining operation. The country's state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, must pay more than $984 million on Friday. The note is secured by 50.1 percent of Citgo. There is no grace period on the note, which means holders could declare it in default immediately, if unpaid. PDVSA could then lose control of one its most important and valuable assets. Venezuela has pledged the remaining 49.9 percent of Citgo to Russia's Rosneft. If that loan has a cross-default provision, Russia  in theory  could demand that chunk of Citgo if Venezuela fails to pay on Friday. The details of that contract have not been made public. The U.S. government has made clear that it will not allow Rosneft to own a piece of Citgo, and the Russians have been trying to renegotiate that deal.
Saudi Aramco's Amin Nasser, CEO of the world's largest oil company, says he does not spend much time worrying about booming production from U.S. shale fields.

One reason, says Nasser, is that shale drillers will eventually deplete the low-cost, high-quality "sweet spots" they've focused on throughout much of the three-year oil price downturn. American energy companies have driven down the cost of producing a barrel of crude, staved off bankruptcy and prevented output declines by tapping their best oil fields first.

"The concentration that we are seeing today is on the sweet spot of shale, and this will not last forever," Nasser said in an exclusive interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

"You can concentrate for some time on the sweet spots and produce more oil. But ultimately you need to venture downward, and that's where you have less quality and you require more cost to produce these barrels," Nasser said Sunday from the command center at Saudi Aramco headquarters in Dhahran.
Sears Holdings is cutting its century-old ties with Whirlpool and will no longer sell the company's products, which include Maytag, KitchenAid and Jenn-Air subsidiaries, according to an internal Sears memo sent to stores last week. The memo was reviewed by CNBC.

"Whirlpool has sought to use its dominant position in the marketplace to make demands that would have prohibited us from offering Whirlpool products to our members at a reasonable price," Sears wrote to its employees.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the news Monday evening.

Sears said it plans to sell Whirlpool-branded products in its facilities until inventory is "depleted." Meantime, Whirlpool will continue to manufacture items for Sears' Kenmore nameplate, the companies have confirmed.

Department store chain Sears added that it will provide "tools and instructions" to its employees regarding how to deal with "excess inventory," and how to move into its Kenmore or other appliance brands.

Whirlpool shares were down near 10 percent Tuesday morning.
Over three years after publishing her best-selling memoir "#Girlboss," multimillionaire entrepreneur and Girlboss Media CEO Sophia Amoruso today released her third book titled, "The Girlboss Workbook: An Interactive Journal for Winning at Life." Following a few years of "some very public stumbles" combined with "hard-won wins," Amoruso tells CNBC Make It her new book is based completely on personal experience and is the self-help resource she wishes she had growing up. Inside the 176-page workbook, you'll find roadmaps for plotting your dream career, tips for writing cover letters and thank you emails, budgeting tools and money advice, self-care and relationship tips and a guide to political activism, among other fill-in-the-blank activity pages. One of the biggest lessons Amoruso says she wants readers to take away from the new book: "No one is going to do the hard work in your life for you," she says, having learned from experience, "but look in the mirror and be honest about your friendships and relationships and don't settle for any less than you are worth." In case you don't know what the difference between a "Girl Boss" and a regular boss is, Amoruso defined it back in 2014 for Elle as such: "A Girl Boss is someone who has big dreams and is willing to work hard for them," adding that "keeping personal responsibility for your future, being comfortable taking risks and understanding that failure is the byproduct of your own invention." Through the "Girlboss Workbook," which doubles as an adult coloring book of sorts, Amoruso says she wants to help provide some structure on how women should approach getting jobs, starting businesses and building brands while still being funny and irreverent.

"Girlboss Workbook" features a satirically defaced version of her first book's millennial-pink cover, a nod to what Amoruso hopes readers will do with it: "Whatever you do, take this book, and your path, into your own hands. No need to handle it with care and no need to live a typical, cookie-cutter life," she writes on the back cover. Amoruso is most famous for starting vintage designer clothing company Nasty Gal, which she grew from a one-woman eBay operation as a 22-year-old in 2006 to a company with a cult following, which earned over $300 million in revenue in 2015 alone, according to Forbes estimates. But the Nasty Gal empire fell following financial struggles as well as legal issues and layoffs. In 2015, Amoruso stepped down as its CEO, the company then filed for bankruptcy in late 2016 and was acquired this year by fast-fashion company Boohoo for $20 million, a mere fraction of Nasty Gal's valuation just two years prior.

Amoruso also came into the spotlight in April this year, when the Netflix original series "Girlboss"  inspired by her memoir and executive produced by her  received widespread criticism and got canceled after one season. At the time, she said she was proud of the work Netflix did, but she was looking forward to controlling her narrative from then on out. "The last decade of my life has been inheriting choices that I made without knowing what I was building or how to build a culture. There were just so many things, I was 22 years old and I ended up with this runaway train that was Nasty Gal," Amoruso says. Amoruso no longer has ties to Nasty Gal, Forbes reports, and even teases her misfortune in a section called "How to keep from going bankrupt!" in her new book. But she has moved on to transforming her "#girlboss" slogan into launching her own company Girlboss Media this August. She says it's the first business she actually started with intention. "So much of the culture at Nasty Gal after all was unintentional because it really just started as a girl in a room with some clothes," she says. She adds that "when you scale something started without intention and then scales as big as Nasty Gal did, it gets really hairy." Amoruso describes her new business Girlboss Media as a content community, consisting of social media, Girlboss.com, the Girlboss Radio podcast, the Girlboss Foundation, conference-like Girlboss Rallies and now the workbook, all of which are "centered on redefining success" for women "through shared stories and learning from one another's experiences."

Girlboss Founder and CEO Sophia Amoruso and Instagram Co-Founder and CEO Kevin Systrom speak onstage at the inaugural Girlboss Rally on March 4, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. Vivien Killilea | Getty Images

"The construct of what success looks like was built by and for white guys in suits and it's an exciting time for us to rethink what success looks like for ourselves," she adds. Amoruso says starting Girlboss Media was the first time in her life where she felt her opportunity in business and her purpose have been aligned, "and it's a really exciting thing, waking up every day to do that." "It's exhilarating to start a company on purpose, from day one," she adds.

While she encourages "Girlboss Workbook" users to plot out a five-year plan and reminds them "the best things take time," Amoruso says her five-year plan for Girlboss Media involves becoming the next Oprah Winfrey for millennials and future generations. "Really the top of the pyramid for us is being like Oprah," Amoruso says. "We're just stepping into a time where we're becoming parents, our lives are getting so much more complex than the conversation five years ago about millennials being entitled," she says. "We're growing up and I want Girlboss to be better than anyone else at speaking about things like hardship, success and spirituality in a way that has a lot of heart, for a generation who doesn't really have that. It's a new era." In August, Amoruso raised $1.2 million in seed funding for her new company thanks mainly to Facebook alumni fund Slow Ventures and other investors. As the "Girlboss Workbook" hits the shelves today, Amoruso says she is also considering the topics of her next book.
India's primary concern is that China has dubbed a corridor through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) as a "flagship" plan under One Belt One Road.

The mention of OBOR in Communist Party's constitution may not go down well with India. Photo: Reuters.

By Ananth Krishnan: In a reflection of how China's leader Xi Jinping is personally pushing his pet One Belt, One Road (OBOR) global infrastructure initiative, the Communist Party of China (CPC) congress today passed an amendment to the party constitution to specifically mention the plan.

As the once-in-five-year congress concluded, the CPC amended the Constitution to enshrine Xi's special status by including his eponymous ideological contribution, called "Xi Jinping Thought of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era", into the constitution. This elevates Xi's status on a par with the CPC's towering past leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, the only other leaders mentioned by name in the constitution.

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The congress passed several other amendments to the constitution, and on the foreign policy front, updated the party charter to include some of Xi's initiatives. It calls to "build a community with a shared future for mankind", a formulation Xi has often articulated on his foreign tours, to "follow the principle of achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration", and most importantly, to "pursue the Belt and Road Initiative", as China calls the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) plan in English.

INDIA's CONCERNS

India was the major lone absentee to Xi's OBOR summit in May, and experts say his reiteration of the significance of the plan could widen an already sensitive rift with India on the issue amid other recent strains in ties.

India's primary concern is that China has dubbed a "flagship" plan under OBOR a corridor through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), called the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). India has also publicly criticised other aspects of OBOR as well, including a lack of transparency and the pushing of projects that leave "debt burdens" on recipient states.

CHINA's GRAND STRATEGY

Explaining the significance of OBOR being included into the constitution, Chinese strategic expert Wang Dehua told India Today, "I think it is an important part of Xi Jinping's vision. It is a grand strategy for China. The main idea is to build a world community of shared destiny. This community of destiny is a core meaning of OBOR. I think it tallies with the national interest of all countries."

"We are patiently waiting for India to understand the significance of the OBOR," he added. "In India, many people still have a Cold War mindset. They say that that OBOR is expanding China's interests in South Asia. India's ambiguous approach is because India hesitated to join or not join but I think joining is best choice for India," he added, saying India had "one foot" in the project through the Bangladesh China India Myanmar (BCIM) corridor which China considers a part of OBOR, although it predated the plan.

FLAGSHIP OF OBOR

China, however, has shown no inclination as yet towards addressing any of India's primary concerns on CPEC. Moreover, China didn't seek to consult India during the one-year period it was rolling out OBOR, and decided, despite India's publicly articulated concerns on PoK projects, to not only include CPEC but to dub it "a flagship" of the plan, officials say.

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India has also pointed out to China that it joined the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) initiative, which was formulated as a multilateral institution unlike OBOR, which is entirely China-led and hasn't yet come up with a structured mechanism that allows participating countries to share a stake in the initiative.

ALSO WATCH: BRICS Summit: Modi, Xi meet for first time after 73-day-long Doklam standoff

--- ENDS ---
Stanley Black & Decker has chosen Lowe's as the next retail destination for its Craftsman brand, which it bought from Sears Holdings earlier this year.

Sears had controlled the iconic tool name for 90 years. Now, Craftsman is looking to grow with its new owner through other retailers.

"We have been more than impressed with the level of commitment and support afforded by Lowe's for the Craftsman brand," the president of Stanley Black and Decker's global tools and storage division, Jeffrey Ansell, said on a call with analysts and investors Tuesday morning.

"We continue working with other channel partners and continue to provide them with successful programs to facilitate their growth as well," Ansell added.

In buying Craftsman, Stanley Black & Decker paid $525 million in cash to Sears, also promising to make a $250 million payment at the end of year three of their relationship. Additionally, the company will send annual payments to Sears of between 2.5 and 3.5 percent on new Stanley Black & Decker sales of Craftsman products through year 15.

To be sure, Craftsman is still sold in Sears stores and on its website. The purchase by Stanley Black & Decker provided Sears the right to sell Craftsman products made by its existing suppliers, royalty-free, for up to 15 years.

In January, when the purchase was first announced, Stanley Black and Decker pointed out that "only approximately 10% of Craftsman-branded products are sold outside of Sears Holdings and the agreement will enable Stanley Black & Decker to significantly increase Craftsman sales in these untapped channels."

Tuesday's announcement validates the fact that Stanley Black & Decker is now strategically seeking other outlets for growth. According to Craftsman's website, the brand is currently sold at Ace Hardware, Orchard Supply Hardware, Blain's Farm and Fleet, and Atwoods Ranch and Home, in addition to Sears and Kmart.

Starting in the second half of 2018, a broad assortment of Craftsman products will be available both in Lowe's stores and online, adding another retailer with national exposure to that list. Stanley Black and Decker will also work with Lowe's to manufacture and develop other products for the home improvement retailer, making the two underlying partners.

Meantime, Sears is facing more disputes with its longtime Craftsman suppliers.

In June, Sears updated a blog post to reflect that it settled a dispute with One World Technologies, a Craftsman partner, which the department store chain had first sued in mid-May.

Shortly after, Sears filed a lawsuit against Western Forge, which has worked with the company's Craftsman division for more than 50 years. That suit has also since been settled.

Sears Chief Executive Eddie Lampert has been more vocal about his frustrations with partners this year, saying in one interview the company is "fighting like hell." Lampert explained he wasn't going to allow Sears to be taken advantage of by its vendors.

Despite trying to push toward profitability, Sears' deteriorating financial conditions forced the retailer earlier this year to disclose in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that there was "substantial doubt" about its ability to "continue as a going concern."

Met with fears by Wall Street that a bankruptcy was looming, Sears countered by saying it remained focused on trying to improve its business, saying the language was in adherence to regulatory standards. Meantime, Sears has been landing additional loans from its CEO to support the company heading into the holidays.

As Craftsman moves into Lowe's, Sears has severed ties with its century-old appliance partner, Whirlpool .

"Whirlpool has sought to use its dominant position in the marketplace to make demands that would have prohibited us from offering Whirlpool products to our members at a reasonable price," Sears wrote in an internal memo to its employees last week.

In turn, Sears said it will push its own Kenmore nameplate. Whirlpool will also continue to manufacture some Kenmore appliances for Sears.
Check out which companies are making headlines before the bell:

Caterpillar  Caterpillar earned an adjusted $1.95 per share for the third quarter, swamping estimates of $1.27 a share. Revenue also beat forecasts, with Caterpillar seeing a significant increase in demand for its construction equipment.

3M  The maker of a wide variety of products including Scotch tape and Post-It notes earned $2.33 per share for the third quarter, 12 cents a share above estimates. Revenue beat estimates as well and 3M also raised its full-year forecast after seeing organic growth across all its business groups.

United Technologies  United Technologies came in four cents a share above estimates, with adjusted third-quarter earnings of $1.73 per share. Revenue was above forecasts, as well. The company also raised its full-year forecast above current Street consensus despite negative pressure from its Pratt & Whitney and Otis Elevator units.

General Motors  The automaker reported adjusted quarterly profit of $1.32 per share, 20 cents a share above estimates. Revenue also beat forecasts. It was the 10th straight quarter that GM beat Street estimates.

McDonald's  The fast-food giant earned an adjusted $1.76 per share for the third quarter, one cent a share shy of forecasts. Revenue beat estimates, however, as global comparable-store sales rose six percent, while U.S. comps rose 4.1 percent.

Apple  Initial shipments of Apple's iPhone X will only be 20 million units, half of forecasts, according to a report by Japanese news service Nikkei. The service did not say how it got that information.

Stanley Black & Decker  The tool maker earned an adjusted $1.95 per share for the third quarter, eight cents a share above forecasts. Revenue also beat estimates and the company raised its full-year forecast on broad-based growth across all its categories.

Eli Lilly  The drugmaker came in two cents a share above estimates, with adjusted quarterly profit of $1.05 per share. Revenue topped forecasts, as well. The company also raised its full-year forecast on upbeat sales for its newer drugs and also said it was considering options for its animal health unit.

Whirlpool  The appliance maker missed estimates by eleven cents a share, with adjusted quarterly profit of $3.83 per share. Revenue also missed forecasts, and Whirlpool issued a profit warning because of rising input costs. Separately, an internal memo cited by the Wall Street Journal said retailer Sears is no longer selling Whirlpool appliances  including the Whirlpool, Maytag, KitchenAid, and Jenn-Air brands  because of a pricing dispute.

Amazon.com  Amazon said Amazon studio comedy and drama chief Joe Lewis has stepped down, in yet another executive departure for the unit. Amazon did not give a reason for Lewis' resignation. Amazon Studios chief Roy Price left earlier this month following harassment allegations.

Microsoft  Microsoft dropped a lawsuit against the U.S. government after the Justice Department changed its rules on alerting customers about requests for their personal information from government agencies. The new rules call for defined time periods rather than open-ended secrecy orders.

Rio Tinto  Rio Tinto is the target of a class action suit involving the company's investment in a Mozambique coal mining operation. The Securities and Exchange Commission has already filed fraud charges against the company involving that investment, saying executives had inflated the value of those assets and concealing critical information.

Novartis  Novartis reported higher quarterly profit that exceeded analyst forecasts, and the drugmaker also said it had made significant progress toward a possible spinoff of its Alcon eye care unit by the first half of 2019.

Zions Bancorp  Zions missed estimates by a penny a share, with quarterly profit of 72 cents per share, and the regional bank's revenue also came in below forecasts. Zions said its quarterly results were impacted by Hurricane Harvey, which saw it provide financial relief to affected employees in Texas and set aside additional reserves for any credit-related impact.

Hanesbrands  Hanesbrands was downgraded to "perform" from "outperform" at Oppenheimer, which notes that the apparel maker does not have significant online sales and feels that the holiday season won't provide much of a sales boost.

General Electric  GE got yet another analyst downgrade, this one from Stifel Nicolaus. The firm points to reduced cash flow expectations and the potential for a dividend cut.

HNI Corp.  HNI reported adjusted third-quarter profit of 82 cents per share, beating forecasts by two cents. However, the office furniture maker's current quarter and full-year guidance is well below Street forecasts, with HNI citing several challenges including a rapidly changing environment and a difficult operational transformation.
Swedbank beat third-quarter operating profit expectations on Tuesday and brushed off concerns that the Swedish housing market could be set for a significant correction.



Operating profit rose to 6.19 billion Swedish crowns ($755 million), helped by higher lending volumes in the bank's home markets.



That topped a mean forecast of 5.87 billion in a Reuters poll of analysts and its 6.03 billion crowns profit a year earlier.



Sweden's housing market has stumbled in recent months. Late on Monday, a Stockholm-based developer of luxury condos issued a profit warning and some analysts are worried the economy, and banks, could suffer.



Swedbank acknowledged the housing market had continued to cool off during the third quarter but said it was a welcome development.



"The slowdown we see now I think is healthy, but at the same time it does not solve the problems we have. There are far too few homes available for people with regular income," Swedbank CEO Birgitte Bonnesen told a conference call with reporters.
Every year, millions of graduate and undergraduate students study at a foreign college.

There are over one million international students studying in the United States alone. The most recent figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that over 4.5 million students enroll in a college located in a country where they are not citizens.

OECD research also suggests that the number of international students is rising sharply. Between 2005 and 2012, the share of students studying outside of their home country increased by 50 percent.

This increase in popularity is why U.S. News & World Report assessed 1,250 institutions across 74 countries in order to develop its annual 2018 U.S. News & World Report Best Global Universities rankings.

"Today, more students are exploring higher education options beyond their own borders," writes U.S. News and World Report. "Universities worldwide are competing for the best students, renowned faculty and research dollars."

U.S. News used data from Clarivate Analytics InCites and ranked universities based on factors such as global research reputation, publications and conferences. In order to be considered, universities had to have published at least 1,500 papers between 2011 and 2015. In some cases several institutions tied for the same ranking.

Read on to see the 10 best global universities:
In a sense, Hollywood is facing its first-ever real scandal. What's going on now has made the movie industry do something it perhaps has never done before: feel deeply ashamed about itself. A famously self-confident, indeed smug, institution is questioning its basic norms.



Of previous industry scandals there have been many, but Hollywood itself didn't take any of them particularly seriously. The Roman Polanski scandal? Hey, it was just sex. Oh, it was sex with an underage girl who had been drugged past the point where she could give meaningful consent? Well, it was the '70s. Anyway, the girl forgave him. Anyway, he's suffered enough. Anyway, his family was murdered by Nazis and his wife by the Manson family. The Academy gave Polanski an Oscar for Best Director, and a standing ovation in 2003. In the clip, Martin Scorsese can be seen standing and applauding, right in front of Harvey Weinstein. Jack Nicholson, at whose home Polanski's appalling act took place, is applauding robustly also. Anything to do with sex or drugs Hollywood shrugs off as mere libertinism, and while previous sex scandals  Fatty Arbuckle, Errol Flynn, Ingrid Bergman  may have been bad for business, those in show business didn't have any particular moral objections, or if they did, they dismissed them as bad choices made by scattered individuals, not emblems of moral rot in the system.



The popularity of Communism in Hollywood, and Jane Fonda's visit to Hanoi during the Vietnam War, didn't much alter Hollywood's view of itself either. If you asked movie people to describe their politics, they'd say it boils down to supporting the underdog, and maybe opposing war. Who was a bigger underdog than the ragtag North Vietnamese forces against a massive industrialized army? Jane Fonda won an Oscar before she went to Hanoi to cheer for our enemy, and she won another one just seven years later. As for the Reds and fellow travelers who attained many positions of power and influence in the movie business, to Hollywood the only real scandal there was the McCarthyite reaction that sidelined some highly talented people. The blacklisted Hollywood Ten became underdogs, victims of oppression and hence icons within the business. At no point did Hollywood as a whole question its own patriotism.



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Broadly speaking, then, previous Hollywood scandals fall into two categories: debauchery and far-left ventures, neither of which is overly worrisome to a debauched and left-wing institution. The tale of Harvey Weinstein, though, can't be spun as an attempt to uplift the oppressed, nor dismissed as one man's depravity. Too many people were in on it. Indeed, it appears that everyone was in on it: Sex Assault on the Orient Express.

Roy Price, the head of Amazon Studios and a major industry player, lost his job due to an accusation of sexual harassment just a week after The New Yorker reported three women claimed they were raped by Weinstein. Last weekend the Los Angeles Times published a sickening piece detailing claims made by 38 women about loathsome sexual behavior by the writer-director James Toback, who has made many well-regarded films and scored an Oscar nomination for his script for Warren Beatty's Bugsy. The actress Molly Ringwald had nothing particularly sensational to offer about her experience as a young actress in Hollywood, and yet her reminiscences about her history of degradation were nauseating in their multiplicity. She recalled, for instance, that under the guise of teaching her to dance, a 50-year-old crew member pressed up against her with an erect penis when she was 13. This sort of talk could go on for months. Hollywood may have a moral and public-relations horror on its hands akin to the Catholic Church's pedophilia scandal.
Perhaps congressional Republicans would never have really decided to pay for upper-bracket tax cuts by lowering the amount Americans could put into their 401(k) retirement accounts. But the fact that Republican leaders chose not to comment on the possibility once it was reported that they were considering it last week, rather than immediately denying the story, gave reason for pause across the political spectrum.

And that's where things stood over the weekend, as Democrats began to open fire with charges that the GOP was planning to pay for tax cuts on businesses  something they rightly believe can help fuel economic growth  by making it harder for the harried middle and working classes to put money aside for retirement without paying taxes on their savings.

But any possibility that this might actually become part of the plan Republicans will eventually present to the country likely went out the window yesterday morning thanks to President Trump:

@realDonaldTrump: There will be NO change to your 401(k). This has always been a great and popular middle class tax break that works, and it stays!

Republicans  as well as most of the rest of the country  have often complained about the president's use of Twitter and publicly wished that he would stop. As it happened, Monday morning provided another example of how Trump's inability to resist the temptation to reply to a critic leads to trouble, as he continued a feud with a Gold Star widow and a Florida congresswoman.

But Trump's tax tweet was as smart as it was very much to the point. If Republicans were even thinking of undermining the 401(k) provision in the law  and it's obvious that some of them were doing just that  the president just made that proposition a lot less attractive.

More from National Review:

Doing more on fiscal tax reform

The GOP's tax dilemma

The perilous path to tax reform



In any effort to simplify the tax code, some constituencies that already benefit from loopholes or breaks are bound to be hurt. The current laws are a compendium of politically inspired deals that were produced by a toxic mixture of horse-trading, payoffs to supporters, and raw pandering to public opinion. Wholesale change is an imperative, and to accomplish any real reform, lawmakers will have to make enemies of those who benefit from the status quo.

But while it might be argued that the growth spurred by upper-bracket tax cuts is worth reducing the amount Americans can save in their 401(k) accounts, the optics of such a measure would be atrocious.



We already knew that Democrats would greet any attempt to reform the system or lower taxes so as to grow the economy with their usual class-warfare tactics. Contrary to the myths they spread about taxes, the wealthiest Americans already pay most of the income tax collected by the government.



But it's also true that in an economy plagued by the anemic growth that followed the 2008 recession, the middle class has found it increasingly difficult to save money for retirement. The 401(k) accounts allowed by law are a sensible way to encourage savings and increase investment in the economy. Though the government "loses" the revenue it might have collected had these savings been taxable, it gains from the surge of investment that 401(k) savings provide.
He did so hours before he headed to Capitol Hill for lunch with Corker and the Senate GOP caucus. The subject was supposed to be the tax bill, for which Trump will need at least 50 of 52 Senate Republicans to pass.

On Tuesday morning, Trump once again decided he could not let criticism go unanswered. After Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee called on the White House to "step aside" from the crafting of the GOP tax-cut bill, the president unleashed a Twitter fusillade deriding Corker as a "liddle'," "incompetent" "lightweight" who "couldn't get elected dogcatcher in Tennessee."

Add one more obstacle to the list of challenges blocking Republicans' path on tax legislation: President Donald Trump 's fragile ego.

Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, speaks to members of the media on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. The feud between President Donald Trump and Corker flared up again.

The episode followed a recurrent pattern: Trump is either unable or unwilling to sublimate his ego to the broader goals of his administration and political allies.

Corker, who has announced he'll leave the Senate next year after two terms, had already made plain his concern about expanding the deficit through tax cuts. Tuesday's attack from the White House can only encourage him to hold fast; that goes, too, for Corker's friends in the caucus who have their own reservations about who gains and who loses from the still-developing proposal.

President Donald Trump speaks about his tax reform proposal in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, October 24, 2017.

He displayed that characteristic on the first day of his presidency with false claims about inaugural crowds. Later, instead of accepting responsibility for the failure to repeal and replace Obamacare, the president blamed fellow Republicans such as Sens. John McCain and Mitch McConnell.

This past week, needing success on tax cuts to salvage a barren opening year, Trump submerged himself in needless controversy. That, too, was touched off by Trump's defensiveness over the solemn presidential task of consoling the families of fallen soldiers.

The cascading furor set the White House against a Democratic congresswoman in exchanges that tarnished the credibility of both Trump and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. That it escalated into a direct confrontation with a gold star widow reflects the president's inability to let go.

"Trump is motivated by the same concern in all situations, which is to dominate and to be perceived as having won," Tony Schwartz, Trump's 1987 co-author on "The Art of the Deal," recently told The Washington Post.

That trait, combined with Trump's fleeting attention span and weak grasp of policy detail, fits poorly into a legislative process requiring teamwork.

Trump wants the biggest tax-cut in American history. But his initial claims that he could provide one without increasing the deficit proved so unrealistic that he scaled back his first outline.

He insisted his revised plan would help the middle class at the expense of wealthy taxpayers such as himself. But that appears so at odds with reality that Republican lawmakers are scrambling to revise it again.

Trump was reportedly surprised to discover some middle-class taxpayers would be hurt by losing federal deductions for state and local taxes, so elimination of that tax break is under review. When lawmakers considered compensating for lost revenue by taxing contributions to 401(k) savings accounts, the president summarily ruled that out via tweet.

Those changes, and the White House decision to jettison the House GOP "border adjustment tax," mean the tax cut will add that much more to federal deficits and debt. Unless other revenue raisers are found or Trump's "big, beautiful" tax cut is reduced, senators such as Corker and anti-deficit House conservatives find it tougher to vote yes.

The latest attack on Corker poses another danger. The Tennessee senator answered Trump by voicing concerns that other Republicans only whisper privately: that Trump is not only dishonest, but possibly unstable and dangerous as America's commander-in-chief.

Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, wouldn't express confidence in Trump's command of the nuclear arsenal or say whether the president should be removed from office. If other Republicans see their legislative agenda as doomed anyway, they may feel emboldened to echo him.
The ads will have some sort of visual marker, likely a purple dot next to the user handle, and a purple box with the text "Promoted by" and the name of the sponsor.

Twitter said in a blog post on Tuesday it would clearly label political electioneering ads, which the Federal Election Commission (FEC) defines as an ad used to promote a specific candidate for elected office or affiliated party posted within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election. Electioneering ads can also include any ad clearly promoting a political candidate at any time.

As political pressure mounts on social media companies to say where ads are coming from, Twitter will reveal more information about political advertising on its platform.

In addition, the company will limit which criteria can be used to target people and will introduce a "stronger" penalty on those who do not abide by the new rules. The company did not say what the tougher standards or penalties will be.

Twitter, along with Facebook and Google , are sending their lawyers to Congress to testify as lawmakers investigate Russian involvement in the 2016 election through online political ad buying. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have introduced the "Honest Ads Act" as a way to get platforms to disclose more about paid online political ads. The legislation would require platforms with 50 million or more monthly unique visitors to have a public database of political ads and records for anyone who bought more than $500 worth of political ads in the previous 12 months.

Twitter's move to provide more information on political ads lines up with most of what Congress is asking for.

The company will also launch a "transparency center," which will show all ads  political or not  currently running on Twitter, and how long the ads have been running. The database will show users which ads have been targeted toward them and the personal criteria used to target them.

Political ads specifically will have additional information in the center, including all associated campaign ads currently running or that have run on the platform. It will show who funded the campaign, how much they spent on this specific campaign, and how much they spent on the platform in total. There will be information on the criteria used to place the ad, such as age, gender and geography.

The new ad policies will first be enforced in the U.S. but will expand globally eventually.
London won't lose its title as the world's number one financial center after Brexit, according to the U.K's International Trade Minister.

Liam Fox was asked at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh if he was troubled by a recent tweet from Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein that appeared to suggest Frankfurt in Germany would be the best place for financial services once Britain left the EU.

Tweet 1

Speaking as part of a panel, Fox said London still held many advantages and suggestions that London could lose financial capital after Brexit didn't bother him.

"No, London is and has been the premier financial center of the world. It has a depth of financial infrastructure that really stretches across the United Kingdom. It has got a level of liquidity that people struggle to find anywhere else," Fox added.

Fox made the argument that people would continue to invest and operate in the U.K. because the country had low taxation, low regulation, English as a language and was a great location for trade.

The cabinet minister reinforced his belief that for financial services, London would remain at the top of the pile.

"If you want to put it in shorthand people say money will go where money can be made, money can be moved, and money can be removed. That is a function of law and that is why London will remain pre-eminent."
Equifax trading information and the company logo are displayed on a screen where the stock is traded on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York.

Britain's markets watchdog said it has opened an investigation into the hacking of U.S. credit reporting agency , which affected nearly 700,000 UK citizens.

"The Financial Conduct Authority announces today that it is investigating the circumstances surrounding a cybersecurity incident that led to the loss of U.K. customer data held by Equifax Ltd on the servers of its U.S. parent," the watchdog said in a statement on Tuesday.

"This statement is made given the public interest in these matters."

The announcement follows a letter from Nicky Morgan, chair of the House of Commons' Treasury Committee to the watchdog, asking if Equifax had violated terms of its license to operate in the country, and whether the regulator had the power to compel the company to provide compensation to UK consumers.

Equifax said it was already working closely with the FCA and other authorities.

"We welcome this opportunity to learn the lessons from this criminal cyber-attack in order for all businesses to better protect consumers in the future," the company said in a statement.

Equifax has said that 15.2 million records on British citizens were involved in the breach, including sensitive data on what it said were 693,665 individuals, for whom credit protection services were offered.

The U.K. data accessed by unknown hackers included credit accounts, user credentials, partial credit card details and driver license numbers. The remaining 14.5 million records contained names and birth dates of U.K. consumers were "potentially compromised", the company disclosed.

Equifax first revealed in September it had been the target of a massive data breach which hit around 143 million people, mostly in the United States.
Behind roadblocks and newly laid roads, workers are putting the finishing touches to a gleaming "floating dome" that emerges from the sand like a large spaceship. The 7,000-tonne latticed structure is the centrepiece of a new Louvre that will finally open in Abu Dhabi next month.

The museum is the flagship project of the emirate's multibillion-dollar development plans  the latest instalment of its efforts to present itself to the world as a tolerant global city that links east and west. It forms part of a plan conjured up a decade ago by an ambitious younger generation of leaders.

Back then, the talk in the United Arab Emirates' capital was about weaning the economy off its dependence on oil and equip a youthful population, raised in a conservative society, with the skills to prosper in the modern world.

But a militaristic element has been added to Abu Dhabi's grandiose vision. The UAE, steered by Abu Dhabi's rulers, has deployed combat troops to the battlefields of Yemen since 2015, introduced national service and emerged as one of the region's most interventionist foreign policy players.

"It's no longer the cuddly little Switzerland," says an executive and long-term resident of the UAE.

Popular uprisings that rocked the Arab world in 2011, the rise of Isis, frustration with former US president Barack Obama and concerns about Iran have converged to shake up the Middle East and shape the thinking of the once risk-averse, oil-rich Gulf state. The UAE is now pursuing a strategy it criticises its rivals Qatar and Iran for: intervening in its neighbours' affairs in pursuit of its own national security goals.

It joined Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt in cutting diplomatic and transport links with Qatar in June and, in the words of regional officials and analysts, is "driving from behind" on the embargo. The UAE backs Khalifa Haftar, the military strongman in Libya, violating a UN arms embargo on the country to boost his air power, according a UN report. It has also built a military base at the Eritrean Red Sea port of Assab and is deploying its petrodollars to help counter Qatar's influence over Hamas, the Palestinian militant group.

The transformation of Abu Dhabi, and the UAE's foreign policy, is traced to the 2004 death of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, who helped found the federation in 1971 and built its reputation as a low-key, neutral mediator.

Today, the UAE boasts what analysts describe as the region's best equipped and trained military  a force developed with the aid of foreign advisers. These included Erik Prince, the co-founder of Blackwater, the private security company. Jim Mattis acted as an unpaid adviser to the UAE on how best to modernise its military before he became US defence secretary, and is credited with coining the phrase "little Sparta" to describe the nation's military prowess.

"The assertive role Abu Dhabi is playing both in the Gulf and across the region is a world away from the consensual diplomacy of Sheikh Zayed's era," says Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a research fellow at Rice University in the US. "As Abu Dhabi picks sides and tethers itself to the Saudi mast it risks becoming enmeshed in regional faultlines as never before."

The man driving change is Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Abu Dhabi's Sandhurst-trained crown prince, a son of the late leader. When his father died in 2004, Sheikh Mohammed's elder half-brother, Sheikh Khalifa, became UAE president. But Sheikh Mohammed was long considered the "chief executive" and, with his half-brother ill, he has consolidated power.

Sheikh Mohammed is aided by a small group of trusted lieutenants including Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE's ambassador to the US. Mr Otaiba is said to be close to Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law, and a White House adviser on the Middle East. Mr Otaiba is seen as one of the most influential diplomats in Washington. The UAE has paid millions to think-tanks and consultants to ensure its worldview is heard in the US capital, according to emails from Mr Otaiba that were leaked earlier this year by hackers keen to embarrass the Gulf state.

Sheikh Mohammed, 56, has also forged a close alliance with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's powerful 32-year-old heir apparent. Both share visions of modernising their nations and brook little political dissent. They are hawks on Shia Iran, which Sunni-led Gulf states accuse of destabilising the Arab world, and deem political Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood  which took power in Egypt after the 2011 revolution before being ousted two years later  an existential threat to the absolute monarchies and the broader region.

When Mr Trump called for new US sanctions on Iran this month and threatened to tear up the 2015 nuclear accord, the UAE and Saudi Arabia were among the few states to publicly applaud.

Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati analyst, says the UAE's assertiveness reflects a new-found confidence in Abu Dhabi over its "soft" and "hard" resources, ranging from its financial clout to strong relations with the west and growing military power. "It has dawned on them that they have lots of [levers] and they can cash in," he says.

The emirate is home to the world's second-largest sovereign wealth fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which is estimated to have assets of more than $800bn. At the same time, its concerns about the neighbourhood are greater than "at any other time  more than after the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war and Saddam's invasion of Kuwait," Mr Abdulla says.

rolonged low oil prices have forced even super-rich Abu Dhabi to delay projects and slash jobs at state entities. But the UAE continues to splurge on the latest weaponry.

It has an indigenous population of more than 1m, about 10 per cent of the total. Yet in 2014, the most up-to-date estimate of military expenditure, the UAE spent $22.8bn on defence  ranking it 14th globally, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Arms imports, mostly from the US but also Russia and others, increased 63 per cent between the periods of 2007-2011 and 2012-2016, Sipri estimates.

Emirati officials insist that the billions poured into culture, tourism and high-tech manufacturing can only bear fruit if the region is stable.

"We are putting all our focus on the generations to come and . . . we need a stable region to see the fruition of what we are doing today," says Mohammed al-Mubarak, one of Abu Dhabi's 18-member executive council, its top decision-making body.

But it is a high-risk strategy for a nation that prospered by staying clear of the turmoil that has blighted the region. "When a power is overstretched, it risks getting bruised," says Mr Abdulla.

The UAE's reputation has already been tarnished by concerns about the high number of civilian deaths and allegations of abuses in Yemen, where it is estimated that about 1,500 Emirati special forces are deployed as part of a Saudi-led coalition backing an exiled government fighting Iranian-allied Houthi rebels. Human Rights Watch has accused the UAE of supporting Yemeni forces that have abused dozens of people during security operations. The UAE and Saudi Arabia deny the claims.

"If they are going to get credit for things like their role in fighting terrorism," says William Hartung, an analyst at the Center for International Policy, "it should be balanced with some of the consequences of their actions."

Since the Saudi-UAE led coalition intervened in the Yemen conflict, the country has endured what aid agencies describe as the world's worst man-made humanitarian crisis. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi say they are backing the legitimate government. Emirati troops have also been fighting al-Qaeda alongside US special forces.

Emirati officials acknowledge the cost of getting bogged down in a foreign land is both reputational and financial. Yet Sheikh Mohammed appears convinced of the UAE's approach. In a statement last year he spoke of the "heroic role" of the military in defending "Arab security against attempts to interfere in its domestic affairs and combating the forces of extremism". He also hinted at a growing sense in the Gulf that it can no longer depend on Washington as its protector, adding that these factors "make self-reliance on our own defence capabilities a first priority".

The sentiment is a legacy of Mr Obama's presidency, much reviled in the palaces of the autocratic Gulf. The region's leaders accused him of abandoning former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, in the tumult of the Arab spring. They also derided his decision to sign the nuclear deal with Tehran, believing it would embolden the Islamic republic. Relations have improved with the Trump administration, but Gulf officials acknowledge that the US president is unpredictable.

And the UAE, in alliance with Saudi Arabia, has taken matters into its own hands. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh led the embargo on Qatar, accusing it of sponsoring terrorism, meddling in regional affairs and backing political Islamist groups, despite it being a key US ally and host to America's largest military base in the Middle East. So far, they have rebuffed US state department pressure to resolve the diplomatic crisis.

Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, says that while the UAE is concerned about "US retrenchment . . . if you want to influence the US or other key actors you have to look credible, and a military build-up is essential in this respect".

"The first strategy is to establish dominance, jointly with Saudi Arabia, on security and foreign policy in the Arabian peninsula. The second is to ally, co-opt or restrain actors in the first circle around the peninsula, Egypt and so on, and then identify and support allies in the third circle [globally]," he says. "The crisis with Qatar is about telling the world 'we are the ones who matter'."

But there is a human cost. Two years ago, 45 Emirati troops were killed in a single day of fighting in Yemen, the deadliest incident in the UAE's military history. Abu Dhabi has built an imposing monument to security forces killed in the line of duty  the vast majority in Yemen in the past two years.

The commemoration opened last year on Martyrs' Day, a new public holiday that is part of efforts to foster a greater sense of nationalism and ensure domestic support for the UAE's aggressive stance, observers say. So far, the leaders appear to have secured the buy-in of Emiratis. One businessman recalls how he told his son that he did not have to do national service, introduced in 2014 for 18-30 year-olds, because he was an only son. But the 18-year-old "begged me to do it".

"If you speak to most UAE nationals they feel the Yemen [intervention] was a good thing because the Iranians are coming to the peninsula," the businessman says. But he adds that the older generation worries that younger Emiratis are getting carried away with the "little Sparta" tag.

"They think we are shaping the region," the businessman says. "My problem is we are giving ourselves more weight than we deserve. When you start taking military action abroad you have a greater risk of something happening at home, especially when your people are less than 10 per cent of the population."

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The CEO of the maker of the Patriot missile defense system said Tuesday that Californians shouldn't worry about the missile threat of nuclear-armed North Korea, but he urged them to contact lawmakers in Washington to push for more defense spending.

"I would say relative to the North Korean threat, you shouldn't be worried," said Raytheon CEO Thomas Kennedy in an exclusive interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "But you should ensure that you've talked to your congressman or congresswoman to make sure they support the defense budget to the point where it can continue to defend the United States and our allies."

Raytheon, the Massachusetts-based defense giant known for the Patriot anti-missile system, has benefited from global demand for missile defense systems in Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

Kennedy was asked how business has changed since the North Korean threat increased. He said Raytheon is "working with a lot of our customers in the region that want to increase their missile defense capabilities. And that's probably the main effort there. We're also ensuring and working with the U.S. government to make sure they have the resources available in the region to do what needs to be done."

Kennedy believes the U.S. military has the "capabilities and the competencies" to counter the threat from North Korea. "We just need to make sure we continue to fund that capability so we have the systems in place that can counter the threat," he said.

The CEO said he's hopeful Congress will reach a bipartisan solution to allow increased defense spending despite the Budget Control Act and sequestration, or the spending caps, that have held back increased military spending for years.

"This is not a time to be cutting defense budgets," he said. "This is a time of significant turmoil around the world, and of any time in the history of the United States where we need to support a strong defense, it's today."

According to Kennedy, security threats also are driving customer demand in other regions, including Europe, where Russia's provocations in Ukraine and Crimea have raised the alarm for Eastern European and Baltic states.

"If you go to Europe, you see a lot of Eastern European countries significantly concerned about their sovereignty, the safety of their citizens," he said. "Raytheon does provide solutions to essentially protect the sovereignty of nations and the safety of their citizens."

Kennedy said there's also concern by countries in the Mideast and North Africa that's driving demand for new defense systems.

"You go over to the Middle East, North Africa region, you see issues in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya. A lot of concern by countries in the region relative to the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism efforts going on there. There's also concerns about bigger powers in the region," he said.

The Raytheon executive, who was interviewed while attending the Saudi Arabia Vision summit, noted that the company established a 100 percent owned company in the kingdom and praised economic reforms underway there.

"That was something that wasn't allowed before. So the kingdom is changing its laws essentially [to] make Saudi Arabia a much more attractive place for especially U.S. business."

Meantime, Kennedy was asked about potential interest in acquisitions. He responded, "If we have any gap areas, we look at that continuously, in terms of growing the company. But right now we're not in a position to make any major acquisitions."

The CEO also ruled out any speculation of a merger with a large competitor such as Boeing .

"That's not on the table today," he responded.
Russia's appetite for bitcoin has been overblown by the media, the head of Russian bank VTB International told CNBC Tuesday.

"There was some speculation that there was some buying coming from Russian investors, but more than these reports, as a bank, we have not seen much in terms of flows," Riccardo Orcel said.

It had been reported that the enthusiasm for bitcoin in Russia had led to a spike in Google searches, patent registrations and even plans for a national cryptocurrency called the CryptoRuble. However, he told CNBC that he hadn't seen this level of intensity surrounding the cryptocurrency.

"There was some interest reported in the press but I've not seen in Russia a lot of interest in bitcoin, to be honest," Orcel said.

Meanwhile, Andrey Kostin, president and CEO of VTB Bank, told CNBC Tuesday that he is "a little bit skeptical" about the use of cryptocurrencies in general.

"We see a lot of high speculation factor in cryptocurrencies and I think it's dangerous," he said.

"Until the governments decide how to regulate this area I think it will be very, very dangerous for investors to invest in cryptocurrencies."

Nonetheless, the future of banking is in innovative technologies, Orcel said.

"Clearly fintech (financial technology) is the future for the banking industry. For a country of the size of Russia, clearly having branches around the entire country is just not possible and fintech is the future."

Orcel suggested that there could be some consolidation in the future between banks and high technology firms, as a result.
A new subscription offering from Amazon could be a major threat to Lake Forest, Illinois-based industrial supplier W.W. Grainger .

Shares of GWW fell more than 3 percent to $202.05 Tuesday afternoon after Amazon Business announced an upgrade to their shipping services for business customers. The new Business Prime Shipping service offers free two-day shipping to multi-user business accounts in Germany and the United States, a feature Amazon says will simplify procurement.

Business Prime Shipping directly competes with at least two Grainger operations, including the Japanese e-commerce unit MonotaRO Co and the British distributor Cromwell. Taken together, the two companies account for 11 percent of Grainger's total sales, according to a research note from RBC Capital Markets.

"Given parent Amazon's deep pockets and apparent margin insensitivity, we continue to believe that Grainger will be drawn into further price competition, putting more pressure on its gross margin," the analysts wrote. "We reiterate our high-conviction Underperform rating on GWW shares."

Grainger shares have been struggling this year. The company is down more than 12 percent year to date, despite a boost earlier this month when the company reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings.

Joseph Micucci, a representative for Grainger, issued the following statement to CNBC:

The majority of Grainger's U.S. customers do not pay freight, as freight costs are embedded in our contracts. Grainger also offers freight advantaged programs, such as Red Pass Plus, which include free freight with a flat annual fee for non-contract customers. Zoro customers do not pay freight on orders above $50. Grainger has a history of providing competitive freight options for next day service.

 With reporting by Morgan Brennan.
When Warren Buffett is looking at hiring a new employee or finding a new company to invest in, he has a lot of criteria. But, one thing he isn't looking for are fancy university degrees.

"I don't care where someone went to school, and that never caused me to hire anyone or buy a business," Buffett says in a 2006 interview with the Wall Street Journal.

In fact, he didn't even want to attend college himself. "I didn't want to go to college," Buffett tells Bloomberg in a 2016 interview. He only applied because his dad, Howard H. Buffett, suggested an undergraduate program at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

"After the first year [at Wharton] I wanted to quit and go into business," Buffett explains. "My dad said, 'Well, give it one more year.' So I went the second year, and I said 'I still want to quit.'"

Buffett transferred to the University of Nebraska so he could graduate in three years. And, higher education turned out to be a valuable experience for him.

"[T]here wasn't a class that disappointed me," he says of his time at Nebraska, where he earned an undergraduate degree in business administration. And his experiences during graduate school studying economics at Columbia University changed his life.

Still, Buffett doesn't believe success always requires a degree.

"I don't think college is for everyone," Buffett tells students of Ivey Business School at Western University in 2012, adding that none of his three children graduated from college. "The best education you can get is investing in yourself. But this doesn't always mean college or university."

Investing in yourself means tackling areas you aren't good at, and learning new skills. His advice: "Address whatever you feel your weaknesses are, and do it now." Buffett, for example, took a Dale Carnegie course to overcome his fear of public speaking.

He also suggests reading, thinking and learning.

"Read 500 pages like this every day," Buffett once reportedly told students, pointing toward a pile of reports and papers. "That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it."

Then, he takes time to understand what he learned.

"I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think," he says. "That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think."

That is an investment that "supersedes all others," according to Buffett. Because when it comes down to it, skills and experience matter more than a piece of paper, says Buffett.

"If you are interested in business, or likely to be in business, an MBA is very useful," Buffett says in a 2001 article in Nebraska Business magazine "But, what is really important is what you bring to a class in terms of being interested in the subject. If you view a course like accounting as a drudge and a requirement, you are missing the whole game. Any course can be exciting. Mastering accounting is like mastering a new language, it can be so much fun."

As for his own two degrees, he isn't sure where he would find the diplomas if he looked for them. According to Buffett: "I don't have them on my wall, in fact I don't even know where they are."

Don't miss: Here's how much grad school cost when Warren Buffett graduated in 1951, compared to today

Like this story? Like CNBC Make It on Facebook!
The White House on Tuesday sought to downplay the significance of two Republican senators who stunned Washington by forcefully speaking out against President Donald Trump.

In response to a dramatic speech by Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who announced that he would retire after his current term, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she thought "a lot of the language wasn't befitting of the Senate floor."

Sanders similarly dismissed Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, who sent shockwaves through Washington on Tuesday when he told reporters he believes Trump's legacy would be the "debasement of America."

"Imagine how incredible and how many good things we would be doing, if people like Senator Bob Corker got on board and started doing their job instead of doing so much grandstanding on TV," Sanders said.

Sanders' responses to Corker and Flake underscored how ill-prepared the White House was on Tuesday to respond to the criticisms being leveled at the president by fellow Republicans. The notion that Flake had said something inappropriate during his speech suggested that perhaps Sanders may not have heard Flake's address.

Flake never mentioned Trump by name, but it was obvious to whom he was referring when he said things like this:

We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country. The personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms and institution, the flagrant disregard for truth and decency, the reckless provocations most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have been elected to serve. None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal.

The White House did not immediately respond to a follow-up question from CNBC about precisely what was inappropriate in Flake's speech.

Corker, likewise, delivered an unexpected broadside against Trump on Tuesday morning, after the president attacked him on Twitter, telling CNN's Manu Raju:

The debasement of our nation will be what he'll be remembered most for, and that's regretful, and affects young people. We have young people who, for the first time, are watching a president stating, you know, absolute non-truths nonstop, personalizing things in the way that he does, and it's very sad for our nation

Corker is also retiring at the end of his current term, a reality which has had a liberating effect on the typically cautious Tennessee Republican, who has emerged as an outspoken critic of the president whose Cabinet he once hoped to serve in.

As with Flake, the White House has yet to reveal any sort of strategy aimed at neutralizing criticism from Republicans like Corker, a reality which left Sanders few options on Tuesday but to accuse Corker of seeking the limelight -- a criticism which tends to ring hollow in a White House led by the ratings-obsessed Trump.

Still, Sanders said Corker "was probably just trying to get a headline on his way out the door."
Hey guys. New to angular, so this might be a noobish question:



I have an array of objects, each containing variables like "country", "site", etc.



I want my list to show all the instances of only one variable. The following test works:



HTML < pre > < tr ng-repeat =" x in testSites | orderBy:myOrderBy" > < td > {{x.country}} < /td > < /tr >





However, I want to use a variable where "country" is used above. Like this: {{x.aspect}}



I've tested the 'aspect' variable, and it works, having the value 'country' as default, so it should show the exact same result, but all I get is an empty list.



Thanks a lot in advance.



I am unable to create a simple dialog box using jQuery for some reason. I imported a reference to jQuery3.2.1.js. I am trying to call a div with a class named "dialogue-box" in a section with the id called "dialogue".





Here is my code:



$(document).ready(function(){ $( " #dialogue .dialogue-box" ).dialog({ title: " MENU" , width: 500 , height: 600 , modal: true }); });



if anyone could please let me know what i am doing wrong, I would apperciate it.



Thanks,



I am developing a simple user interface, in which I want to add lazy-loading concept on the text using 'vanilla' JavaScript. I this right now I am displaying information about 10 users only. When I am going to scroll down I want to load the rest of the information. For that, I find out the current scroll position. If it reaches the bottom, want to append next data to existing one. I tried to append the simple text, It worked. But it is unable to append elements from div. How should I rectify that code?? Thanks..!![here is the code]



I'm slowly learning Jvascriopt, creating a personal webpage to display snapshots from my webcam. It sends files to my FTP server every x seconds, but changes the filename to include date/time coding. I want to display the latest file, but its impossible to sync camera, server and workstation time down to the second. So my plan is to loop down from 59 secs, looping when the file is not found.



If I have the following line, I want to trap an error if the file is not found. The "TRY" method doesn't seem to capture an error though, any ideas?

document.write('')



Thx,



please send me java typed code using java.io for hospital management



JavaScript is not the same thing as Java. That's not how it works. There are plenty of sites where you can pay someone to do your work for you. This is not one of them.





"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."

- Homer









"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

- Benjamin Disraeli







Send me your credit card and I'll happily send you the code.

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.



There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.





he is not aware of the forum



suggest me to how to code the calculation of working hours in Week excluding Weekends(saturday and sunday) in JavaScript or jquery using Moment.js



I'm fiddling around setTimeOut javascript function. I've 5 function calls with different time delay. What I want is to execute only those functions which have a 500ms delay difference between each functions. I've created a fiddle (https://jsfiddle.net/vt7sanav/). Can someone suggest what should i do to check the delay between two functions is 500ms then execute the function else ignore the function.



Example: Packet1 comes in, should be sent(printed) straight away, Wait 500ms and within 500ms, ignore new msgs(function calls). Print only messages which have a delay of 500ms in between.



function postMessage(msg) { $( " #msgBox" ).append( "

" + msg + " time:" + new Date().getSeconds() + " :" + new Date().getMilliseconds()); } function makeRequest(msg) { postMessage(msg); } function makeRequestThrottled(msg) { postMessage(msg); } function sendMessage(msg, delay) { setTimeout(() => makeRequestThrottled(msg), delay); } sendMessage( " Packet1" , 200 ); sendMessage( " Packet2" , 600 ); sendMessage( " Packet3" , 1800 ); sendMessage( " Packet4" , 2400 ); sendMessage( " Packet5" , 2600 );







function sendMessage(name, delay) { console.log(name, delay); } var packetInfo = [{ name: ' Packet1' , delay: 200 }, { name: ' Packet2' , delay: 600 }, { name: ' Packet3' , delay: 1800 }, { name: ' Packet4' , delay: 2400 }, { name: ' Packet5' , delay: 2600 }]; var prev = undefined; for ( var i = 0 ; i < packetInfo.length; i++) { var item = packetInfo[i]; if (i == 0 ) sendMessage(item.name, item.delay); else { if ( item.delay - prev.delay > 500 ) sendMessage(item.name, item.delay); } prev = item; }



I need to parse a JSON in javascript.

This works fine if the JSON is like:

JavaScript { " test" :[{ " data" :{ " ... where I can access the data like (if arg was "receiveddata" in the callback function)

recieveddata.test[index].data ...



but know I'm in the case where I have this: JavaScript { " 1" :[{ " data" :{ " date_of //notice the " 1 " as key There is no way I can access the data like above as receiveddata.1[index].data ...



How can I access the data? (or should I ask the source to update their key names)



(I'm using the jQuery getJSON function, which works fine on other JSON's where there are normal keys.)



thanks.

V. (MQOTD rules and previous solutions)



{ "1" : [ { "field": "value"... You can access properties in the JavaScript through index notation as well, this is one of the funniest things in JavaScript. This makes it possible to have properties, and attributes in a way that is impossible in other languages directly. JavaScript supports, object.property , object["property"] and much more ways to access the properties, and attach the properties. Thus, when you have a property called (for instance), " object.1 ", or " object.something-else ", then you can access them through index notation and that would be valid JavaScript.



So I am unsure as to what your JSON is like but if the JSON schema is like the following  which indeed is like yours, var str = "{ \"1\": [{\"field\": \"attr\"}]}"; Then you can execute the following JavaScript and do what you intent to, JavaScript var obj = JSON.parse(str); alert(obj[ " 1" ][ 0 ].field); Try this, and you will see how strange sometimes JavaScript can be. Try the code online here, [Edit fiddle - JSFiddle](https://jsfiddle.net/afzaal_ahmad_zeeshan/mvbtztpL/)

The sh*t I complain about

It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem

~! Firewall !~





Do you believe it, I was actually thinking about this solution and I dismissed it!

(I was not able to get it through normal index, so I dismissed a key index, because usually if key index is possible, so is normal indexing)



anyway got it up and running, thanks for pointing it out

V. (MQOTD rules and previous solutions)



Hi I want to know how to hide developer tool option from setting in chrome, f 12 button , and right click inspect element option .i will be grateful if i will get a reply asap.



Guys, what do you think about Google Policy with Angular releases? Just half of a year - and we ' ll got Angular 6 version. Is it too fast or it' s ok?


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"Sure, Chromebooks are fine for schools and other simple stuff, but you can't actually use 'em for work  can you?"

As someone who's written about Google's Chrome OS platform since the start, that's a question I've heard more times than I can count. So I set out to get some current perspective on the answer.

For context, Chromebooks have actually played a significant role in my personal life for years. While I use a Windows desktop system in my office during the workday, I rely on a Chromebook for pretty much anything else that isn't well suited to a phone  after-hours typing, weekend bill-paying, light work away from my desk, and so on. I've taken Chromebooks with me to handle work while I travel, too, but it's been a while  and boy, oh boy, has a lot changed.

One of those things is the now-widespread availability of Android apps on Chrome OS. The current Chromebook I personally own and most recently traveled with is the original Chromebook Pixel, and it's (a) not a convertible device and (b) just old enough that it wasn't among the devices upgraded with Google Play Store support earlier this year.

So on a recent business trip to Boston, I decided to take a more contemporary Chromebook as my sole large-screen computing device. No other laptops, no traditional tablets, nada  just the one Chromebook for everything I needed to do, from the moment I left my house to the night of my return.

The Chromebook work experiment: 2017 edition

In order to formulate my impressions with a device that could take full advantage of Chrome OS's current features, I borrowed an Asus Chromebook Flip C302CA  a $500ish product I'd describe as a really nice upper-midrange system. Like a lot of Chromebooks these days, it's a convertible touchscreen laptop with a 360-hinge that lets you use it in a variety of modes, ranging from laptop to fully flattened slate.

Asus

And you know what? For the entire week I was away, including two long days of multiflight travel, I didn't once miss my standard desktop setup. In many ways, in fact, I actually felt like I was better off than I would have been with a traditional Windows laptop for my business trip purposes.

[ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page. ]

Now, much of that is due to the nature of my job: Most of my work these days is done in cloud-centric apps like Google Drive, Google Keep, and Gmail. I use a cloud-based content management system for publishing stories. I use either Slack or email for almost all of my work-based communication. So like many people  and just like I've observed myself in the past  the transition from a traditional desktop operating system to Chrome OS doesn't require much thought or adjustment for me.

In my past Chromebook work experiences, though, there's always been one nagging asterisk: I occasionally get documents back from editors with questions or suggestions made with Microsoft's Track Changes system. And while Google Docs has its own comparable "Suggestions" system that works well enough in and of itself, mixing the two formats isn't exactly seamless  especially when the other person is expecting the document back in the same format they sent.

This time, that wasn't an issue: Thanks to Android app support on the Chromebook Flip, I could use an app like OfficeSuite Pro to open Word documents in their native format, without any conversions, and view and respond to changes and comments right within Microsoft's Track Changes system. (I could have also used Microsoft Word itself in the same manner  as its Android version, unlike the web-based version, is fully featured  but I don't have or particularly want to purchase an ongoing subscription for my limited needs.)

The other Chromebook work caveat I've always faced revolves around image editing, and this one unfortunately is still a bit of a bummer. Android has oodles of excellent apps for polishing up photos, but there's just no great alternative for Photoshop-caliber multilayer graphical work. Web apps like Pixlr can get the job done in a pinch but have remained meaningfully less optimal than the full Photoshop experience when it comes to my workflow.

So that proved to be the one realistic drawback in day-to-day work on a Chromebook for me. I can certainly get by with the available image-editing options, but I do miss having the full desktop-caliber software in that domain. (Maybe one day...)

Chromebook work conclusions

That gets us back to our original question: Can you use a Chromebook for work? Ultimately, as my experience illustrates, the answer depends on what kind of work you need to do. If you have specific desktop utilities you need for your job  things without suitable web- or Android-based equivalents  then no, you won't be able to effectively use a Chromebook for your work.

(Technically speaking, you could always use a tool like Google's Chrome Remote Desktop to access traditional desktop software via another computer  and that's a great option to have in a pinch  but realistically, it isn't something you're gonna want to do for extended periods of time on a regular basis.)

Increasingly, though, those sorts of needs are more the exception than the rule. Most people don't need the full power of Photoshop for their jobs. More and more business software is available in a web or Android version. A Chromebook absolutely isn't going to work for everyone, but it is going to be a viable option for an awful lot of professionals  now more so than ever.

Without a doubt, part of that is thanks to the presence of Android apps, which absolutely do redefine a Chromebook's possibilities and limitations. The Microsoft Office situation from my own adventure is a perfect example (and say what you will, but plenty of people have even more pressing needs for access to the full Office software on their work computers). Android apps similarly address long-standing Chrome OS omissions like the lack of a video-call-capable Skype client for the web.

But Android apps won't address more niche needs  like the lack of a fully featured desktop-caliber image editing program, as I'm often reminded, or the lack of other platform-specific specialty software. Android apps go a long way toward filling in the gaps for people who were already close to being able to use a Chromebook for work, but they aren't a magical fix that's suddenly going to make the platform whole for everyone.

For those of us in the former category  or those for whom Chrome OS was already sufficient before  the addition of Android apps accomplishes one other thing worth mentioning: It opens up the door to some interesting possibilities by allowing you to run previously mobile-exclusive software on your regular laptop. As I've said before, the Chromebook is effectively the new Android tablet  and when that same device is also your work computer, you get an appealing sort of all-in-one experience that isn't possible anywhere else.

The Chromebook can become a uniquely versatile work-and-everything-else device

During my business trip, for instance, I flipped the Chromebook Flip into its tablet mode and watched movies and other videos on a spacious screen during my flights. I didn't need to tote a separate tablet for such purposes, nor did I have to pay anything extra to "rent" such content  since the Netflix and YouTube Android apps, unlike their web-based equivalents, allow you to pin videos to a device for offline viewing. That's a pretty compelling perk for a laptop.

There are many other such examples, but you get the idea: There's something to be said for having a device that handles everything you need from the moment you leave the house to the end of the day  whether you're going into work, traveling for business, or whatever. With the new presence of mobile apps along with all of Chrome OS's core advantages, the Chromebook can become a uniquely versatile work-and-everything-else device for a certain type of user.

For me, with the asterisk of graphic editing options still not being quite where I'd like them to be, that's certainly proven to be the case. I left my house carrying just a single lightweight convertible device in my bag, and that one laptop handled everything I needed  work-specific and otherwise  and in a way no traditional computer or convertible could have.

So, yes: Chromebooks can definitely be used for work  and much more. The only question you need to answer is whether or not Chrome OS itself is right for you.
Oh yeah, you like that? A firm ass whooping of the Redskins on Monday Night  how many times do they have to do this before the Redskins ask to stop putting them on Monday Nights against the Eagles?  and pure, unadulterated Carson Wentz sex abstinence. It was a fun romp, but its going to leave you with some bruises.

Jordan Hicks is done for the year with a torn Achilles. I wish I had some deep insight to add here, or a truly thoughtful take. But Ill just break it down by saying: fuck.

Jason Peters, on the other hand (foot?), may or may not have a serious injury, according to multiple, similarly timed reports:

If there is some bit of encouraging news on OT Jason Peters, Eagles do not believe he tore his ACL, per source. MRI this morning to see.  Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) October 24, 2017

From late last night: Early word on Jason Peters injury is MCL tear in right knee, per source, but #Eagles wont know until tests today.  Jeff McLane (@Jeff_McLane) October 24, 2017

It looks like Per Source, whoever this man or woman is, texts Schefter first, and then McLane.

If Peters has only some sort of sprain or strain, it would obviously be TREMENDOUS news, because the Eagles will replace him with a hot dog cart, which, when filled with infected water, weighs just as much and has more mobility than Halapoulivaati Vaitai.

JP is king of devastating looking injury that he misses a play for, but that didn't look good.  Joe (@JoeMcB) October 24, 2017

This is true. There is nothing worse than seeing Peters lying on the ground in a heap and get carted off the field like a wounded elephant, unable to bear the weight of his own mass and achieve the balance it requires to compensate for his thick trunk. I feel like this happens every year. How many times have we said Oh shit Jason Peters career is over? I feel like at least 3-4 times. One of these times it will be the end for him, but maybe hes got one more left in the tank.

In other news, I have pneumonia! It turns out puking in your car on the way home from the Sixers home opener isnt normal and can indeed be a sign of an infection of the lungs. Not sure how many posts I have in me today, but Im rallying to write about a bonerific night in sports just as soon as I cough up this yellowish glob which I believe is actually a three-day old egg yolk. Ahhhhh, there it is. I feel like a dragon whose fire thing is broken like this is the goo that ignites in other dragons before its breathed onto tiny villages. But my ignitor doesnt work and, thus, I just lean over the screaming townspeople and dribble some yellow slime on them. Technically speaking, thats what I believe this substance is. Im the worst dragon.
We are expecting 347 calls this season and 950,000 passengers, up from 328 calls and 850,000 passengers last year, said Takayuki Miyamoto, assistant manager of cruise for the tourism and culture bureau in Fukuoka, which is served by the port of Hakata.

Those numbers are growing, in part from infrastructure improvements aimed at big ships, and are even further up from 2015, when the port had 259 calls and 580,000 passengers.

With capacity adjustments happening in China, the port expects a flat 2018.

Costa sailed 10 cruises out of Hakata in 2016 aboard the Victoria, upping capacity in 2017 with 32 sailings on the neoRomantica.

Costa has successfully captured a new customer segment in the Japanese cruise market: families, said Miyamoto.

The port is offering incentives for offseason and homeporting calls. With congestion a problem on particular summer days, the port has put in a berth allocation process that favors overnight calls as well as turnarounds.

Other projects include adding more shore excursion content.

Currently, more than 95 percent of the cruise ships calling at Hakata are from China. Their shore excursions are mainly group tours to shops and sightseeing spots, and Japanese cultural experiences are rarely offered, Miyamoto said. Passengers interests lie not only in shopping but also in hands-on experiences. We believe diversification is the key. Small-group excursions will give passengers more flexibility with their shore excursions.

More port development is aimed at attracting additional large ships. The city will dredge and lengthen the Chuo Wharf next year in line with specs for Oasis-class vessels. In addition plans call for expanding the berth at Chuo to accommodate two vessels at once.

---

For insight and in-depth analysis of the Asia-Pacific and Chinese cruise market, download the 2018 China Market Report.

About the 2018 China Market Report

The 2018 China Market Report by Cruise Industry News is the only resource covering the future trajectory of the Chinese and Asia-Pacific cruise industry, presenting the past, present and future in a concise 95-plus page PDF download.

It is the only forward looking and independently-researched data available on the Chinese cruise market.

Cruise Industry News profiles all the major cruise lines operating in Asia, from Carnival Corporation to Royal Caribbean and local operators.

In addition, there are discussions with leading Chinese travel agents about the charter model and pricing trends, port news and updates from across the region, and a look at the fleet of ships in Asia through 2027.

There is also exclusive analysis and statistics of the Asia-Pacific market going back to 1998 and supply projections through 2027, in addition to a break-down of Asia-Pacific and China by operator and market capacity. Click here to learn more.
The future of what could be the biggest domestic cruise market in the world will be in focus in Sanya, at China Cruise Shipping, as the China Cruise and Yacht Industry Association (CCYIA) announced the lineup for its Presidents Forum discussion, set for Monday Nov. 6.

Weihang Zheng, deputy vice president and general secretary, CCYIA will host the discussion. Among the top industry players from the established cruise world are Arnold Donald, president and CEO of Carnival Corporation; Dr. Zinan Liu, president of China and North Asia Pacific for Royal Caribbean Cruises; and Kent Zhu, president of Genting Cruise Lines.

They will be joined by what is the future of the Chinese cruise industry, including the president of China State Shipbuilding Corporation, Qiang Wu; as well as Chengming Sun, vice president of China Merchants Group and Zhuoyang Fu, vice president of China Travel Service Group.
KnowBe4, a fast-growing security awareness training and phishing simulation provider, announced they have closed on a $30 million Series B investment led by Goldman Sachs. The funding comes on the heels of 18 consecutive quarters of growth, which resulted in the company landing at No. 231 on the Inc. 5000 annual ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America.

Kevin Mitnick, an internationally recognized computer security expert and KnowBe4s chief hacking officer  often referred to as the worlds most famous hacker  helped design KnowBe4s cybersecurity training.

Cyber threats and need for employee training continue to grow

Helping organizations combat the burgeoning ransomware threat by training their employees is a huge market opportunity.

A whopping 91 percent of cyber attacks and the resulting data breaches begin with a spearphishing email, according to numerous sources. KnowBe4 states that this conclusively shows end users really are the weak link in IT security.

[ Read also: Catching up with Kevin Mitnick and bookmark CSO's daily dashboard for the latest advisories and headlines. ]

A growing percentage of phishing emails, when clicked by users, inject ransomware into computers and mobile devices.

Further, global ransomware damage costs are predicted to exceed $5 billion in 2017, up from $325 million in 2015  15x in just two years. And the impact is expected to worsen, especially for healthcare organizations, which have been attacked the most and may see ransomware attacks quadruple by 2020.

The human attack surface is growing exponentially year over year at a time when people have moved ahead of machines as the primary targets for hackers. There are 3.8 billion internet users in 2017 (51 percent of the worlds population of 7 billion), which is up from 2 billion in 2015.

Cybersecurity Ventures predicts there will be 6 billion internet users by 2022 (75 percent of the projected world population of 8 billion)  and more than 7.5 billion internet users by 2030 (90 percent of the projected world population of 8.5 billion, 6 years of age and older).

The total addressable market  or T.A.M. as venture capitalists call it  for the security awareness training market is exploding. One report predicts the market for training employees on how to detect and defend against spearphishing emails, ransomware attacks and other cyber threats will reach $10 billion by 2027, up from $1 billion in 2014.

Goldman Sachs: KnowBe4 platform is a must-have

KnowBe4 has separated itself as a leader in the cybersecurity awareness training market, with their platform becoming a 'need to have' for businesses across sectors and geographies in the fight against cyber threats, said Hans Sherman, a vice president in Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division who will join the KnowBe4 board of directors in connection with the investment.

Institutional investors and VC firms may view the Goldman Sachs investment as a call to action. Theres a solid lineup of security awareness training companies  each bringing their own unique programs and tools to turn employees into cyber defenders.

If theres one thing for sure, its that a whole lotta employees need to be trained on security. The security awareness market will be an interesting one to watch.

Visit SteveOnCyber.com to read all of my blogs and articles covering cybersecurity.

Follow me on Twitter @CybersecuritySF, or connect with me on LinkedIn. Send story tips, feedback and suggestions to me here.
You tell us Are Managers to Blame When Companies Fail to Innovate?

The buck really does stop at the top. Specifically, when the company makes fewer bucks because it isnt keeping up with the competition, its managers may be the cause.

Thats what some new research from staffing firm Robert Half suggests.

Robert Half interviewed Chief Financial Officers, who cited too much bureaucracy (30 percent) and being bogged down by daily tasks and putting out fires (27 percent) as the biggest barriers to innovation.
With no path to win, Mastriano still silent on conceding blowout loss
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Most major currencies were little-changed amid a lull in top-tier economic news flow. The Euro was alone standout, sinking against all of its major counterparts. The drop may reflect prepositioning ahead of a much-anticipated ECB policy announcement later in the week that is expected to bring clarity on the fate of the central banks QE asset purchase program.

A quiet economic data docket in Asia Pacific trading hours offers little besides Japanese manufacturing PMI data. The outcome may not inspire a strong response from the Yen considering its limited implications for the direction of BOJ monetary policy, especially after Prime Minister Abes triumph in a snap election held over the weekend.

DailyFX Economic Calendar: Asia Pacific (all times in GMT)

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IG Client Sentiment Index Chart of the Day: NZD/USD

CLICK HERE to learn more about the IG Client Sentiment Index

Retail trader data shows 61.7% of traders are net-long NZD/USD, with the ratio of traders long to short at 1.61 to 1. The number of traders net-long is 10.8% higher than yesterday and 51.6% higher from last week, while the number of traders net-short is 5.7% higher than yesterday and 6.1% higher from last week.

We typically take a contrarian view to crowd sentiment, and the fact traders are net-long suggests NZD/USD prices may continue to fall. Traders are further net-long than yesterday and last week, and the combination of current sentiment and recent changes gives us a stronger NZD/USD-bearish contrarian trading bias.

Five Things Traders are Reading

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Core Laboratories N.V. provides reservoir description and production enhancement services and products to the oil and gas industry in the United States, Canada, and internationally. It operates through Reservoir Description and Production Enhancement segments. The Reservoir Description segment includes the characterization of petroleum reservoir rock, reservoir fluid, and gas samples to enhance production and improve recovery of oil and gas from its clients' reservoirs. It offers laboratory-based analytical and field services to characterize properties of crude oil and oil delivered products; and proprietary and joint industry studies. The Production Enhancement segment provides services and products relating to reservoir well completions, perforations, stimulations, and production. It offers integrated diagnostic services to evaluate and monitor the effectiveness of well completions and to develop solutions to improve the effectiveness of enhanced oil recovery projects. In addition, the company markets and sells its products through a combination of sales representatives, technical seminars, trade shows, and print advertising, as well as through distributors. It operates approximately in 50 countries. The company was founded in 1936 and is based in Amstelveen, the Netherlands.
Intrepid Potash, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the extraction and production of the potash in the United States and internationally. It operates through three segments: Potash, Trio, and Oilfield Solutions. The Potash segment offers muriate of potash or potassium chloride for use as a fertilizer input in the agricultural market; as a component in drilling and fracturing fluids for oil and gas wells, as well as an input to other industrial processes in the industrial market; and as a nutrient supplement in the animal feed market. The Trio segment provides Trio, a specialty fertilizer that delivers potassium, sulfate, and magnesium in a single particle. The Oilfield Solutions segment sells water for use in the oil and gas services industry; and offers potassium chloride real-time mixing services on location for hydraulic fracturing operations and trucking services. The company also offers salt for use in animal feeds, industrial applications, pool salts, and treatment of roads and walkways for ice melting or to manage road conditions; magnesium chloride for use in the deicing and dedusting of roads; brines for well development and completion activities in the oil and gas industry; and metal recovery salt, a combination of potash and salt to enhance the recovery of aluminum in the aluminum recycling processing facilities. Intrepid Potash, Inc. was founded in 2000 and is based in Denver, Colorado.
NOW Inc. distributes downstream energy and industrial products for petroleum refining, chemical processing, LNG terminals, power generation utilities, and industrial manufacturing operations in the United States, Canada, and internationally. The company offers its products under the DistributionNOW and DNOW brand names. It provides consumable maintenance, repair, and operating supplies; pipes, valves, fittings, flanges, gaskets, fasteners, electrical products, instrumentations, artificial lift, pumping solutions, valve actuation and modular process, and measurement and control equipment; and mill supplies, tools, safety supplies, and personal protective equipment, as well as applied products and applications, such as artificial lift systems, coatings, and miscellaneous expendable items. The company also offers original equipment manufacturer equipment, including pumps, generator sets, air and gas compressors, dryers, blowers, mixers, and valves; modular oil and gas tank battery solutions; and application systems, work processes, parts integration, optimization solutions, and after-sales support services. In addition, it provides supply chain and materials management solutions that include procurement, inventory planning and management, and warehouse management, as well as solutions for logistics, point-of-issue technology, project management, business process, and performance metrics reporting services. The company serves customers through a network of approximately 180 locations in the upstream, midstream, and downstream sectors of the energy industry, including drilling contractors, well-servicing companies, independent and national oil and gas companies, midstream operators, and refineries, as well as petrochemical, chemical, utilities, and other downstream energy processors; and industrial and manufacturing companies. NOW Inc. was founded in 1862 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
The following companies are subsidiares of Transocean: 15375 Memorial Corporation, Agon Shipping Inc., Aguas Profundas Limitada, AngoSantaFe - Prestacao de Servicos Petroliferos Limitada, Angola Deepwater Drilling Company (Offshore Services) Ltd, Arcade Drilling AS, Asie Sonat Offshore Sdn. Bhd., Barents Rigco Limited, Blegra Asset Management Limited, Blegra Financing Limited, Caledonia Offshore Drilling Services Limited, Challenger Minerals Inc., Covent Garden - Servicos e Marketing Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Deepwater Drilling (Transocean Ghana) Limited, Deepwater Drilling North Africa LLC - Free Zone, Deepwater Pacific 1 Inc., Deepwater Supply Inc., Drillship Alonissos Owners Inc., Drillship Hydra Owners Inc., Drillship Kithira Owners Inc., Drillship Kythnos Owners Inc., Drillship Paros Owners Inc., Drillship Skiathos Owners Inc., Drillship Skopelos Owners Inc., Drillship Skyros Owners Inc., Eastern Med Consultants Inc., Entities Holdings Inc., GSF Leasing Services GmbH, Global Marine Inc., Global Offshore Drilling Limited, GlobalSantaFe (Labuan) Inc., GlobalSantaFe B.V., GlobalSantaFe C.R. Luigs Limited, GlobalSantaFe Denmark Holdings ApS, GlobalSantaFe Drilling (N.A.) N.V., GlobalSantaFe Drilling Company, GlobalSantaFe Drilling Company (North Sea) Limited, GlobalSantaFe Drilling Company (Overseas) Limited, GlobalSantaFe Drilling Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., GlobalSantaFe Drilling Operations Inc., GlobalSantaFe Drilling Services (North Sea) Limited, GlobalSantaFe Drilling Trinidad LLC, GlobalSantaFe Drilling Venezuela C.A., GlobalSantaFe Financial Services (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., GlobalSantaFe Group Financing Limited Liability Company, GlobalSantaFe Holding Company (North Sea) Limited, GlobalSantaFe Hungary Services Limited Liability Company, GlobalSantaFe International Drilling Corporation, GlobalSantaFe International Drilling Inc., GlobalSantaFe International Services Inc., GlobalSantaFe Nederland B.V., GlobalSantaFe Offshore Services Inc., GlobalSantaFe Operations (Mexico) LLC, GlobalSantaFe Saudi Arabia Ltd., GlobalSantaFe Services (BVI) Inc., GlobalSantaFe Services Netherlands B.V., GlobalSantaFe Servicios de Venezuela C.A., GlobalSantaFe South America LLC, GlobalSantaFe Tampico S. de R.L. de C.V., GlobalSantaFe Techserv (North Sea) Limited, GlobalSantaFe U.S. Holdings Inc., Indigo Drilling Limited, Inteliwell JV GP Limited, Inteliwell JV LP, Kalambo Operations Inc., OCR Falklands Drilling Inc., OR Norge Operations Inc., Ocean Rig, Ocean Rig 1 Inc, Ocean Rig 2 Inc., Ocean Rig Canada Inc., Ocean Rig Cuanza Operations Inc., Ocean Rig Cubango Operations Inc., Ocean Rig Deepwater Drilling Limited, Ocean Rig Investments Inc., Ocean Rig Management Inc., Ocean Rig Operations Inc., Ocean Rig UDW Inc., Ocean Rig UDW LLC, Offshore Ghana Transocean Limited, Offshore Rig Operations AS, Olympia Rig Angola Holding S.A., Olympia Rig Angola Limitada, Orion Holdings (Cayman) Limited, Orion RigCo (Cayman) Limited, P.T. Santa Fe Supraco Indonesia, PT. Transocean Indonesia, Platform Capital N.V., Platform Financial N.V., Primelead Limited, R&B Falcon (A) Pty Ltd, R&B Falcon (Caledonia) Limited, R&B Falcon (M) Sdn. Bhd., R&B Falcon (U.K.) Limited, R&B Falcon B.V., R&B Falcon Deepwater (UK) Limited, R&B Falcon Drilling Co. LLC, R&B Falcon Exploration Co. LLC, R&B Falcon International Energy Services B.V., RBF Rig Corporation LLC, Ranger Insurance Limited, Reading & Bates Coal Co. LLC, SDS Offshore Limited, Safemal Drilling Sdn. Bhd., Santa Fe Braun Inc., Santa Fe Construction Company, Santa Fe Drilling Company of Venezuela C.A., Saudi Drilling Company Limited, Sedco Forex International Inc., Services Petroliers Transocean, Servicios Petroleros Santa Fe S.A., Ship Investment Ocean Holdings Inc., Songa Offshore Delta Limited, Songa Offshore Drilling Limited, Songa Offshore Enabler Limited, Songa Offshore Encourage Limited, Songa Offshore Endurance Limited, Songa Offshore Equinox Limited, Songa Offshore Equipment Rental Limited, Songa Offshore Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Songa Offshore Management Limited, Songa Offshore Pte. Ltd., Songa Offshore Rig 2 AS, Songa Offshore Rig 3 AS, Songa Offshore SE, Songa Offshore SE, Songa Offshore Saturn Limited, Songa Offshore T & P Cyprus Limited, Songa Saturn Chartering Pte. Ltd., Spitsbergen Rigco Limited, Sub-Saharan Drilling Inc., T. I. International Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., TILAM Holdings Limited, TRM Holdings Limited, TSSA - Servicos de Apoio Lda., Transocean Africa Drilling Limited, Transocean Asia Services Sdn Bhd, Transocean Asset Holdings 1 Limited, Transocean Asset Holdings 2 Limited, Transocean Asset Holdings 3 Limited, Transocean Atlas Limited, Transocean Barents ASA, Transocean Brasil Ltda., Transocean Britannia Limited, Transocean Canada Drilling Services Ltd., Transocean Conqueror Limited, Transocean Conqueror Opco LLC, Transocean Corporate Services Limited, Transocean Cyprus Capital Management Public Limited, Transocean Cyprus Drilling Operations Public Limited, Transocean Deepwater Drilling Services Limited, Transocean Deepwater Holdings Limited, Transocean Deepwater Inc., Transocean Deepwater Mauritius, Transocean Deepwater Nautilus Limited, Transocean Deepwater Seafarer Services Limited, Transocean Discoverer 534 LLC, Transocean Drilling Enterprises S.a.r.l., Transocean Drilling Israel Ltd., Transocean Drilling Limited, Transocean Drilling Namibia Inc., Transocean Drilling Offshore S.a.r.l., Transocean Drilling Sdn. Bhd., Transocean Drilling Services (India) Private Limited, Transocean Drilling U.K. Limited, Transocean Eastern Pte. Ltd., Transocean Employee Support Fund, Transocean Enabler Limited, Transocean Enabler Rigco Limited, Transocean Encourage Limited, Transocean Encourage Rigco Limited, Transocean Endurance Limited, Transocean Endurance Rigco Limited, Transocean Entities Holdings GmbH, Transocean Equinox Limited, Transocean Equinox Rigco Limited, Transocean Finance Limited, Transocean Financing (Cayman) Limited, Transocean Financing GmbH, Transocean Guardian Limited, Transocean Holdings 1 Limited, Transocean Holdings 2 Limited, Transocean Holdings 3 Limited, Transocean Holdings LLC, Transocean Hungary Holdings LLC, Transocean Hungary Investments LLC, Transocean Hungary Ventures LLC, Transocean Inc., Transocean Innovation Labs Ltd., Transocean International Holdings Limited, Transocean International Resources Limited, Transocean Investimentos Ltda., Transocean Investments Holdings LLC, Transocean Investments S.a.r.l., Transocean Ltd., Transocean Management Services GmbH, Transocean Minerals Holdings Limited, Transocean Nautilus Limited, Transocean North Sea Limited, Transocean Norway Operations AS, Transocean Offshore (North Sea) Ltd., Transocean Offshore Canada Services Ltd., Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling Inc., Transocean Offshore Deepwater Holdings Limited, Transocean Offshore Drilling Limited, Transocean Offshore Gulf of Guinea II Limited, Transocean Offshore Gulf of Guinea VI Limited, Transocean Offshore Gulf of Guinea VII Limited, Transocean Offshore Gulf of Guinea XII Limited, Transocean Offshore Gulf of Guinea XIII Limited, Transocean Offshore Holdings Limited, Transocean Offshore International Limited, Transocean Offshore International Ventures Limited, Transocean Offshore Limited, Transocean Offshore PR Limited, Transocean Offshore USA Inc., Transocean Onshore Support Services Limited, Transocean Orion Limited, Transocean Phoenix 2 Limited, Transocean Phoenix 2 Opco LLC, Transocean Pontus Limited, Transocean Pontus Opco Inc., Transocean Poseidon Limited, Transocean Poseidon Opco Inc., Transocean Proteus Limited, Transocean Proteus Opco LLC, Transocean Quantum Holdings Limited, Transocean Quantum Management Limited, Transocean Quantum Rig Holdings Limited, Transocean Quantum Sentry Holdings Limited, Transocean Rig 140 Limited, Transocean Rig Management Limited, Transocean SPSF Holdings Limited, Transocean Sedco Forex Ventures Limited, Transocean Sentry Limited, Transocean Services (India) Private Limited, Transocean Services AS, Transocean Services UK Limited, Transocean Skyros Limited, Transocean Spitsbergen ASA, Transocean Sub Asset Holdings 1 Limited, Transocean Sub Asset Holdings 2 Limited, Transocean Sub Asset Holdings 3 Limited, Transocean Support Services Limited, Transocean Support Services Nigeria Limited, Transocean Support Services Private Limited, Transocean Technical Services Egypt LLC, Transocean U.S. Holdings LLC, Transocean UK Limited, Transocean Voyager 1 Limited, Transocean Voyager 2 Limited, Transocean West Africa Holdings Limited, Transocean Worldwide Inc., Triton Asset Leasing GmbH, Triton Capital I GmbH, Triton Capital II GmbH, Triton Capital Mexico GmbH, Triton Conqueror GmbH, Triton Corcovado LLC, Triton Financing LLC, Triton Gemini GmbH, Triton Holdings Limited, Triton Hungary Asset Management LLC, Triton Hungary Investments 1 Limited Liability Company, Triton Industries Inc., Triton KG2 GmbH, Triton Management Services LLC, Triton Mykonos LLC, Triton Nautilus Asset Leasing GmbH, Triton Nautilus Asset Management LLC, Triton Offshore Leasing Services Limited, Triton Pacific Limited, Triton Poseidon GmbH, Triton Voyager Asset Leasing GmbH, and Wilrig Offshore (UK) Limited.

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The following companies are subsidiares of PepsiCo: Alimentos Quaker Oats y Compania Limitada, Alimentos del Istmo S.A., Amavale Agricola Ltda., Anderson Hill Insurance Limited, Asia Bottlers Limited, BAESA Capital Corporation Ltd., BFY Brands, BFY Brands LLC, BFY Brands Limited, BUG de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Balmoral Industries LLC, Bare Foods Co., Barrhead LLC, Be & Cheery, Beaman Bottling Company, Bebidas Sudamerica S.A., Beech Limited, Bell Taco Funding Syndicate, Bendler Investments II Ltd, Bendler Investments S.a r.l, Beverage Services Limited, Beverages Foods & Service Industries Inc., Bishkeksut OJSC, Blaue NC S. de R.L. de C.V., Blue Cloud Distribution Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Arizona Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Arkansas Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Colorado Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Florida Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Georgia Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Illinois Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Indiana Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Iowa Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Kentucky Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Louisiana Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Minnesota Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Mississippi Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Missouri Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Nebraska Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Nevada Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of North Carolina Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Ohio Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Oklahoma Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Pennsylvania Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of South Carolina Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Tennessee Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Texas Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Virginia Inc., Blue Cloud Distribution of Wisconsin Inc., Blue Ridge Sales LLC, Bluebird Foods Limited, Bluecan Holdings Unlimited Company, Bokomo Zambia Limited, Bolsherechensky Molkombinat JSC, Boquitas Fiestas LLC, Boquitas Fiestas S.R.L., Bottling Group Financing LLC, Bottling Group Holdings LLC, Bottling Group LLC, Bronte Industries Ltd, C & I Leasing Inc., CB Manufacturing Company Inc., CEME Holdings LLC, CMC Investment Company, Caroni Investments LLC, Centro-Mediterranea de Bebidas Carbonicas PepsiCo S.L., Ceres Fruit Juices Pty Ltd, ChampBev Inc., China Concentrate Holdings Hong Kong Limited, Chipsy International for Food Industries S.A.E., Chipsy for Food Industries S.A.E., Chitos Internacional y Cia Ltda, Cipa Industrial de Produtos Alimentares Ltda., Cipa Nordeste Industrial de Produtos Alimentares Ltda., Cocina Autentica Inc., Comercializadora CMC Investment y Compania Limitada, Comercializadora Nacional SAS Ltda., Comercializadora PepsiCo Mexico S de R.L. de C.V., Compania de Bebidas PepsiCo S.L., Concentrate Holding Uruguay Pte. Ltd., Concentrate Manufacturing Singapore Pte. Ltd., Confiteria Alegro S. de R.L. de C.V., Copella Fruit Juices Limited, Copper Beech International LLC, Corina Snacks Limited, Corporativo Internacional Mexicano S. de R.L. de C.V., CytoSport Holdings Inc., CytoSport Inc., Davlyn Realty Corporation, Defosto Holdings Limited, Desarrollo Inmobiliario Gamesa S. de R.L. de C.V., Dilexis S.A., Donon Holdings Limited, Drinkfinity USA Inc., Drinkstation Inc., Drinkstation Innovation Co. Ltd., Drinkstation Limited, Dutch Snacks Holding S.A. de C.V., Duyvis Production B.V., EPIC Enterprises Inc., Echo Bay Holdings Inc., Elaboradora Argentina de Cereales S.R.L., Enter Logistica LLC, Environ at Inverrary Partnership, Environ of Inverrary Inc., Eridanus Investments S.a r.l, Evercrisp Snack Productos de Chile S.A., FL Transportation Inc., FLI Andean LLC, FLI Colombia LLC, FLI Snacks Andean GP LLC, Fabrica PepsiCo Mexicali S. de R.L. de C.V., Fabrica de Productos Alimenticios Rene y Cia S.C.A., Fairlight International SRL, Far East Bottlers Hong Kong Limited, Food Concepts Pioneer Ltd., Forest Akers Nederland B.V., Forty-Six Peaks Holding Inc., Fovarosi Asvanyviz es Uditoipari Zartkoruen Mukodo Reszvenytarsasag, Freshwater International B.V., Frito Lay Gida Sanayi Ve Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Frito Lay Poland Sp. z o.o., Frito Lay Sp. z o.o., Frito Lay de Guatemala y Compania Limitada, Frito-Lay Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Frito-Lay Dip Company Inc., Frito-Lay Dominicana S.A., Frito-Lay Global Investments B.V., Frito-Lay Inc., Frito-Lay Investments B.V., Frito-Lay Manufacturing LLC, Frito-Lay Netherlands Holding B.V., Frito-Lay North America Inc., Frito-Lay Sales Inc., Frito-Lay Trading Company Europe GmbH, Frito-Lay Trading Company GmbH, Frito-Lay Trading Company Poland GmbH, Frito-Lay Trinidad Unlimited, Fruko Mesrubat Sanayi Limited Sirketi, GB Czech LLC, GB International Inc., GB Russia LLC, GB Slovak LLC, GMP Manufacturing Inc., Gambrinus Investments Limited, Gamesa LLC, Gamesa S. de R.L. de C.V., Gas Natural de Merida S. A. de C. V., Gatorade Puerto Rico Company, General Bottlers of Hungary Inc., Golden Grain Company, Goveh S.R.L., Grayhawk Leasing LLC, Green Hemlock International LLC, Grupo Frito Lay y Compania Limitada, Grupo Gamesa S. de R.L. de C.V., Grupo Mabel, Grupo Sabritas S. de R.L. de C.V., Gulkevichskiy Maslozavod JSC, Hangzhou Baicaowei Corporate Management Consulting Co. Ltd., Hangzhou Haomusi Food Co, Hangzhou Haomusi Food Co. Ltd., Hangzhou Tao Dao Technology Co. Ltd., Health Warrior, Health Warrior Inc., Heathland LP, Helioscope Limited, Hillbrook Inc., Hillgrove Inc., Hillwood Bottling LLC, Hogganfield Limited Partnership, Holding Company "Opolie" JSC, Homefinding Company of Texas, Hudson Valley Insurance Company, IC Equities Inc., IZZE Beverage Co., Inmobiliaria Interamericana S.A. De C.V., Integrated Beverage Services Bangladesh Limited, Integrated Foods & Beverages Pvt. Ltd., International Bottlers Management Co. LLC, International KAS Aktiengesellschaft, Inversiones Borneo S.R.L., Inversiones PFI Chile Limitada, Inviting Foods Holdings Inc., Inviting Foods LLC, KAS Anorthosis S.a r.l, KAS S.L., KFC, Kevita Inc., Kinvara LLC, Kungursky Molkombinat JSC, Larragana S.L., Latin American Holdings Ltd., Latin American Snack Foods ApS, Latin Foods International LLC, Lebedyansky, Lebedyansky Holdings LLC, Lebedyansky LLC, Limited Liability Company "Sandora", Linkbay Limited, Lithuanian Snacks UAB, Mabel, Marbo Product d.o.o. Beograd, Marbo d.o.o. Laktasi, Matudis - Comercio de Produtos Alimentares Limitada, Matutano - Sociedade de Produtos Alimentares Lda., Mid-America Improvement Corporation, Mountainview Insurance Company Inc., Muscle Milk, NCJV LLC, New Bern Transport Corporation, New Century Beverage Company LLC, Noble Leasing LLC, Northeast Hot-Fill Co-op Inc., Office at Solyanka LLC, Onbiso Inversiones S.L., One World Enterprises LLC, One World Investors Inc., P-A Barbados Bottling Company LLC, P-A Bottlers Barbados SRL, P-Americas LLC, PAS Luxembourg S.a r.l, PAS Netherlands B.V., PBG Canada Holdings II LLC, PBG Canada Holdings Inc., PBG Cyprus Holdings Limited, PBG Investment Partnership, PBG Midwest Holdings S.a r.l, PBG Soda Can Holdings S.a r.l, PCBL LLC, PCNA Manufacturing Inc., PR Beverages Cyprus Holding Limited, PR Beverages Cyprus Russia Holding Limited, PRB Luxembourg S.a r.l, PRS Inc., PSAS Inversiones LLC, PSE Logistica S.R.L., PT Quaker Indonesia, Papas Chips S.A., Pei N.V., Pep Trade LLC, Pepsi B.V., Pepsi Beverages Holdings Inc., Pepsi Bottling Group Global Finance LLC, Pepsi Bottling Group GmbH, Pepsi Bottling Group Hoosiers B.V., Pepsi Bottling Holdings Inc., Pepsi Bugshan Investments S.A.E., Pepsi Cola Colombia Ltda, Pepsi Cola Egypt S.A.E., Pepsi Cola Panamericana S.R.L., Pepsi Cola Servis Ve Dagitim Limited Sirketi, Pepsi Cola Trading Ireland, Pepsi Logistics Company Inc., Pepsi Northwest Beverages LLC, Pepsi Overseas Investments Partnership, Pepsi Promotions Inc., Pepsi-Cola Advertising and Marketing Inc., Pepsi-Cola Bermuda Limited, Pepsi-Cola Bottlers Holding C.V., Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company Of St. Louis Inc., Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of Ft. Lauderdale-Palm Beach LLC, Pepsi-Cola Company, Pepsi-Cola Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Pepsi-Cola Far East Trade Development Co. Inc., Pepsi-Cola Finance LLC, Pepsi-Cola General Bottlers Poland Sp. z o.o., Pepsi-Cola Industrial da Amazonia Ltda., Pepsi-Cola International Cork, Pepsi-Cola International LLC, Pepsi-Cola International Limited, Pepsi-Cola International Limited U.S.A., Pepsi-Cola International Private Limited, Pepsi-Cola Korea Co. Ltd., Pepsi-Cola Management and Administrative Services Inc., Pepsi-Cola Manufacturing Company Of Uruguay S.R.L., Pepsi-Cola Manufacturing International Limited, Pepsi-Cola Manufacturing Mediterranean Limited, Pepsi-Cola Marketing Corp. Of P.R. Inc., Pepsi-Cola Mediterranean Ltd., Pepsi-Cola Metropolitan Bottling Company Inc., Pepsi-Cola Mexicana Holdings LLC, Pepsi-Cola Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Pepsi-Cola National Marketing LLC, Pepsi-Cola Operating Company Of Chesapeake And Indianapolis, Pepsi-Cola Sales and Distribution Inc., Pepsi-Cola Technical Operations Inc., Pepsi-Cola Thai Trading Co. Ltd., Pepsi-Cola de Honduras S.R.L., Pepsi-Cola of Corvallis Inc., PepsiAmericas Nemzetkozi Szolgaltato Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, PepsiCo ANZ Holdings Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Alimentos Antioquia Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos Colombia Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos Ecuador Cia. Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos Z.F. Ltda., PepsiCo Alimentos de Bolivia S.R.L., PepsiCo Amacoco Bebidas Do Brasil Ltda., PepsiCo Asia Research & Development Center Company Limited, PepsiCo Australia Financing Cyprus Limited, PepsiCo Australia Financing Limited Partnership, PepsiCo Australia Financing Partner 1 LLC, PepsiCo Australia Financing Partner 2 LLC, PepsiCo Australia Financing Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Australia Holdings Pty Limited, PepsiCo Australia International, PepsiCo Austria Services GmbH, PepsiCo Azerbaijan Limited Liability Company, PepsiCo BeLux BV, PepsiCo Beverage Sales LLC, PepsiCo Beverage Singapore Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Beverages Bermuda Limited, PepsiCo Beverages Hong Kong Limited, PepsiCo Beverages International Limited, PepsiCo Beverages Italia Societa' A Responsabilita' Limitata, PepsiCo Canada Finance LLC, PepsiCo Canada Holdings ULC, PepsiCo Canada Investment ULC, PepsiCo Canada ULC, PepsiCo Captive Holdings Inc., PepsiCo Caribbean Inc., PepsiCo China Limited, PepsiCo Consulting Polska Sp. z o.o., PepsiCo De Bolivia S.R.L., PepsiCo Del Paraguay S.R.L., PepsiCo Deutschland GmbH, PepsiCo Eesti AS, PepsiCo Euro Bermuda Limited, PepsiCo Euro Finance Antilles B.V., PepsiCo Europe Support Center S.L., PepsiCo Finance Americas Company, PepsiCo Finance Antilles A N.V., PepsiCo Finance Antilles B N.V., PepsiCo Finance South Africa Proprietary Limited, PepsiCo Financial Shared Services Inc., PepsiCo Food & Beverage Holdings Hong Kong Limited, PepsiCo Foods A.I.E., PepsiCo Foods China Company Limited, PepsiCo Foods Group Pty Ltd, PepsiCo Foods Guangdong Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Foods Nigeria Limited, PepsiCo Foods Private Limited, PepsiCo Foods Sichuan Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Foods Taiwan Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Foods Vietnam Company, PepsiCo France SAS, PepsiCo Global Business Services India LLP, PepsiCo Global Business Services Poland Sp. z o.o., PepsiCo Global Holdings Limited, PepsiCo Global Investments B.V., PepsiCo Global Investments S.a r.l, PepsiCo Global Mobility LLC, PepsiCo Global Real Estate Inc., PepsiCo Global Trading Solutions Unlimited Company, PepsiCo Golden Holdings Inc., PepsiCo Group Finance International B.V., PepsiCo Group Holdings International B.V., PepsiCo Group Spotswood Holdings S.a r.l, PepsiCo Gulf International FZE, PepsiCo Hellas Single Member Industrial and Commercial Societe Anonyme, PepsiCo Holding de Espana S.L., PepsiCo Holdings, PepsiCo Holdings LLC, PepsiCo Holdings Toshkent LLC, PepsiCo Hong Kong LLC, PepsiCo Iberia Servicios Centrales S.L., PepsiCo India Holdings Private Limited, PepsiCo India Sales Private Limited, PepsiCo Internacional Mexico S. de R. L. de C. V., PepsiCo International Hong Kong Limited, PepsiCo International Limited, PepsiCo International Pte Ltd., PepsiCo Investments Europe I B.V., PepsiCo Investments Ltd., PepsiCo Ireland Food & Beverages Unlimited Company, PepsiCo Japan Co. Ltd., PepsiCo Light B.V., PepsiCo Logistyka Sp. z o.o., PepsiCo Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., PepsiCo Management Services SAS, PepsiCo Manufacturing A.I.E., PepsiCo Max B.V., PepsiCo Mexico Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., PepsiCo Nederland B.V., PepsiCo Nordic Denmark ApS, PepsiCo Nordic Finland Oy, PepsiCo Nordic Norway AS, PepsiCo Nutrition Trading DMCC, PepsiCo One B.V., PepsiCo Overseas Corporation, PepsiCo Overseas Financing Partnership, PepsiCo Panimex Inc, PepsiCo Products B.V., PepsiCo Products FLLC, PepsiCo Puerto Rico Inc., PepsiCo Sales Inc., PepsiCo Sales LLC, PepsiCo Services Asia Ltd., PepsiCo Services CZ s.r.o., PepsiCo Services LLC, PepsiCo Twist B.V., PepsiCo UK Pension Plan Trustee Limited, PepsiCo Ventures B.V., PepsiCo Wave Holdings LLC, PepsiCo World Trading Company Inc., PepsiCo Y LLC, PepsiCo de Argentina S.R.L., PepsiCo de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., PepsiCo do Brasil Industria e Comercio de Alimentos Ltda., PepsiCo do Brasil Ltda., PepsiCola Interamericana de Guatemala S.A., Pet Iberia S.L., Pete & Johnny Limited, Pine International LLC, Pine International Limited, Pinstripe Leasing LLC, Pioneer Food Group Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods Groceries Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods Group Ltd., Pioneer Foods Holdings Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods Pty Ltd, Pioneer Foods UK Ltd, Pioneer Foods Wellingtons Pty Ltd, Pipers Crisps Limited, PlayCo Inc., Pop corners, PopCorners Holdings Inc., Portfolio Concentrate Solutions Unlimited Company, Premier Nutrition Trading L.L.C., Prestwick LLC, Prev PepsiCo Sociedade Previdenciaria, Productos Alimenticios Rene LLC, Productos S.A.S. C.V., Productos SAS Management B.V., Punch N.V., Punica Getranke GmbH, Q O Puerto Rico Inc., QFL OHQ Sdn. Bhd., QTG Development Inc., QTG Services Inc., Quadrant - Amroq Beverages S.R.L., Quaker Development B.V., Quaker European Beverages LLC, Quaker European Investments B.V., Quaker Foods, Quaker Global Investments B.V., Quaker Holdings UK Limited, Quaker Manufacturing LLC, Quaker Oats Asia Inc., Quaker Oats Australia Pty Ltd, Quaker Oats B.V., Quaker Oats Capital Corporation, Quaker Oats Europe Inc., Quaker Oats Europe LLC, Quaker Oats Limited, Quaker Sales & Distribution Inc, Raptas Finance S.a r.l., Rare Fare Foods LLC, Rare Fare Holdings Inc., Reading Industries Ltd, Real Estate Holdings LLC, Rockstar Energy Drink, Rolling Frito-Lay Sales LP, S & T of Mississippi Inc., SIH International LLC, SVC Logistics Inc., SVC Manufacturing Inc., SVE Russia Holdings GmbH, Sabritas LLC, Sabritas S. de R.L. de C.V., Sabritas Snacks America Latina de Nicaragua y Cia Ltda, Sabritas de Costa Rica S. de R.L., Sabritas y Cia. S en C de C.V., Sakata Rice Snacks Australia Pty Ltd, Sandora Holdings B.V., Saudi Snack Foods Company Limited, Sea Eagle International SRL, Seepoint Holdings Ltd., Senselet Food Processing PLC, Senselet Holding B.V., Servicios GBF Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Servicios GFLG y Compania Limitada, Servicios Gamesa Puerto Rico L.L.C., Servicios SYC S. de R.L. de C.V., Seven-Up Asia Inc., Seven-Up Light B.V., Seven-Up Nederland B.V., Shanghai PepsiCo Snack Company Limited, Shanghai YuHo Agricultural Development Co. Ltd, Shoebill LLC, Simba (Proprietary) Limited, Simba Proprietary Limited, Sitka Spruce, Smartfoods Inc., Smiles and Bites Holdings S.de R.L. de C.V., Smiths Crisps Limited, Snack Food Investments GmbH, Snack Food Investments II GmbH, Snack Food Investments Limited, Snack Food-Beverage Asia Products Limited, Snacks America Latina S.R.L., Snacks Guatemala Ltd., So Spark Ltd., Soda-Club CO2 Atlantic GmbH, Soda-Club CO2 GmbH, Soda-Club CO2 Ltd., Soda-Club Switzerland GmbH, Soda-Club Worldwide B.V., SodaStream, SodaStream Australia Pty Ltd, SodaStream CO2 SA, SodaStream Canada Ltd., SodaStream Enterprises N.V., SodaStream France SAS, SodaStream GmbH, SodaStream Iberia S.L., SodaStream Industries Ltd., SodaStream International B.V., SodaStream International Ltd., SodaStream Israel Ltd., SodaStream K.K., SodaStream New Zealand Ltd., SodaStream Nordics AB, SodaStream Poland Sp. z o.o., SodaStream SA Pty Ltd., SodaStream Switzerland GmbH, SodaStream USA Inc., SodaStream Osterreich GmbH, South Beach Beverage Company Inc., South Properties Inc., Spitz International Inc., Sportmex Internacional S.A. de C.V., Springboig Industries Ltd, Spruce Limited, Stacy's Pita Chip Company Incorporated, Star Foods E.M. S.R.L., Stokely-Van Camp Inc., Stratosphere Communications Pty Ltd, Stratosphere Holdings 2018 Limited, Streamfoods Ltd, TFL Holdings LLC, Tasman Finance S.a r.l, The Gatorade Company, The Good Carb Food Company Ltd., The Pepsi Bottling Group Canada ULC, The Quaker Oats Company, The Smith's Snackfood Company Pty Limited, Thomond Group Holdings Limited, Tobago Snack Holdings LLC, Tropicana Alvalle S.L., Tropicana Beverages Limited, Tropicana Europe N.V., Tropicana United Kingdom Limited, Troya-Ultra LLC, United Foods Companies Restaurantes S.A., V-Water, VentureCo Israel Ltd, Veurne Snack Foods BV, Vitamin Brands Ltd., Walkers Crisps Limited, Walkers Group Limited, Walkers Snack Foods Limited, Walkers Snacks Distribution Limited, Walkers Snacks Limited, Whitman Corporation, Whitman Insurance Co. Ltd., Wimm-Bill-Dann Beverages JSC, Wimm-Bill-Dann Brands Co. Ltd., Wimm-Bill-Dann Central Asia-Almaty LLP, Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods LLC, Wimm-Bill-Dann Georgia Ltd., Wimm-Bill-Dann JSC, and Wimm-Bill-Dann Ukraine PJSC.

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Weatherford International plc, an oilfield service company, provides equipment and services for the drilling, evaluation, completion, production, and intervention of oil and natural gas wells worldwide. The company operates in two segments, Western Hemisphere and Eastern Hemisphere. It offers artificial lift systems, including reciprocating rod, progressing cavity pumping, gas, hydraulic, plunger, and hybrid lift systems, as well as related automation and control systems; pressure pumping and reservoir stimulation services, such as acidizing, fracturing and fluid systems, cementing, and coiled-tubing intervention; and drill stem test tools, and surface well testing and multiphase flow measurement services. The company also provides safety, downhole reservoir monitoring, flow control, and multistage fracturing systems, as well as sand-control technologies, and production and isolation packers; liner hangers to suspend a casing string in high-temperature and high-pressure wells; cementing products, including plugs, float and stage equipment, and torque-and-drag reduction technology for zonal isolation; and pre-job planning and installation services. In addition, it offers directional drilling services, and logging and measurement services while drilling; services related to rotary-steerable systems, high-temperature and high-pressure sensors, drilling reamers, and circulation subs; managed pressure drilling, conventional mud-logging, drilling instrumentation, gas analysis, wellsite consultancy, and open hole and cased-hole logging services; reservoir solutions and software products; and intervention and remediation services. Further, the company provides equipment and drilling tools; tubular handling, management, and connection services; equipment rental services; and onshore contract drilling and related services through a fleet of land drilling and workover rigs. Weatherford International plc was incorporated in 1972 and is headquartered in Baar, Switzerland.
Nelnet, Inc. engages in loan servicing, communications, education technology, services, and payment processing businesses worldwide. The Loan Servicing and Systems segment provides loan conversion, application processing, borrower updates, customer service, payment processing, due diligence procedures, funds management reconciliation, and claim processing services. This segment also provides student loan servicing software; business process outsourcing services specialized in contact center management, such as inbound calls, outreach campaigns and sales, and interacting with customers through multi-channels. The Education Technology, Services, and Payment Processing segment offers financial management services; school information system software; website design and cost effective admissions software; FACTS Giving, a donation platform; and customized professional development and coaching services, educational instruction services, and technology products that aid in teacher and student evaluations. It also offers tuition payment plans, and service and technology for student billings, payments, and refunds; solutions for in-person, online, and mobile payment experiences on campus; payment processing services, such as credit card and electronic transfer; faith community engagement, giving management, and learning management services and technologies; and an integrated commerce payment platform, financial management, and tuition payment plan services, as well as a school management platform that provides administrative, information management, financial management, and communication functions for K-12 schools. The Communications segment provides fiber optic service to homes and businesses for internet, television, and telephone services. The Asset Generation and Management segment acquires, manages, and owns loan assets. The Nelnet Bank segment operates internet industrial banks. The company was founded in 1978 and is headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Synchrony Financial, together with its subsidiaries, operates as a consumer financial services company in the United States. It provides credit products, such as credit cards, commercial credit products, and consumer installment loans. The company also offers private label credit cards, dual cards, co-brand and general purpose credit cards, short- and long-term installment loans, and consumer banking products; and deposit products, including certificates of deposit, individual retirement accounts, money market accounts, and savings accounts to retail and commercial customers, as well as accepts deposits through third-party securities brokerage firms. In addition, it provides debt cancellation products to its credit card customers through online, mobile, and direct mail; healthcare payments and financing solutions under the CareCredit, Pets Best, and Walgreens brands; payments and financing solutions in the apparel, specialty retail, outdoor, music, and luxury industries; and point-of-sale consumer financing for audiology products and dental services. The company offers its credit products through programs established with a group of national and regional retailers, local merchants, manufacturers, buying groups, industry associations, and healthcare service providers; and deposit products through various channels, such as digital and print. It serves digital, health and wellness, retail, home, auto, powersports, jewelry, pets, and other industries. Synchrony Financial was founded in 1932 and is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut.
The following companies are subsidiares of Abbott Laboratories: 3A Nutrition (Vietnam) Company Limited, ABON Biopharm (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd., AGA Medical Belgium, AGA Medical Corporation, AGA Medical Holdings Inc., ALR Holdings, AML Medical LLC, APK Advanced Medical Technologies LLC, ATS Bermuda Holdings Limited, ATS Laboratories Inc., Abbott, Abbott (Jiaxing) Nutrition Co. Ltd., Abbott (UK) Finance Limited, Abbott (UK) Holdings Limited, Abbott AG, Abbott Asia Holdings Limited, Abbott Asia Investments Limited, Abbott Australasia Holdings Limited, Abbott Australasia Pty Ltd, Abbott B.V., Abbott Bahamas Overseas Businesses Corporation, Abbott Belgian Investments, Abbott Bermuda Holding Ltd., Abbott Biologicals B.V., Abbott Biologicals LLC, Abbott Bulgaria Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Capital India Limited, Abbott Cardiovascular Inc., Abbott Cardiovascular Systems Inc., Abbott Delaware LLC, Abbott Diabetes Care Inc., Abbott Diabetes Care Limited, Abbott Diabetes Care Sales Corporation, Abbott Diagnostics GmbH, Abbott Diagnostics International Ltd., Abbott Diagnostics Technologies AS, Abbott Doral Investments S.L., Abbott Equity Holdings Unlimited, Abbott Equity Investments LLC, Abbott Established Products Holdings (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Finance Company SA, Abbott Financial Holdings SRL, Abbott France S.A.S., Abbott Fund Tanzania Limited, Abbott Gesellschaft m.b.H., Abbott GmbH & Co. KG, Abbott Health Products LLC, Abbott Healthcare (Puerto Rico) Ltd., Abbott Healthcare B.V., Abbott Healthcare Costa Rica S.A., Abbott Healthcare LLC, Abbott Healthcare Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Healthcare Private Limited, Abbott Healthcare Products B.V., Abbott Healthcare Products Ltd, Abbott Holding (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Holding GmbH, Abbott Holding Subsidiary (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Holding Subsidiary (Gibraltar) Limited Luxembourg S.C.S., Abbott Holdings B.V., Abbott Holdings LLC, Abbott Holdings Limited, Abbott Holdings Poland Spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Hungary Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Abbott Iberian Investments (2) Limited, Abbott Iberian Investments Limited, Abbott India Limited, Abbott Informatics Asia Pacific Limited, Abbott Informatics Canada Inc, Abbott Informatics Corporation, Abbott Informatics Europe Limited, Abbott Informatics France, Abbott Informatics Germany GmbH, Abbott Informatics Netherlands B.V., Abbott Informatics Singapore Pte. Limited, Abbott Informatics Spain S.A., Abbott Informatics Technologies Ltd, Abbott International Corporation, Abbott International Enterprises Ltd., Abbott International Holdings Limited, Abbott International LLC, Abbott International Luxembourg S.ar.l., Abbott Investments Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Ireland, Abbott Ireland Financing Designated Activity Company, Abbott Ireland Limited, Abbott Japan Co. Ltd., Abbott Kazakhstan Limited Liability Partnership, Abbott Knoll Investments B.V., Abbott Korea Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Bangladesh) Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Chile) Holdco (Dos) SpA, Abbott Laboratories (Chile) Holdco SpA, Abbott Laboratories (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Abbott Laboratories (Mozambique) Limitada, Abbott Laboratories (Pakistan) Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Philippines), Abbott Laboratories (Puerto Rico) Incorporated, Abbott Laboratories (Singapore) Private Limited, Abbott Laboratories A/S, Abbott Laboratories Argentina Sociedad Anonima, Abbott Laboratories B.V., Abbott Laboratories C.A., Abbott Laboratories Finance B.V., Abbott Laboratories GmbH, Abbott Laboratories Inc., Abbott Laboratories International LLC, Abbott Laboratories Ireland Limited, Abbott Laboratories Limited, Abbott Laboratories Limited - Laboratoires Abbott Limitee, Abbott Laboratories NZ Limited, Abbott Laboratories Pacific Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Poland Spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Laboratories Products B.V., Abbott Laboratories Residential Development Fund Inc., Abbott Laboratories S.A., Abbott Laboratories SA, Abbott Laboratories Services Corp., Abbott Laboratories Slovakia s.r.o., Abbott Laboratories South Africa (Pty) Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Trustee Company Limited, Abbott Laboratories Uruguay S.A., Abbott Laboratories Vascular Enterprises, Abbott Laboratories d.o.o., Abbott Laboratories de Chile Limitada, Abbott Laboratories de Colombia S.A., Abbott Laboratories de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Abbott Laboratories druzba za farmacijo in diagnostiko d.o.o., Abbott Laboratories s.r.o., Abbott Laboratories(Hellas) Societe Anonyme, Abbott Laboratorios S.A., Abbott Laboratorios S.A., Abbott Laboratorios del Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Abbott Laboratuarlari Ithalat Ihracat ve Ticaret Ltd.Sti, Abbott Laboratorios Lda, Abbott Laboratorios do Brasil Ltda., Abbott Limited Egypt LLC, Abbott Logistics B.V., Abbott Management GmbH, Abbott Management LLC, Abbott Manufacturing Singapore Private Limited, Abbott Mature Products International Unlimited Company, Abbott Mature Products Management Limited, Abbott Medical (Hong Kong) Limited, Abbott Medical (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Abbott Medical (Portugal) Distribuicao de Produtos Medicos Lda, Abbott Medical (Schweiz) AG, Abbott Medical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Abbott Medical (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Australia Pty. Ltd., Abbott Medical Austria Ges.m.b.H., Abbott Medical Balkan d.o.o. Beograd (Novi Beograd), Abbott Medical Belgium, Abbott Medical Canada Inc./ Medicale Abbott Canada Inc., Abbott Medical Danmark A/S, Abbott Medical Devices Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Espana S.A., Abbott Medical Estonia OU, Abbott Medical Finland Oy, Abbott Medical France SAS, Abbott Medical GmbH, Abbott Medical Hellas Limited Liability Trading Company, Abbott Medical Ireland Limited, Abbott Medical Italia S.p.A., Abbott Medical Japan Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Korea Limited, Abbott Medical Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Abbott Medical Laboratories LTD, Abbott Medical Nederland B.V., Abbott Medical New Zealand Limited, Abbott Medical Norway AS, Abbott Medical Overseas Cyprus Limited, Abbott Medical Sweden AB, Abbott Medical Taiwan Co., Abbott Medical U.K. Limited, Abbott Medical spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Middle East S.A.R.L., Abbott Molecular Inc., Abbott Morocco SARL, Abbott Nederland C.V., Abbott Nederland Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Netherlands Investments B.V., Abbott Norge AS, Abbott Nutrition Limited, Abbott Nutrition Manufacturing Inc., Abbott Operations Singapore Pte. Ltd., Abbott Operations Uruguay S.R.L., Abbott Overseas Cyprus Limited, Abbott Overseas Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Overseas S.A., Abbott Oy, Abbott Point of Care Canada Limited, Abbott Point of Care Inc., Abbott Poland Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Procurement LLC, Abbott Products (Philippines) Inc., Abbott Products (Spain) S.L., Abbott Products Algerie EURL, Abbott Products B.V., Abbott Products Distribution SAS, Abbott Products Egypt LLC, Abbott Products Limited, Abbott Products Limited Liability Company, Abbott Products Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Products Operations AG, Abbott Products Operations LLC, Abbott Products Romania S.R.L., Abbott Products Tunisie S.A.R.L., Abbott Products Unlimited Company, Abbott Resources Inc., Abbott Resources International Inc., Abbott S.r.l., Abbott Saudi Arabia Trading Company, Abbott Scandinavia Aktiebolag, Abbott Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, Abbott South Africa Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Strategic Opportunities Limited, Abbott Trading Company Inc., Abbott Universal LLC, Abbott Vascular Devices (2) Limited, Abbott Vascular Devices Limited, Abbott Vascular Inc., Abbott Vascular Instruments Deutschland GmbH, Abbott Vascular International, Abbott Vascular Japan Co. Ltd, Abbott Vascular Limitada, Abbott Vascular Netherlands B.V., Abbott Vascular Solutions Inc., Abbott Ventures Inc., Abbott West Indies Limited, Abbott drustvo sa ogranicenom odgovornoscu za trgovinu i usluge, Advanced Neuromodulation Systems Inc., Alere, Alere (Shanghai) Diagnostics Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Healthcare Management Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Medical Sales Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Technology Co. Ltd., Alere A/S, Alere AB, Alere AS, Alere AS Holdings Limited, Alere BBI Holdings Limited, Alere Bangladesh Limited, Alere China Co. Ltd., Alere Colombia S.A., Alere Connect LLC, Alere Connected Health Limited, Alere Connected Health Ltd., Alere Diagnostics GmbH, Alere DoA Holding GmbH, Alere GmbH, Alere GmbH (Austria), Alere GmbH (Germany), Alere HK Holdings Ltd., Alere Health B.V., Alere Health BVBA, Alere Health Corp., Alere Health Sdn Bhd, Alere Health Services B.V., Alere Healthcare (Pty) Limited, Alere Healthcare Connections Limited, Alere Healthcare Inc., Alere Healthcare Nigeria Limited, Alere Healthcare S.L., Alere Holdco Inc., Alere Holding GmbH, Alere Holdings Bermuda Limited, Alere Holdings Pty Limited, Alere Home Monitoring Inc., Alere Inc., Alere Informatics Inc., Alere International Holding Corp., Alere International Limited, Alere Lda, Alere Limited, Alere Limited (New Zealand), Alere Medical BVBA, Alere Medical Co. Ltd., Alere Medical Pakistan (Private) Limited, Alere Medical Private Limited, Alere North America LLC, Alere Oy Ab, Alere Philippines Inc., Alere Phoenix ACQ Inc., Alere Pte Ltd, Alere S.A., Alere S.r.l., Alere S/A, Alere SAS, Alere San Diego Inc., Alere Scarborough Inc., Alere Spain S.L., Alere Switzerland GmbH, Alere Technologies GmbH, Alere Technologies Holdings Limited, Alere Technologies Limited, Alere Toxicology AB, Alere Toxicology Inc., Alere Toxicology S.r.l., Alere Toxicology Services Inc., Alere Toxicology plc, Alere UK Holdings Limited, Alere UK Subco Limited, Alere ULC, Alere US Holdings LLC, Alere s.r.o., Alisoc Investment & Co, Amedica Biotech Inc., Ameditech Inc., American Generics S.A.S., American Medical Supplies Inc., American Pharmacist Inc., Antares S.A., Apica Cardiovascular Limited, Aquagestion Capacitacion S.A., Aquagestion S.A., Arriva Medical LLC, Arriva Medical Philippines Inc., Arvis Investments Limited, Atlas Farmaceutica S.A., Avee Laboratories Inc., Axis-Shield AD III AS, Axis-Shield AD IV AS, Axis-Shield AS, Axis-Shield Diagnostics Limited, Axis-Shield Ltd., BBI Animal Health Limited, BBI Diagnostics Group 2 Public Limited Company, Banco de Vida S.A., Bioabsorbable Vascular Solutions Inc., Bioalgae S.A., Biohealth LLC, Biosite Incorporated, Bosque Bonito S.A., Branan Medical Corporation, Brandex Europe C.V., British Colloids Limited, CFR Chile S.A., CFR Interamericas EL Salvador Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, CFR Interamericas Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, CFR Interamericas Panama S.A., CFR Pharmaceuticals, California Property Holdings III LLC, CardioMEMS LLC, Caripharm Inc., Cephea Valve Technologies, Cephea Valve Technologies Inc., Colibri Medical Aktiebolag, Comercializadora y Distribuidora CFR Interamericas Honduras S.A., Concateno South Limited, Concateno UK Limited, Consorcio Tecnologico en Biomedicina Clinico-Molecular S.A., Continuum Services LLC, Cozart Limited, Dextech S.A., Diagnostik Nord GmbH, Distribuciones Uquifa S.A.S., Domesco Medical Import-Export Joint-Stock Corporation, Duphar International Research B.V., Endocardial Solutions, Epocal (US) Inc, Esprit de Vie S.A., European Chemicals & Co, European Drug Testing Service EDTS AB, European Services S.A., Evalve Inc., Evalve International Inc., FARMINDUSTRIA S.A., Fada Pharma Paraguay Sociedad Anonima, Fadapharma del Ecuador S.A., Farmaceutica Mont Blanc S.L., Farmacologia Em Aquicultura Veterinaria Ltda., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV Ecuador S.A., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV S.A., Fernwood Investment S.A., First Check Diagnostics LLC, Focus Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Forensics Limited, Forestcreek Overseas S.A., Fournier Pharma Corp., Fournier Pharma GmbH, Fournier Pharmaceuticals Limited, Framed B.V., Gabmed GmbH, Garden Hills LLC, Global Analytical Development LLC, Globapharm & CO LP, Glomed Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Golnorth Investments S.A., Gynocare Limited, Gynopharm Sociedad Anonima, Gynopharm de Centroamerica S.A., Gynopharm de Venezuela C.A., Hi-Tronics Designs Inc., IDEV Technologies Inc., IG Innovations Limited, IMTC Finance B.V., IMTC Holdings B.V., IMTC Technologies Inc., Ibis Biosciences LLC, Igloo Zone Chile S.A., Igloo Zone S.L., Inmobiliaria Naknek S.A.C., Innovacon Inc., Instant Tech Subsidiary Acquisition Inc., Instant Technologies Inc., Instituto de Criopreservacion de Chile S.A., Integrated Vascular Systems Inc., Inverness Canadian Acquisition Corporation, Inverness Medical (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Australia Pty Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Hong Kong Limited, Inverness Medical Innovations SK LLC, Inverness Medical Investments LLC, Inverness Medical LLC, Inverness Medical Shimla Private Limited, Inversiones K2 SpA, Inversiones Komodo S.R.L., Ionian Technologies LLC, Irvine Biomedical Inc., Kalila Medical, Kangshenyunga S.A., Knoll UK Investments Unlimited, LLC VeroInPharm, Laboratoires Fournier S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano Lafrancol S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano del Ecuador S.A., Laboratorio Internacional Argentino S.A., Laboratorio Synthesis S.A.S., Laboratorios Lafi Limitada, Laboratorios Naturmedik S.A.S., Laboratorios Pauly Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Laboratorios Recalcine S.A., Laboratorios Transpharm S.A., Laboratory Specialists of America Inc., Lafrancol Dominicana S.A.S., Lafrancol Guatemala S.A. Sociedad Anonima, Lafrancol Internacional S.A.S, Lafrancol Peru S.R.L, Lake Forest Investments LLC, Lightlab Imaging Inc., Limited Liability Company Abbott Laboratories, Limited Liability Company Abbott Ukraine, Limited Liability Company VEROPHARM, Lung Fung Hong (China) Limited, Mansbridge Pharmaceuticals Limited, MediGuide LLC, MediGuide Ltd., Medscreen Holdings Limited, Metropolitana Farmaceutica S.A., Midwest Properties LLC, Murex Argentina S.A., Murex Biotech Limited, Murex Biotech South Africa, Murex Diagnostics Inc., Murex Diagnostics International Inc., Natural Supplement Association LLC, Negocios Denia Sociedad Anonima, Neosalud S.A.C., Nether Pharma N.P. C.V., NeuroTherm LLC, Normann Pharma-Handels GmbH, North Shore Properties Inc., Novamedi S.A., Novasalud.com S.A., Nutravida S.A., OJSC Voronezhkhimpharm, Omnilab Iberia Sociedad Limitada, OptiMedica, Orgenics France SAS, Orgenics International Holdings B.V., Orgenics Ltd., PBM-Selfcare LLC, PDD II LLC, PDD LLC, PT Alere Health, PT. Abbott Indonesia, PT. Abbott Products Indonesia, Pacesetter Inc., Pantech (RF) (PTY) LTD, Pembrooke Occupational Health Inc., Penagos S.A., Pharma International Sociedad Anonima, Pharmaceutical Technologies (Pharmatech) S.A., Pharmatech Boliviana S.A., Polygon Labs S.A., Quality Assured Services Inc., RF Medical Holdings LLC, RTL Holdings Inc., Ramses Business Corp., Recben Xenerics Farmaceutica Limitada, Redwood Toxicology Laboratory Inc., Rich Horizons International Limited, SC VEROPHARM, SJ Medical Mexico S de R.L. de C.V., SJM International Inc., SJM Thunder Holding Company, SPDH Inc., Saboya Enterprises Corporation, Salviac Limited, Scanax AS, Sealing Solutions Inc., Selfcare Technology Inc., Shandong Abbott Dairy Product Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Medical Devices Science and Technology Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Shanghai Si Fa Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Sinensix & Co., Spinal Modulation LLC, St. Jude Medical, St. Jude Medical AB, St. Jude Medical ATG Inc., St. Jude Medical Argentina S.A., St. Jude Medical Asia Pacific Holdings GK, St. Jude Medical Atrial Fibrillation Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Brasil Ltda., St. Jude Medical Business Services Inc., St. Jude Medical Cardiology Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Colombia Ltda., St. Jude Medical Coordination Center, St. Jude Medical Costa Rica Limitada, St. Jude Medical Europe Inc., St. Jude Medical Export Ges.m.b.H., St. Jude Medical GVA Sarl, St. Jude Medical Holdings B.V., St. Jude Medical India Private Limited, St. Jude Medical International Holding, St. Jude Medical LLC, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings II, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings NT, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings SMI S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings TC S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Mexico Business Services S. de R.L. de C.V., St. Jude Medical Middle East DMCC, St. Jude Medical Operations (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., St. Jude Medical Puerto Rico LLC, St. Jude Medical S.C. Inc., St. Jude Medical Systems AB, St. Jude Medical Turkey Medikal Urunler Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Standard Diagnostics Inc., Standing Stone LLC, Swan-Myers Incorporated, TC1 LLC, Tendyne Holdings Inc., Tendyne Medical Inc., Thoratec Delaware LLC, Thoratec Europe Limited, Thoratec LLC, Thoratec Switzerland GmbH, Tobal Products Incorporated, Topera GmbH in Liquidation, Topera Inc., Tremora S.A., Tuenir S.A., TwistDx, UAB Abbott Laboratories, UAB Abbott Medical Lithuania, Union-Madison Realty Company Inc., Unipath Limited (dba Alere International/aka Cranfield), Unipath Management Limited, Unipath Pension Trustee Limited, Veropharm, Veropharm Limited Liability Partnership, Vida Cell Inversiones S.A., Vida Cell S.A., Vivalsol, W&R Pharma Handels GmbH, Western Pharmaceuticals S.A., X Technologies Inc., Yissum Holding Limited, ZonePerfect Nutrition Company, eScreen Canada ULC, eScreen Inc.,      ( ), and Abbott Laboratories Baltics.

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Thomson Reuters Corporation provides business information services in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. It operates in five segments: Legal Professionals, Corporates, Tax & Accounting Professionals, Reuters News, and Global Print. The Legal Professionals segment offers research and workflow products focusing on legal research and integrated legal workflow solutions that combine content, tools, and analytics to law firms and governments. The Corporates segment provides a suite of content-enabled technology solutions for legal, tax, regulatory, compliance, and IT professionals. The Tax & Accounting Professionals segment offers research and workflow products focusing on tax offerings and automating tax workflows to tax, accounting, and audit professionals in accounting firms. The Reuters News segment provides business, financial, and international news to media organizations, professional, and news consumers through news agency and industry events. The Global Print segment offers legal and tax information primarily in print format to legal and tax professionals, governments, law schools, and corporations. The company was formerly known as The Thomson Corporation and changed its name to Thomson Reuters Corporation in April 2008. The company was founded in 1851 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Thomson Reuters Corporation operates a subsidiary of The Woodbridge Company Limited.
AbbVie Inc. discovers, develops, manufactures, and sells pharmaceuticals in the worldwide. The company offers HUMIRA, a therapy administered as an injection for autoimmune and intestinal Behcet's diseases; SKYRIZI to treat moderate to severe plaque psoriasis in adults; RINVOQ, a JAK inhibitor for the treatment of moderate to severe active rheumatoid arthritis in adult patients; IMBRUVICA to treat adult patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL), and VENCLEXTA, a BCL-2 inhibitor used to treat adults with CLL or SLL; and MAVYRET to treat patients with chronic HCV genotype 1-6 infection. It also provides CREON, a pancreatic enzyme therapy for exocrine pancreatic insufficiency; Synthroid used in the treatment of hypothyroidism; Linzess/Constella to treat irritable bowel syndrome with constipation and chronic idiopathic constipation; Lupron for the palliative treatment of advanced prostate cancer, endometriosis and central precocious puberty, and patients with anemia caused by uterine fibroids; and Botox therapeutic. In addition, the company offers ORILISSA, a nonpeptide small molecule gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonist for women with moderate to severe endometriosis pain; Duopa and Duodopa, a levodopa-carbidopa intestinal gel to treat Parkinson's disease; Lumigan/Ganfort, a bimatoprost ophthalmic solution for the reduction of elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) in patients with open angle glaucoma (OAG) or ocular hypertension; Ubrelvy to treat migraine with or without aura in adults; Alphagan/ Combigan, an alpha-adrenergic receptor agonist for the reduction of IOP in patients with OAG; and Restasis, a calcineurin inhibitor immunosuppressant to increase tear production, as well as other eye care products. AbbVie Inc. has a research collaboration with Dragonfly Therapeutics, Inc. The company was incorporated in 2012 and is headquartered in North Chicago, Illinois.
The following companies are subsidiares of InterContinental Hotels Group: 2250 Blake Street Hotel LLC, 24th Street Operator Sub LLC, 36th Street IHG Sub LLC, 426 Main Ave LLC, 46 Nevins Street Associates LLC, Allegro Management LLC, Alpha Kimball Hotel LLC, American Commonwealth Assurance Co. Ltd., Asia Pacific Holdings Limited, BHMC Canada Inc., BHR Holdings B.V., BHR Luxembourg SARL, BHR Pacific Holdings Inc., BHTC Canada Inc., BOC Barclay Sub LLC, Barclay Operating Corp., Bristol Oakbrook Tenant Company, Cafe Biarritz, Cambridge Lodging LLC, Capital Lodging LLC, Compania Inter-Continental De Hoteles El Salvador SA, Crowne Plaza Amsterdam (Management) B.V., Crowne Plaza LLC, Cumberland Akers Hotel LLC, Dunwoody Operations Inc., EVEN Real Estate Holding LLC, Edinburgh IC Limited, General Innkeeping Acceptance Corporation, Guangzhou SC Hotels Services Ltd., H.I. (Ireland) Limited, H.I. Soaltee Management Company Ltd, HC International Holdings Inc., HH France Holdings SAS, HH Hotels (EMEA) B.V., HH Hotels (Romania) SRL, HI Sugarloaf LLC, HIM (Aruba) NV, Hale International Ltd., Hoft Properties LLC, Holiday Hospitality Franchising LLC, Holiday Inn Mexicana S.A. de C.V., Holiday Inns (China) Ltd, Holiday Inns (Chongqing) Inc., Holiday Inns (Courtalin) Holdings SAS, Holiday Inns (Courtalin) SAS, Holiday Inns (England) Ltd., Holiday Inns (Germany) LLC, Holiday Inns (Guangzhou) Inc., Holiday Inns (Jamaica) Inc., Holiday Inns (Malaysia) Ltd., Holiday Inns (Middle East) Ltd., Holiday Inns (Philippines) Inc., Holiday Inns (Saudi Arabia) Inc., Holiday Inns (South East Asia) Inc., Holiday Inns (Thailand) Ltd., Holiday Inns (UK) Inc., Holiday Inns Crowne Plaza (Hong Kong) Inc., Holiday Inns Holdings (Australia) Pty Ltd, Holiday Inns Inc., Holiday Inns Investment (Nepal) Ltd., Holiday Inns of America (UK) Ltd., Holiday Inns of Belgium N.V., Holiday Pacific Equity Corporation, Holiday Pacific LLC, Holiday Pacific Partners LP, Hotel Inter-Continental London Limited, Hotel InterContinental London (Holdings) Limited, Hoteles Y Turismo HIH SRL, IC Hotelbetriebsfuhrungs GmbH, IC Hotels Management (Portugal) Unipessoal Lda, IC International Hotels Limited Liability Company, IHC (Thailand) Limited, IHC Buckhead LLC, IHC Edinburgh (Holdings), IHC Hopkins (Holdings) Corp., IHC Hotel Limited, IHC Inter-Continental (Holdings) Corp., IHC London (Holdings), IHC M-H (Holdings) Corp., IHC May Fair (Holdings) Limited, IHC May Fair Hotel Limited, IHC Overseas (U.K.) Limited, IHC UK (Holdings) Limited, IHC United States (Holdings) Corp., IHC Willard (Holdings) Corp., IHG (Australasia) Limited, IHG (Marseille) SAS, IHG (Thailand) Limited, IHG ANA Hotels Group Japan LLC, IHG ANA Hotels Holdings Co. Ltd., IHG Bangkok Ltd, IHG Brasil Administracao de Hoteis e Servicos Ltda, IHG Commission Services SRL, IHG Community Development LLC, IHG Cyprus Limited, IHG ECS (Barbados) SRL, IHG Franchising Brasil Ltda, IHG Franchising DR Corporation, IHG Franchising LLC, IHG Hotels (New Zealand) Limited, IHG Hotels Limited, IHG Hotels Management (Australia) Pty Limited, IHG Hotels Nigeria Limited, IHG Hotels South Africa (Pty) Ltd, IHG International Partnership, IHG Istanbul Otel Yonetim Limited Sirketi, IHG Japan (Management) LLC, IHG Japan (Osaka) LLC, IHG Management (Maryland) LLC, IHG Management (Netherlands) B.V., IHG Management MD Barclay Sub LLC, IHG Management SL d.o.o, IHG Management d.o.o. Beograd, IHG Orchard Street Member LLC, IHG PS Nominees Limited, IHG Systems Pty Ltd, IHG Szalloda Budapest Szolgaltato Kft., IHG de Argentina SA, IND East Village SD Holdings LLC, Inter-Continental D.C. Operating Corp., Inter-Continental Florida Investment Corp., Inter-Continental Florida Partner Corp., Inter-Continental Hospitality Corporation, Inter-Continental Hoteleira Limitada, Inter-Continental Hotels (Montreal) Operating Corp., Inter-Continental Hotels (Montreal) Owning Corp., Inter-Continental Hotels (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Inter-Continental Hotels Corporation, Inter-Continental Hotels Corporation de Venezuela C.A., Inter-Continental Hotels of San Francisco Inc., Inter-Continental IOHC (Mauritius) Limited, Inter-Continental Management (Australia) Pty Limited, InterContinental (Branston) 1 Limited, InterContinental (PB) 1, InterContinental (PB) 2, InterContinental (PB) 3 Limited, InterContinental Berlin Service Company GmbH, InterContinental Brasil Administracao de Hoteis Ltda, InterContinental Gestion Hotelera S.L., InterContinental Hotel Berlin GmbH, InterContinental Hotel Dusseldorf GmbH (Germany), InterContinental Hotels (Puerto Rico) Inc., InterContinental Hotels Group (Asia Pacific) Pte Ltd, InterContinental Hotels Group (Australia) Pty Limited, InterContinental Hotels Group (Canada) Inc., InterContinental Hotels Group (Espana) SA, InterContinental Hotels Group (Greater China) Limited, InterContinental Hotels Group (India) Pvt. Ltd, InterContinental Hotels Group (Japan) Inc., InterContinental Hotels Group (New Zealand) Limited, InterContinental Hotels Group (Shanghai) Ltd., InterContinental Hotels Group Customer Services Ltd., InterContinental Hotels Group Healthcare Trustee Limited, InterContinental Hotels Group Operating Corp., InterContinental Hotels Group Resources Inc., InterContinental Hotels Group Services Company, InterContinental Hotels Group do Brasil Limitada, InterContinental Hotels Italia S.r.L., InterContinental Hotels Limited, InterContinental Hotels Management GmbH, InterContinental Hotels Nevada Corporation, InterContinental Management AM LLC, InterContinental Management Bulgaria EOOD, InterContinental Management France SAS, InterContinental Management Poland sp. z.o.o, InterContinental Overseas Holding Corporation, Intercontinental Hotels Corporation Limited, KG Benefits LLC, KG Gift Card Inc., KG Liability LLC, KG Technology LLC, KHP Washington Operator LLC, KHRG 11th Avenue Hotel LLC, KHRG 851 LLC, KHRG Aertson LLC, KHRG Alexandria LLC, KHRG Alexis LLC, KHRG Allegro LLC, KHRG Argyle LLC, KHRG Austin Beverage Company LLC, KHRG Baltimore LLC, KHRG Born LLC, KHRG Boston Hotel LLC, KHRG Canary LLC, KHRG Cayman Employer Ltd., KHRG Cayman LLC, KHRG DC 1731 LLC, KHRG DC 2505 LLC, KHRG Donovan LLC, KHRG Employer LLC, KHRG Goleta LLC, KHRG Gray LLC, KHRG Gray U2 LLC, KHRG Hillcrest LLC, KHRG Huntington Beach LLC, KHRG King Street LLC, KHRG La Peer LLC, KHRG Miami Beach LLC, KHRG Muse LLC, KHRG NPC LLC, KHRG Onyx LLC, KHRG Palladian LLC, KHRG Palomar Phoenix LLC, KHRG Philly Monaco LLC, KHRG Pittsburgh LLC, KHRG Reynolds LLC, KHRG Riverplace LLC, KHRG SFD LLC, KHRG Sacramento LLC, KHRG Savannah LLC, KHRG Schofield LLC, KHRG Sedona LLC, KHRG State Street LLC, KHRG Sutter LLC, KHRG Sutter Union LLC, KHRG Taconic LLC, KHRG Tariff LLC, KHRG Texas Hospitality LLC, KHRG Texas Operations LLC, KHRG Tryon LLC, KHRG VZ Austin LLC, KHRG Vero Beach LLC, KHRG Vintage Park LLC, KHRG WPB LLC, KHRG Wabash LLC, KHRG Westwood LLC, KHRG Wilshire LLC, KHRG Zamora LLC, Kimpton Hollywood Licenses LLC, Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group, Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group LLC, Kimpton Phoenix Licenses Holdings LLC, Kimpton Sedona Licenses LLC, Louisiana Acquisitions Corp., MH Lodging LLC, Mercer Fairview Holdings LLC, PML Services LLC, PT SC Hotels & Resorts Indonesia, Pollstrong Limited, Powell Pine Inc., Priscilla Holiday of Texas Inc., RM Lodging LLC, Regent Hotels and Resorts, Resort Services International (Cayo Largo) L.P., SBS Maryland Beverage Company LLC, SC Cellars Limited, SC Hotels International Services Inc., SC Leisure Group Limited, SC NAS 2 Limited, SC Quest Limited, SC Reservations (Philippines) Inc., SCH Insurance Company, SCIH Branston 3, SF MH Acquisition LLC, SPHC Group Pty Ltd., SPHC Management Ltd., Semiramis for training of Hotel Personnel and Hotel Management SAE, Six Continents Corporate Services, Six Continents Holdings Limited, Six Continents Hotels Inc., Six Continents Hotels International Limited, Six Continents Hotels de Colombia SA, Six Continents International Holdings B.V., Six Continents Investments Limited, Six Continents Limited, Six Continents Overseas Holdings Limited, Six Continents Restaurants Limited, SixCo North America Inc., Solamar Lodging LLC, Southern Pacific Hotel Corporation (BVI) Ltd., Southern Pacific Hotels Properties Limited, Universal de Hoteles SA, White Shield Insurance Company Limited, and World Trade Centre Montreal Hotel Corporation.

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Juniper Networks, Inc. designs, develops, and sells network products and services worldwide. The company offers routing products, such as ACX series universal access routers to deploy high-bandwidth services; MX series Ethernet routers that function as a universal edge platform; PTX series packet transport routers; wide-area network SDN controllers; and session smart routers. It also provides switching products, including EX series Ethernet switches to address the access, aggregation, and core layer switching requirements of micro branch, branch office, and campus environments; QFX series of core, spine, and top-of-rack data center switches; and juniper access points, which provide Wi-Fi access and performance. In addition, the company offers security products comprising SRX series services gateways for the data center; Branch SRX family provides an integrated and next-generation firewall; virtual firewall that delivers various features of physical firewalls; and advanced malware protection, a cloud-based service and Juniper ATP. Further, it offers Junos OS, a network operating system; Contrail networking, which provides an open-source and standards-based platform for SDN; Mist AI-driven Wired, Wireless, and WAN assurance solutions to set and measure key metrics; Mist AI-driven Marvis Virtual Network Assistant, which identifies the root cause of issues; Juniper Paragon Automation, a modular portfolio of cloud-native software applications; and Juniper Apstra to automate the network lifecycle in a single system. Additionally, the company provides software-as-a-service, technical support, maintenance, and professional services, as well as education and training programs. It sells its products through direct sales, distributors, value-added resellers, and original equipment manufacturers to end-users in the cloud, service provider, and enterprise markets. The company was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
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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MDU Resources Group, Inc. engages in the regulated energy delivery, and construction materials and services businesses in the United States. The company's Electric segment generates, transmits, and distributes electricity for residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, as well as operates 3,500 miles of transmission lines and 4,800 miles of distribution lines. Its Natural Gas Distribution segment distributes natural gas for residential, commercial, and industrial customers in Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming; and offers supply-related value-added services. The company's Pipeline segment provides natural gas transportation and underground storage services through a regulated pipeline system primarily in the Rocky Mountain and northern Great Plains regions; and cathodic protection and other energy-related services. Its Construction Materials and Contracting segment mines, processes, and sells construction aggregates; produces and sells asphalt mix; and supplies ready-mixed concrete. This segment is also involved in the sale of cement, finished concrete products, and other building materials and related contracting services. The company's Construction Services segment designs, constructs, and maintains electrical and communication wiring and infrastructure, fire suppression systems, mechanical piping and services; overhead and underground electrical, gas, and communication infrastructure; and manufactures and distributes transmission lines construction equipment. It serves manufacturing, commercial, industrial, transportation, institutional, and renewable and government customers, as well as utilities. The company was founded in 1924 and is headquartered in Bismarck, North Dakota.
Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. provides investor communications and technology-driven solutions for the financial services industry. The company's Investor Communication Solutions segment processes and distributes proxy materials to investors in equity securities and mutual funds, as well as facilitates related vote processing services; and distributes regulatory reports, class action, and corporate action/reorganization event information, as well as tax reporting solutions. It also offers ProxyEdge, an electronic proxy delivery and voting solution; data-driven solutions and an end-to-end platform for content management, composition, and omni-channel distribution of regulatory, marketing, and transactional information, as well as mutual fund trade processing services; data and analytics solutions; solutions for public corporations and mutual funds; SEC filing and capital markets transaction services; registrar, stock transfer, and record-keeping services; and omni-channel customer communications solutions, as well as operates Broadridge Communications Cloud platform that creates, delivers, and manages communications and customer engagement activities. The company's Global Technology and Operations segment provides solutions that automate the front-to-back transaction lifecycle of equity, mutual fund, fixed income, foreign exchange and exchange-traded derivatives, order capture and execution, trade confirmation, margin, cash management, clearance and settlement, reference data management, reconciliations, securities financing and collateral management, asset servicing, compliance and regulatory reporting, portfolio accounting, and custody-related services. This segment also offers business process outsourcing services; technology solutions, such portfolio management, compliance, fee billing, and operational support solutions; and capital market and wealth management solutions. The company was founded in 1962 and is headquartered in Lake Success, New York.
Chegg, Inc. operates direct-to-student learning platform that supports students starting with their academic journey and extending into their careers with products and services to support and help them better understand their academic course materials. The company offers Chegg Services, which include subscription services; and required materials that comprise its print textbooks and eTextbooks. Its subscription services include Chegg Study, which helps students master challenging concepts on their own; Chegg Writing that provides students with a suite of tools, such as plagiarism detection scans, grammar and writing fluency checking, expert personalized writing feedback, and premium citation generation; Chegg Math, a step-by-step math problem solver and calculator that helps students to solve problems; Chegg Study Pack, a bundle of various Chegg Services product offerings, including Chegg Study, Chegg Writing, and Chegg Math Solver services, which creates an integrated platform of connected academic support services; Busuu, an online language learning solution that offers a comprehensive solution through a combination of self-paced lessons, live classes with expert tutors, and the ability to learn and practice with members of the Busuu language learning community; and Thinkful, a skills-based learning platform that offers professional courses along with networking, interviewing, and career services. The company also provides other services, such as Chegg Life, Chegg Prep, and Chegg Internships; provides personal and professional development skills training; and rents and sells print textbooks and eTextbooks. Chegg, Inc. was incorporated in 2005 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.
Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. operates bookstores for college and university campuses, and K-12 institutions in the United States. It operates through three segments: Retail, Wholesale, and Digital Student Solutions. The company sells and rents new and used print textbooks, digital textbooks, and publisher hosted digital courseware through physical and virtual bookstores, as well as directly to students through Textbooks.com. It also offers First Day and First Day Complete access programs; BNC OER+, a turnkey solution for colleges and universities, that offers digital content, such as videos, activities, and auto-graded practice assessments; and general merchandise, including collegiate and athletic apparel, school spirit products, lifestyle products, technology products, supplies, graduation products, and convenience items. In addition, the company sources, sells, and distributes new and used textbooks; and sells hardware and a software suite of applications that provides inventory management and point-of-sale solutions to approximately 350 college bookstores. Further, it offers direct-to-student subscription-based writing services; and bartleby, a direct-to-student subscription-based offering that includes textbook solutions, expert questions and answers, and writing and tutoring services. The company operates 805 physical college and university bookstores; 622 virtual bookstores; 8 True Spirit e-commerce websites; pop-up retail locations; 73 customized cafes and 11 stand-alone convenience stores; and a media channel for brands targeting the college demographic. Barnes & Noble Education, Inc. was founded in 1965 and is headquartered in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.
WABCO Holdings Inc., together with its subsidiaries, supplies electronic, mechanical, electro-mechanical, and aerodynamic products worldwide. The company engineers, develops, manufactures, and sells braking, stability, suspension, steering, transmission automation, and air management systems primarily for commercial vehicles. The company's products include pneumatic anti-lock braking systems, electronic braking systems, electronic stability control systems, brake controls, automated manual transmission systems, and air disc brakes; and various conventional mechanical products, such as actuators, air compressors, and air control valves for medium and heavy-duty trucks, buses, and trailers. It also offers pneumatic and hydraulic braking and control systems for off-highway vehicles; conventional braking systems; electronic and conventional air suspension systems; steering technologies; and vehicle electronic stability control and roll stability support products, and advanced driver assistance systems. In addition, the company supplies electronic suspension controls and vacuum pumps to the passenger car and SUV markets, as well as provides remanufacturing services. Further, it offers replacement parts, fleet management solutions, diagnostic tools, training, and other expert services for commercial vehicle aftermarket distributors and service partners, and fleet operators. The company sells its products primarily to truck and bus original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), trailer OEMs, and car manufacturers; and manufacturers of heavy duty and off-highway vehicles in agriculture, construction, mining, and other industries. WABCO Holdings Inc. was founded in 1869 and is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.
Mohawk Industries, Inc. designs, manufactures, sources, distributes, and markets flooring products for remodeling and new constructions of residential and commercial spaces in the United States, Europe, Russia, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Global Ceramic, Flooring North America (Flooring NA), and Flooring Rest of the World (Flooring ROW). The Global Ceramic segment provides a range of ceramic tile, porcelain tile, and natural stone products; and sources, markets, and distributes other tile related products. This segment markets and distributes its products under the American Olean, Daltile, Eliane, EmilGroup, KAI, Kerama Marazzi, Marazzi, and Ragno brands. The Flooring NA segment offers floor covering product lines in a range of colors, textures, and patterns, including carpets, carpet tiles, rugs and mats, carpet pads, hardwood, laminate, medium-density fiberboards, luxury vinyl tiles (LVT), and sheet vinyl products. This segment markets and distributes its flooring products under the Aladdin Commercial, Durkan, IVC, Karastan, Mohawk, Mohawk Group, Mohawk Home, Pergo, Portico, and Quick-Step brands. The Flooring ROW segment provides wood flooring and vinyl flooring, as well as laminates, roofing elements, sheet vinyl, LVT, insulation boards, medium-density fiberboards, chipboards, and other woods products under the Feltex, Godfrey Hirst, Hycraft, IVC Commercial, IVC Home, Leoline, Moduleo, Pergo, Quick-Step, and Unilin and Xtratherm brands; and licenses its intellectual property to flooring manufacturers. Mohawk Industries, Inc. was incorporated in 1988 and is headquartered in Calhoun, Georgia.
SINCE THE RAPTURE OCCURS BEFORE THE FUTURE 7 YR TREATY IS SIGNED, I WONT BE AROUND TO HAVE THE ACTUAL TREATY SIGNING. BUT UNTIL THEN THIS SITE IS DEDICATED TO THE BEGININGS OF THE ISRAELI / ARAB PEACE PROCESS. AND AS CLOSE TO THE 7 YEAR SIGNING THAT WE GET BEFORE THE RAPTURE OF THE SAVED TO HEAVEN. UNTIL WE MEET JESUS IN THE CLOUDS BODILY, AND COME TO EARTH 7 YRS LATER.
[October 23, 2017] Managed Security Services Market to 2025 - Global Analysis and Forecasts

NEW YORK, Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The managed security services landscape is growing and evolving with innovative services to efficiently and proficiently secure the IT infrastructure of organization. Due to lack of skilled workforce, many organizations are not capable enough to fully protect their IT infrastructure. Moreover, increase in sophistication of cyber-attacks, it is becoming very challenging for organizations to rely and invest in their in-house security processes. Hence, many organizations are migrating from their in-house security processes to third party MSSPs. MSSPs offer complete managed security services to organization with round the clock monitoring of organization's IT infrastructure and preventing them from potential threats and cyber-attacks. Present-day security processes demands a balance of device management, event monitoring, and incident response, as well as Governance, Risk, and Compliance functions. Increasing number of cyber-attacks and ever-growing complex risk and compliance requirement have led to the demand for third party specialize security service providers.



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05155315



North America with the most advanced software and IT services organizations in the world contributes the largest market share in the global managed security services market. APAC with large number of emerging countries along with increasing numbers of smart cities and high FDI, is growing with the highest growth rate. Europe market stood at the second largest market for managed security services owing to increasing number of cross-border transactions. However, Middle East & Africa and South America market is still in the nascent stage of the market.



The managed security services market is segmented for eachregion on the basis of Service Type Deployment Type, Enterprise Size, and Verticals. Each vertical is further segmented into service type which includes Threat Management, Vulnerability Management, Log Management, Compliance Management, and SIEM. The different types of threat management services that are covered in this report include Managed Firewall, Managed IDS/IPS, Managed VPN, Managed Anti-Virus and Malware, Managed Gateway Security, Managed IAM, Managed DLP, Others (Managed Web Content Filtering, and Managed Application Control, and Managed Email). The end verticals considered in the managed security services market includes IT and Telecom, Retail, BFSI, Healthcare, Government, Manufacturing, Energy & Utility, Media, and Others. Five major geographical regions considered within the scope of this market are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA), and South America (SAM).







The global managed security services market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 14.7% during the forecast period 2017  2025 and accounts for US$ 18,030.9 Mn in the year 2025. Increasing cyber threats across industries, digital transformation across industries, and increase in adoption of BYOD are fueling the growth of managed security services market. Majorly developing economies contribute a major portion of the market share to the managed security services market, where cybersecurity market both are growing at significantly higher pace, also the developed economies are anticipated to demand up-gradation and innovation in existing managed security services in the coming years.



The key players profiled in the report are AT&T Inc., IBM Corporation, Dell SecureWorks Inc., Trustwave Holdings, Verizon Communications, Symantec Corporation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP, NTT Security, CenturyLink, Inc., and BT Group plc.





Reasons to Buy

Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies.

- The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the managed security services market, thereby allowing players to develop effective long-term strategies.

- Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets.

- Scrutinize in-depth global market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as those hindering it.

- Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin commercial interest with respect to products, segmentations and industry verticals.



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05155315



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



https://www.reportlinker.com





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Apple sees its mobile devices as the major platform for artificial intelligence and Jeff Williams says that integration of AI won't be just limited to mobile phones.

Apple believes its mobile devices will become a major platform for artificial intelligence in the future. Jeff Williams, Apple's Chief Operating Officer said while speaking at TSMC's 30th-anniversary celebration in Taipei. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the top semiconductor supplier for Apple since 2010. Williams believes that technological innovations around the cloud and on-device processing will lead to improved life. He also notes that with new developments, users will have to sacrifice little on privacy or security. "I think we're at an inflection point, with on-device computing, coupled with the potential of AI, to really change the world," he said.

Apple announced iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X in September with the new A11 Bionic chipset designed by TSMC. The new six-core chipset includes dedicated neural network hardware - which Apple calls as Neural Engine - for performing machine learning and AI-based tasks. At the launch event, Apple claimed that Neural Engine is capable of performing up to 600 billion operations per second.

The A11 Bionic chip is at the heart of the iPhone X, which brings support for new facial recognition technology called Face ID. Face ID uses an array of sensors including a dot projector to create a mathematical model of a person's face and uses Neural Engine to process all the data on-device. Williams sees the addition of neural engines to its phone and watch as a precursor to a future dominated by AI-based applications. "We think that the frameworks that we've got, the 'neural engines' we've put on the phone, in the watch ... we do view that as a huge piece of the future, we believe these frameworks will allow developers to create apps that will do more and more in this space, so we think the phone is a major platform, Williams said.

Reuters reports Williams saying that healthcare industry is ripe for change and AI could be used to change the way healthcare is delivered to end users. He added that integration of AI won't be just limited to smartphones.

Artificial Intelligence is seen as the next major battle among technology companies including Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. Google announced the Pixel 2 smartphones combining hardware and software with artificial intelligence earlier this month. Chinese smartphone maker Huawei also launched its Mate 10 series smartphones with the Kirin 970 chipset that has a dedicated Neural Processing Unit.

With iPhone X going on sale starting November 3, Williams' comments highlight the company's aim of taking artificial intelligence beyond Siri. The Cupertino-based iPhone maker is also said to be evaluating ways to turn its Apple Watch into a mainstream healthcare device.
Lionsgold's joint venture company, Kalevala Gold Oy, was granted government approval to carry out testing on gold ore from the Finland-based Kuikka project, to assist in the optimisation of the pilot plant recovery, Lionsgold confirmed on Tuesday.

According to the gold operator, and further to the announcement dated 5 October, Kalevala, the bearer of the Kuikka gold deposit received authorisation from the Finnish government for an "initial 200 tonne test ore sample from Kuikka", due to be carried out in November.

These samples, according to Lionsgold, were expected to aid in the pilot plant recovery as well as operating procedures for the 5,000 tonne bulk sampling programme which was planned but still subjected to government approval.
The listing committee of the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), a robust market with liquidity and access to capital, has conditionally accepted Condor Gold's request to be listed, the board of Condor Gold announced on Tuesday.

According to Condor, final approval for the listing is pending the company meeting conditions and requirements imposed by TSX, as well as final receipt and acceptance by the Ontario Securities Commission of its "long form" non-offering prospectus.

Condor to date hosts 9.6m tonnes of gold in the 'Indicated Mineral Resource' category, 8.5m tonnes in the 'Inferred Mineral Resource'category, as well 6.9m tonnes in the 'Probable Mineral Reserve' category through its flagship La India Project in Nicaragua.

Mark Child, chairman and CEO commented:

"The TSX listing will constitute a milestone for Condor Gold, providing a local trading platform for existing and new Canadian shareholders and investors. The vast majority of mining and exploration companies operating in South America are TSX/TSXV listed and, in my opinion, Canadian investors will find Condor a compelling investment that is undervalued compared to its TSX/TSXV listed peer group; 100% ownership of a high-grade gold deposit close to permitting, which can be expanded, in a jurisdiction with a pro-mining Government.

"Condor has been engaged with the local community for several years via employment and many social programmes, from healthcare, to education to the distribution of drinking water. Over the past 18 months we have been in constructive talks with national government and, with their blessing, we are now entering direct conversation with the local community regarding key aspects of permitting. Condor is entering the final phase of its permitting process to construct a 2,800tpd processing plant with a capacity to produce 100,000 oz gold p.a. from a single open pit and continues its strategy of expanding the gold resources through drilling and proving a major gold district."
Israeli lawmarkers unanimously outlawed the country's binary options industry, which some local authorities said had links to organised crime.

The move by the parliament, the Knesset, was at the behest of the head of the country's securities regulator, Shmuel Hauser, who had promised to act against the industry in August 2016, following an investigation by The Times of Israel.

In August, Israeli Police Superintendent Gabi Biton, accused Israeli crime kingpins of backing the binary options industry.

"Our eyes have been opened. [...] What we're seing here is a massive organised criminal enterprise. We are talking about criminals at various levels of crime organisations, up to the very top," Biton told a meeting of the Reforms Committee in August, according to The Times of Israel.
International service company Serco Group announced on Tuesday that it has reached agreement to acquire BTP Systems , a provider of satellite communication and radar engineering technical services to the US defence industry.

The FTSE 250 company said the business was to be acquired on a cash-free, debt-free basis for $20m, with the consideration to be satisfied using Serco's existing debt facilities.

It said the acquisition, subject to required approvals, was expected to complete around the end of the year.

Serco said BTP has deep capabilities within the satellite and radar industries, where it provides maintenance, repair and overhaul, testing facilities, and related systems and field engineering services.

Those services complemented Serco's existing ship and shore modernisation work, the board claimed, and enhanced its capability in 'C5ISR' (command, control, communications, computers, combat systems, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance).

In particular, Serco said BTP's in-service engineering and related capabilities - when combined with Serco's existing installation services - would create a full end-to-end capability to sustain systems throughout their life cycle.

Major customers of BTP included the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), the Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) and Hill Air Force Base in Utah.

BTP has reportedly grown strongly over the 14 years since it was founded.

Revenue for 2017 was expected to be approaching $20m, and EBITDA approximately $3m.

Serco said there would be a limited amount of transaction and integration costs, after which the acquisition was still expected to be immediately accretive to earnings.

Serco guided to leverage for covenant purposes of between 1.4x and 1.8x EBITDA at the end of 2017, explaining that on an underlying pro forma basis the transaction would increase leverage by approximately 0.1x.

The value of BTP's gross assets, excluding cash balances, was approximately $3m.

This acquisition adds deep expertise in satellite and radar engineering services, which complements Serco's existing defence business particularly in relation to C5ISR work and our ship and shore modernisation, radar and other base support services, said Serco group chief executive officer Rupert Soames.

BTP operates in a growing segment of the market and through its combination with Serco we will be able to target additional revenue and cost synergies.

We welcome our new colleagues joining Serco and look forward to working together as we further develop our scope, scale and excellent reputation in the US defence sector.

In a separate announcement on Tuesday morning, Serco said it has also agreed and signed heads of terms to acquire a portfolio of selected UK health facilities management contracts from Carillion.

It said that, once a definitive business purchase agreement has been agreed and Carillion has received the requisite third-party consents and shareholders' approval if required, the contracts would be acquired on a cash-free, debt-free basis with the consideration to be satisfied using Serco's existing debt facilities.

Assuming that all the contracts are transferred to Serco, the total consideration payable would be 50.1m - subject to a limited working capital adjustment - with payment largely phased as the contracts transfer, Sercos board said in its statement.

Full transition and integration of operations was expected to be achieved by the end of 2018.

The contracts provide facilities management support services to over 50 NHS sites across the UK, including five acute hospital trusts.

The portfolio of contracts is profitable and has current annual revenue of approximately 90m and a weighted average remaining term of 14 years.

Serco said further particulars would be published once the definitive business purchase agreement was signed.
[October 23, 2017] Santech Announces New APIs for Credentialing & Provider Data Management Solutions at NAMSS

ISELIN, N.J., Oct. 23, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Santech Solutions is releasing new application programming interfaces (APIs) for its suite of solutions at NAMSS' 41st Educational Conference and Exhibit in Colorado Springs (Oct. 21-25, 2017). Santech is applying strategic IT intelligence to modernize provider data management infrastructure across all stakeholders with its in-depth knowledge of providers and payors' business needs. With the launch of its open APIs Santech will enable hospitals and medical practices to efficiently submit provider data to multiple participating payors. "Payors and providers need smarter solutions that can communicate with each other to exchange provider participation information. Since this is critical for the success of payor-provider partnerships, Santech has deployed an open infrastructure solution suite which provides readily usable APIs and a user interface for submission of provider data usually sitting in multiple systems such as Credentialing, Quality, EMR, HR, and Practice Management Systems, and across numerous spreadsheets and manual notes," said Neeraj K. Sharma, Chief Operating Officer at Santech Solutions. Santech expects the open APIs will make it easier for vendors of competing work flow systems to collaborate together to improve the healthcare ecosystem. With the help of these APIs, framented and distributed provider data can be pulled together from multiple systems and submitted seamlessly to payors in a usable format for credentialing, directory and value based reimbursement (VBR) contract management purposes.



Earlier this year Santech was selected as a 'cool vendor' by leading analyst firm Gartner for enabling transformational provider management due to its continuous innovations and modern provider data management infrastructure. "Offering an API to allow other solutions to leverage this comprehensive infrastructure suite was a natural next move to help the industry," Sharma noted. APIs drive improved capabilities within the Industry:

APIs allow hospitals and practices to seamlessly submit their provider data such as demographic, credentialing, location, specialty, work hours, accepting new patients (open close panel), quality scoring, attestations, signed applications, and participation acceptance of VBR contracts to multiple payors.

APIs will help in submitting this data from heterogeneous sources, including Santech's comprehensive I-Net Exchange program which deploys patent pending algorithms to identify correctness and completeness of data and that data meets a payor or plan's specific business requirements.

APIs coupled with a user interface provide additional capabilities to hospitals and practices to nurture their provider data based on their specific business alignment with each payor and network.

APIs and user interfaces also allow hospitals and practices to receive and fulfill requests from payors seeking information. Traditionally these requests get exchanged through email/faxes and phone calls, a cumbersome and time-consuming process for medical professionals. Santech's intuitive APIs provide an appropriate solution to the three major problems of streamlining the payor-provider relationship. First, APIs allow hospitals and practices to seamlessly submit their provider data with payors right from their existing system of record. Second, APIs reduce staff time in accommodating provider directory update requests from multiple payors. Third, APIs reduce errors and mistakes of manual updates leveraging Santech's patent pending data cleansing and indexing algorithms. Through industry accelerating features, these APIs will help in modernizing the payor-provider relationship with more accurate provider information. A well-timed offering for NAMSS attendees System vendors work with multiple hospitals and practices to house their valuable provider data, and often struggle to exchange this information with payors. Santech encourages these system vendors to beta test the newly released APIs to enhance their system capabilities for exchanging information with payors. "How payers and providers exchange information is in drastic need of streamlining. While many of us are focused on filling that need, Santech believes that if we work together, we can truly turn the provider-payer relationship around. We welcome technology partners and system vendors to work collaboratively to extend their system capabilities by using these APIs," said Sharma. Sharma and Bert Fajardo, Santech's VP of Strategy, are available at NAMSS to discuss in detail a simplified and intuitive provider management platform for credentialing and compliance at Booth # 108. About Santech Founded and managed by healthcare specialists, Santech offers innovative solutions to payors, practices and health systems to transform their provider and network management capabilities. Built for scalability and high performance, our enterprise-caliber solutions are designed to meet the needs of small, midsize and large organizations. Santech is recognized as a 2017 Gartner "Cool Vendor" in Health-Value Management for U.S. Healthcare Payers. The company is headquartered in Iselin, New Jersey. Visit us at www.mySantech.com. Media contact:

Neeraj K. Sharma, Chief Operating Officer, Santech Solutions

[email protected]

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[October 23, 2017] EST Group Ranks on Inc. 5000 List Two Years in a Row

Inc. magazine has again ranked EST Group as one of the fastest-growing private companies on its 36th annual Inc. 5000, the most prestigious ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economy's most dynamic segment- its independent small businesses. Companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Domino's Pizza, Pandora, Timberland, LinkedIn (News - Alert), Yelp, Zillow, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as honorees of the Inc. 5000. "It's inspiring to have our success reflected in the Inc. 5000 list again this year," stated Kelly Foster, EST Group Co-founder, Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Technical Officer (CTO). "We again want to thank those who keep working hard to make the company a special place. We continue to focus on our top priority, which is to ensure that our clients, vendors and employees have the best experience they have ever had with an IT consulting company. Our philosophy is that we are most successful when our clients and employees are, too, and it's exciting to see that recognized." The 2017 Inc. 5000 list, unveiled online at Inc.com and with the top 500 companies featured in the September issue of Inc. magazine, is considered to have America's greatest (and most inspiring) entrepreneurial companies of the year. The fastest-growing private firms in America are creators. They create companies, they create value, and they create jobs-619,631 of them over the last three years. The average company on the list achieved a three-year average growth of 481%. The Inc. 5000's aggregate revene is $206 billion. Complete results can be found at www.inc.com/inc5000.



"The Inc. 5000 is the most persuasive evidence I know that the American Dream is still alive," says Inc. President and Editor-In-Chief Eric Schurenberg. "The founders and CEOs of the Inc. 5000 tell us they think determination, risk taking, and vision were the keys to their success, and I believe them." About EST Group

EST Group is an IT solutions company with a strong focus in providing data center solutions and services, as well as integration and identity and access management solutions and services to their clients' IT environment. Their goal is for their clients to achieve maximum efficiency and productivity. They have been providing these solutions since 2005. EST strives to provide the best experience their clients, partners and employees have ever had with an IT consulting company. For more information on EST Group, visit www.est-grp.com. For more press information, contact Donna Hegdahl (972)717-3500 x222 or via e-mail at [email protected] About Inc. Media Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures, Inc. is the only major brand dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies, with the aim to deliver real solutions for today's innovative company builders. Winner of the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in both 2014 and 2012, the total monthly audience reach for the brand has grown significantly from 2,000,000 in 2010 to over 18,000,000 today. For more information, visit www.inc.com. The Inc. 5000 is a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the nation. Started in 1982, this prestigious list of the nation's most successful private companies has become the hallmark of entrepreneurial success. The Inc. 5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony is an annual event that celebrates their remarkable achievements. The event also offers informative workshops, celebrated keynote speakers, and evening functions. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171023006428/en/

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Trumbull, CT  October 23, 2017  TMC announced, vXchnge has joined ITEXPO as a gold sponsor and MSP Expo as a platinum sponsor. The two events are collocated and taking place February 14-16, 2018 at the Greater Ft. Lauderdale/Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The combined expo hall has become the annual meeting point for buyers to sit face-to-face with hundreds of manufactures and solutions providers in one place, for three incredibly productive days. ITEXPO is the only event dedicated to exploring communications solutions for the enterprise mid market, resellers and service providers. Through its powerful content, MSP Expo brings together business owners and technology specialists in the channel to grow their managed services business.

vXchnge is a leading carrier-neutral colocation services provider dedicated to improving the business performance of its customers. Companies can leverage vXchnges interconnections and strategically located data centers across US growth markets. vXchnge delivers unmatched brand protection and reliability to global and emerging growth brands through its data-center-as-a-service solution.

ITEXPO and MSP Expo represents a great gathering point for vXchnge to meet with customers and prospects, said Ernest Sampera, Chief Marketing Officer, vXchnge. We are excited to be a sponsor and look forward to leveraging this venue as a branding initiative to show customers that they can depend on vXchnge as their strategic colocation provider.

Registration for ITEXPO and MSP Expo is now open, contact [email protected] for more information. For media inquiries, contact Jessica Seabrook. Companies interested in exhibiting, sponsorship or advertising packages for ITEXPO or MSP Expo should contact TMC's Joe Fabiano at 203-852-6800 x132 or Maureen Gambino at 203-852-6800 x109.

ITEXPO is also sponsored by Diamond sponsor, Digium, Platinum sponsors, 88VoIP, Fiber Mountain, Grandstream, Sangoma, Windstream, Sansay, Telnyx, Yealink, Gold sponsors, ABP Tech, Speech Mobility and Vitelity.

MSP Expo is also supported by platinum sponsor Wildix and gold sponsor Speech Mobility.

For the latest news, updates and information on these events follow them on Twitter at @ITEXPO and @MSPExpo.

About TMC

Global buyers rely on TMCs content-driven marketplaces to make purchase decisions and navigate markets. This presents branding, thought leadership and lead generation opportunities for vendors/sellers.

TMCs Marketplaces:

Unique, turnkey Online Communities boost search results, establish market validation, elevate brands and thought leadership, while minimizing ad-blocking.

Custom Lead Programs uncover sales opportunities and build databases.

In-Person and Online Events boost brands, enhance thought leadership and generate leads.

Publications, Display Advertising and Newsletters bolster brand reputations.

Custom Content provides expertly ghost-crafted blogs, press releases, articles and marketing collateral to help with SEO, branding, and

overall marketing efforts.

overall marketing efforts. Comprehensive Event and Road Show Management Services help companies meet potential clients and generate leads face-to-face.

For more information about TMC and to learn how we can help you reach your marketing goals, please visit www.tmcnet.com.

Media and Analyst Contact:

Jessica Seabrook

Marketing Director

TMC

203-852-6800 x 170

[email protected]

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Edited by Mandi Nowitz
The Hyundai Verna is known as Accent in the Middle East markets. The fifth-gen Verna will be exported to the Middle East from India. This is the largest order received by Hyundai as compared to the previous models of the sedan.

Hyundai had invited 33 distributors from the Middle East which also included Saudi Arabia, Oman and UAE and other Asian countries to its production plant in Chennai. The distributors got to witness the plant and also drove the new Verna.

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The fifth-gen Verna will also be exported to South Africa, Gulf and other Asian countries starting from 2018. Hyundai has also received an impressive response in the domestic market and has received more than 18,600 bookings since its launch.

The India-spec Hyundai Verna draws power from a 1.6-litre four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines producing 121bhp and 126bhp respectively. Both the engines are mated to a 6-speed manual or a 6-speed automatic gearbox. Hyundai is also expected to introduce a smaller 1.4-litre engine in the future.

MD and CEO of Hyundai India, Y K Koo said, "The Next Gen Verna has received overwhelming response from domestic and export markets. We are very happy and proud to receive such a large single export order within one month of showcasing the product to the distributors from overseas markets."

DriveSpark Thinks!

India has become the global manufacturing hub for several automakers which is a good development. Under the Make In India initiative, Hyundai will manufacture and export the new Verna to the Middle East which will also create additional employment opportunities in the country.
Google on Monday rolled out an online payment service thats designed to accelerate the online checkout process.

While the new offering isnt quite Amazon One-Click, it will eliminate many of the annoying steps that can slow down the online purchase process and often result in abandoned shopping carts.

Pay with Google uses address and credit or debit card information users provide to Google to speed them through checkout. Instead of a merchant collecting that information from the customer, its sent behind the scenes by Google.

Google has called on website and app developers to incorporate Pay with Google into their creations.

You can implement it with just a few lines of code, and its free  we dont charge any transaction fees, said Pali Bhat, Googles vice president for payments products.

Google understands that it takes more than an application programming interface and a service to create a critical mass of users, said Rajiv Dholakia, vice president for products and business development at Nok Nok Labs.

Pay with Google is doing that by bringing Googles users as well as its developers to the party, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Convenient Service

For anyone with a Google account, the payment service can be very convenient.

Customers can direct payments from any of the credit cards they have registered with Google companies, including Chrome, Android Pay, YouTube and Google Play, noted Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

Plus, they dont have to fill in numbers or address lines, thus speeding up the payment process, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Users upgrading their Android phones also will find Pay with Google a cozy fit.

They dont have to add new cards every time they get a new phone. They can leverage their cards from Google, said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy.

On the downside, that does create one-stop-shopping for cybercriminals, since a shoppers credit cards are stored at a single location.

I see that as a low probability, though, as Google is typically secure, Moorhead told the E-Commerce Times.

Since [Pay with Google] is based on the Android Pay platform, it supports those same security features and functions, said Pund-ITs King.

Googles Gain Is Merchants Loss

Performing online transactions using Pay with Google is especially secure when compared to data protection methods found at many merchants.

Your credentials are pretty darn safe behind Googles firewalls, said David Robertson, publisher of The Nilson Report.

The reality is too many merchants store our data on systems that can be compromised, he told the E-Commerce Times.

Merchants have never historically been in the business of protecting information, Robertson continued, and many CEOs dont understand whats needed to be spent to protect data stored about their customers.

However, theres a significant drawback for merchants to funneling transactions through Google.

Google is separating the merchant from the opportunity to collect information about their customers, Robertson said.

Youthful Tilt

At launch, Pay with Google had 15 partners, with another 12 in the wings and the expectation of many more as the service picks up momentum.

Still, the offering may not attract as broad an audience as Google would like it to.

Customers need to have bought into Google as a primary mobile and service provider, Pund-ITs King explained.

Plus, the retail partners are tilted to companies focusing on younger consumers, he added. Thats likely to change over time, but it could limit interest among older customers.

Whats more, if Google is betting on more people paying for things with their phones to boost Pay with Google usage, it may be disappointed.

I believe the value proposition for mobile payments remains fairly weak, King said. The function it proposes to eliminate  using a physical credit card  is hardly onerous, and most consumers continue to have concerns about the security and trustworthiness of mobile payments.

Nevertheless, Google had to get into the payment aggregator game with a product like Pay with Google, maintained Nilsons Robertson.

No one knows what the landscape is going to look like three years from now, but everybody is trying to get their ducks lined up to play in as many ponds as possible, he explained. So if you have the capability to be a payment aggregator, it seems to be a good play.
RoboCyberWall on Tuesday launched its proprietary precision firewall solution bearing the same name. RoboCyberWall is designed to protect HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) ports on Linux-based Apache2 and NGINX Web servers.

The patent-pending firewall blocks all known exploits and zero-day attacks on Apache2 and NGINX Web servers, according to the developer. It is the only firewall designed from the ground up to protect the Linux Apache2 or NGINX Web servers root directory, as well as the document root directory.

The products Modular Security paradigm for Linux server perimeters has been hacker tested for more than a year. It is far more secure than yesterdays all-in-one firewalls, according to the company, which describes them as Jack of All Trades, Master of None.

RoboCyberWall-protected servers, despite thousands of attempts by multiple hackers challenged to do otherwise, have never been successfully hacked, said John R. Martinson Sr., CEO of RoboCyberWall.

The Linux server firewall solution targets small and mid-sized business users. When coupled with fully compatible Web application firewalls from multiple vendors, RoboCyberWall provides a complete security solution, Martinson told LinuxInsider.

Matter of Necessity

No firewalls currently are designed specifically to protect the Web servers actual root directory. Hackers know this, so they attack via the Internet protocol address assigned to the Web server that is serving up packets for the domain name server via the HTTP protocol, explained Martinson. That allows hackers to breach the Web servers root directory to gain access to the users data, which resides in the Web servers DocumentRoot directory.

Internet-borne threats such as ransomware and other malware are driving the need for organizations to rethink their existing security frameworks, such as firewalls and browser isolation, Daniel Miller, director of product marketing at Ericom Software, told LinuxInsider.

The aggressive activities of well-organized and financed hackers means that businesses of every sort need to be vigilant or risk being crippled. That can be especially difficult for SMBs that do not have the financing or expertise available to mount sophisticated defensive efforts, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

RoboCyberWall aims to address those organizations pain points and keep some of their most vulnerable targets safe from attacks and exploits, he told LinuxInsider.

What It Does

In securing the non-application portion of the stack, RoboCyberWall provides pinpoint protection for Linux Apache2 or NGINX Web server HTTP and HTTPS ports. Typically, these are ports 80 and 443, which are two of the top three most-targeted ports for attack worldwide, based on Akamais State of the Internet report.

The attackers goal is to get access to the Web servers change log files so they can take over the Apache2 or NGINX Web server, noted Martinson, Hackers can use a known hack, a zero-day exploit or a brute force attempt.

A bad actor who has breached an Apache2 or NGINX Web servers root directory gains complete access to the DocumentRoot directory where the actual data is located.

Product Comparison

RoboCyberWall differs from competing security tools for Linux servers, said Martinson, in five key areas:

It is easy to install, using very little processor overhead;

It is inexpensive, licensed at US$8.95 per month;

Its dynamic whitelist results in zero false positives;

It prevents exploits rather than cleaning up afterward; and

It results in no downtime or lost revenue.

Older technology has to guess which packets are good or bad, making detection of zero-day attacks impossible, Martinson said.

Generally, RoboCyberWall is a software-only solution, meaning that it is downloadable and designed to run on a host Linux-based Apache2 and NGINX Web server, said King.

That makes it simpler and easier to deploy than packaged solutions, and far cheaper than dedicated firewall appliances, he added.

RoboCyberWall consumes minimal processing and memory resources, and minimal whitelisting features. While the product may suffer from focusing on HTTP and HTTPS ports, those are the ones most often targeted by hackers, King pointed out.

The solutions minimal footprint requirements also mean that it can be effectively used on older systems repurposed for Web-serving needs. Thats a common practice among the cost-conscious SMBs that are the companys primary market targets, he explained.

Better Mousetrap

Linux-based DevSecOps shops that are building modern applications are another niche customer target. RoboCyberWall should fair well, as it is purpose-built for protecting Web applications. Most players in that space have a wide range of coverage and do not necessarily focus on Linux/Web applications, said George Gerchow, vice president of security and compliance at Sumo Logic.

At Sumo Logic, we do not run Windows at all, and so for us and for other organizations running similar environments, RoboCyberWall would complement what we are already doing, he told LinuxInsider.

There is a major need for what RoboCyberWall offers in todays market. The entire InfoSec community should be moving to host-based security solutions that scale and use intelligent automation to prevent attacks, he said, instead of traditional inline solutions that do not scale and have a hard time detecting new malware and bad packets.
Nvidia went to China last week and made a series of interesting announcements having to do with smart cities and autonomous cars. (The video is worth watching.)

IBM made an announcement on advancements in tying the Weather Channel to its Watson artificial intelligence engine and targeted marketing.

We also found out about Oculus Fall in Love VR project which is kind of like The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, but the significant other is a hot computerized avatar.

Intel announced Loihi, a new AI processor that emulates the human brain.

All of these things have broad implications for how we will perceive the world in a decade  and strangely enough, for how the world will perceive us. Our reality, or at least our perception of it, will be massively changed.

Ill offer some predictions about the world we can expect in 2027 and close with my product of the week: an amazing new cellphone-sized camera that can outperform DLSRs.

The Smarter Electric Car

In another 10 years, we should be close to critical mass in both electric-powered cars and cars that drive themselves. More than 300K people preordered Teslas new Model 3, and 25K have preordered the new Jaguar iPace.

Other than supercars, car preorders at this magnitude are almost unheard of  and this hasnt been lost on the car companies. Most have plans to ramp up electric car production massively over the next few years, and this is the same time that well also be ramping up autonomous driving.

Couple this with Qualcomm and WiTricitys efforts to create wireless charging, which most of these cars will be using, and these cars not only can drop you off at work, but also drive themselves to a recharging station to recover.

There is some question of whether youll buy your car or just use Lyft (Ubers survival is in doubt at the moment), and Lyft just partnered with Ford to make this happen.

If you do buy a car (or most any other major purchase), youll likely do it virtually. Car original equipment manufacturers already have virtual reality headsets in trial runs at dealerships, with folks like Audi leading the charge.

When Jaguar announced and showcased its electric car, the iPace, it used VR, allowing buyers to see and experience the car long before manufacturing lines were even set up.

Oh, and there is a pretty good chance that this Airbus project to create an autonomous car that can be carried by a drone will be in production. Now that is cool.

The Smarter Home/Office

One of the biggest personal impacts of AI will be in the home. One of the problems well likely experience is people choosing to interact with machines that tell them what they want to hear rather than other people who tend to be less willing to be extremely agreeable.

The work being done by the Fall In Love VR project, I noted above. You think there are Web addiction problems now  wait until the pornography industry gets involved in this. On the positive side, you could get a workout partner who always would be there for you. On the negative side, it will be far harder to catch scammers and telemarketers in the act.

This technology will merge with digital assistants and robotics, making it very likely youll have an increasingly intelligent, mobile, smart robot helping you around the house. The initial target market for this will be people who are disabled in some way, even just by age.

Im not ready to wrap my head around what fully blending human-like personalities into these robots could do to relationships. As Nvidia showcased during its event in China, these ever-more-intelligent systems will be able to learn just what you like over time, in order to mold themselves into your ideal companion. Im thinking that in comparison, relationships with people will truly suck.

Speaking of interaction, we should have real-time translation with proper inflection, as well as a far more advanced speech-to-text capability. Many of us simply may decide to forgo mice and keyboards (last week Microsofts Holographic keyboard display patent became public) , suggesting cubicle farms likely will become nonviable due to the related noise.

Ironically, because the proliferation of autonomous cars will make traffic concerns largely a thing of the past (they will better manage congestion, and youll be able to work while riding in the self-driving car), the need to go into work should be reduced massively. Meetings increasingly can be attended by digital avatars, who likely will take better notes than you ever did.

Your appliances and equipment will be better able to determine a coming problem, and to automatically schedule a fix, suggesting that extended warranties will be replaced by service agreements.

Oh, and we already have robotic vacuum cleaners that map out our homes. Future versions could better secure them as well.

Youll be able to conduct searches based on lines spoken in a video to find specific locations corresponding to snippets of audio (that also was showcased at Nvidias event).

Smarter Cities

At the heart of this latest wave is a focus on monitoring and facial recognition. This is the ability for city officials and agencies to know where you are and what you are doing any time you are out of your home.

This not only will make you a ton safer  because the increasing number of cameras will identify a crime or injury in progress and more accurately track the criminals and dispatch help  but also will provide a far more complete idea of what your interests and priorities are for future city growth and investment.

Granted, its likely well still be having a cow over the massive lack of privacy, but that train left the station some time ago.

The city in most cases will know where you are, and often even what you are doing. I can certainly anticipate city services that allow you to better track your children and spouse, which could be a huge problem for many members of both groups.

Tracking isnt just for people  these systems will track cars, trucks, and perhaps even pets (which would be handy for those of us who own runners). By connecting to cars and homes, cities should be able to better manage traffic, utilities, law enforcement and repair services  and if you get into trouble, automatically route you to the police station.

Wrapping Up

This stuff is coming together very quickly. In a few short years, our homes will be able to better clean and maintain themselves, our cars will drive significantly better than we do and will be a ton cleaner, and our cities will pretty much know things about us we likely dont realize ourselves.

Where we work, who or what we interact and fall in love with, and the concept of privacy will have changed a lot (Nvidia showcased an estimate that cities will own a billion security cameras in a decade).

It will be a very, very different world.

The Light L16 camera  check out the quality of the pictures it takes  is a weird thing to look at. It has a ton of sensors and lenses  the 16 in the name refers to the number of lenses the camera has. It looks very strange, but this allows the camera to capture amazing depth of field, and to allow a level of editing and quality hard to find in a DSLR let alone something the size of a smartphone.

Light L16Camera

One thing initial users have discovered is that to get this quality, you still need to treat the camera like a DSLR, which means you must steady it and be cognizant of the settings. That means for the best shots, youll want tripod.

Its currently being offered as a preproduction special of US$1,299, but the initial run apparently is sold out. Once it starts shipping, the price will jump to $1,700 which is still cheap for DLSR quality.

I know I virtually never carry my DLSR because the damn thing is so big, but this Id likely carry. Oh, and this is the first generation of the product. Imagine what the second generation will be like.

Im fascinated by segment-changing innovative products, and this week the Light L16 is certainly that, so its my product of the week.
In an unprecedented crackdown on pollution, the Chinese government has temporarily shut down tens of thousands of factories in an effort to improve air quality throughout industrial regions in the country.

Thousands of regulators with Chinas Ministry of Environment have spread across the country to inspect factories for compliance with strict new laws detailing emission standards. Electricity and gas lines to factories will be suspended until officials can determine whether or not each facility is following the law.

Many migrant workers were forced to abandon these factories and look for other work, though the Chinese Premier promised in April that while the closures would mean setbacks, the government would work to transfer these employees instead of laying them off.

In 2013, China established a bold plan to measurably improve air conditions by the end of 2017, a deadline whose looming approach has led to drastic measures geared towards hitting those targets at all costs.

These factory closures are occurring alongside large-scale moratoriums on coal use and steel production, which are two of the biggest contributors to air pollution in Chinas industrial regions. In August, the northern Hebei province announced that these shutdowns would remain in place from October of this year through next March. Air pollution typically spikes during this time, typically referred to as heating season.

China is no stranger to dangerous levels of pollution. In 2013 the nation suffered from what was later dubbed airpocalypse, a day where air pollution levels were up to 30 times higher than what is considered healthy by the World health Organization. The Guardian reported that one hospital admitted more than 900 children for respiratory ailments that day, which many saw as a wake-up call to the damaging consequences of Chinas growth-first development strategy.

Chinas rapid industrialization has come with a fair amount of environmental and social setbacks. As the manufacturing industry grew in China, so too did pollution.

Additionally, income inequality in the country has proliferated as a result of the disparity of opportunity between urban communities and rural communities, which lack access to the economic gains of the industry.

Though urban centers produce the lions share of pollution across the country, the consequences of such devastation are not limited to wealthier city residents. Both urban and rural Chinese suffer at the hands of industrial pollution, and in both areas, it is the poorest residents who are worst affected.

Global Citizen campaigns on the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development, including goals three, 10 and 13: good health and well-being, reduced inequalities and climate action. You can take action on these issues here.

The recent halt on industrial operations across China are one of several signs that the government is serious about tackling the problem of pollution.

Since the crackdown began, more than $130 million dollars worth of fines have been levied against 18,000 companies who failed to meet the stricter environmental regulations. This may be a consequence of putting enforcement powers in the hands of taxation agencies, who have typically been more aggressive than the Ministry of Environment in enforcing regulations.

The implementation will be totally different, Shanghai environmental lawyer Peter Corne told NPR. It wont be the environmental bureau thats implementing anymore. Theyll just be monitoring. It will be the tax bureau thats implementing it.

In addition to the fines on business, government officials in cities who failed to meet pollution reduction milestones have been fired en masse. All of these measures point to a dramatic shift in the way the government battles pollution.

This is better than a 100-percent pay raise for me, said Corne. I was just dreaming about it. I never thought it would come true.

Reposted with permission from our media associate Global Citizen.
Pinewood Bowl has booked its first concert for 2018: The cast of truTVs "Impractical Jokers," aka the comedy troupe The Tenderloins, will bring its Santiago Sent Us tour to the outdoor amphitheater on May 18.

The Tenderloins, a New York-based comedy troupe, whose four members -- Joe Gatto, James Murray, Brian Quinn and Sal Vulcano -- are the creators, executive producers, and stars of truTVs "Impractical Jokers."

Now in its sixth season, the series follows the Tenderloins as they coerce one another into doing public pranks while being filmed by hidden cameras. With each new season, the show continues to take dares to outrageous levels with new over-the-top hijinks.

Tickets for the Pinewood show, set for 7:30 p.m., go on sale at 10 a.m. Oct. 27. Ticket are $49.50, $59, $69, $79 and $99 and are subject to applicable fees.

Tickets can be purchased at Pinnacle Bank Arena Ticket Office, 400 Pinnacle Arena Drive, online at ticketmaster.com or charge by phone at 866-448-7849 (automated) or 800-745-3000 (live person).
President Trump might think that global warming is a hoax created by the Chinese, but the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congresss nonpartisan auditing arm, is urging the administration to craft a plan to confront climate change or else it will have to deal with its massive economic consequences.

According to a new report released by the GAO, the U.S. government has already spent more than $350 billion over the past decade on dealing with natural disasters and losses from flood and crop insurance. The tally does not even include the economic toll from this years horrific West Coast fires and successive hurricanes, which is estimated to cost at least $300 billion.

Costs will also soaras much as $35 billion per year by mid-centuryif global emission rates are not reduced, the study warns.

The federal government has not undertaken strategic government-wide planning to manage climate risks by using information on the potential economic effects of climate change to identify significant risks and craft appropriate federal responses, the study states. By using such information, the federal government could take the initial step in establishing government-wide priorities to manage such risks.

The report, which features interviews with more than two dozen scientific and economic experts and 30 studies, was requested by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Susan Collins (R-ME).

The Government Accountability Officeif you will, the chief bean counteris basically telling us that this is costing us a lot of money, Cantwell told the New York Times. We need to understand that as stewards of the taxpayer that climate is a fiscal issue, and the fact that its having this big a fiscal impact on our federal budget needs to be dealt with.

The Senators hope that the study will prompt Congress and the administration to move towards a bipartisan solution to fight the effects of a warming world.

My hope is the administration will take a look at this report and realize there is an economic impact here that is significant, Collins told the Times. We simply cannot afford the billions of dollars in additional funding thats going to be needed if we do not take into account the consequences of climate change.

Trump, however, has notoriously pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement and rolled back several Obama-era environmental regulations designed to address climate change, including the repeal of the Clean Power Plan. The presidents EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has close links to the fossil fuel industry and once said that carbon dioxide is not the primary driver of global warming.

Robert N. Stavins, an economist at Harvard University, cast doubt the study would convince the government to act.

The GAO study is conservative, its not alarmist, its realistic and balanced and they go out of their way to point out all of the uncertainties involved, Stavins told the Times. I dont see any likelihood its going to be taken seriously.

Indeed, the price tag from the GAOs study is drastically lower than estimates from other recent reports. The non-profit Universal Ecological Fund found that extreme weather and public health issues related to burning fossil fuels could cost the U.S. up to $360 billion annuallynearly half of annual U.S. economic growthwithin the next ten years.
In the second edition of its Sea of Distress report released Tuesday, Greenpeace found that some foodservice industry playersespecially Sodexo, Aramark, and Compass Grouphave taken important steps toward protecting the oceans and workers at sea.

While the majority of the fifteen companies assessed in the report failed again, there are signs that some companies are starting to work toward sustainable seafood, transparency, and advocacy for our oceans and seafood industry workers.

It is a good sign that some key foodservice companies are moving in the right direction on sustainability for our oceans and the ethical treatment of workers, said Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner David Pinsky. Unfortunately, there are still large companies holding back progress. Massive distributors like Sysco and US Foods must work urgently to help protect ocean health and workers rights throughout the supply chain.

5 Ways to Help Stop the Destruction of Our Oceans  EcoWatch https://t.co/8ncwITatqO @SolimanAdam @HealTheBay  EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) August 23, 2016

The U.S. foodservice industry represents approximately half of food-dollar spending outside of the home every day, supplying clients like Google, Walmart, Disney World, Burger King, Florida State University, Yosemite National Park and the U.S. Congress. With annual sales exceeding $700 billion, this growing industry has a tremendous impact on the environment and workers worldwide.

In its report, Greenpeace found that Sodexo, Aramark and Compass Group continue to lead the industry by sourcing more responsible seafood, working to reduce their plastic footprint, ensuring transparency, and advocating for better practices at sea. Performance Food Group nearly received a passing score, surpassing its competitor Sysco, while Centerplate and Delaware North continued to climb in the rankings, although both companies still failed. Maines Paper & Food Service, Shamrock Foods, and Elior North America were the worst performers, leaving many questions about what initiatives these companies have to protect ocean health and workers rights.

Greenpeaces foodservice ranking comes on the heels of major commitments from global tuna giant Thai Union to provide more sustainable and ethical seafood. Foodservice companies should follow Thai Unions lead on addressing problematic transshipment at sea, sourcing more sustainably caught tuna, and taking steps to protect workers rights. Some companies are already taking action. Aramark is now the first U.S. foodservice company with a public policy regarding transshipment at seaa practice that enables vessels to continue fishing for months or years at a time and has the potential to facilitate illegal activity, including labor and human rights abuses.
Nicaragua will officially join the Paris agreement and has presented the necessary paperwork to the UN, Vice President and first lady Rosario Murillo said on local radio Monday.

Murillo called the accord the only instrument we have in the world that allows the unity of intentions and efforts to face up to climate change and natural disasters. Nicaragua was the only country to outright reject the agreement in 2015, arguing in favor of more drastic action to mitigate climate impacts.

The move means that the U.S., which announced it would pull out of the agreement in June, heads into the COP23 talks in Bonn next month alone with Syria as the only two countries in the world not participating in the global accord.

Scientists from more developed countries, scientists working at NASA, European scientists, everyone agrees that we must stop the process that is leading to the destruction of the planet, said Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

As reported by the BBC:

Nicaragua has no oil and vigorously pursues green energy policiesmore than 50% of its electricity is produced by geothermic, wind, solar, biomass and wave power. It is a country that is believed to be especially at risk from climate change.

The World Bank described the central American country as a renewable energy paradise in 2013.

For a deeper dive:

Reuters, BBC, The Hill

For more climate change and clean energy news, you can follow Climate Nexus on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for daily Hot News.
Another report sounding the alarm about climate change. Another missed opportunity to talk about the most promising solution: regenerative agriculture.

The New York Times cited a new report by the notoriously conservative Government Accountability Office (GAO), which said climate change is costing taxpayers billions.

CNN also reported on the GAO study, which calls on Trump to craft appropriate responses.

The CNN coverage noted several initiatives to combat climate change undertaken under the Obama administration, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys (EPA) Clean Power Plan, which sought to lower carbon emissions on a state-by-state basis, and the Paris climate agreement, which saw almost every country agree to voluntary limits on future carbon emissions.

The current climate-denying Trump administration wants to scrap those, and other climate initiatives, in favor of prioritizing corporate profits.

But thats not why Im writing today. Im writing because once again, a major report on the costsfinancial, social, environmental, politicalof doing nothing to slow runaway global warming focuses exclusively on reducing carbon emissions. As usual, this new report fails to mention that even if we achieved zero emissions tomorrow, were still in big troubleunless we draw down and sequester the billions of tons of carbon already in the atmosphere.

And once again, a major report on global warming fails to acknowledge that we have the tools readily at our disposal to draw down that carbon, and we know how to use them. They are regenerative agriculture and land-use practices outlined in a recent Stanford Woods Institute report, which says:

If you want to do something about global warming, look under your feet. Managed well, soils ability to trap carbon dioxide is potentially much greater than previously estimated, according to Stanford researchers who claim the resource could significantly offset increasing global emissions. They call for a reversal of federal cutbacks to related research programs to learn more about this valuable resource.

The federal government has no problem subsidizing, to the tune of $20 billion/yearGMO monoculture crops that degrade the soil and play a significant role in making global warming worse.

But Congress has no problem cutting back research on how to improve soil health as a means of combatting global warming?

Fortunately, other governments are incorporating the soil solution into their policies and plans to combat global warming. The most significant is Frances Four for 1000: Soils for Food Security and Climate Initiative launched by the French government at the Paris climate summit in December 2015.

In the U.S., some states are taking steps of their own to enact regenerative agriculture policies, notably California, Vermont and Massachusetts.

If your state isnt on the list, maybe its time you start building a Regeneration Movement in your own community?

Its time to stop ignoring our best hope of cooling the planet. If federal lawmakers wont help, we need to make sure our local and state officials get on board.
A much higher rate of prolonged postoperative opioid use is identified in bariatric surgical patients compared with general surgical patients

SAN DIEGO: Nearly 9 percent of bariatric surgical patients--or about one in 12--who did not take opioid pain medications until their weight-loss operation, or the month before it, report that they are still using prescription opioids one year postoperatively, according to new research findings. Results of a Michigan study, presented at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress 2017, also indicate that this rate of new prolonged use of opioid pain relievers was more than 45 percent higher than use in general surgical patients.



This study provides further evidence that certain patient groups are more prone to persistent opioid use than others, said senior investigator Amir A. Ghaferi, MD, MS, FACS, FASMBS, associate professor of surgery at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.



"Surgeons must identify patients who may be at higher risk for addiction to opioids, so they can adjust prescribing for postoperative pain," said Dr. Ghaferi, who also directs the Ann Arbor-based Michigan Bariatric Surgery Collaborative (MBSC), a quality improvement program that supplied the study data. "Patients undergoing bariatric surgery may be particularly vulnerable to opioid dependence, possibly because of chronic knee and back pain associated with morbid obesity."



An estimated 196,000 patients underwent bariatric operations in the United States in 2015.1 Understanding the prevalence of persistent opioid use after bariatric operations is important, Dr. Ghaferi noted, as the nation struggles with an epidemic of opioid abuse. About 2 million Americans had a substance use disorder involving prescription pain medications, according to the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.2



For this study, Dr. Ghaferi and his fellow investigators used the MBSC database, which includes 95 percent of bariatric operations performed in Michigan. They identified 14,063 patients undergoing first-time bariatric surgical procedures (primarily minimally invasive, laparoscopic procedures) who completed surveys about their use of prescription painkillers preoperatively and again one year after the operation. The researchers initially administered the survey by email and then, if there was no response after several reminders, by mail or phone. The survey listed commonly prescribed opioid medications, such as hydrocodone and oxycodone.



Patients undergoing weight-loss operations routinely receive an opioid prescription for postoperative pain, and most patients discontinue using opioid medications earlier than two weeks after their operation, Dr. Ghaferi said. Their study, however, found a small minority who continued taking the potentially addictive medications much longer.



Most survey respondents--73 percent, according to updated numbers from the presentation--stated they had not taken opioid medications in the one to 12 months before their surgical treatment, meaning they were "opioid naive," the researchers found. Of these opioid-naive patients, 8.8 percent (905 patients) reportedly said they were still using their opioids one year after starting them for postoperative pain.



This rate of new persistent opioid use was 46 percent higher than the 6 percent rate reported among opioid-naive patients in general surgical populations, Dr. Ghaferi said. The general surgical data, he explained, came from the Michigan Opioid Prescribing Engaging Network, or Michigan-OPEN, an initiative that aims to prevent surgery-related opioid abuse.



When the researchers analyzed survey data for all bariatric surgical patients, including those who reported using opioids before their operation, they found that nearly one in four patients were still taking opioid medication a year postoperatively.



"Given the known elevated risk of cross-addiction to alcohol and illicit drugs in bariatric surgical patients,"3 Dr. Ghaferi said, "providers should pay special attention to opioid use during the postsurgical period."



He said patients should understand that that they do not need to finish their opioid prescription once they feel better. While taking opioids, patients also should use nonopioid pain medicine, such as ibuprofen or acetaminophen (if not already in their opioid pills), which can reduce their opioid requirements.4



Based on these findings, Dr. Ghaferi said he and his University of Michigan colleagues have made changes to reduce opioid overprescribing and patients' need for opioids after bariatric surgical procedures. Strategies he and other experts4 recommend to providers include:



Preoperatively screen patients for substance abuse risk factors, such as excessive alcohol use or a family history of substance use disorder 5

Prescribe fewer opioid pills in the first prescription

Perform local nerve blocks in the operating room to minimize the need for postoperative opioid medications

He added that further study is necessary to identify effective screening tools for opioid abuse and to determine the appropriate number of opioid pills to prescribe after bariatric surgical procedures.

"We don't want our surgical patients to become addicted to opioids, but of course we don't want them to be recovering at home in pain either," Dr. Ghaferi said.



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Dr. Ghaferi's study coauthors were: Sanjay Mohanty, MD, from Henry Ford Health System, Detroit; Jay S. Lee, MD, from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Amanda Stricklen, RN, MS, and Rachel Ross, RN, MS, both from the Michigan Bariatric Surgery Collaborative (MBSC), Ann Arbor; and Arthur M. Carlin, MD, FACS, from the MBSC and Henry Ford Health System.



"FACS" designates that a surgeon is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.



The Michigan Bariatric Surgery Collaborative is funded by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Detroit.

1 Source: American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery. Estimate of bariatric surgery numbers, 2011-2015. July 2016. https://asmbs.org/resources/estimate-of-bariatric-surgery-numbers. Accessed September 6, 2017.

2 Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Key Substance Use and Mental Health Indicators in the United States: Results from the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. 2016. Publication No. SMA 16-4984. https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUH-FFR1-2015/NSDUH-FFR1-2015/NSDUH-FFR1-2015.pdf. Accessed August 29, 2017.

3 Source: King WC, Chen JY, Courcoulas AP, et al. Alcohol and other substance use after bariatric surgery: prospective evidence from a U.S. multicenter cohort study. Surg Obes Relat Dis. 2017;13(8):1392-1402. <

sup>4 Source: Chou R, Gordon DB, de Leon-Casasola OA, et al. Management of Postoperative Pain: A Clinical Practice Guideline From the American Pain Society, the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine, and the American Society of Anesthesiologists' Committee on Regional Anesthesia, Executive Committee, and Administrative Council. J Pain. 2016;17(2):131-157. 5 Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Prescription opioids. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/opioids/prescribed.html. Updated March 16, 2016. Accessed August 29, 2017.



About the American College of Surgeons

The American College of Surgeons is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and improve the quality of care for all surgical patients. The College is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients. The College has more than 80,000 members and is the largest organization of surgeons in the world. For more information, visit http://www.facs.org (.)
Oct., 24, 2017 -- (BRONX, NY) -- Juan Robles, M.D., attending physician at Montefiore Health System and assistant professor of family and social medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, has earned a $1 million grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to support Bronx students pursuing healthcare careers and create a more inclusive workforce dedicated to underserved communities.

There is often a startling contrast between the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of healthcare providers and the people they treat. For example, only one in 15 doctors is African-American, although African Americans are one-eighth of the U.S. population. One in 20 doctors are Hispanic/Latino despite one in six Americans identifying as Hispanic/Latino. This is a major problem according to published research on disparities, which shows having more diverse healthcare providers enhances communication and trust with patients, strengthens medical research and is essential to addressing the health inequality that plagues our country.

Using this grant money, Dr. Robles will gain expertise in workforce development and expand the Bronx Community Health Leaders (BxCHL), a "pipeline" program he co-founded in 2014 with current Einstein medical student Julissa De La Cruz. The program offers volunteer positions to youth from communities underrepresented in healthcare professions. Working at Montefiore's Family Health Center, the students learn about delivering primary care to underserved people and gain hands-on experience helping patients navigate the healthcare system.

"This program is a bridge for students to reach their potential, cultivating a workforce that reflects the communities we serve," says Dr. Robles. "When we invest in motivated young people who support our community - our clinics, our patients and our neighborhoods thrive. I am honored to be a part of that journey for these students as they become the next generation of homegrown healthcare leaders."

Dr. Robles moved from Honduras to the Bronx when he was 13 years old. He did not speak a word of English at the time. He credits volunteering as a translator for Spanish-speaking patients at the Einstein Community Health Outreach (ECHO) clinic, the first student-coordinated clinic in New York State, with giving him the skills and confidence to apply to medical school.

"We are proud to have Dr. Robles, a success story himself, working in our practices and increasing opportunities for promising students to enter the field of medicine," says Peter A. Selwyn, M.D., M.P.H., professor and chair of family and social medicine at Einstein.

To date, 16 BxCHL students have enrolled in medical schools around the country, including Einstein, Weill Cornell Medical College, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and New York Medical College. Earlier this year, BxCHL students presented research on the program at the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine Annual Spring Conference in San Diego. Their work will also be presented in several national forums including the upcoming 2017 Family Medicine Education Consortium (FMEC), Ohio, and the National Caucus on Arthritis & Musculoskeletal Health Disparities in Washington D.C.

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About Montefiore Health System

Montefiore Health System is one of New York's premier academic health systems and is a recognized leader in providing exceptional quality and personalized, accountable care to approximately three million people in communities across the Bronx, Westchester and the Hudson Valley. It is comprised of 11 hospitals, including the Children's Hospital at Montefiore, Burke Rehabilitation Hospital and close to 200 outpatient care sites. The advanced clinical and translational research at its medical school, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, directly informs patient care and improves outcomes. From the Montefiore-Einstein Centers of Excellence in cancer, cardiology and vascular care, pediatrics, and transplantation, to its preeminent school-based health program, Montefiore is a fully integrated healthcare delivery system providing coordinated, comprehensive care to patients and their families. For more information please visit http://www.montefiore.org. Follow us on Twitter and view us on Facebook and YouTube.

About Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Albert Einstein College of Medicine is one of the nation's premier centers for research, medical education and clinical investigation. During the 2016-2017 academic year, Einstein is home to 717 M.D. students, 166 Ph.D. students, 103 students in the combined M.D./Ph.D. program, and 278 postdoctoral research fellows. The College of Medicine has more than 1,900 full-time faculty members located on the main campus and at its clinical affiliates. In 2016, Einstein received more than $160 million in awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This includes the funding of major research centers at Einstein in aging, intellectual development disorders, diabetes, cancer, clinical and translational research, liver disease, and AIDS. Other areas where the College of Medicine is concentrating its efforts include developmental brain research, neuroscience, cardiac disease, and initiatives to reduce and eliminate ethnic and racial health disparities. Its partnership with Montefiore, the University Hospital and academic medical center for Einstein, advances clinical and translational research to accelerate the pace at which new discoveries become the treatments and therapies that benefit patients. Einstein runs one of the largest residency and fellowship training programs in the medical and dental professions in the United States through Montefiore and an affiliation network involving hospitals and medical centers in the Bronx, Brooklyn and on Long Island. For more information, please visit http://www.einstein.yu.edu, read our blog, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and view us on YouTube.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A new study suggests that people with advanced cancer prefer doctors communicate with them face-to-face with just a notepad in hand rather than repeatedly using a computer. These findings will be presented at the upcoming 2017 Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium in San Diego, California.

"To our knowledge, this is the only study that compares exam room interactions between people with advanced cancer and their physicians, with or without a computer present," said lead study author Ali Haider, MD, an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in the Department of Palliative, Rehabilitation, and Integrative Medicine, which also funded the study.

Many doctors now use a computer software program for managing electronic health records. The researchers were concerned that it might impair communication with patients and also knew from earlier research that people with chronic health concerns, and often accompanying emotional issues, want their doctors to talk to them directly.

About the Study

The researchers filmed four approximately 2-minute videos that featured actors who were carefully scripted and used the same gestures, expressions, and other nonverbal communication in each video to minimize bias:

Video 1: Doctor A in a face-to-face consultation with just a notepad in hand

Video 2: Doctor A in a consultation using a computer

Video 3: Doctor B in a face-to-face consultation with just a notepad in hand

Video 4: Doctor B in a consultation using a computer

The patients in the study had either localized, recurrent, or metastatic disease. Ninety percent were fully physically functional, and all were English speakers. To further standardize and control their assessment, the researchers captured patient information on psychosocial factors, age, and level of education upon enrollment.

The researchers randomly assigned 120 patients to four equal-sized groups. After viewing their first video, the patients completed a validated questionnaire rating the doctor's communication skills, professionalism, and compassion. Subsequently, each group was assigned to a video topic (face-to-face or computer) they had not viewed previously featuring an actor-doctor they had not viewed in the first video. A follow-up questionnaire was given after this round of viewing, and the patients were also asked to rate their overall physician preference.

Key Findings

After the first round of viewing, the patients rated doctors in the face-to-face video as having more compassion and better communication skills and professionalism than the doctors who used the computer in the exam room. After having watched both videos, 72% of participants favored the face-to-face interaction.

"We know that having a good rapport with patients can be extremely beneficial for their health," said Dr. Haider. "Patients with advanced disease need the cues that come with direct interaction to help them along with their care."

The researchers note that their study answers questions about patients' perceptions, but not how to address the issue of computer use in an exam room.

Next Steps

"Our study was done at an outpatient clinic, so it is probably more pertinent in that setting compared to a hospital where patient-doctor interactions are more frequent and rigorous," said Dr. Haider. "We are pretty certain that people will permit another entity in the exam room, but our study shows that if the third entity is a computer, the computer is not preferred."

The researchers believe that they would probably find the same results if the study was conducted with people with early-stage cancer. However, they weren't so sure about a younger population with higher computer literacy and said that population might be the subject of a future study.

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ATTRIBUTION TO THE 2017 PALLIATIVE AND SUPPORTIVE CARE IN ONCOLOGY SYMPOSIUM IS REQUESTED IN ALL NEWS COVERAGE.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - A study of 100 people with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) receiving chemotherapy found that patient and physician perceptions of treatment risk and the likelihood of a cure varied widely. Overall, patients tended to overestimate both the risk of dying due to treatment and the likelihood of a cure. These findings will be presented at the upcoming 2017 Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium in San Diego, California.

"Patients with AML face very challenging treatment decisions that are often placed upon them within days after being diagnosed," said senior study author Areej El-Jawahri, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA. "Because they face a grave decision, they need to understand what the risks of treatment are versus the possibility of a cure."

About the Study

The researchers enrolled 50 patients who were receiving intensive care for AML (which usually meant hospitalization for 4 to 6 weeks) and 50 patients who were receiving non-intensive care (often given as outpatient treatment). The median patient age was 71 years, 92% were white, more than 50% had a college education, and most were from higher income brackets.

Within three days after starting treatment, both the patients and their physicians were given a questionnaire to assess how they perceived the likelihood of dying from the treatment. One month later, they completed a follow-up questionnaire to assess perceptions of prognosis. Within that timeframe, most patients received laboratory results that more definitively established the type and stage of cancer.

Key Findings

Regardless of whether they received intensive or non-intensive care, 63% of patients thought it was somewhat likely they would die due to treatment, and 28% thought it was extremely likely they would die. In contrast, 80% of the treating oncologists thought it was very unlikely that their patients would die due to treatment.

One month later, nearly all (90%) of patients thought it was somewhat or very likely they would be cured of their AML. In contrast, 74% of their oncologists thought it was unlikely or very unlikely that their patients would be cured. The gap between patient and doctor perceptions was most striking for patients receiving non-intensive therapy, with 44% of patients believing they would very likely be cured, while none of their oncologists thought this was very likely.

"There were several very important factors we were not able to capture in our study, including what was actually discussed between patients and their oncologists, and whether patients simply misunderstood or misheard the information conveyed to them," said Dr. El-Jawahri. "Perhaps most importantly, we did not audio-record the discussions between the patients and their physicians, which could provide additional details regarding barriers to accurate prognostic understanding in these conversations."

Prior to this study, the authors had looked at similar perceptions in people with lung, colorectal, and other cancers, as well as in people with blood cancers receiving hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The gaps in perception of treatment risk and cure for patients as compared to their physicians were not as large in those diseases as in AML. The researchers attribute this to higher levels of distress seen in people with AML due to the urgency of their treatment decisions.

Next Steps

The researchers have found that early consideration of palliative care in a treatment plan for patients with solid tumors improves patients' understanding of the prognosis. They hope to implement a similar study in patients with leukemia.

"Clearly there are important communication gaps between oncologists and their patients," said Dr. El-Jawahri. "We need to find ways to help physicians do a better job of communicating with their patients, especially in diseases like AML where stress levels are remarkably high."

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This study was funded by a grant from the National Cancer Institute.

ATTRIBUTION TO THE 2017 PALLIATIVE AND SUPPORTIVE CARE IN ONCOLOGY SYMPOSIUM IS REQUESTED IN ALL NEWS COVERAGE.
What began with two orphanages (one in Fremont and one in Omaha) in the early 1890s has grown into a nonprofit that serves individuals, families and communities statewide.

Today, 125 years later, Lutheran Family Services has offices in 11 cities as far west as North Platte and as far east as Council Bluffs. Its Lincoln presence extends more than 40 years.

After adding a foster care program in 1927, what is now called Lutheran Family Services evolved into a multi-faceted social services organization, offering everything from refugee resettlement aid and veteran assistance to marriage and family counseling and substance abuse programs.

Over the years, Lutheran Family Services stepped out with moral courage to take on tough issues, said President and CEO Ruth Henrichs, who has headed up the organization since 1984.

LFSs services fall under three program focuses: childrens services, behavioral health and community support services, with behavioral health being the largest. When Lancaster County opted to privatize mental health services in 2014, LFS took on a huge chunk of that responsibility. It assumed the countys medication management program, substance abuse and mental health therapies and programs, along with community support services.

Community support services directly support refugees, immigrants and victims of international human trafficking. Caseworkers focus on advocacy, cultural orientation, education, immigration legal services, employment and job readiness training.

$25 million budget

Employing around 350 staff statewide, LFS has a $25 million budget and impacts more than 45,000 people annually. Half of its financial backing comes from federal and state contracts, faith-based organizations, private individual contributions, United Way (nine counties) and the other half from program fees.

Childrens services focus on intervention, well-being and behavioral health. Three Centers for Healthy Families promote healthy family behaviors through parent education and support, family and community awareness, and early detection and intervention for improved physical and mental health. LFS continues to be involved with foster care and adoptions as well. Counseling and treatment programs for children and youth, like the sexual abuse treatment program RSafe (Lincoln, Omaha and Council Bluffs), are also available.

Lutheran Family Services stepped up to the plate when it was invited to community stakeholder meetings involving several health care entities and the City of Lincoln to discuss how to better integrate medical and mental health care.

What they needed was an ambassador to take the vision to reality, explained Todd Reckling, vice president of programs for LFS.

Working with the Community Health Endowment, Lincoln Mayors Office, Region V Services, both Lincoln hospitals, Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department, the Peoples Health Center and others, LFS developed an integrated care model. It included bringing the Peoples Health Center, a federally qualified health center, together with mental health services provided by LFS.

Our mission has called us to be a part of the community and respond to community needs, said Henrichs.

Health 360 clinic

In 2015, Health 360 Integrated Care Clinic opened in the former Lancaster County Community Mental Health Center near 17th and South streets. It moved to its new location at 2301 O St. in May 2016, along with all of LFSs Lincoln services. Also housed under the same roof are a Peoples Health Center location and Genoa QoL Pharmacy.

Its the way of the future, said Henrichs.

The building is purposely located in the middle of six areas identified by the Community Health Endowment as underserved, making access to mental and medical health services more convenient for those Lincolnites. What we brought to that area is not just accessibility but affordability, Reckling shared.

At Health 360, a team of behavioral and physical health specialists consult about each patient, determining their medical and mental health needs right then and there. Clients can also get referrals for more specialized care to meet their total needs, Reckling explained.

Lots of organizations are coming in to partner and deliver services, Henrichs said. Some include Community Crops weekly veggie distribution, a Legal Aid attorney who offers services once a week and Southeast Community Colleges language classes for refugees.

In 2015, with one integrated care team in place, Health 360 experienced 2,047 patient visits, Reckling said. The average client visits four to six times a year.

In 2016, when LFS added another care team, the number of monthly encounters rose from 186 a month in 2015 to 403 a month. Through August 2017, the average was 927 encounters a month.

Through its community support program, LFS assists clients 18 and older diagnosed with a severe and persistent mental health condition. It can help them with things like securing employment, transportation, housing, behavioral therapy and making community connections.

LFS specifically tries to find employers and landlords who will work with the client, said Julie Fisher-Erickson, director of behavioral health for Southeast Nebraska.

We give hope, she said. They see that theres hope out there, and they can change.

The goal is for LFS to work itself out of a job, she explained, and for those individuals to become self-sufficient. One of our benefits is we have all kinds of treatments under one roof, she added.

Issues facing LFSs clients

In her role, Fisher-Erickson reads plenty of assessments, so she is familiar with the issues facing LFSs clients. They range from substance abuse, domestic violence, child protective custody issues, depression, persistent mental illness, unemployment, lack of adequate medical care, legal problems and family conflict.

Although LFS was started by Lutherans, its services are available to everyone. In fact, Henrichs said that data shows that less than 10 percent of those served identify as Lutheran.

We serve everyone, regardless of ability to pay, she said.

Christian faith grounds the organization. As stated among LFSs values, faith empowers its employees to courageous compassion, service with justice and bold decisions.

As LFS continues to evolve, it will do so under a new president and CEO. Henrichs will retire at the end of this year after telling the LFS story for more than 40-plus years and motivating others to get involved. She hopes that more people will come to understand how care of a neighbor affects care of self.

Thats what LFS models. They help people one person at a time, doing things you and I cant, she said.
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology and the Technical University of Denmark have developed a method that makes it possible to map the individual responses of nanoparticles in different situations and contexts. The results pave the way for better nanomaterials and safer nanotechnology and were recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

In the future almost all new technology will be based on nanotechnology in some form. But nanoparticles are temperamental personalities. Even when they look the same from a distance, they are obstinately individual when you zoom in to each individual one.

Svetlana Alekseeva and Christoph Langhammer at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, together with researchers at the Technical University of Denmark, have discovered why different polycrystalline nanoparticles behave so distinctly when they come into contact with hydrogen. This knowledge is essential in order to develop better hydrogen detectors, which are expected to play an important role in the safety of hydrogen cars.

"Our experiments clearly showed how the reaction with hydrogen depends on the specifics of the way in which the nanoparticles are constructed. It was surprising to see how strong the correlation was between properties and response - and how well it could be predicted theoretically," says Svetlana Alekseeva, a Postdoc at the Department of Physics at Chalmers University of Technology.

A nanoparticle of a certain material is comprised of a number of smaller grains or crystals. The number of grains and how they are arranged is therefore crucial in determining how the particle reacts in a certain situation or with a certain substance.

Alekseeva and her collaborators have produced maps - effectively virtual portraits - of individual palladium nanoparticles. The images show the grains as a number of fields which are combined into a map. Some particles consist of a large number of grains, others have fewer grains, and the fields border on one another in different ways.

This new method of characterising nanoparticles is based on a combination of electron microscopy and optical microscopy. The same individuals are examined using both methods and it is possible to monitor their response when they encounter other substances. This therefore makes it possible to map the basic material properties of nanoparticles at an individual level, and see how these correlate with the response of the particles when they interact with their environment.

As a result an almost infinite range of possibilities are opened up for further research and for the development of products and nanomaterials which are both technically optimised and safer from an environmental and health perspective.

The nanoparticles that have been investigated also operate as sensors in themselves. When they are illuminated, they reveal how they react with other substances, such as various gases or fluids. Langhammer's research team is currently working on several projects in this area, including some relating to hydrogen detection.

But knowledge about nanoparticles is needed in a range of different fields in society. These include, for example, in new electronic devices, batteries, fuel cells, catalytic converters, textiles and in chemical engineering and biotechnology. There is still a lot we do not know about how these small particles operate or will come to affect us and the environment in the long term.

"Nanotechnology is developing fast in the world, but so far the research into nanosafety is not happening at the same pace. We therefore need to get a much better grasp of the risks and what distinguishes a hazardous nanoparticle from a non-hazardous one," says Christoph Langhammer, Associate Professor at the Department of Physics, at Chalmers.

"Our work indicates that not everything is what it seems - it's the details that are crucial. To understand if and why nanoparticles are hazardous to humans, animals or nature, we also need to look at them individually. Our new method now allows us to do this."

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Boulder, CO, USA: Fifty million years ago, Bremerton, Washington, may have looked a lot like Iceland: hot new land atop an oceanic spreading center. That land was part of the Siletzia terrane, a thick wedge of basaltic crust that extends from Oregon to British Columbia.

Siletzia has been recognized and studied for decades (by Ray Wells at the USGS, GSA Annual meeting abstract 321-2, and many others). The wedge of oceanic material that forms this terrane is thick, as much as 32 kilometers, and accreted onto North America 50 million years ago.

Yet big questions remain about Siletzia's magmatic and tectonic history and its role in the tectonic evolution of the Pacific Northwest and the Western Cordillera as a whole. For example, what was the source of all that magma? Was Siletzia a series of oceanic plateaus along a spreading center, or the product of a mantle plume? What was the precise age of basalt and how did it relate to ongoing subduction of the Farallon plate under North America?

On Wednesday, 25 October, at the Geological Society of America's 2017 Annual Meeting, Michael Eddy will present new data that sheds light on these questions. Eddy's work supports the hypothesis that Siletzia was an oceanic plateau or island chain built along a northeast-trending spreading center. His high-precision age dates show that oceanic rocks to the northwest in British Columbia are 51 million years old, while similar rocks near Bremerton are a million years younger. "If my timing for the collision between Siletzia and North America is correct, then the rocks in the Bremerton area represent the location of the spreading center during collision," Eddy says.

In this case, that timing was everything. At the same time that hot new crust was building Siletzia near Bremerton, active subduction worked to pull that new crust beneath North America. Eddy's data adds credence to the model that this young crust was still too hot and buoyant to subduct. Instead, it "jammed" the subduction zone and stuck to North America.

Like a pile-up on a highway, Siletzia's jamming of the subduction zone and the subsequent collision likely had a tectonic ripple effect. Eddy's work supports the scenario in which that collision coincides with the deformation of the Cascades, caused crunching of central Washington, impacted the direction of subduction, and may help explain why the Farallon plate broke off on its way under North America.

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Session: T229. Paleocene-Eocene Tectonic and Magmatic Evolution of the Pacific Northwest

Wednesday, 25 October 2017, 8:00 a.m. to 12 p.m. Tahoma 4 (The Conference Center)

Presentation Time: 8:00 a.m.

Session Link: https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2017AM/webprogram/Session42958.html

Paper 321-1; Evidence for the Siletzia Terrane's Origin as a Ridge Centered Oceanic Plateau

Abstract Link: https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2017AM/webprogram/Paper301568.html

Contact: Michael Eddy, meddy@princeton.edu

The Geological Society of America, founded in 1888, is a scientific society with more than 25,000 members from academia, government, and industry in more than 100 countries. Through its meetings, publications, and programs, GSA enhances the professional growth of its members and promotes the geosciences in the service of humankind. Headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, GSA encourages cooperative research among earth, life, planetary, and social scientists, fosters public dialogue on geoscience issues, and supports all levels of earth science education.
The political career of Levon Ter-Petrossian - Armenia's first post-Soviet president from 1991-1998 and current Chairman of the country's leading opposition party Armenian National Congress opposition party - has been defined by his struggle for two things: a democratic Armenia and an Armenia that is at peace with its neighbors.

This is according to a new book - Armenia's Future, Relations with Turkey, and the Karabagh Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan; 1st ed. 2018 edition September 19, 2017), a collection of Ter-Petrossian'a articles, speeches and interviews from 1990 to 2016. It is the first time a collection of his writings from this period have appeared in English translation in compilation.

The volume is edited by Arman Grigoryan, Assistant Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University who also served in the Armenian government from 1991 to 1993. It provides a unique window into the political transformations of this period and the issues that have plagued Armenia's politics since its independence.

"Ter-Petrossian was not a mere politician but also a statesman and an intellectual who led a process of transforming the political discourse in Armenia," said Grigoryan. "In particular, he targeted many of the calcified dogmas of the traditional Armenian nationalist narrative, especially the dogmas related to Armenia's relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan."

His collected writings also forcefully respond to the popular view among Western journalists and academics that clashing ethnic identities and historical hatred are at the root of the Karabagh conflict and the cold war with Turkey.

Addressing Ter-Petrossian's detractors in Armenia and the Armenian diaspora, Grigoryan writes in the foreword: "The overarching theme in all of these arguments is that Armenians have to begin to think and act like a people with a state, rather than a stateless ethnic group, and that doing so requires pragmatism, rational calculation, and rejection of historic grievances, including the ideology of the Armenian Cause, as a basis of politics."

The stakes of the struggle to change this logic, Grigoryan argues, are nothing less than Armenia's future and its ability to reach its potential as an independent, democratic nation.

His foreword concludes: "...Armenia's chances of becoming a 'normal state' [versus a state bound by 'national ideology'] are closely tied to normalization of relations with its neighbors. The alternative is a state, where every democratic challenge is menacingly described as a threat to unity, where the public even refrains from issuing such challenges lest it wets the enemy's appetite, and where the defense minister is seriously pushing the idea of turning the nation into an army..."

Grigoryan gave a presentation on the topic earlier this year in Los Angeles as part of a panel during a conference titled "End of Transition: Armenia 25 Years On, Now What?" The conference, hosted by the University of Southern California's Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies, brought together notable names in media, government, academia and the arts to explore demographic changes, transitions in social and economic policy, the development of formal and informal political and social institutions, bottom-up social change and civil society formation, and the foreign policy challenges Armenia is dealing with.

Grigoryan is exploring the broader topic of war and democratic transition in an upcoming book.

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Teenagers who do not access healthcare and are a certain personality type are at greater risk of dropping out of high school

Teenagers who do not access healthcare when needed are at greater risk of dropping out of high school say researchers from Lancaster University in the UK.

More than one in five young people in the developed world drop out of high school, which leads to a higher risk of unemployment, ill health and crime.

The study in the Journal of Economic Psychology examined data from the US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescents to Adult Health, a nationally representative sample of 90,000 students in grades 7 to 12 at 132 schools.

The authors, Dr Eugenio Zucchelli and Dr. Giuseppe Migali, from Lancaster University said : "Forgone healthcare is a consistently significant predictor" and could be used to identify teenagers at risk of leaving before the age of 18.

Over a third of dropouts do not seek healthcare when needed compared with only over a quarter of other high school students.

Not using healthcare includes not choosing to access healthcare for reasons including "did not know who to see" and "I thought the problem will go away"; this was used as a marker of the ability to assess the long-term consequences of actions.

The researchers excluded teenagers who could not pay or did not have transport to visit the doctor and the ones with chronic conditions.

A risky attitude towards health is also common among more than half of dropouts, who are more likely to smoke, drink and take drugs.

High school graduates and dropouts differ on the Big Five personality traits used by psychologists.

Dropouts are more likely to have combinations of the following traits:

low conscientiousness

neuroticism

introversion

Researchers say "Individuals who forgo their healthcare and present low conscientiousness and introversion have the highest risk of dropout."

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New Rochelle, NY, Oct. 24, 2017 -- Novel approaches to tissue engineering and regenerative medicine are first evaluated and optimized in animal models before making the leap to clinical testing in human subjects. For many of these innovative new techniques and materials to succeed and advance to the clinic, the selection of an appropriate animal model and design of the experiments to gauge performance and outcomes can determine whether a particular approach, and the field in general, continue to move forward. A special issue devoted to the latest research on using animal models in regenerative medicine research is forthcoming in Tissue Engineering, Part C, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. Select articles from the issue are now available online on the Tissue Engineering website.

Guest Editors Jorge Piedrahita, PhD, North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Raleigh, and J. Koudy Williams, DVM, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston Salem, NC oversaw the development of the special issue. They compiled a series of outstanding papers on diverse topics contributed by leading researchers. These include the article entitled "Inflammation-Induced Osteogenesis in a Rabbit Tibia Model," in which F. Cumhur Oner, MD, PhD, et al., University Medical Center Utrecht, Delft University of Technology, and Utrecht University, The Netherlands, examined the inflammatory responses to bacterial infection that can promote bone formation. The researchers showed that the inflammatory response caused by exposure to Staphylococcus aureus antigens, in the absence of bacterial infection, could stimulate bone growth and might be a useful strategy in bone regenerative medicine.

In the article "Rise of the Pigs: Utilization of the Porcine Model to Study Musculoskeletal Biomechanics and Tissue Engineering During Skeletal Growth," Matthew Fisher, PhD and coauthors from North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC School of Medicine, present the unique opportunities and challenges for using pigs as translational models in the development of musculoskeletal regenerative medicine approaches. In particular, the researchers describe the advantages porcine models offer for studying biomechanics.

Johan Lammens, MD, PhD and coauthors from University Hospitals KU Leuven, KU Leuven, Medanex Clinic (Diest), and University of Liege, Belgium, caution that techniques for repairing large bone defects developed in the laboratory will only ultimately be successful in humans if the preclinical studies are performed in a reliable animal model using a bone defect of sufficient size created by following well-defined methods. They share their perspectives in the article entitled "Warning About the Use of Critical-Size Defects for the Translational Study of Bone Repair: Analysis of a Sheep Tibial Model."

"This special issue emphasizes not only the need for appropriate animal models to increase our understanding and knowledge, but also for the final clinical application of regenerative medicine-based products," says Methods Co-Editor-in-Chief John A. Jansen, DDS, PhD, Professor and Head, Department of Biomaterials, Radboud University Medical Center, The Netherlands.

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Click here to register to be notified when the complete special issue on Animal Models is published.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R03AR068112. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

About the Journal

Tissue Engineering is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published 42 times per year online and in print in three parts: Part A, the flagship journal, published 24 times per year; Part B: Reviews, published bimonthly, and Part C: Methods, published 12 times per year. Led by Co-Editors-In-Chief Antonios G. Mikos, PhD, Louis Calder Professor at Rice University, Houston, TX, and Peter C. Johnson, MD, Principal, MedSurgPI, LLC and President and CEO, Scintellix, LLC, Raleigh, NC, the Journal brings together scientific and medical experts in the fields of biomedical engineering, material science, molecular and cellular biology, and genetic engineering. Leadership of Tissue Engineering Parts B (Reviews) and Part C (Methods) is provided by John P. Fisher, PhD, University of Maryland and John A. Jansen, DDS, PhD, Radboud University, respectively. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed online at the Tissue Engineering website. Tissue Engineering is the official journal of the Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS). Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Tissue Engineering website.

About the Publisher

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Stem Cells and Development, Human Gene Therapy, and Advances in Wound Care. Its biotechnology trade magazine, GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 80 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.
By harnessing massive amounts of data on activity within and between snippets of DNA, researchers say it could be possible to reprogram both healthy and diseased cells

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- In fairy tales, all it takes to transform a frog into a prince, a servant into a princess or a mouse into a horse is the wave of a magic wand.

But in the real world, transforming one living thing into another isn't so easy. Only in recent years have scientists discovered how to do it, with tiny individual living cells.

In fact, the team that figured it out won the Nobel Prize, for discovering how to take an ordinary human skin cell and transform it into a stem cell -- the same kind of cell found in embryos. With painstaking effort, such cells can grow up to become any other kind of cell in the body.

And in the last decade, that time-consuming transformation technique has opened the door for discoveries about many diseases, from birth defects to cancer.

But what if scientists could cut out a step, and go straight from skin cell to any other kind of cell?

A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences lays out a way to do it - and avoid all the intermediate steps involved in the other technique, which produces induced pluripotent stem cells.

In the paper, they lay out a way to harnessing the wealth of data now available about DNA activity, and reprogram cells directly. The formula also provides a blueprint for determining the optimal combination of factors and when they should be added to accomplish this reprogramming. Using this formula, the authors were able deduce the factors that the Nobel-winning team discovered, a process that required many years of trial and error.

The concept, developed by a team of University of Michigan scientists together with colleagues from the University of Maryland and Harvard University, combines biological information on genome structure and gene expression with a fair bit of math, using an approach called data-guided control. The paper's authors include world experts on control theory Roger Brockett, Ph.D. of Harvard and U-M mathematics department chair Anthony Bloch, Ph.D.

Though the paper spells out an algorithm for transforming cells -- and successfully predicts factors that are already known to reprogram cells -- it does not directly test the formula in the laboratory. The authors have plans to further test their method, and hope that it can be tried by scientists at Michigan and around the world.

If it bears fruit, they predict it could have applications including regenerating diseased or lost tissue, and fighting cancer.

"Cells in our body naturally specialize," says Indika Rajapakse, Ph.D., the U-M bioinformatics and mathematics researcher who is senior author of the new paper. "What we propose could provide a shortcut to doing the same, to help any cell become a targeted cell type."

Rajapakse notes that the idea of direct reprogramming is not new. In the late 1980s, a team led by the late scientist Harold Weintraub turned skin cells directly into muscle cells by bathing the cells in a type of molecule that encouraged certain genes in the cells' DNA to be "read". Rajapakse trained with Weintraub's colleague Mark Groudine, Ph.D. at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

The new model builds on that idea, by also harnessing the power of these molecules, called transcription factors or TFs.

But instead of bathing the whole cell culture in one TF, the scientists aim to target cells with specific TFs at specific crucial times in their lifespan. They lay out a mathematical control model for harnessing all the information that can now be learned about cells at the molecular level, and combining it to map out the timing and sequence for injecting TFs to get the desired cell type.

"We have so much data now from RNA and transcription factor activity, and from Hi-C data of chromosome configuration that tells us how often two pieces of chromatin are near one another, that we believe we can go from the cell's initial configuration to the desired configuration," says Rajapakse.

The Hi-C technique lets scientists track the location of, and contact between, portions of the DNA/protein complex called the chromatin. So even if two genes sit far apart on a long strand of DNA, they may come in close contact with one another when those looping, folding strands end up next to one another. If one of those genes gets "read", it may produce a transcription factor that then sets in motion the "reading" of the other gene, and the production of a certain protein that plays a key role in transforming the cell in some way.

The amount of data that would come out of analyzing these "topologically associating domains" in just one type of cell is huge. But modern bioinformatics techniques make it easier to make sense of it all.

The first author of the paper is Scott Ronquist, a Ph.D. student who began working with Rajapakse in the Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics department as an undergraduate at U-M. He and former postdoctoral fellow Geoff Patterson, Ph.D., led the effort to use gene expression and TAD data generated in the Rajapakse lab and publicly available gene expression and TF data to test their model. They were able to see patterns in the data that reflected the pace of normal cell differentiation.

Now, they're working on testing the model proactively, in the laboratory of Max Wicha, M.D., the Forbes Professor of Oncology at Michigan Medicine, U-M's academic medical center, and former director of the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center.

"This algorithm provides a blueprint that has important implications for cancer, in that we think cancer stem cells may arise from normal stem cells via similar reprogramming pathways," says Wicha, who is a co-author on the PNAS paper. "This work also has important implications for regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, since it provides a blueprint for generating any desired cell type It also demonstrates the beauty of combining mathematics and biology to unravel the mysteries of nature."

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NOTE: The University has filed for a patent on the algorithm. The work was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.
Oct. 24, 2017, WASHINGTON, D -- NEHI (the Network for Excellence in Health Innovation) called today for a series of regulatory steps and other actions to enable new payment arrangements for high cost cancer drugs. Known as "value-based" or "outcomes-based" contracts, such arrangements tie payments to measurable results in patients, in contrast to prevailing arrangements that tie prices and discounts to the volume of drugs purchased.

At present, relatively few such arrangements exist or have been disclosed publicly, although the U.S. government has apparently reached the outlines of such a deal with the biopharmaceutical company Novartis over its recently approved cell therapy drug, Kymriah. Although value-based contracting itself isn't a total solution to the challenge of high-cost drugs, NEHI argues that it is an "important arrow in the quiver" as health insurers and other payers confront a growing number of these medications.

In a white paper published today, NEHI synthesized perspectives from a group of experts across multiple sectors: biopharmaceutical companies, health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, and patient groups. The paper recommends a number of changes to support thoughtful experimentation in value-based contracting, as follows:

Various stakeholders, including the oncology community, payers, and biopharmaceutical manufacturers, should expedite efforts to improve collection of data and should develop patient-reported outcomes measures for cancer care.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should finalize guidance on the exchange of health care economic information on new, not-yet-approved products. NEHI also recommends that the FDA consider publishing specific guidance to allow communication about off-label uses for cancer drugs, given the likelihood that drugs approved for use in one type of cancer are likely to be used for other cancer indications.

The Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services should create new safe harbors to the federal Anti-Kickback Statute to allow for various activities that can support value-based contracting. These activities, such as when biopharmaceutical companies help to ensure that patients adhere to medication, should not be construed as illegal inducements and should be allowed through value-based contracts without threat of legal sanction.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services should make appropriate exemptions under Government Best Price and related federal health program rules to allow for value-based contracting without triggering other price cuts and unreasonable losses for biopharmaceutical manufacturers. If CMS cannot achieve a regulatory solution, Congress should step in and revise the law accordingly.

Congress should direct the National Academy of Medicine to investigate new, long-term approaches to financing high-cost therapies for cancer and other diseases, as value-based contracting by itself will not address that the challenges that high-cost drugs pose for the financial sustainability of health care.

"We are in the midst of a revolution in cancer care in which new, more personalized drugs will help many patients, but at high cost," said Susan Dentzer, NEHI's president and chief executive officer.

Pointing to an estimate from QuintilesIMS that more than 600 unique molecules are now in late-phase cancer drug development, she said, "Value-based contracting constitutes one approach that will help to ensure that we as a nation obtain better value for the money that may be expended on these drugs."

NEHI's new white paper builds on recommendations made in a March 2017 white paper on operational and policy barriers to value-based contracting in the United States.

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Read the paper or access other resources on Value-Based Contracting at https://www.nehi.net/writable/publication_files/file/nehi_vbconcology_final.pdf.

During a webinar at 10 AM ET on October 26, NEHI will explore prospects for value-based purchasing in oncology. Dentzer will moderate a discussion with Claire Brunken, Executive Director of Outcomes Projects for Novartis, and Dr. Michael Sherman, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President of Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare.

Register for the webinar at https://global.gotowebinar.com/manageWebinar.tmpl?webinar=5447922171940064003

About NEHI (The Network for Excellence in Health Innovation):

NEHI is a national nonprofit, nonpartisan organization composed of stakeholders from across all key sectors of health and health care. Its mission is to advance innovations that improve health, enhance the quality of health care, and achieve greater value for the money spent. NEHI consults with its broad membership, and conducts independent, objective research and convenings, to accelerate these innovations and bring about changes within health care and in public policy.
Provides information on lakes in 17 US Northeastern and upper Midwestern states

Countless numbers of vacationers spent this summer enjoying lakes for swimming, fishing and boating. But are they loving these lakes to death?

The water quality of the nation's lakes is threatened not only by the things people do in and around them, but, say scientists, by less obvious factors such as agriculture and changes in climate. Because lakes are as distinct as one snowflake from another, they may respond differently to these challenges.

To better understand the complex factors that threaten lake water quality, scientists need data on many lakes in various environmental settings. Unfortunately, much of the lake and geographic data needed for such studies is not easily accessible. The datasets exist in multiple formats in government, university and private databases  and sometimes in file drawers.

Now, a new "geography of lake water quality," called LAGOS, is allowing scientists to understand lakes in ways that will better inform water policy and management. LAGOS, or the LAke multi- scaled GeOSpatial and temporal database, includes information on 50,000 lakes in 17 U.S. Northeastern and upper Midwestern states.

A team of 80 scientists in fields including limnology, ecology, computer science, geographic and information sciences, and other disciplines developed LAGOS. Their recent paper in the journal GigaScience makes the results available to researchers, policymakers and the public.

"We're at an exciting time in environmental science, when people are recognizing that the big problems we face require us to work together across disciplinary boundaries and to openly share data, methods and tools," said paper co- author Kendra Cheruvelil, a scientist at Michigan State University (MSU).

With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the researchers collected water quality information from scientists, government and tribal environmental agency personnel, and citizens.

"Efforts like LAGOS can build the capacity for broad-scale research on the environment," said lead author Patricia Soranno, also of MSU. "They've driven home the importance of Big Data approaches that are very collaborative so science can better inform policy and management to preserve water quality for future generations."

The resulting database is the work of dozens of people who collected and processed water quality data, thousands of others who shared water quality data, and more than 15 researchers who worked together for several years.

The LAGOS team gathered information for 50,000 lakes in 17 states from digital maps -- melding land use, geology and climate data -- and combined it with water quality data.

"High-quality, long-term data are essential to addressing questions about ecosystem change," said David Garrison, chair of the NSF Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Working Group. "This is a wonderful resource for researchers and managers focused on lakes and other aquatic ecosystems."

NSF LTER and other scientists are participants in the LAGOS project, including those funded by NSF's MacroSystems Biology, Critical Zone Observatory, and Water Sustainability and Climate programs.

"Enabling access to clean drinking water and the services lakes provide, such as fishing and recreation, are among the greatest environmental challenges we face today," said Liz Blood, program director for NSF's MacroSystems Biology program.

"Now, a comprehensive database has been created that will provide easy access to information on water quality, and the physical and ecological factors that affect it, across scales from individual lakes to entire regions," Blood said. "It will be a valuable resource for researchers, managers, landowners and citizen scientists to evaluate the many factors affecting lakes."

Added Richard Yuretich, program director for NSF's Critical Zone Observatory program, "This information on thousands of lakes will enable reliable analyses of water quality trends over space and time. It will be very helpful in assessing controls on lake health such as population growth, land use, and climate, and will benefit environmental and human well-being now and in the future."

LAGOS scientists hope the database will encourage more research on lakes, which, said Soranno, are an important part of many people's lives.

Added co-author Corinna Gries, an information scientist at the University of Wisconsin, "This is a great example of how environmental research can leverage a wide range of information, such as map-based data from Google Earth, and combine it with water samples collected by scientists and citizens."

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Irrigation for agriculture is the largest use of fresh water around the globe, but precise records and maps of when and where water is applied by farmers are difficult to locate. Now a team of researchers has discovered how to track water used in agriculture.

In a paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the researchers detail their use of satellite images to produce annual maps of irrigation. The findings, the scientists said, will help farmers, water resource managers and others understand agricultural irrigation choices and make better water management decisions.

"We want to know how human activities are having an impact on the environment," said hydrogeologist David Hyndman of Michigan State University (MSU), principal investigator of the project. "Irrigation nearly doubles crop yields and increases farmer incomes, but unsustainable water use for irrigation is resulting in depletion of groundwater aquifers around the world. The question is: 'How can we best use water?'"

The paper highlights the need to know when and where irrigation is occurring to effectively manage water resources.

The project focuses on an economically important agricultural region of the central U.S.--the Republican River Basin--that overlies portions of Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas, and provides surface water and groundwater to the High Plains Aquifer. The team found that irrigation in this area roughly doubled between 2002 and 2016.

Water use in this region can be complicated because it is regulated to preserve stream flow into Kansas in accordance with the Republican River Compact of 1942.

"Previously, we knew what farms were equipped to irrigate, but not which fields were actually irrigated in any particular year," said Jillian Deines, also of MSU and the paper's lead author. "Our irrigation maps provide this information over 18 years and can be used to understand the factors that contribute to irrigation decisions."

The researchers used Google Earth Engine, a cloud-computing platform that makes large-scale satellite and environmental data analyses available to the public, to quantify changes in irrigation from year to year--an important finding for farmers, crop consultants and policymakers working to improve the efficiency of irrigation.

Google Earth Engine has been an asset for computing the large number of satellite images needed, the scientists said. "It allows researchers to use consistent methods to examine large regions through time," Deines said.

The project, which also involves MSU research associate Anthony Kendall, is supported by the joint National Science Foundation (NSF)-USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Water, Sustainability and Climate (WSC) program and the joint NSF-NIFA Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water Systems (INFEWS) program.

"Knowing what to plant, how much land to plant, and how much irrigation water is necessary to support a crop through harvest has been a challenge for farmers throughout time," said Tom Torgersen, NSF program officer for WSC and INFEWS. "Farmers can now envision a future where models will provide options to help guide decisions for greater efficiency and crop productivity."

Program managers at USDA-NIFA said that demand for agricultural products will likely increase in the future, while water for irrigation may decrease due to water quality issues and competitive uses.

The Republican River Basin researchers "leveraged new computing power to handle the 'Big Data' of all available Landsat satellite scenes, and developed irrigation maps that help explain human decisions about irrigation water use," said Jim Dobrowolski, program officer in NIFA's Division of Environmental Systems. The maps hold the promise, he said, of the ability to make future water use predictions.

A NASA graduate fellowship program award also funded the research.

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Infrared data from NASA satellites helped confirm that former Tropical Depression 27W has strengthened into a tropical storm near Guam. The storm has been renamed Tropical Storm Saola and NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed the system in infrared light to determine the location of its strongest storms.

The U.S. Territory of Guam has issued a Small Craft Advisory and High Surf Advisory for the island that extends from Oct. 24 to Oct. 25.

Infrared light provides valuable temperature data to forecasters and cloud top temperatures give clues about highest, coldest, strongest storms within a hurricane.

On Oct. 24 at 12:45 a.m. EDT (0425 UTC) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed Tropical Storm Saola's cloud top temperatures in infrared light. MODIS found cloud top temperatures of strongest thunderstorms were as cold as or colder than minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62.2 Celsius) in two areas, south and southwest of the center.

Cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) that animated multispectral satellite imagery showed the main convection has sheared southwestward of a partially exposed, broad, low level circulation center. That indicates that the storm was still being battered by vertical wind shear.

On Oct. 24 at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) the center of Tropical Storm Saola was located near 13.6 degrees north latitude and 141.1 degrees east longitude, about 159 nautical miles west of Navsta, Guam. The island of Guam is located approximately 3,300 miles West of Hawaii, and 1,500 miles east of the Philippines and south of Japan. Guam is a territory of the United States and its residents are U.S. citizens.

Saola had maximum sustained winds near 40 knots (46 mph/74 kph) and was moving to the northwest at 25 knots (28.7 mph/46.3 kph).

The National Weather Service in Guam issued a Small Craft Advisory until 6 p.m. CHST (local time) on Wednesday, Oct. 25. NWS Guam noted: "As Tropical Storm Saola moves away from the Marianas, combined seas of 10 to 13 feet will subside to 8 to 9 feet Wednesday night, Oct. 25. Fresh to strong winds will prevail through Wednesday decreasing Wednesday night."

There's also a High Surf Advisory in effect for Guam until Wednesday, Oct. 25 at 6 p.m. CHST, local time. The Advisory states "expect hazardous surf of 12 to 14 feet along east facing reefs and 8 to 10 feet along south facing reefs. Along west and north facing reefs...surf will be hazardous up to 9 feet. Surf will remain hazardous through Wednesday."

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expects that Saola will continue strengthening and become a typhoon by Oct. 25 as it moves in a northwesterly direction. Extended forecasts call for the storm to curve to the northeast beginning on Oct. 27 when it is parallel to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan.

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For updated forecasts on Guam, visit: http://www.prh.noaa.gov/guam/
Officers at Lancaster County's juvenile detention center don't believe the center is adequately staffed to protect the youth there from assaulting each other or staff, their union said in a news release Tuesday.

Members of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 77, which represents detention officers at the Youth Services Center, unanimously agreed in a recent survey the center lacks adequate staff, the release said.

None of the 19 officers in the union's anonymous survey said they believe the administration pays sufficient attention to the staff's safety and security concerns, according to the release.

"For several years, FOP No. 77 has repeatedly warned the county and the (center's) administration that the YSC is not adequately staffed to protect staff and residents from resident assaults," said Tom McCarty, the union's attorney. "These warnings and concerns have been dismissed."

The union's announcement Tuesday comes just more than two weeks after five detention officers were assaulted by two teenage boys following breakfast. One officer needed to be hospitalized.

Administrators ignored staff concerns and denied requests for additional officers after staff reported rising tension among a specific group of youth there, the union alleged.

The "troubling" assault is not an isolated incident, according to the union, but part of an increase in assaults coming amid diminished staffing levels inside the center in southwest Lincoln.

In a statement, Lancaster County Board Chairman Todd Wiltgen declined Tuesday to address the union's allegations, because he believes it is inappropriate to comment as the union and county negotiate a contract.

"Lancaster County remains committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of juveniles in custody and staff at the Youth Services Center," Wiltgen said in a statement. "We continually monitor the situation."

The center remains in complete compliance with Nebraska Crime Commission juvenile detention standards, Wiltgen said.

Thirty-six juveniles, most awaiting post-adjudication placement in group homes or therapeutic programs, were housed at the center Tuesday, Wiltgen said.

This year through Oct. 13, the center reported 39 assaults between residents and six assaults on staff, the union said.

The center had 31 resident-on-resident assaults and seven on staff in all of 2016, the release said.

Those figures represent total incidents, not total staff assaulted, McCarty said.

Before the Oct. 9 assaults on staff, officers on two occasions reported rising tension among a group of boys, the union said.

The day before, officers asked administrators to call in more staff to "prevent an altercation," but they did not, the union said.

The next morning, another officer said she didn't feel safe working with the same group of boys because of rising tension and asked for more staff to help her, but her request was denied, according to the union.

Around 8 a.m. following breakfast, two boys assaulted staff as they tried to calm one of the boys, who was agitated, Wiltgen said.

The residents, who were physically mature, were the ones officers had previously warned about, the union said.

The officer hospitalized suffered bruising, a swollen-shut eye and a broken hand that required surgery, the release said.

Wiltgen said that employee was released from the hospital later that day.

Several other officers received medical attention at the center for their injuries, the release said.

One of the teens reportedly bragged about the amount of staff blood on the floor after the assault.

In September, a resident bled and spit on an officer during an incident, but administrators denied the officer permission to change his clothes afterward.

And in June, administrators let the defensive training certifications for several officers expire, the release said. It took the union notifying county officials this had happened to prompt them to offer abbreviated training to correct the issue, the union alleged.

The county has patched holes in detention officer staffing using administrative staff instead of hiring more officers, the union said.

The number of full-time officers at the center employed by the county decreased from 36 in 2012 to 30. Eleven officers are not part of the union, which bargains on behalf of all 30 officers there.

The center's director, Sheli Schindler, didn't respond to a request for comment.

Safety and security are top priorities for the union, McCarty said in an interview.

"Wed like to see the Youth Services Center increase staff and safety among its priorities," he said.

To read the union's full news release, scroll below.
(Portland, Ore.) October 23, 2017 - Understanding the puzzling and complex nature of concussion and how to treat it will take a whole new way of approaching the problem, according to new research led by Portland State University.

The researchers advocate the use of systems science - a discipline that analyzes complex problems as whole systems and integrates research findings from different disciplines.

"Complex systems are those in which the behavior of the whole is not entirely explained by the behavior of its parts," said Erin Kenzie, systems science researcher at Portland State.

"And traumatic brain injury, or TBI, is very complex. It's been called the most complicated disease of the most complex organ of the body," she added. Mild traumatic brain injury is also known as concussion.

In the past decade, systems science has been used to understand conditions such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, drug abuse and depression.

Traditional methods of studying disease are important for understanding small pieces of the puzzle, Kenzie said, but to understand why some people recover quickly from concussion and others do not, requires researchers to also look at the big picture.

Kenzie said the problems in studying concussion include the fact that there is no single definition that is accepted across scientific disciplines. There's also disagreement and uncertainty about how to diagnose, evaluate, measure and classify TBI.

"Every clinical trial for TBI treatment to date has failed to demonstrate reliable and safe improvement in outcomes," she said. "Systems science models can be used to develop new ways of classifying TBI, which is critical for designing better studies."

The United States sees as many as 3.8 million cases of TBI a year, mostly concussions. A significant number of patients experience prolonged physical, emotional or cognitive impairments months after the injury.

Kenzie's team included researchers from Oregon Health & Science University, Veterans Affairs Portland Health Care System and Brigham Young University. Their study was published on Sept. 28 by Frontiers in Neurology.

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About Portland State University (PSU)

As Oregon's only urban public research university, Portland State offers tremendous opportunity to 27,000 students from all backgrounds. Our mission to "Let Knowledge Serve the City" reflects our dedication to finding creative, sustainable solutions to local and global problems. Our location in the heart of Portland, one of America's most dynamic cities, gives our students unmatched access to career connections and an internationally acclaimed culture scene. U.S. News & World Report ranks us among the nation's top 10 most innovative universities. http://www.pdx.edu | @PSUinfoandnews
Across very different cultures - Ghana and the United States - when parents acknowledge the perspectives of their adolescent children and encourage them to express themselves, the youths have a stronger sense of self-worth, intrinsic motivation, and engagement, and also have less depression. Yet having the latitude to make decisions appears to function differently in the two cultures, with positive outcomes for youths in the United States but not in Ghana.

Those are the conclusions of a new study by researchers at Clark University that looked at approaches to parenting teenagers in the two countries. The study appears in the journal Child Development.

"A parenting approach that allows teens to feel they are being heard has been linked to youths being happier, more self-motivated, and more confident," explains Kristine N. Marbell-Pierre, head of guidance and counseling at Ghana International School, who was at Clark University when she led the study. "This type of parenting is considered western in its approach and there have been questions about its benefit in nonwestern, more hierarchical cultures that place greater emphasis on respect for and obedience to elders by children and youths. In our study, helping adolescents feel that their perspective mattered was helpful to youths - in both Ghana and the United States - while the role of decision making and choice differed between the two cultures."

The researchers examined responses to questionnaires filled out by 401 adolescents in seventh and eighth grades; 245 were from the United States and 156 were from Ghana. Teens answered questions about the extent to which their parents acknowledged their point of view and allowed them to make decisions, have choices, and express their opinions. Questionnaires also assessed the extent to which adolescents perceived their parents as controlling their behavior, as well as adolescents' academic motivation, sense of self-worth, level of depression, and perception of themselves as independent from their parents or as a unit with their parents.

The study found that parenting approaches that encouraged students to express themselves and acknowledged their points of view boosted youths' self-motivation, engagement in school, and self-worth, and decreased their levels of depression in both countries. Allowing adolescents to make decisions and have choices was associated with positive outcomes only in the United States. This difference in the effects of who makes decisions and of choice was in part due to how adolescents viewed themselves, the authors found: Those who saw themselves as independent felt that being allowed to make decisions supported their autonomy, while this was not the case for youths who perceived themselves as more a part of the family unit.

"Our study resolves conflicting findings from previous studies," says Wendy Grolnick, professor of psychology at Clark University, who coauthored the study. "It suggests that supporting adolescents' sense of agency is universally beneficial, but how this support is given may not necessarily look the same across cultures."

The authors caution that while there are cultural differences overall between Ghana and the United States with respect to factors such as the extent to which autonomy is fostered in youths, there are also important variations across families within each culture that contribute to patterns for subgroups and individuals.

The findings have implications for how parents in different cultures can support positive development in their adolescents, suggest the authors. While some forms of support appear to function similarly across cultures, others appear to be culture-specific. Practitioners who work with parents should consider cultural differences as they recommend specific parenting strategies.

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The study was supported by Clark University's Frances L. Hiatt School of Psychology and the Jacob and Frances Hiatt Endowment.

Summarized from Child Development, Parental Autonomy Support in Two Cultures: The Moderating Effects of Adolescents' Self-Construals by Marbell-Pierre, KN (Ghana International School, formerly at Clark University), and Grolnick, WS, Stewart, AL, and Raftery-Helmer, JN (Clark University). Copyright 2017 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved.
Volcanic eruptions have been known to cool the global climate, but they can also exacerbate the melting of ice sheets, according to a paper published today in Nature Communications.

Researchers who analyzed ice cores and meltwater deposits found that ancient eruptions caused immediate and significant melting of the ice sheet that covered much of northern Europe at the end of the last ice age, some 12,000 to 13,000 years ago.

"Over a time span of 1,000 years, we found that volcanic eruptions generally correspond with enhanced ice sheet melting within a year or so," says lead author Francesco Muschitiello, who completed the research as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

These weren't volcanoes erupting on or near the ice sheet, but located a thousand miles away in some cases. The eruptions heaved huge clouds of ash into the sky, and when the ash fell on the ice sheet, its darker color made the ice absorb more solar heat than usual.

"We know that if you have darker ice, you decrease the reflectance and it melts more quickly. It's basic science," says Muschitiello. "But no one so far has been able to demonstrate this direct link between volcanism and ice melting when it comes to ancient climates."

The discovery comes from the cross-sections of deposits, called glacial varves, most of which had been collected in the 1980s and 1990s. Varves are the layered sediments that form when meltwater below an ice sheet routes large amounts of debris into lakes near the sheet's edge. Like the rings of a tree, the layers of a glacial varve tell the story of each year's conditions; a thicker layer indicates more melting, since there would have been a higher volume of water to carry the sediment.

The team also compared the varves to cores from the Greenland ice sheet, whose layers contain a record of ancient atmospheric conditions. Testing of those layers for sulfates revealed which years experienced explosive volcanic eruptions, which tend to release large amounts of ash. Matching up the ice layers with varve layers from the same time periods, the team found that years with explosive volcanic activity corresponded to thicker varve layers, indicating more melting of the northern European ice sheet.

Muschitiello and his colleagues studied a period ranging from 13,200 to 12,000 years ago, when the last ice age was transitioning into today's warm climate. They focused specifically on volcanic eruptions in the northern high latitudes--events similar to the 2010 eruptions of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Although that eruption was relatively minor, its large ash cloud shut down air traffic across most of Europe for about a week.

How much melting could an eruption like that cause? "It's difficult to put an exact number to it," says glaciologist and coauthor James Lea from the University of Liverpool. "It depends on many factors." Running thousands of model simulations, the team found that the amount of melting depends on the individual eruption, which season it occurs in, the snowpack conditions at the time, and the elevation of the ice sheet. "Change any one of these and you would get different amounts of melt," says Lea. In the worst scenarios, the model predicted that ash deposition would remove between 20 centimeters and almost one meter of ice from the surface of the highest parts of the ice sheet.

The model results should be taken with a pinch of salt, Muschitiello cautions, due to uncertainties about past conditions. However, because the team simulated a very broad range of potential conditions, he's confident that the ice sheet's real response lies somewhere within their range.

Michael Sigl, a paleoclimatologist from the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland who wasn't involved in the new study, says the hypothesis that ash particles might counteract the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions is intriguing. But, he said, "coincidences in the timing of rapid ice-sheet melting events and eruption dates do not automatically imply causation, and there may be other scenarios that could be consistent with the presented data." Sigl's own work has found a link between eruption-induced ozone depletion and deglaciation in the Southern Hemisphere. Nevertheless, he says, the new study shows that more work is needed to understand the effects of aerosol emissions from volcanic eruptions.

The preliminary results suggest that "present day ice sheets are potentially very vulnerable to volcanic eruptions," says Muschitiello. They also point to a possible hole in the climate models that scientists use to make predictions about the future: Models currently don't simulate the ice sheets' response to changes in particulate deposition from the atmosphere in an interactive way.

Another intriguing implication is that previous research has suggested that melting ice sheets and glaciers could increase the frequency of volcanic eruptions in glaciated areas by lightening loads on earth's crust, allowing underlying magma to rise. If the link between volcanism and ice sheet melting is confirmed, it could indicate the presence of a so-called "positive feedback loop" in which eruptions exacerbate melting, and more melting causes more eruptions, and so on.

Muschitiello says the study "can give us hints about the mechanisms at play when you're expecting rapid climate change."

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Muschitiello is now a research scientist at Uni Research and the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research in Bergen, Norway. Other authors of the paper are Francesco Pausata at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Douglas Mair from the University of Liverpool, and Barbara Wohlfarth from Stockholm University.

The paper, "Enhanced ice sheet melting driven by volcanic eruptions during the last deglaciation," is available from the authors or press@nature.com. After it is published, it will appear online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01273-1.

Scientist contacts:

Francesco Muschitiello fmuschit@ldeo.columbia.edu

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is Columbia University's home for Earth science research. Its scientists develop fundamental knowledge about the origin, evolution and future of the natural world, from the planet's deepest interior to the outer reaches of its atmosphere, on every continent and in every ocean, providing a rational basis for the difficult choices facing humanity. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu | @LamontEarth

The Earth Institute, Columbia University mobilizes the sciences, education and public policy to achieve a sustainable earth. http://www.earth.columbia.edu.
Nanotechnology plays an important role in removing toxic chemicals found in the soil. Currently more than 70 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund sites are using or testing nanoparticles to remove or degrade environmental contaminants. One of these -- nano-zero-valent iron -- is widely used, though its effect on organisms has not been examined.

In a recent experiment, a team of scientists from UC Santa Barbara tested the effect of sulfurized nano-zero-valent iron (FeSSi) on a common freshwater alga (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii). They found that FeSSi picked up cadmium from a watery medium and alleviated cadmium toxicity to that alga for more than a month. Their results appear in the journal ACS Nano.

"However, when FeSSi was doing what it was designed to do, we found it was up to 10 times more toxic when bound to cadmium than without," said lead author Louise Stevenson, a postdoctoral scholar in UCSB's Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology (EEMB). "The current standards for what is an acceptable concentration to use are based on data from the particle itself unbound to the contaminant. Our work suggests that those allowable limits potentially could be huge underestimations of the actual toxicity."

To simulate a precipitation event in which toxic material from soil washes into a waterway, the researchers dosed C. reinhardtii with the cadmium-laced FeSSi and waited an hour before taking measurements. They found that organic material the algae itself produced as a byproduct of photosynthesis mitigated the toxicity of FeSSi and allowed the nanoparticle to remediate up to four times as much cadmium.

"The organic material makes the FeSSi particle less toxic, which allows a greater zone of remediation and increases the cadmium concentrations that can be used," Stevenson said. "That's interesting because every natural system contains some organic material. Along with the toxic effect of the nanoparticles just on cell viability, we identified an important feedback between organic materials produced by the algae itself decreasing toxicity, which decreases toxicity to the algae.

According to Stevenson, the environmental effects of nanotechnology are very context specific, making overarching predictions difficult. So, the UCSB team designed a dynamic ecological model that can be used to extrapolate what they empirically tested. The investigators amassed enough data to develop a series of equations to describe the dynamics of the concentrations they tested.

"We're developing new technology faster than we can predict its environmental impact," Stevenson noted. "That makes it very important to design experiments that are ecologically and environmentally relevant but also get at dynamics that can be extrapolated to other systems."

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The paper's multifaceted approach stems from an interdisciplinary collaboration. Stevenson is an empirical toxicologist and ecological modeler and her co-authors Arturo Keller, a professor at UCSB's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, and Yiming Su, a graduate student who visited the Keller Lab from Tongji University in Shanghai and developed FeSSi, are environmental chemists. Co-author Roger Nisbet, an EEMB professor, is a theoretical ecologist. Additional co-authors are Adeyemi Adeleye, a Bren School alumni who is a National Research Council researcher with the EPA, and Yalei Zhang of Tongji University in Shanghai.

This research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Oct. 24, 2017 -- A rash of earthquakes in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico recorded between 2008 and 2010 was likely due to fluids pumped deep underground during oil and gas wastewater disposal, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.

The study, which took place in the 2,200-square-mile Raton Basin along the central Colorado-northern New Mexico border, found more than 1,800 earthquakes up to magnitude 4.3 during that period, linking most to wastewater injection well activity. Such wells are used to pump water back in the ground after it has been extracted during the collection of methane gas from subterranean coal beds.

One key piece of the new study was the use of hydrogeological modeling of pore pressure in what is called the "basement rock" of the Raton Basin - rock several miles deep that underlies the oldest stratified layers. Pore pressure is the fluid pressure within rock fractures and rock pores.

While two previous studies have linked earthquakes in the Raton Basin to wastewater injection wells, this is the first to show that elevated pore pressures deep underground are well above earthquake-triggering thresholds, said CU Boulder doctoral student Jenny Nakai, lead study author. The northern edges of the Raton Basin border Trinidad, Colorado, and Raton, New Mexico.

"We have shown for the first time a plausible causative mechanism for these earthquakes," said Nakai of the Department of Geological Sciences. "The spatial patterns of seismicity we observed are reflected in the distribution of wastewater injection and our modeled pore pressure change."

A paper on the study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. Co-authors on the study include CU Boulder Professors Anne Sheehan and Shemin Ge of geological sciences, former CU Boulder doctoral student Matthew Weingarten, now a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, and Professor Susan Bilek of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro.

The Raton Basin earthquakes between 2008 and 2010 were measured by the seismometers from the EarthScope USArray Transportable Array, a program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to measure earthquakes and map Earth's interior across the country. The team also used seismic data from the Colorado Rockies Experiment and Seismic Transects (CREST), also funded by NSF.

As part of the research, the team simulated in 3-D a 12-mile long fault gleaned from seismicity data in the Vermejo Park region in the Raton Basin. The seismicity patterns also suggest a second, smaller fault in the Raton Basin that was active from 2008-2010.

Nakai said the research team did not look at the relationship between the Raton Basin earthquakes and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

The new study also showed the number of earthquakes in the Raton Basin correlates with the cumulative volume of wastewater injected in wells up to about 9 miles away from the individual earthquakes. There are 28 "Class II" wastewater disposal wells - wells that are used to dispose of waste fluids associated with oil and natural gas production - in the Raton Basin, and at least 200 million barrels of wastewater have been injected underground there by the oil and gas industry since 1994.

"Basement rock is typically more brittle and fractured than the rock layers above it," said Sheehan, also a fellow at CU's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. "When pore pressure increases in basement rock, it can cause earthquakes."

There is still a lot to learn about the Raton Basin earthquakes, said the CU Boulder researchers. While the oil and gas industry has monitored seismic activity with seismometers in the Raton Basin for years and mapped some sub-surface faults, such data are not made available to researchers or the public.

The earthquake patterns in the Raton Basin are similar to other U.S. regions that have shown "induced seismicity" likely caused by wastewater injection wells, said Nakai. Previous studies involving CU Boulder showed that injection wells likely caused earthquakes near Greeley, Colorado, in Oklahoma and in the mid-continent region of the United States in recent years.

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For more information contact Jim Scott in CU Boulder media relations at jim.scott@colorado.edu or 303-492-3114.
Millions of people could benefit from a new study that is seeking novel solutions to the problems of infectious diseases and emerging epidemics in Africa.

Teams of scientists from Africa and the UK are to pool their expertise in dozens of research projects across the continent.

They will seek to develop better treatments for conditions such as malaria and sleeping sickness, and to be better prepared for epidemics such as Ebola.

The 7 million initiative - named Tackling Infections to Benefit Africa, or Tiba, after the Swahili word to cure infection - aims to harness and develop expertise in partner countries.

Tiba's programme of research will be set by its partners in Africa, who will apply their own perspective to address the continent's infectious disease problems.

Researchers aims to improve the health of affected populations by strengthening every part of the health system - from lab research to clinical treatments - on a continental scale.

The initiative will involve teams from Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe, supported by experts in infectious disease and global health at the University of Edinburgh.

Tiba is funded by the National Institute for Health Research through the Global Challenges Research Fund.

Professor Francisca Mutapi, Tiba Deputy Director at the University of Edinburgh, said: "The key to this initiative is that Africa will be setting its own research agenda. We are working closely with governments and drivers of health policy, to ensure recommendations from research are taken up and the people of Africa can benefit from our collective findings."

Professor Mark Woolhouse, Tiba Director at the University of Edinburgh said: "This project is a unique opportunity to improve the ways that African health systems tackle infectious diseases. By harnessing our collective expertise to gain a better understanding of what works best, we hope to reduce the burden of infectious disease for millions of Africans."

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Clinically aggressive juvenile offenders on probation in Cook County, Illinois, who participated in a two-week intervention program focusing on reducing risky behavior were four times less likely to be incarcerated in the 12 months after the intervention than their peers who participated in an information-based health promotion program.a pair of handcuffs

The findings, by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago, are published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Mounting evidence suggests that incarceration frequently exacerbates psychiatric conditions, including aggression, among youth and leads to further incarceration.

"Most juvenile offenders are released back into the community following arrest, but without new skills for coping with the environmental triggers that may have prompted behaviors leading to arrest, and they are at high risk for incarceration," said Ashley Kendall, postdoctoral fellow in the UIC School of Public Health and first author on the paper.

Kendall and her colleagues wanted to measure the efficacy of a two-week psycho-social intervention for juvenile offenders serving probation on future aggression and incarceration. They worked closely with the Cook County Department of Juvenile Probation to evaluate the efficacy of PHAT Life (Preventing HIV/AIDS among Teens), which focuses on recognizing triggers that lead to risky behavior, be it sexual or aggressive in nature, and guide youth through envisioning ways to cope with "hot" feelings that prompt risk taking. PHAT Life was developed by Geri Donenberg, professor of medicine in the UIC College of Medicine and senior author on the paper.

The researchers compared participation in PHAT Life to an equally intensive health information program among 310 participants, ages 13 to 17 years old, residing in Cook County and on probation. In this randomized, controlled study, the average age of participants was 16 years old; about 30 percent of participants were female and 90 percent were black.

Participants were asked to complete aggression surveys before the start of the intervention programs, and again six months and 12 months after the intervention. Each time they took the surveys, they were asked to reflect back on their aggression levels over the previous six months.

Prior to the beginning of the interventions, 71 participants reported clinically significant aggression in the surveys. "This means that these participants reported levels of aggressive behavior that typically have significant negative impact on their lives," Kendall said. "These youth reported they did things like physically attack people, destroy others' property and yell often."

The PHAT Life program focused on factors involved in risky behaviors, including unhealthy relationships, substance use, emotional regulation and peer influence. Youth identified unique people, places, situations or moods that triggered high-risk behavior and developed specific plans for addressing the triggers.

The control group participated in a program that provided information on nutrition, substance use, violence and HIV/AIDS. Participants also reviewed tips for preventing interpersonal conflicts from becoming violent.

The programs consisted of eight sessions lasting 90 to 120 minutes each over the course of two weeks. They were delivered at detention alternative programs run by the Cook County Department of Juvenile Probation called evening reporting centers, or ERCs. These centers provide after-school supervision as part of probation.

PHAT Life, the researchers found, seemed to have the most impact on reducing aggressive behavior in those who reported clinical aggression at the beginning of the intervention, compared with those who were not clinically aggressive at the start.

Among clinically aggressive participants, those enrolled in PHAT Life showed meaningful reductions in aggression over the first six months compared with participants in the control group. By 12 months after the intervention, participants in PHAT Life appeared to maintain reductions in aggressive behavior, but the control group had equally low levels.

"We think that aggression was probably elevated for most offenders at the time of arrest, so we'd expect to see everyone 'cool down' over the following year," said Kendall. "That PHAT Life expedited improvements is likely still important, given how costly even six months of aggressive behavior can be."

Clinically aggressive participants in PHAT Life were also nearly four times less likely to report incarceration in the last six months on their 12 month post-program surveys compared with those in the control group.

"We are currently expanding the delivery of PHAT Life to youth on probation in Cook County by training probation staff and youth who were previously involved in the justice system to deliver the program to their peers," said Donenberg. "We hope this sets to stage for a better long-term trajectory for all justice-involved youth."

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Erin Emerson and William Hartmann, UIC, and Richard Zinbarg, Northwestern University, are co-authors on the paper.
SAN ANTONIO (Oct. 24, 2017) - New research from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has identified the molecular mechanism that causes kidney cancer to resist drug treatment. The findings were published in the October edition of the journal Nature Communications.

In normal cell functioning, nutrients are broken down and processed within the mitochondria, or "energy factories," to make energy available to the body in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). In 1931, Otto H. Warburg won the Nobel Prize by observing that in cancer cells, energy production (ATP) switches from within the mitochondria to outside the mitochondria, in part, to make cancer cells resistant to drug therapy. Since then, scientists have been working hard to identify the critical players involved so that smart targeting of that pathway would render cancer cells sensitive to drug treatment.

In the Nature Communications study, scientists, led by principal investigator Karen Block, Ph.D., a longtime associate professor of nephrology at UT Health who last year joined the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Research and Development in Washington D.C., conducted preclinical experiments and studies in animal xenograft models of human kidney cancer to shed light on the processes.

Building on a groundbreaking study published in 2009, Dr. Block and colleagues identified the presence of an enzyme, NOX4, within the cell's mitochondria and revealed NOX4 as a culprit in kidney cancer evolution. In the new study, the researchers focused on identifying the key mechanisms involved.

"In the first study, we learned that the NOX4 enzyme generates oxygen radicals that paradoxically facilitate survival of kidney cancer cells undergoing drug treatment," Dr. Block explained. "However, we found that when we reversed energy production back to the mitochondria, free radical production by NOX4 was shut off, allowing the cancer cells to die when exposed to drug treatment.

"Thirty to 40 percent of patients who have had surgery to remove kidney cancer eventually die because the disease has spread, due to the lack of effective drug therapies and drug resistance," explained Ronald Rodriguez, M.D., interim dean of the Joe R. & Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine and professor of urology at UT Health, who is a co-author on the study.

"We learned that NOX4's role in the mitochondria is to sense the energetic switch that Warburg described in the 1930s. When ATP production changes from the mitochondria, NOX4 turns on to start drug resistance, allowing the cancer cells to survive, Dr. Block added.

"We think that when this mechanism starts, if develops a NOX4 perpetual loop, allowing the cancer to grow and spread. We also think there is the potential that the loop can be reversed. More research needs to be conducted to better understand the mechanism and how we may be able to use drugs to intervene and at which stage," she said.

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The study, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01106-1 was funded with a Veterans Administration Merit Award and two National Institutes of Health awards.

Other researchers on the grant from UT Health include post-doctoral fellow Karthigayan Shanmugasundaram, Ph.D., and research scientists Bijaya K. Nayak, Ph.D., and William E. Friedrichs, from the Department of Medicine; and Dharam, Kaushik, M.D. from the Department of Urology.

For current news from the UT Health Science Center San Antonio, now called UT Health San Antonio, please visit our online newsroom, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, with missions of teaching, research and healing, is one of the country's leading health sciences universities and is now called UT Health San Antonio. UT Health San Antonio's schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health professions and graduate biomedical sciences have produced more than 33,000 alumni who are advancing their fields throughout the world. With seven campuses in San Antonio and Laredo, UT Health San Antonio has a FY 2018 revenue operating budget of $838.4 million and is the primary driver of its community's $37 billion biomedical and health care industry. For more information on the many ways "We make lives better," visit http://www.uthscsa.edu.
In 1827, the English botanist Robert Brown made an observation of seemingly little importance that would turn out to play a central role in the development of the atomic theory of matter. Looking through the objective of a microscope, he noticed that pollen grains floating in water were constantly jiggling around as if driven by an invisible force, a phenomenon now known as Brownian motion. It was later understood that the irregular motion of the pollen particle is caused by the incessant buffeting of the water molecules surrounding the pollen particle. Albert Einstein's theoretical analysis of this phenomenon provided crucial evidence for the existence of atoms. The collisions of the pollen grain with the water molecules have two important effects on the motion of the grain. On one hand, they generate friction that slows the particle down and, at the same time, their thermal agitation keeps the particle moving. Brownian motion results from the balance of these competing forces.

Friction and thermal motion caused by the environment also deeply affect transitions between long-lived states for example phase transitions such as freezing or melting. The long-lived states, e.g. different phases of a material or distinct chemical species, are separated by a high energy barrier as depicted schematically in the illustration. The barrier between the wells prevents the physical system from rapidly interconverting between the two states. As a consequence, the system spends most of its time rattling around in one of the wells and only rarely jumps from one well to the other. Such transitions are important for many processes in nature and technology, ranging from phase transitions to chemical reactions and the folding of proteins.

Friction's unexpected influence on transitions

How often, then, do such rare barrier crossing events occur? This is the question that the Dutch physicist Hendrik Kramers addressed theoretically back in 1940. Using a simple model system, he showed mathematically that the rate at which transitions occur quickly decreases with growing barrier height. More surprisingly, Kramers predicted that the transition rate also depends on the friction in a very interesting way. For strong friction, the system moves sluggishly leading to a small transition rate. As the friction is decreased, the system moves more freely and the transition rate grows. At sufficiently low friction, however, the transition rate starts to decrease again because in this case it takes a long time for the system to acquire sufficient energy from the environment to overcome the barrier. The resulting maximum of the transition rate at intermediate friction is called the Kramers turnover.

Measuring Kramers' prediction with laser-trapped nanoparticles

In an international joint effort, scientists from the ETH Zurich, ICFO in Barcelona and the University of Vienna have now succeeded in directly observing the Kramers turnover for a levitated nanoparticle. In their experiment, a nanoparticle is held in a laser trap with two wells separated by an energy barrier as shown in the illustration. Just like the pollen grain observed by Brown, the nanoparticle constantly collides with the molecules surrounding it and these random interactions occasionally push the nanoparticle over the barrier. By monitoring the motion of the nanoparticle over time, the scientists determined the rate at which the nanoparticle hops between the wells for a wide range of frictions, which can be accurately tuned by adjusting the pressure of the gas around the nanoparticle. The rate obtained from their experiment clearly confirms the turnover predicted by Kramers almost 80 years ago. "These results improve our understanding of friction and thermal motion at the nanoscale and will be helpful in the design and construction of future nanodevices", says Christoph Dellago, one of the authors of the study.

Publication:

Loic Rondin, Jan Gieseler, Francesco Ricci, Romain Quidant, Christoph Dellago and Lukas Novotny, "Direct measurement of Kramers turnover with a levitated nanoparticle", in Nature Nanotechnology 2017, (online from 23.10.2017); DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2017.198

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MADISON, Wisconsin - In the central nervous system of humans and all other mammals, a vital insulating sheath composed of lipids and proteins around nerve fibers helps speed the electrical signals or nerve impulses that direct our bodies to walk, talk, breathe, swallow or perform any routine physical act.

But diseases of the nervous system, including multiple sclerosis (MS) in people, degrade this essential insulation known as myelin, disrupting the flow of information between the brain and the body, impairing movement, dimming vision and blunting the ability to function normally.

And while scientists have long studied myelin and understand its role in disease when it degrades, they have puzzled over how myelin repairs itself naturally and whether the thinned sheaths that are a hallmark of the healing nervous system are adequate for restoring the brain's circuitry over the long haul.

This week (Oct. 23, 2017), in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reports that in long-lived animals, renewed but thin myelin sheaths are enough to restore the impaired nervous system and can do so for years after the onset of disease.

The team's findings reinforce the idea that thin myelin sheaths are a valid, persistent marker of remyelination, a hypothesis challenged by other recent research. "As the only biomarker of myelin repair available this would leave us without any means of identifying or quantifying myelin repair," explains Ian Duncan, an expert on demyelinating diseases at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine and the senior author of the new study.

Duncan and his team looked at a unique genetic disorder that naturally afflicts Weimaraners, a breed of dog that as 12- to 14-day-old pups develop a severe tremor and loss of coordination. The condition is known to occur as the development of the myelin sheath in parts of the dog's central nervous system is delayed. The symptoms gradually diminish and in most cases disappear altogether by 3-4 months of age.

"This is a very widespread mutation in the breed," says Duncan, noting that myelin repair mimicking what is seen in remyelination is known to occur in these dogs as the rejuvenated nerve fibers have a thinned myelin sheath.

The new Wisconsin study was made possible as 13 years ago two Weimaraner pups, littermates, were seen as patients at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Duncan was able to maintain contact with the owners after the dogs were adopted and retrieve samples of spinal tissue after the dogs lived out their lives. As they aged, the dogs exhibited few signs of tremor and were deemed 'neurologically normal' up to 13 years of age.

The purpose of the study, says Duncan, was to confirm that thin myelin sheaths persisted and supported normal neurologic function.

To expand on the results, Duncan also looked at a condition in cats, another long-lived species that has been shown to fully recover nervous system function after demyelination. In particular, Duncan's team was interested in remyelination of the optic nerves.

That element of the study, looking at remyelination two years after the onset of the condition, Duncan notes, is an example of "true demyelination and remyelination. We found that nearly every optic nerve fiber was remyelinated with a thin myelin sheath, which is important for understanding human disease because in multiple sclerosis, the optic nerve is often the first to be demyelinated."

The new findings confirm that the gold standard for evaluating remyelination is the long-term persistence of thin myelin sheaths, which support nerve fiber function and survival, Duncan notes. The results are important for diseases like MS as it means that new therapies designed to promote myelin repair can be safely evaluated and quantified based on the presence of thin myelin sheaths.

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These studies were supported in part by NMSS grant RG-1501-02876 and by a prior grant from the MS Hope for a Cure Foundation.

- Terry Devitt (608) 262-8282, trdevitt@wisc.edu
Low enrollment in a small high school in the Sandhills will trigger a November vote on the fate of the sprawling 572-square-mile district where state education officials have been working to improve performance.

Loup County Public Schools, located in the small town of Taylor west of Calamus Reservoir, was named one of three priority schools as part of the Nebraska Department of Educations new accountability system that classifies school districts into four levels based on performance.

Loup County was among 87 schools that fell into the lowest classification, and was selected as a priority school in part because it faced struggles common to other rural districts. The state selected an urban school in Omaha and a Native school on a reservation because they represented schools with similar challenges.

In Loup County, one of those struggles was low enrollment, which has now triggered a state law that would force the district to dissolve unless residents in the district vote to keep it open.

When we named them a priority school, they had been projecting theyd be up against this vote in a couple of years, said Nebraska Education Commissioner Matt Blomstedt.

The state's involvement has helped stabilize the school, especially staff turnover, and test scores have improved significantly.

Still, on Nov. 14, voters in the district will need to decide whether to keep their high school -- which has 21 students.

Total enrollment, including preschool, is 61 students. That's dropped from more than 100 a decade ago.

Back then, school reorganization and the fate of one-room schools was a hotly debated topic in the Legislature, which ultimately passed a law that led to the end of those Class 1 districts.

Since 2006, fewer than 10 school districts have dissolved or merged, and those are typically decided by the school board members of those districts.

The situation in Loup County is different.

It falls under a narrowly constructed state law that applies to districts with high schools that are within 15 miles of another district's high school.

If enrollment of a high school dips below 25 students for two consecutive years, they must merge with one of the nearby high schools.

While there are other rural districts with high schools smaller than 25 students, Loup County is the only one within 15 miles of another district. Both Sargent and Burwell public schools are within that distance.

Two years ago, the law was amended with Loup County in mind, allowing residents to vote on whether to keep the high school open. If it succeeds, residents would have to vote each year until high school enrollment hits 35.

Rusty Ruppert, who has been superintendent at Loup County for 22 years and also at Sargent Public Schools for the past seven, said 15 miles seems like an arbitrary number that requires the district to pay for an annual election.

Its a numbers thing, he said. Whats magic about 15 miles? If youre 15.5 miles youre OK as far as the statute goes and if youre 15, youre not. Im not sure whats magical about that.

The school district is an important economic driver in the community, employing about 20 teachers and another 10 support staff, he said.

The threat of dissolution contributed to some decisions of families to opt out, as well as staff turnover, Blomstedt said, although some families just live closer to a neighboring school.

Loup County is one of 18 Class 2 districts in Nebraska, schools with 1,000 people or less living within their boundaries.

Eight to 10 other districts could find themselves in the same position as Loup County in the coming years, Blomstedt said.

Rural schools present a balancing act from a state policy perspective, he said. While merging districts can be more efficient, schools are important to help small communities thrive.

You dont see economic development in communities that are losing their basic services, and that includes schools, he said.

Were Loup County to dissolve, residents could choose which neighboring district with which to affiliate and their property value would be assigned to that district. Loup County's revenue is substantially lower than the two neighboring districts, and has a significantly higher per pupil cost.

If residents vote to keep their district intact, the state will continue to work with them. If not, theyll help them through the dissolution process, Blomstedt said.

We set this (priority school system) up to learn lessons. If (Loup County) does go through the process of dissolution there will be lessons we learn from that. It will help inform policy no matter what."
At the end of a nearly four-year study, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln announced Monday it would be removing nearly all of the blue emergency phones dotting its campuses.

Only two phones of the more than 85 originally installed will be operational after this week  those outside the Nebraska Union and the East Union, the university said in a news release.

As more and more students and visitors to campus carry cellphones with them, the blue phones installed after the rape and murder of 18-year-old UNL student Candice Harms in 1992 are being used sparingly.

This decision was made primarily because these phones have simply outlived their usefulness now that nearly everyone has access to a cellphone, said University Police Chief Owen Yardley. They are also expensive to maintain and replace.

UNL estimates it would have cost $1.7 million to keep the existing network of phones running over the next 15 years, a steep price tag for a system that has fielded very few true emergency calls.

Many of the calls made to UNL police from the blue phones were nonemergencies: asking for someone to unlock a campus building, someone requesting a ride to detox, as well as pranks and hoaxes.

With nearly every student, faculty, staff and visitor on campus carrying a cellphone, UNL also cited added security initiatives as making the blue phones obsolete.

There are more security cameras on campus, better outdoor lighting and electronic access to buildings.

Yardley said discussions with students and others in the UNL community revealed many were unaware the blue phones existed. They also said they would rather seek shelter and use their cellphone to contact officers than remain at the emergency phone location.

All of our campus training today centers on safety concepts such as run, hide and fight, Yardley said. Nothing in public safety training says stop and wait in an open area for help.

The plan to remove the phones was supported by the Association of Students of the University of Nebraska, the Faculty Senate and other university groups.

Nebraska Wesleyan University is also studying whether or not to remove its emergency phone stations from campus, spokeswoman Sara Olson said.

Five emergency phones remain at NWU, although they are not regularly used, Olson said. Like students at UNL, Wesleyan students are using their cellphones to report emergencies.

We emphasize to students that they save the security number in their cellphone, Olson said. Thats what most of the students use.
Tuesday, October 24, 2017

What will you fund, and what will you not fund?

It seems like a simple question on the surface, but any funder knows how quickly one can be overwhelmed by the complexity. Depending on your mission and capacity, your focus could include broad program areas such as health or education. Or, it might be concentrated in specific areas like increasing access to high-quality early childhood education.

In general, there are three potential levels of change that I encourage my clients to explore to determine where they can effect change, based on their capacity:

People

Organization

Fields

For the sake of example, lets assume your interest is in substance abuse treatment. Your funding focus could take one or more of the following forms:

You might decide the front lines are the place to be, and support programs that provide treatment to individuals struggling with addiction. This helps people. OR

You might recognize that the organizations that provide substance abuse treatment are operating on a shoestring and need help with staff training, strategic planning, board development or other capacity issues, so you provide funding to improve their operations. This focuses on organizations. OR

You may realize that the stigma of substance abuse prevents people from getting help so you fund a national communications campaign to reduce the stigma. In this case, you are focusing on the entire field.

What you want to fund may also inform where youll place your funding focus  locally, statewide, nationally or globally  and vice versa. If you want to create change for individuals in the substance abuse example above, you may decide to start in a single community. If youre bound by geography but want to support the field nationwide, then you may need to support the participation of local organizations in national networks. The key is to find the most appropriate (or creative) nexus of what and where to serve your mission.

To learn more about your funding focus and to explore additional practices for effective grantmaking, download your free copy of From Essential to Savvy: Key Practices For Effective Grantmaking.

 2017 Kris Putnam-Walkerly. All rights reserved. Permission granted to excerpt or reprint with attribution.

______________________________________________________________________

Kris Putnam-Walkerly, MSW, has helped to transform the impact of top global philanthropies for over 18 years. A member of the Million Dollar Consultant Hall of Fame and named one of Americas Top 25 Philanthropy Speakers. Author of the award-winning book Confident Giving: Sage Advice for Funders, which was named one of The 10 Best Corporate Social Responsibility Books. For more ways to improve your giving, visit Putnam Consulting Group.

______________________________________________________________________

Trusted Advisory Services

Kris Putnam-Walkerly serves as a trusted advisor to foundation leaders and high-wealth donors across the globe. As an advisor, Kris transfers learning to leaders and their teams so they have the ability to build their own internal capacity to be successful in their work. Kriss clients report immediate and dramatic improvement in both personal performance and philanthropic impact.

Whether you are the CEO of a larger foundation, the sole staff member charged with decision-making, or a high-net worth donor, the questions Kris can address cover a broad spectrum of professional and personal issues. As an advising client, youll have unlimited access to Kris during regular business hours by phone, Skype, email and, when desired, face to face. With over 18 years of experience working with top global philanthropies, Kris understands how to build an impactful organization that integrates your philanthropic passions and the challenges that must be overcome to get there.

Learn more about this and other services offered or contact Kris today to begin a trusted advisor relationship.

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November 2, 2017  The Michael Chatman Giving Show http://www.unity.fm/program/TheMichaelChatmanGivingShow

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How Will Trustees Lead Into the Future?

Book Kris for your next conference or event!
An animal rights group has launched an anti-cage campaign against Noble Foods, the United Kingdom's leading egg company.

The campaign, which is being reported by the national press, is being run by the Humane League and calls on Noble to commit to completely cage-free production by 2025.

All leading retailers in the United Kingdom, as well as leading foodservice companies have already said that they will source their eggs from only non-cage birds by that date following pressure from animal welfare groups. Humane League has now turned its attention to the country's biggest egg packer.

"Many of us no longer eat eggs but the vast majority of the world still does. When consumers buy free range eggs, they mainly do so because they want to avoid cruel farming practices," said Pru Elliott, Humane League's head of campaigns in a release announcing the campaign.

"However, when people buy eggs from the happy egg co, they are unwittingly supporting the caging of millions of animals. This simply isn't right," she said.

Good Egg Award

Noble's high welfare happy egg brand has been hugely successful for the company, selling in both the UK and the United States and securing a string of awards for the business.

In November last year Noble was presented with a Good Egg Award by Compassion in World Farming for its "commitment to providing humanely raised free range eggs to the US market."

Rachel Dreski, food business manager of Compassion in World Farming USA said at the time: We congratulate the happy egg co on their Good Egg Award and commend them for going above and beyond for their birds.

In the US were witnessing a major shift in attitude on how laying hens should be raised. The happy egg co is proof that higher welfare systems offering access to sunlight and pasture are possible on a large, affordable scale.

4.3million hens

Despite the accolades, Humane League says that, whilst the company produces more than 60 million eggs a week, 4.3 million hens on Noble farms remain in cages.

Pru Elliott said: "Noble Foods has a policy to go 70 percent cage-free by 2020. Since it is already very close to this target, and millions of hens remain caged, this is clearly not strong enough progress.

"We're asking for Noble Foods to make a commitment to go 100 percent cage-free by 2025. If most of the UK's supermarkets and restaurants can do it, why can't the UK's leading egg company? Cage systems are immensely cruel.

"In a cage, a hen can't express important natural behaviours. She can barely even stretch her wings. It's time for Noble Foods to live up to its stated company values and stop inflicting this suffering on hens."

Cage-free in UK

At the annual conference of the British Free Range Egg Producers Association (BFREPA) in October Noble chief executive Dale Burnett spoke about the move towards cage-free in the UK market.

He said that the egg industry was still waiting to hear what retailers would replace cage eggs with come 2025. He was amongst a number of people calling for greater clarity from the retailers.

"The message about colony cage is that it will end in 2025. Very brave statements. What does it mean? What will replace it? This is the key message," Mr Burnett said.

He said there had been suggestions that some form of intensified barn system may replace colony eggs. "No-one has really nailed that properly down and said: 'We are doing that.'

"There have been suggestions of free range, but is it free range as we know it today or is it some form of intensive free range, which will allow for price tiering.

"What I do know is that the clock is ticking and, as an industry, we are going to have to respond to it. Obviously in this room I'm sure you all hope it's some form of free range.

"But we do need to get some clarity in the industry to be able to respond to consumer demands and consumer needs if the retailers carry out their suggested end date at some point in 2025," he said.

'Big and Fresh'

Alongside the successful happy egg brand, Noble also has a successful enriched cage brand called Big and Fresh.

Dale Burnett told delegates at the BFREPA conference that this brand would convert to whatever replaced enriched sourcing in 2025 - whether that was some form of barn or intensive free range egg.

Big UK retailers made their commitment to go cage-free following successful animal welfare campaigns.

Particularly influential was a petition by schoolgirl Lucy Gavaghan, from Sheffield. She initially aimed her campaign at Tesco.

Once Tesco committed to going cage-free, she turned her attention to other leading retailers. Asda and Morrisons subsequently made the cage-free commitment and they were followed by discounters Aldi and Lidl and then the convenience chain, Spar. Sainsburys, the Co-op, Waitrose and Marks and Spencer stopped selling cage eggs some years ago.

The UK is not the only country where companies have gone cage-free. In the United States major names like Subway, Costco, McDonalds, Burger King, Nestle, Sodexo, Aramark, Heinz, Starbucks and Compass Group are all turning their backs on eggs from birds in cages.

Two leading cruise companies  Carnival and Royal Caribbean have also said that they intend to stop using eggs produced in cage systems. In Australia, Woolworths has said it will stop selling cage eggs by 2018.
A new report aimed at identifying a strategy for the UK dairy industry post-Brexit has concluded the future is bright for British dairy farmers.

However, the report said long-standing issues surrounding productivity, marketing, the management of volatility and use of technology must be addressed.

The report was presented at the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers' (RABDF) policy and business conference in London on Wednesday (18 October) by report author Mike Houghton, a partner with Andersons.

At the conference, Mr Houghton argued that while prospects for lowland farms retaining subsidy look slim unless clear public benefit is being delivered, this isnt necessarily a bad thing.

Forty years of income support appears to have done little to improve productivity and efficiency in the dairy sector, and so a change to the support system should not automatically be seen as a negative, he explained.

But there are some stumbling blocks  how we manage volatility of price for one. Risk management tools are an obvious solution, particularly for heavily invested businesses which are viable at 26-28p per litre but would not survive for long at sub-20p.

'Improved management'

Mr Houghton said that some processors and independents are developing such tools, but banks and Government might also assist in this area.

Much of the variation in price could also be ironed out through better communication, use of technology, and improved management of supply and demand, he added.

A quicker reaction to oversupply situations is in everyones interests; at present the industry appears to respond to reducing milk prices by producing more milk, at least in the short term.

At farmgate level, this might be take the form of better A and B pricing models. At a global level it could mean setting up an OMEC  the milk producing equivalent of OPEC  which manages fluctuations in price by balancing supply and demand.

Dairy monitor farms

The report explains that many dairy farmers would benefit from a wider network of dairy monitor farms to help them improve their understanding of production economics.

For example, I estimate that achieving an average yield from forage of 3,000 litres per cow would save the industry over 60 million each year, Mr Houghton explained.

Marketing is also an important consideration. We have an extremely large domestic population on our doorstep with a range of chronic health problems that good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle can help to address.

Dairy can be part of that solution, marketing on the back of what is, globally, a very good standard of animal welfare and food quality.

The Trehane Trust, a dairy education charity, has welcomed the report. It said dairy farmers must view Brexit for the opportunities.

Domestic Agricultural Policy

The National Farmers' Union (NFU) has also released a new Brexit document. It outlines what it would like the government to adopt as part of a new domestic agricultural policy.

The document aims to ensure UK farming is profitable and competitive in the future as the UK leaves the EU.

The paper, entitled 'Delivering a Bold and Ambitious Future for Farming' sets out opportunities for a British agricultural policy.

It builds on the key themes the NFU sees as being integral to an agricultural policy; volatility, productivity and the environment.

NFU President Meurig Raymond said its "what farming and Britain needs" and urged the Government to adopt the measures to help make a success of Brexit for the nation.

For decades, UK farming has been subject to policies set at a pan-European level, implementing successive CAP reforms driven from the European stage, said Mr Raymond.
A number of cattle in a consignment from an assembly centre in France have tested positive for Bluetongue virus BTV-8 in the UK, the government has announced.

The UKs Chief Veterinary Officer has urged farmers to remain vigilant for signs of bluetongue virus after the disease was successfully picked up in a number of cattle imported from France through the post-import testing regime.

The Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) identified the disease in cattle after they were brought to Preston and Kendal in England and two locations in Scotland.

A total of 32 animals came from the same assembly centre in France, in an area where multiple cases of bluetongue have been confirmed since September this year.

Action is being taken to ensure there is no spread of the disease, with movement restrictions at the affected premises, targeted surveillance and culling of animals where necessary.

Strict rules on the movement of livestock from regions affected by bluetongue are in place, the government has said.

The UK remains officially bluetongue-free and exports are not affected.

'Severe disease'

Chief Veterinary Officer for the UK, Nigel Gibbens said Bluetongue does not pose a threat to human health or food safety, but can cause "severe disease" in some cases.

He said it can also have a negative impact on farm incomes, for example by causing reduced milk yield in cows and infertility in sheep.

"We continue to carefully monitor the situation in France, where Bluetongue disease control measures are in place," Mr Gibbens said.

"This detection is a good example of robust disease surveillance procedures in action and should highlight to farmers the risks which come with bringing animals from disease-affected areas into their herds.

"It is also a timely reminder for farmers that the disease is still a threat, despite coming towards the end of the period when midges are most active.

"Keepers must remain vigilant and report any suspicions to APHA. They may also want to talk to their vet to consider if vaccination would benefit their business."

Movement restrictions

The affected animals will be dealt with under the Trade in Animals and Related Products regulations.

Cattle with a high risk of being infected with the BTV-8 strain of bluetongue or which had not been vaccinated before being exported will be humanely culled, the government has said.

Farmers will have the option to send those animals without fully compliant paperwork back to France or to cull them to reduce the risk of disease spreading to susceptible UK livestock.

Movement restrictions will be in place on the premises for several weeks until testing rules out spread via local midges.

BVA, the British Cattle Veterinary Association, Sheep Veterinary Society and Goat Veterinary Society have stressed the importance of careful animal sourcing.

Commenting, BVA Senior Vice President Gudrun Ravetz said: It is reassuring that the systems we have in place for post-movement testing have ensured the disease has been detected quickly, and that action has been taken.

However, it is a grave and timely reminder to all livestock keepers of the importance of responsible sourcing of animals, and of fully understanding the potential disease risks of importing animals from areas where disease is known to be circulating.

Farmers should always consult their local vet and act within their farm health plan when sourcing new animals."

Reduce milk yield

Bluetongue virus is transmitted by midges and affects cows, goats, sheep and other camelids such as llamas.

It can reduce milk yield, cause sickness, reduce reproductive performance or, in the most severe cases, cause death of infected animals.

The UK government has worked closely with a number of groups to raise awareness of the threat of bluetongue through the Joint campaign Against Bluetongue (JAB).

The most recent case of the disease in the UK came in 2007. The UK has been officially free from the disease since July 2011.
A "collaborative, trusting and transparent" relationship between dairy processors and producers in Wales is more important than ever before in light of the uncertainty surrounding Brexit.

That is the message from farming union NFU Cymru at the Welsh Dairy Show in Carmarthen on Tuesday (24 October).

With milk prices on the rise, theres no doubt that this years Welsh Dairy Show will see milk producers in a more upbeat mood than they were 12 months ago.

However, with Brexit drawing closer and the open-sided nature of many milk contracts skewed towards the processor, these are still uncertain times for the dairy industry in Wales.

NFU Cymru Milk Board Chairman Aled Jones said: With Brexit looming large on the horizon, now is the time for milk producers to take stock and look at their relationship with their milk purchaser.

The introduction of Dairy Producer Organisations (DPOs) is something that NFU Cymru has supported for a long time now, and we believe that advocating the right producer representation could pave the way for producer organisations here in Wales, where appropriate.

Presently most of us deal on an individual basis with our processors but, long-term, I think that we are far stronger if we speak as one voice. For some, DPOs could bring longer term contracts providing better security - we are already seeing five-year contracts in place in Ireland.

Stable prices

A report by the European Commission states that more than 60% of DPOs have earned better or more stable milk prices for their farmers.

The focus of the report is the important role DPOs can play in increasing farmer bargaining power, it lines up with the NFU dairy boards asks including its calls for fairer, more balanced milk contracts and stronger producer representation.

Mr Jones continued: I would also urge all buyers to provide options in their contracts to help producers manage milk price risk. I would like to see more opportunity for forward contracts for all or part of annual milk production to protect against volatility and provide certainty on price and volume for both producer and processor.

There is also an opportunity for the futures market as a price smoothing mechanism. It is encouraging that some dairy companies have started on these routes but we need more to do so.

Futures market

Stock Exchange-traded contracts could improve hedging and planning reliability for farmers by tackling high volatility, according to a report.

Private sector financial instruments such as futures and options can help farmers to tackle risks stemming from unforeseen price shocks and enhance planning reliability.

Dairy financial products have been around in the United States since the 1990s, while such contracts were only introduced in the European Union as recently as in 2015 in the current form.

Volumes traded are still low but significantly increasing, thus showing a growing interest for futures in the dairy market.

For this to work, we need improved transparency and accurate up-to-date milk price reporting mechanisms. We require the support of Government to put a mandatory mechanism in place covering both milk price and volumes, Mr Jones explained.

'Huge opportunity'

Mr Jones will also use the Welsh Dairy Show to talk about the wider challenges and opportunities facing the industry as a result of the UKs impending departure from the EU.

Despite the current uncertainty surrounding Brexit, there are opportunities for the Welsh dairy sector. I believe that our climate and rainfall will increasingly make us a favoured area for milk production as climate change impacts on global production systems, he said.

To grasp these opportunities we need to see close cooperation and improved collaboration across the supply chain and contracts in place that help give producers greater certainty, clarity and security over milk price.
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Esha Deol, Bharat Takhtani baby daughter gets beautiful name from Hema Malini | Filmibeat

Esha Deol and her businessman husband Bharat Takhtani became proud parents of a baby girl yesterday in the wee hours of morning.

The actress gave birth to the newborn at Hinduja hospital in Mumbai. Later, pictures of Esha and her husband standing outside the hospital holding their bundle of joy in their hands, went viral on the internet.

Meanwhile, the couple have already settled for a name for their newborn. Read on to know more details...

This Is What They Have Named The Little One Esha and business magnet Bharat Takhtan have named their daughter Radhya. The Meaning Radhya is derived from Radha, which means to be worshipped. Guess Who Decided The Name! "We are very happy to announce that our daughter will be named as Radhya Takhtani. The name has been jointly decided by Esha and me," says Bharat Takhtani. The Divine Name Grandparents Hema Malini, Dharmendra and Takhnanis are extremely happy with the 'divine' name. Takhtani's will have a formal naming ceremony in a week's time. Here's What The New Parents Have To Say- Esha and Bharat thanked media fraternity for the love and blessings. "She has been showered with messages from film fraternity. She would like to thank all her fans on social media who wished and made beautiful creatives for Esha and Radhya," added daddy Takhtani.

Currently Esha is enjoying her time with baby Radhya and trying to become a hands-on mommy. Watch out this space for more!
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Salman Khan film Bharat: Interesting and unknown facts | FilmiBeat

Eid is very special occasion for Salman Khan as Sultan and Tubelight released during Eid in 2016 and 2017 respectively. It looks like the actor is all set to continue with the trend as his upcoming film 'Bharat' has its eyes fixed on Eid 2019 release. The film is scheduled to go on floors in April 2018.

Lingerie Shoot! Amy Jackson Poses For Lipsy London

"That film is just the starting point for ours but since it was an inspiration, we wanted in all fairness to officially own it and acquired the remake rights before going ahead with Bharat. It starts in 1947 and ends in 2000 and is the journey of a country and also a person, both of whom go by the name of Bharat," revealed producer Atul Agnihotri told Mumbai Mirror.



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Bharat is an adaptation of the South Korean movie 'An Ode To My Father', where a father gets separated from his son and daughter during the war and refugee crisis and revolves around the storyline of being reunited with the family despite all odds. The film is very emotional and will strike a chord with the Indian audiences when it'released in 2019.

Also, Bharat will be directed by none other than Ali Abbas Zafar and the film will be shot in Abu Dhabi, Spain, Delhi and Punjab. We will have to wait and watch as to who will be the leading lady in the upcoming movie.
His film Jab We Met enjoys a cult status in Bollywood's romcom space, but director Imtiaz Ali says he would have loved to make some changes in the film.

Shahid Kapoor's introvert nature and Kareena Kapoor Khan's high-spirited avatar made the audience fall in love with their characters of Aditya Kashyap and Geet Dhillon.

Imtiaz adds he would rather not reveal the changes he wanted to make as the film continues to be a fan-favourite.

The director tells PTI, "There are lot of things that I would like to change. Now that 10 years have passed and people are still loving it, I would resist myself from doing that, otherwise I will get beaten up by fans for doing that."

Jab We Met completes 10 years on October 26.

Talking about why he thinks the film was able to connect with the masses, Imtiaz says it was not the usual love story where the boy meets girl and they fall in love.

"I feel elated that people love the simplicity of the movie. It is a bit different. It is about positivity, it gives you hope, makes you smile, especially that part when Geet, on the terrace of her building, tells Aditya - 'Life is a game. Let's enjoy it.

"Getting stressed about it doesn't make it easier'. I think that was the icing on the cake in the film."

Both the characters were poles apart from each other and happened to meet when their paths intersected on a train journey.

In the second half of the film, both Geet and Aditya undergo drastic role reversals.

Talking about the chemistry between Kareena and Shahid, Imtiaz says it is not about the stars sharing an equation.

"... Else it will be the same for every film. The chemistry is between characters of a story... The actors are playing those characters, that's why they look interesting together or not," he adds.

Apparently, Bobby Deol and Ayesha Takia were initially considered for the lead roles.

"They (Shahid and Kareena) worked very hard to deserve the success that they got in Jab We Met. It turned out very well, in that way they consider themselves very fortunate," says Imtiaz.

Also Read: Golmaal Again First Day (Opening) Box Office Collection: TERRIFIC!
Kapil On Australia Shoot

As soon as he reached Australia, he was upset and not in good mood because of many reasons. An artist on the set of Firangi had passed away. He tried to meet Maansaab, but that didn't happen, and he had a death to deal with.

Kapil Became Nervous!

He further added, "The artist had to shoot a scene with me the next day, but he died. I became nervous and negative. The only positivity was Maansaab."

Kapil Wanted To Cancel Australia Shoot

"I asked if they can cancel Australia shoot by giving them a little more money than what was spent for the show. But the show couldn't be cancelled as the tickets were sold."

Kapil Fought With His Childhood Friend!

When the show was about to start, the two artists had a fight. Kapil actually fought with that person, who was his childhood friend. This fight actually happened five minutes before the show. However, nobody knew about it (fight) because that wasn't famous."

Kapil & Chandan Fight

After the show, Chandan had left the hotel and he didn't meet him for almost five days. Kapil wanted to apologise to him. When they met, they again started lashing out at each other. Sunil, too, was with him.

Kapil Loves Sunil

He further added, "He loves Sunil. Wherever he is, I hope he's happy, and I know he loves me."

Kapil Didn't Want To Meet Anybody!

After reading a lot of reports against himself, Kapil says he locked himself and didn't want to interact with anybody even on social media.

It Took Kapil 3 Months To Recover!

Kapil said, "I had started treatment in Bangalore and had even started drinking a lot. I locked myself as I felt everyone hated me. It took me three months to recover."

Kapil Wanted Sunil To Launch The Trailer!

"I had even texted Sunil as I wanted him to launch the trailer but he couldn't come as he's in Canada for his show."
From Texas, the teams head rapidly south to Mexico City for this weekend's race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. Those involved look ahead to the Formula 1 Gran Premio de Mexico 2017... Ferrari Kimi Raikkonen Because of the altitude, this track is quite slippery, with very little grip, so its easy to lose lap time. In the first part you have a long straight where its possible to overtake, while the rest of the track is more similar to a street circuit and there it gets more difficult to pass. But for sure, if you have the speed it should be possible to gain positions. This year we have been pretty strong in most places, so I dont see any reason why it shouldnt be the same here. Lets see how it is tomorrow: with the new cars, given the increased downforce they generate, it should be a bit better. In these last three races we are aiming to do the best we can, hopefully fighting for wins. Sebastian Vettel We are still here to fight and we want to do it till the end. We are trying to do our best and win and then well go from there. Everything that we can learn today will help us for the future, this is the thinking inside the whole team. We need to keep going and push on our development. Last year, the start for us was important as it gave us the best opportunity to attack, but this year, we should have better chances during the race. We have had a mixed year with ups and downs, which I think is normal for a team. There were races we couldnt finish and that hurts. But we have a good car and on paper we should be more competitive here, so lets see what happens.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Kimi Raikkonen (FIN) Ferrari at Formula One World Championship, Rd18, Mexican Grand Prix, Preparations, Circuit Hermanos Rodriguez, Mexico City, Mexico, Thursday 26 October 2017.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images Sebastian Vettel (GER) Ferrari walks the track at Formula One World Championship, Rd18, Mexican Grand Prix, Preparations, Circuit Hermanos Rodriguez, Mexico City, Mexico, Thursday 26 October 2017.  Kym Illman/Sutton Images Info Close

Ferrari Kimi Raikkonen Because of the altitude, this track is quite slippery, with very little grip, so its easy to lose lap time. In the first part you have a long straight where its possible to overtake, while the rest of the track is more similar to a street circuit and there it gets more difficult to pass. But for sure, if you have the speed it should be possible to gain positions. This year we have been pretty strong in most places, so I dont see any reason why it shouldnt be the same here. Lets see how it is tomorrow: with the new cars, given the increased downforce they generate, it should be a bit better. In these last three races we are aiming to do the best we can, hopefully fighting for wins. Sebastian Vettel We are still here to fight and we want to do it till the end. We are trying to do our best and win and then well go from there. Everything that we can learn today will help us for the future, this is the thinking inside the whole team. We need to keep going and push on our development. Last year, the start for us was important as it gave us the best opportunity to attack, but this year, we should have better chances during the race. We have had a mixed year with ups and downs, which I think is normal for a team. There were races we couldnt finish and that hurts. But we have a good car and on paper we should be more competitive here, so lets see what happens.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Pierre Gasly (FRA) Scuderia Toro Rosso at Formula One World Championship, Rd16, Japanese Grand Prix, Race, Suzuka, Japan, Sunday 8 October 2017.  Kym Illman/Sutton Images Brendon Hartley (NZL) Scuderia Toro Rosso on the drivers parade at Formula One World Championship, Rd17, United States Grand Prix, Race, Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA, Sunday 22 October 2017.  Manuel Goria/Sutton Images Info Close

Toro Rosso Pierre Gasly Im really excited about the Mexican GP race weekend! Its going to be my third race weekend as a Formula 1 driver, this time on a completely new track for me  Ive never raced there, so it will be exciting to learn a new one. Ive been there as a reserve driver with Red Bull for the last two years and I think its a unique event. The atmosphere there is very special, the fans are great and very passionate. The part of the stadium in the last sector is also amazing, always full of spectators cheering the drivers on. Its great to see all the grandstands completely full! Its a special city and we always visit it during Halloween or the Day of the Dead, and the whole city gets crazy about it  you see people dressed up and with painted faces invading the streets and enjoying the big fiesta! Its really cool to see. Hopefully we can have a great race weekend there. Ill keep pushing together with the team, Ill try to do my best, keep gaining experience and I really hope we achieve a positive result! Brendon Hartley "I'm so excited to head to Mexico for my second Formula 1 Grand Prix! It was a steep learning curve in Austin last week, so I'm looking forward to putting some of the lessons learnt into practice this weekend here in Mexico. It's a tricky venue for the engineers, as the high altitude plays havoc on downforce and cooling, but from a driving point of view it's a great track and one I really enjoy!"

Toto Wolff (AUT) Mercedes AMG F1 Director of Motorsport at Formula One World Championship, Rd16, Japanese Grand Prix, Practice, Suzuka, Japan, Friday 6 October 2017.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images

Mercedes Toto Wolff, Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport Although the constructors title is now secure, we are only halfway to hitting our objectives for the season. When we set our targets at the start of the year, it was to become the only team to win both championships across a major regulation change. We now have to complete that job with Lewis, who is in the best possible position with three races remaining. We know that anything can happen in this sport, and that the tables can be turned on you very quickly. So there will be no let off in our vigilance and attention to detail in these final rounds. We will be racing to win. Our target may be clear  but it will not be easy to achieve this weekend in Mexico. This is an unusual circuit where the cars run at maximum downforce owing to the high altitude. Some of our most difficult weekends this season have come with the car running at maximum downforce, so we expect a tough and close-fought battle with both Ferrari and Red Bull. It will be important to be at the very top of our game if we want to get the job done.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Romain Grosjean (FRA) Haas F1 on the drivers parade at Formula One World Championship, Rd17, United States Grand Prix, Race, Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA, Sunday 22 October 2017.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images Kevin Magnussen (DEN) Haas F1 at Formula One World Championship, Rd17, United States Grand Prix, Qualifying, Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA, Saturday 21 October 2017.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images Info Close

Haas Romain Grosjean Brake cooling is an issue because of the air density. From there, we also have very little downforce because were at altitude. I guess the biggest thing for us to feel is the downforce loss. The biggest challenge for the car is the cooling. Kevin Magnussen You need a lot of downforce there. As the air is thin, you lose downforce. Its pretty tricky. You can see the effect it has on top speeds. Because the air is so thin, you dont have a lot of drag from the air down the straight. Our maximum speeds go very high. Its one of the tricky races that you have to compromise a lot of things in order to cool the car and find downforce. The atmosphere is awesome. You have the infield part  the stadium part  and its always packed. The Mexican people are really into it. Its a great atmosphere. You notice it on the drivers parade, for sure. The fans are very passionate. Guenther Steiner, Team Principal Its very different to anything else. You need your highest downforce level  whatever you can you put on there because of the air being so thin. Cooling  you never have enough up at that altitude. It is different, but we know we have to adapt to it."

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Nico Hulkenberg (GER) Renault Sport F1 Team at Formula One World Championship, Rd17, United States Grand Prix, Practice, Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA, Friday 20 October 2017.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images Carlos Sainz jr (ESP) Renault Sport F1 Team on the grid at Formula One World Championship, Rd17, United States Grand Prix, Race, Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA, Sunday 22 October 2017.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images Info Close

Renault Nico Hulkenberg Mexico City is a massive place, maybe one of the biggest Ive ever visited. Ive been fortunate to fly over it in a helicopter and its really mind blowing! The track itself is challenging. We are at high altitude, so we lose a lot of downforce because of the air density. It makes the car light and easy to slide. It has a lot of tricky corner combinations which look simple but are extremely technical. Its certainly not an easy lap. The standout is the final two corners and driving through the stadium. Thats really cool, its always loud and a real goose bumps moment. Carlos Sainz Its one of my favourite race weekends and a lot of us drivers really enjoy it. We really feel the heat of the crowd there; its very special and feels different to any other race. The track is not easy to drive as the effective downforce is pretty low, which makes the car feel quite light. There are long straights  so high speeds - then twisty corners which are challenging to get right. My qualifying there hasnt been too bad, I made Q3 last season. You get a good feeling for the atmosphere on the track parade, especially when you say hi to more than 200,000 people, which is pretty special. You really see the passion of the fans and their love for Formula 1; its really cool and a great race on the calendar. As a driver, we love seeing this passion and you know it will be special weekend. The stadium is really cool, but even away from that section the grandstands are always packed! Trying the Mexican cuisine is a must, even though Im not a fan of spicy food. I usually go for the quesadillas which arent too spicy and are very tasty. Its strange that my friends nickname me Chilli, even though I dont like spicy food, that doesnt work very well! Mexico City is extremely busy so you need a good chauffer who knows some tricks on how to get to places quickly. Remi Taffin, Engine Technical Director Its an interesting venue. There are high speeds through the long straights with the thinner air at high altitude giving less resistance. The thinner air means the turbo has to spin at a higher rate to input enough oxygen into the ICE, it actually spins around 8 percent more in Mexico than in Abu Dhabi. Equally, fuel consumption over one lap is quite low so energy recovery is less critical in Mexico than at other circuits. Cyril Abiteboul, Renault Sport Racing Managing Director When Formula 1 returned to Mexico in 2015 we didnt know quite what to expect. What we found was a superb event which was well run and organised, and supported by enthusiastic and knowledgeable fans. Mexico City has been through a lot with the recent earthquake but the strength and the spirit of the city is strong, and Formula 1 is determined to put on a good show.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Sergio Perez (MEX) Force India VJM10 at Formula One World Championship, Rd17, United States Grand Prix, Practice, Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA, Friday 20 October 2017.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images Esteban Ocon (FRA) Force India F1 at Formula One World Championship, Rd16, Japanese Grand Prix, Race, Suzuka, Japan, Sunday 8 October 2017.  Manuel Goria/Sutton Images Info Close

Force India Sergio Perez Racing at home means a lot for me. Its always a busy week, both for me and the team, but being at home makes all the hard work we put in for our fans and our partners worthwhile. Its definitely the most enjoyable weekend of the year for me. Its a great race for everyone involved in Formula One. Theres so much passion and the whole week is a big celebration. Everyone in Mexico City is looking forward to the race. The track is quite fun to drive and being on those long straights is special. Because of the altitude, even though youre running high wings, you still achieve very high speeds and its really hard to stop the car under braking  in that sense it feels like a bit like Monza. I am lucky I get to race in my country in front of my fans. Their support means so much to me and its inspiring to see fans waving the Mexican flag in every grandstand. I really want to give them a special result to celebrate. Esteban Ocon Racing in Mexico is good fun. I am expecting the atmosphere to be fantastic: I had a taste of it last year and the final sector, going through the stadium, is impressive. Motorsport and Formula One are very important for the Mexican fans and to hear them cheering every lap feels very special. The track is great. You can find a very good rhythm and you can overtake. The stadium section is very slow and it bunches up the cars just before the very long straight. There are some special corners as well and its just a cool track. Turns one and four are good opportunities for overtaking so I am expecting some action through that part of the lap. I have a Mexican team mate so this is a special race for the team. Sergio is very popular in Mexico, but I hope there will be a very warm welcome for me as well  similar to what I had last year. Sergio and I had a few difficulties earlier in the year, but were good now and theres a lot of respect between us. We work together for the team to get the best performance possible and I hope all fans will respect that. Tom McCullough, Chief Race Engineer "The characteristics of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez are dominated by the high altitude of the track, at 2250m above sea level. At 780mbar, the air density is very low, resulting in reduced downforce, drag and cooling capacity. Its a standout challenge for the engine and brake system cooling, especially since it is a high brake energy track. Low-speed corners dominate the layout, so it is crucial to develop a set-up that gives you performance in those sections. At the same time, you need to make the most of the very long straight which provides a very good opportunity for overtaking." Vijay Mallya, Team Principal Our season continues to go from strength to strength with another double points finish in the United States last week. Weve had the fourth quickest car for the last three events and picked up significant points with both cars. It means weve edged even closer to securing fourth place in the championship with an opportunity to mathematically secure this result in Mexico this week. The Mexican Grand Prix is always a hugely important weekend for everybody in the team, but especially for Sergio. We receive huge support from the fans and with so many guests and partners joining us at the track we have extra motivation of put on a strong show. We have more updates coming for the VJM10 as we continue to push hard with development late into the season, which should give us an extra performance step this weekend.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Fernando Alonso (ESP) McLaren and Michael Andretti (USA) at Formula One World Championship, Rd17, United States Grand Prix, Qualifying, Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA, Saturday 21 October 2017.  Steven Tee/LAT/Sutton Images Stoffel Vandoorne (BEL) McLaren at Formula One World Championship, Rd17, United States Grand Prix, Race, Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA, Sunday 22 October 2017.  Kym Illman/Sutton Images Info Close

McLaren Fernando Alonso Its very important that we head to Mexico with everybody in our thoughts that has been affected by the recent earthquake, and show them as much support as we possibly can at this really difficult time. The welcome we receive in Mexico City is among the best in the world  you can really feel the warmth of the fans all around the circuit, especially in the arena section, and the support is unbelievable. For me, its nice to be able to arrive in a country, travel to the hotel and check in using my own language! But seriously, I love Mexico and the Mexican people, and I hope we can put on the show they deserve. It will surely be a challenging weekend for us as Im expecting to start from the back of the grid due to the engine issue we had in Austin. Its also a track where we often struggle with traffic, which makes overtaking difficult. But, on the positive side, we tested a lot of new components on Friday in the USA which we were very happy with, and we hope to take those forward to use in Mexico. Stoffel Vandoorne We head to Mexico City very aware of the current situation there and we send all of our support and best wishes to the people of Mexico after such a terrible disaster. For McLaren Honda, Mexico will likely be a very tricky race for us because of the long straight and the high altitude, two characteristics which will make things more difficult for us all weekend. As I had to change my PU on race day in Austin, were hoping that we wont have to take penalties on my car in Mexico, but at the moment were looking into everything and will wait until Friday to confirm if anything is necessary. I last went to Mexico City two years ago and loved the whole experience. We stay downtown and the city is really cool. I remember the awesome atmosphere around the whole track and Im looking forward to going back there. The fans are amazing and the coolest part of the circuit is the stadium because there are so just many people there. Ive been preparing to race on this circuit for a while with my engineers in the simulator, and Im excited to get out on track there for the first time on Friday. Eric Boullier, Racing Director Firstly, on behalf of both myself and the whole team, Id like to send our condolences to the hundreds of people that have been affected by the terrible earthquake in Mexico in September. Mexico City is a place weve quickly grown to love visiting, and we hope this coming weekend we can show our solidarity and support for the victims and shine a spotlight on the incredible resilience theyve shown, as well as recognise the generous hospitality we receive from our Mexican friends every year we visit. While I cant promise victory, we will of course fight for everything we can despite difficult circumstances, as we did in Austin. Its likely that Fernando will have to take penalties due to the PU issue he faced last weekend, so he is already preparing himself for what will undoubtedly be a spirited fight from the back of the grid. We dont yet know how the weekend will pan out for Stoffel, but will try to give him the best chance we can at what will be a second new track for him in as many weeks. The conditions, too, make it tough for all the teams  its often hot and humid in Mexico City, and coupled with the altitude it makes cooling and outright engine performance even more of a challenge than normal. Weve learned a lot about these characteristics from the past two years weve raced there and I hope we can put this to good use next weekend. We arent expecting to make a significant dent on the points table this weekend, but we never ever give up, and will give it our all to make the best we can out of this challenging double-header as possible. Yusuke Hasegawa, Honda R&D Co. Ltd Head of F1 Project & Executive Chief Engineer After a very disappointing weekend in the United States, were now crossing the border to Mexico. First of all, we would like to express our condolences to the people who lost their lives in the disaster and offer our heartfelt sympathy to all those affected. This will be the third year of the Mexican Grand Prix since its return to the Formula 1 calendar. We always enjoy racing in the cheerful Latin atmosphere in front of the fanatic Mexican fans. I also appreciate the warm support from our Honda de Mexico colleagues. The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez is unique in terms of its location with a very high altitude of 2,300m. Due to the thin air, its necessary for us to have a totally different approach to extract the power out of the PU compared to other circuits. In addition, the long straight means were expecting to face a tough challenge. However, the tricky conditions are the same for all the other teams, and we will use the data collected over the past two years to make the best race strategy possible. It is obviously a race under very difficult circumstances for the people of Mexico, and we hope to put on a good show for them all.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Felipe Massa (BRA) Williams at Formula One World Championship, Rd17, United States Grand Prix, Qualifying, Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA, Saturday 21 October 2017.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images Lance Stroll (CDN) Williams at Formula One World Championship, Rd16, Japanese Grand Prix, Practice, Suzuka, Japan, Friday 6 October 2017.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images Info Close

Williams Felipe Massa First of all, its a shame to see whats happened, its so sad to see the people losing their lives and also their homes from the earthquake so thats really, really sad. I think we need to help them and get as much support for them. We need to pass the message to people around the world. That is the most important thing. Secondly, they are really in love with Formula One and they go crazy for the race. When you see the people in the grandstand and around the roads, they are proper Formula One fans and I think its fantastic to race there. I always enjoy it, I go with some friends, my father and we always enjoy the atmosphere there. It looks very similar to Sao Paolo so you also feel at home. I really hope we can have an important race for them in this difficult moment. Lance Stroll This will be the first time I have visited Mexico and all the stories I have heard about the country and the circuit mean I am really looking forward to it. I am particularly looking forward to the stadium section where all the fans are and get really excited. I know there will be a great atmosphere and I cant wait to get out on the circuit to experience it for myself. Another aspect of Mexico I am looking forward to is the food, as I am a huge fan of Mexican food and I love my spices. It will also be a bit of a special weekend for me as on race day I shall be celebrating my 19th birthday. Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer This is our third year returning to Mexico after a long break since the 1990s. Our first thoughts are for everyone affected by the recent earthquake, and we hope that we can bring some brightness to the city after that tragedy. In actual fact, the Mexican fans are never lacking in enthusiasm, as this is arguably the most passionate crowd of the entire Formula One season. This makes it a real pleasure to race at this event for both teams and drivers. The circuit itself has some interesting challenges. Due to the altitude there is about 80 percent normal atmospheric pressure. The effect of this is that we run the most extreme downforce bodywork that we have available, but it only delivers the level of downforce that we would typically run at Monza, which is a very high-speed circuit. Therefore, the cars are very light on downforce which makes it particularly challenging for the drivers and we often see a lot of mistakes, leading to some interesting races. The particular highlight of the circuit is the stadium section and the podium in front of all the fans, so we look forward to putting on another great event.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Max Verstappen (NED) Red Bull Racing and garage guests at Formula One World Championship, Rd17, United States Grand Prix, Qualifying, Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA, Saturday 21 October 2017.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images Daniel Ricciardo (AUS) Red Bull Racing on the drivers parade at Formula One World Championship, Rd17, United States Grand Prix, Race, Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA, Sunday 22 October 2017.  Mark Sutton/Sutton Images Info Close
Sugar beet growers on the industry haulage scheme hit by troubled contractor M&J Haulage will not see any cost increase this harvest, British Sugar has pledged.

Lincolnshire-based M&J Haulage went into administration earlier this month after losing a bid to cart thousands of tonnes of beet from farms to British Sugars Newark factory.

British Sugar agriculture director Colm McKay said all growers affected by the situation had now been contacted following a meeting arranged by NFU Sugar.

See also: Emergency meeting called over beet haulage crisis

Alternative haulage arrangements had been made and British Sugar was writing to all impacted growers to confirm the contingency plans and reassure farmers.

Last week, NFU Sugar chairman Michael Sly said M&Js demise called into question the ability of the industry haulage scheme to deliver a sustainable supply chain from field to factory.

Some growers not on the industry haulage scheme also voiced concern they could face higher transport costs to get beet to the Newark factory.

They have also expressed worries harvested beet could deteriorate as it awaits collection.

Capacity available

But Mr McKay said: We are supporting all growers  including those who contracted directly with M&J Haulage  and have supplied a list of contractors who have capacity available.

Where growers would prefer we are speaking to contractors on their behalf.

Mr McKay pledged: Any impacted growers on the industry harvesting and haulage scheme will see no increase in costs for this campaign.

British Sugar said it will continue the dialogue with growers as harvest continues.

The first few weeks of the harvesting and processing campaign have also seen growers air concerns aired about other supply chain issues at British Sugar factories.

Mr Sly said: Multiple breakdowns have already meant delays for growers in harvesting and hauling beet and do not instil confidence.

British Sugar has acknowledged some factories had a difficult start to the campaign.

New equipment

But it said this was partly due to commissioning new equipment as part of a 250m investment over five years to make factories more efficient and robust.

Mr McKay said lifting conditions remained generally good for beet and adequate supplies of the crop were now available at all four factories.

As well as Newark, British Sugar has factories at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk; and Cantley and Wissington, both in Norfolk.

Daily throughputs at all our factories have now stabilised at above daily target levels, said Mr McKay.

The average sugar content across all four British Sugar sites last week was 17.8%.

Any grower who remains concerned about delays can call the British Sugar helpline on 0870 240 2314 or the NFU Sugar helpline on 0370 066 1974.
The shortlist has been announced for the new look National Milk Records/Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers Gold Cup, which has been opened up to a wider range of producers.

Farmers Weekly takes a look at the six dairy farmers who have made the selection.

Thomas Dickinson, Scaftworth, Doncaster, South Yorkshire

Key facts Block calving spring and autumn

163ha dairy and arable unit

270 pedigree Jersey cows

Yield 5,675kg of milk at 5.6% fat and 4.0% protein

Milk supplied to Longley Farms

Somatic cell count 136,000cells/ml

Calving interval 383 days

55% of cows are in calf at 100 days

The Dickinson familys block calving pattern enables them to take full advantage of grass growth and forage production.

About 60% of milk is produced from home-grown forage  mainly grazed grass with lucerne, fodder beet, grass and maize silage used in a total mixed ration.

See also: Gold Cup winners reveal secret to high yields and fertility

Thomas took over the management of the farm in 2013 from his parents John and Susan and has been keen to maintain genetic improvement.

Along with his herdsman Richard Saxby, they have set breeding criteria based on improving milk quality and maintaining legs and feet.

They are rolling out a genetic evaluation of the herd with a view to genomic testing youngstock.

All cows are screened quarterly using milk samples for Johnes disease, bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD), leptospirosis and infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR) and cows are vaccinated for BVD and IBR.

Cow comfort is a priority and they spent 30,000 on new cubicle mattresses and toppers last year.

In the next 12 months, Thomas wants to reduce borrowings significantly.

Keen to promote their milk locally, the Dickinsons have set up a vending machine at the village pub supplying fresh milk and butter, selling about 400 litres of milk a week.

David Williams, Northop, Mold, Clwyd

Key facts Spring-calving herd

275 cross-bred Friesian Jersey cows and 171 followers

Yield 3,850kg of milk and 350kg milk solids

5.21% fat

3.87% protein

Somatic cell count 192,000cells/ml

Calving interval 370 days

Davids mission is to develop a grass-based dairy system providing a lifestyle and income equal or better than that which could be earned off-farm.

Together with his wife Carol, daughter Vicky and sister-in-law Sue Pope, he runs a paddock-grazing system and switched to once-a-day milking in 2011.

This alleviated the problem of accessing half his grazing platform which involves crossing a very busy commuter road close to the North Wales Expressway and also cut labour requirements.

Now in their seventh year of once-a-day milking David stresses the system hasnt compromised cow yields, health or the profitability of his business.

All cows are dried off by December before calving starts early February.

Once calved, cows are turned out to grass and breeding starts early May. They target fewer than 10% not in calf by 70 days, with 2017 scanning results showing that 85% of cows are in calf by six weeks.

They target grass use of 85% of grass grown. In 2016, this was 13t DM/ha.

Chris and Rich Norman, The Leen, Pembridge, Herefordshire

Key facts 162ha farm

600 cross-bred Friesian Jersey cows

Yield 5,536kg of milk, at 4.99% fat, 3.7% protein

Somatic cell count 97,000 cells/ml

Calving interval 374 days

The light loam over gravel soils that run down to the River Arrow, low rainfall of 711mm makes The Leen an ideal set up for an autumn-calving paddock-grazing system.

Brothers Rich and Chris Norman aim to minimise any health risks by using BVD tag and test for calves at birth and blood testing them at six months old then monitoring the milking herd using a milk sample.

They also vaccinate for IBR, BVD and leptospirosis.

The skilled dairy team is one of the Normans priorities.

Led by dairy manager Krisztian Takacs, who joined them in 2008, the team of three full-time stock people and two trainee part-time helpers undergo regular training.

Autumn calving starts on 4 September and continues for 10 weeks.

This year, 360 cows calved in the first 22 days and they aim to calve 75% of cows in six weeks.

Mating starts in November. All cows are AId to a dairy bull and the aim is to achieve pregnancy rates of 88% at 10 weeks. In 2016, 68% of cows were in calf by 42 days.

Turnout is as early as possible in February.

They aim for 12.5t DM/ha and produce 73% of their milk from forage, keeping in parlour feeding to a flat rate of 950kg per cow fed in early lactation.

Darren and Stuart McMurran, Banbridge, Northern Ireland

Key facts 410 Holstein cows and 300 followers

Year-round calving

Milk yield 11,751kg at 3.81% fat and 3.13% protein

Three-times-a-day milking

Somatic cell count 175,000/ml

Calving index 375 days

222ha

Brothers Darren and Stuart are obtaining pregnancy rates of 25% at their 410 Holstein farm in Northern Ireland.

It is the third time the McMurrans have qualified for the Gold Cup finalist line up in the past four years.

But this year they have done so against a backdrop of herd expansion, adding 150 cows and a new cubicle shed

They target a level milk profile and an average daily output of 40 litres a cow.

Land is the limiting factor here in Northern Ireland, so we look to maximise output per cubicle while controlling inputs, says Darren.

Used for the high-yielding group, the new sand cubicle housing looks to be contributing to cow performance.

The average for this group of cows, that have been in the house for the past 18 months, is 54kg/day of milk with a somatic cell count of 89,000 cells/ml.

The McMurrans also stick to strict milking protocols including pre-and-post dipping and a cluster flush system to help to keep the herds average somatic cell count on a downward trend.

They use the National Milk Records polymerase chain reaction test to help identify the pathogens and determine the best treatment. And any cows with more than three cases of mastitis are culled.

Working closely with Newry vets, all animals on the unit are vaccinated for BVD, IBR and leptospirosis.

DJ & S Tomlinson, Bilsborrow Hall Farm, Preston, Lancashire

Key facts Pedigree Holstein herd  270 cows and 300 youngstock, including young bulls

160ha unit

Year-round calving  calving index (to September 2017) 377 days

Somatic cell count 98,000cells/ml

Replacement rate 22%

40% of cows are in calf by 100 days

Supply Pakezza Dairies at Rochdale

Having come runner-up in 2013 and 2015, could it be third time lucky for the Bilsrow Holstein herd?

Run by James Tomlinson and his wife Eleanor in partnership with James parents David and Sheila, the 270-cow pedigree herd is yielding an impressive 11,383kg at 4.27% fat and 3.16% protein.

James attributes some of the success in herd health  and fertility  in this high-performance herd to breeding policies.

A balanced approach has always been taken to sire selection. We want to breed milky healthy cows of average size and with the strength to last at least five  and preferably more  lactations.

About 80% of inseminations are with genomically proven sires.

Well-known for his cattle breeding expertise, James uses sexed semen on heifers and breeds herd replacements plus 50 heifers that they sell along with and 25 stock bulls a year.

Looking forward, James wants to see longevity improve further and he is working with his vet to reduce antibiotics use across the board. Following a selective dry cow therapy programme, 30% of the herd does not receive antibiotics at drying off.

Through the Garstang Discussion Group and vet discussion group meetings he keeps up to speed with the performance of his herd versus others in the area.

Andrew and Rachel Giles, Glasbury-on-Wye, Powys

Key facts Grass-based system  spring calving

550 cross-bred Friesian Jersey cows, 275 youngstock

Milk yield 5,316kg, 4.43% fat, 3.50% protein

Somatic cell count 130,000 cells/ml

Submission rates 90%  95% in three weeks

Replacement rate 22%

174ha grazing platform

For Andrew and Rachel Giles success is based on looking after the soil and grassland and breeding the right type of cow that can graze from February to November on a tight stocking rate and with superb fertility.

They look to complete calvings in 11 weeks in spring and get more than 78% back in calf in six weeks.

They are growing 13t of DM/ha from grass and feed only 800kg a cow a year of concentrates.

Fit healthy cows at drying off, selective dry cow therapy and a transition ration with the right balance of minerals helps with calving and mating, with conception rates and calving interval hitting 55-60% and 375 days respectively.

Farm performance is carefully monitored and they are active members of local discussion group Wye Graze, which sets benchmarks for similar dairy units in the area.

The aim here is to control costs, be technically efficient as grass and dairy producers so we produce as high a value product as we can, and make sure we make a profit even when milk prices are low like they were in 2016, he adds.
Display, Processors, RAM and Storage

The Acer Predator Triton 700 comes with a 15.6-inch full-HD IPS display with a 120Hz refresh rate with support for Nvidia's G-Sync tech. The notebook is powered by a seventh generation Intel Core i7 processor which is paired with Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPU.

The device further offers two NVMe PCIe SSDs in RAID 0 configuration and up to 32GB of 2400MHz DDR4 RAM. However, the company has said that the specifications may vary depending on model and/or region.

Innovative Cooling

The company has managed to fit top-end specifications into the Predator Triton 700 in relatively slim (for a gaming laptop) chassis which is about 18.9mm thick. Acer has claimed that it because of its Nvidia's Max-Q technology and its own innovative cooling featuring AeroBlade 3D metal fans. The fans as per the company will increase airflow by 35 percent compared to conventional fans.

Better Sound Output

Predator Triton 700 features Dolby Atmos surround sound and Acer TrueHarmony technologies that are said to deliver a better audio experience. The laptop also offers Skype for Business Certification to provide superior teleconferencing.

Other Features

Acer Predator Triton 700 also comes with several other features that include Killer DoubleShot Pro networking and Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, two USB 3.0 ports (featuring power-off USB charging), one USB 2.0 port, an HDMI 2.0 port, one DisplayPort connector, and a Gigabit Ethernet port.

The laptop has a Corning Gorilla Glass plate beside the keyboard giving a view of the cooling system and it also functions as a 'Precision Touchpad'.

The Predator Triton 700 is equipped with an RGB-backlit mechanical keyboard and it comes with its PredatorSense software which will enable gamers to customise the controls as per the user's needs. The laptop is also VR ready.

Pricing and Availability

Acer Predator Triton 700 will be available in India across Acer Exclusive Stores and authorized online stores and will retail at a price of Rs. 2,99,999.
Android Oreo rollout for Samsung phones to start from 2018 News oi -Chandrika Last year also, Samsung updated its flagship smartphones around the same timeline.

It seems like Samsung smartphone users wouldn't receive the Android Oreo update before 2018. We got this information from an official Samsung Turkey portal Guncel Miyiz.

According to the portal, Samsung has already started working on the Android 8.0 Oreo update and it will be rolled out in the beginning of 2018. However, the portal doesn't reveal any additional information. As such, neither the release date for the update nor the timeline for particular devices is given. In any case, the Galaxy Note 8, as well as the Galaxy S8 duo, are the first in line to get the Oreo update.

Last year also, Samsung updated its flagship smartphones around the same timeline. Unfortunately, Samsung has made no progress when it comes to sending out OS updates on time. It is pretty frustrating for users as well, who will have to wait for months to get the taste of Oreo.

Currently, other than Google Pixel phones, Sony's Xperia XZ1 and Xperia XZ1 Compact run on the latest iteration of Android. Even Sony's Xperia XZ Premium smartphone has already started receiving the Oreo update. There are rumors suggesting that HTC will start pushing out Android 8.0 Oreo update to its flagships sometime between November to early December.

Despite being a tech giant, Samsung, on the other hand, is taking much more time for the Oreo update. Anyway, the Oreo update will bring a slew of new features including the picture-in-picture mode, modified notification visuals, Always-on display (already available on Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and Galaxy S8 duo), and auto-fill. In addition, there will be many performance and security improvements.

Via

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New HTC U11 Plus invite teaser confirms the phone's design News oi -Samden Sherpa HTC has just released a new teaser for the event and the new teaser reveals the back side of the smartphone.

HTC is busy creating hype for its upcoming U11 series smartphone the U11 Plus. We have already seen many leaks regarding the smartphone and the company has also reportedly sent out press invitations for a launch event that will happen on November 2 in Taipei.

While we are a few days away from the launch, the company has just released a new teaser for the event. Well, HTC's new teaser does not have the U symbol like the previous ones but it does show the back side of the smartphone. It does not show the full back side of the device, but it does give us some hints about the design of the smartphone.

The teaser confirms that the HTC U11 Plus will most likely sport a single camera at the rear. There is an LED flash and what seems to be a secondary microphone at the sides of the camera. The fingerprint scanner is also placed below the camera and this is one noteworthy change as HTC U11 featured a front-facing fingerprint scanner. Further, the back side of the phone seems to combine metal and glass finish.

Youll see it all on 11.02.2017. pic.twitter.com/vzYtKVdjK5  HTC (@htc) October 24, 2017

That is pretty much that we can make out from the teaser. Besides, HTC U11 Plus also appeared on TENAA and it did show off the phone's design. As per the TENNA images, in terms of design, it showed that the smartphone has very small bezels on the sides and thin ones at the top and bottom. The rear portion appeared to have a glossy finish like the one its predecessor HTC U11. At the back, there was a single camera lens placed at the center with the fingerprint sensor below it. Basically confirming the features that the teaser has shown us.

However the TENAA listing did not reveal any spec info, so it is still a mystery. Going by earlier rumors and leaks, HTC U11 Plus is expected to feature a 6-inch WQHD+ display with an 18:9 aspect ratio. The handset will most probably be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC and the smartphone could come in two variants in terms of memory. The base variant will pack 4GB of RAM with 64GB of internal storage. The higher variant will come with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage.

As for the optics, the HTC U11 Plus is rumored to be equipped with a 12-megapixel rear camera with f/1.7 aperture and dual-LED flash. Up front, it is expected to come with an 8-megapixel camera for selfies and video calling. Further, the smartphone is said to backed by a 3930mAh battery and it should come with support for Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0. HTC U11 is also said to come with features like IP68 rating for water and dust resistance, Edge Sense technology, and Boom Sound for enhanced audio capabilities. Earlier leaks from benchmark websites have revealed that the smartphone will launch with Android 8.0 Oreo out-of-the-box.

Meanwhile, reports have also stated that HTC could announce the U11 Life model as well. HTC U11 Life is said to be the company's rumored Android One smartphone. Further, rumors have said that this smartphone will come with mid-range specifications that will include a 5.2-inch display, a Snapdragon 630 SoC, and 16-megapixel camera sensors on front and back.

The HTC U11 Life is also expected to come in two variants, with one carrying 3GB of RAM and 32GB of inbuilt storage, while the other variant housing a 4GB of RAM and 64GB of inbuilt storage. HTC U11 Life is said to be a cheaper version of HTC's flagship. Some reports have also mentioned that HTC U11 Life is just a renamed version of HTC Ocean Life.

In any case, we should be hearing more details about the new phone or phones in the coming days and everything will be clear.

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Military Strikes Continue Against ISIS in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Oct. 23, 2017  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, conducting 25 strikes consisting of 28 engagements between Oct. 21-22, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Yesterday in Syria, coalition military forces conducted seven strikes consisting of 10 engagements against ISIS targets.

-- Near Abu Kamal, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS vehicle.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, six strikes destroyed five defensive fighting positions, four ISIS lines of communication, a vehicle-borne-bomb factory and an ISIS headquarters.

On Oct. 21, coalition military forces conducted four strikes consisting of four engagements against ISIS targets.

-- Near Abu Kamal, three strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and destroyed a vehicle-borne-bomb factory, an ISIS-held building and a unmanned aerial vehicle.

-- Near Shadaddi, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a fighting position.

Strikes in Iraq

Yesterday in Iraq, coalition military forces conducted three strikes consisting of three engagements against ISIS targets.

-- Near Qaim, three strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and destroyed an improvised explosive device factory and an ISIS-held building.

On Oct. 21, coalition military forces conducted 11 strikes consisting of 11 engagements against ISIS targets.

-- Near Qaim, eight strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed six ISIS vehicles, three ISIS-held buildings, a vehicle-borne-bomb factory, a checkpoint and a petroleum, oil, and lubrication site.

-- Near Rawah, two strikes destroyed an ISIS-held building and a vehicle-borne-bomb factory.

-- Near Tal Afar, a strike destroyed an ISIS tunnel.

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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Army developing lasers that pierce fog, dust to destroy targets

By David Vergun, Army News ServiceOctober 23, 2017

WASHINGTON -- A lot of people think that high-energy lasers, or HELs, can't penetrate fog, rain and dust, said Thomas Webber. That's just plain wrong.

Webber, director of the Directed Energy Division's Technical Center, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, spoke at the Association of the United States Army's Annual Meeting and Exposition, Oct. 9.

The key to making HELs work in poor atmospheric conditions is something called "adaptive optics," he said, adding that the Army is continuing to make more and more improvements on its adaptive optics system to give a greater range of compensation for degraded conditions.

Besides the optics, an effective beam control system is used, which forms one beam from multiple lasers to pinpoint exactly where the peak energy should be focused, he said, adding that it operates in conjunction with the optics system.

ADVANTAGES OF LASERS

Webber outlined some advantages HELs have over conventional weapons. HELs are low-cost, the main expense being the diesel used to power the generators, he said.

They're also faster than conventional weapons, he pointed out.

The HELs have rapid engagement, which means that once the target is acquired and engaged "it's not getting away from you because the instant fired, it will make contact with it at the speed of light. It doesn't get any faster than that."

Precision of the energy is another key component, he said, meaning HEL can be focused at the most vulnerable point of the target where it will do the most damage thanks to the advanced optics and speed at which a laser travels.

In fact, the optics on the HEL are so advanced that a battlefield commander can use them for multiple applications with regards to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. "It's the best ISR capability they'll ever have access to," Webber said.

HEL has "a deep magazine," he said, implying that it doesn't run out of bullets or jam like conventional weapons sometimes do.

Another advantage is that HELs don't broadcast a visible signature because the laser beam is invisible to the human eye, despite artist renderings of lasers firing brightly colored beams, he said.

Finally, he said HELs give commanders graduated degrees of engagement. What that means is the HELs can be dialed up to destroy rockets, mortar and artillery fire, as well as unmanned systems, or the power can be dialed down low enough to disable targets as "soft" as an AK-47 rifle.

The effectiveness of lasers was demonstrated during the Joint Improvised Threat Defeat Organization's "Hard Kill Challenge" exercise, conducted at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, from Feb. 27 to March 3, 2017, Webber said.

During that challenge, the Mobile Expeditionary High Energy Laser 2.0, using a relatively small 5-kilowatt HEL, demonstrated its counter-UAS capability, winning the challenge by shooting down more UASs than any other type of weapon, he noted.

DEVELOPMENTAL TIMELINE

Getting to this point in time required about 10 years of development, testing and lots of trial and error, Webber said.

The reason development has seemed like a long time coming, is that although "we want to get this capability to the field as quickly as we can, we also want to work this in an engineering mindset. We want to get it right and demonstrate the capability and be informed as we move forward," he said.

When the Army was looking for a laser, instead of inventing one, it turned to the private sector, which had been using them for some time in the welding industry.

The next step was to develop a thermal management system to address all of the radiant heat that HELs give off, then develop a beam control system that could point at and track moving objects, he said. Also, a power management system was developed that provided HEL with a refresh rate that allowed power to recycle fast enough to fire multiple bursts.

All of that, along with generators, batteries and laser components was pretty massive, he said, so the Army decided to place it all on one of its bigger trucks, the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck, or HEMTT, which allowed the team to demonstrate capabilities with a 10-kW HEL three years ago.

This fiscal year, a 60-kW HEL-on-a-HEMTT will inform milestone decisions and in FY19, another demonstration will lead to proof of concept.

The next step, Webber said, is to put a 100-kW HEL on a Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles, with the goal of making it a program of record.

Although HELs are not yet in the brigade combat teams, some Soldiers at Fort Sill and other places have gotten the opportunity to experiment with them, he said.

Those experiments involved a 5-kW HEL mounted on a Stryker. The main focus wasn't power -- it was about learning what tactics, techniques and procedures Soldiers might employ, he said. "They'd come up with some pretty crazy and creative ways they could use the laser. That's good. The user testing was so valuable."

Eventually, the team plans to mount a 50-kW HEL on a Stryker, he said. "This will be our mobile mission high-energy laser  with enough power for short-range air defense capability for the maneuver force. That's key. Moving with the force."

Although Webber's team is the Army's lead for HEL science and technology, he said the Army is working collaboratively within its own laboratories and centers of excellence, as well as across the services, with allies, as well as industry partners.

"High energy lasers can be used in a variety of mission sets that address existing and future capability gaps," Webber said. "These invisible killers are going to be game changers."

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A strong OPFOR makes a strong army

By Capt. Kayla Christopher October 23, 2017

YAVORIV, Ukraine -- When the U.S. Army's 45th Infantry Brigade Combat Team assumed the Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine mission in January the Combat Training Center development staff was tasked with growing a small group of Ukrainian soldiers into a formidable opposing force.

Ten months later, the OPFOR, composed of Ukrainian soldiers permanently stationed at the Yavoriv CTC, has grown from a little more than 100 soldiers to a battalion-sized element complete with a T-64 tank company.

The role of the OPFOR, explained CTC development officer, Lt. Col. Khalid Hussein, is to simulate the enemy, thereby creating tough and realistic training for the infantry battalions that rotate through the Yavoriv CTC.

"Our goal is to have a fully-functional, free-thinking opposing force that is capable of creating a challenging environment for the rotational unit and we do this through the application of a force-on-force scenario," Hussein said.

Tools such as the Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System, more commonly referred to as MILES gear, help simulate battlefield effects, but it's the unpredictability of the actual OPFOR soldiers that makes the fight feel real.

Enabling the OPFOR to become what it is today has not been without its challenges.

"The biggest challenge has been growing from a company-sized to a battalion-sized element in a very short amount of time," Hussein said. "Anytime you expand an organization-personnel issues, training, resources, logistics-these are the natural challenges you'll face."

Hussein credits the OPFOR's success to the professionalism and adaptability of the Ukrainian officers and NCOs who have stepped-up in leadership roles throughout the formation.

"We capitalize on the experience these guys bring to the unit," Hussein said. "They have responded very effectively and it's been quite amazing how quickly they've adjusted."

Over the last year, the deployed U.S. Soldiers have stressed the importance of the NCO corps to the Ukrainian army through NCO professional development.

The NCOs in the OPFOR unit are no exception.

"My main focus has been showing them how NCOs and officers work hand-in-hand," said Sgt. 1st Class Russel Coley, the NCO in charge of the OPFOR development.

In the beginning, he explained, it was difficult to convince the Ukrainian officers to trust their NCOs, but now, slowly but surely, the NCOs are leading more and more of training.

"We've integrated ourselves with the Ukrainian OPFOR, we're like one team," Coley said. "Now they want to model their NCO corps after ours."

As part of their professional development, Coley has had the Ukrainian NCOs lead classes on tactics and pre-combat checks and inspections among other topics.

Coley says building a strong OPFOR hinges on their NCOs being proactive.

"That's the key thing-they're taking ownership of it," Coley said. "They can see the fruits of their labor and they know that what they're doing is paying off."

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Release

No. NR-360-17 October 23, 2017

United StatesJapanRepublic of Korea Defense Ministerial Meeting Joint Press Statement

U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, and Republic of Korea Minister of National Defense Song Young-moo convened the 9th Trilateral Defense Ministerial Meeting in Clark, Philippines on October 23 on the margins of the 2017 Association of Southeast Asian Nations Defense Ministerial Meeting Plus. Their joint press statement is available here.



http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1350803/

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Release

No. NR-362-17 October 23, 2017

Readout of Secretary of Defense Mattis' Meeting with Japanese Minister of Defense Onodera

Pentagon Chief Spokesperson Dana W. White provided the following readout:

Oct 23, 2017

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis met with Japanese Minister of Defense Itsunori Onodera in Clark, Philippines on the sidelines of the ASEAN Defense Ministerial Meeting Plus to discuss regional and global security issues. Secretary Mattis and Minister Onodera reaffirmed the U.S.-Japan alliance is the cornerstone of peace, prosperity, and freedom in the Asia-Pacific region.

The defense leaders both condemned in the strongest terms North Korea's recurring provocations and development of nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, which pose an increasing threat to regional peace and security. They resolved to continue bolstering bilateral and trilateral security cooperation with the Republic of Korea to deter and respond to threats posed by the Kim Jong Un regime.

Secretary Mattis reaffirmed that Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands and that the United States will continue to oppose any unilateral action that seeks to undermine Japan's administration of these islands. Both Secretary Mattis and Minister Onodera 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, which alter the status quo and increase tensions.

Secretary Mattis and Minister Onodera confirmed that the United States and Japan will continue to cooperate closely to provide capacity building assistance to Southeast Asian partners. They affirmed that the U.S.-Japan alliance is indivisible and agreed that further efforts to strengthen the alliance will contribute to peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region and around the world.

//END//

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1351035/

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More than 11 million Yemeni children in dire need of aid, warns UN

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 07:12PM

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned that more than 11 million Yemeni children are in dire need of relief aid as a result of Saudi Arabia's aggression against the impoverished country.

In a statement published on Monday, the agency described the conflict in Yemen as "devastating," and said the Yemeni children were facing "the largest food security crisis in the world and an unprecedented cholera outbreak."

"Deprived of access to basic health and nutrition services, children are unable to fulfill their potential," the statement said, adding that children in the war-ravaged country were dying of "preventable causes like malnutrition, diarrhea, and respiratory tract infections."

The OCHA also pointed to the uncertain future of millions of schoolchildren in Yemen as thousands of teachers refuse to attend classes for not receiving their salaries during the past year.

"The education system is on the brink of collapse, with more than five million children at risk of being deprived of their right to education," the OCHA said.

Since March 2015, Yemen has been under heavy airstrikes by Saudi Arabia's warplanes as part of a brutal war against the Arabian Peninsula country in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstall the former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.

More than 12,000 people have been killed since the onset of the campaign and much of the country's infrastructure, including hospitals, schools and factories, has been ravaged.

The Saudi war has also triggered a deadly cholera epidemic across Yemen.

According to data provided by the World Health Organization and Yemen's Health Ministry, the country's cholera outbreak, the worst on record in terms of its rapid spread, has infected 612,703 people and killed 2,048 since it began in April, with some districts still reporting sharp rises in new cases.

The United Nations also says the Saudi war has left some 17 million Yemenis hungry, nearly seven million facing famine, and about 16 million almost without access to water or sanitation.

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14 killed after three bombers blow up explosives in northeast Nigeria

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 06:29PM

A triple bomb attack in northeastern Nigeria has left 14 people dead and more than a dozen others injured, authorities say.

The casualties occurred on Sunday evening, when three female bombers detonated their explosives in the northeastern city of Maiduguri.

"So far, we have 14 people killed and 18 injured in the triple suicide bombings last night," said Ahmed Satomi, from the Borno state emergency management agency.

No group or individual has so far claimed responsibility for the deadly attack; however, an anonymous militia source said the blasts came "hours after reports of sighting of a lot of Boko Haram members outside the city."

Last month, at least 15 people were killed after suspected members of the Boko Haram Takfiri terrorist group targeted an aid distribution point in Borno state.

The group claimed an attack on August 16 in Konduga, during which three female attackers blew up their explosives outside a camp for displaced persons. It killed at least 28 people and left more than 80 others injured.

Boko Haram has been largely pushed back out of its main strongholds in northern Nigeria, according to the country's military and government. The group, however, is still active in its Sambisa Forest enclave in Borno state and launches sporadic attacks on civilians and security forces there.

The Nigerian military launched renewed counter-insurgency offensives after the end of the rainy season in northeastern Nigeria in September. Those offensives have clearly caused attacks by Boko Haram to drop, but the government warns that the group can still attack civilians at "soft" targets, including mosques, markets and camps for displaced people.

Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced as a result of eight years of the Boko Haram insurgency, which has also affected Nigeria's neighbors, including Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

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Egypt bombs militants smuggling weapons from Libya

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 05:47PM

Egypt says a convoy of suspected militants smuggling weapons from neighboring Libya has been neutralized as the military steps up operations to hunt those behind a recent deadly attack on police forces in the southwest of the capital Cairo.

The Egyptian army spokesman, Tamer el-Rifai, said in a statement on Monday that eight vehicles were also destroyed in airstrikes on the country's western border earlier in the day.

Rifai said the bombardment was part of operations to track down "terrorists" who killed 16 policemen in a high-profile attack in the region last week.

Security sources say more than 50 were killed when militants ambushed Egyptian police forces some 135 kilometers outside Cairo on Friday night. The attack sparked huge public anger in Egypt, with many questioning President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's success in fighting militants across Egypt.

Egypt's Defense Ministry said on Monday that the anti-terror operation in the Western Desert, some 135 kilometers southwest of Cairo, began after security forces received tip-offs about militants "hiding, training, and preparing to carry out terrorist operations" in the area.

The Egyptian Air Force said the vehicles destroyed in the air raids were carrying "large quantities of weapons, ammunition and explosive material" for "a new infiltration attempt." Another military statement said scores of militants were killed while traveling onboard the vehicles.

Sisi convened a high-profile security meeting Sunday to discuss last week's ambush attack. He said the attack had failed to dent his government's resolve to fight terrorists.

Various militant groups, including a branch of the Daesh Takfiri group, have been launching attacks on security forces and civilians since 2013 when Sisi, the then army chief, led a coup against then president Mohamed Morsi, which ousted him from power.

Many blame the current insurgency in Egypt on Sisi's large-scale crackdown on dissent, including followers of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Mass trials have been held for thousands of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, and hundreds have received death sentences or lengthy prison terms. Egypt outlawed the movement in 2014.

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United Nations condemns arrest of Congo opposition members

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 03:04PM

The United Nations has called on authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to release the opposition members recently arrested amid a crackdown on dissent by President Joseph Kabila's government.

The UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, known as MONUSCO, made the plea on Monday, a day after Congolese police broke up a meeting by the main opposition party, the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), in the southeastern city of Lubumbashi and arrested 28 supporters.

"I urge the Congolese authorities to release immediately and unconditionally those arbitrarily arrested yesterday in Lubumbashi," said Maman Sidikou, head of the UN mission.

Sidikou said MONUSCO was "deeply concerned by ongoing acts of intimidation" against opposition members and reminded authorities of their duty to guarantee citizens' rights "in accordance with the constitution and international commitments" of DR Congo.

Reports said the arrests took place on the eve of a return to the city of opposition leader Felix Tshisekedi after a long absence. Party sources said 48 were detained.

In a separate incident on Monday, riot police fired teargas canisters to disperse people who had gathered at the city's airport to welcome the opposition leader.

Tensions are high in DR Congo after Kabila did not step down when his constitutional mandate expired in December.

Kabila's presidential term expired on December 19, 2016, but ruling officials have effectively prolonged his mandate until 2018, claiming that the government would not be able to arrange elections before then.

The opposition accuses Kabila and the electoral commission of having "declared war on the Congolese people" by delaying the poll.

The UN has on several occasions said the current situation has created "tensions and a climate of uncertainty," and the international community has strongly demanded that a clear poll timetable be released.

Joseph Kabila has run one of the world's least developed countries since the 2001 assassination of his father Laurent.

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Suspected al-Qaeda-linked terrorists kill 4 UAE-backed forces in southern Yemen

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 02:41PM

At least four UAE-backed forces, loyal to Yemen's former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, have been killed and several others have sustained injuries after a number of terrorists launched a bomb attack against their military camp in southern Yemen.

According local sources, five suspected militants of the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) Takfiri terrorist outfit, driving an explosives-laden vehicle, approached a military base in the district of Mudiyah in Abyan province on Monday morning.

Four of the assailants, wearing explosive vests, then ran the vehicle towards the base to detonate their explosives but were all shot dead by guarding mercenaries before they had time to accomplish their terror mission.

The remaining assailant then blew up the vehicle, causing a massive explosion, which killed the driver and four mercenaries. The blast also wounded at least nine other UAE-backed mercenaries.

Last month, Hadi's militia managed to capture Mudiyah, a stronghold of al-Qaeda militants in southern regions.

No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it has the hallmark of the AQAP terror outfit, which alongside its rival, the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, has exploited more than two years of Saudi Arabia's war against the Yemeni nation, trying to deepen its influence in the impoverished country by launching bombings and shooting attacks.

Since March 2015, the Saudi regime has been heavily bombarding Yemen as part of a brutal campaign against its impoverished southern neighbor in an attempt to reinstall Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, and crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement, which is in control of large parts of Yemen including the capital Sana'a. The Saudi campaign, however, has failed to achieve its goals.

Hadi, who initially fled the country to Riyadh, managed to capture Aden in July 2015 with the military help of the regime in Riyadh after it fell into the hands of Houthis in September 2014. He has since taken some other regions of Yemen, including parts of Abyan.

Since then, Hadi, along with his supporters and militiamen, has turned the port city into their base, calling it Yemen's temporary capital, and has gone hand-in-hand with the Saudi war machine against the nation, trying to capture more areas in the country.

Over the past two years, Houthis have been running state affairs and defending Yemeni people against the Saudi campaign.

Latest figures show that the imposed war has so far killed over 12,000 Yemenis and wounded thousands more. The Saudi aggression has also taken a heavy toll on the country's facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.

Certain Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, are key partners to the campaign, which lacks any international mandate and has faced increasing criticism.

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US secretary of state makes surprise visit to Afghanistan

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 02:20PM

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has landed in Afghanistan in a brief, unannounced trip to discuss Washington's new war strategy with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, according to the American embassy.

Tillerson met with President Ghani on Monday at Bagram Airfield north of Kabul, America's largest base in Afghanistan, where he only spent two hours before departing for Qatar.

"The Secretary stated that the new U.S. strategy for South Asia makes clear the United States' commitment to working with the government of Afghanistan and with partners across the region to achieve peace in Afghanistan and deny safe havens to terrorists who threaten that goal," the US embassy in Kabul said in a statement.

"President Ghani reiterated his support for the new US strategy and emphasized his government's commitment to reforms aimed at ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of all Afghans."

"Clearly we have to continue to fight against the Taliban, against others, in order for them to understand they will never win a military victory," Tillerson told reporters after the meeting that was also attended by Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah.

It was Tillerson's first trip to Afganistan as secretary of state.

On August 22, Tillerson undermined President Donald Trump's promise to win the Afghan war and defeating the Taliban, saying Washington might not succeed in the war.

"I think the president was clear this entire effort was intended to put pressure on the Taliban, to have the Taliban understand that you will not win a battlefield victory," Tillerson said then. "We may not win one, but neither will you."

His remarks came one day after Trump said he would prolong the military intervention in the South Asian country, which he once described as a "complete waste."

The United States -- under Republican George W. Bush's presidency -- and its allies invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 as part of Washington's so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban regime from power, but after more than one and-a-half-decade, the foreign troops are still deployed to the country.

After taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama, a Democrat, vowed to end the Afghan war -- one of the longest conflicts in US history  but he failed to keep his promise.

Trump, who has spoken against the Afghan war, has dubbed the 2001 invasion and following occupation of Afghanistan as "Obama's war."

But now Trump has announced to deploy thousands of more troops to the war-torn country, signaling a policy shift.

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Catalan authorities won't follow orders from Madrid: Official

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 11:21AM

A senior Catalan official says all institutions, inducing police, will only follow orders from democratically-elected regional government of Catalonia if Spain moves to impose direct rule on the separatist region.

The region's foreign affairs spokesman Raul Romeva said in an interview with BBC on Monday that Catalan authorities will not follow orders from Madrid.

"It's not that we will refuse (orders). It is not a personal decision. It is a seven million-person decision," Romeva said.

"I have no doubt that all civil servants in Catalonia will keep following the instructions provided by the elected and legitimate institutions that we have right now in place (in Catalonia)," he added.

He said that Madrid needs to recognize that the Catalan people had voted for independence in a referendum on October 1 and that only the Catalan people have the right to change the regional institutions.

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has announced plans to sack Catalonia's regional government and limit the powers of its parliament, after Catalonia's president Carles Puigdemont refused to drop the secession bid.

Rajoy called on Spain's Senate on Saturday to trigger a section of the constitution -- known as Article 155 -- which allows Madrid to take over any of the country's 17 autonomous regions should they break the law.

Romeva further urged the European Union to take action against Madrid's attempt to impose direct rule on Catalonia.

"How can the European Union live with that situation if it appears," he asked. "How can the EU democracy survive and how can they be credible if they allow this to happen?"

"The people and the institutions in Catalonia will not let this to happen," he added.

Spain's Deputy Prime Minister has said Madrid may choose a single representative to govern Catalonia temporarily.

A Catalan far-right party The Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP)meanwhile, warned that Madrid "will receive a response in the form of massive civil disobedience" if it dismisses the regional government.

The party denounced Madrid's plans as the biggest aggression" against the Catalan people since the country was ruled by a military dictatorship from 1939 until his death in 1975.

The region's political parties are scheduled to meet later on Monday to set a date and agenda for a gathering of the regional parliament to discuss the poetical issue and decided the next steps.

"What happens now, with everyone in agreement and unity, is that we will announce what we will do and how," said Catalan government spokesman Jordi Turull.

He denounced Madrid's move as "a fully-fledged coup against Catalan institutions."

Madrid wants, among other measures, to take direct control of Catalonia's police, the Mossos d'Esquadra, and warns it will consider increasing the presence of the National Police and Civil Guard.

Catalonia and the Basque Country are Spain's only regions with their own fully deployed police forces.

In the Basque Country, people staged a demonstration in Beasain in support of Catalan separatists, joining hands across the streets to form a huge human chain.

Later, they gathered in the main square, where they sang 'We are all Catalonia' and listened to public speeches.

One of the speakers addressing the crowd said, "We send all our strength and support from here [to Catalonia]. We are all Catalonia. We are with you."

The Basque Country is an autonomous community of northern Spain, which has been recognized by the Spanish Constitution of 1978.

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Philippine defense chief declares end to Daesh siege on Marawi

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 09:08AM

The Philippine defense chief has declared an end to the five-month operation aimed at liberating the southern city of Marawi, which was under a siege by Daesh-affiliated militants.

Speaking at an annual meeting of Southeast Asian defense ministers on Monday, Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said, "There are no more militants inside Marawi City."

Lorenzana said that Filipino troops recovered 42 bodies of the last group of militants in two buildings and a mosque in the area.

"Those are the last group of stragglers of Mautes (Takfiri militant group) and they were caught in one building so there was a firefight, so they were finished," he added.

He explained that the last hostages held by the militants had been released earlier.

Military spokesman, Restituto Padilla, also confirmed that there were "no more terrorists" in Marawi, but said there was still gunfire in the city, without elaborating.

Reuters also reported that automatic gunfire and artillery could be heard throughout Monday morning in the city.

Marawi's liberation was first announced by President Rodrigo Duterte on October 17, but the military said at the time that it was still fighting a dwindling band of militants in the city.

Prior to Duterte's announcement, the Philippine army had killed two top Daesh terrorist commanders, Isnilon Hapilon and Omarkhayam Maute, during a raid in the embattled city.

Hapilon, the top Daesh leader in Southeast Asia, had, according to the army, joined forces with the Maute militant group to plan the Marawi rampage, which sparked fears of the notorious terror group gaining a foothold in the region.

Filipino troops were engaged in a battle with hundreds of militants, who had occupied Marawi on May 23 after taking control of the city's central business district. They ransacked banks and shops, including gun stores and looted houses.

The violence has displaced hundreds of thousands of residents and left at least 1,131 people dead, including 919 militants and 165 soldiers and police officers.

The military said it rescued at least 1,780 of the hostages seized by the militants. Army commander Romeo Brawner said at a news conference on Sunday that they freed the final group of 20 captives overnight.

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Tillerson Makes Surprise Visit To Afghanistan To Discuss New U.S. Strategy

RFE/RL October 23, 2017

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has paid an unannounced visit to Afghanistan for talks with Afghan leaders on the new U.S. strategy to end the 16-year war.

The closed-door meeting took place on October 23 at Bagram Airfield north of Kabul, the United States' largest base in Afghanistan, as President Ashraf Ghani's Western-backed government is struggling to beat back insurgents in the wake of the exit of most NATO forces in 2014.

"Clearly we have to continue to fight against the Taliban, against others, in order for them to understand they will never win a military victory," Tillerson told reporters after the meeting with Ghani that was also attended by Afghan Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah.

"It is imperative in the end that we are denying safe haven to any terrorist organizations or any extremists to any part of this world," he added.

The administration of President Donald Trump has recently unveiled a strategy to try to defeat the Taliban and other extremist groups in Afghanistan, and officials said more than 3,000 additional U.S. troops are being sent to the country to reinforce the 11,000 U.S. troops already stationed in the country.

At a brief news conference in Afghanistan before leaving the country, Tillerson said he would visit Pakistan on October 24 to discuss U.S. requests for specific actions against extremist groups based there. He will then head to India.

"We have made some very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support the Taliban receives and other terrorist organizations receive," Tillerson said.

Pakistan has denied that it harbors terrorists and says the United States is using Islamabad as a "scapegoat" for its own failure to win the war in Afghanistan.

In a statement, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul said Tillerson and Ghani "reaffirmed the U.S.-Afghan commitment to achieving peace, stability, and long-term prosperity in Afghanistan."

Tillerson said that the new U.S. strategy for South Asia "makes clear the United States' commitment to working with the government of Afghanistan and with partners across the region to achieve peace in Afghanistan and deny safe havens to terrorists who threaten that goal," it added.

The embassy statement said that Ghani "reiterated his support for the new U.S. strategy and emphasized his government's commitment to reforms."

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/tillerson-in-surprise-visit-to- afghanistan-discusses-new-us-strategy/28810943.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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Preliminary Results Show Need For Mayoral Runoffs In Kosovo

RFE/RL's Balkan Service October 23, 2017

Preliminary results in Kosovo's municipal elections indicate that runoffs will be needed to decide the winning candidates in mayoral races in major cities throughout the Balkan country.

With about 90 percent of precincts reporting in the capital, Pristina, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said incumbent Mayor Shpend Ahmeti of the Self-Determination Party, also known as the Vetevendosje movement (VV), has won 43.42 percent of the vote.

If confirmed, it would mean that Ahmeti would face a runoff next month against Arban Abrashi of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), with 35.91 percent.

Runoffs were also likely in 18 other municipalities, including Prizren, Mitrovica, Gjilan, and Gjakova, the preliminary results indicate.

Countrywide, polling stations closed at 1900 local time (Eds: same time in Prague) and the CEC said the turnout was 43.79 percent, as the young republic took another step in its effort to solidify its democratic credentials.

International observers said the voting took place without any major irregularities.

"Procedures are respected. We were informed only about technical problems," said Alojz Peterle, chief observer of the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) to Kosovo.

Democracy in Action, a nongovernmental organization -- which said it had some 3,000 observers monitoring the election -- had said indications were that a second round of elections would be needed to determine mayoral winners in at least 15 municipalities.

Some 1.89 million people were registered to vote at 2,505 polling stations in the 38 municipalities. The CEC said the number of registered voters includes Kosovar citizens living abroad and is often larger than the actual population of Kosovo, currently about 1.81 million.

The mayor's race in Pristina is seen as the big prize. The opposition Self-Determination Party currently controls town hall under Ahmeti's leadership.

The country's police chief, Shpend Maxhuni, said, "Creating a peaceful and secure climate for all citizens of the Republic of Kosovo, as well as maintaining order, peace, and public security in the country before, during, and after the election is the Kosovo police's [priority]."

After casting her ballot in Pristina, CEC chief Valdete Daka said voting was continuing normally and that no major irregularities had been reported.

Police did cite one incident, saying they confiscated an explosive device from a bus entering Kosovo from Serbia via the Jarinje border crossing point on October 22.

According to Besim Hoti, deputy police commander for the municipality of North Mitrovica, the bus with a Serbian number plate was carrying 50 people, apparently intending to cast ballots in Kosovo.

Hoti told RFE/RL that two hand-bombs and two electric detonators were found in the bus during security checks at the border crossing.

Officials said the bus driver and two leaders of the group of passengers were detained.

Western-backed Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a move recognized by 115 countries, although not by Serbia or Russia.

There are some 120,000 Serbs in Kosovo, and most of them oppose the authorities in Pristina.

The CEC has said that 27 of the municipalities have an ethnic-Albanian majority, 10 have ethnic-Serb majorities, and one is mostly ethnic Turkish.

Earlier this year, Kosovo experienced a prolonged period of political instability created by inconclusive June elections.

The political gridlock eased in September when a coalition headed by the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), the New Alliance for Kosovo (AKR), and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) agreed to form a government.

The deal gave the coalition, which also included ethnic-Serb and other non-Albanian minority parties, 63 of parliament's 120 seats.

President Hashim Thaci had said he would give Ramush Haradinaj, leader of the AAK, a formal mandate to try to form a government once he could show he had a deal showing a majority coalition was in place.

With reporting by BalkanInsight and AP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/kosovo- municipal-elections-serbia -albania/28809966.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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Press Availability at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan

Press Availability

Rex W. Tillerson

Secretary of State

Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan

October 23, 2017

SECRETARY TILLERSON: Well, I want to start by thanking President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah and the Afghanistan leadership for meeting with me this morning. I thought it was very important to stop here in Afghanistan coming to the South Asia region as part of the recently announced South Asia policy and strategy that President Trump has put forth.

I also want to thank  I have Ambassador Llorens and General Nicholson with me  for their leadership, both our diplomatic as well as the incredible military effort of the men and women in uniform here as well, and all of the effort that they've put forth to work towards a peace, which is really our objective.

I think the U.S. has made it clear in terms of our support for Afghanistan, support for a sovereign, unified, and democratic Afghanistan, charting a path to peace, prosperity, and self-reliance. It is imperative at the end that we are denying safe haven to any terrorist organizations or any extremists to any part of this  the world.

(Brief interruption.)

SECRETARY TILLERSON: Okay.

QUESTION: I'm so sorry.

SECRETARY TILLERSON: That's all right. We also want to work with regional partners to ensure that there are no threats in the region as well. And this is very much a regional effort, as you saw was rolled out in the strategy itself. So we're demanding others also deny safe haven to terrorists anywhere in the region. We are working closely with Pakistan in that regard as well.

President Ghani has assured me of his firm commitment to reform, continuing reforms here in Afghanistan, as well as his new anti-corruption strategy and policies that is going to underpin much of the effort here. We also discussed preparations for parliamentary elections next year in 2018. It's very important that those elections go forward as well. And finally, we discussed regional developments and agreed on the vital importance of all regional stakeholders to work with us, work with the United States, but also work with our other partners, the NATO partners and others who take a great interest in this region, to fight against terrorists, fight against insurgents, to support peace and stability for Afghanistan.

We have a lot of hard work, some challenges ahead of us. But the United States and our partners here in Afghanistan are committed to seeing this through.

With that, happy to take a question or two.

MODERATOR: John.

QUESTION: Sir, what kind of message  let me back that up. You've said in the past that if the Pakistanis do not take firm action in denying safe haven for the Taliban and other extremists, they could suffer a cut in U.S.  further cuts in U.S. assistance  the United States, I believe, has given Pakistan a menu of other actions that it could take  unless it takes those actions within a certain timeframe. Are you able to give us details of what that menu is and what the timeframe is?

SECRETARY TILLERSON: I'll be traveling to Islamabad tomorrow, in fact, to meet with Pakistani leadership as well, and we have made some very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support that the Taliban receives and the other terrorist organizations receive in Pakistan. And we've said in this whole strategy this is a conditions-based approach, and so our relationship with Pakistan will also be conditions-based. It will be based upon whether they take action that we feel is necessary to move the process forward of both creating the opportunity for reconciliation and peace in Afghanistan, but also ensuring a stable future Pakistan. In our conversations with Pakistani leadership, we're as concerned about the future stability of Pakistan as we are in many respects here in Afghanistan. Pakistan needs to, I think, take a clear-eyed view of the situation that they're confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organizations that find safe haven inside of Pakistan. And so we want to work closely with Pakistan to create a more stable and secure Pakistan as well.

MODERATOR: Gardiner.

QUESTION: Sir, this sort of has the feel of a forever war. Is there a part of this strategy  as you said, it's conditions-based, but it seems as though that condition means a U.S. military presence far off into the horizon. Isn't it?

SECRETARY TILLERSON: Well, the President has made it clear that we're here to stay until we can secure a process of reconciliation and peace. It's not an unlimited commitment; he's also made it clear it's not a blank check commitment. That's why it is a conditions-based commitment.

But I think if you consider the current situation in Afghanistan  and we were talking about this a few minutes ago  and you look a few years in the past and what the circumstances were, Afghanistan has come quite a distance already in terms of creating a much more vibrant population, a much more vibrant government, educational systems, a larger economy. And so there are opportunities to strengthen the foundations for a prosperous  a prosperous Afghanistan society.

Clearly, we have to continue the fight against the Taliban and against others in order for them to understand they will never win a military victory. And there are, we believe, moderate voices among the Taliban, voices that do not want to continue to fight forever. They don't want their children to fight forever. So we are looking to engage with those voices and have them engage in a reconciliation process leading to a peace process and their full involvement and participation in the government. There's a place for them in the government if they're ready to come renouncing terrorism, renouncing violence, and being committed to a stable, prosperous Afghanistan.

MODERATOR: Michele.

QUESTION: Have you spoken with the Pakistanis since your big speech on India? Are you trying to reassure them about what India's involvement is here? And I understand Ghani is going as well.

SECRETARY TILLERSON: I've not spoken to anyone in the Pakistani leadership since the speech I gave on India. That's certainly something we'll be talking about during the visit tomorrow. But I think our view of the relationship with India is one that's of strategic importance not just for this specific region, but in the context of that speech it was about a free and open Indo-Pacific region stretching all the way to  from Japan to India.

So it's a broader relationship. We do, though, believe that India has a very important positive role that India can play in the process to achieve a peaceful, stable Afghanistan as well. They already are providing important economic activity  creating jobs  which is important for the future Afghanistan. And we think they  we want to encourage that as well. We think they can be a very positive influence on creating the right environment for the future in Afghanistan.

MODERATOR: All right, guys. Thanks so much.

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Villagers Suspected of Luring Green Berets into Niger Ambush

By Idriss Fall, Bagassi Koura October 23, 2017

A local official and an analyst say residents of the Niger village where four Green Beret soldiers were killed this month may have delayed the soldiers while an ambush was set up and helped to lead the victims into a deadly trap.

"The attackers, the bandits, the terrorists have never lacked accomplices among local populations," said Almou Hassane, mayor of Tongo-Tongo where the attack took place, in what is believed to be his first interview with a Western news organization.

The village chief in Tongo-Tongo, Mounkaila Alassane, has been arrested since the attack, Hassane said, lending credibility to the suspicion of local involvement. He is in government custody according several officials.

His arrest was also confirmed by Karimou Soumana, a representative of the Tillaberi region, during a National Assembly debate to extend the state of emergency in that part of Niger.

Speaking by telephone to VOA's French-to-Africa service, Mayor Hassane said the dead Americans were part of a patrol made up of eight U.S. Green Berets and about 20 Nigerien special forces, which arrived in pickup trucks at the village near the Mali border the evening before the attack.

"They must have spent the night in the northwest of Tongo-Tongo," Hassane said.

Moussa Askar, director of the newspaper l'Evenement in the capital, Niamey, said the soldiers were in the area to track down an accomplice of Abu Adnan al-Sahraoui, a former member of the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), who joined the Islamic State terror group in the Sahara Desert.

Aksar, a specialist on terrorism in the Sahel region of Africa, told VOA that members of the patrol questioned residents of the village, who dragged out the discussions, possibly giving the attackers time to organize an ambush.

'Contaminated' village

"It turns out that this village was a little contaminated by hostile forces," said Aksar, who said he received the details from Defense Minister Kalla Moutari. "The unit stayed a little longer than expected because, apparently, people were aware that something was going on."

While the soldiers were still in the village, a fake terror attack was staged nearby, according to Aksar and local sources. The soldiers rushed to the scene, where about 50 or more assailants with vehicles and motorcycles opened fire with Kalashnikovs and heavy weapons.

Four Nigerien soldiers and three Americans were killed on the spot. The body of the fourth American soldier was found 48 hours later, about a mile away from the initial site, CNN reported.

Rhissa Ag Boula, a high-ranking government official and a former Tuareg rebel chief in Niger, told VOA that the fourth soldier, La David Johnson, had remained at the front line while the others retreated under heavy fire.

The attack has raised questions in Niger, especially since the U.S. Army operates drone bases in the country and has significant intelligence resources there.

"That's what really shocked us: how, at their level, with all the resources they have, they could not have strong intelligence to avoid what happened there," said Hassane.

Responsibility for attack

No group has officially taken responsibility for the attack. According to sources in the region, however, it is the work of Abu Adnan al-Saharaoui, who calls himself the Islamic Emir of the Great Sahara, affiliated with the Islamic State group.

According to a Tuareg from the region, al-Saharaoui is believed to be involved in arms and fuel trafficking. He is a former member of the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), which occupied and imposed sharia law in northern Mali in 2012 before being dislodged by French forces.

Al-Saharaoui, a former acquaintance of Algerian extremist and trafficker Mokhtar Bel Mokhtar, had led the kidnapping of the nine-person staff of the Algerian consulate in Gao in 2012. Originally from Western Sahara, he wants to control the band on the common border of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

"He wants to take control of all these communities facing poverty and governance issues so that they can join his cause," said Aksar.

The group is the latest of several jihadist organizations in the Sahel region, including the Defenders of Islam group linked to militant Iyad Ag Ghali in northern Mali. The movement for the Liberation of Macina, led by Hamadoun Koufa, remained very active in central Mali.

Ansarul Islam, on the other side of the border, is increasing its attacks in northern Burkina Faso, while Boko Haram continues to launch attacks in the countries in Africa's Lake Chad Basin.

The al-Mourabitoun group, which is led by Moktar Belmokhtar  declared dead several times  has perpetrated several terror actions in the vast Sahel region, including the 2013 attack on the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria that left 67 people dead.

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George W. Bush's speech last week at a forum hosted by his eponymous institute might as well have been titled "Dear Donald." The 43rd president all but called out the current president by name as he lamented the tone and character of today's political rhetoric.

"Bigotry seems emboldened," said Bush. "Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication."

Indeed.

Trump likes to label these theories and fabrications "fake news," but "fake news" is Trump's own invention -- and his greatest fabrication to date. Now the rallying cry for millions of Trump supporters, "fake news" is a deflection, a decoy floated on the human sea of credulity to distract people from coverage he finds unflattering.

The truth is that what Trump says and does is so often unflattering without embellishment that adjectives and adverbs needn't apply.

One need look no further than last Tuesday when, attempting to comfort the widow of a slain soldier, Trump reportedly couldn't bother to use the deceased's name and reminded the grieving woman that her husband had known what he was signing up for, but "it hurts anyway." You could say that. Or not.

By contrast, Bush's suffering on behalf of the injured and killed whom he sent into harm's way as president is apparent in his visage, in the portraits of wounded soldiers he has painted, and in his ongoing work with troops and military families. Such actions don't alter the pain of a deadly mistake, but they at least indicate a profound empathy that is utterly lacking in the current president.

No stranger to media criticism -- crushing criticism -- Bush never attacked the fourth estate. He also obviously recognizes that worse than a reporter's or editor's error is the undermining of public faith in a free press. Once the government succeeds in eliminating a country's watchdogs, the government becomes the only source of information. Most people know, or should know, how that ends.

The irony is that the very people who curse the media also tend to curse government overreach.

Trump's "fake news" charge is very much in the vein of propaganda. He has created a false narrative to clear obstacles -- such as questioning reporters or the hindrance of accountability -- from his path.

Russians are also very good at this. Recent revelations about fake Twitter accounts tied to Russia through which genuinely fake news was posted and distributed to influence the 2016 election remind us of how vulnerable we are to real fake news. Unfortunately, Trump has helped blur the line between propaganda and what is otherwise known simply as news.

The fact that members of Trump's campaign and family retweeted some of these real-fake news items demonstrates how difficult it can be to recognize what's real and what's not. This may be the greatest challenge of our times.

Disinformation combined with generalized antipathy toward the traditional press may be the toxic combination that poisons unity and condemns democratic principles to the hazardous-waste dump. One cannot overemphasize the importance of these developments or of the president's contributions to the undermining of institutions created by our Constitution to monitor government power.

Recall that a president's primary duty, in addition to defending the country, is to protect the Constitution. Yet, in just nine months in office, Trump has done more to challenge the integrity of the First Amendment than any other president in history, including expressing interest in making it easier to sue journalists for libel.

He would never actually push such a measure because Trump is smart and knows he'd get nowhere. But he also knows that many among his base don't know this. No matter. He's rallied the base with rhetoric and re-enforced the infrastructure of his greatest deception. Talk about fake news.

In other remarks clearly aimed at Trump, Bush addressed bullying and prejudice in public life that "sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry and compromises the moral education of children." And: "We can't wish globalization away, any more than we could wish away the agricultural revolution or the industrial revolution."

One needn't be a sleuth to infer that Bush was speaking to the man oft-referred to as our bully-in-chief, as well as to Trump-the-salesman, who convinced working-class Americans that he would bring back all those jobs lost to globalization. As Bush suggested, globalization is the new age and the old one isn't coming back.

A Republican president needed to say these things -- and his name wasn't Trump.
Army Officer Allegedly Behind South Sudan Killing, Rapes Found Dead

By Waakhe Simon Wudu October 23, 2017

A South Sudanese army officer who oversaw soldiers accused of killing a journalist and raping at least five international aid workers last year has died in his jail cell, according to the army.

First Lieutenant Luka Akechak was found dead in his cell more than a week ago, but his death was reported Friday.

Army spokesman Colonel Santo Domic said there was no sign of foul play in Akechak's death.

"Luka Akechak died. He died of natural causes," Domic told VOA's South Sudan in Focus. He said no post-mortem report was given to the army.

Chief suspect

Akechak was a chief suspect in the case, which has highlighted the difficulty of bringing accused perpetrators of human rights violations to justice in South Sudan, where conflict has raged for nearly four years.

Akechak was accused by at least one alleged rape victim of instructing soldiers under his command to rape aid workers at the Terrain Hotel complex in Juba in July 2016.

"Instead for him to stop rape or looting because he was a commanding officer for that unit, one of the victims reported he was the one facilitating rape," Domic said. The soldiers were also accused of killing a local journalist, John Gatluak.

While defense attorney Philip Sanyang told VOA that Akechak's death comes as a shock, it will not jeopardize his efforts to prosecute the other defendants.

Cause of death questioned

He also questioned the commander's cause of death.

"If the army is saying it is a natural death, natural death happens with reasons, so there must be post-mortem report that shows this person died of natural death, so it can't just be a verbal testimony by anyone," said Sanyang.

The specific charges against each of the remaining suspects are unclear, along with the evidence that led to the charges.

The military court overseeing the case ordered the women accusing the soldiers of rape to return to the country and testify in person against the accused, refusing any testimony offered outside of South Sudan. Most of the aid workers left South Sudan shortly after the incident took place and have not returned.

Evidence to convict

Sanyang said Akechak was an important witness to the prosecution's case, but he believes there is enough evidence to convict the other soldiers.

"Most of the charges levied against this person were things that were done jointly. So in an absence of one person it cannot lead to the throwing out of the other charges against other accused persons. We know it has created a gap, but still we are hopeful that the case is still well," Sanyang said.

An alleged victim from Italy returned to South Sudan in August to testify. In two weeks another victim is expected to return and provide evidence.

Domic said court proceedings are expected to reconvene this week, but will be held behind closed doors.

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Tillerson Makes Unannounced Visit to Iraq, Afghanistan

By Ayesha Tanzeem October 23, 2017

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made a previously unannounced visit Iraq, hours after a similar trip to Afghanistan.

In Baghdad, Tillerson was to meet Monday with Iraqi Prime Minister Haida al-Abadi.

Earlier, the top American diplomat discussed the new U.S. strategy for South Asia with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and other senior officials at Bagram airbase, outside of Kabul.

Tillerson said, "I think the U.S. has made it clear in terms of our support for Afghanistan, support for a sovereign, unified, and democratic Afghanistan, charting a path to peace, prosperity, and self-reliance. It is imperative at the end that we are denying safe haven to any terrorist organizations or any extremists to any part of this world."

Ghani said the new U.S. strategy brought a positive change in the region and added, "all stakeholders should carryout their responsibilities sincerely," according to the statement from the presidential palace.

The U.S. and Afghanistan have long alleged that Afghan Taliban, particularly their deadliest arm the Haqqani network, has safe havens in Pakistan. But Islamabad claims it has cleared out all militant safe havens in previously lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan through a military operation.

Calls for action

Tillerson, who travels to Islamabad Tuesday, said, "We have made some very specific requests of Pakistan in order for them to take action to undermine the support that the Taliban receives and the other terrorist organizations receive in Pakistan."

"Pakistan needs to, I think, take a clear-eyed view of the situation that they're confronted with in terms of the number of terrorist organizations that find safe haven inside of Pakistan," he added.

Pakistan has acknowledged that it has some influence with the Taliban but says it does not control the movement or its leaders.

Held in Pakistan

Last week, American Caitlan Coleman and her Canadian husband Joshua Boyle, who were kidnapped in Afghanistan five years ago, were rescued, along with their three children born in captivity, from the Haqqani network in Pakistan's Kurram Agency bordering Afghanistan. The rescue operation was carried out by the Pakistan military on an intelligence tip from the United States.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo told a Washington based group, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the couple was held in Pakistan for the entire length of their captivity.

This contradicted earlier statements by Pakistan's military and government that the couple was recently moved across the border from Afghanistan.

Secretary Tillerson's Afghanistan trip was kept a secret due to security concerns, especially after an attack last month on Kabul airport during a visit by U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis. Even many in the State Department press corps were expecting the visit to take place Thursday, on the way back from India.

Relations between India and Pakistan, almost always on a rollercoaster in their 70 year history of independence from the British, seem to be in a downward spiral for the past two years. Both sides used harsh words against each other in the recent U.N. General Assembly in New York, accusing each other of human rights abuses or supporting terrorism.

The tensions between the two countries may also be a topic of discussion when the Secretary arrives in New Delhi.

"The possibility of an India-Pakistan dialogue will be discussed, and Mr. Tillerson will also brief his Indian counterparts on the outcome of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group [U.S.-China-Afghanistan-Pakistan] meeting on talks with Taliban that took place in Oman on October 16," a source familiar with the planning for the visit told Indian English language daily The Hindu.

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Panel showcases talent, provides glimpse into Army cyber operations

By Joe Lacdan October 23, 2017

WASHINGTON -- The Army Cyber Command is recruiting a variety of cybersecurity talent from industry, government and academia to bolster the service's cyber teams.

In an effort to showcase that talent and offer a glimpse into cyber operations, Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, ARCYBER commanding general, hosted a panel of specialists from cyber protection teams, the 780th Military Intelligence Brigade and the Cyber Protection Brigade Oct. 11 at the Association of the U.S. Army Annual Meeting and Exposition.

Army Cyber Commands' units include both Soldiers and civilians from diverse backgrounds in cybersecurity and intelligence. The panel featured 1st Lt. Alvaro Luna, a tactical offensive cyber ops planner; Staff Sgt. Scott Stappenbeck, tactical cyber ops team member; Capt. Sean Eyre, a network defense lead; Maj. Josh Rykowski, a cyber protection team lead; Vince Walker, a target analyst; and Nakasone.

Luna, a Fairfax County native, is part of an Army pilot program to integrate cyber into tactical fighting formations. Walker is a Department of the Army civilian who has worked in cybersecurity for three years. Rykowski and Eyre are members of the service's only defensive cyberspace unit at Fort Gordon, Georgia.

Currently 41 of the Army's active cyber protection teams are operationally controlled by U.S. Cyber Command. The teams are generally 80 percent military and 20 percent civilian. Nakasone said an additional 11 cyber protection teams will be built from the Army National Guard and 10 from the Army Reserve.

The additional teams will bring additional capacity as Cyber Command continues to build its capabilities to combat online threats.

"When we built our teams, we knew that we wanted to have longevity in some positions," Nakasone said. "Having 20 percent of our force be from the Department of the Army civilian work core was important for us just because we knew there was a stability there and an experience there. That was an important piece of building our capabilities over time."

Nakasone said it was a priority to hire team members who could remain at the position for an extended period of time and handle the work hours required.

Team members discussed the importance of education and working closely with company commanders so they are aware of their options and capabilities.

"I would say the No. 1 challenge is the educational piece," Luna said. "Making (the commanders) understand what we can do so they have a plethora of choices to what they're doing on the battlefield. We're just adding one more tool."

In order to combat a threat, Luna said that cyber operations planners must carefully study their primary environment. He said situational awareness of a particular location -- knowing the type of router, switcher or type of network infrastructure -- is crucial to understanding a particular threat.

"There is no magic button that it takes to come on time and access and understand the environment that you're working in," Luna said. "So if you understand that environment, then we can tailor certain effects."

"Our team has had high operational tempo," Rykowski said. "There's definitely a wide range of missions for us to conduct and just coming into our own as a brand new brigade, brand new unit, brand new domain -- we're trying to get our capabilities out to customers as well and to ensure they understand the capabilities that we provide."

Rykowski said that the cyber protection teams' tool kits provide members with the capability to defend against online threats, while allowing the flexibility to adapt and adjust to the characteristics of the adversary.

"We can reconfigure it on the fly," Rykowski said. "So when we do that mission analysis, when we receive the first mission and we sit down and try to think through what capabilities we need to bring to bear based on the potential adversary that we're hunting, we can set those capabilities up ahead of time  While we connect our kit directly to the network, we have defenses within the kit to ensure that we ourselves do not get exploited if the adversary is still in the network."

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CPC's governance wisdom leading China to bigger role in global development

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 08:43, October 23, 2017

China, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), has in recent years served as a stabilizing factor and source of wisdom in a world troubled with uncertainties and challenges.

Reading the signals from the ongoing 19th CPC National Congress, analysts worldwide said they are confident that the CPC will lead China to make more contributions to world peace and development.

SUPPORTING GLOBAL GOVERNANCE SYSTEM

David Shambaugh, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a leading U.S. think tank, said that China "has a particularly important leadership role to play in global governance."

He mentioned various areas in which the world has seen China significantly increase its contributions, including climate change, global health, international peacekeeping, global economic governance, energy security and reshaping multilateral institutions.

China was one of the first to sign the Paris Agreement, and has reaffirmed its commitment to fighting global warming after the United States announced its decision in June to withdraw from the accord.

As Chinese President Xi Jinping said Wednesday in his report at the opening session of the 19th CPC National Congress, China has taken a driver's seat in international cooperation on climate change and become an "important participant, contributor, and torchbearer" in the global endeavor for ecological civilization.

The country more than met its carbon emission reduction goals last year, and pledged a package of 3.1 billion U.S. dollars to the South-South Cooperation Fund on Climate Change for developing countries.

Avery Goldstein, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said he thinks that "China, sticking with this path, makes it more likely that eventually even the United States will come back to the consensus on climate change."

China is also a staunch supporter of the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions and a provider of international humanitarian relief. It is the top contributor of UN peacekeepers and the second-largest contributor to peacekeeping funds.

Khairy Tourk, a professor with the Stuart School of Business of the Illinois Institute of Technology, said that even though its per capita income is not as high as those of advanced nations, China is already providing the world with public goods, such as sending peacekeepers, fighting piracy, and sending medical missions to really poor countries to take care of the people who cannot afford to have good medical treatment.

On economy, China is an indispensable force to counter global economic sluggishness. Over the past five years, China has contributed more than 30 percent of global economic growth.

These remarkable achievements did not come easily, as the country has made tremendous efforts to deepen all-round reforms and adjust its economic structure to address tough challenges and maintain sustainable growth.

Meanwhile, China is committed to promoting an open economy and free trade. Gerishon Ikiara, an international economics lecturer at the University of Nairobi, said that China's active participation in global economic cooperation and support for open and free global trade have benefited itself and all other countries.

The scholar said he expects China to continue to play a leading role in shaping the global system of trade integration, which will help spur global growth.

OFFERING SOLUTIONS WITH CHINESE WISDOM

China's "more proactive" action in setting the agenda for global growth and governance is exemplified by the Belt and Road Initiative, a "very powerful idea," said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, chairman of the Kuhn Foundation, a U.S. nongovernmental organization promoting U.S.-China ties.

The initiative, proposed by Xi in 2013, aims to promote trade, financial integration, infrastructure inter-connectivity and people-to-people exchanges along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes linking Asia with Europe and Africa.

By linking countries and regions that account for more than 60 percent of the world's population and 30 percent of the global gross domestic product, the initiative is a "perfect example" of China sharing its wisdom and solutions for global growth and governance, Kuhn said.

What's more, in Shambaugh's opinion, the initiative "has great potential for many countries and global development."

"Most of the countries along the Belt and Road have significant development need -- electricity and power, transport infrastructure, IT connectivity, etc. -- which China can contribute greatly to fulfilling," he said.

Nigel Haworth, president of the New Zealand Labor Party, said the initiative shows that China has started looking constructively at new ways of complementing existing systems of economic integration, such as the World Trade Organization and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

In addition, the Belt and Road Initiative also helps safeguard regional peace, said former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, noting that it creates an opportunity for countries with different state systems to work together to protect the region from terrorism.

"One should be counting all the benefits of stability, with less wars, less tension, less crises and less terrorism. It is very important to have a global picture," he said.

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Xi Consolidates Power as New China Leadership Line-up Revealed

Sputnik News

05:01 23.10.2017

As a five-yearly leadership shake-up is underway in Beijing, President Xi Jinping is expected to fill the ruling Communist Party's apex of decision-making, the Politburo Standing Committee, with trusted allies.

Xi's line-up for his first term at the helm of the world's largest political party was a compromise influenced by his two immediate predecessors. But China's ongoing 19th party congress is seen as the new beginning for Xi, who is expected to enter his second term with a team stacked with trusted allies and followers.

China's president has assembled enough personal power in the five years since becoming general secretary of the party that he is now referred to as its "core."

"This congress is set to herald the start of Xi's era," said Chen Daoyin, an associate professor at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, as cited by South China Morning Post.

"He is certain to elevate loyalists who can firmly and thoroughly implement his political and policy agenda to the central leadership positions," Chen added.

Five of the seven current members of Standing Committee, headed by Xi Jinping, are due to step down when the national midterm Congress closes on Tuesday, with only Xi and Premier Li Keqiang projected to survive the reshuffle.

The list of the most likely candidates for promotion to the Standing Committee includes Wang Yang, expected to become executive vice-premier, and Shanghai party chief Han Zheng, who may head the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) advisory body. Both are seasoned politicians, well-connected to the top and already members of the 25-strong Politburo.

The 63-year-old Han has spent his entire career in the country's financial hub  Shanghai party. Traditionally, the party boss of Shanghai has always taken a seat at the Standing Committee during a leadership reshuffle.

Wang, 62, already a vice-premier of the State Council, has solid administrative experience after managing both the Chongqing and the southern Guangdong provinces. He is described as a man who lobbies for social and political reform.

Based on information from several sources, the Post reported that other new faces set to join China's top decision-making body will be predominantly Xi men: Li Zhanshu, director of the general office of the Communist Party and close friend of Xi's since their early 30s; head of department of organization Zhao Leji; and Wang Huning, head of China's central policy research office.

The full list of the seven-member Standing Committee will be officially announced on Wednesday, after the party's new Central Committee holds its first plenum meeting and endorses the line-up.

Although Wang Yang and Han could be confirmed as Standing Committee members on Wednesday, according to sources, they would not take up state-level posts until early next year.

 Sputnik

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North Korea Insults 'Lunatic' Trump For Preparing 24-Hour Nuke Patrols

Sputnik News

22:00 23.10.2017

Following a bombshell report late Sunday evening that the US is preparing to put its B-52 nuclear bombers on 24-hour alert, a North Korean editorial blasted US President Donald Trump as a "hooligan" and a "lunatic."

Defense One first reported that B-52s may soon begin flying round-the-clock to prepare for a doomsday scenario  a posture that hasn't been ordered since the end of the Cold War. "This is yet one more step in ensuring that we are prepared," Gen. David Goldfein, US Air Force chief of staff, told the news outlet.

"I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in," Goldfein noted.

North Korea did not look at it that way.

"Lunatic Trump is running headlong into ruin, taking America with him, and the poor puppet forces are following him, at the peril of their lives," a recent KCNA report cited by multiple media organizations reads. South Korea and Japan are generally referred to as US puppet forces by Pyongyang.

"Dignitaries of White House, and State and Defense Departments of the US are having a hard time cooling Trump overheated with war fever, but only the South Korean puppet forces are fanning up the lunatic fingering a nuclear button," KCNA reportedly said.

It is important to emphasize that the order to go on 24-hour alerts has not yet been given, something Goldfein stressed, Defense One reports. But the service is gearing up to receive such an order at any moment: renovations are underway in the Barksdale, Louisiana, Air Force Base that is the home base of the 2d Bomb Wing and Air Force Global Strike Command, which oversees the service's nuclear forces. If the aircraft are to be put on alert, they will once again be positioned at all times on the runway at the base, with crews sleeping nearby.

An October 23 KCNA report chided the South Korean "puppet forces" further, stating that they "always look up to their American master."

Pyongyang, meanwhile, has been steadily preparing its own arsenal. Yonhap reported South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha as saying over the weekend, "It is true that North Korea is quickly approaching the completion of its nuclear armament." The diplomat's statement falls in line with CIA Director Mike Pompeo's prediction that Pyongyang is merely "months" from commissioning a nuclear weapon that could strike the US mainland.

Russian political analyst Vladimir Terekhov told Sputnik News that Pompeo's statement wasn't so much an intelligence assessment as it was political rhetoric. "I don't think anything serious will happen before President Trump's November 8 visit to Beijing," the observer said. "By the way, [Pompeo's] statement itself is a kind of preparation for this visit as an element of pressure against China, since it's clear that the main goal of all this American rhetoric and their actions in the Korean Peninsula are directed not against North Korea itself, but against Washington's main geopolitical adversary  China."

US, South Korean and Japanese defense officials reiterated their call Monday for North Korea to denuclearize and end their ballistic missile testing. According to a joint statement, "The Ministers called on North Korea to abandon its unlawful nuclear and ballistic missile programs in a complete, verifiable, and irreversible manner, to cease additional provocative actions that only increase tensions in the region, and to abide by its international obligations and commitments," the leaders said, speaking in the Philippines.

 Sputnik

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India Appoints New Envoy to Kashmir

By VOA News October 23, 2017

India has appointed a new envoy to Kashmir in the hope of promoting peace in the troubled region.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh says former Intelligence Bureau director Dineshwar Sharma has been designated to open talks with Kashmir's various factions - the first such appointment by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"As a representative of government of India, ... Sharma will initiate a sustained interaction and dialogue to understand legitimate aspirations of the people of Kashmir," Singh said in New Delhi.

There was no indication Pakistan would be involved in the peace talks.

Former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah, an outspoken critic of the Indian government, said he would keep an open mind about the new appointment and "wait to see results of the dialogue process."

Kashmir has been the center of a deadly tug-of-war between India and neighboring Pakistan since the end of British colonial rule in 1947. The Muslim-majority Himalayan territory is divided between the nuclear-armed rivals, but both claim Kashmir in full.

Kashmir rebels have battled Indian forces for decades, demanding either independence or a merger with Pakistan. The rebels have staged a series of attacks on Indian security bases in recent months, including an attack in southern Kashmir in August that left eight security officials dead.

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Iran reaffirms all countries' rights to acquire conventional arms

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

New York, Oct 23, IRNA -- Iran's missile program has been developed to meet its defense and security needs and all countries are entitled to the right of acquiring conventional weapons, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Uni

Iran's missile program has been developed to meet its defense and security needs. It cannot and should not been seen and assessed in vacuum, Eshagh Al Habib said, addressing the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly on Conventional Weapon.

The full text of his address is as follows:

Mr. Chairman,

My delegation associates itself with the NAM statement delivered by Indonesia.

Iran reaffirms the inherent right of any State to acquire, manufacture, import and retain conventional arms and related parts, components and ammunition for its self-defense and security needs.

Iran shares the concerns over increasing global military expenditure. This is even more alarming in a region like the Middle East, where in addition to nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, a large arsenal of sophisticated offensive conventional weapons of the Israeli regime continue to threaten the peace and security of the region and beyond.

In recent years, such an already complicated security situation in the Middle East has been exacerbated including by manifold increase in the military budgets and arms imports by certain States in the Persian Gulf. Only one example of this trend is the signing of a 110 billion dollar weapons deal by one of these countries with the U.S. in 2017, which is yet separate from a ten-year, 350 billion dollar arms deal that this country signed separately with the US.

Mr. Chairman,

These are only the tip of the submerged iceberg of the security situation, military expenditure and arms import in a region where we live. Yet some countries are criticizing Iran for lunching only a handful missiles that are strictly designed to carry only conventional warheads and are proportionate with its security environment.

Iran's missile program has been developed to meet its defense and security needs. It cannot and should not been seen and assessed in vacuum.

For instance, historically, during the war imposed on Iran by Saddam, not only did the United States and its regional allies provide military, intelligence, logistical, economic and political assistance to Saddam, and offer their support and maintained their silence during his chemical weapons attacks campaign, they also did everything in their power to interdict the acquisition of even the most basic defensive capabilities by Iran.

Through that experience Iran learned that in order to protect its people, safeguard its independence and security, and defend its national honor, it must rely on indigenous capacities; it learned that it should not hesitate in developing the capability to meet its legitimate defense and security needs.

As regards the current security environment in the Middle East, and at a time when the hostile policies of the United States and its regional allies, especially the Zionist regime, as well as the transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars worth of arms into the region have turned the region into a tinderbox, why should Iran remain complacent about its defense needs?

When the U.S. allies in the region, whose combined population is far less than Iran, each spend exponentially higher sums on their military than Iran, why Iran  that has attacked no one in almost 300 years but has been the victim of aggression supported by the U.S. and its regional partners  shouldn't acquire necessary tools of deterrence in the face the constant threats by aggressors?

While the combined total military expenditure of the Middle East countries in 2016 showed a 19 per cent increase compared with 2007, Iran's military expenditure decreased by 7.3 per cent during that period. This fact alone indicates how Iran exercises maximum restraint in reacting to skyrocketing security challenges in its region. This is also based on the understanding that our security can be achieved by our reliance on our people not by spending billions of dollars to import arms.

9376**2050

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No one can talk about Iran's military power: Rouhani

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Mon / 23 October 2017 / 13:59

Tehran (ISNA)  Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stressed that no one can talk about the military power of Iran.

Speaking in a ceremony commemorating martyrdom of Sayyid Mostafa Khomeini on Monday, Dr Rouhani said, "Someone may comment about Iran's weapons. Let's not pay attention to these comments. Iran's weapons are the same as the rest of the world. Our constitution says that it must be deterrent and, perform effective defense in the rainy day. The whole world is the same. No one can talk about the military power of another country, which is based on their constitution and defensive strategies".

"We ask you when our people were under artillery and bombardment of the enemy missiles; did you give us weapons of air defence, let alone offensive weapons? At that time, we sent a Europe-made anti-aircraft gun, which it was committed to repair, but they didn't, and they did not even gave it back to us, saying that you are in war and we cannot do it. Now they want to talk with us about weapons," he added.

"Talk of Iran's defensive power and presence in the region is escaping forward. Who brought devastation to the region and its people? Who helped terrorists to destroy Iraq? Who created these terrorists?" the president noted.

"There are a lot of these words. Do not trust them very much. If we are to respond to threats one day, we know how to do that," Rouhani added.

The president emphasized, "Our way is undoubtedly the right path, and we will continue this path with all our might".

End Item

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Iran's missile program not open to negotiation: UN envoy

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 06:10PM

Iranian Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Es'haq Al-e Habib says the country's missile program is not open to negotiation and will continue with strength and according to the Islamic Republic's national defense agenda.

Speaking at a UN committee on Monday, Al-e Habib added that Iran's missile program was only meant for defense and deterrence and accuracy of its missiles was proportionate to threats faced by the country.

"Iran's missile program has been designed to meet the country's defensive and security needs and it is impossible to make any comment about it without taking our security environment into consideration," he said.

He pointed to executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's imposed war against Iran in 1980s and said this experience taught Tehran that it must rely on its national potentialities in order to guarantee its dependence and security and that it should not hesitate about developing the necessary potentialities to meet its needs in defense and security sectors.

Further in his address, the Iranian diplomat pointed to certain claims that the country's ballistic missile tests were in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 and noted that the resolution called on Iran not to carry out any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

"Iran has always emphasized that none of its ballistic missiles have been designed to carry nuclear weapons," Al-e Habib pointed out.

Resolution 2231 was adopted on July 20, 2015 to endorse the historic nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries in the same year.

Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council  the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China  plus Germany signed the nuclear agreement on July 14, 2015 and started implementing it on January 16, 2016.

Under the JCPOA, Iran undertook to put limitations on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions imposed against Tehran.

US President Donald Trump on October 13 refused to formally certify that Iran was complying with the 2015 nuclear deal and warned that he might ultimately terminate the agreement.

While Trump did not pull Washington out of the nuclear deal, he gave the US Congress 60 days to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions against Tehran that were lifted under the pact. Reimposing sanctions would put the US at odds with other signatories to the accord and the European Union.

Trump also said his goal was to ensure that Iran would never obtain a nuclear weapon, adding, "We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror and the very real threat of Iran's nuclear breakout."

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Iranian diplomat stated that military expenses of the Middle East countries had increased by 19 percent from 2007 to 2016, adding, "During the same period, Iran's military expenses increased only by 7.3 percent."

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While Nebraska is among many states pursuing various iterations of sentencing reform in an effort to reduce its prison population, revising some mandatory minimum sentencing for nonviolent offenders would ease the human and financial strain on the state's prisons.

A bill on select file before the Legislature, one that was recently discussed during an interim Judiciary Committee hearing, offers a good test case.

Sen. Ernie Chambers LB447 removes mandatory minimums only for drug possession sentences, which would likely ease prison overcrowding  last reported at 159 percent  and save money on incarcerating nonviolent offenders.

Data from the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services indicate nearly 20 percent of Nebraskas roughly 5,300 inmates are serving time on mandatory minimum sentences. More than one in eight state inmates is there on drug charges, not accounting for other charges such as theft or burglary that often stem from drug use.

The major problem is that, for generations, addiction has been criminalized rather than treated. Chemical dependency, whether meth or opioids, is no different than alcoholism  beyond the legality and societal acceptance of the substance.

As such, nonviolent offenders who suffer these conditions need treatment to break the chains of addiction. Crimes committed as a result of addiction mustnt go unpunished, of course, but no prison system is designed to be a repository for those with mental illness and chemical dependency.

As the word correctional in its official name indicates, the prison system is designed to take inmates who come into its facilities and help them repair broken lives. Many nonviolent drug offenders would be better served by designated substance abuse treatment as much as, if not more than, incarceration, yet mandatory minimum sentences dont include good time credit in prison.

Nearly all will inevitably leave prisons one day. But far too many return  such as the 69 percent of mandatory minimum inmates in Nebraska, per the Attorney Generals office, who are repeat offenders.

Law enforcement officials and prosecutors have argued that mandatory minimums are a critical tool for their offices. The threat of such a sentence for the most severe charge no doubt yields more plea agreements to lesser charges. Certainly, these pleas close the case, but they dont necessarily solve the root problem.

Meanwhile, as supporters of Chambers bill have noted, Nebraska law doesnt have mandatory minimum sentences on offenses such as robbery, forcible rape and manslaughter  while simple drug possession often does.

Nonviolent drug possession charges and affiliated mandatory minimum sentences highlight the inequities within the criminal justice system. Chambers bill, coupled with more treatment and community-based programs, rather than one-size-fits-all incarceration, would be a positive for Nebraska.
All enemy's plans for Middle East defeated: IRGC commander

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 04:10PM

The commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC)'s Ground Force says all enemy's plans for the Middle East region have been defeated, urging the country's military forces to boost their power and readiness to deter the enemy.

"All enemy's plans for the Middle East have been defeated," Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour said on Monday, adding, "When they saw conditions in Syria and Iraq, they reached the conclusion that if those conditions continued, there would be no sign of Israel. This is why they created Daesh and [other] terrorist groups."

He added that the resistance forces and Iranian military advisors were eliminating Daesh terrorists hand in hand.

Having witnessed the influential role played by the Iranian forces, the US decided to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization and then it announced that it would just impose sanctions on it, but Washington is sure to suffer another defeat in this regard, the senior IRGC commander said.

Pakpour pointed to enemy's increasing threats against the country and emphasized that Iranian military forces must adopt measures to improve their capabilities and preparedness "so that the enemy will not make any miscalculation."

The US Treasury Department announced on October 15 that it was planning to introduce new sanctions against the IRGC as a part of US President Donald Trump's supposedly new diplomatic offensive against Tehran, which he unveiled on October 13 by refusing to certify the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries.

In his latest anti-Iran speech, Trump accused the IRGC of destabilizing the Middle East and threatening American interests in the region.

Following Trump's announcement, the US Treasury added the IRGC to its anti-terrorism sanctions list, claiming in a statement that the elite military force was "providing support to a number of terrorist groups, including Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as to the Taliban."

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on October 14 slammed the US Treasury Department's move against the IRGC, saying that Iranian people from all walks of life strongly supported the defenders of the country and the region against terrorism.

"Today, Iranians  boys, girls, men, women  are ALL IRGC," Zarif said on his official Twitter account.

He added that the Iranian people were "standing firm with those who defend us & the region against aggression & terror."

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Elections in Iraq's Kurdistan region delayed as parties fail to present candidates

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 02:00PM

Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has decided to postpone elections for the region's presidency and parliament as political parties still grapple with the aftermaths of a controversial independence referendum held in the semi-autonomous territory nearly a month ago.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Kurdish MP said on Monday that political parties in Kurdistan had failed to focus on the elections and present candidates because of turmoil that followed the September 25 referendum.

The deadline to present candidates expired last week and was extended until Monday.

Iraq, along with neighbors Iran and Turkey, opposed the vote, warning that the referendum would further complicate the security situation in the Arab country that has been grappling with foreign-backed militancy in its north and west for the past three years.

Following the vote, the central government in Baghdad shut down flights in and out of the region and ordered a halt to its independent crude oil sales.

The Kurdish region further slipped into political uncertainty after Iraqi forces captured the disputed city of Kirkuk last week. The city and its surroundings, rich in oil and populated by Kurds, Arabs and Christians, have been at the heart of a long-running row between Erbil and Baghdad.

Political parties have criticized KRG President Massoud Barzani for the deepening stand-off with Baghdad that they blame on the Kurdish leader's ill-timed decision to hold the referendum.

The KRG's paramilitary forces, known as Peshmerga, have helped Iraqi government purge Daesh Takfiri terrorists from key urban areas. However, the cooperation seems to have turned into a fierce rivalry after the controversial referendum.

Gorran, the main opposition party to Barzani, issued a statement on Sunday, calling for the resignation of the Kurdish leader who has held the region's presidency since 2005. The opposition party said Barzani was responsible for the turmoil that followed the referendum.

Sources in the Kurdish electoral commission said Monday it was now up to the Kurdistan region's parliament to announce a new date for presidential and parliamentary elections. The current presidency and parliament would continue to function until new elections were held in the region.

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Iraqi PM slams Tillerson's remarks on Hashd al-Sha'abi

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 11:38AM

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's media office has criticized meddlesome comments made by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson regarding the country's Popular Mobilization Units or Hashd al-Sha'abi.

"No party has the right to interfere in Iraqi matters," Abadi's media office said in a statement on Monday, citing a source close to the prime minister.

Abadi made the remarks after Tillerson said Iran and all other countries currently helping Iraq in its fight against the Daesh terrorist group needed to leave the Arab country now that the battle was drawing to a close.

"The foreign fighters in Iraq need to go home and allow the Iraqi people to regain control," Tillerson said in the Saudi capital on Sunday.

Tillerson was speaking after a rare joint meeting with the leaders of Iraq and Saudi Arabia in Riyadh.

Hashd al-Sha'abi is an Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization composed of some 40 groups, which are mainly Shia Muslims. The force reportedly numbers more than 100,000 fighters. Iraqi authorities say there are between 25,000 and 30,000 Sunni tribal fighters within its ranks in addition to Kurdish Izadi and Christian units.

The fighters have played a major role in the liberation of Daesh-held areas to the south, northeast and north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, ever since the terrorists launched an offensive in the country in June 2014.

On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also slammed Tillerson's remarks, saying they had been uttered under the influence of petrodollars of certain states.

"Exactly what country is it that Iraqis, who rose up to defend their homes against ISIS, return to?" Zarif said in a tweet late on Sunday, using an alternative name for Daesh. "Shameful US FP (foreign policy), dictated by petrodollars," he tweeted.

Upon his arrival in the South African capital city of Pretoria on Sunday, Zarif also denounced the policies of US President Donald Trump's administration as "isolated in the world."

"Unfortunately, the Americans do not want to rectify their viewpoint that Iran is a source of stability and peace as well as a campaigner against terrorism in the region," he said.

Daesh launched a terrorist offensive inside Iraq in 2014. It swiftly took over territory in the Arab country and posed a threat to seize Baghdad.

Iran has been providing advisory military assistance to the central government in Baghdad and the regional government in the Iraqi Kurdistan, helping them both maintain ground and win back territory lost to the terrorist group in 2014.

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Russia 'committed' to Iraq despite Kurdish oil ties: Lavrov

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 11:31AM

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says Moscow is committed to Iraq's territorial integrity after the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) held a controversial plebiscite on secession.

"I would like to confirm once again our commitment and respect to Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Lavrov said at a meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in Moscow on Monday.

Russia's top diplomat further said that Moscow respects the desire of Iraq's Kurdistan to seek to assert its identity. However, he stressed that this must be done in dialog with the Iraq's central government.

Lavrov said Russia will also continue its economic relations with the Iraqi Kurdistan, as it does with the rest of Iraq even as government troops have retaken control of major oil fields in Kirkuk.

The top Russian diplomat said Moscow was not closing its consulate in the Kurdish capital city of Erbil, but the mission was subordinate to the country's embassy in Baghdad.

Last week, Russian energy giant Rosneft signed a deal to put production sharing agreements into force with respect to five production blocks in the Iraqi Kurdistan.

The announcement ignited condemnation by the Iraq's oil ministry, which cautioned oil companies against signing contracts with authorities in the semi-autonomous region without its approval.

"This department and the Iraqi federal government are the only two bodies with whom agreements should be reached for the development and investments in the energy sector," the ministry said in a statement.

Iraqi Oil Minister Jabbar al-Luaybi also denounced the "irresponsible announcements coming from certain officials in Iraq or abroad, or from foreign companies about their intention to conclude deals with parties in Iraq without the federal government being aware."

Tensions flared up between Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region and the central government in Baghdad after the KRG held a highly controversial plebiscite on secession.

The referendum was held on September 25 despite strong opposition from the central government in Baghdad, the international community, and Iraq's neighboring countries, especially Turkey and Iran.

Following the vote, Baghdad imposed a ban on direct international flights to the Kurdish region and called for a halt to its independent crude oil sales.

Kurdistan elections delayed

On Monday, head of the electoral commission in Iraq's Kurdistan region Hendrean Mohammed said presidential and legislative elections will not be held as planned on November 1 as political parties have not presented candidates.

He said the commission will refer the matter to the regional parliament to set a new date for the elections. The deadline to present candidates expired last week and was extended until Monday.

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Moscow Calls On Iraqi Kurds To Act In Cooperation With Baghdad

RFE/RL October 23, 2017

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said that Moscow respects the aspiration of Iraqi Kurds to seek to assert their identity, but added that this must be done in "dialogue" with the federal government in Baghdad.

Lavrov made the comments on October 23 amid tension between Baghdad and Iraq's Kurdistan region over the independence referendum held in the autonomous region last month.

"We understand the aspiration of the Kurdish people for strengthening their identity and self-awareness," Lavrov said following talks with Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in Moscow.

However, the Russian minister insisted that a "dialogue" with the Iraqi government would be "the only correct way to realize those aspirations, with due account of the Kurdish issue's significance for the region and the need to avoid the emergence of additional sources of regional instability."

Lavrov also said that Russia will continue its economic ties with the Kurdish region, as it does with other constituent parts of Iraq.

On October 20, Russia's state-owned Rosneft oil company said that it agreed with the government of Iraq's Kurdistan to take a controlling stake in the region's main oil export pipeline.

Lavrov also said that Russia is not closing its consulate in Irbil, the main city in Iraqi Kurdistan, but said the mission was subordinate to the Russian Embassy in Baghdad.

Lavrov added that that there is "a good basis for further development" of cooperation between Moscow and Baghdad, particularly in the energy and defense spheres.

Jaafari said that he expects relations with "our friends and strategic partners in Russia" to strengthen, according to Russian news agencies.

People living in areas under Kurdish control in norther Iraq overwhelmingly backed secession in the September 25 referendum that the Baghdad government rejected as illegal.

Following the vote, Iraqi government troops and allied Shi'ite militia fighters moved into disputed areas in northern Iraq that previously were held by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.

With reporting by Reuters, TASS, and Interfax

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/moscow-calls-iraqi-kurds-act-in- cooperation-with-baghdad/28810858.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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Tillerson In Iraq After Baghdad Dismisses Call For Iran-Backed Militias To 'Go Home'

RFE/RL October 23, 2017

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has arrived in an unannounced visit to Iraq after the Shi'ite-led government dismissed his call for Iranian-backed militia fighters who helped Baghdad defeat Islamic State (IS) extremists to "go home."

Tillerson arrived in Baghdad late on October 23 for talks with senior officials about Iran, the Kurdish independence movement, and rebuilding efforts after the defeat of the IS group in major Iraqi towns and cities.

He is meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi and is also due to hold talks with Iraqi President Fuad Masum, a Kurd, in an apparent reaffirmation of U.S. support for a unified Iraq after the Kurdish independence referendum held last month in northern Iraq.

Tillerson has been making the Trump administration's case for an Arab alliance to oppose Iran's activity in the Middle East. He attended the inaugural meeting of the Saudi Arabia-Iraq Coordination Council on October 22 and urged the two longtime rivals to set aside past differences.

Speaking on October 22 after a meeting with Saudi Arabia's King Salman and Abadi, Tillerson said it was time for Iranian military advisers and fighters "to go home and allow the Iraqi people to regain control."

"Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fight against [IS] is coming to a close, those militias need to go home," Tillerson said. "The foreign fighters in Iraq need to go home and allow the Iraqi people to regain control."

A senior U.S. official said Tillerson's remarks referred to militia fighters known as the Popular Mobilization Forces and the Quds Force, the foreign arm of Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

But Iraq's cabinet on October 23 insisted that the paramilitary forces that helped it to defeat IS were fully Iraqi.

"The fighters of the Hashid [al-Shaabi paramilitary units] are Iraqis who are concerned for their country and have sacrificed for its defense and for its people," it said in a statement, quoting a source close to Abadi.

The cabinet added that "nobody has the right to interfere in Iraqi affairs."

Tillerson's Persian Gulf trip came amid efforts by President Donald Trump's administration to isolate and contain Iran in the Middle East and beyond.

It included a visit to the inaugural Saudi-Iraqi Coordination Council, led by Abadi and King Salman, which has been pushed by the United States as a means to counter Iran's influence in Iraq.

In Tehran on October 23, Iranian President Hassan Rohani said Iran's position in the Middle East had never been stronger.

"In Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, northern Africa, in the Persian Gulf region -- where can action be taken without Iran?" Rohani said during a speech that was broadcast by Iranian state television.

Iranian-backed militias have played key roles in the U.S.-supported Iraqi government's efforts to drive IS fighters from Iraq.

After pushing the extremists out of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul earlier this year, Iraqi government troops and allied, Iranian-backed militia are mopping up remnants of the IS extremist group from its last remaining pockets of territory in the country.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif assailed Tillerson's comments in a Twitter post.

"Exactly what country is it that Iraqis who rose up to defend their homes against ISIS return to?" Zarif said in a tweet, using an alternative name for IS.

"If it wasn't for the sacrifices of the Islamic Republic of Iran, [Islamic State] would have installed its government in Damascus, Baghdad, and [the Iraqi Kurdistan capital] Arbil by now," Zarif said.

Trump said on October 22 that he does not object to France and Germany continuing to trade with Iran, despite Trump's refusal to certify Iran's compliance with a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.

"I told them just keep making money," Trump said. "Don't worry. You just keep making money."

Tillerson, however, said the United States is hoping European companies and countries "will join the U.S. as we put in place a sanction structure."

"Those who conduct business with Iranian Revolutionary Guards, any of their entities -- European companies or other companies around the globe -- really do so at great risk," Tillerson said.

Tillerson flew into Iraq from Qatar. Earlier on October 23, he made a surprise visit to Afghanistan. Neither trip was announced publicly.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/tillerson-iran-iraq- saudi-arabia-qatar-revolutionary- guard-pmf-quds/28809968.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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Erbil Urges Baghdad to 'Immediately' Withdraw Troops From Kurdistan Territories

Sputnik News

18:24 23.10.2017(updated 18:44 23.10.2017)

Iraqi Kurdistan sticks to a peaceful resolution of the current confrontation with Baghdad.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  Iraqi Kurdistan's authorities have called on Baghdad to withdraw the troops deployed to Kurdish territories and begin talks to peacefully settle the crisis.

"We call on the Iraqi Government to immediately cease its military aggression and withdraw from all territories. As the political leadership of the Kurdistan Region has said time and again, Iraq must commit to unconditional talks to settle political disputes through peaceful means," a statement released by the Kurdistan Region Security Council read.

Over the past 48 hours, Baghdad has continued to deploy its military equipment, including tanks and artillery, "as well as American equipment, including Humvees and Armored Personnel Carriers," according to the statement.

The Kurdistan Council further claimed that "Iraq has shown zero sign of de-escalating their military aggression against the people of Kurdistan Region."

The tensions between Baghdad and Erbil have intensified after the September 25 independence referendum held by the region, seeking secession from Iraq despite strong opposition from the latter.

READ MORE: Syrian Kurds 'Don't Want Partition of Syria, Do Not Seek Kurdistan's Autonomy'

The vote triggered a military operation by Iraqi forces, aimed to gain control over the disputed territories, including those of Kirkuk, an oil-rich region, which followed the Iraqi Kurdistan's decision to strive for separation.

Later in the week, the Kurdish Peshmerga Ministry reported of Iraqi forces advance toward the Syrian border through the Diyala province and in the area of the Mosul Dam. The ministry claimed Peshmerga troops located in these regions were not clashing with the Iraqi forces to avoid possible confrontation.

During the course of Baghdad's operation, the United States has urged Baghdad to reduce the movement of government troops in northern Iraq to prevent further conflicts with Kurdish forces.

 Sputnik

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Japan's PM vows to 'deal firmly' with N Korea immediately after he won elections

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 06:59AM

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promised to "deal firmly" with North Korea, immediately after he won a landslide "super-majority" in the snap elections he had called, for an increased mandate to deal with the "crises" facing his country.

Exit polls suggested on Monday that Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) coalition has retained its two-thirds majority in Sunday's election.

The conservative LDP, together with its coalition ally Komeito Party, has won 312 of the 465 seats in the lower house of parliament, according to local broadcaster NHK.

The results give Abe the parliamentary numbers he needs to pursue his longtime ambitionto give the role of the military a boost amid tensions with North Korea, which has fired two missiles over Japan in recent months.

Speaking after the exit polls on Monday, Abe said, "As I promised in the election, my imminent task is to firmly deal with North Korea.... For that, strong diplomacy is required."

Japan's deputy chief cabinet secretary Yasutoshi Nishimura also said that Abe had a phone conversation with US President Donald Trump after his victory, during which the two leaders agreed to work together to increase pressure on Pyongyang.

Abe is now one step closer to his mandate of revising Japan's post-war pacifist constitution, which is considered by many conservatives as a humiliating imposition following Japan's World War II defeat in 1945.

The prime minister had previously proposed to revise a clause of the constitutionknown as Article 9which renounces war completely. Article 9 bans a standing military but has been interpreted to allow armed forces exclusively for self defense.

Abe has set a deadline of 2020 to make that revision happen, but even if he manages to get the approval for such an amendment in the two houses of parliament, he would still need to put it to a public vote in a referendum.

Parties, which are in favor of the change, are now in possession of almost 80 percent of the seats in the lower house of the parliament.

Abe had previously said he needed a new mandate to tackle a "national crisis" from North Korea's missile and nuclear programs.

Speaking at a news conference on Monday, Abe outlined his North Korea policy and said, "I will pursue decisive and strong diplomacy to tackle North Korea's missile, nuclear and abduction issues and put further pressure to get it to change its policy."

He also said he would "thoroughly" discuss North Korea's nuclear weapons program with Trump during his first visit to Asia next month.

Trump's planned trip to Asia will include stops in Tokyo as well as in the Chinese and South Korean capitals, Beijing and Seoul.

In the meantime, Trump's Defense Secretary James Mattis has kicked off a week-long tour of Asia to hold talks with US regional allies on what he has called Pyongyang's "reckless" provocations.

Mattis, who is in the Philippines, will pay visits to Thailand and South Korea.

Tensions between the United States and North Korea have increased in recent months, with Trump repeatedly threatening military action against the country.

He has claimed that a diplomatic approach over the past 25 years "hasn't worked" and that Pyongyang has made "fools of US negotiators."

In response, North Korea has vowed a tough response to any American aggression.

The North has faced tough UN sanctions over its nuclear weapons program, but says it will continue to develop its military programs as a deterrent against the hostile policies of the United States and its regional allies, including South Korea and Japan.

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UN opens key fundraising conference for Rohingya refugees

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 04:01PM

The United Nations has opened a major fundraising conference aimed at securing aid for nearly one million persecuted Rohingya Muslim refugees in Bangladesh.

Elisabeth Rasmusson, the deputy chief of the World Food Programme (WFP), told the conference in the Swiss city of Geneva on Monday that the funds would benefit the Rohingya refugees who have fled the ongoing violence in Myanmar's western Rakhine state.

"We are here today because, sadly, the needs are even greater than we can provide with our current resources," the UN official said, adding, "On behalf of the people we are trying to help, we must ask you for more."

Also addressing the conference, the UN humanitarian chief, Mark Lowcock, said, "We need more money to keep pace with intensifying needs. This is not an isolated crisis, it is the latest round in a decades-long cycle of persecution, violence and displacement."

"Children, women and men fleeing Myanmar are streaming into Bangladesh traumatized and destitute," he added. "We assess we have pledges of around $340 million."

Lowcock reiterated the UN call on Myanmar to allow "full humanitarian access across Rakhine" where aid agencies have been denied entry.

He said that Myanmar must "guarantee the right to safe, voluntary and dignified return so that the Rohingya can live in peace with their human rights upheld in Rakhine."

The pledging conference comes as the United Nations has appealed for $434 million to provide life-saving aid to 1.2 million people for six months.

According to the UN, the funds will benefit the 900,000 Rohingya refugees as well as roughly 300,000 local people from Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar area on the Myanmar border.

Rohingya arrivals 'untenable'

Addressing the conference in Geneva, Shameem Ahsan, the ambassador of Bangladesh to the United Nations, called the exodus of Rohingya Muslims to his country as "untenable."

The diplomat called on Myanmar to let the refugees return.

"This is the biggest exodus from a single country since the Rwandan genocide in 1994," the ambassador said, adding, "Despite claims to the contrary, violence in Rakhine state has not stopped. Thousands still enter on a daily basis."

Ahsan said Bangladesh's interior minister was in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, for talks to find a "durable solution."

Myanmar continues to issue "propaganda projecting Rohingyas as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh," the diplomat said, adding, "This blatant denial of the ethnic identity of Rohingyas remains a stumbling block."

Since October 2016, Myanmar's army has been carrying out a military crackdown in Rakhine, where a large number of the Rohingya live.

Many of Rohingya Muslims who have managed to take refuge in Bangladesh say Myanmar's soldiers and Buddhist mobs have been attacking civilians and burning down their homes.

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Rohingya crisis: Donors pledge $344 million at UN-backed conference to support aid efforts

23 October 2017  A United Nations-supported humanitarian conference today raised more than $344 million to fund critical relief programmes for Rohingya refugees and host communities in Bangladesh.

The exodus  which began in late August  continues unabated, making the crisis the fastest growing refugee emergency in the world today. As of Sunday, some 603,000 refugees are estimated to have arrived in Bangladesh and thousands more reportedly remain stranded in Myanmar without the means to cross the border.

"Humanitarian donors have today expressed their solidarity and compassion with the families and communities in need," said Mark Lowcock, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator.

"These very generous pledges must now quickly translate into life-saving relief for the vulnerable refugees and support to host communities who have been stretched to the limit," he added.

Since the crisis began, UN agencies have ramped up their relief efforts, including conducting a massive immunization campaign that inoculated more than 700,000 people against cholera, as well as providing food assistance to hundreds of thousands of refugees.

However, the scale of the crisis has overwhelmed the response, and emergency shelters, blankets, clean water, health care and other forms of aid are urgently needed. Adding to the complexity is that Bangladesh was already hosting about 200,000 Rohingya refugees prior to the crisis.

"More than 800,000 stateless Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh aspire to a life that meets their immediate needs for food, medicine, water, and shelter. But beyond that, a life that has hope for the future where their identity is recognised, they are free from discrimination, and are able to return safely to their homes in Myanmar," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

"As we come together in solidarity, I want to thank Bangladesh and its refugee-hosting communities and the donors for supporting them," he added.

There were a total of 35 pledges made today, including money pledged and committed since 25 August as well as new announcements. Several donors also announced in-kind assistance worth more than $50 million. Fundraising campaigns are also underway in several countries.

One such initiative is the UN World Food Programme's app ShareTheMeal, which launched a worldwide campaign on Sunday to raise funds to feed Rohingya refugee children and provide them with vital nutrition with a simple tap on their phones.

The pledging conference was co-organized by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). It was co-hosted by the European Union and the Government of Kuwait.

No durable humanitarian solutions to political crises  IOM chief

Also speaking today, IOM Director General William Lacy Swing underscored that while sustainable life-saving assistance for the refugee population in Bangladesh needs to be ensured, the root causes of the crisis need to be addressed.

"We must urge international leaders to support the peaceful resolution of this decade-long crisis in Myanmar and insist that the authorities create conditions of safety, security and dignity in Rakhine state to one of the world's most persecuted populations," he said.

Adding that the recommendations of the Rakhine Advisory Commission offer a way forward to peaceful co-existence, Mr. Swing underscored that the implementation must start immediately and that the first step is to allow humanitarians to resume their work in the northern part of Rakhine state.

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RACINE  The Zach Pietrini Band will perform Friday, Oct. 27, at McAuliffes Pub, 3700 Meachem Road.

Voted Best Live Act in Milwaukee (Milwaukee Magazine, 2017), its been four years since Zach Pietrini showed up on the Milwaukee music scene. Despite being a Chicago transplant, the Zach Pietrini Band has become a recognized name around town playing featured spots at Summerfest and Bastille Days.

At the forefront of the Americana resurgence in the north country, Pietrini quickly distinguished himself with his fearless vulnerability, prolific writing and dynamic live show. Pietrinis fifth release, Holding Onto Ghosts, has continued to solidify his reputation as an Americana force.

The new album offers a loud yet vulnerable look into what haunts Pietrini. Lyrically, the focus is on lost love, desperate hopes, and the tension of caring for a family while trying to make it as an artist.

I wanted to offer an honest snapshot into my life, and invite people into a safe place to look at theirs, said Pietrini about the new record.

The Cow Ponies, a Milwaukee-based band that performs both original music and old country, alternative country and cow punk copies, open the show at 9 p.m. The cover charge is $7.
Report: Russia Implicates Browder In Magnitsky 'Murder' Probe, Citing Widely Mocked MI6 'Expose'

Carl Schreck October 23, 2017

In April 2016, the head of Russia's powerful Investigative Committee instructed his subordinates to examine the potential "complicity" of U.S.-born British businessman William Browder -- once Russia's largest portfolio investor -- in the "murder" of his former employee, Sergei Magnitsky.

It was a bizarre twist in the saga of Magnitsky, whose 2009 death in a Moscow jail resulted in a 2012 U.S. law bearing his name that slaps sanctions on Russians deemed to be human rights abusers. Browder vigorously lobbied for the law, arguing that Magnitsky was tortured and denied medical treatment for blowing the whistle on a massive tax fraud allegedly involving Russian law enforcement and tax officials.

Russia, which says Magnitsky's death was a tragedy but denies allegations that he was abused while in custody, has undertaken an aggressive, multipronged effort in recent years aimed at discrediting Browder and the narrative underpinning the U.S. Magnitsky Act.

The law was said to be at the center of a meeting between a Russian lawyer, Donald Trump Jr., and other confidants of U.S. President Donald Trump at a controversial meeting in New York in June 2016.

Investigative Committee chief Aleksander Bastrykin's call last year to probe allegations of Browder's possible role in Magnitsky's death was explicitly linked to a documentary on Russian state TV that alleged a byzantine conspiracy between Browder, British intelligence, and Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.

But for 18 months, it was unclear if this probe had gone anywhere.

According to an October 22 report by The New York Times, however, Russian authorities are indeed pursuing a possible murder charge against Browder -- and citing evidence that parrots widely mocked claims presented in the documentary broadcast on Rossia-1 television a day prior to the Investigative Committee's announcement.

Citing documents obtained from a court docket by a lawyer for Magnitsky's family, the Times reported that Russian prosecutors allege Browder colluded with a representative of Britain's MI6 to convince doctors to withhold medical care to "cause the death of S.L. Magnitsky" while he was in custody.

RFE/RL reached out to Browder, who said he was not immediately able to provide a copy of the documents in question.

Prosecutors, according to the Times report, also cite alleged intercepts of intelligence communications and suggest the goal of the purported plot was to start "a significant news trigger to discredit" Russia.

They also cite claims made in the Rossia-1 documentary, including that Browder was in cahoots with Navalny in a purported secret operation titled "Quake" -- with Browder supposedly using the code name "Solomon" and Navalny using the moniker "Freedom."

Clumsy Fakes

The documentary featured scans of alleged secret U.S. and British documents concerning Browder, Navalny, and Magnitsky that were widely ridiculed as crude fakes based on their clumsy syntax and grammatical mistakes -- including improper use of English indefinite and definite articles that often stymie native Russian speakers.

The claims by Russian prosecutors, as reported by the Times, echo one alleged CIA document from 2009 shown in the Rossia-1 program with the awkward subject line: "Report on the health status of a Sergei Magnitsky."

The document purports that Browder ("Agent Solomon") "was offered by proxies in the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service to arrange the termination of any medical services for Magnitsky...which could lead to his death."

That document is signed by "V. Plame" -- an apparent reference to former CIA covert officer Valerie Plame, who was exposed by officials in the administration of President Georgia W. Bush after her husband criticized the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Plame on Twitter called the document, purportedly from 2009, "such nonsense" and noted that she left the CIA in 2007.

The Russian Investigative Committee did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment on The New York Times report, and officials there could not immediately be reached by telephone.

The report was published just days after Canada on October 19 passed its version of the Magnitsky Act, a move that Russian President Vladimir Putin called "unconstructive political games."

Browder U.S. Travel Blocked?

Browder, meanwhile, is claiming that Russia has placed him on an Interpol list, and that his U.S. "global entry status" -- which can expedite entry to the United States -- has been revoked by U.S. officials, The Guardian reported.

Interpol has previously refused to place the investor, whom Russia convicted in absentia on tax-evasion charges in 2013, on an international wanted list at Moscow's request.

The Guardian reported over the weekend that Russia had used a loophole allowing governments to place individuals on the Interpol database unilaterally.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-magnitsky- implicates-browder-murder-probe-cites -widely-mocked-expose/28811246.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Russian Aerospace Forces to Receive S-500 Air Defense Systems in Several Years

Sputnik News

17:55 23.10.2017

A Russian Aerospace Forces official has revealed the time of the next-generation S-500 system's debut.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The deliveries of cutting-edge S-500 air defense systems, with a range of 400-600 kilometers (250-370 miles), to Russia's Aerospace Forces will start around 2020, Deputy Commander of Russia's Aerospace Forces Lt. Gen. Viktor Gumenny said Monday.

The S-500 Prometey, also known as the 55R6M Triumfator-M, is a foremost anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic missile system currently under development in Russia. The S-500 can intercept and destroy both intercontinental ballistic missiles and hypersonic cruise missiles and aircraft.

Previously, the Russian news network Zvezda had described the S-500 Prometey as a whole set of characteristics that would turn the Russian air defense system into a single information space, rather than just an advanced new missile system. According to the broadcaster, Prometey might analyze information about possible missile attacks from early warning satellites and over-the-horizon radars and issue target designations to various systems.

The Prometey, designed by Russia's Almaz Antei corporation, is a major upgrade from the bleeding-edge S-400 complex that has already been put into service and its US rival  the Patriot Advanced Capability-3.

 Sputnik

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Syrian army makes new advances on Daesh lines south of Dayr al-Zawr

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 04:10PM

The Syrian army has advanced deeper into the southern outskirts of the eastern city of Dayr al-Zawr, which is partially held by Daesh terrorists, pushing the Takfiri outfit further toward total defeat in the oil-rich province, a monitoring group reports.

According to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Monday, Daesh terrorists are increasingly losing ground across the province to advancing Syrian troops and the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is a US-backed group of Kurdish and Arab militants.

The developments came a day after Syrian ground forces, backed by pro-government fighters, managed to liberate the strategic town of Khasham, located in the northeastern countryside of Dayr al-Zawr city, from the grips of Daesh.

Daesh overran large parts of Dayr al-Zawr province, including its many oil fields, in mid-2014 as it seized swathes of land in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

By early 2015, the Takfiri terrorists were in control of some parts of city of Dayr al-Zawr and besieged the remaining parts, which were under government control. It is estimated that 100,000 people remain in the government-held parts of the city.

Backed by the Russian military and fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance movement, the Syrian army has managed to break Daesh's three-year siege on Dayr al-Zawr province, though the total elimination of the group is yet to come.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The Syrian government says the Israeli regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri terrorist groups that are wreaking havoc in the country.

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Chinese military activities near Taiwan closely monitored: MND

ROC Central News Agency

2017/10/23 14:43:14

Taipei, Oct. 23 (CNA) The military is closely monitoring any movements of Chinese military planes or navy vessels near Taiwan as part of their far-sea training activities and has response measures in place, Ministry of National Defense (MND) spokesman Chen Chung-ji () said Monday.

China's far-sea training activities are expected to become routine in the future and the military has a set of response options, according to Chen.

Chen made the remarks while answering media inquiries after the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held a group interview in Beijing with the theme of "solid strides on the path of building a powerful military with Chinese characteristics" on Sunday.

Liu Rui (), a bomber pilot with the People's Liberation Army Air Force, said at the news conference that since the PLA expanded its far-sea training from the near coast to the deep seas several years ago, it has made long-distance deployments a routine part of its live-fire exercise cycle.

Liu also said the Chinese military will continue to expand its far-sea training, increase the frequency of its far-sea training activities and upscale its military exercises.

Also that day, Taiwanese media pundit and military expert Qi Yue-yi () said in an exclusive interview with CNA that the PLA has expanded its global footprint in recent years as evidenced by the multiple encroachment of Chinese military surveillance aircraft into Taiwan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ) earlier this year.

China's act represents an attempt by China to show off its military might and test Taiwan's political and military response capabilities, Qi said.

PLA aircraft and vessels have several times flown and sailed near southern Taiwan and into the Western Pacific via the Miyako Strait, which lies between the Japanese islands of Miyako and Okinawa, and is part of Japan's exclusive economic zone, but includes a narrow band of international waters and airspace.

Chinese fighter jets and ships have also regularly crossed the "first island chain," which refers to the first major archipelagos off the East Asian continental mainland, including the Japanese archipelago, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan and the northern Philippines, he said.

In response, Chen said Monday that the military is closely monitoring the air space and seas above and around Taiwan.

Chen also said the Defense Ministry has a range of response options available and called on the public to support the government's efforts to develop a more independent defense sector or asymmetric warfare capabilities.

Meanwhile, in response to criticism of a waste of public resources over the Navy's deployment of a Kidd-class guided missile destroyer to rescue a Yilan-registered fishing boat which was trapped at sea due to engine failure Oct 20, Chen said that protecting the people is the military's duty and cannot be evaluated in terms of money.

(By Lu Hsin-hui and Evelyn Kao)

Enditem/J



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Turkish President Attacks Washington

By Dorian Jones October 23, 2017

U.S. and Turkish diplomats continue talks on resolving a dispute over recent visa curbs, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan steps up his rhetoric against Washington. Bilateral relations are set to be further strained by an upcoming court case over Iranian sanction busting involving Turkish citizens.

Erdogan launched a scathing attack Sunday on the country's Western allies.

He warned Turkey would respect its strategic alliances with its partners as long as those countries respected the law. Ankara has accused some of its NATO partners of conspiring against it and offering sanctuary to people it accuses of being involved in last year's coup.

Erdogan specifically targeted Washington.

"They say the United States is the cradle of democracy. This can not be true, this can not be democracy," he said. " If the United States issues arrest warrants for my 13 bodyguards in a country where I went upon invitation, I am sorry, but I will not say that country is civilized."

Erdogan's body guards are accused by U.S. prosecutors of assaulting peaceful protesters outside the Turkish embassy during his visit to Washington in May.

The Turkish president's scathing attack comes as diplomats from both countries are continuing efforts to resolve the mutual curbing of visas.

Washington imposed visa restrictions following the arrest on terrorism charges of two local employees working at U.S. diplomatic missions in Turkey.

That move saw Ankara retaliating with its own visa restrictions.

The U.S. State Department described the talks Thursday as productive.

Political columnist Semih Idiz of Al Monitor website said Erdogan's increasingly tough rhetoric against Washington should be viewed in a wider context of the importance of bilateral relations to both sides.

"He [Erdogan] is a master of coming out with bellicose remarks at unexpected and sensitive moments. But we must realize Erdogan was in New York very recently and had a very chummy meeting with Donald Trump who called him a special friend. So Turkey is aware for all the problems it has with America, [it] too it has to tread carefully," said Idiz.

Observers point out Erdogan's tough rhetoric is in part motivated by domestic politics. A tough anti American stance plays well with Turkish nationalists Erdogan is courting for 2019 presidential and general elections.

But U.S. Turkish relations could be further strained with an upcoming Iranian sanction busting court case in the United States that involves Turkish-Iranian businessmen Reza Zarrab and senior members of a Turkish State bank.

Political consultant Atilla Yesilada of Global Source partners warns the case can only add to bilateral tensions.

"This upcoming Reza Zarrab case which we [Turkey] consider a big conspiracy of the American deep state, so the possibility of these political shocks tampering off is almost nil," said Yesilada.

Washington's ongoing support of Syrian Kurdish militia fighting the Islamic State, also continues to infuriate Ankara who accuse the militia of being, linked to an armed insurgency in Turkey.

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UK steps up role as the fight against Daesh evolves

23 October 2017

UK forces deployed at Al Asad Air Base will train further forward and provide increased force protection for UK personnel in and around coalition bases as Daesh continues its retreat across Iraq and Syria.

2 Rifles, currently based at Al Asad providing infantry, counter-IED, engineering and combat medical training to the Iraqi Security Forces, will now patrol outside the base perimeter.

The UK is also deploying a further team of British military medical personnel to Al Asad and will extend the deployment of British engineers at the base by six months. A Light Surgical team, made up of RAF medics and personnel from the Army Medical Corps, will be able to provide world leading medical treatment to Coalition forces within the critical "Golden Hour" after being wounded.

Defence Secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, said:

"The fight against Daesh's reign of terror is not over and as the nature of the Coalition campaign changes, the role we play must adapt too. By training Iraq forces we are helping with the long-term stability of the country and our own security here at home."

The campaign to defeat Daesh in Iraq has entered its final phase following the liberation of Mosul, Hawija and the Ninewah Province from its barbaric rule. Iraqi Security Forces are now advancing across Anbar Province, clearing Daesh positions in the Euphrates River Valley.

Medical support to operations is a top priority for the Coalition. Learning from previous operations, such as the world leading trauma care developed at Camp Bastion's hospital, the UK medical personnel will ensure Coalition forces receive the highest standard of treatment if required.

Over 600 British soldiers are on the ground in Iraq, helping to train that country's forces. UK troops have so far helped train over 58,000 Iraqi Security Forces in battle-winning infantry, counter-IED, engineering and combat medical skills. In addition to personnel on the ground in Iraq, RAF aircraft have carried out over 1,600 strikes against Daesh. The UK's commitment from all three Services to the fight against Daesh across the region now numbers just over 1,400 military personnel.

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US preparing to put nuclear bombers back on 24-hour alert: Report

Iran Press TV

Mon Oct 23, 2017 04:09PM

The US Air Force is preparing to place its fleet of B-52 bombers rigged with nuclear weapons on 24-hour alert for the first time since 1991 amid escalating tensions with North Korea.

A senior US Air Force official told security news website Defense One on Sunday that American military leaders are reacting to new threat levels.

"The world is a dangerous place and we've got folks that are talking openly about use of nuclear weapons," General David Goldfein, Air Force chief of staff, said, referring to North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un who has threatened to attack the US with nuclear weapons if it continues its aggressive policy against his country.

Goldfein said no official order had been given to put nuclear bombers on alert, but said preparations are underway. That decision would be made by the commander of US Strategic Command, or the head of US Northern Command.

"This is yet one more step in ensuring that we're prepared," he said during a tour of Air Force bases home to nuclear bombers. "I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more for the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we're prepared going forward."

Goldfein noted that it is "no longer a bipolar world where it's just us and the Soviet Union. We've got other players out there who have nuclear capability. It's never been more important to make sure that we get this mission right."

Refurbishments are reportedly being made to Barksdale Air Force base in Louisiana, home of the 2d Bomb Wing and Air Force Global Strike Command, which manages US nuclear forces. So the B-52s would be ready to "take off at a moment's notice."

The B-52 can fly up to about 50,000 feet and at subsonic speeds, and it has the ability to carry and fire a variety of weapons, including cluster bombs, gravity bombs and precision guided missiles.

The long-range bomber is capable of carrying up to 70,000 pounds (32,000 kg) of weapons, and has a typical combat range of more than 8,800 miles (14,080 km) without aerial refueling. It can also unleash both nuclear and precision-guided conventional ordnance.

The White House has already warned the United States is ready to use its nuclear weapons against North Korea if the country continues to threaten Washington or its allies, amid escalating tensions between the two countries.

The North Korean leader has ordered the production of more rocket warheads and engines, shortly after the United States suggested that its threats of military action and sanctions were having an impact on Pyongyang's behavior.

Pyongyang says it will not give up on its nuclear deterrence unless Washington ends its hostile policy toward the country and dissolves the US-led UN command in South Korea. Thousands of US soldiers are stationed in South Korea and Japan.

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Cold War Revisited: US Reportedly Preparing to Put B-52 Bombers on 24-Hour Alert

Sputnik News

13:31 23.10.2017(updated 14:37 23.10.2017)

The US Air Force could put its B-52 bombers back on 24-hour alert, Defense One reported citing the USAF chief of staff. The report emerged amid the ongoing tensions over North Korea's nuclear and missile program.

"This is yet one more step in ensuring that we're prepared," USAF chief of staff Gen. David Goldfein said. "I look at it more as not planning for any specific event, but more toward the reality of the global situation we find ourselves in and how we ensure we're prepared to move forward."

Goldfein and other senior defense officials stressed that despite the alert having not yet been given, it could come. If ordered the measure would be unprecedented. Nothing like this has been seen since 1991, the end of the Cold War.

The general noticed that in the current global environment it is necessary to think about new ways of using nuclear weapons, both for deterrence and combat.

"It's no longer a bipolar world where it's just us and the Soviet Union. We've got other players out there who have nuclear capability. It's never been more important to make sure that we get this mission right," he said.

According to Defense One, Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, home of the 2nd Bomb Wing and Air Force Global Strike Command, is currently being renovated and could soon house nuclear-armed B-52 bombers at the ready.

Goldfein's statements come on the heels of a new spike in tensions on the Korean Peninsula due to Pyongyang's missile launches and a nuclear test as well as Washington's repeated threats to resolve the crisis with force. In particularly, US President Donald Trump has threatened to take a "devastating" military option and "totally destroy" North Korea, while North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has warned Washington of "hardline countermeasures" against possible aggression.

The confrontation between Pyongyang and Washington has continued to intensify amid joint US-South Korean drills east of the Korean peninsula. Forty US and South Korean warships, including the supercarrier USS Ronald Reagan, along with US Air Force B1-B strategic bombers, were deployed across an area stretching from the Yellow Sea to the Sea of Japan.

While Washington continues its saber rattling, further pushing the situation towards an impasse, Russia and China have repeatedly called for the cessation of military threats and to find a compromise.

During his recent speech at the Valdai Discussion Club, Russian President Vladimir Putin once again articulated Moscow's approach to the Korean crisis, emphasizing that Pyongyang should not be "driven into a corner" and calling for international dialogue.

"Any contradictions must be resolved in a civilized manner. Russia has always been in favor of this approach. We are firmly convinced that even the most complex 'knots'  must be untangled, not cut," Putin said.

In June, a "double freeze" scenario was proposed by China and backed by Russia, in which North Korea would cease its nuclear missile tests, while US-South Korean military drills would be simultaneously halted. The initiative has been rejected by Washington.

 Sputnik

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CALEDONIA  The Village Board will appoint one of its members to fill the remaining time of Village President Bob Bradleys term rather than hold an election to find a successor, trustees decided Monday.

Last week, Bradley announced that he was going to retire from the position on Nov. 6. At a special meeting Monday, trustees debated the best way to appoint Bradleys successor.

Trustee Ed Willing started off the discussion by nominating Trustee Kevin Wanggaard for the position through the end of Bradleys term in April 2019, which Trustee Lee Wishau seconded.

But before the board could vote, Fran Martin, a member of the villages Community Development Authority, asked that she be allowed to speak.

Martin said that by nominating a trustee to the position through 2019, the board was denying Caledonias citizens the right to elect a president.

We didnt vote for Bob (Bradley) for president for one of you to fill that position for 16 months of his term, said Martin. That to me is an abridgment of democracy and Im asking you not to do it.

Wishau, stating that he had misunderstood the nomination, withdrew his second and asked for more discussion on the matter.

Out of the board members, Id like to know who is interested and Id like to ask a few questions to whoever is interested in this position on the board, said Wishau.

Trustee Jay Benkowski agreed and said he wanted those interested to present the board with a platform. He also wanted the board to discuss whether they would nominate someone to fill the term through the 2018 municipal elections or until April 2019.

Broad authority

Village Attorney Elaine Ekes said the Village Board has broad authority when it comes to filling the position. She said the board could choose to fill the position through 2019 or fill it through the 2018 election.

Benkowski said that while a nomination through 2019 was legal, he thought the move had the appearance of cronyism.

I respect your (Ekes) opinion  its legal, but its the optics, said Benkowski. Its political suicide.

Two trustees interested

Wanggaard and Trustee Jim Dobbs said they were both interested in the position and thought the term should run through 2019.

Its going to take an enormous amount of work to get up to speed (as president), said Dobbs.

It takes about three or four months to get up to speed on what else is going on behind the scenes, said Wanggaard. Id love to be president but I dont believe its in this villages best interest to be president for five months then run for election.

Wanggaard said he believes that because of developments in the county, it is important to have consistent leadership through 2019.

As a Village Board, we have to present ourselves to any number of big corporations that want to relocate here because of Foxconn, he said, referring to the massive manufacturing campus proposed in neighboring Mount Pleasant.

Wishau made a motion for the interim president position to run through April 2018. Benkowski seconded, but in the final vote the four other trustees voted it down.

Trustee Ed Willing then made a motion for the interim presidents position to run through April 2019. The motion passed with Benkowski and Wishau opposed.

Wishau then made a motion that the board hold a special meeting next week at which Wanggaard, Dobbs and whomever else on the board is interested in the presidents position would give a presentation and answer questions about why they should be nominated.

The board voted in favor of the proposal and voiced issues trustees want the nominees to discuss, such as economic development, the Douglas Avenue corridor, land use, TIF districts, education, quality of life, parks and overall what they would like to see for the future of the community.
New England and the Mid-Atlantic, including the Chesapeake Bay, have a long and storied history of fishing.

Fishing continues to define our culture today, with lobsters, sea scallops, crabs, and a variety of fish filling our menus and attracting tourists from all over the world. New Bedford, Massachusetts, is consistently among the highest value ports in the United States, thanks to the lucrative scallop fishery. Recreational fishing is a popular pastime, contributing billions to our economy. Many fishermen still fish in the same places and for the same species as their ancestors hundreds of years ago.

We are also dedicated to conserving, protecting, and rebuilding endangered and threatened marine and anadromous species in rivers, bays, estuaries, and marine waters off New England and the Mid-Atlantic. Our work helps ensure the survival of protected marine mammals, sea turtles, and fish for future generations.

Our work to maintain sustainable fisheries and protect marine life is a joint effort of the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office and Northeast Fisheries Science Center, offering sound science to help inform management decisions in an ever-changing environment. To find out more about our work, read our 2020-2023 New England and Mid-Atlantic Regional Strategic Plan.
RACINE COUNTY  Two people have been taken into custody after a high-speed pursuit Monday morning in Racine County after which drugs were reportedly found in the suspect vehicle.

According to a release issued Monday by the Racine County Sheriffs Office:

At about 8:58 a.m. Monday, a Racine County Sheriffs deputy was monitoring traffic on Highway 20 near Old Yorkville Road in Yorkville when a deputy saw a white SUV pass with a loud exhaust system and missing a rear side window.

The deputy stopped the vehicle and identified the driver as 35-year-old Kenneth Dwight Evans and a passenger as Lucrecia M. Butler, 39. The Sheriffs Office did not indicate where the suspects live.

During the stop, the deputy learned Evans had a warrant for his arrest for armed robbery issued by the Milwaukee Police Department. When the deputy approached the vehicle to take Evans into custody, Evans allegedly drove away at a high rate of speed, the release said.

The deputy initiated a high-speed pursuit with speeds reaching up to 104 mph. The deputy pursued the vehicle until Evans stopped near the intersection of Highway 20 and Highway D in Rochester.

According to the release, a high-risk traffic stop was initiated. During the investigation, heroin was reportedly found in Butlers possession.

Both Evans and Butler were taken into custody and transported to the Racine County Jail.

Evans is being held on pending charges of fleeing and eluding, recklessly endangering safety, possession with intent to deliver heroin, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a firearm by a felon.

Butler is being held at the Racine County Jail on charges of possession with intent to deliver heroin, misdemeanor bail jumping and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Sheriffs officials said the investigation was ongoing as of Monday.
Apple Pay has now expanded to Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates, as promised earlier this year.

The addition of Sweden, Denmark and Finland leaves only Norway from the Scandinavian region to receive Apple Pay.

Meanwhile, the UAE becomes the first Middle Eastern nation to support Apple Pay. Now banks and financial institutions in a total of 20 countries support Apple's secure payment system.

Naturally Apple is working to further expand Pay's reach. You can check which banks work with Apple Pay here.

Source | 2
HMD is launching a new Nokia phone in India at the end of the month  October 31. The save the date emails went out, but they are vague about which device will be featured. Its labeled only as the next milestone for Nokia phones.

It could be the new Nokia 7, which starts selling in China tomorrow (a flash sale). Alternatively, the still-unofficial Nokia 2  an affordable $99 handset  could be unveiled.



Nokia 7 could arrive in India at the end of the month

Then theres the Nokia 9, which cleared the FCC back in June and would be quite the milestone. But the Nokia 8 has been on sale in India barely over a week and launching the 9 now would eclipse it. A 4G featurephone is also a distant possibility.

For what its worth, our money is on the Nokia 7. Its a hot, newly unveiled device with no launch date set for India. We think this will be its welcoming party.

Via
These are the best offers from our affiliate partners. We may get a commission from qualifying sales.
The Samsung Galaxy S9 has already been the subject of a handful of rumors, and things are only expected to heat up from here. A patent filed by the South Korean company in its home country suggests the next-gen Galaxy S series of devices may come with a fingerprint sensor on the front.

This year's Galaxy S8 came with a rear-mounted fingerprint reader. However, to say the least, the placement of the sensor didn't impress everybody. The patent in question is from 2016, but it's possible that Samsung may implement it in Galaxy S9 to address fingerprint sensor placement concerns.

The image included in the patent indicates there'll be round cut at the bottom (similar to the one Essential's PH-1 has on the top) that'll house the sensor. So it would be interesting to see how users will react to the new design if the tech giant decides to go that route.

Source | Via
Saint Paul winery wins two best of show awards

Alan Ward is shown in a video made by North Carolina Wine.

Related Stories

Henderson Countys first commercial winery, Saint Paul Mountain Vineyards, won two of three Best of Show awards at the 2017 N.C. State Fair Wine Competition.

The family-owned winery won the Best of Show award in the bunch grape category for its Laurel Hill semi-dry Vidal Blanc blend and the Best of Show award in the fruit/honey category for its Chestnut Gap Cottage dry blackberry wine.

The Old North State Winery in Mt. Airy won the Best of Show award in the muscadine category.

In addition to the Best of Show medals, St Paul wines won 12 other medals  one double gold, six silver and five bronze  in the N.C. State Fair Wine Competition.

We are very excited to receive two of the highest recognitions given in North Carolina for wine, Alan Ward, the owner and operator of Saint Paul Mountain Vineyards, said in a news release. We are fortunate at Saint Paul Mountain Vineyards to be able to grow grapes in such a unique growing region. The Appalachian mountains are the second oldest in the world with more geological and plant diversity than any other location in the world. That makes this a perfect place to grow vinifera. We are honored to receive these awards and thank our winemaker Stephen Rigby, who deserves recognition as well.

The state fair competition was held Aug. 18-19 at the N.C. Viticulture and Enology Center at Surry County Community College. Only wines made from a minimum of 75 percent N.C. grown fruit or honey were allowed to enter the competition. The top awards were verified by the N.C. Wine and Grape Council before being made public.

Saint Paul Mountain Vineyards, at 588 Chestnut Gap Road off of U.S. 64 East, recently celebrated its fifth anniversary.

The winery is located on acreage that has been in Wards family and farmed for more than nine generations. The Saint Paul tasting room includes both indoor and outdoor seating with views of the vineyards.

Saint Paul wines are made from 14 varieties of grapes grown in two vineyards at elevations of 2,300 and 3,000 feet, the highest in Henderson County and some of the highest in the state.

Ward recently opened a tasting room for Appalachian Ridge Artisan Ciders across the road from Saint Pauls tasting room.

Full results from the competition can be found at www.ncwine.org.
RACINE  The suspect accused of shooting and killing a man on Holmes Avenue last fall made his initial appearance in court Monday.

Michael A. Cina, 39, of the 1600 block of South 63rd Street, West Allis, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide with the use of a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm by a felon.

Racine charges

On the afternoon of Sept. 14, 2016, Racine police responded to the 1600 block of Holmes Avenue on a report that a man had been shot. Police found the victim, later identified as 36-year-old Joey Torrez, in a grass parkway between the sidewalk and street. Torrez had reportedly been shot eight times while he was in his car.

Torrez was initially taken to Ascension All Saints Hospital, then transported to Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa for treatment, but was removed from life support and died on Sept. 20, 2016, from gunshot injuries he sustained.

Police obtained footage of the shooting from a surveillance camera in the neighborhood, which reportedly showed Torrez getting into his vehicle, and a blue Ford Focus driving up next to Torrezs vehicle. A persons arm then reaches out of the Ford, fires at Torrez and drives away.

The suspect was identified as Cina after police spoke with witnesses and learned Cina drove a blue Ford Focus with unique wheels matching footage of the shooting. Another witness said Cina had reportedly admitted to killing a Racine man.

Kenosha charges

Cina is also the suspect in a Kenosha homicide in which a glove with Cinas DNA was found during the investigation. Shell casings from the Kenosha homicide also reportedly were fired from the same gun used in the Racine homicide.

In connection to the Kenosha homicide, Cina is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, burglary, armed with a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Cina remains in custody on a $500,000 bond in both the Racine and Kenosha cases, online records show.

A preliminary hearing in the Racine case is set for Nov. 1 at the Law Enforcement Center, 717 Wisconsin Ave., for the Racine case.
CALEDONIA  Son, pops, bro.

Those are the words emblazoned on a memorial along Douglas Avenue after Michael Fuchsgurber, a 39-year-old father, lost his life Friday following a hit-and-run crash.

Tyler J. Martinez, 27, of the 3600 block of 10th Avenue, Racine, has been charged in connection with the crash in which Fuchsgurber was struck on his bicycle Friday evening while on a ride with his 15-year-old son along Douglas Avenue.

Condolences and other mournful sentiments were echoed on Fuchgurbers Facebook page, with friends leaving comments such as He was a great guy! Prayers to you all. And Your family and friends are in my prayers. Tragic.

Fridays fatal hit-and-run

Martinez was charged Monday with felony hit and run resulting in death.

According to a criminal complaint and a Caledonia Police Department media release:

At about 9:47 p.m. Friday, police and fire units responded to the 5400 block of Douglas (Highway 32) near Middle Road for a hit and run, car-versus-bicyclist crash.

Paramedics rushed Fuchsgruber to the emergency room at Ascension All Saints Hospital in Racine, but he succumbed to his injuries.

According to the complaint, Martinez called his father after hitting something along Douglas Avenue at about that time. His father then called 911 to report the crash.

When police talked to Martinez, he told them he didnt stop because he thought he hit a mailbox. He was also concerned because he thought his license was suspended, although police later verified he had a valid license.

In addition, Martinez was concerned about calling police because he had been cited for speeding and inattentive driving in the past.

After talking to Martinez, police informed him that he did not hit a mailbox; he had hit a person. Martinez was visibly shocked, the complaint said.

Martinez then asked if the person was OK. That is when police told him Fuchsgruber had died.

During the investigation, police issued Martinez a Breathalyzer test and he allegedly blew a 0.0, showing no signs of intoxication. Police also searched his phone and didnt find any texts or phone calls that were conducted during the time of the crash.

Initial appearance

During Martinezs initial appearance on Monday afternoon, Assistant Racine County District Attorney Christoper Steenrod asked Court Commissioner Alice Rudebusch for a $75,000 cash bond.

I am concerned Mr. Martinez is a flight risk, Steenrod said. It appears that he was aware he hit something on the side of the road, and rather than stopping to investigate what he had hit, he continued driving. So I am worried about his willingness to appear in court as scheduled.

Assistant State Public Defender Gregory Holdahl asked Rudebusch to consider a small cash bond, citing Martinezs lack of criminal past, employment, willingness to cooperate with police and his responsibilities at home with his girlfriend and two small children.

I dont think hes a flight risk based on the criminal complaint, which listed that he cooperated with the police when they showed up, Holdahl said. He showed genuine remorse and scaredness of the news, and hes basically done everything he could to ensure that he was cooperating with the police ... I understand the charges are serious, but I dont think anything in the criminal complaint indicates hes a flight risk.

Rudebusch set a signature bond of $50,000. Under conditions of the bond, Martinez is not to drive under any circumstances or have contact with the victims family.

The maximum sentence for felony hit and run resulting in death carries a fine of up to $100,000 and/or imprisonment for 25 years.

A preliminary hearing is set for Nov. 8 at the Law Enforcement Center, 717 Wisconsin Ave.
Volleyball playoffs: Hubs, Blazers will play for state titles

North Hagerstown got past Magruder in four sets in the 3A semifinals, and Clear Spring swept Forest Park in the 1A semifinals. Finals are Wednesday.
L ike the LPs that used to be made there, the Old Vinyl Factory in Hayes, west London, is back in fashion.

The 18-acre site was once the headquarters of EMI where many of that companys classic records were produced.

Redevelopment is creating 630 homes alongside restored Art Deco buildings set to become boutique shops, work studios, bars and cafes, a cinema and museum.

Part of the all-important Heathrow commercial zone, Hayes is beginning to attract a fresh wave of tech and data companies, some relocating from high-priced Shoreditch.

The factory project has been commended as a fine example of heritage-led design, and is conveniently close to the new Hayes and Harlington Crossrail station opening next year.

Apartments for rent have been launched at the factorys Gatefold Building.

Prices from 1,165 per month. Call 020 3845 4796.
Let's Keep the Gun

Control Laws That Work

By Rob Morse. October 21st, 2017

Article Source

A mass murderer killed almost 60 people in Las Vegas. Hundreds more were injured by gunshot wounds and by being trampled in the mass panic that followed. Politicians, celebrities and gun control activists called for new gun laws. That isn't a new idea. We already have 23 thousand firearms regulations. Let's look at the recent proposals. We can keep the gun-control laws that work and get rid of the rest.

Demand Universal Background Checks- Lots of states already require background checks when firearms are bought or sold. The murderer in Las Vegas bought his guns legally, so he passed his background checks. So did the murderers who killed people at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, at the Umpqua Community College in Oregon, and at Isla Vista near the University of Santa Barbara campus. I'm noticing a pattern here. Background checks only look at past criminal history. They can not predict future behavior, and they absolutely failed to stop mass murderers.

Impose Magazine Capacity Restrictions- I mentioned him before, but the murderer at Isla Vista used a handgun, not a rifle. He bought his gun and magazines in California which already has magazine capacity restrictions. This murderer had several magazines.

Impose Magazine Capacity Restrictions- I mentioned him before, but the murderer at Isla Vista used a handgun, not a rifle. He bought his gun and magazines in California which already has magazine capacity restrictions. This murderer had several magazines. .......

The whole point here is simple -- with the thousands of gun laws already on the books, where is there any logic whatsoever in trying to add more? The answer - none at all. Any attempt to ramp up extra 'gun control' laws would have but one purpose, which is to get ever closer to trying to ban guns altogether. A win for "them", a win for the criminals, but a total loss for all (the majority) of law abiding citizens. "They" will never give up with their infringement efforts.

"You don't have to be Jewish to fight by our side."

 2017 JPFO All rights reserved.

jpfo@jpfo.org

1-800-869-1884

Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership

12500 NE 10th Pl.

Bellevue, WA 98005 USA

"America's most aggressive defender of civil rights"

We make the NRA look like moderates

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Let's Keep the Gun

Control Laws That Work

By Rob Morse. October 21st, 2017

Article Source

A mass murderer killed almost 60 people in Las Vegas. Hundreds more were injured by gunshot wounds and by being trampled in the mass panic that followed. Politicians, celebrities and gun control activists called for new gun laws. That isn't a new idea. We already have 23 thousand firearms regulations. Let's look at the recent proposals. We can keep the gun-control laws that work and get rid of the rest.

Demand Universal Background Checks- Lots of states already require background checks when firearms are bought or sold. The murderer in Las Vegas bought his guns legally, so he passed his background checks. So did the murderers who killed people at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, at the Umpqua Community College in Oregon, and at Isla Vista near the University of Santa Barbara campus. I'm noticing a pattern here. Background checks only look at past criminal history. They can not predict future behavior, and they absolutely failed to stop mass murderers.

Impose Magazine Capacity Restrictions- I mentioned him before, but the murderer at Isla Vista used a handgun, not a rifle. He bought his gun and magazines in California which already has magazine capacity restrictions. This murderer had several magazines. So did the murder who killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The attempted mass murderer who attacked a church in Tennessee last month also used a handgun. These murderers were able to kill at will because their victims were disarmed. Magazine Capacity Restrictions didn't stop mass murders. Let's get rid of this failed law.

Outlaw Semi-Automatic Weapons- The proponents of gun control said we should outlaw semi-automatic weapons. These weapons fire a single shot for each press of the trigger. We will ignore the physical and legal impossibility of collecting every one of the 200 million semi-automatic firearms in the United States. Let's pretend for a moment that we could make all of the semi-automatic guns in the United States go away. Guns don't stay gone. Criminals get them. Criminals have them now. It is illegal for criminals to have guns, but the night is filled with gunfire in Chicago. In Chicago, we disarmed the honest people while we left the criminals armed. Gun prohibition failed to disarm criminals, so let's get rid of it.

Prohibit Private Citizens from Owning Firearms- Gun Control advocates say we should have gun laws like the ones in England and France. Mexico and Honduras also have gun prohibition. In Mexico and Honduras, the drug gangs have guns and the honest citizens are disarmed. Those countries have a frightening murder rate that is far higher than in the United States. London now has a higher crime rate than New York City.

France outlawed semi-automatic rifles, yet terrorists murdered over a hundred people at the Bataclan Theater in Paris. These terrorists used illegal automatic rifles. It turns out that terrorists and drug gangs don't obey the law. Only honest people do, so who are we disarming with more gun laws? These gun laws fail in the United States and around the world. Prohibition fails, so let's get rid of it.

We need more gun-free zones- The Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino was a gun free zone. Not even the security guards were armed. The Pulse Nightclub, the Umpqua Community College, Isla Vista, and the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were also gun free zones. Murderers go to gun-free zones because they want disarmed victims. Since murderers like them, let's get rid of gun free zones.

But gun-control might save one life- For every claim that gun control saves a life, I can point to many lives it cost. Victims of domestic abuse could not buy a gun to protect themselves and their family. I can point to rape victims who were disarmed by gun laws. Disarming honest people doesn't make us safer. I document that guns save lives every week.

I want to save many lives, and that is why I want these ineffective gun laws to go away. I trust my neighbors to do the right thing. I trust my neighbors every day as we drive to work and school. So do you. I trust my neighbors more than I fear criminals. I want my neighbors ready to save lives every day..and everywhere. That is why I want to get rid of these gun control laws that don't work. It is simply common sense.

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A new Danish white label hotel operator has been established for the Nordic hotel market. Core Hospitality is a sister company to Zleep Hotels, but contrary to the hotel chain, the operating company is independent of brands, ensuring that it can run everything from hostels to full-service hotels. Several synergies are created for Core Hospitality as it can draw on Zleep Hotels' strong, central organization.

"We operate hotels"

As a white label hotel operator, Core Hospitality is especially focused on operations. The organization behind gets more flexibility with hotel projects where other brands than Zleep Hotels are a better fit. Core Hospitality already has one confirmed project in Copenhagen with Moxy Hotels, Marriott's new brand focused on the next generation of travelers. The establishment of Core Hospitality thus creates further growth potential for the organization.

"We have known for a long time that Zleep Hotels were to operate other types of hotels than modern economy hotels. It was an obvious next step for us to establish Core Hospitality to develop and operate hotels with other brands than Zleep. The operating company is a strong addition to our pipeline of Zleep hotels in the years to come," says Peter Haaber, CEO of Core Hospitality and Zleep Hotels.

Easy choice for outside investors

As a hotel operator that is independent of brands, the company is flexible to operate and cooperate with several hotel brands and owners. The company will do both management agreements as well as lease contracts, which are more common in the Nordic region. Core Hospitality and Zleep Hotels' joint organization creates natural, horizonal synergies within several business functions, such as Revenue, Accounting, HR, and Marketing.

Facts about Core Hospitality

Core Hospitality is a Danish hotel operator with Nordic ambitions

The operating company is brand independent but is already cooperating with some of the world's largest brands

Core Hospitality will sign both lease contracts and management agreements

Zleep Hotels is a sister company, which organization is creating synergies

The first confirmed project is the Moxy hotel in Copenhagen, which is expected to open 228 rooms in the third quarter of 2018

Peter Haaber

CEO, Zleep Hotels

+45 51 57 87 00

Zleep Hotels
In the first of two pieces on serviced apartments, we examine the drivers of growth in the extended-stay sector. In the second article, to be published next month, we will examine innovations in serviced apartments in the face of increasing land prices.

Call them what you will  serviced or extended-stay apartments or aparthotels  major operators in this sector are looking to differentiate their properties from traditional hotels and Airbnb. That means trying to innovate with new products, while apartment and studio sizes continue to shrink due to rising land prices. And while operators are generally optimistic about the short-term, the longer term remains somewhat enigmatic.

'Professionalism' in extended-stay

At the recent Serviced Apartment Summit Europe (#SASEU), speakers taking part in a CEO panel discussion ('CEO hard talk: Unlocking the future') outlined plans to expand to cities in France, Germany, the UK, the US and elsewhere. But Brexit is looming large, even though panelists were encouraged not to mention the 'B' word.

Interestingly, perhaps, the 'P' word  professionalism  was uppermost in at least one CEO's mind. Sean Walker, the chief executive of BridgeStreet, which is developing sub-brands while 'not trying to overly expand the business,' acknowledged the sector was "lagging in relative terms to the hotel groups." However he added: "We can accelerate our changes because we can watch what mistakes have been made." He highlighted product differentiation as a key development over the past year and that "now there's very clear direction for different types of businesses that have picked their true north."

Financial institutions had reacted well to the growing sense of professionalism in the sector as there was greater clarity  and once they "see clarity, there's a degree of confidence," he said. "Data clarifies. Good, bad and ugly. And that brings confidence to the sector."

Karim Malik, Deputy CEO of Aparthotels Adagio, the extended-stay brand of Accor, likened the Paris market to a 'washing machine' over the past 12 months. Adagio has some 50 aparthotels in the French capital  about half of its total number of properties. "It's been pretty hectic". Adagio, he said, has focused mostly on product innovation and on communal area concepts over the past year.

Airbnb: a threat or a boon?

While Brexit represents a major challenge to the hospitality industry, due to uncertainty ("The world didn't fall apart" after the referendum, said one panelist, but "there's still a hell of a lot of rocky road ahead."), the emergence of Airbnb may have brought some unexpected benefits even though it's other forms of accommodation.

"What Airbnb has done for our industry  is educated the traveler that there is an alternative to the traditional hotel," said George Westwell, Director of Cheval Residences. However, in terms of innovation and new ideas, the sector could do better. "We do things, but we do (them) slowly and I think we need to really innovate a lot more."

Westwell added that Cheval will be investing heavily in technology over the next 12-18 months as it wants, like many hotel groups, to understand its guests better. "Technology is going to be a driver that's going to help us get there," he said.

Citing STR data, Guus Bakker, CEO EMEA of Frasers Hospitality, noted that, at four percent of the market, Airbnb remains relatively small in terms of market share and supply. But while there's no reason to panic, there's no room for complacency either.

"I've mixed feelings about the whole Airbnb, shared economy and booking.com (issue)," said Tom Walsh, CEO of StayCity. "Booking.com has always given us big brand distribution power from when we were tiny. We're still relatively small, but the presence of individual apartments in big numbers on booking.com is a bit of a challenge." As in the hotel industry, aparthotel groups such as StayCity want to start owning direct customer relations and take ownership of distribution. "Our focus is Germany, the UK and gateway cities. And I do see a huge opportunity there," Walsh said. "There is under-penetration and there's a ready amount of institutional backing which wasn't there a few years ago."

EHL Senior Lecturer and HoCoSo Chairman, Jonathan Humphries, writes:

The serviced apartments and extended-stay sector is one of the fastest growing areas of hospitality accommodation in Europe. This is driven by many of the players coming from a real estate background, or owner-operator models, and understanding the importance of driving real estate asset values, through cost-conscious operations, revenue maximization and space utilization. This makes these players competitive on development projects which is assisting the rapid expansion.

Investment is becoming more institutionalized and the supply offering less fragmented, highlighted by the emergence of many new brands to provide clarity. There is still a significant demand-supply imbalance in Europe, which should drive continued development growth in this sector for the years to come and the continued importance of conferences such as SASEU to bring all the investors, developers, managers and brands together.

EHL Hospitality Business School

Communications Department

+41 21 785 1354

EHL
HITEC Dubai, Officially Endorsed by DTCM, Aims to Facilitate Tourism Vision 2020

HITEC Dubai, co-produced by Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP) and Naseba, will feature an expo floor with over 40 technology providers showcasing the latest innovations; and a summit for hospitality decision makers and technology providers to conduct business.

As part of Dubai's Tourism Vision 2020, approved by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai and UAE Vice President and Prime Minister, Dubai plans to attract 20 million visitors per year by 2020. Dubai is renowned for raising the bar and making the impossible happen. EXPO 2020 will bring a huge influx of international visitors into the UAE and the hospitality industry plays a vital role in securing Dubai's position as one of the world's premier tourism hubs.

To help realize this vision, HITEC, the world's largest hospitality technology exposition and conference brand is debuting in the Middle East, with Dubai as the host city.

HITEC Dubai, co-produced by Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP) and Naseba, will feature an expo floor with over 40 technology providers showcasing the latest innovations; and a summit for hospitality decision makers and technology providers to conduct business.

HITEC Dubai's Advisory Council has meticulously crafted an educational session with panel discussions, tech talks and workshops that allow hoteliers to discuss solutions that will transform their operations. Smart rooms, loyalty by blockchain, PMS, sustainable technology, all cloud hotels and smart data analytics are just some of the many topics being covered as part of the agenda.

HITEC Dubai's Advisory Council Chairman and Jumeirah Group CIO, Marwan Al Ali, noted "technology enhances guest experience, reduces costs and increases profitability  all of these are paramount to the region leading up to mega events like Expo 2020 and beyond. I invite all key hospitality stakeholders to make the best use of HITEC's debut to the Middle East."

Dubai's Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing (DTCM), the principal authority for the planning and marketing of tourism in Dubai, is responsible for helping to realize Tourism Vision 2020 and has also officially endorsed HITEC Dubai.

"Technology has become the central nervous system of all leading economic drivers in the region including the hospitality industry," said Naveen Bharadwaj, production director at Naseba. "We are pleased to receive the endorsement of DTCM for HITEC Dubai, an impact-driven technology show for knowledge sharing, product show-casing and deal-flow within the hospitality industry."

"Several Middle Eastern stakeholders have attended HITEC in North America over the years and we are very glad to follow their requests and bring HITEC to Dubai for the benefit of the wider industry," said Frank Wolfe, CEO at HFTP. "DTCM's endorsement underlines the government's commitment to industry-wide adoption of technology and innovation."

For more information, contact Sharath Ravi on +971 44 55 79 13 or email at sharathr@naseba.com.

About HITEC Dubai

Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC) is the world's largest and oldest hospitality technology exposition and conference brand. HITEC offers a unique combination of top-notch education and brings together the brightest minds and hottest technologies from across the globe to one place.

Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP), producers of HITEC, will partner with Naseba, a business facilitation company, to bring the brand to Dubai. Making the event accessible to buyers from the lucrative Middle Eastern market, currently worth over USD 75 bn.

The show will offer an education program and exhibits. In addition, HITEC Dubai will feature a summit with one-to-one business meetings that have become the hallmark of Naseba's platforms. Hoteliers attending the summit portion of HITEC Dubai will be pre-qualified to confirm their purchasing authority, budgets, timelines and solutions of interest.

hitec.naseba.com

About HFTP

Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP) established in 1952, is an international, nonprofit association, headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA, with offices in Hong Kong, United Kingdom and the Netherlands. HFTP is recognized as the spokes group for the finance and technology segments of the hospitality industry with members and stakeholders spanning across the globe. HFTP uniquely understands the industry's pressing issues and assists its stakeholders in finding solutions to their challenges more efficiently than any organization. It does this via its expert networks, research, certification programs, information resources and conferences/events such as HITEC. HFTP also owns the world's only hospitality-specific search engine, PineappleSearch.com.

For more information about HFTP, email membership@hftp.org or download the HFTP/HITEC media kit. Follow HFTP/HITEC on HFTP Connect, Facebook (@HFTPGlobal; @HITECconference), LinkedIn, Twitter (@HFTP), Instagram (@HFTP_HITEC), Flickr and YouTube for the latest news. Stay tuned to HFTP's industry-specific, informational news sites: HFTP News, HITEC Bytes, HFTP Club Bytes and HFTP Finance Bytes.
Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE: H) today announced that a Hyatt affiliate has entered into a franchise agreement with HR Group for a Hyatt House hotel in Frankfurt, Germany. Expected to open in late 2019, the hotel will be owned by benchmark. REAL Estate Development GmbH and will be leased and managed by HR Group. Hyatt House Frankfurt/Eschborn will mark the second Hyatt House and third select service hotel for Hyatt in Germany, an important step towards increasing Hyatts portfolio throughout the country.

The Hyatt House brand is rooted in extensive consumer insights indicating that guests seek stylish, comfortable, seamless experiences that accommodate their lifestyles and familiar routines. To embody this, the brand offers casual hospitality and purposeful service in a smartly designed, high-tech and contemporary environment.

We are delighted to announce plans for the second Hyatt House hotel in Germany, said Guido Fredrich, Hyatts regional vice president acquisitions and development for Europe. We continue to grow the Hyatt House brand thoughtfully in key markets around the world, and we believe Hyatt House Frankfurt/Eschborn will provide an exciting new hotel experience for guests visiting Frankfurt, one of Germanys most important hotel markets.

Rusan Husry, managing director of HR Group, added, We strongly believe in the further development potential of the hotel market in the greater Frankfurt area. Entering into our first franchise agreement with Hyatt displays a further milestone in the growth path of our group.

The new Hyatt House hotel will be located in Frankfurt Eschborn, a well-established business area on Frankfurts Ring Road, known to be the citys international financial and economic center. The hotels immediate surrounding area is currently home to numerous high-profile corporations. Eschborn benefits from a great infrastructure with easy access to the main highways, convenient connections into Frankfurt city center and Frankfurt airport. It also offers a range of local amenities such as shopping facilities, restaurants, and recreation areas.

The combination of the hotels extended stay offering and ideal location will be very attractive for business travelers and we are excited to introduce the Hyatt House brand to Frankfurt, Europes financial hub, said Gotz U. Hufenbach, managing partner of benchmark. REAL Estate Development GmbH. We believe that Hyatt House Frankfurt/Eschborn will cater to a growing extended stay market in Germany and we look forward to welcoming guests and making them feel at home.

Hyatt House Frankfurt/Eschborn will offer:

190 rooms and apartment-style Kitchen Suites with fully equipped kitchens, comfortable living rooms, spacious bedrooms, and stylish bathrooms with complimentary skin and hair care amenities

with fully equipped kitchens, comfortable living rooms, spacious bedrooms, and stylish bathrooms with complimentary skin and hair care amenities Free Wi-Fi throughout the hotel and guestrooms

throughout the hotel and guestrooms The Commons , a comfortable lounge with an open and welcoming space for guests to relax, gather and socialize

, a comfortable lounge with an open and welcoming space for guests to relax, gather and socialize 24/7 H Market to meet the everyday needs of guests, from snacks and sundries

to meet the everyday needs of guests, from snacks and sundries A 24-hour Workout Room to keep fitness routines going

to keep fitness routines going Borrows Menu with often-forgotten items from phone charges to razors

with often-forgotten items from phone charges to razors A Very Important Resident (VIR) program, including complimentary grocery shopping, and other personalized perks, for guests with 30 plus consecutive nights

program, including complimentary grocery shopping, and other personalized perks, for guests with 30 plus consecutive nights Additional services, including guest laundry and complimentary grocery shopping available to extended stay guests

There are five Hyatt-branded hotels currently open in Germany, namely Park Hyatt Hamburg, Grand Hyatt Berlin, Hyatt Regency Cologne, Hyatt Regency Dusseldorf, and Hyatt Regency Mainz. In addition to Hyatt House Frankfurt/Eschborn, there are three Hyatt-branded hotels currently under development: Hyatt House Dusseldorf/Andreas Quarter (expected to open in October 2017), Hyatt Place Frankfurt Airport (expected to open in January 2018) and Andaz Munich (expected to open in Q3 2018).
Mike and Jesse are adding interesting stuff to the blog in our spare time, so pardon the miscellany and lack of any organization.



If you need to email about something (not hood ornaments) that isn't relevant to the comment section, e mail me at jbohjkl@yahoo.com, which will be responded to pretty fast on weekdays



Images used IAW Title 17 U.S. Code 107

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107

This is under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license.See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode
The Setai Tel Aviv Hotel to Open in Early 2018

Nakash Holdings is introducing the Setai hotel brand to Tel Aviv when it opens The Setai, Tel Aviv, a new five-star deluxe hotel, in early 2018. The property, which is joining The Leading Hotels of the World collection of independent luxury hotels, will be located in the historic old Jaffa area of Tel Aviv. This will be the hospitality group's second Setai in Israel, following the recent opening of the Sea of Galilee property in May 2017, and third globally, joining The Setai, Miami Beach.

Rooted in five-star hospitality, the newest Setai will be the premier luxury destination in Tel Aviv. The hotel is located in the heart of the city, steps from the famous Clock Square and the city's coastline, at the historic site known as the "Kishle." It was originally constructed by the Turkish Empire to be a prison on the site of a historic Crusader fortress.

"We are excited to extend the prestige and sophistication of the Setai brand in Israel with our third property, The Setai, Tel Aviv," says Bruno H. de Schuyter, General Manager. "The 13thcentury structure that is the foundation of the new hotel is unlike any other, and we took meticulous care in preserving and infusing important historic elements into the transformation of the building. Guests will be surrounded by a unique atmosphere of 'old meets new,' while experiencing first-class amenities and services in what will be the most superior five-star hotel in Tel Aviv."

The guest room collection at The Setai, Tel Aviv includes:

110 rooms and 10 suites;

A Presidential Suite extending more than 1,000 square feet, that includes a master bedroom, a guest room, a kitchen with a dining area and a spacious balcony

A selection of Deluxe, Premium Plus, Executive and Premium rooms that also feature balconies with breathtaking views of the Mediterranean Sea and the infinity swimming pool.

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The hotel's design vision, led by the London office of Ara Design, is 'old meets new,' blending Middle Eastern and Mediterranean elements with a contemporary style. Most of the guest rooms' outer walls are the building's original stone. Oak furnishings and leather panels in the wardrobe and desk add contemporary touches, while decorative pendant lights create a welcoming illumination to guests as they enter. Contemporary is balanced with antiquity through Arabic wall patterns cascading above the beds and detailed rugs.

Separated from the bedroom by an innovative electronic LED glass partition, the bathroom can be privatized electronically at the guest's demand. Grey marble and soft lighting provide a meditative look and feel to the bathrooms, which are fully equipped with full bath and separate shower.

The Setai, Tel Aviv's unique blend of historic and modern design is also evident in the hotel's lavish public areas. Visitors will be welcomed into the reception area that is framed by vaulted ceilings and a doorway with Turkish ottoman calligraphy. Contemporary seating, chic modern furnishings and ornate carpets complete the lobby lounge area that includes a full bar surrounded by reclaimed timber from the building's original roof. Lacquered walls and grand chandeliers incorporate historic architectural details to complete the space.

Multiple courtyards and four levels of glass-paneled terraces allow visitors to take in magnificent views of the city and the sea while also indulging in the pool deck and cabanas. Below the ground level are five spacious event halls, a spa and Turkish Hammam.

A seamless blend of old and new is also captured in the various views of the city's historic landmarks and sites. Looking north from a hotel balcony, guests will see the luminous skyscrapers of Tel Aviv, while southern views offer the rustic city landscape. Gazing to the west offers the gleaming Mediterranean Sea and the coastline of Tel Aviv, while the east boasts uninterrupted views of the historic Jaffa Clock Tower, one of seven clock towers built during the Turkish Empire period.

Transforming a 13th Century Structure into Five-Star Luxury

Upon acquisition, the Nakash team commissioned comprehensive research to properly preserve the historic structure. Preservation efforts included extensive archeological digs, carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority, which unearthed remains dating back to the Crusader Period through the Ottoman era.

Feigin Architects, an Israel-based firm, lead the architectural planning and execution of the hotel, transforming the historic site into a five-star luxury property. The hotel features elements of the original building, two additional floors, and a new wing designed to reflect the style of the historic structures. The building's enchanting history is infused throughout the hotel. A large arch at the hotel's entrance bears the seal of Abdul Hamid II, 34th sultan of the Turkish Empire, who rose to power over 100 years ago.

All historic structures that were discovered have undergone complete restoration, inside and out. The original Kishle, including wooden ceilings and ironwork, has been preserved, while wooden doors and windows have been recreated to emulate the original. Former prison yards were meticulously restored and now serve as the hotel's front and rear courtyards. All preservation was performed by restorationers and experts in stone, iron, and woodwork, adhering to the original structures.

Influenced by Israel-centric flavors, The Setai, Tel Aviv's innovative food and beverage offerings include first-class meals and experiences inspired by local products. The property's restaurant specializes in fine Mediterranean cuisine.

The Spa at The Setai, Tel Aviv offers a rejuvenating, tranquil space and world-class staff. Guests can choose from a variety of massages and treatments, a Turkish Bath, and a spacious swimming pool overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

The Setai, Tel Aviv is an ideal venue for business conferences as well as private occasions, with five spacious event halls. The largest hall is equipped with the most advanced multimedia technology, and can accommodate up to 150 people.

Four additional halls can accommodate up to 15 guests banquet-style, making them ideal for private meals, seminars, board meetings, and other intimate gatherings.

The hotel's prime location in Tel Aviv's lively, colorful and multicultural area provides its guests the opportunity to not only enjoy all that the property has to offer but also its unforgettable, culture-rich surroundings. Just steps away from The Setai, Tel Aviv, guests will find authentic restaurants, boutiques, flea markets and bustling ports of the city.

The Setai, Tel Aviv opening rates begin at $400 per night.




With only a few months left in 2017, weve released our final Global Travel Insights report for the year. In it, we look at how early planning for the quarter, and for December in particular, is already shaping up. Here we share four interesting travel trends from around the globe.

1. North American early planners are looking for a long Christmas break.

So far, the top departure dates for December are December 22, 23, and 21. With Christmas falling on a Monday this year, we see early planners trying to figure out just how long a trip theyll takelooking as early as a Thursday departure.

2. Winter is comingso travelers are looking to warm weather.

The cold weather hasnt really hit us yet, but early planners are already looking to warm getaways for their winter getaways. Asia-Pacific travelers, for example, are heading to places that are enjoying their summer season like Auckland, Brisbane, and Melbourne for their December getaways.

3. December sees a focus on family travel.

Latin American early travel planners, for instance, are looking for more family and couple travel than the quarter average. We see the same trend in Europe as well. With lots of time off from work and school, early planners are looking to take to the skies with the whole family this December.

4. Theres lots of room for inspiration.

All around the globe we see opportunities to influence early planners toward your destination, offering, or brand. For example, Middle East & Africa early planners look in similar share for both short and long-haul destinations for 12+ days. This means two things:

1) If youre an interregional travel marketer, you can encourage travelers to stay with you by offering tailored deals, like a 10th night free.

2) If you are a long-haul destination for MEA travelers, you have an audience that is keen to spend a lot of time and money traveling. Work to reach these travelers and inspire them to spend those long vacations with you.

Need help turning these travel trends into marketing takeaways? Download the full report.

About Catlyn

Catlyn is Sojern's Senior Content Marketing Manager. She loves playing video games and hiking with her dog, Dottie. Her favorite part of travel is the food, preferring street food to fine dining. She holds a PhD in Philosophy.
Peppers Silo Hotel to Open in Launceston Tasmania

Mantra Group is set to manage Launceston's 108-room Silo Hotel when it opens in April next year.

Carrying the Group's Peppers brand, Peppers Silo Hotel is a $25 million redevelopment of the Kings Wharf grain silos in Launceston, Tasmania.

The ten-storey hotel will have 108 rooms, including 52 in the barrels of the former silo, and overlooks the nearby tourist drawcards of Seaport, Royal Park, the Tamar River Basin and Cataract Gorge. Four large apartments will occupy the top floor, while a restaurant, cocktail bar and large meeting room will be located on the first floor.

Peppers Silo Hotel is the third management agreement signed between Mantra Group and developer Stewart, Morris & MacLagen Group, joining Peppers Seaport Hotel, Launceston and Peppers York Cove, Tamar Valley.

Mantra Group Chief Executive Officer Bob East said the Group is thrilled to expand its presence in another key Australian tourist destination with established demand drivers.

"The consistently high-performing hotel market in Launceston, combined with the ideal location of Peppers Silo Hotel and its unique market drivers, presented us with an exceptional opportunity to add to our existing portfolio of two hotels in the city," said Mr East.

"This acquisition comes at an opportune time in the Tasmania tourism market, with the state currently enjoying record domestic and international visitation.

"And, based on supply and demand forecasts, this strong performance is set to continue with further uplift projected.

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"We're excited to again partner with Stewart, Morris & MacLagen Group on this property and believe it has great potential to service a number of markets."

Peppers Silo Hotel will be the first hotel development to open in Launceston since Mantra Charles Hotel was developed in 2010.

"The addition of this new hotel will see Mantra Group grow its presence within the Launceston market to 268 rooms under management," said Mr East.

Developer Errol Steward said Launceston is in need of new tourism products and has a shortage of hotel rooms in summer.

"We're confident that this unique property will operate with great success and provide travellers with high quality accommodation in Tasmania's North East," said Mr Stewart.

"With a broad target market of intrastate and interstate tourists, corporates and locals, we felt it was important to represent the original silos to ensure the history of the site was not lost.

"This concept also translates to the interior design of the hotel, where historic photography and some key pieces from the original silos will be displayed throughout the building.

"The project also provides a major boost to the local economy, creating more than 60 direct and hundreds of indirect jobs during the construction stage and, once operational, numerous long-term hospitality jobs."

Peppers Silo Hotel is located on the corner of Lindsay Street and Kings Wharf Road, Launceston Tasmania. Its location has direct frontage to the Tamar River providing the hotel with water views and views over the many vantage points around Launceston.
Rich Media Exchange announced today their joint partnership with THOR Inc., a world leading travel services company.

The multi-layered agreement centers around Rich Medias digital asset library of travel content and management portal technology. THOR will host their own white label version of the portal on the THOR website at media.THORtravelservices.com, enabling their extensive base of preferred suppliers and travel agents to utilize this unique sales and asset management tool.

We are very excited to be working with an organization as professional and well respected as THOR. They are a synergistic fit for our two companies, that allows use of our portal technology and platform, along with our increased distribution system, including the worldwide network of our partner, Travel Daily Media. Our goals and our customers are a strategic compliment to one another and we look forward to a very productive and successful partnership now, and into the future, commented Kulin Strimbu, CEO of Rich Media Exchange.

The THOR Media Portal, (powered by Rich Media Exchange), is an exclusive benefit to THORs preferred network of travel agents who will enjoy complimentary access to the library. Designed to easily upload, host, store and organize a vast array of digital assets, including video, the portal boasts easy sharing capabilities, including convenient playlist-building features.

In addition, THOR and its travel agency members, will enjoy a cross-promotional relationship with Travel Daily Media USA, marketing partner to Rich Media Exchange, and recent addition to the Travel Daily Media Global Network, based in Asia. We really see this partnership as a strategic win for everyone involved, said Trisha Hall, managing director, THOR, Inc. The THOR Media Portal will give our preferred partners an enormous value-added resource towards the utilization and management of high quality, professional video  seen as a must have in todays visually-driven environment. Plus, the added distribution through Rich Media and Travel Dailys worldwide base is a huge opportunity for us to tap a global audience through a singular publication network.

THOR will kick off the relationship by being an exclusive contributor to the Travel Partners section on TD USA. This is just one more platform opportunity for us to raise our brand and our value to our membership, added Hall. To see THORs contributing articles, go to the Partners page at www.traveldailyusa.com.

Background:

THOR, Inc. is an international travel services company that has been providing travel services and products to the worlds leading travel providers since 1977. THOR travel agency members have a variety of programs and services to choose from including the THOR Hotel Program, THOR Car Program, THOR Services Program and Agent Connection, A Global Booking Tool by THOR. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Travelport, THOR continues to increase customer value and transform products and services to meet its customers ever-changing needs. For more information about THOR, Inc., visit www.THORtravelservices.com, e-mail info@THORtravelservices.com or call +1 303-439-4100.

Rich Media Exchange is a B2b content management and marketing company, specializing in video delivery and distribution. With over 2,500 videos and 600,000 images, RME owns the largest library of travel content available in the marketplace. Dedicated to simplifying the use of rich media for travel marketing, RME distributes to more than 1800 media outlets and over 5,000 travel agents. Rich Media Exchange is the visual content partner for Travel Daily USA, and platform partner for Tripwriters.com, a content marketing and management tool for travel bloggers. It currently operates in the United States, with recent expansion to the UK and Western Europe. Learn more at www.richmediaexchange.com.

Travel Daily USA is the newest addition to the Travel Daily Media Group, the industrys fastest growing worldwide online trade publication. With the launch of the US website, Travel Daily Global becomes the largest worldwide travel publication, covering more than 20 countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia and raching more than 200,000 subscribers worldwide. Targeting the largest travel seller market in the world, TD USA is positioned to become the preferred digital trade partner to more than 50,000 subscribers and exponentially more influencers via social media. Incorporating rich media and big data at a global level, this new platform transforms TDUSA from an online news provider to a virtual industry partner. Learn more at www.traveldailyusa.com.

Contacts:

Tessa Snyder

THOR, Inc.

303.439.4116

tsnyder@THORtravelservices.com

Kulin Strimbu

Rich Media Exchange

303.881.8178

kulin@richmediaexchange.com

Kelly Happ

Travel Daily USA

303.704.8131

kelly@traveldailymedia.com
Back in 2000, Eminem wasnt the legend we know him as today. Instead, he was merely a rapper who was on the rise, with the Slim Shady LP having won him a Grammy and the Marshall Mathers LP about to make him a household name on every corner of the planet. However, before the latter could take place, the Michigan native was apparently in contact with Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi and expressed interest in being part of his solo album, which also dropped 17 years ago.

According to Loudwire, Iommi recently revealed this stunning behind-the-scenes tidbit during a conversation with Ryan J. Downey at the Musicians Institute. Indeed, Em was in contact with the Sabbath ax man and wanted to be a part of Iommis solo project, which was being hyped up a great deal at the time that it was in production. However, much to the dismay of Slim Shady fans, Iommi was not familiar with Eminem or his work at the time and the collaboration never went down as some may have hoped it would. Iommi had recruited a whos-who of big names in the world of rock and roll, including Dave Grohl, Henry Rollins, Philip Anselmo, Billy Corgan, Brian May and more to work on the album with him during that period.

Its not like Iommi or Black Sabbath were unfamiliar with combining rap and rock on the same track. In 1995, the band enlisted the services of veteran gangster rapper Ice-T to provide some of the vocals for the song Illusion of Power, which you can hear in full below. Where the guitarists solo album is concerned, another Detroit artist, Kid Rock, was supposed to make an appearance on one of the songs, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on where you stand on Kid Rock) that particular bit of material didnt make the final cut.

Who knows what an Eminem-Tony Iommi record may have sounded like back then, and also where Slim Shadys career may have gone as a result. Would be have seen him go full-on rock and tour with a metal outfit? Just the mental image alone is something to behold. However, if a song like Berzerk is any indication, Eminem is definitely not one to shy away from drawing on his love of rock and allowing it to influence his own music.

Eminem
As you may recall, Meek Mill was busted for reckless endangerment while in New York City in August. The MMG rapper was arrested was booked by area police for riding his dirt bike while in the city. According to sources who saw the entire stunt, Mill was allegedly riding his four-wheeler in and out of traffic and popping wheelies in the street. To make matters worse, he was also videoing the entire incident live on Instagram. Broadcasting this kind of daredevil activity is probably how the NYC police officials caught on to him in the first. In a statement, police claimed that the rapper was arrested for an open complaint on reckless endangerment. Apparently he was seen on social media driving recklessly on a dirt bike. Police encountered him today and arrested him. Hes already been removed to Central Booking, and hell be going to court now.

Now, Mill has taken to Instagram to voice his displeasure in a since-deleted post with how the legalities of the situation have continued to played out, claiming that he was giving a Class 1 felony for popping wheelies. As part of the caption that he used to vent his frustration, he also lamented that the system was out to get him in a way, with this kind of punishment being far too severe for the crime that was committed. New York State uses a letter and number scale to determine the severity of the felonies that are handed out by police and then upheld or not in a court of law. In this case, the classification that Mill is describing could land someone in prison for life.

Whether or not that seems like a fair response for dirt bike riding in New York, Meek Mill has been given some favorable decisions for some of his recent legal troubles, including the fact that his airport assaulted case was recently dropped. You can read more about that incident here.

Meek Mill
Jelani Maraj was arrested in December 2015 after being accused of raping his step-daughter. His sister, Nicki Minaj, posted his $100,000 bail and continues to stand behind him.

In the latest hearing of the case, a 10-year-old boy testified that he knew something wasnt right when he walked in on Jelani raping his sister. The boy was eight-years-old at the time and his sister was eleven.

According to The Sun, the young boy shared the disturbing details when he took the stand at the Nassau County Supreme Court in New York State.

What happened was I was looking for [her], he said. My pencil broke and I didnt have any others. He detailed how his sisters pants were around her ankles.

I saw [Jelanis] underwear close to his knees, he testified. I thought it wasnt right. It looked weird to me so I ran upstairs.

The boy said Jelani later found him and slapped him in the face multiple of times. He threatened that if he mentioned anything to his mother, he would never see her again. Defence lawyer David Schwartz seemingly tried to make the allegations less intense by getting the boy to admit the lights were turned off when he walked into the room.

You would agree that when the light is not on, the room is very dark? David asked. Yes, the boy answered.

More disturbing news came from Dr Aaron Miller who said the young girls medical records suggest strongly that she was having sex. I can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that [the girls] medical exam can prove penetration, he said.

Jelanis attorney has said multiple times that he believes this case is an attempt to extort Nicki of $25 million dollars. In the last trial held for the case, David claimed that the DNA of Jelani that was found on the young girls underwear was placed there by her mother, Jacqueline Robinson, for the police to find.

Why would [Jacqueline] lie and force her children to lie? I can give you 25 million reasons why, David previously told the courtroom. Jackie became obsessed with Nicki Minaj  getting her hands on her money. He added, an evil Jackie targeted [Jelani]. Trying to get him to marry her, and then just four months after they were married, we have this.

Nicki Minaj
We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector
3 held with pangolin scales from Dhading

Police have arrested three persons in possession of two kg pangolin scales from Adamghat of Dhading district.
Banks weakness helped criminals to hack into its system

A cyber attack on NIC Asia Bank, which reportedly lost millions of rupees last week in the biggest-ever cyber heist in Nepal, was imminent, as the banking institution had allowed staff of the Information Technology (IT) Department to use computers deployed for SWIFT transaction to perform tasks like checking personal e-mails, the Post has learned.
Gondhoraj Momos Take Over West Bengal; Have You Tried Them Yet?
Bhattarai, Shrestha trade barbs

Former comrades Baburam Bhattarai, coordinator of the Naya Shakti Party, Nepal, and Narayan Kaji Shrestha, senior leader of the CPN (Maoist Centre), have traded barbs after their nomination in Gorkha-2 on Sunday for a federal parliament seat.
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Most of the roughly 6,000 residents of Lampedusa would have been fast asleep as chaos unfolded on the Italian islands shores four years ago this month. What lights were on might have been seen from the distance by the more than 500 people packed on an overcrowded boat sailing from Libya, carrying refugees mainly from Eritrea, Somalia and Ghana.

Whatever they saw from the Mediterranean, more than half of the passengers on the ship would not survive the night to find out what laid beyond the waters edge.

Soon after the shipwreck on 3 October, 2013, it would emerge that the 20-metre long fishing boat began to sink after suffering engine trouble less than a quarter of a mile from Lampedusa. A blanket set on fire in a frantic bid to grab the attention of potential rescuers only made things worse  igniting gasoline and engulfing the boat in flames, forcing many passengers to throw themselves from the ship, while others gathered at one end of the sinking boat, causing it to capsize further.

Recommended Japan accepted just three refugees in the first half of 2017

Of the more than 500 passengers on board, only around 160 survived. At the time, it was the single largest loss of life to come as a result of the booming black market in illegal crossings on the Mediterranean.

It would be another two years before the full weight of Europes refugee crisis would rock the continent in 2015, with thousands of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean in the years that have followed since.

But in the immediate aftermath of the disaster four years ago, came the inevitable question: who was to blame?

Selling a business

One people smuggler in Sudan thought he had the answer. Records from a wiretapped telephone exchange show him asking a fellow people smuggler in Libya how many people on the boat were his.

Exactly 109, came the answer  of which 58 did not survive.

The Sudanese smuggler reproached his Libyan counterpart for his role in overcrowding the boat  and in the end, the Libyan smuggler took it upon himself to personally notify the families of the victims whose safe passage he had failed to deliver. He also shelled out $5,000 (3,800) in compensation.

Certainly to some degree, his actions might have come from a place of remorse  but in large part, the move was likely part of a bid to save his reputation and prevent potential customers from turning to one of his many rivals.

Scores of people in Rome lit candles in memory of the victims of Lampedusa, who had died the previous night (AFP/Getty)

In the illicit business of people smuggling, reputation, researchers at Cambridge Universitys Institute of Criminology say, is everything  at least, for those who want to stay in the trade.

Demand is satisfied by a plethora of actors, Dr Paolo Campana, an expert in criminal networks at Cambridge, says. Its not uncommon for many people to have another job, like owning a shop even, and be working as a people smuggler on the side.

The market is very competitive, so smugglers have to go out of their way to attract people and convince them to choose them over someone else, Campana says. That can be the difficult part.

Going social in an illicit trade

So how does one go about marketing an illicit service in a trade that international bodies across Europe are working to shut down?

The answer can be as easy as a 10-minute search on Facebook, depending on how good your web-surfing skills are. Smugglers have been found with a simple search for key words like Libya and passage written in Arabic.

I tried to find one myself and it only took a handful of minutes before I came up with a page that appeared to be advertising such services.

I cant say with certainty, but yes, it looks like it may be connected to some smuggling activity based on the English translation, Campana agreed.

Facebook is just one of the means, he says. Because the market is so competitive, they have to find a way to do it and Facebook is one of the ways. They post pictures of themselves, of successful crossings, of their boats, and its all a way to build trust and credibility.

A spokesperson from Facebook told The Independent the social media company works closely with law enforcement agencies around the world to shut down any pages or posts promoting people smuggling services on its website.

People smuggling is illegal and any posts, pages or groups that coordinate this activity are not allowed on Facebook, the spokesperson said.

We urge people to use our reporting tools to flag any content that they suspect may be illegal or violate our standards so it can be reviewed and swiftly removed by our global team of experts, who work closely with law enforcement agencies around the world.

As part of its bid to crack down on illicit networking on its platform, the social media giant has also recently announced it will be adding an additional 3,000 people to its investigative team.

But even more effective than Facebook, Campana says, is the age-old method of word of mouth. Most of the people researchers spoke to relied on the reviews of friends and family to find a smuggler they believed they could trust.

One Syrian refugee told researchers at Cambridge: We spoke to people that we knew, people who left and who arrived and asked, which smuggler did you go with? How was the behaviour of the smuggler? In the end, there were three smugglers that had honest behaviour.

Refugees and migrants wait to be transferred from another NGO rescue ship to the migrant offshore aid station near Lampedusa, Italy on 10 June, 2017 (Getty)

Campana says that the fact that not everyone has access to a platform like Facebook, or the skills to use the technology, means that many have little choice but to rely on word of mouth.

Education really matters. If you have the skills to use technology and find information, you are in a much better place, Campana says. Human smuggling reflects the broader world in that sense. Its a mirror image. Young, educated Syrians for example, who are on the internet can find the info more easily. If you are older and dont have access to technology, you have to rely on family, friends and word of mouth.

Smugglers who are interested in staying in the illicit business for the long term know that they must deliver on their promises if they dont want to be shut out of the black market, Campana says. That is one of the main aspects of smuggling that set it apart from human trafficking, though the two are often mistakenly conflated.

From an analytical perspective, human trafficking and smuggling are very different. With trafficking, the commodity at stake is control of a person with intent to exploit that person. The central element is control, Campana says. With smuggling, the commodity at stake is the crossing of a border, getting from A to B and that is what smugglers care about.

Of course, as the devastating death toll of thousands of refugees who have lost their lives due to overcrowding on ships and ill-prepared crews will show, that does not mean smugglers who arent interested in playing the long game dont get greedy. A refugee living in Greece described to The Independent how the transfer he had arranged from Egypt turned deadly after his boat, overloaded with passengers, began to sink during the crossing.

I was in a little boat with 17 other people and there were these two baby girls on it. It capsized near Turkey, he said. A helicopter came for us in the end and the police came, but they were too late. Two women and the two baby girls died.

Yes, while exploitation is not the main goal, it does sometimes happen, Campana says. Sometimes the smuggling is overpriced. Sometimes they make promises that they know they wont deliver. They promise a high quality boat and then provide a small dinghy. They promise immediate departure and then make you wait for days. Some care about safety, while others are more reckless.

Staggering growth

Unlike other forms of organised crime, the illicit business of human smuggling is a quintessential free market with few controls over who gets involved, Campana says. I was surprised by the fragmentation of the market and the competition  and its ability to grow, the researcher adds.

If you look at the percentages, the rate of growth has been staggering, the researcher says. I have hardly seen such growth in other illegal markets.

(Paolo Campana/ University of Cambridge (Paolo Campana/ University of Cambridge)



People smuggling now represents the third-largest business for international criminals, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has said, with as many as 1.8 million illegal border crossings recorded between 2010 and 2016, according to the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex). IOM estimates that people smugglers make a total of roughly $35bn (27bn) a year worldwide, with a boom in profits in recent years from the migrant crisis.

Campanas research has found that the number of illegal border crossings along the Eastern Mediterranean route alone, which includes crossings into Greece and Italy, increased by 1,641 per cent from 2014 to 2015, translating into 885,386 illegal entries in 2015, compared to 50,834 in the previous year.

He says recent efforts to stem the surge in smuggling activity have shown some progress, however, with land-based policies like the 2016 deal between the EU and Turkey, which sees the country accepting the return of most asylum seekers who travel through its territory in exchange for billions of euros in aid, prompting a slow-down.

The question becomes whether these flows will shift, for example, from the Central Mediterranean to the Western Mediterranean. Also, it might prove quite challenging to implement a similar agreement in places like Libya  both from a human rights perspective and a practical perspective. However, what it is clear, I think, is that naval operations like the ones in the Mediterranean are not being effective in disrupting smuggling operations.

Finding Mr Big

Stopping smugglers from operating is a challenging enterprise, Campana says, for several reasons. First, there are limited barriers when it comes to entering the market. The business of people smuggling requires limited capital and relatively few skills. In a country, such as Libya, he says, militias are often also willing to grant smugglers protection for a fee, working as enforcers for those who are willing to pay the price to operate.

But a large part of the problem is the sheer number of smugglers operating in the market  and the fact that there is little hierarchy among its participants.

While Campana says it may seem tempting to frame criminal markets as being dominated by a select few masterminds, he believes an important part of the puzzle of how to successfully crack down on people smuggling is looking at the illicit trade as a free market.

In such an unregulated market, there are no kingpins or monopolies. Targeting one smuggler or one specific group will do little good because if one smuggler is targeted, his market share, so to speak, would be taken by others.

The structure of smuggling is a far cry from the typical hierarchy of say, the mafia, the typical godfather style does not exist, the researcher adds. Its made up of very fragmented groups. Here, there are no Mr Bigs.
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Saudi Arabias crown prince, speaking at a major investment conference, has promised his kingdom will return to what we were before  a country of moderate Islam that is open to all religions and to the world.

Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud made the announcement at the beginning of the landmark Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh on Tuesday.

The country would also do more to tackle extremism, the prince said. We will not waste 30 years of our lives dealing with extremist ideas; we will destroy them today, he said when asked by Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business Network.

 LSE Saudi Arabia academic: Lifting ban on women driving is being used to deflect bad news

It was not like this in the past... We will end extremism very soon, the prince added, in his most direct criticism of Saudi Arabias conservative religious establishment to date.

Expanding on his earlier comments in an interview with the Guardian, the crown prince said that the country's conservatism was in part fallout from Iran's Islamic Revolution.

What happened in the last 30 years is not Saudi Arabia. What happened in the region in the last 30 years is not the Middle East. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, people wanted to copy this model in different countries, one of them is Saudi Arabia. We didnt know how to deal with it. And the problem spread all over the world. Now is the time to get rid of it.

"We are a G20 country. One of the biggest world economies. Were in the middle of three continents. Changing Saudi Arabia for the better means helping the region and changing the world. So this is what we are trying to do here. And we hope we get support from everyone."

Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, is governed under an puritanical form of Sunni Islam known as Wahabism; it is extremist versions of Wahabism that are espoused by jihadist movements such as al-Qaeda and Isis.

In the wake of 9/11, the Saudi authorities have worked alongside the US and other Western countries to tackle radicalisation and terrorism funding  but have often been criticised for not doing enough.

10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 1 /10 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih , were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2015, Yemens Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Members of the Kingdoms Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as inciting people against the authorities. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabias clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his confession. At Dawoods trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty

The claims from Prince bin Salman will be met with scepticism internationally, as Saudis hardline clerics still wield much power and influence in the country. Rights groups continue to condemn the states human rights violations, the precedent for many of which is based on the Saudi interpretation of Quranic law.

Prince bin Salman, who was suddenly appointed heir to the throne by his father King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud earlier this year, is viewed by many as the face of the modern kingdom.

The 32-year-old is the driving force behind Vision 2030: Saudi Arabias long-term economic and social policy designed to wean itself off dependence on oil, and is popular for his reforms to the countrys ineffective state bureaucracy.

Last month, it was announced women in Saudi Arabia would be finally be given the right to drive, a symbolic move signalling changes to the institutionalised discrimination against women in the country.

While Prince bin Salman has built his reputation as a bold and socially liberal reformer, critics note his hawkish foreign policy. As defence minister  a position he has held since 2015  he has attracted censure over his role in Saudi Arabias bloody intervention in the Yemeni civil war, as well as his aggressive stance on Iran.

The prince is also regarded as one of the primary decision makers behind the Gulf states recent cutting of ties with Qatar.

Also at the Future Investment Initiative, Prince bin Salman announced the creation of Neom, a new $500bn (381m) independent economic zone to be built on the border with Jordan and Egypt.

The 2025 project will operate using alternative energy and serve as a worldwide technology innovation hub, he said.

The conference, which runs until Thursday, is aimed at showing that Riyadh is opening itself up to the modern world and diversifying its revenue streams, following a global plunge in oil prices.
An innocent Irishman released from an Egyptian jail after four years behind bars has vowed to work for other prisoners overseas.

Ibrahim Halawa was freed late last week, about a month after he was acquitted of all charges related to a mass Muslim Brotherhood protest in Cairo in 2013.

The 21-year-old flew into Dublin Airport for an emotional private reunion with his family before being brought to meet friends and supporters.

And after seeing his mother Amima in a wheelchair, he said his priority was to spend time at home with her.

"I'm going to take some time off, my mom is sick, so I'll be taking some time by her side," Mr Halawa said.

About 150 people gathered in the basement of the arrivals hall in Dublin Airport for an emotionally charged return.

Mr Halawa, from Firhouse in Dublin, had flown back to Ireland with Ambassador to Egypt Sean O'Regan and his sister Nasaybi.

His release from Wadi el Natrun prison in Cairo was initially delayed for several weeks as Egyptian authorities claimed all those convicted or acquitted in a controversial mass trial had to be processed in order.

Mr Halawa's repatriation was further delayed last week after his release as he had to wait for new travel documents.

But flanked by his father, prominent Dublin Muslim cleric Sheikh Hussein Halawa, and waving the Irish Tricolour, Mr Halawa issued passionate messages of thanks to the Irish Government, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, President Michael D Higgins and Foreign Minister Simon Coveney among others.

He also had a special mention for journalist Peter Greste, who was incarcerated with him for more than a year after being detained in the midst of the protests.

And while being swamped by well-wishers, Mr Halawa revealed what was going through his head.

"It still feels like a dream," he said.

"This is a moment I've waited for for four years - a free man, acquired after four years.

"I have left a lot of cellmates behind. There's a lot of innocent people behind bars around the world, not just in Egypt."

Mr Halawa added that his experience of incarceration abroad has made him want to work for Irish prisoners overseas and the homeless.

"Even if they are criminals or if they have been convicted, I'm going to be asking for them to come back to do their time in Ireland," he said.

"I felt how it is to be away from home.

"I was always hoping that the least I could get would be prison at home so at least I could see my family."

Mr Halawa said he had written a large section of a book and wanted to complete it and get his "life straight".

He said that he was looking forward to a plate of fish and chips.

Mr Halawa also praised the work of Irish diplomats and Sinn Fein MEP Lynn Boylan, who has been involved in campaigns for his freedom since the start.

She fought back the tears after embracing the free man.

"He's missed out on four important years. So I think that's going to be difficult for him and he's going to need help to come to terms with that," she said.

Mr Halawa was jailed after being arrested in a mosque amid protests over the removal of the then Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi. He was one of almost 500 people in a protracted mass trial.

Three of his sisters, Somaia, Fatima and Omaima, were also arrested during the crackdown on the 2013 protest but were later released on bail and returned to Dublin.

They were acquitted following trial in absentia.

Mr Halawa said he was feeling mixed emotions after touching down in Ireland.

"It's a dream come true," he said.

"Every day in prison I would imagine this day - how it's going to be. It's what made me go forward."

Mr Halawa added: "I'm looking forward to the future but I can't forget the past.

"It's going to make me work harder in the future.

"I feel hurt but I feel happy, obviously, reunited and back home."

Mr Halawa said he did not feel safe after his release from prison last week.

"I'm back into a new world. I was taken away from life and then, one second, you're back. It's going to be hard to recover."

Ireland's Children's Minister Katherine Zappone was one of those to greet Mr Halawa on his arrival home.

"The Government are here to support him every step of the way," she said.

"He and his family are extraordinary. They are inspiring us as a Government and I think also the country."
Mr Justice Frank Clarke said the move would help explain and create an understanding of the courts

Court proceedings have been broadcast in Ireland for the first time.

Two judgments handed down by the country's Supreme Court in Dublin were aired in a pilot project on Tuesday.

State broadcaster RTE filmed the two judgments, which lasted around 20 minutes, using small robotic cameras inside the court room. It was screened live on RTE's on-line player and carried in later TV news bulletins.

In the first judgment, the five Supreme Court judges unanimously rejected an Irishman's challenge against his extradition to the US to face charges related to an alleged mortgage fraud.

The second case involved a man seeking compensation under a state redress scheme for abuse he suffered as a young child in a nursing home.

Ireland's Court of Appeal had found he should not receive compensation because the nursing home was not covered under the remit of the redress scheme.

The Supreme Court overruled the Appeal Court decision by a majority of four to one and asked that the matter be referred back to the body which determines redress payments so appropriate compensation could be provided.

Before the historic broadcast, the Chief Justice of Ireland Mr Justice Frank Clarke expressed hope the initiative would help the public better understand the working of the courts.

"We are taking the step of televising the judgments of the Supreme Court, as a way of demystifying the courts process," he said.

"We wish to allow people see how their highest court operates. This will help explain and create an understanding of the courts.

"This is a start, and following a test period, we will review the success of same with a view to expanding coverage in the new year. This might include televising the parties making their arguments in the Supreme Court".

Jon Williams, managing director RTE News and Current Affairs, said: "It's vital that justice is not just done, but is seen to be done.

"So we welcome the Chief Justice's decision to allow RTE's cameras into the Supreme Court - and hope it will enable the public to see the way justice is delivered in an even more open and transparent manner than at present."
Independent MEP Luke 'Ming' Flanagan said he believed Ireland will benefit from Brexit and that the EU is a body that tries to dictate when people should use the toilet.

It emerged this week that Mr Flanagan voted in tandem with far-right politicians such as Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen in favour of a hard Border for the North.

All other Irish MEPs voted the other way.

Mr Flanagan claimed he made the vote "in error". He later requested to the EU authorities that his vote be changed after he was criticised by the Border Communities Against Brexit group.

Video footage has now emerged of Mr Flanagan heralding the prospect of Brexit.

The video was recorded prior to the decision taken by the British electorate. He also issued an extraordinary attack on the EU - saying it tried to dictate when people use the toilet.

"I personally would like to see a vote for Brexit," the Midlands-North-West MEP said.

"There are swings and roundabouts for Ireland out of it. But I think one of the biggest effects of it would be that it would be the jolt the European Union needs.

"One thing I do not support is a union that tells me what time I have to go to the toilet at, how long I can work - that should be the decision of the people of Ireland, no more than it should be the people of Great Britain who make them decisions for themselves. So I would be pleased to see a Brexit happen."

It's understood Mr Flanagan became engaged in testy exchanges with the Border Communities Against Brexit group after it criticised his decision to vote against the resolution.

A meeting was then scheduled between the MEP and the group for last Thursday. Sources close to the group say they were furious with Mr Flanagan.

Mr Flanagan did not respond to a request for comment last night.

On Saturday, he responded by wrongly claiming he had an encounter with this journalist in the Oireachtas restaurant.

"An error in following my voting list," Mr Flanagan said.

"Haven't heard from you since we had to run you from our dinner table in the Oireachtas restaurant."

The resolution opposed by Mr Flanagan - which passed through parliament - was issued in response to the serious concerns about the return of a hard Border.

It states that the parliament "stresses that the unique position and special circumstances confronting the island of Ireland must be addressed in the withdrawal agreement and this in a manner fully consistent with the Good Friday Agreement in all its parts, the agreed areas of co-operation, and with European Union law in order to ensure the continuity and stability of the Northern Ireland peace process".
Britain must find concrete proposals to tackle issues concerning the border between the United Kingdom and Ireland in the wake of Brexit, said French President Emmanuel Macron during a news conference with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar.

"It's up to the UK to come up with concrete proposals to minimise the impact of Brexit on the British/Irish border," said Macron on Tuesday.

Earlier this month, Varadkar had said Ireland wanted Britain to commit to a fallback option that would avoid a customs border returning to the island of Ireland, should its plan of keeping the closest possible ties with the EU fall through.

Brussels' chief negotiator Michel Barnier also told a group of newspapers today that Britain must choose from a range of existing off-the-peg models for its relationship to the European Union when it leaves the bloc,

He said a bespoke deal could only be negotiated after an orderly departure.

Barnier, who is leading the EU's negotiations with Britain after last year's Brexit vote, told Handelsblatt that while it was in both sides' interest to maintain a close relationship, the range of possible relationships was limited.

"The only way to do it without difficulties is by staying within the internal market. That would be the Norway model, but the British government rejects it," he said. "Another option would be a free trade agreement like the CETA-deal with Canada."

Even a Canada-style deal would take several years to negotiate. Asked if there would be a specific British model after the country left on March 30, 2019, Barnier said: "No."

Expand Close EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. Photo: Reuters / Facebook

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European leaders decided this weekend that Britain had not made enough progress on exit negotiations to begin work on devising a future relationship, leading to concern in Europe and the world that Britain could crash out of the bloc in disorderly fashion, with serious economic and political consequences.

"A disorderly exit would bring enormous problems - mainly for Britain, but also for us," he said in the interview with Handelsblatt and four further European newspapers. That would affect everything from food supply to healthcare.

He added: "Britain would leave the single air traffic space, losing take-off and landing rights. It would no longer be a member of the Euratom treaty and could no longer import nuclear material from the EU for hospitals and power stations."

The process of designing a longer-term relationship with the EU was also fraught with difficulties, he added, warning that the EU would need to find ways to head off any British attempts to undercut European environmental or welfare standards.

"We will have to arrange future coopperation on defence and security policy in a separate treaty," he said. "We will have to ward off British attempts to influence our decision-making processes in this area."
MEPs have voted to back a full ban on glyphosate-based herbicides by the end of 2022 along with immediate restrictions on the product.

The Parliament's stance opposes the European Commissions proposal to renew the controversial herbicide licence for 10 years.

Instead, MEPs say the EU should draw up plans to phase out the substance, starting with a complete ban on household use and a ban in use for farming when biological alternatives (i.e. integrated pest management systems) work well for weed control.

Glyphosate should be completely banned in the EU by December 15, 2022, with the necessary intermediate steps, MEPs say.

The EU risk assessment process before renewing the substances licence was mired in controversy, as the UN cancer agency and EU food safety and chemical agencies came to different conclusions regarding its safety.

Moreover, the release of the so-called Monsanto Papers, internal documents from the company which owns and produces Roundup, of which glyphosate is the main active substance, shed doubt on the credibility of some studies used in the EU evaluation on glyphosate safety, say MEPs.

The EUs authorisation procedure, including the scientific evaluation of substances, should be based only on published, peer-reviewed and independent studies commissioned by competent public authorities, MEPs say.

EU agencies should be beefed up in order to allow them to work in this way.

Next steps

The non-binding resolution was adopted by 355 votes to 204, with 111 abstentions. Now EU Member States will vote on a Commission proposal to renew the marketing authorisation of glyphosate on Wednesday.

A European Citizens initiative calling for a ban on the herbicide reached more than a million signatures in less than a year and will trigger a public hearing in Parliament in November.
Bibeksheel Sajha Party lays claim to limited constituencies

The Bibeksheel Sajha Party, which aims to be recognised as a national party by crossing the minimum vote threshold, has fielded candidates in a limited number of constituencies in the first phase of federal and provincial elections.
France is open to phasing out common weedkiller glyphosate, the government said on Monday, following complaints from farmers worried about a potential imminent ban.

Prime Minister Edouard Philippe reiterated Paris would vote against the European Commissions proposal to extend for 10 years the licence for glyphosate, which is used in Monsantos Roundup, citing uncertainty about its safety.

A vote is due to take place by the end of the year.

However, Philippe said the French government had asked the farm and environment ministries to propose by the end of the year a plan to move away from glyphosate in light of the current research and available alternatives for farmers, signalling a readiness to accept a gradual phasing out.

A government spokesman earlier referred to the end of the presidents five-year term in mid-2022 as a potential start date for a full ban, while Agriculture Minister Stephane Travert on Friday spoke of a five- to seven-year phase out period.

The Commission, the EU executive, proposed extending glyphosates licence after the European Chemical Agency (ECHA) said in a study in March it should not be classified as a cancer-causing substance, contradicting an earlier study by an agency of the World Health Organization.

A government source also said France, the EUs largest grain grower and exporter, was asking the Commission to present a plan for phasing out glyphosate, but denied any timeframe had been set.

French farmers welcomed the prime ministers statement.

This means Matignon (the prime minister) is starting to understand that a full ban would be impossible to apply in France. This is already an easing in position, Christiane Lambert, head of Frances largest farm union FNSEA, told reporters after meeting Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot.

Three hundreds farmers protested on Pariss landmark Champs-Elysee shopping street on Friday against Hulots position against the renewal of glyphosates licence. Farmers say there is no alternative to the product.

A European Commission source said a vote due on Oct. 5-6 on the licence had been postponed for at least a month.

A failure to renew the licence by the end of the year would see a ban kick in automatically on Jan. 1, 2018.
The Tanaiste and Jobs and Enterprise Minister Frances Fitzgerald has asked the Government to back a tougher regime for overseeing and disciplining auditors, in a package of measures taken to Cabinet last night.

The proposed Companies (Statutory Auditors) Bill 2017 will aim to beef up the powers of the Irish Auditing and Accounting Supervisory Authority (IAASA), as the competent authority responsible for oversight of auditors.

It will also update the rules for auditors of institutions other than companies, such as industrial and provident societies and friendly societies, which will extend the tighter rules to building societies and credit unions. The move to toughen auditing standards generally comes after firms that signed off on the finances of the main banks in the build-up to the crash escaped largely unscathed, despite the scale of the subsequent crisis.

Anglo Irish Bank's former auditor Ernst & Young (EY) was lambasted last year by Judge Martin Nolan following the trial of three of the bank's executives, for failing to spot a 7.2bn conspiracy to defraud.

"It beggars belief that Ernst & Young signed off on the accounts," the judge said. "How they signed off on the accounts as true and fair is a mystery to me."

In a brief press statement at the time, EY said none of its staff had been called to give evidence before the judge.

Two years ago a report commissioned by accounting standards agency the Chartered Accountants Regulatory Board (CARB) surprised many when it, in effect, exonerated all of the firms, including EY, that had audited the banks before the crash.

The research looked at audits in 2008 and 2009 by KPMG of AIB, Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS), and Irish Life and Permanent (Il&P); Ernst & Young (EY)'s audits of Anglo Irish Bank and EBS; and PwC at Bank of Ireland.

Work carried out at the main banks by accountancy firms around the time of the crash was "satisfactory" and met international standards, according to the long-awaited report.
NUI Galway is to develop its campus with the aid of a 60m loan

NUI Galway has received a loan of 60m for its campus development from the European Investment Bank (EIB).

In addition to the funding for NUI Galway, Dublin Institute of Technology is also expected to receive 110m from the EIB to assist with work at its Grangegorman campus over the coming months.

The EIB funding for NUIG will be used to help cover the cost of building student accommodation, and a new building for its college of medicine, nursing, and health sciences.

"The support from EIB will assist in the completion of our new Human Biology Building, which will transform the learning environment for our health science students," said NUI Galway President Dr Jim Browne.

Over the last decade the EIB has provided 1.2bn for education investment across Ireland, including 675m for investment in third-level education in the country.

"Less than three years ago the EIB set out to ensure that all Irish universities could benefit and now Ireland is the only country in Europe where all universities have benefited from EIB-backed investment," said Education and Skills Minister Richard Bruton.

The new financing was formally signed ahead of a briefing for the presidents of the seven Irish universities outlining opportunities to broaden EIB group support.

Over the last decade the EIB has provided 28bn for education investment across the EU including support for construction and modernisation of schools and improvement in vocational training.
ASL bought the airline operations of TNT Express, including TNT Airways in Belgium and Pan Air Lineas Aereas in Spain, last year. Stock image

Underlying profits at Dublin-based ASL Aviation dipped 5pc last year to 7.9m, despite revenue soaring to 738m from 377m as it completed the acquisition of operations including TNT Airways.

When exceptional items are included, pre-tax profit slumped 52pc.

ASL operates passenger and freight services and customers include Aer Lingus. It is a joint venture between Belgian company Compagnie Maritime Belge and a unit of investment firm Degroof Petercam.

ASL directors said the company had delivered a "reasonable" set of results given the "challenging trading conditions" in the sector.

They acknowledged that while there had been a 51pc fall in pre-tax profits, the decline was primarily a result of one-off adjustments in the period, including 5.2m in impairment costs, 800,000 in acquisition-related costs, and 1.6m in restructuring costs.

ASL, whose CEO is Hugh Flynn, bought the airline operations of TNT Express, including TNT Airways in Belgium and Pan Air Lineas Aereas in Spain, last year.

ASL paid 53.5m for the businesses and noted that it was satisfied with their integration into the group and their performance to date.

US delivery giant FedEx acquired TNT for $4.8bn last year.

ASL, which operates around the world, noted in its accounts that the industry continues to be "extremely cost sensitive" and that this has coincided with lacklustre volume growth.

"While volume appears to be showing some positive signs in the short term, the pricing pressures are expected to continue, which will continue to negatively impact margin and the viability of certain operations," the company added.
Initiative Ireland has launched the country's first syndicated property finance platform.

The launch coincides with the company's pre-approval of a 1.5m secured loan which will fund the development of 10 social housing apartments and a restaurant in Dublin.

The platform - which enables private and institutional investors to customise their property loan portfolio in line with their individual risk appetite - has been described by CEO Padraig W Rushe, as offering "low-to-moderate" risk for lenders.

Investors must be willing to put forward a minimum balance of 10,000, and can earn returns of between 3.5pc to 7.5pc, provided there is no default on the property development loans.

The lending takes place across two tiers, with the different tiers providing different levels of risk and reward, based on the terms of the underlying loan.

In the event of a loan default, tier one - which earns returns of 3.5pc - will be repaid first.

"It's a fair alignment of risk and reward. The only people who have exposure to our model are those who are directly involved in it," Mr Rushe told the Irish Independent.

He added that the platform does not provide financial advice to investors, however, it was "extremely" transparent to investors in terms of risks and rewards on offer.

Mr Rushe said Initiative Ireland was looking at locations across the country, but is seeing a lot of interest in the Dublin market.

He went on to say that the platform was not willing to invest in apartments in the middle of the country "somewhere we feel it doesn't really make sense".
Tesco now has a 22pc share of the Irish grocery market

Tesco and SuperValu are now neck-and-neck in the battle to be Ireland's biggest grocery chain. But Dunnes Stores is in hot pursuit as the busy Christmas buying frenzy approaches.

New figures from research group Kantar Worldpanel show that Tesco has continued to claw back market share after being toppled from the top spot in 2015.

Tesco now commands a 22pc share of Ireland's multi-billion euro grocery market.

SuperValu, controlled by the Cork-based Musgrave group, also now has a 22pc share.

The Kantar Worldpanel data shows that SuperValu's share slipped during the 12 weeks to October 8, compared to the 22.4pc it had in the corresponding period last year.

Tesco's share climbed from 21.6pc to 22pc in the same period.

Dunnes Stores saw its market share dip from 22pc to 21.9pc.

The data represents the share of the value of goods sold, rather than the volume.

Lidl and Aldi both posted small gains in the latest period.

Lidl's share increased from 11.6pc to 11.7pc. Aldi's edged to 11.6pc from 11.5pc.

David Berry, director at Kantar Worldpanel, said that both SuperValu and Tesco have benefited from consumers spending more each time they shop.

"Though SuperValu has seen consumers spend an additional 40 cent per basket on average, Tesco has encouraged its shoppers to add an extra 1 to every shop," he said.

"With Dunnes Stores only 0.1 percentage points behind SuperValu and Tesco, the top three Irish supermarkets are all fighting for the top spot.

"With the festive period just around the corner - the time of year when sales spike and shoppers aren't afraid to spend that little bit extra - the competition shows no signs of abating."

Mr Berry added that shoppers were also spending more on branded goods compared to a year ago.

"This time last year sales of branded items dropped by 0.5pc compared to the year before," he said. "However we're now seeing a return to form - with sales up 1.3pc.

"At Christmas, shoppers tend to flock back to brands - partly for sentimental reasons and also as people are tempted to trade up at this time of year," added Mr Berry.

Grocery prices continued to fall in the latest period, nudging 0.1pc lower, compared to a 0.4pc decline in the previous period.
Contempt of court writ filed against IGP Aryal

A contempt of court writ has been filed at the Supreme Court (SC) against Inspector General of Police (IGP) Prakash Aryal.
Finance minister Paschal Donohoe has said that borrowers have been treated "disgracefully" by the banks during the tracker mortgage scandal.

And he said the government isn't satisfied with the progress banks have made in resolving the situation that saw people who had been on tracker mortgages lose money after being wrongfully removed from the schemes.

Mr Donohoe said the the time has arrived for the banks to "to finally act in the best interest of their impacted mortgage customers."

And he added: "of course they should have done this from the beginning."

Mr Donohoe made his remarks in the Dail after meeting the bosses of several banks.

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Fianna Fail TD Michael McGrath asked Mr Donohoe if he could give a commitment that people affecetd by the scandal will get their money back along wiht compensation

He also asked if Mr Dohonoe coudl give a commitment that there "will be accountability as to how this happened in the first place and that there will be a thorough investigation which gets to the bottom of how exactly this could occur"

Mr Donohoe said: "I have just concluded my meetings with the ceos of Bank of Ireland, AIB, Permanent TSB, Ulster Bank and KBC to discuss the tracker mortgage examination.

"I and the government are not satisfied with the progress that lenders have made to date and believe that impacted customers should by this time had their tracker mortgages restored and where appropriate have received redress and compensation."

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He said that the Central Bank is examining the tracker mortgage issue and outlined enforcement actions that have taken place so far.

Mr Donohoe said the Central Bank has already imposed a 4.5m penalty on Springboard Mortgages Ltd.

"Currently the Central Bank is pursuing investigations in relation to tracker mortgage-related issues arising in both Permanent TSB and Ulster Bank Ireland.

"Two further enforcement investigations into other lenders are in train," Mr Donohoe added and said that the Central Bank has indicated that further enforcement investigations can be anticipated.

Mr Donohoe also noted that the Central Bank has reporting obligations to the Gardai and other agencues where they suspect that a criminal offence may ahve been committed and it "takes these obligations very seriously".

He said he supported the Central Bank in "pursing its tracker mortgage related investigations and and any other necessary action to the fullest extent and as expeditiously as possible."

The finance minister also said: "I believe the impacted tracker mortgage borrowers have been treated disgracefully by mortgage lenders and that many borrowers have incurred considerable losses and in some cases even more significant harm.

"We should be clear that it was the mortgage lenders that caused this harm to their customers and the primary responsibility for rectifying the problem rests with them."

He said that all lenders need to cooperate with the Central Bank examination to the Bank's satisfaction and "more particularly to the satisfaction of their impacted customers."

"The main point I want to make now is that the time has now arrived for banks to finally act in the best interest of their impacted mortgage customers... Of course they should have done this from the beginning," he said.

Mr Donohoe said he will have further contact with the banks over the next 24 hours and promised to update the Dail on how these talks have gone tomorrow evening.

Sinn Fein TD Pearse Doherty again asked Mr Donohoe when the affected customers would get their money back from the banks and if this would take place by the end of the year.

Mr Doherty said the sum the banks had taken from their customers is in the region of 300m.

Mr Donohoe offered no specifics on when he expects borrowers to get their money back as well as compensation but said people owed money "should have their money repaid to them".

Mr McGrath raised concern that fines - like that imposed on Springboard - are "not the answer" in terms of ensuring accountability.

He said he feared that such fines if imposed on other banks will "simply be passed on to customers" and those responsible for the scandal won't be held to account.

Mr Doherty asked Mr Donohoe if he told the banks to "return the money immediately" and asked if he had warned them that the the board of those part owned by the State would be sacked.

Mr Donohoe said he was "very clear" that the banks' failure to repay their customers is "unacceptable" and he said he supports the Central Bank's use of its powers to bring the matter to a conclusion.

He said: "Too many people are waiting for their money back, too much confusion still exists regarding where this issue stands.

"And the engagement that I have had with the banksI have been clear that this is a disgrace and it should have been resolved by now".
One in four banks have disappeared from the eurozone since the onset of the financial crisis as banking collapses and a wave of mergers continue to radically reduce the sector's scale.

A new report by the European Central Bank exposes the rate of attrition. In Ireland the number of credit institutions has reduced by a fifth, helped by the decimation of Anglo Irish and Irish Nationwide as well as operational scale-backs from the likes of Danske and Rabo Bank.

The ECB's latest assessment of the region's financial services sector comes as the Central Bank of Ireland revealed the taxpayer-funded rescue of the banks added 58.4bn to the nation's gross debt at the end of last year. An economic letter drafted by economists Ronan Hickey, Linda Kane and Diarmaid Smyth, argued it is too early to gauge the "ultimate costs" of the bailout. But they noted the impact of the rescue on Ireland's financial health has been acute, with only Greece suffering from higher outstanding net liabilities at end-2016 due to support provided" to the financial services sector.

Recapitalisations account for the bulk of the costs.

In total, 48.9bn of taxpayers' money was injected into Irish banks - lower than the frequently reported 64bn. The economists stated this was because some of these payments were classified as "financial transactions".

They are excluded as these exchanges of financial assets, such as cash for shares (or vice versa) are expected to produce a profit for the State, as evidenced by the recent Government's 3.4bn share sale in AIB.

This cash benefits the Exchequer, but is excluded from the general Government position. The Central Bank economists concluded it is too early to quantify the final toll of the bank bail-out, arguing the costs "may end up being higher or lower depending on how various banking positions are unwound and the cumulative cost of servicing the related borrowing."

While the rescue of the banks during the crash continues to represent a considerable burden to the State, the ECB report shows the number of credit institutions operating in Ireland has declined while the importance of non-bank players has increased. The total value of assets held by the region's domestic banks hit 24.2trn at the end of last year, a fractional increase on 2015 but still 14pc down on 2008.
Food exports from the European Union to the rest of the world have increased 42pc in volume in the past five years, according to data from Eurostat.

The increase in volume has not been matched by the increase in the value of food exports to the rest of the world which increased by 20pc in the five years to 2016.

In 2016, the EU exported 91 million tonnes of food outside of its borders, the total value of which was 84bn. In comparison, food imports to the EU have increased by just 6pc in terms of volume in the five-year period, while they have increased by 18pc in terms of value.

Last year, total food imports to the EU represented almost 93 million tonnes of food - almost identical to the export volume of food.

The value of the food imported was 101bn.

Looking at specific food groups, the EU exported over 14bn of cereals such as wheat, spelt, barley and oats in 2016, accounting for almost one fifth of the total extra-EU food exports in value.

The second-largest group consisted of vegetables and fruit, which accounted for 12bn, or 14pc, of exports.

Meat exports, followed by dairy products and eggs completed the top four exports of food from the EU to non-EU countries.

In terms of food imports, member states imported mainly fruit and vegetables - which represented just under one-third of the total extra-EU imports, or almost 30bn.Fish made up a quarter of imports, while just under a fifth was made up of coffee, tea, cocoa and spices last year.

During 2016, intra-EU exports of food amounted in 2016 to 250 million tonnes, worth 283bn.

Last year, the Netherlands, exporting 13bn, was the EU's biggest food exporter in terms of value.

However it was closely followed by France and Germany, which each exported 11bn worth of food. Italy and Spain completed the top five member states for food exports in terms of value to non-EU countries in 2016.

The United States was the main destination for exports, taking food valued at 8bn from the EU.

Other major destinations for EU food exports were China, Switzerland, Japan and Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile imports of food into the EU came mainly from Brazil - which accounted for 9bn worth of total extra-EU food imports, the US (7bn), and Norway (6.8bn). Other countries that member states imported food from last year included Argentina, China, and Turkey.

Taking Ireland on its own, the value of our food and drink exports in 2016 was 11.5bn, according to Bord Bia. The UK was the main destination for Irish agri-food and drink exports last year, accounting for 37pc of all exports.

Continental Europe was the destination for 32pc of Irish food and drink exports in 2016, while 31pc went to international markets outside of the EU.

Dairy products and ingredients accounted for a third of Irish food and drink exports in 2016, with beef accounting for a fifth of our food and drink exports.
Hes worked with some of the biggest recording artists in the world but Richard Fearless, aka Death In Vegas, has his sights set on music royalty  Queen Bey.

I did write a song for Beyonce, he said. Id just like to add, I wasnt asked to do it. Ive tried a couple of different ways [to get it to her] but I think I might have a new inroad from someone who worked on the tour.

Fearless, along with former band member Tim Holmes, achieved widespread acclaim as Death In Vegas in the 90s with their groundbreaking second album The Contino Sessions, mixing rock with electronica and featuring guest vocalists Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream, Iggy Pop and The Jesus And Mary Chains Jim Reid.

Further collaborations with Liam Gallagher and Paul Weller followed on third album, Scorpio Rising, but it was a formula Fearless was growing tired of.

Im definitely not over collaborations but I see any kind of collaborations I do not being in the Death In Vegas format  I see them as a producer or if the right person comes along thats interesting to work with, but I dont want to make an album with a bunch of guest vocalists as Death In Vegas ever again thats not really for me. I want to make something that feels pure.

After a seven-year hiatus, Fearless returned re-energised as Death In Vegas in 2011, with Trans-Love Energies and Transmission (2016) hailing a more techno-oriented direction. Gone are the bass and guitars of the early days  Fearless is now armed with a 909 drum machine and mixing desks and hes adamant youll need your dancing shoes when he takes the stage next Saturday at the Metropolis festival in the RDS, Dublin.

Coming to Dublin and doing the shows were doing, its exciting to be able to represent it in a different way, which I think has a sense of relevance and makes sense rather than a 20-year-old band trying to do a bunch of old songs  Id rather shoot myself in the foot or head.

Its dance music and it doesnt need to have three guitarists on there. Its quite euphoric it definitely keeps you moving.

Unfortunately the phrase death in Vegas now also evokes memories of gunman Stephen Paddock opening fire on concert goers at a country music festival from his Mandalay Bay hotel room in the Nevada gambling mecca, killing 58 and injuring nearly 500.

Its a link Fearless is obviously uneasy with, but the producer and DJ has no plans to change the bands name, despite admitting hes never been a big fan of it himself.

A friend of mine made a film about the last 15 minutes of Elviss life. It was called Death In Vegas  I was called Dead Elvis before but I had to change the name as there was a punk label in Ireland called Dead Elvis. Anyway, we changed the name and it was one of those ones Ive never even liked the name. It happened and it started 20 years ago, and at this stage, I cant change the name because of an absolutely horrific event.

Theres definitely people who contacted us about it and said how insensitive it is and stuff like that but, yeah, its a tragic coincidence really.

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Fearless is no stranger to these shores. His father is from Belfast and has a house in Donegal since the 70s. After growing up in the Middle East, Africa and London, the Tir Chonaill abode has been the one constant family home all his life.

Its always been a really nice cool place for myself and my sister. Going to a trad night on a Tuesday in the pub or a Thursday  that would always have been quite a big thing.

With seven and five-year gaps respectively between the last three Death In Vegas albums, Fearless is planning on not making fans wait quite as long for new music. Hes currently mixing a new single to go with a bunch of remixes  and thats just for starters.

Ive got music coming out over the next few months. Some of it is Richard Fearless and some of it is Death In Vegas. Theres not an album as such but there are other albums. Im being a cryptic  Ive got a lot of music to come out, put it that way.

Im going to try and get another Death In Vegas record done by the end of next year.

And Beyonce? Fans will be hoping that inroad leads to something and she falls crazy in love with what she hears.

Fearless: Yeah (looking at the holes in the bottom of my shoes at the moment), me too.

Death In Vegas play this Saturday on the Warehouse Stage as part of the Metropolis festival at the RDS in Dublin. Fearless will also play an after-show set at the Wah Wah Club on South William Street on Saturday.
DISGRACED solicitor Michael Lynn used around 3m belonging to his Kendar Holdings foreign property company to fund his personal lifestyle, the High Court heard.

The expenditure included st25,000 on his own private box at the redeveloped Wembley Stadium in London and some 301,000 in a pension fund for his retirement.

The struck-off solicitor, who fled the country in 2007 leaving an estimated 80m in debts and who is still in a Brazilian prison fighting efforts to extradite him, paid the money into two pension schemes with Canada Life and Aviva between 2004 and 2007, the court heard.

Kendar Holdings liquidator Martin Ferris, who has spent several years trying to find where the money went, was on Tuesday granted an order by the High Court that Canada Life and Aviva pay the surrender value of those pension funds to the liquidator in order to recover some money for the creditors.

Andrew Fitzpatrick SC, for Mr Ferris, said among those creditors are people who paid deposits for holiday homes in Hungary and Portugal where Kendar's business model was to fund construction of these properties using deposits. Included in the creditors list is 278,500 paid in deposits while there is another 1m owed to unsecured creditors.

The liquidator discovered that someone had removed the computer servers for Kendar which meant there were very few books and records to work on to trace where the money went. However, counsel said, trial management accounts were created based on various bank accounts, including Lynn's own personal account into which various large cash payments were made.

Under companies legislation, this was a very clear case of fraudulent disposition of company property which gave the power to the court to order the pension monies be paid to the liquidator, counsel said.

Mr Fitzpatrick said the liquidator had written to Mr Lynn, who the court heard is still incarcerated in Cotel Prison, Recife, seeking assistance in tracing monies. While he (Lynn) had offered assistance he never actually gave any information. In fact, Lynn demanded information from the liquidator and made various allegations against the liquidator, counsel said.

Mr Ferris, in his investigations, discovered many serious matters concerning Mr Lynn, primarily that he used some 3m of company money for his own personal expenses, including the box at Wembley, counsel said.

Mr Fitzpatrick also said there was no question of impropriety on the part of Canada Life and Aviva who were prepared to return the money provided it was by court order.

Papers in the application to have the funds paid to the liquidator were served on Mr Lynn in prison but he was not represented in court.

Ms Justice Marie Baker said she was satisfied that the payments into the pension fund were done to deprive the company of money and were therefore a fraudulent disposition under Section 608 of the 2014 Companies Act providing the power of the court to order the return of those assets.

She said the amount to be paid out is to be whatever the invested value the fund stands at on the date of the perfection of the court order.

The judge also said it was clear the pension payments were excessively large having regard to the size of Kendar Holdings and its turnover.
Delhi mission vacant after envoys resignation

With the approval of ambassador Deep Kumar Upadhyays resignation, Nepals mission in New Delhi, considered a major diplomatic outpost of Kathmandu, has been vacant once again.
An autistic Kilkenny man has been committed to the Central Mental Hospital (CMH) after being found not guilty by reason of insanity of attempting to murder his pregnant sister so she wouldn't raise her child in Dublin.

A Central Criminal Court judge made the order yesterday, two weeks after a jury returned the special verdict following the trial of 33-year-old Daniel O'Connell.

Mr Justice Paul Butler had remanded him to the hospital for the required 14 days under the Insanity Act.

James Dwyer BL, for the State, informed the judge that consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Anthony Kearns had prepared the required report during that time.

"There's evidence before the court, which would warrant such an order being made," he said.

He was referring to an order committing Mr O'Connell to the CMH, where he would receive the inpatient care or treatment needed for the mental disorder from which he suffered.

The judge said that he had thoroughly read the report and noted that there was a bed available in the hospital.

"The evidence is only one way in this matter," he said. "In those circumstances, I make the order."

Mr O'Connell, who had been brought to court by staff from the CMH, was then accompanied from court by his family and returned to the hospital by the CMH staff.

The trial heard Mr O'Connell first developed homicidal feelings for his sister when she settled in Dublin, due to the fear that she would have a baby born and raised there.

He had developed what the prosecution described as "an unnatural and almost pathological dislike of Dublin and Dublin people" as a child.

Mr O'Connell, of Rosemount, Newpark, Co Kilkenny, had pleaded not guilty to the attempted murder of his sister Olivia O'Connell on April 25, 2016, at Scholarstown Park, Knocklyon.
A Dublin man who sexually abused four sisters in their home has had his prison sentence cut on appeal.

The 50-year-old-man, who cannot be named to protect the victims' identities, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to six counts of sexual assault against the four girls on dates between 2002 and 2004.

The man, who has a previous conviction for rape, was the then partner of the girls' mother and was living with them in the family home when the sexual assaults occurred.

The eldest victim was aged between 12 and 13-years'-old when she was abused and each of her three younger sisters were assaulted on one occasion each, with the youngest being seven-years'-old.

Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy imposed consecutive sentences totalling 12 years and ordered four years post release supervision.

However, the man successfully appealed his sentence today through his barrister, Michael Bowman SC, and he was accordingly re-sentenced to nine years and six months imprisonment again with four years post release supervision.

Giving judgment in the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice John Hedigan said there seemed to have been double counting of the aggravating factors when the judge took the same egregious factors into account for counts related to the eldest sister and counts related to the younger three.

Mr Justice Hedigan said the single counts in respect of the girl's three sisters were very different in nature. The eldest sister was subjected to a terrifying regime of assault in her own home over a prolonged period whereas the other assaults were one off events.

He said the counts involved would not normally attract the headline sentences chosen by the sentencing judge. In respect of two of the three counts, one year sentences were imposed by the three-judge court and one-and-a-half years for the third of the three. The court was obliged to have regard to the totality principle.

Mr Justice Hedigan, who sat with Mr Justice George Birmingham and Mr Justice Alan Mahon, said the new cumulative sentence would be nine years and six months.

As in the court below, he said the Court of Appeal would not suspend any part of the sentence.
The family of a pensioner who died after a choking incident in a nursing home dining room has settled its High Court action for 110,000.

Father of five, Sean Cunningham (73), who suffered from dementia, was left alone to feed himself and choked to death, the court was told.

Mr Cunningham was residing at St Gabriels Nursing Home, Raheny, Dublin, was known to have difficulty eating, his counsel Paul Burns said.

Mr Cunningham's son John, of Park Lawn, Clontarf , Dublin had sued SGNH Ltd, with offices at Warrington Place, Dublin, the owners of St Gabriel's, as a result of his father's death on December 16, 2014.

It was claimed Mr Cunningham, who had been in the nursing home since August 2014, was wheeled in to the dining room at around 5pm on December 16, 2014 and left alone to feed himself. It was claimed no staff member was present in the section of the room where Mr Cunningham was seated and which was separated from the front section by a wall.

Ten minutes later, a staff member heard a noise and discovered Mr Cunningham apparently choking and raised the alarm.

Various attempts were made to clear Mr Cunningham's airway and CPR was also commenced, but he died shortly after admission to hospital.

It was claimed there was a failure to have any adequate care plan or any nutrition plan to address Mr Cunningham's known risk of choking.

There was also an alleged failure to ensure his meals were supervised and he was assisted in eating. It was also claimed there was a failure to communicate Mr Cunningham's risk of choking to all staff members having contact with him.

Mr Justice Kevin Cross was told liability had been admitted in the case.

An inquest last year in to the death of Mr Cunningham heard the pensioner suffered from dementia, with short term memory problems following a brain tumour.

He was admitted to Beaumont Hospital in April 2014 after he went missing and was later found in Galway.

He had previously gone missing for two days while on holiday in Madrid.

The family were finding it increasingly difficult to care for him, Dublin Coroners Court heard, and he was admitted to the nursing home after coming out of Beaumont.

A post-mortem found the cause of death was cardio respiratory arrest due to an episode of choking on a food bolus. Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane returned a verdict of misadventure.
A mother who lost her baby two days after his birth has told an inquest of her harrowing experience.

Sandra Cullivan was 36 when she went to Mullingar Regional Hospital to be induced on April 28 2015.

Her baby Stevie Cullivan, named after his father who died following a heart attack the previous December, was born at 11.59pm.

The baby boy died two days later on April 30.

Stevie was my last chance to have a baby with Stephen. I am completely and utterly devastated, Sandra Cullivan said.

Dublin Coroners Court heard how the infant was being treated as a precious baby because of the recent loss of the babys father. Ms Cullivan had been allocated a private room in the post-natal ward and her mother was to attend as her birthing partner. Mrs Cullivan said her mother, whod been with her since morning, had been told to go home by staff in the evening as there was nothing happening.

At 10pm, two hours before the birth, Ms Cullivan was given pethidine for pain relief. A CTG scan found the babys heartbeat was normal. She was not deemed to be in labour at this point. The midwife assigned to her care was busy dealing with three other patients whod undergone Caesarean sections that day and had entrusted Ms Cullivans care to her colleagues.

I was hoping to get into see her as soon as possible but other things happened and I was deviated, the midwife said.

During this 90 minute period, Ms Cullivan was left alone in the room with the doors closed. She was having contractions and she became concerned but said she could not reach the call bell.

I was very afraid for our baby, I shouted out for help and I was eventually heard and a nurse came in, Ms Cullivan said. There was urgency in the midwifes voice when she examined her, Ms Cullivan said. The baby's head was low in the birth canal and birth was imminent, the court heard.

Another midwife was called in to help and Ms Cullivan was brought to the Labour Ward in a wheelchair at 11.40pm. There was growing concern for the baby as CTG monitoring of his heartbeat returned an abnormal result. Baby Stevie was born at 11.59pm.

He wasnt crying. I kept asking why he wasnt crying. It was obvious Stevie wasnt going to be okay, Ms Cullivan said.

I feel devastated that I was left for so long and nobody came near me. I looked after this baby for forty weeks. I put my faith in this hospital, Ms Cullivan told Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane. The baby was rushed to the resuscitation suite where his airway was suctioned and he was ventilated.

The inquest continues.
Aviva Insurance had established that a 60,000 personal injuries claim by a 25-year-old Dublin home care worker had arisen out of a contrived traffic accident, a judge has told the insurance companys legal team.

Judge Francis Comerford, when he threw out the claim by Leonard Naughton Madden, said a link had been shown between him and his uncle to whom the car that crashed into him had been afterwards brought for inspection.

That is quite a coincidence, the judge told barrister Paul ONeill, counsel for Aviva, who had told the court there was more than enough evidence to cast doubt on Naughton Maddens case.

Mr ONeill, who appeared with Charlotte Finnigan of Corrigan and Corrigan solicitors, told the Circuit Civil Court there were too many disquieting factors in the case and it should be dismissed.

Naughton Madden said the car in which he had been a passenger had been driven at the time of the accident in Rathmines, Dublin, on September 2012 by a William OBrien senior who, prior to the crash, he did not know.

In cross-examination by Mr ONeill he said he did not know the co-defendant in his case either, a Joseph Carroll with an address in Rathgar, Dublin, who had been driving the car that had crashed into him.

He also did not know that William OBrien senior had been the deal maker on behalf of Joseph Carroll when Carroll had bought the car off an Ann Gibney before it had subsequently rear-ended OBriens car in which he was a passenger.

Naughton Madden told the court he knew nothing about a number of other allegedly linked claims made against Aviva and denied any connection with claimants who allegedly contrived this and other accidents.

Ann Gibney told the court William OBrien senior had brokered the deal to buy her car. Another man Mr OBrien said was from Rathgar had produced the money for it.

Dismissing Naughton Maddens claims with costs against him, Judge Comerford said he accepted Carroll was involved in a contrived accident and that it was more likely than not that Mr Naughton Madden knew there was going to be an accident.

The personal injury system and the way it was structured was there to facilitate genuine plaintiffs who suffer injuries in accidents and while the court had to have regard to this it had to have a concern if it felt the system for doing justice to others was being used in a dishonest way.

Following the hearing Robert Smyth, Head of Fraud at Aviva, said the company had a duty to customers to fight all fraudulent claims irrespective of the significant costs involved.

Every effort will be made to ensure we recover our costs and we will co-operate with the gardai to ensure that anyone involved in staged accidents face criminal prosecution, he said.
A well-known Irish paedophile has been given a three-month sentence in Scotland after being caught in possession of banned devices.

Anthony Luckwill received widespread coverage in the media after being released from a jail term imposed for sexually assaulting young boys after he posed as a TV casting agent.

The predatory paedophile, previously branded "a grave risk to society" by an Irish judge, has a long history of convictions across Ireland and the UK.

Yesterday, Luckwill appeared in court at Dunfermline Sheriff Court after he was caught with a camera, a laptop and a mobile phone at a hotel in Fife in Scotland in June.

Under the terms of the Sex Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) placed on Luckwill in the UK 10 years ago, he is banned from owning these devices.

Luckwill admitted to owning the devices and he was sentenced to three months yesterday by Sheriff Alison McKay. The devices were also forfeited to the court.

He is already serving a 10-month sentence handed down last month in connection with this breach of the SOPO.

At a previous hearing in June, the court heard that Luckwill left Ireland in May and moved to Scotland.

Luckwill, originally from Dublin, has numerous convictions for child-related sex offences in Ireland, Wales and the Channel Islands.

In 2012, he was jailed for five months after arriving in Guernsey and trying to lure a 14-year-old boy to his hotel room.

In June 2013, he was jailed for four-and-a-half years in Ireland for sexually assaulting two boys who thought they were going to TV auditions.
A young man who was caught with over 27,000 worth of cocaine in his bedroom was a sacrificial lamb to drug dealers, a Dublin court has heard.

Niky Sosso (22) pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possessing cocaine for sale or supply in his home at Parslickstown Drive, Mulhuddart, Dublin, on January 28, 2016.

He will be sentenced on December 19.

Garda Ronan Farrelly told Derek Cooney BL, prosecuting, that gardai obtained information there were drugs at a home in Mulhuddart. A search warrant was executed on the evening of the day in question and Sosso himself answered the door.

While sniffer dogs searched the house, Sosso immediately told gardai where they would find drugs in his bedroom, including in an iPhone box, in a bag in his dresser and in a shoebox. A total of 387g of cocaine with a street value of 27,115 was retrieved from the house.

Sosso made immediate admissions on the spot before being interviewed by gardai where he gave further information. He has no previous convictions.

Gda Farrelly agreed with Michael Bowman SC, defending, that Sosso was naive and didn't seem to understand the gravity of his situation at the time.

Sosso told gardai he was holding the drugs for other people, from whom he took orders. He said he got into it to make a bit of money. The court heard Sosso was a student at the time and did not own a car, a house or any other significant assets.

He has nothing of particular value in the world, Mr Bowman said, adding Sosso received very little reward for his role in the operation.

Counsel contended Sosso was at the lowest end of the ladder and was not an essential cog in the operation. He told gardai he was too afraid to reveal who he was working for.

When asked what he thought would happen now he had lost the drugs, he replied, I don't know. I fear the worst.

He was a sacrificial lamb, Mr Bowman told the court.

He said his client's family moved to Ireland from Congo in 2007 and his parents were hardworking people who had taken pride in the fact their children had assimilated into the country.

They are devastated and humiliated by what has transpired, Mr Bowman said.

The court heard Sosso is currently in employment and has pledged to provide all the money he currently earns to drug rehabilitation facilities.

Mr Bowman said his client had done everything within his ability to right this wrong and he urged Judge Karen O'Connor to consider other sentencing options.

Judge O'Connor ordered a Probation Welfare Services Report and she remanded Sosso on continuing bail until his sentence in December.
Eight factory workers killed in Malaysia road accident

At least eight factory workers were killed in an accident involving two buses and a van along the North South Expressway in Malaysia on Tuesday, The Star online reported.
The Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) has rejected the latest public service pay deal.

Members of the secondary teachers union voted by a narrow 51.5pc-48.5pc margin against the Public Service Stability Agreement (PSSA). The turnout was 64pc.

All three teacher unions have rejected the agreement, but it has been accepted, on aggregate, by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions.

Teachers will benefit from all aspects of the deal as long as they don't take industrial action.

There is no immediate threat of industrial action.

Their main bone of contention is the PSSA's failure to end two-tier pay scales.

Talks have opened between public sector unions and Government officials on the new entrants' pay issue.
A 5m new school building project has come to a halt after a lengthy dispute which the Department of Education claims was about quality.

The contractor, Manley Construction, Co Meath, agreed to withdraw from the job two weeks ago, after a formal conciliation process.

The 24-classroom, St Christopher's primary school, Haddington Road, Dublin, was supposed to open last month, but it will be at least another two years before it welcomes pupils.

The site has been idle for months, while pupils are crammed into prefabs. St Christopher's is an amalgamation of existing boys' and girls' schools and pupils are already wearing the uniform for the new co-ed.

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Building work started in December 2015 and, according to the department, throughout the project its own design team raised issues in relation to quality and lack of progress with works.

Dublin City Council inspectors also raised "quality concerns".

Last October, the council wrote to the department expressing "serious concerns" about compliance with regulations relating to structure, materials and workmanship. The letter also noted "concerns and deficiencies" relating to drainage and waste water disposal, and fuel and energy conservation.

The department has paid over about one-third of the contract price.

A spokesperson for Manley Construction said that while it acknowledged "that issues arose as part of the project delivery, the dispute did not relate to the quality of the work or timeline for project delivery".

"There were a number of contractual issues that developed as part of the project, culminating in a contractual conciliation dispute process."

According to the department, during the course of the dispute, Manley put in 13 claims totalling in excess of 900,000, but ultimately exited the job waiving an entitlement to the additional sums claimed.

In July, the department invoked a clause covering an employer's right to terminate a contract. An independent conciliator was appointed and, according to the department, there was an agreement last month that the contractor would withdraw and waive any entitlements to the additional sums. Manley left the site on October 9.

Manley also disputes the department's version of the conciliation agreement and said it did "not accurately reflect the agreement reached between the parties".

A tender process for a replacement contractor will get under way in the new year.
A mother has made a heartbreaking plea for information about her missing son on his 21st birthday.

Winnie Burke spoke to the The Neil Prendeville Show on Corks RedFM about her son John, who was last seen on June 16 in Cork.

Mother-of-nine Winnie, who lives in Tralee, travels to Cork every week to put up flyers and search for her son and on his 21st birthday today she made a fresh plea to try and find her second eldest.

"Every day it gets harder," she told the show. "I just want to know is he okay, is he all right. If he could just pick up the phone and ring us, we just need to know he is alright."

According to gardai, John was last seen on June 16 - five months ago - in Cork city.

Gardai say that John is described as being 5 6 tall of slim build and with short brown hair.

It is not known what he was wearing when last seen.

Winnie said she is worried as his phone no longer connects, he hasn't been on his Facebook page since June 16 and he hasn't collected any disability payments that are due to him.

"It has gone five months," Winnie said. "It is so hard to go to bed at night not knowing where your child is, it doesn't matter what age they are."

The family are originally from Waterford before moving to Tralee in 2008.

However, the most positive leads on John came from Cork so every Saturday she travels down to the city to put up flyers and show John's picture to people.

Her husband does the same every Sunday but so far they have had no luck in locating their son.

"Nobody has seen him, nobody has heard of him," said Winnie, but she is hopeful that this reminder to the public on his birthday may jog someone's memory.

"Even if you just think it is him, just pick up the phone," Winnie said.

Anyone who has seen John or who can assist in locating him is asked to contact Tralee Garda Station on 066 7102300, The Garda Confidential Telephone Line 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station.
Ibrahim Halawa en route to Ireland with his sister, Nasaybi, and Ambassador to Egypt Sean O'Regan

Dubliner Ibrahim Halawa is due to arrive back in Ireland this morning after spending more than four years in prison in Cairo.

The Firhouse man (21) was just 17 when he was arrested in the Egyptian capital during a mass Muslim Brotherhood protest in Cairo in 2013.

After a protracted legal battle he was acquitted of all charges.

The 21-year-old, from Firhouse in Dublin, is flying back to Ireland with his sister, Nasaybi, and Ambassador to Egypt Sean O'Regan.

"Finally on my way home, thank you to everyone who has caused this moment I love you all so much. Looking forward to finally coming home," he said on Facebook.

He is expected to have a private reunion with his family at Dublin Airport before meeting other well-wishers.

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Mr Halawa's repatriation was delayed in part as new travel papers had to be issued for him.

He was jailed after being arrested in a mosque amid protests over the removal of the then Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi. He was one of almost 500 people in a protracted mass trial.

Mr Halawa, the son of prominent Dublin Muslim cleric Sheikh Hussein Halawa, was a student at the time.

His three sisters, Somaia, Fatima and Omaima, were also arrested during the crackdown on the 2013 protest but later released on bail and returned to Dublin. They were acquitted following trial in absentia.

Additional reporting by agencies
Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has given a cryptic answer when asked by the Sky News whether he wants to be the next President of Ireland.

Mr Ahern, who led the government from 1997 until 2008, appeared on All Out Politics today to discuss the Brexit negotiations.

However, host Adam Bolton threw the Dubliner a final question on whether the rumours about his ambition to be president in 2018 are true.

God knows what will happen next year, Mr Ahern replied with a smirk.

His former party Fianna Fail voted at their recent Ard Fheis to contest the election which is due next October - but at the same event Micheal Martin ruled out a return to the party for the ex-Taoiseach.

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In the wake of the Mahon Tribunal findings in March 2012, Mr Martin was in the process of moving for his old boss's expulsion from the party when Mr Ahern felt obliged to resign from the organisation he led for 14 years.

However, his old cumman in Drumcondra wrote to the party in recent weeks recommending Mr Ahern for a distinguished service award.

Mr Martin described the move as mischievous.
Ibrahim Halawa en route to Ireland with his sister, Nasaybi, and Ambassador to Egypt Sean O'Regan

Ibrahim Halawa was welcomed by family and supporters at Dublin Airport (Picture: Gerry Mooney)

Ibrahim Halawa was welcomed by family and supporters at Dublin Airport (Picture: Gerry Mooney)

Dubliner Ibrahim Halawa has arrived back on Irish soil after more than four years in prison in Cairo.

The 21-year-old Firhouse man was just 17 when he was arrested in the Egyptian capital during mass protests in 2013.

After a protracted legal battle he was acquitted of all charges.

He flew back to Ireland with his sister, Nasaybi, and Ambassador to Egypt Sean O'Regan.

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Speaking to the waiting media after a private reunion with his family Ibrahim thanked the Government and all of his supporters for their help during his ordeal.

Asked what it felt like to be back with his loved ones he said:

"It still feels like a dream... this is the moment I've waited for for four years... a free man, acquitted after four years."

Ibrahim said there are still al lot of innocent people he left behind and added that he hopes to work to help free wrongfully incarcerated people around the world.

He said he will be taking some time to be with his mother who is ill.

The overjoyed young man also said: Im as Irish as you can be.

Its just great to be back, Im very happy, Im very, very, very happy, Im so excited to be home.

The minute when I was on the plane and I saw the green land, its so green, its so beautiful, I havent seen the green in so long, I want to be with the Irish people, thank you so much.

And he tackled head-on the criticism he has faced from some quarters after being arrested in Cairo at 17 while attending Muslim Brotherhood rallies over the ousting of democratically-elected president Mohammed Morsi.

"I really want to thank the haters," Mr Halawa said.

"They made me stronger, to come out and be ready for everything. Like they say, sticks and stones will break my bones ..."

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His plane arrived in Dublin around 11.05am this morning as expected.

Minister Katherine Zappone, who represents the area Ibrahim's family live, posted a photo on her Twitter account which showed her giving the camera a thumbs up alongside Ibrahim.

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Mr Halawa's sister Somaia, one of the most vocal and persistent campaigners over the last four years, tried to contain herself as she watched the outpouring of emotions.

"I don't think I'll ever be any more happier than I am now ... I don't think when I got married I was that happy, I don't think when I get kids I'll be that happy either," she said.

"I just don't think any single thing in life will make me so happy as this moment."

She explained the impact the homecoming was having on her mother.

"For her to see Ibrahim today that was something I can't express," she said.

Among the scores of offers of support to have flooded to the family in recent days, the simplest of messages came from the likes of Pete Moloney, an old friend from Rockbrook Park Secondary School in Dublin.

"He has a lot to catch up on, with family first of all, spending time with them," he said.

"He'll be a busy man."

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Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney also welcomed him back to Ireland.

Minister Coveney said: "This is a very happy day for Ibrahim and his family, and a day of great joy also for all of his friends and supporters.

"I and all of my colleagues in Government are very pleased that Ibrahims ordeal is now at an end, and that he is back home with his family.

"There will be many challenges for Ibrahim as he comes to terms with all that he has been through, and all the changes that have taken pace while he has been detained in Egypt.

"He will need time and space in the period ahead and I hope that his privacy and that of his family will be respected."

Among the supporters gathered to welcome Ibrahim back is childhood friend, Ramadan Duadu who said he last spoke to Ibrahim about their Leaving Cert results more than four years ago.

Four years now, we missed him so much, were very excited to have him back, he said.

Ive known him since I was a kid so we grew up together.

We went to school together when we were quite young and then again for the Leaving Cert.

"The last time I actually spoke to him before all of this happened, was four years ago, we were actually just discussing our Leaving Cert results.

Its going to be really weird now coming back, were all graduating and he has to sort out his life, he added.

He said they just want to help Ibrahim settle back into normal life.
Rob Laffan (pictured with his daughter Sadie) is known as a "popular family man"

A devoted Irish dad was left fighting for his life after he suffered a brain injury during a work trip in the US last week.

Rob Laffan (40) was at a work conference in Minneapolis on Friday when he collapsed suddenly and hit his head, causing serious head injuries - including a fractured skull and bleeding to the brain.

His worried friends and family have now organised fundraisers to help Rob and his wife Emily, who are from Fairgreen in Limerick City.

Local Councillor Daniel Butler told Independent.ie how the frightening incident happened.

The Fine Gael representative said: "Rob was over in the US for the Close The Gap conference as he was advertising his Tippy Talk product, which was inspired by his daughter Sadie (6).

"Sadie has autism and has difficulty communication so Rob invented this touch screen device to help Sadie and other people who are non-verbal, such as people with autism or those who have suffered from strokes to express themselves.

"He was at the conference on Friday when he fainted and collapsed and he fell he fractured his skull.

"He was speaking to Emily that night but then things got worse when doctors identified two bleeds on his brain."

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Rob's condition rapidly deteriorated and he remained in the Intensive Care Unit over the weekend.

Emily flew to be by Rob's side, while Sadie and her older daughter Megan have remained in Ireland with relatives.

Although Rob is now conscious, the couple's friend Linda Daly said that he may have a long recovery.

she told Independent.ie: "As far as I am aware he will have more MRIs carried out and his doctors are concerned that he may suffer seizures as a result of his fall.

"Emily has seen an x-ray of his skull and there was a big crack going straight across the front of it."

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Cllr Butler added: "He is awake but he is in quite a confused state, which is to be expected with that kind of injury and his doctors have said that he won't be able fly home for at least a month."

Rob's friends and family have established an online fundraiser to help raise money to cover Rob's medical costs and to help support the family through their ordeal.

Cllr Butler explained: "We are all anxious to help spread the word, medical bills in the US are notoriously expensive and obviously Emily will need to be over there with him for a while, it's a long road ahead.

"The response from the public has been really good so far and it shows that Rob is a really popular man, everyone in the area seems to know him and he has a large group of friends, he is very well-liked.

"He is a family man and adores his daughters and Emily."

Linda agreed that there has been a generous response to the fundraiser.

She said: "Rob and Emily are such a nice couple, Rob is a lovely guy, you couldn't not like him."
Festivalonomics

Nepal will slowly inch back to normal by the end of the week, after a month full of festivities. In an agrarian society, a months break and the accompanying celebrations after hard physical labour is perfect.
Joseph Rafferty is arrested and taken from City West shopping centre following a major manhunt. Picture: Gerry Mooney

Armed Gardai arrest a man at City west Shopping centre this afternoon after a chase through Tallaght...Picture Colin Keegan, Collins Dublin.

This is the man who was arrested following an armed, eight-hour crime rampage across Dublin, during which six cars were hijacked and two people assaulted.

Joseph Rafferty (37) was last night being quizzed by detectives after he led gardai on a pursuit that began after a domestic dispute.

Members of the elite Emergency Response Unit (ERU) were drafted in yesterday to help apprehend the suspect, who assaulted at least two people during the violent rampage.

Bizarrely, in the middle of his crime spree, he paid for fizzy drinks and sweets at a service station before continuing his rampage.

Detectives are investigating reports that a shot was fired, but preliminary examinations of the firearm indicate that no shots were discharged. The weapon  a 9mm eight-gauge machine gun  was recovered close to where Rafferty was arrested.

It has also emerged that Rafferty is currently serving a driving ban and was previously sentenced in the UK for his role in a car-jacking.

The incident began when the suspect took an Audi car from his partners house at Brookview Lawns in Tallaght at around 6.20am.

He then drove around Jobstown and crashed the car in the Russell Square area a short time later.

He then stole or hijacked a Citroen Berlingo van, which he abandoned in Whitestown Way.

Rafferty then went to a house in the Watergate area of Tallaght, not far from The Square shopping centre, where at 6.50am he rang the doorbell.

The owner answered the front door and was shocked when he saw Rafferty standing at the porch door with what looked like a machine gun in his hands.

He smashed the front door with the butt of the gun, and then hit me on the head with it, the owner told the Herald.

He demanded the keys to the car. He was very determined and then he just drove away in it, he added, a large dressing covering the wound on his forehead.

Ten minutes later, Rafferty drove into the forecourt of the Topaz filling station at Ninth Lock near Clondalkin in the Renault Kadjar.

He came in and was very agitated and aggressive. He bought Club Orange, biscuits and Lucozade, as well as pastries and sweets, and paid for them and then left, said a filling station employee.

He then drove away in the direction where he came from.

The search continued during the morning, with gardai attempting to determine his whereabouts.

Rafferty abandoned the Renault in a car park on the Naas Road and then stole a silver Volvo car with an 06 MO registration.

At this stage, the massive number of gardai in pursuit descended on the area determined to close the net.

Within minutes, there were reports that he had ditched the Volvo and stolen a blue Subaru car at a dealership.

Marked and unmarked garda cars, as well as members of the ERU and Armed Support Unit (ASU) poured into the area around Tallaght and CityWest as the garda helicopter hovered overhead.

Then Rafferty hijacked a black Mercedes car and gardai chased it in the direction of CityWest Shopping Centre.

The pursuit came to an end at the centre when Rafferty was arrested following a scuffle with detectives shortly after 2pm.

In 2010, Rafferty received an eight-year sentence for a botched supermarket raid in which his accomplice was stabbed to death.

Rafferty, of Russell Place, Russell Square, Tallaght, pleaded guilty on his trial date at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to a 2,862 cash robbery at SuperValu in Killester in 2008.

He has more than 20 previous convictions here and in the UK, including an eight-year sentence from Oxford Crown Court for robbery and car-jacking, three years for criminal damage with a petrol bomb and seven years for four robberies, both from Dublin Circuit Criminal Court in 2000 and 1999.

Last year, Rafferty was also handed a lengthy road ban and is disqualified from driving.

Local Fianna Fail Cllr Charlie OConnor said the dangerous situation had caused fear and upset in Tallaght and the wider community, but added that gardai had handled it well.

I had calls from schools who were aware of the situation and were concerned about letting children out. The massive presence of the gardai was a big reassurance and they did very well in the end to capture this man without any major injuries or disaster, he said.
Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin has accused the banks of stealing citizens money in the tracker mortgage scandal.

Mr Martin also urged the Government to carefully investigate whether there was collusion between the 11 lending banks to take away tracker mortgages from borrowers after recession hit.

No credible explanation has been given as to how this happened in all of the banks at the same time, Mr Martin told the Dail.

The Fianna Fail leader also argued that the Government had been very slow to react to the crisis and had only become active after there was major public controversy.

There is a sense of the Government standing by and putting the interests of the banks ahead of the interests of the public, Mr Martin said.

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Replying for the Government, Foreign Affairs Minister, Simon Coveney, said the Government had devoted almost all of the ministers time at Monday nights Cabinet meeting to the issue.

He said the Finance Minister, Paschal Donohoe, had already met five bank executives and would report to the Dail tomorrow on these meetings.

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Mr Coveney said the Government would again meet to consider its next move if the banks response was not deemed adequate. He said there was a serious cultural problem in the Irish banks.

The banks should be there to serve an economy and to serve a society as opposed to the other way around, Mr Coveney said.
Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are on a collision course of plans to give TDs and senators a week off.

The Dail is due to rise on Thursday for the mid-term break.

But at the Fianna Fail front bench meeting this morning , Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin strongly objected to the move.

He told TDs and senators that he is not satisfied with the level of progress being made in relation to the passing of bills.

He said the lack of bills being passed is "not a laughing matter."

The issue is due to come to a head in the Dail today.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar TD and Health Minister Simon Harris turn the first sod for the new Paediatric Outpatients and Urgent Care Centre on the grounds of Connolly Hospital, with James Mohan, Ashleigh Kiernan, Matilda Kiernan, and Isabel Kiernan, from the Youth Advisory Council

What's in a name? The newly christened National Children's Hospital complex, which will be known as Phoenix Children's Health, is already dividing opinion.

The umbrella name for the 1bn hospital and two satellite centres in Dublin was unveiled yesterday after months of brainstorming and consultation.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Health Minister Simon Harris announced the title when they turned the sod in one of the satellite centres at Connolly Hospital in Dublin.

The unusual choice of name for the complex - from a pool of 300 suggestions - was defended by the board of the hospital.

It follows a flash of inspiration from a health worker in Temple Street Hospital, seven roadshows and a review by six focus groups over nine months.

They were drawn from the staff of the three existing hospitals, regional paediatric units and the children's hospital group.

A spokeswoman said the phoenix was invoked because it is a symbol of renewal, inspiration, vision, hope, growth and regeneration.

"It is easy to pronounce and translates as 'Feinics' in Irish," she said.

The main hospital, which is being built at St James's Hospital campus, and is due to open in 2022, will be known as Phoenix Children's Hospital Ireland.

The satellite units, which each comprise an outpatients department and urgent care unit, will be called Phoenix Children's at Tallaght and Phoenix Children's at Connolly.

The Connolly centre will open in 2019 and the Tallaght centre in 2020.

The new complex - first mooted back in 1993 - will amalgamate the three existing children's hospitals in Temple Street, Crumlin and Tallaght.

The long-awaited hospital, which has been rescued from the ashes after being turned down for planning permission at the Mater Hospital in 2012, has been beset by setbacks for well over a decade.

The neutral title also diplomatically side-steps having to include the names of any of the existing hospitals.

If precedent is anything to go by, the hierarchy of names would cause inevitable controversy over which should come first.

One of the key challenges in the future will be getting the three hospitals to operate as a unit under one roof and reduce the risk of rivalries which marred the efficiency of other similar mergers in the past.

Speaking at the ceremony at Connolly Hospital, the Taoiseach, who was in his own constituency, said: "I worked here in 2004 and 2005 and it was a very happy time."

Health Minister Simon Harris said the naming of the hospital marks "a new era in paediatric healthcare development".

"This unit will open in only 21 months so really this project is getting very real now," he said.

Asked about the decision of the hospital board to appeal a number of conditions attached to the fire safety certificate, issued by Dublin City Council, he said: "My response to this is very clear. The national children's hospital and the board have gone above and beyond in ensuring that this world-class hospital will exceed fire safety standards."

He insisted it "is certainly not an issue of cost from the Government", adding: "It's a project of nearly 1bn in terms of investment from the taxpayer so we can deliver a world-class hospital for children right across this country. The issue of cost will not arise."

Mr Harris said that whatever An Bord Pleanala decides will be followed by the developers.

"But it's very important to state that this hospital has already been designed to exceed the fire safety standards that are already there," he said.

"It's part of the normal planning process that there's often a back and forth between planners and anybody developing any large project."
Nineteen school buildings earmarked for construction in 2015 are still not 'shovel ready', the Irish Independent can reveal.

The projects in seven different counties were announced in December 2014, with the then education minister saying the developments were needed to replace inadequate educational infrastructure and to cater for demographic changes.

However, in some instances a site hasn't even been selected yet, while others are at a very early stage.

The three extensions and 16 new builds were included in a list of 70 projects. Almost two years later, just 26 have been completed.

Among the delayed projects are six new schools in Cork, five in Dublin, two in Wexford and one each in Westmeath, Galway and Longford.

Extensions to schools in Clare, Dublin and Galway have also been delayed.

Fianna Fail's education spokesman Thomas Byrne said the projects were announced with "much fanfare" by former education minister Jan O'Sullivan under the oversight of the Fine Gael/Labour coalition.

However, he said it will still be "years before they are actually up and running".

The Meath East TD criticised Ms O'Sullivan's successor, Education Minister Richard Bruton, saying the lack of progress was "inexcusable".

"Students are suffering due to the delay in progressing these projects. Many students are being taught in overcrowded classrooms, which is having a detrimental impact on their education," he told the Irish Independent.

"Teachers are also being forced to rely on substandard resources due to a lack of space, especially in cases where temporary accommodation is in use for years on end."

A spokesman for Minister Bruton said the Government was "building more schools and providing more additional school places than ever before".

He said the department intends to complete all the school projects announced in 2014 - but admitted some have hit significant problems.

"In the case of school projects announced from within the multi-annual programme from 2015, 64 school projects have either been completed, are on site or are in advanced architectural planning," the spokesman said.

"The remaining six school projects announced for 2015 have not advanced as the department expected due to specific issues arising in the case of such projects such as site issues, planning difficulties etc."

However, Mr Byrne said the minister "needs to knuckle down" and ensure construction gets under way on the remaining projects.

"These new schools were meant to be delivered long ago and further delays cannot be tolerated," he said.

The 19 schools

EXTENSIONS

Knockanean Primary School, Ennis, Co Clare

St Finians CC, Swords, Co Dublin

SN Creachmhaoil, Craughwell, Co Galway

NEW SCHOOLS

Carrigtwohill Primary School, Co Cork

Gaelscoil Charraig Ui Leighin, Co Cork

Sonas, Carrigaline, Co Cork

South Suburbs Post-Primary School, Cork

Gaelcholaiste Charraig Ui Leighin, Co Cork

Carrigtwohill Post-Primary School, Co Cork

St Francis of Assisi, Balgriffin Park, Belmayne, Dublin 13

Belmayne Education Together NS, Balgriffin Park, Dublin 13

Gaelscoil Ros Eo, Rush, Co Dublin

Scoil Niamh, Citywest Community NS, Tallaght, Dublin

Citywest ET, Tallaght, Dublin

Claregalway ETNS, Claregalway, Co Galway

Gaelscoil an Longfoirt, Fearann Ui Dhuagain, Co Longford

Curraghmore NS, Mullingar, Co Westmeath

St Senans NS, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford

St Patricks Special School, Bohreen Hill, Enniscorthy, Co Wexford
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was accused of "throwing his weight around" over the issue of the border in the Brexit talks.

Speaking during the Prime Minister's update to parliament on progress on the negotiations, North Antrim MP Ian Paisley said Mr Varadkar should concentrate on the interests of the Republic or Ireland.

He said: "Has the Prime Minister taken the opportunity to remind the Republic of Irelands Taoiseach that it is about time that he started to pull his weight in the interests of the Republic of Ireland, rather than attempting to throw his weight around on the issue of the border?

"All that he doing is potentially damaging his economy more than the economy of Northern Ireland. Will the Prime Minister make an impression on the Labour partys front benchers that when they visit Northern Ireland and threaten that the peace process is an exchange for Brexit, they are playing with fire and they ought not to encourage that beast?"

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Responding, Prime Minister Theresa May said: "It is very important that all sides are clear that we must ensure that the Belfast Agreement is put into place, recognised and respected in its entirety.

"It is also important that we ensure that the peace programmes that have been possible through our membership of the European Union can continue.

"When it comes to resolving the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, it will be for us to work with the Republic of Ireland Government and the European Union more generally to find a solution that we all want to see, whereby there is no physical infrastructure at the border and no return to the borders of the past."
Banks at the centre of the tracker mortgage scandal are expected to issue a statement outlining their plans for paying compensation in the coming days.

It is understood the institutions hauled before Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe have agreed to issue separate statements confirming the next steps to paying the majority of people affected before Christmas.

Mr Donohoe is also due to issue a statement confirming he has broad agreement from the main lenders to speed up the redress scheme.

It is understood that AIB chief executive Bernard Byrne apologised for the bank's role in the scandal following his meeting with Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe today.

Mr Byrne said AIB was confident of making significant progress in relation to the customers who had issues with their tracker mortgages - and said he had outlined the work the bank had undertaken to date.

He said the bank would make a full statement on the issue tomorrow.

Ulster Bank has also apologised for its role in the tracker loan scandal.

CEO Gerry Mallon said he had apologised unequivocally for the bank's mistakes and that his "number one focus is putting this right and that is what we are going to work hard at now".

All the banks are expected to issue detailed statements tomorrow.

However, this deadline is expected to be challenging for both KBC and Bank of Ireland as they are understood to be behind in their efforts to identify affected customers and the amounts of money to be refunded.

Sources say Mr Donohoe told bank bosses he believes they have been dragging their feet in solving the problem, at real human cost.

After new Bank of Ireland boss Francesca McDonagh met the minister, the bank would only say: We had a meeting with the minister and we listened very carefully to what the minister had to say and his concerns.

We are treating this matter very seriously and well be making a statement in due course.

After leaving the meeting, KBC Bank chief executive Wim Verbraeken said the minister had conveyed the Governments grave concerns. He said the bank would make a full statement later this week.

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Permanent TSB did not comment on its meeting.

Banks are understood to have explained to Mr Donohoe that it is a massive task to work out the extent of overcharging on each individual account where a tracker product should have been in place.

Each mortgage account has to be reconstituted as if there was a tracker rate in place once the holder had come off a fixed rate.

Some of those affected went into arrears, further complicating the exercise.

Once the overcharged amount and the refund due is worked out, it then has to be verified and confirmed by third-party consultants.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar yesterday insisted that taxpayers will not be left to foot the bill for the banks mistakes.

Fianna Fail Finance Spokesperson, Michael McGrath has said that those affected by the Tracker Mortgage scandal must be given clarity on when they will receive what they are owed by the banks and that those who facilitated it must be held to account.

Deputy McGrath said that the tracker scandal has further damaged public confidence in the banking sector.

"As part of the current examination, around 13,000 customers have been affected by the banks failure to honour the customers contractual rights," he said.

"To add insult to injury, many banks have failed to hand back the money owed to their customers. Some are out of pocket to the tune of tens of thousands of euro, leaving many in arrears on their mortgage.

"We need an investigation, led by the Central Bank, to find out whether there was formal or informal coordination across the industry in the handling of tracker related issues.

"We owe it to the customers affected to ensure that they get the compensation they deserve for the trauma and stress they experienced as a result of the banks actions," he said.
President Michael D Higgins was welcomed to New Zealand with a traditional Haka.

The President is currently on a six day State Visit of New Zealand and began the day at Government House in Wellington.

Having pressed noses with Maori elders and taking part in a traditional Powhiri ceremony in which a warrior advanced towards him with a spear before placing a dart on the ground as a peace offering.

Maintaining eye contact with the warrior President Higgins stopped down and picked up the dart.

The warrior then slapped his thigh to signify that the ceremony had been a success.

After a Karanga, or call to welcome, a Maori party performed a traditional Haka.

In the dance, the President and their party were likened to passengers on an ancient war canoe.

Following this the Irish national anthem was played and a 21 gun salute fired.
Former RJP-N gen secy joins Congress

Former general secretary of Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal Jangilal Raya formally joined the Nepali Congress on Monday.
WOW air has launched the latest transatlantic flash sale from Dublin, with one-way tickets to nine North American destinations from 99.99.

The fares are available to Boston, Washington DC, Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago, Montreal and Toronto, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

WOW's flights from Dublin involve a stopover in Reykjavik, with meals, seat selection and bags (starting from 31.99 each-way) all charged as extra.

The sale prices are available online (wowair.ie) for travel between November 1 and December 13... perfect for pre-Christmas shopping, if thats your bag.

WOW flies five times weekly between Dublin and Reykjavik (from 39.99 each-way) but will suspend its service between Cork and Iceland this month due to low demand.

Last week, Icelandair announced that it would join WOW on the Dublin route, launching a six-times weekly service from May 2018.

Air routes are mushrooming between Ireland and North America, with Norwegian already offering a 99 sale this summer, and Aer Lingus adding new direct flights to Philadelphia from March 2018 - with several new aircraft on order to continue its transatlantic expansion.

This summer, it launched a new 169 "unbundled" fare offering.

WOW air plans to launch five new US destinations from Dublin in 2018, including Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St Louis and Dallas.

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The signal tower on Bray Head was used from 1815 until the Second World War. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

Hiker dwarfed by the Cliffs of Moher, with OBriens Tower in the distance. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

The Sheep's Head. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

View towards Cruagh Island from the cairn on the tidal islet of Illaunakeegher on Omey Island. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

Looking across to Mountain Common from the north-eastern part of the route on Inishturk. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

A walker beside the narrow chasm that separates Illandavuck from Erris Head. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

Spectacular cliffs line the promontory of Dun Balair on Tory Island. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

Ards Peninsula. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn, published by The Collins Press, 2016

Looking towards Bunglass from the summit of Slieve League. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

Looking for a great walk on the Wild Atlantic Way? Helen Fairbairn has the perfect book for the hiker's back pocket.

'Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way: A Walking Guide' is published by The Collins Press (collinspress.ie), and here, its author outlines 10 of her favourites.

From golden beaches to thrusting headlands and soaring sea cliffs, it's a selection that makes us want to get the boots on, with photos to match by Gareth McCormack.

1. Ards Peninsula, Co Donegal

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Whatsapp Ards Peninsula. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn, published by The Collins Press, 2016

This highly enjoyable, easy route explores a pleasant mixture of woodland and coastline at the tip of Donegal's Ards Peninsula. Highlights include a wooden boardwalk through the dunes, and 4km of sandy bays separated by rocky headlands. Terrain is firm throughout, and it all starts and finishes at historic Ards Friary.

Time: 2-3 hours Distance: 7km Difficulty: Easy

2. Tory Island, Co Donegal

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Whatsapp Spectacular cliffs line the promontory of Dun Balair on Tory Island. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

Lying 12km off the northwest coast of Donegal, Tory Island is the most remote place to walk in Ireland. Its unique atmosphere and spectacular coastline make it an evocative and intriguing spot to explore. A 35-minute ferry crossing brings you to the island, then a figure-of-eight circuit carries you past the lighthouse to the sheer cliffs and razor-sharp aretes of the north-east coast.

Time: 3-3 hours Distance: 11.5km Difficulty: Easy

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3. Slieve League, Co Donegal

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Whatsapp Looking towards Bunglass from the summit of Slieve League. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

The hike over Donegal's most majestic sea cliffs is a classic of Irish hillwalking. These are amongst the highest cliffs in Europe, and the scale of the scenery is simply breathtaking. The most popular route to the top is an out-and-back ascent from Bunglass. But beware  500m of ascent and the sheer drop to ocean mean the trip is not for the fainthearted!

Time: 3-4 hours Distance: 10km Difficulty: Hard

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4. Erris Head, Co Mayo

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Whatsapp A walker beside the narrow chasm that separates Illandavuck from Erris Head. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

This short trip packs a remarkable punch as it makes its way around the northern tip of Mayo's Belmullet Peninsula. The cliff-fringed headland feels wild and remote, and is crowned by a First World War lookout post. A series of marker posts make route-finding a simple affair, but the fabulous Atlantic views are nothing short of extraordinary.

Time: 1-2 hours Distance: 5km Difficulty: Easy

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5. Inishturk, Co Mayo

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Whatsapp Looking across to Mountain Common from the north-eastern part of the route on Inishturk. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

A picturesque harbour, a modest mountain summit and 130m-high sea cliffs are just some of the highlights of the circumnavigation of this charming Mayo island. The day starts with a 40-minute ferry journey, and continues with the discovery of the Inishturk's finest natural features. The hike fits perfectly into a day-trip, but the welcoming hospitality of the islanders makes it tempting to stay longer.

Time: 3-4 hours Distance: 10km Difficulty: Moderate

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6. Omey Island, Co Galway

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Whatsapp View towards Cruagh Island from the cairn on the tidal islet of Illaunakeegher on Omey Island. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

Timing is critical for this walk, because the route starts and finishes by crossing a tidal causeway. Get the tide wrong and you'll be stranded on the island! Once safely across the sand, Omey is all about its history. Millennia of human habitation on this County Galway outpost have left remains including a medieval church, a holy well, and ancient bones protruding from a monastic graveyard.

Time: 2-3 hours Distance: 8km Difficulty: Easy

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7. Cliffs of Moher, Co Clare

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Whatsapp Hiker dwarfed by the Cliffs of Moher, with OBriens Tower in the distance. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

This linear path carries you above Ireland's most famous sea cliffs. Almost a million people flock to these County Clare cliffs each year, but most never venture beyond the grounds of the visitor centre. This route lets you explore the full 13km of coastline between Doolin and Hag's Head, enjoying magnificent coastal scenery throughout.

Time: 3-4 hours Distance: 13km Difficulty: Easy

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8. Mount Eagle, Co Kerry

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Ancient ruins, spectacular coastal views and a mountain summit all feature on this highly recommended route at the tip of Kerry's Dingle Peninsula. In fact, it's hard to think of a route that packs more variety into 8km than this one. With clusters of beehive huts on the lower slopes and Great Blasket Island lying just offshore, fond memories are guaranteed.

Time: 3-3 hours Distance: 8km Difficulty: Moderate

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9. Bray Head, Co Kerry

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Whatsapp The signal tower on Bray Head was used from 1815 until the Second World War. Photo: Gareth McCormack, from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn (The Collins Press, 2016)

This relatively short, signed circuit visits the most dramatic coastal scenery on the famous Ring of Kerry. Lying at the western tip of Valentia Island, Bray Head is wild and rugged, with a Napeoleonic signal tower that perches precariously above 240m-high cliffs. Fabulous coastal views include the twin pyramids of the Skellig Islands.

Time: 2-2 hours Distance: 6km Difficulty: Easy

10. Sheep's Head, Co Cork

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Wild scenery and a rather primeval atmosphere pervade the tip of this remote peninsula in County Cork. This fully-signed hike lets you explore the final few kilometres of land before the promontory finally concedes to the sea. A cliff-ledge lighthouse and a ridge-top traverse of Ballyroon Mountain are just some of the treats on offer.

Time: 3-4 hours Distance: 12.5km Difficulty: Moderate

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Want to know more?

Find more on Helen Fairbairn at helenfairbairn.com, and on photographer Gareth McCormack on his website at garethmccormack.com.

For full details of these and twenty other walking routes, see Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way  A Walking Guide by Helen Fairbairn, published by The Collins Press, price 14.99.

For more on the Wild Atlantic Way, see wildatlanticway.com.
Traffic rolls on the Florida Keys Overseas Highway's Seven Mile Bridge Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017, near Marathon, Fla. Photo: Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau/HO

After a natural disaster hits a destination, should you travel or stay away?

Thats the question facing countless tourists who have booked, or are considering booking, trips to hurricane-ravaged Florida and the Caribbean.

Its natural to be swayed by fear and speculation. Hurricanes Irma and Maria caused unimaginable destruction last month, but destinations are urging tourists not to feel guilty about travelling to the area, but to spend their tourist dollars to aid recovery.

Come back to Turks & Caicos, reads a letter from the islands Minister of Tourism. You are helping us to rebuild our islands and returning normal lives to our people.

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Whatsapp Divers examine a trumpet fish Saturday, Sept. 30, 2017, in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary off Key Largo, Fla. Photo: Frazier Nivens//Florida Keys News Bureau/HO

The Florida Keys, where 50pc of the workforce is employed by tourism, has reopened to visitors. Although islands like Puerto Rico and Sint Maarten face overwhelming challenges, the western and southern Caribbean were mostly unaffected, and the vast majority of cruise ports are operational.

Cuba, where most owners of small restaurants and casas particulares depend on guests to support their families, wants visits now more than ever, says Edith Huntink of Rickshaw Travel.

The best way to support the region is by continuing to visit those beautiful islands, says Irish tour operator Tropical Sky.

Originally, this weeks travel features on Miami and the eastern Caribbean were scheduled for September. We held them back. But I think now is the time to publish. Florida and most of the Caribbean are open for business. Tourists really can do their bit to help.

Cruise control

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Celebrity Cruises are returning to the Caribbean, they tell me emphatically.

Like Carnival, Royal Caribbean and others, they are adapting itineraries where necessary, rather than cancelling sailings (guests will be notified of port changes).

Check their website (celebritycruises.ie) or with your Irish travel agent.

Travalue.ie has a two-night stay in Miami and seven-night Caribbean cruise on MSC Seaside in March from 1,599pp. Or Travel Escapes (travelescapes.ie) has a 16-night Fred Olsen cruise from the UK to Barbados from 1,399pp, departing December 5.

Caribbean deals

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Once Irma passed, 100pc of our clients went ahead with their plans, and in their own words, would never have known there was such disruption, says Veronica Flood of Tour America (touramerica.ie). Florida did a great job clearing up.

The company has a five-night trip to Miami from November 10, including direct return flights, from 799pp.

Meanwhile, Tropical Sky (tropicalsky.ie) has seven-night, all-inclusive stays at the Dominican Republics five-star Now Onyx Punta Cana from 1,299pp.

Find more deals on the ITAAs website (itaa.ie/offers).
Composite: Georgina Campbell with one of her awards (Dublin in background).

The Twelve Hotel in Bearna, Co. Galway, has been named Ireland's Hotel of the Year at the 2018 Georgina Campbell Awards.

The four-star was cited for its "fresh, youthful style and an exceptionally focused food and wine offering" convenient to both Connemara and Galway City.

Managed by "an inspired (and inspiring) proprietor" in Fergus O'Halloran, The Twelve "sings of quality and innovation at every level", Campbell said.

The 2018 awards, held today at Bord Bia's Thinking House in Dublin, also saw Dax in Dublin win Restaurant of the Year, while a 'Hospitality Hero' award for services to Irish food and hospitality was given to Beryl and James Kearney and chef Gary O'Hanlon of Viewmount House in Longford.

Full list of award winners:

Hotel of the Year: The Twelve Hotel, Bearna, Co. Galway

The Twelve Hotel, Bearna, Co. Galway Restaurant of the Year: Dax, Dublin

Dax, Dublin Chef of the Year: David McCann, Dromoland Castle, Co. Clare

David McCann, Dromoland Castle, Co. Clare Outstanding Guest Experience: Quinlan & Cooke, Caherciveen, Co. Kerry

Quinlan & Cooke, Caherciveen, Co. Kerry Host of the Year: Tony Frisby, Dromoland Castle

Tony Frisby, Dromoland Castle Business Destination of the Year: Tankardstown House, Slane, Co. Meath

Tankardstown House, Slane, Co. Meath Newcomer of the Year: Bullitt Hotel, Belfast

Bullitt Hotel, Belfast Country House of the Year: Virginia Park Lodge, Virginia, Co. Cavan

Virginia Park Lodge, Virginia, Co. Cavan Guesthouse of the Year: The Old Bank House, Kinsale, Co. Cork

The Old Bank House, Kinsale, Co. Cork B&B of the Year: Muldowney's B&B, Arranmore, Co. Donegal

Muldowney's B&B, Arranmore, Co. Donegal Farmhouse of the Year: Hillcrest farm, Ahakista, Co. Cork

Hillcrest farm, Ahakista, Co. Cork Bord Bia 'Just Ask' Restaurant of the Year: The Bay Tree Bistro, Waterford

The Bay Tree Bistro, Waterford Taste of the Waterways Award: St. George's Terrace, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim

St. George's Terrace, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim Seafood Restaurant of the Year: Hooked, Galway

Hooked, Galway Wine Award of the Year: Green Man Wines, Dublin

Green Man Wines, Dublin Pub of the Year: Bar One, Castlebar, Co. Mayo

Bar One, Castlebar, Co. Mayo Family Friendly Destination: Amber Springs, Gorey, Co. Wexford

Amber Springs, Gorey, Co. Wexford Pet-friendly Hotel of the Year: Pupp, Dublin

Pupp, Dublin Hideaway of the Year: Castle Murray House, Dunkineely, Co. Donegal

Castle Murray House, Dunkineely, Co. Donegal Atmospheric Restaurant of the Year: The Boathouse Bistro, Dromquinna Manor, Co. Kerry

The Boathouse Bistro, Dromquinna Manor, Co. Kerry Ethnic Restaurant of the Year: Nightmarket, Dublin

Nightmarket, Dublin Casual Dining Restaurant of the Year: Nobel, Holywood, Co. Down

Nobel, Holywood, Co. Down Cafe of the Year: Cakeface Patisserie, Kilkenny

Cakeface Patisserie, Kilkenny Natural Food Award: Vascoe, Fanore, Co. Clare

Vascoe, Fanore, Co. Clare Street Food Award: Food Depot - Gourmet Street Kitchen, Clonakilty & Courtmacsherry, Co. Cork

Campbell's annual awards are the longest running in Ireland, independently assessed, and eagerly awaited as a bellweather of trends in Irish hospitality.

Expand Expand Previous Next Close Twelve Hotel, Galway Georgina Campbell at her 2018 awards. Photo: Paul Sherwood / Facebook

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Through our programme of anonymous assessment were always keeping a sharp eye out for those exceptional establishments which are right on top of their game and going the extra mile for customers," Campbell said this afternoon.

"What we seek is not perfection but real food and hospitality with real heart, and were continuing to find it in clusters of excellence all over the country."

In delivering the awards, she noted especially good experiences in Northern Ireland, the Burren and the northwest, where communities are working together.

A new Street Food award is a nod to the boom in casual dining in Ireland, though she said there is no sign of fine dining disappearing.

"There are times something special is needed."

As is her custom, Campbell did not shy away from highlighting disappointments - particularly with rising hotel prices and "underperforming" four and five-star hotels.

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"Higher prices mean higher expectations, of course, but the high level of dissatisfaction is often down to simple things that could easily be fixed at any level, plus a lack of hospitality (which often means lack of a host) and poor staff training.

"Its hard to avoid the conclusion that there are too many underperforming four and five star properties, whereas good three stars deserve to be held in higher regard and we would like to see the best ones resist the ambition to move up to the next category.

She also called on the Government to retain the 9pc VAT rate for the hospitality industry.

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A British former assistant to Harvey Weinstein has said she has broken a confidential agreement to speak out about alleged sexual harassment by the disgraced movie mogul.

Zelda Perkins said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Monday that she wished to break the non-disclosure agreement said to have been made in October 1998.

Perkins, who worked for Miramax in London, shared a 250,000 payment with another woman who claimed she was sexually assaulted by Weinstein, according to the report.

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Ms Perkins, who waived her right to anonymity, said Weinstein had repeatedly sexually harassed her, starting when he asked her to massage him while he was in his underwear.

I want to publicly break my non-disclosure agreement, she told the newspaper, running the risk of legal action against her.

Unless somebody does this there wont be a debate about how egregious these agreements are and the amount of duress that victims are put under.

She said her first experience of harassment was when he asked her to massage him while he was wearing just his underwear, which she declined to do but his behaviour continued.

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But this was his behaviour on every occasion I was alone with him, she said. I often had to wake him up in the hotel in the mornings and he would try to pull me into bed.

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Weinstein, who denies allegations of non-consensual sex, has been accused of sexual harassment and abuse by dozens of women since a bombshell investigation published by The New York Times.

The 65-year-old is the subject of criminal investigations in the UK, Los Angeles and New York as well as a civil rights investigation in the US state.
Real Madrid football player Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodriguez are seen on July 8, 2017 in Ibiza, Spain. (Photo by Europa Press/Europa Press via Getty Images)

Real Madrid and Portugal's forward Cristiano Ronaldo poses with partner Georgina Rodriguez and his son Cristiano Ronaldo Jr as they arrive for The Best FIFA Football Awards 2016 ceremony

Real Madrid and Portugal's forward Cristiano Ronaldo poses with partner Georgina Rodriguez and his son Cristiano Ronaldo Jr as they arrive for The Best FIFA Football Awards 2016 ceremony

Cristiano Ronaldo's girlfriend Georgina Rodriguez is one proud mama-to-be.

The 22-year-old model is expecting a child with her boyfriend of nearly one year and showed off her growing baby bump in a sleek photoshoot with Hola! magazine, Spain's glossy celebrity bible.

The mag has teased a picture from her shoot, along with an excerpt from her interview where she says she "loves children". Georgina is reportedly around six months pregnant.

It's a busy time to be in the Ronaldo house - the Real Madrid superstar (32) just welcomed twins in June, but it's believed his seven-year-old son Cristiano Ronaldo Jr is a big help with his baby siblings.

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Rumours of Georgina's pregnancy have been swirling for months, but Ronaldo confirmed the news last month to Spanish newspaper El Mundo while on a recent trip to Ibiza with his other half and a group of friends.

Earlier this month, Ronaldo shared a sweet family picture of him with son Cristiano Jr (seven) and one-month-old twins Eva Maria and Mateo, saying he feels "blessed" with his young family.

In the case of his three children, he has not identified the mother - in 2010, he confirmed the news of his first child by announcing on social media, "With the agreement of the mother, who wishes to remain anonymous, I will have exclusive custody of my son."
Actress Julianne Moore has voiced her hopes that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein will face prosecution following accusations of sexual harassment.

The US star said it was important to recognise the recent wave of allegations against the producer as claims of criminal behaviour rather than just salacious conversation.

Moore, who has previously worked with Weinstein, but said she was never in a situation where she was alone with him, told NBC News: I think its really, really important when we discuss this that, rather than it being salacious conversation, this is criminal behaviour.

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I hope that hes prosecuted for some of these things. I hope that some of the charges stand.

Her comments come after it was announced that The Weinstein Company, co-founded by Weinstein, was under an investigation by New Yorks top prosecutor.

The states attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, launched the civil rights investigation on Monday, saying: No New Yorker should be forced to walk into a workplace ruled by sexual intimidation, harassment, or fear.

The probe will look into what previous complaints have been made within the company, following claims from stars such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie who have recently accused Weinstein of sexual harassment.

Rose McGowan claimed in a tweet that the disgraced producer had raped her, but Weinstein has so far unequivocally denied non-consensual sex.

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Matt Damon, who worked with both Weinstein and Paltrow on 1999 film The Talented Mr Ripley, said: I knew the Gwyneth story. She and I never talked about that. Harvey was incredibly respectful of her, always.

I dont know what I would have done. I never saw it in front of me.

He was a bully, he was intimidating, that was part of who he was and Ive been reading these stories because I am racking my brain Could I have known something? Is there something I could have done?

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But Moore said: Rather than continue to discuss what could have happened (we should be discussing) what can we do to prevent it? How can we communicate to people that its not okay, that they should speak out, that they will have support, that people will be taken to task?

Damon added: I think women are seeing that their voices are not going to fall on deaf ears.

(Weinstein) is a pariah, and he was the most powerful guy in Hollywood. Hes got to face justice, hes got to face what hes done.

As well as the dozens of direct complaints launched against Weinstein  who has since been fired from The Weinstein Company and resigned form its board  a number of high-profile stars have condemned his alleged behaviour.

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According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tom Hanks spoke at an NPR Presents event this week and said of predatory Hollywood executives: They think, somehow, this is how it works. Dont you understand, this is how it works, Im your boss and you will have to please me.

I think those days are close to (over). I dont know if theyll ever be over.

He also urged all people who may have witnessed such behaviour in the workplace to ask themselves: Did you aid it? Did you abet it? Did you warn people against it?
US actor Matt Damon and his wife Luciana Barroso arrive for the opening ceremony of the 74th Venice Film Festival and the premiere of the movie "Downsizing", on August 30, 2017 at Venice Lido. / AFP PHOTO / Filippo MONTEFORTEFILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images

US actor Matt Damon and his wife Luciana Barroso arrive for the opening ceremony of the 74th Venice Film Festival and the premiere of the movie "Downsizing", on August 30, 2017 at Venice Lido. / AFP PHOTO / Filippo MONTEFORTEFILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images

US actor Matt Damon and his wife Luciana Barroso arrive for the opening ceremony of the 74th Venice Film Festival and the premiere of the movie "Downsizing", on August 30, 2017 at Venice Lido. / AFP PHOTO / Filippo MONTEFORTEFILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images

Matt Damon and Luciana Barroso walk the red carpet ahead of the 'Downsizing' screening and Opening Ceremony during the 74th Venice Film Festival at Sala Grande on August 30, 2017 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

Matt Damon and Luciana Barroso walk the red carpet ahead of the 'Downsizing' screening and Opening Ceremony during the 74th Venice Film Festival at Sala Grande on August 30, 2017 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

Matt Damon and Luciana Barroso walk the red carpet ahead of the 'Downsizing' screening and Opening Ceremony during the 74th Venice Film Festival at Sala Grande on August 30, 2017 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)

US actor Matt Damon and his wife Luciana Barroso arrive for the opening ceremony of the 74th Venice Film Festival and the premiere of the movie "Downsizing", on August 30, 2017 at Venice Lido. / AFP PHOTO / Filippo MONTEFORTEFILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images

US actor Matt Damon and his wife Luciana Barroso arrive for the opening ceremony of the 74th Venice Film Festival and the premiere of the movie "Downsizing", on August 30, 2017 at Venice Lido. / AFP PHOTO / Filippo MONTEFORTEFILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so when Matt Damon and his wife Luciana Barroso make a rare red carpet appearance, you take note.

The Oscar-winning star (46) and wife of 12 years are often considered one of the most rock solid in Hollywood and look happier than ever two years after renewing their wedding vows.

Damon and Barroso were among the guests of honour at the premiere of his latest film Downsizing at the Venice Film Festival, with the mother-of-four taking centre stage in a floor sweeping semi-sheer red gown with a plunging cut-out neckline and her other half went for a classic black tuxedo.

Downsizing is a sci-fi satire focused on the perils of overpopulation and sees Damon and his onscreen wife Kristen Wiig debate whether or not to shrink themselves to one percent of their body to live in a luxurious government-funded complex. Wiig, was also on hand to promote the film, with a new slicked back hairstyle and a glittering Zuhair Murad gown.

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The couple famously at a bar in Miami where she was working in 2002 while he was filming Stuck On You in Miami and he's never shied away from gushing over his other half.

"I literally saw her across a crowded room, literally," he previously recalled of their first meeting. "Eight years and four kids later, that's my life. I don't know how else our paths would've crossed if that didn't happen. If all those things didn't happen."

He credits marrying a "civilian" with keeping him and his family grounded and doesn't feed the tabloids with a salacious personal life.

I got lucky, I fell in love with a civilian," he previously told Esquire. "Not an actress and not a famous actress at that. Because then the attention doesnt double  it grows exponentially. Because then suddenly everybody wants to be in your bedroom.

Expand Close US actor Matt Damon and his wife Luciana Barroso arrive for the opening ceremony of the 74th Venice Film Festival and the premiere of the movie "Downsizing", on August 30, 2017 at Venice Lido. / AFP PHOTO / Filippo MONTEFORTEFILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images / Facebook

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But I dont really give them anything. If Im not jumping up and down on a bar, or lighting something on fire, or cheating on my wife, theres not really any story to tell. They can try to stake me out, but theyre always going to get the same story  middle-aged married guy with four kids. So as long as that narrative doesnt change too much, theres no appetite for it."

The Venice Film Festival will span over 10 days and actress Annette Bening is presiding over the jury, which will see a host of stars, including Jennifer Lawrence and her director boyfriend Darren Aronfksy, descend on the Italian city.

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Govt fails to monitor Tihar bullion market

The Department of Supplies Management did not monitor the quality of gold and silver jewellery and utensils sold during Tihar, the festival when bullion sales skyrocket, stating it does not have a guideline to do so.
Photographer Terry Richardson and actress Demi Moore attend the OHWOW & HTC celebration of the release of "TERRYWOOD" at The Standard Hotel & Spa on December 7, 2012 in Miami Beach, Florida. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for HTC)

(L-R) Paris Hilton, Nicky Hilton and Terry Richardson attend the Jeremy Scott fashion show during MADE Fashion Week Spring 2014 at Milk Studios on September 11, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images)

Photographer Terry Richardson attends The Annie Leibovitz SUMO-Size Book Launch presented by Vanity Fair, Leon Max and Benedikt Taschen during Vanity Fair Campaign Hollywood at Chateau Marmont on February 26, 2014 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Vanity Fair)

Kate Moss and Terry Richardson attend the Mango new collection launch at Centre Pompidou on May 17, 2011 in Paris, France. (Photo by Julien M. Hekimian/Getty Images)

Fashion photographer Terry Richardson has been banned from working with Vogue magazine as well as some of the world's biggest selling titles.

Richardson (52) has been working in the fashion and celebrity portrait industry for years and his pictures are famously explicit and often controversial - famously directing a naked Miley Cyrus in her Wrecking Ball video and and shot Kylie Jenner's suggestive 2017 calendar.

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He has worked with everyone from Miley Cyrus and Kim Kardashian to Miranda Kerr and Kate Moss.

Conde Nast International issued correspondence with staff members at all of its international titles that they would no longer be working with Richardson and any pending work by him should be "killed or substituted with other material", according to the Daily Telegraph.

Accusation of harassment and sexual exploitation by models have followed Richardson throughout his career, which he has always denied.

The email concerning an "important matter" as sent by Conde Nast's executive vice president and chief operating officer James Woolhouse on Monday. "Please could you confirm that this policy will be actioned in your market effective immediately. Thank you for your support in this matter," he wrote.

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Conde Nast's impressive roster of titles includes Vanity Fair, GQ and W.

A reason for the ban was not given, but the Telegraph report suggests it could be in connection with a Sunday Times article which asked why the controversial photographer was still being "feted by fashionistas" in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Since more than 40 women have come forward accusing Weinstein of harassment and assault, a number of models, including Christy Turlington, have stated that sexual exploitation is rampant in the fashion industry, but did not name Richardson or any photographer in particular.

In 2001, Canadian model Liskula Cohen said she walked out of a Vogue photoshoot because she wasn't comfortable with his requests. "He wanted me to be completely naked and pretend to give one of the men a sex act, while he was also naked," she told New Statsmen, adding the men were not models, but his friends.

In 2014, after reportedly offering a model an appearance in Vogue in exchange for sex, a spokesperson for the American edition of the magazine said it had "no plans to work him" going forward.

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Richardson issued a statement to the Huffington Post on Friday in response to allegations of sexual misconduct.

"I collaborated with consenting adult women who were fully aware of the nature of the work, and as is typical with any project, everyone signed release. I have never used an offer of work or a threat of rebuke to coerce someone into something that they did not want to do."
Women's rights groups in Portugal have reacted angrily to a court decision that quoted the Bible in justifying a suspended sentence for a man convicted of assaulting his ex-wife with a spiked bat because of alleged adultery.

The man was given a 15-month suspended sentence and a fine of 1,750 euros for using a bat spiked with nails to assault the woman in the street in 2015, leaving her covered in cuts and bruises.

The prosecutor had argued the sentence was too lenient and asked an appeal court for prison time of three years and six months, but judges rejected his request.

In a written ruling, the judges expressed "some understanding" for the attacker, saying a woman's adultery is "a very serious offence against a man's honour and dignity".

They noted the Bible says an adulterous woman should be punished by death and also cited a 1886 Portuguese law that gave only symbolic sentences to men who killed their wives for suspected adultery.

The judges at the appeal court in Porto, Portugal's second-largest city, wrote that they were making reference to the Bible and an old law "to stress that a woman's adultery amounts to conduct which society has always condemned and condemned very strongly".

The written ruling became public this week and sparked outrage on Portuguese social media, with rights groups speaking out.

The Women's Alternative and Response Union described the ruling as "inadmissible" because it legitimised violence against women and blamed the victim.

It said the separation of powers in Portugal means there is no place for the Bible in the courts.

The group plans to stage street protests on Friday.

Portugal's Superior Magistrates Council, an oversight body, said it had taken note of the "vivid criticism from broad sections of public opinion", but added courts are independent and it could not intervene, even when faced with "archaic, inappropriate or unfortunate" comments by judges.

The woman could appeal to Portugal's higher courts.
Albert Einstein's formula for a happy life was sold for 1.3 million US dollars (1 million) at an auction in Jerusalem.

The Nobel-winning scientist's musings, on a handwritten note, may not be as famous as his groundbreaking theory of relativity, but they still shed light on one of the great modern minds.

Winner's Auctions and Exhibitions said Einstein was travelling in Japan in 1922 when he was told he would be awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.

In Tokyo, Einstein scribbled the note in German to a bellboy after he did not have cash to give him a tip.

"A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness," it reads.

Gal Wiener, chief executive of the auction house, said Einstein told the bellboy that because of his fame, the handwritten note "will probably be worth more than a regular tip".

Wiener said bidding began at 2,000 and quickly escalated, with the bidding war lasting around 25 minutes.

Another note Einstein gave the bellboy, which read Where There's A Will There's A Way, was sold for over 200,000 dollars, Mr Wiener said.

He would not identify the buyer or seller of either note.

Einstein was a founder of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and left it his literary estate and personal papers.

He declined an invitation to serve as Israel's first president.

Einstein died in 1955.

AP
Comedian Sean Hughes had wanted a 'cheerful' funeral and that is what he got as his fellow comics bid their final farewell to him.

Among those who attended the funeral at Islington and Camden Cemetery in London yesterday were comedians Jack Dee, David Baddiel and Johnny Vegas.

Also paying his last respects was Phill Jupitus, who appeared alongside Hughes on panel show 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks'.

Hughes' brothers, Alan and Martin, had issued an open invitation to anyone who had been a "significant part of Sean's life, at any stage" to join the family yesterday. The funeral was followed by a wake.

Hughes (51), who was born in London but grew up in Firhouse, Dublin, died on October 16 following a short illness. It is understood he suffered a heart attack following a flare-up of cirrhosis of the liver.
Govt set to hand over project licence to TBI

While the Investment Board Nepal (IBN) was gearing up to launch international bidding to develop the much-awaited Tamakoshi 3 Hydropower Project,
Police said they opened fire after being attacked by villagers

Police in northern Burma have opened fire on hundreds of villagers who tried to enter a jade mine, killing at least five and injuring 20 others, state media said.

Five policemen were also reportedly hurt.

Burma's official news agency said 50 jade seekers initially tried to force their way into the privately-owned mine area in Kachin state on Wednesday night, but were blocked by patrolling police.

It said they left, but nearly 600 people returned an hour later and clashed with the officers, burning trucks and damaging a digger.

The government news agency said police opened fire after being attacked with knives.

It said nine of the injured are in serious condition. Independent accounts of the clash were not immediately available.

The state's Hpakant township has much of the world's highest-quality jade ore.

Big, well-connected companies mine most of the jade, while desperately poor villagers risk their lives by digging for scraps.

Piles of mining waste have collapsed on villagers several times, killing dozens.
The head of Germanys financial regulator has warned that City firms are at increasing risk of a cliff-edge Brexit, as he urged banks wanting to relocate to the country to speed up their applications.

Felix Hufeld, president of Bafin, said that the regulator is currently preparing for the worst, given the lack of progress from the last five rounds of Brexit talks.

Negotiators have not made sufficient progress on the designated key separation issues, he said in a speech delivered at an event organised by consultancy zeb in London.

For the time being, we therefore have to assume that the UK will not be a member of the common market or anything close to it following Brexit.

There are only 18 months to go before that happens, possibly leading to a so-called cliff-edge situation.

Bafin has already conducted several workshops with a number of firms, and while it will offer assistance to all institutions that are interested in relocating their business to Germany, Mr Hufeld warned that resources could be tested.

He said: Some time ago we set up virtual structures for this with dedicated teams to act as permanent points of contact for an institutions authorisation procedure.

But we only have limited resources, too, of course. So, as the saying goes, its first come, first served.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has arrived in the Central African Republic amid mounting communal violence and a deteriorating humanitarian situation.

The UN chief has called the country one of the world's most dangerous places for aid workers to serve.

Already a dozen UN peacekeepers have been killed.

Mr Guterres has recommended that the number of peacekeepers be increased by 900 to a total of about 12,000.

The United States has been seeking to cut the costs of UN peacekeeping operations but Mr Guterres has said more are needed in Central African Republic to protect civilians.

Mr Guterres is also accompanied on his trip by the United Nations' first victims' rights advocate, Jane Connors.

Central African Republic is where the largest number of sexual abuses allegations was made against peacekeepers last year.

AP
Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a military force with political clout and an industrial empire, stands to benefit from heightened tension between Washington and Tehran, analysts said.

US President Donald Trump broke ranks with other major powers earlier this month by disavowing Iran's compliance with a 2015 multinational nuclear deal, complicating life for foreign investors nervous of possible new US sanctions.

The IRGC, which reports directly to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, began rapidly expanding its commercial interests a decade ago, before US and EU sanctions were imposed on Iran's oil and finance sectors in 2012 over the country's nuclear programme.

It controls businesses ranging from ports management to telecommunications and has made the most of both cooling and warming ties with the West.

When Western oil companies vacated energy projects in Iran after 2012, the Guards took them on; after the penalties were lifted in 2016, the IRGC, through front companies, served as a conduit for foreign business flowing into Iran.

If investors are put off again, the IRGC is ready to step in, said an official from Mr Khamenei's camp.

"We want foreign investors to stay, but if they leave because of [US] pressure, the Guards can easily replace them. There is no better alternative," the official said, declining to be named because he was not authorised to speak to media.

Under sanctions, Iran's clerical rulers rewarded the Guards by showering them with contracts for skirting the restrictions as well as for suppressing dissent at home and helping Tehran's regional allies from Iraq to Lebanon.

The IRGC's lack of technical expertise and concern over the viability of its economic ventures under sanctions meant it later welcomed pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani's deal that eased sanctions in return for curbs on the nuclear programme.

Mr Khamenei, a hardliner who holds ultimate authority on matters of state, guardedly endorsed the nuclear accord but has said Mr Rouhani's economic follow-through has fallen short.

To bypass existing unilateral US sanctions, which bar any business with the Guards and its affiliated firms, many of the IRGC's front companies are not even formally owned by the Guards, but by individuals and firms linked to it.

Mr Rouhani has tried to encourage reluctant major European firms and banks to return to Iran by seeking to curb the Guards' involvement in the economy, which led to the IRGC transferring ownership of some companies to the state.

In recent months, the IRGC, which sees itself as a bulwark against Western influence, has criticised Mr Rouhani for viewing foreign countries as the key to economic growth.

"The IRGC will be the main beneficiary of the tension with Washington ... In order to protect its economic dominance, the IRGC prefers only limited opening to the West," said a Western diplomat who follows Iran closely.

While backing the nuclear deal, Europeans share Washington's concern over Iran's ballistic missile programme and "destabilising" regional behaviour. The IRGC has vowed to accelerate the disputed missile programme.

Many foreign firms remain hesitant to invest in Iran for reasons including lingering unilateral US sanctions imposed over human rights violations and alleged Iranian links to terrorism, and the dominant role of the IRGC in the Middle East's second largest economy.

Among European firms that have announced big deals in Iran since last year are planemaker Airbus, French energy group Total, and Germany's Siemens. Iran needs the equivalent of billions of dollars in investment to revitalise industries including oil and gas and develop sectors held back by a lack of Western financing and economic influence of the IRGC.
Hong Kong's highest court has freed pro-democracy activists Joshua Wong and Nathan Law on bail pending an appeal against their prison sentences after they were convicted of sparking massive protests in 2014.

They were imprisoned after the justice secretary had an earlier, more lenient sentence overturned, raising concerns about political interference in the courts and dealing a setback to the movement for full democracy in the Chinese-controlled city.

The decision to release Mr Wong, Hong Kong's most famous activist, and Mr Law, a disqualified legislator, came the same day China's Communist Party was ending a twice-a-decade congress in Beijing that expanded President Xi Jinping's power.

Though the events were unrelated, they highlighted the widening rift between mainland China and semi-autonomous Hong Kong.

Mr Wong, 21, and Mr Law, 24, told reporters outside the Court of Final Appeal that they were granted bail until their appeals are heard on November 7.

They said they were looking forward to having meals with their families after what Mr Law said were some "uncomfortable times" during their two months in prison.

Even though they have been bailed, they said it was unclear if their appeals would be successful and that they are prepared to go back to prison.

"There will be more occasions in the future when our group of young people will go to prison, but we will persist in keeping the faith and working together to fight for democracy," said Mr Wong, who is also awaiting sentencing for a separate contempt case.

"The government can lock up our bodies but cannot lock up our minds," he said, adding that their time in prison was a chance for them to strengthen their determination.

"The world is watching the result of the case," and what it means for rule of law and the "one country, two systems" principle that guarantees Hong Kong wide autonomy and civil liberties unseen in mainland China, Mr Law said.

Broadcaster RTHK reported that Judge Geoffrey Ma required each to post 50,000 Hong Kong dollars (4,800) for bail, surrender their travel documents and report to police once a week.

They were originally given community service sentences that let them avoid prison after convictions for involvement in an unlawful assembly that kicked off the "Umbrella Movement" protests.

Hong Kong's justice secretary requested that the courts review those punishments, and in August, Mr Wong was given six months in prison and Mr Law received eight months.

The move sparked fears that authorities were undermining the city's independent judiciary.

Mr Wong gained fame, including a starring role in a Netflix documentary, because he was still a teenager when he helped spearhead the 2014 protests against Beijing's decision to restrict elections that brought major Hong Kong thoroughfares to a standstill for 79 days.

Mr Law, also a former protest leader, was elected to the legislature last year, becoming the city's youngest-ever legislator, but was disqualified from office after a government legal challenge.

A third student leader, Alex Chow, did not request bail in the same case.

In another development highlighting concerns about human rights in the city, the Chinese and Swedish governments confirmed the release of Gui Minhai, one of five Hong Kong booksellers believed to have been abducted and spirited to mainland China for selling gossipy titles about elite Chinese politicians to Chinese readers.

Sweden's foreign ministry said it was informed by Chinese authorities that Mr Gui, who has Swedish citizenship, had been released from Chinese detention, although Mr Gui's daughter disputed the news.

China's foreign ministry said in a brief statement that he had been released on October 17 after "serving out his prison term for which he had been sentenced for the crime of having caused a traffic accident".

It gave no information about his whereabouts or other details.

Mr Gui disappeared from his Thai vacation home in late 2015 and resurfaced in January 2016 on China's state broadcaster CCTV, where he said he returned to China to turn himself in for an old crime.

AP
South Korea's Hyunmoo II ballistic missile is fired during an exercise at an undisclosed location in South Korea, Monday, Sept. 4, 2017. (South Korea Defense Ministry via AP)

South Korea's Hyunmoo II ballistic missile is fired during an exercise at an undisclosed location in South Korea, Monday, Sept. 4, 2017. (South Korea Defense Ministry via AP)

An Hyunmoo II ballistic missile is fired during an exercise in South Korea, (South Korea Defence Ministry/AP)

South Korea has conducted its first live-fire drill for an advanced air-launched cruise missile it says will strengthen its pre-emptive strike capability against North Korea in the event of crisis.

South Korea's military said the Taurus missile fired from an F-15 fighter jet travelled through obstacles at low altitudes before hitting a target off the country's western coast.

The missile, manufactured by Germany's Taurus Systems, has a maximum range of 500km (310 miles) and is equipped with stealth characteristics that will allow it to avoid radar detection before hitting North Korean targets, according to Seoul's Defence Ministry.

South Korea has been accelerating efforts to ramp up its military capabilities in face of a torrent of nuclear weapons tests by North Korea, which on September 3 conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test to date.

Shortly after the nuke test, Seoul announced it reached an agreement with Washington to remove the warhead weight limits on South Korean ballistic missiles, which under a bilateral guideline could be built for a maximum range of 800km (497 miles).

A pre-emptive strike against Pyongyang's leadership would be difficult to undertake, but it is widely seen as the most realistic of the limited military options Seoul has to deny a nuclear attack from its rival.

The North said its latest nuclear test was a detonation of a thermonuclear weapon built for its developmental intercontinental ballistic missiles that were flight tested twice in July.

The country is also developing solid-fuel missiles that could be fired from land mobile launchers or submarines. It flew a powerful new mid-range missile over northern Japan last month while declaring more missile tests targeting the Pacific Ocean.
Meeting targets

When results are not forthcoming, it is all too easy to look for someone to blame. This is true for education too. Today, there are 264 million children and youth not going to school.
The Trump administration is determined to get tax legislation into law this year (AP)

Donald Trump has engaged in a furious exchange of tweets and counter-tweets with a Republican senator, saying he "couldn't get elected dog catcher" while the congressman fired back that the president was "utterly untruthful".

"#AlertTheDaycareStaff," tweeted Bob Corker, an outspoken Republican critic of Mr Trump.

The latest clash came ahead of Mr Trump's lunch with Republican senators on Capitol Hill as Congress turns its focus to overhauling the nation's tax code.

Early on Tuesday, Mr Corker said on NBC's Today programme that the Republican-led Congress should set the course on taxes after Mr Trump dismissed at least one idea on retirement plans.

Asked if Mr Trump should leave the issue to Congress, Mr Corker said: "I think that's the best way for us to have success."

That prompted an angry Twitter response from the president, who wrote: "Bob Corker, who helped President O give us the bad Iran Deal & couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting Tax Cuts...."

Mr Corker took to his own Twitter account to respond: "Same untruths from an utterly untruthful president. #AlertTheDaycareStaff."

Mr Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations chairman, has previously dubbed the White House an "adult day care centre" and said Mr Trump could be setting the nation on a path to World War Three.

Mr Trump has called him "Liddle' Bob Corker".

The Tennessee Republican senator said later that world leaders are "very aware" that much of what Mr Trump says "is untrue", and the president is "debasing our nation".

Speaking to CNN outside a congressional hearing room, he said: "The president has great difficulty with the truth on many issues."

Mr Corker, who is retiring, said Mr Trump "is obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president", and his tenure will be remembered for "the debasing of our nation, the constant non-truth-telling, the name-calling... it's very sad for our nation".

The president responded that Mr Corker decided to retire after Mr Trump refused to endorse him "and now is only negative on anything Trump. Look at his record!"

AP
Kolkata, Oct 24 (IBNS): Chief Secretary of West Bengal government, Malay Kumar De, on Tuesday confirmed that 34 persons have died due to dengue so far in the state while 18,238 people have been infected with the mosquito-borne viral disease.

"Thirty-four dengue deaths have been reported so far while 18,238 others have been infected with dengue fever in West Bengal," Malay De said during a press conference here at state secretariat Nabanna in Kolkata.

"Infections due to DEN-2 (dengue strain type 2) and DEN-4 (dengue strain type 4) have increased this year while no DEN-5 (dengue strain type 5) case has been reported so far," Chief Secretary added.

Malay De said that the state government is monitoring the situation very closely.

"All civic bodies have been instructed to carry out anti-dengue drive and we are monitoring the entire situation," he said.

"There is no question of hiding dengue data and we are sharing every single updates with the media," Malay De added.

Chief Secretary Malay De requested people not to trigger panic as dengue situation in the state is still under control.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha,Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Amish, the Indian author, of Shiva Trilogy fame (The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas, and The Oath of the Vayuputras), has come out with his seventh book, Immortal India, in 2017. The author, on a recent visit to Kolkata on a book signing programme, spoke to IBNS correspondent Souvik Ghosh, sharing his views on a range of issues in India.

Tell me about the story of the book briefly.



Immortal India is my thought on various social issues in our country using the lens of our ancient wisdom. I feel that there are several positive liberal messages hidden in our ancient culture which, regrettably, are unknown to many because we do not teach them in our education system. So, I address various issues in this book like women's rights, freedom of expression, LGBT rights, historical issues, social issues, in the form of thousand to fifteen hundred word-articles so that one can read them in discrete pieces.

How did you strike upon such a story line?



The way has been the same for me like other fictional books that I have written till now. They all are fictional stories but loosely have at their core have some philosophies or points of view that I want to convey. So, normally the philosophy and points of view are step one and two, respectively, which is a wrapper around the philosophy. I have always conveyed the step two, which is the story but with Immortal India, I am conveying the step one. It is the core philosophies themselves, straight up, so it is a different genre for me.



How do you see the issues in present India which you have dealt in the book?



I feel two things. India had seen a very rapid change post 1991, after the economic reforms. Of course, poverty has declined though we still have to do a lot more. But the achievement has been good since 1991. This has also led to a lot of cultural changes and with any process of change, some negatives do emerge. Any process of change is disruptive, so that is one aspect. Second aspect which I feel is in the public debate space. Regrettably, we have two groups of extremists -the left wing and the right wing extremists - who are just after one another. Many of the centrists, who are avast majority in the country but not so well represented in the public debate space, need to speak up a bit more. Centrists are the majority in the country but not well represented in the public debate space.



Do you think the political wings, left wing and right wing, becoming intolerant towards each other leading to the chaos in the country?



No, this chaos is there only in the public debate space. Most common Indians are actually getting on with their lives. The point one is trying to make that the common Indians, who are actually across all places, communities, are largely centrists. We are deeply religious, liberal as well. By liberal, I mean the ability to describe different points of view but we are not a part of the public debate space. We need to make ourselves heard a little bit more for the good of public debate. The country is okay but it is the public debate space which is involved into this screaming matches which serves no purpose.



How do you see social media into this public debate?



Social media adds to this. One of the things I keep emphasising is that Twitter (social media) is not India (not everything). I am not denying that Twitter has a role to play but that is not India and we must always know that in mind. Debates on television channels are not India. India is far bigger than these.



Are you saying that people are getting involved into the social media too much instead of looking into the world?



No, I am saying that people are getting lost only on social media and TV debates and newspaper. Actually, there are two groups that are taking each other out all the time but this is not India. The country is far bigger. And in this debate space, people are not listening to the other side. All they want is to know how do they classify one into left wing or right wing. They are not even listening to the debating points. People are only trying to classify an individual and then decide whether to attack or support them.



How do you feel when you see some angry debates are taking place on social media where one is after the other? Is it painful to an author?



I think it is the nature of the modern debate. What has happened in modern debates, sadly, is the loss of nuance. Everything tends to get simplified. In the public debate space, that is the small circle, people like to see black and white but the world is actually not black and white. Nothing is simplistic. One cannot put the nuances in 140 characters (Twitter) and that is one of the sources of the problem. Things tend to be viewed very simplistically when actually life is very complicated. The nuances are getting lost.

Is it because social media is easily accessible, people tend to comment on anything?

No, that is good. Everyone must have the right to speak. The point is whether that should be the part of the public debate space which people listen to. There is certainly a case for every different shade of opinion to be heard. It should not be the case where one shade of opinion dominates one newspaper or the other. So in that sense, social media has been good. But everything has both positives and negatives in it. The negative is that everything is reduced to 140 characters so there is no nuance. So it will be better if all mainstream media gives openness to all points of view.



Image: Facebook page of Amish Tripathi.
Image: Wallpaper

New Delhi, Oct 24 (IBNS): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday greeted the UN on its 72nd anniversary.

"Greetings on @UN Day. We appreciate UNs efforts in promoting world peace & laud the wide range of initiatives under its guidance. #UNDay," the Prime Minister's tweet read.

Lauding the UN, he said in an ensuing tweet, "India is proud of the steadfast support & active participation in several @UN initiatives aimed at making our world a better place. #UNDay."

UN was established in 1945.





Image: Wallpaper
Image: g4sp/Wikipedia

Lucknow, Oct 24 (IBNS): At least 20 planes, both fighter and transport, of the Indian Air Force (IAF) will take part in a 'touch and go' drill on the Uttar Pradesh highway on Tuesday.

The 'touch and go'drill is performed by several countries where they allow their air forces to use stretches of large roads to use as the runway in case of emergency situations where the airbase gets destroyed by either natural calamity or from enemy strike.

PTI news agency quoted Gargi Malik Sinha, PRO, Defence, Eastern Command as saying, "It is for the first time any transport aircraft will land and then take off from the expressway. The AN-32 are meant for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief during floods or any other natural calamity."

The IAF is likely to use its Super Hercules C-130J, the main transport aircraft, during the drill.

Earlier in 2015, the Mirage-2000 fighters and Sukhoi-30 of the IAF have twice landed on highways in Uttar Pradesh.

Image: g4sp/Wikipedia


New Delhi, Oct 24 (IBNS): President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan met with Indian President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, in New Delhi.

President Ghani is on a one day working visit to India at the invitation of Prime Minister Modi.

He called on the Indian President at the Rashtrapati Bhavan early on Tuesday, which was followed by his visit to Hyderabad House to meet PM Modi.

Prime Minister Modi is hosting a lunch in honour of President Ghani, prior to which they engaged in detailed delegation level talks.

India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj also called on the visiting dignitary.

President Ghani will also give a public address at Vivekanand International Foundation.

The invitation on behalf of Prime Minister Modi for President Ghani to visit India was extended by the National Security Adviser of India when the latter visited Kabul on Oct 16.

According to the MEA, the visit will build upon the recent high level bilateral exchanges between the two countries, including the recent visits of Dr Abdullah Abdullah, Chief Executive of Afghanistan on Sep 27-29 and that of the Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Salahuddin Rabbani on Sep 10-11 to India for the meeting of the bilateral Strategic Partnership Council, which was co-chaired by EAM.

Both sides will have the opportunity to review the entire gamut of multifaceted bilateral strategic partnership, including the New Development Partnership; hold consultations and coordinate on furthering the shared objective of promoting peace, security, stability and prosperity in Afghanistan and efforts to combat the menace of terrorism; and discuss regional and global issues of mutual interest, the MEA release said.

Images: PIB
New Delhi, Oct 24 (IBNS): For India, Afghanistan is not just a strategic partner, but a nation that evokes endearing affection, said Indian President Ram Nath Kovind in New Delhi on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, President Ashraf Ghani of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, called on the Indian Prersident at Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Welcoming the Afghan President to India, President Kovind expressed admiration for the astute leadership that he has provided to Afghanistan through difficult times.

He also commended President Ghani for strengthening bilateral relations between India and Afghanistan.

President Kovind recalled President Ghanis speech at the Heart of Asia Summit in Amritsar in December 2016, and his visit to the Golden Temple.

He added that civilisation-related links and people-to-people contacts provide a strong foundation 'to our ever-growing friendship'.

The President said that in recent times, the two countries have deepened their strategic partnership.

The India-Afghanistan Trade and Investment Show in New Delhi brought the businessmen of both countries together and generated business worth over US $ 200 million.

The President expressed happiness at the opening of the air freight corridor between Kandahar and Kabul and Delhi.

He also noted that the Afghan cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat have been connected directly by air to Delhi.

The President said that securing sustained peace and security remain the key fundamentals in leading Afghanistan on the pathway of economic recovery and growth.

Unfortunately, mindless and senseless violence is being imposed on the people of Afghanistan, said President Kovind.

President Kovind strongly condemned recent terror attacks in Afghanistan, including in the provinces of Kabul, Kandahar, Ghazni and Paktia, which resulted in over 200 innocent people being killed.

The President said that India itself has been victim of state-sponsored, cross-border terrorism for decades.

"We can fully empathise with the ongoing quest of the Afghan people to secure peace. India believes that whatever initiatives are taken for bringing peace in Afghanistan should be Afghan-led and Afghan-controlled," the Indian President said.

Image; President of India/Twitter
New Delhi, Oct 24 (IBNS): BJP lawmaker Vinay Katiyar has said that Taj Mahal was earlier a temple.

"People should understand that it i Tejo Mandir," he told media.

He said the structure was built by Hindus kings.

Vinay Katiyar made the controversial comment at a time when some activists belonging to Hindu outfit Hindu Yuva Vahini on Monday went to the Mughal iconic building and recited 'Shiv Chalisa' inside its premise.

The youths, belonging to Rashtra Swabhimaan Dal (RSD) and Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV), were taken away by CISF personnel and released after they submitted a written apology, Hindustan Times reported.

Away from recent controversies surrounding the Taj Mahal, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Oct 17 said the grand Indian iconic structure was built by blood and sweat of Indian labourers.

The Chief Minister told media: "It does not matter who built it or for which reason, it was built by blood and sweat of Indian labourers."

Amid the controversy over the omission of Taj Mahal from Uttar Prdesh tourism department booklet, Yogi Adityanath is also likely to visit Agra on Oct 25 on what is being perceived as a damage control mission.

According to reports, Adityanath is expected to visit Taj Mahal and other monuments in the city.

On Oct 15, BJP MLA Sangeet Som defended the omission of Taj Mahal as one of the tourist attractions, saying the monument was built by a 'traitor' who imprisoned his father and targeted Hindus.

He said the Governments at the state and Centre are working to erase the blot of Akbar, Aurangzeb and Babur from history books.

Many people were pained to see that the Taj Mahal had been removed from the list of historical places what history which history the person who made Taj Mahal imprisoned his father he targeted the Hindus of Uttar Pradesh and India if these people still find place in history, then it is very unfortunate and I guarantee that history will be changed, Som said while addressing a programme at Meerut.

His comments drew criticism from various quarters, though the party later claimed that what Som had said only reflected his own views.
Myadi job lures migrant workers

Many Nepali migrant workers, who had come from India to celebrate the Dashain and Tihar festivals, have postponed their return to become temporary police personnel or Myadi Prahari for the upcoming elections.
Kolkata, Oct 24 (IBNS): The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday quizzed Trinamool Congress (TMC) Lok Sabha MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar in connection with its ongoing probe into the Narada sting operation, officials said.

According to reports, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar appeared at ED office at CGO Complex in Kolkata's Salt Lake area at around 11:30 am. with several documents.

ED sources claimed that the doctor-turned-MP is currently being interrogated and her statement is being recorded.

Earlier on July 14, officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) visited Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar's residence in Madhyamgram, on the outskirts of Kolkata, and questioned the TMC MP from Barasat Lok Sabha constituency for hours in connection with the same case.

Since Mar 14 last year, news portal- Narada News- released several sting operation footage, where TMC's leaders, ministers, MPs and MLAs were exposed while allegedly taking bribes.

From the beginning, TMC leaderships had claimed that the sting footage was doctored and a conspiracy of the Opposition.

After getting direction from the Calcutta High Court and Supreme Court, the CBI has started probe into the case.

On April 17, the investigation agency registered an FIR in connection with the case under several non-bailable sections against 12 influential leaders, cabinet ministers, MLAs and MPs of TMC and one senior IPS officer, who were seen taking bribes in the sting footage, reports said.

Besides CBI, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), has registered a money laundering case in Narada sting and it's currently investigating the case.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)
New Delhi, Oct 24 (IBNS): The Minister for Commerce and Industry Suresh Prabhu launched the official website for the Cell for IPR Promotion and Management (CIPAM) of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) here on Tuesday.

CIPAM has been set up under the aegis of DIPP with a mandate to effectively implement the National Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Policy.

Secretary DIPP Ramesh Abhishek was also present.



The website is interactive providing regular updates on all upcoming events including awareness and sensitization programs being conducted, as also information on all Intellectual Property Rights.

It would make available resource material on IPRs specially curated for various levels: schools, universities, industry and enforcement agencies.



One can read the latest news and updates, specially curated feed on all latest happenings in the world of IP, insightful and educational blogs by CIPAM and IP experts.



The website provides regular updates on the latest IP trends  statistics on applications filed, examined, grants and disposal for various IPRs. It would provide information on the various initiatives being taken by the Government to strengthen the IPR regime in the country.
New Delhi, Oct 24 (IBNS): In pursuance with Indiaas aAct East Policya, Indian Naval Ship Sukanya under the command of Commander SA Deodhar, NM arrived at Belawan Indonesia this morning to participate in the 30th edition of CORPAT (Coordinated Patrol) and 3rd Bilateral exercise between the Indian Navy and the Indonesian Navy.

The exercise is aimed to foster closer maritime ties with countries located on the rim of the Indian Ocean.

The upcoming bi-lateral exercise CORPAT scheduled from Oct 24  Nov 5 Nov 17 is a demonstration of Indias commitment to its ties with Indonesia and to the maritime security in the Indian Ocean Region.



The two navies have been carrying out Coordinated Patrols (CORPAT) on respective sides of the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) twice a year since 2002.



The aim of the CORPAT is to enhance mutual understanding and inter-operability between the navies, prosecute vessels involved in unlawful activities, conduct SAR and take measures against Sea Pollution.

Defence relations between India and Indonesia have been growing steadily with regular joint activities and interactions between the armed forces of the two countries.



These interactions would also provide opportunities for extensive operational and training engagements and contribute substantively to the maintenance of good order at sea.

The exercise seeks to strengthen the existing bonds of friendship between India and Indonesia, and underscore Indias partnership and solidarity with friendly countries of the region. As part of the Indian Governments vision of SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region), the Indian Navy has also been involved in assisting countries in the Indian Ocean Region with EEZ surveillance, Search and Rescue and other capability enhancement activities.

During the stay at Port Belawan, various activities such as official calls, formal reception on board ship, ship open to visitors, guided tours for Indian naval personnel and professional interaction between naval personnel of both the nations have been planned.


Image: www.YouTube.com

Kolkata, Oct 24 (IBNS): A middle-aged jeweler was suspected to have been murdered in his shop at Zakaria Street area under Jorasanko Police Station limits in central Kolkata on Monday night.

According to reports, nearly 55-year-old jeweler Md. Selim, who was a resident of north Kolkata's Rajabazar area, was found dead inside his shop's anti-chamber at around 10 pm.

"Jeweler's driver, Md. Iliyas, found him dead and called the local police in," a senior official of Kolkata Police told IBNS.

"Prima facie indicates that the man was murdered and local police and the officials of city police's homicide department have begun probe into the matter," he added.

Sources in the police said that few dummy or imitation-gems, at least three precious diamonds, which were stored inside a vault, and mobile phone of the businessman have gone missing since the murder took place.

"We are questioning jeweler's family members and his driver to get a clue," a city police official told IBNS.

However, none has been arrested so far in connection with the incident while body of the killed jeweler, Md. Selim, has been sent for post mortem.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)




Kolkata, Oct 24 (IBNS): Denouncing Myanmar government's treatment towards the Rohingya community, at least 17 minority and human rights groups held a massive rally to Myanmar consulate in Kolkata on Tuesday.

A large number of protesters took part in the protest march which started from Park Circus area in the late afternoon.

Police, however, stopped the rally near Ballygunge Phari, nearly 800 metres away from Myanmar embassy which is located at Ballygunge Circular Road.

"Aung San Suu Kyi's Nobel peace prize should be taken away as she is no longer a symbol of peace," an organizer told IBNS.

"We have few demands, including Myanmar government must provide citizenship to Rohingyas living there, Rohingyas, who have fled Myanmar and entered India to save their lives, must be given rehabilitation and the United Nations should form a committee to probe Myanmar army's torture on Rohingyas," he added.

According to the UN, more than 500,000 Rohingya refugees have poured into Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar since 25 August, having fled their homes after violence erupted in Myanmar's northern Rakhine province.

United Nations relief agencies and partner aid organizations have been helping the country to cope with the influx.

Recently External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj met Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and said Myanmar must take back Rohingya refugees, as it has been a burden for the neighbouring country.

Swaraj had expressed India's concern over the violence in Myanmar and said that peace can only be restored with the deportation of the refugees to the war torn Rakhine state.

The central government had already said they want to deport the Rohingyas as they are a threat to the national security.

The Centre, days ago, filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court stating that the presence of Rohingyas Muslims in the country poses national security threats as intelligence reports suggest links of a section of the immigrants, branded stateless in Myanmar, with Pak-based terror groups.

According to reports, the Centre had also told the apex court that whether or not Rohingya refugees should be allowed to settle in the country be left to the executive.

The top court had asked the government to file an affidavit following a petition against the deportation of the illegal immigrants to Myanmar.



(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)




Srinagar, Oct 24 (IBNS): Security forces arrested Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militant in Tral of Pulwama district of south Kashmir on Tuesday evening.

An official said that Arizoo Bashir Najar was arrested in Tral.

The arrest was done during a joint operation by police and the security forces.

Police said that Najar was active for quite some time.

(Reporting by Saleem Iqbal Qadri)
New York, Oct 24(Just Earth News): It was once known as the aBridge of Death,a the frontline between warring factions in the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR). Legendary tales were shared of the bridge being drenched in blood, with even Government security forces scared to set foot on it.





Fast forward to 2014, when the United Nations peacekeeping mission was deployed to CAR and steps began to be taken to bring together the militias in attempts at community reconciliation. It was not till October 2016, that local leaders joined forces with the UN peacekeepers to convince the militia groups to disarm and re-open the bridge.



On Monday, it is simply known as the Yakite Bridge. Located in the PK5 neighbourhood of Bangui, the strife-torn capital, it is booming with traffic and local merchants from both Christian and Muslim communities, thanks in part to the stabilization efforts of the UN peacekeeping mission.



This commercial suburb of Bangui is crowded with small traders trying to get back to normal business. Many traders have returned from neighbouring countries, including Cameroon, Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they escaped violence.



We are looking for peace. Now we want reconciliation, but they are still killing Muslims, says Lawadi Ismael, a representative for the neighbourhood, adding: When the fighting broke out in 2013, I never left. Now, business is slowly resuming, but these attacks against Muslims must stop, as he blames the Government for its alleged passivity, while asking the UN peacekeeping mission, known as MINUSCA, to do more to protect them.



We followed a joint patrol of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the CAR (MINUSCA) to the PK5 neighbourhood, the site of numerous clashes between the mainly Muslim Seleka rebels and the anti-Balaka militia, which are mostly Christian, during the civil conflict that erupted in 2013.



A unique aeronautics surveillance unit supports the patrol with live information gathering capacity: a camera equipped aerostat balloon, and three hover masts mounted on vehicles, send videos in real time to the joint operation centre, indicating any crowd movement or potential threats. This is used to guide the patrol to areas which need security, while protecting their members.



Even as technology helps the peacekeepers, reconciliation is still fragile, especially after recent attacks in the south-east and the centre of the country, often targeting minority communities.



The police assist mostly when we apprehend a suspect; the military takes the lead when the use of force is required, explains Jean-Marie Vianney, commander of the 36-strong Rwandan military platoon, as they head together with the 12-member Cameroonian Formed Police Unit (FPU) towards PK5.



"We need to reassure the population and discourage bandits," says Sergeant Epouba Martine Martial, a Cameroonian police officer with MINUSCA.



Despite noteworthy progress and successful elections, and a UN presence to shore up stability, support governance and provide humanitarian assistance, CAR has remained in the grip of instability and sporadic unrest.



The deteriorating situation has driven about a quarter of the people in the country from their homes and since the start of 2017, the number of IDPs has reached 600,000 and refugees in neighbouring countries number over 500,000.



More than 1 million Central Africans are displaced  inside the country or abroad  and in Bangassou, the camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) has reached 1,800 people and is still growing.



When he arrives in the area on 24 October, which is also United Nations Day, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected to pay tribute to the 12 peacekeepers who have died since January 2017 due to hostile acts.



Across the country, communal tensions are growing. Violence is spreading. And the humanitarian situation is deteriorating, said Guterres, who made it a point to mark UN Day with peacekeepers who put themselves on the frontlines in some of the most dangerous areas of the world.



In his latest report to the Security Council on CAR, the Secretary-General has requested reinforcements of 900 additional troops for the mission.



Lieutenant General Balla Keita, Force Commander of MINUSCA, is quite clear that the effect of this surge in capacity will help the mission stabilize the situation. However, he noted: There will never be a military solution for a peacekeeping operation. The solution will be a political one  a genuine negotiation with all parties.



UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe







Source: www.justearthnews.com






Ontario, Oct 24 (IBNS): Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently chatted with New Zealand Prime Minister-elect Jacinda Ardern via Skype.

Trudeau took to Twitter to deliver the news himself.

In his post, he wrote that he is eager to meet the newly elected Kiwi Prime Minister.

"Skype chat with New Zealand PM-designate @jacindaardern! Eager to meet in person soon to keep building ties & trade between our countries," his post read.

Ardern, 37, is one of the youngest Prime Minister designate in the world.

The incoming Prime Minister is the leader of the New Zealand Labour Party.

Last week, Trudeau had congratulated Ardern on Facebook soon after the announcement of her win was made public.

He had said, "...we have the opportunity to bring our two countries even closer together as we tackle common issues that face both Canadians and New Zealanders."

Both Trudeau and Ardern feature in the list of young leaders of the world.

Ardern is set to take office next month, after the New Zealand First party decided to form a centre-left coalition with her Labour Party.

The New Zealand national election had ended without a clear winner and the Kiwi population was waiting to know the name of their leader since Sep 23.

In her first full interview, she has attacked 'capitalism' as a 'blatant failure'.

"If you have hundreds of thousands of children living in homes without enough to survive, that's a blatant failure," she said. "What else could you describe it as?" she told current affairs programme The Nation.

Taking a swipe at the incumbent Prime Minister Bill English and his National Party, who held power for nine years, she said, "When you have a market economy, it all comes down to whether or not you acknowledge where the market has failed and where intervention is required. Has it failed our people in recent times? Yes."

"How can you claim you've been successful when you have growth roughly three per cent, but you've got the worst homelessness in the developed world?" she added.

She said that the measures for New Zealand will have to change,

"We need to make sure we are looking at people's ability to actually have a meaningful life, an enjoyable life, where their work is enough to survive and support their families," Ardern added.

Following her appointment, Ardern will become the youngest female leader of any developed economy.



Image: twitter.com/nzlabour
London, Oct 24 (IBNS): A British person, who was fighting against so called Islamic State in Syria, has been killed in Raqqa, media reports said on Tuesday

The person has been identified as Jac Holmes.

He had been fighting with Kurdish militia the YPG since 2015, media reports said.

Kurdish representatives in the UK said they had been told by YPG officials the former IT worker from Bournemouth was killed while he was clearing an area to make it safe for civilians, BBC reported.

His mother, Angie Blannin, told the British news channel: "He loved what he was doing there, he loved being a soldier. He had the courage of his convictions."

"He was just a boy when he left the UK, a little bit lost. He told me he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life. But by going out there, he found something that he was good at and that he loved," she said.

She said she has not seen her son for more than a year.

"We thought with any luck he'd be home for Christmas. It had been so tough since he had been away but I was always 100% behind him," she said.

"After all this, he had said he might go into politics, or perhaps into close protection security. He'd seen so much for a boy of his age," the mother said.

Ozkan Ozdil, who also fought with Mr Holmes in Syria, told the BBC his friend had become well-known and respected among Kurdish fighting units.
New York, Oct 24(Just Earth News): Blaming just the teacher or the school for systemic educational problems can have serious negative side effects, warns a new report from the United Nations educational agency.

Education is a shared responsibility between us all  governments, schools, teachers, parents and private actors, said Irina Bokova, Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in a press release.

Accountability for these responsibilities defines the way teachers teach, students learn, and governments act. It must be designed with care and with the principles of equity, inclusion and quality in mind, she added.

The report, titled Accountability in education: meeting our commitments, looks at the different ways people and institutions can be held accountable for reaching the internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goal for Education (SDG4).

The report, the second in the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) series, shows that blaming teachers for poor test scores and absenteeism is often both unjust and unconstructive.

Using student test scores to sanction teachers and schools makes it more likely they will adjust their behaviour to protect themselves, which may mean leaving the weakest learners behind, explained Manos Antoninis, Director of the GEM Report.

Accountability must start with governments. If a government is too quick to apportion blame to others, it is deflecting attention away from its own responsibility for creating a strong, supportive education system,

For example, that nearly half of teacher absenteeism in Indonesia in 2013/14 was due to excused time for study for which replacements should have been provided.

In Senegal, only 12 of the 80 missed school days in 2014 were due to teachers avoiding their responsibilities.

In the European Union in 2009-2014, 38 per cent of education and training tenders only had one bidder, compared to 16 per cent of tenders in the construction sector, indicating that the risk of corruption is higher in education than in the building industry.

The report says that whereas transparency would help identify problems, only one in six governments publish annual education monitoring reports.

The report calls on governments to:

design accountability mechanisms for schools and teachers that is supportive and avoid punitive mechanisms, especially those based on narrow performance measures;

allow for democratic participation, respect media freedom to scrutinize education and set up independent institutions to handle complaints;

develop credible and efficient regulations with associated sanctions for all education providers, public and private, that ensure non-discrimination and the quality of education;

make the right to education justiciable, which is not the case in 45 per cent of countries.

Photo: UNICEF/Wathiq Khuzaie

Source: www.justearthnews.com


Nepali migrant found dead in South Korea

A Nepali migrant worker was found dead in South Korea on Sunday.
New York, Oct 24(Just Earth News): Unless progress is accelerated, ending child marriage in West and Central Africa will take more than 100 years, with far-reaching, life-altering consequences for millions of child brides and crippling impact on the region's prosperity, the United Nations children's agency has said.

A new report released Monday from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Achieving a future without child marriage: Focus on West and Central Africa, reveals that, due to rapid population growth and high prevalence of child marriage, even if the current decline rate was doubled, it would not suffice to reduce the annual number of girls married.

We cannot continue to let so many of our girls miss out on their health, education, and childhood, said Fatoumata Ndiaye, UNICEF's Deputy Executive Director, in a press release, adding that at current rates, our report shows, it will take over 100 years to eliminate child marriage in the region  how is this acceptable?

The new projections, released during a UN-backed high-level meeting on ending child marriage in Dakar this week, aim to bring the spotlight on the region of the world where girls face the highest risk of marrying in childhood.

While the prevalence of child marriage in West and Central Africa has declined over the past two decades, progress has been uneven, and still four in 10 women are married before the age of 18 and, of these, one in three before the age of 15.

West and Central Africa includes six of the 10 countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage in the world: Niger; the Central African Republic; Chad; Mali; Burkina Faso and Guinea.

The report also highlights that progress is possible when the right mix of strategies is in place, such as empowering girls, mobilizing families and communities to change attitudes and behaviours, providing adequate services to girls at risk and to married girls and putting in place consistent laws and policies to protect and promote the rights of girls.

In five countries in the region  Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Togo, Ghana and Rwanda, declines ranged from 40 to 60 per cent over the past 25 years.

The longer a girl stays in school, the less likely she is to be married before the age of 18 and have children during her teenage years.

Getting girls to schools should be our top priority, said Ndiaye. Not only because it equips girls for life, but it also helps to lift their families, their communities, their countries out of poverty.

Photo: UNICEF/UN0118457

Source: www.justearthnews.com


New York, Oct 25(Just Earth News): Soap, toothbrushes, water containers and liquid antiseptic are among the items the United Nations migration agency is distributing to the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees that have settled in sprawling camps that cover the Cox's Bazar district of southern Bangladesh.

These kits ensure that Rohingya families  particularly women and children  can at least meet their personal care and hygiene needs as they face the harsh reality of life in the makeshift settlements, Sarat Dash, International Organization for Migration's (IOM) Bangladesh Chief of Mission said on Tuesday.

The kits, which also include hygienic cloths, menstrual hygiene products, undergarments, and other small personal items, are funded by the UN's Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).

To date, IOM has distributed 6,626 hygiene kits to the most vulnerable families, reaching an estimated 33,130 people among those that have arrived in Bangladesh after fleeing violence in Myanmar's Northern Rakhine state.

The kits are part of a $5 million CERF contribution to fund IOM shelter, health, water, sanitation and hygiene operations in Cox's Bazar.

CERF funding has been critical to saving lives in this humanitarian crisis. It has allowed us to scale up and respond to the escalating needs of Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar in a very short timeframe, Dash stressed.

An estimated 603,000 refugees have arrived in the Cox's Bazar district of southern Bangladesh since August  joining some 200,000 others already sheltering in the settlements. Most of the new arrivals come with nothing but the clothes on their back, often having walked for days without food or water. Many have experienced devastating physical and emotional trauma.

Committing to help

On Monday, IOM, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) organized a pledging conference in Geneva co-hosted by the European Union and the Government of Kuwait. There, 35 international donors pledged $345 million to ramp up, over the next six months, critical humanitarian assistance for the refugees and host communities in Bangladesh.

The pledges, which include money already committed, cover nearly 80 per cent of the $434 million appealed for in the UN Joint Response Plan  aimed to meet the basic needs of 1.2 million newly arrived and existing refugees and their Bangladeshi hosts in Cox's Bazar through February 2018.

Without these vital funds, humanitarian agencies will not be able to continue to provide protection and life-saving aid to one of the most vulnerable groups in the world, said IOM Director General William Lacy Swing, after the pledging conference.

We welcome these pledges, but I hope that the end of this conference does not mean the end of new funding commitments. We have not reached our target and each percentage point we are under means thousands are left without food, healthcare and shelter, he added.

IOM is appealing for $120 million to meet the needs of the most vulnerable Rohingya and the Bangladeshi communities hosting them over the next six months.

Photo: Muse Mohammed/IOM

Source: www.justearthnews.com
Montreal/Edmonton, Oct 24 (IBNS): Bringing a sigh of relief to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Liberal candidate Richard Hebert cliched a win in the Tory seat of Quebec in a recent by-election on Monday, media reports said.

Hebert has been serving as the mayor of Dolbeau-Mistassini since 2013.

The Liberals have secured a win in the heartland of Quebec for the first time since 1980, where they have put up their worst show in 2015 election.

The win in the Tory seat will certainly bring a smile on Trudeau's face particularly when he is facing the criticisms for his tax policies.

On Sunday, a protest against Canadian PM Trudeau was organised on the issues of the Liberal government's tax policies and financial dealing with former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr.

However, the protest was countered by some demonstrators who had accused the anti-Trudeau group of disguising the rally to support far right and racist views.

On the other hand, Conservative candidate Dane Lloyd have won the by-election in Alberta.

Lloyed (26), a military reservist, won the Sturgeon River-Parkland, west of Edmonton.

However, the Liberals and the New Democratic Party (NDP) have failed to create an impression in the Alberta by-election.

Liberal candidate Brian Gold secured 15.6% of the total votes.

The NDP, which has appointed Jagmeet Singh as its new leader, managed to get only 10% of the total votes.



Image: Twitter/@JustinTrudeau
The Spokane Tribe is getting closer to opening a new casino in Washington.

The Spokane Tribe Casino is due to open in Airway Heights before the end of the year. As construction nears completion, the tribe hosted a job fair last Thursday and is hosting another one this Thursday to fill new positions at the facility. More than 300 jobs are open, KXLY reported.

The tribe is one of the few to complete both steps of the two-part determination provisions of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act . The process requires approval from the state, in addition to the Bureau of Indian Affairs

It took the tribe over 10 years to win final approval for the casino.

Read More on the Story: Spokane Tribe to fill 300 positions ahead of casino opening (KXLY October 19, 2017)

Federal Register Notice: Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Proposed Spokane Tribe of Indians West Plains Casino and Mixed Use Project, City of Airway Heights, Spokane County, WA (February 1, 2013)

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The wait is finally over! Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor along with her fashionista sister Rhea Kapoor has released their first teaser poster of Veere Di Wedding. The poster is colourful in shades of yellow and green. Starring Kareena Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Shikha Talsania and Swara Bhaskar, the four can be seen glamming it up in the poster.

Rhea Kapoor and Ekta Kapoor have brought together four powerhouse performers in their forthcoming film, Veere Di Wedding.

Instagram/Veere De Wedding

The film, which promises to be a fun ride, explores the spirit of the modern Indian woman.

Well, we certainly think that this is the best cast that Rhea could've chosen for the movie especially post Kareena's pregnancy and strong role in the movie Ki & Ka and Sonam's amazing portrayal in the biopic of the braveheart flight stewardess 'Neerja.'

Hooligans.. with my veeres.. its a blast working with your closest friends. @reallyswara @shikhatalsania #kareenakapoorkhan A post shared by sonamkapoor (@sonamkapoor) on Oct 20, 2017 at 12:58pm PDT

Swara Bhaskar has also constantly proved herself as a versatile actress in Bollywood by doing a variety of roles and the new kid on the block, Shikha Talsania is none other than Tiku Talsania's daughter.

The OG BFF #fohlife thanks to our fairy godmothers and fairy godfathers for our magical threads...  love you @anamikakhanna.in and @sandeepkhosla @abujani1 A post shared by Rhea Kapoor (@rheakapoor) on Oct 20, 2017 at 4:02am PDT

The movie, which is being directed by Shashanka Ghosh, has wrapped up their Delhi schedule and will reportedly head to Thailand for their next. After seeing the glamourous poster, our excitement level is at the peak for sure!

Are you excited too?
PTI

The India Air Force (IAF) has created history by landing 17 fighter jets, including Mirage-2000 and Sukhoi-30 MKI, on the Agra-Lucknow Expressway. Read more

Here are more top news of the day:





1) Forget Security Of Women, Haryana Govt Will First Build PG Hostels For Cows Across The State

AFP/ Representational Image

At a time when the state is facing accusations about cow deaths in state-run shelters due to lack of food, the government has come up with a new plan - PG hostels for cows and buffaloes. Read more

2) Standing Up For National Anthem At Movie Theatres May Not Remain Mandatory Anymore

BCCL

The Supreme Court has asked the central government to take a call on framing appropriate rules and regulations on playing the national anthem in movie halls. Read more

3) Indian Navy's All-Women Sailboat Crew, On Its Way To Circumnavigate The Globe Reaches Australia

Indian Navy

An all-women crew of Indian Navy, aboard sailboat INSV Tarini, has entered Fremantle Port in Australia during its maiden voyage to circumnavigate the globe. Read more

4) Bengaluru Pollution Goes Up By 47% Despite Heavy Rains And Expensive Firecrackers This Diwali

BCCL/Representational Image

Incessant rain and GST on crackers had little impact on festive spirit this Diwali, with the city recording a 46.8% rise in the level of air pollutants. Read more

5) Note Ban Horror: First Anniversary Of Demonetisation Will Be Marked As 'Black Day' On Nov 8

AFP

Several opposition parties have announced that they would observe November 8, the first anniversary of demonetisation, as 'Black Day' and would hold protests across the country to highlight its "ill-effects" on the economy and the poor. Read more
While the rest of the world may consider the Taj Mahal, a celestial teardrop on the cheek of time, the monumental building has become an object of political grappling, particularly in recent time.

With BJP governments both at the Centre and the state of UP where the Taj Mahal is located are adamant to prove that it was the shrine to Lord Shiva called Teja Mahalaya, the rest look to the conventional narratives associated with the Taj.

If Yogi Adityanath-led UP governments decision to remove Taj Mahal from UP tourism booklet in September is taken into light spirit, BJP leader Vinay Katiyars statement calling it Tejo Mahalaya is certainly bound to raise many eyebrows.

But have you ever wondered where this term Tejo Mahalaya came from?

Yes, the genesis of the origin of the Tejo Mahalaya lies in the scripts of Marathi magazines published in the 1960s and 70s when a writer named PM Oak.

In one of his articles which ignited a slew of discussions Oak called Taj Mahal, an ancient shrine dedicated to Lord Shiva, Tejo Mahalaya. Oak in many of other writings claimed that if we dig up the premises of the Taj, the remains of the old temple, it was built upon can be excavated.

But not many paid any heed

Since in 1960s and 70s, the saffron outfits hadnt gained publicity, nobody paid much heed to Oaks claims. But Oak kept on writing.

Oak propagated many other theories as well.

Taj Mahal wasnt only historical monument questioned by Oak, he even called Kaaba, an Islamic sanctum santorum situated in Saudi Arabia a Hindu temple and he also called Agra fort a Hindu building.

Christianity or Krishna Neeti

Oak claimed that Christianity was originally a Vedic religion following Krishna and claims that Christianity was originally known by either the names Chrisn-nity or Krishna-Neeti.

He went on to claim that Vatican was allegedly originally called Vatika and that the Papacy was originally a Vedic Priesthood until Constantine the Great around 312 A.D killed the "Vedic pontiff" and installed in his place a representative of the tiny Christian sect. Oak had roughly written nine books in English, 13 in Marathi and 8 in Hindi.
India has one of the highest rates of acid violence in the world and the cases keep increasing each passing year.

An acid attack is worst form of physical and mental attack and people who are scrarred for life, almost never recover from the trauma. But there are handful who are not ready to cower down to the attack.

Humans of Bombay/Facebook

The Humans of Bombay shared a heartbreaking story of an acid attack victim named Shaboo from Mumbai. The girl, who is now 23-years-old, was attacked by her father when she was just two. Shaboo was sitting on her mother's lap when her father poured a bottle of acid on her mother.

While her mother succumbed to the injuries, the acid had eaten up half of Shaboo's face. Afer the attack her family abandoned her, after which she was grew up at an orphanage, where she was pampered with a lot of love and attention.

Sabhoo fought social stigma at college among her friends, but she battled it all, only to emerge stronger. In her words, "the only thing I hate about the entire incident is that people still refer to me as an acid attack victim  Im not a victim! Im as normal as anybody else  Ive embraced my scars and Im really excited for the rest of my life to unfold. I have ambition, dreams and life goalsI want to make my mark in the world, not because of this acid attack ...but everything I am, inspite of it.

And that's what you call strength and resilience.

Read her full story below:

When I was 2 years old, my father stormed into the house, where I was sitting on my mothers lap and poured acid on her  half of which fell on me. I know this story from Doctor Gore, who treated me for the next few years because I dont remember any of it  not even the pain. I just know that I lost my mother to that attack, and when my relatives heard of my condition  they disowned me. My father fled the city, and I grew up in an orphanage.

Honestly, from my doctors to those at my orphanage  Ive been pampered a lot. They showed me incessant, unconditional love for which Im so thankfulmy childhood really wasnt as bad as it would seem.

Where I did struggle a little was when I stepped into the real world for college. Initially, I didnt make any friends  I used to eat lunch alone, sit on the last bench and try my best to be invisible. I was so conscious of my scars that I felt like everyone was staring at me.

Turns out, it was all in my mind because I ended up making a lot of friends who Ive had some of my happiest memories with. I remember this really funny incident when we were at a sleepover. I fell asleep but since the attack, my eyelids dont shut  something my friends didnt know. They kept talking to me for a long time only to realise I had been sleeping the whole time! Weve made so many jokes about that  imagine how easy it was for me to sleep in my lectures  almost feels like I have a superpower!

Often my friends ask me if I hate my father and if Im vengeful  and my answer is always no. Honestly, Ive forgiven him. He must have been in a dark place himself to even think of committing such a crimebut me holding on to it is like feeding that darkness  Ive let it go completely.

I have no room in my life for hate  my entire focus is on finding a job. I was fired from my last job because of my appearance and because I took regular leaves for my check ups. Since then, Im looked after by the Sahaas foundation but Im hopeful that Ill have another job soon!

Looking back, the only thing I hate about the entire incident is that people still refer to me as an acid attack victim  Im not a victim! Im as normal as anybody else  Ive embraced my scars and Im really excited for the rest of my life to unfold. I have ambition, dreams and life goalsI want to make my mark in the world, not because of this acid attack but everything I am, inspite of it.
A German couple, who are touring the world right now, lost their dog on Chennai's Marina Beach in July. But good luck prevailed and they will soon be reunited.

syncro travels/facebook

Their pet, Luke, has been found and the couple flew in on Monday to take the dog back. The couple had adopted Luke, a Labrador mix, from the streets of Greece when he was a puppy. They soon obtained a passport for Luke and together set on a world tour in a camper.

Also read: French Ministers & President Macron Crack Up As His Pet Dog Urinates During A Serious Meeting

The trio was in Chennai in July when Luke went missing. At the time, Luke was sleeping under their camper and was on a leash. An eyewitness had told the couple that someone had taken Luke in an auto rickshaw.

syncro travels/facebook

The couple sought the help of social media to find Luke and also put posters on petrol stations offering a reward of Rs. 60,000. Soon, Chennaites began sending pictures of dogs they thought resembled Luke.

Also read: Your Dog May Be Using Facial Expressions To Communicate With You, Expecting You To Pay Attention

But it was all thanks to the efforts of one woman, Vijaya Narayanan, that Luke was found. An animal rescuer, she had been tracing the dog for months. She was contacted by a youth who brought Luke to a vet's clinic. The embedded microchip confirmed that the dog was Luke.

syncro travels/facebook

Janin Scharrenberg, Luke's owner, took to Facebook and said,

"Tomorrow there will be a picture of all of us together, but today I want to share this picture with you. This is our friend Vijaya, she kept searching for Luke even after months. We were strangers when we met and she still decided to help us, just like that. She answered every call, explained the story over and over again, she talked to literally 1000s of Rickshaw drivers and printed 1000s of posters.

This wouldn't have happened without her.

So here it is, a picture of Luke and Vijaya!"

And here's a picture from their reunion.

Also read: CIA Fires A Bomb-Sniffing Dog Because She Loved Playing More Than Looking For Explosives

There is good in the world, after all.
To know who was the mentor of Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev is part of general knowledge that job aspirants should have, at least according to Haryana Staff Selection Commission (HSSC).

BCCL/ File

This is among several unusual questions that have featured in the HSSC exams in the past two years, The Indian Express reported.

Other questions which have left the students confused include the following.

Where is the dera of Kali Kamali Baba located in Haryana?

(Shift Attendant 2016; answer: Kurukshetra)

On which part of the body is the ornament Chalkada worn?

(Haryana Police Constable 2016; answer: Leg)

Which occasion is also known as Basodha?

(Police Constable post, 2016; answer: Nirjala Ekadashi)

On what occasion is Sindhara gifted to daughters or sisters?

(Patwari/Lower Division Clerk, 2016; answer: Teej)

Roti mud jana is a sign of what in Haryana?

(Lower Division Clerk, 2016; answer: Arrival of guests)

The Haryana government decided to constitute village level committees under the chairmanship of ___ for construction and maintenance of cow homes?

(Bus Conductor, 2017, answer: Sarpanch)

Which place in Haryana is related to Kapil Muni?

(Haryana Statistical Assistant 2016; answer: Kalayat)

Of what metal are ornaments worn in legs made of?

(Pump Operator 2016; answer: Silver)

Where is the place named Dairongo located?

(Haryana Food Supply Sub-Inspector 2017; answer: Bhiwani)

What does the idiom Chilam Bharna mean in Haryana?

(Pump Operator/ Divisional Accountant 2016; answer: To serve guests)

According to BJP spokesperson Raman Malik the questions are related to the social fabric of the state that should be known by the aspirants.

However, many who appeared for these exams said such questions reflect the situation of education in the state.

BCCL/ File

Baba Ramdev featuring in the question is not surprising as the state had appointed the Yoga Guru as its ambassador in 2015 with the rank of a cabinet minister.

He has also been seen sharing the stage with many BJP leaders including Manohar Lal Khattar numerous times.
Prithvi Man Shrestha is a political reporter for The Kathmandu Post, covering the governance-related issues including corruption and irregularities in the government machinery. Before joining The Kathmandu Post in 2009, he worked at nepalnews.com and Rising Nepal primarily covering the issues of political and economic affairs for three years.
After Cambridge University uploaded Stephen Hawking's Ph.D. thesis on its website, the section completely crashed as people flooded to read it.

Also read: Stephen Hawking's Famous PhD On Expanding Universe Is Available For Anyone To Read For Free

reuters

Hawking wrote the thesis when he was 24 and given its popularity, one couldn't have expected anything else. The Apollo system on which it was uploaded completely broke after people tried to access the world's most brilliant scientist's work.

Also read: Stephen Hawking Believes Trump's Move To Quit Paris Climate Deal Will Push Earth Over The Brink

Cambridge University Library via npr

The University wanted people to feel encouraged to upload their Ph.D. thesis on its open access website. Hawking supported the idea as well and said,

"By making my PhD thesis Open Access, I hope to inspire people around the world to look up at the stars and not down at their feet; to wonder about our place in the universe and to try and make sense of the cosmos. Anyone, anywhere in the world should have free, unhindered access to not just my research, but to the research of every great and enquiring mind across the spectrum of human understanding."

Cambridge University/Stephen Hawking via bbc

Also read: Stephen Hawkings Reveals Our Days Are Numbered, Says We're Doomed If We Don't Colonise Mars

Hawking's 1966 thesis, 'Properties of expanding universes' can be accessed here but the page may not currently load.
Mogherini: Eastern Europeans should not overreact to human rights violations in Ukraine

by Lori R. Oliveros Tue, Oct 24, 2017 1:00AM
Cotton Rallies on Tuesday Barchart - 44 minutes ago Tuesdays cotton trade bounced back with 285 to 346 point gains. New crop Dec rallied 184 points on the day, which discounted it to now 984 points under the spot Dec contract. The 11/14 Cotlook A Index... CTZ22 : 88.74s (+4.06%) CTH23 : 86.97s (+4.01%) CTK23 : 85.84s (+4.05%)

Wheats Gain on Tuesday Barchart - 44 minutes ago Wheat markets ended the day with gains. At the high, Dec SRW was up to $8.43 for a 24 cent gain, but closed 9 3/4 cents higher. The other front months were 7 3/4 to 9 3/4 cents higher. KC wheats ended... ZWZ22 : 828-2s (+1.19%) ZWH23 : 848-0s (+1.16%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.6241 (+1.42%) KEZ22 : 963-0s (+0.71%) KEPAWS.CM : 9.2132 (+0.74%) MWZ22 : 974-0s (+1.14%)

Hogs Gain on Tuesday Barchart - 44 minutes ago Tuesday hog futures closed with $0.45 to $1.12 gains through the front months. The USDA National Average Base Hog Price for Tuesday was $1.46 stronger to $85.54. The CME Lean Hog Index was $88.65 on 11/11,... HEZ22 : 85.325s (+0.53%) HEJ23 : 95.500s (+1.19%) KMZ22 : 95.900s (+0.24%)

Cattle Close Mixed on Tuesday Barchart - 44 minutes ago Front month cattle futures ended 7 to 30 cents lower in some of the contracts, while Feb and April closed 50c and 30c in the black. Feeders worked $1.80 to $2.42 in the red. USDA reported limited cash... LEZ22 : 151.275s (-0.20%) LEG23 : 153.050s (+0.33%) LEJ23 : 156.725s (+0.19%) GFX22 : 175.675s (-0.72%) GFF23 : 177.025s (-1.35%)

Corn Rises on Tuesday Barchart - 44 minutes ago Corn futures worked 7 to 10 cents higher on Tuesday. December ended the day near the mid point of the range, which took the contract to $6.75 at the high. The USDA announced a private corn sale of 230,185... ZCZ22 : 666-6s (+1.45%) ZCPAUS.CM : 6.6694 (+1.57%) ZCH23 : 669-2s (+1.52%) ZCK23 : 667-6s (+1.40%)

Soy Rallies on Tuesday Barchart - 44 minutes ago Soybean futures closed the session with 14 to 17 cent gains on Tuesday. Jan was trading with 24 cent gains at the days highs. Meal futures ended with gains of $3.90 to $4.80/ton. BO prices closed with... ZSF23 : 1457-2s (+1.16%) ZSPAUS.CM : 14.3095 (+1.37%) ZSH23 : 1461-6s (+1.18%) ZSK23 : 1467-0s (+1.10%)

Crude Shakes Off Weak IEA Demand Forecast and Closes Higher on Missile Strikes on Poland Barchart - 51 minutes ago Dec WTI crude oil (CLZ22 ) on Tuesday closed up by +1.05 (+1.22%), and Dec RBOB gasoline (RBZ22 ) closed down by -1.24 (-0.49%). Crude oil and gasoline prices Tuesday settled mixed, with crude recovering... CLZ22 : 86.92s (+1.22%) RBF23 : 2.4742s (+0.09%)

Grain Spreads: Wheat Flare Up Walsh Trading - 1 hour ago Fireworks Overseas Sparks Possible Reversal
Burma Arrest Warrant Stalls for Alleged Sex Predator Who Claimed to be Next Buddha

Khun Tan / The Irrawaddy

MAWLAMYINE, Mon State  A 25-year-old man who reportedly postured as the next Buddha in order to seduce young girls is yet to be detained despite state government calls for his arrest.

Khun Tan of Mon States Thaton Township convinced local Pa-O people he was the reincarnation of influential and respected Pa-O monk Alantaya Sayadaw Ashin Sakka, according to reports.

With many parents in the area believing that their daughters sleeping with Khun Tan would be a blessing, he is said to have seduced hundreds of girls, mostly aged around 15.

Mon State government was planning to issue an arrest warrant against him but was stalled as none of the girls reportedly targeted by Khun Tan has reported him to police for rape or sexual assault.

Khun Tan is not on the arrest warrant list of the government because no one filed a lawsuit against him, said Daw Khaing Khaing Lei, the chairperson of Mon State Parliament Women and Child Rights Protection Committee.

Khun Tan arrived when he was seven in Thaton, where Pa-O custom advises that a bride thought to be born ill fated can be rebalanced by nominally marrying a man who has good astrological influence.

I cant establish a case as a guardian of my daughters. My wife and daughters have given him their lives and virginity. If they say Khun Tan didnt even touch them, it is difficult for me to file complaint, said U Win Nyunt, whose two daughters had nominal marriages with Khun Tan.

After the nominal marriage ceremony, Khun Tan took his two daughters to Shan State for about 10 days. In his ward alone, there were seven girls who had nominal marriages with Khun Tan.

Some parents were even upset that Khun Tan didnt marry their daughter, said U Win Nyunt.

The head of Thaton central police station confirmed to The Irrawaddy that the police station has not received any complaint against him over the last two months or in the past.

In August, Mon State government arrested five monks, who were the members of Alantaya Pagoda Board of Trustees and supporters of Khun Tan, after they defied the order of the Mon State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committeethe state Buddhist authorityto stop repairing the pagoda without official permission.

The trustees were remodeling the pagoda after Yangons Shwedagon Pagoda. The state government has sought permission from Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture to arrest two more trustees of the pagoda.

Complaints were only filed against the trustees, and not against Khun Tan. So, Khun Tan was not under warrant, said Daw Khaing Khaing Lei.

Khun Tan reportedly fled to his native Hopong in Shan States Taunggyi District some two months ago after the arrest of the trustees.

Thaton District General Administration Department is interrogating the administrator of Zayit Chaung village in Alantaya Religious Area for allegedly covering up a rape case committed by Khun Tan, according to the district commissioner.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.
Burma US Says it is Considering Sanctions Over Myanmars Treatment of Self-Identifying Rohingya

Rohingya refugee children carry supplies through Balukhali refugee camp near Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh, October 23, 2017. / Hannah McKay / Reuters

WASHINGTON, United States  The United States is taking steps and considering a range of further actions over Myanmars treatment of its self-identifying Rohingya Muslim minority, including targeted sanctions under its Global Magnitsky law, the State Department said on Monday.

We express our gravest concern with recent events in Myanmars Rakhine state and the violent, traumatic abuses Rohingya and other communities have endured, it said in a statement.

It added: It is imperative that any individuals or entities responsible for atrocities, including non-state actors and vigilantes, be held accountable.

Self-identifying Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar in large numbers since late August when Muslim insurgent attacks sparked a ferocious military response, with the fleeing people accusing security forces of arson, killings and rape.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday the United States held Myanmars military leadership responsible for its crackdown on the self-identiRohingya Muslim minority.

Tillerson stopped short of saying whether the United States would take any action against Myanmars military leaders over an offensive that has driven more than 600,000 self-identifying Rohingya Muslims out of the country, mostly to neighboring Bangladesh.

The State Department made the announcement ahead of US President Donald Trumps maiden visit to the region early next month when he will attend a summit of ASEAN countries, including Myanmar, in Manila.

It marked the strongest US response so far to the months-long self-identifying Rohingya crisis but came short of applying the most drastic tools at Washingtons disposal such as reimposing broader economic sanctions suspended under the Obama administration.

Critics have accused the Trump administration of acting too slowly and timidly in response to the self-identifying Rohingya crisis.

The State Department said on Monday: We are exploring accountability mechanisms available under US law, including Global Magnitsky targeted sanctions.

Measures already taken include ending travel waivers for current and former members of the military in Myanmar, also known as Burma, and barring units and officers in northern Rakhine State from US assistance, it said.

We have rescinded invitations for senior Burmese security forces to attend US-sponsored events; we are working with international partners to urge that Burma enables unhindered access to relevant areas for the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission, international humanitarian organizations, and media, the statement said.

In addition, Washington is consulting with allies and partners on accountability options at the UN, the UN Human Rights Council, and other appropriate venues, it said.

Aimed at top generals?

Interviews with more than a dozen diplomats and government officials based in Washington, Myanmars capital, Yangon, and Europe have revealed that punitive measures aimed specifically at top generals were among a range of options being discussed in response to the self-identifying Rohingya crisis.

Such measures could include the possibility of imposing asset freezes and prohibiting American citizens from doing business with them.

Washington has worked hard to establish close ties with Myanmars civilian-led government led by Nobel laureate and former dissident Aung San Suu Kyi in the face of competition from strategic rival China.

Forty-three US lawmakers urged the Trump administration to reimpose US travel bans on Myanmars military leaders and prepare targeted sanctions against those responsible for the crackdown.

The Magnitsky Act, originally passed in 2012, imposed visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials linked to the 2009 death in prison of Sergei Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian whistleblower. It has since been expanded to become the Global Magnitsky Act, which could be used against the generals in Myanmar.
Specials Rakhine Crisis in Numbers

Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar wait to be let through by Bangladeshi border guards after crossing the border in Palang Khali, Bangladesh October 16, 2017. / Reuters

YANGON  Since Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) attacked police outposts in northern Rakhine State on Aug. 25, security personnel and hundreds of militants have been killed, but undoubtedly civilians have been hit hardest.

The militant attacks and ensuing military operations have thrown scores of Hindus, Arakanese and self-identifying Rohingya Muslims into turmoil. The Irrawaddy illustrates the crisis in the following infographics, which show the total death toll of the crisis, high number of abductions, alleged mass killings, and the stream of Muslim refugees fleeing for Bangladeshnow at more than 600,000.

Outposts Under Attack and Mass Destruction

The map below shows the locations of 30 border police outposts attacked by ARSA on Aug 25 in the entire Maungdaw district. It also provides the positions of villages burnt down in the aftermath of the attacks. International organizations, rights groups, and fleeing self-identifying Rohingya say the military and local Arakanese are behind the arson. The military and government says the culprits are militants and even the Muslim homeowners themselves.

Civilian Deaths Allegedly by Militants

Although ARSA has denied targeting civilians, The Irrawaddy reporters have spoke with Hindus who have given first-hand accounts of an ARSA attack. In addition to Hindus, this bar graph shows the rising number of Muslims and Arakanese reportedly killed by militants prior to the Aug. 25 attacks.

Abductions in Northern Rakhine State

These are the numbers of Hindus, Muslims and Arakanese believed to have been abducted by ARSA for collaborating with the government from 2016 October to 2017 October.

Rakhine Crisis Death Toll

The death toll among ARSA fighters, civilians and government troops based on statistics collected by the UN and the government.

Exodus of Muslims and non-Muslims

Militant violence has displaced nearly 30,000 non-Muslims in Maungdaw districtmainly Arakanese sub-ethnic groups Mro, Thet and Daingnet as well as Hindus. Meanwhile, more than 603,000 self-identifying Rohingyaslocally known as Bengalishave fled to Bangladesh to escape military clearance operations.

Within a few weeks of Aug. 25, the total number of Muslim refugees climbed to a half million on the Bangladeshi border. The Irrawaddy visualizes the beginnings of the mass exodus in the following map using UN statistics.

Refugee Elsewhere

Myanmars problem of internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees is not only confined to Rakhine State. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre documented in 2014 an increase of 140,000 IDPs after 2012 communal riot in Rakhine State.

Moreover, civil wars between the government army and dozens of ethnic armed organizations have resulted in at least 500,000 IDPs in Shan, Kachin, Karen, Mon, Kaya, Bago, and Tanitharyi areas in 2014.

References

Locations of ARSA attacks on 25 August obtained from a map shared on the Commander-in-Chiefs Office Facebook page. GIS dataset of burned villages obtained from Destroyed buildings in Maungdaw and Buthindaung townships, Maungdaw District, Myanmar map, published on 5 October, obtained from UNOSAT. Data on ARSAs alleged killingsof Muslims and Arakanese by date obtained from the State Counsellor Office Information Committee Facebook page. Data on ARSAs alleged killings of Hindus obtained from previous Irrawaddy reporting and corroborated by data obtained from the Commander in Chiefs Office Facebook page. Data on ARSAs abductionsof Muslims and Arakanese by date obtained from the State Counsellor Office Information Committee Facebook page. Data on ARSAs alleged abductions of Hindus obtained from previous Irrawaddy reporting and corroborated by data obtained from the Commander in Chiefs Office Facebook page. Data on deaths from ARSAs attacks, targeted civilians between Oct 2016 and Aug 2017 and ARSAs alleged mass killing of Hindus in Aug and Sept 2017 from the same sources as [2] and [3]. Data on death toll of suspected militants from the Commander in Chiefs Office Facebook page. Data on death toll of Muslims from the UN Special Rapporteurs speech on September 8 . Data on locations of self-identifying Rohingya refugees in Coxs Bazaar from the Inter Sector Coordination Groupobtained via Humanitarian Data Exchange. Map of IDPs in Myanmar in 2014 obtained from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

This report was updated with source references on Oct 25 after its publish date on Oct 24.
Tuesday, Oct 24th, 2017 (2:58 pm) - Score 1,849

Israel-based Sckipio, which helped to build some of the kit that Openreach (BT) piloted as part of their 330Mbps G.fast broadband rollout, has today demonstrated over 3.1Gbps of download speed (900Mbps upload) on production silicon using G.fast bonding at 212MHz.

Last month the company took a big step forward after they became one of the first to launch a chipset based off the ITUs new Amendment 3 to the G.fast standard (here), which doubles the spectrum frequency to 212MHz and also supports other changes like coordinated Dynamic Time Allocation (cDTA).

Today the company moved to demonstrate some of these improvements at the Broadband World Forum event in Berlin (booth E101C), where they teamed up with software company Civica. The setup involved two bonded pairs of CAT-3 wiring (regular copper telephone wires) in a network that should in theory be able to hit a top speed of 4Gbps (Gigabits per second).

The demonstration used Sckipios new SCK23000 chipsets, Civicas WanStaX software and the Microsemi WinPath network processor. But crucially we are not given any information about distance (how long was the copper line?).

David Baum, Co-founder and CEO of Sckipio, said: Sckipio is pushing Gfast to astonishing speeds with production silicon. No other Gfast solution delivers end-to-end 212a profile bonding.

Openreachs recent Fibre-to-the-distribution-point (FTTdp) based test of pole mounted G.fast distribution points from NetComm Wireless also made use of 212MHz to achieve Gigabit class speeds (here) and bonding could certainly take such performance further in the future.

However at the moment the technology is somewhat hobbled by its limited port count (up to 48 per cabinet, rising to 96 in the future) and ordinary consumers tend to be discouraged by the high pricing of bonded solutions, which is why they have remained more the preserve of SME business connectivity.
Tuesday, Oct 24th, 2017 (11:30 am) - Score 1,752

The Chief Network Architect for SSE Enterprise Telecoms, Conrad Mallon, has claimed that Openreachs new OSA Filter Connect (virtual dark fibre) product is an inadequate alternative to Ofcoms push for the Dark Fibre Access (DFA) solution that was cancelled following BTs legal challenge.

Openreach were originally due to launch the proposed DFA product in October, which would have allowed UK ISPs to gain physical access to the operators existing fibre optic cables (i.e. enabling them to install their own equipment at either end of the fibre within cable ducts). But this was cancelled after BT won a legal challenge against the incorrect market definitions that Ofcom had adopted in their 2016 business connectivity review (here).

Ofcom is currently still considering how to react and in the meantime Openreach has thrown a spanner into the works by unveiling their new Optical Spectrum Access (OSA) product for ISPs called Filter Connect (here), which is a kind of virtual or grey dark fibre style alternative product. Openreach view this as being both a competitively priced and flexible solution.

Openreach also claimed that the new OSA FSP3000 service was given a positive reception by at least some operators, although one of those that had hoped to be using the original DFA solution (SSE Enterprise Telecoms) appears to disagree.

Conrad Mallon, SSEs Chief Network Architect, told ISPreview.co.uk: The Openreach announcement promoting an alternative to full Dark Fibre Access (DFA) does not address the industrys concern. Following Ofcoms ruling in 2016 that providers should be able to gain physical access to Openreachs existing fibre optic cables, and the subsequent Competition Appeals Tribunal ruling, Openreach had promised to provide a solution that meets the needs of the market. However, the result of that promise  Optical Spectrum Access Filter Connect  is a patchwork alternative that meets neither the needs of customers, nor the need to increase competition to open up the telecoms access market in the United Kingdom. We believe the DFA ruling will go ahead, and needs to go ahead, because ultimately it offers a solution to the connectivity challenges being faced by UK businesses. If this means that Ofcom needs to address some of the issues raised by BT/Openreach at the recent hearing, then this should be completed promptly and robustly to ensure the outcome serves the market, by offering choice, value and scale for customers. In the meantime, SSE Enterprise Telecoms continues to pursue innovative, alternative means of meeting the connectivity needs of customers.

Openreach are currently consulting on the new service until 18th November and if all goes well then they hope to publish a final outcome by the end of December 2017, which could result in the product being launched during Q1 2018/19. Sadly SSE did not provide any examples of where the new service is deemed to be inadequate vs DFA, but we have asked.
The ASX-listed Dreamscape (ASX:DN8) says the acquisition of the Sydney-based Enetica  which includes Web City, Entica and Host1  will expand its own hosting footprint in Australia, with integration into the recently acquired Net Logistics infrastructure, operations and management.

Dreamscape is acquiring the Enetica Group from privately held Bucan Holdings and will fund the acquisition in cash.

Dreamscape Networks managing director and chief executive Mark Evans (below, left) said: This is our third strategic acquisition since listing Dreamscape Networks in December 2016. Having successfully integrated Net Logistics, the acquisition of Enetica Group is where the synergies of our growth strategy really start to come to life in Australia.

Bolting Enetica Group into Dreamscape Networks allows us to harness the capability inherent in our previous two acquisitions, Net Logistics and Vodien. We will utilise the upgraded Net Logistics technology platforms, while improving customer service and marketing capabilities by harnessing the Vodien brand to bring increased value to current Web City customers.

By leveraging these capabilities we can increase our customer footprint in Australia and deliver an enhanced offering to the customers of Web City and Enetica, with the aim of growing returns for our shareholders.

It is a small but great opportunity to improve the product mix for all our Australian customers and provides Dreamscape Networks with increased scale to release additional add-on value products to further improve customer engagement, average bookings per user, and the lifetime value of our customers.
Sitaula in dilemma over contesting polls under FPTP or PR

Nepali Congress (NC) leader Krishna Prasad Sitaula has reached out to the party cadres of his election constituency before taking the decision whether to contest the parliamentary election under the first-past-the-post or, proportional representation category.
Swiss provider of personal computer and mobile accessories Logitech International has announced second-quarter sales of US$364 million, an increase of 12% compared to the corresponding quarter in the previous financial year.

The company said in a statement that its GAAP profit increased by 12% to US$60 million, compared to US$53 million in the corresponding quarter in the previous financial year.

We delivered another strong quarter of growth, said Bracken Darrell, Logitech president and chief executive.

Gaming and Video Collaboration categories showed particular strength and momentum. And we have a diverse and strong portfolio overall.

"Were entering the second half of the year with a wide range of exciting products ahead of the holiday season.

Darrell said he felt confident about the prospects for the third quarter, normally the biggest quarter for the company.

The second-quarter results helped Logitech confirm its full-year outlook of increasing sales by between 10 and 12% and reaching a full-year profit of between US$260 million and US$270 million.
One of Australia's well-known network experts says the comments made by NBN Co chief executive Bill Morrow on the ABC's Four Corners NBN programme on Monday night indicate that he has discovered the company is in trouble as it is unlikely to make any money as per its business plan.

Mark Gregory, associate professor in network engineering at RMIT, told iTWire that Morrow now appeared to be looking for a parachute.

Morrow, who is on a 457 visa, will need to have it renewed next year if he is to continue heading the troubled public sector company.

Gregory added that while the Coalition Government representatives seemed to be indicating on the programme that everything was hunky-dory, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull himself was now admitting that Australia should have followed the New Zealand model.

He said this was an indication that at last there was a realisation that the whole thing was a mess.

Communications Minister Mitch Fifield, who appeared on the programme, referred to the network as being "fit for purpose", but also said that nothing was set in stone and things needed to change as and when technology dictated it.

Gregory was of the opinion that the New Zealand path should be taken as soon as possible. He said that by adopting fibre-to-the-node technology, the government had caused the issues that it was now facing.

He said it was possible to make the switch now and avoid a bigger mess than what existed at the moment.

Robin Eckermann, an adjunct professor at Canberra University, said he had watched the Four Corners programme "with a mixture of interest, bemusement and dismay at various inaccuracies in the story as portrayed".

"There was an excessive focus on the different access technologies that NBN Co is using and insufficient focus on the biggest problem that afflicts the network right now - that is, the performance degradation that results from overloaded CVC capacity," said Eckermann, the chief architect behind the TransACT network.

He said some of those with fibre connections who appeared on the programme also complained of poor speed during busy times. "So right now, more fibre connections wouldn't address the 'elephant in the room' problem that's dragging performance down. Unlocking more speed in the final few kilometres of dedicated cabling to the premises is going to be irrelevant if all the connections at 12/25/50/100 Mbps are channelled into a shared pipe (ie: the CVC) where an average capacity of just over 1 Mbps per user is currently being provisioned," he pointed out.

Eckermann said the issue got only a brief mention, but several spokespeople had dismissed the problem by saying it was the RSPs' fault for not buying enough capacity. "In my view, that is evading the real issue - most Australians work within affordability limits and simply do not have the capacity to a whole lot more for fixed broadband."

New access networks did not have a good track record of delivering promised returns on investment. "Witness the Optus and Telstra HFC networks, and TransACT's network here in Canberra where investors had to accept a significant write-down in the capital value of the network when it was sold," he said.

"While the government clings to the illusion that the NBN will deliver a return on investment, CVC capacity will be priced at a level that leads to performance being throttled - and this risks making the entire expensive investment a failure in terms of equipping Australia to optimise its digital future.

"Ultimately the way to fix the problem is for the government to accept that the target return is not achievable - and by resetting the expectations, allow CVC pricing to fall to sensible levels (or zero!) and thereby unlock the full transformative potential of the network. In my view, it is only a matter of time before this becomes bleedingly obvious - but until that happens, the performance problems will continue to fester."
Thimi woman held on charge of burning husband to death

Police arrested a Thimi-based woman on the charge of burning her husband to death.
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TeleSur |  

Popular Mobilisation fighters should be encouraged because they will be the hope of country and the region, Abadi said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has defended the role of his countrys Popular Mobilization Forces, or Hashd al-Shaabi, following a statement by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that members of the paramilitary force should go home.

Tillerson arrived on Monday hours after the prime ministers media office rejected the call to demobilize the Popular Mobilization, who played a crucial role defeating the Islamic State group and helped Baghdad capture the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk.

In his opening remarks at the meeting with Tillerson, Abadi said that Popular Mobilization is part of the Iraqi institutions, rejecting accusations that it is acting as an Iranian proxy.

Popular Mobilisation fighters should be encouraged because they will be the hope of country and the region, he said.

Tillerson had previously said Iran and other countries participating in Iraqs fight against the Islamic State group need to depart the Arab country now that the battle was drawing to a close.

The foreign fighters in Iraq need to go home and allow the Iraqi people to regain control, Tillerson said in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on Sunday.

Tillerson delivered the comments following a joint meeting with the leaders of Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

The PMF is comprised of dozens of organizations, including Sunni Muslim, Yazidi, Christian and Shiite Turkmen groups. The groups have been excoriated as a sectarian tool of Iran due to the heavy representation of Shia Muslim organizations. Shiites form a plurality among Iraqis.

No party has the right to interfere in Iraqi matters, Abadis media office said in a statement prior to Tillersons visit.

Shia militia include those who ideologically align with the Islamic Republic of Iran such as the Badr Organization, who worked with U.S. troops following the 2003 U.S. invasion, as well as groups like Asaib Ahl al-Haq  a paramilitary group that carried out daring operations against occupying forces during the insurrection that followed the collapse of the Iraqi state.

Afghan, Iranian and Lebanese fighters have fought alongside local militia in a regional effort against the transnational extremist that was coordinated with Irans aid.

Asaib Ahl al-Haq reacted to Tillersons comment by saying it would be Americans who will be forced to leave Iraq.

Your forces should get ready to get out of our country once the excuse of Daeshs presence is over, said Asaibs leader, Qais al-Khazali, according to the groups TV channel, al-Aahd.

Washington has 5,000 troops in Iraq and provided air support, training and weapons to Iraqi government forces. At the same time, Iran armed, trained and advised the Popular Mobilization Units that often fought alongside the army.

Following Tillersons comments, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that the U.S. top diplomats message was dictated by Irans oil-rich arch-rival Saudi Arabia.

Exactly what country is it that Iraqis who rose up to defend their homes against ISIS return to?, Zarif said in a tweet. Shameful US FP (foreign policy), dictated by petrodollars.

Speaking from the South African capital Pretoria later in the day, Zarif noted that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is isolated in the world.

Unfortunately, the Americans do not want to rectify their viewpoint that Iran is a source of stability and peace as well as a campaigner against terrorism in the region, he said, according to state-run Iranian news network Press TV.

At his meeting with Abadi in Baghdad, Tillerson urged the Iraqi government and Masoud Barzanis Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil to resolve their conflict on Kurdish self-determination and disputed territories through dialogue.

We are concerned and a bit sad, Tillerson said. We have friends in Baghdad and friends in Erbil, and we encourage all parties to enter into the discussion  and all differences can be addressed.

Via TeleSur



Related video added by Juan Cole:

Wochit Politics: Tillerson Makes Surprise Visit To Iraqi Prime Minister
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Nicolai Due-Gundersen | (The Conversation) |  

A blockade against Qatar by its Gulf neighbours is now in its fifth month. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates severed socio-economic ties with Qatar as punishment for its alleged support of terrorism and interference in their affairs. As well as hurting Qatars economy, economists have argued that this is bad news for the entire Gulf, which will face the threat of lowered interest from foreign investors, trade restrictions and a drop in tourism, challenging regional ambitions to diversify away from oil dependence.

There is one country working hard to mediate the situation, however, and thats Kuwait. The small, oil-rich state has no vested interest in the crisis, but lots to gain from acting as a mediator. It knows best that a protracted blockade could threaten a second depression across the Gulf. After all, the first such depression originated from Kuwaits unregulated stock market, amid high oil prices and the thirst for speculative spending by Kuwaitis with new-found wealth.

The early 1980s saw oil riches overflow into Kuwaiti accounts. A new class of wealth was emerging, itching for investment opportunities that would parallel the rush of oil prices, with its rapid money-making machinery. At the time, the government-run Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) was heavily regulated, with limited companies and even more limited trading options. It begged the question: if oil could transform Kuwaits tired buildings into modern glass high rises, why couldnt that same wealth create an unrestricted trading environment?

The camel market

By 1981, demand had created the mirage of certain wealth in the new and exciting Souk al-Manakh stock market. As explained by economist John Quinn, this unregulated stock market was housed in a modest old building once used for camel trading and would become ground zero for the largest bubble [to burst] in the history of the entire Middle East.

A previous speculation crash on the KSE in 1977 prompted officials to ban the creation of new Kuwaiti trading companies, so eager Kuwaiti traders registered their firms in future blockaders Bahrain and the UAE, using Kuwaiti funds and legal loopholes to trade with their own stock exclusively on the Souk al-Manakh. With unregulated excess liquidity, the roulette wheel started to spin. Under pure speculation and excessive use of postdated checks, stock soared. New wealth, created from nothing, lured bigger players to gamble unchecked, creating greater demand for new stock companies. The roulette wheel continued to spin. Everyone was a winner.



Nicolai Due-Gundersen



From 1979-82, 165 new firms sprang up to fuel the fire of speculative buying. At its height, Souk al-Manakh shares saw a 100% price increase within weeks and enjoyed traded shares of up to US$3.5 billion against the KSEs US$837m. In a culture where your word was your bond, postdated checks were accepted en masse, with buyers and sellers knowing that share prices would jump in time to cover debt owed. Greed was good. Collapse was inevitable.

By August 1982, the mirage of quick wealth became a sandstorm. The default of one large trader wiped Manakh shares of up to 98% of their worth. The collapse was felt by a 53% loss in value of KSE shares. Real estate prices dropped by 44%.

Lack of regulation meant that the government had no initial knowledge of how much damage had been done. External evaluation assessed the remnants of the souk. The conclusion was that the camel market was never a network of structured traders but an entangled web of two-way IOU notes and postdated checks. In total, the crisis created debts of US$94 billion  over four times Kuwaits GDP. Of these debts, 95 involved just 18 traders.

Knowing that a slow response would cause a drop in government confidence and paralyse the economy, officials convened arbitration panels. Travel restrictions were imposed on debtors and a US$2 billion emergency fund was established to mitigate the crisis. Foreshadowing the effects of the blockade, the collapse of Kuwaits camel market provoked a drop in foreign investment and a drain of capital from Kuwaiti to foreign accounts. Bahrain and the UAE established their own boards to assess the damage to their own economies.

Ironically, Qatar seemed protected from Kuwaits stock market collapse. Doha did not establish its own stock market until 1997, avoiding entanglement with the disastrous souk. The oil price drop succeeding Kuwaits crash was more of a concern to Qatar than the collapse of its neighbours speculative bubble. Qatar tightened financial regulation and reduced spending on infrastructure but maintained welfare generosity.

The Souk al-Manakh collapse acts as a reminder of how one Gulf state can affect another. Kuwait knows better than its neighbours that financial and political shocks can stifle foreign investor confidence in the entire region. At a time when Kuwait is attempting to open its official stock exchange for global investment and finally leave the Souk al-Manakh scandal behind, its ability to mediate the Qatar blockade is more important than ever. No one knows how long the siege will last. The only certainty is that the Gulf cannot profit from speculation.

Nicolai Due-Gundersen, PhD Candidate and Political Analyst, Kingston University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.



Related video added by Juan Cole:

Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Relationship with Iran | CNBC
Achyut Wagle holds PhD in economics and is currently a professor at the Kathmandu University School of Management. He is an econo-political analyst, writing for The Kathmandu Post for many years.
TORONTO, Oct. 24, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Montero Mining and Exploration Ltd. (TSX-V:MON) (Montero or the Corporation) has entered into a Letter of Intent (LOI) with Frovio Investment, a Namibian company, to acquire up to an 80% interest in its wholly owned Soris Lithium Project in the Soris pegmatite field, Namibia (the Property). The agreement provides Montero three months to complete legal and technical due diligence to its satisfaction and is also subject to regulatory approval.

Under the terms of the LOI, Montero immediately earns an 80% interest in the Property by committing to spending C$1 million and completing a feasibility study in 3 years.

Dr. Tony Harwood, President and Chief Executive Officer of Montero commented, The Soris Lithium Project pegmatites were intermittently mined for tantalum and tin between 1960 and 1990. Montero has identified lithium bearing spodumene mineralization in a number of pegmatites and intends to confirm initial lithium grades of up to 5.6 % Li 2 O with further sampling and mineralogical studies. The lithium, tantalum and tin market is currently one of the most promising and forward-looking sectors in the high technology mining industry and a focus area for Montero.

The Soris Lithium Project is located in central Namibia north west of the town of Uis which is 220 km north of Walvis Bay, Namibias largest commercial deep-water port. The project is located in the Erongo Region and is connected by dirt and asphalt road to the port of Walvis Bay.

The Soris pegmatite field is hosted in the metasedimentary units of the Damara Mobile Belt, the northeast-trending branch of the Neo-Proterozoic, Pan African Damara Orogen in Namibia. The zoned pegmatites at Soris belong to a group of highly fractionated, tantalite-cassiterite, lithium-rich rare metal pegmatites. Lithium mineralization occurs in the form of spodumene crystals developed virtually over the whole length of the pegmatite, although the relative abundance of spodumene varies from one location to another. Towards the pegmatite core zone spodumene minerals of up to 80 cm long are observed inter-grown with quartz.

The Soris Lithium Project pegmatites encompass several outcrops, varying in length between 100m up to 470m over a distance of 2.4 km and has been measured in places to be more than 30 m wide. The pegmatites were mined on small scale for tin and tantalum between 1960 and 1990 with an estimated total production of 4 to 5 tonnes tantalite concentrate grading 54% to 61% Ta 2 O 5 and about 4 tonnes of cassiterite concentrate grading 64% SnO 2. (Diehl, 1992). More recently exploration for tantalum and tin, including Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling was undertaken until 2015. The pegmatite has not been mined or systematically sample assayed for lithium.

Nico Scholtz is currently reviewing available information on the Soris Lithium Project. Recent field investigations revealed the pegmatite to host more than 30% spodumene by volume with values of up to 5.6 % Li 2 O obtained from grab samples, these range from 4.5 % Li 2 O to 5.6 % Li 2 O, with an average and median value of 5.1% Li 2 O. The grab samples are selective samples and not necessarily representative of the mineralization hosted in the pegmatites on the property. Further confirmatory work is planned as part of the due diligence and updates will be provided.

Qualified Person's Statement

This press release was reviewed and approved by Mr. Mike Evans, M.Sc. Pr.Sci.Nat., who is a qualified person for the purpose of National Instrument 43-101 and a Consulting Geologist to Montero. A review was also undertaken by Nico Scholtz, Pr.Sci.Nat., is a qualified person for the purpose of National Instrument 43-101 and is a Namibian based geologist with more than 10 years experience. He has extensive experience in rare metal pegmatite exploration in Namibia having worked on many Lithium-Cesium-Tantalum (LCT) pegmatite intrusions.

About Montero

Montero is a mineral exploration and development company engaged in the identification, acquisition, evaluation and exploration of mineral properties in Africa. Currently these include phosphates in South Africa and rare earth elements (REE) in Tanzania. Montero is reviewing and evaluating other opportunities from its operating base in South Africa. Montero trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol MON.
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - October 23, 2017) - Palamina Corp. (TSXV: PA) has completed a preliminary review of five prospective gold project areas in the department of Puno, Peru, staked by the Company in January of 2017. Palamina's primary focus has been to acquire land positions in the Puno Orogenic Gold Belt (POGB), as identified by small-scale and informal hard-rock mining operations. The targeted projects have never been subject to systematic exploration or drill testing. In order to execute on its plan, Palamina has also assembled an experienced geological team with collectively over 27 years of experience in the POGB.

Palamina applied for 24,100 hectares in the POGB. The Company has completed initial geological reconnaissance site visits on each targeted area and decided to focus on the Gaban and Coasa gold projects in the belief that these areas host the potential to discover important orogenic gold deposits.

Andrew Thomson, President and C.E.O. of Palamina Corp. stated, "Preliminary exploration has led to the prioritization of the Gaban and Coasa gold properties. At Gaban, Palamina is exploring for the source of numerous alluvial gold deposits within the application rights area. At Coasa, Palamina has uncovered the north-western extension of the shear zone hosting the Crucero gold deposit. Palamina is positioning itself to fill the demand for new projects with multi-million ounce gold potential."

GABAN GOLD PROJECT: Palamina has a total of 5,900 hectares on nine mining concessions under application that make up the Gaban Gold Project. A total of five campaigns, or 75 days, have been spent on geological reconnaissance mapping and geochemical stream and rock outcrop sampling programs with as many as three field crews operating at times. The Gaban concession application boundary is less than one kilometer from the town of San Gaban at an elevation of 550 meters, located on the new Interoceanic Highway connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Local power is supplied by the 206 MW San Gaban hydroelectric facility and a new bridge, scheduled to be completed in February 2018, is currently being completed across the San Gaban River which will provide easy year-round access to the project.

Artisanal gold mining in streams traversing the concessions has been observed at more than ten locations. Palamina believes Gaban hosts the source of the alluvial gold. Initial stream sediment sampling within the drainages sieved to -60# (0.250 mm), have returned values of up to 4.9 g/t gold. Subsequent follow-up rock sampling bordering the drainage system has returned anomalous gold and important pathfinder element values where detailed follow-up geological mapping and geochemical rock sampling is warranted.

Members of Palamina's geological team formed part of the exploration discovery team at the Ollachea gold deposit located 40 km to the south-southwest. Principal controls on orogenic gold mineralization within the POGB are mineralogical, lithological and structural in nature. Geological reconnaissance activities within the Gaban Project boundaries have shown that each of these important components are present. The Gaban Project additionally hosts at least two intrusive events, at least one of which is mineralized. Up to three quartz vein/veinlet-sulphide mineralizing events have been recognized to date, with associated structural deformation evident in both sediments as well as mineralized intrusive bodies.

At Gaban, field activities for 2017 are expected to resume in April of 2018 after the Andean rainy season ends. During the rainy season, field crews will focus on Palamina's Coasa Gold Project.

COASA GOLD PROJECT: In January 2017, Palamina applied for 8,800 hectares near the town of Usicayos to explore a geologic environment interpreted to be similar to that of the Ollachea orogenic gold deposit located some 65 km to the northwest. Members of Palamina's geological team formed part of the exploration discovery team at Ollachea. The Ollachea deposits are focused along an east-west trend, analogous to that at Coasa, at surface elevations ranging from 3,000 to 3,600 metres.

Palamina field crews have completed four geochemical sampling and reconnaissance mapping campaigns, or 70 days, in the area, which have revealed numerous historic, as well as recent artisanal diggings. In addition, on the Coasa concessions, geochemically prospective areas have been identified. These are intimately associated with the northern extension of the structure controlling the Crucero gold deposit.

On September 19, 2017, GoldMining Inc. acquired the Crucero deposit and has reported a pit constrained Indicated Resource of 30.9 million tonnes averaging 1.01 g/t gold containing 1.00 million ounces of gold and an Inferred Resource of 31.2 million tonnes averating 1.03 g/t gold containing 1.03 million ounces of gold at a 0.4 g/t gold cut-off (September 20/2017 GoldMining Inc. news release).

Palamina plans to advance its geological reconnaissance and surface sampling activities of prospective and anomalous structures in the eastern sector of the Coasa Gold Project during upcoming field campaigns.

Sample location maps and photo's of Gaban and Coasa may be viewed at:

http://www.palamina.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/NR12map.pdf

Mr. Donald Mc Iver, M.Sc. Exploration and Economic Geology, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (FAusIMM), as well as the Society of Economic Geologists (FSEG), is Vice President Exploration for Palamina Corp. He is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 and he has reviewed the geological contents of this press release.

About Palamina Corp.:

Palamina is directed by a group of proven mine finders focused on securing mining assets with the potential to host significant gold deposits. Palamina has acquired the application rights to five projects in the Puno gold belt and one project in the coastal I.O.C.G. belt in Southern Peru and holds 100% interest to one exploration project in Mexico. Palamina has 22,574,713 shares outstanding and trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol PA.
TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Oct. 24, 2017) - First Cobalt Corp. (TSX VENTURE:FCC) (OTCQB:FTSSF) (the "Company") announces the commencement of prospecting and structural mapping on properties owned by Cobalt One Ltd. (ASX:CO1) and CobalTech Mining Inc. (TSX VENTURE:CSK), the results of which will be used to plan a winter drill program for the consolidated land package in Ontario, Canada.

Highlights

Cobalt One and CobalTech have provided property access to First Cobalt's exploration team in anticipation of the merger completion

Prospecting targets include Caswell, Ophir and Silver Banner, which are known to be cobalt-rich, along with several mines in the Kerr Lake and Maiden Lake areas

Mapping program to focus on the New Lake area, including the Ophir and Silver Banner mines, and the Maiden Lake area east of the Keeley, Frontier, Haileybury and Bellellen mines

Outcrop exposure in the Cobalt Camp is extensive therefore prospecting, structural mapping and bedrock sampling are intended to prioritize areas for further exploration and winter drilling across the consolidated land package

Trent Mell, President & Chief Executive Officer, commented:

"As the merger of First Cobalt, Cobalt One and CobalTech nears completion, the three companies are cooperating to give the consolidated company an early start on a land position that will encompass 10,000 hectares and 50 past producing cobalt and silver mines. This exploration program will advance our understanding of the diverse geologic settings throughout the Camp and position us for an active winter season."

In advance of the completion of the mergers with Cobalt One and CobalTech (announced June 26, 2017), First Cobalt has been granted access to the properties belonging to both companies to initiate prospecting and mapping programs of the consolidated land package. Results will be incorporated into planning for winter drill targets.

First Cobalt's Greater Cobalt Project currently covers approximately 4,300 hectares in the historic Silver Centre and Cobalt mining centres, now collectively referred to as the Cobalt Camp. On completion of the two merger transactions, First Cobalt will control over 10,000 hectares of prospective land and 50 historic mining operations in the Cobalt Camp. Cobalt One shareholders will meet to approve the transaction on November 17 and CobalTech shareholders will meet on November 21.

The prospecting program will be led by Bjorkman Prospecting, a highly regarded and well-decorated team of Ontario prospectors, and will be conducted around areas with known mineralization throughout the Camp. Current government and historic maps show shallow pits and trenches, however complete metal data (Co, Ag, Ni, Cu, Fe, Zn, Pb, Au, As, S) to characterize mineralization and lithogeochemical data to identify hydrothermal alteration have not been reported.

Bedrock sampling will focus on a number of shallow historic shafts, the muckpiles in close proximity, and outcrops in the Kerr Lake area that contain several historic mines including the Drummond mine. Another area of interest includes the Caswell mine where historic production is reported to contain Ag-Co-Ni-Cu minerals but with only a few assays recorded. The geologic setting at the Caswell mine is similar to many of the large past-producing mines in the Cobalt Camp including Nipissing, Crown Reserve and Kerr Lake. Other prospects and surface showings will be sampled near the Keeley-Frontier area.

A mapping program will also be undertaken in conjunction with the prospecting program. Mapping will be conducted at 1:5000 scale to characterize regional structures associated with Co-Ag mineralization. The program is designed to follow up on work completed in June in the Keeley-Frontier area, which concluded that folding may be an important control on the location of Co-Ag vein development. This program will focus on two areas: (1) the New Lake area, including the Ophir mine on Cobalt One property as well as the Silver Banner mine on CobalTech property, and (2) the Maiden Lake area on Cobalt One property to the east of First Cobalt's Keeley, Frontier, Haileybury and Bellellen mines.

Airborne magnetic data previously collected has been modelled and interpreted for the Maiden Lake area. These interpretations are being evaluated as part of this field mapping program. Airborne magnetic data for the New Lake area is currently being modelled and will be integrated with the structural mapping interpretations following the field work. Structural interpretation work will also continue through December by relogging available historic drill holes and recent drill holes at Keeley-Frontier.

Qualified/Competent Person - NI 43-101 and JORC Code

The geological information in this announcement has been reviewed by Dr. Frank Santaguida, P.Geo., a Competent Person (as defined in the JORC Code, 2012 edition) who is a practicing member of the Association of Professional Geologists of Ontario (being a 'Recognised Professional Organisation' for the purposes of the ASX Listing Rules). Dr. Santaguida is also the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 who has reviewed and approved the contents of this news release.

Dr. Santaguida is employed on a full-time basis as Vice President, Exploration for First Cobalt. He has sufficient experience that is relevant to the style of mineralization, the type of deposit under consideration and to the activity being undertaken to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the JORC Code.
University signs agreement expanding its joint Doctor of Veterinary Medicine training program with China

Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017

Sponsors of the U.S.-China Joint Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Scholarship Program sign a memorandum of understanding to expand the program. Signing the agreement at the Oct. 19 ceremony in Beijing, China, are, from left, Rimma Driscoll, vice president Business Development and Commercial Alliances, at Zoetis; Frank Blecha, associate dean for research at Kansas State University's College of Veterinary Medicine; and Xin Shengpeng, secretary general of the Chinese Veterinary Medical Association. | Download this photo.





MANHATTAN  A program initiated by Kansas State University that helps students from China earn veterinary medical degrees in the U.S. is increasing the number of students it serves.



A memorandum-of-understanding signing ceremony was conducted Oct. 19 in Beijing, China, expanding the U.S.-China Joint Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Scholarship Program, which was initiated in 2012 by the U.S.-China Center for Animal Health at Kansas State University, along with the China Agricultural University and Chinese Veterinary Medical Association. The joint program has been sponsored by China Scholarship Council, Kansas State University, Zoetis and the International Veterinary Collaboration for China.



Zoetis originally provided funding to the program for 30 students' pre-veterinary tuition and related activities. The China Scholarship Council has provided full-ride scholarships for four years of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine tuition and five years for living stipends. Kansas State University has sponsored the program by providing program management service and additional scholarships.



Under the new agreement, Zoetis will continue to support the program by providing pre-veterinary tuition funding for an additional 15 students with Kansas State University and the Chinese Veterinary Medical Association.



"The U.S.-China Joint Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Program advances veterinary education and promotes the development of the animal health industry in China," said Rimma Driscoll, vice president, Business Development and Commercial Alliances, at Zoetis. "Since 2012, Zoetis, along with the International Veterinary Collaboration for China, has stood behind this remarkable program, and we look forward to continuing with that assistance."



"The signing ceremony on Oct. 19 was a great opportunity for us to invite all supporters to celebrate and witness the U.S.-China public-private partnership on veterinary education and welcome the program's inaugural Doctor of Veterinary Medicine graduates back to China," said Jishu Shi, director of the U.S.-China Center for Animal Health.



The U.S.-China Joint Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Program is a five-year training program with one year of pre-veterinary study at Kansas State University and four years of veterinary study at the university or one of three other U.S. partnering schools. Once students receive their Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, they are to return to China to advance veterinary education and promote animal health, public health and food safety under the concept of "One World, One Health."



In May, the program graduated four inaugural students who are the first government-sponsored Chinese Doctor of Veterinary Medicine recipients since 1949. Now, these four graduates are recruited by the China Agricultural University and Huazhong Agricultural University as associate professors.



"Today, more than ever before, veterinary medicine has a global mission and responsibility, said Frank Blecha, associate dean for research with Kansas State University's College of Veterinary Medicine. "With our first Doctor of Veterinary Medicine recipients from this program returning to China this year, it is appropriate and exciting for all of us to rededicate ourselves to this important international veterinary educational program as it foretells a bright future for veterinary medical collaboration in the world."



The signing event was at the Grand Hyatt in Beijing. Representing the university at the ceremony were Shi, Blecha and Lei Wang, manager of the U.S.-China Center for Animal Health, who all also spoke at the event.
Peter and Veronica Mallouk Give Back Program donates $500K to Kansas State University for at-risk youth

Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017

Bob Carr, center, presents a $500,000 check to Kansas State University President Richard B. Myers, second from right, to launch a partnership between the university and Give Something Back, a foundation that assists low-income students. Also pictured, from left, are Bryon Williams, assistant director of community outreach at the university's New Student Services; Stephanie Bannister, the university's assistant vice president for student life and director of education and personal development; Carr; Myers; and Larry Moeder, the university's associate vice president for student life and executive director of admissions and student financial assistance. | Download this photo.





MANHATTAN  Low-income, at-risk students will have a greater opportunity to graduate college in four years without crushing debt because of a new partnership between Kansas State University and the Peter and Veronica Mallouk Give Back Program.



The program is the Kansas-based arm of Give Something Back, or Give Back, a nonprofit organization founded by philanthropist, entrepreneur and author Robert O. Carr that provides scholarships and mentoring to students who have faced economic hardships or other challenges such as the incarceration of a parent or foster care.



Give Back provides these students the opportunity to go to college and graduate in four years with little or no debt. The organization already has prepaid more than $35 million in scholarships to help more than 1,500 students go to college in seven states, and continues to grow.



A native of Kansas, Peter Mallouk is president and chief investment officer of Creative Planning Inc., one of the largest independent wealth management firms in the country. A graduate of the University of Kansas and its Graduate School of Business, he and his wife, also a KU graduate, are co-founders of KC CAN!, an organization of volunteers dedicated to improving the quality of life of children in Kansas City. Barron's magazine named Peter Mallouk the No. 1 independent financial advisor in America three years in a row.



"Like Bob Carr, Veronica and I are strongly motivated to help those who don't get a fair shake," Peter Mallouk said. "We funded the Kansas arm of Give Back because we want to do our small part to help put as many kids as we can as close to the same starting line as other kids. We don't believe someone's probability of success should be dependent on their ZIP code of birth."



Carr, CEO and founder of Beyond, a cause-based business tools and services company, has designated Give Back as beneficiary of his majority shareholder position in the company. Carr presented the $500,000 check from the Mallouks' Give Back Program to Kansas State University President Richard B. Myers to officially launch the partnership on Oct. 18.



"The Mallouk Give Back program in Kansas, once fully developed, will literally help transform the lives of between 150 to 300 students in their home state," Carr said. "And when one life is transformed in a family or neighborhood, it helps transform the lives of others. Cycles of poverty and marginalization can be broken through higher education."



Give Back provides mentoring and scholarships through a unique long-term model that identifies recipients in the ninth grade to start preparing them for college. Participating students who enter four-year universities upon high school graduation must maintain a minimum 3.0 GPA in high school, take a college preparatory course load and demonstrate strong character. They then attend one of the foundation's partner colleges, such as Kansas State University, where their tuition, fees, and room and board are covered. Every student who has graduated from college through Give Back is employed, and 91 percent of them graduated college in four years.



Without the program, many of the students, who come from low-income families, grew up in foster care or have incarcerated parents, would not have found collegiate success.



"Student success is important to us, and Give Something Back fits well with Kansas State University's land-grant mission," Myers said.



The university will deposit Give Back's $500,000 contribution in an interest-bearing account for four years before participating students, who are Pell Grant-eligible, start attending the university, said Larry Moeder, associate vice president for student life and executive director of admissions and student financial assistance.



"We hope to combine the Give Something Back funds with as many other funding sources as possible, including federal funds and other scholarships our counselors will help students find, to reduce the amount of this grant that we use so we can help more students," Moeder said.



Kansas State University's partnership with Give Back will provide opportunities for transformation as students benefit from the programming and scholarships, and the entire campus community will benefit as well, said Stephanie Bannister, assistant vice president for student life and director of education and personal development.



"Students will transform during their time at K-State because they will realize their dreams and open their minds to new possibilities, which is the opportunity higher education affords," Bannister said. "Working together, our campus community will experience grit, perseverance, heart and determination as we learn and work alongside people with different lived experiences. Transformation is going to happen on all sides."
Richard Harman writes at Politik:

On September 26, three days after the election, the National partys pollster, David Farrar, on his Kiwblog said: Twenty-two of the best 23 seats for NZ First are National held seats.

This will also make it very interesting for them if they decide to support a Labour-led Government.

Im not sure all those provincial and rural voters that voted NZ First will be keen on the inevitable political correctness and anti-agriculture policies that will eventuate from such a Government.

Id say there would be a huge backlash.

This is why Im quite keen to have Winston go with Labour and Greens.

 It will be sad for the country, but good for National in the long term as theyd ride a wave of discontent in 2020 and only need to pick up two more seats to govern. 

These comments from Farrar were frequently quoted by National Party sources spoken to by POLITIK over the past few weeks as a reason for the negotiators not to do a deal with NZ First.
The full agreement is here. For the most part all the reviews are not covered here as they may lead to nothing. So what are the big items:

$1 billion regional development fund

100 million trees a year to be planted

A feasibility study for moving Ports of Auckland. This means it wont happen.

Re-establish the NZ Forestry Service

Reform the Reserve Bank Act  likely to mean higher inflation

Increase minimum wage to $20 by April 2021. Is currently $15.75 so this is $4.25 over four years or around $1.20 cents a year. Has currently been going up 50 cents a year so this will have an impact on jobs.

Re-establish the Mental Health Commission.

Annual Free Health Check for Seniors including an eye check as part of the SuperGold Card.

Progressively increase the age for free breast screening to 74.

Pilot counsellors in primary schools.

Restore funding for Computers in Homes.

Establish a Housing Commission

Strive towards adding 1800 new Police officers over three years

Increase Community Law Centre funding.

Establish a Criminal Cases Review Commission. This is a rare good policy.

National Superannuation eligibility to remain at 65.

If the Climate Commission determines that agriculture is to be included in the ETS, then upon entry, the free allocation to agriculture will be 95%.

Increase support for National Science Challenges, including for piloting alternatives to 1080 and countering myrtle rust and kauri dieback.

No resource rentals for water in this term of Parliament

Introduce a royalty on exports of bottled water

Work with Maori and other quota holders to resolve outstanding issues in the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill in a way that is satisfactory to both Labour and New Zealand First. This means the sanctuary is dead unless corporate fisheries owners get paid money. That would set a precedent for all future marine reserves.

Independent review of the integrity of electoral processes and enrolments. I doubt the review will be at all independent. They will have an outcome in mind. Be very scared.

Introduce and pass a Waka Jumping Bill. This law allows party leaders to expel MPs from Parliament who disagree with them. Awful.

Allow a conscience vote for MPs on New Zealand Firsts Supplementary Order Paper to the End of Life Choice Bill, which provides for a referendum. Weird, as it is a conscience vote anyway.

Support New Zealand Firsts Racing policy. NZ First donors once again get a win!

Work towards a Free Trade Agreement with the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan Customs Union and initiate Closer Commonwealth Economic Relations. Double weird. Against an FTA with the US and against an FTA with China but Winston wants an FTA with Russia and Belarus!

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Tootle crowned most promising startup

Tootle, a mobile application designed by young Nepalis has been crowned most promising startup by Seedstars World, a global firm involved in promoting startups in emerging markets.
Yubaraj Bhusal appointed new chief executive officer of NRA

The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA), set-up to oversee the reconstruction works in the aftermath of the April 2015 earthquake, which killed nearly 9,000 people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of houses, seems to have become a political playground for parties.
Archaeologists unearthed an ancient Coptic tombstone during a dig Sunday (Oct. 22), according to Egypt's antiquities ministry.

The tombstone is decorated with a cross and Coptic inscriptions that were carved onto a limestone block, the ministry said. It measures about 1.2 feet by 3 feet (38 by 98 centimeters).

It wasn't immediately clear for whom the gravestone was made or when it was produced, but archaeologists plan to study it more to find out, Mostafa Alsager, the general director of Karnak Antiquities and the Avenue of Sphinxes, said in a statement. [Photos: 2,000-Year-Old Tombs Found in Egyptian Oasis]

The tombstone was discovered by an Egyptian archaeological group that was excavating beneath the Al Mathan bridge in Luxor, on the eastern side of the Avenue of Sphinxes  a well-known historical road that is lined with small sphinxes.

The Coptic gravestone's age in unknown. (Image credit: Egypt Ministry of Antiquities)

These days, Coptic Christians make up just 5 to 10 percent of Egypt's population, but the majority of Egyptians used to be Coptic, according to Paul Rowe, a professor of political and international studies at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, Canada.

The word "Copt" comes from an ancient Greek word that means "Egyptian," and it's used to refer to all Egyptian Christians, Rowe said.

According to the biblical book of Acts, Jews from Egypt visited Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost, a harvest festival that marked the birth of the Christian church just weeks after Jesus' crucifixion, Rowe said. These Egyptians took the Christian message back to their homes, which started the Coptic tradition.

The majority of Egyptians were Christian by the fourth century, but a few hundred years later, during the Middle Ages, Egyptians began to convert to Islam, Rowe said.

The discovery of the limestone tombstone may help archaeologists learn more about the ancient Coptic people who lived in Egypt, the ministry said.

Original article on Live Science.
Californians and Texans seem to suffer from a fear of holes, Georgians fear heights, and Americans generally seem to really be creeped out by the number 13  or at least, that's what our search histories suggest.

Security company ADT has a blog called yourlocalsecurity.com, and in the spirit of Halloween, those who run the blog decided to look carefully at what scares people. The method was simple: matching up search terms with "why am I afraid of," according to Scott Bay, author of the blog and a communications specialist at the company, who said the results don't really mean that people suffer from the actual phobia. True phobias are clinical terms and require a diagnosis from a psychologist or psychiatrist. "Our data points come from search data and merely represent what people are searching for, not necessarily the phobia they may have (if any)," Bay told Live Science.

To get the data, Bay and his colleagues looked at Google Trends, using data from a yearlong period starting in September 2016. They cross-referenced the "why am I afraid of" text string with the top 24 phobias in the United States determined by fearof.net. [What Really Scares People: Top 10 Phobias]

It's not possible to track an individual's search data, because Google Trends looks at things in aggregate. Even so, the algorithm reveals not only generalized search trends over the whole country but also a way to see where certain terms are concentrated.

The results were, in some cases, surprising  few would guess that New Yorkers seem to be really interested in claustrophobia, the fear of enclosed spaces. Half the population lives in densely populated New York City, where getting a kitchen big enough to sit down in is a relative luxury. Claustrophobia seems a common search term in Florida as well.

Other phobias  with their more exotic names  are found in California and Texas, where searches for trypophobia, or the fear of holes, was most common. Arizonans have a lot of people searching for brontophobia  the fear of thunder and lightning. Residents of Kentucky would seem to have an inordinate fear of commitment  gamophobia  which was the most common phobia searched.

And perhaps unsurprisingly, the top two phobias searched nationwide were triskaidekaphobia (the fear of the number 13) and xenophobia, the fear of the unknown, which also gets conflated with fear of foreigners and immigrants. (The term is often used interchangeably, though it isn't quite the same thing). The third most-commonly searched phobia in the U.S. was coulrophobia, or the fear of clowns  anyone who was traumatized at a childhood birthday party might recall that one. In fourth place was trypophobia, followed by thalassaphobia, or fear of the ocean.

An odd statistical fluke meant that while thalassaphobia was in the top five, it wasn't concentrated enough to show up as the top phobia for any state. (Clowns made it in Colorado and Nebraska. Xenophobia made it to the top spots in no fewer than nine states: Alaska, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin). Triskaidekaphobia made the top spot only in North Dakota. Trypophobia was in first place for California, New Mexico, Texas and Vermont.

Nevadans seem to fear ghosts (phasmaphobia). They share this one with Kansans, Oregonians and Tennesseans.

The phobias might offer some ideas for region-specific Halloween costumes. Evidently dressing up as the land shark will do well to scare people in New Jersey and New Hampshire, where galeophobia was their top-searched phobia.

Originally published on Live Science.
A rescued bear with a tongue so large it dragged on the ground has a second chance in life after surgery.

A University of Edinburgh veterinarian joined bear rescue organizations in Southeast Asia to operate on the Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus). The young bear, nicknamed "Nyan htoo," or "bright," was rescued from illegal sale in Myanmar along with a sibling. Monks at a monastery in Myanmar stepped in to prevent the two bears from being shipped to China, according to the University of Edinburgh.

Unfortunately, Nyan htoo's tongue soon began to swell. In 2016, vets in Myanmar did an operation to remove the enlarged tissue, but the swelling returned. By June 2017, the tongue was bulbous and hard for Nyan htoo to hold up. It dragged on the ground when he played, scraped against his teeth constantly, and forced the bear to lean his head against the side of his cage for support, according to the university. [The 6 Craziest Animal Experiments]

Postsurgical pathology suggests the swollen tongue may have been caused by elephantiasis, a swelling of tissue caused by parasitic worms that are transmitted via mosquito bite. More than 120 million people are infected with these worms (and have lymphatic filariasis) in countries throughout the tropics and sub-tropics of Asia, Africa, the Western Pacific, and parts of the Caribbean and South America, according to the CDC.

The disease, also known as lymphatic filariasis, is caused when worms block the flow of fluid called lymph. Lymph is the body's drainage system; it's made of blood plasma and fluids that flow through lymphatic vessels to be reintegrated into the blood. The immune system also uses the lymphatic system as a home base. Elephantiasis is famous from the late-1800s case of the "Elephant Man," Joseph Carey Merrick, who had severe growths and swelling over his head and body and who was dramatized in a 1980 film by English actor John Hurt. However, Merrick didn't suffer from elephantiasis. For years, people thought that he had neurofibromatosis type 1 (which can manifest as elephantiasis), but in 1986, geneticists identified his condition as Proteus syndrome, according to an article published in 2011 in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

Elephantiasis was unknown in bears before this case, however.

"This was a really unusual medical condition  never before seen in any species of bear  but we weren't about to give up on Nyan htoo," Nelson said in a statement. "Now, he will be able to eat much more comfortably, sleep in more natural positions and move more freely for the rest of his life."

Editor's Note: This article was updated to clarify that Joseph Merrick did not have elephantiasis and to provide a CDC number for cases of lymphatic filariasis.

Original article on Live Science.
Nature & Weather, Local News, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: October 24 2017

DOEs Proposal To Subsidize Dirty Coal-Burning Power Would Violate Multiple Federal Laws; Proposal Threatens New Yorkers With More Pollution And Climate Change, And A Less Reliable And Resilient Electricity Supply.

New York, NY - October 24, 2017 - Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced his opposition to the Trump Department of Energys proposal to subsidize coal-burning power plants. In comments filed today, the Attorney General argued that the proposal would violate multiple federal laws and threaten New York with more air pollution, further climate change, and a less reliable and resilient electricity supply in an attempt to bail out polluting and climate-damaging coal-burning power plants.

This unlawful, thinly-veiled corporate giveaway threatens to impede New Yorks progress in protecting the environment, and securing a cleaner, more sustainable, and affordable energy future, said Attorney General Schneiderman. The Trump administration continues to put polluters before the health and well-being of New Yorkers. Well continue to fight back.

In comments filed today , Attorney General Schneiderman charges that the proposed subsidy threatens to undercut New Yorks progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and its efforts to better protect the electric grid against the effects of climate change through clean and renewable energy sources. It would also likely harm both public and environmental health, undermining New Yorks fight against smog and acid rain-forming pollution that blows into the state from upwind coal-fired power plants.

On September 28, 2017, US Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry signed a notice of proposed rulemaking directing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to consider adopting a rule to require that electricity generators with a 90-day fuel supply on-site be paid higher prices  principally, coal and nuclear power plants. The Trump Administrations proposal seeks to protect these power plants from market forces that are resulting in their closure. The DOE claims that subsidizing fuel-secure power plants is necessary for the reliability and resiliency of the electricity system  ensuring adequate fuel is available to power plants to operate during an emergency, extreme weather conditions, or a natural or man-made disaster.

The Attorney General charges that, because DOE has failed to establish any need or other basis for the proposed subsidy, the DOEs proposed rule would violate requirements of both the Federal Power Act and federal Administrative Procedure Act. As stated in the comments, the notice of proposed rulemaking provides no evidence that fuel unavailability has created a reliability or resilience problem and no analysis demonstrating that the [proposed required subsidy] would solve that nonexistent problem. In its rush to subsidize coal-burning power plants, DOE is ignoring the fact that states such as New York are already home to a reliable, resilient electricity grid. There is no pressing fuel-related reliability emergency in New York and, to the extent fuel assurance may be a future concern, New York has and will continue to take rational steps to assure system reliability for all users, the Attorney General wrote. The AG also charges that DOE has violated the Administrative Procedure Act by not allowing sufficient time or providing sufficient detail and rationale regarding the proposal to allow for meaningful public comment.

Beyond these violations of multiple federal laws, the proposed subsidy  the avowed purpose of which is to buoy uncompetitive and polluting coal-fired power plants threatens to undercut the states efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect the grid from climate change, promote clean, renewable, and affordable energy, and protect public health and the environment in the state.

Competition in the wholesale energy markets and New Yorks environmental and energy policies have resulted in the closure or repowering of most of New Yorks coal-burning power plants. However, Attorney General Schneiderman argues that, by encouraging the greater use of those remaining plants, the proposed subsidies threaten achievement of the states ambitious goals of reducing in-state carbon pollution emissions by 40 percent and obtaining 50 percent of electricity generation from renewable sources by 2030. Employing subsidies to prop up out-of-state coal-burning power plants could do substantial harm to decades-long efforts to reduce the pollution that blows into New York, and contributes to smog, soot, acid rain, and other health and environmental impacts. The Attorney General also cautions that increases in greenhouse gas emissions due to increased use of coal-fired power plants would contribute to climate change and its harms, including impacts on the electric grid, in New York.

In addition, Attorney General Schneiderman argues that  directly contrary to the proposals purported goal of reducing risks to the electric grid  subsidizing coal-burning power plants would actually increase the likelihood of storm-related resiliency problems. Climate change produces storms of greater intensity, and those severe storms present greater risk to grid reliability and resiliency. The [proposal], however, provides additional financial support to coal-fired power plants that would give them an incentive to run more frequently, generating additional carbon dioxide emissions that would make climate change worse, increasing the intensity of storms and therefore increasing the risk to grid reliability and resiliency.

Despite the potential for the proposed subsidies for coal-burning power plants to result in significant adverse impacts to New Yorks environment, FERC has not performed an analysis of these impacts pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). As stated in the comments, at a minimum, the [proposal] raises questions that need to be evaluated regarding whether and to what extent the [proposed subsidies] would lead to increased use of coal-fired generating units; whether and to what extent increased coal combustion would worsen air quality, in New York and elsewhere, and contribute to climate change; and whether other, less harmful alternatives exist. The Attorney General charges that DOEs failure to perform an environmental impact analysis of the proposal is a violation of NEPA.
Music, Movies & Entertainment, Local News, Arts & Culture, Seasonal & Current Events

By Long Island News & PR Published: October 24 2017

Peter Joseph, the controversial writer/director of the Zeitgeist Film Series, will be Tom Needhams special guest this Thursday on WUSBs The Sounds of Film.

Stony Brook, NY - October 24, 2017 - Peter Joseph, the founder of the Zeitgeist Movement, will be Tom Needhams featured guest this week at 6 P.M. on The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the Economy to End Oppression , and his upcoming film, InterReflections . Peter Joseph, the founder of the Zeitgeist Movement, will be Tom Needhams featured guest this week at 6 P.M. on WUSBs The Sounds of Film . He will be discussing his current book,, and his upcoming film,

Peter Joseph is an award-winning filmmaker, musician and activist who is most well-known for his Zeitgeist Film Series . The Zeitgeist films utilize archival footage, interviews, animation and narration to propose extensive social and economic changes. The films were all originally released on the internet and earned tens of millions of viewers making them some of the most watched movies in Internet history. The series includes Zeitgeist: The Movie , Zeitgeist: Addendum , and Zeitgeist: Moving Forward . Some of the people featured in the series include George Carlin, Alex Jones, Jacque Fresco, Max Keiser and Michael Ruppert. The Zeitgeist Film Series has been translated into over 40 languages and screened in over 150 countries. The popularity of the films led to start of the Zeitgeist Movement which advocates for the transformation of society and its economic system to a non-monetary system based on resource allocation.

Peter Joseph will be discussing his new film, InterReflections . The movie employs a new narrative-based fantasy and live-action style that takes place in multiple time frames. With this film, Peter Joseph leaves behind his documentary style and takes on an experimental abstract mixed-film style.

About the Sounds of Film
Local News, Crime

By Long Island News & PR Published: October 24 2017

NCPD: Omar Baumann of Kissimee, 30, is being charged with Assault and Possession of a Dangerous Weapon.

NCPD reports the arrest of a Florida man for an Assault that occurred on Monday, October 23, in Elmont.

Elmont, NY - October 24, 2017 - The Fifth Squad reports the arrest of a Florida man for an Assault that occurred on Monday, October 23, 2017 at 5:35 p.m. in The Fifth Squad reports the arrest of a Florida man for an Assault that occurred on Monday, October 23, 2017 at 5:35 p.m. in Elmont

According to detectives, Omar Baumann, 30, of Kissimee, got into an altercation with an acquaintance over a past disagreement. The altercation became physical when the defendant pulled a knife from his pocket and stabbed the victim several times, including once in his abdomen. The victim drove himself to an area hospital for treatment. Baumann was arrested without incident.

Defendant Baumann is being charged with Assault 1st Degree and Possession of a Dangerous Weapon 4th Degree. He will be arraigned on Tuesday, October 24, 2017 at First District Court, Hempstead
Local News, Business & Finance, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: October 24 2017

Mangano announces start of a renovation project at the site of the former Source Mall in Westbury.

Mineola, NY - October 24, 2017 - Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano joined Michael Mai, Founder of Lesso Group Holdings Ltd. on Thursday, October 19th, to announce to start of a renovation project at the site of the former Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano joined Michael Mai, Founder of Lesso Group Holdings Ltd. on Thursday, October 19th, to announce to start of a renovation project at the site of the former Source Mall in Westbury . The Lesso Group purchased the mall, as well as the Fortunoff building on the property, in May, and plan to complete renovations by next year. This includes investing $25 million into transforming a portion of the property into showroom space for their China-based home furnishings and building products business.
Local News, Crime, Business & Finance, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: October 24 2017

The Equifax data breach was one of the largest in U.S. history, affecting an estimated 145.5 million Americans, or 45% of the entire population. This included 8 million New Yorkers.

New York, NY - October 24, 2017 - Senator David Carlucci announced an 8-point plan to respond to the massive data breach involving Equifax. The plan is the result of a hearing held on September 28 by the Senate Consumer Protection Committee (chaired by Senator Carlucci).

The Equifax data breach was one of the largest in U.S. history, affecting an estimated 145.5 million Americans, or 45% of the entire population. This included 8 million New Yorkers. Data compromised by the breach included social security numbers, drivers license numbers, birthdays, home addresses, and telephone numbers.

Following the hearing, Senator Carlucci released an extensive report detailing the committees findings and recommendations. These include a 8-point plan that addresses a host of concerns relating to data breaches and identity theft. This plan takes a number of actions:

Expanding the Definition of Private Information: We recommend the enactment of S. 6890/A. 8709 by Senator Carlucci and Assemblywoman Fahy, which expands the definition of private information, the disclosure of which would trigger state data breach protocols to include birth dates, home addresses, and telephone numbers. It also removes the requirement that credit card, debit card, and bank account numbers be disclosed along with passwords or security codes to be considered a breach. Give New York State Statutory Authority Over Credit Reporting Agencies: We recommend enacting S. 6878 by Senator Comrie, giving the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) licensing authority over credit reporting agencies, as well as the ability to review their records. Drastically Reduce Notification Time: We recommend the enactment of S. 6891 by Senator Carlucci, requiring that a preliminary notification that a breach may have occurred be sent to the Attorney General within 24 hours and to all effected parties within 48 hours. We also recommend the enactment of S. 1104A by Senator Valesky, requiring that notification that a breach has occurred be sent to all effected parties and the Attorney General within 45 days. Set Minimum Data Security Standards for All Large Companies: We recommend the reintroduction and enactment of the Data Security Act. This bill sets minimum, flexible data security standards for credit reporting agencies and other entities including reasonable data safeguards, independent audits by licensed auditors, and a safe harbor provision for those who meet heightened federal standards. Making Credit Freezes Free for All Consumers: Under current law, only an initial credit freeze is free, regardless of whether a breach has occurred. However, companies can charge up to a $5 fee unfreeze or refreeze your credit. We recommend the enactment of S. 6891 by Senator Carlucci, requiring that companies offer free credit freezes and unfreezes to all New Yorkers at any time. Providing Free Credit Monitoring to All New Yorkers: We recommend the enactment of S. 6912 by Senator Carlucci, requiring that companies that suffer a data breach provide free credit monitoring services to effected parties for one year following a breach. Free FICO: We recommend the enactment of S. 6913 by Senator Carlucci, which would implement a public outreach program to help educate New York consumers about their rights to access their credit report under the federal Equal Credit Opportunity Act, as well as the workings of FICO scores. S. 6914, also by Senator Carlucci, implements a broader education and outreach program to inform consumers about topics such as their rights to notification of a data breach, credit freezes, and credit monitoring, among other topics. Additionally, we call on the federal government to make access to credit reports and FICO scores free in all cases, for all consumers, at any time. Allow Consumers to Opt-In to Any Sharing of Their Personal Information: We recommend the enactment of S. 5576 by Senator Carlucci, requiring internet service providers to provide customers with a copy of their privacy policy and to obtain written and explicit permission from a customer prior to sharing, using, selling or providing any sensitive information to a third party.

The Equifax breach put into stark contrast the degree of the threat posed by identity thieves and hackers. The time for action is now  and we are taking action. This 8-point plan takes a comprehensive approach to combating data breaches and identity theft. I call upon the legislature to make it a top priority during the upcoming legislative session and to swiftly enact it into law. Carlucci said.
by Wayne Friedman , October 23, 2017

A high-tech Mountain View, California-based company is looking to grab low-tech TV viewers.

Didja is starting BayAreaBTV -- a free TV app that live-streams content from small-to-midsize San Francisco market TV stations. Along with that app, consumers have the option of buying a cloud DVR service for $4.95 a month.

Didja is trying to capture cord-cutters. Antenna TV is growing significantly; people have a lot of choice of content, says Jim Long, CEO of Didja, speaking with Television News Daily.

Long estimates there are 16 million antenna-only based TV viewers and this is rising. He says there were 7 million TV antennas sold last year in the U.S.

Didja's business model is not intended to sell any advertising -- or to charge most small-to-midsize over-the-air TV stations. We are more of a service facility, a computer platform, than a big national brand, says Long.

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Didja looks to expand into 40 markets covering more than 60% of U.S. TV homes by 2019. Longs goal is to get around 6 million to 8 million TV users to sign on. The company ran a recent test in the Phoenix market -- PhoenixBTV -- featuring 25 to 27 channels.

The app is free for small-to-midsize TV stations -- those that are not involved in any retransmission fee deals -- which in LA, for example, he estimates at about 80 of just over 100 stations.

For bigger TV stations -- major affiliate stations and big independents -- Didja will charge a fee, which will be comparable to retrans fees big TV stations get from pay TV providers. Long says: Well be in that ballpark.

TV affiliate stations will pay Didja, which in turn will pay TV networks. This will be found money for the networks, he says.

Long believes TV network advertising will improve as a result of these new over-the-air TV consumers, especially as many will be younger. We are going to be measured, just like everyone.

Once Didja signs up bigger TV affiliates and they are added to the app, it will alter its structure to charge around $15 a month for consumers.

Consumers will also have the option of remaining with the free TV app -- a package of non-affiliate/independent TV stations that do not get any money from retrans deals.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, October 24, 2017

Any talk of Facebook building bridges with publishers may have to be put on hold. The worlds largest social network is testing a new format for its popular Newsfeed feature, which removes content posted by pages (including publishers) from the Newsfeed and relocates it to the new Explore Feed.

Its worth noting that Facebook is testing the new feature in a few smaller markets overseas (Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Slovakia, Serbia, Guatemala, and Cambodia). There is no guarantee it will ever see a broader rollout, either in the U.S. or abroad.

Still, the test holds out the alarming possibility that Facebook, by moving publisher content to the harder-to-find Explore Feed, will effectively demote it in the big hierarchy of user attention  making it even harder for publishers to find and retain Facebook audiences.

Facebook launched Explore to expose users to content from sources outside their usual social-media context. By definition, it includes things users havent already expressed interest in. That's not exactly an ideal storefront for publishers or content creators of any stripe, especially considering it is a separate tab users choose to open.

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In the tests, the main Newsfeed is devoted solely to news from friends, family, and other members of the users personal social network.

The results of the test in smaller markets are sobering for publishers.

One small publisher in Slovakia reports that while the countrys big newspapers and media companies fared better, small publishers have seen the organic reach of some of their Facebook pages fall by two-thirds. Facebook interactions, such as likes and shares, are down by a factor of four.

Back on the positive side of the ledger, Facebook has also begun testing a new system that will allow publishers to sell subscriptions and enforce their paywalls in coordination with the network. The new subscription sales tool, developed under the aegis of Facebooks Journalism Project, is integrated with Facebooks Instant Articles. It allows publishers to direct users to their own Web sites, off the Facebook platform, in order to sign up.

Facebook is offering publishers two paywall options, one which allows users to read up to 10 free articles per month before requiring them to subscribe, and another that allows publishers to choose which articles are free to view and which will be behind the paywall.

However, at launch, the new subscription sales system will only be compatible with Android devices. That's due to Facebooks inability to come to an agreement with Apple over sharing revenue from the sales.
Dr. Lerner and team conducted their study on a cohort of young adults, and their findings were published yesterday in the Journal of Neuroscience.

The process of fear learning is the mechanism through which we attempt to predict exposure to threatening situations so that we react appropriately to preserve our safety.

Dr. Itamar Lerner, Shira Lupkin, and other researchers from Rutgers University in Newark, NJ, have now conducted a study indicating that better-quality sleep is linked with dampened brain activity in regions tied to fear learning.

Other conditions, such as epilepsy , have also been associated with sleeplessness, and a recent study covered by Medical News Today even suggests that there may be a causal relationship between sleep disturbances and ADHD .

Sleep disturbances are linked with a poorer quality of life overall, and they are often associated with a range of mental health issues, including depression and anxiety .

New research has found that better-quality sleep is connected with reduced activity in brain regions implicated in fear learning. Thus, time spent in rapid eye movement sleep could be a good indicator of susceptibility to post-traumatic stress disorder.

The researchers were spurred to conduct their study by existing research about the relationships between post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and sleep disturbances.

Previous studies have aimed to understand the relationship between established fear memories  which have already taken root in the mind  and sleep in the context of PTSD.

The current studys goal, by contrast, was to establish whether or not a persons sleep patterns before witnessing a traumatic event might be a good predictor of whether fear memories will become established in the first place.

This, in turn, might indicate whether or not sleep patterns of brain activity associated with fear learning might be associated with an individuals susceptibility to PTSD.

In their study, Dr. Lerner and his colleagues asked the participants  who were 17 healthy Rutgers University students, of which five were female  to monitor their own brain activity during sleep for approximately 1 week.

For this purpose, they used unobtrusive devices such as a headband that allowed them to measure their brainwaves and a bracelet recording arm movements. The participants also used a sleep log to record their sleep habits and patterns.

In addition to the self-monitoring, the participants were involved in a neuroimaging experiment that conditioned them to associate a neutral image  of a colored lamp  with the induction of a mild electric shock.

The researchers found that those who spent more time in the rapid eye movement (REM) phase of sleep  which is associated with dreaming  also had dampened activity in, as well as reduced connectivity between, the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex during fear learning.

These three brain regions are variously implicated in our response to stress factors, as well as in memory and learning.

For instance, the amygdala and the hippocampus are known to work together in the context of the fight-or-flight response  that is, how we react to a perceived source of threat  as well as in the process of memory formation .
When it comes to architecture, every country has its own unique style. While Roman architecture looms heavily on domes, arches, amphitheatres and art carved into walls of stone buildings depicting battles; roots of Indian architecture are attached to its history, civilization and glorious feats.

But, no matter how exotic or heavenly other countries are, there is nothing that can beat China and its deceptive architecture. Other countries might mesmerize you, but China knows how to trigger your acrophobia and this glass bridge on the eastern face of Hebei's Taihang Mountain is a classic example of just that.

 Pinterest

Clearly, walking on a glass bridge that hangs some 3,800 ft. above the sea level is not enough to satisfy the sadistic pleasures of the architects who designed it, so they went ahead and threw this to scare the sh*t out of us and give a mini heart attack.

Just look at this video, where a man is visibly freaked out and looks terrified because the glass underneath him seems to be cracking. This short clip is enough to make anyone pee their pants, but in reality the glass isn't actually cracking because of your weight and it was just an effect created in order to be provocative. You've got to me kidding me!

Apparently, the walkway designers placed some panels of shattered fragments of glass in between the layers. So every time you walk on it, it will appear as if it is breaking and you can hear the glass cracking. But it's all an illusionwhich can potentially cause a cardiac arrest!

Although, as reported by Mashable, the East Taihang district administration has already issued an official apology, but that doesn't take away from the fact that pranking people who are already walking on a dangerous glass path, is cool.

Having said that, Taihang Mountain's glass bridge is not the only death-defying spot, as there are many such breathtaking (quite literally) places to visit in China. If you feel that walking on this glass bridge will be a cool thing to do, then you should definitely include the hiking trail to Mount Huashan on your bucket list.

 imgur

Steep staircases, vertical ascents and a trail of wooden planks (without any fences) bolted onto the mountainside is all it takes to reach the destination and this video makes it look like its child's play.

FYI, this trail is considered to be one of the most dangerous of its kind in the world and we are not surprised. People who say that one gets butterflies in their stomach when they fall in love clearly have not hit this deadly trail. We guess we'll have to settle for the vicarious view. What draws the adventurous souls to this deadly trail is the fascinating view of the city of Huayin, which boasts of the rich 3000-year-old Chinese culture and the site of the renowned Terracotta Warriors.

Another dangerous path is the Guoliang Tunnel, which has been carved alongside and through the mountain. Driving through this road requires immense focus and even the slightest mistake can turn life-threatening. Surprisingly it was carved in five years by just 13 villagers in remote China in the 1970s.

And last but definitely not the least is the Chongqing Wansheng Ordovician Theme Park, where you are actually swinging over a 1000 ft in the air (FML). With the fog blanketing you as you are pushed by a *cough* devil *cough* staff member, it sure makes a mesmerizing view. We can bet there is no amusement park on the planet which can give such a thrill!

So we can conclude that in China the definition of fun is basically going through near death experience. So, unless we are planning to audition for the next 'Khatron Ke Khiladi', there's no way on earth that someone can convince us for a trip to China. But, we are sure there will be many who will want to visit those places or might have already been there, so let us know about your experience in the comments below and tag your friends to plan an adventurous trip, right now.
You just can't forget 'Rajesh Ramayan Koothrappali' from 'Big Bang Theory' with his god-awful sweater vests and a naive yet kind heart. Portrayed by Kunal Nayyar, Raj's character is just too hard to ignore. Raj is one of the five main characters to appear in every episode. For people who don't know much about his character, Raj is Howard Joel Wolowitz's (Simon Helberg) best friend, the two have an amazing on-screen presence and their bromance is hysterically awesome. However, at times things do take an awkward turn due to his metrosexuality.

Well, Kunal recently made a brief appearance on the 'Ellen Show' and the discussion the two had is already making waves thanks to its hilarious content.

(c) CBS

When an actor appears on Ellen DeGeneres' show you know what to expect. Fun, embarrassing moments, intimate topics and of course, pure insanity. And that's exactly how Kunal and Ellen's conversation went down.

From him admitting that he waves to literally anyone....even if he has no idea who they are, to his religious commitment to eating, the entire episode was filled with moments that leave you in splits.

However, what grabbed our attention was when the two started talking about the festival of lights. The actor went on to explain how Diwali is celebrated in India and what people usually do during those days.

He told her about 'Choti Diwali' and explained, It's like small Diwali and then today is the actual Diwali. People start partying a week before.

(c) The Ellen Show

Ellen even asked him if people eat or drink a certain item to which Kunal said, No just alcohol and food.

The concept of partying way before the actual festival began left Ellen feeling considerably jealous as she said, You should have a small holiday before a big one, why don't we have one before the big one?

And later she came up with an epic idea of having Thanksgiving in Diwali style. Well, that's an interesting take. The two are so natural and spontaneous that you can't get enough of them.

This clip is still trending on 49th position in YouTube and just within few days has got over 3,70,000 views.

Check out her Ellen's full response because it's too good to miss.
It's okay to have celebrities as role models when it comes to your fitness goals. Having a pro bodybuilder, a professional athlete or even a fitness trainer as a role model is great. Yes we know it takes hard work, vision, dedication to get to a level where you deserve applause and praises but it can also be a little boring to be constantly following people who behave like monks. A balance of work and pleasure is very healthy and also a great way to go about life. Here are 5 celebrities who I think know how to strike the balance between their fitness lifestyle and their work. Also, more than anything, these dudes saty fit year round and don't just get in shape when the camera's watching.

1) Jason Momoa

You may know this boisterous, strong long haired man for his role as Khal drogo in game of thrones. He is also all set to break records with his most anticipated role that is coming up this year with Aqua Man. Jason Mamoa is one damn fit mofo, standing at 6.3 in height; he has the musculature of a Greek god. His style of working out is very unique when compared with other celebs. Loves doing cross fit and is a mountain climber at heart. In fact, Momoa has been into climbing for decades now. Nothing is too risky for this man. When he is not shooting or climbing random rocks he is either riding bikes or drinking Guinness beer and getting drunk. Girls seem to love the beer froth that gets on his moustache and beer while he sips. How does one maintain such an amazing physique and abs and still drink like a fish is something to think about?

2) John Abraham

What is so special about this Indian hunk of an actor is his true dedication to the term fitness. And he does it without making his life look boring. While most Indian male celebs drink, smoke and do drugs, this man stays away from all these habits. He is a very clean eater. Leads a regimented lifestyle and never misses a workout. A long time ago his bike accident made news, however the next day his instagram posts showed he was up at 6 am working out and pumping up those muscles in spite of his injuries . What is really great about this person is that, he has time for his passion which is riding bikes, makes time for his marriage, and for his parents, and also runs a production company producing some good movies. Now there's nothing boring about this guy.

3) Arnold Schwarzenegger

While most youngsters were 'just doing things' Arnold dedicated himself to becoming the best built man in the world. And indeed became Mr. Universe at just 21 years old. What happened after that is rock and roll history. Every set he performed at the gym got him closer to his goal of being the best and one day taking over Hollywood by storm. He invested into multiple businesses even before he acted in his first movie. While people told him he would never make it big in Hollywood, he made time to learn English, study business, understand the craft of acting and made history. Even though he made all his dreams come true, having a net worth of over 300 million USD at the age of 70 as you read this, he still workouts twice a day. He wakes up at 5 am to do his cardio followed by some breakfast and news paper reading, finish off all his work for the day and then back at the gym in the evening to lift weights. This man made a lot of sacrifices as a youngster but he sure as hell made time to have some fun by keeping up with the hippie era by smoking weed , or messing around with a lot of women at the Venice beach . He did it all and yet managed to get all he wanted in life.

4) Conor mc gregor

The only UFC star to dare challenge Floyd 'Money' Mayweather at his own sport, Mc Gregor was much applauded for his fighting spirit in the ring. Taking home a 100 million dollars at 29 years old is no joke either. His training is unmatchable, his discipline and dedication to each and every practice session is what got him where he is today. It took a lot of hard work, tears and sweat for this young man to be on the news and have such a fat bank account. His flamboyant lifestyle of wearing the best of designer clothes, top end cars and best vacation spots is how a bad boy who has earned it all would live.

4) Christian Bale

When it comes to transformations, this man needs no introduction. Some of his transformations were so extreme that it makes you wonder how someone could have the will to go through something like that. What is even more amusing is how he regained all that lean muscle and weight back for his role in batman after losing it all in the Mechanist. What you can learn from this man is that if you put your mind to something, there is nothing you can't do. Christian bale's multiple transformations teaches us that, give your all and set goals and targets and then go ahead. Although his skinny physique is not what fitness enthusiasts should look for, it's his dedication to literally look unrecognizable just by making changes in nutrition and workouts is what can be looked up to.

Helius is one of Mumbai's most promising fitness professionals and part time kettle bell lecturer. His knowledge on nutrition and trainer soft skills management is well recognized. To know more about him CLICK HERE, and mail your queries about fitness to heliusd@hotmail.com.
Pals before gals, bros before * ahem * you know the word, bromance over romance. The movie industry loves celebrating the bond of male friendships and why shouldn't they? It's considered nothing less than sacred to men. I am sure you are guilty of secretly bailing out on your girl for a boys night out, chosen to take advice from your best friend instead of following what your girlfriend thought was right. Here is a legit reason for your behaviour. Turns out you are probably 'designed' to function that way. (sigh of sweet relief am I right?)

 CBS

A new study published on the basis of an extensive survey done by 'Men And Masculinity' shows that men usually prefer the emotional dependency on their bros over a romantic relationship. Having an intimate heterosexual friendship with fellow men has been the most normal thing in the history of humans. Relationships, romantic inclinations and even matrimonial alliances for that matter, have been the societal way of finding companionship and raising a family. The survey was conducted on over 30 men, mostly those who were pursuing graduation and had a girlfriend. The survey revealed that the increasingly intimate, emotive, and trusting nature of bromances offers young men a new social space for emotional disclosure, outside of traditional heterosexual relationships.

 Warner Bros

The main catalyst that led to men choosing their pals over their gals was the comfort that comes with the lack of judgement with their friends. Also, many subjects revealed that it was easier for them to open up to their male friends about their conflicts rather than their girlfriends. The study also highlighted something that you might be thinking while reading this. The rise of the bromances may not altogether be liberating and socially positive for women, according to the survey.

The authors also suggested that these factors sometime even influence where and with whom men end up living with in their early years of adult life. This feeling might resonate with you as well, however, one should remember that balance is the key to a happy life. Sure, bromance will save you on a rainy day any day, but that does not mean that you neglect the possibility of a blossoming romance in your life.
Samsung wowed the world when they introduced the Note 8 recently but people tend to forget that the Note 7 was a spectacular phone as well. Apart from the obvious bursting feature of course. The Note 7 was one of the biggest disasters in consumer tech's history and Samsung took measures to ensure it doesn't happen again. The South Korean company employed a rigorous eight-point safety check for future smartphone due to the fiasco and since then the company launched two spectacular smartphones: The Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8.

 Twitter

Since the launch of the Note 8, consumers have put the debacle behind them and it is clearly evident since the newly launched device is selling like hot cakes. In order to fully capitalise on the huge success, the company liked to remind consumers about the huge debacle with a very smart yet funny promotion method.

 Iberia Airlines

Samsung Spain handed out 200 Note 8 devices to passengers on board a flight between Madrid and A Coruna, Galicia. There was a messaged that came along with the smartphone which read A year ago we asked you to turn it off, we welcome you today on board, according to a simple Google Translate search.

 BCCL

The promotion clearly admits that the Note 7 was banned from flights due to the fact that its battery kept malfunctioning. What impresses us the most is that Samsung is not ashamed of hiding the same fact and wants to remind customers that they have a new and safer product that can be used in flights. Even though this might be a weird way to promote a new product, it is certainly gaining trust amongst consumers.

The video above was captured by Samsung and it shows that passengers were happy to get a free smartphone but were also annoyed about being woken up.

The Galaxy Note 8 has reviewed well across the globe and we feel it is one of the best Android smartphones you can buy today. You can read our review here to know more about the device.

Source: Techcrunch
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As used in these Terms, "billing" shall indicate either a charge or debit, as applicable, against your Payment Method. The subscription fee will be billed at the beginning of your subscription and on each subsequent renewal (as per plan chosen by you) thereafter unless and until you cancel your subscription or the account or service is otherwise suspended or discontinued pursuant to these Terms. To see the commencement date for your next renewal period, go to the billing information section on your account page.

In order to sustain the Services, it is important that you honor the payment obligations to which you have agreed. Accordingly, the Company reserves the right to pursue any amounts you fail to pay in connection with the Services. You will remain liable to the Company for all such amounts and all costs incurred by the Company in connection with the collection of these amounts, including, without limitation, collection agency fees, reasonable attorneys fees, and arbitration or court costs.

You also understand and acknowledge that the Company only facilitates the third party payment gateway for processing of payment. This facility is managed by the third party payment gateway provider and you are required to follow all the terms and conditions of such third party payment gateway provider. You are responsible for the accuracy and authenticity of the information provided by you, including the bank account number/credit card details and the like. You agree and acknowledge that the Company shall not be liable and in no way be held responsible for any losses whatsoever, whether direct, indirect, incidental or consequential, including without limitation any losses due to delay in processing of payment instruction or any credit card fraud.

You can file any complaint related to payment transfer at Site and the same shall be forwarded to the concerned third party payment gateway provider for redressal.

Free Trials: You may be offered a free trial period at the start of your membership of the Services, solely at the discretion of the Company. The duration and the terms of the free trial period shall be at the discretion of the Company and shall be specified during sign up. Free trials may not be combined with any other offer(s). Free trials will not be given in cases of renewal of membership or activation of another account from a physical address and/or email address and/or device which is linked to an already existing account, etc. Billing may automatically commence at the end the free trial period, without prior notice, as per the subscription plan chosen by you, unless you cancel your membership prior to the expiry of the free trial period. It is hence recommended that you keep track of your account, including the date when the free trial period ends.

Once billing commences, we will continue to bill your Payment Method for your membership fee until you cancel. You may cancel your membership at anytime; however, there are no refunds or credits for partially used periods.

4.LINKS TO OTHER SITES

The Site or the Services may contain the links or pointers to other websites but you should not infer or assume that the Company operates, controls, or is otherwise connected with these other websites. When you click on a link within the Site, the Company may not warn you that you have left the Site and are subject to the terms and conditions (including privacy policies) of another website. Please be careful to read the terms of use and privacy policy of any other website before you provide any confidential information or engage in any transactions. You should not rely on these Terms to govern your use of another website.

The Company is not responsible for the content or practices of any other website even if it links to the Site and even if the website is operated by a company affiliated or otherwise connected with the Company. You acknowledge and agree that the Company is not responsible or liable to you for any content or other materials hosted and served from any website other than the Site.

5. CONTENT OWNERSHIP AND LIMITED LICENSE

Company Content means Company proprietary content, including but not limited to, Company trademarks and logos made available through the Site and Services, excluding Third Party Content and User Submissions.

Third Party Content You may be able to access, review, display or use third party services, resources, content or information via the Site or the Services.

User Submissions means the text, data, graphics, images, photos, video or audiovisual content, hypertext links and any other content that the Company allows its users to uploads, posts, flips, compiles or otherwise provided to Company via the Site and Services, as applicable.

Ownership: The Site, Services and the Company Content are protected by copyright, trademark and other applicable laws. Except as expressly provided in these Terms, Company and its licensors exclusively own all right, title and interest in and to the Site, Services, and the Company Content, including all associated intellectual property rights. You may not remove, alter or obscure any copyright, trademark, service mark or other proprietary rights notices incorporated in or accompanying the Site, Services or Company Content. Company claims no ownership interest in any Third Party Content and expressly disclaims any liability concerning those materials.

Limited License: Subject to your compliance with the Terms herein, the Company hereby grants you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, freely revocable license to use the Services for the personal and non-commercial use only. Except for the foregoing limited license, no right, title or interest shall be transferred to you. Content on the Site and/or the Services is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only and may not be used, copied, reproduced, distributed, transmitted, broadcast, displayed, sold, licensed, or otherwise exploited for any other purposes whatsoever without the prior written consent of the respective owners. We reserve all rights not expressly granted in and to the Site and/or the Services and the Content. These Terms do not authorize you to, and you may not, reproduce, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, communicate to the public, make available, create derivative works of or otherwise use or exploit any Third Party Content or User Submissions in violation of applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized use of the Contents or the Services will result in termination of the limited license granted by the Company and cancellation of your membership. Use of Site or the Services for any unauthorised purpose may result in severe civil and criminal penalties. The Company does not promote, foster or condone the copying of Content, or any other infringing activity and the owners of Third Party Content or User Submissions may have the right to seek damages against you for any such violation.

Interactions between Users: You are solely responsible for your interactions (including any disputes) with other users. You understand that Company does not in any way screen Company users. You are solely responsible for, and will exercise caution, discretion, common sense and judgment in, using the Site and Services and disclosing personal information to other Company users. You agree to take reasonable precautions in all interactions with other Company users, particularly if you decide to communicate with Company user offline or meet them in person. Your use of the Site, Services, Company Content, and any other content made available through the Site or Services is at your sole risk and discretion, and Company hereby disclaims any and all liability to you or any third party relating thereto. Company reserves the right to contact Company users, in compliance with applicable law, in order to evaluate compliance with the rules and policies in this Terms You will cooperate fully with Company to investigate any suspected unlawful, fraudulent or improper activity via the Services.

By making available any User Submissions through the Site and Services, you hereby grant to Company and its users a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, assignable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, broadcast, make available, communicate to the public and otherwise use and exploit such User Submissions through or by means of the Site and the Services and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed throughout the world. Company does not claim any ownership rights in any such User Submissions and nothing in these Terms will be deemed to restrict any rights that you may have to use any such User Submissions. You hereby acknowledge and agree that Company shall not be liable for any Uses of your User Submissions by any third party that had access to your User Submissions during the period in which your User Submissions was available on or through the Services. You acknowledge and agree that Company reserves the right to not to publish, display the User Submissions or modify, amend or delete any User Submissions on the receipt of any complaint, that the User Submissions are infringing or in violation of any applicable laws. You acknowledge and agree that you are solely responsible for all User Submissions that you make available through the Site or Services. Accordingly, you represent and warrant that: (a) you either are the sole and exclusive owner of all User Submissions that you make available through the Site or Services or you have all rights, licenses, consents and releases that are necessary to grant to Company the rights in such User Submissions, as contemplated under these Terms; (b) neither the User Submissions nor your accessing, posting, submission or transmittal of the User Submissions or Company's use of the User Submissions (or any portion thereof) on, through or by means of the Site and the Services or any other permitted use will infringe, misappropriate or violate a third party's patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret, moral rights or other intellectual property rights, or rights of publicity or privacy, or result in the violation of any applicable law or regulation; and (c) no payments of any kind shall be due to any third party, whether a copyright owner or an agent thereof, for any use made of the User Submissions (or any portion thereof) on, through or by means of the Site and the Services.

By using the Site or the Services, you acknowledge the sole responsibility for and assume all risk arising from your access to, use of or reliance upon any such Third Party Content, or User Submissions and Company disclaims any liability that you may incur arising from your access to, use of or reliance upon such Third Party Content or User Submissions. You acknowledge and agree that Company: (a) is not responsible for the availability or accuracy of such Third Party Content or User Submissions; (b) has no liability to you or any third party for any harm, injuries or losses suffered as a result of your access to, reliance on or use of such Third Party Content or User Submissions; (c) does not undertake or assume any duty to monitor for inappropriate or unlawful content on third party websites or User Submissions; and (d) does not make any promises to remove Third Party Content from being accessed through the Site or the Services.

6.ADVERTISING MATERIAL

Part of the Site or the Services may contain advertising information or promotion material or other material submitted to the Company by third parties. Responsibility for ensuring that material submitted for inclusion on the Site complies with applicable international and national law is exclusively on the party providing the information/material. Your correspondence or business dealings with, or participation in promotions of advertisers including payment and delivery of related goods or services, and any other terms, conditions, warranties or representations associated with such dealings, are solely between you and such advertiser. Before relying on any advertising material, you should independently verify its relevance for your purpose, and should obtain appropriate professional advice. The Company shall not be responsible nor liable for any loss or claim that you may have against an advertiser or any consequential damages arising on account of your relying on the contents of the advertisement.

7.COLLECTION AND USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

For information about the Companys policies and practices regarding the collection and use of your personally identifiable information, please read the Privacy Policy as available on the Site. The Privacy Policy is incorporated by reference and made part of these Terms. Thus, by agreeing to these Terms, you agree that your presence on the Site and use of the Services are governed by the Company's Privacy Policy in effect at the time of your use. The Company reserves the right to disclose any information that is required to be shared, disclosed or made available to any governmental, administrative, regulatory or judicial authority under any law or regulation applicable to the Company. The Company can further disclose your name, street address, city, state, zip code, country, phone number, email, as it in its sole discretion believes necessary or appropriate in connection with an investigation of fraud, intellectual property infringement, piracy, or other unlawful activity. Company may be required to retain the information provided by you if required to be maintained for a specified period under applicable laws.

8.YOUR OBLIGATIONS

You hereby agree and assure the Company that the Site and/or the Services shall be used for lawful purposes only and that you will not violate laws, regulations, ordinances or other such requirements of any applicable Central, State or local government or any other international laws. You further concur that you shall not:

circumvent, remove, alter, deactivate, degrade or thwart any of the content protections in the Site or the Services.

either directly or through the use of any device, software, internet site, web-based service, or other means copy, download, stream capture, reproduce, duplicate, archive, distribute, upload, publish, modify, translate, broadcast, perform, display, sell, transmit or retransmit the Content unless expressly permitted by the Company;

either directly or through the use of any device, software, internet site, web-based service, or other means remove, alter, bypass, avoid, interfere with, or circumvent any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary notices marked on the Content or any digital rights management mechanism, device, or other content protection or access control measure associated with the Content including geo-filtering mechanisms

use the Site or the Services in any manner that could damage, disable, overburden, or impair and not to undertake any action which is harmful or potentially harmful to any the Companys server, or the network(s), computer systems / resource connected to any the Company server, or interfere with any other partys use and enjoyment of the Site or the Services;

obtain or attempt to obtain any materials or information through any means not intentionally made available through the Site/Services;

perform any activity which is likely to cause such harm;

carry out any "denial of service" (DoS, DDoS) or any other harmful attacks on application or internet service or;

use the Site or the Services for illegal or unlawful purposes;

disrupt, place unreasonable burdens or excessive loads on, interfere with or attempt to make or attempt any unauthorized access to any the Company website or the website of any the Companys customer;

forge headers or otherwise manipulate identifiers in order to disguise the origin of any content transmitted through the Site or the Services;

attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Services, other accounts and computer systems through hacking, password mining or any other means. You shall not obtain or attempt to obtain any materials or information through any means not intentionally made available through the Site or the Services;

incorporate the Site or Services into or retransmit via, any hardware or software application or make it available via frames or in-line links unless expressly permitted by the Company in writing;

create, recreate, distribute or advertise an index of any significant portion of the Site or Services unless authorized by the Company;

use or launch any "robots", "spiders", "offline readers" etc. or any other automated system, that accesses the Site or the Services in a manner that sends numerous automated requests to the Sites servers in a given period of time, which a human cannot reasonably send in the same period by using conventional web browsing application or tool(s) for similar purposes;

Send or post any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, email, junk mail, spam, chain letters or other form of solicitation like solicit login information or access an account belonging to someone else;

Use the Site, Services or Company Content for any commercial purpose or the benefit of any third party or in any manner not permitted by these Terms of Use;

Impersonate or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity;

Encourage or enable any other individual to do any of the foregoing.

In addition, you are strictly prohibited from creating derivative works or materials that otherwise are derived from or based ,on the Content in any way, including montages, mash-ups and similar videos, wallpaper, desktop themes, greeting cards, and merchandise, unless it is expressly permitted by the Company in writing. This prohibition applies even if you intend to give away the derivative materials free of charge.

The Site may permit you to post user submissions including but not limited to reviews of Content available through the Services, comments on such Content etc. You understand that these User Submissions, once posted by you, are visible to all members since it is a public forum.

More specifically, when you review / rate any Content available on the Services (as per functionality made available on the Site), you give the Company express rights and consent to display your rating / review in relation to the relevant Content on the Site, including making it available to other members for viewing. If you do not want your User Submissions / reviews / ratings to be shared in a public forum, do not use these features.

These features may change without notice to you and the degrees of associated information sharing and functionality may also change without notice.

The Company is free to use any comments, information, ideas, concepts, reviews, or techniques or any other material contained in any communication you may send to us ("User Feedback"), including responses to questionnaires or through postings to the Services / the Site and User Submissions, without further compensation, acknowledgement or payment to you for any purpose whatsoever including, but not limited to, developing, manufacturing and marketing products and creating, modifying or improving the Services. By posting / submitting any User Feedback / User Submission on the Site, you grant the Company a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free irrevocable, sub-licensable license and right in such User Feedback / User Submission to the Company, including the right to display, use, reproduce or modify the User Feedback / User Submission in any media, software or technology of any kind now existing or developed in the future.

Operators of public search engines have the permission to use functionalities like spiders to copy materials from the Site for the sole purpose of creating publicly available searchable indices of the materials, but not caches or archives of such materials. We reserve the right to revoke these exceptions either generally or in specific cases, in our sole discretion. You agree not to collect or harvest any personally identifiable information, including account names, from the Site, nor to use the communication systems provided by the Site for any commercial solicitation purposes. You agree not to solicit, for commercial purposes, any users of the Site with respect to its User Submissions.

You shall be financially responsible for your use of the Services (as well as for use of your account by others, including without limitation minors living with you). You undertake to supervise and be responsible for all usage of minors and access of the Site under your name or account and absolve the Company from any liability on this account. You also warrant that all information supplied by you or members of your family for using the Services and accessing the Site, including without limitation your name, email address, street address, telephone number, mobile number, credit card number is correct and accurate. Failure to provide accurate information may subject you to civil and criminal penalties.

You shall be responsible for obtaining and maintaining any equipment or ancillary services needed to connect to, access the Site or otherwise use the Services, including, without limitation, modems, hardware, software, and long distance or local telephone service. You shall be responsible for ensuring that such equipment or ancillary services are compatible with the Services.

You agree that the Company may directly or through third party service providers send information to you about the various services offered by the Company from time to time.

You agree that Company will have the right to investigate and take all appropriate legal action to prevent, stop or deter violations of any of the above, including infringement of intellectual property rights and Site and Services security issues. Company may involve and cooperate with law enforcement authorities in prosecuting users who violate these Terms of Use or the rights of any third party.

You acknowledge that Company has no obligation to monitor your access to or use of the Site, Services or Company Content or to review or edit any User Submissions or Third Party Materials, but has the right to do so for the purpose of operating the Site and Services, to ensure your compliance with these Terms of Use, or to comply with applicable law or the order or requirement of a court, administrative agency or other governmental body. Company reserves the right, at any time and without prior notice, to remove or disable access to any Company Content, Third Party Materials, and any User Submissions, that Company, in its sole discretion, considers to be in violation of these Terms or otherwise harmful to the Site or Services.

9.PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES

PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES

You agree that You shall not host, display, upload, modify, publish, transmit, update, store or share any information on the Site, that

belongs to another person and to which you do not have any right to;

is grossly harmful, harassing, blasphemous defamatory, obscene, pornographic, paedophilic, libellous, invasive of another's privacy, including bodily privacy, insulting or harassing on the basis of gender, hateful, or racially, ethnically objectionable, disparaging, relating or encouraging money laundering or gambling, or otherwise inconsistent with or contrary to the laws in force;

harm children in any way;

infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary rights;

violates any law for the time being in force;

deceives or misleads the addressee about the origin of such messages or knowingly and intentionally communicates any information which is patently false or misleading in nature but may reasonably be perceived as a fact ;

impersonate another person

contains software viruses or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer resource;

threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order or causes incitement to the commission of any cognisable offence or prevents investigation of any offence or is insulting any other nation;is patently false and untrue, and is written or published in any form, with the intent to mislead or harass a person, entity or agency for financial gain or to cause any injury to any person.

You understand and agree that the Company may, but is not obligated to, review the User Submissions and may delete or remove it (without notice) in its sole and absolute discretion, for any reason or without assigning any reason, subject to storage post deletion as required under applicable laws.

If you are found to be in non-compliance with the laws and regulations, these terms, or the privacy policy of the Site, the Company shall have the right to immediately terminate/block your access and usage of the Site and the Company shall have the right to immediately remove any non-compliant Content and or comment or any unlawful content , which is prohibited under any law for the time being in force, uploaded by you subject to storage post removal as required under applicable laws, and shall further have the right to take recourse to such remedies as would be available to the Company under the applicable laws.

We reserve the right to remove any messages we deem to be inappropriate, i.e, racist, sexist or threatening. Additionally, unlawful messages will be removed on being notified by a government agency or by an order of any court. Messages using inappropriate language will also be removed. We do not wish to be censors, but our forums must remain civilized and respect the rights of others.

10.TERMINATION OF ACCOUNT, SUSPENSION OR DISCONTINUATION OF THE SERVICE

The Company reserves the right to change, suspend, or discontinue temporarily or permanently, some or all of the Services (including the Content and the devices through which the Services are accessed), with respect to any or all users, at any time without notice. You acknowledge that the Company may do so in its sole discretion. You also agree that the Company will not be liable to you for any modification, suspension, or discontinuance of the Services, although if you are a paid subscriber and the Company suspends or discontinues the Services, the Company may, in its sole discretion, provide you with a credit, refund, discount or other form of consideration (for example, the Company may credit additional days of service to your account). However, if the Company terminates your account or suspends or discontinues your access to the Services due to your violation of these Terms, then you will not be eligible for any such credit, refund, discount or other consideration.

11.DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES AND LIABILITY

You understand and agree that the Company provides the Services on as-is with all faults and as available basis. You agree that use of the Site or the Services is at your risk. All warranties including without limitation, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, for the title and non-infringement are disclaimed and excluded.

No representations, warranties or guarantees whatsoever are made by the Company as to the (a) accuracy, adequacy, reliability, completeness, suitability or applicability of the information to a particular situation; (b) that the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free; (c) the quality of any services, content, information, or other material on the website will meet your expectations or requirements; (d) any errors in the Site will be corrected; (e) warranties against infringement of any third party intellectual property or proprietary rights; or (f) other warranties relating to performance, non-performance, or other acts or omissions of the Company, its officers, directors, employees, affiliates, agents, licensors, or suppliers.

The Company does not warrant that any of the software used and or licensed in connection with the Services will be compatible with other third party software or devices nor does it warrant that operation of the Services and the associated software will not damage or disrupt other software or hardware.

The Company, its affiliates, successors, and assigns, and each of their respective investors, directors, officers, employees, agents, and suppliers (including distributors and content licensors) shall not be liable, at any time for any, direct, indirect, punitive, incidental, special, consequential, damages arising out of or in any way connected with the use of Site or the Services, whether based in contract, tort, strict liability, or other theory, even if the Company have been advised of the possibility of damages.

In the event any exclusion contained herein be held to be invalid for any reason and the Company or any of its affiliate entities, officers, directors or employees become liable for loss or damage, then, any such liability of the Company or any of its affiliate entities, officers, directors or employees shall be limited to not exceeding subscription charges paid by you in the month preceding the date of your claim for the particular subscription in question chosen by you.

12.INDEMNIFICATION

You agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless, the Company, its affiliates, successors, and assigns, and each of their respective investors, directors, officers, employees, agents, and suppliers (including distributors and content licensors) from and against any losses, claims, damages, liabilities, including legal fees and expenses, arising out of:

any claim due to or arising out of your violation of these Terms, including but not limited to a claim arising out of a breach of your representations or warranties made hereunder;

your use or misuse of or access to the Site or the Services;

your violation of any law, regulation or third party right, including without limitation any copyright, property, or privacy right; or any claim that you have caused damage to a third party.

The Company reserves the right, at its own expense, to employ separate counsel and assume the exclusive defence and control of any matter otherwise subject to indemnification by you, and you agree to cooperate with the Companys defence of these claims.

13.GRIEVANCE REDRESSAL MACHENISM

Grievance Redressal Mechanism : Any complaints, abuse or concerns with regards to content and or comment or breach of these terms shall be immediately informed to the designated Grievance Officer as mentioned below via in writing or through email signed with the electronic signature grievance[dot]mensxp[at]timesinternet[dot]in or Mrs. Namrata Nongpiur (Grievance Officer)

Any complaints or concerns with regards to content or to report any abuse of laws or breach of these terms may be taken up with the designated grievance redressal officer as mentioned below by sending an email grievance[dot]mensxp[at]timesinternet[dot]in or via post to

Mrs. Namrata Nongpiur

Grievance Officer (mensxp.com)

Times Internet Limited

391, Udyog Vihar Phase - III,

Gurgaon, Haryana 122002, India

Ph: 0124-4518550

Notice of Copyright Infringement: Our policy is to comply with all Intellectual Property Laws and to act expeditiously upon receiving any notice of claimed infringement. If you believe that any work has been reproduced on this website in a manner that constitutes copyright infringement, please provide a notice of copyright infringement containing all of the following information:

A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner for the purposes of the complaint.

Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed.

Identification of the material on our website that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.

The address, telephone number or e-mail address of the complaining party.

A statement that the complaining party has a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent or the law.

A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notice of copyright infringement is accurate, and that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the right that is allegedly infringed.

14.GENERAL TERMS

 Relationship

None of the provisions of the Terms shall be deemed to constitute a partnership or agency between you and the Company and you shall have no authority to bind the Company in any manner, whatsoever. This agreement is solely for your and the Company's benefit and not for the benefit of any other person, except for permitted successors and assigns under this Agreement.

 Assignment

You may not transfer to anyone else, either temporarily or permanently, any rights to use the Services or any part of the Services. Any attempt by you to do so is void. The Company may assign, transfer, delegate and/or grant all or any part of its rights, privileges and properties hereunder to any person or entity.

 Force Majeure

Neither Party shall have any liability for any interruption or delay, to access the Site due to Force Majeure Event. For the purposes of this clause, Force Majeure Event means any event or circumstance or combination of events and circumstances which is reasonably beyond the control of the party affected thereby and which causes or results in default or delay in performance by such affected party of any of its obligations under this agreement and includes an act of God, war, hostilities, civil commotion, strikes, lockouts and other industrial disputes.

 Applicable Law

These Terms are governed by and construed in accordance with, the laws of India without giving effect to principles of conflict of law. In the event of any dispute or claim by you against the Company, you agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of courts at New Delhi.

 Limited Time To Bring Your Claim

You and the Company agree that any cause of action arising out of or related to use of the Site or the Services must commence within one (1) year after the cause of action accrues otherwise, such cause of action will be permanently barred.

 Survival

Rights and obligations under the Terms which by their nature should survive will remain in full effect after termination or expiration of the subscription.

 Non Waiver

Any express waiver or failure to exercise promptly any right under this agreement will not create a continuing waiver or any expectation of non-enforcement.

 Entire Agreement

These Terms constitute the entire agreement between the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof and supersedes and replaces all prior or contemporaneous understandings or agreements, written or oral, regarding such subject matter.

Copyright Notice

Copyright 2013 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.
Technology has made our lives so much easier that it's only after we are deprived of certain basic tech-necessities that we realize how handicapped we are without it.

Just the other day as I switched on Google maps to look for the least traffic-heavy route back home, a rush of impatience and the sluggishness brought upon by Apple's new update forced me to take a route well-known instead. Never have I regretted my impulsive decision making more than that moment. As I parked the car at my home after being stuck in traffic for almost two and a half hours that day, I promised myself to always check the route before leaving office.

But even millennials would agree that the internet can't be the most important invention of the century. Internet is just the bi-product of inventions that enabled this kind of communication in the first place. Inventions like fibre optics that not many know about.

Fibre Optics: The Backbone of Internet

Narinder Singh Kapany is an Indian-born American Sikh physicist. He hails from Moga in Punjab and has been associated with extensive research in biomedical instrumentation, solar energy and pollution monitoring. He is also widely known as the father of fibre optics  the backbone of Internet.

Kapany is one of those few distinguished Indians in the field of science and technology who have really made an impact on how the modern world functions. Many put him in the category of Jagadish Chandra Bose, G N Ramachandran and Satyendranath Bose and with good reason too. He coined the term 'Fibre Optics' in 1960 and yet very few people know about it.

 fibrenetwork

Featured in 1999 as one of the 'Unsung Heroes of the 20th Century' in the Fortune magazine, Kapany was always fascinated by the thought of channelling light through a curved path. In a book published by author Shivanad Kavani, 'Sand to Silicon: The Amazing Story of Digital Technology', Kapany describes his initial interest in the field as follows:

"When I was a high school student at Dehradun in the beautiful foothills of the Himalayas, it occurred to me that light need not travel in a straight line, that it could be bent. I carried the idea to college. Actually it was not an idea but the statement of a problem. When I worked in the ordnance factory in Dehradun after my graduation, I tried using right-angled prisms to bend light.

However, when I went to London to study at the Imperial College and started working on my thesis, my advisor, Dr. Hopkins, suggested that I try glass cylinders instead of prisms. So I thought of a bundle of thin glass fibres, which could be bent easily. Initially my primary interest was to use them in medical instruments for looking inside the human body. The broad potential of optic fibres did not dawn on me till 1955. It was then that I coined the term fibre optics."

The Need for Speed

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The need for fibre optics arose because light, by its nature, travels in a straight line. So, if you somehow need to perform experiments that require light to travel in a curved path, then a vessel or a pipe coated with reflecting material on the inside is needed to achieve that result. But as it turns out, one of the major problems with such reflecting surfaces is that even with 99.99 percent reflectivity, there can be almost-zero transmission of signals because the light wave gets reflected millions of times inside such pipes. This is where the concept of total internal reflection comes into effect, wherein the angle of incidence is such that the ray of light is reflected back entirely without weakening the beam.

So, in essence, all you need for communication by using light signals is a non-absorbent piece of glass that carries a beam of light inside a glass strand compliant with the concept of total internal reflection. Such communication is fast and efficient and this field of study is thus called fibre optics.

In theory, transmitting light through curved surfaces looked doable. It was another thing, however, to find optical quality glass and draw fibre out of it. For this purpose, Kapany went to the Pilkington Glass company.

"I took some optical glass and requested them to draw fibre from that," says Kapany. "I also told them that I was going to use it to transmit light. They were perplexed, but humoured me."

His visit, however, was not incredibly successful, as Pilkington sent fibre of green glass which is used to make beer bottles instead of the optical glass he had demanded. "They had ignored the optical glass I had given them. I spent months making bundles of fibre from what they had supplied and trying to transmit light through them, but no light came out. That was because it was not optical glass. So I had to cut the bundle to short lengths and then use a bright carbon arc source," Kapani explains in the book.

 Thinkstock

As the green glass experiment failed, several people suggested trying cladding (a covering or coating on a structure or material) the fibre. Cladding was useful as it reduced leakages and protected the core. Kapany, along with his partner Hopkins published the results in 1954 in the British journal Nature.

After publishing the journal, Kapany became the foremost authority on the subject of fibre optics. When he moved to the United States to teach at Rochester and the Illinois Institute of Technology, Kapany published an article on fibre optics in Scientific American in 1960. That article established him as the inventor of fibre optics. The wall of inventions at the Massachusetts Institutes Of Technology too gives that credit to Kapany.

Still, Not Good Enough for the Nobel

 Rajan parikkar

Signal loss in glass fibre was a sticking issue for it to be used in modern communication. This, however, didn't prevent Antoni Karbowiak and Shanghai-born engineer, Charles Kao from trying. In a paper published in 1966 in London at the meeting of Institution of Electrical Engineers, Kao proposed that once fibre optics losses were reduced to 10-20 dB/km, communication networks for long range data transmission could be a reality. That paper, along with Kao's enthusiasm to actively pursue his vision of using this technology in telecom proved to be a game changer. Within four years, Kao's goal of reducing the signal losses to 20 dB/km was reached with low-loss fibre. For his work in the field of fibre optics including the breakthrough of calculating how to transmit light over long distances, Charles K.Kao was awarded the Noble Prize in physics. Kapany, even though remembered for his pioneering work in the field, was royally ignored.

"Well, that's what the world says (that I am the father of fibre optics), but the Nobel committee has its own decision", Kapany said in an interview later after the announcement was made.

When asked to describe how he felt on being ignored by the Nobel committee, Kapany said: "What can you say about this. It is known that Prof Kao started work in this field many years after me. He faced competition too. I don't think there should be any controversy about it. It is up to the Swedish Academy to decide. Whatever criteria they wanted to use, they have used."

Despite being overlooked for the Nobel Prize, Kapany has continued his exemplary work in science and technology. He has written hundreds of research papers in the field and has over hundred patents to his name, some in the field of solar energy too. He was also honoured with 'The Excellence 2000 Award' from the USA Pan-Asian American Chamber of Commerce in 1998. Singh is also a member of British Royal Academy of Engineering.

With an exemplary career that has stretched over 60 years, Kapany remains an unsung hero in the field of science and technology whose pioneering work has empowered an entire generation with a new means of communication. Noble or not, Kapany's legacy is the gift of interaction that we experience in our digital lives every day and for that we'll always be grateful.
Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Snow this evening will taper off and give way to cloudy skies late. Low 29F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 80%. Snow accumulations less than one inch..

Tonight

Snow this evening will taper off and give way to cloudy skies late. Low 29F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 80%. Snow accumulations less than one inch.
Exceptionally gifted people often do not lead normal lives. What is it about them that sets them apart? Their genius, their skill, is not the only thing that makes them different. It is often accompanied by a hunger to succeed and an eccentric personality. Nikola Tesla, one of the most famous and successful inventors of the last century, was one such man. Popularly nicknamed the 'mad scientist', Tesla was the brain behind a lot of technological inventions, the alternating current system being the most popular among them.

'Mad Scientist' Who Barely Slept

 Wikimedia Commons

Born in what is now Croatia, Nikola Tesla was as geeky as they came. The famous inventor had a dedicated routine that often left him with as little as 2 hours to sleep every day. He worked from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and would resume his work after dinner, often ending up awake all night. So rigid was his routine that even his dinner had to be served at exactly 8:10 p.m. and by the same person at the Delmonico's in New York where he often went to dine. It was this headstrong obsession with his work that led him to create a plethora of designs and inventions, besides the alternating current system. His path-breaking work in electric motors, x-ray, wireless lighting, radio and the famous Tesla coil was an immense contribution to modern technology.

A Morbid Fear Of Germs And OCD Tendencies

 Wikimedia Commons

Tesla had his quirks. There is no great person in this world without eccentricities. The famous scientist had obsessive-compulsive tendencies and was obsessed with the number 3. He had a fear of germs and carried a stack of 18 napkins with him. A terrible bout of cholera in childhood was plausibly the cause of this phobia. Not just that, Tesla had an irrational fear of pearls. Yes, pearls. He would refuse to talk to any woman wearing pearls; he is said to have sent his secretary back home when one day she turned up at his work place wearing pearls.

The Suave And Good-Looking Genius Who Mostly Kept To Himself

 Wikimedia Commons

Standing at 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing 64 kilos, Nikola Tesla was a lean and stylish man. It is believed he walked over 15 km every day and was quite particular about his clothes and grooming, something he considered important from a business point of view. He believed that in order to be successful, you had to look the part too. His impeccable dressing sense and gentle mannerisms made him popular amongst those who knew him, but he preferred to stay away from company mostly. Tesla never married; his work remained his single most obsession all his life.

When Ideas Came To Him As Strange Visions

 Wikimedia Commons

We often find ourselves wondering how a genius's mind works. World-famous scientists, inventors, writers, artists  how do ideas come to them, how do they think of all that? In what comes across as a rather uncanny occurrence, Tesla often saw visions accompanied by flashes of light since childhood. Of course, he was quick to dismiss their uncanny nature, being the scientist that he was. But he saw ideas in these visions and could soon visualize entire inventions in his head before he even put pen to paper. It was really all in the head.

(L to R)Tesla and Edison  Wikimedia Commons

Nothing came easy though. During his stint at the Edison Machine Works, a joint venture by Thomas Edison and Charles Batchelor, he worked hard to improve Edison's lighting tech and come up with better street lighting systems, something Edison's direct current technology was unable to support. Despite his exceptional work, there was a fallout and it is believed Tesla was not paid his due. He struggled to keep his head afloat after leaving the company.

Tesla ran pillar to post trying to gain support and investors for his alternating current system, finally landing a patent and an investor. Edison is said to have influenced public opinion against Tesla's model of AC system, even though eventually, Tesla was able to patent his invention and find a market for it too.

In his lifetime, Tesla secured around 300 patents for his various inventions. His extensive work laid the foundation of many technological advancements that were to come and change the face of the modern world.

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MLBTR is publishing Offseason Outlooks for all 30 teams. Click here for the other entries in this series.

Despite making a number of additions prior to the July 31 trade deadline, the Rays faded down the stretch, falling short of both a wild card berth and even a winning record. The club now faces another offseason of adding low-cost pieces while facing hard decisions about trading pricier talent.

Guaranteed Contracts

Evan Longoria , 3B: $81MM through 2022 ($13MM club option for 2023, $5MM buyout)

, 3B: $81MM through 2022 ($13MM club option for 2023, $5MM buyout) Kevin Kiermaier , CF: $47MM through 2022 ($13MM club option for 2023, $2.5MM buyout)

, CF: $47MM through 2022 ($13MM club option for 2023, $2.5MM buyout) Chris Archer , SP: $13.75MM through 2019 (plus club options for 2020-21)

, SP: $13.75MM through 2019 (plus club options for 2020-21) Wilson Ramos, C: $10.5MM through 2018

Arbitration Eligible Players (service time in parentheses; projections via MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz)

Contract Options

Nathan Eovaldi, SP: $2MM club option for 2018

Free Agents

[Tampa Bay Rays depth chart | Tampa Bay Rays payroll outlook]

The Rays havent had a winning record since 2013, but with Evan Longoria, Chris Archer and (most recently) Kevin Kiermaier locked up on long-term deals, it seems as though the club will continue to try and contend rather than explore a full teardown and rebuilding process. That being said, Tampa could very well duplicate its approach from last offseason  aiming to add, but prepared to shift course and start selling if an offer too good to refuse comes in for Archer or Jake Odorizzi.

These are the financial realities for the small-market Rays, whose quest for a new ballpark isnt any closer to resolution, and whose revenues took an extra hit in 2017. While owner Stuart Sternberg recently stated that a total payroll slash wasnt likely to happen, the first move is down for the 2018 payroll.

Salaries for Longoria, Archer, Kiermaier and Wilson Ramos total $36.25MM next year, while the Rays are projected to spend $41.4MM on a large arbitration class of 13 players. Even with a couple of obvious non-tenders, those modest savings would be wiped out by Nathan Eovaldis $2MM club option, which is likely to be picked up as he makes his return from Tommy John surgery. That works out to a payroll north of the $77MM mark, which is already higher than any Opening Day payroll figure in franchise history.

The most obvious candidates for trades are the more expensive names within that arbitration class  Odorizzi ($6.5MM), Corey Dickerson ($6.4MM), Alex Colome ($5.5MM), Adeiny Hechavarria ($5MM) and Brad Miller ($4.4MM). It would be surprising if all five of these players were wearing Rays uniforms in April, though they also carry their share of warning signs for potential trade suitors. Hechavarria has an excellent glove but is not a very productive hitter; Colome saw his strikeout rate drop and both his contact and hard-hit ball rates rise; injuries contributed to Odorizzi and Miller delivering replacement-level seasons; and Dickersons bat went ice-cold after a strong first half.

Odorizzis down year is the biggest concern, as it both lowered his asking price in trades and also gave the Rays a question mark heading into next years rotation if the righty is kept. Alex Cobb is a virtual certainty to leave in free agency, whether or not the team issues him a qualifying offer. (There are indications thats the intention, though putting $17.4MM on the table for one year of Cobb may just be too great a risk, particularly after Jeremy Hellickson took the Phillies QO last year.) Cobbs departure would increase Odorizzis importance in next years rotation. The starting four looks to be Archer, Odorizzi, Blake Snell and Jake Faria, with Matt Andriese, Eovaldi and top prospect Brent Honeywell all in the mix for the fifth starters job. Jose De Leon and Taylor Guerrieri will be at Triple-A but are coming off injury-plagued 2017 seasons, so Ryan Yarbrough and Yonny Chirinos are currently the top minor league depth options.

Theres enough depth here that the Rays could feel comfortable about their pitching even in the event of an Odorizzi trade, provided they get some injury luck and Snell/Faria both continue to develop as reliable-or-better big league arms. Andriese could also be shopped, though a hip injury limited him to 86 IP last year, and the Rays likely arent keen on selling low on a pitcher with four years of team control.

The biggest move, of course, would be an Archer trade. The ace right-hander also comes with up to four years of his control via the club options on his team-friendly contract, and he only reinforced his credentials by delivering more strong numbers in 2017. Teams like the Cubs, Dodgers, Braves and Astros have all been linked to Archer in the past and they (and others) are sure to check in with Tampas front office about the rightys availability. It would take a major blockbuster of a trade package to actually trigger a deal, however, as Archers contract makes him particularly important to a low-payroll club like the Rays.

Colomes asking price wouldnt be nearly as hefty after a tepid 2017, though his experience as a closer, past dominance, and remaining control would still hold appeal to other organizations. That said, he is another pitcher the Rays would likely prefer to keep since Tommy Hunter, Sergio Romo and Steve Cishek could all leave the bullpen in free agency. The Rays dont have a clear heir apparent at closer if Colome is dealt, unless they feel Brad Boxberger is ready to reclaim his old job after two injury-plagued seasons. After Colome and Boxberger, Tampa Bay probably has enough young arms on hand that they wont make any hugely notable moves to their relief corps, aside from adding a left-handed pitcher to the mix. Xavier Cedeno missed much of 2017 with forearm problems and advanced metrics didnt love Dan Jennings work, so the Rays could use some extra southpaw depth in the pen.

Consistent offense continued to be a problem for the Rays in 2017, though full seasons from Ramos and Kiermaier should provide an internal boost to the lineup. Logan Morrisons one-year, $2.5MM deal ended up being a terrific bargain for the Rays, but with Morrisons 38-homer season likely set to land him a multi-year contract elsewhere, the Rays now have a big hole to fill at first base.

This position could also be addressed from within, should Tampa feel that prospect Jake Bauers is ready for the big leagues. Entrusting a starting role to a rookie who only posted good but not great (.263/.368/.412 over 575 PA) Triple-A numbers would be a bold move, so the Rays could sign a veteran right-handed hitting first baseman like Mike Napoli, Danny Valencia or perhaps even Jose Bautista as a platoon partner.

Alternatively, the Rays could shift Miller back to first base if they feel Bauers needs more seasoning. All of Millers 303 career innings as a first baseman came in 2016, when he also enjoyed a breakout year at the plate, and its at least possible that playing a less-demanding defensive position contributed to Millers performance. Metrics such as UZR/150 and Defensive Runs Saved indicated that Miller was also a below-average defender at first base, though that would be less of a problem than his subpar glovework at second base.

Then again, its a question as to whether Miller is in the Rays plans at all given his -0.1 fWAR performance last season. A non-tender doesnt seem likely (it would be hard for the offense-starved Rays to walk away from a player who hit 30 homers in 2016) but Miller is likely to be shopped this winter thanks to his significant arbitration number.

The Rays could again use Miller at second base if they can live with his defense, though options abound in the middle infield. Unlike with Miller, the Rays know what theyre getting in Hechavarria, whose $5MM projected salary comes with the promise of an outstanding shortstop glove. Retaining Hechavarria is probably the safest bet since star prospect Willy Adames has yet to debut in the majors and former shortstop-of-the-future Matt Duffy is a wild card after missing all of 2017 due to complications from heel surgery. Adames and Duffy could factor into the second base picture, however, if Miller is traded or shifted to first.

Dickerson has provided the Rays with capable defense over his two seasons with the team, though hell need enough DH time that left field looks like an area of need. Mallex Smith will return as the fourth outfielder but doesnt have the bat for such a significant role, so Tampa will likely explore veteran outfielders that could be had on a short-term deal, akin to the one-year, $5MM contract with Colby Rasmus from last winter. If the Rays were willing to spend a bit more, a versatile player like Howie Kendrick could be a nice fit as a right-handed bat capable of spot duty in left field, second and first base.

Speaking of versatility, its worth noting that the Rays have a sincere interest in Shohei Otani, which perhaps implies more than the standard due diligence that every team is undoubtedly doing on the 23-year-old two-way star. Otanis apparent disinterest in immediate salary riches helps the Rays case, though they almost surely wouldnt be able to offer him a truly massive extension after he has spent enough time in North America for such a deal to pass muster with the league. It cant be understated what a franchise-altering addition Otani would be, though its safe to call the Rays a longshot suitor at best.

After four straight losing seasons, the Rays are still looking for those missing pieces to their roster puzzle, as well as hoping that they can finally get a year where all their key players are both healthy and productive at the same time. The emergence of players like Snell, Faria, Duffy, Honeywell, Adames and Bauers as productive regulars would be an enormous boost for a Rays team that relies on young talent, though some type of proven veteran additions will be necessary to get the club back over the .500 mark.
Following his hugely successful European tour, Sarkodie will embark on a three-date UK tour in support of his chart topping 5th studio album Highest.

The tour commences on November 23rd at Birmingham O2, November 24th at London O2 Forum Kentish Town and will close with a set at Manchester Academy 2 on November 25th.

Joining Sarkodie on the highly anticipated tour is 'the peoples band, The Compozers and official DJ to Sarkodie, Dj Mensah . He has enlisted the support of special guests that feature on his albumMoelogo, Big Narstie, Bobii Lewis, Jayso and Suli Breaks.

The tour powered by Sarkcess Music, Dice Recordings & Skillions Records in conjunction with Goldenvoice, Live Nation and Echo London, is set to be the most celebrated event of the year with major surprises alongside the amazing lineup.

With a career spanning over 10 years, Sarkodie has released 5 albums, won numerous awards and has become Ghana's most influential artiste and one of Africas best rappers.

Sarkodie continues to break boundaries and this tour will surely establish Sarkodie as one of the world's most iconic African artiste.

His current album has received rave reviews and dominated the iTunes Charts since its release.
Ghanaian celebrated hyper-realistic Pencil Artist, Theo Pencil, who takes deep inspiration from the Sultan of Brunei and has made an impressive art work of him wishes to meet with the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah.

Known for hyper-realistic pencil drawings, Theo Pencil has completed an amazing drawing of the Sultan of Brunei  which is already going viral on social media.

It is Theos wildest wish to meet the Sultan of Brunei, do an official presentation, hob-nob with him, and to have his blessings.

I take a lot of inspiration from the Sultan of Brunei. I never go to You Tube without watching something on him. That is how come he sunk into my sub-conscious mind. He inspires me to think out of the box. I will be the happiest to meet him, Theo Pencil said.

Sultan of Brunei  real name, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, is the 29th and current Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei, a country in Asia.

He is also the first and incumbent Prime Minister of Brunei.

The eldest son of Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien III and Raja Isteri (Queen) Pengiran Anak Damit, Bolkiah succeeded to the throne as the Sultan of Brunei, following the abdication of his father on 5 October 1967.

The Sultan has been ranked among the wealthiest individuals in the world; Forbes estimated the Sultans total peak net worth at US$20 billion in 2008.

Following the death of Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej in 2016, the Sultan is the wealthiest monarch in the world.

On 5 October 2017, The Sultan celebrated his Golden Jubilee to mark the 50th year of his reign on the Throne.

Theo Pencil also filmed the drawing stages of the drawing and wishes to telecast it to the Sultan of Brunei  plus draw another picture that is very dear to the heart of Sultan of Brunei, should the King ask him to.

Find the final work of the Sultan of Brunei. Yes  what you are seeing is raw Pencil work. Very detailed! Hyper-Realism!

Profile Of Theo Pencil

Theo Pencil is a young talented Ghanaian Hyper-Realistic Artist born on the 5th day of May, 1993 and lives in Accra, Ghana. With no formal education in art work, his works have been viewed across the world with amazement and wonder.

The realism of his drawings has captivated many people. His real name is Theophilus Boateng Kwaku Sarpong but was given the name Theo Pencil by his friends because of the magic he performs with just a pencil.

He discovered his talent as an artist at the age of eight when he used to draw cartoons just for fun. Theo Pencil advanced as a hyper-realistic pencil artist at the early ages of seventeen. His area of specialization in the arts industry is mostly works on human figures.

He is good in colour works but most of his master pieces are in pencil which inspires him a lot.

At the age of 21, Theo Pencil had made realistic pencil portraits of some famous personalities including: Kofi Annan  Former United Nations Secretary General, Nelson Mandela  Former South African President, Niki Minaj  A popular American Music Artist.

And others: Jerry John Rawlings and John Agyekum Kufuor  both Former Presidents of the Republic of Ghana, Jackie Appiah  A popular Ghanaian Actress, Nana Akufo Addo  President of Ghana, Barack Obama  Former President of the United State of America and others.

Theo Pencil is always drawing and it would be a great delight that the next pencil art work would be YOU  yes YOU!
24.10.2017 LISTEN

It's that time of the year again when Big Events Ghana gives awards to deserving radio and TV personalities who have demonstrated media work excellence in their selected categories. This year's RTP Awards is the 7th edition, counting far back from 2010.

Out of the over 6000 applications sent for shortlist consideration, Conscious Queen triumphed among the names called up when the nomination list was publicly unveiled at Holiday Inn Hotel on Tuesday September 19 in a live telecast which hit TV stations and RTP's facebook page.

On her 3rd repeat appearance on the RTP nomination shortlist, Conscious Queen of Pink 96.9 fm can confidently boast of a sure maiden win. She again made it to the radio reggae show of the year category contest with "Rasta's Jet, her weekend reggae program which runs from 10am to 12pm.

Referencing the RTP-Reggae related record, Conscious Queen is found to be the only female reggae that has been nominated thrice.

Conscious Queen's radio presence history spans 6 years, this entire period solely spent at Pink 96.9. A fact highly defensible: when media-monitoring statisticians are shortlisting for top 5 female reggae presenters in Ghana, the mentioning of Conscious Queen is indispensable.

Her skillful intelligent presentation, compelling interview questionnaire and playlist makes her an intimidating young media force. She runs on radio Monday to Saturday between 10am and 12pm, with her Saturday set aside specially for reggae and dancehall.

To vote for Conscious Queen to win the radio reggae show of the year award at RTP, send RTP QUEEN to 1446, all networks. Voting ends 27th October.

Follow Conscious Queen at the below handles:

Facebook: Kukuwa Kyerewaa (Conscious Queen)

Instagram:Conscious_Kween
The multiple-blog release of Irie Ites Studio's "Bad Edge Riddim" album made a sudden big media buzz and elevated Irie Ites' credit height in Ghana's danecahall journal.

The up-dope power that the "Bad Edge Riddim" carries gave the nation a vigorous shake station after station when the Irie executives took the album artistes around on a week-long radio tour. At each radio stop, the artistes ran a live non-stop medley session in a blockbuster lyrical downpour pattern to spice up the interview. This loud craze generated a wider fan crave for the riddim's medley visual the entire tour, but it wouldn't take Irie Ites forever to drop the video to quench this burning hard crave.

Boom!.....the video is here..... It is madly strung up with the visual snippets of an 11 artiste strong dancehall army which core mission is to serve you a fun-packed viewing pleasure in a grand ghetto style.

DOWNLOAD the "Bad Edge Riddim medley video via the below link.

IRIE ITES STUDIO - Bad Edge Riddim Medley Video DOWNLOAD]

YouTube Link:


Pastor Solomon Leonard Baidoo, known in the gospel scene as Da Prince GH, says he does not regret campaigning for President Akufo-Addo and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) during the 2016 general elections.

According to the gospel artiste, he joined the campaign train of the NPP because of its good policies that it has for the country.

He said he is also convinced that President Akufo-Addo would be able to move the country's development agenda forward.

The gospel artiste revealed that before the elections, God spoke to him concerning His choice in the then presidential candidate, which led him to dedicate his song titled 'Yesu' (The Victory Song) to Nana Addo.

Da Prince, who is also the head pastor of Zion Princes Church, in an interview with BEATWAVES, stated that besides God speaking to him about the sitting president, he personally believed in the manifesto of the NPP concerning tourism, creative arts and culture.

The gospel artiste recently composed a song featuring PR, an upcoming gospel artiste, to help promote the 'See Ghana, Wear Ghana, Eat Ghana and Feel Ghana' project launched by the Ministry of Tourism, Creative Arts & Culture.

Da Prince GH, however, called on Ghanaians to support the Akufo-Addo-led government in his fervour and plans to transform the tourism and creative arts industry in order to meet international standard.

He also called on churches to pray for the leadership, adding that they are enjoined by the word of God to do so, adding that Ghanaians should exercise restraint over the promises given to them by the NPP as they would eventually be fulfilled.
Celebrated Highlife Musician,Kwabena Kwabena has again proved why he is regarded as the best Contemporary Highlife musician in Ghana after performing excellently at the just ended Becca At 10' concert held at the National Theatre.

Becca at 10 concert is a celebration of the ten year career of multiple award-winning Songstress; Becca who has gotten the best of herself for Ghana

Kwabena Kwabena who was billed to perform alongside a tall list of acts had pulled out from the much publicized concert, with the reason that Beccas management failed to live up to the agreed arrangement.

But after some intervention, Kwabena Kwabena rescinded his decision to boycott the event.

His manageress Frema Ashkar,a celebrated broadcaster with Metro TV who announced the Adult Music hitmaker's decision to rescind his withdrawal explained to Razzonline.com that:

For the sake of Hon. Dzifa Gomashie a big fan of Kwabena who was practically on her knees, Kwabenas fans, and because Becca and her management have accepted their mistakes, Kwabena has no option than to rescind his decision...so Kwabena will perform".

Justifying why he was begged to rescind his decision,Kwabena Kwabena put up an electrifying performance that led the fans to yearn for more.

Kwabena,who spent over thirteen(13) minutes on stage performed songs such as Tuamudaa,Kyere Wo Do,'You Lied To Meft Becca,and a rendition of Bob Marleys One Love & I Dont Want To Wait In Vain.

The peak of Kwabena Kwabena's scintillating performance was when he performed his popular Tuamudaa hit song and when he performed with Becca on their collaborated song You lied To me Their combination was really a delight to watch.

Most Patrons and other showbiz personalities who graced the occasion applauded the organizers;Zylofon Media for convincing Kwabena Kwabena to perform on the night.

Kindly watch excepts of Kwabena kwabenas electrifying performance
24.10.2017 LISTEN

What would you do if you have envisioned your career path in a desired field but opportunities are simply not popping up?

Would you give up out of frustration or grab opportunities in other career fields you have not planned for?

The latter was Susanna Nyakotey's option which made all the difference.

Susanna came from a poor home and had to carry stones from a hole in stone quarry with her parents as a means to survive.

She worked at the quarry throughout her secondary school education to support herself witth basic school needs.

Growing up she developed a strong desire for journalism. She wanted to be the pretty lady reading news on your favorite TV channel everyday. But that would not happen as her career took a different turn.

"I had always nursed the idea of becoming a news anchor growing up," she said in an interview with Accra-based Radio station, Peace FM.

She added: "But I tried several times for a job in media houses but to no avail. Although, I had stints with Graphic Communications Group Ltd, I was not employed."

So after her National Service at the erstwhile Internal Revenue authority, now Ghana Revenue Authority, when she came accross an advert in the dailies seeking for interpreters at the Accra Circuit Court, she applied and got employed.

Her role meant that she interpretes court proceedings for people who could neither speak nor understand the English Language into three local dialects: Twi, Ga and Ga Adangbe.

Working at the court for 8 years under four judges, she developed intense interest in the law profession and decided to become a lawyer.

"At a point I developed interest in law. I observed how the lawyers and judges carried themselves in court and it was so appealing to me so I decided to study law," she noted.

Now, she holds a diploma in journalism so what could she do?

"So I enrolled at Zenith College for a Diploma in Law course, my Bachelor of Law (LLB) is from the University of London, then I applied to Ghana School of Law 2015."

Miss Nyakotey was part of the lawyers who graduated earlier this month.

She admits her success journey has been rough - Occasionally, she had to rely on the benevolence of some friends to pay her school fees as funds towards her education were difficult to come by.

The struggle that comess with combining studies and work also presented itself but she defied the odds and forged on.

She had this piece of advice for young people,"grab any opportunity that comes your way even if its not part of your career plan while waiting"

"Young women should not live thier lives anyhow. They should persevere and rely on God because if you are determined to do anything, God will always come through for you." she added.

Copyright Modern Ghana

All rights reserved. This article, or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, paraphrased or used in any manner whatsoever without giving full credit to modernghana and the author of the article. The source should clearly state modernghana and the writer's name either above or beneath the article when using. However, it could be used in brief quotations and in reviews.
Two practicing physicians from the city based Down Town Hospital conducted the last weekly evening OPD clinic at Guwahati Press Club on 14 October.

Dr Siben Dutta and Dr Santos Reddy, while interacting with the participants, had offered necessary consultations. Organized under the Evening with a Doctor program for the benefit of press club members along with their dependants, the camp witnessed the participation of over 25 media persons.

The participants also got their blood sugar & pressure checked by nurses Nimanihal Changloi and Taku Aampi in the Saturday camp. The 7 October camp was graced by Dr Rupam Choudhury and Dr Tapan Sharma from the Sun Valley Hospital.

A number of doctors from Apollo Chennai Hospital, SIMS Hospital Chennai, Manipal Bangalore Hospital, Fortis Hospital Bangalore, Medanta the Medicity Hospital, GNRC Hospitals, Dispur Hospital, Hayat Hospital, Ayursundra Hospital, Nemcare Hospital, Sight First Eye-Clinic etc attended the camps.
24.10.2017 LISTEN

A collaborative work between the police and Medical and Dental Council has lead to the arrest of 19 fake doctors who have been practising without medical certificates since January 2016.

Registrar of the Council, Dr. Eli Kwasi Atikpui, disclosed that they were able to arrest some of the culprits after following ups on leads from suspicious patients.

"For others, we got to know them through leads while checking the authenticity of the certificates they presented when they applied for a job.

"Others were also arrested because they prescribed wrong drugs and the physician followed up," he said.

Answering a question about how such fake doctors get into the system, Dr. Atikpui said some of them inherited the clinics from their parents.

One of the culprits, Fortune Kamasa, the Registrar said had been arrested in 2013, convicted and fined.

He was at the St. Joseph Hospital but after he paid the fine, he changed the name to Family Community Hospital and continued practising.

"But fortunately, we have got him again, he told the press.

He has been arraigned before a Hohoe Circuit Court and jailed for 17 years.

Five other cases have been determined by the court with those found guilty handed different jail terms and fines. Fourteen other cases are still under investigations.

The Medical and Dental Council is expected to issue special certificates to practising doctors from starting next year.

Dr. Eli Kwasi Atikpui said they are taking steps to curb the menace and they are longing at a long-term solution by issuing medical practitioners with certificates which have special security features.

Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com| Oswald K. Azumah| [email protected]
24.10.2017 LISTEN

The Northern Regional Secretariat of the Ghana School Feeding Programme, is yet to be opened, after it was locked up almost a week ago, by a pro-NPP group, calling itself the Burma Camp Youth, in protest against the recruitment of caterers.

Shockingly, the police and the Regional Security Council have done very little to restore sanity in order for pupils who rely on the programme to continue to benefit from it.

Members of the Burma Camp Youth at Aboabo in the Tamale Metropolis, locked up the Secretariat on October 17, 2017.

Spokesperson of the Burma Camp Youth group, Mohammed Kamil, earlier in a Citi News interview, vowed that the Secretariat will be under lock and key until the mode of selection of the Caterers and Zonal Coordinators is reversed.

Staff of the Ghana School Feeding programme including the Regional Coordinator, Felicia Tetteh, have since not returned to work.

The group members have accused the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Miss Otiko Afisah Djaba, of hijacking the programme in the region, hence their action.

The group has thus petitioned the Northern Regional Chairman of the governing NPP, Daniel Bugri Naabu, and the partys regional Council of Elders over the matter.

The group in that petition asked President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to call Otiko Djaba to order.

Over the weekend, they threatened to lock up district offices of the Ghana School Feeding Programme beginning Monday October 23, 2017, if the problem is not solved.

They warned caterers who have been allocated schools in the Tamale Metropolis not to cook or else they will be severely dealt with, but the Caterers ignored the threat.

The Zonal Coordinator for Tamale, Sagnarigu and Tolon , Suraya Abdul Manan, told Citi News that all Caterers under her supervision were at work.

She said no amount of intimidation or threats will compel the caterers to stop cooking. Suraya Abdul Manan encouraged the caterers to ignore any threats and continue to cook for the pupils.

Meanwhile, the Northern Regional Police Command appears not to be bothered about the Burma Camp Youth groups action.

The police Public Relations Officer, Mohammed Yussif Tanko, on Eyewitness News claimed the matter had not been officially brought to the notice of the police administration.

His comment drew public condemnations from listeners who sent messages to the news programme via various social media networks.



By: Abdul Karim Naatogmah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
The Professor Kwesi Botchwey Committee says the NDC's humiliating defeat in the 2016 polls can be traced to deep crack which formed after the party elected national, regional and constituency executives in 2014.

The leaked report said the party was divided two years ahead of the crucial 2016 general elections because some defeated party executives adopted a laid-back attitude, while others worked against the party.

This observation formed part of a 455-page report intercepted by Joy News.

In the heat of last years polls, the NDC had boasted of being more united than its rival New Patriotic Party (NPP), which had been engulfed in internal wranglings which led to the suspension of three national executives.

Ex-President John Mahama repeatedly aimed at the 2016 NPP presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, accusing him of fomenting dissension in his party.

But the 13-member Botchwey Committee said whilst the NDC appeared united on the surface, it was deeply divided at the base.

It was deeply divided in a good number of constituencies across the country two years to the general elections, the report said of the party.

The Committee zeroed in on two constituencies where it said entrenched positions of interest groups went against the party.

Party members in the Nandom Constituency were very upfront in stressing that the apparent divisions that existed amongst the leading party members in the constituency in the run-up to the 2016 election had their antecedents in the 2014 election for party officers, the report noted.

The situation in Jomoro Constituency in the Western Region was not different from the other constituencies where the NDC lost bitterly in both the parliamentary and presidential levels to its arch-rival, the NPP.

The Committee also said whilst the expansion of the partys electoral college was laudable, the integrity of the biometric register was tampered with.

Some national, regional, and constituency executives had preferred candidates and therefore skewed the process to favour them leaving grassroots members bitter, the report said.

The Committee said the actions of some party executives may frustrate and make reconciliation difficult before and even after the elections.

Some members of the NDCs Biometric Registration Committee were alleged to have worked independently of the Committee and started dealing with aspirants and other interest parties.

The mismanagement of the Biometric process promoted ethnicism in constituencies of diverse ethnic groups, the report said.

"A number of independent candidates emerged from many constituencies as a protest to the conduct and outcome of the implementation of the expanded Electoral College," the report said.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brakopowers | [email protected] | Instagram: @Realbrakopowers
In a dramatic turn of events in the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Vodafone Ghana tax dispute before the court, the Acting Commissioner-General of the GRA has refused to grant a waiver of the payment of 30 per cent of the value of tax in contention.

In a letter to Vodafone dated October 4, 2017, obtained by ghanabusinessnews.com, the Acting Commissioner-General of the GRA, Mr. Emmanuel Kofi Nti, said he will not grant the waiver requested by Vodafone.

The Commissioner-General has discretionary powers to grant or deny waivers in tax.

In July 2017, the Transfer Pricing Unit of the GRA conducted a Transfer Pricing audit of the company for the 2012  2016 years of assessment and found Vodafone liable of GH162,468,361.90 in taxes.

But Vodafone disagreed with the GRAs use of the Technology Transfer Regulations, 1992 (L.I. 1547) instead of the Transfer Pricing Regulations, 2012 (L.I. 2188,) in the audit exercise, court documents show.

In a back and forth correspondence between the two, the GRA counteracts Vodafones assertions by arguing that after subjecting the companys transactions to the Technology Transfer Regulation 1992, (L.I. 1547), it established that the transactions do not meet the Arms Length Test.

Following several meetings to resolve the matter, the GRA asked Vodafone to submit its grievances in writing. That was done through its consultants, KPMG, the document states.

However, Vodafone while waiting for a response from the GRA, it instead received an audit report with the tax assessment of GH162,468,361.90 from the Transfer Pricing Unit of the GRA, which demanded that the stated assessment should be paid within 14 days. Vodafone however, objected to the demand.

The telecoms provider then went to court asking the court to compel the Commissioner-General to determine its request for a waiver of the said payment of the 30 per cent of the amount which is to the tune of GH49 million.

Meanwhile, in response to Vodafone Ghanas objections, the GRA has said among others in an Affidavit to the court that between 2012 and 2016, Vodafone Ghana has remitted GH2.1 billion to its parent company outside Ghana. The amount, the tax authorities say is about 30 per cent of the telecoms providers turnover, adding that the company has not paid corporate income tax for six years. A fact that Vodafone officials have admitted arguing that it is because the company hasnt made any profit since it took over Ghana Telecoms in 2009.

The matter has been adjourned twice already. The Court will, however, hear the case today after Vodafone Ghana prayed the court to adjourn to today October 23, 2017.

Portions of the letter that stated the refusal of the tax waiver read as follows:

We refer to your application dated 25th August 2017, requesting for a waiver of the 30% of the tax objected to by your company.

"We also refer to the Authoritys letter of September 4th 2017, in which you were informed that the Commissioner-General was yet to consider a decision to exercise his discretionary power under subsection 6 of section 42 of the Ghana Revenue Management Act 2016 Act 915.

"Having thereafter considered your said request of 25th August, 2017, the Commissioner-General has refused to grant your application for a waiver of the payment of the said 30% of the tax in dispute.

"In line with subsection 5 of section 42 of the Ghana Revenue Management Act 2016 Act 915, you are advised to comply with the Authoritys letter of 4th September 2017.
The pregnant widow of an American soldier killed in an ambush in Niger said Monday that Donald Trump struggled to remember his name during a condolence call, in an account the president immediately disputed.

Trump's call to Myeshia Johnson, whose husband Sergeant La David Johnson was one of four US soldiers killed in the October 4 jihadist attack, has generated a storm of controversy and comes as questions swirl over how the attack happened.

"Yes, the president said that he knew what he signed up for but it hurts anyways," Johnson said on ABC's Good Morning America TV program, in her first public comments on the death of her 25-year-old husband.

"It made me cry because I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said it."

Myeshia Johnson, who is carrying the couple's third child, said she "heard him stumbling on trying to remember my husband's name and that hurt me the most."

"The only way he remembered my husband's name because he told me he had my husband's report in front of him and that's when he actually said La David," she said.

The US president fired back on Twitter, insisting: "I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson, and spoke his name from beginning, without hesitation!"

Details of Trump's call were made public last week by a Democratic congresswoman who claimed the president had offended Johnson's widow, drawing accusations from the White House of politicizing the issue.

The escalating row, now heading into its second week, prompted Trump's chief of staff John Kelly, a former general whose son died in Afghanistan, to deliver an emotive defense of the president -- while lashing out at the Florida congresswoman, Frederica Wilson.

Myeshia Johnson told ABC Wilson's account of the call was "100 percent correct," saying she was a lifelong family friend and had listened in over a speakerphone.

Continued Niger ops

"Whatever Miss Wilson said was not fabricated," Johnson said. "Why would we fabricate something like that?"

Asked if she had any words for the president, she replied: "No. I don't have nothing to say to him."

The dispute comes amid questions over exactly what happened ahead of the ambush, and the military response afterward.

General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said "we owe the American people an explanation of what their men and women were doing at this particular time."

Myeshia Johnson also wanted answers about how her husband died.

She was initially told that there had been "massive gunfire" and "my husband as of October 4th was missing," she said on ABC.

"A couple of days later is when they told me that he went from missing to killed in action," she said.

General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discusses recent military operations in Niger

"I don't know how he got killed, where he got killed or anything."

The 12 American and 30 Nigerien soldiers on the mission were attacked by about 50 fighters Dunford characterized as locals associated with the Islamic State group.

Questions have been raised over why it took hours before backup support reached the patrol, and why Johnson's body was left behind and only recovered the following day.

Dunford said the October 3-4 mission was originally approved based on an intelligence assessment that they were "unlikely" to come into conflict with any local forces.

Trump himself kicked off the furor early last week by falsely claiming that Barack Obama and other former presidents did not call the families of fallen soldiers.

As the controversy escalated, the president went on to claim he had called "virtually" all fallen servicemembers' families since taking office.

That has reportedly left his administration scrambling, with four families of servicemembers receiving rush-delivered letters from the White House in recent days, according to the Atlantic.
Zekarias Mesfin spent months making a movie about his dangerous illegal migration from Ethiopia -- and when he arrived at the film's premiere, he was in a coffin carried by six white-gloved pallbearers.

Not that Zekarias, 33, was dead.

But he chose the dramatic entrance to show how close to death he came 12 years ago when he left his home in Ethiopia to journey across the deserts of Sudan and Egypt to try to get to Israel.

"I was almost dead," Zekarias told AFP, following the Ethiopian premiere of the film last week at the national theatre in the capital Addis Ababa. "At the Israel border, I lost many, many friends, sisters, brothers."

Zekarias could not have predicted where his journey would finally take him: after being caught and jailed for two years for illegally entering Egypt, the United Nations helped him resettle in Canada.

He has since become a Canadian citizen and settled in Edmonton, Alberta with his wife and two children.

Zekarias says he spent years thinking about making a film about his odyssey.

Six white-gloved pallbearers carried the coffin holding Ethiopian migrant Zekarias Mesfin who said he aimed to show how close to death he came on his perilous journey

Finally deciding to take the plunge three years ago, he ploughed his savings of 2.2 million birr ($81,303, 69,067 euros) into making "Ewir Amora Kelabi", an Amharic phrase that can be roughly translated as "the higher spiritual power guiding the lost".

'I was there'

Zekarias plays himself in the film, re-enacting his journey across Africa to show viewers just how hazardous it can be.

Illegal immigration is "very difficult, it's very, very dangerous. I want to teach that," Zekarias said of the film, which was shot in Ethiopia. "I didn't make this documentary film by guessing. I was there."

Ethiopia is Africa's second most populous country and also one of its poorest.

But despite rapid economic growth over the past decade, many Ethiopians seek to try their luck elsewhere, mostly countries in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, even if they don't have any visas and have to brave war zones like Yemen to get there.

Zekarias' movie is called "Ewir Amora Kelabi", an Amharic phrase that can be roughly translated as "the higher spiritual power guiding the lost"

An estimated 334,000 Ethiopians migrated to the Middle East between 2006 and 2014, according to the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat, a group of international organisations that monitor migration in East Africa and Yemen.

Tales are rife of the brutality and violence that the migrants face.

In August, the United Nations reported at least 50 migrants from Ethiopia and Somalia were deliberately drowned off Yemen by smugglers who appeared to have spotted a coastguard patrol.

Those who do make it to their destinations and find work provide vital remittances for their families back home, but are also regularly exploited by their employers or physically abused, according to the International Labour Organization.

A familiar story

Zekarias' movie -- which he also produced and wrote -- won an award for Best Emerging Filmmaker at the African Film Festival in Dallas in July.

It is a story that would be familiar to many Ethiopian migrants.

Zekarias' movie, in which he played the role of himself and also produced and wrote, won an award for Best Emerging Filmmaker at the African Film Festival in Dallas in July

After being orphaned at a young age, Zekarias roamed Ethiopia working in barber shops until 2005 when he decided to make the trek to Israel, enticed by the better prospects there.

Along the way, he and other migrants were abused and cheated by smugglers and rarely had enough food and water.

He was eventually captured by Egyptian authorities near the Israeli border and thrown into prison.

The film is unflinching in its depictions of the brutality migrants face, but Zekarias said it was up to the viewer to determine whether they want to migrate or not.

"Anyone can decide to go. The decision is up to them," Zekarias said. "But if they see this movie, I don't think they want to go."
Christian and Muslim leaders in Central African Republic (CAR), speaking ahead of a visit by United Nations chief Antonio Guterres, have urged the UN to overhaul its strategy for the strife-torn country.

Guterres is expected on Tuesday, ahead of a requested renewal in November of the UN force in CAR, called MINUSCA, which has been accused by some of passivity.

"If they're just television spectators of the conflict, that won't do," Cardinal Dieudonne Nzapalainga, the Catholic archbishop of Bangui said in a joint interview on Saturday alongside the country's Muslim and Protestant leaders.

"A revision of strategy" has to go hand-in-hand with a mandate for UN troop renewal, said Protestant leader Nicolas Guerekoyamene-Gbangou.

Poor but mineral-rich, CAR has become a byword for conflict and misery.

Thousands have lost their lives and half a million people have been displaced, according to the UN, out of a population of roughly 4.5 million.

In their interview with AFP, the religious leaders pleaded with the world not to see the conflict as a matter of religion, but of gangs who often exploited faith to further their own goals.

In 2013, CAR's then president Francois Bozize, a Christian former army chief, was overthrown by a pro-Muslim Seleka rebel coalition.

Militias known as "anti-balaka" launched a counter-offensive in the name of defending the Christian majority population.

'Not religion'

"The religious stance has been used only for political ends, for looting and for making off with the (mineral) riches beneath the soil," said Oumar Kobine Layama, head of the Islamic Conference in CAR.

"This is not a religious conflict."

In the southeastern town of Bangassou, where anti-balaka forces unleashed a new wave of violence in May, MINUSCA troops "made all the Muslims come to the mosque and abandoned them," Kobine said.

"If the cardinal and the bishop hadn't come to protect them, what would have become of them. Who would have been responsible?"

The imam added: "Christians and Muslims are now together at the displaced persons' site. If this was really a war of religions, would they be in the same place?"

Those who kill in the name of Christianity are beyond the pale, said Guerekoyame-Gbangou.

At Kembe in the southeast, the anti-balaka in October attacked "a place that's a sanctuary in usual times, a mosque," he said.

"They can't say they're Christians and go on to kill. All those with such ideas in their heads are outside their faith."

In 2013, the three leaders set up a "platform of religious confessions" in a show of inter-faith unity and to act as a mediator in the conflict.

The "platform" earned the UN Human Rights Prize in 2015, but at some personal cost to their founders. Kobine has been forced to move house and relatives of Guerekoyame-Gbangou were killed in 2015.

UN mandate

Guterres' four-day stay in CAR will be his first visit since taking office on January 1, although he regularly visited the country as former head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

He will go Bangui and Bangassou and also meet victims of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers as part of his effort to address damaging allegations that have hit the blue helmets in several missions.

The secretary general's visit comes at a time when the United Nations faces a precarious financial situation, as the United States pushes for cost-cutting measures in peacekeeping.

The international body has maintained some 12,500 troops and police on the ground in CAR since September 2014 to help protect civilians and support the government of Faustin-Archange Touadera, who was elected last year.

The force's mandate expires on November 15. On October 18, Guterres urged the Security Council to add 900 troops, to enable the force "to shape and influence security situations, rather than react to them."
The United States is considering a stepped-up military presence in Africa to pursue Islamic State group jihadists looking for new havens after the fall of their "caliphate," American officials say.

After IS lost its de facto capital Raqa in Syria this month, and its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul earlier, the group "has aspirations to establish a larger presence" in Africa, the US military's top officer General Joseph Dunford said on Monday.

From Libya to Egypt's Sinai, to East Africa and West Africa the jihadists have already posed a threat, Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a press conference.

He was discussing the October 4 clash in Niger, West Africa, that cost the lives of four American soldiers.

Along with five Nigerien troops, the US soldiers died on the Niger-Mali border in an attack carried out by locals associated with IS, according to Dunford.

The incident shocked many Americans unaware of the hundreds-strong US military presence in that country.

Dunford said the military will make recommendations to President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis "for the allocation of forces that meet what we see as the threat, what we anticipate the threat to be."

On Tuesday he meets military chiefs from 75 countries "to talk about the next phase of the campaign" against IS.

Speaking to reporters following a meeting with Mattis last Friday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate's Armed Services Committee, said bluntly: "The war is morphing. We're going to see more actions in Africa, not less."

After the Middle East, Africa already has the greatest presence of American special forces. Official figures show more than 1,300 of the troops are deployed there.

These elite units train local forces in counter-terrorism and "will only accompany those forces when the prospects of enemy contact is unlikely," Dunford said.

These rules of engagement "are going to change when it comes to counterterrorism operations," Graham said.

He hinted that American troops would be authorized to shoot first on "terrorist" targets, which is not the case now.

A growing threat

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford says the Islamic State group aspires to a greater presence in Africa

The European Union's presidency also warned this month that countries in that bloc must monitor "very carefully" a growing IS threat in North Africa, where fighters have relocated.

Dunford said the war is moving to multiple arenas.

"I'm not sure I'm ready to say it's shifting just to Africa. We're dealing with a challenge that exists from West Africa to Southeast Asia," he said.

"I believe ISIS will attempt to establish a physical presence outside of Iraq and Syria" after losing Mosul and Raqa, the general added, using another acronym for IS.

"That's exactly why we're conducting the kinds of operations we're conducting in Niger, to ensure that local forces have the capability to prevent that from happening."

The US supports with aerial refueling and intelligence France's Operation Barkhane against jihadists in five Sahel nations: Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso.

In all, the US military has about 6,000 personnel in 53 African countries, Dunford said.

According to a report to Congress by General Thomas Waldhauser, who heads the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), the American presence is notable in Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya.

The numbers of US special forces varies but the Niger contingent of about 800 is currently the largest in any one country on the continent.

Dunford vowed the US will remain, despite the four fatalities in Niger.

"Our intent is to continue operations there," Dunford said.
24.10.2017 LISTEN

Residents in Tamale may have good reason to question the competence of police in the Northern Region given that it only heard about the widely reported raid on the Northern Regional Secretariat of the School Feeding Programme Office by a New Patriotic Party-affiliated group only about two days ago.

The group, calling itself the Burma Camp Youth, has not shied away from the media claiming it locked up the offices on Monday, October 16, over what it called unfair allocation of schools in the region to caterers.

The group's Chairman, Mohammed Kamil, in an earlier Citi News interview, accused the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Otiko Afisa Djaba, of hijacking the allocation exercise.

No complaints, no arrest

But no arrest has been made thus far, despite the brazen attack on a state institution, and the Northern Regional Police PRO, ASP Yussif Tanko, explained on Eyewitness News that, this was also because no official complaint had been made.

ASP Tanko stressed that, such an act should be considered lawless, but as we speak now, nobody has reported any case, saying somebody has gone to the office, locked them out of the office and kept the keys in his pocket. We haven't received any such complaint.

In his view, if what happened is something that is a security threat to them or if what happened is true, I think they would come to our office and made a complaint to us.

Despite the coverage on Citi FM and other media outlets of the raid, ASP Tanko said: you cannot [assume] that anybody in our regional command has listened into your network has heard what happened there.

Staff should have reported incident

He further questioned why the staff of the school feeding offices had not made any report, saying I wonder why you are not calling them and asking them why this thing has happened and they have failed to report the issue to the police.

Investigations into the incident are yet to begin as in the meantime, ASP Tanko said what his outfit would do, is to find out from authorities if such a thing [the raid] has happened.

secondly, why they have not reported the matter to police. And if it is confirmed that it has happened, then we will ask them if they knew the person who did that and then we will take it from there, he added.



By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
24.10.2017 LISTEN

Former Communications Minister, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah, has mounted a strong defence against revelations contained in the Dr. Kwesi Botchwey Election Review Report that accuses him of being one of two prime people who caused the National Democratic Congress (NDC)s defeat in the 2016 elections.

The report, compiled by Dr Kwesi Botchwey, a party stalwart, singled out Dr. Boamah and former Presidential staffer, Stan Dogbe as the two persons whose actions drove the then incumbent party to the opposition.

The President was virtually naked with the two around him, the report said in part.

The report reveals that both Dr. Boamah and Stan Dogbe carried themselves like shadow actors for the government.

Details of the report secured by Joy News says Dr. Boamah was the undoing of former President John Mahama.

The findings in the report were obtained from interviews with a large segment of the pro-NDC press.

However, Dr Boamah said the findings in the report do not represent the facts.

Let it be known that it is never the case, it is never the case that any of those things that have been said happened. I did my job very well and if anybody wants to assess me based on how I worked, at least they should assess it with the 2012 campaign when I was specifically Deputy Campaign Coordinator, he said.

The report revealed resources budget to facilitate NDC communication activities were diverted, however, Dr. Omane Boamah challenges that too.

"To the best of my ability, within budget, we did what we could. That is the reason why with the all the dust that is being thrown at various ministries left, right, centre, a lot of the ministries are still standing because we ensured that we worked within our means," he said.

The report also said only four people benefited from 34 vehicles that were to be presented to members Presidential Press Corps , but Dr Omane Boamah has denied that too.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
Some commuters who rely on rail transport are beginning to feel the impact after a train headed from Tema to Accra, derailed at Tesano in Accra.

About five passengers on board the train got injured and were rushed to the hospital after the accident. Four of them were treated and discharged, with the other still on admission.

Citi Business News checks reveal that, about 600 commuters who use rail transport from the main railway station in Kantamanto in Accra, were on Monday forced to use road transport after the train derailed at Tesano.

The train normally leaves Tema at 6:30am through Asaprochona in Sakumono, then to Baatsona, Shangrila , Dzowulu, Achimota, Odo at the Kwame Nkrumah Cirlce, then to Kantamanto in Accra.

Commuters along these routes who are mostly traders and business owners, are already lamenting the impact as the situation is expected to last for about two days.

The Area Manager of the Ghana Railway Company Limited at the Kantamanto station, Abraham Kingsley Woode, told Citi Business News the development will adversely affect commuters.

Yes, I think it will be a challenge, but we are working to get it back on the lines. It may take about two days. I don't think it is a major difficulty getting it back, he assured.

Meanwhile, some passengers told Citi Business News they still prefer rail transport despite the accident, due to the cost and the limited time it takes to reach their destinations.

3-member c'ttee to investigate Tesano train derailment

Meanwhile, the Minister for Railways Development, Joe Ghartey, has constituted a 3-member committee to look into circumstances that led to the derailment of an Accra-bound train from Tema on Monday morning.

The committee, which is being chaired by the Deputy Railways Minister, Kwaku Agyenim-Boateng, is to complete work and present their report in 10 days, that is November 6th, 2017.

By: Lawrence Segbefia/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
Even as global donors reduce their aid offerings to war-torn Sudan, the European Union has vowed to provide the African country with humanitarian assistance for "as long as it takes".

On Monday, the EU offered a new 106-million-euro ($124 million) aid package to Sudan at a time when the United Nations has managed to raise only 39 percent of its overall 2017 aid appeal for the country, where millions still live on foreign aid.

"There is no doubt that the overall humanitarian situation in Sudan remains very concerning," the EU's Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid, Christos Stylianides, told AFP in an interview late on Monday after wrapping up a two-day visit to Sudan including to parts of conflict-wracked Darfur.

"We will continue to provide this assistance as long as it takes."

Urging other global donors to follow the EU, Stylianides said it was justified to aid Sudan as it has millions of displaced people who need assistance and hosts almost a million refugees, half of them South Sudanese.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced in Sudan's three conflict areas of Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan due to fierce fighting between government forces and rebels.

Some 461,000 refugees have also arrived in Sudan since December 2013 when a brutal civil war erupted in South Sudan, the world's youngest country formed after it split from the north in 2011.

'Unprecedented situations'

"I recognise that the funding from the European funds, from the European citizens, remains very important in order to deal with these very unprecedented situations, not only in Sudan but worldwide," he said.

The EU has mobilised some 422 million euros for meeting Sudan's humanitarian needs since 2011.

European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Christos Stylianides gives an interview to AFP in Khartoum on October 23, 2017

Of the new 106-million-euro aid package, 46 million will be to provide food, nutrition, health and education, while the rest will be channelled to help displaced people, migrants and host communities.

Even as Sudan's humanitarian needs grow "day by day", Stylianides acknowledged that there were only limited funds available.

For 2017, United Nations aid agencies have managed to raise only 39 percent of the $804 million asked for.

The UN says the lack of funds has already led to dozens of health facilities being closed in Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan.

"We need more funding, we need more donors in order to engage in these difficult situation," Stylianides said.

Aid access 'not negotiable'

It is all the more essential that aid reaches targeted people, he said, and that Khartoum gives "unrestricted access" to aid workers.

"This is not negotiable," Stylianides said.

Aid workers acknowledge that since the middle of 2016, Khartoum has given increasing access even to what were previously no-go areas, especially after Washington made it a key condition for lifting its decades-old trade embargo imposed on Sudan.

The embargo was officially lifted from October 12.

Khartoum's "open-door policy" when it came to accepting South Sudanese refugees and giving more access to aid workers will encourage global donors like the EU, Stylianides said.

"But we have to see more and more improvement in these very difficult things, because without access the humanitarian workers cannot reach the vulnerable people," he said.

Campaign groups like the Washington-based Enough Project charge that millions of euros provided by the EU were being used to build capacities of Sudanese security forces for stopping the flow of migrants coming to Europe through Sudan.

Stylianides said EU aid was not distributed through the Sudanese government at all, and the bloc was in fact focussing on how to develop Africa itself.

"The first priority is to deal with root causes, is to seek investment in Africa through our investment plan, to create jobs for the youth in Africa, and of course at the same time to see growth in African countries," he said.
In a dramatic turn of events in the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and Vodafone Ghana tax dispute before court, the Acting Commissioner-General of the GRA has refused to grant a waiver of the payment of 30 per cent of the value of tax in contention.

In a letter to Vodafone dated October 4, 2017, obtained by ghanabusinessnews.com, the Acting Commissioner-General of the GRA, Mr. Emmanuel Kofi Nti, said he will not grant the waiver requested by Vodafone.

The Commissioner-General has discretionary powers to grant or deny waivers in tax.

In July 2017, the Transfer Pricing Unit of the GRA conducted a Transfer Pricing audit of the company for the 2012  2016 years of assessment and found Vodafone liable of GH162,468,361.90 in taxes.

But Vodafone disagreed with the GRAs use of the Technology Transfer Regulations, 1992 (L.I. 1547) instead of the Transfer Pricing Regulations, 2012 (L.I. 2188,) in the audit exercise, court documents show.

In a back and forth correspondence between the two, the GRA counteracts Vodafones assertions by arguing that after subjecting the companys transactions to the Technology Transfer Regulation 1992, (L.I. 1547), it established that the transactions do not meet the Arms Length Test.

Following several meetings to resolve the matter, the GRA asked Vodafone to submit its grievances in writing. That was done through its consultants, KPMG, the document states.

However, Vodafone while waiting for a response from the GRA, it instead received an audit report with the tax assessment of GH162,468,361.90 from the Transfer Pricing Unit of the GRA, which demanded that the stated assessment should be paid within 14 days. Vodafone however, objected to the demand.

The telecoms provider then went to court asking the court to compel the Commissioner-General to determine its request for a waiver of the said payment of the 30 per cent of the amount which is to the tune of GH49 million.

Meanwhile, in response to Vodafone Ghanas objections, the GRA has said among others in an Affidavit to the court that between 2012 and 2016, Vodafone Ghana has remitted GH2.1 billion to its parent company outside Ghana. The amount, the tax authorities say is about 30 per cent of the telecoms providers turnover, adding that the company has not paid corporate income tax for six years. A fact that Vodafone officials have admitted arguing that it is because the company hasnt made any profit since it took over Ghana Telecoms in 2009.

The matter has been adjourned twice already. The Court will however hear the case today after Vodafone Ghana prayed the court to adjourn to today October 23, 2017.

We refer to your application dated 25th August 2017, requesting for a waiver of the 30% of the tax objected to by your company.

We also refer to the Authoritys letter of September 4th 2017, in which you were informed that the Commissioner-General was yet to consider a decision to exercise his discretionary power under subsection 6 of section 42 of the Ghana Revenue Management Act 2016 Act 915.

Having thereafter considered your said request of 25th August, 2017, the Commissioner-General has refused to grant your application for a waiver of the payment of the said 30% of the tax in dispute.

In line with subsection 5 of section 42 of the Ghana Revenue Management Act 2016 Act 915, you are advised to comply with the Authoritys letter of 4th September 2017.
24.10.2017 LISTEN

Children need special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth reiterates the 1924 declaration pledge that mankind owes to the child to the best it has to give and specifically calls upon voluntary organization and local authorities to strive for the observance of childrens right.

MR. Speaker, all protocol observed. I am in the person of Akomatsri Abla Sarah. An honorable member of the majority caucus of this noble house. Mr. Speaker permit me to talk about one major factor that is destroying our future leaders, the nation and the world at large 

Trafficking of children is a form of human trafficking and is defined as the "recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, and/or receipt" of a child for the purpose of slavery, forced labor and exploitation.

Though statistics regarding the magnitude of child trafficking are difficult to obtain, the International Labour Organization estimates that 1.2 million children are trafficked each year. The trafficking of children has been internationally recognized as a serious crime that exists in every region of the world and which often has human rights implications. Yet, it is only within the past decade that the prevalence and ramifications of this practice have risen to international prominence, due to a dramatic increase in research and public action. A variety of potential solutions have accordingly been suggested and implemented, which can be categorized as four types of action: broad protection, prevention, law enforcement, and victim assistance.

The main international documents dealing with the trafficking of children are the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child , the 1999 I.L.O. Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention and the 2000 U.N. Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children .

The first major international instrument dealing with the trafficking of children is part of the 2000 United Nations Palermo protocols , titled the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children . The definition of "child" used here is that listed in the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child which states, "a child means every human being below the age of 18 years, unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier." This is important, because some countries have chosen to set the "age of majority" lower than 18, thus influencing exactly what legally constitutes child trafficking.

Some related legal instruments include, International human right instruments, Labour and migration treaties, Trafficking specific instrument and Regional instruments.

National laws pertaining to child trafficking continue to develop worldwide, based on the international principles that have been established. Anti-trafficking legislation has been lauded as critical by the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking , because it ensures that traffickers and trafficking victims are treated accordingly: for example, "if migration laws are used to pursue traffickers, it is often the case that the victims too are prosecuted as illegal migrants, whereas if there is a specific category of 'trafficker' and 'trafficked person,' then it is more likely that the victim will be treated as such." The existence of national laws regarding child trafficking also enables trafficking victims and/or their families to take appropriate civil action.

Mr. speaker, the objective of child trafficking is often forced child labour. Child labour refers specifically to children under a stipulated minimum age, usually 14 at the lowest, being required to work. UNICEF estimates that, in 2011, 150 million children aged 514 in developing countries were involved in child labour Within this number, the International Labour Organization reports that 60% of child workers work in agriculture. The ILO also estimates that 115 million children are engaged in hazardous work, such as the sex or drug trade. Overall, child labor can take many forms, including domestic servitude, work in agriculture, service, and manufacturing industries. Also, according to several researchers, most children are forced into cheap and controllable labor, and work in homes, farms, factories, restaurants, and much more (Beyrer 16; Gozdziak and MacDonnell 171; Vinovich 88). Trafficked children may be sexually exploited, used in the armed forces and drug trades, and in child begging. In terms of global trends, the ILO estimates that in 20042008, there was a 3% reduction in the incidence of child labor; this stands in contrast to a previous ILO report which found that in 20002004, there was a 10% reduction in child labor. The ILO contends that, globally, child labour is slowly declining, except in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of child workers has remained relatively constant: 1 in 4 children aged 517 work in this region. Another major global trend concerns the number of child laborers in the 15-17 age group: in the past five years, a 20% increase in the number of these child workers has been reported. A surprised example has occurred in the United States as McCabe (2008) indicates that in the 1990s, huge companies such as Gap and Nike were using industries sweatshops that use trafficked children to make their desired products.

Mr. speaker, the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict is a protocol of the Convention on the Rights of the Child , formally adopted by the United Nations in 2000. Essentially, the protocol states that while volunteers below the age of 18 can voluntarily join the armed forces, they cannot be conscripted. As the Protocol reads, "State parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that member of their armed forces who have not attained the age of 18 years do not take a direct part in hostilities." Despite this, the International Labour Organization estimates that "tens of thousands" of girls and boys are currently forcibly enlisted in the armed forces in at least 17 countries around the world. These children are conscripted into direct in hostilities thus combat roles, supporting roles such as messengers or spies and for political advantages thus propaganda purposes.

Recent research conducted by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers has also noted that girl soldiers must be uniquely recognized, in that they are especially vulnerable to acts of sexual violence. The incidence of child soldiers was the focus of the Kony 2012 movement, that aimed to arrest Joseph Kony , a Ugandan war criminal who is responsible for the trafficking of thousands of child soldiers and sex slaves.

Children are also used in drug trades in all regions of the world. Specifically, children are often trafficked into exploitation as either drug couriers or dealers, and then 'paid' in drugs, such that they become addicted and further entrapped. Due to the illicit nature of drug trafficking, children who are apprehended are often treated as criminals, when in reality they are often the ones in need of legal assistance. While comprehensive worldwide statistics regarding the prevalence of this practice are unknown, several useful regional studies have been conducted. For example, the has recently investigated the use of Afghan children in the heroin trade and child involvement in the drug trades of Brazil. Scholar Luke Dowdney specifically studied children in the drug trade in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; he found that children involved in the drug trades are at significantly higher risk of engaging in violence, particularly murder.

Children may be trafficked for the purposes of adoption, particularly international adoption. Children are sourced from orphanages or kidnapped, or parents may be tricked, cajoled or coerced into relinquishing custody. Disreputable international adoption agencies then arrange international adoptions, charging high fees to prospective adoptive parents. The Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Cooperation in regard to Intercountry Adoption is an international agreement designed to protect children from such exploitation and to assist in preventing such illegal intercountry adoptions.

Forced begging is a profitable practice in which exploiters are motivated by economic incentives. The business structures of major rings of children trafficked for the purpose of begging have been examined as comparable to a medium-size business enterprise. In the most severe cases networks of children forced to beg may generate $3040,000 USD for the profiteer. Though family networks are not nearly as extensive, a study conducted in Albania showed that a family with multiple children begging can earn up to fifteen euros a day, an amount greater than the average national teacher salary. Anti-Slavery International asserts that because this income is relatively high many families believe it is the best option available given the lack of existing capabilities . Capability deprivation, meaning the routine absence of adequate resources that serve in facilitating opportunities, may account for cross-generational begging practices within families. UNICEF studies have found that begging is especially prevalent among families in which parents are incapacitated in some way, leading children to be the sole providers.

According to the World Bank forced begging is most commonly found in the Middle East and countries of West Africa, where laws prohibiting begging are scarce and heavy regulation of trafficking absent. In Zimbabwe, where child begging is especially prominent, the United Nations has indicated many contradictions between the Labour Act of Zimbabwe and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Many nations, such as Indonesia, have laws against begging on the books, but the repercussions for such entail temporary detainment and eventual release back onto the streets, which does little to combat the issue.

There are several cultural factors that support begging. In Europe begging is found in a number of minority cultures, especially popular within Roma and nomadic communities. In Turkey familial networks of beggars have been documented across three generations, making it deeply ingrained within their survival schemas. It is important to note that while these may be culturally rooted practices, juvenile begging by way of familial pressure still falls under the realm of forced begging. The transport of children, even one's own, for the purposes of exploitation through begging is a form of trafficking outlined by the United Nations.

Mr. Speaker, in China, in response to adult starvation, some children were exchanged, killed, and eaten. According to Robyn Meredith, "peasants [in the People's Republic of China (possibly in ca. B.C.770)] turned into skeletons. The nation's farmers, including the residents of Xiaogang, .... [among some] starving families [,] resorted to a practice called  [meaning "exchanging children to eat"]:.. they traded a child for a neighbor's child, then killed and ate the skinny youngster, with the sickening knowledge that their neighbors were devouring their own.

The practice is also known as "re-homing" or " adoption from disruption ".

In ancient Rome , according to Keith Bradley, Augustine wrote that "there were indigent parents selling their children because they needed the cash."

In contemporary Nepal, parents of poor families sell their children to orphanages (or sometimes simply hand them over without any payment). The orphanage then misrepresent them as "orphans", ensuring an income for the orphanages.

Mr. speaker, some Physical and Mental Consequences of Trafficking include:

Child victims of human trafficking face significant problems. Often physically and sexually abused, they have distinctive medical and psychological needs that must be addressed before advancing in the formative years of adulthood.

Child victims of exploitation can face a number of long-term health problems:

Sleeping and eating disorders

Sexually transmitted diseases

HIV/AIDS, pelvic pain, rectal trauma and urinary difficulties from working in the sex industry

Drug addiction

Chronic back, hearing, cardiovascular or respiratory problems from endless days toiling in dangerous agriculture, sweatshop or construction conditions

Fear and anxiety

Depression, mood changes

Guilt and shame

Cultural shock from finding themselves in a strange country

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Traumatic bonding with the trafficker

According to UN.GIFT , child trafficking has the most significant impact on trafficked children and their families. First, trafficking can result in the death or permanent injury of the trafficked child. This can stem from a dangerous "movement" stage of trafficking or from specific aspects of the "exploitation" stage, such as hazardous working conditions. Moreover, trafficked children are often denied access to healthcare, effectively increasing their chances of serious injury and death. Trafficked children are also often subject to domestic violence; they may be beaten or starved in order to ensure obedience. In addition, these children frequently encounter substance abuse; they may be given drugs as "payment" or to ensure that they become addicted and thus dependent on their trafficker(s). As opposed to many other forms of crime, the trauma experienced by children who are trafficked is often prolonged and repeated, leading to severe psychological impacts. UN.GIFT reports that trafficked children often suffer from depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, among other conditions.

Effects on families are also severe. Some families believe that sending or allowing their children to relocate in order to find work will bring in additional income, while in reality many families will never see their trafficked children again. In addition, UN.GIFT has found that certain forms of trafficking, particularly sexual exploitation in girls, bring "shame" to families. Thus, in certain cases, children who are able to escape trafficking may return to their families only to find that they are rejected and ostracized.

Child trafficking has also been shown to have a major effect on communities. If multiple children in a community are trafficked, it can result in the entire community being corrupted, and thus devastated, by trafficking. Social development efforts are hindered, as trafficked children's educations are cut short As a result of this lack of education, children who escape trafficking may be less able to secure employment later in life. In addition, trafficked girls face special obstacles, in that their prospects for marriage might be diminished if the community becomes aware that they have been trafficked, particularly into sexual exploitation.

On a national level, economic development is severely hindered by the lack of education of trafficked children; this results in a major loss of potentially productive future workers. Children who are able to successfully return to their families often pose a significant financial burden, due to their lack of education, and the illnesses and injuries they may have incurred during trafficking work. There are major costs associated with the rehabilitation of these trafficked children, so that they are able to successfully participate in their communities. Furthermore, the persistence of child trafficking indicates the presence of sustained criminal activity and criminal networks, which, in most cases, are also associated with drugs and violence. As a result, UN.GIFT has cited child trafficking as a significant indicator of national and global security threats.

Mr. Speaker below are some solutions to child trafficking, or "anti-trafficking actions", can be roughly classified into four categories:

Broad protection: "To prevent children and former victims from being (re)trafficked"

Prevention: "Of the crime of child trafficking and the exploitation that is its end result"

Law enforcement: "In particular within a labour context and relating to labour laws and regulations"

Protection: "all steps towards the redress of their grievance, rehabilitation and helping to establish her/him.

Broad protection actions are geared towards children who could potentially be trafficked, and include raising awareness about child trafficking, particularly in vulnerable communities. This type of outreach also includes policies geared towards improving the economic statuses of vulnerable families, so that reasonable alternatives are available to them, other than sending their children to work. Examples of this include increasing employment opportunities for adults and conditional cash transfer programs. Another major broad protection program that has been readily endorsed by UN.GIFT , the I.L.O , and UNICEF involves facilitating gender equality, specifically by enhancing both boys' and girls' access to affordable, quality education. Another way to raise awareness for child trafficking is by communities from all over the world dedicating a week to this situation. Observing the 2012 Human Trafficking Awareness Day in the US, and wider world. Community groups along with police enforcements are collaborating to organize events as well as in depth information sessions and support groups for the victims. The events held by communities could include films, guest speakers, booths, and many more things that can help people understand the seriousness of this issue. The ICE (Human Trafficking) has a help line for victims as well as conducts awareness in the U.S.A communities through the ICE In Plain Sight Campaign.

Preventative actions are more focused on addressing the actual practice of child trafficking, specifically by implementing legal frameworks that are aimed to both deter and prosecute trafficker, This involves the adoption and implementation of the International Labour Organization's international labour standards , as well as the development of safe and legal migration practices.

Law enforcement refers to the actual prosecution of traffickers; UNICEF maintains that successful prosecution of child traffickers is the surest way to send a message that child trafficking will not be tolerated. Traffickers can be "caught" at any one of the three steps of trafficking: recruitment, movement, and/or exploitation; anti-trafficking laws as well as child labour laws must then be appropriately enforced and having them properly implemented. The development of grassroots surveillance systems has also been suggested by UNICEF which would enable communities to immediately report signs of child trafficking to legal authorities.

Protection begins first with victim identification; child trafficking laws must specifically and appropriately define what constitutes a "trafficking victim" Legal processes must then be in place for removing children from trafficking situations, and returning them either to their families or other appropriate settings. Victims should also be provided with individualized and supportive physical and psychological rehabilitation in order to establish him or herself. This recuperation can take quite a length of time but, with the individual having the correct support, they can work towards a functional life. Finally, steps should be taken to avoid "double victimization" - in other words, to ensure that formerly trafficked children are treated as victims, and not as criminals An example of "double victimization" would be a child who was illegally trafficked into sexual exploitation in the United States, and then, once free from trafficking, is prosecuted for being an illegal migrant.

Mr. speaker, in concluding many organizations have proposed potential solutions to child trafficking. These organizations continue to conduct research concerning this practice and policies that can be implemented to work towards its eradication. The most internationally recognized of these organizations include:

Mr. speaker, all protocol observed let us give the child victims hope again and support them in anyway we can. When this happens; you win, I win, Ghana wins the world wins.

THANK YOU

References
Sanity has been restored to the Seventh Day Adventist High School in Koforidua after the headmistress yielded to pressure from parents to accommodate their wards in boarding house.

Some aggrieved parents spent weeks on the school premises demanding their wards are admitted into the boarding house.

These parents from Savlugu, Takoradi, Konongo, Swedru, Akim Oda and Sogakope, massed up at the Regional Coordinating Council to petition the Eastern Region Minister, Eric Kwakye Darfour, and later moved to the Regional Education office where the Eastern Regional Education Director, Madame Gertrude Mensah, explained to them that the only option available was for their wards to be day students or be transferred to other schools close to them.

Pressure from the parents eventually forced the hands of the hitherto, insistent headmistress of the Seventh Day Adventist Senior High School to accommodate the students into the schools boarding house.

Kwaku Bernard, a teacher in the school confirmed the latest development when Citi News visited the school to assess the situation on the ground, a month after the parents picketed.

Currently, I can tell you we still have accommodation problems, but some structures are in place to solve it, we have a girls hostels which is about 70 percent complete, so when it is done the girls will move in.

Most of the students who did not get boarding accommodation were re-posted to other schools. I personally called some parents who confirmed to me that their wards have gained admission into other schools. Those who rented accommodation outside the school have all been given accommodation in the school now by the headmistress, they have all been called back into the school and theres no one leaving outside the schools compound.

The teacher also pleaded for governments intervention to address challenges with inadequate classrooms.

We also need more classrooms because as the number of students have increased, definitely we need more classrooms to help in that regard, so we want appropriate authorities to come to our aid.

Shift system at dinning

Citi News next stop was at the Koforidua Technical Senior High School (Kotech). A month ago, Citi News reported about several challenges including the lack of accommodation facilities.

The Headmaster told Citi News the situation persists.

Our dinning hall was designed to accommodate only 300 students, but now it is being used by over 900 students, so we are trying to do an extension of the structure. Formally, the delay and go slow at the dinning hall was affecting our contact hours, so we have designed a new strategy to curb that delay, so now lecturers close 10 minutes early so students can use the dinning, so I can say the problem is a bit okay now, but still we need a bigger dinning hall.

Staff common rooms now dormitories/ Teachers relax under trees

On accommodation, Mr. Dwamena explained that the teachers had to vacate their Staff common room and sit under trees as their office has been converted into a boarding facility.

With accommodation, we are facing the same problem because the boarding house was also designed to house below 900 students, but now it is operating above 900. We wanted just 150 boys and 200 girls, but most of the students who gained admission here are from far so the teachers have moved out of the staff common room and it is being used by the students as dormitory.

I have written a formal letter to the ministry for approval, I am yet to get approval for that, but it will accommodate close to 50 students, so the teachers saw the wisdom in it, and have moved out. We gave some space at the workshops so they go there to do their paper work, and some also sit under the trees to relax.

Authorities of the school are meanwhile carrying out regular checks and monitoring at private accommodation facilities, that have been turned by landlords into hostel for students who couldn't make it into the boarding house.

Though these hostels are privately owned, the occupants are properties of our school and its our responsibility to take care of them. We have teachers going in there from time to time daily to check up on them, and monitor them so as they do not do what they prefer. We are really concerned about their safety and welfare and we will do everything to protect them.

Chop Box rooms now dormitories

At the Oyoko Senior High School, where Citi News reported about landlords converting their unhygienic rooms into hostels for new students, the Assistant Headmistress in charge Domestic Issues, Madame Diana Mintah Jiagge, would not comment on the fate of students in private hostels, but said school authorities have converted 3 chop box rooms to house more students.

I do not want to talk about students in private hostels because it is outside the school and we have no business with it. What we are concerned about is the safety and well-being of students in the schools dormitories, so we have converted two chop box rooms, which was used by the students to keep their chop boxes into a dormitory to be used by the girls, and when you go to the boys side, one box room has also been converted into a room to provide additional space for the boys.

We were expecting 500 boarders, but we were given 700, and we also received additional 71 students who were coming from afar, so we had no option than to give them boarding accommodation. Some of the parents were even pleading to let their kids sleep on the floor, but we managed to give accommodation to 27 students out of the additional 71 we received. I can say that no student is sleeping on the floor here in the school though the spacing in the dormitory is not too good.

Inadequate furniture/ science labs now classrooms

On lack of furniture, she said the PTA is liaising with the school management to provide a total of 120 dual desks for the first year students immediately.

I heard the Secretary of the PTA talking to my headmaster about the plans in place to provide 150 dual desks for the first year students. As I speak, some students are using the schools science laboratories as their permanent classrooms because of the infrastructure and furniture problems we are facing here, the situation is not too bad; as you can see the kids are all in class learning.

The implementation of the Free SHS which started in September this year with only first year students of about 400, 000, has shot up enrollment drastically, and this has put excess pressure on facilities in most senior high schools.

Government has promised to address the challenges as and when they arise, to sustain the programme.



By: Neil Nii Amatey Kanarku/citifmonline.com/Ghana
24.10.2017 LISTEN

Liberia is really a free and sweet country. Free and sweet in that a person of Negro decent or a Liberian born who is a nationalized citizen of another country can come to Liberia and seek the presidency and that behavior would be acceptable. In other words, a person can violate our constitution and make demand on us and we would allow it.

FrontPage Africa recent article, entitled Alexander Cummings Conditions before Endorsing Boakai or Weah, which was published in the papers October 19 edition, is not only disgusting, but is also somewhat laughable. FrontPage Africa is a leading news paper in Liberia. Alexander Cummings, the ANC political leader who dismally lost the recently completed first round election, expressed conditions or concerns, which he said must be met or shared before he would endorse a candidate in the Liberian runoff election. I just do not get it. Although in this second round election, every vote counts, how can a candidate who took 5th place with a single digit make such unreasonable and hard demands?

To get his support, Cummings sets three conditions that each final candidate must meet: the candidate must ensure that peace and stability in Liberia will be maintained; that corruption will be fought and government waste will be reduced; and that Liberian businesses will be supported and empowered.

These conditions are conceptual. Did not Cummings know that the peace which we now enjoy did not come from the effort of one person; that the Sirleaf-Boakai administration has failed to fight corruption. Did not he know? Did not Cummings view the candidates campaign platforms? The platforms should tell him what each candidate plans to do if elected. The platforms should state the candidates respective positions on issues, including Cummings concerns. The first round is over; Cummings lost, and others lost. Now is the time for the like minds to come together in the cause and interest of the Liberian people.

Usually in a close election, a kingmaker can negotiate with the final candidates for his/her support. But that negotiation is based on the political strength of the prospective kingmaker. He/she must have something valuable; that is the numbers or votes. Prince Johnson was a kingmaker in the 2011 election because he had the Nimba votes. He took third place. Does Cummings have the strength for his conditions? Let us look at Cummings numbers.

Cummings, a newcomer in the Liberian electoral politics, did surprisingly well. He did better than other candidates who have had participated in previous elections. I admired his efforts. However, Cummings did not win a single county, not even his home county Maryland. He came fifth in the national votes, accounting for 7.2% of the total votes. Most of his votes came from Montserrado County, where he obtained 10.4% of the total votes of 590,837. Weah got 48.6% and Boakai received 27.3%. Seemingly, majority of Cummings votes came from young people wanting change. In short and analytically, his number, though better than those of other candidates, does not merit his demands.

Moreover, there is a contradiction: the 2017 presidential election is about change vs. continuity. Cummings ran for change; change from the ruling Unity Party failed policies; change from the politics of corruption; and change for a better future and conditions. Cummings along with leaders of the other opposition parties, signed the Ganta Declaration, which said that if an opposition party is in the runoff with the ruling party, the other opposition parties would support the opposition. Though the declarations goal to formulate a coalition structure did not materialize, the conceptual agreement for solidarity remains.

What is Cummings now debating or thinking whether to support change or continuity? If he is wavering, and cannot be trusted on an agreement, how can he be trusted on a treaty or agreement as a national leader? Did he break business agreement or understanding with other business entities when he was an executive of Coco-Cola? Is Cummings showing his true color here?

CUMMINGS, A LUCKY BOY

Cummings came into Liberian national politics by what I call a lucky boy phenomenon. He had lived abroad for over twenty years. There are credible reports which allege that he is a US citizen. He never denied the accusation knowing that to deny US citizenship willingly is treasonable in America. With his millions, he somewhat bought the leadership of the Alternative National Congress, ANC, a breakaway group from the Congress of Democratic Change, CDC. He became ANC standard bearer for the 2017 elections.

Cummings got on the National Elections Commission list of qualified candidates for the elections, thanks to the Supreme Court u-turn ruling, which made the Codes of Conduct useless and toothless. He got lucky also because the high court failed to apply the ten year residency clause and failed to apply the requirement that only Liberian citizens can seek the presidency. Cummings got away with these constitutional requirements because of the view that Liberia is a free and sweet country and you can violate her laws and go free. However, operating and living by lucks does not always last.

But Cummings and the likes of him are making a serious mistake. They cannot successfully hijack the runoff election. The Liberian people have spoken; they have rejected the candidacy of Brumskine, Urey, Cummings, Jones, Cooper, and the others. Despite NEC failures and the problems of the first round election, these candidates must accept the results and support change as campaigned. They must nevertheless submit their concerns and seek legal redress if needed. I support their concerns.

Cummings received the buck of his support from the youths who believed in his campaign for change. He was the new kid on the block. He is rich, was energetic and an ex-international business executive who won the hearts and souls of poor and jobless inner-city youths. He must not disappoint them; he must not play political game for selfish and personal gain.

Should he and others continue to play game the opposition party in this runoff election can appeal directly to the youth voters of the opposition parties to vote for change. Cummings and his gang would have no power to make demands. Cummings should learn that in most cases, the party members or voters do not follow their standard bearer when he/she loses in the first round. The members vote their conscience or interest. Some members also may not vote.

Vice standard bearers of losing parties can also independently support any of the winning candidates. The candidates can pursue the vice standard bearers who have numbers and not bother with the political leaders. For instance, in 2005, Winston Tubman won Bong County because of his running mate Jeremiah Sulunteh of Bong. While Tubman supported Weah in the runoff, Sulunteh backed Sirleaf and delivered Bong to Sirleaf. Sulunted was rewarded with a ministry position and later ambassador to America. This proves my point that Cummings really does not have that level of power, which he is trading with and asking candidates to come to his feet.

It would be in Suluntehs best interest politically to support the Coalition, CDC, since the senatorial position of its Vice Standard Bearer Senator Jewel Taylor of Bong would be vacant if the senator is elected vice president. Sulunteh could run for that post with CDC support. He could however, for ethnic and regional interest and solidarity, support the ruling Unity Party. The later interest would not yield greater political benefit, for it would not give him anything better than what he had before. Politics, as we know is about interest. But the interest must make sense.

The recent announcement of the youth wings of the opposition parties to pledge to vote for change is in the right direction. They are following their reason for the campaign. They are being honest! A candidate should be consistent with and not deviate from his/her campaign principles. To act otherwise could hurt later. I will explain and give example in the following paragraphs.

Some viewers on social media are advising Cummings not to endorse any candidate in the runoff. He can listen to that advice. That is his right. But he should know what happened to Counselor Brumskine in 2005.

In 2005, after Brumskine disappointing loss in the first round in that election, he opted to support neither Sirleaf nor Weah in the second round. Some observers blamed him for Weahs defeat due to what they called Brumskines cowardice behavior not to take a stance against Sirleaf, who was considered by some voters as a contributor to the civil war. Though Weah lost, other candidates including Varney Sherman and Tubman supported Weah in the runoff.

The Liberian electorates did not forget Brumskines behavior in 2005. In 2011 election they buried him to an embarrassing fourth place decreasing from 13.9% in 2005 to 5.5% in 2011. In that campaign, Brumskine was the strongest critic of the Sirleaf-Boakai administration. But in the runoff he endorsed Sirleaf to an easy UP victory. He was rewarded with big legal contracts.

Brumskine came out of retirement and ran in this election. But again the people did not forget his betrayer to the opposition and his contradictory behavior. As we know, he was again defeated in a first round which he was expected to be in the second round. Like in 2011, he obtained a single digit percent in this election. Liberian voters can praise you, wear your T-shirts and eat your money and food during the campaign. But they can beat you or punish you mercilessly at the polls for your game playing behavior and for betraying their hope. A word to the wise is sufficient.
UNICEF Ghana has renewed its commitment with Ghanas largest mobile phone network operator MTN to provide the Agoomobile phone platform. The Agoo platform was created to help young people across Ghana access information on key issues relating to their physical wellbeing and social development.

The Agoo service which is free for MTN subscribers, was launched in 2015 in response to the Ebola outbreak. Subscribers were provided information on how to manage the outbreak of Ebola and cholera as it occurred. Now reaching at least 2,000 people a day, majority of whom are under 20 years old, the mobile phone platform has become a source to access vital health information.

Now, in the second phase when mobile phone users will call short code 5100 - the dedicated Agoo number  they will hear important messages on health, education, sanitation and protected safe environments for children and youth. The recordings include ways in which young people can protect themselves from violence, learn basic tips on healthy lifestyles such as the importance of handwashing and hygiene management, and also receive advice on diseases and illnesses, including cholera and malaria.

UNICEF Ghana Representative a.i., Rushnan Murtaza said, The Agoo platform has been very successful because it harnesses the power and popularity of the mobile phone and shares information that is relevant to young people  their social and physical wellbeing. This platform is empowering for young girls and boys across Ghana. We greatly value our partnership with MTN on this exciting and innovative initiative which has so far shown remarkable results. We are delighted to commit ourselves to this partnership for another two years.

The Chief Marketing Officer, Mr. Asher Khan said, MTN as a technologically driven company, appreciate the partnership with UNICEF due to the impact and benefit Ghanaians will enjoy. Receiving vital information and preventive measures of any disease or sickness is key to promoting our health. MTN will continue to promote the Agoo platform partnership that supports the health and wellbeing of all Ghanaians, especially the Youth. 

Since 2015, Agoo has provided health information to over 900, 000 callers, 55% of whom were females. Agoo is bridging the gender and age gaps and making accurate information accessible to over 87% of its callers below 25 years. The huge response to the mobile interface is now set to widen its reach and relevance to the youth of Ghana.

Over the years, Agoo has transitioned from an Agent-operated Call Centre in the first phase to an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. Agoo software is developed and managed by technology company, Votomobile. MTN Customers can access the service on short code 5100 whilst other mobile users can call 0540 118 999 to access the Agoo platform.
24.10.2017 LISTEN

Around the world activists who are strategic thinkers face a daunting challenge to effectively tackle the multitude of violent conflicts, including the threat of human extinction, confronting human society in the early 21st century.

I wrote that activists who are strategic thinkers face a daunting challenge because there is no point deluding ourselves that the insane global elite  see The Global Elite is Insane http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/06-02-2014/126767-global_elite-0/  with its compliant international organizations (such as the UN) and national governments following orders as directed, is going to respond appropriately and powerfully to the multifaceted crisis that it has been progressively generating since long before the industrial revolution.

For reasons that are readily explained psychologically  see Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1305/S00186/love-denied-the-psychology-of-materialism-violence-and-war.htm/ and, for more detail, see Why Violence? http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence and Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice http://anitamckone.wordpress.com/articles-2/fearless-and-fearful-psychology/  this insanity focuses their attention on securing control of the worlds remaining resources while marginalizing the bulk of the human population in ghettos, or just killing them outright with military violence or economic exploitation (or the climate/ecological consequences of their violence and exploitation).

If you doubt what I have written above, then consider the history of any progressive political, social, economic and environmental change in the past few centuries and you will find a long record of activist planning, organizing and action preceding any worthwhile change which was invariably required to overcome enormous elite opposition. In short, if you can identify one progressive outcome that was initiated and supported by the global elite, I would be surprised to hear about it.

Moreover, we are not going to get out of this crisis  which must include ending violence, exploitation and war, halting the destruction of Earths biosphere and ongoing violent assaults on indigenous peoples, ending slavery, liberating occupied countries such as Palestine, Tibet and West Papua, removing dictatorships such as those in Cambodia and Saudi Arabia, ending genocidal assaults such as those currently being directed against the people of Yemen and the Rohingya in Myanmar, and defending the rights of a people, such as those in Catalonia, to secede from one state and form another  without both understanding the deep drivers of conflict as well as the local drivers in each case, and then developing and implementing sound and comprehensive strategies, based on this dual-faceted analysis of each conflict.

In addition, if like Mohandas K. Gandhi, many others and me you accept the evidence that violence is inherently counterproductive and has no countervailing desirability in any context  expressed most simply by the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. when he stated the enemy is violence  then we must be intelligent, courageous and resourceful enough to commit ourselves to planning, developing and implementing strategies that are both exclusively nonviolent and powerfully effective against extraordinarily insane and ruthlessly violent opponents, such as the US government.

Equally importantly, however, it is not just the violence of the global elite that we must address if extinction is to be averted. We must also tackle the violence that each of us inflicts on ourselves, our children, each other and the Earth too. And, sadly, this violence takes an extraordinary variety of forms having originated no later than the Neolithic Revolution 12,000 years ago. See A Critique of Human Society since the Neolithic Revolution. http://rinf.com/alt-news/editorials/critique-human-society-since-neolithic-revolution/

Is all of this possible?

When I first became interested in nonviolent strategy in the early 1980s, I read widely. I particularly sought out the literature on nonviolence but, as my interest deepened and I tried to apply what I was reading in the nonviolence literature to the many nonviolent action campaigns in which I was involved, I kept noticing how inadequate these so-called strategies in the literature actually were, largely because they did not explain precisely what to do, even though they superficially purported to do so by offering principles, guidelines, sets of tactics or even stages of a campaign.

I found this shortcoming in the literature most instructive and, because I am committed to succeeding when I engage as a nonviolent activist, I started to read the work of Mohandas K. Gandhi and even the literature on military strategy. By the mid-1980s I had decided to research and write a book on nonviolent strategy because, by then, I had become aware that the individual who understood strategy, whether nonviolent or military, was rare.

Moreover, there were many conceptions of military strategy, written over more than 2,000 years, and an increasing number of conceptions of what was presented as nonviolent strategy, in one form or another, were becoming available as the 1980s progressed. But the flaws in these were increasingly and readily apparent to me as I considered their inadequate theoretical foundations or tried to apply them in nonviolent action campaigns.

The more I struggled with this problem, the more I found myself reading The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi http://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-literature/collected-works-of-mahatma- gandhi-volume-1-to-98.php in a library basement. After all, Gandhi had led a successful 30 year nonviolent liberation struggle to end the British occupation of India so it made sense that he had considerable insight regarding strategy. Unfortunately, he never wrote it down simply in one place.

A complicating but related problem was that among those military authors who professed to present some version of strategic theory, in fact, most simply presented an approach to strategic planning (such as using a set of principles or a particular operational pattern) or an incomplete theory of strategy (such as maritime theory, air theory or guerrilla theory) and (often largely unwittingly) passed these off as strategic theory, which they are not. And it was only when I read Carl von Clausewitzs infuriatingly convoluted and tortuously lengthy book On War that I started to fully understand strategic theory. This is because Clausewitz actually presented (not in a simple form, I hasten to admit) a strategic theory and then a military strategy that worked in accordance with his strategic theory. Could this strategic theory work in guiding a nonviolent strategy? I wondered.

Remarkably, the more I read Gandhi (and compared him with other activists and scholars in the field), the more it became apparent to me that Gandhi was the only nonviolent strategist who (intuitively) understood strategic theory. Although, to be fair, it was an incredibly rare military strategist who understood strategic theory either with Mao Zedong a standout exception and other Marxist strategists like Vladimir Lenin and Vo Nguyen Giap understanding far more than western military strategists which is why, for example, the US and its allies were defeated in their war on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Some years later, after grappling at length with this problem of using strategic theory to guide nonviolent strategy and reading a great deal more of Gandhi, while studying many nonviolent struggles and participating in many nonviolent campaigns myself, I wrote The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach. http://www.sunypress.edu/p-2176-the-strategy-of-nonviolent-defe.aspx I wrote this book by synthesizing the work of Gandhi with some modified insights of Clausewitz and learning of my own drawn from the experience and study just mentioned. I have recently simplified and summarized the presentation of this book on two websites: Nonviolent Campaign Strategy https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/ and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy. https://nonviolentliberationstrategy.wordpress.com/

Let me outline, very simply, nonviolent strategy, without touching on strategic theory, as I have developed and presented it in the book and on the websites.

Nonviolent Strategy

You will see on the diagram of the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/strategywheel/ that there are four primary components of strategy in the center of the wheel and eight components of strategy that are planned in accordance with these four central components. I will briefly describe the four primary components.

Before doing so, however, it is worth noting that, by using this Nonviolent Strategy Wheel, it is a straightforward task to analyze why so many activist movements and (nonviolent) liberation struggles fail: they simply do not understand the need to plan and implement a comprehensive strategy, entailing all twelve components, if they are to succeed.

So, to choose some examples almost at random, despite substantial (and sometimes widespread) popular support, particularly in some countries, the antiwar movement, the climate justice movement and the Palestinian and Tibetan liberation struggles are each devoid of a comprehensive strategy to deploy their resources for strategic impact and so they languish instead of precipitating the outcomes to which they aspire, which are quite possible.

Having said that a sound and comprehensive strategy must pay attention to all twelve components of strategy it is very occasionally true that campaigns succeed without doing so. This simply demonstrates that nonviolence, in itself, is extraordinarily powerful. But it is unwise to rely on the power of nonviolence alone, without planning and implementing a comprehensive strategy, especially when you are taking on a powerful and entrenched opponent who has much to lose (even if their conception of what they believe they will lose is delusional) and may be ruthlessly violent if challenged.

For the purpose of this article, the term strategy refers to a planned series of actions (including campaigns) that are designed to achieve the two strategic aims (see below).

The Political Purpose and the Political Demands

If you are going to conduct a nonviolent struggle, whether to achieve a peace, environmental or social justice outcome, or even a defense or liberation outcome, the best place to start is to define the political purpose of your struggle. The political purpose is a statement of what you want. For example, this might be one of the following (but there are many possibilities depending on the context):

To secure a treaty acknowledging indigenous sovereignty between [name of indigenous people] and the settler population in [name of land/country] over the area known as [name of land/country].

To stop violence against [children and/or women] in [name of the town/city/state/country].

To end discrimination and violence against the racial/religious minority of [name of group] in [name of the town/city/state/country].

To end forest destruction in [your specified area/country/region].

To end climate-destroying activities in [name of the town/city/state/country].

To halt military production by [name of weapons corporation] in [name of the town/city/state/country].

To prevent/halt [name of corporation] exploiting the [name of fossil fuel resource].

To defend [name of the country] against the political/military coup by [identity of coup perpetrators].

To defend [name of the country] against the foreign military invasion by [name of invading country].

To defend the [name of targeted group] against the genocidal assault by the [identity of genocidal entity].

To establish the independent entity/state of [name of proposed entity/state] by removing the foreign occupying state of [name of occupying state].

To establish a democratic state in [name of country] by removing the dictatorship.

This political purpose anchors your campaign: it tells people what you are concerned about so that you can clearly identify allies, opponents and third parties. Your political purpose is a statement of what you will have achieved when you have successfully completed your strategy.

In practice, your political purpose may be publicized in the form of a political program or as a list of demands. You can read the five criteria that should guide the formulation of these political demands on one of the nonviolent strategy websites cited above.

The Political and Strategic Assessment

Strategic planning requires an accurate and thorough political and strategic assessment (although ongoing evaluation will enable refinement of this assessment if new information emerges during the implementation of the strategy).

In essence, this political and strategic assessment requires four things. Notably this includes knowledge of the vital details about the issue (e.g. why has it happened? who benefits from it? how, precisely, do they benefit? who is exploited?) and a structural analysis and understanding of the causes behind it, including an awareness of the deep emotional (especially the fear) and cultural imperatives that exist in the minds of those individuals (and their organizations) who engage in the destructive behavior.

So, for example, if you do not understand, precisely, what each of your various groups of opponents is scared of losing/suffering (whether or not this fear is rational), you cannot design your strategy taking this vital knowledge into account so that you can mitigate their fear effectively and free their mind to thoughtfully consider alternatives. It is poor strategy (and contrary to the essence of Gandhian nonviolence) to reinforce your opponents fear and lock them into a defensive reaction.

Strategic Aims and Strategic Goals

Having defined your political purpose, it is easy to identify the two strategic aims of your struggle. This is because every campaign or liberation struggle has two strategic aims and they are always the same:

1. To increase support for your campaign by developing a network of groups who can assist you.

2. To alter the will and undermine the power of those groups who support the problem.

Now you just need to define your strategic goals for both mobilizing support for your campaign and for undermining support for the problem. From your political and strategic assessment:

1. Identify the key social groups that can be mobilized to support and participate in your strategy (and then write these groups into the bubbles on the left side of the campaign strategy diagram that can be downloaded from the strategy websites), and

2. identify the key social groups (corporation/s, police/military, government, workers, consumers etc.) whose support for the problem (e.g. the climate catastrophe, war, the discrimination/violence against a particular group, forest destruction, resource extraction, genocide, occupation) is vital (and then write these groups into the columns on the right side of the campaign strategy diagram).

These key social groups become the primary targets in your campaign. Hence, the derivative set of specific strategic goals, which are unique to your campaign, should then be devised and each written in accordance with the formula explained in the article The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions. https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/articles/political-objective-strategic-goal/ That is: To cause a [specified group of people] to act in the [specified way].

As the title of this article suggests, it also explains the vital distinction between the political objective and the strategic goal of any nonviolent action. This distinction is rarely understood and applied and explains why most direct actions have no strategic impact.

You can read appropriate sets of strategic goals for ending war, ending the climate catastrophe, ending a military occupation, removing a dictatorship and halting a genocide on one or the other of these two sites: Nonviolent Campaign Strategic Aims https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/strategywheel/strategic- aims/ and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategic Aims. https://nonviolentliberationstrategy.wordpress.com/strategywheel/strategic-aims/

The Conception of Nonviolence

There are four primary conceptions of nonviolence which have been illustrated on the Matrix of Nonviolence. https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/strategywheel/conception-of-nonviolence/ Because of this, your strategic plan should:

1. identify the particular conception of nonviolence that your campaign will utilize;

2. identify the specific ways in which your commitment to nonviolence will be conveyed to all parties so that the benefits of adopting a nonviolent strategy are maximized; and

3. identify how the level of discipline required to implement your nonviolent strategy will be developed. This includes defining the action agreements (code of nonviolent discipline) that will guide activist behaviour.

It is important to make a deliberate strategic choice regarding the conception of nonviolence that will underpin your strategy. If your intention is to utilize the strategic framework outlined here, it is vitally important to recognize that this framework is based on the Gandhian (principled/revolutionary) conception of nonviolence.

This is because Gandhis nonviolence is based on certain premises, including the importance of the truth, the sanctity and unity of all life, and the unity of means and end, so his strategy is always conducted within the framework of his desired political, social, economic and ecological vision for society as a whole and not limited to the purpose of any immediate campaign. It is for this reason that Gandhis approach to strategy is so important. He is always taking into account the ultimate end of all nonviolent struggle  a just, peaceful and ecologically sustainable society of self-realized human beings  not just the outcome of this campaign. He wants each campaign to contribute to the ultimate aim, not undermine vital elements of the long-term and overarching struggle to create a world without violence.

This does not mean, however, that each person participating in the strategy must share this commitment; they may participate simply because it is expedient for them to do so. This is not a problem as long as they are willing to commit to the code of nonviolent discipline while participating in the campaign. https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/articles/minimizing-risk-violent-repression/

Hopefully, however, their participation on this basis will nurture their own personal journey to embrace the sanctity and unity of all life so that, subsequently, they can more fully participate in the co-creation of a nonviolent world.

Other Components of Strategy

Once you have identified the political purpose, strategic aims and conception of nonviolence that will guide your struggle, and undertaken a thorough political and strategic assessment, you are free to consider the other components of your strategy: organization, leadership, communication, preparations, constructive program, strategic timeframe, tactics and peacekeeping, and evaluation.

For example, a vital component of any constructive program ideally includes each individual traveling their own personal journey to self-realization  see Putting Feelings First https://feelingsfirstblog.wordpress.com/putting-feelings-first/  considering making My Promise to Children https://nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com/strategywheel/constructive-program/my-promise-to-children/ to eliminate violence at its source and participating in The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth http://tinyurl.com/flametree to preserve Earths biosphere.

Needless to say, each of these components of strategy must also be carefully planned. They are explained in turn on the nonviolent strategy websites mentioned above.

In addition to these components, the websites also include articles, photos, videos, diagrams and case studies that discuss and illustrate many essential elements of sound nonviolent strategy. These include the value of police/military liaison, issues in relation to tactical selection, the importance of avoiding secrecy and sabotage, how to respond to arrest, how to undertake peacekeeping and the 20 points to consider when planning to minimize the risk of violent police/military repression when this is a possibility.

Conclusion

The global elite and many other people are too insane to walk away from the enormous violence they inflict on life.

Consequently, we are not going to end violence in all of its forms  including violence against women, children, indigenous and working peoples, violence against people because of their race or religion, war, slavery, the climate catastrophe, rainforest destruction, military occupations, dictatorships and genocides  and create a world of peace, justice and ecological sustainability for all of us without sound and comprehensive nonviolent strategies that tackle each issue at its core while complementing and reinforcing gains made in parallel struggles.

If you wish to declare your participation in this worldwide effort, you are welcome to sign the online pledge of The Peoples Charter to Create a Nonviolent World. https://thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com/

Given the overwhelming violence that we must tackle, can we succeed? I do not know but I intend to fight, strategically, to the last breath. I hope that you will too.

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of Why Violence? http://tinyurl.com/whyviolence His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. http://robertjburrowes.wordpress.com
The Minister for Roads and Highways, Kwesi Amoako Atta, has assured that his Ministry will blacklist road contractors who deliver shoddy work.

The Minister also warned that President Nana Addo led NPP government will deal ruthlessly with constructors who will do shoddy works on our roads.

Speaking to the media at Sofoline in the Kumasi Metropolis during day one of his three day tour to some road projects within Ashanti Region, the Minister reiterated his governments commitment to sanction contractors who fail to give value for money for their work.

There is no way that the people of this country will accept any shoddy work from any contractor from now going, and I have said it and indicated that, we as a government and the employer, will make sure we discharge our side of the obligation, and we shall take every engineer, every contractor who does a shoddy work.

He said it is the fundamental aim of this current government that they won't allow anybody to take money belonging to the country into granted and miss use it.

Woe betides anyone who will miss use state fund and do shoddy work" he warned.

The Minister is accompanied by,HonOwusu Aduomi one of his Deputies, Engineers, from Ghana High Authority as well as Urban Roads, the Ashanti regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah, KMA Chief Executive, Osei Assibey Antwi and some MPs from the region.

Among the areas they visited were Bohyen, Sofoline interchange, Kyerapatre Tech where he ordered the removal of 4 major roundabouts and many more.

According to him, the NPP government is committed to release the burden of the Ghanaian people in terms of deplorable roads and for that matter they are not going to joke with road projects.

At Sofoline, the contractors of the interchange complained about financial obstacles as a bane for the stalled project till date making motorists going through hell before they can cross over.

Meanwhile, the Road Minister categorically stated that the Kumasi - Sunyani road is a key project in Kumasi and Ashanti region at large so the government will not joke with it.

According to him government will do everything possible to find a lasting solution to the problem to enable them complete the project in order to ensure smooth vehicular movement in the area.

"We are very much concern about this project so whatever the current government will do to complete the project we will do, and us a government we will joke with anything in the country whether in Ashanti region, Greater Accra region or Northern region everything is important to us, " he emphasised.

"We won't let anybody to stress in Ashanti region whatever we will do to solve this problem we will do," he assured.

For his part, the Member of Parliament for Kwadaso Constituency, Hon Dr. SK Nuamah therefore urged the constructors to go back to the original plan and make it attractive.
President Akufo-Addo with some of his ministeries at the event yesterday

President Akufo-Addo has expressed grave concern about the growing spate of internet fraud  known in local parlance as 'Sakawa' and other cyber crimes in the country.

Currently, he said, Ghana is experiencing its fair share of cybercrime and cyber security challenges that are home-grown and that cyber crime has become one of the commonest and most pervasive crimes in the country today.

Just last week, three Ghanaians were arrested for internet romance fraud, ripping off their victims to the tune of about 5 million.

Concern

Ghana now counts among prevalent crimes in the country, website defacements, hacking into banking systems and critical databases, ransom-ware attacks, e-mail fraud, identity theft, SIM box fraud, cyber fraud  normally called 'sakawa' or 419  and increasingly, the use of identity theft to impersonate government and public officials, and subject them to abuse on social media. Children are also facing increasing risks on the internet,  including risks associated with improper contacts, conduct and contents on the internet he said at the opening of the National Cyber Security Week in Accra yesterday.

President Akufo-Addo admitted the fact that the task that we face, therefore, is urgent, indicating that the fast pace at which technology is developing means that often the law enforcement officials are struggling to keep pace with the law-breakers.

To this end, he insisted, it is critical, therefore, that those in-charge of protecting our ICT security are well equipped with the knowledge and the expertise to do so.

Interventions

Going forward, he stressed, the tools and competencies with which we fight crime must necessarily, therefore, change.

We need to train and have a well-equipped corps of cybercrime fighters, but we should go further than that. I dare say it is time to take another look at the qualifications that we require in a policeman for example.

The president has, therefore, emphasised the urgent need for the Cybercrime Unit of the Police Service to be beefed up to deal with these new threats, saying, Ghana is transitioning from a traditional economy into an IT-enabled economy.

In the meantime, the Ministry of Communications is said to be working on a number of e-government initiatives, including e-justice, e-immigration, e-passports, e-procurement and tertiary education connectivity initiatives, among others, to transform Ghana's public-sector services.

Whilst he admitted the fact that The national identification system, the digital addressing system, e-payments, digital financial services and the various e-government initiatives in which we are now taking so much pride, can be brought to a halt or undermined by cybercrime, President Akufo-Addo assured, My government is, therefore, resolved to address these challenges in order to safeguard our digital journey.

Strategy

He revealed that we are undertaking specific policy and practical intervention initiatives, including capacity building, international cooperation, judicial enforcement of cybercrime legislations and implementation of technical standards and safeguards.

That, he said, was part of reasons why in July this year, he asked the minister for communications to oversee the implementation of Ghana's National Cyber Security Policy & Strategy (NCSPS).

This, according to him, had led to the adoption of a multi-stakeholder approach, as a foundation for the effective implementation of the various cyber security activities and programmes.

To improve Ghana's cyber security emergency response readiness, President Akufo-Addo indicated, Government, through the Ministry of Communications, is currently working on the establishment of a dedicated Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), to protect critical national information infrastructure, and sectorial CERTs for the various sectors of the economy based on international standards and benchmarks.

We intend to establish a National Cyber Security Centre, as has been done in some other countries, to liaise with relevant state agencies and the private sector to oversee cyber security operations at the national level. This is one of our major priorities in the next few months, as we step up our efforts to secure our digital journey.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent
President Akufo-Addo left the country yesterday for Niger to meet colleague heads of state in the West African sub-region over the issue of a common currency, which has remained in the files of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for some time now.

He was seen off at the Kotoka International Airport, Accra, by Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia; Chief of Staff, Frema Osei-Opare and a host of government officials.

He left in the company of some senior government officials, and is

expected back home today.
The African Association of Psychosocial and Marriage Counsellors over the Weekend licensed fifty (50) trained counsellors after graduating from the Akona School of Counselling Ghana. It was held at the premises of International Central Gospel Church at Dansoman Exhibition.

Dubbed: "Licensure of Aapmac New Members and Katacm October Mentorship Lectures," which coincided with a special lecture on the rising incidence of prostate cancer in black men: the role of the Psychosocial and marriage counsellors in Ghana which was delivered by a well-known figure and researcher in the fight against prostate cancer in Ghana; Dr. Raphael Nyarkotey Obu.

Addressing the Counsellors, Dr. Nyarkotey Obu who is the President of Men's health Foundation Ghana; the National peak body of prostate cancer and mens charity working with men affected by prostate cancer who also doubles as Research Professor of Prostate Cancer and Holistic Medicine at Da Vinci College of Holistic Medicine, Larnaca city, Cyprus, said his aim is to transform and change the cancer situation in Africa. Dr. Nyarkotey has conducted extensive research into prostate cancer in black men and evidence based holistic medicine in the management of the disease.

His work also extends to Nigeria where he made several media appearances and was conferred the Nigeria Legendary Award by the Optimum Men Health Foundation in Ikeja, Nigeria. He was recently named in the Ghana maiden edition of 40under40 achievers award for 2017.

The lecture was focused on the role of the counsellors and how to deal with the diagnosed man with prostate cancer as the treatment of the disease presents with diverse side effects.

I am a man on a mission to stop prostate cancer before it strikes in the black community he said. My role as a specialist in prostate cancer and a researcher is to provide an invaluable service to patients of diverse backgrounds and beliefs using holistic and conventional medicine. Also as a policy maker, I want to use Medical Politics to influence decisions in Government for total holistic healings in health care.

I want to see a continent where cancer treatment is not luxury, a continent where there is national recognition of all cancers as a major health challenge and policies to address it.

According to him he has come to realize that no matter how well you eat or how fit you are, you are not indestructible  nobody is including Vegetarians. But aside that there are defense measures one can take and arming yourself with knowledge is by far the most important

On cancer Treatment according to Dr. Nyarkotey, Prostate cancer treatment is a choice and diverse treatment modalities available to the patient. You have to be proactive on your treatment choice based on the stage of the cancer.

There are both conventional ones; surgery, Brachytherapy, Hormonal treatment, chemotherapy etc. He further said, Prostate Cancer after treatment affect mens sex life in the sense that during treatment the testicles are being removed, and also the manhood of the man shrinks after treatment.

"The treatment also comes with financial issues as the costs of treatment are very expensive. To end his presentation Dr. Nyarkotey, prescribed some forms of supplement which will help a prostate cancer patient. He mentioned Cordyceps, Zinc, Vitamin D3, Hibiscus tea, and Green tea, alkaline water, as they all boost the immune system of the patient. Dr. Nyarkotey who is a member of the Prostate Cancer Transatlantic Consortium revealed the role of the consortium in handling the disease in the black community.

Speaking to Today, the President of African Association of Psychosocial and Marriage Counsellors (AAPMAC), Rev Dr Abraham Konotey Ahulu, said AAPMAC is an African Psychological professional body of trained counsellors, Psychologists, Sociologists and Psychiatrists working with: the Police Service, Prisons Service, Fire Service, Education Institutions, NGOs and many more organizations.

AAPMAC was officially registered in 2001 as Counsellors and Ministers professional body for training, mentoring and licensing, He disclosed.

He added that AAPMAC is where life transformation, growth and development is achieved through systematic training, mentoring and counselling services for individuals, families, and organizations at all levels by their skillful (Professional) Counsellors and Collaborating Organizations.

According to him medical science has recognized that about 70 - 80 percent of diseases are caused as a result of anger, bitterness, resentment and unforgiveness which National Health Sector cannot solve all of these so they set up this Organization to help solve all these problems.

"A lot of these problems do not need medical attention to solve it but sometimes Counselling, He revealed.

Dr. Ahulu also revealed that a lot of people don't see the need for Counselling or the important of Counselling and as a result die of stress, loneliness, and many problems which could be solved by the Counsellors but not the medical sectors.

In the 21century if you want to live a very sound and victorious life then you need professional Counsellors.

In conclusion he urged the public to recognized and know the need of a Counsellor in the Society as a whole. Interestingly, Dr. Nyarkotey who is also the National President of the Alternative Medical Association of Ghana (AMAG) also graduated from the Akona School of Counselling and was also presented with his membership certificate and licensed to practice counseling. According to Dr. Nyarkotey he added Psychosocial counseling in other to help manage his cancer patients very well and revealed his interest to research extensively into the role of psychosocial oncology in the management of the cancer patient.
Parliamentary proceedings for the third week of the third meeting of this parliamentary session, begun last Tuesday [October 17, 2017] with the invocation of Standing Order 14(2) which states Whenever the House is informed by the Clerk at the Table of the unavoidable absence of Mr. Speaker, the First Deputy Speaker shall perform the duties and exercise the authority of Mr. Speaker in relation to all proceedings of the house until Mr. Speaker resumes the Chair, without any further communication to the House.

The Speaker was not in his chair throughout the week because he was not available but in my view, that did not in any way affect the smooth running of proceedings as First Deputy Speaker, Joe Osei owusu (NPP MP, Bekwai) and Second Deputy Speaker Alban Bagbin (NDC MP, Nadowli-Kaleo) steered the affairs of the House creditably from Tuesday through to Friday.

On the Floor

Some Ministers who were programmed to answer questions on the Floor of the House did not show up for various reasons including the fact that some of them had to be part of the team hosting President Alassane Ouattara [Ivorian President] who was in the country at the time.

This incurred the wrath of the Minority and at different times within the week. Members on the front bench of the Minority such as Chief Whip Alhaji Muntaka Mubarak (NDC MP, Asawase) and Deputy Minority Leader, James Klutse Avedzi (NDC MP,Ketu North) protested the non-appearance of the Ministers on the Floor.

Matters came to a head on Friday [October 20, 2017] when Second Deputy Speaker, Alban Bagbin then in the Speaker's chair, rejected the explanation of the Majority as to why the Minister for Roads and Highways, Kwesi Amoako- Atta (MP, Atiwa West) failed to honor the invitation of the House and did not assign any of his deputies to represent him in answering questions from Alhassan Suhuyini (MP, Tamale North) regarding the roads in his constituency.

Not even the explanation of Majority Chief Whip, Kwesi Ameyaw-Cheremeh (MP, Sunyani East) that the Ministers were at a retreat, could dissuade the note of caution Alban Bagbin gave the front bench of the Majority.

Special Prosecutor Bill

Within the week, the report of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee on the Office of the Special Prosecutor Bill was laid on the Floor of the House.

Ranking Member of the Committee, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini (NDC MP, Tamale Central) insisted in an interview with me that Parliament had the power to carve out the office of the Special Prosecutor by law despite differing legal opinions proferred by respected Senior Law Lecturer at the University Of Ghana School of Law, Dr Raymond Atuguba on the constitutional questions that surround the bill.

Throughout the week, the Employment, State Enterprises and Social Welfare Committee of the House chaired by Kwame Anyimadu Antwi(NPP MP,Asante Akim Central) presented amendments to the Northern, Middle Belt and Coastal Development Authority bills which went through the consideration stage.

NCA statement on the floor of Parliament

The highlight for me on the Floor was the heated debate on Thursday that flowed from the fiery speech of Communications Minister , Ursula Owusu-Ekuful (NPP MP, Ablekuma West) on the sanctions of the National Communications Authority (NCA).

The Ministers speech essentially bothered on her outfits resolve to bring sanitize the media space by ensuring that the NCA does not renege on its regulatory role through the issuance of sanctions as and when necessary.

Communications Minister, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful

The speech elicited a response in equal measure from Minority MPs such as Sam George (NDC MP, Ningo Prampram) who rejected portions of the legal argument from the Minister indicating that the schedule of fees used for the sanctions had not even come to Parliament.

Similar points of view were espoused by Minority Spokesperson on Communications, Alhaji A.B.A Fuseini (NDC MP,Sagnarigu), Mahama Ayariga (NDC MP, Bawku Central) and Alhassan Suhuyini. The Majority mounted a spirited defence of the Minister's speech with Alexander Afenyo-Markin (NPP MP, Effutu) defending the actions of the NCA to shut down some radio stations based on points of law and the Electronic Communications Act 775.

The Minister, in conclusion, announced that she had received some petitions with regards to a reduction in the severity of the fines. Over the weekend, news broke, that some of the sanctions had been halved, an expected reprieve to many media organisations that are drowning in the sheer magnitude of the fines.

AMERI Recision

In August 2017, KT Hammond (NPP MP, Adansi Asokwa) filed an urgent motion for recision of the 510 million dollar AMERI deal for reasons of gross misrepresentation. The speaker's decision to refer the motion to the Mines and Energy Committee of the House did not sit well with the Minority and thus, they staged a walkout.

Subsequently the Minority decided to boycott the sittings of the Committee of which two were public hearings in the course of the week.

In KT Hammond's submission to the Committee, he argued that new information available to him suggests that AMERI shortchanged the government of Ghana by misrepresenting some facts and in the process made supernormal profits of 150 million dollars from a power plant the country procured in the heat of the Dumsor in 2015.

KT Hammond

He further argued that the as the Ranking Member on the Committee who seconded the motion, he owes it a duty to bring the belated information to the notice of the House in a bid to call back the deal or get it rescinded.

Former Power Minister, Dr Kwabena Donkor (NDC MP, NDC Pru East) under whose tenure the deal was brokered however believed that, calling back the deal through Parliament is not the best option especially when AMERI was signed off with the blessings of the VRA who acted as the Technical advisors and AMERI till date gives the country one of the most competitive tariffs.

Go to court not Parliament

He argued that, just like most of his other colleagues in the Minority that if the deal is bad, it should be terminated through the law courts and not Parliament.

Opinion

The NCA had been dead to its regulatory role in the media space for years and the sudden quickening of the state body to take up its role through the issuance of the sanctions that affected some 131 radio stations is commendable but for the sake of media sanity, there should be a semblance of tampering justice with mercy at least as the first warning as it is said in Ghanaian parlance.

But in no uncommon way, the current leadership of the NCA and the Communications Ministry has shown through the whole sanctions saga that they are ready to bite the bullet and take the hard decisions to sanitize the country's media space. With regards to the AMERI recision proceedings that are unfolding, it is my view that the Minority should have participated in the hearings at least as a measure of helping grow the country's democracy.

Just as the then Minority were condemned for staying out of the vetting of President Mahama's appointees in 2013, the current Minority in Parliament though have chosen to exercise the right of boycott, I think they should have been in the proceedings even though they believe it would be a mere academic exercise.

Their decision however has been consistent with their resolve that Parliament is not the appropriate tool but rather the courts.

On the matter of coverage of the proceedings of the Committee, the leadership of Parliament must be commended for allowing the media to sit through some of the hearings notably that of Dr Kwabena Donkor and KT Hammond but in my view, the public interest would have been better served if the media were also allowed to cover the critical submission of the officials of AMERI but that notwithstanding , the proceedings so far have been enlightening and Ghanaians wait with bated breath, the committee's full report to the plenary and how things would unfold from there.

This week in Parliament

With the report of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee on the Office of the Special Prosecutor Bill laid last week, the Committee is expected to present its report, replete with the various amendments and the debate that would characterize the second reading stage where the policy and principles of the bill are deliberated upon.

Also, if the programme of the House rolls out as scheduled, the Northern, Middle Belt and Coastal Development Authority Bills are expected to be read the third time and passed.

The Ministers of Energy, Foreign Affairs, Interior, and National Security among others are expected to appear before the House in the course of the week in relation to questions from MPs on their respective sectors.



By: Duke Mensah Opoku/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The Writer is the parliamentary reporter for Citi 97.3 FM
24.10.2017 LISTEN

A self-styled doctor who was arrested at the Family Community Hospital at Hohoe in the Volta Region, has been sentenced to 17 years in prison.

The convict, Fortune Kamasah, was sentenced on two counts of practicing without authority, and receiving payment for the practice of medicine without authority.

Fortune Kamasah had earlier in 2013 been fined by the Hohoe Circuit Court for practicing medicine without a license.

Speaking at a media briefing in Accra on Monday, the Registrar of the Medical and Dental Council, Dr. Eli Atikpui, expressed worry about the increasing spate of quack doctors in the country.

20 quack doctors arrested since 2016

He said since January 2016, 20 quack doctors had been arrested across the country.

Ten (10) of the quack doctors were arrested in the Greater Accra Region, three in the Central Region, and the rest were arrested in the Volta and Eastern Regions.

Dr. Atikpui explained that, of the 20 arrested, five had been prosecuted and sentenced.

Every Ghanaian is a potential patient, and that is why we must all ensure that any medical practitioner who treats us has the training, the requisite knowledge and skills. The concern is that, we are seeing an increasing number of people holding themselves up as doctors.

He noted that we are not able to really establish how much harm has already been done and how much harm would be done. So we need to ensure that the public is well-educated on the activities of these quack doctors.

Dr. Atikpui said the Medical and Dental Council is putting in stringent measures to ensure that all persons practicing medicine without authority are brought to book.
Three persons who conspired and robbed a couple at gunpoint have been collectively sentenced to 69 years' imprisonment for conspiracy to commit crime and robbery.

James Tetteh, unemployed and Emmanuel Kelly, electrician, were each sentenced 22 years' jail term while Joseph Kpakpo Allotey, an auto mechanic, was convicted to 25 years' imprisonment in hard labour.

The three were hauled before the court for robbing one Emelia Addae Gyenfi and her husband, Paa Gyimah Gyenfi, of $19,950; GH8,000; 5,000; 900.00; three mobile phones, one iPad and a box containing jewelleries together with other items.

They were said to have scaled the wall and gained access to the room of the complainants whiles they were asleep at about 1:50 am on March 30, 2016, at East Legon in Accra.

Chief Inspector Kwabena Adu told the court that the three used an implement to force open the burglary proof of a window and entered the building.

He said the robbers then climbed upstairs and used a big stone to break open the complainants' bedroom door and entered the room.

At gunpoint, they ordered the complainants to lie down. They then ransacked the room and made away with the items aforementioned.

Chief Inspector Adu said at about 03:00 hours, a witness in the case, through a tracking device which was installed on Emelia's phone, assisted the police to track the accused persons, who were arrested, whiles Joseph and other accomplices managed to escape.

He said Joseph Allotey was later arrested on June 25, 2017 by the Madina police.

Chief Inspector Adu said a search conducted in their room revealed an amount of US$19,950; GH410; 900.00; 5,000, three mobile phones, one iPad and a box containing jewelleries.

He said the GH8,000 was however, not recovered.

The court, presided over by Aboagye Tandoh, in his judgement, said while the three accused persons tried to convince the court that they had nothing to do with the charges for which they were brought to court, the prosecution was able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they had committed the offence.

He said based on the evidence and witness statements presented to the court, it was clear that the robbers did not just randomly choose the victims, but conducted a thorough background check on them to know that they (victims) had that much money at home.

The judge thus sentenced the three based on the parts they each played in the organisation and the robbery.

Joseph Kpakpo who is said to have nurtured Emmanuel, was given the 25 years' jail term for being the central point and having played a major role in the robbery.
24.10.2017 LISTEN

There was a heated gun battle between the police and a group of suspected armed robbers in the Eastern Region at dawn on Tuesday.

The incident occurred after the robbery gang tried robbing a faulty Kumasi-bound trailer at Omenako, a town in the Suhum Municipality.

Two suspects  17 year old Owusu William, and Yeboah Emmanuelwere among the gang of armed robbers who tried robbing the man diesel trailer with registration number GR  221- W, loaded with assorted goods from Accra, and headed for Kumasi.

The robbers, who were in two vehicles, a Ford Fuso and Ford sprinter with registration numbers GT-3371- 13, and AS-3801-13 respectively, allegedly attacked the trailer when it developed a mechanical fault at Suhum Omenako on the main Accra-Kumasi Highway.

The Eastern Regional Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Ebenezer Tetteh, who confirmed the incident to Citi News, said one of the suspects, Owusu William, sustained gunshot wounds.

Meanwhile, the two suspects have been arrested, whilst the others are at large.
24.10.2017 LISTEN

The Ghana Insurers Association (GIA) has urged the National Insurance Commission (NIC) to develop capital modules for the insurance industry. The President of GIA, Aretha Duku, said this will go a long way to improve insurance penetration in the country.

She said, I think the commissioner did say that he would engage the industry in talks in terms of whether to increase the minimum capital or not and we are all for that but we are also very mindful that we need to make sure the capital doesnt become idle.

Madam Duku said, That is to say, we should look at each company, have some sort of a capital module in place, that can help us ascertain whether company A in terms of the risks they are accepting and the liabilities on their book, the capital they have is adequate or not and if its not then so be it, it needs to be increased.

She said, Similarly, you can also have another company who might have the same level of capital but might not have utilized the capital. So we dont want the case where capital becomes idle as per the risks and businesses one is underwriting.

She was speaking to JoyBusiness at the sidelines of the maiden edition of the National General Insurance Conference under the theme: Transforming the General Insurance Industry in Ghana through Self-Regulation, Financial Capacity, and Business Innovation.

Statistics from the NIC indicates that less than 30% of Ghanaians have insurance cover.

The commissioner of insurance, Justice Ofori, called on the players in the industry to adopt innovative ways to deepen penetration in the insurance sector.

The National Insurance Commission earlier in a meeting with the Finance Ministry proposed a 100% increase in the capital requirement for insurance companies. This the commissioner said will help to improve the insurance penetration rate of 3% in the country.
Police in the Eastern Region have arrested two suspects  17-year-old Owusu William and Yeboah Emmanuel  who were among a gang of armed robbers that tried to rob a faulty Kumasi-bound trailer at Omenako, a town in the Suhum Municipality.

There had been a heated gun battle between the police and the group of suspected robbers in the Eastern Regional town at dawn on Tuesday.

The robbers, who were in two vehicles, a Ford Fuso and Ford sprinter with registration numbers GT-3371- 13, and AS-3801-13 respectively, allegedly attacked the trailer when it developed a mechanical fault at Suhum Omenako on the main Accra-Kumasi Highway.

The Eastern Regional Police Public Relations Officer, ASP Ebenezer Tetteh, who confirmed the incident and subsequent arrests to Citi News, said one of the suspects, Owusu William, had sustained gunshot wounds.

The police had information that there was a robbery going on at Omenako close to Suhum so the patrol team quickly moved to the crime scene, and upon reaching there they met the suspected robbers who exchange gunfire with the police, he narrated.

In the process two of the suspects were arrested, one Owusu William was hit and sustained gunshot wounds, another suspect, Emmanuel Yeboah a driver was also apprehended and as I speak Owusu is on guard at the Suhum Hospital receiving treatment and Yeboah is in police custody helping with investigations.

ASP Ebenezer Tetteh also disclosed that the Regional Police Command has begun a manhunt for the other suspects who managed to escape.

The other suspects however escaped and we are on a manhunt for them. We are using this opportunity to give out information to the general public especially landowners, hospitals and herbal centres within and around Suhum and adjoining areas to quickly report to the police or inform us if anybody comes to them with complaints of injuries because we believe that the suspects who escaped might have sustained some form of injuries as a result of the gun battle with the police.

The vehicles which were being used by the armed robbers in their operation have been impounded at the police station to assist us with investigations, ASP Tetteh added.
24.10.2017 LISTEN

Body sculpture, popularly referred to as body reshaping has become a popular phenomenon mostly among young women in Ghana and beyond. It is one of the fastest growing disciplines in the medical profession in recent times. Body sculpture is an area responsible for shaping the body.

It is common these days to see adverts on television, radio and in the newspapers on body shapes.

Posters displaying pictures of body shapes and sizes of women (before and after) are common at every corner of the country. And almost on a daily basis, a new hospital for body reshaping springs up at various places.

Strangely, directions on some of these posters actually lead to no proper locations. When the numbers on these posters are called, the response is "We will bring the products to you".

The high demand for having a new shape (especially ladies), has actually attracted many fraudsters into the profession. These fraudsters often use illegal methods including creams, chemical substances, tablets, etc to defraud their clients.

Most ladies who patronise the services of body sculpture hospitals often go there to reshape their thighs, buttocks, hips, breasts and stomachs to look more attractive, upright and beautiful.

Most of these women often fall victim to these criminals in their attempt to find a place to have their bodies reshaped.

Unfortunately, some of the ladies take strange tablets and apply creams to their buttocks and stomach with the hope of having a new shape, but to no avail.

A man (name withheld), who claimed to be an expert in the field told the reporter from JICD in an interview that his hospital which is located at Djorwulu in Accra deals in creams imported from Colombia. "Clients buy these creams and apply them with hot water to their thighs, buttocks and hips for the desired shape and size" he added.

A lady (name withheld), also told the reporter in an interview that she had fallen victim many times to a number of these fraudsters who took her money under the pretext of reshaping her buttocks for her. She said these criminals gave her chemical substances to drink and later on pressed certain metals on her stomach but nothing positive was seen. "Some of them asked me to go and come back in three weeks time but after all those attempts, I did not see any improvement in my shape. So I demanded my money but he refused to pay me back" she added.

At the Obenfo hospital at Weija, the CEO, Dr. Dominic K. Obeng-Andoh told the Journalists In Community Development (JICD) reporter that there are mushrooms of clinics which claim to be experts in body reshaping. According to him, these are all fraudsters and impostors who have no idea about body sculpture, yet they use fraudulent means to dupe their clients. "I find it difficult to understand why this kind of lawlessness is allowed in this country", he told the reporter. He therefore called on the authorities to take immediate steps to flash out these criminals from the system.

According to Dr. Obeng, body sculpture (reshaping) is not a field for laymen because it requires medical competence and skill to perform the function. He therefore advised ladies not to compromise on safety but to go to the right places for the best results.

Dr. Obeng said it is therefore unacceptable for anyone to claim to be an expert without any training. "Ghana is a noble country and we should not allow this noble profession which has the tendency to attract health tourism to be tarnished" he added.

The body sculpture (reshaping) expert said there is no known drug or cream that is used to reshape the body. He therefore advised the public to beware of the activities of these fraudsters and report them to the police for action.

"Adverts on reshaping are sponsored by these criminals to defraud the public with impunity as the ladies themselves are shy of reporting the matter to the police. Often, they end it by saying "Nyame Betua Wo Ka" literally meaning, God will deal with you" he added.

Asked whether his hospital is up to the task, the CEO said the hospital delivers safe, instant and natural results to clients with no side effects. "We do use chemicals, drugs or cuts during the surgery" he added. He asked the authorities to protect the industry by flashing out all criminals and imposters since it has the potential to earn more foreign exchange for Ghana.

The reporter interviewed a client who had just gone through body reshaping surgery at the Obengfo hospital and said she had earlier fallen victim to many fraudsters. She said "but in a matter of one hour, I now have my desired shape at the Obengfo hospital".

The reporter had the opportunity to see the video of the lady before and after the surgery.

A woman from Cote dIvoire who also went through a successful surgery at the Obengfo hospital told the reporter in an interview that her new shape was mind blowing and beyond her imagination. She asked Ghanaians to take advantage of this wonderful hospital for their natural shape and beauty.

Speaking in an interview, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Ministry of Health (MOH), Mr. Robert Cudjoe expressed worry about the activities of some imposters in that sector. He said the ministry will soon come out with measures to deal with these criminals.

According to him, the ministry will strengthen the existing laws to regulate the operations of the hospitals providing this service.

He said this is to ensure that sanity prevails in that area. "The ministry will have to go by the rules of engagement to flash out the fake ones.

The ministry will also have no alternative but to close down those facilities defrauding the public. we don't need to tolerate this lawless behavior in this country" he said.

The PRO mentioned the fact the country would benefit immensely if the system is sanitized and allow only the genuine ones to operate. He made it clear that he would send the message across to the appropriate quarters to help deal with the menace.

He however commended those genuinely providing the service and pledged the ministry's protection for their operations.
Ron Strikker, Netherlands Ambassador to Ghana, has called on government to ensure that start-up businesses transition smoothly into SMEs to rake in maximum economic benefit.

Strikker, who was the special guest at the Start-Up Investor Conference organized by MBC Africa, in collaboration with the Netherlands Embassy in Accra, said that it has always been difficult for governments to ensure the transformation of start-up businesses into full-blown SMEs.

The Ambassador said turning start-ups into SMEs helps to reduce the rate of unemployment, especially among the youth, who are desperately in search of jobs.

The conference was attended by many young people who are aspiring to become big-time entrepreneurs.

Other state agencies that strengthen the Small to Medium-scale (SME) sector were also present.

It was themed: Securing Investments for Start-ups.

Chief Executive Officer of National Entrepreneurship and Innovation (NEIP), John Kumah, who explained his outfit's mandate to the participants, underscored the need for start-ups to always look out for opportunities that could make their businesses viable.

He said it was critical for the government to create the enabling environment for everybody to explore and added that the right signals are being sent that the Akufo-Addo administration was serious about reducing unemployment.

He admitted that there were limited job opportunities in the public sector and said the private sector is being encouraged through tax incentives, especially to generate more employment.

Mr. Kumah said to be a successful entrepreneur, it can be very difficult and the journey can be very tough, adding that NEIP is helping start-ups to star up.

He said the government has about $10 million to support good initiatives in the eco-system and added that the money is expected to be raised to $100 million in due course.

He said that NEIP was enticing young entrepreneurs with tax reprieves, employee support, among others, to bring many people with innovative business plans on board.

Tenemba Anna Sanake, CEO of MBC Africa, in her opening remarks, said her outfit was committed to providing a comprehensive solution to SMEs in Africa by integrating the business services they need to grow onto a common platform.
Users of Jumia Ghana's e-Commerce platform will enjoy the best deals in various categories during this year's Black Friday scheduled to run from 24th November to 8th December.

Ore Odusanya, Managing Director of Jumia Ghana, said the Black Friday event was the biggest, by default, sale for most e-commerce businesses, and Jumia is expected to triple its sales that week.

Last year, the sale run for one week, but will run for two weeks this year in a bid to give consumers more options.

The company had seen high growth in the last six months due to an increased growth on consumers, offering them the best and biggest brands at the best prices, and had been able to maintain its black Friday sale levels after last year's event.

He was speaking at a press interaction with Jumia's Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director in Accra.

Mr Odusanya said there will be new deals every day in different categories during the two-week campaign.

On 24th November, the global Black Friday, the sale will be in all categories, after which it will be one category per day; men's fashion on 25th, women's fashion on 26th, Cyber Monday on 27th, mobile phones on 28th, computers on 29th, TVs and appliances on 30th, and so on till the 8th of December.

It also has a seven-day return policy on the products.

Jumia has also worked with partner MTN to set up and integrate its mobile money platform where customers can pay for their products safely and also partnered with Ghana Post for out-of-Accra deliveries.

Massimiliano Spalazzi, Jumia Africa CEO, said Jumia began operations in Ghana when there was the lack of a strong offline retail presence.

While one retail outlet in the United States served about 380 people, one outlet in Africa served on average 60,000 people, thus e-commerce allows African countries to leapfrog to online purchasing.

This is a huge opportunity we are seeing happening across the countries where we operate, he said.
24.10.2017 LISTEN

The official announcement by Vice-President MahamuduBawumia that the Akufo-Addo government intends to recruit some 3,000 Arabic-language instructors as part of its education policy, ought to raise the hackles of all patriotic, peace- and democracy-loving Ghanaians (See Government to Recruit 3,000 Arabic Instructors  Bawumia Citifmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 10/22/17). I hope that AlhajiBawumia, the apparent spearhead of this initiative, fully appreciates the constitutional concept and tenet of the Separation of Church, or Religion, and the State. Under absolutely no circumstances should taxpayer money be expended on the support of Islamic, or Christian, education in the country, no matter which part of the country such an initiative is being undertaken.

Ghana may indisputably be a predominantly Christian country, but it is decidedly secular in both political and cultural orientation, the inescapable religiosity of its citizenry notwithstanding. If the government wants to promote Islamic education, it must do so by encouraging the development of our indigenous languages and cultures as the vehicles for the propagation of Islam in the predominantly Muslim areas of the country. Thus, one would rather have the Al-Quran, or The Holy Quran, translated into such major northern Ghanaian languages as Dagomba and Mamprugu or Mamprusi and Gonja (I, personally, own two copies of the Quran and have done the Juma several times). In other words, Islam must be adapted to suit the cultures of its local practitioners in Ghana. Nobody should use public funds to promote Arabic in this country, unless Akan and other major Ghanaian languages are also being promoted in the Arab world.

We also should not create a pernicious and tragic situation, whereby our indigenous languages and cultures are irresponsibly left to atrophy and vanish by the patently unhealthy acquisition of the Arabic language and culture. It is an open secret that the Arabs continue to be among the most anti-African racist people around the globe. We all witnessed the apocalyptically massive and wanton destruction wreaked on the indigenous African population of the Sudan by the Arab terrorists called the Janjaweed. Yes, unforgettable and unforgivable crimes against African humanity and our womanhood. In Darfur, in southwestern Sudan, for example, it did not matter that most of the Black-African population was Muslim and Islamic in religious and cultural orientation. Their jihadist rapists and butchers only saw the blackness of the skins of their victims; and the blackness of the latter as a quintessential symbol of evil to be exterminated and extirpated.

Dont get me wrong, we are not averse to the study of the Arabic language as a course of study in our public schools and tertiary academies; however, the sort of cultural Arabization being systematically promoted by the likes of the Bambiwiya Institute ought not to be supported by the Government of Ghana with taxpayer funds. Rather, it ought to be parochially or privately promoted. The knee-jerk argument that the government has been supporting Christocentric education in the country for decades now, does not hold water because it was a purely involuntary policy carried out by the Nkrumah-led Convention Peoples Party (CPP), because these Christocentric parochial institutions were already fiercely independent and the most successful of their kind in the country.

In other words, in nationalizing our Mission Schools, the CPP government intended to spread the great benefits of cutting-edge modern education and knowledge that these Christocentric institutions jealously represented and guarded. That situation is not nearly the same with these Islamic institutions. What we need to be planning and talking about is how to effectively and successfully export our more ancient and humanistic traditional African values into the largely violent and benighted Arab world, as a means of civilizing these haughty Arabs and making them more culturally inclusive, accommodating and hospitable like us, the indescribably despised Wretched of the Earth.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs
Prison officers at the Sunyani Medium Prison in the Brong-Ahafo Region have undergone a free medical screening to check their HIV status and other ailments that are gaining ascendancy within the Sunyani Municipality.

According to medical experts in the region, especially in the Sunyani Municipality, more and more out-patients to medical facilities are registering HIV, hypertension and diabetics, which they say is becoming worrying. In a bid to encourage more persons within the municipality to know their health status and adopt healthy lifestyles, the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Hospital at Fiapre has organised a free medical screening for officers and inmates at the Sunyani Prisons.

The head of the medical team from the SDA Hospital, Dr Philip Kakari, explained that because Sunyani has the highest number of HIV cases in the country, his outfit is putting in measures to help residents know their HIV status so that they can be cautious about their sexual life.

According to him, about 400 officers are expected to go through the exercise, where their mass index (BMI), temperature and blood pressure (BP) would be checked to help the health officials give experts advice on how to life properly.

He mentioned that the inmates will also be screened to know their HIV status.
An Accra Circuit Court has sentenced two motorbike robbers to 15 years' imprisonment each in hard labour.

Bashiru Issah, motor mechanic and Abdulai Sulley, motor rider were said to have laid ambush for the complainant who is also a motor rider and robbed him of his motorbike.

They also attacked the complainant by hitting his left eye with a locally manufactured pistol leading to the complainant bleeding profusely.

The two were hauled before the court for robbery and conspiracy charges.

They pleaded guilty to the charges and were convicted on their own plea by the court presided over by Mr. Aboagye Tandoh.

DSP Patience Mario told the court that on October 12, 2017, Bashiru Issah laid ambush by the roadside as if he was picking something from the ground.

She said while the complainant approached Bashiru, he forcibly attempted to snatch the motorbike but the complainant resisted.

Bashiru then hit the complainant with a locally manufactured pistol. His accomplice Abdulai Suley then emerged from a nearby bush and hit the complainant from the back.

The complainant out fear for his life took to his heels and the two robbers made away with the motorbike.

The complaiant then informed his co-riders about his ordeal and they mounted a manhunt for the two robbers.

They eventually found the robbers after about 20 minutes and managed to apprehend them.

She said but for the timely intervention of the police, the two robbers would have been lynched.

ASP Mario told the court that the motorbike has been retrieved.

She said the robbers admitted the offence in their caution statement but denied attacking him with any offensive weapon.
The Archbishop Porter Girls Senior High School within the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Area has benefitted from the Groupe Nduom Foundation through the construction of a dormitory block to accommodate the ever increasing school population.

The dormitory block christened: Yvonne Sterlin Nduom is named after the benefactor, who happened to be an old girl of the school as well as the initiator and financier of the project.

The project forms part of Groupe Nduoms initiative of giving back to the society and general contribution to improve upon quality education in the country.

The new dormitory which was constructed by York properties would accommodate 200 students and has two bedroom flat as accommodation for the house mistresses.

Presenting the keys of the dormitory to the Headmistress of the School, Mrs. Nduom stated that her passion for girl-child education motivated her to build the dormitory for the school.

Education is very dear to my husband and so we have set up an education fund which we are using to provide infrastructural support and provide scholarship for intelligent but needy students to ensure that no child is left out in education in this country

The wife of the businessman/politician Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom recounted the role her Alma mater played in her formative stage in life and said it was only prudent that she contributed to the ever growing success story of the school.

She said,  most of my character was moulded here, my very best friends were met here over 50 years ago, we were given not only academic knowledge, but invaluable life skills which went a long way to make me a lady of substance now So my heart is full of joy standing on this ground to donate this edifice to my Alma mater

She admonished the students to make good use of the facility to enhance their academic performance.

The Archbishop Porters Girl is one of the top schools within the Western Region and currently ranked ninth in the list of best schools in Ghana.

The school now has four dormitories to accommodate students and would help to ease the pressure on the existing facilities.

Mrs Mary Ama Brako, Headmistress of the school appreciated Groupe Nduom for the kind gesture stating that the new dormitory has come at the right time.

The headmistress disclosed that Mrs Nduom has donated also a photocopier to the school for administrative work.

The school appealed for musical instruments and beds to help the school in socialisation and comfortable sleep respectively.
Dr. Nortey Omaboe

24.10.2017 LISTEN

Accra: October 23, 2017: Ghanas target to perform better than the 46th position on the World Bank doing business index has received a boost with roll out of the e-certificate platform on the e-Registrar portal. The roll out marks the successful implementation of the online registration of companies, as well as the authorization of operations of businesses.

Speaking at the launch of the Registrar Generals e-certificate platform in Accra, Executive Chairman of GCNet, Dr. Nortey Omaboe explained the roll out was a clear manifestation of the very best of the ideals of a Public Private partnership.

He assured that the innovative e-applications which are developed and deployed by GCNet were robust and powerful and the e-certificate launch was an example of just one of such innovations conceived, tested and fully operational.

We at GCNet fully vouch for the integrity of the technological solution that has been produced and we are extremely proud to be associated with its launch, Dr. Omaboe assured.

Dr. Omaboe said the eRegistrar platform was linked to the Total Revenue Integrated processing System (TRIPS), the domestic tax platform which integrates with the Customs platform and also the expenditure monitoring platform of the Ministry of Finance, known as the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS).

Dr. Omaboe observed that it was critical that all important national technology systems are fully integrated within a seamless national technology ecosystem and that GCNet was fully committed unreservedly to play a leading role in that process.

Launching the e-certificate platform on the e-Registrar portal, Vice President Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia observed the introduction signalled the culmination of hard work to reform and enhance the Registrar-Generals Departments service delivery in line with the Presidents vision to make Ghana the most business-friendly nation in Africa, he said.

Dr Bawumia expressed optimism that once the new Companys Act, which was currently before Parliament was passed into law, which is expected to be soon, commencement certificate would no longer be a requirement to start a business, in addition to the incorporation certificate.

What we are witnessing today is an example of Public Private Partnership with support from development partners, such as the World Bank with the aim of re-engineering the business processes of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the Registrar Generals Department, Dr. Bawumia said.

Minister for Justice and Attorney General, Ms Gloria Akuffo cautioned all stakeholders to avoid abusing the system so as to reap its full benefits to deepen the ease of doing business. She entreated both the Registrar-Generals Department and GCNet to adhere to a rigorous and regular maintenance regime so as to gain optimum advantage from the systems.

Earlier in her welcome remarks, the Registrar-General, Mrs. Jemima Oware noted the introduction of the e-certificate platform would allow clients to have an end to end process to apply for registration of their businesses online and get their Business Registration Certificate, Incorporation and Commencement Certificates at the end of the process.

The e-certificate functions on the e-Registrar portal platform as deployed by GCNet is supported by a number of services on-line, including the e-Shop which allow company searches, reservation of company names and the booking of marriage ceremonies amongst others. This is in line with Governments commitment to deepen technology to improve the ease of doing business in Ghana and to enhance the business competitiveness of the country.

The result is a significant uptake by Ghanaian businesses using the paperless system with data showing that by the first half of the year, over 6,855 online transactions were conducted via the Registrar-Generals Department portal.
The Founder and Chief Medical Director of ChildAccra, a foremost family medical center in Accra, has been presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the South Africa-based CEO Global during an awards ceremony organized at the Airport West Hotel in Accra.

The award, which is in recognition of the renowned paediatricians dedication and commitment to the welfare and development of women and children, adds up to a plethora of other awards that have been conferred on Dr Tuakli from across the globe.

Dr Tuakli has received a wide-range of awards for writing about children and childrens health; work and fight against HIV/AIDs; and even growing flowers and exporting flowers (being the first person to export flowers from Ghana).

With respect to this award from CEO Global, she was picked from over four thousand (4000) nominees who had been selected from across the West and Central Africa region. In attendance at the event were several other awardees drawn from the Western and Central part of Africa.

Sharing her joy after receiving the award, Dr Tuakli revealed that the award means a lot to her. According to her It is a very special honour when one is recognized by a jury of ones peersthe fact that women, for whom I have spent an enormous amount of my life supporting, working for, nurturing and caring for are now awarding me this as a lifetime achievement award makes it extremely special to me.

She further adds that receiving this award thrusts greater responsibility on me and indicates the need to continue to be a role model. Indeed, I shall continue to spend the rest of the years that God gives me in active duty supporting the roles of women, the health of women and their children she concludes.

Maureen Odoi, the Ghana Programme Director of CEO Global giving a brief on the award says of it as a continent-wide independent awards that seek to identify private and public sector actors who are really excelling in their fields of endeavours. The awards are divided into various categories spanning SME Development, Media, Education and Training, Medicine, Building and Construction and Agribusiness she adds.

According to her, organizers have segmented the continent into four regions with each region holding a sub-regional award. At the end of it all, a continental award will be held in South Africa later in the year with participants drawn from the winners of the regional awards.

About ChildAccra

CHILDAccra, a leading-edge medical center, focuses on patient centered care by addressing all the factors that influence the health of you and your family.

Located in Accra, Ghana, the centre has among its goals to educate, support and provide health care that nurtures patient trust and loyalty.

With over 10 years of delivering quality and dynamic medical services, the centre has had tremendous impact on families in Ghana and the West Africa sun-region.
International tourist arrivals in Africa went up by 8% in 2016 according to UNWTO Tourism Highlights 2017 Edition , which cites comparatively limited data available to date. This represents a strong rebound, following two years (2014 and 2015) of weaker performance due to various geopolitical, economic, and health challenges.

As compared to 2015, 2016 saw a 4 million increase in international tourists, to reach 58 million (5% of the world total). This earned the region US$ 35 billion in international tourism receipts (3% share), representing an increase of 8% in real terms.

The report further indicates that Sub-saharan Africa led the continents recovery by +10%. Attributed partly to simpler visa procedures, South Africa recorded a 13% growth in international arrivals, with Kenya and Tanzania also enjoying double digit growth of +17% and +16% respectively in 2016. Yet, domestic travel spending still had the biggest share according to a Jumia Travel Hospitality Report for Africa, generating approximately 64% of Africas Tourism GDP. This is in comparison to 36% of foreign visitor spending in 2016.

UNWTO notes among others strengthening of security, improved air and sea connectivity, and the redirection of tourism flows from other troubled destinations, as major contributors to the improved tourism performance in most African countries.

Credit: Josephine Wawira
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres arrived in the Central African Republic Tuesday to assess the country's fragile security situation as violence between militias threatens to intensify.

Crowds of people braving heavy rain lined the road from Bangui airport to the capital to greet him.

In his four-day stay, the UN chief will hold talks with political leaders in Bangui and visit the southeastern town of Bangassou, in one of the worst-hit regions for violence.

He is also expected to meet victims of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers -- part of an effort to address damaging allegations that have hit the blue helmets in several missions.

In the run-up to Guterres's visit, Christian and Muslim leaders urged the United Nations to overhaul its peacekeeping strategy, which some have criticised as being too passive.

"A revision of strategy" has to go hand-in-hand with a mandate for UN troop renewal, Protestant leader Nicolas Guerekoyamene-Gbangou told AFP during a joint interview on Saturday with the country's Muslim and Catholic leaders.

The UN has a force of some 12,500 troops and police on the ground in CAR to help protect civilians and support the government of Faustin-Archange Touadera, who was elected last year.

Known as MINUSCA, its mandate -- which expires on November 15 -- is due to be renewed, and Guterres is looking for reinforcements.

Humanitarian law 'not respected'

This is Guterres's first visit to CAR since taking office as secretary general, although he regularly visited the country as former head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR

CAR, one of the world's poorest nations, has been struggling to recover from a three-year conflict between nominally Muslim and Christian militias that started after the 2013 overthrow of Francois Bozize.

Between 2013 and 2016, acting under a UN mandate, France intervened militarily to push out the Muslim Seleka rebels and the United Nations launched its peacekeeping mission in 2014.

But the country remains plagued by violence.

Thousands have lost their lives and half a million people have been displaced, according to the UN, out of a population of roughly 4.5 million.

Since May, renewed clashes in the southeast have pitted armed groups against each other as they compete for control of minerals and areas of influence, while claiming to protect communities.

"The religious stance has been used only for political ends, for looting and for making off with the riches beneath the soil," said Oumar Kobine Layama, head of the Islamic Conference in CAR. "This is not a religious conflict."

Guterres's stay will be his first visit to the Central African Republic since taking office on January 1, although he regularly visited the country as former head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

In his latest report to the Security Council on CAR, Guterres requested reinforcements of 900 troops, but whether this will have a decisive impact on the ground is unclear.

Aid organisations say they are extremely worried about security.

"Humanitarian law is no longer being respected in CAR," Frederic Manantsoa Lai from Doctors Without Borders (MSF) told AFP, warning that humanitarian groups can no longer access many parts of the country due to armed militias.

"We are reaching our limits in terms of humanitarian aid because of a lack of security," he said.

"Since September 2016, we have seen a dozen intrusions in MSF hospitals -- two women forcibly removed from Bangassou hospital and killed outside... in Zemio, a two-year-old child brutally murdered in hospital. The population is completely surrounded, and we are more and more exposed, we are taking more and more risks."
French President Emmanuel Macron lauded deepening security and diplomatic ties with Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Tuesday, adding that he had refused to "give lessons" about human rights during their talks in Paris.

The 39-year-old French centrist had faced calls from rights groups to raise torture and political repression in Egypt publicly after the first face-to-face meeting between the pair.

Instead, Macron stressed how Egypt was a vital partner in the fight against Islamic extremism in the Middle East and Europe, as well as key in the search for lasting political solutions in war-wracked Libya and Syria.

"The first battle that we have in common is the fight against terrorism," Macron said during a joint press conference which underlined their common purpose against extremists which have claimed hundreds of victims in both countries.

Macron said he had stated that combating extremism "should be carried out with the respect of the rule of law and human rights," but declined to criticise Sisi's record since he seized power in 2013.

As French president "I would not accept that another leader gave me lessons about how to govern my country... I believe in the sovereignty of states and we am not here to give lessons without taking account of the context," Macron explained.

The former investment banker, elected in May, has promised a pragmatic, results-oriented foreign policy, but also one that sees France uphold its historic mission of defending human rights.

His approach is in line with other European leaders who see Sisi as a source of stability, but Macron did not go as far as US President Donald Trump who praised the Egyptian for doing a "fantastic job" in April.

Egyptian security services are accused of using torture systematically by human rights groups, while government pressure on the media, NGOs and political opponents is seen as having increased under Sisi.

The most populous country in the Middle East is fighting the Egyptian branch of the Islamic State group in the north of the Sinai peninsula and has faced a series of attacks that has affected its vital tourism industry.

At least 16 Egyptian police officers were killed at the weekend in an ambush by Islamist fighters in the country's Western Desert in a rare flare-up outside the Sinai.

No torture?

Asked by a French reporter about allegations that an Italian academic researcher found murdered in Egypt in 2016 died after being tortured by the police, Sisi defended his security services.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi attends a military ceremony at the Hotel des Invalides in Paris on October 24, 2017

"We do not practise torture," he said, adding: "The Egyptian people refuses all violent practises or dictatorship and failures to respect human rights."

He also said that journalists and unnamed groups, which he accused of trying to undermine the country, were wrongly fixated on "political rights" in his country of nearly 100 million people.

"What do you say about the rights of victims (of terrorism) and their families?" he asked. "What were the rights of people who worked in the tourism sector which has been affected by terrorism?"

Sisi ousted the country's first civilian president, the Islamist Mohamed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood, and insists that his priority is to restore law and order and provide jobs to ordinary Egyptians.

Stubborn but discreet?

Macron raised the cases of 15 activists or journalists behind bars in Egypt in private and would "wait for some progress", an aide told reporters after the talks, on condition of anonymity.

In the lead up to the visit, Macron's aides had stressed that human rights would be discussed behind closed doors and that France would be "stubborn but discreet."

Rights groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International had urged the French leader to be bolder and make economic cooperation and military support conditional on improvements in human rights.

"The silence of foreign governments sends a message to the Egyptian authorities that they can continue," Hussein Baoumi, Egypt expert at Amnesty International, told a press conference in Paris on Monday.

The head of Human Rights Watch in France, Benedicte Jeannerod, urged Macron to end "France's disgraceful policies of indulgence toward al-Sisi's repressive government."

Egypt is a major buyer of French military equipment with orders worth more than 5.0 billion euros ($5.8 billion) since 2015, including for 24 Rafale fighter jets.

Those deals were negotiated by former defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian who is now foreign minister in Macron's government.

Le Drian and Sisi are set to have dinner together later Tuesday.
It was an exciting atmosphere at the La Presby Senior High School as CEO of McDan Shipping Company, today [Tuesday], honored his promise by providing hundred desks to assist first year students who had been forced to sit on cement blocks due to the pressure brought on by the Free SHS policy.

According to McDan Shipping, the Tuesday morning delivery is the first batch of the entire package promised the school.

Citi FM has given the infrastructure deficit in senior high schools extensive coverage, prompting a pledge from the Education Ministry of Education to make the necessary provisions to the needy schools.

The school had already made headlines when its headteacher, who was subsequently interdicted by the Ghana Education Service, said first-year students under the Free SHS policy, had to pay GHc 80 for desks or risk standing during classes.

The La Presby first-year students were seen to be sitting on makeshift chairs comprising wooden planks supported by cement blocks.

The CEO of McDan Shipping, Daniel Makorley, subsequently visited the school and pledged to donate furniture to first-year classrooms.

As part of their celebrations upon receipt of the desks, the students were heard shouting appellations like one man one seat, no bore blocks, our backs will rest and no more back pains again.

The students expressed their gratitude to the company, saying the desks will go a long way to improve teaching and learning.

God bless him. We thank him for what he has done for us. May he get a long life; I dont even know how to express myself today, one student said.

This time we can learn hard. At first we couldnt learn well because we were sitting on blocks, but now we can focus on our work, another noted.



By: Anas Seidu/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Tennessee Senator Bob Corker has unleashed a blistering attack on US President Donald Trump, calling the president utterly untruthful.

In a series of television interviews, Mr Corker accused the president of lying, adding that he debased the US and weakened its global standing.

Mr Trump fired back on Twitter, calling the top Senator a lightweight who couldnt get re-elected.

The pair are due to meet at a Senate lunch to discuss tax reform on Tuesday.

He is purposely breaking down relationships we have around the world that had been useful to our nation, Mr Corker said on CNN after Mr Trump criticised him on Twitter.

I think the debasement of our nation is what hell be remembered most for, he said.

The Foreign Relations Committee head, who was an early supporter of Mr Trump, added that the president has great difficulty with truth.

Raising the voltage  Anthony Zurcher, BBC News, Washington

The good news for Donald Trump is hes managed to push his feud with a grieving war widow out of the headlines. The bad news is hes done it by pushing a stake through Republican unity at a time when the party needs to come together to pass big-ticket tax reform through Congress.

The latest blistering exchange between Republican Senator Bob Corker and the president has all the hallmarks of one of Mr Trumps classic intra-party campaign spats.

Theres the quick Twitter trigger finger, the derogatory nicknames (liddle Bob Corker), the over-the-top hyperbole (he couldnt get elected dog catcher).

Republicans  including those who bore the brunt of Mr Trumps vitriolic attacks  largely shrugged off those earlier rows as primary-season posturing and unified behind their unlikely standard-bearer in the autumn general election.

Mr Corker, on the verge of Senate retirement, isnt backing down, however. And the president is once again raising the voltage.

The party is learning the hard way that theres only one Donald Trump  whether hes a real-estate mogul, a reality TV star, a candidate or a president.

If you question his leadership, his views or his attitude, hell unleash the whirlwind, no matter the consequences.

When asked if he regretted supporting Mr Trump during the 2016 election, the Tennessee senator said: Lets just put it this way, I would not do that again.

His comments came after Mr Trump lashed out at the Republican in a series of tweets.

Last month Mr Corker announced that he would not seek re-election at next years mid-term elections. He has been an ardent supporter of the 2015 agreement to curb Irans development of nuclear weapons.

The tweets appeared to be in response to Mr Corkers comments on ABC News Good Morning America, in which he suggested the president should stop interfering in the debate on tax legislation.

Mr Trump is planned to head to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to rally Senate Republicans on a White House-backed tax reform plan.

Mr Corkers support for the plan could be crucial as Republicans seek to pass the legislation in the divided upper chamber.

The Tennessee lawmaker also raised concern with the presidents behaviour toward North Korea, saying Mr Trump continues to kneecap his diplomatic representative, the secretary of state.

He added that when it comes to diplomacy with Pyongyang, Mr Trump should leave it to the professionals for a while.

Following Mr Trumps attack, Mr Corker fired back on Twitter.

The spat reignites an ongoing feud between the two men, which blew up earlier this month when Mr Corker responded to an attack from Mr Trump saying: Its a shame the White House has become an adult day care center.

Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.
The Western Regional Minister, Dr. Kwaku Afriyie, has rubbished claims by the Minority suggesting that government is short-changing cocoa farmers in the country.

At a press conference in the Western Region, the Minority accused the Akufo-Addo government of poorly managing the cocoa sector.

It further claimed that government has sidelined suspected NDC sympathizers in the distribution of the subsidized fertilizer.

According to them, governments decision to sell the fertilizer at a subsidized price instead of giving them out for free, amounts to robbing the farmers.

But speaking to Citi News, Dr. Afriyie described such claims as misleading.

According to Dr. Afriyie, the cocoa sector is doing well under the Akufo-Addo government, such that there is reverse smuggling of cocoa beans from Cote D'ivoire to Ghana.

What the Minority said is very pathetic and very disingenuous. We have maintained the price at GHC 475As I speak to you now, there is reverse smuggling from Cote D'lvoire to Ghana. If the prices were so good why are Ghanaian farmers not sending their cocoa to Cote D'lvoire as was sometime in the past?

Gov't has neglected cocoa farmers  Minority

The Minority Spokesperson on Agric, Eric Opoku, had accused the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration of neglecting cocoa farmers in the country.

He indicated that, this is evident in the cancellation of some road projects, challenges with cocoa mass spraying exercise, and replacement of free fertilizers with subsidized ones.

Our dear farmers, it is sad to note that no provision was made for cocoa roads in the COCOBOD budget for 2017/18. This means that the cocoa roads which are deteriorating faster than anticipated due to the neglect of the NPP government, is going to get worse, making users (mostly farmers) wretchedly despondent and low-spirited to continue to labour for our dear nation, Mr. Opoku said.

Mr. Opoku also accused the NPP government of sidelining perceived sympathizers of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), in the distribution of fertilizers, claiming that farmers are now in difficulties.

The programme is overly politicized, and perceived NDC sympathizers are left out in the distribution of chemicals.

He further challenged government to come clean on how much government has realized so far in the cocoa stabilization fund.

You may recall that in the last press conference, we made specific demands in respect of the Cocoa Stabilization Fund established in 2014 by the Mahama government. Even though attempts were made to respond to the issues raised, specific questions were not addressed. We are still interested in knowing how much is accumulated in the Cocoa Stabilization Fund and its impact on cocoa farmers in this critical period.



By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
The legality of the Ministry of Food and Agricultures decision to purchase GHc9 million worth of chemicals to combat armyworms on a sole-source basis, allegedly without the Public Procurement Authoritys approval, was questioned on the floor of Parliament on Tuesday.

Responding to questions on the matter, a Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Sagre Bambangi, disclosed that the Ministry only roped in the Public Procurement Authority after the GHc 9 million arrangements for the insecticides had been made.

The Ministry having secured the above facility, consequently requested for a retrospective approval from the Public Procurement Authority, for an emergency supply of insecticides to control the fall armyworms.

The Public Procurement Authority granted the request of the use of Single Source Procurement Method, to engage various supplies to undertake the procurement of insecticide in accordance with section 40(1) (c) of the Public Procurement Act, 2003 (Act 663), Dr. Bambangi said.

The section in question, however says nothing about retrospective approval as it notes that: a procurement entity may engage in single source procurement under section 41 with the approval of the board where owing to a catastrophic event, there is an urgent need for the goods, works or technical services, making it impractical to use any other methods of procurement because of the time involved in using those methods.

The Ashaiman Member of Parliament, Ernest Norgbey, highlighted this fact, as he questioned the legality of the retrospective approval.

But the Deputy Minister responded by saying that if it were wrong, the Public Procurement Authority would not have done same.

The Ministry of Agriculture collaborated with UN Food an Agriculture Organisation and Centre for Agriculture Biosciences International, for the recommended insecticides registered in Ghana, and also registered for the control of fall armyworms in Brazil, USA and other African countries.

After the recommendations, the Minister invited companies which had registered with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and appealed to them to supply on credit.

In all, 12 companies were assembled by the government, but not in a competitive bidding process, to supply the insecticides to fight the armyworms, due to the urgent nature of the situation.

The NPP administration has repeatedly criticized the previous administration for engaging in all forms of sole-sourcing contracts which did not ensure value for money, and in most cases breached Public Procurement regulations.

They have thus pledged to ensure that such reckless sole-sourcing contracts are not the order of the day.



By: Duke Mensah Opoku & Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Lagos, Nigeria - October 23, 2017  The Comedy Central Grab The Mic Talent Search train was in Port Harcourt over the weekend, in search of Nigerias next comedy superstar. The auditions held on Saturday, October 21, at the Presidential Hotel, Port Harcourt.

Hundreds of budding comedians turned out to present their best comedic materials to the judges and a live audience. The panel of judges made up of Ace Comedian Ali Baba, Wazobia FM OAP, Akasbaba and Bukwild, a Port-Harcourt-based Artiste, had a tough time trimming down the numbers, as there were several sterling performances.

Commenting, Ali Baba stated that the comedic materials presented by the contestants were impressive.

This is a testament to the fact that Nigeria is home to a great pool of amazing comedy talents who are set to explore the endless possibilities that the Comedy Central Grab The Mic platform presents and take the industry to another dimension.

Some notable personalities such as Chike, The Voice Nigeria 2016, First Runner Up, and Comedian, Gordons were present at the event. Comedian Gordons thrilled the audience with a surprise performance.

Following the Lagos and Port Harcourt auditions, the nationwide talent search will be rounded off with the Jos audition, on 28 October 2017, at the Silk Lounge. Winners from each region will be placed in the final showdown in Lagos, where the Grab The Mic champion will emerge.
24.10.2017 LISTEN

Recall that in a letter dated 23rd March, 2017, the Nollywood Actor/Politician, Kenneth Okonkwo, demanded that elections be conducted into the Local government Councils in Enugu, failure which he threatened to go to court.

The Enugu State government eventually yielded to the popular demand of Enugu State people and agreed to organize elections into the Local governments in accordance with the Constitution

However, recently, APC has been crying fowl over the attitudes of the Enugu State government towards the local government elections.

The Nollywood Actor, who is a prominent member of APC in the state, berated the state government over its plans to manipulate the elections in favour of PDP in the state. He articulated his views in a three-page letter to Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, dated 12th October, 2017, where he expressed lack of confidence in the process.
Vietnam veteran Bernie Sasse of Onalaska was aboard the USS Forrestal when it caught fire in 1967 in a tragedy that left 134 of his fellow crew members dead.

Sasse was present for the Onalaska Area Historical Societys Oct. 17 program about the disaster, which went on to play a major role in the way the U.S. Navy trains seamen in firefighting.

The historical societys members and guests learned about the explosions and fire aboard the aircraft carrier through a documentary about the incident and from Sasse.

Its been 50 years, Sasse said. I did have nightmares when I first got out (of the Navy).

The documentary, Trial by Fire recounted the mistakes made in causing the explosions and those made in the subsequent fire suppression efforts. The 20-minute video is now used by the Navy to train all sailors in proper firefighting techniques.

Stationed on board the ship, third class petty officer Sasse was serving a two-year tour as a store keeper. Another survivor, U.S. Sen. John McCain, a pilot stationed aboard the Forrestal, barely escaped as the fire from the explosions moved toward his aircraft.

Before the incident, pilots assigned to the Forrestal flew 700 sorties in four days over Vietnam while the carrier was stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin. This extensive operation created a shortage of bombs.

To meet this shortage, bombs from the World War II and Korean War eras were taken out of storage in the Philippines and shipped to the Forrestal. Because of their age and improper storage, a number of the old bombs leaked and were unstable.

The explosions and fire started at about 10:50 a.m. July 29, 1967, while the fight crew was preparing for the second flight of the day. During the preparations, a rocket accidentally launched and flew across the flight deck, striking a fuel tank on a Skyhawk waiting to be launched.

While the rockets warhead safety mechanism prevented it from detonating, the impact tore the fuel tank off the jets wing and ignited it. Within seconds, the aircrafts other external fuel tanks overheated and ruptured, releasing more jet fuel to spread along the flight deck.

Among the mistakes leading up to the explosions and fire was the fact aircraft were bring fueled while ordnance were loaded onto jets. The foam firefighting equipment also hadnt been charged.

When the first line of firefighter were lost in the early part of the incident, breaking the chain of command, untrained crew members took up the battle, spraying water indiscriminately. The water hampered the foams ability to fight the blaze and damaged sensitive equipment.

Since the incident, the Navy has changed its protocol to give all sailors training in proper firefighting techniques.

Now, everyone gets trained in fighting fires, Sasse said.

In addition to the crewmen who lost their lives, 161 were injured. The injured were transported to the hospital ship USS Repose.

While the fire on the flight deck was extinguished by the end of the day, fires below deck took another day to put out.

Sasse mentioned he and a number of the surviving crew members attended a 50-year reunion in Washington, D.C. this year.
La Crosse police are looking for a 24-year-old man charged with raping a 14-year-old girl whose family he was staying with.

According to a criminal complaint, the girl told police she was sleeping in her bed on Oct. 8 when she awoke to find Christopher T. Davis raping her. She said he then rolled onto the floor by her bed, where he went to sleep.

The girl told relatives, who beat up Davis and told him to leave. Her father told police Davis had been staying with them for about 2 months and was supposed to be sleeping in a spare room.

Davis was charged last week with sexual assault of a child under 16, which carries a maximum sentence of 40 years.

Police believe Davis fled to Milwaukee but has since gone to Mississippi. There is a warrant for his arrest.
- Contrary to earlier reports, the head of the civil service of the federation, Winifred Oyo-Ita, did not play any part in the reinstatement of the ex-pension boss, Abdulrasheed Maina

- A committee made up of top officials from the ministry of Interior recommended Mainas reinstatement

- PDP asks President Buhari to sack the minister of interior, Abdulrahman Dambazzau, and the AGF Abubakar Malami over their alleged roles in reinstating the ex-pension boss

More details have emerged on how a former chairman of the presidential task force on pension reforms task team, Abdulrasheed Maina, was reinstated in the civil service and made a director despite being on the run for alleged N2b scam.

READ ALSO: Tension in Akwa Ibom as vulture allegedly delivers sack letter to monarch to quit throne

The Nation newspaper reports that the recall of Maina was facilitated by the attorney-general of the federation and justice minister, Abubakar Malami.

The newspaper stated that Abubakar Malami was the one who directed the federal civil service commission (FCSC) to reinstate Maina.

It also learnt that contrary to earlier reports, the head of the civil service of the federation, Winifred Oyo-Ita, did not play any part in the reinstatement of the ex-pension boss, rather she had advised against Mainas recall, but she was overruled.

It was said that a committee made up of top officials from the ministry of interior recommended Mainas reinstatement

The paper reported that the officials were members of the Senior Staff Committee (SSC) of the ministry of interior.

The details of those who authorised Mainas return were contained in a letter of reinstatement sent to the wanted officer by the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC).

The letter dated September 18, was also sent to the head of the civil service of the federation by the federal civil Service commission (FCSC).

The letter, which was reportedly signed by Mustapha L. Sulaiman for the FCSC chairman, indicated that the AGF advised the FCSC that Maina should be reinstated.

The letter stated that: Kindly refer to the Attorney-General of the Federation/ Honourable Minister of Justice letter Ref. No. HAGF/FCSC/2017/ VOL. 1/3 dated 27th April 2017 requesting Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) to give consequential effect to the judgment that voided the warrant of arrest issued against A.A. Maina which formed the basis for the query and his eventual dismissal.

Further to the aforementioned letter, the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC) at its meeting held on 14th June, 2017 deliberated on the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGFs) letter and requested the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) vide letter FC.4029/82/VOL.III/160 of 21st June 2017 to advise the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Interior to consider the AGFs letter, the Officers case and make appropriate recommendation to the Commission.

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The OHCSF accordingly advised the Ministry of Interior to consider the matter. The Ministry of Interior at its Senior Staff Committee (SSC)s meeting held on 22nd June, 2017 considered the disciplinary case against the Officer and the letter by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice seeking the reinstatement of the Officer as a Director (Administration), SGL. 17 in the Federal Civil Service.

The Ministry of Interiors Senior Staff Committee (SSC) deliberated on the case and recommended that Mr. Maina be reinstated into the service as Deputy Director. SGL. 16. The Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) vide letter Ref. No. HCSF/LU/ COR/ FCSC/749/III/ 135 dated 14th August 2017 forwarded the recommendations of the Senior Staff Committee (SSC) of the Ministry of Interior to the FCSC for further necessary action.

The FCSC at its meeting held on Wednesday, 16th August, 2017 considered the letter from the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice and the recommendations of the Senior Staff Committee (SSC) of the Ministry of Interior on the disciplinary case against Alhaji Abdulrasheed Abdullahi Maina, Deputy Director (Administration), Salary Grade Level 16.

The FCSC, thereafter, approved the reinstatement of the Officer into the Service with effect from 21st February, 2013(being the date he was earlier dismissed from Service).

The FCSC also approved for the Officer to sit for the next promotion examination to the Post of Director (Administration), SGL. 17.

Speaking on how Maina was reinstated, some top government sources said the AGF, federal civil service commission (FCSC) and the officials of the ministry of interior facilitated the recall of the ex-pension boss.

The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation insisted that the reinstatement of Maina was absurd and illegal. She did not play any role in the entire process which led to the recall of the dismissed officer.

In fact, she refused to add a sentence or a line to a memo routed through her office to the so-called Senior Staff Committee (SSC) of the Ministry of Interior. It is not within the mandate of the SSC to determine a grievous disciplinary case involving Maina, one official stated.

Another official said: When some forces were determined to bring Maina back, the Head of the Civil Service took precautionary measures and warned that the process will fail.

Instead, what the FCSC did was to compel the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation to forward the recommendations of the Senior Staff Committee (SSC) of the Ministry of Interior to it for further necessary action.

All the documents are intact and they will be presented to President Muhammadu Buhari. I am sure more heads will roll. All the SSC members have no business being in office again.

Copy of the letter that recalled Maina, photo credit: The Nation newspaper

Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to sack the minister of interior, Abdulrahman Dambazzau, Attorney-General of the federation and minister of justice, Abubakar Malami over their alleged roles in reinstating Abdulrasheed Maina's as director in the ministry of interior.

Daily Trust reports that the party in a statement Monday, October 23, by its national publicity secretary, Prince Dayo Adeyeye also demanded Maina's immediate arrest and prosecution.

Legit.ng gathered that the PDP said the APC-led government should always do what is right by exposing "the corrupt elements in government" and making them to face the wrath of the law.

The EFCC stage a walk against corruption on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- Governors from 16 southern states met in Lagos on Monday

- It was the first southern governors summit in 12 years

- At the meeting, the governor discussed the need for true federalism

Twelve years after the first forum was inaugurated, governors from 16 southern states in Nigeria met again in Lagos on Monday, October 23, for a forum meeting.

The only governor who was missing and did not send a representative to the summit was the Imo state governor, Rochas Okorocha.

Legit.ng gathers that at the meeting hosted by Lagos state governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, the governors reiterated their support for true federalism in Nigeria.

The Nation reports that Governor Ambode while addressing counterparts at the meeting said states would benefit from the envisaged restructuring.

The governors met in Lagos 12 years after the first southern governor summit. Photo source: Vanguard

READ ALSO: How Buharis minister allegedly ordered Mainas recall

He said the goals of true federalism, which included the strengthening of autonomy and the enhancement of fiscal viability, would enable the states to develop at their own pace, based on their peculiarities.

He said: "States are disparaged for always carrying begging bowls to Abuja in quest of hand-outs from the federal government. This is a function of our present national constitution that burdens the federal government with activities and responsibilities that rightly fall within the province of states.

The productivity and revenue-generating capacities of most states are thus stifled, thus turning them into no better than street beggar states incapable of even meeting routine obligations of paying workers salaries and pensions without federal support.

The governors were hosted by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos state. Photo source: Vanguard

Ambode clarified that while pushing for greater devolution of power, responsibilities and resources from the centre to the states, the goal of the forum is neither to a weak centre and strong states and vice versa.

He paid tribute to former Lagos state governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, for his initiative, in starting the Southern Governors Forum 12 years back.

The governor hailed the form for advocating for a special allocation to oil-producing states in the federation account, adding that its agitation led to the current 13% revenue derivation and allocation from the federation account.

He said: Another major victory won towards strengthening the countrys practice of true federalism was the declaration by the Supreme Court in 2002 that the then prevalent practice of the federal government deducting monies from the federation account as a first charge for the funding of Joint Venture Contracts, the NNPC priority projects, servicing of federal governments external debt, the judiciary and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and other federal obligations were illegal and unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court in that case abolished the special funds created by the federal government to enable it draw funds from the federation account to pay for matters that fell within its exclusive responsibility before sharing whatever was left with states and local governments.

Other governors present at the Southern Governors summit 2017 include the six southwest governors: Ekiti state governor, Ayo Fayose; Ogun state governor, Ibikunle Amosun; Ondo state governor, Rotimi Akeredolu; Osun state governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola and Oyo state governor, Abiola Ajimobi.

Also present were the governors of: Rivers state, Nyesom Wike; Edo state, Godwin Obaseki; Abia state, Okezie Ikpeazu; Enugu state, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi; Akwa Ibom state, Emmanuel Udom and Ebonyi state, David Umahi.

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The deputy governors of Anambra, Dr Nkem Okeke and Cross River state, Professor Ivara Esu were also present at the event.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that state governors have made a fresh demand of bailout funds from President Muhammadu Buhari.

The governors represented by Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara state urged the president to ensure the release of the 50% of the Paris Club loan refund.

The governors said the fund could be used to cushion the budgets of the state governments in 2018.

During the meeting which was held at the Presidential Villa with President Buhari, the Zamfara state governor said the federal government's intervention through the bailout funds were utilized by the state governments.

Are Nigerians truly tired of President Buhari? - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- President Muhammadu Buhari's ambassadorial nominee to US may be rejected because of age

- The nomination of the 82-year-old Sylvanus Nsofor raised a lot of controversy before the Senate approved him

- Former US intelligence community expert, Mathew Page, warned that Nsofor may be rejected because of his age

A former US intelligence community expert, Matthew Page, has warned that the United States may likely reject Nigeria's 82-year-old ambassadorial nominee, Sylvanus Nsofor.

Page, who made this statement during an interview with Osasu Igbinedion on The Osasu Show said Nsofor is likely to be rejected due to his advanced age.

Recall that Nsofor's nomination was initially rejected by the Senate but President Buhari sent a revised list to the upper legislative chambers.

READ ALSO: 16 southern governors meet in Lagos

The nomination of Nsofor, a retired judge, was eventually confirmed on June 7, after a major controversy about his age, The Cable reports.

While speaking on reasons why Nsofor might not be the right fit for the post, Page said: This chap made headlines when he was nominated as an ambassador by Buhari . he is a very well respected Nigerian but his disadvantage is that he is 82-year-old, Page said.

What I am hearing is that the US government is very uneasy about agreeing to have this ambassador posted to Washington because that is an extremely arduous drop.

You have a growing schedule and its one of Nigerias largest overseas embassies to manage. This is something that needs a very dynamic and energetic person with an enormous constitution.

So, there is an uneasiness but there is also the desire to respect when a country sends you an ambassador. You cant just say no, send me another one.

The Nigerian government may sort of reconsider and realise that that person may not be best suited and that there are obviously a lot of talented Nigerian diplomats.

So I dont think there is a shortage for choice. PMB for whatever reason in his mind just wants this particular guy for this particular post and its probably not the best fit.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that two senior permanent secretaries, Aminu Nabegu and Olukunle Bamgbose, have been awarded the title of Ambassador-In-Situ by the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

The announcement was made in a statement by the assistant director in charge of press, Mohammed Nakorji.

The statement released in Abuja said the two officials had put in their best of over 30 years in the service of the government and had discharged their responsibilities very well.

Are Nigerians truly tired of President Buhari? - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
State regulators will hold a hearing Wednesday in La Crosse on Xcel Energys proposal to raise electricity and gas rates next year.

The Minnesota-based utility is seeking a 3.6 percent increase in electricity revenues for 2018 and a 10 percent hike for natural gas. If approved, that would translate into about $6 more per month on the average residential electric bill and $5.31 more for gas.

The Public Service Commission, which sets rates for investor-owned utilities, will hold a public hearing at 3 p.m. at the La Crosse Public Library. Public comments can also be submitted online.

PSC staff have recommended more modest increases of 1.6 percent for electricity and 8.2 percent for gas, but it will be up to the three-member commission to determine the rates, which are structured to give the company a return on its investments.

Xcel has requested to maintain its current 10 percent profit margin, while consumer advocates argue that 9 percent is more reasonable.

The company is also seeking to raise the flat fee for all account holders to $17 a month, which the Citizens Utility Board opposes on the grounds that its unfair to customers who use the least energy and that it discourages energy savings.

Last year the PSC authorized an increase from $8 to $14.

Xcel said the electric rate increase is necessary to support investments needed to maintain safe, reliable service when sales are flat or declining.

This is the 12th straight year Xcel has sought to increase electricity rates. The PSC has granted all but one request, giving the utility a little more than half of what it asked for.

The average month Xcel residential electric bill in 2017 was just over $100, according to PSC data. Thats lower than all but one of the states largest investor-owned utilities.
A Chicago man faces traffic and drug charges after allegedly leading police on a chase through Sauk and Juneau Counties.

Graeme Daniel Ciciora, 26, is charged with second-degree recklessly endangering safety, attempting to flee an officer, possession of THC and possession of drug paraphernalia. He faces up to 10 years imprisonment for the first charge.

According to the criminal complaint:

On Oct. 14, a state trooper clocked a car driven by Ciciora going 88 mph near mile marker 100 on Interstate 90/94 in Sauk County. The vehicle accelerated as the trooper attempted to catch up to it. As the trooper pursued the vehicle, he clocked it going up to 108 mph.

The trooper activated his emergency lights in order to make a traffic stop. He followed the vehicle for a short distance before realizing the vehicle was not pulling over.

The vehicle continued along the interstate into Juneau County. As the vehicles approached exit 79, a Juneau County Sheriff's Office deputy joined the chase with his emergency lights and siren on.

A Mauston police officer positioned himself near exit 69 with tire deflation devices. As the suspect approached the officer, he switched lanes and used the shoulder to avoid the TDDs. He then passed a slower moving semi and attempted to use the exit ramp. A Mauston officer was waiting for him at the bottom of the ramp.

Ciciora then drove off the road and into grass. He eventually drove into a ditch where his car became disabled.

Once Ciciora was detained, he told police, I must have had a stroke. Police called an ambulance to assist him.

When searching the vehicle, police found marijuana and a glass container.

Ciciora is due in court at 9 a.m. Nov. 22 at the Juneau County Justice Center. He was released Oct. 18 on a $1,500 bond.
TECNO, a premier mobile phone brand under TRANSSION HOLDINGS, has launched its newest addition, the Phantom 8 in Middle East and Africa region. The regional launch took place in Jumeirah Beach Hotel, Dubai in the presence of 200 guests.

Award winning Actor Odunlade Adekola

Addressing the media at the event, Arif Chowdhury, Vice President of Transsion Group  the parent company of TECNO Mobile, spoke about the brands fortunes, advancement of smartphone technology and the brands expansion strategy into new markets. We are very excited about the launch of the Phantom 8 today. It has not been an easy ride to success but as they say in the end, success is all that matters and I can say 2017 has been a very remarkable year for us as a company. We have received admirable awards and recognitions like the Smartphone Brand of the Year Award at Titans of Tech Awards in Lagos this year, and recognitions in key markets, expanded our product lines, ventured into new markets and raised the bar on smartphone innovation.

Arif Chowdhury, Vice President of Transsion Group

The newly launched Android operated Phantom 8 features a revolutionary camera, attractive design and high-speed experience. Debuting an impressive 20MP bright front Camera and 12MP + 13MP dual cameras at the rear with 10x super zoom, single shot HDR, 4 in 1 skin brightening technology, real-time refocus and filter, ultra-quality super pixel lens with great noise control, the device is powered by a 6GB high speed RAM, 64ROM, 2.6GHz MediaTek Helio P25 processor and a 3500mAh battery with 50% extra ultra-fast charge capacity, all of which ensures that the device is faster and consumes less energy. The device is wrapped in a diamond design uni-body with drip screen, 2.5D glass and has a 5.7 Full HD screen mounted on its surface. With a glass fingerprint scanner that guarantees 50% more responsiveness planted at the rear of the device, handling and securing the Phantom 8 is such a delight.

The Phantom 8 will be available in Shadow Gold, Galaxy Blue, Royal Purple, Jack Black and Diamond Blue colors and fully supports VR Videos.

The Phantom 8 will ship to several markets across the world

The new Phantom 8 is compatible with Micro SIM or Nano SIM Card and supports up to 2TB (Terra Bytes) TF (Trans Flash) Card, and it holds 4 modules, 20 bands and covers more than 200 countries and zones.

In Nigeria, customers can start to pre-order the Phantom 8 exclusively from SLOT shops across Nigeria from October 23  26, 2017. Smartphone retailers SLOT Systems, will have the exclusive rights to sales of the Phantom 8 for a period starting from October 27 - 31, 2017. Other shops across Nigeria will start selling from November 1, 2017.

[Sponsored]

Source: Legit.ng
The Homegrown School Feeding Programme is an initiative by the Buhari-led federal government to improve the lives of citizens by feeding pupils in schools on a daily basis.

Recently, Legit.ng reported that the federal government said the school feeding programme had reached a total of 17 states across Nigeria.

Also, it was said that over four million pupils were benefitting from the programme which targets one meal every school day in schools.

The official Facebook page for Aso Rock Villa Nigeria on Tuesday, October 24, released some rules and guidelines on the programme. This was likely in response to a video being circulated on social media which allegedly showed the poor meals being given to pupils.

The federal government tweeted this on Monday, October 23, regarding the video:

Below are the rules and updates set out to guide the programme:

Aso Rock announcement on school feeding program Source: Facebook, Aso Rock Villa

READ ALSO: Home Grown School Feeding Programme commences in Kaduna

A statement signed by the senior special assistant to the vice president on media and publicity, Laolu Akande, said in part: "So far, in Cross River state, 117,750 children in 973 schools are being fed under the programme, while in Akwa Ibom, there are 171,732 children in 1,101 schools being fed.

"Niger state has a total of 710,880 being fed in 2,411 schools in the state. In total, 4,773,064 schoolchildren in 25,771 schools in 17 states are currently benefitting from the school feeding programme.

"This is a notable increase from the previous total of 2,918,842 schoolchildren from 19,881 schools in 14 states that had benefitted from the programme."

Below are some comments on the video:

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Ebonyi state, Nigeria and West Africa's food capital - on Legit.ng TV.

Source: Legit.ng
- Two police officers and an expatriate have been kidnapped by gunmen in Kogi state

- Ezekiel Negedu and sergeant Gini John were killed while on guard duty on Obajana - Oshokoshoko - Kabba road

- The abducted expatriate, Mr Jose Machada, a Portuguese civil engineer, along with other expatriates and Nigerians, were inspecting the project when the gunmen struck

The police in Kogi on Tuesday, October 24 confirmed the killing of two police officers and the abduction of an expatriate by unknown gunmen at a construction site in the state.

Spokesman of the state police command, ASP William Aya, told newsmen in Lokoja that Insp. Ezekiel Negedu and Sgt. Gini John were killed while on guard duty on Obajana  Oshokoshoko  Kabba road.

READ ALSO: PDP's Obaze will win Anambra gubernatorial election - Prophet who predicted Nnamdi Kanu's release declares

Aya said that John died on the spot while Negedu died on arrival in hospital.

According to the police spokesman, about 15 gunmen emerged from a nearby bush and attacked the construction site of A .G. Dangote Company currently handling the rehabilitation of the 45-kilometre Obajana  Kabba Road.

He said that the abducted expatriate, Mr Jose Machada, a Portuguese civil engineer, along with other expatriates and Nigerians, were inspecting the project when the gunmen struck.

According to him, the deceased policemen put up a gallant fight and resisted attempt by the invading gunmen to wreak further havoc.

The police spokesman, however, expressed regret that Negedu and John died in active service to the nation.

Aya said that the state police Commissioner, Mr Ali Janga, had a raised a team headed by the Deputy Commissioner of Police and comprising men of Special anti-robbery squad, mobile police force, Counter Terrorism Unit and others to comb the bush and rescue the victim.

He said that Janga had also visited the scene where he met with top officials and workers of the construction company on the incident.

Aya said that the police commissioner assured the workers of adequate security and promised to rescue the abducted expatriate.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that Ibrahim Idris, Nigeria's inspector general of police backed death penalty for convicted kidnappers while urging officers not to get kidnapped.

The police boss said death penalty would reduce the menace of kidnapping in the country.

If any police officer misbehaves with you, call any of these numbers - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday, October 22, returned to Abuja after a successful four-day working visit to Ankara and Istanbul in Turkey.

Legit.ng reported that the presidents official aircraft which took off from Ataturk airport, Istanbul, at about 12pm (Turkish time), landed at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja at 4.05pm.

While in Ankara, Buhari was hosted by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyeb Erdogan, for a fairly long one-on-one meeting, on Thursday, October 19, before the bilateral meeting that involved their ministers and members of their delegations.

Below are the key highlights of his visit:

1. Security

Nigeria and Turkey agreed to partner in fighting international crimes, including the smuggling of illicit arms and banned substances.

2. Refugees

Nigeria and Turkey discussed the possibilities of collaboration in handling Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and refugees.

3. Aviation

On the area of civil aviation, Turkey made a case for a Turkish Company interested in bidding for the concession of the Abuja Airport. Turkey also made a request for increased air transportation slots for Turkish Airlines.

READ ALSO: Buhari returns to Abuja after 4-day working visit to Turkey

4. Trade and Investment

On the issue of trade and investment, President Buhari and Recep Tayyip Erdogan individually outlined ways to increase the size of trade and investment between Nigeria and Turkey.

5. Education and health matters

The Nigerian delegation accepted an offer by the Turkish government to support the Maarif Organization for Education to set up schools and hospitals in Nigeria.

6. Defence

Nigeria and Pakistan agreed to strengthen the defence and military cooperation initiated by them a few years ago.

President Buhari held a bilateral meeting with Pakistani PM Shahid Khakan Abbasi, in Istanbul and the two countries agreed to revamp the Nigeria-Pakistan Joint Commission. President Buhari also met with President Alpha Conde of Guinea.

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Meanwhile, Buhari has been described by Senator Dino Melaye (APC-Kogi West), as a good man who is surrounded by caterpillars and cankerworms.

The senator made his comments on Tuesday, October 24, in response to a debate on the controversial reinstatement of the former chairman of the presidential task force team on pension reforms, Abdulrasheed Maina, into the civil service.

Are Nigerians truly tired of President Buhari? - on Legit.ng TV.

Source: Legit.ng
We have been tardy chronicling CalPERS latest, flagrant violation of the California constitution, state election laws, and even its own regulations in how it ran its board elections, which concluded on October 2. Keep in mind that this is the first time CalPERS used new election procedures that the board voted in last year, with JJ Jelnicic the only one to take issue with the deeply flawed and undemocratic rules. This matter is still live since one of the two seats contested is subject to a runoff that begins on November 10.

Our criticisms have been confirmed via the Secretary of State, who is required to certify CalPERS board elections, taking the unheard-of step of issuing a qualified certification, which we will post below. As we will also discuss, two of the candidates for the election went to observe the supposed public tabulation of the paper ballots, where there were more violations of law, starting with the fact that there were no paper ballots whatsoever present and the process was not public.

Background: CalPERS Illegal Board Election

For those new to this controversy, see our recent posts, CalPERS Cant Even Figure Out How to Count Ballots in Accordance With Its Own Election Regulation, Let Alone Comply With California Law and CalPERS Doubles Down on Its Illegal Election, Makes Absurd Claim That It Is Above the Law. Weve also embedded a letter from Michael Flaherman to CEO Marcie Frost. It discusses the ways in which the election procedures were at odds with the law and even worse, looked designed to suppress the votes of union members who wanted to vote against candidates their union endorsed.

The major shortcomings with the election were:

1. Non-secret ballots. The paper ballots, the most popular voting method, required that voters sign the ballot proper. Moreover, each ballot had a bar code which identified each voter. This violates the California Constitution, which says, Voting shall be secret. 2. Use of illegal voting method. One of the voting methods CalPERS used for the first time was online voting, which is expressly prohibited by the California election code. 3. Lack of adequate security. This took place on all fronts. The paper ballots were not secured. The envelopes in which they were mailed were opened before the end of the election, the ballots were kept in the open in a room next to vending machines with the door open and another door onto an employee parking lot, as opposed to kept in cages as is the normal practice for paper ballots. The telephone and online voting channels were manned by Everyone Counts staffers working from home, some and perhaps all of which were temps, yet all had access to the full CalPERS election database. Computer security experts have also ridiculed Everyone Counts claims about the security of its online voting process. 4. Flagrant violations of CalPERS own regulation. The most striking part of this sorry episode was that CalPERS could not be bothered to comply with its own newly-created regulation. Well discuss this in greater detail below, but even before the election closed, CalPERS was already out of compliance and made clear it intended to continue to violate its rule. For instance: Paper ballots were to be tabulated only after the end of the election, yet they were being processed daily, at an out-of-state facility, in Everett, Washington The tabulation be done the date of the election notice, yet it actually took place the next day, in a different state than where the ballots were. The tabulation of the paper ballots was supposed to be public, yet the videos weve embedded below show, it wasnt. 5. Lack of an audit trail. Even banana republics operate at higher standards than this. From an LA CityWatch article on the online election that Everyone Counts ran for the LA Neighborhood Councils. It had to be terminated and the process run with paper ballots: As far as the online voting debacle is concerned, California State Law prohibits electronic or online voting statewide, yet it was deemed by the powers-that-be in the City of Los Angeles that this does not apply to NC elections. The law applies to City elections, County elections, and State elections so why is a City government entity which receives taxpayer dollars excluded? A major issue with online voting was the impossibility of doing election verification after the election. No actual ballots were kept for the online votes and no final tally that reconciled the ballot count issued.

Unprecedented Qualified Certification by Secretary of State

So it should come as no surprise that the Secretary of State, which for obvious reasons could not cause a political firestorm by not ratifying an election y a major state agency, instead tried to distance himself from the process. We have embedded the full certification at the end of this post. Below is a screenshot of the critical section:

A search of recent CalPERS election certifications shows that none contain a disclaimer by the Secretary of State about the election methods.

Also bear in mind that the qualified certification is not the result of CalPERS using an outside party to run the election. CalPERS has regularly used third-party vendors.

As you will also see from the vote tally, on the second page of the second embedded document, that a full 5% of votes werent counted. This is enough to swing elections in many cases. Given that the second election vendor, Integrity Voting Systems, was validating the ballots out of public view, which is extremely irregular, we have no way of trusting these figures.

In addition, the fact that the voter turnout was markedly lower than for the elections for the same seats four years ago, when there was no open seat (as in youd expect a low turnout) and there were almost certainly more voters eligible this time, raises even more red flags about the integrity of the entire process.

Even More Violations of CalPERS Regulations

Margaret Brown, who is participating in the runoff that starts November 10, and Michael Flaherman went to La Jolla on October 3 to witness the public tabulation of the ballots, as stipulated in CalPERS regulation:

On the date specified in the Notice of Election at the location designated by CalPERS, the validated paper ballots shall be tabulated publicly by an independent, neutral agent appointed by CalPERS for that purpose.

It would be hard to find more ways to have violated this section than actually took place:

1. The process was not public 2. The paper ballots were not at the location announced by CalPERS 3. That meant paper ballots could not be tabulated. It isnt clear what was done, although we will speculate 4. CalPERS head of operations was regularly in and out of the room where what was purported to be the tabulation took place, calling the independence and neutrality of the agent into question 5. The tabulation was not performed on the date specified

The process was not public. It cannot be repeated enough times that the election vendor Everyone Counts hostility to transparency and refusal to allow for public oversight, as required by CalPERS regulation, should disqualify them for serving as a contractor in any public election.

As we detailed in a earlier post, CalPERS couldnt get its story straight on how the paper ballots were to be tabulated.

Candidate Margaret Brown had several e-mail exchanges with CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost with the subject line Public Viewing of Ballot Tabulation on September 28. It was obvious that Brown and/or allies of hers planned to view the tabulation of the paper ballots. So no one should have been surprised when Brown and fellow candidate Michael Flaherman showed up at the designated location, an Everyone Counts office in La Jolla.

In the video of the so-called tabulation, the woman speaking first is Kim Malm, CalPERS Chief of Operations for the Support Services Division. Even her brief statement contains a Big Lie. She depicts Integrity Voting Systems (a division of K&H Printing) and Everyone Counts a if they were a single vendor, when CalPERS own contract award made clear they were separate companies. CalPERS has been dogged in sticking with this fabrication despite having it called out more than once, which suggest it is somehow very important to them.

Things start getting interesting at 1:08:

Brown comments that there are no ballots visible in the conference room, which is behind not one but two glass walls. There is a glass wall behind the reception area, a corridor between the reception room and the conference room, which has its own glass wall.

A man, which Brown and Flaherman believe was an Everyone Counts executive, then sticks his head out the door to the reception room:

Everyone Counts man: Sorry, no cameras are allowed. Michael Flaherman: You can call the police, but Im not putting down the camera. Margaret Brown: Its a public viewing. Flaherman: Youre making a mistake to try to push that story. Malm: So if they stood right there, then theyd be able to.. Flaherman: No, Im standing here. Malm: Im just saying Flaherman: Im standing here and Im going to record. Malm: So theyd be able to see from there and thats a public area, I think? Everyone Counts man Its your call.

Mind you, this exchange is consistent with the entire make it up as you go along and pay no attention to the rules posture that has been on evident through this entire process.

A little while later, someone handed this notice to Brown and Flaherman:

If Everyone Counts is so afraid of and hostile to the public, it has no business running public elections.

On top of that:

Whatever was being done in that conference room was secret. No explanation whatsoever was given. This clips shows more clearly the two walls of glass, how far away the Everyone Counts staffers are, and how they have their screens turned away from public view.

There is no reason to believe anything related to the election was happening in that conference room. For all we know, the Everyone Counts staffers were playing solitaire.

As Margaret Brown found out on her site visit to Everett, Washington, where the ballots were mailed, and where they were opened, adjudicated, and scanned in machines that were capable of recording the votes (Brown recognized the equipment as being the same as used to score standardized tests). It is entirely reasonable to surmise that the ballots were being tabulated by computer daily, with the totals sent to the second vendor, Everyone Counts, and potentially, CalPERS, daily. How hard is it to add up the totals for a month of weekday counting for a total of six candidates? To cover up what was actually done, Everyone Counts instead put up a bizarre show of people looking diligently into laptops with nary a ballot in sight, instead of tabulating paper ballots, as required.

And even though Brown and Flaherman could not hear the conversation in the conference room, the audio from the reception area was being piped into the conference room. At one point, Brown commented on how woman who was holding her hands in a prayer position while looking at her screen must be praying to get a different result. She snapped out of that pose. To make sure that wasnt a coincidence, Brown later commented on how a womans skirt had ridden up so high that her private parts were on view. She quickly pulled her skirt down and changed her posture.

If you want to see what a proper public election process looks like, have a look at the video below, which has snippets of the vote counting in the recent UK snap election. Skip over the talking heads bits to watch the counting process:

The media is welcome and, along with the general public, can record the entire process. There is a great show of the ballots being conveyed, in sealed boxes, to the counting station, which as is common in the UK, is in a public gymnasium. The ballot boxes are opened, with cameras on and tons of people in the room. The ballot envelopes are opened and the ballots removed, again in full public view. In one clip, you can see a woman in a black sweater with a big seal on her left shoulder. That seal is a party badge. Members of the various parties get to hover right over the tables where the ballots are sorted and counted to make sure nothing funny is going on.

And when the count has been completed and checked, the candidates line up, in alphabetical order by party name, and the vote for each candidate is announced right there, in the very room where the count just took place. From what I saw live during the snap election, the winner and the runner up both make short speeches.

The paper ballots were not at the location announced by CalPERS. You can see, as Brown points out in the video clip above, that the ballots are nowhere to be seen. They were apparently still in Everett, Washington, safely out of public view, so the manner in which the ballots were handled remains secret. We only know what little CalPERS and the vendors have claimed, which we know may be false, since theyve been caught lying and have also changed their stories. .

That means the ballots must have been scanned in Washington prior to the close of the election for the purpose of tabulation. That in turn means CalPERS violated its own regulation in yet another way. The mailed-in ballots were to be:

securely scanned solely for the purpose of validating the ballots and to ensure only one vote is cast per voter.

The scanning was to take place securely, which was clearly not the case in the breakout room that Brown visited in Washington. The staffers there told her that Everyone Counts was unable to handle any physical documents. That means the scanned images were made for the purpose of counting, and not just validation.

That meant paper ballots could not be tabulated. As Flaherman pointed out in his letter to Marcie Frost:

However, according to the election contractors, their ongoing procedures include scanning all incoming ballots each day at the Everett, WA facility for the purpose of creating an electronic image record of how each ballot card was voted, with the image then transmitted over the Internet to the San Diego area facility. The purpose of this scanning, which is best understood as a precursor to tabulation, is clearly other than the two purposes4 solely for which scanning is allowed. Critical reasons exist for why 554.8(5)(b) severely limits the purposes for which completed ballots may be processed. First, if election administrators are permitted to undertake activities that verge on ballot counting, which is what is occurring here, they may be tempted to actually count ballots in the midst of the election and to leak that information to favored candidates. Second, 554.8 limits the public portion of ballot processing to those activities occurring at the conclusion of the election, when election observers can ensure the integrity of the process. Allowing substantial ballot processing to occur prior to the end of the election therefore implies allowing ballots to be processed in secret. It is also contrary to the language of 554.8(5)(b) to create an image of each ballot card and then determine the outcome of the election by tabulating those images rather than tabulating the actual ballots. The regulation states clearly that the actual paper ballots shall be tabulated in order to count votes.

Moreover, the election vendors confirmed in a meeting with candidates partway through the election that they were going to persist with their impermissible procedures despite having been caught out by Brown during her site visit. From Flahermans letter:

Despite this plain language [in the election regulation], at the September 20th meeting, the election contractors stated their intention not to tabulate the paper ballots but instead to tabulate electronic facsimiles of them. Again, this is a planned departure from not only the plain language of the regulation but from widely accepted norms of democratic elections, where the marked ballot cards constitute the definitive indication of each voters intent and stand as a relatively tamper-proof record.

CalPERS head of operations was regularly in and out of the room where what was purported to be the tabulation took place, calling the independence of the process into question. Kim Malm of CalPERS was in contact with Everyone Counts staff throughout the entire process, while the public was by design kept in the dark.

Preferential access by CalPERS, including Malm giving orders to a senior Everyone Counts employees (recall him in the first video asking her to decide what to do about Flaherman recording) proves Everyone Counts was not operating in an independent, neutral manner as required by CalPERS own regulation.

CalPERS should either made no appearance whatsoever in La Jolla, or to protect the appearance of impartiality, had a member of the public at the side of any CalPERS staffer when interacting with Everyone Counts employees, let that member of the public see everything the CalPERS employee saw, and let members of the public ask questions about the process.

The tabulation was not completed on the date specified. CalPERS regulation stipulated that Online and telephone votes will be tabulated on the date specified in the Notice of Election. When you turn to the Notice of Election, it shows that Paper, online, and telephone ballots will be tabulated on October 2.

But CalPERS created a mess for itself by allowing votes to be submitted until midnight. It might have finessed this problem by starting the tabulation before midnight, and then adding in any last-minute votes. But CalPERS cant even be bothered to pretend to follow its own rules.

The reason this matters is that there is a yawning time gap between when the election closed, at the end of October 2, and when the tabulation of the paper ballots was set to begin, at 9:00 AM the next day. After all the other opportunities for mischief that weve pointed out, this one may seem minor, but by the standards of election norms, it is extreme. Again, look at the UK election video clip above to see the contrast, in how much emphasis they place on keeping the ballots secure and having it be extremely visible how they are carried from the polls to the counting station.

This sorry episode confirms yet again that CalPERS regards itself as entirely outside the law. This misconduct validates the normally-unhinged-looking attacks of government-hating libertarians who inveigh against greedy, self-interested, unaccountable bureaucrats. This behavior also energizes other right-wing enemies of public pension funds. CalPERS is handing its opponents a loaded revolver. And rest assured, they will use it.
Lambert here: Readers may wish to look at the methodology. Im unsure about the word segregation in the title. I mean, Ive tried grits, and I dont like them. Others may disfavor tuna casserole. Or mashed potatoes. Or a blazing hot tom yum. Im sure there are real issues here  as arent there always around food?  but Im not sure a segregation frame is the way to look at them. Note that I am for people from different cultures and food traditions eating together; its convivial, something the slow food movement recommends.

By Donald R. Davis, Ragnar Nurkse Professor of Economics, Columbia University, Jonathan Dingel, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Joan Monras, Assistant Porfessor of Economics at CEMFI, Eduardo Morales, and Assistant Professor of Economics, Princeton University. Originally published at VoxEU.

Smart devices and online activity generate a stream of data describing human behaviour in great detail. Social scientists can tap such data to examine previously unexplored topics. This column uses online restaurant reviews to measure consumption segregation. In New York City, restaurant consumption is considerably more racially integrated than residences. A substantial share of consumption segregation is attributable to the fact that consumers are less likely to visit restaurants in neighbourhoods with demographics unlike their own.

In many developed economies, racial and ethnic discrimination are illegal, yet there is still considerable segregation along these lines. For example, the US has prohibited racial discrimination in education, employment, and housing for decades, yet segregation in each of these domains remains a stubborn feature of modern America (Hellerstein and Neumark, 2008, Boustan, 2011). Racial discrimination in public accommodations like hotels and restaurants is also illegal in many countries. In the US, such discrimination has been legally prohibited since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, we do not know the degree to which patrons of these businesses are racially segregated or integrated.

One reason consumption segregation is important is that interpersonal contact between people of different backgrounds can improve intergroup relations (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006). Casual contact in shared consumption spaces may form a cosmopolitan canopy, such that a cognitive and cultural basis for trust is established that often leads to the emergence of more civil behaviour (Anderson 2011).

The primary reason consumption segregation has gone unexamined is that standard data sources do not describe consumer behaviour in sufficient detail to measure such outcomes. Government consumption surveys describe households expenditures, but they typically do not identify the businesses patronised and do not cover enough households in a location to estimate segregation amongst them. A promising alternative is the increasing trail of digital exhaust generated by individuals using online platforms and smart devices as part of their daily lives. These new data offer social scientists opportunities to observe dimensions of individual behaviour unseen by traditional methods. For example, individuals are comfortable using Google to search for content that they would be unlikely to reveal to a survey enumerator (Stephens-Davidowitz 2017). Spatial variation in the prevalence of Google searches for racial slurs has been shown to predict vote shares in US presidential elections (Stephens-Davidowitz 2014). Restaurant reviews posted on Yelp can reveal hygiene violations previously undetected by health authorities (Harrison et al 2014).

In recent research, we use business reviews posted by users of the website Yelp to study consumption segregation in New York City restaurants (Davis et al. 2017). While users of the website are not a representative sample of the population, their online activity provides rich details of their consumption patterns that are not available in other data sources. This allows us to describe how restaurant consumption depends on the characteristics of individuals, restaurants, and neighbourhoods and use our estimates to compute measures of consumption segregation. We find that restaurant consumption is considerably less segregated along racial and ethnic lines in New York City than residences are. As the body of digital exhaust grows, researchers will be able to measure segregation in other cities and other dimensions of economic life.

Consumption Segregation

We cannot say a priori whether segregation along demographic lines is greater in consumption or residences. The fact that individuals may move around the city for consumption purposes has an ambiguous effect relative to the racial segregation of residences. On one hand, if diverse consumers choose common destinations, this may mitigate the spatial separation of residences. On the other hand, demographic differences in tastes could cause individuals choices to diverge even further.

To study consumption segregation, we use data from Yelp users in New York City to estimate a discrete-choice model of the restaurant patronage decision. We allow consumers decisions to depend on spatial frictions (the transit time it takes to reach the restaurant from home or work), social frictions (demographic differences between the users home neighbourhood and the restaurants neighbourhood), and restaurant characteristics (cuisine, rating, price, etc.). Our estimates show that all three components are important for predicting behaviour. Consumers are more likely to patronise a restaurant when it is closer to them, when it is located in a neighbourhood with racial demographics similar to their own, and when the restaurant has a higher rating. These preference parameters are race-specific, so we also find that, for example, Asian users are more likely to patronise restaurants serving Asian cuisine.

Next, we compute measures of consumption segregation that would prevail if the entire residential population of New York City behaved according to our estimates. The map in Figure 1 illustrates our main results for three Manhattan neighbourhoods: Harlem, East Harlem, and the Upper East Side. Each dot on the map represents 5% of the residents or consumers in each census tract (delineated in the maps). The four colours represent four different demographic groups: Asian (red dots), black (blue), Hispanic (orange), and white (green). Panel A makes clear that residential segregation is relatively high in this part of Manhattan  Harlem residents are primarily black, East Harlem is heavily Hispanic, and the Upper East Side is overwhelmingly white.

Panel B shows the model-predicted racial composition of restaurant patrons in each tract. While there are still clear differences across neighbourhoods, consumption in Panel B is considerably more integrated than residences in Panel A. Individuals of different races and ethnicities are more likely to consume together in the same restaurant than to reside in the same census tract. For the city as a whole, we compute a dissimilarity index, a standard measure of segregation, for both consumption and residences. Consumption dissimilarity is about half the level of residential dissimilarity.

Figure 1 Residential and consumption segregation in three Manhattan communities

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Notes: These maps depict community districts 8 (Upper East Side), 10 (Central Harlem), and 11 (East Harlem) in Manhattan. Each dot represents 5% of the tracts residential population or predicted restaurant visitors. Asian residents or consumers are represented by red dots, black by blue, Hispanic by orange, and white by green. Panel A depicts residences; panel B depicts estimated consumption; panel C depicts consumption without spatial frictions; and panel D depicts consumption without social frictions.

Spatial frictions, social frictions, and gentrification

We illustrate the contributions of spatial and social frictions to the observed consumption segregation by predicting consumer behaviour in the absence of these frictions. Panel C shows consumption patterns when we wholly eliminate spatial frictions, making every restaurant in the city available to any resident without any travel time. Comparing panel C to B, there is a diminution of the degree of consumption segregation, but this change is relatively modest. Spatial frictions lead consumers to often choose restaurants near their residences, but consumption segregation is not simply inherited from residential segregation.

Panel D sets social frictions to zero (and spatial frictions at their estimated levels). It shows the pattern of consumption that would result if consumers considered transit time and restaurant characteristics when choosing their destination, but were unaffected by the racial and ethnic composition of the neighbourhood in which the restaurant is located. The result is considerably more integrated consumption in each of the neighbourhoods depicted in Figure 1. This substantial role for demographic differences in predicting consumers choices may reflect a number of mechanisms, such as preferences over residential demographics, a tendency to visit restaurants located near friends or family members who share the same race or ethnicity, or differences in information sets that co-vary with demographics. Regardless of the exact mechanism, we estimate that consumption dissimilarity for the city as a whole would be about one third lower if consumer behaviour did not respond to differences between the residential demographics of the restaurant tract and both the consumers individual identity and residential tract demographics.

The social frictions associated with demographic differences imply that gentrification could have consequences for incumbent residents welfare beyond those associated with changes in housing prices. We illustrate this by computing the expected utility of restaurant consumption for incumbent residents in low-income, majority-black neighbourhoods in current conditions and in a counterfactual in which surrounding neighbourhoods become high-income, majority-white areas. We find that incumbent residents would suffer welfare losses due to gentrification that are overwhelmingly due to increases in social frictions rather than changes in restaurant traits. These demographic changes presumably have consequences for dimensions of urban life beyond restaurant consumption.

Conclusions

Novel data allow economists to study dimensions of economic life previously undocumented. A particularly promising source is the digital exhaust generated by the smart devices and online platforms that now accompany large swathes of human activity. These data describe individual behaviour at a much higher frequency and in much greater geographic detail than most traditional data sources. We use restaurant reviews posted to Yelp to study segregation of consumption along racial and ethnic lines in New York City. While this metropolis is distinctive in terms of its population density and diversity of restaurants, our paper provides a first look at consumption segregation and introduces a methodology that could be applied to studying consumption segregation in other cities, countries, and sectors.

References available at the original.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Over the past, oh, decade or so Ive been so consumed with the battle to get everybody into the heatlh care system  Everybody in, nobody out, as Quentin Young puts it  that I havent put much energy into thinking about the heatlh care itself. After all, just because a house is energy inefficient doesnt mean that its OK to leave people out in the cold. Now that single payer is no longer never, ever, but a program that could actually be achieved with (an enormous) level of effort, KHNs new series, Treatment Overkill, which starts with Liz Szabos So Much Care It Hurts: Unneeded Scans, Therapy, Surgery Only Add To Patients Ills, provides me with a change to broaden my scope a bit, with a survey post like this one.

So Im going to look at two issues: (1) Is overtreatment a real problem? and (2) What are the causes of overtreatment? Spoilers: Yes, and its complicated.

Confession time: Im the sort of person who doesnt get the idea of deductibles at all; I cant understand why anyone would seek out medical treatment unless they were absolutely sure they needed it. And the reason I fear the heatlh care system is, in fact, the prospect (painful) overtreatment; the dental clinic that was going to give me full anesthesia to remove a wisdom tooth; or my nightmare of end of life care hooked up to a machine in a nursing home in a room with a television I cant turn off.

Overtreatment Is Real Problem

Evidence for overtreatment[1] falls into two categories: Anecdotes, and studies and surveys. Ill look at anecdotes first.

Anecdotes isnt really a fair word, though; most of the stories are more about entire vertical markets (for example, stents, as we shall see). Szabo starts out with this example:

When Annie Dennison was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, she readily followed advice from her medical team, agreeing to harsh treatments in the hope of curing her disease. In addition to lumpectomy surgery, chemotherapy and other medications, Dennison underwent six weeks of daily radiation treatments. She agreed to the lengthy radiation regimen, she said, because she had no idea there was another option. Medical research published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2010  six years before her diagnosis  showed that a condensed, three-week radiation course works just as well as the longer regimen. A year later, the American Society for Radiation Oncology, which writes medical guidelines, endorsed the shorter course. In 2013, the society went further and specifically told doctors not to begin radiation on women like Dennison  who was over 50, with a small cancer that hadnt spread  without considering the shorter therapy. Its disturbing to think that I might have been overtreated, Dennison said. I would like to make sure that other women and men know this is an option.

(Note, sadly, that Dennison immediately puts the onus on the consumer patient to be informed; an obvious tax on time, to be paid with the patient has the least time or energy to spare, instead of looking for the systemic solution she vaguely hints at with would like to make sure. This impulse is a topic for another post.)

Nobel Prize Winner Bernard Lowns gives a second example in this interview (after demolishing bed rest for heart attack patients as a form of medieval torture as well):

[DR. LOWN]: At the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital [now Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston] in 1960, I was asked to see a patient who was in her late 70s, demented, and had burns over 60 percent of her body. She had been smoking in bed. They asked me to consult about putting in a pacemaker, which she did not need. Furthermore, she was clearly dying, and implanting a pacemaker would only have increased her suffering without prolonging her life. I was mortified. I wrote a note urging against a pacemaker. It created quite a rumpus. If that were an isolated episode, it would be tragic. But that kind of thing happened daily.

Here is a third, and egregious example, from Health Beat:

Over the weekend, the New York Times published a head-turning tale about Dr. Mark Midei, a star cardiologist at St. Joseph Medical Center in Townson, Maryland. According to federal investigators, Dr. Midei implanted potentially dangerous cardiac stents in the arteries of as many as 585 patients who didnt need them. A hard worker, he managed to knock off those 585 procedures in just two years, from 2007 to 2009. Medicare paid $3.8 million of the $6.6 million charged for the treatments. The Baltimore Sun broke Dr. Mideis story in January. In February the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, which oversees Medicare and Medicaid, began investigating. Monday, the Finance Committee released a 1200-page report.. The report reveals that Midei was a favorite son of Abbott Laboratories, the company that manufactured the stents. Indeed, in August of 2008, Abbott celebrated the fact that the handy doctor had inserted 30 of the companys cardiac stents into trusting patients in a single day: Two days later, an Abbott sales representative spent $2,159 to buy a whole, slow-smoked pig, peach cobbler and other fixings for a barbecue dinner at Dr. Mideis home. Employees from St. Josephs attended the feast.

(It may seem that Im stacking the deck on causality here, but Im really not, although it would be foolish to deny that such cases exist.)

Note again that these examples all involve treatment: Radiation treatment, a pacemaker, and stents. Were not talking about ordering a few two many tests. (The American Family Physican supplies numerous classes of overtreatment, not just anecdotes. See Table I.) Now to the studies and surveys.

Overtreatment in the United States, by Heather Lyu, et al (from the Public Library of Science, and thus peer-reviewed) has induced a good deal of discusson since its publication in September 2017. From the Findings:

The response rate was 70.1%. Physicians reported that an interpolated median of 20.6% of overall medical care was unnecessary, including 22.0% of prescription medications, 24.9% of tests, and 11.1% of procedures.

Dear me. If one-fifth of all medical care is unnecessary, that does seem like rather a lot of stress and fear induced for no reason. And if one out of every ten treatments is unncessary, thats rather a lot of people going to Pain City because their number came up, and not for any medical reason. Those odds arent quite as bad as Russian roulette, but theye in the ballpark! I havent (yet) been able to find figures on the costs of overtreatment, but there have been studies done on the costs of unnecessay care. Health Affairs:

Current estimates for unnecessary expenditures on overuse range from 10 to 30 percent of total health care spending. Even the lower estimate, from the Institute of Medicine, amounts to nearly $300 billion a year. No specialty is immune from practices that lead to overuse, as a recent spate of papers in medical journals can attest. In cardiology, even using criteria that are relatively permissive, an estimated 11 percent of stents are delivered to inappropriate patients. At some hospitals, that rate is closer to 20 percent.

(Note that the figure of 11% unnecessary stents jibes well with Lyus figure of 11.1% of all procedures being unnecessary.)

Im sure none of this is new to any medical professionals in the NC readership, but it was new to me, and may well be new to NC readers  especially those who received treatments that they retrospectively, or just now, understood to be unnecessary.

The Causes of Overtreatment

Its clear that one cause for overtreatment is the profit motive. (I would speculate that individuals like Midei, the stent dude, are edge cases, and that the real causes are more subtle and systemic.) Quoting again from Lyu, et al.:

The top three cited reasons for overtreatment were fear of malpractice (84.7%), patient pressure/request (59.0%), and difficulty accessing prior medical records (38.2%) Seventy-one percent of respondents believed that physicians are more likely to perform unnecessary procedures when they profit from them. The interpolated median response for the percentage of physicians who perform unnecessary procedures with a profit motive was 16.7%; 28.1% of respondents believed that at least 3045% of physicians do so (Fig 2). Respondents who were attending physicians with at least 10 years of experience (OR 1.89 (1.432.50) vs trainees) and specialists (OR 1.29 (1.061.57)) were more likely to believe that physicians perform unnecessary procedures when they profit from them Respondents compensation method and hospital characteristics were not associated with differences in perceptions on the profit motive associated with unnecessary care.

So, the more experienced the doctor is, the more likely the doctor is to believe that profit drives unnecessary procedures. However, the profit motive imputed to individuals cannot be the sole driver (see DICE: Nonclinical Causes of Overtreatment for a model that includes Economics without being reductive) as this letter in the British Medical Journal shows:

As a person who follows the evolution of health care policy from the vantage point of the United States, I found BMJs May 12 article on Choosing Wisely in the UK [see here; CW is an informed consumer model] very interesting. The authors ascribe the phenomenon of medical overtreatment in the UK to a culture of more is better fostered by such factors as defensive medicine, patient pressures, commercial conflicts of interest, payment by activity, and the demands of pay for performance. Many critics of the American health care scene ascribe the problem of irrational overtreatment unsupported by available evidence in the U.S. to precisely the same causes, and argue that the key to rationalizing American medical practice lies in adoption of the UKs single payer, universal coverage health care system and the UKs system of civil justice. The fact that a Choosing Wisely program is necessary in the UK, and for most of the same underlying reasons as apply in the U.S., proves that the UK has not found the panacea to achieving rational medical practice and that emulation of the UK methods of health insurance, physician payment, and civil justice will not work as a panacea in the U.S. either.

So, sadly, single payer as such is unlikely to solve overtreatment (although I cant think of an advocate who ever said it would).

Conclusion

If there were one kind of doctor-patient relationship that I would like to see incentivized when single payer comes to pass, its this one. Again Dr. Lown:

U.S. News: Problems with Americas health care system are economic, but they are also human. Whats been lost in modern medicine? [DR. LOWN: In my view the lost art of listening is a quintessential failure of our health care system. I think that you cannot heal the health care system without restoring the art of listening and of compassion. You cannot ignore the patient as a human being. A doctor must be a good listener. A doctor must be cultured in order to understand where the patient lives, why he lives like that, and also realize that the leading cause of disease in the world is poverty.

Call me Polyanna, but I think if the health care system started treating patients like human beings, that a good deal of overtreatment would be avoided.

NOTES

[1] Overtreatment is not the same as overtesting, or overdiagnosis. Over-treatment involves actual procedures performed on a patient, often surgically. In other words, lots of pain and suffering imposed to no good purpose. (Szabos article considers all three, but I am focusing only on overtreatment.) American Family Physicians defines overtreatment as follows: Treatment initiated when there is little or no reliable evidence of a clinically meaningful net benefit, where net benefit equals benefit minus harm. 
(Natural News) Crypto-currency startup Tezos is encountering some headwinds despite raising $232 million in July through an initial coin offering (ICO).

In a blog post dated October 18, founders Arthur and Kathleen Breitman revealed that progress has stalled for several reasons, including delays in hiring engineers. They also outlined a dispute with the head of the Tezos Foundation, an independent nonprofit entity based in Switzerland which oversees the Tezos ecosystem, including providing financial controls.

The Breitmans accused foundation president Johann Gevers of allegedly engaging in self-dealing and are attempting to remove him from his position. Gevers has denied the allegations and has refused to step down. A legal struggle is likely on the horizon. Through a separate company, the Breitmans own the Tezos source code and other related intellectual property. The original plan is for the couple to eventually sell their company to the foundation for about $20 million.

The couple also indicated in the blog message that they anticipate a February 2018 launch date for the Tezos network.

Bloomberg Technology reports that the management dispute and slow progress in the networks development has apparently led to ripple effects for what is said to be the worlds largest ICO.

Derivatives on Tezos tokens fell as much as 31 percent, according to exchange HitBTC. On BitMEX, December futures on the tokens plunged 58 percent as traders unwound bets the project would be launched before the end of the year. The actual tokens have yet to be created.

Tezos Team Spat Sends Futures Price Diving 75% as Investors Panic  https://t.co/y1kNG0csa1

#Cryptocurrency pic.twitter.com/JJ8hhNew9F  Crypto Street (@Thecryptostreet) October 20, 2017

According to ZeroHedge, the Tezo difficulties highlight some issues with digital currencies and the like, which are generally unregulated.

Tezoss struggles underscore the biggest flaw in the ICO market: Investors keep throwing capital at companies hoping to luck into the next bitcoin, even though most companies dont have a working product and many have relied on white papers fleshing out their ideas to market their tokens, a strategy that has been surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly) successful.

The Wall Street Journal noted that ICOs can have some shortcomings, such as untested management, opaque structures and little transparency into what anyone involved wants to do with the huge sums they are raising.

So far this year, more than $2 billion has been invested in trendy ICOs.

Earlier this year, Natural News found editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, who is pro-crypto-currency, warned that the bitcoin speculative bubble is headed for a collapse, and set forth his reasons, in the form of questions, for taking that position. He also likened it, to some degree, to what happened with the the dot-com bubble and the subprime mortgage debacle. (Related: Read more about bitcoin at Liberty.news.)

Sources include:

Medium.com

Bloomberg.com

ZeroHedge.com

WSJ.com
(Natural News) Its a new day in Washington, D.C. after Donald J. Trump defied the odds and beat the political establishment of both parties, but unfortunately, the federal bureaucracy lives on and until he has more time to cut it down to size, it will continue to make lives more difficult  and dangerous  for Americans.

One group of regulators that is particularly loathsome are those who deal with food safety, notes Natural News founder/editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger. In a recent podcast, he asks if youve ever wondered why toxic food additives and ingredients that are banned in many other countries around the world are still legal in foods sold across the USA, or why GMOs arent allowed to be labeled in America, keeping consumers in the dark about what theyre eating?

The answer is that U.S. government regulators have been deeply corrupted by industry influence. They now operate solely to protect the interests of food and agriculture industries by keeping consumers ignorant of all the toxic poisons and GMOs theyre eating, Adams says.

The Health Ranger noted that many substances like GMOs and pesticides are being banned by other countries but not the United States, because our government is so incredibly corrupt (as weve seen once more in recent days with new revelations about how Russian officials bribed Hillary Clinton and her husband to get 20 percent of U.S.-held uranium  and the FBI knew about it but did nothing).

Adams says Americans are currently living under a system of food fascism because the government is so beholden to many big corporations and together they have formed a totalitarian partnership that beats down competition while enforcing corporate- and big government-friendly rules, even to the detriment of We the People.

When you have big corporations write the regulatory rules, you have fascism, he said. When government exists to protect the interests of the corporations while betraying the interests of the people, you have fascism.

And the problem is particularly inherent in the American food industry, where corporate control over the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is pervasive.

Think about it, he said. Why in any sane society would we not label GMOs? Why would we not want the consumer to have more information that they can use to make an informed decision about what they wish to eat?

And yet, every legitimate effort  by states, by advocacy groups, by organic growers  to force the government to mandate GMO labeling has gone down in defeat or is being litigated out of existence in the courtrooms. (Related: Check out the Health Rangers GMO labeling song Just Label It.)

While the issue hasnt yet come up during the Trump administration, President Obama  who claimed in 2008 during his first presidential campaign to support GMO labeling  signed federal legislation in August 2016 preempting states from requiring food labeling to contain information on GMOs.

That law, Adams said, signifies to Americans that they dont really have a right to know whats in their food.

Of course, America is the headquarters of Monsanto and the biotech industry, which of course have their financial tentacles into academia, the media and government.

Adams noted that Trump is pro-organic and doesnt need GMO corporate Americas money, making him the most likely president to push for new legislation that would require food makers to fully inform Americans about whats in their food.

Its no coincidence that the people who used to argue that smoking cigarettes was safe are now arguing that GMOs are safe, Adams said, alluding to the similarities between how the tobacco and GMO industries are using similar public relations tactics to keep people in the dark about the dangers of their products.

Theres so much more Adams discusses, and you can hear his discussion in its entirety by clicking below or clicking here.

Also check out:

Biotech.news

Disinfo.news

FoodScience.news

GMO.news

Trump.news
A new fund has been started by a coalition of immigrant service providers and advocates to provide direct assistance to undocumented residents affected by the North Bay wildfires.

The campaign, UndocuFund, was launched for residents in Sonoma County with a mission to provide direct support to undocumented children, families and communities affected by the fires.

According to UndocuFund, an estimated 28,000 undocumented immigrants live and work in Sonoma County, many of which were affected by the fires. Due to a lack of English speaking proficiency and immigration status many undocumented victims avoid access to disaster-relief services despite their eligibility.

UndocuFund will ensure that undocumented families displaced by the fires will have the support and resources they need to recover and rebuild, said the campaign's website.

Funding will be provided to fire victims for expenses such as:

 Temporary Housing

 Home repairs

 Essential household items

 Medical and dental expenses

 Tools and equipment required for work

 Clean-up items

 Repair of essential vehicle

 Moving and storage expenses

 Funeral and burial expenses

 Necessary educational materials (computers, school books, supplies)

According to the website, one hundred percent of all donations made to the fund will be used directly to support victims of the fire. The process to receive funds has not yet been announced but is expected to be ready soon.
A prominent homeless camp in Berkeley that has been at its current location for most of this year was given an eviction notice over the weekend, but activists are rallying to keep it there.

On Tuesday afternoon, the residents received a last-minute hail mary from a San Francisco Federal Judge, who granted a 1-week temporary restraining order against BART.

Still, the group is bracing for eviction, mentally preparing themselves for the worst.

"We don't feel safe," said Stacey Hill, who has been living at the camp for about nine months. "It wouldn't surprise me if (BART) shows up anyway."

The large camp has been at the iconic "Here" and "There" signs marking the Berkeley-Oakland border since mid-January, according to homelessness activist J.P. Massar. The camp is visible to traffic entering Berkeley from Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Adeline Streets.

Roughy two-dozen tents are set up around the signs. Residents who live there have access to a make-shift pantry with food and a shelf with self-help and educational workbooks. Fresh flowers in vases sit atop the main table used for eating.

"It's our home," explained resident Sam Clune, "and we try to keep it nice."

Now dubbed "the Poor Tour," the camp grew out of a blend of homeless assistance and activism that started last year, when camps were initially established in the area of the Berkeley Bowl grocery store and the city's central coordinating office for homeless services called the Hub at 1901 Fairview St.

At the time, participants said they were protesting the city's system for allocating aid to homeless people, calling it disorganized and difficult.

The city of Berkeley raided the camp at several locations last year, at one point even arresting City Council candidate Nanci Armstrong-Temple and 70-year-old activist Barbara Brust. But since moving to the border signs along the BART tracks, the camp's residents have been able to camp mostly unimpeded.

This apparently was partly due to confusion over who actually owned the land they were camping on. According to activists and residents at the camp, BART police arrived on Saturday evening and started putting up signs giving campers a 72-hour notice to leave.

In a video posted by homeless advocate Mike Zint on Saturday, a BART police officer serving an eviction notice said BART didn't realize that it was BART property and that the transit agency had a memorandum of understanding with the city of Berkeley to maintain it, but the city asked BART to remove the campers.

According to Massar, the group, which includes activists in the First They Came For the Homeless organization, has established a short list of rules for the camp, like forbidding drugs and keeping noise curfew hours and also recently added a porta-potty and hand washing station. Massar said there are about 25 people living there.

Massar wrote in an open letter to BART directors Rebecca Saltzman and Lateefah Simon, who represent Berkeley, that the community there is peaceful and law-abiding.

"This is cruel; this is inhumane; this is despicable. I implore you to stop it," Massar wrote. "These people have no place to go. There are no excess shelter beds in Berkeley. I know you are acutely aware of the extreme housing shortage in the Bay, and the desperate plight of homeless people as a result."

BART officials did not return multiple requests for comment Monday.

Because the 72-hour notice was reportedly served on Saturday, the soonest the camp could be evicted would be this evening. However, such enforcement actions frequently come during the early morning hours.

Activists have called for an "eviction resistance party" to begin at the spot this evening and go "as long as necessary."

Additional reporting by NBC Bay Area's Gillian Edevane.
An East Bay community has rallied around an LGBTQ center where a man burned a Rainbow Flag and punched a volunteer.

Workers at Pacific Center, which opened in Berkeley 44 years ago and was the third of its kind in the nation, said they have never seen anything like what occurred.

Police said a transient burned a Rainbow Flag Friday morning then punched a volunteer receptionist in the face. The volunteer attempted to stop the transient before being punched.

"These are times that things like this are happening," said Leslie Ewing, director for the Pacific Center for Human Growth.

Ewing believes the current political climate is at least partly to blame for the incident. She said since the presidential inauguration last November there have been more than 200 crimes at community centers across the country.

"Everything from defacing buildings to setting fire," Ewing said.

Ewing stopped short of saying LGBTQ community centers are specific targets.

After Friday's incident, Ewing said a passer-by was able to get a picture of the suspect and showed it to police. A short time later police arrested 23-year-old Richard Woods.

Woods was arrested on suspicion of arson, committing a hate crime and battery with bodily injury. His motive is still unknown.



Ewing said the center has received an outpouring of support and affection after the incident.
The body of a homeless 48-year-old Desert Storm veteran remained at the Cook County medical examiner's office Monday as his family in Florida struggled to bring him home. But when the Cook County commissioner and a nonprofit aiming to help veterans and their families teamed up, the man's remains will now be heading back to his family.

Nelson Rodriguez's widow, who lives in Jacksonville, Florida, reached out to "America's Heroes Group," a nonprofit which in turn reached out to Cook County Board Commissioner Richard Boykin.

The VA has not always done the job that we would like them to do for these people, said Cliff Kelley, who works for the nonprofit. "This is a situation we hope doesn't have to happen again."

Rodriguez's widow explained the family couldn't afford a funeral or cremation.

Boykin said it's not right for the body of a veteran to sit in a bureaucratic limbo.

Veterans who die homeless, or without next of kin that people cant locate--that theyre bodies dont just sit around, thats disrespectful, he said.

So Boykin coordinated with the medical examiners office. Together they were able to cremate Rodriguezs body at no cost to the family.

The action spurring Boykin to make veterans a priority.

"We have too many homeless veterans in Cook County, Illinois and throughout the country," he said. "These individuals have served our nation and served our nation well.

The commissioners office will work with veterans groups and funeral homes. Their goal is to ensure homeless vets are buried with dignity and respect.

I think we have to be more of a compassionate county for our veterans," Boykin said. "I think we have to do more to prioritize.

Boykin will personally escort Rodriguez's remains to Florida, he said.
Saudi Arabia's powerful crown prince on Tuesday announced plans to build a futuristic city run entirely on alternative sources of energy and said the ultraconservative kingdom must return to "moderate Islam."

The $500 billion "Neom" project , envisioned as a hub for technological innovation, will be funded by the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, which the prince oversees, as well as the Saudi government and a range of private and international investors.

"This place is not for conventional people or conventional companies," Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told an audience of investors from around the world gathered in the capital, Riyadh, on Tuesday. "This will be a place for the dreamers of the world."

It's the latest surprise move by Saudi Arabia, a country that for decades was characterized by slow, cautious reforms, bureaucratic red tape and promises that fell short of target. The kingdom was forced to spring into action nearly three years ago after global energy prices fell by more than half, threatening to deplete Saudi foreign reserves and spending power by 2020.

Now, the kingdom is on a mission to build the world's largest sovereign wealth fund to invest in projects like Neom. The aim is diversify revenue away from oil exports and create more jobs under a plan spearheaded by the crown prince known as Vision 2030 .

No reform, however, was more disruptive to the old order than last month's decision to lift the ban on women driving next summer. Saudi Arabia is also expected to bring back cinemas soon as it opens the ultraconservative country to more entertainment.

Prince Mohammed defended these reforms at the conference on Tuesday, saying "we were not like this in the past."

"We want to go back to what we were: Moderate Islam," the prince said during his rare public appearance. The heir to the throne said the kingdom will work to defeat extremist ideas and ensure that young Saudis live in harmony with the rest of the world.

He was speaking on a panel that included business titans Stephen Schwarzman of U.S. private equity firm Blackstone and Masayoshi Son of Japan's technology conglomerate SoftBank.

As panelist after panelist lavished praise on the 32-year-old prince for his "passion," ''vision" and "enthusiasm," he interjected, saying: "I'm one of 20 million people. I am nothing without them."

For many middle and lower-income Saudi families, the prince's reform blueprint is long overdue.

Most Saudis hold jobs with the government, where wages for many can average just a few hundred dollars a month. Still, the public sector wage bill eats up about half of the government's total expenditure. As part of Vision 2030, the government plans to trim the public sector workforce by about 20 percent while ensuring there are enough jobs in the private sector to keep up with demand.

Over the next decade, an estimated 5 million young Saudis will enter the workforce, creating an urgent need for rapid job creation.

Projects like Neom are focused on creating some of those jobs. The independent economic zone in the northwestern region of the country, near Egypt and Jordan, sits on 26,500 square kilometers (10,230 square miles) of untouched land along the Red Sea.

The crown prince envisions it as a hub for innovation, where scientists would develop new technologies and investors would make healthy returns. It's a place, he said, where drones, driverless cars and robotics might all work together to ensure there's no traffic, for example.

Prince Mohammed chose to unveil the project at the Future Investment Initiative conference being organized by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund.

The kingdom plans to transform the fund into the world's largest by listing less than 5 percent of state-owned oil giant Aramco on the Saudi stock exchange and an international exchange, and transferring ownership of Aramco to the Public Investment Fund, also known as PIF.

Saudi Arabia says this could put some $2 trillion under PIF's control double that of Norway's sovereign wealth fund, which is currently the world's largest.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of the conference, PIF Managing Director Yasir al-Rumayyan said the fund currently manages about $230 billion in assets.

Recently, reports emerged that Saudi Arabia was considering holding off on the international portion of the Aramco IPO in favor of a private offering from a key investor like China. Saudi officials, however, insist Aramco is on track for listings as early as next year.

Al-Rumayyan, who is also on the board of Aramco, addressed those concerns at the forum in Riyadh, saying: "Everything is on track, 2018 is our target."

Batrawy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
A Connecticut man was sentenced to prison after defrauding elderly family and friends of more than $400,000.

According to the Rhode Island Department of Justice, Robert Oathout, 37, of Hartford, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Providence, Rhode Island for defrauding over $447,000 from family members and family friends. Oathout told the victims he needed money for medical expenses, and that it would be paid back after he received a settlement for a botched medical procedure in Connecticut. The victims were all between the ages of 67 and 87 years old.

Oathout received electronic payments before, during, and after being incarcerated in Rhode Island on unrelated federal drug charges.

Investigators said there was no botched procedure and he was not owned and settlement payments.

Oathout pleaded guilty in July to eight counts of wire fraud. He was sentenced to 63 months in prison and three years supervised release. He was also ordered to pay restitution of $434,635.75 to the victims.
The Town of Mansfield said propane gas in the kitchen sparked an explosion that injured five people at the Spring Hill Inn on Saturday.

The incident happened at the former Altnaveigh Inn on Storrs Road (Route 195) just before 5:10 p.m. Multiple ambulances and LifeStar were requested to the scene for five people who sustained burn injuries.

One victim was airlifted to Rhode Island Hospital, one person was transported to Hartford Hospital and three others were sent to Windham Hospital.

State police said the injuries did not appear to be life-threatening on Saturday.

Witnesses who were at the inn for an event said they smelled gas before the explosion.

"There was a big flash kind of out of my periphery," said Rick Haverly, of Coventry. "Kind of had my back to it I think. Then a boom and then a little force."

On Monday, the town said the explosion occurred when propane gas accumulated in the kitchen and found an ignition source. The cause of the explosion remains under investigation by the Mansfield Fire Marshal's Office, with assistance from the Connecticut State Police Fire & Explosion Investigation Unit.

Fire officials said the damage was contained to the kitchen area and most of the injuries were burns.



The Spring Hill Inn posted a statement on Facebook thanking first responders.